2023 Doctoral Sustainability Thesis Inventory
The Sustainability Doctoral Thesis Inventory was developed by the Committee on the Environment, Climate Change, and Sustainability (CECCS). It gathers information about all doctoral theses with sustainability content at the University of Toronto since 2009. It includes 3,974 sustainability-oriented doctoral theses, representing approximately 32% of 12,268 doctoral theses since 2009. The purpose of the sustainability thesis inventory is to increase the visibility of such work, making it more accessible for the U of T community to access sustainability related scholarly work.
The approach to sustainability we take here addresses both human and environmental wellbeing (instead of simply focusing on reducing environmental damage), in accordance with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs were chosen as a basis for the inventory due to their comprehensiveness and widespread usage in the sustainability field. The inventory was created based on keywords from the SDGs, as shown in this table.
These SDG-related keywords, also used to develop the Sustainability Undergraduate Course Inventory, were developed in 2017 by the Expanded Student Engagement (ESE) Project in consultation with CECCS. SDG 17, “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the goal partnership for sustainable development,” was excluded from the methodology, as it encompasses the act of achieving the other goals rather than bringing a new perspective to sustainability.
Using these keywords, titles and abstracts of doctoral theses were searched. Since 2009, the School of Graduate Studies (SGS) requires doctoral and masters graduates to submit a thesis to TSpace, a free research repository hosted by the U of T Libraries to disseminate and preserve the scholarly record of U of T faculty and graduate student research. SGS intends to house all available digitized Doctoral and Masters theses by U of T graduate students on TSpace. The thesis metadata was exported by a TSpace administrator and shared with CECCS in August 2023.
The following information was documented in the inventory: Author, Advisor/Supervisor, Title, Department, Date Issued, Abstract, Degree and the SDG(s) to which the thesis is related.
If you are an author or supervisor at the University of Toronto and think that a thesis should be included in or removed from the inventory, please contact ayako.ariga@utoronto.ca.
| Author | Advisor | Title | Department | Date issued | Abstract | Degree | Keyword(s) | SDG(s) covered |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abawi, Zuhra Elizabeth | Wane, Njoki N||Lopez, Ann E | Troubling the Teacher Diversity Gap: The Perpetuation of Whiteness Through Practices of Bias Free Hiring in Ontario School Boards | Social Justice Education | 2018-03 | Teaching staff in Ontario schools do not reflect the increasing diversity of the students who occupy Ontario classrooms today. School boards across Ontario have come under considerable scrutiny regarding the lack of diverse teacher representation that adequately reflects Ontario’s demographic composition (Childs et al., 2010; Ryan, et al., 2009; Turner, 2015). This thesis addresses the Ontario teacher diversity gap (James Turner, 2017; Turner 2015; Turner, 2014; Ryan, et al., 2009) in relation to provincial equity and inclusive educational policies, which have been created to address the dominance of white teachers in publicly-funded education in Ontario. However, findings from the research indicate that these policies have not had the desired results, and in some ways have contributed to perpetuating the status quo, and the ongoing overrepresentation of white teachers in schools. The thesis furthermore addressed the notion of bias-free hiring (Fine Handlesman, 2012; Hassouneh, 2013) practices through narratives of Ontario teachers themselves. The predominant assumption of bias-free hiring is that one can divorce themselves from their unconscious biases and preconceptions of groups who are dissimilar to them in order to recruit the so-called “most qualified applicant”. The narrative of the “most qualified applicant” is a term invoked when racialized people seek access to employment opportunities. School administrators have great influence on who is hired; therefore it is important for administrators to interrogate their own social locations and positions of power, and unconscious bias in terms of how they recruit teachers. Findings from the research indicate that teachers from racialized groups have different experiences when seeking employment as teachers in publicly-funded school boards in Ontario. In response to this the EHT Equity Hiring Toolkit for Ontario School Administrators has been developed to support school administrators to recruit more diverse teachers. The EHT provides a framework for school administrators to engage in antiracist praxis and action, by examining their social location, and ways that their positionality impacts the hiring decisions they make. School administrators can use the creation of the Toolkit based on the findings of the data that emerged from the research as a Creative Professional Activity (CPA). I consider this to be my contribution to the field of social justice education and leadership. | Ed.D. | educat, inclusive, employment, justice, | 4, 8, 16 |
| Abbarin, Nastaran | Ganss, Bernhard | The Role of Enamel Matrix Protein Amelotin on Biomineralization | Dentistry | 2015-11 | Dental caries is one of the most common chronic diseases of people worldwide. Despite recent advances in oral health care and restorative dentistry, the problem of dental caries and erosion remains unresolved due to the lack of knowledge of the natural biomineralization process of tooth tissues. Dental enamel plays a crucial role in preventing the tooth from destruction. However, if damaged or lost, it cannot be regenerated. Understanding the molecular mechanisms behind formation of enamel would not only make restoration of the tissue possible, but would also provide new insights for optimum design of calcium phosphate based biomaterials for dental and orthopedic applications. Amelotin (AMTN) is a recently discovered protein that is primarily expressed during the maturation stage of enamel formation and is localized at the cell-mineral interface on the surface enamel layer. In vivo studies using transgenic mice suggest a direct regulatory function for AMTN in enamel biomineralization. The aim of this PhD project was to test this hypothesis using different in vitro model systems of mineralization. I first showed that recombinant human (rh) AMTN accelerates hydroxyapatite mineralization in a dose-dependent manner when dissolved in the mineralization SBF buffer. Inactivation of a conserved SSEEL motif resulted in significant reduction in the mineralizing ability of the full-length molecule. I also evaluated the importance of phosphorylation in mineralization by testing a synthetic peptide containing a short sequence of AMTN including phosphorylated SSEEL in the crystallization assay and showed that it promoted mineralization albeit to a lesser degree than rh-AMTN. Detailed characterization of secretory enamel matrix in overexpressor mice showed rapid and uncontrolled mineralization. I also tested the mineralizing ability of AMTN in an established osteoblast cell line and demonstrated that AMTN transfected or introduced in the culture media in the recombinant form both accelerate the formation of mineralized nodules. AMTN molecules embedded in collagen gel matrix were also able to mineralize the collagen material in the SBF buffer within a few hours. The findings of this PhD project provide solid evidence that AMTN is a promoter of hydroxyapatite mineralization and likely a key player in the establishment of surface enamel layer. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Abbey, Melissa Sarah | Reaume, Geoffrey | Madness and Poverty in Toronto: A Narrative Analysis. | Social Justice Education | 2018-11 | This research is a culmination of my experience with Madness and its presence in the world. I question what it means to experience mental health ‘trouble’ in a world that seeks to live under the guise of normalcy. Trouble, as I can most clearly navigate it, happens when something steps outside of the boundaries of normalcy. When life is experienced by an individual as something outside of social convention, the individual becomes ‘marked’ with difference based on a shared perspective of what is correct. My doctoral research therefore examines this phenomenon to understand how one lives a ‘spoiled identity’ in a world that seems to be in defiance of it. I carry out a narrative analysis of textual data to question the unquestioned and ubiquitous presence of mental health narratives within contemporary Western culture. I have not lived in poverty but I take up its narrative in connection to Madness as an intrinsic precursor to something amiss in our society. In addressing these social inequalities, I utilize key conceptual tools such as stigma/spoiled identity, narrative prosthesis, and the interplay between ‘I’ and ‘We’ narratives. As an Interpretive Sociologist, I use the lenses of ethnomethodology and phenomenology to engage in this discussion. The data collected explores and combines the individual and social experience, with Madness and poverty being the phenomena that depict this understanding. My data comes from present- day Toronto newspapers and mental healthcare programming information packages collected from four research sites in Toronto. I utilize newspapers as an object of my research because of their powerful role in narrating public and dominant views. I couple these narratives with an analysis of mental healthcare programming information packages to see where these dominant views appear within society-at-large. | Ph.D. | health, poverty | 1, 3 |
| Abboud, Rida | Neysmith, Sheila | The Social Organization of the Lives of 'Semi-skilled' International Migrant Workers in Alberta: Political Rationalities, Administrative Logic and Actual Behaviours | Social Work | 2013-06 | This institutional ethnography is an inquiry into the particular migrant category of International Migrant Workers (IMW) in Canada (otherwise known as Temporary Foreign Workers). It looks at how the daily lives of IMWs who have been deemed as ‘semi-skilled’ by the National Occupational Classification (NOC) system are organized by their immigration and job status in Canada. These IMWs are working primarily in the food service, hotel or retail industries in front-line and often precarious employment in Southern and Western Alberta. The data was collected through a literature review, interviews, observations, and textual analysis. The participants that informed this inquiry are IMWs, service providers in the immigrant sector, representatives from the Alberta Government, and an immigrant recruiter/consultant. This study uses an ‘ideological circle’ (Yan, 2003), which maps out the process through which governmental ideology is filtered down to all levels of society via a set of ideas, knowledge, procedures and methods about people and processes. It provides a vehicle to identify the specific social relations that organize people in different sites. It becomes apparent through this mapping that along with the political rationalities of neoliberal criteria and the logic of globalization, and market civilization and citizenship, certain administrative logic and technologies of government such as situating IMWs as economic units in the Canadian nation-state, processes of skill codification, and devolution of immigration policies and programs, become the foundations for the ways that IMWs live their lives in Canada. In particular, we can see how and why they ‘work’ for permanent residency, how and why they become vulnerable to precarious employment in their workplace and in other ways, and how and why they become isolated through family separation. The thesis ends with a look into how social workers and social service organizations are managing ‘professional’ relationships with migrant populations whose lives are organized in the above ways, and questions whether it’s possible at all to move beyond supporting ‘bare life’ (Agamben, 1998). | PhD | employment, worker | 8 |
| Abdel-Qadir, Husam | Anderson, Geoffrey M | The Spectrum, Impact, and Management of Cardiovascular Disease in Ontario Women with Early Stage Breast Cancer | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-06 | Background: There are limited data about the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease after early stage breast cancer. Methods: We conducted four cohort studies utilizing data from Ontario women diagnosed with early stage breast cancer between 1998 and 2015. The first study describes causes of death after breast cancer, with a focus on patient strata where death from cardiovascular causes may exceed that from breast cancer. The second study examines hospital presentations for different categories of cardiovascular disease, and their temporal relationship to heart failure, comparing early stage breast cancer cases to age-matched women without cancer. The third study develops a score for predicting cardiovascular risk after early stage breast cancer. The final study examines 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme-A reductase inhibitor (also known as statins) use after early stage breast cancer as a marker of cardiovascular preventative therapy, with comparison to cancer-free women of similar cardiovascular risk. Results: Breast cancer was the most common cause of death. Among patients with prior cardiovascular disease, the risks of death from breast cancer and cardiovascular disease were equivalent for the first five years, after which death from cardiovascular causes was more frequent. For women aged ≥66 years who survived ≥5 years after diagnosis, cardiovascular disease exceeded breast cancer as the leading cause of death at ten years post-diagnosis. The 10-year cumulative incidence of cardiovascular hospitalization was 11.7% after early stage breast cancer and 10.6% in controls. The ratio of cardiovascular disease rates between the cohorts increased with time. 76% of cardiovascular hospitalizations were for diagnoses other than heart failure. 36% of first heart failure presentations were preceded by hospital presentation with another cardiovascular disease. We developed a score to predict the risk of death or hospitalization from cardiovascular disease. Model calibration and discrimination were good. The c-index in the validation cohort was 81.3% at 5 years. Finally, we observed that women with early stage breast cancer were less likely to dispense statins compared to cancer-free women, though the differences were small. Relevance: These data provide useful insights into the importance of cardiovascular disease and how its management can be improved in women with early stage breast cancer. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Abji, Nadeem Nasir | Leon-Garcia, Alberto | Robust and Energy Efficient Service Provider Networks | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2015-11 | This thesis focuses on the energy efficiency of service provider networks. It examines methodologies for reducing the energy consumption as well as greening the operation of the network through the integration of renewable energy systems. It studies the impact of these techniques on network performance and robustness. In order to reduce energy consumption we focus on the problem of energy-aware network planning and traffic engineering. Utilizing the network criticality metric, from network science, and an optimization formulation we quantify the energy-robustness trade-off of green traffic flow assignments. We also develop a robust, dynamic lightpath assignment algorithm, which provides energy savings at low loads and an order of magnitude better blocking performance at high loads. We then examine the challenge of integrating renewable energy in core networks to minimize cost and emissions. We show that renewable energy systems can compromise network robustness and increase disruptions in the network because usage must 'follow the sun'. We study the integration of energy storage systems to mitigate these concerns and quantify the potential savings in energy and cost. We develop a distributed, energy management algorithm to make energy storage charging/discharging decisions as well as electricity purchases for a service provider. Finally we examine the problem of content caching in service provider networks. We study the energy consumption of a caching scheme designed for performance and propose energy-aware modifications. We conclude by studying the impact of over-the-top video-on-demand services like Youtube and Netflix on service provider access networks and propose methods to reduce energy consumption and network congestion. | Ph.D. | energy; renewable, consum | 7, 12 |
| Abji, Salina | Korteweg, Anna C. | Emerging Logics of Citizenship: Activism in Response to Precarious Migration and Gendered Violence in an Era of Securitization | Sociology | 2017-06 | Postnationalism is a theory of citizenship that emerged in the 1990s, which rejected national membership as an exclusionary or limited way of organizing rights and belonging, and sought instead to re-imagine citizenship beyond the nation-state. The approach was largely discredited at the time for underestimating the persistent influence of nationalism and for lacking empirical evidence. In this project, I join a small group of scholars who argue for a reconsideration of postnationalism, particularly for scholarship examining the production of illegality and securitization of borders across countries in the global north. I add to this scholarship by offering an extended case analysis of postnational activism in Toronto, in response to major restructuring of Canada’s refugee and immigration system and expanded deportation regime between 2006 to 2015. Using ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative interviews, and discourse analysis, I show how some activists used postnational human rights frames to restrict immigration authorities from entering schools, women’s shelters, and other city spaces for the purposes of investigating and deporting non-status migrants. Theorized as postnational acts of citizenship, such approaches were useful for exposing the structural violence produced through state regulation of borders and citizenship, leading to the articulation of a ‘no borders’ politics. However, as a social movement strategy, postnational claims were also limited in their capacity to imagine alternatives to state protection, particularly for non-status women in situations of gender-based violence. My findings also point to the erosion of citizenship for a group of activists working as service providers within state-funded institutions, where processes of securitization altered their working conditions and produced feelings of fear, despair, and even terror in how they interpreted the actions of the Conservative party in power at the time. Overall, this research draws attention to the increased salience of postnationalism for studies of social inequality in the contemporary immigration context. | Ph.D. | gender, women, equality, institution | 5, 16 |
| Abou-Beih, Mahmoud Osman | Abdulhai, Baher | Semantic Web Based Multi-agent Framework for Real-time Freeway Traffic Incident Management System | Civil Engineering | 2012-06 | Recurring traffic congestion is attributable to steadily increasing travel demand coupled with constrained space and financial resources for infrastructure expansion. Another major source of congestion is non-recurrent incidents that disrupt the normal operation of the infrastructure. Aiming to optimize the utilization of the transportation infrastructure, innovative infrastructure management techniques that incorporate on edge technological equipment and information systems need to be adopted to manage recurrent and non-recurrent congestion and reduce their adverse externalities. The framework presented in this thesis lays the foundation for multi-disciplinary semantic web based incident management. During traffic incident response, involved stakeholders will share their knowledge and resources, forming an ad-hoc framework within which each party will focus on its core competencies and cooperate to achieve a coherent incident management process. Negotiation between various response agencies operators is performed using intelligent software agents, alleviating the coordination and synchronization burden of the massive information flow during the incident response. The software agents provide a decision support to human operators based on the reasoning provided from the underlying system knowledge models. Ontological engineering is used to lay the foundation of the knowledge models, which are coded in a web based ontology language, allowing a decentralized access to various elements of the system. The whole system communication infrastructure is based on the Semantic Web technologies. The semantic web facilitates the use of, in an enhanced manner, the already existing web technologies as the communication infrastructure of the proposed system. Its semantic capabilities help to resolve the information and data interoperability issues among various parties. The web services concepts combined with the semantic web allow the direct exploration and access of knowledge models, resources, and data repertories held by various parties. The developed ontology along with the developed software system were tested and evaluated by domain experts and targeted system users. Based on the conducted evaluation, both the ontology and the software system were found to be promising tools in developing pervasive, collaborative and multi-disciplinary traffic incident management systems | PhD | infrastructure | 9 |
| Abou-Tabickh, Lilian | Williams, Melissa S. | Al-'Asabiyya in Context: Choice and Historical Continuity in Al-Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldūn | Political Science | 2019-11 | The purpose of this dissertation is to understand the meaning of the term Al-'Aṣabiyya in Al-Muqaddima of Ibn Khaldūn in context. In Al-Muqaddima, he constructs a method for the scientific study of history, the subject matter of which is human association. Human association is necessary for human beings, but by its nature, it requires political authority and economic organization. By order of existence, political authority is acquired only by al-‘aṣabiyya. Therefore, al-‘aṣabiyya is an “essential condition” in the world, and it can be perceived by the senses and the intellect. It is a power that “secures” political victory, and as such, it becomes the source that enables protection and the preservation of human life, the development of urban culture through the management of economic cooperation, and social harmony. In this study, I use a linguistic-contextual method to show that the form of al-'aṣabiyya that secures political authority is not natural, irrational, or aggressive. Rather, it is the fruit of the labour of unity and agreement between individuals and groups (‘aṣabiyyāt). It is a power that individuals manufacture intentionally either by way of descent, alliance, or allegiance to gain political authority. They are ahl al-‘aṣabiyya who achieve their goal “in the ordinary way,” that is, by overcoming others by their power of unity, and praiseworthy qualities. This study also shows that there is no organic connection between al-‘aṣabiyya and the form or quality of rulership. In fact, Ibn Khaldūn’s rejection of hereditary rule, condemnation of tyranny, and argument against the necessity of prophecy show that rational politics suffices for the management of human association. His statement on the science of physics, the use of the term “matter” in an economic sense to mean money, and the connection between injustice and economic policies show that the decline of the polity is not natural but a matter of choice between moderation and excessiveness. The detailed exposition of these various elements shows that the pattern of history in Al-Muqaddima is not cyclical. Instead, history is a narrative about cultural transmission, political and historical continuity, the expansion of one power, and the contraction of another. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Aboudina, Aya | Abdulhai, Baher | Optimized Time-dependent Congestion Pricing System for Large Networks: Integrating Distributed Optimization, Departure Time Choice, and Dynamic Traffic Assignment in the Greater Toronto Area | Civil Engineering | 2016-11 | Congestion pricing is one of the most widely contemplated methods to manage traffic congestion. The purpose of congestion pricing is to manage traffic demand generation and supply allocation by charging fees (i.e., tolling) for the use of certain roads in order to distribute traffic demand more evenly over time and space. This study presents a system for large-scale optimal time-varying congestion pricing policy determination and evaluation. The proposed system integrates a theoretical model of dynamic congestion pricing, a distributed optimization algorithm, a departure time choice model, and a dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) simulation platform, creating a unified optimal (location- and time-specific) congestion pricing system. The system determines and evaluates the impact of optimal tolling on road traffic congestion (supply side) and travellers’ behavioural choices, including departure time and route choices (demand side). For the system’s large-scale nature and the consequent computational challenges, the optimization algorithm is executed concurrently on a parallel cluster. The system is applied to simulation-based case studies of tolling major highways in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) while capturing the regional effects of tolling. The models are developed and calibrated using regional household travel survey data that reflect travellers’ heterogeneity. The DTA model is calibrated using actual traffic counts from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation and the City of Toronto. The main results indicate that: (1) more benefits are attained from variable tolling due to departure time rescheduling as opposed to mostly re-routing only in the case of flat tolling, (2) widespread spatial and temporal re-distributions of traffic are observed across the regional network in response to tolling significant – yet limited – highways in the region, (3) optimal variable pricing mirrors congestion patterns and induces departure time re-scheduling and rerouting patterns, resulting in improved average travel times and schedule delays at all scales, (4) tolled routes have different sensitivities to identical toll changes, (5) the start times of longer trips are more sensitive (elastic) to variable distance-based tolling policies compared to shorter trips, (6) optimal tolls intended to manage traffic demand are significantly lower than those intended to maximize toll revenues, (7) toll payers benefit from tolling even before toll revenues are spent, and (8) the optimal tolling policies determined offer a win-win solution in which travel times are improved while also raising funds to invest in sustainable transportation infrastructure. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Abrahamyan, Lusine | Feldman, Brian M. | Designing Randomized Clinical Trials for Rare Diseases | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-11 | Objectives: 1) To evaluate the quality of randomized clinical trials (RCTs) in rare diseases using Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) as an example, 2) to evaluate the time to treatment response in patients with rheumatic diseases, 3) to evaluate the power of the Randomized Placebo-Phase Design (RPPD) under various response time distributions, and 4) to examine the use of Value of Information (VOI) methodology in the optimal design of clinical trials for rare disease using hemophilia prophylaxis with factor VIII as an example. Methods. The methods include a systematic review, a secondary analysis of data from an RCT and from a patient registry, a computer simulation study, and an evaluation of hypothetical RCT scenarios with VOI methodology. Results. The quality of RCTs in JIA based on selected quality indicators was poor with some positive changes over time. In the data sets used for the assessment of hazard distributions, the response times followed mostly generalized gamma or lognormal distributions. The impact of time-to-event distribution on the power of RCTs was assessed in computer simulations. Based on the simulation results, the highest sample sizes were observed for response times following the exponential distribution. In most scenarios, the parallel groups RCT design had higher power than the RPPD. The conclusion of the VOI analyses indicated that at threshold values lower than 400,000 the current evidence supported the use of on-demand therapy. Threshold values higher than 1,000,000 supported the use of tailored or alternate day prophylaxis. At threshold values between 400,000 - 1,000,000 the optimal decision varied from on-demand to prophylaxis therapies. Conclusions. New, more powerful and acceptable designs should be developed for rare diseases. When time-to-event outcomes are used, investigators should use various sources of information to evaluate response time distributions before the new trial is designed, and consider this information in sample size calculation and analysis. VOI methodology should be used in the planning stage of studies to determine the relevant costs and benefits of future research, and to determine the optimal trial parameters that maximize the cost-benefit trade-off. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Abramovich, Ilona Alex | Burstow, Bonnie | Young, Queer and Trans, Homeless, and Besieged: A Critical Action Research Study of How Policy and Culture Create Oppressive Conditions for LGBTQ Youth in Toronto's Shelter System | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | This dissertation is about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, and queer (LGBTQ) youth and the shelter system. This work focuses on the denial of home and safety to queer and trans youth. Over approximately two years, different groups of people came together to discuss what is holding up and sustaining the homophobia and transphobia in the shelter system, how homophobia and transphobia occurs and is managed in the shelter system, and how broader policy issues serve to create oppressive contexts for LGBTQ youth. This is a Critical Action Research study that was informed by Critical Ethnography and Institutional Ethnography. In order to investigate what disjunctures occur for LGBTQ youth in the shelter system and how those disjunctures come about, this dissertation draws upon one-on-one interviews with LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness, shelter Executive Directors, City of Toronto management, and training facilitators; focus groups with frontline shelter staff; and training observations. This study suggests that it is both the excessive bureaucratic regulation and the lack of necessary bureaucratic regulation in highly significant areas, that play a key role in creating the disjunctures that occur for queer and trans youth in the shelter system. This dissertation describes the findings of this study in five major themes, which include: Homophobia and Transphobia in the Shelter System, LGBTQ Youth Invisibility, Inadequate, Invasive and Otherwise Problematic Rules, Lack of Knowledge, and Inconsistent Conformity to Formal Rules. A Digital Storytelling project was created with one youth and was used as a Knowledge Mobilization strategy for this study. The film helped generate extensive media attention and facilitated change in the shelter system, at the City of Toronto, and at a policy level. This research study has made it possible for the voices of LGBTQ homeless youth to be heard in the context of a critical public health and social justice problem. Detailed policy and practice recommendations and changes to the Toronto Shelter Standards are provided at the end of this dissertation and are meant to help Toronto's shelter system become safe, accessible, and supportive of LGBTQ youth. | Ph.D. | justice, gender, queer, institution | 5, 16 |
| Abu Jayyab, A Khaled | Reichel, Clemens | Nomads in Late Chalcolithic Northern Mesopotamia: Mobility and Social Change in the 5th and 4th Millennium BC | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2019-06 | Due to the nature of their lifestyle and inherent mobility nomadic groups of the past have left little if any discernible imprint in excavated archaeological records. This is regrettable since most regions of the world that saw the emergence of complex societies were shaped by pastoralism as much as by agriculture, requiring us to study the modes in which nomadic and sedentary populations interacted with each other. My study addresses the transformative impact that nomadic groups had on Northern Syria and Northern Mesopotamia during the Early Late Chalcolithic period (4500 – 3800 BC), a crucial time span of social and technological innovations that foreshadowed the “Urban Revolution” of the 4th millennium BC. Using chaîne opératoire as underlying analytical tool I studied material assemblages from surveys and excavations across southeastern Turkey, Northern Syria, northern Iraq and Western Iran to identify items of material culture that can be associated with non-sedentary populations and their seasonal movements within this greater region. This study was complemented by detailed petrographic analyses of ceramics from key sites that had seen extensive excavation. My study not only contributes to a better regional understanding of Late Chalcolithic societies (notably the social and economic relationships between settlements and hinterland) but also provides a template for how to enhance the visibility of the “invisible nomad” within the archaeological record. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Abughanm, Saad | Katz, Ariel | The Protection of Pharmaceutical Patents and Data under TRIPS and US-Jordan FTA: Exploring the Limits of Obligations and Flexibilities: A Study of the Impacts on the Pharmaceutical Sector in Jordan | Law | 2012-06 | In 2000, Jordan signed the Agreement on Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (the TRIPS Agreement) and a free trade agreement with the US (USJFTA). Both commitments have required Jordan to comply with various obligations, including full compliance with the minimum standards for the protection of intellectual property rights (IPRs) under the TRIPS Agreement and TRIPS-Plus IP standards set out under the terms of the USJFTA. Enticed by views that strong IP protection would create prosperity in the Kingdom by promoting technological innovation and inducing transfer and dissemination of technology to Jordanians, Jordan implemented the provisions of TRIPS and the USJFTA to the letter. However, Jordan focused little attention on important “TRIPS flexibilities”. In particular, Jordan has qualified parallel importation and limited the grounds of compulsory licenses. In addition, Jordan provides pharmaceutical testing data with data exclusivity. This thesis focuses on the Jordanian experience in the pharmaceutical sector. It argues that strong patent protection has not been conducive to the promotion of technological innovation and the transfer and dissemination of technology. Moreover, this protection has resulted in adverse outcomes such as increased drug prices, unavailability of essential medicines in some public hospitals for serious diseases, and a dwindling local pharmaceutical industry, in part, as a consequence of its inability to access advanced, patented technology on reasonable commercial terms. The thesis also investigates the legitimacy of establishing certain grounds of compulsory licensing by Jordan, even in light of the TRIPS-Plus obligations under the USJFTA. It advocates that such grounds contribute to the promotion of technical innovation, lead to the transfer of advanced technology, and above all improve access to affordable medicines. Finally, the thesis explores Jordan’s obligations to protect pharmaceutical testing data under TRIPS and USFTA arguing that neither of these two instruments requires data exclusivity as claimed by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) and some developed countries. | SJD | rights; trade; industr; innovation | 9, 10, 16 |
| Acuna, Maria Virginia | Clark, Caryl||Munjic, Sanda | The Spanish Lamento: Discourses of Love, Power, and Gender in the Musical Theatre (1696-1718) | Music | 2016-06 | Weeping male characters dominated lamenting scenes in the mythological zarzuela during the tumultuous years surrounding the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). Always played by a woman en travesti, the lamenting male became a stock character in this musical genre, entertaining audiences while allegorically reflecting Madrid’s elite at the turn of the eighteenth century. This dissertation uncovers an as yet unexplored proliferation of male laments in staged drama of the period while addressing a cross-dressing phenomenon in the zarzuela, an aspect that has until now received little attention. Extant zarzuelas from the period 1696–1718 form the core of the dissertation. I explore lamenting traditions in this repertory in relation to contemporary cross-dressing practices, and to contemporary philosophical, literary, gender, and medical discourses. Among the numerous male laments occurring in this repertory, I identify two types: Cupid’s laments, and their allegorical representation of the Spanish monarch and of his struggle for power, and male amorous complaints as a manifestation of philosophical perceptions about love. Finally, discourses of gender inequality are revealed in the analysis of the few female laments appearing in the genre. I suggest that a proliferation of male lamentos during this period is symptomatic of the political tensions felt at court. Moreover, I contend that the male lyrical voice that had long dominated the tradition of amorous suffering found a safe conduit for theatrical and lamenting expression in the female performer. Women’s voices and bodies softened the dangerous overtones of feminization carried in the male lamento, thus allowing the lamenting male to become widely accepted. An examination of the zarzuela and its laments helps bring a rich literary, theatrical, and musical tradition into the mainstream while illuminating an under-explored period in the history of Spanish music. | Ph.D. | gender, women, equality | 5 |
| Adam, Simon | Burstow, Bonnie | Crazy making: The reproduction of psychiatry by nursing education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-06 | This is a study of how psychiatric discourse linguistically and institutionally figures in nursing education in Ontario. Correspondingly, it is a study of ‘mental health’ nursing education in undergraduate nursing programs, specifically, those offered by college-university partnerships. It is likewise an investigation of how psychiatry has come to colonize nursing by way of the nursing academy. A mixed qualitative methodology study, its analysis draws on the author’s experience as a nursing student and faculty member, with data also coming from student and faculty interviews, observation periods, and a number of curriculum and institutional documents. Two primary approaches are employed–critical discourse analysis and institutional ethnography. Critical discourse analysis is used to unearth how the structure and function of language play a role in the reproduction of ‘mental illness.’ The language of nursing mental health literature is examined as a producer of psychiatrically-colonized constitutions of ‘mental health.’ What is demonstrated is how nursing linguistically downloads psychiatric discourse, thereby reproducing an ideologically biomedical framing of ‘the patient.’ With institutional ethnography, the thesis makes visible the operational complex of the relations that comprise the nursing program under study. Beginning in the everyday world, the author traces the institutional processes which embed and maintain a problematic construction of the ‘mentally ill,’ in the process, maintaining a perpetual state of psychiatric ruling. Reinforcing this psychiatric reproduction are ‘disciplinary’ practices–those docility-producing teaching practices which are common to university professional education. These too are examined as an arm of the institution, as inscribers of psychiatric discourse, effectively perpetuating a problematic understanding of ‘mental health’ for nursing. The thesis ends with a discussion of implications for critical thinking and directions for nursing. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Adams, Eric Michael | Schneiderman, David | The Idea of Constitutional Rights and the Transformation of Canadian Constitutional Law, 1930-1960 | Law | 2009-11 | This dissertation argues that the idea of constitutional rights transformed Canadian constitutional law well before the entrenchment of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Specifically, it locates the origins of Canada’s twentieth-century rights revolution in the constitutional thinking of scholars, lawyers, judges, and politicians at mid-century (1930-1960). Drawing on archival documents, personal papers, government reports, parliamentary debates, case law, and legal scholarship, this work traces the constitutional thought and culture that first propelled human rights and fundamental freedoms to the forefront of the Canadian legal imagination. As a work of legal history, it also seeks to revive the dormant spirit of constitutional history that once pervaded the discipline of Canadian constitutional law. The Introduction situates the chapters that follow within the emerging Canadian historiography of rights. Chapter Two traces the origins of Frank Scott’s advocacy for constitutional rights to the newer constitutional law, an approach to constitutional scholarship sparked by the social and political upheavals of the Depression, and the influence of Roscoe Pound’s sociological jurisprudence. Chapter Three explores the varied dimensions of the Second World War’s influence on the nascent idea of Canadian constitutional rights. In particular, the rapid rise of the wartime administrative state produced a rights discourse that tended to reflect the interests of property while ignoring the civil liberties of unpopular minorities. Chapter Four examines the rise of a politics and scholarship of rights in the years immediately following the war. In response to international rights ideals and continuing domestic rights controversies, scholars and lawyers sought to produce a theory of Canadian constitutional law that could accommodate the addition of judicially-enforced individual rights. If not entirely successful, their efforts nonetheless further reoriented the fundamental tenets of Canadian constitutional law. Chapter Five reveals the influence of Canada’s emerging constitutional culture of rights on the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly Justice Ivan Rand and his conception of an implied bill of rights. Together, these chapters demonstrate the confluence of ideology, circumstance, and personality – the constitutional history – that altered the future of Canadian constitutional law. | SJD | rights, justice | 16 |
| Adamson, Nancey | Katharine, Janzen | Millennial Employees' Expectations of the Workplace: A Case Study of Humber College | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | The purpose of this study was to explore and describe whether what the Millennial employees (employees born between January 1, 1981 and December 31, 2000) who participated in the study wanted in the workplace aligned with what is currently offered in the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts Technology (CAAT) system. More specifically, the study examined if the Millennials who currently worked at the CAAT that was the site of this study (Humber College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning), felt the current "terms and conditions" of employment met their needs, and if not, what were their suggestions on changes that might be made to better meet their expectations.I used a convergent parallel mixed methodology research design for this study with the intention to provide Humber leaders with the perspectives of their youngest employees on the current "terms and conditions" of employment and provide recommendations on if and/or how changes could be made to better meet these employees' needs. By including the perspectives from three key sources of information in this study, that is, Millennial employees, Human Resources leaders, and document analysis, the findings provided a deeper understanding of the issues explored.The conclusions and recommendations drawn from this study suggest that there are many opportunities for college leaders to re-examine policies and practices that are currently in place for college employees. Many suggestions and recommendations were made in each of the five main categories measured: Financial Rewards; Recognition; Skill Development; Career Development; and Quality of Work/Life.The study findings may inform policy and practice that will create an environment that is conducive to attracting and retaining the best faculty, support staff and administrators so that the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology can meet the mandate set out for them by the provincial government. | Ph.D. | employment | 8 |
| Adebajo, Sylvia Bolanle | Myers, Ted | Prevalence and Correlates of HIV, Syphilis, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C Infections and Sexual Behaviours of Men who have Sex with Men in Two Cities in Nigeria | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014-06 | Globally, men who have sex with men (MSM) continue to be disproportionately affected by the HIV pandemic. However, prior to this study, very little was known about the magnitude and factors that heighten MSM's vulnerabilities to HIV and other STIs in Nigeria. A cross-sectional survey was administered to 1,125 consenting MSM in Lagos and Ibadan recruited through modified respondent driven strategy. Sero-prevalence of HIV, hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV) and syphilis and levels of unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) were determined using data adjusted for network size and unweighted data for the pooled sample. Correlates of HIV, HBV, HCV and UAI were examined using multiple logistic regression analyses. Results revealed relatively young sexually active men who engaged in multiple concurrent sexual relationships with both men and women. More than half of the men self-identified as bisexual, and 44.4% as homosexual. High levels of risky sexual behaviours were demonstrated with over two-thirds of MSM in Ibadan (65.5%) and Lagos (69.7%) reporting UAI with their male partners in the previous 6 months. Correlates of URAI included homosexual identity, older age, lack of social support, and douching. Prevalence of previously undiagnosed HIV infection were four times higher in Lagos 12.7% (95% CI 10.6-15.0), and Ibadan 11.2% (95% CI 5.7-16.2) than the national HIV prevalence among Nigerian men. Prevalence of HBV (10.1% and 18.0%); HCV (2.8% and 4.3%) and current active syphilis (0.03%) infections in Lagos and Ibadan respectively were also high. Correlates of HIV were URAI and UIAI with men and women, condom breakage, homosexual identity, increasing age, employment, sexual activities with non-African white men and internalized homophobia. Bisexual identity, UIAI with male sex partners, and low self-esteem were associated with HBV infection. Correlates of HCV were URAI and reported sex with men who had lower educational status. This study confirms the existence of MSM who engage in risky behaviours with very limited access to appropriate HIV and STI prevention services. | Ph.D. | gender, health | 3, 5 |
| Adefarakan, Elizabeth Temitope | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | Yoruba Indigenous Knowledges in the African Diaspora: Knowledge, Power and the Politics of Indigenous Spirituality | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-06 | This study investigates how Yoruba migrants make meaning of Yoruba Indigenous knowledges in the African Diaspora, specifically within the geopolitical space of dominant Canadian culture. This research is informed by the lived experiences of 16 Africans of Yoruba descent now living in Toronto, Canada, and explores how these first and second generation migrants construct the spiritual and linguistic dimensions of Yoruba Indigenous identities in their everyday lives. While Canada is often imagined as a sanctuary for progressive politics, it nonetheless is also a hegemonic space where inequities continue to shape the social engagements of everyday life. Hence, this dissertation situates the historical and contemporary realities of colonialism and imperialism, by beginning with the premise that people in diasporic Yoruba communities are continuously affected by the complicated interplay of various forms of oppression such as racism, and inequities based on language, gender and religion. This study is situated within a socio–historical and cosmological context to effectively examine colonialism’s impact on Yoruba Indigenous knowledges. Yet, inversely, this study also involves discussion of how these knowledges are utilized as decolonizing tools of navigation, subversion and resistance. The central focus of this research is the articulation of colonial oppression and how it has reconfigured Yoruba Indigenous identities even within a purportedly ‘multicultural’ space. First, the historical dis/continuities of the Yoruba language in Yorubaland are investigated. This strand of the research considers British colonization, and more specifically, the Church Missionary Society’s (CMS) efforts at translating the Bible into Yoruba as pivotal in the colonial project. What kinds of categories does missionary education create that differ from pre-colonial categories of Yoruba Indigenous identity? How are these new identities shaped along lines of race and gender? In other words, what happens when Yoruba cosmology encounters colonialism? The second strand of this research investigates how these historical colonialisms have set the framework for enduring contemporary colonialisms that continue to fracture Yoruba Indigenous knowledges. This dissertation offers insights relevant to diversity and equitable pedagogy through careful consideration of the complicated strategies used by participants in their negotiations of Yoruba identities within a context of social inequity and colonialism. | PhD | equitable, gender | 4, 5 |
| Affifi, Ramsey Rasheed | Bredo, Eric | Educating in a Multispecies World | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-11 | The widespread deterioration of our planet's life support system is a global challenge facing humanity. This dissertation is based on the premise that changing course requires fundamentally reconstructing how we think about humans and the rest of nature. If a sustainable course requires that we see ourselves as members of an ever-evolving biotic community, then we will have to abandon ways of thinking and acting that distort a sense of continuity between our species and others, replacing kinship with radical separation. Insofar as education is concerned with human learning processes while considering learning in other species as irrelevant or nonexistent, it institutionalizes and perpetuates attitudes that prevent us from reintegrating back into our web of relations. These attitudes are no longer biologically, philosophically, or ethically warranted. They do not keep up with the extent of our empirical and theoretical progress beyond thinking in terms of metaphysical dualisms. To evolve a better discipline, I claim that we must ecologize education; we must dare to imagine and enact an interspecies pedagogy. In the seven papers that follow, I draw from various philosophical, scientific and pedagogical sources to trace pathways into interspecies pedagogy and I try to overcome some of the ways my culturally-informed biases have blocked me from taking the concept seriously. The papers are diverse but they also overlap, showing the process by which I have worked to develop a theoretical alternative that erases the line between education and biology. As such, this publication fits within the larger "posthumanist" shift occurring variously throughout the university. My partial solutions and explorations are admittedly situated and contextual. However, I hope that they can help those who suffer similar blockages as I do to feel more viscerally that the world around them is responsive, attentive, and worthy of pedagogical consideration, and that the range of human affairs treating the biological world as but scenery set behind the great human story is as miseducative for other species as it is for us, and in need of a swift dismantling. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Afridi, Momina | Bascia, Nina | UNDERSTANDING THE WORK OF FEMALE TEACHERS IN LOW FEE PRIVATE SCHOOLS IN PUNJAB, PAKISTAN | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-11 | While Low Fee Private Schools (LFPSs) and Public Private Partnership (PPPs) initiatives have been widely promoted in various contexts including Pakistan, they have seldom been viewed through the lens of the teacher’s life and work. To understand the work of female teachers in LFPSs, I apply a conceptual framework that demonstrates the interconnectedness of teachers’ career and working conditions, gender and teacher labour markets in looking at the work of teachers. Specifically I ask, how female teachers perceive and experience their careers, working conditions and gendered labour in LFPSs with regards to the occupational labour market for teachers in Punjab, Pakistan. My qualitative study is based on interviews and focus group discussions with teachers and principals in LFPSs located in Punjab. In addition, NGO fieldworkers and civil society members who work on education were also interviewed to gain a better understanding of the context. Findings from my study point to how haphazard recruitment, lack of career paths and the diminishing social image and status of teachers negatively affect the work and motivation of female teachers in LFPSs in Punjab. A crucial argument that emerges from my study is that while teachers in LFPS themselves are willing to learn and improve their performance, they do not have enough opportunities for in-service training in challenging areas such as multi-grade teaching, subject specialisation, changing syllabus and dealing with students who have very poor learning levels. While for young, single and female teachers a major reason for leaving employment in LFPSs was their inability to work after getting married, many teachers argued that a low salary and tough working conditions, often caused women to move to other jobs. The study affirms the observation that female teachers in LFPS are paid lower wages and are increasingly being hired in private schools due to their gender. Women in LFPSs face much different working conditions, management attitudes and salary as compared to male teachers. Findings show that women’s work in LFPSs teaching in Pakistan takes place in a social, economic and political environment that constrains women’s labour force participation. | Ph.D. | educat, gender, women, employment, labour, worker, wage | 4, 5, 2008 |
| Agha Beigi, Hossein | Christopoulos, Constantin||Sullivan, Tim | Retrofit of Soft Storey Buildings Using Gapped Inclined Brace Systems | Civil Engineering | 2014 | Although a soft storey mechanism is generally undesirable for the seismic response of building structures, it could provide potential benefits due to the isolating effect it produces. This thesis proposes a retrofit strategy for buildings that are expected to develop soft storey mechanisms, taking advantage of the positive aspects of the soft storey response while mitigating the negative ones. After a review of traditional considerations that are made for soft storey structures, the work starts by comparing the behaviour of an RC frame building with two infill configurations; in the first configuration, it is assumed that masonry infills are distributed over all storeys uniformly, while in the next step and in order to consider soft storey effects, it is assumed that masonry infills are not present at the ground storey. Results of incremental dynamic analyses indicate that structures with uniform infill are less likely to collapse. However, if the displacement demands at the first level of soft storeys could be sustained, their overall performance would be significantly improved. Following this initial study, a gapped inclined brace (GIB) system is proposed with the aim of significantly reducing the likelihood of collapse whilst ensuring that the seismic damage concentrates at this single level, protecting the rest of the structure located above. The GIB system achieves these aims by reducing P-Delta effects at the first floor of soft storey buildings without significantly increasing their lateral resistance. The mechanics of the proposed system are defined and a systematic design procedure is explained and illustrated. The theoretical relations that are derived for GIB systems are verified through numerical analyses. Results of cyclic static and incremental dynamic analyses demonstrate that the overall seismic performance of soft storey buildings retrofitted using a GIB system is greatly improved, indicating that the GIB system produces an efficient and intelligent soft storey mechanism at the first level of such buildings, which provides several advantages over conventional approaches. The last part of the thesis discusses various uncertainties that remain about the potential of GIB systems, including the best likely connection details for GIB systems, which should be investigated as part of future research. | Ph.D. | buildings | 9 |
| Agou, Shoroog | Locker, David ||Tompson, Bryan ||Streiner, David | Oral Health Related Quality of Life Outcomes of Orthodontics in Children | Dentistry | 2009-11 | Contemporary conceptual models of health emphasize the importance of patient-based outcomes and recognize the complexity involved in their assessment. Various health conditions, personal, social, and environmental factors, are all thought to contribute to individual’s quality of life. However, the impact of orthodontic treatment on Oral Health-related Quality of Life (OH-QOL) outcomes in children has not yet been systematically studied. Hence, this research was planned to assess the effect orthodontic treatment has on pediatric OH-QOL outcomes. Further, the important moderational role of children’s psychological assets on OH-QOL reports is explored. Following completion of a preliminary study to confirm the psychometric properties of the Child Perception Questionnaire (CPQl1-14), the current two-phase study was undertaken. This consisted of a cross-sectional study examining the relationship among Self-Esteem (SE), malocclusion, and OH-QOL, and a longitudinal study examining the influence of orthodontics and children’s Psychological Wellbeing (PWB) on OH-QOL reports. This PhD dissertation is presented in the “Publishable Style”. The journals which hold the copyrights for the papers published from this thesis have given permission for the reproduction of the text and figures for this dissertation. The preliminary data confirmed that the CPQ11-14 is sensitive to change when used with children receiving orthodontic treatment. Our cross-sectional findings indicated that the impact of malocclusion on OH-QOL is substantial in children with low SE and identified SE as a salient determinant of OH-QOL in children seeking orthodontic treatment. Longitudinal data, on the other hand, detected significant improvement of OH-QOL outcomes after orthodontic treatment. As postulated, these improvements were most evident for the social and emotional domains of OH-QOL. However, covariate analysis emphasized the important role psychological factors play in moderating OH-QOL reports, as children with better PWB were more likely to report better OH-QOL regardless of their orthodontic treatment status. These results substantiate the validity of contemporary models of patient-based outcomes linking biological, personal, social, and environmental factors. Researchers and clinicians are encouraged to adopt this forward thinking approach when dealing with children with oro-facial conditions. Further studies with larger samples and longer follow-ups would be of value to expand on these findings. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Agyepong, Rosina | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | Black Focused Schools in Toronto: What do African-Canadian Parents Say? | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-11 | Abstract The purpose of this study was to examine how parents of African descent understand the African-centered school concept as an alternative education to the mainstream public school in Toronto. While we cannot ignore the success stories of some Black students in the school system, the reality remains that the academic performance of some shows a downward trend. Hence, concerned educators and members of the African-Canadian community suggest the need for the establishment of a Black focused or African-centered school as an alternative to the mainstream public school. This will allow students to learn more effectively because they are culturally grounded and will be able to link issues of individual or group identities with what goes on at school. This qualitative research relied principally on in-depth interviews with twenty African-Canadian parents who have children in the mainstream public schools in Toronto. It assumes that parents are important stakeholders in their children’s education so their views on problems and the need for an alternative form of schooling have significant implications for the academic performance of Black youth. The data from my study and available literature make it evident that despite the introduction of African heritage and multicultural programs and anti-racist education, profound problems still exist for Black youth in the mainstream public schools. The findings indicate that out of twenty, a majority of seventeen African-Canadian parents support the establishment of African-centered schools as an alternative to the mainstream public school. All participants interviewed agree that discrimination, prejudice and stereotyping in mainstream public schools are major problems for their children. The parents’ narratives show that the establishment of an African-centered school as an alternative to the mainstream public school is a way to combat the discrimination and prejudice Black youth encounter at school. The parents believe Black focused schools should be a major preoccupation of educational personnel, school boards and policy makers. Finally the implications of establishing an African-centered school to address the needs of Black youth and directions for future research are discussed. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Aharonson, Barak Simcha | Silverman, Brian S. | The Technological Landscape: Competition and Opportunity | Management | 2008-11 | Technological position is a dimension along which organizations can either differentiate from or mimic the behavior of other organizations in the technological landscape. This paper is aimed at providing empirical evidence of the specific ways in which an organization’s technological position choice is impacted by the tension that arises from technological co-location; the information available to the focal firm; and the focal firm’s usage of such information. In this dissertation I examine the factors influencing technological agglomerations in technological positions in the technological landscape. I further examine how the organization’s experience impacts its strategic positioning choice while facing the tradeoff between the expected derivatives of co-location - opportunities and competition. I argue and find that an organization strategically positions itself in the technological landscape based not only on the information it has gathered on its technological environment but also using its own experience and information. Further, my findings show that the organization’s technological positioning choice reflects the tension between opportunity and competition, which questions the notion of isomorphism. | PhD | innovation, industr | 9 |
| Ahmed, Abdelsalam E | Zu, Jean | Design, Modelling and Analysis of Triboelectric Nanogenerators | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-06 | In today’s world, energy storage has become a critical issue in energy generation and harvesting technologies. As a result, research efforts in the sustainable energy discipline have consistently focused on the generation of energy from environmentally-friendly sources. Recently, a fundamentally new technology, triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), has been demonstrated for its unique merits that include considerable output power, high efficiency, and cost-effective materials. There is a significant body of research focusing on designing TENG; however, there are no guidelines for developing improved TENG designs and structures. To address this challenge, this work introduces TENG design guidelines experimental and computational designs. Furthermore, this dissertation has two primary objectives: (1) to develop accurate 3D multi-physics finite element model (FEA) and (2) to perform a detailed techno-economic life cycle assessment. The developed FEA is used to determine appropriate TENG geometries offering an optimal efficiency for such a design. Experimentally, different case studies are developed for water wave, and wind energy harvesting. Regarding water wave energy, a duck-shaped TENG is proposed to achieve an instantaneous output power up to 1.366 W.m-2. As for wind energy, TENG and Darrieus conventional turbines are compared, with results predicting the unique advantages offered by TENG at low rotation speed. Moreover, inspired by the hummingbird-wing structure, we proposed a TENG design that attained 1.5 W m-2 peak electrical output. In addition, an 11 life cycle environmental metrics are determined. The environmental impact of the selected TENGs is lower compared to traditional photovoltaics technologies. Moreover, The Levelized Cost of Electricity of selected TENGs is also very sensitive to the module efficiency and is expected to be lower than that of other energy technologies if the modules’ efficiencies and lifetimes exceed 25% and 15 years, respectively. | Ph.D. | water, environment, wind, energy | 6, 7, 13 |
| AHMED, KHALID | Teichman, Judith | The Impact of Geopolitical Interests on Peace Negotiations: A Critical Analysis of the Role of Third-Party Mediation in the Horn of Africa – The Case of Sudan | Political Science | 2018-11 | As a greater number of sub-national groups demand secession, the theory of mediation finds itself without concrete principles with which to respond. This research endeavors to introduce a critical theory discourse in mediation literature on the role of superpower intervention. I explore two shortcomings in mediation literature. First, unlike critiques available elsewhere, superpower participation in peace mediation is not considered a form of superpower hegemony. My research suggests that superpowers utilize mediation to serve their interests while ostensibly appearing to be ‘assisting’ the locals, out of humanitarian impulse, to restore ‘peace’ and ‘prosperity’. Second, despite the intricate nature of secessionist wars, they are not accorded appropriate consideration. In secessionist wars, separatist groups actively enlist the support of superpowers sympathetic to their cause. This research is guided by two questions: does mediation literature address how superpowers mediate secessionist conflicts in which they are sympathetic to the cause of separatist groups? And, if such analysis exists, does it attempt to deconstruct critically how superpowers enlist regional and local allies to influence the outcome of negotiations in favour of their own interests in secession? Using two case studies in Sudan, my findings illustrate that the negative role of superpower hegemony in mediation processes has been neglected and depoliticized in mediation literature. I argue that mediation literature should not rely on superpower leverage to mediate an end to secessionist wars ― embodied in the form of state-led Track I diplomacy processes ― since it only provides ready-made resolutions and legitimizes foreign intervention and exploitation. Therefore, I further argue that for mediation theory to be more relevant and useful in fostering an indigenous end to secessionist wars they are better off utilizing non-state actors ― as in the form of Track II diplomacy ― to mediate secessionist wars. Non-state actors, void of state interests, have the capacity to facilitate greater inter-elite negotiations, which, in turn, will strengthen local ownership of peace processes and foster consensus on indigenous resolutions. | Ph.D. | peace | 16 |
| Ahmed, Mavra | L'Abbe, Mary R | Assessments of Dietary Intakes of Canadian Armed Forces Consuming Field Rations | Nutritional Sciences | 2017-11 | Military personnel frequently encounter metabolically challenging training or deployment conditions and are known to not eat enough during these field operations. Such conditions also make it challenging to collect accurate dietary intake data using traditional dietary assessment methods. The specific objectives of this thesis were to assess energy and nutrient intakes of a convenience sample of CAF personnel consuming: 1a) home diets and; 1b) ad libitum field rations at home; 2) ad libitum field rations under different temperature conditions with strenuous activities vs. sedentary in a laboratory setting; and 3) field rations during a 5-day winter weather field exercise. Additionally, 4) a mobile tablet application for dietary assessment of military personnel was evaluated. Energy intakes were similar between home diets and from ad libitum consumption of field rations at home but CAF participantsâ had less than recommended intakes of some micronutrients. In a temperature and humidity-controlled chamber with simulated military-type tasks, energy intakes were similar between treatments of varying temperatures with strenuous physical activity in comparison with the sedentary treatment. Energy consumption did not increase during the rest of the day upon completion of the treatments. During the winter weather field exercise, participants had insufficient energy intakes in relation to their measured energy expenditures, resulting in a significant weight loss. An electronic tablet application was found to be a valid method of assessing dietary intakes from field rations. Overall, this thesis characterized home diets of a sample of CAF personnel and demonstrated that reduced energy intake is not due to ration palatability, time to prepare or eat the food in an acute setting. Using the best available dietary assessment methodologies, this thesis demonstrated that energy intakes did not increase in harsh environmental temperatures with strenuous physical activities even with ample time to eat and food prepared on request and showed that during a winter weather field exercise, participants exhibited â voluntary anorexiaâ (under-consumption of food) and weight loss, which has implications for potential impairments in performance and health of CAF personnel during longer duration deployments. Additionally, the use of mobile technology enables accurate dietary intake assessments of military personnel. | Ph.D. | food | 2 |
| Airia, Parisa | Eyssen, Gail | From Education to Tumour Characteristics in Colorectal Cancer: An Analysis of the Pathways. | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-11 | Background: Genetic and environmental factors have been associated with colorectal cancer (CRC) risk. However, their association with prognosis has been less studied. Methods: Path analysis was employed to examine causal pathways from education to environmental (diet, alcohol, smoking, physical activity) and personal factors (screening), and then to obesity and ultimately to tumour characteristics (stage, grade, microsatellite instability (MSI), and site) that are associated with CRC prognosis. Data came from the Ontario Familial Colon Cancer Registry. Pathways were evaluated for effect modification by sex and two indicators of CRC genetic susceptibility (Bethesda criteria and newly identified familial cancer clusters). Results: Four food patterns (healthy foods, high-fat foods, sweet and processed foods, and oriental foods) and four nutrient patterns (total macronutrient, fat vs. carbohydrate, and micronutrients from supplements and from foods) were identified. Education was associated positively with healthy lifestyle factors (e.g. healthy foods factor) and negatively with unhealthy factors (e.g. smoking). As expected, high body mass index (BMI) was associated with lower physical activity and higher fat vs. carbohydrate factor. Unexpectedly, BMI was positively associated with the healthy foods factor among Bethesda positive patients and men. An association between education and BMI was mediated by the healthy foods factor and by physical activity. Important poor prognostic factors, higher grade and stage, were associated with smoking and not being screened. However, unexpected associations included a positive association of physical activity with tumour grade among Bethesda positive patients and a positive association of healthy foods with stage among Bethesda negative patients. Patients with right-sided tumours were more likely to receive micronutrients from supplements, and screening and less likely to smoke, and for men, to have a high BMI, high fat diet and healthy food diet. Conclusion: Some unhealthy lifestyle factors, such as smoking and a high fat food dietary pattern, are associated with adverse CRC tumour characteristics and so may affect the prognosis. Family history may modify some associations though the findings require independent confirmation. | PhD | food, health | 2, 3 |
| Aitken, Madison | Martinussen, Rhonda | School-based Screening for Mental Health Difficulties in Primary Grade Children: Psychometrics, Incremental Validity, and Patterns of Co-occurring Difficulties | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2016-11 | The demand for childrenâ s mental health services in Ontario exceeds available resources and, as a result, alternative approaches such as delivering mental health services in the school system may be needed. Within the school system, universal screening has been recommended as a method of identifying mental health difficulties early and beginning to provide intervention. If schools are to implement such screening programs, they must select appropriate screening measures and informants and be prepared to meet the needs of the children identified as at-risk. This process is complicated by high rates of co-occurrence among mental health difficulties, social and academic difficulties. The overall goal of this dissertation is to contribute to knowledge in the area of school-based mental health screening in terms of instruments, informants and the predominant patterns of co-occurring difficulties in elementary school children. Three studies will be presented, all of which involve the same community sample of 501 children in Grades 1 to 3. In the first study, confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the construct validity of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a potentially useful screening measure that has received little research attention in Canada. The results support the five-factor structure of parent and teacher SDQ ratings. Adequate internal consistency and inter-rater agreement were also found. The second study used negative binomial regression to test the hypothesis that parent ratings of symptoms as well as parent and teacher ratings of impairment contribute to more accurate screening than teacher symptom ratings alone. The results suggest that the most useful combination of screening data includes teacher symptom and impairment ratings and parent impairment ratings. The third study used latent class analysis to identify patterns of co-occurrence among some of the most common childhood difficulties: internalizing, externalizing, inattention/hyperactivity, social, and reading difficulties. The results indicate that a significant number of non-referred elementary school children experience difficulties in two or more important aspects of functioning. Collectively, these findings provide an important foundation that may guide future research on and implementation of school-based mental health screening in terms of selecting measures and informants and anticipating potential patterns of need in young children. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Ajandi, Jennifer | Eichler, Margrit | Overcoming Barriers and Finding Strengths: The Lives of Single Mother Students in University | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-06 | The impetus for this study came from my own history of being a single mother while completing my undergraduate degree and the struggles that entailed. The research uncovers both the barriers and facilitators experienced by single mothers in undergraduate programs in a Canadian context and utilizes a framework of access and equity in education. The co-participants belonged to diverse social and political identities in terms of age, race and ethnicity, sexuality, (dis)ability, and countries of birth. All the women attended universities in Southern Ontario. Twenty-five women agreed to be interviewed in either a group or individual interview. Co-participants were encouraged to contribute to the design and analysis of the study wherever possible. Previous research based in the United States conceptualized single mother students as social assistance recipients and explored their difficulties within this context. This study suggests using a wider lens to include other experiences identified by co-participants and the literature review. The study locates barriers both within the university as well as in the larger society such as interpersonal violence, stress, financial insecurity, racism and other forms of discrimination. However, it also identifies supports and strengths single mothers encountered such as family, friends, children as motivation, professors, on-campus supports, and critical pedagogy, all of which were largely missing from previous research. Many women challenged the often pathologizing dominant discourse and instead described single motherhood as empowering, independent, and liberating as compared to being a part of a traditional nuclear family. Co-participants also identified feeling isolated, discussions around which engendered a social group outside of the research project. By creating awareness of the needs of diverse single mother students, this project aims to disrupt the still-prevalent notion of the “traditional student” and accompanying policies and practices in institutions of education and the wider community. While much has been documented in Canada about the need for access, equity, and inclusive schooling, single mothers in particular have not been a main focus and included among other intersections of identity. The findings from this study address this gap and contribute to the literature. | PhD | educat, inclusive, gender, women | 4, 5 |
| Ajodhia-Andrews, Amanda Devi | Gérin-Lajoie, Diane | Bridging Understandings of Differences, Learning and Inclusion: Voices of Minoritized Students | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-11 | Many Canadian children from minority status groups experience long-term academic complexities, influencing their sense of school belonging and engagement (Willms, 2003; Willms & Flanagan, 2007). Research demonstrates children with intersecting differences of race, ethnicity, language, and disability, and those in their middle years (10-13 years old), undergo heightened academic challenges (Blanchett, Klingner, & Harry, 2009; Cobbold, 2005). Within Toronto, one of the most diverse Canadian cities, this study explores the narratives of 6 middle years children with intersecting differences of race, ethnicity, language, and disabilities. The narratives highlight participants’ understandings of differences, learning, and inclusion. Specifically, what are marginalized children’s personal schooling experiences, and how may these insights support inclusive learning, teaching, and sense of belonging? Underpinned by conceptual lenses of (a) critical theory, from which stems critical pedagogy and critical multicultural education, and (b) the “new sociology of childhood” (Greene & Hogan, 2005), which includes social constructivist and participatory frames, this study employed qualitative narrative and critical discourse analysis research methods throughout 7 research sessions over a 4 month period. Accessing children’s multiple views, data collection included a “mosaic” (Clark & Moss, 2001) multi-method approach, such as semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions, writing activities, imaginative story games, photography, and drawings. The children’s narratives are re-presented as portrait narrative summaries within this paper. Surfacing findings include two predominant themes: (a) Participants’ conceptualizations of differences, race, ethnicity, language, culture, disability, and autism. Participants’ views relate to theories of denying differences, colour blindness, White discourse, and Othering; and (b) Interconnecting factors of inclusive and exclusive elements contributing to participants’ overall sense of school belonging. Additionally this theme highlights matters of meritocracy, individualization, and the “good” student. Underscoring both themes are notions of normalcy, and deficit and deficient-based discourses. Inviting student voice into educational conversations and research processes, this study demonstrates the importance of listening to voices of children with intersecting differences, as they may adeptly advance areas of inclusion and diversity. | PhD | cities, inclusive, educat | 4, 11 |
| Akbari, Saidal | Nurul Habib, Khandker M | Land-use and Transportation Interactions through the Lenses of Two-Worker Households, Rising Commuting Costs and Transit-Oriented Development | Civil Engineering | 2018-06 | Integrated land-use and transportation planning is critical for dealing with the challenges of urbanization and for ensuring the social, economic and environmental sustainability of our cities. Effective planning requires a proper understanding of land-use and transportation interactions. To improve this understanding, the research conducted in this dissertation includes empirical studies to examine interactions in the contexts of two-worker households, rising commuting costs and transit-oriented development. First, econometric models are developed to examine the relationship between factors related to the transportation network and the land-use configuration of two-worker households. Geometrical variables are utilized as descriptors of the land-use configuration and are used to draw relationships with commuting modal accessibility and commuting trade-offs. Second, discrete choice models are developed to examine household choices concerning land-use configuration in the event of significant increases in commuting costs. A discrete choice model is also developed to examine the direction of home location choice relative to the workplace. Framing the model in this manner enables the identification of factors that may contribute to urban sprawl. Third, empirical models are developed to examine travel behaviour in the context of transit-oriented development. Trip generation models for rail trips with walk access/egress are developed to identify the influence of station-level attributes and characteristics of the surrounding environment. The Living Near Transit survey is then designed to collect disaggregate household-level data from households who reside within a walking catchment area of GO Transit rail stations. The collected data is used to develop a behavioural model that identifies specific demographic factors and transit-oriented development characteristics that influence mode choices. The empirical studies in this dissertation contribute to the existing body of literature by revealing new findings of land-use and transportation interactions in the three noted contexts and have corresponding policy implications. | Ph.D. | cities, urban, environment | 11, 13 |
| AKENA, Adyanga Francis | Wane, Nathani Njoki | Integrating African Indigenous Science into the Faculties of Higher Education Curriculum in Uganda | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2014-06 | This study examines African Indigenous Science (AIS) in higher education in Uganda. To achieve this, I use anticolonial theory and Indigenous knowledge discursive frameworks to situate the subjugation of Indigenous science from the education system within a colonial historical context. These theories allow for a critical examination of the intersection of power relations rooted in the politics of knowledge production, validation, and dissemination, and how this process has become a systemic and complex method of subjugating one knowledge system over the other. I also employ qualitative and autoethnographic research methodologies. Using a qualitative research method, I interviewed 10 students and 10 professors from two universities in Uganda. My research was guided by the following key questions: What is African Indigenous Science? What methodology would help us to indigenize science education in Uganda? How can we work with Indigenous knowledge and anticolonial theoretical discursive frameworks to understand and challenge the dominance of Eurocentric knowledge in mainstream education?My research findings revealed that AIS can be defined in multiple ways, in other words, there is no universal definition of AIS. However, there were some common elements that my participants talked about such as: (a) knowledge by Indigenous communities developed over a long period of time through a trial and error approach to respond to the social, economic and political challenges of their society. The science practices are generational and synergistic with other disciplines such as history, spirituality, sociology, anthropology, geography, and trade among others, (b) a cumulative practice of the use, interactions with and of biotic and abiotic organism in everyday life for the continued existence of a community in its' totality. The research findings also indicate that Indigenous science is largely lacking from Uganda's education curriculum because of the influence of colonial and post-colonial education. Graduates of the colonial education system who are manning education in the country have themselves come to disdain Indigenous knowledge. The major findings from the study were: 1) participants' articulation of Indigenous science; 2) influence of organized religion on African Indigenous Science; 3) dominance of professors' foreign experiences in determining curriculum content; 4) protection of intellectual property rights for Indigenous science; and 5) collaborative research between Indigenous and Western scholars to enhance attitude change toward Indigenous science. | Ph.D. | rights, inclusive | 4, 16 |
| Akers, Joshua | Hackworth, Jason | Decline Industry: The Market Production of Detroit | Geography | 2013-11 | Declining cities are active sites of capital accumulation. Spaces of decline mark a shift in accumulation strategies rather than a withdrawal of capital. These practices are extended through the deployment of law and policy that privilege private markets and embed market logics in urban governance. The production of urban decline is deepened and extended in the relationship of capital and the state through law and policy. Fundamental to these activities is a conception of private property as the driving force in creating stability and growth within urban areas. The ideological power invested and manifested in private property has driven many of the policy responses to urban decline over the past two decades. The centering of private property as the foundation of urban growth generates policy approaches that appear incapable of addressing the deepening social inequalities of urban life and the uneven development of cities in North America. Declining cities are frequent sites of market-based intervention, yet the outcomes of policies that have entrenched and deepened decline are attributed to the absence or withdrawal of capital rather than the active practices of accumulation. The development and deployment of laws and policies that conceptualize property as merely a stabilizing force, obscures the practices of property, and allow destructive forces of speculative and predatory investment to persist and expand. This work identifies shifting accumulation strategies in spaces of decline. It is a study of activity rather than absence or loss. This allows three interventions in urbanization more broadly and declining cities specifically. First, it integrates declining cities into broader discussions on urbanization and neoliberalization. Second, by exploring declining cities as active sites, the cases both unsettle and expand current understandings of disinvestment, the reach of financialization, and the sites targeted for policy development and transfer. Finally, given the current trajectory of urban austerity, the downloading of crisis to the local level, spaces of decline demonstrate possible trajectories and outcomes as austerity is an already ongoing process in these cities. It also demonstrates how these policies and practice are multi-directional and multi-scalar. | PhD | cities, urban, production, governance | 11, 12, 16 |
| Akhavan, Tina | Anderson, G. Harvey | The Effect of Whey Protein on Short-term Food Intake and Post-meal Glycemic Regulation in Young Adults | Nutritional Sciences | 2012-06 | The hypothesis that consumption of whey protein (WP) prior to a meal suppresses short-term food intake and reduces post-meal glycemia by insulin-dependent and -independent mechanisms in healthy young adults was explored in three studies. Study one investigated the effect of solid vs. liquid forms of WP (50 g) and sucrose (75 g) on food intake at 1 h. Whey protein, whether in solid or liquid form, suppressed food intake more than sucrose. Study two examined the effect of WP (10-40 g) consumed 30 min prior to a meal on food intake, and pre- and post-meal blood concentrations of glucose and insulin. Whey protein reduced food intake and post-meal glycemia in a dose-dependent manner without increased blood insulin concentrations. In the third study, glycemic control after WP was compared with glucose, at doses of 10 and 20 g. Both pre-meal WP and glucose consumption reduced post-meal glycemia similarly. However, WP resulted in lower pre-meal blood glucose and delayed gastric emptying, lower pre-and post-meal and overall insulin secretion and concentrations and higher GLP-1 and PYY concentrations compared with glucose. Thus, the results of this research support the hypothesis that consumption of WP prior to a meal suppresses short-term food intake and reduces post-meal glycemia by insulin-dependent and -independent mechanisms in healthy young adults. | PhD | food | 2 |
| Akhtar, Umme Salma | Evans, Greg J||Scott, Jeremy A | In vitro Toxicological Study of Particulate Matter and the Relationship with Physicochemical Properties of Particles | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2015-06 | Numerous epidemiological and toxicological studies have reported substantial evidence linking airborne particulate matter (PM) exposure to adverse health effects. PM-initiated oxidative stress at the cellular level is considered a potential mechanism contributing the pathogenesis of cardiopulmonary diseases. However, there remain major gaps in knowledge about the relationship between toxicity and the physicochemical properties of PM. The main objective of this study was to investigate the effects of different source-related and size-fractionated ambient PM on cellular responses to identify relevant physicochemical properties (e.g., size, composition, and redox activity) of particles that could be responsible for the effects. Another objective was to evaluate whether progressive oxidative stress-induced cellular responses (i.e., activation of antioxidant defence at lower level of oxidative stress, followed by inflammatory response, and ultimately cell death as the stress level increases) represent a potential biological mechanism affecting cells in all size fractions. For this purpose, different source-related Standard Reference Materials (industrial, urban, and diesel PM), and size-fractionated ambient coarse, fine, and ultrafine PM (collected from Toronto, Canada) were tested. A549 cells were exposed to different PM doses for certain duration. After exposure, the cells were analyzed for different biological responses and the responses were then compared with available physicochemical properties of the PM. This study demonstrated that exposure to PM can initiate mass-dependent antioxidant, proinflammatory, and cytotoxic responses. Among the different source and size-related PM, transition metal-enriched industrial and coarse PM exhibited the greatest cytotoxic effect, whereas organic compound-enriched ultrafine PM caused significant induction of antioxidant defence. Correlation analyses with chemical constituents suggested transition metals and organic compounds were associated with the observed biological responses. However, the observed biological responses could not be explained by particle size or composition alone. Both of these properties should be considered when explaining the observed PM toxicity. This study also showed that ultrafine PM initiated the hypothesized progressive biological responses, whereas different biological pathways might be involved in coarse and fine PM. Overall, this study demonstrated that the cellular responses varied substantially after in vitro exposure to PM from different sources and ultrafine PM could be as potent as coarse and fine PM. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Akl, Ahmad | Mihailidis, Alex | Automatic Detection of Mild Cognitive Impairment in Older Adults Using Unobtrusive Sensing Technologies | Biomedical Engineering | 2016-06 | The public health implications of growing numbers of older adults at risk for dementia place pressure on identifying dementia at its earliest stages so as to develop proactive management plans. However, this capability of early detection is very challenging with the contemporary detection process in the form of conventional clinician visits, which are typically not sensitive to detecting mild cognitive or functional decline. Fortunately, some studies have documented that changes in motor capabilities precede and may be indicative of cognitive impairment. A major motivation for this thesis was: can we utilize changes in motor capabilities and activity patterns to automatically predict the onset of dementia in older adults through continuous monitoring using unobtrusive sensors? Many studies have demonstrated that the prodromal dementia phase commonly identified as mild cognitive impairment is an important target for this early detection of impending dementia amenable to treatment. Consequently, in this thesis we explored different approaches for the automatic detection of mild cognitive impairment using unobtrusive sensing technologies. We started off by exploring the feasibility of detecting mild cognitive impairment in older adults using a number of predefined measures associated with their in-home walking speed. We were able to achieve this goal with an area under the ROC curve and an area under the precision-recall curve of 0.97 and 0.93, respectively, using a time frame of 24 weeks. We were also very interested in exploring the feasibility of detecting mild cognitive impairment in older adults using changes in their activity patterns. We used inhomogeneous Poisson processes to build generalized linear models of older adults' activity that would model their presence in different rooms throughout the day. Using these models, we extracted very interesting insights and visualized significant changes in older adults' activity patterns as they started experiencing cognitive impairment. Finally, we devised a method for automatic detection of mild cognitive impairment using changes in older adults' activity models, and we achieved this goal with an F0.5 score of 85.6 percent. We also investigated the two subtypes of mild cognitive impairment, namely the amnestic and the non-amnestic subtypes, and made very interesting observations. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Akram, Saadia | Moodley, Roy | A Qualitative Study of the Process of Acculturation and Coping for South Asian Muslim Immigrants Living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-06 | The present study explores the nature of coping mechanisms among South Asian Muslim immigrants living in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) who have been living in Canada between three to five years and experienced acculturation challenges and depression. Thirteen immigrants (seven females and six males) were interviewed to share their stories of personal experiences of settlement and acculturation in Canada. These interviews were analyzed using the grounded theory approach to develop themes and sub-themes to understand and interpret the data. The findings reveal that the research participants experienced a number of acculturation challenges (feeling different, feeling excluded, disruption in the family and material differences) which led to depression. During the course of their depression participants experienced certain events which became turning points in their lives, subsequently motivating them to change the way in which they live. They sought out particular kinds of support and coping mechanisms which helped them to settle, integrate and belong to the Canadian culture. The midlevel grounded theory that has emerged from participants’ responses is discussed. Recommendations are made to inform mental health professionals to incorporate these coping mechanisms in delivering culturally sensitive services to the target population. Study implications for theory, psychotherapy, counselling and other mental health practices and future research in the area of settlement and adaption of newcomers in Canada are discussed. | EDD | health | 3 |
| Akrong, Alberta O. | Akrong, Alberta O.||Wane, Njoki N. | Non-Formal Literacy Education For Rural Women's Empowerment in Ghana: A Micro Level Analysis | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2014-11 | Much as knowledge is rationally perceived as power with ability to construct identity, and facilitate social interaction, most women in rural areas in Ghana are unable to read or write in a local language as they missed out on schooling for socio-cultural and structural reasons. Yet, literacy is discounted as an element of personal transformation as well as a skill to possibly and cogently bridge the gender-parity gap in education through empowerment projects. The reason being; non-formal education programmes which engender acquisition of literacy skills is disparaged as an alternative form of learning in education planning at the detriment of marginalized populations and women in particular. But how can one read the world without the word (Freire Macedo, 1987)? This study primarily identifies the linkage between literacy and women's empowerment; interrogates the prognosis between literacy and personal transformation; and examines the methods employed by Non Formal Education Division to systematise learning to achieve this goal in Ghana. It is an empirical qualitative multi-sited research conducted in four rural locations in Accra to critically investigate how non-formal education is represented in social development. The study's analytical framework is set within a feminist methodology and grounded theory, and draws on transformative learning Mezirow (2000) and empowerment Stromquist (1995) as conceptual frameworks to explore the epistemology and subjective change respectively. The findings report: interest in literacy is dynamic but implicates government indifference with respect to non-formal education as it identifies, that instable governance, funding and state bureaucracy encumber institution and programme effectiveness and this deprive citizens their right to education. Learner interest has equally shifted from gender-role reinforcement literacy to that of empowered literacy to include: income-generating and employable skills, multi-language learning, women's co-operative formation, and micro credit opportunities. The study concludes with a five-frame proposal for NFED institutional strengthening for effective governance, public engagement and fundraising towards sustainable literacy for development. | Ph.D. | educat, gender, women, rural, institution, governance | 4, 5, 11, 16 |
| Akseer, Nadia | Bhutta, Zulfiqar A | Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition in Afghanistan | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-11 | Afghanistan is an impoverished conflict-prone nation with some of the worst documented maternal and child health and survival indicators worldwide. Entering a period of relative stability after the 2001 US-led upheaval of Taliban governance, Afghanistan had, for the first time in decades, an opportunity for redevelopment and growth. Government, along with development partners, funders, civil society, NGOs and the global community, came together to rapidly expand basic infrastructure, strengthen the health care system, and to scale-up health services throughout the overwhelmingly rural population. This dissertation’s aim was to systematically document progress and determinants of maternal and child health intervention utilization and nutrition during the 2001 to 2014 time period, and to identify remaining geographical and socioeconomic inequalities. First, I examine determinants of improvements in two critical markers of maternal and newborn health and survival (skilled birth attendance and institutional deliveries) from 2003 to 2011 using nationally-representative survey data. Next, a thorough assessment of the socioeconomic and regional inequalities in essential reproductive, maternal, newborn and child health (RMNCH) interventions in Afghanistan is presented. Finally, I conduct modeling exercises of the basic, underlying and immediate determinants of undernutrition among children ( | Ph.D. | governance, institution, rural, infrastructure, health, nutrition. Socioeconomic | 1, 2, 3, 9, 11, 16 |
| Akseer, Spogmai | Magnusson, Jamie-Lynn | Learning in a Militarized Context: Exploring Afghan Women’s Experiences of Higher Education in ‘Post-Conflict’ Afghanistan | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-11 | This study examines the repercussions of the war on terror and subsequent occupation of Afghanistan, on the daily (gendered) life experiences of Afghan women. I argue that such wars are markers of the shifts in global capitalist accumulation processes, from exporting ‘goods’ to the Global South, to now exporting capitalism. Specifically, the war on terror is the latest manifestation of monopoly finance capitalism, which leverages wars and insecurity in the Global South as lucrative sites for accumulating profits and (re)investments. Democratic ideals provide a ‘moral’ justification for mass militarism, human rights violations, torture and erosion of existing social and economic inequalities. Notions of freedom, equality or classlessness, which are important objectives of formal democracy, as well, colonialist and racist ideologies of Others have become effective mechanisms for capitalism to sustain and reproduce capitalist class relations. Education is an important site for socializing citizens toward accepting and participating as human capital in monopoly finance capitalism. Through the World Bank, higher education reforms in Afghanistan are endorsing neoliberal policies, even as these policies continue to contradict and exacerbate existing inequalities. Specifically, female education has become a key strategy in continued militarization and occupation in the country. In this study, I examine the contradictory ways in which female university students navigate through an increasingly militarized, violent and patriarchal terrain. Guided by a transnational feminist approach and a dialectical historical materialist framework, 19 female university students from 5 public and private universities were interviewed in Afghanistan. Findings suggest that the university is a contradictory site where participants mobilize new and old strategies for addressing gendered constraints in their lives, while simultaneously creating new ones. The implications of these findings suggest a need for extensive institutional and ideological support for women’s learning, and also improving home-school connections. The participants’ desire to learn and their concerns over increasing violence and insecurity, reveal the militarized nature of their learning, as well, the possibility for critical and transformative learning against imperialism, patriarchy and class relations. | Ph.D. | educat, gender, women, equality, institution, rights | 4, 5, 16 |
| Al Abdullatif, Awatif Mohamed | MacKeigan, Linda | The Provision of Pharmaceutical Care in Oman: Practice and Perceived Facilitators and Barriers to Implementation | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2014-06 | Objectives: The study purpose was to determine the extent of the implementation of pharmaceutical care (PC) in Oman and factors affecting its implementation. Methods: A cross-sectional mail survey of all practicing pharmacists in Oman based on the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was conducted. The survey instrument was informed by a focus group study to identify behavioral, normative, and control beliefs amongst pharmacists in three practice settings. Results: The survey useable response rate was 61.2%. Participants provided PC activities between `sometimes' and `most of the time'; however, provision of advanced PC activities was limited. Provision of PC did not significantly differ across inpatient, outpatient, and community settings. Clinical knowledge, communication skills, pharmacist time, and adequate staffing were common facilitators across practice settings; worry about responsibility and culturally-based gender issues regarding patient care were common barriers. While having a private counseling area, and access to patient records and to drug information databases were facilitators identified in the public sector, their absence was a barrier in community pharmacies. Reimbursement was the main barrier in the private sector. Country of origin was significantly related to pharmacists' beliefs about providing PC; specifically, Omani pharmacists had significantly different behavioral, normative, and control beliefs than their South Asian counterparts. All constructs of the TPB (attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control) were significant predictors of intention to provide PC, but the added construct--past behavior recency was not. The overall variance explained in intention was 43%. Of the two predictors of behavior in the TPB model, only perceived behavioral control was significant; intention was not. The explained variance in PC behavior was 13.0%. Conclusions: This is the first study to examine the implementation of PC in Oman. The findings of this study will inform the development of strategies for advancing PC practice, a mandate of Ministry of Health and the pharmacy profession in Oman. The TPB was useful for explaining pharmacists' intention to provide PC; however, a longitudinal study is recommended to test its predictive validity for PC behavior. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Al-Bader, Sara | Singer, Peter A. | Science-based Health Innovation in Sub-Saharan Africa | Medical Science | 2011-11 | Policy making bodies are increasingly highlighting the important role innovation can play in African development─not only to spur economic growth but also to deliver locally relevant, affordable products and services to African populations. The health sector is one area where innovation is most needed; however, we know very little about the capacity of African countries to innovate in this area. At the same time, a range of conceptual questions have arisen in the academic literature as to the very definition of innovation in an African context, and specifically, the applicability of the National Innovation System (NIS) to African countries. Through detailed case study research of science-based health firms in South Africa, of the NIS health system of Ghana, and by comparing these data with data collected in Uganda and Tanzania, I shed light on these questions from an empirical perspective. I find that science-based health innovation is a complex field, and whilst institutions can help or hinder its viability, the current state of health innovation in SSA can be attributed primarily to individual entrepreneurs with strong networks, who are taking risks in a largely non-enabling environment. I find that, more important for innovation, is the ability to access global knowledge–through appropriate policies and strong partnerships–and the capacity to apply it locally. For this, tacit knowledge, or “learning-by-doing,”’ to respond to consumer demand and achieve regional product penetration, is vital. My results show that the traditional focus on knowledge - or science-heavy innovation - will simply not capture the true extent of health innovation in SSA countries. Furthermore, science-based health innovation is clearly not one thing, and it is, for example, important to understand how plant medicine innovation fit in. The aims, intentions, and impacts of African health research on the countries themselves are rather vague, which constrains innovation at all levels. | PhD | health, economic growth, innovation, consum, institution | 3, 8, 12, 16 |
| Alali, Abdulaziz | Nathens, B. Avery | Process of Care and Outcome of Critically Ill Patients with Traumatic Brain Injury | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-06 | This thesis used clinical epidemiology methods to examine the relationship between process of care and outcome of critically ill patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). First, I evaluated the association between intracranial pressure (ICP) monitoring use and mortality after severe TBI at the patient-level and at the hospital-level. ICP monitoring use was associated with lower mortality at the patient-level [adjusted odds ratio (OR) was 0.44; 95% confidence interval (CI): 0.31-0.63] and at the hospital-level (adjusted OR for death in the quartile of hospitals with highest use compared to the lowest was 0.52; 95% CI: 0.35-0.78). The main implication is that wider utilization of ICP monitoring in managing severe TBI appears warranted pending further studies. Second, I evaluated whether decompressive craniectomy or barbiturate coma provides better value, in terms of health effects and costs, for the management of refractory intracranial hypertension following TBI. Decompressive craniectomy resulted in greater quality-adjusted life expectancy relative to barbiturate coma [average gain was 1.5 quality-adjusted life years (QALYs)] but at higher costs (incremental cost-effectiveness ratio was $9,565/QALY gained). The main implication is that decompressive craniectomy, for this indication, is a more attractive strategy relative to barbiturate coma at commonly accepted willingness-to-pay thresholds. Third, I examined the relationship between tracheostomy timing and outcomes of TBI patients. Early tracheostomy ( | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Alavi, Sina | Mostaghimi, Javad | New Approaches to High Efficiency Inductively Coupled Plasma Analytical Atomic Spectrometry | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-06 | Two new strategies have been proposed for reducing the gas and energy consumption of ICP sources, in the first place, and improving their analytical performance, in the second place, for analytical atomic spectrometry. In the first strategy, a system was designed to collect the exhaust argon from the interface of an ICP-MS system, purify it, and recycle it back to the ICP torch. The experiments showed that the argon collection system was capable of withstanding the extreme temperatures of the plasma and collect most of the exhaust gas without disturbing the plasma. In the first stage of purifying the gas, a metal-foam heat exchanger coupled with a Peltier cooler was used to freeze the water content of the exhaust gas. In the second stage, a titanium-based heated filter was used to capture the other contaminants. The purification system was shown to be capable of purifying the exhaust argon for several hours of operation. In the second strategy, a new ICP torch was developed with significant reduction in gas and power consumption, but better analytical performance. Computer simulations were used extensively to design and optimize the torch based on the flow patterns, heat transfer, and electromagnetic field. This approach led to a new generation of ICP torches with a “conical” geometry. The new torch could work with up to 70% reduction in gas/energy consumption, at least 4 times higher power density, and a more stable plasma in comparison with the conventional “cylindrical” torches. Based on spectroscopic measurements, in comparison with the common Fassel-type torches, the new torch exhibited 1000–1700 K higher excitation/rotational temperature, 3 times higher robustness, 5 times higher electron density, less interference from easily-ionizable elements, and equal/better detection limits in multi-element analysis. It was further demonstrated that the whole vaporization/atomization/ionization of sample species could be completed in a shorter time using the new torch. Analyzing metal-tagged beads/cells with a commercial CyTOF2 mass cytometer showed that 50% reduction in event length and 2 times higher sensitivity could be achieved using the new torch. These improvements can potentially lead to higher sample throughput and shorter time of analysis per sample. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Alavy Ghahfarrokhy, Seyed Masih | Siegel, Jeffrey A | In-situ Measurement of Ventilation and Impacts of Filtration on IEQ and Energy use of Residential Buildings | Civil Engineering | 2019-11 | Indoor environmental quality (IEQ) impacts of filters in residential HVAC systems is a strong function of many HVAC system- and building-specific parameters. Furthermore, the energy consequences of filters can be important, and the magnitude and the sign of these energy impacts are system-specific as well. These system- and building-specific parameters can vary not only over different residential buildings, but also over the lifetime of a filter in a given building. A primary building-specific parameter that varies greatly over time is outdoor ventilation air change rate (ACR). ACR is not only an important particle removal mechanism, and a source of variations in filter IEQ performance, but it also is an important contributor to energy use in buildings. This work first critically reviews the existing literature on filtration and then presents an integrated evaluation of the overall IEQ and energy performance of higher efficiency residential filters. It also further develops the understanding of how ACR varies over time and how it influences filtration performance in residences. Yearlong measurement results from particle removal performance analysis of four different high efficiency filters placed in 21 residences in Toronto, Ontario showed that there was more variation in filter performance between the same filter in different homes than there was between different filters in the same home. In addition, increasing system runtime (ontime fraction) could also lead to higher particle removal impacts of filters. Study of energy consequences of the same filters in the same homes showed that fan energy consequences of high efficiency filters are negligible and because HVAC runtimes were generally low (median = 9.6%) in this sample of homes, the difference between energy consumption of different types of motor fans at typical runtimes was small (less than 10 kWh per month). Yearlong ACR measurements showed that ACR is a temporally dynamic parameter with timescales of minutes that varies considerably over long-term periods (e.g., geometric mean = 0.47/h, geometric standard deviation = 3.44 in one of the residences studied). Overall, this dissertation provides new methods and data for assessing the ventilation performance and impacts of filtration on IEQ and energy use of residential buildings. | Ph.D. | , buildings. Energy | 7, 9 |
| Albert, Alonso E. Gomez | Melino, Angelo | Essays in Market Integrations, and Economic Forecasting | Economics | 2012-11 | In this thesis I study two fields of empirical finance: market integration and economic forecasting. The first two chapters focus on studying regional integration of Mexican and U.S. equity markets. In the third chapter, I propose the use of the daily term structure of interest rates to forecast inflation. Each chapter is a free-standing essay that constitutes a contribution to the field of empirical finance and economic forecasting. In Chapter 1, I study the ability of multi-factor asset pricing models to explain the unconditional and conditional cross-section of expected returns in Mexico. Two sets of factors, local and foreign factors, are evaluated consistent with the hypotheses of segmentation and of integration of the international finance literature. Only one variable, the Mexican U.S. exchange rate, appears in the list of both foreign and local factors. Empirical evidence suggests that the foreign factors do a better job explaining the cross-section of returns in Mexico in both the unconditional and conditional versions of the model. This evidence provides some suggestive support for the hypothesis of integration of the Mexican stock exchange to the U.S. market. In Chapter 2, I study further the integration between Mexico and U.S. equity markets. Based on the result from chapter 1, I assume that the Fama and French factors are the mimicking portfolios of the underlying risk factors in both countries. Market integration implies the same prices of risk in both countries. I evaluate the performance of the asset pricing model under the hypothesis of segmentation (country dependent risk rewards) and integration over the 1990-2004 period. The results indicate a higher degree of integration at the end of the sample period. However, the degree of integration exhibits wide swings that are related to both local and global events. At the same time, the limitations that arise in empirical asset pricing methodologies with emerging market data are evident. The data set is short in length, has missing observations, and includes data from thinly traded securities. Finally, Chapter 3, coauthored with John Maheu and Alex Maynard, studies the ability of daily spreads at different maturities to forecast inflation. Many pricing models imply that nominal interest rates contain information on inflation expectations. This has lead to a large empirical literature that investigates the use of interest rates as predictors of future inflation. Most of these focus on the Fisher hypothesis in which the interest rate maturity matches the inflation horizon. In general, forecast improvements have been modest. Rather than use only monthly interest rates that match the maturity of inflation, this chapter advocates using the whole term structure of daily interest rates and their lagged values to forecast monthly inflation. Principle component methods are employed to combine information from interest rates across both the term structure and time series dimensions. Robust forecasting improvements are found as compared to the Fisher hypothesis and autoregressive benchmarks. | PhD | trade | 10 |
| Alcantara, Christopher | White, Graham | Deal? Or No Deal? Explaining Comprehensive Land Claims Negotiation Outcomes in Canada | Political Science | 2008-11 | In 1973, the Canadian government created the federal comprehensive land claims process to negotiate modern treaties with Aboriginal peoples in Canada. Despite 35 years of negotiations, many Aboriginal groups have failed to complete modern treaties. This dissertation explains why some Aboriginal groups have been able to complete modern treaties and why some have not. After examining four sets of negotiations in Newfoundland and Labrador and the Yukon Territory, I argue that scholars need to pay greater attention to the institutional framework governing treaty negotiations and to a number of factors relative to the Aboriginal groups. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Aldughpassi, Ahmed | Wolever, Thomas M. S. | Physiological Effects of Barley: Examining the Effects of Cultivar, Processing and Food Form on Glycemia, Glycemic Index, Satiety and the Physico-chemical Properties of β-glucan | Nutritional Sciences | 2013-11 | Barley has been receiving increased attention as a human food due to the health benefits associated with β-glucan fiber and its potential as a low glycemic index (GI) functional food. Research has shown a relationship between the physico-chemical properties of β-glucan and the physiological effects, which may be altered by processing. However, it is not known if the physiological effects of consuming barley are affected by variations in chemical composition among cultivars or by common processing methods such as pearling or milling. The primary objective of this thesis was to characterize the effects of differences in cultivar starch and fibre content, level of pearling and milling on the GI, satiety and the physico-chemical properties of β-glucan. Nine barley cultivars varying in starch-type and β-glucan content were studied in three experiments in separate groups of ten healthy participants. Blood glucose and satiety ratings were measured and the GI was calculated. Total starch, total fibre, β-glucan, molecular weight (MW), solubility and β-glucan viscosity were determined in vitro. Results showed that GI varied by cultivar (CDC-Fibar, 26 ± 3 vs. AC-Parkhill, 35 ± 4, P < 0.05) and pearling (WG, 26 ± 4 vs. WP 35 ± 3, P < 0.05). When two cultivars were milled and processed to wet pasta the GI increased by 184% (P < 0.05). The pearled wet pasta had a significantly lower GI compared to the whole grain (P < 0.05). Boiled barley kernels tended to elicit greater satiety than white bread, but the difference was not significant. In both the boiled barley kernels and the wet pasta, pearling did not affect the MW, viscosity and solubility. MW did not significantly differ between cultivars but solubility and viscosity did (P < 0.05). The wet pasta had significantly lower MW, solubility, viscosity but not β-glucan content than the boiled barley kernels (P < 0.05). In conclusion, pearling did not have an effect but milling and extruding resulted in significant reduction in MW, solubility and viscosity. The GI of barley is influenced significantly by cultivar, pearling and milling. Further studies are required to determine the effect on satiety. | PhD | food, health, consum | 2, 3, 12 |
| Aleks, Rachel | Gunderson, Morley | Union Strategies and Potential Targets for New-Member Organizing in the United States | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2014-11 | This dissertation focuses on attempts by labor unions in the United States to prioritize new-member organizing as a means of reversing the decline in union density. In three papers, I look at strategic organizing efforts and opportunities at three distinct levels of analysis: the federation level, the national and local-union levels, and the level of the individual potential member. In the first paper, I look at efforts by seven unions that split from the AFL-CIO in 2005 to form a new union federation, Change to Win. I estimate the effect of Change to Win policies on whether the union won the certification election and the number and percentage of workers successfully organized, using data from the National Labor Relations Board and the National Mediation Board from September 2000 through September 2010 and a difference-in-difference estimator. The results indicate no statistically significant difference in organizing success, following Change to Win's formation and implementation of new organizing strategies and practices, relative to the AFL-CIO. The second paper of my dissertation analyzes recent attempts to organize the growing number of professional workers into historically blue-collar unions using a combination of data from the National Labor Relations Board and data from a national survey that I designed and administered to national and local unions throughout the country. Using a series of interactions, I test whether the effect of key strategies and tactics differ across professional-worker status. My results show that the effect of some typical union and employer strategies and characteristics does differ for professionals versus nonprofessionals. Finally, the third paper examines youth attitudes towards unions, since young workers are underrepresented in union membership. I examine how youth attitudes towards unions have changed over time using a generational approach and data from the 1976-2010 nationally representative Monitoring the Future survey of twelfth graders. I find that beginning with the Baby Boomers, each generation (i.e., Gen X and Gen Y) has had more favorable attitudes towards unions than the previous generation. Furthermore, I find that the antecedents of youth attitudes towards unions, including work values, socio-political beliefs, background, and employment history and expectations, have changed over each generation. | Ph.D. | worker, employment | 8 |
| Alene, Nebiyu Baye | Maclaren, Virginia | Politicizing Waste Collection and Discipling Waste Collectors: A critical Analysis of Waste Management Practice in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2003 - 2012) | Geography | 2015-11 | This dissertation investigates the unique approach the Addis Ababa city government (AACG) put in place to address the city’s waste collection problem. To solve the garbage problem AACG introduced major waste management reforms in 2003 and 2009. The two waste management reforms basically strived (1) to create employment opportunities for unemployed urban residents through mobilizing them to form government-initiated micro-enterprises (CMEs) and engage in door-to-door waste collection, and (2) to discipline waste in order to create a clean and livable city through increasing waste collection efficiency. The main focus of this dissertation is unpacking how the different techniques and rationalities waste governing institutions employed to discipline waste as a material politicized waste collection, define power relation between the city government and waste collectors, and disciplined waste collectors. I explore these issues through examining the specific spaces of engagement between waste collectors (formal and informal) and city government’s representatives by paying close attention to the everyday practices of waste collection between 2003 and 2012. Primary data collected included a questionnaire survey (n=423) and key informants’ interviews (n=28). Secondary data were also consulted. I use the concept of governance, everyday state, and the notion of governmentality as analytical frameworks. Empirical findings reveal that the city government’s objective of creating clean city between 2003 and 2009 was marred by the city government’s effort to tackle unemployment by securing waste collection activities for government-initiated CMEs. It is also shown that the different governing technologies the city government employed to discipline waste as a material were in fact aimed at disciplining waste collectors through reconfiguring the power relationship between waste governing institutions and waste collectors. The research also highlights the way the city government forms partnership with CMEs in the 2009 waste management reform. The research suggests that the city’s government favour of a specific arrangement of partnership that sits in the middle of the public-private spectrum where it is neither the full-scale privatization of services nor the kind of public service delivery that was prevalent before 2009. Moreover, the research raises important questions about the involvement of cooperative micro-enterprises in waste management. | Ph.D. | employment, urban, waste, institution, governance | 8, 11, 12, 16 |
| Alghamdi, Dalia Jamal | Kooy, Mary | EFL Teaching in University Classrooms in Saudi Arabia: A Case Study of Instructors and Curriculum and Implementation for Language Learning | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2017-03 | Literature has extensively documented the traditional conceptions of viewing teaching, learning, curriculum and implementation and recommends changing these traditional views for better teaching and learning outcomes. However; still some teachers view curriculum as a rigid document, learning as static, unalterable, and measurable by tests and teaching as transmitting knowledge and teachers as transmitter of prescribed knowledge. This thesis presents a case study of nine EFL instructors explaining the ways participating English as a Foreign Language (EFL) instructors understand and implement the foundation year EFL university curriculum in Saudi Arabia and how their understanding impacts their implementation and language learning. This case study explains the factors affecting studentsâ learning through the eyes of the participating EFL instructors, the ways these EFL instructors re-imagine teaching and learning in the EFL curriculum at university, and the support needed for EFL instructors that would facilitate improved English teaching and learning. The rigid, hierarchical educational system and its effects on EFL in the foundation year as a result of its top-down organization, fixed curriculum, limited time, and poor outcomes were highlighted as factors that contribute to EFL teaching, learning, curriculum and implementation at university. The findings reveal that policy and power, voice and choice, culture, motivation, teacher learning, and resources are major factors that need reconsideration for improved EFL teaching and learning. One of the emerging considerations from this research is that participating EFL instructors need to rethink traditional, conventional conceptions of EFL curriculum, teaching, and learning at the university level in Saudi Arabia for improved teaching and learning outcomes. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Alharbi, Ohood | El-Sohemy, Ahmed | Genetic Variation Predicting Lactose Intolerance (LCT -13910C>T), Dairy Intake, 25-Hydroxyvitamin D and Risk of Cardiometabolic Disease | Nutritional Sciences | 2018-06 | Background: The LCT-13910C>T variant is associated with lactose intolerance (LI) in >70 ethnic populations. In Canada, the prevalence of the LCT -13910C>T variant is not known. Individuals with LI might avoid dairy, which is a rich source of calcium and vitamin D. Dairy has been associated with increased risk of cardiometabolic diseases, but findings have been equivocal. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of LI risk genotypes in major ethnic groups living in Canada and their association with 25(OH)D levels and biomarkers of cardiometabolic disease, and to determine food predictors of calcium and vitamin D in different LCT genotypes. Methods: A total of 1,495 participants from the Toronto Nutrigenomics and Health (TNH) study were used for the present study. Fasting blood samples were obtained for genotyping, 25(OH)D, biomarkers of cardiometabolic disease, and plasma proteomics. Dairy intake was assessed using a 196-item semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Results: Approximately 32% of Caucasians, 99% of East Asians, 74% of South Asians, and 59% of those with other ethnicities had the CC genotype associated with LI. In Caucasians, compared to the TT genotype, those with the CC genotype had lower dairy intake, and plasma 25(OH)D levels. The CT and CC genotypes were associated with lower calcium intake and increased risk of suboptimal ( | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Alhashme, Mohamed | Ashgriz, Nasser | A virtual thermostat for local temperature control | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2017-06 | This thesis presents design and operation of a newly developed virtual thermostat to control any desired local temperature in an HVAC controlled space. Conventional HVAC thermostats use a single point temperature sensor at one fixed location in a controlled space to control the temperature of the whole space. The single point temperature sensor does not represent the entire controlled domain. In addition, in most applications only a small zone in the controlled space needs to be controlled (for example where the people are located). Heating and cooling of the unnecessary zones lead to extra energy consumption that can be saved if only the required zones are controlled. Such a control system requires knowledge of the temperature distribution in the whole zone at all times. In this work, we have used computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to determine the distributive temperature inside the controlled space at all times and turn the HVAC system ON and OFF based on the temperature of the desired zone in the space. In this study, we have determined the energy savings by comparing the energy consumption of a conventional thermostat controlled system with a locally controlled one. Several cases with different heat losses, and different inlet air velocities and directions are studied. Energy savings of up to 22% is realized for the cases studied here. In addition, the study showed the effect of personâ s location on the energy saving using the local control. One of the main problems with such a control system is that the CFD calculations may take a long time (10- 24 hours depending on the complexity of the problem), which is not practical for real-time temperature control. In order to reduce the computational times and simulate various operating conditions quickly, an artificial neural network (ANN) model is used to train the temperature control system. This resulted in reduction of the computational times to few seconds, making this system practical. This thesis, presents various elements of the newly developed virtual thermostat and its operating principals. | Ph.D. | energy, consum | 7, 12 |
| Ali, Ayesha | Benjamin, Dwayne||Bobonis, Gustavo J | The Impact of Electricity Outages on Households | Economics | 2016-11 | Electricity outages are a common occurrence in developing countries and can have a substantial impact on household welfare. In this dissertation, I assemble a unique data set with a district level measure of outages, electricity generation prices, and labour market outcomes to examine the effect of outages on employment and earnings. I also develop an analytical framework that can be used to measure the welfare impact of outages on households arising from disruption of electricity used in the home. In chapter 1, I construct a district level measure of outages in Pakistan using the intra-annual variability in night lights observed in meteorological satellite data. I estimate the elasticity between variability and reported outages, and use household electricity consumption data to show that electricity consumption declines as variability increases within districts. These findings establish that night lights variability is a valid measure of outages that can be used in empirical applications where subnational data on outages is not available. In chapter 2, I estimate the effect of outages on labour market outcomes of adult males in Pakistan. To address the problem of measurement error and potential endogeneity in night lights variability, I use exogenous variation in the price of energy used to generate electricity at thermal plants near a district, as an instrument. I find that outages have a significant negative effect on employment, days worked, earnings and productivity. A larger effect on districts with a greater reliance on electricity intensive industries and more educated workers suggests labour demand driven reduction in productivity. In chapter 3, I develop an analytical framework to measure the welfare impact of electricity outages on households. The welfare effect or the willingness to pay for a reduction in outages is larger the greater is the impact on home produced services affected by outages. It is also larger the smaller is the observed change in grid electricity expenditures. I find that the elasticity of grid electricity consumption to outages is smaller the more outward shifted is the demand for electricity, suggesting that households with a high value for electricity adapt by rescheduling activities or acquiring off-grid supply. | Ph.D. | consum, industr, worker, labour, employment, energy, educat | 4, 7, 8, 9, 12 |
| Ali, Noaman G | Kasturi, Malavika||Kingston, Paul | The Hashtnagar Peasant Movement: Agrarian Class Struggle, Hegemony and State Formation in Northwestern Pakistan, 1947–1986 | Political Science | 2019-06 | This study examines how peasant movements led by revolutionaries impacted state formation, or more broadly the institutional configuration of power, in post-colonial Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province (NWFP). The study asks, first, how did a movement of lower classes, specifically tenant farmers and landless labourers, win concessions from landed elites and also shape the direction and institutionalization of state power in the 1970s? Second, why did revolutionary politics in Pakistan decline and fade away, diverging from its counterparts in other parts of South Asia? Based on archival research, oral history, and participant observation, the study divides a narrative of nearly forty years of events into three critical conjunctures, comparing and contrasting the inter-actions of radical organizers, rural classes, the political organizations representing exploiting propertied classes, and the state. The first conjuncture concerns the late 1940s, when the Communist Party of Pakistan’s inadequate preparation and organization of peasants led to an ultimately failed movement in the northern Hashtnagar area. The second conjuncture covers the period from the late 1960s to the early 1970s in which the communists formed the Mazdoor Kisan Party. The party’s organizational work contributed to the comparative success of 1970s peasant struggles in the form of de facto land and tenancy reforms and the decline of institutions of landlord power in villages, alongside the generation of new and renewed institutions of peasant power. Peasant organization compelled the state apparatus to intervene in favour of tenants. The third conjuncture concerns the denouement of the peasant movement in the latter 1970s and 1980s. As tenants became de facto proprietors of land their involvement in the movement and party organization declined, leaving them unable to mount a significant challenge to a military regime that restored some of the power of landed elites. Nevertheless, tenants largely preserved the gains they had made. Ultimately, the institutional configuration of power inside and outside of the apparatus of the state was determined by the balance of power between different classes. Moreover, strategic choices that revolutionary organizers made about confronting the state frontally as opposed to lowkey organizing increased or decreased their own organizational capacity and longevity. | Ph.D. | labour, rural, institution | 8, 11, 16 |
| Allan, Billie | Sakamoto, Izumi | Rupture, Defragmentation and Reconciliation: Re-visioning the Health of Urban Indigenous Women in Toronto | Social Work | 2013-11 | This doctoral research seeks to advance understanding about what impacts the health and well-being of urban Indigenous women in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is grounded in the goal of centering Indigenous women’s knowledge and revitalizing recognition of Indigenous women as leaders in the care of health knowledge, who continue to carry roles and responsibilities as knowledge and vision keepers, healers, helpers and caregivers despite the mass devastation caused by colonization. Utilizing an Indigenous research method, research circles and interviews were used to gather knowledge with twenty-three Indigenous women asking the following questions: 1) What helps you to be healthy and well here in the city? 2) What gets in the way of your health and well-being? and 3) What do you envision as needed to support your health and well-being and that of Indigenous women generally here in Toronto? The findings of the research highlight the ways in which women seek wholeness and (w)holistic health care and services in attending to their health and well-being. The stories shared speak to the rupture and fragmentation caused by colonization as experienced by the participants, specifically the disconnection and dislocation that they faced due to child welfare apprehension, adoption or violence, while emphasizing the ways in which they have or are presently navigating these challenges in relation to their health and well-being – a process of defragmentation. This thesis is also, in part, the story of how I am learning my role as a caretaker of knowledge (as I would describe the role of researcher), learning how to gather it, care for it and share it back in a good way. It is the story of what I know now, a knowledge that will continue to grow over time, with more experience to better understand the full beauty and depth of what has been shared. This thesis is a knowledge bundle of stories gathered with urban Indigenous women in the city of Toronto to help better understand what impacts their health and well-being, and what they see as needed moving forward. It is woven together with my own story of who I am, where I come from and why I came looking for this knowledge. | PhD | health, women, urban | 3, 5, 11 |
| Allan, Katherine Sarah | Dorian, Paul | The Family Study: Assessment of the Incidence, Etiology, Circumstances and Familial Risk for Sudden Cardiac Death and Aborted Sudden Cardiac Death in Young Individuals | Medical Science | 2016-06 | Background: Recent reviews have highlighted our lack of information on the incidence etiology and circumstances of sudden death (SD) in the young, particularly the distribution of underlying disorders, preventable triggers, and identifiable familial predisposition to fatal arrhythmias. Methods: This study had 3 parts: (1) the development and (2) implementation of a novel, comprehensive methodology to capture all SDs and aborted SDs (both cardiac and non-cardiac) in a defined geographic area, (3) followed by a feasibility study with a case control design. We utilized a prospectively collected, population-based registry of all out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCAs) in the Greater Toronto Area, to identify patients from 2009-2012. The retrospective study included cases that were OHCAs ages 2-45, treated or untreated, died or survived and we reviewed all available data for each case and adjudicated an etiology. In the feasibility study, included cases were presumed cardiac, treated OHCAs ages 18-65. Two relatives per patient were interviewed regarding symptoms prior to the arrest, cardiac history, and family history of sudden cardiac death (SCD). Two sets of control patients were administered the same questionnaire as cases. Results: We identified 656 SCDs ages 2-45 over a 4 year period, with an overall annual incidence rate of 3.97 per 100,000 persons. We report a high autopsy rate, with a shift towards ischemic heart disease as the predominant underlying etiology in adults ages 35-45, from structural heart disease and sudden unexplained deaths in children. Adults experienced their SCDs more frequently at home and at rest than did children, and most reported new symptoms in the day preceding their event. Our feasibility studies demonstrated that it is viable to obtain a reliable family history of SCD and major cardiac risk factors from both cases and controls using a self-developed survey. Conclusions: By using a validated comprehensive population based registry of consecutive cases to identify all eligible patients, in combination with a novel classification methodology, large sample size, and multiple sources of data, we were able to better describe the nature and scope of the problem of sudden cardiac death within a young, urban Canadian population. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Allan, Kori Louise | McElhinny, Bonnie | Learning how to "Skill" the Self: Citizenship and Immigrant Integration in Toronto, Canada | Anthropology | 2014-11 | The underemployment of foreign-trained professional immigrants became an intense focus of Canadian immigration policy and integration programs in the 2000s, particularly in Toronto, which receives more immigrants than any other Canadian city. This thesis examines how government conceived of this `skilled immigrant underemployment problem' and in turn promoted particular solutions to address it. Rather than viewing the role of government as needing to intervene in the labour market, it largely focused on reforming individual immigrants. In particular, integration programs tended to focus on "soft skills" training, which construed individual immigrants as skills deficient and as requiring training in "Canadian workplace culture". This dissertation thereby examines the ways in which immigrants were urged to sell the self, and how they were asked to become particular kinds of Canadian workers and citizens. I argue that these integration programs largely did not ameliorate un(der)employment, for they did not address the systemic discrimination new immigrants faced. Rather, I show how they increased the regulation of the un(der)employed and attempted to shape subjectivities in line with values dubbed "Canadian", which were integral to post-Fordist forms of labour and (neo)liberal rationalities of government. More specifically, I demonstrate how immaterial labour is deeply assimilatory. Rather than merely produce material products, workers must embody a brand/product, affectively and effectively, in ways that are deeply classed, racialized and gendered. These behavioural dispositions, however, were rendered technical and thus governable through a skills discourse. Additionally, I argue that these interventions reproduced a transition industry that facilitated and contributed to the cycling of new immigrants through endless job fairs and other training programs, a process through which they became flexible and entrepreneurial citizens who accepted responsibility for their own "employability". These programs thus constituted a means of rationalizing and managing (un)employment insecurity and of reproducing and regulating flexible labor. | Ph.D. | gender, employment, labour, worker, industr | 5, 8, 2009 |
| Alleson, Richard | Birn, Anne-Emanuelle | Contested Environmental Illness in the Negev/al-Naqab: A Narrative Analysis of lLcal Knowledge and Organizational Struggle | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-11 | In 2003, the Israeli government announced plans to transfer a large army base from the centre of the country to the Negev (al-Naqab in Arabic), 8 kilometers downwind from the Ramat Hovav industrial zone and national hazardous waste treatment site. Since its creation in 1975, Ramat Hovav has been a major centre for bio-chemical production, hazardous waste treatment and consequently, pollution. For decades, Bedouin residents from Wadi Naam had been living adjacent to the industrial zone, their concerns and protests remaining unheard. However, when the health of Israeli soldiers serving at the prospective site was at stake, local environmental disputes shifted into the national spotlight. The decision to move the army base was a catalyst for a prolonged struggle over conflicting interpretations of environmental health risks. Using a narrative-based case study methodology, this research examines both the local environmental knowledge and the organizational strategies that inform the contested environmental illness struggles that took place at the Ramat Hovav industrial zone between 1997 and 2011. It illustrates how environmental organizations, policymakers, and industrial representatives, through protracted challenges and counter-challenges, found an interim approach for addressing pollution, thereby clearing the way for the construction of the army base. It also illuminates the differential treatment of contested environmental illness by state, municipal, and organizational actors when the subjects at risk are Jewish Israeli youth, as opposed to Bedouin residents, thus uncovering institutionalized environmental discrimination toward the Bedouin of Wadi Naam that is symptomatic of prejudicial public policies dating back to the establishment of the state. The first formal study of contested environmental illness in the Middle East, this case contributes broader insight into the institutional dynamics of environmental injustice, the relationship between local knowledge and political pressure, and the organizational tactics underlying environmental risk management. | PhD | health, wind, industr, production, waste, environment, pollut, institution, justice | 3, 7, 9, 13, 16 |
| Almas, Andrew David | Conway, Tenley M. | Native Trees, Urban Forest Management Planning, and Residents: Knowledge, Attitudes, and Actions | Geography | 2017-06 | In the past decade, municipalities across North America have increased investment in their urban forests in an effort to maintain and enhance the numerous benefits provided by them. Some municipalities have drafted long-term urban forest management plans (UFMPs) that emphasize the planting of native trees to improve ecological integrity, and participation of residents, since the majority of urban trees are typically located on residential property. Yet it is unclear if municipal foresters are mindful of UFMP goals or what residentsâ level of knowledge, attitudes, and actions are regarding native trees and urban forestry goals. Through a case study of southern Ontario municipalities, I administered interviews with municipal foresters and a survey exploring residentsâ ability to identify the native status of common tree species, as well as their attitudes and actions regarding urban forest issues. The results indicate that all municipalities with management plans emphasize native species, and many justify their planting as a way to increase ecological integrity. However, only a fraction of species native to the region are available through nursery stock, meaning many are not planted by municipalities. The results of the survey indicate that residents are better able to identify common native trees than non-native trees, although knowledge-levels are low, and there are failures of resident outreach within the case study municipalities. Although residents generally have positive attitudes towards native trees, few are interested in planting native species if they create a hazard or increase costs. These positive attitudes do not translate into emphasizing native species when actually selecting tree species to plant. This dissertation adds to existing research surrounding native species management in urban ecosystems, and understandings about how urban forestry policy influences residents and municipal actors. Future research is needed to determine species suitability for urban plantings and meaningful ways of engaging with new residents. | Ph.D. | forest, urban | 9, 15 |
| Alon, Pnina | Macklem, Patrick | The Aging Workforce: Addressing its Challenges Through Development of a Dignified Lives Approach to Equality | Law | 2010-03 | Against the background of the global demographic shift towards an aging workforce and its impacts on the labour market and the economy in industrialized societies, this dissertation pinpoints six salient challenges for future litigation and policy-making in the area of labour and employment discrimination law. These include the global tendency towards abolishing mandatory retirement and increasing the eligibility age for pension benefits; legislative age-based distinctions; cost as a justification for age discrimination; performance appraisals of senior workers; and the duty to accommodate senior workers. At the core of each challenge lies a normative question regarding our conception of senior workers’ right to age equality, its importance and relative weight compared with other rights and interests. The aim of this dissertation is therefore to critically review the current understanding of this right and its moral and economic underpinning. Most notably, the dissertation contends that the prevailing conception of equality assessment (the Complete Lives Approach to equality), according to which equality should be assessed based on a comparison of the total share of resources obtained by individuals over a lifetime, has substantial implications for age discrimination discourse. As it uncovers the numerous difficulties with the complete lives approach, the dissertation develops an alternative: the Dignified Lives Approach to equality, according to which an individual should be treated with equal concern and respect, at any particular time and regardless of any comparison. The dissertation then articulates five essential principles founded in Dworkin’s notion of equal concern and respect: the principle of individual assessment, the principle of equal influence, the principle of sufficiency, the principle of social inclusion, and the principle of autonomy. When one of these principles is not respected at any particular time, a wrong is done, and the right to equality is violated. Next, the dissertation elucidates when and why unequal treatment of senior workers based on age does not respect each of these five principles and therefore constitutes unjust age discrimination. It demonstrates that senior workers’ right to age equality is a fundamental human right. Finally, it examines the above-mentioned challenges through the lens of the new Dignified Lives approach. | SJD | rights, industr, worker, labour, employment, equality | 8, 9, 16 |
| Alschech, Jonathan | Regehr, Cheryl | Predictors of Violence, Traumatic Stress, and Burnout in Sex Work | Social Work | 2019-11 | This dissertation reports and discusses the findings of an online survey of 339 sex workers in Canada and the United States concerning their experiences of traumatic stress, burnout, and violence by clients, their working conditions and environment, and their perceptions and experiences of their clients. The survey was designed to collect data on the prevalence of harm and distress among sex workers across the various contexts and locations in which sex work is bought, as well as on how harm and distress in sex work relate to client behaviours and characteristics, structural factors such as sex work stigma and racial or ethnic identity, and protective factors such as working conditions and social cohesion. The 339 sex workers surveyed reported very high levels of traumatic stress, with at least half the respondents reporting levels of traumatic stress consistent with a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis. Respondents also reported a very high prevalence of violent clients, as nearly half of the clients were reported to be violent. The prevalence of violence by clients was somewhat lower, with half of respondents experiencing violence occasionally and 25% of respondents reporting violence as a rare occurrence. Burnout levels among the surveyed workers were also high; half the sample reported levels of burnout above the accepted threshold for detecting burnt-out workers. A higher prevalence of clients perceived as adhering to hegemonic masculinity norms significantly predicted higher levels of traumatic stress as well as a higher prevalence of violent clients. Also, a higher prevalence of clients motivated by their inability to access non-commercial sex due to a physical or mental disability or lack of social skills significantly predicted higher levels of violence by clients and higher prevalence of violent clients. More control over working conditions significantly predicted lower levels of traumatic stress, and higher levels of social cohesion significantly predicted lower levels of burnout. Sex work stigma significantly predicted variation in the prevalence of violence by clients, prevalence of violent clients, levels of traumatic stress, and levels of burnout in the surveyed sex workers. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| Alshaer, Hisham | Fernie, Geoff R ||Bradley, T Douglas | A Single-Channel Acoustic Method for Portable Diagnosis of Sleep Apnea | Biomedical Engineering | 2014-11 | Background: Sleep apnea is a very common disease with serious health consequences. It affects approximately 85% of adults, most of whom remain undiagnosed, which puts them at risk of car accidents, because of sleepiness, and hypertension, heart failure, and stroke. The objective of this thesis was to develop a single-channel device for portable monitoring of sleep apnea that uses breath sounds collected via a microphone placed in front of the nose and mouth. Methods: Project 1: Frequency characterization was used to identify the basic components of the respiratory cycle, i.e., inspiration and expiration. Project 2: Inspiratory sounds were used to determine upper airway narrowing by means of Linear Predictive Coding (LPC), which was validated against objective measures of upper airway resistance. Project 3: An algorithm to calculate the frequency of apneas and hypopneas per hour (apnea-hypopnea index or AHI) was developed and validated against polysomnography in 50 subjects during sleep. Project 4: Finally, a self contained device was then developed and evaluated in 49 subjects in the home setting, 11 of whom used the device on 2 different nights. Results: Project 1: Inspiratory and expiratory phases had characteristically different spectra that allowed them to be distinguished with up to 97% correct classification. Project 2: LPC coefficients were found to be modulated by the ensuing of upper airway narrowing. Project 3: AHI determined by acoustic analysis showed up to 94% correlation with PSG and up to 90% diagnostics accuracy. Project 4: In the home unattended setting, the overall rating for ease-of-use was excellent and the success rate of independent use was 94%. The portable device showed excellent performance with very high signal-to-noise ratio of 31.7 dB. The intra-subject 2-night AHI scores were reproducible in 9 out of 11 (82%) home subjects, which is well within reported inter-night variability. Conclusion: Acoustic analysis of breath sounds is a powerful tool for characterization of respiratory patterns including upper airway narrowing and accurate identification of apneas and hypopneas as compared with the current gold standard. This technology can be packaged in a compact device that can be used independently and reliably in the home environment. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Alshalalfah, Baha Waheed Yousef | Shalaby, Amer Saïd | Planning, Design and Scheduling of Flex-route Transit Service | Civil Engineering | 2009-11 | The rapid expansion of low-density suburban areas in North America has led to new travel patterns that require transit services to be more flexible. Flex-Route transit service, which combines fixed-route transit service with elements of demand-responsive transit service, has emerged as a viable transit option to address the travel needs of the residents of these areas. Existing literature in this field, however, is limited and lacks any comprehensive analysis of Flex-Route planning, design and scheduling. This research aims at exploring Flex-Route transit service to provide detailed guidelines for the planning and design of the service, as well as developing a new scheduling system for this type of unique service. Accordingly, the objectives of this research are: assessing the practicality of Flex-Route transit service in serving low-density suburban areas; identifying essential Flex-Route planning steps and design parameters; determining the feasibility and cost of replacing fixed-route transit with Flex-Route service; and developing a Flex-Route-specific dynamic scheduling system that relies on recent developments in computer and communication technologies. In this regard, we develop an analytical model that addresses several design parameters and provide a detailed analysis that includes, among other parameters, finding optimal values for Flex-Route service area and slack time. Furthermore, the analytical model includes a feasibility and cost analysis that estimates the cost incurred by several stakeholders if Flex-Route service is chosen to replace fixed-route service. The core of the scheduling system is a new developed algorithm – the Constrained-Insertion Algorithm- that exploits the powerful search techniques of Constraint Programming. The scheduling system can handle the daily operations of Flex-Route transit services; it accepts daily (or dynamic) inputs and, in minimal time, produces very cost-effective and reliable schedules. Moreover, the scheduling system has the ability to be used as simulation tool to allow transit operators to assess the feasibility and performance of proposed Flex-Route transit services before implementation. The applicability of the analytical model as well as the performance of the scheduling system were subsequently evaluated and validated through process that included testing on a case study in the City of Oakville, Canada. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Amernic, Heidi | Boon, Heather | Exploring Patient-centred Primary Care in Family Health Teams | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2016-11 | Background: Family Health Teams (FHTs) are primary care models established to provide comprehensive, patient-centred care to Ontarians through an interprofessional team approach. However, little is known about how patient-centred interprofessional team care is operationalized in a FHT, specifically regarding the workflow processes employed across diverse clinical contexts. Objectives: To (1) define patient-centred care in an interprofessional primary health care team context; (2) to identify factors that act as either enablers or barriers to operationalizing patient-centred care; and (3) propose a framework of patient-centred interprofessional team care. Design: Qualitative approach Method: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 16 patient and 24 provider participants from three Family Health Teams in Ontario, Canada. Participants were asked to describe experiences defining aspects of patient-centred care and how contextual factors influenced their experiences. Interview questions were guided by the Patient Centred Clinical Method (Stewart et al. 2003). Transcripts were coded by two independent investigators using a content analysis approach, followed by discussion to reach consensus. Data analysis was guided by the qualitative analysis framework defined by Miles and Huberman (1994): data reduction, data display and conclusion drawing/verification. Results: Patient-centred care is provided by the “wider provider”, defined by participants as a patient’s interprofessional primary health care team. The wider provider is formed through referrals and may adjust in response to patient needs. Members of the wider provider leverage information collected by one another to address scope appropriate patient needs. Participants described contextual factors (such as co-location status of providers and access to electronic patient records); and individual factors (such as physician referral practices) that act as either intentional or unintentional workflow “blocks” on the functioning of the “wider provider”. These “blocks” encourage alternate patterns of workflow, or “workarounds”, which impact both the patient and provider experience. Conclusion: In an interprofessional primary health care team context, a patient-centred experience is defined by factors beyond just the patient’s relationship and interaction with an individual provider. This study presents a novel framework of patient-centred care in an interprofessional primary health care team context. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Amir, Eitan | Tannock, Ian | Optimizing the Tailored Treatment of Breast Cancer | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2012-11 | Background: Breast cancer is a diverse disease. Over the past 3 decades it has been increasingly appreciated that therapy should be targeted to specific patient and tumour characteristics. In recent years the evaluation of tailored therapy has been dominated by the development of new drug therapy which when successful has been marketed at a high price. There have been few successful attempts to optimize currently available therapies. This thesis explores the optimization of currently available therapies in three domains: efficacy, toxicity and supportive care. Methods: Three independent studies were undertaken. First, a prospective cohort study was conducted to assess the impact of re-biopsy of recurrent breast cancer on physician choice of therapy and on patient satisfaction. The second study comprised a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized trials exploring toxicities associated with different endocrine therapy options for early breast cancer with the aim of identification of patients who may be harmed by certain drugs. Finally, a randomized feasibility study was conducted to evaluate de-escalated intravenous bisphosphonates in women with low-risk metastatic breast cancer to bone. Results: All studies met their objectives in showing that the tailored use of available therapies can be optimized. The prospective study of the impact of re-biopsy showed that treatment decisions were modified in 14% of women. Patient satisfaction with the process of re-biopsy was high. The meta-analysis of toxicities of endocrine therapy identified cardiovascular disease as a statistically significant toxicity of aromatase inhibitors, thereby suggesting that those with established cardiovascular disease or risk factors thereof should reduce their exposure to these drugs. Finally, the randomized feasibility study showed that it is possible to conduct randomized trials of de-escalated bisphosphonates in women with low-risk breast cancer and there was no signal that reducing the frequency of treatment was associated with untoward outcomes. Conclusions: It is possible to optimize the tailored therapy of breast cancer using currently available treatments. This may lead to improved patient outcome while using existing resources. Further studies assessing the optimization of other treatments are warranted. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Amiri, Touraj | Stermac, Lana | Occupational Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Latent Structure and Risk Pathways | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-11 | Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as a sequela of work-related incidents is associated with significant health and socioeconomic burden. The current study examined the latent structure of PTSD symptoms, their moderators and predictors, and explored a risk pathway model in a sample of trauma-exposed workers (N = 440). Six models, ranging from 1 to 5 factors, representing 17 PTSD symptoms described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV) and assessed by the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale for DSM-IV (CAPS-DX; Blake et al., 1995), were tested using confirmatory factor analysis. The dysphoria model (Simms et al., 2002) had adequate fit, provided a parsimonious structure over competing models, and evidenced differential correlation patterns with symptoms of depression, anxiety and pain. Measurement invariance across gender and interpersonal violence was obtained for the dysphoria model. Differences due to gender and interpersonal violence in severity of the hyperarousal factor were found. Subsequently, the social cognitive theory of posttraumatic recovery (Benight Bandura, 2004) and epidemiological literature guided conceptualization of a risk pathway model using structural equation modeling. The model supported self-efficacy as a proximal predictor of PTSD. Further, it highlighted the role of trauma type (interpersonal violence), vulnerability (family psychiatric history, female gender, childhood adversity), and protective (education and social support) factors. While historical predictors or their impact may be difficult to change, coping self-efficacy is known to be amenable to psychological intervention with promising results (Benight Bandura, 2004). Coping self-efficacy may be an important target of psychological assessment and intervention. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health, educat, gender, worker | 1, 3, 4, 5, 8 |
| Amirjamshidi, Glareh | Roorda, Matthew J. | Assessment of Commercial Vehicle Emissions and Vehicle Routing of Fleets using Simulated Driving Cycles | Civil Engineering | 2015-06 | Growing concern over greenhouse gas emissions has prompted research on identifying means to control and reduce these emissions. In transportation, vehicle emissions are strongly correlated with driver behaviour. Research relating driving behaviour with emissions uses driving cycles that are assumed to be constant regardless of vehicle type for a specific area. Using a single driving cycle, however, is simplistic for emission estimation purposes as there is significant variance in the driving behaviour of different vehicle types on various road types. In this research, microsimulation models are used to generate road and vehicle specific driving cycles to improve emission estimation. Typically, the calibration of microsimulation models are carried out using vehicle counts and average speed of vehicles. A genetic algorithm is used to show that calibrating these models against acceleration data in addition to average speed and vehicle count would provide a more accurate representation of driver behaviour. This claim is validated by comparing simulation results with observed values of different parameters related to driving behaviour. The model is then used to create improved driving cycles for various types of vehicles on different types of roads. Use of simulation allows data to be collected under consistent traffic conditions for all vehicle and road types. It is also shown that using simulated driving cycles produces emission factors that are closer to the observed compared to the average speed model. Finally, as a demonstration of the application of these driving cycles, a green routing problem has been used as a test case. The test case uses the developed driving cycles to optimize the routes of a hypothetical delivery company to minimize their emissions and costs under various circumstances incorporating the effect of vehicle load in estimating emissions. Results show statistically significant differences in total distance travelled, driving time, and CO2-eq emitted as the result of different minimization criteria of distance-, time-, and emissions optimal. It is also shown that by using the proposed approach, insightful analysis of emissions under various policies of cap-and-trade vs. carbon taxing can be conducted with good accuracy without requiring technology changes or other investments, which may be expensive. | Ph.D. | greenhouse gas, trade | 10, 13 |
| Ampleman-Tremblay, Sandrine | Stewart, Hamish | Prosecuting and Sentencing Police Sexual Assaults: A Canadian Perspective | Law | 2018-11 | This thesis is intended to provide a first normative review of the justice system and Canadian criminal courts’ handling of police sexual assaults. To achieve this purpose, the author, after having described the phenomenon of police sexual misconduct and the implications of the legal concept of sexual assault (s. 271 Criminal Code), outlines the main barriers to prosecution and the sentencing framework that was generally applied in Canadian police sexual assault cases. The analysis is based on twelve cases heard before Canadian courts, but excludes ethics and professional misconduct cases from institutions such as the Special Investigation Unit in Ontario. Finally, the thesis concludes with a chapter dedicated to possible solutions. This last segment is divided into three subsections: before trial, at trial, and at the sentencing phase. Solutions suggested include not only legal reforms, but also educational changes in law schools. Ce mémoire analyse les cas d’agressions sexuelles commises par des policiers au Canada. Le phénomène d’inconduite sexuelle policière et le concept d’agression sexuelle (a. 271 du Code criminel) sont d’abord décrits. Puis, les principaux obstacles inhérents à la judiciarisation de ces cas et les principes de détermination de la peine qui s’appliquent sont précisés. Cette première étude en droit canadien est basée sur douze jugements rendus par des cours canadiennes, excluant cependant toutes décisions de comités de déontologie, et toutes inconduites professionnelles traitées par des institutions telles que l’unité des enquêtes spéciales de l’Ontario. Finalement, diverses solutions légales et éducationnelles (c.-à-d. préliminaires au procès, durant son cours et lors de la détermination de la peine) sont proposées pour remédier à ce problème sociétal. | LL.M. | institution, justice | 16 |
| An, Sofiya | Chambon, Adrienne | Multiple Institutional Logics within the (Trans)National Welfare Diamond: Child Welfare Transformation in Post-Soviet Kazakhstan | Social Work | 2014-06 | For over two post-Soviet decades, Kazakhstan has experienced multiple transformations, big and small, visible and invisible, recognized and unnoticed. Focusing on child welfare transformation in post-Soviet Kazakhstan, this thesis pursues two research questions: (1) How have child welfare institutions changed in Kazakhstan in the post-Soviet period? (2) What was the role of (trans)national institutional factors (i.e., legal and regulatory environments, organizational policies and practices, and interorganizational relationships) and Soviet institutional legacies in shaping institutions of child welfare provision in Kazakhstan?Using an integrated multidimensional theoretical framework built upon the welfare diamond, a transnational approach, and historical institutionalism, I examine a mix of national and transnational organizations involved in child welfare reform, conceptualizing them as interconnected policy actors embedded in the historically contingent (trans)national institutional (legal and regulatory) environment. Using qualitative case study methodology for social policy analysis, this thesis draws upon data collected through interviews with key informants, conducted between June and September 2012, and textual documents (policy and legal documents, organizational and program documents, research reports, and media reports). The thesis develops two main arguments. The first argument concerns institutional factors that shape child welfare institutions. The transformation of the child welfare system was a function of relations among (trans)national organizational actors whose behaviors were constrained and enabled by the wider (trans)national legal/regulatory environment. The institutional environment and the child welfare diamond were characterized by multiple, competing, and shifting institutional logics. My second argument concerns the effects of the institutional and organizational environment on child welfare institutions. Multiple institutional logics, I argue, have accounted for the development of hybrid child welfare institutions, which encompass core Soviet-type child welfare institutions, maintained and reproduced, along with multiple layers of new institutions introduced over the past twenty years. This analysis indicates that the post-Soviet change in welfare provision consisted of numerous incremental and multidirectional institutional adjustments. | Ph.D. | environment, institution | 13, 16 |
| Anderson, Helen Marie | Ford, Maureen | Mastering the Story/Storying the Master: Philosophy of Education Discourse and Empire | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-11 | This dissertation is an exploration of the role of Euro-North American Philosophy of Education discourse in the genealogy of race struggle. I examine how the reliable narration of Philosophy of Education functions as a project of racial rule premised on moral/temporal/spatial notions of (White) civility and respectability. Tracing the history of race war from the 17th century to present day, I look at how racism has shifted from sovereign power to disciplinary power to biopower as a mode of population management, operating not only through race but through gender and class distinctions as well. I analyze the racialized narrative conventions of liberal modern Enlightenment philosophy and the role these conventions continue to play in the creation and maintenance of a violent racial state. Drawing upon Critical Race Theory, feminist epistemologies, narrative theory, and the work of Michel Foucault, I look at what reliable narration does for philosophers, educators, and students, examining what we/they might have invested in maintaining a distinction between ‘reliability’ and ‘unreliability.’ I ask: How is reliable narration used as a tool by philosophers, educators, and ultimately, the state to distinguish between the civil and uncivil, between those worthy and unworthy of moral consideration, political engagement, and basic human rights? How do the impartiality, univocality, universality, and dispassion of reliable narratives become tied to race and the management of racialized bodies? My aim is to examine the ways in which race as a method of governance acts on a text, its author(s), and its audience. “How are racialized subjectivities constituted through and constitutive of language and knowledge,” I ask, “and to what effect?” I want to trace the social and civil relations mapped out by particular narrative conventions and examine the consequences of failing to adhere to such conventions. I suggest that by questioning the function of reliable narration in philosophical and pedagogical practice, educators, scholars, and students can intervene in the operation of race as a mode of discipline, creating the possibility of a more equitable society in which all have the opportunity to flourish. | PhD | equitable, gender, governance, rights | 5, 6, 16 |
| Anderson, Laura | Sellen, Daniel | The Immigrant Experience, Child Feeding and Care: An Examination of the Determinants of Children's Health and Nutrition in Newcomer Families | Anthropology | 2014-06 | This study aims to examine how the migration experience influences newcomer mothers’ young child feeding and care practices and their children’s overall health. The thesis comprises three separate manuscripts, each of which examines one of the three intermediate determinants of the nutritional status of young children (UNICEF 1990): access to healthcare, household food insecurity, and child feeding and care practices. The research was conducted in Toronto’s Jane-Finch neighbourhood, a suburban neighbourhood home to a high density of newcomers. Thirty-two participants (16 Sri Lankan Tamil and 16 Latin American) who had migrated to Canada within the past five years as refugee claimants or family sponsored immigrants participated in the study. Data collection consisted of semi-structured interviews with women from low-income households who had a child between the ages of 1 and 5 years. Spanish and Tamil speaking interviewers interviewed each participant two or three times. Data was analyzed using a mid-level approach in which broad analytical themes are determined prior to analysis and specific themes were then generated based on participants’ perspectives and are grounded in the data. The first manuscript examines newcomer mothers’ experiences accessing physicians for their children and identifies the major gaps between mothers’ expectations and their actual experiences that lead to barriers in communication and overall patient dissatisfaction. The second manuscript demonstrates that mothers’ past experiences with food insecurity affect two aspects of the construct of food insecurity: its managed aspect and its temporal nature. This finding has implications for the measurement of food insecurity in newcomer populations. The third manuscript reveals that newcomer mothers are exposed to several parallel and often conflicting systems of knowledge concerning health and nutrition for their children, and that their utilization of Canada’s Food Guide is impeded by its failure to acknowledge alternate parallel knowledge systems. These findings can be applied to the development of social and health policy aimed at improving cultural competency in healthcare and nutrition education and at ameliorating the income constraints leading to household food insecurity. | PhD | food, nutrition, health, educat, women, urban | 1, 3, 4, 5, 11 |
| Andres, Heather | Peltier, W. R. | Northern High Latitude Climate Variability of the Last Millenium | Physics | 2016-03 | This work explores the causes of northern high-latitude climate variations over the last millennium, and industrial and future periods. Attribution studies are performed on a suite of global climate simulations, and four historical reconstructions of Greenland surface temperatures and precipitation (two of which are new to this work). The simulations followed the protocols of the Palaeoclimate Modelling Intercomparison Project 3 and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5. At least half of the multi-decadal variability in simulated Greenland climate variations over the last millennium is reproduced by a linear, empirically-generated model including terms for volcanic emissions, solar insolation changes (including total solar irradiance and orbital components) and an index associated with latitudinal shifts in the North Atlantic jet. Empirical model parameters are obtained by regressing simulated Greenland temperatures and precipitation against time series for each of the response variables. Greenhouse gas radiative forcing changes are unimportant to simulated Greenland conditions over the last millennium, although they dominate after the mid-20th century. Most of the historical Greenland climate reconstructions are restricted to the industrial period, due to a lack of spatially-comprehensive climate records. They exhibit substantial differences in the timing, phasing and amplitudes of past climate variations, due to regional sensitivities in the source data and the reconstruction methodologies. Reconstructions indicate that Greenland temperatures did not begin to follow hemispheric greenhouse gas warming patterns until the mid-1990s. This discrepancy indicates either that the warming hiatus was associated with internal climate variability, or that the simulations are missing processes important to Greenland climate. For example, indirect effects of anthropogenic aerosols are not captured in the climate model employed here. All of the external climate forcings included in the empirical models initiate significant simulated climate responses in a number of northern hemispheric regions over the last millennium. These forcing responses are not independent, however, except in Tropical regions. Particularly in the Arctic and North Atlantic, nonlinear interactions between the forcings work together to generate the transition between the Medieval Climate Anomaly and the Little Ice Age. Internal variability also plays an important role, even on hemispheric averages. | Ph.D. | solar, industr, climate, greenhouse gas | 7, 9, 13 |
| Anger, Gregory John | Piquette-Miller, Micheline | Impact of Diabetes on Drug Disposition Mechanisms in Pregnancy | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2011-11 | Over 220 million people worldwide are diagnosed with diabetes and rising prevalence is reported in nearly all surveyed populations. Accordingly, the percentage of pregnancies affected by pre-existing type 1 or 2 diabetes or by diabetes that develops during pregnancy, called gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), is also on the rise. Today, approximately 8% of all pregnancies are complicated by diabetes. Diabetes alters drug disposition mechanisms in non-pregnant subjects but the impact of diabetes on drug disposition in pregnancy has not been properly evaluated. Atypical drug disposition in pregnancy has implications for maternal and fetal health. Because liver tissue from pregnant women is not readily available, this thesis investigated drug disposition mechanisms primarily in a rat model of experimental GDM. This model consisted of administering streptozotocin, a diabetogenic toxin, to pregnant rats on gestational day 6. One key finding was that elevated circulating lipids in GDM rats competed with drugs (e.g., glyburide and saquinavir) for plasma protein binding so as to increase free drug concentrations. Another key finding was that important hepatic drug efflux transporters (e.g., Mdr1a/b) and metabolic enzymes (e.g., Cyp3a2 and Ugt1a1) were upregulated in GDM as a consequence of, most likely, enhanced nuclear receptor activity (e.g., pregnane X receptor upregulation). Upregulation of hepatic drug efflux transporters and metabolic enzymes, coupled with larger unbound drug fractions, would be expected to increase the hepatic clearance of many drugs. Consistent with this, in GDM, maternal and fetal exposure to the Mdr1 and Cyp3a2 substrate lopinavir was substantially lower than controls post-administration and data supporting enhanced lopinavir metabolite formation were obtained. Placental drug efflux transporters were also examined in this lopinavir study. Elevated placental Mdr1b and Bcrp expression was observed in GDM, which was associated with decreased fetal exposure to lopinavir (even after correcting for maternal unbound concentrations). Taken together, this thesis demonstrates that experimental GDM can significantly impact drug disposition by altering key drug disposition mechanisms. If confirmed in humans, this drug-disease interaction would need to be considered when atypical therapeutic outcomes occur in diabetic pregnancies. Data from experiments with human placentas, obtained from pregnancies complicated by insulin-managed diabetes, is included/discussed. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Angod, Leila | Razack, Sherene | Behind and Beyond the Ivy: How Schools Produce Elites Through the Bodies of Racial Others | Social Justice Education | 2015-06 | This is a study of how the elite subject is made at Canadian secondary schools. I show how the bodies of racial others are crucial to this making. This dissertation analyzes encounters with racial others both behind and beyond elite schools' ivy-covered walls. These encounters are linked through a racial process of becoming in which whiteness and elite status are inextricable. This new Canadian elite subject is the gendered global citizen of our intensified neoliberal and racially structured world. I theorize two encounters that consolidate this subject. The first is a multicultural encounter with East Asian international students behind the ivy at three southwestern Ontario elite schools. I conduct a document analysis of archival material to consider how anxiety about increasing numbers of students of color coincided with a shift to co-education. Second, I theorize a humanitarian encounter beyond the ivy between girls of an elite private school and the South African children and staff of a school they visited for the purpose of volunteering abroad. The analysis of the multicultural encounter suggests that schools are compelled to seek further encounters with difference abroad. The analysis of the humanitarian encounter reveals the micropractices that constitute the elite subject in the making, in this case, high school girls. These historical and empirical analyses are considered together with contextual information on ten elite schools in southwestern Ontario. My approach is to track the continuities and shifts that characterize elite school encounters. I do this by following routes to elite subjectivity. I theorize moral distinction as a route to elite status, and the rhetorical, discursive, and emotional structures that facilitate this process of becoming. This is a gendered process, and I am particularly interested in the making of elite femininities. This study offers three main findings. First, the processes of becoming elite both behind and beyond the ivy share a racial logic. Second, elite schools sell whiteness. Third, the volunteer abroad encounter, as part of the business of selling whiteness, reinforces students' sense of elite, racial and moral superiority. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Annau, Marion | Hadfield, Gillian | Innovation and Commercial Information: A Delicate Balance | Law | 2020-03 | Canadian law concerning trade secrets and confidential information fosters innovation by achieving a delicate balance between employer and employee interests. The rich doctrinal landscape allows for a flexible approach to the scope of protection together with a thoughtful analysis of the underlying relational expectations of the parties. The balance of interests achieved fosters innovation by protecting commercial information while concurrently facilitating labour mobility. Criminal legislation, which transfers the cost of prosecution to the state, eliminates some subtleties of case law and threatens severe sanctions, would dampen innovation by upsetting the balance of interests in favour of employer-plaintiffs. This effect has been illustrated by empirical studies of the impact of fluctuating American legal protection of commercial information on employee mobility and innovation. Until such time as there is clear evidence that civil remedies are inadequate to protect the socio-economic order of Canada, the urge to invoke criminal sanctions should be rejected. | LL.M. | labour, innovation | 8, 9 |
| Antonelli, Fabrizio | Livingstone, David W. | Workplace Learning in Secondary Schools: An Examination of Ontario's Venture into Formal Career Education | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-11 | Employing Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, this study will examine the origins, creation, and implementation of Ontario’s Career Studies course as it relates to existing economic and workplace practices. Specifically, two broad aspects of the course will be addressed. First, the expectations for the course will be examined to determine the general approach to workplace education as outlined in course curriculum documents and approved-for-use textbooks. Also included in this analysis will be the ways Career Studies teachers interpret and deliver course material. Secondly, this study will uncover the opportunities students have to control and empower themselves in their career development. This includes an exploration of the alternatives to current workplace and economic practices as presented in the course materials, as well as the strategies emphasized for students to adopt in their career planning. At the moment Career Studies, like other career education and guidance programs in Canada, presents current neo-liberal market and labour trends as permanent and outside the control of human agency. In response to these trends, students are expected to improve their marketability for employment through individual and competitive career-development practices, in effect distancing themselves from others through formal credential attainment and attitudinal adjustments that best suit employers. Opportunities for students to experience collective empowerment through alternative workplace and economic practices are noticeably absent from the course. This study wishes to shed light on some of the shortcomings of career education in Ontario and to propose recommendations that truly situate students as architects of their career planning. Employing Hyslop-Margison and Graham’s (2003) Principles for Democratic Learning (PDL), this study concludes that opportunities for students to critically examine and question current workplace practices, explore alternatives to the status quo, and, most importantly, understand the social elements behind current workplace and economic conditions, will better position students to control their future work lives. | PhD | employment, labour | 8 |
| Antonini, Enrico | Amon, Cristina H | CFD-based Methodology for Wind Farm Layout Optimization | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-11 | Driven by concerns on climate change and global warming, increasing oil prices, government support and public receptiveness, wind energy harvesting is emerging as one of the fastest growing renewable energy technologies. Most wind energy is nowadays produced by wind farms, which consist of hundreds of turbines to take advantage of economies of scale. Wind farm performance is however affected by the wakes generated by the turbines which can significantly diminish their annual energy production. Accurate wake effect predictions and reliable wind farm layout design become therefore critical aspects to the economic success of a wind farm project. The present research project aims therefore to define an innovative design framework that integrates accurate wake effect predictions for the development of the next generation wind farms as part of the strategy for promoting the transition to a renewable energy generation. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) provides a unique tool to simulate wind turbine wakes because of its capability to provide a complete solution for the flow field in complex configurations. Nevertheless, CFD simulations are strongly influenced by the choice of the turbulence model used to close the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations. We therefore conducted an analysis of different turbulence models and their influence on the results of CFD wind turbine simulations to suggest the most suitable for such applications. Even though proper turbulence modeling is adopted, several studies showed however that the effectiveness of RANS models in wind farm simulations has not always been consistent. We therefore hypothesized this limitation to arise from uncertainties generated by the wind direction variability and proposed a modeling framework that, by accounting for such uncertainties, consistently improved the agreement of the CFD predictions with the experimental observations. To integrate the CFD models in a design methodology, we developed an innovative continuous adjoint formulation for gradient calculations within the framework of a gradient-based wind farm layout optimization. By testing this optimization methodology under different wind farm configurations, wind resource distributions and terrain topography, we showed that this unique CFD-based design framework effectively improved the annual energy production of a proposed wind farm by optimally siting its turbines. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, wind, production, climate, global warming | 7, 12, 13 |
| Antoniou, Maria C. | Piran, Niva | Food, Eating and the Body: An Account of Women's Lived Experiences Across the Lifespan | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2009-11 | The purpose of this study was to explore women’s subjective food and eating experiences from childhood through to adulthood and the ways in which these experiences either connected or disconnected them from their appetites for food and eating. The present study used a qualitative life history methodology, the goal of which is to assess individuals’ lived experiences to construct broader contextual meaning. In-depth interviews were used to investigate food and eating experiences among twelve women between ages 25 and 44, representing diverse social and cultural backgrounds as well as current and past eating problems. Participants took part in an open-ended interview, using a series of guided questions about their food and eating experiences from childhood through to adulthood. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed for themes using the constant comparison method. Two models emerged from the data in this study that described the social factors that connected and disconnected women from their appetites and eating. The Regulating Discourses Model which outlines current ways women negotiate appetite and desire through food and eating experiences, and the Socialization through Food and Eating Model which delineates socialization processes related to food and eating during women’s development. This research may be useful for counselors, health care professionals, as well as the larger community to increase awareness on ways to maintain girls’ and women’s connection to their bodily appetites and desires throughout the lifespan. | PhD | food | 2 |
| Antoniou, Tony | Glazier, Richard H. | Health Services Utilization among Persons Living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus Infection in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2012-11 | The goals of this dissertation were to investigate aspects of the health services utilization of marginalized persons living with HIV (PLWH), including women, recent immigrants, heterosexual men and individuals living in low income neighborhoods. In the first study, an algorithm of three physician claims for HIV-infection within a three-year period was validated for case-ascertainment of PLWH in administrative databases. The sensitivity and specificity of the algorithm were 96.2% [95% confidence intervals (CI) 95.2% to 97.9%] and 99.6% (95% CI 99.1% to 99.8%), respectively. The algorithm was used to conduct a population-based study examining rates of hospitalization among all PLWH receiving care in Ontario. The introduction of combination antiretroviral therapy was associated with more pronounced reductions in rates of total (-89.9 vs. -60.5 per 1000 PLWH; p = 0.003) and HIV-related hospitalizations (- 56.9 vs. -36.3 per 1000 PLWH; p < 0.001) among men relative to women. Between 2002 and 2008, higher rates of total hospitalization were associated with female sex [adjusted relative rate (aRR) 1.15; 95% CI: 1.05 to 1.27] and low socioeconomic status (aRR 1.21; 95% CI: 1.14 to 1.29). Higher rates of HIV-related hospitalizations were associated with low socioeconomic status (aRR 1.30; 95% CI: 1.17 to 1.45). Recent immigrants had lower rates of both total (aRR 0.70; 95% CI 0.61 to 0.80) and HIV-related hospitalizations (aRR 0.77; 95% CI 0.61 to 0.96). Finally, a theoretically-informed qualitative study was conducted to characterize the help-seeking experiences of heterosexual men living with HIV. The results indicate that without the symbolic appeal of women and the social connections of gay men, heterosexual men lack the composition of capital required to benefit fully from or improve their positions within the existing HIV health and social service fields. The findings of this dissertation illustrate important disparities in health services utilization among PLWH in Ontario. | PhD | women, health, socioeconomic | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Antony-Newman, Max | Gérin-Lajoie, Diane | Parental involvement of Eastern European immigrant parents of elementary school students in Ontario | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-11 | This study focuses on the parental involvement among Eastern European immigrant parents of elementary school students in Ontario. Immigrant parents are shaped by their own educational experiences in home countries and face particular challenges to be involved in the education of their children who attend schools in the immigrant-receiving nations due to language barriers and low familiarity with the new school system. I collected my data through interviews with parents and the analysis of parental involvement documents in Ontario. The analysis was informed by the concepts of social and cultural capital developed by Pierre Bourdieu. I found that Eastern European immigrant parents see their role supporting children mainly in the home by emphasizing academic achievement and extracurricular activities. Interviewed parents grew up in countries with strict boundaries between school and family, as a result they often do not see volunteering and taking part in decision making in Ontario schools as meaningful for them. Although most parents possess high levels of cultural capital there was a variation in the amount of social capital available to immigrant parents. Those who managed to recreate rich social networks in the new country communicated with teachers more successfully and were satisfied with school. The critical analysis of policy documents showed that despite the shift towards acknowledging different types of involvement more value is still given to school-based activities, which makes the immigrant parental involvement less visible. The results of the study will enable educators and policy makers to pay more nuanced attention to the involvement among immigrant parents for better achievement and well-being of all children in Ontario classrooms. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Aoyama, Kazuyoshi | Fowler, Robert A | Maternal Critical Illness in Canada: temporal and geographic trends, predictors of outcome, and an examination of the variability in provision of critical care | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-11 | Objectives: (1) To identify the most appropriate models for use in predicting maternal mortality in pregnant and postpartum women; (2) to establish temporal and geographic trends in maternal morbidity, mortality and admission to intensive care in Canada; (3) to identify factors associated with maternal morbidity and death in Canada; and (4) to explore variation in admission to intensive care among Canadian hospitals for pregnant and postpartum women. Methods: For the first objective, we performed a systematic review of risk prediction models. Objectives two through four were addressed within a series of nationwide population-based observational studies using the database from the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Estimated annual percent change of maternal morbidity, mortality and admission to intensive care were computed with negative-binomial regression models. Multi-level logistic regression models were employed to investigate factors associated with the outcomes. Median odds ratios was used to describe variation in admission to intensive care. Results: The systematic review revealed the Collaborative Integrated Pregnancy High-dependency Estimate of Risk (CIPHER) model and the Maternal Severity Index had very good discrimination and calibration for predicting maternal mortality. The national population-based study identified a stable maternal mortality rate of 6.2 per 100,000 deliveries, but increasing rates of severe maternal morbidity and admission to intensive care with estimated annual percent changes, 1.32% (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 0.60 – 2.04) and 1.83% (95% CI 0.68 – 2.98), respectively. Severe maternal morbidity varied across Canadian regions but was highest in the northern Territories at 22.8 per 1000 deliveries. Extremes of maternal age were associated with severe maternal morbidity and mortality. For two pregnant women with similar characteristics at different hospitals, the median odds of being admitted to ICU was 1.92 in one hospital compared to another, indicating substantial variability in admission patterns to intensive care for pregnant and postpartum women in Canadian hospitals. Conclusions: In Canada, while maternal mortality appears stable, maternal age is increasing over time and is independently associated with severe maternal morbidity. There is substantial regional variation in maternal morbidity and mortality. Finally, there is wide variability in maternal admission to intensive care among hospitals and among provinces in Canada. | Ph.D. | health, innovation | 3, 9 |
| Appolloni, Simon | Scharper, B Stephen | Convergent Knowing: Explorations of a Sustained - and 'Sustainable' - Theological Reflection on Science, Environment, and Liberation | Religion, Study of | 2014-06 | Since the last half of the twentieth century, Christian theorists, theologians, biblical scholars, philosophers and ethicists have been struggling, in varying degrees, with the increasingly pressing issues that have arisen from a planetary environmental crisis and a growing inequality and persistent poverty afflicting the majority of human beings. They have tried to reconcile these emergences with discoveries from science about how our world functions, and traditional affirmations of their faith. The struggle has been daunting, marked by a litany of concerned voices that argue that one or more of the issues or facets of the debate require greater attention. In this dissertation, I investigate the writings of four Christian thinkers: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Leonardo Boff, Diarmuid O'Murchu and Thomas Berry. These authors attempt to integrate, to varying extents, environmental concerns, liberation thought, scientific discovery and traditional precepts of their faith. These thinkers, I argue, are greatly facilitated in their integration of all these aspects by the particular epistemic framework they employ when engaging their faith and science in a communal conversation. I label this framework "convergent knowing," characterized by a close and seemingly continuous relationship between these two significant ways of knowing. I suggest that "convergent knowing" could serve as a model for other Christian thinkers who are currently struggling to integrate ecology, justice, science and their faith. Evidence for this is found within the collective work of the four authors I examine, which reveals an emerging ethical vision that seeks liberation for the human and the other-than-human. I further argue that "convergent knowing" adds a new and important dimension to the religion-science debate, one that does not seem to be adequately represented by current leading typologies representing the religion-science nexus. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that there might be a larger civilizational paradigm shift occurring that underlies a growing convergence of Christianity and science. Characterized by relationality, this new paradigm is shaping how scholars currently approach science, ecology, ethics and religion. | Ph.D. | justice, ecology, environment, inequality, equality, poverty | 1, 5, 10, 13, 16 |
| Arevalo-Quintero, Olga Lucia | Kesler, Olivera | Development of Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Metal Supports and Intermediate-Temperature Direct Hydrocarbon Anodes | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-11 | Direct hydrocarbon (DH) solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) have the potential to play a role in the transition from high-polluting to cleaner and sustainable electricity generation systems. Moreover, metal-supported DH SOFCs have several advantages that could potentially increase the overall competitiveness of the technology. In this study, bi-layer metal-supported cells were developed using suspension plasma spraying (SPS). The cells were fabricated on bi-layer supports fabricated by powder metallurgy, with microstructures designed to provide a suitable surface morphology for uniform anode deposition. An open circuit voltage (OCV) of 1.105 V at 750 °C in 3% humidified hydrogen was obtained, which deviates from the Nernst potential by only 5 mV. Therefore, the bi-layer support has the potential to minimize cell defects that are known to be detrimental to cell performance. Metal-supported SOFCs containing Cu-Ni-samaria doped ceria (SDC) composites with or without additions of Co or CeO₂, were evaluated for stability against interdiffusion in H₂ at 850 °C. The interdiffusion of Fe, Cr, and Ni was studied, and three protective strategies to prevent the diffusion of Fe and Cr into the Cu-based anodes were evaluated: pre-oxidation of the metal support, application of a protective LaCrO₃ coating to the metal supports, and addition of an SDC interlayer between the metal support and anode. It was found that the most effective stand-alone method to diminish the diffusion of Fe into the anodes containing Co and Ni was the addition of an SDC interlayer between the anode and the metal support. An assessment of the feasibility of using BaTiO₃ as a catalyst for DH SOFC anodes was also performed. The microstructure and electrochemical performance of metal-supported Cu-SDC-Ni-based anodes with or without the addition of CeO₂ and/or BaTiO₃ were evaluated. Metal-supported SOFC anodes were fabricated by a hybrid suspension and solution precursor plasma spraying (SPS/SPPS) process and by SPPS. SPPS Cu-based anodes were found to have better resistance to coarsening than SPS/SPPS Cu-based anodes. The highest power density in this study was obtained for an SPPS Cu-SDC-Ni-BaTiO₃ anode, with peak power densities at 750 °C of 624 mW/cm² and 266 mW/cm² in H₂ and in CH₄, respectively. | Ph.D. | pollut | 13 |
| Arnillas Merino, Carlos Alberto | Cadotte, Marc W | Determinism vs. Stochasticity in Community Assembly Processes: The Role of Species Phylogeny and Dominance | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2019-06 | The deterministic or stochastic nature of the rules that regulate which species co-exist in a community has been long debated in ecology. This thesis aims to answer (1) if understanding the degree of determinism in the co-existence of species is more or less informative than other sources of uncertainty affecting regional biodiversity, (2) if biodiversity is important to understand ecosystem processes, and (3) if dominance and determinism are correlated. Using a landscape model I show that the degree of determinism or stochasticity (1) controls regional species richness, and (2) causes more uncertainty on species richness than land use change or climate change in the Tropical Andes. In herbaceous communities around the world, diversity is important to improve predictions of biomass productivity and litter accumulation mostly when the diversity and biomass descriptors of the communities were partitioned into legumes, forbs and graminoids. Graminoids, grasses and Carex, and one forb lineage were more likely to be dominant species than non-dominant, while more than a dozen forb lineages were more likely to be non-dominant species. The environment affected the dominant plants the most, increasing the role of habitat filtering, with a less common effect of limiting similarity; in contrast, non-dominant plants were mostly affected by limiting similarity among the non-dominants, but with no signal of habitat filtering. This pattern was observed in herbaceous systems using a local dominant removal experiment and a global observational dataset. The results show that dominant species are a more deterministic subset of species that converge towards a predictable optimum constrained by environmental conditions. In contrast, non-dominant species are better described as a diverging group of species, potentially with multiple optimums, and therefore with a less predictable response. Understanding the differences between dominant and non-dominants can improve models of ecosystem services that rely either on biomass accumulation or on diversity. | Ph.D. | climate, enviornment, biodiversity, ecology | 13, 15 |
| Arora, Paul | Jha, Prabhat | Epidemiologic Characterization of the Heterosexual Transmission of Human Immunodeficiency Virus and other Sexually Transmitted Infections in India | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-11 | India houses the world’s third largest population of people living with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) who constitute about 6% of the global HIV burden. In about 2008-9, an estimated 1.9 million [95%CI: 1.5 to 2.5] adults were living with HIV in India. The four southern Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu account for about 60% of estimated HIV infections, although they house only 30% of the adult population. I report that most HIV infections in infected couples in the general population of India (85.4% (95%CI: 80.0, 90.7)) were introduced by the male partner. The per-partnership transmission probability of HIV in the general population was low 29.1% (95%CI: 22.5, 35.7) compared to what has been reported for other STIs. Important theoretical facilitating factors for HIV transmission were associated with HIV infection with nearly equal effect sizes in both genders and across HIV–risk settings (multiple partnerships (OR: 2.46 (95%CI: 1.98, 3.06) and STIs (ORHSV-2: 5.60 (95%CI: 3.37, 9.33); ORSyphilis: 4.12 (95%CI: 2.35, 7.25)). The strength of association of STIs with HIV was consistent. Intervention spending on, or coverage of, STI treatment-focused sex work interventions (per 1000 total district population) was associated with a reduced annual risk of either HIV (- 1.7%, 95%CI: -3.3, -0.10) or syphilis (-10.9%, 95%CI: -15.9, -5.8) infection in young pregnant women in the high-burden southern states. A decreased annual risk of syphilis iii among young pregnant women attending public prenatal clinics in the high-burden southern states was associated with a unit increase (per 1000 total district population) of intervention spending (-0.009%, 95%CI: -0.014, -0.004), number of STIs treated (-10.9%, 95%CI: -15.9, -5.8), FSWs reached (-3.0%, 95%CI: -5.2, -0.7) and condoms distributed (-0.034%, 95%CI: - 0.053, -0.015). Male sexual behaviour (non-regular partnerships and use of female sex work) is the dominant driver of HIV transmission in the general population of south India. Ulcerative STIs were strongly associated with HIV infection in south India and interventions aimed at treating STIs and promoting safer sex practices for FSWs and their clients have resulted in reductions in HIV and syphilis incidence and prevalence in the general population of south India. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Arrandale, Victoria Helen | Holness, Dorothy Linn | Occupational Exposures and the Co-occurrence of Work-related Skin and Respiratory Symptoms | Medical Science | 2012-06 | Occupational skin and respiratory symptoms, and disease, are common problems. Workers can develop new disease or aggravate existing disease as a result of exposures at work. Many workers are exposed to chemicals that can cause both respiratory and skin responses and there is evidence that some workers experience symptoms in both systems. There is also evidence that skin exposure may lead to sensitization and the development of respiratory disease. There is very little research that has examined both airborne and skin exposures together with lung and skin outcomes. The purpose of this thesis was to further investigate the relationships between occupational exposures, skin symptoms and disease, and respiratory symptoms and disease. Four studies were undertaken to improve our understanding of these complex relationships. Results from a study of clinical patch test data determined that seven of the ten most common occupational contact allergens are also capable of causing occupational asthma and that these common occupational exposures may not be recognized as sensitizers in common reference materials. Exposure-response relationships for skin symptoms were modeled in bakery workers and auto body shop workers using historical data; significant exposure-response relationships were found for auto body workers. In two separate studies of concurrent skin and respiratory symptoms, workers did report concurrent skin and respiratory symptoms. In predictive models, subjects reporting a history of eczema were more likely to report concurrent skin and respiratory symptoms. Overall, the results from this thesis provide more evidence that the skin and respiratory systems are associated. This body of work suggests that: (1) several common occupational exposures can cause disease in both the skin and respiratory system; (2) a portion of workers report both skin and respiratory symptoms; and (3) exposure-response relationships do exist for skin symptoms, both work-related and non-work-related. Future studies need to gather detailed information about exposure and response in both systems in order to better determine the role of exposure(s) in the development of skin and respiratory symptoms. Improved understanding of these relationships will allow for more targeted and effective exposure prevention strategies and will ultimately reduce the burden of occupational disease. | PhD | worker, health | 3, 8 |
| Arviv, Tamir | Mahtani, Minelle||Leslie, Deborah | The Diverse Geographies of Jewishness: Exploring the Intersections between Race, Religion, and Citizenship among Israeli Migrants in Toronto | Geography | 2016-06 | In this dissertation, I explore how Jewish migrants who have relocated from Israel, but who are now living in the Greater Toronto Area understand, negotiate and perform their identities, belongings, and citizenship upon migration, both individually and collectively. Working from a series of forty-eight interviews and a set of participant observations at public events, I discuss how the discourses and material realities of life in Israel and in Toronto inform their attachments, identities, and claims of belonging. I illustrate the ways in which their hybrid and transnational identities, attachments, and claims of belonging challenge Euro-Zionism's homogenizing project - opening up potential for new revitalized spaces for conversations about Israel/Palestine. The empirical chapters in this study focus on the themes of diaspora, whiteness, and citizenship in an attempt to foreground the multi-dimensional and diverse nature of Jewish identity and Jewish multiculturality and multiraciality in Canada (and in Israel). Theoretically, this opens up opportunities to consider scaffolding that describes the complex multiplicity within cultures. Case studies are used to address the formation and re-formation of racial, religious, and national identities after migration, providing theoretical insights into the complex relations of multiple local racial formations to global racial formations, both historically and in the contemporary period, and their interconnectivity with other axes of difference, such as religion. In particular, I emphasize the intersection of racial formation and religious identity by foregrounding the immense diversity of Jewish identities, cultures, and racial connections. Doing so, I begin to map previously unexplored intersections between Jewish studies and critical theories of race in order to illuminate spaces for potential critical geographical analyses of these fields. This study, therefore, opens up new questions not only for future research on the "Israeli diaspora" , but also for studies of race, religion, migration, and urban space in social and cultural geography. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| ARYEE, EDNA | Schneider, Margaret||Wane, Njoki | Implications of Sexual Risk Assessment for HIV Intervention Planning: The Utility of the Expanded AIDS Risk Reduction MODEL among Young Ghanaian Women | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-11 | ID: 10997Background Study Objective(s): Increasing HIV/AIDS knowledge alone does not stem the spread of HIV among young Ghanaian women. Rather, the solution lies in enhancing the individual's appreciation of her own risk and self-efficacy for reducing risky behaviours (Sallar, 2001). The current dissertation aims to understand the factors related to HIV/AIDS sexual risk behaviour among young Ghanaian women. In an expansion of the AIDS Risk Reduction Model (ARRM; Catania, 1990), psychological (sexual assertiveness and self-esteem), interpersonal (resiliency), and cultural variables (spirituality, cultural mistrust, gender roles, childhood sexual abuse, social health, and Africentrism) were identified to assist in the prediction of stage-specific variables at each stage (i.e., Labeling, Commitment, and Enactment) of the ARRM. Sexual risk behaviour was further examined in relationship to diverse demographic variables. Methods: Using quantitative exploratory survey and convenience sampling methods, two hundred (N=200) female participants were recruited at three institutions in Accra, Ghana. Results: Labeling: Labeling was positively related to Peer Norm. However, Labeling was negatively related HIV/AIDS Risk Knowledge and Susceptibility to HIV. Further, there was a positive relationship between Labeling and HIV Testing (at the Commitment Stage). The overall regression for the expanded predictors model on Labeling was not statistically significant. Education and age accounted for the bulk of the explained variance at this stage. Commitment: HIV testing intention was negatively related to age and marital status. However, it was positively related to education. Overall, neither the ARRM nor the expanded ARRM variables predicted Commitment. However, there was a positive relationship between Self- esteem and Commitment. Enactment: Condom Use Self-efficacy was positively related to age. Education was positively related to Enactment. For the expanded predictors, Perception of Sexual Enjoyment, Sexual Communication, Spirituality and Self-Esteem were negatively related to Enactment. There was also a positive relationship between Sexual Assertiveness and Enactment. Conclusion: Together, findings validated the Expanded ARRM as a fairly reliable model that helped in the coherent understanding of psychosocial and cultural issues that increase sexual vulnerability in young Ghanaian women. Overall, this study contributes to efforts to promote the use of culturally appropriate strategies in HIV prevention in Ghana. | Ph.D. | health, gender, women | 3, 5 |
| Asakura, Kenta | Newman, Peter A | Theorizing Pathways to Resilience among LGBTQ Youth: A Grounded Theory Study | Social Work | 2015-11 | This three-paper dissertation seeks to advance the conceptual understanding of resilience among lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. Interviews with service-providers (n = 16) and LGBTQ youth (n = 19) were conducted and analyzed, using Grounded Theory (GT) methodologies. The first paper conceptualizes how participants understand the construct of resilience and the associated concepts (i.e., adversity, positive adaptation). Three relevant categories are reported: (1) facing adversities across contexts, (2) growing up in the age of marriage equality, and (3) “doing well” while still in pain. Provided extensive adversities LGBTQ youth experience, participants endorsed a context-dependent understanding of “doing well” (e.g., “battling through”) rather than using normative criteria of health and wellbeing (e.g., absence of psychopathologies, presence of socially desirable outcomes). The second paper reports a substantive theory of resilience emerged in the GT study. The core category, paving pathways through the pain, suggests that youth build on their experiences of marginalization and the concomitant emotional pain to carve out personalized pathways to resilience. All youth employed the following five processes: (1) navigating safety across contexts, (2) asserting personal agency, (3) seeking and cultivating meaningful relationships, (4) un-silencing social identities, and (5) engaging in collective healing and action. While the degree of which and the ways in which youth made use of these resilience processes varied, youth focused their attention to the areas of their individual life circumstances that inflicted emotional pain and engaged more deliberately in one or more of the resilience processes related to the origins of pain. In the third paper, results of the GT study, along with other relevant literature, inform the application of a social ecological framework of resilience in working with LGBTQ youth. This framework conceptualizes that the role of social workers is to promote not only the internal capacity of LGBTQ youth but also the capacity of their social ecologies to better support them. A youth case is discussed to inform interventions across the micro, mezzo, and macro levels of practice. Discussion sections for each paper and the dissertation conclusion summarize study results, limitations, and implications for social work and further research. | Ph.D. | equality, queer | 5 |
| Ashworth, Melody Kelly | Joseph, M Ducharme | Teacher Training in a Proactive Classroom Management Approach for Students with Autism Spectrum Disorders | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-11 | As the prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) increases, more children with ASD present for services in public school classrooms. Due to the unique social and communication difficulties that characterize this population, these children often exhibit challenging behaviours such as non-compliance, verbal and physical aggression and high levels of off-task responses. Compounding these concerns, teachers and classroom support staff are typically inadequately trained in evidence-based behavioural intervention strategies for such children, particularly those suited for class-wide intervention that are easy to implement and fit within a school setting.The current study addressed these concerns by examining the effectiveness of Errorless Classroom Management (ECM), a proactive classroom management teacher training package, in three self-contained classrooms and a total of 7 students ranging from Grade 1 to Grade 8. In a multiple baseline across classrooms design, teachers and classroom support staff were taught a range of proactive skills that included use of moderating support strategies, reinforcement of prosocial student behaviours, and systematic fading of supports and reinforcement. Teachers and classroom support staff were also trained in how to use these classroom management strategies to build four core student skills: compliance, acquiescence, on-task behaviour, and communication skills. After training, classroom staff showed increased use of proactive classroom management strategies and reduction in use of reactive disciplinary strategies. Results also indicated moderate improvements in student compliance, on-task skills and prosocial behaviours, as well as covariant reductions in challenging behaviours. Improvements in staff and student behaviour were maintained at the 5 month follow-up. Most staff members indicated satisfaction with the training and showed an overall moderate reduction in stress levels related to classroom management. The outcomes of the current study are encouraging and suggest that ECM is suitable as a proactive classroom management approach for self-contained ASD special education classrooms and may fit well as a curriculum within a school wide positive behaviour support framework. The in-service training was completely non-aversive, inexpensive, and brief, making it a positive and cost-efficient approach to classroom management. Teacher training in ECM could potentially decrease the number of students with ASD who require intensive supports in the school system. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Aubrecht, Catherine (Katie) | Titchkosky, Tanya | Surviving Success, Reconciling Resilience: A Critical Analysis of the Appearance of Student ‘Mental Life’ at one Canadian University | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-11 | This dissertation addresses the university student as a figure of mental health and illness. Drawing on the methods and theories of disability studies, interpretive sociology, critical, feminist and queer theory, as well as hermeneutically oriented phenomenology, my work explores the social production of this student figure or type – variously depicted as ‘ invisible’, ‘maladjusted’, ‘stressed’, ‘difficult’, sensitive’, ‘resilient’, ‘narcissistic’, and extraordinarily ‘ordinary’. This figure is addressed as a means of revealing contradictory understandings of the relationship between success and survival, as this relationship appears in the ordinary daily life of the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The social and historical significance of the contemporary University’s Student Life Programs and Services is analyzed with a view to reveal the Western cultural values and practices which organize consciousness of success as a necessary condition of contemporary existence. Special attention is paid to the cultural production of knowledge concerning university student ‘mental life’, the appearance of which is located at the interstices of colonialism, global health policy, institutional ‘best practices’, cultural mores and folkways, and embodied experiences. I dwell with this appearance as an occasion to engage the materiality of Western mythologies of resilience, and with them the meaning of human agency under neoliberal governance. This engagement examines the productive power of the disciplinary and institutionalized ‘language of mental illness’ through a genealogy of the University of Toronto, a textual analyses of the University’s Student Life Programs and Services literature, and a discursive analysis of open-ended interviews with student services representatives which seeks both to understand and transgress conventional interpretations of the structure of Student Life. I demonstrate how University presentations of student bodies, minds and senses perceived to be lacking in ‘ordinary order’, can be reconceived as sites to reflect on the paramount presence of psychiatric knowledge in interpretations and responses to embodied difference within the university setting. Overall, this dissertation seeks to disrupt unexamined relations to the meaning of student types; and in the process, display how normative relations to the student as a figure of mental health and illness needs is currently and historically organized and socially achieved. | PhD | health, gender | 3, 5 |
| August, Martine Jade | Walks, Alan | Speculating Social Housing: Mixed-Iicome Public Housing Redevelopment in Toronto's Regent Park and Don Mount Court | Geography | 2014-06 | This dissertation develops a multi-dimensional critique of the globally popular "socially mixed" public housing redevelopment approach, drawing on tenant experiences in Toronto's Regent Park and Don Mount Court communities. Socially mixed redevelopment involves the demolition of modernist public housing and its replacement with mixed-income, mixed-use communities; usually redesigned in a neo-traditional style and achieved via public-private partnership. This dissertation addresses three research questions and goals. First, it examines the impacts of redevelopment on tenants, who benefit from much-needed investment but endure hardship associated with relocation, gentrification, and displacement. Second, it critically examines core theoretical and planning ideas (`deconcentration' and `social mix') that serve to justify mixed-income redevelopment. These discourses rest on problematic core assumptions, and promote policies that - as I discover in a meta-analysis of nearly 200 empirical studies - do not deliver on their promises. Third, this research offers a political-economic critique of the significance and future impacts of redevelopment, placing tenant experiences in the context of local, state, and global economic restructuring. Redevelopment is presented as an example of what I call "speculative social welfare," a new and increasingly popular approach for financing former welfare state provisions in the context of global neoliberalism. Speculative social welfare replaces state expenditure with profits derived from gentrification and real estate speculation, relies on the market to allocate former welfare state provisions, entails reduced investment, and intensifies existing patterns of socio-spatial polarization. This research is based on qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, ethnographic participant observation, and textual analysis. My analysis of redevelopment in Toronto reveals that financial motivations drive policy, trumping loftier planning, design, and equity-oriented goals. From pre-move tenant interviews, I develop a counter-narrative that challenges stigmatizing pro-revitalization rhetoric, and highlights `real' problems in Regent Park that redevelopment is ill-suited to address. Post-move interviews reveal that `old' problems are being reproduced in the mixed community, and highlight the negative political and social impacts of gentrification and displacement. My analysis of Don Mount Court points to the paradoxical outcomes of "New Urbanist" design, and challenges the `myth' of the benevolent middle class in a landscape marked by deeply uneven power relations. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Avendano, Carlos Enrique | Cowling, Sharon A. ||Finkelstein, Sarah A. | Natural and Cultural Landscape Evolution during the Late Holocene in North Central Guatemalan Lowlands and Highlands | Geography | 2012-06 | Paleoecology has been only in recent decades applied to Mesoamerica; this thesis provides new records of paleoenvironmental changes in Guatemala. Paleoecological reconstructions are developed based mainly on pollen in the Lachuá lowlands and Purulhá highlands of the Las Verapaces Region. For the first time, quantitative vegetation and climate analyses are developed, and plant indicator taxa from vegetation belts are identified. Changes in vegetation are explained partially by elevation and climatic parameters, topography, drainage divides, and biogeography. Pollen rain and indicator plant taxa from vegetation belts were linked through a first modern pollen rain analysis based on bryophyte polsters and surface sediments. The latter contain fewer forest-interior plant taxa in both locations, and in the highlands, they contain higher local pollen content than in the lowlands. These calibrations aided vegetation reconstructions based on fossil pollen in sediment records from the Lachuá and Purulhá regions. Reconstructions for the last ~2000 years before present (BP) were developed based on fossil pollen from cores P-4 on a floodplain in Purulhá, and L-3, a wetland in Lachuá. Core P-4 suggests that Mayan populations developed a system of agricultural terraces in a former paleolake-swamp environment, which was abandoned at the time of the Spanish Conquest (~400 BP). Core L-3 indicates the abandonment of Mayan “Forest Gardens” at the time of the early Postclassic. These gardens likely prevailed during the Classic period (~300-1100 yrs BP) at the outskirts of the ancient city of Salinas de los Nueve Cerros. Following abandonment, forest recovery took place for about 800 yrs. Cultural factors are found to be more important in determining vegetation dynamics in this region, since no clear evidence of climate forcing was found. The P-4 and L-3 cores provide likely evidence that Mayan populations were, contrary to other evidence, innovative landscape managers. Scenarios in the Las Verapaces Region have been drastically modified in recent times (e.g. after the European Conquest), as suggested by pollen evidence in the top of both P-4 and L-3 cores, possibly due mostly to modern large scale natural resources exploitation, which represent environmental threats greater than any seen in the last ca. 2000 years. | PhD | natural resources, environment, forest, ecology | 12, 13, 15 |
| Axler, Renata Emily | Miller, Fiona A | Commercialization, Collaboration and Conflict of Interest: An Institutional Work Analysis of Academic Entrepreneurship in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-06 | Recent health research and innovation policies have encouraged academic biomedical scientists to engage research commercialization and collaborations with the health products industry. These activities of `academic entrepreneurship' have been valued for their ability to produce social, economic, and health impacts. However, these initiatives have also been met with concern for their potential to create conflicts of interest. This study examines how publicly-funded academic biomedical scientists in Canada value the activities of academic entrepreneurship and manage conflict of interest concerns. Drawing on neo-institutional theories, this research explores the institutional logic of entrepreneurial science, and the micro-level negotiations of `institutional work' conducted by academic entrepreneurs in legitimizing entrepreneurial initiatives. This mixed-methods study draws from a national survey of publicly-funded biomedical researchers (n = 1,618), and in-depth interviews with 24 academic entrepreneurs and 14 trainees. Analyses indicate that the institutional logic of entrepreneurial science tends to be positioned as distinct to academic science, though this logic is heterogeneous. Exploring entrepreneurial scientists' institutional work in valuing and navigating entrepreneurial activities, normative value is generated in these activities through proposals of their contributions to scientific processes and downstream clinical and societal impacts. Entrepreneurial scientists simultaneously claim adherence to academic norms, and use these to legitimize their entrepreneurial engagements. In navigating entrepreneurial activities, entrepreneurial scientists engage in strategies to maintain academic activities alongside entrepreneurial ones, and claim to avoid conflicts of interest. In an environment of overall skepticism and uncertainty about academic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial scientists engage in institutional work processes of change-through-maintenance, where appeals to the maintenance of academic norms serve to legitimize entrepreneurial activities. As entrepreneurial initiatives proceed in academic biomedical science and are legitimized by entrepreneurial scientists, this study calls for a need to scrutinize and regulate these initiatives, especially as potential conflicts of interest and their impacts tend to be obfuscated. | Ph.D. | health, innovation, industr | 3, 9 |
| Ayerst, Stephen | Restuccia, Diego | Essays in Macroeconomic Growth | Economics | 2020-06 | The innovation of new technologies is fundamental for driving aggregate economic growth. The spread (or lack of) of these technologies across countries helps explain growth in developing countries and why large productivity gaps persist. My thesis studies the contribution of technological progress and diffusion for explaining cross-country productivity gaps and aggregate growth. The first chapter studies how the diffusion of new technologies affects growth. I develop a model of endogenous growth, in which firms decide how to invest in the adoption of a new technology and innovation. Knowledge embodied in products is more complementary to future innovations using the same technology. Consequently, as firms adopt the new technology it becomes harder to innovate with the old technology. I calibrate to empirical evidence using patent data on the diffusion of information-communication technology (ICT). Diffusion is driven by adoption early on (about 1/3) and innovation later (about 2/3). Despite large firm-level gains from adoption, aggregate growth falls by 15% over the transition because firms scale back innovation. The second chapter studies how institutional distortions prolong the adoption of new technologies in developing countries. I build a model in which firms choose technology and resource inputs given their underlying productivity and exposure to the institutional environment. I calibrate to US data on the distribution of employment and adoption pattern of new technologies. Increasing distortions to be consistent with low-income countries increases the adoption lag of new technologies by 19 years (43% of the data) and decreases productivity by 65%. The third chapter (with Faisal Ibrahim, Gaelan MacKenzie and Swapnika Rachapalli) studies the role of knowledge embodied within traded products for diffusion. We use patent data to construct a measure of embodied technology. Using this measure, we find that increases in high-knowledge traded goods are associated with higher productivity and R\ growth. To quantify the importance of this channel, we develop an endogenous growth model with trade and knowledge links. We find that a large fraction of long-run growth is attributable to spillovers with developing countries benefiting relatively more. | Ph.D. | innovation, industr, economic growth, employment | 8, 9 |
| Ayyavoo, Gabriel Roman | Pedretti, Erminia | Using Online Pedagogy to Explore Student Experiences of Science-technology-society-environment (STSE) Issues in a Secondary Science Classroom | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-06 | With the proliferation of 21st century educational technologies, science teaching and learning with digitally acclimatized learners in secondary science education can be realized through an online Science-Technology-Society-Environment (STSE)-based issues approach. STSE-based programs can be interpreted as the exploration of socially-embedded initiatives in science (e.g., use of genetically modified foods) to promote the development of critical cognitive processes and to empower learners with responsible decision-making skills. This dissertation presents a case study examining the online environment of a grade 11 physics class in an all-girls’ school, and the outcomes from those online discursive opportunities with STSE materials. The limited in-class discussion opportunities are often perceived as low-quality discussions in traditional classrooms because they originate from an inadequate introduction and facilitation of socially relevant issues in science programs. Hence, this research suggests that the science curriculum should be inclusive of STSE-based issue discussions. This study also examines the nature of students’ online discourse and, their perceived benefits and challenges of learning about STSE-based issues through an online environment. Analysis of interviews, offline classroom events and online threaded discussion transcripts draws from the theoretical foundations of critical reflective thinking delineated in the Practical Inquiry (P.I.) Model. The PI model of Cognitive Presence is situated within the Community of Inquiry framework,encompassing two other core elements, Teacher Presence and Social Presence. In studying Cognitive Presence, the online STSE-based discourses were examined according to the four phases of the P.I. Model. The online discussions were measured at macro-levels to reveal patterns in student STSE-based discussions and content analysis of threaded discussions. These analyses indicated that 87% of the students participated in higher quality STSE-based discussions via an online forum as compared to in-class. The micro-level analysis revealed students to attain higher cognitive interactions with STSE issues. Sixteen percent of the students’ threaded postings were identified in the Resolution Phase 4 when the teacher intervened with a focused teaching strategy. This research provides a significant theoretical and pedagogical contribution to blended approach to STSE-based secondary science education. It presents a framework for teachers to facilitate students’ online discussions and to support learners in exploring STSE-based topics. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Azimi, Yaldah | Farnood, Ramin ||Allen, Grant | The Effect of Physicochemical Properties of Secondary Treated Wastewater Flocs on UV Disinfection | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2013-11 | The microbial aggregates (flocs) formed during secondary biological treatment of wastewater shield microbes from exposure to ultraviolet (UV) light, and decrease the efficiency of disinfection, causing the tailing phenomena. This thesis investigates whether the formation of compact cores within flocs induces higher levels of UV resistance. Moreover, it investigates the effect of secondary treatment conditions on the physicochemical properties of flocs’, effluent quality, and UV disinfection performance. Compact cores were isolated from the flocs using hydrodynamic shearing. The UV dose response curves (DRC) were constructed for flocs and cores, and the 53-63 μm cores showed 0.5 log less disinfectability, compared to flocs of similar size. Based on a structural model developed for the UV disinfection of flocs, floc disinfection kinetics was sensitive to the core’s relative volume, their density, and viability. The UV disinfection and floc properties of a conventional activated sludge (CAS) system, and a biological nutrient removal (BNR-UCT) system, including both biological nitrogen and phosphorus removal, was compared. The 32-53 μm flocs and the final effluent from the BNR-UCT reactor showed 0.5 log and 1 log improvement in UV disinfectability, respectively, compared to those from the CAS reactor. The BNR-UCT flocs were more irregular in structure, and accumulated polyphosphates through enhanced biological phosphorus removal. Polyphosphates were found to be capable of producing hydroxyl radicals under UV irradiation, causing the photoreactive disinfection of microorganisms embedded within the BNR-UCT flocs, accelerating their UV disinfection. Comparing the UV disinfection performance and floc properties at various operating conditions showed that increasing the operating temperature from 12 ºC to 22 ºC, improved the UV disinfection of effluent by 0.5 log. P-Starved condition, i.e. COD:N:P of 100:10:0.03, decreased the average floc size and sphericity, both by 50%. Despite the higher effluent turbidity of the P-Starved reactor, the final effluent’s UV disinfection improved by at least 1 log compared to the P-Normal and P-Limited conditions. The improvement in the floc and effluent disinfectability were accompanied by a decrease in floc sphericity and a decrease in the number of larger flocs in the effluent, respectively. | PhD | waste | 12 |
| Azzopardi, Corry | Allagia, Ramona | The Discursive Construction of Gendered Attributions of Blame for Child Sexual Abuse: A Feminist Critical Discourse Analysis of Maternal Failure to Protect in Child Welfare Policy and Practice | Social Work | 2015-11 | Nonoffending mothers of children who have been sexually victimized have historically borne the burden of blame in professional and public discourse. Notwithstanding strong empirical evidence to the contrary, attributions of maternal culpability for the inception and maintenance of abuse dynamics have been socially manufactured through hegemonic paradigms of deficient mothering. While insinuations of conscious or unconscious maternal collusion may have dissipated since early psychoanalytic and family systems eras, the legacy of mother-blame lives on in present day child welfare policies and practices through the ideologically- and institutionally-entrenched doctrine of failure to protect. With the intent of unearthing gender-based power asymmetries in contemporary child welfare system responses to child sexual abuse, this doctoral study applied feminist critical discourse analysis to investigate discursive constructions of blame and failure to protect, as enacted, reinforced, and resisted through the powerful language of child welfare policy and practice texts. In this multimodal, problem-oriented, social advocatory approach to critical social science research, descriptive, interpretive, and explanatory analyses of semiotic data were conducted to expose transparent and opaque orders of discourse that legitimize particular relations of power and authority in child welfare operating to the detriment of women and children. Anchored in neoliberal modes of governing, child-centric notions of best interests, and hierarchical structures of power, this study uncovered dominant ideologies of gender and motherhood that function to construct women as the embodiment of sexual abuse risk, target of scrutiny and blame, and primary agent of change. Judged against naturalized schemas of good mothering in isolation of subjective lived experiences, social locations, and material conditions, failure to protect standards have an inherently disproportionate and troubling effect on women, particularly marginalized women who endure intersecting sources of oppression and adversity. Consequent formulations of child sexual abuse as a corollary of maternal inadequacies and defective instincts wrongly, albeit effectually, deflect the gaze away from sexual abuse perpetrators, nonoffending fathers, unresponsive institutions, and profound social injustices. Mothers are fundamental to the collective goal of promoting children’s safety and recovery in the aftermath of sexual abuse. Prevailing child welfare narratives that blame and shame paradoxically impede maternal capacities for support and protection and, thus, compromise children’s best interests. Gendered child welfare discourse has proven itself to be remarkably impervious to change. This study effectively problematized and destabilized its stronghold on child welfare policy and practice by unmasking and denaturalizing the ideological content of textually mediated discourses, building a persuasive case for social and institutional reform grounded in a solid epistemic and evidentiary foundation, and proposing progressive avenues for discursive resistance, negotiation, and transformation. | Ph.D. | women, gender, institution | 5, 16 |
| Bachmann, Christian | Roorda, Matthew J||Kennedy, Chris | Analyzing the Effects of Changing Global Trade Patterns on Domestic Freight Systems | Civil Engineering | 2015-12 | Global trade patterns are continuously changing as economies and trade policies develop and interact. Recent developments and forecasts suggest changes in such patterns are likely to continue. Global trade patterns ultimately manifest themselves in freight flows on global and domestic transportation systems, but the translation of economic flows into transportation patterns is not straightforward. Moreover, while countries may benefit from global trade, the transportation impacts are felt locally, as passenger and freight movements compete for domestic infrastructure capacity.This thesis introduces a joint transportation and trade modelling framework to analyze the effects of changing global trade patterns on domestic freight operations. A unique multi-scale modelling framework confronts the notion that it is convenient but unrealistic to draw a geographic boundary around the economy and freight transportation system. Innovative harmonization, transformation, estimation, and optimization-based methods are developed to jointly model trade at the global, national, and regional levels. Multinomial logit (MNL) models are used to include the influence of transportation disutility in global trade choice behaviours, extending the multi-scale model into the domain of random-utility-based multi-regional input-output (RUBMRIO) models, which are first comprehensively introduced and reviewed.To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach, a Canada-centric model was developed that includes forty-eight countries, Canada's ten provinces and three territories, and Ontario's eleven economic regions. Validation results show that it is possible to link spatial scales with a reasonable degree of accuracy. And while Canada's industrial outputs are the sum of its provincial and regional outputs, individual provinces and regions are not just microcosms of the larger country's behaviour. Example applications of food and paper product demand shocks from the United States, as well as doubling and halving of global transportation costs, demonstrate that the economic impacts from scenarios related to global trade and their implications for freight demand and traffic patterns differ for each province of Canada and region of Ontario. | Ph.D. | trade, industr, infrastructure | 9, 10 |
| Badali, MattheW Anthony | Zilman, Anton | Extinction, Fixation, and Invasion in an Ecological Niche | Physics | 2019-11 | The competitive exclusion principle postulates that due to abiotic constraints, resource usage, inter-species interactions, and other factors, ecosystems can be divided into ecological niches, with each niche supporting only one species in steady state. Seemingly in conflict with this principle, remarkable biodiversity exists in biomes such as the human microbiome, the ocean surface, and every speck of soil. Despite their importance in human health and conservation biology, the long term dynamics, diversity, and stability of communities of multiple interacting species that occupy similar niches are still not fully understood. Biodiversity decreases as species go extinct and increases as new species establish themselves, and both extinction and invasion are moderated by interactions with other species. Classically, the theory of niches describes biodiversity, as relatively static. More recently popular, neutral theory models biodiversity as a balance of successive extinctions and invasions. Stochastic fluctuations allow mathematical models, like the neutral Moran model, to exhibit extinction. Stochasticity also connects neutral and niche theories, with Moran dynamics being one limit of a Lotka-Volterra model. The extinction times in the neutral and niche limits are qualitatively different, indicative respectively of exclusion and coexistence of two species, yet the transition between these limits has not been fully investigated. I identify the nature of the transition by calculating the mean extinction time with an arbitrarily accurate technique, discovering that competing species can coexist unless their ecological niches entirely overlap, which implies that extinction and loss of biodiversity is less common than predicted by neutral models. Biodiversity is also maintained by new species entering the system, a process I represent with a single invader in the Lotka-Volterra model and repeated immigrants into the Moran model. I demonstrate that greater niche overlap leads to longer invasion times, and less likelihood of success of an invasion attempt. With the Moran model I find the critical immigration rate at which immigrants are likely to maintain their presence in the system. | Ph.D. | biodiversity | 15 |
| Badr, Mario Jean | Enright Jerger, Natalie | New Tools for Evaluating Parallel and Heterogeneous Architectures | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2020-06 | Computer architecture is entering its second golden age. The number of servers worldwide is estimated to be ten million. The number of mobile devices in the world now exceeds two billion. But with the decline of technology scaling, performance improvements from shrinking transistors has dwindled. The world now turns to innovations in computer architecture for increased performance. A fundamental aspect of computer architecture is evaluating tradeoffs between design points. Evaluating these trade-offs is becoming more difficult due to the increased complexity of the hardware and applications. Traditional methods for evaluation are useful but limiting. In this dissertation, we propose to remove these limitations by complementing traditional tools with two new ones: Rhythm and Mocktails. The traditional method of simulating parallel systems is limiting for two main reasons. First, only a small sample of a workload’s execution is considered. Second, the input to the application has been reduced in size by orders of magnitude. Rhythm removes these limitations by modeling only the key interactions between the application, system software, and hardware, producing performance estimates in seconds or minutes for full runs of a benchmark with realistic inputs. We validate the fidelity of Rhythm’s estimates to measurements of workloads running on two real systems. Rhythm helps architects gain valuable insights on the performance of parallel architectures in the early stages of design, guiding them toward the design points that should be evaluated in more detail. The rapid evolution of mobile computing has led to a significant degree of heterogeneity in the hardware. The heterogeneity stems from domain-specific accelerators, which limits academic research because these accelerators (and their workloads) are proprietary. Mocktails removes this limitation for architects exploring the memory hierarchy by statistically modeling the memory access behaviour of compute devices without making assumptions about the hardware or workload. We validate the fidelity of Mocktails experimentally for caches and main memory. Architects can use Mocktails in their simulations to mimic the behaviour of a compute device, making the tool a useful conduit between industry and academia. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Badwall, Harjeet | Razack, Sherene | Can I Be a Good Social Worker? Racialized Workers Narrate their Experiences with Racism in Every Day Practice | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2013-06 | Social work imagines itself as a site of goodness and justice. My thesis illustrates the ways in which commitments to the profession’s social justice-oriented ideals are ruptured when racialized social workers name the operation of racism within everyday sites of professional practice. I show how colonial and imperial constructions of helping (moral superiority and goodness) continue to shape the hegemonic scripts about the role and practices of social work, reinscribing white dominance in social work knowledge production. Historically, racialized bodies have been constituted as Others, subjects to be regulated, controlled and ‘saved’ within the colonial project. I examine the dilemmas that emerge when racialized Others become the helpers and attempt to perform a normative identity that is constructed through white dominance. In this study, I provide a detailed analysis of twenty-three semi-structured interviews with racialized social workers. I trace the production of the profession’s values and notions of good practice within their narratives. I specifically explore the moments in which ‘good’ practice and commitments to the values of the profession break down in everyday work with clients and co-workers. Racist encounters with clients appear as overwhelming occurrences within workers’ narratives, and a complex paradox is revealed: the discursive arrangements within social work that constitute good, social justice-oriented practice, are the very same discourses that disavow the operation of racism. Within these moments workers are left questioning whether or not they can be ‘good social workers’ because the act of naming racism appears to be incompatible with their commitments to the values that shape what is recognized as good social work practice. The narratives presented in this thesis point to the trespasses, erasures and individualizing discourses that secure whiteness at the exact moments in which race is made invisible. I contend that, when workers name racism, their very presence is destabilizing to a social work profession that needs to construct an image of itself as a site of goodness. Social work must examine the colonial continuities that construct contemporary practices, and to make visible the ways in which hegemonic scripts shaping justice and goodness reinstall whiteness and collude with racism. | PhD | justice, worker | 8, 16 |
| Baergen, Alyson | Donaldson, D J | Illuminating Urban Grime: The Atmospheric Impact of Urban Grime Photochemistry | Chemistry | 2016-11 | Deposition and subsequent processing of atmospheric species on impervious surfaces leads to the formation of surface films. Most abundant in urban environments, these films, sometimes referred to as â urban grimeâ , are thought to mediate environmental processing of species through adding an additional compartment into which species can partition, facilitating transfer of atmospheric species into surface water and promoting heterogeneous reactions. In this thesis, real urban grime samples are collected and used to investigate composition, growth characteristics, and reactivity of the less studied inorganic fraction of the film. Some of the reactions that we propose include the photochemical formation of nitrogen oxides, the formation of ClNO2 from grime chloride and the re-emission of ammonia from grime. The particular focus is urban grime photochemistry as a possible daytime source of HONO to the atmosphere. While surface nitrate/HNO3 photolysis has been previously suggested as a HONO source, it has not been previously studied using real environmental surfaces. Using a combination of laboratory and field photochemical experiments it has been found that grime nitrate undergoes photolysis to form gas phase nitrogen oxides at a rate faster than has previously been reported for aqueous nitrate, gas-phase HNO3 and surface deposited HNO3 on clean glass. This chemistry is dependent on relative humidity and only involves a fraction of extractable grime nitrate. Based on these studies, urban grime photochemistry was explored as a source of HONO using a box model. The magnitude and temporal variation of this HONO source depend on the photochemical properties of the precursor including rate constant and wavelength dependence of its absorption cross-section, the source and rate of accumulation of the precursor as well as other factors such as latitude, season. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Bagha, Shaheen | Sage, Tammy | The Impact of Chronic High Temperatures on Anther and Pollen Development in Cultivated Oryza Species | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2014-03 | Rice is the leading staple for half the world’s population. Climate change, expanding populations and loss of agricultural land are projected to reduce rice yields by upwards of 30%. Significantly, rice yields decline by 10% for every 1°C increase in temperature. Temperatures ≥ 32°C can cause failure in male reproductive development and eliminate yields in some cultivars. This dissertation determined the developmental features and mechanisms associated with failure in male reproduction at temperatures of 32 °C and 36 °C in temperature tolerant and sensitive cultivars of O. sativa and O. glaberrima. Temperatures of 32 °C impaired anther dehiscence in the temperature sensitive cultivar of O. sativa by preventing septum cell wall degradation, which is essential for pollen dispersal. Temperatures of 36 °C induced abortion in pollen development either during meiosis primarily in O. sativa or at the uninucleate stage in O. glaberrima. Abortion during meiosis was associated with autophagic programmed cell death, whereas failure at the uninucleate stage of pollen development was associated with features of necrosis such as cytoplasmic shrinkage and cell wall collapse. Increased hydrogen peroxide production was detected in aborting meiocytes and uninucleate microspores at 36 °C, indicating that this reactive oxygen species may contribute to the failure of male reproductive development in rice during high temperature stress. Identification of the timing of failure in male reproductive development, and the cellular features associated with these processes in rice, form the basis for the identification of molecular mechanisms that control yield responses to high temperature stress. | PhD | production, climate, agriculture | 2, 12, 13 |
| Bagherzadeh Namazi, Azadeh | Jia, Charles||Allen, Grant | Microwave-assisted Production of Activated Carbon from Pulp Mill Sludge with White Liquor | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2014-11 | This work establishes the technical feasibility of producing a value added product ,activated carbon, from a waste stream, pulp mill sludge, using white liquor as the activating agent and microwaves as the energy source. The work also demonstrates the potential of the sludge-derived activated carbon in removing bioactive compounds in pulp mill effluents that affect fish production. Readily available at Kraft mills, white liquor is able to convert sludge into activated carbon with a specific surface area (SSA) of 650 m2/g. While NaOH in white liquor creates pores in the carbon from sludge, other two components of white liquor, Na2S and Na2CO3, inhibit the activation process. Porosities of activated carbon produced with microwave oven and conventional furnace are comparable. The use of microwaves reduces the activation time from hours to minutes. However, strong microwave absorbers, such as NaOH and KOH, are needed for pyrolysis and activation, since pulp mill sludge and wood polymers are weak microwave absorbers with tan δ | Ph.D. | waste | 12 |
| Bahry, Stephen | Cummins, James | Perspectives on Quality in Minority Education in China: The Case of Sunan Yughur Autonomous County, Gansu | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2009-11 | This exploratory multiple embedded case study investigates perspectives on education reform under conditions of minority language endangerment in Sunan Yughur Autonomous County, a minority-district in northwest China. The study included three school sites: a Yughur minority urban school; a Yughur minority rural district school, and a Yughur majority rural district school and four embedded cases: school administrators, teachers, parents and students, of Yughur, other minority, or Han nationality. Adult stakeholders were interviewed on what is important to learn in “education for quality”, and what aspects of Yughur knowledge, culture and language should be included in school curriculum as part of education for quality, while students were asked what they enjoyed studying and whether they would enjoy learning stories, poems and songs in Yughur in school. Findings include strong support among parents and students regardless of ethnicity or school site for Yughur language and culture as “essential qualities” to foster in Sunan County school curriculum, with moderate to weak support among educators ranges with some variation among sites. Three parallel visions emerge from the study of what it means today for Chinese minority student to be an educated person in contemporary China: (a) regular Chinese-medium education; (b) multicultural Chinese-medium education; and (c) maintenance bilingual education in Yughur and Chinese. The third vision envisions developing additive bilinguals who know the heritage of their minority as well as the national curriculum in Mandarin. A vision of balanced bilingualism and multiculturalism that sees heritage languages and Mandarin as “resources” is shared by the large majority of parents and students, most teachers and some administrators. Holders of other visions for local minority education largely share a “Language as Problem” orientation towards minority languages. One aim of devolution of school-based curriculum authority is to develop schools’ individuality. This study reveals three divergent models of local schooling that have developed in one minority school district: one that centres on a monolingual model of national culture, one monolingual, multicultural model, and one bilingual, multicultural model, with the latter model corresponding more closely to minority stakeholder perspectives that schools should play a stronger role in the maintenance and revitalization of their cultural and linguistic heritage. | EDD | educat, urban, rural | 4, 11 |
| Bajestani, Maliheh Aramon | Beck, J. Christopher | Integrating Maintenance Planning and Production Scheduling: Making Operational Decisions with a Strategic Perspective | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2014-06 | In today's competitive environment, the importance of continuous production, quality improvement, and fast delivery has forced production and delivery processes to become highly reliable. Keeping equipment in good condition through maintenance activities can ensure a more reliable system. However, maintenance leads to temporary reduction in capacity that could otherwise be utilized for production. Therefore, the coordination of maintenance and production is important to guarantee good system performance. The central thesis of this dissertation is that integrating maintenance and production decisions increases efficiency by ensuring high quality production, effective resource utilization, and on-time deliveries. Firstly, we study the problem of integrated maintenance and production planning where machines are preventively maintained in the context of a periodic review production system with uncertain yield. Our goal is to provide insight into the optimal maintenance policy, increasing the number of finished products. Specifically, we prove the conditions that guarantee the optimal maintenance policy has a threshold type. Secondly, we address the problem of integrated maintenance planning and production scheduling where machines are correctively maintained in the context of a dynamic aircraft repair shop. To solve the problem, we view the dynamic repair shop as successive static repair scheduling sub-problems over shorter periods. Our results show that the approach that uses logic-based Benders decomposition to solve the static sub-problems, schedules over longer horizon, and quickly adjusts the schedule increases the utilization of aircraft in the long term. Finally, we tackle the problem of integrated maintenance planning and production scheduling where machines are preventively maintained in the context of a multi-machine production system. Depending on the deterioration process of machines, we design decomposed techniques that deal with the stochastic and combinatorial challenges in different, coupled stages. Our results demonstrate that the integrated approaches decrease the total maintenance and lost production cost, maximizing the on-time deliveries. We also prove sufficient conditions that guarantee the monotonicity of the optimal maintenance policy in both machine state and the number of customer orders. Within these three contexts, this dissertation demonstrates that the integrated maintenance and production decision-making increases the process efficiency to produce high quality products in a timely manner. | PhD | production | 12 |
| Baker, Jayne | Welsh, Sandy | Girl Power, Boy Power, Class Power: Class and Gender Reproduction in Elite Single-gender Private Schools | Sociology | 2013-11 | This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the role of elite single-gender schools in the reproduction of class and gender inequalities. This is an ethnographic study of an all-boys and all-girls school in the Toronto area, combining participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and web and print school documents. I focused especially on students in their final year of high school, when the potential advantages embedded within a private school are most likely to be capitalized on. The data provide an opportunity highlight three mechanisms of class and gender reproduction. First, I explore the teacher/student relationship as a source of advantage for students and show how teachers are complicit in these negotiations. I make sense of this in the context of the schools’ belief in the importance of educating the whole child, including traits like leadership, and the university prep focus of these schools. Second, I focus on how school personnel understand their students as gendered subjects and the contradiction this presents at the all-girls school, where administrators are keen on students defying stereotypes but draw on many of those stereotypes to develop best practices at the school. Third, I analyze the university choice process of these students, noting especially how they construct distinctions between Canadian universities despite Canada not having a steep and well-known hierarchy between institutions, and how they use the established hierarchies in other countries. I bring together theories on the correspondence between the economic structure and the education system and the role of culture in reproduction, staying mindful of how these educational settings are structured and what is happening in the classroom, including how students shape their educational experiences through their actions and their interactions with others, especially teachers. | PhD | educat, gender, equality | 4, 5 |
| Baker, Leroy | Titchkosky, Tanya | Normalizing Marginality: A Critical Analysis of Blackness and Disability in Higher Education | Social Justice Education | 2019-06 | This dissertation examines the experiences of Black undergraduate and graduate students with disabilities enrolled at the University of Toronto, Canada. The study employs an intersectional framework to explore the experiences of twelve Black students in relation to interpretive categories of Blackness and disability in this university setting. Using interpretive sociology, critical Black and disability studies theories, my study illuminates the ways students navigate the everyday complexities of Blackness and disability in University life. In employing qualitative methodology, this study investigates the University of Toronto’s disability accommodation policies, practices and procedures that organize the lives of Black disabled students. In essence, my study addresses marginalization by mapping the University’s bureaucratic practices influencing students’ academic progress. In relation to this mapping, the dissertation explores how Black disabled students navigate their experiences in accessing the bureaucratic ordering of accommodation and how this influences their academic endeavours. This critical analysis reveals that the University of Toronto is failing Black disabled students through its disability accommodation policies and practices. It also indicates that the marginalization of Black disabled students is normalized through the routine orders of accommodation processes. Ultimately, this study shows how categories of “Blackness” and “disability” act to circumscribe educational opportunities for students with disabilities. These categories are typically informed by anti-Blackness and the bio-medical versions of disability generating “individual lack,” which conceals the complex ways hierarchies of power are enabled by the social construction of normalcy. My aim is to raise a collective awareness of anti-Blackness in negotiating equity in educational opportunities in universities for students with disabilities. The study concludes by discussing how the impact of colonialism and structural inequities within accounts of Blackness and disability continue to produce injustice in university settings. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Baliunas, Dalia Ona | Rehm, Jürgen | A Comparison of Two Methods of Adjusted Attributable Fraction Estimation as Applied to the Four Major Smoking Related Causes of Death, in Canada, in 2005 | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-11 | The main objective of the thesis was to compare two methods of calculating adjusted attributable fractions and deaths as applied to smoking exposure and four health outcomes, lung cancer, ischaemic heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cerebrovascular disease, for Canadians 30 years or older in the year 2005. An additional objective was to calculate variance estimates for the evaluation of precision. Such estimates have not been published for Canada to date. Attributable fractions were calculated using the fully adjusted method and the partial adjustment method. This method requires confounder strata specific (stratified) estimates of relative risk, along with accompanying estimates of variance. These estimates have not previously been published, and were derived from the Cancer Prevention Study II cohort. Estimates of the prevalence of smoking in Canada were obtained from the Canadian Community Health Survey 2005. Variance estimates were calculated using a Monte Carlo simulation. The fully adjusted method produced smaller attributable fractions in each of the eight disease-sex-specific categories than the partially adjusted method. This suggests an upwards bias when using the partial adjustment method in the attributable fraction for the relationship between cigarette smoking and cause-specific mortality in Canadian men and women. Summed across both sexes and the four smoking related causes of death, the number of deaths attributable to smoking was estimated to be 25,684 using the fully adjusted method and 28,466 using the partial adjustment method, an upward bias of over ten percent, or 2,782 deaths. It is desirable, theoretically, to use methods which can fully adjust for the effect of confounding and effect modification. Given the large datasets required and access to original data, using these methods may not be feasible for some who would wish to do so. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Ballantyne, Marilyn | Stevens, Bonnie | Maternal-infant Predictors of Attendance at Neonatal Follow-up Programs | Doctor of Medicine/Doctor of Philosophy | 2010-06 | Attendance at Neonatal Follow-up (NFU) programs is crucial for parents to gain access to timely diagnostic expertise, psychosocial support, and referral to needed services for their infants. Although NFU programs are considered beneficial, up to 50% of parents do not attend these programs with their infants. Non-attending infants have poorer outcomes (e.g., higher rates of disabilities and less access to required services) as compared to attenders. The purpose was to determine factors that predicted attendance at NFU. Naturally occurring attendance was monitored and maternal-infant factors including predisposing, enabling, and needs factors were investigated, guided by the Socio-Behavioral Model of Health Services Use. A prospective two-phase multi-site descriptive cohort study was conducted in 3 Canadian Neonatal Intensive Care Units that refer to 2 NFU programs. In Phase 1, standardized questionnaires were completed by 357 mothers (66% response rate) prior to their infant’s (N= 400 infants) NICU discharge. In Phase 2, attendance patterns at NFU were followed for 12 months. Higher maternal stress at the time of the infant’s NICU hospitalization was predictive of attendance at NFU. Parenting alone, more worry about maternal alcohol or drug use, and greater distance to NFU were predictive of non-attendance at NFU. Attendance at NFU decreased over time from 84% at the first appointment to 74% by 12 months. Two distinct attendance patterns emerged: no or minimal attendance (18.5%) and attendance at all or the majority of scheduled appointments (81.5%). The most frequent point of withdrawal from NFU occurred between NICU discharge and the first scheduled appointment; followed by drop-out following the first NFU appointment. These results provide new insight into patterns of attendance and the maternal-infant factors that characterize attenders/non-attenders at NFU and serve as the critical first step in developing interventions targeted at improving attendance, infant outcomes, and reporting of developmental sequelae. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Ballon, Anna | Berta, Whitney | Entrepreneurship in Publicly Funded Hospitals: A Multi-case Study of Privately Funded Rehabilitation in Ontario Hospitals | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-11 | Ontario hospital spending represents the largest portion of the health care budget. Consequently, governments and publicly funded hospitals have implemented policies and strategies to decrease health care costs on the one hand, and on the other hand, to increase revenues from non-governmental sources. For hospitals, one revenue-generating opportunity includes partnering with privately funded rehabilitation companies or creating hospital-owned privately funded rehabilitation departments. The presence of parallel funding streams (public and private) for health care services departs from the political and organizational norms for Canadian hospitals. The primary objectives of this research are to characterize the organizational relationships between publicly funded hospitals and privately funded rehabilitation departments and companies, examine their effectiveness, and understand the benefits and/or disadvantages that these relationships afford hospitals beyond those originally anticipated. This study used mixed research methods within multiple case studies. Study results indicated that Ontario hospitals have employed numerous entrepreneurial strategies to increase revenues in addition to government funding. The relationships between hospitals and privately funded rehabilitation companies/departments allowed the relationship partners to achieve mutually beneficial goals by exploring and exploiting new and existing material and non-material resources. Nevertheless, hospital leaders have encountered political, social, and organizational tensions when related to the presence of privately funded health care services in hospitals. This study contributes to organization and management science by examining the utility of these relationships and the factors that hinder or facilitate relationship success. From a practical perspective, the findings of this study are of value to organizational leaders who may wish to establish and maintain effective relationships between publicly and privately funded companies in the context of the Canadian health care system. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Balogh, Robert Stephen | Colantonio, Angela | Hospitalizations for Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions among Persons with an Intellectual Disability, Manitoba, 1999-2003 | Rehabilitation Science | 2010-06 | This thesis examines hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions among persons with an intellectual disability living in Manitoba from 1999 to 2003. Hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions are considered an indicator of access to, and the quality of, primary care. Intellectual disability can be defined as a disability originating before age 18 characterized by significant limitations both in intellectual functioning and in adaptive behaviour as expressed in conceptual, social, and practical adaptive skills. Between 1 and 3% of the population has an intellectual disability. This thesis addressed three objectives: 1) To identify ambulatory care sensitive conditions that are applicable to persons with an intellectual disability; 2) To compare hospitalization rates for ambulatory care sensitive conditions between persons with and without an intellectual disability in Manitoba; 3) To identify factors associated with hospitalizations for ambulatory care sensitive conditions among adults with an intellectual disability living in Manitoba. An online survey of primary care providers with experience working with persons with an intellectual disability found consensus on fifteen ambulatory care sensitive conditions applicable to persons with an intellectual disability. Large discrepancies in hospitalization rates for these conditions were found between persons with and without an intellectual disability. Controlling for age, year, sex, and region, persons with an intellectual disability were 6 times more likely to be hospitalized for an ambulatory care sensitive condition. Future research should investigate reasons for the large discrepancy in rates between persons with and without an intellectual disability. Among adults with an intellectual disability, living in a rural area (odds ratio 1.3; 95% CI=1.0, 1.8), living in an area with a high proportion of First Nations people (odds ratio 2.3; 95% CI=1.3, 4.1), and experiencing higher levels of comorbidity (odds ratio 25.2; 95% CI=11.9, 53.0) were all associated with a higher likelihood of being hospitalized for an ambulatory care sensitive condition. Dwelling in higher income areas had a protective effect (odds ratio 0.56; CI=0.37, 0.85). The results suggest that addressing the socioeconomic problems of poorer areas and specifically areas densely populated by First Nations people would likely have an impact on hospitalizations for ACS conditions for persons with an intellectual disability. | PhD | socioeconomic, rural | 1, 11 |
| Balyuk, Tetyana | Davydenko, Sergei | Three Essays in Lending | Management | 2017-11 | This Thesis studies whether financial technology (fintech) innovation and loans provided by corporate insiders can mitigate financing frictions and correct market failures in markets with asymmetric information and adverse selection. It consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 outlines the research questions examined in the Thesis and highlights its main findings. Chapter 2 studies the effect of borrowing from peer-to-peer (P2P) lending platforms, a recent fintech innovation in lending, on the supply of credit by traditional credit intermediaries, such as banks, and the demand for credit from banks by consumers. It provides evidence suggesting that this innovation in lending affects the information environment in the credit market and increases access to credit by consumers. Chapter 3 examines loan selection by investors and loan returns in P2P markets. It demonstrates the dominating role of institutional investors in P2P lending, contrasts the loan-picking skill of institutional and retail investors, and discusses the ability of fintech lenders to accurately price and screen loan applications. Chapter 4 studies whether information-intensive debt can benefit corporations by investigating loans provided by corporate insiders, so-called related-party lending, from the perspective of corporate borrowers. It documents characteristics of these loans and shows that they are taken when the information asymmetry between borrowers and external capital providers is likely high. The findings also suggest that other debt providers regard relating-party lending as a signal of credit quality of borrowers. Chapter 5 concludes and discusses avenues for future research. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Bance, Sheena | Stermac, Lana | Intimate Partner Violence in South Asian University Students | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2019-06 | Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) is a substantial problem affecting women of all social, economic, and cultural backgrounds. Although women worldwide are affected by IPV, research suggests that belief systems justifying violence against women or adherence to traditional gender roles may place some women at particularly high risk. Moreover, although women are exposed to IPV at high rates, many choose not to disclose to formal support (e.g., law enforcement) or informal supports (friends, family) due to numerous barriers. Experiences of disclosure are essential to understand since the response received after IPV disclosure is important to psychological functioning. The current study adopted an intersectional framework to examine the experience of IPV from the perspective of young, female South Asian students. Based on a mixed methods approach, the overall results indicated that women were frequently affected by psychological/emotional forms of IPV and that some of these forms of IPV were particularly meaningful within the South Asian culture. Similar to women of the majority culture, more than half of participants disclosed to informal supports while very few disclosed formally. A substantial barrier to disclosure were cultural norms about dating. Finally, while psychological health was qualitatively related to the experience of IPV, statistical analyses did not support a relationship between the response received after disclosure and psychological health. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Banerjee, Kiran Meisan | Carens, Joseph||Bertoldi, Nancy | Rethinking Membership: Statelessness, Domination, and the Limits of Contemporary Citizenship | Political Science | 2016-11 | This dissertation examines the politics and ethics of forced migration from both a conceptual and normative perspective. The dissertation does so by focusing on the phenomenon of what Hannah Arendt referred to as ‘statelessness’—a term which is deployed in this project in an extended sense that includes all persons who might be in need of international protection because their own state is unable or unwilling to effectively secure their human rights. In approaching statelessness from the perspective of political theory, the primary task of my dissertation is to offer a novel conceptual account of the harm that is done by statelessness or the de facto loss of membership within a political community and what this entails for how we ought to respond to the global reality of forced displacement. In doing so, this project challenges conventional approaches and intuitions regarding our ethical responsibilities to refugees and others categories of displaced persons. The goal of this critical reconstruction is to recast the nature of our responsibilities as obligations of justice, as opposed to those of humanitarian assistance. At the same time, this account also foregrounds the importance of constructing fair and effective responses to these forms of exclusion that attend to the role of agency in remedying the loss of membership. | Ph.D. | rights, justice | 16 |
| Bani-Fatemi, Ali | De Luca, Vincenzo | Genetics and Epigenetics of Suicidal Behavior | Medical Science | 2018-11 | According to the latest World Health Organization report (2012), suicide was the second leading cause of death among people. Approximately 90% of suicide victims or suicide attempters are diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder. Schizophrenia patients have been shown to be at an increased risk for suicide. Although many risk factors have been identified, few of these factors have a significant clinical impact on predicting suicide. Whether genetic and epigenetic alterations are potential risk factors for suicidal behavior in schizophrenia has yet to be investigated. A well-characterized sample of schizophrenia patients with a distinct suicide attempt history was recruited to evaluate the influence of genetic and epigenetic alterations as potential risk factors for suicidal behavior. Sociocultural and clinical variables were also examined. Selected genes were genotyped to test whether independently or combined, specific clinical variables and DNA variants can accurately predict suicidal behavior. Our study found no evidence that genetic or epigenetic factors have a significant influence on the risk for suicidal behavior in schizophrenia. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Banwell, Jenessa | Kerr, Gretchen | An exploration of the Role of Mentorship in Advancing Women in Coaching | Exercise Sciences | 2020-06 | Women coaches continue to be underrepresented in the coaching domain (LaVoi, McGarry, Fisher, 2019) despite the growth and advancement of women in non-sport fields (Statistics Canada, 2017). A notable strategy used to develop and advance women in non-sport sectors is mentorship and while mentorship initiatives currently exist for women in the coaching domain, we know little about women coaches’ experiences of mentorship, what they learn and how they develop through mentorship, and how they can be better supported through mentorship to facilitate career advancement. The purpose of this dissertation, therefore, is to explore the role of mentorship in the advancement of women in coaching. A mixed methods approach was used in this study, which led to the production of three manuscripts: 1) Towards a process for advancing women in coaching through mentorship; 2) Benefits of a Female Coach Mentorship Program on women coaches’ development: An ecological perspective; and 3) Key considerations for advancing women in coaching. The findings from these studies provide much needed empirical data on the role of mentorship in women coaches’ growth and advancement, and more specifically, on the importance of process-driven and group-based mentorship for women coaches, the need for greater organizational involvement and macro-level changes in mentoring women coaches, and the need to shift to sponsorship to help advance women in coaching. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Bapat, Priya | Ito, Shinya | Placental Pharmacology -- Implications for Therapy in Pregnancy | Pharmacology | 2016-11 | Medication use during pregnancy requires a balance between treating a condition in the mother, and minimizing potential risks in the fetus. In recent years, it has been estimated that between 50 and 70% of pregnant women in North America will take at least one prescription medication during their pregnancy. The decision to begin or continue treatment during pregnancy relies heavily on evaluating the risk-benefit ratio, and an important determinant in this risk assessment is estimating fetal drug exposure. The use of medications in pregnant women can be especially challenging, as there is very limited safety data in pregnancy. Recently, novel oral anticoagulants have been developed and approved for clinical use. However, the information regarding their fetal safety and placental transfer in humans is unknown. We used the ex vivo placenta perfusion model to investigate anticoagulant (dabigatran, rivaroxaban, apixaban) transfer across the human placenta. Rivaroxaban and apixaban rapidly crossed the term human placenta, while dabigatran crossed the placenta to a lesser extent. The placenta perfusion results were adjusted to account for protein binding and pH differences between the mother and fetus. We also developed a pharmacokinetic model that adequately described the transplacental transfer of anticoagulants by using data from our experiments. While the placenta perfusion model can be technically challenging, its results strongly correlate with in vivo placental transfer data. By evaluating the success rate of the perfusion model in our laboratory, we determined that establishing the fetal circulation is an important stage of the protocol. This information can be used to create a focused training program to help increase the overall success rate of this model and productivity of the lab. Drug use in pregnancy is multifactorial, and placental transfer data is important in assessing which drugs can be used to treat the mother while protecting the unborn. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Baptiste, Laurelle Jno | Joshee, Reva | Stories of Racialized Internationally Trained Post-secondary Educators Re-entering their Professions | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2013-06 | This research project investigates the job search experiences of racialized internationally trained educators seeking to re-enter their professions in Canada. Previous studies have made extensive headway in understanding the job-search experiences of racialized immigrants. Specifically, some studies have demonstrated that racism is endemic to the Canadian labour-market, while others have concluded that work experience and credentials obtained in some countries are systematically undervalued in the Canadian labour-market. Further, studies have demonstrated that factors such as non English sounding names and accents can greatly limit some individuals’ job opportunities. Despite this widespread consensus, narrative accounts of job search experiences are almost entirely absent from present research. Hence, in distinction from the quantitative methods of the majority of recent studies of the subject, this work relies on the narratives of racialized immigrant educators for its principal empirical evidence. The counter narratives assembled in this work provide a unique and unprecedented insight into the experience of racialized immigrant educators in the Canadian job-market. Through interviews with racialized immigrant educators from various educational, racial and political backgrounds, this study seeks to explore the challenges that are faced by some racialized immigrants in Canada. The results of this study confirm the consensus in the existing literature, but also demonstrate that discrimination against racialized immigrants has often been greatly under-stated. The narratives suggest that racialized immigrant educators experience significant discrimination during the job search process and in Canadian society in general. Further, this study reveals the extent to which the discrimination faced by racialized Canadian immigrants is not the result of single factors—such as race, accent, non English names and culture—but is rather the cumulative and overlapping result of multiple factors of discrimination. The consequences of this discrimination lead to alienation from Canadian society, family breakdown, disenchantment, loss of self-worth and identity. Subsequently the effects can extend from one immigrant generation to the next. These results are mostly unheard and unexplored in existing literature and dominant discourse. | EDD | labour | 8 |
| Barbera, Jennifer | Chen, Charles | A Qualitative Examination of Career Resiliency in Professional Immigrants | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2013-11 | This qualitative study endeavored to interview professional immigrants in order to better understand the adjustment and career-related challenges that professional immigrants encounter when they immigrate to Canada and pursue educational retraining. The main purpose of the study was to explore retraining decisions and outcomes and uncover the factors that influence career resiliency amongst professional immigrants. It was discovered that most professional immigrants have a desirable pre-immigration career and come to Canada to provide a better standard of living for themselves and/or their children. Professional immigrants often expect that they will be able to continue in their vocational field after arriving in Canada with little or no retraining. Unfortunately, most professional immigrants encounter significant initial career barriers such as discrimination, a lack of social networks, and non-recognition of foreign education and work experience. These barriers often lead to issues such as unemployment, under-employment, unfair treatment, psychological distress and a reduced standard of living. To help cope with these difficulties, most professional immigrants rely on social support and personal actions. In particular, encountered career challenges often prompt professional immigrants to adopt educational retraining as a career-enhancing strategy. The specific retraining experiences and career outcomes of participants were explored and discussed in detail. In summary, some participants were able to re-establish a career in Canada that was as satisfying as their pre-immigration career, however, most participants were unable to establish a career that is equivalent to their pre-Canadian career status. A number of participants even found themselves’ unemployed or grossly under-employed despite living in Canada for at least six years and having completed retraining. Overall, participants in this study represented a wide range of experiences which served to guide the formation of a new theoretical model for career resiliency. In addition to accounting for the influence of individual, relational and contextual factors, the newly presented Relative Encompassment Model of Career Resiliency accounts for the influence of relative comparisons, which were found to influence participant’s attitudes, perceptions and coping abilities. The important implications for theory, policy and practice are discussed. Suggestions for future research on career resiliency are also made. | PhD | employment | 8 |
| Barclay, Arlis Lynne | Barclay, Arlis | Sex and Influence: The Gendered Nature of Canadian Political Culture During The Aberdeen Years, 1893-1898 | Social Justice Education | 2015-06 | This dissertation investigates the links between social and political life in Canada at the close of the nineteenth century through an exploration of the lived experience of four very different political wives. Building upon the important work of historians such as Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, who successfully argued that women played key, if informal, roles in the world of nineteenth century politics and society, it generates new perspectives on the role of women and their influence on Canadian political culture. Drawing on personal letters, journals, newspaper articles and columns, as well as on memoirs, reminiscences, autobiographies, biographies and popular histories, this micro-historical study adds to our understanding of the subtle, varied and idiosyncratic ways that patriarchy and liberalism made an impact on the gendered experience of their everyday lives. If these political wives played an important role in the political life of late nineteenth century Canada, politics also played an important role in the creation of the synergistic friendships that developed among these women, friendships that in turn encouraged and directed their political activity. As this dissertation will argue, the ideology of separate spheres both enhanced and constrained the ability of these women to influence political culture, not by breaking down the boundaries of gender hierarchy but by working within them, reverencing separate spheres ideology and by sometimes astutely maneuvering accepted gender paradigms to achieve a measure of political influenceThe dissertation begins with an overview of the emblematic ceremonial representation of gender and politics, provides a detailed examination of the micro-politics of social and married life to argue that women played a significant part in the construction andconsolidation of political culture in late nineteenth century Canada | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Barnes, Dean Spencer | Bickmore, Kathy | Restorative Peacemaking Circles and other Conflict Management Efforts in Three Ontario High Schools | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-06 | Violence is pervasive in many schools, and current punitive conflict management approaches in schools tend to be ineffective and disproportionately harmful to marginalized students. Restorative peacemaking circles, also known as conferences, are an alternative for managing conflict designed to improve communication, help people resolve conflicts, and help repair and build relationships among individuals in schools (Morrison, 2007; Pranis, 2005). This thesis is based on theory that such relationship-building and dialogic conflict resolution practices will contribute to reductions in school violence. This qualitative, multiple-case study of the implementation and interpretation of restorative practices at three Ontario high schools analyzed student, teacher, and administrator interviews, school documents, and participant observations. Results indicate that interview participants perceived restorative peacemaking circles (and related peacemaking practices) to be inclusive and fair processes that helped to strengthen participating students' relationships with peers and adults, contributing to reducing violence. Key factors facilitating implementation of restorative peacemaking circles and peacebuilding approaches included leadership and committed staff, quality training, and implementing responsive and proactive practices. In two schools, external facilitation resulted in limited implementation of restorative practices. This reliance on external facilitators constitutes one way schools can implement restorative practices. However, external facilitation of restorative practices by only non-school staff depended on outside funding and expertise that could become unavailable at any time, without leaving behind in-school capacity. Conflict management policies in the three schools were largely constrained by a punitive regulatory framework (e.g., suspensions and expulsions), which limited these schools' adoption of restorative initiatives. Although theorists and researchers advocate whole-school proactive initiatives and conflict-learning opportunities for diverse students, sparse evidence indicated that only one (and, even less so, one other) of the three schools had implemented any proactive peacebuilding approaches. These school-based findings will help administrators, policymakers, and scholars understand how certain restorative practices can be feasibly implemented, and used to strengthen relationships (developing social capital) and reduce school violence. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Barton, Deborah | Bergen, Doris | Writing for Dictatorship, Refashioning for Democracy: German Women Journalists in the Nazi and Post-war Press | History | 2015-06 | This dissertation investigates how women journalists acted as professional functionaries in support of the National Socialist dictatorship, and later, a democratic West Germany. As a project that examines the intersections between the press, politics and gender, this study makes three contributions to the study of German history. The first is for the understanding the expansiveness and malleability of what constituted politics in the Third Reich and the nature of consensus between the regime and the population. Nazi gender ideology proclaimed that women belonged only in the private sphere. Correspondingly, Nazi press authorities dictated that women write only about topics pertaining to this area. The regime labeled such news apolitical. However, soft news from a cheerful perspective was an indispensible part of Nazi media policy: it provided the façade of normalcy and morale building under Hitler. In return for their support, the state offered women journalists a status not open to most women. The study of women journalists further unravels the draw of National Socialism for those Germans the regime deemed politically, socially and racially acceptable: increased possibilities and social prestige. The second contribution relates to the study of women in the professions, which has often been overlooked. This project demonstrates that the National Socialist regime needed female journalists and thereby emphasizes women's roles in major events. Not an insignificant number of women built diverse and influential careers in journalism both within and outside of Nazi gender parameters, often with the expressed desire of Nazi press officials. The third contribution is for understanding the cultural interchanges that affected the relationship between the Western Allies, international audiences, and West Germany in the post-war years and the ways in which gender and the experiences of women in Third Reich helped Germany move forward. In the decades after the war, women presented their professional experiences during the Third Reich in a manner that served to distance not only themselves but also the press and Germany as a whole from Nazism. By repressing, reimagining and remembering the Nazi past, the women's personal writing became a vehicle that helped West Germany build and maintain a stable democracy. | Ph.D. | gender, women, institution | 5, 16 |
| Barykina, Natallia | Ruddick, Susan | Socialist Constructions: Modern Urban Housing and Social Practice | Geography | 2015-11 | My dissertation, “Socialist Constructions: Modern Urban Housing and Social Practice,” investigates the modernist production of living space by focusing on housing reform in Weimar Germany’s Berlin and Frankfurt am Main as well as on the subsequent projects of German modernist architects working in the USSR in the early 1930s. Broadly, my work addresses questions of urban politics (primarily in Germany and Soviet Union), ownership, modernist urban visions, and everyday living practices. I take as a starting point the claim that home was central to the production of modern subjectivity, and, more specifically, that suburban public housing was instrumental in the production of Weimar modernity. By surveying a range of constitutive material and discursive elements for these new forms of settlement (including new technologies and construction methods, state and civic managerial bureaucracies, struggles over finance policies, discursive, aesthetic, and propagandistic legitimizing strategies, etc.), I look at how suburban, large scale, and publicly funded housing estates (Großsiedlung) were organized, constructed, and inhabited. Informed by a conceptual model of “coproduction,” I aim to articulate how domesticity and public housing figured in the production of modern subjects and sensibilities and to re-connect discussions of policies to understandings of the sphere of the home as a site of everyday life, paying close attention to spaces that shape and produce—and are produced by—complex networks of social practices in the modern city. I investigate the ways in which different actors (Social Democratic government, city planners, municipal authorities, housewife associations, residents) involved themselves in the construction, legitimation and provision of emerging modern organizations of space. My case studies target specific and resonant sites of coproduction of the modern home: Martin Wagner’s and Bruno Taut’s housing estate Hufeisensiedlung in Berlin; the International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) in Frankfurt, which introduced the notion of “minimal dwelling”; such minimalist innovations as Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky’s Frankfurt kitchen; and the new industrial cities of the USSR, where German architects worked to adapt concepts of “minimal living” into a different cultural context. | Ph.D. | urban, cities, industr | 9, 11 |
| BĂŠdard Rubin, Jean-Christophe | Schneiderman, David | Precedents in Canadian and American Constitutional Culture: A Comparative Essay | Law | 2016-11 | This thesis explores the place of constitutional precedents in contemporary Canadian and American constitutional culture. The author identifies four elements that explain the relative indifference in Canada to the problem of stability and change in the interpretation of constitutional rights and freedoms: the lack of a historical constitutional narrative in Canadian constitutional culture, the lack of meaningful â super precedentsâ , the structure of the proportionality analysis under the Oakes test and the adherence to a less formalist and more openly political conception of constitutional adjudication. These elements are contrasted with the American experience in which precedents are central to any constitutional discourse. The comparison tries to make explicit how these differences are linked to different assumptions and expectations about the rule of law and the role of the judiciary in adapting the legal traditions of these two Common Law countries to the challenges of written constitutionalism. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Bashir, Naazish | Ungar, Wendy J. | The Economic Evaluation of Early Intervention with Anti-TNF-α Treatments in Pediatric Crohn’s Disease | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-06 | BACKGROUND: Crohn’s disease is a chronic disorder in which sections of the gastrointestinal tract become inflamed and ulcerated through an abnormal immune response. Costly anti-TNF-α treatments are indicated only after other treatments have not worked. However, anti-TNF-α treatments have been proposed as first line therapy due to their effectiveness. OBJECTIVE: The primary objective was to assess the incremental cost-effectiveness of early intervention with anti-TNF-α treatment vs. conventional step-up strategy at improving the number of steroid-free remission weeks gained from public healthcare payer and societal perspectives. METHODS: A two-dimensional probabilistic microsimulation Markov model with seven health states was constructed for children with moderate to severe Crohn’s disease. Newly-diagnosed children with Crohn’s disease aged 4-17 years who received anti-TNF-α treatment and other concomitant treatments, such as steroids and immunomodulators, within the first three months of diagnosis were compared to children with newly-diagnosed Crohn’s disease who received standard care of steroids and/or immunomodulators with the possibility of anti-TNF-α treatment only after three months of diagnosis. The outcome measure was weeks in steroid-free remission. The time horizon was three years. A scenario analysis examined variation in costs of anti-TNF-α treatment. A North American multi-centre, observational study of children with Crohn’s disease provided input into clinical outcomes and health care resource use. To reduce selection bias, propensity score analysis was used. RESULT: From a public healthcare payer perspective, early intervention with anti-TNF-α treatment was more costly with an incremental cost of $31,112 (95% CI: 2,939, 91,715) and more effective with 11.3 more weeks in steroid-free remission (95% CI: 10.6, 11.6) compared to standard care, resulting in an incremental cost per steroid-free remission week gained of $2,756. From a societal perspective, the incremental cost per steroid-free remission week gained for early anti-TNF-α treatment was $2,968. CONCLUSION: While unknown, if a willingness-to-pay threshold was assumed to be $2,500 per week in steroid-free remission, early intervention with anti-TNF-α would not be cost-effective. However, there is considerable uncertainty in the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio and many patients escalate to anti-TNF-α eventually. Therefore, restrictive policies on anti-TNF-α treatment access for pediatric Crohn’s patients may want to be re-visited by decision makers. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Bassil, Katherine | Cole, Donald | The Relationship Between Temperature and 911 Medical Dispatch Data for Heat-Related Illness in Toronto, 2002-2005: An Application of Syndromic Surveillance | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2008-11 | Heat-related illness (HRI) is of growing public health importance, particularly with climate change and an anticipated increased frequency of heat waves. A syndromic surveillance system for HRI could provide new information on the population impact of excessive heat and thus be of value for public health planning. This study describes the association between 911 medical dispatch calls for HRI and temperature in Toronto, Ontario during the summers of 2002-2005. A combination of methodological approaches was used to understand both the temporal trend and spatial pattern in the relationship between 911 medical dispatch data and temperature. A case definition for HRI was developed using clinical and empirical assessments. Generalized Additive Models (GAM) and Zero inflated Poisson regression (ZIP) were used to determine the association between 911 calls and mean and maximum temperature. The validity of the HRI case definition was investigated by making comparisons with emergency department visits for HRI. Descriptive, aberration detection, and cross-correlation methods were applied to explore the timing and volume of HRI calls in relation to these visits, and the declaration of heat alerts. Finally, the existence of neighbourhood level spatial variation in 911 calls for HRI was analyzed using geospatial methods. This is the first study to demonstrate an association between daily 911 medical dispatch calls specifically for HRI and temperature. On average, 911 calls for HRI increased up to a maximum of 36% (p<.0001) (median 29%) for each 1°C increase in temperature. The temporal trend of 911 calls for HRI was similar to emergency department visits for HRI and heat alerts, improving confidence in the validity of this data source. Heterogeneity in the spatial pattern of calls across neighbourhoods was also apparent, with recreational areas near the waterfront demonstrating the highest percentage increase in calls. Monitoring 911 medical dispatch data for HRI could assist public health units carrying out both temporal and geospatial surveillance, particularly in areas where synoptic based mortality prediction algorithms are not being utilized. This previously untapped data source should be further explored for its applications in understanding the relationship between heat and human health and more appropriately targeting public health interventions. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Basta, Karlo | Kopstein, Jeffrey | Accommodative Capacity of Multinational States | Political Science | 2012-06 | This dissertation explains the extent and durability of the institutions of territorial autonomy in multinational states. Its main argument is that the viability of territorial autonomy hinges on the relative economic importance of the minority-inhabited region for the central government. If the fiscal resources of the minority-inhabited region are critical for the funding of the central government’s policy objectives, autonomy is likely to be limited and short lived. If those resources are not as crucial for the governability of the entire state, autonomy is likely to be more extensive and durable. The importance of the minority-inhabited region depends on two sets of factors. The first is the relative level of economic development of majority and minority-inhabited areas. The second is the strategy of governance adopted by the central state elites. Strategies of governance determine the extent of the fiscal burden that the central government will place on the population of the state, thereby exerting significant influence on accommodative outcomes. The theoretical framework developed in this dissertation refers to statist (high spending) and laissez-faire (low spending) strategies of governance. The framework is tested in four multinational states: the former Yugoslavia, the former Czechoslovakia, Canada and Spain. The empirical chapters combine structured-focused comparison with longitudinal case study analysis. The cases largely bear out the hypotheses presented in the dissertation. However, analysis of the cases also demonstrates the importance of minority-group influence at the central state level in accounting for accommodative outcomes. In cases where minority elites have extensive influence at the centre, attempts at limiting the autonomy of minority-inhabited regions tend to be unsuccessful. This thesis contributes to a greater understanding of the design and durability of the institutions of territorial autonomy, which have important consequences for the stability and viability of multinational states. | PhD | governance, institution | 16 |
| Bastedo, Heather | Fletcher, Joseph F. | They Don't Stand for Me: Generational Difference in Voter Motivation and the Importance of Symbolic Representation in Youth Voter Turnout | Political Science | 2012-06 | Building from Hannah Pitkin’s work on forms of representative democracy, this thesis demonstrates how differing generational expectations of political representation affect participation in electoral politics. Consistent with earlier work, it confirms that youth voting decreases when young people are less educated, less interested, or when they lack a sense of responsibility. However these factors only explain part—and not necessarily the most important part—of the younger generation’s motivations for voting. The analysis also shows that youth are markedly less likely to vote when young people feel that their values are not aligned with those of political leaders. The relationship between values—or symbolic representation—and voting remains significant and strong for young people even when the classic predictors of voting are included in the model. In fact, symbolic representation is a stronger predictor of voting than such factors as education, political interest, or the sense of responsibility to vote. This new variable is therefore important in understanding why the most recent decline in voting occurs predominantly among youth. Issue campaigns are less likely to move young people one way or another with respect to voting, as the majority of issues do not affect young people directly, if at all. As a consequence youth are left to rely on their own understanding of what political leaders actually stand for to pull them in or entice them to vote. But if the values that young people care about are not symbolically represented by political leaders and their electoral platforms, then youth will have less to vote for, and will likely just stay home and ignore elections altogether. Conversely, if political leaders make modest changes to their campaign strategies that also appeal to values—rather than strictly to interests—we could also see an increase in turnout among youth, and therefore an increase in democratic legitimacy. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Batacharya, Sheila | Ng, Roxana | Life in a Body: Counter Hegemonic Understandings of Violence, Oppression, Healing and Embodiment among Young South Asian Women | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2010-11 | This study is an investigation of embodiment. It is informed by the experiences and understandings of health, healing, violence and oppression among 15 young South Asian women living in Toronto, Canada. Their articulation of the importance of, and difficulties associated with, health and healing in contexts of social inequity contribute to understandings of embodiment as co-constituted by sentient and social experience. In my reading of their contributions, embodied learning – that is, an ongoing attunement to sentient-social embodiment – is a counter hegemonic healing strategy that they use. Their experiences and insights support the increasingly accepted claim that social inequity is a primary determinant of health that disproportionately disadvantages subordinated people. Furthermore, participants affirm that recovery and resistance to violence and oppression and its consequences must address sentient-social components of embodiment simultaneously. In this study, Yoga teachings provide a framework and practice to investigate embodiment and embodied learning. Following 12 Yoga workshops addressing health, healing, violence and oppression, I conducted individual interviews with 15 workshop participants, 3 Yoga teachers and 2 counsellor / social workers. Participants discuss Yoga as a resource for addressing mental, physical, emotional and spiritual consequences of violence and oppression. They resist New Age interpretations of Yoga in terms of individualism and cultural appropriation; they also challenge both New Age and Western biomedicine for a lack of attention to the consequences of social inequity for health and healing. This study considers embodied learning as an important healing resource and form of resistance to violence and oppression. Scholarship addressing embodiment in sociology, health research, anti-racism, feminism, anti-colonialism, decolonization and Indigenous knowledges are drawn upon to contextualize the interviews. This study offers insights relevant to health promotion and adult education discourse and policy through a careful consideration of the embodied strategies used by the participants in their nuanced negotiations of social inequity and pursuits of health and healing. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Bavel, Jay Van | Cunningham, William | Novel Self-categorization Overrides Racial Bias: A Multi-level Approach to Intergroup Perception and Evaluation | Psychology | 2008-11 | People engage in a constant and reflexive process of categorizing others according to their race, gender, age or other salient social category. Decades of research have shown that social categorization often elicits stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination. Social perception is complicated by the fact that people have multiple social identities and self-categorization with these identities can shift from one situation to another, coloring perceptions and evaluations of the self and others. This dissertation provides evidence that self-categorization with a novel group can override ostensible stable and pervasive racial biases in memory and evaluation and examines the neural substrates that mediate these processes. Experiment 1 shows that self-categorization with a novel mixed-race group elicited liking for ingroup members, regardless of race. This preference for ingroup members was mediated by the orbitofrontal cortex – a region of the brain linked to subjective valuation. Participants in novel groups also had greater fusiform and amygdala activity to novel ingroup members, suggesting that these regions are sensitive to the current self-categorization rather than features associated with race. Experiment 2 shows that preferences for ingroup members are evoked rapidly and spontaneously, regardless of race, indicating that ingroup bias can override automatic racial bias. Experiment 3 provides evidence that preferences for ingroup members are driven by ingroup bias rather than outgroup derogation. Experiment 4 shows that self-categorization increases memory for ingroup members eliminating the own-race memory bias. Experiment 5 provides direct evidence that fusiform activity to ingroup members is associated with superior memory for ingroup members. This study also shows greater amygdala activity to Black than White faces who are unaffiliated with either the ingroup or outgroup, suggesting that social categorization is flexible, shifting from group membership to race within a given social context. These five experiments illustrate that social perception and evaluation are sensitive to the current self-categorization – however minimal – and characterized by ingroup bias. This research also offers a relatively simple approach for erasing several pervasive racial biases. This multi-level approach extends several theories of intergroup perception and evaluation by making explicit links between self-categorization, neural processes, and social perception and evaluation. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Baxan, Victorina | Gagné, Antoinette | Uncovering Roots of Diversity Conceptions in Teacher Candidates in a Concurrent Teacher Education Program: A Case Study of Teaching and Learning about Diversity | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-06 | With the increasing diversity of students in Canadian schools (Egbo, 2011; Gérin-Lajoie, 2008; Solomon, Portelli, Daniel Campbell, 2005), teachers are expected to have an understanding, knowledge and skills related to diversity to be effective teachers of students with often multiple and intersecting diversities. Teacher education is ever more concerned with developing programs where future teachers can develop critical understandings and knowledge of the nature of diversity and the ability to readjust and respond to the diversity dynamics in schools (Childs, Broad, Gallagher-MacKay, Sher, Escayg McGrath, 2010; Gambhir, Broad, Evans Gaskell, 2008; Gagné, 2009). This case study investigated aspects of teaching and learning about diversity in a concurrent teacher education program with a focus on the sources and influences on diversity conceptions of teacher candidates. Findings revealed multiple tensions within the teacher education program, as well as within and among teacher candidates as they learned about diversity. At the programmatic level, there was tension caused by the differences in the way the teacher education curriculum was planned, delivered and experienced. At the level of the learner, individual characteristics appeared to influence developing conceptions of diversity to the point where these overshadowed the careful design features intended to support the development of socially just and inclusive educators. Two main lenses were used to analyse findings and highlight these tensions: the conceptual change lens (Posner et al., 1982; Hewson Lemberger, 2000; Larkin, 2010, 2012) and the liberal theory (Moosa-Mitha, 2005; McLaren, 1995; Fleras, 2002). The findings suggest that in addition to the model of teacher knowledge (Shulman, 1987) and conceptual change approach (Posner et al., 1982; Larkin 2010), other concepts and theories are important to understand teacher candidates' evolving conceptions of diversity as members of a society where liberal multicultural notions of diversity are promoted through public discourses and policies. These include what Fuller (1969) calls the stages of concerns of beginning teachers; King and Kitchener's (2004) reflective judgment model of development of epistemic assumptions in early adulthood or what Dewey (1904) calls "mental movement" of a student. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Baxter, Joshua | Kawashima, Ken C. | Capital-nation-state: A Genealogy of Yasukuni Shrine | East Asian Studies | 2016-11 | Japanâ s militaristic past continues to haunt the present and often at the center of these debates is the site that commemorates the war dead, Yasukuni Shrine. This dissertation seeks to address the political economy of the shrine and argues that this issue cannot be transcended if the history of the development of capitalism in Japan continues to be bracketed off in favor of narrating the shrine strictly through the discourse of the nation and the state. This claim derives from the observation that Yasukuni Shrine and the development of capitalism in Japan emerge at the same historical moment and thus they must also share an underlying logic. By adding capital to the equation, it becomes evident that the shrine is at the nexus of the operation of Capital-Nation-State and thus played a role in producing the very idea of modern Japan. Using a variety of primary sources, from state documents to personal diaries and newspaper reports, the archival research reveals how the shrine, as a state institution, was shaped by economic interactions just as much as it was by state ideology. In each chapter a different aspect of how the history of capitalism intersects with the space of the shrine is examined through the themes of everyday life, commodity exchange, urban planning, and universal conscription. Key to all of these themes is the relation of political economy to space. Whether it was facilitating commodity exchange on the shrine grounds or making land transactions, Yasukuni Shrine was an active agent in shaping not only the immediate space around it, but also in forming a national space. By examining the political economy of Yasukuni, it becomes evident that the shrine played an important role in propagating various types of exchanges (whether economic, religious or political) that were essential to forming this space. Thus, the results of this project show that Yasukuni was more than just a state institution that fostered the creation of national subjects; it was a space that brought together the three social forms, Capital-Nation-State, which characterizes and dominates our current socio-political landscape. | Ph.D. | urban, institution | 11, 16 |
| Beange, Pauline E. | White, Graham | Canadian Campaign Finance in Comparative Perspective 2000-2011: A Failed Paradigm or Just a Cautionary Tale? | Political Science | 2012-06 | This thesis compares the public policies of campaign finance in Canada with those in the U.S. and the U.K. in the period 2000-2011. The majority of the Canadian literature on party finance demonstrates a belief in the efficacy and necessity of the enterprise. This dissertation suspends this disposition and offers a critical approach to the regulation of money in Canadian elections. This thesis situates the discussion of party finance regulation in the context of contending models of democracy. Campaign finance rule changes are conceptualized within a new institutionalist framework. Changes in campaign finance rules are seen as changes in incentives and are seen to work in configurations, that is, interacting with existing formal and informal constraints. New institutionalism provides the avenue of inquiry into the position of political parties on the boundary of the public and private spheres and how campaign finance regulation may shift that boundary. This thesis adopts a mixed-method approach, incorporating the results of 65 semi-structured interviews with academics and political practitioners with primary document research. This thesis demonstrates that campaign finance rule changes interact with other electoral rules, types of parties and the nation’s historic institutions. The need to meld Quebec’s statist and civil-code traditions with Westminster democratic traditions, the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the role of subsequent court decisions, and the role of Elections Canada in its political finance oversight capacity, constitute major catalysts for Canadian party finance rule changes and for understanding the impact of rule changes. Contrary to the majority of literature on campaign finance reform, this thesis demonstrates that there may be diminishing marginal returns to additional campaign finance regulations, at least in a mature democracy such as Canada. Campaign finance rules reveal preferences for different models of democracy. As such, they must be carefully monitored. | PhD | financial market | 10 |
| Beattie, Robert Graham | McMillan, Robert | Essays on the Economics of Media Coverage of Climate Change | Economics | 2016-11 | For the majority of people, media coverage is the primary source of information about important issues of the day. I explore media coverage, particularly in relation to climate change, in the three chapters of this thesis. The first chapter analyzes the divergence between the views of the scientific community and the public through the lens of media capture. I develop an objective measure of the tone of climate change coverage by creating an index which uses phrase frequency analysis to compare newspaper text with the UNâ s IPCC reports and the Heartland Instituteâ s skeptical response. The index captures the extent to which newspaper text aligns with each report, classifying text that shares more language with the IPCC report as being more environmental. Using the index and panel data on advertising spending, I implement an instrumental variables strategy and find that advertising from carbon-emitting industries increases the prevalence of skepticism and lowers the quantity of coverage of climate change in US newspapers. The second chapter proposes a model that explores the issue of media bias. The model complements the literature that discusses demand-driven (Gentzkow and Shapiro, 2006) and supply-driven (Baron, 2006) bias by showing that biased coverage can arise when neither media outlets nor consumers are biased. Instead, the bias in the model I present evolves from the premise that information is costly for media outlets to acquire. The third chapter presents an empirical analysis of competition among newspapers. Newspapers compete by taking a homogeneous input -- the news that is available to report on -- and producing a differentiated output: the coverage they provide. I study the mechanics of this process by analyzing coverage of climate change in British newspapers during the period 2006-2015. Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation to classify newspaper articles by topic, I compare the prevalence of topics across newspapers. Newspapers tend to cover the similar topics at a given time, but are able to differentiate themselves based on which topics they cover most. If a newspaper usually provides extensive coverage of a topic related to climate change, it will increase coverage more in response to a news story involving that topic. | Ph.D. | environment, climate | 13 |
| Beaujot, Ariel | Loeb, Lori | The Material Culture of Women's Accessories: Middle-class Performance, Race Formation and Feminine Display, 1830-1920 | History | 2007-11 | This dissertation investigates the cultural meaning ascribed to feminine fashionable objects such as gloves, fans, parasols and vanity sets. I pay particular attention to issues of middle-class formation, the performance of gender, and the materiality of race, empire and colonialism. While these issues lie at the heart of British historiography, this project is written from a unique perspective which privileges cultural artifacts through material culture analysis. While the emergence of the middle class is typically studied as a masculine/public phenomenon, this project corrects the overemphasis on male activity by showing that middle-class women created a distinctive ‘look’ for their class via the consumption of specific goods and through participation in daily beauty rituals. Adding to these ideas, I argue that Victorian women performed a distinct type of femininity represented as passivity, asexuality, innocence, and leisure. By studying the repetitive gestures, poses and consumption practices of middle-class women, I show that certain corporeal acts helped to create Victorian femininity. This work also suggests that women participated in the British colonial project by consuming objects that were represented in the Victorian imagination as imperial spoils. As such, I argue that imperialism penetrated the everyday lives of Britons through several everyday objects. Empire building also created anxieties surrounding questions of race. Women’s accessories, such as gloves and parasols, helped British women to maintain their whiteness, an important way of distinguishing the ‘civilized’ Britons from the ‘uncivilized’ tanned colonial peoples. Overall this project showed that within the everyday objects consumed by women we can identify the anxieties, hopes and dreams of Victorians. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Becerra, Flor Yunuen Garcia | Acosta, Edgar ||Allen, D. Grant | Recovery of Surface Active Material from Municipal Wastewater Activated Sludge | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2010-11 | Wastewater activated sludge is produced during the biological treatment of wastewater. After treating the sewage, the sludge is allowed to settle. Part of the settled material is returned to the treatment process as return activated sludge (RAS) and the excess is removed as waste activated sludge (WAS). The handling and disposal of the sludge are energy and capital-intensive treatments, with a significant environmental impact. This work studies the possibility to utilize RAS (an example of wastewater sludge) as a source of surface active agents. The results indicate that higly surface active materials can be extracted from RAS, and that the RAS extract has potential applications as a detergent and wood adhesive. The results also suggest that recovering a suite of products from RAS, a biological heterogenous source, can be technically feasible. An effective alkaline treatment was developed (at pH>12) that can extract up to 75% of the sludge’s organic matter, a yield higher than previously reported. Increasing the extraction pH increased the extract surface activity, which is linked to increasing the amount of higher molecular weight molecules and the presence of phospholipids. Increasing the extraction pH beyond 11 was also related to extensive cell lysis, increasing significantly the amount of recovered material and the surface activity of the extract. The alkaline extract has properties comparable to commercial detergents. Without further purification, the extract has a low surface tension (37 mN/m on average) and performs similarly to synthetic detergents. Further assessment of the RAS extract (insensitivity to pH, surface tension, interfacial tension) suggests that it may be suitable for commercial applications. The RAS extract can also be formulated into wood adhesives using glutaraldehyde as a crosslinker. The extract fraction with 10-50 kDa constituents at pH 9 achieves high adhesive shear strengths (4.5 MPa on average, at 30% relative humidity and 25°C) with 40% of wood failure. The adhesive strength of RAS-based adhesives is strongly correlated to its protein content. | PhD | waste | 12 |
| Beglaubter, Judith | Fox, Bonnie | Negotiating Fathers’ Care: Canadian Fathers’ Leave-taking as Conformity and Change | Sociology | 2019-06 | Despite some changes to the ways contemporary families are handling the allocation of paid and unpaid work, the path of least resistance still tends be maternal caregiving with mothers more likely than fathers to cut back on their employment or drop out of the workforce entirely. Because men typically maintain, and may even strengthen, their ties to the labour market at the transition to parenthood, offering them paid parental leave is thought to provide an important opportunity for fathers to develop the skills and sense of responsibility that are characteristic of mothers’ parenting, ultimately reducing gender inequality in families. Although leave schemes that specifically target fathers are praised for their high usage rates, there has been little research into the quality of men’s time at home. This dissertation addresses this gap in the literature by probing the time-bounded and gender-laden circumstances of early parenthood to consider the ways in which fathers’ early involvement might set the stage for their greater participation in domestic life. I do so by examining how Canadian fathers come to use, experience, and act in response to their time on parental leave. The men in this study waxed enthusiastically about the parenting skills and emotional bonds they developed while on leave. Many were so moved by the experience that they came to incorporate the values and practices of care into their identities. Yet at the same time, the allocation of leave time and couple’s subsequent divisions of housework and domestic responsibility remained gendered. Couples had to engage with gendered cultural expectations that took men’s employment for granted but allowed them greater leeway than women when it came to meeting parenting standards. Nevertheless, I argue that the transformative potential of fathers’ leave-taking should not be dismissed – even small changes to couples’ gendered roles and fathers’ identities are important in undoing gender inequality. | Ph.D. | gender, equality, empkoyment | 5, 8 |
| Behman, Ramy | Nathens, Avery B||Karanicolas, Paul J | The Management of Adhesive Small Bowel Obstruction: A Population-based Analysis of Practices and Outcomes | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-03 | Background Adhesive small bowel obstruction (aSBO) is a common surgical illness that is characterized by its high likelihood for recurrence. We sought to compare different management strategies during the first admission for aSBO to characterize how early management strategies effect short- and long-term outcomes associated with aSBO. Methods We developed an algorithm to identify patients admitted to hospital for their first episode of aSBO using administrative data collected by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care of Ontario. We compared operative management to non-operative management with respect to the cumulative incidence of recurrence and overall survival; we also performed a cost-utility analysis comparing early operative management to a trial of non-operative management; finally, we evaluated the impact of laparoscopic surgery for aSBO on the incidence of bowel injury and peri-operative morbidity and mortality. A variety of quasi-experimental methods were used to estimate causal effects while accounting for potential confounding by indication. Results We identified 40,800 patients admitted for their first episode of aSBO over 2005-2014. Patients managed operatively had a lower risk of recurrence of aSBO [21.1% vs 13.0%, p | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Belay, Fisseha Yacob | Wane, Njoki N | Conceptualizations and Impacts of Multiculturalism in the Ethiopian Education System | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2016-06 | This research, using critical qualitative research methods, explores the conceptualization and impact of multiculturalism within the Ethiopian education context. The essence of multiculturalism is to develop harmonious coexistence among people from diverse ethnic, social and cultural backgrounds. The current Ethiopian regime has used the ethnic federalism policy to restructure Ethiopia’s geopolitical, social and education policies along ethnic and linguistic lines. The official discourse of Ethiopian ethnic federalism and multicultural policies has emphasized the liberal values of diversity, tolerance, and recognition of minority groups. However, its application has resulted in negative ethnicity and social conflicts among different ethnic groups. Two universities, one in Oromia and another in Southern Nations, Nationalities and People’s (SNNP) region, were selected using purposive sampling for this study. Document analysis and in-depth interviews were used to collect data from ten professors, ten students and three curricular experts. The findings of this study revealed that Ethiopian multiculturalism has stemmed from the ethnic federalism political system; however, participants’ conceptualizations ranged from unity to division and difference to allegiance. Data further revealed that the impact of multiculturalism in the Ethiopian education system has involved mother tongue usage, quality of education, lack of leadership and foreign policy, while the impact on inter-ethnic relationships includes the declining social cohesion, the rise of ‘narrow nationalism’ and the implication of ethnic conflicts. This study discusses the effects the politics on language use, the declining quality of education and policy transfer all have within the Ethiopian education system. In addition, the study addresses the proliferation of negative ethnicity and the path to genocide. Finally, it makes recommendations to educators and policy makers to improve the education system as well as provide an environment to cultivate ethnic harmonious coexistence. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Bell, Joshua | Baker, Andrew | Dysfunctional AMPA Receptor Trafficking in Traumatic Brain Injury | Medical Science | 2010-06 | Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a devastating public health problem for patients and their families. The neurodegeneration that follows TBI is complex, but can be broadly subdivided into primary and secondary damage. Though primary damage is irreversible and therefore unsalvageable, extensive literature aimed at understanding the tissue, cellular, inflammatory and subcellular processes following the injury have proven unequivocally that secondary pathophysiological events are delayed and progressive in nature. Understanding these secondary events at the cellular levels is critical in the eventual establishment of targeted therapeutics aimed at limiting progressive injury after an initial trauma. One such secondary event is referred to in the literature as excitotoxicity; a sustained and de-regulated activation of glutamate receptors that leads to rapid cytotoxic edema and calcium overload. Our understanding of excitotoxicity has evolved to include not only a role for elevated extracellular glutamate in mediating neuronal damage, but also post-synaptic receptor modifications that render glutamate profoundly more toxic to injured neurons than healthy tissue. In this thesis, we explored the hypothesis that glutamate excitotoxicity can be perpetuated by trauma-induced post-synaptic modification of the AMPA receptor. Specifically, we used a cortical culture model of TBI as well as the fluid percussion injury device to test the hypothesis that TBI confers a reduction of surface GluR2 protein, an AMPA receptor subunit that limits neuronal calcium permeability. We conjectured that this decrease in the expression of surface GluR2 would increase the expression of calcium-permeable AMPA receptors, thereby rendering neurons vulnerable to secondary excitotoxic injury. We further investigated the subcellular mechanisms responsible for the internalization of surface GluR2, and the phenotypic consequences of GluR2 endocytosis in both models. Our data revealed that both models of TBI resulted in a regulated signaling cascade leading to the phosphorylation and internalization of GluR2. By exogenously interrupting the trafficking of GluR2 protein with an inhibitory peptide, we further observed that GluR2 internalization was mediated by a protein interaction involving protein interacting with C kinase 1 (PICK1) and protein kinase C alpha (PKCα), two PDZ domain-containing proteins that mediate GluR2 trafficking during constitutive synaptic plasticity. We observed that GluR2 endocytosis was NMDA receptor dependent, and resulted in increased neuronal calcium permeability, augmented AMPA receptor-mediated electrophysiological activity and increased susceptibility to delayed cell death. Finally, we demonstrated that the interruption of GluR2 trafficking is cytoprotective, suggesting that sustaining surface GluR2 protein protects neurons against secondary injury. Overall, our findings suggest that experimental TBI promotes the expression of injurious GluR2-lacking AMPA receptors, thereby enhancing cellular vulnerability to secondary excitotoxicity. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Bell, Lindsay | Heller, Monica | Diamonds as Development: Suffering for Opportunity in the Canadian North | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2013-06 | Despite the repeated collapse of mining towns and sites in the Great Slave Lake region, most residents embrace new resource projects as possibilities for creating viable futures. Situated at the intersection of socio-cultural and linguistic anthropology, this ethnographic investigation of the Canadian diamond boom of the 2000s illustrates how imagining stable livelihoods despite a record of impermanence and crises depends on integrating and reframing past failures with present aspirations for “the good life”. At the height of the diamond boom in 2007, future imaginaries were largely associated with high wage job creation in the rapidly expanding industrial sector. Based on 18 months of fieldwork among those said to benefit most from new industrial development: the Aboriginal under/unemployed, this dissertation’s ethnographic attention is on job training programs and employment interventions that promised local residents new futures. The fieldwork coincided with the global financial crisis and almost none of the 90 students followed through the research secured work in the industry at the conclusion of their training. Nevertheless, people continue to maintain faith in a future linked to resource development. Capturing people’s everyday re-makings of tomorrow in uncertain times, this dissertation reveals that while employment in global extractive industries is unable to provide economic security to those who seek it, its promises are productive for four reasons. First, they (re)define the natural world as ‘opportunities for work’. Second, the specific techniques of industry and statecraft that surround mining (impact and benefit agreements, and socio-economic monitoring) transform everyday events of difference and inequality into catastrophes which render industrial development sensible even urgent. Third, they orient public sentiment towards a “future anterior,” a form of temporal longing that I argue impedes a deep reading of the historical present and participates in a politics of deferral. Fourth, they rely on and reproduce a chronotopically constrained public debate on natural resource development. | PhD | equality, employment, industr, inequality | 5, 8, 9, 10 |
| Beltan, Sude | Schatz, Edward | Making and Maintaining Metropolises: Entrepreneurial Municipalism in Turkey | Political Science | 2018-06 | This dissertation explores the implications of the public administration and local governance reforms that took place in Turkey in the mid-2000s with a comparative focus on three major metropolitan cities: İstanbul, İzmir, and Diyarbakır. Engaging with the literatures on state rescaling and urban entrepreneurialism, the author analyzes how reforms transformed municipalities into entrepreneurial organizations primarily concerned with territorial competitiveness of their jurisdictions while the central state repositioned itself as a critical actor in urban policy-making. The dissertation research is guided by three critical aspects of urban governance in Turkey: the changing dynamics of intergovernmental relations (national/local and metropolitan/district), the institutional transformation of municipalities (New Public Management restructuring), and emergent urban policies (city branding initiatives, urban transformation projects, and social services). The author argues that variations across three cities indicate how intergovernmental relations imbued with party politics and the local political context are critical in conditioning the scope and content of entrepreneurial action. The author proposes that studies of neoliberal urbanism, which analytically prioritize the political economy perspective, should put cities back into their national context to capture the political and institutional embeddedness of contemporary neoliberal urban governance. | Ph.D. | cities, urban, institution | 11, 16 |
| Benchimol, Eric Ian | Guttmann, Astrid ||To, Teresa | The Ontario Crohn’s and Colitis Cohort: Incidence and Outcomes of Childhood-onset Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Ontario, Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-06 | Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), characterized by chronic gastrointestinal inflammation, represents a significant childhood chronic disease. In this thesis, a case ascertainment definition of paediatric-onset IBD was validated using administrative data and developed the Ontario Crohn’s and Colitis Cohort (OCCC). The epidemiology of paediatric IBD in Ontario was described, demonstrating that Ontario has one of the highest worldwide incidence rates. Statistically significant increases in incidence were noted in 0-4 year olds (5.0%/year, p=0.03) and 5-9 year olds (7.6%/year, p<0.0001), but not in other age groups. Lower income children were more likely to be hospitalized at least once (hazard ratio (HR) 1.17, 95% confidence intervals (CI) 1.05-1.30) or visit the ED (HR 1.21, 95% CI 1.09-1.35) and had more IBD-related physician visits (odds ratio (OR) 3.73, 95% CI 1.05-13.27). Lower income children with Crohn's disease (CD) (not ulcerative colitis [UC]) were more likely to undergo intra-abdominal surgery within 3 years of diagnosis (OR 1.22, 95% CI 1.01-1.49), especially if diagnosed after 2000 (OR 1.79, 95% CI 1.27-2.53). Finally, changes in health services utilization and surgical rates were described, as were changes in specialist care provision and immunomodulator use in children with IBD between 1994-2007. The changes to care included increased outpatient care provided by paediatric gastroenterologists, and increased immunomodulator use. Children diagnosed with CD, but not UC, in recent years had lower surgical rates. In CD patients, intra-abdominal surgical rates within three years of diagnosis decreased from 18.8% in children diagnosed in 1994-1997 to 13.6% in those diagnosed in 2001-2004 (P = 0.035). When stratified by age at diagnosis, this decrease was significant in children diagnosed ≥10 years old (OR 0.67, 95% CI 0.48-0.93). The OCCC will continue to be used to investigate the epidemiology and burden of paediatric IBD and to improve the care received by children with IBD in Ontario. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Bensimon, Cécile M. | Upshur, Ross | Communicable Disease Control in the New Millenium: A Qualitative Inquiry on the Legitimate Use of Restrictive Measures in an Era of Rights Consciousness | Medical Science | 2009-06 | Background: When Canadian public health officials issued thousands of quarantine orders during the SARS outbreak in 2003, it raised difficult questions about the legitimacy and acceptability of restrictive measures to achieve public health goals. While public health interventions have traditionally been justified on utilitarian grounds, this project aims to establish an empirical basis to justify public health action. The objectives are: 1) Descriptive: To describe the views of members of society on the justifiability of using restrictive measures to achieve public health goals; 2) Analytic: To analyze the use of restrictive measures at the intersection of public health policy, human rights norms, and ethics; and 3) Normative: To situate public health ethics within a Habermasian model of communicative ethics that can serve as the basis of justification for the legitimate use of restrictive measures based on the intersubjective recognition of public health and human rights. Methods: Individual interviews were conducted with 62 participants, including 23 health care providers, 16 members of the public, 13 community and/or spiritual leaders from the Greater Toronto Area, as well as six public health officials and four health care regulators at the local, provincial, and federal levels of jurisdiction. Findings: Participant views were analyzed and organized into themes that revolve around the following concepts: 1) common good; 2) types of quarantine; 3) compliance; 4) reciprocity; 5) uncertainty; and 6) communication. Conclusions: Combining empirical research with conceptual scholarship, it is argued that the recognition of and commitment to the common good by participants, which emerged as an overarching theme, provide justificatory power for the use of quarantine during communicable disease outbreaks. But to respect rights, while being committed to the common good, it is argued that we must move beyond the see-sawing between ostensibly competing requirements toward a conception that gives equal weight to public health and human rights; that is, both imperatives – the community and the individual – refer to one another without dissolving into one another. Following a Habermasian account of opening processes of decision-making to a moral-practical discourse, it is argued that public health ethics offers an important site for integrating his model of discourse ethics within public health deliberations to expand the scope of moral argumentation on--and ultimately to ground the justification of--the use of restrictive measures. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Bentley, Paul | Levine, David | Martyr for Mental Health: John R Seeley and the Forest Hill Village Project, 1948-1956 | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2013-11 | This is the history of a mental health project conducted in the schools of Forest Hill, Ontario during the 1950s. Its original name was the Forest Hill Village Project but it became famous in history as Crestwood Heights, the book written about the project by John R. Seeley, Alex Sim and Elizabeth Loosley. The Forest Hill Village Project was a significant event in Canadian history not only as part of the first mental health grants ever issued by the federal government; but also as the first major attempt to address the mental health needs of children in school. Hatched at the highest levels of military planning during the Second World War, the Forest Hill Village Project would involve senior government and university administrators as well as psychiatrists, social workers and teachers from across Canada in an experiment in psychoanalytic pedagogy. John R. Seeley was the only individual, however, whose fate was so inextricably linked with the project that it cannot be understood apart from him. It was because of Seeley's genius that a mental health revolution from the top-down was attempted in Canadian history, and it was because of his own psychological issues that it failed. The martyrdom of John R. Seeley did not consist simply in the irony of his own fall into mental illness while leading a mental health project in the schools of Forest Hill, but also in his being effectively banished from Canadian society because of his efforts. The admixture of Seeley's personal issues and his revolutionary commitment to mass psychoanalysis eventually brought him into irreconcilable conflict with the more conservative leadership of Canada's medical and educational establishment. Though Seeley was forced out of teaching in Canada, the history of his mental health revolution may yet open doorways for the future of mental health in Canadian schools. | EDD | health | 3 |
| Bento, Pedro | Restuccia, Diego | Competition, Innovation, and Regulation: Accounting for Productivity Differences | Economics | 2013-11 | The relationships between competition, innovation, and regulation have long been studied in an attempt to understand and evaluate the effect of regulation on the wealth and growth of nations. Recent empirical work has emerged taking advantage of the still ongoing proliferation of ever more disaggregated data to shed more light on these relationships and at the same time uncover new puzzles in need of explanations. This thesis is an attempt to address the discrepancies between some of these newly discovered phenomena and current theory. In Chapter 1 I introduce an insight of Friedrich Hayek - that competition allows a thousand flowers to bloom, and discovers the best among them - into a conventional model of Schumpeterian innovation. I show how the model can account for two seemingly contradictory empirical phenomena, a positive relationship between competition and industry-level productivity growth, and an inverted-U relationship between competition and firm-level innovation. In Chapter 2 I extend the model to investigate the effects of patent protection on competition and innovation, and to understand the interaction between patent policy and product-market regulation. I calibrate the model to show that patent protection in the U.S. is depressing competition, innovation, growth, and welfare. Using patent and citation data, I further provide empirical evidence supporting the implications of the model. In Chapter 3 I investigate the impact of regulatory entry barriers to new firms on aggregate output and total factor productivity. Following recent work by Thomas J. Holmes and John J. Stevens, I extend a standard model of monopolistic competition to account for the existence of both niche markets and mass markets within industries. Calibrating the model using U.S. manufacturing data, I show this extension goes a long way towards explaining the large gap between empirical estimates of the impact of barriers to entry and the quantitative predictions of current models. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Beresheim, Amy Catherine | Pfeiffer, Susan K | Bone Microstructure and Changes in Tissue Mineralization throughout Adulthood | Anthropology | 2018-06 | This research aims to explore the global variability in the structural and material properties of mid-thoracic ribs within a large (n=213) sample of known age, sex, and government “race” designation from apartheid South Africa [DOD 1967-1998]. Most individuals in the study sample were non-white, and inferred to be of poor socioeconomic status. Using linearly polarized light microscopy (LPLM) on the full sample, and back-scattered scanning electron microscopy (BSE-SEM) on a subset (n=143), histomorphometric parameters, and the average tissue mineralization of the cortical and trabecular bone compartments were assessed in photomontages of transverse rib cross-sections. The influence of body size on bone mass and histomorphometry was first considered. Tissue-level changes were then interpreted in a biosocial context, exploring variation associated with adverse apartheid living conditions and adult life history. Body size does not appear to correlate with either bone mass or histomorphometry, suggesting that size-standardization may not be necessary in studies of rib bone microstructure. Compared to the women in the research sample, men exhibited delayed peak bone mass attainment, lower osteocyte densities, and lower average tissue mineralization. Women achieved peak bone mass when anticipated. Relative cortical area, osteon area, bone tissue mineralization, and cortical porosity were the best histological indicators of menopause in women. Poorer bone health indices in males infer greater systematic marginalization under apartheid rule. Men in this sample may have been more susceptible to dietary deficiencies and substance abuse issues, leading to compromised bone mass and quality. This research demonstrates that osteoporosis risk is not just a concern of the aged, white female population in South Africa. It provides novel data on an understudied population, and underscores the importance of skeletal research collections for the study of contemporary epidemiological issues. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health, women | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Berg, Herman van den | Choo, Chun Wei ||Silverman, Brian S. | Knowledge-based Vertical Integration: The Nature of Knowledge and Economic Firm Boundary Location | Information Studies | 2008-06 | This research extends the knowledge-based view of the firm as it relates to organizational structure. In particular, this research provides evidence that fundamental classifications of knowledge are measurable, in relative terms, as factors of production. It then relates differences in relative quantities of these classifications of knowledge to the presence or absence of inter-firm boundaries. Finally, this study provides evidence that financial performance may be related to the alignment of organizational structure with knowledge-based factors of production. This study contributes to strategic management theory by offering a potential solution to the difficulties of measuring knowledge as a factor of production. The research was motivated by the belief that it is the cost and value of knowledge that determines economic efficiency (Simon, 1999). By surveying professionals in the mutual fund industry for their relative reliance on three classifications of knowledge, this study suggests a set of measures of knowledge-based factors of production. These measures in turn support the testing of hypotheses related to the vertical integration (or de-integration) of adjacent stages of production. Researchers have typically categorized organizational knowledge as either tacit or explicit. This research develops the concept of encapsulated knowledge as a fundamental classification of knowledge. Encapsulated knowledge is neither tacit nor explicit, because it is externalized and implicit. Progress in measuring knowledge is made by distinguishing between knowledge that resides in human minds (tacit), knowledge that is codified as information (codified), and knowledge that is embodied in the design and functionality of physical artefacts (encapsulated). Relative reliance on the fundamentally different knowledge-based factors of production was found to vary between adjacent stages of production, despite the essential overlap of jointly held substantive knowledge. Portfolio managers are generally less (more) reliant on tacit (encapsulated) knowledge than other investment management professionals in the mutual fund complex. In addition, portfolio managers whose firms are de-integrated from the mutual fund management firms were found to be more (less) reliant on tacit (encapsulated) knowledge than their integrated counterparts. Finally, alignment between mutual fund structure and reliance on knowledge-based factors of production was found to affect performance of mutual funds. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Bergholz, Max | Viola, Lynne | None of us Dared Say Anything: Mass Killing in a Bosnian Community during World War Two and the Postwar Culture of Silence | History | 2012-11 | This dissertation analyzes the dynamics of mass killing in the Kulen Vakuf region of Bosnia during 1941 in order to explain why a culture of silence crystallized after the Second World War about the murder of Muslim civilians by Serb insurgents. The main argument is that the silence about nearly 2,000 Muslim civilians massacred by Serb insurgents was rooted in the transformation of many of the perpetrators into members of the Communist-led Partisan resistance movement. After the war, the Communist authorities remained silent about the massacres to avoid implicating Partisan fighters as war criminals, and so too did the Muslim survivors out of fear and a desire to move on. The dissertation uncovers the emergence of the silence through an analysis of the actions of the local Communist authorities, the Muslim and Serb communities, and the interactions among them between the years 1941-1981. It studies the history of the silence through the categories of those who “were silenced” and those who “were silent,” concluding that the complicity of nearly all social groups was necessary for the maintenance of silence about the massacres, which everyone knew about, but almost no one spoke of publicly. Through a detailed study of one Bosnian region over four decades this dissertation sheds light on the broader subjects of mass violence, remembrance, and national relations and identification in this part of Europe during the twentieth century. Specifically, it shows how the German invasion of Yugoslavia—and not widespread ethnic hatred among neighbors—triggered a small number of local extremists to engage in mass violence, which quickly cascaded into acts of attempted genocide and civil war. It illuminates how perpetrators of mass ethnic violence paradoxically were absorbed by guerrilla forces dedicated to multi-ethnic co-existence. It demonstrates how a Communist regime, which was explicitly committed to promoting the national equality of its multi-national population, ended up practicing a war remembrance policy that was profoundly skewed along national lines, and specifically against Muslims. It shows the concrete ways in which silence, a subject that historians of remembrance generally pay lip-service to but have yet to examine carefully, is created and enforced in the aftermath of mass killing. Finally, it argues that fixed notions of ethnic hatred or inter-ethnic friendship fail to grasp the highly fluid and situational nature of national relations and identification in multi-ethnic communities living in the shadow of mass killing. This dissertation is based on three main sources: previously untapped archival documents, especially from the Archive of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo and the Archive of the Una-Sana Canton in Bihać; memoirs and testimonies written by participants in wartime events, including several unpublished manuscripts never used before by researchers; and numerous interviews conducted with survivors of mass killings and their children. | PhD | peace | 16 |
| Bergman, Jennifer | Lemmens, Trudo | The Systemic Failure to Protect Children with Mental Health Issues: An Analysis of the Failings of the Family Law and Criminal Justice Systems | Law | 2018-11 | A significant majority of children who are engaged with the family law (child welfare) and youth criminal justice systems suffer with mental health issues. Only a fraction of them get treatment. Without adequate supports and services these children may become enmeshed in a “vicious cycle”, with significant short and long-term consequences for children and families, as well as society as a whole. In this Thesis, I explore the role of the law, in theory and in practice, in the failure to provide these children with needed mental health services. Specifically, I investigate how the definition of mental health issues in the family law (child welfare) and criminal justice systems, and the failure in both systems to recognize the impact of the intersection of various factors (e.g. socioeconomic status, race, gender) on individual children (and families), leads to a systemic failure to adequately protect children with mental health issues. | LL.M. | socioeconomic, health, gender | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Berkowitz, Christine Ann | Halpern, Rick | Railroad Crossings: The Transnational World of North America, 1850-1910 | History | 2009-11 | The last quarter of the nineteenth century is often referred to as the “Golden Age” of railroad building. More track was laid in this period in North America than in any other period. The building of railroads was considered synonymous with nation building and economic progress. Railway workers were the single largest occupational group in the period and among the first workers to be employed by large-scale, corporately owned and bureaucratically managed organizations. While there is a rich historiography regarding the institutional and everyday lives of railway workers and the corporations that employed them, the unit of analysis has been primarily bounded by the nation. These national narratives leave out the north-south connections created by railroads that cut across geo-political boundaries and thus dramatically increasing the flows of people, goods and services between nations on the North American continent. Does the story change if viewed from a continental rather than national perspective? Railroad Crossings tells the story of the people and places along the route of the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada between Montreal, Quebec and Portland, Maine and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (and later of the Southern Pacific) between Benson, Arizona and Guaymas, Sonora. The study first takes a comparative view of the cross-border railroad development followed by a consideration of emerging patterns and practices that suggest a broader continental continuity. The evidence demonstrates that this broader continental continuity flows from the application of a certain “railroad logic” or the impact of the essence of railroad operations that for reasons of safety and efficiency required the broad standardization of operating procedures that in many ways rendered place irrelevant. | PhD | worker, institution | 8, 16 |
| Berlingieri, Adriana | Mirchandani, Kiran | Challenging Workplace Bullying: The Shaping of Organizational Practices Toward Systemic Change | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2015-06 | In the last two decades, much effort has been invested in empirical research to understand workplace bullying. However, the identification, development and use of practices to counter it remain one of the largest research gaps in the field. This study centres on how the current conceptualization of bullying places an exclusive focus on individual actors and acts which directly shapes prevention and intervention organizational practices limiting the potential for long-term, systemic change. I sought out an organization that is attempting to take up the concept of bullying differently and trace how this conceptualization shapes their practices. As a critical organizational ethnography, guided by institutional ethnography and practice-based studies, this study includes fieldwork within a major healthcare organization. I examine practices in depth, in particular policies and education and training programs, using participant conversations and textual analysis. I examine links between how the concept of workplace bullying is constructed on an everyday basis by organizational members and internal organizational practices. Bullying in this organization is conceptualized as an interpersonal issue, as well as an organizational and societal issue and as interrelated with other forms of violence. Changes in interpersonal relations of their members, as well as systemic and organizational changes, are central goals.It is important for anti-violence (including bullying) practices to not focus on individual acts and behaviours alone. Workplace bullying is best recognized and dealt with also as an organizational issue. If the organization's role remains hidden, its systems and practices interrelated with violence will continue unaltered. In particular, organizations need to view anti-violence practices as interrelated to those countering inequities in the workplace. Effective anti-violence practices do not stop with implementation. They are ongoing, collaborative processes of development, evaluation, learning, communication and unwavering commitment. Practice do not stand alone, but are related to, support and shape one another. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| Bernardes, Rogerio Paulo | Sykes, Heather | Big Boys, Physical Education, and the Ethics of Bodily Difference: A Poststructural Analysis | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2019-11 | The purpose of this thesis was to explore: 1) body, health, and movement discourses – particularly those advanced by the physical education and biomedical health communities – that shaped the embodied movement experiences of boys, with a focus on bigger boys; 2) how boys negotiated accusations of fatness, discourses of health, and what I have termed physical education-through-sport; and, 3) how we might move forward ethically in the conceptualization of embodiment and encounters with bodily difference. Making selective use of authors and theories in the process of plugging in (Jackson Mazzei, 2012), I used a theoretical framework informed by poststructuralist theory and a philosophy of the limit (Cornell, 1992; Pronger, 2002). Working with six boys ages 12 to 14 years old, I employed semi-structured interviews, participant observation sessions (developed as part of a physical activity program specific to this study), and focus groups to theorize a shift from fatness to bigness that redeemed oversized bodies as intelligible in gendered constructions of masculinity. For the boys in this study, constructions of health and physical activity were more strongly connected to mental health concerns and maintaining positive social relations than to disease prevention and ill-health. These understandings opened up a space to conceptualize ethical encounters with bodily difference that challenged dominant constructions of the individual, separate, independent, sovereign self. Drawing on a philosophy of the limit (Cornell, 1992), a conceptualization of the connected, self-in-relation was proposed in terms of the ethic of alterity (Cornell, 1992; Pronger, 2002). This is an ethic of compassionate openness that endorses encounters with ‘difference’ without fear of otherness. In this view, this ethic of alterity confronts the territorialisation of difference present in discourses of (systemic) inclusion by conceptualizing an already interrelated and interdependent self as a condition of subjectivity. | Ph.D. | gender, health | 3, 5 |
| Bernstein, Jodi T. | L'Abbe, Mary R | Examination of the sugars contents of Canadian prepackaged foods and the role that nutrition labelling can play in helping Canadians identify foods consistent with World Health Organization Guidelines | Nutritional Sciences | 2018-11 | The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends free sugars intakes be limited to a maximum of 10% of energy intake. This thesis aims to characterize sugars in the Canadian prepackaged food and beverage supply and investigate whether the sugars information available on the food label (% Daily Value (%DV) and nutrient content claims) support the WHO free sugars intake guidelines. Three studies were conducted using the University of Toronto’s Food Label Information Program (FLIP) 2013 database that contains nutrient composition and labelling information for a large representative sample of prepackaged foods and beverages (n=15,342). In the first study, a novel method for calculating the free sugars contents was developed and applied to products in FLIP 2013. Free sugars were present in 65% of foods and beverages and contributed on average, 20% of calories and 64% of products’ total sugars content. In the second study, a free sugars DV of 50g, which aligns with WHO guidelines, was compared with a total sugars DV of 100g. A free sugars DV more consistently identified products with ≥10% of calories from free sugars (82% vs. 55%) and with suboptimal nutritional composition as defined by the Food Standards Australia New Zealand nutrient profiling scoring criterion (70% vs. 45%), than a total sugars DV. In the third study, products with sugar-related nutrient content claims had more favourable nutrient profiles than those without these claims, but 48% had ≥10% of calories from free sugars. Findings suggest the need for nutrition labelling and the food supply to more reliably support identification and consumption of products consistent with WHO free sugars intake guidelines. Together these results represent significant advancements in the field of sugars research and the calculation and addition of free sugars levels to FLIP can inform an array of future studies and policy actions related to free sugars. | Ph.D. | nutrition, production | 2, 12 |
| Bernstein, Seth | Viola, Lynne | Communist Upbringing under Stalin: The Political Socialization and Militarization of Soviet Youth, 1934-1941 | History | 2013-11 | In 1935 the Communist Youth League (Komsomol) embraced a policy called "communist upbringing" that changed the purpose of Soviet official youth culture. Founded in 1918, the Komsomol had been an organization of cultural proletarianization and economic mobilization. After the turmoil of Stalin’s revolution from above, Soviet leaders declared that the country had entered the period of socialism. Under the new conditions of socialism, including the threat of war with the capitalist world, "communist upbringing" transformed the youth league into an organization of mass socialization meant to mold youth in the shape of the regime. The key goals of "communist upbringing" were to broaden the influence of Soviet political culture and to enforce a code of "cultured" behavior among youth. Youth leaders transformed the Komsomol from a league of young male workers into an organization that included more than a quarter of Soviet youth by 1941, incorporating more adolescents, women, and non-workers. Employing recreation, reward and disciplinary practices that blurred into repression, mass socialization in the Komsomol attempted to create a cohort of "Soviet" youth - sober, orderly, physically strong and politically loyal to Stalin’s regime. The transformation of youth culture under Stalin reflected a general shift in Stalinist social policies in the mid-1930s. Historians have argued whether this turn was a conservative retreat from Bolshevik ideals or the use of apolitical modern state practices in the service of socialism. This dissertation shows that while youth leaders were intensely interested in modern state practices, they made these practices into central elements of Soviet socialism. Through the Komsomol, youth became a resource for the state to guide along the uncertain and dangerous road to the future of communism. Reacting to domestic and international crises, Stalinist leaders created a system of state socialization for youth that would last until the fall of the Soviet Union. | PhD | women, gender, institution | 5, 16 |
| Bersaglio, Brock | Kepe, Thembela | Green grabbing and the contested nature of belonging in Laikipia, Kenya: A genealogy | Geography | 2017-06 | Global demand to protect endangered wildlife at any cost has corresponded to increasingly more Large-Scale Land Acquisitions being carried out for conservation purposes. This dissertation focuses on how and why different rural groups have such diverse experiences with, and reactions to, this phenomenon (i.e. green grabbing). Recent studies emphasize the need to depart from stereotypes of rural groups as either passive victims or unified resistors of green grabbing. Such studies show that green grabs have differentiated impacts and are met by variegated political reactions from below â including resistance, acquiescence, and incorporation. While making important contributions to the literature, these insights lead to additional questions. For example, how do the political reactions of certain rural groups align or depart from those of others and why? In responding to such questions, this dissertation makes green grabbing a subject of ethnographic and historical analysis in Laikipia, Kenya. Through a genealogical approach to studying green grabbing, this dissertation brings literature on ethnicity and belonging in Laikipia into dialogue with recent green grabbing literature. The findings suggest that in settler societies, certain aspects of green grabbing may be understood as acts of white belonging. Likewise, green grabbing presents other rural groups with opportunities â however marginal â to re-assert different notions of belonging in the landscape through resistance, acquiescence, or incorporation. Based on these findings, this dissertation argues that green grabbing is central to longstanding contestations over belonging in Laikipia. The phenomenon has been made possible by, but has also re- produced, ethno-spatial divisions rooted in colonial expansion. By tracing the shifting contours of these divisions in time, this dissertation contextualizes how and why different rural groups experience and react to green grabbing. In doing so, it builds a case for ethnographic and historical analyses of green grabs in other places, spaces, and times. | Ph.D. | conserv | 15 |
| Bertram, Laurie K. | Iacovetta, Franca | New Icelandic Ethnoscapes: Material, Visual, and Oral Terrains of Cultural Expression in Icelandic-Canadian history, 1875 - Present | History | 2010-11 | This dissertation uses the Icelandic-Canadian community to discuss alternate media and the production of “ethnoscapes,” or landscapes of ethnic identity, on the prairies from 1875 to the present. Drawing from larger historiographies of food, gender, material culture, oral history, and commemoration, it offers an investigation into power, acculturation, and representation using often-marginalized terrains of Canadian ethnic expression. Each of the project’s five chapters examines the cultural history of the community through a different medium. The first chapter uses clothing, one of the most intimate and immediate ways that migrants experienced transition in North America, to explore the impact of poverty, marginalization, disease, climate, and eventual access to Anglo commercial goods on migrant culture. Chapter two analyses the role of food and drink, specifically coffee, alcohol, and vínarterta (a festive layered torte) in everyday life and the development of migrant identity. The third chapter analyses the growth of conservatism and depictions of women in the Icelandic-Canadian community in the twentieth century, with a focus on the decline of radical Icelandic language publications and the rise of ethnic spectacles. Chapter four analyses the impact of centennial and multicultural heritage campaigns on Icelandic-Canadian life, popular narrative, and domestic space by tracing the emergence of the koffort (immigrant trunk) in intergenerational family commemorative practices. Chapter five continues the discussion of popular memory with an examination of the compelling hjátru (superstitious) narrative tradition in the community. It illustrates that Icelandic migrants imported and adapted this tradition to the North American context in a way that also reflected their understanding of colonial violence as an unresolved, disruptive, and damaging intergenerational inheritance. Providing an alternate view of the community beyond either cultural endurance or assimilation, this dissertation argues that the multiple material, visual, and oral conduits through which members have experienced life in the New World have been crucial to the construction of Icelandic-Canadian identity. It is through these terrains that community members have continually engaged with public expectations and demands for both ethnic performance and suppression. The fluidity of these forms and forums and their facilitation of members’ engagement with, adaptations to, and contestation of images of ethnicity and history have enabled the continual construction of Icelandic identities in North America 135 years after departure. | PhD | poverty, food, gender, women | 1, 2, 2005 |
| Bethell, Jennifer | Rhodes, Anne ||Bondy, Susan | Child and Adolescent Emergency Department Presentations for Self-harm: Population-based Data from Ontario, Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2012-06 | Objective: Describe emergency department (ED) presentations for self-harm by youth (12-17 yearolds), including the mental health follow-up they receive after their first-ever presentation, and analyze the association between this mental health follow-up and repeat presentation(s). Methods: Population-based health services data from Ontario, Canada, covering April 2002 to March 2009, were used to ascertain ED presentations for self-harm by youth (n=16,835). These data were used to create a retrospective cohort (n=3,497) of those making their first-ever presentation, and individually-linked to inpatient admission and ambulatory physician contact data. Mental health follow-up within 30-days of discharge, either from a psychiatrist or from any physician specialty, was assessed. The associations between follow-up and repeat self-harm presentation(s) within the following year were then analyzed. Results: Conservatively, the overall incidence rate for ED presentations for self-harm by Ontario youth was 239.0 per 100,000 person-years. Rates were higher in girls, increased with age and inversely related to neighbourhood income and community size (population). Self-harm made up a small but severe proportion of ED use by youth. Over half (57.2%) making their first-ever self-harm presentation had no mental health contact with a physician within 30 days of discharge (and several demographic, clinical and health service variables were associated with follow-up). However, mental health follow-up was not associated with reduced odds of repetition or fewer repeat presentations. Conclusions: ED presentations for self-harm by youth in Ontario are remarkably consistent with those reported from other Western countries. Self-harm is an important public health issue in Canada and requires a comprehensive prevention strategy. These data suggested follow-up youth received after their first-ever ED presentation for self-harm may be inadequate and strategies to improve follow-up may be needed. Still, more research is needed to establish the effect of follow-up on relevant outcomes. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Bhaneja, Charu | Teichman, Judith | Hustling the State - Women’s Movements as Policy Entrepreneurs: Engaging the State in India | Political Science | 2014-06 | This study examines the opportunities and constraints women activists confront as they pursue strategies to influence public policy in a fluctuating, diverse and complex political arena. To illustrate this, I suggest that engagement with the state can be efficacious in certain instances (violence against women) but that in those cases where women face structural constraints (women’s political representation), where the challenges are powerful, opportunity to have an impact is limited. Examining the extent to which the state has been an arena where women’s groups have been able to demand and achieve change provides significant insights into political environments that shape women’s agency and advocacy within that region. My doctoral thesis takes a multi-level approach in order to understand the impact of women’s movements on the state and its institutions. I maintain that women’s movement activity elicits state responsiveness and I analyze three factors to support my claim. First, I consider what government is in power and how open it is to engagement. Secondly, I consider how cohesive the women’s movement is on a particular issue and thirdly, I maintain that women’s national machinery can be an effective channel for implementing women’s interests. Building on theoretical ideas from New Social Movement theory and theories on women and the state, my research forms a bridge by combining a macro-meso-micro analysis that captures both the women’s associational field itself and the complex interactions between civil and political society. Drawing on data from my qualitative research I demonstrate that national governments do not act unless otherwise pushed from women’s movements proving that pro-women legislation has not been possible without the organization and mobilization of women’s groups. The implications of the findings presented in this thesis suggest that women are the strength of institutions and are imperative to the functioning of women’s national machinery hustling the state as policy brokers. | PhD | institution, rights, women | 5, 16 |
| Bhatia, Amar | Macklin, Audrey | We All Belong: Indigenous Laws for Making and Maintaining Relations Against the Sovereignty of the State | Law | 2018-03 | This dissertation proposes re-asserting Indigenous legal authority over immigration in the face of state sovereignty and ongoing colonialism. Chapter One examines the wider complex of Indigenous laws and legal traditions and their relationship to matters of â peoplingâ and making and maintaining relations with the land and those living on it. Chapter Two shows how the state came to displace the wealth of Indigenous legal relations described in Chapter One. I mainly focus here on the use of the historical treaties and the Indian Act to consolidate Canadian sovereignty at the direct expense of Indigenous laws and self- determination. Conventional notions of state sovereignty inevitably interrupt the revitalization of Indigenous modes of making and maintaining relations through treaties and adoption. Chapter Three brings the initial discussion about Indigenous laws and treaties together with my examination of Canadian sovereignty and its effect on Indigenous jurisdiction over peopling. I review the case of a Treaty One First Nationâ s customary adoption of a precarious status migrant and the related attempt to prevent her removal from Canada on this basis. While this attempt was unsuccessful, I argue that an alternative approach to treaties informed by Indigenous laws would have recognized the staying power of Indigenous adoption. Notwithstanding current Canadian immigration law, this staying power would further the goals of Indigenous self-determination, decolonization, and Canadian reconciliation. The Conclusion reviews the preceding arguments and contends that state sovereignty remains a significant, but not insurmountable, barrier to Indigenous self-determination and Canadian reconciliation. Grudging legal developments and heightened societal expectations require genuine, substantive reconciliation efforts. It seems only a matter of time before Indigenous rights to extend membership and status to foreign nationals are recognized again. This dissertation makes the original contribution that the best way of doing so would be through the renewal of treaty relations informed by resurgent Indigenous laws and legal traditions. | S.J.D. | rights | 16 |
| Bhatia, Tajinder Pal Singh | Kant, Shashi | Economic Analysis of World's Carbon Markets | Forestry | 2012-03 | Forestry activities play a crucial role in climate change mitigation. To make carbon credits generated from such activities a tradable commodity, it is important to analyze the price dynamics of carbon markets. This dissertation contains three essays that examine various issues confronting world’s carbon markets. The first essay investigates cointegration of carbon markets using Johansen maximum likelihood procedure. All carbon markets of the world are not integrated. North American carbon markets show integration and so do the CDM markets. For future, the possibilities of arbitrage across world’s markets are expected to be limited, and carbon trading in these markets will be globally inefficient. There is a strong need of a global agreement that allows carbon trade to prevent climate change at the least cost options. The second essay evaluates various econometric models for predicting price volatility in the carbon markets. Voluntary carbon market of Chicago is relatively more volatile; and like other financial markets, its volatility is forecasted best by a complex non-linear GARCH model. The compliance market of Europe, on the other hand, is less volatile and its volatility is forecasted best by simple econometric models like Historical Averages and GARCH and hence is different from other markets. Findings could be useful for investment decision making, and for making choice between various policy instruments. The last essay focuses on agent based models that incorporate interactions of heterogeneous entities. Artificial carbon markets obtained from such models have statistical properties - lack of autocorrelations, volatility clustering, heavy tails, conditional heavy tails, and non-Gaussianity; which are similar to the actual carbon markets. These models possess considerably higher forecasting capabilities than the traditional econometric models. Forecast accuracy is further improved considerably through experimentation, when agent characteristics like wealth distribution, proportion of allowances and number of agents are set close to the real market situations. | PhD | wealth distribution, trade, climate, forest | 1, 10, 13, 15 |
| Bhattarai, Anil | Rankin, Katharine N||Hunter, Mark | Seeing Like a Farmer: Socioecological Complexity of Constructing and Maintaining Ecologically Integrated Smallholder Family Farms | Geography | 2019-11 | This dissertation investigates the political-ecological conditions that led to the emergence and spread of ecological farming practices in Nepal’s Chitwan Valley. It takes a conjunctural approach to examine the spread of different ecological practices in different periods and the roles played by households, government institutions and others in this process of change. The dissertation draws upon data generated through an interdisciplinary qualitative research which utilized mixed-methods including a year-long ethnographic field research in Nepal, primary and secondary literature review, personal experiences, observation, and formal and informal interviews. This dissertation shows that the adoption of ecological farming practices resulted from different conjunctural changes within the farming households and beyond. The major factors within the households that pushed for the adoption of ecological practices were: the reduced availability of household labour as children spent increasing amount of time in schools and adults engaged in off-farm activities, the decline of formal and informal access to common pool resources such as grazing lands and forests, and the perceived and/or real biophysical shifts such as intractable pest damage of crops, beneficial effects of multi-cropping, and degradation of soil by the use of chemical fertilizers. These changes were also possible because of changes beyond the households: specific policies and programs adopted by national government agencies, international development agencies, and, after 1990s, non-governmental organizations. These policies included direct support such as through cash subsidies (for biogas) and free distribution of saplings, educational and training programs on ecological management of farms, and formal and informal exchanges of ideas and experiences of ecological practices among farmers. This dissertation also shows that Increased commodification of other aspects of households, such as the education of children, construction of modern homes, and health care, has created challenges for ecological farming. Differentiated capacity for diversification of resource generation such as through migration and off-farm income shapes the possibility for the maintenance of the ecological farms. This dissertationI has developed the rubric of ‘seeing like a farmer’ as a conceptual tool to critically assess and examine this phenomenon. This framework integrates 'society' and 'nature,' and expands the focus beyond 'agricultural sector'. | Ph.D. | labour, agriculture | 2, 8 |
| Bhatthal, Parminder | Olson, Paul | Factors Motivating Sikh Canadian Youth to Become Involved in the Khalistan Movement | Social Justice Education | 2015-11 | The purpose of the study was to catalogue and analyse factors that motivate Canadian Sikh youth in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to become involved with the Khalistan movement. Two research questions were posed: (1) How does the Khalistan movement serve to order and manage intra-Sikh relationships, primarily those involving young people, in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario? (2) How does the Khalistan movement manage the Sikh identity vis-à-vis the non-Sikh realities of India and Canada? Using the theoretical frames of symbolic interactionism, functionalist homeostasis, and, to a lesser extent, postcolonial theory, applied through a case study method, three main conclusions were reached. The first finding of the study was that family influences solidified Khalistan-involved youth’s attitude of differentiation from other Canadians. Personal identity interpretations led Khalistan-involved Sikh youth to develop and reinforce a sense of differentiation from other Canadians. Khalistan thus provided an important pivot of differentiation for these participants. The second finding of the study was that participation in Khalistani movements was discovered to be a means for men to build a masculine Sikh identity in interaction with each other, women to build a general social identity based on interactions with each other, and men and women to interact with each other on the basis of collective socio-religious identity exploration and affirmation. Participation in Khalistani movements also came to be understood as a means of expression and differentiation for Sikhs that identified as Sikh only, or Sikh and Canadian, or Canadian only. The study presented a general sociological model for understanding the politicised actions of immigrant youth in Canada. | Ph.D. | rights | 16 |
| Bhimani, Salima | Ruben, Gaztambide-Fernandez Dr. | (ORIGINAL - see JIRA ticket https://support.library.utoronto.ca/browse/TSPCE-21695) Mapping the Assembly of Muslim Exceptionality and Exceptional Muslims in Colonial Modernity. Ismaili Muslim Encounters through Discourses, Bodies and Space in the Canadian Colonial Nation | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-11 | What is produced through the encounters with specific “modern Muslims” in the Canadian colonial nation state? In the last decade in Canada there have been efforts to engage in a demarcation between Muslims and other racialized groups in order to define some bodies as part of the nation whilst others outside of the national imaginary. This is particularly important in the nation-building project of Canada in retaining a tolerant, liberal and multiculturally celebrated society. This critical feminist ethnography makes visible the encounters and present economies of sociopolitical currents in which the Ismailis, as a Muslim community and gendered ethnicized bodies, move and animate in Canada as a settler colonial race formation as well as in a broader geography of Muslim social and cultural politics. It is in the constitutions and movements of their collective subjectivities as a religious community and in their ethnicized gender, race, and class difference that they locate and engage in interlocking systems of power rooted in nation, empire, colonialism, modernity, and religion. This thesis aims to show that in order to make sense of Ismaili encounters it is necessary to map multiple pasts and multiple presents, which they are part of and that shape them. Different from most studies on the Ismailis in Canada, I also place Ismailis’ entrance and settlement in Canada within a broader dynamic of colonial power and management of racialized peoples and within current shaping of Muslims as racial constructs. This thesis argues that Ismailis are becoming Muslims of “exceptionality.” First, through their high level public encounter with the colonial settler Canadian nation state; second through their intersecting encounters with other Muslims and non-Muslims in Canada; and third in their encounters with each other as Afghan, Pakistani, and Indian Ismailis. These three encounters intervene the discourse of pluralism of which the Ismailis are becoming advocates and Canada its global exemplar. It is through seeing what is produced between these “bodies” in specific moments of their meeting in Canada that, bodily, spatial and discursive practices of social relationship making emerge. These show the paradoxical outcomes of embodying modern coloniality and Muslim exceptionality. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Biazar, Bahar | Mojab, Shahrzad | ESL Education for Social Transformation | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-11 | If one considers the colonial history of TESL, its ties to imperialism, and capitalism’s need for a cheap labour force which instigates movement of both people and corporations, one will see that TESL is a very social and political activity. Furthermore, since our current social organization and economic model are guided by capitalist social relations, it is crucial to place teaching ESL within these relations in order to shed light on its role in capitalism’s reproduction. In this study, I focus on the learner as a social being and investigate the potential of English language learning as a social and political act for the purpose of social change. My main research question is: What is English language learning from the perspective of the learner who is motivated by pursuing social transformation? What would an ESL class aimed at social change look like from the perspective of the learners and teachers of this study and a dialectical theoretical framework? To what degree are ESL teachers and institutions aware or accommodating to these learners’ needs? To pursue these questions, I have conducted a qualitative research study to explore the barriers and successes that ESL teachers attempting to do critical work have had. I have also interviewed ESL learners who are motivated by their desire to be politically and socially active in order to gain insight about their English language learning and their ESL classes. My theoretical conceptualization has allowed me to see how our actions as ESL teachers and theorists at times reproduce capitalist social relations and at other times challenges and disrupts them. It is my hope that this study will generate theory in the field of language education that helps other language learners and educators to politicize, decolonize, and radicalize the field of ESL. | Ph.D. | institution, labour | 8, 16 |
| Biggar, Jeff | Siemiatycki, Matthew | Between Public Goals and Private Projects: Negotiating Community Benefits for Density from Toronto's Urban Redevelopment | Geography | 2017-11 | This dissertation investigates the role of Toronto’s discretionary planning system in extracting public value from density gains in private land development. The three articles that comprise the dissertation focus on three interrelated phenomena: the equity effects of densification and spatial distribution of public benefits; the practice of discretion in planning based on a system of development control and its effects on the delivery of public benefit outcomes; and, different approaches to planning negotiations and the consequences this brings to the governance of public benefits. In policy terms, these interrelated phenomena centre around a discrete area of Toronto’s land use planning framework known as “Section 37” – a section of Ontario’s Planning Act granting exemptions from planning rules for developers in exchange for them providing “community benefits:” parks and open space, public art, affordable housing. Drawing on GIS analysis and 55 semi-structured interviews, the thesis documents the incentive-based mechanism known as density bonusing in Toronto’s land use regime. The analysis highlights the ways in which this planning policy and practice articulates the connections between municipalities and the private development industry. The dissertation argues that density bonusing in planning is a vehicle for examining broader dynamics of urban phenomena, including the institutional and spatial relationship between private development and public good, notions of ‘good planning’, and the role of non-governmental actors in shaping planning processes and outcomes at the neighbourhood scale. More broadly, the dissertation articulates a common observation that can be gleaned from the research findings: the rise of planning tools like density bonusing point to the centrality of zoning and bargaining as a dominant model of planning occurring in cities. | Ph.D. | industr, cities, urban, land use | 9, 11, 15 |
| Biggs, Jeffrey | Smith, Tat | Marketing Institutions of Afforestation Generated Carbon Offsets in Canada: Political Sustainability, Ideology and the New Institutional Economics | Forestry | 2009-11 | Anthropogenically forced climate change has emerged as one of the most important, and polarizing, issues of our time. Afforestation generated carbon offset projects hold a position in Canada as potentially influential, yet frustratingly under-utilized, options to mitigate climate change. This dissertation responds to the question, “what are the economic implications of afforestation generated carbon offset institutions in Canada – and how appropriate are the tools of the New Institutional Economics (NIE) in their identification?” I establish the context for discussion by arguing that the NIE, as practiced, seems incapable of providing rigorous analysis while simultaneously responding to questions of power and distribution. The case of afforestation generated carbon offset marketing is presented as an appropriate context for exploring this point. A literature review is then used to establish general patterns regarding aggregating institutions for offset production and marketing, and aggregating institutions are presented as a response to the effects of transaction costs on the Canadian offset market. I then develop supply and demand curves to describe the equilibrium state of the Canadian offset market, into which the transaction costs borne by three aggregators are integrated. Their performance in fulfilling various policy objectives is evaluated. The results indicate that the primary variation between scenarios is the distribution of benefits. This focus on the distribution of benefits continues through demonstrating how subtle variations in modeling coefficients affect the regional distribution of afforestation projects within Canada, identifying the power associated with policy maker ideology. The role of policy maker ideology is then explicitly examined through a survey of government analysts and technicians and the application of discriminant analysis. The primary axes of afforestation ideology are identified, and demonstrated to be independent of concerns of transaction costs and aggregation. These results are integrated to argue that distributional concerns, particularly when ideologies are active in informing policy maker preferences, are critical to achieving sustainable policy outcomes, and that the NIE can respond to such concerns, but only if reform takes place to legitimate these techniques as part of the standard economic discourse. | PhD | institution, climate | 13, 16 |
| Bilton, David Harrison | Coupland, Gary | Northern, Central, Diversified, Specialized: The Archaeology of Fishing Adaptations in the Gulf of Georgia (Salish Sea), British Columbia | Anthropology | 2014-06 | The Coast Salish subsistence economy has been characterized by local fishing adaptations to regional ecological variability (Mitchell 1971a.) This dissertation explores the temporal depth of these adaptations in the traditional territory of the Coast Salish, the Gulf of Georgia. Many researchers have used this, Donald Mitchell’s (1971a), model to develop theories of regional cultural development. Many of these interpretations present social complexity or social inequality – a hallmark of Northwest Coast social complexity – as having developed more or less in lock-step with the specialized fishing adaptation described among the Central Coast Salish, around the Fraser River. The temporal depth of this adaptation and the “Diversified” fishing adaptations described among the Northern and Southern Coast Salish, as well as their developmental relationship, are not well understood. In exploring this problem, this study evaluates whether or not the ecological ethnographic model is representative of the archaeology of these cultural subareas. A gap in the regional dataset which corresponds with a large portion of Mitchell’s (1971a) “Northern Diversified” fishing subarea has largely presented a previous study of this type. Recently excavated sites in traditional shíshálh territory provide artifact and archaeofaunal data that fill in this gap. These data are analyzed along with existing data from the Northern subarea and from the Central Gulf of Georgia (River and Straits Fishing subareas). The results of this study significantly broaden our understanding of prehistoric Coast Salish socioeconomic diversity, and test the assumed salmon specialization on the Fraser River and its primacy the development of regional ethnographic characteristics, especially pronounced social inequality. The results also shed light on the prehistoric importance of herring, a decreasingly overlooked resource in Northwest Coast archaeological studies, and advocate for the use of fine mesh recovery for quantifying the relative importance of fish species. | PhD | fish, socioeconomic, quality | 1, 5, 14 |
| Binnington, Matthew John | Wania, Frank | Modeling and Measuring Environmental Contaminant Exposure Among Canadian Arctic Indigenous Humans and Wildlife | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2016-11 | Arctic wildlife and indigenous human exposure to persistent organic pollutants (POPs) was mechanistically simulated using a combined global fate and transport model (GloboPOP) and food chain bioaccumulation model (ACC-Human Arctic) approach. Initial model results demonstrated that POP concentration-age relationships in long-lived Arctic marine mammal (MM) populations (ringed seals, beluga whales, bowhead whales) are not equivalent to those in individuals when assuming realistic, time-variant chemical emissions. Birth year relative to peak emissions year was the most critical parameter differentiating population versus individual concentration-age associations, while lifespan was shown to possess a negligible impact when these trends were controlled for the birth year effect. Additionally, birth year influence was essentially mitigated in reproductive female Arctic MMs, due to the appreciable POP elimination potential of lactation. Reproductive female wildlife retained no â memoryâ of past POP exposure, and therefore in certain instances population versus individual concentration-age trends were similar. Applying this model approach to reproduce measured POP exposures among indigenous Arctic humans revealed that reported rates of traditional food (TF) consumption, particularly of lipid-rich MM items, were critical determinants of modeled POP concentrations, while their association with measured levels was generally much weaker. This discrepancy in the contribution of reported TF consumption to modeled versus measured POP concentrations caused our model to appreciably overestimate exposures among certain Arctic indigenous biomonitoring populations, to a degree that suggested TF intake rates were highly uncertain. Given this, no reasonable conclusions were possible regarding the chief theorized determinants to temporal POP exposure trends in these groups, namely declining environmental concentrations and reduced population-wide TF consumption. The effect of temporary changes to TF intake by indigenous Arctic women of childbearing age (WCBA), as well as fish intake by temperate WCBA was also investigated. Reductions in consumption of these critical dietary POP exposure sources, including even complete elimination for multiple years prior to pregnancy, was ineffective in reducing long-lived POP exposure to WCBA and their offspring, as WCBA still retained significant body burdens from earlier exposure. However, greater consumption of these same items was shown to rapidly increase POP levels beyond regulatory thresholds. Finally, field and experimental analysis of beluga blubber TFs illustrated that food preparation techniques can exert a significant influence on the levels of certain nutrients and environmental contaminants in these food items. Ageing beluga blubber was the most impactful process examined, due to its distinctive phase separation between solid fat and liquid oil after sufficient fermentation time. Aged liquid oil contained elevated levels of beneficial polyunsaturated fatty acids, and phase separation also selectively depleted certain hydrophilic contaminants from the liquid oil, such as mercury and several ionogenic perfluorinated pollutants. Though ageing uqsuq did not in turn raise concentrations of many hydrophobic contaminants, we did observe elevated concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which ultimately suggested that TF preparation methods may not only modulate chemical content present prior to food processing, but in fact introduce contaminants. Ultimately, our findings aligned with previous investigations of food preparation influence on nutrient and contaminant levels by demonstrating widely variable effects from processing, depending on the compounds, foods, and techniques examined. We also suggest that uqsuq oil may be the most appropriate beluga blubber TF product for indigenous Arctic Canadians wishing to maximize nutrient intake from these food items while minimizing environmental contaminant exposure. | Ph.D. | pollut, environment, marine | 13, 14 |
| Bird, Andrew | Smart, Michael | Taxation and Financial Decision Making | Economics | 2013-11 | Understanding the effects of taxes on the financial decision making process sheds light on the process itself and has important ramifications for policymakers. In this thesis, I study these effects in three different contexts: international acquisitions, executive compensation, and dividend payout. In Chapter 1, I investigate the possibility that tax rather than productivity differences are driving international acquisition decisions. A theoretical model of this process yields two testable implications of tax-induced sorting: that, relative to high-tax domestic bidders, low-tax foreign bidders will specialize in both high profitability target firms and those with low levels of tax deductions. I find support for both of these effects in the U.S. acquisition market using cross-sectional variation in target profitability and industry-level variation in deductions from the tax reform of bonus depreciation. Counterfactual simulations show that this reform induced a large drop in foreign acquisitions, leading to a significant loss of aggregate wealth. In Chapter 2, I study a recent increase in the tax rate on stock options for a subset of firms to learn about the effects of taxation on executive compensation. Using novel executive compensation data, I find that this tax increase resulted in an immediate reduction in both option grants and the share of options in total compensation. There appears to have been limited, if any, substitution towards other components of compensation. Hence, the burden of the tax increase must have been substantially borne by the affected executives. In Chapter 3, I use a 2006 tax cut in Canada to study the effects of dividend taxes on corporate payout. Analysis of discrete dividend events suggest little effect from the reform, in stark contrast with recent evidence from the United States. Difference-in-differences estimates using control groups comprised of firms which were exogenously unlikely to be affected by the reform suggest a small positive effect on net dividend initiations. Finally, fixed effect models of regular dividends reveal a small increase around the reform. However, the type of firms responding casts serious doubt on taxes as the cause. Overall, these results are consistent with the small and open nature of the Canadian economy. | PhD | industr, taxation | 9, 10 |
| Bird, Anne Elizabeth | Livingstone, David W | THE PECULIAR FAMILY BUSINESS OF FAMILY CHILD CARE: POLICY AND REGULATION AFFECTING EMOTIONAL LABOUR IN CAREGIVING | Social Justice Education | 2017-11 | In Ontario, Canadaâ s licensed family child care system, there is a dissonance between expectations embedded in state-licensed family child care regulation and policy, and the lived experience of regulated family child care providers. Gender, social class and more recently, race/ethnicity intersect to exacerbate complicated working conditions for the care providers leading to poor recognition and financial compensation from both parents and the state. I have combined an analysis of the historical development of the care model with my own qualitative investigation of the everyday experience of 11 regulated care providers in Toronto, their material circumstances and the emotional labour they invest in caring for young children. Detailing the historical development of the system shows that the core elements of the contemporary care model can be traced through its child welfare lineage dating from 19th century child saving, and from foster care to family child care, which remains largely unchanged since the inception of regulation in 1978. The elements I have examined are the role of the mandatory home visitor in relation to the care provider and their occupational segregation; the bureaucratic expectations of the state as implemented in a private domain; and the social construction of the care provider as someone who requires surveillance to provide quality care for children, particularly because of her vulnerable location as a low-income, self-employed worker. I have identified these elements for discussion to support a case for change in the contemporary care model. Poor recognition and compensation have been compounded by the deeply entrenched funding model dependent on child care fee subsidies to parents. This circular challenge of an outdated funding model supporting outdated gendered assumptions about a care model is at the heart of the puzzle to solve for jurisdictions that have foisted self-employment on regulated care providers working in their own homes. I conclude with policy and research recommendations for licensed family child care agencies and the Ontario government. | Ph.D. | worker, labour, employment | 8 |
| Bishop, Adam Michael | Gervers, Michael ||Armstrong, Lawrin ||Meyerson, Mark ||Northrup, Linda | Criminal Law and the Development of the Assizes of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Twelfth Century | Medieval Studies | 2011-06 | The legal treatises of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were written in the thirteenth century, when most of the kingdom had been re-conquered by the Muslims. There are no treatises from the twelfth century, when the kingdom was at its height. The thirteenth-century jurists claimed that the kingdom had always had written laws, but they may have been making this up for political purposes. The treatises also discuss issues important to the noble class of which the jurists were a part: property rights and the feudal services owed to the king, as well as the proper way to plead their cases in court. But what do they say about criminal law, and laws for the lower classes? How were crimes tried and punished in the twelfth century, and did this differ from the laws recorded in the thirteenth century? Chapter one deals with the different treatises, and their claim that there was a set of laws called “Letres dou Sepulcre” in the twelfth century. The most important of the treatises for criminal law, the assizes of the burgess court, is examined in detail. Chapter two looks at the small number of laws that survive from the twelfth century, in charters, the canons of the Council of Nablus, and the chronicle of William of Tyre. Chapter three is a study of other descriptions of crusader law in the twelfth century, including those by Christian and Muslim pilgrims, and especially the observations of Usama ibn Munqidh. These accounts are tied together by the common theme of theft and the ways that thieves could be punished. Chapter four deals with cases mentioned by thirteenth-century sources, including theft, assault, and prostitution, but especially cases that led to trials by battle. The usefulness of such trials for dating some of the laws is also examined. The conclusion demonstrates that certain parts of the assizes relating to criminal law must have already existed in the twelfth century, and offers some tentative ideas about the specific origin of the laws. Avenues for future research are also introduced. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Bissonnette, Jean-Francois | Silvey, Rachel | Envisioning Agribusiness: Land, Labour and Value in a time of Oil Palm Expansion in Indonesia | Geography | 2012-11 | The thesis examines the social and economic implications of large-scale agribusiness expansion in Indonesia by analyzing how this economic system, as it is envisioned and materialised, reshapes livelihood possibilities. Based on original interviews with oil palm plantation workers, plantation company officials, smallholders, and on secondary research, this thesis scrutinises the forms of knowledge and practices that constitute large-scale oil palm agribusiness. While oil palm agribusiness produces economic opportunities for groups of individuals from certain social categories, it constrains the prospects of others in systematic ways. Oil palm agribusiness, as a project and as a set of practices, is deployed by a broad range of economic actors at different scales in an attempt to govern access to resources. However, the power of oil palm companies and investors over land, labour, and value is contested and negotiated by workers and smallholders who engage creatively with this economy. The thesis shows that oil palm agribusiness forms a field of power that produces specific subjectivities which transform the meanings and constraints related to this mode of production. The first part of the thesis (chapters 2 and 3) identifies the objectives pursued by those who plan and envision oil palm agribusiness. I emphasise that oil palm agribusiness serves a number of often competing and shifting aims that range from capital accumulation to welfare provision. The second part of the thesis (chapters 4 and 5) demonstrates how the modes of visioning examined in the first part of the thesis produce a broad set of material conditions for populations. I analyse the ways in which these conditions are constantly reshaped by everyday power relations and articulated around the value of labour and land. Based on ethnographic fieldwork that I conducted in West Kalimantan, Lombok, and Nias, these chapters shed light on the lived geographies of labour and the livelihood strategies used by individuals and social groups in the space of oil palm agribusiness. | PhD | labour, worker, production | 8, 12 |
| Biswabandan, Bapujee | Cummins, Jim | Multilingual Education in Classrooms with Multiple Mother Tongues: A Case Study of Pedagogical Possibilities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-06 | This dissertation describes a collaborative action research project undertaken with Grades 1 and 2 children and parents from two Adivasi communities in a multiple-language classroom in a remote area of Odisha, India. The children came from Santali, Ho, and Odia home language backgrounds but were taught in Odia, the dominant state language. Classroom interactions were observed over a 7-month period in order to understand how students and teachers negotiated the teaching of academic content and initial reading skills. The study built on the extensive research that has emerged in recent years supporting mother-tongue based multilingual education (MTBMLE) in countries as diverse as Ethiopia, India, and the Philippines. These studies have provided evidence for cross-linguistic interdependence and transfer of conceptual and academic skills across languages. However, these initiatives were implemented in contexts of linguistic homogeneity involving children from a single mother tongue, whereas the majority of the classrooms in Odisha have children from multiple linguistic backgrounds. In addition to classroom observations, data were gathered by means of interviews with eight parents, two teachers, and five students. These interviews took place both before and after the creation by parents of a multilingual children’s book in Ho, Santali, and Odia. The interviews with parents and teachers prior to the creation of the book focused on participants’ own educational experiences, their linguistic identities, and their views on medium of instruction in education. The interviews after the community book creation project focused on these issues and how participants’ perspectives were affected by the inclusion of the two Adivasi languages in the book and in classroom instruction. The student interviews were conducted after the book was used within the classroom and focused on the impact of this initiative on their attitudes towards their home languages and the dominant school language. The findings of the study suggest a positive impact of a community created multilingual storybook on the parents, the students and the community. The project demonstrated that the multilingual repertoires of parents can be used as a powerful resource for implementing multilingual education in linguistically diverse Adivasi contexts. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Biswas, Aviroop | Alter, David | Examining the relationship between exercise and sedentary behaviour among cardiac rehabilitation patients to inform intervention strategies | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-06 | Prolonged time in sedentary behaviours is associated with cardio-metabolic disease risk and mortality in adult populations. Yet, the association between sedentary behaviour and exercise participation on health outcomes is unclear. Six inter-related studies were conducted in the pursuit of the following objectives: to understand the risks and determinants of sedentary behaviour among patients participating in exercise-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR), and inform the development of sedentary behaviour interventions among these individuals. Prolonged sedentary time was found to be associated with cardio-metabolic disorders and mortality independent of physical activity, with greater mortality risks for those with low physical activity levels compared to those with greater levels. Among CR patients, exercise participation did not influence their sedentary time and were found to be highly sedentary (>8 hours per day) at the initiation of, and throughout CR, irrespective of whether physical activity guidelines were met. Patients and staff placed a lower priority in reducing sedentary behaviour than improving physical activity and other health behaviours. Intrapersonal factors (biological, psychological), and environmental factors (behaviour settings, the information environment, social-cultural factors, natural environment) were perceived to be facilitators of sedentary behaviour, and barriers to reducing sedentary behaviour. It was also determined that the exercise focus of CR might be beneficial to individuals who are unable to reallocate sedentary time to exercise and light physical activity. Alternatively, a focus on light-intensity physical activity alone may be suitable for those patients who are unable to participate in exercise. Lastly, it was found that CR programs do not benefit all patients equally, and an intervention strategy must be individually targeted. Taken together, these findings contribute towards a better understanding of whether prolonged sedentary time is a distinct health risk factor, and inform the development and pilot testing of future sedentary behaviour interventions for CR patients. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Black, Tara Loise | Regehr, Cheryl | Children's Exposure to Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): Challenging Assumptions about Child Protection Practices | Social Work | 2009-11 | Objective: While child welfare policy and legislation in Canada and other regions has increasingly defined children who are exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) as maltreated, little is known about the response of the child welfare system to children exposed to IPV. This dissertation seeks to determine the response of child protection services to reports about IPV; the outcomes of child protection investigations referred for children exposed to IPV; and what factors predict decisions made by child protection workers (e.g., court involvement, child welfare placement, closing the case, substantiation, and making a referral to other supportive services) for investigations involving children exposed to IPV. Methods: This study is based on a secondary analysis of data collected in the 2003 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS-2003). Bivariate analyses and multiple multinomial regression were conducted to study the substantiation of maltreatment, and logistic regression was conducted to predict child protection workers’ decisions to keep the case open, make a child welfare placement, take the family to court, and make a referral for investigations involving children’s exposure to IPV. Results: Seventy-eight percent of the investigations involving only IPV were substantiated. The multinomial regression could not accurately classify the suspected and unfounded cases. Substantiated investigations involving co-occurring IPV were three times more likely to stay open for ongoing child protection services compared to IPV only cases (adjusted odds ratio = 2.93, p < .001). Child protection service outcomes for substantiated investigations involving co-occurring IPV were ten times more likely (adjusted odds ratio = 10.61, p < .001) to involve a child welfare placement compared to IPV only cases. The factors driving child protection worker decisions were primarily the co-occurrence of maltreatment, younger children, and emotional harm. Conclusions: Due to the expansion in what constitutes a child in need of protection, there has been an overwhelming increase in the number of referrals about children being exposed to IPV in Canada. Future analyses should explore whether policies that direct IPV cases to child welfare services is both an effective way of protecting children and a reasonable use of limited child welfare resources. | PhD | well being | 3 |
| Blackport, Russell | Kushner, Paul J | The Atmospheric Response to Arctic Sea Ice Loss in the Coupled Climate System | Physics | 2017-03 | Arctic sea ice loss is expected to have a large impact on the atmosphere, both in the Arctic and potentially outside the Arctic, through changing the atmospheric circulation. In this thesis, the impact of sea ice loss in the climate system is studied using multi-century coupled Earth system model simulations that include dynamical coupling between oceans, atmosphere, and sea ice. In these simulations, sea ice is artificially melted by reducing its albedo. This framework allows for adequate sampling of the isolated impacts of sea ice loss when potentially important ocean feedbacks are included. It is shown that in response to sea ice loss, the atmospheric circulation response is weak compared with internal variability. There is a large reduction in temperature variability on all timescales over the Arctic Ocean. Smaller magnitude reductions in variability are also seen in mid-latitude temperature, sea level pressure and mid-tropospheric geopotential height. The impacts of sea ice loss are isolated from the impacts of warming at low-latitudes in the sea ice albedo forced simulations and simulations forced by projected greenhouse-dominated radiative forcing using a pattern scaling method. It is found that many of the wintertime atmospheric circulation responses that occur in response to sea ice loss are opposed and at least partially cancelled out by the impacts of low-latitude warming. However, both sea ice loss and low-latitude surface warming act in concert to reduce subseasonal temperature variability throughout the mid and high latitudes. Finally, the cause of the previously documented amplified response to sea ice loss in the coupled climate system is investigated. Atmospheric general circulation modelling (AGCM) experiments are performed that show that ocean warming in the mid-to-high latitudes induced by sea ice loss amplifies the atmospheric circulation response. The impact of the ocean warming that occurs in regions away from the sea ice loss region is similar in magnitude and structure to the impacts of sea ice loss itself, indicating modelling experiments that do not include ocean feedbacks will underestimate the response. | Ph.D. | climate, ocean | 14 |
| Blackstock, Cynthia (Cindy) | Regehr, Cheryl | When Everything Matters: Comparing the Experiences of First Nations and Non-Aboriginal Children Removed from their Families in Nova Scotia from 2003 to 2005 | Social Work | 2009-11 | The Canadian Incidence Study on Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (Trocme, 2001) found that structural factors such as poverty, poor housing and substance misuse contribute to the over-representation of First Nations children in child welfare care and yet there is very little information on the experiences of First Nations and Non-Aboriginal children after they are placed in care. The When Everything Matters study tracks First Nations and Non-Aboriginal chlidren removed from their families between 2003-2005 in Nova Scotia to the time of reunification or to the time of data collection if the child remained in care. The characteristics of children and their families are compared to the primary aims of child welfare services provided to children and their families. Results indicate that poor families living in poor housing are graphically over-represented among all families who have their children removed. Poverty-related services were not provided to families in proportion to its occurrence. Caregiver incapacity related to substance misuse was most often cited as the primary reason for removal and although substance misuse services were provided there is a need for further child welfare training, policy and services in this area given the scope of the problem presenting in both First Nations and Non-Aboriginal families. Study findings are nested in a new bi-cultural theoretical framework founded in First Nations ontology and physic's theory of everything called the breath of life theory. Implications for theoretical development as well as child welfare research, policy and practice are discussed. | PhD | poverty | 1 |
| Blakelock, Emily Charlotte Vogl | Ross, Jill||Townsend, David | Doing It by the Book: Teaching Sexuality in the Twelfth-Century Classroom | Medieval Studies | 2017-11 | This dissertation demonstrates the extent to which concepts of sexuality were intertwined with teaching and learning in twelfth-century French schools, making a vital connection between the history of education and that of gendered sexuality. Learning, enculturation and socialization were combined in the new urban schools of the twelfth century, in which boys underwent rigorous grammatical and moral training while forming homosocial bonds with their classmates and teachers. Students in their early- to mid- teens would routinely read sexually explicit texts, such as Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris, Terence’s Eunuchus, Statius’ Achilleid, and Juvenal’s satires, as part of their training in Latin literacy. These classical Latin texts were categorized by medieval teachers as “ethical” despite the fact that they contain depictions of rape, adultery, prostitution, cross-dressing and male sodomy. I argue that such discussions of sexuality were incorporated into the program of mores which traditionally accompanied early education in grammatica. My research presents a new perspective on socialization in medieval schools, using classroom texts and commentaries which have rarely been examined as sources for the history of sexuality. Starting with an overview of the role of the medieval school in male social formation, I uncover the pedagogical discourse which connects grammar with sexuality, and with the sexual status of the medieval adolescent student. While Ovid identifies himself as a schoolteacher and establishes “rules” for love and sex with the help of his medieval commentators, and Alan of Lille describes sexual deviance as the result of mislearning the “grammar” of sex, Statius and Terence highlight the inherent gender fluidity and erratic sexual behaviour of adolescent boys, casting doubt on the stability of the boundaries established by such regulatory mechanisms. Juvenal and his twelfth-century commentators add to this discourse by implying that male sodomy is taught through homosocial networks, and identifying adolescent boys as especially prone to learning sodomy, with the school as the site of particular anxiety. These perspectives reflect twelfth-century anxieties about clerical celibacy and homosociality and demonstrate a medieval recognition of the social forces which underpin both education and sexuality. | Ph.D. | educat, gender | 3, 5 |
| Blanchard, Taryn Sheridan | Sidnell, Jack||Cody, Francis | Free Expression Activism in a (Post)Modern World of Risk and Uncertainty | Anthropology | 2019-06 | This thesis is about free expression activists and the central roles that risk and uncertainty play in their experiences. Today, activists who work on an array of free expression issues—including free speech, privacy, and press freedom—are driven by two principle predicaments. The first is the increasing pervasiveness of digital technologies, and the second is an aging liberalism deployed in increasingly conflicting fashions. Both of these predicaments are escalated by the post-9/11 preoccupation with national (in)security and the growing precarity of the neoliberal capitalist order in a world of economic and political globalization. Free expression activists work hard to foster conditions in which freedom can flourish (for themselves and others). But it is not only human rights discourse or other liberal idea(l)s that they appraise, confront, and grapple with on a day-to-day basis to conceive of their obstacles and advance their goals. Equally important are assessments and tools built on risk-based decision-making, discursive strategies that work to identify and harness risk and uncertainty, and other practices and ideologies through which risk and uncertainty are enacted. The goal is frequently to manage or minimize risk and uncertainty, but, by engaging them so strategically, free expression activists also end up accentuating them and giving them new, heightened meaning. Weaving through a series of free expression settings and subgroups, this thesis examines how activists experience and engage risk and uncertainty to achieve their own ends as they work at the intersection of liberalism, technology, and security. During their efforts, issues of personhood and statecraft are negotiated, bureaucratic encounters and network governance are navigated, and the intersubjective work of asking for and delivering help is performed. Moreover, complex contradictions that mark (post)modern life are explored, within which new kinds of power and resistance, as well as questions of morality, are being developed and taken up. | Ph.D. | rights | 16 |
| Bloom, Devin | Lovejoy, Nathan | Transitions between Marine and Freshwaters in Fishes: Evolutionary Pattern and Process | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-03 | Evolutionary transitions between marine and freshwater habitats are rare events that can have profound impacts on aquatic biodiversity. The main goal of my thesis is determining the processes involved in transitions between marine and freshwater biomes, and the resulting patterns of diversity using phylogenetic approaches. To test hypotheses regarding the geography, timing, frequency, and mechanisms regulating biome transitions I generated multi-locus time-calibrated molecular phylogenies for groups of fishes that include both exclusively marine and freshwater species. My analysis of anchovies demonstrated that Neotropical freshwater anchovies represent a monophyletic radiation with a single origin in South American freshwaters. I used a phylogeny of herring and allies (Clupeiformes) to investigate the evolution of diadromy, a migratory behavior in which individuals move between oceans and freshwater habitats for reproduction and feeding. These analyses do not support the hypothesis that differences in productivity between marine and freshwater explain the origins of diadromous lineages. Diadromy has been considered an evolutionary pathway for permanent biome transitions, however I found that diadromy almost never produces a fully marine or freshwater clade. Marine lineages often invade continental freshwaters during episodes of marine incursion. In South America, the rich diversity of marine derived fish lineages invaded during Eocene marine incursions from either the Pacific or the Caribbean, and Oligocene marine incursions from the Caribbean. I falsified the highly cited Miocene marine incursion hypothesis, but found that the Pebas Mega-Wetland catalyzed diversification in some marine derived lineages. Using diversification analyses, I investigated the evolutionary processes that have generated disparate patterns of diversity between continents and oceans. I found that freshwater silversides have higher speciation and extinction rates than marine silversides. Lineages accumulation plots suggest ecological limits are not regulating clade growth in either marine or freshwater biomes. Overall, biome conservatism is a widespread pattern among fishes, and this pattern is largely driven by competition in clades that are physiologically capable of biome transitions. Biome transitions are facilitated by rare paleogeographic events, such as marine incursions. Finally, a difference in net diversification rate is the macroevolutionary mechanism that best explains the difference in diversity between continents and oceans. | PhD | biodiversity, fish, conserv, water, marine, ocean | 14, 15 |
| Blum, Joshua | Stewart, Hamish | The Chiarelli Doctrine: Immigration Exceptionalism and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms | Law | 2018-11 | Since the 19th century, American courts have relied on the “plenary power doctrine” to hold that federal immigration law is immune from constitutional challenge. Despite no such rule in Canada, this paper argues that a similar doctrine has silently crept into Canadian constitutional law. With its roots in the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1992 decision in Chiarelli, Canadian courts have set out a doctrine of evasion and technicality that has rendered many of the Charter rights of immigrants and refugees to be effectively non-justiciable. Without explanation, laws that detain, uproot, exile, separate families, and return people to persecution have been exempted from normal standards of justice. This paper charts the emergence of the “Chiarelli doctrine”, critiques its incoherence, and explores why judges have so steadfastly refused to engage with the human rights claims of non-citizens. It concludes with a simple proposal to bring these doctrines of exception to an end. | LL.M. | justice, rights | 16 |
| Bodruzic, Dragana | Wong, Joseph | Sharing Responsibility for Social Welfare Provision between Companies and the State: A Comparison of Brazil and India | Political Science | 2019-11 | In the Global South non-state actors sometimes provide more collectively desirable goods than the state. This includes the engagement of companies through corporate social responsibility (CSR) projects, but an unexplored question remains: under conditions of limited state capacity, how do state and business actors interact in the evolution of systems of social welfare provision? To answer this question, I consider Brazil and India. While existing literature on the relationship between business and the state has found the two to be similar cases, research reveals divergent trends in both how these states promote corporate engagement in social welfare provision, and in how companies take on such roles. I show that Brazil supports social welfare largely through the expansion and universalization of state programs, and promotes CSR through taxation, lending policies and legal arbitration mechanisms. India includes business actors in socioeconomic development to a greater degree and has passed legislation that requires companies to spend a portion of profits on community development in the form of CSR projects. I show that this empirical variation can be explained with reference to three factors: state capacity, prevailing ideas about which actors hold responsibility for social welfare provision, and the historical institutionalization of CSR. State capacity is a permissive condition. Under conditions of limited state capacity, the interplay of prevailing notions of citizenship and ideas about how business and the state should interact combine to shape differing notions of responsibility. In India, the norm that responsibility should be shared between state and corporate actors exists, while in Brazil the state has come to be seen as holding primary responsibility for social welfare. These ideas have subsequently shaped both state policies towards CSR, and companies’ willingness to engage in socioeconomic development. I argue that the Indian state is developing a liberal CSR regime that promotes company engagement in CSR, while also granting companies leeway over their engagement. Companies have responded by expanding their role in delivering collectively desirable goods. The Brazilian state, on the other hand, is developing a statist CSR regime under which the state seeks to maintain control over company involvement in socioeconomic development. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, taxation, institution | 1, 10, 16 |
| Bohnke, Christin | Fenner, Angelica | Postcolonial Theory Reconsidered: Discourses of Race, Gender, and Imperialism in the German-Japanese Realm | Germanic Languages and Literatures | 2017-11 | This study explores the intersections of race and gender as they manifest in film and print media across a century of transnational flows between Germany and Japan. I argue that German-Japanese relations in the twentieth century invite novel re-readings of existing postcolonial theories, resulting in a productive re-evaluation of inherited terms such as ‘hybridity’ and ‘race’. Each chapter of my dissertation is devoted to a particular strand of the cultural fabric woven between Germany and Japan and its consequences for the broader relationship between East Asia and Europe. Chapter two focuses on the German-language magazine East Asia (Ost-Asien) published by the Japanese Tamai Kisak from 1898-1910 in Berlin, on Kitasato Takeshi’s German-language drama Fumio (1900), and on the silent film Bushido (1926). These works negotiate Japan’s complex situation as simultaneously belonging to an Asian and a European cultural realm in often contradictory ways. Chapter three pursues an in-depth analysis of the German-Japanese relationship between 1932 and 1945 via such diverse cultural artifacts as the results of a German-Japanese essay contest held in 1944, German newsreels, and German-Japanese filmic co-productions. My research demonstrates how the cultural co-productions between Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan downplayed questions of race and gender in an attempt to forge a shared identity as Soldatenvölker (soldier people). In my fourth and final chapter, I analyze the contemporary work of one Japanese filmmaker and two Japanese authors who migrated from Japan to Germany after the Second World War: Marie Miyayama, Yoko Tawada and Hisako Matsubara. I will demonstrate how tourism, commodity culture, as well as notions of transculturalism and an increasing convergence of ‘East’ and ‘West’ are paramount for shaping the German-Japanese discourse in the late 20th and early 21st century. | Ph.D. | production, gender | 5, 12 |
| Bolton, Melissa Pauline | Margaret, Schneider | The Impact of MS on Intimate Relationships: The Role of Identity | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-11 | The present study explored the qualitative experience of women with multiple sclerosis to delineate the intrapersonal process, relational and broader social influences in the process of identity preservation/or/change. While there is a breadth of literature on the variables associated with relational satisfaction for those with MS, far less has been conducted on how identity is impacted or influences psychosocial adjustment following illness. The findings of this research were applied to broader principles asserted by identity theory and the identity negotiation theory (INT) in an effort to explore whether these theories could share added insight and value into the experience of these women. In-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-two women from across Canada. Our findings suggest that women with MS undergo significant aspects of identity re-negotiation. Participants entered into a process of re-negotiation when they experienced a change in their social roles based upon physical disability. Within our findings was the emergence of three main groups of participants: Participants who did not experience physically disabling symptoms and thereby did not experience any identity disruption; Participants who experienced identity disruption and experienced difficulty with these changes; and those who fared well in their ability to adapt to physical changes and maintain continuity in aspects of their identity. This was influenced by both intrapersonal variables such as ones ability to maintain continuity in role-identities, find acceptance, positive reframe their situation and express gratitude. Moreover, this was also largely influenced by interpersonal feedback and support from their partner and peers.Relational context played a significant role in identity preservation or alteration. An intimate partner played a paramount role in whether women felt self-verified and nourished while undergoing ambiguity associated with ever-changing physical limitations. The variables that facilitated this process included: commitment to identity; relational clarity; continuity; self-verification and an ability to preserve salient aspects of identity despite physical changes. This study highlights the process of identity disruption for this population and provides valuable insight into the process of preserving salient aspects of identity while navigating physical disability both for the individual and the couple. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Bone, Janet Marie | Peterson-Badali, Michele | Understanding of Nurturance and Self-determination Rights in Maltreated Children and Youth | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2013-11 | Increasing access to rights for young people has highlighted the fact that little is known about their thinking and understanding of rights issues. However, expanding children’s access to rights without adequate knowledge of how they understand, experience and are able to use these rights, may be detrimental to their well-being. Thus far, research has explored conceptions of rights in several populations, including school aged children and young offenders, but little attention has been focused on maltreated children – a particularly vulnerable group. The purpose of the current study was to examine conceptions of and attitudes towards children’s nurturance and self-determination rights in 10-18-year-old children with histories of maltreatment who were living in state care. Associations between rights conceptions and attitudes, and factors related to the experience of maltreatment and child welfare care (e.g. type of maltreatment, type of foster care, time in care, and number of foster care placement changes), were explored. Rights concepts were assessed by having participants generate and discuss children’s rights issues arising in three contexts: home, school and the greater community, as well as through general knowledge questions. Attitudes were assessed using the Children’s ii iii Rights Attitudes questionnaire (Peterson-Badali, Morine, Ruck & Day, 2004), a 32 item likert-scale measure of children’s endorsement of various nurturance and self-determination rights. Results indicated that, while maltreated children’s conceptions of rights did frequently vary from previous findings with non-maltreated children, there were also a number of broad-based similarities. Interestingly, while maltreatment and child welfare care variables were largely unrelated to rights conceptions and attitudes, participants’ understanding did appear to be informed by the particular concerns that emerged from their unique circumstances (e.g., the fulfillment of basic needs such as food, clothing, and education). Findings are discussed in relation to theory, research, policy, and practice. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Bonilla, Sofia | Allen, D. Grant | Protein-Based Conditioners for Enhancing Biosludge Dewaterability | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-06 | Synthetic organic polymers are commonly used conditioners to enhance sludge dewaterability. However, these polymers are petroleum-derived, costly and can be toxic to aquatic systems. There have been limited studies on the potential use of enzymes for enhancing the dewaterability of sludge and little is known about the mechanisms for such enhancement. This thesis investigated the potential of using proteins as conditioners for enhancing biosludge dewaterability. Cationic proteins can enhance biosludge dewaterability. This was demonstrated by the conditioning effect on biosludge of lysozyme and protamine. After screening several enzymes, lysozyme was the only enzyme that showed dewatering improvements, increasing the cake solids content of biosludge by up to 5.8%. Active and inactive lysozyme exhibited a similar ability for enhancing sludge dewaterability suggesting a non-enzymatic mechanism. The mechanism by which cationic proteins, such as lysozyme, enhance biosludge dewaterability appears to be charge neutralization. In agreement with this proposed mechanism, it was found that the surface charge of a protein largely determines its potential as a conditioner. Synthetic polymers consistently outperformed cationic proteins increasing biosludge cake solids by up to 7.4%. However, protamine showed a higher flocculating activity than synthetic polymers on kaolin suspensions (up to 36% higher at pH 7 and pH 9). Cationic proteins are biodegradable and can potentially be extracted from waste which can be an advantage over synthetic polymers. Although the enzymes in this study were not found to positively affect the dewaterability of biosludge, enzymes can improve the anaerobic digestibility of biosludge as a result of their enzymatic activity. Treatment with proteases and glycosidases increased biogas yields by 10% after 62 days of anaerobic digestion. Taken together, the findings of this thesis improved the current understanding of how enzymes and proteins can change biosludge, and how these changes affect its dewaterability and anaerobic digestibility. | Ph.D. | water, waste | 12, 14 |
| Bonnell, Jennifer Leigh | Sandwell, Ruth W. | Imagined Futures and Unintended Consequences: An Environmental History of Toronto's Don River Valley | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-06 | This dissertation explores human interactions with Toronto’s Don River Valley from the late eighteenth century to the present, focusing on the period of intense urbanization and industrialization between 1880 and 1940. Its concentration on the urban fringe generates new perspectives on the social and environmental consequences of urban development. From its position on the margins, the Don performed vital functions for the urban economy as a provider of raw materials and a sink for wastes. Insights derived from the intersections between social and environmental history are at the heart of this project. The dissertation begins by documenting the industrial history of the river and its transformation from a central provider in the lives of early Toronto residents to a polluted periphery in the latter half of the nineteenth century. An analysis of the valley’s related function as a repository for human “undesirables” reveals connections between the processes that identified certain individuals as deficient “others” and similar imperatives at work in classifying difficult or unpredictable environments as “waste spaces.” Efforts to “reclaim” and improve the river are the subject of the remaining chapters. A series of initiatives between 1870 and 1930 aimed at reconfiguring the lower Don as an efficient corridor for transportation and industrial development reveal in their shortcomings and unintended consequences a failure to accommodate dynamic and often unpredictable ecological processes. Reclamations of a different kind are explored in the conservation movement of the twentieth century, through which the valley emerges as a valuable public amenity. The dissertation concludes by investigating how the valley’s history informs current plans to “renaturalize” the river mouth. Throughout, the Don functions as an autonomous and causal force in the city’s history. On this small river on the urban fringe, nature and society worked in mutually constitutive ways to shape and reshape the metropolis. | PhD | conserv, pollut, environment, waste, urban, industr, water | 9, 11, 13, 14 |
| Boodoo, Muhammad Umar Aabid | Gomez, Rafael | Institutions and Stakeholder Influence on CEO Compensation and Corporate Social Responsibility | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2016-11 | This thesis of three (stand-alone) chapters centres around the premise that institutions and stakeholders influence corporate policy, in particular with regards to CEO Compensation, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Chapter 1 focuses on the implicit regulation that unions may pose to corporate governance, and finds that during the financial crisis (2008-2011), union density at corporate level was positively related to non-equity components of CEO pay such as salary and pension contributions with no significant effects on equity components such as options and restricted stock units. These findings have some precedence in the literature but they also go counter to more prominent theoretical predictions and empirical research which posit that unions should in fact reduce CEO compensation. Chapter 2 looks at the influence of unions on CSR profiles and, through the lenses of stakeholder and neo-institutional theories, finds that unions generally tend to gear companies towards more internal rather than external CSR. However, the observed effect of unions on the internal-external CSR profile of companies is not linear. At low levels of unionization, there is a substitution effect where companies substitute internal for external CSR, but at higher levels of unionization, both elements complement and reinforce each other. Drawing from the employment relations literature, I propose that the complementarity perhaps points to a labour-management relationship which is based on more equally-shared power, trust, and loyalty. Chapter 3 looks at the causal impact of regulatory changes on Corporate Social Performance. Using difference-in-difference techniques, I find that forcing companies to disclose CSR practices makes them improve their social performance. I attribute this finding to firms facing higher social pressures and firms being soft targets for activists given that their CSR practices become public information. Further, I find that the social and governance elements of CSR improve more than the environment aspect. This finding bodes well with stakeholder identification and salience theory, which posits that stakeholders who have power and whose claims are more legitimate and urgent will be given more attention by management. All three chapters reinforce the hypothesis that institutional pressure and stakeholder pressure have an impact on Corporate policy. The data used in this thesis come from new and proprietary sources, and cover three different countries (Canada, the UK, and India), adding to the expansion of the management literature. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, institution, governance | 8, 16 |
| Borden, Kira Alia | Isaac, Marney E | Root Ecology for Sustainable Agroecosystems: Intraspecific Variation in a Pan-Tropical Tree Crop | Geography | 2018-11 | Agroecosystems that rely on higher levels of biodiversity and fewer inputs to sustain both crop production and ecosystem function require a dramatic shift away from a one-size-fits-all approach to management. Notably, this means that phenotypic expression of plants on farms cannot be assumed constant, as biotic and abiotic conditions in low-input, biodiverse agroecosystems are complex. To accurately assess and predict plant and ecosystem function in these agroecosystems, we require a more robust understanding of the drivers and consequences of intraspecific variation in plants. This includes root systems, which are arguably understudied but have a critical role in resource acquisition and use. To this end, I carried out research on the root systems of an economically important and widely cultivated tree crop, | Ph.D. | biodiversity | 15 |
| Borduas, Nadine | Abbatt, Jonathan P. D.||Murphy, Jennifer G. | The Atmospheric Fate of Organic Nitrogen Compounds | Chemistry | 2015-11 | Organic nitrogen compounds are present in our atmosphere from biogenic and anthropogenic sources and have impacts on air quality and climate. Due to recent advances in instrumentation, these compounds are being detected in the gas and particle phases, raising questions as to their source, processing and sinks in the environment. With their recently identified role as contributors to aerosol formation and growth, their novel large scale use as solvents in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology and their emissions from cigarette smoke, it is now important to address the gaps in our understanding of the fate of organic nitrogen. Experimentally and theoretically, I studied the chemical atmospheric fate of specific organic nitrogen compounds in the amine, amide and isocyanate families, yielding information that can be used in chemical transport models to assess the fate of this emerging class of atmospheric molecules. I performed kinetic laboratory studies in a smog chamber to measure the room temperature rate coefficient for reaction with the hydroxyl radical of monoethanolamine, nicotine, and five different amides. I employed online-mass spectrometry techniques to quantify the oxidation products. I found that amines react quickly with OH radicals with lifetimes of a few hours under sunlit conditions, producing amides as oxidation products. My studies on amides revealed that they have much longer lifetimes in the atmosphere, ranging from a few hours to a week. Photo-oxidation of amides produces isocyanates and I investigated these mechanisms in detail using ab initio calculations. Furthermore, I experimentally measured isocyanic acid’s Henry’s Law constant as well as its hydrolysis rate constants to better understand its sinks in the atmosphere. Finally, I re-examined the structure-activity relationship (SAR) of organic nitrogen molecules for improved model parameterizations. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Boroomand-Rashti, Siamak | Portelli, John P | Student Decision-Making in the Classroom: An Examination of Existing Theories and a Model for Mainstream Implementation | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | Authors such as Bill Glasser, A. S. Neill, and John Holt have critiqued the compulsory nature of secondary schools and the inherent structure imposed on them by educational authorities. This structure limits student opportunities to make decisions regarding their own learning. This thesis examines the concept of student decision-making and its effect on student learning in educational environments. It argues for inclusion of more student-centred decision-making opportunities as part of a democratic education model. The thesis analyzes different educational theories and models that grant students, to varying extents, chances to make decisions about their own learning. The thesis presents an alternative to the current system: a model that questions imposed structures and places the student at the centre of the decision-making process, while asking educators to consider their roles as facilitators. The thesis begins by summarizing the prescribed Ontario Ministry of Education requirements, followed by an examination of the concept of decision-making itself, beginning with philosophical justifications through analysis of the works of authors such as Gutmann, Levinson, and Brighouse. Next, the thesis examines certain theories of education in order to give context for the proposed model. The existing theories selected range from liberal conceptions to critical pedagogy to “unschooling”; each theory is analyzed and discussed with respect to how student decision-making is supported. The next two chapters focus specifically on existing educational models where student decision-making is recognized through specific methods and strategies. Models include Glasser’s Choice Theory, the Montessori School method, self-determination theory, the Sudbury Valley School, and Summerhill School—the latter two affording students numerous decision-making opportunities in explicit and widespread ways. The thesis concludes with the proposed model, referred to as the Student Decision-Making Model, which could be implemented in Ontario high school classrooms, with considerations made regarding if and how changes to Ministry structure are needed. The model recognizes the student as the central character in the school decision-making process and is illustrated with an exemplar known as the Time Use Exemplar. The model’s combined focus on student choice and Ministry regulation allows it to reach the maximum number of students. | Ed.D. | educat | 4 |
| Borovilos, Rena | Dietsche, Peter | The Impact of Dual Credit Programs on College Students: A Comparative Study of Dual Credit Participants and Non-dual Credit Participants in One Ontario College | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-06 | Dual Credit Programs were introduced to the province of Ontario in 2005 as part of an educational reform initiative designed to help more students graduate high school and transition to college. The number of Ontario Dual Credit Programs has grown tremendously over the years but research has not kept pace with program expansion. This study was conducted to help fill that research gap. This study investigated the impact of Dual Credit Programs on college students by focusing on a group of students who participated in dual credit courses and activities and subsequent postsecondary programs at Humber Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning (Humber College) in Toronto, Ontario. The study also included a comparison group of non-dual credit participants who attended postsecondary education at the same institution and at the same time as the dual credit participants. Best described as a retrospective longitudinal study, this mixed methods research involved three data sources: college student records, college students, and college faculty. The data used in this study was derived from the student records, an online student survey, student interviews, and faculty interviews. College students who were previously enrolled in dual credit courses and comparators with no dual credit experience were found to differ in college preparation, college engagement, and college success but not college persistence. However, independent analyses of the college records of dual credit participants showed them to differ on college persistence depending on the number of dual credit courses they completed. The findings of this study have implications for policy and practice, theory development, and future research in the dual credit area. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Boskovic, Branko | McMillan, Robert | Air Quality, Externalities, and Decentralized Environmental Regulation | Economics | 2013-06 | This dissertation investigates the causes and effects of the decentralization of environmental regulation. In Chapter 1, I provide an historical overview of air pollution regulation in the U.S., which serves as the context for this dissertation. Chapter 2 develops a model of interjurisdictional environmental regulation where economic and pollution spillovers may arise. I show that these spillovers may cause local jurisdictions to seek decentralized regulatory control, which in turn generates inefficient outcomes. Chapter 3 investigates empirically whether the decentralization of air pollution regulation in the U.S. during 1971-1990 caused an increase in transboundary air pollution. I find that the transfer of regulatory authority from the federal government to an individual state generated a significant increase in air pollution observed at monitors in downwind states. These findings vary with distance to those states creating transboundary spillovers and across pollutants with different atmospheric lifetimes. This is consistent with the notion that local governments do not account for externalities that their policies generate. The final chapter estimates a model of interjurisdictional environmental regulation that allows for transboundary pollution and competition for firms. The interdependence in jurisdictions’ regulatory choices from the spillovers creates a challenging identification problem, which I address using exclusion restrictions derived from the atmospheric physics of pollution propagation. For total suspended particulates, transboundary pollution will typically occur only between contiguous neighbours in the direction of the wind. This implies that exogenous factors affecting pollution dispersion (such as wind velocity) in distant jurisdictions can serve as instruments for neighbours' endogenous policy choices: they do not affect a given jurisdiction's regulatory choice directly, but directly affect the choices of that jurisdiction's neighbours. I find that a shift from centralized to state regulatory control causes significant increases in the number of polluting firms that locate in that state and decreases elsewhere; the same shift increases ambient air pollution at home and in other states. I also find that state regulatory choices respond much more to changes in the number of firms than to pollution. Further, I show that the degree of decentralization and the observed pollution outcomes are far from the counterfactual efficient levels. | PhD | wind, environment, pollut | 7, 13 |
| Bourgeois, Robyn Sanderson | Sherene, Razack | Warrior Women: Indigenous Women's Anti-violence Engagement with the Canadian State | Social Justice Education | 2014-11 | This study examines indigenous women's involvement in state-sponsored anti-violence responses since the 1980s. It focuses on three fields of political engagement: (1) the Canadian state politics of family violence; (2) the Native Women's Association of Canada's(NWAC) "Sisters in Spirit" (SIS) initiative and the politics of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls; and (3) the politics of prostitution and the Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. Overall, I argue that despite navigating a complex and colonizing political terrain largely out of their control, indigenous women have been "warrior women," advancing strong anti-colonial anti-violence responses that support the end goal of ending violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada. I also explore how indigenous women have sometimes employed political discourses and strategies that while appearing to offer a valid pathway of resistance, replicate dominant discourses and strategies and, thus, serve to undermine these efforts by securing the colonial Canadian state's authority over indigenous peoples and territories and, therefore, the persistence of violence against indigenous women and girls in Canada. To reinforce both of these claims, this study addresses reception: that is, I argue that the Canadian state's responses to violence against indigenous women and girls have been driven by self-interest and state political agendas which, because of the adversarial nature of colonial domination, rarely coincide with the interests or needs of indigenous women and their communities. Furthermore, I show that the state's response to indigenous women's anti-violence resistance can be favorable when it can be reconciled with its self-interest and political agendas, but quickly moves to appropriation and suppression if these anti-violence politics threaten Canadian state dominance. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Boutcher, Faith D | Gagliardi, Anna | A Multi-Methods Study of the Role of Middle Managers in Brokering Knowledge in Hospitals | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-11 | Hospitals are complex environments that are accountable for the quality of the services they provide. The quality of care in hospitals, however, is often less than ideal – patients may not receive treatments with proven effectiveness or may receive unnecessary or even potentially harmful care (Grimshaw et al., 2012; McGlynn et al., 2003). Hospital managers play a pivotal role in facilitating high quality care and may play a brokerage role in the sharing and use of knowledge in healthcare organizations (Birkin et al., 2018; Urquhart et al., 2019). The body of research on knowledge brokers (KBs) suggests that they may have multiple roles, but prior research has focused primarily on KBs in formal roles external to the practice community they seek to influence (CHSRF, 2003). Little is known about internal KB roles, and it remains unclear how the KB role is enacted in health care. There is a dearth of research on what impact KBs within organizations have in brokering knowledge in hospitals (Burgess Currie, 2014; Glegg Hoens, 2016). Although middle managers (MMs) may potentially play a key role as KBs, how MMs act as KBs in health care has not been adequately studied in Canada or elsewhere (Birkin et al., 2018; Currie et al., 2014). This multi-methods study examined the role that MMs play in brokering knowledge in hospitals, the determinants of their KB efforts, and the impact of those efforts. The findings of a qualitative descriptive study, using semi-structured interviews with MMs in hospitals across Ontario, Canada, conducted concurrently with a Critical Interpretive Synthesis of the literature, found that MMs enact many of the roles and activities of knowledge brokers in hospitals to create, share or implement an innovative or evidence-based practice. In addition to roles and activities, this study contributes to the extant literature by revealing determinants that may influence MM KBs efforts and their impact in hospitals and by providing actionable insights into how to optimize the role. This study also makes recommendations that administrators and policy makers can use to strengthen KB roles to better equip MM KBs to ultimately improve quality of care. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Boutilier, Justin James | Chan, Timothy CY | Emergency Medical Services Response Optimization | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-11 | Time-sensitive medical emergencies are responsible for one-third of all deaths worldwide and similarly affect both developed and developing countries. Emergency medical services (EMS) provide rapid out-of-hospital treatment for time-sensitive medical emergencies. In this thesis, we combine optimization and machine learning to solve challenging EMS response problems in two diverse settings: Dhaka, Bangladesh - an urban center in a developing country, and Toronto, Canada - an urban center in a developed country. These settings are unified by uncertainty and stochasticity leading to new robust and chance-constrained optimization problems. In both cities, we employ machine learning to integrate real data with our optimization models. The second chapter develops a unified framework for emergency response optimization under travel time (edge-length) and demand (node-weight) uncertainty that is suitable for developing urban centers. We traveled to Dhaka to conduct field research resulting in the collection of two unique datasets that we leverage to estimate demand for EMS and to predict travel times in the road network. We carefully integrate our predictions and robust optimization model to develop an efficient solution algorithm for large-scale problems. We use our framework to provide an in-depth investigation into four key policy-related questions. The third and fourth chapters focus on improving EMS response for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Chapter 3 employs a simplified location-queuing framework to quantify the potential benefit from using drones to deliver automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to OHCAs. We demonstrate, using data from 50,000 historical OHCAs covering 26,000 square kilometers around Toronto, that a drone network has the potential to significantly reduce AED delivery time. Chapter 4 develops a two-stage machine learning approach to simulate cardiac arrest incidents and an integrated location-queuing model tailored to the problem of drone-delivered AEDs. Our model combines the p-median framework with an explicit M/M/d queue to determine the minimum number of drones required to meet a pre-specified response time goal (average or 90th percentile), while guaranteeing that a sufficient number of drones are located at each base. We develop a novel reformulation technique that exploits the baseline (EMS) response times, allowing us to optimally solve large-scale instances and provide policy insights. | Ph.D. | health, urban | 3, 11 |
| Bouzigon, Mylène | Roach, Kent | The Application of Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to Searches Conducted for Purposes of National Security Intelligence | Law | 2017-11 | This paper proposes an approach to the interpretation and application of section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms where searches by the state are effected in the course of ensuring national security, more specifically in producing national security intelligence. Having outlined the principles developed by the courts in applying section 8, it suggests that the stateâ s interest in national security is one of the highest order, resulting in it weighing heavily in balancing against individualsâ privacy interests. In the course of its examination, it describes national security intelligence and criminal investigations as different paradigms, justifying different treatments. It proposes that the Hunter v Southam standard remains available in areas where privacy stakes are the most serious, to begin to slide toward that of reasonable suspicion at earlier points than it would in criminal matters, remaining modulated by the expectation of privacy or degree of intrusion. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Bowley, Gregory Freeman Wayne | Green, Andrew | The Weakest Link? Evaluating Private Nuisance Liability in Ontario's Environmental Law Context | Law | 2015-11 | The Court of Appeal for Ontario’s decision in Smith v Inco Ltd illustrates the degree to which the law of private nuisance and Rylands v Fletcher liability has evolved over the last hundred and fifty years from strict(ish) liability tort doctrines to fault-based means of recovery. Inco also offers an opportunity to consider whether this evolution has left some wronged landowners behind. This work considers the evolution of private nuisance and Rylands liability into the tort doctrine(s) they are today, and illustrates the Province of Ontario’s statutory response to that evolution in the environmental contamination context. Ontario’s common law and statutory environmental compensation regime is then evaluated in the context of four distinct measures of wrongfulness from two theoretical schools of liability. Where Ontario’s regime is found to permit wrongful loss without recovery, statutory changes to extend rights of compensation to all landowners suffering wrongful loss are proposed. | LL.M. | environment, rights | 13, 16 |
| Boye, Seika Letitia Ajokor | Johnson, Stephen B | Looking for Social Dance in Toronto's Black Population at Mid-century: A Historiography | Drama | 2017-06 | The documentation of social dance within the lives of African-Canadians at mid-century is largely undocumented. This dissertation asks the question: Where did Toronto’s black population go to social dance during the 1950s and what is learned about African-Canadians via the lens of social dance? Through archival research I interrogate both sources and methodological approaches applied to social dance and/or African-Canadian historical work. I argue against reading African-Canadian documents and histories through dominant African-American historical narratives, proposing that historical and cultural overlaps are better understood in tandem with moments of departure into African-Canadian specificity. I look to Canadian contexts pertaining to social dance, legislation, trans-cultural exchange via black sleeping car porters on the train, leisure venues and music to inform close readings of photographs, newspapers and oral histories. This work emerges at the intersection of dance studies, Black Studies, performance studies, visual culture and cultural history and historiography. It proposes ways to contextualize doubt in archival research when verification is unavailable due to the systemic exclusion of African-Canadian and other marginalized bodies from Canada’s historical record. Through case studies my research looks at: photographs as a complex tool of equal rights advocacy; text-based documents that reveal the reinforcement of racist stereotypes through language about the black dancing body and repeated reports of discrimination in searches for “negro” and “dance” in mainstream newspapers; and oral histories as both invaluable and troubling documents that at once conceal and expose otherwise undocumented information pertaining to racism, social dance and African-Canadian heterogeneity. Despite shifting municipal, provincial and federal legislation in 1950s Toronto, leisure culture remained segregated. Alternative venues where African-Canadians gathered for social dancing include the Home Service Association, Universal Negro Improvement Association and University Settlement House (USH). While each of these spaces had unique mandates in terms of communities served, social dances at all three venues were attended by both black and non-black populations during the 1950s. These social dances are reported to have played otherwise inaccessible African-American blues and rock and roll music and resulted in repeated and ongoing interracial community gathering that was not otherwise reflected within mainstream culture. Social dance is proven to be a site of revelation about race, class, gender, generation and the African-Canadian population at mid-century. | Ph.D. | gender, rights | 5, 16 |
| Bozak, Nadia | Cazdyn, Eric ||Keil, Charlie | The Disposable Camera: Image, Energy, Environment | Comparative Literature | 2008-03 | “The Disposable Camera” theorizes the relationship between the cinematic image and energy resources. Framed by the emergent carbon-neutral cinema, the recent UCLA report on the film industry’s environmental footprint, as well as common perceptions about digital sustainability, “The Disposable Camera” posits that cinema has always been aware of its connection to the environment, the realm from which it sources its power, raw materials and, often enough, subject matter. But because the natural environment is so inextricably embedded within film’s basic means of production, distribution and reception, its effects remain as overlooked as they are complex. “The Disposable Camera” argues that cinematic history and theory can and indeed ought to be reappraised against the emerging ascendancy of environmental politics, all films; as such, all cinema could logically be included within the analytical parameters of this project. Primary focus, however, is given to documentary cinema, as well as notable experimental and narrative films. Selected texts do not overtly represent an environmental issue; rather, they reflexively engage with and theorize themselves as films, thus addressing the technological, industrial, and resource-derived essence of the moving image. Of import here are films that reveal how specific formal or aesthetic choices evidence and critique the ideology attached to resource consumption and/ or abuse. While it composes a distinctly environmental trajectory of the cinematic image, this project likewise historicizes and critiques these same stages and also challenges the utopian and/ or apocalyptical tendencies challenging eco-politics. Additionally, “The Disposable Camera” is committed to mapping out the shift from a distinctly tangible celluloid-based cinematic infrastructure to the ostensibly immaterial form of digital filmmaking. Indeed, the tension that now pits cinema’s material past against its immaterial future corresponds with the decline of natural reality on the one hand and the rise of cyber realities on the other, a parallel condition that fully evidences the increasingly palpable overlap between environmental and cinematic politics. | PhD | energy, industr, consum, production, environment | 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Bradley, Beverly Dawn | Cheng, Yu-Ling | A Systems Analysis and Operations Research Approach to Optimizing Health Technology Allocation for Low-income Countries: The case of medical oxygen for childhood pneumonia in The Gambia | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Medical oxygen is essential for treating childhood pneumonia - the leading cause of death in children under five worldwide. Unfortunately, oxygen is not widely available in many low-resource settings due to challenges such as cost, supply logistics, variability in oxygen demand, poor electricity supply, lack of trained staff, and inadequate maintenance capacity. Currently, no systematic approaches exist to help health systems plan appropriate oxygen supply systems that cost-effectively meet the needs of health facilities given these complex challenges. This thesis presents a novel operations research (OR) approach to medical oxygen technology planning in low-resource settings. A decision-support model â OxOpt â was developed to identify the optimal combination of technologies that will meet the needs of health facilities facing resource constraints. The model applies a unique combination of simulation and optimization approaches never before combined to address a global health resource allocation problem. A discrete-event simulation model simulates health facility-level activities such as clinical demand for oxygen, power interruptions and equipment breakdowns, using primary and secondary data collected specifically for this context. A genetic algorithm-based optimization model identifies optimal technology strategies that will satisfy simulated oxygen needs. The model takes into account seasonal variability in oxygen demand, alternative energy options, and the costs of technology, energy and training. It also estimates the number of patients treated and lives saved as a result of recommended solutions. The design of the OxOpt model is informed by several important analyses. A study of oxygen concentrator maintenance histories contributes previously lacking data on long-term functionality in a low-resource setting, providing insight into the cost of parts, expected lifespans, frequency of failures and technician training needs. Based on an analysis of alternative energy sources, a decision-tree was developed to guide decisions about appropriate energy choices given system costs and grid electricity availability. OxOpt functionality is demonstrated for the case of The Gambia, through scenarios exploring healthcare equity in resource allocation, climate change, and changes in technology. An OR approach to oxygen planning, which can be applied more broadly to other health technologies, can improve the efficient use of limited resources and identify cost-effective solutions that save lives. | Ph.D. | health, production | 3, 12 |
| Braga, Juarez | Lee, Douglas S | Investigation and Management of Coronary Artery Disease Among Patients with Heart Failure in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-06 | Background: The investigation and management of heart failure (HF) requires extensive use of healthcare resources in Ontario, Canada. Methods: Four cohort studies using administrative databases were conducted to describe the epidemiology of HF; to assess the use of cardiac imaging and coronary revascularization; and to determine the significance of non-obstructive coronary artery disease on clinical outcomes. Results: The incidence rate of HF decreased 32% from 380 new cases (95% CI, 376-384) per 100,000 individuals in 2002 to 256 (95% CI, 254-259) per 100,000 in 2016 (P | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Bramwell, Allison F. | Wolfe, David A. | Networks Are Not Enough: Urban Governance and Workforce Development in Three Ontario Cities | Political Science | 2010-06 | Cities everywhere are struggling to develop strategic responses to vast and rapid economic changes brought about by globalization while mediating the social impact of economic change. Workforce development is a policy area that straddles the divide between economic development and social welfare imperatives. This thesis examines local networks supporting workforce development activities in three Ontario cities in order to better understand the dynamics of urban governance in Canada. The analysis focuses on the two central questions of whether cities have the political autonomy to develop their own strategic workforce development networks, and if so, do these networks reflect efforts to integrate economic development and social welfare considerations. It engages with three theoretical perspectives that offer different explanations for local governance dynamics: neo-institutionalist theories argue that higher institutional structures shape and constrain local governance efforts; the critique of neo-liberalism argues that local governance dynamics will be dominated by the interests of capital for economic development; and theories of urban governance argue that cities have the autonomy to shape their own governance efforts. Theories of urban governance also focus analytical attention on how the patterns of interaction between local state and non-state actors shape local governance dynamics. The study does find evidence of local workforce development networks, and finds that these networks vary according to the patterns of interaction between local state and non-state actors. From a neo-institutionalist perspective, however, the study also finds that macro-institutional policy frameworks shape and constrain these local governance efforts. | PhD | cities, urban, institution, employment, economic growth | 8, 11, 16 |
| Bray-Collins, Elinor Flora | Sandbrook, Richard | Sectarianism from Below: Youth Politics in Post-war Lebanon | Political Science | 2016-11 | In this dissertation I examine why sectarianism persists among Lebanese youth. While much of the literature on communal conflict focuses on macro-level factors and elite-based explanations, I look to different, finer, levels of analysis for a fuller picture of how communal dynamics are reproduced, and why they persist—even where the literature would expect to find them lacking, such as among educated, economically secure young Lebanese, in western-oriented universities, or civil society movements. I argue that youth themselves, and particularly the young partisans of Lebanon’s political parties, play an active role in the reproduction and rejuvenation of sectarian political dynamics ‘from below.’ The networking, strategies, and activities of youth within their political spheres constitute a ‘feedback mechanism’ operating at the grassroots to reproduce Lebanon’s particular sectarian institutional configuration. I contend that youth not only contribute to the reproduction of sectarianism, they also help to adapt it and rejuvenate its appeal among their peers. I examine three spheres of youth politics: the university campus; youth-led civil society movements; and youth wings of political parties. I find that far from being the ‘blind followers’ of manipulative elites depicted in the literature, partisan youth act with more autonomy than is often assumed; generating new culture, styles, and social networks—all of which are imbued with sectarian affiliation. I also show that the politics of Lebanese youth are complex, ambivalent, and sometimes contradictory. Youth pursue multiple agendas—not only sectarian ones. In some cases, partisan youth even challenge their sect-based parties to develop more transparent, democratic institutions. Their efforts, however, get shut-down by political elites. Thus, while youth enjoy relative autonomy within their own political realms, the closer they come to the power of Lebanon’s elites, the more limited it becomes. This study contributes to debates on path dependency, the persistence of communal categories, and challenges dichotomous conceptions of youth politics. To understand the political role of youth as more than simply the “hope” or “threat” for democracy, I argue we must look closely at the politics of everyday life and grassroots realms, and take youth seriously as political actors in their own right. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Breen, Andrea | Arnold, Mary Louise | The Construction of Self-identity and Positive Behavioural Change in Pregnant and Parenting Young Women | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2010-11 | The purpose of this mixed method study was to investigate the relationship between the narrative construction of self-identity and positive change in antisocial behaviour in pregnant and parenting young women. It focused on two related aspects of identity development: (1) individuals’ conceptualizations of their personally salient self-values; and (2) “self-action coherence”: the process of constructing self-narratives that establish coherence between one’s personally salient self-values and behaviour. This study also included a qualitative exploration of how becoming a mother in adolescence and early adulthood is related to processes of identity development and behavioural change. Participants were 27 pregnant and parenting young women (ages 16 to 22) recruited from youth-serving agencies in Toronto, Ontario. Participants completed a questionnaire on history of engagement in antisocial behaviour and a semi-structured interview that explored self-identity and critical life experiences. Analyses of participant interviews suggest that positive behavioural change in pregnant and parenting young women is related to active engagement in self-reflection motivated by a convergence of meaning gleaned from a variety of life experiences, including the transition to motherhood. Quantitative findings suggest that: (1) an orientation to relational values is related to lower reported recent engagement in antisocial behaviour; (2) self-action coherence develops across adolescence and early adulthood; and (3) self-action coherence is related to reported positive behavioural change. Overall, the findings suggest that an orientation to relationships is important for establishing positive patterns of behaviour and that positive behavioural change in pregnant and parenting young women involves a process of constructing personally salient self-values and establishing behaviours that cohere with these values. The findings have theoretical implications relating to identity development in adolescence and early adulthood and its relations to behavioural functioning. The findings also have implications for applied work with pregnant and parenting young women with histories of antisocial behaviour. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Brennan, Terri-Lynn Kay | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | Spiritual Diversity in Modern Ontario Catholic Education: How Youth Imbue an Anti-colonial Identity Through Faith | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-11 | Approximately one in two parents across the province of Ontario, regardless of personal religious beliefs, now choose to enrol their children in a public Roman Catholic secondary school over the public secular school counterpart. The Ontario Roman Catholic school system has historically struggled for recognition and independence as an equally legitimate system in the province. Students in modern schools regard religion and spirituality as critical aspects to their individual identities, yet this study investigates the language and knowledge delivered within the systemic marginalization and colonial framework of a Euro-centric school system and the level of inclusivity and acceptance it affords its youth. Using a critical ethnographic methodology within a single revelatory case study, this study presents the voices of youth as the most critical voice to be heard on identity and identity in faith in Ontario Roman Catholic schools. Surveys with students and student families are complemented with in-depth student interviews, triangulated with informal educational staff interviews and the limited literature incorporating youth identity in modern Ontario Roman Catholic schools. Through the approach of an anti-colonial discursive framework, incorporating a theology of liberation that emphasizes freedom from oppression, the voice of Roman Catholic secondary school youth are brought forth as revealing their struggle for identity in a system that intentionally hides identity outside of being Roman Catholic. Broader questions discussed include: (a) What is the link between identity, schooling and knowledge production?; (b) How do the different voices of students of multi-faiths, educators, administrators, and so forth, contradict, converge and diverge from each other?; (c) How are we to understand the role and importance of spirituality in schooling, knowledge production, and claims of Indigenity and resistance to colonizing education?; (d) What does it mean to claim spirituality as a valid way of knowing?; (e) In what way does this study help understand claims that spirituality avoids splitting of the self?; (f) How do we address the fact that our cultures today are threatened by the absence of community?; and (g) What are the pedagogic and instructional relevancies of this work for the classroom teacher? | EDD | inclusive | 4 |
| Brennenstuhl, Sarah K. | McDonough, Peggy ||Worts, Diana | The Welfare State and Socioeconomic Inequalities in Women’s Health Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Four OECD Countries | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014-03 | While it is known that social policies influence the organization of employment and family life, this knowledge is rarely used to understand women's health. The current study uses feminist welfare state theory to examine socioeconomic inequalities in women's health dynamics in countries differing by the extent to which their social policies encourage male breadwinning and female caring/homemaking. The pathways underlying these inequalities are also investigated. Socioeconomic inequalities in health are hypothesized to be largest in strong male-breadwinner states (Britain/Germany), smallest in weak male-breadwinner welfare states (Denmark), and intermediate in modified male-breadwinner states (France). Further, family and income will explain more of health inequalities in strong and modified versus weak male-breadwinner regimes. The analysis uses longitudinal data from the European Community Household Panel (1994-2001) for working-aged women from Britain (n=2,193), Germany (n=2,421), France (n=2,400) and Denmark (n=1,412). The effects of socioeconomic position (measured by education) on self-rated health trajectories are examined using Latent Growth Curve Models; model estimates iii are compared cross-nationally using z-scores. Pathways linking education to health are identified by determining how much employment status, family roles and household income attenuate health inequalities in each country. The analyses are repeated for a sub-sample of mothers of young children—a group for whom policies surrounding the integration of employment and family are critical. Low education predicts worse initial health in all countries, but not faster health decline. Against expectations, education-based inequalities in health are largest in weak male-breadwinner states, but income explains virtually none of that inequality. By contrast, income has a larger explanatory role in regimes where women's unpaid caregiving is encouraged. Employment status is a relatively important mediator of the education-health relationship in all policy contexts, while family roles are not. Restricting the analysis to mothers reveals a much smaller education gradient in health in Denmark, providing evidence that weak male-breadwinner states are most effective at reducing health inequalities among mothers, relative to all women. Feminist welfare state theory better predicts cross-national differences in pathways underlying socioeconomic inequalities in health than the magnitude of inequalities, and may be most useful for understanding the health of mothers with young children. | PhD | socioeconomic, health, women, inequality | 1, 3, 5, 10 |
| Briggs, Anthony Quincy | McCready, Lance T | Looking for Work: How Second Generation Caribbean Black Male Youth Make Sense of Social Mobility, Social Networks and Employment Opportunities in Toronto | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2017-06 | ABSTRACT This dissertation project examines the ways in which working class Caribbean Black Males Youth (CBMY) that are in precariously employed seek to get full- time employment. These CBMY are subjected to being unprepared to access employment for two main reasons, either they fall into the 50% drop out rate (Allahar, 2010; Dei, 2008; Gordon Zinga, 2012; James, 2011) or these men fall into the 52 % of precariously employed in the Greater Toronto Area (Lewchuck et al., 2014; Block Galabuzi, 2011). Post high school transitions into the job market for these Black Males are expressed through their viewpoints. My research is theoretically grounded in Critical Race Theory in acknowledging that racism is embedded in Canadian life moving to capsulize the various complex ways CBMY navigate the demands of the market place in the city of Toronto. The aim is to conceptualize the meaning making process through key elements (i.e., schooling experiences, family experiences, peers conversations) shaped by their choices on deciding on particular kinds of employment. I argue that dominant social ideals of manhood are influenced by privileged, white, male middle-class standards. I therefore interrogate how CBMY make sense of themselves, either within or outside of these conventional standards of manhood and masculinity as it relates to precarious work. Based on these larger research arguments, I critically examine how CBMY address social issues of mobility, social networks and employment opportunities from their own perspectives. | Ph.D. | employment | 8 |
| Bright, Jennifer Elizabeth | Garrett, Frances | Women and Hormones in Tibetan Medical Literature | Religion, Study of | 2017-03 | This dissertation examines a contemporary genre of Tibetan medical writings that seek to integrate Tibetan medical and biomedical notions of “hormones” in the reproductive bodies of women. The analytical lens of ‘gender’ plays a significant role in this dissertation, specifically the ways in which medical and Buddhist language and literature surrounding the Tibetan integration of biomedical notions of hormones deeply implicates modern-day Tibetan national, ethnic, and religious identities. This dissertation provides overviews and analyses of a selection of recently published Tibetan medical works that research methods to integrate and articulate biomedical notions of ‘hormones’ into the Tibetan medical system. These works include book-length commentaries, medical journal articles, book chapters, and home reference books that focus on women’s health. This dissertation analyzes the relationship between establishing medical authority with the practice of textual research in present-day Tibetan medical writing in ‘Chinese Tibet,’ and how ‘hormones’ are the central point of intersection and integration between the Tibetan medical and biomedical systems. Many present-day Tibetan medical authors turn to Buddhist thought, and specifically the texts and language of Tantra, to explicate and articulate the Tibetan understanding of hormones. In their research into the authoritative and classical texts of their traditions, the majority of the authors discussed within this dissertation argue that it can be definitively established that the classical Indo-Tibetan medical and Buddhist writers and experts ‘knew’ about the very subtle substances circulating throughout the body that are today known in biomedicine as “hormones.” | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Bristow, David | Kennedy, Christopher A. | Thermodynamics and the Sustainability of Cities | Civil Engineering | 2013-06 | Cities interact with and rely on energy in complex ways. Fundamentally cities rely upon high quality energy and outputs of low quality for their very existence. The energy flows and transformations enabling cities are tied to physical limits imposed by thermodynamics. Understanding of these limits and the relationships among energy and cities, it is revealed herein, is of vital importance to the sustainability of cities. Four contributions to this understanding are provided. The first articulates how the thermodynamic forces driving cities, together with the dynamic environment within which cities reside, stipulates what type of activities within cities are sustainable. Second, a model depicting the scaling relationship between urban energy use and economic output is devised, and it’s fit to historical data demonstrated via nonlinear regression. By differentiating between energy used to grow and energy used to maintain economic output the model illustrates how reductions in these values on a per dollar basis abets growth while the reverse delays growth, or stops it altogether when energy needs for maintenance become too high. Third, an exergy network conceptualization of cities is developed that reveals the structure of the exergy flows in a city. The topology of the network drastically alters the city’s ability to maximize usefulness of imported energy as well as alter that variability in the amount of usefulness extracted. Finally, the resilience of cities with respect to energy is presented by considering the energy storage and buffer capacity of the urban metabolism. The city of Toronto is shown to have adequate flexibility in food and transport fuels to withstand operation for days without undue interruption of typical activities. Together these differing aspects of the open non-equilibrium details of cities establish an improved prescription of the sustainable city. | PhD | environment, urbban, energy, resilien | 7, 11, 13 |
| Brolley, Michael | Park, Andreas||Malinova, Katya | Essays in Market Microstructure | Economics | 2015-11 | This thesis examines the impact of various financial market innovations on trading in limit order markets, with a focus on financial market quality and investor welfare. Chapter 1 is a joint work with Katya Malinova. We model a financial market where privately informed investors trade in a limit order book monitored by low-latency liquidity providers. Price competition between informed limit order submitters and low-latency market makers allows us to capture trade-offs between informed limit and market orders in a methodologically simple way. In Chapter 2, I develop a model to examine the impact of dark pool trade-at rules. Dark pools—trading systems that do not publicly display orders—fill orders at a price better than the prevailing displayed quote, but do not guarantee execution. This improvement is known as the “trade-at rule”. In my model, investors, who trade on private information or liquidity needs, can elect to trade on a visible market, or a dark market where limit orders are hidden. A competitive liquidity provider participates in both markets. The dark market accepts market orders from investors, and if a limit order is available, fills the order at a price better than the displayed quote by a percentage of the bid-ask spread (the trade-at rule). The impact of dark trading on measures of market quality and social welfare depends on the trade-at rule, relative to the price impact of visible limit orders. A dark market with a large (but not too large) trade-at rule improves market quality and welfare; a small trade-at rule, however, impacts market quality and social welfare negatively. Price efficiency declines whenever investors use the dark market. For a trade-at rule at midpoint or larger, the liquidity provider does not post limit orders to the dark market. Chapter 3 is also a joint work with Katya Malinova. We study a financial market where investors trade a security for liquidity reasons. Investors pay a ‘take’ fee for trading with market orders, or a ‘make’ fee for limit orders—so-called ‘maker-taker pricing’. When all investors face the same fee schedule, only the total exchange fee per transaction has an economic impact, consistent with previous literature. However, when a subset of investors pay only the average exchange fee through a flat fee per trade---a common practice in the industry---maker-taker fees have an impact beyond the total fee. In comparison to a single-tier fee system, a ‘two-tiered’ fee system leads to a fall in trading volume and investor welfare; investors who pay maker-taker fees directly earn higher average profits than investors that pay an average flat fee per trade. Under this “two-tiered pricing”, increasing or decreasing the maker rebate can improve trading volume and welfare; however, only a reduction in the maker fee maximizes volume and welfare, and reduces differential profits to zero. | Ph.D. | financial market, innovation | 9, 10 |
| Brown, Kevin Antoine | Fisman, David N | Developing Individual and Population-level Models of Hospital-acquired Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) to Enable the Timely Identification of High-Risk Patients, to Facilitate Inter-Institution Comparisons of Incidence, and to Promote Quality Improvement | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014-11 | Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a health-care associated disease that causes diarrhea and, in more severe cases, colitis and death. It is the most common of hospital-acquired infections in North America. In this thesis, I present 3 studies elucidating individual and population-level risk factors for CDI. In a meta-analysis of antibiotic effects on community-associated CDI risk, I found that Clindamycin, fluoroquinolones, and cephalosporins, monobactams and carbapenems (CMCs) had the largest effects on CDI risk, while macrolides, sulfonamides and trimethoprim and penicillins had lesser associations with CDI risk. I noted no effect of tetracyclines on CDI risk. A retrospective case-cohort analysis of 2,067 adults hospitalized at a tertiary hospital in Ontario, Canada, between June 2010 and May 2012 was conducted to assess the magnitude and duration of antibiotic effects on CDI risk. I found that risks due to antibiotic exposure begin two days after the initiation of antibiotics and are most elevated for a period of 5 days after antibiotic cessation. In this cohort study, exposure to symptomatic CDI cases was not associated with increased risk of infection. I carried out a time-series analysis on 16 years of monthly CDI incidence rate data in the United States to describe the relationship between CDI incidence and hospital pneumonia and influenza (P) prevalence at a hospital network level. Peak P prevalence preceded peak CDI incidence by 9 weeks and I found that surges in hospital P prevalence were associated with disproportionately large impacts on CDI incidence that lasted for 13 months. These findings suggest that control of CDI must involve a strengthening of antimicrobial stewardship initiatives in order to diminish inappropriate antibiotic exposures. Initiatives that would lessen the impacts of seasonal respiratory infections on hospital admissions, including influenza vaccination and programs to reduce pneumonia-associated hospitalizations, could also help stem the increasing incidence of CDI in the North American health care system. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Brown, LeAnn Christine | Nagy, Naomi | Phonetic Cues and the Perception of Gender and Sexual Orientation | Linguistics | 2015-03 | Phonetic variation is a well-established type of cue used in the construction and perception of social identities such as gender, concepts of masculinity and femininity, and sexual orientation. Less established is how cues indexed with inter-related identities are integrated or weighted relative to each other. Because the cues identifying gender and sexual orientation are potentially overlapping, (i.e., gay and lesbian speakers are often perceived as using cues indexed with the opposite gender), in this study, experimental methods are used to assess cue effects. Experimental cues used are fundamental frequency (f0), first and second vowel formants (Fn), and the center of gravity of the fricative /s/. These were chosen as all were significant in the perception of sex, gender and/or sexual orientation, or in terms of production by such groups in previous studies. In this study's experiments, three groups of participants (n=105) heard target stimuli consisting of /V/, /sV/ or /Vs/, created by combining altered and unaltered cues. Each participant heard a stimulus and chose a perceived gender and sexual orientation for that stimulus. Results indicate that the outcomes for the dependent variables of Perceived Gender, Men's Perceived Sexual Orientation (MPSO) and Women's Perceived Sexual Orientation (WPSO) result from the same cues but that cue integration strategies vary. The area of greatest overlap is for Perceived Gender and MPSO with F0 Up cues resulting in more women and gay men percepts, and FN Down cues resulting in more men and straight men percepts. For WPSO results the vocalic cues strongly affect each other, although F0 Up cues tend to result in more straight women percepts. These results suggest that listeners use experienced and stereotypic cues when determining gender and sexual orientation. The results also suggest that listeners use an androcentric template for all three dependent variables. Cue variants are not marked with specific indexical meanings such as "women" or "femininity", but are marked in terms of man-based norms. Crucially, cue integration involves both social markedness based on stereotypes and phonetic markedness based on cue ranges. Cue Integration Theory is proposed to account for the empirical results for all three dependent variables. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Brown, Sharon Leonie | Wane, Njoki | Mosaic Paths to New Knowledge: Conceptualizing Cultural Wealth from Women of Colour as They Experience the Process of becoming Doctoral Recipients | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2012-11 | Abstract The aim of this study is to identify the positive contributions women of colour (WOC) bring to higher education as they experience the process of becoming doctoral recipients. Their experiences are presented as a new epistemology—a theory of knowledge—as part of the larger area of cultural capital theory. The experiences of WOC in Canadian doctoral programs are conceptualized as ‘cultural wealth’ and new knowledge because evidence reveals that the intrinsic value of their contributions has evolved from unique cultural and historical resources. The discursive theoretical frameworks of Womanist theory, critical race theory (CRT) and cultural capital theory are utilized to guide the analysis of the findings. This study establishes the experiences of the participants as valuable and distinctive knowledge by emphasizing the intersectionality of race, class, gender, culture, and spirituality. The research suggests that the experiences of women of colour are informed by an inner wisdom woven from the mosaic, or uniquely diverse paths, which these women have taken toward earning their doctorate degree. The existing interpretation of cultural capital theory - originally established by Bourdieu and Passeron (1977) - is considered the only social marker of wealth in socio-economical and educational research. Although previous studies have challenged this dominant perspective, this current study presents a unique interpretation of cultural capital theory by expanding the notion of cultural wealth from a Canadian perspective. This study highlights the importance of the racial/cultural context that is highly visible in Canadian culture but seldom addressed in higher education research. In addition, the aim of my study is to establish the wealth of “Mosaic Paths” found among the cultural identity of WOC, as a new epistemology in Canadian higher education. Specifically, the journey toward achieving a doctoral degree is often over-generalized in higher education. This study will reveal the realistic paths that WOC must traverse in order to realize their goals. Finally, the findings from the data reveal six major sources of cultural wealth: 1) Mother’s Influence, 2) Age Capital, 3) Mentorship, 4) Survival Strategies, 5) Negotiating Academic Culture or Know-how, and 6) Spirituality. | PhD | equitable, women | 4, 5 |
| Browne, Dillon T. | Jenkins, Jennifer M | Social Disadvantage Gets Inside The Family: Exploring Biopsychosocial Family Processes in the Emergence of Developmental Health Inequalities | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2016-11 | Children raised in socially disadvantaged settings often exhibit poorer developmental health in a variety of domains, including socioemotional, medical and cognitive functioning. This relationship appears to operate in part via a cascade linking poverty and cumulative environmental adversity to early biological risk and interpersonal family process. Moreover, these mechanisms are suggested to function over-and-above the direct effects of material investments in childrenâ s healthy development and wellbeing. Despite this knowledge, there remains a need for longitudinal developmental research examining the nature in which environmental risk in early life impacts multiple and distinct intermediary mechanisms that are manifest within the proximal family environment. In order to address this limitation, the present dissertation provides three separate empirical studies outlining the nature in which social disadvantage impacts family process (in the form of interpersonal sensitivity), and early biological risk (in the form of birth weight). Data for the present dissertation came from the Kids, Families and Places Study, which is a population-based prospective birth cohort of newborn infants and their families from Toronto and Hamilton, Ontario, Canada (N=501 families). The present dissertation demonstrates that social disadvantage (1) impacts cognitive functioning in a number of domains at the time of school entry via maternal sensitivity and material investments, (2) disrupts the receipt of cognitive sensitivity during family interactions across multiple dyads, particularly for younger siblings, and (3) simultaneously increases developmental risk for multiple siblings-per-family and tends to increase sibling differences in developmental experience. To conclude, implications for the study of developmental health and family science are discussed. | Ph.D. | poverty, socioeconomic | 1 |
| Bryant, Rachel | Sumner, Wayne||Walsh, Denis | Tragic Moral Conflict and Endangered Species Recovery | Philosophy | 2018-11 | Given the state of the art of conservation, and given the rapidity with which species are disappearing as the result of human economic activities, members of the societies that encourage and benefit from these activities, and that undertake the species recovery process, often face a terrible choice: either 1) intensively manage species populations and ecological communities by killing, harming, making vulnerable to harm, or controlling the most important aspects of the lives of many individual animals; or 2) allow entire species to go extinct. I call situations in which people face this kind of choice recovery predicaments. Such predicaments seem to be tragic moral conflicts, or situations in which whatever one does—even the right act that is right on the whole—will be seriously wrong. This dissertation explores whether working from within Kant’s deontology, Ross’s deontology, or utilitarianism excuses environmental ethics for neglecting the problem of tragic moral conflict, or for failing to recognize recovery predicaments as tragic moral conflicts. It asks three questions of each theory. Does it have what it takes to admit that the right act can be wrong in some way? If so, does it have what it takes to admit that the right act can be seriously wrong? And if it does, can it interpret recovery predicaments as situations in which whatever one does will be tragically wrong? The dissertation argues that, for each theory, the answer to the first two questions is yes. None of the theories excuses us for ignoring the problem of tragic moral conflict. For both Ross’s and Kant’s deontologies, the answer to the third question is also yes, but for utilitarianism, the answer is indeterminate. This means that from within utilitarianism, we cannot say whether a recovery predicament is a tragic moral conflict, but from within the other two theories we can say that it is. | Ph.D. | environment, conserv | 13, 14 |
| Bryce, Erin Kathryn | Tracy, Rogers | Six Feet under the Weather: The Short-Term Relationship between Synoptic Weather and Daily Mortality | Anthropology | 2014-11 | The fact that weather affects human health has been thoroughly documented. However, few studies have used longitudinal archival meteorological AND demographic information in their analyses, or addressed multiple research questions in a single location. This study investigates the effects of weather extremes, unseasonable weather, weather changes, and local winds on the rate of daily mortality in the British colony of Gibraltar. By addressing several key questions at once, the interactions between different components of the weather and their collective effects on the body can be examined, which accurately reflects the complexity of real-life conditions. Daily mortality and meteorological information was collected for the period 1859-1989. In total, 39,926 individual deaths over 44,246 days were analyzed. Daily weather was classified using the Spatial Synoptic Classification (SSC). Weather change was defined by the Euclidean distance between sequential days' weather variables. Wind direction and wind speed were used to evaluate local winds. Oppressive dry tropical and moist tropical days in the summer were associated with higher mor-tality; moist polar conditions in the winter were associated with an increase in mortality for children under 5 and males over 65. Moist tropical days in the winter were associated with decreased mortality for the entire population but increased mortality for males and females over 65 and for males aged 5-65. Moist polar days in the summer were healthy for the entire population. Days with large and small weather changes were associated with an excess of mortality compared to days of intermediate weather change. Local winds were found to be positively associated with daily mortality, although the direction of the wind was not significant. Since humans face an elevated risk of mortality during days with large or small changes in the weather, public health interventions should target not only temperature extremes, but also take the variability of the weather into account. | Ph.D. | weather, health | 3, 13 |
| Buchan, Sarah | Kwong, Jeffrey C | Using Laboratory-Confirmed Outcomes to Study Pediatric Influenza and Influenza Vaccine Epidemiology in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-06 | Annual epidemics of seasonal influenza continue to cause substantial morbidity in young children. Influenza is among several respiratory viruses that cause illness in children, in addition to a large burden on the healthcare system and society, but is the only one for which a vaccine is available. In this dissertation, I present three studies regarding the epidemiology of influenza in children under the age of five years using a novel approach of linking laboratory and health administrative data in Ontario. In a systematic review and meta-analysis of children presenting to healthcare who are tested for influenza, I found that 20% (95%CI 15%-25%) have laboratory-confirmed influenza, with variation across subgroups. I found that influenza represents a large overall burden of disease and a substantial proportion of healthcare encounters for respiratory illnesses. In a retrospective cohort study, I compared the characteristics, outcomes, and relative severity of illness of children who were hospitalized and tested for influenza A, influenza B, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and were positive for only a single virus. I found that in-hospital outcomes and post-discharge healthcare utilization in children with no identified comorbidities were similar by virus type, but post-discharge healthcare utilization was higher for those with influenza in those with underlying comorbidities. I observed similar severity of illness, based on in-hospital outcomes, and cost of hospitalization between viruses. In a test-negative study, I estimated vaccine effectiveness (VE) against laboratory-confirmed influenza hospitalizations in children aged 6-59 months for the 2010-11 to 2013-14 seasons. I found that overall, VE was 51% (95%CI 38%-61%) for any vaccination, with variation by vaccination status (full vs. partial), season, age group, and subtype. These results indicate that large numbers of pediatric hospitalizations resulting from influenza infection could be prevented by promoting seasonal influenza vaccination each year. Overall, these results contribute to our understanding of pediatric respiratory viruses in Ontario, with each individual chapter adding to our knowledge regarding burden, severity, and prevention of influenza infection. These results can inform families, clinicians, public health practitioners, and policy makers in order to help reduce the impact of annual influenza infection in young children. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Buick, Catriona Jane | Metcalfe, Kelly | Understanding the Role of Oncogenic Human Papillomavirus (HPV) Status on Adherence Behaviors Among Women with Abnormal Cervical Cytology | Nursing Science | 2017-11 | The discovery of oncogenic Human Papillomavirus (HPV) as the precursor to cervical cancer is a significant advancement in public health. However, the use of HPV testing has increased the complexity of cervical screening, as it is associated with elevated psychosocial burden and perceived risk of cancer in some women. What remains to be seen is if knowledge of oneâ s oncogenic HPV status impacts on adherence to follow-up recommendations for cervical screening abnormalities, a modifiable health behavior that is strongly associated with the primary prevention of cervical cancer. Insomuch as adherence rates remain low in women with cervical screening abnormalities, it is crucial that we understand which factors impact on adherence to follow-up recommendations across a range of clinical manifestations. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to: 1) to identify if clinical, demographic or psychosocial factors predict non-adherence with recommended follow-up after initial consultation; 2) to identify clinical, demographic and psychosocial variables associated with HPV related burden and; 3) to describe the clinical and demographic characteristics of participants according to pre-post smoking and HPV vaccine immunization patterns. This study examined 186 women referred to a large Toronto colposcopy clinic. The HPV Status Adherence Conceptual Framework was used to guide survey development and to contextualize results. The findings suggest that non-adherence to colposcopy follow-up exists and is problematic. Specifically, younger women (OR=0.73, p | Ph.D. | women | 3 |
| Bullen, Mary Doreen | Eichler, Margrit | Transitioning To High School: Parent Involvement And School Choice | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-06 | Abstract The disquiet around parent-school relationships is the focus of this study. During transitioning to high school, the boundaries around this relationship changes. Few studies have addressed these changes, particularly from parents’ perspectives. It is parents’ voices which are central to this study. This dissertation uses the standpoint of parents, which is often absent or silent in educational literature and research. Within a critical and constructivist paradigm, and influenced by Institutional Ethnography, two elementary schools (divergent in race, social class, ethnicity and immigrant status) and one high school are the sites for interviews with 14 parents and 13 educators. 11 parents were re-interviewed after their children entered high school. Four questions were addresses: How has parent involvement come to be understood? How is the parent-school relationship experienced by parents and educators? How and why are decisions made around the transition and school choice process? Do parents’ perceptions align/vary from those of educators? Based on historically constructed notions and assumptions, parent involvement is usually understood as a visible and public demonstration of appropriate and caring parenting ignoring interactions outside of the public’s gaze. Illustrated through Parent Council membership, parent involvement is gendered, classed, culturally related and race, ethnic and immigrant status specific. Some parents had more social, cultural, economic and emotional capital to bring to the transition process, while others were marginalized and had to rely on/trust the education system. School and Board policies and procedures were examined and their varied affects on parents’ experiences and choices analysed. Educators assisted in disseminating assumptions around parent-school relationships and contributed to inequitable parent knowledge, partially as a result of too little training. By examining social, economic and cultural positioning of parents within local school communities, positive parent-school relationships can be nurtured, which political pundits and educationalists have failed to accomplish. During transitioning, organization and social discontinuities contributed to parent and school disconnects and constructed borderlands in the parent-child-school relationship. This study evidenced the fragility of the parent-school relationship, especially during this vulnerable time for parents and thus, reflective questions are presented in hope of initiating a crucial conversation in local school communities. | EDD | equitable | 4 |
| Burdyny, Thomas | Sinton, David | System-based Approaches for the Enhancement of Catalytic CO2 Reduction Reactions | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2017-11 | This thesis focusses on the importance of system design, specifically the engineering of gas, liquid and solid catalyst interactions, in enhancing catalytic CO2 reduction processes. The most impactful contributions of this thesis are: the enhancement of CO2 production rates via morphology-induced mass transport (Chapter 3); the manipulation of local reaction environments to increase electrochemical CO2-to-ethylene production in an H-cell configuration (Chapter 4); the design of an abrupt reaction interface adjacent to a gas-liquid interface for high current and selective ethylene production in an alkaline media (Chapter 5); and the creation of a scalable multi-phase photocatalytic reactor (Chapter 6). While material science and chemistry are essential in the creation and functionality of CO2 reduction catalysts, the overall system surrounding the solid catalyst plays a similar influential role in determining the overall efficiency, product distribution and production rate. By understanding the complex interactions between a solid catalyst, liquid electrolyte and gas reagents/products, the underlying influences of system engineering on catalyst performance can be extracted and improved. Using this approach catalyst surface morphology is revealed to increase limiting current densities multifold by enhancing the natural mass transport effects of departing CO2 reduction products. The pH and CO2 gradients formed at the catalystâ s surface during the reaction similarly influence product selectivity, most notably the ratio between hydrogen, methane and ethylene using copper-based catalysts. Equipped with this understanding, tuning catalyst morphology under differing buffering capacities allowed for traditionally coupled CO2 limitations and electrode pH to become partially decoupled; ethylene production under ambient conditions then improved significantly as compared to a catalytic system void of such considerations. Expanding on this knowledge CO2 reduction catalysts were designed to operate in a highly alkaline environment where the reaction onset potential for ethylene formation was found to be reduced to unparalleled levels. The system design, which manipulated a sub-100 nm diffusion interface, similarly led to half-cell power conversion efficiencies higher than previous efforts at significantly improved production rates. | Ph.D. | cities, production, environment | 11, 12, 13 |
| Burgess, Allison H. F. | Dehli, Kari | It's Not A Parade, It's A March!: Subjectivities, Spectatorship, and Contested Spaces of the Toronto Dyke March | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-11 | In this thesis I address the following questions: (1) How do dykes take up space in public in contemporary cities? (2) How does the ‘marching dyke’ emerge as a subject and what kind of subject is it? (3) How, in turn, do marching dykes affect space? In order to examine these questions I focus on the Toronto Dyke March to ask how it emerged in this particular time and place. The answer to each of these questions is paradoxical. I argue that the Dyke March is a complex, complicated and contradictory site of politics, protest and identity. Investigating ‘marching dykes’ reveals how the subject of the Dyke March is imagined in multiple and conflicting ways. The Toronto Dyke March is an event which brings together thousands of queer women annually who march together in the streets of Toronto on the Saturday afternoon of Pride weekend. My research examines how the March emerged out of a history of activism and organizing and considers how the March has been made meaningful for queer women’s communities, identities, histories and spaces. My analysis draws together queer and feminist poststructuralism, cultural geography literature on sexuality and space, and the history of sexuality in Canada. I combine a Foucaultian genealogy with visual ethnography, interviews and archival research. I argue that the Dyke March is an event which is intentionally meaningful in its claims to particular spaces and subjectivities. This research draws connections across various bodies of scholarship and offers an interdisciplinary contribution to the literature, contributing to discussions of queer women’s visibility and representation. Although my analysis is focused on Toronto as a particular site, it offers insight into broader queer women’s activist organizing efforts and queer activism in Canada. | PhD | queer | 5 |
| Burke, Jason Robert | Farish, Matthew ||Goonewardena, Kanishka | In the Defence of Cities: A History of Security Planning in Canada | Planning | 2012-11 | Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, urban spaces have become increasingly subject to various methods of surveillance and control, especially by physical means. Yet, while 9/11 acted as a catalyst for rapid increases in security measures, the process of securitization has a much longer history. Accordingly, this research looks at how security has been planned and how this has changed over the last four decades in the context of Canada. The dissertation focuses on three Canadian case studies to explore the evolution of security planning: the October Crisis with an emphasis on Montreal (1970), the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Vancouver (1997), and the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. Each case represents a significant moment in Canadian security planning and provides insight into the shifting structure of Canada’s security apparatus. Furthermore, these cases offer a lens into the historical transformations of the Canadian ‘security state’. While the issues and actions associated with these cases cut across local, national, and international scales, the impacts of security measures in each were mostly local and urban. To show how Canadian urban spaces have been transformed and controlled by an evolving security framework, I argue that security planning must be understood as a form of urban planning, although one that remains to be properly acknowledged by the profession or even the academic discipline of planning. Given the democratic claims of liberal planning and its professed concern for the good city, it is therefore significant that the security measures studied in these case studies were implemented without democratic scrutiny but with significant consequences for urban experience. This dissertation tells a story of security planning in Canada, demonstrating how its practices have changed over time in ways that are at odds with liberal political values cherished by mainstream planning. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Burley, Jessica Lynn | Strange, William | The Socio-Economics of Neighbourhoods and Cities: Papers in Urban Economics | Economics | 2017-11 | This thesis explores the socio-economics of neighbourhoods and cities and the role that changes to labour market opportunities and access to amenities play in determining housing demand and demographic shifts. Many cities are experiencing a spatial inversion in terms of neighbourhood demographics -- city centers are becoming both wealthier and more expensive while peripheral, suburban neighbourhoods are becoming both poorer and less expensive. In a dynamic context, I consider the social and economic processes that contribute to neighbourhood change. Chapter 1 contributes to the literature on neighbourhood change by providing a comprehensive characterization of the dynamics of New York City neighbourhoods. Using a structural breakpoint analysis I provide evidence of which neighbourhoods have changed, when they changed, and the magnitude of the change. I show a clear spatial and temporal pattern to neighbourhood change and I present several results: price increases are larger than price decreases; increases in housing demand precede increases in price growth; and downtown neighbourhoods are increasingly wealthier and a greater fraction white. Chapter 2 explores the extent to which changing labour market characteristics contribute to the patterns of neighbourhood change. I construct a spatial-Bartik instrumental variable as an exogenous measure of neighbourhood labour demand, which is then used to generate predicted income growth rates and house price growth rates. I find that in New York City 21% of the variation in income growth rates and 41% of the variation in house price growth rates between 1990 and 2010 can be explained by exogenous labour demand shocks. Chapter 3 focuses on the influence of the built environment on social behaviours. I find a strong and positive cross-sectional relationship between the built environment and social interactions. Once I address the endogenous decision of where to live, the significant effects found in the cross-section disappear. This implies that there is sorting of relatively social individuals into more walkable neighbourhoods. I find some evidence that this sorting is correlated with life-cycle changes that may affect both residential decisions and social relationships. | Ph.D. | labour, cities, urban | 8, 11 |
| Burshell, Jessica Lynn | Bowers, Anne||Mitchell, William | Essays on organizations in market emergence processes | Management | 2017-11 | Economic growth is associated with market dynamics based on new products and ideas. However, products that do not fit into the established market structure face risks, including being overlooked, undervalued, and failing. To overcome those risks, organizations can try to influence emergence of new market structures with which to be associated. My dissertation draws on theories related to organizational strategy, institutions, market categories, and social movements to examine how organizations engage in processes of market emergence. My dissertation deploys a social constructionist perspective wherein it is through social interactions and socio-cognitive processes that market structures emerge. Using this lens, I examine choices by organizations and external reactions to them by focusing on environments in which interactions are likely. The first study examines the strategic choice to claim a label by members of an emerging market category. We introduce the concept of proximate social space to examine the responsiveness of organizations to their external environment defined by either geography or market segment. In the context of a niche nonprofit practice in the U.S., we find that organizations choose to be early claimants of a label relative to their local geographic region, even as they exhibit awareness of their peers within their market segment. The second study examines the activities social movement organizations can use to increase awareness and market demand for certified products. Research on social movements has identified product certifications as a means for influencing the market, however certifications require awareness to function as intended. In a series of chapters using the context of LEED certification for environmentally-friendly buildings, I examine the strategies that social movement organizations can use to influence awareness of their certification, and the relationship between awareness and demand for that certification in the local geographic regions where interactions occur. I conclude by identifying both theoretical and practical implications based on the insights in each of the chapters. | Ph.D. | economic growth, industr | 8, 9 |
| Burtnyk, Mathieu | Bronskill, Michael | Conformal Heating of the Prostate for the Treatment of Localized Cancer using MRI-guided Transurethral Ultrasound | Medical Biophysics | 2011-06 | Prostate cancer is the most prevalent cancer and the third-leading cause of cancer-related death among men in the developed world, with the number of cases expected to double within the next 15 years. Conventional therapies offer good control of local disease but are associated with high complication rates reducing long-term health-related quality-of-life significantly. MRI-guided transurethral ultrasound therapy has emerged as an attractive, minimally-invasive alternative for the treatment of localized prostate cancer, where the entire gland is heated to temperatures sufficient to cause irreversible thermal coagulation. A device inserted in the urethra uses multiple ultrasound transducers to produce directional heating patterns directly in the prostate. Adjusting the ultrasound power, frequency and device rotation rate enables high spatial control of the thermal lesion. MRI provides information essential to the accurate targeting of the prostate; anatomical images for device positioning and treatment planning, and quantitative temperature measurements within the prostate to compensate for dynamic tissue changes, using feedback control. This thesis develops a complete treatment delivery strategy for producing conformal regions of thermal coagulation shaped to whole-gland prostate volumes, while limiting the thermal impact to the surrounding important anatomy. First, acoustic and thermal simulations incorporating a novel temperature feedback controller were used to model and shape regions of coagulation to human prostate geometries with a high degree of accuracy. Second, treatment delivery strategies were developed and simulated to reduce thermal injury to the surrounding anatomy, below the threshold for sustained damage. Third, experiments in tissue-mimicking gel phantoms confirmed the predictive accuracy of the simulations and the feasibility of producing conformal volumes of coagulation using transurethral ultrasound devices and MRI-temperature feedback. This work forms the basis of clinical treatment delivery methods and supports the use of the simulations as a planning tool to enhance the inherent compromise between safety and efficacy on a patient-specific basis. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Burton, Wendy Jackson | Sorensen, Andre | From Greenspace to Greenbelt: The Role of Civil Society in Landscape Protection in the Toronto Region | Geography | 2016-11 | Greenspace has been increasingly identified as an important element of environmental, social and economic health, yet proponents of greenspace protection from within civil society often find themselves with limited resources in political battles with powerful pro-growth coalitions. This was the case with the three citizen-led campaigns that managed to protect progressively larger landscapes in the Toronto region, culminating with the creation of a 1.8-million-acre greenbelt. How did they do this? This study uses qualitative methods and draws on institutionalism, participation theory, and social capital approaches to examine the evolution of environmental civil society groups and how they learned to exploit governance processes to persuade state actors to break with the status quo. The study looks at how cultural understandings, historical legacies, legal institutions, planning rules and public preferences shaped the landscape of the Toronto region. The research finds that citizen environmentalists were able to use their social capital resources as civil society groups to adapt governance structures – particularly public participation processes – to build a durable constituency for greenspace protection with payoffs for political actors. Particularly influential were: historical legacies of deploying natural solutions to prevent natural disasters, public participation exercises that were open to manipulation, bridging social capital that helped build large coalitions, and bonding social capital that helped coalition members unite and carry out strategies that included keeping the vision alive for decades as election cycles came and went, and, finally, protecting new state partners from criticism. However, state actors under the influence of the still-strong growth coalition remain reluctant stewards of the environment and have chosen implementation strategies that could undermine greenspace protection over time. The study adopts an inclusive definition of civil society and finds that a new typology based on two measures of social capital – inclusiveness and (private vs. public) interests – shows that certain groups are more useful in coalitions campaigning to expand public goods. The study also finds that difficulties in developing the social capital needed to develop working relationships in short-term stakeholder groups were overcome by resorting to selective membership and secret meetings. | Ph.D. | governance, environment, urban | 11, 13, 16 |
| Buse, Christopher G. | Poland, Blake | Analyzing an Emerging Field of Public Health Practice in Ontario, Canada: The Case of Climate Change Adaptation | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-11 | This dissertation uses the case of public health adaptation to climate change in Ontario, Canada to develop an understanding of how new fields of public health practice emerge, and how practices become legitimated by practitioners. Since climate change became an identified public health issue by way of the Ontario Public Health Standards, 2008 (OPHS), and given that health equity is a normative dimension of practice and climate change holds the potential to exacerbate existing health inequalities, this work makes three primary contributions. First, I utilize Bourdieu’s theory of practice to describe how social change occurs within the professional field of public health. Second, I share practitioner interpretations of the OPHS to develop an understanding of how policy on climate change adaptation is translated into practice. Third, I highlight the role of health equity in climate change work, as practiced by Ontario public health practitioners. The dissertation draws on data from a web-scan of the thirty-six Ontario public health unit web pages and twenty in-depth interviews with public health practitioners from twenty health units. By identifying specific practices and interpretations of public health policy related to climate change, I show how specific practices are imbued with discursive meaning that shape how public health action on climate change is framed and understood as ‘legitimate’. Findings illustrate that climate change is very much an emerging field of practice, with a variety of approaches taken by practitioners including inaction, the repackaging of existing environmental health activities, and championing innovative practices. I demonstrate how practitioners selectively utilize policy to both enable and constrain public health action on climate change, and to document how health equity is employed as a discursive strategy by the champions of this work to try and legitimate climate change adaptation as a unique sub-field of public health practice. | Ph.D. | environment, climate, health | 3, 13 |
| Butler, Colleen Dorelle | Townsend, David | Queering the Classics: Gender, Genre, and Reception in the Works of Hrotsvit of Gandersheim | Medieval Studies | 2016-11 | This thesis examines how the worldâ s first female dramatist, the tenth-century canoness Hrotsvit of Gandersheim, challenged pedagogical interpretations of gender in her imitations of Roman literature. The dissertation finds that while Hrotsvit imitated the content and form of Ovid, Terence, and Virgil, she denaturalized the binary conceptions of gender promulgated in their works by inverting the specific markers of gender identified in pedagogical texts associated with them and by linking those behavioural markers to imbalances of social power rather than to biology. Studies of the sex/gender system in the early medieval period have tended to focus on medical discourses which attribute gendered behaviour to biology. My doctoral research uses untapped primary sources to prove that gender was not invariably thought to be tied to biology in the medieval cultural imaginary. The commentaries, glosses, and other pedagogical texts on classical literature used in medieval classrooms presented readers with a concrete set of ideas about gender, including highly specific linguistic and behavioural expectations. While scholars have increasingly begun to analyze commentaries on classical literature for insights into medieval gender norms, the majority of this work has focused on the dissemination of ideas about masculinity in male homosocial schools during the twelfth century and beyond. My research contributes to this conversation by asking how early medieval female readers responded to the educational discourses on gender which they encountered in the female-led classrooms of women's religious institutions. The thesis is also innovative in its proposal that Hrotsvitâ s book of saintsâ legends was written in imitation of Ovid. Overall, the dissertation revises current understandings of the sex/gender system in the Ottonian period, demonstrating that ideas which resemble the social construction of gender were circulating centuries earlier than previously thought. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Byrne, Brendan | Strong, Kimberly||Jones, Dylan B A | Monitoring the carbon cycle: Evaluation of terrestrial biosphere models and anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions with atmospheric observations | Physics | 2018-11 | Reliable projections of climate change will require terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) that produce robust projections of changes in the exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere and terrestrial biosphere. In this thesis, atmospheric CO2 observations are used to evaluate TBMs. First, the sensitivity of several observing systems to surface fluxes of CO2 is characterized. This analysis identifies the spatiotemporal scales over which atmospheric CO2 observations provide significant constraints on net ecosystem exchange (NEE) fluxes. Second, constraints from atmospheric CO2 and solar-induced fluorescence (SIF) observations are combined to evaluate the seasonality of NEE, gross primary productivity (GPP) and ecosystem respiration (Re) fluxes over the northern mid-latitudes for a set of TBMs. It is shown that model-based seasonal cycles of Re exhibit systematic differences from optimized Re constrained by atmospheric CO2 and SIF measurements, with the models overestimating Re during June-July and underestimating Re during the fall. Further analysis suggests that the differences could be due to seasonal variations in the carbon use efficiency and to seasonal variations in the leaf litter and fine root carbon pool. Finally, the ability of TBMs to simulate interannual variability (IAV) in NEE is evaluated. IAV in NEE produced by a set of TBMs and CO2 flux inversions is compared to proxies of IAV in the carbon cycle, including temperature anomalies, SIF anomalies, and the Palmer drought index. It is shown that CO2 flux inversions that assimilate observations from the Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT) out-perform most TBMs in recovering NEE anomalies driven by climate anomalies, suggesting that GOSAT CO2 flux inversions can be used to evaluate NEE anomalies produced by TBMs on large scales. This thesis also describes the installation of an open-path Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (OP-FTIR) system in downtown Toronto. This system provides continuous observations of CO2, CO, CH4 and N2O, which, in combination with other observing stations, will provide valuable top-down constraints on GHG emissions from Toronto. An initial evaluation of this instrument is performed and comparisons of the observed gases with meteorological observations and CO2, CO, and CH4 measurements at a nearby site are presented. | Ph.D. | solar, climate, greenhouse gas | 7, 13 |
| Cadchumsang, Jaggapan | Levin, Michael D. | People at the Rim: A Study of Tai Ethnicity and Nationalism in a Thai Border Village | Anthropology | 2011-11 | Based on ethnographic research in Ruam Chai, a large and remote village in northern Thailand, this dissertation seeks to examine the emergence of ethnic identity and nationalistic consciousness of the Tai people within the context of Thai nation-building, state development, and the history of the area in the 20th century. The Tai—generally known as the Shan—are the predominant residents of this multi-ethnic frontier community, once occupied by the notorious opium warlord, Khun Sa, prior to absolute control and administration by the Thai state in 1982. These people migrated from various areas of Myanmar’s Shan State over different periods of time, for a variety of reasons. Due to their illegal immigration, the Thai state classifies them into different non-citizenship statuses according to their migration background as well as survey and registration periods. As a result of recent revisions of the Thai Nationality Act, the documented Thailand-born offspring of these displaced Tai, whose parents’ statuses fall into certain non-Thai categories, meet the nominal requirements for becoming naturalised. Within the theoretical framework of constructivist approach and the notion of ethnic dynamism and nationalistic sentiments as a cultural practice in borderlands, this dissertation suggests the investigation of the Tai ethno-nationalism through three interconnected levels of analysis: village or community, national, and transborder. On the village level, while the Tai acknowledge their ethnic diversity and have a logical, conventional system of identification among themselves; they maintain ethnic boundaries amid interactions with village members of other ethnic origins, and (re)construct identities in response to both internal and external forces. On the national level, a nation-building process has induced a stronger sense of “being Thai” to both Thailand-born Tai children and pre-existing generations of Tai. This process emphasises ethnic homogeneity—through the employment of the Thainess concept—and exclusion of the Non-Thai from the Thai, where categorically ineligible Tai are driven to embrace outlawed conduct to secure Thai citizenship. On the transborder level, movements back and forth as well as relationships across various international borders have played a vital role in constructing Tai identity and imagining the nation of the Tai people, both in Ruam Chai and beyond. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Cahuas, Madelaine Cristina | Wakefield, Sarah | Estamos Aquí, We Are Here: Latinx Struggles for Social Justice in the Greater Toronto Area | Geography | 2018-11 | The Latin American or Latinx population is one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in Canada. Yet, there is a persistent lack of spaces and opportunities for Latinx people to gather, build community and mobilize politically in one of the most diverse urban centres in Canada, the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). At the same time, Latinx people have worked against this invisibility by carving out spaces in the city through the non-profit sector, where they have established numerous organizations, programs, networks and grassroots collectives. It is well documented how neoliberalization has negatively impacted the non-profit sector by coopting community agendas and suppressing social justice activism, and these effects have also been seen in the Latin American-serving non-profit sector. What is not well understood is how Latinx women and non-binary people negotiate and resist not only neoliberalization, but multiple forces of oppression, like heterosexism, racism and settler colonialism, that are interconnected and embedded within the non-profit sector and migrant political organizing. The objectives guiding this dissertation aim to explore how Latinx women and non-binary people serving as community workers or (LCWs) contend with, and challenge these intersecting systems and geographies of domination, within and beyond the GTA’s non-profit sector. These objectives are addressed using Chicana Latina Feminist Epistemologies, testimonio methodology, and multiple qualitative methods including 37 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, a workshop, participant observation and grey literature analysis. The findings reveal that LCWs, while constrained by white neoliberal and hetero-patriarchal non-profit structures and local political systems, they engage in innovative socio-spatial practices that transform urban spaces and advance social justice in the GTA. Furthermore, the findings of this dissertation underscore the spatiality of Latinx political life, and demonstrate how Latinx people dynamically create alternative geographies that are anchored in principles of reciprocity, relationality and a deep commitment to radical, decolonial and feminist politics. La población latinoamericana o latinx es uno de los grupos étnicos que esta creciendo más rápido en Canadá. Sin embargo, persiste la falta de espacios y oportunidades para que personas latinx forman una comunidad y se movilizan políticamente en uno de los centros urbanos más diversos de Canadá, la Área Metropolitana de Toronto. Al mismo tiempo, personas latinx han trabajado contra esta invisibilidad creando espacios en la ciudad a través del sector sin fines de lucro, donde han establecido varias organizaciones, programas, redes y colectivos activistas. Está bien documentado cómo la neoliberalización ha tenido un impacto negativo en el sector sin fines de lucro cooptando las agendas de comunidades y reprimiendo el activismo de la justicia social. Lo que no se entiende bien es cómo las mujeres latinas y personas de género no binario latinx resisten no solo la neoliberalización, pero múltiples fuerzas de opresión, como el heterosexismo, el racismo y el colonialismo, que son interconectadas e integradas en el sector sin fines de lucro. Esta tesis explora cómo las mujeres latinas y personas de género no binario latinx que son trabajadoras comunitarias desafían estos sistemas. Este objetivo se aborda utilizando epistemologías Chicanas, Latinas feministas, metodología testimonial y múltiples métodos cualitativos que incluyen 37 entrevistas, un taller y observación participante. Los resultados revelan que las trabajadoras, aunque están limitadas por estructuras de opresión y sistemas políticos locales neoliberales, hetero-patriarcales y racistas, se involucran en prácticas innovadoras que transforman el espacio urbano y promueven la justicia social. Las conclusiones de esta tesis alumbra las geografías de comunidades latinx y demuestran cómo personas latinx crean dinámicamente alternativas basadas en principios de reciprocidad, relacionalidad y un profundo compromiso con la política radical, decolonial y feminista. | Ph.D. | women, worker, urban, justice | 5, 8, 11, 16 |
| Cairns, Kate | Dehli, Kari | Mapping Futures, Making Selves: Subjectivity, Schooling and Rural Youth | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-11 | This dissertation explores how rural young people imagine their futures in neo-liberal times. The analysis is based upon three months of ethnographic research with grade 7/8 students in ‘Fieldsville,’ a predominantly white and working-class rural community in Southeastern Ontario. I examine students' participation in a widely-used career-education program called The Real Game, in which they are encouraged to become entrepreneurial subjects capable of crafting productive futures in an uncertain world. My study asks: How do these young people produce and perform their imagined future selves, and what does this suggest about the opportunities and constraints that shape their current identities? Integrating insights from feminist poststructural theory and cultural geography, the project extends and challenges studies of the neo-liberal subject by integrating an analysis of place. The thesis builds upon, and contributes to, critical scholarship theorizing young lives as socially, spatially and temporally situated by exploring processes of location within subjectivity formation. Integrating classroom and playground observations with focus groups and interviews, the analysis reveals that young people draw upon diverse discourses in order to envision the person they hope to become. In addition to the subject positions on offer in The Real Game, popular culture provides a key resource in practices of self-making, as students invest in middle-class ideals of the “good life,” and distinguish their own rural location from racialized mappings of urban and global others. Although Fieldsville students are deeply invested in their rural community, tensions emerge where local attachments meet dominant narratives of mobility that encourage them to locate their futures elsewhere. These place-based tensions present particular challenges for girls, who must negotiate the gendered dynamics of rural social space alongside popular discourses of “girl power” that proffer unlimited possibilities for today's young women. Teasing apart the intersections of gender, race, class and space within students' narratives, I argue that studies of neo-liberal subjectivity must examine how dominant discourses are negotiated from particular social and geographical locations. Methodologically, the analysis demonstrates how school-based ethnography can shed light on broader socio-historical processes as they are lived in specific geographical and cultural spaces. | PhD | rural, urban, gender | 5, 11 |
| Callaghan, Mike | Lee, Richard B||Sellen, Daniel W | Antiretroviral Therapy in Walvis Bay, Namibia | Anthropology | 2015-11 | Highly Active Antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is a successful means of treating infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Namibia was among the first countries in sub-Saharan Africa to achieve universal access to HAART for HIV-positive citizens through the public sector. In this thesis, I explore treatment outcomes in Walvis Bay, a busy port city at Namibia’s coast. I find that gender is the most important factor shaping HAART, with women reporting for testing and treatment in greater numbers than men, sooner in the course of their illness, and enjoying lower mortality after treatment initiation. There are no compelling biological explanations for this distribution; I postulate a series of socio-cultural and political-ecological factors driving outcomes in Walvis Bay. In particular, changing gender roles and different points of entry into care are important at the individual level. I describe a ‘toxic masculinity’ that, however fragile, actively interferes with testing, treatment, and health-seeking behavior. Female identity, conversely, emerges as altogether more stable and more suited to the clinical and social demands of HAART. More broadly, actions are shaped by large-scale processes of urbanization and globalization, and especially the effects these have on labour, subsistence, and culture change. I conclude by suggesting modifications to the rollout program that may help to distribute the benefits of HAART more equitably through the treatment population. This research has important implications for other countries in sub-Saharan Africa as they gradually move toward universal access to HAART. More generally, it may presage future challenges of globalization and infectious disease. | Ph.D. | health, gender | 3, 5 |
| Callaghan, Tonya | Sykes, Heather | Holy Homophobia: Doctrinal Disciplining of Non-heterosexuals in Canadian Catholic Schools | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-06 | In 2012 clashes between Catholic canonical law and Canadian common law regarding sexual minorities continue to be played out in Canadian Catholic schools. Although Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ensures same-sex equality in Canada, this study shows that some teachers in Alberta Catholic schools are fired for contravening Catholic doctrine about non-heterosexuality, while Ontario students’ requests to establish Gay/Straight Alliances are denied. This study seeks to uncover the causes and effects of the long-standing disconnect between Canadian Catholic schools and the Charter by comparing the treatment of and attitudes towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (lgbtq) teachers and students in publicly-funded Catholic school systems in the provinces of Alberta and Ontario. I employ a multi-method qualitative research framework involving: 1) semi-structured interviews with 20 participants (7 current and former teachers and 13 former students), 18 of which are re-presented as condensed narratives; 2) media accounts that illustrate the Catholic schools’ homophobic environment; and 3) two key Alberta and Ontario Catholic policy and curriculum documents. The central question driving this study is: How does power operate in Canadian Catholic schools? Is it exercised from the top down solely, or are there instances of power rising up from the bottom as well? To answer this question, I draw upon the critical theories of Gramsci (1971), Althusser (1970/2008), Foucault (1975/1995), and Giroux (2001) in order to explain the phenomenon of “holy homophobia” in Canadian Catholic schools. The chief finding of this study is that contradictory Catholic doctrine on the topic of non-heterosexuality is directing school policy and practice regarding the management of sexual minority groups in Alberta and Ontario Catholic schools, positioning these schools as potential hotbeds for homophobia. Hopefully, this thesis can one day serve as a resource for anti-homophobia education researchers and practitioners, school administrators, educators and students who are interested in eliminating religiously-inspired homophobia in school settings. | PhD | gender, queer, equality, rights | 5, 16 |
| Calvasina, Paola Gondim | Carles, Muntaner | Examining the Oral Health, Access to Dental Care and Transnational Dental Care Utilization of Adult Immigrants: Analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (2001-2005) | Dentistry | 2014-11 | Immigrants form a significant and growing proportion of Canadian society. Around 250,000 immigrants are admitted into the country each year. Recent immigrants to Canada are, on average, healthier that the general Canadian population, in a phenomenon called "the healthy immigrant effect". However, over the years after immigration, their health declines. Very little is known about the oral health of adult immigrants to Canada, and there is no evidence that "the healthy immigrant effect" applies to oral health. Little and inconsistent evidence is also found regarding immigrants' access to dental care and dental care utilization. A secondary data analysis was conducted on the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC 2001-2005). Using a generalized estimating equation (GEE) approach, we examined socio-demographic and economic factors associated with changes in self-reported dental problems among a sample of adult immigrants to Canada over a four-year period. Using logistic regression, we also examined predictors of barriers to accessing dental care (i.e., unmet dental care needs) and transnational dental care utilization over a three point five year. Results revealed that immigrants were more likely to report dental problems than Canadians over the period of observation (OR=2.77; 95% CI: 2.55-3.02). Lack of dental insurance predicted immigrants' unmet dental care needs (OR=2.63; 95% CI: 2.05-3.37) and transnational dental care utilization (OR=2.05; 95% CI:1.55-2.70) post-migration. Immigrant women were also more likely to report dental problems, and to use transnational dental care services over time. In conclusion, this study identified an increased likelihood of reporting dental problems over time, suggesting that the healthy immigrant effect applies to oral health. Immigrants lacking dental insurance were more likely to face barriers to accessing dental care and to use transnational dental care strategies to overcome those barriers. Shortcomings in immigration policies and the features of the Canadian dental care system, which tend to exclude most socially marginalized groups, may contribute to immigrants' oral health deterioration. Importantly, immigrant women who over time were more likely to report dental problems should be at the forefront of public policies aiming to improve the oral health ofimmigrants. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Cameron, Paula | Cole, Ardra | Seamfulness: Nova Scotian Women Witness Depression through Zines | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-11 | Seamfulness is a narrative-based and arts-informed inquiry into young women's "depression" as pedagogy. Unfolding in rural Nova Scotia, this research is rooted in my experience of depression as the most transformative event in my life story. While memoirists tell me I am not alone, there is currently a lack of research on personal understandings of depression, particularly for young adult women. Through storytelling sessions and self-publishing workshops, I explored four young Nova Scotian women's depression as a productive site for growth. Participants include four young women, including myself, who experienced depression in their early 20s, and have not had a major depressive episode for at least three years. Aged 29 to 40, we claim Métis, Scottish, Acadian, and British ancestries, and were raised and lived in rural Nova Scotian communities during this time. At the seams of adult education, disability studies, and art, I ask: How do young women narrate experiences of "depression" as education? How do handmade, self-published booklets (or “zines”) allow for exploring this topic as embodied, emotional and critical transformative learning? To address these questions, I employ arts-informed strategies and feminist, adult education, mental health, and disability studies literatures to investigate the critical and transformative learning accomplished by young women who experience depression. Through a feminist poststructuralist lens and using qualitative and arts-informed methods, I situate depression as valuable learning, labour, and gift on behalf of the societies and communities in which women live. I argue that just as zines are powerful forms for third space pedagogy, depression itself is a third space subjectivity that gives rise to the "disorienting dilemma" at the heart of transformative learning. I close with "Loose Ends," an exploration of depression as an unanswered question. This thesis engages visual and verbal strategies to disrupt epistemic and aesethetic conventions for academic texts. By foregrounding participant zines and stories, I privilege participant voices as the basis for framing their experience, rather than as material to reinforce or contest academic theories. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Campbell, Melissa Colleen | Barton, Bruce | "Acts of Resistance": Reclaiming Native Womanhood in Canadian Aboriginal Theatre. | Drama | 2016-06 | This study investigates the representation of Aboriginal womanhood in Aboriginal women’s theatre in Canada. Using five core case studies to explore Indigenous women’s self-representation, I demonstrate how Native theatre engages in acts of resistance that promote the decolonization of Aboriginal womanhood. Drawing on concepts of Aboriginal storytelling, I attempt to weave the connections between the personal story and the collective history to demonstrate how these plays use theatrical presence to rebuke historical and contemporary absences of Native women. Each play does this by taking aim at political policies, stereotypes in popular culture, and sexual violence, which all sustain negative constructions of Native womanhood. Chapter one establishes the context(s) in which these plays exist and explores a history of legislation and policies that contributes to the negative representations of Aboriginal women. Chapters two and three demonstrate how Native women's theatre confronts stereotypes of Aboriginality and deconstructs them as a form of personal and collective healing. Chapter two explores how culture jamming and humour are used to disrupt the re-circulation of stereotypes in order to challenge the cultural currency stereotypes maintain in film, television, and other medias. In chapter three I explore the connection between the stereotypes and sexualized violence. I identify strategies used to represent violence, specifically around concepts of “presence” and “absence.” The function of violence in these plays is not one of (re)victimization, but one that evokes concepts of testimony, witnessing, and storytelling. It will also deal with the problematic perceived trajectory of healing and identity formation through violence in some of the plays. Chapter four looks to the relationship between identity and community and signals how a return to “home” and community can help rebuild positive Indigenous identities and becomes the final act of resistance. Chapter five examines the relationship between storytelling (in the theatre), history, and witnessing trauma. It proposes that Native storytelling, especially in the theatre, is an act of survivance that challenges historical absences. Finally, in chapter six, I look forward to the transnational applications of my research and gesture to Indigenous eco-theatre as one avenue that promotes the decolonization of Indigenous peoples globally. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Campbell, Sara E. | Mandrak, Nicholas E. | Exploring Spatiotemporal Community Assembly using Taxonomic and Functional Dimensions of Biodiversity | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2020-06 | Determining how diversity is generated and maintained in ecological communities is a central goal of community ecology and conservation. Ecologists have long aimed to explain the processes responsible for the assembly of communities and although many hypotheses have been proposed, understanding what makes a non-native species successful continues to be the principal question in invasion ecology. Addressing these topics is inherently complex given that the mechanisms that regulate diversity are often dependent on the spatial and temporal scale at which they are quantified and are further complicated by pervasive context dependence. This thesis examines the spatiotemporal changes in, and community assembly processes governing, functional and taxonomic dimensions of biodiversity in fish communities of the Laurentian Great Lakes in response to the establishment of non-native species and extirpation of native species. I show that both taxonomic and functional dimensions of local and regional diversity are increasing over time. Between-community diversity has increased and decreased for functional and taxonomic dimensions of diversity, respectively, indicating the presence of both biotic differentiation and homogenization that is temporally dynamic. Environmental filtering selects for similar species due to a shared affinity for local conditions and explains establishment success of non-native species as well as local and regional patterns of diversity. Community assembly and composition is also highly regulated by dispersal and historical effects due to the glacial history of the region. | Ph.D. | environment, conserv, ecology | 13, 15 |
| Campbell, Stephen Douglas | Li, Tania | Contesting Migrant Labour: A Politics of Precarity on the Thai-Myanmar Border | Anthropology | 2015 | The global proliferation of export processing zones, linking migrant labour to international markets and global supply chains, has established these sites as critical components of contemporary globalised capitalism. As regulatory enclaves of industrial production, export processing zones are marked by forms of population administration organised around the optimisation of low-waged, flexible labour. This dissertation is a study of the social construction of formal and informal labour regulation at one such regulatory enclave. It focuses on the Mae Sot Special Border Economic Zone in northwest Thailand, where some 200,000 plus Myanmar migrants have been engaged in highly precarious employment in garment and textile manufacturing, agriculture, and service work since the early 1990s. While formal state policy significantly impacts the on-the-ground regulation of migrant labour in Mae Sot, the local situation exhibits a variety of overlapping, formal and informal regulatory regimes. These multiple regimes of regulation are subject to continual processes of contestation, negotiation and compromise, with uncertain effects on Mae Sot's border capitalism. In order to trace these processes, I present ethnographic accounts of migrants engagement with various state and private actors, including the Mae Sot police, officials of the Thai government's Labour Protection Office, private passport companies, and non-governmental organisations. I further trace the emergence of migrant social formations, shaped by the particular conditions of low-waged, flexible labour as well as despotic employment practices and coercive policing. The dissertation concludes by following the organisational efforts of a group of migrants employed at one Mae Sot garment factory, as they seek to raise their wages and improve their working conditions over the course of a year. Throughout, I find that migrants' everyday practices and patterns of struggle are shaped both by the site's network of governmental rule and by the disciplinary powers of the local police. | Ph.D. | production, industr, wage, labour. Employment | 8, 9, 12 |
| Campeau, Holly | Levi, Ron | Policing in Unsettled Times: An Analysis of Culture in the Police Organization | Sociology | 2016-11 | This dissertation examines how actors within a public sector institution - a police organization - use culture to make sense of a shifting occupational landscape. Interviews with 100 police officers and field notes from 50 ride-along hours were collected over the course of 18 months in the police service of a medium-sized city. Rather than conceive "police culture" as an ideal-type of values and attitudes, this project engages with concepts from sociological literature on culture and organizations to re-conceptualize police culture as a "resource" officers deploy to navigate what can be risky work in a contentious organization. First, contrasting traditional cultural depictions of police officers as unremittingly mission-oriented and indivisible, findings reveal the fragility of officer solidarity and unwillingness to engage with risky situations. Expanding surveillance outside the reach of law enforcement (e.g. cellphone videos, social media, etc.) contribute to uncertainty as officers carry out their duties. Second, police engage with a combination of myths and generational scripts in ways that both defend and challenge the status quo in their organization. "Old-school" scripts sustain the prominence of paramilitarism, camaraderie and athleticism. And while "new-generation" scripts are mainly deployed ceremonially to signal legitimacy to external policing constituents, some officers also use them to express the importance of education, the banality of military mindsets, and the need for equitable practices to be implemented on a more routine basis. Finally, results show that police rely on jointly established understandings about their local community to both perform and justify their organization's non-conformity with certain industry standards. Overall, insofar as change in policing is the objective in the current era of wavering public confidence and fiscal crisis, this study suggests that mere top-down policy reform is insufficient: organizational policy and actual practices are only loosely-linked and those charged with implementing a new course of action (i.e. senior officers) are often the staunchest supporters of non-change. Without a disruption to the lock-step hierarchical structure of the police organization, institutional reform is likely only to emerge generationally, as the most promising energy for transformative change rests among cohorts entering the occupation at a particularly unsettled time. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Campos, Luis Roberto | Audrey, Macklin | Archiving Memory: Explorer and Trader Accounts as Evidence in Aboriginal Rights and Title Litigation | Law | 2014-11 | This project examines the extensive use of explorer and trader narratives as evidence in aboriginal rights and title litigation. It is difficult to reconcile the conflicting--and often extreme--interpretations of these texts as mostly imaginative literature, a view increasingly held outside of the law, and as authoritative evidence, a position adopted in legal proceedings. Generally, my work reconsiders epistemic practices in aboriginal rights and title proceedings. Specifically, it turns to a literary framework to reflect on the empirical value of historical narratives. Additionally, by utilizing the concept of archive as a critical tool, my work also seeks to comprehend the law's continuing predilection for these texts. Ultimately, while evidential proceedings are generally regarded as oriented toward generating trial knowledge, I argue that in fact the substantive law has driven courts to the imperial texts and has, in effect, constructed the conditions of their necessity and reliability. Both the loosening of evidential rules--to create a story-telling space-- and the unique criteria-legal tests has contributed to their evidential hegemony, often at the expense of aboriginal histories, which are seen as anthropological curiosity. Significantly, this thesis does not suggest the imperial narratives have no empirical or evidential value. It does, however, urge trial actors to account for their limitations. And, by doing so, a broader objective may be served: a fresh examination of the current substantive criteria of aboriginal rights and title law, particularly as it impacts evidential parity between the aboriginal and imperial stories. | S.J.D. | rights | 16 |
| Canizares Perez, Mayilee | Badley, Elizabeth M||Glazier, Richard H | AN AGE-PERIOD-COHORT ANALYSIS OF HEALTH STATUS AND HEALTHCARE USE IN CANADA: ARE BABY BOOMERS DIFFERENT FROM OTHER GENERATIONS? | Medical Science | 2017-11 | BACKGROUND: There are concerns for the provision of healthcare services in Canada given the large numbers of ageing baby boomers. However, little is known about how they differ in their health profile and patterns of healthcare use compared to other generations. This thesis describes three studies, based on a longitudinal survey of the population, examining the trajectories of multimorbidity and healthcare use (i.e. conventional care and complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)) across five birth cohorts. METHODS: Using data from the Longitudinal National Population Health Survey (1994-2011), the thesis studies examined 10186 participants belonging to one of the five birth cohorts: pre World War II (born: 1925-1934), World War II (born: 1935-1944), older (born: 1945-1954) and younger (born: 1955-1964) baby boomers, and Generation X (Gen Xers, born: 1965-1974). Hierarchical age-period-cohort analysis was used to examine the contributions of age (life-course), period, and cohort effects in changes in multimorbidity, use of conventional care (i.e. primary care and specialist services users), and CAM use. RESULTS: Each succeeding recent cohort had higher odds of reporting multimorbidity than their predecessors. Furthermore, Gen Xers and younger boomers, particularly those with multimorbidity, were less likely to use primary care than earlier cohorts. The increasing levels of multimorbidity explained the higher specialist use observed in recent cohorts. Likewise, at corresponding ages, more recent cohorts reported greater chiropractic and CAM use than their predecessors. The use of conventional care was positively related to greater CAM use, but did not contribute to changes over time or to cohort differences in CAM use. CONCLUSIONS: There is a need for policies addressing important generational differences in healthcare preferences and the balance between primary and specialty care to ensure integration and coordination of healthcare delivery. The findings also highlight the importance of planning interventions and policies to deal with more recent birth cohorts entering into older age with worse health than previous generations. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Cao, Jie | Zhu, Xiaodong | Three Essays in Macroeconomics | Economics | 2016-06 | This thesis consists of three chapters. Chapter 1 studies a life-cycle pattern of female labor supply (hours per woman) in Japan. It exhibits an "M" shape with the second peak lower than the first one. Employing a micro-data set, I show that the pattern can be understood as a result of labor supply behavioral differences across different types of women and demographic composition changes along the life cycle. I then build a life-cycle model featuring transitions between heterogeneous types of women, human capital accumulation and childcare cost. The calibrated model accounts for the aggregate pattern well. Counterfactual experiments suggest that narrowing gender wage gap would have a larger positive effect on female labor supply than lowering childcare cost, a result mostly explained by the human capital channel. Chapter 2 studies the links between idiosyncratic distortions and potential aggregate losses. Under the economic environment of Restuccia et al. (2008) (RR), I characterize analytically the mappings from distortions to total factor productivity (TFP) and other aggregate measures. Using these mappings, I explain in a unified way three features emerged from RR's numerical experiments, where endogenous exit of firms is assumed away and distortions are restricted so as to have no impact on capital accumulation. Additionally, I explain why these features disappear when distortions affect capital accumulation. I then extend RR's study by introducing the endogenous exit margin and find that various aggregate losses can respond to this margin quite differently. Chapter 3 studies financial frictions and resource misallocation in China's manufacturing sector. I emphasize two aspects of the financial frictions in the Chinese context. One is credit discrimination: Unproductive state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have easy access to credit while productive non-SOEs are credit constrained. The other is that the credit constraint faced by non-SOEs is much tighter than those in financially developed countries. Using a firm-level data set, I find that a potential 24% TFP gain can be achieved if the credit constraint faced by non-SOEs is at a level similar to the one in the US, and that 53% of the gain can be attributed to improved allocations between SOEs and non-SOEs. | Ph.D. | gender, women, wage | 5, 8 |
| Capatina, Elena | Kambourov, Gueorgui | Essays on the Allocation of Talent, Skills and Inequality, and Life-cycle Effects of Health Risk | Economics | 2012-03 | This dissertation consists of three essays. The first essay studies how health risk affects individuals' economic decisions due to changes in productivity, required medical expenditures, available time and survival probabilities implied by changes in health status. It assesses the role of these four channels in determining labour supply, asset accumulation and welfare using a life-cycle model calibrated to the U.S. economy. I find that all channels and the interactions between them have large implications for the macroeconomic variables studied. Health has larger effects for the non-college than college educated, explaining a significant fraction of the difference in labour supply, degree of reliance on government transfers and asset accumulation across education groups. Improving non-college health outcomes to approach those of college graduates results in large welfare gains, higher labour supply, and significantly lower reliance on government welfare programs. The second essay studies the evolution of wage inequality in the United States between 1980 and 2002 in a framework that accounts for changes in the employment of physical and cognitive skills and their returns. I find that within education-gender groups, average employed cognitive skills have remained constant, while average physical skills have declined. The returns to high levels of cognitive skills have increased dramatically, while returns to low levels of cognitive skills and physical skills have remained approximately constant. Skills account for approximately half of the increase in the college wage premium, and for a small but growing fraction of residual wage inequality. The final essay studies the sorting decisions of students with different levels of analytical and verbal skills into college fields of study. I build a model where each field tests and perfectly reveals to potential future employers only the students' skill that is intensively required in that field. Students' expected wages after graduation are a function of their revealed skill levels and firms' expectations of the unrevealed skills given the chosen field. I show how the size of each field and the average talent it attracts depend on the average skill levels, on skill dispersion and on the degree of correlation between skills in the student population. | PhD | equality, employment, labour, wage, inequality | 5, 8, 10 |
| Carbajal, Maria Patricia | Bickmore, Kathy | BUILDING DEMOCRATIC CONVIVENCIA (PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE) IN CLASSROOMS: CASE STUDIES OF TEACHING IN MEXICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS SURROUNDED BY VIOLENCE | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06 | Mexico is suffering from an avalanche of violence and school surroundings are not the exception. Although teachers’ perceptions tend to consider that violent contexts around schools increase the levels of school violence, large-scale international studies show that even when schools are located in high-crime areas, they can develop low levels of school violence by promoting communitarian relationships, equal access to quality education, and democratic participation. Some qualitative inquiries in Latin America have attempted to explain causal pathways for building peaceful relationships in schools by applying the theoretical construct of democratic convivencia (peaceful coexistence). However, scarce research in this field has been accomplished. This qualitative multiple-case study examined how three purposely selected Mexican teachers (fifth and sixth grades), through their classroom pedagogies, fostered (or not) the development of democratic convivencia in regular urban elementary public schools located in violent neighborhoods, the apparent consequences of these pedagogies for student-participants, and the factors that helped or hindered this process. Data included 23 observations in classrooms (of 90 minutes each in average), six individual interviews with teachers, and six group interviews with 20 students. While these three teachers followed official textbooks, they found spaces –within and outside the curriculum– to include elements of the three dimensions of pedagogies for democratic convivencia: inclusion, equity and conflict (resolution) dialogue. Results show that these teachers offered students meaningful lived experiences of inclusion and community-building by recognizing and affirming (to different degrees) students’ identities. They offered valuable (though ambivalent) opportunities for students’ equitable access to academic success by balancing students’ academic status. They also tended to use educative peacekeeping (avoiding punishment) and/or some elements of peacemaking as main conflict resolution strategies. Contrastingly, these teachers offered limited opportunities for deliberation and collective decision-making processes, two important elements for facilitating the development of students’ democratic capacities. Despite contradictions and limitations: poverty, students’ painful experiences with violence, extensive official curriculum content, and national standardized tests, these teachers showed that it is possible to implement pedagogies based on the three dimensions of democratic convivencia that may offer students opportunities for experiencing new horizons of human relationships in impoverished and violent contexts. | Ed.D. | poverty, peace, equitable, urban | 1, 5, 11, 16 |
| Cardon, Nathan | Halpern, Rick | “A Dream of the Future”: Race, Empire, and Modernity at the Atlanta and Nashville International Expositions, 1895-1897 | History | 2014-06 | For a region often viewed as outside the processes of modernization, the United States South’s international expositions were symbolic opportunities to demonstrate its embrace of a narrative of industrial, cultural, and racial progress. Taking the 1895 Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition and the 1897 Nashville Tennessee Centennial Exposition as an analytical basis, this dissertation investigates how southerners transformed modernity by making it “Jim Crow.” It explores the ways white and African American southerners performed a variety of racialized and classed identities that embraced and critiqued modern progress. Responding to the dissolution of old certainties, southerners turned to science and technology as a stable site of truth and meaning. At the same time, their response to modernity was rooted in the South and its developing “New South” cities. In these cities southerners formulated a distinctive modernity that was compatible with the region’s racial dynamics and was adopted by the North as the nation expanded and encountered non-white colonial subjects. This dissertation makes clear the ways in which southerners, often considered on the periphery of change, responded to dislocating events by rooting their responses in the local. The specific economic, social, racial, and political realities of the South all shaped southerners reactions to and articulations of modernity and empire. By narrowing the question of southern modernity to a specific time and space this dissertation redefines a key moment in southern and American history, showing how responses to the dislocating effects of modernity were grounded in the specific temporal and spatial contexts of the South and were exported as American empire. | PhD | industr, cities | 9, 11 |
| Carey, Graham Hamilton | Sargent, Edward H | A Surface Chemistry Approach to Enhancing Colloidal Quantum Dot Solids for Photovoltaics | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2015-11 | Colloidal quantum dot (CQD) photovoltaic devices have improved rapidly over the past decade of research. By taking advantage of the quantum confinement effect, solar cells constructed using films of infrared-bandgap nanoparticles are able to capture previously untapped ranges of the solar energy spectrum. Additionally, films are fabricated using simple, cheap, reproducible solution processing techniques, enabling the creation of low-cost, flexible photovoltaic devices. A key factor limiting the creation of high efficiency CQD solar cells is the short charge carrier diffusion length in films. Driven by a combination of limited carrier mobility, poor nanoparticle surface passivation, and the presence of unexamined electrically active impurities throughout the film, the poor diffusion length limits the active layer thickness in CQD solar cells, leading to lower-than-desired light absorption, and curtailing the photocurrent generated by such devices. This thesis seeks to address poor diffusion length by addressing each of the limiting factors in turn. Electrical transport in quantum dot solids is examined in the context of improved quantum dot packing; methods are developed to improve packing by using actively densifying components, or by dramatically lowering the volume change required between quantum dots in solution and in solid state. Quantum dot surface passivation is improved by introducing a crucial secondary, small halide ligand source, and by surveying the impact of the processing environment on the final quality of the quantum dot surface. A heretofore unidentified impurity present in quantum dot solids is identified, characterized, and chemically eliminated. Finally, lessons learned through these experiments are combined into a single, novel materials system, leading to quantum dot devices with a significantly improved diffusion length (enhanced from 70 to 230 nm). This enabled thick, high current density (30 mA cm-2, compared to typical values in the 20-25 mA cm-2 range) devices, and the highest reported solar power conversion efficiency to date. | Ph.D. | solar | 7 |
| Carolyn, Hatch | Meric, Gertler | Competitiveness by Design: An Institutionalist Perspective on the Resurgence of a 'Mature' Industry in a High Wage Economy | Planning | 2013-06 | This thesis examines the learning dynamics underpinning the resurgence of Canada's office furniture manufacturing sector, which underwent dramatic growth following its near collapse in the wake of the North American trade liberalization beginning in the late 1980s. It investigates the role that design and quality have played in prompting a move up-market and enhancing the sector's competitiveness. It also focuses on other leaning processes that drive economic growth, looking at attempts to transfer workplace practices from Continental Europe to Canada, as well as the institutional obstacles that shape and constrain these processes. Finally, it examines how furniture firms learn from their customers, and the key role played by market intermediaries such as sales agents, dealers, interior designers, and architects in linking producers with consumers as well as influencing the final furniture product. The learned behaviour hypothesis that is central to this thesis suggests that globally competitive firms operating in a Canadian institutional context prosper by learning how to produce (i.e. industrial practices and processes) and what to produce (i.e. design-intensive, high quality products) from the above sources that are both internal and external to the manufacturing firm. The scope of research considers the social and organizational practices through which manufacturing knowledge is integrated into innovation processes, as well as their dynamics, spatiality and temporality, the institutional forces that shape the skills, training, tenure and design dimensions of a high performance workplace, and the mechanisms and conditions that mediate the transfer of manufacturing knowledge at a distance. The empirical analysis entails a mixed-methods approach including a survey questionnaire and in-depth interviews with industry experts. The analysis contributes to core debates in economic geography and the social sciences concerning the role of proximity and distance in innovative production, and the structure / agency debate. In summary, it finds that economic growth in the office furniture sector in Canada is dependent upon not only local knowledge networks and flows but also global sources of innovation and competitive advantage. It also advances an agency-centered institutionalist economic geography by showing that institutions interact in complex ways with the decision-making of economic actors to shape local labour dynamics and the behaviour of firms. | PhD | economic growth, labour, innovation, industr, trade, production | 8, 9, 12 |
| Carpenter, Sara Catherine | Mojab, Shahrzad | Theorizing Praxis in Citizenship Learning: Civic Engagement and the Democratic Management of Inequality in AmeriCorps | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-11 | Over the last twenty years, the academic work on citizenship education and democracy promotion has grown exponentially. This research investigates the United States federal government’s cultivation of a ‘politics of citizenship’ through the Corporation for National and Community Service and the AmeriCorps program. Drawing on Marxist-feminist theory and institutional ethnography, this research examines the ways in which democratic learning is organized within the AmeriCorps program through the category of ‘civic engagement’ and under the auspices of federal regulations that coordinate the practice of AmeriCorps programs trans-locally. The findings from this research demonstrate that the federal regulations of the AmeriCorps program mandate a practice and create an environment in which ‘politics,’ understood broadly as having both partisan and non-partisan dimensions, are actively avoided in formalized learning activities within the program. The effect of these regulations is to create an ideological environment in which learning is separated from experience and social problems are disconnected from the political and material relations in which they are constituted. Further, the AmeriCorps program cultivates an institutional discourse in which good citizenship is equated with participation at the local scale, which pivots on a notion of community service that is actively disengaged from the State. Through its reliance on these forms of democratic consciousness, the AmeriCorps program engages in reproductive praxis, ultimately reproducing already existing inequalities within U.S. society. The primary elements of this reproductive praxis have been identified as ‘a local fetish’ and the ‘democratic management of inequality.’ The local fetish refers to the solidification of the local as the preferential terrain of democratic engagement and is characterized by an emphasis on face-to-face moral relationships, local community building, and small-scale politics. The democratic management of inequality refers to the development of discursive practices and the organization of volunteer labor in the service of poverty amelioration, which is in turn labeled ‘good citizenship.’ This research directs our attention to a more complicated notion of praxis and its relationship to the reproduction of social relations. Also, this research brings into focus the problem of the conceptualization of civil society and its relationship to democracy and capitalism. | PhD | poverty, equality, inequality, production, institution | |
| Carr, Rebecca | Flood, Colleen M | How Effective is the Right to Health at Improving Equity in the Levels of Access to Childhood Immunisations? | Law | 2014-11 | This thesis explores various inequities in children's levels of access to vaccinations and considers how the normative aims of the international human right to health are being implemented in order to address them. It is argued that the right to health is a transformative right that places obligations upon states to achieve health equity. In light of this objective, this thesis investigates ways in which the right to health, in reality, is serving to influence levels of access to childhood vaccinations - a health equity enhancing intervention - and the rights impact upon equity is assessed throughout. It concludes that applications of the right to health are effective at procuring the equitable levels of access to childhood vaccinations that, in theory; its framework has been designed to effect. Remaining inequities in levels of access to childhood vaccinations might be more effectively addressed, if further rights-oriented approaches to the issues are adopted. | LL.M. | health, equitable, rights | 3, 5, 16 |
| Carrier, Nathalie | Gaskell, Jane | What Catches On? The Role of Evidence in the Promotion and Evaluation of Educational Innovations | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-03 | The debate about and support for innovation in education has heated up. There is hype around the possibilities novel and disruptive innovations can have on changing education practice and providing more effective learning solutions. The advent of the Internet and social media technologies allows for an abundance of innovation to be promoted and shared with and between educators, and the increasing use of technologies like iPads in the classroom results in the advertisement of innumerous new education applications. For the educator, there is the difficult challenge of knowing how to sift through this material and separate those innovations that may hold value for their classroom situation from those that have gained wide appeal. In this thesis I take an interest in how certain education innovations catch on and are adopted on a large scale, and how the marketing of these innovations in various kinds of media as well as the ways they are evaluated by teachers, contribute to this process. I separate my findings into two articles and use a set of six qualities generated from the research use and social psychology literatures as a guide (evidence, compatibility, accessibility, practicality, credibility, appeal), focusing on evidence in relation to the other five qualities. In the article on media promotion, I find the kinds of evidence used rarely came from formal research studies, but from anecdotal forms of evidence and general statistics related to use of the innovation. In the article on teacher evaluation, I find the teachers were open to trying out innovations, but had different strategies for evaluating and selecting them. Evidence was often discussed as a low priority criterion on which to base judgments. Overall, the results of this thesis show how difficult it can be to make a quick and informed judgment about these innovations where the teachers lacked tools to evaluate them consistently and effectively and where a wide range of strategies were used in their promotion. This suggests an important need that is largely not addressed in teacher training programs and professional development around providing teachers with guidance and training in their search, selection and evaluation processes. | Ph.D. | educat, innovation | 4, 9 |
| Carriere, Jessica Erin | Hulchanski, David J.||Zuberi, Daniel | Neighbourhood Policymaking and Political Discourses of Exclusion, Risk and Effect: An Interpretive Policy Analysis of the Evolution of Place-Based Programs in the UK and Canada | Social Work | 2017-06 | The impact of various forms of neighbourhood change on the social fabric of metropolitan areas is a major concern throughout affluent Western nations. In addressing spatially-concentrated problems, urban policy-making and development patterns have become increasingly similar across the advanced capitalist countries. There is a transnational movement among policy-makers toward the application of geographically targeted, neighbourhood-based interventions referred to as area-based, or place-based policies. In cities across Western Europe, Australia, the United States, and Canada, we see the emergence of a new policy language: new policy frames, or storylines, which function to discursively construct the individuals and communities that reside in technocratically-defined ‘disadvantaged’, ‘priority’ or ‘at-risk’ neighbourhoods. Asking the question ‘why do certain ideas catch on in public policy’, this dissertation utilizes interpretive policy analysis (IPA) to understand how policy actors go about adopting transnational policy language, ideas and concepts – and how they enact them in their local contexts. This dissertation is focused on place-based policies and programs in the United Kingdom (UK) and Canada. Divided into three stand-alone papers, the dissertation explores three different but conceptually analogous topics. In doing so, it outlines the geographical and ideological origins of a place-based approach to local governance, and the means through which it has been established in local systems of governance. In the absence of scholarly research on ‘how, why, where and with what effects’ place-based policies have been circulated, learned, reformulated, and mobilized, this dissertation seeks to develop an understanding of the adaptations in the modalities and rhetoric of political actors, institutions and policy regimes which have accompanied the enactment of place-based policies at various scales of governance. IPA links ‘high’ politics (i.e., elite political institutions and multinational organizations) with ‘low’ politics (i.e., local and community-level governance). It orders and relates discursive elements (subjects, objects, tropes, narratives) to processes of meaning-making, representation and action. The IPA approach is used here to help account for the assemblage of policies, political discourses and regulatory tools that have produced new, place-based logics of 'social exclusion', 'risk' and 'neighbourhood effects' that are now widely understood as universal aspects of cities. | Ph.D. | governance, urban, cities | 11, 16 |
| Carroll, Shawna M. | Sykes, Heather | Negotiating Subjectivities Through Literature: Anticolonial Counternarrative Fiction Book Clubs and Their Possibilities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2019-06 | “Tired of reading straight, racist, colonial fiction?... Want to read meaningful anti-colonial fiction that disrupts racism on Turtle Island?” This is the call I put out to engage participants in this anticolonial book club research project. Reading two books together, I asked: How do five racialized women and one Indigenous woman negotiate their subjectivities during processes of reading anticolonial fiction? This research question was the aim of the project, but the anticolonial political commitments are at the foundation of the anticolonial feminist literacy theoretical framework and feminist Deleuzian methodology used. As a queer, white, settler researcher and educator, I created the project with a desire-based lens, in order to focus on the subversion, persistence, and thriving in the feminist anticolonial space. I recruited the six women with two main goals: examine how reading anticolonial fiction can help facilitate the negotiation of subjectivities and examine how reading fiction that is not white settler colonial in nature can create generative spaces for people to thrive. Using the feminist Deleuzian methodological framework through the anticolonial feminist literacy theoretical lens allowed me to focus on the hot spots of the data that arose in the book club conversations, one-on-one meetings, and reading journals. Focusing on these hot spots, or what ‘glowed,’ I explain how reading and language are embodied processes and allowed one participant to continue becoming bilingual-immigrant-racialized-woman in ways that resist molar/static understandings of her subject positions and a more liveable life. Focusing on a second hot spot, I explain how reading anticolonial counternarrative fiction enabled a space for deep self-reflection which helped the participants build trust in their subject positions and experiences of marginalization, which allowed them to create a new consciousness outside of white settler colonial discourses. In the last data chapter, I explain how this anticolonial book club created an anticolonial community of care to walk alongside Indigenous resurgence initiatives through feminist solidarity and horizontal comradeship. Walking alongside Indigenous resurgence is always contextual, but this research project shows one way in which this is possible in a non-reactionary, productive way. | Ph.D. | women, queer, inclusive | 5 |
| Carsley, Sarah Elizabeth | Parkin, Patricia C||Birken, Catherine S | Using Electronic Medical Records to Examine Childhood Obesity Outcomes in Community-Based Primary Care | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-06 | Childhood obesity has become a global public health priority. Obesity leads to increased risk of several co-morbid health conditions such as hypertension, type 2 diabetes, and mental health problems. Growth monitoring is the long-standing child health practice to identify children who fall outside healthy growth parameters. It has been proposed as a key activity for prevention of obesity in children. Growth data is now predominantly stored in primary care electronic medical records (EMRs). However concerns about data quality have limited its use for public health and research. Five inter-related studies were conducted to better understand the feasibility of using routinely collected anthropometric data from primary care EMRs for childhood obesity surveillance and outcomes. In our survey on current growth monitoring practices, only 21% of primary care providers reported using a length board to measure length in infants less than two years of age. Growth measurements were reported to be performed most often during scheduled well-baby/child visits, but rarely during sick visits. Encouragingly, intra- and inter-observer reliability of height/length, and weight was found to be acceptable when using appropriate equipment and measurement methods. Body mass index z-score data in EMRs was found to be 90% complete and 97% accurate. The main inaccuracies were due to recording measurements with inconsistent units and data entry errors. Using reliable data from EMRs, it was found that preschool-aged children (2 to | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Carson, Andrea | Webster, Fiona | Ambiguous Endings: A Feminist Sociological Approach to Women’s Stories of Discontinuing Medical Fertility Treatment in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | This dissertation problematizes the dominant cultural view that assisted reproductive technologies (ART), such as in vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination, are highly successful medical treatments that produce ‘miracle babies’. I preface this study by outlining the landscape of fertility clinics and ART legislation in Canada, emphasizing the murkiness of Canada’s data on ART use and efficacy. I then use a post-structural feminist theoretical lens to focus on women’s experiences of discontinuing medical fertility treatment in Canada. I interviewed 22 women who received various forms of fertility treatment in Canada and who were at various stages in relation to treatment (e.g. on a temporary break from treatment, left treatment indefinitely, had yet to decide whether to initiate treatment after a diagnosis). Using a sociological form of narrative analysis, I analyzed these stories and co-constructed eight narrative themes. Through these eight narrative themes, I demonstrate two things: first, that there are multifaceted ways in which women engage these technologies and ultimately leave, and secondly, that there are implicit gendered power relations at work within the fertility clinic that may make it more difficult for women to leave treatment when it is financially, emotionally, and physically beneficial for them to do so. I highlight the stories of these women and their differing life circumstances, including women across a broad age range (approximately 25 to 50 years of age), two women in self-identified queer relationships, and women with varying degrees of financial security, to elucidate the ambiguous character of ending treatment-- an experience that is often marginalized in the public-facing view of fertility treatment as a highly positive scientific innovation. Out of my interpretations I make eight recommendations for health providers, stakeholders and policymakers to improve fertility care in Canada and to make the experience of medical fertility treatment less physically, emotionally and financially distressing for users. | Ph.D. | health, gender, women, queer, innovation | 3, 5, 2009 |
| Carson, Lindsey D. | Trebilcock, Michael J. | Laws of Unintended Consequences: The Impacts of Anti-Foreign Bribery Laws on Developing Countries | Law | 2015-03 | Over the past quarter-century, the international community has grown increasingly aware of the deleterious impacts of corruption on economic growth, governance institutions, political stability, social freedoms and opportunities, and overall equality and efficiency within and across countries, with the effects most pronounced in the developing world. Corruption's ascent as a priority on the international development agenda has led to the emergence of a global anti-corruption regime engaging governments, civil society, business, and international organizations. Among the most prominent of these multilateral anti-corruption efforts has been the agreement among most of the world's leading economic powers to create legally binding standards that criminalize the bribery of foreign public officials. However, the existing literature examining the impacts of these anti-foreign bribery (AFB) laws has focused nearly exclusively on the statutes' effects on the competitiveness, costs, and investment decisions of regulated firms and individuals, with little investigation of the consequences of the multilateral AFB regime for the countries ostensibly harmed most by corruption - those in the developing world. This dissertation fills that gap in current law and development scholarship, using theoretical, anecdotal, and empirical evidence to identify how AFB laws change the incentives of foreign investors as well as government officials and to analyze how those shifts may ultimately affect the levels, sources, sectors, and types of foreign investment flowing into developing countries. It further considers the consequences of AFB laws for governance institutions and the magnitude and forms of corruption within less-developed countries. Examining critically the range of potential effects, it concludes that, under certain conditions in certain environments, laws prohibiting foreign bribery may undermine the developmental conditions in and prospects for poorer countries. | S.J.D. | governance, institution, enviornment, economic growth, equality | 5, 8, 16 |
| Carter-Chand, Rebecca Ann | Bergen, Doris L. | Doing Good in Bad Times: The Salvation Army in Germany, 1886-1946 | History | 2016-06 | The Salvation Army came into being in an era of empire and it came of age in the heyday of internationalism. Its particular form of internationalism has proved remarkably adaptable to the massive political and social changes that have taken place since the mid-nineteenth century. This dissertation examines the Heilsarmee (the German branch of the Salvation Army) during the tumultuous decades between 1886 and 1946 and the tensions between the organization’s international and the national identities. The dissertation places the Heilsarmee in three main historical contexts: the history of religion in Germany—arguing that the Heilsarmee’s presence points to a religious vibrancy that is often underestimated; the history of internationalism—demonstrating the direct connections between imperialism, Christianity, and internationalism; and debates about German civil society during the Nazi period—revealing the malleable nature of the Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). After the first Salvationists arrived in Germany in 1886, the Heilsarmee went through a process of transplantation, carving out a place for itself in Germany after turning its focus to social work. During World War I, its transnational entanglements challenged the organization’s internationalist identity and made practical matters difficult as the Heilsarmee ceased communication with the headquarters in London. Ultimately the structure proved resilient and the organization’s postwar relief work in Germany boosted its public profile. The Heilsarmee came to be seen as the embodiment of goodness in Germany, as is observed in the many representations of the Salvation Army in Weimar-era cultural production. In the 1920s and 1930s the Heilsarmee became increasingly nationalist and politically conservative. It supported the rise of the Nazi Party, sharing many of the same social values. After 1933, while struggling to maintain some measure of autonomy, it became a participating body in the NSV (National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization). Although the government restricted its activities, the Heilsarmee was active throughout World War II. As it had in 1914, the Heilsarmee cut off ties with its parent organization in 1939, reuniting when the war ended. In the postwar period the Heilsarmee sought to rehabilitate itself by emphasizing its links to the international Salvation Army. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Carter, Kimberly | Nedelsky, Jennifer | Engendering Security: Lessons from Post-conflict Central America | Political Science | 2013-11 | Analyzing post-conflict contexts from a feminist perspective sheds light on an important, yet overlooked, fact in peacebuilding research: While human rights are officially recognized and codified by state and international institutions, the actual possibility of enjoying these rights often depends on whether they are respected or violated in private, often intimate, gendered relations. I therefore ask: How might peacebuilding efforts bridge the gap between the promise and practice of women’s rights and basic security in post-conflict contexts? In response, I argue that peacebuilding efforts must foster a feminist vision of positive peace that requires not only the absence of war, but also the elimination of unjust social relations. So long as gendered violence is largely excluded from mainstream peacebuilding theories and practices, a robust human rights regime will remain elusive - even in contexts that are otherwise regarded as peacebuilding "success stories". In theory, the protection and promotion of human rights as part of peacebuilding is not very controversial. The challenge, as I illustrate, is in finding ways to make these rights a meaningful reality (i.e. a behavioural practice) in the lives of a post-conflict population. Based on 92 interviews and extensive participant-observation research in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, I demonstrate how grassroots projects are well-positioned to: a) address the private relations in which gendered violence often occurs, and b) change the attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that sustain the gendered power relations and gendered roles subordinating women. I focus on three projects developed by Central American citizens to strengthen women’s rights and basic security: Women’s Police Stations, Nuevos Horizontes (New Horizons) a shelter for survivors of intimate partner violence, and the innovative telenovela or "social soap" Sexto Sentido (Sixth Sense). My findings show how these projects both empower women through a combination of resources, agency and achievements, and challenge traditional gendered roles and identities common in the region, such as machismo, that normalize violence against women. By challenging patriarchal power distributions and gendered identities/roles from the "bottom-up," my research offers baseline examples of how grassroots initiatives can improve women's security, consequently strengthening the rights-based culture necessary for positive peace. | PhD | gender, women, institution, peace, rights | 5, 16 |
| Carvalho, Gustavo | Bernstein, Steven | International Structure, Cooperation, and Sovereign Debt Crises: The Brazilian Debt Restructurings of 1898, 1931, and 1983 | Political Science | 2016-06 | In this dissertation, I offer three main contributions to the literature on sovereign debt. First, I make the case for a structurally-oriented perspective on debt crises. The social institutions that comprise the finance and production structures of the international economy act as conduits for the transmission of crises from developed countries to the periphery of the system, as they increase the relative scarcity of capital through mechanisms such as capital and trade flows. I argue that defaults and moratoria are thus better understood as reactions to the relative scarcity of capital at the international level and not as opportunistic strategies adopted by utility-maximizing politicians who want to avoid the costs associated with repayment. Second, I reevaluate the relationship between debtors and creditors and how they cooperate. I argue that they cooperate by means of positive-sum debt restructuring processes whose results fall within a continuum between full repayment and full repudiation. In other words, cooperation is based on a compromise and not on the enforcement of the original terms of debt contracts by creditor countries or the creditors themselves. Finally, I offer a deeper and more nuanced analysis of the role that the structural power of creditors and creditor countries play in the sovereign debt market, and I argue that they shape the social arrangements that regulate their relationship with debtor countries. I support my claims with qualitative historical studies of three past cases of Brazilian moratoria and debt renegotiations - the Funding Loans of 1898 and 1931, and the Financing Program for 1983. | Ph.D. | trade, production, institution | 10, 12, 16 |
| Carvalho, Ibrahim Oliveira Lopes de | Prado, Mariana M | An Assessment of FDI in Angola: Signalling Readiness to Attract Investment | Law | 2019-11 | The financial system can be of extreme importance to improve capital accumulation and promote economic growth. This study, provides an assessment of the role of the financial system, specifically the banking sector, to attract FDI in Angola. Furthermore, it is also assessing how attracting FDI into the financial system can lead to the attraction of FDI into other sectors. | LL.M. | economic growth | 8 |
| Cascante, Helena Isabel | Davidson, Robert A. | On Globalization and Civil Society: Mediating Spatial Practice in Twenty-first-century Latin America | Spanish | 2011-06 | “On Globalization and Civil Society: Mediating Spatial Practice in Twenty-first-century Latin America” explores the tensions between globalization and civil society from a multi-geographical and multidisciplinary angle. The dissertation is informed by theories of space, power, identity, citizenship, and postmodernity, as well as mediatic and socio-political analyses of conditions that have consistently challenged democracy and the formation of a just civil society specifically in the Colombian and Mexican contexts but throughout Latin America as well. I argue that national institutions fundamental to the formation of knowledge and the construction of identity--namely national citizenship, geopolitical and symbolic borders, and the national media--impose undue limits and power on globally affected individuals. After acknowledging and analyzing the dehumanizing way in which these national institutions limit individual freedoms and participation within local and global public spheres, I take a more hopeful stance as I explore humanizing instances that transcend victimization through the imagination and creation of alternative social orders that destabilize traditional apparatuses of authority through agency-enhancing initiatives. Through close readings of contemporary Colombian and Mexican narrative by Héctor Abad Faciolince, Jorge Franco, Heriberto Yépez, and Luis Humberto Crosthwaite, and a case study of Un Pasquín, Vladimir Flórez’s independent alternative Bogotá media project, I call for a new understanding of the possibilities of the twenty-first-century public sphere in Latin America. I contend that by subverting dominant paradigms of power, these alternative spheres provide a new model from which to think and advance a just global order. In short, I argue that, despite globalization’s mostly deleterious consequences for the world’s most at risk local populations, the formation of a more humanizing spatial and mediatic practice that fosters alternative public spheres responsive to the human need for individual agency and subjectivity, though seemingly unattainable, is in fact possible. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Cashman, Rafael Mark | Portelli, John | Conflict and Creativity in Jewish Modern Orthodox Girls’ Education: Navigating Tradition and Modernity | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-11 | This study investigates Jewish Modern Orthodox girls’ dissonant, creative and adaptive responses to their religious and gender identities as they negotiate the tensions between authority and autonomy in an all-girls’ high school. It considers how the school, as a socializing agent, plays a role in this development. This study is framed by a post-structural research agenda that explores the complexity of religious practices in modernity, and a feminist post-structural body of research around alternative girlhoods in modernity. This ethnographic study contends with the notion that the presence of autonomy and other modern values such as egalitarianism, are a necessary challenge to the girls’ capacity to accept religious and patriarchal authority in a self-affirming way. Instead, it found that girls accept or creatively adapt to, and rarely dissent from, aspects of religion’s authority, while still maintaining their expectation of autonomy and egalitarianism. They achieved this state through a complex and creative re-structuring of normative religious categories in their religious lives, rather than through a bifurcation of the competing discourses, as had been posited in previous research. Existing gender norms in Modern Orthodox society reinforced the girls’ lack of dissonance. Even where girls bifurcated between their religious and social lives in order to maintain each, aspects of creativity emerged. For example, in their non-ritual lives inequality was an anathema, but they were not bothered by ritual inequity. They accepted and even supported their exclusion from certain rituals because they felt it afforded them more, not less autonomy, by freeing them from unwanted religious responsibilities. In this way, they used existing patriarchal structures to achieve what they understood as a personal advantage. Several themes emerged from this study. First, modern religious practitioners who live within divergent discourses re-form and re-create traditional categories in order to live holistic modern-religious lives within the inherited structures of traditional religion. Second, gender plays a role both in supporting existing norms, but also afford opportunities to challenging them. Third, despite the strong presence of autonomy amongst the girls, dissonance toward religious authority was surprisingly low. | Ph.D. | gender, equality, inequality | 5, 10 |
| Casimirri, Giuliana | Kant, Shashi | Outcomes and Prospects for Collaboration in Two Aboriginal and Non-Aboriginal Forest Management Negotiations in Ontario | Forestry | 2013-11 | Successful intercultural natural resource management collaboration is challenged by divergent worldviews and power disparities. Studies of non-intercultural collaboration efforts demonstrate that good outcomes emerge when procedural conditions are met, such as fostering open and high-quality deliberations, use of interest-based bargaining techniques and collective definition of the scope of the process. The applicability of these procedural conditions to intercultural collaboration efforts, such as negotiations between Aboriginal people, government resource managers and sustainable forest license holders, has not been explored. The aim of this thesis is to examine the outcomes and factors influencing two intercultural collaborations in the northeast region of Ontario. Semi-structured interviews with collaboration participants, negotiation meeting minutes and draft agreements are used as data sources. Following a general inductive coding approach and using QSR NVivo 2, the analysis of outcomes in both cases highlights improvements in relationships, increased understanding among the parties and the gradual definition of the scope of the negotiation. The findings also demonstrate that several barriers, including a lack of clear policy and legislative framework for collaboration and different definitions of the problem discourage intercultural collaboration. In one negotiation process, frequent and high quality deliberations, using an interest-based negotiation approach, and efforts to mutually define the scope of the negotiation prior to substantive negotiation do not overcome these systemic barriers to collaboration. However, in another negotiation process, the social and relational characteristics of the community and participants do contribute to the parties recognizing their interdependence, focusing on shared goals and undertaking joint action. This research demonstrates that the development of shared goals and acknowledgement of divergent problem definitions are more important to intercultural collaboration success than the development of improved relationships and establishing a mutually acceptable scope prior to collaboration. In the absence of a supportive legislative basis for the distribution of forest decision-making authority and responsibilities, this understanding of how Aboriginal, government and forest industry participants can collaborate is useful for developing more effective and equitable intercultural collaboration. | PhD | equitable, industr, forest | 4, 9, 15 |
| Castillo, Yessica Rico Mancebo del | Wagner, Helene H. | Effects of Rotational Shepherding on Plant Dispersal and Gene Flow in Fragmented Calcareous Grasslands | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2012-11 | Understanding dispersal and gene flow in human-modified landscapes is crucial for effective conservation. Seed dispersal governs colonization, recruitment, and distribution of plant species, whereas both pollen and seed dispersal determine gene flow among populations. This PhD thesis tests the effect of rotational shepherding on seed dispersal and gene flow in fragmented calcareous grasslands. Calcareous grasslands (Gentiano-Koelerietum pyramidatae vegetation) in Central Europe are semi-natural communities traditionally used for rotational grazing that experienced a decline of plant species during the 20th century due to abandonment of shepherding. This PhD profits from a management project started in 1989 in Bavaria, Germany to reconnect previously abandoned calcareous grasslands in three non-overlapping shepherding systems. Two vegetation surveys in 1989 and 2009 revealed colonizations in previously abandoned grasslands reconnected by shepherding. First, I propose a comprehensive approach to identify determinants of community-level patch colonization rates based on 48 habitat specialist plants by testing competing models of pre-dispersal and dispersal effects and accounting for post-dispersal effects. Mean source patch species occupancy in 1989, and structural elements in focal patches related to establishment explained community-level patch colonization rates. Secondly, by adapting the community analysis to all 31 individual species of the same community with sufficient data, I corroborate the role of shepherding to support dispersal for a range of species, even if they lack seed morphological traits related to zoochory. Thirdly, for the habitat specialist Dianthus carthusianorum, I genotyped 1,613 individuals from 64 populations at eleven microsatellites to test the effect of dispersal by sheep on spatial genetic structure at the landscape scale. Genetic distances between grazed patches of the same herding system were related to distance along herding routes, whereas ungrazed patches showed isolation by geographic distance. Lastly, within individual grassland patches, shepherding significantly decreases the degree of relatedness among neighboring individuals (kinship structure) and increases genetic diversity. My thesis contributes towards understanding the effects of zoochory on spatial dynamics in plant populations across scales. | PhD | conserv | 15 |
| Catalini, Christian | Ajay, Agrawal | Three Essays on the Impact of Geographic and Social Proximity on Innovation | Management | 2013-11 | The ability of an economy to generate and diffuse ideas has a profound influence on its ability to sustain growth. Our understanding of a key economic phenomenon behind agglomeration and modern growth - localization economies - relies on basic assumptions about how knowledge is recombined locally versus over distance. Whereas scholars have extensively studied the effects of proximity on the diffusion of ideas, the micro-foundations of knowledge recombination remain undeveloped. In particular, we know surprisingly little about how geographic, social and knowledge proximity shape the way ideas are generated, recombined, and discovered by others. In the first study, I provide novel empirical evidence grounded in an original theoretical framework to explain how the composition of near-neighbor scientists influences the direction of inventive activity. Co-located individuals are more likely to engage in low expected value but high variance payoffs interactions ("water cooler"). To address endogeneity concerns due to selection into co-location and matching, I exploit an unexpected random relocation of scientists due to asbestos removal at UPMC Paris. Results are consistent with the theory and shed light on how proximity affects innovation: random versus chosen co-location leads to higher levels of experimentation, and has a positive impact on breakthrough ideas for collaborations across academic fields. In the second study I explore the decline in collaboration that follows the separation of previously co-located co-authors. Not all co-author pairs are equally affected by an increase in geographic distance, as social proximity substitutes for it when the returns to collaboration are high. Collaborations that bridge otherwise disconnected communities of experts are the most negatively affected by separation. Finally, the third study examines how social and geographic proximity affect the discovery and funding of creative projects in online crowdfunding. Whereas the internet reduces many distance-related frictions, local and distant investors exhibit different investment patterns. The distance effect is explained by investors who likely have a social relationship with the entrepreneur, and does not persist after the first investment (i.e., it is likely driven by search costs). Thus, crowdfunding seems to eliminate many distance-related frictions, but not those related to social interactions. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Catungal, John Paul | Leslie, Deborah ||Farish, Matthew | For us, by us: political geographies of race, sexuality and health in the work of ethno-specific AIDS service organizations in global-multicultural Toronto | Geography | 2014-06 | This dissertation traces the role of racialization in the production of spaces of sexual health organizing and social service provision. Drawing on insights from geographies of sexualities and the literatures on critical race theory, it examines how spaces of care that emerged from local responses to HIV/AIDS in 1980s Toronto (e.g., AIDS service organizations or ASOs) became sites for the normalization of whiteness and the exclusion of people of colour. It also documents the ways that activists of colour disidentify with mainstream ASOs by naming the exclusions – and deadly effects – engendered by white normalization and by adopting “for us, by us” approaches to sexual health that symbolically and literally made specific spaces for people of colour. Central to these acts of disidentification, I argue, are geographical discourses and practices, which include place-making tactics that mark certain spaces as “ethno-specific” and the identification and targeting of particular sites (e.g., event-spaces, clubs, neighbourhoods) for sexual health outreach to communities of colour. This dissertation is based on case studies of three ethno-specific ASOs in Toronto: the Black Coalition for AIDS Prevention, the Asian Community AIDS Services, and the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention. Interviews with current and former workers (board members, volunteers and paid staff) form the main archive – along with supplementary archival and media analysis and participant observations – for the analysis that follows. A consideration of the geographies of e-ASOs’ work highlights the political salience of race for sexual and health politics, and provides a forum for bringing geographies of sexualities into conversation with queer of colour analysis. It thus contributes to the theoretical and political project of anti-racist geographies of sexualities not only by naming the exclusions that people of colour face in sexual political spaces, but also by focusing on their tactics of survival, resilience and resistance. | PhD | health, gender, queer, worker | 3, 5, 2008 |
| Cauchi, Laura | Magnusson, Jamie Lynn | The Drive to Innovation: The Privileging of Science and Technology Knowledge Production in Canada | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2012-11 | This dissertation project explored the privileging of knowledge production in science and technology as a Canadian national economic, political and social strategy. The project incorporated the relationship between nation-state knowledge production and how that knowledge is then systematically evaluated, prioritized and validated by systems of health technology assessment (HTA). The entry point into the analysis and this dissertation project was the Scientific Research and Experimental Design (SR&ED) federal tax incentive program as the cornerstone of science and technology knowledge production in Canada. The method of inquiry and analysis examined the submission documents submitted by key stakeholders across the country, representing public, private and academic standpoints, during the public consultation process conducted from 2007 to 2008 and how each of these standpoints is hooked into the public policy interests and institutional structures that produce knowledge in science and technology. Key public meetings, including the public information sessions facilitated by the Canada Revenue Agency and private industry conferences, provided context and guidance regarding the current pervasive public and policy interests that direct and drive the policy debates. Finally, the “Innovation Canada: A Call to Action Review of Federal Support to Research and Development: Expert Panel Report,” commonly referred to as “The Jenkins Report” (Jenkins et al., 2011), was critically evaluated as the expected predictor of future public policy changes associated with the SR&ED program and the future implications for the production of knowledge in science and technology. The method of inquiry and analytical lens was a materialist approach that drew on the inspiring frameworks of such scholars as Dorothy Smith, Michel Foucault, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Melinda Cooper, and, Gilles Deleuze. Ultimately, I strove to illuminate the normalizing force and power of knowledge production in science and technology, and the disciplines and structures that encompass it and are hooked into it where the privileging of such knowledge becomes hegemonic within and by the regimes of knowledge production that created them. | PhD | institution, production, industr, innovation | 9, 12, 16 |
| Cerny, Judy Marie | Neysmith, Sheila | Low-income Mothers, Provisioning, and Childcare Policy: A Vision of Shared Caring | Social Work | 2009-11 | This research examines how childcare policy in Ontario, Canada assists and constrains low-income urban women’s strategies of provisioning for their children. Childcare policy refers to the range of programs that assist families in reconciling paid work and parenthood. In Ontario, Canada, these programs include childcare fee subsidies, tax deductions, parental leave policies, child benefits/allowances and a program regulating live-in caregivers. Provisioning is used to capture an array of daily work-related activities (e.g. paid, unpaid and caring labour) that mothers perform to ensure their children’s survival and well-being. The qualitative study, based on individual semi-structured interviews with 20 low-income mothers living in an urban community, found that women carry out various activities in provisioning for their children. Some of these are familiar and visible activities such as providing domestic caring labour, engaging in the labour market, and undertaking volunteer work in the community. Others are less visible tasks such as sustaining their health and that of their children, making claims/asserting their rights, and ensuring safety. Low-income urban mothers provision under numerous constraints. A continuous shortage of money and childcare issues are at the core of these constraints. The study also found that the mothers encounter a variety of barriers in the community, such as a limited availability of social and community services and a high level of violence/criminal activity in their neighbourhoods. Issues related to poor health, an inadequate diet, or the necessity of caring for children with special needs further constrain women’s lives. Limited English language skills, racial barriers, and the struggles of adapting to a new country add to the multi-dimensional barriers facing low-income urban mothers. The research indicates that mothers use a variety of strategies to counter these barriers; however, these strategies cost women in terms of their time as well as their physical, mental and emotional energy. Childcare policy assists to a certain extent by providing some support to low-income mothers. Enhancements to the existing policies have potential benefits; however, they are like patches on a leaky bucket. Ultimately, the bucket needs to be replaced with a new way of envisioning family responsibilities, work and childcare. | PhD | rights, urban, labour, women | 5, 8, 11, 16 |
| Cervenan, Amy Martina | Leslie, Deborah | Placing the Festival: A Case Study of the Toronto International Film Festival | Geography | 2017-11 | Economic geographers researching the film industry have focused on the dual spatial pattern of film work that has arisen since the sector restructured in the 1970s. The new geography of film has been characterized simultaneously by concentration (i.e. major clusters) and dispersal (i.e. â runawayâ production). During this time, film festivals have proliferated in cities across the globe, yet remain largely unexplored. This presents a need to better understand major film events as important, if temporary, nodes in the cultural production system. Adopting a festival-centric approach, this case study of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) yields particularly rich insights on the potential value festivals create for the film industry, festival participants, and the host region. In part, this is because TIFF is connected to a global festival circuit and is embedded in a city with established local film production. My research takes up the growing interest in events, extends conceptualizations of value-creation, and considers how TIFF brings together international actors from across the film value chain. The research foregrounds the role of an active audience in valorizing an experiential cultural product, and in building the reputation of local film. This research contributes three major findings. First, it finds that TIFF acts as a temporary cluster, which creates opportunities for networking, relationship-building, and industry learning. It is also an important site for selling and promoting work, and creating pipelines to access non-local knowledge, markets and resources. Second, this research explores the expanded role for consumer influence, and finds that audience engagement with films at TIFF creates an information-rich environment, which influences business decisions, professional development, and marketing activities. Third, this research finds that TIFF contributes to place-making and culture-led urban development. These findings have implications for policy, practice and research across industry, government and academic communities. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Chahal, Nutan (Nita) | McCrindle, Brian W | Motivational Interviewing as a Lifestyle Management Strategy for Dyslipidemic Overweight and Obese Adolescents | Medical Science | 2016-06 | Background: Dyslipidemia, overweight and obesity (OW/OB) in the pediatric population contributes to metabolic complications and future cardiovascular disease. The prevalence varies but the problem is a global issue. Adolescence is a challenging developmental stage with many factors influencing adolescent health. Lifestyle management is the preferred treatment. Motivational interviewing is a promising counselling approach; however, evidence is limited for this population. Objectives and Methods: The substantive focus involved exploring MI for dyslipidemic adolescents. Study A was a retrospective cohort comparison aimed to assess a collaborative educational approach with MI elements for pediatric patients (n=38) newly referred to a specialized lipid clinic, versus historical patients who had received a more didactic educational approach (n=31). Study B involved theoretical research to build and graphically represent a conceptual framework for MI, including special applications to adolescents. Study C was a mixed-methods, randomized controlled trial (N=32) to evaluate the outcomes of MI counselling, comparing adolescents together with a parent versus adolescents alone. A qualitative component occurred following the quantitative data collection to explore the perceptions of participants. Findings: Despite some limitations, sufficient promise was observed in the Study A findings to move forward with a detailed plan to rigorously explore MI. Significantly improved lifestyle and anthropometry outcomes were observed favouring the collaborative education approach with MI. The theoretical work in Study B defined four key elements for a MI framework: the Person, the Problem, the Process, and the MI Counsellor. The between group results for Study C were equivocal; however, with both groups combined in a secondary analysis, there were significant improvements in nearly all outcomes. The interviews enriched an understanding of the participantsâ lives, lifestyle change, and the counselling process. Conclusion: Motivational interviewing is an effective and desired counselling strategy for adolescents with dyslipidemia and overweight/obesity. Further research with a longer period of observation is needed to determine whether achieved lifestyle improvements can be sustained in the long-term. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Chakraborty, Kalyan Sekhar | Miller, Heather M.-L | Subsistence-Based Economy and the Regional Interaction Processes of the Indus Civilization Borderland in Kachchh, Gujarat: A Bio-Molecular Perspective | Anthropology | 2019-11 | This dissertation investigates the role of food producers in the Indus Civilization borderland in Kachchh, Gujarat, particularly during the Urban/Mature phase (2600-1900 BCE). During the Urban phase, this region was occupied by two distinct categories of settlements. The settlements from the first category were strategically situated, contained Classical Harappan type materials, and were specialized in craft production, craft-related trade and administration; these are popularly known as Classical Harappan-type settlements. The settlements from the second category, popularly known as Sorath-type settlements, were located inland, contained regional pottery and practiced agro-pastoralism. The analysis of the subsistence economy of Kotada Bhadli, a Sorath-type settlement, provides an evaluation of the nature of economic production at this settlement and the possible day-to-day interactions between this settlement and neighboring non-food craft-producing settlements. To date, our understanding of rural food production and regional everyday interaction between different specialized groups in the Indus borderland is limited, and therefore, through providing a detailed account of the subsistence-related economy at a rural settlement, this thesis aims to evaluate the nature of specialized staple production, and provide more data for the understanding the nature of staple exchange between these settlements specialized in diverse economic activities. To incorporate this everyday regional interaction in our current understanding of regional interactions during the Indus age, I summarized and arranged different arguments from various scholars into distinct models. The analysis of molecular, isotopic and micro-botanical remains suggest the involvement of Kotada Bhadli with specialized sedentary to semi-sedentary pastoralism and some form of household-level cultivation of plants, along with some importing of agricultural grains and Harappan-style craft goods from neighboring settlements. Based on these results, I propose a likely cooperative regional interaction between diverse groups and specialists such as craft producers, traders, raw material distributers and staple producers, in the presence or absence of a centralized or regional authority during the Urban phase. Such reciprocal relationship between diverse specialized groups not only supported the production of wealth but also helped to maintain status and identity, as well as dealing with critical environmental, economic and probably political conditions that may have ultimately helped sustain this civilization over many centuries. | Ph.D. | economic growth, food, industr, rural, production | 1, 8, 9, 11, 12 |
| Chakravartty, Dolon | Cole, Donald C | Attending to Differential Environmental Exposures Among Racialized Newcomer Women in Canada: Why so Difficult? | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | This thesis aims to increase understanding of differential environmental exposures and to explore how inequity in environmental health can be viewed and articulated for newcomer and racialized women in Canada. Based on a subpopulation biomonitoring study of heavy metal concentrations among South and East Asian newcomer women in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), entitled “Metals in Newcomer Women (MNW),” this thesis is comprised of three individual papers. The first paper modified selected reflective and transformational questions of an Intersectionality-Based Analysis to frame my examination of the environmental research itself. Through a personal reflexive process, I analyzed the processes by which the research was identified, constructed, developed, and funded to examine assumptions, definitions, and values that contributed to study decisions. Transformational questions provided a framework to think about the problem differently and about potential challenges in doing so. The second paper addresses how adopting elements of community-based research (CBR) in the MNW study increased relevance and reach for our communities of interest. The paper describes how CBR elements included developing meaningful partnerships with public health organizations and actively engaging peer researchers, as well as newcomer women with similar linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The latter bridged the gap with many of our participants and helped to overcome known barriers to participation. As health professionals themselves, with experience interacting in clinical settings, peer researchers provided expertise and familiarity, shared more adequate explanations of relevant topics, and helped participants overcome the reluctance to participate in a scientific study. The third paper uses mixed methods to explore the “exposure experience” of MNW study participants and to understand how individuals may process, interpret and respond to the knowledge of the presence of bodily contaminants. Grounding research in the experiences and perspectives of underrepresented populations provides a deeper and broadened understanding of non-dominant views and definitions of the environment, allowing an examination of intersecting identities and social categories and how these contribute to conceptualizing exposures. The findings of this thesis suggest that challenging dominant conceptual frameworks that underpin environmental health research, through the application of intersectional and critical race perspectives and the use of community-based approaches, can augment and enhance equity-relevant implications of environmental health for racialized newcomer women | Ph.D. | health, women, inequality | 3, 5, 10 |
| Chan, Brian Chun-Fai | Krahn, Murray D||Mittmann, Nicole | Economic Burden of Chronic Ulcers | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2017-06 | Chronic ulcers (pressure ulcer, diabetic foot ulcer and leg ulcer) are an underappreciated yet growing concern to the health care system. These conditions are commonly observed in various health care settings and are associated with an increase in health care utilization and cost. The current understanding of the economic burden of chronic ulcers is limited to short term costs. The aim of this thesis is to expand the knowledge of the cost-of-illness of chronic ulcers by presenting three related studies. The first study systematically reviewed cost-of-illness studies on chronic ulcers. Included studies were heterogeneous, limiting our ability to aggregate and compare results. There was a lack of extensive, long-term studies evaluating attributable cost of chronic ulcers. Thus, the usefulness of cost-of-illness studies for chronic ulcers to policy-makers is limited. In the second study, we evaluated the lifetime cost-of-illness of chronic ulcers using Ontario administrative data. The economic impact of a concurrent pressure ulcer for individuals with a spinal cord injury was explored in the third study. This thesis highlights the substantial economic burden of chronic ulcers. The results presented are only a portion of the total financial burden associated with treating individuals with this condition. Additional efforts by health care policy decision makers, clinicians and patients in targeting preventative interventions will reduce the downstream cost of chronic ulcers freeing up limited health care resources to treat other health concerns. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Chan, Elic | Fong, Eric | Mahjonging Together: Distribution, Financial Capacity, and Activities of Asian Nonprofit Organizations in Canada | Sociology | 2014-06 | Using a nationwide database of nonprofit organizations, this thesis examines the impact of the socio-spatial environment and resource dependency on the development of ethnic organizations among four East Asian communities (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese) across Canadian cities. The thesis makes an original contribution to the theoretical understanding of ethnic communities by evaluating the different perspectives for understanding three related but distinct properties of ethnic organizations (1) distribution – the number of organizations in a given city; (2) financial capacity – total revenue of the organization; and (3) cross-border activities – location and type of activities pursued outside of Canada. The findings suggest that organizations develop more in response to social need rather than group resource, and that the number of organizations is greater in cities where levels of residential concentration are high. The analysis shows that group characteristics such as income and size of enclave do not predict higher revenue among nonprofits. Rather, the effect of government funding is the most consistent predictor of financial capacity across all groups. Overall, the results highlight the importance of inter-group dynamics for institutional development, with traditional predictors such as group resource playing a lesser role. In regards to their activities, the results show that organizations of recent immigrant groups do not necessarily operate programs back home as some groups have more programs in places outside their home country. Additionally, source of funding and religion play a role in determining the location of cross-border activities. These findings challenge the current perspective on transnational linkages as ethnic organizations have the power to mediate group interests away from the host-home nexus. Together, the research offers a novel empirical approach to examine how groups organize at the community level and provides an alternative perspective in the understanding of integration, social cohesion and sense of belonging in multicultural societies. | PhD | cities | 11 |
| Chan, Eugene Yue-Hin | Mitchell, Andrew A | Is There In Choice No Beauty? Motivation for Choosing Moderates Choice Overload | Management | 2014-11 | Some research suggests that increasing the number of options may be harmful for consumers by increasing their difficulty with choosing, which increases their likelihood of experiencing regret. However, other research suggests that increasing the number of options may also be beneficial by satisfying consumers' diverse tastes and variety-seeking needs. Thus, it isn't clear whether - or when - more choice would be harmful or beneficial for consumers. I propose that the motivation for choosing as either extrinsic or intrinsic impacts consumers' satisfaction with the chosen option differently. For extrinsic choices where consumers are choosing an option to achieve some separable consequence, more choice increases the difficulty with choosing, which decreases satisfaction. For intrinsic choices where consumers are choosing an option for its inherent rewards, more choice increases the autonomy from choosing, which increases satisfaction. Crucially, this difficulty or autonomy occurs because consumers perceive variety with more choice, even though more choice does not necessarily mean a greater objective amount of variety. I conclude by discussing how understanding the motivation for choosing has implications for researchers and marketers who study or provide choice to consumers. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Chan, Jeffrey | Morrow, Peter M | Essays in International Trade | Economics | 2016-11 | This thesis consists of three chapters that empirically investigate issues pertaining to international trade. Chapter 1 provides clear evidence that increased exposure to import competition from low-income countries results in lower quality matches between workers and firms, using matched employer-employee data from Italy. I measure match quality as the match (worker-firm) fixed effect from a wage regression that includes a rich set of time-varying observables, as well as worker and firm fixed effects. Import shocks reduce match quality, shifting the entire distribution of match effects leftward. This occurs because workers accept worse matches, but not because of workers in good matches leaving their jobs. Back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that, for the average firm, a one standard deviation increase in import competition decreases profitability per worker by approximately 10% through lower match quality. Chapter 2 examines whether import competition affects the gender wage gap. While specifications without worker or firm fixed effects suggest that the wage gap closes with increased import competition, I find that import competition lowers women's wages relative to men when controlling for unobserved worker and firm heterogeneity. Accounting for these sources of heterogeneity is important because: 1) women, particularly women that earn low wages, are more likely than men to change industries or leave the sample as a response to import competition, and 2) firms that employ women are relatively more likely to exit and reduce employment due to import competition. Chapter 3 provides evidence that that increased numbers of U.S. troops in a country is associated with increased exports to and imports from the U.S. I provide evidence suggesting that this effect is not driven by favourable U.S. policies that coincided with troop increases. I find that the pro-trade effect of troops is concentrated in differentiated and consumer goods industries. I also find some evidence that soldiers provide a boost to the trade of cultural goods. The results in this paper complement abundant anecdotal evidence that suggests that American military personnel bring back foreign goods and culture while also spreading American culture and goods. | Ph.D. | gender, women, employment, worker, wage, industr, trade | 5, 8, 9, 10 |
| Chan, Phoebe Tsz-Wai | Halfar, Jochen | Subarctic Crustose Coralline Algae as Recorders of Past Climatic and Environmental Change | Earth Sciences | 2016-06 | If unabated, the continued anthropogenic release of carbon dioxide is expected to lead to warming and acidification of ocean waters, with widespread and detrimental impacts on marine ecosystems. Proxy records stored in biomineralized shells and skeletons of long-lived paleoclimate archives are essential for understanding long-term climate variability - previously unresolvable based on spatiotemporally limited observations. In this dissertation, geochemical and physical proxies from Clathromorphum spp. crustose coralline algae (CCA) are used for interpreting past climatic and environmental changes in the subarctic North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans. Micro-computed tomography techniques are used to examine the algal skeleton, and reveal changes in skeletal density in relation to recently observed acidification off the Aleutian Islands, Alaska. Metabolic trade-offs associated with continued growth and calcification in acidifying seawaters may have resulted in the production of weaker (less-dense) skeletons since 1980. However, correlations indicate that in addition to acidification, sunlight availability and temperature stress are also important factors influencing the ability of CCA to calcify. Furthermore, barium-to-calcium (Ba/Ca) ratios are utilized as proxies for phytoplankton productivity in northern Labrador, Canada, such that: Higher (lower) algal Ba/Ca values are interpreted as decreased (increased) productivity coinciding with the expansion (melting) of sea-ice. This multi-centennial record of algal Ba/Ca indicates a long-term increase in North Atlantic productivity that is unprecedented in the last 365 years. Conversely, in mountainous coastal regions surrounding the Gulf of Alaska where high sediment loads are present in seasonal runoff, algal Ba/Ca is used as an indicator for freshwater runoff. Ba/Ca is inversely correlated to instrumental salinity, and indicates a unique period of freshening (2001 â 2006) that is related to increasing glacial melt and precipitation on mainland Alaska. The results presented here illustrate the physiological responses of coralline algae to acidification, and provides much-needed data for future projections of climate and environmental change. | Ph.D. | water, climate, environment, ocean, marine | 13, 14 |
| Chan, Vincy | Colantonio, Angela | A Population Based Perspective of Children and Youth with Acquired Brain Injury in Ontario, Canada | Rehabilitation Science | 2016-06 | Acquired brain injury (ABI) includes traumatic (TBI) and non-traumatic brain injury (nTBI). It is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide and can negatively affect the long-term development of children and youth living with an ABI. The objective of this thesis was to address current gaps in pediatric ABI research by (1) establishing the foundation for efforts to reach an appropriate case definition for pediatric TBI; (2) addressing the paucity of information on the health service use of children and youth with nTBI; and (3) expanding current knowledge on children and youth with a brain tumour by including data on individuals with metastatic and non-malignant brain tumours. Population based healthcare administrative data from Ontario, Canada, were used and children and youth with an ABI were identified using International Classification of Diseases Version 10 codes. Results showed that the number and rate, healthcare use, and intentional and mechanism of injury differed significantly when including/excluding 'unspecified injury to the head' diagnostic codes in the case definition for TBI, providing evidence for the importance of accurately interpreting current findings for the TBI population in reference to the case definition. Data also showed that although the rate of nTBI episodes of care was not as high as the rates reported for the TBI population, the health service use among the nTBI population was just as high as the TBI population. This suggests that the pediatric nTBI population puts an increased burden and demand on the healthcare system with currently little data to direct resources and planning. Finally, despite higher rates of malignant brain tumour episodes of care, patients with benign and unspecified brain tumours also use acute care and post-acute care services, indicating that current estimates for brain tumour and associated healthcare use are underestimates. This thesis provided a comprehensive update on children and youth with ABI from a population based perspective that has implications for policy and decision-making, health services planning, and resource allocation for ABI. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Chandan, Priyanka | Bergquist, Bridget A | Evaluating the Application of Photochemical Mass-Independent Fractionation of Mercury (Hg) in Natural Systems | Earth Sciences | 2018-11 | Mercury (Hg) is a toxic and globally distributed contaminant that poses a serious risk to humans, wildlife, and the environment due to its ability to bioaccumulate along the food webs in aquatic ecosystems. The overarching goals for this dissertation are to: (1) evaluate the potential of mass-independent fractionation (MIF) of Hg during photochemical reactions to understand biogeochemical Hg cycling in natural systems; and (2) utilize Hg mass-dependent (MDF) and mass-independent fractionation (MIF) to characterize and trace Hg sources in the environment. In Chapter 2, Hg isotopes link environmental factors to Hg MIF preserved in freshwater lower trophic organisms to quantify MMHg photodegradation in freshwaters and understand how Hg MIF is preserved in natural systems. In Chapter 3, Hg isotopes in pelagic ocean higher trophic biota assess the relative contribution of Hg sources, transformation processes (methylation/photodemethylation), and other factors that may control the Hg isotopic signature of open-ocean fish in different regions and depths of the pelagic ocean. Chapter 4 assess Hg isotopes in atmospheric gaseous Hg(0), particulate Hg (PHg), and snow to understand Hg photochemical processes and sources in the Arctic. This dissertation demonstrates source characterization of atmospheric Hg species from multiple emission sources and better understanding of transformation processes that alter Hg source signatures, and highlights the potential of stable Hg isotopes to contribute to the increasing knowledge of Hg sources and transformation processes in the atmosphere, aqueous ecosystems and cryosphere. | Ph.D. | environment, ocean | 13, 14 |
| Chang, Christine | Ensminger, Ingo | Impacts of Short Photoperiod, Elevated Temperature, and Elevated CO2 on Cold Hardening in Eastern White Pine | Cell and Systems Biology | 2017-03 | Cold hardening in evergreen conifers is induced during autumn by decreasing temperature and photoperiod, and may be delayed or impaired by climate warming. This work aimed to 1) characterize the control of photoperiod versus temperature over the downregulation of photosynthesis, changes in carbohydrate metabolism and development of freezing tolerance that occur during cold hardening in Eastern white pine (Pinus strobus L.) seedlings; and 2) assess the impact of elevated temperature and elevated CO2 on the timing and extent of cold hardening in P. strobus seedlings under controlled and field conditions. Under controlled conditions, short photoperiod rapidly induced adjustments of leaf starch and sucrose, while low temperature rapidly induced adjustments of leaf pigments, photosynthesis and accumulation of glucose. Prolonged exposure to short photoperiod and low temperature induced downregulation of photosynthesis, accumulation of cryoprotective carbohydrates, and development of freezing tolerance. A novel 16-kD dehydrin protein was induced by short photoperiod and maximally expressed with the addition of low temperature; expression of this dehydrin strongly correlated with freezing tolerance. Under controlled conditions, elevated temperature suppressed the downregulation of photosynthesis and accumulation of cryoprotective compounds; freezing tolerance was impaired, but provided sufficient protection against average historical winter temperatures at the seedlingsâ native origin. The combination of elevated temperature and elevated CO2 enhanced photosynthesis and, under long photoperiod, enhanced accumulation of starch. Elevated CO2 did not further impair development of freezing tolerance. Under field conditions, development of freezing tolerance was initiated during early autumn by decreasing photoperiod. Frost exposure in mid-late autumn induced the downregulation of photosynthesis, accumulation of soluble sugars, and strongly enhanced freezing tolerance. However, the projected temperature increase for the year 2050 did not perceptibly delay downregulation of photosynthesis or impair freezing tolerance. These findings indicate crucial roles for short photoperiod and low temperature during cold hardening. Warmer climates with elevated CO2 levels may allow P. strobus seedlings to benefit from increased carbon uptake and extend photosynthetic activity during the autumn. Elevated temperature and CO2 may impair the development of freezing tolerance, but is unlikely to increase risk of damage incurred by winter exposure for P. strobus seedlings grown in southern Ontario. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Chang, Rachel Ying-Wen | Abbatt, Jonathan P. D. | Arctic Aerosol Sources and Continental Organic Aerosol Hygroscopicity | Chemistry | 2011-06 | Atmospheric particles can affect climate directly, by scattering solar radiation, or indirectly, by acting as the seed upon which cloud droplets form. These clouds can then cool the earth's surface by reflecting incoming sunlight. In order to constrain the large uncertainties in predicting the ultimate effect of aerosol on climate, the sources of atmospheric particles and their subsequent ability to turn into cloud droplets needs to be better understood. This thesis addresses two parts of this issue: the sources of Arctic aerosol and the hygroscopicity of continental organic aerosol. Small particles were observed in Baffin Bay during September 2008 that coincided with high atmospheric and ocean surface dimethyl sulphide (DMS) concentrations suggesting that the aerosol formed from oceanic sources. An aerosol microphysics box model confirmed that local DMS could have produced the observed particles. In addition, the particle chemical composition was measured using aerosol mass spectrometry in the central Arctic Ocean in August 2008 and particles were found to be 43% organic and 46% sulphate. Factor analysis further apportioned the aerosol mass to marine biogenic and continental sources 33% and 36% of the time, respectively, with the source of the remaining mass unidentified. The second part of the study parameterises the hygroscopicity of the ambient organic aerosol fraction (κorg) at Egbert, Ontario and Whistler, British Columbia. This was done using two methods: 1) by assuming that the oxygenated organic component was hygroscopic and that the unoxygenated organic component was non-hygroscopic, κ of the oxygenated component was found to be 0.22 ± 0.04, and 2) by assuming that κorg varied linearly with the atomic oxygen to atomic carbon ratio, it could be parameterised as κorg = (0.29 ± 0.05) × (O/C). Calculations predict that knowing κorg is important in urban, semi-urban, and remote locations whenever the inorganic mass fraction is low. | PhD | solar, climate, ocean | 7, 13, 14 |
| Chaparro, Maria Paula | Grusec, Joan E | Overcoming the Cancer Experience: Narrative Identity in Young Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer | Psychology | 2015-11 | Although young adult survivors of childhood cancer (YAs) face a series of significant physical and psychosocial challenges, only a portion of these survivors will actually develop mental health difficulties. Research on narrative identity and posttraumatic growth suggests that developing a coherent life-story narrative, making meaning, and finding benefits from negative life events, can contribute to better psychosocial adjustment. The aim of the present study was twofold: understanding the mechanisms that link young adults’ cancer experience with positive psychosocial adjustment outcomes (i.e., empathy, attributional style, and coping), and investigating maternal distress-related communication and young adult attachment style as predictors of narrative identity and psychosocial adjustment. One hundred and eighteen YAs completed an adapted version of McAdams’ life-story interview (2001), which was coded for meaning making and coherence. YAs could choose to talk about cancer or non-cancer-related turning points. YAs completed online questionnaires assessing posttraumatic growth, attachment style, and three measures of psychosocial adjustment. Ninety-five mothers of YAs wrote a narrative of a past experience with their child’s cancer, and completed measures of distress-related disclosure, cancer-talk, and dispositional optimism. Results revealed that meaning making was higher for cancer-related than for non-cancer related turning points. Posttraumatic growth mediated the associations between cancer meaning making and both coping and empathy. Mothers’ cancer-talk frequency was related to YA cancer meaning making, and mothers’ distress-related disclosure was associated with YA posttraumatic growth. Mothers’ narrative coherence about a memory of their child’s cancer was unrelated to YA narrative coherence, but was positively related to YA negative attribution style, but only for mothers who scored low on optimism. Finally, secure attachment style was associated with YA narrative coherence about their cancer experience, and YA overall narrative coherence (cancer and non-cancer) mediated between YA secure attachment and YA empathy. These findings indicate that YA’s successful incorporation of the cancer experience into their narrative identities through meaning making and posttraumatic growth processes is linked to positive psychosocial adjustment outcomes. Also, mothers who engage in distress-related conversations with their children contribute to YA’s capacity to overcome their cancer experience. Implications for research on narrative identity development and clinical practice are discussed. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Chassels, Caroline June | Bascia, Nina | Responses to Difference in Initial Teacher Education: A Case of Racial and Linguistic Minority Immigrant Teacher Candidates | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | Despite recent rhetoric advocating the diversification of the teacher workforce, teachers in Canada continue to be disproportionately white and of northern European heritage. By investigating responses to difference experienced by racial and linguistic minority immigrant teacher candidates in an initial teacher education program, this thesis sheds light on dynamics that challenge or support the induction of minoritized individuals as members of the teaching profession in Canada. Data collected through interviews with eight immigrant teacher candidates, four instructors, and five student support staff of an initial teacher education program at an urban Canadian university (UCU) indicated that teacher candidates at UCU experienced varied responses to difference. Influences of both hegemony and collaboration were found in the university and practice teaching contexts where individuals representing regimes of competence enacted challenging assimilationist or supportive multiculturalist ideologies. In practice teaching contexts, although all of the teacher candidates engaged with at least one collaborative mentor teacher and they all persisted to complete the program, six of the eight teacher candidates (i.e., all of the linguistic minority teacher candidates in this study) encountered a challenging and significantly discouraging relationship with a mentor teacher. In these hegemonic contexts the legitimacy of the teacher candidates appeared to be measured against a conception of “real teachers” as “real Canadians” who are native English-speakers and who are familiar with the culture of schooling in Canada. Within the university context, student support staff were consistent in their critical awareness of the challenges and supports experienced by teacher candidates while instructors demonstrated a range of familiarity with these issues and with concepts of equity as they relate to the experiences of teacher candidates. Implications of this study support the following: continuation of programs offered through student support services; educative collaborative implementation of UCU’s equity policy to promote greater consistency in its influence; application of inclusive pedagogy; greater curricular emphasis on social power and constructions of difference; recognition of immigrant teachers’ linguistic capital; development of a collaborative method to evaluate teacher candidates in practice teaching contexts; and continued effort to advance a more profound and consistent influence of multiculturalist ideology in Canadian schools. | PhD | urban, educat, inclusive | 4, 5, 11 |
| Chatterjee, Soma | Mirchandani, Kiran | 'Borders...Are No Longer at the Border': High-skilled Labour Migration, Discourses of Skill and Contemporary Canadian Nationalism | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | This dissertation explores the constitutive relationship between immigration and nationalism as manifest in the high skilled labour market of post-liberalization (post 1960s) Canada. I show that as skilled immigration became crucial for Canadian national prosperity, a simultaneous rise in discourses of skill deficit rendered actively recruited immigrants as deficient worker subjects. Unfolding in the decades following liberalization, persistent discourses of deficit - refracted through a systemic privileging of Canadian/Western skills and training (understood as both tangible credentials and intangible soft/cultural skills) - constructed the figure of the immigrant as a prototypically skill-deficient subject struggling to integrate into the Canadian labour market, and by extension, to the larger Canadian society. Scholarship on labour market integration has frequently seen the issue as an example of policy level and administrative disjuncture. In contrast, I argue that skilled immigrants’ marginalization in the labour market of the very nation that recruited them as vital for national prosperity creates a gap between immigrants’ juridical and substantive membership. It is systematic and socio-politically productive. I conduct a critical discourse analysis of post-liberalization skilled immigration policies and related texts (government commissioned reports, press releases, ministerial speeches, and policy backgrounders) and show how the nation state continues to be an exclusive space where immigrants’ welcome is contingent and conditional on their ability to approximate an amorphous and contested Canadianness. I argue that it is through the mobilization of deficit discourses that the post-liberalization state negotiated its increasing reliance on immigrant labour with the historically racially conceptualized criteria for national membership. In the post- liberalization global hierarchy of nation states, the dynamics of welcome (as labour) and expulsion (from membership) allowed Canada to open up the national space to the raceless meritocracy of the best and the brightest, while continuing to re-align it along racial lines. This dissertation makes three key interventions: 1) it repositions the high skilled labour market – typically considered unfettered by practices of racialized nationalism - as a key site for its exercise in post-liberalization era, 2) it argues that training/learning discourses in this context are better seen as nationalist discourses subsumed within the discriminatory notion of Canadian experience, and finally, 3) it proposes a dialogue between scholarships on Canadian nationalism and immigrants’ labour market integration as the conceptual disconnect between these is analytically costly for our understanding of post-liberalization Canadian nationalism. | Ph.D. | labour, worker | 8 |
| Chatwood, Susan Jennifer | Brown, Adalsteinn | Health System Stewardship in Arctic Regions | Medical Science | 2016-11 | This thesis responds to health system challenges in Arctic regions where there are complex and interrelated challenges related to climate change and environmental effects impacts, geographic remoteness, indigenous health needs and values, and health equity. Specifically, the United States (US), Canada, Norway and Finland are studied. The need to further understand the health system context has been emphasized in many international and Arctic forums. How health systems situate or optimize performance in the Arctic context has not been studied previously. This thesis explores how health systems respond with a stewardship framework that aspires to adopt ethical and multi-sector approaches to health. To broaden our lens, we developed new methods that recognize both indigenous knowledge and western science. We captured indigenous and national perspectives, and we enveloped notions of common values (humanity, cultural responsiveness, teaching, nourishment, community voice, kinship, respect, holism and empowerment) that provide a basis for health system comparisons in Arctic nations. Policies and strategies within circumpolar nations that respond to shared context and challenges were identified. In particular, we used a case study approach to highlight how circumpolar health systems organize and respond through health system stewardship functions to the shared circumpolar challenges. Overall, Canada and the United States demonstrated higher levels of self-determination, and Norway and Finland exhibited strengths in strategies and policies influencing work across sectors. While the emphasis on stewardship functions differed, government statements that promoted work across sectors were present in all nations, as were dialogues on the self-determination of indigenous peoples. The findings provide some ssurance that there are common values and goals in Arctic regions, and that the concept of stewardship is an effective response within this context. The findings provide a collection of policy resources and a direction for value-based stewardship of health systems in Arctic regions at the regional, national, self-governing and international level of governments. The development of a performance framework and scorecard for this context will enhance the ability to learn from different approaches to stewardship, and guide trusting relationships and health equity in circumpolar nations. | Ph.D. | health, climate, environment | 3, 13 |
| Chau, KIm | Koren, Gideon||Ito, Shinya | Unraveling the Clinical Efficacy of Probiotics in Pediatrics | Pharmacology | 2016-11 | Evidence have shown that manipulation of the intestinal microbiota with probiotics are promising therapeutic agents for restoring health, particularly in pediatrics, as probiotics holds a good safety profile. Focus has been on the treatment of a number of common pediatric gastrointestinal conditions, leading to a rise in the number of clinical trials and systematic reviews being published. Therefore, an overview of systematic reviews (OoSR) was conducted to consolidate the evidence on the clinical efficacy of probiotics as a therapeutic option to treat pediatric gastrointestinal conditions. Recent attention has been on probiotics for the treatment of infantile colic, as the etiology remains elusive with limited treatment options. Therefore, a 21-day randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial was conducted to determine the efficacy of Lactobacillus reuteri DSM 17938 (108 colony-forming units; n = 24) versus placebo (n = 28) to treat colic. Final analyses revealed that colicky infants receiving L. reuteri cried/fussed (min/d) significantly less compared to placebo (Day 21, median [IQR]: 60(64) vs. 102(87); (P=0.045), respectively. Furthermore, more infants in the L. reuteri group showed a 50% crying/fussing time reduction compared to placebo (17 infants vs. 6 (P=0.035); RR: 3.3 [95% CI: 1.55 to 7.03]). Thus, L. reuteri was shown effective at treating colic in breastfed Canadian infants compared to placebo. However, contradictory results from a larger RCT concluded L. reuteri was ineffective. Therefore, a meta-analysis was conducted to determine the effectiveness of L. reuteri to treat colic by pooling treatment effects from five RCT (total n = 335; L reuteri n = 172, placebo n = 163). Pooled estimates revealed infants receiving L. reuteri cried/fussed significantly less (mean difference: 43.5 minutes; 95% CI: 54.3 to 32.6 minutes) and successfully responded to treatment by day 7 (RR = 2.43; 95% CI: 1.41 to 4.16; P | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Chaudhry, Munaza Rubee | Anderson, Geoffrey | Predicting Individual-level Probabilities of Dementia and Diabetes using Health Services Administrative Data | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-11 | Health services administrative data (HSAD) provide a timely and readily available population-based data source for health research and planning. To perform disease-specific analyses, individuals with the disease must first be identified in the administrative data. In this validation study, a data modeling method (logistic regression) and two algorithmic modeling methods (random forests and gradient boosted machines) were compared in predicting individual-level probabilities of diabetes and dementia using HSAD. Prevalence for both diseases was calculated to demonstrate a population-level application and A1C testing rates were calculated to demonstrate an individual-level application. Diabetes prevalence and A1C testing rates were compared with the classification-based methods currently used for the Ontario Diabetes Database (ODD). The reference standard data were chart re-abstraction data for a sample of Toronto-areas physician for diabetes and the Ontario sample of the Canadian Study of Health and Aging for dementia. The three-year random forest models were the best-performing models for both diabetes (Nagelkerke’s R2=0.82, C statistic=0.98 and calibration slope=1.02) and dementia (Nagelkere’s R2=0.58, C statistic=0.92 and calibration slope=1.00). Based on the random forest probabilities, the prevalence of dementia in Ontario in 2008/09 was 8.5 percent for females and 5.7 percent for males. The prevalence of diabetes was 5.4 percent for females and 6.5 percent for males. A1C testing rates varied from 38 to 61 percent depending on the probability cutoff used. The probability-based diabetes prevalence was lower than the ODD-based rates and the A1C testing rates were higher than the ODD-rates. Although the random forest models are more complex than the pooling algorithms currently used for the ODD, they offer researchers the flexibility to construct cohorts with sensitivities and specificities specific to each purpose. Algorithmic modeling methods are well suited to research using health services administrative data and should be pursued as an alternative to data modeling methods. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Chaudhuri, Ipsita Nita | Cole, Donald | Participatory Action Research for Environmental Health among Senegalese Peri-urban Farmers | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2010-03 | Participatory action research (PAR) oriented by an eco-system health framework is one approach to involving marginalised peoples in their own problem solving. A PAR project during 2005-06 that engaged peri-urban farmers in Senegal using popular education documented change on environment and health perceptions and behaviour. Health as a theme took on greater importance, as farmers related good health to their ability to work and their overall productivity. Farmers came to better recognize the symptoms of pesticide poisoning and to establish more clearly the link between pesticide-related work practices and health effects. Less clear remained their recognition of symptoms and links with wastewater use practices, though malaria and parasitic infection were linked to urban agriculture. African worldviews, including notions of locus of power, were important determinants of perceived vulnerability to risks. Farmers cited fatigue as an important clue to the work-health interface and indicator of overall wellbeing. Farmers’ understanding evolved to become more dynamic, describing the complex web of environmentally-related health risk. By 2006, farmers experimented more with less toxic pest control methods, adjusted their clothing to protect their skin and mouth, and reduced some exposure pathways through improved hygiene behaviour. However, toxic pesticides continued to be used and exposure to wastewater with limited protection remained widespread. Change was dependent upon: the researcher’s deep understanding of how farmers learned; farmers’ trust in the purveyors of new information; and the clarity, consistency and relevance of messages devised. Change varied with farmers’ literacy; the language used; and the way in which tools and media were interpreted culturally and technically. The health belief model provided a partial explanation for changes in perceptions and behaviour. Social, political and economic barriers preventing change included: leaving the onus for change on farmers, diminishing the responsibility of pesticide manufacturers and governments; land tenure arrangements which reduced investment in health and environment protection; urban poverty and illiteracy; and eco-system constraints. Examination of the PAR process, its leadership, owners, tools and ideas developed, and knowledge created provided useful insight into issues of power and control. | PhD | poverty, agriculture, urban, environment | 1, 2, 11, 13 |
| CHEN, CHAORAN | Restuccia, Diego | Essays on Macroeconomic Development | Economics | 2017-11 | Agricultural productivity is important for understanding international income differences. The international labor productivity differences are much larger in agriculture than in non-agriculture. Moreover, poor countries have higher agricultural employment shares. Therefore, my thesis studies why cross-country labor productivity differences are much larger in agriculture. In the first chapter, I argue that the prevalence of untitled land in poor countries lowers their agricultural productivity. Since untitled land cannot be traded across farmers, it creates land misallocation and distorts individuals' occupational choice between farming and working outside agriculture. I build a model to quantify the impact of untitled land. I find that economies with higher percentages of untitled land would have lower agricultural productivity; land titling can increase agricultural productivity by up to 82.5%. The second chapter studies agricultural productivity through technology adoption. Cross-country differences in capital intensity are larger in agriculture than in non-agriculture, reflecting differences in agricultural technology adoption. I build a model featuring technology adoption in agriculture. As the economy develops, farmers gradually replace the traditional technology with a modern technology which has higher capital intensity and higher productivity, as is observed in the U.S. historical data. For countries at different stages of development, my model can explain 1.56-fold more of agricultural productivity differences compared to a model without technology adoption. I further show that land misallocation in agriculture impedes technology adoption and magnify productivity differences. The third chapter, co-authored with Diego Restuccia and Raul Santaeulalia-Llopis, uses detailed household-level micro data from Ethiopia to study factor misallocation and its impact on agricultural productivity. We find substantial factor misallocation across farmers in agriculture. An efficient reallocation of resources can increase aggregate agricultural output and productivity by 127 percent. Land rentals substantially improve resource allocation, with market-based rentals much more effective in reducing misallocation. Exploiting regional variation in land rentals resulting from the implementation of a land certification reform, we find that more land rentals are associated with lower misallocation and higher agricultural productivity: a one percentage point higher land rental is associated with a 0.8 percentage points higher agricultural productivity. | Ph.D. | trade, agriculture, economic growth | 2, 8, 10 |
| Chen, Heyu | Yan, Ning | The Utilization of Bark and Bark Components from Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) for Polyurethane Applications | Forestry | 2020-06 | Tree bark is a renewable, largely available, and inexpensive forest residue that has desirable chemical compositions to be processed into functional extenders or value-added chemicals. However, the utilization of bark for advanced applications is limited. Herein, this thesis study explored using bark and bark components from Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) to improve performance of conventional polyurethane wood adhesives and as a starting material to synthesize novel non-isocyanate polyurethanes (NIPUs). Firstly, bark particles (particle sizes | Ph.D. | renewable | 7 |
| Chen, Jieming | Yan, Ning | Investigating Mechanical Performance and Water Absorption Behavior of Organo-nanoclay Modified Biofiber Plastic Composites | Forestry | 2013-06 | Hydrophobic Surface modification of biofibers to reduce water/moisture absorption of the biofiber or biofiber-plastic composites has attracted many researchers. In order to reduce the moisture sensitivity of kraft and mechanical pulp fibers, organo-nanoclay particles were adsorbed on the biofiber surfaces. Surface hydrophobicity, in terms of moisture absorption, water uptake, water contact angle and surface energy of the modified fibers were tested. The treated fibers had nano-scale surface roughness and substantially lower surface energy. The thermal stability of the mechanical pulp fibers increased after the nanoclay modification. The organo-nanoclay treated kraft and mechanical pulp fibers were used to make biofiber reinforced high density polyethylene (HDPE) composites. The organo-nanoclay treated kraft fibers had a more uniform dispersion in the HDPE matrix and the resulting composites had a higher Young’s modulus and thermal stability. Similar trend was observed for the mechanical pulp fiber-HDPE composites. The adhesion between the kraft fibers and matrix was greatly improved after adding maleic anhydride polyethylene (MAPE) as a compatibilizer, therefore, improvements in tensile strength, Young’s modulus, and thermal stability of both treated and untreated fiber composites were observed. However, this improvement was more significant for the composites containing the treated fibers. In addition, water absorption was decreased by incorporating the organo-nanoclay treated mechanical pulp fibers in the HDPE composites. The treated kraft fiber-HDPE-MAPE composites also showed a decrease in water absorption. The crystallization behaviors of the organo-nanoclay treated and untreated kraft fiber-HDPE composites with and without MAPE compatibilizer were studied. It was found by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) analysis that both organo-nanoclay treated and untreated kraft fibers could act as nucleating agents. All composites crystallized much faster than the neat HDPE, while their crystallinity levels were lower. The organo-nanoclay treatment of the kraft fibers increased the nucleation rate. However, both the crystallinity level and the nucleation rate of the treated kraft fiber composites were increased by the addition of the MAPE compatibilizer. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveled that MAPE could also increase the d-spacing of the organo-nanoclay layers in the composites. When the fiber loading was 40 wt% in the composites, exfoliation of the nanoclays in the composites was observed. | PhD | water, energy | 5, 7 |
| Chen, Jin | Amza, Cristiana | Chorus: Model Kowledge Base for Perfomance Modeling in Datacenters | Computer Science | 2011-11 | Due to the imperative need to reduce the management costs, operators multiplex several concurrent applications in large datacenters. However, uncontrolled resource sharing between co-hosted applications often results in performance degradation problems, thus creating violations of service level agreements (SLAs) for service providers. Therefore, in order to meet per-application SLAs, per-application performance modeling for dynamic resource allocation in shared resource environments has recently become promising. We introduce Chorus, an interactive performance modeling framework for building application performance models incrementally and on the fly. It can be used to support complex, multi-tier resource allocation, and/or what-if performance inquiry in modern datacenters, such as Clouds. Chorus consists of (i) a declarative high-level language for providing semantic model guidelines, such as model templates, model functions, or sampling guidelines, from a sysadmin or a performance analyst, as model approximations to be learned or refined experimentally, (ii) a runtime engine for iteratively collecting experimental performance samples, validating and refining performance models. Chorus efficiently builds accurate models online, reuses and adjusts archival models over time, and combines them into an ensemble of models. We perform an experimental evaluation on a multi-tier server platform, using several industry- standard benchmarks. Our results show that Chorus is a flexible modeling framework and knowledge base for validating, extending and reusing existing models while adapting to new situations. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Chen, Yuting | McCabe, Brenda Y. | Factors Affecting Safety Performance of Construction Workers: Safety Climate, Interpersonal Conflicts at Work, and Resilience | Civil Engineering | 2017-06 | A safety plateau in safety performance has been observed in many countries or regions. In order to continuously improve safety performance, the key is to identifying factors affecting safety performance. This research examined four factors, namely, safety climate, individual resilience (IR), interpersonal conflicts at work (ICW), and organizational resilience (OR) that may contribute to explaining safety outcomes. A self-administered survey was used. From 2013 to 2016, 1281 surveys were collected from 180 construction sites of Ontario, Canada. This thesis composed three papers, which leads to the following conclusions: • Safety climate not only affects physical safety outcomes but also employees’ job stress level. • ICW is a risk factor for safety performance. • IR has the potential to mitigate post-trauma job stress and interpersonal conflicts of construction workers. • Management commitment is the key to promoting a good safety culture. • Safety awareness is the most important individual factor affecting construction workers’ safety performance. • Team support, especially the support from coworkers, has a significant positive impact on construction worker’s safety awareness. Several original contributions were made: • This study designed and tested questions of individual resilience. • This study is the first empirical study investigating the impact of individual resilience on safety outcomes. • This study is the first study testing the antecedents of interpersonal conflicts at work and the resulting safety outcomes in the construction industry. • This study designed and tested organizational resilience questions in the context of construction industry. • This is the first study testing the mechanism about how the resilience factors interact with each other and eventually affect safety outcomes. • This study is the first study using structural equation modeling (SEM) to quantify organizational resilience. Accordingly, the following recommendations were provided: • Construction organizations need to not only monitor employees’ safety performance but also their psychological well-being. • Safety professionals may consider adding coping skill training programs to improve the individual resilience of their workforce and reduce conflict-related safety outcomes. • Construction organizations can improve employees’ safety awareness by promoting a good team-level safety culture, and by building a good reporting and learning culture. | Ph.D. | worker, industr | 8, 9 |
| Cheng, Calvin Chia-Hung | Goh, M. Cynthia | Enhanced Column Filtration for Arsenic Removal from Water: Polymer-Templated Iron Oxide Nanoparticles Immobilized on Sand via Layer-by-Layer Deposition | Chemistry | 2017-11 | Arsenic is ubiquitous in water sources around the world and is highly toxic. While precipitation and membrane filtration techniques are successfully implemented in developed cities, they are unsuitable for rural and low-resource settings lacking centralized facilities. This thesis presents the use of ultra-small iron oxide (Fe2O3) nanoparticles functionalized on sand granules for use as a house-hold scale adsorption filter. Water-stable Îą-Fe2O3 (hematite) nanoparticles ( | Ph.D. | water, rural | 6, 11 |
| Cheng, Man Chuen | Hsiung, Ping-chun||Choo, Hae Yeon | Intimate Frontiers: Chinese Marriage Migrants and Contested Belonging in Hong Kong and Taiwan | Sociology | 2018-11 | Based on 17 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Taiwan and Hong Kong between June 2014 and July 2016, this dissertation examines the everyday regulation and negotiation of belonging at various sites of Chinese marriage migrants' personal lives, including social service encounters, domestic space of the home, and Chinese marriage migrant communities. As Chinese women married across the two politically contested borders, their post-migration lives are situated within the frontiers of intimate family lives but also historically grounded political struggles and renewed local discontent against China’s political encroachment. The struggles of belonging faced by Chinese marriage migrants illuminate the norms, values, and ideologies upheld by citizens and the states of Hong Kong and Taiwan. As Chinese marriage migrants yearn to integrate into the Hong Kong and Taiwanese societies, some Chinese marriage migrants mobilized hegemonic discourses of belonging to make meanings of their everyday lives, others contested their exclusion by redefining their identities and in the process, producing new layers of inequalities against less-privileged Chinese marriage migrants. Delving into the narratives of belonging developed in everyday interaction, this dissertation shows how national belonging is a regulated and negotiated process beyond legal categories and immigration policies. This dissertation also shows how class intersects with gender and nationality in producing differentiated regulatory practices and narratives of belonging, illuminating the contradiction and complexity of immigrant belonging in an era of global interconnection and geopolitical tension. Situating the production and negotiation of these narratives within enhanced economic integration and shifting geopolitical entanglement across the China-Hong Kong and China-Taiwan borders, this dissertation also highlights the unfortunate alignment of market logic and nationalist ideology in the formation of discursive national boundaries against immigrants at geopolitically contentious times. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Cheng, Terry Tien | Williams, Charmaine | “Continuing a normal life as a normal person”: A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study on the Reconstruction of Self Identity of Chinese Women Within the Lived Experience of Breast Cancer Survivorship | Social Work | 2010-11 | Breast cancer incidence in Chinese women is rising in North America. However, a critical review of the empirical research reveals a clear under-representation of the breast cancer survivorship experiences of ethnic minority women, particularly those of Chinese origin. A breast cancer diagnosis not only disrupts a woman’s everyday life but also, and more importantly, her self-identity: who she was before the cancer diagnosis and who she becomes after the diagnosis. The purpose of this study was to understand the lived survivorship experience of Chinese women with breast cancer, in particular the way they reconstruct their self-identity while living under the constant threat of premature mortality. A hermeneutic phenomenology was employed to illuminate the essence of the lived experience. A purposeful sample of 24 Chinese women was recruited, and audiotaped face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted in English or Mandarin. An iterative process was carried out to identify themes and interwoven them into the four existentials of lifeworld to lend structural meaning to the lived experience. The self-identity of Chinese women living with breast cancer did not fit the current combative survivor identity and narrative as represented in the North America media. Rather, a ‘quiet’, modest and practical narrative underscoring the Chinese virtues of self-reliance, endurance, and social responsibility and harmony characterized their lived experience and self-identity. They endured unexpected major life events and accepted what life offers in an effort to move on with their lives of being a normal person again. An understanding of the way Chinese women manage the impact of breast cancer and their survivorship experience will significantly contribute to building our knowledge about this minority population within the Canadian context. In turn, this understanding will support health care professionals with the development of culturally sensitive psychosocial/supportive care services to maximize adaptation and recovery. | PhD | health, women, inequality | 3, 5, 10 |
| Cheng, Vincent | George, Arhonditsis | Modeling the Climatology of Tornado Occurrence using Bayesian Inference | Geography | 2014-11 | Our mechanistic understanding of tornadic environments has significantly improved by the recent technological enhancements in the detection of tornadoes as well as the advances of numerical weather predictive modeling. Nonetheless, despite the decades of active research, prediction of tornado occurrence remains one of the most difficult problems in meteorological and climate science. In our efforts to develop predictive tools for tornado occurrence, there are a number of issues to overcome, such as the treatment of inconsistent tornado records, the consideration of suitable combination of atmospheric predictors, and the selection of appropriate resolution to accommodate the variability in time and space. In this dissertation, I address each of these topics by undertaking three empirical (statistical) modeling studies, where I examine the signature of different atmospheric factors influencing the tornado occurrence, the sampling biases in tornado observations, and the optimal spatiotemporal resolution for studying tornado occurrence. In the first study, I develop a novel Bayesian statistical framework to assess the probability of tornado occurrence in Canada, in which the sampling bias of tornado observations and the linkage between lightning climatology and tornadogenesis are considered. The results produced reasonable probability estimates of tornado occurrence for the under-sampled areas in the model domain. The same study also delineated the geographical variability in the lightning-tornado relationship across Canada. In the second study, I present a novel modeling framework to examine the relative importance of several key atmospheric variables (e.g., convective available potential energy, 0-3 km storm-relative helicity, 0-6 km bulk wind difference, 0-tropopause vertical wind shear) on tornado activity in North America. I found that the variable quantifying the updraft strength is more important during the warm season, whereas the effects of wind-related variables are more uniform across seasons. The residual variability of the same modeling framework (a reflection of the fidelity of the statistical formulation considered) is subsequently used to delineate distinct geographical patterns of tornado activity. This piece of information provides the foundation for the Bayesian hierarchical prognostic model presented in the third chapter of my dissertation. The results of the latter approach reinforce my earlier finding that the spatial variability of the annual and warm seasonal tornado occurrence is well explained by convective available potential energy and storm relative helicity alone, while vertical wind shear is better at reproducing the cool season tornado activity. The Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework offers a promising methodological tool for understanding regional tornado environments and obtaining reliable predictions in North America. | Ph.D. | weather, wind, innovation | 7, 9, 13 |
| Cheng, Xiang | Sinton, David | In-situ observation and quantification of microalgae downstream processing on a microfluidic platform | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-03 | Producing biofuels and bioproducts from microalgae is a promising path for low-carbon energy and products. Microalgal biomass is an attractive feedstock for the generation of carbon neutral biofuels and high-value bioproducts because of the high growth rate and lipid content of many microalgae species. Understanding the downstream processing of converting microalgal biomass to valuable products is a critical step in the biofuel industry. In this thesis, a novel microfluidic platform capable of precise control of processing parameters and providing optical access to reactions at high temperature and pressure was developed and applied to observe and quantify the biomass-to-bioproducts conversions in three distinct studies. First, for bioenergy application, hydrothermal liquefaction of microalgae was performed on this microfluidic platform monitored using fluorescence microscopy. A strong shift in the fluorescence signature from the algal slurry at 675 nm (chlorophyll peak) to a post-HTL stream at 510 nm is observed for reaction temperatures at 260°C, 280°C, 300°C and 320°C (P = 12 MPa), and occurs over a timescale on the order of 10 min. Biocrude formation and separation from the aqueous phase into immiscible droplets is directly observed and occurs over the same timescale. Second, many algal bioproduct efforts currently focus on high-value products such as astaxanthin due to the much-improved economics over producing fuels. Hydrothermal disruption of the cell wall for astaxanthin extraction from wet biomass using high temperature and pressure was demonstrated and studied using this microfluidic platform. Hydrothermal disruption at a temperature of 200 °C was shown to be highly effective, resulting in near-complete astaxanthin extraction from wet biomass - a significant improvement over traditional methods. Third, supercritical CO2 has relatively low critical temperature and pressure (31.1 °C and 7.4 MPa) is considered a greener solvent for bioactive compounds extraction. Supercritical CO2 extractions of astaxanthin with and without co-solvents (ethanol and olive oil) were performed on the microfluidic platform to study the extraction mechanism in each case. Astaxanthin extraction using ScCO2 achieved 92% recovery at 55 °C and 8 MPa applied over 15 hours. With the addition of co-solvents, ethanol and olive oil, the timescales of extraction process are reduced significantly from 15 hours to a few minutes, representing the fastest complete astaxanthin extraction at such low pressures. The direct observation of these complex reaction processes was made possible for the first time here, allowing visual characterization, fluorescence spectroscopy, and quantitative imaging of the conversion at the single-cell scale during all stages. This level of insight has simply not been possible with previous conventional reactors. Although batch reactors have advantages in, for instance, quantifying yields requiring large volumes of products, microfluidic reactors have advantages with respect to process control and visualization at cellular level - providing high resolution, real-time data on complex reactions. The innovative platform and results presented in this thesis provide new insight in the challenging area of biomass-to-bioproduct conversion, and provide insight that can inform larger scale operations. | Ph.D. | industr, energy | 7, 9 |
| Cheng, Xu Jr. | Wallace, James S. | Modeling Injection and Ignition in Direct Injection Natural Gas Engines | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2008-06 | With increasing concerns about the harmful effects of conventional liquid fossil fuel emissions, natural gas has become a very attractive alternative fuel to power prime movers and stationary energy conversion devices. This research studies the injection and ignition numerically for natural gas (mainly methane) as a fuel applied to diesel engine. Natural gas injector and glow plug ignition enhancement are two of the most technical difficulties for direct injection natural gas engine design. This thesis models the natural gas injector, and studies the characteristics of the internal flow in the injector and natural gas jet in the combustion chamber during the injection process. The poppet valve model and pintle valve model are the first reported models to simulate the natural gas injector to improve the traditional velocity and pressure boundary conditions. This thesis also successfully models the glow plug assisted natural gas ignition and combustion processes by developing a glow plug discretized model and a novel virtual gas sub-layer model. Glow plug discretized model can describe the transient heat transfer, and adequately represents the thin layers of heat penetration and the local temperature difference due to the cold gas jet impingement. The virtual gas sub-layer model considers complicated physical processes, such as chemical reaction, heat conduction, and mass diffusion within the virtual sub-layers without significantly increasing computational time and load. KIVA-3V CFD code was chosen to simulate the fluid flow. Since the KIVA-3V is designed specifically for engine research application with conventional liquid fuels, many modifications have been implemented to facilitate this research. | PhD | energy | 7 |
| Chenoweth, Meghan Jo-Ann | Tyndale, Rachel F | Sources of Variation in Nicotine Metabolism and Associations with Smoking Abstinence in Adolescents and Adults | Pharmacology | 2016-06 | Smoking remains a major public health concern; worldwide, approximately one billion people smoke. Despite the fact that many smokers are motivated to quit, only a small minority of those making quit attempts successfully quit each year. Variation in the rate of nicotine metabolic inactivation influences a number of smoking behaviours, including cessation. Thus, we sought to characterize genetic, environmental, and demographic sources of variability in the rate of nicotine metabolism, and resultant influences on smoking behaviours. Variation in the activity of the major nicotine-metabolizing enzyme, cytochrome P450 2A6 (CYP2A6) changes nicotine clearance and is associated with altered smoking behaviours, including cessation, in adults. We demonstrate here that slow (versus normal) nicotine metabolizers are more likely to achieve prolonged abstinence in adolescence, as in adulthood. We further demonstrate that in clinical trials, adult slow (versus normal) nicotine metabolizers are more likely to achieve early abstinence. We also investigated additional sources of genetic variability in the rate of nicotine metabolism and their potential influences on smoking. We demonstrate that genetic variation in an additional nicotine-metabolizing enzyme (i.e., FMO3), and a cytochrome P450 co-enzyme (i.e., POR), does not substantially alter nicotine metabolism, CYP2A6 activity, or tobacco consumption. We further demonstrate that environmental and demographic sources of variability in CYP2A6 activity, such as gender and ethnicity, explain only a small proportion of the total variation in CYP2A6 activity; however, these factors may have unique impacts on smoking behaviours and thus should be further investigated in studies of smoking. Overall, our findings provide additional information regarding the role of variation in nicotine metabolism rate in cessation outcomes in both adolescents and adults. A greater understanding of the factors that influence smoking cessation will help optimize treatment outcomes and reduce the burden of tobacco-related disease. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Cherukupally, Pavani | Park, Chul B||Bilton, Amy M | Surface Engineered Sponges Enable Oily Wastewater Remediation and Residual Oil Recovery | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-06 | In the US, steam-¬based oil extraction processes generate over 15 billion liters of emulsified oil contaminated wastewater annually. For sustainability, these effluents need to be remediated and/or recycled. However, the complex properties (pH, dissolved salts, and high temperature) of effluents pose challenges for removal of oil microdroplets removal using current separation methods. This thesis developed a new process to selectively recover crude oil microdroplets from wastewater using inexpensive sponges. This process synergistically uses sponge surface properties and pre-existing ionic and thermal energies of the wastewater to achieve 95-99% oil removal efficacy from wastewater. First, an acid-base polymeric sponge was applied to remove crude oil microdroplets from water. In acidic or basic environments, acid-base polymers acquire surface charge due to protonation or dissociation of surface functional groups. This property is invoked to adsorb crude oil microdroplets from water using a polyester polyurethane sponge. Using the surface charge of the sponge and oil droplets, the solution pH (5.6) for 99% oil removal efficacy was predicted and verified through adsorption experiments. The droplet adsorption onto the sponge was governed by physisorption, and the driving forces were attributed to electrostatic attraction and Lifshitz-van der Waals forces. The sponge was regenerated and reused multiple times by mechanical compression. Next, to remove oil microdroplets from water at broad pH conditions, an innovative surface engineered sponge (SEnS) was designed by combining surface chemistry, surface charge, roughness, and surface energy. Under all pH conditions, the SEnS rapidly adsorbed oil microdroplets with 95-99% removal efficiency predominantly by electrostatic attraction and Lifshitz-van der Waals forces. Furthermore, at the best pH value, 92% of the oil was adsorbed within 10 min due to synergistic charge attraction. The adsorbed oil was recovered by rinsing with a diluent while the cleaned SEnS was reused multiple times for oil adsorption. Subsequently, crude oil is recovered from the diluent using distillation. Due to the process efficacy, sponge reuse, and oil recovery, this adsorptive-recovery method using sponges demonstrates great potential for the industrial oil recovery from wastewater. Furthermore, this work lays foundation for the development of new SEnS with the potential to revolutionize water treatment technologies. | Ph.D. | water, energy, recycl, industr, environment | 6, 7, 9, 13 |
| Chia, Yeow Tong | Sandwell, Ruth W. | The Loss of the 'World-Soul'? Education, Culture and the Making of the Singapore Developmental State, 1955 - 2004 | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | This dissertation examines the role of education in the formation of the Singapore developmental state, through a historical study of education for citizenship in Singapore (1955-2004), in which I explore the interconnections between changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, and the politics of nation-building. Building on existing scholarship on education and state formation, the dissertation goes beyond the conventional notion of seeing education as providing the skilled workforce for the economy, to mapping out cultural and ideological dimensions of the role of education in the developmental state. The story of state formation through citizenship education in Singapore is essentially the history of how Singapore’s developmental state managed crises (imagined, real or engineered), and how changes in history, civics and social studies curricula, served to legitimize the state, through educating and moulding the desired “good citizen” in the interest of nation building. Underpinning these changes has been the state’s use of cultural constructs such as Confucianism and Asian values to shore up its legitimacy. State formation in Singapore has been very successful, as evidenced by its economic prosperity and education has played a key role in this success. However, the “economic growth at all costs” ethos comes, arguably, at a price – the potential loss of zeitgeist, or the loss of the “World-Soul”. Nation building in the sense of fostering a sense of rootedness and belonging to the country in its citizenry – the “World-Soul” – had to be relegated to the backburner in the relentless pursuit of economic development, in order to sustain and legitimize the developmental state. By harnessing the educational sphere for its economic growth objectives through the discourse of crisis, the developmental state gained political legitimacy in the eyes of a citizenry increasingly accustomed to educational mobility and material wealth, even if at the expense of political freedoms. | PhD | economic growth | 8 |
| Chiavaroli, Laura | Jenkins, David JA | Glycemic Index and Macrovascular Disease in Type 2 Diabetes | Nutritional Sciences | 2016-11 | Abstract The rapid rise in type 2 diabetes (T2DM) prevalence seen over the past few decades is projected to increase further, together with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Thus, there is a need to find effective and sustainable prevention and treatment strategies for diabetes, including dietary strategies. Low glycemic index (GI) diets may be suitable to assist in T2DM management; however there is a lack of evidence on long term adherence, as well as on the association with surrogate markers of CVD risk beyond traditional risk factors. Recently, advances have been made in measures of subclinical arterial disease through the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which, along with standard measures from carotid ultrasound scanning (CUS), have been associated with CVD events. To address these knowledge gaps, we conducted a randomized controlled trial in those with T2DM at high risk of CVD to assess the effect of a low GI diet over 3 years. The trial, currently ongoing, has already yielded a rich dataset allowing for the exploration of associations between dietary variables and subclinical arterial disease assessed as vessel wall volume (VWV) by MRI and carotid intima media thickness (CIMT) by CUS. The thesis objectives were to assess the association between GI and CIMT and VWV, assess whether a low GI diet can be followed successfully long term, what advice is adopted, and more specifically, whether provision of free study bread improves adherence. Baseline cross-sectional analyses did not reveal any association between GI and either CIMT or VWV. CIMT and VWV were however, significantly associated negatively with carbohydrates, starch, and dietary pulses, which are a particularly low GI food. Long term adherence to a low GI diet was demonstrated to be sustainable over 3 years at a level similar to that observed in earlier 3- and 6-month trials (an average reduction of 11 GI units) through substitutions of breads, cereals and fruit for low GI options and of potatoes and rice for dietary pulses. The provision of a free study bread, which was implemented mid-way through the trial, significantly improved adherence to low GI statistically, however not at a level physiologically significant (~1 GI unit lower). These results are the first to assess and demonstrate long term adherence to a low GI diet and to assess GI and MRI measures of macrovascular disease to assist in the understanding of the role of diet and nutrition in macrovascular disease development in T2DM. | Ph.D. | food, health | 3 |
| Chin, Andrew Tim Man | Fortin, Marie-Josée | Fish Community Responses to the Land Use Change and Environmental Variability in Estuaries | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-11 | Understanding how species communities respond to land use and environmental change over space and time is necessary given the rapidly changing environment that threaten species persistence. In intrinsically dynamic environments such as estuaries, the spatial and temporal environmental variability at the interface of freshwater and marine ecosystems result in species that persist with morphological or physiological adaptations to these changing environmental conditions. Yet, estuarine fish communities are facing further change as a result of the loss of functional connectivity through stream fragmentation due to culverts that impede fish passage upstream, and land use change as well as climate change among estuaries that reduce habitat quality. It is unknown how the extent of environmental change due to land use and climate change in estuaries and their associated watersheds affect estuarine fish communities in addition to natural variability. In this thesis, I determine how fish communities in estuaries respond to land use impact and environmental variability at the stream and watershed levels. The functional connectivity of species is impacted by stream fragmentation due to culverts upstream of New Brunswick estuaries and their watersheds. I show that the potential functional connectivity of species varies according to migratory traits and the ontogeny of species. In the Miramichi watershed, I assess how forest harvesting and weather fluctuations affect the density of juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) at the watershed level. I demonstrate that accounting for the upstream forest harvesting have cumulative impacts on juvenile Atlantic salmon through each catchment downstream and over time. Within and among the estuaries, I find evidence that fish communities shift according to environmental change. My findings relating to the effects of land use and environmental variability from streams to the watersheds would result in a better predictive capacity of how estuarine fish communities will potentially change or persist. | Ph.D. | water, climate, environment, marine, fish, forest, land use | 13, 14, 15 |
| Chin, Stephen | Anderson, Jason H | Architectures and Tools for Efficient Reconfigurable Computing | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2018-11 | Recent decades have seen large growth in the silicon industry with transistor scaling and transistor count approximately doubling every two years. With the continued growth of transistors-per-chip and increasing power density, dark silicon challenges have risen. Reconfigurable computing poses a possible solution to some of the challenges through improving performance and energy efficiency by tailoring the hardware to the application. Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) are a platform for realizing reconfigurable computing and have had traction for over a decade. Their recent introduction into mainstream data-centres bodes well for the field. Another type of reconfigurable architecture, Coarse Grained Reconfigurable Arrays (CGRAs), poses one other platform for computing. Being more specialized than FPGAs, CGRAs’ main selling point is increased efficiency versus FPGAs, at the cost of platform flexibility. This dissertation looks at efficient computing first from the perspective of FPGAs, developing new architectures and new CAD tools, making for a more efficient FPGA. The proposed FPGA architecture consists of a hybrid multiplexer / look-up-table logic block that has reduced area with respect to traditional architectures. Then, with the prospect that CGRA architectures hold, we develop an open-source framework, CGRA-ME, for the modelling and exploration of CGRAs. This unifying software framework incorporates, architecture description through a custom language, architecture modelling, application mapping, and RTL generation, and allows further development of CGRA architectures and related CAD tools throughout the research community. Within the CGRA-ME framework, a new architecture-agnostic application mapper formulated in an integer linear program was also developed for generic CGRAs. Through this dissertation, we have made headway towards more efficient reconfigurable architectures through architecture design and related CAD and are optimistic that these contributions will have positive impact on further research and industrial application of reconfigurable architectures. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Chindalo, Pannel | Bascia, Nina | How Undergraduate Students Think about Higher Education and Prepare for Employment | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-11 | This study explores of how university students understand the relationship between a liberal arts undergraduate degree and becoming employment-ready. The study employs a phenomenological approach. Surveys and interviews of students were conducted on the Faculty of Arts and Science students at the St. George Campus of the University of Toronto. Supplementary data were obtained from National Survey of Student Engagement. By employing Bourdieu‟s theory of practice (especially with regard to capital, habitus and field), the study reveals how students went about preparing for the labour market differed by their social class, immigration status and race. Students‟ abilities to secure skill-enhancing extracurricular activities and maintaining high GPA scores appeared related to their cultural capital. Most racialized first generation students experienced levels of difficulties in securing skill-enhancing extracurricular skill activities and maintaining high GPAs, which affected their employment readiness, clarity about occupational direction and their entry to graduate studies. New immigrant students were least aware of the extracurricular activities needed to prepare for employment. The study concludes that most liberal arts undergraduate students are not ready for employment at the completion of their studies and that social class and race may be related to their ability to make themselves employment-ready | PhD | employment, labour | 8 |
| Chiose, Simona Ruxandra | Hansen, Randall||Kopstein, Jeffrey | Voices from the margins: Interest groups and the state in Canadian and British immigration policy-making between 2000 and 2010 | Political Science | 2017-06 | Over the decade of the 2000s, governments in Canada and Britain converged in their immigration policies, increasing the ability of short-term and temporary foreign workers to enter their labour markets and restricting refugee entries. This work seeks to find an explanation for the source of these changes and tests an interest-based approach in particular. Did interest groups successfully lobby policy-makers or did politicians act autonomously in each area to implement legislation? By comparing labour and refugee policies within and across countries, it contributes to a growing stream in the political study of immigration which explicitly considers each field in relation to the other in an attempt to specify the sources of policy change. Six cases, two in labour migration and one in refugee legislation in each country, are considered. The research reveals that political actors in Westminster systems are able to set, direct and accomplish their agendas with little input from organized interests in most cases. They are further able to design policy instruments that insulate their decision-making from interest groups. The study, therefore, confirms theoretical expectations. Governments were able to respond to perceived electoral risks â including media pressure and global economic shocks â and reverse policies that interest groups had advanced. The work opens new and emergent questions about the conditions under which organized interests may participate in the making of immigration policy. It further suggests that the ability of strong states to act autonomously can create a democratic deficit that may lead to state power being unshackled from accountability, and undesirable and unexpected policy outcomes. As a result, robust mechanisms are required to allow interest groups a voice in policy processes. | Ph.D. | labour, worker | 8 |
| Chiran, George | Sawchuk, Peter | Expansive Learning in Technology Startup Organizations: An Activity-theoretical Analysis | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11 | This study examines the complex, and sometimes conflicting dimensions of learning dynamics in highly innovative, rapidly transforming startup organizations, from an activity-theoretical perspective. Given the pivotal role startups play in the innovation economy, it is important to better understand these dynamics and associated tendencies in development by conceptualizing learning as both a socio-culturally mediated, collaborative and contradictory process, situated in times of rapid change. To examine these dynamic relations, the study draws upon key concepts from the Cultural Historical Activity Theoretical (CHAT) tradition, which are applied and extended to develop an expansive view of learning in startup organizations examined. The study is designed to address two overarching objectives. First, by developing a greater understanding of mediation/boundary crossing/contradiction (MBCC) dynamics in startup organizations in the process of development - area which I will demonstrate has not been effectively examined in Information and Knowledge Management (IKM) literature - this study will contribute to an understanding of conditions and relations shaping the processes inherent in distinct and divergent trajectories of tendential development in relation to knowledge creation in organizations examined. Second, central to the activity-based approach adopted in this study is a robust examination of the potential for expansive learning (PfEL) in startup work, conceived as a function of a contradiction/resolution/synthesis (CRS) dynamic, grounded empirically. Research findings provide original and valuable contributions not only to CHAT research but also to the field of IKM and adjacent domains of adult education and entrepreneurship learning, broadly conceived. It is argued that the focus on everyday work practices of startup organizations provides a foundation in understanding tendential development and learning in startup work, complementing existing approaches to conceptualizations of learning in IKM literature. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Chishti, Maliha | Mojab, Shahrzad | Post-Conflict Afghanistan: A Post-Colonial Critique | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | AbstractThis dissertation responds to a growing body of literature that points to a crisis in post-conflict aid interventions. These complex, costly and risky international undertakings have not only failed to produce desirable results, but have left efforts to effectively and successfully restructure post-war states and societies an elusive goal. Focusing on Afghanistan, I offer a postcolonial analysis to unmask and interrogate the underlying knowledge base and institutionalized sets of power relations that govern post-conflict reconstruction and statebuilding interventions in the country. Therefore, this study is preoccupied with not only what we in the west are doing wrong in Afghanistan, but why we are there, how we perceive ourselves and Afghans as well as the way we work and the kinds of relations that are fostered.This study argues that one can detect the continuity of a colonial worldview in modern statebuilding practices in Afghanistan. As such, interventions primarily rekindle and reassert the west's own sense of meaning and purpose in the country, ensuring that westerners, and not necessarily Afghans, are the primary beneficiaries of post-conflict interventions and that westerners are never made to feel `out of place' in Afghanistan. Interventions, therefore, construct an outwardly oriented state, responsive to the desires and needs of the international community, rather than being inwardly oriented and responsive to the needs, expectations and lived realities of the majority of Afghans. To substantiate this claim, this dissertation focuses on the concepts of colonial ambivalence and mimicry as well as terra nullius in order to unmask some of the hidden, obscure and implicit assumptions, ideas, values and relations that underpin externally facilitated interventions in Afghanistan. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Chit, Ayman | Grootendorst, Paul | Economics of Influenza Vaccine Development | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2013-11 | In this thesis we are particularly concerned about the development of new and improved influenza vaccines with in the changing external economic environment. The thesis covers two major objectives: 1) Developing methods to estimate the costs of influenza vaccine development The ability to calculate the development costs for specific medicines and vaccines are important to inform investments in innovation. Unfortunately, the literature is predominated by non-reproducible studies only measuring aggregate level drug research and development (R&D) costs. Further, the literature appears very scant on the development costs of new vaccines. In the first objective we therefore describe methodology that improves the transparency and reproducibility of primary indication expected R&D expenditures of influenza vaccines. 2) Developing methods to focus influenza vaccine R&D towards meeting cost-effectiveness targets The second objective is focused on how to forecast evidence requirements for cost effectiveness analysis (CEA) of influenza vaccines. The guidance to manufacturers on what evidence would optimally support acceptable CEA is scant. The absence of such guidance and the increased emphasis on CEA can add significant risk to the vaccine development process. Thus we perform a Value of Information (VOI) analysis on the parameters of a cost effectiveness model designed to evaluate new influenza vaccines designed for use in elderly adults. The results of this study highlight what type of endpoints that should be studied in influenza vaccine R&D programs. From our work on these objectives we are able to shed light on economics that should be considered while developing a new influenza vaccine. Though our contribution is mainly methodological, we conclude the thesis suggesting changes in the way the vaccine industry and HTA agencies work. These changes are in our view necessary to meet society’s demand for new vaccines that deliver high value for money. | PhD | innovation, industr | 9 |
| Chiu, M. L. Teresa | Eysenbach, Gunther | Usage and Non-usage Behaviour of eHealth Services Among Chinese Canadians Caring for a Family Member with Dementia | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2008-06 | Background: Information Communication Technologies (ICT)-mediated support can reduce family caregiver burden and may bridge service gaps caused by time constraints and language or cultural barriers. (Non)-usage behaviour can be explained using Andersen’s Behavioural Model of Health Service Utilization, Venkatesh’s Unified Theory of Use and Acceptance of Technology, Eysenbach’s Law of Attrition, and Wilson’s and Chatman’s Information Behaviour Theories. Purpose: This study aimed to describe and explain (non)-usage behaviour of ehealth services among Chinese caregivers. Method: This two-phase study used a mixed methods design involving 46 Chinese caregivers who cared for a family member with dementia. Usability of the ICT tools designed in the study was tested. Phase I participants (N=28) had access to a bilingual information site and personalized email support from professionals. Phase II participants (N=18) were randomized to use one of three enhanced features. Pre- and post-intervention data were collected, and qualitative interviews were conducted. Results: The Phase I ICT tools supported the core functions without major usability issues. Perceived efforts to use the ICT-mediated services influenced the consent decisions of Phase I caregivers (p=.036). Caregivers initiated service earlier if they had a higher acceptance of the service (p=0.017). Frequent users of email support experienced a decline of perceived burden compared with an escalation of perceived burden by non-users (p=0.023). An older age, greater caregiving competence, and lower English or computer proficiency explained non-usage behaviour. Requirements were identified to enhance the Phase I ICT tools. In Phase II, a test of three enhanced features showed there was no major usability issue. The intervention study found the enhanced features did not influence email use as hypothesized. Qualitative analysis showed usage patterns were explained by caregiver needs, caregiving beliefs, personal capacity, social support, ICT factors, and style of use. Non-users preferred Chinese to English compared with users (p=0.046). Integrating the theories and empirical findings, three concepts were developed to explain (non)-usage behaviour: usage in context, usage paths, and stages of use. Conclusion: Usage and non-usage behaviour can be explained by the service needs in the caregiving context, the use of non-ICT-mediated resources, and the access barriers to Internet use. Use of ICT-based support can be beneficial to caregivers if they do not drop out of the service. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Chiu, Maria S. | Tu, Jack | Race, Ethnicity and Cardiovascular Risk: A Population-based Study in Ontario, Canada | Medical Science | 2012-06 | Background: Ethnic and immigrant groups represent a large and growing segment of the Canadian population, however, little is known about how these groups differ in their cardiovascular risk factor profiles when compared to the White population. This thesis describes three large, population-based studies examining cardiovascular risk among people of White, South Asian, Chinese and Black ethnicity living in Ontario. It was hypothesized that ethnic groups would differ significantly in their cardiovascular risk factor profiles. Methods: The study population included 154 653 White, 3364 South Asian, 3038 Chinese, and 2742 Black subjects derived from Statistics Canada’s National Population Health Survey and Canadian Community Health Surveys. In Project 1, the age- and sex-standardized prevalence of cardiovascular risk factors, heart disease, and stroke were compared across the four ethnic groups. In Project 2, the degree to which cardiovascular risk factor profiles differed between recent immigrants and long-term residents was compared across ethnic groups. In Project 3, a subsample of the study population was used to compare the ethnic-specific incidence and age at diagnosis of diabetes. We also derived ethnically appropriate body-mass index (BMI) cutoff values for obesity for assessing diabetes risk. Results: Ethnic groups living in Ontario differ strikingly in their cardiovascular risk profiles. The Chinese group had the most favourable cardiovascular risk factor profile, with 4.3% of the population reporting ≥2 major cardiovascular risk factors (i.e., smoking, obesity, diabetes, hypertension), followed by the South Asian (7.9%), White (10.1%) and Black (11.1%) groups. For all ethnic groups, cardiovascular risk factor profiles were worse among those with longer duration of residency in Canada. Nonwhite subjects developed diabetes at a higher rate, at an earlier age, and at lower ranges of BMI than White subjects. For the equivalent incidence rate of diabetes at a BMI of 30 in White subjects, the BMI cutoff value was 24, 25, and 26 in South Asian, Chinese, and Black subjects, respectively. Interpretation: These findings highlight the need for designing ethnically tailored cardiovascular disease prevention strategies and for lowering current targets for ideal body weight for nonwhite populations. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Chödrön, Gail Sherap | Poland, Blake | Inclusion without Potential: Disability and the Biopolitics of Neuro-logical Human Capital Investments | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-11 | Parents challenged Canada’s National Children’s Agenda (NCA)—a policy umbrella for neoliberal investments in early childhood introduced in 1999—for mobilizing a brain-focused conceptualization of child development they felt excluded children with disabilities. This conceptualization cast early brain formation as a critical developmental stage and investment phase for human capital development at the population level, assembling a linkage between brain-economy-population that I term the “neuro-logical” model. Although studies show that political efforts to invest in human capital through early childhood reproduce inequality for many, few have considered the exclusionary effects on children with disabilities. To elucidate the inclusion/exclusion of disability, I examine how developmental differences were discursively incorporated in attempts to mobilize and operationalize the neuro-logical model in policy between 1994-2011. Drawing on Lemke’s approach to Foucauldian biopolitics, I conceptualize the NCA as an effort to assemble knowledge and strategies for optimizing life at the population level, and read the neuro-logical model as a strategy to calibrate biopolitics to both emergent neuroscientific “truths” and rapid social and economic change. Using a critical interpretive, “anthropology of policy” methodology that analyzes policy as both discourse and governmental technique, I analyze the neuro-logical model through relevant documentary sources. While the NCA was rhetorically about investing in all children, it was more directly about investing in normal and normalizable brain development as a means to optimize population vitality and ensure global economic competitiveness. I develop the argument that the possibilities for including disability as a form of developmental difference were inscribed in the neuro-logical model itself. Specifically, cognitive impairments that were considered permanent were positioned as the non-normalizable remainder in the investment agenda. Framing the investment in early childhood in neuroscientific terms obscured both the discursive reproduction of disabled children’s marginality and the deflection of alternate conceptualizations of human value, child potential, and inclusion. This thesis contributes to theorizing how models of normal and normalizable child development shape the discursive incorporation of children with disabling differences, with implications for policy, theory, and practice. Ethnographically rich policy research is needed to investigate how policy models are reproduced or transformed through local implementation. | Ph.D. | equality, inequality | 5, 10 |
| Choi, Mirue | Damaren, Christopher J. | Flexible Dynamics and Attitude Control of a Square Solar Sail | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2015-06 | This thesis presents a comprehensive analysis of attitude and structural dynamics of a square solar sail. In particular, this research examines the use of corner-attached reflective vanes to control the attitude of the spacecraft. An introduction to known solar sail designs is given, then the mathematics involved in calculating solar radiation pressure forces are presented. A detailed derivation and implementation of the unconstrained nonlinear flexible structural dynamics with Finite Element Method (FEM) models are explored, with several sample simulations of published large deflection experiments used as verification measures. To simulate the inability of a thin membrane to resist compression, the sail membrane elements are augmented with a method that approximates the wrinkling and the slacking dynamics, which is followed by a simulation of another well-known experiment as a verification measure.Once the structural dynamics are established, the usage of the tip vanes is explored. Specifically, a control allocation problem formed by having two degrees of freedom for each tip vane is defined and an efficient solution to this problem is presented, allowing desired control torques to be converted to appropriate vane angles. A randomized testing mechanism is implemented to show the efficacy of this algorithm. The sail shadowing problem is explored as well, where a component of the spacecraft casts shadow upon the sail and prevents solar radiation pressure force from being produced. A method to calculate the region of shadow is presented, and two different shadowing examples are examined - due to the spacecraft bus, and due to the sail itself.Combining all of the above, an attitude control simulation of the sail model is presented. A simple PD controller combined with the control allocation scheme is used to provide the control torque for the sail, with which the spacecraft must orient towards a number of pre-specified attitude targets. Several attitude orientations are simulated, then a number of modifications to the control are explored. The controllability of the rigid and the elastic modes of the sail at different stable states is demonstrated as well, showing that the sail is controllable for all its modes in its stable state. | Ph.D. | solar | 7 |
| Choi, Stephanie Ka Yee | Rourke, Sean B. | Depression in People Living with HIV and Their Unmet Needs in Mental Health Care in Ontario: A Prospective Cohort Study | Medical Science | 2016-11 | Nearly 50% of HIV-positive patients have a history of suffering from depression. Although the condition is treatable, depression in these patients is under-recognized and under-treated, resulting in poorer clinical and quality-of-life outcomes. There are also gaps and disparities in accessing mental health care among these patients, but current evidence is limited to U.S. studies. The primary objectives of this thesis work were to: (1) establish the validity and reliability of self-report measurement instruments in identifying depression against DSM-IV criteria; (2) examine the burden of current depression and the underlying factors driving the burden; (3) estimate the rate of publicly-funded mental health service use and unmet needs for mental health care among HIV-positive patients with depression; and (4) examine the impact of depression on costly and preventable acute health services use in the Canadian health care system. A prospective cohort study was conducted by following a cohort of HIV-positive patients from October 1, 2007 to March 31, 2013 in the province of Ontario, Canada. I adopted a novel longitudinal linked data approach. Various regression models were employed for the analysis. Three self-report instruments (CES-D20, K10, and PHQ9) performed equally well and accurately when compared against DSM-IV criteria. With regards to the burden of depression, one in four HIV-positive patients was depressed. Half of depressed HIV-positive patients had a recurrent episode. In addition, there were delivery gaps in mental health care for depressed HIV-positive patientsâ one-half used mental health services and of these, one-half received minimally adequate care. Furthermore, HIV-positive patients with depression and/or substance use issues were associated with a 19â 70% elevated rate of emergency department (ED) admissions and a 17-67% elevated rate of potentially preventable ED admissions compared to those without these conditions. In sum, depression is highly prevalent in HIV-positive patients and is likely to be chronic and recurrent over time. There are delivery gaps in mental health care for depressed HIV-positive patients. More effective mental health care policies and better access to mental health care services are required to address the unmet needs of HIV-positive patients and reduce the impact of depression on their lives. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Chopra, Kevin | Levitan, Robert | Exploring the Pathophysiology of Chronic Depression: The Interplay between Depression, Cortisol Responses, and Personality | Medical Science | 2013-06 | Chronic major depressive disorder (CMDD) is a common and debilitating illness. Its pathophysiology needs further elucidation, before more effective targeted treatments can be developed for this condition. To gain a better understanding of the psychobiology of CMDD, three interconnected studies were conducted that examined the interplay between chronic depression, cortisol responses, and personality. Study 1 examined cortisol responses to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in CMDD participants (n=29) as compared to healthy controls (n=28). It was hypothesized that cortisol responses would be greater in the CMDD population. Results indicated that females with CMDD had increased cortisol output compared to female controls, a pattern consistent with the hypothesis. However, males with CMDD had decreased cortisol responses compared to male controls. These results suggest that cortisol responses to social stress are altered in those with CMDD; however, females and males experience fundamentally different changes. Study 2 examined moderating effects of personality on cortisol responses to the TSST in those with CMDD (n=51) as compared to healthy controls (n=57). It was hypothesized that higher neuroticism and/or lower extraversion would be associated with increased cortisol responses in CMDD participants. As hypothesized, lower extraversion was associated with increased cortisol reactivity in those with CMDD but not in healthy controls. However, no association was found between neuroticism and cortisol responses. These findings could support the notion that lower extraversion is a vulnerability marker for chronic depression and thus a possible target for treatment. Study 3, evaluated the cortisol awakening response (CAR) in CMDD participants (n=27) compared to healthy controls (n=30). It was hypothesized that such awakening responses would be more pronounced in the depressed population compared to controls. Contrary to expectation, no differences were found between the groups. However, lower extraversion was associated with a lower CAR in both CMDD and healthy controls, a finding that was not anticipated a priori. These interconnected studies suggest that examining relationships between depression, cortisol responses, and personality, can assist with identifying distinct psychobiological profiles in those with chronic depression. It is proposed that this strategy will improve the likelihood of developing more targeted treatments for this population. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Chowdhury, A K M Zahidur R | Kherani, Nazir P. | Facile Grown Native Oxide Based Passivation of Crystalline Silicon: A Novel Approach for Low-Temperature Synthesis of Silicon Photovoltaics | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2013-11 | Passivation of the crystalline silicon surface is central to the attainment of high-efficiency silicon solar cells and even more so as the silicon absorber is thinned. Moreover, the current predominantly high temperature processing of thin silicon wafers gives rise to defect migration-creation and thermal stresses in a typical multi-layered photovoltaic (PV) device. The development of a simple and effective low temperature passivation scheme would aid immensely in the synthesis of next generation low-cost high-efficiency thin silicon solar cells. This research proposes, investigates and demonstrates the efficacy of a novel low-temperature passivation scheme for crystalline silicon surface which consists of a facile grown native oxide (SiOx) layer and a silicon nitride (SiNx) over layer. A systematic experimental study of the interfacial passivation quality reveals that high quality surface passivation is obtained at a saturation native oxide thickness of ~10Å. The passivation quality is uniform over a large silicon surface with a surface recombination velocity (SRV) of 8 cm/s. Recombination modelling of the interface shows that the interfacial defect density diminishes with increasing native oxide thickness while the trapped charge density is essentially unchanged. In light of the new passivation scheme, this research investigates theoretically and experimentally a legacy photovoltaic cell concept, the Back Amorphous-Crystalline silicon Heterojunction (BACH) PV device, and proposes a novel PV cell concept - the Lateral Inherently Thin (LIT) amorphous-crystalline silicon heterojunction PV device. Benchmarked theoretical studies of the devices, using Sentaurus - a device modelling code, indicate a maximum BACH cell and LIT cell efficiency of 24.4% and 23.9%, respectively, for a 100µm thick textured cSi substrate with attainable (10 cm/sec) passivation quality. BACH and LIT PV devices, integrating the new facile grown SiOx passivation scheme, were fabricated using n-type double-side polished 280µm thick (100) FZ cSi wafers. An optimal untextured cell efficiency of 16.7% and 11.6% are obtained for a 1 cm2 BACH and LIT devices, respectively, under AM1.5 solar irradiation. Development of the high quality facile grown oxide based passivation scheme, a paradigm shift relative to conventional thermal oxide passivation, paves the path for low-temperature synthesis of oxide-based high quality semiconductor devices on thin silicon - including high-efficiency silicon photovoltaics. | PhD | solar | 7 |
| Christine, McKenzie | Bonnie, Burstow | Exploring Intersectionality, Unravelling Interlocking Opresssions: Feminist Non-credit Learning Processes | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-06 | The concepts of intersectionality and interlocking identities came out of needs raised by communities and then academics wrote about it. This dissertation examines these concepts and how these resonate with the ways that feminist educators conceptualize and facilitate non-credit learning processes with women. This research focuses on 10 differently-located feminist educators and the processes they lead that meet a range of learning goals. Specifically, this research examines the learning practices that these educators used to help women learners gain a consciousness around their identity and issues of power and oppression. I then discuss how these practices resonate with the theoretical frameworks of intersecting and interlocking oppressions. Anti-oppression, feminist informed research and feminist standpoint theories informed the research approach. The Critical Appreciative Process, which builds on the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) method, was used to explore what is working within feminist non-credit learning processes. In addition, two case studies were elaborated on in order to examine the learning practices that were particularly successful. The educators reflected on several barriers involved in bringing differently-located women together to explore and address the power dynamics associated with power and oppression. These included the defensiveness, denial and avoidance associated with acknowledging and addressing privilege. The educators also shared effective practices for addressing such barriers. Key practices included creating an environment for difficult conversations, working intergenerationally, using theoretical frameworks to deconstructing interpersonal dynamics occurring in the group and providing tools to draw on everyday experiences and challenge (inappropriate) behaviours. Additionally, specific activities for raising learners’ awareness of their own complex and multiple identities and how these identities are co-constructed through interactions with others were detailed. This study revealed the limitations of intersectionality and interlocking identities frameworks in praxis, as well as the ways in which an awareness of identity, difference and power creates an entry point for intersectional and interlocking awareness that aids feminist movements. This research makes a contribution to strengthening the praxis of feminist educators facilitating non-credit processes. Within feminist theorizing, this research also makes an important contribution in contextualizing intersectionality and interlocking identities frameworks within a range of feminist non-credit learning practices. | PhD | inclusive, women | 4, 5 |
| Christoforou, Anthea | Tarasuk, Valerie | The Determinants of Discretionary Front-of-Package Food Labelling | Nutritional Sciences | 2017-11 | The Determinants of Discretionary Front-of-Package Food Labelling Anthea Christoforou Doctor of Philosophy Department of Nutritional Sciences University of Toronto 2017 ABSTRACT Front-of-package (FOP) nutrition labelling is pervasive in Canada and occurs at the discretion of manufacturers. While there is evidence to suggest FOP labelling can impact product sales, other work has consistently demonstrated no association between the presence of a FOP reference and the nutritional quality of a product. A comprehensive examination of how manufacturers choose to engage in FOP labelling is needed to better understand the implications of this practice for consumers. Drawing on a survey of packaged foods sold in national chain retailers in Toronto the aims of this thesis were 1) to examine how the presence and nature of FOP references relate to a) level of food processing, b) product innovation (focusing on products designed as substitutes for traditional foods), and c) brand; and 2) to assess the nature of unregulated references through a systematic comparison of these references to nutrition labelling regulations. FOP nutrition references were more likely to appear on highly processed products, innovative foods and products manufactured by transnational brands, but they were less frequently displayed on products targeted to discount shoppers. A more in-depth examination of the nature of FOP material revealed a greater propensity for references highlighting ‘nutrients to limit’ (e.g., ‘trans fat free’, ‘low in sodium’) amongst highly processed products and those of transnational brands whereas innovative foods displayed a greater proportion of references which relayed information of ‘positive’ constituents (e.g., ‘good source of calcium’). Transnational brand products were more likely than other products to bear unregulated ‘natural’ references and less likely to display regulated ‘organic’ labels, potentially signalling their need to circumvent regulatory requirements that would vary across markets. Nearly a quarter of products surveyed bore unregulated nutrition references, and most of these relayed information for which regulated options exist. Taken together, the strategic distribution of FOP references observed on highly processed products, innovative products and those manufactured by transnational brands, and the myriad of unregulated text found on these products, suggest FOP labelling functions primarily as a marketing tool and point to the need for a more effective regulatory framework for nutrition communication to better support healthy food selection. | Ph.D. | consum, innovation, health, nutrition | 2, 3, 9, 12 |
| Christopoulos, John | Dacome, Lucia | Abortion in Late-Renaissance Italy | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2013-06 | What did abortion mean in late-Renaissance Italy? This dissertation investigates conceptions and practices of abortion in Italy from 1550-1650. It aims to historicize abortion by recovering and joining together, from a broad base of sources, as many contemporary representations and images, points of view and voices on this subject as possible. I argue that abortion was a contentious and ambiguous event that had several meanings and that generated many seemingly inconsistent responses from ordinary individuals and institutional authorities. Abortion was a complex physical and medical event that carried heavy moral load. It was discussed in numerous contexts and had bearings on a variety of socio-historical domains. Drawing on a variety of sources, (including archival materials, legal codes and civic proclamations, works of theology, jurisprudence and medicine, letters and trial documents), and interdisciplinary in its method (utilizing the methodologies of social and cultural history, gender studies, history of ideas, the law, medicine and the body, and microhistory), this dissertation offers the first focused analysis of conceptions of abortion in the early modern period by examining meanings and practices in relation to broader social, political, medical, and religious developments in Counter-Reformation Italy. While detecting and analysing changes in institutional responses towards the practice over the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this dissertation argues that culturally pervasive discourses of ambiguity and uncertainty persisted and that this shaped the way abortion was processed at the situational level. Examining the multiple and contradictory ways in which abortion was represented in various discursive contexts, this study throws light on some of the broader social, sexual, and gender imbalances that bore directly on perceptions and experiences of the female body and that shaped the ways in which institutions and individuals processed abortions. Far from being black or white, early modern Italian attitudes and responses to abortion were always complex and multifaceted. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Chu Morrison, Jemille Lai-Yin | McDougall, Doug | Empowering Children Through a Global Education Reading Program | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2019-11 | This 19-year global education curriculum project was conducted by a Canadian researcher in solidarity with a Tanzanian women’s rights activist who requested assistance with her campaign to end the continued illegal practice of female circumcision in her village. Years of fundraising, researching and planning resulted in filling a primary school with multicultural children’s literature to be used in a daily global reading program from grades one to seven. During the seven years of teacher training and curriculum implementation workshops in Tanzania involving global education and holistic education principles, the teachers expressed their shock over the unprecedented openness and critical thinking of their students. The students developed a keen awareness of social justice issues through their daily reading and book talks. By the upper grades, the male and female students articulated their stance against female circumcision without controversy, as though it was common knowledge that this was an illegal and unacceptable practice. Additionally, the students scored top results on their graduating national exams. The intent of the project was not to improve standardized testing results of the most disadvantaged, rural students and HIV orphans. This was a positive side-effect of the transformative powers of storytelling in the lives of children who are now better equipped to think critically about illegal, harmful cultural practices. | Ph.D. | rights, justice, rural, women | 5, 11, 16 |
| Chua, Vincent Kynn Hong | Erickson, Bonnie | Social Capital and Inequality in Singapore | Sociology | 2010-11 | Written as three publishable papers, this dissertation examines the sources of several forms of social capital in Singapore, and the effects of social capital on occupational success. Using representative survey data from Singapore, these papers make several important theoretical contributions: The first paper examines how and why categorical forms of stratification such as gender and ethnicity tend to produce distinctive forms of network inequalities: for example, whereas Chinese (relative to Malays and Indians) tend to have greater access to well-educated, wealthy, Chinese and weak tie social capital (but not non-kin), men (relative to women) tend to have greater access to men, non-kin and weak ties (but not well-educated, wealthy and Chinese). The key to understanding such distinctive patterns of network inequalities (by gender and ethnicity) is to understand the distinctive ways in which gender and ethnic groups are distributed in routine organizations such as schools, paid work and voluntary associations. The second paper examines the significance of personal contacts in job searches, in the context of Singapore’s meritocratic system. I show that in certain sectors such as the state bureaucracy, social networking brings no distinct advantages as appointments are made exclusively on the basis of the credentials of the candidates. Thus, personal contacts are not always useful, especially in labour markets that rely heavily on the signalling role of academic credentials to match people to jobs. In contrast, personal contacts are more useful among less qualified job searches in the private sector. The third paper shows that while job contacts (i.e. ‘mobilized’ social capital) may not always pay off in meritocratic labour markets, ‘accessed’ social capital remains extremely important. The leveraging power of social capital in meritocratic markets is not the active mobilization of job contacts per se, but more subtly, the result of embedded social resources such as knowing many university graduates and wealthy people. Together, these papers illustrate how socio-structural factors such as meritocracy, gender and racialization form important predictors of the distribution, role and value of social capital in everyday life and labour markets. | PhD | gender, labour | 5, 8 |
| Chuang, Deng-Min | Newman, Peter Adam | The Impact of Co-occurring Psychosocial Health Conditions and Attitudinal Familism on Condomless Anal Sex among Gay, Bisexual and Other Men Who Have Sex with Men (gbMSM) in Taiwan | Social Work | 2020-06 | Backgrounds: Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) constitute the majority of HIV incidence in Taiwan. To understand the social determinants of health among MSM in Taiwan, this thesis aims to examine the impact of co-occurring psychosocial health conditions (PHCs) and attitudinal familism on condomless anal sex among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) in Taiwan. Methods: A cross-sectional online survey was implemented using convenience sampling and distributed from July–September 2017 through collaborative partnerships with five community-based LGBTQ organizations in three metropolitan cities and two rural cities in Taiwan. Informed consent was obtained before the survey. Participants completed questions about socio-demographic characteristics, attitudinal familism, adverse childhood experiences, intimate partner violence, sexual minority stress, methamphetamine use and 14 coping strategies. HIV infection and condomless anal use were operationalized as outcome variables and analyzed using multivariable logistic regression and path analysis, controlling for socio-demographic characteristics. Results: One thousand MSM completed the online survey. Taiwanese MSM with more than one PHC had greater than twofold higher odds of being HIV-positive; those with three or more PHCs had twofold higher odds of having condomless anal sex. Positive reframing, acceptance and spiritual belief coping partially mediated the pathway from co-occurring PHCs to condomless anal sex. Spiritual belief coping partially mediated the association between co-occurring PHCs and HIV infection. The results also revealed that lower levels of attitudinal familism were associated with more co-occurring PHCs, which were, in turn, directly associated with greater use of the substance use coping strategy, which was itself directly associated with more condomless anal sex. Conclusion: The results highlight the importance of preventing co-occurring PHCs, including working to diminish exposure to violence and to reduce minority stressors among MSM in Taiwan. Taiwanese MSM living with co-occurring PHCs would benefit from trauma-informed counselling, which involves emotion-focused approaches and elements of positive reframing, acceptance and spiritual belief coping. Additionally, evidence-based research among MSM in Taiwan should further examine the effect of other coping strategies and social norms on HIV risk-taking behaviours. | Ph.D. | queer, health | 3, 5 |
| Chum, Antony | Walks, R. Alan | Socio-environmental Determinants of Cardiovascular Diseases | Geography | 2012-11 | Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death and disability around the world. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the impact of socio-environmental determinants of CVDs at the neighbourhood scale in order to inform actionable interventions, which may lead to large-scale reductions in preventable CVDs. Drawing on 2411 surveys carried out in Toronto, Canada, this thesis employs multilevel models to estimate the magnitude of socio-environmental influences on the risk of CVD while adjusting for individual-level risk factors. To advance current research methodology, strategies and innovations were developed to 1) improve the characterization of neighbourhoods by empirically testing a full range of socio-environmental influences; 2) account for non-residential exposures by including a combined analysis of work and home contexts; 3) account for variations in the duration of exposure through the use of time-weighted models; 4) deal with problem of spatial data aggregation by developing and testing a novel method of neighbourhood zone design, and 5) account for the spatial scales of different socio-environmental determinants by modeling at multiple scales. The thesis demonstrated that land use decisions are inextricably public health decisions. It found that living in neighbourhoods with inadequate access to food stores and areas for physical activity, burdened by violent crimes and fast food restaurants, and over-dependent on automobiles (leading to air pollution), with a high level of noise may significantly increase the risk of CVDs, over and above individual-level risks. The thesis also found that working in neighbourhoods that are socio-economically disadvantaged or have high-traffic may significantly increase CVD risk. The thesis developed and demonstrated novel methods to reduce the measurement error of neighbourhood exposures through 1) the use of “amoeba buffers” to improve neighbourhood zone design to better reflect participants’ local neighbourhoods and 2) the use of duration of exposure weights to adjust for individual differences in the time spent across different contexts. Finally, it found that the significance of socio-environmental factors depends on the scale of data aggregation; thus, investigation of multiple scales may be required to identify the relevant scale that matches the specific contextual factor in future research. | PhD | health, pollut, environment | 3, 13 |
| Chyzzy, Barbara | Dennis, Cindy-Lee | Mobile Phone-based Peer Support in the Prevention of Postpartum Depression Among Adolescent Mothers: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial | Nursing Science | 2019-06 | Background: Adolescent mothers are at three times greater risk for developing postpartum depression (PPD) compared to adult mothers. Lack of social support has been identified as a major risk factor for PPD among adolescent mothers. The objective of this parallel pilot randomized controlled trial was to evaluate the feasibility, acceptability and adherence of a mobile phone-based peer support intervention and obtain preliminary estimates of impact on clinical outcomes to inform a future definitive randomized controlled trial. Methods: Pregnant adolescents 16-24 years old were recruited from the community in Toronto, Canada and randomly allocated into either a mobile phone-based peer support intervention group or a usual care control group using sequentially numbered, opaque, sealed envelopes. Participants in the intervention group received support from a trained peer mentor by mobile phone (voice calling or text messaging) during their last trimester of pregnancy and 12 weeks postpartum. Primary outcomes measured implementation (feasibility, acceptability and adherence). Secondary outcomes measured preliminary effectiveness (depressive symptomatology, anxiety, social support and health service utilization). A research assistant blinded to group allocation collected outcome measures. Results: Forty pregnant adolescents (mean age 21.6, SD 1.8 years) were recruited (intervention n=21, control n=19). Primary outcomes: 33 participants (82.5%) completed outcome measures. A total of 121 contacts were made between participants and peer mentors, with the majority of contacts made by text message (n= 112, 92.6%). Overall, 100% of participants agreed or strongly agreed that they were satisfied with their peer support experience. Secondary outcomes: After controlling for baseline depressive symptomatology, participants in the intervention group demonstrated lower mean depression scores at 12 weeks postpartum compared to participants in the control group (F = 4.25, p = 0.048). There were no group differences in anxiety, social support or health service utlization. No adverse events were reported. Discussion: Mobile phone-based peer support may be a feasible and acceptable way to provide support to adolescents during pregnancy and in the postpartum period. Preliminary evidence suggests that the peer support intervention may be effective in preventing depressive symptomatology among adolescent mothers. A definitive randomized controlled trial with adequate sample size is warranted. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Cimon, David | Park, Andreas | Essays on Financial Market Structure | Economics | 2016-11 | In this thesis, I model three innovations in modern financial markets. First, I study conflict of interest in the relation between brokers and investors. Second, I study Exchange Traded Funds, and their impact on their constituent assets. Finally, I study crowdfunding as a means for entrepreneurs to resolve uncertainty regarding demand for their projects. Many investors do not access equity markets directly; instead they rely on a broker who receives their order and submits it to a trading venue. Brokers face a conflict of interest when the commissions they receive from investors differ from the costs imposed by different trading venues. Investors want their orders to be filled with the highest probability, while brokers choose venues in order to maximize their own profits. I construct a model of limit order trading in which brokers serve as an agent for investors who wish to access equity markets. In just over 20 years, exchange traded funds (ETFs) have gone from a new financial innovation to an industry representing over $1.3 trillion CAD in assets under management. With this rapid rise in popularity, questions naturally arise as to whether ETFs affect the markets for the underlying assets from which they are formed. In this chapter I present a static model of informed limit order book trading in which market participants trade in either cash markets or basket securities ETFs. Since its advent less than 10 years ago, crowdfunding has grown to a multi-billion dollar industry. There has been debate over whether crowdfunding has competed with or complemented traditional financing methods such as banks and venture capital. One feature of crowdfunding, is a shifting of the risk from the project from the traditional venues, to these consumers themselves. This chapter examines the role of crowdfunding in the financing process for entrepreneurs, specifically in regards to the resolution of uncertainty regarding demand for their projects. | Ph.D. | innovation, industr, financial market | 9, 10 |
| Clarke, Allyson Kathryn | Lana, Stermac | In The Eyes of The Law: Survivor Experiences and Image Construction Within Sexual Assault Cases | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-11 | Research has clearly documented the challenges that sexual assault survivors face within the legal system, yet little attention has been devoted to the ways in which survivors demonstrate agency during this process. The present study explored the ways in which sexual assault survivors navigate the power structures and stereotypes present within the Canadian criminal justice system, particularly during pre-trial preparatory activities and testifying experiences. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with eight adult female sexual assault survivors who testified against their assailant at a preliminary hearing or trial, as well as four service providers responsible for assisting survivors within the legal system. Data collection and analysis was informed by constructivist grounded theory (Charmaz, 2006). Findings showed that survivors' experiences testifying and interacting with defense attorneys were predominantly negative, while experiences with police and Crown Attorneys were comprised of both supportive and unsupportive aspects depending on the level of belief, support and commitment shown. Consistent with previous findings on survivor agency (e.g., Greeson Campbell, 2011), participants expressed agency through purposeful acts of both compliance and defiance with system expectations, depending on which course of action was deemed most beneficial in meeting personal goals for self-protection, system change or prosecution of the offender. Participants complied with system expectations through cooperation with legal personnel as well as deliberate mental, emotional, psychological and physical strategies to prepare themselves for testifying, including independent legal research, testimony rehearsal, psychological coping strategies, emotion management, and appearance modification. These activities were undertaken to increase personal confidence and comfort, as well as to construct stereotypically consistent images of ideal victimhood, enhance perceived credibility and assist in the prosecution effort. In addition, participants expressed agency through actions such as obtaining their own legal representation, protesting and resisting unfair or inappropriate treatment, and setting boundaries in their interactions with legal personnel. Findings indicate that even in the aftermath of serious trauma, survivors of sexual assault are able to take purposeful action to assess their own needs and shape their legal interactions and experiences in order to best meet their personal goals (Greeson Campbell, 2011; Konradi, 2007). | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Clarke, Kathleen | Childs, Ruth A | An Investigation of the Experiences of Graduate Students with a Mental Health Condition | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11 | Discussion of postsecondary students’ mental health often overlooks the graduate student population, focusing on the undergraduate student population instead. The overall purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of graduate students with mental health conditions and to examine the challenges they face and the supports they use. The study followed a sequential-explanatory approach. In Phase 1, the 2016 Canadian Reference Group data from the National College Health Assessment was used to obtain an overall understanding of Canadian graduate students’ mental health. Findings from the quantitative analyses showed significant differences between a sample of 1,461 graduate/professional students with mental health conditions and 3,291 graduate/professional students without mental health conditions. Specifically, participants with mental health conditions reported experiencing higher levels of stress and more impediments to academic performance. Additionally, participants with mental health conditions were significantly more likely to report accessing providers for mental health support and to report that they would seek mental health support in the future if they had a problem that was bothering them. For Phase 2, 38 semi-structured interviews were conducted with doctoral students in Ontario who identified as having a mental health challenge or disability. Analyses found that some participants felt their mental health condition(s) delayed their academic progress. Participants who were not considered on-track to completing their degree on-time typically reported that the comprehensive exam stage was problematic. For support, participants often disclosed mental health-related concerns to peers and supervisors in addition to seeking formal support from on- or off-campus services. Overall, the findings suggest that the experiences of graduate students with mental health challenges may differ from their peers without mental health challenges. For faculty, academic programs, departments, and student services offices, understanding such differences is important for the delivery of effective and tailored support that meets the needs of this specific population of students. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Clarke, Leroy | Wallace, John | An Investigation of the Impact of Mentoring on Students' Decisions to Pursue Professions in Medicine/Health Sciences: A Sociocultural Framework for Multicultural Science Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2010-11 | In the 21st Century and beyond, it is clear that science and technology will be a catalyst in strengthening economic competitiveness and fostering social cohesion. However, some minoritized students are not engaged in science or related careers in science such as medicine. This study addresses the systemic issue of equitable and accessible science education as a requisite for career acquisition such as medicine. Mentoring is presented as a sociocultural participatory activity for engaging students in science learning. The purpose of this study is to assess the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine Summer Mentorship Program (SMP) and to use the data to theorize on the mentoring phenomenon. In 1994, the SMP was established as a means of ameliorating the traditionally low participation of Aboriginal and Black students in medicine and other health sciences. For the first 10 years (1994 – 2004), 250 participants enrolled in the program. Recently, ten past mentees of the program matriculated into various medical schools (5 in the Class of 2008 at the University of Toronto, this is significant, as the norm is usually 0 or at most 2). The study utilized a qualitative approach, requiring the collection of semi-structured one-on-one interview data and an interpretive phenomenological methodology to evaluate the data. There was an increased level of school and community involvement when students returned to high school and an increased awareness of the academic and career choices available to protégés. Mentees indicated that the influence of the SMP followed them much further than the end of the summer and considered it to be an important and defining moment in their educational journey. Communication could be improved so that mentors get a sense of their own impact and for professional development. Recommendations include conducting a study more focused on the impact of the SMP on Aboriginal students who completed the program. Finally, from a theoretical perspective, further work is recommended in order to fine-tune the proposed Mentoring Oriented Teaching and Learning Strategy (MOTALS) framework that incorporates students as natives in a welcoming community of science practice rather than immigrants in a strange land of non-contextual science knowledge. | PhD | equitable | 4 |
| Classen, Lauren Stephanie | Wardlow, Holly ||Sellen, Daniel | Not "Just Staying": How Health and Development Programming is Reshaping the Past, Present and Future for Rural Youth in Malawi | Anthropology | 2013-11 | Drawing on ethnographic and visual anthropological data, this dissertation explores the anticipated and unanticipated effects of youth-targeted health and development programmes in rural Malawi. Contemporary development programmes are anticipatory in nature: they are focused on managing health, behaviour, education and social relations today in ways that are believed to open opportunities for some distant and better future. Working with rural youth who “just stay,” an idiom youth use to describe their “failure” to make progress towards desired futures, I show how discourses and ideals espoused in anticipatory programmes including human rights, education, gender and love are slippery concepts. As they percolate through this particular social, political, historical and demographic context and into the imaginaries of young people, these discourses often become something new and unexpected. In particular I show how: i) a discursive elision occurs between the rights discourse and other markers of modernity and youth take up their “right” to wear modern clothing and drink commercial alcohol, ii) selfish behaviours including alcoholism and womanising surface in boys’ self-constructions as innate tendencies rather than part of a socially produced and constantly shifting construction of masculinity, iii) audit cultures, critical to the operation of anticipatory programmes, reduce gender equality to something “countable,” which, in turn, alters programme activities, leads to performances by participants and filters into youth subjectivities, and iv) discourses on modern and “healthy” loves, free from HIV/AIDS, lead to re-arrangements in romantic relations and friendships that provide new and positive opportunities for women not always available in customary marriages. By privileging the future over the present and the past, programmes overlook numerous structural barriers to improving the lives of the youth who “just stay.” I argue that the unanticipated effects of these programmes constitute and give rise to several invisible forms of violence. On the other hand, however, some effects are generative of new and positive subjectivities and relationships that are egregiously overlooked by programmes. This ignorance prevents programmes from building upon positive effects to generate desired change and sometimes even undermines their own stated goals. | PhD | health, gender, women, equality, rural, rights | 3, 5, 11, 16 |
| Cleary, Julian | Maclaren, Virginia W. | Incorporating Waste Prevention Activities into Life Cycle Assessments of Residential Solid Waste Management Systems | Geography | 2012-06 | The four papers of this dissertation explore themes related to waste prevention, the system boundaries, functional units and scale of life cycle assessments (LCAs) of municipal solid waste (MSW) management, as well as the transparency and consistency of the application of LCA methods. The first paper is a comparative analysis of the methodological choices and transparency of 20 LCAs of MSW that were recently published in peer-reviewed journals, and includes a comparison of their midpoint level impact values using statistical indicators. The second paper proposes a conceptual model, designated WasteMAP (Waste Management And Prevention), for evaluating LCAs of MSW which incorporate waste prevention. In WasteMAP, waste prevention through dematerialization is viewed as analogous to waste treatments so long as it does not affect the functional output (product services) of MSW-generating product systems. Papers 3 and 4 comprise the WasteMAP LCA case study. Paper 3 depicts product LCAs of wine and spirit packaging (conventional, lightweight and refillable, each type generating different quantities of waste) at the scale of the individual package and the municipality. At the municipal scale, the LCAs address impacts from the wine and spirit packaging supplied in the City of Toronto, Canada in 2008, and a waste prevention scenario which substitutes lighter weight and reusable containers. The lowest endpoint level impacts out of the five container types studied were associated with refillable containers and aseptic cartons. Paper 4 addresses the Toronto MSW management system and applies the WasteMAP model to allow for the comparison, on a functionally equivalent basis, of the LCA results of a reference scenario, based on 2008 data, with a scenario incorporating six types of waste prevention activities (prevention of unaddressed advertising mail, disposable plastic bags, newspapers, lightweight and refillable wine and spirit packaging, and yard waste). The findings highlight the benefits of waste prevention, and the relative significance of the decision to account for recycled content when modelling waste prevention. The endpoint level impact assessment results using the ReCiPe and Impact 2002+ evaluation methods are in keeping with the assumption in the waste hierarchy that waste prevention has a superior environmental performance. | PhD | environment, waste, recycl | 7, 12, 13 |
| Cleaver, Shaun Robert | Nixon, Stephanie A||Polatajko, Helene J | Postcolonial Encounters with Disability: Exploring Disability and Ways Forward Together with Persons with Disabilities in Western Zambia | Rehabilitation Science | 2016-11 | The economic and epistemological dominance of the global North has outlived colonialism. This postcolonial dynamic causes impairment in the global South and renders life more difficult for persons with disabilities (PWDs). This dynamic also limits the ability of people in the global South to respond to disability. This thesis aimed to challenge the postcolonial dynamic through the development of new ways to think about disability, and what to do about it, through a North-South collaboration with a North American rehabilitation provider and two disability groups and their members in Western Zambia. This constructionist qualitative research project was informed by critical and participatory approaches to research. The participating groups included one based in an urban area and another in a rural area. A total of 81 individual members of the two groups participated. Data were generated through eight focus group discussions and 39 interviews and analyzed using thematic and reflexive analysis strategies. The participants of this research were most concerned with poverty. The strategy that they suggested to improve their situation was help, a gift or grant of material resources shared in a relationship of expected compassion. This research was complicated by power dynamics and differences between the participants and researcher with respect to priorities and ways of thinking. The complications likely impacted what people talked about and the way they talked about it. The complications also meant that this research was less collaborative than planned. This research showed that PWDs in Western Zambia had concerns, and suggested strategies to improve their situation, that were different than those that are most common in Zambia. Since the current ways of thinking about disability in Zambia are largely informed by the concerns and priorities of the global North, this research points to possible alternatives that are based in the realities of the country. | Ph.D. | poverty, urban rural | 1, 11 |
| CLEMENT, Anne | REILLY, James ||HASSANPOUR, Amir | Fallahin on Trial in Colonial Egypt: Apprehending the Peasantry through Orality, Writing, and Performance | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2012-06 | This dissertation explores the experiences of Egyptian peasants from the Delta province of Minufiyya who were tried for murder by newly created "native" or "national" courts between 1884 and 1914. Through the study of 2,000 pages of criminal files, I deconstruct how the colonial state used the modern techniques of judicial orality, writing, and performance, both to justify a series of reforms that turned the entire legal process into a parody of justice, and to develop a grand narrative that essentialized peasants as revengeful, greedy, and passionate and ultimately linked their alleged immorality to their illiteracy. Furthermore, my work sheds light on how peasants reacted to this process of moralization of the law by promoting the "honor of the brigand" through violence and poetry. Finally, by focusing on the many petitions contained in the judicial files, my dissertation provides new insight into the development of a "vernacular" culture of the law that betrays the peasants' awareness of the highly political nature of the legal process. By presenting and analyzing an untapped wealth of Egyptian archives produced by the native courts, this research not only sheds invaluable light on the workings and hence the very nature of British colonial justice in Egypt, but also represents a significant advance in the knowledge of the origins of Egypt's current legal system. On a more theoretical level, this study also constitutes an important contribution to the reflection on the subaltern subject initiated by Rosalind O'Hanlon and Talal Asad, by showing how the peasants' agency paradoxically lies in their "disempowerment." | PhD | justice | 16 |
| Cleovoulou, Yiola | Thiessen, Dennis | Examining the Complexities of Fostering Social Inclusion in Elementary Classrooms | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2010-06 | The purpose of this 1-year case study was to understand how 5 elementary school teachers in an inner-city school foster social inclusion. Through classroom observations and interviews, the study examined the variations of classroom practices the teachers used to create inclusive environments, the challenges they faced in the process, and the strategies they developed to address these challenges. How their work in the classroom interacted with the school's organizational structures was also explored. Three concepts frame the study: a broad conception of social inclusion that addresses multiple aims for creating an environment of belonging and takes students of all social identities into account; a detailed conception of the practice of social inclusion from a range of theoretical perspectives and teachers' experiences; and a situated conception of context that interrelates the classroom with the school and the community. Three dimensions of pedagogy—content-based practices, relations, and structures—are used to identify and compare principles of inclusive practice. The study portrays the interactions of daily classroom life through cross-case analysis and reveals the complex decision-making processes that teachers use to foster social inclusion. This study builds on growing scholarship in the field of social inclusion in education (Ainscow et al., 2006; Dei, 1996a; Kosnik & Beck, 2009; Kumashiro, 2002; Topping & Maloney, 2005) and on the increased interest in inclusive pedagogical practices. The in-depth portraits of the teachers’ classroom practices are compared to literature in 4 areas: citizen-based pedagogy, culture-based pedagogy, race-based pedagogy, and anti-oppression pedagogy. The teachers’ practices are analyzed in relation to 2 principles of social inclusion: connecting content to students’ lives and creating mutually supportive social spaces. The study revealed that the participants' practices were mainly associated with pedagogies based on citizenship and culture, with some connections to race-based and anti-oppression pedagogies. What differentiates this study from most other studies in this area is its detailed attention to the dynamic complexity of applying principles of social inclusion to practice. The portraits offer insights into inclusive work in classrooms that will benefit teachers, teacher educators, and researchers interested in expanding the field of social inclusion in education. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Close, Angele | Stermac, Lana | Self-compassion and Recovery from Sexual Assault | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2013-11 | Despite concerted efforts to eradicate violence against women and challenge victim-blaming attitudes towards survivors of sexual assault, women continue to be sexually victimized and encounter negative and accusatory reactions by family, friends, and society at large. For many survivors, the consequences are internalizing blame and feelings of shame, which has been shown to be related to increased psychological distress, self-destructive coping mechanisms, depression, generalized anxiety, and post-traumatic stress (Arata, 1999; Davis & Breslau, 1994; Feiring, Taska, & Lewis, 2002; Frazier, 1990, 2000; Frazier & Schauben, 1994; Wyatt et al., 1990). New research in the area of self-compassion suggests that this way of self-relating can counter shame (Gilbert, 2005) and serve as a resiliency factor for coping with daily stressors (Leary, Tate, Adams, Allen, & Hancock, 2007) and contribute to well-being (Neff, 2003a). No study has yet empirically evaluated self-compassion among survivors of trauma, nor more specifically, victims of sexual assault. The present study investigated the relationships between self-compassion and various indicators of psychological health that have been associated with posttrauma adjustment. One hundred and forty-one women in North America who experienced a sexual assault in the past 5 years (aged 18 to 61, M age = 27 years) completed measures assessing trauma history (sexual trauma history, childhood trauma and stressful life experiences), posttrauma adjustment (psychological distress, negative posttraumatic cognitions, and shame), self-compassion, self-criticism, and life satisfaction. The results of the study showed that self-compassion was significantly negatively related to psychological distress, negative posttraumatic cognitions, shame and self-criticism, and was positively related to life satisfaction. Hierarchical linear regressions revealed that when controlling for earlier childhood trauma and other stressful life experiences, self-compassion was a strong and significant predictor, explaining between 19 to 42% of the variance in psychological distress, negative posttraumatic cognitions, shame, and self-criticism. Comparing groups based on severity of sexual assault revealed that women who experienced attempted rape reported significantly higher levels of self-criticism compared with women who experienced sexual coercion. These findings bolster recent studies that equate self-compassion with psychological resilience. The negative relationships revealed between self-compassion and measures reflecting posttrauma adjustment and self-criticism, along with the positive association with life satisfaction clearly demonstrate validity in the pursuit of self-compassion as an important psychological construct that may help women recover from sexual trauma. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Clune, Laurel Ann | Nelson, Sioban | When the Injured Nurse Returns to Work: An Institutional Ethnography | Nursing Science | 2011-06 | Nursing is a high risk profession for injury. A Canadian survey reports many nurses are in poor physical and emotional health; they sustain more musculoskeletal and violence related injuries than other occupational groups. In Ontario, an injury management approach called Early Return to Work (RTW) requires injured workers, including nurses, to go back to work before full recovery. The Workplace Safety and Insurance Board cite this approach as beneficial to both the employer and employee. This study uses an institutional ethnographic approach to examine critically the RTW process from the standpoint of injured registered nurses. Through interviews and mapping activities with nurses, other health professionals and managers, a rendering of the social organization of hospital injury management emerges. The findings suggest that the implementation of RTW is complicated and difficult for nurses, their families and hospital employers. Injured nurses engage in significant amounts of domestic, rehabilitation and accommodation work in order to participate in the RTW process. When the returning nurse is unable to engage in full duties hospital operations become disorganized. Collective agreements and human resources procedures limit the participation of injured nurses in creative and/or new roles that could utilize their knowledge and skills. As a result, nurses are assigned to duties, which hamper them from returning to their pre-injury positions and cause their employment with the hospital to be reconsidered. The unsuccessful return of injured nurses to employment is counter to provincial retention initiatives, which seek to sustain an adequate cadre of nurses ready and able to care for the increasing health care needs of an aging population. Sites of change which could support and promote the successful return of these injured workers to nursing work are identified in this study. | PhD | health, employment, worker | 3, 8 |
| Cobb, Cameron Darcy Baxter | Ryan, James | Minoritized Parents, Special Education, and Inclusion | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-06 | While there is a large body of literature on the subject of inclusion from a student’s perspective in terms of program delivery, little has been written about how minoritized parents are included in special education processes. This critical study examines how minoritized parents – those who are at times disadvantaged because of how they are differentiated within society – are included in and/or excluded from special education in the varying circumstances associated with this process. To delve into the parameters and implementation of special education identification, placement, and program delivery, I spoke with four minoritized parents and one minoritized youth engagement worker. Additionally, I examined codified policies and regulations, in order to consider how individuals interpret and shape the enactment of this policy within school cultures. In recording and coding the stories of minoritized parents, I have found that Ontario’s system of identification, placement, and program delivery presently leads minoritized parents to experience varying degrees of inclusion and/or exclusion. These degrees may be influenced by a number of circumstances, including how knowledge, language, positioning, and philosophy are presented. As outlined in this paper, Ontario’s Ministry of Education, along with school boards across the province, may pursue a number of different change avenues, and these paths will inevitably lead to different outcomes. While some paths may lead to conflict resolution and enriched inclusion, others may intensify situations of exclusion. Any sort of policy change that sets out to transform special education identification, placement, and program delivery along an Inclusion/Exclusion, Transparency/Opaqueness continuum would ultimately have to address a variety of complications. While the two general forces of larger social context and policy complications are addressed in the concluding chapter of the paper, the specific manner in which they materialize cannot be predicted with complete accuracy. Rather than articulating a detailed set of instructions to redesign policy, I hope to generate critical reflection and discussion on the matter of transforming Ontario’s special education model. If special education inclusion is to be enriched in Ontario, change is imperative. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Cohen, Sarah | Cummins, James | Making Visible the Invisible: Dual Language Teaching Practices in Monolingual Instructional Settings | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2008-06 | This dissertation documents the work of two teacher collaborators who brought a focus on linguistic and cultural diversity into their literacy teaching even while teaching in English medium schools. The research was carried out during eighteen months utilizing collaborative case study methodology in conjunction with two teachers in highly multilingual and multicultural public elementary schools in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). This study explores the pedagogical possibilities that are made available by teaching for transfer and highlights the resource that students’ linguistic diversity can be even when the instructional setting is monolingual. The dual language literacy pedagogies of the two teachers provide the basis for an analysis of the paths for knowledge construction and identity development that were made available for students through this work. I examine the role that teacher identity and societal influences play in enabling or constraining a redefinition of literacy for the increasingly globalized context of schools. The image of the child, of literacy and of bilingualism projected by the work of the two participating teachers shape the analysis of their identity and role definition as educators. By examining teaching practices that integrate students’ linguistic and cultural identities into the fabric of the literacy curriculum several themes are considered: (a) the role of teacher identity and choice in creating learning contexts that draw on students’ interests and prior knowledge, (b) the link between student engagement and a classroom ecology that values students’ identities and, (c) the different types of knowledge that are generated in the process of participating in the dual language literacy work. Results suggest that students were able to utilize their first language skills in the service of learning English. They also experienced a renewed motivation to extend their first language skills into the sphere of literacy as a result of its affirmation within the classroom. In the case of both first and second language development, students’ ability to engage cognitively and affectively in their literacy work was heightened by virtue of the integration of their language and culture into the curriculum. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Coiner, Heather Allison | Sage, Rowan F. | The Role of Low Temperatures in Determining the Northern Range Limit of Kudzu (Pueraria montana var lobata), an Invasive Vine in North America | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2012-06 | Invasive non-indigenous species are among the principle drivers of global change, altering nutrient cycles, changing disturbance regimes, and generally threatening biodiversity. Climate change is widely expected to exacerbate invasions by relaxing abiotic barriers, such as low temperature, but the mechanistic evidence supporting this is limited. Here, I evaluate the hypothesis that low temperatures determine the northern range limit of kudzu (Pueraria montana var. lobata), an invasive Asiatic vine in North America, by assessing freezing and chilling tolerance of kudzu plants in winter, spring, summer, and fall. Kudzu was widely planted throughout the southeastern U.S. in the early 20th Century to prevent erosion. It is winter-deciduous and reproduces primarily from buds on stem nodes. In the last 40 years, kudzu has migrated northward in concert with a northward shift in the -20oC minimum winter temperature isocline, indicating that less severe winter cold is permitting northward migration. Freezing mortality during winter does not explain this correlation. Electrolyte leakage assays demonstrate that above- and belowground kudzu stems can survive to -27oC and -17oC. Insulation provided by soil and snow protects belowground stems from lethal temperatures to well north of kudzu's current range limit. Severe spring chill stops growth and photosynthesis and causes some shoot mortality, but both growth and photosynthesis recover quickly following the chill. Summer growth rates are rapid (up to 22 cm/d), responding within hours to temperature changes, and are unimpaired by nighttime lows. Photosynthesis is reduced at cool temperatures, but on cool days, kudzu leaves tend to be warmer than air temperature, so photosynthesis rates generally remain close to optimal values. In autumn, growth stops below 15oC, but leaves are retained and maintain modest photosynthetic competence until killed by frost in November. In colder climates that occur far north of kudzu's current range, reductions in the length and quality of the growing season could accumulate over time to reduce kudzu's success. There is, however, no strong evidence that low temperatures in any season will prevent kudzu from migrating throughout southern Ontario, making kudzu a good candidate for invasive species regulations. | PhD | biodiversity, climate | 13, 15 |
| Coleman, Brenda Lee | McGeer, Allison | The Role of Drinking Water as a Source of Transmission of Antimicrobial Resistant Escherichia coli | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2008-11 | Antimicrobial resistance is a serious threat to the treatment of infectious diseases and a leading public health concern of the 21st century. Antimicrobial resistant E. coli has been detected in many places including domestic livestock, humans, food items, surface water, and drinking water. Although the use of antibiotics is a major contributor to the emergence of resistance, the ingestion of water contaminated with antimicrobial resistant bacteria may contribute to the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance in humans. Purpose: The objectives of the research were to determine the prevalence of human faecal carriage of antimicrobial resistant E. coli in people residing in southern Ontario who used private water sources and to determine whether the use of water contaminated with antimicrobial resistant E. coli was associated with human carriage of same. Method: The study population consisted of people living in Ontario households that submitted water samples from private water sources for bacteriological testing between May 2005 and September 2006. Respondents completed a questionnaire and submitted a self-collected rectal swab. Results: Antimicrobial resistant E. coli were detected in the swabs of 41% of the 699 respondents, with 28% resistant to ampicillin, 25% to tetracycline, and 24% to sulfisoxazole, and 29% that were multi-drug resistant. Subjects from households using untreated water contaminated with antimicrobial resistant E. coli were 40% more likely to carry antimicrobial resistant E. coli in their gastrointestinal system than people from households using uncontaminated water, even after adjusting for the effect of other variables. Implications: The association between the consumption of water contaminated with antimicrobial resistant E. coli and human carriage of resistant E. coli highlights the ongoing risks associated with water contamination and antimicrobial resistance in Ontario. The high rates of resistant E. coli in healthy non-institutional persons provides further rationale for public health programs to reduce antibiotic use in medicine and agriculture. | PhD | agriculture, health, water, consum | 2, 3, 6, 12 |
| Conrad, Patricia | Deber, Raisa Berlin | Do Regional Models Matter? Resource Allocation to Home Care in the Canadian Provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia & New Brunswick | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2008-06 | Proponents of Canadian health reform in the 1990s argued for regional structures, which enables budget silos to be broken down and integrated budgets to be formed. Although regionalization has been justified on the basis of its potential to increase home care resources, political science draws upon the scope of conflict theory, which instead suggests marginalized actors, such as home care, may be at risk of being cannibalized in order to safeguard the interests of more powerful actors, such as hospitals. Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, constitute a natural policy experiment. Each has made different decisions about the regionalization model implemented to restructure health care delivery. The policy question underpinning this research is: What are the implications of the different regional models chosen on the allocation of resources to home care? Provincial governments are at liberty to fund home care within the limits of their fiscal capacity and there are no federal terms and conditions which must be complied with. This policy analysis used a case comparison research design with mixed methods to collect quantitative and qualitative data. Two financial outcomes were measured: 1) per capita provincial government home care expenditures and 2) the home care share of provincial government health expenditures. Hospital data was used as a comparator. Qualitative data collected from face-to-face, semi-structured interviews with regional elite key informants supplemented the expenditure data. The findings align with the scope of conflict theory. The trade-off between central control and local autonomy has implications for these findings: 1) home care in Prince Edward Island increased it share from 1.6% to 2.2% of provincial government health spending; 2) maintaining central control over home care in Nova Scotia resulted in an increase in its share from 1.4% to 5.4%, and 3) in New Brunswick, home care share grew from 4.1% to 7.6%. Inertia and entrenchment of spending patterns was strong. Health regions did not appear to undertake resource reallocation to any great extent in either Prince Edward Island or New Brunswick. Resource reallocation did occur in Nova Scotia where the hospital share of government spending went down and was reallocated to home care and nursing homes. But, Nova Scotia is the only province of the three in which home care was not regionalized. Regional interests in maintaining existing levels of in-patient hospital beds was clearly a source of tension between the overarching policy goals formulated for health reform by the provincial governments and the local health regions. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Constantinou, Peter P. | Jones, Glen A. | Government Relations in the Post-secondary Education Sector in Ontario | Theory and Policy Studies | 2010-06 | There has been little research on the government relations function within the post-secondary education sector in Ontario. This study explores this topic by reviewing the literature and collecting data from key informants in the college, university and government sector, and those who can speak about the sector associations. The study describes how the leaders of colleges and universities in Ontario perceive and conduct government relations, both as individual institutions and as a sector, and analyzes trends and potential implications. The study utilizes a pluralist model of interest group behaviour and applied the hollow-core theory to the policy community and the findings provide compelling evidence that this theory is a useful theoretical framework for understanding the nature of this policy community. This study also provides valuable insight into the hollow-core theory of pluralism. The leadership of individual colleges and universities shares a similar understanding of government relations and engage a similar approach. Individual colleges and universities work independently to lobby for capital funding and work together through their respective associations to lobby for system-wide funding and reforms. Although the presidents of individual institutions continue to lead the government relations function, the trend in the post-secondary education sector in Ontario is to invest additional resources and time in these activities. This study is the first of its kind in Ontario and makes an important contribution to our understanding of the way leaders in the post-secondary education sector in Ontario perceive and conduct government relations. Implications of the findings are considered and recommendations are made for further research. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Conway, Lauryn | Smith, Mary Lou||Widjaja, Elysa | Health-related Quality of Life in Children with Drug Resistant Epilepsy: A Focus on Risk Factors, Measurement, and Surgical Outcomes | Psychology | 2019-11 | Health-related quality of life (HRQOL) is recognized as the most important outcome of any chronic health condition. Despite growing empirical interest in HRQOL outcomes, important knowledge gaps undermine the burgeoning literature, compromising the translation of findings to clinical care for children with drug resistant epilepsy. In response, this dissertation presents a comprehensive investigation of HRQOL in children with drug resistant epilepsy through three integrated objectives: (1) fine-tune the existing arsenal of HRQOL measures in pediatric epilepsy; (2) identify risk factors for HRQOL in children with drug resistant epilepsy; and (3) examine the influence of low intellectual ability on post-surgical change in HRQOL. Studies 1 and 2 examined HRQOL assessment in children with drug resistant epilepsy across research and clinical settings. Study 1 extended the validity of the Quality of Life in Childhood Epilepsy Questionnaire (QOLCE-55) to children with drug resistant epilepsy, including confirmation of the higher order factor structure; the findings contribute to the robust psychometric profile of the QOLCE-55 as a reliable and valid measure. Study 2 demonstrated promising evidence regarding the psychometric properties of a global measure of quality of life (QOL), a potentially useful tool that can be used by clinicians to evaluate the impact of treatment outcomes in children with drug resistant epilepsy. Study 3 investigated correlates of HRQOL in children with drug resistant epilepsy, finding that lower child IQ, fewer resources available to aid families and caregiver unemployment were uniquely associated with diminished HRQOL. These results highlight the dominant effect of psychosocial factors on child HRQOL, relative to epilepsy-related variables. Lastly, Study 4 assessed change in HRQOL after epilepsy surgery, with a focus on the role of intellectual ability. Our results suggest that children with low intellectual ability can expect to achieve similar post-operative improvements in HRQOL compared to those with normal intelligence. In sum, the four studies included in this dissertation address and overcome many gaps in the literature on pediatric epilepsy and HRQOL. This body of work provides necessary and novel evidence with the potential to improve prognostication, inform presurgical counselling, and identify targets for therapeutic interventions in children with drug resistant epilepsy. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Cook, Charlene | Fuller-Thomson, Esme | Challenging the Behavioural Model: Exploring Individual, Interpersonal, and Structural Predictors of Adolescent Dual Protection Use | Social Work | 2009-11 | The optimal model to support adolescent sexual health is the concurrent use of hormonal birth control and condoms. This dual protection approach prioritizes protection against unplanned pregnancy as well as sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In order to explore individual, interpersonal and structural factors that influence adolescent protection use, multivariate Chi-squared Automatic Interaction Detector (CHAID) analysis was completed with a national sample of adolescents (n=2320) from the 2002 Canadian Youth, Sexual Health, and HIV/AIDS Study. CHAID is a decision tree method which assesses interactions between significant independent variables to optimize prediction of the dependent variable (i.e. safer-sex protection method). Among adolescent females, the following factors were associated with dual protection use: high condom intentions; having lived with both biological parents; having accessed a medical professional or media as the primary source of HIV/AIDS information; having utilized a medical professional as the primary source of sexual health information; having never had unwanted sex; having not consumed alcohol and/or drugs before sex; frequent sexual activity; having identified a medical professional as the primary source of STD advice; having been tested for STDs; and having supported the importance of talking about condoms with a partner. Among adolescent males, dual protection was associated with: high condom intentions; frequent sexual activity; the belief that both partners are responsible for condom use; having been born in Canada; having noted uncertain or high levels of religiosity; having been older than 14 at first sexual intercourse; having been able to speak with their father about sex; having accessed a medical professional or media as the primary source of HIV/AIDS information; and having reported a peer group that did not use tobacco. The results indicate that structural factors, in concert with individual and interpersonal factors, play a vital role in understanding adolescent safer-sex practices. Policy and practice implications include revisions to sexual health curricula, sexual health service accessibility for all adolescents, and targeted prevention programming for adolescents at highest risk. Further research into the sexual health of male adolescents and the influence of structural factors on sexual health among diverse samples should be prioritized. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Cook, Steven | Tanner, Julian | Taking It To The Streets: A Comparative Analysis Of Violent Victimization, The Victim-Offender Overlap, And The Victim-Fear Relationship Among School And Street-Involved Youth In Toronto | Sociology | 2017-03 | Research on violent victimization among youth has received a considerable amount of academic attention in recent years; however, this research has typically been conducted separately for conventional populations of school-based youth and at-risk populations of street-involved youth. Although it is generally assumed that the rates of violent victimization are higher among the street-involved youth, to date, research has yet to undertake a comprehensive and comparative analysis of these two populations. Without this research, the presumed differences between these two populations will remain untested, and an analysis of how the mechanisms operate similarly and differently between these two populations will remain largely unexplored. This dissertation project addresses this gap in the literature by undertaking a comparative analysis of violent victimization, the victim-offender overlap, and the victim-fear relationship among a comparable sample of school-based youth and street-involved youth. In general, the findings from this dissertation reveal that the street-involved youth are violently victimized at much greater rates than the school-based youth, and these differences cannot be explained away by the social-situational factors that are more abundant among the street-involved youth. While the factors predicting the victim-offender overlap appear to follow a similar pattern for both the school and street youth, the dangerous social context of life on the streets creates an environment where violence and victimization frequently co-occur. These high rates of violent victimization do not directly translate into a higher level of fearfulness of crime, however, as the street-involved youth report being less fearful on average than do the school-based youth. These results suggest that fearlessness may be a learned adaptation among the street-involved youth to survive life on the streets. | Ph.D. | well being | 3 |
| Cooke, Jason Arthur | Farish, Matthew ||Prudham, William S | The Fossil Fueled Metropolis: Los Angeles and the Emergence of Oil-based Energy in North America, 1865-1930 | Geography | 2014-06 | Beginning with coal in the nineteenth century, the mass production and intensive consumption of fossil fuel energy fundamentally changed patterns of urban and industrial development in North America. Focusing on the metropolitan development of Los Angeles, this dissertation examines how the emergence of oil-based capitalism in the first three decades of the twentieth century was sustained and made increasingly resilient through the production of urban and industrial space. In a region where coal was scarce, the development of oil-based energy was predicated on long-term investments into conversion technologies, storage systems and distribution networks that facilitated the efficient and economical flow of liquefied fossil fuel. In this dissertation, I argue that the historical and geographical significance of the Southern California petroleum industry is derived from how its distinctive market expansion in the first three decades of the twentieth century helped establish the dominance of oil-based energy as the primary fuel for transportation in capitalist society. In North America, the origins of oil-based capitalism can be traced to the turn of the twentieth century when California was the largest oil-producing economy in the United States and Los Angeles was the fastest growing metropolitan region. This dissertation traces how Los Angeles became the first city in North America where oil became a formative element of urban and industrial development: not only as fuel for transportation, but also in the infrastructures, landscapes and networks that sustain a critical dependence on oil-based energy. With a distinctive metropolitan geography, decentralized and automobile-dependent, Los Angeles became the first oil-based city in North America and thus provides an ideal case study for examining the regional dynamics of energy transition, establishment and dependence. Interwoven with the production of urban and industrial space, oil remains the primary fuel that sustains the capitalist mode of production. | Ph.D. | production, urban, industr, energy, infrastructure | 7, 9, 11, 12 |
| Coombs, Michelle | Mirchandani, Kiran | Women, Learning, and Charitable Leadership in Canada | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-06 | This thesis explores how female charitable-sector leaders draw on dominant discourses and how they counter them in their talk about leadership and learning. Drawing on rich narratives coming out of female leaders’ interviews, I demonstrate how gender and identities are constructed through dominant discourses drawing on feminist post-structuralism and intersectionality theory. This inquiry uses a transdisciplinary discursive approach combining Critical Discourse analysis (CDA), Feminist Post-structuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA), and Discursive Psychology (DP). Drawing on these approaches ensures that gender remains at the forefront, that a connection occurs between societal discourses and day-to-day talk, and that the research attends to how subjectivities are created through talk. The intention is fourfold. First, this research aims for a greater understanding of how present masculine constructions of leadership are manifest in charitable organizational leaders’ talk. Second, it explores how such masculine leadership ideals are negotiated and challenged. It identifies how these discourses occur and create points of tension or ideological dilemmas. Third, it investigates moments where dominant discourses are contested in talk. Finally, this research considers how learning is implicated in these processes. The findings demonstrate, first, that women are positioned through dominant discourses of leadership, gender, and difference, and that this places them as something “other” than a leader. Dominant discourses, though they circulate broadly, penetrate the non-profit sector contextually. Second, the findings establish that charitable-sector leaders negotiate and challenge dominant discourses. Third, the findings demonstrate that women contest these notions through discursive mechanisms, including naming dominant discourses, using non-damaging discourses, and rediscursivization. The contestation of dominant discourses also occurs contextually and, sometimes, in contradictory ways and works to challenge the status quo. Fourth, learning is embedded in discourse resulting in women learning in and through dominant discourses as they lead. This research contributes to the understanding of how dominant masculine rationality is learned and perpetuated in leaders’ talk, as well as how it is challenged. This, in turn, provides new methodological tools and discursive approaches to research and the practice of social change work not only in the non-profit sector but also in leadership learning and social policy development. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Coons, Ginger | Ratto, Matt | Something for Everyone: Using Digital Methods to Make Physical Goods | Information Studies | 2016-06 | In this dissertation I draw a link between the purported changes being wrought on society by the adoption of digital production technologies and previous waves of technological change in the production of goods. I use two case studies to provide detailed accounts of methods of production and development which use digital fabrication technologies to negotiate relationships between individuals and standards. The first case study, a collaborative Free/Libre Open Source Software development project, represents a kind of digital production which creates digital goods. The second case study looks at the digitally-aided fabrication of a physical good: 3D-printed sockets for prosthetic legs. I further argue that we need new frameworks for studying the intersection of the digital and the physical, or the inextricability of the two concepts. Scrutinizing the way mass methods of production almost always account for the needs of some kind of normative user, resulting in mis-fit for non-standard users, I then question arguments about mass-customization as a solution to mis-fit. One of the contentions I advance in this dissertation is that positioning mass production as necessarily harmful and marginalizing, while seeing mass customization as a solution, creates a counter-productive dichotomy. In service of that argument, I draw on historical work about a pre-digital custom industry: dressmakers in the pre- and early-Industrial period. Finally, I trouble the role of the user in production, and contend that, increasingly, the distinction is not between who is a user or a producer, but in which circumstances, and when, one is acting in the role of the user or producer. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Corna, Laurie Marie | McDonough, Peggy | Gender, the State and a Lifetime of Experience: Understanding Health Inequality among Older Adults in Britain | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-11 | There is a well-established relationship between socioeconomic position (SEP) and health among older adults, but a short-coming of existing research is its failure to link the SEP-health relationship in later life to the gendered histories of work and family life, or the policy contexts in which these histories unfold. Drawing on the life course perspective and welfare state theory, this research investigates: the dominant patterns of labour market and family experiences over the life course for current cohorts of older adults in Britain; whether health dynamics among older adults vary by gender and life course experiences; and whether SEP and social roles at age 65 mediate these relationships. The data come from a sample of individuals born between 1927 and 1940 participating in the British Household Panel Survey (N=1552). I first examined life course experiences in the labour market and the family from young adulthood to retirement age using a two-stage latent class analysis. Theoretical considerations, along with indices of model fit, suggested that four latent life paths broadly characterized the experiences of the older adults in this sample. Consistent with the social policy context in Britain in the post-World War II years, I found evidence of distinct gender patterns in role configurations at various points across the life course and in the life pathways that link these experiences over time. In the second part of the analysis, I assessed health dynamics using latent growth curve models. Only mental health dynamics were patterned by life course histories, and SEP at age 65 mediated part of this relationship. The life course histories did not have an independent influence on trajectories of chronic health problems or self-assessed health. These findings are considered in the context of our current understanding of health dynamics among older adults, including gender differences and their relationship to SEP. | PhD | socioeconomic, health, gender | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Cornelson, Kirsten | Benjamin, Dwayne | Social interactions and racial inequality | Economics | 2017-11 | A large body of evidence suggests that social interactions causally influence individuals' economic decisions (e.g. Duo and Saez, 2003; Bayer, Ross and Topa, 2008; Dahl, Loken and Mogstad, 2014). This finding implies that differences in the social environment faced by members of different races â in particular, differences in social norms and in the characteristics of social networks - may help perpetuate racial inequality. In this dissertation, I present two papers that attempt to understand how these differences in the social environment are created and reinforced. In the first chapter, I assess the influence of media role models on black educational attainment by examining the impact of a popular 1980's sitcom: The Cosby Show. The show portrayed an upper-middle class black family, and frequently emphasized the importance of a college education. If role model effects exist, young black people should have responded more strongly to this message. I test this hypothesis by relating educational attainment to city-level Cosby ratings, using Thursday NBA games and very warm Thursdays as instruments. I find that Cosby increased years of education by 0.2-5.0% among black youth, but had no effect on white youth. In the second chapter, I examine a determinant of social segregation by race in the United States: physical distance. Because U.S. cities are highly segregated, the time cost of interacting with a member of another race is typically higher than the cost of interacting with a same-race friend. My goal in this chapter is to quantitatively assess the importance of this channel in explaining why people typically interact with members of their own race. I argue that the causal effect of distance on social interactions is captured by consumers' distaste for travel. Based on external estimates of this parameter, I simulate the frequency of cross-racial interactions that would occur if only distance mattered in determining individuals' choice of interaction partners. I compare the simulation results to a new measure of the actual frequency of inter-racial interactions based on Flickr photographs. I estimate that 25-30% of social segregation for whites in the U.S. is attributable to physical distance alone. | Ph.D. | equality, inequality, gender, cities | 5, 10, 11 |
| Correia, Kevin | Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan | Reconstructing the Evolution of Xylose Fermentation in Scheffersomyces Stipitis | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-06 | Lignocellulose is a renewable feedstock that can be fermented to biofuels and biochemicals, but its use is limited by several techno-economic challenges, including xylose fermentation. Scheffersomyces stipitis has been identified as an efficient xylose fermenter, but does not ferment well in industrial conditions. The scientific community has been engineering Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the preferred yeast for industrial biotechnology, to ferment xylose to ethanol with the xylose reductase (XR)-xylitol dehydrogenase (XDH) genes from Sch. stipitis for 30 years; however, recombinant Sac. cerevisiae's titres, rates, and yields for ethanol from xylose lags Sch. stipitis. This performance gap may be due to aspects of Sac. cerevisiae's metabolism that hinders xylose fermentation, aspects of Sch. stipitis' metabolism that enables xylose fermentation, or a combination of both. The focus of this thesis is to improve our understanding of budding yeast metabolism beyond Sac. cerevisiae, and ultimately reverse engineer how Sch. stipitis' metabolism has evolved to ferment xylose to ethanol efficiently with improved genome annotations and metabolic modelling. To obtain higher-quality genome annotations, ortholog groups in 33 yeasts and fungi spanning 600 million years in Dikarya were predicted using OrthoMCL. Over 500 enzyme families were curated with phylogenetic reconstruction to resolve inconsistencies. These ortholog assignments are more accurate than existing ortholog databases, and span diverse yeasts. Next, the gains and losses of metabolic genes were reviewed to identify important and reoccurring events in the evolution of metabolism in budding yeasts. Duplications were found to play an important role in the evolution of metabolism, including changes in enzyme cofactor preference and localization. The curated pan-genome and functional annotations were used to reconstruct genome-scale metabolic networks of the 33 species; the reconstructions have more genomic and metabolic coverage than those made with previous methods. Finally, the Sch. stipitis metabolic network was used to simulate xylose fermentation. NADH kinase and NADP phosphatase (NADPase), an orphan enzyme in eukaryotes, were found to be critical to xylose fermentation in these metabolic flux simulations. Pho3.2p was the sole NADPase candidate showing expression during xylose fermentation; its activity was confirmed in vitro. Xylose fermentation evolved in the Scheffersomyces-Spathaspora clade following genes duplications for XR and an acid phosphatase. This thesis provides a foundation for unravelling how metabolism has evolved in the yeast pan-genome. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Cortinois, Andrea Angelo Maria | Jadad, Alejandro R. | Supporting Recent Immigrants in their Effort to Access Information on Health and Health-related Services: The Case Of 211 Toronto | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2008-11 | The objectives of this thesis are to: 1) obtain a snapshot of callers of 211 Toronto, a free information and referral service, understanding how representative they are of Toronto’s general population; 2) understand how 211 Toronto callers seeking health-related information use the information they obtain when contacting the service and their overall level of satisfaction, and; 3) better understand the experience and information needs of recent immigrants struggling to navigate an unfamiliar health care system. The study had three phases: 1) a cross-sectional phone interview with 211 Toronto callers; 2) a follow-up phone interview of 211 Toronto callers who had asked health-related questions; and, 3) qualitative interviews with callers who were Spanish speakers from Latin American countries. Participants were randomly selected adult callers living within the boundaries of Toronto’s Census Metropolitan Area (CMA). Respondents were compared with the general adult population living in Toronto’s CMA, using 2001 Census data, to identify under- or overrepresented population groups. A sub-set of callers who had asked health-related questions was followed up to understand how they had used the information received and their level of satisfaction with the service. Qualitative interviews were conducted with callers who were recent immigrants and native Spanish speakers from Latin America to explore their post-migration experiences. Recent immigrants experience significant information challenges. Health-related questions reflect the multifaceted nature of the concept of health in the experience of users. Negative experiences with the health care system are common. Recent immigrants have access to disorganized, confusing, often poor quality information. 211 Toronto represents an efficient and effective way to gain access to information but does not achieve its full potential. Newcomers should receive timely, appropriate, and reliable information on existing health and health-related services as soon as possible after they relocate to Canada. Appropriate information should also be made available to potential immigrants in their countries of origin. Information and communication technologies should be used to support newcomers, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of services such as 211 Toronto. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Coskun, Devrim | Kronzucker, Herbert J | On the Roles of Membrane Channels in Plant Mineral Nutrition and Toxicity | Cell and Systems Biology | 2016-11 | The study of plant mineral nutrition and toxicity has made major strides recently, particularly at the level of molecular genetics. Arguably, however, this has been at the expense of “classical” physiology, which is of concern because critical physiological examinations of cellular and molecular models in planta are needed if extrapolations of these models to “real-world” (field-level) conditions are to be made. This is particularly urgent in the face of increasing environmental degradation and global food demands. To this end, the preset work explores the physiological role of membrane channels in higher-plant nutrition and toxicology, building upon foundational work in nutritional physiology and applying the important new discoveries in the areas of molecular-genetics and electrophysiology. Combining radioisotopic (42K+ and 13NH3/13NH4+) flux kinetics and compartmentation analyses with techniques in electrophysiology, mutant analysis, gas exchange, fluorescence imaging and tracing, and tissue mineral-content analysis, this work investigates the involvement of inward- and outward-rectifying Shaker-like K+ channels (KIR and KOR, respectively), nonselective cation channels (NSCCs), and aquaporins (AQPs), in K+ and NH3/NH4+ transport under conditions of both stress (low K+, salinity, and ammonium toxicity) and non-stress, in the intact plant. Efflux analyses showed that KOR channels mediate K+ efflux in barley roots only at low external [K+] ( | Ph.D. | food, environment | 1, 13 |
| Costa, Iara Regina Da | Moodley, Roy | Being Brazilian, Becoming Canadian: Acculturation Strategies, Quality of Life, Negative Affect, and Well-being in a Sample of Brazilian Immigrants Living in the Greater Toronto Area | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-06 | Acculturation is a predominant feature of today’s society and one that has unique implications for immigrants’ mental health. Given that two thirds of Canada’s population growth is due to immigration, understanding the effects of acculturation on newcomers should be a central focus of academic research. The present study utilized an exploratory quantitative method to investigate the associations between acculturation strategies, quality of life, and negative affect in a sample of 180 Brazilian immigrants living in the Greater Toronto Area. The mediating and moderating roles of quality of life (QOL) were explored, as well as which patterns of acculturation strategies were associated with enhanced well-being, represented by low negative affect (NA), high QOL, and high Satisfaction with Life in Canada (SLCI). Clusters analysis identified patterns of acculturation strategy use, resulting in four acculturation profiles: integrated, assimilated, separated, and marginalized. Results indicated that QOL did not act as either a mediator or moderator of the relationship between acculturation profiles and NA. With regard to well-being indicators, acculturation profiles successfully predicted NA and SLCI, with the Assimilated being the most favourable profile evidenced by its lowest NA and highest SLCI levels. While acculturation profiles did not predict QOL, the trend of the Assimilated profile being predictive of favourable well-being was also present as its members reported slightly higher QOL than their counterparts from other profiles. Well-being risk and protective factors are presented. The results highlight the importance of including control variables in future research in order to uncover the unique impact of acculturation on the mental health of immigrants. Implications for practice and future research are also discussed. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Cote, Isabelle Lucie | Bertrand, Jacques | Unsettling Migrants? The Impact of Internal Migration on Sons of the Soil Conflict in China and Indonesia | Political Science | 2014 | Recent instances of large-scale inter-provincial migration have resulted in open clashes between indigenous populations and migrants--i.e., `Sons of the Soil' (SoS) conflict--in several minority regions around the world. Yet, equally large population movements have been peacefully integrated elsewhere. Under what conditions does internal migration lead to SoS conflicts? Based on quantitative population data and over 100 interviews conducted in nine months of fieldwork in China and in Indonesia, I argue that large and consistent socio-economic and political Horizontal Inequalities (HIs) between migrants and locals is a key condition explaining why some minority regions erupt in SoS conflicts while others remain relatively quiet. Fearing demographically-induced socio-economic and political marginalization, local communities resort to violence against migrants when the latter appear to benefit disproportionately from their relocation at the expense of the local population -i.e. when they are "dominant migrants" with close connection to the State and its dominant ethnicity. However, any single dimension of HIs is unlikely to result in SoS conflict independently. It is the coalescing of various mutually-reinforcing HIs that render the situation most explosive. Yet, local people do not always act on these grievances and mobilize against migration. A favourable institutional context is necessary for migration-related tensions to transform into SoS conflicts. Alongside HIs, I contend that political liberalization influences the likelihood, frequency and intensity of SoS conflicts, as it affects internal migratory patterns and local people's abilities to organize or mobilize against migrants. As political liberalization also contributes to socio-economic and political inequalities between migrants and locals, it simultaneously tilts the balance of power between groups. By analyzing the different migration trajectories and how they relate to SoS conflict, this dissertation highlights the conditions transforming the otherwise peaceful internal migration into a violent process. The empirically-informed model herein developed puts migrant/local relations squarely at the center of our analysis, providing a more nuanced and disaggregated analysis of the different dimensions of their relations. While the empirical focus is on migration-conflict dynamics in China and Indonesia, the model developed provides important insights for countries with large-scale internal migration to minority regions. | Ph.D. | peace | 16 |
| Cottrell, Barbara | Simpson, Andre | Towards an Understanding of Dissolved Organic Matter Molecular Composition and Reactivity in the Environment | Chemistry | 2013-11 | Dissolved organic matter (DOM), one of the most complex naturally occurring mixtures, plays a central role in the biogeochemistry and the photochemistry of natural waters. A complete understanding of the environmental role of DOM will come only from the elucidation of the relationship between its structure and function. This thesis presents new work on the separation, characterization, and reactivity of DOM in rainwater, freshwater, and seawater. A new separation technique based on counterbalance capillary electrophoresis was developed for the separation of Suwannee River NOM. A comparative study of the organic content of rainwater was accomplished using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) with spectral database matching ,Fourier transform ion cyclotron mass spectrometry (FT-ICR-MS), and comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography time-of-flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC-TOFMS). Three complementary, non-overlapping datasets identified of over 400 compounds. Analysis of the FT-ICR-MS data using van Krevelen diagrams and the carbon oxidation state showed variation in the elemental composition and molecular size. Over 50% of the compounds identified in this study were known components of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) and volatile organic carbon (VOCs). Dissolved organic matter (DOM) plays a central role in the photochemistry of natural waters through the production of reactive oxygen species and the triplet excited state of DOM (3DOM*). These reactive species are central to the reactivity, transport, and fate of both natural and anthropogenic chemicals in the environment. Laser flash photolysis (LFP) was used to demonstrate that particulate organic matter (POM) generates a triplet excited state species (3POM*). LFP of seawater from the Pacific Ocean and the Bermuda Atlantic Time Series Station detected similar excited state species from surface to 4535m. Metal speciation has been implicated in the photochemistry of natural waters. Copper immobilized metal affinity chromatography (IMAC) of seawater and freshwater isolated a low and a high affinity fraction that generated excited state transients. Excitation-emission matrix spectroscopy showed that while the seawater fractions were autochthonous, freshwater fractions enriched in chromophoric DOM (CDOM), were allochthonous. The discovery of these different classes of compounds in freshwater and seawater has important implications both for the mineralization of DOM and the removal of xenobiotics in the aquatic environment. | PhD | water, production, environment | 6, 12, 13 |
| Coulthard, Catherine Elizabeth | Cummins, James | Finding the Voice of the Early Author: The Impact of a Self-Authoring Program Among First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Preschool Children and Families | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2017-11 | This study examined the impacts of implementing a self-authored, dual language identity text program into an existing Aboriginal Head Start preschool program. First Nation, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) preschool children and families, and educators were co-researchers in the blended Indigenous influenced, participatory action research study which spanned a one-year school timeline and research phase. This study includes an autoethnographic account of a non-FNMI, or a settler author’s personal journey of consciousness and understandings related to surfacing issues of a non-FNMI person doing research with FNMI peoples. The study was underpinned by theoretical frameworks centred on valuing the interconnectedness of the familial and contextual environment of children. Moreover, this research embraces the notion that knowledge is socially constructed to create meaningful change. With this in mind, the study was framed to acknowledge the children’s participatory contributions to the study, guided by Indigenous knowledge and Collaborative Frameworks (2012), Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory (1968), the Academic Expertise, and Societal Power Relations Empowerment (Cummins, 2001), and Cummins’ and Early’s Literacy Engagement framework (Cummins Early, 2011). Through cyclical reflective practices, the co-researchers in this study found suggestive evidence of the positive impacts of the project for the children, their families, the staff, and the original author with regards to sense-of-self and cultural identity. This study can inform practice in early childhood education, specifically with respect to the provision of culturally relevant educational resources and programming for FNMI children. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Couperthwaite, Michelle Zoe Lisa | Goldstein, Abby | Relationship Satisfaction among Individuals of Diverse Sexual Orientations and Gender Identities: The Role of Love and Attachment Styles | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-06 | Empirical research on relationship satisfaction emerged and is largely situated within a cisgender heteronormative context. This study examines the application of various established relationship measures to diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. The objectives of this study are (a) to explore the factor structures and internal reliabilities of various well-validated adult intimate relationship measures of love styles (Love Attitudes Scale, Short Form; LAS-SF), relationship-specific attachment (Experiences in Close Relationships Scale - Relationship Structures; ECR-RS), sexuality (Sexual Relationship Scale; SRS), and relationship satisfaction (Relationship Assessment Scale; RAS) to determine their viability with a diverse and inclusive sample; and (b) to examine the relative abilities of love and attachment styles to predict relationship satisfaction among sexual orientation minority and trans-spectrum adults. Online survey data ( | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Cour, Lykke de la | Iacovetta, Franca | From “Moron” to Maladjusted”: Eugenics, Psychiatry and the Regulation of Women, Ontario, 1930s-1960s | History | 2013-11 | In the early 1900s, the eugenics movement spurred a number of major developments in Ontario, among them the committal of large numbers of women to the Ontario Hospital, Cobourg under diagnoses of mental defect. A tool of reproductive control, institutionalization was meant to inhibit “feebleminded” women’s procreative capacities. Despite the absence of enabling legislation, evidence suggests eugenic sterilizations also occurred in the province. Drawing on the detailed patient case files of women confined to the Cobourg facility from the mid1930s to mid1960s, this dissertation re-examines the history of eugenics in Ontario to demonstrate not only its profound impact in the decades prior to the Second World War, but also its enduring effects in the postwar era. To illustrate eugenics’ lingering impact, the study explores the interconnections between diagnoses linked to intellectual disabilities and emergent postwar psychiatric classifications of personality disorders to show how eugenics and psychiatric regulation were re-framed after the 1940s and applied to broader groups of women. Examining disability as both a category of analysis and a discursive construct, the dissertation argues that eugenicists re-scripted the notion of mentally ‘unfit’ into a concept of ‘maladjustment’ in the postwar years, and then applied it more broadly to justify and advance inequitable social relations across a range of social identities. Eugenics operated both materially and discursively as a mechanism through which particular configurations of gender, race, class, and sexuality, along with disability, were established and regulated. It was ultimately in and through early-twentieth-century eugenics that the ‘bio’ and ‘social’ collided, facilitating new notions of citizenship, modes of state governance, and the emergence of the modern bio-political state. | PhD | equitable, women, cities | 5, 11 |
| Cousté, Natalia Maria | Rupp, Stephen | Urban Cartographies: The Spanish Baroque City and the Contemporary Latin American City | Spanish | 2011-03 | “Urban Cartographies: The Spanish Baroque City and the Contemporary Latin American City” examines baroque and postmodern narratives through the representation of urban life. This study argues that the baroque reflects the crisis posed by the encounter with the other in the new continent of America, while the postmodern is related to a crisis of knowledge. Selected narrative texts illustrate the main literary tendencies of these two periods and demonstrate similarities in the responses of literary characters to their urban settings. The sense of crisis is both a central literary theme and a response to the historical conditions of urban life during the two periods. Even though the concept of crisis appears to involve a unique experience, the parallels between the two periods suggest that the postmodern crisis is not unique. The social and cultural responses of literary characters to the sense of crisis are similar in both periods. Postmodern social conditions of urban existence are seen as repetitions of the patterns of the baroque. This observation emphasizes literary traditions; parallels and differences between baroque and postmodern texts attest to the idea that all literature revisits previous literary forms through the dynamics of intertextuality. Another focus is the value of the concept of mapping, as a literary theme and a personal practice. As a means for discovering of urban spaces and of defining the human subject mapping suggests that in times of crisis subjects produce parallel systems to control their circumstances. Lastly, this work discusses an experimental literature generated in response to urban disorder, in which disruption and chaos lead to new narrative forms. Ultimately, picaresque and postmodern narratives both respond to complex urban spaces through forms that innovate and integrate new cultural and literary elements. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Couture-Carron, Amanda | Tanner, Julian||Wortley, Scot | Adolescent Offending: How Growing Up Disadvantaged Matters Across Immigrant Generations | Sociology | 2020-06 | Poverty and disadvantage are typically associated with a variety of social problems, including adolescent offending. While poverty and disadvantage tend to increase adolescent offending, this does not appear true among foreign-born populations. Indeed, the foreign-born are less involved in offending than the native-born suggesting disadvantage is not a predictor of their offending. Although disadvantage may not be a direct cause of the foreign-born’s adolescent offending, this dissertation argues it may be consequential in previously unconsidered ways. This dissertation uses longitudinal data to examine two roles disadvantage may play in adolescent offending aside from a direct predictor – (1) an indirect cause mediated by more immediate causes of offending and (2) a moderator of the more immediate causes of offending. The overarching purpose of this dissertation, therefore, is to investigate how disadvantage affects adolescent offending across immigrant generations. Structural equation modeling assesses these two potential roles. Findings from the first two papers suggest different forms of disadvantage have distinct indirect consequences and those consequences vary by immigrant status (i.e., foreign born or native born) and by type of offending (i.e., violence or substance use). Results from the third paper indicate that residing in a disadvantaged neighbourhood changes the effects of some predictors on offending in distinct ways depending on immigrant generation (i.e., first, second, and third-plus generation). Taken together, this research demonstrates that disadvantage is, indeed, implicated in foreign-born adolescents’ offending as an indirect cause and as a moderator of the more immediate causes of offending. This research establishes that the ways in which disadvantage operates in these two roles varies by immigrant status, immigrant generation, and type of offending behaviour. The dissertation, therefore, offers insight into how disadvantage impacts adolescent offending across immigrant generations. As a whole, this dissertation demonstrates both the relevance of disadvantage for understanding offending and the heterogeneity of its consequences. This research challenges assumptions that all forms of disadvantage simply increase adolescent offending in a uniform and singular way. | Ph.D. | poverty | 1 |
| Couture, Victor | Duranton, Gilles ||Turner, Matthew A. | Three Essays in Urban Economics | Economics | 2013-11 | This thesis studies the benefits and costs of urban living. Chapter 1 is a theoretical and empirical analysis of the benefits of urban density for consumers, while Chapter 2 proposes a model of how cities enhance the incentives for knowledge diffusion. Chapter 3 investigates the costs of congestion and the determinants of car travel speed across US cities. In Chapter 1, I study the consumption value of urban density by combining Google’s local business data with microgeographic travel data. I show that increased density enables consumers to both realize welfare gains from variety and save time through shorter trips. I estimate the gains from density in the restaurant industry, identifying willingness to pay for access to a slightly preferred location from the extra travel costs incurred to reach it. The results reveal large but very localized gains from density. Increasing the density of destinations generates little reduction in trip times, so most of these gains from density are gains from variety, not savings on travel time. In Chapter 2, I propose a new micro-foundation for knowledge spillovers. I model a city in which uncompensated knowledge transfers to entrepreneurs are bids by experts in auctions for jobs. The model derives from the key ideas about how knowledge differs from other inputs of production, namely that knowledge must be possessed for its value to be assessed, and that knowledge is freely reproducible. Agglomeration economies result from growth in the number of meetings between experts and entrepreneurs, and from heightened competition for jobs among experts. In Chapter 3, written jointly with Gilles Duranton and Matt Turner, we investigate the determinants of driving speed in large US cities. We first estimate city level supply functions for travel in an econometric framework where both the supply and demand for travel are explicit. These estimations allow us to calculate a city level index of driving speed. Our investigation of the determinants of speed provides the foundations for a welfare analysis. This analysis suggests large gains in speed if slow cities can emulate fast cities, and sizable deadweight losses from congestion. | PhD | production, consum, urban, cities, industr | 9, 11, 12 |
| Covelli, Andrea Marie | Baxter, Nancy N||Wright, Frances C | Choosing Mastectomy: A Qualitative Exploration of the Increasing Mastectomy Rates in Women with Early-stage Breast Cancer | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-06 | Context: Rates of Unilateral (UM) and contralateral prophylactic mastectomy (CPM) for early-stage breast cancer (ESBC) have been increasing. Numerous factors for this rise have been suggested including the surgeon's preference, the patient's choice and the external environment. Objectives: A grounded theory study explored women's decision-making processes in their treatment for ESBC, and elucidated the role of the surgeon and the practice environment in the increasing rates. The Health-Belief Model was applied, discerning those factors influential in surgical decision-making shaping women's choice for UM+/-CPM. Design: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with patients to understand their experiences and decision-making which resulted in undergoing UM+/-CPM. Similarly, semi-structured interviews were conducted with general surgeons exploring their treatment approaches to ESBC. Theoretical sampling identified suitable candidates. Data were collected until saturation was reached. Constant comparative analysis identified key concepts. Results: 29 patients and 45 surgeons completed interviews. The `overwhelming threat' of breast cancer `was the dominant theme. Despite surgeons describing the high survivability of ESBC, patients misperceived the threat of death from their cancer, and strived to eliminate this threat by choosing UM+/-CPM. Surgeons described breast-conserving therapy (BCT) and UM as equivalent treatment options for ESBC, and frequently recommended BCT. Despite this, women requested UM+/-CPM. CPM was discouraged, as surgeons described no survival advantage and increased operative risks. Experiential knowledge was the most influential factor in patients' decision-making. Previous negative experiences of family and friends with breast cancer, translated into an overestimated risk of recurrence, contralateral cancer, metastasis and subsequent death. Patients' perceived the risks and severity of ESBC to be great, and believed that by choosing UM+/-CPM they would eliminate the threat of breast cancer. Most women did not perceive any risks of undergoing UM+/-CPM, yet many experienced concerns with disturbed skin sensation, cosmesis and body image. Conclusion: Previous cancer experiences and experiential knowledge are extremely influential in women undergoing UM+/-CPM. Women overestimated their risk and misperceived the benefit of UM+/-CPM as they thought it would substantially improve their cancer outcomes. As undergoing UM+/-CPM is not without risks improved discussion of patient sources of information and fears around survival may benefit surgical consultations, facilitating informed decision-making. | Ph.D. | women, health | 3, 5 |
| Crago, Anna-Louise | Krupa, Christopher||Wardlow, Holly | Chercher La Vie: Births, Deaths, Labour and Militarized Border-crossing among Sex Workers in an Area of Armed Conflict in Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo | Anthropology | 2020-06 | This dissertation is a study of sociality and power in armed conflict. It is based on ethnographic research with two groups of women who sell sex in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, self-identified “bambaragas”. These women travel back and forth across militarized lines in areas of armed conflict to perform sex work and other complementary labour and to trade with a variety of different state and non-state armed groups. This study argues that any attempt to understand sociality and power in war must grapple centrally with non-violent death. The combined effects of armed conflict and privatization contributed to mass infant, child and maternal death. Bambaragas and their children bore a distinct and disproportionate death burden. Hospitals sat at the intersection of governance of health as a private commodity rather than a public entitlement, by both the state and non-state armed groups. This resulted in policies within hospitals of refusing emergency care, abusing and punishing women suspected of abortion, imposing debt and extracting payment, and forcibly detaining women who couldn’t pay for their or their children’s care. This study also contends that gender is central to the workings of power in armed conflict. Armed groups’ governance of bambaragas fluctuates around a central tension: while their labour was relied upon by armed groups, to the point of becoming at times a stake in the conflict, their gendered independence and border-crossing meant they were treated with suspicion and, at times, targeted and killed not as civilans nor as military actors but as what I call “sovereign women/gendered traitors”. Bambaragas’ mutual recognition and collective practices of assistance, secrecy, care and housing allowed women to navigate dangerous conflict environments and predatory privatized health governance and was, at times, what allowed women to keep their children alive and in their care. | Ph.D. | health, gender, women | 3, 5 |
| Crath, Rory | Williams, Charmaine | Aesthetics of Social Work: Governing Risky Spaces and Youth Subjects through Techniques of Visuality | Social Work | 2012-11 | In the wake of a rescaling of national state welfare responsibilities, urban centres, like the city of Toronto, have become new governance sightlines for managing the deleterious effects of a globalised restructuring of capitalist economies. Toronto is now trafficking its multicultural and “creative city” flare in regional and global markets to secure capital investment necessary to float its newly acquired fiscal responsibilities, including welfare and social services provisioning. And a host of local private-public partnerships have appeared as “shadow state” actors to assist in the suturing of disenfranchised communities to the operative logics of neo-liberal governance and globalised city aspirations. Social welfare and urban studies literature has not been attentive to the increasing reliance on visuality and the “aesthetic” more broadly in securing these desired social and economic outcomes. My ethnographically based dissertation picks up this analytical slack by inciting a two-fold intervention: First, I hone in on the efficacious properties of visual images produced within 3 different social policy spaces and their presumed roles in constituting the domains of social interaction and production. This analysis illustrates that different policy crafting experts understand the “aesthetic” as a remunerative technology of governance - for regulating the problematics of socio-economic and racialised difference, and for mediating rifts in the social fabric as fallout from welfare retrenchment. Second, I examine the ways in which certain normativised aesthetic sensibilities connected to neoliberal urbanism serve as both a calculative resource for re-defining certain spaces and subjects as problematic and thus controllable, and an interpellative mechanism for assembling moralized subjects around the dictates of responsibility and (self) empowerment. The dissertation argues that although these aesthetic governance strategies are resulting in a depoliticisation of communities, and a moralised segregation of compliant and non-compliant subjects played out along racialised /economic lines, there exists a level of disruption transpiring in the spaces of policy implementation. In situ attention to these disruptions, layered with a reflexive analytical restaging of these events and a critical analysis of deployed governance strategies are proposed as a grounding for social work, research and social policy praxis. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Creatore, Maria Isabella | Glazier, Richard H. | The Epidemiology of Diabetes among Immigrants to Ontario | Medical Science | 2013-06 | Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) prevalence is increasing globally with roughly 2.4 million people currently living with this condition in Canada. T2DM occurs more commonly in non-European ethnoracial groups, however the distribution of risk by age, sex, ethnicity and immigration status in Canada are not completely understood. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the epidemiology of diabetes in an immigrant, multi-ethnic population using linked immigration and health data for the province of Ontario. The ultimate goal of this work is to generate information that can be used to design appropriate and effective targeted programs for diabetes prevention, management and control in order to reduce inequities in health. The principal findings of this work indicate that: 1) South Asians had a three-fold higher risk for developing diabetes as compared with people of European ethnicity and this disparity in risk was evident at a very young age; 2) The young age at diabetes onset experienced by many of our high-risk ethnic groups, including South Asians and people of African and Middle Eastern descent, suggest that in order to capture an equivalent risk of disease, screening may be recommended up to 15 years earlier in these groups – which is not reflected in current screening guidelines; 3) Contrary to patterns seen in Western European populations, women belonging to many high–risk ethnicities had equivalent or, in some cases, higher risk than men; 4) Risk varied substantially across country and region of birth making broad definitions of race or ethnicity (eg. ‘Asian’ or ‘Black’) inappropriate. These findings emphasize the heterogeneity of risk experienced by different ethnoracial populations in Canada and suggest that targeted primary prevention programs aimed at young adults and adolescents belonging to high-risk ethnic groups may be warranted. In addition, screening guidelines may need to be updated to reflect the younger age at onset in these populations. Further research is necessary to identify culturally appropriate and effective programs to reduce diabetes risk and associated health problems in these populations. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Creese, John Laurence | Smith, David G. | Deyughnyonkwarakda - "At the Wood's Edge": The Development of the Iroquoian Village in Southern Ontario, A.D. 900-1500 | Anthropology | 2011-06 | This dissertation explores the origins and development of Northern Iroquoian village life in present-day southern Ontario, from the first appearance of durable domestic architecture in the 10th century A.D., to the formation of large villages and towns in the 15th century A.D. Twenty-five extensively excavated village sites are analyzed in terms of the configuration of exterior and interior space, with a view to placing the social construction of community at the centre of the problem of early village development. Metric and space-syntax measures of the configuration of outdoor space reveal coordinated developments in the scale of houses and villages, their built-densities, and the structure of exterior accessibility networks, that involved the emergence of a “local-to-global” pattern of order with village growth. Such a pattern, I argue, was experientially consonant with a sequential hierarchy of daily social encounters and interactions that was related to the development of factional groups. Within the longhouse, a similarly “nested” pattern of spatial order and associated social identities emerged early in the history of village development, but was elaborated and ritualized during the later 13th century as the longhouse became the primary body through which political alliances involving village coalescence were negotiated. I suggest that the progressive extensification of collective social groups associated with longhouse expansions and village coalescences involved the development of “conjoint” personhood and power in a context of predominantly mutualistic village economies and enduring egalitarian ideals. The ritualization of domestic space during this process reveals that the continual production and extension of social group identities – such as the matrilineage – was contingent upon “social work” accomplished through an ongoing generative engagement with the built environment. | PhD | production, environment | 12, 13 |
| Csiszar, Susan | Diamond, Miriam L. | Estimating Urban Scale Semi-volatile Organic Compound Emissions and Fate Using a Coupled Multimedia and Atmospheric Transport Model | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2012-11 | Cities are sources of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), to surrounding regions and beyond. A spatially resolved, (5×5 km2), dynamic contaminant fate model named Spatially Oriented or SO-MUM was developed by coupling the fugacity based Multimedia Urban Model (MUM) (Diamond et al., 2001; Diamond et al., 2010c) and the Boundary Layer Forecast Model and Air Pollution Prediction System (BLFMAPS) which was developed at Environment Canada (Daggupaty et al., 2006). MUM was updated to contain a revised surface film sub-model which takes into account the dynamic nature of surface films. SO-MUM was illustrated by application to the City of Toronto, Canada. Spatially resolved air emissions of Σ88PCB were estimated to be ~230 (40-480) kg y-1, 280 (50-580) g y-1 km-2, and 90 (16-190) mg y-1 capita-1 and Σ26PBDE were estimated to be 28 (6-63) kg y-1, 34 (7-77) g y-1 km-2 and 11 (2-25) mg y-1 capita-1. These emissions were back-calculated from measured air concentrations and spatial chemical mass inventories yielding emission rates per mass inventory of 0.4 (0.05-1.6) and 0.1 (0.01-0.7) g kg-1inventory y-1, for Σ88PCBs and Σ26PBDEs, respectively. Approximately 30% and 16% of PCB and PBDE emissions emanate from the city’s downtown. Air advection accounted for ~95% (PCB) and ~70% (PBDE) of total air emission losses with the remaining balance depositing to the city. The metric “Urban Travel Distance” or UTD was introduced for quantifying the extent of an urban plume resulting from spatially heterogeneous emissions. For PCBs and PBDEs the UTDs were ~25 and ~30 km. The updated surface film sub-model indicated that films “bounce” higher vapor pressure semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) back into the air but they act as a transient sink from air for lower vapor pressure SVOCs, thereby facilitating transport to surface waters. Model calculations suggest that if the PCB inventory is reduced, volatilization from near-shore Lake Ontario will become a net source of PCBs to air, but that neither near-shore Lake Ontario nor soil would become a significant volatilization PBDE source to air. | PhD | water, cities, urban, environment, pollut | 6, 11, 13 |
| Cullen, Thomas M. | Evans, David C | Dinosaur Palaeoecology in the Late Cretaceous of Alberta: Quantitative Assessments Using Vertebrate Microfossil Bonebeds and Stable Isotope Analyses | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-11 | The Belly River Group (BRG) of Alberta is one of the best-sampled Late Cretaceous terrestrial faunal assemblages in the world, providing a high-resolution biostratigraphic record of terrestrial vertebrate diversity, and has potential to be a model system for testing hypotheses of dinosaur palaeoecological dynamics. Vertebrate microfossil bonebeds (VMBs; assemblages of small bones and teeth concentrated together over a relatively short time and representative of community composition) offer an unparalleled dataset to better test these hypotheses by ameliorating problems of sample size, geography, and chronostratigraphic control that hamper many palaeoecological analyses. The first half of this thesis uses the largest VMB dataset yet assembled to test if trends in vertebrate diversity and community structure in the BRG are best explained as a response to environmental and sea-level change, and finds that while the vertebrate community as a whole was sensitive to these changes, the dinosaurs were not. This provides evidence against the long-held idea that dinosaur communities were sensitive to small-scale environmental gradients within a single depositional basin. The second half of this thesis tests hypotheses of dinosaur diet and niche partitioning using stable carbon and oxygen isotope analyses of species and guilds in a VMB assemblage. Results of these analyses refute the hypothesis that large diet-tissue fractionations explain enriched stable carbon values previously found in dinosaurs, as similarly enriched values are found in multiple sampled vertebrate groups, suggesting instead that they are related to changes in local isotopic baseline. These isotope data were then compared with a similar analytical sample from a modern analogue vertebrate community collected from Louisiana. Broad overlap exists in many of the species and guild distributions in both the extant and fossil systems, suggesting a lack of community-level saturation in resource use, less exclusionary control on niche occupation, and stronger selection for generalists rather than specialists. Overall, the results of this thesis suggest that greater care should be taken when making inferences into dinosaur community dynamics in the absence of thorough quantitative assessments and extant analogue data. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Cunningham Warren, Cara Lynn | Schneiderman, David | Sanctuary Lost? Exposing the Reality of the “Sanctuary-City” Debate Liberal States-Rights’ Litigation | Law | 2017-11 | The Trump Administration seeks to withhold federal funding from “sanctuary cities.” It also has returned to the Secure Communities Program, which has led to a 150% arrest-rate increase of the migrants who would otherwise be integrated into “sanctuary” jurisdictions. Liberal voices have responded in legal and academic terms, but they have not reframed the administration’s powerful anti-immigrant narrative. This rhetorical mismatch has obscured fundamental aspects of the debate—namely, the power of states to make community policing decisions and the effectiveness of such policies. Moreover, liberals’ approach to states-rights’ litigation is incomplete. The aspects of Executive Order 13,768 that are receiving the most attention (funding) can be rebuffed, yet aspects that pose grave, indirect harm to integrationist policies (S-Comm) are not being addressed. Liberals should continue states-rights’ litigation but also assert an integrationist counter-narrative and use litigation as a form of non-cooperation designed to prompt a return to enforcement priorities. | LL.M. | rights, cities | 11, 16 |
| Curling, Deone | Moodley, Roy | I Heal, We Heal: A Qualitative Study of Black Canadian Women's Experiences of Depression and Coping | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2013-11 | The psychological literature on mental health has shown that oppressions such as racism, sexism and classism can be extremely stressful. Thus individuals' identities, such as race, gender, and socioeconomic status, and the oppression these can lead to have clinical implications. The current research sought to investigate the intersection of Black Canadian women's identities and how it contributes to their unique experience of depression and coping. The aim of this study was to identify significant experiences of depression and coping of this population in order to develop a theory of healing. | EDD | socioeconomic, health, gender | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Curnow, Joe | Esmonde, Indigo||Sawchuk, Peter | Politicization in Practice: Learning the Politics of Racialization, Patriarchy, and Settler Colonialism in the Youth Climate Movement | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-11 | As anti-pipeline struggles have become a central focus of the North American environmental movement, the Whiteness, masculinity, and settler-coloniality of the mainstream movement has come under more scrutiny than ever. Though the mainstream environmental movement has long been acknowledged as a White default space, committed to strategies and tactics rooted in settler-colonial logics, and managed by White men at the highest levels, there is a broad conversation emerging right now arguing that the movement needs to unsettle those norms, and urgently. This study looks at one climate campaign as a case study with the potential to reveal both how mainstream environmental spaces become default spaces of Whiteness, masculinity, and settler-coloniality, as well as how these activist groups can become politicized, resisting social relations of dominance and centring reconciliation in their approach to climate justice. Using sociocultural theory as the lens for theorizing learning within the climate movement, this dissertation brings learning within social movements into focus, examining cognition, participation, ways of knowing and being, and identity development across a two-year activist campaign. This dissertation examines Fossil Free UofT, the University of Toronto campaign for fossil fuel divestment. I ask how participants learned to understand and disrupt social relations of racialization, settler colonialism, and patriarchy. I examine what participants in the campaign learned and how they mobilized their learning collectively to reproduce and resist racialized, gendered, and colonial power relations. I also question how sociocultural theories of learning enable theorizations of politicization, as well as how they can be strengthened through sustained attention to the ways that social relations shape opportunities to learn in movements. This dissertation contributes to an emergent field in the learning sciences, where social movements and community organizations are increasingly analyzed for their ability to foment unique learning opportunities. I theorize politicization within this context, providing a framework for sociocultural learning theorists to bring together disparate conversations about learning, civic engagement, sociopolitical development, and critical social analysis. | Ph.D. | justice, environment. Climate | 13, 16 |
| Curran, Bruce John | Verma, Anil | Three Essays on Legal Issues Impacting the Employment Relationship in Canada | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2015-11 | The first of three papers helps resolve the substantial debate about the impact of Honda v. Keays, a 2008 Supreme Court of Canada decision modifying the principles for compensating employees for improper employer conduct during dismissal (called “moral damages”). I performed content analysis on all relevant Canadian cases in the four years after Honda and an equivalent period before Honda and then used a tobit model to test legal scholars’ and lawyers’ predictions. I find that moral damages are less probable after Honda. Furthermore, the size of awards is smaller in those cases where moral damages are granted, partly because certain levels of employer misconduct now produce lower damages. However, I also find that, since Honda, high levels of mental distress are compensated more richly. The second paper is motivated by the absence of recent studies that investigate delay in grievance arbitration, despite increasing concerns being voiced about the issue. I performed content analysis on a random sample of about 400 Ontario arbitration awards, and then used a proportional hazards model to examine the extent of delay and its determinants. Consistent with common perception, the results suggest that delay has become a worse problem over the past two decades. I find that certain legalistic factors and the expanded jurisdiction of arbitrators over specific types of issues are associated with delay. The results also show that certain dispute resolution procedures are related to decreased delay, and this suggests some practical solutions. Prompted by a recent series of Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decisions on freedom of association (FOA) in the labour context, the third paper critically examines the Canadian jurisprudence. The state of this law in Canada has been roundly criticized by various prominent labour law academics. This paper relies on Sheldon Leader’s theory of FOA to argue that the SCC should have interpreted s. 2(d) of the Charter as protecting collective bargaining and striking as independent rights, rather than as rights necessary for the realization of the FOA. Having done so would have yielded jurisprudence that was more consistent and coherent. | Ph.D. | labour, rights | 8, 16 |
| Currie, John Ross | Knowles, Gary | Writing for Ecological Understanding | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | Thomas Berry (1999) and John Vaillant (2015) agree that the central question of our times involves considering the natural, nonhuman world and the human place in it. Ecological understanding can be defined as this awareness. This work examines ecological understanding in terms of writing pedagogy for adult learners, considering how narrative ways of teaching and learning supports ecological understanding in adult learners; and how writing can serve as a learning response to environmental and ecological issues. The methodology approaches these questions by paying attention to students’ voices about their learning and by examining student-authored work through Buell’s (1995) ecocritical lens. Interviews with educators also contribute. Robert Yagelski’s (2011) ontological approach to writing views the act as one that “both shapes and reflects our sense of who we are in relation to the world around us” (p.3). This work furthers this theory, which views the primary benefits to the self occurring solely during the act of composition, by moving towards an ontological theory of writing for ecological understanding that considers the entire writing process as shaping the self, including the editing process and a pedagogy that encourages publication of student-authored peer models. This new ontology culminates in Seven Principles for Teaching Writing for Ecological Understanding, two of which are: First-person creative nonfiction and other genres serve as solid entry points for students into the topic of the environment.; Cultivation of the naïve narrator well serves environmental writing. One methodological refinement is to focus on students’ work and then ask them to consider their own work from their point of view. Further questions include: Does a predisposition towards writing for ecological understanding develop in childhood and, if so, can it be offset by experiential writing pedagogy?; How do peer model texts affect the learning of adult students who employ them? | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Curtis, Josh P. | Robert, Andersen | Class Identification in Modern Democracies: A Comparative Study of its Sources and Effects | Sociology | 2014-11 | This dissertation explores the extent to which people are class aware in modern democratic society. I investigate whether the positions people occupy in the class structure, and the perceptions of where they think they fit, influence attitudes toward economic inequality. This research also considers the social and political consequences of national-level income inequality for class awareness. Market household income inequality has grown substantially in most modern societies since the 1990s. At the same time, government effort to reduce inequality has waned. I examine whether attitudes differ in countries with low and high inequality, and whether class awareness plays a role in shaping how people think about economic inequality. I find that class identities are more polarized in unequal societies, and that even if people perceive inequality as legitimate, they would prefer it to be reduced if it might improve their own economic position.My findings suggest that people's class identities and their preferences for inequality strongly reflect their economic positions. Yet, I also find that class attitudes change at different levels of income inequality. This is because when inequality rises more people in society feel its adverse effects. My research shows that people across the class structure in all societies understand how economic inequality affects their lives. More importantly, people understand how they might benefit from inequality changing. This awareness holds significant policy implications, especially if inequality continues to grow. These conclusions are drawn from two sources of individual-level survey data spanning nearly two decades. Each substantive chapter employs a cross-national analysis. In total, I investigate class identification and awareness in 42 countries, using three waves of the World Values Survey (WVS) collected from 1990-2006, and two waves of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) Inequality Module collected from 1999-2009. I extract country-level data from various sources, including the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Standardized Income Inequality Database (SWIID), the World Bank (www.worldbank.org), and the CIA World Factbook (www.cia.gov). | Ph.D. | inequality, equality | 5, 10 |
| D'Agostino, Lisa Anne | Mabury, Scott A. | Environmental Chemistry of Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances in Aqueous Film Forming Foams | Chemistry | 2017-06 | While aqueous film forming foam (AFFF) release has been known to result in environmental contamination with perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFASs) for over fifteen years, identities of individual PFASs in AFFFs have been largely unknown, proprietary information. Using mixed-mode ion exchange solid phase extraction (SPE), high resolution mass spectrometry (HR-MS), quadrupole time-of-flight (qTOF) tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), and liquid chromatography (LC)-MS/MS, 103 individual PFASs were identified in AFFFs and surfactant concentrates, including multiple chain-length congeners. Aerobic wastewater treatment plant sludge biodegradation of two AFFF components, 6:2 fluorotelomer sulfonamide alkylbetaine (FTAB) and alkylamine (FTAA), was investigated revealing biodegradation to short-chain perfluoroalkyl carboxylates (PFCAs) and known PFCA precursors. Additional degradation products were also identified, including 6:2 fluorotelomer sulfonamide (FTSAm) as a degradation product of both 6:2 FTAB and 6:2 FTAA, and six additional degradation products of 6:2 FTAA. A survey of selected Canadian surface waters for AFFF-related PFASs using SPE and LC-MS/MS revealed that several AFFF-related PFASs could be detected in urban and AFFF-impacted surface waters. These included FTABs and fluorotelomer betaines (FTBs), which were the fluorotelomer PFASs with the highest maximum concentrations. Other PFASs, such as perfluorohexane sulfonamide (FHxSA), 6:2 FTSAm, and 6:2 fluorotelomer mercaptoalkylamido sulfonate sulfone (FTSAS-SO2) were identified in some samples. Extraction and analysis of sediment from an AFFF-impacted river and batch sorption experiments with 6:2 FTAA and 6:2 FTAB in an agricultural soil provide preliminary insights into sorption behaviour of AFFF components, where longer chain-length FTBs were apparently more sorptive than shorter chain-lengths and 6:2 FTAA was more sorptive than 6:2 FTAB. This work is significant in identifying numerous PFASs found in AFFF that require further research in regards to their environmental fate and toxicology, demonstrating the presence of AFFF-related PFASs in Canadian environmental samples, and investigating biodegradation forming PFCAs and sorption of selected PFASs found in AFFFs. | Ph.D. | water, waste, environment | 6, 12, 13 |
| D'Arcangelis, Carol Lynne | Razack, Sherene | The Solidarity Encounter between Indigenous Women and White Women in a Contemporary Canadian Context | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-11 | This dissertation tracks the gendered operation of white settler liberal subjectivity at a specific site of settler colonial relations—the “solidarity encounter” between Indigenous women and white women in Canada. Through in-depth qualitative analysis of interviews and self-reflection (as a white settler woman ally), I examine the encounter’s intersubjective relations, shining the theoretical spotlight on how white women negotiate our tenuous status as settlers. Attentive to the complexity of these relations, including how white women allies grapple with our dominant positionality, I signal the perniciousness of white settler liberal subjectivity and the deep quest for legitimacy/innocence at its core. This quest, I argue, manifests itself as a white desire for proximity to Indigenous women, which in turn takes various forms and is often experienced by Indigenous women as invasive. I dedicate three chapters to mapping the sometimes subtle expressions of this desire (e.g., the need for acceptance, inclusion, forgiveness, healing, empowerment/purpose, friendship) and its role in liberal self-making projects, i.e., how it serves to negate colonial hierarchies and/or white settler women’s colonial complicity therein. Further, I develop the concept of the “impulse to solidarity”—the bundle of desires and discursive practices that propels white settler women in their pursuit of proximity, an impulse related to, but distinct from the “helping imperative” (Heron, 2007). White women allies find it difficult to resist the gendered dictates of liberal subjectivity, which in a settler colonial context demand our reproduction as legitimate national subjects vis-à-vis Indigenous women Others. Despite the inescapability of the “colonial present” (Gregory, 2004), I also note a cautious optimism among participants regarding the possibility of non-colonizing solidarity. I propose a framework for reconfiguring intersubjective relations in the solidarity encounter best encapsulated by the directive “step back, but not out.” Struck by pervasive spatial references in participant narratives, I characterize the problem (colonizing solidarity) and its solution (non-colonizing solidarity) in spatialized terms—white settler women must interrogate and curb our solidarity impulse and related practices of proximity. We must recognize when settler liberal self-interest takes centre stage, compels us to “come too close” and diminishes the collective political work of solidarity. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| D'eon, Jessica C. | Mabury, Scott A. | Exploring Sources of Human and Environmental Fluorochemical Contamination | Chemistry | 2010-11 | Perfluorinated carboxylates (PFCAs) and perfluorinated sulfonates (PFSAs) are found almost ubiquitously in the environment, however their direct production and use is limited. The focus of this thesis was to explore connections between observed contamination with the manufacture and/or use of commercial fluorochemical materials. Perfluorinated sulfonamides (PFSAms) are semi-volatile materials used in the manufacture of commercial fluorochemicals. Investigations into the atmospheric fate of a model PFSAm found atmospheric lifetimes that allow transport to remote environments, potentially through a novel N–dealkylation product. A suite of PFCAs, as well as the PFSA from loss of the amide moiety, were also observed. This investigation demonstrated that PFSAm atmospheric oxidation will contribute to PFCA and PFSA contamination in remote locations, including the Arctic. The perfluorinated phosphonates (PFPAs) were used as defoaming additives in pesticide formulations. Using novel extraction and analysis methods, widespread PFPA contamination was detected in Canadian surface waters and wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluent. As fully fluorinated acids, the PFPAs are a new class of perfluorinated acid discovered in the environment. Uptake and elimination parameters determined in the rat demonstrate the potential for human PFPA exposure, as these chemicals are bioavailable. Processes governing the pharmacokinetics and disposition of perfluorinated acids in the body are poorly understood. Novel heteronuclear nuclear magnetic resonance experiments identified human serum albumin as the major site of interaction. Competitive binding experiments found the PFCAs displaced the endogenous human serum albumin ligand, 13C1-oleic acid, at lower concentrations than established ligands. The strong association observed between the PFCAs and human serum albumin may inform observed human toxic endpoints and long elimination half-lives. The polyfluoroalkyl phosphates (PAPs) are used in food-contact paper packaging. High PAP concentrations were discovered in human sera, waste paper fibres and WWTP sludge, establishing human exposure to these chemicals. Biotransformation from PAP to PFCA was investigated in a rat model. The serum kinetics and PFCA products observed, suggest PAP exposure may be a significant source of human PFCA contamination. The concerted approach of environmental monitoring with investigations of atmospheric and biological fate allowed strong associations to be made between commercial fluorochemical sources and observed contamination. | PhD | water, waste, environment | 6, 12, 13 |
| D'Souza, Rohan Dominic | Sander, Beate||Murphy, Kellie | Exploring Methodologic Challenges in the Conduct of Patient-preference Studies in Obstetrics | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-06 | Background: Clinical decision analysis (CDA) and model-based economic evaluations (EE) are used to inform clinical practice, funding recommendations and health policy. These models require patient-preferences for health-states. Obstetrics, which involves two intricately-related individuals - mother and fetus - who often exhibit competing interests, makes elicitation of patient-preferences challenging. Aims and objectives: To inform best practices on obtaining and using patient-preferences in obstetrics. Methods: We first conducted a systematic review of CDA studies to understand how research methods have been adapted to the mother-fetus dyad especially regarding incorporation of patient-preferences. We followed this by another systematic review to inform optimal research methods for conducting patient-preference studies in obstetrics while creating a repository of preference values for pregnancy-related health states. We used information from these studies to design and conduct a cross-sectional study eliciting preferences for health-states related to anticoagulant use in pregnancy. We compared three methods – visual analogue scale (VAS), time trade-off (TTO) and standard gamble (SG), and obtained preference values through individual and shared interviews with pregnant women and family members. Results: Our first review (77 studies) showed that despite long-term implications of obstetric decisions, studies frequently did not consider lifetime horizons and patient-preferences for outcomes related to mother and offspring, and failed to adhere to guidelines regarding conduct and reporting. The second review (37 studies, median 125 participants) found inconsistencies in choice of valuation methods, anchors and sample size specifications, and knowledge gaps with regard to the role of family members in decision-making. The third study (57 pregnant women and 43 family members) showed that preference values obtained through shared interviews were closer to those of the family member and that VAS and TTO had greater differences between health-state valuations relative to the SG. Conclusions: In obstetrics, consideration should be given to involving family members while obtaining preferences for combined maternal-fetal health-states. The SG seemed most appropriate for this study. Implications: Our work informs methods regarding conduct of CDA and patient-preference studies in obstetrics, contributes to clinical decision-making and delineates a plan for future research that will standardize conduct and reporting of patient-preference studies. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Da Silva, Michael Edward | Flood, Colleen M | Realizing the Right to Health Care in Canada | Law | 2018-06 | International and domestic laws increasingly recognize health rights; international law clearly recognizes a right to health that includes health care entitlements and approximately 69% of domestic constitutions include a right to health care. Recognition of a positive right to health care has been slower to emerge in Canada, but there are nascent signs that the judiciary is receptive to the idea in principle. Challenges nonetheless remain – existing articulations of rights to health care do not easily fit the traditional ‘claim-right’ model of rights and questions remain over how to operationalize health rights, including how to do so without overwhelming the public fisc. It is difficult to resolve these issues in a manner that accounts for the structure of health rights in domestic constitutional laws, international human rights law, and philosophy. This work addresses these challenges and offers an account of the right to health care that is philosophically sound and operationalizable by courts and policymakers. I argue that a positive right to health care is best understood as a set of claims to related morally important goals. This pluralist understanding of the right can fit a modified version of the claim-right model and is independently justifiable. It is also consistent with the structure of health rights in international human rights law and some existing positive constitutional health rights. I next explain how to measure compliance with this pluralist right, providing an account of what the right to health care must accomplish in concrete terms. I then apply the metrics that I developed to the Canadian health care system and explore how three branches of public law (constitutional law, human rights law, and administrative law) can improve Canada’s scores on those metrics. I ultimately argue that all three branches can be reformed to better realize the pluralist right to health care. | S.J.D. | rights | 16 |
| DaCosta, Paula | Bascia, Nina | CULTURAL IDENTITY AND HYBRIDITY IN “DIFFERENT SPACES”: RECENT IMMIGRANT STUDENTS NEGOTIATING SETTLEMENT AND UNIVERSITY IN ONTARIO, CANADA | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-11 | This qualitative research explores cultural identity construction among recent immigrant students from Jamaica who live and attend universities in Ontario, Canada. It focuses on the experiences of identity construction when migration, settlement and university participation are considered. The research approached the complexities in the immigrant student identity through a hybrid conceptual lens. Through semi-structured interviews of 14 undergraduate students in universities in Ontario, multiple dimensions of identity and intersectional considerations were elucidated. The combined use of hermeneutic (interpretative) phenomenology with a critical component allowed for exploration of cultural identities as living with and through difference, by hybridity. Participants’ experiences of growing up in Jamaica, moving to Ontario and attending university were the general themes within which issues of social class, skin colour, language, race, nation of origin, stereotypes and discrimination were discussed. The findings suggest that participants construct their cultural identities through the intervening influences of parents, peers of similar cultural orientations, language, discourses of difference, nation of origin and aspirations. Of significance is the salience assigned to social class identification and its relation to speech and skin color in the origin country. Social class was not assigned the same meanings in the receiving nation. Participants maintained their nation of origin identification in Ontario, despite encounters of stigmatization and discrimination. This research finds evidence to suggest both resistance to essentialist views of Jamaicans and beliefs in an essence of Jamaican-ness. The study concludes that students’ interactions in and outside of university are complexly negotiated and thus, their identities are multiply constructed. The study makes recommendations for partnerships among policy makers, universities, and settlement agencies to provide appropriate resources to assist recent immigrant students in their educational journey. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Dadani, Sharmin | Todorova, Miglena | The Politics of Standardized Testing in Ontario: Critically Assessing the Impact on Learners, Teachers, and Administrators | Social Justice Education | 2019-11 | This study examines the historical origins and educational and political objectives of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT). It argues that ultimately, standardized tests, such as the OSSLT, advance neoliberal agendas reflecting the interests of the Canadian state and capital, rather than those of diverse learners, teachers, and society at large. The study traces the ways in which Ontario and state educational policies have infused neoliberal values of individuality, self discipline, accounting, and work preparedness into public education through standardized testing, in order to foster students who can find placement in the local and global economies as workers and consumers. The study also illuminates how the OSSLT has functioned as a hegemonic tool for measuring teacher and learner ‘success’. The study uses a qualitative methodology, including personal interviews with teachers and school administrators in the Greater Toronto Area, and an examination of primary and secondary sources that include educational policy documents. The interpretation of the data utilizes a critical discourse analysis approach and a constellation of theories pertaining to educational policy, neoliberalism, racial and cultural difference, and theories related to modes of governmentality and educational systems that shape the rationale, design, and implementation of standardized testing tools in public education. The major findings of this study note the elimination of community, segregating stakeholders where school administrators and teachers view the test and its purpose in very distinct ways. The OSSLT has shifted the purpose of education from sorting students for human capital as a priority over educating them as democratic citizens. The role of administrators has altered from leaders to managers of data, and teachers’ loss of power changed their role to that of facilitators. Finally, a myriad of negative emotional effects were noted for all stakeholders especially students who are racialized and marginalized. The study moves from critique to resolutions by offering three possible ways to re-imagine and re-shape the test: altering the rules of the test; incorporating multiple aspects of learning and knowing by using an inclusive design model of holistic assessment; and resisting the test, thus undermining its credibility and function altogether. | Ed.D. | worker | 8 |
| Daftary, Amrita | Calzavara, Liviana | Integrating Patients into Integrated Healthcare: Perspectives from Individuals Coinfected with Tuberculosis and HIV | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2012-03 | Background: Tuberculosis (TB) and human-immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infections are intertwined through complex biological and social pathways that affect over one million people worldwide. Mitigation of the co-epidemic is undermined by a failure to integrate TB and HIV healthcare services as a result of critical clinical, operational and social challenges. The social challenges of TB/HIV coinfection and integrated care are least understood. Objectives: This research examines the social contexts of TB/HIV illness and related healthcare from the perspective of patients coinfected with TB and HIV. Methods: The study was set within a constructivist-interpretivist theoretical framework. Non-participant field observations and semi-structured in-depth interviews were held with 40 coinfected adults (24 women, 16 men) and 8 healthcare workers at 3 ambulatory clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, providing varying models of TB and HIV care. Subjective meanings of illness and healthcare were analyzed in relation to patients’ social contexts. Findings and Interpretations: Coinfection exposes patients to a double and unequal form of social stigma around TB and HIV. Affected individuals construct dual identities and negotiate selective disclosure of TB over HIV in order to manage this double stigma. Their experiences with stigma are bound by social, structural and gendered inequalities, and mediate their decisions to disclose, access and adhere to medical care. Coinfection also exposes patients to pluralistic, disparate and fragmented forms of healthcare delivery. Experiences with stigma and with distinct cultures of TB and HIV care affect their decisions for integrated healthcare. While integration may allow for some technical and clinical efficiency, it may also heighten some patients’ social burden of illness as a result of HIV disclosure and stigmatization. Conclusion: Integration efforts should consider the social contexts of TB/HIV coinfection, social consequences of patients’ health decisions, and paradigms within which such efforts are set in the design and execution of successful interventions. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Dagtas, Mahiye Secil | Boddy, Janice | Heterogeneous Encounters: Tolerance, Secularism and Religious Difference at Turkey's Border with Syria | Anthropology | 2014-11 | This dissertation is an ethnographic investigation into the politics of religious difference in Turkey. Drawing on fieldwork in Antakya, a city near Turkey's Syrian border populated by Arabs and Turks of Sunni, Alawi, Jewish, and Orthodox Christian backgrounds, it explores the mundane, political, and aesthetic representations of religious difference and demonstrates how such difference is constructed, lived, and configured in everyday realms of sociality. Four such realms are focused on: a multi-religious choral ensemble, Antakya's historical marketplace, domestic and communal sitings of guesthood (misafirlik), and places and discourses of common worship. Official representations of Antakya's religious diversity imply a pluralist and "tolerant" form of national citizenship as compared to Turkey's Republican secularist model. I argue, however, that daily practices, artistic expressions, and networks of exchange between different denominations of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish residents of the city inhabit a more heterogeneous field characterized by interpersonal relations of negotiation, hospitality, intimacy, and hostility. These interrelations are further informed and delimited by structures of power embedded in local, national, and transnational regimes of diversity management and implicated in the minoritization of non-Sunni and non-Turkish communal identities. Nevertheless, they also rework and transcend such regimes of governance. In illustrating what it means to cohabit an interreligious milieu near a national border, this dissertation is positioned among other anthropological explorations of religious diversity and the growing literature on secularism, as well as anthropological studies of borders and marginality. It shows that religious difference is produced at the intersection of multiple discourses, practices, and boundaries, and as such it evades both pluralist (multi-community) and dualist (i.e. religion vs. secular) models of religious co-existence. | Ph.D. | governance | 16 |
| Daignault, Katherine | Saarela, Olli||Lou, Wendy | Causal Inference Methodology for Comparisons of Hospital Quality of Care | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | In a national or provincial health care system, where limited financial resources are available to improve patient care, it is necessary to be able to evaluate the current care practices of hospitals to determine where resources are best spent. Assessment of hospital care quality is achieved by comparing each hospital's performance to some reference level of care, often the average care level in the system, termed standardization. Standardization allows adjustment for differences in patient characteristics between hospitals which would unduly penalize hospitals that treat sicker patients. The quality and quantity of information available to make such adjustments, or lack thereof, can bias estimates of a hospital's performance, resulting in misleading assessments of quality. Further, the goal of profiling care is not just to identify areas in which care disparities exist, but ultimately to intervene on care to improve patient outcomes. In this thesis, I take advantage of the causal nature of such comparisons (i.e. poor care leads to poor outcomes) and propose new statistical methods under a causal inference framework. First, I illustrate the current limitations of a standard hospital comparison analysis using U.S. prostate cancer data. Second, I develop a doubly robust estimator for the standardized mortality ratio (SMR) when the reference is to the system average level of care. I show that this estimator will provide unbiased estimates of the SMR as long as one of the component models is correctly specified. Third, I show that one assumption needed for the above estimator can be relaxed only for this reference comparison. Fourth, I adapt causal mediation analysis methods to derive a decomposition of the hospital effect on patient outcomes that may act through a mediating process, and develop two estimators for this decomposition. This allows quantification of the effect an intervention to improve care may have on patient outcomes so that hospitals can be prioritized in terms of those who would benefit most from government resources. Finally, I illustrate the proposed mediation methods on Ontario kidney cancer data. This thesis provides valuable tools to effectively identify and target hospitals in which care improvement is most needed. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Dainty, Katie Naismith | Morrison, Laurie J. | Understanding Staff Perspectives on Collaborative Quality Improvement in the ICU: A Qualitative Exploration | Medical Science | 2011-06 | Despite the ongoing initiatives of quality improvement collaboratives in healthcare which reflect various multifaceted intervention packages, clear evidence of the effectiveness of the model itself is lacking. Little is known about the true impact of the collaborative approach on improvement outcomes or how specific components are actually implemented within participating organizations. This dissertation reports on empirical qualitative research undertaken to investigate “how” healthcare providers and management describe the experience of being involved in a collaborative network for quality improvement. Using a process evaluation of a sample QI collaborative, this research reveals that frontline staff do not feel the need to conform or be identical to their peer organizations; rather they feel that by participating with them that their high level of care is finally recognized. In addition, the existing communication structure is ineffective for staff engagement and a “QI bubble” seems to exist in terms of knowledge transfer and the idea of collaboration bears out more internally in increased intra-team cooperation than externally between organizations or units. Selected theoretical perspectives from the fields of sociology and organizational behaviour are used as an analytic framework from which the author posits that based on the findings from this case study that in fact collaboratives may not actually function by any of the commonly held assumptions of legitimization, communication and collaboration. A conceptual framework for how these constructs are related in terms of QI collaborative design is proposed for future testing. With further work and on-the-ground testing of this model and relational hypotheses, this research can help the QI community develop a more functional theory of collaborative improvement and use mixed methods evaluation to better understand complex QI implementation. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Daku, James J. | Angela, Hildyard | Faculty Perceptions of Leadership on Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | Leadership and diversity are both important topics in research and are often investigated separately. There is a long history of research in leadership, and diversity is a relatively new area of research in comparison. Differences such as age, gender, race, ethnicity, disability, and sexual orientation can be an advantage to some and a disadvantage to others when considering success in school, work opportunities or income potential. Rarely is research in leadership brought together with research in diversity, and both are complex areas of study. This study investigates traditional and emerging conceptualizations of leadership and differences in age, gender, race and ethnicity.This study investigated leadership from the perspective of diverse followers, and sought to understand the extent faculty perceptions of leadership differed based on age, gender, race and ethnicity at two large colleges located in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. As well, this study investigated the ways in which faculty who differ prefer to be led, and the ways in which faculty who differ wish to be included in leadership. This study is important because research in leadership often overlooks the impact of difference among followers. In this current economic climate, college leaders risk having disenfranchised faculty who do not support organizational goals because leaders have not fully considered the significance of faculty diversity.Results suggest on one hand that the extent of difference in perception is minimal, but this does not mean the differences in perception are unimportant. As well, faculty perceived leadership as being embodied in an individual; although, there was a strong preference for shared leadership practice. Faculty considered their primaryleadership role as being in the classroom and minimal involvement in leadership outside of that context. Finally, the implications of these findings for leadership and leadership practice are discussed. The findings presented will help to support conceptualizations of leadership in the colleges studied that model a shared leadership practice in order to meet organizational goals. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Dale, Bryan | Prudham, Scott | Farming for System Change: The Politics of Food Sovereignty and Climate Change in Canada | Geography | 2019-03 | In this dissertation, I explore the overlap between climate change and food production, focusing on the concept of food sovereignty and the potential for ecological farming to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. I unveil how the concepts of food sovereignty and agroecology are (and are not) being taken up by Canadian farmers, farmers’ organizations and others who have a stake in climate change debates. Based on two years of scholar-activist-oriented research, including interviews with farmers and ethnographic engagements on farms and at events focused on agricultural politics and practices, I describe the opportunities and constraints for agroecological approaches to contribute to mitigating climate change, as well as the significant political, geographical and socio-cultural challenges that are generally inhibiting the actualization of food sovereignty in Canada. Focusing on the work of La Vía Campesina’s two member organizations in this country, the National Farmers Union (NFU) and Union Paysanne, I am concerned with the basic problem of how tensions between systemic and pragmatic changes are articulated through agroecology initiatives and food sovereignty advocacy. My essential claim is that a broad counterhegemonic movement will be required in order for there to be a significant shift in climate and food politics in Canada. Food sovereignty and agroecology have the potential to be incorporated into a system change agenda, I argue, but any serious effort to move them forward, and tackle climate change, will require confronting capitalism itself. I do not suggest that this will necessarily require overt anticapitalist campaigns, but rather that farmers and other food sovereignty proponents will do well to grapple with the structural constraints within capitalism, while finding ways to talk about and pursue radical change through ostensibly more prosaic initiatives. As part of the counterhegemonic shift I am pointing to, I also argue that farmers’ organizations will need to prioritize both strategic alliance-building with various groups, as well as political education activities that can help both farmers and non-farmers make progress on these fronts, disrupting apolitical approaches to climate and food issues. | Ph.D. | food, production, climate, greenhouse gas, ecology | 2, 12, 13, 15 |
| Dalton, April Sue | Finkelstein, Sarah A | Chronology, Paleoecology and Stratigraphy of Late Pleistocene Sediments from the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Canada | Earth Sciences | 2017-11 | Stratigraphic records in the Hudson Bay Lowlands (HBL), Canada, offer rare insight into local paleoenvironments and the Late Pleistocene climate system over North America. Age determinations on sub-till non-glacial materials suggest that the HBL, lying near the centre of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) extent of the Laurentide Ice Sheet (LIS), was ice-free for parts of Marine Isotope Stage 3 (MIS 3; 57,000 to 29,000 yr BP), MIS 5 (130,000 to 71,000 yr BP) and MIS 7 (243,000 to 190,000 yr BP). The MIS 3 age assignment is notable since it suggests the possibility of significant retreat of the LIS and a relatively high global sea level, both of which are a contrast to assumptions that North America was moderately glaciated, and that global sea level was relatively low during that time interval. Paleoecological proxies, including pollen and plant macrofossils, suggest that the HBL contained peatland and boreal vegetation during all previous non-glacial intervals, and pollen-based quantitative reconstructions of sites which are hypothesized to be MIS 3 and MIS 5a (~80,000 yr BP) in age suggest that climate during MIS 3 may have had less annual precipitation than during MIS 5a and present day. Stratigraphic analyses of these glacial and non-glacial sediments provide insight into the dynamicity of Late Pleistocene ice sheets; multiproxy analyses of three stratigraphic successions along the Albany River resulted in the recognition of at least three glacial advances from shifting ice centers within the QuĂŠbec sector of the Laurentide Ice Sheet during the Late Pleistocene. This dissertation contributes a chronological dataset for reconstructing the movement, timing and dynamics of Late Pleistocene ice sheets over North America, as well as paleoecological data for understanding the character and distribution of boreal peatlands during previous interstadial and interglacial periods. | Ph.D. | climate, environment, marine | 13, 14 |
| Dalton, Zoe | McGregor, Deborah | As We Move Ahead Together: Foregrounding Reconciliating and Renewed First Nation/ Non-Aboriginal Relations in Environmental Management and Research | Geography | 2010-11 | The research project upon which this dissertation is based focused on enhancing understandings of the nature of current First Nations/non-Aboriginal relations in environmental management. The project was undertaken as a collaborative initiative by the author, a non-Aboriginal doctoral researcher, in partnership with Walpole Island First Nation. The research served as an opportunity for co-producing knowledge on this subject across cultures and worldviews, and as an effort to build towards our shared aspiration of learning how distinct, yet inextricably linked, First Nations/non-Aboriginal understandings, approaches and worldviews can come together within a context of mutual respect and mutual benefit. The purpose of the research was to investigate the existence and types of issues leading to First Nations/non-Aboriginal tensions in environmental management, to analyze and unpack underlying causes of challenges identified via the research, and to construct avenues for relationship improvement. The research project was grounded in a specific investigation into relations in species at risk conservation and recovery in southern Ontario, Canada. The resulting dissertation is structured around three primary focal areas: 1) investigating and exposing colonial influences at play in Canada’s Species at Risk Act, and offering a new model for co-governance in this arena and beyond; 2) investigating relations surrounding efforts towards traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) transfer in species at risk work, with a focus on exploring issues identified in relation to intellectual imperialism; and 3) introducing and characterizing an original, reconceptualized approach to First Nations/non-Aboriginal relationships in academic research; this approach focused on ways in which investigatory practice can become a means of working towards broader reconciliation goals. Research findings from this dissertation indicate that colonial factors, often unevenly visible to actors involved in environmental management and research, continue to strongly affect the potential for positive, productive First Nations/non-Aboriginal relations in these spheres - including within the species at risk conservation and recovery arena examined here. Project results provide insight into the nature of the factors influencing relationships, as well as potential avenues for addressing the vitality of colonialism in contemporary relations and overcoming the influences on First Nations and on First Nations/non-Aboriginal relationships. | PhD | governance, conserv, environment | 13, 14 |
| Dan, Ioana | Kambourov, Gueorgui ||Siow, Aloysius | Gender and Occupational Riskiness | Economics | 2011-11 | In this thesis I investigate the relationship between the gender distribution across industries and occupations and the incidence and consequences of displacement. First, I provide empirical evidence to support the idea that women self-select into less risky industries and occupations, that is industries and occupations with lower displacement rates and lower earnings growth. Using data from the Displaced Worker Survey (1984-2002), the corresponding Annual Demographic Supplement to the March Current Population Survey, and the Dictionary of Occupational Titles, I find that, even though women have a lower incidence of displacement in the aggregate, they are more likely to get displaced at the one-digit industry and occupation level than men. Displacement is also more costly for women, in terms of both employment and monetary consequences, which suggests that women’s choice of safer sectors could be an insurance mechanism against the risk of displacement and its costly consequences. I then construct a dynamic occupational choice model in the spirit of Keane and Wolpin (1997), in which occupation(industry) groups differ not only in terms of the rate of human capital accumulation, but also in the risk and associated cost of displacement, as well as in the value of the non-monetary utility component. I calibrate the model for men and perform a number of counterfactual experiments for women. Quantitative results suggest that differences in displacement probabilities, together with differences in re-employment probabilities, and in human capital penalty rates at displacement explain up to 15% of the gender occupational segregation, and up to 10% of the gender industry segregation. Allowing women to also have an extra preference for non-employment explains in a proportion of 60% why women avoid high risk occupations, that is occupations with higher displacement risk, higher earnings growth and higher human capital depreciation (or alternatively, lower human capital transferability). | PhD | gender, women, employment. Worker, industr | 5, 8, 2009 |
| Danard, Deborah Dawn | Restoule, Jean Paul | Medicine Wheel Surviving Suicide-Strengthening Life Bundle | Social Justice Education | 2016-11 | Medicine Wheel Surviving Suicide-Strengthening Life Bundle Deborah Danard Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto 2016 Abstract The Medicine Wheel Surviving Suicide-Strengthening Life Bundle (2016) responds to the disproportionately high number of completed and attempted suicides in Aboriginal communities (past, present and anticipated future) and the need for advancing traditional knowledge as a sustainable long-term community centred approach that demonstrates strengthening life promotion as the wholistic lens to address the complex issue of suicide. Traditional knowledge gathered through literature reviewed, oral teachings and stories is the central component of this research study that spans over a decade, building on foundational traditional knowledge and teachings that informed the Medicine Wheel praxis in Finding Our Way - Culture as Resistance to Suicide In Indian Country (Danard, 2005). This research study is my contribution to the (then) Indian Affairs Minister Bob Nault who said, attempt[s] to tackle the suicide problem haven’t worked, and he was open to suggestions from ‘Anyone who will give us some recommendations about how to deal with suicide’ (Hicks, 1999). Developing the research study from a social justice education lens applying traditional knowledge methods and methodology examines the relationality of transforming traditional knowledge context into practice to enact systemic change at the community level and further Chandler and Lalonde’s (1998) findings that list cultural continuity factors as a ‘hedge’ against suicide, including self-government, land claims, education, health services, cultural facilities, child protection, women in leadership and police/fire services. Every generation has their challenges, past generations have survived colonial expansion and cultural genocide such as residential schools, the sixties scoop, the Indian Act, loss of identity, Bill C-31, alcohol and drug use, loss of language, and dispossession and forced removal from traditional land base and territories (AFHJSC, 1993; AHF, 2007; Duran Duran, 2000; Chrisjohn Young, 1997; Antone Hill, 1992). From an Anishinaabe researcher location and way of being Anishinaabe, this research study is my recommendation for surviving suicide – strengthening life as one of this generation’s challenges that requires “retracing” our ancestral knowledge (Benton-Benai, 1988) and gathering traditional knowledge to mobilize culture as resistance to the survival of suicide (Danard, 2005) and ultimately “survivance” (Vizenor, 1999) of this generation and coming generations. | Ph.D. | health, justice | 3, 16 |
| Daniel, Colin John | Fortin, Marie-JosĂŠe | Incorporating Uncertainty into Projections of Landscape Change | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-06 | A wide range of spatially-explicit simulation models have been developed to forecast landscape dynamics, including models for projecting changes in both vegetation and land use. A key challenge facing these models is how to incorporate uncertainty, including the future effects of climate change, into their projections. I present here a general framework, called a state-and-transition simulation model (STSM), for incorporating uncertainty into projections of landscape change. The STSM method divides a landscape into a set of spatial units, and then simulates the discrete state of each spatial unit forward in time as a stochastic process, in response to discrete transitions, using a Monte Carlo approach. The method also allows for any number of continuous stocks to be defined as stochastic processes for each spatial unit, along with continuous flows to move material between these stocks over time. I demonstrate the STSM method using two different applications. The first is a model of land use/land cover (LULC) change for the State of Hawaii. This model explores interactions between possible future changes in LULC, combined with projected shifts in moisture zones due to climate change, in order to generate projections for the future spatial and temporal distribution of LULC across the State. Through the integration of a carbon stock-flow model with the STSM, I further demonstrate how spatially-explicit projections for terrestrial carbon can incorporate uncertainties in projections of LULC change. The second application presents a new approach for incorporating uncertainty into forest management planning, which I demonstrate using two landscapes in the boreal forest of Ontario (Canada). Here I explore the implications of incorporating uncertainties regarding the spatial and temporal variability of wildfire, including the potential effects of climate change, into spatially-explicit projections of timber supply and habitat for woodland caribou. STSMs can be applied to a wide range of landscapes, including questions of both land use change and vegetation dynamics. Because the method is both spatially-explicit and stochastic, it is well suited for characterizing uncertainty in landscape dynamics. STSMs offer a simple yet powerful means for incorporating uncertainty into projections of landscape change. | Ph.D. | climate, forest, land use | 13, 15 |
| Danyluk, Martin Andrew | Cowen, Deborah | Conflict at the Crossroads: Redrawing Global Supply Lines in the Age of Logistics | Geography | 2018-06 | This dissertation examines the landscapes of logistics, the fast-growing industry responsible for managing the movement of goods, materials, and related information in the global economy. As commodity flows increase in volume, velocity, and distance, they depend on increasingly large-scale transformations of the physical and social environment. How is space being refashioned to accommodate new methods and patterns of circulation? And how do popular forces intervene in these processes? This research employs a multi-sited, relational methodology to investigate how the circulation of commodities is influencing the production of space at multiple scales. Its empirical focus is the recent expansion of the Panama Canal, a logistics megaproject with global reverberations, and the consequent rivalry among North American ports seeking to attract a new generation of oversized container ships. Drawing on a year of mixed-methods fieldwork in Panama City, Los Angeles, and New York, the dissertation analyzes competitive efforts to remake space in the image of smooth, efficient circulation and the struggles that have ensued over land, labour, and the environment. I argue that the landscapes of logistics are contradictory and conflictual spaces: even as global supply chains deliver the material provisions that make possible the reproduction of contemporary life, their development and functioning are undergirded by violent processes of community dispossession, labour exploitation, and environmental degradation. These impacts are disproportionately borne by poor and racialized residents and workers, whose struggles play a fundamental role in shaping corporate production and distribution networks. The research offers a critical reappraisal of the prevailing view that logistics provides a progressive and sustainable path to economic development. It shows that, as logistics has become increasingly vital to the operations of capitalism, the circulation of commodities exacts a heavy toll on those who live and labour in the arteries of global trade. | Ph.D. | labour, worker, industr, trade, industr | 8, 9, 10 |
| Darko, Isaac Nortey | Dei, George S | Environmental Stewardship and Indigenous African Philosophies: Implications for Schooling and Health Education in Africa: A Case of Ghana | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2014-06 | In the last 50 years, the pursuance of alternative discourses that would provide alternative solutions to the growing environmental challenges facing the African continent such as pollution poor sanitation, deforestation, desertification, erosion, and degradation have significantly increased. In line with such efforts, the main objective of this project is to identify the prospects and potentials inherent in Indigenous African perspectives on environmental stewardship and their usefulness in mitigating these challenges in Africa. This work, therefore, explores the numerous environmental stewardship ideas contained in proverbs, music, visual arts, adages, 'Ananse' stories and poems, in some Indigenous communities from Ghana; while at the same time, examining the impact of Westernization on the social, political, economic and cultural orientations of Indigenous environmental stewardship practices in traditional communities. The study involved five local communities within the Greater Accra and Eastern regions of Ghana. Over five months, 70 participants from Accra, Amamole, Pantang, Aburi and Nsawam were sampled for the research. Using one-on-one interviews, focus group discussions, semi structured questionnaires and observations; the sampled individuals shared cultural practices, beliefs and norms around environmental stewardship. Results of the study showed that almost all Indigenous communities developed complex systems that guided their existence and well-being. These systems were enshrined in sets of intricate relationships that existed between both humans and non-humans. These relations were regulated by sets of practices, norms and beliefs, which are mostly imbedded in African Traditional Religion (ATR). Thus Indigenous Ghanaian environmental stewardship reflected vital cultural and societal values such as responsibility, accountability, reciprocity, spirituality, and harmony. Three main African environmental ethics were established; first; interconnection and interdependence; second, environmental spirituality; and third, respect for authority. The study concluded with proposed changes in the Ghanaian education and health systems based on these ethics and other important local practices. Significant was the inclusion of local languages and local teaching methodologies in the classroom as well as health institutions. As an exploratory research, the results are capable of producing very well-founded cross-contextual generalities such as localized school curricula, localized health education and policies, which could be adapted for other Indigenous African nations. | Ph.D. | institution, forest, pollut, Sanitation | 6, 13, 15, 16 |
| Davidson, Adrienne | Skogstad, Grace | Flexibility in the Federal System? Institutional Innovation and Indigenous Nations’ Self-Determination in the US and Canadian Far North | Political Science | 2018-11 | Since the early 1970s, Indigenous nations in northern Canada and the United States have secured a heightened level of governing autonomy through the creation of new institutions of self- and shared-rule. While much attention has been devoted to the political factors that allowed for development of these institutions, and their operation within the federal governance framework, this thesis argues that these new institutions have important political implications that have, as yet, been largely unexplored. The settlement of modern land claim agreements, beginning in the 1970s, was a response by the United States and Canadian federal governments to Indigenous demands for self-determination. The decision to settle modern land claim agreements marked a move away from the dominant policy paradigm of assimilation, and into a new paradigm that recognized Indigenous goals for economic self-determination, and which is increasingly responsive to Indigenous demands for political self-determination through self-government. This ideational shift enabled the development of new sites of Indigenous authority within the federal political system. By building a comparative analysis of the political dynamics across four cases—the Northwest Arctic and North Slope regions in Alaska, and the Inuvialuit and Gwich’in regions in the Northwest Territories—this thesis argues that early decisions by the state have had significant, and reinforcing, effects on the development of the institutional spaces for Indigenous minority nations. How these institutions were designed and implemented has had important implications for the degree to which they reinforce or reconstitute conceptions of national or cultural identity. It also has important implications for the degree to which these new institutions are successful at reducing conflicts between the minority nation and the state. By developing a novel framework of minority national conflict, I am able to illustrate how these decisions influence contemporary political dynamics. | Ph.D. | governance | 16 |
| Davidson, Lisa Marie | McElhinny, Bonnie | Living in a World of ‘Riotous Difference’: Canadian Multiculturalism and Christian Hospitality within the Presbyterian Church in Toronto (Tkaronto) | Anthropology | 2019-11 | With the secularization of Canadian public institutions, mainline protestant churches in urban centers are witnessing a steady decline in membership in recent decades. Church members are not participating in church activities as they once did, which has motivated some congregations to discuss the influence of immigration and multiculturalism within the church. This dissertation is an ethnographic study of the interethnic relationships and the value of multiculturalism in Presbyterian congregations in the multicultural and multiracial city of Toronto (Tkaronto), Ontario, and more broadly, within the national denomination of the Presbyterian Church of Canada. In recounting the crisis of church precarity, this dissertation considers the contours of church governance that structure racializing practices within congregations. Additionally, this study examines the virtue of hospitality, a central theme among Presbyterian congregations that attends to denominational identity, church-run social programmes, and inclusion of minorities within congregational polity. Based on 25 months of ethnographic research among three congregations, this dissertation focuses on the personal experiences and Christian understandings of racialized and white congregants who are working to develop a meaningful church community, which is fraught with ideological and affective friction. This thesis makes two key arguments. First, the inclusion of different (non-white) bodies is needed to sustain and grow the church, both economically and spiritually, yet different bodies and their subjectivities (vis-à-vis class, racialization, and age) are challenging to congregational unity in terms of Anglo-centric denominational identity. Second, to welcome its racially, ethnically and economically diverse participants, church members express a virtue of openness in welcoming guests and strangers. Christian hospitality, which is distinct from charity, mediates and at times blurs the boundaries between stranger, guest and host, as well as the cleavages arising from modes of inclusion and exclusion. The friction in 'welcoming the stranger', a ubiquitous phrase indexing Christian hospitality, is a theological, ideological and practical conundrum. The friction is revealed in the narratives of congregants and the mundane acts of in/hospitality that highlight the affective, temporal, and spatial ambiguities that arise from the politics and ethics of integration. Throughout, this thesis investigates the linkages and ruptures between Christian hospitality and Canadian state multiculturalism. | Ph.D. | urban, institution | 11, 16 |
| Davies, Jennifer Lee | Chen, Charles P | Learning Experiences and Career Successes of Immigrant Professionals in Canada | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2019-11 | Canada, a nation reliant on immigrants for economic growth, has invited millions of professionals to live here, but census and survey data show that a majority of newcomers do not integrate into the Canadian workplace at levels commensurate with their education and experience. The reasons for this are unclear. Many recent immigrant professionals turn to retraining as part of a plan to regain their former professional status, but the results of this strategy have not been fully examined. This qualitative study examined the work search and retraining experiences of recent immigrant professionals in Canada. Twenty-six men and 26 women, economic immigrants to Canada, well-educated professionals in their countries of origin, described the challenges they experienced in semi-structured interviews. The challenges they described included understanding the economy and managing their expectations for initial employment; work search difficulties such as lacking a professional network; the vagaries of chance and opportunity; and planning for retraining, sometimes to obtain an entire Canadian credential in their field. Additionally, support programs offered to newcomers are not always based on a career development theory, nor are all career development theories tested against reality. The present study also uses the experiences described by the study participants to examine the utility of career self-determination theory (Chen, 2017), an emerging career development metatheory grounded in the psychology of motivation. This study found the three basic career needs proposed by Chen – career autonomy, career competence, and career relatedness – plus a fourth motivational career need, career consistency, in the work search and retraining experiences of these immigrant professionals. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed, and suggestions for further research are provided. | Ed.D. | women, employment, economic growth | 5, 8 |
| Daviet, Remi | Burda, Martin||Gourieroux, Christian | Methods for statistical analysis and prediction of discrete choices | Economics | 2018-11 | The increasing availability of individual-level consumer data has facilitated the development of new methods for analyzing and predicting people's product choices. This thesis contributes to the existing body of literature with three chapters advancing the statistical analysis of discrete choice. In Chapter 1, I propose a new model seeking to elaborate on the role that choice set composition, known as context, plays in a discrete choice problem. Specifically, I generalize a state-of-the-art class of models stemming from recent research on neural normalization to the multi-attribute setting. I impose a structural model composition based on the brain synaptic plasticity literature, allowing for a particular form of correlation between product utilities. I highlight the properties of the model with a series of experiments and real-world empirical applications. In Chapter 2, I propose a new Monte Carlo method, called Hamiltonian Sequential Monte Carlo (HSMC), for the purpose of nonparametric estimation of unobserved consumer heterogeneity in discrete choice problems. HSMC combines the advantages of Sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) and Hamiltonian transition dynamics. SMC exploits gains from parallelization very efficiently as the core computational load involving the model likelihood is performed by many individual particles independently of one another. At the same time, by using first-derivative information, Hamiltonian transition dynamics has been shown to yield substantial gains in Markov chain mixing properties relative to the standard random walk proposal steps outside of the SMC context. I compare the performance of HSMC with SMC on a discrete choice model of consumer purchases with nonparametric consumer heterogeneity and show the favorable properties of HSMC. In Chapter 3, I propose a Bayesian method called Sequential Optimal Inference (SOI) providing an optimal sequence of questions in experiments. Experiments are frequently used to elicit preferences of potential consumers. Using SOI, the questions are adaptively designed to maximize the expected information and take into account the subjects' previous answers. The method also allows for real-time inference and provides updated posterior distributions while the experiment is performed. Existing methods were created for specific sub-cases. SOI is more general, nesting a large class of models and allowing for a number of inference objectives. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Davy, Christina M. | Murphy, Robert W. | Conservation Genetics of Freshwater Turtles | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-03 | Turtles have long life spans, overlapping generations and promiscuous mating systems. Thus, they are an ideal system with which to investigate the application of conservation genetics methods and assumptions to long-lived organisms. Turtles are also one of the most threatened groups of vertebrates and conservation genetics studies are essential to effective recovery of turtle species. This thesis has two main objectives: 1) to evaluate some common population genetics assumptions with respect to turtles and other long-lived organisms, and 2) to collect important information on the population genetics of threatened turtles in Ontario, which can be used to inform species recovery. In Chapters Two and Three, I describe the development of novel microsatellite markers for the snapping turtle and spiny softshell. In Chapter Four I demonstrate significant genetic structure in populations of the endangered spotted turtle in Ontario, and find that “bottleneck tests” may fail to detect recent population declines in small turtle populations. I also show that spotted turtles do not show the typical correlation between population size and genetic diversity. In Chapter Five I use microsatellite markers developed in Chapter Two and document population structure in the widespread snapping turtle for the first time. I compare these results with results from Chapter Four to test the traditionally accepted hypothesis that genetic diversity is reduced in small, isolated populations compared to large, connected populations. As in Chapter Four, my results suggest that the usual patterns of genetic structure and loss of diversity may not apply to turtles. In Chapter Six I conduct a conservation genetics study of the endangered Blanding’s turtle. Finally, in Chapter Seven I combine results from spotted, snapping and Blanding’s turtles to test whether vagility predicts population structure, genetic diversity and significant barriers to gene flow in three species sampled across a single landscape. Analyses reveal minimal congruence in barriers to gene flow and the three species show unexpected and contrasting patterns of diversity across the landscape. Discordant patterns among species highlight areas for further research and shed light on possible cryptic behaviour, and I discuss potential further directions for research in the Summary. | PhD | conserv | 14 |
| Davy, Eulite Lyn | Ryan, James | Culturally Responsive Leadership:How Principals Employ Culturally Responsive Leadership to Shape the School Experiences of Marginalized Students | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-11 | This qualitative study research examines how 2 elementary principals in Ontario schools employ culturally responsive leadership (CRL) to shape the school experiences of marginalized students. In particular, it explores the strategies 2 principals use to enact this approach to leadership, the barriers and resistance they face that impede their social justice agenda, the supports that facilitate their work in schools, and the impact CRL has on various stakeholders. This study employed semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions guided by the conceptual framework derived from the literature review around culturally responsive pedagogy, culturally responsive leadership, social justice leadership, and educational leadership. Five teachers from each school were also interviewed in order to capture their insights as to how their principalâ s culturally responsive leadership practices impacted their teaching and understanding of cultural responsiveness. The findings in the study show that principal participants foster a cultural responsive culture, promote culturally responsive pedagogy, create a welcoming climate in their school and build authentic relationships with all stakeholders, to move their social justice agenda forward. They also advocate passionately on behalf of their community to access resources to benefit students and families in the school community. These administrators also endeavor to change unjust structures that serve to perpetuate inequity and deter students from reaching high academic standards. In doing so, these leaders encounter formidable resistance and obstacles, despite which they continue to respond to the needs of their community in order to create socially just and equitable schools. | Ed.D. | equitable, justice | 4, 16 |
| Dawe, Meghan | Dinovitzer, Ronit | Stratification in the Canadian Legal Profession: The Role of Social Capital and Social Isolation in Shaping Lawyers’ Careers | Sociology | 2018-11 | The North American legal profession has traditionally excluded marginalized social groups via formal entry barriers and other social closure mechanisms. While many of these obstacles have eroded over time and the legal profession is more heterogeneous today than in the past, formal and informal obstacles maintain the ongoing professional dominance of white men from privileged social backgrounds. Although lawyers represent a powerful and elite social group, the legal profession’s internal hierarchies reflect the unequal distribution of status, opportunities, and rewards among its members, making it an important site for examining professional stratification. Using a national survey of a cohort of recent entrants to the Canadian legal profession, I examine stratification in the legal profession and the mechanisms that sustain workplace disparities and discrimination. I find that traditional hierarchies persist and that new lines of demarcation have emerged. Moreover, I find that social capital and social isolation are key mechanisms driving divergent outcomes and experiences for traditionally disadvantaged groups of lawyers in their early careers. Specifically, I find that spending time with partners and other senior attorneys increases earnings and decreases experiences of workplace discrimination; having a woman mentor and a higher proportion of racial and ethnic minorities in the workplace reduce the odds of experiencing discrimination; and having a racial/ethnic minority mentor increases the odds of expressing mobility intentions for lawyers working in private law firms. Workplace relationships operate as both assets and liabilities in lawyers’ careers; having partners notice and invest in you and being surrounded by coworkers and mentors who ‘look like you’ can bolster the careers of lawyers from traditionally disadvantaged groups, yet socially similar mentors can also exacerbate the consequences of outsider status if they too are outsiders within the profession. Thus, social capital both facilitates and constrains lawyers’ careers and stratification in the legal profession. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| de Jesus-Bretschneider, Angelica | Daniere, Amrita | Transforming Climate Resilience: A Case Study of Myanmar Migrants in Phuket, Thailand | Geography | 2018-11 | Climate resilience is a system’s ability to absorb climate change disturbances and reorganize in a way that the system retains the same function and identity. The concept of climate resilience is widely criticized for its neutral and post-political approach to planning for climate change. Resilience practitioners typically conduct vulnerability assessments to identify how institutions, systems, and actors are at risk from climate change. However, because practitioners focus on climate exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacities of essential infrastructure systems, such as settlement areas, water supply networks, and food systems, practitioners tend to overlook the inherently political nature of vulnerability and the broader social structures that create or reinforce it, especially for marginalized people. My research on the lives of 80 Myanmar migrants in Phuket, Thailand serves as a case study for the importance of taking a directly political approach to planning for climate resilience. In this thesis, I describe the vulnerabilities of Myanmar migrants in Phuket as embodied structural violence, which refers to the economic, political, and cultural dynamics that systematically cause human suffering and constrain human agency to meet personal needs and goals. Resilience practitioners in Phuket can apply a structural violence lens, particularly during the vulnerability assessment process, to identify and address social structures that create vulnerabilities, including elitism, nepotism, fragmentation, and discrimination in Thailand. Unfortunately, people who are underrepresented in policymaking and planning process in Thailand, including Myanmar migrants, are often the ones to bear the disproportionate costs of climate change. Thus, resilience practitioners must advocate for an explicitly political, inclusive, and participatory approach; for example, one that incorporates the experiences and knowledge of all inhabitants in Phuket. Through my research, I also add to the discourse of planning for migrant communities, especially at a time when renowned international institutions, such as the United Nations, are highlighting significant planning and policymaking challenges linked to climate change-induced migration. | Ph.D. | food, inclusive, water, infrastructure, cities, urban, resilien, climate | 2, 5, 7, 10, 12, 14 |
| De Luna, Phil | Sargent, Edward H | Nanostructured Electrocatalysts for CO2 Conversion | Materials Science and Engineering | 2019-06 | Renewables-powered electrochemical activation and conversion of water + CO2 into hydrocarbons and oxygenates could potentially offer a sustainable, low-net-emissions, route to produce many of the world’s most needed commodity chemicals and fuels. In this thesis I report progress in the synthesis, characterization, and computational modelling of electrocatalyst materials for the CO2 reduction reaction. I show how experiment, theory, and spectroscopy can be used together to uncover physicochemical phenomena; I build nanostructured materials to exploit these phenomena; and I integrate these materials into electrocatalytic systems. I first begin by examining the pathways toward industrial implementation of CO2 reduction technology. I give a brief technoeconomic analysis and carbon emissions assessment of certain valuable products. I then describe the concept of Field-Induced Reagent Concentration (FIRC) on gold nanoneedle catalysts. This entails the use of nanostructured morphologies to produce a high local electric field that attracts positively charged cations to stabilize CO2 reaction intermediates to produce CO with Faradaic efficiencies above 90% and overpotentials of 240 mV. I continue with a description of the potential for tandem catalysis between metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) and gold nanoneedles towards tuning CO2 reduction. Next, I describe how thin layers of amorphous sulfide-doped tin catalysts on top of gold nanoneedles can modulate CO2 reduction towards formic acid synthesis with Faradaic efficiencies of 93% and current densities of 55 mA cm−2 over 40 hours. I then demonstrate a new bottom-up synthesis, catalyst electro-redeposition, that allows simultaneous control over morphology and oxidation state of copper to produce ethylene selectively. I use a combination of spectroscopy and computational simulation to explain the electronic structure-property relationships of this new catalyst and report a partial ethylene current density of 160 mA cm–2 and an ethylene/methane ratio of 200. I conclude by describing emerging directions in the field including greater understanding of electrocatalyst evolution, inspiration from biology, and integration into electrolyzer systems. I discuss the wider relevance of nanostructuring as a means to control and enhance catalytic activity. | Ph.D. | water, renewable, industr | 6, 7, 2009 |
| De Vera, Joan | Bergquist, Bridget | Tracing the Distribution of Pb and Trace Elements in the Canadian Arctic from the Atmosphere to the Ocean | Earth Sciences | 2020-06 | Trace elements (TEs) play important roles in biogeochemical processes in the Arctic and understanding their cycling along with their isotopes will help us understand better the warming induced changes in the Arctic. This dissertation measured Pb, its isotopes and other TEs in aerosols and seawater samples collected in the Canadian Arctic. Lead and its isotopes are useful particulate source tracers and can be used to understand particulate contaminant inputs and oceanic circulation. Iron is also evaluated because it is an important micronutrient for primary production in the ocean. This study shows that anthropogenic aerosols from Europe and Russia (Eurasia) still dominate during the Arctic Haze period (winter–spring) and particulate pollution levels are relatively stable in the Arctic since the 2000s. This study also traced the anthropogenic Pb from aerosols to the Canadian Arctic seawater using Pb isotope measurements. Historic Eurasian Pb with distinctively low 206Pb/207Pb ( | Ph.D. | water, production, ocean, pollut | 12, 13, 14 |
| DeBeer, Yvette | Joshee, Reva | Ideologically Informed: A Policy Archaeology of Special Education in Ontario, 1965-1980 | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-11 | Waves of education reform in Ontario since the 1960s have resulted in widespread changes to curriculum, governance, and policy directives. Despite these continual reforms the structures and the practices of special education have changed very little since the early twentieth century. This dissertation looks at special education policy historically (1965-1980) in Ontario and offers an explanation for this resistance to change. Policy archaeology is developed in this study to map policy texts backwards through time and to interpret the meaning of policy discourses in these texts. The discourses produced by various policy actors are interpreted within the historical context to illuminate the ideologically informed beliefs of society about children with disabilities and their education. The ideologies of conservatism, liberalism, and scientific rationalism continue to construct the identities of children with disabilities as deviant from “normal” children. These differences are scientifically measured and quantified by medical and psychological professionals. The hierarchical organization of schooling sorts students into homogeneous groups according to ability. The constructed identities and segregated placements marginalize children with disabilities from the opportunities available to children in the regular classroom. Ideologies are stable and enduring and contribute to the stability of beliefs about special education in spite of extensive and continuous reforms in other areas of education. This dissertation builds on the earlier theories of the policy web (Joshee & Johnson, 2005). The large policy web of special education is composed of individual webs of meaning that represent the condensation symbols of disability, education, professionalism, management, and equality in particular ways that support the marginalization of children with disabilities. These webs are internally cohesive and related to each other by shared discourses. These interconnections give the web an intricate, irregular design but also give the web strength. Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of capital, the members of the Ontario Association for Children with Learning Disabilities, and its members as individuals, held high forms of capital that were used as power. This association shaped policy discourses in particular ways that influenced beliefs about learning disabilities, acquired resources for children with learning disabilities, and reproduced privilege for the association. | EDD | educat, equality | 4, 5 |
| Debnath, Mrinal Kanti | Olson, Paul | Living on the Edge: The Predicament of a Rural Indigenous Santal Community in Bangladesh | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-11 | This thesis explores the ways in which the legacy of colonialism continues to shape the material and non-material conditions of rural indigenous communities in Bangladesh. This research examines the complex confluence of power, politics, economics, and identities in rural Bangladesh; it explores the web of local, national, and global mechanisms that (re)create and maintain oppressive systems and structures. Adopting an anti-colonial discursive framework and a case study approach, this research incorporates data from semi-structured and informal, in-depth individual interviews, focus-group interviews, an observational journal, and a review of relevant literature to study a remote Santal village in the Rajshahi division of Bangladesh. This study focuses on the voices of the local people, their experiences and narratives, and analyzes the data within the wider contexts of history, politics, and culture. The anti-colonial discursive framework that guides this study acknowledges the material and intellectual agency of local people and the value of their knowledge and lived experiences; it contributes to understanding local history and culture and the saliency of local resistance to oppressive practices. The research findings reveal that colonial structures of oppression are perpetuated by the devaluation of indigenous peoples’ mother tongue, education, culture, and religion and by distancing them from the land that has belonged to them for centuries. The findings present a shift from the ritual-based, cultural matrix of the rural indigenous community and its tradition-oriented socio-political and education systems. Exclusionary policies and practices of the nation state and Christian aggression have fragmented the Santal community, devalued their collectivist mode of living, and alienated them from their traditional ways of life. The process of land alienation has perpetuated the colonial legacy of terra nullius and displaced the indigenous Santal community’s sense of belonging and its inherent connection to Mother Earth, the bongas , and the spirits of their ancestors. This dissertation suggests that there is urgent need for activism to resist colonial structures of oppression that continue to this day. This study contributes to literature on anti-colonial struggles across the globe and offers a framework for understanding other colonial and indigenous contexts. | EDD | rural, educat | 4, 11 |
| Dechief, Diane Yvonne | Caidi, Nadia | Designing Names: Requisite Identity Labour for Migrants' Be(long)ing in Ontario | Information Studies | 2015-06 | This dissertation responds to the question of why people who immigrate to Ontario, Canada frequently choose to use their personal names in altered forms. Between May and December 2010, I engaged in semi-structured interviews with twenty-three people who, while living in Ontario, experienced name challenges ranging from persistent, repetitive misspellings and mispronunciations of their original names to cases of significant name alterations on residency documents, and even to situations of exclusion and discrimination. Drawing on critical perspectives from literature on identity and performativity, science and technology studies, race and immigration, affect, and onomastics (the study of names), I establish that name challenges are a form of "identity labour" required of many people who immigrate to Ontario. I also describe how individuals' identity labour changes over time. In response to name challenges, and the need to balance between their sometimes-simultaneous audiences, participants design their names for life in Ontario--by deciding which audiences to privilege, they choose where they want to belong, and how their names should be. | Ph.D. | labour | 8 |
| DeFalco, Randle Charles | BrunnĂŠe, Jutta | International Crimes as Familiar Spectacles: Socially Constructed Understandings of Atrocity and the Visibility Politics of International Criminal Law | Law | 2017-11 | This thesis examines the role aesthetic considerations play in the development of shared social and legal understandings of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Utilizing a social constructivist, interactional legal theory analytical framework, I argue that aesthetic considerations play a major role in identifying these international crimes. The “visibility politics” resulting from this heavy reliance on aesthetic factors in turn, influence social interactions through which shared understandings of these crimes are developed, resulting in shared understandings of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes being embedded in a particular aesthetic model of atrocity. According to this model, atrocity crimes are expected to manifest themselves as familiar spectacles of violence and abuse that are both shocking and intuitively “criminal” in nature. While at first glance, this understanding may appear to merely reflect the extraordinary scale of atrocity crimes themselves, the notion that such crimes will necessarily manifest themselves according to this aesthetic model ignores the complexities of mass harm causation, and the substance of international criminal law (ICL). Chapter one, combining insights from interactional legal theory and the field of neuroaesthetics, theorizes ICL as an environment conducive to aesthetic considerations influencing relevant norm development processes. Chapter two, through an analysis of how the language of atrocity is deployed within ICL discourses, argues that shared understandings of atrocity crimes are grounded in an aesthetic model of atrocities as familiar spectacles of violence and abuse. Chapter three demonstrates that this aesthetic model fails to account for the complexity of real-world atrocity situations and the wide variety of means through which genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes may be committed. Chapter four examines how visibility politics have shaped social and legal understandings of processes of mass killing and abuse in Khmer Rouge era Cambodia and elsewhere. Chapter five argues that visibility politics undermine the aims of ICL and negatively influence historical memory and the distribution of human rights, transitional justice, and peacebuilding resources. Chapter six, returning to interactional legal theory, argues that the visibility politics of ICL also impair the legality legitimacy of ICL itself, by undermining ICL’s adherence in practice to interactionalism’s criteria of legality. | S.J.D. | JUSTICE | 16 |
| deGelder, Mettje Christine | Lambek, Michael ||Sanders, Todd | Reluctant Relations: And Ethnography of 'Outreach' in a Post-apartheid City | Anthropology | 2011-03 | This dissertation focuses on performance, moral practice, and self-respect in an urban South African setting. Taking as its point of departure the emergence and rapid expansion, in the 1990s and 2000s, of an outreach organization I call Jesus People Pretoria (JPP), it discusses this NGO’s attempt to create a ‘moral community’ in the post-apartheid city from the diverse vantage points of its Afrikaner leaders, its clients, and—most emphatically—its lay workers, the majority of whom are black women. Gradually moving from the everyday stage of outreach labour towards women’s gendered performances within and beyond the work environment, it proposes that at stake in the making of the JPP moral community is the negotiation of self-respect, which hinges upon the degree to which interactions imply the fostering or refutation of mutual respect, or the measure of the ‘equality’ of the exchange. As an urban entity deeply entwined in and illuminative of South Africa’s broader post-apartheid ironies, including ongoing race-based differentiation and the pervasiveness of HIV/AIDS and death, predominantly moral practice here remains but ambivalently constituted. Yet this does not denote the absence of the moral but temporarily rests it in the region of the indistinct, the unresolved, in the moment of its apparent impossibility or unachievability. | PhD | gender, equality, labour, worker, urban, environment | 5, 8, 11, 13 |
| Dehghan Najmabadi, Alireza | Peterson, Karl | Durability testing protocols for concrete made with alternative binders and recycled materials | Civil Engineering | 2018-06 | Recent strategies to reduce the carbon footprint and environmental impact of concrete include the reduction or elimination of portland cement and utilization of waste materials. The impact of these changes on the durability of concrete is an active area of research, but less-so in terms of the characterization and interpretation of the micro-structural responses of these new concrete mixtures to traditional durability tests. This research explores novel approaches for performing durability tests that are commonly used in the areas of chloride ingress, external sulfate attack, and alkali silica reaction (ASR) in an effort to refine and improve the current methods of testing. To validate a durability testing approach, its suitability and effectiveness should be checked against a wide range of concrete compositions, hence, various mixtures with different physical and chemical characteristics, including binders with either straight portland cement, alkali activated slag, alkali activated fly ash, or alkali activated metakaolin were prepared and tested. First, a micro x-ray fluorescence (µXRF) method was developed to measure chloride ingress through the use of multiple calibration curves to account for matrix effects across the variety of binder systems. Second, two different sulfate resistance testing protocols were compared, and a similar µXRF approach was developed to measure sulfate ingress, with phase changes evaluated by a scanning electron microscope combined with x-ray energy dispersive spectrometry (SEM/EDS). Third, a new digital-image-based approach for conducting the damage rating index (DRI) was developed and the indexes were compared with the traditional method. Finally, the addition of fibres recovered from recycled glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) was found to be innocuous in terms of ASR expansion in accelerated mortar beam and concrete prism tests, and the pozzolanic reactivity of the recycled GFRP fibres was confirmed by SEM/EDS. | Ph.D. | energy, waste, recycl, environment | 7, 12, 13 |
| Delaney, Sarah | Ito, Shinya||Colantonio, David | Drug Monitoring in Breast Milk: Novel Insights on Pharmacokinetics and Infant Exposure Estimates | Pharmacology | 2018-11 | The health benefits of breastfeeding are numerous and well described. It has been reported that ~70% of women take medication in the postpartum period; however, little is known about drug excretion into breast milk and infant exposure estimates are often unreliable. This gap in knowledge is due to the fact that women are excluded from clinical trials if they are lactating and carrying out a formal pharmacokinetic study is both ethically and practically challenging. The lack of knowledge and uncertainty on drug safety during lactation causes women to discontinue breastfeeding prematurely in order to take a medication or decide not to initiate breastfeeding altogether. While most drugs are considered to be compatible with breastfeeding, inaccurate infant exposure predictions of drugs in breast milk have led to infant adverse events and even fatalities. The overall aims of this thesis were to investigate the safety of three drugs and their use during lactation: methotrexate, escitalopram, and infliximab. Using a combination of newly developed analytical techniques, in silico methods, and animal lactation models, this thesis helps provide an updated framework for studying the safety of drugs during breastfeeding. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Delano, Kaitlyn E. | Ito, Shinya | Utilizing Biomarkers to Assess Prevalence and Trends of Substance Use During Pregnancy in Canada | Pharmacology | 2015-11 | Substance use during pregnancy is associated with numerous risks to both mother and fetus. Studies of the prevalence and trends of substance use during pregnancy have predominantly relied on maternal self-report, which is known to be unreliable and inaccurate. The emerging use of biomarkers has presented researchers and clinicians with the opportunity to assess this complex matter in a more objective and reliable manner. The overall objective of the research described in this thesis is to utilize biomarkers to assess prevalence rates and trends of substance use during pregnancy in Canada. This objective was addressed through three studies focusing on distinct populations. The first study focuses on a highly specific population of methadone-using pregnant women involved in social services, and found that rates of polydrug use (specifically opioid use) were similar to a negative control group, with approximately half of individuals continuing to use additional opioids during pregnancy. The second study highlights a routine urine drug screen program within the obstetric unit of a regional hospital; we conclude that the prevalence of substance use in this population is close to three times the national average, and that drug use during pregnancy is associated with more maternal and neonatal complications. Lastly, the third study aims to estimate the prevalence of heavy fetal alcohol exposure through the analysis of fatty acid ethyl esters in meconium samples collected nationwide, and reveals that the prevalence ranges between 1.16 and 2.40%, the equivalent of at least 1,800 new cases of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder in Canada each year. Overall, this research provides new insights into the prevalence and trends of substance use during pregnancy, and aims to guide future public education initiatives and highlight the continuing need for more effective, accessible treatment options for pregnant women who struggle with substance use. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Deligiannis, Athanasios Tom | Homer-Dixon, Thomas | Environmental and Demographic Change and Rural Violence in Peru: A Case Study of the District of Chuschi, Ayacucho | Political Science | 2020-06 | Considerable debate exists about whether and how human-induced pressure on the natural environment contributes to violent conflict. This dissertation examines whether human-induced environmental and demographic change helped generate rural violence in the District of Chuschi, in the South-Central Andes of Peru in the latter half of the 20th century, in the years leading up to the Sendero Luminoso insurgency in 1980. The dissertation’s findings reveal that long-term patterns of resource capture and human-induced environmental and demographic change, combined with prevailing local, regional, and national political-economic currents in Peru over the 20th century to increase inter-community competition for valuable but limited agricultural resources – over range lands, crop lands, and water resources. In particular, these changes conditioned patterns of violence between two neighbouring communities in the District – the Community of Chuschi and the Community of Quispillacta. Changes aggravated conflictual relationships between Chuschi and Quispillacta over rights to long-contested resources that were essential to increasingly pressured livelihoods in both communities. Change and contest resulted in winners and losers, with implications for social stability years into the future. Quispillacta largely emerged as the victor in these community resource conflicts. However, their victory fostered enduring resentment in Chuschi - the traditional administrative centre of the District - and among Chuschi’s associated hamlets. These grievances spilled out during the Sendero insurgency as some in rival communities falsely accused Quispillacta of being a centre of Sendero militancy, accusations likely stemming from community members who lost out in the inter-community land competition. Quispillacta suffered terribly as a result in the Peruvian military’s counter-insurgency bloodletting, disproportionately more than Chuschi and its associated hamlets – score-settling by counter-insurgency. Human pressure on the local environment and people’s adaptive choices to these pressures thus helped condition patterns of violence in the decades before the Sendero insurgency, and patterns of violence once the insurgency heated up in the area. Understanding why violence took the shape that it did in Chuschi during the insurgency and over the previous century in various small-scale confrontations requires examining the interface of human-induced environmental change and demographic change, in the relation to socio-economic changes in the region. | Ph.D. | water, rural, environment | 6, 11, 13 |
| Della Rovere Proia, Clelia | Ryan, James | Creating Inclusive Schools for LGBTQ Populations - A Study Exploring Strategies School Leaders Employ for LGBTQ Inclusion | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-11 | The purpose of this study is to explore specific strategies that inclusive-minded elementary principals use to create more inclusive school environments for LGBTQ populations, which continue to be underrepresented in different facets of school community life. Qualitative interview data was collected across different school districts from thirteen elementary principals who actively promote the inclusion of LGBTQ populations in Ontario schools. The data suggests that, despite the number of barriers that principals face in their efforts to create more inclusive school environments for LGBTQ populations, school leaders employ many strategies to strategically and intentionally facilitate school environments that are welcoming, respectful, and inclusive for individuals who identify as LGBTQ. The findings of this research have implications for the urgency for this work as well as the possibilities to realize school communities which are inclusive of LGBTQ communities. The findings also have implications for professional learning for leaders in the area of inclusion and social justice. In addition, supports and appropriate resources that are needed to enhance the work of LGBTQ inclusion in schools are highlighted. | Ed.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Deller, Fiona | Chambers, Anthony | Early Intervention Programs for Low Income Students: What Can Evaluations Reveal? A Systematic Review | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-06 | In Canada and the United States, young people from low-income families are less likely than other youth to enroll in postsecondary education. The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of early intervention programs on the participation of low-income students in postsecondary education, by looking at existing program evaluations. Early intervention is a programmatic approach to improving access to postsecondary education. Programs are designed to start early in the educational pathway and help those youth who might otherwise not participate in postsecondary education get the resources, support, counselling and information they need to participate. This study attempts to answer the question, what can evaluations reveal about the impact of early intervention programs on the postsecondary education preparation and enrollment of low-income youth. To try to answer the research question, this study examines 14 existing early intervention program evaluations, and the literature on program evaluations, to better understand the impact of these programs on the target population. The 14 program evaluations examined in this study include the following about how low-income students are served: the programs taken as a whole had moderate to strong impact on high school graduation and postsecondary enrollment, but moderate to nil impact on academic achievement and postsecondary retention; the effects seem to diminish when students leave the programs; the application process is a strong determinant of success in programs that require application, implying that these programs serve those students who are already motivated and aspirational; and, the impact of “place-based” programs which theoretically serve the most at-risk, low-income students, are ambiguous and require significantly more research. Finally, to better understand the impact of early intervention programs, it is recommended that there be a stronger emphasis on evaluation in these programs, and that future evaluations take into consideration the application process as a confounding variable in the effect of the program (i.e., have an experimental or quasi-experimental design with a control for application). | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Demirtas, Derya | Chan, Timothy C.Y.||Kwon, Roy H. | Facility Location under Uncertainty and Spatial Data Analytics in Healthcare | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-06 | Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is a significant public health issue and treatment, namely, cardiopulmonary resuscitation and defibrillation, is very time-sensitive. Public access defibrillation programs, which deploy automated external defibrillators (AEDs) for bystander use in an emergency, have been shown to reduce the time to defibrillation and improve survival rates. The focus of this thesis is on data-driven decision making aimed at improving survival from OHCA by analyzing cardiac arrest risk and optimizing AED deployment. This work establishes a unique marriage of data analytics and facility location optimization to address both the demand (cardiac arrest) and supply (AED) sides of the AED deployment problem. In the demand side, we analyze the spatiotemporal trends of OHCAs in Toronto and show that the OHCA risk is stable at the neighborhood level over time. In other words, high risk areas tend to remain high risk, which supports focusing public health resources for cardiac arrest intervention and prevention in those areas to increase the efficiency of these scarce resources and improve the long-term impact. In the supply side, we develop a comprehensive modeling framework to support data-driven decision making in the deployment of public location AEDs, with the ultimate goal of increasing the likelihood of AED usage in a cardiac arrest emergency. As a part of this framework, we formulate three optimization models that consider probabilistic coverage of cardiac arrests using AEDs and address specific, real-life scenarios about AED retrieval and usage. Our models generalize existing location models and incorporate differences in bystander behavior. The models are mixed integer nonlinear programs, and a contribution of this work lies in the development of mixed integer linear formulation equivalents and tight and easily computable bounds. Next, we use kernel density estimation to derive a spatial probability distribution of cardiac arrests that is used for optimization and model evaluation. Using data from Toronto, Canada, we show that optimizing AED deployment outperforms the existing approach by 40% in coverage and substantial gains can be achieved through relocating existing AEDs. Our results suggest that improvements in survival and cost-effectiveness are possible with optimization. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Demming, Keita | Quarter, Jack | Making Space for Social Innovation: What We Can Learn from the Midwifery Movement. | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-11 | I contend that the emerging field of social innovation is at risk of â social innovation washingâ â organizations capitalizing on the trend of social innovation, rather than actually innovating. The current discourse is loaded with language and approaches that suggest market-force solutions to social change and largely ignore that notion that each time we attempt social innovation, we evoke a site of struggle. I draw on literature that is grounded in understanding society from a lens of domination of others to propose a strategic approach to social innovation as an alternative to current conceptualization of the term. The thesis explores the question, how can social innovation be understood or used as a strategic or intentional approach to social change? I use a reflective and iterative approach to conceptualize social innovation. I argue that for an activity or process to be considered a social innovation, it needs to accomplish three things: to have changed social practices, relations, or interactions; deeply challenged or changed our existing paradigms (or stances); and significantly changed resource flows within an existing social system. After considering several potential case studies (for example, credit unions, insurance, or the internal combustion engine), I selected midwifery. Midwifery was the only example I could find that had experienced social innovation multiple times. Prior to the invention of hospitals, all births happened in homes and within communities. Later, and in many parts of the world, birth moved into hospitals and many communities were excluded from the birthing process. Today, we are witnessing a trend toward births occurring in homes, birthing centres or hospitals, with varying degrees of community inclusion. The thesis argues that for agents to achieve social innovation they need free spaces where they can co-develop their collective identity. Next, agents need to transform current spatial and social practices, existing stances, and finally, the extent to which they can be autonomous or dependent on the existing system. The thesis explored, midwifery communities in Trinidad and Ontario and proposed a model that forefronts the production and reproduction of space as being integral to creating the conditions for generating social innovation. | Ph.D. | innovation, production | 9, 12 |
| Deng, Feng | Chen, Jing Ming | Global CO2 Flux Inferred From Atmospheric Observations and Its Response to Climate Variabilities | Geography | 2011-06 | Atmospheric inversion has recently become an important tool in estimating CO2 sinks and sources albeit that the existing inversion results are often uncertain and differ considerably in terms of the spatiotemporal variations of the inverted carbon flux. More measurements combined with terrestrial ecosystem information are expected to improve the estimates of global surface carbon fluxes which are used to understand the relationships between variabilities of the terrestrial carbon cycle and anomalies of climatic factors. Inversions using more observations have often been hampered by the intense diurnal variations of CO2 concentrations at continental sites. Diurnal variations of the surface flux are included with atmospheric boundary dynamics in order to improve the atmospheric inversion accuracy. Modeling experiments conducted in this study show that inverse estimates of the carbon flux are more sensitive to the variation of the atmospheric boundary layer dynamics than to the diurnal variation in the surface flux. It is however generally better to consider both diurnal variations in the inversion than to consider only either of them. Forest carbon dynamics is closely related to stand age. This useful terrestrial ecosystem information has been used as an additional constraint to the atmospheric inversion. The inverse estimates with this constraint over North America exhibit an improved correlation with carbon sink estimates derived from eddy-covariance measurements and remotely-sensed data, indicating that the use of age information can improve the accuracy of atmospheric inversions. Terrestrial carbon uptake is found mainly in northern land, and a strong flux density is revealed in southeastern North America in an improved multi-year inversion from 2002 to 2007. The global interannual variability of the flux is dominated by terrestrial ecosystems. The interannual variabilities of regional terrestrial carbon cycles could be mostly explained by monthly anomalies of climatic conditions or short-time extreme meteorological events. Monthly anomalies of the inverted fluxes have been further analyzed against the monthly anomalies of temperature and precipitation to quantitatively assess the responses of the global terrestrial carbon cycle to climatic variabilities and to determine the dominant mechanisms controlling the variations of terrestrial carbon exchange. | PhD | forest | 15 |
| Denney, Steven Charles | Wong, Joseph | Does Democracy Matter? Political Change and National Identification in South Korea and Beyond | Political Science | 2019-11 | What is the relationship between political system type and preferences for national membership and belonging? Existing research suggests that preferences and institutions align. Cross-national work indicates that citizens in countries with consolidated democratic institutions have national identities that are more open and inclusive, whereas those in countries with weak democratic or authoritarian institutions tend to have more closed and exclusive national identities. But what about citizens in new(er) democracies? Do identities forged under autocratic regimes change, or are they resilient over time? Using pooled cross-sectional data on South Korean national identity between 2003 and 2015, this thesis considers whether people who were socialized under authoritarian political conditions have national identities different from those who came of age under democracy. Further, using newly collected survey and interview data, this thesis also leverages a natural experiment in institutional change to isolate the effects of both “growing up autocratic” and exposure to democratic institutions by comparing responses from native South Koreans with that of resettled North Korean migrants. The research presented here confirms the association between system type and national identity; democrats have more pluralistic and voluntarist conceptions of national membership and autocrats hold higher barriers to belonging and have more ascriptive national identities. The thesis further indicates the type of political system in which citizens are socialized determines, at least in part, their national identity. Overall, the research findings presented in this thesis make three contributions. First, it adds further evidence to existing bodies of literature which hold that institutions and individual preferences tend to align. Second, it also confirms findings from existing literature on political socialization, showing that formative years’ experiences generate attitudes that endure over the life-cycle. Third, it adds new insight and understanding of changes in South Korean national identity across generations. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Dergal, Julie | McDonald, Lynn | Family Members' Use of Private Companions in Nursing Homes: A Mixed Methods Study | Social Work | 2011-11 | Families who are dissatisfied with the nursing home care of their family member may supplement their care by hiring a private companion. Families who have the financial resources pay for extra care, while families who cannot afford a private companion receive the current standard of care. Anecdotal evidence suggests that private companion use has increased over time. However, there is no research that examines private companions. The goal of this mixed methods study was to provide empirical evidence about who private companions are, what they do, and why they are needed. Andersen and Newman’s Health Service Utilization Model was used to understand private companion use. This study used both survey research and grounded theory. A mailed survey was completed by 280 of 432 family members of nursing home residents in a Toronto nursing home, yielding a response rate of 65 percent. Grounded theory principles were used to conduct interviews with 10 family members to understand why private companions were hired. Almost two-thirds of nursing home residents had a private companion. Family members reported that they paid about $475 per week for private companions who provided about 40 hours of care per week. Private companions were mostly women and immigrants. Private companions performed many activities including assisting with activities of daily living, toileting, feeding, escorting to activities, and providing social support. In the survey, family members reported hiring a private companion for reasons related to families’ needs (e.g. quality of care concerns), residents’ needs (e.g. deteriorating health); and staff recommendations. The family members reiterated these reasons in the interviews. Quality of care was the overarching theme that captured the reason for private companion use, which encompassed the following themes: inadequate staffing, unmet residents’ needs, overburdened family members, and suboptimal nursing home environment. The qualitative data emphasized the importance of building relationships with nursing home residents. The predictors of private companion use in the multivariate analysis were longer duration of nursing home stay, higher resident dependency, and family members’ concerns with quality of care. This research is among the first to study private companions, and has implications for research, policy, and practice. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Derrible, Sybil | Kennedy, Christopher A. | The Properties and Effects of Metro Network Designs | Civil Engineering | 2010-11 | Since 2008, more than half of the world population lives in cities. To cope with this rapid urbanization in a sustainable manner, transit systems all around the world are likely to grow. By studying 33 networks in the world, this thesis identifies the properties and effects of metro network designs by using a graph theory approach. After the literature review, a new methodology was introduced to translate networks into graphs; it notably accounts for various transit specificities (e.g., presence of lines). Metro networks were then characterised according to their State, Form, and Structure; where State relates to the development phase of metros; Form investigates the link between metros and the built environment; Structure examines the intrinsic properties of metros, by notably looking at their connectivity. Subsequently, the complexity and robustness of metros were studied; metros were found to possess scale-free and small-world features although showing atypical topologies; robustness emphasizes on the presence of alternative paths. Three network design indicators (coverage, directness and connectivity) were then related to ridership (annual boardings per capita), and positive relations were observed, which suggests that network design plays an important role in their success. Finally, these concepts were applied to the Toronto metro plans announced by the Toronto regional transportation authority, Metrolinx; it was found that the grid-pattern nature of the plans could hinder the success of the metro; seven possible improvements were suggested. Overall, the topology of metro networks can play a key role in their success. The concepts presented here can particularly be useful to transit planners; they should also be used along with conventional planning techniques. New transit projects could benefit greatly from an analysis of their network designs, which in turn may play a relevant role in the global endeavour for sustainability. | PhD | cities, urban, environment | 11, 13 |
| Dersnah, Megan Alexandra | Levi, Ron | Feminist Practice in an International Bureaucracy: Contestation Over the Field of Peace and Security at the United Nations | Political Science | 2016-11 | This dissertation looks at the community of feminists who seek to advance women’s rights from within the UN system. It broadly asks: how does this community that is invested in a set of ideals go on to develop practices that promote organizational change within a constrained bureaucratic setting? At its heart, this dissertation seeks to understand the role of these individuals in creating change within the UN system, both at the level of normative advancement, through the adoption of new institutional rules, and also at the level of practice, in terms of making these norms meaningful in the everyday functioning of the organization as a whole. It adopts a theoretical approach that brings Bourdieu’s field theory into the IR literature on communities of practice, drawing to the foreground the dynamics of power and contestation in the field as actors struggle to drive change. In accounting for change, it analyzes how these feminists navigate emerging and persistent challenges and opportunities in and through their everyday practices, capturing their successes, failures, and compromises. It looks in particular at the practice of writing documents as key to strategic efforts to advance women’s rights. Through this approach, this dissertation makes visible the interactions between institutional constraints and strategic agency within the UN. It analyzes the case of the evolution of the ‘Women, Peace, and Security’ normative agenda, as well as the creation of UN Women, to understand the complexity of feminist engagement in these bureaucratic spaces. | Ph.D. | women, rights | 5, 16 |
| Deruiter, Wayne | Guy, Faulkner | A Longitudinal Examination of the Interrelationship of Multiple Health Behaviours | Exercise Sciences | 2014-11 | Background: Evaluating the interrelationship of health behaviours could assist in the development of effective public health interventions. Furthermore, the ability to identify cognitive mediating mechanisms that may influence multiple behavioural change requires further evaluation. Purpose: The objectives of this nationally representative multi-wave longitudinal analysis were: (1) to evaluate co-variation among health behaviours; specifically alcohol consumption, leisure-time physical activity, and smoking, and (2) to examine whether mastery acts as a mediating cognitive mechanism that facilitates multiple health behaviour change.Methods: Secondary data analysis was conducted on the first seven cycles of the Canadian National Population Health Survey. Data collection began in 1994/1995 and has continued biennially to 2006/2007. This longitudinal sample consisted of 15,167 Canadians 12 years of age or older. Alcohol consumption, leisure-time physical activity, and smoking were assessed as continuous variables. Parallel process growth curve models were used to analyze co-variation between health behaviours as well as to evaluate the potential mediating effects of perceived mastery. Results: An increase in leisure-time physical activity was associated with a greater reduction in tobacco use, while a flatter positive trajectory in alcohol consumption was associated with a steeper decline in tobacco use. Co-variation between alcohol consumption and leisure-time physical activity did not reach statistical significance. For the most part, mastery was unsuccessful in mediating the interrelationship of multiple behavioural changes.Conclusions: Health behaviours are not independent, but rather interrelated. Although one could argue that the estimated magnitude of such behavioural changes were quite small, modest and attainable behavioural changes at the population level can have considerable effects on the morbidity, mortality, and health care costs. In order to optimize limited prevention resources, these results suggest that population level intervention efforts targeting multiple modifiable behavioural risk factors may not need to occur simultaneously. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Despres-Bedward, Antoine | Brett, Clare | Exploring Online Engineering Education for Sustainable Development: Reconceptualizing Curriculum at Scale | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2019-11 | Projected growth in urban centers will require increased engineering talent and resources to facilitate the infrastructure demands of growing cities (Ibrahim et al., 2016). This study sought to understand how universities in Kenya, Rwanda and Canada were currently equipped to scale and support engineering programs on sustainable development. I travelled to Kenya and Rwanda in July of 2016, and to Canada in August and September of 2018, to study engineering programs and interview faculty members at five universities. Pinar’s (1975) method of currere was used as a theoretical framework for studying online engineering education in post-colonial contexts. The study paired the theoretical framework with a case study methodology. The study generated six themes related to scaling engineering education for sustainable development online. The themes are the engineering curriculum, online learning, accreditation, the progression from an engineering graduate to a professional, the government influences and international influences. The findings provide insights for a researcher and an educator to consider when studying and designing online engineering education for sustainable development at scale. The findings emphasize the importance of incorporating hands-on solutions in the engineering curriculum, the need to negotiate with the stakeholders from the universities, accreditation boards, local and international governments, and the importance of contextualizing the curriculum to the students and their environments. The findings also revealed the significant involvement of China in government-sponsored infrastructure projects in East Africa, the increase in the number of MOOCs on sustainable development, the importance purposefully filling academic and development spaces in a good way, and how the method of currere can be used to bridge a gap between engineering and education university departments. Further research is needed to explore how educators and researchers can develop the necessary skills to collaborate with individuals with different worldviews, understand the impact that China’s involvement in East Africa has on sustainable development and engineering education, interview other stakeholders identified by the participants, and, how future sustainable development projects will affect engineers and their environments. | Ph.D. | sustainable development, infrastructure, cities, urban | 8, 9, 11 |
| Devereux, Kevin | Siow, Aloysius | Essays in Interpersonal Economics | Economics | 2018-11 | Do people vary in their ability to work with others? In Chapter 1 I compare a worker's productivity in solitary production to their value-added to team production to identify team skills: the contribution to team production beyond that given by general skills. The identifying assumption is that workers use general skills in both production functions, but team skills only in team production. Professional tennis provides a useful setting to compare solo work (singles) to teamwork (doubles). I find that 50% of variation in team output is explained by team skills. This is robust to nonlinear production specifications. Players sort positively-assortatively along both skill dimensions, yielding indirect returns to skills of about half the magnitude of the direct returns. Team skills matter beyond tennis. An accumulating body of evidence identifies interpersonal skills as a driver of labour market trends in developed economies, including wage polarization and the emergence of the female labour force. Chapter 2 summarizes an interdisciplinary body of evidence on how interpersonal skills predict tangible life outcomes, with a focus on the labour market. There is convincing evidence that interpersonal skills play a primary role among noncognitive skills, and contribute to the execution of nonroutine tasks. Partnerships can thrive or falter also in the personal realm. Nearly 40% of new marriages will end in divorce, and recent divorcees remarry quickly. This prompts re-examination of the gains to marriage in terms of risk sharing. In Chapter 3 myself and my supervisor Laura Turner explore marriage and divorce when individuals can engage in on-the-marriage search (OTMS). Introducing OTMS allows us to match the rapid remarriage rates seen in US microdata and to explore the connections between infidelity, divorce, and remarriage reported in the sociology literature. In a second-best contracting world, OTMS has ambiguous implications for marriage as a consumption smoothing device and platform for raising children. We find that OTMS has variable effects on the first and second moments of consumption, making women worse off and men better off. Counterintuitively, OTMS has a positive effect on fertility because it increases the attractiveness of having children for men in mediocre marriages. | Ph.D. | production, labour, wage | 8, 12 |
| Devine, Cheryl E. | Edwards, Elizabeth A. | Identification of Key Organisms, Genes and Pathways in Benzene-degrading Methanogenic Cultures | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2013-11 | Benzene is a carcinogenic hydrocarbon and a widespread groundwater contaminant. Microbial mineralization of benzene is possible, but the process is slow and not well understood under the anaerobic conditions that are often prevalent at contaminated sites. The goals of this study were to gain a better understanding of key organisms, genes and metabolic pathways associated with benzene degradation in methanogenic enrichment cultures. Conditions required for the successful growth of the cultures were also explored. Potential key organisms were identified via 16S rRNA gene cloning studies, performed using several cultures that had been enriched in parallel from the same hydrocarbon-contaminated site. In all cultures, closely related members of the Syntrophobacterales were found to have survived and thrived over nearly a decade of enrichment. These organisms, referred to as ORM2-like organisms, were phylogenetically most similar to those present in cultures enriched from other benzene-contaminated sites. To link organisms with their potential roles in anaerobic benzene biodegradation, we sequenced, assembled and analyzed the metagenome of one of the benzene-degrading methanogenic cultures. Several assemblies were created from Illumina sequencing data and a combination of these proved to be optimal. An unsupervised binning method was developed to achieve near-complete genomes of the three most abundant phylotypes, including a group of three closely-related ORM2-like species, a hydrogen-utilizing Methanoregula sp., and a previously unidentified organism in the culture, classified as a member of the Candidate Division OD1. The ORM2-like organisms were found to harbor a suite of genes linked to the degradation of the central metabolite benzoyl-CoA. Proteomic data confirmed that these genes were expressed under benzene-degrading conditions, providing strong evidence for the role of ORM2-like organisms as benzene fermenters. Activity of hydrogenotrophic and acetoclastic methanogens was confirmed; other organisms may play peripheral roles that increase the culture robustness. The absence of an easily identified putative anaerobic benzene carboxylase in the ORM2-like genomes suggests a novel mechanism for benzene activation by these organisms. The work presented here provides a valuable blueprint that could be used in identifying biomarkers of anaerobic benzene biodegradation, or in exploring the genomes of organisms from novel genera, orders and even phyla. | PhD | water, pollut | 6, 13 |
| Di Ruggiero, Erica | Cohen, Joanna E. | Agenda Setting in Global Policy Development: The Case of the International Labour Organization Decent Work Agenda | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015 | Structural inequality, employment insecurity, and unhealthy working conditions continue to rise. Confronted by these challenges, global institutions such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) are providing policy advice to protect and promote the health and well-being of workers. This dissertation focuses on agenda setting - how health and social problems get and stay on policy agendas and how agendas are set and produced through the political interactions of social actors -to better understand why global progress in improving poor working conditions through policy may be stalled. I conducted a qualitative study using data from interviews and publicly accessible archival policy texts about the Decent Work Agenda (DWA) and related texts. Interviews with 16 participants from the ILO, World Health Organization (WHO) and World Bank (WB) helped to further understand what role the DWA has played in setting these institutions' work policy agendas. A critical discourse analysis of 10 policy texts surfaced different health, economic, and social conceptualizations of `decent work' in the work policy agendas of these institutions. My findings indicate that the DWA has not been fully embraced by the WHO and WB, although there is evidence of policy coherence within the UN multi-lateral system. I found evidence of resistance to "ILO language" by the WB and shift in ILO language from decent work to job over time (1999-2012). I observed a drift towards privileging macro-economic measures to foster job creation particularly in WB texts but also evidence of strategic appeals to economic interests in WHO texts. Deeply-held beliefs of neoliberalism that are embedded in global policy enabled pro-market and pro-economic discourses in the case of all three institutions I found that catalytic events such as the 2008-09 economic crisis and policy precedents contributed positively to attention to and use of the Decent Work Agenda as a policy instrument. I also found differences in the implicit and explicit use of terms such as decent work, health, health equity and economics within and across policy texts. How these concepts come to be interpreted differently in policy texts and contested globally in the face of vested institutional interests partially explains why efforts to improve global working conditions have been stalled. | Ph.D. | equality, employment, labour, worker, inequality, institution | 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Diane, Susan | Jackson, Nancy||Sykes, Heather | Willful Women Creating the World: Life Stories of Feminist and Queer Activists | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-06 | This thesis documents themes from the lives of three women who have been high-profile activists in the women's and LGBTQ communities of Toronto for more than 20 years. There has been no previous major work that documents and examines their lived experiences, their social/historical contexts, and their personal resistance and political strategies. This research explores how these women have responded to multiple oppressions such as homophobia, heterosexism, sexism, racism and poverty, and used collective political action to pursue new visions, structures, and spaces for women and LGBTQ people in the public world.The research draws on multiple methodological and theoretical influences. It is guided by several strands of feminist scholarship broadly informed by the "post" traditions, including intersectionality, the attribution of willfulness, feminist world-building and queer world-making. Particular attention is given to the diverse ethno-cultural, historical and socio-economic contexts of these women's lives, and to the shaping of individual experience through Canada's history as a white-settler nation.The author employs narrative and autoethnographic writing strategies to present life histories, using the metaphor of a tree to tell each life story. Data was gathered through multiple in-depth interviews focused on significant life events, photographs/artifacts and memories. The findings are presented using an arts-informed approach that includes drawings and photographs, and aims to educate and inspire audiences both within and beyond the academy. | Ph.D. | poverty, women, queer | 1, 5 |
| Dick, Jennifer Marie Abbass | Dennis, Cindy-Lee | Evaluating the Effectiveness of a Coparenting Breastfeeding Support Intervention (COSI) on Exclusive Breastfeeding Rates at Twelve Weeks Postpartum | Nursing Science | 2013-11 | Breastfeeding is the infant feeding method recommended by leading health authorities. Breastfeeding rates in Canada are suboptimal. Fathers’ support for breastfeeding has been found to positively impact breastfeeding exclusivity and duration. Intervention studies have not been conducted to determine the best way to involve fathers and assist them in providing support to breastfeeding mothers. Therefore, a randomized controlled trial was conducted to evaluate the effects of a coparenting breastfeeding support intervention. Coparenting teaches parents to work in partnership towards meeting their jointly determined child health goals. The primary outcome was exclusive breastfeeding at 12 weeks postpartum. The secondary outcomes were breastfeeding duration, breastfeeding support, and coparenting at 6 and 12 weeks as well as paternal infant feeding attitude and breastfeeding self-efficacy at 6 weeks. First-time breastfeeding women (n=214) and the infants’ fathers were recruited on the postpartum unit. Parents were randomized to the usual care groups or the intervention group, which received standard postpartum care, plus a multifaceted support intervention. The intervention included an in-hospital discussion, take-home booklets, video, access to a secure study website, follow-up emails, and a telephone call. All components of the intervention contained extensive information on breastfeeding and coparenting. The results of this study indicated that more mothers in the intervention group were exclusively breastfeeding at 6 (n= 75, 72.1% compared to n=62, 60.8%) and 12 weeks (n=70, 67.3% compared to n=63, 60.0%) and practicing any breastfeeding at 6 weeks (n=102, 98.1% compared to n=94, 92.2%); however, the differences were not significant. There were significantly more mothers in the intervention groups practicing any breastfeeding at 12 weeks (n= 100, 96.2% compared to n= 92, 87.6%, RR 1.10, 95% CI [1.01, 1.19]; x2=5.09, p=0.02). No significant differences were found between the groups in relation to breastfeeding support, the coparenting relationship or paternal infant feeding attitude. However, the intervention group had a significantly greater increase in paternal breastfeeding self-efficacy over the first 6 weeks postpartum (F=4.84, p=0.03). This trial appeared to be feasible in the postpartum period and provides preliminary evidence suggesting this intervention may increase breastfeeding outcomes; however, more research is warranted. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Dickinson, Thea L | Gough, William | Advancing Climate Change Adaptation | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2019-06 | The impacts of climate change are vast and consequential. The years 2012 to 2016, using conservative estimates, revealed more than 1500 climate-related disaster events displacing over 3.2 million people and causing USD$450 billion in financial losses. Recent studies confirm that extreme weather events and the failure of climate change mitigation and adaptation are the leading risks to global stability. Climate change adaptation is advancing differently in nations across the world. Using pragmatism as a theoretical framework and applying a mixed methods approach, this dissertation seeks to identify determinants of adaptation. Grounded theory analysis of 403 national documents from 192 parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change identified 35 themes of climate change adaptation. A mixed methods data transformation model was applied to study the influence of several relatively stable parameters on the level of climate change adaptation. Nineteen variables were suitable for Principal Component Analysis, which further categorized 15 as determinants. The top 5 determinants were identified using between groups multivariate analysis. The influence of geopolitical variables on climate change adaptation were analyzed, these included: GDP per capita, economic classification, system of government, level of democracy, land type, region, level of conflict, and refugees. The research resulted in several significant and unexpected findings. Countries with the highest levels of adaptation appear to have many key commonalities. This dissertation seeks to identify ways in which we can collectively advance climate change adaptation. | Ph.D. | climate, weather, conserv | 13, 14 |
| Ding, Ding | Zhu, Xiaodong||Aivazian, Varouj A | Essays on Market Conditions and Corporate Investment Decisions | Economics | 2015-03 | This thesis investigates how market conditions -- different beliefs about firm value, the business cycle, and financial regulations -- affect corporate investment decisions in firms, and the impact of these decisions on corporate performance. In Chapter 1, I document evidence that belief dispersion affects corporate investment allocation. When investors disagree with each other on expectations about future project returns, firms allocate a larger share of total investment in riskier projects (for example, R and M), in order to exploit the disagreement, and they allocate less in physical capital investment. This effect becomes amplified when firms experience a positive return shock to CAPX, when more investment in CAPX would be expected. To establish causality, I use mergers between brokerage houses to provide a source of exogenous shocks to belief dispersion. Chapter 2, written jointly with Mohammad Rahaman, uses economic recessions as settings for `creative destruction' and examines the efficiency of pro-cyclical capital reallocation through the corporate-control market. It shows that the efficacy of M investment activities varies with time and in intensity, as firms that concentrate most of their M activities in the good times are more likely to exit inefficiently in a subsequent recession. The results suggest that firms misallocate capital through excessive M\ during expansions, thus becoming more vulnerable when there is a negative aggregate shock. Chapter 3, written jointly with Varouj Aivazian and Mohammad Rahaman, provides cross-country evidence to show that adverse financial shocks to firms can be attenuated through regulations. Episodes of systemic banking crises across many countries are examined to identify unanticipated credit contractions; firm investment growth during and post crisis periods are compared to their pre-crisis levels. The chapter shows that credit contractions are costly for firms, and that they are more costly for firms that are more reliant on the external capital market. It is also shown that declines in investment growth are greater for externally dependent firms if such firms are embedded in ex-ante ``repressively" regulated financial markets. The results suggest that specific financial reforms play a significant role in attenuating the propagation of a banking crisis to the real sector. | Ph.D. | financial market | 10 |
| Ding, WeiDan | Park, Chul B.||Sain, Mohini M. | Development of Polylactic Acid/Cellulose Nanofiber Biocomposite Foams | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-06 | The development of sustainable polymeric materials has been receiving increasing attention largely due to the rising environmental awareness and stringent governmental regulations. Biorenewable resource based biodegradable polylactic acid (PLA) is one of the most promising alternatives to petroleum-based polymers. Cellulose nanofibers (CNFs), derived from renewable resources, are being regarded as the next generation renewable reinforcements for the production of high performance biocomposites. The combination of PLA and CNFs not only endows the resulting composites with fully biodegradable feature, but also gives them significantly improved performance properties. In this context, the objective of this thesis is to develop uniform fine-cell PLA/CNF composite foams with improved mechanical properties. The material properties of PLA/CNF biocomposites, foaming mechanisms, and the mechanical properties of the composite foams were investigated. During the isothermal and non-isothermal crystallization process, CNFs, acting as effective crystal nucleating agents, enhanced the crystal nucleation density, decreased the crystallite sizes, and accelerated the crystallization of PLA. Pressurized CO2 also affect the crystallization kinetics of PLA/CNF composites significantly. The addition of CNFs increased the melt viscosity of PLA dramatically due to the formation of 3D network structure of CNFs and a good interaction between PLA and CNFs. In-situ observation revealed that CNFs were effective cell nucleating agents during foaming. Compared to the neat PLA and PLA/micro-size fiber composite foams, PLA/CNF composite foams showed a much finer and uniform cell structure. Different void fractions of PLA/CNF composite foams were obtained by altering the processing conditions. The flexural strength and modulus of the composite foams decreased with increased void fraction. Comparable specific flexural strength to the neat PLA was achieved in PLA/CNF composite foams and the toughness was increased up to 3.5 times. Notched Izod impact strength was improved by 55 % at 70 % void fraction. The addition of CNFs also improved foams' dynamic mechanical properties. | Ph.D. | renewable, production, environment | 7, 12, 13 |
| Dinnage, Russell | Abrams, Peter | The Role of Consumer Interactions in the Consequences and Causes of Community Phylogenetic Structure | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-11 | Phylogenetic structure measures patterns of evolutionary history within communities – are some communities composed of species more distantly or closely related than expected by chance? Due to common descent, closely related species are more ecologically similar, and so degrees of relatedness in a community may be good predictors of its ecology, more so than the number of species. Whether we are speaking of how phylogenetic structure arises as a consequence of ecological processes, or how phylogenetic structure affects the functioning of communities, the role of consumer organisms has received less attention than the role of resources. In this thesis, I ask what are the consequences and causes of phylogenetic structure of a potentially multi-level community, focusing on the underappreciated effects of consumer-resource interactions. In Chapter 2, I show how phylogenetic diversity of plant communities predicts the diversity and abundance of arthropods captured in a long-running biodiversity experiment better than species richness alone. In Chapter 3, I show how phylogenetic diversity and species richness interact to explain herbivore damage at a whole community level. In Chapter 4, I explore how phylogenetic structure of old field plant communities differs in plots of contrasting disturbance history, and speculate as to what factors – such as herbivory – may have contributed to these differences. In Chapter 5, I present a model which incorporates competition – through both resources and consumers of a focal trophic level – and environmental filtering, two factors which are thought to impact phylogenetic structure through their influence on ecological similarity. I show that environmental filtering interacts with competition to determine the coexistence of similar species, and that consumers may have different effects than do resources. My dissertation provides new insight into the importance of consumers in ecological communities, both through their effect on, and through their response to, patterns of evolutionary history in their prey. | PhD | ecology, biodiversity, environment | 13, 15 |
| Dintsman, Elise Weinstein | Livingstone, David W. | Tattered Cloth Tells More: Women's Work and Museum Representation | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-11 | The past two decades posed some challenges for the museum world. Questions about the production of meaning, museum relationships with community groups, and the politics of representation in exhibitions, occupy both museum practitioners and scholars. These questions are further related to the general issues that are at the forefront of contemporary society, which include problems of social inclusion, cultural diversity and social equity (Sandell, 2002; 2007). Most of the discussion has been framed around racial, ethnic and cultural communities and their access to and participation in museum programming. Gender relations and feminist issues have been largely overlooked (Conlan and Levin, 2010: 308). This study considers the representation of women’s work in museums. In particular, I examine portrayals of “culture” and “work” in women’s textile production. Museum literature has documented the subordination (or absence) of women and their work in exhibitions and the hegemonic, patriarchal approach within which they were represented (Porter, 1996; Levin, 2010). Using an ethnographic case study of a museum dedicated to textile collection, I suggest seeing this museum as a potential challenge to mainstream museums’ traditional approach and silence on the women’s work that has created most textiles on display. I examine the meanings that are produced in relation to the textiles, the organization and dissemination of these meanings through exhibitions and the ways in which the public (visitors and members) responds to these exhibitions. In order to explore these questions, Hall’s communication model (1993) was applied to trace the process of encoding and decoding meanings at the museum. My approach to meaning production is realized through observations of the museum’s committee meetings. The second stage is the circulation of meanings in exhibitions. I examine this through an analysis of exhibitions’ texts and docent tours. Decoding these meanings is realized through surveys of museum members and visitors together with short interviews. My findings suggest that initially, the museum offered some oppositional elements in exhibiting practices. However, a shift occurred towards a dominant, hegemonic view of museum work and re-effacing of women’s work with the departure of the founders. | PhD | gender, women | 5 |
| Dippel, Christian | Trefler, Daniel | Essays in Internationsl Political Economy | Economics | 2012-03 | This dissertation studies three important questions in international political economy: The long run consequences of social divisions created by historical colonialism, the importance of trade shocks in shifting political power balances and shaping institutional development and the influence that major political powers have over the decisions of smaller nations. I study these three questions empirically in four papers that span three distinct regions and time periods. The first paper asks whether the large differences in economic development across Native American reservations today can be explained by social divisions that were created more than 150 years ago when the US government forcibly integrated distinct Native American bands into shared reservations, condemning them to a system of shared governance that was not consistent with their political traditions and tribal identities. The second and third papers study the effect of the first globalization on the political and economic equilibrium in seventeen 19th century British Caribbean plantation colonies. I use this set of highly comparable but in precise ways distinct islands as a laboratory to study the effect of globalization on the long run development of representative institutions and on the coerciveness of labour markets at the time. The first of two papers provides insights into the working of colonial institutions and traces the mechanisms through which the planter elite managed to maintain a monopoly over policy making and retard long run development. The second paper highlights the importance that exogenous output price changes had for the willingness of planter elites to engage in costly coercion that distorted labour markets in their favour. In the final paper I test whether major aid donors use foreign aid to buy the votes of developing countries. Taking advantage of a unique long-running dispute between major donors in the International Whaling Commission, I am able to address the three major empirical challenges in answering this question: that aid moves much slower than voting behaviour, that alliances constantly change with issues and that most international organizations vote frequently and on a range of issues while data on aid disbursals is available only in yearly aggregates. | PhD | labour | 8 |
| Doberstein, Carey | David, A Wolfe | Governing by Networks: the Policy Implications of Civil Society Participation in Decision Making | Political Science | 2014-11 | Why has Vancouver developed and implemented more effective homelessness policy in the last 20 years than Toronto, despite sharing similar homelessness challenges? Finding that none of the traditional theories for policy divergence--such as executive and council leadership, local political institutions or ideational paradigms--adequately explain the policy variation, this dissertation identifies one key difference in the two cities: the properties and dynamics of homelessness governance networks--where state and civil society actors jointly craft policy. Through empirical analysis involving archival research, interviews, extended participant observation, and quantitative decision making data, the study finds that highly institutionalized and inclusive governance networks in Vancouver are largely responsible for the superior policy innovation and coordination over the past twenty years. The research then breaks new theoretical terrain by specifying and modeling the causal mechanisms that link network governance to public policy outputs, establishing that `brokerage' and `persuasion' are the key emergent dynamics from governance networks as deliberative systems of policymaking. The theory-building bridges the metagovernance, network governance, and deliberative democracy bodies of literature to construct a generalized and falsifiable model linking network governance to policy outputs that can be applied across a number of policy domains. | Ph.D. | inclusive, innovation, cities, governance | 4, 9, 11, 16 |
| Doda, Lider Baran | Restuccia, Diego | Three Essays on Macroeconomics | Economics | 2011-06 | This dissertation consists of three independent essays in macroeconomics. The first essay studies the transition to a low carbon economy using an extension of the neoclassical growth model featuring endogenous energy efficiency, exhaustible energy and explicit climate-economy interaction. I derive the properties of the laissez faire equilibrium and compare them to the optimal allocations of a social planner who internalizes the climate change externality. Three main results emerge. First, the exhaustibility of energy generates strong market based incentives to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions without any government intervention. Second, the market and optimal allocations are substantially different suggesting a role for the government. Third, high and persistent taxes are required to implement the optimal allocations as a competitive equilibrium with taxes. The second essay focuses on coal fired power plants (CFPP) - one of the largest sources of CO2 emissions globally - and their generation efficiency using a macroeconomic model with an embedded CFPP sector. A key feature of the model is the endogenous choice of production technologies which differ in their energy efficiency. After establishing four empirical facts about the CFPP sector, I analyze the long run quantitative effects of energy taxes. Using the calibrated model, I find that sector-specific coal taxes have large effects on generation efficiency by inducing the use of more efficient technologies. Moreover, such taxes achieve large CO2 emissions reductions with relatively small effects on consumption and output. The final essay studies the procyclicality of fiscal policy in developing countries, which is a well-documented empirical observation seemingly at odds with Neoclassical and Keynesian policy prescriptions. I examine this issue by solving the optimal fiscal policy problem of a small open economy government when the interest rates on external debt are endogenous. Given an incomplete asset market, endogeneity is achieved by removing the government's ability to commit to repaying its external obligations. When calibrated to Argentina, the model generates procyclical government spending and countercyclical labor income tax rates. Simultaneously, the model's implications for key business cycle moments align well with the data. | PhD | climate, production, consum, energy | 7, 12, 13 |
| Dong, Ping | Zhong, Chen-Bo||Aggarwal, Pankaj | Strength in Numbers: The Moral Antecedent and Consequence of Consumer Conformity | Management | 2017-06 | Consumers often encounter moral violations in their daily life, from every day transgressions such as adultery and tax evasion to infamous company frauds. News reports about immoral behaviors of one type or another have become regular features on TV programs, radio stations, and social media websites. Previous research has mainly focused on how exposure to others’ moral violations can influence one’s own behaviors in a personal setting. However, we know very little about how moral violations may affect the way consumers relate to others. To fill this gap, my dissertation focuses on understanding the social nature of morality by exploring the moral antecedent (Essay 1) and consequence (Essay 2) of consumer conformity. Essay 1 investigates the moral antecedent of consumer conformity. By synthesizing insights from research on social order and conformity, I propose that exposure to others’ immoral behaviors can heighten the perceived threat to social order, which may increase consumers’ endorsement of conformist attitudes and hence their preferences for majority-endorsed choices in subsequently unrelated consumption situations. Moreover, I show that the effect disappears (a) when the moral violator has already been punished by third parties (Study 4) and (b) when the majority-endorsed option is perceived as immoral and therefore may be viewed as being complicit with the moral violators (Study 5). Essay 2 examines the moral consequence of consumer conformity. Extending the results of Essay 1, I propose and demonstrate that perceptions of being in the majority (vs. minority) group, even in a completely unrelated domain (e.g., consumption), can induce perceptions of being in the moral majority and signal social order to consumers, which has important downstream consequences on consumers’ moral judgments such as reducing their concerns about condemning and punishing moral transgressors. Three studies provide support for these propositions. By advancing our understanding of the moral antecedent and consequence of consumer conformity, this dissertation adds to a growing research stream showing that moral concerns can affect consumer behavior by exploring (a) how moral principles could serve as a basis for consumers’ preferences and choices and (b) how consumption conformity can buffer moral threats. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Donnelly, Michael Anthony | Henderson, Greig | For All Peoples and All Nations: Anglophone Literature and the Imaginative Work of International Law (1884-2017) | English | 2017-11 | This thesis explores how Anglophone literature debated the rise of modern international law since the late nineteenth century, including the founding of the United Nations and the 1948 declaration of human rights. While international law has its origins in the early modern period, it was largely at the turn of the century, with the Berlin Conference, that it began taking shape as a colonial and then a postcolonial, global ethics. In this thesis, I lay claim to literature’s capacity to legislate by examining instances where Anglophone novelists—including Joseph Conrad, Bryher, Vladimir Nabokov, Chinua Achebe, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie—work through the promises and problems of international jurisprudence. More than a mere reflection of international law’s evolving theory and practice, the literature I treat registers the law’s presumptions and first principles while interrogating its capacity to follow through with its declarations. In spreading the law’s claims while also submitting them to the scrutiny of close reading, these novels are both advocates of and at times stubborn liabilities for international law’s normative worlds. Collectively, these Anglophone novelists scrutinize international law’s ability to shape the ways we come to know ourselves and one another as rights-bearing individuals, international actors, advocates, and activists. Recent work in the humanities has begun to address the ways in which international law is a set of interlocked narratives that claim to enshrine common sense when, in fact, they curate and confine modern ways of knowing, feeling, and belonging. By attending to issues that often go unacknowledged in the ordinary practices of international law—questions about subjectivity and self-fashioning, concerns about security and citizenship—I continue the work of examining international law’s epistemologies. In approaching literature as responsive to legal developments, and law as dependent on the narrative logic conventionally reserved for literature, I narrate the kinds of life and liberty that international law makes both conceivable and inconceivable, while at same time examining the literary contexts that continue to shape its apparent common sense. | Ph.D. | rights | 16 |
| Dookie, Lesley | Esmonde, Indigo | Examining Marginalizing Acts of Social Positioning in Mathematical Group Work: Towards a Better Understanding of how Microaggressions and Stereotype Threat Unfold in Intergroup Interactions | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-11 | Mathematics learning is documented as being racialized and gendered. Power dynamics between students from various social groups can become particularly problematic during collaborative group work when students from dominant social groups position group members from stereotyped social groups in ways that hinder their opportunities to learn. The present study seeks to investigate how marginalization unfolds during everyday interpersonal interactions within mathematical group work and how students from stereotyped social groups talk about these experiences. Employing an interdisciplinary theoretical framework that cuts across the fields of the learning sciences and social psychology, this qualitative study aims to further understand not only the sociohistorical stereotypes and systems of power that are entrenched within mathematics classrooms, but also how power is constructed through the ways students position one another in their moment-to-moment interactions. Drawing from six episodes of videotaped collaborative group work wherein students from stereotyped social groups are working with students from dominant social groups, the study examines the microdynamics of marginalizing acts of social positioning. Using a stimulated recall interview technique, the study also explores how six focal students from stereotyped social groups, identify, interpret, and discuss their experiences with marginalization. The findings demonstrate the verbal and non-verbal dimensions of marginalization; highlight the intersectionality of race and gender and pinpoint racialized and/or gendered patterns in social positioning; and acknowledge the different interpretations and observations of the researcher versus the focal students. The findings also demonstrate how the focal students responded to potential threats to their identity and pushed back against marginalization: While two of the focal students appeared to adopt silence as a means of resistance to marginalization; two of the other focal students verbally contested marginalizing acts of positioning; and the remaining two focal students pretended to agree and get along with group members in an attempt to maintain group cohesion. The study’s theoretical contributions include a synthesis of sociocultural theories of learning with social psychological theories that foreground race and gender. Implications for mathematics education are also raised, including suggestions for the design and implementation of collaborative group work as well as incorporating video methods into professional development initiatives. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Dorries, Heather | McGregor, Deborah | Rejecting the False Choice: Foregrounding Indigenous Sovereignty in Planning Theory and Practice | Planning | 2012-06 | During the latter half of the 20th century, the term sovereignty has become a pivotal concept for describing the political goals of Indigenous movements. The term has come to stand for the general rights of Indigenous peoples to be self-governing and describe efforts to reverse and resist processes of ongoing colonization, dispossession and assimilation. The purpose of this dissertation is two-fold. First, it explores the role of planning in the erosion of Indigenous sovereignty and the creation of conflicts over urban land use and development. More specifically, it examines the role of planning in the project of securing, aggrandizing and normalizing Canada’s sovereignty claims, and illustrates how the idea of sovereignty influences the configuration of relations between Canada and Indigenous peoples. While the concept of sovereignty is not commonly discussed in planning literature or planning policy, it is argued that concepts such as property, jurisdiction, and Aboriginal rights serve as a cipher for sovereignty in the context of planning. This dissertation research finds that the practices and principles of planning aid in the narration of a political imaginary and the creation of a legal geography which affirms Canada’s territorial and moral coherence. This examination of planning is placed against the backdrop of broader historical tendencies in Canadian Aboriginal policy. The second purpose of this dissertation is to consider how taking Indigenous political authority seriously can present new ways of thinking about both planning and sovereignty. It is argued in this dissertation that Indigenous understandings of sovereignty originating in Indigenous law and Indigenous interpretations of Canadian law must be placed in the foreground in planning theory and practice. In the past, the interventions and alternatives advocated by planning both theorists and policy makers to improve the position of Indigenous peoples in planning processes have largely emphasized the recognition and inclusion of Indigenous peoples and reduced Indigenous struggles over territory to the realm of identity politics. As an alternative, foregrounding Indigenous political authority can present new ways of thinking about both planning and sovereignty. | PhD | rights, land use, urban | 11, 15, 16 |
| Douglas, Lisa Marie | Sherwood Lollar, Barbara | Investigating Controls on Variation in Isotopic Fractionation during Biodegradation of Chlorinated Ethenes and Ethanes | Earth Sciences | 2015-06 | Kinetic isotope effects occur due to different reaction rates for light and heavy isotope-containing molecules, and are controlled by the bonds broken during degradation. For many primary pollutants, stable carbon, hydrogen, and chlorine isotope effects have been found to fit a Rayleigh model, indicating a single rate-limiting step. This thesis examines biodegradation pathways where additional controls and rate-limiting steps may affect observed isotope fractionation. Two haloalkane dehalogenases catalyzed aerobic 1,2-dichloroethane (1,2-DCA) dechlorination with very different enzyme affinities and turnover rates. However, carbon isotope enrichment factors were the same for both enzymes, reflecting the intrinsic kinetic isotope effect associated with C-Cl bond breakage. Carbon isotope fractionation was also largely constant during anaerobic 1,1,1-trichloroethane (1,1,1-TCA) biodegradation, even when the rate of biodegradation was inhibited by trichloroethene (TCE) co-contamination. This finding provided the basis for carbon isotope-based assessment of 1,1,1-TCE biodegradation at a TCE co-contaminated field site. The wide range of carbon isotope fractionation observed for anaerobic tetrachloroethene (PCE) biodegradation has been a matter of longstanding controversy. This work found the magnitude of carbon isotope fractionation for PCE biodegradation is related to the phylogenetic relationships between PCE-degrading organisms, which may allow for better selection of enrichment factors when assessing PCE biodegradation at field sites. Unexpectedly large variations in carbon isotope fractionation have also been observed for anaerobic TCE biodegradation. During C-Cl bond breakage, slopes of dual element carbon and chlorine isotope effects are typically constant for a given reaction because additional rate-limiting steps affect both elements in a similar way. Hence, characteristic combinations of C/Cl isotope effects can be used to investigate the underlying mechanistic details of a reaction. For TCE biodegradation, C/Cl isotope slopes indicate different reductive dehalogenases may catalyze different reductive dechlorination reaction pathways. This thesis advances the application of compound specific isotope analysis for assessing bioremediation of chlorinated ethenes and ethanes, as well our understanding of the enzymatic degradation mechanisms that catalyze biodegradation. | Ph.D. | pollut | 13 |
| Dowling, Kristen Brooke | Gillis, Joseph R | Homophobic Bullying: Understanding Teacher, LGBTQ Youth, and Advocate Perspectives | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2016-11 | Recent research shows that the use of derogatory terms, threats, and violence against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth in schools continues to occur (Collier, Bos, Sandfort, 2013; Taylor Peter, 2011). Moreover, the frequency of LGBTQ youth suicides (McFarland, 1998) and the extent of short- and long-term psychosocial issues experienced by LGBTQ youth are concerning (Deisher, 1989; Mufioz-Plaza, Quinn, Rounds, 2002). Research involving teachers has found that teachers were frequently aware that homophobic bullying was occurring, but they didn’t know how, or were unwilling, to address it (Warwick, Aggleton, Douglas, 2001). The current study was a qualitative investigation of teacher, LGBTQ youth, and bullying expert and advocate perspectives on homophobic bullying. Grounded theory methods were utilized to analyze the 18 semi-structured interviews. Four themes were identified around the participants’ understanding of what homophobic bullying is: Words as Weapons, Understanding “That’s so Gay”: Harmful Discrimination or Innocuous Slang, Exclusion as a Weapon, and It’s not Getting Better. Four additional themes emerged around how to facilitate positive change in the school system: Understanding Action: Explicit and Implicit Messaging, Understanding School Culture, Suggestions for Change: Stopping the Silence, and Creating Change: Top Down or Bottom Up? More specifically, the qualitative findings illustrated that verbal homophobic bullying is rampant and perceived as challenging for school staff to address and lessen, and the climate for LGBTQ students continues to be viewed as negative and hostile. Teachers reported acting on homophobic bullying regularly, whereas LGBTQ youth participants felt teacher action was minimal. Homophobic bullying was considered by participants to be a broad issue that required attention from various micro- to macro-systems. From these findings, a model for conceptualizing the influences of change around homophobic bullying was developed and is presented here. This model utilized Bronfenbrenner’s Bioecological Systems Theory (1977; 1989; 1999) as a guide to capture the key players that participants felt were most influential on homophobic bullying, from the individual level to the larger socio-political influences. | Ph.D. | queer, inclusive | 4, 5 |
| Doyle-Jones, Carol Sarah | Stagg Peterson, Shelley | Importance of Working Collaboratively and Risk-taking with Digital Technologies when Teaching Literacy | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-06 | As classroom landscapes and digital technologies are constantly changing, this qualitative research study investigated the challenges for elementary educators as they implement and sustain digital-based literacy practices. The perceptions of 15 participating elementary teachers, from rural and urban Ontario, Canada, as they reflected on their own teaching practices and curriculum planning involving literacy and digital tools, were explored through the lens of New Literacies (Coiro et al., 2008). The following research questions guided this study: a) What do teachers who use multimodal practices perceive as their teaching strengths? b) How do teachers describe their understanding of literacy and learning? c) How do teachers utilize digital technologies to support teaching and learning through multimodal methods? d) What types of environments support teachers to address the challenges of teaching with multimodal practices? Primary sources of data for this study were semi-structured interviews and the teachers' educational resources and documents, sourced to plan teaching and learning literacy activities, and collected and analyzed through a grounded theory approach. Findings suggest that the 15 teachers effectively integrate multimodal and digital tools and resources into their literacy curriculum, through supportive environments and peer collaborations. This shift in teaching and learning illustrated challenges with common technological and connectivity issues as well as finding space for professional development with Web 2.0 applications. The teachers experienced tensions when teaching through multimodal means, such as inequity of access to digital resource sharing and daily implementing digital tools in the elementary literacy curriculum. Constantly seeking out new ways to integrate digital technologies, tools and resources, while embracing the tensions of teaching digitally, these pedagogical risk-takers provided opportunities to further understand the importance and challenges of facilitating multimodal practices in the elementary literacy classroom. | Ph.D. | urban, rural, innovation | 9, 11 |
| Doyle-Wood, Stanley | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | A Trace of Genocide: Racialization, Internal Colonialism and the Politics of Enuncation | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-11 | This analysis examines the implicatedness of the self as an embodied space of marginality, knowledge, and resistance to the discursive and material effects of systemic oppression. It explores the implications and possibilities as they relate to social collectives [in nation-state contexts] in resisting and contesting the constraining forces of dominant/dominating institutionalized power and authority in the context of speaking and/or enunciating from the space of abjectification, racialization, and outcastness that has been constructed historically by the nation-state of Britain as a body codified as included-as-excluded-as-removed from the dominant sociopolitical collective’s sense of self and identity? This study argues that enunciation in this form carries with it a politics of ontological transformation that has profound implications for the social collective that is Britain as a whole specifically in the context of social justice affirmation and the reclamation [and assertion] of a collective sense of self that is grounded in a refusal and contestation of the multi-layered hegemonic conceptual frameworks that continue to naturalize, {re}produce and sustain systemic oppression as a state of permanency [Bell, 1992]. This study will explore the permanency of oppression further in relation to the discursive and material negation and amputation of social difference [i.e. class, gender, disability, and sexuality] while centering race [and its prostheticization] as a salient organizing tool in the (re)production of a hegemonic social order. To this end this study utilizes two key interconnecting concepts, internal/internalized colonialism, and racialization. ii It suggests that racialization mediated and channeled by and through a process of internal/internalized colonialism underpins the hegemonic social order of Britain and as such both terms are re-conceptualized and subjected to a complex analysis. Finally, this study examines the theoretical possibilities for developing an anti-racialization framework as a politics of enunciation that makes usage of the concept of racialization as a tool for [1] demystifying systems of oppression, [2] understanding the processes of collective implicatedness in oppression, [3] refusing pathologization and [4] mobilizing transformation through and within a refusal of the amputative and negative capacities of the racialization process. | PhD | justice, gender | 5, 16 |
| Drah, Bright Bensah | Sellen, Daniel | Crisis Foster Care in an Age of HIV and AIDS: Experiences of the Queen Mothers of Manya Klo, Ghana | Anthropology | 2011-11 | Older women in communities ravaged by HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa have been hailed as constituting the most effective response to the growing number of orphans, which has overwhelmed the customary mechanisms of support. Over 80 percent of orphans in Ghana are fostered by women, because an orphan’s kinship networks - and particularly the female members of the networks - are expected to assume responsibility for her/him. Unfortunately, in the Manya Klo Traditional Area of Ghana, AIDS, poverty and other factors have weakened kinship support and cooperation, resulting in patchy external responses to physically frail and economically disempowered traditional female leaders (queen mothers) acting as caregivers. Most of the existing research about orphan care has focused exclusively on the woman-child dyad, thereby obscuring other forms of care. In particular, the “grandmother-led household” has become a self-fulfilling truism that has blinded researchers to other relationships of care. Moreover, the analyses of the situation of orphans are based on frameworks that ignore orphans' perspectives and the social context in which fostering is negotiated. In this study, I employ mixed methods to analyze an orphan care project run by the Manya Krobo Queen Mothers Association (MKQMA) and address three issues: (1) What is the socio-economic and cultural context in which queen mothers foster orphans? In particular, how do queen mothers’ positions as traditional leaders, HIV and AIDS, poverty, and external assistance programs (state and NGO) all shape the organization of orphan care? (2) What are the challenges for depending on the Queen Mothers Association to support orphans? (3) How are orphans’ needs identified and described (from the perspectives of the caregiver, the orphans and those who assist them). In particular, can community-derived measures of childcare rather than the current measures typically used in international development and children’s projects provide better indices of the needs of children after losing a parent? | PhD | women, poverty | 1, 5 |
| Drake, Andrew | Harvey, Harold ||Mandrak, Nicholas E. | Quantifying the Likelihood of Human-mediated Movements of Species and Pathogens: The Baitfish Pathway in Ontario as a Model System | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2011-06 | Estimating the risk associated with species and pathogen movements involves considerable uncertainty. One key uncertainty concerns the extent and frequency of human-mediated species and pathogen movements relative to the distribution of recipient ecosystems. Baitfish use in Ontario, Canada is one of many pathways with the potential to introduce and spread biota to beyond their current geographic range. To determine the biological risk associated with baitfish use, models were used to estimate the probability of species occurrences throughout pathway levels, from the commercial harvest level, to retail tank and angler purchases, to movement and release by the end-user (i.e., the angler). Vector activity, as the primary contributor of species movements and introductions associated with this pathway, was modeled within a spatial interaction framework that incorporated landscape structure (e.g., the distribution of angling populations, lake size and sportfish richness, and their physical separation via least-cost routing of transportation networks) to predict the extent of movement. Agent-based models of vector activity were used to relate vector movements to region-specific probability thresholds of risk activity. Model outputs were used to estimate the movement and introduction of species and pathogens to lake ecosystems resulting from a variety of infection scenarios. Species results identified a pronounced reduction in the probability of non-target species occurrences throughout pathway levels. However, the occurrence of biological invaders and other non-target fishes at retail levels implied incidental bycatch throughout the pathway. Relatively short, frequent vector movements associated with incidentally purchased species were very likely, yet would not contribute to species range expansions due to the homogeneity of biological communities at those levels. However, rarer, yet considerably lengthier, vector movements associated with key species and pathogens implied the potential for low-probability, long-distance species and pathogen movements resulting from human activities. | PhD | fish | 14 |
| Drieschova, Alena | Adler, Emanuel | Change of International Orders: Empire, Balance of Power, and Liberal Governance | Political Science | 2016-11 | There is a persistent gap between the abstract concepts elites use to understand the elements of international orders and the actual material foundations that underpin those orders. In medieval times European societies conceived of international order in the form of Universal Monarchy, although material power was not sufficiently concentrated to permanently reach further than to the next town. In the early eighteenth century, rulers practised international order as a territorial balance of power, while territorial states were fully formed only in the early nineteenth century. This begs the question of how the abstract concepts that IR practitioners work with to order international interactions actually emerge on the ground. I propose that they result from concrete forms of representation, like warfare practices, diplomatic practices, or representative buildings, which create IRâ s macro-phenomena in the daily interactions between people. Forms of representation characterize the units of the international system and position them towards each other in relations of subordination, superiority, or equality. These spatial configurations constitute the deep generative grammar of an international order. When the forms of representation change the international order changes. I develop two mechanisms of change based on struggles over forms of representation and on contingent changes in representative forms. To trace the effects of representative forms as material signs I propose a new methodological apparatus based on Peircean semeiotics. I empirically study the transition from a medieval ordering mechanism of empire to the ordering mechanism of a territorial balance of power, and use the findings to illustrate how we might understand the potential emergence of a postmodern order in Europe. | Ph.D. | equality | 5 |
| Drinkwater, Mary Anne | John, P. Portelli | Democratizing and Decolonizing Education: A Role for the Arts and Cultural Praxis: Lessons from Primary Schools in Maasailand, Southern Kenya | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | Under the impact of global neoliberal educational policies and the continuing influence of colonial-informed policies and pedagogical approaches, the arts, in schools around the world, are either being devalued or their conception is being narrowly focused towards market-based purposes. Researchers and critical theorists have argued that the arts are a vital educational tool for promoting the creative, critical and culturally responsive skills necessary for a robust democratic society. For centuries, the arts and cultural practices have been deeply embedded in the rich cultural heritage of many indigenous peoples as tools for giving voice, building community and sharing knowledge. For nation-states, like Kenya, which have struggled along a rocky road toward democracy, the arts and cultural practices could play a key role in supporting the development of critically engaged citizens for the broader purposes of democratic and transformative education. This thesis uses a two-pronged lens informed by critical-democratic theory and decolonial theory to explore teachers' understanding of their use of the arts and cultural praxis in a purposely selected case study located in Maasailand, southern Kenya. The research design followed an international case study approach and drew from comparative international education theory and methods. In order to deepen the understanding of the multi-contextual factors influencing teachers' use of the arts and cultural praxis, the study also included data gathered from policy documents and from other educational stakeholders including head-teachers, principals, supervisory officers, parents, curriculum coordinators, policy makers and community members. The analysis and discussion of the findings provides a critique of the continuing impact of colonial and neoliberal educational policies on teachers' use of the arts and cultural praxis for transformative education, and highlights the need for a broader and more equitable conception of the arts and cultural practice as | Ph.D. | equitable | 4 |
| Dryden, OmiSoore H. | Walcott, Rinaldo W | Unrepresentable Blood: Canadian Blood Donation, “Gay Blood” and the Queerness of Blackness | Social Justice Education | 2016-06 | In this dissertation, I explore the Canadian Blood Services blood donation questionnaire and how the blood stories assembled within this document, and in the larger blood system, intersect with and depict blackness, queer (diaspora) sexualities, and Canadian (homo)nation-making. Narratives on blood produce moments of discipline, regulation, and confinement. Canadian Blood Services argues that its donor questionnaire is designed to effectively screen potential blood donors, with a number of questions focused on preventing an HIV/AIDS outbreak in the general population. The information gathered from these diverse questions constructs a figure of the ideal blood donor, thus creating a distinction between people whose blood gives life and people whose blood brings death. These distinctions result in the ban of particular groups of people, including bisexual and gay men and African people. Through centring a black queer diasporic analytic and reading practice, I am able to interrogate the ontological problem made of blackness. I contend that queerer modalities of thought are necessary to account for the complicated realities of racialized sexuality lived through black queered bodies and by black queer and trans people (and their blood). I analyze a diverse set of archives, including the donor questionnaire; websites of social and political organizations involved in the gay-blood debates; and legal, news, and government documents pertaining to the Canadian blood system. I seek to break the public silence on how blood continues to be used to justify the denigration of the lives of black people, both inside and outside of gay spaces, to push against the narrow, normative Eurocentric structures of gay blood. Thus, this reading acts as a decolonial, diasporic, transgressive project of writing blackness. My intervention into these anti-normative, anti-colonial discussions of blood, queerness, and blackness engages in a form of â epistemic disobedienceâ necessary to think differently about and disrupt both the homonationalist framing of gay blood and, more importantly, how we envision queer communities in our diasporic home-making. It is this that I seek to provoke in this thesis: to bring together the tangible and incoherent realities of our lives in order to articulate and engage in transformative justice. | Ph.D. | queer, justice | 5, 16 |
| Dubois, Janique F. | White, Graham ||Williams, Melissa | Just Do It! Self-Determination for Complex Minorities | Political Science | 2013-11 | This thesis explores how Indigenous and linguistic communities achieve self-determination without fixed cultural and territorial boundaries. An examination of the governance practices of Métis, Francophones and First Nations in Saskatchewan reveals that these communities use innovative membership and participation rules in lieu of territorial and cultural criteria to delineate the boundaries within which to exercise political power. These practices have allowed territorially dispersed communities to build institutions, adopt laws and deliver services through province-wide governance structures. In addition to providing an empirical basis to support non-territorial models of self-determination, this study offers a new approach to governance that challenges state-centric theories of minority rights by focusing on the transformative power communities generate through stories and actions. | PhD | rights, institution | 16 |
| Duggan, Mark | Hartenberger, Russell | Tradition and Innovation in Brazilian Popular Music: Keyboard Percussion Instruments in Choro | Music | 2011-06 | The use of keyboard percussion instruments in choro, one of the earliest forms of Brazilian popular music, is a relatively recent phenomenon and its expansion into university music programs and relocation from small clubs and private homes to concert halls has changed the way that choro is learned and performed. For many Brazilians, this kind of innovation in a “traditional” genre represents a challenge to their notion of a Brazilian cultural identity. This study examines the dynamic relationship that Brazilians have with representations of their culture, especially in the area of popular music, through an in depth discussion of the use of keyboard percussion instruments within the genre of choro. I discuss the implications of using keyboard percussion in choro with a detailed description of its contemporary practice and a critical examination of the sociological and academic issues that surround choro historically and as practiced today. This includes an historical overview of choro and organology of keyboard percussion instruments in Brazil. I discuss multiple perspectives on the genre including a consideration of choro as part of the “world music” movement and choro’s ambiguous relationship to jazz. Through an examination of the typical instrumentation and performance conventions used in choro, I address the meanings and implications of the adaptation of those practices and of the various instrumental roles found in choro to keyboard percussion instruments. Solutions to problems relating to instrumental adaptation are offered, with particular attention to issues of notation, improvisation, rhythmic approach and the role of the cavaquinho. I also discuss the significance of rhythmic feel and suingue (swing) in relation to the concept of brasilidade (brazilianness) as informed by and expressed through Brazilian popular music. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Dugoua, Jean-Jacques | Koren, Gideon ||Einarson, Thomas Ray ||Mills, Ed | Natural Health Products (NHPs) in Pregnancy and Lactation: A Review of the Landscape and Blueprint for Change | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2011-06 | Introduction: Based on the perceived risk to newborns and pregnancy outcomes associated with certain drugs, women may be hesitant to prescribe and take drugs during pregnancy. In cases like these, pregnant women may seek treatment using natural health products (NHPs) as alternatives to drugs. Unfortunately, evidence of safety in pregnancy and lactation is unknown for many NHPs. Objectives: To review the present state of evidence on the safety of NHPs during pregnancy and lactation. To create a new system to validate evidence on NHPs during pregnancy and lactation designed to affect medical decision. Methodology: NHPs were systematically reviewed and in some cases, meta-analyzed for evidence of safety during pregnancy and lactation. Results: In total, 79 NHPs were systematically reviewed and 2 NHPs were meta-analyzed in order to determine the evidence of safety in pregnancy and lactation. Despite the presence of data (72/79 NHPs in pregnancy and 53/77 NHPs in lactation), the quality of the data was generally poor. Using evidence-based medicine principles, a new system of evaluating evidence was established for studies involving NHPs in pregnancy and lactation. A number of NHPs were identified as being of potential risk in pregnancy. A number of NHPs were identified as potentially being apparently safe in pregnancy and lactation. Blue cohosh is of potential concern for harm in pregnancy given an apparent dose-dependant relationship. Conclusion: There is a large knowledge gap on the safety of NHPs in pregnancy, even more so in lactation. The new system for evaluating NHP safety in pregnancy and lactation will require validation. In order to improve the knowledge gap, future studies are proposed on NHPs in pregnancy and lactation as part of the newly formed MotherNature research network. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Duke, Guy Stephen | Swenson, Edward R | Consuming Identities: Communities and Culinary Practice in the Late Moche Jequetepeque Valley, Peru | Anthropology | 2017-06 | This dissertation explores the interconnections between food and identity in the Late Moche Jequetepeque valley (AD 650-850). The peripatetic nature of Late Moche lifeways in the Jequetepeque valley, in which farmers, fishers, and pilgrims of all statuses participated in a political-religious-economic round, guided the everyday consumptive practices of valley residents. Utilizing a practice-based materialist approach, I assess the preparation, consumption, and disposal of food and food-related materials at two sites: Wasi Huachuma and Huaca Colorada. I critique binary conceptions of consumption (e.g., feasts vs. daily meals, ritual vs. non-ritual consumption) by analyzing in detail the plant, animal, and ceramic materials recovered from excavations at the two settlements. The application of discriminant analysis to the ubiquity data from the two sites identified statistically correlated assemblages of materials. The results of these assays challenge some of the assumptions of previous Moche studies which ascribe somewhat rigid class associations to specific materials, such as camelid meat and chili pepper. In specific, this dissertation demonstrates that strict class designations are not represented in the culinary practices of the Late Moche inhabitants of Wasi Huachuma and Huaca Colorada. Instead, this dissertation recognizes that class distinctions, and identity in general, are often fluid constructs. Based on these insights, this dissertation has reinterpreted Moche diet and cuisine by identifying that the contingency of consumptive practices is effectively entangled with culturally specific conceptions of space, place, and time, as well as group and individual identity. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Dumouchel, Joelle | Pauly, Louis W||Adler, Emanuel | Regulating International Finance: The Genesis and Transformation of Central Banking Practices | Political Science | 2016-06 | This dissertation investigates the development of financial regulation since the nineteenth century through central banks’ governing practices in industrial countries. Since central banks adopted the lender-of-last-resort function in the 1870s, they have been continuously contributing to the stabilization of financial markets. However, the nature of their governing practices has transformed. This dissertation addresses the sociological and historical underpinnings of central banks’ authority. By combining theoretical insights from interactionist sociology (e.g., Pierre Bourdieu, Norbert Elias, and Etienne Wenger) and from the philosophy of modernity (e.g., Hannah Arendt, Michel Foucault, and Jürgen Habermas), it looks into the crucial role of knowledge for financial governance in general and central banks’ authority in particular. Knowledge shapes governance in two ways. It structurally creates the conditions of possibility for certain practices to develop and it cognitively represents reality. Such representations become incorporated into the background knowledge of the community of practice. The thesis highlights the importance of modern science for governance to occur. The rise of science in economics and finance has transformed legitimate representations of the financial environment and concepts of competence and credibility defining who is entitled to act. The dissertation details three practices of financial stabilization by central banks through time, each of which stem from a distinct market representation and cultural configuration of the community of practice. The practices investigated are monetary-based, capital-flow-based, and standard-based practices of governance. | Ph.D. | financial market | 10 |
| Dungan, Sarah | Chang, Belinda S.W. | The Molecular Evolution of Cetacean Dim-Light Vision: In Vitro Studies of Rhodopsin Over a Macroevolutionary Transition | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-06 | Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) are fully aquatic mammals that have captured the imagination of biologists due to their iconic evolutionary transformation from terrestrial ancestors. Nevertheless, much about how this extreme macroevolutionary transition occurred at the molecular level remains unknown. The vertebrate visual system is ideal for studying molecular adaptation due to the reliance organisms place on it for fitness-related behaviours, and because key molecular components of the visual transduction cascade in photoreceptors are relatively well understood. Light activation of the dim-light pigment, rhodopsin, is the first step of the visual transduction cascade, and is thought to have been the target of selection across a wide variety of vertebrate lineages. Cetaceans, due to their rich evolutionary history, are model organisms for understanding how changing environments put selective pressure on sensory processes. In this dissertation, I investigate the molecular basis for adaptive evolution in cetacean rhodopsin using a combination of in vitro expression experiments and computational analyses. First, I evaluate evidence for adaptation in cetacean rhodopsin through characterization of its spectral properties in the killer whale (Orcinus orca), and a statistical assessment of selection patterns in a representative dataset of cetacean rhodopsin genes. Next, I focus on the evolutionary significance of key amino acid substitutions in killer whale rhodopsin that confer both spectral and non-spectral (kinetic) functional shifts, specifically through comparison with rhodopsin pigments from two outgroup species (bovine and hippopotamus). Finally, I use an ancestral sequence reconstruction and protein resurrection approach to establish functional and corresponding molecular shifts across the terrestrial-aquatic transition at the root of Cetacea. Together, these projects provide a more complete investigation of cetacean rhodopsin, not only addressing questions regarding dim-light (aquatic) adaptation in cetaceans, but also generating new hypotheses about how the ecology of living and ancient cetaceans has shaped the visual system. | Ph.D. | ecology, environment | 13, 14 |
| Dunlop, Wendy Anne | Portelli, John | The Legal Duty to Accommodate Faith and Religion in Ontario's Public Schools: An Exploratory Case Study | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-11 | Abstract Ontario public schools have become a focal point—and contested sites—where the dichotomy of a proclaimed secular stance must be reconciled with the legal duty to accommodate diverse faiths and religions. This exploratory case study examines the experiences of principals in addressing the challenge of ensuring the public school is positioned as secular, while simultaneously accommodating the faiths and religions of Ontario’s increasingly diverse, multi-cultural society. When competing rights under the Canadian Charter or Human Rights Code come into conflict it can present a complex challenge. To provide context for this exploratory case study jurisprudence, legislation and school policy, developed post-Charter, are reviewed. With this legal framework data from interviews with twelve elementary and secondary principals from five Ontario public boards are examined to learn how the principals enact, integrate, and mobilize the duty to accommodate faith and religion in their ‘secular’ schools. What is the impact on how schools function? How is conflict managed when religious tenets conflict with other equal but competing rights, such as sex equity, same sex relationships, or freedom of speech? Is there a tipping point—a point of ‘undue hardship’—where a principal must declare a religion-based request as deleterious to the rights of others, and thus impossible to accommodate? The study demonstrates the legal duty to accommodate faith and religion in Ontario’s bourgeoning multi-faith society adds to the complexity of the principal’s role in ensuring the religious diversity of students and staff is recognized, included and integrated into the fabric of our public schools. The study also demonstrates the successful accommodation of faith and religion is facilitated through the principal’s mindset of inclusivity, respect for difference, engagement with the community—including religious leaders—and knowledge of the law. The growing influence of Muslims and Islam in our schools and their accommodation needs are also recognized. Principals particularly acknowledge the new health education curriculum which has created discord with Christians and non-Christians. Opposition to content on same-sex relationships places principals in an untenable position between accommodating religious beliefs and safeguarding the rights of the LGBTQ communities. Principals are greatly challenged by the dilemma. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Dunmore, Catherine Elizabeth | Su, Anna | Why no one comes running for the boys who cry rape: The response of domestic and international criminal justice systems to sexual violence against men and boys during conflicts | Law | 2017-11 | Sexual violence against men and boys is prevalent throughout situations of conflict, yet this study outlines the significant challenges to male victims accessing justice at either a national or international level. The legal community has the unique potential to acknowledge and address such violence. However, utilising a case study of Uganda exposes the multiple hurdles male victims may face, with domestic legislation both failing to criminalise their rape and prosecuting individuals perceived as homosexual, including through implementation of forced anal testing. Meanwhile, the countryâ s International Crimes Division faces constraints to its available resources, caseload and jurisdiction. A review of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and International Criminal Court jurisprudence demonstrates that international criminal tribunals may be better placed to ensure effective redress for male victims. Nevertheless, further progress is essential to achieve justice for all boys and men who cry rape. | LL.M. | justice | 16 |
| Dunsworth, Edward Ira | Radforth, Ian | The Transnational Making of Ontario Tobacco Labour, 1925-1990 | History | 2019-11 | This dissertation explores the transformations in tobacco farm labour in Ontario from approximately 1925 to 1990, advancing a significant reinterpretation of the histories of agricultural labour and guestworker programs in Canada. Contrary to portrayals of Canadian agriculture as permanently plagued by labour shortage, this case study demonstrates the heterogeneity of the sector, which included not only labour-starved growers but also farmers like those in tobacco whose high profits enabled them to attract a diverse range of harvest workers each year. Indeed, for much of the 20th century, Ontario’s tobacco sector, located primarily in Norfolk County and the surrounding areas, was the premier destination for seasonal farmworkers in Canada. In the sector’s early decades, tobacco workers enjoyed significant freedom of movement, unusual opportunities for social mobility, and a vibrant culture of worker organization and resistance. However, the opportunities in Ontario tobacco were never equally available to all prospective workers, and incorporation into the sector was always marked by patterns of inclusion and exclusion. For those workers who could gain access to the tobacco labour market, the benefits of working in tobacco steadily declined over the 20th century. By the 1980s, the sector no longer offered opportunities for social mobility and the possibilities of worker organization were greatly constrained. Guestworkers from the Caribbean and Mexico found their labour and geographic mobility much more tightly restricted than any previous or contemporary groups of tobacco workers. These transformations were complex and the result of many contingent factors (in both Canada and migrant-sending countries), including: political economic trends; ideologies of race and gender; the actions of employers, local communities, and workers themselves; and the efforts of multiple levels of the state to exert greater control over tobacco farm labour. The thesis pays particular attention to the transnational dynamics of labour migration systems, guestworker program structures, and worker resistance. By historicizing farm labour in a single crop and single region over approximately seven decades, the dissertation demonstrates that farm labour is not by definition a station of poverty and extreme exploitation, but instead is made so by historical processes. | Ph.D. | worker, labour, gender, agriculture, poverty | 1, 2, 5, 8 |
| Durbin, Anna | Glazier, Richard H | Mental Health Service Use Patterns for Immigrant Groups in Ontario: Population Based Studies | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-06 | Background: Immigrants have diverse pre-immigration, peri-immigration, and post-immigration experiences. Despite being exposed to distinct mental health stressors, little is known about immigrant groups' service use for non-psychotic mental health disorders in the host country.Objective: Three studies assessed mental health service use by recent newcomers who settled in Ontario, Canada compared to use by age-and-sex matched long term residents (Canadian-born individuals or pre-1985 immigrants). Each study focused on one factor associated with one of the three stages of immigration: pre-immigration (region of origin), peri-immigration (admission class), and post-immigration (area material deprivation).Methods: Population-based administrative data sources were linked to measure primary care visits, psychiatrist visits, and hospital use (i.e., emergency department visits or hospital admissions) for non-psychotic disorders by recent immigrants (i.e., within five years of arrival)in Ontario during 1993-2012. Results: Immigrants' service use patterns for non-psychotic mental health disorders differed from long term residents, with immigrants generally using less mental health care. In the pre-immigration study on world region of origin, immigrants from all regions used less psychiatry and hospital services than long term residents, while immigrants' use of primary care relative to long term residents varied by region of origin.In the peri-immigration study on admission class, male refugees were more likely to use primary care than long term residents. No admission class of immigrants had greater use of psychiatry or hospital care than comparators. In the post-immigration study on material deprivation, immigrants were over-represented in deprived areas. While residence in more deprived areas was associated with greater use of primary and hospital mental health care, immigrants exhibited smaller increases in use than long term residents.Discussion: Given rising immigration levels globally and Ontario, reviews of existing practices and policies are necessary to better understand immigrants' lower use of mental health service use and different patterns of use than long term residents. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Dusha, Elton | Shi, Shouyong | Essays on Intermediated Corruption, Financial Frictions and Economic Development | Economics | 2013-06 | Distortions that affect macroeconomic outcomes are an important avenue through which we can explain differences in cross country output and productivity. In this thesis I concentrate on two types of distortions, political economy and informational distortions. In Chapter one, I build a model of intermediated corruption where interactions between government bureaucrats and those who bribe them are mediated by a third party. I show that intermediation has significant effects on the incidence of corruption and the prices entrepreneurs pay for permits. When corruption is particularly acute, measures that increase the frequency with which government bureaucrats are audited often have the undesirable result of increasing the prevalence of corruption because of intermediation. In Chapter two I explore the link between corruption and inequality by building a model in which tax collectors are corrupt. I find that as inequality increases, the frequency of corrupt transactions increases as well. I also find that where corruption is more severe, because wealthier individuals tend to pay lower taxes, inequality is higher. I perform a few quantitative experiments to better understand this linkage. Chapter three explores distortions that are caused by adverse selection in markets with search frictions. I find that when participants are concerned about the information they reveal through their interactions in the market, the distortions to liquidity are deeper and that equilibrium selection is significantly affected. I also find that markets with reputational concerns are more sensitive to outside shocks. | PhD | inequality, equality | 5, 10 |
| Dutton, Jessica Nancy | Fox, Ann||Myers, Ted | Lessons from Stories of Diabetes Self-Management: Enunciating Culture in Health Decision-Making in the Third Space | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-11 | Increasing rates of type 2 diabetes in Indigenous populations are a complex and critical problem. The requirements of diabetes self-management are challenging and few interventions have produced meaningful improvements for Indigenous people with diabetes. Studies have reported that when Indigenous people seek help with diabetes from the medical system they face racial discrimination and barriers rooted in cultural difference and misunderstanding. In this dissertation, I explore the intersections of culture and health care in the context of Indigenous peoples’ experience with diabetes self-management. This study combines critical ethnographic methods with the theory of postcolonial scholar Homi Bhabha to provide new insights into how members of a colonized group (the subaltern) experience the world from a figurative third space between the culture of the colonizer and the culture of the colonized. In the third space, experiences are translated uniquely, since the subaltern has knowledge of both the culture of the colonizer and their own culture. Based on this process of translation, a person in the third space enunciates their cultural difference through words and actions that challenge, unsettle, or infiltrate the colonial power. I conducted storytelling sessions with ten Indigenous community members in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories in Canada to explore how Bhabha’s third space theory can applied to the experiences of Indigenous people navigating the third space between the mainstream Canadian medical culture and Indigenous culture and enunciating cultural difference through diabetes self-management behaviours. This work disrupts the traditional understanding of individual level behaviour change by addressing the mechanism through which individual health decision-making is influenced by experience translated through the lens of colonization. I argue that, while the Western medical system is part of a colonial structure, the third space model provides an opportunity to understand how Indigenous people develop self-management behaviours that are culturally informed and discursively strategic. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Dyer, Ellen Louise Elizabeth | Jones, Dylan B A | Sahel and Congo Basin Precipitation: Variability and Teleconnections | Physics | 2016-11 | Future projections of African precipitation are still mired in uncertainty. Reducing this uncertainty requires a better understanding of the processes that drive variability in present day African precipitation. Using the Community Earth System Model (CESM), we examined the linkages between regional and local atmospheric circulation patterns and their impact on precipitation in the Sahel and Congo Basin, with a particular focus on the influence of the Indian Ocean on precipitation in these regions. The influence of the Indian Ocean on Sahel precipitation was investigated using a series of sea surface temperature (SST) sensitivity experiments. We identified two mechanisms by which the Indian Ocean can alter Sahel precipitation. The first mechanism is associated with perturbations on the equator that alter Sahel precipitation by modulating the Asian monsoon circulation and driving changes in descent in North Africa. The second mechanism is associated with SST perturbations that cover more of the basin and alter the overturning circulation between the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. These two mechanisms result in different precipitation responses in the Sahel. The first mechanism induces an increase in precipitation as a result of warming in the Indian Ocean, whereas the second mechanism produces a decrease in Sahel precipitation in response to warming. Congo Basin precipitation was examined with regional water tagging and stable isotope tracers in CESM. Using regionally defined water tags, the moisture contribution from different sources to Congo Basin precipitation was investigated. We found that the Indian Ocean and evaporation from the Congo Basin are the dominant moisture sources, and that the Atlantic Ocean is a comparatively small source of moisture. Variability in Congo Basin precipitation was found to be a result of changes in the available moisture and in the atmospheric circulation in the region. In wet years, more of the precipitation in the Congo Basin is derived from Indian Ocean moisture, although the spatial distributions of the dominant sources is shifted, reflecting changes in the mid-tropospheric circulation over the Indian Ocean. The isotopic signatures in precipitation were consistent with the dominant influence of moisture from local evaporation and the ocean sources. | Ph.D. | water, ocean | 14 |
| Dyer, Hannah M. | Dina, Georgis | Becoming Otherwise: The Queer Aesthetics of Childhood | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2014-11 | This dissertation examines the relationship between discourses of childhood, theories of sexuality and cultural production. The theoretical framework draws on the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott. I read literature published in the fields of education, queer theory and childhood studies to posit a theory of childhood that acknowledges the role of the unconscious in learning and in sexual development. I ask how theories of childhood create the material conditions amidst which children develop, and how the adult's own history of dependence, individuation, and relationality informs their theory of what defines a normal childhood. Throughout the dissertation, I theorize queer childhood as that which exceeds the confines of normalcy and resists normative assessments of growth. In the scope of this project, queer childhood is that which transcends and troubles normative metrics of growth. Here, queer references both non-normative sexuality and childlike qualities, such as curiosity, creativity and the desire for play, which do not expire when adulthood is obtained.In order to use the proposed framework, I test theories of childhood development as they relate to sexuality, learning and loss by applying them to representations of childhood in film. I suggest that the adult's non-conscious dynamics operant in encounters with children and childhood instruct pedagogy and curriculum used to educate children. Methodologically, I examine aesthetic representations of childhood in four films in order to theorize the relationship between adult constructions of childhood and the experience of being a child. My intent is to show how the viewing of these films forms an aesthetic experience that can assist in the symbolization of an unconscious constellation of affect, defense and desire. To this end, I privilege psychoanalytic theories of how aesthetic objects describe and clarify subjective experience, and narrate conflict, in order to contribute a theory of queer childhood attentive to both social and instinctual life. | Ph.D. | queer | 5 |
| Dylan, Arielle | Chambon, Adrienne S. | "Three Hundred Leagues Further into the Wilderness" Conceptualizations of the Nonhuman during Wendat-French Culture Contact, 1609-1649: Implications for Environmental Social Work and Social Justice | Social Work | 2010-06 | This study concerns an essential but, until recent years, little explored area of social work: environmental social work. The social work profession has long considered persons in their environment; however, use of the term environment has typically referred to social rather than nonhuman physical dimensions of space and place. It is common knowledge that we face today a number of serious environmental challenges, but less common is an understanding of how things came to be as they are. Why, for example, did things not develop differently? Why is our human-nonhuman relationship so strained? This research asserts human conceptualisations of the nonhuman other influence treatment of not only the nonhuman but also other human beings. Having an interdisciplinary focus involving social work, environmental studies and early Canadian history, Wendat and French conceptualisations of the nonhuman are explored through an ecofeminist framework in a culture-contact context to initiate consideration of, and in due course attending to, the uneasy intersection of the human and the nonhuman, social work and environmental issues, and current Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal relations. Through locating our environmental crisis within a historical context, it is possible to unsettle some contemporary assumptions about the human-nonhuman relationship, drawing attention to the fact that things could have been otherwise, that the environmental challenges experienced today were not inescapable. While there are certainly many ways to approach a history of our present environmental crisis, this investigation in the Canadian context involving a clearly defined case of culture contact between the Wendat and French in the early seventeenth century offers a variety of advantages deriving, in part, from the comparable but different complexities belonging to each group and the opportunity to explore two highly dissimilar cultural practices and belief systems from the time of initial contact. This study examines in detail how the two cultures understood and interacted with the nonhuman, and each other, through a forty-year period from 1609-1649. From this historical exploration of Wendat and French worldviews and land-use practices implications for social work are described and a model for place-based social work is generated. | PhD | environment | 13 |
| Dziedzic, Rebecca | Karney, Bryan W | Decision Support Tools for Sustainable Water Distribution Systems | Civil Engineering | 2015-06 | Sustainability relies on the balance between economic, social, and environmental objectives. Although seemingly divergent at times, the connections between them elucidate opportunities for improving different components simultaneously. In water distribution systems, aging infrastructure, insufficient funds, water scarcity, leakage, and high energy use have prompted the pursuit of sustainability through different strategies. These conditions demand improvement and create the opportunity to rethink the system. The present study proposes five separate decision support approaches that underlie a systems approach. These address current issues of North American water distribution systems and lessen the gap between research and application.The first two focus on the interface between users and networks. The relation between user characteristics and demand is studied by building an integrated database to support planning, especially demand management. Data from three Ontario municipalities are used to define metrics, benchmarks, conservation targets, and user clusters. The relation between users and service requirements is further explored qualitatively through a survey on water user expectations, addressing the disconnection between utilities and stakeholders. Applied to the City of Guelph, it informs the utility of knowledge gaps and preferred solutions.While these approaches concentrate on the needs of the stakeholders, inputs to more thorough planning, the next two assess the resulting systems. A set of energy metrics addresses the issue of inefficient energy use and provides indicators of system capacity, costs, and greenhouse gas emissions. The metrics are applied to the Toronto water network, and allow for the identification of specific areas for improvement. In order to further evaluate how complex networks respond to variations, a more comprehensive set of performance metrics are proposed and applied to two example networks.The final approach seeks to improve the design process by reducing the computational intensity of optimization procedures and thereby allowing for the analysis of more system objectives and uncertainties. The procedure, applied to Anytown, uses shorter time cycles to approximate full costs of systems with varying loads. Overall, the approaches facilitate current-day decision-making by applying systems thinking to the development of new solutions that collect, integrate, analyse, and re-interpret readily available data and models. | Ph.D. | water, energy, infrastructure, greenhouse gas, environment, conserv | 6, 7, 9, 13, 14 |
| Eastham, Laura Campbell | Begun, David R | Stable Isotope and Trace Element Paleoecology of the Rudabánya II Fauna: Paleoenvironmental Implications for the Late Miocene Hominoid, Rudapithecus hungaricus | Anthropology | 2017-11 | The Late Miocene extinction of great apes in Europe has generally been regarded as the consequence of environmental changes that occurred in correlation with global Late Miocene cooling. However, given the range of dietary and locomotor adaptations observed among the different hominoid genera it is unlikely that the same environmental factors can account for the decline of the entire group. To better understand the factors that influenced the extinction of European Miocene apes it is necessary to evaluate their paleoecology on a regional scale. This research utilizes stable carbon and oxygen isotope (δ13C and δ18O) and strontium/calcium (Sr/Ca) trace element ratios measured in fossil ungulate tooth enamel to reconstruct the paleoecology and paleoclimate of Rudabánya II (R. II), an early Late Miocene (~10 Ma) hominoid locality in northeastern Hungary. The fossiliferous deposits at R. II preserve abundant samples of the extinct great ape Rudapithecus hungaricus. Primary aims of this research include: 1) evaluating the types of habitats present in terms of forest canopy cover, 2) examining trophic niche dynamics among the diverse ungulate community, and 3) estimating key climatic variables including mean annual temperature (MAT), mean annual precipitation (MAP), and degree of seasonality. Stable isotope and Sr/Ca values indicate the presence of a heterogeneous wetland-forest environment, with a gradient of more open to closed canopy habitats. Significant differences in stable isotope and Sr/Ca values were observed among the sampled ungulate fauna, supporting the interpretation of resource specialization and partitioning. A MAP of 1030-1333 mm/yr, and a MAT of 14°C were calculated from the average δ13C and δ18O values of the equid Hippotherium intrans. Intra-tooth δ18O values revealed low amplitudes of variation indicating that seasonal changes in temperature and precipitation were relatively mild. The paleoenvironment that Rudapithecus inhabited was similar to that of contemporaneous hominoids in Western Europe, but strikingly different from that of hominoids in the Eastern Meditterranean. While adaptations to fallback feeding and efficient suspensory arboreality would have allowed Rudapithecus to endure some degree of environmental deterioration, the progressive restriction and fragmentation of humid wetland-forests following the retreat of Lake Pannon would have eventually led to its extinction. | Ph.D. | climate, environment, forest | 13, 15 |
| Easton, Mark David | Kervin, John | Gender-Pay Inequality and Organizational Culture: A Multi-Organizational Analysis | Sociology | 2015 | According to sociologists, more female-concentrated occupations pay less mainly because societal culture devalues work associated with women. But less clear is how much the cultural context of the work organization fosters or suppresses this devaluation. This question is vital because pay and work are not formally linked at the occupation level, but at job level - through a formal workplace practice known as job evaluation. And as researchers often note, the outcomes of this practice are ultimately influenced by organizational culture. Drawing from the literature on gendered organizations, organizational culture, job evaluation, and stereotyping theory, this dissertation examines whether organizations with more masculine cultures have intensified levels of devaluation in their job-reward systems - reflecting the logic that more masculine cultures prescribe wider status differences between what is stereotyped as masculine and feminine. The analysis draws from a confidential dataset linking over 50 thousand jobs to 68 separate government organizations of a single country. Main findings suggest that while the statistical effect of organizational culture is modest, the amount of devaluation in an organization's job-reward system intensifies in more female-concentrated jobs that are located in more masculine organizational cultures. Further, in some instances, the traditional framework of job evaluation might encourage gender stereotypes to manifest as pay inequalities that benefit more female-concentrated jobs. But this counterintuitive form of inequality is largely masked in more masculine organizational cultures. Collectively, this dissertation contributes to a more organizational-cultural understanding of pay determination by considering how the cultural context of work organizations influences formal organizational activities that were intended to be gender neutral. It also contributes to the more recent gendered-organizations literature that has become increasingly concerned with the impact of organizational context on gender inequalities, and to some of the more recent social-psychological literature concerned with the impact of background effects on stereotyping outcomes. | Ph.D. | gender, women, equality, inequality | 5, 10 |
| Eastwood, Alexander | Cobb, Michael | Strange Dwellings: Inhabiting American Literary Modernism | English | 2015-11 | This dissertation probes the relationship between sexuality and the home in American literature from the early twentieth century, asserting forms of dwelling that challenge the values given to itinerancy and vagrancy in criticism on queer modernism. Within queer theory, which since its inception has prescribed an anti-social, anti-normative position, scholars have mined modernist texts for their transgressive potential. Indeed, modernist texts frequently exhibit precisely the qualities that American culture negatively associates with queerness: urbanism, exile, dislocation, disorientation, loss, and infertility. However, I argue that narratives of queerness that privilege anti-social behaviour risk occluding more granular discussions of the murky relationships that queer subjects have with ordinariness and normativity. The basic premise of “Strange Dwellings” is, therefore, that sexuality in American modernism indexes a range of concomitant concerns and anxieties, including a pervasive fascination with home. Affective ambivalence permeates many of the texts in this project, which simultaneously express profound nostalgia and strain toward new aesthetic, social, and political realities. While the home may find its form in the house, home is ultimately an affective state, I conclude, rather than a material space. I re-direct our attention to the ways in which modernist texts refuse to assimilate to traditional social and literary formations, and yet strive to recuperate and transform them. “Strange Dwellings” examines instantiations of the queer home in texts by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, Wallace Thurman, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Willa Cather, and James Agee. While my aims extend well beyond those of a revisionist project, I deliberately return to well-trodden critical ground in order to consider modernism’s fraught relationship to the peripatetic. Rather than pursuing questions of recovery or canonicity, I contend that the authors I take up envision their place within literary history by conceiving of place in physical terms. Just as their texts come to constitute forms of housing, writing serves as an act of homemaking. These authors mobilize form itself as a dwelling space, recasting the home as a site of endurance. In doing so, they treat writing as a practice with the capacity to aesthetically re-imagine the social. | Ph.D. | queer | 5 |
| Eaton, Emily Marie | Prudham, W. Scott | Getting Behind the Grain: The Politics of Producer Opposition to GM Wheat on the Canadian Prairies | Geography | 2009-11 | On May tenth, 2004 Monsanto announced that it would discontinue breeding and field level research of transgenic Roundup Ready (RR) wheat. This decision was heavily influenced by the widespread rejection of RR wheat by Canadian prairie producers who voiced their opposition through a diverse coalition of rural and urban organizations. With six of the nine member organizations representing rural and farm groups, this research departs from the most common representation of anti-GM movements as being urban and European-centred. This dissertation contrasts the general acceptance of Monsanto’s Roundup Ready canola just five years earlier (in the mid 90s) with the widespread opposition amongst prairie producers to RR wheat. It uses an updated version of the agrarian question and the production of nature thesis to show how capitalist relations are differentiated across place and commodities. The research finds that producer resistance to RR wheat hinged on the specificities of local histories and institutions, cultural conceptions of worth and economic fair treatment, and the character of wheat as a commodity with particular biophysical properties. The research is also concerned with the ways in which producers articulated their resistance with and through discourses of consumption, while at the same time rejecting the attempts made by proponents of RR wheat to relegate them to consuming subjects, who would best register their dissent by voting with their dollars on the market. For many prairie farm organizations, the fate of the family farm is tied up with the future of wheat farming and the capacity of farmers to collectively market their wheat in international markets. Monsanto’s vision for the future of prairie wheat crossed moral and cultural boundaries for producers and organizations that understood themselves as active subjects. | PhD | cities, urban, rural, agriculture | 2, 11 |
| Eaton, Sarah | Pauly, Louis | China's State Capitalist Turn: Political Economy of the Advancing State | Political Science | 2011-11 | The thesis explores puzzling change in Chinese state sector over the past two decades. China’s debt-ridden state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were long seen as the most thorny reform dilemma; however, in the past decade, the surging profitability of large SOEs in the so-called “monopoly sectors” (longduan hangye 垄断行业) have made them lynchpins of an emerging state capitalist system. The main argument is that the state sector’s apparent reversal of fortunes is, in large measure, a legacy of the brief period of neoconservative rule (1989-1992) following the Tiananmen uprising in spring 1989. The fleeting ascendance of Chen Yun’s neoconservative faction provided them the opportunity to redirect the reform course set by Deng Xiaoping and embed a market vision which saw SOEs as pillars of the economy. The neoconservative leadership laid the normative and institutional foundations of a robust SOE-directed industrial policy regime which has gained momentum through the 1990s and into the last decade. The study also sheds lights on the political and economic drivers of China’s unfolding market order through analysis of the industry foundations of China’s emerging state capitalist system. In recent years, state ownership has concentrated in some industries and largely retreated from others. What is driving this process of what Pei (2006) terms the “selective withdrawal” of the state from the economy? To address this question, the nature of ownership change across Chinese industry in recent years is first analyzed. Focus then shifts to comparative analysis of the reform pathway of two industries in which state ownership remains dominant: telecommunications and airlines. Combining insights from the partial reform equilibrium model and historical institutionalism, the study argues that both the particularist interests of “short-term winners” in industry and the neoconservative policy legacy have left an imprint on the process of selective withdrawal. | PhD | industr, institution | 9, 16 |
| Eaves, Nickolas Anthony | Thomson, Murray J||Dworkin, Seth B | The Effect of Reversibility and High Pressure on Soot Formation | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-11 | Reducing soot emissions from combustion processes is important due to the negative health and environmental effects of atmospheric soot. In order to achieve this goal, there has to be a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of soot formation to allow for the determination of economically viable methods of reducing these emissions. Due to the highly complex nature of soot formation, detailed numerical models are employed to gain fundamental understanding of the factors that affect each mechanism of soot evolution. Since most practical combustion devices operate at elevated pressures, it is important to understand the effect of pressure on soot formation. The overall goal of this thesis is to improve the currently employed models by replacing tunable constants with fundamental physics, with secondary goals of applying the model to high pressure conditions. This thesis is divided into four research studies. The first is a detailed description and validation of the numerical code utilized to simulate soot formation, denoted as the CoFlame code. The second study develops a novel model for two key soot formation processes, which are the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) nucleation and condensation processes. The novel reversible PAH clustering (RPC) model is shown to be superior to previous models. The third study enhances the RPC model to include nucleation and condensation events from a wide range of PAHs. It is shown that smaller PAHs contribute the most to the nucleation process, while all PAHs contribute to the condensation process. The fourth and final study applies the CoFlame code to high pressure flames and determines that shear between the air and fuel streams is responsible for the formation of recirculation zones at elevated pressures and complete conversion of fuel to soot. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Ebrahimi, Neda | Ito, Shinya | PREGNANCY, NEONATAL AND DISEASE OUTCOMES IN WOMEN WITH RELAPSING REMITTING MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2018-06 | Objective To compare pregnancy, neonatal and disease outcomes in women with Relapsing Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (RRMS) exposed to different therapeutic agents— natalizumab (Tysabri®) and Vitamin D. Methods Data from German and Canadian Multiple Sclerosis (MS) pregnancy registries was compared to evaluate neonatal and pregnancy outcomes in natalizumab exposed and unexposed groups. A healthy control group of pregnant women unexposed to teratogens was also utilized; primary outcome of interest was birth defects and miscarriage rates. For the Vitamin D study we first compared postpartum disease outcomes using Kaplan Meier and Cox Regression in a German (GER) cohort not supplementing with Vitamin D to a Canadian (CAN) cohort with Vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy; primary outcome of interest was time to disease resurgence in the postpartum period. We then evaluated neonatal outcomes in Canadians with high dose Vitamin D (>4000IU/day) in pregnancy to ones with lower intake. Primary outcome of interest was birth weight. Results There were no significant differences in birth defects or other adverse neonatal outcomes between the 101 natalizumab exposed, 78 disease matched, and 97 healthy controls. The rates of miscarriage were higher in both MS groups in comparison to the healthy controls. In the Vitamin D study, significantly more GERs used Disease Modifying Drugs (DMDs) in pregnancy and postpartum compared to CANs. There was no difference in disease resurgence between the two cohorts. Neonatal outcomes including birth weight did not differ significantly in the 29 women that exceeded 4000IU/day in pregnancy, compared to women that took lower doses. Conclusion Gestational exposure to either therapy, natalizumab or Vitamin D, is not associated with adverse outcomes. Larger studies are needed to investigate the longer duration of therapy with natalizumab and higher doses of Vitamin D >4000IU/day in pregnancy. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Edelson, Miriam Karin | Eichler, Margrit | Mental Health in the Workplace: Unions' Role in Identifying and Combating Psychosocial Hazards | Social Justice Education | 2016-11 | The world of paid work has shifted extraordinarily in the last several decades. Globalization, technology, lean production, the intensification of work, mergers and reorganizations and precarious work have all meant a toughening of the conditions for workers. Unions organize in these conditions, confronting issues of concern to workers. Very little has been written about the role unions play in trying to protect the psychological health of their members. The major question of this thesis is whether unions are identifying and combating psychosocial hazards in the workplace. The thesis adds to knowledge on this subject by analyzing two data sets. First I conduct an analysis of grey literature on the Internet about psychological health and safety concerns. Second, I explore a series of questions with union health and safety experts representing every major Canadian union from each sector of the economy. The questions probe how unions are dealing with psychosocial risks in the workplace, how unions are organizing resistance and building solidarity. My inquiry also explores the issue of how unions deal with return-to-work for workers who have been absent for mental health reasons. I am not a neutral observer: I write from the standpoint of workers. My work has a practical utility to the degree that it can be directly applied to these real life problems facing health and safety practitioners. It attempts to theorize that which these union specialists should do. It also tries to anticipate some practical problems they may need to solve in future as a result of current health and safety practices. I observe real life phenomena and develop theory around them. One of these is that unions resist employer restraints and power and in so doing bump up against managementsâ right to control production and dictate work organization. In this thesis, I show the fledgling ways in which unions are challenging managementsâ typical rights in the interests of better working conditions. I give evidence of three promising practices that unions are adopting and propose that these may be adapted further for initiatives in other sectors. I argue that workersâ psychological health is one potential winner of these strategies. I also propose that union representatives be educated to deal more empathically with members that are absent for reasons of psychological ill health, in advocating for them when they return and by building solidarity among co-workers. | Ed.D. | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Edelsparre, Allan Holmquist | Sokolowski, Marla B||Fitzpatrick, Mark J | Movement Ecology: How Genes, Food, and Climate Influence Dispersal in Drosophila melanogaster | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2020-06 | Organisms have colonized virtually all types of life-sustaining habitats on our planet resulting in the extraordinary distribution and diversity of life existing today as well as in the past. Elucidating the genetic and environmental contributions to dispersal is important to advance our understanding of how such factors influence the distribution of species and communities. In my thesis, I advanced this understanding by examining adult dispersal in Drosophila melanogaster in strains known to differ in larval foraging behaviour. In the first part of my thesis, I investigated strains of Drosophila melanogaster that are naturally polymorphic in larval foraging behaviour. This polymorphism is mainly due to allelic variation at the foraging (for) locus. forR larvae (rovers) have longer foraging path-lengths compared to fors larvae. In laboratory and field experiments I demonstrated that these strains differ in adult dispersal. Using mutant and transgene fly strains I verified that for was the causal agent contributing to differences in adult dispersal and that for mediates a link between foraging and dispersal via pleiotropy. In the second part, I investigated the effect of habitat loss on connectivity in rovers and sitters. Competing hypotheses propose that connectivity decreases either linearly or nonlinearly with increasing habitat loss. My results support the latter hypothesis. I found critical distances where dispersal and therefore connectivity was reduzed to zero. This critical distance can be manipulated by differentially expressing for in flies suggesting that habitat loss can directly influence genetic variation in populations with multiple dispersal strategies. In the third part of my thesis, I tested whether the distribution of food in landscapes interacted with dispersal. When food was limited rovers and sitters adopted similar strategies to track the distribution of patches, however, when the amount of food increased with the distribution of patches rovers and sitters tracked the distribution of food differently. In the last part of my thesis, I examined how dispersal in flies responded to changes in climate. In a mark-release-recapture experiment I combined capture data with temperature and wind factors in dynamic models to estimate dispersal rates for rovers, sitters and an outbred strain of flies. I found that temperature elicited a similar response in rovers and sitters. This response differed from an outbred strain. I also detected a strong response to wind with wind-advection rates increasing with wind speed for all three fly strains. Surprisingly, my results suggest that response to temperature and wind might minimize known differences in dispersal propensity. My results also strongly suggest that the direction and magnitude of wind may play a key role in the colonization and distribution of fly populations. Taken together, these findings are relevant to the study of the spread of pests and invasive species, particularly in taxa where for might contribute to dispersal. More broadly, my findings have implications for understanding how genes and the environment interact to produce dispersal at the population-level and ultimately the distribution of species and communities. | Ph.D. | ecology | 15 |
| Edwards, Bret Joel | Penfold, Steve | A Bumpy Landing: Airports and the Making of Jet Age Canada | History | 2017-11 | This dissertation examines changes at and around Canadaâ s major airports in the early jet age. It traces how airports in major Canadian cities evolved into mass transport hubs between the 1950s and 1980s and also materialized as complex technical systems that connected aviation to wider contemporary issues. During this period these airports assumed a dual role, operating in the background to help move people and planes and emerging at key times to occupy public consciousness. Historical changes there can thus help explain how airports grew increasingly visible as fixed, but active, modern infrastructure that both facilitated jet age mobility and were deeply embedded in the postwar order. This dissertation links the transformation of major airports to the rise of mass air travel, postwar change, and federal stewardship. Aviationâ s rapid growth and technological advances beginning in the 1950s invariably transformed how these airports looked, worked, and were experienced by different groups of people. Various central developments in postwar Canada beyond aviation also migrated to these airports and made them more visible as public infrastructure that were both imagined in the national sphere and part of globalization. Moreover, airports were federally operated until the early 1990s and thus a state infrastructure project. The federal government and its partners used a combination of anticipatory and reactive strategies to manage airports that emphasized national interests, but also cared about cities and capital. This approach blended multiple scales and dynamics and constantly shifted as conditions changed, generating problems and tensions along the way that shaped the particular trajectory of airport development between the 1950s and 1980s. Taken together, this dissertation strengthens and advances historical knowledge about airports and aviation in Canada. It also contributes to the history of technology and mobility and its relationship to social and cultural change. Lastly, it contributes to the political, social, and cultural history of postwar Canada by bringing air travel into the narrative. In so doing, it shows how airports helped to make jet age Canada, a process that encompassed the local, national, and global arena and stretched well into the late twentieth century. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, cities | 9, 11 |
| Edwards, Brie Anna | Jackson, Donald Andrew | Temporal Change in Crayfish Communities and Links to a Changing Environment | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-11 | Community ecology and conservation are complementary disciplines under the umbrella of ecology, providing insight into the factors that determine where and how communities exist, and informing efforts aimed at sustaining the diversity and persistence of the organisms that comprise them. Conservation ecologists apply the principles of ecology and other disciplines, to the maintenance of biodiversity. This thesis uses this approach to assess the status of freshwater crayfish in south-central Ontario and investigate potential anthropogenic drivers of crayfish community change. I start with a temporal analysis of crayfish relative abundance over a period of 18 years and find that all species have experienced significant population declines across the sampled range, resulting in reduced species distributions and crayfish community diversity. Next I employ multivariate statistical techniques to relate changes in crayfish communities between the two time periods to ecological and anthropogenic changes. I identify a number of threats in the region that are correlated with crayfish decline and are likely to pose a threat to aquatic ecosystems more broadly in the region, including calcium (Ca) decline, metal pollution, human development, and species introductions. In the latter two chapters I look more closely at Ca decline as a mechanism driving crayfish declines. First, laboratory analysis of the effect of Ca availability on juvenile Orconectes virilis (a Shield native) reveals that survival is significantly reduced below 0.5-0.9 mg·L-1, which is one of the lowest ever reported Ca requirement thresholds for a crustacean. Second, a correlative study using adult inter-moult crayfish collected from lakes that range broadly in their Ca concentrations, indicates that for O. virilis, carapace Ca content is significantly related to lake Ca concentration, and is under-saturating below 8 mg·L-1. This collective body of work identifies significant anthropogenic threats to crayfish and their aquatic ecosystems in south-central Ontario. | PhD | ecology, biodiversity, fish, conserv, pollut, water | 13, 14, 15 |
| Edwards, Sarah Allison | Bondy, Susan J | Push & Pull: Social determinants of the use of smoking cessation support in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-11 | Tobacco use continues to undermine the health of the Ontarian population. In addition, socio-economic disparities in smoking rates persist in Ontario, despite public health care and universal tobacco control policies. Public health strategies require a detailed understanding of how people are actually quitting smoking in order to develop appropriate interventions and strategies. This thesis used existing evidence and data from the Ontario Tobacco Survey (OTS) to explore unassisted and assisted quitting. The first manuscript estimated the proportion of adult smokers who report attempting to quit unassisted, without the use of pharmacological and/or behavioural assistance, by systematically reviewing population-based studies. A majority of quit attempts were unassisted; however, across and within countries over time, a trend toward lower prevalence of unassisted quit attempts was identified. The second manuscript estimated the prevalence of unassisted quitting and the reach and pattern of use of assisted methods in Ontario. Unassisted quitting was the dominant method reported (58.8%, 95% CI: 56.0-61.6). For assisted methods, pharmaceutical support was the most common (92.9%, 95% CI: 91.1-94.6). Use of behavioural support either alone (2.5%, 95% CI: 1.5-3.6) or in combination with pharmaceutical support (4.6%, 95% CI: 3.3-5.9) was rare. The third manuscript examined the associations between socioeconomic status (SES) and access to care measures and use of cessation strategies using multinomial regression models. Smokers living in areas with the lowest ethnic concentration were more likely to make an assisted quit attempt compared to unassisted quitting (RR=1.67; 95% CI=1.08-2.60) or making no quit attempt (RR=1.65; 95% CI=1.14-2.41). Smokers who reported visiting a doctor in the previous 6 months were more likely to quit with assistance versus unassisted, whether they were advised (RR=1.96, 95% CI=1.49-2.59) or not advised to quit (OR=1.37, 95% CI=1.04-1.82). Together, these studies make a substantial contribution to understanding how smokers are choosing to quit smoking. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Edwards, Steven | Harrison, Timothy P. | Ebla’s Hegemony and Its Impact on the Archaeology of the Amuq Plain in the Third Millennium BCE | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2019-03 | This dissertation investigates the emergence of Ebla as a regional state in northwest Syria during the Early Bronze Age and provides a characterization of Ebla that emphasizes its hegemonic rather than imperial features. The texts recovered from the Royal Palace G archives reveal that Ebla expanded from a small Ciseuphratean kingdom into a major regional power in Upper Mesopotamia over the course of just four or five decades. To consolidate and maintain its rapidly growing periphery, Ebla engaged in intensive diplomatic relations with an array of client states, semi-autonomous polities, and independent kingdoms. Often, political goals were achieved through mutual gift-exchange and interdynastic marriage, but military activity became increasingly common towards the end of the period covered by the texts. However, apart from installing palace officials at some cities, Ebla did not appear to have invested heavily in building infrastructure, such as roads or forts, along its periphery, preferring instead to leave matters of defense up to client and allied states. As a result, the archaeological impact of Ebla’s political hegemony along parts of its periphery was minimal. In re-evaluating the archaeological evidence for Ebla’s growth in the mid-third millennium BCE, this dissertation shows that in only a few instances—for example, in changes to regional settlement patterns in the Amuq Plain, subsistence strategies at Tell es-Sweyhat, and the distribution of ceramic assemblages—can an Eblaite influence on material culture along its periphery be inferred, and even then, only indirectly. While Ebla’s sphere of interaction extended over a considerable territory, this dissertation restricts most of its discussion to Ebla’s northwestern frontier, and particularly to the archaeology of the Amuq Plain. This study demonstrates that even though Ebla had installed an official at Alalaḫu—the major polity in the Amuq Plain—local historical trajectories remained largely intact, and Ebla’s hegemony left only an ephemeral archaeological legacy in the area. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Eetezadi, Sina | Allen, Christine | Nanomedicines and Combination Therapy of Doxorubicin and Olaparib for Treatment of Ovarian Cancer | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2016-03 | Ovarian cancer is the fourth leading cause of death in women of developed countries, with dismal survival improvements achieved in the past three decades. Specifically, current chemotherapy strategies for second-line treatment of relapsed ovarian cancer are unable to effectively treat recurrent disease. This thesis aims to improve the therapeutic outcome associated with recurrent ovarian cancer by (1) creating a 3D cell screening method as an in vitro model of the disease (2) developing a nanomedicine of doxorubicin (DOX) that is more efficacious than PEGylated liposomal doxorubicin (PLD / Doxil ® ) and (3) evaluating additional strategies to enhance treatment efficacy such as mild hyperthermia (MHT) and combination therapy with inhibitors of the poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase enzyme family (PARP). Overall, this work demonstrates the use of 3D multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS) as an in vitro drug testing platform which more closely reflects the clinical presentation of recurrent ovarian cancer relative to traditional monolayer cultures. With the use of this technology, it was found that tissue penetration of drug is not only an issue for large tumors, but also for invisible, microscopic lesions that result from metastasis or remain following cytoreductive surgery. A novel block-copolymer micelle formulation for DOX was developed and fulfilled the goal of iicontrolling drug release while enhancing intratumoral distribution and MCTS bioavailability of DOX, which resulted in a significant improvement in growth inhibition, relative to PLD. MHT appeared to enhance drug accumulation in MCTS in the short term, but not after 48 h of drug treatment. Drug combination studies of DOX together with the PARP inhibitor, olaparib (OLP, Lynparza ® ) were conducted in 2D monolayers and 3D MCTS. In these studies, the effectiveness of the DOX:OLP combination therapy in monolayers and MCTS was found to be ratio dependent such that equimolar ratios resulted in an additive effect, while a greater level of synergy was observed with more extreme ratios. The synergistic effect observed bears promise for future evaluation in vivo which warrants an appropriate delivery method to ensure that the determined molar ratios of both drugs accumulate at the tumor as such, despite differences in the pharmacokinetic profile of each drug, respectively. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Eidelman, Gabriel Ezekiel | Stren, Richard | Landlocked: Politics, Property, and the Toronto Waterfront, 1960-2000 | Political Science | 2013-06 | Dozens of major cities around the world have launched large-scale waterfront redevelopment projects over the past fifty years. Absent from this list of noteworthy achievements, however, is Toronto, a case of grand ambitions gone horribly awry. Despite three extensive revitalization plans in the second half of the 20th century, Toronto’s central waterfront, an area roughly double the city’s central business district, has remained mired in political gridlock for decades. The purpose of this dissertation is to explain why this came to pass. Informed by extensive archival and interview research, as well as geospatial data analyzed using Geographic Information Systems software, the thesis demonstrates that above and beyond political challenges typical of any major urban redevelopment project, in Toronto, issues of land ownership — specifically, public land ownership — were pivotal in defining the scope and pace of waterfront planning and implementation. Few, if any, waterfront redevelopment projects around the world have been attempted amidst the same degree of public land ownership and jurisdictional fragmentation as that which plagued implementation efforts in Toronto. From 1961-1998, no less than 81% of all land in the central waterfront was owned by one public body or another, dispersed across a patchwork of public agencies, corporations, and special purpose authorities nestled within multiple levels of government. Such fragmentation, specifically across public bodies, added a layer of complexity to the existing intergovernmental dynamic that effectively crippled implementation efforts. It created a “joint-decision trap” impervious to conventional resolution via bargaining, problem solving, or unilateral action. This tangled political history poses a considerable challenge to conventional liberal, structuralist, and regime-based theories of urban politics derived from US experiences. It also highlights the limits of conventional implementation theory in the study of urban development, and calls into question longstanding interpretations of federal-provincial-municipal relations and multilevel governance in Canada. | PhD | water, cities, urban | 6, 11 |
| Eidoo, Sameena | Mundy, Karen | "When you witness an evil act, you should stop it with your hand." Citizenship Learning and Engagement of Muslim Youth Activists in Toronto, Canada | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2014-11 | This thesis is about being young, Muslim and politically engaged in contemporary Toronto, Canada. Young Muslims attempting to come to terms with the complex and contradictory promises of Canadian citizenship must confront what it means to "be Canadian"—a national identity marked by historical legacies of oppressions, and shaped by ideals of western liberal democracy. Post-9/11 Canada is marked by intensified suspicion and repression of Muslims and those who “look like” Muslims. This thesis examines how 18 young people, ages16 to 29, who self-identity as “Muslim” and “activist” learned “to reflect and act upon the world in order to transform it” (Freire, 1970). Through life history interview methods, this study attempts to capture how the participants had come to their political activism, critical experiences of learning inside and outside of schools that they understood as influential in shaping their political subjectivities and practices, the range of issues of injustice that concerned them, and the various actions they took to address those issues. The young Muslims expressed concern for and acted on access to quality affordable housing, police brutality, gender-based violence, Islamophobia and other forms of hate, and the question of Palestine. Their actions included creating safe spaces, (dis-) engaging formal systems of governance and public authority, providing public education, producing cultural narratives, and engaging in various forms of direct action. Their voices and stories maintain centrality throughout this work. This thesis is based on a broad definition of “education” that encompasses formal and non-formal education and informal learning. It is also based on the premise that “all education is citizenship education.” It demonstrates how the young Muslims’ multiple learning experiences in families, neighborhoods, communities, youth subcultures, social movements and school--embedded in histories of war and migration—enable them to name and to take action to transform the concrete situations of oppression that impact them and their communities. Particularly important for the young Muslims were the cultural and political spaces in which they were able to critically and collectively explore and question their lived experiences, identities, and binding solidarities. | PhD | governance, justice, gender | 5, 16 |
| Eizadirad, Ardavan | Trifonas, Peter P | Assessment as Stereotyping: Experiences of Racialized Children and Parents with the Grade 3 EQAO Standardized Testing Preparation and Administration in Ontario | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-11 | This exploratory qualitative study uses Critical Theory, specifically Critical Race Theory, to examine the subjective experiences of racialized children and parents with the Grade 3 EQAO standardized testing preparation and administration in Ontario, Canada. Standardized testing as a tool for measuring accountability in schools was introduced in 1996 by the Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) which is an arm’s length agency of the Ministry of Education. Each year EQAO assesses students in publicly funded schools in Grades 3, 6, 9, and 10 focusing on numeracy and literacy using criterion-referenced standardized tests to provide an independent gauge of students’ learning and achievement. Data was collected via audio and video recording of semi-structured interviews with eight Grade 3 children and their parent(s). Although there are research studies conducted on EQAO testing, majority has been at the secondary level. Insights from this study contributes to filling in the gap in the field by focusing on EQAO testing in elementary schools and how it impacts racialized children and parents whose voices are often silenced within educational settings due to systemic barriers. Eight findings emerged through focused coding and thematic analysis. Findings indicate the way the Grade 3 EQAO standardized test is prepared for and administered is more harmful than beneficial. The harmful impact of standardized testing is identified under the umbrella term invisible scars and traumatizing effects of standardized testing particularly how EQAO testing marginalizes racialized children and those from lower socio economic backgrounds. Identifying external assessment as stereotyping, it is argued EQAO tests are culturally and racially biased as it promotes a Eurocentric curriculum and way of life privileging white students and those from higher socio-economic status. A shift from equality to an equity approach is recommended to tackle closing the achievement gap. The achievement gap will not be minimized in a sustainable manner without first addressing inequality of opportunity. Education alone, and quality of education, cannot be judged exclusively through standardized tests and their quantifiable indicators. Children have to be viewed as holistic beings with different social, cognitive, emotional, developmental, spiritual and academic needs. | Ph.D. | equality | 5 |
| El-Gawad, Hossam Mohamed Abd El-Hamid Abd | Abdulhai, Baher | Optimization of Multimodal Evacuation of Large-scale Transportation Networks | Civil Engineering | 2010-11 | The numerous man-made disasters and natural catastrophes that menace major communities accentuate the need for proper planning for emergency evacuation. Transportation networks in cities evolve over long time spans in tandem with population growth and evolution of travel patterns. In emergencies, travel demand and travel patterns drastically change from the usual everyday volumes and patterns. Given that most US and Canadian cities are already congested and operating near capacity during peak periods, network performance can severely deteriorate if drastic changes in Origin-Destination (O-D) demand patterns occur during or after a disaster. Also, loss of capacity due to the disaster and associated incidents can further complicate the matter. Therefore, the primary goal when a disaster or hazardous event occurs is to coordinate, control, and possibly optimize the utilization of the existing transportation network capacity. Emergency operation management centres face multi-faceted challenges in anticipating evacuation flows and providing proactive actions to guide and coordinate the public towards safe shelters. Numerous studies have contributed to developing and testing strategies that have the potential to mitigate the consequences of emergency situations. They primarily investigate the effect of some proposed strategies that have the potential of improving the performance of the evacuation process with modelling and optimization techniques. However, most of these studies are inherently restricted to evacuating automobile traffic using a certain strategy without considering other modes of transportation. Moreover, little emphasis is given to studying the interaction between the various strategies that could be potentially synergized to expedite the evacuation process. Also, the absence of an accurate representation of the spatial and temporal distribution of the population and the failure to identify the available modes and populations that are captive to certain modes contribute to the absence of multimodal evacuation procedures. Incorporating multiple modes into emergency evacuation has the potential to expedite the evacuation process and is essential to assuring the effective evacuation of transit-captive and special-needs populations . This dissertation presents a novel multimodal optimization framework that combines vehicular traffic and mass transit for emergency evacuation. A multi-objective approach is used to optimize the multimodal evacuation problem. For automobile evacuees, an Optimal Spatio-Temporal Evacuation (OSTE) framework is presented for generating optimal demand scheduling, destination choices and route choices, simultaneously. OSTE implements Dynamic Traffic Assignment (DTA) techniques coupled with parallel distributed genetic optimization to guarantee a near global optimal solution. For transit evacuees, a Multi-Depots, Time Constrained, Pick-up and Delivery Vehicle Routing Problem (MDTCPD-VRP) framework is presented to model the use of public transit vehicles in evacuation situations. The MDTCPD-VRP implements constraint programming and local search techniques to optimize certain objective functions and satisfy a set of constraints. The OSTE and MDTCPD-VRP platforms are integrated into one framework to replicate the impact of congestion caused by traffic on transit vehicle travel times. A proof-of-concept prototype has been tested; it investigates the optimization of a multimodal evacuation of a portion of the Toronto Waterfront area. It also assesses the impact of multiple objective functions on emergency evacuation while attempting to achieve an equilibrium state between transit modes and vehicular traffic. Then, a large-scale application, including a demand estimation model from a regional travel survey, is conducted for the evacuation of the entire City of Toronto. This framework addresses many limitations of existing evacuation planning models by: 1) synergizing multiple evacuation strategies; 2) utilizing robust optimization and solution algorithms that can tackle such multi-dimensional non deterministic problem; 3) estimating the spatial and temporal distribution of evacuation demand; 4) identifying the transit-dependent population; 5) integrating multiple modes in emergency evacuation. The framework presents a significant step forward in emergency evacuation optimization. | PhD | cities | 11 |
| El-Hadi, Nehal | Mahtani, Minelle||Rankin, Katharine | The Production Of Presence: How Women Of Colour Transmute Online Activities Into Offline Change | Geography | 2018-11 | This dissertation project explores the intersections of and interactions between virtual and material spaces as studied through the online activities of women of colour social justice activists in Toronto. Internet technologies and services have reshaped everyday urban life, and the growing availability of devices and access to online spaces and networks are changing how we engage with the city. In this dissertation, I examine how the internet facilitates access to the right to the city for racialized and gendered individuals who may have been excluded from city-building processes. Using a mixed methods approach, I combine participant interviews with digital archival research; I also use mainstream media coverage as a secondary data source to provide verification and reinforce my findings. Through what I term “the production of presence,” I investigate the relationships between online user-generated content and its effects on offline lives, spaces, and processes. First, I describe the how women of colour social justice activists in Toronto use their online activities to access their right to the city, extending this to include the right to represent the city. I look at the characteristics of virtual spaces that uniquely enable and facilitate different ways of being in urban spaces. Second, I apply an object-oriented framework to user-generated content to examine the how this data has the agency to both produce presence that extends beyond the tokenism of visibility politics, and to organise readers into audience, publics, or communities. Examining user-generated content as object reveals the agency of data and raises questions about the ethics of accessing and using user-generated content in professional practice, which I explore in further depth in the third paper of this dissertation. In this final paper, I look at planning and journalism as two professions involved in shaping and representing the city, and I examine how the online personal archives of women of colour social justice activists can be accessed to inform reporting on and designing the city. | Ph.D. | justice, urban, women | 5, 11, 16 |
| El-Meehy, Asya | Sandbrook, Richard | Rewriting the Social Contract: The Social Fund and Egypt's Politics of Retrenchment | Political Science | 2010-03 | The politics surrounding retrenchment and social protection in the Middle East have been obscured by a broad ideological consensus that civil society has replaced the state as the site of social provisioning since the nineties. Contrary to the dominant “state retreat” narrative, the adoption of neo-liberalism in the region was not in fact uniformly accompanied by convergence around a minimal welfare regime. Why have processes of welfare retrenchment unfolded along contrasting patterns across the Middle East with some states explicitly redefining social policy frameworks, and others undermining access and effects of prevailing programs without dismantling them? The dissertation aims to contribute to our understanding of state-society relations in the region by closely examining recent welfare regime changes in Egypt. Why has Egypt pursued “hidden retrenchment” entailing dilution of universal benefits, conversion of social programs to new beneficiaries and institutional layering, without the explicit overhaul of welfare policy frameworks? What are the micro-level political influences shaping the retrenchment process on the ground? Using the Social Fund for Development as a window for understanding hidden retrenchment in Egypt, the dissertation demonstrates that external dynamics of globalization, and donor assistance do not mainly account for welfare regime restructuring. Similarly, the state’s fiscal status, and the underlying switch in development strategies cannot explain retrenchment patterns. Rather, I argue that the internationally dominant neoliberal development discourse has influenced some aspects of retrenchment reforms, and domestic political dynamics have molded hidden retrenchment in Egypt. The regime’s power maintenance logic and a prevailing moral economy of social entitlements explain the process. Micro-level qualitative and statistical analyses of retrenchment politics also reveal that intra-state agencies struggles, regime security concerns, the state’s tendency to fiscally penalize areas with a history of Muslim Brotherhood support, as well as the National Democratic Party’s patronage networks influence outcomes on the ground. My findings suggest that variations in retrenchment patterns across the region reflect important differences in states’ social bases of power, rather than external pressures or domestic economic dynamics. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| El-Sabek, Luai M. | McCabe, Brenda Y. | FRAMEWORK FOR MANAGING INTEGRATION CHALLENGES OF PRODUCTION PLANNING AND CONTROL IN INTERNATIONAL CONSTRUCTION MEGA-PROJECTS | Civil Engineering | 2017-11 | The public often associates mega-projects with poor performance due to delays and budget overruns. International mega-projects (IMPs) comprise multiple subprojects across widely spread areas, often with independent resources and individual plans. Such decentralization into clusters increases the integration planning and execution challenges. Changes to the schedule, budget, and scope, as well as poor design, are critical integration challenges within and across subprojects of mega-projects. International characteristics of project delivery compound additional complexity on integration aspects. It is essential for the production planning system in IMPs to be robust in addressing integration challenges to achieve necessary interface and realistic reporting. This study aimed to reveal the significance of operational gaps and resolve the integration challenges in IMPs. To achieve its goal, the study was divided to three phases. They are: 1) synthesize literature and practice with respect to production planning and control systems; 2) evaluate the performance of the production planning and control system at a mega-scale in a case study; 3) develop a framework to provide workable solutions to address the unique and complex integration challenges of IMPs. The Last Planner速 System (LPS速) was found to be an emerging production planning and control system with a promising potential. Fostered to complement, not to replace, the existing LPS速 model, the proposed IMPact framework is a roadmap aiming to improve the operations of IMPs, keeping them on track, and potentially replacing the negative image of IMPs with positive impressions. The validated framework provided a conceptual practical solution, based in LPS速, to address the challenges that project teams on IMPs have within and across subprojects. It is intended to be an adaptive system in an effort to improve delivery and performance of IMPs. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| El-Sayed, Nosayba | Schroeder, Bianca | Exploiting Field Data Analysis to Improve the Reliability and Energy-efficiency of HPC Systems | Computer Science | 2016-06 | As the scale of High-Performance Computing (HPC) clusters continues to grow, their increasing failure rates and energy consumption levels are emerging as two serious design concerns that are expected to become more challenging in future Exascale systems. The efficient design and operation of such large-scale installations critically relies on developing an in-depth understanding of their failure behaviour as well as their energy consumption profiles. Among the main obstacles facing the study of HPC reliability and energy efficiency issues, however, is the difficulty of replicating HPC problems inside a lab environment or obtaining access to operational field data from HPC organizations. Examples of such field data include node failure logs, hardware replacement logs, system event logs, workload traces, data from environmental sensors, and more. Fortunately, the recent decade has witnessed an increasing number of HPC organizations willing to share their operational data with researchers or even make them publicly available. In this work, we exploit field data analysis in improving our understanding of HPC failures in real world systems, and in optimizing HPC fault-tolerance protocols while analyzing their respective performance and energy overheads. Throughout our analyses, we investigate various HPC design tradeoffs between system performance, system reliability, and energy efficiency. Our results in the first part of this thesis provide critical insights into how and why failures happen in HPC installations as well as which types of failures are correlated in the field. We study the impact of various factors on system reliability, including environmental factors such as data center temperature and power quality. We find that the effect of temperature, for example, on hardware reliability in large-scale systems is smaller than often assumed. This finding implies that the operators of these facilities can achieve high energy savings by raising their operating temperatures, without making significant sacrifices in system reliability. Our analysis of power problems in large HPC facilities, on the other hand, revealed strong correlations between different power issues (e.g. power outages, voltage spikes, etc.), and increased failure rates in various hardware and software components. Based on our observations, we derive learned lessons and practical recommendations for the efficient design and operation of large-scale systems. The second part of this thesis utilizes the knowledge obtained from our HPC failure analysis in improving HPC fault-tolerance techniques. We focus on the most widely used fault-tolerance mechanism in modern HPC systems: "checkpoint/restart". We study how to optimize checkpoint-scheduling in parallel applications for both performance and energy efficiency purposes. Our results show that exploiting certain failure characteristics of HPC systems in designing checkpoint-scheduling policies can reduce the energy/performance overheads that are associated with faults and fault-tolerance in HPC systems significantly. | Ph.D. | energy, consum | 7 |
| El-Tantawy, Samah | Abdulhai, Baher | Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Integrated Network of Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers (MARLIN-ATSC) | Civil Engineering | 2012-11 | The population is steadily increasing worldwide resulting in intractable traffic congestion in dense urban areas. Adaptive Traffic Signal Control (ATSC) has shown strong potential to effectively alleviate urban traffic congestion by adjusting the signal timing plans in real-time in response to traffic fluctuations to achieve the desired objectives (e.g., minimizing delay). Efficient and robust ATSC can be designed using a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) approach in which each controller (agent) is responsible for the control of traffic lights around a single traffic junction. Applying MARL approaches to ATSC problem is associated with a few challenges as agents typically react to changes in the environment at the individual level but the overall behaviour of all agents may not be optimal. This dissertation presents the development and evaluation of a novel system of Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Integrated Network of Adaptive Traffic Signal Controllers (MARLIN-ATSC). The MARLIN-ATSC control system is developed to provide a self-learning ATSC using a synergetic combination of reinforcement learning approaches and game theory. MARLIN-ATSC operates in two modes: (1) independent mode, i.e. each intersection controller operates independently of other agents; and (2) integrated mode, where each controller coordinates the signal control actions with the neighbouring intersections. The system was tested on three networks (i.e., small, medium, large-scale) to ensure seamless transferability of the system design and results. The large-scale application was conducted on a computerized testbed network of 60 intersections in the lower downtown core of the City of Toronto for the morning rush hour handling 25,000 trips. The results show unprecedented reduction in the average intersection delay ranging from 27% in mode 1 to 39% in mode 2 at the network level; and travel time savings of 15% in mode 1 and 26% in mode 2, along the busiest routes in downtown Toronto. The thesis shows how mathematical modelling of the traffic control problem as a stochastic control problem, combined with the utilisation of artificial intelligence techniques such as reinforcement learning in a game-theory setup, can provide highly useful and economically inexpensive solutions to real-life problems such as urban traffic congestion. | PhD | environment, urban | 11, 13 |
| Eldem, Tuba | Kopstein, Jeffrey | Guardians Entrapped: The Demise of the Turkish Armed Forces as a Veto-Player | Political Science | 2013-11 | This study examines how and why Turkey's civil-military relations regime transformed since the soft coup of 28 February 1997. It argues that major changes in the international security structure -the renaissance of democratic control of armed forces, the change of US foreign policy in the Broader Middle East and the process of Europeanization- opened a window of opportunity for demilitarization in Turkey. The recognition of Turkey's EU membership candidacy at the Helsinki Summit of December 1999 and the required alignment of Turkey's civil-military relations with that of EU best practices were the most important external factors that altered Turkey's domestic political opportunity structure in favor of change. Voter re-alignment in the November 2002 elections, the emergence of a single-party government with a strong will to change the domestic balance of power in its own favor, and the domestic mobilization of opposition to the military mediated between the EU's external pressure and domestic change. The military, in turn, failed to veto reforms that targeted its own prerogatives as such an action would generate substantial cost to its ideational interests including loss of prestige, credibility, and legitimacy as a result of being perceived as obstructing Turkey's century-old Westernization-cum-modernization process. An analysis of the behavioral, attitudinal, and institutional dimensions of democratic control shows that in the post-Helsinki period Turkey has not attained democratic control of the armed forces, but instead has shifted from the tutelary regime category to the defective democratic control category. Regarding the implications of this institutional change for the trajectory of Turkey's democratization, the study does not provide as optimistic a view as those advanced by the country's liberal and Muslim intellectuals. By conceptually differentiating between civilianization and democratization, this study argues that although the Turkish regime has become substantially civilianized in the last decade - i.e., political power has shifted markedly into the hands of civilians- the extent of the regime's democratization failed to match this level of civilianization. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Elias, Brenda Mary | Quarter, Jack | Without Intention: Rural Responses to Uncovering the Hidden Aspects of Homelessness in Ontario 2000 to 2007 | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2009-11 | This thesis analyzes the impact of the political decision to broaden the scope of the Government of Canada's 3-year National Homelessness Initiative (Human Resource Development Canada, NHI, 2002) from an urban focus to one that includes smaller communities. This change provided the opportunity to study the phenomenon of homelessness and how rural responses are formed. This author postulates that this focus of attention on an almost invisible phenomenon—rural homelessness—and the accompanying community planning processes funded by the Supportive Community Partnership Initiative (SCPI) will impact local social policy development. A multi-dimensional analytical approach was adopted and considered three components: first, a policy review, a broad look at the policy agenda framework in Canada; then, a case study to illustrate implementation issues related to the National Homelessness Initiative; and, finally, a reflection on current practice in order to realize a holistic critique of public policy. The influence of socio-economic, political, and cultural factors on local planning and capacity building will be highlighted. Various models of governance were adopted across the country and guided the collaborative processes. This thesis presents an in-depth look at the community action plans and activities of the Simcoe County Alliance to End Homelessness (SCATEH) in both the rural and urban settings of Simcoe County. The processes adopted, capacity building components identified, and outcomes over the 7 years covered by the SCPI agreement are examined. The limitations of using participatory local action planning to respond to complex issues such as homelessness are detailed along with a modified community-based policy development model recommended as a learning tool to be used by those volunteers acting as agents of change. It is widely recognized that safe, affordable social housing is a fundamental need, and one that is extremely difficult to meet. The contribution this research makes is to reveal how effective government-community partnerships can be in a rural setting. | PhD | urban, rural, governance | 11, 16 |
| Elliott, Laura Leigh | MacNeill, Margaret | The “Missing Discourses of Desire”: Young Women’s Health and Physical Education Experiences in Toronto and Porto Alegre | Exercise Sciences | 2018-06 | Through a feminist poststructural lens, this dissertation explores: (a) the range of understandings about gendered and racialized bodies held by young women in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; (b) a comparison of the discourses embedded in health and physical education (HPE) policy with respect to gender, sexuality, and fitness in two urban high schools in Toronto, Ontario, Canada and two urban high schools in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil; and (c) the effects that gendered and racialized narratives mediating HPE policy and media consumption have on young women in these cities. This study involved a policy analysis of HPE documents and 40 semi-structured interviews with young women 14-17 years of age (n=20 in Canada; and n=20 in Brazil) in order to investigate the myriad of ways in which the body is gendered, sexualized and racialized in HPE and media. Interviews in Toronto and Porto Alegre reveal that students who took part in this study embody a form of healthism promoted in school and throughout the wide range of media platforms the young women consume. In Toronto, the consequence is what Michelle Fine (1988) calls a “missing discourse of desire” that tends to negate pleasure for students. Porto Alegre students taking part in this study also exhibit healthist biopedagogies, although self-acceptance and pleasure emerged as dominant themes. These latter themes emerging from the Porto Alegre responses, diverge from the Toronto youth responses; as the Porto Alegre youth celebrate more diverse visions of the female body, whereas Toronto students discuss a discourse of ‘moderation.’ This moderation discourse narrows positive embodied practices. Utilizing Fine’s argument about “missing discourses of desire” in education, Ontario HPE is then examined and questioned in relation to embodied pleasures made possible for young people in HPE. Policy recommendations include: addressing the social determinants of health in policy, adding opportunities for joyful experiences in physical education, and including critical health literacy and social media literacy in future policy. Young women are encouraged to find embodied pleasure in their physical education experiences and to critically question media representations of the female form. | Ph.D. | health, gender, women, cities | 3, 5, 11 |
| Elliott, Nicole Estella | Stewart, Suzanne L | Stories of Spirit and the streets: Indigenous mental health, trauma, traditional knowledge and experiences of homelessness | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-06 | Indigenous people in Canada have endured many traumas as a result of the consequences of colonization observed through poor social determinants of health. Homelessness, particularly, has been noted as at a state of crisis for Indigenous people. This study seeks to understand the intersections of homelessness, traditional knowledge and mental health by interviewing sixteen Indigenous homeless people in a large Canadian city. Results revealed some psychological factors, cultural identity and external factors as being integral in the overall experiences of homelessness. The results of this study help identify a need for integrative mental health services that focus on the Indigenous culture as a strength in the promotion of healing and recovery. Specific implications are inclusive of policy and psychological approaches that are based on the needs of Indigenous homeless peoples themselves that can build and improve the current models of mental health care that embrace the Indigenous approaches to mental health and trauma. These results also provide some rich data regarding the actual lived experiences of marginalized people that have been silenced by recognizing the importance of cultural connection and the utilization of Indigenous approaches in the field of mental health and trauma service. | Ph.D. | health, inclusive | 3, 4 |
| Ellis, Everton | Muzzin, Linda J. | ‘Seamless’ Transition to Citizenship? International Student Graduates, Race, and Structural Inequities in Canada’s (Im)migration-Labour Market | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11 | Abstract Canada, like other economically-advanced nations, has gradually been implementing internationalization strategies to respond to the pressures brought on by globalization. The federal government, in 2014, launched an International Education Strategy, a university/college-led scheme to increase the number of international students to Canada. After completing Canadian postsecondary studies, they may transition to the labour market and then to permanent residence (reputedly ‘seamlessly’) via one of Canada’s economic immigration programs. This research critically analyzes the trajectory of international student graduates originating from the Caribbean and South/Southeast Asia as they navigate the labour market-immigration transition. The qualitative study is framed by theoretical perspectives drawn from anti-racist/postcolonial prisms, critique of neoliberalism, and conceptualizations of social capital and social closure to understand and interpret the lived experiences of 18 international student graduates of Ontario colleges and universities. My analysis as well as five key informants supported the conclusion that Black Caribbean and South/South Asian student migrants with Canadian credentials do not experience a seamless transition from their post-graduation phase to Canadian permanent residence (PR). The findings reveal ‘hidden’ problems behind the apparent neutrality of Canada’s points system, and protracted wait times associated with Canada’s economic immigration programs as well as the emotional and psychological pain experienced by student migrants. It also demonstrates how federal policies such as the National Occupational Classification (NOC) codes and the Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) influence the transition of international student graduates. These racialized participants ‘whiten’ their resumés, and call upon various types of consultants and actors in their racial and interracial networks to circumnavigate structural inequities in obtaining employment. Not all the consultants are fully informed about immigration policy and omit crucial information or advise strategies that ‘off-ramp’ those applying for PR. Further, there are differences between applicants in their access to interracial networks necessary for obtaining employment. Finally, my study indicates that the labour market integration of Black Caribbeans and South/Southeast Asians in Canada is influenced by the complexities of gender, race, and racialization. | Ph.D. | educat, inclusive | 4 |
| Elrick, Jennifer Margaret | Korteweg, Anna | Family|Class: Race and Third-Order Immigration Policy Change in Post-War Canada | Sociology | 2017-06 | This dissertation addresses the scholarly debate about what happened to “race” as a core idea in immigrant selection policies during the shift – in Canada and elsewhere – from a nationalist-particularist policy paradigm to a liberal-universal one after World War II. The standard account of this “third-order” policy change is that race was replaced by universal human rights and equality as the main ideas according to which immigrant inclusion/exclusion is determined. Critics argue that race never truly stopped guiding immigrant selection frameworks and practices, and that racialized exclusion remains a core component of immigration policy and its implementation. I contribute to this debate by focusing on the micro-level dynamics of how the Canadian immigration bureaucracy negotiated the removal of explicitly racist clauses from immigration policy from 1952 and 1967. I adopt a discursive institutionalist framework that draws attention to how bureaucrats engage in interpretive practices that are shaped by – and shape – the repertoire of ideas present in the policymaking context. Using archival records, I examine how bureaucrats racialized potential immigrants in the policymaking context, how they linked this racialization (positive or negative) to the notion of immigrant admissibility, and whether/how racialization processes and their links to admissibility changed during the post-war era. My analysis yields three main findings. First, it shows that bureaucrats used the idea of race to construct differences between groups not just in terms of innate biological differences, but also in terms of class and status. Second, I reveal two mechanisms (“recasting” and “crossing individuals”) by which immigration bureaucrats changed the relative salience of these two components of the idea of race and show how these affected individual and group-level admissibility. Finally, I modify the punctuated equilibrium account of this post-war policy shift, which highlights bureaucratic resistance to exogenous pressures for change. I do this by showing how the substantive content of universalized entry categories in the 1967 Immigration Regulations emerged endogenously through the interpretive practices of immigration bureaucrats. The dissertation concludes by outlining the implications of these findings for scholarship on immigration, race and nation; immigration policy theory; and the role of states in boundary change processes. | Ph.D. | equality, institution, rights | 5, 16 |
| Elshenawy, Mohamed Mostafa Ata | Abdulhai, Baher||El-Darieby, Mohamed | A Three-Pillar Methodology and Framework for Seamlessly Integrated Cyber-Physical Intelligent Transportation System of Systems | Civil Engineering | 2017-06 | Novel smart city initiatives rely on information and communications technologies to manage mobility in metropolitan areas. The proliferation of mobile devices, wearables, and connected vehicles has resulted in many dynamic mobility applications that offer isolated and segregated services covering different needs of the transportation system such as advanced traveller information, smart parking management, and integrated dynamic transit services. The majority of these applications focus on solving a single problem; hence they offer limited support to provide regional, multi-modal, and multi-jurisdictional services capable of meeting the rising expectations of travellers. A contemporary challenge in intelligent transportation applications is to amalgamate sensors, services, and city infrastructure into an integrated intelligent transportation system of systems where isolated applications are seamlessly combined to render integrated mobility services to stakeholders and end users. The integrated system of systems provides a unifying framework to support the automatic formulation of regional and integrated ITS services in response to different situational changes. This thesis proposes a coordination and integration framework based on semantic web technology that supports day-to-day intelligent transportation operations in smart cities in the context of Internet of Things (IoT). The framework defines three pillars to coordinate and integrate dispersed cyber and physical components, provide higher order mashed ITS services, and facilitate collaboration, coordination, and knowledge sharing across different city stakeholders. The first pillar of the framework is the Ontological Semantic Knowledge Representation (OSKR) pillar which reduces the conceptual and terminological confusion involved in the coordination process by introducing a four-tier ontological model of: (1) abstract ITS processes based on the Canadian ITS Architecture, (2) web services, (3) ITS sensors and (4) transportation infrastructure. The overall ontology describes the shared concepts and their relationships in a machine-understandable, uniform and consistent manner. The second pillar of the framework is the Integrated Service Planning (ISP) pillar which orchestrates, based on the collaboration of stakeholders, the composition of the cyber-physical resources satisfying the objectives, constraints and conditions required by the envisioned higher order intelligent transportation operation. The ISP pillar identifies the characteristics of the integrated application including needs and scope, key functionalities to be integrated, functional requirements, interfaces and key hierarchical tasks. The third pillar of the framework is the real-time Integrated Service Execution (ISE) pillar which enables the creation and execution of hierarchical task networks, hierarchical service discovery and invocation/execution to ultimately provide the composite integrated higher order ITS service. The ISE pillar also provides the level of abstraction required to manage the heterogeneity of the shared cyber-physical components offering several functionalities such as data mapping, message routing, and message validation. This thesis presents the three pillars of coordination and demonstrates how they can be used to enable the dynamic provisioning of advanced traveller information services within the Greater Toronto Area. | Ph.D. | cities, infrastructure | 9, 11 |
| Elton, Sarah | Poland, Blake | A Posthumanist Study of Health and the Food System: Vegetal Politics in Toronto Urban Gardens in the Anthropocene | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | This critical qualitative study explores the ontological split between humans and nature, identified by scholars including Val Plumwood and Donna Haraway, and considers human health and the food system in the Anthropocene. I draw on posthumanist theory to investigate what happens to understandings of food systems and health if the ontological dualism in Euro-Western thought that separates humans from nature is challenged, or even undone. What is a posthumanist understanding of health in the food system? What is a posthumanist approach to food systems and health in the context of the city, during this time of rapid urbanization, environmental destruction and climate change? I engaged with gardeners who grow food in the City of Toronto and their plants. Garden visits and interviews were conducted with 23 gardeners about their growing practices, plants and conceptions of health and wellbeing. To place these growers in context I conducted key informant interviews on urban agriculture; consulted grey literature including municipal reports, seed catalogues and archival material; and implemented a survey (N=103) with a wider group of growers. Participant observation involved working in community gardens during the growing season of 2018 as part of a multispecies ethnography where plants were considered as participants of equal importance to humans. Part One explores the theoretical underpinnings and the methodology I developed to identify plant agency in gardens. Part Two presents the empirical work that investigates health, vegetal politics and plant agency in Toronto. Part Three lays out the contributions of the thesis. The theoretical contribution is a posthumanist understanding of health in the food system. The methodological contribution is a three-step approach to accounting for plant agency. The substantive contribution is about plant agency. I argue that plants are actors in the redevelopment of the Toronto’s Regent Park and that plants co-produce food sovereignty and support the ecological determinants of health. These findings contribute to an understanding of what is being called ‘vegetal politics’ and expand on definitions of health as related to food production and consumption. | Ph.D. | agriculture, food, urban, consum, production, climate | 2, 11, 12, 13 |
| Embleton, Lonnie Elizabeth | Braitstein, Paula||Kaul, Rupert | Adapting and Piloting a Combined Gender, Livelihoods, and HIV Prevention Intervention with Street-connected Young People in Eldoret, Kenya | Medical Science | 2019-11 | Despite being highly vulnerable to acquiring human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), no effective evidence-based interventions exist for street-connected young people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In Kenya, street-connected young people have a heightened HIV prevalence, engage in sexual practices that elevate their exposure to HIV, and experience structural drivers of HIV acquisition, such as gender inequities and economic marginalization. Therefore, the overall objective of this doctoral thesis was to adapt and pilot a combined gender, livelihoods, and HIV prevention with street-connected young people in Eldoret, Kenya using a multi-stage mixed methods study design. In the first stage, the Stepping Stones and Creating Futures interventions and a matched-savings programme were adapted using a modified ADAPT-ITT model. During adaptation, we used community-based research methods informed by a rights-based approach, with four Peer Facilitators and 24 street-connected young people aged 16 to 24 years. Numerous adaptations came forth to the programme content and delivery. This adaptation process resulted in producing a comprehensive intervention entitled ‘Stepping Stones ya Mshefa na Kujijenga Kimaisha’. In the second stage, we piloted the adapted intervention with 80 street-connected young people using a pre- and post-intervention convergent mixed methods design. The primary outcomes of interest were HIV knowledge and gender equitable attitudes. Secondary outcomes included condom-use self-efficacy, sexual practices, economic resources, and livelihoods. Participants had significant increases in HIV knowledge and gender equitable attitudes from pre- to post-intervention. Attendance level at the intervention was a significant predictor of HIV knowledge and gender equitable attitudes change scores. Intervention participants reported encouraging changes in condom use knowledge, condom use self-efficacy, health-seeking practices, daily earnings, housing, livelihood activities, and street-involvement. Overall, this research demonstrated that it was feasible to adapt an evidence-based intervention with street-connected young people and provides a model for other researchers and organizations in LMICs to use, which may assist in addressing the knowledge gap in effective interventions for street-connected young people. The pilot findings support the potential for further testing with a rigorous study design to investigate how best to tailor the intervention, particularly accounting for gender differences, and increase the overall effectiveness of the programme. | Ph.D. | rights, gender, equitable, health | 3, 4, 5, 16 |
| Emrich, Teri Elyse | Mary, R L'Abbe | Front-of-Pack Nutrition Rating Systems and Symbols in Canada | Nutritional Sciences | 2014-11 | Front-of-pack (FOP) nutrition rating systems and symbols provide simplified information on the nutritional content of foods. Despite concerns that the presence of multiple FOP systems may be confusing and misleading to consumers, the government has rejected recommendations to implement a single, standardized FOP system claiming that the current unregulated marketplace is already meeting the needs of Canadians. The overall objective of this work was to generate Canadian evidence to determine the legitimacy of the government's position.The specific objectives were to evaluate the extent to which foods meeting the criteria of voluntary FOP systems are identified by the system's symbol, to compare the nutritional quality of foods with and without FOP systems, to describe Canadians' attitudes towards FOP systems, and to determine experimentally the most liked and understood FOP system by consumers. We generated evidence through three studies. Studies 1-2 employed a 2010 database of Canadian packaged food labels. Compared to products without FOPS, products with FOPS were not being used to market foods consistently lower in calories, saturated fat, sodium, and sugar in 10 food categories and 60 subcategories. Significantly many more products qualified to carry two major Canadian FOPS than actually displayed these FOPS on their label. Study 3 used a national survey panel to test Canadians preferences for four FOPS. 86% of consumers supported the implementation of a single, standardized FOPS. Nutrient-specific systems (a traffic light and a Nutrition Facts table based FOPS) were preferred and rated more consumer friendly than other systems. In summary, FOPS are not being used to promote the healthiest products in the Canadian marketplace, and could be misleading consumers. Despite the government's position not to adopt a single, standardized FOPS, Canadian consumers would support such an initiative and would prefer a nutrient specific FOPS. | Ph.D. | food, consum | 2, 12 |
| Encalada Grez, Evelyn Viviana | Chun, Jennifer Jihye | Mexican Migrant Farmworker Women Organizing Love and Work Across Rural Canada and Mexico | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | This is a transnational ethnographic study focusing on Mexican women in the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP), a temporary visa arrangement that annually employs an average of 40,000 Mexican and Caribbean migrant farmworkers. Migrant women defy patriarchal norms by migrating across borders to work, assuming the role of principal breadwinners in their families, and working in a masculinized labour force. I situate their intimate practices of love, sexuality, and carework in conjunction with the roles of states, the global economy and Canadian agriculture in a practice I term transnational storytelling to complicate the one-dimensional and masculinized lens of migrant labour in the literature and logics of the SAWP. I claim that migrant women not only work in Canadian agriculture but in the management of transnational family economies involving care and emotional labour. Similarly, as migrant domestic workers, Mexican migrant women form part of the global care chain organizing themselves with their non-migrating kin for household survival. This study is rooted in community-engaged scholarship of several years in my role as a community-labour organizer and co-founder of the collective, Justicia for Migrant Workers (J4MW). Additionally, I used qualitative research methods, primarily convivir, or accompaniment of migrant workers and their families throughout rural Mexico and Canada, to understand their lives. Fundamental to this study is the importance of activist research that assigns critical value to knowledges of not only migrant workers and their non-migrating kin but also of community organizers and community-engaged scholarship in order to collectively build social justice projects that offset transnational casualties experienced through this labour migration. I detail how community-labour organizing is emotional labour as well, involving heartbreak, disempowerment but also resistance. Principally, this study seeks to make visible Mexican women beyond their work in Canadian farms and transnationally in relation to their families in transnational labour chains. It concludes with proposals for directions in organizing and research. | Ph.D. | justice, rural, worker, women, agriculture | 2, 5, 8, 11, 16 |
| Erler, Andre Richard | Peltier, William R | High Resolution Hydro-climatological Projections for Western Canada | Physics | 2015-11 | Accurate identification of the impact of global warming on water resources and hydro-climatic extremes represents a significant challenge to the understanding of climate change on the regional scale. Here an analysis of hydro-climatic changes in western Canada is presented, with specific focus on the Fraser and Athabasca River basins and on changes in hydro-climatic extremes. The analysis is based on a suite of simulations designed to characterize internal variability, as well as model uncertainty. A small ensemble of Community Earth System Model version 1 (CESM1) simulations was employed to generate global climate projections, which were downscaled to 10 km resolution using the Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF V3.4.1) with several sets of physical parameterizations. Downscaling was performed for a historical validation period and a mid- and end-21st-century projection period, using the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas trajectory. Daily station observations and monthly gridded datasets were used for validation. Changes in hydro-climatic extremes are characterized using Extreme Value Analysis. A novel method of aggregating data from climatologically similar stations was employed to increase the statistical power of the analysis. Changes in mean and extreme precipitation are found to differ strongly between seasons and regions, but (relative) changes in extremes generally follow changes in the (seasonal) mean. At the end of the 21st century, precipitation and precipitation extremes are projected to increase by 30% at the coast in fall and land-inwards in winter, while the projected increase in summer precipitation is smaller and changes in extremes are often not statistically significant. Reasons for the differences between seasons, the role of precipitation recycling in atmospheric water transport, and the sensitivity to physics parameterizations are discussed. Major changes are projected for the Fraser River basin, including earlier snowmelt and a 50% reduction in peak runoff. Combined with higher evapotranspiration, a significant increase in late summer drought risk is likely, but increasing fall precipitation might also increase the risk of moderate flooding. In the Athabasca River basin, increasing winter precipitation and snowmelt is balanced by increasing evapotranspiration in summer and no significant change in flood or drought risk is projected. | Ph.D. | water, recycl, climate, greenhouse gas, global warming, weather | 6, 7, 13 |
| Erman, Aysegul | Krahn, Murray D. | Estimation of Hepatitis C Prognosis to Inform Treatment Prioritization Decisions | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2020-06 | Chronic hepatitis C (CHC) is a leading cause of hepatic fibrosis and cirrhosis. Fortunately, treatment has been revolutionized by the recently introduced direct-acting antivirals (DAAs). However, prompt access to DAA therapy remains a challenge owing to exorbitant drug costs, as well as other health system constraints. Given that HCV disease progression is highly variable, delaying curative treatment could have varying levels of health impact for different CHC subpopulations. To address these issues, the three studies presented in this thesis aim to 1) derive updated estimates of the natural history of HCV, 2) explore the variability in disease progression, and 3) use these prognostic estimates to help inform decisions on the prioritization of highly effective but costly DAA therapy. The first study derived updated estimates of HCV-related liver disease progression (i.e., FPRs, or fibrosis progression rates) through a systematic review and meta-analysis of the current literature evaluating hepatic fibrosis in treatment-naive individuals with CHC; and explored sources of heterogeneity. Stratified analysis revealed substantial heterogeneity across study populations. The second study complemented the biopsy-based estimates of HCV disease progression derived in the first study by generating alternative estimates of prognosis (i.e., LSPR or liver stiffness progression rates) based on a newer non-invasive assessment of liver disease through a systematic review and meta-analysis of the literature on transient elastography (TE)-based assessment of hepatic fibrosis in treatment-naive individuals with CHC. The study suggested that non-invasive prognosis of HCV is consistent with FPRs in predicting time-to-cirrhosis. However, the current literature was limited and more longitudinal studies of liver stiffness are needed to obtain refined estimates. The third study employed detailed information on HCV prognosis obtained from meta-regression models derived from the first study to help inform treatment prioritization decisions by quantifying the health impact (i.e., life expectancy and quality-adjusted life expectancy) associated with delaying DAA therapy for various CHC subgroups using decision-analytic methods. Taken together these studies present detailed prognostic information for various subpopulations of patients. The data presented in these studies should be a valuable resource for patients, clinicians, and clinical policymakers in the DAA era. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Erochko, Jeffrey A. | Christopoulos, Constantin | Improvements to the Design and Use of Post-tensioned Self-centering Energy-dissipative (SCED) Braces | Civil Engineering | 2013-06 | The self-centering energy dissipative (SCED) brace is an innovative cross-bracing system that eliminates residual building deformations after seismic events and prevents the progressive drifting that other inelastic systems are prone to experience under long-duration ground motions. This research improves upon the design and use of SCED braces through three large-scale experimental studies and an associated numerical building model study. The first experimental study increased the strength capacity of SCED braces and refined the design procedure through the design and testing of a new high-capacity full-scale SCED brace. This brace exhibited full self-centering behaviour and did not show significant degradation of response after multiple earthquake loadings. The second experimental study extended the elongation capacity of SCED braces through the design and testing of a new telescoping SCED (T-SCED) brace that provided self-centering behaviour over a deformation range that was two times the range that was achieved by the original SCED bracing system. It exhibited full self-centering in a single storey full-scale frame that was laterally deformed to 4% of its storey height. The third experimental study confirmed the dynamic behaviour of a multi-storey SCED-frame in different seismic environments and confirmed the ability of computer models of differing complexity to accurately predict the seismic response. To achieve these goals, a three-storey SCED-braced frame was designed, constructed, and tested on a shake table. Lastly, a numerical six-storey SCED-braced building model was constructed. This model used realistic brace properties that were determined using a new software tool that simulates the full detailed mechanics of SCED and T-SCED braces. The building model showed that initial SCED brace stiffness does not have a significant effect on SCED frame behaviour, that T-SCEDs generally perform better than traditional SCEDs, and that the addition of viscous dampers in parallel with SCED braces can significantly reduce drifts and accelerations while only causing a small increase in the base shear. | PhD | energy | 7 |
| Erueti, Andrew Kaponga Clifford | Knop, Karen | The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Mixed-Model Interpretative Approach | Law | 2016-11 | This dissertation offers a distinctive means of reading the key international instrument for promoting indigenous peoplesâ rights, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. The current orthodoxy is to read the Declaration as containing human rights adapted to the indigenous situation. This is supported by a particular reading of the political history of the Declaration â that is, that initial claims based on anti-colonialism advanced by Northern indigenous advocates were abandoned in favor of a more pragmatic human rights model. However, this reading does not do full justice to the complexity and diversity of indigenous peoplesâ participation in the Declaration negotiations. I provide a fresh account of the political history of the international indigenous movement as it intersects with the Declaration negotiations. What this reveals is tension between two movements that can be broadly separated along the lines of the North and South. Northern indigenous peoples were the originators of the international movement and sought to shoehorn their sovereignty-based claims into an international project. They relied in particular on anti-colonial justifications drawn from the UN-directed decolonization movement (decolonization model). But they were soon joined by a vibrant and skilled Southern movement of indigenous peoples representing Latin America, Asia and Africa. This movement placed greater emphasis than their Northern counterparts on human rights and especially the right to culture (human rights model). One of my core arguments is that contrary to conventional accounts, the decolonization model was not eclipsed by the human rights model but maintained throughout the Declaration negotiations. And it is the decolonization model that accounts for what I describe as the self-determination framework in the Declaration. This argument is developed through chapters 1-3. As a result the Declaration reflects two normative models, aimed at the two different regions: human rights for the South; and decolonization for the North (the mixed-model). The principal benefit of this bifurcated reading of the Declaration is that it enables both the Northern and Southern indigenous movements to gain the rights they seek from the Declaration. But how, precisely, does this political history translate into a legal justification for this mixed-model? In Chapter 4, I argue that the mixed model is also supported by legal and political justificatory arguments. The challenge of my mixed-model is to avoid the decolonization model being absorbed by the human rights model through the practices of interpretation. I hope to assist advocates to reposition their arguments and set out two case studies in chapter 5 that seek to show the potential implications of the decolonization model. | S.J.D. | rights | 16 |
| Esensoy, Ali Vahit | Carter, Michael W | Whole-System Patient Flow Modelling for Strategic Planning in Healthcare | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-11 | Health systems are under pressure to deliver high quality care to improve outcomes, access and financial sustainability. In the past decade, Ontario pursued such improvements through a series of transformation initiatives aimed at moving care provision to the community settings and integrating care around patient pathways through system. In this dissertation we present operational research (OR) approaches to facilitate whole-system strategic planning for health systems, with a focus on patient flow among care sectors to address transformation challenges in Ontarioâ s health care system and its regional health authorities. Firstly, we expand on Soft OR methods to collaboratively develop a qualitative model to capture the boundary and transitional view of patient flows across major care sectors in a health region. The model is not scoped around a specific question, but is meant to be a broad platform for exploring the patient flow relationships among multiple care domains. Secondly, we build on the findings of the qualitative model, and leverage the administrative datasets across these major care sectors to develop a high fidelity simulation model to evaluate the effects of policy interventions and their effects on system-wide patient flows. Methodologically this simulation builds on the structural simplicity of system dynamics with comprehensive, patient-level data to achieve a highly flexible simulation to model flows for a broad and modifiable range of patient cohorts and interventions. Finally, we implement both models in the analysis of whole-system care policies. The qualitative model is used for the analysis of slow stream rehabilitation policy options and is utilized to identify conflicts of this initiative with existing patient flow interventions. The simulation model is used to assess the cross-sector patient flow impacts of implementing stroke best practices. The results highlight the importance of community care investments and cross-sector referral patterns in realizing the greatest benefits from this policy. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Esfarjani, Sanaz Arabzadeh | Mostaghimi, Javad ||Dworkin, Seth Benjamin | A Modeling Framework for the Synthesis of Carbon Nanotubes by RF Plasma Technology | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2013-11 | The novel, cost and energy-efficient synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) by radio-frequency (RF) induction thermal plasma is a promising process for large scale production of CNTs for industrial and commercial applications. Techniques and conditions for producing larger quantities of CNTs have mainly depended on trial-and-error empirical variations of several operating parameters. Therefore, a detailed kinetic mechanism for CNT production in numerical simulations of an RF plasma system is required for understanding the process and identifying the parameters that mainly influence nanotube production. Such a model could also be used to enhance and optimize the design of synthesis systems. In this work, a two-dimensional axisymmetric model was constructed for a RF processing system for the production of CNTs. The plasma field was solved using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) Eulerian frame of reference. The interactions between the plasma and injected feed particles were considered using momentum, heat and mass transfer source terms in the plasma field governing equations. The trajectory and temperature history of the injected particles into the plasma were computed using a Lagrangian method. The effects of plasma gas composition and the raw material feed rate in the system on the plasma thermo-fluid fields were studied. It was found that when 100% He sheath gas was employed, compared to an Ar-He mixture, the evaporation rate of the injected feedstock particles in the plasma increased due to the higher thermal conductivity of the He gas. Based on the raw material feed rate analysis, a higher loading rate of feedstock reduces down the plasma temperature along the injection zone and increases the average evaporation time of the feedstock in the plasma. A chemistry model for the formation of CNTs from feedstock material was implemented into an in-house two-dimensional axisymmetric parallelized CFD code. 36 elementary chemical reactions representing the formation of CNTs were numerically solved in the computational domain parallelized for execution on 64 Central Processing Units (CPUs). It was shown that the reaction rates of key reactions could be adjusted within their uncertainty range to improve the predicted yield of CNTs to within the yield rate reported from the experiments. | PhD | energy, industr | 7, 9 |
| Esmail, Laura Caroline | Kohler, Jillian Clare | The Politics of Canada's Access to Medicines Regime: The Dogs that Didn't Bark | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2012-03 | Decisions to reform pharmaceutical policy often involve trade-offs between competing social and commercial goals. Canada's Access to Medicines Regime (CAMR), a reform that permits compulsory licensing for the production and export of medicines to developing countries, aimed to reconcile these goals. Since it was passed in 2004, only one order of antiretroviral drugs, enough for 21,000 HIV/AIDS patients in Rwanda for one year, has been exported. Future use of the regime appears unlikely. This research aimed to examine the politics underlying the formation of CAMR. Parliamentary committee hearing transcripts from CAMR's legislative development (2004) and from CAMR's legislative review (2007) were analyzed using a content analysis technique to identify how stakeholders who participated in the debates framed the issues. These findings were subsequently analyzed using a framework of framing, institutions and interests to determine how these three dimensions shaped CAMR's final policy design. In 2004, policy debates were dominated by two themes: intellectual property rights and TRIPS compliance. Promoting human rights and the impact of CAMR on innovation were hardly discussed. With the Departments of Industry Canada and International Trade as the lead institutions, the goals of protecting intellectual property and ensuring good trade relations with the United States appear to have taken priority over encouraging generic competition to achieve drug affordability. The result was a more limited interpretation of patent flexibilities under the WTO Paragraph 6 Decision. The most striking finding is the minimal discussion over the potential barriers developing country beneficiaries might face when attempting to use compulsory licensing, including their reluctance to use TRIPS flexibilities, their desire to pursue technological development and the constraints inherent in the WTO Paragraph 6 Decision. Instead, these issues were raised in 2007, which can be partly accounted for by a greater representation of the interests of potential beneficiary country governments. While the Government attempted to strike a balance between drug affordability and intellectual property protection, it designed CAMR as a last resort measure. Increased input from the developing country beneficiaries and shifting to institutions where the right to health gets prioritized may lead to policies that better achieves affordable drug access. | PhD | health, industr, trade, production, institution | 3, 9, 10, 12, 16 |
| Estrada, Vivian Jimenez | Iseke, Judy | Indigenous Maya Knowledge and the Possibility of Decolonizing Education in Guatemala | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-11 | Maya peoples in Guatemala continue to practice their Indigenous knowledge in spite of the violence experienced since the Spanish invasion in 1524. From 1991 until 1996, the state and civil society signed a series of Peace Accords that promised to better meet the needs of the Maya, Xinka, Garífuna and non-Indigenous groups living there. In this context, how does the current educational system meet the varied needs of these groups? My research investigates the philosophy and praxis of Maya Indigenous knowledge (MIK) in broadly defined educational contexts through the stories of 17 diverse Maya professional women and men involved in educational reform that currently live and work in Guatemala City. How do they reclaim and apply their ancestral knowledge daily? What possible applications of MIK can transform society? The findings reveal that MIK promotes social change and healing within and outside institutionalized educational spaces and argues that academia needs to make room for Indigenous theorizing mainly in areas of education, gender, knowledge production, and nation building. I analyze these areas from anticolonial and critical Indigenous standpoints from which gender and Indigenous identities weave through the text. Thus, I rely on Maya concepts and units of analyses (Jun Winaq’) guided by an Indigenous research methodology (Tree of Life) to conduct informal and in-depth interviews that lasted 2 to 4 hours. In addition, I held a talking circle with half of the participants. My analysis is founded on my own experience as an Indigenous person, my observations and participation in two Maya organizations in 2007 and a review of secondary literature in situ. The study contributes to a general understanding of contemporary Maya peoples and knowledge, and describes the theoretical validity of the Maya concept of Jun Winaq’. I argue that this concept seeks to heal individuals and a society to strengthen the Maya and all peoples. Throughout the dissertation I highlight the value of Indigenous knowledge and voices as parts of a political process that has the potential to decolonize mainstream education. I end with a graphic illustration of the elements in Maya Indigenous education and discuss future research for building a political agenda based on self-determination and healing relevant to Indigenous struggles globally. | PhD | gender, women, equitable, production, peace | 4, 5, 12, 16 |
| Etches, Jacob | Mustard, Cameron | Economic Inequality in Adult Mortality in Canada: Analyses of the Longitudinal Administrative Databank | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2009-11 | This dissertation contains two empirical papers on income and premature mortality, and one methodological paper that concerns the summary measurement of the extent of social inequalities in health. Income dynamics and adult mortality: Canada and the USA Chapter 4 examines the effects of income level and income drops on all-cause mortality in Canada and the United States. The Canadian data are from the Longitudinal Administrative Databank (LAD), and the US data are from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The LAD consists of personal income tax records for 20% of Canadian filers from 1982 through 2005. The PSID is a survey sampled in 1968 and followed annually through 1997. Analyses of the PSID confirmed previously published findings that used alternative statistical methods. The effect of income level on hazard of death is twice as large in the United States. The effects of income drops differed in Canada and the United States. Income dynamics and adult mortality in Canada: Chapter 5 re-analyses the LAD data to refine causal inference regarding the effects of income level and income drops on all-cause mortality. Exposure at ages 40-55 is analyzed for induction times ranging from 1-18 years. Income level was defined as the mean of the previous five year period, and income drops was measured both as annual change, and as the difference between projected and observed income. The effect of income level attenuated very little over induction time, and was not confounded by work disability. The effect of income drops also attenuated very little over induction time. Men in couple families showed a monotonic dose-reponse effect of income drops, and exclusion of families with potentially confounding characteristics did not affect the estimated risks. The hypothesized dependency of the effect of income drops on income level was not observed. No differences were observed between the two measures of income drops. Overall, there is strong evidence that the effect of income level on risk of death is primarily causal, while evidence for the effect of income drops is mixed. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Etcheverry, Jose | Harvey, Danny | Challenges and Opportunities for Implementing Sustainable Energy Strategies in Coastal Communities of Baja California Sur, Mexico | Geography | 2008-11 | This dissertation explores the potential of renewable energy and efficiency strategies to solve the energy challenges faced by the people living in the biosphere reserve of El Vizcaíno, which is located in the North Pacific region of the Mexican state of Baja California Sur. This research setting provides a practical analytical milieu to understand better the multiple problems faced by practitioners and agencies trying to implement sustainable energy solutions in Mexico. The thesis starts with a literature review (chapter two) that examines accumulated international experience regarding the development of renewable energy projects as a prelude to identifying the most salient implementation barriers impeding this type of initiatives. Two particularly salient findings from the literature review include the importance of considering gender issues in energy analysis and the value of using participatory research methods. These findings informed fieldwork design and the analytical framework of the dissertation. Chapter three surveys electricity generation as well as residential and commercial electricity use in nine coastal communities located in El Vizcaíno. Chapter three summarizes the fieldwork methodology used, which relies on a mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods that aim at enabling a gender-disaggregated analysis to describe more accurately local energy uses, needs, and barriers. Chapter four describes the current plans of the state government, which are focused in expanding one of the state’s diesel-powered electricity grids to El Vizcaíno. The Chapter also examines the potential for replacing diesel generators with a combination of renewable energy systems and efficiency measures in the coastal communities sampled. Chapter five analyzes strategies to enable the implementation of sustainable energy approaches in El Vizcaíno. Chapter five highlights several international examples that could be useful to inform organizational changes at the federal and state level aimed at fostering renewable energy and efficiency initiatives that enhance energy security, protect the environment, and also increase economic opportunities in El Vizcaíno and elsewhere in Mexico. Chapter six concludes the thesis by providing: a summary of all key findings, a broad analysis of the implications of the research, and an overview of future lines of inquiry. | PhD | energy, renewable, environment | 7, 13 |
| Etemadi, Amir Hossein | Iravani, Mohammad Reza | Control and Protection of Multi-DER Microgrids | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2012-11 | This dissertation proposes a power management and control strategy for islanded microgrids, which consist of multiple electronically-interfaced distributed energy resource (DER) units, to achieve a prescribed load sharing scheme. This strategy provides i) a power management system to specify voltage set points based on a classical power flow analysis; 2) DER local controllers, designed based on a robust, decentralized, servomechanism approach, to track the set points; and 3) a frequency control and synchronization scheme. This strategy is then generalized to incorporate both power-controlled and voltage-controlled DER units. Since the voltage-controlled DER units do not use inner current control loops, they are vulnerable to overcurrent/overload transients subsequent to system severe disturbances, e.g., faults and overloading conditions. To prevent DER unit trip-out or damage under these conditions, an overcurrent/overload protection scheme is proposed that detects microgrid abnormal conditions, modifies the terminal voltage of the corresponding VSC to limit DER unit output current/power within the permissible range, and restores voltage controllers subsequently. Under certain circumstances, e.g., microgrid islanding and communication failure, there is a need to switch from an active to a latent microgrid controller. To minimize the resultant transients, control transition should be performed smoothly. For the aforementioned two circumstances, two smooth control transition techniques, based on 1) an observer and 2) an auxiliary tracking controller, are proposed to achieve a smooth control transition. A typical microgrid system that adopts the proposed strategy is investigated. The microgrid dynamics are investigated based on eigenvalue sensitivity and robust analysis studies to evaluate the performance of the closed-loop linearized microgrid. Extensive case studies, based on time-domain simulations in the PSCAD/EMTDC platform, are performed to evaluate performance of the proposed controllers when the microgrid is subject to various disturbances, e.g., load change, DER abrupt outage, configuration change, faults, and overloading conditions. Real-time hardware-in-the-loop case studies, using an RTDS system and NI-cRIO industrial controllers, are also conducted to demonstrate ease of hardware implementation, validate controller performance, and demonstrate its insensitivity to hardware implementation issues, e.g., noise, PWM nonidealities, A/D and D/A conversion errors and delays. | PhD | urban, energy, industr | 7, 9, 11 |
| Evans-Tokaryk, Kerry | Ferris, F. Grant | Biogeochemical Defluoridation | Geology | 2011-03 | Fluoride in drinking water can lead to a crippling disease called fluorosis. As there is no cure for fluorosis, prevention is the only means of controlling the disease and research into fluoride remediation is critical. This work begins by providing a new approach to assessing fluoride remediation strategies using a combination of groundwater chemistry, saturation indices, and multivariate statistics based on the results of a large groundwater survey performed in a fluoride-contaminated region of India. From the Indian groundwater study, it was noted that one technique recommended for defluoridation involved using hydrous ferric oxide (HFO) as a solid phase sorbent for fluoride. This prompted investigation of bacteriogenic iron oxides (BIOS), a biogenic form of HFO, as a means of approaching bioremediation of fluoride. Batch sorption experiments at ionic strengths ranging from 0.001 to 0.1 M KNO3 and time course kinetic studies with BIOS and synthetic HFO were conducted to ascertain total sorption capacities (ST), sorption constants (Ks), and orders of reaction (n), as well as forward (kf) and reverse (kr) rate constants. Microcosm titration experiments were also conducted with BIOS and HFO in natural spring water from a groundwater discharge zone to evaluate fluoride sorption under field conditions. This thesis contributes significant, new information regarding the interaction between fluoride and BIOS, advancing knowledge of fluoride remediation and covering new ground in the uncharted field of fluoride bioremediation. | PhD | water | 6 |
| Evans, Beth Jean | Hoffmann, Matthew J||Bernstein, Steven | Many Shades of REDD: Explaining Variation in the Adoption and Adaptation of the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) Mechanism in Latin America | Political Science | 2017-11 | REDD is a multilateral, incentive-based mechanism through which developed states finance avoided deforestation activities in developing states in exchange for tradable carbon emission reduction credits. Developing statesâ responses to REDD range from strong opposition to enthusiastic support, even amongst states with similar incentive structures. This suggests a disjuncture between the logic of incentives and the complex range of domestic factors impacting whether and how states choose to understand and participate in voluntary but centrally coordinated international policy innovations such as REDD. Drawing on insights from policy diffusion, global governance, international pathways and social movements literatures, this work proposes a dynamic analytical framework which sees statesâ adoption and adaptation of REDD as flowing from differences in the nature of the domestic political opportunity structure (POS). This POS explains whether (under what conditions) and how (via what mechanisms or pathways of influence) states come to internationally adopt and domestically adapt voluntary but centrally coordinated international policy innovations. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Bolivia and Peru in 2015, this comparative analysis demonstrates how particular combinations of ideational and institutional POS shaped policy decisions pertaining to REDD at various policy junctures in each case by determining which actors would have access to policy processes, as well as what ideas would be salient therein. It also demonstrates the ways in which REDD policy-making can become embedded in broader webs of domestic power and politics, resulting in domestic adaptations of REDD that are ancillary, and potentially even antithetical, to the mainstream conceptualization of REDD as a market-based mechanism designed to reduce emissions from deforestation. | Ph.D. | innovation, forest | 9, 15 |
| Evans, Jenna Madeleine | Baker, G. Ross | Health Systems Integration: Competing or Shared Mental Models? | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-06 | For over two decades, health services researchers and managers have focused on improving integration between organizations and levels of care. Yet, healthcare systems capable of delivering integrated care have not developed widely. This dissertation argues that structural and process strategies for integration need to be supplemented by attention to the social cognitions that characterize the behaviours of actors within healthcare systems. The aim of this dissertation is to explore how Shared Mental Model Theory might advance our understanding and measurement of integration processes and performance. The first paper in this dissertation examines the evolution of healthcare integration strategies over twenty-five years as reported in the academic literature. Six major, inter-related shifts were identified in strategy content. This evolution in conceptualization and practice highlights the importance of attention to meanings and perceptions. The second paper draws from Shared Mental Model Theory, and an exploratory, theory-driven literature review, to identify mental model content specific to system-level integration efforts, and to develop a theoretical framework of the antecedents, moderators and outcomes of shared mental models of integration. The final paper validates and improves the proposed content framework using a two-round, web-based modified Delphi process with a diverse, pan-Canadian group of integration experts, including policymakers, planners, managers, care providers, educators, researchers and patient advocates. The proposed “Integration Mindsets Framework” may be used to facilitate the planning, implementation, management and evaluation of integration initiatives. A shared mental models lens complements and fills the gaps of current approaches to the study of integration in the healthcare sector by focusing attention on the evolution and interplay of meanings, interpretations and knowledge about integration – and their potential impact on practice. Together, these studies provide theory-based, expert-validated constructs and frameworks that enable researchers and practitioners to describe, conceptualize and analyze health systems integration from a socio-cognitive perspective. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Evans, Jennifer Beatrice | Iacovetta, Franca | Telling Stories of Food, Community and Meaningful Lives in Post-1945 North Bay, Ontario | History | 2015-06 | "Telling Stories of Food, Community and Meaningful Lives" uses the memories of nearly seventy women who lived in northern Ontario during the post-1945 period. These women represent a diverse cross-section of the population including English- and Franco-Ontarians, European immigrants as well as Anishinaabe and Métis peoples. Although northern Ontario has been understood as a white and masculine space, this project provides a corrective narrative by uniting the food stories of Euro-Canadian and Indigenous women to consider cross-cultural perspectives, inter-relationships as well as complex racial, colonial and religious dynamics. This project largely argues that women from diverse backgrounds used food to negotiate the physical, cultural and ideological spaces they inhabited. For these women, food and its related activities became a critical site for identity formation and a sense of belonging but also a source of fear, loneliness, exclusion and discrimination.Each chapter is organized to examine a facet of women's food experiences. Chapter 1 analyzes how the North and northern Ontario impacted the availability and cost of food, and the strategies women used to ensure they obtained food including berry-picking, hunting and fishing. In chapter 2, I combine women's memories and cooking literature to consider the ways women learned to cook as well as the imaginative, transformative and healing elements of preparing dishes. Chapter 3 discusses the complex connections between food and family relationships, as episodes of familial happiness were recalled alongside those of struggle, neglect and abuse. Chapter 4 looks at the consumption of food-related items and technologies as the fulfillment of creativity, desires and cultural norms as well as a symbolic movement away from the pains and struggles of their past. And finally, chapter 5 investigates the community building and interactions centered on the making, eating and sharing of food. | Ph.D. | women, food | 2, 5 |
| Fafard St-Germain, Andr�e-Anne Fafard | Tarasuk, Valerie | Household Food Insecurity in Canada: Understanding the Economic Circumstances and Policy Options | Nutritional Sciences | 2019-11 | Food insecurity is an important public health problem that affected 12.6% of households in 2012. There is no policy intervention explicitly designed to tackle food insecurity, but there are growing interests in identifying solutions to reduce the problem. To help inform the development of effective policy actions, this thesis focused on better understanding the household economic circumstances related to food insecurity and the potential of housing and food subsidy programs in mitigating it. Using the 2010 Survey of Household Spending, the description of spending patterns revealed that the budget of food-insecure households tends to prioritize more immediate, basic needs. The in-depth examination of the intersection between homeownership and food insecurity highlighted important food insecurity disparities between households with different homeownership status and housing asset level and suggested that housing policy may play a role in mitigating food insecurity by promoting homeownership and ensuring mortgage affordability. However, other policy actions are needed to build the economic resilience of lower-income renting households. Social housing is the primary approach to improve housing affordability among low-income renting households, but study findings indicated that those living in government-subsidized housing remained highly vulnerable to food insecurity and that improving housing affordability seemed insufficient to compensate for income inadequacy. Food subsidy programs have been a key policy tool to improve food access and affordability in remote, northern communities, but the evaluation conducted using data from the Canadian Community Health Survey raised serious concerns about its effectiveness and highlighted the need to develop effective initiatives to reduce the high rates of food insecurity in Canada’s North. Together, the findings suggest that existing housing and food subsidy programs have limited potential to mitigate food insecurity and that different policy actions working in tandem are required to build the economic resilience of all households and reduce food insecurity in Canada. | Ph.D. | food | 2 |
| Fakhri, Michael | Rittich, Kerry | The Making of International Trade Law: Sugar, Development, and International Institutions | Law | 2011-11 | This historical study focuses on the multilateral regulation of sugar to provide a broader institutional history of trade law. I argue that theories of development and tensions between the global North and South have always been central to the formation, function, and transformation of international trade institutions. Sugar consistently appears as a commodity throughout the history of modern trade law. The sugar trade provides an immediate way for us to work through larger questions of development, free trade, and economic world order. I examine the 1902 Brussels Sugar Convention, the 1937 International Sugar Agreement (ISA), and the 1977 ISA. These international agreements provide a narrative of the development ideas and concerns that were a central feature of the trade institutions that preceded the World Trade Organization. In the context of the sugar trade over the last century, very few challenged the idea of free trade. Instead, they debated over what free trade meant. The justification for free trade and the function of those international institutions charged to implement trade agreements has changed throughout history. Yet, despite multiple historical and doctrinal definitions of free trade, two dynamics remain consistent: trade law has always been configured by the relationship between policies of tariff reduction and market stabilization and has been defined by the tension between industrial and agricultural interests. | SJD | trade, institution | 10, 16 |
| Fan, Helen Y. | Heerklotz, Heiko | Asymmetry in the Partitioning of Surfactants into Lipid Membranes | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2017-06 | The emergence of modern standards of public sanitation and personal hygiene was promoted by the invention and mass production of synthetic detergents/surfactants. Detergents insert into and permeabilize cell membranes, and solubilize them completely at higher concentrations; a thorough understanding of these phenomena is particularly important for the agriculture, pharmaceutical, and cosmetics industries. The complex cell membrane is often modelled with liposomes; detergent–membrane interactions have been described by a three-stage model, which assumes equilibrated interactions in that detergents flip-flop rapidly within the membrane bilayer. However, many detergents flip-flop slowly and become asymmetrically distributed in the membrane upon insertion (e.g., sodium dodecyl sulphate at room temperature). The works presented in this thesis aim to further our understanding of asymmetric detergent–membrane interactions and to advance the methodology of characterizing them. The methods applied in these works are spectroscopic and calorimetric in nature, and extended here by developments in quantitative analysis. They were used to investigate three very different detergents: surfactin, a lipopeptide that is negatively charged near neutral pH; 12:0 lysophosphocholine (12:0 LPC), a zwitterionic product of membrane lipid metabolism; and digitonin, a nonionic surfactant often used in membrane protein studies. These detergents share the common thread of asymmetry, but interact with and solubilize membranes in different ways: Surfactin equilibrates in the membrane upon reaching a threshold content in the outer leaflet; 12:0 LPC and digitonin stay in the outer leaflet and do not solubilize the membrane even at high concentrations (digitonin being more persistent in this than 12:0 LPC). As such, all equilibrating detergent–lipid interactions are alike, in that they can be described by the three-stage model; every nonequilibrating detergent–lipid interaction is asymmetric in its own way. | Ph.D. | agriculture, sanitation, industr | 2, 6, 2009 |
| Fan, Lifeng | Sidani, Souraya | Examining the Feasibility, Acceptability and Effects of a Foot Self-care Educational Intervention in Adult Patients with Diabetes at Low Risk for Foot Ulceration | Nursing Science | 2012-06 | Background: Foot ulceration and subsequent lower extremity amputation are common, serious, and expensive chronic complications for patients with diabetes. Foot-care education, provided to patients with diabetes at low-risk for ulcers, prevents minor foot problems that may lead to ulceration. Little evidence is available to support the effectiveness of educational intervention in low-risk diabetic patients. Objectives: The objectives of the pilot study were to examine the feasibility and acceptability of the foot care educational intervention, and to explore its effects on patients’ foot self-care knowledge, efficacy, and behaviors, and the occurrence of minor foot problems in adult patients with diabetes at low risk for foot ulceration. Methods: A one group repeated measures design was used. The intervention was given over a 3-week period. The first intervention session consisted of a 1-hour one-on-one, provider-patient interaction to discuss foot self-care strategies; the second session involved a 1-hour hands-on practice training. The third and fourth sessions entailed two 10-minute telephone contact booster sessions. Seventy eligible participants with type 2 diabetes at low risk for foot ulcerations were enrolled in the study, and 56 participants (30 women and 26 men; mean age: 55.8±13.2 years) completed the study. The outcomes of foot self-care knowledge, efficacy, behavior, and foot and footwear conditions were assessed at pre-test, following the first two sessions, and 3-month follow-up. Repeated measures analysis of variance, and paired-t test were used to examine changes in outcomes over time. Results: The findings provided initial evidence suggesting the foot self-care educational intervention is feasible and acceptable to adult patients with type 2 diabetes. It was effective in improving patients’ foot self-care knowledge (F (2, 54) = 230.444, p < 0.01), self-efficacy (F (2, 54) = 94.668, p < 0.01), and foot self-care behaviors (t (55)=117.228, p < 0.01), in reducing the occurrence of minor foot skin and toenails problems (all p<0.05), and in improving wearing proper shoes and proper socks (all p<0.05 ) at 3-month follow-up. Conclusions: The findings from this pilot study support the effects of the intervention. Future research should evaluate its efficacy using a randomized clinical trial design, and a large sample of patients with diabetes at low risk for foot ulcerations. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Fancott, Carol | Baker, G. Ross | "Letting stories breathe": Using Patient Stories for Organizational Learning and Improvement | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2016-06 | There has been a recent upsurge in the use of patient stories to better understand patients’ experiences of illness and of care, and to inspire leaders and staff for quality and safety within healthcare. However, to fully realize the potential of patient stories, a more nuanced understanding is needed of how they are used, who tells them, for what purpose, and in what context. Using a constructivist case study methodology with qualitative methods, this study examined four healthcare organizations that are known leaders in the systematic and deliberate use of patient stories, exploring the storytellers, the types of stories told and their purposes. It also examined the contexts that enable the use of stories and the impact they have had on organizational learning and quality improvement. An interpretivist approach to analysis highlighted the specific types of stories told by patients and of patients, and how they were co-constructed from stories of chaos into quest stories for learning, “authorized stories” to be shared for particular purposes. The storytellers who emerged were those who had extended their involvement as patient advisors/members, determined by leaders to be the “right fit” and at the “right time” to share their stories. Strong leaders modeled and supported the philosophical orientation toward patient and family-centred care that patient stories helped to develop and sustain. Leaders also created the organizational structures and processes required to gather and share stories, and to link them purposefully with learning and improvement. The act of storytelling is not a simple one and tensions surfaced relating to what stories are told, how, by whom, and for what purposes. In many ways, the organizations demonstrated how they were thinking with stories and how learning occurred at individual, team, and organizational levels. However, leaders and organizations continued to retain control of which patient stories were shared, in what forum, and for what purposes. Despite their best intentions and explicit demonstrations to hear the patient voice, a more reflective practice is required to better appreciate the power and privilege that exists within organizations, making this an area to explore further in theory development for organizational learning. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Fang, Limin | Aguirregabiria, Victor | Three Essays in Industrial Organization | Economics | 2018-11 | My thesis includes three chapters that examine the dynamics of competition in the retail industry. Chapter One of the thesis demonstrates that online review platforms help consumers learn faster about product quality and improve consumer welfare as a result. To examine this, I use a novel dataset containing the universe of full-service restaurants in Texas, consumer search interest on major online review platforms and their online review information. I illustrate that online review platforms' effects on learning show up in restaurant revenues and survival probabilities. Specifically, doubling consumers' exposure to Yelp, the dominant platform, increases the revenue of a high-quality new independent restaurant by 8-20% and decreases that of a low-quality restaurant by about the same amount. Doubling Yelp exposure also raises the survival rate of a new high-quality independent restaurant by 7-19 basis points and reduces that of a low-quality restaurant by a similar level. Other platforms, especially Google, have similar effects but in smaller magnitude. In contrast, online platforms do not affect the revenues or survival rates of chains and old independent restaurants. Counterfactual analysis based on a structural demand model with consumer learning shows that online review platforms speed up the learning process by 0.5 to 2.5 years, increase consumer welfare by 5.4% and the total industry revenue by 5.9% during the period of 2005-2015. Chapters Two and Three deal with the entry and exit dynamics of the retail industry, in particular, how chain retailers can pre-empt the entry of competitors by densely packing a geographic area with their outlets. Chapter Two develops a measure for preemptive motives in dynamic oligopoly games with entry and exit, and applies the measure in both theoretical and empirical studies. Chapter Three uses this measure in the fast casual dining industry in Texas to investigate if there is a trade-off between preemptive entry and survival of firms. The results show that under some conditions, preemption in fact helps the incumbent firm survive, while in other cases, preemption harms survival. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Fang, Ray | Côté, Stéphane||Connelly, Brian | Class Advantage in White-collar Organizations: An Investigation of Parental Income, Work Resources, and Job Success | Management | 2019-11 | Substantial research shows that people with lower-income parents face difficulties entering professional, white-collar organizations, finding that employers are less likely to hire them even when their qualifications are equal to their counterparts with higher-income parents. Still, many overcome their economic disadvantages and get employed, but little research has examined whether and how economic backgrounds continue to shape work experiences and outcomes after entry. This study investigates a theoretical model that merges two different literatures: one demonstrating that people reliably signal their social class background to others, and another demonstrating that supervisors provide more important work resources to subordinates that they like, trust, and think are competent. I propose that growing up with higher-income parents leads employees to develop higher social class reputations—observers’ collective perceptions of a person’s social class. Class reputations are then positively associated with two important work resources: perceived supervisor support and job autonomy. Finally, I propose that employees who perceive more supervisor support and job autonomy are more satisfied and productive at work. I tested this model in the field among 124 business school interns in similar jobs using a multisource, time-lagged survey. Results indicated that interns with higher-income parents were perceived as higher class. Contrary to my predictions, class reputations were unrelated to any work outcomes. Exploratory analyses focused on (a) associations with parental education and (b) two alternative mediators: social class signals (behaviors that provide information about a person’s class background) and social class anxiety (apprehension or worry about one’s class rank). Results tentatively suggest that parental education predicted supervisor support, autonomy, and job satisfaction, but not job performance. Further exploratory mediation analyses tentatively suggest that class signals explained why interns with more educated parents perceived more supervisor support, and in turn experienced higher job satisfaction. Finally, combining income and education into a composite tentatively suggested a dual-path model whereby interns with upper-class parents experience higher job satisfaction because they (a) send upper-class signals and in turn, perceive more supervisor support and (b) are less anxious about their class rank. New insights into class advantages in white-collar organizations are discussed. | Ph.D. | employment | 8 |
| Farhadi, Beyhan | Hunter, Mark | "The Sky’s the Limit": On the Impossible Promise of E-learning in the Toronto District School Board | Geography | 2019-11 | Under the banner “The Sky’s the Limit,” electronically delivered instruction (e-learning) in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) emerged as an approach that promised expanded opportunities for students to prepare for a competitive, globalized, and networked economy. In contrast, this year-long ethnographic study on e-learning in secondary day school programs in the TDSB reveals intensified inequalities that map geographically in areas divided by class and race, serving students in schools with greater learning opportunities. By this, I refer to the concentration of e-learning students in schools that are ranked highly on the TDSB’s Learning Opportunity Index (LOI). I also show how the TDSB leverages e-learning to facilitate private–public partnership with Canadian International School (CIS), Vietnam. It is a program that accredits Vietnamese students with an Ontario Secondary School Diploma so that they better qualify for university programs abroad. In the context of these results, I argue that that the promise made by e-learning is impossible to fulfil because it is a technology that reinforces merit-based schooling systems that tend to reproduce social and cultural hierarchy. Social scientists working on educational issues have long identified how inequality is spatialized, particularly as a dynamic of exclusionary processes and inclusionary activities that reproduce hierarchies. These hierarchies condition student identity and perpetuate systems of disadvantage and violence wrought by settler colonialism, anti-Black racism, gender discrimination, and conceptions of disability within a global capitalist economy. Systems, however, are not static. Systems can be contested. While emphasizing the institutional nature of oppression, I hold schooling systems in tension with the insights of students, whose desire for a more inclusive society produces the force that makes progress possible. It is the responsibility of public education to realize this desire, for the benefit of all students. In a time of deepening cuts, education faces a crisis manufactured by social divestment, rising income inequality, and entrenchment of cultural hierarchies that discredit diversity as a value that can produce structural transformation and social justice. As an integral part of communities, schools must harness the power of people, rather than technology, to respond to this crisis. | Ph.D. | inclusive, gender, equality, inequality, institution, justice | 4, 5, 10, 16 |
| Farney, James | Forbes, Hugh Donald | Social Conservatives and the Boundary of Politics in Canada and the United States | Political Science | 2009-11 | This dissertation investigates social conservative activism in the American Republican Party and in four parties of the Canadian right: the Progressive Conservative Party, Reform Party, Canadian Alliance Party, and Conservative Party of Canada. While issues like gay and lesbian rights and abortion became politically contentious in both countries during the late 1960s, American social conservatives emerged earlier than their Canadian counterparts and enjoyed considerably more success. Understanding this contrast explains an important part of the difference between Canadian and American politics and explicates a key aspect of modern conservatism in North America. The argument developed here focuses on different norms about the boundary of politics held in right-wing parties in the two countries. Norms are embedded components of institutions that codify the “logic of appropriateness” for actors within a given institution (March and Olsen 1989, 160) and both construct and regulate the identities of political actors (Katzentstein 1996). The recognition of norms has been an important development in organizational theory, but one that has never been applied to modern office-seeking parties (Ware 1996, Berman 1998). Qualitative case studies establish that many Republicans understood both sexuality and appeals to religion as politically legitimate throughout the period under investigation. In Canada, alternatively, Progressive Conservatives saw such questions as being inappropriate grounds for political activity. This norm restricted social conservative mobilization in the party. It was only when the Reform Party upset both the institutions and ideology of Canadian conservatism that social conservatives began to gain prominence in Canadian politics. Since then, the success of Canadian social conservatives has been limited by Canada’s political culture and institutions but they are now, as their American counterparts have long been, consistently recognized by other Canadian conservatives as partners in the conservative coalition. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Farooq, Bilal | Miller, Eric | Evolution of Urban Built Space: Markets and Decisions | Civil Engineering | 2011-06 | To understand the factors that influence the spatio-temporal distribution of built space, and thus population in an urban area, play an extremely important role in our greater understanding of urban travel behaviour. Existing location of activity centres, especially home and work, strongly influences the short-term individual-level decisions such as mode of transportation, and long-term household-level decisions such as change in job and residential location. Conditions in the built space market also affect households’ and firms’ location and relocation decisions, and hence influence the general travel patterns in an urban area. This research addresses two very important, but at the same time, not very widely investigated dimensions that play a key role in the evolution of built space and population distribution: Markets and Decisions. A disequilibrium based microsimulation modelling framework is developed for the built space markets. This framework is then used to operationalize the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area’s owner-occupied housing market within Integrated Land Use Transportation and Environment (ILUTE) modelling system. Simulation results captured heterogeneity in the transaction prices, due to type of dwellings and different market conditions, in a very disaggregate fashion. On the decisions side, this research first developed a generic multidimensional modelling framework that captures the behaviour of builders in terms of the supply of new built space. The where, when, how much, and what type of supply decisions were incorporated within a single framework. This modelling framework was then applied to estimate a model for the supply of new office space in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). Estimation results indicated a risk taker behaviour on the builders’ part, while market conditions and supply of resources (labour, construction cost etc.) were also found to be important factors in decision making. In addition to that, this research also developed a comprehensive hedonic analysis for the asking rent of office space in the Greater Toronto Area. The effects of accessibility, quality, location, and market conditions on rent were explored. Data indicated a high degree of spatial heterogeneity and clustering effects. Spatial analysis techniques were incorporated within the hedonic framework to capture these effects. Estimation results indicated that access to transport infrastructure, distance from CBD, and vacancy rate were significant in explaining the variation in the rent. | PhD | labour, infrastructure, urban, land use, water | 8, 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Fatona, Andrea | Walcott, Rinaldo | Where Outtreach Meets Outrage: Racial Equity Policy Formation at the Canada Council for the Arts (1989-1999) | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-11 | Where Outreach Meets Outrage: Racial Equity at the Canada Council for the Arts (1989-1999), examines the early formation of racial equity policies at The Canada Council for the Arts. In this research project, I am primarily interested in understanding the ways in which ‘culture’ is employed by the state, the Canada Council for the Arts and by black artists to articulate and communicate complex issues that pertain to notions of art, citizenship, solidarity, justice, multiculturalism, belonging and nationhood. The research places culture and cultural production centrally within claims and calls by racialized artists for the ethical redistribution of societal resources and participation in societal structures. I look at questions of how community is produced and struggled over in relation to claims for cultural resources. This thesis employs an interdisciplinary approach drawn from the disciplines of sociology, anthropology and critical cultural studies to allow the complex relationships between activities of the Canadian state, racial equity policy making at the Canada Council, and grass roots social activism to emerge. I argue that state practices of management are elastic and that racial equity policies at the Canada Council emerged out of a confluence of transformational activities simultaneously taking place at the state/institutional and grassroots levels. The significance of this research project is that it fuses contemporary cultural production and art within contemporary social justice paradigms that seek to understand the processes and practices within liberalism that produce oppressions and resistance through an exclusionary politics of representation. This dissertation study will have both applied and theoretical implications in the Canadian context both within and outside of the academy in the fields of the arts, cultural policy and education. | PhD | equitable | 4 |
| Faulkner, Breanne | Goldstein, Abby L | "Things Are Changing": Police Mental Health and Psychotherapeutic Help-seeking Within an Evolving Police Culture | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-06 | Due to repeated trauma exposure and significant ongoing sources of operational and organizational stress, police officers are vulnerable to mental health problems, including PTSD, depression, and other Operational Stress Injuries (OSIs). In recent years, police organizations have made efforts to build awareness and the address mental health needs of their membership, and Ontario legislation has attempted to address gaps in access to services among first responders. As such, aspects of traditional police culture which may be incompatible with psychotherapeutic help-seeking, such as norms of hegemonic masculinity, authoritarianism, and emotional control have been challenged. The current study aimed to explore the lived experiences of Ontario police officers with regard to job-related psychological distress and help-seeking, and to elucidate the complex role of contemporary police cultural norms in shaping help-seeking behaviours. In-depth research interviews were conducted with 18 police officers of various occupational ranks and roles. A constructivist grounded theory approach was utilized toward the development a model of psychological help-seeking within the contemporary police culture. Results demonstrated that although most officers reported that “things are changing” within the police cultural and institutional context, themes of weakness versus strength, us versus other, safety and suitability for the job, and co-constructed silence continue to pervade many of their experiences and perceptions of psychological difficulties, constraining help-seeking behaviours and often delaying help-seeking. Specific factors interfering with help-seeking included issues with accessibility, education, and awareness, but more prominently, identity issues, a fear of work-related consequences, and skepticism and mistrust, especially of mental health treatment providers. Establishing trust and reducing stigma via leadership and peer access points to community service providers were important facilitating factors. Psychotherapeutic service engagement often resulted in a shift away from policing as a fundamental component of identity, as well as a greater level of comfort with help-seeking, challenges to previously-held stigmas, and most powerfully, an inclination to share these experiences with one’s peers and thereby challenge the culture of silence. A model of the influence of the police culture on psychotherapeutic help-seeking among police is presented, and theoretical implications, as well as implications for prevention and intervention with police are outlined. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Faulkner, Daniel Owen | Kherani, Nazir P. ||Ozin, Geoffrey Alan ||Perovic, Doug | The Influence of Synthesis Temperature on the Crystallographic and Luminescent Properties of NaYF4-based Upconverters and their Application to Amorphous Silicon Photovoltaics | Materials Science and Engineering | 2012-11 | There are several factors which conspire to limit the efficiency of solar cells. One of these is the fact that a solar cell is unable to absorb photons of energy less than the band gap of the semiconductor from which it is made; in the case of some high-band gap materials such as amorphous silicon – the model system used in this study – this can mean that as much as 50% of the solar spectrum is unusable. Upconversion phosphors – materials which can, by way of two or more successive photon absorptions, convert low energy (typically near infrared) light into high energy (typically visible) light – offer a potential solution to this problem as they can be used to convert light, which would otherwise be useless to the cell, into light which can be used for power generation. In this thesis we work towards the application of NaYF4-based upconverters to enhanced efficiency amorphous silicon (a-Si) photovoltaic power generation. We begin by synthesizing these upconverters at a range of temperatures and studying the crystallographic and spectroscopic properties of the resulting materials, elucidating heretofore undocumented trends in their luminescence and crystallography, including the effect of synthesis temperature on upconversion intensity, crystallite size, and lattice parameter. We also investigate the emission quantum yield of these materials, beginning with an in depth discussion and investigation of two methods for recording absolute quantum yields. We demonstrate that the quantum yields of the materials may vary by a factor of over 100, depending on the synthesis conditions. After we have fully characterized these properties we turn our attention to the application of these materials to amorphous silicon solar cells, for which we provide a proof of concept by demonstrating the effect of upconversion luminescence on the photoconductance of an a-Si film. We conclude by developing a roadmap for future improvements in the field. | PhD | energy, solar | 7 |
| Fawcett, Kevin William | Kambourov, Gueorgui||Shi, Shouyong | Wages, Worker Mobility, and the Macroeconomy | Economics | 2020-06 | This thesis contains three essays on wages, worker mobility and the macroeconomy. Chapter 1 develops an equilibrium model of the labor market with on-the-job search, wage-tenure contracts, and heterogeneity in match productivity. The model predicts an inverse relationship between match productivity and post-unemployment wages where workers in high productivity matches earn a low wage initially, but experience significant wage growth over tenure. The model is considered in the context of labor market entry for young adults. Unemployment risk in the transition process reduces worker mobility and limits the ability of workers to recover from a low quality initial match. Quantitatively, workers that initially form low quality matches expect to produce 8.0% less and consume 5.2% less in their first three years in the labor market relative to workers that initially form high quality matches. Chapter 2 studies efficiency in the model developed in Chapter 1. The social planner's match formation strategy perfectly insures employed workers against unemployment risk and results in an 11.3% increase in permanent consumption relative to the competitive equilibrium. Two self-financed policies in the forms of an extension of unemployment insurance and a hiring subsidy are considered as alternative strategies to increase worker welfare. The optimal policies increase permanent consumption by 5.1% and 1.3% respectively relative to the competitive equilibrium, however both policies are associated with a decrease in average output per worker. Chapter 3, joint with Shouyong Shi, develops an equilibrium model of the labor market where workers have incomplete information about their ability. Search outcomes yield information for updating the belief about the ability, which affects optimal search decisions in the future. Firms respond to updated beliefs by altering vacancy creation and optimal wage contracts. To study equilibrium interactions between learning and search, this paper integrates learning into a search equilibrium with on-the-job search and wage-tenure contracts. The model is calibrated to quantify the extent to which learning and on-the-job search can explain empirical facts related to wage decreases in job-to-job transitions, duration dependence in unemployment, and frictional wage dispersion. | Ph.D. | employment, worker, wage, consum | 8, 12 |
| Fazel Zarandi, Mohammad Mahdi | Berman, Oded||Krass, Dmitry | Incentives in Supply Chain Management | Management | 2016-06 | My dissertation focuses on strategic issues in supply chain management. It consists of three studies. In the first chapter, I investigate the incentive issues in supply chain information sharing. Specifically, I provide an explanation for a long-standing question in supply chain management: why do supply chain firms often use simple contracts when our models typically show that more complex forms are needed to coordinate the supply chain? Using a stylized supply chain model consisting of a retailer who solicits forecast information from a manufacturer, I show that if there is sufficient operational flexibility in the supply chain, credible information sharing is indeed possible in a simple contracting environment. The second chapter focuses on the structure of supply chains in a competitive environment. It is motivated by Ford's support of the government bailout of its competitors General Motors and Chrysler. This is in sharp contrast with the general presumption that firms prefer fewer to more competitors. Using a stylized supply chain structure, I sort out conditions where firms have self-interest in promoting the sustainability of their competitors. To get some sense of whether the model can be a credible explanation for Ford's support of the bailout, I calibrate it to pre- and post-recession data. The calibrated model suggests that the bailout of GM and Chrysler actually benefitted Ford. In the third chapter, I present the Almost Robust Optimization model that is a simple and tractable methodology for incorporating data uncertainty into supply chain models. The model trades off the objective function value with robustness and finds optimal solutions that are almost robust. To efficiently solve the model, a novel decomposition approach is proposed that decomposes the model into a deterministic master problem and a subproblem which checks the master problem solution under different realizations. Finally, to demonstrate the efficiency of the methodology, I apply it to two important logistics problems. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Fazel-Zarandi, Maryam | Fox, Mark | Representing and Reasoning about Skills and Competencies over Time | Computer Science | 2013-11 | To stay competitive within the market, organizations need to accurately understand the skills and competencies of their human resources to better utilize them and more effectively respond to internal and external demands for expertise. This is particularly important for most services organizations which provide a variety of products and services to multiple and changing clients. The ability to accurately locate experts is also important to knowledge workers. From this perspective, finding individuals with appropriate knowledge and skills is important for accomplishing knowledge intensive tasks and solving complex problems. This thesis focuses on the problem of representing and reasoning about skills and competencies over time for more effective human resources management and expert finding. Proper modeling of skills and competencies provides, among other things, a common language for assessments, a foundation for consistent interviewing, a linkage between performance management and learning, and a means for aligning business strategy and skills for driving organizational performance. It also improves knowledge management by making explicit what the organization knows and can perform. In this thesis, we present a framework for profiling human resources over time. In particular, we use first-order logic to represent and reason about expertise, skills and competencies and capture information about sources of skill and competency information. The framework provides: - a formal ontology for skill and competency management which specifies how individuals should be represented and evaluated against a skill, - a technique for inferring and validating skills and competencies over time using different sources of information, - a systematic way of evaluating human resources in order to provide a more efficient, structured, and consistent assessment process, and - techniques for identifying unreliable sources of information and revising trust in these sources. This work enhances the ability of organizations to better utilize their human assets and improves the task of expert finding required for accomplishing knowledge intensive tasks and solving complex problems. | PhD | worker | 8 |
| Fazli, Ghazal Sanam | Booth, Gillian L | Ethnic Variation in Prediabetes Incidence and Outcomes among Immigrants and Long-Term Residents | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-06 | Type 2 diabetes is rapidly increasing worldwide, particularly in low and middle-income countries. In Canada, the estimated prevalence of diabetes is projected to increase from 9.3% to 12.1% by 2025. Previous studies have shown that some ethnoracial populations of non-European descent have a higher risk of developing diabetes, however, evidence on the onset of prediabetes across different ethnoracial groups in Canada is not available. Although, 5-10% of people with prediabetes convert to diabetes, there is no knowledge on the risk of conversion to diabetes among immigrants of different ethnic origins in Canada. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis was to investigate the epidemiology of prediabetes within an immigrant cohort across different ethnicities, compared with long-term Canadian residents to inform future research and policy. The main findings from this thesis conclude that: 1) Ethnicity is an important risk factor for the development of prediabetes and its progression to diabetes 2) Non-European populations, especially, people of South Asian, Sub-Saharan African and Caribbean, and South-East Asians at young ages have an elevated risk of developing prediabetes, in comparison to Western Europeans 3) Generally, South Asians, Sub-Saharan African and Caribbeans, and West Asian and Arabs, have a nearly twofold risk of converting to diabetes relative to Western Europeans 4) Relative to Western Europeans, the incidence of prediabetes and its conversion to diabetes was elevated for both women and men of non-European descents 5) Neighbourhood walkability amplified the effects of ethnicity such that non-European populations living in low walkability neighbourhoods had an increased risk of prediabetes, but those living in high walkability neighbourhoods did not. This was particularly evident among West Asian and Arabs, and Latin Americans. These findings highlight the need for population health interventions that will address the rapidly rising rates of prediabetes and conversion to diabetes among immigrant populations of different ethnicities. Future research and policy steps may involve establishing age/ethnic specific cut offs for diabetes screening and monitoring prediabetes risk within health care settings; designing diabetes prevention programs tailored to high risk groups and tackling upstream determinants such as neighbourhood designs that promote healthier lifestyles and support the prevention of diabetes. | Ph.D. | health, socioeconomic | 1, 3 |
| Febria, Catherine M. | Williams, D. Dudley | The Molecular Ecology of Hyporheic Zones: Characterization of Dissolved Organic Matter and Bacterial Communities in Contrasting Stream Ecosystems | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2010-11 | The aims of this thesis were to characterize the molecular ecology of the hyporheic zone – between dissolved organic matter (DOM) and microbes – and to test whether seasonal and spatial patterns existed in correlation with seasonal ecosystem processes. The hyporheic zone is an area of vertical integration between groundwater and surface water, and lateral integration between terrestrial and stream ecosystems. Colonization corers were used to collect in situ DOM and bacterial communities from the hyporheic sediments of two streams that varied in hydroperiod (i.e., permanent vs. intermittent). DOM was collected using passive samplers and analyzed using 1H NMR and fluorescence spectroscopy; bacteria were characterized using terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism. At the permanent site, bacteria correlated significantly with seasonal environmental factors including: fall communities with DOM concentration; spring and winter communities with nitrate concentrations; and summer communities with temperature. Bacterial communities at the intermittent site were significantly correlated with flooding as a function of hydrologic connectivity. Sediment communities were discriminated between hyporheic sediments and interstitial porewaters, and shared several operational taxonomic units (OTUs). Sediment communities were more distinct when hydrologic connectivity was low, and porewater communities changed dramatically upon flooding. Fifteen out of 259 OTUs were shared across aquatic sediments, interstitial porewater and watershed soil samples. DOM was spatially and seasonally dynamic in both sites. Five key DOM groups described using 1H NMR spectroscopy revealed spatial differences between the permanent and intermittent sites. EEM-PARAFAC models confirmed that despite significantly different molecular components, the relative sources of DOM at both sites were similar, including humic-like terrestrial sources and tyrosine (microbial) sources. This study provides new knowledge on both organic matter dynamics and bacterial communities in a dynamic aquatic ecotone, and also confirmed the hypothesis that bacterial communities correlated significantly with ecosystem processes within a watershed. | PhD | ecology, water, environment | 6, 13, 15 |
| Fecso, Andras Botond | Grantcharov, Teodor P | Technical Performance and Patient Outcomes in Surgery: Another Piece of the Puzzle | Medical Science | 2018-06 | Introduction: Patient outcomes depend on a variety of variables related to patients themselves, to disease or treatments. In surgery, operations are the mainstay of management and the operating room is a high-stakes, high-risk environment where the surgeon plays an invaluable role. Extensive literature demonstrates how the aforementioned variables affect patient outcomes, however when it comes to surgeon technical skills, the existing evidence is limited. Therefore the main goal of this thesis was to provide evidence and to emphasize the importance of technical skills and to strengthen the current literature. Material and Methods: Research designs contained within this dissertation include: (1) a systematic review to summarize the existing evidence, (2) a retrospective technical skills analysis, (3) a survey study to define the participants in the operating room and a (4) prospective observational study to determine the relationship between technical and non-technical intraoperative performances. Results: Four research studies were completed. The systematic review demonstrated that technical performance affects patient outcomes, however the quality of evidence is low. The retrospective skill analysis addressed the main methodology deficiencies identified in the review and confirmed that technical performance does affect patient outcomes in laparoscopic gastric cancer operations. The survey study identified that although technical skills have been shown to be important, trainees do not routinely perform the main steps of these operations. Finally, the prospective observational study demonstrated that technical and non-technical performances are related and both are important complements to each other. Conclusion: Technical performance affects patient outcomes. Technical and non-technical performances are related. Ongoing assessment and enhancement of these skills, using modern strategies such as structured feedback, deliberate practice, coaching etc., might improve patient outcomes. Future studies should perform a comprehensive assessment of the operating room and design educational interventions for all participants, regardless of their level of training or experience. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Federman, Mark Lewis | Laiken, Marilyn | From BAH to ba: Valence Theory and the Future of Organization | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2010-11 | This thesis traces the history of organization from the society of Ancient Athens, through the medieval Church, the Industrial Age, and the 20th century – the latter characterized by the Bureaucratic, Administratively controlled, and Hierarchical (BAH) organization – until today’s contemporary reality of Ubiquitous Connectivity and Pervasive Proximity (UCaPP). Organizations are rarely, if ever, entirely BAH or entirely UCaPP, but do tend to have tendencies and behaviours that are more consistent with either end of a spectrum delineated by this duality. Valence Theory defines organization as being an emergent entity whose members (individuals or organizations) are connected via two or more of five valence (meaning uniting, bonding, interacting, reacting, combining) relationships. Each of these relationships – Economic, Socio-psychological, Identity, Knowledge, and Ecological – has a fungible (mercantile or tradable) aspect, and a ba-aspect that creates a space-and-place of common, tacit understanding of self-identification-in-relation, mutual sense of purpose, and volition to action. Organizations with more-BAH tendencies will emphasize the fungible valence forms, and primarily tend towards Economic valence dominance; more-UCaPP organizations tend to emphasize ba-valence forms, and are more balanced among the relative valence strengths. The empirical research investigates five organizations spanning the spectrum from über-BAH to archetypal UCaPP and discovers how BAH-organizations replace the complexity of human dynamics in social systems with the complication of machine-analogous procedures that enable structural interdependence, individual responsibility, and leader accountability. In contrast, UCaPP-organizations encourage and enable processes of continual emergence by valuing and promoting complex interactions in an environment of individual autonomy and agency, collective responsibility, and mutual accountability. The consequential differences in how each type of organization operates manifest as the methods through which organizations accommodate change, coordination, evaluation, impetus, power dynamics, sense-making, and view of people. Particular attention is paid to the respective natures of leadership, and effecting organizational transformation from one type to the other. Set in counterpoint against Zen-like, artistically constructed conversations with a thought-provoking interior sensei, the thesis offers a new foundational model of organization for the current cultural epoch that enables people to assume their responsibility in creating relationships and perceiving effects in the context of a UCaPP world. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Fedorenko, Olga | Schmid, Andre | Tending to the “Flower of Capitalism:” Consuming, Producing and Censoring Advertising in South Korea of the '00s | East Asian Studies | 2012-11 | My dissertation examines discourses and practices that surrounded consumption and production of advertising in South Korea in the first decade of the 21st century. In its approach, my study breaks away from works that assume that advertising performs the same role universally and that local advertising industries should follow the uniform path of development, in terms of both creative content and industry structures. Treating advertising as an integral part of social reality, I embed my analysis in Korea's idiosyncratic social, cultural, political, and economic contexts to interrogate non-marketing functions of advertising. My dissertation investigates multiple projects that advertising mediates in contemporary South Korea, from challenging social norms and renegotiating cultural meanings, to contesting capitalist control over mass media and articulating fantasies of humanist capitalism. I explore how advertising consumers (including advertising censors) and advertising producers channel, shape, enable or block the flows of advertising messages and revenues. My conclusion is that, in South Korea, the marketing instrumentality of advertising is subordinated to the ethos of public interest, and both advertising consumers and producers strive for advertising that promotes humanist values and realizes democratic ideals, even if it jeopardizes the commercial interests of advertisers. Theoretically, this study builds on critical theory and anthropology of media while drawing on Korean Studies scholarship to grasp interconnections between the practices of advertising production and consumption, on the one hand, and, on the other, the modern entanglements of capitalism and democracy. Methodologically, I combine a discourse analysis of advertising-related public texts—popular advertising campaigns, responses to them in mass media and the blogosphere as well as the exhibits of the Advertising Museum in Seoul—with ethnographic fieldwork at two sites, an advertising agency and a quasi-government advertising review board, both in Seoul. | PhD | industr, consum, production | 9, 12 |
| Fehringer, Gordon Markus | Boyd, Norman F. | Genetic Variation at the Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 Gene and Association with Breast Cancer, Breast Density and Anthropometric Measures | Public Health Sciences | 2008-03 | Background and objectives Evidence suggests that circulating IGF-I levels increase mammographic density (a breast cancer risk factor) and breast cancer risk in premenopausal women. The objective of this thesis was to examine the association of genetic variation at the IGF1 gene with IGF-I concentration, mammographic density, breast cancer risk, and related anthropometric measures in premenopausal women. Methods Three IGF1 CA repeat polymorphisms (at the 5′ and 3′ ends, and in intron 2) were genotyped. A cross-sectional design was used to investigate their associations with IGF-I levels, mammographic density, BMI, weight, and height. Families from registries in Ontario and Australia were used to investigate associations with breast cancer risk and also BMI, weight and height. Results In the cross-sectional study, greater number of copies of the 5′ 19 allele were associated with lower circulating IGF-I levels. Greater number of 3′ 185 alleles were associated with greater percentage breast density, smaller amount of non-dense tissue, and lower BMI. Including BMI in regression models removed the association of the 3′ 185 allele with percentage breast density. In the family based study, nominally significant associations (5′ 21 allele, intron 2 212 allele, intron 2 216 allele) with breast cancer risk were observed, but significance was lost after multiple comparison adjustment. There was a stronger association between the intron 2 216 allele and risk under a recessive model, and 5′ allele groupings of length 18 to 20 and 20 or more repeats produced significant positive and negative associations respectively. These associations were not strongly supported in analyses stratified by registry. Results from the family based study did not support an association between genetic variation at IGF1 with BMI, weight or height. Conclusions No specific IGF1 variant influenced each of circulating IGF-I levels, mammographic density, and breast cancer risk. The failure to replicate the association of the 3′ 185 allele with BMI in the family based study suggests that the association of the 3′ 185 allele with percentage breast density is spurious, since this association was mediated through the relationship with BMI (suggesting IGF-I action on body fat). Evidence for an association between IGF1 and breast cancer risk was limited. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Feng, Wenlu | Hildyard, Angela||Skolnik, Michael | The Relationship between Institutional Climate and Student Engagement and Learning Outcomes in Ontario Community Colleges | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-11 | This study was designed to examine the relationship between institutional climate and student engagement in Ontario colleges. Climate and engagement data were gathered by questionnaires from a sample of 348 students from an Ontario community college. The climate data were collected by the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ), and student engagement was measured by a questionnaire compiled using items selected from the Ontario College Student Engagement Survey (OCSES). Statistical analyses of correlation and multiple-regression were applied to test the relationship between the variables, using SPSS Statistics Version 21. Results revealed that students’ perception of their learning environment was significantly related to both engagement and learning outcomes. The climate dimensions of good teaching practice, emphasis on independence, appropriate workload, and support for learners were found to be significant predictors of student engagement, which in turn was significantly related to learning outcomes. Findings provide empirical evidence that supports the feasibility of using institutional climate dimensions to predict student engagement and learning outcomes. Based on this, future studies may treat student engagement as a type of organizational behaviour that can be studied in relation to the social psychological context of educational institutions, thus broadening the scope of study on student engagement. From a practical point of view, the findings provide clear indications for college educators around building appropriate policies that encourage and support optimal student outcomes. As well, effective teaching practices that are appropriately conceived and implemented can make a significant difference that results in improved education quality. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Feng, Xiaojuan | Simpson, Myrna J. | The Molecular Composition of Soil Organic Matter (SOM) and Potential Responses to Global Warming and Elevated CO2 | Geography | 2009-11 | Soil organic matter (SOM) contains about twice the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. With global changes, the potential shifts in SOM quantity and quality are a major concern. Due to its heterogeneity, SOM remains largely unknown in terms of its molecular composition and responses to climatic events. Traditional bulk soil analysis cannot depict the structural changes in SOM. This thesis applies two complementary molecular-level methods, i.e., SOM biomarker gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, to examine the origin and degradation of various SOM components in grassland and temperate forest soils, and to investigate the shifts in microbial community and SOM composition with both laboratory- and field-simulated global changes, such as frequent freeze-thaw cycles, increasing soil temperatures, elevated atmospheric CO2 levels, and nitrogen (N) deposition. This thesis has several major findings. First, as the most active component in soil, microbial communities were sensitive to substrate availability changes resulting from prolonged soil incubation, freeze-thaw-induced cell lyses, N fertilization and increased plant inputs under elevated CO2 or soil warming. Microbial community shifts have direct impacts on SOM decomposition patterns. For instance, an increased fungal community was believed to contribute to the enhanced lignin oxidation in an in situ soil warming experiment as the primary degrader of lignin in terrestrial environments. Second, contrast to the conventional belief that aromatic structure was recalcitrant and stable in SOM, ester-bond aliphatic lipids primarily originating from plant cutin and suberin were preferentially preserved in the Canadian Prairie grassland soil profiles as compared with lignin-derived phenols. Cutin- and suberin-derived compounds also demonstrated higher stability during soil incubation. With an increased litter production under elevated CO2 or global warming, an enrichment of alkyl structures that had strong contributions from leaf cuticles was observed in the Duke Forest Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) and soil warming experiments, suggesting an accumulation of plant-derived recalcitrant carbon in the soil. These results have significant implications for carbon sequestration and terrestrial biogeochemistry. Overall, this thesis represents the first of its kind to employ comprehensive molecular-level techniques in the investigation of SOM structural alterations under global changes. | PhD | forest, global warming, environment | 13, 15 |
| Fennessy, Barbara Ann | Livingstone, David W. | Communities and Leaders at Work in the New Economy: A Comparative Analysis of Agents of Transformation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Hamilton, Ontario | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2009-11 | Without change, stagnation is inevitable. Never has this truth been more obvious than during the current epoch of industrial decline in North America. This research provides two economic narratives that exemplify the struggles of industrial communities as they strive to regenerate. The research involves a comparative analysis of the transformation of two steel cities, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Hamilton, Ontario, from 1970 to 2008. For cities in which one major industry has formed the foundation of the local economy, job losses can result in massive dislocation and devastating consequences for individuals, families, and communities. Pittsburgh and Hamilton are among many cities striving to diversify and strengthen their economies as manufacturing diminishes and Western sunset industries rise in the East. Transformation has been much more extensive in Pittsburgh than in many cities because Pittsburgh was so largely dominated by the steel industry and faced a virtual collapse of that industry. Hamilton has also experienced a steep decline in steel and related manufacturing jobs. Based on 55 interviews with city leaders, including a pilot study in Welland, Ontario, this research examines eight critical factors that collectively influence development: transformational leadership, strategic development planning, civic engagement, education and research, labor, capital, infrastructure, and quality of life. The study looks at how city leaders drive these factors in the context of global economic forces to revitalize their communities. Together, these elements combine to create the new economy of cities. To achieve successful transformation, the elements must function as part of an integrated system─a community economic activity system (CEAS). This research is grounded in MacGregor-Burn’s (1978; 2003) transformational leadership theory and positions local leadership as the central driver of economic regeneration. It highlights the importance of enduring social relations among leaders for creating an organized, yet dynamic, base of power that is necessary to mobilize resources and execute development policies to achieve qualitative change. Moreover, it points to the importance of inclusiveness and openness in engaging local citizen groups in order to build trust and confidence that recovery will happen. Pittsburgh and Hamilton offer many examples of successful partnerships that increasingly involve public-private-nonprofit-academic collaboratives. | PhD | infrastructure, industr | 9 |
| Ferguson, Renee Justine | Janzen, Katharine | Hidden among the Under-represented: Foster Youth Access and Persistence in Ontario Post-secondary Education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-06 | The pathway to and through post-secondary education begins in early life. Individuals require academic preparation, to be made aware of post-secondary options, become engaged in the processes and procedures necessary for enrollment, transition to their studies, and persist to graduation. This exploratory study investigated the experiences of Ontario’s foster youth (FY as they navigate this pathway. Viewing the issue of FY post-secondary under-representation, and their overall access and persistence, through theories of social reproduction, The Capabilities Framework, cooling-out, and resilience, it posed the question of whether or not FY experience equitable opportunity to attend and succeed in higher education. Semi-structured interviews asked what barriers and supports foster youth experience throughout their post-secondary educational journeys in Ontario. Four foster youth in addition to three child welfare workers, three child welfare experts, and one child welfare advocate shared insights reflective of findings in the literature. Though this study’s findings are introductory, they align with previous research and point to the need for additional, consistent, and efficacious educational and child welfare supports to encourage, prepare, and help FY access and persist within post-secondary education. This study also asked what the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) do to address FY under-representation and support greater rates of access and persistence by the demographic. Programs, services, and supports offered by Ontario’s 22 English-speaking CAATs were reviewed to determine how the system directly and indirectly supports FY, and make recommendations for improvement. Once FY are enrolled in post-secondary education, this research points to the need for greater, more tailored and responsive programming, services, and supports in Ontario’s colleges. Overall, this study highlights gaps in data collection on foster youth outcomes after they age-out of child welfare, the need for more research into the post-secondary experiences of youth in the province, and the importance of informed policies and practices in child welfare and post-secondary education in order to advance foster youth post-secondary opportunities and attainment. | Ph.D. | equitable, inclusive | 4 |
| Ferhan, Muhammad | Sain, Mohini M||Yan, Ning | Investigation of Biological Process for the Conversion of Bark Biomass to Bio-based Polyphenols | Forestry | 2016-03 | Due to increasing waste production and disposal problems arising from synthetic polymer production, there is a critical need to substitute these materials with biodegradable and renewable resources. The concept of green polymers has become more appealing due to the presence of large volumes of processing residuals from the timber and pulp industries. This, in turn, supports the idea of developing new polymers based on bark extractives. In this thesis, three comparative treatments i.e., enzymatic, alkaline, and UV/H2O2, have been conducted for the extraction of beetle infested lodgepole pine (BILP) and mixed aspen barks polyphenolic extractives. Use of laccases as biocatalysts to affect and enhance the catalytic properties of enzymes has been shown to be a promising solution for bark depolymerization. Furthermore, laccases are suitable for biotechnological applications that transform bark biomass into high valued bark biochemicals. The industrial and biotechnological application of ligninases is constantly increasing due to their multiple uses and applications in a diversity of processes. Bark depolymerization was conducted in submerged fermentation (SF) and we identified polyphenols/polyaromatic compounds after four weeks when the production media (PM) was induced with 50mg/100ml of each type of bark during the lag-phase. During SF where honey was used as a natural mediator substitute (NMS) in the PM, laccase activities were about 1.5 times higher than those found in comparable cultures without honey in the PM. These samples were analyzed by GC-MS. The laccase enzyme was purified using UNO sphere Q-1 anion exchange chromatography and the molecular weight was determined to be ~50kDa on 10% SDS-PAGE and laccase kinetic parameters including maximal velocity (Vmax), Michaelis constant (Km), and turnover number (Kcat) were calculated from a Lineweaver Burk plot. All calculated kinetic parameters of the laccase activity are substrate (ABTS) specific. Py-GC-MS analysis of bark showed differing effects of fungal activity on bark composition. Polyphenolics were separated in reverse-phase mode using HPLC with two selected wavelengths of 290 and 340 nm to improve separation. The replacement of conventional natural mediators (NM) by monofloral honey in production media, and investigation of the effect of fungi-derived laccases on bark polyphenols are studied for the first time by this thesis work. | Ph.D. | renewable, industr, waste, production | 7, 9, 12 |
| Fernandez Hermosilla, Magdalena | Anderson, Stephen | Becoming a Principal in Chile: Learning the Role of School Improvement | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-06 | This study is concerned with the ways in which newly appointed public school principals in Chile learn to understand and lead school improvement. Using a mixed methods approach combining qualitative and quantitative data sequentially, this study contributes to exploring the characteristics and perceptions of principals starting their careers, looking into their previous trajectories and work experiences before and after appointment, the actors and institutions supporting their learning about the role, as well as their understandings about leading school improvement. The design involved 12 qualitative interviews followed by the application of a survey (n=121). Findings suggest new principals enter the job with vast experience about the public school system, having occupied different leadership roles prior to appointment. In spite of previous trajectory and formal preparation, new principals still acknowledge the great difficulties and challenges confronted in the transition to the role, in five cases perceiving that ‘nothing really prepares you for the job’. In learning about leading school improvement, they value the supports of students and professionals in their personal networks, perceiving local authorities to have a less preponderant role, as they participate actively during selection processes, and less consistently after appointment. The study also explores the influence of principals’ individual characteristics and school context (i.e. gender, age, education, school size, urban context, SES) within the process of learning about their role. This study also illustrate how new principals understand and learn about their role in school improvement, and suggests that a great majority of them conceptualize school improvement as limited and influenced by the current education policy context and work experience, restricting their views to unidimensional notions related to students’ results. Finally, findings are discussed to provide comparison with the international socialization research of new principals, suggesting that Chileans novices share perceptions about a ‘shocking’ transition with principals in other countries and differ greatly in the importance given to local school authorities instead. | Ph.D. | educat, gender, urban | 4, 5, 11 |
| Ferreira, Kevin D. | Lee, Chi-Guhn | An Integrated Two-stage Innovation Planning Model with Market Segmented Learning and Network Dynamics | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2012-11 | Innovation diffusion models have been studied extensively to forecast and explain the adoption process for new products or services. These models are often formulated using one of two approaches: The first, and most common is a macro-level approach that aggregates much of the market behaviour. An advantage of this method is that forecasts and other analyses may be performed with the necessity of estimating few parameters. The second is a micro-level approach that aims to utilize microeconomic information pertaining to the potential market and the innovation. The advantage of this methodology is that analyses allow for a direct understanding of how potential customers view the innovation. Nevertheless, when individuals are making adoption decisions, the reality of the situation is that the process consists of at least two stages: First, a potential adopter must become aware of the innovation; and second the aware individual must decide to adopt. Researchers, have studied multi-stage diffusion processes in the past, however a majority of these works employ a macro-level approach to model market flows. As a result, a direct understanding of how individuals value the innovation is lacking, making it impossible to utilize this information to model realistic word-of-mouth behaviour and other network dynamics. Thus, we propose a two-stage integrated model that utilizes the benefits of both the macro- and micro-level approaches. In the first stage, potential customers become aware of the innovation, which requires no decision making by the individual. As a result, we employ a macro-level diffusion process to describe the first stage. However, in the second stage potential customers decide whether to adopt the innovation or not, and we utilize a micro-level methodology to model this. We further extend the application to include forward looking behaviour, heterogeneous adopters and segmented Bayesian learning, and utilize the adopter's satisfaction levels to describe biasing and word-of-mouth behaviour. We apply the proposed model to Canadian colour-TV data, and cross-validation results suggest that the new model has excellent predictive capabilities. We also apply the two-stage model to early U.S. hybrid-electric vehicle data and results provide insightful managerial observations. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Ferreira, Patricia | Trebilcock, Michael ||Prado, Mariana Mota | Breaking the Weak Governance Curse: Global Regulation and Governance Reform in Resource-rich Developing Countries | Law | 2012-11 | There is growing consensus that unless resource-rich developing countries improve their domestic governance systems, rising exploitation of mineral, oil and gas resources may result in long-term adverse developmental outcomes associated with the “resource curse”. Despite the consensus, reforms do not abound. This dissertation investigates the obstacles to such reforms, and the mechanisms and strategies that can possibly overcome these obstacles. I argue that two trapping mechanisms are binding these countries to a “weak governance curse”. One mechanism is the phenomenon of path dependence, which makes a dysfunctional governance path initiated at a past historical juncture resistant to change over time. The other mechanism is rent-seeking behaviour associated with high resource rents, which creates perverse incentives for political and economic actors to resist reforms. The Law and Development literature has recently produced a rich body of knowledge on governance reform in developing countries, yet it has largely neglected the potential role of innovative global regulatory mechanisms, beyond development assistance, in this process. I argue that this evolving literature ought to draw from global regulation studies to investigate the interaction between unconventional global regulatory mechanisms and domestic governance reform. In this thesis I analyze whether extraterritorial home country regulations, such as anti-bribery, anti-money laundering and securities disclosure regulations, and transnational public-private partnerships, such as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, may offer institutional opportunities for external and internal actors to facilitate policy reforms in resource-rich and governance-poor countries. My conclusion is twofold. First, there is reason for cautious optimism regarding the potential for unconventional global regulatory mechanisms to provoke positive feedback effects in domestic governance reform. These mechanisms can open innovative institutional pathways of influence to outsiders and insiders promoting governance reform. Second, instead of searching for a regulatory silver bullet, the most promising way to promote reforms in resilient dysfunctional governance systems is to make use of the wide range of conventional and unconventional mechanisms available. A constellation of regulatory instruments opens up the possibility for outside and inside reformers to benefit from a different policy mix of available mechanisms, depending on the specific circumstances of a given country at a particular time. | SJD | industr, resilien, institution | 9, 12, 16 |
| Field, Robert | Jones, Dylan | Large-scale and Microphysical Controls on Water Isotopes in the Atmosphere | Physics | 2010-11 | The isotopic composition of water in the atmosphere is influenced by how the water evaporated, how it was transported, and how it formed in the cloud before falling. Because these processes are temperature dependent, the isotopic ratios stored in glacial ice and other proxy sources have been used as an indicator of pre-instrumental climate. There is uncertainty, however, as to whether isotopic ratios should be interpreted as a proxy of local temperature, or as a broader indicator of changes in how the vapor was transported. To better understand these processes, the NASA GISS general circulation model (GCM) was used to examine two different types of controls on the isotopic composition of moisture. The first control was the large-scale circulation of the atmosphere. Over Europe, it was found that δ18O is strongly controlled by a Northern Annular Mode-like pattern, detected in both the GCM and for Europe’s high-quality precipitation δ18O data. Over the southwest Yukon, it was found that higher δ18O was associated with moisture transport from the south, which led to a re-interpretation of the large mid-19th century δ18O shift seen in the ice cores from Mt. Logan. The second type of control was microphysical, relating to the way precipitation interacts with vapor after it has formed. Using a GCM sensitivity experiment, the effects of ‘post-condensation exchange’ were found to depend primarily on the proportion between the amount of upstream precipitation that fell as rain and the amount that fell as snow, and at low latitudes, on the strength of atmospheric moisture recycling. This led to a partitioning of the well-observed correlation between temperature and precipitation δ18O into its initial and post-condensation components, and a GCM-based interpretation of satellite measurements of the isotopic composition of water vapor in the troposphere. | PhD | water, climate | 6, 13 |
| Figueiredo, Camila Guarim | Swenson, Edward | Regional Complementarity and Place-making in the Northern Region of the Tapajós National Forest Reservation, Lower Amazon, Brazil | Anthropology | 2019-06 | From the tenth to the eighteenth centuries in the late pre-colonial period, Indigenous communities associated with the Santarém ceramic style lived in settlements of various sizes in the present day cities of Santarém and Belterra in the western region of the state of Pará, Brazil. This region is characterized by a rich and varied archaeological landscape consisting of inland ponds, anthropogenic forests, trail networks, and Amazonian Dark Earths (a very fertile and stable anthropogenic soil). In this dissertation, I combine historical ecology perspectives with theories of landscape, place and space in order to improve understanding of previous occupations and environmental transformations in the Santarém-Belterra region. More specifically, I present the results of an archaeological survey conducted in 2014 in the northern region of the Tapajós National Forest Reservation, 66 km south of the junction of the Tapajós and Amazon rivers. Altogether, I mapped thirteen archaeological sites, recorded the location of four Amazon Dark Earth deposits and two findspots. The majority of the ceramics recovered from my survey belong to the Santarém archaeological culture, however, ceramics associated with the Konduri and Pocó style, the Incised and Punctate tradition, and the Formative period were also recovered during the survey. In addition, my survey identified pre-contact Amazon Dark Earth soils and an extensive trail network that connected the plateau to the riverine environments of the reserve. The application of ArcGIS spatial analyst toolbox modelled how the settlements in peripheral areas were integrated and connected in terms of pathways and river networks with the Porto site, the heartland of the Santarém tradition at the junction of the Amazon and Tapajós rivers. My study indicates that the social and economic organization of the inhabitants in the northern region of the Flona-Tapajós was based on strategic resource and ecological complementary that integrated diverse environments. Permanent, year-round communities settled in different landscape likely maintained communication, sponsored joint ritual events, and engaged in the exchange of resources. In the end, the dissertation demonstrates that the Amazon was systematically reshaped by the social production of space. | Ph.D. | cities, environment, land use, forest, ecology | 11, 13, 15 |
| Filsoof, Kia | Lehn, Peter W | A Triangular Modular Multilevel DC-DC Converter with Multiple-input Multiple-output Power Flow Capability | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2016-06 | There has been recent interest in expansion of direct-current (dc) networks, motivated mainly by proliferation of renewable energy sources, electrical energy storage, and electronic loads which operate with dc power. One of the key challenges hindering the adoption of dc networks is the lack of high performance dc-dc converter topologies to accommodate energy exchange, at high power levels, between dc buses of different voltage levels. Conventional dc-dc power converters such as the boost or the flyback face a fundamental limitation in operating at high power levels and/or voltage conversion ratios. As these topologies utilize a single semiconductor switch, their maximum attainable power and voltage rating is dependent on the highest power rated semiconductors available. Moreover, regardless of the operating power, these topologies suffer from high losses and ringing when operated at high conversion ratios. In recognizing the shortcomings of conventional topologies for employment in high power and/or conversion ratio applications, a new topology is proposed that provides an efficient and cost-effective solution. The proposed modular topology is constructed from identical converter cells which may be connected in parallel and series to share the overall power stress. As a result, the dependency of the topology's power and conversion ratio on existing semiconductor technology is insignificant. Moreover, the topology is capable of supporting bidirectional power flow exchange between multiple sources and loads which makes it suitable for a wide range of power conversion applications. The proposed topology can achieve a conversion ratio of six with half of its switches operating at a duty cycle value 25% lower and the other half of its switches operating at a duty cycle value 40% lower than that of the conventional boost converter while requiring only 15% higher switch volt-ampere rating. The proposed converter's operating mechanism is described, and its analytical steady-state and dynamic models are derived. In investigating the topology's dynamic model, a modular control algorithm is devised for closed-loop operation of the topology. The ability of the topology to operate as a multiple-input multiple-output converter is also investigated through similar analytical and control studies. Simulation and experimental studies are carried out to evaluate the converter's performance under both steady-state and dynamic operation. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable | 7 |
| Fine-Meyer, Rose | Sandwell, Ruth W. | Including Women: The Establishment and Integration of Canadian Women’s History into Toronto Ontario Classrooms 1968-1993 | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2012-11 | Social movement activism throughout the 1960s and 1970s provided space for feminist concerns in a variety of arenas. Women's movement activism and women's scholarship in history challenged the ways in which women’s experiences had been marginalized or omitted in school history programs and curricula. Women's organizations developed and broadened networks, created and published resources, and lobbied governments and institutions. Their widespread activism spilled into a range of educational circles and influenced history teachers in altering curricula to include women in course materials. Advocating for women, on a curricular or professional development level, however, was complicated because of entrenched neo-liberal systems in place within education institutions. Although the Ontario Ministry of Education and the Toronto Board of Education demonstrated clear support for a wide range of gender equity-based initiatives, they committed to implementing a 'piecemeal' approach to curricular change. The fundamental work to include women in history curricula relied heavily on grassroots networks that allowed for women’s experiences to leak into classrooms, and were responsible for bringing women’s voices into the history curricula. This study explores the initiatives of the Toronto Board of Education from 1968-1993, with particular analysis of women’s committees, teacher/librarians in resource centers, Affirmative Action representatives, individual teachers and administrators. Within the broader public sphere, the contributions of concerned parents, activists, small independent publishers, educational reformers, political leaders and women’s history organizations lent their voices to ideas about how the inclusion of women in history curricula should take shape in Toronto schools. Ministry gender equity policies and history course guidelines provided incremental and therefore politically safe responses to educational change. The Toronto Board's "add-on" approach to including women in course examinations avoided instituting major "top-down'" curricular change, which kept the integration of women’s history within classrooms on the periphery of most course work. The substantive grassroots activism and the commitment of women’s organizations and individual teachers, however, allowed women’s history to flourish within individual classrooms in Toronto and demonstrates the ways in which "bottom-up" initiatives can be a powerful force in curricular change. | PhD | women, inclusive | 4, 5 |
| Finer-Freedman, Judith | Guttman, Mary Alice | The Voices of Women Struggling to Manage Employment and Motherhood | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2013-06 | The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions of working women when they announce their pregnancies, take maternity leave, transition back to work, and utilize flexible work policies. Using a qualitative methodology, transcripts of in-depth interviews were analyzed utilizing a life history approach. Key findings of the study are that women perceive more negative responses to the announcement of their pregnancies than positive ones. In terms of maternity and parental leave policies, all the participants had access to these benefits. Women found issues with financial adequacy, administration, and duration of these policies. Mothers found that financial support from the Canadian government was inadequate to allow them to take the full duration of the 52-week maternity and parental leave for which they were eligible. In addition, employer “top-up” payments were limited and administrative details of maternity leave were often not discussed fully with pregnant workers. When women returned to work, they found that workplaces did not offer resources such as a phased-in return to work or personnel to help them re-engage with their prior work projects. Women discussed the challenges of managing their dual roles of worker and mother and found that managers and coworkers put them in a mommy mould which lessened the quality of their assignments. New mothers found that they had difficultly juggling their work and home responsibilities, finding time for themselves, and receiving increased domestic support from their spouses. While some workplaces offered women flexible workplace policies, not all mothers chose to access them as they found these policies often negatively impacted their career progression. Other issues were a lack of flexible workplace policy transparency, inconsistent manager support, and difficulty maintaining a flexible schedule. Findings have major implications for an improved response from managers upon pregnancy announcement, improved dialogue among employers about increasing “top up” maternity leave pay to new mothers, developing a formal transition plan for new mothers returning to the workplace, and expanding the use of flexible workplace policies. | EDD | women, worker | 5, 8 |
| Firestone, Michelle | O'Campo, Patricia | Our Health Counts - Unmasking Health and Social Disparities among Urban Aboriginal People in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-06 | In Canada, accessible and culturally relevant population health data for urban First Nations, Métis and Inuit people are almost non-existent. There is a need for Aboriginal community centric research and data systems, specifically in the area of mental health and substance misuse. The goal of this research was to address these knowledge gaps. The three linked studies being presented were nested in the Our Health Counts (OHC) project, a multi-partnership study aimed at developing a baseline population health database for urban Aboriginal people living in Ontario. In the first study, concept mapping was used to engage urban Aboriginal stakeholders from three culturally diverse communities in identifying health priorities. After completing brainstorming, sorting and rating, and map interpretation sessions, three unique community specific maps emerged. Map clusters and their ratings reflected First Nations, Inuit, and Métis understandings of health. Concept mapping encouraged community participation and informed the development of three health assessment surveys. The second study generated a representative sample of First Nations adults and children living in Hamilton, Ontario by utilizing Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS), a modified chain-referral sampling approach. Population estimates were generated for household and personal income, mobility, over-crowding and food availability. Results revealed striking disparities in social determinants of health between First Nations and the general population. The third study used the RDS generated sample to examine mental health and substance misuse among First Nations adults living in Hamilton. Prevalence estimates were generated for diagnosis and treatment of a mental illness, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), suicide, alcohol and substance misuse, and access to emotional supports. Findings indicated that First Nations adults living in Hamilton experience a disproportionate burden of mental health and substance misuse challenges. The three linked studies make innovative contributions to Aboriginal health research. Results clearly exemplify the effective application of community-based research methods that are grounded in local knowledge and built on existing community strengths and capacities. Representative population health data for urban First Nations will contribute to current deficiencies in health information; will shape policy and programming priorities as well as future research directions, particularly with respect to health and social disparities among this population. | PhD | urban, cities, health | 3, 11 |
| Fiser, Adam P. | Clement, Andrew | The Kuh-Ke-Nah Broadband Governance Model: How Social Enterprise Shaped Internet Services to Accommodate Indigenous Community Ownership in Northwestern Ontario, Canada (circa 1997 to 2007) | Information Studies | 2010-06 | This thesis articulates how the Kuh-Ke-Nah network (K-Net) shaped broadband development in remote indigenous communities. K-Net operates under the not-for-profit stewardship of Keewaytinook Okimanak (KO) Tribal Council. Located in Northwestern Ontario, KO brought K-Net to life amongst its six member First Nations in the mid 1990s. As K-Net evolved and expanded its membership, KO established a governance model that devolves network ownership and control to community networks in partner First Nations. This governance model reflects KO’s use of social enterprise to organize K-Net’s community-based broadband deployment amidst necessary partnerships with government programs and industry players. K-Net’s social enterprise has rapidly grown since 1997, when its core constituents fought for basic telephone service and internet access in Northern Ontario. In the space of less than a decade, K-Net communities have gone from a situation in which it was common for there to be but a single public payphone in a settlement, to a point where over thirty now have broadband internet services to households. Technologies now under K-Net control include a C-Band satellite transponder, IP videoconferencing and telephony, web and email server space, and a variety of terrestrial and wireless links that effectively connect small, scattered First Nations communities to each other and the wider world. K-Net’s governance model encourages member communities to own and control community local loops and internet services under the authority of a local enterprise. Community ownership and control over local loops allows First Nations to collaborate with KO to adapt broadband applications, such as telemedicine and an internet high school, to local challenges and priorities. K-Net’s aggregation of demand from disparate users, within and across member communities, creates economies of scale for the network’s social enterprise, and allows a dynamic reallocation of bandwidth to meet social priorities. Based on four years of research with K-Net stakeholders under the Canadian Research Alliance for Community Innovation and Networking (CRACIN), my thesis documents the evolution of K-Net’s governance model as a reflection of its social enterprise. Drawing from Community Informatics and the Ecology of Games, I trace K-Net’s history and organization to assess how KO, its partners, and K-Net’s constituents, cooperated to make social enterprise viable for member First Nations. | PhD | governance, ecology, industr | 9, 15, 16 |
| Flogen, Sarah | Sioban, Nelson | The Social Organization of Secondary Stroke Prevention | Nursing Science | 2014-11 | The early writings of Dorothy Smith (1990) and the tools of institutional ethnography were used to explicate the social organization of stroke prevention care in Ontario, Canada. This study was undertaken to understand how social determinants of health that set the context for patients' lives and health are rendered invisible by the lens of health care professionals. This is despite the fact that there is substantial evidence that lower socioeconomic status is associated with higher incidence of stroke, stroke risk factors, and mortality after stroke. Data collection included observations of direct clinical care in a secondary stroke prevention clinic, interviews with patients, health care professionals, and extra-local informants, as well as the analysis of texts that were encountered in the setting. The entry point for data collection was through observations and interviews with patients who attended a secondary stroke prevention clinic. This local setting was connected through texts to the larger administrative and governing organizations, including the Ministry of Health and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. Data analysis made visible a new interventionist paradigm in stroke care. This paradigm relies on a pharmaceutical innovation, provincial data circulation, as well as on visual imagery of vascular disease through brain scans. Secondary stroke prevention was found to be based on statistical risk formulas which act as a proxy for certainty. Rather than prevention, secondary stroke prevention constitutes last minute `damage minimization' in patients with serious vascular disease. A significant finding was that patients did not know what secondary prevention was, yet actively participated in the related work, seemingly driven by the fear of disability. Biomedical risk ideology locates disability and `risk factors' in the body, thus social determinants of health are invisible. The complexity of health warrants the application of social as well as biomedical knowledge. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Fogel-Yaari, Hila | Lu, Hai||Callen, Jeffrey L. | CEO Characteristics, Disclosure Quality, and Innovation | Management | 2016-11 | Innovation is an important driver of economic growth. In this dissertation, I bring together two main streams of literature on the firm-level determinants of innovation: (1) CEO characteristics (CEOs directly influence internal processes that culminate in corporate innovation) and (2) information asymmetry between CEOs and investors (reduced information asymmetry may improve monitoring and increase corporate innovation). I show that disclosure quality plays a role in both cases: (1) a reduction of information asymmetry through higher disclosure quality is associated with more innovation; and (2) disclosure quality serves as a mechanism through which CEO characteristics also affect innovation (i.e., CEO characteristics’ “indirect effect”). Based on a path analysis, the indirect effect is shown to be statistically and economically significant, and accounts for as much as 33% of a CEO’s total effect on innovation. This implies that CEOs affect corporate performance not only by shaping internal processes, but also by utilizing disclosure quality to raise financial capital. Overall, my findings show the importance of disclosure quality for corporate innovation. | Ph.D. | economic growth, innovation | 8, 9 |
| Folinsbee, Kaila | Reisz, Robert R. | Evolutionary History and Biogeography of Papionin Monkeys | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2008-11 | Climate change has been invoked to explain patterns of speciation, extinction and biogeographic change over time, however it can be a difficult hypothesis to test empirically. One area of particular interest is climate change in the African Neogene, linked with the origin of hominins. A perfect model clade to test these hypotheses is the papionin monkeys, a diverse group (both extinct and extant), represented by an excellent fossil record. I describe new fossil papionin specimens from Coopers Cave, South Africa, and redescribe and discuss some previously known fossil material. This rich data set provides a necessary deep-time perspective, and, in conjunction with independently generated data, can be used to test hypotheses related to climatic and geological events (such as increasing late Pleistocene aridity and persistence of forest refugia) that may be directly linked to patterns of speciation and biogeographic distribution in the fossil record and in living species. Testing these hypotheses requires a robust phylogenetic hypothesis. I collected morphological character data for a species-level phylogenetic analysis of the papionin clade in order to reconstruct the phylogeny of the group. My analysis found that the living species Theropithecus gelada is nested within extinct theropiths, and is primitive relative to the Pleistocene taxa Theropithecus darti, T. oswaldi and T. leakeyi. Also falling within the theropith lineage are the early Pliocene taxon Pliopapio, the South African taxa Dinopithecus and Gorgopithecus, and two species whose relationships were uncertain until my analysis. “Papio” quadratirostris and “Papio” baringensis are nested within the theropiths, and should be referred to the genus Theropithecus. Biogeographic analysis demonstrates that papionin monkeys share a similar pattern with other Neogene African mammals; they first disperse out of Africa during the mid-Miocene, return to Africa by the late Miocene and undergo a series of vicariant speciation events and range restriction to central Africa, but disperse out into eastern and southern Africa by the Pleistocene. These speciation and dispersal events are tightly correlated with global climatic and tectonic changes. | PhD | climate, forest | 13, 15 |
| Forkes, Jennifer | Maclaren, Virginia W. | Measuring the Shape and Size of the Foodshed | Geography | 2011-06 | This thesis explores indicator tools to measure the ecological impacts of changes to the food system. The concept of a ‘foodshed’ provides a framework to explore the relationships between ecological impacts and where food system activities occur. Indicators of resource use and reuse are developed to describe the shape and size of the foodshed. Paper 1 presents a review of six indicator-based tools from the literature. Using a three criteria definition of ecological sustainability in the food system - increased resource efficiency, decreased pollutant loading, and increased output reuse - Paper 1 examines the suitability of these tools for evaluating the impacts of municipal food policy driven-changes in the location of activities, processes within activities and diet composition. Paper 2 describes the shape of a foodshed, and investigates how changes in Toronto’s waste management impacted the reuse of food-related nitrogen. Reuse increased from 1% in 1990 to at least 4.7% in 2001, through backyard composting and the land application of processed sewage. By 2004, in spite of household organics collection, reuse decreased to 2.3%, due to a reduction in land-applied sewage. The analysis suggests that sewage management has a larger impact on the reuse of food nitrogen than household solid waste management. Paper 3 quantifies the size of the foodsheds of Canada and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), and evaluates the feasibility of self-sufficiency and its impact on the total land area used for production. Nationally, there is sufficient harvested land area to meet 95% of the land area needed for self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is only feasible for the GTA by drawing from a foodshed extending 400 kilometres beyond its boundary. Given current yields, total self-sufficiency would occupy more land area than currently used domestically and abroad. Higher yields or a change in diet could decrease the size of the foodshed. | PhD | food, production, waste, pollut | 2, 12, 13 |
| Forrest, Crystal | Pfeiffer, Susan | Iroquoian Infant Mortality and Juvenile Growth 1250 to 1700 AD | Anthropology | 2010-11 | This thesis investigates changes in Iroquoian infant mortality and juvenile growth between 1250 and 1700 AD in the Lower Great Lakes region of North America. The objectives of this thesis are to investigate the tempo and quality of growth of Iroquoian infants and juveniles; to investigate the relationship between apparent neonatal and postneonatal mortality and predicted mortality ratios based on equal probability of mortality risk in the first year of life (1:11); and to investigate whether or not the ratio of neonatal to postneonatal mortality changed as a result of cultural change associated with the arrival of Europeans at around 1600 AD. These were investigated using a sample of infant and juvenile remains from twenty-one sites in upper New York state and Ontario. Tempo and quality of growth were examined by comparing femoral length at different ages to the Iroquoian adult femur length endpoint and to the growth patterns established in the Denver Growth Study and in other aboriginal North American archaeological samples. Above average infant growth is attributed to biocultural factors and infant mortality is largely caused by acute conditions. Below average juvenile growth, especially between two and seven years of age, is attributed to nutritional imbalances and overcrowding, poor sanitation, and infectious disease prevalence. Juveniles were likely chronically ill, resulting in poor attainment of stature, and this may have contributed to their deaths early in life. Apparent infant mortality was found to differ from predicted mortality, and this difference was attributed to cultural and environmental mortality biases that make interpretation difficult. Change in infant mortality ratios as a result of cultural change associated with European contact is evident in the Iroquoian context: the lack of neonatal remains in postcontact ossuaries is consistent with the ethnohistoric record, but the high proportion of neonates in precontact ossuaries suggests that observations made by ethnohistoric observers may not be applicable to our understanding of precontact burial patterns. The change in the ratio of neonatal to postneonatal remains in the pre- and postcontact periods is interpreted as evidence of changes in burial patterns rather than change in mortality risk. | PhD | nutrition, sanitation, environment, climate | 2, 6, 13 |
| Foty, Richard George | To, Teresa | Measuring the Short-Term Effect of Ambient Air Pollution on Acute Health Service Use in Ontarians Living with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease | Medical Science | 2017-11 | Short-term air pollution exposure has been associated with increased morbidity, especially amongst vulnerable populations like those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) is an aggregate measure of overall ambient air pollution. It was designed to communicate to the public in an understandable way air quality levels, associated health risks, and strategies to reduce exposure. Its formulation was based on relative mortality and little is known about the association between the AQHI and morbidity amongst individuals with COPD. The objective of my dissertation is to determine the association between ambient air pollution and acute health service use (HSU - hospitalization and emergency department [ED] visits) amongst individuals with COPD. My first original research study determined the perception and knowledge of individuals with COPD, regarding air pollution health risks, assessment, and exposure reduction strategies. The second quantified the association between the AQHI and acute HSU, and the final study examined whether temperature modifies this association. While Canadians with COPD believed that air pollution affects health, their level of knowledge regarding air quality assessment, health risks, and strategies to reduce exposure was lacking. The AQHI was associated with increased risk of acute HSU for non-accidental, COPD and cardiovascular (CVD) causes. A statistically significant association between the AQHI and CVD hospitalization was observed at all temperatures, whereas the association with COPD hospitalization was only significant at higher temperatures. Results also suggested individuals with prior history of hospitalization for COPD, lower respiratory tract infection, or acute myocardial infarction may be more vulnerable. These findings provide important insights for policy and public health strategy. Reducing the negative health effects of air pollution amongst individuals with COPD requires patient and health care provider education, real-time dissemination of air quality levels regardless of temperature, and specific recommendations on how to reduce exposure. | Ph.D. | health, pollut | 3, 13 |
| Found, Adam | Adonis, Yatchew | Essays in Municipal Finance | Economics | 2014-06 | Chapter 1: I analyze economies of scale for fire and police services by considering how per-household costs are affected by a municipality’s size. Using 2005-2008 municipal data for the Province of Ontario, I employ a partial-linear model to non-parametrically estimate per-household cost curves for each service. The results show that cost per household is a U-shaped function of municipal size for each service. For fire services, these costs are minimized at a population of about 20,000 residents, while for police services they are minimized at about 50,000 residents. Based on these results, implications are drawn for municipal amalgamation policy. Chapter 2: I review how the literature has continued to exclude the business property tax (BPT) from the marginal effective tax rate (METR) on capital investment for over 25 years. I recast the METR theory as it relates to the BPT and compute 2013 estimates of the METR for all 10 provinces in Canada with provincial BPTs included. Building on these estimates, I compute the METR inclusive of municipal BPTs for the largest municipality in each province. I find the BPT to be substantially damaging to municipal, provincial and international competitiveness. With the business property tax representing over 60% of the Canadian METR, among the various capital taxes it is by far the largest contributor to Canada’s investment barrier. Chapter 3: I estimate the responsiveness of structure investment and the tax base to commercial property taxes, taking a new step toward resolving the “benefit view” vs. “capital tax view” debate within the literature. Using a first-difference structural model to analyze 2006-2013 municipal data for the Province of Ontario, I improve upon past studies and build onto the literature in a number of ways. I find that commercial structure investment and tax base are highly sensitive to the property tax with Ontario’s assessment-weighted average tax elasticity (and tax-base elasticity) ranging from -0.80 to -0.90 at 2011 taxation levels. The results support the capital tax view of the business property tax, building onto the growing consensus that business property taxes substantially impact investment in structures and the value of the tax base. | PhD | taxation | 10 |
| Fox, Chloe | Leslie, Deborah | Craft and the Contemporary Geographies of Manufacturing: Local Embeddedness, New Workspaces, and the Glamourization of Work in the Craft Brewing Sector | Geography | 2019-06 | Craft forms of production have enjoyed a notable revival in recent decades and have been argued to provide a source of competitive advantage in a post-Fordist economic landscape. Craft combines physical manufacturing with creative production to produce objects imbued with notions of quality, authenticity, skill, and bespoke production. Craft elevates particular practices and processes, which has allowed it to become viewed as a more environmentally responsible and socially just way of organizing production. This dissertation explores the normative landscape of craft, emphasizing the implications it has for contemporary geographies of manufacturing. Drawing on a mixed methods approach, and an in-depth case study of the craft brewing sector in Portland, Oregon, the dissertation highlights three unique geographies associated with contemporary craft manufacturing. First, the dissertation highlights a tendency towards spatial agglomeration and a (re)localization of small-scale production in advanced economies. It traces the development of Portland’s craft brewing cluster, highlighting the significant role that place-specific institutional and material factors have played in the emergence and growth of the cluster. Second, the dissertation highlights a heightened perception and desirability of manufacturing work associated with the contemporary resurgence of craft, despite the presence of precarious working conditions in craft sectors. A key finding of the dissertation is that precarious working conditions are actually being exacerbated by the heightened status of craft brewing work. Finally, the dissertation highlights a fusion of industrial and cultural production associated with the recent craft revival and documents the ways this has transformed industrial workspaces. In particular, the dissertation emphasizes the unique spatial and locational requirements of craft breweries as well as the ways that their workspaces are enlisted to serve both production and consumption functions. It also places the material landscape of craft beer production in conversation with urban planning, revealing the ways in which craft breweries are used by policy-makers to promote gentrification, tourism and neighbourhood branding and the ways in which these policies are simultaneously benefitting and threatening the continued existence of Portland’s significant craft brewing cluster. | Ph.D. | industr, urban, consum, production, environment | 9, 12, 13 |
| Frances, Dachin Norbu | McCauley, Shannon J | The Effects of Warming on Aquatic Insects - Individual to Community Responses | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-11 | Climate change is increasing temperatures globally as well as the frequency and severity of extreme events such as heat waves. Given that the majority of animals on Earth are ectothermic, and therefore physiologically linked to environmental temperatures, it is imperative to predict the impacts of future warming on species. The physiological effects of warming on ectotherms have been studied extensively, yet, species interactions can also be affected by temperature. My thesis assessed how differences in species’ responses to warming affect their interactions and ultimately the structure and dynamics of communities. I first asked if phenological and early developmental responses to warming differed among and within dragonfly species. Warming accelerated growth and developmental rates, however, differences were greater within as opposed to between species in these responses. I also examined whether differences in behavioural responses to warming among species could determine which species became the superior IG predator. Foraging and IGP rates increased with warming but activity level changes were not predictive of the outcome of these interactions. Next, I asked how the interactive effects of warming and predator presence affected prey foraging decisions. Warmer conditions appeared to have a greater impact on prey behaviour that the predator presence, even though the prey’s risk of being eaten increased with temperature. Lastly, I manipulated developmental conditions in pond mesocosms to understand how warming and heat waves affect community structure. Heat waves similarly increased species’ evenness in communities as warming. However, heat waves further boosted survival compared to ambient and warmed conditions, strengthening consumption on primary consumers within these food webs. Together, my thesis demonstrates the importance of understanding complex interactions between species to make more accurate predictions of the effects of future warming on communities. | Ph.D. | consum, climate, environment | 12, 13 |
| Frater, Terence George Anthony | Mundy, Karen | Jamaica's Higher Education Committment under the GATS | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2008-06 | This research seeks to answer two questions: why did Jamaica include its higher education (HE) sector in its General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) ‘Schedule of Commitments’; and, how do the politicians and policy makers view the impact of this decision? For answers, I looked at arguments linking the GATS with national development and with HE. The thesis explores Jamaica’s HE policy strategies, how they are formed, how well, even after the fact, the decision-makers understand the implications of the regulatory framework of the GATS and the loss of control implicit in some of its tenets. This study is anchored in research findings by UNESCO and the World Bank, among others, which show that HE systems serve as the foundation for nations’ social and economic development, in providing the required knowledge and high levels of trained manpower to build their human capital. However, suggestions have been made that inequities in the global trading system constrain small developing countries in implementing policies that serve these objectives. Therefore, the emergence of the GATS as a new regulatory structure for trade in educational services raises concerns about the ability of countries like Jamaica, to promote an HE system likely to meet their needs. iii Twenty senior policy actors within Jamaican society were interviewed to elicit their views on national priorities for HE and, the opportunities or threats to their fulfilment presented by the GATS Commitment. Of particular interest is the growth in cross-border HE services found in Jamaica. The research found that notwithstanding the inequities of the global trading system, Jamaica embraces the concepts of liberalisation and free trade, and its negotiators, in formulating the Commitment, were seized with GATS’ potential for rapidly expanding access to HE. However, the evidence of this research suggests they were ill-prepared to make this decision, and clearly there is need for a better understanding of the role of HE in Jamaica’s development. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Freeman, Lisa Marie | Ruddick, Sue | Making Room: The Geography of Rooming House Regulation in Toronto | Geography | 2013-06 | This dissertation addresses the contemporary moment of the uneven regulation of rooming houses using qualitative research methods including semi-structured interviews, participant observation and document analysis. The uneven regulation of rooming houses provides an opportunity to study the local administration of poverty, the fragmented legal landscape of municipal law, the suburbanization of poverty and the governance of a marginalized tenant population. This dissertation questions how municipal governments function administratively, how space—specifically suburban space—influences urban governance and how an imagined geography of a 1970s skid row permeates present-day debates concerning suburban rooming houses. The geography and regulation of rooming houses in Toronto is fragmented. This fragmented legal landscape provides an opportunity to study how the bureaucratic functions of the municipal government alter the state of affordable housing in the city. In 1974, Toronto implemented a rooming house licensing bylaw as a response to fatal fires and unsafe living conditions in rooming houses. Still, in 1989 the Rupert Hotel fire happened in a licensed downtown rooming house. This specific fire garnered considerable municipal attention to the ‘problem of rooming houses.’ When the City of Toronto amalgamated in 1998, the rooming house licensing bylaw remained within the jurisdiction of the former City of Toronto (the downtown) and rooming houses were prohibited in the former cities (the inner suburbs) of Scarborough and North York and licensed (in a limited capacity) in Etobicoke. As poverty continues to rise in Toronto’s inner suburbs, rooming houses are increasingly in demand. Meanwhile, the legal status of rooming houses continue to be precarious as they are perceived to be illegal in the suburbs and legal in the downtown. Overall, this dissertation documents the geography of municipal bylaws in the context of gentrification, urban renewal, increased poverty in the suburbs and the everyday role of law. | PhD | poverty, urban, cities, governance | 1, 11, 16 |
| Freeman, Victoria Jane | Morgan, Cecilia | "Toronto Has No History!" Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Historical Memory in Canada's Largest City | History | 2010-11 | The Indigenous past is largely absent from settler representations of the history of the city of Toronto, Canada. Nineteenth and twentieth century historical chroniclers often downplayed the historic presence of the Mississaugas and their Indigenous predecessors by drawing on doctrines of terra nullius, ignoring the significance of the Toronto Purchase, and changing the city’s foundational story from the establishment of York in 1793 to the incorporation of the City of Toronto in 1834. These chroniclers usually assumed that “real Indians” and urban life were inimical. Often their representations implied that local Indigenous peoples had no significant history and thus the region had little or no history before the arrival of Europeans. Alternatively, narratives of ethical settler indigenization positioned the Indigenous past as the uncivilized starting point in a monological European theory of historical development. In many civic discourses, the city stood in for the nation as a symbol of its future, and national history stood in for the region’s local history. The national replaced ‘the Indigenous’ in an ideological process that peaked between the 1880s and the 1930s. Concurrently, the loyalist Six Nations were often represented as the only Indigenous people with ties to Torontonians, while the specific historical identity of the Mississaugas was erased. The role of both the government and local settlers in crowding the Mississaugas out of their lands on the Credit River was rationalized as a natural process, while Indigenous land claims, historical interpretations, and mnemonic forms were rarely accorded legitimacy by non-Indigenous city residents. After World War II, with new influxes of both Indigenous peoples and multicultural immigrants into the city, colonial narratives of Toronto history were increasingly challenged and replaced by multiple stories or narrative fragments. Indigenous residents created their own representations of Toronto as an Indigenous place with an Indigenous history; emphasizing continuous occupation and spiritual connections between place and ancestors. Today, contention among Indigenous groups over the fairness of the Mississauga land claim, epistemic differences between western and Indigenous conceptions of history, and ongoing settler disavowal of the impact of colonialism have precluded any simple or consensual narrative of Toronto’s past. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Freire-Gormaly, Marina | Bilton, Amy M | Experimental Characterization of Membrane Fouling under Intermittent Operation and Its Application to the Optimization of Solar Photovoltaic Powered Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water Treatment Systems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-06 | This thesis presents a novel experimental characterization of reverse osmosis membrane fouling from the intermittent operation of solar powered water treatment systems. This thesis also depicts the development of an analytical membrane fouling model and a design framework to configure location-customized solar photovoltaic reverse osmosis systems. The World Health Organization estimates that 760 million people worldwide lack access to clean drinking water. The regions with the highest water scarcity are usually off-grid, remote and have high solar insolation. Therefore, the use of solar powered reverse osmosis water treatment systems is a viable solution. However, to minimize the costs, these systems are configured with minimal battery storage and operated intermittently with extended shutdown periods. Literature lacks an experimental characterization of the effect of this intermittent operation on membrane fouling and an associated design optimization framework. This research work on reverse osmosis water treatment systems is divided into two main parts: (1) the experimental characterization of membrane fouling under intermittent operation, and (2) the development of an analytical membrane fouling model and a design optimization framework for these systems. A new fully-instrumented experimental lab-scale system was designed, built, commissioned and operated with triplicate measurements of membrane permeability and membrane salt rejection for the experimental characterization. A new pilot-scale experimental system was also designed, built and operated. The membrane fouling was characterized experimentally for intermittent and continuous operation. The effect of anti-scalant and rinsing was also investigated. Two types of experimental water was tested: an experimental MilliQ-based matrix and an experimental groundwater-based matrix. The groundwater was from Nobleton, Ontario. In addition, membrane autopsy was performed using scanning electron microscopy. An analytical membrane fouling model was developed based on the experimental results. Furthermore, a novel design framework was developed using this new analytical membrane fouling model. This design optimization framework can be used for the configuration of community-specific solar photovoltaic reverse osmosis systems that are reliable throughout the system life at a minimal cost. The design optimization framework can be adapted for other modular systems such as renewable power systems for off-grid communities, remote First Nations, Métis, and Inuit communities, or remote mining sites. | Ph.D. | solar, renewable, urban, water | 6, 7, 11 |
| Freylejer, Leandro | Trefler, Daniel | Three Essays in International Trade | Economics | 2018-03 | This thesis comprises three chapters: In Chapter I, I develop a general model to study the impact of labour mobility distortions on the gains from trade liberalization. The main feature of the model is that it combines comparative advantage forces with sectoral production misallocation. I use this framework to study the effect of labour market policies affecting the level of occupational mobility distortions on the gains from trade. I first show that differences in market structure across sectors lead to a misallocation of production. A planner is able to solve this misallocation by changing the composition of employment in the economy through changes in the level of labour market distortions. I use the model to study the impact of labour market distortions on the gains from trade from 1992 to 2007 in the US. I find that, relative to observed, optimal distortions lead to a 2.7% increase in the median cost of switching occupations and a doubling of welfare gains from trade. In Chapter II, I examine whether trade liberalization decreases investment misallocation in India. I provide evidence that, independently of firm heterogeneity, exporters earn more revenue from the extensive margin of production. Also, I show that this difference between exporters and non-exporters is increasing in the degree of external financing needs of the sector in which firms operate. This finding suggests that an increase in trade liberalization has the additional effect of increasing the efficiency of the allocation of investment in new product varieties from less-productive non-exporters to more-productive exporters. In Chapter III, I propose a model to explain deviations from the source-destination hierarchy prediction in models of trade with heterogeneous firms. I first show that firms do not follow a pecking order of foreign market entry. To explain these deviations, I show a two-period, partial equilibrium model with asymmetric information in product appeal. Firms know the appeal of their products but consumers are unaware of it. After consuming in the first period, consumers observe a noisy signal and update their expectations. Given the updating process, I show that there is an imperfect sorting of firms into markets. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, consum | 8, 12 |
| Friendly, Abigail | Daniere, Amrita | Implementing Progressive Planning in Brazil: Understanding the Gap between Rhetoric and Practice | Geography | 2014-06 | This dissertation explores the juxtaposition between an innovative national policy underpinned by concepts of the right to the city and social justice, and the implementation of that law at the local level, with variable results. Approved in 2001 following the growth of the urban reform movements and a new 'citizens' Constitution in 1988, the Statute of the City explicitly recognized the 'right to the city,' understood as the right to participate in urban life. In the Brazilian context, this means a combination of the 'social function of property and of the city' (the regulation of urban development as a public issue rather than a private one) and the democratic management of cities. The Statute regulates the 1988 Constitution's chapter on urban policy, mandates institutionalized participation in planning processes including citizen councils, large-scale forums and public hearings, and aims to promote social justice by alleviating the array of complex problems faced by Brazilian cities. Using a combination of semi-structured interviews, document analysis and observation, I focus on one case of the politics of implementing the progressive policy tools of the Statute of the City: the city of Niterói, Rio de Janeiro State. In my research, four intertwining themes explore how power relations and civil society organization influence the capacity to implement more participatory and socially just planning. While a gap exists between the rhetoric of the Statute and local practice, my findings suggest that the changes made as a result of the new planning directives of the Statute need to be seen as a long-term process. Indeed, the Statute is extraordinary in the Brazilian context, given high levels of poverty and socio-spatial inequality, violence and the aftermath of twenty years of dictatorship. | Ph.D. | justice, institution, urban, inequality, equality, poverty, ecology | 1, 5, 9, 11, 16 |
| Friesen, Patrick Calvin | Sage, Rowan F | Exploiting the Productivity of C4 Photosynthesis in Cool Temperate Climates: Mechanisms and Thresholds of Cold Tolerance in Miscanthus, Saccharum, and Spartina pectinata | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015-06 | Perennial grasses that use the C4 photosynthetic pathway are the best choice for terrestrial bioenergy and can help mitigate climate change. Much of the marginal land available for bioenergy occurs in cool temperate climates at high latitudes. To be productive in cool temperate climates, C4 perennial grasses must successfully overwinter the first growing season and produce leaves that tolerate spring chilling and frosts to harness the long photoperiods. Although there is nothing inherently cold sensitive about the C4 pathway, cold tolerant C4 grasses are rare and the additional C4 cycle and architecture introduce more potentially cold sensitive sites. In addition, the C4 cycle imposes a greater restriction in demand for energy and may predispose C4 grasses to chronic photoinhibition. Miscanthus x giganteus is a highly productive C4 perennial grass in cool temperate climates that is a model of photosynthetic chilling tolerance. Miscanthus is closely related to Saccharum a C4 genus that includes commercial sugarcane and energycane. Although M. x giganteus is chilling tolerant, it shows little tolerance of subzero temperatures with reports of winterkill in some cold climates. Spartina pectinata is a C4 perennial grass native to North America with a distribution up to 61°N latitude. The purpose of this thesis is to compare cold tolerance thresholds across these C4 perennial grasses and test hypotheses about the underlying physiology. First, this thesis demonstrates that M. x giganteus and another triploid Miscanthus hybrid have superior photosynthetic chilling tolerance over other Miscanthus hybrids and Saccharum genotypes. Across these genotypes, chronic photoinhibition or photoinactivation is closely associated with chilling sensitivity of net CO2 assimilation rate. Next, a more detailed investigation comparing M. x giganteus with the most chilling sensitive Miscanthus hybrid reveals Rubisco is the predominant limitation on net CO2 assimilation rate at cooler temperatures. Finally, this thesis compares the overwintering capacity, seasonal rhizome freezing tolerance, and leaf frost tolerance of S. pectinata and M. x giganteus in a first year field plot. Spartina pectinata shows greater overwinter survival and a fall/winter lethal temperature threshold of -24°C compared to -4°C for M. x giganteus, as well as greater spring leaf frost tolerance. | Ph.D. | energy, climate | 7, 13 |
| Frunchak, Svitlana | Viola, Lynne | The Making of Soviet Chernivtsi: National 'Reunification', World War II, and the Fate of Jewish Czernowitz in Postwar Ukraine | History | 2014-03 | The Making of Soviet Chernivtsi: National “Reunification,” World War II, and the Fate of Jewish Czernowitz in Postwar Ukraine Doctor of Philosophy Svitlana Frunchak Graduate Department of History University of Toronto 2014 Abstract This dissertation revisits the meaning of Soviet expansion and sovietization during and after World War II, the effects of the war on a multiethnic Central-Eastern European city, and the postwar construction of a national identity. One of several multiethnic cities acquired by the USSR in the course of World War II, modern pre-Soviet Chernivtsi can be best characterized as a Jewish-German city dominated by acculturated Jews until the outbreak of World War II. Yet Chernivtsi emerged from the war, the Holocaust, and Soviet reconstruction as an almost homogeneous Ukrainian city that allegedly had always longed for reunification with its Slavic brethren. Focusing on the late Stalinist period (1940–1953) but covering earlier (1774–1940) and later (1953–present) periods, this study explores the relationship between the ideas behind the incorporation; the lived experience of the incorporation; and the historical memory of the city’s distant and recent past. Central to this dissertation is the fate of the Jewish residents of Czernowitz-Chernivtsi. This community was diminished from an influential plurality to about one percent of the city’s population whose past was marginalized in local historical memory. This study demonstrates a multifaceted local experience of the war which was all but silenced by the dominant Soviet Ukrainian myth of the Great Patriotic War and the “reunification of all Ukrainian lands.” When the authors of the official Soviet historical and cultural narratives represented Stalin’s annexation as the “reunification” of Ukraine, they in fact constructed and popularized a new concept of “historical Ukrainian lands.” This concept—a blueprint for the Soviet colonization of the western borderlands in the name of the Ukrainian nation—tied ethnically defined Ukrainian culture to a strictly delineated national territory. Applied to the new borderlands and particularly to their urban centres characterized by cultural diversity, this policy served to legitimize the marginalization and, in several cases, the violent displacement of ethnic minorities, bringing to an end Jewish Czernowitz. | PhD | cities | 11 |
| Fu, Jing | Cummins, James | The Influence of Gender and Culture on First and Second Language Writing of Chinese and Japanese-speaking University Students | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2011-06 | This study investigated the influence of gender and culture on 23 university students’ first language (L1) and second language writing (L2). Specifically, the study investigated the extent to which gender differences would emerge in students’ L1 and L2 writing and whether any such differences would manifest themselves differentially in L1 as opposed to L2 writing. Students represented three national groups (8 Japanese students, 7 Chinese students, and 8 Taiwanese students). The Japanese and Chinese groups received their schooling in their home countries and came to Canada for purposes of university studies. However, the Taiwanese group came to Canada during their schooling years and consequently their English academic skills were better developed than their Chinese skills. L1 and L2 writing was sampled with four different writing tasks and analyzed for patterns of lexical and rhetorical usage. Stimulated-recall interviews were conducted with each student after they had completed the four writing tasks. The goal of the interviews was to identify the metacognitive strategies the students utilized in their L1 and L2 writing. Issues related to how students’ identities intersected with their L1 and L2 writing were also explored. Because the national groups are heterogeneous with respect to L1 and L2 writing experience, each group was considered as a separate case study for purposes of analysis. Exploratory cross-group analyses were carried out only to throw additional light on within-group trends. In the sample as a whole, statistical differences related to gender did not emerge. However, qualitative analysis of students’ L1 writing showed a distinct gender difference within the Japanese group. Specifically, Japanese females used considerably more politeness markers in their Japanese writing in comparison to Japanese males whose L1 writing tended to be more assertive. These differences were not apparent in males’ and females’ L2 (English) writing. No gender differences were observed in either L1 or L2 among the Chinese and Taiwanese groups. The findings suggest that learners absorb the instruction they receive in relation to effective ways of writing in their L2 environments and are fully capable of adjusting lexical and rhetorical features from L1 norms to L2 norms. The fact that female Japanese students did not generalize the politeness features they used in Japanese to English suggests that student identities are fluid and shift according to the cultural and linguistic context. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Fujita, Nobuko | Brett, Clare | Group Processes Supporting the Development of Progressive Discourse in Online Graduate Courses | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-03 | This design-based research study investigates the development of progressive discourse among participants (n=15, n=17, n=20) in three online graduate course contexts. Progressive discourse is a kind of discourse for inquiry in which participants share, question, and revise their ideas to deepen understanding and build knowledge. Although progressive discourse is central to knowledge building pedagogy, it is not known whether it is possible to detect its emergence in the patterns of participation in asynchronous conferencing environments or what kinds of instructional scaffolding are most effective to support its development. This study offers a unique perspective by characterizing episodes of discourse where participants honor the commitments for progressive discourse and by refining designs of peer and software-based scaffolding for progressive discourse. Results showed that measures such as note count, replies, and thread sizes can determine some qualities of online discourse but do not shed light on the development of progressive discourse. Thus an in-depth analysis of discourse for groups was developed to trace the interdependent individual contributions to the group discourse. Peer scaffolding that made norms for progressive discourse explicit was introduced to encourage participants to engage in sustained student-centered discourse for inquiry. Findings show that this intervention was most effective at the beginning of a course for newer online learners and newer graduate students, and least effective for students who were practicing K-12 teachers. A significant barrier to fostering progressive discourse is the tendency for teachers to reject these norms and revert to belief-mode thinking and devotional discourse typical of traditional schooling. Additionally, findings suggest that software-based scaffolding (as found in Knowledge Forum’s scaffold support feature) is a promising avenue for future design innovations to encourage progressive discourse. Although the results of this study are only suggestive, the findings do illustrate ways in which graduate students can uphold the commitments to move beyond expressions of socio- affective connection and opinion to discuss ideas in ways that lead to more useful explanations. The implications for these results for analyzing the quality of online discourse and the designs of instructional scaffolding in online learning environments are discussed. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Furgale, Paul | Barfoot, Timothy D. | Extensions to the Visual Odometry Pipeline for the Exploration of Planetary Surfaces | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2011-11 | Mars represents one of the most important targets for space exploration in the next 10 to 30 years, particularly because of evidence of liquid water in the planet's past. Current environmental conditions dictate that any existing water reserves will be in the form of ice; finding and sampling these ice deposits would further the study of the planet's climate history, further the search for evidence of life, and facilitate in-situ resource utilization during future manned exploration missions. This thesis presents a suite of algorithms to help enable a robotic ice-prospecting mission to Mars. Starting from visual odometry---the estimation of a rover's motion using a stereo camera as the primary sensor---we develop the following extensions: (i) a coupled surface/subsurface modelling system that provides novel data products to scientists working remotely, (ii) an autonomous retrotraverse system that allows a rover to return to previously visited places along a route for sampling, or to return a sample to an ascent vehicle, and (iii) the extension of the appearance-based visual odometry pipeline to an actively illuminated light detection and ranging sensor that provides data similar to a stereo camera but is not reliant on consistent ambient lighting, thereby enabling appearance-based vision techniques to be used in environments that are not conducive to passive cameras, such as underground mines or permanently shadowed craters on the moon. All algorithms are evaluated on real data collected using our field robot at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies, or at a planetary analogue site on Devon Island, in the Canadian High Arctic. | PhD | water, climate, environment | 6, 13 |
| Gabay, Danielle | Chambers, Tony | Race, Gender and Interuniversity Athletics: Black Female Student Athletes in Canadian Higher Education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2013-11 | Despite the documented history of women's athletics and minority students' participation in Canadian postsecondary institutions, little is known about Black female student athletes and their experiences within Canadian higher education. This dearth of information is paradoxical considering the academic and athletic legacy of this subgroup, as well as the noted importance of the student experience and athletic participation within Canadian universities. The aim of the study was to gather data on the experiences of Black female undergraduate students involved in varsity athletics. The goal was to gain an understanding of their experiences as students, as athletes, and as Black women. Additionally, the study intended to help fill a gap in the existing literature on race, sport, and the student experience in the Canadian context. The study employed an intersectional framework to examine how race, gender, athleticism and the student role intersect to shape the student experience. The investigation utilized a mixed method approach consisting of an online survey and in-depth interviews. This national study included participants from each of the four Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) regions. Twenty-eight Black female student athletes completed the online survey, while an additional thirty-two Black female student athletes were interviewed. The findings were divided into seven major themes: University Expectations versus Reality, Pressure and Positivity, Complex Relationships, Unique Experiences, Negotiating and Navigating, Hiding and Highlighting and Levels of Blackness. In a number of ways, the Black Canadian female student athlete's experience is similar to that of other student athletes. However, it also was found that Black female student athletes have a unique experience due to the intersection of their race, gender and athleticism. Thus, Black female student athletes have a distinct experience as they deal with racial, gender, and athletic stereotypes; the underrepresentation of Black females and Black female athletes in higher education; the intricacies of Black dating and intimate relationships; and the complex interactions within the Black communities on campus. | PhD | educat, gender, women | 4, 5 |
| Gahir, Sarabjit Singh | Piquette-Miller, Michekine | PXR-mediated Regulation of Placental Drug Transporters Impact on Fetal Exposure to Lopinavir | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2014 | Globally, there are close to 20 million women living with HIV. An increasing number of these women are of child bearing age. Current guidelines recommend treatment of all pregnant women with highly active antiretroviral agents to both maintain maternal health and to prevent the vertical transmission of the virus. Maintaining a balance between adequate levels of antiretroviral in the fetal system and preventing fetal toxicity are key to the success of this strategy. Despite increasing use, little is known about the transplacental accumulation of these agents. ABC drug transporters at the placental surface are believed to play an important role in the protective function of the placenta. This thesis explored the involvement of Pregnane X Receptor (PXR), an established regulator of drug transporters in the liver and intestine, in the regulation of placental drug transporters and the impact of PXR genotype and associated differences in placental transporter levels on fetal drug accumulation of lopinavir, a key antiretroviral used extensively in pregnant women. We examined the role of the nuclear receptor at the placental interface in PXR knockout and wildtype mice. Pegnenolone-16-á-carbonitrile (PCN) treatment failed to induce PXR and target genes in the placenta in contrast to the liver. Furthermore, an inverse relationship between placental PXR expression and the expression of Pgp, Mrp 1-3 and Bcrp was observed in the placental tissue. PXR heterozygotes were bred in order to generate pregnant dams with varying expression of placental transporters in individual fetal units within the same dam. This model was used to study the impact of fetal genotype and placental transporter expression on fetal exposure to lopinavir within the same dam. A two fold higher fetal accumulation of lopinavir was observed the PXR null placentas as compared to the wild types. An inverse relationship was observed between the placental expression of Mdr1a and fetal exposure to lopinavir (p | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Galer, Dustin | Radforth, Ian | "Hire the Handicapped!": Disability Rights, Economic Integration and Working Lives in Toronto, Ontario, 1962-2005 | History | 2014-06 | This dissertation, “‘Hire the Handicapped!’: Disability Rights, Economic Integration and Working Lives in Toronto, Ontario, 1962-2005,” argues that work significantly shaped the experience of disability during this period. Barriers to mainstream employment opportunities gave rise to multiple disability movements that challenged the social and economic framework which marginalized generations of people with disabilities. Using a critical analysis of disability in archival records, personal collections, government publications and a series of interviews, I demonstrate how demands for greater access among disabled people to paid employment stimulated the development of a new discourse of disability in Canada. Including disability as a variable in historical research reveals how family advocates helped people living in institutions move out into the community and rehabilitation professionals played an increasingly critical role in the lives of working-age adults with disabilities, civil rights activists crafted a new consumer-led vision of social and economic integration. Separated by different philosophies and bases of support, disability activists and allies found a common purpose in their pursuit of economic integration. The focus on employment issues among increasingly influential disability activists during this period prompted responses from three key players in the Canadian labour market. Employers embraced the rhetoric and values of disability rights but operated according to a different set of business principles and social attitudes that inhibited the realization of equity and a ‘level playing field.’ Governments facilitated the development of a progressive discourse of disability and work, but ultimately recoiled from disability activism to suit emergent political priorities. Labour organizations similarly engaged disability activists, but did so cautiously, with union support largely contingent upon the satisfaction of traditional union business first and foremost. As disability activists and their allies railed against systematic discrimination, people with disabilities lived and worked in the community, confronting barriers and creating their own circles of awareness in the workplace. Just as multiple sites of disability activism found resolution in the sphere of labour, the redefinition of disability during this period reflected a shared project involving collective and individual action. | PhD | employment, labour, rights | 8, 16 |
| Gallagher-Mackay, Kelly | Gaskell, Jane | Schools, Child Welfare and Well-being: Dimensions of Collective Responsibility for Maltreated Children Living at Home||Schools, Child Welfare and Well-being: Dimensions of Collective Responsibility for Maltreated Children Living at Home | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-11 | This qualitative study examines collective responsibility for the well-being of maltreated children who remain at home. Based on accounts of mothers, teachers and child welfare workers, and policy officials, the study uses institutional ethnography to examine how schools and child welfare authorities work together and with families. Contributing to the socio-legal literature, it explores understandings of responsibility in formal law and in practice. The policy response to these children’s needs raises significant theoretical and political issues because they are on the borderlands of public and private responsibility. Child welfare involvement signals public intervention is required to ensure protection and well-being. Strong, proactive, and coordinated support by public authorities should follow. However, data suggest three pervasive theoretical or political accounts legitimize very limited support. (1) The notion of home and school as separate spheres. Participants understand and in theory support the highly prescriptive regulation governing reporting and contact between schools and CAS. But in practice participants pointed to limits on responsibility for knowledge or communication across the boundaries. Participants acknowledged limited knowledge or communication despite a regulatory regime that promotes and assumes it. (2) Comprehensive family responsibility. Deeply-rooted notions of family responsibility and autonomy render public support for struggling families and children relatively discretionary. A policy and practice scan shows child welfare provides less educational support to children living in the community relative to those in foster care, and minimal individual or systemic accountability for services to these children. (3) Persistent heroic narratives of the teacher who ‘makes a difference’ through exceptional commitment to struggling students. To relegate caring work to realm of personal commitment privatizes responsibility for an important aspect of effective teaching. Though cited as exemplary, the exercise of these responsibilities is not supported, not demanded, and not planned for, which is problematic for interagency co-operation and teacher burnout. These political and institutional narratives limit the system’s response to the needs of these vulnerable children to discretion and chance. Meeting their needs requires not only a focus on coordination across bureaucratic boundaries, but also strengthening the visibility of, and accountability for, issues of well-being within education and child welfare. | PhD | well being | 3 |
| Gambhir, Mira Raj | Thiessen, Dennis | Images of the Diversity Educator: Indian and Canadian Perspectives of Diversity Education in Teacher Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-06 | Increasingly, diversity education in initial teacher education (ITE) is identified as a global need in pluralist contexts. Recent policies in India and Canada make explicit commitments to addressing diversity and inclusion as part of teacher education reforms. Despite strong and growing policy recommendations, limited information is available on how ITE programs approach diversity education in practice. In response, I conducted a qualitative international comparative study of ITE programs in Ontario, Canada, and Delhi, India. The purpose of this study is to identify the similarities and differences of approaches to diversity education in ITE programs. The study analyzes six programs--three in Canada and three in India--that prepare novice teachers for diversity. I focus primarily on two of the programs and include the other four as context for the regional beliefs and practices in each country. Through interviews, classroom observations, and document analysis, I explore: a) participants' understandings of diversity education; b) program policies, structures and procedures; c) curriculum content and pedagogy; and d) the challenges of approaches to diversity education.The findings reveal that the approaches of both programs are framed by three images of the diversity educator--the affirmer, the conscious practitioner, and the social reformer--albeit in varying ways and with different emphases. The affirmer focuses on empowering students, reinforcing positive views of diversity, and building community in the classroom; the conscious practitioner on being mindful of diversity and aware of the implications of social issues on candidates' lives and practice; and the reformer on implementing diversity education curriculum for social reform. Each image highlights distinct conceptions of diversity, inclusion, professional knowledge, and social action.The images of the diversity educator offer a framework for comparative international inquiry on diversity education in ITE. They generate insights into how diversity education is approached in three ways: 1) as distinct forms based on sociocultural context, ITE participants' beliefs, and program practices; 2) as important opportunities for social action in education; and 3) as multiple forms simultaneously operating in a single ITE program. The images provide new directions on how to best understand and improve diversity education in ITE. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Gananathan, Romona | Pelletier, Janette | Legal and Policy Implications for Early Childhood Professionals in Ontario's Kindergarten Programs | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2015-06 | The integration of child care and early education systems has been driving staffing change in early learning environments globally over the past decade. Rationales for staff integration often include concurrent movements to professionalize and regularize the early childhood sector. The legal and policy implication of systems integration in Ontario includes the movement of a largely unionized private non-profit sector workforce into the realm of public education in Full Day Kindergarten (FDK). Ontario was the first jurisdiction in Canada to introduce a team teaching model comprised of a Registered Early Childhood Educator (RECE) and Kindergarten Teacher, bringing approximately 10,000 new RECEs into the public education sector. At the same time, the College of Early Childhood Educators was also established to develop standards of practice and provide public accountability for early childhood professionals.This thesis explores the new "professional" role of the RECE within the integrated FDK staff team in the education sector and the concurrent movement to professionalize and regularize the early childhood profession in Ontario. Through a series of four interrelated manuscripts that use a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches including feminist legal policy research and text analysis, this compilation thesis documents the legal and policy impact of FDK staffing policy, and how it has influenced the way the new professional RECE role in FDK is being developed through legislation, policy and practice. By conceptualizing professionalization as a site of struggle and using feminist legal and policy research perspectives to understand policy implementation, I describe ways in which policy makers can have a more meaningful impact through FDK program implementation at all levels, and disclose strategies on how the policy intent of a more professional status and role for RECEs in Ontario's education system can be realized. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Gao, Han | Lian, Keryn | Advanced Proton Conducting Polymer Electrolytes for Electrochemical Capacitors | Materials Science and Engineering | 2015-11 | Research on solid electrochemical energy storage devices aims to provide high performance, low cost, and safe operation solutions for emerging applications from flexible consumer electronics to microelectronics. Polymer electrolytes, minimizing device sealing and liquid electrolyte leakage, are key enablers for these next-generation technologies. In this thesis, a novel proton-conducing polymer electrolyte system has been developed using heteropolyacids (HPAs) and polyvinyl alcohol for electrochemical capacitors. A thorough understanding of proton conduction mechanisms of HPAs together with the interactions among HPAs, additives, and polymer framework has been developed. Structure and chemical bonding of the electrolytes have been studied extensively to identify and elucidate key attributes affecting the electrolyte properties. Numerical models describing the proton conduction mechanism have been applied to differentiate those attributes. The performance optimization of the polymer electrolytes through additives, polymer structural modifications, and synthesis of alternative HPAs has achieved several important milestones, including: (a) high proton mobility and proton density; (b) good ion accessibility at electrode/electrolyte interface; (c) wide electrochemical stability window; and (d) good environmental stability. Specifically, high proton mobility has been addressed by cross-linking the polymer framework to improve the water storage capability at normal-to-high humidity conditions (e.g. 50-80% RH) as well as by incorporating nano-fillers to enhance the water retention at normal humidity levels (e.g. 30-60% RH). High proton density has been reached by utilizing additional proton donors (i.e. acidic plasticizers) and by developing different HPAs. Good ion accessibility has been achieved through addition of plasticizers. Electrochemical stability window of the electrolyte system has also been investigated and expanded by utilizing HPAs with different heteroatoms. The optimized polymer electrolyte demonstrated even higher proton conductivity than pure HPAs and the enabled electrochemical capacitors have demonstrated an exceptionally high rate capability of 50 Vs-1 in cyclic voltammograms and a 10 ms time constant in impedance analyses. | Ph.D. | energy, consum, environment | 7, 12, 13 |
| García Del Moral, Paulina | Korteweg, Anna C||Levi, Ron | Feminicidio, Transnational Legal Activism, and State Responsibility in Mexico | Sociology | 2016-06 | This dissertation uses the concept of transnational legal activism to analyze the mobilization of international human rights law as a multi-scalar process that produces and is shaped by gendered political and discursive opportunities. I apply this framework to examine how feminist grassroots activists engaged with supranational human rights institutions, especially the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, to hold the Mexican state responsible for the murders of three young women in Ciudad Juárez, an industrial city that borders the United States, in the case of González and Others “Cotton Field.” The Court declared that Mexico had failed to act with due diligence to prevent, investigate, and punish these crimes. These murders epitomize what activists identified as feminicidio, the systematic killing of women in a context of institutionalized gender discrimination sanctioned by the state; this phenomenon has prevailed in the northern state of Chihuahua where Ciudad Juárez is located since the 1990s. The dissertation also investigates how federal and local state actors responded to grassroots activists’ claims and the judgment of the IACtHR, including the criminalization of feminicidio. Through interviews with Mexican activists and frame analysis of the IACtHR judgment and of federal and local parliamentary debates, I argue that grassroots activists’ involvement in transnational legal activism contributed to expanding and rearticulating the meaning of women’s human rights and state responsibility at the domestic and supranational levels. Throughout, I highlight activists’ agency in this process and in their interactions with transnational organizations specialized in human rights advocacy and supranational litigation. Thus, I challenge assumptions in the literature on human rights and social movements that imply that grassroots actors have a limited access to international law and avenues to participate in transnational advocacy. Last, I suggest that the actions of Mexican grassroots activists extend a Latin American approach to international human rights law. | Ph.D. | gender, women, rights | 5, 16 |
| Garcia Ricci, Diego | Austin, Lisa | The Contribution of International Human Rights Law to the Protection of Privacy: the Case of Mexico | Law | 2017-06 | This thesis examines the contribution of international human rights law to the protection of privacy. It poses the question of whether or not international human rights law can compensate for the limitations that other areas of law have in the protection of privacy with respect to the mandatory collection, retention, use or disclosure of personal information carried out by states. The thesis argues that international human rights treaties and jurisprudence offer principles, frameworks and an individual entitlement that can be applied in domestic jurisdictions to protect the private lives of individuals from abuses of power by states through data processing. To test its argument, the thesis uses Mexico as its case study. Several factors make Mexico an especially useful jurisdiction for this purpose. A right to privacy is not explicitly included in the Mexican legal order and the judiciary has yet to develop privacy jurisprudence. Following a 2011 constitutional amendment, Mexico opened its legal system to international human rights law, incorporating into the national bill of rights those human rights included in international treaties. Mexico offers an excellent opportunity for examining what international human rights law can offer in the protection of privacy of individuals with respect to the mandatory data processing carried out by the state. The thesis demonstrates that the right to privacy included in international human rights treaties has been understood by authoritative interpreters as implying other important principles such as legality, necessity and proportionality. In the Big Data era, where state surveillance is taking on new dimensions, these principles are crucial for the protection of privacy. By showing how the international human rights law on privacy can be received within Mexican law, this thesis shows that the private lives of individuals can be protected from abuses of power committed by the state via data processing. Esta tesis examina la contribución del derecho internacional de los derechos humanos a la protección de la privacidad. Se pregunta si el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos puede compensar las limitaciones que otras áreas del derecho tienen en la protección de la privacidad con respecto a la recolección, retención, uso o divulgación obligatorios de datos personales llevados a cabo por los estados. La tesis sostiene que la jurisprudencia y los tratados en derechos humanos ofrecen principios, marcos normativos y un derecho individual que podrían ser aplicados en las jurisdicciones nacionales para proteger la vida privada de los individuos de los abusos de poder llevados a cabo por los estados a través del procesamiento obligatorio de datos personales. Para probar su argumento, la tesis usa a Mexico como estudio de caso. Distintos factores hacen que México sea una jurisdicción especialmente útil para este propósito. El derecho a la privacidad no está explícitamente incluido en el orden jurídico mexicano y el poder judicial aún tiene que desarrollar jurisprudencia sobre privacidad. Tras una reforma constitucional en 2011, México abrió su sistema jurídico al derecho internacional de los derechos humanos, incorporando a la constitución mexicana aquellos derechos humanos incluidos en los tratados internacionales. México brinda una excelente oportunidad para examinar lo que el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos puede ofrecer para proteger la privacidad de los individuos respecto al procesamiento obligatorio de datos llevado a cabo por el estado. La tesis demuestra que el derecho a la privacidad incluido en los tratados internacionales de derechos humanos ha sido entendido por los intérpretes oficiales como implicando otros principios importantes tales como el de legalidad, necesidad y proporcionalidad. En la era del Big Data, donde la vigilancia estatal está tomando nuevas dimensiones, estos principios son cruciales para la protección de la privacidad. Al mostrar cómo el derecho internacional de los derechos humanos en materia de privacidad puede ser recibido dentro del derecho mexicano, la tesis demuestra que la vida privada de los individuos puede ser protegida de los abusos de poder cometidos por el estado vía el procesamiento de datos. | S.J.D. | rights | 16 |
| Garcia, Alexander | Berdahl, Jennifer | Making Waves without Rocking the Boat: Women’s Reinforcement of Gender Status Hierarchies as a Protectant against Discrimination | Management | 2013-06 | Research on sex discrimination has found consistent support for the idea that women who violate gender roles by succeeding in male-dominated domains elicit hot forms of discrimination. In particular, evidence suggests that a perceivers' conservatism, which represents a preference against gender change toward greater equality, might motivate this kind of discrimination. Therefore, I hypothesized that perceiver conservatism would predict discrimination against female gender role violators. In two studies, I found evidence that conservatism predicts negative evaluations of targets (Study 1), as well as sabotage (Study 2). In addition, Study 2 revealed that the relationship between conservatism and sabotage was partially mediated by the perceivers' anxiety. However, if the discrimination that conservative perceivers direct at gender role violators is motivated by conservatives' preference against social change toward greater equality, then targets who support gender status hierarchies while they violate gender roles should experience less discrimination from conservative perceivers than those who challenge status hierarchies. Consistent with this reasoning, perceivers' conservatism was negatively related to perceived interpersonal hostility of female gender role violators who expressed support for gender hierarchy. In contrast, perceivers' conservatism was positively related to perceived interpersonal hostility of female gender role violators who expressed opposition to gender hierarchy (Study 1). However, targets' expressions of support for gender hierarchy did not have this effect on the relationship between perceivers' conservatism and perceptions of the target's ineffectuality (Study 1), respect for the target (Study 1), or sabotage of the target (Study 2). Moreover, while supporting status hierarchies reduced perceptions of interpersonal hostility from perceivers high in conservatism, it increased perceptions of hostility from those low in conservatism. Thus, supporting gender hierarchies may appear to help in some contexts, but is associated with significant costs, as well. The implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed. | PhD | gender, women, equality | 5 |
| Gardner, Paula | Gastaldo, Denise | The Public Life of Older People: Neighbourhoods and Networks | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2008-11 | Preserving and improving the health and well-being of older people is a significant public health issue of the 21st century. The increased attention to the promotion of health in old age has given rise to an extensive body of literature on the subject of “healthy aging” – a discourse dedicated to understanding the multidimensional factors associated with aging and health and the application of this knowledge. Adopting a place-based, qualitative approach, this dissertation addresses key gaps in the healthy aging literature. The public life of older people aging in place was examined to understand how neighbourhoods, as important physical and social places of aging, contribute to the well-being and healthy aging of older people. This dissertation employed a critical geographical gerontology research framework and a methodology called ‘friendly visiting’ which combines ethnography, narrative and case study research and utilizes participant observation, visual methods and interview techniques. The qualitative data were analyzed using grounded theory and an adapted coding strategy that integrated the textual, visual, and auditory data. The analysis process highlighted theoretically-informed themes that characterized participant’s perceptions and experiences of their neighbourhoods. Findings reveal neighbourhoods are important places of aging that impact the well-being of older people aging in place. This dissertation provides insight into the micro-territorial functioning of neighbourhoods for older people. Embedded within these environments are key sites for informal public life called third places (e.g., parks, streets and coffee shops). Third places are important material and social places for older populations. Preparing for, journeying to, and engaging in these public sites promotes healthy aging by providing opportunities for engagement in life and facilitating social networks. Results advance healthy aging and aging and place research, contribute to gerontological and geographical methodologies, and have implications for policy and practice in areas such as health promotion and age-friendly community initiatives. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Gariba, Shaibu Ahmed | Livingstone, David W. | Race, Ethnicity, Immigration And Jobs: Labour Market Access Among Ghanaian And Somali Youth In The Greater Toronto Area | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2009-11 | This thesis uses focus group interviews and survey questionnaires to examine perceptions of Ghanaian and Somali youth, residing in Toronto, about barriers to their labour market access. The emphasis is on perceptions that deal with labour market discrimination based on race, ethnicity and recency of immigration. The results show that perceptions of discrimination based on these factors are widespread among all of the participants interviewed or surveyed. This suggests a very strong belief that employment discrimination is pervasive and persistent in the Toronto labour market. The findings also show that the perceptions of discrimination are largely driven by ‘lived discriminatory’ experiences faced by the participants as well as revealing their desire for fairness and equality in society. The perceptions of discrimination negatively affected the level of trust the research participants have in people and institutions as well as impacting their sense of belonging to their communities and the wider society. The relationship between perceptions of discrimination and low levels of trust and sense of belonging is established in the findings of the Ethnic Diversity Survey. The consequences of this impact on the research participants and their communities are high levels of unemployment, high poverty rates and participant dissatisfaction with their own communities and society at large. It is my belief that this thesis contributes to the debate about the significance of discrimination due to race, ethnicity and immigrant status in the Canadian labour market. | PhD | poverty, equality, employment | 1, 5, 2008 |
| Gass, Krista Rose | Jenkins, Jennifer M. | Examining Parental Socioeconomic Status and Neighbourhood Quality As Contextual Correlates Of Differential Parenting Within Families | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2011-11 | Although several studies have demonstrated that differential parenting has a negative impact on the children exposed to it, only a small number of studies have attempted to understand why differential parenting occurs within families. The goal of the present study was to examine the contextual correlates of differential parenting. Specifically, the association between parental socioeconomic status (SES) and differential parenting and the association between objective and subjective indices of neighbourhood quality and differential parenting were investigated. Data were collected as part of the Kids, Families, and Places (KFP) study and analyzed using multilevel modeling. Six hundred and fifty families provided data on 881 children. Five hundred and ninety nine families included a father in the home. Close to seventy five percent of children included in the sample were less than six years of age. Differential parenting was assessed separately for mothers and fathers and across positive and negative parenting outcomes. The findings revealed that parental SES was significantly associated with differential parenting for three of four parenting outcomes. For mothers, SES was negatively associated with differential positivity and negativity. For fathers, SES was negatively associated with differential positivity but not negativity. The objective quality of neighbourhoods in which families resided (i.e., measured as a composite score that combined census tract data on neighbourhood disadvantage and interviewer observations of neighbourhood physical and social disorder) was positively associated with maternal differential negativity; however, this association was also moderated by mothers’ subjective perceptions of their neighbourhoods (i.e., measured using maternal reports of neighbourhood collective efficacy). In other words, when mothers perceived their neighbourhoods to be highly cohesive and supportive, exposure to objectively unfavourable neighbourhood conditions was less strongly associated with differential negativity. Objective neighbourhood quality was not associated with the other three differential parenting outcomes of interest. These findings highlight the important relationship that exists between contextual influences both within and outside of the immediate family and differential parenting. Moreover, they speak to the importance of including both mothers and fathers in studies of differential parenting. The merits of using multilevel modelling to investigate differential parenting and suggestions for future research are discussed. | PhD | socioeconomic | 1 |
| Gaudon, Justin Michael | Smith, Sandy M. | Natural Enemies of Wood-boring Beetles in Northeastern Temperate Forests and Implications for Biological Control of the Emerald Ash Borer (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) in North America | Forestry | 2019-06 | The emerald ash borer (hereafter EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire (Coleoptera: Buprestidae), is a wood-boring beetle accidentally introduced into North America during the 1990s, and has since been killing millions of ash trees, Fraxinus spp. L. (Lamiales: Oleaceae), as it spreads across Canada and the USA. Native North American natural enemies, especially parasitoid wasps, are important mortality factors of EAB, but little information is available on their arrival and detection in EAB-infested regions, and their feasibility for augmentative biological control against EAB is uncertain. Two important native parasitoid groups, Phasgonophora sulcata Westwood (Hymenoptera: Chalcididae) and Atanycolus spp. Foerster (Hymenoptera: Braconidae), were investigated to determine (1) factors influencing their capacity to disperse, (2) vegetation and habitat characteristics influencing their local abundance and role in EAB mortality, (3) whether their populations can be augmented to increase parasitism of EAB, and (4) how best to detect and monitor their populations as EAB continues to spread. The weak dispersal capacity of P. sulcata suggests it should be released as pupae close to EAB if used in an augmentative biological control program. Forest vegetation and habitat structure determine local abundance of P. sulcata and Atanycolus spp., and tree biomass, tree condition, and floral resource availability are important predictors of high parasitism on EAB. Relocating parasitoid-infested ash logs to EAB-infested sites can significantly augment populations of native parasitoids to increase EAB parasitism by 64.8 ± 18.1 % three years after introduction. Purple prism traps can be used to detect and monitor changes in populations of relocated P. sulcata and Atanycolus spp. These findings improve our understanding of the role of native natural enemies in suppressing EAB population growth and slowing ash tree mortality in North America. | Ph.D. | forest | 15 |
| Gauvreau, Cindy Low | Ungar, Wendy Joan | The Application of Cost-effectiveness Analysis in Developing Countries | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2011-06 | Developing countries face imminent choices for introducing needed, effective but expensive new vaccines, given the substantial immunization resources now available from international donors. Cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) is a tool that decision-makers can use for efficiently allocating expanding resources. However, although CEA has been increasingly applied in developing-country settings since the 1990’s, its use lags behind that in industrialized countries. This thesis explored how CEA could be made more relevant for decision-making in developing countries through 1) identifying the limitations for using CEA in developing countries 2) identifying guidelines for CEA specific to developing countries 3) identifying the impact of donor funding on CEA estimation 4) identifying areas for enhancement in the 1996 “Reference Case” (a standard set of methods) recommended by the US Panel on Cost-Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, and 5) better understanding the decision-making environment in developing countries. Focusing on pediatric immunization in developing countries, thematic analysis was used to distill key concepts from 157 documents spanning health economics, clinical epidemiology and health financing. 11 key informants, researchers active in developing countries, were also interviewed to explore the production and use of evidence in public health decision-making. Results showed a divergence between industrialized and developing nations in the emphases of methodological difficulties, in the general application of CEA, and the types of guidelines available. Explicitly considering donor funding costs and effects highlighted the need to specify an appropriate perspective and address policy-related issues of affordability and sustainability. Key informant interviews also revealed that opinion-makers, international organizations and the presence of local vaccine manufacturing have significant influence on decision-making. It is suggested that CEA could be more useful with a broadened reference case framework that included multiple perspectives, sensitivity analysis exploring differential discount rates (upper limits exceeding 10% for costs, declining from 3% for benefits) and supplemental reports to aid decision-making (budgetary and sustainability assessments). This study has implications for improving health outcomes globally in the context of public-private collaborative health funding. Further research could explore defining an extra-societal (multi-country) perspective to aid in efficient allocation of immunization resources among countries. | PhD | health, industr | 3, 9 |
| Gaviria, Olga | Sá, Creso | Inuit Self-determination and Postsecondary Education: The Case of Nunavut and Greenland | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2013-11 | With Inuit identifying as a people beyond nation-state boundaries, and Nunavummiut and Greenlanders as citizens of Canada and Denmark, the right to self-determination has followed distinct trajectories in the jurisdictions examined in my thesis. Nunavut has a constitutional mandate to be responsive to the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, paradoxically intensifying the relationships with the federal government towards further devolution and maintaining an ethnic divide trespassing territorial lines. Envisioning statehood, Greenland has chosen to gradually break economic ties with Denmark and in mainstreaming its governance capacity it appears to be branching off ethnocentric policies. In what seem opposing pathways, autonomous postsecondary education institutions are positioned to mitigate the notional extremes the right to self-determination calls upon. By comparing institutions steering through conflicting missions, this thesis illustrates the ways in which the right to self-determination operates against the backdrop of regained geopolitical prominence of the Arctic Region. Applying a legal theoretical framework to the scholarship of indigenous education this thesis raises a number of issues in carrying forward the right to self-determination once indigenous peoples regain control over their destinies. Issues regarding social stratification challenging the politics of representation indicate that achieving some form of autonomy does not necessarily result in social justice as the indigenous rights advocacy scholarship suggests. Considering the Inuit right to self-determination as a process right rather than an outcome, this finding highlights internal pluralities challenging the reification of Inuit identity on the basis of cultural, political, and socioeconomic difference. This thesis advocates for examining the contingencies that shape Inuit multiple allegiances accounting for peoples vantage geopolitical positioning. As Inuit redefine their position in the local, national, and global spheres, important knowledge is produced overcoming the single overriding of identity politics. Recognizing that Inuit knowledge is knowledge in context, the author contends, may lead to new ways for postsecondary education to uphold the Inuit right to self-determination. | PhD | rights, governance, socioeconomic | 1, 16 |
| Gayapersad, Allison | Sellen, Daniel | Access to Healthcare by Pregnant and Lactating Women Living with HIV and AIDS in Kenya | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-06 | Maternal deaths are the second biggest killer of women of reproductive age. High maternal deaths in sub-Saharan Africa reflect inequities in health services. This study explored how intersecting factors such as gender, class, and other social relations shape access to healthcare among a selected group of HIV-positive Kenyan. Guided by a postcolonial feminist perspective, the study employed semi-structured interviews to elicit the perspectives of key institutional actors on the challenges and constraints of the health services landscape and in-depth interviews to gain insight into the lived experiences of individual women’s access to healthcare within the healthcare and social context of a purposively selected large Kenyan town. Key institutional actors’ perspective indicated that the healthcare system is complex, in flux, and homogenized women. They acknowledged that a lack of adequate healthcare funding resulted in unmet needs for people living with HIV, gaps in training of health practitioners and shortage of medical equipment and supplies. Women’s narratives revealed the complexities of their lives. Women’s diversity and agency were reflected in their stories about how they accessed healthcare within this complex healthcare system and within the existing social constraints in this setting. Women engaged with patriarchy and employed various strategies to access healthcare and strive for positive living. Positive social interactions such as social support were instrumental in motivating women’s access to healthcare. Negative social interactions, such as stigma, blame and social obligations, worked to both hamper and motivate women to access healthcare. Women’s social class intersected with gender and these other social relations to determine their access to healthcare. A lack of consideration of women’s heterogeneity results in a failure to account for how structures of oppression and gendered inequities translate into diverse material risks for women and impact their ability to access healthcare. A postcolonial feminist perspective, that listened to silenced and homogenized voices, is an effective tool to unmask the circumstances and conditions that affected women’s access to healthcare. This study contributes to the research on maternal health in countries with high maternal mortality and provides the basis for planning and implementing equitable care at local and national levels. | Ph.D. | health, equitable, gender, women | 3, 4, 2005 |
| Gebhard, Amanda Michelle | Sykes, Heather | In School but not of the School: Teaching Aboriginal Students, Inferiorizing Subjectivities, and Schooling Exclusions | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-11 | Education for Aboriginal peoples is championed as a great equalizer and antithetical to a future of incarceration. Even though Aboriginal peoples are experiencing upward trends in education, they continue to be incarcerated at ten times the rate of their non-Aboriginal counterparts in the Canadian prairies. This study explores the discursive connections between education and incarceration for Aboriginal students. Specifically, the researcher sought to understand how educators’ normative discourses about learning and school legitimize and make possible the criminalization of Aboriginal students, and how educators work to disrupt normative discourses and open up possibilities for who can be a learner. This study is informed by multiple race frameworks, and poststructural theorizing about knowledge, power and subjectivities, and offers a discourse analysis of interviews with Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal educators working across one prairie province. The central finding of this thesis is that normative discourses about Aboriginal students are exclusionary discourses that position Aboriginal students outside of acceptable learner status, and effectively, outside of settler society. This argument is constructed over three interrelated chapters: Chapter Five demonstrates how cultural discourses are often racializing discourses that allow educators to evade considerations of racism and claim commitment to Aboriginal students, Chapter Six explores how inferiorizing discourses produce Aboriginal students as impossible learners and naturalize schooling exclusions, and Chapter Seven presents the discourse of the taken-for-granted-as-troublesome Aboriginal male student and the normalization of a police presence in schools. Throughout each chapter, the author demonstrates how subjectivities imposed upon Aboriginal students are not only incommensurable with normative expectations of student behaviour, but also at odds with the imagined qualities of citizens of the nation state. Counter-narratives of participants who disrupt normative discourses and produce Aboriginal students as belonging in school are also included. Emphasizing the school as a powerful identity-making space where students learn who they are and where they belong in a settler society, the author suggests race power deployed through normative educational discourses naturalizes spaces of abjection as rightful spaces of belonging for Aboriginal peoples. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Geddes, Jeffrey | Murphy, Jennifer | Observations of Reactive Nitrogen Oxides: From Ground Level Ozone Production to Biosphere-atmosphere Exchange in Downwind Forest Environments | Chemistry | 2013-06 | In urban areas, emissions of nitrogen oxide radicals (NOx ≡ NO + NO2) to the atmosphere from anthropogenic activities such as fossil fuel combustion contribute to poor air quality through the production of ozone and particulate matter. Soils are also a significant global source of NOx, but at downind forest environments the deposition of transported reactive nitrogen can be much more important than local emissions. Data from a government monitoring network in the Toronto area from 2000-2007 was used to explore the impact of long-term trends in NO2 and other ozone precursors on local ozone levels. Non-linear chemistry and the influence of meteorology explained why reductions in precursor levels during this period did not lead to significant improvements in ozone. Data from this network was also used to investigate the ability of a satellite-borne spectrometer to represent spatial patterns of ground-level NO2 in the same region. Selection biases, resulting from the need to discard satellite data on cloudy days, were shown to affect locations differently and were most severe at a receptor site. The sum of all reactive nitrogen oxides including NOx is known as NOy. A custom-built instrument for high precision and time resolution measurements of reactive nitrogen oxides was tested under various lab and field conditions, and used in field work where direct biosphere-atmosphere exchange of NOy was measured by eddy covariance above two comparable North American mixed forests (Haliburton Forest Wildlife Reserve and the University of Michigan Biological Station). While these forests were found to be small net sources of NOx, they were subject to elevated rates of NOy deposition overall, driven by the transport of polluted air from upwind source regions. Wet deposition measurements were used to show that dry deposition contributed a significant fraction of total deposition during the observation periods. | PhD | wind, urban, environment, pollut | 7, 11, 13 |
| Geddie, Katherine Paige | Gertler, Meric S. | Transnational Landscapes of Opportunity? Post-graduation Settlement and Career Strategies of International Students in Toronto, Canada and London, UK | Geography | 2010-11 | This thesis explores the emerging issue of cities and countries competing for international students as part of market and talent-based economic development strategies. Based on case studies in London, UK and Toronto, Canada, this research draws on interviews with senior policy-makers as well as international students completing their overseas studies to examine three issues. First, this thesis investigates the process by which similar policies to attract and retain greater numbers of international students have been developed and introduced in both countries. Arguing that these policies are “mobile,” this thesis demonstrates how the competitive interconnectedness of policy-making leads to the transfer of policy ideas from one jurisdiction to another, while also recognizing the mediating role of institutions for contributing to continued geographic differences in the policy landscape regarding international education. Second, it examines the decision-making process for international graduate students upon the moment of graduation with regard to their settlement and employment strategies. Through a comparison of international students finishing advanced degrees in science and engineering in both sites, it reveals the extent to which students’ plans involve the complex intermingling of personal, professional and (im)migration regulation factors. The confluence of these factors tend to pull students in different geographic directions, indicating that the conventional ‘stay or return’ construct is too simplistic as a framework for understanding students’ future movements. Moreover, the comparison of students’ strategies in the two sites illustrates the differential effect of multi-scalar institutional frameworks in constructing certain types of migrant subjects. Third, this thesis investigates how career development strategies of international students differ according to broad disciplinary differences. Contrasting the career plans of graduating students in science, engineering, and art and design programs, this research finds that there are key differences in the socio-spatial career strategies held by international students in line with the differentiated knowledge bases literature. | PhD | institution, cities, employment | 8, 11, 16 |
| Gendron-Carrier, Nicolas | Baum-Snow, Nathaniel||Trefler, Daniel | Essays in Labour and Urban Economics | Economics | 2018-11 | This thesis contains three essays that focus on topics in labour and urban economics. In Chapter 1, I use new administrative Canadian matched owner-employer-employee data to investigate the mechanisms that drive entry into entrepreneurial careers and entrepreneurial success among young individuals. I pay particular attention to the value of prior work experience in entrepreneurship. I use information on the career choices and earnings of individuals each year to structurally estimate a dynamic Roy model of career choice. I recover parameters governing: (a) the returns to various types of experience in the labour market and in entrepreneurship, (b) the non-pecuniary benefits associated with being a worker and an entrepreneur, and (c) career-specific entry costs. I use the estimated model to evaluate the impact of policies designed to promote successful entrepreneurship. Chapter 2 (joint with Leah Brooks and Gisela Rua) investigates how containerization impacts local economic activity. Containerization is premised on a simple insight: packaging goods for waterborne trade into a standardized container makes them dramatically cheaper to move. We use a novel cost-shifter instrument -- port depth pre-containerization -- to contend with the non-random adoption of containerization by ports. Container ships sit much deeper in the water than their predecessors, making initially deep ports cheaper to containerize. Consistent with New Economic Geography models, we find that cities near container ports grow an additional 70 percent from 1950 to 2010. Gains predominate in cities with initially low population density and manufacturing. Chapter 3 (joint with Marco Gonzalez-Navarro, Stefano Polloni, and Matthew Turner) investigates the relationship between the opening of a city's subway network and its air quality. We find that particulate concentrations drop by 4% in a 10km radius disk surrounding a city center following a subway system opening. The effect is larger near the city center and persists over the longest time horizon that we can measure with our data, about eight years. We estimate that a new subway system provides an external mortality benefit of about $594m per year. Although available subway capital cost estimates are crude, the estimated external mortality effects represent a significant fraction of construction costs. | Ph.D. | labour, worker, cities, urban | 8, 11 |
| Gendy, Marie Nabil Samwel | Le Foll, Bernard | Randomized Placebo-Controlled Clinical Trials Testing Gemfibrozil for Smoking Cessation and Melatonin for Alcohol-related Sleeping Problems | Pharmacology | 2019-11 | Substance use disorder (SUD) is not a temporary condition but it is a chronic and relapsing disorder that leads to serious health risks. SUD is considered a pathological behavior, affecting the reward circuit and stress system, and these impairments can last for a longer period even after detoxification and abstinence. The motivation behind exploring new therapeutic options for different kind of SUDs and their complications is the limited success of the available treatments. For instance, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved medications for Tobacco use disorder (TUD) increase abstinence rates; however, relapse remains the most likely outcome, with success rates of only 20-30% at 1 year post-treatment follow up. The other motivation for exploring new therapeutics is the harmful side effects caused by current medications; for instance, the use of benzodiazepine receptor agonists, to treat alcohol use disorder (AUD)-sleep disorder, which are known to be addictive. This thesis focuses on two randomized clinical trials (RCTs) exploring the effect of two therapeutic options one for TUD using lab paradigms for nicotine craving and reinforcement and a brief quit attempt. The other RCT is exploring the effect of melatonin for sleep problems in AUD subjects for four weeks of treatments monitoring iii sleep quality versus placebo. The result of the 1st clinical trial showed no significant effect of gemfibrozil versus placebo on TUD lab indices. The 2nd clinical trial showed a time effect on sleep scores that were significantly enhanced after 4 weeks of treatment. However, no drug effect was observed. In conclusion, it is highly recommended to conduct more RCTs in the fields of SUD in order to obtain better success rates with fewer side effects. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Geng, Xuesong | Silverman, Brian S. | Categories and Evaluation Bias in Valuation of Technological Innovation | Management | 2009-11 | This dissertation examines the perceptual bias of investors and securities analysts (the “audience” in the stock market) in their valuation of public firms’ innovative activities. I suggest that such bias occurs because the audience views a firm’s innovation through the prism of the firm’s categorization in product markets – its industry category – which may only loosely conform to the technological interrelationship among firms in knowledge space. I explore theoretically the conditions under which evaluation bias is most likely to occur – notably, due to innovations that defy the existing categorical structure used by the audience. Based on this theoretical framework, I develop hypotheses for empirical tests. I first argue that both technological opportunities and technological threats residing outside a firm’s industry are more likely to be underestimated by the stock market than those residing within the industry. In a sample of large U.S. manufacturing firms covering the years 1980 through 2000, I collected patent data to reflect innovative activities of firms. I compare the effect of a firm’s innovative activities on its current market valuation and its future cash flows. Consistent with my predictions, I find that firms capitalizing on cross-industry opportunities are more likely to be undervalued, while firms facing cross-industry technological competition are more likely to be overvalued. I further argue that reliance on categorical identity for information cues may reduce the audience’s ability to adequately assess the value-relevance of innovations that deviate from the technological norm in an industry. By analyzing the absolute forecast errors in security analysts’ reports, I find confirming evidence that deviant innovations increase the forecast bias. I further argue and demonstrate that such bias is less prevalent for diversified firms and in industries with less stable categorical “norms,” two conditions in which the audience is less likely to rely on categorical information and more likely to employ firm-specific information. Finally, I discuss the contribution and implication of the findings to studies of categorization and value-relevance of technological innovations. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Genovese, Matthew Paul | Lian, Keryn | Self-Assembled Carbon-Polyoxometalate Composites for Electrochemical Capacitors | Materials Science and Engineering | 2017-11 | The development of high performance yet cost effective energy storage devices is critical for enabling the growth of important emerging sectors from the internet of things to grid integration of renewable energy. Material costs are by far the largest contributor to the overall cost of energy storage devices and thus research into cost effective energy storage materials will play an important role in developing technology to meet real world storage demands. In this thesis, low cost high performance composite electrode materials for supercapacitors (SCs) have been developed through the surface modification of electrochemically double layer capacitive (EDLC) carbon substrates with pseudocapacitive Polyoxometalates (POMs). Significant fundamental contributions have been made to the understanding of all components of the composite electrode including the POM active layer, cation linker, and carbon substrate. The interaction of different POM chemistries in solution has been studied to elucidate the novel ways in which these molecules combine and the mechanism underlying this combination. A more thorough understanding regarding the cation linkerâ s role in electrode fabrication has been developed through examining the linker properties which most strongly affect electrode performance. The development of porosity in biomass derived carbon materials has also been examined leading to important insights regarding the effect of substrate porosity on POM modification and electrochemical properties. These fundamental contributions enabled the design and performance optimization of POM-carbon composite SC electrodes. Understanding how POMs combine in solution, allowed for the development of mixed POM molecular coatings with tunable electrochemical properties. These molecular coatings were used to modify low cost biomass derived carbon substrates that had been structurally optimized to accommodate POM molecules. The resulting electrode composites utilizing low cost materials fabricated through simple scalable techniques demonstrated (i) high capacitance (361 F g-1), (ii) close to ideal pseudocapacitive behavior, (iii) stable cycling, and (iv) good rate performance. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| George, Tammy | Razack, Sherene H. | Be All You Can Be or Longing to Be: Racialized soldiers, the Canadian military experience and the Im/Possibility of belonging to the nation | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2016-11 | Military conquest and intervention have played a central role in the making and maintaining of empires for centuries. The question of who serves in those militaries remains extremely significant in settler societies, particularly in the contemporary negotiation of citizenship, immigration, national belonging and identity. In this dissertation I ask the following questions: Who is the racialized soldier subject? How do racialized soldiers negotiate national belonging? What are their experiences in the Canadian military? This research study examines the racial underpinnings of citizenship through an exploration of the experiences of racialized soldier subjects in the Canadian Forces in the post 9/11 era. The study is based on in-depth interviews with twenty-five reserve and retired soldiers, both men and women from various racialized communities in Canada. Drawing on a â race cognizantâ poststructuralism and feminist critical race theories of subjectivity, masculinity, nation formation, citizenship and racial discourse, this research reveals several important findings. First, this dissertation reveals that while the Canadian military projects itself as a racially diverse institution, the reality is quite different. In this thesis, I theorize military recruitment as a project of inclusion into a white culture. Racialized soldiers join the military family for a number of reasons, but often experience the military as duplicitous and are at times met with enormous bureaucracy. Their journeys into the military reveal complex structural conditions that make joining the military a viable option. Once in the military, interviews with racialized soldiers reveal the visceral nature of whiteness within the Canadian military apparatus. The narratives of soldiers of colour also show that despite the amount of racial labour involved in negotiating this white space, there still remains a desire to belong. In battle zones, soldiers of colour often display an ambivalence if not a critique of the racist and Orientalist underpinnings of war. Yet they remain dedicated and are proud of their military service. These findings have important implications for understanding institutional diversity, the experiences of military life and finally, the undeniable role of racism in modern day warfare. | Ph.D. | equitable, labour | 4, 8 |
| Germain, Rachel M. | Gilbert, Benjamin | Historical Contingencies in the Ecology and Evolution of Species Diversity | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2016-11 | Ecologists have long-sought to explain the high diversity of species in biological communities, given that classic theory predicts that diversity is limited by available niche space. In recent years, ecologists have looked towards â historical contingenciesâ , the persistent effects of past ecological and evolutionary processes, as possible mechanisms that maintain diverse communities, either by relaxing the constraints of niche availability or by adding temporal dimensions to speciesâ niches. In this thesis, I use field and greenhouse experiments to explore three ways in which historical contingencies manifest in annual plant communities. First, my work on maternal effects shows that abiotic (ch. 2) and biotic (ch.3) conditions in the maternal generation have diverse effects on offspring phenotypes across an assemblage of species. Because species differences in environmental responses can facilitate coexistence, these studies suggest that maternal effects could act as a form of niche differentiation, and motivate future research to clarify their influences on coexistence outcomes. Second, I performed, to my knowledge, the first experimental decoupling of dispersal limitation and environmental sorting in a natural landscape by manipulating entire seed pools of annual plants (ch. 4). In doing so, I was able to identify the pervasive and scale-specific influences of dispersal limitation that constrain species distributions in plant communities. Lastly, I used competitive trials to identify macroevolutionary divergence in competitive interactions among species (ch. 5), and found evidence that divergence is contingent on historical competitive interactions in ways that are consistent with character displacement. In sum, my dissertation work has expanded our understanding of (i) the number of potential niche dimensions that might allow species to differentiate, (ii) how this differentiation can arise over evolutionary time, and (iii) the interplay of current and historical conditions in the maintenance of species diversity, and the timescales over which they play out. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Gewurtz, Rebecca E. | Kirsh, Bonnie | Instituting Market-based Principles within Social Services for People Living with Mental Illness: The Case of the Revised ODSP Employment Supports Policy | Rehabilitation Science | 2011-06 | Policies are shaped by social values and assumptions, and can significantly impact the delivery of health and social services. Marginalized groups are often disadvantaged in the political realm and reliant on publicly funded services and supports. The purpose of this research is to consider how public policies are constructed and implemented for marginalized groups and to increase understanding of the consequences of policy reform. It draws on a case study of the Ontario Disability Support Program, Employment Supports (ODSP-ES) and considers the impact of the policy revision that occurred in 2006 on employment support services for people living with mental illness. A constructivist grounded theory approach guided data collection and analysis. Key policy documents were analyzed and 25 key informant interviews were conducted with individuals who were involved in: the construction and/or implementation of the policy; developing and/or delivering employment services under the policy; or advocacy work related to the policy. The findings highlight the impact of outcome-based funding on employment services and practices, and provide lessons for the construction and implementation of public policy for marginalized groups. The new funding system has promoted a shift from a traditional social service model of employment supports towards a marketing model, wherein services focus on increasing job placement and short-term job retention rates. However, the introduction of market principles into employment services has had significant implications for people living with mental illness. Employment programs are required to absorb increased financial risk, thereby altering the way service providers work with clients to help them find and keep jobs; there is a heightened focus on the rapid placement of clients into available jobs and less attention to the quality of employment being achieved and to complex barriers that prevent individuals from succeeding with employment. Although ODSP-ES has been somewhat successful at connecting people with disabilities to competitive employment, it has led to secondary consequences that compromise its overall utility. The findings highlight the complexity of constructing and implementing public policy for marginalized groups and suggest that evaluating public policy is an interpretative exercise that should be explored from multiple perspectives beyond the stated objectives. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Ghali, Mona | Bickmore, Kathy | Education and (in)security: The Canadian International Development Agency's Education Sector Aid to Conflict-affected States, 2000-2013 | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-03 | This study investigates the relationship between education aid and security (goals, understandings, and discourses) in conflict-affected and post-conflict states, using Michel Foucault's archaeological and genealogical analytical methods. I used a comparative historical (archaeological) analysis to examine continuities and discontinuities in education reconstruction practices from 1945 to 2013, to develop a typology of education aid goals and practices comprising stabilization, protection, peacebuilding and statebuilding, and to identify historical trends and patterns in education aid to conflict-affected states. Next, I adopted a genealogical method to examine the Canadian International Development Agency's (CIDA's) education sector aid to Afghanistan Colombia, and (South) Sudan from 2000 until 2013. This genealogy entailed identifying the multiple security apparatuses inclusive of discursive and non-discursive practices that construct and reify security threats and risks, and the relationship between dominant understandings of security and education aid practices. The genealogical analysis revealed how CIDA, and the Canadian government more broadly, linked Canada's education aid with its foreign policy priorities through mechanisms ostensibly mandated to improve public sector accountability. In this context, accountability constituted a form governmentality--ways in which the government regulated the conduct of CIDA managers, and ensured domestic public support for Canada's development assistance program by shaping (through discourses) ways of thinking about aid, instead of employing directly coercive measures. The findings indicate that, in each country case study, CIDA's education aid practices were historically and contextually contingent, and embedded within a security apparatus. Broadly speaking, the security apparatus affected education aid in four main ways. First, the security apparatus produced subjectivities of at-risk (vulnerable) or risky (dangerous) populations which became the object of education sector interventions. Second, the security apparatus delimited the spatial dimension of Canada's aid commitments by separating and isolating territories. In some instances the security apparatus precluded areas from CIDA aid; in other instances it concentrated aid on a specific border zone, province, or areas. Third, the security apparatus entailed the use of education aid as a mechanism to regulate or discipline the conduct of populations. Fourth, CIDA's education sector aid divided the world into secure and insecure zones, particularly after 2005-2006. In secure zones, education contributes to a knowledge economy and continuous learning; in insecure, conflict-affected areas, education aid is used to manage populations perceived as at-risk and risky. Finally, the study draws attention to the possibility that, differently imagined and problematized, alternate understandings of security could support education reconstruction for transformative social change. | Ph.D. | inclusive, peace | 4, 16 |
| Gibbings, Sheri Lynn | Barker, Joshua | Unseen Powers; Transparency and Conspiracy in a Street Vendor Relocation in Yogyakarta, Indonesia | Anthropology | 2012-03 | This dissertation examines how a group of street vendors in Yogyakarta City, Indonesia, experienced a government-organized relocation from Mangkubumi Street to a newly renovated marketplace. In particular, I explore the strategies taken by the leaders of a street vendor organization called Pethikbumi to refuse the relocation and claim their right to the street. Contestations over streets, street vending and street vendor relocations constitute important moments during which citizenship, democracy and belonging are negotiated in the city. I argue that the conflict over belonging and democracy took the form of a social drama and was shaped and structured by specific moral appeals, public performances, and processes of imitation (cf. Turner 1974). The study begins with an exploration of the history of street vending and the pedagang kaki lima (street vendor) in Indonesia. I outline how the pedagang kaki lima were viewed as “dirty”, a simplified code for the transgression of social, spatial and legal boundaries. I move on to explore the way the street vendors of Pethikbumi drew on ideas of “the people” (rakyat), democracy and transparency in claiming their rights. I analyze the ways that Pethikbumi drew on important moments in Indonesia’s past and present, situating this relocation conflict as significant and as part of “history”. The relocation was also rooted in an epistemology of “skepticism” derived from an awareness of the ambiguity and tension between appearances and realities (cf. Anderson 1990). Pethikbumi engaged in tactics to both reveal and conceal the “unseen powers” that were imagined as working behind the scenes to generate conflict. The conflict over the relocation to a marketplace was not only a fight over who had access to the street but also a struggle over what constitutes democracy, how to achieve transparency, and who belongs in post-Suharto Indonesia. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Gibson, John Howard | Karney, Bryan||Guo, Yiping | Water Quality and Hydraulic Trade-offs in Drinking Water Distribution Networks | Civil Engineering | 2019-06 | Historically, water distribution network design focused on providing water at the appropriate flow and pressure, particularly during high-demand and firefighting conditions. More recently, it was discovered that 18% of waterborne disease outbreaks in the U.S. could be linked to deficiencies in the distribution network (DN), shifting the distribution network research focus towards water quality. This thesis uses genetic algorithms to assess some of the tensions between providing high flows for firefighting and water quality in drinking water distribution networks. It is shown that relaxing the traditional design restrictions on minimum pipe diameters (i.e., that they be greater than 150 mm) can provide an improved balance of fire flow, water quality, and cost. Using genetic algorithms to generate a series of Pareto Fronts, it is shown that there are significant trade-offs between fire flow and achieving high flow velocities associated with establishing self-flushing pipes. Self-flushing pipes are believed to reduce high-turbidity water events, a major source of consumer complaints. A Monte Carlo simulation suggests that a velocity of 0.10 to 0.25 m/s is self-flushing. An additional benefit of high velocity networks may include better disinfectant mass transfer to the pipe wall, where opportunistic pathogens are likely to be found. To achieve these higher velocities, this work suggests a need to relax minimum pipe diameters, reduce redundant network loops, and reduce available fire flows. This approach is now used in several European countries but has yet to be adopted in North America. Finally, it is shown that health risks associated with intrusion remain relatively constant over time, even as the number of defects in the pipe and intrusion volume increase. It is suggested that health risks are a weak function of intrusion volume. Important risk factors for intrusion likely include the number of low-pressure events and the average pipe residence time. | Ph.D. | health, water, consum | 3, 6, 12 |
| Gibson, Margaret F. | Sakamoto, Izumi | Filtered Out: LGBTQ Parents Engage with Special Needs Service Systems | Social Work | 2015-06 | Using ethnographic methods, this study started from the everyday activities and narratives of LGBTQ parents of children with 'special needs'. A critical approach to intersectionality was employed to consider how certain parents, children, and families are constructed as "different" or "not fitting" in particular settings and contexts, and what consequences follow (Crenshaw, 1991; Gibson, 2013). Fifteen parents and six key informants were interviewed, all of whom were based in the Greater Toronto Area. Methods used were drawn from institutional ethnography (Smith 2005) and discourse analysis (Gee, 2005; Riessman, 2008). The study found that special needs services systems operate to `filter out' potential service users at multiple points of contact, regardless of the intentions of individual providers or the written policies of organizations. Parents encounter interpersonal and text-based, procedural barriers that discourage, deny, and defer claims. As a result, parents do extensive `systemwork' to improve the chances that their children will receive needed supports, and to fill in the gaps when they do not.This institutional reliance on parental work and the resulting framework of competition means that what children and families receive is highly variable. Parents marshal whatever financial, social, and relational resources they have in support of their efforts. Often `going private' is the only or best means of being able to secure or augment public services, however only some parents have the financial means to do so. For parents and children with fewer resources and privileges, it is more difficult to avoid being filtered out. Parents reported particular vulnerabilities and strategies related to their LGBTQ identities as they navigated special needs services. Parent narratives reflected the ways that parents both contend with and reshape dominant ways of thinking about queerness and disability. The impact of dominant notions about `desirable' children and parents could not only be seen in parents' narratives and strategies, but also in their reluctance to engage with special needs systems. This discursive background is thus another means in which parents are filtered out. These findings have implications for users, researchers, and providers of special needs service systems, particularly those who want to make special needs service provision accessible and responsive to all. | Ph.D. | institution, queer | 5, 16 |
| Gibson, Rachael Elizabeth | Bathelt, Harald | Dynamic Capitalisms? Understanding Patterns of Technological Specialization through an Exploration of Interfirm Interaction at International Trade Fairs | Political Science | 2018-11 | In recent years, the study of comparative capitalisms has raised important questions about the dynamic elements of capitalist diversity and the need for better explanations of institutional change. Building on this and related literatures in political economy and economic geography, this thesis explores a source of economic dynamism that has been overlooked in political science: international trade fairs. Despite their relative neglect in this field, trade fairs have long been recognized as an important promotional and sales tool. More recently, scholars have conceptualized trade fairs as critical sites through which global knowledge flows are circulated and ideas for innovation explored. From this perspective, trade fairs represent important platforms for networking, interactive learning, and knowledge exchange because they foster intense interactions among actors despite spatial boundaries. And, since trade fairs are organized according to a specific technological or industry focus, they facilitate interactions between firms from different capitalist varieties. Through the diffusion of state-of-the-art knowledge, trade fairs may serve as drivers of economic globalization, challenging the continuation of distinct capitalist varieties by enabling cross-system convergence regarding the technological specialization of firms. Yet, it is clear that countries have retained competitive advantages in specific industries and that full convergence has not taken place. Adopting a mixed-methods approach, this thesis addresses this puzzle, first, by exploring the micro-processes of search through a qualitative study. Using the garbage-can model and the “organized anarchy” concept, it finds that firms’ search processes rarely follow a linear or rational trajectory; yet, they are guided by the pre-existing production contexts and knowledge bases of their home countries. The empirical foundations of these findings are broadened through a quantitative study, which identifies different learning and search patterns between German and U.S. firms at trade fairs, largely consistent with the Varieties of Capitalism perspective. Taken together, the analysis reveals the path-dependent nature of firms’ search processes and suggests that firms from different countries are embedded in distinct paths and tend to follow their specific pathway. The thesis highlights the role of trade fairs as mediators of global economic processes and calls for greater attention to these events in political science. | Ph.D. | innovation, institution | 9, 16 |
| Giesbrecht, Jodi | Radforth, Ian | Killing the Beast: Animal Death in Canadian Literature, Hunting, Photography, Taxidermy, and Slaughterhouses, 1865-1920 | History | 2012-11 | This dissertation explores the ways in which practices of killing animals in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Canada shaped humans’ perceptions of self and place. Analyzing the multivalent meanings of animal death in wild animal stories, sport hunting, photography, taxidermy, and meat eating, I argue that killing animals was integral to the expansion of settler colonialism in the dominion, materially facilitating the extension of agriculture and industry, and rhetorically legitimizing claims to conquest over indigenous peoples and wild landscapes. But humans’ self-definitions through animal death were not straightforward tales of mastery. Increasingly aware of the disappearance of wildlife from the dominion’s forests, less dependent upon wildlife for subsistence, women and men attributed greater cultural, political, and economic value to the nation’s animals, empathizing with animals and condemning animal extinction. Expressing a sense of guilt over human culpability in the vanishing of wild species, then, humans sought ways of defeating the ravages of modernity by preserving traces of animals in material, representational forms, using encounters with animals as means of defining a sense of self and nation. Fictional stories of animals proliferated, sport hunting soared in popularity, and taxidermied animals adorned many walls. Contemporaries killed animals as a means of legitimizing colonial occupation of newly settled land and asserting mastery over nature, then, but they also regretted their role in precipitating the disappearance of animals from nature. In reconciling this paradox, human and animal engaged in an ongoing process of co-constitution, defining and redefining shifting boundaries of kinship and otherness in a myriad of ways. Such paradoxical meanings of animal death emerged when humans were no longer reliant upon wild animals for survival. As such, I conclude this study by analyzing an important counterpart to wild animal death—the slaughtering of domestic animals as meat. Eating commercially produced meat increasingly defined one’s status as a modern subject within a technologically advanced and civilized nation, the transition from eating wild animals to domestic animals symbolizing a sense of success in overcoming the challenges of settlement in a colonial landscape. | PhD | forest, agriculture, industr | 2, 9 |
| Gill, Jagjeet Kaur | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | Minding the Gap: Understanding the Experiences of Racialized/Minoritized Bodies in Special Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-11 | The issue of special education in the United States has been a contentious issue, at best, for the past 40 years. In Ontario, to a lesser extent, there have been issues of equal access to education for minoritized and racialized students. Special education in the Toronto area has not been without its issues surrounding parental advocacy, the use of assessments, and disproportionate number of English Language Learners in special education. This project examines how racialized and minoritized families understand special education practices and policies, specifically within the Toronto, York, Peel, and Halton Regions. The investigation is informed by nine interviews with students in grades 7 to 12, their respective mothers, and five special education administrators and educators. Students and parents identified themselves as Black, Latino/a, and South Asian. Within these categories, parents identified themselves as Somali, Trinidadian, Jamaican, and Punjabi-Sikh. Students were identified with a range of disabilities including learning, behavioural, and/or intellectual. This research focuses on ways to interrogate and examine the experiences of minoritized students and their parents by bringing forward otherwise silenced voices and understanding what it means to “speak out” against the process of identification and placement in special education. The findings of this investigation suggest a disconnect how policies and practices are implemented, and how, parents’ rights are understood. In particular, policies are inconsistently applied and are subject to the interpretation of educators and administrators, especially in relation to parental involvement and how much information should be released to families. The issue of language acquisition being read as a disability was also a noted concern. This investigation points to implications for teacher education programs, gaps in parental advocacy and notions of parental participation within schools, and re-examining special education assessments, practices, and policies. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Gill, Ralph | Fadel, Mohammad | Corporate Governance, Corporate Culture, and Innovation | Law | 2020-03 | Mainstream corporate theory posits the standard shareholder-centered model (“SSM”) as the global normative standard for corporate governance and predicts convergence around a universalistic set of core principles and best practices, regardless of industry context; this thesis develops “knowledge primacy” as a production and knowledge-based critique of SSM. Knowledge primacy suggests optimal allocation of control in a firm’s governance structure is contingent upon, and an endogenous response to, the nature of its production process; it reviews empirical evidence and develops theory to support its hypothesis of an optimally inverse relationship between shareholder rights and the complexity of a firm’s production process, arising from: (i) problems of evaluation and control, and non-contractibility that increase with the knowledge formation, trust, and social exchange requirements of complex, knowledge-based production; and (ii) the tradeoff between lower agency costs and higher governance or “principal costs” associated with the allocation of control under conditions of “knowledge inversion” to cognitively unqualified public shareholders, resulting in net losses from the separation of knowledge and control. In certain production contexts, SSM is destructive of shareholder value, firm value, and social welfare. It rests upon a set of fundamentally ideological assumptions and assertions incongruent with the underlying logic, structure, and historical evolution of corporate law, which has accommodated the needs of increasingly complex production by shrinking the bundle of property rights associated with share ownership, thereby preserving optimal integration of knowledge and control. A neo-institutional perspective on organizations suggests that vestigial formal governance structures, such as shareholder meetings and shareholder votes, are institutionalized myths and ceremonies, retained and enacted as societally legitimated rationalized elements to provide cover for the decoupling of formal and informal controls required by complex production; the formal role of shareholders in the legal-rational structure of corporate governance may be largely symbolic, analogous to that of the Crown in the civic institutions of a constitutional monarchy such as Canada, or the “peppercorn” theory of consideration in the law of contract. The disruptive general implications of such a view for SSM are explored herein; knowledge primacy is compared and contrasted with director primacy and team production critiques of SSM. | S.J.D. | institution | 16 |
| Gill, Simerpal | Koren, Gideon | Investigating Sources of Variability in Pharmacological Response to Nausea and Vomiting of Pregnancy | Pharmacology | 2010-03 | Nausea and vomiting of pregnancy (NVP) is the most common medical condition in pregnancy, and, unfortunately, variability exists among pregnant women in the therapeutic effect of anti-emetics as well as in factors that can exacerbate NVP. Identifying and managing these sources of variability will result in significant improvements in the quality of life of pregnant woman. This dissertation addressed clinical pharmacology strategies in managing NVP by focusing on three predominant areas of variability. The first challenge addressed in this dissertation was women with pre-existing gastrointestinal (GI) conditions and adherence and tolerability to prenatal multivitamin supplementation. To identify the role of iron in reducing adherence and increasing NVP and GI symptoms, two separate studies were conducted. In the first study, women randomized to a prenatal multivitamin supplementation with higher iron content experienced more adverse GI effects and increased severity of NVP symptoms. In the second study, after discontinuing iron-containing prenatal multivitamins, two-thirds of women in a prospective cohort reported improvement in their NVP symptoms which was corroborated with validated scales to quantify NVP severity. The second challenge addressed in this dissertation was the effect of heartburn and acid reflux on the severity of NVP. In a controlled, prospective study, women experiencing heartburn and acid reflux experienced greater severity of NVP compared to women with no GI symptoms. Furthermore, treatment of heartburn and acid reflux with acid-reducing pharmacotherapy with associated with a reduction in GI symptoms and NVP severity. Therefore, histamine 2 blockers or proton pump inhibitors, which do not appear to be associated with increased fetal risks, should be administered when required. The third clinical pharmacology challenge addressed in this dissertation was to determine the pharmacokinetic variability of the active ingredients of Diclectin®, first-line pharmacotherapy for the treatment of NVP. Large variability was observed in the area under the curve for both active metabolites: a 6.5-fold difference for pyridoxal-5’-phosphate and a 2.1-fold difference for doxylamine. Whether these pharmacokinetic differences contribute to suboptimal efficacy remains to be determined. In conclusion, based on the results presented in this dissertation, several improvements in clinical pharmacology strategies can be made to enhance management of NVP. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Gilmour, Julie Frances | Bothwell, Robert | "The kind of people Canada wants": Canada and the Displaced Persons, 1943-1953 | History | 2006-06 | In 1947 the federal government of Canada began a program to move European Displaced Persons (DP) out of the International Refugee Organization (IRO) camps in Germany and Austria. This program, designed to fill chronic labour shortages in Canada’s resource industries and contribute to a solution for Europe’s refugee crisis, occurred in a transitional moment in Canadian society. Canadians emerged from World War Two with a new sense of Canada’s role in the world, but despite a changed international climate, a new discourse of human rights and a potentially robust economy, old perceptions of race, immigration and economic management lingered in the postwar years complicating the work of a new generation of civil servants, politicians and industry operators. This is a history of the transition. It demonstrates the ways that old and new ideas of the nation, citizenship, race and immigration co-existed. It highlights the significance of the beginnings of a debate on the elimination of discrimination based on race in Canada’s immigration policy; shows the link between economic prosperity and popular support for immigration; and demonstrates the importance of individuals within industry, the civil service and in government in national decision-making. This is an international history, spanning the Atlantic and bringing a global perspective to local experience in Canadian industries. Chapters on the federal decision making process are supplemented by evidence from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the IRO, the Ontario Ministry of Education and forestry, mining and hydro industries. It uses a variety of methodologies including policy history, oral history, public opinion polling, gender, ethnicity and labour studies to investigate the implications of these decisions for Canadian society. It demonstrates that the 1947-1951 movement of DPs was initiated primarily under dual pressure from Canadians who had served abroad and industry leaders who had previously used POW labour to solve on going shortages in the bush. These decisions were strongly informed by both the crisis in Europe and Canadian assumptions about race, labour and citizenship. By examining the expectations Canadians had for the behaviour of its newest arrivals and future citizens this study highlights the foundations of Canadian citizenship in 1947: community participation, contribution to the development of the economy, and political loyalty to the nation. | PhD | gender, labour, rights | 5, 8, 16 |
| Gilraine, John Michael | McMillan, Robert | Three Essays in the Economics of Education | Economics | 2017-11 | In principal, public education provides a child's key means of skill accumulation, irrespective of background. In practice, however, the actual performance of public schooling is a disappointment, with stakeholders concerned that the current state of public education heightens inequality and prepares students inadequately for the workforce or higher learning. This thesis develops and applies novel econometric techniques to highlight education policies that may increase student achievement and reduce the pervasive test score gaps that plague public education today. Chapter 1 sets out a new approach that enables me to credibly identify dynamic interactions among school inputs for the first time. Such an approach is rarely adopted in empirical research due to stringent requirements: in an observational setting, identifying dynamic interactions requires period-by-period randomization. I overcome this challenge by combining rich administrative data with a rule whereby students are held accountable only if there are forty or more students in their demographic group. The rule provides useful year-to-year variation, supplying the backbone of my identification strategy. I then estimate the technology structurally and consider the efficacy of alternative accountability schemes: conditioning on initial test scores rather than prior test scores can increase average achievement and reduce inequality. Chapter 2 proposes an approach that allows researchers to identify separate treatment components from a single discontinuity. As an application, I consider the discontinuity associated with class size caps -- a widespread education policy used to reduce class sizes. My approach exploits the asymmetry between school-grades entering versus exiting treatment to distinguish the pure effect of changes in class size from the effect of a newly-hired teacher. Using data from New York City, I find that class size reductions increase student achievement, though these gains are counteracted by the newly-hired teacher. Chapter 3 uses a regression discontinuity design to investigate the merits of decentralized public goods provision in the context of Title I, the largest U.S. federal education funding program. My results indicate that the negligible impact of Title I is caused by its centralized nature: in a decentralized form, Title I generates a substantial improvement in student achievement, particularly for the socioeconomically disadvantaged. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, educat, equality, inequality | 1, 4, 5, 10 |
| Girard-Pearlman, Jeannine | Magnusson, Jamie Lynn | Between the Idea and the Reality: An Intersectional Anlaysis of the Challenges of Teaching Health Advocacy as a Means to Achieve Social Responsibility in Medicine | Leadership, Higher Education and Adult Education | 2013-06 | Canada, like other countries around the world, has health inequities. The literature on social accountability and responsibility urges medical schools to be grounded in the needs of communities to address health inequities. The Canadian professional and regulatory bodies promote the CanMEDS Competencies of which one, the Health Advocate Competency, speaks of addressing community issues. Yet medical schools face challenges actualizing social responsibility and teaching the Health Advocate Competency. Therefore it is important to understand how the teaching of health advocacy and social responsibility is incorporated into the undergraduate curricula of self-defined socially responsible medical schools in Canada. In this study, mixed methods were used beginning with a semi-structured questionnaire administered to undergraduate Course Directors at two medical schools in Canada with a response rate of 74% (n=60). This was followed by a series of open-ended interviews with eleven equity leaders to bring their perspective into the data collection and establish knowledge about frontline intersectional equity work. The major theoretical lens encircling this work was intersectionality which examines historical oppression and how the intersection of gender, race, and class compound health inequities. Questionnaire results made it clear that biomedical ideology and the CanMEDS Medical Expert Competency were privileged in the undergraduate curriculum at the expense of other knowledge such as health advocacy and social responsibility. The objective biomedical discourse ignores or marginalizes important social influences on health which are highlighted by using an intersectional lens. The semi-structured interviews provided rich data about working in an intersectional equity framework highlighting the impact of the intersections of race, gender, class and other identities on health inequities. These interviews also demonstrate the importance of health advocacy in improving health care outcomes and addressing social responsibility. Incorporating intersectionality into previously accepted assessment tools for physicians adds an important dimension to the health care encounter. Explicitly embedding social responsibility and health advocacy in the medical school mission and curriculum is essential to their acceptance. A series of supporting recommendations are offered. | PhD | gender, health | 3, 5 |
| Gladstone, Brenda McConnell | McKeever, Patricia ||Boydell, Katherine | "All in the Same Boat": An Analysis of a Support Group for Children of Parents with Mental Illnesses | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2010-06 | The effectiveness of psychoeducation and peer support programs for children of mentally ill parents is frequently measured by demonstrating children’s ability to meet program goals according to pre-defined categories determined by adults. Little is known about how children respond to these goals, whether they share them, and how, or if, their needs are met. I conducted an ethnographic study of one such group for school-aged children. I examined how specific discourses framed the content of the program manual designed to educate and support children and I observed how children responded to the program. My study is rooted in Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgical analyses of the reciprocal influence individuals have on one another in face-to-face encounters. From a critical dramaturgical perspective the participants were expected to conform to behavioural expectations of the setting, itself framed by broader arenas of interaction in which shared institutionalized meanings govern (often idealized) presentations of self. Data collection included: 1. a critical discourse analysis of the program manual; 2. participant observation of interactions during the eight-week program; and 3. children’s evaluations of the program in a separate group interview. Being identified as “as all in the same boat” was meaningful and consequential for children who were expected to learn mental health/illness information because, “knowledge is power”, and to express difficult feelings about being a child of a mentally ill parent. Children could be said to have achieved the goals of the program because they developed a mutual understanding about how to interpret and give meaning to their circumstances; “recognizing” unpredictable behaviours as signs of illness and becoming responsible for managing only how “their own story would go”. Children were not expected to care for ill parents, even when they wanted some responsibility, and were strongly discouraged from turning to friends for support. Children strategized to negotiate and resist group expectations and challenge assumptions about being “all in the same boat”. Suggestions are made for determining what constitutes “good” mental health literacy based on children’s preferences for explaining their circumstances in ways they find relevant and for supporting children’s competencies to manage relationships that are important to them. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Gladstone, Lia | Gérin-Lajoie, Diane | Learning From Rape Crisis Volunteers: Remembering The Past, Envisioning The Future | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-11 | While research on sexual violence, rape crisis centres and volunteers is extensive, there are very few empirical studies that draw specifically on the experiences of rape crisis volunteers. Instead, most of the literature pertaining to rape crisis work focuses on the efforts of social workers or other paid staff. When rape crisis volunteers are examined, the focus is primarily on the context through which their work is performed, for instance, how a rape crisis centre operates in relation to other community organizations (Campbell, 1998) or whether a specific rape crisis centre upholds feminist philosophies (Maier, 2008). Studies are also usually restricted to the negative effects of rape crisis work (for example, how rape crisis workers experience anxiety, social withdrawal and vicarious trauma) or focus on what sustains rape crisis workers while working in a stressful environment (Baird and Jenkins, 2003; Hellman and House, 2006; Thornton and Novak, 2010; Wasco and Campbell, 2002). Using the life history approach, this study builds on previous research and explores the experiences of volunteers at rape crisis centres across Ontario, Canada. In particular, the following issues were examined: motivations to volunteer, personal challenges and tensions, as well as challenges with respective centres. Findings indicate that all participants in the study have directly and/or indirectly experienced a range of different kinds of violence. Also, participants noted a range of complex and interconnected motivations for their initial and ongoing involvement in rape crisis work, most notably, self-healing. Finally, most participants expressed hesitancy towards identifying as feminists and did not associate feminism and the anti-violence movement as being strictly related to women. Theorizing the experiences of rape crisis volunteers through the lens of standpoint theory offers a new approach to knowledge construction in the area of rape crisis work and points towards the way that services, including training, can be improved for volunteers. Furthermore, the life history approach offers a unique way to understand the experiences of rape crisis volunteers in greater depth and breadth, since attention was placed on the volunteer process as well as other life experiences. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Glas, Aarie | Hoffmann, Matthew J. | Habits of Peace: The Foundations of Long-Term Regional Cooperation in Southeast Asia and South America | Political Science | 2017-11 | The regions of Southeast Asia and South America are often cited as puzzling cases of long peace among nation-states. Absent hard power balancing behaviours, liberal democratic development, and economic interdependence, both present unlikely cases for prolonged periods of time absent large scale inter-state violence. This research begins with an inquiry into the foundations the long peace of each region: practices of conflict management. More narrowly, this project asks: How can we understand cooperation and community building alongside persistent militarized violence? Upon what foundations have these largely illiberal states been able to build relative but lasting peace despite pervasive territorial disputes? In answering these questions, this research argues that distinct and diplomatic habits shape the management of peace and conflict in each region. The underlying argument of this work is that the habitual and dispositional qualities of regional diplomatic practice inform the long peace of these regions and regional relations more generally. In each region, distinctive and discrete qualities of regional relations shape crisis response, but also shape how crises, themselves, are understood by regional diplomatic officials. These â habits of peaceâ make possible long-term regional cooperation and relative peace alongside persistent intra-regional violence. After articulating the conflictual nature of peace in each regional case, I suggest that existing understandings of regional long-peace overlook the practical and tactical foundations upon which interstate cooperation rest. I offer a theoretical framework and particular set of methods attentive to the habitual and dispositional qualities of inter-state relations. In the subsequent empirical cases I demonstrate the existence and effect of a particular regional habitual disposition in each region, with a particular focus on episodes of regional crisis including the 2011 Preah Vihear border dispute in Southeast Asia and the 1995 Cenepa conflict between Peru and Ecuador. | Ph.D. | peace | 16 |
| Goary, Woyengi | Williams, Charmaine C | The Institutional Organization of Black Female Child Protection Workers’ (Re)construction of their Role as Carers in Child Protection: An Institutional Ethnographic Inquiry | Social Work | 2018-06 | This institutional ethnographic study explores the coordinated processes that organize Black female child protection workers’ (re)construction of their role as carers in the Ontario child protection system. This examination occurs within the backdrop of colonialism and shifting and unequal power relations in Canada. Absent from social work research is an understanding of the complex sequences of actions in every day child protection activities that authorize colonial ideologies and practices and the impact of Black female child protection workers’ negotiation of this context on their well-being. This study’s informant sample includes 9 Black female child protection workers currently employed at a child protection institution in Ontario. Data was collected from semi-structured interviews and textual analysis. The findings revealed colonialism in the child protection system is maintained through institutional patterns of exclusion and acts of dissimulation in the institutional discourse and practice. In response, Black female child protection workers resist colonial practices through their injection of acts of caring into their work. At the same time, their constant experiences of structural violence lead to institutional trauma. This research highlights a contradiction within the social work framework; the overt espousal of human rights and social justice as ethical priorities, while covertly maintaining colonialism in the child protection system, specifically towards Black female child protection workers and their communities. The findings advance social work knowledge by offering a way to identify the existence and the impact of the colonial context on Black female child protection workers as well as map out the sequences of actions or inactions that embed colonial ideologies and practices in the child protection system. | Ph.D. | worker, justice, rights | 8, 16 |
| Goddard, Shannon | Cuthbertson, Brian H | Barriers and Facilitators to Early Physical Rehabilitation in Mechanically Ventilated Patients | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-06 | Background: Physical rehabilitation strategies, when initiated in critically ill patients, may improve functional outcomes of survivors and may shorten duration of mechanical ventilation and ICU length of stay, although evidence is conflicting. Despite some conflicting evidence, it has been recommended in clinical practice guidelines, but not been consistently implemented in critical care units. The implementation of complex interventions in healthcare is challenging, but may be improved using theory to understand barriers and facilitators, and ultimately to design interventions. The Theoretical Domains Framework (TDF) is a framework based on health psychology that was designed to improve implementation of evidence based practice. Methods: This dissertation describes a series of projects, based on the TDF, and aimed at understanding barriers and facilitators to early physical rehabilitation in mechanically ventilated patients. First, a systematic review of the literature, using the TDF to synthesize barriers and facilitators was done. The following two research chapters describe a Delphi study of nurses, physical and occupational therapists, respiratory therapists and physicians. The first round of the Delphi consisted of semi-structured interviews. With the TDF, a theoretically driven topic guide was developed and interviews analyzed using a theory-driven content analysis. The following rounds of the Delphi consisted of agree/disagree questions with a Likert scale, based on Round 1 results that were reviewed and prioritized by the research group. Results: The systematic review of the literature found that there was a general lack of theory in assessing barriers and facilitators. Using the TDF to synthesize, we found a significant focus on the domains of Behavioural Regulation, Environmental Context and Resources and Beliefs about Consequences. The Dephi study confirmed these findings, although also found a focus on the domains of Skills, Social and Professional Role, Beliefs about Capabilities, Social Influences, Knowledge and Optimism. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Godin, Paul Joseph | Strong, Kimberly | Laboratory Spectroscopy of Fluorinated Molecules for Atmospheric Physics | Physics | 2017-11 | Temperature-dependent absorption cross-sections are presented for five fluorinated molecules considered to be greenhouse gases due to being radiatively active in the mid-infrared. The molecules studied are perfluorotributylamine (PFTBA), 2,2,3,3,3- pentafluoropropanol (PFPO), 1,1,1,3,3,3-hexafluoro-2-propanol (HFIP), perfluorodecalin (PFDC), and 2H,3H-perfluoropentane (HFC-43-10mee). HFIP is a fluorinated liquid commonly used as a specialty solvent for some polar polymers and in organic synthesis. PFTBA, PFPO, and HFC-43-10mee are commonly used in electronic and industrial applications. PFDC is capable of dissolving large quantities of gases, making it useful for a variety of medical applications. Experimental absorption cross-sections were derived from Fourier transform infrared spectra recorded from 530 to 3400 cm â 1 with a resolution of 0.1 cm â 1 over a temperature range of 298 to 360 K. These results were compared to theoretical density functional theory (DFT) calculations and previously published experimental measurements made at room temperature. Theoretical DFT calculations were performed using the B3LYP method and a minimum basis set of 6-311+G(d,p). The calculations have determined the optimized geometrical configuration, infrared intensities, and wavenumbers of the harmonic frequencies for different ground-state configurations due to the presence of internal rotors. As the population of each configuration changes with temperature, changes in the experimental spectra were used to make accurate band assignments. From these band assignments, the DFT spectra were calibrated to match the experimental spectra, increasing the accuracy of the DFT prediction outside of the experimental range. Using the adjusted DFT-calculated spectra, the wavenumber range was extended beyond the experimental range to calculate radiative efficiencies and global warming potentials. When using only the experimental range, the new values agreed with previously published values. However, when the range was extended using the DFT spectra, the radiative efficiency and global warming potential were increased, suggesting that the current values are underestimating the climate impacts of these species. Additionally, work done on building a multipass White cell is presented. This new system can be used in the future to resolve weak lines to extract line parameters needed for atmospheric trace gas retrievals. | Ph.D. | global warming | 13 |
| Goh, Y. Ingrid | Koren, Gideon | Examining Different Levels of Prevention of Birth Defects and Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2009-03 | While all women hope to deliver a healthy baby, approximately 3-5% babies are affected by birth defects. Birth defects can occur naturally or be induced by teratogens. Alcohol is a known teratogen that causes fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), the most commonly known cause of neurobehavioural and neurodevelopmental deficits. Individuals affected with FASD are likely to be involved with or require additional assistance from healthcare, education, social services, and justice sectors. Due to this immense burden, effective prevention of FASD can have a major public impact. Prevention of FASD can occur at different levels: primary prevention (preventing alcohol-induced birth defects from occurring in the first place); secondary prevention (preventing alcohol-induced birth defects from developing or progressing); tertiary prevention (improving the outcome of individuals affected with FASD); and quaternary prevention (preventing another child from being affected with FASD). The objective of this thesis was to explore a multilevel birth defect and FASD prevention strategy. Primary prevention by was investigated by maternal multivitamin supplementation to optimize fetal growing conditions, as alcoholics are commonly deficient in nutrients. A meta-analysis of maternal multivitamin supplementation demonstrated a decreased risk for certain congenital anomalies and pediatric cancers. Secondary prevention was investigated by a randomized double-blinded placebo-controlled evaluating the ability of high doses of antioxidants (vitamin C and vitamin E) to mitigate the effects of prenatal alcohol exposure. The study was ceased due to safety concerns regarding high doses of vitamin C and vitamin E in preeclamptic studies. Tertiary prevention was investigated by anonymous meconium screening of babies of Grey-Bruce, Ontario residents delivering at or transferred to St. Joseph’s Health Care in London, Ontario. A 30% prevalence of fatty acid ethyl esters (FAEE) positive meconium was observed at this high-risk unit. Meconium screening is also a means of quaternary prevention since positive screens also identify mothers who were unable to stop consuming alcohol after 13 weeks of pregnancy, and therefore are at risk of delivering another child who is prenatally exposed to alcohol. The identification and engagement of these mothers into treatment programs constitutes primary prevention of FASD in subsequent pregnancies. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Golberg, Shari Beth | Gibbs, Robert | When Beruriah Met 'A'isha: Textual Intersections and Interactions Among Jewish and Muslim Women Engaged with Religious Law | Religion, Study of | 2013-11 | This study explores various understandings of religious authority, law and empowered textual interpretation among two distinct yet inter-related groups of Jewish and Muslim women: contemporary academics and laywomen in North America who are engaged in the study of classical religious texts. There are two modes through which I examine these interpretive activities by women: the first approach involves a comparative textual analysis of academic writings on religious texts by women, while the second utilizes feminist ethnography to zero in on the textual experiences of Jewish and Muslim laywomen who spent time studying religious texts together. Although the entitlements offered to women under secular laws in North America generally surpass those granted to them under Jewish and Islamic law, rather than abandoning religious laws entirely, Jewish and Muslim laywomen and exegetes continue to grapple with religious legal texts and praxis, since these are bound up with notions of identity, community and belonging. But rather than accepting the status quo, this highly-educated subset of Jewish and Muslim women empower themselves to reinterpret traditional texts and adapt communal practices to better reflect more inclusive and egalitarian values. Through their academic works, scholars such as Amina Wadud, Tikva Frymer-Kensky, Judith Hauptman, Fatima Mernissi, Kecia Ali and Rachel Adler revisit religious law and succeed in broadening the communal spaces, leadership roles and personal status entitlements available to Jewish and Muslim women. Similarly, when Toronto-based laywomen challenge the ideas coming from the pulpits of their local mosques and synagogues, or use their own knowledge of texts and other extra-textual sources to redefine how they eat, dress and pray as Muslims and Jews, they are pushing the boundaries of how each community views women, traditional praxis and authority, forcing us to confront what it means to be a Jewish or Muslim woman scholar in the twenty-first century. These acts of empowered interpretation and religio-legal reform among both laywomen and exegetes arise from a similar source: a "textual confidence", which is a strange alchemy of a solid traditional and secular education, strong familial and communal supports, but is equally related to one's geography, conceptions of gender and perceptions of authority. | PhD | gender, inclusive, women | 4, 5 |
| Goldberg, Caroline | McDonald, Lynn | Towards a Framework for Practice: A Phenomenological Study of Community Dwelling Holocaust Survivors' Social Work Service Needs | Social Work | 2011-11 | This phenomenological study explores the needs of community dwelling Holocaust survivors and proposes a framework for social work practice with this population. Data from qualitative interviews with Holocaust survivors and family caregivers of Holocaust survivors suggest that there are at least two different cohorts of Holocaust survivors in this study. These cohorts, referred to as classic and contemporary survivors in this dissertation, differ with regard to their age as well as the extent to which they are affected by numerous barriers relating to their health and physical ability as well as to language, education, and work background. A small number of respondents demonstrated characteristics belonging to both of the cohorts. A continuum, with classic survivors on one end of the scale and contemporary survivors on the other is therefore suggested as the best way to understand the differences between the two cohorts of Holocaust survivors in this study. Research findings compare and contrast these two ends of the continuum, as well as the cases which fit somewhere in the middle, and suggest the following five themes: 1. There are important similarities and differences between classic and contemporary survivors, 2. Individual Holocaust survivors, their family members and the larger community have all been affected by the Holocaust, 3. Identities and values have been impacted by the trauma associated with the Holocaust, 4. Survivor characteristics can be classified as characteristics of resiliency and/or vulnerability, (The sub-themes uncovered in this study relating to resiliency include fierce independence, a “never give up” mentality and a strong social conscience. The sub-themes relating to vulnerability include guarded trust, a “going without” mentality, increased vulnerability to loss, and loss of secure identity), and 5. The needs of the study population can be better understood by considering resiliency and vulnerability characteristics. The life course framework and individual and community trauma theories are applied to understand these research findings which inform the proposed framework for social work practice. | PhD | health, labour | 3, 8 |
| Goldman, Michael | Moodley, Roy | Beyond Acculturation: Cultural Constructions of Immigrant Resilience and Belonging in the Canadian Context | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-03 | The psychological literature on immigrants has identified numerous challenges of resettlement. Research on acculturation indicates that adaptive functioning is characterized as a bicultural prospect in which individuals balance their heritage and the dominant culture within the receiving society. This conceptualization of positive adaptation typically relegates culture to a broad-based and static property circumscribed within ethnicity, neglecting diverse cultural representations and the way specific mechanisms affect the process of adaptation. The current research sought immigrants’ subjective accounts of resilience. The aim of this study was to identify specific markers of significant adversity and corollary positive adaptation that intersect with diverse mechanisms of culture to develop a theory of cultural adaptation. A constructivist grounded theory approach was implemented in data collection and analysis. Eighteen first-generation immigrants, who represented a range of cultural backgrounds and geographic regions, each participated in one semi-structured interview. The overarching theme that emerged from data analysis, Belonging, was found to explicate the meaning of resilience for immigrants in terms of their cultural adaptation. Belonging indicated a process by which immigrants gained a sense of identification with and inclusion in Canadian society. Immigrants’ perception of Belonging was affected by two mid-level themes, Forming Attachments and Feeling Acceptance. Forming Attachments was contextually driven and highlighted a personal process of developing cultural attachments. The advancement of attachments, interpersonally, occupationally and to the larger sociocultural environment, was meaningful to recovery and had implications for Belonging. The second mid-level theme identified a reciprocal process of acceptance that revealed a struggle to accept cultural changes as well as the significance of feeling accepted as an equal member of society. Taken together, Forming Attachments and Feeling Acceptance had a significant effect on immigrants’ sense of Belonging and were contextualized within a range of cultural domains. This study highlights the dynamic role of culture in immigrant adaptation and contributes to both research and health care professionals by offering a framework of immigrant resilience that may promote healthy forms of functioning. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Gomaa, Noha AE | Quinonez, Carlos | The Biology of Social Adversity in Oral Disease | Dentistry | 2018-11 | Several pathways have been proposed to explain the relationship between adverse social and living conditions and oral health outcomes. However, little is known about the underlying biological mechanisms by which the social “gets under the skin” to bring about oral diseases. This work aims to investigate the pathobiological pathways by which adverse social exposures (focusing on socioeconomic position), become embodied in oral and systemic inflammation. The specific objectives are to: (1) evaluate the evidence on social-biological interactions in oral disease; (2) assess the contribution of socioeconomic factors to the association between periodontal and systemic inflammation; (3) assess socioeconomic differences in periodontal and oral immune parameters; and (4) examine the contribution of psychosocial stress factors and the activation of the stress pathway in these relationships. To do this, we first conducted a systematic review, based on which a conceptual model was plotted, followed by an analysis of secondary NHANES IV data where the contribution of socioeconomic position to the relationship between periodontal and systemic inflammation was assessed. Finally, an analysis of primary data was conducted to assess the socioeconomic differences in periodontal disease and oral immune outcomes and the contribution of financial stress, perceived stress and the stress hormone cortisol to these differences. Overall, the results showed that socioeconomic factors attenuate the relationship between periodontal disease and systemic inflammation, and that individuals on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic hierarchy are at a greater risk for a pro-inflammatory oral immune system that potentially increases their vulnerability to periodontal tissue damage. This relationship was significantly attenuated by the effect of financial and perceived stress and cortisol, indicating a biopsychosocial pathway between socioeconomic exposures and periodontal disease. Collectively, the results from this work show that the socioeconomic, psychosocial and biological factors have a convergent role in the oral disease process. Integrated policy solutions that target these underlying factors in oral disease and associated inequalities are required. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Gönlügür, Emre | Anderson, Christy||Scrivano, Paolo | American Architecture and the Promise of Modernization in Postwar Turkey | History of Art | 2014 | This dissertation examines the Turkish reception of American architectural culture in the post-World War II period, with particular focus on the manner and geographical scope of the transfer of American architecture overseas in the wake of the Marshall Plan. I analyze the vehicles for the transmission of American architecture, including professional publications, exhibitions, technical assistance missions, scholarly exchanges, and projects constructed with US funds. In order to account for the circulation of American architectural ideals in postwar Turkey, I also draw on new research on popular culture and examine films, women's and family magazines, travelogues, and newly-emerging consumption habits that were effective in transmitting and disseminating ideas about the American way of life. My main concern is to show how in the context of Turkey's modernization efforts during the 1950s Turkish architecture looked to, reinterpreted, and even contested American architecture, planning ideals and building technologies. To this end, this dissertation delineates three different instances of cultural interaction between Turkey and the United States, which highlight the diffusion of American architectural ideals to Turkish architectural scene: the construction of the Istanbul Hilton Hotel as the centerpiece for Turkey's attempt to increase its share of the growing international travel market; the US contribution to the Izmir International Trade Fair where American domestic design and consumer goods were put on display; and the establishment of a school of architecture and planning in the Turkish capital Ankara with the assistance of American experts. I argue that American architecture cannot simply be viewed as serving to advance US political and economic interests in Turkey. American buildings, planning ideals, and notions of domestic modernity helped channel Turkey's pursuit of modernization and progress which was concentrated in three major areas: the development of international tourism, the creation of a consumer economy and the establishment of institutions of higher education. | Ph.D. | buildings, trade, industr | 9, 10 |
| Gonzalez Jimenez, Alejandra | Napolitano, Valentina | Entanglements: Volkswagen de MĂŠxico and Global Capitalism | Anthropology | 2017-11 | This dissertation is an ethnographic study of global capitalism. It examines the multilayered presence of Volkswagen de México to grapple with the double-edged sword of transnational economic dependencies. Car manufacturing in Mexico has created jobs for a number of college graduates, middle class status, modes of relationality and care, and even the possibility to migrate to Germany. At the same time global car production relies on a large number of low-wage and uncertain jobs, on mechanisms that make labor cheap and discipline the labor force, as well as on land and water dispossession. While Volkswagen de México is a medium of inclusivity into 21st century global capitalism, it has also created contentious relations on the ground: among those who celebrate the presence of the factory, those who oppose it, those who have been violently excluded, and among unionized and non-unionized workers. To elucidate this complex and convoluted landscape of social relations, this study examines how transnational car production intersects with processes of nation-state formation, local ideas about status, and personal aspirations, as well as the conjunctures between global transformations, manufacturing, and the North American Free Trade Agreement. This dissertation shows how Volkswagen’s car economy has endured through forms of domination, subjugation and accommodation, and traces its not-always-predictable effects on the ground. Thereby it offers a nuanced and textured account of how global capitalism is constituted trans-locally. | Ph.D. | institution, wage, trade | 8, 10, 16 |
| Goodfellow, Nathalie M. | Lambe, Evelyn K. | Serotonin 5-HT Receptor Currents in the Healthy Rodent Prefrontal Cortex and in a Model of Affective Disorders | Physiology | 2013-06 | Affective disorders represent one of the greatest global burdens of disease. Work in patients with affective disorders demonstrates that serotonin (5-HT) signaling within the prefrontal cortex, particularly at the level of the 5-HT receptors, plays an integral role in both the pathology and treatment of these diseases. Surprisingly, the characterization of the prefrontal 5-HT receptors under both healthy and pathological conditions remains incomplete. The technique of whole cell electrophysiological recording provides an unparalleled tool for investigating the functional effects of these 5-HT receptors on neurons in acute prefrontal cortical slices. The objectives of my thesis were to delve deeper into the 5-HT receptor subtypes that modulate the prefrontal cortex in the healthy control rodents and to examine how this modulation was disrupted in a rodent model of affective disorders. In work from healthy control rodents, I examined two prefrontal 5-HT receptor-mediated currents. I show for the first time the presence of the 5-HT1A receptor during the early postnatal period, a critical developmental window during which this receptor programs adult anxiety behaviors. In adulthood, I characterized an inhibitory current mediated by the 5-ht5A receptor; findings that will permit the classification of this receptor within the 5-HT receptor family. Collectively, this investigation of functional early 5-HT1A receptors and adult 5-ht5A receptors offers a novel conceptual framework for understanding 5-HT receptor modulation of the healthy prefrontal cortex. To model vulnerability to affective disorder in the rodent, I used the early stress of maternal separation. In early stress rodents, I observed a marked increase in 5-HT1A receptor currents during the early postnatal period, the critical time window for the programming of anxiety. By comparison, in adulthood I found that rodents exposed to early stress displayed increased 5-HT2A receptor currents. These findings provide novel insight into the developmental and long-lasting pathology underlying early stress, indicating that the early prefrontal 5-HT1A receptor and adult prefrontal 5-HT2A receptors as a potential therapeutic target in treatment of affective disorders At a fundamental level, the findings provided herein offer critical insight into the cellular mechanisms underlying affective disorders, one of the most debilitating and costly diseases worldwide. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Gora, Stephanie Leah | Andrews, Susan A | Development and Evaluation of Photocatalytic Linear Engineered Titanium Dioxide Nanomaterials for the Removal of Disinfection Byproduct Precursors from Drinking Water | Civil Engineering | 2017-11 | Photocatalysis has long been touted as a potential drinking water treatment technology but has proven difficult to implement at full scale. This project aimed to address two of the perennial challenges preventing the use of photocatalysis for drinking water treatment: the need to safely remove the photocatalyst from the water after treatment and the danger that incomplete mineralization of contaminants will lead to the formation of intermediate compounds that are more reactive or toxic than their parent compounds. A suite of titanium dioxide-based linear engineered nanomaterials (LENs) was synthesized and compared to standard commercial titanium dioxide nanoparticles in terms of filterability, settleability, surface characteristics, crystal phase structure, available surface area, photonic efficiency, and propensity to form hydroxyl radicals. The LENs were also evaluated in terms of their ability to remove disinfection byproduct (DBP) precursors from two natural surface water matrices via adsorption and photocatalysis. DBPs, which form when naturally occurring organic precursor compounds interact with chemical disinfectants used in drinking water treatment, are suspected carcinogens and are widely regulated throughout the world. In this study, photocatalysis increased the DBP formation potential of both water matrices at short irradiation times. Longer treatment times resulted in decreased in DBP formation potential. Adsorption removed DBP precursors from the water without transforming them. The surface area and crystal phase structure of the nanomaterials were identified as important drivers of photocatalytic treatment effectiveness and regenerability. Adsorption efficacy was mainly impacted by surface area, agglomeration, and charge interactions. The effects of both adsorption and photocatalysis on DBP formation potential were strongly influenced by the composition of the water matrix being treated. The results of this project have informed the conceptual design of two titanium dioxide-based water treatment processes for DBP precursor removal: a single step photocatalytic system and a two-step adsorption and regeneration system. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Gorczynski, Paul | Faulkner, Guy | Addressing Obesity in Schizophrenia: An Ecological Approach | Exercise Sciences | 2013-06 | Individuals with schizophrenia are at high risk for obesity. Contemporary treatment approaches have concentrated on improving diet and physical activity behaviour. Guided by the Medical Research Council Framework, this thesis aimed to identify modifiable environmental factors that may influence the dietary and physical activity behaviours of clients at a psychiatric facility and examine the efficacy of intrapersonal and environmental components of a broad ecological intervention. Study one explored what environmental factors at the facility influence diet and physical activity. Participants identified that obesogenic elements involved aspects of the social and built environments and that both intrapersonal interventions and environmental changes are needed to improve physical activity and dietary behaviour. Based on the findings of the first study, study two examined the feasibility of exercise counseling amongst individuals with schizophrenia and its effect on increasing moderate and vigorous levels of physical activity (MVPA). Findings showed that exercise counseling is feasible. Accelerometer results showed that levels of MVPA decreased throughout the study, but levels of mediating psychological variables of physical activity increased. Study three examined the use of point-of-choice prompts to increase stair use at the hospital. Overall, no significant changes in stair use between the study phases were found, but male staff members increased their stair use throughout the study. Using multiple research methods, this thesis has made several contributions to the understanding of physical activity and dietary behaviours in individuals with schizophrenia. Novel solutions are needed to move beyond lifestyle interventions and address multiple individual and environmental factors that cause weight gain in this population. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Gordeyko, Marcia Anne | Peterson-Badali, Michele||Henderson, Joanna | Examining the Needs of Crossover Youth: Individual and System Level Factors | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2017-06 | Examining the Needs of Crossover Youth: Individual and System Level Factors, 2017 Marcia A. Gordeyko Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development University of Toronto Abstract Objective. Crossover youth are broadly defined as youth who have had contact with both the child welfare and youth justice systems. Although there has been increased research on crossover youth, including the numerous negative outcomes they experience (e.g., high rates of recidivism, multiple out-of-home placements; Herz, Ryan, Bilchik, 2010), much of this research has been based on data drawn from large child welfare and youth justice administrative databases. This approach may limit our understanding of crossover youth in other domains in which they also experience difficulties (e.g., mental health and substance use), as well as limit our understanding of these youth from a variety of perspectives (e.g., community service providers). Given that high rates of mental health and substance use difficulties are of concern for crossover youth (Turpel-Lafond Kendall, 2009), we need more specific information on their mental health needs, how these needs are met, and how service providers conceptualize the needs of crossover youth. To begin to address these questions, the two papers that make up my dissertation examined the mental health needs of crossover youth and service providers’ perspectives on those needs, respectively. Paper 1. The first part of this paper examined whether crossover youth have unique mental health symptomatology (in terms of symptom type and/or severity) compared to their peers involved in a single-system (i.e., youth justice or child welfare alone) and their non-system-involved peers. Part two examined whether youth system involvement and symptom presentation predicted receipt of mental health services. To address these questions, 389 youth in Grades 7 to 10 were recruited from school boards and mental health agencies across Ontario, Canada to complete self-report surveys. Crossover youth had the highest rates of all types of mental health symptoms and a significantly higher rate of externalizing symptoms compared to child welfare and non-system-involved youth. With respect to service receipt, findings are discussed in terms of the differential impact of internalizing versus externalizing symptoms, as well as system-level barriers. Paper 2. The aim of the second paper was to gather information on service providers’ perspectives on crossover youth, their needs, and the barriers they may face while navigating various systems. Semi-structured interview data from 10 service providers from multiple service domains (e.g., mental health, child welfare, housing) resulted in the following five themes grounded in the data: 1) crossover youth have unique experiences and needs that make them a distinguishable group; 2) family struggles – particularly difficulties with relational connectedness or attachment – impact crossover youth as they move through various systems; 3) crossover youth struggle to engage in positive relationships with others (e.g., peers and service providers); 4) crossover youth require multiple services across multiple service domains; and 5) crossover youth face numerous barriers in having their needs met, which are exacerbated by the behavioral and relational difficulties they experience. These findings exemplified that crossover youth are impacted by both individual factors (e.g., behavioral and relational difficulties) and system level factors (e.g., multiple service providers), which interact to create further challenges for crossover youth. These themes, along with previous research, were used to create an exploratory model encompassing the experiences of crossover youth at the individual and system levels, with the aim of providing a more holistic perspective on the needs of crossover youth as well as stimulating future research. Conclusions. Together, the findings from both papers highlight the importance of continued research that broadens our understanding of crossover youth beyond their experiences and outcomes in the child welfare and youth justice systems. To help inform the development of effective treatment programs and prevent negative outcomes, a more in-depth exploration is required of individual factors (particularly behavioral and relational difficulties), system level factors, and how these factors may interact to exacerbate negative outcomes for crossover youth. | Ph.D. | health, justice | 3, 16 |
| Gordon-Muir, Lorna | McCready, Lance | Some Black Male Teachers' Perspectives on Underachievement Problems for Black Male Students | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-06 | This dissertation examines some structural and cultural problems that can contribute to the problem of underachievement facing Black, male students in the educational system. A phenomenological approach was used to gain the perspectives of six Black, male educators on this problem. Underachievement problems for these students have garnered much interest in the research literature and in pedagogical debates. It is a problem with a long history from the Royal Commission on Learning (1993) to TDSB Urban Diversity Strategy (2008) the problem continues to baffle educators. Data also presents a dismal picture, with 40% from this group underachieving. Black, male teachers‟ perspectives are significant because presently their voices are limited in the literature. Their perspectives are also influenced by race, ethnicity and gender, and these are issues that impact on the problem being investigated. The main questions of the study are: - What are some Black male educators' perspectives of the role of structural and cultural factors that contribute to the problem of underachievement and school failure for Black, male students? Were these the same barriers they faced and how did they overcome these barriers as students? - How might the narratives of these Black male educators both challenge and support multicultural approach to curriculum that purports to particularly address the problems facing Black, male students? The result of the research indicates that there are structural and cultural factors that can cause underachievement problems for Black, male students. It suggests that an iii integrated approach which acknowledges the influence of both structure and culture could be used as a means for improving learning outcomes for this group of earners. | EDD | urban, inclusive | 4, 11 |
| Gordon, Blair | Liu, Jun | Lsr2: An H-NS Functional Analog and Global Regulator of Mycobacterium tuberculosis | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2013-06 | Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb), the etiological agent of tuberculosis (TB), continues to be one of the leading global health challenges causing ~2 million deaths annually. In the majority of infected individuals, the bacteria establish a latent, asymptomatic infection capable of persisting for decades with 5-10% of infected individuals developing active disease in their lifetime. Currently it is estimated that one-third of the world’s population is latently infected, representing a large reservoir for disease reactivation and subsequent spread. Latent TB infection is a paucibacillary disease in which a small heterogeneous population of bacilli is present in the body. M. tb persisters, which are characterized by reduced or altered metabolic activity and enhanced drug tolerance, are thought to be the major contributor towards latent infection and disease relapse following chemotherapy; however, the molecular mechanisms governing persisters formation remain poorly understood. My thesis concerns the characterization of the highly conserved DNA binding protein Lsr2 of mycobacteria. Previous biochemical study of Lsr2 revealed it exhibits DNA-bridging activity analogous to H-NS, an important nucleoid associated protein found in the proteobacteria. iii Here I show using in vivo complementation assays that Lsr2 is functionally equivalent to H-NS, even though these proteins share no sequence similarity. I also present genetic evidence that Lsr2 is a global regulator of M. tb that acts primarily as a transcriptional repressor. Notably, I found that Lsr2 represses a large cohort of genes induced in M.tb during in vitro models of latency including genes implicated in persister formation. I also present evidence that lsr2 is selectively inactivated during long-term hypoxia, a condition thought to be important for persister formation during latency. Lastly, I tested the lsr2deletion mutant in a mouse model of infection and found it had reduced growth relative to the WT but was still able to persist. Taken together my work implicates Lsr2 as a central regulator of persister formation and opens up exciting future research avenues on latent TB infection. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Gordon, David Jeremy | Hoffmann, Matthew | From Global Cities to Global Governors: Power, Politics, and the Convergence of Urban Climate Governance | Political Science | 2016-06 | Cities are increasingly included in discussions of climate governance and lauded as sources of innovation, leadership, and experimentation. But can they succeed where states have failed in producing meaningful collective actions and effects? To respond to this pressing question requires understanding whether cities can achieve more than rhetorical commitment to coordinated action, whether they can come together and coordinate their actions. To answer this question my dissertation addresses the puzzling ability of the C40 Climate Leadership Group to achieve internal coherence. Leveraging a novel dataset of over 4700 discrete urban climate governance actions, I demonstrate empirically that the cities of the C40 have come not only to cohere around a common project, employ common practices of climate governance, but that the C40 has converged around a common set of governance norms: shared ideas as to the role of cities in global climate governance, the ways in which cities can and should engage in governance, and how governance should be practiced. I introduce a novel conceptual framework that interweaves elements of social constructivism and network analysis with Bourdieu's social field theory, and demonstrate how reconceiving the C40 as a governance field illuminates currents of power that operate beneath the still waters of nominal and voluntary cooperation, and provides a means of explaining how convergence has been pursued, contested, and produced by actors who claim and wield various sorts of power and authority. The dissertation applies this novel conceptual apparatus to demonstrate why contestation was paramount between 2005 and 2010, and how convergence was produced from 2011 on. Put simply, the C40 only achieved convergence once there was an actor with enough power to overcome resistance and secure complicity from its members, with such power translated into influence through the mechanism of recognition. | Ph.D. | water, cities, urban, climate, governance | 6, 11, 13, 16 |
| Gordon, Joshua | Haddow, Rodney | Bringing Labor Back In: Varieties of Unionism and the Evolution of Employment Protection and Unemployment Benefits in the Rich Democracies | Political Science | 2012-11 | This thesis looks at the politics of labor market policy in the postwar period in the advanced industrialized democracies. Specifically, the dissertation seeks to explain stark cross-national differences in unemployment benefit systems and employment protection legislation. The theory advanced in this thesis emphasizes significant differences in union organization across the rich democracies. This view, “Varieties of Unionism”, shows how the varying political capacities and policy preferences of labor movements explain most of the cross-national policy differences. In particular, the research points to union movements’ ideological traditions and varying rates of union density, union centralization, and involvement in unemployment benefit administration as crucial explanatory forces. Each feature of union movements captures an important part of why they might choose to advocate on behalf of the unemployed and to their differential ability to have those policy preferences realized, as well as indicating the kinds of preferences they will have for employment protection legislation. In the case of policies directed at the unemployed (or so-called labor market ‘Outsiders’), these insights lead to the construction of an index of “Outsider-oriented Unionism”, which correlates very closely to cross-national variations in unemployment benefit generosity as well as to active labor market policy spending. The thesis also introduces a new fourfold typology of unionism that helps to explain the different combinations of employment protection legislation and ‘Outsider policy’ generosity that exist among the rich democracies, or labor market policy ‘regimes’. The thesis makes this argument with multiple regression analysis of fifteen rich democracies and with detailed historical case studies of Britain, The Netherlands, and Sweden. In making this case, the thesis strongly challenges the explanations of labor market policy put forward by the Varieties of Capitalism literature and Insider-Outsider theory. In addition, the thesis reformulates the traditional Power Resource view by introducing a more rigorous theory of labor movements’ policy preferences and thereby qualifies recent statements that have emphasized partisanship almost alone. Most broadly, the theory challenges the “individualist turn” in recent comparative political economy scholarship and suggests that the field needs to return its gaze far more toward organized interests. | PhD | employment, industr | 8, 9 |
| Gore, Christopher D. | Stren, Richard | Power and Process: The Politics of Electricity Sector Reform in Uganda | Political Science | 2008-03 | In 2007, Uganda had one of the lowest levels of access to electricity in the world. Given the influence of multilateral and bilateral agencies in Uganda; the strong international reputation and domestic influence of its President; the country’s historic achievements in public sector and economic reform; and the intimate connection between economic performance, social well-being and access to electricity, the problems with Uganda’s electricity sector have proven deeply frustrating and, indeed, puzzling. Following increased scholarly attention to the relationship between political change, policymaking, and public sector reform in sub-Saharan Africa and the developing world generally, this thesis examines the multilevel politics of Uganda’s electricity sector reform process. This study contends that explanations for Uganda’s electricity sector reform problems generally, and hydroelectric dam construction efforts specifically, must move beyond technical and financial factors. Problems in this sector have also been the result of a model of reform (promoted by the World Bank) that failed adequately to account for the character of political change. Indeed, the model of reform that was promoted and implemented was risky and it was deeply antagonistic to domestic and international civil society organizations. In addition, it was presented as a linear, technical, apolitical exercise. Finally the model was inconsistent with key principles the Bank itself, and public policy literature generally, suggest are needed for success. Based on this analysis, the thesis contends that policymaking and reform must be understood as deeply political processes, which not only define access to services, but also participation in, and exclusion from, national debates. Future approaches to reform and policymaking must anticipate the complex, multilevel, non-linear character of ‘second-generation’ policy issues like electricity, and the political and institutional capacity needed to increase the potential for success. At the heart of this approach is a need to carefully consider how the character of state-society relations in the country – “governance” – will influence reform processes and outcomes. | PhD | hydroelectric, governance | 7, 16 |
| Gorham, Nathan J.S. | Stewart, Hamish | Wrongful Pre-Trial Detention in the Toronto Area Bail System | Law | 2015-11 | This study examines 20 bail cases from the Greater Toronto Area where the accused persons were detained in custody pending trial but their charges were later withdrawn or dismissed. It is concluded that many of the cases amounted to miscarriages of justice in the bail system. A miscarriage of justice in the bail system – wrongful pre-trial detention – is defined as any unjustifiable detention order followed by the withdrawal or dismissal of the charges. Many of the cases involved detention orders that were premised on errors in principle. The cases are examined to determine the causes of the miscarriages of justice. Relevant constitutional principles are also discussed. Change in the nature of a “strong prima facie case” test is proposed for any bail hearing where the Crown contends that the strength of its case weighs in favour of detention. | LL.M. | justice | 16 |
| Govind, Ajit | Chen, Jing Ming | Spatially Explicit Modeling of Hydrologically Controlled Carbon Cycles in a Boreal Ecosystem | Geography | 2008-06 | Current estimates of terrestrial carbon (C) fluxes overlook explicit hydrological controls. In this research project, a spatially explicit hydro-ecological model, BEPS-TerrainLab V2.0 was further developed to improve our understanding of the non-linearities associated with various hydro-ecological processes. A modeling study was conducted in a humid boreal ecosystem in north central Quebec, Canada. The sizes and nature of various ecosystem-C-pools were comprehensively reconstructed under a climate change and disturbance scenario prior to simulation in order to ensure realistic biogeochemical modeling. Further, several ecosystem processes were simulated and validated using field measurements for two years. A sensitivity analysis was also performed. After gaining confidence in the model’s ability to simulate various hydrologically controlled ecophysiological and biogeochemical processes and having understood that topographically driven sub-surface baseflow is the main process determining the soil moisture regime in humid boreal ecosystem, its influence on ecophysiological and biogeochemical processes were investigated. Three modeling scenarios were designed that represent strategies that are currently used in ecological models to represent hydrological controls. These scenarios were: 1) Explicit, where realistic lateral water routing was considered 2) Implicit, where calculations were based on a bucket-modeling approach 3) NoFlow, where the lateral sub-surface flow was turned off in the model. In general, the Implicit scenario overestimated GPP, ET and NEP, as opposed to the Explicit scenario. The NoFlow scenario underestimated GPP and ET but overestimated NEP. The key processes controlling the differences were due to the combined effects of variations in plant physiology, photosynthesis, heterotrophic respiration, autotrophic respiration and nitrogen mineralization; all of which occurred simultaneously in different directions, at different rates, affecting the spatio-temporal distribution of terrestrial C-sources or sinks (NEP). From these results it was clear that lateral water flow does play a significant role in the net terrestrial C distribution and it was discovered that non-explicit forms of hydrological representations underestimate the sizes of terrestrial C-sources rather than C-sinks. The scientific implication of this work demonstrates that regional or global scale terrestrial C estimates could have significant errors if proper hydrological constraints are not considered for modeling ecological processes due to large topographic variations of the Earth’s surface. | PhD | water, climate | 6, 13 |
| Goyal, Shivani | Cafazzo, Joseph A | Influencing Behaviour to Improve Diabetes Self-Management: The Design and Evaluation of Mobile Health Applications | Biomedical Engineering | 2017-11 | The global increase in the prevalence of diabetes along with the cost associated with complications is challenging traditional approaches to healthcare delivery. While the pervasiveness of mobile phones has resulted in a consumer-driven market for diabetes-focused mobile health applications (apps), the majority of these apps are not evidence-based or rigorously evaluated. The main objectives of this research were to design, develop and evaluate, a consumer-focused, behavioural app for the self-management of diabetes. Following a knowledge translation framework, existing evidence around behaviour change theory, diabetes self-management, and mHealth was reviewed, and informed the conceptualization of the app features. The app was developed following user-centered design principles, where iterative feedback was obtained from patients throughout the process. The resulting intervention, bant2, was a consumer-focused app for the self-management of type 2 diabetes, focused on the contextualization of blood glucose readings with personalized lifestyle behaviours. While a 12-month randomized controlled trial (RCT) was designed to evaluate the impact of bant2 on clinical outcomes, findings from recent studies led to reconsider both the intervention the evaluation approach. The bant RCT (n=96) and | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Graber-Naidich, Anna | Carter, Michael W||Verter, Vedat | Operations Research Methodologies to Improve the Quality, Accessibilty and Equity of Primary Care | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2015-11 | A growing body of evidence reveals the importance of primary care to the overall health of populations, resulting in an increasing interest in efficient, effective, timely and equitable delivery of primary care services. This research focuses on two perspectives of delivering primary care. First, the work focuses on the quality of primary care delivery, represented by distribution of facilities that provide primary care on different quality levels and incur varying costs on the regulator. The proposed model optimizes the geographic distribution of facilities (locations and types) and provides tradeoffs between two objectives - the quality of provided care and the annual operating cost. The Pampalon deprivation index is incorporated directly as a proxy of varying needs, as it was correlated with complex health-care problems, more frequent visits and barriers to obtain care. Results are showcased on the area of Kingston, Ontario. Second, the distribution of general practitioners is addressed, measured in terms of general practitioners (GPs) per population. Many countries are experiencing inequitable distribution of GPs, such that does not match the distribution of the population. It usually results from the fact that health professionals are choosing practice locations according to their own preferences and considerations. To address this issue, human choice is incorporated into the modeling approach explicitly, using Huff’s spatial interactions approach. The utilities of the professionals when choosing communities are modeled, affecting in turn the probabilities of location choice. The presented model explores the option of modifying policies so that the resulting distribution of general practitioners in the studied geographic area will be more equitable. As an example, educational policies are explored, devising the optimal locations of residency training of family physicians and their background combinations (at each training location) for Ontario. The developed methodologies showcased for the province of Ontario, Canada, however they are general enough to be used in any jurisdiction with similar characteristics. | Ph.D. | health, equitable | 3, 4 |
| Graham, Susan M. | Bayoumi, Ahmed | Sexual Risk Behavior, HIV, and Sexually Transmitted Infections in a Cohort of Kenyan Female Sex Workers, 1993 – 2007 | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2011-06 | This thesis comprises a detailed analysis of sexual risk behavior among female sex workers participating in a prospective cohort study in Mombasa, Kenya between 1993 and 2007. To determine whether high-risk behavior has decreased over time, I examined trends in and associations with condom use and partner numbers at enrolment and over follow-up using multinomial logistic regression. While condom use increased among women enrolling into the cohort, women reduced partner numbers, rather than increasing condom use, over cohort visits. Workplace, charge for sex, duration of sex work, alcohol use, pregnancy and illness were all predictors of condom use. To evaluate the extent to which HIV risk estimates were affected by loss to follow-up, I investigated associations between sexual risk behavior, loss to follow-up, and HIV acquisition, using competing risks regression. Women reporting unprotected sex with multiple partners had the highest risk for HIV infection, and were also most likely to remain in the cohort. Finally, I used Andersen-Gill modeling to assess the impact of sexual risk behaviors on acquisition of sexually transmitted infections (STI) including gonorrhea, non-specific cervicitis, and trichomoniasis. While incident gonorrhea was closely associated with recent sexual risk behavior, incident trichomoniasis was not. Both conditions had high hazards for recurring in a 90-day window after a prior diagnosis. Non-specific cervicitis was demonstrated to be a chronic, relapsing condition associated with protected sex with multiple partners (possibly due to more frequent condom use) and with known biologic risk factors (i.e., pregnancy, hormonal contraceptive use, cervical ectopy, and genital ulcer disease). Overall, these analyses have led to a better understanding of how different sexual behavior patterns are associated with adverse outcomes, including HIV and STI acquisition, and identified specific factors associated with high-risk sexual behavior that may be amenable to intervention. | PhD | women, worker | 5, 8 |
| Grainger, Tess Nahanni | Gilbert, Benjamin | Coexistence in a warm and patchy world | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-06 | For the many species that rely on patchily distributed resources, patterns of coexistence and diversity are the product of local abiotic and biotic interactions and inter-patch dispersal. Understanding the multi-scale drivers of coexistence in patchy landscapes has become increasingly pressing, as habitat fragmentation makes the world patchier, and warming threatens to disrupt biological processes across spatial scales. In my thesis, I use meta-analytic, observational and experimental approaches to understand how local species interactions and dispersal shape diversity in patchy landscapes, and how warming disrupts these dynamics. In Chapter 1, I review metacommunity experiments to identify when common experimental approaches that homogenize metacommunities fail to test existing theory, and outline how emerging theory on the invasion criterion, food webs and priority effects could be used to help reveal the mechanisms underlying observed responses. In Chapter 2, I use dispersal and anti-predator traits of specialist milkweed herbivores to predict species’ distributions across a patchy landscape and test the importance of local top-down pressure in mediating classic biogeographic relationships. In Chapter 3, I test predictions about the impact of warming on plant-herbivore interactions and the importance of species’ arrival order and demonstrate how warming strengthens trophic interactions, amplifies priority effects and alters the interspecific differences in dispersal that determine arrival order. In Chapter 4, I test the combined impact of warming-induced changes to local competitive interactions and dispersal on metacommunity diversity, and show that positive local effects of warming, combined with the risk of moving across the matrix, can produce unexpected interactive effects of temperature and connectivity on metacommunity diversity. By describing and implementing novel approaches that provide better tests of metacommunity theory, and applying a multi-scale approach to climate change research, my thesis informs our understanding of how natural and anthropogenic processes shape diversity in patchy landscapes. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Granados, Andrea | Gubbay, Jonathan B||McGeer, Allison J | Clinical Utility of Viral Loads in Influenza Virus Infections | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2018-06 | For influenza, as for many other infectious diseases, a test which could predict which patients have illness which progresses and requires hospital care, and which can be safely discharged home would improve care and reduce healthcare system costs. Attempts to develop clinically based severity score systems have failed to predict in-hospital mortality/ICU admission in patients with influenza. Viral loads have been shown to correlate with disease severity for some respiratory viruses, and technology is now available that might make measuring viral load in clinical microbiology laboratories feasible. This thesis hypothesizes that influenza viral load can be measured in routine clinical testing and is predictive of disease severity. First we investigated the process of viral load testing, by evaluating collection methods and storage conditions. We compared viral loads in self-collected and investigator-collected nasal swabs in a cluster randomized vaccine trial, and found no difference in viral load regardless of collection method. Utilizing serially diluted RNA transcripts and clinical specimens, we measured viral loads at different storage temperatures over time and after multiple freeze/thaw cycles. We identified that samples with RNA concentrations ≤3.0 log10 copies/ml degrade more quickly than those with higher concentrations of RNA and that nasopharyngeal specimens can undergo up to 7 freeze/thaw cycles and storage up to three years at -80°C if they are re-extracted before testing. Next, we investigated the relationship between viral loads of influenza in out-patients, patients requiring hospital admission, and patients admitted to the ICU. We determined that viral loads were lower in influenza A patients admitted to the ICU compared to other settings, while influenza B viral load were higher in ICU patients compared to other settings. Finally, we investigated the association between influenza A viral load and hospital length of stay in a sample of patients with detailed clinical and epidemiological data, and the association between influenza viral load and symptom severity in healthy adults. We did not find an association between viral load and these outcomes in either population. In conclusion influenza viral load, while it can be reliably measured in samples, it is not a suitable marker for disease severity in influenza. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Grant, Jacque-Ann Natacia | Hofmann, Ronald | UV-advanced Oxidation Treatment of Micropollutants in Secondary Wastewaters | Civil Engineering | 2015-11 | Ultraviolet light+hydrogen peroxide (UV/H2O2) advanced oxidation is known to effectively oxidise micropollutants in wastewater. Its relatively high cost and energy requirements in comparison to other treatment options, however, have limited its implementation. This research evaluated the use of coagulation as a modification to the pre-tertiary component of the wastewater treatment process. The objective was to reduce the background scavenging capacity of the wastewater as a means of improving the oxidation efficiency of UV/H2O2 while reducing the cost and energy requirements. Effluent organic matter (EfOM) was identified as the primary wastewater component responsible for scavenging of the hydroxyl radicals required for oxidation in UV/H2O2 treatment. The organic constituents of EfOM that are the driving force for its reactivity with the hydroxyl radical were identified as the high molecular weight components (biopolymers) and tryptophan-protein like components. Since EfOM concentration and composition can vary from one water matrix to another, a comparison of secondary wastewaters from membrane bioreactor (MBR) and activated sludge (AS) treatment systems showed that the average scavenging capacity of the AS systems exceeded the average of the MBRs such that MBRs may be more amenable to UV/H2O2 treatment. Coagulation of the wastewater using ferric chloride, aluminium sulphate, and polyaluminium chloride primarily removed the high molecular weight components and significantly reduced the EfOM scavenging capacity. This improvement in wastewater quality also resulted in an improvement in the degradation rates of micropollutant compounds, reduced the energy requirements required to achieve 1-log removal of the compounds, and significantly reduced the costs associated with the UV/H2O2 system. No one coagulant outperformed any of the others; however the study demonstrated that coagulation is a feasible modification for a wastewater treatment plant upstream of an UV-AOP system. It was also found that the cost benefit to UV/H2O2 exceeded the chemical costs of coagulation. Nevertheless, facilities considering UV-AOP systems should weigh the benefits of increasing the H2O2 concentration or using coagulation as the cost savings are relatively similar at high H2O2 concentrations. | Ph.D. | pollut | 13 |
| Grassau, Pamela Anne | Williams, Charmaine C | Navigating the Cathexis: Mothers and Daughters and End of Life | Social Work | 2015-06 | This dissertation begins with women's lives and examines the experience of mothering (and daughtering) across the full continuum of women's lives, including the end of their lives. Specifically, my work focuses on the cathexis, the specific flow of energy that moves between mothers and daughters as they navigate the meaning, significance and context of their connection as a mother is at the end of her life. Strongly informed by a feminist epistemology, this study draws on multiple conversations with five mothers and adult daughter s (10 participants including one-in law pairing) as a mother is receiving in-patient or home based end of life care. Drawing on a narrative methodology and utilizing joint/dyadic interviews as my method, mothers and daughters were asked to share relational stories over time: when the daughter was young; when the daughter was a young-adult/adult; when illness arrived; in the present and what they hoped for one another in the future. Applying a narrative thematic and dialogic/performance analytic approach, end of life relational stories were examined to further our understanding of how and why mothers and daughters experiences of end of life are experienced and performed in particular ways. Findings across the two analytic approaches reflect interwoven processes between mothers and daughters which are individual, relational and intersubjective. Individual processes address individual knowing and individual choices; relational processes reflect relational care practices between mothers and daughters, and mothers and daughters and care providers; and intersubjective processes address mutual knowing of dying and death. Implications of this study for social work practice and education strongly encourage social work practice to expand to dyadic interviews and interventions in end of life, with an emphasis on what we can learn if we listen carefully to what, how and why people say things in particular ways. Implications for research encourage further questioning about how end of life is relational, and strongly urges researchers to explore joint/dyadic interviews as a method to explore living and dying in relationship. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Gratton, Susan L. | Sossin, Lorne | Administrative Law in the Welfare State: Addressing the Accountability Gap in Executive Social Policy-making | Law | 2010-11 | With the rise of the welfare state, democratic, common law governments undertook a new proactive role as social welfare manager; allocating limited health, education, and social services benefits among competing public priorities. In spite of the important impact of this role on the lives of citizens, the various political, managerial, and legal mechanisms designed to hold executive social policy-makers accountable to the legislature have largely broken down. In this dissertation, I argue that our constitutional democracy permits courts to fill this accountability gap by acting as an accountability mechanism of last resort. I propose a new doctrine of administrative review for social policy and programs in which deference is based on evidence of accountability achieved within the policy-making process. Administrative review for accountability would allow courts to evaluate the legitimacy of the process by which social policy is created rather than interfering in the substance of social policy. My dissertation seeks to develop this administrative review doctrine within existing constitutional constraints including the separation of powers. | SJD | institution | 16 |
| Gray, Carolyn Steele | Deber, Raisa Berlin | Accountability in the Home and Community Care Sector in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2013-11 | This research seeks to identify what accountability frameworks were in place for the home and community care sector in the Canadian province of Ontario, how home and community care agencies in Ontario responded to accountability demands attached to government service funding (specifically through Community Care Access Centre (CCAC) contracts and Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) Multi-Service Accountability Agreements (MSAAs) and what, if any, effect accountability frameworks had on service delivery. This study uses a multi-phase parallel mixed methods approach. First, an environmental scan and document analysis was conducted to identify accountability frameworks and identify key characteristics of accountability demands. Next, 114 home and community care agencies in Ontario were surveyed and 20 key informant interviews were conducted with executives from 13 home and community care agencies, two CCACs and two LHINs. Data from these different methods were combined in the analysis phase. Home and community care agencies face multiple accountability requirements from a variety of stakeholders. We found that government agencies relied most heavily on regulatory and expenditure policy instruments to hold home and community care organizations to account. Organizational size and financial dependence were significantly related to organizational compliance to accountability demands attached to CCAC contracts and MSAAs. In addition to the theorized potential organizational responses to external demands (compliance, compromise, avoidance and defiance), this study found that organizations engaged in internal modification where internal practices are changed to meet accountability requirements. Smaller, more poorly resourced organizations that were highly dependent on LHINs or CCACs were more likely to internally modify organizational practice to meet accountability demands. Although MSAAs and CCAC contracts supported a quality culture amongst organizations, internal organizational changes, such as redirecting time towards reporting requirements and away from care, and cutting innovative practices and programs, were reported to have a negative impact on the quality of service delivery. Government reliance on contract-based accountability for funded home and community care services, while politically advantageous, has the potential to seriously and negatively affect the quality of home and community services delivered. Policy makers need to carefully consider the potential impact on quality of service delivery when developing and implementing accountability policy. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Gray, Kimberly Anne | McDonough, Peggy | The Politics of Knowledge Production in HIV/AIDS Research about Ontario's African, Caribbean, and Black Communities | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-06 | HIV/AIDS science has long been a site of contestation by civil society actors. Early activists originating in the gay community affected the course of HIV/AIDS science by challenging the definition and treatment of the disease. However, little is known about the politicized efforts of other groups disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS, particularly Black communities, to mobilize and shape research about their communities. This thesis interrogates social relations and power in research about HIV/AIDS in Ontario's African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) population. Using Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, together with concepts from the sociology of science and race theory, I investigate tensions and struggles over the definition and production of ACB HIV/AIDS research. Through a review of research grants and 21 semi-structured interviews with actors engaged in research, I characterize the field of ACB HIV/AIDS research and explore the struggles therein. I also examine what is at stake in these struggles and their implications for the reproduction of, and resistance to, systems of domination. My findings indicate that the field of ACB HIV/AIDS research is composed of interlocking scientific disciplines and non-scientific domains. Struggles over the field's organizing principles are represented in the different stances that participants adopt concerning the legitimate definition of research. Some academic-based actors define HIV/AIDS research according to empiricist principles oriented toward technical control and prevention of disease. These serve to depoliticize science and defend scientific authority and the social order. Other actors, both academic- and community-based, depict HIV/AIDS research through a social justice lens focussed on the empowerment of the ACB population and improvement of its social position. Community-based ACB actors in particular resist the epistemic dominance of science and argue for the legitimacy of non-scientific actors as "knowers" of the ACB population, and research as a socio-political tool. These subversive strategies challenge scientific authority and threaten to disrupt the status quo. The findings suggest that ACB actors navigate between utilizing existing mechanisms of science and resisting the dominance of science in shaping knowledge about their lives. My research contributes to the sociology of science scholarship concerning the politics of knowledge, scientific boundary work, and health movements. | Ph.D. | health, justice | 3, 16 |
| Gray, Michael G. | Christopoulos, Constantin ||Packer, Jeffrey A. | Cast Steel Yielding Brace System for Concentrically Braced Frames | Civil Engineering | 2012-11 | This thesis presents the development and validation of a high ductility seismic resistant steel brace connector called the Yielding Brace System (YBS) that improves the earthquake performance of steel braced frame buildings. The connector is comprised of two steel castings which dissipate seismic energy through flexural yielding of specially designed triangular yielding fingers. In this body of work, the need for such a system is presented along with a summary of previously developed steel castings for enhanced earthquake performance of building structures. The development of the YBS concept is then discussed in detail and equations are developed to predict the elastic and plastic response of a YBS connector based on the geometry of the yielding fingers. The low-cycle fatigue life of the cast steel material used for the yielding elements of the YBS is characterized based on the results of several cyclic, small-scale yielding fingers tests and a low-cycle fatigue life prediction model is derived. Following this, the design of a prototype connector for the second storey brace of a fictitious six storey sample building located in Los Angeles is presented. This design is conducted using the low-cycle fatigue prediction model, the response prediction equations and non-linear finite element analysis. Results of four full-scale prototype tests are then presented. Two of the tests are axial tests of the device alone, while the other two are full-scale braced frame tests. Finally, the design of a 12-storey sample building is presented. This building design is then evaluated via non-linear time-history analysis using the FEMA P-695 methodology. The results from these analyses are then discussed and compared to a similar study conducted on the same building designed with buckling restrained braces. This work shows that the Yielding Brace System is a highly ductile, seismic resistant brace that can be used as an alternative to the buckling restrained brace with the potential to provide a stiffer structure with increased ductility. | PhD | buildings | 9 |
| Gray, Sarah | MacNeill, Margaret | Biological Differences or Social Constructions? The Entanglement of Sex and Gender in Health and Physical Education | Exercise Sciences | 2018-06 | Increasing concern over the wellness of young people has placed an increased emphasis on health and physical education as part of the schooling process for young men and women (13–18 years). An increasing number of policies have been implemented in schools in a consorted effort to address student wellbeing. This dissertation explores the discourses that shape the experiences of young men and women in secondary school. Specifically, I explore biological assumptions and social behaviours of young people which influence their eating behaviours and physical activities. Using a biopedagogical theoretical perspective combined with a sex and gender framework, this analysis engages with the complex relationships between biological understandings and resulting social behaviours with the intention of determining whether or not one is a predictor or resistor of the other. Data collection occurred in three phases (interviews with participants in policy implementation and dissemination, focus groups with secondary students, and policy analysis) and was conducted in a public school board in the Greater Toronto Area. I demonstrate that young people’s own understandings of about natural biological differences between young men and women are reinforced and (re)produced in social behaviours. Dominant discourses and constructions about sex and gender create binary categories and give rise to behaviours which impede the experiences and expressions of some young men and women. This research demonstrates the need to understand sex and gender as a continuum instead of binary categories. This would broaden the expressions of eating behaviours and physical activities for both young men and women. | Ph.D. | well being, gender | 3, 5 |
| Graziano, Antimo | Sain, Mohini||Jaffer, Shaffiq | Novel Functional Graphene and its Thermodynamic Interfacial Localization in Biphasic Polyolefin Systems for Advanced Lightweight Applications | Forestry | 2020-06 | Implementation of multiple polymers represents a fast and cost-efficient method to bring additional functional attributes that are practically impossible without a highly capital-intensive synthesis of the product from a monomer. However, most polymer groups are thermodynamically immiscible, resulting in the material to devalue in performance. The purpose of this research is to study the impact of a novel nanostructured carbon co-factor on the compatibility between Polyethylene (PE) and Polypropylene (PP), in a macro-micro biphasic polyolefin system, with PE representing the macro phase. An alternative and inexpensive Graphene Oxide (GO) modification is performed for synthesizing a novel functional graphene. Then, a thermodynamically driven mixing mechanism of the three components is proposed for selectively localizing the additive at the PE/PP interface. The focus is on improving the structural attributes of PE, increasing its industrial value, through the combined effect of micro phase PP and interface localized novel functional graphene. The experimental results highlight the effectiveness of the GO modification process in recovering pure graphene structure and properties, in a cost-effective way. Moreover, the preferential localization of the highly exfoliated novel functional graphene at the biphasic system interface lowers PE/PP interfacial tension and viscosity mismatch. This increases phase compatibility and promotes a remarkably fine dispersion of the micro phase into the macro phase. Consequently, a significant thermo-mechanical performance enhancement is seen, with stiffness and toughness being greater than the ones of virgin PP, and strength and heat deformation resistance almost matching the neat PP ones. Lastly, PE non-isothermal crystallization kinetics are investigated to validate the experimental data. It is shown that the increase in material’s performance is in direct correlation with nucleation-controlled PE crystallization, induced by the synergistic combination of micro phase and novel functional graphene. These findings will allow industries to replace their PP based materials with one that has a more abundant, simpler, cheaper, and yet performant PE as the major component, bringing a paradigm shift in the manufacturing of advanced lightweight polyolefin materials with tuned functionalities, suitable for emerging engineering applications. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Greaves, Wilfrid William John | Hoffmann, Matthew J | Constructing In/Security in the Arctic: Polar Politics, Indigenous Peoples, and Environmental Change in Canada and Norway | Political Science | 2016-06 | As climate change transforms the circumpolar Arctic, ‘Arctic security’ has increasingly been used as a concept to address the most urgent related policy questions. But security is a contested concept, and there is contradiction among the various understandings of what it actually entails in the Arctic region. This dissertation investigates competing conceptions of security and environmental change by state and non-state actors in the Arctic regions of Canada and Norway. It asks why, despite being understood as a threat to national and global security by other states and in other regional contexts, has climate change not been constituted as a security threat by Arctic states? I examine this question through a comparative analysis of Canada and Norway’s foreign and security policies, how they construct the significance of climate change, and those policies’ correspondence with local Indigenous conceptions of Arctic security. The findings suggest that the conception of security held by Arctic Indigenous peoples have been structurally excluded from official Arctic security discourse. The dissertation makes three central contributions: it offers a comparative analysis of circumpolar states’ understandings of Arctic security; it undertakes the first comparative analysis of Indigenous understandings of Arctic security; and it proposes a revised theory of how certain identities condition the process through which in/security is socially constructed. | Ph.D. | environment, climate | 13 |
| Greene, Carolyn Toller | Doob, Anthony N. | Creating Consensus: An Exploration of Two Pre-charge Diversion Programs in Canada | Criminology | 2011-06 | Over the last forty years, diversion of young offenders from the criminal justice system has been a part of youth justice policy in Canada. Over this period of time numerous research studies have examined the effectiveness of diversion programs. Many have had similar conclusions: diversion programs do not draw the majority of their participants from court bound populations. While the purpose of diversion was to limit state intervention into the lives of young people, it has instead served to extend the arm of the law by increasing state intervention for many young offenders. Yet, despite the evidence diversion policy and programs continue to garner broad based support. This research is an attempt to understand the popularity of diversion over time and explore the purposes, beyond that of a reduction in the use of youth court, that diversion serves. This research examines two police pre-charge diversion programs in Ontario, Canada. Diversion is explored from the perspective of the police that use and operate these programs as well as from the perspective of the young people processed in them. | PhD | justice | 16 |
| Greensmith, Cameron DI | Cannon, Martin | Diversity is (not) good enough: Unsettling White Settler Colonialism within Toronto's Queer Service Sector | Social Justice Education | 2014-06 | This dissertation explores the ways in which queer service provision and non-Indigenous lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and trans (LGBTQ)-identified service providers in downtown Toronto can contribute to and become complicit in white settler colonial projects. During this study based on in-depth interviews, forty-three research participants were asked about their experiences working within their respective queer service organizations, and, more specifically, about their understandings of how diversity, anti-racism, and anti-colonialism are practiced. Findings highlight how queer service provision, particularly its perpetual crisis and capacity to care for queerness, can obscure the ways the organizations themselves contribute to the naturalization of a hierarchy of oppression that centralizes the needs of white queers. Additionally, I consider the narratives of white service providers' goodness as easily relocating Indigenous peoples as "problems" and "pathology" who then become unworthy of care. Moreover, this inquiry theorizes how the narratives offered by white service providers fit Indigenous peoples and people of colour into stories of Canadian multiculturalism. I show how non-Indigenous queer and trans service providers' evocations of diversity and inclusion easily deflect their implicatedness in white settler colonialism. Although queer service provision is a rich site of queer politics, it continues to be a site that is tied to state-sanctioned funding regimes and neoliberal models of care used to naturalize Indigenous peoples' elimination, erasure, and assimilation. Thus, this research contends that queer communities in downtown Toronto operate to sustain white supremacy and settler colonialism. I conclude with a set of questions that asks non-Indigenous service providers to engage with how they participate (often unknowingly) in white settler colonial projects, and move beyond queer service provision as a site of emancipation in order to meaningfully support Indigenous resurgence and decolonization. | Ph.D. | queer | 5 |
| Greenwood, Ryan | Armstrong, Lawrin | Law and War in Late Medieval Italy: The Jus Commune on War and Its Application in Florence, c. 1150-1450 | Medieval Studies | 2011-11 | This study, on law and war in late medieval Italy, has two primary aims. One is to review the legal tradition on war as it developed in the medieval jus commune, or common law, from approximately 1150-1300, and then to consider how that tradition evolved from roughly 1300-1450. In general the latter period still represents a lacuna in scholarship on the legal theory of war, and can be addressed as a distinct period because the fourteenth century was a time when theory moved in important new directions. It will be suggested in turn that those new directions were related to changing politics and institutions in Italy. The second aim continues and reflects the first, as it seeks to better understand how legal arguments about war and peace were employed in practice, using Florence as an example. The study finds that these legal arguments found their most important role in diplomacy. Florentine diplomatic records, as well as legal opinions (or consilia) on inter-city disputes, will help to examine the complex nature of that role. In general it will be seen that the law, including the jus commune, was a strategic tool and an important regulatory mechanism for relations between political actors in late medieval Italy, though one that also had significant limitations. The first chapter introduces the material and themes. The second treats the just war tradition and laws on war through 1300. The third chapter examines legal theory on war, particularly in Roman law, from roughly 1300 to the early fifteenth century. The fourth explores how just war arguments were deployed in Florentine political discourse between 1230 and 1430. The fifth chapter examines a range of legal issues related to war, as found in diplomatic instructions and consilia which played a role in Florentine wartime diplomacy from 1392-1402. The sixth chapter is the conclusion. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Gregg, Kelly | Hess, Paul | Pedestrianized Streets – From Shopping to Public Space: The History and Evolution of Pedestrianization In North America From Modernism to Contemporary | Geography | 2019-11 | This dissertation addresses the evolution of pedestrianization, specifically examining the pedestrian mall concept, which originated from modernist planning and design ideas in the early 20th century. The pedestrianization of Times Square in New York City in 2009 has heightened contemporary interest in pedestrianization for public space purposes. Only a few decades ago however, post-war pedestrian malls were dismissed as a failure that devastated retail districts in downtowns across North America. Given this history, how did pedestrianization in North America experience a rise, fall and reinvention in only a few decades? This research specifically examines how pedestrianization and the pedestrian mall concept evolved as a planning idea, a design strategy, and planning policy from modernism to the contemporary planning era in North America. To address this overall question, this dissertation is divided into three articles. The first article questions how pedestrianization was conceptualized as a modernist idea and transferred between North America and Europe during the 20th century and identifies Architect Victor Gruen as a primary figure in the post-war idea exchange. The second article outlines how the pedestrian mall was established and widely replicated as an urban renewal strategy in the American post-war. The third article demonstrates how the post-war pedestrian mall concept failed and was subsequently abandoned in North America. The final and concluding chapter synthesizes the research and suggests evolutionary phases of pedestrianization ranging from the early experimental ideas that were prominent before and during World War II, to the contemporary rise in experimentation with pedestrianization ideas. I conclude in arguing that there is a clear link and recycling of ideas that were only recently rejected and that a similar process of replicating ideas is still occurring. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Greiss, John | Rogerson, Carol | Applicability of the Charter in the Healthcare Context Through the Lens of Vaccination-or-mask Policies | Law | 2016-11 | Despite numerous Supreme Court of Canada decisions on Charter applicability, there has been limited discussion on how the Charter applies to entities operating in the healthcare sector. This paper uses vaccination-or-mask policies as a test case to illustrate the difficulties in applying the current law to determine if the Charter applies to various actors, including hospitals, regional health authorities, physiciansâ offices and other for-profit healthcare companies, and the professional regulatory bodies. The analysis demonstrates that the current test remains confusing and unclear, does not significantly reduce the possibility of government shirking its Charter obligations, and may lead to a differential protection of rights across the provinces. A solution is proposed that requests the court to consider a more holistic approach to characterizing an entity as governmental or not. Also, it may be useful to recognize that healthcare as a public monopoly is a unique case for Charter applicability. | LL.M. | health | 3 |
| Greve, Patricia | Adler, Emanuel | Overlap, Identities, and Expectations: Explaining Challenges to Cohesion in Security Communities | Political Science | 2018-06 | This dissertation asks why there are recurrent challenges to cohesion in security communities (SCs) in international relations. Each of the three papers provides a specific part of the answer to this question. Focusing on SCs and the balance of power (BOP), the first paper juxtaposes two common ways of governing security relations between actors in international relations and describes the repertoires of practices that they are based on. A process-based understanding of SC and BOP suggests that they may overlap. We explain why that is the case and identify different types of overlap (temporal, functional, spatial, and relational). Challenges to cohesion may arise in cases where SC and non-SC practices coexist. The second paper focuses on the process of identification in SCs. It does so by bringing together the literatures of ontological security, recognition, and security communities. A revised ontological security view suggests that security communities need to not only continually reinforce a sense of “we-ness” but also recognize members’ distinctiveness. This tension leads to struggles for recognition during which actors employ different strategies: adoption, reform, denial, or exit. I show how struggles for recognition can help explain challenges to cohesion in security communities, and I illustrate how my argument may help adjudicate the debate about the state of transatlantic relations after the end of the Cold War. The third paper conceptualizes security communities as governance mechanisms that include but also may go beyond the routinization of peaceful conflict resolution: Members of a security community “do things together;” they exhibit collective intentionality – which can be inward as well as outward oriented. I argue that collective intentionality gives rise to different kinds of expectations: I develop an analytical framework for understanding the interplay of predictive and prescriptive expectations among members of a security community and its effects on the cohesion of the community. Somewhat counterintuitively, I suggest that managing expectations is particularly challenging in security communities because of the problem of complacency, the likelihood of resentment, the expectation of forgiveness, and the problem of recognition needs. Taken together, my arguments imply that stable cooperative inter-state relationships can only partially rely on structural conditions for their maintenance: Supposedly stable ‘material’ and ‘ideational’ structures do not exist outside of or separate from the continuous political process of struggles for recognition and expectations management. | Ph.D. | governance | 16 |
| Grewer, David Michael | Simpson, Myrna J. | Changes to Soil and Sedimentary Organic Matter Composition with Permafrost Active Layer Detachments in a Canadian High Arctic Watershed | Chemistry | 2017-11 | The vast reservoir of organic matter (OM) locked up in Arctic permafrost may become vulnerable to degradation with increased thawing. In recent years, higher than average Arctic temperatures have increased the frequency of abrupt permafrost thawing events. On sloped terrain, deeper seasonal thawing of permafrost soils can initiate landslide-like events called active layer detachments (ALDs) which can release large amounts of previously unavailable carbon into the surrounding environment. Once exposed, more easily degraded permafrost-derived OM may be transported and mineralized through hydrological networks, altering biogeochemical cycles both locally and globally. It is therefore important to investigate the environmental fate of permafrost-derived OM following release by ALDs. Several complementary methods were used to investigate soil and sedimentary OM composition from an ALD-impacted High Arctic watershed, including: biomarker analyses via gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (solvent extractable compounds, base hydrolysable products, CuO oxidation products, phospholipid fatty acids), solid-state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, and radiocarbon analysis using accelerator mass spectrometry. Samples collected from the watershed represented three distinct environments: soils, fluvial sediments, and lacustrine sediments. Soil OM composition of depth profiles from upslope and downslope regions of the disturbance were compared. Lower amounts of labile OM upslope, suggesting increased erosion, contrasted with higher amounts downslope indicative of the accumulation of OM. Additionally, labile OM observed in subterranean soil downslope indicates storage of more easily degraded material in deep permafrost. Fluvial sedimentary OM composition downstream of the disturbance was investigated to characterize potential shifts in OM composition resulting from ALD inputs. In addition, downstream translocation of ALD inputs over time was determined when comparing samples from 2011, 2013, and 2014. OM composition in areas along the river receiving ALD inputs also shifted from permafrost-derived biomarkers toward more contemporary aquatic-derived inputs over time. OM composition from recent lacustrine sediments contained older, more persistent compounds suggesting that the labile OM released by ALDs likely undergoes degradation before reaching the lake. Overall, this thesis reveals the ongoing shifts in the OM composition of ALD-impacted Arctic landscapes and contributes to the growing body of evidence suggesting enhanced losses of labile permafrost-derived carbon with future warming and climate change. | Ph.D. | environment, | 13 |
| Griffiths, Caitilin J. | Keirstead, Thomas | Tracing the Itinerant Path: Jishū Nuns of Medieval Japan | East Asian Studies | 2010-11 | Medieval Japan was a fluid society in which many wanderers, including religious preachers, traveled the roads. One popular band of itinerant proselytizers was the jishū from the Yugyō school, a gender inclusive Amida Pure Land Buddhist group. This dissertation details the particular circumstances of the jishū nuns through the evolving history of the Yugyō school. The aim is to provide a comprehensive understanding of the gender relations and the changing roles women played in this itinerant religious order. Based on the dominant Buddhist view of the status of women in terms of enlightenment, one would have expected the Buddhist schools to have provided only minimal opportunities for women. While the large institutionalized monasteries of the time do reflect this perspective, schools founded by hijiri practitioners, such as the early Yugyō school, contradict these expectations. This study has revealed that during the formation of the Yugyō school in the fourteenth century, jishū nuns held multiple and strong roles, including leadership of mix-gendered practice halls. Over time, as the Yugyō school became increasingly institutionalized, both in their itinerant practices and in their practice halls, there was a corresponding marginalization of the nuns. This thesis attempts to identify the causes of this change and argues that the conversion to a fixed lifestyle and the adoption of mainstream Buddhist doctrine discouraged the co-participation of women in their order. | PhD | inclusive, gender | 4, 5 |
| Griffiths, John Darrin | Ryan, James | Promoting Inclusion in Urban Contexts: Elementary Principal Leadership | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | The purpose of this study is to explore the strategies principals use to promote inclusion in their urban elementary schools. Data was collected from sixteen urban elementary school principals—who were identified as skilled at promoting inclusion—in Ontario, Canada. The thesis argues that inclusion is vital to ensuring social justice and combating the culture of positivism in the current educational context. As well, this thesis presents numerous strategies to promote inclusion with staff members, students, and parents. I also identify critical themes: the importance of principals teaching others, particularly teachers, about inclusion; how the principals in this study learned about inclusion; teachers as barriers to the promotion of inclusion; and the negative impact on principals who promoted inclusion. I conclude with the connection of inclusion with the concept of the public intellectual. | EDD | inclusive | 4 |
| Grise, Paul Edmund | Walks, Alan||Leslie, Deborah | The (D)evolution and Neoliberal Restructuring of Social Housing in Canada: A Comparative Study of Municipal and Provincial Governance in Toronto, ON and Vancouver, BC | Geography | 2016-11 | Neoliberal policies have been widely adopted and implemented in capitalist societies. Canada is no exception, as neoliberal strategy is evident at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. Examples of this can be found in Canadian social housing, among other areas of policy. Since the 1990s the ways in which social housing is managed and funded have changed significantly. Through devolution the federal government’s role has decreased considerably, resulting in increased responsibilities for provinces and municipalities. While most provinces now manage social housing portfolios, Ontario is the only province to subsequently devolve its responsibility to the municipal level. Given reduced levels of government funding, providers are increasingly challenged to find new and innovative ways to assist in the delivery of social housing. The purpose of this research is to examine how varying levels of devolution influence neoliberalization processes at the local level, and determine if a greater degree of downloading is linked to a more intensified withdrawal of direct state involvement and increased private sector participation. This is achieved through an in-depth comparison of Toronto and Vancouver, two of Canada’s largest cities. The results highlight how neoliberal policies are experienced differently across time and space, the complexity of policy devolution, and consider the role of local path dependencies in social housing provision. Additionally, by presenting detailed accounts of the devolution process, the introduction of new ‘affordable housing’ programs, and the expiry of federal operating agreements, this study provides a comprehensive, critical and updated review of Canada’s evolving social housing system. | Ph.D. | cities | 11 |
| Gruner, Sheila | Mojab, Shahrzad | Learning Land and Life: An Institutional Ethnography of Land Use Planning and Development in a Northern Ontario First Nation | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-06 | This study examines intricately related questions of consciousness and learning, textually-mediated social coordination, and human relationships within nature, anchored in the everyday life practices and concerns of a remote First Nation community in the Treaty 9 region. Through the use of Institutional Ethnography, community-based research and narrative methods, the research traces how the ruling relations of land use planning unfold within the contemporary period of neoliberal development in Northern Ontario. People’s everyday experiences and access to land in the Mushkego Inninowuk (Swampy Cree) community of Fort Albany for example, are shaped in ways that become oriented to provincial ruling relations, while people also reorient these relations on their own terms through the activities of a community research project and through historically advanced Indigenous ways of being. The study examines the coordinating effects of provincially-driven land use planning on communities and territories in Treaty 9, as people in local sites are coordinated to others elsewhere in a complex process that serves to produce the legislative process called Bill 191 or the Far North Act. Examining texts, ideology and dialectical historical materialist relations, the study is an involved inquiry into the text process itself and how it comes to be put together. The textually mediated and institutional forms of organizing social relations—effectively land relations—unfold with the involvement of people from specific sites and social locations whose work is coordinated, as it centres on environmental protection and development in the region north of the 51st parallel. A critique of the textually mediated institutional process provides a rich site for exploring learning within the context of neoliberal capitalist relations and serves to illuminate ways in which people can better act to change the problematic relations that haunt settler-Indigenous history in the contemporary period. The work asks all people involved in the North how we can work to address historic injustices rooted in the relations and practices of accumulation and dispossession. The voices and modes of governance of Aboriginal people, obfuscated within the processes and relations of provincial planning, must be afforded the space and recognition to flourish on their own terms. | PhD | environment, land use, institution | 13, 15, 16 |
| Guerrero, Alexandra Cristina | Gaztambide-Fernandez, Ruben | Rethinking Latin@ Student Engagement: Identification, Community Engagement, and Transformative Learning through Youth Participatory Action Research | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2014-06 | My dissertation explores the ways in which youth participatory action research (YPAR) can provide students with the affective and the socio-educational experiences to become agents of personal, social, as well as educational change. My analysis is centred on a YPAR pilot study at Urban High School (pseudonym), a central Toronto secondary school with large numbers of students who self-identified as Latin@. This YPAR program, which was implemented as a Saturday senior social science credit course, involved 20 Latin@ students from diverse national, ethnic and academic backgrounds. Through a transnational Latin@ feminist lens and a methodological framework of YPAR, I examine how the students describe the processes of self-identification, community engagement, and transformative learning. While exploring the students' perspectives on their engagement and learning throughout the course, this dissertation problematizes conventional forms of schooling and argues for the necessity of shifting schooling towards more culturally relevant and student-centred pedagogies such as YPAR. The findings of this dissertation present YPAR as an alternative pedagogy that provides students with the opportunities to participate in collaborative learning environments through which they can develop knowledge as well as critically engage with issues that are relevant to them. In turn, this youth-centred pedagogy provides students with various forms of resources that create vast possibilities for transformative learning on individual and collective levels. Included in these possibilities is the building of relationships as well as critical dialogue on a variety of topics like power relations, gender, race, immigration, and schooling. The opportunities for such critical conversations cultivate a relevant context through which students can develop their research and inquiry skills and acquire a foundation through which to learn more about themselves and their social context. The dissertation concludes with an account of how this YPAR work has been expanded beyond the course and into further work with Latin@ and other groups of youth. This account points not only to the necessity of rethinking conventional forms of schooling, but also to the possibilities that YPAR yields for empowering youth to shift how they see themselves and engage with the world around them. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Gugel, David Michael | Meyerson, Mark D | The Social and Cultural Worlds of Elite Valencian Youth, 1300-1500 | Medieval Studies | 2016-06 | This study examines the socio-cultural position of adolescents and youths – those between the approximate ages of fifteen and twenty-five years old – within aristocratic and patrician society in late medieval Valencia. It investigates how young people were defined and described by adult society, as well as how young people understood their own relationship with sources of adult authority – sometimes acquiescing to it and sometimes actively resisting it – and concludes that, far from being an insignificant or abbreviated period of transition from childhood to adulthood, adolescence was a vital and protracted period of preparation that was believed to require special vigilance and attention from adult society to ensure that adolescents and young adults became “successful” members of society. The study begins, in Part I, by investigating how adolescence was understood and defined by the Valencian legal code, the Furs, which collectively codified adolescence as a period of “quasi-adulthood.” Then, the second part examines how adolescence and youth were constructed in works of prescriptive literature composed by ecclesiastical and secular authors in late-medieval Valencia, with particular attention given to the writings of the Franciscan writer Francesc Eiximenis, as well as Ramon Llull’s Llibre de l’orde de cavalleria, and Joanot Martorell’s chivalric epic, Tirant lo Blanc. These sources highlight the importance of paternal or adult supervision of a child’s education, while also giving insight into societal constructions of aristocratic masculinity and femininity, aristocratic honor, masculine aggression, and socially acceptable forms of sexual expression between young men and women. Finally, Part III of this study explores how the values expounded by the sources used in Parts I and II were expressed by young people within society. Using legal records (court cases and judicial records) and documentary materials, this section analyzes how young members of aristocratic households, particularly squires and the younger members of aristocratic families, were socialized into the culture of violence, honor, and “proper” sexual comportment by adult society and, consequently, reproduced these values in their own lives. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Guilcher, Sara | Jaglal, Susan | An Investigation of the Journey of Care Related to Secondary Health Conditions for Community-dwelling Persons with Spinal Cord Injury | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-11 | This thesis comprises an in-depth analysis of the journey of care in managing secondary health conditions (SHCs) for community dwelling persons with a spinal cord injury (SCI) in Ontario. Persons with SCI are at high risk of preventable secondary health conditions. The Network Episode Model was used to help conceptually guide the thesis. To determine whether potentially preventable SHCs may be related to emergency department (ED) use, in the first study, I examined patterns of emergency department use (ED) such as the number of visits by year post injury and characteristics of these visits (e.g., acuity level, timing of visits, reasons for visits). Results from this study suggest that the ED is being used as an inappropriate substitute for primary health care for individuals with traumatic SCI. In the second study, to better understand care provision in the community, I examined the caregiving networks, in particular the structure and roles of informal care. While networks are smaller for persons with SCI compared to the general population, these ties are strong, which is essential when the roles involve a level of trust and flexibility. These informal networks serve as critical key players and secondary team members. Finally, in the third study, the journey of care related to SHCs was examined at the micro (individual level), meso (care provider level) and macro (health system level). Significant challenges at the macro health system level were identified such as rigid policies, wait-times for services, funding and social inequities. These analyses have led to a better understanding of the journey of care, which seems to be a challenging and an uphill struggle for persons with SCI, care providers, and community-based advocates. If we are to make significant gains in minimizing the incidence and severity of SHCs, we need to tailor efforts at the health system. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Guilford, Nigel Gareth Hugh | Edwards, Elizabeth A. | The Anaerobic Digestion of Organic Solid Wastes of Variable Composition | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Abstract Every year in Canada approximately 8 million tonnes of organic solid waste is placed in landfills where it decomposes anaerobically over decades, produces large volumes of leachate requiring treatment, and releases 20 million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions as CO2eq. Anaerobically digesting this waste prior to landfill would obviously be beneficial, but this is difficult to achieve because solid waste is a complex, heterogeneous and variable mixture, making any form of processing much more expensive than landfill. This thesis investigates the capabilities of a new approach to the anaerobic digestion of solid waste designed to overcome these obstacles. Most of the costly separation and pretreatment steps common in European anaerobic digesters are eliminated. The waste remains stationary, the leachate is recirculated through it, and the resulting digestate is aerobically cured. The biogas generated is recovered for the generation of electricity or the production of renewable natural gas. A laboratory scale system comprising six sequentially batch fed leach beds and an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor was constructed, and operated continuously for 616 days. The feedstock consisted of a mixture of cardboard, boxboard, newsprint, and fine paper, to which varying amounts of food waste were added (from 0% to 29% on a COD basis). The digester accommodated these and other changes without any signs of process upset or instability. It was found that the addition of food waste increased biogas production from the fibre mixture from 101 L.kg-1CODfibreadded to 330 L. kg-1CODfibreadded an increase of 225%. A substrate destruction efficiency of 65% (on a COD basis) and a methane yield of 225 L.kg-1 CODadded were achieved, at a solids retention time of 42 days. This performance was similar to that of a CSTR digesting similar wastes. A financial analysis showed that the technology can be competitive with landfill. | Ph.D. | renewable, waste, greenhouse gas | 7, 12, 13 |
| Gunness, Patrina | Koren, Gideon | New insight into Acyclovir Renal Handling and Nephrotoxicity | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2011-11 | Drug – induced nephrotoxicity is a serious adverse reaction that can have deleterious effects on a patient’s health and well-being. Acyclovir is an example of such an agent that causes the aforesaid effects. The drug induces severe nephrotoxicity in patients. The etiology of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity has not been fully elucidated. The overall objective of this thesis is to gain new insight into the pathogenesis of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity. Cytotoxicity studies showed that acyclovir induced human renal proximal tubular (HK-2) cell death, in vitro, and that the degree of this toxicity was significantly reduced by co-exposure to 4-methylpyrazole. The results suggest that acyclovir induces direct insult to human renal proximal tubular cells and the toxicity may be caused by the parent drug’s noxious acyclovir aldehyde metabolite. Transepithelial transport studies illustrated that acyclovir does not inhibit the transport of creatinine across porcine renal proximal tubular (LLC-PK1) or HK-2 cell monolayers. The results suggest that acyclovir does not inhibit the tubular secretion of creatinine in vitro, and possibly, in vivo, as well. Therefore, the abrupt, pronounced and transient elevations in the levels of plasma creatinine observed in patients may be solely and genuinely due to reduced GFR as a result of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity, and not to a tubular interaction between creatinine and acyclovir. Employing human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293) containing the full-length human ABCG2 gene encoding the wildtype ABCG2 amino acid sequence; cell accumulation studies showed that in the presence of the human breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) inhibitor, fumitremorgin C (FTC), there was significant intracellular accumulation of acyclovir. The results suggest that acyclovir is a substrate for the efflux transporter and bears several potential implications with respect to the renal transport mechanisms and pathogenesis of the direct tubular damage induced by the drug. Synthesizing all the data, the results contribute to a better understanding of the pathogenesis of acyclovir – induced nephrotoxicity. Moreover, the research highlights the need for future studies that will aid in further elucidation of the underlying cell and molecular mechanism(s) of this toxicity and potential therapies for prevention of the direct renal tubular injury induced by the drug. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Gupta, Sumit | Sung, Lillian||Guttmann, Astrid | Socioeconomic Status, Diagnostic Interval Length and Outcome in Pediatric Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-06 | Efforts to determine the causes of treatment failure in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common childhood cancer, have neglected the potential role of socioeconomic status (SES). This thesis aimed to address three key knowledge gaps in the field of SES and pediatric oncology. First, we evaluated the current literature by conducting a systematic review of studies evaluating the impact of SES upon childhood cancer survival. Of the 36 studies identified, we found that low SES was uniformly associated with inferior outcome in low- and middle-income countries. The same association was commonly found in studies conducted in high-income countries. Secondly, as several researchers have proposed that prolonged diagnostic intervals (time between first healthcare access and diagnosis) may serve as a pathway linking low SES and inferior cancer outcome, we developed and validated a novel measure of diagnostic interval length among Ontario children with ALL using population-based health services data. Using this measure, we found that prolonged diagnostic interval (≥4 days) was associated with having a general practitioner (GP) as primary care physician vs. a pediatrician [adjusted odds ratio (OR) 1.60, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.04-2.47; p=0.03]. Socioeconomic and healthcare access variables were not associated with interval length. While prolonged diagnostic intervals were associated with superior event-free survival [hazard ratio (HR) 0.71, 95% CI 0.52-0.98; p=0.04], this association was confounded by disease biology. Finally, we aimed to determine the impact of SES upon Ontario children with ALL. We found that while low SES was not associated with inferior EFS, immigrant status was associated with superior outcome (HR 0.36, 95% CI 0.13- 0.96; p=0.04). These findings have important implications for patients, caregivers, researchers and policymakers. Future studies should use the methodologies developed in this thesis to explore the impact of SES and diagnostic interval length in other malignancies | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Guta, Adrian | Strike, Carol | A Foucauldian Engagement with the “Problem of Ethics” in the Canadian HIV Community-based Research Movement | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-06 | This dissertation examines the Canadian HIV community-based research (CBR) movement, with an attention to how research ethics is understood and practiced. HIV CBR brings together health researchers, clinicians, service providers, and people living with HIV (PHAs) to undertake collaborative research and evaluation. HIV CBR is characterized by inclusive and community-driven research processes, a commitment to partnership building, and the involvement of relevant stakeholders. However, HIV CBR practitioners claim the formal research ethics review process is unresponsive and alienating, and fails to address the ethical issues present in their work. For these reasons, research ethics review has been identified as a major barrier to HIV CBR. Towards examining these claims, interview data were collected from recipients of Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) HIV CBR operating grants from across Canada. The analysis offered here departs from the majority of the literature by using Michel Foucault’s approach to ethics. Foucault’s work considers the role of power, discourse, and how conceptions of morality emerge within particular systems of governance. This dissertation includes an introductory chapter, three core chapters written in a manuscript format and a concluding chapter. In Chapter 1, I situate my dissertation at the intersections of HIV CBR, empirical bioethics, and critical public health. Chapter 2 examines the confessional dimensions of interviewing participants about their ethical transgressions. Chapter 3 offers an analysis of the relationship between actors in the CBR movement, related funding programs, and the state. Chapter 4 examines the relationship between actors in the CBR movement and prescriptive research ethics. In Chapter 5, I conclude by exploring the implications for advancing greater critical reflexivity in HIV CBR. Overall, this dissertation theorizes the so called “problem of ethics” in HIV CBR and uses it as opportunity to ask different kinds of questions about community engagement in collaborative research. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Guthrie, Jordan Alexander | Eyoh, Dickson | Land and Leviathan: Local Politics and Land Tenure Reform Implementation in Rural Tanzania | Political Science | 2014-11 | Reforms aiming at the transformation of customary or communal institutions of rural property rights into systems of ownership operable through the market mechanism have gained prominence on contemporary development agendas and, since the 1990s, have been undertaken by over twenty African countries. Strategies and outcomes of these reforms, however, have varied significantly across diverse rural contexts throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The dissertation asks: How have global shifts in thinking about property relations played out within state and local institutions? How has the character of rural property rights reforms been shaped by the diverse local social and political contexts of their implementation in African countrysides? The analysis draws on institutionalist theories of state-formation, socio-cultural perspectives on agrarian change, and ten months of fieldwork in rural Tanzania to argue that differences in the organization of local authority over land within particular rural political ecologies determine the character and outcomes of property rights reforms across rural contexts within the same country and even district. Boone's (2003) analysis of the impact of communal structures on state strategies of rural institution-building, and Berry's (1993, 2002) arguments about the fluidity, negotiability, and contestation of African social institutions provide starting points for the analysis. Particular strategies of reform in Tanzania are situated within the country's own historical trajectory of agrarian political economic development before their implementation is analyzed within rural contexts differing in the relative centralization (Moshi District of Kilimanjaro Region) or decentralization (Bagamoyo District of Coast Region) of communal authority. Differences in the local organization of authority are shown to shape both the strategies of central reformers, as well as the ways in which local elites and producers have sought to contest, harness, and manage the reform process. Communal structures evolve in the face of new risks and opportunities and are argued to provide rural actors with different sets of tools in managing processes of agrarian change. Implications are drawn for understanding dynamics of rural commoditization, the character of political contestation in contemporary African countrysides, and the role not only of rural elites but of producers themselves in shaping outcomes of institutional change. | Ph.D. | rights | 16 |
| Guven, Ali Burak | Sandbrook, Richard | Peasants, Bankers and the State: Forging Institutions in Neoliberal Turkey | Political Science | 2006-06 | The recent rediscovery of institutions in the study of international development has drawn considerable attention to macro arrangements, but sparked much less interest in mid-range, sectoral institutions and how they are reshaped under dynamic domestic and nondomestic constraints. This study joins the few examples of this latter research focus by offering a typology of sectoral institutional pathways in contemporary late developers. The typology incorporates four variables: pre-existing institutions, international norms, technocratic engineering, and coalition politics. It is argued that from careful pairings of these variables, for which the sectoral effects of internationalization and the intensity of domestic political competition are used as the main criteria, it is possible to deduce distinct ideal-typical pathways: insulated accommodation, insulated innovation, negotiated accommodation, and negotiated innovation. The typology models the complexity of institutional trajectories, but it cannot predict concrete institutional profiles. Its value is in providing guidance for empirical analysis. The bulk of the study is devoted to applying this framework to the evolution of Turkey’s fiscal, financial and agricultural regimes of governance from 1980 to 2007. This comparative exercise unlocks several empirical mysteries at once: the failure of Turkish governments in the 1990s to readjust the novel fiscal and banking regimes to preempt the perils of democratic instability and rapid financial integration; the surprising persistence of populist-corporatist forms of market governance in agriculture despite the neoliberalism of the 1980s and 1990s; the stark divergence in reform outcomes across these regimes during the intense restructuring efforts of the 2000s; some odd instances of institutional complementarity; and the exotic twists in the fortunes of Turkish peasants and bankers throughout the entire period. A separate chapter extends the typology to four non-Turkish cases to gain comparative insight into the different types of reshaping: Chinese banking, South Korean corporate governance, Mexican agriculture, and Argentine labor markets. Among the main findings of the study are the need to get beyond dichotomous notions of institutional continuity and change, the problematicity of the quest for good institutions via externally-inspired reforms, and the value of mid-range institutional analysis for understanding shifts in collective fortunes and preferences under processes of macro-transformation. | PhD | agriculture, institution | 2, 16 |
| Habib, Muhammad Ahsanul | Miller, Eric | Microsimulating Residential Mobility and Location Choice Processes within an Integrated Land Use and Transportation Modelling System | Civil Engineering | 2009-11 | This research investigates motivational and procedural aspects of households’ long-term decisions of residential locations. The main goal of the research is to develop microbehavioural models of location processes in order to implement this critical land use component within a microsimulation-based model of Integrated Land Use, Transportation and Environment (ILUTE). The research takes a disaggregate and longitudinal approach to develop the models, which is consistent with the real-world decision-making process of households concerning their movements from one residence to another over time. It identifies two sequential model components to represent households’ relocation behaviour: (1) a model of household residential mobility that determines whether a household decides to become active in the housing market, and (2) a (re) location choice model. Both components are empirically investigated using retrospective surveys of housing careers. For the residential mobility decision, the research tests continuous-time hazard duration models and discrete-time panel logit models, and attempts to capture heterogeneity effects due to repeated choices within both modelling techniques. A discrete-time random parameter model is selected for implementation within ILUTE since it incorporates time-varying covariates. Assuming a sequential decision process, this mobility decision model is linked to the (re) location choice model that establishes preference orderings for each active household for a given set of dwelling units that it considers to relocate within the housing market. A unique feature of the (re) location model developed in this research is that it incorporates reference dependence that explicitly recognizes the role of the status quo and captures asymmetric responses towards gains and losses in making location choice decisions. The research then estimates an asking price model, which is used to generate base prices for active dwellings to interact with active households through a market clearing process within a microsimulation environment. A multilevel model that simultaneously accounts for both temporal and spatial heterogeneity is developed in this research using multi-period property transaction data. Finally, this research simulates evolution of households’ location choices for a twenty-year period (1986-2006) and compares the results against observed location patterns. | PhD | land use | 15 |
| Hackett, Kristy Melissa | Sellen, Daniel W | Impact of a Community-based Smartphone Intervention on Maternal Health Service Utilization in Rural Tanzania | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-11 | Improving access to safe facility-based delivery (FBD) is a challenge in rural Tanzania, where 50% of women deliver at home without skilled medical assistance. Community health workers (CHWs) may improve women’s demand for, and uptake of FBD services; however CHW performance can be suboptimal without supportive supervision and job aids. This dissertation addresses key questions in maternal health services research and contributes to the evidence base for mobile health (“mHealth”), for which rigorous impact studies in low-income countries remain scarce. This study employed a cluster-randomized, controlled, mixed-methods trial design to evaluate the impact of a smartphone-based intervention (SP+) designed to assist CHWs with data collection, prenatal education delivery, gestational danger sign identification, and referral on women clients’ utilization of FBD. Pairs of CHWs in 32 villages were cluster-randomized to receive training on either SP+ or standard, paper-based protocols for use during household visits with clients. The main outcome (delivery location) was ascertained via postnatal household surveys with 572 randomly selected women. In-depth qualitative interviews with 60 CHWs and 14 healthcare professionals, and focus group discussions with 56 women clients were conducted to explore perceptions of CHW performance, quality of care, and SP+ implementation strength. SP+ was associated with increased FBD: after adjusted analyses, the odds of FBD in intervention villages were two times greater than the odds in control villages (OR=1.95; p=0.02). A key underlying mechanism was increased household visit frequency by smartphone-assisted CHWs; these CHWs reported higher job satisfaction compared to peers in the control group. Qualitative findings suggest that SP+ led to perceived improvements in data management, communication, decision-making support, emergency response, enhanced social status and credibility, and perceived health system improvements among clients. However, concerns regarding privacy and data security were raised. Through triangulation of methods and data sources, I demonstrate how factors influencing women’s use of FBD in this context are multidimensional and thus require multi-level maternal health programs and policies. I argue that while SP support for CHWs can be efficacious in targeting increased FBD, prevailing health system weaknesses including a lack of formal support for CHWs limits the potential impact of such strategies. | Ph.D. | health, women, rural | 3, 5, 11 |
| Hackett, Valarie Cynthia Rhonda | Williams, Charmaine C. | Families Building Nations, or Nations Building on Families? An Exploration of How African Caribbean Immigrants (Re) Construct Family in the Context of Immigration and Oppression in Canada | Social Work | 2016-11 | This study retrospectively explores the experiences of separation and reunification of African Caribbean immigrant families and how they rebuild their families in the context of immigration and oppression in Canada. Experiences of multiple separations and prolonged reunification have been expected and commonplace for many Caribbean families who have immigrated to Canada since the 1960s. There is a gap in social work knowledge about the experiences of African Caribbean immigrant families in Canada, and this lack is particularly important in light of the frequency of these families’ contact and conflict with institutions such as child welfare agencies, the educational system, and the criminal justice system; these are social institutions where social work has an instrumental role. The study sample consisted of 27 participants, including 25 who identified as African Caribbean women and men, and two who were not African Caribbean-identified. This qualitative study used a decolonizing critical constructionist grounded theory methodology, with data collected through semi-structured individual interviews and focus groups. The major themes that emerged from the study include “Cast Out,” “Keeping Up,” and “Child Rearing.” Together, these themes point to the specific realities and complexities involved in the impact of multiple separations and extended reunification on African Caribbean immigrant families. For social work, the findings offer important contextual knowledge about African Caribbean immigrant families that may help to inform transformative policies and practices. Additionally, the findings aim to contribute towards depathologizing and decolonizing understandings of the historical and contemporary social conditions and subsequent life choices and chances of African Caribbean immigrant families in Canada. | Ph.D. | women, justice | 5, 16 |
| Hadayeghi, Alireza | Shalaby, Amer Saïd ||Persaud, Bhagwant | Use of Advanced Techniques to Estimate Zonal Level Safety Planning Models and Examine their Temporal Transferability | Civil Engineering | 2009-06 | Historically, the traditional planning process has not given much attention to the road safety evaluation of development plans. To make an informed, defensible, and proactive choice between alternative plans and their safety implications, it is necessary to have a procedure for estimating and evaluating safety performance. A procedure is required for examining the influence of the urban network development on road safety, and in particular, determining the effects of the many variables that affect safety in urban planning. Safety planning models can provide a decision-support tool that facilitates the assessment of the safety implications of alternative network plans. The first objective of this research study is to develop safety planning models that are consistent with the regional models commonly used for urban transportation planning. Geographically weighted Poisson regression (GWPR), full-Bayesian semiparametric additive (FBSA), and traditional generalized linear modelling (GLM) techniques are used to develop the models. The study evaluates how well each model is able to handle spatial variations in the relationship between collision explanatory variables and the number of collisions in a zone. The evaluation uses measures of goodness of fit (GOF) and finds that the GWPR and FBSA models perform much better than the conventional GLM approach. There is little difference between the GOF values for the FBSA and GWPR models. The second objective of this research study is to examine the temporal transferability of the safety planning models and alternative updating methods. The updating procedures examine the Bayesian approach and application of calibration factors. The results show that the models are not temporally transferable in a strict statistical sense. However, relative measures of transferability indicate that the transferred models yield useful information in the application context. The results also show that the updated safety planning models using the Bayesian approach predict the number of collisions better than the calibration factor procedure. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Haderer, Margarete | Kohn, Margaret | Politics and Space: Creating the Ideal Citizen through Politics of Dwelling in Red Vienna and Cold War Berlin | Political Science | 2014-03 | To wield direct influence on the everyday lives of citizens, new political elites have often professed a profound interest in shaping the politics of dwelling. In the 1920s, Vienna’s Social Democrats built 400 communal housing blocks equipped with public gardens, theaters, libraries, kindergartens, and sports facilities, hoping that these facilities would serve as loci for “growing into socialism”. In the 1950s, housing construction in Berlin became a site of the Cold War. East Berlin’s social realist “workers palaces” on Stalinallee were meant to serve as an ideal flourishing ground for the “new socialist men and women”. In contrast, West Berlin's modernist Hansa-Viertel was designed to showcase an ideal dwelling culture and an urban environment that would cultivate individuality. This dissertation examines three historically situated and ideologically distinct responses to the housing question: social democracy in Red Vienna, state socialism in East Berlin, and liberal capitalism in West Berlin. It illuminates how political promises of a radical new beginning were translated into spatial arrangements—the private scale of the apartment and the urban scale of the city—as well as how citizens appropriated the social, political, and economic norms inherent to the new spaces they inhabited. More specifically, the following analyses demonstrate the fact that inherited social, technological, and economic practices have often subverted political visions of a radically different future. This was the case with pedagogy in Red Vienna’s municipal housing, instrumental reason in the form of Taylorism and Fordism in East and West Berlin’s mass housing, and gender relations in Red Vienna’s and East Berlin’s politics of dwelling. At the same time, this dissertation examines counter-spaces that emerged from the dialectics between political promises and actual socio-spatial realities, counter-spaces that both reflect critically on past hegemonic “politics of dwelling” and that foreshadow alternative political imaginations that are still relevant today. Of particular interest are counter-hegemonic practices of dwelling that embody possibilities of emancipation—of experiencing oneself as subject instead of object of social transformation, justice—of emphasizing considerations of equality and recognition, and radical democracy—of questioning power relations and of forming alliances among disadvantaged groups to transform everyday life. | PhD | equality, gender, justice | 5, 16 |
| Hajighasemi, Mahbod | Yakunin, Alexander F.||Edwards, Elizabeth A. | Enzymatic Depolymerization of Synthetic Polyesters by Microbial Carboxylesterases | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Several types of biodegradable polyesters with different physical properties have emerged to replace traditional petroleum-based polymers, including polylactic acid (PLA). However, the lack of a sustainable recycling strategy for most biodegradable plastics and their accumulation in aquatic environments necessitate the design of ecologically benign polymers with improved life cycles. Enzymatic degradation of polyesters may not only serve as an energy-efficient approach to convert and re-use post-consumer plastics, but will also pave the way to design plastics with improved biodegradability. Although a number of polyesterase enzymes have been identified, the growing global demand for novel plastics and polymers has stimulated an interest in biocatalytic approaches for plastics recycling technologies. The discovery of novel polyesterases with high activity against a broad range of complex synthetic polyesters remains a key challenge for the development of enzyme-based plastic recycling. In this work, over 200 purified uncharacterized hydrolases from different microbial genomes and metagenomes were screened for esterase activity against polylactic acid, polycaprolactone (PCL), and the model polyethylene terephthalate substrate 3PET producing 39 active enzymes. Direct, activity-based screening of purified uncharacterized hydrolases has revealed the presence of polyesterase activity in several uncharacterized hydrolases from diverse esterase families, whose activity could not have been predicted using current bioinformatics tools. In this work, 17 novel polyester-degrading enzymes were biochemically characterized using both mono-ester and polyester substrates. Some of the identified polyesterases catalysed complete or extensive hydrolysis of solid PLA with the production of soluble lactic acid oligomers and monomers. Agarose-based assays with 24 different synthetic polyesters demonstrated a broad substrate range of the six identified polyesterases. Moreover, the crystal structures of two polyester- hydrolases were determined and the active site residues critical for the enzymatic activity were identified using site-directed mutagenesis. The crystal structure of the RPA1511 polyesterase from Rhodopseudomonas palustris revealed the presence of a molecule of polyethylene glycol bound close to the catalytic Ser residue, which represents the first structure of the polyesterase-substrate mimic complex. The results presented in this thesis indicate that microbial carboxylesterases can hydrolyze a broad range of polyesters with high rates, making them attractive biocatalysts for plastics depolymerization and recycling. | Ph.D. | recycl, production | 7, 12 |
| Halim, Md. Abdul | Thomas, Sean C | Forest Disturbances and Climate Feedbacks in a Mixedwood Boreal Forest | Forestry | 2020-06 | Boreal forests play a critical role in global climate via important biophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks. Large-scale disturbances, particularly fire and harvesting, significantly affect these feedbacks by altering the surface and stand attributes, and can impact boreal forests’ role in the global climate system. Surface- and stand-attribute-driven feedbacks change rapidly in early successional stages, making them challenging to model. As the frequency and intensity of disturbances in boreal forests are predicted to increase, a vast landscape with proportionally more young forests is likely to result. Understanding these feedbacks during early stand development is thus more critical than ever before. Scarcity of data on key biophysical (e.g., albedo, soil temperature) and biogeochemical (e.g., soil greenhouse gas fluxes) processes during early stand development has been noted, particularly in mixedwood boreal forests. Using a series of micrometeorological towers in fire and harvesting chronosequences of a mixedwood boreal forest of northwestern Ontario, we studied combined effects of vegetation cover and climate warming on the surface soil (~2 cm depth) temperature in post-disturbance stands, and the patterns and drivers of surface albedo and soil CO2 and CH4 fluxes during early stand development stages in post-fire and post-harvest stands. A proxy-year analysis indicated that surface soil temperature in winter and spring was lower in a warm year compared to a baseline year, and the magnitude of this difference varied with vegetation cover (Chapter 2). Albedo differences between post-fire and post-harvest stands were most pronounced during winter and spring and primarily driven by stand age and species composition (Chapter 3). We also found that CO2 effluxes were lower in post-fire stands compared to post-harvest stands; post-fire stands were never a source, but some young post-harvest stands were a net source of CH4 . The magnitude in flux difference between post-fire and post-harvest stands varied with stand age and was affected by environmental variables such as soil temperature, moisture, pH, and litter depth (Chapter 4). These findings are critical for understanding dynamics in soil temperature, albedo, and soil carbon fluxes during early successional stages and useful for climate-smart boreal forest management. | Ph.D. | climate, greenhouse gas, environment, forest | 13, 15 |
| Hall, Aaron M. | Fortin, Marie-JosĂŠe | Anthropogenic Impacts on Multihabitat Species and Applications for Conservation | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015 | Anthropogenic impacts are apparent in all ecosystems, threatening the persistence of biodiversity everywhere on Earth. Species' responses to these impacts depend largely on their biology and ecology, and therefore all species are not equally impacted. Species with particular life histories, such as long generation times, specific habitat requirements, small geographic ranges, or poor dispersal potential, are more at risk because they are unable to respond positively in the face of anthropogenic threats. With respect to habitat preferences, the more specific a species' needs, the higher the threat because even a small loss of habitat can lead to local extinctions, meaning that species requiring multiple habitats that are spatially adjacent might be even more at risk of extinction than those that do not. This need for multiple, adjacent habitats, is a common life history strategy, yet how anthropogenic impacts affect these species is currently understudied. Furthermore, the adjacency requirements of these species' habitats are rarely incorporated into conservation tools intended to inform conservation practitioners. To address these gaps in conservation science, in this thesis, I focus on a common group of species that require multiple habitats, Odonata, and investigate the influence of anthropogenic recreation, landuse change, and climate change on their diversity and community composition as larvae and as adults. I then incorporate adjacent habitat requirements into species distribution models and migration simulations. Overall, I find that: (1) anthropogenic impacts from recreation, landuse change, and climate change do affect the diversity and community composition of odonata, generally resulting in reduced diversity of specialist species; (2) adults and larvae respond differently to anthropogenic pressures, likely because they utilize distinct habitats, or the same habitats in different manners; and (3) incorporating adjacent habitats into species distribution models and migration simulations leads to more restrictive, but potentially more realistic, range expansion predictions of one species of Odonata in a fragmented landscape in southern Ontario. | Ph.D. | climate, biodiversity, ecology | 13, 15 |
| Halmrast, Nathan | Park, Andreas | Essays in Financial Economics and Banking | Economics | 2015-11 | This thesis studies the economics of changes in financial and banking rules and regulations. Chapter 1 provides an empirical investigation of the impact of a regulatory change on domestic financial markets, and potential spillovers to international markets. Chapter 2 examines sweeping reforms to international financial and banking regulations from the perspective of central banks. Chapter 3 investigates how financial markets compete, both domestically and internationally, through the introduction of new exchange specific rule changes. In Chapter 1, I study how 2010 amendments to Regulation SHO, which impose temporary constraints on short sale trades after triggering a circuit breaker, impact trading. Using matching based analysis for in period variation, and a pre-regulation placebo counter factual test I find circuit breakers have a marked impact on most market measures for firms post circuit breaker. The regulation aims to improve liquidity, as evidenced through the measure of depth. I do find that depth improves, however, this change is driven by a change in the composition of depth which suggests that real liquidity diminishes after a circuit breaker has been triggered. In collaboration with Anita Anand and Albert Yoon, Chapter 2 examines the legal mandates of central banks prior to and following the recent financial crisis. We examine the mandates of central banks of 42 countries from 2002 to 2011. Across the sample, we find that most central banks have consistent, but not identical, mandates and that most mandates create discretionary rather than affirmative responsibilities. In addition, we find that the total number of central bank mandates has increased dramatically. In Chapter 3, with Katya Malinova and Andreas Park, we investigate how securities exchanges worldwide aim to incentivize liquidity provision introducing maker-taker fee structures. We analyze the impact of maker-taker pricing on market quality, by studying the 2006 introduction of maker rebates on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX). We find that measures of quoted and effective spreads tighten, but depth declines. Benefits to liquidity providers decline while costs for liquidity demanders do not increase, even after accounting for rebates and increased fees, respectively, due to increased competition. | Ph.D. | financial market | 10 |
| Hamam, Ahmed | Kronzucker, Herbert J. | On the Understanding of Sodium Transport and its Role in Salinity Stress in Plants | Cell and Systems Biology | 2020-06 | Soil salinity is a major threat to global agriculture, affecting >900 million hectares of land. Sodium chloride is the most soluble and widespread salt on earth, and at high cytosolic concentrations, is considered toxic. For decades, researchers have been investigating the pathways of Na+ transport and its distribution in plants under salinity stress, especially at the point of contact, the root surface, but the underlying mechanisms remain poorly resolved. According to the current proposed model, Na+ enters root cells passively (i.e. down its electrochemical gradient), via membrane channels, at very high rates and is then actively pumped out of the cytosol at nearly the same rate. This model of rapid Na+ cycling has recently been called into question, as inexplicable cellular energetics, flawed methodologies, conflicting results, and a lack of in-planta demonstrations all plague the model. The present work addresses these fundamental issues by systematically comparing radiotracer measurements and electrophysiological recordings, in conjunction with various nutritional profiles, inhibitory assays, mutant analyses, and genetic characterizations in the model systems barley (Hordeum vulgare), rice (Oryza sativa), and Arabidopsis thaliana. Efflux analysis showed the first physiological evidence of differential unidirectional Na+ efflux from distal root and bulk root zones under steady-state conditions, validating the physiological role of the Na+/H+ antiporter (SOS1) in Na+ efflux, but lack of significant involvement in rapid Na+ cycling based on known expression patterns. Electrophysiological recordings and radiotracer measurements indicated that Na+ influx is modest in nature and saturates well below any toxic concentration of Na+, in stark contrast with what is reported in the literature in support of the standing model. Influx analysis also revealed considerable plasticity in Na+ transport under salinity stress in response to nutritional changes, but only by breaking with conventional protocols. These findings provide clear evidence that the current model of rapid Na+ cycling is invalid and in need of significant reevaluation. It is concluded that most of the reported Na+ fluxes under salinity stress are a gross overestimation of symplastic flow and are more likely to be predominately apoplastic in nature. | Ph.D. | agriculture | 2 |
| Hamanishi, Erin T. | Campbell, Malcolm M. | Intraspecific Variation in the Populus balsamifera Drought Response: A Systems Biology Approach | Forestry | 2013-06 | As drought can impinge significantly on forest health and productivity, the mechanisms by which forest trees respond to drought is of interest. The research presented herein examined the intra-specific variation in the Populus balsamifera drought response, examining the potential role of the transcriptome to configure growth, metabolism and development in response to water deficit. Amassing evidence indicates that different species of Populus have divergent mechanisms and Three lines of inquiry were pursued to investigate the intraspecific variation the drought response in P. balsamifera. First, the transcriptome responses of six genotypes of P. balsamifera were examined using Affymetrix Poplar GeneChips under well-watered and water-deficit conditions. A core species-level transcriptome response was identified. Significantly, intraspecific variation in the drought transcriptome was also identified. The data support a role for genotype-derived variation in the magnitude of P. balsamifera transcriptome remodelling playing a role in conditioning drought responsiveness. Second, the impact of drought-stress induced declines in stomatal conductance, as well as an alteration in stomatal development in two genotypes was examined. Patterns of transcript abundance of genes hypothesised to underpin stomatal development had patterns congruent with their role in modulation of stomatal development. These results suggest that stomatal development may play a role as a long-term mechanism to limit water loss from P. balsamifera leaves under conditions of drought-stress. Finally, the drought-induced metabolome of six P. balsmaifera genotypes was interrogated. Metabolite profiling reveled amino acids such as isoleucine and proline and sugars such as galactinol and raffinose were found with increased abundance, whereas TCA intermediates succinic and malic acid were found with decreased abundance in response to drought. Comparative analysis of the metabolome and the transcriptome revealed genotypic-specific variation in energy and carbohydrate metabolism. Taken together, the findings reported in this thesis form a foundation to understand the basis of intraspecific variation in the drought response in P. balsamifera. Transcripts and metabolites that contribute to within-species differences in drought tolerance were defined. These molecular components are useful targets for both future study, as well as efforts aimed at protecting and growing trees of this important species under challenging environmental conditions. | PhD | forest | 15 |
| Hamdani, Suryani Sara | Renwick, Rebecca | Problematizing Transition to Adulthood for Young Disabled People | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-11 | The purpose of this critical qualitative study was to understand how transition to adulthood for young people with developmental disabilities (DD) is constituted as a ‘problem’ in policies and practices across sectors in Ontario and the implications for these young people and their parents. This transition to adulthood has been identified as a policy problem in three provincial government sectors in Ontario, Canada—rehabilitation, education, and developmental services. The problem is predominantly framed as a service transition issue, particularly when young people ‘age out’ of pediatric health services by age 19 and public education by age 21, and seek adult-oriented programs and services. Transition policies have been developed in each sector, shaped by both explicit and implicit understandings of key concepts, such as disability and adulthood. These understandings function to constitute transition as a particular kind of problem, and play a key role in what is considered and proposed to address it, but also what is not considered or potentially neglected or even ignored. What is and is not considered has implications for the health and daily lives of young disabled people and their families. Guided by a problem-questioning approach to policy analysis proposed by Carol Bacchi, I used a multimethod design, including analysis of three policy documents and in-depth interviews with 13 parents, to examine how transition to adulthood is constituted as a problem. My analysis revealed that normative assumptions about ways of being, becoming, and acting as an adult shaped an implied problem of disabled children and their inadequate progression to socially valued adult roles and activities. Policies shaped by these assumptions had both positive (e.g., feelings of self-worth for achieving or approximating socially valued roles and activities) and unintended negative effects (e.g., social exclusion, stress or anxiety when adult roles were not achieved) on young disabled people and their parents. These findings highlight opportunities for rethinking the policy problem in ways that can mitigate unintended harmful consequences on young people with DD and their families and for improving their health and daily life circumstances through healthy public policy and cross-sector coordination. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Hamlin, Daniel | Davies, Scott | School choice in deindustrialized cities: A mixed method comparison of charter and public schools on safety and parental involvement in Detroit, Michigan | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-06 | Charter schools have rapidly expanded in deindustrialized American cities over the past twenty-five years where they have been touted as a solution to pressing school safety problems, low parent participation, and educational underperformance. Yet, research on charter schools has focused on student achievement, largely overlooking school safety and parental involvement. This thesis compares charter and public schools on perceived school safety and parental involvement in Detroit, Michigan in three studies in the sandwich format. With its large charter school sector, Detroit is a highly relevant setting, embodying the social and economic challenges of deindustrialized cities that have undergone charter school reforms. In the first study, charter schools exhibited statistically higher perceived school safety, net of controls for neighborhood, school, and demographic characteristics. However, this relationship was largely diminished after accounting for parent-related characteristics. In the second study, non-profit managed charter schools elicited statistically higher parental involvement than for-profit managed charter and public schools while public schools reported greater parent decision-making, net of controls. The third study examined the mechanisms underlying the statistical results by conducting site observations (n = 40), interviews with parents (n = 20) and teachers (n = 20), and numerous informal interviews with different groups of stakeholders. Findings indicated that although charter school strategies were partly attributable to school performance, distinguishing attributes of school choosers conferred a self-selection advantage to charter schools. Overall, charter schools in deindustrialized cities appear to offer a modest improvement on perceived school safety and parental involvement, but they are not accessed by the most disadvantaged students. Extending access to information and transportation may enable greater access, but policy remedies beyond school choice may be needed to address challenges in neighborhood public schools where extraordinarily disadvantaged students are likely to remain enrolled. Additionally, relationship-building and a parent presence in school may be strategies for improving perceived school safety. This thesis furthers existing scholarship by demonstrating the following: the importance of safety to school choice processes in deindustrialized cities; distinguishing features of school choosers among demographically similar families; and differences in safety and parental involvement strategies by school type. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Hamonic, Nicole Dianne | Gervers, Michael | The Order of St John of Jerusalem in London, Middlesex, and Surrey, c.1128–c.1442: A Social and Economic Study Based on The Hospitaller Cartulary, British Library Cotton MS Nero E vi | Medieval Studies | 2012-11 | This dissertation is a socio-economic analysis of the Knights Hospitallers’ estate management in London, Middlesex, and Surrey. It is based on the examination of 372 charters that trace the social, legal, administrative, and economic history of the Order in England between c.1128 and c.1442. The Hospitallers’ involvement in London’s property market is placed within the larger social and economic context of the city. The evolution of the Order’s administrative policy from serving largely as an absentee landlord, to one entangled in litigation to recover rents in arrears, allowed the Order to more than double its income from urban and suburban possessions between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. Regarding the rural Middlesex estates, it is argued that the Hospitallers tailored their administrative tactics to suit local social and economic conditions. They developed new estates with aggressive solicitation of properties and manorial assets, and expanded pre-existing manors by purchasing scattered properties and quit-claims from the descendants and widows of tenants. In response to fourteenth-century population decline and rising prices and wages, the Order shifted to long-term leasehold tenancies, removing themselves ii from the direct management of the properties. Social tensions after 1381, moreover, resulted in shorter leases, and the emergence of copyhold tenancies in the early fifteenth century. A comparative analysis of the Templars’ urban and rural possessions, and of the Hospitallers’ administration thereof following the dissolution of the Templars in 1312, is included in this dissertation. It is argued that the Hospitallers’ acquisition of Templar possessions increased not only their economic standing in England, but also positively impacted the spiritual profile of the priory church at Clerkenwell, London. This dissertation is the first of its kind to examine the corpus of charters pertaining to the Hospitallers’ estate management in London, Middlesex, and Surrey. It is a valuable contribution to our understanding of one of the most important medieval military orders in Europe, and its relationship with London. It is also of interest to scholars of the social and economic history of England. The charters that serve as the basis for this dissertation have been edited, and are included here as an appendix. | PhD | wage, socioeconomic | 1, 8 |
| Hancock, Rebecca L. | Ungar, Wendy Joan | An Economic Evaluation of Teratology Information Services | Medical Science | 2010-06 | BACKGROUND: Teratology Information Services (TIS) educate the public and health professionals via telephone regarding the safety of drugs and other exposures during pregnancy and lactation. Currently TIS consultations are free, but funding is eroding. A cost-benefit analysis may inform resource allocation. It was hypothesized that an individual TIS consultation regarding anti-depressant use during pregnancy provides a positive net benefit compared to a family doctor (FD) consultation. METHODS: A survey of international TIS was conducted to gauge TIS costs. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was designed to assess preferences and willingness-to-pay (WTP, an estimate of benefit) for teratology counseling. DCE respondents (local community volunteers) chose between potential counseling services following an anti-depressant exposure during pregnancy. Services were described by five service attributes and one cost attribute, which were generated in focus groups. Preferences and WTP were estimated using logit regression. Incremental benefits and costs of counseling by TIS and FD were compared in a probabilistic sensitivity analysis to obtain the incremental net benefit from both a societal (productivity costs included) and health system perspective. The FD consultation was costed through OHIP billing codes. The TIS consultation was micro-costed. RESULTS: Eighteen TIS in North America and 16 international TIS completed the survey. Most TIS are small (median two employees, median budget US$69,000). The DCE had 175 respondents. The most important attribute of counseling was receiving very helpful information; information delivery methods were less important. WTP for the TIS scenario was CDN$124 (SD $12); WTP for the FD scenario was CDN$79 (SD $8). Service costs were similar for TIS and FD (approximately $32/consultation); FD had higher productivity costs. Incremental TIS benefits were likely to outweigh costs under both the societal and health system perspectives (probability 99% and 97% respectively). CONCLUSIONS: An economic evaluation of a program that delivers pregnancy health information via telephone required a novel approach. While there are some methodological challenges to valuing benefits through willingness-to-pay, it may be appropriate for valuing counseling. TIS should emphasize their ability to provide high quality information. The benefits of an individual TIS consultation on anti-depressant use during pregnancy are likely greater than the costs. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Hande, Mary Jean Elizabeth | Magnusson, Jamie | Disability (and) Care in Late-Capitalist Struggle: A Dialectical Analysis of Toronto-based Disability (and) Care Activism | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-11 | Disability organizing has proliferated across North America, particularly in the historic centres of disability organizing: San Francisco and Toronto. Similarly, attention to “care” in its multiple practices and formations has proliferated in community-based and radical activism. This proliferation is linked to the historical developments of austerity, neoliberalism, and imperialism as dominant material and ideological social relations. In this context, the meanings of disability (and) care are being reworked and reconceptualized by the state, grassroots organizers, and a variety of financial interests, proliferating disability identities. These social relations place care (and social reproduction) at the heart of radical and revolutionary organizing. Disability organizers and activists seeking to consciously intervene and change these conditions and social relations must grapple with the disability (and) care of the past as well as possibilities for the future in order to shape their projects from forms of resistance to prefigurative and strategic revolutionary struggle. Drawing on oral stories, zines and blogs of activists and organizers, I use a relational/reflexive method (Gorman 2005) to dialectically investigate how disability activists, anti-poverty organizers and political care workers develop “disability consciousness” as they mediate and politicize the contradictions of their disability care praxis. In my interviews with activists beyond the umbrella of disability politics proper, I broaden the historical and material dialectics of care to include disability consciousness around processes and stigmatized drug use in the context of gentrification and drug wars. By expanding these dialectics I can better attend to the social relations of race, imperialism and finance capitalism that remain marginal in disability politics. This thesis is an investigation of how disability activists, anti-poverty organizers and political care workers develop “revolutionary disability consciousness” through struggle. My analysis will develop dialectical methods for recognizing this struggle, while also charting a path towards a revolutionary future, which is not wistful, but realistic, necessary and already becoming. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Hannah, Erin | Pauly, Louis | Contesting Cosmopolitan Europe: A Study of Non-governmental Organizations in the European Union's External Trade Policymaking Process | Political Science | 2008-11 | This thesis investigates whether more open trade policymaking processes that include non-governmental entities, by virtue of the divergence of interests represented, lead to a stronger, more legitimate and qualitatively enhanced international trade system. The European Union stands out among major trading powers for its significant and dramatic response to new demands for access and participation. The thesis examines whether improvements in the political opportunity structure for ‘progressive’ Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) result in more legitimate external trade policymaking in the European Union (EU). Legitimacy is assessed along two lines: the way policy is made (procedural legitimacy) and the projected outcomes of policy (substantive legitimacy). The role of NGOs is evaluated in two important cases in the context of World Trade Organization negotiations since 2000. The first concerns the formulation of the formal European Communities’ (EC) position on trade related intellectual property rights (TRIPS) and access to medicines. The second concerns the EC’s requests for water services liberalization in the context of General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) 2000 negotiations. Through a critical evaluation of the role of NGOs in these cases, the thesis argues that there is clear potential for NGOs to represent citizens’ demands, constitute a basic form of popular representation and hold decision-makers accountable to a broader public. However, they cannot determine policy outcomes in this arena. This thesis challenges a theoretical perspective on public policymaking called Cosmopolitanism. Grounded in democratic and normative theory, it conceives of Global Civil Society, and NGOs in particular, as major conduits for democracy and social justice in global and/or regional governance. The thesis builds upon the insights of Constructivism to advance an alternative account of the significance of NGOs in the EU’s external trade policymaking process. In particular, it argues that epistemes, the deepest level of the ideational world, dominate the external trade policymaking process. NGOs succeed only when their attempts to achieve more democratic, just, equitable and fair external trade policies in the EU conform broadly to the dominant legal/liberal episteme. When they seek to overrule that episteme, they fail, regardless of their formal involvement in the external trade policymaking process. | PhD | equitable, trade, justice | 4, 9, 16 |
| Haqanee, Zohrah | Badali, Michele | Examining Education Outcomes for Justice-involved Youth | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-06 | School is one of several critical points for breaking the cycle of offending. Although probation officers are addressing issues related to youths’ schooling at a greater rate than other – perhaps more pressing – criminogenic needs with which youth may present, there is limited empirical evidence to inform such practices, including what academic achievement looks like for justice-involved youth. In this dissertation I examined the school characteristics of 721 14-19-year old justice-involved youth serving probation sentences in Ontario, Canada, including relationships between demographic, criminal justice system, and school variables. Using Latent Class Analysis (LCA), I examined whether there were distinct classes of youth characterized by academic and behavioural at-risk indicators, and – if so – whether classes differed in terms of demographics, criminal justice system, and school variables. Using linear mixed effect modelling, I examined the longitudinal pattern of achievement over time, including whether achievement changed over the time spent on probation. Results indicated that youths struggled academically from the start of grade 9, with little improvement throughout high school. By age 17 they had earned, on average, a third of the credits required to graduate, and – of those old enough – only 27% actually graduated, compared to the provincial average of 82%. Compared to youth who did not complete high school, youth who graduated had fewer difficulties with family and substance abuse, more productive use of leisure time, lower levels of procriminal/antisocial attitudes, lower levels of involvement with criminally- involved peers, and less justice system involvement. Using risk indicators for school dropout found within the broader education literature, the LCA produced three classes of school risk. Classes differed in intensity of criminogenic needs and total credits earned in school. The effect of probation on credits earned over time was moderated by levels of substance abuse and antisocial peer relationships. Implications for case management of youth on probation include the potential usefulness of prioritizing criminogenic needs outside of (but related to) school in order to improve school outcomes. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Hardcastle, Lorian | Flood, Colleen M. | The Role of Tort Liability in Improving Governmental Accountabilty in the Health Sector | Law | 2013-03 | Over the past decade, concerns with the accessibility and quality of health services have led several individuals to bring tort claims against provincial governments. Unlike other types of health sector legal claims, which have been the subject of much commentary, this thesis provides the first treatment of the tort cases against governmental defendants. To date, Canadian courts have not been receptive to these claims, striking nearly all of them on pre-trial motions, on the basis that government defendants did not owe the plaintiffs a duty of care. In order to situate the health sector tort claims within the judiciary’s broader approach to governmental liability, I compiled a dataset of all tort cases against Canadian governmental defendants from the past decade. My dataset indicates that judges have dismissed more health sector tort claims than those arising from nearly all other sectors of government activity, even accounting for other explanatory variables. I also develop a framework to categorize the judicial approaches to the test for establishing a duty of care. Canadian judges now generally conduct a comprehensive analysis of the closeness and directness of the parties’ relationship and the policy implications of tort liability in determining whether a defendant owes a plaintiff a duty of care. However, judges adjudicating health sector claims fail to appreciate the government’s modern role in the health sector and are almost singularly concerned with the policy implications of their decisions. I conclude with two policy recommendations. First, I argue that judges should more frequently permit these claims to proceed beyond the pre-trial dismissal stage to a full trial, in order to evaluate the policy concerns both for and against governmental liability with the benefit of a full evidentiary record. Second, I argue that judges should more frequently permit health sector tort claims to proceed beyond the duty of care stage of the negligence analysis to an assessment of whether the government met the standard of care. While this approach would allow judges to scrutinize the reasonableness of the government’s decisions, improving transparency and potentially motivating an improved decision-making process, it would not necessarily lead to widespread liability. | SJD | health | 3 |
| Hardy, Billie-Jo | Daar, Abdallah | Bridging the Genomics Gap: The role of Large-scale Genotyping Projects in the Developing World and the Importance of Genomic Sovereignty | Medical Science | 2012-03 | In recent years, there have been several proposals for large-scale human genotyping projects in the developing world. The dissertation presented here explores the motivations, opportunities and challenges of initiating locally led, large-scale genotyping projects documenting human genomic variation in the developing world. I analyze two case studies: the Indian Genome Variation Consortium in India and the University of Cape Town, Department of Human Genetics and the African Genomics Education Initiative in South Africa. These case studies, together with similar projects in Mexico and Thailand provide compelling reasons for pursuing these projects: the potential to address local health needs and reduce health care costs; the opportunity to stimulate economic development through investments in genomic sciences, and the availability of unique population resources. In an effort to capture the value of these investments and promote an equal stake in international collaborations, Mexico and India have developed guidelines and laws to protect local human genetic material as a sovereign resource, referred to here as ‘genomic sovereignty’. Critics have suggested that it can impede international collaborations and reduce access to external funding. I provide an in depth analysis of genomic sovereignty and how it may contribute to each country’s aim of achieving health equity through investments in genomics, its relation to heritage and patrimony, and its potential limitations. The debate is critical, as the knowledge generated from large-scale human genomic research will need to be interpreted in larger international collaborative efforts before it can lead to health benefits. Qualitative case study methodology is employed and the primary data source consists of interviews conducted with key informants. The research described here provides a source of empirical description and analysis that is informing the framing of policies, principles and practices on how research infrastructure and capacity are being established for human genomic sciences in developing countries. | PhD | health, infrastructure | 3, 9 |
| Harper, Alexander | Jill, Caskey | Patronage in the re-Christianized Landscape of Angevin Apulia: The Rebuilding of Luceria sarracenorum into Civitas Sanctae Mariae | History of Art | 2014-11 | This dissertation examines the early fourteenth-century architecture, art, and urbanism of Lucera in Apulia, a city that for most of the thirteenth century served as the only Muslim settlement on the Italian peninsula until its violent purge and destruction by the king of Naples on August 15, 1300. As a city that was suppressed, repopulated, and rebuilt within the span of two decades, Lucera is unique and facilitates a case study that bridges scholarship on the art and architecture in southern Italy, urbanism, multiculturalism, and the emergence of states. This interdisciplinary work argues that Lucera's destruction and reconstruction were due to the rise of an Angevin state and investigates how the repopulated city's art and architecture were affected by the priorities of consolidation and centralization. This dissertation emphasizes the growth of Angevin cities as social and historical phenomena within an analysis of their built environments and the art forms that inhabited them. The most fundamental question raised is how did the emergence of the centralized Angevin crown, the same force that willed the end of Muslim Lucera and its subsequent reconstruction, affect architectural production as well as the dissemination of artistic styles throughout the kingdom? In addition, what was the relationship between arts on a smaller scale, many examples of which were "imported" from regional artistic centers, and buildings, which largely were vernacular constructions? This dissertation argues that the links between political centralization, building production, and artistic circulation within the Angevin South were inextricable. It reaches three fundamental conclusions: the development of an Angevin state meant that a large population of visible religious and ethnic minorities at Lucera was seen as detrimental to political, social, and cultural consolidation, necessitating a purge; the group of outsiders was located within an economically important region of the kingdom, prompting an immediate reconstruction to complete a network of urban centers that had begun three decades earlier; and the same commercial and diplomatic networks of which rebuilt Lucera formed one of the final pieces facilitated the circulation of materials, individual expertise, and art work employed to build, govern, and furnish the reconstructed city. In essence, this dissertation provides a history of the Angevin state through a detailed examination of Lucera's art and architecture rather than providing purely monographic histories of each object. | Ph.D. | cities, urban | 11 |
| Harris, Christopher | Sawchuk, Peter H. | The Development of Working-class Organic Intellectuals in the Canadian Black Left Tradition: Historical Roots and Contemporary Expressions, Future Directions | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-06 | This thesis explores the revolutionary adult education learning dimensions in a Canadian Black anti-racist organization, which continues to be under-represented in the Canadian Adult Education literature on social movement learning. This case study draws on detailed reflection based on my own personal experience as a leader and member of the Black Action Defense Committee (BADC). The analysis demonstrates the limitations to the application of the Gramscian approach to radical adult education in the non-profit sector, I will refer to as the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) drawing on recent research by INCITE Women of Colour! (2007). This study fills important gaps in the new fields of studies on the NPIC and its role in the cooptation of dissent, by offering the first Canadian study of a radical Black anti-racist organization currently experiencing this. This study fills an important gap in the social movement and adult education literature related to the legacy of Canadian Black Communism specifically on the Canadian left. | PhD | equality | 5 |
| Harris, Lucille | Coupland, Gary | Heterarchy and Hierarchy in the Formation and Dissolution of Complex Hunter-gatherer Communities on the Northern Plateau | Anthropology | 2012-11 | This research explores the changing nature of social organization associated with the growth and breakup of large nucleated hunter-gatherer winter settlements in the Mid-Fraser region of south-central British Columbia, ca. 2000-300 cal. B.P. It uses hierarchy and heterarchy as overarching conceptual frameworks for theorizing and evaluating structures of social and political organization. Regional radiocarbon data were used to examine issues of demography and to evaluate the role of scalar stress in producing social change in these burgeoning communities. In order to explore aspects of economic practice and wealth distribution over time artifacts, fauna, and features from sixteen different housepits from five different village sites near the present-day town of Lillooet, British Columbia were analyzed. Results suggest that the villages formed around 1800 cal. B.P. and attained peak population ca. 1200 cal. B.P. The onset of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly at that time altered resource conditions, resulting in greater reliance on mammalian rather than riverine resources. Increased pressure on these resources led to the incorporation of greater amounts of small bodied mammals after 1000 cal. B.P. Apparent declining numbers of houses within large villages after 1200 cal. B.P. suggest that village abandonment began at this time, with individual families likely settling in dispersed villages. The large villages were totally abandoned by 900-800 cal. B.P. Lack of evidence for wealth differentiation in these contexts suggest that social hierarchy based on control over access to resources never emerged in the large villages and that more egalitarian conditions prevailed. Heterarchical structures that allow for shifting balance of power between bands and individual families is argued to have characterized the shift between population aggregation and dispersal. | PhD | wealth distribution | 1 |
| Harrison, Spencer James | Ardra, Cole | Not a Freak Show, Growing up Gay in Rural Ontario: An Arts-informed Inquiry | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | Not a Freak Show: An Arts-informed Inquiry into Growing up Gay in Rural OntarioBy:Spencer James HarrisonDepartment of Leadership, Higher, and Adult EducationUniversity of TorontoAbstract This thesis provides a lens into the climate of growing up gay in rural Ontario in the 1960s and 1970s when there were no images, narratives, or roles models upon which to build one's identity. A full-sized painted circus tent forms the basis of the research and the accompanying written thesis is in the form of an artist's catalogue. Through these forms I present my narratives as a sexual minority and provide strategies for how the present climate of homophobia might be understood and shifted if different stories were created to challenge the oppressive ones that now surround and frame this population. To examine the phenomenon of growing up gay during this time period I began an Artist-in-Residency in a Toronto District School Board High School, where I used an autoethnographic methodology to paint and tell my own story, so I might hear it, share it, and investigate how I and others understand it. This studio provided a site where the narratives of my life, which homophobia had silenced and made invisible, could be revealed. Through the production of a major program of painting I challenged others' ideas of what growing up gay was like, I addressed a missing element of Canadian gay history, and I made methodological advancements through bringing together Arts-informed and Autoethnographic methodologies. Upon completing the painted project I wrote the major narratives that emerged from creating the studio space. The written thesis is presented in a storied form to make it accessible to a broad range of readers and to leave space for readers to consider their own stories. Through this research I came to understand how I made sense of my world, ways my community can change the narratives that are told about them through telling their own, and the value of art as a mechanism for social change. This research contributes to fields of art for social change, history of sexual and gender minority people, notions of belonging, and furthers Arts-informed and Autoethnographic methodologies. | Ph.D. | queer | 6 |
| Harrison, Teddy | Williams, Melissa S | Criminal Justice, Indigenous People, and Political Power in Canada | Political Science | 2020-06 | My dissertation contributes to the work of reconciling radically different justice concepts with a view to designing institutions that can be accepted as legitimate by Indigenous and non- Indigenous Canadians alike. The project is principally a work of political theory within Canadian politics, but it draws upon and contributes to literatures in political philosophy, empirical political science, criminology, and law. The central question of my dissertation is, how can criminal justice in Canada be rendered legitimate for Indigenous people? I argue that legitimate criminal justice is possible, but only if Canadian criminal justice practices are altered to incorporate fundamental insights from Indigenous theories of justice. Chapter two surveys the failures of Canadian criminal justice for Indigenous people, including overincarceration, underrepresentation on juries, the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, and over- and under-policing. Drawing on Indigenous voices, I argue that these are symptoms of an underlying problem: the criminal justice system is not legitimate for Indigenous people. In the third chapter, I argue that the prominent liberal theories of legitimacy that undergird the Canadian polity cannot legitimate the Canadian constitutional framework or the institutions of criminal justice. Instead, criminal justice institutions must establish a form of freestanding legitimacy by deploying practices that themselves are acceptable to Indigenous people. In chapter four I make the case that a separate system of justice for Indigenous people cannot provide legitimacy. The lives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians are sufficiently intertwined that justice problems would inevitably cross jurisdictional boundaries (defined territorially or by identity), leaving many caught in the other system. In matters of justice, separation cannot obviate the need for reconciliation. In chapter five, I work to reconcile Indigenous and non-Indigenous understandings of a concept fundamental to Canadian justice: impartiality. I develop an inclusive model of impartiality implicit in Indigenous practices of circle justice that can supplement the Canadian model of impartiality as disinterestedness. In the conclusion, I note that the level of punitiveness of Canadian justice is unjustified, and a less punitive approach for all would open up more juridical and legal space for Indigenous approaches to justice. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| HASAN, MOHAMMAD | PARK, CHUL | A Systematic Study of Solubility of Physical Blowing Agents and their Blends in Polymers and their Nanocomposites | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2013-11 | The solubility of a blowing agent (BA) in polymer melts is a critically important parameter affecting the plastic foams fabrication. Theoretically, cell nucleation occurs when the pressure of the polymer/gas mixture drops below the solubility pressure. For effective process design, accurate solubility data for blowing agents in polymers is necessary. However, getting more accurate solubility data is a big scarce. Through this research, it was possible to generate more accurate solubility and pressure-volume-temperature (PVT) data and to verify various equations of states (EOS). During the last two decades, due to ozone-depleting-potential (ODP) and global warming issues of BAs, the plastic foam industry has experienced serious regulatory, environmental, and economical pressures. In response to this, researchers and industry have been exploring the uses of blowing agent blends. Nevertheless, very limited fundamental research on the foaming mechanism using blowing agent mixtures has been conducted. The end results of this research is expected to provide guidance to choose the optimal composition of environmental-friendly blowing agent blends and offer insights to develop sustainable foaming technology. This thesis also highlights a comprehensive research for the PVT and solubility behavior of polymer nanocomposites (PNCs). By using the magnetic suspension balance (MSB) and PVT apparatus, it was possible to determine the solubility behavior of PNC more accurately. Fully experimental results indicated that infusion of nanoparticles decreases the volume swelling as well as solubility and diffusivity. It was hypothesized that infusion of organoclay nanoparticles generates a significant amount of solidified (solid-like) polymer near its surface and consequently reduces total absorption capacity of the system. However, it is believed that the solubility behavior of polymeric composites fully depends on the interaction or affinity between fillers (micro or nano) and gas. In other words, if the nanoparticles (such as CaCO3, aluminum oxide, tin oxide) or fillers (such as carbon black, zeolites, silica gel) are highly polar and/or porous, overall sorption (absorption + adsorption) might increase due to adsorption phenomenon. Through the solubility, PVT and modeling of nanocomposites, this research has advanced the understanding of the effect of nanoparticles on solubility that governs different physical phenomena (such as cell nucleation and, cell growth) during plastic foaming. | PhD | industr, environment, global warming | 9, 13 |
| Hasdell, Rebecca | Poland, Blake D||Mah, Catherine L | The Space in Between: Healthy Public Policy Development in Canada’s Provincial North | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-06 | Healthy public policy is a cornerstone of public health practice, and a key strategy for creating enabling environments for health. A recent priority has been to better account for and integrate context into healthy public policy-making, including in the design, execution and evaluation of population health interventions. Healthy Public Policy may be an important tool for promoting health in the smaller cities and rural regions that comprise Canada’s Provincial North. Populations living in these regions share common health challenges and bear a disproportionate burden of poorer health outcomes compared to their urban counterparts. The objective of this research was to explore healthy public policy development for smaller cities and rural regions. An empirical focus on retail food environments in Canada’s Provincial North captured the contextual scale needed for this research aim. Through a community-university partnership in Northern British Columbia, I asked: (1) How is context accounted for and integrated in population health intervention planning? (2) What features of local context are most important to measure to build an evidence-base for action? I employed an interpretivist methodology and a mixed-methods approach, adopting a exploratory sequential design. Over the course of two years embedded in the field, I engaged in participant observation, and conducted workshops and key informant interviews to design a locally-relevant retail food environment assessment plan, then conducted environmental observation of stores to quantify features. Finally, I completed in-depth interviews with retail store operators to further examine qualitatively their experiences of contextual factors. I found that institutions, settings and communities are organized according to the regional connectedness of smaller cities and adjacent rural regions, which has implications for healthy public policy-making in Canada’s Provincial North. Regional connections engender contextual features that are important to measure and understand, but capacity challenges in public health as well as retail practice limit data collection and evidence use at this scale. Existing strategies such as partnerships and community-engagement planning utilized by public health practitioners should be preserved. Additionally, new partnerships with retailers are needed to identify contextual priorities for future action. | Ph.D. | health, cities, urban, rural | 3, 11 |
| Hasinoff, Dorothy Brenda | McDonald, Lynn | Declines and Regains in Income Status and Health Status Among Mid- and Later-life Canadians | Social Work | 2015-06 | As Canada's population ages, understanding the associated economic and social issues that may emerge becomes critical. This study's purpose was to investigate sociodemographic and health behaviour factors that influence income and/or health changes among Canadians in mid- and later-life. To examine these factors, logistic regression analyses were undertaken using a representative sample (n = 2,368) of Canadians, ages 40 to 59 from seven cycles (1994-1995 to 2006-2007) of longitudinal data from the National Population Health Survey. This study examined whether, for this age group, income decline was a stronger determinant of health decline (social causation) than vice versa (reverse causation). Of 382 respondents who experienced both an income and health decline, 230 experienced an income before a health decline. Several logistic regression findings supported social causation and only one supported reverse causation. Also explored by this study was the comparative influence of sociodemographic versus health behaviour factors on changes in income and health. Compared to sociodemographic factors, health behaviour factors had less influence on changes in income and health. The physical inactivity and obesity variables were infrequently statistically significant predictors of income and health changes. The drinking habits variable was frequently a statistically significant predictor of changes in income and health. A history of smoking was very frequently a statistically significant predictor--of health declines only, both income and health declines, and income declines before health declines.The factors associated with * two-fold declines (income and health) were higher income, good or very good (vs. excellent) health, being older, not having graduated from high school, and a history of smoking; * income regains were lower income, being male, younger, married, and a high school graduate; and * health regains were higher income, being neither a high school graduate nor an immigrant, never having smoked, and being a moderate or nondrinker. A better understanding of the patterns and predictors of income and health declines and regains among mid- and later-life Canadians may serve to identify opportunities to improve the future welfare of the elderly. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Hathaway, Mark D. | Scharper, Stephen B. | Cultivating Ecological Wisdom: Worldviews, Transformative Learning, and Engagement for Sustainability | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-06 | The ecological crisis—encompassing interrelated challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and the widening gap between rich and poor—threatens the future of entire species, ecosystems, and human civilisation. This crisis is not only a political, economic, and technological challenge, but also has roots in the way that people—particularly those living in industrialised, affluent societies—perceive their relationship to other humans, living beings, and the Earth itself. Therefore, a shift towards more ecological worldviews and the cultivation of an ecological wisdom that enables persons to perceive reality relationally and discern ecologically-appropriate actions for the common good can play a key role in addressing the crisis. Based on in-depth interviews with 24 ecological educators and activists and extensive biographical and theoretical research, this inquiry examines how ecological worldviews and wisdom may be cultivated in practice. To do so, it explores both the nature, meaning, and manifestations of ecological wisdom as well as how different significant life experiences contribute to the cultivation of ecological wisdom. Using an organic, thematic-narrative approach, the stories of the research participants are presented and analysed, endeavouring to maintain the narrative gestalts to communicate the experiences in a way that is meaningful and transformative. Ecological wisdom may be understood as a process of perceiving reality as relational and interconnected; attuning oneself to the wisdom of other beings and Earth itself; and acting cooperatively and co-creatively to bring forth an ecologically regenerative, socially just, and meaningful way for humans to live harmoniously within specific contexts. Transformative ecological learning—which reshapes consciousness, feelings, thoughts, relationships, and actions to cultivate ecological wisdom—involves a variety of processes. Primary is practicing mindfulness—while letting go of destructive habits and mentalities—to enable one to connect and relate to other beings, learn from them, and work co-creatively with them. Other key processes involve immersions into novel cultures, ecosystems, states of consciousness, and Indigenous wisdom; concretely practicing new ways of perceiving and acting; exercising imagination, art, and responsive creativity; sharing stories embodying ecological wisdom; analysing the crisis and seeking insights from scientific and traditional knowledge; and organising with others to effect transformation. La crisis ecológica no es solo un desafío político, económico y tecnológico, sino que también tiene sus raíces en la forma en que las personas - particularmente aquellas que viven en sociedades industrializadas y prósperas - perciben su relación con otros seres humanos, otros seres vivos y la Tierra misma. Por lo tanto, un cambio hacia cosmovisiones más ecológicas y la cultivación de una sabiduría ecológica que permita a las personas percibir la realidad relacionalmente y discernir acciones ecológicamente apropiadas para el bien común puede desempeñar un papel clave al abordar la crisis. Basado en entrevistas profundas con 24 educadores y activistas ecológicos, esta investigación examina cómo las cosmovisiones y la sabiduría ecológicas pueden cultivarse en la práctica. Para hacerlo, explora tanto la naturaleza, el significado y las manifestaciones de la sabiduría ecológica y al mismo tiempo cómo las diferentes experiencias de la vida significativas contribuyen a la cultivación de la sabiduría ecológica. La sabiduría ecológica puede entenderse como un proceso de percibir la realidad como relacional e interconectada; sintonizándose con la sabiduría de otros seres y la Tierra misma; y actuando de manera cooperativa y co-creativa para generar una forma ecológicamente regenerativa, socialmente justa y significativa para que los humanos vivan armoniosamente dentro de contextos específicos. El aprendizaje ecológico transformador - que transforma la conciencia, los sentimientos, los pensamientos, las relaciones y las acciones para cultivar la sabiduría ecológica - implica una variedad de procesos. Primaria es la práctica de la atención plena, mientras se libera de hábitos y mentalidades destructivas, para permitir que uno se conecte y se relacione con otros seres, aprenda de ellos y trabaje de manera cooperativa con ellos. Otros procesos claves incluyen inmersiones en culturas y ecosistemas nuevas además de estados de conciencia alternados y la sabiduría indígena; practicando concretamente nuevas formas de percibir y actuar; ejercitando la imaginación, el arte; compartiendo historias que manifiesten la sabiduría ecológica; analizar las causas profundas de la crisis; contemplando ideas del conocimiento científico y tradicional; y organizándose con otros para efectuar la transformación. | Ph.D. | educat, climate | 4, 13 |
| Hathiyani, Abdulhamid | Mirchandani, Kiran | A Bridge to Where? An Analysis of the Effectiveness of the Bridging Programs for Internationally Trained Professionals in Toronto | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2017-06 | The biggest hurdle for new immigrants in Canada is their integration into the economic system. These immigrants have higher levels of education but their earnings have been lower and falling in comparison to the native-born Canadians (Akter et al., 2013; Block and Galabuzzi, 2011; Reitz, 2011). The issue of integrating Internationally Educated Professionals (IEPs) into the labour market in Canada is complex and multifaceted. In its effort to ease this gap of integration, the provincial government has invested millions of dollars to establish numerous â bridging programsâ in Ontario. These bridging programs that are supposed to integrate IEPs quickly into the labour market vary depending on the profession, service providers, their length and structure. Utilizing qualitative research and an interpretivist lens, with the help of IEPs (n=20) who have completed the bridging programs and service providers (n=8) for primary data, it has become apparent that although these programs were of benefit to some participants, they do not live up to expectations for many IEPs who continue to struggle to get employed in their profession. This thesis identifies neoliberalism, as not only an economic and political force but also a potent ideology that fosters self-blame.The bridging programs are short-term courses of varying lengths that are supposed to help IEPs address and overcome the challenges of economic integration. They may help in certain ways but are neither equipped to address, nor capable of addressing, the systemic issues of discrimination or racism, with issues of inconsistencies, instability and short sidedness surrounding them. An overall change in attitude to embrace social responsibility and renewed commitment to social justice is required by all stakeholders, if we are to address the ongoing plight of the so many IEPs who are qualified and skilled, but cannot practice in their professions. | Ph.D. | equality, labour, wage | 5, 8 |
| Hatzopoulou, Marianne | Miller, Eric | An Integrated Multi-model Approach for Predicting the Impact of Household Travel on Urban Air Quality and Simulating Population Exposure | Civil Engineering | 2008-11 | The population and economic growth experienced by Canadian metropolitan areas in the past twenty years, has been associated with increased levels of car ownership and vehicle kilometres travelled leading to a deterioration of air quality and public health and an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. The need to modify urban growth patterns has motivated planning agencies in Canada to develop a broad range of policies aiming at achieving a more sustainable transportation sector. The challenge however, remains in the ability to test the effectiveness of proposed policy measures. This situation has led to a renewed interest in integrated land-use and transport models to support transport policy appraisal. This research is motivated by the need to improve transport policy appraisal through the use of integrated land-use and transport models linked with a range of sub-models that can reflect transport externalities. This research starts with an exploration of the transport policy environment in Canada through a questionnaire-based survey conducted with planners and policy-makers. The survey results highlight the need for tools reflecting the sustainability impacts of proposed policies. While the second part of this research explores sustainability indicators and recommends a set of social, economic, and environmental measures, linked with integrated land-use and transport models; effort is dedicated to estimate the environmental indicators as part of this thesis. As such, the third part of this research involves the development of an emission-dispersion-exposure modelling framework. The framework includes a suite of sub-models including an activity-based travel demand model (TASHA), an emission factor model (Mobile6.2C), a meteorological model (CALMET), and a dispersion model (CALPUFF). The framework is used to estimate link-based emissions of light-duty vehicles in the Greater Toronto Area under a base scenario for 2001. Dispersion of emissions is then conducted and linked with population in order to estimate exposure to air pollution. | PhD | health, economic growth, urban, greenhouse gas, environment | 3, 8, 11, 13 |
| Hawkes, Michael | Kain, Kevin C. | Host Pathogen Interactions in Malaria and Tuberculosis: Experimental Models and Translation to Novel Adjunctive Therapies | Medical Science | 2012-06 | Malaria and tuberculosis together account for more than 2 million deaths worldwide each year. The present body of work examines interactions between these leading pathogens and cross-cutting themes in innate immunity to both diseases. Not only are malaria and tuberculosis important threats to public health in their own right, but malaria-tuberculosis co-infection appears to generate more severe pathology than either disease on its own, and malaria may exacerbate primary or re-activation tuberculosis (Chapter 2). Moreover, both diseases appear to share common host defense pathways, including CD36, a macrophage cell surface receptor important for innate immunity (Chapter 3). Biomarkers of host defense pathways common to both malaria and tuberculosis distinguish between clinical disease phenotypes and predict mortality in severe malaria (Chapters 4-7). Biomarker discovery led to the identification of angiopoitetin-2 (Ang-2) as a surrogate marker of disease severity in malaria and a potential therapeutic target. Nitric oxide, in addition to its antimycobacterial properties, is known to inhibit Ang-2 release from the endothelium, and is therefore hypothesized to improve outcomes in African children with severe malaria (Chapters 8 and 9). A broad range of methods are applied to address these diseases and their interactions, ranging from mammalian cell culture experiments in vitro, animal models of disease, analysis of human samples, and clinical epidemiology (randomized controlled trial). Translational aspects of this research are emphasized, outlining how advances in understanding of infectious disease pathogenesis can be applied to improved diagnosis, prognosis, and novel adjunctive therapies for two of the leading global infectious threats. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Hawkins, Naoko | Schieman, Scott | Nativity Status and the Relationship between Education and Health: The Role of Work-related and Psychosocial Resources | Sociology | 2014-03 | The claim of some policymakers that education is the great equalizer of socioeconomic disparities in health (Low et al. 2005) has come under question in recent years. Higher education is related to better health for both immigrants and the Canadian-born. However, immigrants experience weaker health returns to their education than the native-born (Kennedy et al. 2006). Despite the importance of this issue, the reasons for this gap are not fully understood. This dissertation integrates the immigrant health, social stress, and immigrant integration literatures to better understand this issue, using Cycles 17 and 22 of the Statistics Canada collected General Social Survey (GSS). The analyses reveal that education has a diminished effect on the self-rated health (although not stress) of immigrants, the functional limitations of established immigrants, and the happiness of recent immigrants. The reasons for this gap vary depending on the health measure. The weaker relationship between education and the functional ability of established immigrants and the happiness of recent immigrants is explained by immigrants’ lower work-related returns (employment type, occupational skill, personal income) to education. For self-rated health, the nativity status differential in the effect of education on self-rated health is rooted in immigrants’ lower work-related and psychosocial returns (mastery and trust, although not social support) to education. Since work-related and psychosocial resources are integrally linked to health, immigrants experience lower health returns to their education than the native-born. These findings make three major contributions. First, they extend the traditional understanding of the relationship between education and health (Low et al. 2005), underscoring that immigrants do not experience the same level of health benefits to their education as the native-born. Second, they augment knowledge about why immigrants experience weaker health returns to their education than the native-born: because they receive diminished employment types, occupational levels, income, mastery, and trust relative to their levels of education. Third, the results highlight that foreign education is not linked to as high mastery and trust as that of the native-born – a new finding that underscores that foreign education is not just linked to diminished work-related resources and health, but psychosocial resources as well. | PhD | socioeconomic, health, educat | 1, 3, 2004 |
| Hay, Alexander Hans | Karney, Bryan W | Post-conflict Infrastructure Rehabilitation | Civil Engineering | 2019-11 | The International Community’s rehabilitation paradigm for post-conflict regions has persisted since its inception for post-World War II Europe, though has yet to repeat that initial success. The nature of the post-conflict environment is different, challenging the assumptions upon which the paradigm rests. The Paris Declaration 2005 called for greater alignment of reconstruction projects with local needs, and more recent demands for greater accountability of humanitarian agencies working in post-conflict areas reflects increased frustration with this lack of success. However, the consistent challenge for all stakeholders has been a lack of common reference and the projection of assumed essential services models that can rarely adapt to local nuances. This thesis represents an investigation of the rehabilitation paradigm, explores what successful delivery looks like and how to inform its practicable attainment. Above all, any change to the existing paradigm must be readily adoptable by practitioners and this largely defines the scope of this conceptual work. It frames the nature of the rehabilitation requirements and the role of infrastructure, proposing an outcomes-based system of project measurement and a Common Operating Picture (COP) that are built on a near-real time stand-off recognition of the existing natural, built and human situation. The COP is dynamic, responsive to change, providing an auditable evidence-based common reference for all stakeholders to understand the existing situation and evaluate proposed policies and projects effects. This includes the re-discovery of long-established practices such as intelligent resourcing, as well as proposing Beneficial Capability and a unifying purpose for post-conflict infrastructure around the physical, mental and social wellbeing of the local population. Five critical components of a post-conflict rehabilitation implementation framework are proposed for improved alignment and outcomes: common reference for all stakeholders, a unifying purpose of local population health, intelligent resourcing, beneficial capability, and a system of systems view of the relationship between infrastructure and society. These will assist the infrastructure engineer in the planning and delivery of infrastructure projects, concluding that the process of project implementation is as important as its substance. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Hayes, Katie | Poland, Blake | Responding to a Changing Climate: An Investigation of the Psychosocial Consequences of Climate Change and Community-based Mental Health Responses in High River | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | This dissertation explores the psychosocial consequences of climate change and psychosocial adaptation opportunities in High River, Alberta. Influenced by the theoretical approach of Political Ecology, I investigate community impacts and community-based mental health responses in High River following the 2013 Southern Alberta floods. Research methods include: a desktop climate change and health vulnerability and adaptation assessment that includes over 116 data sources; telephone interviews with key informant health and social services leaders (n = 14); four focus group sessions with front-line health and social services workers (n = 14); and, semi-structured interviews (n = 18) with a sample of community-members exposed to the 2013 flood and who self-identify in any one or more ways: female, youth, elderly, non-white, someone living in a low socio-economic status, someone with pre-existing health concerns. A total of 46 participants were recruited in this research. Results of the empirical investigation in High River are showcased in three manuscripts. The first manuscript, informed by critical Political Ecology, is an investigation of sociopolitical conditions that influence health inequities and adaptation opportunities (or lack thereof) in a changing climate in High River. The second is an empirical exploration of the long-term psychosocial consequences of the 2013 flood, relating these consequences to the broader issue of climate change and psychosocial health. The third manuscript is an exploration of how the long-term psychosocial risks and impacts of the 2013 flood are being addressed via response interventions and connecting these lessons-learned to the broader topic of climate change and psychosocial adaptation. This research suggests that a Political Ecology lens can support a critical analysis of what the environment means and to whom, with a particular focus on what adaptation to our changing climate means and to whom. Further, findings from this empirical research suggest that there are a range of psychosocial outcomes related to the 2013 Southern Alberta flood, and these outcomes continue to affect the psychosocial wellbeing of High River residents, particularly those most marginalized, five years post-flood. Findings also suggest that there are lessons-learned from High River about actions to support or enhance psychosocial adaptation to a changing climate. | Ph.D. | climate, environment, health | 3, 13 |
| Hayhurst, Lyndsay | MacNeill, Margaret ||Kidd, Bruce | “Governing” the “Girl Effect” through Sport, Gender and Development? Postcolonial Girlhoods, Constellations of Aid and Global Corporate Social Engagement | Exercise Sciences | 2011-11 | The “Girl Effect” is becoming a growing global movement that assumes young women are catalysts capable of bringing social and economic change to their families, communities and countries, particularly in the Two-Thirds World. The evolving discourse associated with the Girl Effect movement holds implications for sport, gender and development (SGD) programs. Increasingly, SGD interventions are funded and implemented by transnational corporations (TNCs) as part of the mounting portfolio of global corporate social engagement (GCSE) initiatives in development. Drawing on postcolonial feminist international relations theory, cultural studies of girlhood, sociology of sport and governmentality studies, the purpose of this study was to explore: a) how young women in Eastern Uganda experience SGD programs; and b) how constellations of aid relations among a sport transnational corporation (STNC), international non-governmental organization (INGO), and southern non-governmental organization (SNGO) impacted and influenced the ways that SGD programs are executed, implemented and “taken up” by young women. This study used qualitative methods, including 35 semi-structured in-depth interviews with organizational staff members and young women, participant observation and document analysis in order to investigate how a SGD program in Eastern Uganda that is funded by a STNC and INGO used martial arts to build young women’s self-defence skills to help address gender-based, sexual and domestic violence. Results revealed martial arts programming increased confidence, challenged gender norms, augmented social networks and provided social entrepreneurial opportunities. At the same time, the program also attempted to govern young women’s sexuality and health, but did so while ignoring culturally distinct gender relations. Findings also highlighted the colonial residue and power of aid relations, STNC’s brand authority over SGD programming, the involvement of Western actors in locating “authentic” subaltern stories about social entrepreneurial work in SGD, and how the politics of the “global” sisterhood is enmeshed in saving “distant others” in gender and development work. Overall, this study found that the drive for GCSE, when entangled with neo-liberal globalization, impels actors working in SGD to look to social innovation and entrepreneurship as strategies for survival in an increasingly competitive international development climate. | PhD | gender, women, innovatin | 5, 9 |
| Haynes, Kristine | Mitchell, Carl PJ | Climate Change Impacts on Mercury Cycling in Peatlands | Geography | 2017-06 | Climate change, through hydrological impacts and shifts in vascular plant communities, may significantly affect the strength of peatlands as sinks of inorganic mercury (Hg) and downstream sources of neurotoxic methylmercury (MeHg). Four complementary studies were conducted at the PEATcosm (Peatland Experiment at the Houghton Mesocosm Facility) and SPRUCE (Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Climatic and Environmental change) sites to investigate the anticipated effects on Hg cycling. Lowered, more variable water tables and the removal of Ericaceae shrubs in the PEATcosm mesocosms significantly enhance Hg and MeHg mobility in peat pore waters as well as export from the peat in runoff during the snowmelt period. Mercury is mobilized in association with dissolved organic carbon leached from the peat as a result of increased aerobic decomposition. Enhanced Hg and MeHg solid phase peat concentrations are observed within the zone of the lowered, fluctuating water tables due to translocation within the peat profile. This shift in peat concentrations does not correspond to any significant differences in Hg methylation or MeHg demethylation. The strongest trend of Hg deposition to peat occurs with increased sedge cover, possibly as a result of coincidental shuttling of Hg to the peat by aerenchymous tissues. Different plant functional groups alter the pathway of gaseous Hg exchange, with greater Hg sorption to leaf surfaces and accumulation in leaf tissues by stomatal uptake for the Ericaceae shrubs as compared to the sedges. Total gaseous Hg fluxes increase marginally with deep soil warming. Isotopic analyses demonstrate differences in Hg depositional sources to the two peatland sites, likely due to differences in snow accumulation, and provide insight into the mechanisms governing Hg cycling in peatlands. Collectively, these studies demonstrate that anticipated climate change may significantly affect peatland Hg mobility and cycling within and among the terrestrial, atmospheric and hydrological pools. | Ph.D. | water, climate, environment | 6, 13 |
| Hayter, Jennifer | Bohaker, Heidi | Racially "Indian", Legally "White": The Canadian State's Struggles to Categorize the Métis, 1850-1900 | History | 2017-11 | The Canadian state has constantly been faced with a paradox: differentiated rights and regulations required it to define the boundaries of the invented category "Indian," yet it was never able to do so satisfactorily. The existence of mixed-ancestry and Métis people disrupted its seemingly clear categories of "Indian" and "White." This thesis asks three central research questions: how did the Canadian state understand the category they called "half breeds;" what cultural and intellectual ideas informed these notions; and what was their impact? There was no single meaning or understanding of the term "Half Breed," but it was in fact characterized by inconsistency, ambiguity, contradiction, and confusion. There were two significant opposing forces at play: 1) the need to consolidate the power of the emerging state, which usually meant grouping the Métis and people of mixed ancestry in with “Indians” in order to better control them, and 2) the desire to save money, which usually meant separating out “half breeds” as a way of reducing the number of status Indians (to minimize the scope of the state’s fiscal responsibilities). The Métis presented themselves as a free “civilized” Indigenous People, but for the government, the term "half breed" was most useful as a floating signifier, with no stable meaning. In an era of increasing state rationalization, the sliding signifier allowed for flexibility in otherwise rigid laws and policy, aiding the state in navigating between its often-conflicting goals. Only in a few instances did the state recognize the Métis as a distinct People. Because of discrimination and the lack of official recognition, many Métis people were dispossessed and hid their heritage. On the other hand, this very ambiguity could provide a degree of freedom, and Métis today are working to define themselves as a distinct people and to fight for their inherent Indigenous rights. | Ph.D. | rights | 16 |
| Hayward, Stephen | Wania, Frank | Fate of Current-use Pesticides in the Canadian Atmosphere | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2010-11 | Across Canada, and around the world, very large amounts of pesticides are produced and applied to agricultural crops each year. Although pesticide usage is declining, they are still a necessary part of industrial agriculture. Numerous pesticides have been quantified in the atmosphere, at high levels near regions of use and at lower, but still significant levels in remote regions. Some of the most persistent pesticides have been banned, but others continue to be used despite their persistence and potential for long-range transport (LRT). We have applied and refined an XAD-2 resin-based passive air sampler (PAS) to study the concentrations of pesticides in the atmosphere. A set of laboratory experiments measured the equilibria sorption coefficients for chemicals on XAD-2 resin, allowing the determination of a new predictive equation for equilibria sorption coefficients, and thus interpretation of the range of applicability of both XAD-based PAS and active air samplers (AAS). A set of field experiments were performed to compare the data obtained by both PAS and AAS, and to study the temporal trends of a wide range of pesticides in an agricultural area of southern Ontario. Because it is now apparent that XAD-PAS sampling rates can vary between compounds and with temperature, we also determined new compound-specific sampling rates for pesticides in the XAD-PAS. The XAD-PAS were deployed in two transects across Canada, one from the Great Lakes region to the Canadian Arctic, and one across southern British Columbia in four different mountain regions and at different elevations. The air concentrations of current-use pesticides were correlated with regions of their use in both transects. The variation of air concentration with elevation was correlated with local, ground-level sources in British Columbia. The LRT of pesticides was determined from the north-south transect, and correlated to their atmospheric half-lives. Historic-use pesticides such as hexachlorobenzene and hexachlorocyclohexane were found to have relatively uniform distributions in the Canadian atmosphere, while further evidence of α-hexachlorocyclohexane evaporation from oceans was observed in both transects. | PhD | agriculture | 2 |
| He, Qian | Reid, Frank ||Verma, Anil | Disadvantaged Groups in the Labour Market: Older Workers, Younger Workers, and Nonstandard Workers | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2013-06 | This dissertation examines four disadvantaged groups in the labour market from a variety of perspectives. Specifically, I looked into older workers, younger workers, nonstandard workers and female workers. In the first chapter, I examine the effects of Ontario eliminating mandatory retirement in 2006 on the labour force participation of older workers and the unemployment of younger workers. My second chapter examines the relationship between nonstandard employment and the subsequent workplace profitability. In my final chapter, I examine the interaction effect of employment status and gender on the issue of work hour mismatches. The first chapter examines the impact of recent labour policy change at a national/provincial level. I find positive and significant effects for the labour force participation rate of older workers in Ontario in the five years following the legislation change of banning mandatory retirement in Onatrio. Similar results are found for both men and women; however, the magnitude of this effect is somewhat smaller for men. In addition, the empirical analysis also reveals a short-run rise in the unemployment rate of younger workers. The second chapter examines the financial implication of nonstandard employment at an organizational level. The results suggest that nonstandard employment is positively associated with subsequent workplace profitability, after controlling for factors that might also affect profitability. Moreover, this significant positive relationship between nonstandard employment and subsequent profitability is primarily driven by capital intensive manufacturing, the real estate/rental/leasing, the retail/trade/consumer service, and the education and health services industries as well as smaller workplaces. Larger workplaces and the rest of the private sector do not display significant results. The final chapter looks into how employment status and gender systematically impact work hour preferences at an individual level. The findings indicate that there is a significant interaction effect between nonstandard employment and gender. Female nonstandard workers prefer to work more hours. Male workers, both nonstandard and standard, are more likely to prefer to work fewer or the same hours. These results conform to labour market trend of increasing labour force participation rates of females and a declining trend among males. | PhD | health, gender, women, employment, labour | 3, 5, 2008 |
| Helson, Julie Elizabeth | Williams, D. Dudley | Macroinvertebrate Community Structure and Function in Seasonal, Low-land, Tropical Streams across a Pristine-rural-Urban Land-use Gradient | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2012-11 | Tropical freshwater ecosystems are understudied and not well understood relative to temperate systems; however, they are becoming increasingly imperiled by escalating anthropogenic impacts. The aim of this thesis was to investigate how tropical freshwater macroinvertebrate communities changed both structurally and functionally over a pristine-rural-urban land-use gradient, in relation to different spatial and temporal scales, as well as to the availability of potential food sources. Fifteen streams in the Panama Canal Watershed were sampled during the dry and wet seasons of 2007 and 2008, for macroinvertebrate communities (benthic and leaf litter), environmental variables, and potential food sources. Along the land-use gradient, in both habitat types, taxon richness, diversity, and evenness all decreased significantly; whereas, abundance increased significantly. For the benthic macroinvertebrate community, unique variation was explained equally well by local (water chemistry and sediment type) and landscape (riparian vegetation and watershed land use) characteristics in the dry season, and landscape characteristics explained slightly more variation in the wet season. Leaf-litter macroinvertebrate community unique variation was better explained by local variables than by landscape variables in both seasons. In terms of potential food resources, fine detritus and inorganic material were the most common across all streams (increased quantities in urban streams) and seasons; whereas, the availability of diatoms and leaf material increased in the dry season. Using gut content analyses, we found that collectors (gatherers and filterers) were by far the most common functional feeding group, increasing in abundance along the land-use gradient. Predators, shredders, and scrapers were all most abundant in pristine streams and decreased along the land-use gradient. Finally, using seven community metrices, a potential biomonitoring tool was developed, the Neotropical Low-land Stream Multimetric Index (NLSMI), which distinguished well among the different levels of stream impairment. This study demonstrated that tropical communities were negatively affected by human land alteration, but that community responses depended on the habitat sampled, the influence of different spatial scales varied between the seasons, and the effect of food resources appeared to be complex. These aspects must be taken into consideration for management decisions and restoration strategies to be effective. | PhD | water, urban, rural, environment, | 6, 11, 13 |
| Hemington, Kasey Sarah | Davis, Karen D | Neural Correlates of Pain and its Associated Clinical and Psychological Correlates in the Dynamic Pain Connectome in Patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis | Medical Science | 2018-11 | Chronic pain is a major public health issue. Despite its prevalence, the brain and behavioural mechanisms underlying chronic pain are not well understood, hampering effective treatment. Both individual factors (such as how we adapt in response to stressors), and brain function contribute to variability in pain perception. Abnormalities in brain and behaviour may indicate (mal)adaptive response or functioning in chronic pain patients. The overall goal of this thesis is to elucidate brain and behavioral mechanisms involved in pain. I first explore brain communication within and between networks of the dynamic pain connectome (default mode network; DMN, salience network; SN, sensorimotor network; SMN) that reflect chronic pain symptoms. Second, I examine how resilience – an individual’s ability to adapt well in response to stress – contributes to individual differences in pain perception. Finally, I investigate the intersection of brain communication and resilience and how this relationship is altered in chronic pain. My participants included healthy controls and patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) experiencing chronic pain. Participants underwent a resting state fMRI scan and psychophysical testing, and completed questionnaires probing resilience and other factors. I found that 1) AS patients exhibit abnormal, heightened DMN-SN cross-network functional connectivity, 2) cross-network connectivity between the DMN, SN, SMN, and descending pain system tracks AS pain-related outcomes, 3) resilience, anxiety, and their interaction predict pain-related affect in response to experimental pain stimuli, 4) AS patients reporting high pain intensity and disease activity are less resilient, 5) Chronic pain intensity is related to (heightened) DMN – SMN cross network connectivity, and 6) within-DMN connectivity tracks resilience in healthy individuals and patients reporting minimal pain. This thesis demonstrates that AS patients have chronic pain-related abnormalities between brain networks of the dynamic pain connectome, and that resilience plays a role in the pain experience and its representation in the brain. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Henderson, Gail Elizabeth | Fadel, Mohammad||Lee, Ian B | A Duty to Minimize the Corporation's Environmental Impacts: Corporate Governance and Sustainable Development | Law | 2014-11 | The scale and scope of today's economic activity will impact the natural environment several generations into the future. Much of this economic activity is undertaken by corporations. The interests of future generations in the natural environment, which are not protected adequately by traditional forms of environmental regulations, require moving away from the shareholder primacy norm that currently dominates both academic writing and directors' understanding of corporate governance in North America. The nascent "responsible investing" movement may result in some changes to corporate behaviour, but it also is insufficient to protect the interests of future generations. For these reasons, a new legal duty imposed on corporate directors is proposed here. This duty should be enacted through the corporations statute in order to make clear the change in the duties of directors away from simply maximizing shareholder wealth. The duty would require the board of directors to minimize the corporation's environmental impacts. "Minimize" is defined as up to the point of causing "undue hardship" to the corporation's ability to generate a profit. The duty therefore requires directors to balance profitability and environmental sustainability. This balancing is inherent in the concept of sustainable development, and therefore asking directors to take on this task is necessary to achieve sustainable development. Although this proposal raises concerns regarding compliance, enforcement and accountability, these concerns are answerable. | S.J.D. | sustainable development, environment, governance | 8, 13, 16 |
| Hennessy, Dean A. | Silverman, Brian S. | External Entry and the Evolution of Clusters: A Study of the Biotechnology Industry in Canada | Management | 2008-03 | Building on recent work in economic geography, evolutionary economics, and international business, I examine how firms that enter from outside a region alter the knowledge and opportunity structure for potential entrepreneurial entrants and indigenous incumbents in that region. In particular, I examine the short and long run effects of both greenfield and acquisition entry on entrepreneurial entry, as well as on the exit and growth of indigenous incumbents in industry clusters. A comprehensive dataset of all firms in the Canadian biotech industry between 1976 and 2003 is used to study the dynamic effects within all regions that have experienced an external entry. The results show a complex set of processes at work. Newer greenfield and acquisition entrants have consistently opposing effects, with newer greenfields enhancing entrepreneurial entry, but dampening growth and survival of indigenous incumbents in the longer run. Older greenfields, those that have a long presence in a given region and are primarily traditional pharmaceutical firms, have a similar effect to that of acquisitions. Moreover, the level of agglomeration moderates the influence of ‘outsiders’ on the indigenous industry, especially in the case of acquisitions. The results suggest that legal constraints on labor mobility barriers have an important influence on the observed patterns. The overall patterns suggest that the search and site selection of outsiders is an important mechanism driving local industry evolution, complementary to other traditional mechanisms. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Henry, Caitlin | Silvey, Rachel | Reproducing Care: Changing Geographies of Nursing Work in the United States | Geography | 2017-06 | Nurses provide essential care to people in their most vulnerable times and perform myriad tasks that support the healthcare system as a whole. In spite of their essential role, nurses in the United States have been subject to devaluation individually and systemically, through underinvestment in nurse training, understaffing of facilities, and a lack of recognition for the work that they do. This dissertation is a qualitative study of nursing work in the US, focusing on nursesâ experiences of their jobs since the 2008 financial crisis until 2014. I base my argument on interviews I conducted with 37 nurses working in New York City and St Louis, Missouri. I also analyzed a variety of texts including media stories, union publications, and discussion boards, as a complement to nursesâ own stories. I examine three means of managing nursing work: the restructuring of the built environment of health services, the lengthening of the working day, and the changing modes of measuring and counting nursing work. I demonstrate different ways and scales at which nursesâ work and working conditions are changing during a dynamic period of restructuring in US health care. By drawing on interviews with nurses working in the New York and St Louis metropolitan regions, complemented with secondary textual analyses, I examine how broader changes to the political economy of health care, specifically the built environment, shift length, and ways of measuring work, impact the mundane and everyday aspects of the nursing job. Through these three means of governing nursing work, I add texture to theories of social reproduction. Social reproduction, or the reproduction of people and of everyday life and institutions, includes historically feminized work that sustains life, such as nursing work. Health and health care work, however, are under-theorized in the social reproduction literature. This dissertation contributes to feminist geography by foregrounding nursing work and the workplace of the hospital. While there is a rich literature in geography on the global migration of nurses and on the gendered dynamics of work, few scholars have engaged with the everyday experiences of nurses in their most common worksite. Furthermore, health geography has paid scant attention to the crucial roles that health care workers play in the making of health. Therefore, in this dissertation, I contribute to these literatures by focusing on the workers, how they and their work are regulated, and their subjectivities in relation to their work as it is restructured. | Ph.D. | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Hepburn, Nicola Celeste | David, Wolfe | Minding the Gap Between Promise and Performance: The Ontario Liberal Government's Research and Innovation Policy, 2003-2011 | Political Science | 2014-11 | The Ontario Liberal government committed an unprecedented $3 billion between 2003 and 2011 to support research and innovation in order to drive economic growth and prosperity. Premier Dalton McGuinty established Ontario's first Ministry of Research and Innovation and appointed himself the inaugural minister, instantaneously pushing research and innovation to the top of the political agenda. Given the scale of new resources committed, Ontario's research and innovation actors intensified efforts to influence the development of research and innovation policy and secure their share of research and innovation money. This study examines the dynamism of policy development in a sector with a state that demonstrated a strong political will to advance an innovation-oriented agenda, and different groups of societal actors intent on influencing the development of that agenda and its supporting policies and initiatives. Using policy network analysis as an explanatory framework and bearing in mind the power of ideas on policy outcomes, this study explains why Ontario's Ministry of Research and Innovation policy developed the way that it did. The dissertation contends that various research and innovation actors played critical roles in ensuring that the ministry's suite of support programs maintained a supply-side innovation orientation between 2003 and 2007. However, changes in the policy network post-2008 made decision-makers more receptive to demand-side innovation programmatic ideas. And while the government introduced a small number of demand-side innovation initiatives to address recessionary concerns, Ontario's policy mix maintained a supply-side innovation bias. The dissertation identifies the factors that constrained a shift to a more demand-side innovation policy orientation, discusses the adverse impact these policy choices had on the government's efforts to realize its economic goals, and offers policy recommendations on how decision-makers can move forward towards implementing a strategic, integrated, place-based approach to policy development that will drive growth and sustainability. | Ph.D. | economic growth, innovation | 8, 9 |
| Hepburn, Shamette | Coloma, Roland S. | Residential Selection at Retirement: A Visual Ethnography Exploring the Later Life Mobilities of Jamaican Canadian Transmigrants | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | This thesis focuses on the migratory life course and everyday life geographies of Jamaican Canadian older adults in order to document, analyze, and share how they sustain their social and economic wellbeing. My research questions are: What are the experiences of Jamaican Canadian transmigrant older adults who live in and across Canada and Jamaica? As racialized older adults, what factors determine their geographical options at retirement? How do systemic barriers stemming from intersections of age, race, gender, and class impact their mobility strategies and decisions? My research is informed by my preliminary empirical studies (Hepburn, 2011; Hepburn et al., 2015) and by my five-year professional background as a gerontological social worker in Toronto. To understand the life course of racialized transmigrant older adults, my study utilizes visual ethnography, operationalized as photovoice in conjunction with constructivist grounded theory methods, to advance a new theoretical framework propitious for social work practice. To address the study’s central questions, my data collection took place in Toronto, Canada and in Trelawny and Manchester, Jamaica. I examined the lives and living conditions of 12 Jamaican Canadian older adults categorized into three groups: those who decided to stay in Canada permanently; those who reside in both Canada and Jamaica; and those who returned to Jamaica permanently. For feasibility, data from five participants who represented information-rich cases were selected for this thesis. In what is largely a critique of mainstream social gerontology and migration studies, I propose a “critical transnational ethnogerontology framework” based on the ways in which Jamaican Canadian older adults navigate transnational spaces. This framework is generative for social work because it broadens the gerontological imagination and revises social work’s theoretical, methodological and practice models that are bounded within the nation-state and linear conceptions of the life course. Transmigrant mobility presents social workers with challenges, such as how to deliver services to older adults who move between countries, what their needs are, and how to develop support networks beyond a singular state. My study provides a new theoretical framework, relevant empirical data, methodological innovation, and policy and practical recommendations for the later life adaptations of transmigrant racialized older adults to an increasingly insecure, globalized world. | Ph.D. | well being | 3 |
| Heppner, Denise Hudspith | Peterson, Shelley S | Case Study of an Indigenous Teacher’s Writing Instruction: Tensions and Negotiations Among Western Discourses of Writing and 8 Ways Aboriginal Principles | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-06 | This research investigated an Indigenous teacher’s pedagogy in a rural First Nation school in order to gain insight into culturally responsive writing instruction. Pre-service and in-service educators have identified significant challenges in the teaching of writing, feeling unprepared and/or lacking confidence to teach this essential skill. Additionally, many teachers feel uncomfortable and/or ill-equipped to incorporate Indigenous content and perspectives into their classrooms. Resulting from generations of on-going colonial oppression, educational disparities in literacy development have been identified between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Along with a focus on traditional language and cultural revitalization, Indigenous families in Canada have advocated education for their children in the dominant literacy practices of schooling. With a growing Indigenous population, educators are seeking ways to respectfully and successfully integrate cultural perspectives, content, and traditional ways of knowing/learning into their classrooms. This study addressed the paucity of research on writing development in Canada conducted within rural areas and with Indigenous Peoples. Case study methodology was utilized. Qualitative data was collected and analyzed in the form of classroom observations, formal and informal interviews, and collection of artifacts (e.g., student writing, curricular resources, etc.). An initial objective of this study was to identify which of six evidence-based discourses of writing (Ivanić, 2004) were employed in the teacher’s instructional approaches and beliefs about writing instruction. Findings revealed that she utilized all six at varying times over the course of the classroom observations, reflecting a comprehensive approach to teaching writing. Tensions were revealed between conflicting discourses, some remained unresolved while others were successfully negotiated. The second question in this study sought to determine which of the 8 Ways Aboriginal pedagogies (Yunkaporta, 2009) did the teacher utilize in her writing instruction. In addition to incorporating local cultural content she utilized all instructional methods identified through the 8 Ways framework. Examination of classroom practices revealed an overlap between Western discourse theory and the Indigenous 8 Ways pedagogy framework. Utilization of Indigenous instructional strategies directly address the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (2015d) call to action regarding the integration of Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Herath, Sreemali | Gagné, Antoinette | Teachers as Transformative Intellectuals in Post-conflict Reconciliation: A Study of Sri Lankan Language Teachers' Identities, Experiences and Perceptions | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-06 | The UNDP (2005) notes the twentieth century as one of the bloodiest in human history. It has been defined by wars between countries and regions, as well as conflicts within countries. As members of the global community, it is hard for educators not to encounter the effects of violence and war in different forms in local and professional contexts. Set against the aftermath of one of the longest civil wars in recent times, this study explores what three Sri Lankan teacher education programs in the National Colleges of Education (NCOE) are doing to prepare prospective English language teachers to teach in a time of post-conflict reconciliation. This qualitative study was conducted in three teacher education programs in the Western, Central and Northern Provinces of Sri Lanka and includes the voices and perceptions of culturally and linguistically diverse teacher candidates and teacher educators. Most of the war zone was located in northern Sri Lanka. In particular, this study focuses on teacher candidates' identities, their experiences within the program and with diversity, their understanding of diversity as well as their roles and responsibilities when teaching socially and culturally diverse learners. This qualitative research inquiry utilizes a blend of narrative and case study methodologies, and includes a variety of traditional data sources such as semi-structured face-to-face interviews, formal and informal observations, and document analysis, as well as non-traditional methods such as picture descriptions, identity portraits and mind maps generated by the teacher candidates. The research is informed primarily by a group of focal participants comprised of 12 teacher candidates (4 from each program). Their voices are complemented by a peripheral group of 16 teacher candidates and 9 teacher educators from the three teacher education programs, thus providing a rich understanding of how Sri Lankan English language teachers experience the process of becoming teachers. An integrated conceptual framework based on notions of pedagogical orientations (Cummins, 2009; Miller and Seller, 1990; Miller, 2007, 2010) support the analysis of teacher candidates' diverse perspectives and experiences relevant to curricular practices in their teacher education program. Additional concepts and theories are considered to allow for a more textured understanding of the prospective teachers' identities, the nature of their experiences in the program and their perceptions of their own roles as future teachers. These include post-structuralist identity theory (Clarke, 2009; Norton Pierce, 1995; Norton, 2000), social justice teacher education (Cochran-Smith, 2004; Zeichner, 2009, 2011) and culturally relevant pedagogy (Gay, 2000, 2002). The findings of the study highlight the promise of language teacher education programs to create conditions for teacher candidates to become transformative intellectuals (Giroux, 1985) in the larger post-conflict reconciliation process underway in Sri Lanka. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Herrera Vacaflor, Carlos Alejandro | Cook, Rebecca J | Obstetric Violence in Argentina: a Study on the Legal Effects of Medical Guidelines and Statutory Obligations for Improving the Quality of Maternal Health | Law | 2015-11 | Obstetric Violence is a pervasive phenomenon that affects women’s maternal health worldwide. It has been recognized by the WHO that abusive and disrespectful treatment in facility-based childbirth is a contributing factor in maternal and infant mortality, and the global community has adopted steps in attempting to identify and eliminate all forms of obstetric violence. Within Latin America, Argentina has taken proactive measures legislating the proscription of obstetric violence. This thesis seeks to examine the development of the concept of Obstetric Violence in Argentina, its organic evolution from internal medical regulations and guidelines to national legislation. The thesis will also track evidence about the degrees of success that Obstetric Violence definition, assessment and regulation have had in preventing violations of women’s rights—both on a practical level and in the legal redress of these rights through tort claims. | LL.M. | health, women, rights | 3, 5, 16 |
| Herstein, Lesley Maureen | Adams, Barry J | The Water Provision System: Developing and Applying a Conceptual Systems Framework for Provincial and State Water Provision Dynamics | Civil Engineering | 2015-11 | Societal systems are complex networks of actors, institutions, policies, and technologies that evolve over time to service the needs of the public. Such a system exists for the public provision of water and can be referred to as the water provision system. The ultimate goal of a given water provision system is to provide safe water to the public at an acceptable level of service in a financially sustainable manner. The failure to fulfill this mandate is a failure of the water provision system as a whole, which can threaten public health and safety, and economic and political stability. Without a shared understanding of the complex dynamic behaviour of the water provision system, uncertainty can overwhelm stakeholders and undermine the decision- making process. This can result in short-term solutions that do not take into account the long- term needs of the water provision system and can result in the failure to provide this important service in the future. This thesis demonstrates the value of creating a shared conceptual understanding of the water provision system. A conceptual model is developed to describe the water provision system in the context of Canadian and American water provision. The value of such a model is exhibited by (i) applying the model to explain systemic challenges associated with the current water provision system; (ii) proposing an alternative water provision system that can potentially address these issues; and (iii) proposing a pathway for the transition from the current to the proposed alternative water provision system. Overall, this thesis explores the systemic origin of issues that have, over decades, manifested within the water provision system and stand to ultimately threaten its existence. Therefore, the work presents a pathology of water provision system challenges in an effort to meaningfully understand and address the systemic cause of these issues. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Hervas, Anastasia | Isakson, Ryan | The Socio-ecological Ramifications of Boom Crops: Examining the Impacts of Oil Palm Expansion upon Food System Vulnerability in the Lachuá Ecoregion, Guatemala | Geography | 2019-11 | Integration of contract farmers into oil palm production schemes has been advocated as a strategy for spurring rural development and improving food security in the global South. In Guatemala, oil palm contract farming has been promoted through a contentions government program, which has led to rapid expansion of the crop in the country’s northern lowlands, including the Lachuá Ecoregion where this study is set. In this thesis, the socio-ecological food systems framework is used to demonstrate ways in which oil palm expansion has altered food system vulnerability and adaptation capacity in an oil-palm dominated community in the Lachuá Ecoregion, as compared to a neighbouring community with minimal oil palm presence and prevalent staple maize farming. Effects of oil palm on local land transactions, employment, and household income are examined in relation to cross-scalar dynamics of self-provisioning and market-provisioning of food. Ecological variables including the conditions of forests, water, and soil nutrient cycling are also considered as they lead to changes in local food access and consumption patterns, notably the reduced consumption of fresh vegetables, fruits, and herbs. This study challenges the official narrative that smallholder oil palm cultivation catalyses rural development, improves food security, and deters peasant land sales. Results indicate that oil palm expansion has accelerated land sales and put pressure on subsistence farming, while providing limited benefits to the host community – namely non-inclusive and precarious jobs. At the same time, it exacerbated many existing food system vulnerabilities, such as degraded soils and shrinking forest resources, and introduced new ones, including increased exposure to global commodity shocks. The study concludes that, in the absence of profound efforts to address the underlying causes of food system vulnerability, the promotion of cash crops like oil palm will exacerbate inequalities in food access and weaken the food system overall. | Ph.D. | food, water, employment, rural | 2, 6, 8, 11 |
| Hewer, Micah Joel | Gough, William A | Weather, Climate (Change) and Zoo Visitation: A Case Study of the Toronto Zoo (Ontario, Canada) | Geography | 2016-11 | The statistical relationship between weather, climate and zoo visitation was determined and the impact of projected climate change was assessed, based on a case study of the Toronto Zoo (Ontario, Canada). This research was conducted in three independent study stages. The first study determined the weather sensitivity and temperature thresholds associated with visitation to the zoo, based on a statistical analysis of historical data. Temperature was found to be the most influential weather variable, positively affecting daily zoo visitation; however, when temperatures exceeded 26 째C in the shoulder season or 28 째C in the peak season, negative effects on visitation were observed. The second study used a modelling approach to assess the impact of projected climate change on future visitation to the zoo. The output from a series of seasonal multivariate regression models suggests that annual visitation to the zoo will likely increase over the course of the 21st century due to projected climate change. The main increases in visitation were projected during the shoulder seasons, with some potential losses during the peak season, especially if warming exceeds 3.5 째C. The third study used a multi-year temporal climate analogue approach to explore zoo visitor responses to seasonal climatic anomalies and reassess the impacts of projected climate change on zoo visitation. When anomalously warm winters and springs occurred within the historical record, total zoo visitation in those seasons increased significantly. Conversely, when anomalously warm summers occurred, visitation decreased significantly. Temperature anomalies in the autumn season did not result in any significant differences in visitation. Zoo visitation was determined to be highly weather sensitive, with both the modelling and analogue approaches suggesting that projected climate change will have significant but disparate impacts on visitation across the seasons, demonstrating both opportunities and threats for zoo managers and city planners. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Higginbottom, Katie | Ryan, James | Women Directors of Education: Policy Consequences, Gender Perspectives and Leadership Strategies | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-06 | This study presents a qualitative analysis exploring how women Directors of Education in Ontario (English) public school boards manage the pressures of leadership. Alongside this analysis is a concurrent exploration of the effects the Ontario government’s 1993 PPM 102: Affirmative Action/Employment Equity for Women Employees policy had on women Directors of Education in Ontario (English) public school boards. Data collection includes 12 interviews of women Directors of Education in Ontario (English) public school boards. The study revealed a complex relationship between women Directors of Education in Ontario (English) public school boards and their discrimination experiences. Participants denied experiencing discrimination, despite describing instances of clear discrimination. Dropping out of the study or altering their original interviews silenced some women. Gender microaggressions were also apparent throughout the interviews. Additionally, participants denied ever experiencing pressures associated with their gender. Strategies for coping with the pressures of leadership are designed to deal with pressures associated with the board of trustees, board staff, the public and church clergy. Strategies Directors of Education used to manage these pressures were categorized into three groups: strategies for personal success; micropolitical strategies in the workplace and strategies for managing home life and professional life. Fifty percent of participants described formal/informal hindrances in managing the pressures of leadership, while 100% of participants described formal/informal supports, which aided their management of the pressures of leadership.The study also revealed that most participants identified either an indirect effect or a direct effect of PPM 102 on their career; seven noted an indirect effect, and 1 a direct effect. Four noted no effect at all on their career. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Hill, Jenny Charlotte | Drake, Jennifer A||Sleep, Brent | Designing Green Roofs for Low Impact Development: What Matters, and Why? | Civil Engineering | 2017-06 | This thesis assesses the performance of green roofs primarily as hydrologic systems and as components in biogeochemical cycles; asking: What are they made from? Which design parameters are most influential? What are the relative impacts? Can the findings be explained? A multivariate experiment (n = 24) at the Green Roof Innovation Testing laboratory (GRITlab) between May 2013 - April 2015 revealed that irrigation has the greatest effect on annual runoff coefficient, compared to type of planting medium or planting depth (đ ĽĚ = 0.5). Switching between Sedum. or native species planting made no significant difference. NRCS curve numbers (đ ĽĚ = 90) and peak runoff coefficients (đ ĽĚ = 0.1) were considered robust, unchanging with any of the design factors. Water extractable total phosphorus in 3.5-year-old media had been unaffected by irrigation, depth or planting compared to the overall difference between the compost or mineral basis (90 ppm and 46 ppm respectively). Electrical conductivity was higher in water discharged from the mineral media; in situ measurements are highly variable, complicated by the heterogeneity of the materials. Higher concentrations of humic acids were found at in the water discharged from the compost. The water retention curve (WRC) of ten media components and mixtures were used to explore the bi-modal distribution of inter-particle voids and intra-particle pore spaces and to explain why the non-linear storage capacity of the materials. The water retention capacity was inversely related to saturated hydraulic conductivity; both macroscale properties were highly dependent on the size of the lowest decile fraction of particle sizes. Media components with high organic matter content were assessed for wettability using contact angle measurements. Past and current practices in green roof construction were considered by sampling media from thirty-three green roofs. Most planting media were compost based with high organic matter (OM), or mineral based with very low OM. Bulk density, particle density and porosity were all dependent on OM, as were the hydrological properties of water retention capacity and permeability. An average 10% loss of depth was observed across all installations regardless of their age or organic matter content. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Hlevca, Bogdan | Wells, Mathew G | Influence of Hydrodynamic Events on Circulation and Thermal Habitat in Coastal Embayments of the Great Lakes | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2016-06 | Coastal embayments act as the main interface between urban and agricultural run-off and the waters of the Great Lakes. They make a large contribution to the water quality of the Great Lakes for their size. Given the relentless urbanization occurring in Ontario, it is now critical to understand how water circulation within these confined coastal bays determines the health of the aquatic ecosystem. This research tackles three interconnected aspects of embayment physics and littoral circulation. First, the mechanisms that contribute to the flushing of coastal embayments are assessed. Lake water level fluctuations provide an important role in flushing shallow coastal embayments in the Great Lakes, especially if the embayment has a resonant response. Specifically, long-period waves can excite resonance in coastal embayments, which greatly increases the flushing rates. Three shallow coastal embayments of Lake Ontario and Lake Huron are analyzed and the difference in their responses to similar long-period waves is found to be explained by resonance. Second, water stratification and its effect on the physical processes in coastal embayments is studied. Toronto Harbour, which is taken as a case study, is characterized by considerable thermal variability as a result of diurnal heat fluxes and large amplitude movements of the thermocline of Lake Ontario. During the ice-free period an array of benthic and surface temperature loggers were deployed to obtain the spatio-temporal distribution of water temperatures. Cold intrusions were found to quickly flow from the lake into the harbour and lead to rapid drops in temperature that may be associated with a variety of negative effects on many aquatic organisms. Finally, frequent water level oscillations are shown to drive significant exchange between Toronto Harbour and Lake Ontario. Analysis of water currents, water levels and temperatures is used to determine the hydrodynamic characteristics of the lake-harbour system and demonstrate that strong water level fluctuations with a period of one-hour dominate the exchange flows in the shallow embayments of the harbour, which is in contrast to the conventional wisdom that water circulation in coastal embayments of the Great Lakes is always dominated by baroclinic processes driven by differential heating or upwelling events. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Ho, Elise | Gough, William A. | Chldren's Ideas About Climate Change | Geography | 2009-03 | This thesis examines children’s (aged 11-12) ideas about climate change. Seventh grade children in 9 schools in Ontario were interviewed and submitted illustrated responses about climate change over a one year period of data collection. Qualitative grounded theory was used to allow themes from the data to emerge, and the use of computer software, NVivo7, was used to code and classify themes. The data were analyzed to answer three main research questions. First, the thesis explored if there were common similarities or differences between the children’s and adults’ responses (as gained from the literature). Second, children’s responses were grouped by geographical location. These locations included rural, urban, and suburban school. This was conducted in order to determine if any group differences exist among children in these three areas. The study found that children’s and adults perceptions are quite similar, and that in some situations, both groups tend to use substitution of other environmental knowledge (cultural models) in lieu of knowledge of climate change but that children also tended to use different cultural models to explain their ideas about climate change. The thesis concluded that no group differences existed among rural, urban, and suburban children and children in all groups tended to have much more detailed knowledge of mitigation strategies than the effects and causes of climate change. The thesis also concluded that a new educational framework, modeled after the Causes, Effects, and Mitigation Strategies of Climate Change (CEM Framework) ought to be used to redistribute this knowledge across these three areas. | PhD | climate | 13 |
| Ho, Lok See | Baumann, Shyon ||Wheaton, Blair | On Cultural Capital: Fine Tuning the Role of Barriers, Timing and Duration of Socialization, and Learning Experiences on Highbrow Musical Participation | Sociology | 2012-06 | Recent research in the sociology of culture has placed significant focus on musical taste and practices. This research agenda has ushered an understanding of the relationship between social class and cultural consumption, and particularly, the implications that patterns of cultural preferences and practices have on social inequality. A frontrunner in this line of work is Bourdieu (1984), who offers a sophisticated and useful theoretical framework—the Cultural Capital Theory—to illuminate the role of culture and its consumption in society. Written as three publishable papers, the chapters use empirical evidence to explore three issues surrounding highbrow musical practices that enrich Bourdieu (1984)’s framework. The first paper (Chapter 2) examines the role of structural and personal barriers in blocking attendance to highbrow concerts. It takes as a starting point Bourdieu (1984)’s argument that upper class individuals are more likely to attend classical music and opera concerts than their lower class counterparts, and questions whether these distinct patterns of participation are attributable to the different barriers that each class faces. The second paper (Chapter 3) offers a sophisticated analysis of the impact of socialization on highbrow concert attendance. By innovatively integrating the concepts of timing and duration, hallmarks the Life Course Perspective, I map out the potentially dynamic nature of the socialization process. In doing so, I illustrate the varying implications that different timing and duration of exposure has on later life highbrow concert participation. The last paper (Chapter 4) investigates the process of socialization to understand what conditions present during this crucial period in time encourage persistence in highbrow musical practices. I find that engaging in interactions that allow one to experience positive emotional resonance, develop a musical identity, and feel a sense of autonomy over musical decisions lead to the propensity to remain engaged in musical activities throughout life. | PhD | equality, consum | 5, 12 |
| Hoch, Laura Brennan | Ozin, Geoffrey A | Functional Nanomaterials for Gas-phase Heterogeneous Photocatalysis: Toward Efficient Solar Fuel Production | Chemistry | 2016-06 | Harnessing abundant solar energy to facilitate the capture and conversion of greenhouse gas CO2 into carbon-based fuels and chemical feedstocks represents a significant scientific challenge with implications for both climate change and sustainable energy production. Herein, we have demonstrated that highly defected indium oxide, In2O3-x(OH)y, nanoparticles can function as effective gas-phase photocatalysts for CO2 reduction to CO via the reverse water gas shift (RWGS) reaction. Significantly we have found that the presence of both oxygen vacancies and surface hydroxide groups are necessary to facilitate the reaction. Using transient absorption spectroscopy we demonstrated that these defects play a significant role in the excited state charge relaxation pathways, with higher defect concentrations resulting in longer excited state lifetimes, which is attributed to electron and hole trapping in oxygen vacancies and surface hydroxide groups, respectively. This supports the proposed surface Frustrated Lewis Pair (FLP) reaction mechanism, in which a surface active site composed of a Lewis acidic, coordinatively unsaturated indium atom, created by the presence of an oxygen vacancy, adjacent to a Lewis basic hydroxide, assists the adsorption and heterolytic dissociation of H2, which then enables the adsorption and reaction of CO2 to form CO and H2O. Preliminary results indicate that photogenerated electron and hole localization in these defects enhances their Lewis acidity and basicity, lowering the activation energy for the RWGS reaction under illumination. Finally, we demonstrated that by evenly dispersing In2O3-x(OH)y nanoparticles on vertically aligned silicon nanowires (SiNW), we can increase reaction rates by improving reflective losses and facilitating light trapping in the region of the solar spectrum where In2O3-x(OH)y absorbs. Further, by using the photothermal properties of the SiNWs, the light energy not absorbed by In2O3-x(OH)y can be converted into localized heat energy, removing the need for external heating and improving the overall energy efficiency of the process. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, greenhouse gas | 7, 13 |
| Hoe, Alice | Boyd, Monica | Working in ‘Bad Jobs’: Immigrants in the New Canadian Economy | Sociology | 2017-11 | Beginning in the late 1960s, the Canadian economy experienced two significant changes: the growth of immigrants from non-traditional source regions and major economic restructuring. The work transformation significantly undermined the quality of work, leading to a growing number of ‘bad jobs’, characterized by low wages, lack of fringe benefits, and declining union coverage. The literature on work transformation, however, relies primarily on macro-level theorizing, and pays less attention to how new forms of inequality emerge from these changes. Alternatively, studies on immigrants’ economic integration tend to rely on single-dimension, orthodox indicators of economic outcomes, such as earnings, and many do not incorporate the context of the new economy. Among the studies that do, the use of small samples and qualitative measures limit the ability to identify patterns of inequality. My dissertation fills this gap in the literature by bringing together these two intricately intertwined, yet disparate sets of literature. I analyze how job quality differs significantly by nativity status and demonstrate immigrants’ overrepresentation in ‘bad jobs’. I study immigrants’ disadvantage on three levels, in three independent papers: 1) likelihood of engaging in ‘bad jobs’, 2) differential long-term outcomes of engaging in ‘bad jobs’, and 3) household-level inequalities based on job quality and nativity status of the household head. I analyze the Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics, using both cross-sectional and panel data, as well as household-data, which I constructed from cross-sectional individual files. I find that immigrants experience significant disadvantage in the new Canadian economy: they are more likely to work in ‘bad jobs’ and stay in ‘bad jobs’ than the Canadian-born. These individual-level inequalities also translate to household-level inequalities in terms of likelihood of living low-income. The results from this dissertation draw attention to stratification within the new economy and incorporates the context of the new economy into the study of immigrant integration. | Ph.D. | equality, labour, wage, inequality | 5, 8, 10 |
| Hoffmann, Florian | Oreopoulos, Philip ||Shi, Shouyong | Essays on Human Capital, Wage Dispersion and Worker Mobility | Economics | 2011-06 | This dissertation is comprised of three papers. In Chapter 1 I analyze if career heterogeneity in terms of life-cycle earnings, occupational mobility and unemployment is predominantly driven by skills acquired prior to labor market entry or by decisions made and shocks accumulated over the working life. My study is based on a Dynamic Discrete Choice model that enriches the proto-typical dynamic Roy-model with a number of potentially important sources of career heterogeneity, such as match heterogeneity and permanent shocks to skills. I find that a large fraction of life-cycle income inequality is driven by match heterogeneity among workers with the same observable and unobservable credentials. Differences in comparative advantages, though quantitatively important as well, have a much smaller impact than what has been found in research that relies on estimates from more restrictive dynamic Roy models. In Chapter 2 I estimate a flexible non-stationary variance components model of residual earnings dynamics and investigate if recent increases in residual inequality are caused by an increase of the variances of permanent, persistent or transitory shocks. My results suggest that underlying sources of increasing wage inequality are very different across education groups. Most importantly, only the lesser educated experience a large increase in earnings instability. Chapter 1 and 2 utilize a unique administrative data set from Germany that follows workers from the time of labor market entry until twenty-three years into their careers. In the last chapter I investigate empirically if a particular set of pre-labor market skills – namely university student achievement – can be fostered by assigning male teachers to male students and female teachers to female students. I find that being taught by a same-sex instructor helps students to improve their relative grade performance and the likelihood of completing a course, but the magnitudes of these effects are small. | PhD | equality, employment, worker, inequality | 5, 8, 10 |
| Hojati, Zahra | Wane, Njoki | Ironic Acceptance – Present in Academia Discarded as Oriental: The Case of Iranian Female Graduate Student in Canadian Academia | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | The purpose of this research is to examine the experiences of first-generation, highly educated Iranian women who came to Canada to pursue further education in a ‘just’, ‘safe’, and ‘peaceful’ place. The research has revealed that these women who were fleeing from an ‘oppressive’ and ‘unjust’ Iranian regime face new challenges and different forms of oppression in Canada. This dissertation examines some of the challenges that these women face at their place of work and/or at graduate school. The research findings are based on narratives of eleven Iranian women who participated in in-depth interviews in the summer of 2008. These women, whose ages range from 26 to 55 and are of diverse marital status, all hold an academic degree from Iran. They were also all enrolled in different graduate schools and diverse disciplines in Ontario universities at the time of the interviews. The research findings indicate that their presence in Canada became more controversial after the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade centers in New York. Historically, the social images imposed on Middle Eastern women derive from the Orientalism that arose following the colonization of the Middle East by Western imperialists. The perpetuation of such images after the 9/11 attack has created a harsh environment for the participants in this research. After 9/11 most immigrants from the Middle East were assumed to be Muslim and Arab, which many North Americans came to equate with being a terrorist. In order to analyze the participants’ voices and experiences, I have adopted a multi-critical theoretical perspective that includes Orientalism, anti-colonialism and integrative anti-racist feminist perspectives, so as to be equipped with the tools necessary to investigate and expose the roots of racism, oppression and discrimination of these marginalized voices. The findings of this research fall under six interrelated themes: adaptation, stereotyping, discrimination, being silenced, strategy of resistance, and belonging to Canadian society/ graduate school. One of the important results of this research is that, regardless of the suffering and pain that the participants feel in Canadian graduate school and society, they prefer to stay in Canada because of the socio-political climate in Iran. | PhD | women, inclusive | 4, 5 |
| Holland, Emily | Rogers, Tracy | Bringing Childhood Health into Focus: Incorporating Survivors into Standard Methods of Investigation | Anthropology | 2013-11 | The osteological paradox addresses how well interpretations of past population health generated from human skeletal remains reflect the health of the living population from which they were drawn. Selective mortality and hidden heterogeneity in frailty are particularly relevant when assessing childhood health in the past, as subadults are the most vulnerable group in a population and are therefore less likely to fully represent the health of those who survived. The ability of subadults to represent the health of those who survived is tested here by directly comparing interpretations of childhood stress based on non-survivors (subadults aged 6-20,14 females and 9 males) to those based on retrospective analyses of survivors (adults aged 21-46, 26 females and 27 males). Non-survivors and survivors were directly matched by birth year, using the Coimbra Identified Skeletal Collection; therefore interpretations of childhood stress reflect a shared childhood. Long bone and vertebral canal growth, linear enamel hypoplasia, cribra orbitalia, porotic hyperostosis, scurvy indicators and periosteal bone reactions were assessed for both groups. Overall, long bone growth generates the same interpretation of health for both non-survivors and survivors, and both groups exhibit the same range of stress (mild to severe), but the pattern of stress experienced in childhood differs between the two groups. Female survivors reveal different timing of stress episodes and a higher degree of stress than female non-survivors. Male survivors exhibit less stress than male non-survivors. These different patterns suggest that interpretations based solely on non-survivors would under-represent the stress experienced by female survivors and over-represent the stress experienced by male survivors, further demonstrating the importance of addressing issues of selective mortality. In addition, these different patterns suggest that hidden heterogeneity of frailty may be sex specific where males are more vulnerable to stress and females more able to develop resistance to stress and survive. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Holmes, Krista M. | Janzen, Katharine | Research Ethics in the Ontario College Sector: An Exploratory Descriptive Study of Governance and Administrative Frameworks | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | The purpose of this study was to explore the existing frameworks for the governance and administration of research ethics policies and practices in place at the Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATS), and to identify implications for policy and practice related to the future governance and administration of research ethics at Ontario CAATs. This study examined four key areas associated with the management of compliance with ethics principles related to research conducted at the 22 English language Ontario colleges: the history of the establishment of Research Ethics Boards in the Ontario college sector; what currently exists, in terms of relevant policies, processes, funding and infrastructure at participating colleges; what currently works within the sector, to ascertain areas for improvement; and implications for future policy and practice. Lewin's (1947a) Theory of Planned Change formed the basis of the theoretical framework for this study. College employees responsible for the administration of research ethics and REB Chairs at the participating colleges were the key informants; research ethics administrators from all 22 English language colleges in Ontario were invited to complete an online questionnaire, and interviews were conducted with eight REB Chairs or their designate from a stratified purposeful sample of the English language colleges. The conclusions drawn from this study suggest that numerous driving and restraining forces exist to support and challenge the governance and administration of research ethics at participating colleges, and that these forces can be effectively addressed to improve the governance and administration of research ethics across the Ontario college sector. The study findings may inform policy and practice that could enhance the governance and administration of research ethics for the ultimate benefit of enhancing the culture of applied research and innovation, not just at the colleges that participated in this study, but also at other colleges and institutes across Canada and internationally that may face similar challenges. | Ph.D. | governance | 16 |
| Holyoke, Paul | Deber, Raisa Berlin | Behaviour in a Canadian Multi-payer, Multi-provider Health Care Market: The Case of the Physiotherapy Market in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2009-06 | This is a study of several contentious issues in Canadian health policy involving the interaction of public and private payers and for-profit (FP) and not-for-profit (NFP) providers; the influence of health professionals on market structure; and the role of foreign investment. A case study was used, the Ontario physiotherapy market in 2003-2005, with its complex mix of payers and providers and foreign investment opportunities. Key market features were: fragmented but substantial payer influence, effective though uncoordinated cost control across payers, constrained labour supply, and fragmented patient referral sources. These features increased the complexity of providers’ interactions with patients and payers, reducing standardization and therefore favouring local, professional-owned small business FP providers (FP/s) for ambulatory care. NFP Hospitals’ market share declined. The findings generally confirmed expected behavioural differences between FP and NFP providers but expected differences between investor-owned FP providers (FP/c) and FP/s providers were not generally found. FP/s dominated the market, and FP/c providers appeared to mimic FP/s market behaviours, competing in local sub-markets. With no single or dominant payer, cost control difficulties were expected, but all 11 payer categories (public and private) used various cost control mechanisms, resulting in significant collective but uncoordinated influence. Generally, no payer alone supported a provider’s operations. The dominant labour suppliers, regulated physiotherapists, were scarce and exerted significant pressure, affecting market structure by asserting individual preferences and professional interests. FP/s dominance resulted, supported by the traditional patient referral source, physicians in small practices. Very little foreign investment was found despite little protection for domestic providers under NAFTA. In sum, this study showed FP and NFP provider stereotypes are subject to payer pressure: FP/c organizations can adapt by mimicking FP/s, and payers can modify NFPs’ assumed community orientation. Labour shortages and historical referral patterns can make individual professionals and their preferences more influential than their collective profession without diminishing the importance of professional interests. The degree and structure of payer control can make a market unattractive to foreign investors. Finally, this market – neither a planned or standard market – had a service provision pattern more broadly influenced by professionalism and practitioner interests than policies or prices. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Hong, Qing | Smart, Michael | International Taxation and Income-shifting Behaviour of Multinational Corporations | Economics | 2010-11 | This thesis examines the income-shifting behaviour of multinational corporations when they are facing international corporate income tax rate differentials. Multinational corporations may apply tax-planning strategies in order to shift their pre-tax profits from a high-tax country to a low-tax country; therefore, the same amount of money would be subject to a lower tax rate. By doing so, multinational corporations minimize their global tax liabilities without changing their total income. The first essay develops a simple general equilibrium model by which to explore the effect of tax planning on the host country in terms of social welfare and optimal taxation. We endogenize multinational corporations’ investment decisions by allowing the user cost of capital to be affected by shifting decisions. We find that if tax rates are not excessively high, then an increase in tax planning activity causes a rise in optimal corporate tax rates, and a decline in multinational investment. Thus, fears of a “race to the bottom” in corporate tax rates may be misplaced. Also, we find that the residents in high-tax countries may be better off with (some) income shifting. We prove that there is an interior optimal thin capitalization rule (a restriction on the debt-to-equity ratio) that is lower than the degree of tax planning preferred by multinational firms. The second essay empirically examines the evidence of income-shifting behaviour of Canadian multinational corporations. The results are consistent with the income-shifting hypothesis that multinationals are inclined to shift their pre-tax profits to low-tax jurisdictions. I find that having non-arm’s length transactions with related parties in tax-haven countries has a significant negative impact on the taxable income that is reported in Canada. Further, I compare the different roles between small havens and large havens and find that the effect of having transactions with small havens is significantly negative, while the effect of having transactions with large tax havens is not significant. Also, I find that if Canadian corporations control their foreign-related corporations with whom they had non-arm’s length transactions, then they are more likely to report lower taxable incomes in Canada than are those that have other types of relationships with their foreign-related corporations. | PhD | taxation | 10 |
| Hook, Benjamin Austin | Halfar, Jochen | Paleoclimatology of the Paleocene/Eocene using Kimberlite-hosted Mummified Wood from the Canadian Subarctic | Earth Sciences | 2014 | By the end of this century, if fossil fuel emissions are not reduced atmospheric CO2 will increase to levels that have not existed for tens of millions of years. During the Paleocene/Eocene (P/E) transition (ca. 56--52 Ma), high atmospheric CO2 levels (680--1030 ppmV) caused steeply elevated global temperatures (8 °C higher than modern mean annual temperatures). Arctic and Subarctic regions were warm and humid, supporting a temperate rainforest biome rather than tundra. Although this period has been studied using ocean sediment cores with low temporal resolution, high-resolution proxies (e.g., tree rings) offer the possibility of understanding fine-scale climate variability during the P/E. Recently, mummified (non-petrified) wood (Taxodioxylon Hartig 1848, and Piceoxylon Gothan 1905) was discovered in Canadian Arctic diamondiferous kimberlites near Lac de Gras, in the Northwest Territories. Wood samples within individual kimberlites were crossdated, to produce some of the oldest floating tree-ring width (RWI) chronologies (up to 417 years in length) in history. Using the oldest verified tree-ring alpha-cellulose ever found (ca. 53.3 Ma), I constructed stable isotope records (d13C and d18O) from samples of Piceoxylon including an 86-year-long record at annual resolution, and a subannual-scale record spanning four tree rings.Mean temperatures were estimated at 11.4 °C (std. dev. = 1.8 °C), which is an average of 16°C warmer than the modern Subarctic (-4.6 °C). Subannual temperature variation ranged from 3.5--16.4 °C, with a mean of 10.9 °C (std. dev. = 3.0 °C). Spectral analysis of annual records (stable isotope and RWI) exhibited strong bidecadal oscillations (20--30 years/cycle) along with marginally significant interannual, pentadecadal, and centennial oscillations. This oscillatory pattern is similar to the modern Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), suggesting that a PDO-like phenomenon existed in the early Eocene, causing a bidecadal cloudiness regime at our study site, whereby periods of greater cloudiness and increased precipitation caused increased tree growth, alternating with decades of less moisture and decreased tree-ring growth. Results presented here will offer insights into patterns of tree growth and physiological responses to high-CO2 greenhouse climates, providing data with which paleoclimate models of the P/E may be validated. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Hoornweg, Daniel | Kennedy, Christopher | A Cities Approach to Sustainability | Civil Engineering | 2015-06 | A Cities Approach to SustainabilityThis thesis provides a response to the question of how we might achieve greater sustainability, and from that sustainable development. An engineering approach, or applied science (physical and social), integrated within a multi-stakeholder partnership, is proposed. A road map to a partial, or `shadow agreement' is proposed, that would hopefully serve as the start of a global process leading to comprehensive sustainable development.An argument is made why cities are the most likely actors to design and bring about such an agreement. An agreement among the world's larger cities (those urban areas with 5 million or more residents by 2050) is possible, and is likely a necessary, but not sufficient condition to achieve sustainable development. Each city is viewed as a unique system as well as collectively within a `system-of-systems,' and more broadly within local and global ecosystems and economies. Global boundaries and objectives such as the Sustainable Development Goals are down-scaled and applied at a metro-city level.Population projections are provided for the world's larger cities (in 2025, 2050, 2075 and 2100). Along with the hierarchy of sustainable cities, two new tools are developed in this thesis: (i) a cities approach to physical and socio-economic boundaries, and: (ii) sustainability costs curves. These two tools underpin the shadow agreement and are powerful planning and engineering tools in their own right. Case study application of the tools is provided for Dakar, Mumbai, Sao Paulo, Shanghai, and Toronto. | Ph.D. | sustainable development, cities | 8, 11 |
| Hori, Yukari | Gough, William A. | Impact of Climate Change on Winter Road Systems in Ontario's Far North: First Nations' and Climatological Perspectives on the Changing Viability and Longevity of Winter Roads | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2016-11 | Climate change is already being experienced in Ontario’s Far North with implications for First Nations communities that are reliant on winter road systems. The first study of this thesis examined how winter road seasons have been affected historically by particular climate conditions by focusing on the timing of opening dates of the James Bay Winter Road (JBWR). This study established a minimum threshold of 380 freezing degree-days (FDDs) below 0°C, a threshold subsequently used to assess the impacts of climate change on winter road systems in the future using climate change projections. The second study explored the current vulnerability of the Fort Albany First Nation community regarding physical, social/cultural, economic impacts associated with changing winter roads and its seasons, as well as river ice regimes. Through the analysis of key informant interviews and winter road user surveys on the changes in winter roads and river ice regimes, the six major themes were identified. As a result, the JBWR has now become a critical seasonal lifeline for not only providing a relatively inexpensive land transport of essential goods and supplies, but also reconnecting coastal remote communities by physical, social, and cultural activities during winter. The third study focused on the viability and longevity of winter road systems in Ontario’s Far North for the next century using recent climate model projections using three Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios. Using FDD threshold established in the first study as the main metric, climate conditions are expected to remain favourable in Big Trout Lake and Lansdowne House during winter road construction through the end of 2100. However, climate conditions would possibly be unfavourable for winter road construction at Moosonee, Kapuskasing, and Red Lake by 2041−2070. These studies demonstrate that there is an immediate need to develop adaptation strategies in response to impacts of climate change on winter roads in Ontario’s Far North. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Horne, Lendell Chad | Joseph, Heath | Health, Risk, and Justice | Philosophy | 2014-11 | While citizens in a liberal democracy are generally expected to see to their basic needs out of their own income, health needs are an exception. Most rich liberal democracies provide their citizens with health care or health care insurance in kind. Many people find this special treatment for health care appealing, but political philosophers and bioethicists have struggled to justify it. Most theorists hold that it is justified by the moral importance of health, but this approach has many flaws, not least of which is the fact that access to personal health care services is in fact a relatively inconsequential determinant of population health. This dissertation offers a new justification for health care entitlements. Health needs are not more important than other basic needs, morally speaking, but they are more unpredictable. I argue that health care entitlements are best justified in terms of risk management rather than health equalization or health promotion. Citizens ought to have insurance against health risks to provide stability in their future expectations and thus to protect their capacities to form, revise, and pursue a rational plan of life. The failure of private markets to deliver adequate access to health care insurance provides a rationale for state involvement in the delivery of health care. This approach provides tidy answers to some pressing problems in macro-level bioethics, but it has implications for political philosophy as well. One of the most important functions of the modern state is to provide citizens with security against various risks, including health risks, and yet this function is conspicuously absent from John Rawls's influential theory of justice. My dissertation begins the work of integrating security from risk into a liberal-egalitarian theory of justice. | Ph.D. | health, justice | 3, 16 |
| Hossain, Shaik | Caspersen, John | Branch Growth and Crown Dynamics in Northern Hardwood Forests | Forestry | 2015-06 | The canopy is one of the last frontiers of forest research, due to the difficulty of gaining direct access to tree crowns, and the difficulty of identifying and measuring individual tree crowns from a distance. These challenges have limited our understanding of both tree growth and stand dynamics. This thesis examines ontogenetic trends in the diameter growth of tree trunks and radial growth of tree crowns, using a combination of ground-based inventory data and in-situ measurements taken from a mobile canopy lift. The main goal was to determine whether and why growth declines once trees reach the canopy. The inventory data revealed that both diameter and crown growth rates follow a hump-shaped trend, and that the crown area of many large trees shrank over time, suggesting that the decline in expansion rates is the net effect of declining growth and increasing dieback. The in-situ measurements confirmed that dieback increases with tree size, suggesting that tree sway increases as trees grow larger, resulting in more frequent collisions between neighboring crowns. Indeed, dieback was higher in tree crowns located within 3 m of another crown, confirming that dieback is in part the result of inter-crown collisions. In-situ measurements of lateral branch growth were also taken before and after gap formation to examine species- and size-specific responses to canopy disturbance. Yellow birch did not respond significantly to gap formation, but sugar maple and beech did. On the other hand, small trees responded more to gap formation than large trees. Following release, small trees grew faster than large trees, but lateral growth did not vary with branch length or tree height, suggesting that growth declines due to increased reproduction, rather than increased support costs or hydraulic limitation. Indeed, in-situ measurements confirmed that large trees that produced a lot of seeds grew less than small trees that produced few seeds. Overall, this research indicates that disturbance acts in concert with declining growth and increased dieback to offset the size-asymmetry of light competition, favoring small trees that can grow laterally to exploit light in canopy gaps, as well as web of narrow spaces between crowns of canopy trees. | Ph.D. | forest | 15 |
| Hossein, Caroline Shenaz | Teichman, Judith A. | The Politics of Microfinance: A Comparative Study of Jamaica, Guyana and Haiti | Political Science | 2012-11 | The microfinance revolution of the 1980s acclaimed micro-credit as a tool that would improve the lives of economically active people trapped in poverty. The 2006 Nobel prize awarded to Mohammed Yunus and Grameen Bank confirmed for the industry’s advocates that microfinance was a panacea, and billions of dollars have been channeled to financial services for the poor. However, a series of high-profile scandals in 2010 shook development agencies’ faith in micro lending, and support has waned in light of evidence that microfinance alone cannot change structural inequalities and end poverty. I show that politics operate throughout the industry, reproducing inequalities within the process of micro lending. In my political ethnographic study of 460 people in three countries, I find that race and class politics is entrenched in all three countries, yet there are different outcomes related to attitudes of microfinance managers. In Jamaica and Guyana, micro lenders demonstrate that historically rooted racial and class biases go beyond gender to determine the allocation of micro loan resources. Ingrained biases interfere with the allocation of loans to the urban poor because discriminatory practices reinforce pre-existing social divisions. The Haiti case is hopeful: lenders, particularly the caisses populaires (credit unions), are made up of socially conscious people who recognize the country’s exclusionary politics. Managers and staff have class origins similar to the clients they serve and view micro loans as a tool to contest class and race-based oppressions. Haiti’s case suggests that collective systems such as those found in the caisses populaires and informal banks are effective because they relate to people’s history; and managers influenced by the masses, organize financial programs that are responsive to their clients and remain free from elite capture. This bottom-up approach in microfinance determines a greater level of social transformation for the urban poor. | PhD | poverty, gender, urban | 1, 5, 11 |
| Houle, David | Skogstad, Grace | Carbon Pricing in Canadian Provinces: from Early Experiments to Adoption (1995-2014) | Political Science | 2015-11 | This dissertation studies the emergence of carbon pricing mechanisms at the sub-federal level in Canada to answer two questions. First, why have some Canadian provinces adopted carbon pricing instruments, either a cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, while others have not? And, second, of the provinces that have adopted carbon pricing, how can we explain differences in the design of their carbon pricing instruments? In order to answer these questions, the dissertation has investigated the process of adoption of climate change policy in Canada’s ten provinces through four distinct stages: 1) the diffusion of the ideas supporting carbon pricing, 2) climate policy capacity building, 3) the public debate following the proposition of carbon pricing by the governing party, and 4) the design of the carbon pricing instrument. After reviewing the climate policy-making processes in the provinces, the dissertation’s answer to the first question is that carbon pricing instruments have been adopted in provinces in which the government has shown early on an acceptance of both the scientific paradigm of anthropogenic climate change and the policy paradigm of liberal environmentalism—the latter promoting market-based climate policy. These provinces are also the ones in which the premier has shown a personal commitment to the issue of climate change, which has contributed to focusing resources on the issue and to building climate policy capacity ahead of other provinces. Among provinces that have adopted carbon-pricing, climate policy is framed as providing important economic benefits through the creation of carbon markets and fostering investments in the renewable energy industry and other green technologies. The answer to the second question is that provinces, although to varying degrees, have designed carbon pricing instruments in order to take into consideration the particularities of their economic context and the policy preferences of their main industrial emitters. While some provinces, such as Quebec in imposing a cap-and-trade system, have been willing to go well beyond what their industries have been ready to accept, at least initially, others have adopted carbon pricing instruments designed to match closely the policy preferences of their most important GHG emitting industry. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, climate, environment | 7, 13 |
| House, Julian | Zhong, Chen-Bo||DeVoe, Sanford | Mercenaries: The Paradoxical Effect of Pay-for-performance on Unethical Tasks | Management | 2015-11 | While some organizations, like charities and government agencies, engage in prosocial behavior that upholds the highest prescriptive moral values in our society; others, like those in the tobacco, fossil fuel, gambling, and weapons industries, operate within the confines of the legal system while nevertheless behaving antisocially and violating core moral proscriptions against harming others. Unfortunately our understanding of the psychology that enables collective moral violations is still very limited because scholarship in behavioural business ethics has tended to focus on individual-level antecedents of unethical behaviour as opposed to the interpersonal and organizational factors that lead ordinarily ethical people astray. This dissertation attempts to rectify this imbalance by asking how it is possible to motivate employees to comply with instructions that violate society’s ethical principles. Given that money is generally considered the most powerful motivational tool available to most organizations, this research examines how different financial incentive structures motivate performance of dirty work that is technically legal but violates society’s ethical norms. Surprisingly, and contrary to its well-documented positive effect on the performance of ethically-neutral work tasks, I predict that pay-for-performance incentive structures will have a negative effect on performance of unethical tasks. Existing motivational theories are unable to make similar predictions, so I contribute to our understanding of unethical behavior on behalf of organizations by considering the embedded nature of ethical decision-making and argue that pay-for-performance alters employees’ perceived employment relationships and thereby inhibits moral disengagement from societal norms. Through a series of pilot studies I identify two appropriate experimental paradigms to test my hypotheses. The first reported experiment involves a novel paradigm in which online workers are recruited as part of a marketing study to compose social-media advertising messages in support of a tobacco company. The second experiment adapts an established bug-killing paradigm in which laboratory participants are asked to place either bugs or inanimate objects into a modified coffee grinder that they subsequently activate. In both experiments, participants are either paid for their performance of this moderately unethical task or receive a comparable flat fee. This dissertation reports the results of these experiments and discusses their scholarly contribution. | Ph.D. | employment | 8 |
| Hove, Jennifer Kathleen | Fletcher, Joseph F. | A Struggle for Hearts and Minds: Statebuilding and Origins of Political Legitimacy in Post-2001 Afghanistan | Political Science | 2015-11 | This thesis tackles a central puzzle of externally-assisted statebuilding: why international efforts to rebuild states with more capacity do not necessarily result in more internal legitimacy. It examines the dynamics of state legitimacy in Afghanistan since the fall of the Taliban by tracing dominant understandings of political legitimacy that came to characterize the international statebuilding project; (de)legitimizing practices of the Afghan state and external actors; and in turn, citizen evaluations of state institutions. Unlike scholars who interpret legitimacy as automatically following from particular kinds of institutions (namely those associated with liberal democracy), this thesis suggests that legitimacy is best understood as resulting from complex interactions between state, society and – in the context of externally-assisted statebuilding – international actors. The study finds that despite initial optimism and the existence of a state that provides more to its citizens than has historically been the norm, many Afghans have grown critical of state institutions. This shift in perceptions owes in large part to the conflicted approach to governance taken by the international statebuilding project. I argue that international actors first positioned good governance as a core criterion against which to judge the legitimacy of the Afghan state, which represented a departure from traditional understandings of political legitimacy in the country. Despite this emphasis, external actors then contributed to a dysfunctional governance environment characterized by a polarization of power, an uneven distribution of resources, and high levels of external intrusiveness in local politics, especially in Afghanistan’s insecure southern provinces. Aligning with these arguments, this dissertation finds that local attitudes towards international actors are instrumental in determining Afghans’ perceptions of state legitimacy, especially in the South where external actors were more invasive in shaping the statebuilding project. Secondly, it finds that key governance indicators – namely the state’s perceived inclusiveness, responsiveness and fairness – are critical drivers of legitimacy, particularly in the South where the gap was especially great between the rhetoric of good governance and governance failings on the ground. These findings help to position political legitimacy at the center of conversations about statebuilding efforts, and contribute to a richer understanding of state legitimation during international intervention. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Hovhannisyan, Gayane | Millson, Peggy||Lee, Colin | Syndromic Management of Chlamydia and Gonorrhea in Women with Vaginal Discharge at the Public Health Sexual Health and Sexually Transmitted Diseases Clinics in Hamilton, Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014 | Background. Canadian guidelines on sexually transmitted infections recommend that women with vaginal discharge and high-risk for STIs be treated for chlamydia and gonorrhea when high quality laboratory testing is not available or follow-up cannot be assured. Hamilton Public Health (HPH) Sexual Health (SH) and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) clinics offer antibiotics for chlamydia and gonorrhea when women present with vaginal discharge or dysuria; however, this approach has never been evaluated. Objectives. To determine the positive predictive value (PPV) of the syndromic approach at the HPH SH and STD clinics; to determine risk factors for chlamydia and gonorrhea in the study population and to retrospectively evaluate whether the addition of one or more risk factors would improve the performance of the syndromic approach at these clinics; to estimate the interval between testing and treatment, and the proportion of chlamydia and gonorrhea cases who did not return for treatment. Methods. A retrospective chart review was conducted. 3700 charts were abstracted from the HPH SH and STD clinics. Time to treatment and data on cases who did not return for treatment were obtained from the Integrated Public Health Information System. Risk factors were analyzed using log-binomial regression, to estimate relative risks of outcomes associated with characteristics of interest. Results. Syndromic management of vaginal discharge and dysuria at HPH clinics had PPVs of 10% and 1% for treating chlamydia and gonorrhea, respectively. Treating these women for chlamydia and gonorrhea based on two or more risk factors for these infections would have resulted in a PPV | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Howard, Philip Sean Steven | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | The Double-edged Sword: A Critical Race Africology of Collaborations between Blacks and Whites in Racial Equity Work | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2009-06 | In recent years, there has been a significant amount of new attention to white dominance and privilege (or whiteness) as the often unmarked inverse of racial oppression. This interest has spawned the academic domain called Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS). While the critical investigation of whiteness is not new, and has been pioneered by Black scholars beginning at least since the early 1900s in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois, what is notable about this new interest in whiteness is its advancement almost exclusively by white scholars. The paucity of literature centering the Black voice in the study of whiteness both suggests the lack of appreciation for the importance of this perspective when researching the phenomenon of racial dominance, and raises questions about the manner in which racial equity work is approached by some Whites who do work that is intended to advance racial equity. This study investigates the context of racial equity collaborations between Blacks and Whites, responding to this knowledge deficit in two ways: a) it centers the Black voice, specifically and intentionally seeking the perspectives of Blacks about racial equity collaborations b) it investigates the nature and effects of the relationships between Blacks and Whites in these collaborative endeavours. This qualitative research study uses in-depth interview data collected from ten Black racial equity workers who collaborate with Whites in doing racial equity work. The data makes evident that the Black participants find these collaborations to be necessary and strategic while at the same time having the potential to undermine their own agency. The study examines this contradiction, discussing several manifestations of it in the lives of these Black racial equity workers. It outlines the importance of Black embodied knowledge to racial equity work and to these collaborations, and outlines an epistemology of unknowing and a politics of humility that these Blacks seek in their white colleagues. The study also outlines the collective and individual strategies used by these Black racial equity workers to navigate and resist the contradictory terrain of their collaborations with Whites in racial equity work. | PhD | equitable | 4 |
| Howse, Dana | Eakin, Joan | Injured Workersâ Moral Engagement in the Compensation System: The Social Production of Problematic Claiming Experience | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-11 | A small proportion of compensation claims in Ontario are complex, prolonged, and often adversarial. These claims are associated with chronic disability, unemployment, and financial and emotional suffering for injured workers, and significant financial and administrative burden for the compensation system. This thesis employed a critical interpretive qualitative design to better understand sociologically the issue of ‘problematic claiming’ from the standpoint of injured workers. A key finding is that injured workers engage with the compensation system morally, framing their experience of claiming in terms of right and wrong, just and unjust, good and bad. Their experience is characterized by mistrust, confrontation with system players, feelings of dehumanization and judgement. Injured workers in this study responded to their moral experience of claiming through the performance of ‘identity work’: attempts at reputation repair that involved displaying their status as ‘good workers’ and ‘good claimants’. This thesis elaborates on this central finding and explores what might produce injured workers’ moral engagement in compensation by considering three social discursive contexts that may play a role in shaping the system and the understandings and practices of those within it: the injured worker movement’s ‘justice discourse’, and the broader societal-level discourses of sick role and neoliberalism. This analysis contributes to both the substantive field of work and health and the theoretical field of social theory. The findings illuminate the tensions and related consequences that arise from the differing conceptions of claiming between injured workers and the compensation board. Highlighting the value of applying concepts from the social sciences to the study of the relationship between work and health, the research underscores the continued and expanded usefulness of sick role theory in contemporary studies of health and illness behavior, and provides empirical substance for understanding the notion of moral in sociological terms. | Ph.D. | health, employment, worker | 3, 8 |
| Hsiao, Marvin Min-Yen | Jha, Prabhat ||Nathens, Avery B. | Road Traffic Injury Mortality in India | Medical Science | 2013-11 | Introduction: The burden of road traffic injuries (RTI) is worsening globally, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) and among the young and economically productive populations. A major barrier to improving road safety in India and other LMIC is that existing RTI data sources are severely limited by poor population coverage and data quality. This dissertation explores the reliability and feasibility of using a novel data source with verbal autopsy (VA) methods for the purposes of RTI surveillance in India. Methods: The reliability of the VA methods was assessed using physician agreement on the specific categories of injury death as the metric. Next, a nationally representative household mortality survey with VA methods was used to directly estimate the age- and gender-specific RTI death rates and to identify context-specific RTI risk factors in India. Finally, a national spatial database was constructed to quantify potential access to trauma care in relation to the spatial distribution of RTI deaths in India. Results: Across a broad array of application settings in India, the level of physician agreement was high indicating that the VA methods were reliable in distinguishing RTI deaths among other specific categories of injury deaths. The estimated 183,600 RTI deaths in 2005 from the mortality survey were over 50% more than the national police statistics. Of these RTI deaths, 65% were males between ages 15-59 years, 68% were pedestrians and other vulnerable road users, and over 55% occurred at the scene of collision, within minutes of collision, and/or involved a head injury. The existing community health centres and district hospitals in the Indian public health system had inadequate trauma care capacity but were suitably located to allow broad spatial access to timely trauma care for the majority of RTI deaths in India, which were most problematic in the northern states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and in Tamil Nadu. Conclusions: Properly designed VA studies can provide accurate and reliable RTI surveillance data and assist in identifying context-specific road safety interventions. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Hsu, Amy Teh-Mei | Laporte, Audrey | An Investigation of Approaches to Performance Measurement: Applications to Long-term Care in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-11 | With a growing proportion of older adults in the Canadian population, the sustainability of publicly-funded long-term care (LTC) continues to be a concern. While emphasis has been placed on more efficient care delivery – that is, to increase output with a fixed amount of resources – it is unclear if, and how greater efficiency can be realized in a market where the quantities of inputs and output are carefully regulated by government policies. Furthermore, despite the wealth of information on the association between organizational structure, efficiency, and quality of care from research conducted in the U.S., these relationships have not been extensively studied in Canada. This type of analysis is of particular relevance for Ontario, which has the highest proportion of for-profit, chain-owned nursing homes (also known as ‘LTC homes’) in the country. To explore these questions, econometric methods were applied to evaluative the productivity and technical efficiency of LTC homes in Ontario. The dataset was derived from Statistics Canada’s Residential Care Facilities Survey (RCFS) and consisted of observations from 627 LTC homes collected over 15 years (1996/1997 to 2010/2011). Dynamic panel data models – including random effects, fixed effects, maximum likelihood and quantile regression – were estimated to determine the production function of service providers in this sector. Descriptive results revealed that staffing levels were the highest among municipal LTC homes, followed by not-for-profit and for-profit operators. On average, independent facilities provided more hours of direct care than chain-affiliated LTC homes. Within these facilities, health care aides provided more hours of care than any other category of care personnel; in fact, their contribution to residents’ care increased over time. Results from the dynamic panel data models found chain affiliation, urban location, and the scale of operation to be positive and significant predictors of technical efficiency – controlling for heterogeneity in the residents’ care needs, other organizational attributes (e.g., profit status) and the operating environment (e.g., market concentration). Technical efficiency is one of many aspects of performance. The empirical work presented in this thesis offers examples of methods that can be used to analyze and inform LTC policies in Ontario in the future. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Huang, Yu-Te | Fang, Lin | Opportunities and Challenges: Identity Development and Lived Experiences among Chinese Immigrant Young Gay Men in Toronto | Social Work | 2017-11 | This grounded theory study sets out to explore identity development and lived experiences among Chinese immigrant young gay men, with a focus on their migration journey and intersectional social locations. Eighteen Chinese gay men who were aged 18-28 and had moved from Mainland China, Hong Kong, or Taiwan to Canada participated in semi-structured individual interviews conducted in either Mandarin or English. Findings indicate that these gay men migrated to Canada for an array of reasons, citing “living in a LGBT-friendly country” as only one of many factors. Recent socioeconomic and cultural changes in Chinese societies have led many participants to revise their original perception of “the West is better.” On the other hand, the increasing acceptance of homosexuality in Chinese societies is noted throughout the interviews. Situated in this socio-cultural context, the participants’ current state of ethnocultural identity is found to be in-between, consisting of constant transitions between Canadian culture and Chinese culture over time and across contexts. Their sexual identity generally followed a linear progression and achieved a uniform and settled state with selective, pragmatic disclosure. Yet, various interpersonal and environmental factors were highlighted to bear upon their process of self-identifying as gay. Several themes regarding intersectionality emerged from the data. First, study participants do not experience conflicts between their sexual and cultural identities. Second, the intersectionality is context-specific. While rejecting the ubiquitous existence of intersectional oppression, study participants have experienced a certain form of marginalization that occurs in the context of disclosing their gay identity to their Chinese friends/families and finding a dating partner within a gay community. Third, participants consider the label of “double minority” oversimplified and derogatory, indicating that their intersectional identities can serve as a source of social support. Based on the research findings, implications for social work theory, research, and practice are discussed. | Ph.D. | queer | 5 |
| Huang, Yuheng | Agrawal, Aneil F | Genetic Variation, Adaptability and Gene Expression Pplasticity in heterogeneous Environments | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015-11 | Natural environments change over time and space. How populations respond to different forms of environmental heterogeneity has strong impacts on the health and persistence of the populations. In my thesis, I explored the effects of temporal and spatial heterogeneity on several important aspects of populations—levels of genetic variation, the potential of future adaptation, and gene expression plasticity—using replicated experimental populations of Drosophila melanogaster evolving under alternative regimes: constant regimes maintained in either cadmium- or salt- enriched larvae diets (Cad and Salt, respectively) and two heterogeneous regimes that vary either temporally (Temp) or spatially (Spatial) between the two diets. Whole-genome resequencing of these populations found that for sites likely under differential ecological selection (and those closely linked to them), the pattern of within-population diversity is Spatial > Temp > Salt, Cad. However, for sites that are not affected by differential selection, the pattern is Spatial > Salt, Cad > Temp. Quantitative genetic variance patterns for three fitness related traits are partially consistent with the genomic diversity. Spatial populations tend to harbor more genetic variation than Temp populations or those under a constant environment that is the same as the assay environment. The adaptability of these populations was further assessed by exposing them to high temperature while being maintained in their original larval diet regimes. Both types of heterogeneous populations had a larger adaptive response to high temperature than homogeneous populations for female productivity but not for male siring success. Finally, the transcriptome was measured in both diets for each population to examine gene expression plasticity. Relative to the constant populations, both heterogeneous populations showed increases in adaptive plasticity. Spatial populations are more readily to increase adaptive plasticity than Temp. Whereas for the genes selected for similar expression in both diets, Temp populations more readily evolve to the adaptive state than Spatial. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| hughes, naomi | cooper, karyn||roxana, ng | Homelessness, Health, and Literacy: An Institutional Ethnographic Study of the Social Organization of Health Care in Ontario, Canada | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-11 | This thesis presents findings from an institutional ethnographic study that examined the experiences of 27 individuals who frequented an Open Access homeless shelter in Greater Toronto, Ontario. Many participants interviewed in the study either lacked an Ontario Health Insurance Card, or they expressed little interest in acquiring one. Individuals who had chosen not to seek reissuance of their health cards either implicitly or explicitly self-excluded themselves from participation in programs and services that, although useful to them, might be seen to regulate, control, and thereby subordinate their interests to those of the dominant institution. This study sought to map, locate, and make visible the local, everyday experiences of individuals at an Open Access shelter, and to situate that map within the translocal and often invisible realm of broader neoliberal ideologies and their related bureaucratic health care policies and directives. Neoliberal doctrines have also been evidenced in recent health care reforms, including the reduction in welfare spending and social subsidies, the centralization of federal power and authority over provincial mandates, and the implementation of high-tech computerized monitoring and management systems designed to reduce fraudulent access to health care. This study not only explicated the different forms of literacy (organizational, technological and health literacies) that are both employed and reproduced in institutional settings, but it also examined the role of literacy within larger social, political, and economic contexts. Using an institutional ethnographic method of inquiry, this study examined the ways in which literacy (or the lack of literacy) shapes and mitigates the experiences of homeless individuals attempting to gain access to health care. This study asked: How are institutional health policies evidenced in the everyday, material lives of real people? Are such policies potentially exclusionary? | PhD | health | 3 |
| Hume, Nathan | Choudhry, Sujit | Constitutional Possibilities: An Inquiry Concerning Constitutionalism in British Columbia | Law | 2012-11 | Constitutional change is relentless. Today, states jockey with regional associations, international organizations, transnational networks and sub-state authorities to define the scope of legitimate political conduct and establish rival bases for political affiliation. Constitutional theorists must be resolute but they should not be rigid. Especially in such uncertain conditions, theories are best understood not as plans to be implemented but as hypotheses to be tested. Charles Sabel and David Dyzenhaus write separately but share this pragmatic orientation, in which doubt is indispensable and truth is the end of public inquiry. They also share a distinctive belief that constitutionalism serves a moral end: it is the project of cultivating citizens who conceive their political community in terms of the commitments revealed by its practices. Their position, which is well suited for contemporary challenges, warrants elaboration and examination. British Columbia offers an ideal constitutional laboratory for that test. During the 1970s and 1980s, doubts mounted about the legitimacy of the constitutional settlement imposed by the Crown in the westernmost province of Canada. Legal, political and constitutional decisions raised the possibility that aboriginal rights and title survived colonization and Confederation. Since 1990, their existence has been confirmed in a cascade of constitutional experiments. Those initiatives can be distilled into four procedures: litigation, negotiation, consultation and collaboration. Although they have delivered practical benefits to some indigenous peoples, these procedures have not transformed provincial politics into a moral endeavour. The constraints on constitutionalism in British Columbia are both conceptual and institutional. Despite marginal improvements, those constraints endure and constitutionalism remains for now the sporadic pursuit of a small elite. To conceive constitutionalism as a project is to set a sound but exacting standard. Although British Columbia falls short, its failure is informative: the theory is useful. | SJD | institution | 16 |
| Humphreys, Alexander Fendrich | Halfar, Jochen | Shallow Water Carbonate Sediments of the Galápagos Archipelago: Ecologically Sensitive Biofacies in a Transitional Oceanographic Environment | Earth Sciences | 2018-03 | Shallow water carbonate producing organisms are directly controlled by their local oceanography. As a result, long-term environmental signals—stemming from the breakdown of calcareous organisms—can be read from time-averaged carbonate sediments. To better understand these complex biophysical interactions, it is important to study carbonate development within oceanographic transition zones and environments affected by disturbances, such as the El Niño—Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This dissertation represents the first investigation into modern shallow water, soft sediment, carbonate environments of the Galápagos Archipelago, eastern tropical Pacific (ETP). This region is notable for straddling an oceanographic transition zone from tropical oligotrophic to temperate eutrophic—caused by high nutrient and low pH upwelling—and for being directly impacted by ENSO. A top-down approach is followed, which analyzes the biogenic structure of Galápagos sediments and their connection to local and regional oceanography and climate, and then explores how these findings relate to benthic foraminifera—sensitive environmental indicators contained within the sediments. Sediment point counting and statistical models revealed that while these carbonate environments span a biogenic and oceanographic transition comparable to similar settings in the ETP, the proximity of the Galápagos to the ENSO region directly influences its sedimentary structure and distribution. Point counting also revealed a near-absence of benthic foraminifera, which is unusual for ETP, and tropical shallow water carbonates in general. Statistically comparing foraminiferal species composition and diversity to dominant oceanographic parameters revealed the low abundances and distribution of these testate (shelled) single-celled protists to be negatively influenced by the combination of repeated Holocene ENSO events, and the effects of protracted exposure to high nutrient and low pH waters of the southern archipelago. Ultimately, the results of this study may serve as a template for investigating the interaction of carbonates and oceanography within similar atypical tropical assemblages in the fossil record. | Ph.D. | ocean, water | 14 |
| Hunter, Alexandra | Hannah-Moffat, Kelly | Flipping the Paradigm: The Conceptualization and Practice of Mental Healthcare in Ontario Prisons | Sociology | 2020-06 | This dissertation focuses on understandings of mental illness and on the organization and delivery of mental healthcare in Ontario prisons. In the process, I identify a nascent model of correctional medicine in Ontario prisons. Having interviewed both medical professionals and correctional personnel, I give a voice to those who deliver care in prisons in Ontario, a voice that has been rarely heard. Although my focus is on the provision of mental healthcare, the study offers a window into the workings of provincial prisons more generally. Multiple reports, commissions, and ombudspersons have called for improvements to mental healthcare for people in custody. Missing in these discussions is clarity about who and what is being talked about. I start to answer these questions and describe what care is being provided and for whom. I also show that the current practices define people out of the category of mentally ill rather than in. ‘Defining out’ perpetuates the inadequacy of care. Moreover, the inherent subjectivity of mental health diagnoses and treatment is not being mediated by appropriate communication among those delivering care in prisons. I discuss how prisons are becoming de facto mental health facilities; how institutional responses vary across the province of Ontario; and how everyone dealing with mentally ill individuals has to improvise – sometimes just to get everyone through the day as safely as possible. My findings indicate that correctional officers operate with insufficient understandings of mental illness to effectively carry out their current roles as central gatekeepers to mental healthcare. As a result, medical professionals have limited access to the people who would benefit from that expertise. I show how practitioners perceive the patterns of mental healthcare delivery in correctional settings and expose an emerging model of medicine that is distinct from both community medicine and forensic medicine. Throughout the dissertation, I argue for the need to flip the paradigm of mental healthcare from one with a singular focus on illness to one that focuses on wellness in order to better address the mental health needs of all people in prison, including those experiencing forms of ‘un-wellness’. | Ph.D. | health, institution | 3, 16 |
| Huryn, Steven Matthew | Gough, William A | Analysis of Thunderstorm Trends in Southern Ontario, Canada: Past and Future | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2016-06 | Despite the potential hazards associated with thunderstorms, they have been underrepresented in climatology studies. Southern Ontario is Canadaâ s most active thunderstorm region, and the countryâ s most populous and industrialized region. To date there has been no analysis of past trends of thunderstorms in Southern Ontario, or any analysis of how thunderstorm frequency might change over the current century. This thesis consists of three research chapters flanked by an introduction (Chapter 1) and discussion (Chapter 5). In Chapter 2 manual thunderstorm observations from eight Environment Canada weather stations are evaluated for accuracy by comparing them to data from the Canadian Lightning Detection Network. The results indicate the manual observations are reliable for small distances around each weather station, as is expected given the normally localized nature of thunderstorms. In Chapter 3 the historical manual hourly thunderstorm observations are evaluated for trends over the past several decades. Daily precipitation and wind gust data are used as proxies to determine if there have been changes in thunderstorm intensity, and yearly thunderstorm occurrence is compared to the larger scale phenomena ENSO and NAO. No consistent significant trends were observed over this period in either thunderstorm occurrence or intensity and a correlation between thunderstorm frequency and ENSO and NAO was also not detected. In Chapter 4 thunderstorm occurrence was successfully related to convective available potential energy (CAPE), with the probability of observing a thunderstorm on a given day at each of the weather stations increasing with daily maximum CAPE. While there were no consistent significant trends in CAPE observed over the reference period, by statistically downscaling three general circulation models it was found that large and robust increases in CAPE are expected over the coming decades across all weather stations, which consequently will have the potential to result in an increase in thunderstorm frequency. | Ph.D. | climate, weather | 13 |
| Hussey, Brendan John | McMillen, David R | Towards Engineering a Programmable Universal Transcription Activation System | Cell and Systems Biology | 2017-11 | Developing the next generation of medical, agricultural and sustainability biotechnology is limited by the complexity of natural biological systems; namely the dynamics and interactions between genetically encoded parts. Synthetic biology seeks to reduce the complexity by replacing natural biological components with simplified, synthetic control systems. Transcription is a major control step for biological systems and thus subject to a number of successful efforts for synthetic regulation, primarily in eukaryotes. These systems, however, rely primarily on host components and thus are still largely entangled in the complex host processes. Additionally, prokaryotes, which represent a large fraction of hosts in industrial biotech, still lack the programmable activation systems of eukaryotes. Furthermore components are not readily transferable between the two, which is important for simplifying design. Thus, we sought to design a programmable transcription activation system in prokaryotes by combining the wealth of information on the strong phage T7 RNA Polymerase (RNAP) with modular and programmable DNA binding proteins. Importantly, T7 RNAP is a self-contained RNAP that interacts minimally with the host and is thus orthogonal. We reasoned that reducing T7 RNAPs natural affinity for DNA would allow for control of initiation through programmable DNA binding proteins (DBPs). We show that indeed, T7 RNAP can be programmed to transcribe synthetic promoters via fusion to programmable DNA binding proteins and this interaction can be tuned with various molecular manipulations of promoter and protein. Furthermore, the set of DBPs can be expanded by replacing the fusion with a split T7 and DBP facilitated through programmable leucine zipper domains. This culminates in T7 RNAPs that are programmable and small molecule inducible. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Hutson, Janine Rose | Gideon, Koren | Evaluation of Transplacental Pharmacology and Toxicology from Bench to Bedside | Medical Science | 2014-11 | Many women require pharmacologic treatment during pregnancy. Clinical studies of drug safety in human pregnancy are often limited because of ethical considerations and thus a theoretical framework to evaluate drug safety in pregnancy is needed. Dual perfusion of a single placental lobule is the only experimental model to study human placental transfer of substances in organized placental tissue. The objectives of this thesis were to systematically evaluate the perfusion model in predicting placental drug transfer and to develop a model to account for non-placental pharmacokinetic parameters in the perfusion results. In general, the fetal-to-maternal drug concentration ratios matched well between placental perfusion experiments and in vivo samples taken at the time of delivery. After modeling for differences in maternal and fetal/neonatal protein binding and blood pH, the perfusion results were able to accurately predict in vivo transfer at steady state (R2 = 0.85, P | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Hwang, Merose | Schmid, Andre ||Poole, Janet ||Song, Jesook | The Mudang: Gendered Discourses on Shamanism in Colonial Korea | East Asian Studies | 2009-11 | This dissertation examines the discursive production of mudang, also known as shamans, during the late Chosŏn Dynasty (eighteenth to nineteenth-centuries) and during the Japanese colonial period in Korea (1910-1945). The many discursive sites on mudang articulated various types of difference, often based on gender and urban/rural divides. This dissertation explores four bodies of work: eighteenth to nineteenth-century neo-Confucian reformist essays, late nineteenth-century western surveys of Korea, early twentieth-century newspapers and journals, and early ethnographic studies. The mudang was used throughout this period to reinforce gendered distinctions, prescribe spatial hierarchies, and promote capitalist modernity. In particular, institutional developments in shamanism studies under colonial rule, coupled with an expanded print media critique against mudang, signalled the needs and desires to pronounce a distinct indigenous identity under foreign rule. Chapter one traces three pre-colonial discursive developments, Russian research on Siberian shamanism under Catherine the Great, neo-Confucian writings on "mudang," and Claude Charles Dallet’s late nineteenth-century survey of Korean indigenous practices. Chapter Two examines the last decade of the nineteenth-century, studying the simultaneous emergence of Isabella Bird Bishop’s expanded discussion on Korean shamanism alongside early Korean newspapers’ social criticisms of mudang. Chapter Three looks at Korean newspapers and journals as the source and product of an urban discourse from 1920-1940. Chapter Four examines the same print media to consider why mudang were contrasted from women as ethical household consumers and scientific homemakers. Chapter Five looks at Ch’oe Nam-sŏn and Yi Nŭng-hwa’s 1927 treatises on Korean shamanism as a celebration of ethnic identity which became a form of intervention in an environment where Korean shamanism was used to justify colonial rule. | PhD | gender, urban, rural | 5, 11 |
| Hwee, Jeremiah | Pole, Jason D||Sung, Lillian | The Role of Infections in the Etiology of Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-11 | Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is the most common childhood cancer. However, the etiology of childhood ALL is uncertain. An infectious trigger for ALL is hypothesized based on evidence from biological and epidemiologic studies. The goal of the dissertation was to assess the relationship between prior infections and the development of childhood ALL. In a systematic review and meta-analysis, no overall relationship between prior infections and childhood ALL could be identified (odds ratio, OR=1.10, 95% confidence interval, CI 0.95-1.28). The systematic review showed most studies that used self-reported data to measure infections were susceptible to recall bias. Thus, administrative data may be particularly useful in furthering our understanding of the infectious etiology of ALL. Using electronic medical records as the reference standard, a study was conducted to assess the criterion validity of administrative databases to identify infectious syndromes in children aged 0-18 years from Ontario, Canada. Administrative billings codes for an infection (respiratory, skin and soft tissue, gastrointestinal, urinary tract or otitis externa) demonstrated moderate sensitivity (0.74, 95%CI 0.70-0.77), and high specificity (0.95, 95%CI 0.93-0.96), positive predictive value (0.87, 95%CI 0.84-0.90), and negative predictive value (0.88, 95%CI 0.86-0.89). Finally, the association between prior infections and the development of childhood ALL, using health administrative data, was conducted applying the findings from the validation study to define and measure infections. Overall, having >2 infections per year increased odds of ALL by 43% compared to children with ≤0.25 infections per year in Ontario. Infections occurring between 1 to 1.5 years of life may be a critical period as having an infection in this window increased the odds of ALL by 20%. Certain infections such as respiratory and invasive infections may be more important than other infections in the development of ALL. The accumulated insights from each study was used to inform subsequent objectives, resulting in a unified dissertation that found infections have a role in the etiology of childhood ALL. Future work should extend the empirical study investigate the critical period between 1 to 1.5 years by collecting detailed infection data and other exposures that begin around this period. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Hyatt, Ashley Elizabeth | Stewart, Suzanne | Working Together: Indigenous Knowledges, Urban Youth, and Mental Health for Career Development | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2019-11 | Indigenous people in Canada have endured and survived many traumas as a result of the legacy of colonization, which have negatively impacted their social determinants of health. Employment, especially for Indigenous youth, has been identified as an area in need of urgent attention. Despite the fact that Indigenous youth are the fast growing population in Canada, they continue to be underemployed despite programs that were designed to increase Indigenous youth employment rates. This study explores the intersections of employment policies and practices, traditional and cultural knowledges, and mental health by interviewing ten Indigenous key community informants and five Indigenous Elders/Traditional Knowledge keepers in the Greater Toronto Area. The results revealed that decolonizing and Indigenizing current employment policies and practices and is integral to supporting Indigenous youth employment. The results of this study highlight the importance of modifying services so that they emphasize the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and cultures to promote healing and mental wellness. Implications were identified that policies, practices, and vocational psychology models can be enhanced in their application with Indigenous youth by integrating Indigenous worldviews related to health and wellness to promote healing from trauma and mental health. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Ibrahim, Nadine | Kennedy, Christopher | Prioritizing Climate Action for Low-carbon Growth in Cities | Civil Engineering | 2015-11 | Cities play a vital role in the global economy, which necessitates incremental progress towards low-carbon growth to serve their long-term needs and remain competitive locally and collectively. Urban energy consumption makes the climate challenge more pronounced in cities, where simultaneously, the opportunities for mitigation are prevalent. From a climate governance perspective, this thesis examines the prioritization of climate action to meet greenhouse gas emission targets that come at a cost to cities and their residents. The thesis presents four papers that together structure climate action by developing tools to support cities in decarbonizing their economic growth. A three-pronged approach to climate action is developed to integrate key city documents: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventories, Climate Action Plans, and Budgets, and a review of practices and advancements in progressive cities are presented. Greenhouse gas inventories are the starting point of cities’ climate action, which are analyzed comparatively as they apply to community, corporate and upstream emissions, with examples from New York, Shanghai and Paris. Surprisingly not typically linked to inventories, climate action plans are strategic documents defining ambitious initiatives to reduce emissions. A methodology to compile mitigation measures suggested in climate policies and programs in a city, and that of higher orders of government is established, and their cost-effectiveness and abatement potential is calculated and illustrated in the form of a marginal abatement cost (MAC) curve. A case study of prioritizing mitigation measures in the energy supply, buildings, transportation and waste sectors is demonstrated for Toronto’s climate targets, drawing implications for the city’s 2020 and 2050 outlook. To integrate budgets with inventories and action plans, the METRO model is designed for cities to forecast greenhouse gas emissions and evaluate city budgets and business and household incomes relative to climate mitigation priorities. Applying the model to Toronto, the methodology of the METRO model is demonstrated to show that climate commitments have a quantitative dimension and an economic reality. Prioritized climate action positions cities for timely mitigation efforts, where knowledge sharing among cities is paramount to achieving low-carbon growth. | Ph.D. | energy, cities, urban, consum, climate, waste, greenhouse gas | 7, 11, 12, 13 |
| Ignagni, Esther | Eakin, Joan | Disabled Young People, Support and the Dialogical Work of Accomplishing Citizenship | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-11 | Governments, human rights bodies and disability studies scholars all have suggested that disabled people’s citizenship – the legal status and lived practices that enable membership, participation and belonging in one’s community - depends on consistent, adequate and readily available home and personal supports. Yet, little theoretical or empirical work examines disabled young people’s citizenship or their use of support, particularly from their standpoints. Consequently, the ‘work’ disabled young people do to accomplish citizenship remains unrecognized, as are their unique requirements for support to do that work. Normative non-disabled citizenship assumptions remain unproblematized. This study explores what disabled young people do to accomplish citizenship, using home and personal support as the empirical foci. I used a dialogic theoretical and methodological approach, drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin and Dorothy Smith. Both posit that our talk, consciousness and actions respond to and anticipate the voices of others. Through participatory media arts techniques with disabled young people, ethnographic observation and interviews with gatekeepers to formal and informal care, I describe the work that a group of disabled young people did to secure and maintain support and how this in turn shaped their opportunities for specific citizenship practices: self-determination, community participation and social contribution. I argue that disabled young people's work to secure and maintain support requires that they mobilize the authoritative discourse of 'the poster child': a set of objectified values and views encapsulated in utterances about disabled people as futureless, deficient and deferential, originating in images to promote charitable giving. I trace three sequences of activities in which participants assimilated, resisted or brought poster child utterances into ‘dialogue’. The findings raise questions about the extent to which formal entitlements to supports influence how citizenship is lived. Drawing attention to the gaps and tensions in support provision, the findings illuminate the tremendous invisible, tacit work these participants do to strengthen fragile supports. This work, organized by philanthropic rather than rights discourses, leads to a qualified or fragile citizenship. Finally, the study raises questions about the normative and material demands that we may all experience with respect to achieving citizenship, regardless of disability or age. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Imtiaz, Sameer | Rehm, Jürgen | Cannabis Use and Cannabis Use Disorder: Burden of Disease in Canada, Trends in Utilization of Specialized Addiction Treatment Services in Ontario and Efficacy of Brief Interventions | Medical Science | 2019-11 | Three broad topics related to the treatment of cannabis use and cannabis use disorder were examined. First, cannabis-attributable burden of disease in Canada in 2012 was quantified based on the burden of disease analyses, including comparative risk assessments. The cannabis-attributable burden of disease was substantial, most of it due to cannabis use disorder in the form of disability rather than mortality. Although the contributions of cannabis-attributable schizophrenia, lung cancer and road traffic injuries were comparatively minimal, lung cancer and road traffic injuries were the main contributors to cannabis-attributable mortality. Second, trends in treatment of problematic cannabis use were characterized through Ontario’s specialized addiction treatment system between 2010/11 and 2015/16. As cannabis use became less stigmatized and more accepted as normative behavior, clients in treatment for problematic cannabis use only decreased. At the same time, the frequency of cannabis use among all clients in treatment for problematic cannabis use increased. Taken together, treatment that was unnecessary from a clinical standpoint may have been reduced, but there may have been overall increases in severity. Third, the efficacy of brief interventions for cannabis use, compared with minimal control interventions, was reviewed based on participants recruited from health care settings in randomized trials. A systematic review and meta-analyses indicated an overall small number of studies on this topic. The available evidence indicated that brief interventions for cannabis use were not efficacious for improving cannabis-specific ASSIST scores and number of days of cannabis use. On the other hand, the evidence for other cannabis-specific outcomes was limited and mixed. Altogether, the three studies suggested continued monitoring of cannabis use disorder, continued public education of lower risk cannabis use, lack of evidence to scale up brief interventions for cannabis use, expansion of treatment options for cannabis use disorder and development of the evidence base for cannabis use. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Ingram, Leigh-Anne | Joshee, Reva | Citizen-girls: Girls' Perspectives on Gender, Ciitizenship and Schooling | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-06 | The voices, perspectives and experiences of girls and young women in history, political and civic education remain rare, and those of girls of color are even rarer still. This dissertation reports on the results of a qualitative study exploring girls’ perspectives on and experiences of citizenship in the Toronto area. Through the use of document analysis, semi-structured interviews; and photovoice, this study suggests that the girls easily identify traditional gendered expectations in their families, schools and in the society at large. At the same time, the girls often make deliberate choices to defy these expectations, carve out their own paths, and serve as advocates for gender equality, social justice and engaged citizenship. This study focuses on the voices of girls and the ways in which concepts of gender enhance, shape and inhibit civic action within schooling. Despite an increased emphasis on education for active citizenship in education more broadly, this study provokes serious questions about what girls are learning about their roles in society and how concepts of gender affect the ways young people understand and enact their citizenship roles. There are new fields of research in the areas of youth civic engagement, citizenship education, feminist and girlhood studies, all of which informed my understanding of these ‘citizen-girls’, however they still often remain separated and inadequately consider the intersections of multiple identity factors as well as the relationship between individual agency and the societal structures that construct dominant values. This study has important implications for educators and policymakers, suggesting a need for more spaces and opportunities both within the classroom, and outside the school, for girls and boys to critically engage with the messaging they receive about gender, democratic participation and citizen engagement. Furthermore, these girls’ experiences also suggest that we must broaden our definition of citizenship and civic participation in order to better reflect the myriad new forms of citizen expression being used by girls and young people in modern societies today. | PhD | gender, women, equality | 5 |
| Ip, Alexander Halley | Sargent, Edward H | Broad-spectrum Solution-processed Photovoltaics | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2015-11 | High global demand for energy coupled with dwindling fossil fuel supply has driven the development of sustainable energy sources such as solar photovoltaics. Emerging solar technologies aim for low-cost, solution-processable materials which would allow wide deployment. Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) are such a materials system which exhibits the ability to absorb across the entire solar spectrum, including in the infrared where many technologies cannot harvest photons. However, due to their nanocrystalline nature, CQDs are susceptible to surface-associated electronic traps which greatly inhibit performance. In this thesis, surface engineering of CQDs is presented through a combined ligand approach which improves the passivation of surface trap states. A metal halide treatment is found to passivate quantum dot surfaces in solution, while bifunctional organic ligands produce a dense film in solid state. This approach reduced midgap trap states fivefold compared with conventional passivation strategies and led to solar cells with a record certified 7.0% power conversion efficiency. The effect of this process on the electronic structure is studied through photoelectron spectroscopy. It is found that while the halide provides deep trap passivation, the nature of the metal cation on the CQD surface affects the density of band tail states. This effect is explored further through a wide survey of materials, and it is found that the coordination ability of the metal cation is responsible for the suppression of shallow traps. With this understanding of CQD surface passivation, broad spectral usage is then explored through a study of visible-absorbing organolead halide perovskite materials as well as narrow-bandgap CQD solar cells. Control over growth conditions and modification of electrode interfaces resulted in efficient perovskite devices with effective usages of visible photons. For infrared-absorbing CQDs, it is found that, in addition to providing surface trap passivation, ligands must be used to prevent nanocrystal fusion that leads to introduction of band tail states. The most efficient solution-processed infrared solar cells yet reported are achieved through this approach, opening a path towards low-cost photovoltaics with high spectral usage. | Ph.D. | energy, solar | 7 |
| Iqbal, Farwah | Librach, Clifford||Li, Ren-Ke | Characterization of Potential Mechanisms that Render the Combination of First Trimester Umbilical Cord-Derived Perivascular Cells (FTM HUCPVC) and Endothelial Progenitor Cells (EPC) a Promising Cellular Therapeutic Strategy Following Ischemic Cardiac Injury | Physiology | 2019-11 | Heart disease is the main cause of mortality worldwide. The available treatments are limited, high risk and often inefficient. Cell-based therapies are being developed to provide an efficient and safe option to improve quality of life, prevent future mortality and the need for heart transplantation. Aged and ill individuals often have impaired endogenous regenerative cells. Instead, healthy, young cells can be delivered into the damaged heart to decrease inflammation, restore blood flow, preserve the myocardium and increase cardiac output. Pre-clinically and clinically tested therapeutic cell types achieved some of these goals, but no single-cell type seems to be versatile enough, to heal the heart on its own. Herein, I propose the combined use of two regenerative cell types as a treatment after myocardial infarction (MI). The first cell type is the endothelial progenitor cell (EPC), which are the origin of new blood vessels, second is the first trimester human umbilical cord-derived perivascular cell (FTM HUCPVC). FTM HUCPVC can support developing blood vessels, control inflammation and release growth factors. We hypothesized that combined administration of these cells can achieve clinically significant healing in a damaged heart. We previously found that FTM HUCPVC have greater regenerative potential following cardiac injury compared to term HUCPVC and bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells. Optimal cell ratios were determined by a mouse model of subcutaneous angiogenesis and an immunocompromised rat model of MI. The combination of FTM HUCPVC and EPC significantly improved vasculogenesis compared to single cell-type treatments partly through the platelet-derived growth factor beta (PDGF-B) signalling cascade. Both FTM HUCPVC and EPC in combination support perivascular niches in the myocardium by homing to vascular structures and secreting pro-angiogenic factors. The resultant cardiac perfusion is likely required for cardiac muscle preservation, scar tissue reduction, and ultimately the improved cardiac function. To our knowledge, this study is the first to show significant structural and functional cardiac improvements following combination cell therapy compared to single cell-type therapies. Currently our group is working on large animal studies to test this novel therapeutic approach as we plan for a phase I clinical trial to provide a novel treatment option for patients following MI. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Irvine, James Alexander | Bertoldi, Nancy | Canadian Refugee Policy Paradigm Change in the 1990s: Understanding the Power of International Social Influence | Political Science | 2011-06 | This dissertation explores the factors which contributed to a change in the paradigm that framed Canadian refugee policy over the course of the 1990s. This change is characterized in the dissertation as a shift from a refugee protection paradigm that dominated policy-makers’ thinking in the 1970s and 1980s, to a security-control paradigm by at the end of the 1990s. This change is puzzling because it occurred prior to the events of 9/11 rather than in response to them and because domestic motivations for change do not provide a complete explanation of the shift. The dissertation argues that although factors in the domestic and international environments may have enabled paradigm change, a more complete explanation of shift needs to consider the process through which Canadian policy-makers were socialized into a developing international norm. This process of international socialization occurred through bureaucrats’ international interaction in bilateral and Regional Consultative Processes akin to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s global government networks. Using data generated from primary document analysis and a series of interviews of key policy-makers this dissertation maps paradigm change over the two periods. This data is then used to provide evidence of the importance of bureaucratic socialization through a global government network for migration in explaining this change. | PhD | governance | 16 |
| Ishikawa, Wakako | Niyozov, Sarfaroz | An Examination of the Culture of Health education and Education for Health in Timor-Leste | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06 | This study examines public health culture in Timor-Leste, subsequent to independence in 2002. After having been a colony of Portugal for 450 years and under Indonesian occupation for almost 25 years, Timor-Leste has established a new health system and began promoting health education in the country. This thesis is a qualitative case study in which prominent local people and international workers in Timor-Leste were interviewed, and existing information from both international and local organizations was investigated, along with relevant research from the literature review. The information was compared with neighbouring countries’ health education programs and similar studies. Moreover, this study explores the benefits and disadvantages between one district near the capital and another district at the east end of the country. The government organized the flagship program, Servisu Integradu da Saúde Communitária (SISCa) (Integrated Community Health Services) titled, “From, With and To the Community,” as a bottom-up program in 2008, for participation by the citizens. The government is successfully shifting from only hospital health care to community health care. In addition, the model of curable health care was changed successfully to one of preventative health care. The government will need to continue development of the country’s health plan by implanting more fully health education in the schools and communities, and by organizing infrastructures, such as the clean water system and the sewage system in the whole country, to modify the sanitation and hygiene problems. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Issahaku, Paul Alhassan | Neysmith, Sheila | Male Partner Violence against Women in Northern Ghana: Its Dimensions and Health Policy Implications | Social Work | 2012-11 | The study was conducted in northern Ghana to determine the scope of male partner violence (MPV) against women, identify the factors associated with this problem as well as point out the health implications of MPV. In a sample of 443 married women drawn from outpatient populations across six district health centers we found that nearly 7 out of 10 women have experienced some MPV: 62% have experienced psychological violence; 29% have experienced physical violence; and 34% have experienced sexual violence. A multiple regression analysis showed that male controlling behavior, number of children, presence of concubines, partner appreciation, and very good health significantly predicted Total Violence. The results showed that the more controlling a husband is the more likely his wife is to experience severe violence and that more children in the marriage is associated with more violence for the women. Marriage duration was significantly positively correlated with violence, indicating that the longer the time since a woman got married, the more likely she experiences violence. Husband’s education was significantly negatively correlated with violence, indicating that husband education has a decreased effect on violence. Logistic regression and ANOVA models identified a number of socio-demographic factors as significant correlates of MPV. These include couple’s unemployment, particularly husband unemployment, being young – under 30 years and being younger than the husband, presence of concubines, being Muslim or Traditional, living in a rural setting, husband alcohol use, being a healthy woman, and not being appreciated by the husband. We found that MPV is associated with physical and mental health difficulties among women. Some 47 women reported having sustained multiple injuries, including sprains, broken bones and teeth, cuts, and burns. Mental health difficulties among these women included partner phobia, sleep deprivation, and thoughts of suicide. We make recommendations that call on government and other stakeholders to initiate policy that provides services to women experiencing MPV and that implements education and campaign programs to eventually eliminate MPV in Ghana generally. | PhD | health, women, rural | 3, 5, 11 |
| Itani, Satoko | Sykes, Heather | Japanese Female and `Trans' Athletes: Negotiating Subjectivity and Media Constructions of Gender, Sexuality, and Nation | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-06 | The focus of this thesis is twofold: 1) the construction of Japanese female athletes in `masculine' sports by Japanese media in terms of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and nation; and 2) Japanese female and `trans' athletes' negotiation with Japanese gender and sexuality norms in the formation of their gendered subjectivities. A theoretical framework informed by feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories is used to analyze the discursive constructions and constitution of subjectivities of Japanese female and `trans' athletes in the `masculine' sports of soccer and wrestling. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was employed to analyze Japanese mainstream newspaper and magazines published between 2001 and 2012 and in-depth interviews with twelve Japanese female and `trans' athletes in wrestling and soccer. The result of the media analysis illustrates that Japanese mainstream media used multiple normative and normalizing discursive tactics to construct Japanese female athletes within patriarchal, sexist, and heterosexist gender and sexual norms. These discourses were also mobilized in the reporting of international competitions in which the success of Japanese female athletes was appropriated to construct Japanese national identity in order to recuperate Japanese masculinity. The analysis of interviews with female and `trans' athletes illustrates their intricate processes of negotiation with male domination of their sport, Japanese gender and sexual norms, the conflicting demands of athletic careers, and the medicalized discourse of `Gender Identity Disorder (GID)'. The discursive fissures opened up by these conflicting and oppressive discourses, however, provided a `third' gender space in which `female sporting masculinity' is recognized as the `norm' and not as `queerness'. Although this `third' space may be temporary, it provided female and `trans' athletes a space to negotiate heterosexist and cisgenderist Japanese sporting spaces and the society at large. | Ph.D. | gender, queer | 5 |
| Ivanova, Iryna | Watson, Jeanne | The "How" of Change in Emotion-focused Group Therapy for Eating Disorders | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2013-11 | Currently, there is a limited understanding of change mechanisms across all treatment approaches for eating disorders (ED), particularly with regard to group psychotherapy. This presents one of the major obstacles in the development of more effective treatments. The purpose of this study was to extend current understanding of therapeutic processes in group psychotherapy for bulimic disorders. Thirty-one women were randomly assigned to either 16-weeks of Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) or Motivation/Education and Skill Building (M/ESB) as part another study at a participating outpatient ED program. The goals of this study were to: (1) evaluate the relationship between in-session processes; (2) compare these processes between two group treatments; (3) examine in-session differences as a function of client activity in group EFT; (4) and identify a pathway to change. As expected, the findings demonstrated that mid therapy emotional arousal was associated with higher levels of insight, and an increase in insight overtime was associated with an increase in therapeutic alliance. Arousal was not positively correlated with alliance. There was a significant interaction between group treatment x time: clients in EFT reported gains in insight overtime, as measured by post-session change measure, whereas clients’ scores in M/ESB did not change over the course of psychotherapy. Alliance increased significantly over the course of therapy in both groups. Contrary to expectations, clients in the EFT group did not report higher levels of arousal compared to the M/ESB group. The limited sample size in the control group precludes firm conclusions about group comparisons. When examining client activity within EFT, the results demonstrated that clients that were actively engaged in the chair-tasks reported higher post-session change scores, arousal, and alliance compared to when they were in the observing role; however, there was a significant upward trend on post-session change scores regardless of the client role. The pathway to change was partially supported: the observer-rated degree of resolution scores predicted a third of variance in post-session change scores; controlling for pre-treatment outcome scores, post-session change scores predicted variance at the outcome on several EDI-3 subscales. These preliminary findings are discussed in the context of psychotherapy process literature, highlighting limitations and future directions. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Iwase, Maki | Sioban, Nelson | The Social Effects of Gestational Diabetes in "High-risk Ethnic Groups" | Nursing Science | 2014-11 | This ethnographically-informed doctoral study examines the social effects of gestational diabetes (GD) in "high-risk ethnic groups" in order to elucidate how contested categories of disease, risk, and race cross-articulate in authoritative texts, clinical practice, and everyday realities of women of colour. The questions that guide this dissertation study are organized around truth discourses, strategies of intervention, and modes of subjectification: What kinds of discourses are employed to constitute knowledge about GD, risk, and race/ethnicity? What types of subjects are constructed through discourses on GD in "high-risk ethnic groups?" How are race-based risk discourses accomplished locally in the clinical setting? How do women respond to, engage with, and resist race-based risk discourses and practices pertaining to GD? And how do such discourses and practices shape women's subjectivities from diagnosis to post-partum? Study methods include discourse analysis of three authoritative texts, participant observation in two diabetes education centres in Southern Ontario, and interviews conducted with twelve women of colour in a three time sequence (after diagnosis, before delivery and post-partum). Data generated from these multiple sources were analyzed and interpreted through Foucauldian theoretical concepts of biopower, governmentality, and subjectification. The findings reveal that discourses are neither neutral nor value-free but infused with racial and moral assumptions. Race-based risk discourses are accomplished in the clinical setting through a variety of strategies that reproduce racial logics by rendering power relations invisible. However, women in this study engaged with and resisted disciplinary practices in enabling and constraining ways that contributed to the formation of an emergent type of racialized subject. I argue that discourses and disciplinary practices participate in the processes of racialization and subjectification which may paradoxically produce unintended effects of contributing to the problem of diabetes. I conclude by calling for greater reflexivity beyond racialization and medicalization. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Izrailit, Julia | Reedijk, Michael | Notch Regulation in Breast Cancer | Medical Biophysics | 2015-11 | Breast cancer affects thousands of Canadian women every year, and ranks as the second most common cause of cancer death. Our group has previously shown that patients whose breast cancers abnormally express genes of the Notch family have poor survival rates. In addition, abnormalities in Notch are most common in the aggressive triple negative (TN) subtype of breast cancer for which there is currently no effective treatment. In order to understand what drives Notch activation in TN breast cancer cells, a novel Notch reporter system was developed and optimized for high throughput screens (HTS). Using the Notch reporter system, a chemical kinase inhibitor screen identified the MAPK-ERK signaling pathway as a predominant regulator of Notch ligand (JAG1) expression and Notch activation. Consistent with this, a kinome siRNA screen identified the pseudokinase Tribbles homolog 3 (TRB3), a known regulator of MAPK-ERK, among the most significant hits. We demonstrated that TRB3 is a master regulator of Notch through the MAPK-ERK and TGFβ pathways. Supporting our findings, in vitro and in vivo studies showed that TRB3 inhibition decreases breast cancer cell proliferation in a JAG1-dependant fashion and reduces the growth of MDA MB231 TN breast cancer xenografts. To understand how TRB3 is regulated, a proteomic screen of TRB3-associated cellular complexes was performed and identified the deubiquitinase USP9x as a novel interacting protein for TRB3. We showed that TRB3 serves as a scaffold for USP9x that regulates JAG1 function through two mechanisms: (1) through TRB3 deubiquitination and stabilization and (2) through deubiquitination and activation of Mind Bomb 1 (MIB1), an E3 ligase required for JAG1 activity. We also demonstrated that USP9x is required for TRB3 and JAG1 up-regulation in response to cellular stress. Taken together, the work presented in this thesis, contributes to a better understanding of Notch regulation in breast cancer and identifies novel pathways that may be therapeutically targeted in TN disease. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Jack, William David | Ryan, James | Hiring for Diversity: Changing the Face of Ontario's Teacher Workforce | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | Changing the face of Ontario’s teachers is a topic that draws both ardent support and profound criticism by those closest to school governance. It surfaces questions about teacher quality, student achievement, inequity, diversity, politics, public trust, the past, the present, and the future. In the centre are teachers applying for jobs, and principals making decisions about whom to hire, and why. Influencing these decisions are a number of elements that range from the rational procedures that underlie human resources management to the intuitive, difficult to define factors borne of principals’ experiences and perspectives on teacher excellence. This study attempts to examine the processes at play as principals go about hiring teachers for the specific purpose of diversifying the teacher complement in their schools. Despite pressure from public policy since the 1980s, movement towards greater diversity in the teacher workforce has been slow, showing only modest change while the ethno-racial diversity of Ontario’s large urban centres approaches or surpasses fifty percent. Surveys from nearly a quarter of the principals in District A (a large, suburban school district in the Greater Toronto Area) and follow-up interviews with ten of their colleagues provide data that reflect how principals position diversity relative to other teacher qualities when hiring, their understanding of policy intimating the need for more teachers from diverse backgrounds, and the internal and external hurdles they face when hiring teachers. The data also show that these factors do not often include dimensions of teachers’ diverse identities. This finding remains surprisingly consistent among principals across variables such as experience, the number of interviews they conduct, and the student diversity of their respective schools. Data collected from personal interviews, however, show more nuanced differences between principals’ hiring stories and reflect a strong, unresolved tension between a belief in the benefits of teachers from diverse backgrounds and the hiring decisions that manifest this belief. Of note: the vast majority of participants in both the survey and interviews self-identify as White European. As such, the data are interpreted as a representative sample of principals in District A, but also as the prevailing identity of those charged with hiring teachers. | Ed.D. | equitable | 4 |
| Jackson, Derek Andrew | Mabury, Scott A. | Hydrolysis and Atmospheric Oxidation Reactions of Perfluorinated Carboxylic Acid Precursors | Chemistry | 2013-06 | This dissertation explores a number of different environmentally relevant reactions that lead to the production of perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs), a family of environmental pollutants that does not undergo any further degradation pathways. The compound perfluoro-2-methyl-3-pentanone (PFMP) is a new fire fighting fluid developed by 3M that is designed as a Halon replacement. The environment fate of PFMP with regards to direct photolysis, abiotic hydrolysis and hydration was determined using a combination of laboratory experiments and computational modeling. PFMP was found to undergo direct photolysis giving a lifetime of 4-14 days depending on latitude and time of year. Offline samples confirmed PFCA products and a mechanism was proposed. Polyfluorinated amides (PFAMs) are a class of chemicals produced as byproducts of polyfluorinated sulfonamide synthesis via electrochemical fluorination (ECF). Using synthesized standards of four model compounds, PFAMs were detected and quantified in a variety of legacy commercial materials synthesized by ECF. PFAMs were hypothesized to undergo biological hydrolysis reactions, suggesting their importance as historical PFOA precursors. The PFAMs were also investigated with regards to their environmental fate upon atmospheric oxidation. Using a smog chamber, the kinetics and degradation mechanisms of N-ethylperfluorobutyramide (EtFBA) were elucidated. The lifetime of EtFBA to oxidation by OH was found to be approximately 4 days. Using offline sampling, PFAMs were shown to give PFCAs upon atmospheric oxidation and a plausible mechanism was proposed involving an initial N-dealkylation step followed by loss of isocyanic acid to give a perfluorinated radical. The perfluorinated radical then produces PFCAs by a series of known atmospheric reactions. Finally, the biological hydrolysis of the polyfluoroalkyl phosphate monoesters (monoPAPs) were studied in vitro using a bovine alkaline phosphatase enzyme. Michaelis-Menten kinetic parameters were measured and compared to hexyl phosphate. It was discovered that monoPAPs hydrolyzed on average 100 times faster than hexyl phosphate due to the electron withdrawing fluorine substituents. The results were also used to rationalize the results of a previous in vivo study which suggested monoPAPs were rapidly hydrolyzed in the small intestines of rats following a high dose by oral gavage. | PhD | production, pollut | 12, 13 |
| Jackson, Fatimah Z. | Muntaner, Carles | Maternal Depression in Barbados: Exploring How Black Women Experience, Understand, Manage and Cope with Self-Reported 'Baby Blues' and Postpartum Depression | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015 | Postpartum depression is a major depressive disorder whose onset can appear up to one year after delivery and last for weeks, months or years (O'Hara, 1987). The `baby blues' is a mild affective syndrome common during the first three days after birth and can last up to 10 days (O'Hara, 1987; Cole, 2009). Existing research on maternal depression in the English-speaking Caribbean uses epidemiological methods to investigate the incidence and prevalence of depression occurring during pregnancy and the postpartum period, but largely excludes research on the `baby blues'. Also absent from the Caribbean research are studies that use qualitative methods which can help build understanding about how women's social worlds impact their mental health (Amankwaa, 2003; Almond, 2009). To investigate these gaps, a qualitative research project was conducted with 11 (n=11) Black women in Barbados to explore how they have understood, managed, coped, and sought treatment for self-reported postpartum depression and the `baby blues'. Black Feminist and Caribbean Feminist Theoretical frameworks anchored the project and helped consider how women's social, historical, racial, and cultural backgrounds were linked to their maternal mental health. The project's findings show that early maternal depression literature from North America and Europe largely excluded women from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds. Studies conducted to fill this gap have recorded higher rates for the `baby blues' and postpartum depression in Caribbean contexts. Research with Black Caribbean women in the Diaspora highlights their Intersectional experiences and explanatory models which have helped them understand maternal depression. Barriers that prevented research participants from receiving the maternal mental health care they needed included a lack of formal information and education on maternal depression at the postnatal stage; proliferation of international and non-local information sources on maternal depression; women's intersecting race, class and gendered experiences with self-reported maternal depression; and social/cultural stigmas around mental health. The formal and informal supportive resources women discussed and critiqued during their maternal depression experiences included local healthcare institutions, family members, intimate partners, and religious and spiritual sources. The research findings confirm that maternal depression exists in Barbados, and affirms that these conditions are a global public health concern. They also show that an Intersectional framework can facilitate analyses that acknowledge women's multi-layered identities which can help transform how maternal depression is treated and prevented. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Jackson, Paul | Prudham, W. Scott | Cholera and Crisis: State Health and the Geographies of Future Epidemics | Geography | 2011-06 | In the fall of 1892, fear of cholera was pervasive in North America. Ten years into the fifth international cholera epidemic -- that lasted from 1881 to 1896 -- cholera had been raging in the Middle East, India, and Europe, but the disease had yet to cross the Atlantic Ocean. The maritime traffic of immigrants from Europe was continuous, and each migrant ship potentially carried the disease. Doctors, government officials, and politicians were not asking 'will cholera come?', but rather when. While no one got sick or died of cholera in the city of Toronto in 1892, the crisis and fear of imminent cholera was very real. Drawing on archival research, this dissertation maps how a cholera crisis was shaped by urgency, immediacy, and speculation on the future. My argument will show how the geography of an epidemic is not limited to the presence of a disease. If crises are times of profound activity, how does this event need to be substantiated in order to produce change? This dissertation follows how cholera was integral to producing an object called proliferating life that held together: migrating populations, growing cities, and degeneration; marshland as the source of disease; the medical theory of zymosis that explained how disease outbreaks got out of control; and Malthusian 'laws' of population. Health experts used correlation and synecdoche to visualize these relations. However, these experts needed a stable institutional base to articulate both their fears and their recommendations, which included: professionalized expanding health boards, as social infrastructures; reclaiming Toronto’s marshland of Ashbridge's Bay; and a health ideology built upon the fear of future epidemics, immigration, and a growing economic rationale for health. By the early 20th century, state health became instrumental to a "national vitality", a practice of government intervention that I frame as bureaucratic bio-economy. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Jacobs, Josephine Christina | Peter, C. Coyte | The Impact of Informal Caregiving Intensity on Labour Market Outcomes | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-11 | Most OECD countries have introduced policies shifting health care into community settings. These policies rely on informal caregivers to provide care to disabled or ill family and friends. At the same time, there are policies in place promoting labour market retention. To better understand how caregiving and labour policies may interact to affect the available pool of caregivers and labour force participants, we need more evidence about how informal caregiving is related to labour market outcomes. We explore this issue through three empirical studies, with a focus on caregivers who provide significant amounts of weekly care (i.e. intensive caregivers).The first study uses the Canadian cross-sectional General Social Survey to determine whether providing informal care is associated with various labour market states. We find that intense caregiving is associated with being fully retired for men and women. High intensity caregivers are also more likely to be retired before age 65. In the second study, we use the American National Longitudinal Survey of Mature Women and control for time-invariant heterogeneity and time-varying sources of bias amongst retirement-aged women. We find that women who provide at least 20 hours of informal care per week are 3 percentage points more likely to retire relative to other women, which supports the idea that intensive caregiving may cause women to retire. Finally, given changes in the policy, demographic, and cultural contexts, we use the American National Longitudinal Surveys of Young and Mature Women to explore whether labour market penalties have changed over time. Following two cohorts of pre-retirement aged women, we find that intensive informal caregiving is negatively associated with labour force participation for both pre-Baby Boomers and Baby Boomers. The caregiving effects are not significantly different across cohorts, implying that, despite the introduction of offsetting policies, labour market penalties for caregivers have persisted. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Jahanfar, Ali | Drake, Jennifer||Sleep, Brent | Hydrological and Life Cycle Assessment of Green Roof Photovoltaic Systems | Civil Engineering | 2019-06 | Traditionally, green roof (GR) and photovoltaic (PV) systems have been viewed as direct competitors vying for the same roof space. However, with appropriate design, synergistic effects can arise when these technologies are combined. This study is focused on two major areas: first, the cradle-to-use life cycle analysis of integrated systems in terms of energy and carbon emissions; and second, the hydrologic related effects of an integrated system including runoff, water retention, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture, among others. A probabilistic analysis was performed to examine the potential energy and carbon emissions of GR, PV, and integrated systems (GR-PV). The analysis demonstrates that a GR-PV system is a low-risk investment generating lower energy and carbon-emission pay-back time in comparison with separate GR and PV systems. The hydrology and vegetation growth of two full scale integrated systems was monitored at GRITlab between August 2016 and July 2017 with 1.2 m and 0.6 m differential height between GR modules and PV panels. Doubling the differential height (from 0.6 to 1.2m) did not significantly change the rainwater retention and peak flow reduction in the integrated systems. Larger vertical distance between PV and GR provided plants with more solar radiation and greater rain exposure, which led to more vegetation growth. GR evapotranspiration (ET) processes and modeling approaches for shaded and unshaded conditions were investigated using data from two GR modules installed at the Green Roof Innovation Testing laboratory (GRITlab) on the fifth-story roof of a University of Toronto building located on the downtown St. George campus. A modified Penman-Monteith equation was developed to provide improved prediction of hourly ET, specifically for GR applications. The modified equation improved ET estimates by 8-9% and 37% under non-water limited and water limited conditions, respectively for the GRITlab data. The net radiation and wind speed beneath PV panels was modeled as a function of length, height, slope and row-spacing of PV panels and diurnal wind/sun characteristics. ET rates beneath PV panels were shown to be most sensitive to PV panel row-spacing and length. | Ph.D. | water, energy, solar, innovation | 6, 7, 2009 |
| James, Patrick Michael Arthur | Fortin, Marie-Josee | Interacting Disturbances in the Boreal Forest and the Importance of Spatial Legacies at Multiple Scales | Forestry | 2009-11 | Forest disturbances and the spatial patterns they create affect ecosystem processes through their influence on forest vegetation from individual trees to landscapes. In the boreal and mixed-wood forests of eastern Canada the main agents of disturbance are logging, fire, and defoliation by the spruce budworm (SBW, Choristoneura fumiferana). These disturbances are similar in that they remove forest biomass and influence forest succession but also distinct in that logging creates patterns that are different than those created by natural disturbances. All disturbances are indirectly linked to each other through their mutual effects on forest spatial structure and succession. Through such feedbacks, spatial disturbance legacies can facilitate or constrain further disturbances, including forest management. Surprisingly, the long term spatial consequences of interactions among multiple natural and anthropogenic disturbances remain largely unexplored. This thesis investigates how, and at what spatial scale, legacies in forest composition and age structure influence natural disturbance dynamics, and how natural disturbances constrain forest management. I address four specific questions: (i) For how long do spatial legacies of different forest management strategies persist on the landscape? (ii) How do interactions among logging, fire, SBW, and succession affect timber availability and long term forest patterns in age and composition? (iii) How do these patterns differ from those created by each disturbance individually? And, (iv) How can management be used to reduce the extent and severity of fires and SBW defoliation through the manipulation of forest structure? The key scientific innovations of this thesis are: (i) Characterization of the duration and influence of spatial legacies on forest disturbances and sustainability; (ii) Development of a dynamic spatial forest simulation model that includes distinct successional rules that respond to different types of disturbance and shifts in disturbance regimes; and, (iii) Development and application of a wavelet-based significance testing framework to identify key scales of expression in forest spatial patterns. These innovations provide a scientific basis for landscape level forest management strategies designed to reduce the long term impacts of defoliating insects and to meet multiple objectives. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Jang, In Chull | Heller, Monica | Consuming Global Language and Culture: South Korean Youth in English Study Abroad | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2017-06 | In globalizing South Korea, it is a prevalent belief that English competence and global awareness are key qualifications for successful employment. This belief has led South Korean young adults to pursue transnational experiences to improve their employability in the neoliberal job market. This thesis examines how the ideology of English as a global language produces the necessity of learning the language abroad and governs students’ overseas learning and life, through the case of Korean youth studying English in Toronto. Drawing on 13-month ethnographic fieldwork in Toronto, two research trips to South Korea, and various types of relevant documents, this thesis analyzes sociolinguistic trajectories of a group of Korean students attending a private language school. Especially, from a political economic perspective of language and culture, the thesis focuses on the ways in which the Korean students consume and negotiate desired types of English and English speakers. This study shows that the majority of students accessing the English study abroad market were students from non-elite universities who had no legitimate global experiences and low levels of oral proficiency in English. Recognizing the necessity of linguistic and cultural capital, the Korean youth decided to study English abroad, as their parents agreed to financially support their overseas education. In the private language teaching industry, such social, linguistic, and economic positions of the Korean youth led them to be strategic, calculative, and consumerist in terms of their English learning. In multilingual Toronto, the Korean students stratified English speakers according to the latter’s authenticity, proficiency, and intimacy. They constantly navigated “good” English programs and teachers in their language school. However, their status in the Western society, which remained as temporary visitors, non-native English speakers, and (East) Asians, posed challenges to immersing themselves in local cultures. Furthermore, this thesis demonstrates that the Korean students’ attitudes toward life and learning emphasizing accountability and effectiveness caused emotional burn-out and intercultural fatigue. Subsequently, the Korean students temporarily suspended the normative ways for success in English study abroad and pursued an alternative way of life. They enjoyed leisure activities such as travels and everyday mingling, thus constructing their version of cosmopolitanism. | Ph.D. | employment | 8 |
| Janigan, Kara | Mundy, Karen | Factors affecting Girls' Education in Tajikistan: What Difference did the Girls' Education Project Make? | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-11 | Since Tajikistan’s independence in 1991 the number of rural girls leaving school after grade 9 has been increasing at an alarming rate. In order to improve rural girls’ secondary school attendance and retention, in 2006 Save the Children, local non-governmental organization (NGO) partners, and the Ministry of Education implemented a two-year UNICEF-funded Girls’ Education Project (GEP). This mixed-method study compares rural girls’ secondary school experiences and opportunities at six schools (three GEP schools and three non-GEP schools) in two districts located in regions with the lowest levels of female secondary school participation nationwide. Two research questions guided this study: 1) What factors serve as obstacles or enablers to girls’ secondary school experiences and opportunities in rural Tajikistan? and 2) How did the GEP attempt to overcome factors limiting rural girls’ secondary school experiences and opportunities and which aspects of the project were perceived to be most effective? The study’s theoretical framework contains concepts from two sets of theories: 1) social reproduction (schooling as a means of maintaining and reproducing the status quo) and 2) empowerment (schooling as a means of changing the status quo). Data collected reveals two groups’ perspectives: 1) adult participants (Ministry of Education officials, NGO staff, school administrators and teachers) and 2) rural female upper secondary school students. A multi-level data analysis process was used to compare findings within and across districts. Factors that serve as either an obstacle or an enabler of girls’ educational experiences and opportunities include those relating to the community/society, family, school, and self. Factors related to community/society include the dominant belief that a girl is “grown-up” by 15 and should no longer go to school which intersects with family poverty to create a major barrier to girls’ non-compulsory secondary schooling. Factors affecting girls’ schooling related to the family were the most significant determinant of a girl’s schooling. Of all the GEP activities, participants consistently considered the girls’ overnight camp to be the “best” activity. Findings show how enabling just a few girls to return to school significantly increases the likelihood of other girls being allowed to attend school in these rural communities. | PhD | poverty, rural, educat | 1, 4, 11 |
| Janjua, Martyna Anna | Gastaldo, Denise | Governing the Lives of Immigrants: A Foucauldian Perspective on Tuberculosis Immigration Medical Surveillance in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-03 | This dissertation critically examines the experiences of new Canadian immigrants and immigration applicants undergoing immigration TB health screening and surveillance, and focuses on the social effects of this process on the health and wellbeing of newcomers. Using Foucault’s theoretical framework of governmentality, this study seeks to understand how various knowledges about health and the immigrant body are (re)produced through the articulation of immigration, public health, and biomedical discourses, and how these regimes of knowledge and power constitute social relations and structure the daily reality of newcomers to Canada. The first purpose of this study was to document the ways in which ‘medicalization’ of the immigration process shaped the migratory journeys (i.e. constrained and enabled possibilities for action) of immigration applicants. The second objective was to understand how these overlapping discourses created rationalities of governance to construct and regulate immigrant subjects, and to what effect. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews (15) with newcomers undergoing immigration TB screening and surveillance, observations of immigration TB clinic appointments (14), and observations of the TB clinic itself. The data were analyzed to determine how newcomers navigated the immigration and settlement, and immigration medical surveillance (IMS) processes, and how they negotiated power during interpersonal encounters with authorities and experts, particularly at the site of the TB clinic. The tensions arising from competing discourses and logics were found to have multiple negative effects: they create structural barriers to obtaining immigration status causing physical, psychological and emotional suffering for applicants; they produce conflicting and perceivably irreconcilable subjectivities for applicants (the ‘desirable’ immigrant vs. the ‘good’ TB patient); and they unwittingly implicate TB health care providers into the mechanism of immigration surveillance as state authorities, corroding the doctor-patient relationship and undermining their ability to provide adequate medical care to newcomers. I argue that an overemphasis on biomedical approaches to treating TB among newcomers in the name of biosecuritization does little for actually controlling TB in Canada. Instead, this study reveals the need to incorporate a social determinants of health approach, particularly one that acknowledged the immigration and settlement process itself as a determinant of TB and immigrant health. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Janmohamed, Zeenat | Mirchandani, Kiran | Getting Beyond Equity and Inclusion: Queering Early Childhood Education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | The Canadian early childhood landscape is changing substantially, pushing early childhood from a private family responsibility into the greater public policy discourse. New investments in early childhood services, combined with research that defines the importance of early years learning, requires a careful analysis of the professional preparation of early childhood educators. At the same time typical understandings of family and childhood are being challenged through legal and social policy reforms. Although Canadian demographic changes indicate a growing number of queer families with children, the gap in addressing the interests of queer identified parents and their children is exacerbated by the dominance of a heteronormative perspective in early childhood theory, training and practice. My study demonstrates the disparity between the professional preparation of early childhood educators in Ontario and how queer families are understood in the Canadian context. I draw upon queer theory to deconstruct how educators understand child development patterns and family composition including the newly defined family units that can include single or multiple parents of varying sexual identities that may consist of, but are not limited to lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and trans parents. Using qualitative methods, the research is grounded in data sources including text analysis of key early childhood texts, focus groups with early childhood educators who have graduated from ECE training programs in Ontario during the last decade and interviews with queer parents with young children enrolled in early childhood programs. I argue that the inherent heteronormative discourse of developmentally appropriate practice silences queer in early childhood training and is embedded in foundational approaches including standards of practice, curriculum frameworks and textbooks commonly used in the training of early childhood educators. Notions of diversity, equity and inclusion structure this silencing. My study also found that early childhood educators have a narrow understanding of how queer parents may be similar or different from other parents. Educators have a limited capacity to support and engage with parents that do not fit the dominant framework of family identity. The queer parents’ narratives consistently present subtle forms of homophobia and transphobia through the silencing of their family in their child’s early childhood program. The results of the study provide an opportunity to reimagine the professional training of early childhood educators embedding a much richer theoretical grounding and teaching practice of diversity and difference that includes queer parents and their children. | PhD | queer | 5 |
| Jeffrey, Kamara | Troper, Harold | Consultation, Conflict, and Collaborative Federalism: Canada-Ontario Immigration Relations, 1970-2005 | Social Justice Education | 2015-11 | The provision of immigrant settlement services has long been recognized in the social science literature as essential to the economic, social, and political integration of immigrants to Canada. The 1976 Immigration Act, enacted in 1978, was a catalyst for increased provincial involvement in immigration, a jurisdiction shared between the two governments, yet largely managed by the Canadian federal government. The new Act initiated a flurry of bilateral federal-provincial cooperation accords on immigrant settlement throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. Yet, the Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement (COIA), signed in November 2005, was the last of ten bilateral immigration accords to be signed in Canada. While other Canadian provinces successfully leveraged their jurisdictional capacity in immigrant settlement through the successful negotiation of bilateral immigration agreements with the federal government, the finalization of a Canada-Ontario agreement on immigration and settlement remained in bureaucratic and political impasse for decades despite Ontario’s position as the province receiving the largest proportion of immigrants to Canada. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore the process by which Ontario’s first intergovernmental immigration agreement, decades in the making, was successfully concluded in 2005. Drawing on archival government documents, extensive interviews, and multiple interdisciplinary analyses, this dissertation traces the trajectory of Canada-Ontario-municipal intergovernmental negotiations in the shared jurisdiction of immigration and settlement from 1970-2005 to show how these intergovernmental relations evolved against a dynamic backdrop of demographic shifts, changing international norms, bureaucratic restructuring, and broader political agendas and economic interests. The dissertation demonstrates that while the negotiation of the 2005 Canada-Ontario Immigration Agreement marked a new leaf in intergovernmental cooperation, the Canada-Ontario immigration relationship remains wrought with complexity. Ontario’s unique approach to immigration consultation, continued disputes over devolution and federal spending power in the province, and fluid federal-provincial-municipal jurisdictional boundaries continue to pose a challenge to existing theories of collaborative federalism and multilevel governance. | Ph.D. | governance | 16 |
| Jelle, Abdinoor Abdullahi | Perovic, Doug D.||Ozin, Geoffrey A. | Photochemical and Photothermal Reduction of Carbon Dioxide for Solar Fuels Production | Materials Science and Engineering | 2017-11 | Abstract Catalytic conversion of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide to value-added chemicals and fuels powered by solar energy is envisioned to be a promising strategy to realize both energy security and environmental protection. This work demonstrates that earth abundant, low cost nanomaterials based on silicon and iron can be used to harvest both light and heat energy from the sun to reduce CO2 and generate solar fuels. Herein, we have demonstrated that ruthenium supported ultra-black silicon nanowires can drive the Sabatier reaction both photochemically and photothermally where both incident photons absorbed by and heat generated in the black silicon nanowires accelerate the photomethanation reaction. This allows the reaction to be activated at ambient temperatures removing the need for external heating that could cause sintering, mechanical degradation and eventual catalyst deactivation and therefore improves the overall energy efficiency of the process. Additionally, we have shown that the rate of photomethanation is greatly enhanced when highly dispersed nanocrystalline RuO2 is chemically deposited onto the black silicon nanowires support. Furthermore, we have demonstrated that other silicon structures such as three-dimensional silicon photonic crystals can be used as an efficient support for CO2 hydrogenation. Unlike other insulating supports, these silicon nanostructured supports are particularly attractive for solar-powered catalysis because, with a band-gap of 1.1 eV, they can potentially absorb 80% of the solar irradiance. Moreover, they exhibit excellent absorption strengths and low reflective losses across the entire solar spectral wavelength range of the ultraviolet, visible and near-infrared portion of the solar spectrum. Finally, we demonstrated a comprehensive comparative study of the physical, electronic, and photocatalytic properties of ironoxyhydroxide (FeOOH) polymorphs by studying the extent of methylene blue photodegradation. This work led to the transformation of these FeOOH polymorphs into magnetite (Fe3O4) which effectively reduced CO2 to CO via the reverse water gas shift (RWGS) reaction. | Ph.D. | water, energy, solar, greenhouse gas | 6, 7, 13 |
| Jenkins, Margaret | Bertoldi, Nancy | The Global Person: A Political Liberal Approach to International Justice Theory Giving Moral Primacy to the Individual | Political Science | 2010-06 | John Rawls's The Law of Peoples has been criticized for focusing on the interests of peoples rather than individuals and for compromising individuals' fundamental human rights in order to tolerate nonliberal ideas of justice. This dissertation develops a new political liberal approach to international justice theory that responds to these concerns. This approach gives explicit moral primacy to the individual while also upholding the political liberal commitment to toleration. I do this by developing a political conception of the person specifically for international justice theory and a global original position of persons for working out principles of international justice. This involves the specification of an idea of freedom that is not parochially liberal and the development of a new political liberal human rights framework. This dissertation does not offer a defense of political liberalism as the right account of justice; the aim of this work is to consider whether a political liberal theory of international justice is able to give the individual moral primacy and to explore how it might do so. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Jenney, Angelique | Mishna, Faye | Doing the Right Thing: Negotiating Risk and Safety in Child Protection Work with Domestic Violence Cases | Social Work | 2011-06 | The concepts of risk and safety are central to social work practice with survivors of violence against women, especially within the child protection system. Recent studies have highlighted how discrepancies between client and worker perceptions may create problematic conditions for developing effective intervention strategies (Dumbrill, 2006; Jenney, Alaggia, Mazzuca, & Redmond, 2005). In addition, tensions exist between movement toward improving worker-client interactions through collaboration and the use of standardized risk and safety assessments as a means of improving practice. The purpose of this research study was to explore how women’s narratives of domestic violence (DV), expressed within the context of child protection services (CPS), become translated into CPS workers’ assessments of risk and need for safety planning. Using Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM), this qualitative study used focus group and interview data to explore how both workers and clients’ experiences of the process of risk assessment and safety planning influenced the course of the intervention. What emerged is that workers and clients held similar representations about the social construction/collective representation of woman abuse and the work of CPS. For both worker and client participants the concept of ‘doing the right thing’ presented itself as an over-arching theme. This theme implies that there is a perceived ‘right way’ of addressing DV cases within CPS work and enhances understanding about the ways in which social workers and clients interact. These findings illustrate how narrative structures shape interactions that take place within the context of care and prevention, manifesting themselves in complex ways that can lead to misunderstanding the impact on children, the (un) conscious subjugation of women victims, and the absence of dialogue about the role of men in addressing DV at a system level. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Jessri, Mahsa | L'Abbe, Mary R | Evidence for a Paradigm Shift in Preventive Nutrition: Measuring the Role of Dietary Patterns in Chronic Disease Risk in Canada | Nutritional Sciences | 2016-11 | National nutrition surveys are the cornerstones of nutritional surveillance for developing dietary guidelines and policies. Some recent studies have questioned the usefulness of nutrition surveys due to their methodological limitations. The overall goal of this thesis was to use the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 2.2 to address these limitations as the first step in population-based dietary pattern analysis, an essential component for development of evidence-based nutritional guidelines and policies. In the first study of this thesis, different methods for handling dietary misreporting were compared and “adjusting for misreporting bias” was identified as the most appropriate technique, which was used in all subsequent studies of this thesis. In the second study, we observed that closer adherence to the only Canadian a priori index, Health Canada’s Surveillance Tool Tier System (HCST) 2014, developed based on the Eating Well with Canada’s Food Guide 2007 (EWCFG) was associated with higher probability of meeting dietary reference intakes (DRI) for nutrients, even though it was not related to obesity risk. These findings were explained in the third study, where the strict focus of the EWCFG on single nutrients, rather than dietary patterns was identified as its main limitation. The first Canadian dietary pattern analyses using energy-based a priori (Study 4) and hybrid (Study 5) techniques were then conducted to address this limitation. Lack of adherence to the recommendations of 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans Adherence Index (DGAI), an a priori dietary quality index, and consumption of an energy-dense, high-fat and low-fiber dietary pattern derived from the weighted partial least squares, were associated with 2-3 times higher risk of obesity. Overall, studies in this thesis demonstrate that application of rigorous methodological techniques to survey data can enhance the usefulness of nutrition surveys for capturing the diet-disease relationships and for informing evidence-based national nutrition guidelines and policies. | Ph.D. | food, nutrition, health | 2, 3 |
| Jetha, Arif | Gignac, Monique | Early Employment Experiences of Canadian Young Adults Living with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Juvenile Arthritis and Spinal Cord Injury | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-11 | Background: Participating in employment is an important milestone signaling the transition to adulthood. Few studies have examined how chronic diseases influence early work experiences. Purpose: This study examined barriers and facilitators to the employment status of young adults, ages 18-30 years, with systemic lupus erythematosus, juvenile arthritis and spinal cord injury; researched employment outcomes like work-health conflict, absenteeism, job disruptions and perceived productivity loss; and investigated barriers to employment among those not working. Methods: 155 participants were recruited from clinics in four Canadian provinces. Participants completed a 30-minute online cross-sectional survey of their work experiences. Demographic, health, psychosocial and work context information was collected. Bivariate and multivariable analyses were performed. Results: Over half of respondents were employed; a quarter of respondents were enrolled in school. Older participants, those reporting greater independence/autonomy, and participants reporting that fewer job accommodations would help them work, were more likely to be employed. Employed participants reported moderate work-health conflict and close to half reported absenteeism, job disruptions and some productivity losses. Greater perceived independence/autonomy, less fatigue and disease activity, and disclosing to others was related to lower work-health conflict. Less fatigue and social support, and greater self-disclosure and job control were related to absenteeism. Job control also was associated with less productivity loss. Among respondents not working, health was generally not a perceived barrier to employment, but drug benefits and work scheduling flexibility were desirable accommodations. Conclusions: Respondents were able to work and be productive despite health problems like pain, fatigue and activity limitations. Relationships with others that were supportive but also fostered independence/autonomy were important to the employment experiences of respondents and deserve greater attention in research. Policies and practices that emphasize work scheduling flexibility and recognize the importance of ongoing health management may help young adults with chronic diseases find and maintain work. | PhD | health, employment | 3, 8 |
| Jewett, Elizabeth Liane | MacDowell, Laurel | Behind the Greens: Understanding Golf Course Landscapes in Canada, 1873-1945 | History | 2015-06 | Between 1873 and 1945, the golf course emerged as a distinct landscape category in Canada. During this transformative period of golf development, the course, as a landscape, revealed particular human and human/non-human interactions. To explore these associations, the term `golfscape' signals the course's literal and ideological construction as simultaneously a playing field and manifestation of nature. Gendered sport identities existed within these golfscapes and reinforced class-based and racialized relationships as well as Anglo-Canadian and Canadian/American connections. Traditional British golfing canon collided with the cultural and environmental realities of Canada to create a unique social and physical space. An examination of private, public, and resort course locations across the country illustrates how clubs positioned and promoted their playing fields within an urbanizing and diversifying country. For example, golfscape game and aesthetic features prompted private and public interests to integrate golf into nature tourism within Canada's national parks during this time. Clubs, however, were held to certain appearance and playability standards, whether in the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains or in the rural-urban fringe that fueled product experimentation and creation. Trends towards professionalism and expertise as well as recognition of the diversity of the country's climates and geographies created room for golf architects and agricultural scientists to position themselves as authorities with the power to experiment and disseminate knowledge and practices to the wider culture. Consequently, a North American-focused golf industry touted their products as scientifically tested and catered to local needs. An analysis of golfscape development, therefore, not only promotes a deeper understanding of the connections among culture, environments, and technology but also contributes a different vantage point from which to study the intersecting forces that shaped life in Canada during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. | Ph.D. | gender, land use, environment | 5, 13, 15 |
| Jeyapal, Daphne | Bhuyan, Rupaleem | Behind the 2009 Tamil Diaspora Protests in Canada: A Critical Analysis of the Production of Race, Resistance, and Citizenship across Borders | Social Work | 2014-11 | Critical social workers emphasize activism for social justice, and acknowledge that global justice movements can inform the evolution of social work practice. Yet, scholarship on community practice and citizen participation has shown varying levels of attention to the interests and context of racialized populations. This dissertation engages this discussion by developing an understanding of what activism comes to be for migrant communities who experience social injustices across local, national and transnational scales. I draw upon a framework of citizenship, racialization and spatiality to problematize conditions of resistance through the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests in Canada. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of print media and key informant interviews, I explore the following: (1) What are the ideologies underlying media representations of the movement in Canada? (2) How can social work researchers ethically represent the resistance movements of others? (3) Why and how does race frame the production of suffering and spectacle through protest? (4) How can we unpack representations of racialized local groups who protest an issue unfolding elsewhere? This project highlights the challenges experienced by racialized communities' in their struggles towards citizenship, social justice and decolonization. Chapter 1 presents the context of the 2009 Tamil diaspora protests, the conceptual framework, and methodology guiding this study. In accordance with the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work's 3-paper dissertation format, Chapter 2, 3 and 4 are stand-alone papers geared towards different peer-review journals. Chapter 2 problematizes how we should represent contested resistance movements in the age of terrorism. Chapter 3 examines how racial logic frames the expression of protesters' suffering, and the construction of the Canadian public's racial apathy. Chapter 4 explores how national media discourses racially and spatially mark protesters as "others," "outlaws," and "outsiders." The findings of this interdisciplinary study demonstrate how resistance by racialized groups in a white settler state is distorted by the indirect and direct representational politics imposed by a hegemonic West. In Chapter 5, I offer implications for social work theory, practice and education to reconsider the boundaries of social justice, incorporate a conceptualization of transnational activism as citizenship, and forefront the politics of protest. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Jeyathevan, Gaya | Jaglal, Susan B | An Exploration of Support Needs of Family Caregivers of Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury: A Qualitative Study | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-11 | There is a gap in evidence with respect to the specific support needs of family caregivers of individuals with spinal cord injury (SCI). The objectives of this thesis include determining: 1) the perceived facilitators and barriers to undertaking and sustaining the caregiving role; 2) the types of support needed by individuals with SCI, and the factors related to the need for more support; 3) the skills needed by SCI family caregivers to enhance competency in caregiving; and 4) how caregivers and care recipients negotiate changes within the relationship post-SCI. This research used a qualitative descriptive approach with an exploratory design. Thirty-four interviews (19 individuals with SCI, 15 family caregivers) were conducted. In the first paper, the following four facilitators to caregiving were identified: access to community support services, positive coping in relationship, social support, and mastery of caregiving roles. Conversely, the following six barriers to caregiving were identified: lack of access to community resources, lack of knowledge about resources and formal training, fragmented continuity of care, negative coping in relationship, role strain, and caregiver injury or illness. In the second paper, the following types of support needed by individuals with SCI were identified: practical, emotional and advocacy. The following factors associated with the need for more support were also identified: a higher level of injury, greater frequency of secondary health conditions and age of the care recipient. In the third paper, twenty-nine SCI family caregiving skills were identified and grouped into six caregiving processes signifying the multiple dimensions of the SCI caregiving role. In the final paper, the following four factors that challenged relationship stability were identified: protective behaviours, asymmetrical dependency, loss of sex and intimacy, and difficulty adapting. Also, the following four strategies used by care recipients and caregivers to maintain/re-build their relationships were identified: interdependence, shifting commonalities, adding creativity into routine, and creating a new normal. These findings could serve to facilitate prospective planning of sustainable support for family caregivers as well as improve the health outcomes of individuals with SCI. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Jia, Chao | Conle, Carola | Understanding School Stories: A Narrative Inquiry into the Cross-generational Schooling Experiences of Six Current and Former Chinese Students | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2009-11 | This thesis research is a narrative inquiry into the cross-generational schooling experiences of six former and current students during a period of momentous social, economic, cultural and political change in China’s modern history, 1949 to the present. It focuses on students’ experience in curricular situations and how they construct and reconstruct curricular meanings. Through this work, I intend to foster a deeper understanding of knowledge, attitudes, beliefs and values about schooling revealed from students’ school experiences. According to Dewey (1938), Schwab (1978), Connelly and Clandinin (1988), curriculum does not only refer to the content in textbooks, but includes people, things, and processes of a learning environment. I used Schwab’s (1978) four commonplaces of curriculum, student, subject matter, teacher and milieu, to explore students’ curricular experiences in relation to the general field of curriculum studies as framed by Dewey, Schwab, Connelly and Clandinin. “These [four] commonplaces combine in different ways, becoming more or less prominent, and more or less salient, in teaching and learning situations” (Conle, 2003, p. 6). Schwab’s (1978) four commonplaces of curriculum provided an avenue for exploring the curricular meanings my and my participants make of our schooling. My participants are my parents, my nephew, an old (male) friend from school, a young female and myself. Since we all share a Chinese upbringing, our school stories were told and explored within China’s social, economic and political contexts. Telling and retelling my and my participants’ schooling experiences and making meaning and significance from them help to convey what has been happening in our curricular situations. Our cross-generational student experiences bring a set of perspectives to explore what it means to be educated in China. By constructing and reconstructing the meaning of our schooling experiences, this study provides space for students’ school stories to be reflectively heard and examined (Olson & Craig, 2005; Richie & Wilson, 2000)in the recent change in China’s educational reforms that seek to promote quality education and engage students’ independent and critical thinking. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Jia, Jia | Ozin, Geoffrey||Perovic, Doug | Photothermal and Photochemical Nanostructured Catalyst Engineering Towards Efficient Solar Fuel Production | Materials Science and Engineering | 2017-11 | With global energy demand rising alongside the advancement of climate change, the conversion of greenhouse gas carbon dioxide into value-added chemicals and fuels is attracting increasing attention. The crux for the successful development of this promising technology is the exploration and discovery of highly active, selective, and stable catalyst materials. Herein we demonstrate that the reverse water gas shift (RWGS) reaction can be driven by Nb2O5 nanorod-supported Pd nanocrystals, without external heating, using visible and near infrared (NIR) light. By measuring the dependence of the RWGS reaction rates on the intensity and spectral power distribution of filtered light incident on the nanostructured Pd@Nb2O5 catalyst, we determine the RWGS reaction to be initiated by heat generated from thermalized charge carriers in the Pd nanocrystals that are excited by inter-band and intra-band absorption of visible and NIR light. We also demonstrate that the catalytic activity and selectivity of CO2 reduction to CO and CH4 products can be systematically tailored, by varying the size of the Pd nanocrystals, to acheive champion turnover frequencies (0.61 sâ 1) and efficient conversion of solar energy to stored chemical energy. The remarkable control over the catalytic performance of Pd@Nb2O5 stems from a combination of photothermal, electronic, and size effects. The insight gleaned from this detailed experimental-theoretical study provides a blueprint for how to tailor the performance metrics of earth-abundant, low-cost metal-metal oxide (M@M'Ox) analogues. Finally, we report a lattice strain and defect controlled strategy that enables the high-performance of low-cost photocatalystic materials. Lattice compressed ultrafine nonstoichiometric indium oxide dots, In2O3-x(OH)y, grown on the surface of niobium pentoxide nanorods were fabricated; the optimized hybrid structure exhibits 44-fold increase in efficiency compared with pristine In2O3-x(OH)y, along with extremely long-term operational stability, potentially originating from the increased number of active oxygen vacancies, prolonged excited-state lifetimes, and enhanced photo-generated carrier energies. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, climate, greenhouse gas | 7, 13 |
| Jia, Yongfang | Sawchuk, Peter | Struggles between Rural and Urban Ways: A Qualitative Study of Informal Learning amongst Female Migrant Domestic Workers in China | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | There are existing researches regarding the subject matter of Chinese rural migrant workers, mainly focusing on economic and social effects of migrant workers, instead of regarding their thoughts, feels and needs. To fill these gaps, this dissertation conducted in-depth interviews involving 30 interviewees as a kind of primary research. It answers three research questions on barriers women migrant domestic workers face, with solutions, informal learning they obtain in workplace, and suggestions to governments, agencies and communities in facilitating their migration process. The thesis presents findings which shed lights to the related researches on the Chinese female rural migrant domestic workers, including the changing requirements as the globalization and urbanization deepen in China, the rural migrants’ active participation into urban life and their enhancing themselves for social upward mobility. The primary focus of analysis in this research is on women’s informal learning that stems from their economic migration between rural and urban areas as well as their work as domestics in the latter. Therefore, this informal learning takes place across a number of locations: within their workplaces (i.e. the homes of employers) but also extends beyond the workplaces (e.g. in discussions with family members or the community). Since this informal learning stems from the relationship of economic migration and domestic work specifically, the learning content is quite diverse. It involves content directly related to work tasks, skills and knowledge as well as relationships with employers (and their families), but it also includes learning content implicated by the context of rural-urban economic migration, such as effects on a worker’s children, husband or parents, aspects of urban living as well as the pendulum swings between their rural and urban lives, and much more. In keeping the type of observations that Malcolm, Hodkinson and Colley (2003) that aspects of informality and formality are likely part of all learning, we will also see how certain aspects of training and even educational attainment of these workers does shape how informal learning occurs, and vice versa learning done informally shapes interest and activity related to training interests, goals and practices as well. | Ed.D. | worker, rural | 8, 11 |
| Jien, Jerry Yu | Gough, William A | Impacts of Climate Variability and Change on Eastern North Pacific Tropical Cyclones | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2015-11 | Damages inflicted by tropical cyclones (TCs) worldwide have increased in recent decades with climate change and variability playing key roles in altering TC characteristics. In this thesis, the impact of natural variability is explored, using ENSO conditions, and climate change on the nature of eastern North Pacific (ENP) TCs. The first research objective of the thesis focused on a spatial-temporal separation of ENP storms based on El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase (temporal variability, El Niño, La Niña, neutral) and regional storm stratification (spatial variability, east and west). The western development region (WDR) storms were found to be more sensitive to influences of ENSO. In particular, during El Niño years, there were more WDR storms. The second research objective explored the ENSO impact on the trajectory of ENP storm tracks by examining the locations for genesis and downgradation points and storm track movements. The storm tracks were strongly influenced by ENSO phases, with significant differences detected for many ENSO pairings. However, when storm data are regionally separated the latitudinal movement of WDR storms tend to be more extensive during El Niño conditions and as a result there are more landfalling TCs. The third research objective of the dissertation explored the importance of near-time sea surface temperatures (SSTs) on storm intensities. SST thresholds were found that were critical for the sustenance of stronger ENP storms that achieve hurricane and major hurricane status. Significantly, the minimum SST threshold varied between the MDR subdivisions. For major hurricanes, the SST requirements for EDR and WDR are substantially lower than that found in the North Atlantic basin at 28.25°C. Although SSTs appear to contribute little in determining the ultimate maximum storm intensity for ENP storms in general, when ENP storms are regionally divided, SSTs are found to be highly associated with the WDR major hurricanes. Evidently the recent warming shown in the distribution of storm-bounded SSTs has led to the rise of maximum potential intensity for ENP storms. Overall, the common theme that emerged from these three studies is that ENP storm characteristics associated with WDR are inherently more sensitive to climate variability and change. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Jindani, Farah | Volpe, Richard | Explorations of Wellness and Resilience: A Yoga Intervention for Post-traumatic Stress | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-06 | Post-traumatic stress is a highly prevalent mental health condition. Mind-body interventions like yoga are increasingly being utilized in the treatment of PTS, but further research is needed to assess its effectiveness. This present randomized control study was designed to supplement the current field of inquiry with a relatively large group of participants and mixed method analysis of the data. The PTS symptoms and overall well-being of 50 participants enrolled in an eight-week trauma-specific Kundalini yoga (KY) program were examined. The findings demonstrate that KY may impact PTS symptomology, sleep, positive affect, perceived stress, and feelings of resilience. Eight month follow-up data are presented. Participant narratives are discussed corroborating quantitative findings and suggest that participants learnt tools to modulate emotions leading to self-mastery. Study limitations are presented with recommendations for future trauma-related research and practice. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Joanis, Marcelin | McMillan, Robert | Essays on the Political Economy of the Centralized Provision of Local Public Goods | Economics | 2008-11 | This thesis explores the political economy aspects of the provision of local public goods by higher levels of government. Chapter 1 focuses on local public goods as instruments for special interest politics at the supra-local level, with an emphasis on public infrastructure. To capture the implications of long-run relationships between political parties and their loyal supporters, I set out a dynamic probabilistic voting model which predicts that the geographic pattern of spending depends on the way the government balances long-run `machine politics' considerations with the more immediate concern to win over swing voters. To assess the empirical relevance of both forces, I analyse rich data on road spending from a panel of electoral districts in Québec. Empirical results exploiting the province's linguistic fragmentation provide robust evidence that partisan loyalty is a key driver of the geographic allocation of spending. Chapter 2 proposes a theoretical framework to analyse the coexistence of multiple tiers of government in local public good provision. I study the effects of such partial decentralization on accountability using a two-period political agency model, in which two levels of government are involved in public good provision and voters are imperfectly informed about each government's contribution to the public good. The model predicts that the net effect of a departure from complete centralization (or decentralization) balances the benefits of vertical complementarity against the loss of accountability following from imperfect information and detrimental vertical interactions. Chapter 3 investigates the impact of partial decentralization on local electoral accountability in the context of California's school finance system. I exploit the peculiarities California's school finance system and the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 to estimate the extent to which politicians are punished or rewarded for observed policy outcomes, and how this channel is affected by the degree of centralization. Results show that voters are responsive to differences in dropout rates and pupil-teacher ratios, and that incumbents are less likely to be reelected when a district's degree of centralization is high. Increased federal involvement after 2001 is associated with sharper local electoral accountability. | PhD | infrastructure | 9 |
| Jofre, Daniella | Valentina, Napolitano | Guallatire: Negotiating Aymara Indigeneity and Rights of Ownership in the Lauca Biosphere Reserve, Northern Chile | Anthropology | 2014-11 | My dissertation explores a multilayered landscape of contestation at the Aymara borderlands of Guallatire. Based on ethnographic fieldwork with guallatire単os in this Andean locality, I focus on how both the history of border institutionalization and the creation of the Lauca Biosphere Reserve impacted ethnicity processes and indigenous ownership in the highlands. I examine the politics of indigeneity as a mobile social formation and transnational field of governance, subjectivities and knowledges, along with notions of heritage shaped by the materiality of property. While struggling for cultural recognition and economic redistribution, guallatire単os have been confronted with a neoliberal state apparatus and violent mechanisms of government, including contradictory legislation which consequently has fragmented traditional native territories and communities, privatized land and water rights, and ultimately invisibilized Indigenous Peoples. However, the free market model has also shaped contested terrains between public and private sectors in the Lauca, paradoxically weakening the role of the state and causing friction among the various stakeholders involved in the Biosphere Reserve. By studying a series of state-driven `participatory meetings' for indigenous and touristic development, I conclude that participatory governance in the Lauca territory has challenged democratic practices and created spaces for indigenous recognition and political representation. Different strategies of resistance are continually performed by the Aymara to negotiate their ethnic identities and cultural boundaries in Northern Chile. | Ph.D. | water, governance | 6, 16 |
| John-Baptiste, Ava Ayana | Krahn, Murray | Chronic Hepatitis C Viral Infection: Natural History and Treatment Outcomes in Substance Abusers | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-11 | Hepatitis C is the most common blood-borne viral illness in the North America. Chronic hepatitis C infection may lead to cirrhosis of the liver, liver failure and liver cancer. In North America, injection drug use is the most important risk factor for infection and substance abusing populations are disproportionately affected by the disease. Antiviral therapy exists and approximately 50% of infected individuals can be cured. The aim of this thesis was to provide information to help clinicians and policy-makers minimize the impact of hepatitis C in substance abusers. The thesis is comprised of three studies. The first assessed the rate of progression to cirrhosis for those acquiring infection through injection drug use, using a meta-analysis of 44 studies from the published literature. We estimated that fibrosis progression occurs at a rate of 8.1 per 1000 person-years (95% Credible Region (CR), 3.9 to 14.7) corresponding to a 20-year cirrhosis prevalence of 14.8% (95% CR, 7.5 to 25.5). The second study measured the association between successful antiviral therapy and quality of life. We demonstrated that sustained responders to therapy had higher scores on the hepatitis-specific Medical Outcomes Survey Short-Form-36 (SF-36), Health Utilities Index Mark 2/3 (HUI2/3), and time-tradeoff (TTO) than treatment failures, an average of 3.7 years following antiviral therapy. The third study assessed rates of adherence to antiviral therapy and rates of sustained response in current or former iii substance abusers on methadone maintenance. We demonstrated that while use of illicit substances prior to therapy negatively affected adherence, rates of sustained response were comparable to non-substance abusing populations. Our work indicates the future burden of disease in current and former substance abusers, demonstrates that antiviral therapy can be successful in this population, and indicates that the benefits of successful therapy may extend beyond decreased disease burden to improved quality of life. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Joly, Marie-Pier | Wheaton, Blair||Landolt, Patricia | Contexts of Exit and the Mental Health and Economic Incorporation of Migrants in Canada | Sociology | 2017-11 | My dissertation explores the impact of contexts of exit on the mental health and economic incorporation of migrants living in Canada, with a specific emphasis on the impact of armed conflicts and human rights violations in countries of origin. The first paper in my dissertation explores the impact of armed conflict according to varying defining characteristics such as severity of the conflict and intra- vs. inter-state focus and finds that migrants from countries with severe intrastate conflict have worse mental health than migrants from countries with no to minor armed conflict and the native-born. The impact of armed conflicts differs by gender, with women experiencing more depressive symptoms and men experiencing more anxiety symptoms. The second paper shows that the impact of armed conflicts is similar to, but does not replace, the impact of human rights violations in countries of origin. The impact of human rights violations is not more pronounced in situations of armed conflicts, and on its own, human rights violations have essentially similar long-term impact on the mental health of migrants as armed conflicts. Each of the first two papers demonstrates that armed conflicts and human rights violations in countries of origin often provoke multiple stressful life events and conditions during the life span that can have cumulative mental health consequences for migrants. The last paper in my dissertation explores the employment and occupational status of migrants from armed conflict countries. It finds that in spite of their high levels of education in Canada, migrants from armed conflict countries experience more difficulties in finding employment, particularly in the early years after migration, and in general achieve lower levels of occupational status, given their education, relative to other migrants and the native-born. When migrants come from countries in conflict, there appears to be an additional discount applied to their job market options after migration. Specifically, education completed prior to migration translates less often into employment success in this group. | Ph.D. | health, employment, rights | 3, 8, 16 |
| Jones-Gailani, Nadia | Iacovetta, Franca | Iraqi Women in Diaspora: Resettlement, Religion, and Remembrance in the Iraqi Diaspora in Toronto and Detroit, 1980 to present | History | 2013-06 | This dissertation explores how Iraqi migrant women living in Toronto and Detroit negotiate identity within existing networks of ethnic Iraqi communities settled in North America. The focus is on how ethno-religious identity is imagined and performed in diaspora as new generations of migrant Iraqi women reinvent their relationship with the host countries of Canada and the U.S., and with the homeland. As part of the global diaspora of Iraqis, women of different ages and ethnicities reinvent identity from within the official multiculturalisms of Canada and the U.S. By engaging with themes of historical memory, generation, diasporic citizenship, and religiosity, I explore how Iraqi women remember, retell, and reinvent the past through their narratives. At the core of this research is a unique archive of more than a hundred oral histories conducted with Iraqi women in Amman, Detroit and Toronto. Drawing upon this archive, I explore how Iraqi women recreate official ‘myths’ of nationalism and the nation, but also, and importantly, shape subjective narratives that reveal their lived experiences of trauma, loss and oppression. I argue that these dual and dueling narratives must be understood within the historical context of oppression in the homeland, and also as the product of the repressive patriarchal framework that silences the feminine, essentially writing Iraqi women and their experiences out of Iraqi history. The narratives of women from various class, ethnic and religious backgrounds reveal their experiences of life during the authoritarian Ba‘th regime, as well as how and why they came to settle in North America. The dissertation highlights the importance of empowering these voices, and listening to them alongside the official and imposed national commemoration of Iraq’s past. The dissertation engages with religion as a central and organizing category in the lives of Iraqi women. Drawing from the works of western and Third World feminists, it explores the role of religiosity in the lives of multi-generational Iraqi women. In particular, I examine ideas of ‘honour’ and modesty, and the performance of religion amongst young women growing up in North America. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Jones, Matt | Freeman, Barry | The Shock and Awe of the Real: Political Performance and the War on Terror | Drama | 2020-06 | This dissertation offers a transnational study of theatre and performance that responded to the recent conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and beyond. Looking at work by artists primarily from Arab and Middle Eastern diasporas working in the US, UK, Canada, and Europe, the study examines how modes of performance in live art, documentary theatre, and participatory performance respond to and comment on the power imbalances, racial formations, and political injustices of these conflicts. Many of these performances are characterized by a deliberate blurring of the distinctions between performance and reality. This has meant that playwrights crafted scripts from the real words of soldiers instead of writing plays; performance artists harmed their real bodies, replicating the violence of war; actors performed in public space; and media artists used new technology to connect audiences to real warzones. This embrace of the real contrasts with postmodern suspicion of hyper-reality—which characterized much political performance in the 1990s—and marks a shift in understandings of the relationship between performance and the real. These strategies allowed artists to contend with the way that war today is also a multimedia attack on the way that reality is constructed and perceived. The dissertation traces the historical antecedents of these aesthetics in postmodern criticism of prior generations of political performance and shows how these artists struggled to discover new aesthetic strategies to criticize war, racism, and violence. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Jones, Natalie Tamara | Gilbert, Benjamin | Understanding How Life-history Traits and Environmental Gradients Structure Diversity | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2016-11 | Determining how diversity is distributed through space and time is a fundamental goal of ecology. My research tested how speciesâ life-history traits structure diversity at landscape and broader scales and over time. I first asked how traits related to seed dispersal shape plant diversity in a naturally fragmented landscape by testing the relationship between diversity and patch characteristics (size and isolation) for species with different dispersal modes. Dispersal mode altered outcomes predicted from theory â while fragment isolation had a negative effect on wind-dispersed species, it did not influence the diversity of animal-dispersed species. I then examined how zooplankton traits (body size and dormancy) correlate with species distributions at a large scale using lakes across an 1800 km north-south gradient in western Canada. Despite predictions that body size should decrease with latitude and low temperatures, I found only weak evidence for any effect of latitude on inter- and intra- specific body size. Zooplankton dormancy dynamics are virtually impossible to test through sampling, yet dormancy underpins seasonal fluctuations in abundance and long term persistence, and it is expected to vary with climate. I therefore used an experimental approach to test how temperature and photoperiod affect hatching rates of dormant eggs from lakes across the latitudinal gradient. My results suggest that mismatches between temperature and photoperiod, as predicted to result from climate change, could drive latitude-dependent shifts in zooplankton emergence. Finally, I examined the temporal stability of diversity across the same latitudinal gradient by examining species colonization and extinction over 50 years. I found that low-latitude communities are increasingly diverse and comprised of small-bodied species despite more rapid temperature change at higher latitudes. Overall, my research has implications for how global changes, such as fragmentation and climate change, alter diversity by changing the viability of specific life-history strategies. | Ph.D. | climate, ecology | 13, 15 |
| Juando-Prats, Clara | Angus, Jan | Health Care Access and Utilization by Young Mothers Experiencing Homelessness: A Bourdieusian Analysis with an Arts-Based Approach | Nursing Science | 2017-11 | Young mothers experiencing homelessness and their children have low economic and social resources and worse physical and mental health outcomes than their more resourced counterparts. Furthermore, their use of health care resources is constrained by social factors that remain understudied. Following a relational approach based on Bourdieuâ s theory of practice, this study aimed to explore and understand the relationships between the social position that these young mothers occupy and their health practices (access/use of healthcare resources and other behaviors). This study also sought the impact of an arts-based approach on community involvement. Through qualitative inquiry I used discursive montage and participatory graphic elicitation. The former consisted of an analysis of the media artifacts on young mothers experiencing homelessness, aiming to understand how they are socially positioned and how this relates to social structures. The graphic elicitation consisted of a semi-structured and an elicitation interview, the latter based on their artwork created during the study. The artwork created by young mothers, volunteers, and by myself was included in the analysis; it was also a tool for my reflexive process. All data were analyzed through a dynamic process of data abstraction using Bourdieuâ s concepts of habitus, capital, and field. Results showed an embodiment of the social values related to the conceptualization of youth that excludes young homeless mothers and sees them as deviant. Young mothers are portrait in the media as unskilled and immature, with a low chance of social success. The contradictions drawn from this social construction of youth and mothering affect not only their daily life but how they take care of their health and that of their children. Participants tended to avoid situations in which they may feel judged or brushed off, which resulted in them minimizing their encounters with healthcare providers. This study has identified a healthcare gap related to the adequacy of existing resources, as well as a need for creative approaches to connecting young mothers with providers. | Ph.D. | health, poverty | 1, 3 |
| Jumbe, Clement Alexander David | Quarter, Jack | The Role of Social Networks in the Decision to Test for HIV | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-11 | The major global concern of preventing the spread of Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) requires that millions of people be tested in order to identify those individuals who need treatment and care. This study’s purpose was to examine the role of social networks in an individual’s decision to test for HIV. The study sample included 62 participants of African and Caribbean origin in Toronto, Canada. Thirty-three females and 29 males, aged 16 to 49 years who had previously tested positive or negative for HIV, participated in interviews that lasted approximately 60 minutes. Measurement instruments adapted from Silverman, Hecht, McMillin, and Chang (2008) were used to identify and delimit the social networks of the participants. The instrument identified four social network types: immediate family, extended family, friends, and acquaintances. The study examined the role of these network types on the individuals’ decisions to get HIV testing. A mixed method approach (Creswell, 2008) was applied, and both qualitative and quantitative data were collected simultaneously. Participants listed their social networks and retrospectively described the role of their network members in influencing their decision to test for HIV. The participants’ narratives of the influence of social networks in HIV testing were coded. A thematic analysis of the qualitative descriptions of the network members’ influence was performed. The quantitative and the qualitative analysis results were then tallied. The results of the study demonstrated that the influence of social networks was evident in the individuals’ decisions to test for HIV. The most influential group was friends, followed in descending order of influence by immediate family, acquaintances, and extended family. These social network ties provided informational, material, and emotional support to individuals deciding to seek HIV testing. For policy makers and health professionals, coming to a more complete understanding of these dynamics will enable them to make institutional decisions and allocate resources to improve and enhance the support available from within these social networks, thus encouraging, promoting, and leading to increased testing for HIV. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Jung, Seyun Maria | Gartner, Rosemary | The Relationship between Immigration and Crime in Canada, 1976-2011 | Criminology | 2017-06 | This dissertation examines whether changes in immigration are associated with changes in crime rates at the macro-level over time in Canada. Specifically, I analyze this relationship in Canadian census metropolitan areas (CMAs) and provinces for the period 1976-2011. In general, the research on the relationship between immigration and crime has shown that they are either negatively associated or not related at all. However, most of this work has been conducted in the United States using cross-sectional designs and has focused on one type of crime, namely homicide. Differences between Canada and the United States in the extent and nature of both immigration and crime warrant a study of their relationship and its generalizability beyond the US. My dissertation adds to the literature by using a longitudinal design â which treats immigration as a process that unfolds over time â and extending the analysis beyond homicide to include violent, property, and crime rates. My findings show that, controlling for demographic and socioeconomic covariates, changes in immigration are either not significantly associated or negatively associated with changes in crime rates. These results lend support to the generalizability of the findings from studies of US cities to Canadian cities, to larger units of aggregation (i.e., provinces),and across different types of crime. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic | 1 |
| Jung, Young Mee Tiffany | Cheng, Yu-Ling | Neighbourhood Sanitation and Childrenâ s Diarrhea in Developing Countries | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Diarrhea is a leading cause of global child mortality. Sanitation has long been recognized as a key intervention against diarrhea, but it has been mostly evaluated as a household-level intervention for household-level health gain, without addressing its implications at neighbourhood-level. In this thesis, neighbourhood sanitation was defined as safe removal of excreta from the neighbourhood environment to prevent human contact. The effect and cost of neighbourhood sanitation intervention against childrenâ s diarrhea were evaluated. The distinct effects of neighbourhood sanitation conditions and household sanitation on diarrhea morbidity were distinguished and compared by a systematic literature review. The results suggested that sanitary neighbourhood conditions and household sanitation access are each associated with reduced diarrheal burden, at comparable magnitudes. The effect of neighbourhood sanitation was further investigated by an exposure-response analysis of neighbourhood-level coverage of sanitation facilities and under-five childrenâ s diarrheal illness. Health survey datasets from 29 developing countries were analysed using a multilevel regression model. The study found a non-linear exposure-response trend between neighbourhood sanitation coverage and diarrhea. A sanitation coverage threshold was identified, below which increase in sanitation coverage was associated with marginal reduction in diarrhea. The cost of neighbourhood sanitation delivered by centralized wastewater management (CWWM) and decentralized wastewater management (DWWM) strategies were compared in a case study site in India. As part of the analysis, the cost variability of DWWM was assessed for a broad range of system configurations. The study showed that NSan delivered by DWWM can be less costly than that by CWWM but with higher land requirement. The lower cost, together with the enhanced flexibility and resilience offered by DWWM, suggested that DWWM may be an adequate alternative to CWWM in rapidly developing regions. The findings of this thesis demonstrate that neighbourhood sanitation is an important and cost-effective intervention against childrenâ s diarrhea in developing countries. | Ph.D. | health, sanitation, water | 3, 6 |
| Junker, Laura | Ensminger, Ingo | Photoprotective Isoprenoids as Indicators for Stress Responses in Forest Trees | Cell and Systems Biology | 2017-03 | For long-lived forest tree species, intraspecific variation among populations in their response to environmental conditions can reveal their ability to cope with and adapt to climate change. Plants constantly adjust the pigment composition of the photosynthetic apparatus to environmental conditions. Under abiotic stress conditions (e.g. drought), plants induce isoprenoid-mediated photoprotective mechanisms such as non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) and increased biosynthesis of antioxidants to minimize photooxidative stress. This thesis investigated the intraspecific variation in the isoprenoid metabolism in Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) comparing Douglas-fir provenances, which represent populations from locations with contrasting environmental conditions. Furthermore, the influence of foliar photosynthetic pigments on leaf optical properties was studied using senescing sugar maple (Acer saccharum) leaves. First, I established a simple and cost-effective protocol for the rapid analysis of isoprenoids using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) (Chapter 2). Three experiments were conducted to evaluate 1) the adjustments of the isoprenoid metabolism when photosynthesis is limited in response to environmental conditions (Chapter 3 and 4); 2) provenance-specific adjustments of photoprotective isoprenoids in response to drought (Chapter 3 and 4); and 3) the influence of senescence-associated changes in isoprenoid levels on leaf optical properties in sugar maple (Chapter 5). In chapter 3, photosynthesis and photosynthetic pigments in seedlings of two Douglas-fir provenances were compared under controlled drought conditions. In chapter 4, intraspecific variation in photosynthesis and photosynthetic pigments in response to changing environmental conditions were studied in mature trees of four provenances over the course of two years. Both experiments revealed that the more drought-tolerant interior provenances exhibit enhanced carotenoid-chlorophyll ratios, and larger pools of xanthophyll cycle pigments and β-carotene compared to coastal provenances from mesic habitats. This provenance-specific variation demonstrated the importance of the isoprenoid metabolism for the adaptation of provenances to drought. In chapter 5, the leaf optical properties of senescing sugar maple leaves were studied. The degradation of photosynthetic pigments as indicator for the progress of senescence was reflected by spectral reflectance measurements and digital image analysis. Isoprenoid metabolism may thus be a potential trait for selection of provenances for future forest management and indicator for remote-sensing of the plant physiological status. | Ph.D. | climate, forest | 13, 15 |
| Kabba, Munya | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | Critical Investigation of the Sierra Leone Conlfict: A Moral Practical Reconstruction of Crisis and Colonization in the Evolution of Society | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-03 | This Sierra Leone Conflict arose from the society’s failure to institutionalize the requisite post-conventional organizing principle for collective will formation and for conflict resolution. In this post-traditional society - one artificially constructed from diverse political and cultural groups, without a shared ethos – only mutual (communicative) understanding can resolve differences and ensure solidarity. A lack of mutual understanding overburdens the adaptive capacity of the society, creating crises tendencies. Repression only intensified these tendencies, ensuring their eventual catastrophic explosion, 11 years civil conflict. State hindrances to social (communicative) interaction rendered the society incapable of realizing the requisite post conventional moral learning i.e. the social intelligence or problem-solving equipment required to resolve conflict, decolonize itself, neutralize normative power, shed dogmatic consciousness, change oppressive conventions, and influential customs. Thus, the study promotes civic virtues of post conventional morality (justice, truthfulness, moral rightness) as the key for liberating the society from its crisis-inducing colonial organizing principle. As the basis of sociology, the discipline the remains focused on society-wide problems, the theory of social evolution is adopted here to reconstruct the crisis in Sierra Leone’s constitutional democratic development. The study uses the rational reconstructive method to explicate problematic validity claims of norms, policy decisions, or the social order. The social order was rendered crisis-ridden because the reasons - the axis around which mutual understanding revolve - adduced for it cannot admit of consensus. The emerging social disintegration exemplifies use of deficient logic in social interaction, one below the requisite categorical moral cognitive consciousness. For this research, colonization is not necessarily externally induced, but forms of understanding in the political, legal, social, and educational interactions. The key point of the study is this: today Sierra Leone achieves solidarity, and decolonize from its conventional organizing principle, only if the state, economy, and civil society can find their limit in the socio-cultural domain. | PhD | justice, institution | 16 |
| Kaderi, Ahmed Salehin | BICKMORE, KATHY | Peacebuilding Citizenship Education in a Muslim Majority Context: Challenges and Opportunities in Bangladeshi Public Schools | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-11 | Globally, many young citizens are disengaged from constructively transforming conflicts and affirming just peace (Kassimir Flanagan, 2010). In Bangladesh, lived experience of polarized political affiliates’ and others’ violent engagement in conflicts often contributes to many citizens’ avoidance of formal politics (Riaz Raji, 2011). Schools can help to reduce––or to reproduce––those patterns of violence and citizen disengagement (Davies, 2011). Dialogue, in educational settings, about lived social and political conflicts and potential solutions—in relation to their own identities and contexts—may help citizens to develop peace-building capacities (Lederach, 1995; McCauley, 2002). This doctoral thesis studies opportunities and challenges for peacebuilding citizenship education embedded in the existing curriculum of Bangladesh, juxtaposed with selected students’ and teachers’ concerns and understandings about selected social conflicts and what people can do about them in their own contexts. Research methods involved document analysis and focus groups with young adolescents and with teachers, in girls’ and boys’ public schools in two cities. Bangladeshi curriculum mandates analyzed in this research do offer opportunities for studying various social conflicts. However, participating teachers’ implemented curriculum tended to ignore multiple viewpoints about human rights and governance conflicts. Participating students and teachers had difficulty identifying social-structural dimensions of the conflicts that they or their families had not directly experienced. All participants were familiar with patterns of direct harm, and sometimes also identified some cultural dimensions, as they described parties and their viewpoints in conflicts that mattered to them. Religious moral factors were prominent in how they described causes and escalators of these conflicts. Beyond suggesting individuals’ religious moral correction, very few participants showed familiarity with democratic problem-solving options that could reduce violence and transform these social conflicts. Thus, in this Muslim-majority context, participants understood the dimensions and solutions of social conflicts in religious-moral terms: Islam provided the vocabulary with which participants talked about mutual responsibility, justice, and the possibilities of peace. The thesis argues that classroom opportunities for critical analysis of multiple viewpoints and of available options to solve social and political conflicts—including their religious dimensions—would increase participants’ opportunities for citizenship learning and peacebuilding engagement. | Ph.D. | justice, peace | 16 |
| Kahil, Rula | Portelli, John P | The Complexities of ‘Shame’: An Exploration of Human Connection | Social Justice Education | 2017-11 | This dissertation is about one of the most controversial emotions: shame. The foundational question is: What constitutes the experience of shame as both an emotion and a dynamic of power, with an emphasis on women’s gender roles? The topic is inspired by my lived experience. Expressions of my narratives and those of others are integral to this work. The discussion begins with an overview of the history of ideas on emotions and shame. Shame was considered more important than other emotions because of its evaluative cognitive dimension. The overview highlights the continuum of inherited scholarly and culturally based gender stereotypes. Through exploring current interdisciplinary scholarly research on shame, a common theme emerged: the irrevocable presence of the ‘other’ in the shame experience. Discussions around this theme led to two basic principles: 1) the individual and the social are deeply intertwined, 2) shame is a declaration of one’s interest, need to belong, and love. The discussions show the significance of our connection with others initiated through various expressions: telling one’s story, art, and writing. When one’s expressions are not aligned with social norms, we are often shamed and alienated. This is shame’s painful and controlling power. However, I argue that acknowledging shame’s pain can instigate critical thinking about our roles within existing social structures. shame’s productive face allows us to reflect on our ideals in relation to whom and what we love, what interests us, and where we belong. My conclusion highlights the intriguing complexity of shame’s two faces: the controlling and the productive. One negates and excludes; the other motivates critical self-reflection. I end with the implications of my work for education. I discuss the importance of: 1) lived experiences, 2) culturally relevant narratives, 3) emotional learning, 4) recognizing the shame embedded in refugees’ experiences, and 5) in grading systems. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Kaida, Risa | Boyd, Monica | Pathways to Successful Economic Integration: The Dynamics of Low Income and Low Wages among New Immigrants to Canada | Sociology | 2012-06 | Contemporary research on immigrant economic integration identifies growing economic disadvantages faced by immigrants and probes sources of the disadvantages by focusing on immigrants’ pre-migration and ascriptive characteristics. However, little empirical evaluation exists on how immigrants overcome their initial economic disadvantages over time. This dissertation departs from previous research by studying the roles of two post-migration factors – schooling (formal education and language training) and the employment of female spouses – in the exits from low wages and low family income (poverty) among recent immigrants. The analysis of the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada (LSIC) – a three-wave survey of immigrants who arrived in Canada in 2000-2001 – produces three main findings. First, investing in host country formal education is beneficial for the economic advancement of new immigrants – especially highly educated ones. This finding confirms the role of skill upgrading programs for adult immigrants as an effective immigrant settlement policy, given that the majority of recent immigrants have postsecondary education but that their initial economic hardships are growing. Second, the benefits of English/French language lessons are real. This finding counters a common criticism that language lessons for adult new immigrants, which are often funded by the governments, are not helpful. Indeed, standard logistic regression analysis of the LSIC data shows that immigrants who enrolled in language lessons have no advantage in exiting poverty or low wages. However, the bivariate probit model demonstrates that this is because unmeasured characteristics of the language lesson participants confound the true benefit of language lessons. Third, this dissertation research highlights the role immigrant women play in lifting their families out of poverty when they work. This finding has an implication particularly for women of Arab and Middle Eastern origins as their notably lower labour force participation rates explain much of their high poverty rates. | PhD | poverty, women, employment, labour, wage | 1, 5, 2008 |
| Kamassah, Sharon Simone | Joshee, Reva | The Impact of Post-Secondary Educational Institution Policies and Practices on Indigenous Staff Recruitment and Retention | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-11 | There is very little published research that explores employment inequities in Canadian Post-Secondary Institutes as they relate directly to Indigenous people (Chan, 2005; Doyle-Bedwell, 2008; Dua Bhanji, 2012; Julien, Wright Zinni, 2010; Singh, 2012). The primary question this study addressed was what impact, if any, did a GTA Aboriginal Post-Secondary School Educational Institute’s (APSE’s) organizational policies, practices and processes have on the recruitment, support, and retention of Aboriginal staff. The participants from the APSE included part time, full time, and Aboriginal Staffing Pilot Program (ASP) employees. Informed by Institutional Ethnography, Ojibwe Medicine Wheel and Womanist theory, the study explored the daily work experiences of the Aboriginal participants as they connected to broader social structures, processes and relationships within the organization. The findings included that the participants were disconnected from the policies enforced by the APSE. Policies were largely constructed without the consideration of Indigenous knowledges and priorities. Another finding was the lack of Indigenized culture and curriculum development erroneously reinforced the belief that Indigenous college members ought to “get over it” and conform to the College’s corporate culture. Recommendations included increasing Indigenous staff representation; consistently Indigenizing the curriculum and culture of the APSE; and cultural safety awareness training for all staff. Given the Truth and Reconciliation calls to action directly hold educational institutions accountable for the needs and inclusion of Indigenous people, the experiences, and insights explored in this study are valuable information for post-secondary Human Resources departments and senior management examining their staff recruitment and retention efforts. | Ph.D. | educat, equitable, employment | 4, 8 |
| Kamo, Sandra L | Davis, Donald W | Clues to the Causes of Mass Extinctions in Earth History from U-Pb CA-ID-TIMS Geochronology | Geology | 2012-11 | Mass extinctions in Earth history have repeatedly altered the course of evolution of life on our planet. The extent and rapid rate at which they occurred required processes that were global in scale and catastrophic in nature. Asteroid impacts and volcanic eruptions are cited as triggers of environmental change and subsequent biological turnover. Causal mechanisms remain enigmatic, partly due to a lack of precise and accurate ages to establish the timing and duration of events, and to limitations of interpreting existing ages due to inter-method and inter-laboratory bias. Two of the largest extinction events in the Phanerozoic were triggered by different processes. The Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinctions are widely accepted as due to the consequences of impact, yet the link between the K-Pg boundary layer and Chicxulub impact has been questioned. Shocked zircon from K-Pg ejecta in Spain and Italy are 550 ± 6 Ma (2s) and show a correlation between intensity of shock metamorphism and discordance to the time of impact. The data are identical to those from Chicxulub and North American ejecta sites and together support a genetic association. Clarification of this link is essential to understanding the role of impact on end-Cretaceous climate and environment. The end-Permian extinctions are the most profound in the rock record and eruption of the Siberian Flood Volcanic rocks as the trigger is supported by U-Pb ID-TIMS ages. The ages indicate that the marine extinctions in China occurred early in the eruptive sequence prior to 251.99 ± 0.18 Ma (2s), synchronous with emission of climate forcing gases. Continued environmental stress from eruption in the Noril’sk and Meymecha-Kotuy areas, may have promoted terrestrial extinctions in the Karoo Basin of South Africa and delayed recovery. The extent of environmental stress is related to the composition of target lithologies, the nature, quantity, and rate of emission of the volatile load, pre-existing oceanic and atmospheric conditions, and global plate configuration. | PhD | climate, marine | 13, 14 |
| Kandinov, Liran | Katz, Ariel | Copyright Legislative Impunity? How Copyright Term Extensions Violate Freedom of Expression | Law | 2015-11 | With the global trend of harmonizing intellectual property rights, there is enormous pressure on Canada to adopt a maximalist approach to copyright protection. The purpose of this paper is to assess the constitutionality of the copyright extensions for sound recordings and performances found within the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act. Although Canadian courts have been reluctant in the past to consider the effects of copyright law on freedom of expression, the time is now ripe for the courts to assert their authority under the constitution. This paper demonstrates that copyright law is indeed in conflict with freedom of expression and that any time the legislature amends or imposes new burdens on expression, the government must justify those actions. In the case of the twenty-year term extension for sound recordings and performances, a constitutional analysis reveals that the law is disproportionate and cannot be saved under s.1 of the Charter. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Kanengisser, Dubi | Kingston, Paul | Democracy, Identity and Security in Israelâ s Ethnic Democracy: The Ideational Underpinnings of Institutional Change | Political Science | 2016-11 | This work expands on the growing ideational institutionalist literature by proposing that institutional change and stability are influenced most substantially by changes to the underlying ideational network which link core societal ideas. These core ideas create the framework on which institutions are built and in which form they are fashioned. Changes to the ideational network lead to adaptive changes in institutions, but the difficulty in completely removing core ideas from these networks protects the institutions from substantial change. The theory is demonstrated using the case of the surprising stability of ethnic democracy in Israel in the wake of the substantial changes to the countryâ s economic and security realities. Small adaptive changes in the institution of ethnic democracy are traced back to changes in the balance between three core ideas: democracy, Jewish identity, and security. The overall stability of the institution, however, is linked to the enduring linkages of the three core ideas even as they experienced changes in their individual meanings. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Kannen, Victoria | Acker, Sandra | Critical Identity Classrooms as Turbulent Spaces: Exploring Student and Instructor Experiences with Identities, Privilege, and Power | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-11 | This qualitative study focuses on students and instructors who study, teach, and learn critical concepts of identity, such as gender, race, and dis/ability. The participants’ reflections on these university classroom experiences are examined in order to explore the ways they understand their encounters with privilege and power. In classes that take up discussions of identity – critical identity classrooms – the intention is often to teach, study, and learn how (our) identity or identities manifest in social life, how these manifestations can be problematized, and how these explorations can lead to social change. Often, these courses centre on discussing identity in terms of oppression, rather than investigating the intersections of privilege and oppression. A major contention of this study is that a lack of discussion about privilege in the academy enables the pervasive invisibility of many unearned social advantages to remain under-theorized and ‘invisible.’ This study questions how it is that we come to understand concepts of identity to be one-dimensional, rather than understanding privilege as dynamic and situated. Using in-depth interviews with 22 undergraduate students and 8 instructors from 2 contrasting universities, this study explores 3 main questions: (1) How do students in higher education who are engaged in critical identity studies interpret privilege, both for others and themselves? (2) How do the participants understand their experiences inside and outside the classroom to be related to notions of privilege and oppression that often arise in critical identity classrooms? (3) How does using a multi-site approach to study critical identity classroom experiences extend the ways in which students’ understandings of privilege can be explored? Using these research questions, the intersections of space/location, power, and identities as they inform notions of privilege and oppression are demonstrated. The participants’ reflections expose how questions of belonging, safety, and ‘place’ contribute to the silences around the study of privilege. The study suggests that understanding privilege and oppression as located within the same network of relations, rather than as binary opposites, will aid in making privilege more accessible as a topic of study in critical identity classrooms. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Kapoor, Sacha | Benjamin, Dwayne | Three Essays on Personnel Economics | Economics | 2011-11 | My dissertation focuses on the role of incentives in the workplace. In Chapter 1, I study peer effects in pay-for-individual-performance jobs. Specifically, I explore whether, how, and why coworker performance matters when rewards are based on individual performance. When teamed with high-performing peers, I find that workers are more productive overall. I also find that workers who resign are unaffected by coworker performance in the period after they hand in their resignation notice. The findings suggest peer effects in pay-for-individual-performance jobs reflect reputational concerns about relative performance rather than competitive preferences. In Chapter 2, I present field evidence that sheds new light on incentive provision in multitask jobs. Specifically, I design and conduct a field experiment at a large-scale restaurant, where the pre-existing wage contract encourages workers to carry out their tasks in a way that is not perfectly aligned with the firm's preferences. The experimental treatment pays bonuses to waiters for the number of customers they serve, in addition to their tips for customer service and hourly wages. I compare worker performance under the treatment to that under the pre-existing contract, where workers are rewarded for overemphasizing customer service, to evaluate the effect of a wage contract that encourages undesirable behavior. I find that the average worker earns more, is more productive, and generates higher short-run profits for the firm when paid bonuses for customer volume. Overall, the findings suggest that sharpening wage contracts to deal with incentive problems in multitask jobs has benefits for workers as well as the firm. In Chapter 3, I present joint work (with Arvind N. Magesan at the University fo Calgary) on the beauty premium's role in the workplace. Specifically, we investigate whether, how, and why the beauty premium can be explained by the behaviour of workers after they are hired. We find that attractive workers earn more because they transfer effort from tasks that reward looks to tasks that reward effort. We also provide evidence against favorable treatment by customers and the employer as sources for the beauty premium. We conclude that the premium is largely driven by the worker's on-the-job behavior. | PhD | worker | 8 |
| Kappeler, Aaron Eugene | Li, Tania | Sowing the State: Nationalism, Sovereignty and Agrarian Politics in Venezuela | Anthropology | 2015-11 | Sowing the State is an ethnographic account of the remaking of the Venezuelan nation-state at the start of the twenty-first century which underscores the centrality of agriculture to the re-envisioning of sovereignty. The narrative explores the recent efforts of the Venezuelan government to transform the rural areas of the nation into a model of agriculture capable of feeding its mostly urban population as well as the logics and rationales for this particular reform project. The dissertation explores the subjects, livelihoods, and discourses conceived as the proper basis of sovereignty as well as the intersection of agrarian politics with statecraft. In a nation heavily dependent on the export of oil and the import of food, the politics of land and its various uses is central to governance and the rural is a contested field for a variety of social groups. Based on extended fieldwork in El Centro Técnico Productivo Socialista Florentino, a state owned enterprise in the western plains of Venezuela, the narrative analyses the challenges faced by would-be nation builders after decades of neoliberal policy designed to integrate the nation into the global market as well as the activities of the enterprise directed at transcending this legacy. Not merely a restoration of the status quo or reassertion of a prior independence, I argue the Venezuelan nation is being reinvented in this drive for sovereignty and the tensions between peasants, technical experts and workers in the Florentino enterprise reflect the cleavages of an emerging state form. | Ph.D. | agriculture, urban, rural | 2, 11 |
| Karasik, Leo | Daniel, Trefler | Three Essays in International Trade | Economics | 2014-11 | This thesis presents three papers on international trade. The first chapter examines how trade liberalization affects firms when labor market institutions differ across countries. One would expect the country with higher labor costs to have a lower proportion of firms that enter the export market. That need not be the case when labor market institutions differ across countries. Different distortions affect the mark-up charged by firms in a heterogeneous manner. Since the distortions differ across countries, so do the mark-ups. I use this finding to show that trade liberalization can lower the survival cut-off and the average productivity of active firms in one of the countries, two of the results that are central to the canonical Melitz (2003) model.The second chapter studies the affiliate location decision of multinational corporations (MNCs). Using hand-collected data on French MNCs, I find that they are more likely to opt for a wholesale affiliate relative to a manufacturing affiliate in more distant countries. I show theoretically and confirm empirically that this result is due to the fact that MNCs locate their wholesale affiliates in geographic proximity to their manufacturing affiliates. The former thereby serve as conduits to the exports of the latter, rather than to the exports of the parent company.The third chapter studies firms' export market entry decision. Using data on Peruvian firms, I find that the Great Recession did not reduce the number of new exporters. This appears to contradict the belief that large fixed costs are the primary barrier to export market participation. I show that two temporary marginal cost shocks can explain continued entry: an inventory draw-down and a fall in shipping costs. This indicates that firms can test out export markets in response to temporary marginal cost shocks, and cast doubt upon the large fixed cost hypothesis. | Ph.D. | trade | 10 |
| Karia, Ella | Njoki, Wane | The Full Day Kindergarten Classroom in Ontario: Exploring Play-based Learning Approach and Its Implications for Child Development | Social Justice Education | 2014-11 | Children have the right to fulfill and expand on all their potentials and desires to learn. In 2010, the Ontario Ministry of Education introduced Full-Day Kindergarten (FDK) in Ontario and aimed at providing quality Kindergarten programs for children. The implementation of FDK is expected to be implemented in all public schools by 2015/16. The literature and research on early years education affirms that children benefit from quality early years educational programs as they are important in developing neurons in the brain before the age of six. This qualitative study focuses on understanding early years' educational philosophies and examining teachers' perspectives on FDK teaching and learning practices. The case studies are informed by the narratives of eight Kindergarten teachers through data collected from interviews, observation, classroom visits, and artifacts. The most significant findings of the study are that quality FDK teaching and learning practices are based on the following features: (a) learning through play-based, inquiry-based and experiential-based exploration; (b) making the educational experiences child-centred and authentic; (c) building on childrens' past experiences, nurturing self-expression and identity; (d) strengthening relationships and connections; and (e) creating stimulating environments, both indoor and outdoor, for children's learning and development. Teachers' perspectives and specific FDK classroom practices are described, analyzed and discussed. Theory informed practice and practice informed theory, as models were developed and designed during this research journey. The theoretical framework served as a holistic lens and was instrumental in examining FDK practices in each case study. The Integrated Child Development Model was created, later modified and named the Early Years Education Model (EYE Model). The EYE Model identified important aspects of quality FDK and named developmental domains. The models served as a tools and conceptual frameworks in evaluating and analyzing classroom practice. Research implications that resulted from this study included improving class size, providing more teacher training, and greater opportunities for quality and varied play experiences were identified as essential moving forward. The Kindergarten years lay a strong foundation for success in future schooling and looking closer at teaching and learning practices in the Kindergarten classroom brings awareness to best practices. | Ed.D. | educat | 4 |
| Karram Stephenson, Grace Lurene | Hayhoe, Ruth E | Exploring the Identities of Students at Western Branch-campuses in Malaysia and United Arab Emirates | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-11 | Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are rapidly growing economies with diverse ethnic and linguistic populations. In both, the need for skilled labour has increased the importance of higher education for national development goals. Lacking the capacity to provide public higher education for all their citizens both countries have recruited foreign institutions to educate those who do not have access to public higher education. This thesis examines the experiences of students at Australian and British international branch-campuses (IBCs) in the UAE and Malaysia in order to understand the influence that enrolment at an IBC has on studentsâ identities. Synthesizing the American and European literature on identity and higher education, this thesis conceptualizes identity as the fluctuating social categories that distinguish groups or individuals from one another. The data for this study was collected during five months of fieldwork, employing qualitative interviews with 49 students and 13 administrators/instructors. The majority of student-participants in this study were affiliated with economically powerful, yet politically marginalized minority groups. The findings suggest that Western IBCs promote a new set of identities that differ from those prioritized in the political and social contexts of the UAE and Malaysia. Students perceive that micro-divisions related to ethnicity decrease at an IBC, but new divisions emerge based on ability, language or region. These findings reflect a changing relationship between higher education and identity in the 21st Century. Cross-border higher education is not embedded in a national or local context, nor promotes identities related to those contexts. Instead, studentsâ identities become linked to their achievements, and thus branch-campuses support students as they forge market-relevant identities. In contexts such as Malaysia and the UAE, this role is significant as IBCs provide peripheral ethnic groups with an alternative pathway to enter the economic sector which is increasingly detached from its political context. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Kassam, Shelina | Razack, Sherene H. | Standing on Guard for Thee: The Acceptable Muslim and Boundaries of Racialized Inclusion in Canada | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | This dissertation traces the emergence of the figure of the Acceptable Muslim in Canadian public, political and cultural discourses, and illuminates the conditions for inclusion of such figures in the national imaginary. The Acceptable Muslim is perceived as a ‘good,’ ‘moderate,’ ‘modern,’ and assimilable Muslim, one who espouses a privatized faith with few public expressions of religious/cultural belonging. Against the backdrop of the racialization of Muslim bodies, Acceptable Muslims (re)confirm the racial boundaries of the nation-state, becoming passionate defenders of multiculturalism, whiteness and a global politics of Western domination. I theorize that the figure of the Acceptable Muslim sustains the narrative of the Canadian nation-state as liberal, democratic, secular, modern and inclusive, even as it relentlessly excludes, punishes and eliminates the Muslim Other. In this sense, Acceptable Muslims stand as sentries at the (symbolic) borders of the nation, reanimating the racialized boundaries of acceptability and signaling that those beyond the boundaries can be legitimately policed by the nation-state. The figure of the Acceptable Muslim is central in Canadian debates about multiculturalism, immigration, citizenship and secularism, contestations which often reinforce differential (and racialized) notions of belonging. For the Acceptable Muslim, the price of (conditional) inclusion is fidelity to the ideological goals of the Canadian nation-state. Grounding my analysis in theories of Orientalism, racialization, citizenship and secularism, I examine Canadian media discourses about Muslims over a ten-year period (2005-2014) and outline the key frames through which the Muslim body is represented. I then interrogate the work and media footprint of some key Acceptable Muslims, and consider how such figures reanimate central tenets of the Canadian national imaginary. Through my analysis, I identify two sets of figures, the Secular Muslim and the Multiculturalist Muslim, both of which fall under the Acceptable Muslim archetype. While this dissertation examines Acceptable Muslims in the Canadian context, such figures are also evident internationally, illuminating how the figure of the Acceptable Muslim travels across geographical boundaries and is implicated in the global dynamics of power. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Kastner, Monika | Straus, Sharon | The Development and Usability Evaluation of a Clinical Decision Support Tool for Osteoporosis Disease Management | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-06 | Osteoporosis is a major public health concern, affecting over 200 million people worldwide. There is valid evidence outlining how osteoporosis can be diagnosed and managed, but gaps exist between evidence and practice. Graham’s “Knowledge to Action” (KTA) process for knowledge translation and the Medical Research Council (MRC) framework for complex interventions were used to address these gaps. The first 4 KTA steps were collapsed into 3 phases of the PhD research plan. In PhD Phase 1, a systematic review was conducted to identify tools that facilitate decision making in osteoporosis disease management (DM). Results showed that few DM tools exist, but promising strategies were those that incorporated reminders and education and targeted physicians and patients. PhD Phase 2 used the findings from the systematic review and consultation with clinical and human factors engineering experts to develop a conceptual design of the tool. Multiple components targeted to both physicians and patients at the point of care, and which could be used as a standalone system or modifiable for integration with electronic health record systems were outlined. PhD Phases 3a and 3b were devoted to the assessment of the barriers to knowledge. In Phase 3a, a qualitative study of focus groups was conducted with physicians to identify attitudes and perceived barriers to implementing decision support tools in practice, and to identify the features that should be included in the design. Findings from 4 focus groups combined with aging research, and input from design and information experts were used to transform the conceptual design into a functional prototype. In Phase 3b, each component of the prototype was tested in 3 usability evaluation studies using an iterative, participant-centered approach to assess how well the prototype met end users’ needs. Findings from the usability study informed the final prototype, which is ready for implementation as part of the post PhD plan to fulfill the requirements of the remaining steps of the KTA and MRC frameworks. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Katri, Ido Hadas | Cossman, Brenda | In-between Categories of Law: a Gender Variant Analysis of Anti-discrimination Law and Litigation | Law | 2015-11 | This thesis offers a gender variant perspective on Anti-Discrimination legislation and litigation. Using queer theory, feminist legal theory and critical race theory, this thesis analyzes current debates within the trans movement regarding the use of rights based litigation and the fight for inclusion. I argue that gender variant people’s exclusion from resources and opportunities is inextricably linked, legally and affectively, to gender performance. I will show how performative aspects of the law can be brought forward by applying an “intrasectional” analysis of the protected classes relating to gender variant people within anti-discrimination law and litigation (ADL), and set the stage for the claim that ADL more broadly is intertwined with performativity. Reading the notion of performativity into legal analysis, this thesis suggests the possibility of strategic use of the existing legal rights as an instrument for change. | LL.M. | gender, queer, rights | 5, 16 |
| Kawabata, Makie | Gastaldo, Denise | Social Construction of Health Inequities: A Critical Ethnography on Day Labourers in Japan | Nursing Science | 2009-06 | Although evidence of health inequities abound, why people in lower socio-economic classes have poorer health has not been sufficiently explored. The purpose of this study is to examine day labourers’ pathways to health inequities in a segregated, urban district in Japan. Critical ethnography was employed to investigate day labourers’ social environments and cultural behaviours in order to reveal the ways that social inequalities embedded in mainstream society and the day labourers’ sub-culture produce and sustain day labourers’ disadvantages, leading them into poorer health than the average population. Data were collected through observations of day labourer’s daily activities, events within the district and their interactions with social workers at a hospital. In addition, interviews were conducted with 16 day labourers and 11 professionals and advocates. The study found several components in the pathways to health inequities of day labourers. First, certain people in Japan are ostracized from the social, economic and political mainstream due to an inability to enact traditional Japanese labour practices. Commonly such exclusions make men become day labourers to survive. In a day labourer district, they are exposed to further social inequalities embedded in the work system and their living circumstance. Living and working as a member of the day labour community, they develop collective strategies in order to survive and preserve their social identities as day labourers. However, such strategies do not provide people with opportunities to lead healthy lives. The study also identified several social determinants of health for day labourers, including: 1) employment, 2) working conditions, 3) temporary living, 4) housing quality, 5) social networks and support, 6) marginalized neighbourhood, 7) access to health care, and 8) gender. The findings contribute to a better understanding of social construction of health inequities, which provides insight on the impact of precarious work in the Japanese society at large. Implications of these findings for public health policy and practice are also discussed. | PhD | health, employment, socioeconomic, equitable | 1, 3, 4, 8 |
| Kawabe, Kelly E | Bascia, Nina | Navigating Equity Through Governance: A Case Study of Micropolitical Equity Work Among School Board Trustees | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-06 | ABSTRACT This study explores how trustees utilize their positions to create equitable conditions within a school district. Using a critical conceptual framework informed by policy analysis, I draw conclusions regarding the relationship between trustees’ understanding of equity and how they use power and influence at micro, meso and macro levels to affect policy. First, interviews were conducted with five retired trustees within a school district and with follow-up interviews with personnel identified by the trustees as knowing their work. Second, an analysis of policy statements and school board minutes was undertaken to examine the extent to which trustees’ understanding of equity influenced school board direction and impacted equity outcomes. Third, after all the data were collected, themes were identified for analysis and coding. The resulting thesis examines the way school district leadership functions in regards to equity. Findings indicate that with the reduction of positional power within their role, trustees are utilizing personal influence in order to affect change. This study examines the impact of this power shift in relation to the following areas: trustee and equitable hiring practices; the role of trustees in policy development; and the ability of trustees to act as a representative for their constituents in a racially and culturally diverse school board. As a result of this shift to using influence rather than the authority of their position, equitable outcomes were related to individual trustee longevity in the role, their personal preconceptions and the amount of cultural diversity within the board of trustees. This study also identifies ways in which those who seek organizational change encounter resistance. | Ed.D. | equitable | 4 |
| Kawano, Yumiko | Wane, Njoki | Storytelling of Indigenous and Racialized Women in the Academy in Toronto: Implication for Building Counternarrative Learning Spaces | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2019-06 | Indigenous and racialized women utilize storytelling as a counter-hegemonic practice; a form of resistance in the academy. This research is centered within a graduate program in Social Science and Humanities, where a high volume of intellectual exchange involves sharing personal, cultural and collective experience. For Indigenous and racialized women, however, personal storytelling renders us vulnerable, especially when the stories become subject matter for research conducted within the dominant culture. However, telling our stories is profound because it helps us develop a sense of self-determination and supports cultural recovery. This project braids anti-colonial, anti-racist, and feminist theoretical frameworks. It depends on concepts developed by Indigenous elders, activists and scholars: Indigeneity, Resistance and Responsibility/Reciprocity. These discursive lenses enable me to situate my arguments about the narrative consumption of Indigenous and racialized female students in the Eurocentric academic setting. Primary data was obtained from face to face interviews as well as a group sharing circle. Two of the participants identified as Indigenous women, seven identified as racialized women, two as queer and all as cis-female. Seven of the participants were graduate students at universities in Toronto, and two of them had already graduated at the time of my interviews in 2014. There are three main findings. First, the act of narration itself enabled us to reclaim our holistic self and resist ongoing historical oppression. Second, the consumption of stories belonging to Indigenous and racialized women by white academics are not isolated experiences. Third, there is a need for mentorship essential to student success. Finding a peer support network among cohort members plays an important role in mitigating daily challenges, however, participants strongly emphasized the importance of institutional support and mentorship from faculty to center the notion of reciprocity. Finally, recommendations focus on the resource development available to Indigenous and racialized women to enhance our experience in the graduate program. | Ph.D. | women, queer, inclusive | 4, 5 |
| Kearney, Elaine Katrina | Yunusova, Yana | The Speech Movement Disorder and its Rehabilitation in Parkinson’s Disease Using Augmented Visual Feedback | Rehabilitation Science | 2018-06 | This dissertation comprises three studies that address the goals of better understanding the effects of Parkinson’s disease (PD) on speech movements and the development of a novel rehabilitation approach using augmented visual feedback (AVF) for individuals with an articulatory disorder due to PD. The first study examined jaw and tongue movements during sentence production in PD with respect to speech intelligibility and across different speaking styles, which are often used as intervention approaches (e.g., loud, clear speech). The results revealed consistently smaller jaw movements in individuals with PD relative to a control group. The results further showed that smaller tongue movement size was associated with lower ratings of speech intelligibility. The verbal cues to increase loudness, improve clarity, and reduce speaking rate generally resulted in changes in movement size and speed for both speakers with PD and healthy controls but the extent of change was smaller for the patient as compared to the control group. Using Cochrane-based methods, the second study systematically reviewed the PD literature that pertained to the use of AVF in motor rehabilitation. The findings showed that AVF is an effective tool for motor rehabilitation in PD. Treatment success can be further enhanced by providing large amounts and a high intensity of treatment, gamifying feedback, and providing knowledge of performance feedback in real-time and on 100% of practice trials. Taken together, the results of the first two studies guided the development of a novel therapy aimed at increasing tongue movement size using AVF, which provided visual feedback regarding movement performance, in addition to verbal cues. The final study investigated the effects of this novel therapy on tongue movement size and speech intelligibility in five patients with PD. The results indicated that AVF (+ verbal cue) may be beneficial in training participants to use large speech movements, compared to a verbal cue alone. The treatment effect on intelligibility was, however, not beneficial in 4/5 patients. The optimal extent of articulatory expansion needed to elicit benefits in speech intelligibility requires further investigation. Overall, this body of work furthered our understanding of the speech movement disorder in PD, and laid the groundwork for expanding evidence-based treatment options for this population in the future. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Keatinge, Brenna | Valverde, Mariana | Growing Land, Growing Law: Race, Urban Politics, and the Governance of Vacant Land in Boston from 1950 | Criminology | 2018-11 | Drawing on archival research, document analysis, stakeholder interviews, and ethnographic work, this study takes an historical approach to analyze the governance of vacant land in the era of neoliberal urban governance in Boston. Previous academic and bureaucratic scholarship has established a well-worn narrative about vacant land as a critical urban problem and the importance of municipal interventions to return it to its “highest and best use.” This study investigates the physical production and ideological construction of vacant land located primarily in several historically low income racialized neighbourhoods in Boston, as well as two programmatic fixes designed by the municipality to address it: community gardening in the 1970s, and urban farming beginning around 2010. In this thesis, I contend that the identification of land as vacant is a social and administrative process that signals vacancy as an object of governance constructed alongside ideologies of the “waste” of racialized populations and their spaces. Vacancy extends the power of “blight” used to justify eminent domain takings of racialized neighbourhoods under urban renewal, while simultaneously fitting the conditions of urban development under neoliberalism and seeming, like other tools of urban planning, impartial to race. I argue that constructing vacant land in racialized neighbourhoods as an urban problem actuates particular kinds of neoliberal governance assemblages designed to yield its “highest and best use,” and to govern racialized populations via the rollout of seemingly community-friendly programmatic fixes. By analyzing the role of vacant land in racialized neighbourhoods as a tool used to ensure the productive capacity of land in the capitalist city, this study offers significant insights into the relationship between race and uneven urban development. This study also contributes to knowledge about urban governance by analyzing the workings of an important tool through which the heavy-handed power of the municipality, derided under neoliberalism, is both constructed and justified. | Ph.D. | urban, waste, governance | 11, 12, 16 |
| Keller, Martin | Dylan, Jones | Mitigating Model Error in CO Emission Estimation | Physics | 2014-11 | Atmospheric carbon monoxide (CO) is the product of incomplete combustion as wellas the oxidation of hydrocarbons in the atmosphere. Since it exerts a significant impacton the oxidative capacity of the atmosphere via reaction with the hydroxyl radical (OH),several studies have attempted to quantify CO emissions using a top-down or inversemodeling approach. Recent studies have shown, however, that there are significant uncertaintiesin emissions estimated using this approach, due to the assumption that thechemical transport model used in the inversion is perfect or unbiased.In this thesis, I will study two different approaches to mitigating the impact of modelbiases on estimated CO emissions using the GEOS-Chem inversion system and CO retrievalsfrom the Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) satellite instrument.First, the feasibility of using the weak constraint four-dimensional variational(4D-Var) approach to mitigate the impact of model errors on estimated CO emissions isexamined in detail using synthetic retrievals in a series of controled Observations SystemSimulations Experiments (OSSEs) using synthetic MOPITT CO retrievals as wellas inversion experiments using real MOPITT retrievals.Afterwards, improving the chemical sink by constraining the precursors of OH by assimilatingsatellite retrievals of ozone and NO2 is examined. The influence of estimatedCO emissions to the joint assimilation of retrievals of different trace gases is examined,as well as the additional impact of using different a priori biomass burning emission inventories. The results presented in this thesis provide a detailed study of these two differentmodel error mitigation approaches, and demonstrate the pitfalls as well as the potentialutility of both approaches in estimating and mitigating model errors. In particular, thisthesis contains the first study of weak constraint 4D-Var in the context of chemical sourceinversions. | Ph.D. | pollut | 13 |
| Kelly, Claire Elizabeth | Ryan, James | Women in Canadian Independent School Leadership: Perceptions, Career Patterns, and Possibilities | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11 | Guided by the research question, How do women faculty in independent schools enter and advance to school leadership positions, this exploratory qualitative study sought to understand perceptions of women in independent school leadership in Canada. Giddens’ (1976) structuration theory, focusing on the interplay between organization and individual, informs the conceptual framework and illustrates inherent tensions between structure and agency in this context. Data collection included fifteen participants’ responses to semi-structured interviews and a survey of independent schools. This highlighted the strategies, barriers, and organizational facilitators that shape the trajectory of women’s leadership climb as it moves through critical stages in a climate of post second-generation gender bias. Moreover, this research examines how such forces impact women’s societal, organizational, familial, and individual identities. Findings reveal that women’s leadership in coeducational independent schools remains underrepresented at the highest levels. Women enter leadership later and become concentrated in the middle stages of the climb. This, despite the finding that women’s educational credentials often surpass those of their male counterparts. Women tend to lack the valuable executive and financial experience that hiring boards prioritize. Moreover, the historic culture of many schools has established a paradigm of leadership that has not been an easy fit for women leaders. Compounding these barriers, women’s careers seemed to coincide with child rearing years and domestic duties, leading to the “double shift”, and a reluctance to move for promotion. Strategies for leadership success include early entry into leadership, performance, mentorship and sponsorship, and a belief that self-improvement leads to school improvement. This study addresses implications for practice, policy, and research, with a clarion call for prioritization of equity in executive leadership, the comprehensive development of programming and supports to encourage early interest and greater numbers of women in independent school leadership. Finally, the study shows a need to reshape the paradigm of leadership to become more inclusive, while also challenging societal perceptions of women as leaders. keywords: women’s leadership, independent schools, career patterns, leadership climb, head of school, Canada, CAIS, identity. | Ph.D. | inclusive, women | 4, 5 |
| Kelly, Joseph | Halpern, Rick | Organized for a Fair Deal: African American Railroad Workers in the Deep South, 1900-1940 | History | 2010-06 | This study concerns the organized activity of African American railroad workers in Deep South states such as Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. The study opens with a broad discussion of wage labour as an aspect of the political economy of the Mississippi Delta and the Piney Woods of Mississippi. By establishing wage labour as a vital aspect of the Deep South economy, the opening chapter sets the scene for the main discussion on the activities of African American railroad workers. This study shows that African American railroad workers protested various racial impositions on them, including their exclusion from white dominated craft unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the ongoing push from white railroad trainmen to have them removed from lucrative posts in the train service, as well as railroad employers’ insistence on keeping them as lowly paid substitutes for white labour. They also took good advantage of federal wartime control over the railroads to challenge prejudiced notions of their skills and experience as workers. African American railroaders were persistent fighters for fair employment practices well before the legendary A. Philip Randolph came on the scene. They engaged their employers and white workers in varying ways. African American railroad shopmen did not hesitate to join subordinate locals of the white-dominated craft unions in the AFL. They participated with white shopmen in the important railroad shop strikes of 1911 and 1922. Their counterparts in the train service tended to build independent organisations and used subtle forms of protest such as letters, petitions and legal suits in preference to strike action. Although organized African American trainmen used seemingly unconfrontational approaches to making their grievances heard, the study cautions against the presumption that these organizations were either weak or unassertive. Careful organisation and preparation for a court appearance or filing a petition with an employer such as the Illinois Central, involved a collective will that cannot be pigeonholed within a dichotomy of militancy versus conformity. African American railroad workers resisted their domination and exploitation on railroads in the Deep South by building effective organizations often within the fold of the AFL. Acknowledgements The road toward this dissertation has been a journey that has seen my transformation from a dilettantish South African intellectual to a serious-minded historian of African American labour and social history. This transformation has neither been a huge nor dramatic leap. Thanks to my thesis supervisor Rick Halpern, with his own interest in collaborative research on race and labour in the U.S and South Africa, I have constantly been aware of the spiritual affinity between the struggles of African Americans for democratic freedoms in the U.S and African people’s struggles against racial domination in South Africa. I have gained enormously from the sure guidance of my committee - Rick Halpern, Dan Bender and Michael Wayne. Rick has been the perfect mentor and thesis supervisor. He supported me in finding focus for my ideas and ensured that I maintained meticulous attention to detail and allowed me to pursue my intellectual goals independently. Dan has been there to provide supportive feedback with sharp insights into the various ways I could widen the horizon of the possible uses of sometimes unyielding primary resource material. Michael has alerted me to the necessity of clear and effective writing, and during my time working with him as a teaching assistant, he was a model of eloquence in teaching. I am grateful for the advice and direction I received from other scholars working in the field of Southern labour and social history, including Michael Honey, Laurie Beth Green, Charles W. Crawford and Eric Arnesen. Eric’s pioneering work on race and labour on U.S railroads has provided this study a key point of critical engagement. I wish to acknowledge my intellectual debt to his skilfully-handled work on relations between African American and white workers in the early twentieth century South. Numerous librarians and archivists inevitably had a hand in the completion of this study. At the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library, I’m especially grateful to Jane L. Lynch, resource sharing specialist, for her quiet but ever efficient support. Retired director of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives at Cornell University, Richard Strassberg guided me to the best available material on railroad labour. Richard also spent time chatting and sharing his wide knowledge of the field of U. S labour history. He was on hand to steer me away from too hasty judgements that could have led me down quite unfruitful research paths. Kheel Center staff, reference archivist Patrizia Sione and administrative assistant Melissa Holland gave assistance with a generosity that went beyond the call of duty. Other archivists who provided attentiveness and outstanding service include: Ed Frank, curator at the Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Library; Walter B. Hill of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC; Guy Hall at the South-eastern region office of the National Archives and Records Administration in Morrow, Georgia; and G. Wayne Dowdy at the Shelby County Public Library in Memphis. Various archivists at the Shelby County Archives, Memphis, Tennessee; at the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; and the Mississippi Department of Archives & History in Jackson, Mississippi, also deserve special mention for their responsiveness and enthusiasm to provide support. My debts, even before the outset of research for this project are numerous. Thanks to the University of Toronto for the fellowship funds and the research travel grants that have sustained me throughout my time as a graduate student. The love, care and patience of my partner Darryl Gershater has been indispensable in helping me keep perspective during my early years in Toronto when the environment seemed frosty and alienating. The completion of this dissertation is by no means sufficient or just compensation for her devotion and tireless support, or for the loss of dreams that she has had to set aside while I drilled away at my studies. I am deeply appreciative of the Gershater family, especially Adele, Josh and Lee-Anne. Their friendship and the tenderness of their home have helped me find in Canada a place of belonging and hope. Personal debts that I particularly wish to mention include Peter Alexander and Carolyn O’Reilly in Johannesburg, South Africa, who encouraged me to apply for the PhD programme in History at the University of Toronto. Stephen Greenberg, Stacey Haahjem and Tina Smith, your steady friendship over the distance of oceans has been a vital source of inspiration. I wish also to thank Bill Freund, emeritus professor in Economic History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, for his advice, persisting confidence and long-standing support. I am grateful also to Peter Brock, the late founder of the University of Toronto’s Carmen Brock Fellowship. Though Peter has not seen this project to the end, he always checked on my progress with a warmth and friendship that I always cherish. I wish finally to mention two people who remind me that even strangers in a bitter and estranged world are capable of basic kindliness. Elton Weaver, a PhD graduate in the History Department at Memphis State University, shines out as an example of African American fraternal feeling and openness. Katherine Bowers, a graduate student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, Northwestern University, Chicago, treated me to the friendliest atmosphere I could possibly have expected over the month of my stay in Chicago. To my mother, Doris Kelly, and my brood of siblings, nieces and nephews back in South Africa – you are with me on this excursion into a small part of the past of a people – African Americans – whom I believe do share with you and others back home, a common resource of spirit and optimism in the face of great adversity. | PhD | employment, labour, wage, urban | 8, 11 |
| Kelly, Sharon Ann | Barker, Joshua||McElhinny, Bonnie | Reconstructing Social Housing: The Socio-spatial Effects of Welfare State Transformation in Toronto's Regent Park | Anthropology | 2015-06 | This dissertation charts the socio-spatial impacts of welfare state reform on the landscape of public housing, and the transformation in modes of governance that mark the shift from a welfare state to a more neoliberal regime. Specifically, it explores the processes and implications of socially-mixed public housing redevelopment, and the ways in which urban planning is used as a social fix. Its focus is Toronto's Regent Park, Canada's first and largest government housing project, which is currently undergoing a $1.75 billion overhaul in which the entire 69-acre site will be razed and rebuilt. Regent Park is widely considered to be a mid-century planning project that failed. Its redevelopment, premised upon the planning philosophy of social mix - diversity of income groups and housing tenure - is intended to be a reversal of poor design and residential segregation. The redevelopment is also financially motivated, unrolling against a backdrop of encroaching neoliberal reform.The appeal to a "healthy" community is central to the re-imagined Regent Park. I explore Regent Park's redevelopment as an exercise in community building and as a political-economic project, with a focus on the rhetoric that underlies these motivations, and on the ways in which these interventions have material effects on the built environment, and on the people who live there. This dissertation, then, is an exploration of attempts to ensure physical and social well-being through an engineering of urban space, and the forms of governance made manifest in these attempts. As such, it is also an exploration of the intersection of two political rationalities. In the current moment, private entities are increasingly called upon to provide public services, in tandem with or in lieu of the state. In Regent Park, the ideals of neoliberal city-building sometimes clash with transforming, but still-existing, bureaucratic welfarist institutions. This thesis examines the ways in which discourses of redevelopment are in tension with the operating of the bureaucratic welfare state, and the ways in which social housing residents experience these competing rationalities and contradictions in political agency. | Ph.D. | urban, poverty, governance | 1, 8, 16 |
| Kelly, Theresa | Stermac, Lana | Judgments and Perceptions Of Blame: The Impact Of Benevolent Sexism And Rape Type On Attributions Of Responsibility In Sexual Assault | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2009-06 | Observers’ attributions of culpability in sexual assault cases have been studied in the context of psycholegal variables to explain how they come to their conclusions. Most research has revealed that there are differences between stranger and acquaintance rape, where victims of the latter are more likely to be blamed (Allgeier & Allgeier, 1995; Bridges & McGrail, 1989; Littleton, 2001; Mynatt & Allgeier, 1990; Scronce & Corcoran, 1995; Schuller & Klippenstine, 2004; Tetreault & Barnett, 1987). However, the work has been largely limited to examining rape myth acceptance and gender differences of observers. The present study addressed these limitations. The goals of this study were: (1) to examine judgments of perpetrator responsibility, (2) to examine the relationship between benevolent sexism and victim blame in an acquaintance rape, (3) to examine as to how benevolent sexism influences assailant blame, and (4) to examine differences between males and females on a sexism measure in relation to attribution of blame. This research utilized a community sample. Several groups of measures were utilized, including sexual assault vignettes with a questionnaire that assessed perceptions of sexual assault. Also administered were measures that assessed for social desirability, benevolent sexism, the preference for unequal relationships, and demographics. Two studies were conducted. The first one was a pilot study, which gathered qualitative and descriptive data for a measure designed specifically for this research. Participants (n= 20) reported that the measure was simple to read, understand and complete. The second study (200 participants) focused on the goals outlined and obtained reliability and principal components analysis information. Findings from study 2 revealed no significant differences between men and women in attribution of responsibility. However, assailant-victim relationship, and the presence of alcohol were statistically significant for blame. Although men scored higher on benevolent sexism in general, women obtained high scores when assailant-victim relationship and the presence of alcohol in the scenarios were taken into account. Similar to previous research (Abrams, Viki, Masser, & Bohner, 2003; Viki & Abrams, 2002; Viki, Masser, & Abrams, 2004), benevolent sexism was found to act as a moderator. Implications from results from this study were also discussed. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Kemp, Kyle | Edward, Sargent | Nanoscale Interfaces in Colloidal Quantum Dot Solar Cells: Physical Insights and Materials Engineering Strategies | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2014-06 | With growing global energy demand there will be an increased need for sources of renewable energy such as solar cells. To make these photovoltaic technologies more competitive with conventional energy sources such as coal and natural gas requires further reduction in manufacturing costs that can be realized by solution processing and roll-to-roll printing. Colloidal quantum dots are a bandgap tunable, solution processible, semiconductor material which may offer a path forward to efficient, inexpensive photovoltaics. Despite impressive progress in performance with these materials, there remain limitations in photocarrier collection that must be overcome. This dissertation focuses on the characterization of charge recombination and transport in colloidal quantum dot photovoltaics, and the application of this knowledge to the development of new and better materials. Core-shell, PbS-CdS, quantum dots were investigated in an attempt to achieve better surface passivation and reduce electronic defects which can limit performance. Optimization of this material led to improved open circuit voltage, exceeding 0.6 V for the first time, and record published performance of 6% efficiency. Using temperature-dependent and transient photovoltage measurements we explored the significance of interface recombination on the operation of these devices. Careful engineering of the electrode using atomic layer deposition of ZnO helped lead to better TiO2 substrate materials and allowed us to realize a nearly two-fold reduction in recombination rate and an enhancement upwards of 50 mV in open circuit voltage. Carrier extraction efficiency was studied in these devices using intensity dependent current-voltage data of an operational solar cell. By developing an analytical model to describe recombination loss within the active layer of the device we were able to accurately determine transport lengths ranging up to 90 nm. Transient absorption and photoconductivity techniques were used to study charge dynamics by identifying states in these quantum dot materials which facilitate carrier transport. Thermal activation energies for transport of 60 meV or lower were measured for different PbS quantum dot bandgaps, representing a relatively small barrier for carrier transport. From these measurements a dark, quantum confined energy level was attributed to the electronic bandedge of these materials which serves to govern their optoelectronic behavior. | PhD | energy, renewable, solar | 7 |
| Kempf, Arlo | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | The Production of Racial Logic In Cuban Education: An Anti-colonial Approach | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-11 | This work brings an anti-colonial reading to the production and maintenance of racial logic in Cuban schooling, through conversations with, and surveys of Cuban teachers, as well as through analysis of secondary and primary documents. The study undertaken seeks to contribute to the limited existent research on race relations in Cuba, with a research focus on the Cuban educational context. Teasing and staking out a middle ground between the blinding and often hollow pro-Cuba fanaticism and the deafening anti -Cuban rhetoric from the left and right respectively, this project seeks a more nuanced, complete and dialogical understanding of race and race relations in Cuba, with a specific focus on the educational context. With this in mind, the learning objectives of this study are to investigate the following: 1) What role does racism play in Cuba currently and historically? 2) What is the role of education in the life of race and racism on the island? 3) What new questions and insights emerge from the Cuban example that might be of use to integrated anti-racism, anti-colonialism and class-oriented scholarship and activism? On a more specific level, the guiding research objectives of the study are to investigate the following: 1) How do teachers support and/or challenge dominant ideas of race and racism, and to what degree to do they construct their own meanings on these topics? 2) How do teachers understand the relevance of race and racism for teaching and learning? 3) How and why do teachers address race and racism in the classroom? The data reveal a complex process of meaning making by teachers who are at once produced by and producers of dominant race discourse on the island. Teachers are the front line race workers of the racial project, doing much of the heavy lifting in the ongoing struggle against racism, but are at the same time custodians of an approach to race relations which has on the whole failed to eliminate racism. This work investigates and explicates this apparent contradiction inherent in teachers’ work and discourse on the island, revealing a flawed and complex form of Cuban anti-racism. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Kendzerska, Tetyana | Tomlinson, George | A Risk Stratification Model for Adult Patients with Obstructive Sleep Apnea: Development and Evaluation | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-06 | Despite emerging evidence that obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may cause cardio-metabolic disturbances independently of known risk factors, the strength and significance of this association remains unclear. This thesis is comprised of three studies assessing the long term-consequences of OSA, and specifically the prognostic value of OSA-related variables for cardiovascular (CV) events, all-cause mortality and incident diabetes. Methods: The first study is a systematic review of longitudinal studies, from 1999 to 2011. Quality was assessed using published guidelines. Studies two and three linked a clinical sleep database to Ontario health administrative databases for the period of 1991 to 2011 to examine the relationship between OSA variables and a composite CV outcome and incident diabetes. For the latter, we assembled a cohort free of diabetes at baseline, as defined by health administrative data. Cox regression models were used to investigate the association between of OSA-related predictors and outcomes of interest, controlling for potential confounders. Study one identified significant relationships between OSA and all-cause mortality and composite CV outcome in men; associations with other outcomes remain uncertain. Among OSA-related variables, only apnea-hypopnea index (AHI) was a consistent predictor. Limitations of the clinically-based studies were small numbers of events, weak definitions of outcomes, and inconsistency in polysomnographic scoring criteria over time. Study two found that 1,172 (11.5%) of 10,149 participants experienced our composite CV event over a median follow-up of 68 months. In a fully adjusted model, the following OSA-related variables were significant independent predictors: time spent with oxygen saturation (SaO2) < 90%, sleep time, awakenings, periodic leg movements, heart rate, and presence of daytime sleepiness. In study three, of 8,678 cohort participants without diabetes at baseline, 1,017 (11.7%) developed incident diabetes over a median follow-up of 67 months. In fully-adjusted models, patients with AHI > 30 had a 30% higher hazard of developing diabetes than those with AHI < 5. Among other OSA-related variables, REM-AHI, and SaO2<90%, heart rate and neck circumference were associated with incident diabetes. Conclusions: Based on these studies, we demonstrated that OSA-related predictors significantly and independently contribute to the risk for occurrence of composite CV outcome and incidence diabetes. | PhD | health, urban | 3, 11 |
| Kennedy, Liam | Kruttschnitt, Candace | 'Reflections From Exile': Exploring Prisoner Writings at the Louisiana State Penitentiary | Sociology | 2015-06 | Research investigating life inside U.S. prisons is on the decline at the precise time when it is arguably most desperately needed. And absent from much of the work that has been done is a consideration of how incarcerated men and women actually cope with, conceive of, and experience their imprisonment. Undertaking the case study of the Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola), I analyze over two decades worth of prisoners' writings contained in The Angolite prison newsmagazine in order to further our understanding of the daily lived experiences of incarcerated individuals during the era of mass imprisonment. First, I examine how the correctional instability that characterized the last several decades of the twentieth century played out on-the-ground at Angola, as well as how penological changes shaped the conditions of confinement and impacted prisoners' lives. Next, I explore in-depth one factor with the potential to influence a prisoner's life behind bars: masculinities. Specifically, I investigate how prisoners navigate the hypermasculine prison code in addition to how they conceptualize manhood. And in the third paper I dig deeper into Angola's plantation past. That is, I analyze how administrators narrate the history of the prison to tourists and outsiders as well as if and how the collective memories of slavery and the Jim Crow era inform prisoners' ideas about their incarceration today. Overall, this project actively strives to highlight prisoners' humanity and complexity, document the nuances of prisoners' carceral experiences, and demonstrate the value of incorporating prisoners' knowledges into academic debates. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Kennedy, Stefanie Dawn | Newton, Melanie J | 'Remembered in the Body': Disability and Slavery in England and the Caribbean 1500-1834 | History | 2015-11 | This dissertation explores the constitutive relationship between disability, anti-black racism, and slavery in the English Atlantic World, from the early stages of colonization to the abolition of the slavery in 1834. It argues that Atlantic slavery, specifically the sugar- producing colonies of the English Caribbean, were key to the development of modern understandings of disability and the disabled body. It was in the specific historical context of the establishment of Englandâ s American colonies, the introduction of sugar to the European economy, and the rapid expansion of the slave trade that the English began increasingly to argue that blackness was an inheritable and racial form of monstrosity. This argument eventually served to normalize and mute opposition to African dispossession in the English Atlantic World. Plantation slavery in the English Caribbean was a disabling system of human exploitation and degradation. The processes of capture, forced march, imprisonment, and forced migration that characterized the slave trade, together with the hostile labour and living conditions of Caribbean sugar plantations, often resulted in emotional, psychological, sensory, and physical impairment. The slave laws of the English Atlantic World deliberately constructed the enslaved as both human and animal, and yet not fully either. By not resolving this tension between the human and the animal, lawmakers and slaveowners could recognize the humanity of the enslaved but effectively disable it by treating the enslaved like animals. The very real spectre of revolutionary emancipation in the eighteenth-century Atlantic World is key to understanding the place of disability in both anti- and pro-slavery rhetoric. Abolitionist representations of the supplicant, disabled bondsperson contrasted with whitesâ fear of the threatening, able-bodied, armed, black male revolutionary and anti-slavery rebel. These two images embodied different paths to emancipation â the choice between revolutionary and armed rebellion on the one hand, exemplified by the Haitian Revolution, and emancipation as a process of imperial and legislated reform on the other. This thesis attempts to retrieve a history of disability in the colonial Caribbean from the archive of English Atlantic slavery and demonstrate that concepts of monstrosity, race, disability, and enslaveability were inextricably linked during the colonial period. | Ph.D. | labour | 8 |
| Kepkiewicz, Lauren | Wakefield, Sarah | Unsettling food sovereignty in Canada: Settler roles and responsibilities; tensions and (im)possibilities | Geography | 2018-06 | Critical Indigenous food sovereignty activists and scholars have called settler food sovereignty movements to complicate our understandings of food and food systems in so-called Canada (Coté, 2016; Morrison, 2011; Manson, 2015). These calls include requests for settlers to rethink interrelationships between land, food, colonialism, and Indigenous sovereignty. Learning from these calls for change, I examine whether and how settler food activists are responding. I do so through a series of five independent papers framed by an introduction and conclusion, which make up this dissertation as a whole. First I outline the methodological and theoretical frameworks and implications of this dissertation. Next, I outline three main themes that arose from the interviews and participant observation I conducted. First, interviewees emphasized that settler food activists need to self-educate about Canadian colonialism and Indigenous struggles for land. Second, interviewees talked about settler food activists’ visions for future food systems that perpetuate colonial food systems. Third, interviewees highlighted the importance of changing settler food activists’ relationships to land, including returning land to Indigenous nations. Based on interviewees’ experiences and insights, I argue that settler food sovereignty movements have not adequately responded to Indigenous critiques and requests and that, through this lack of response, settler food sovereignty movements reify colonial logics. At the same time, interviewees’ experiences also demonstrate that a small number of settlers have begun to engage with Indigenous critiques around Canadian food sovereignty narratives and praxis, and through this engagement are working to support Indigenous food sovereignty. Lastly, I argue that if food sovereignty is a movement rooted in addressing systemic inequities, it cannot be achieved without radically transforming Indigenous-settler relations. It is therefore essential that settler activists are aware of whether and how we are responding to Indigenous calls for change and what work still lies ahead in order to support Indigenous resurgence. | Ph.D. | food | 2 |
| Kerckhove, Derrick Tupper de | Abrams, Peter ||Shuter, Brian | The Spatial Ecology of Predator-prey Relationships in Lakes | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2014-06 | The pelagic zone of lakes is defined as the water column over the area of the lake benthos that does not receive enough light from the sun to allow macrophytes to grow. The four chapters of this thesis explore the spatial ecology of predator-prey interactions between schooling fish and their fish predators in this featureless environment. We first developed novel hydroacoustics methods to study fish and fish school swimming behaviour in the pelagic zone (Chapter 1 and 2). Then we characterized our in-situ school formation and prey movement observations using an ideal gas model to better understand the mechanisms that lead to fish and school densities during the daytime (Chapter 2 and 3). With this model we estimated the functional relationship between the schooling prey densities and predator encounter rates, and verified with empirical data a counterintuitive relationship that encounter rates decreased as overall prey densities increased (Chapter 3). The encounter rates suggested that predation within the pelagic zone might be greatly influenced by external forces if they provide spatial structure which encourages greater degrees of prey aggregation in predictable locations. In this regard we examined the predator-prey dynamics under wind and found large redistributions of prey and predators under windy conditions leading to greater aggregations in downwind locations. Further, we found that our study fish were larger in lakes that were oriented into the wind, perhaps demonstrating a benefit to fish growth under windy conditions (Chapter 4). | PhD | water, fish, ecology | 14 |
| Kerr, Lindsay Anne | Muzzin, Linda | The Educational Production of Students at Risk | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | Informed by institutional ethnography, and taking the problematic from disjunctures in teacher/participants’ experience between actual practice and official policy, this study is an intertextual analysis of print/electronic documents pertaining to students ‘at risk.’ It unpacks the Student Success Strategy in Ontario secondary schools as organized around discourses on risk and safety. Discriminatory classing and racializing processes construct students ‘at risk’ in ways that reproduce socio-economic inequities through premature streaming into pathways geared to post-secondary destinations: university, college, apprenticeship and work. This study questions the accounting logic that reduces education to skills training in workplace literacy/numeracy, and contradicts the official ‘success’ story that promotes Ontario as a model of large-scale educational change. The follow-up intertextual analyses reveal ideological circles that promote ‘evidence-based research’ and ‘evidence-informed practice,’ while actually gearing education to improving ‘results’ on large-scale standardized tests and manufacturing consent for government policies. Questions arise about the lack of transparency and selective use of educational research. A web of behind-the-scenes activities are made visible at public policy think-tanks (e.g. Canadian Council on Learning; Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network), and two little-researched bodies in educational governance — the Council of Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC) and OECD. Although invisible to teachers, the infrastructure for the Student Success Strategy is the Ontario School Information System (OnSIS); this web-enabled data-management technology has built-in capacity to profile students ‘at risk’ and to instigate accountability and surveillance over teachers’ work, with implications for re-regulating teaching practice towards test scores and aggregate statistics. With the intention of transforming education towards genuine equity, and linking the re-organization of social relations in large-scale reform locally, nationally and globally, this study contributes to critical scholarship on the effects of reform policies on people’s lives and extends knowledge of how translocal text-mediated ruling relations operate in education. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Kesarchuk, Olga | Handley, Antoinette | Policy Choices of the Post-Soviet States Regarding Foreign Direct Investment in the Key Sectors of their Economies: the Experience of Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine | Political Science | 2015-11 | Why did some post-Soviet states open up their key economic sectors to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) while others did not? This dissertation argues that the levels of FDI were a result of conscious policy choices rather than ability or inability of the post-Soviet states to create positive investment climate. It explains why Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine made different policy choices regarding FDI into their oil and gas, and metallurgy and mining sectors despite similar sectoral composition of their economies and common past as part of the Soviet Union. I argue that these policy choices were political. The state officials made their policy choices under the influence of two main factors. The first factor was whether or not they believed they could develop a sector exclusively through the use of national resources, with the help of domestic state and private actors. The state of the sector's development during the Soviet era heavily influenced this perception. After the collapse of the USSR, all sectors across all republics needed capital and technologies to maintain production, yet needed them to a different extent. The second factor influencing FDI policy choices was the strategy of power maintenance that political regimes chose and, more specifically, the different political roles they ascribed to different sectors. Sectors with their assets became highly material forms of power that were used by the regimes toward attainment of these three goals. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Khaira, Rupinder | Dietsche, Peter | Characteristics, Engagement and Academic Performance of First-year Nursing Students in Selected Ontario Universities | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | With an aging population nationally, nursing programs have struggled to meet the demand for nurses in our healthcare system. Student attrition remains high at 28% within the first two years of the Baccalaureate nursing programs. In order to meet healthcare system demand, nursing programs need to ensure that students persist, graduate, and are academically successful on the national examination. As a first step in student success, one needs to identify effective educational practices in first-year nursing programs that are associated with student engagement within the Canadian context. Extensive research in the U.S. has examined educational practices and student engagement. However, few national or international studies examined nursing student characteristics and engagement and student success. This study examined the extent to which first-year nursing students are engaged in effective educational practices and any relationships between student demographic, external, academic, social, and institutional variables, and student engagement. A descriptive correlational design was used to conduct a secondary analysis of pre-existing 2008 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) data from nursing students in 13 Ontario Universities. Descriptive statistics were computed to examine student characteristics and the distribution of NSSE benchmark scores. Step-wise multiple regression analysis was used to identify relationships between predictor variables and student engagement and academic performance (grade point average). The results identified several significant predictors of first-year nursing student engagement including age, ethnicity, hours spent preparing for class per week, grade point average, hours per week spent participating in cocurricular activities, participating in physical fitness activities, and institutional size. Being a first-generation student and age were significant predictors of academic performance for first-year nursing students. The findings provide insight into some of the drivers of engagement in first-year nursing education and may also inform policy and practice for improving nursing student engagement and, ultimately, graduation rates. | Ph.D. | health, institution | 3, 16 |
| Khambalia, Amina | Zlotkin, Stanley H. | Periconceptional Iron Supplementation and Iron and Folate Status among Pregnant and Non-pregnant Women in Rural Bangladesh | Nutritional Sciences | 2009-06 | In 2007, Bangladesh’s national strategy to reduce anemia included adolescents and newly married women as target groups for iron and folic acid (IFA) supplementation. This thesis is comprised of a pilot study and a double-blinded randomized controlled trial (RCT) aimed at providing evidence-based research to inform decision-making on periconceptional IFA programs in rural Bangladesh. Results from the pilot study indicate that women who marry during adolescence had significantly longer intervals to first pregnancy compared to adult brides; however, the time interval was not long enough to delay family formation beyond adolescence. Education, age at marriage and contraceptive use were significant factors for delaying time to first pregnancy. The RCT examined the effect of daily periconceptional iron (60 mg) and folic acid (400 μg) vs. folic acid (FA) on iron and folate indictors. Of 272 women, 37% were anemic (Hb <120 g/L), 13% had low plasma folate levels (≤10 nmol), 15% were iron deficient (plasma ferritin <12 μg/L or TfR>4.4 mg/L), 11% were iron deficient and anemic and 81% were estimated to have <500 mg of iron stores. Adolescents had significantly lower plasma ferritin and body iron stores vs. adults. Among 88 pregnant women (PW), an interaction between treatment and adherence was significantly associated with change in Hb (p=0.04) and anemia (p=0.05). During pregnancy, group differences for iron status were not significant. Among NPW (n=146), IFA reduced anemia by 80.0% (95% CI: 0.04, 1.00, p=0.05) and significantly improved change in plasma ferritin concentrations by level of adherence in a dose-response relationship (p=0.01). In both groups, mean plasma folate concentrations increased from 16.9 to31.8 nmol/L and the prevalence of low plasma folate concentrations (<10 nmol/L) was reduced from 14% to 8%. Results suggest that periconceptional iron supplementation along with adequate folic acid intake is efficacious in reducing the prevalence of anemia during pregnancy and improving body iron stores before pregnancy when adherence is high. The effectiveness of periconceptional IFA supplementation remains unclear. Further research needs to examine maternal and infant functional and health outcomes, ways to increase adherence and cost-effectiveness. | PhD | women, rural | 5, 11 |
| Khan, Muhammad Shahid | Iravani, Mohammad Reza | Supervisory Hybrid Control of a Wind Energy Conversion and Battery Storage System | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2008-06 | This thesis presents a supervisory hybrid controller for the automatic operation and control of a wind energy conversion and battery storage system. The supervisory hybrid control scheme is based on a radically different approach of modeling and control design, proposed for the subject wind energy conversion and battery storage system. The wind energy conversion unit is composed of a 360kW horizontal axis wind turbine mechanically coupled to an induction generator through a gearbox. The assembly is electrically interfaced to the dc bus through a thyristor-controlled rectifier to enable variable speed operation of the unit. Static capacitor banks have been used to meet reactive power requirements of the unit. A battery storage device is connected to the dc bus through a dc-dc converter to support operation of the wind energy conversion unit during islanded conditions. Islanding is assumed to occur when the tiebreaker to the utility feeder is in open position. The wind energy conversion unit and battery storage system is interfaced to the utility grid at the point of common coupling through a 25km long, 13.8kV feeder using a voltage-sourced converter unit. A bank of static (constant impedance) and dynamic (induction motor) loads is connected to the point of common coupling through a step down transformer. A finite hybrid-automata based model of the wind energy conversion and storage system has been proposed that captures the different operating regimes of the system during grid-connected and in islanded operating modes. The hybrid model of the subject system defines allowable operating states and predefines the transition paths between these operating states. A modular control design approach has been adapted in which the wind energy conversion and storage system has been partitioned along the dc bus into three independent system modules. Traditional control schemes using linear proportional-plus-integral compensators have been used for each system module with suitable modifications where necessary in order to achieve the required steady state and transient performance objectives. A supervisory control layer has been used to combine and configure control schemes of the three system modules to suite the requirements of system operation during any one operating state depicted by the hybrid model of the system. Transition management strategies have been devised and implemented through the supervisory control layer to ensure smooth inter-state transitions and bumpless switching among controllers. It has been concluded based on frequency domain linear analysis and time domain electromagnetic transient simulations that the proposed supervisory hybrid controller is capable of operating the wind energy conversion and storage system in both grid-connected and in islanded modes under changing operating conditions including temporary faults on the utility grid. | PhD | energy, wind | 7 |
| Khan, Ranya | Gagne, Antoinette | Meeting the Needs of English Language Learners with Interruptions in their Formal Schooling: A Comparative Case Study of Two Teachers' Classrooms | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-06 | An increasing number of newcomer English language learners (ELLs) in Canadian high schools are from refugee backgrounds, have a history of interrupted formal schooling (IFS), and do not have alphabetic and numerical literacy skills in their first language (MacKay & Tavares, 2005; Yau, 1995). While ELLs with IFS pose challenges for Canadian high schools and teachers, the struggles faced by these learners to integrate and succeed in their new educational environments are far more complex. This study aimed to gain insight into how two teachers are attempting to support the academic, linguistic and social integration of ELLs with IFS. Through classroom observations, interviews and document analysis, I examined the envisioned, enacted and experienced stages of two Manitoba high school programs that were created specifically for ELLs from refugee backgrounds who have disrupted or limited formal schooling and are at high risk of academic failure. The findings from this study revealed how teacher agency and divisional as well as administrative input significantly alter current and future learning opportunities for ELLs with IFS. The unique circumstances of each school’s Intensive Newcomer Support classrooms, i.e. student population, support services, teaching practices and administrative decisions, were found to impact the design and delivery of each school’s program and thus the experiences of the students. This study identifies how two teachers in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, attempted to provide a meaningful and relevant education for their ELL with IFS students. It is the researcher’s hope and intent that this study will inform educational policy, teacher education and educational development initiatives both in Canada and in the various international contexts that serve refugees. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Khan, Salaha | Watson, Jeanne | The Process of Crafting an Authentic Identity in the Context of Immigration to Canada: The Muslim Experience | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-11 | This study looked at the experience of religion and the formation of a contemporary ethnoreligious identity in the lives of first generation Pakistani Muslim immigrant men and women who have been residents of Canada for five to ten years. The present research explored the life experiences of Muslim immigrants from Pakistan who immigrated to Canada with their immediate families and resolved the ensuing cultural dislocation. In order to understand the subjective meanings of immigrants’ lived experiences in Canada, the present study used a Grounded Theory framework. The analysis of data revealed a four stage theory of Muslim identity formation. Those stages describe the step-by-step process that highlights immigrants’ experience of culture shock, resolution of culture shock through immigrants’ reaffirmation of their religion that lays the groundwork for an authentic identity through differentiation of self from their country of origin, and formation of an authentic Muslim identity in the host society. It is proposed that the resolution of culture shock and the creation of a post-immigration identity mirrors the developmental process of Differentiation of Self and Other as outlined by Watson (2011) in her process model of becoming a self-governing person. Using their faith as a key resource to cope, these immigrants achieve a renewed sense of self and a revitalized faith. Immigrants come to an enhanced appreciation of Islam as the best system of life for themselves. An improved relationship with faith enhances immigrants’ awareness about the actual philosophy of its system and helps immigrants internalize the desirable Muslim character traits which focus on altruism, modesty, tolerance, fairness, forgiveness, and inclusion. Internalizing the pro social values of Islam brings about a fundamental shift in these immigrants’ perspectives about self and the host society. They successfully differentiate themselves from their country of origin to thrive in their adopted country. Canada provides them a conducive context which helps them access their positive potential in becoming their ideal self, the true Muslims. They come to an increased appreciation of the new society and accept it as their new home, thus form a new identity that speaks for the authentic version of Islam. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Khanolkar, Prasad | Goonewardena, Kanishka||Rankin, Katharine | Slums as Urban Constellations: Tales from Toba Tek Nagar, Mumbai | Geography | 2016-09 | Three hegemonic phenomena dictate the fate of slums in contemporary Mumbai, India. First, the teleological statement: “Mumbai is to be Slum Free.” This ubiquitous proclamation denounces the possibility that the practices through which slum-residents build urban habitats can help rethink urban planning, and in doing so, relegates slums to the realm of “non-planning.” Second, the dominance of neoliberal slum policies, which reify localities built by residents over years into lands with a “developmental value” and alienate residents from their memories, desires, and the sociality embedded in the built environment. And third, the utilitarian impulse of urban development, which uses planning as instrumental means to achieve specific ends. This instrumentality can be traced back to colonialism, during which the ideologies of industrious reason and utilitarianism played a key role in the capitalist transformation of colonized lands. This relationship between means and ends, normalized today, legitimizes the will and the power to “improve” the world of “others” in the names of planning, development, and progress. This dissertation is a response to these three hegemonic phenomena. It uses the concepts of mimesis, excess, and aesthetics to present ethnographic stories about four objects—idle time, films, toilets, and waste, located in the quasi-fictitious Muslim-dominated slum of Toba Tek Nagar. These stories explore four interrelated themes: Chapter One highlights how everyday storytelling, while idling in public spaces, is significant to confronting urban violence and slum planning; Chapter Two describes how rundown video-theaters and locally produced crime-shows become spatial and virtual mediums for residents to construct imaginary worlds in a melancholic context; Chapter Three explores the subject-positions and practices through which residents navigate the world of neoliberal developmental programs in order to build community toilets in their localities; and Chapter Four documents how the ongoing modernization of Mumbai’s waste-management system encloses and divides the common spaces of waste collection and recycling, and its varied impacts on waste pickers. Each story provides a thick description of the daily life and politics that constitute these objects, and contextualizes them within Mumbai’s history. The conclusion draws on the ethnographic insights to conceptualize planning as a form of “commoning.” | Ph.D. | industr, urban, waste | 9, 11, 12 |
| Kharal, Zahra | Sheikh, Shamim A | Towards Understanding the Seismic Behaviour of GFRP Confined Concrete Columns | Civil Engineering | 2019-06 | Conventional steel reinforced concrete (RC) structures are prone to corrosion, resulting in billions of dollars in damages globally annually. The use of glass-fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) bars as internal reinforcement is a pre-emptive measure, which offers a feasible and cost-effective solution to building lasting sustainable infrastructure. Despite the many advantages of GFRP, design codes do not recommend its usage in columns primarily due to the lack of test data, especially under seismic loading. This study was undertaken to understand the seismic behaviour of concrete columns confined by GFRP transverse reinforcement. In the experimental program of this study, sixteen square columns with 305x305 mm cross-section and 1470 mm length were constructed and tested under simulated earthquake loading. Fourteen columns were reinforced with GFRP ties and steel longitudinal bars, while two columns contained GFRP ties and GFRP longitudinal bars. The results, in the form of shear vs. tip deflection and moment vs. curvature hysteresis, showed that GFRP ties can significantly enhance the seismic performance of RC columns. Test results also revealed that if appropriate confinement is provided, columns confined by GFRP ties have flexural strength, energy dissipation capacity, ductility and deformability level comparable to steel-RC columns and thus can be used effectively as primary lateral reinforcement. In the analytical phase of the study, an extensive database of FRP confined columns tested under concentric axial compression was compiled. The applicability of various existing confinement models towards the test data was investigated in detail. A new constitutive stress-strain relationship for FRP confined columns was proposed which captured the behaviour considerably better than the available models. A computation program was developed, utilizing the proposed confinement model, to conduct nonlinear analysis of GFRP confined columns subjected to simulated seismic loading. The program predicted the shear vs. tip deflection and moment vs. curvature envelope curves, and the ductility parameters with reasonable accuracy. Lastly, a critical evaluation of seismic design provisions for FRP confinement in CSA-S806 (2012) was carried out. The code provisions were found to be ambiguous and lacking in several aspects. Based on the available test results, modifications to the current code were suggested. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Khazabi, Mustafa | Sain, Mohini | Investigation of Biopolyol Spray Foam Insulation Modified with Natural Fibers | Forestry | 2015-06 | Rigid spray foam insulation is widely used as wall insulation in construction industry. Replacing synthetic polyether and polyester polyols with bio-based polyol and using water as blowing agent, would provide eco-friendly spray foam which is good for the environment and make buildings a safer place to live. The objectives of this work were to produce sustainable spray polyurethane foam insulation from soy-based polyol, derived from agricultural product and enhance its properties by incorporation of wood and cellulose fibers, a consumer forest product. The composite foam systems and the neat foam prepared in this manner were evaluated in terms of their thermo-mechanical properties, morphological characterization, and also their resistance contribution to overall structural integrity of the buildings against natural shear forces. Wood fiber and cellulose fiber were incorporated as reinforcement in foaming in three stages, 13php, 26php, and 40php. The fiber size, dispersion and concentration within the matrix affected the reinforcing quality. The interactions and the effects of fiber in composite foams were observed at cellular level by Fourier transform infrared and scanning electron microscopy to evaluate their performances. The results indicated incorporation of fiber had an impact on the cell morphology of the composite foam system as compared to the non-fiber foam. The cell structure became more uniform while cell density was increased proportionate to the fiber concentration. Resin found to be compatible with fiber at interfaces but, the viscosity of matrix polymer increased with addition of fiber. The viscosity increase was 20% under 26php fiber concentration. The thermo-mechanical properties of the composite foam systems were improved to some extent at lower fiber concentration, under 26php, due to less impact of viscosity. Cellulose fiber performed better as reinforcement than that of wood fiber due to superior compatibility, higher strength and better fiber quality. | Ph.D. | water, industr, consum, environment | 6, 9, 12, 13 |
| Kheibari, Mohsen Soleimani | Winnik, Mitchell A. | Film Formation of Water-borne Polymer Dispersion: Designed Polymer Diffusion for High Performance Low VOC Emission Coatings | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2012-06 | In this thesis, I describe experiments that were designed to provide a better understanding of polymer diffusion during latex film formation. This step leads to the improvement of film mechanical properties. Polymer diffusion in these films was monitored by fluorescence resonance energy transfer. Current paint formulations contain Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) as plasticizers to facilitate polymer diffusion. The drawback of this technology is the release of VOCs to the atmosphere. VOCs are deleterious to the environment and contribute to smog and ground level ozone formation. The propensity of water, an indispensible part of any latex dispersion, to promote polymer diffusion was studied. Copolymers of poly (butyl acrylate-co-methyl methacrylate) and poly(ethylhexyl acrylate-co-tertiary butyl methacrylate) with similar glass transition temperatures but different hydrophobicity were compared. Polymer diffusion was monitored for films aged at different relative humidities. Water absorbed by the hydrophobic copolymer film was less efficient in promoting polymer diffusion than in the hydrophilic polymer. Only the fraction of water which is molecularly dissolved in the film participate actively in plasticization. Although water has low solubility in most latex polymers, molecularly dissolved water is more efficient than many traditional plasticizers. The possibility of modifying film formation behavior of acrylic dispersions with oligomers was studied by synthesizing hybrid polymer particles consisting of a high molecular weigh (high-M) polymer and an oligomer with the same composition. Oligomers with lower molecular weight are more efficient as diffusion promoters and have less deleterious effect on high-M polymer viscosity. A different set of hybrid particles were prepared in which the oligomer contained methacrylic acid units. The composition of the oligomer was tuned to be miscible with the high-M polymer when the acid groups were protonated but to phase separate when the acid groups were deprotonated. At basic pH, these particles adopt a core-shell morphology, with a shell rich in neutralized oligomers. After film formation, the oligomer shell retarded polymer diffusion. This retardation is expected to expand the time window during which the paint surface can be altered without leaving brush marks (open time). Short open time is a pressing problem in current technology. | PhD | water, energy, environment | 6, 7, 13 |
| Khosravi, Shahriar | Zingg, David W | High-fidelity Aerostructural Optimization of Nonplanar Wings for Commercial Transport Aircraft | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2016-11 | Although the aerospace sector is currently responsible for a relatively small portion of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, the growth of the airline industry raises serious concerns about the future of commercial aviation. As a result, the development of new aircraft design concepts with the potential to improve fuel efficiency remains an important priority. Numerical optimization based on high-fidelity physics has become an increasingly attractive tool over the past fifteen years in the search for environmentally friendly aircraft designs that reduce fuel consumption. This approach is able to discover novel design concepts and features that may never be considered without optimization. This can help reduce the economic costs and risks associated with developing new aircraft concepts by providing a more realistic assessment early in the design process. This thesis provides an assessment of the potential efficiency improvements obtained from nonplanar wings through the application of fully coupled high-fidelity aerostructural optimization. In this work, we conduct aerostructural optimization using the Euler equations to model the flow along with a viscous drag estimate based on the surface area. A major focus of the thesis is on finding the optimal shape and performance benefits of nonplanar wingtip devices. Two winglet configurations are considered: winglet-up and winglet-down. These are compared to optimized planar wings of the same projected span in order to quantify the possible drag reductions offered by winglets. In addition, the drooped wing is studied in the context of exploratory optimization. The main results show that the winglet-down configuration is the most efficient winglet shape, reducing the drag by approximately 2% at the same weight in comparison to a planar wing. There are two reasons for the superior performance of this design. First, this configuration moves the tip vortex further away from the wing. Second, the winglet-down concept has a higher projected span at the deflected state due to the structural deflections. Finally, the exploratory optimization studies lead to a drooped wing with the potential to increase range by 4.9% relative to a planar wing. | Ph.D. | industr, greenhouse gas, environment | 9, 13 |
| Kia, Hannah | Ross, Lori E. | Subjugation and Resistance in Older Gay Men's Health Care Experiences | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-06 | The scholarship on aging among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) adults has, in recent years, experienced unprecedented growth. Despite this emerging body of literature, research on older gay men’s health care experiences remains limited. This qualitative study, which is framed theoretically by Foucauldian governmentality and intersectionality, and informed methodologically by a poststructuralist approach to grounded theory known as situational analysis, attempts to address this gap in the literature. Specifically, drawing on interviews with 27 Toronto-based gay men ages 50 and over, 16 of whom reported being HIV-positive at the time of recruitment, the study offers insight on the health care experiences of older gay men. More specifically, the study highlights processes of subjugation and resistance reflected in the accounts of the participants. Chapter 1 provides a critical review of the literature, highlights the role of Foucauldian governmentality and intersectionality in situating the study theoretically, and outlines the study’s research design. Chapter 2 contains an overview of the study’s key findings, which specifically delineate how sociohistorically significant discursive forces rooted in homophobia and HIV stigma, older gay men’s interpretations of medical practices, as well as institutional constructions of gay aging bodies, together reflect the role of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in shaping older gay men’s subjugation and resistance across health settings. Drawing on the study’s insights, and the centrality of Foucauldian governmentality in supporting the conceptualization of these findings, chapter 3 examines the utility of this theoretical framework in guiding and enriching qualitative studies informed by situational analysis. Chapter 4 utilizes the accounts of this study’s HIV-positive participants to identify the health care and social service needs of this population, and incorporates an intersectional lens to conceptualize variations in the service priorities of this group along dimensions of difference such as socioeconomic status, ability, and race. Finally, chapter 5 concludes with a discussion of the study’s contributions to substantive and theoretical bodies of scholarship, and an overview of the inquiry’s implications for policy and practice in the area of gay aging. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health, queer | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Kiani, Amirreza | Sargent, Edward H | Colloidal Engineering for Infrared-Bandgap Solution-Processed Quantum Dot Solar Cells | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2017-06 | Ever-increasing global energy demand and a diminishing fossil fuel supply have prompted the development of technologies for sustainable energy production. Solar photovoltaic (PV) devices have huge potential for energy harvesting and production since the sun delivers more energy to the earth in one hour than the global population consumes in one year. The solar cell industry is now dominated by silicon PV devices. The cost of silicon modules has decreased substantially over the past two decades and the number of installed silicon PV devices has increased dramatically. There remains a need for emerging solar technologies that can harvest the untapped portion of the solar spectrum and can be integrated on flexible and curved surfaces. This thesis focuses on colloidal quantum dot (CQD) PV devices. CQDs are nanoparticles fabricated using a low-temperature and cost-effective solution technique. These materials suffer from a high density of surface traps derived from the large surface-to-volume ratio of CQD nanoparticles, combined with limited carrier mobility. These result in a short carrier diffusion length, a main limiting factor in CQD solar cell performance. This thesis seeks to address the poor diffusion length in lead sulfide (PbS) CQD films and pave the way for new applications for CQD PV devices in infrared solar harvesting and waste heat recovery. A two-fold reduction in surface trap density is demonstrated using molecular halide treatment. Iodine molecules introduced prior to the film formation replace the otherwise unpassivated surface sulfur atoms. This results in a 35% increase in the diffusion length and enables charge extraction over thicker active layer leading to the worldâ s most efficient CQD PV devices from June 2015 to July 2016 with the certified power conversion efficiency of 9.9%. This represents a 30% increase over the best-certified PCE (7.5%) prior to this thesis. The colloidal engineering highlighted herein enables infrared (IR) solar harvesting for the first time. Addition of short bromothiol ligands during the synthesis significantly reduces the agglomeration of 1 eV bandgap CQDs and maintains efficient charge extraction into the selective electrodes. The devices can augment the performance of the best silicon cells by 7 power points where 0.8 additive power points are demonstrated experimentally. A tailored solution exchanged process developed for 1 eV bandgap CQDs results in air-stable IR PV devices with improved manufacturability. The process utilizes a tailored combination of lead iodide (PbI2) and ammonium acetate for the solution exchange and hexylamine + MEK as the final solvent to yield solar thick films with the filtered (1100 nm and beyond) performance of 0.4%. This thesis pushes the limit of CQD device applications to waste heat recovery. I demonstrate successful harvesting of low energy photons emitted from a hot object by designing and developing the first solution-processed thermophotovoltaic devices. These devices are comprised of 0.7 eV bandgap CQDs that successfully harvest photons emitted from an 800°C heat source. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, industr, production | 7, 9, 12 |
| KICI, Derya | Scardamalia, Marlene | Evolution of Knowledge Building Teacher Professional Development Communities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06 | This study explores the interplay of factors in diffusion of Knowledge Building pedagogy through a multi-level (teachers, administrators, and students) Leading Student Achievement initiative sponsored by the Ontario Ministry of Education in partnership with Ontario Principals’ Councils. Rogers’ (1995) model of diffusion of innovation was used to explore the first and broadest level of decision making by teachers and principals and included analysis of initial resources to learn about and implement Knowledge Building. Analysis included perceived attributes of Knowledge Building pedagogy and factors that influenced early adopters and sustained use. A case study of one school board provides an in-depth account of how these factors came into play; five case studies of classroom practices provide a more micro-perspective on how teachers and students implemented Knowledge Building principles. The findings confirmed that the Leading Student Achievement project is fostering successful adoption of Knowledge Building in Ontario. This study helps to inform decision making for future Knowledge Building and professional development initiatives as well as system-level support required to create a multi-level learning ecology to inform uptake and sustainability of pedagogical innovations. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Kideckel, David | Sandor, Paul | Functional Magnetic Resonance - and Diffusion Tensor Imaging Investigations of Pure Adult Gilles de la Tourette Syndrome | Medical Science | 2010-06 | Gilles de la Tourette syndrome (GTS) is a chronic neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by multiple motor and vocal tics, affecting approximately 1% of the population. The precise neuropathology of GTS has not yet been delineated, but current models implicate subcortical and cortical areas - the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical (CSTC) circuit. The majority of studies in the literature have either dealt with GTS with comorbid conditions and/or children with GTS. As these factors are known to affect brain structure and function, it unknown what the neurobiological underpinnings of pure adult GTS are. The objective of this body of work was to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) to characterize differences in brain function and structure in pure adult GTS patients versus age- and sex-matched controls. I employed a series of three distinct analyses for this purpose, based upon current models of CSTC circuit-related dysfunction in GTS. In the first, GTS patients and control participants executed three finger-tapping paradigms that varied in both complexity and memory requirements. These finger-tapping tasks were modeled after previous studies that showed CSTC circuit-related activity in healthy individuals. Using a multivariate statistical technique to assess task-related patterns of activation across the whole brain, I found that, while there was much overlap in brain activation patterns between groups, sensorimotor cortical regions were differentially recruited by GTS patients compared to controls. In the second fMRI analysis, I measured low-frequency spontaneous fluctuations of the blood oxygen level dependent signal during rest, and found that GTS patients exhibited greater resting state functional connectivity with the left putamen compared to controls. In the final analysis, DTI was used to provide a whole-brain assessment of regional diffusion anisotropy in GTS patients and healthy volunteers and to investigate the fractional anisotropy in predetermined ROIs. This analysis found no differences between GTS patients and controls. Overall, my findings indicated that several CSTC-related regions shown to be atypical in GTS patients previously, are also atypical in pure adult GTS, and that sensorimotor cortical regions and the putamen may be regions of functional disturbance in pure adult GTS. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Kiefer, Heidi | Cohen, Nancy | Handle With Care Evaluation Project: Impact of a Mental Health Promotion Training Program on Child Care Practitioners' Knowledge and Practices | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2013-11 | This study explored the effectiveness of Handle With Care, a mental health promotion training program for child care practitioners working with children between birth to age 6. Handle With Care program content is based on research evidence. Training units are intended to deepen practitioners’ understanding of how children’s social-emotional development, centre and family connections and positive workplace activities link to children’s well-being and practitioners’ roles in these areas. Fifty-seven front-line practitioners from three different regional groups (Rural, Suburban, Urban) completed Handle With Care workshops and were compared to 56 comparison participants, matched according to region, who were not exposed to training. The evaluation utilized a time series repeated measures design and consisted of mixed quantitative and qualitative measures to determine training outcomes related to practitioner’s mental health promotion knowledge and practices. Findings indicated that child care practitioners who participated in Handle With Care training demonstrated increased mental health promotion knowledge. In particular, they acquired better comprehension of issues concerning practitioner and child attachment relationships, children’s self-esteem, emotion expression and regulation and peer relationships. Training participants significantly differed from comparison participants in their knowledge of these topics. In terms of practices, training participants also evidenced significantly improved practices relative to comparison participants. These gains were especially observed in relation to practitioners building trusting relationships with children, fostering children’s sense of self and competence, positive peer interactions and practitioners promoting their own mental health. In contrast, Handle With Care training did not show the intended consistent outcomes with respect to practitioners helping children with emotional communication, dealing with diversity, changes and transitions and practitioners building relationships with children’s parents. Results tended to be discrepant across regional groups, and in some instances, gains in mental health promotion and knowledge were not sustained over time. Overall, the study suggests that Handle With Care is a useful way to augment child care practitioners’ capacity to consider the mental health of all children in their care and flexibly implement strategies to help children reach their optimal potential. The study also provides important information concerning regional differences and areas of training content that may benefit from revision. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Kieltyka-Gajewski, Agnes | Campbell, Elizabeth | Ethical Challenges and Dilemmas in Teaching Students with Special Needs in Inclusive Classrooms: Exploring the Perspectives of Ontario Teachers | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-11 | This study examines the ethical challenges and dilemmas that teachers experience in their work with students who have special needs in inclusive classrooms. Moreover, it investigates the ways in which teachers cope with or resolve such difficulties, the supports currently available to assist them in managing ethical issues, and their recommendations for potential supports. Accounts of ethical challenges reported by 12 teacher participants working at the elementary and secondary level were interpreted from two stages of interviews. Data were analyzed qualitatively using a constant comparison method, with data analysis occurring during and after each stage. Emergent themes were coded and categorized to elicit major and sub-themes. The ethical challenges reported by the participants primarily dealt with issues of care, equity, and fairness, where participants felt that the best interests of students were not being met. Difficulties occurred in the context of accommodations and modifications, assessment and evaluation, discipline, distribution of time and resources, and the rights of the individual student versus the group. In the accounts provided, participants consistently raised concerns about ethical dilemmas they experienced as a result of colleagues. In all of the situations that dealt with colleagues, teachers were unwilling to confront the unethical behaviors of co-workers despite their potential to harm the student. All of the teachers faced ethical challenges in the context of inclusion. While most support the practice of inclusion, concerns were raised about existing inequities, specifically in regard to the degree of inclusivity and access to learning opportunities. Shortages in supports, resources, and training were the primary reasons attributed to the teachers’ struggles. The participants’ recommendations for supports consisted of collaborative professional development opportunities, specifically in special and inclusive education. This study contributes to the growing body of literature in the ethics of inclusive and special education. It has significant implications for policy makers, certifying bodies, teacher education programs, and teachers’ professional lives as it provides insights into the ethical challenges faced by teachers in inclusive classrooms. The results of the study have the potential to influence the development of policies and practices to support both teachers and students. | PhD | educat, inclusive | 4 |
| Kiernan, Jeffrey J. | Stanford, William L||Davies, John E | Systemic MSC Transplantation Restores Functional Bone in a Mouse Model of Age-related Osteoporosis | Biomedical Engineering | 2015-06 | Osteoporosis affects millions of people, and represents a substantial quality of life and economic burden. In human aging, the decline in the number and function of resident bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs) has been widely reported. This has led to the speculation that MSCs are required for the maintenance of skeletal homeostasis, and their loss is associated with age-related osteoporosis. Supporting this etiology, the Sca-1 deficient mouse model of human age-related (type II) osteoporosis demonstrates both decreased MSC self-renewal and expansion, leading to defective maintenance of bone mineral density and bone quality. Therefore, to test the hypothesis that increasing the pool of MSCs could provide therapeutic benefits to patients with type II osteoporosis, we assessed the capacity of transplanted wild type MSCs to rescue osteoporosis in Sca-1-/- mice. Donor MSCs were highly clonogenic and retained high osteogenic activity. Short-term engraftment of DiR labeled MSCs transplanted by intravenous tail vein injection displayed successful engraftment into hind limbs of Sca-1-/- mice for at least 14 days. To assess long-term engraftment, a single bolus of labeled MSCs from male donor mice was transplanted into individual 10-week-old Sca-1-/- females. A half year later, mice were sacrificed and engraftment was assessed. Transplanted Sca-1-/- mice displayed low-level MSC engraftment in the bone marrow and lungs beyond 34 weeks of age. However, histological analyses of trabecular tissue revealed increased bone formation, higher osteoclast numbers, and heterogeneous mineralization indicative of healthier bone in these animals compared to untreated Sca-1-/- controls. Furthermore, MicroCT revealed improved trabecular bone connectivity and a restoration of trabecular anisotropy in mice transplanted with wild type MSCs versus untreated Sca-1-/- controls. Taken together, these results demonstrate that a single systemic transplanted dose of MSCs can reduce the inherent bone formation deficit observed in osteoporotic mice, protect them from progressive reduction in bone quality, and restore functional bone microarchitecture for at least 24 weeks following treatment. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Kil, Richard | McMillen, David R | A Novel Antibody Detection Technique Using the Agglutination of Surface Displaying Yeasts | Chemistry | 2018-11 | Blood screening for disease in the developing world remains an enormous challenge despite significant advances in modern biotechnology. Simple, affordable, and easily deployed tools for antibody detection in blood and other fluids are still desperately needed. A simple yeast-based agglutination assay that requires no electricity, no sophisticated equipment, and minimal training is described here, using established methods for displaying stable fusion proteins on the surface of S cerevisiae. Strains displaying peptides with known binding regions for generic human immunoglobulin G antibodies, and for specific human antibodies against T. cruzi (the causative agent for Chagas’ disease) and dengue virus were created and grown. The cells displaying disease epitopes were mixed with the samples positive for the disease antibodies, and have been shown to capture the specific antibodies to their surfaces. After washing, the coated cells were mixed with cells displaying the Z domain derived from S. aureus, which binds to the Fc region of the captured antibodies, linking the cell types together. The links formed between the cell types cause the cells to agglutinate, resulting in positive and negative signals that are easily distinguishable to the naked eye. Factors affecting the agglutination, including ionic strength, cell mass, the geometry of the well, and proper growth conditions were studied to produce a working protocol for the assay. The key strengths of the assay: simplicity, stability, modularity, low cost, low technical requirement, and broad familiarity with similar tests, give it promising potential to be a new alternative to current industry methods. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Kim, David Youngeil | Bascia, Nina | In This Together: The Impact of Mentorship Programs On The First-Generation Student Experience | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-11 | This study outlines the impact that a mentorship program directed at first-generation students in university has on the individuals who participate. First-generation students are identified as those whose parents do not have any postsecondary education. Colleges and universities are seeing more non-traditional students pursuing postsecondary studies and first-generation students fall into this group. However, despite the increasing numbers of first-generation students enrolling in university, there have not been many programs introduced to facilitate their transition into university. Concerns about their retention persist as these students are at a greater risk of dropping out as compared to their non-first-generation peers. Additionally, the factors associated with being a first-generation student may be limiting their ability to effectively engage in their academic experiences as well as the array of out-of-classroom offerings available at their campuses. Recognizing the challenges faced by first-generation students, the Ontario provincial government introduced funding for colleges and universities in 2005 to institute programs to address some of these issues. Using this funding, a number of college and universities in Ontario have introduced mentorship programs for first-generation students as they make their transition into their postsecondary studies. This study explored the experience of a group of students in relation to their first-generation identity and how their participation in a mentorship program influences their experience. This study was conducted using a mixed methods approach, using a secondary analysis of survey data and 16 interviews of first-generation students who participated in a mentorship program. Evaluating the experience of these students will help researchers and practitioners to better understand the barriers and strategies to support first-generation students who choose to study at university. The thesis applies a conceptual framework that focuses on three concepts: cultural capital, habitus, and self-efficacy. The findings support previous research that has shown the impact that cultural capital can have on habitus as well as self-efficacy. The results of this study also suggest two new findings: a) That an increase in one’s cultural capital can also increase their sense of self-efficacy via the effects of habitus; and b) That a strong sense of self-efficacy can positively affect their habitus. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Kim, Eun-Yong | Heller, Monica | Mediating globalization: An ethnography of the “English problem” through North Koreans’ English learning with South Korean evangelicals | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2017-06 | This ethnography examines the place of English in South Korea through the experience of North Korean migrants in South Korean evangelical institutions. The central thesis is that English in South Korea is both i) a terrain where the tensions in/ of the globalizing (divided) nation-state play out, and ii) a means of mediating those tensions. A central characteristic about the place of English in the South Korean state is the contradiction between the rise of an English testing system for social selection and the limited use of English for everyday communication. This shows the tensions of the neoliberal state, which include notably the tensions between i) globalization and Korean nationalism, and between ii) social stratification and democracy. The English testing system, at the same time, neutralizes these tensions by achieving to a certain extent the competing interests on both sides of the tensions. Evangelicals’ educational institutions for North Korean students are mediating spaces for the North Korean young adults who are directly impacted by the state tensions. They do so by allowing the students to be i) both Korean (national) and English-speaking/ learning (global), and ii) both “North Koreans” (other) and fellow Koreans (us). The evangelicals’ English teaching practices work to mediate their own tension between “helping and evangelizing” (Varghese Johnston, 2007), because English learning is valuable for both neoliberal and evangelical self-development and thus meets the interests of both the evangelicals and the North Koreans. For the North Korean migrants in South Korea, they face the tension between being a South Korean (by citizenship) and not being a South Korean (by cultural habitus). That is, they are given, on one hand, political significance and social advantages through nationalistic/ evangelical institutions (e.g., English support programs particularly for North Koreans), but, on the other hand, they experience barriers in the neoliberal competition (e.g. English testing system). English, however, served as resource for constructing a “third-place” identity for some North Koreans who become fluent English speakers. They had been, in their migration process, less socialized into nationalistic ideology which makes English unspeakable for Koreans. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Kim, Hwan | Colantonio, Angela | Intentional traumatic brain injury in Ontario, Canada | Rehabilitation Science | 2011-06 | Violence and traumatic brain injury (TBI) are two major public health concerns. This thesis is comprised of three different research topics; the epidemiology of intentional TBI in Ontario, discharge against medical advice (DAMA) as an undesirable outcome of acute stage, and functional changes after receiving rehabilitation care. To study these areas, three different datasets from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) were used. The first epidemiological study on intentional TBI identified 1,409 (8.0%) intentional TBIs and 16,211 (92.0%) unintentional TBIs. Of the intentional TBIs, 389 (27.6%) were self-inflicted TBI (Si-TBI) and 1,020 (72.4%) were other-inflicted TBI (Oi-TBI). The most common causes of Si-TBI were “jumping from high places” and “firearms”. Major causes of Oi-TBI were ‘fight and brawl” and “struck by objects”. Si-TBI was associated with younger age, female gender, and having a history of alcohol/drug abuse. Oi-TBI was also associated with younger age and having an alcohol/drug abuse history and also with male gender. The second study on discharge against medical advice found that 446 (2.84%) TBI patients left hospitals without medical advice. DAMA was significantly associated with intentional injuries in those with self-inflicted TBI and other-inflicted TBI. DAMA was also associated with younger age and a history of alcohol/drug abuse. Using univariate analyses, the third study found that people with intentional TBI had significantly lower FIM gains in the motor area and significantly lower relative function gains (as measured by Montebello Rehabilitation Factor Score) in the cognitive area. Multivariate analyses of the same data showed that intentional TBI was also associated with lower cognitive relative gains, while controlling for age, gender, alcohol/abuse history, and other demographic and clinical variables. Persons with intentional TBI were found to be less likely to be discharged home, controlling for other relevant confounders. In conclusion, a person who has been injured due to assault or suicidal attempt may need more individualized care as they may be at greater risk for adverse rehabilitation outcomes. These findings regarding people with intentional TBI provide a basis for enhancing efforts on prevention of violence-related TBI and DAMA, and also for improving rehabilitation programs and discharge plans for this vulnerable population. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Kim, Joanne Soo-Min | Laporte, Audrey | Does Predictive Genetic Information Change Individual Health Behaviours? An Evaluation of Personalized Medicine in Cancer Prevention | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-11 | Personalized medicine is increasingly infused into healthcare. However, current literature offers limited evidence on its theoretical and actual impact on disease prevention. This thesis research asked whether receiving the results of predictive genetic testing that indicated the presence or absence of an inherited predisposition to colorectal cancer (CRC) was associated with change in individual health behaviours that can prevent CRC. The behaviours included colonoscopy use, the fecal occult blood test (FOBT) use, smoking cessation, and the intake of aspirin, folate, and multivitamins. To answer the question, three studies were conducted. In the first study, a literature review was performed to identify, summarize, and critique previous research on the behavioural responses to predictive CRC genetic information. The review identified serious methodological shortcomings in previous studies that compromised the validity of the reported findings and demonstrated that no indisputable evidence on the review topic currently exists. In the second study, a theoretical model grounded in health economics and clinical evidence was devised to generate testable hypotheses on the behavioural responses to predictive CRC genetic information. The model predicted an increased likelihood of colon screening in those who discovered that they carried their family’s genetic predisposition to CRC and an increased likelihood of smoking in those who discovered that they did not. In the third study, an empirical analysis on the behavioural responses to predictive CRC genetic information was undertaken, using the Australasian CRC Family Registry data. Consistent with the theoretical model, the empirical analysis found a higher likelihood of colonoscopy use in those who discovered that they carried their family’s genetic predisposition to CRC and a higher likelihood of smoking in those who discovered that they did not. There was evidence of change in FOBT use, but those findings were not always significant. No significant change was observed in the intake of aspirin, folate, and multivitamins. Therefore, predictive CRC genetic information did change individual health behaviours but not necessarily in ways to improve population health. The impact of personalized medicine on disease prevention is intricate, warranting a thorough assessment from both clinical and societal perspectives to understand its intended and unintended effects. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Kim, Kyoung-Yim | Donnelly, Peter | Producing Korean Women Golfers on the LPGA Tour: Representing Gender, Race, Nation and Sport in a Transnational Context | Exercise Sciences | 2012-06 | This research focuses on the contexts of Korean women professional golfers’ transnational migration, and the ways that US and Korean media represent those athletes. A theoretical framework informed by sociology of sport, postcolonial and transnational feminist studies was employed to illustrate the contexts of the women’s golf migration, and to investigate how transnational Korean women professional golfers are represented in both US and Korean media from 1998 to 2009. Elite discourses—941 media texts from both nations together with government/institutional documents—were collected, Korean texts were translated into English, and document analysis, critical discourse analysis and intersectional analysis were employed. The results illustrate that globalization and neoliberal capitalism, patriarchy, and colonial and imperial history all help to shape the women golfers’ transnational migration paths. The complex contexts also shape the media representations of the women golfers in the two nation-states. In US media, the Korean women golfers are constructed as a racialized and gendered Other within the context of Orientalism, and selective knowledge production in the media maintains and ensures global White supremacy. In Korean media, the women golfers are portrayed as winners under hypermasculine Western forms of globalization and neoliberal reformation of the world order but, at the same time, as keepers and performers of Korean traditional Confucian values. Further, Korean media explain the women’s transnational success as a result of following traditional Korean values and norms; therefore, the women are represented as proud symbols of Korean nationalism and ideal models of productive female subjects in neoliberal globalization. In sum, the Korean women professional golfers are taken up by media in both nation-states as an effective discursive contact zone for making sense of the changing power dynamics of race, gender, and nation under a period of rapid changes of world order. | PhD | gender, women, | 5 |
| Kim, Sanghyun | Walker, Gilbert C | Soft Materials at Interfaces for Controlling and Studying Marine Biofouling, Cellular Growth, and Phonon Polaritons | Chemistry | 2017-11 | Several â softâ material systems are investigated at the nanoscale through the application of surface sensitive techniques. The first family of projects focus on providing environmentally-friendly solutions to challenges faced in aquaculture, including marine biofouling and sea lice infestations. To address fouling, an aqueous-based method was developed for fabricating nanostructured block copolymer films. Specifically, a water-insoluble triblock copolymer, Poly(styrene-block-2 vinyl pyridine-block-ethylene oxide), was phase transferred from a water-immiscible phase into an aqueous environment, where it was found to self-assemble into core-shell-corona type micelles. These micelles were then coated onto surfaces to form thin films and adhesion studies using atomic force microscopy (AFM), zoospore settlement assays, and field tests reveal its ability to serve as a potential marine antifouling coating. Conventional drugs used to control sea lice infestations are becoming less effective as parasites grow tolerant and have been found to harm non-target local species. Here, I present the efficacy of biologically extracted ingredients to serve as potential biopesticides. Liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry techniques are developed and optimized to monitor the fate of azadirachtin (extracted from neem oil) when orally administered to Atlantic salmon and exposed to aqueous environments. Field trial results reveal that azadirachtin levels as low as 0.01 ppm accumulated in the tissue of salmon results in over 85% efficacy against sea lice, relative to controls. The next group of projects investigates properties of synthetic materials at the nanoscale. We show that by supporting hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) on materials with varying dielectric responses in the infrared results in control of surface momenta of hyperbolic phonon polaritons (HPhPs). Our results show that by supporting hBN on materials with higher dielectric responses leads to a higher surface momenta of HPhPs. Furthermore, propagating waves in hBN were found to be highly sensitive to the reflections at the upper and lower interfaces, which provides opportunities for energy to dissipate. The damping behavior of HPhPs was shown to be sensitive to adjacent layers and a method of applying HPhPs in hBN as a sensor is demonstrated. | Ph.D. | water, energy, environment, marine | 7, 13, 14 |
| Kim, Soyeon | Tannock, Rosemary | Color Vision and its mechanisms in College students with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2015-06 | Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) is the most prevalent childhood psychiatric disorder that was first described medically in 1775. However, it is still unclear what the `deficit' is in this clinical condition. Current evidence suggests that its etiology is heterogeneous encompassing various factors that interact and influence each other. Most current theories posit that alterations in the prefrontal cortex and impairments in the associated executive functions and other higher-order processing underlie ADHD symptoms. However, accumulating evidence attests to anomalies in vision in ADHD that cannot be explained by existing models of ADHD. In particular, children with ADHD have been found to exhibit color perception problems (particularly blue), which may be best explained by the `retinal dopaminergic hypothesis.' The hypothesis proposes that low dopamine in the central nervous system induces a hypo-dopaminergic state in the retina, which in turn would have deleterious effects on short wave-length cones (`blue-cones'). Some support exists for this hypothesis but findings are inconsistent and have focused on only one feature of color: namely that of hue in the children with ADHD. Accordingly, for this dissertation, I sought to extend the investigation on color vision by testing two key characteristics of color (hue and saturation) in college students with ADHD using both clinical (Mollon-Reffin Minimalist Color Vision Test, Farnsworth-Munsell 100 Hue Test), and psychophysical methodologies. Specifically, I first tested hue discrimination ability in a college student population with ADHD. Upon replicating evidence of problem in blue hue discrimination in college students with ADHD, I expanded the scope of previous findings on hue discrimination ability by also examining color saturation discrimination ability. Using a psychophysical paradigm, I revealed a problem in color saturation discrimination of red and blue color in another sample of college students with ADHD - a finding which is partially consistent with the retinal dopaminergic hypothesis. Lastly, I explored role of exogenous covert attention in color saturation discrimination in that same group of college students with and without ADHD to ascertain whether attention problems might in part explain the color perception problems in ADHD. The latter study indicated that covert attention does not differentially influence color saturation/contrast sensitivity perception in college students with ADHD than healthy peers. The possibility of color perception problems in ADHD is important, given the extensive use of color in educational settings, as well as the frequent use of color stimuli in many of the standard neuropsychological tests used in the assessment for ADHD and related disorders. Most importantly, the present findings of altered color perception in ADHD highlight the need for further research on other perceptual capacities in ADHD. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Kim, Sungjo | Schmid, Andre | The Countryside and the City: A Spatial Economy of the New Village Movement in 1970s South Korea | East Asian Studies | 2015-11 | This study looks into the transformation of farmers’ living spaces during the period of rapid industrialization in 1970s South Korea. Under the name of the New Village Movement, the Park Chung Hee government conducted diverse reconstruction and renovation projects to alter the residential environment of rural areas. While delving deeply into this specific event and period in Korean history, the main focus of this study is not fixed on the New Village Movement itself, nor on a particular person or agrarian policy. The purpose of this study is to capture the dynamics and relationships between capital and living spaces in the detailed historical context of the New Village Movement. This project of examination is further guided by the overarching argument that the reconfiguration process of farmers’ daily living spaces played a central role in renewing and reconfiguring unequal exchange relationships between the countryside and the city, thereby assisting the growth of manufacturing capital. Chapter 1 focuses on South Korean Land Reform in 1950 and its concomitant agro-economic conditions in the 1950s and 1960s, which explained farmers’ post-war poverty and industrial demand for rural reformation. The subsequent chapters of this study trace the rural New Village Movement of the 1970s and its focus on roof replacement (Chapter 2), house construction (Chapter 3), interior designing (Chapter 4), and village relocation (Chapter 5). Each chapter also pays close attention to the process by which the new rural spaces under transformation were filled with particular commodities such as slate, cement, televisions, and rice. Small-landed farmers, growing industrial capital, and the developmentalist state reflected their different desires and expectations respectively through the new rural spaces and commodities. Tracking all those dynamics, this study emphasizes the centrality of exchange relationship between agriculture and manufacturing or between the countryside and the city in understanding the historicity of the New Village Movement. | Ph.D. | poverty, agriculture, rural | 1, 2, 11 |
| Kimaro, Anthony | Timmer, Vic | Sequential Agroforestry systems for Improving Fuelwood Ssupply and Crop Yield in Semi-arid Tanzania | Forestry | 2009-11 | Promotion of agroforestry practices in sub-Sahara Africa may help sustain subsistent food and wood production by integrating trees and crops on farmlands to replenish soil fertility and improve crop yield. Using rotational woodlot and pigeonpea intercropping systems in semi-arid Tanzania as case studies, my research screened suitable tree species to increase fuelwood supply and examined mechanisms for reducing tree-crop competition. By adopting nutrient use efficiency (the ratio of biomass yield to nutrient uptake) as a criterion, I found that selecting tree species of low wood nutrient concentrations would minimize nutrient exports by 42 – 60 %, thus reducing soil nutrient depletion while concurrently sustaining local fuelwood supply harvested from rotational woodlots. Currently smallholder farmers cannot afford to replenish soil fertility because of high fertilizer costs. However, 5-year tree fallowing raised soil N and P levels for maize culture as high as those from recommended fertilizer applications. Post-fallow maize yield was also increased significantly over natural fallow practices. Apparently there is a trade-off between yields of maize and fuelwood under rotational woodlot culture providing farmers the choice to proportion tree and crop composition based on priority demands. An alternative practice of intercropping pigeonpea with maize may also rapidly replenish soil fertility as well as enhance maize yield when competitive interactions between trees and crops are controlled. Vector analysis revealed that such interactions suppressed biomass yields of maize and pigeonpea by 30 % and 60 %, respectively, due to limited soil nutrients and/or moisture. Optimizing yields of both crops would require prescribed fertilizer addition when intercropped, but dose rates can be lowered by half under the improved fallow system due to alleviating interspecific competition. My findings form the basis of a plea for greater use of rotational woodlot and pigeonpea intercropping systems in semi-arid areas. I conclude that smallholder farm management of rotational agroforestry systems can be significantly improved by refining tree selection criteria and mitigating nutrient competition between trees and crops to maintain food and fuelwood production. | PhD | food, production, forest | 2, 12, 15 |
| Kinawy, Sherif | El-Diraby, Tamer | Customizing Information Delivery for Citizens in Transportation Infrastructure Projects: Towards Active Community Participation in Decision-Making | Civil Engineering | 2017-06 | The communities living and working within many of today's high density urban cores are pushing for greater transparency in planning and governance, and a higher level of public involvement in the identification of impacts of construction activities and mitigating them. Lately, the integration of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) has enabled the use of electronic community engagement, which provides greater accessibility and wider reach. However, these technologies have exhibited a deficiency partially due to a lack of an automated semantic platform for knowledge exchange. To engage the public, the process needs to extend beyond simple, one-way communication into a realm where relevant knowledge is more easily shared between the public and project teams. Thus, this research proposes a social, semantic, customized knowledge exchange framework to address this gap. The main purpose of this research is to extend the scope of construction management research that is typically limited to a number of stakeholders such as the designer, builder, owner and regulatory authority. The proposed framework is intended to complement the current process rather than completely replace it. To successfully create this partnership between project teams (planners and designers) and the public, this research uses ontologies as a formal form of knowledge representation. The social web and other social networking tools are also proposed as the best available technologies to maintain public engagement. Finally, as a way to enhance the user experience on the web implementation of this social-semantic framework, a wayfinding and recommender system is integrated. The eSocOnto ontology and decision support framework were evaluated with the aid of domain experts. The ontology and framework were also further validated through the development of a web software platform as a proof of concept to showcase a variety of features enabled by the framework and the knowledge base. | Ph.D. | urban, governance | 11, 16 |
| King-Brown, Erin Kathleen | Piran, Niva | Weight-related Messages in Primary Care: Challenges and Possibilities | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2015-11 | The purpose of the present study was to acquire a detailed understanding of women’s experiences receiving weight-related information or advice from their general practitioners (GPs). Guided by a critical feminist perspective, this qualitative study explored cultural and social processes that interact with women’s understanding and perceptions of weight-based dialogues. In-depth interviews about weight-related care were conducted with 18 women between the ages of 18 and 45. The women varied in terms of social locations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, and body sizes and weight. A constructivist grounded theory methodology was used to analyse the transcribed interviews. Three core categories emerged in the data analysis in relation to the women’s experiences, namely: (1) Weight Weighing on the Doctor-Patient Relationship, which highlighted the ways weight-based dialogues affected the doctor-patient relationship; (2) Patients’ Self and Body Experiences, which focused on women’s ongoing struggles with weight in relation to sociocultural pressures, as well as how these experiences shaped women’s responses to weight-based care; and (3) Practice, which revealed the weight-management practices of GPs, and constructive insights regarding ways in which GPs’ practices could be improved. The intricacies revealed herein can help inform GPs in navigating the complexities of providing sensitive, weight-related interventions, while simultaneously enhancing the doctor-patient relationship and the quality of care received. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, women | 1, 5 |
| King, Colin | Scott, Katreena | Understanding Reports to Child Welfare from the Education System: Challenges and Opportunities for Supporting Vulnerable Children | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2011-11 | Educators play a crucial role in the detection of child abuse, but there is limited research understanding the role of teachers in responding to maltreatment concerns. The purpose of this dissertation was to utilise three sequential studies, with multiple methodologies, to understand how Canadian educators are situated to detect, respond, and report suspected child abuse. In the first study, a national Canadian database was utilised to compare educator reported cases of child maltreatment to reports from all other professionals. In study two, 245 teachers completed a questionnaire examining their experiences of reporting child abuse, attitudes and beliefs, and perceived barriers and supports in reporting. Lastly, in the third study, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with seven teachers who had recently reported child abuse. In integrating the results from these studies, three conclusions were drawn regarding the role of educators within the child welfare system. These included; 1) Teachers are well-positioned to detect and advocate for the needs of maltreated children; 2) Teachers have a need for greater confidence, and an increased ability to cope with uncertainty, when responding to child abuse; and 3) There is often a mismatch between the goals of teachers in the education system and the perceived response of the child welfare system. Three recommendations were then presented; 1) Educators are a key resource in supporting early detection and intervention initiatives to address child abuse and their role in these initiatives should be further explored; 2) Teachers should be provided with additional strategies to address perceived barriers in reporting child abuse; and 3) Initiatives to promote increased communication between the education and child welfare systems are required. Overall, results supported the unique child-centred perspective of educators in reporting child maltreatment. Study limitations and areas for future research were then discussed. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| King, Emily | Fernie, Geoff R | Home Caregiver Safety when Assisting with Bathing and Toileting | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2017-11 | Home care workers who assist with personal care have much higher rates of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) of the back and shoulder than the general working population. This thesis identifies and describes activities that are likely to contribute substantially to the development of MSDs, then identifies and evaluates ways to reduce risk. Physically demanding activities and aspects of the home care context that contribute to MSD risk are identified through a literature review and through focus groups with home care providers, leading to a focus on toileting and bathing. An observational study was used to analyze providers’ postures and related lower back loads while assisting with these activities in a simulated home care scenario. During toileting, exposures to MSD risk factors were highest when managing clothing, providing posterior perineal care and during transfers. One third of providers’ exposure to severely flexed trunk postures, which are powerful predictors of lower back MSD risk, could be eliminated if bidet seats were used for perineal cleaning. During bathing, the highest exposures to MSD risk factors were observed during transfers and while providing lower limb care. Four tools to reduce exposures were evaluated in a follow-up study. Shoulder muscle activity and exposure to non-neutral postures were reduced when using a short-handled leg-lifter to transfer the legs, while sitting to lift the legs improved back postures but increased demands on the shoulders. A sliding, rotating bench reduced back muscle activity despite an increased use of awkward postures. All participants judged the leg-lifter and sliding, rotating bench to be feasible and desirable for use in the community. The identified tools reduce providers’ exposure to MSD risk factors when assisting with two of the most demanding homecare activities. There is a need to improve access to assistive devices to ensure providers’ occupational safety while preserving their ability to provide client care. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| King, Mary Tiara | Ryan, James | How Hospital Registered Nurses Learn About Drug Therapy for Older Adults | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-03 | Although older Canadians constitute a large portion of patients in hospital, many receive less-than-optimal drug care. Most registered nurses (RNs) and other health care professionals who provide older adults (OAs) with drug therapy lack pre-professional education about that practice. Concurrently, there is little research available about how RNs learn about drug therapy for OAs. Using a qualitative method, this thesis explores hospital RNs’ insights about their knowledge about drug therapy for OAs, their associated learning needs and strategies, and contextual influences on their learning. The findings illuminated RNs’ extensive knowledge, their learning needs and varied learning strategies, and constraints and facilitators of their learning. Drug therapy for OAs is a complex activity. RNs play a pivotal role in that care and have ample knowledge. RNs’ learning is holistic, ongoing, mostly informal, and reflective of many adult-learning theories. By learning, RNs build and transform their repertoires of knowledge to stay current with the quickly changing landscapes of health care, gerontological know-how, and drugs and drug practices. As a result, sometimes RNs protect not only OAs but also other hospital stakeholders from the negative effects of uninformed practice. Nurse educators should teach students about drug therapy for OAs and broaden their own views about RNs’ knowledge and learning strategies for that care. Nurse leaders should maximize chances for RNs to learn and prepare them to influence other stakeholders in ways that support learning. Hospital administrators and other stakeholders should recognize RNs’ pivotal role in drug care and support their learning through organizational changes. Communities should design strategies that ease RNs’ learning. Policymakers should replace corporatism with innovations that champion learning. Researchers and RNs should collaborate on novel projects that bolster RNs’ learning. | EDD | health | 3 |
| Kingyens, Angela Tsui-Yin Tran | Paradi, Joseph C. | Bankruptcy Prediction of Companies in the Retail-apparel Industry using Data Envelopment Analysis | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2012-11 | Since 2008, the world has been in recession. As daily news outlets report, this crisis has prompted many small businesses and large corporations to file for bankruptcy, which has grave global social implications. Despite government intervention and incentives to stimulate the economy that have put nations in hundreds of billions of dollars of debt, and have reduced the prime rates to almost zero, efforts to combat the increase in unemployment rate as well as the decrease in discretionary income have been troublesome. It is a vicious cycle: consumers are apprehensive of spending due to the instability of their jobs and ensuing personal financial problems; businesses are weary from the lack of revenue and are forced to tighten their operations which likely translates to layoffs; and so on. Cautious movement of cash flows are rooted in and influenced by the psychology of the players (stakeholders) of the game (society). Understandably, the complexity of this economic fallout is the subject of much attention. And while the markets have recovered much of the lost ground as of late, there is still great opportunity to learn about all the possible factors of this recession, in anticipation of and bracing for one more downturn before we emerge from this crisis. In fact, there is no time like today more appropriate for research in bankruptcy prediction because of its relevance, and in an age where documentation is highly encouraged and often mandated by law, the amount and accessibility of data is paramount – an academic’s paradise! The main objective of this thesis was to develop a model supported by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to predict the likelihood of failure of US companies in the retail-apparel industry based on information available from annual reports – specifically from financial statements and their corresponding Notes, Management’s Discussion and Analysis, and Auditor’s Report. It was hypothesized that the inclusion of variables which reflect managerial decision-making and economic factors would enhance the predictive power of current mathematical models that consider financial data exclusively. With a unique and comprehensive dataset of 85 companies, new metrics based on different aspects of the annual reports were created then combined with a slacks-based measure of efficiency DEA model and modified layering classification technique to capture the multidimensional complexity of bankruptcy. This approach proved to be an effective prediction tool, separating companies with a high risk of bankruptcy from those that were healthy, with a reliable accuracy of 80% – an improvement over the widely-used Altman bankruptcy model having 70%, 58% and 50% accuracy when predicting cases today, from one year back and from two years back, respectively. It also provides a probability of bankruptcy based on a second order polynomial function in addition to targets for improvement, and was designed to be easily adapted for analysis of other industries. Finally, the contributions of this thesis benefit creditors with better risk assessment, owners with time to improve current operations as to avoid failure altogether, as well as investors with information on which healthy companies to invest in and which unhealthy companies to short. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Kipusi, Sein Sheila | Walcott, Rinaldo | Examination of Black Entrepreneurs in Toronto, Canada: Critical Analysis of the Role of Financial Literacy | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2020-06 | American entrepreneur Jim Rohn stated that “Formal education will make you a living; self-education will make you a fortune” . This research on lived experiences of Black businesses in Toronto has relied on self-education. Bogan and Darity (2008) argue that policymakers and scholars alike consider self-employment as an alternative to unemployment and a route out of poverty. This dissertation examines the historical and contemporary experiences faced by Black businesses in Canada, and in particular the Greater Toronto Area. In addition, this research examines the role of financial literacy education amongst the Black community. This dissertation argues that to understand the challenges within the Black business community, consideration of the complexities of Black identity, in antiquity and modernity, have shaped and influenced the Black narrative in not only stories of heroics and affirmation but betrayal, pain, and contestation, which has had a severe impact on economic prosperity within the Black community as a collective. Using theoretical frameworks that employ an analysis of anti-Black racism, anti-colonialism, and Indigenous knowledges as analytic tools, combined with literary exploration, this dissertation examines the impact of historic and systemic trauma on Black business owners with profound economic implications to their communities that continue to reproduce coloniality, discrimination, and racism. The findings of this research will add to the discourse on systemic, historical, and contemporary barriers that have hindered the growth of Black businesses in Canada. Unearthing the historical and contemporary barriers that have hindered the growth of more Black businesses in Toronto is needed to create an economic blueprint for future Black entrepreneurs to overcome economic, social, political, and psychological adversity. The findings enable scholars, policy-makers, and practitioners to better appreciate the possibilities and difficulties which characterize and frame attempts by Black entrepreneurs in Toronto that advance and/or hinder the sociopolitical and economic environment of Black bodies in Canadian communities. | Ph.D. | poverty | 1 |
| Kirk, Devin Grant | Krkosek, Martin | Predicting the Thermal Dependencies of Infectious Disease | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11 | Climate change is affecting infectious disease around the world. These effects can be complicated, as disease spread depends on characteristics of the host-parasite system in question, including host mortality rates, parasite contact rates, and how quickly the parasite kills its host. Importantly, these key parameters often vary with temperature. Combining mechanistic models of disease spread with thermal performance curves can be a powerful approach to predicting temperature’s effects on disease; however, most host-parasite systems are data poor and it is therefore difficult to parameterize their phenomenological thermal functions. The Metabolic Theory of Ecology (MTE) provides a potential solution to these data limitations. The MTE framework suggests that since metabolism scales with body mass and temperature, metabolic rate can be used to predict temperature’s effects on physiological rates, thereby generating models for the thermal dependencies of disease traits. Since MTE is predicated on first principles of chemistry and physics, it should be generalizable across biological systems and its functions may be parameterized a priori. Recent work has proposed combining MTE with host-parasite models, though we lack empirical tests of how well this approach can describe the thermal dependencies of disease across different host-parasite scales. Here, I use a Daphnia magna – microsporidian experimental host-parasite system to test this approach’s performance. In Chapter 1, I show that MTE is able to capture the thermal dependencies of within-host disease, including parameters that describe host aging and mortality, and parasite growth and equilibrium abundance. In Chapter 2, I provide evidence that MTE can accurately describe the rates that constitute disease transmission (contact and parasite infectivity) across temperature. Finally, in Chapter 3 I use the models described above to parameterize a population-level epidemiological model that predicts disease dynamics under warming or constant temperatures. I test the independent model predictions by driving experimental populations through constant or slowly warming conditions and show that MTE is able to accurately forecast warming-driven disease emergence. This thesis serves as a proof of principle that linking simple metabolic models with a mechanistic host–parasite framework can be used to predict temperature responses of within-host disease dynamics, disease transmission, and overall epidemics. | Ph.D. | ecology, climate | 13, 14 |
| Kirkpatrick, Sharon | Tarasuk, Valerie | Household Food Insecurity in Canada: An Examination of Nutrition Implications and Factors Associated with Vulnerability | Nutritional Sciences | 2008-06 | Household food insecurity, defined as "the inability to acquire or consume an adequate diet quality or sufficient quantity of food in socially acceptable ways, or the uncertainty that one will be able to do so”, affected almost one in ten Canadian households in 2004. Responses have been dominated by community-based food initiatives with little attention paid to potential policy directions to alleviate this problem. The lack of impetus for policy responses may stem from the paucity of evidence documenting the nutrition implications of household food insecurity. Further, the development of policy interventions is hindered by a lack of understanding of the factors that influence vulnerability to food insecurity. This thesis comprises three studies aimed at providing stimulus and directions for policy responses to household food insecurity in Canada. The first study, an analysis of data from the 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey, documents poorer dietary intakes and heightened risk of nutrient inadequacies among adults and adolescents in food-insecure households, providing evidence of the public health implications and public policy relevance of household food insecurity. The second and third studies are examinations of household-level factors associated with vulnerability to household food insecurity. Analysis of data from the 2001 Survey of Household Spending demonstrates the relevance of housing costs to household food access. Among lower-income households, as the proportion of income allocated to housing costs increased, the adequacy of household food spending declined significantly. Receipt of a housing subsidy was associated with an improvement in food spending but mean food spending adequacy fell below the cost of a basic nutritious diet even among subsidized households. The final study comprises a cross-sectional survey of 464 low-income Toronto families, two-thirds of whom were food insecure over the preceding 12 months. Analysis of predictors of severe food insecurity highlights the centrality of income and housing costs and raises serious questions about current definitions of housing affordability and the adequacy of current housing subsidy levels. This work provides a public health imperative for action and points to the urgent need for social policy reform to ameliorate problems of household food insecurity in Canada. | PhD | food | 2 |
| Kirkup, Kyle | Cossman, Brenda||Valverde, Mariana | Sex Crimes: Queer Engagements with the Criminal Law from the Street to the Prison | Law | 2017-06 | Over the past three decades, debates in Canada surrounding the introduction of human rights protections, benefits for same-sex couples, and relationship recognition have tended to invoke a new legal subject, one draped in the garb of respectability. When members of queer communities have sought access to legal protections, they have tended to predicate their claims on respectable familial arrangements. Largely absent from this turn to respectability, however, is engagement with the criminal law, particularly in cases where queer people cannot be easily read as the victims of crime. Sex Crimes: Queer Engagements with the Criminal Law from the Street to the Prison returns to the criminal law to examine its continued use as a tool that disciplines â and, at times, fails to discipline â those who cannot be read in terms of respectability. The project weaves together the practices of policing on the street, stories about HIV non-disclosure from the courtroom, and the experiences of queer people in prison. This project argues that when queer people become ensnared in the repressive aspects of criminal justice, the contemporary legal system stops addressing the hardships they face due to their sexual and gender identities. While norms of substantive equality are now well entrenched in the fields of human rights law, family law, and constitutional law, these standards are cast aside when it comes to the administration of punishment. The project concludes by developing a theory of the law and order queer movement, arguing that when queer people code themselves as respectable victims of crime seeking protection from the punitive apparatuses of the carceral state, they run the risk of instantiating law and order agendas. As a result, they may inadvertently breathe new life into systems that continue to be used to discipline the most vulnerable members of queer communities. | S.J.D. | gender, rights, queer | 5, 16 |
| Klassen, Amy Lynn | Hannah-Moffat, Kelly | Correctional Officer Training and the Secure Containment of Risk and Dangerousness in a Canadian Provincial Jurisdiction | Sociology | 2018-11 | Researchers argue that prison systems have become increasingly punitive since the 1970s. However, the literature on Canadian provincial prisons has yet to document how punitiveness characterized by the rise of risk and concerns about dangerousness has been incorporated into penal practice. Using data collected during a 9-week participant observation study of provincial correctional officer (CO) training and semi-structured interviews with COs, this dissertation argues that CO training depicts prisoners as risky and dangerous by characterizing prisoner misconduct as antagonistic. This conceptualization helps to legitimize the use of physical forms of control. The use of force is positioned as the most important mechanism that COs use to manage antagonistic behaviour. The development of a security orientation premised on the use of force is achieved within a masculinized training regime designed to produce competent officers. I argue that competency is a gendered process where male and female recruits are differentially sanctioned when they fail to show toughness and emotionally stoicism. The amount and type of force used must be reasonable. Reasonableness is tied to how well COs document use of force incidents and how they use force in camera friendly ways. These are positioned as accountability measures designed to reduce excessive force. However, I suggest that these accountability measures actually shield COs from being responsible for the force they use. Force is conceptualized as a legitimate response to prisoner behaviour and COs are taught how to administer high levels of pain without being caught for using force. So long as a CO can justify and document his or her actions, the institution and the officer are absolved of liability associated with the use of physical force. This creates the environmental conditions necessary to keep COs in control by ignoring the social and contextual causes of antagonistic behaviour. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Kleiman, Sela | Moodley, Roy | White Therapists’ Enactments And Mitigations Of Cultural Countertransference Responses In The Cross-Racial Dyad: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-11 | As cities across North America become increasingly racially diverse, the need for mental health professionals to purvey culturally sensitive and effective treatment is critical. White therapists, in particular, working in cross-racial dyads may encounter unique challenges to meet this need. Indeed, among other things, psychological vulnerabilities and racial biases of self and other underlying cultural countertransference enactments may interfere with White therapists’ abilities to provide effective treatment to racialized individuals. This study focuses on exploring White therapists’ lived experiences enacting and/or mitigating the infusion of cultural countertransference responses within the cross-racial dyad. In addition, this study seeks to understand how participants make sense of and contextualize the emergence of these countertransference processes including the manner by which race intersects and interacts with gender – and other sociocultural identities – to influence therapists’ deportment in the cross-racial dyad. Participants were 10 self-identified White therapists living and working in Canada with significant experience helping racialized individuals. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was the methodological approach deemed most suitable to investigate this subject. The findings suggest that cultural countertransference enactments were common among White therapists while working in cross-racial dyads, many of which were identified by the presence of anxiety and/or avoidance strategies. Many participants also reported instances in which they were ostensibly able to counter the tendency to enact cultural countertransference responses. Instead, at times, they reported approaching the treatment process more deliberately and with enhanced awareness such that unintended infusions of potentially harmful dynamics were mitigated. Participants pointed to intersections of gender with race as well as various familial, social, and educational factors that they believed contextualized the emergence/mitigation of these enactments. Unique contributions of this work as well as study limitations, implications, and recommendations for future research are discussed. | Ph.D. | health, cities, gender | 3, 5, 11 |
| Klem, Ethan | Sargent, Edward H. | Infrared Sensitive Solution-processed Quantum Dot Photovoltaics in a Nanoporous Architecture | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2008-11 | If solar energy is to be a significant component of our energy supply, technologies are required which produce high efficiency solar cells using inexpensive materials and versatile manufacturing processes. Solution-processed materials have been used to create low cost, easily fabricated devices, but have suffered from low power conversion efficiencies. A lack of infrared energy capture limits their efficiency. In this work we develop solution-processed photovoltaic devices using lead sulphide quantum dots and high surface area porous oxide electrodes. The resultant devices have a spectral response from 400 to 1800 nm. In fabricating these devices we utilize crosslinking molecules. We explore the impact crosslinkers have on the mobility and morphology of quantum dot films using field effect transistors and transmission electron microscopy. We also explore a hybrid organic/inorganic route for controlling the net doping in quantum dot films. We investigate the chemical and compositional changes that lead sulphide quantum dots films undergo during crosslinker treatment and annealing. Using this information we optimize our charge separation efficiency and our open circuit voltage. The resulting devices have an infrared power conversion efficiency of 2%, four orders of magnitude higher than that in previously reported lead sulphide quantum dot devices. | PhD | energy, solar | 7 |
| Kloet, Marie Vander | Dehli, Kari | Cataloguing Wilderness: Whiteness, Masculinity and Responsible Citizenship in Canadian Outdoor Recreation Texts | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-11 | This research examines representations of wilderness, Canadian nationalism and the production of responsible and respectable subjects in commonplace outdoor recreation texts from Mountain Equipment Co-op, the Bruce Trail Conservancy and the Bruce Peninsula National Park. Drawing theoretical insights from Foucault’s genealogy and technologies of the self, post-structural feminism and anti-racist scholarship on whiteness, I pose three broad questions: How is nature understood? How is Canada imagined? How are certain subjects produced through outdoor recreation? In this research, I outline five ways in which wilderness is represented. First, I consider how wilderness is produced as a place that is above all else empty (of human inhabitants and human presence). I then examine four ways in which the empty wilderness is represented: first, as dangerous and inhospitable, second, as threatened, third, as sublime and fourth, as the Canadian nation. I link the meanings invested into wilderness with a set of practices or desired forms of conduct in order to articulate how a specific subject is produced. These subjects draw on the meanings attributed to wilderness. The dangerous wilderness can only be navigated by a Calculating Adventurer. The threatened wilderness desperately needs the assistance of the Conscientious Consumer. The sublime wilderness provides respite for the Transformed Traveler. The Canadian or national wilderness is best suited to and belongs to the Wilderness Citizen. The four subjects I examine in this thesis each draw from particular wilderness representations and specific practices in order to be produced as desirable in the context of outdoor recreation. By examining the relationship between wilderness discourse, subjects and practices in everyday texts, I illustrate how masculine and white respectability operate in outdoor recreation. Pointing to subtle shifts in the meanings and values attributed to masculinity, Canadianness and whiteness, I articulate how outdoor recreation texts produce subject positions which are richly embedded in race and gender privilege and assertions about national belonging. In addition to examining whiteness, nationalism and masculinity, this research examines how individualized practices, such as consumer activism, become understood as the conduct of responsible neoliberal citizens concerned with national and environmental interests. | PhD | consum, production | 12 |
| Knott, Theresa | Fuller-Thomson, Esme | Testing the Maternal Response Hypothesis in Cases of Suspected or Substantiated Child Sexual Abuse: Secondary Data Analysis of the Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Nelect, 1998 | Social Work | 2008-11 | This dissertation’s analyses examined the association of caregiver, child, abuse and investigation characteristics with maternal response and emotional harm among families for whom child sexual abuse (CSA) was suspected or substantiated. Method This study was based on secondary analysis of data collected in the Canadian Incidence Study of Report Child Abuse and Neglect 1998. The current analysis was limited to 373 CSA investigations for which there was a female non-offending caregiver and complete data on maternal response. Bivariate and hierarchical logistic regression analysis was conducted for two outcomes; maternal response and emotional harm. Results According to social worker assessment, the majority of female non-offending caregivers (87.1%) of children investigated for suspected or substantiated child sexual abuse responded with belief of the abuse disclosure, emotional support and protection of the child victim. The overall maternal response model was significant and accounted for 40.8% of the variance (Nagelkerke R2). Factors significantly associated with maternal response in the multivariate model included maternal mental health, age of the child, child’s manifestation of sexualized behavior, child’s relationship to the perpetrator, duration of abuse and co-occurring maltreatment. The overall emotional harm model was significant and accounted for 18.3% of the variance (Nagelkerke R2). Age of the child at the time of investigation, inappropriate sexualized behavior and substantiation level were significant predictors in the final block of the emotional harm regression equation. Maternal response was no longer significantly associated with emotional harm when the analysis adjusted for child characteristics. Conclusion Consistent with previous research, the majority of non-offending mothers investigated as part of the CIS-98 responded to CSA disclosure with belief, emotional support and protection as determined by the social worker’s assessment. The current study supports the cumulative evidence that caregiver mental health, age of the child and the child’s relationship with the offender are significant predictors of negative maternal response and emotional harm. Although negative maternal response failed to predict emotional harm among children investigated for CSA, continued examination of the risk factors associated with maternal response is warranted to ensure the safety of a small, yet vulnerable segment of children. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Knox, Andrew J. | Evans, Greg J||Karney, Bryan W | Engineering Strategies and Methods for Avoiding Air-quality Externalities: Dispersion Modeling, Home Energy Conservation, and Scenario Planning | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2015-06 | Energy conservation can improve air quality by reducing emissions from fuel combustion. The human health value retained through better air quality can then offset the cost of energy conservation. Through this thesis' innovative yet widely-accessible combination of air pollution dispersion modeling and atmospheric chemistry, it is estimated that the health value retained by avoiding emissions from Ontario's former coal-fired generating stations is $5.74/MWh (using an upper-bound value of $265,000 per year of life lost). This value is combined with energy modeling of homes in the first-ever assessment of the air-quality health benefits of low-energy buildings. It is shown that avoided health damages can equal 7% of additional construction costs of energy efficient buildings in Ontario. At 7%, health savings are a significant item in the cost analysis of efficient buildings. Looking to energy efficiency in the context of likely future low-resource natural gas scenarios, building efficient buildings today is shown to be more economically efficient than any building retrofit option. Considering future natural gas scarcity in the context of Ontario's Long-Term Energy Plan reveals that Ontario may be forced to return to coal-fired electricity. Projected coal use would result in externalities greater than $600 million/year; 80% more than air-quality externalities from Ontario's electricity in 1985. Radically aggressive investment in electricity conservation (75% reduction per capita by 2075) is one promising path forward that keeps air-quality externalities below 1985 levels. Non-health externalities are an additional concern, the quantification, and ultimately monetization, of which could be practical using emerging air pollution monitoring technologies. Energy, conservation, energy planning, and energy's externalities form a complex situation in which today's decisions are critical to a successful future. It is clear that reducing the demand for energy is essential and that there are economically efficient conservation opportunities, particularly in the building sector, being missed. | Ph.D. | energy, buildings, pollut, conserv | 7, 9, 13 |
| Knutson, Glenna | Bascia, Nina | Nurses' Ethical Problem Solving | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2012-06 | A growing body of research has drawn attention to the hierarchical and bureaucratic nature of the hospital organizational environment in which nurses seek to resolve ethical problems related to patient care, whereas other studies have focused on the impact of nurses’ personal or professional qualities on those nurses’ ethical problem solving. This qualitative investigation sought to elucidate the extent to which nurses perceived their personal or professional qualities, as well as organizational characteristics, as influencing their ethical decision making. This investigator interviewed 10 registered nurses in 2 acute-care hospitals that were different in size, location, and type. A relational ethics lens assisted in the analysis of the data, emphasizing ways in which the nurses’ ethical problem solving was socially situated within a complex of relationships with others, including patients, families, physicians, and coworkers. Data analysis revealed key themes, including the nurses’ concern for patients, professional experience, layered relationships with others, interactions within the organization, and situational analysis of contexts and relationships. Subthemes included the nurses’ relationships with patients, physicians, patients’ families, and coworkers. This study revealed a range of ethical problems. Nurses saw their patients as their greatest concern; the nurses worked within a social context of multilayered and complex relationships within a hierarchical, bureaucratic organization with the desire to bring about the best outcomes for patients. The participants described ethical concerns related to the actions or decisions of physicians, patients’ family members, and nurses’ coworkers. The nurses’ deliberation to resolve these ethical problems considered risks and benefits for patients, nurses, and others. The nurses seemed to carry out a contextual assessment, analyzing the presence of mutual respect, the extent of relational engagement, and the potential for opening relational space in order to work together with others to resolve the ethical problem for the patient’s best outcome. The nurses’ ethical actions were socially situated within this complex interpersonal context. This thesis discusses implications of these findings for nursing research, education, and practice. | EDD | worker | 8 |
| Knyahnytska, Yuliya | Webster, Fiona | Changing the Conversation: a Critical Ethnography of Diabetes Care in People with Mental Illnesses | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-06 | Chronic illnesses pose a large public health threat. Diabetes mellitus type II accounts for about 90% of cases, is largely considered preventable by health providers, but continues to be among one of the most debilitating chronic conditions in Canada, and around the world. The co-occurrence of severe mental illnesses and diabetes is well documented, with diabetes being two to three times more prevalent among individuals with severe mental illnesses, compared to the general population. In clinical practices, diabetes management for people with mental illnesses and diabetes continues to operate on the premise of chronic disease model with an understanding of diabetes as a physiological and behavioral deficiency. Therefore, clinical and policy efforts are directed toward the enhancement of patient self-management techniques through patient compliance with pharmaceutical and lifestyle behavior recommendations. Self-management continues to be an important mandate in clinical practice and public health policies, where its biomedical understanding continues to prevail. Nonetheless, relatively little attention has been given to the exploration of how well the biomedical model aligns with peopleâ s everyday experiences. This project explored everyday experiences of diabetes self-management and biomedical compliance among those diagnosed with severe mental illnesses through the lens of critical ethnography. This work demonstrated discordance between biomedical perspectives on diabetes management and the lived experiences of those with mental illness. I identified an alternative conceptualization of diabetes management that moved beyond idealized concepts of self-care in order to introduce the social realities of people with severe mental illnesses as they attempt to enact and negotiate around medical directives. This new understanding encourages a shift towards broader social and contextual understandings of the lived realities of individuals with severe mental illness, and their resourcefulness, competence, persistence, and capabilities. Attention to how social context informs patientsâ realities may assist in the development of new context-sensitive and patient-oriented grounds for public health strategies and clinical practices associated with diabetes care, and challenge traditional understandings of compliance and noncompliance with diabetic self-management. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Ko, Anne A. | Weinrib, Lorraine | A Legal Analysis of the Access to Court Record Policies of the Provincial and Territorial Courts of the Common Law Jurisdiction of Canada and Public Accessibility | Law | 2016-11 | The Supreme Court of Canada has recognized the importance of court openness to public confidence in the transparency and integrity of the administration of justice. These principles are promoted when the public and media have access to court proceedings, which also includes access to court records. Canadaâ s highest court has also recognized the importance of the Charter right of expression and the mediaâ s essential role in disseminating information about the courts to the public, which means accessibility to the courts and records. However, there is inconsistency within the access to court record policies of the provincial and territorial courts of the common law jurisdiction of Canada. While some policies may recognize the importance of court openness and public accessibility, they may not contain provisions that meaningfully adopt these principles. Moreover, there is much debate and hesitation when it comes to digitization of court records and public accessibility. | LL.M. | justice | 16 |
| Ko, Gregory Tsang Tai | Réaume, Denise G | The Customer Isn't Always Right: Exploring the Protective Ambit of the Employment Protection in the Ontario Human Rights Code through Customer-on-Worker Harassment | Law | 2016-11 | This thesis argues that the "right to equal treatment with respect to employment" under section 5(1) of the Ontario Human Rights Code extends to protect workers from customer harassment. In so doing, this thesis aims to provide an account of section 5(1) and the way in which it imposes duties on parties who do not fit the traditional definition of an employer. This project argues that the statutory language of section 5(1) demonstrates a legislative intent to cover relationships outside of the paradigmatic employer-employee relationship and that it is broad enough to cover customer-worker interactions. This thesis will further argue that there is sufficient proximity between customers and employees to justify extending a duty onto customers to refrain from harassment. Finally, this project demonstrates that broader policy considerations justify extending section 5(1) coverage to address customer-worker harassment. | LL.M. | employment, rights | 8, 16 |
| Ko, Sunho | Schmid, Andre | Food for Empire: Wartime Food Politics on the Korean Homefront, 1937-1945 | East Asian Studies | 2018-11 | This research examines how the minute details of food production and consumption in colonial Korea became a target of wartime food politics under the rubric of improving productivity and efficiency for war efforts. In examining the politics, this research takes a more expansive approach to power and politics by locating the agency of power beyond the state and understanding its nature as more than simply totalitarian or suppressive. To this end, this study investigates the knowledge production of a group of experts—ranging from agronomists (Chapter 1 and 2) and nutritional scientists (Chapter 3 and 4), to cookbook authors (Chapter 4) and gardening manual writers (Chapter 5)—who, each in their own way, voiced opinions on the political, cultural, and social issues of the time beyond the sheer material concerns of enhancing productivity in food production and consumption. This research pays especially close attention to three recurring and entangled topics: first, the changing position of the colony and its population in the expanding empire; second, the geographical relationship between city and countryside in the urbanizing peninsula; and finally, ideal gender roles in the bourgeois domestic space. By attending to these themes through the lens of race, region, gender, and class, this study traces how a range of varied social aspirations betray tensions, dilemmas, and contractions of the time rather than converging in the fascist ideology for continuous improvement in total harmony, free from social conflicts. | Ph.D. | food, production | 2, 12 |
| Kobari, Laleh | Yuri, Lawryshyn | Evaluation of Oil Sands Projects and their Expansion Rate using Real Options | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2014-11 | The rapidly expanding oil sands of western Canada, the third largest reserves in the world, are creating serious challenges, such as ecological harm, labour shortages, and extensive natural gas consumption. This thesis develops three practical real options models to evaluate the feasibility of oil sands projects and to stimate the optimal rate of oil sands expansion, while accounting for the stated concerns. The first model estimates the value of an oil sands plant, while accounting for oil price uncertainty, in a single-agent setting. The model shows that, in the current bullish oil market and with the long life of oil sands projects, once constructed, oil sands plants are highly unlikely to close unless the price of oil drops substantially. Unsanctioned projects with little capital spentare susceptible to delay/cancellation. The second model estimates the value of a plant, while accounting for oil and natural gas price uncertainties, in a single-agent setting. The results show that oil price is the key driver of oil sands growth in Alberta. Becauseof the current low natural gas price, the importance of natural gas price uncertainty in the valuation is low. The third model evaluates the rate of oil sands expansion under different environmental tax/cost policies, while accounting for the oil price uncertainty,in a multi-agent setting . This model also accounts for labour shortages in Alberta. The results show that a stricter environmental tax policy delays investment but leads to a higher rate of expansion once investment begins. The first two models provide a framework for oil companies to value new oil sands plants and to gauge the optimum time to construct, given the current state of uncertainty in the industry. The third model allows oil companies and government policy makers to gauge the impact of policy strategies on oil sands expansion rates. | Ph.D. | ecology, environment | 13, 15 |
| Kogler, Dieter Franz | Gertler, Meric S. ||DiFrancesco, Richard J. | The Geography of Knowledge Formation: Spatial and Sectoral Aspects of Technological Change in the Canadian Economy as Indicated by Patent Citation Analysis, 1983-2007 | Geography | 2010-06 | Knowledge, learning, and innovation are vital elements in facilitating economic development and growth. Technological change, which is a synonym for generating knowledge, the diffusion thereof, and subsequent application in the marketplace in the form of novel products and processes, i.e. innovations, has a strong effect on the collective wealth of regions and nations. Knowledge spillovers, which are unintended knowledge flows that take place among spatial (geography) and sectoral (industry) units of observation, provide a rationale for diverging growth rates among spatial units, well beyond what might be explained by variations in jurisdictional factor endowments, and thus are of particular interest in this context. Measuring and quantifying the creation and diffusion of knowledge has proven to be a challenging endeavor. One way to capture technical and economically valuable knowledge is by means of patent and patent citation analysis. Following this approach, and utilizing a novel patent database that has been specifically developed for this purpose, the present dissertation investigates the spatio-sectoral patterns of knowledge spillovers in the Canadian economy over the time period 1983 to 2007. The employed research methodology addresses existing limitations in this stream of research, and contributes to the continuing debate regarding the significance of sectoral specialization versus diversity, and local versus non-local knowledge spillovers as the main driver of knowledge formation processes leading to innovation at the sub-regional scale. The findings indicate that knowledge spillovers are localized, and furthermore, that this localization effect has increased over time for both spillovers within a particular industry, as well as between industry sectors. The analysis of micro-geographic industry specific spatio-sectoral knowledge formation processes, and the inquiry into local sectoral knowledge spillover patterns, outlines how regional evolutionary technology trajectories potentially shape the rate and direction of technological change, and consequently influence economic growth, at a particular place. | PhD | economic growth, innovation | 8, 9 |
| Kohli, Michele | Coyte, Peter C. | Priority Setting in Community Care Access Centres | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2009-06 | In Ontario, access to publicly funded home care services is managed by Community Care Access Centres (CCACs). CCAC case managers are responsible for assessing all potential clients and prioritizing the allocation of services. The objectives of this thesis were to: 1) describe the types of decisions made by CCAC organizations and by individual case managers concerning the allocation of nursing, personal support and homemaking services to long-term adult clients with no mental health issues; and 2) to describe and assess the factors and values that influence these decisions. We conducted two case studies in which qualitative data were collected through 39 semi-structured interviews and a review of relevant documents from an urban and a rural area CCAC. A modified thematic analysis was used to identify themes related to the types of priority setting decisions and the associated factors and values. An internet-based survey was then designed based on these results and answered by 177 case managers from 8 of the 14 CCACs. The survey contained discrete choice experiments to examine the relative importance of client attributes and values to prioritization choices related to personal support and homemaking services, as well as questions that examined case managers’ attitudes towards priority setting. We found that both the rural and the urban CCACs utilized similar forms of priority setting and that case managers made the majority of these decisions during their daily interactions with clients. Numerous client, CCAC, and external factors related to the values of safety, independence and client-focused care were considered by case managers during needs assessment and service plan development. The relative importance of the selected client attributes in defining need for personal support and homemaking services was tested and found to be significantly affected by the location of the case manager (rural or urban area), years of experience in home care, and recent experience providing informal care. Case managers allocated services in the spirit of equal service for equal need and in consideration of operational efficiency. We also identified a number of case manager-related, client-related and external factors that interfered with the achievement of horizontal equity. | PhD | health, urban, rural | 3, 11 |
| Koleilat, Ghada I. | Sargent, Edward H. | Quantum-tuned Multijunction Solar Cells | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2012-11 | Multijunction solar cells made from a combination of CQDs of differing sizes and thus bandgaps are a promising means by which to increase the energy harvested from the Sun’s broad spectrum. In this dissertation, we first report the systematic engineering of 1.6 eV PbS CQD solar cells, optimal as the front cell responsible for visible wavelength harvesting in tandem photovoltaics. We rationally optimize each of the device’s collecting electrodes—the heterointerface with electron accepting TiO2 and the deep-work-function hole-collecting MoO3 for ohmic contact—for maximum efficiency. Room-temperature processing enables flexible substrates, and permits tandem solar cells that integrate a small-bandgap back cell atop a low thermal-budget larger-bandgap front cell. We report an electrode strategy that enables a depleted heterojunction CQD PV device to be fabricated entirely at room temperature. We develop a two-layer donor-supply electrode (DSE) in which a highly doped, shallow work function layer supplies a high density of free electrons to an ultrathin TiO2 layer via charge-transfer doping. Using the DSE we build all-room-temperature-processed small-bandgap (1 eV) colloidal quantum dot solar cells suitable for use as the back junction in tandem solar cells. We further report in this work the first efficient CQD tandem solar cells. We use a graded recombination layer (GRL) to provide a progression of work functions from the hole-accepting electrode in the bottom cell to the electron-accepting electrode in the top cell. The recombination layers must allow the hole current from one cell to recombine, with high efficiency and low voltage loss, with the electron current from the next cell. We conclude our dissertation by presenting the generalized conditions for design of efficient graded recombination layer solar devices. We demonstrate a family of new GRL designs experimentally and highlight the benefits of the progression of dopings and work functions in the interlayers. | PhD | energy | 7 |
| Kolliopoulos, Georgios | Papangelakis, Vladimiros G | Process Water Recovery via Forward Osmosis | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-11 | Forward osmosis (FO) is an emerging membrane technology promising low cost water recovery from high salinity effluents that involves two steps to recover water. Initially, a concentrated draw solution (CDS) recovers water from the effluent, and subsequently, the diluted draw solution (DDS) must be treated for water recovery and draw solution regeneration. Water recovery into the CDS requires almost no energy; however, energy is required to recover water from the DDS and regenerate the CDS. Aqueous carbonated trimethylamine (TMA-CO2-H2O) is an effective draw solution as it consists of highly soluble compounds, namely TMA and CO2, and results into CDSs of high osmotic pressure, capable to achieve a high water recovery yield. Further, TMA and CO2 undergo a phase transformation, from aqueous to vapor, upon mild heating of the DDS, thus facilitating water recovery from it. A fundamental theoretical and experimental investigation of the ternary system TMA-CO2-H2O as draw solution in Forward Osmosis (FO) was conducted. A new database for the Mixed Solvent Electrolyte (MSE) model of the OLI Systems (www.olisystems.com) software was developed to determine the interaction parameters, using new experimental data and regression analysis. The experimental data included VLE, speciation, pH, density, and conductivity. The database developed was shown to accurately predict the chemical properties of aqueous trimethylamine solutions (TMA-CO2-H2O) within 15% within the temperature range 20 to 60 °C. Further, the TMA-CO2 separation efficiency and decomposition kinetics were systematically studied and a decomposition mechanism for the draw solution was proposed. The rate determining step was found to be TMA desorption from the DDS and the draw solute separation process stoichiometric. The temperature and pressure effects on the draw solute separation efficiency were also quantified. A new methodology to obtain speciation data at high temperatures was developed and was validated experimentally. This methodology is applicable to chemical systems that share similar properties to the ternary TMA-CO2-H2O and can be used in kinetics studies. Finally, an energy efficient draw solution separation and regeneration process was designed and operated at both laboratory and pilot-scale. The experimental results were compared to simulations carried out in the OLI Flowsheet process modeling software within 15% error. The specific equivalent work was found to range from 6.8-16.7 kWh/m3 of fresh water produced. Therefore, the niche of the TMA-CO2-H2O based FO process in the water recovery industry was identified in the treatment of high salinity effluents, as this process is more energy efficient that the conventional water recovery processes. | Ph.D. | water, industr | 6, 9 |
| Kolmann, Matthew A. | Lovejoy, Nathan R | Morphological Evolution of the Feeding Mechanism in Stingrays | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2016-11 | Evolutionary transitions between ecosystems are rare, and yet in lineages that have made these transitions we observe drastic changes in their diversity and richness as they adapt to novel habitats and novel resources. The main goal of my dissertation is to examine how transitions among diets and habitats have molded the evolution of predator traits. To test hypotheses regarding how prey materials have shaped the evolution of predators, I examined predator feeding biomechanics using experimental methods and deep-time approaches. Using 3D printing, computational milling, and computed tomography scanning, I compared the biomechanical performance of jaw shape for durophagous stingrays which prey on mollusks with shells of drastically different material and structural properties. I found that all of these jaw morphologies were equally well-suited to crushing the entire breadth of prey mollusk diversity, establishing equifinality of anatomical form stemming from convergent feeding mechanics. Insectivory has evolved only once within modern sharks and rays, found within the enigmatic freshwater stingrays of South America. Using high-speed videography and computed tomography scanning I found that these freshwater stingrays use chewing motions of the jaws when feeding on prey, facilitated by a highly kinetic cranial skeleton, and that these motions are exaggerated for tougher prey like insects. Loose jaw joints, transverse jaw kinesis, passive tooth reorientation, and a hydrodynamic tongue allow freshwater potamotrygonid rays to chew in a manner similar to many mammals. I investigated how the evolution of novel feeding modes such as insectivory and molluscivory in these freshwater rays has altered the tempo of their evolution by generating a molecular phylogeny for the family and analyzing feeding trait adaptation across 40 million years of evolution. The evolution of molluscivores and insectivores in this stingray clade are relatively modern innovations, coincident with the changing nature of the Amazon basin and repeated colonization of new riverine habitats. These dietary strategies, in addition to piscivory, are representative of truly novel adaptive peaks and have contributed to shifts in the rate of both lineage and morphological evolution in these remarkable freshwater stingrays. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Koltai, Jonathan Tomas | Schieman, Scott | Socioeconomic Status, Stress Exposure, and Psychological Well-Being: Complexities in the Stress Process | Sociology | 2018-06 | Decades of research has established an inverse association between socioeconomic position and psychological distress. Within medical sociology, the stress process model represents a dominant framework for investigating mechanisms that generate emotional inequality. Central to the stress process perspective is the observation that exposure to social stress is fundamentally rooted in social statuses and the social roles individuals occupy in their daily lives. Historically, research guided by the stress process paradigm has demonstrated that disparities in psychological distress arise to a substantial degree from inequalities in stress exposure—individuals placed lower in the socioeconomic hierarchy, for instance, are exposed to higher levels of cumulative and operant life stress, and this translates into mental health disadvantages. This dissertation moves beyond existing research by identifying circumstances under which socioeconomic patterns in mental health do not conform to what is commonly predicted by traditional hypotheses, and also provides theoretical insights and empirical evidence about the dynamics that generate pockets of complexity in social stress research. Three major findings emerge. First, I present evidence that time-stable differences between individuals introduce a nontrivial amount of spuriousness in the association between income-related variables and mental health. This raises questions about the independent effect of current income dynamics over and above, for example, the array of disadvantages that individuals may face at more distal stages in the life course. Second, I demonstrate the ways that SES modifies the concurrent experience of job stressors and resources. My findings highlight conditions under which lower status workers are shielded from the effects of stressors, but also the ways that resources may actually leave higher status individuals more vulnerable to the effects of stress exposure. Third, I identify a subgroup of professionals for which a status-health paradox is observed—higher status workers experience poorer mental health relative to their lower status peers—and this can be explained by the stressors of higher status in this particular profession. Each study can be considered an independent project, but taken together they represent an overarching contribution to sociological understandings of the interplay between SES, stress exposure, and mental health. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Konarski, Jakub Z. | Kennedy, Sidney H. ||McIntyre, Roger S. | Affective Processing in Major Depressive Disorder: Neuroanatomical Correlates of State and Trait Abnormailities | Medical Science | 2010-03 | Patients with MDD demonstrate impairments in various components of affective processing, which are believed to persist in the remitted phase of the illness and are believed to underlie the vulnerability for future relapse. Despite advances in neuropsychiatry, the neuroanatomical site of action of various treatment modalities remains unclear, leaving clinicians without an algorithm to guide optimal treatment selection for individual patients. This thesis sought to characterize differences in brain activation during affective processing between MDD treatment responders (RS) and non-responders (NR) by combining clinical and neuroimaging variables in a repeat-measure functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) investigation. We induced increases in positive and negative affect using visual stimuli under fMRI conditions in 21 MDD subjects and 18 healthy controls (HC). Based on previous neuroimaging investigations and preclinical animal data, we hypothesized that increased activation of the amygdala and the pregenual cingulate during negative affect induction (NAI), and decreased activity of the ventral striatum during positive affect induction (PAI), would differentiate ultimate NR from RS. Following the first scan, treatment with fluoxetine and olanzapine was initiated in the MDD group, with follow-up scans at one- and six-weeks thereafter. We hypothesized that decreases in depressive symptoms would be associated with decreased activation of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (PFC) and amygdala during NAI and increased activation of the hippocampus during PAI. Eleven MDD subjects met criteria for clinical remission at study endpoint. Based on trait differences between MDD and HC, we hypothesized that differences observed during NAI would be limited to brain regions involved in regulation of the affective state, including the dorsolateral PFC and the anterior midcingulate cortex. The results of the analyses confirmed the a-prior hypotheses and additionally demonstrated differential activation of the insular, medial temporal, and premotor cortex during repeat PAI and NAI between HC, RS, and NR. These findings provide: i) a neuroanatomical target of successful antidepressant therapy during PAI/NAI; ii) a differential effect of depressive symptoms and dispositional affect on brain activation during PAI/NAI; and iii) an a-prior method to differentiate RS from NR, and iv) demonstrate the need for additional treatment to prevent relapse in the remitted state. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Konukoglu, Ali Emre | Goldreich, David | Foreign Equity Portfolio Flows and Local Markets: Two Examples from the Istanbul Stock Exchange | Management | 2010-11 | This thesis analyzes the nature of foreign equity trades in relation to their effects on local markets. My goal is to contribute to the understanding of equity flows of foreign investors and their effect on the local markets. The thesis consists of two chapters, both of which employ a novel data set that is consisted of monthly equity flows by foreign investors at Istanbul Stock Exchange of Turkey. The first chapter, Foreign Ownership and World Market Integration, aims to explain the de facto financial market integration with global markets with foreign equity ownership using a novel data set of foreign portfolio flows at the individual stock level. The main result is the positive link between global nancial integration and past portfolio in flows by foreign investors on the cross-section of local stocks. The results have high economic significance: Across individual stocks a 1.4% increase in foreign portfolio inflows corresponds to up to 3.3% greater relative explanatory power of the global factor in explaining local stock returns in the following month. The results are indicative of a causal link: The lead-lag effect between foreign portfolio inflows and financial integration does not exist in the opposite direction. I show that stocks that experience an increase in foreign ownership are not more financially integrated in the past, i.e. the foreign portfolio flows are not a response to increased financial integration. The second chapter is titled as Uninformed Momentum Traders and it studies the relationship between momentum trading and information. I present evidence that supports the hypothesis that momentum trading is linked to a lack of information. I document significant momentum trading by foreign investors in stocks on which they potentially have more informational disadvantages. Small stocks, stocks with high volatility and low liquidity, stocks that are financially less integrated and have greater foreign exchange risk are subject to greater momentum trading. Moreover, stocks on which foreign trades indicate lower future profitability are subject to higher momentum trading. Additionally, I show that momentum trades by foreign investors exert contemporaneous price pressure and have no valuable longer-run information content. The contemporaneous price pressure of 2.30% per month is followed by a significant return reversal in the following two quarters. Finally, there is strong evidence that foreign investors do not possess local market speci c information. Momentum trading by foreign investors is triggered by the past profitability of the momentum factor in the local market. However, the negative pro tability of momentum makes momentum trading a sub-optimal trading strategy. | PhD | financial market | 10 |
| Korostil, Michele Colleen | McIntosh, Anthony Randal | The Brain-basis of Large-scale Learning Processes in Schizophrenia | Medical Science | 2018-11 | Learning impairments are common in schizophrenia and relate to functional outcome. This thesis explored the brain-basis of learning in schizophrenia in spatial and temporal domains as it unfolded across two fMRI sessions. During fMRI scanning, healthy controls and participants with schizophrenia completed a lexicon-learning task and a comparative reaction-time task. Using multivariate analytic approaches, the thesis used three vantage points on the fMRI-BOLD signal to characterize the brain-learning relationships. Using reaction-time tasks bookending the learning tasks on both scanning days, Study 1 examined task-independent linear changes in the BOLD signal that could potentially interfere with accurate interpretation in fMRI learning studies. It showed that these effects are stronger in schizophrenia in brain areas associated with cognitive control, default mode networks, perceptual and semantic processing. Results suggested that some of the ‘hyperactivation’ attributed to learning processes in the practice-related literature is better attributed to task-independent effects associated with impaired modulation of the BOLD signal during task switching. Study 2 used a brain-behaviour analysis to examine BOLD activity related to learning-success. With practice, controls shifted between early and late learning processes with a switch between early frontotemporal engagement to later subcortically-focused engagement. Persons with schizophrenia failed to show this same pattern; they were differentiated by level of engagement with perceptual processing regions and an overall suggestion of prolonged, early-learning brain processes. Whole-brain functional connectivity patterns related to learning accuracy showed between-groups similarities, differences and a group-by-time interaction in study 3. While again the controls showed two patterns capturing early and late learning, the pattern for the schizophrenia group spanned both days and did not vary with learning stage. Strong differences in schizophrenia included over-connected intra-cerebellar regions, under-connected frontal-cerebellar regions, over-connected sensorimotor-thalamus connection and under-connected prefrontal-thalamus regions. These patterns mirror many resting-state findings in the extant literature, but here we showed how this dysconnectivity pattern impacted directly on learning performance. Together, these three studies showed how learning in schizophrenia is associated with different large-scale interactions that emerge in different spatial and temporal brain-behaviour distributions. The thesis showed how an overall pattern of brain inflexibility underlies learning challenges in schizophrenia. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Koulakezian, Agop | Leon-Garcia, Alberto | Dynamic Route Guidance Algorithms for Robust Roadway Networks | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2016-11 | This Thesis focuses on developing robust dynamic route guidance algorithms to reduce traffic congestion in roadway networks. While recurring traffic congestion is normally the focus in planning and investment decisions, almost half of traffic congestion is caused by non-recurring traffic disturbances, primarily caused by incidents, vehicle breakdowns, extreme weather events, etc. In order to reduce traffic congestion, we focus on the problem of understanding the effect of traffic disturbances and reducing their impact on roadway networks. We introduce a systematic framework for defining the context of robustness based on the severity, frequency and predictability of traffic disturbances and for developing a robust design for roadway networks based on network design goals. We also present methods to speed up traffic assignment algorithms through compiler optimizations and parallelism, to efficiently measure the effect of traffic disturbances, and enable real-time ITS applications including dynamic route guidance systems. Next, we introduce a hybrid metric for measuring robustness in a roadway network by extending the shortest-path betweenness metric from network science, and augmenting it with links weights based on dynamic traffic flow metrics. Finally, we implement a robust dynamic traffic assignment algorithm for roadway networks based on this metric and test it on a large-scale calibrated network model for the Greater Toronto Area. Performance results show that the robust traffic assignment algorithm reduces vehicle travel times compared to existing traffic assignment algorithms, with and without the presence of disturbances in the form of traffic incidents. This makes a strong case for traffic planners and operators to use robust dynamic route guidance systems within actual implementations of real-time ITS strategies to help proactively alleviate traffic congestion due to disturbances. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Kouri-Towe, Natalie | Georgis, Dina | Solidarity at Risk: The Politics of Attachment in Transnational Queer Palestine Solidarity and Anti-Pinkwashing Activism | Social Justice Education | 2015-11 | Solidarity is at risk. The provocation that frames the title of this project aims to intervene in the theorization of solidarity and the practices of transnational solidarity activism in the 21st century. As a scholar embedded in the field, I take up the question of solidarity at risk to examine the practices of the transnational queer Palestine solidarity and anti-pinkwashing movement (the queer Palestine movement for short). In an era structured by the ideologies of neoliberalism, where free market globalization, privatization and individualism are reshaping the public sphere, the terms and practices of solidarity are shifting. Yet, theories of solidarity have remained embedded in older political frameworks, rooted in early social movement practices in the Marxist tradition or liberal democratic models of civic engagement. In a world changed by neoliberalism, we need new interpretive frameworks for analyzing and practicing solidarity today, not least because contemporary social movements require new ways of envisioning activist solidarity. Neoliberalism has also changed the geopolitical landscape of human rights. In what some queer theory scholars have called homonational times, we find the political stakes of queer solidarities embedded in the changing discourses of sexual rights. Looking at examples of solidarity at risk in the queer Palestine movement, this project maps the political stakes of homonationalism and neoliberalism in social movement practices. Examining cases of solidarity at risk in the queer Palestine movement, this project moves through various theories of solidarity: from transnational feminism, to political theory and philosophy, to queer and affect theories of social and political transformation. Across all these fields, I consider what binds us in solidarity, how our political attachments are important threads in theorizing solidarity, and how we might rethink our models of solidarity to sustain our political imaginings in neoliberal and homonational times. | Ph.D. | queer, rights | 5, 16 |
| Kouyoumdjian, Fiona G | Calzavara, Liviana | Intimate Partner Violence as a Risk Factor for Incident HIV Infection in Women in Rakai, Uganda | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014-03 | Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant public health problem, which has been associated with HIV infection. Previous studies that assessed IPV and HIV have been limited. Objectives: The primary objective of this study was to quantify the association between IPV and incident HIV infection in women in Rakai, Uganda. Secondary objectives were to explore whether condom use and number of partners in the past year mediate this association, and to identify risk factors for IPV. Methods: Data were collected over seven rounds of the Rakai Community Cohort Study between 2000 and 2009. Sexually active women aged 15 to 49 were included in analyses. Longitudinal data analysis was used to quantify the association between IPV and incident HIV infection, modelling participants as random effects. The adjusted population attributable risk fraction was calculated using an adjusted relative risk from a Poisson model. Putative mediators were assessed using Baron and Kenny’s criteria and the Sobel-Goodman test. Longitudinal and non-longitudinal analyses were used to assess predictors of IPV. Results: Women who experienced IPV ever had an odds ratio of incident HIV infection of 1.54 (95% CI 1.14, 2.09, p value 0.01), compared with women who had never experienced IPV. The adjusted population attributable risk fraction of incident HIV during the study period attributable to IPV ever was 14.3% (95% CI 2.8, 23.6). There was no evidence that condom use or partner violence in the past year mediated the relationship between IPV and HIV. Risk factors for IPV included sexual abuse, younger age at first sex, lower levels of education, forced first sex, younger age, being married, relationship of shorter duration, alcohol use by women and by their partners, and thinking that violence is acceptable. Discussion: This study demonstrates that IPV is associated with incident HIV infection in a population-based cohort in Uganda, although the population attributable risk fraction was modest. The prevention of IPV both in early sexual experiences and in adulthood should be a public health priority, and could contribute to HIV prevention. Further research is needed to understand the pathway from IPV to HIV infection. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Kovacevic, Vera | Simpson, Myrna J | 1H NMR-Based Metabolomics of Daphnia magna Sub-lethal Exposure to Organic Contaminants in the Absence and Presence of Dissolved Organic Matter | Chemistry | 2019-11 | Ecotoxicity tests which monitor observable endpoints such as mortality, growth and reproduction do not assess the molecular mode of action of contaminants in target organisms. Also, aquatic toxicity tests often do not include dissolved organic matter (DOM), which is ubiquitously found in natural waters. Hydrophobic organic contaminants sorb to DOM which may alter the bioavailability and toxicity of these contaminants. To assess this hypothesis, proton (1H) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics was used to analyze the metabolome of Daphnia magna after acute sub-lethal exposure to organic contaminants in the absence or presence of DOM. Triclosan, carbamazepine and ibuprofen exposure resulted in different metabolic responses in D. magna. DOM at 5 mg dissolved organic carbon/L (DOC/L) did not change the D. magna metabolome from carbamazepine, imidacloprid or tris(2-chloroethyl) phosphate exposure, perhaps because these weakly hydrophobic contaminants do not sorb to DOM. The metabolic response of D. magna from 17α-ethynylestradiol (EE2) exposure was suppressed by 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 mg DOC/L, likely from decreased EE2 bioavailability with DOM. The metabolic response in D. magna from perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) exposure was not altered with 1 mg DOC/L. However, PFOS exposure with 2, 3, 4 and 5 mg DOC/L resulted in a unique metabolic response in D. magna, which may be due to enhanced PFOS bioavailability or combined action of PFOS and DOM on the metabolome. The metabolic response of D. magna from tris(2-butoxyethyl) phosphate (TBOEP) exposure was unaltered with 5 mg DOC/L, perhaps from the high potency of TBOEP. D. magna exposure to triphenyl phosphate (TPhP) with 5 mg DOC/L resulted in a unique metabolic response compared to TPhP exposure, possibly from combined stress of TPhP and DOM on the metabolome or altered TPhP bioavailability. The mode of action of mixtures of the hydrophobic contaminants triclosan, TPhP and diazinon in D. magna was not altered by 1 and 5 mg DOC/L. Overall, DOM may enhance or suppress the metabolic perturbations in aquatic organisms that originate from sub-lethal exposure to organic contaminants. Therefore, DOM should be included when evaluating molecular-level responses from sub-lethal ecotoxicity tests and during risk assessment of environmental mixtures. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Koven, Anne Judith | Smith, Tat | Policy Networks and Paradigm Change in Ontario Forest Policy, 1988-2014 | Forestry | 2015-11 | This dissertation was developed from documentary research, analyses of public hearing transcripts, and a case study examining 25 years of forest policy change in Ontario from 1988 to 2014. The ideas and actions of the actors in the policy network, and the political, social, and economic structures in which they operated, are investigated using the Dialectical Model of Policy Networks. The relationships among the key policy actors are traced through significant events and legislation: the Timber Management Class Environmental Assessment (1988-1994), the Crown Forest Sustainability Act (1994), the Living Legacy-Ontario Forest Accord (1998), The Endangered Species Act (2007), the Far North Act (2010), and the Ontario Forest Tenure Modernization Act (2011.) The results of the analyses indicate that Ontario’s forest policy evolved over the study period. The policy focus was on timber supply for the forest industry in 1988. This gave way in 1994 to sustainable forest management, which also served environmental and social values. By 2007 the ecological values of forest policy began to predominate. The analyses reveal that as the ENGOs in the forest policy network gained strength, their ideas and their successful political advocacy drove ecological changes. In contrast, the network influence of the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources was weakened by ongoing budget cuts and confusion about its mandate. The forest industry lost its historical power in the network due to the economic crisis and downsizing of the industry and by tactics that caused further estrangement from the government. Professional foresters lost their prominence in the network as decisions about forests became associated with political rather than technical and scientific values. Aboriginal Peoples were unable to break into the network for purposes of furthering their treaty and Aboriginal rights and to obtain economic benefits for their remote communities. Questions are raised about the persistence of the new ecological forest policy network and the acceptance of the network of further reform. The result, however, of these shifts in network dynamics is that Ontario forest policy has experienced a paradigm change. | Ph.D. | natural resources, environment, forest | 12, 13, 15 |
| Kowalchuk, Donna Lynn | Portelli, John P | Principals' Engagement with The Ontario Leadership Framework to Enact Social Justice Leadership: Reflection, Resistance, and Resilience | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-06 | Now, more than ever, leadership — principal leadership — is needed to address the increasing diversity and marginalization in Ontario schools. In 2009, Realizing the Promise of Diversity: Ontario’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy policy was released. While The Ontario Leadership Framework was developed to support and sustain quality leadership in schools and districts across the province, it contains little to connect it to the 2009 document. Lying at the crossroads of education policy, educational leadership theory, and the practice of social justice leadership, this study aims to understand how principals engage in the OLF to enact social justice leadership. Using critical theory to conceptualize leadership for social justice, and a qualitative design, semi-structured interviews from 14 principals were analyzed using a constant comparative analysis method. This study found the OLF does not support social justice leadership. Through their own reflections on power and privilege, principals choose to engage in the OLF, not by trying to fit it into their social justice leadership, but rather by viewing it through the lens of social justice and social justice leadership. The power of reflection threads throughout the findings as does the need for principals to employ resistance and resilience to engage in the OLF to enact social justice leadership. It argues that if practicing and aspiring principals are earnest about closing the achievement gap of marginalized students, then they need to have experience with marginalization, with reflecting on their privilege and power, with resisting the status quo — all the while working subversively and with political savvy so that they can resist the dominant versions of leadership and actually make a change in schools that empower individuals against the structural injustices found in the greater society and within our schools. Given Ontario’s commitment to equity and inclusive education, if all students are truly to benefit from schooling, then this research indicates to policy makers that changes to the OLF are needed. | Ed.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Kozycz, Lisa | Seferos, Dwight S | Conjugated Materials for Organic Electronics | Chemistry | 2015-11 | This thesis describes the design and synthesis of novel conjugated materials for applications in organic electronics. The first half of the thesis focuses on conjugated polymers to be used as p-type (hole-transporting) donor materials in organic solar cells. I was first interested in studying how the open-circuit voltage of an organic solar cell could be increased by lowering the HOMO level of the donor polymer via functional group substitution. I chose to study the benchmark poly(3-hexylthiophene) structure and substituted the 3-hexyl chain with a less-electron donating 3-thiohexyl group. In Chapter 2, I synthesized an equally proportioned diblock copolymer containing 3-hexylthiophene and 3-thiohexylthiophene blocks, and found that the open-circuit voltage of the block copolymer device was as high as that of the device containing only the lower HOMO polymer. This inspired me to investigate the minimum amount of the lower HOMO unit required to reach this maximum voltage and thus I synthesized a series of statistical copolymers, presented in Chapter 3. For this new system I was also interested in investigating the effect of polymer sequence on device performance and thus switched from a block to statistical architecture. In the second half of the thesis, I focus on novel n-type (electron-transporting) materials based on arylene diimides. In chapter 4, I synthesized a one donor-two acceptor random terpolymer containing naphthalene diimide (NDI) and perylene diimide (PDI) as the two electron-deficient units and 2,7-carbazole as the electron-rich unit. I varied the ratio of the two acceptor units and found that while the optical and electrochemical properties varied with acceptor composition, the composition dependence was not evident in device performance. Rather, any amount of the NDI monomer reduced the device efficiency to the value of the one donor-one acceptor NDI parent copolymer due to a pinning of the short-circuit current at the lowest value. In chapter 5, I studied the effect of the single atom substitution of oxygen with sulfur on the optoelectronic and self-assembly properties of a series of small molecule naphthalene diimides. The low LUMO levels and strong intermolecular interactions of these thionated molecules make them ideal candidates for use in n-channel organic thin film or micro/nanowire transistors. | Ph.D. | solar | 7 |
| Kramer, Illan Jo | Sargent, Edward H. | Architecting the Optics, Energetics and Geometry of Colloidal Quantum Dot Photovoltaics | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2013-06 | Solution processed solar cells offer the promise of a low cost solution to global energy concerns. Colloidal quantum dots are one material that can be easily synthesized in and deposited from solution. These nanoparticles also offer the unique ability to select the desired optical and electrical characteristics, all within the same materials system, through small variations in their physical dimensions. These materials, unfortunately, are not without their limitations. To date, films made from colloidal quantum dots exhibit limited mobilities and short minority diffusion lengths. These limitations imply that simple device structures may not be sufficient to make an efficient solar cell. Here we show that through clever manipulation of the geometric and energetic structures, we can utilize the size-tunability of CQDs while masking their poor electrical characteristics. We further outline the physical mechanisms present within these architectures, namely the utilization of a distributed built-in electric field to extract current through drift rather than diffusion. These architectures have consequently exceeded the performance of legacy architectures such as the Schottky cell. Finally, we discuss some of the limiting modes within these architectures and within CQD films in general including the impact of surface traps and polydispersity in CQD populations. Through the development of these novel architectures, the power conversion efficiency of CQD solar cells has increased from ~3.5% to 7.4%; the highest efficiencies yet reported for colloidal quantum dot solar cells. | PhD | energy, solar | 7 |
| Kretz, Andrew | Sรก, Creso | Exploring the Effects of Higher Education Experiences on Male and Female STEM Majors' Attitude Towards Entrepreneurship | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-11 | The purpose of this study was to assess how higher education experiences differently affect female and male STEM students' personal valuation about becoming an entrepreneur. The promotion of entrepreneurship has made its way onto the agendas of policymakers, students, and institutions of higher education. Nonetheless, most studies indicate that male students are significantly more likely than female students to express positive personal valuations about becoming an entrepreneur. The factors influencing this difference, however, are left unexamined. An understanding of how higher education experiences foster or deter interest in entrepreneurship is important for the success of campus-based entrepreneurship initiatives, and for ensuring equal opportunities for female student participation. Universities and colleges in the United States (US) have been at the forefront of efforts to foster student entrepreneurship. Using a series of ordinal logistic regressions on a multi-institutional sample of 871 four-year college and university students collected by the Wabash National Study in the US, I examine student attitudes towards becoming an entrepreneur, along with student responses regarding their higher education experiences on three different waves. Results show that on entering higher education male students are more likely than female students to view becoming an entrepreneur as important, and that this gap widens over time. Moreover, becoming an entrepreneur loses importance for both male and female students over time. This study also found certain personality traits and higher education experiences as significantly associated with studentsâ valuations of the importance of becoming an entrepreneur, namely the degree to which one enjoys engaging in effortful cognitive activities, exams and assignments that require higher-order thinking, and interactions with faculty. This study contributes to understandings of the relationship between higher education and entrepreneurship in several ways. First, the results of this study show that attitudes towards entrepreneurship are weakly associated with key personality traits, indicating that differences between male and female valuations of the importance of becoming an entrepreneur likely stem in part from social expectations and experiences. Second, the results from this study provide colleges and universities with evidence that certain practices may make a difference in the likelihood students will value as important becoming an entrepreneur. The conclusions of this study suggest that colleges and universities interested in promoting student entrepreneurship should be proactive in harnessing studentsâ entrepreneurial interests early in their higher education, when such interests are at their highest. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Krieger, Nathalie Katherine Conn | Ducharme, Joseph | Errorless Classroom Management for Students with Severe Conduct Problems: A Staff-training Approach | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2013-11 | Proactive classroom management involves teacher use of a range of positive interaction and intervention strategies for managing student behaviour in the classroom. This approach to classroom management has been shown to positively influence student academic achievement, behaviour, and social-emotional well-being, as well as teacher job satisfaction, stress levels, and turnover rate. Unfortunately, teachers often receive minimal training in such strategies, leading them to use more reactive forms of classroom management as a means of controlling problematic student behaviour. Given that reactive procedures can have many unintended negative side effects, there is a need for in-service provision of additional teacher training in proactive approaches, especially in classrooms where student problem behaviours are rampant. The present study was designed to address this need by examining the effectiveness of Errorless Classroom Management (ECM), a proactive classroom management program that builds student tolerance to classroom challenges by teaching them four keystone skills: compliance, social skills, on-task behaviour, and communication. We provided ECM training to two staff members (one teacher and one educational assistant) who were working in a special education classroom for students demonstrating extremely high levels of severe antisocial behaviour. The goal of this in-service training program was to alter staff members’ classroom management practices in order to engender covariant improvements in student behaviour. Using time-series observations, we examined staff and student behaviour before and after ECM training. We also investigated the social validity of treatment effects through the use of staff-report questionnaires. Data revealed that staff members effectively reduced their use of reactive strategies following training but were inconsistent in their application of proactive strategies. In turn, student problem behaviour markedly declined following training; however, improvements on other student outcome measures were not consistently observed. Moreover, variability in staff members’ satisfaction ratings and stress scores suggest a modest overall level of social validity. These findings provide early support for the ECM training program as a socially acceptable form of intervention. These results also suggest that it is possible to effect change in student behaviour by training staff members in positive forms of classroom management. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Krolikowski, Alanna | Adler, Emanuel ||Wong, Joseph | China and the United States in Civil-commercial Air and Space: Specialist Cultures and International Relations in High-technology Sectors | Political Science | 2013-11 | Why are some high-technology sectors trans-nationally integrated while others are sites of interstate competition? This dissertation explores this question through a comparison of China-U.S. relations in two strategic, high-technology sectors: civil-commercial aircraft manufacture and civil-commercial spacecraft manufacture. Between 1989 and 2009, China-U.S. relations took strikingly different trajectories in these two sectors. In the aircraft sector, the two countries’ industries traded and integrated their activities and their civil agencies cooperated. By contrast, in the space sector, their industries did not trade or integrate, their civil agencies did not cooperate, and the two countries engaged in a form of technological competition. The divergent trajectories taken by China-United States relations in these two sectors are puzzling because both sectors present similar incentives and disincentives for both transnational integration and interstate competition. Theories of international relations do not fully explain this sectoral variation. This research indicates that this variation is traceable to underlying differences in how specialists in each sector, including technical and policy experts, implicitly reason about and represent technologies in general. In both countries, the air and space specialist communities each hold distinct understandings of the relationship between humans and technology. Performing representational practices that reflect these distinct assumptions, aeronautic and space specialists discursively constitute each sector and its technologies as distinct objects of policy, requiring different forms of state action. In air, these include policies adopted by both countries to enhance bilateral trade, industrial partnership, and technical cooperation. In space, these include measures to inhibit bilateral trade and cooperation while preparing for a coming bilateral confrontation. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Krupa, Joel Russell | Harvey, Danny | The Intersection of Renewable Energy Finance and Governance: Solutions to the Multi-trillion Dollar Challenges | Geography | 2019-11 | The International Finance Corporation (IFC) estimated in 2016 that the 2015 Paris Agreement could drive demand for tens of trillions of dollars of new climate-related investment between 2016 and 2030. Assessments suggest that at least some percentage of these funds will need to be mobilized from private investment sources. Renewable energy, the primary supply-side decarbonization tool, stands poised to capture a significant portion of this number, yet numerous technical, economic, and governance questions loom large in any discussion of renewable energy sector deployment. This thesis focuses on the question of financing all stages of renewables, as well as the ability of finance-linked entities to implement energy governance structures designed to drive a substantial level of renewables integration. We start by presenting case studies on both the United States and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. This study of contrasts is followed by a synthesis of insights on key renewable energy governance challenges from one perspective; specifically, the perspective of individuals with connections to the private finance sector that will be responsible for some of the financial flows for renewables deployment. Derived from extensive time in the field (including unstructured interviews, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic work), this thesis critically examines the perspectives of leading renewable energy financiers (as well as academics and other knowledgeable market observers from around the world) on how best to improve the financial flows to, and governance of, renewable energy finance. Given the difficulty of offering definitive prescriptions in the inherently idiosyncratic political, economic, social, and environmental context guiding each nation, the thesis starts by offering region-specific prescriptions, followed by general directions. In the final substantial chapter, it draws on a geographically diverse set of key stakeholder interviews to tease out common lessons that can be shared across borders. These lessons include the importance of a carbon tax, the criticality of appropriate policy structure and market design, the urgency of pursuing low-cost options (such as applied research), and the need for encouraging new capital sources into the space. Further research on the role of private sector and public sector capital in the renewable energy space is encouraged. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, climate, environment | 7, 13 |
| Kteily-Hawa, Roula | Mirchandani, Kiran | HIV Vulnerability amongst South Asian Immigrant Women in Toronto | Leadership, Higher Education and Adult Education | 2013-06 | This thesis focuses on the structural and behavioural factors that placed South Asian immigrant women living with HIV/AIDS in the Greater Toronto Area at risk. Informed by Connell's social theory of gender (1987), this study examined the role of hegemonic masculinity in legitimizing male power and contributing to the HIV risk of these women. By conducting one-on-one interviews with 12 HIV-positive immigrant women, meaningful constructions of the women's narratives and accounts of their experiences relative to HIV were created. This study examined the intersection of power ideologies such as gender, race and class in specific contexts as they generated particular experiences that affected women's risk for HIV. Following a community-based research approach, a collaborative relationship was established with the Alliance for South Asian AIDS Prevention where qualitative methods of analysis and an inductive approach with an iterative process were followed. Factors such as isolation, economic dependence on their husbands, discrimination, racism, investment in psychologically and emotionally abusive relationships, combined with the absence of support from their family of origin exacerbated the women's risk of HIV infection. The strong ties exhibited by most of the women to their religious/ethnic communities helped sustain a gender-based social hierarchy. To facilitate dialogue and social change for South Asian women, gender and culture need to be situated in social and historical contexts. As such, programs should be understood within a larger critical understanding of the social power relations and history of Canadian immigration patterns. Using anti-racist frameworks, initiatives should address violence against women, while tackling interrelated issues (i.e., housing, poverty, etc.). This work draws attention to oppressions through the experiences of a community of women who are rarely given a voice within the context of research on HIV/AIDS. It will be also helpful for Ontario’s HIV prevention strategy and the field of women's sexual health. | PhD | poverty, health, women | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Kuhn, Esther | Lambek, Michael | Mining for the Future: Dynamics of Artisanal Gold Mining Practice and Governance in the Balan-Bakama (Mande, Mali) | Anthropology | 2017-11 | This dissertation examines the social organization of artisanal gold mining in the Balan-Bakama, a zone of the Mande area of southern Mali (West-Africa). Based on fieldwork conducted primarily in 2010-11 I show how villagers and specifically their male and female mining authorities govern mining sites in the territory of their village. Unlike many artisanal mines that are described in the literature as enclaves disconnected from surrounding communities, Balan-Bakama artisanal mines are part of a locally placed extractive economy. Most inhabitants of the Balan-Bakama are both subsistence farmers and artisanal gold miners (at home or as seasonal migrants). These livelihood activities had traditionally been bound to the rainy season and dry season respectively. With a steadily rising gold price, women miners were increasingly engaged in rainy season surface mining while men mined using the new hard-rock mining technique. With placer mining, these techniques form the set of three artisanal mining techniques applied in the Balan-Bakama. In Mande, gold is categorized as owned by bush spirits who control the uncivilized space beyond villagersâ fields. In order to be able to mine safely and successfully, communities and individual miners are obliged to convince bush spirits to share their gold with humans and to refrain from causing accidents. People are able to gain access to gold through sacrifices, by following the rules of mining sites and by avoiding conflict. If local miners are successful, they will be joined by seasonal migrant miners. In an area characterized by high rural-urban migration but some rural-rural migration, village communities try manipulate migration patterns by stimulating mining to retain young men. Hoping to expand the village in order to achieve a locally defined modernity and form a closer connection to regional centers villagers work to attract informal miners and industrial mining corporations. | Ph.D. | industr, rural | 9, 11 |
| Kuhn, Joel | Kesler, Olivera | Relationships Between Operating Conditions, Carbon Deposition, and Performance in Solid Oxide Fuel Cells | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2014-06 | This research examines the effect of solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) operating conditions on carbon deposition in nickel/yttria-stabilized-zirconia (Ni/YSZ) anodes and the effect of carbon deposition on impedance spectra of polarized SOFCs. Although Ni/YSZ anodes are susceptible to degradation from carbon deposition, Ni/YSZ is still a competitive material set compared to coke-resistant alternatives due to its relative cost and elemental abundance. Thus, it is important to more clearly define coking thresholds with respect to temperature (T), molar steam:carbon ratio (SC), fuel utilization (Uf ), current density (i), and mole fraction of ethane in the fuel (fC2H6). The quantification of gasified carbon (QGC) method was developed for in-situ measurement of carbon deposition on operating SOFCs. Deposited carbon is gasified with H2O, and carbon mass is measured by quantification of evolved CO. It was shown that deposited carbon can be gasified after 100 hours residence time. The accuracy of the QGC method was validated using a thermogravimetric analyzer. Carbon deposition thresholds were measured on button cells with 10 hour carbon deposition periods using CH4 reformate gas mixtures. The constituent concentrations of CH4 reformate gas mixtures were developed mathematically for different SC and Uf. Homogeneous decomposition of C2H6 convolutes carbon mass measurements and limited the study of fC2H6. The coking threshold at open circuit in the SC domain (Uf = 0) was measured to be approximately 1.04 and 1.18 for 600 and 700°C, respectively. The coking threshold at open circuit in the Uf domain (SC = 0.03) was measured to be approximately 36% and 32% for 600 and 700°C, respectively. Coking thresholds agree well with thermodynamic equilibrium calculations when the properties of solid phase carbon are modified appropriately. This observation was further supported by experiments with varying current density. Using measured coking thresholds, the Gibbs free energy of carbon on Ni/YSZ cermets at 600°C was calculated to be 6.91±0.08 kJ-mol-1. Coking on a polarized SOFC was found to be minimally detectable by impedance spectroscopy. The results from this work can be readily applied to SOFC system design, numerical simulations of SOFC anodes, and design of anodes with material gradients. | PhD | energy | 7 |
| Kulaga, Vivian | Gideon, Koren | Fatty Acid Ethyl Esters (FAEE), A Biomarker of Alcohol Exposure: Hope for a Silent Epidemic of Fetal Alcohol Affected Children | Medical Science | 2008-06 | One percent of children in North America may be affected by fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD). FASD remains difficult to diagnose because confirmation of maternal alcohol use is a diagnostic criterion, and women consuming alcohol during pregnancy are reluctant to divulge this information for fear of stigmatization and losing custody of the child. Consequently, using a biomarker to assess alcohol exposure would provide a tremendous advantage. Recently, the measurement of fatty acid ethyl ester (FAEE) in hair has provided a powerful tool for assessing alcohol exposure. My thesis fills a translational gap of research between the development of the FAEE hair test and its application in the context of FASD. The guinea pig has been a critical model for FASD research, in which FAEE hair analysis has previously distinguished ethanol-exposed dams/offspring from controls. My first study, reports a positive dose-concentration relationship between alcohol exposure and hair FAEE, in the human, and the guinea pig. Humans also displayed over an order of magnitude higher FAEE incorporation per equivalent alcohol exporsure, suggesting that the test will be a sensitive clinical marker of fetal alcohol exposure. My second study utilized multi-coloured rats to investigate the potential of a hair-colour bias, as has been reported for other clinical hair assays; no evidence of bias is reported here. My third study is the first to examine the clinical use of the FAEE hair test in parents at high risk of having children with FASD. Over one third of parents tested positive for excessive alcohol use. Parents were investigated by social workers working for child protection services, and my fourth study reports that hair FAEE results agree with social worker reports. Individuals highly suspected of abusing alcohol were at a significantly greater risk of testing positive, whereas individuals tested based on other reasons (such as to cover all bases) were negatively associated with testing positive. The last study of my thesis, confirmed an association between alcohol and drug use by parents at high risk for having children with FASD, posing an added risk to children. This work helps bridge a gap in translational research, suggesting that the FAEE hair test has potential for use in FASD diagnosis and research. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Kulick, Rachel Erin | Knappett, Carl | Urban Soil Micromorphology at Bronze Age Palaikastro, Crete: A Geoarchaeological Investigation of Site Formation Processes | History of Art | 2017-11 | Across the Mediterranean region, human-environment interactions constitute a major research focus, often concerned with issues of sustainability, both past and present. The Aegean region shares many environmental features and often direct cultural interactions with this larger, encompassing region. While broader Mediterranean research questions are also applicable at the local Aegean level, there are some surprising gaps in inquiry, particularly in studies of the Bronze Age Aegean civilizations. Although narratives of the emergence and collapse of civilizations—such as that of Minoan Crete—do invoke environmental factors, whether catastrophic events (e.g., Theran eruption, tsunami) or anthropogenic processes (e.g., soil erosion, overintensive agriculture), there are few multi-scalar investigations of how urban centres interacted with their environments. This dissertation aims to address the aforementioned shortcoming. This project (part of the Palace and Landscape at Palaikastro Project) evaluates epistemological issues concerning the roles of geoarchaeological research and environmental science in archaeological research and applies an urban archaeological soil micromorphology approach to help understand the issues surrounding the episodes of occupation and disturbance at the Minoan urban centre of Palaikastro, in East Crete. The study demonstrates that varied types of socionatural transformations are visible via different scales of data and analysis. Micromorphological differences are observed between sediments related to urban abandonment and transformation processes. This micro-scale evidence indicates the influence of coastal sediments on the site; however, occupation of the urban structures appears to be related to the sustainability of the surrounding slopes. These findings illustrate that information garnered on ‘micro’ processes occurring in and between buildings in the urban settlement completes the punctuated dataset in which one typically encounters archaeological contexts produced by events (such as destructions and abandonments). The micromorphological data connects discrete, small-scale processes that occurred leading up to, and after, specific events and relates these processes to cycles of growth and decay, construction and abandonment, in the context of larger-scale social and environmental transformations. | Ph.D. | agriculture, buildings, urban, environment | 2, 9, 11, 13 |
| Kulkarni, Girish Satish | Laupacis, Andreas ||Fleshner, Neil | The Quality of Surgical Care for Radical Cystectomy in Ontario from 1992 to 2004 | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2008-11 | This thesis is composed of three studies pertaining to the quality of care for radical cystectomy in Ontario between 1992 and 2004. In the first paper, the associations between provider volume and both operative and overall mortality were assessed. In the second paper, potential factors that could explain the association between volume and outcome were explored. In the final paper, the impact of waiting for cystectomy on survival outcomes was evaluated. Methods: A total of 3296 patients undergoing cystectomy for bladder cancer in Ontario between 1992 and 2004 were identified using the Canadian Institute for Health Information Discharge Abstract Database and the Ontario Cancer Registry. The effects of hospital and surgeon volume on operative mortality and overall survival were assessed using random effects logistic regression and marginal Cox Proportional Hazards modeling, respectively. To elucidate the factors underlying the volume-outcome association, the ability of a number of structure and process of care variables to attenuate the impact of volume was assessed. The effect of waiting for care, from transurethral resection to cystectomy, on overall survival was also assessed using marginal Cox models. Results: Neither hospital nor surgeon volume was significantly associated with operative mortality; however, both were associated with overall mortality. Of the measured structure/process measures, hospital factors caused the greatest attenuation of the volume hazard ratios, albeit to a limited degree. The wait time between the decision for surgery and cystectomy was also significantly associated with overall survival. The impact of delayed care was greatest for patients with lower stage disease. The data suggested a maximum wait time of 40 days for cystectomy. Conclusions: In this thesis, gaps in the quality of care for radical cystectomy in Ontario were identified. Patients treated by low volume hospitals and surgeons or those with long wait times all experienced worse outcomes. Since the underlying measures responsible for provider volume remain elusive, additional work is required to understand what these factors are. Initiatives to decrease wait times, however, are under way in Ontario. Whether these interventions decrease wait times and benefit patients remains to be seen. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Kulkarni, Vainatey | Ben-Mrad, Ridha | Development of an Energy Harvesting Device using Piezoceramic Materials | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2015-06 | Piezoelectric energy harvesters are increasingly being pursued for their potential to replace finite-life batteries in wireless sensor modules and for their potential to create self-powered devices. This work presents the development of a novel piezoelectric harvester that attempts to improve upon the power output limitations of current piezoelectric harvesting technology. This novel harvester uses the concept of torsion on a tube to produce shear stresses and hence uses improved piezoelectric properties of the shear mode of piezoceramics to generate higher power outputs. This concept is first presented in this work and a proof-of-concept prototype is utilized to experimentally demonstrate the validity of this novel device. After this, the behaviour of the novel harvester is explored through an investigation into three cross-section geometries of the torsion tube and varying geometries of the eccentric mass using three different comparison metrics. Through this, it is observed that configurations with higher torsional compliance and high eccentric mass inertias have the potential for the highest power output and highest harvester effectiveness. However, the mechanical damping in the system is also found to significantly impact the harvester output resulting in prototypes of the various configurations not performing as expected. As a result of this discrepancy, the factors affecting the performance of the harvester are analyzed in greater detail through the development of a mathematical model that is then used to develop a set of guidelines to direct the design of a torsion harvester for a desired application. These guidelines are then used to develop an improved torsion harvester with a demonstrated ability to produce 1.2 mW of output power at its resonant frequency to power a wireless sensor module. Finally, the use of alternative materials such as single crystals of PMN-PT in the torsion harvester is also examined. Through finite element simulations and with material properties reported in the literature, the torsion harvester used with the sensor module is found to significantly benefit with the addition of the single crystal materials and ultimately generate 300% improvements in average output power while converting 11% of the input energy into usable electrical energy. | Ph.D. | INNovation | 9 |
| Kuluski, Kerry | Williams, A. Paul | Homecare of Long-term Care? The Balance of Care in Urban and Rural Northwestern Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-06 | While some individuals can successfully age at home, others with similar levels of need may require facility based long-term care (LTC). The question addressed in this thesis is: “What factors determine whether or not older persons age at home?” I argue that in addition to the characteristics and care needs of individuals (the demand side); access to home and community care (H&CC) at the local level (the supply side) determines whether or not older people receive care at home relative to other settings. In emphasizing the role of the supply side, I draw on Neoinstitutional Theory and the Theory of Human Ecology to examine how institutions of the state (policies, norms, values, and organizational structures) facilitate or constrain opportunities to age at home across urban and rural areas. In conducting my analysis I draw on the Balance of Care (BoC) framework to analyze the characteristics of individuals waiting for LTC placement in Thunder Bay (urban community) and the surrounding Region (rural communities) of Northwestern Ontario. The BoC framework provides the means to estimate the extent to which their needs could potentially be met in the community if home and community care (H&CC) services were available. The results show that individuals waiting for LTC placement in Thunder Bay experienced higher levels of impairment than those in the Region. However in both areas, most individuals required assistance with instrumental activities of daily living (e.g. housekeeping, meal preparation, etc). In both areas there was limited access to informal caregivers. If a H&CC package were to be made available, 8% of those waiting for facility based LTC in Thunder Bay could potentially be supported safely and cost-effectively at home compared to 50% in the surrounding Region. The results confirm that the supply side matters. When H&CC cannot be accessed, LTC may become the default option, particularly in rural and remote areas. If given access to H&CC, a significant proportion of individuals can potentially age at home. | PhD | urban, rural | 11 |
| Kumar, Aarti | Jenkins, Jenny M | Trajectories of Emotional Problems in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Immigrants | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2015-03 | The purpose of this dissertation was to examine mental health trajectories in immigrants living in Canada. The first study examined the rates of emotional problems among parents, versus non-parents, using all three waves of data from a sample of immigrants in Canada (N = 7055). After controlling for a variety of socio-demographic covariates, results from multilevel logistic regression models indicated that immigrant parents have higher odds of reporting emotional problems in comparison to non-parent immigrants, and these differences are stable across the first four years following immigration. These effects were evident after ethnicity was included in the model and after controlling for relevant socio-demographic characteristics, such as age, gender, socioeconomic status, and immigrant category, suggesting an effect of caregiver strain. In terms of ethnic differences, Black, Arab, South Asian and East Asian respondents have emotional problems that increase at a faster rate in comparison to White immigrants over time. Results revealed that immigrants that endorsed being divorced without children are also particularly vulnerable. The second study examined depressive symptoms in a sample of mothers who were evaluated closely after the birth of a baby using four waves of data from the Kids Families and Places study. Results from latent growth curve models indicated that immigrant mothers showed significantly more depressive symptoms in comparison to Canadian born mothers. More specifically, Asian immigrants and Black immigrants were found to have higher levels of depressive symptoms in comparison to White Canadian mothers. It was found that socioeconomic indicators were among the best predictors of maternal depression in Asian immigrant and Black immigrant mothers. The overall goal of this dissertation is to highlight the importance of studying immigrants, as there are a number of stressors and challenges associated with immigration, which may lead to increased rates of mental health problems. These challenges may be even more burdensome for immigrants who must care for economically dependent children. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Kumar, Pradeep | Kant, Shashi | Households' Preferences, Strategic Interactions, and Joint Forest Management outcomes | Forestry | 2017-06 | Joint forest management (JFM), which seeks to involve local communities in the management of state-owned forests, was started in India in 1990. One of the prime objectives of JFM was to restock degraded forest areas, which has not been uniformly achieved across the country. Variation in the success of JFM has been attributed to several socioeconomic and organizational factors. Existing literature, however, has ignored the role of intracommunity strategic interactions in JFM outcomes. Similarly, roles of social preferences and individual time preferences have also been overlooked. In this research, JFM outcomes have been analyzed through the lens of intracommunity strategic interactions, social preferences, and endogenous and good-specific time preferences. A model of strategic interactions among households of a village has been developed, and it has been shown that in JFM households play a public goods game. Equilibrium of the game has been analyzed, and effects of various model parameters on equilibrium participation have been investigated. An empirical study has been carried out in five villages in central India to observe the role of social preferences in JFM outcomes. It has been found that the presence of social preference is strongly correlated with success in JFM in the village. Since in JFM households incur costs in the beginning and get benefits later, individual time preferences are crucial for JFM outcomes. Time preference analysis is usually done using Samuelson’s discounted utility (DU) model, which expresses individual time preference by a unitary construct – discount rate, and does not consider endogenous and good-specific time preferences. In this research, a theoretical model is developed, and an empirical study is used to show that households’ time preferences are endogenous and good specific. A model for the evolution of other-regarding preferences in JFM has also been developed, and it has been shown that other-regarding preferences may evolve in JFM provided a stimulus is given, community’s dependence on the forest is high, and alternatives to forest resources are available. | Ph.D. | forest | 15 |
| Kumar, Ramya | McDonough, Peggy | The Privatization Imperative: Women Negotiating Healthcare in Kandy, Sri Lanka | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-03 | Since the 1980s, poorer countries have shifted health reform efforts from strengthening public systems to increasing the private sector’s role in healthcare provision. Empirical research on healthcare access focuses on quantifying out-of-pocket payments or service utilization, making invisible both user experiences and how the dynamics of public and private provision are contingent on place and social relations. Historically a model for poorer countries, Sri Lanka’s public healthcare system is seeing steady privatization following decades of insufficient state investment alongside incentivized private expansion. However, little is known about what this restructuring means for healthcare access in Sri Lanka. I employed a Third World Marxist feminist qualitative methodology to explore how the presence of private healthcare shapes access for women in Kandy, Sri Lanka. I asked: Where do women go for healthcare? What are their impressions of the health services they use? How do they navigate public and private systems? And how are these questions shaped by social location? Using focus groups, interviews, meetings, and a short survey, I gathered data from 40 residents of Udawatta Division. My analysis linked macrostructures and processes of healthcare restructuring with women’s everyday experiences of utilizing healthcare. Economic exclusion and quality concerns limited the range of private healthcare ‘choices’ available to users. Almost all women mixed public and private services, with these hybrid arrangements differing by social location. Economically disadvantaged users were compelled to consume private healthcare owing to service deficits in the public system. Middle-class women mostly used private outpatient services, and exploited ‘dual practice’ to access more responsive public inpatient care. Socially disadvantaged women, particularly ethnic minorities, relied on the same pathway to avoid neglect and/or abuse within the public system. The state’s ‘withdrawal’ from healthcare provision, and its incentives for private expansion, has wide-ranging implications for users in Kandy. As women struggle to address service gaps in the public sector, hybrid arrangements stratify services along class and ethnic lines, creating opportunities for private accumulation. My findings interrogate the direction of Sri Lanka’s health reform and call into question global health advocacy for ‘mixed health systems’ as a path to achieving ‘Universal Health Coverage.’ | Ph.D. | health, women, socioeconomic | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Kuo, Pei-Yu | Sain, Mohini||Yan, Ning | Development and Characterization of an Extractive-based Bio-epoxy Resin from Beetle-infested Lodgepole Pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) Bark | Forestry | 2016-06 | Deriving chemicals from renewable feedstock has become a necessity to reduce dependency on petroleum, which release carbon dioxide when burned and aggravate the global warming and ocean acidification. This work offers a potential alternative - bark extractives based epoxy resin - to petro-based conventional epoxy. Our results showed successful epoxidation of bark extractives after reaction with epichlorohydrin. The newly synthesized epoxy (E-epoxy) can replace 50% of petroleum-based epoxy (P-epoxy) and the blend system displayed thermal stability and tensile strength comparable to neat P-epoxy, which demonstrates a great promise in using bark extractives as a substitute for bisphenol A (BPA). An examination of reaction parameters showed that the E-epoxy monomer can be synthesized with high yield and reactivity using spray-dried extractives as substrates, a dioxane/water combination as solvent, and tetrabutylammonium hydroxide as the ring-opening catalyst. An examination of numerical parameters showed the maximum yield with minimum epoxy equivalent weight was achieved after 4.5 hours reaction time with sodium hydroxide to hydroxyl value molar ratio of 3.4 at a reaction temperature of 80 °C. The thermal properties of E-epoxy were studied using TGA, FTIR, and Py-GC/MS, and a new thermal degradation mechanism was proposed. Additionally, nanocellulose fibres (NCFs) were incorporated to enhance E-epoxy’s mechanical performance. Based on an adjusted curing schedule, an E-epoxy/P-epoxy/NCFs composite with high strength, ductility, thermal stability, and sustainability was developed. With 10% E-epoxy, the toughness of neat epoxy resins improved 84 %; after incorporating NCFs, the tensile strength and modulus of composites increased approximately two- and four-fold, respectively. The maximum degradation peak of the composites was 24 °C higher than for neat epoxy resins. Overall, bark extractives exhibit great promise to replace petro-based BPA; incorporating NCFs into E-epoxy/P-epoxy blending system is an effective method to develop a strong and sustainable bio-nanocomposite. | Ph.D. | water, renewable, ocean, marine | 7, 14 |
| KURU, MEHMET | Rothman, Natalie | Locating an Ottoman Port-City in the Early Modern Mediterranean: Izmir 1580-1780 | History | 2017-06 | Extant historiography considers Izmir as a case of early modern “boom town.” Its transformation from a mere pier for the provisions of Istanbul into a bustling trans-regional port-city, so the standard narrative goes, was due to mercantilist penetration by English and Dutch chartered companies at a time of Ottoman economic and political crisis and social dislocation. This formulation gives little credit to the city’s regional setting as an agent of change. This dissertation, in contrast, addresses the question of Izmir’s rise from the vantage point of Western Anatolia’s environmental outlook, hydrogeological features, and crop rotation patterns. It suggests that the city was forged not out of some in-built characteristics, but of how the inhabitants met the environmental challenges, and how this socio-environmental outlook contrasted with other regions in the long run and was articulated with economic and demographic factors. Using a composite methodology that combines environmental and economic historical approaches, and shifting the scale of observation to situate the environmental trends for sixteenth-century Izmir in a millennial perspective, this dissertation reconstructs the infrastructure of Ottoman socio-economic transformation. It rethinks the periodization and causal linkages between environment and fiscality by means of geography, and argues for understanding Izmir through a continuous monetary process that amplified commercial flows on a Eurasian scale. The first two chapters of this dissertation revisit the Little Ice Age argument concerning seventeenth-century socio-economic transformations. These chapters show the geographical limits of the argument, i.e. how the cumulative impact of regional climactic differentiation distinguished Western Anatolia, and Izmir’s hinterland in particular, allowing the development of local agricultural production and the region’s simultaneous demographic growth, distinguishing it from the rest of Anatolia. In the following two chapters, this work draws inspiration from the way that the question of the birth of the Atlantic has been cut down to size and reoriented, inter alia, through an Indian Ocean perspective. Here I similarly emphasize how trade flows running through Ottoman domains were inherently interlocked with Eurasian trade. I suggest that the bi-zonal Ottoman currency acted as a switch mechanism via the marginal utility of arbitrage, discontinuous in the long run but catalyzing a quintessential economic shift from the established portfolio of Eastern goods to the greater salience and integration of local products and markets. It was this shift, I argue, not a mercantilist penetration, which set the process in place. Focusing on the rise of Izmir also allows us to better understand the superstructure of Ottoman socio-economic transformation not only at the stage of Ottoman capital, but also of endemic commercial flows diffused throughout the empire. Finally, in the fifth and the last chapter, I demonstrate how Izmir became the conduit for wider economic flows not for environmental and economic reasons alone, but also fiscal ones. Specifically, Izmir’s covert taxation policy and taxpayers’ responses shaped its urban demographics in tandem with environmental and monetary processes. Ottoman environmental, economic, and political aspects of socio-economic change were thus connected to Eurasian flows of goods and people. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, urban, environment | 9, 11, 13 |
| Kuttner, Benjamin | Malcolm, Jay R. ||Smith, Sandy | Multi-cohort Stand Structural Classification: Ground and LiDAR-based Approaches for Boreal Mixedwood and Black Spruce Forest Types of Northeastern Ontario | Forestry | 2010-11 | Natural fire return intervals are relatively long in eastern Canadian boreal forests and often allow for the development of stands with multiple, successive cohorts of trees. Multi-cohort forest management (MCM) provides a strategy to maintain such multi-cohort stands that focuses on three broad phases of increasingly complex, post-fire stand development, termed “cohorts”, and recommends different silvicultural approaches be applied to emulate different cohort types. Previous research on structural cohort typing has relied upon primarily subjective classification methods; in this thesis, I develop more comprehensive and objective methods for three common boreal mixedwood and black spruce forest types in northeastern Ontario. Additionally, I examine relationships between cohort types and stand age, productivity, and disturbance history and the utility of airborne LiDAR to retrieve ground based classifications and to extend structural cohort typing from plot to stand-levels. In both mixedwood and black spruce forest types, stand age and age related deadwood features varied systematically with cohort classes in support of an age-based interpretation of increasing cohort complexity. However, correlations of stand age with cohort classes were surprisingly weak. Differences in site productivity had a significant effect on the accrual of increasingly complex multi-cohort stand structure in both forest types, especially in black spruce stands. The effects of past harvesting in predictive models of class membership were only significant when considered in isolation of age. As an age emulation strategy, the three cohort model appeared to be poorly suited to black spruce forests where the accrual of structural complexity appeared to be more a function of site productivity than age. Airborne LiDAR data appear to be particularly useful in recovering plot-based cohort types and extending them to the stand-level. The main gradients of structural variability detected using LiDAR were similar between boreal mixedwood and black spruce forest types; the best LiDAR-based models of cohort type relied upon combinations of tree size, size heterogeneity, and tree density related variables. The methods described here to measure, classify, and predict cohort-related structural complexity assist in translating the conceptual three cohort model to a more precise, measurement based management system. In addition, the approaches presented here to measure and classify stand structural complexity promise to significantly enhance the detail of structural information in operational forest inventories in support of a wide array of forest management and conservation applications. | PhD | urban, forest | 11, 15 |
| Kuzmanov, Uros | Diamandis, Eleftherios P. | Characterization of Kallikrein 6 N-glycosylation Patterns and Identification of Sialylated Glycoproteins in Ovarian Cancer | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2013-06 | Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of death among all gynecological disorders. Aberrant glycosylation, or more specifically, increased sialylation of proteins has been observed in this malignancy. Several sialyltransferase genes have been shown to be up-regulated at both mRNA and and protein levels in a number of cancers, including that of the ovary. In the present study, we have analyzed the glycosylation patterns of kallikrein 6 in the context of ovarian cancer. We have discovered that the carbohydrate structures found at the single N-glycosylation site of kallikrein 6 derived from ovarian cancer cells found in the ascites fluid of ovarian cancer patients is enriched in sialic acid moieties and has an increased branching pattern when compared to controls. We have also developed a reliable anion-exchange HPLC-based methodology capable of quantifying different glycoform subpopulations of kallikrein 6 in serum and other biological fluids, which was capable of differentiating between samples from ovarian cancer patients and healthy controls. A variety of classic molecular biology and mass spectrometry based techniques were utilized in these experiments. Based on the results of the analysis of kallikrein 6 glycosylation and other literature reports showing upregulated sialylation of proteins in ovarian cancer, we have also identified sialylated glycoproteins from ovarian cancer proximal fluids and conditioned media of ovarian cancer cell lines. Sialylated proteins were enriched utilizing lectin affinity or hydrazide chemistry. In total, 333 sialylated glycoproteins and 579 glycosylation sites were identified. A list of 21 potential candidate ovarian cancer biomarkers was produced from proteins that were identified solely in ovarian cancer proximal fluids, which could form the basis for any future studies. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Kwak, Laura Jean | Razack, Sherene H. | Asian Conservatives in Canada's Parliament: A Study in Race and Governmentality | Social Justice Education | 2016-11 | This dissertation argues that the political integration of the figure of the Asian Conservative MP has become part of racial governmentality, a part, that is, of how racial minorities are governed. In Canada, official multiculturalism emerged and evolved as the dominant discourse to regulate political heterogeneity. My research finds that the neoliberalization of multicultural discourse as led by the Reform Party of Canada has configured the Asian Conservative member of parliament (MP) as the upwardly-mobile, bootstrap-immigrant, difference-that-integrates into the modern polity. Insofar as multiculturalism as incorporation is a project of assisting racial others into modernity, it requires the utter exclusion of those that have been cast as antithetical to the modern: Indigenous, Black, and working class or poor life. Using a Foucauldian approach to the study of governmentality, the study traces how multiculturalism discourse has given rise to the ideal multicultural subject as necessarily a narrowly imagined Asian Conservative subject. That is, the thesis explores how the Asian Conservative MPs take up the narrowly imagined space of legitimacy that has been carved out for racial others â in which they remain regarded as duplicitous - as conduits to a settler colonial, anti-Black politics. To suggest that the figure of the Asian Conservative parliamentarian is a paradox presupposes the incommensurability of racial identity and conservative politics. By analyzing their text and talk, particularly their contributions to parliamentary debate on national identity, multiculturalism, and immigration policies, this thesis challenges this supposed incommensurability and investigates how Asian Conservative MPs, particularly since 1997, have contributed to the reproduction of racism in the Canadian context. Paradoxically raced in the name of racelessness, my research finds that the figure of the Asian Conservative MP has become vital to the stateâ s narrative of progress and tolerance. At the same time, speaking in the name of race, these politicians promote a discourse of integration and lend legitimacy to the project of managing racial populations. The study finds how politicians of colour also have the capacity to uphold the racial order, leave inequities uncontested, and often augment them with renewed vigour. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Laberge, Maude Pascale | Wodchis, Walter P | How Does Ontario Primary Care Perform? Effectiveness, Costs and Efficiency | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-11 | In 2001, Ontario began introducing new primary care models characterized by physician remuneration mechanisms, interdisciplinary teams, access requirements, and patient enrolment. The objectives of the primary care reform were to improve the quality of and access to primary care and to make primary care more attractive as a physician specialty. This thesis explores the performance of the new primary care models – enhanced fee-for-service (FFS), blended capitation, and interdisciplinary teams - compared to the traditional FFS model. The effectiveness, costs and efficiency are reviewed separately in three distinct studies. The study about effectiveness aims to measure the risk of having a hospitalization for an ambulatory care sensitive condition (ACSC). The risk of having an ACSC hospitalization was lower for patients whose physician practiced in an enhanced-FFS or in a capitation model compared to patients whose saw a FFS physician. It was higher for patients who saw physicians who worked in interdisciplinary teams. The second study examined primary care costs and total health care costs for a randomly selected 10% sample of the Ontario adult population. The costs were calculated at the individual level based on the prices of the services and the utilization. Compared to patients of FFS physicians, patients in capitation models had higher primary care costs but lower total health care costs. Enhanced-FFS patients had the lowest primary care costs and total health care costs. The third study employed a Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to assess the efficiency of physicians. The analyses were supported by survey data on a physician’s hours worked on direct patient care, duration of the visits and other characteristics of a physician’s practice and linked to administrative data on patient visits. After controlling for input and explanatory variables, efficiency scores were on average higher for physicians in blended capitation models and in interdisciplinary teams compared to physicians in FFS. The three studies show significant differences across models for each of the outcomes examined (ACSC hospitalization; primary care costs and total health care costs; efficiency). More research is needed to understand these variations and the causal relationships in these variations, in order to better inform policy. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lachapelle, Érick | Pauly, Louis | "Energy Security and Climate Change Policy in the OECD: the Political Economy of Carbon-energy Taxation" | Political Science | 2011-06 | Why do countries tax the same fuels at widely different rates, even among similarly situated countries in the global political economy? Given the potentially destabilizing effects of climate change, and the political and economic risks associated with a reliance on geographically concentrated, finite fossil fuels, International Organizations and economists of all political stripes have consistently called for increasing tax rates on fossil-based energy. Despite much enthusiasm among policy experts, however, politicians concerned with distributional consequences, economic performance and competitiveness impacts continue to be wary of raising taxes on carbon-based fuels. In this context, this thesis investigates the political economy of tax rates affecting the price of fossil fuels in advanced capitalist democracies. Through an examination of the political limits of government capacity to implement stricter carbon-energy policy, as well as the identification of the correlates of higher carbon-based energy taxes, it throws new light on the conditions under which carbon-energy tax reform becomes politically possible. Based on recent data collected from the OECD, EEA and IEA, I develop an estimate of the relative size of implicit carbon taxes across OECD member countries on six carbon-based fuels and across the household and industrial sectors. I exploit large cross-national differences in these carbon-energy tax rates in order to identify the correlates of, and constraints on, carbon-energy tax reform. Applying multiple regression analysis to both cross-section and time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) data, this thesis leverages considerable empirical evidence to demonstrate how and why electoral systems matter for energy and environmental tax policy outcomes. In particular, I find considerable empirical evidence to support the claim that systems of proportional representation (PR), in addition to the partisan preferences of the electorate, work together to explain differential rates of carbon-energy taxation. By opening up the ideological space to a broader spectrum of “green” parties, I argue that PR systems create a favourable institutional context within which higher rates of carbon-energy taxation become politically possible. After specifying a key causal mechanism within different types of electoral systems – the seat-vote elasticity – I argue further that, voters in disproportional systems actually have more leverage over politicians, and that an increase in environmental voting can have an impact on rates of carbon energy taxation, even in the absence of PR. While the accession to power of green political parties in PR systems is more likely to lead to higher rates of carbon energy taxation, voting for green parties in highly disproportional systems creates incentives for other parties to adopt “green” policies, leading to a similar outcome. In this way, the effect of green votes and green seats will have the opposite effect on policy according to the type of electoral system in use. | PhD | energy, industr, taxation, climate, environment | 7, 9, 10, 13 |
| LaCoste, Nathalie | Newman, Judith H | Waters of the Exodus: Jewish Experiences with Water in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt | Religion, Study of | 2016-11 | This study examines how the fluvial environment shaped the writing of Jewish narratives in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt (300 BCE – 115 CE). It focuses on four texts that narrate the Exodus story and analyzes them in terms of how water in Egypt is described and how elements of the environment—such as the Nile or the Red Sea—are characterized in their retellings. I argue that the natural environment informed Jewish writings through the incorporation of new fluvial terminology, development of different conceptions of water, and the adoption of positive attitudes towards the environment. These features, found specifically in texts composed in Egypt, demonstrate the power of the environment to shape a foundational Jewish narrative. Previous studies on the Jews of Egypt have examined their lives in political, social, or economic terms, with little acknowledgement of the physical environment and its role in daily and religious life. By focusing on water, this work traces the emergence of distinct practices developed in response to the environment, such as the location of places of worship and emerging employment opportunities. Such characteristics distinguish the communities of Egypt from both other Jews and non-Jews. Additionally, the project speaks to larger trends in the field of Biblical Studies that focus on the materiality of everyday life. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Lakanen, Raili | Bunce, Susannah||Ruddick, Susan | “A Battle for the Soul of the Climate Movement”: The Expansion of the Intersectional Climate Justice Frame Among Young Activists in Canada | Geography | 2019-06 | In this dissertation, I argue that the climate justice movement in Canada is conceptually aligned with tenets of feminist political ecology and demonstrates intersectional and decolonial approaches to activism and organizing. Such a framework did not emerge spontaneously but was developed through intellectual work and communication of climate justice activists, a contentious process tantamount to what one activist identified as a “battle for the soul of the climate movement”. Climate justice seeks to address the underlying conditions that generate and perpetuate climate change, understood to be caused by inequities, oppressions, and systems of domination inherent in the colonial-capitalist pursuit of endless growth. Intersectional climate justice further understands that groups and individuals experience and contribute to climate change differentially, based on contextual power relations, privilege, and identity, and thus seeks to incorporate recognition, (re)distributive, and participatory justice in climate change mitigation and adaption. My findings suggest that young Canadian activists began articulating climate justice between 2006 and 2015, in response to a Conservative-led federal government that attempted to (re)create Canada as a global ‘energy superpower’ while simultaneously weakening domestic environmental protection, vilifying activists, and contesting territorial rights of Indigenous peoples. I suggest that this intersectional climate justice movement inhabits the ‘glocal’ scale (e.g., Swyngedouw Kaika, 2003; Harcourt, 2015), constituted by interrelated, multi-scalar processes as well as actors that contest and co-create global narratives that generate and respond to locally-specific conditions. In this case, activist organizing appears to be structured differently than other environmental and social movements that promote allegiance to a group. Instead, principles of intersectional climate justice are disseminated through youth training networks which connect ‘free agents’ (activists without traditional organizational affiliations) from across the country into new linkages for mobilization. Many of the activists interviewed have engaged in processes of relational reflexivity, grappling with their own complicity and advantage in a society that continues to contribute to climate change. Their approaches to enacting intersectional analysis and decolonial solidarity are, arguably, empirical demonstrations of how to “stay with the trouble” (Haraway, 2016), and provide alternatives to hegemonic climate governance approaches that rely on technological interventions or market mechanisms. | Ph.D. | energy, climate, environment, ecology, governance | 7, 13, 15, 16 |
| Lake, Evelyn Margo Robyn | Stefanovic, Bojana||Stanisz, Greg J | Functional Neuroimaging of Recovery from Focal Ischemic Stroke | Medical Biophysics | 2016-11 | Ischemic stroke is the leading global cause of healthy life-years-lost, yet, physiotherapy remains the only means to improve long-term outcome in the vast majority of patients. The absence of more effective interventions in the subacute stage reflects uncertainty surrounding the mechanisms that govern recovery. The present work investigated endogenous neurovascular adaptation, as well as the delayed neurogliovascular unit modulation via GABAA antagonism and cyclooxygenase-1 (COX-1) inhibition. Longitudinal functional and structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), intracranial array electrophysiology, Montoya Staircase testing, and immunofluorescence were employed to examine subacute functional and structural changes in the peri-infarct zone in a rodent model of focal ischemia. In the absence of treatment, early subacute stage was characterized by a persistent skilled reaching deficit and stable lesion volume. Peri-infarct resting perfusion and vascular reactivity to hypercapnia were elevated a week post stroke, while the peri-lesional neuronal network was silenced and somatotopy abolished. By 21 days post-stroke, peri-lesional blood flow resolved to the contra-lesional level, but peri-lesional vascular reactivity remained elevated. Concomitantly, neuronal response amplitudes increased with distance from the necrotic core, suggesting functional remodelling of the lesion periphery, buttressed by increased spontaneous activity. The peri-infarct showed increased vascular density, neuronal loss, and astrocytic activation, while microglia and macrophage recruitment was widespread. GABAA antagonism resulted in progressive improvement in skilled reaching performance and a decrease in stroke volume, while COX-1 inhibition preserved peri-lesional hyperperfusion, increased neuronal survival and decreased microglia and macrophage recruitment. Combined, these studies provide evidence of highly dynamic functional changes in the peri-infarct zone weeks following ischemic injury, suggesting an extended temporal window for therapeutic interventions. Delayed pharmacological modulation of GABAA or COX-1 activity may exert multiple beneficial effects on neurogliovascular function and hence may be promising treatment targets in the subacute stage of stroke. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lakha, Shehnaz Fatima | Pennefather, Peter | A Method for Evaluation of the Management of Chronic Non-cancer Pain in Global Cities | Medical Science | 2016-11 | This dissertation explores the outputs of structures and processes influencing clinical services for chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP) management globally. It focuses on facilities and services available in three global cities: Kuwait, Karachi, and Toronto. It develops and demonstrates qualitative and descriptive survey tools capable of assessing CNCP services and management, and associated barriers from the perspective of academic pain specialist involved in the delivery of CNCP services in those cities. Those tools are based on an original conceptual framework for guiding evaluation of CNCP services and management globally. In addition to a general introduction and discussion sections, the dissertation is made up of three sections. The first section integrates and reviews the literature on chronic diseases, CNCP management, and existing health care systems with respect to CNCP services generally and with a focus on the target global cities in particular. The second section consists of an analysis of methodological research options and development of a Structure Process Output evaluation frameworks based on a hybridization of Donabedian and Logistic evaluation frameworks (DL-Hybrid). Mixed methodology survey and interview instruments were designed to evaluate perspectives of pain clinic leader using that DL-Hybrid framework and organized to characterize three output domains: 1) infrastructure utilization, 2) clinical service delivery and 3) education and research activities. The third section reports on semi-structured interviews with academic pain specialists using those instruments. Four participants were recruited from each of the three global cities (8 men and 4 women). Data was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Krippendorffâ s thematic clustering was used to reveal themes within qualitative data. The three cities showed important differences in how the health system operated but pain specialist shared common training and professional goals and barriers. This qualitative survey provided insights into those goals and barriers. Similarities were observed across the three cities reflecting perhaps the fact that by definition global cities resemble each other economically. The biggest shared obstacle was a lack of resources for coordinating services and evaluating outputs as well as the lack of recognition of the significance of CNCP. The study highlights similarities and variation in perception of barriers. It demonstrates how a global cities lens and a systematic evaluation framework can reveal structural and process issues related to pain clinic outputs aimed at reducing the burden of chronic diseases such as chronic pain both locally and globally. | Ph.D. | health, infrastructure | 3, 9 |
| Lalani, Yasmin | McCready, Lance T. | "Somos Parte de la Solución": Women Activists' Knowledge of Gendered Risk and Their Educational Responses to HIV/AIDS in the Peruvian Amazon | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-11 | This dissertation is a critical ethnography conducted in the Amazon jungle city of Iquitos, Peru--a city where sex work and sex tourism are becoming increasingly prevalent, and where AIDS cases in women are on the rise. In recent years, HIV positive and sex worker women activists in Iquitos have made significant strides to respond to the AIDS crisis through social movement organizing and educational outreach. This dissertation exposes the nuanced gender relations perspectives of HIV positive and sex worker women activists and underscores the importance of including these subjugated knowledges in solution-oriented discourses in HIV/AIDS education. I deployed a combination of gender relations and postcolonial feminist theories to pursue two lines of inquiry. First, I investigated HIV positive women and sex worker women activists' own understandings of gender relations and gender-related risk factors for HIV. Second, I explored the varied educational spaces that activist women produced to disseminate this knowledge to other affected populations and the wider public. Results show that women activists' collective organizing around their stigmatized identities positioned them to critically comment about how gender influences HIV risk for both women and men and also enabled them to encourage their stakeholders to re-think and re-learn gender in ways that would reduce their risk to HIV. As the title of this dissertation reads, women activists asserted that they are "part of the solution" to combat HIV/AIDS in Peru. My dissertation shows that "activist knowledge" is critical to re-conceptualize the ways that local expressions of masculinities, femininities and gender relations are taken up in HIV/AIDS education initiatives. | PhD | gender, women | 5 |
| Lamb, Danielle K. | Gunderson, Morley | Topics in Canadian Aboriginal Earnings, Employment and Education: An Empirical Analysis | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2012-06 | This dissertation is divided into three main components that each relate to the socioeconomic wellbeing of Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian labour market. Specifically, using data from the master file of the Canadian census for the years 1996, 2001 and 2006, the first section examines the wage differential for various Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups, including a comparison of those living on-and-off-reserves. The study finds that, while a sizeable wage gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal persons still exists, this disparity has narrowed over the three census periods for those living off-reserve. The Aboriginal-non-Aboriginal wage differential is largest among the on-reserve population and this gap has remained relatively constant over the three census periods considered in the study. The second study in the dissertation uses data from the master file of the Canadian Labour Force Survey for 2008 and 2009 to estimate the probability that an individual is a labour force participant, and, conditional on labour force participation, the probability that a respondent is unemployed, comparing several Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal groups. The results reveal that Aboriginal men and women have lower rates of labour force participation and higher rates or unemployment in both periods as compared to their non-Aboriginal counterparts. Aboriginal peoples were also disproportionately burdened by a slowdown in economic activity as measured by a change in the probability of unemployment moving from 2008 to 2009, as compared to non-Aboriginal people, who experienced a smaller increase in the probability of unemployment moving from a period of positive to negative economic growth. Finally, the third study examines the probability of high school dropout comparing Aboriginal peoples living on-and-off-reserve using data from the master file of the Aboriginal Peoples Survey for 2001. The findings reveal dramatically higher rates of dropout among Aboriginal people living on-reserve as compared to those living off-reserve. Limitations of all three studies as well as some possible directions of future research related to similar issues concerning Canada’s Aboriginal population are discussed in the concluding chapter of the dissertation. | PhD | socioeconomic, employment, economic growth, labour | 1, 8 |
| Lambersky, John Joseph | Blair, Mascall | Understanding the Human Side of School Leadership: Improving Teacher Morale, Efiicacy, Motivation and Commitment | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | Finding a clear connection between principal actions and student achievement has proved remarkably difficult for educational researchers. Recently, a strong base of evidence has emerged suggesting that principals working indirectly through their teaching faculties can lead to improved student achievement. What constitutes the most effective sort of humanistic and supportive leadership - how exactly principals might lead more effectively through others - has become the research agenda. Recent empirical work illustrates that principals who lead through humanistic approaches can have a positive impact on student achievement in their schools. But what is not clearly known is exactly what `leading with teacher emotions in mind' might actually look like; how can leaders ensure that faculty are emotionally well-served, possessed of a sense of efficacy, and committed to classroom success? The purpose of this qualitative research study was to understand the effects principals have on teacher emotions. What do teachers themselves report leaders do that improves teacher morale, commitment, and efficacy? To the extent that these questions retrace some of the emerging work of the field, they are confirmatory; to the extent that they elicit new responses, they are exploratory.The research was based on interviews of 20 teachers working in secondary schools in Southern Ontario, Canada. Teachers reported that principal behaviours were central to their emotions, and often shaped their morale, efficacy, stress, commitment, and motivation. Key principal behaviours include: showing professional respect for teachers; encouraging and acknowledging teacher effort and results; providing appropriate protection; being seen; allowing teacher voice; and communicating principal vision. The thesis concluded that these behaviours suggest a natural path for school principals to work through the teachers in their school, and represent a meaningful indirect impact of leadership. Further research was recommended to establish the effect size of these principal behaviours, and determine if they apply across jurisdictions, school settings, and different age panels. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Lamothe, Karl Andrew | Jackson, Donald A||Somers, Keith M | Quantifying the Resistance and Resilience of Freshwater Ecosystems to Anthropogenic Disturbance | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-11 | As many as 2 million lakes are estimated to be in Canada that provide beneficial ecosystem services to society such as clean drinking water and freshwater fisheries. However, anthropogenic disturbances on the landscape threaten the delivery of these services and pose questions regarding the maintenance of lake systems to future change. Understanding and quantifying the resistance and resilience of lake systems to disturbance is therefore a priority. The objectives of this thesis are to: 1) develop a quantitative framework for characterizing the resistance and resilience of ecosystems to disturbance; and, 2) quantify the relative resistance and resilience of freshwater lakes in Ontario to anthropogenic disturbance. I begin with a simulation study to demonstrate how distance-based measures in ordination space can provide a framework for characterizing the relative resistance and resilience of systems to disturbance. I then apply the distance-based approach to long-term monitoring data of crustacean zooplankton communities and associated water chemistry data from 19 lakes in Ontario subjected to varying levels of acidification. I show that most zooplankton communities lack resistance to change over time, whether affected by acidification or not, and that water chemistry is changing among all the lakes studied. Finally, I approach resilience from a functional diversity perspective and quantify the functional redundancy of Ontario lake fish communities across the province and relate these patterns to biogeographic and environmental variables. My results demonstrate patterns of redundancy among freshwater fish communities provincially, however, these patterns varied regionally. Overall, this body of work provides a multidimensional approach for characterizing the resistance and resilience of freshwater ecosystems to anthropogenic disturbance that can be applied across systems (e.g., terrestrial, marine, freshwater) and scales (e.g., species, community, ecosystem). | Ph.D. | water, urban, resilien, environment, marine | 11, 13, 14 |
| Landon, Rocky | Restoule, Jean-Paul | We Can Do It (Education) Better: An Examination of Four Secondary School Approaches for Aboriginal Students in Northwestern Ontario | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-11 | The following study is an exercise in understanding how educators can improve their professional practice in terms of addressing the needs of Aboriginal high school students. The study was delimited to four different high schools in Northwestern Ontario in order to develop a broader understanding of best practices used by various school communities. Interviews were conducted with students and educational professionals such as teachers, administrators, guidance personnel and school board members. The study was completed over a period of one week, where one day was spent in each school completing interviews. This study is unique in two ways: it presents the voices of secondary school educators (which had scarcely been reported or heard in the academic community) outlining the direction in which Aboriginal education should go and secondly, as a researcher I attempted to use the medicine wheel as a model for completing and conducting research. There were a number of findings that appeared through the interviews. Teachers and administrators agreed that in order for Aboriginal students to succeed they needed to have involved parental support. It was important to teachers that parents take an active role in the educational life of their child. Additionally, it was acknowledged that First Nation communities were ideal settings for schooling of Aboriginal students as they were supported by family and community kinships. Yet in this study, it was also acknowledged that First Nation schools suffered financially in comparison to provincial schools. They were not able to provide programming comparable to provincial schools and iii were limited to a barebones program with compulsory courses being offered. In some cases, if students failed a course, they were not able to participate in the rest of the school program, until the course was re-taught in two years. Despite these shortcomings, students might do better in First Nation based schools if they were adequately funded with current resources and adequately compensated teachers. This study offers some suggestions on how to improve the practice of educating First Nation secondary students. | EDD | educat | 4 |
| Lane, Natasha Erin | Wodchis, Walter P | Determinants of Disability and Disablement in Ontario Long-term Care Residents | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2016-11 | Purpose: Disability is difficulty with or dependence on others to conduct activities of daily living, such as bathing, eating and dressing; disablement is worsening disability measured over time. Among long-term care residents, disability and disablement lower quality of life and increase health care costs. Understanding the determinants of disability and disablement in this population is critical to guide clinical practice and accountability policies in long-term care homes. Methods: This thesis is theoretically grounded in the Disablement Process Model. It consists of a literature review and two retrospective studies done using Ontario health administrative data. Study 1 features a critical literature review and analytic framework of the determinants of disability and disablement in older adults. Study 2 examines the relative effect of long-term care home versus resident characteristics in explaining residentsâ disability. Study 3 focuses on the association between disability and geriatric syndromes present at admission and disablement experienced by long-term care residents over time. Hierarchical linear regression models were used in both Studies 2 and 3. Implications: The conceptually-grounded, evidence-based analytic framework from Study 1 can be used to advance future research on disability and disablement in older adults, whether or not they live in the community or long-term care. Study 2 demonstrates that the majority of variation in disability among Ontario long-term care home residents is explained by residentsâ geriatric syndromes, not characteristics of the homes in which they live. Study 3 shows that residents with lower disability at admission become disabled more rapidly over the course of their stay; our exploration of possible mechanisms for this finding is relevant to frontline providers and researchers alike. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lang, Tim | Kennedy, Christopher | Quantitatively Assessing the Role of Higher Education in Global Sustainability | Civil Engineering | 2016-06 | Three analytical methods are used to examine three primary questions to address an observed scarcity of literature that quantitatively and empirically assesses the role of higher education in global sustainability. Linear regression is used to assess correlations between institutional environmental impacts and campus initiatives; environmentally-extended input-output analysis is used to assess the global operational footprint of higher education; and the IPAT framework and integrated assessment modeling are used to assess the influence of higher education on global systems. Despite limitations - most notably that current data availability impedes the isolation of higher education from education more broadly - the results support the following conclusions. 1) There are no meaningful correlations between campus sustainability initiatives and direct environmental impacts, though many initiatives are admittedly not aimed at reducing direct impacts. 2) The fraction of overall human ecological footprint attributable to higher education is too minor for its management to play a transformative role in achieving global sustainability, but managing it to lead by example could be more so. 3) Higher education influences global sustainability most significantly by contributing to the education driven fertility mechanism, and possibly by promoting technological change, though the magnitude and exact mechanisms of the latter relationship are uncertain. | Ph.D. | educat, environment, institution | 4, 13, 16 |
| Langen, Nicholas Steven Reed | Roach, Kent | The Compatibility of Human Rights Remedies with the Rule of Law: An Analysis of Rights Remedies in Canada and the United Kingdom, and Their Compatibility with the Rule of Law | Law | 2017-11 | This thesis analyses the development of human rights remedies in Canada and the United Kingdom in the context of two controversial rights issues, euthanasia and prisoner voting. It argues that the development of rights remedies in both jurisdictions has been done in a manner which is incompatible with the rule of law, and as such, creates the risk that individuals will be denied effective protection of their rights, either temporarily or permanently. It proposes a new framework for rights remedies, which ensures the immediate and effective correcting of rights violations, whilst providing a mechanism for engagement with the legislature, ensuring that the any judicial development of policy is constrained by legislative oversight, and ultimately subject to legislative amendment. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Lapeyre, Jaime Patricia | Nelson, Sioban | "The idea of better nursing": The American Battle for Control over Standards of Nursing Education in Europe, 1918–1925 | Nursing Science | 2013-11 | In the midst of the progressive era, American nursing and medical education witnessed tremendous reform. The increase in the number of hospitals during the early twentieth century brought a growing demand for nurses and led to varying standards in admissions and education within hospital training schools. In addition, the rise of the field of public health led to a campaign by a number of American nurse leaders to reform nursing education. This campaign included: the formation of several national professional organizations; gaining the support of prominent medical officials, including those close to the Rockefeller Foundation, an influential philanthropic organization; and successfully arguing against the sending of public health nurses overseas during the First World War. Although these steps were taken prior to the end of the war, the period immediately following the war, and the 1918 pandemic spread of influenza, provided fertile ground for reopening discussions regarding nursing education both nationally and internationally. Following the war, the involvement of numerous American-backed organizations, including the Rockefeller Foundation (RF), the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS), and the American Red Cross (ARC), in the training of nurses in Europe highlighted the numerous and conflicting ideals of American nurses in regards to nursing education during this period. In particular, those who had campaigned for the training of public health nurses in the USA — led primarily by the formidable nurse Annie Goodrich — voiced differing ideals for the training of nurses than those American nurses who led the work of the RF, the LRCS and the ARC in Europe following the war. It will be argued here that, contrary to earlier theses that have suggested the spread of a singular “American gospel” of public health nursing education, in fact there were several hotly contested ideas being conveyed in Europe by several different American individuals and organizations at this time. In particular, the RF’s support of two opposing ideals — that of their own nursing representative, Elisabeth Crowell in Europe, and that of Goodrich in the USA — heightened this conflict. The eventual success of one set of these ideas depended on the alignment of congruent ideals in the training of health care professionals with influential individuals and organizations. Furthermore, this dissertation suggests that the outcome of this debate influenced the future direction of nursing education in both Europe and North America. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Latulippe, Nicole | McGregor, Deborah | Belonging to Lake Nipissing: Knowledge, Governance, and Human-Fish Relations | Geography | 2017-11 | Fishing constitutes an essential relation through which Nipissing peoples belong to Lake Nipissing. Belonging in and through human-fish relations is an affective, embodied, and dynamic relation. It is a reciprocal relation that expresses an Anishinaabe cosmology and rich knowledge and governance traditions. The diverse ways that Nipissing peoples belong to the lake are not represented in provincial fisheries policy and dominant epistemic frameworks; on the contrary, current provisions for Aboriginal Traditional Knowledge, ecosystem-based management, and Aboriginal partnerships preserve what Douglas Harris calls the legal capture of fish. In this dissertation, I write beyond the question of how Indigenous Knowledge Systems can improve Canadian fisheries management to center the diverse ways that Nipissing peoples value fish, know the lake, and enact their laws. Theorizing with difference, with that which seems contradictory and fragmented, my research performs important bridging work. Drawing on Nipissing and Anishinaabe theories and embodiments of power, change and transformation, my work seeks to interpret the efforts by Nipissing First Nation members to maintain relations with a hotly contested resource in a deeply challenging historio-legal environment. | Ph.D. | environment, fish, governance | 13, 14, 16 |
| Laurence, Marion Lorraine Bowlby | Bertoldi, Nancy||Bernstein, Steven | Reinventing Impartiality: Norm and Practice Change in United Nations Peace Operations | Political Science | 2019-06 | This thesis investigates changes in how the norm of impartiality is interpreted on a day-to-day basis in United Nations peacekeeping operations. Historically, peacekeepers remained impartial by serving as passive observers, distancing themselves from ideological disputes, and minimizing involvement in the domestic affairs of host states. Yet practices on the ground have changed dramatically in the last two decades. Today, UN personnel routinely take sides, use force, and engage in practices that are ideologically prescriptive. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), for example, UN troops conduct ‘targeted offensive operations’ against non-state armed groups. Critics argue that these activities violate the norm of impartiality. This criticism elicits a puzzling response from many UN officials: they downplay the novelty of new practices, insisting that are still perfectly impartial. I study this disjuncture between a longstanding norm and practices on the ground by asking how new ways of being ‘impartial’ emerge, spread, and become institutionalized in UN peace operations. To answer this question, I combine insights from the literature on international norms – especially theories of norm contestation – with newer scholarship from the ‘practice turn’ in international relations. Drawing on evidence from Sierra Leone, the DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, and UN headquarters in New York, I argue that new practices emerge through two distinct processes: innovation and improvisation. The former involves conscious reflection, while the latter occurs when practitioners make a series of unconscious, incremental adjustments to existing practices. New practices then spread through vertical, horizontal, and what I call ‘managed’ learning as communities of peacekeepers embrace new standards for judging competence. Finally, I show that the institutionalization of new practices remains very uneven. This variation largely depends on the wider social environment and the degree to which new practices resonate with existing norms and overarching ‘webs’ of practices. | Ph.D. | peace | 16 |
| Lavecchia, Adam Michael | Kroft, Kory | Essays in Public Economics | Economics | 2017-11 | The first chapter sheds new light on the desirability of the minimum wage in the presence of optimal income taxation. Using a search-and-matching framework, I derive a novel condition that links the desirability of the minimum wage to three sufficient statistics: (1) the macro labor force participation response to the minimum wage by low skilled individuals; (2) the macro employment response to the minimum wage for low-skilled individuals; and (3) the welfare weight on low-skilled workers. This condition shows that the minimum wage is welfare improving if it pushes the labor market tightness – the ratio of the aggregate number of vacancies to low-skilled job seekers – closer to its efficient level. I estimate the first two sufficient statistics using an event study design, as well as state and federal minimum wage variation between 1979-2014. I estimate a macro participation elasticity of -0.24 and a macro employment elasticity of -0.32. With these estimates in hand, I simulate the welfare gains from introducing a minimum wage. The second chapter studies the effect of raising contribution limits on retirement saving by exploiting the ‘catch-up limit’ provision, a rule which allows those over the age of 50 to make higher IRA and 401(k) contributions than those under 50. Using a regression discontinuity design, I find that eligibility for ‘catch-up limits’ leads to a large increase in total tax-deferred contributions for those without access to a 401(k) plan. This is driven by a 25 percent increase in average IRA contributions and a 21 percent increase in the likelihood of making an IRA contribution, with no significant effects on overall 401(k) contributions. The findings suggest that, contrary to the neoclassical life-cycle model, the response to eligibility for ‘catch-up limits’ was not limited to constrained savers. The final chapter, joint with Michael Smart, studies the savings effect of Canadian Tax-Free Savings Account (TFSAs). Using a new instrumental variables strategy, we whether TFSA balances crowd-out saving in taxable financial assets and traditional tax-deferred plans. We find that TFSA balances crowd-out saving in taxable fixed income assets and have no statistically significant effect on balances in tax-deferred accounts. | Ph.D. | employment, wage | 8 |
| Lawrie, Paul | Bender, Daniel ||Halpern, Rick | "To Make the Negro Anew"; The African American Worker in the Progressive Imagination 1896-1928 | History | 2011-06 | This dissertation examines how progressive era social scientists thought about African American workers and their place in the nation’s industrial past, present, and future.Progressives across the color line drew on a common discourse of industrial evolution that linked racial development with labor fitness. Evolutionary science merged with scientific management to create new taxonomies of racial labor fitness. I chart this process from turn of the century actuarial science which defined African Americans as a dying race, to wartime mental and physical testing that acknowledged the Negro as a vital -albeit inferior- part of the nation’s industrial workforce. During this period, African Americans struggled to prove their worth on the shop-floor, the battlefield, and the academy. This thesis contends that the modern Negro type- African Americans as objects of social scientific inquiry- which came of age in the post-World War Two era, was born in the draft boards, factories, trenches, hospitals, and university classrooms of the Progressive Era. | PhD | worker, industr | 8, 9 |
| Lee, Byron Y. S. | Gunderson, Morley | Three Essays on Total Returns to the Employment Relationship | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2011-06 | This dissertation examines the total returns to the employment relationship from a variety of perspectives. In the first chapter, I examine different forms of training and study its influence on individual turnover. My second chapter examines the impact of mandatory volunteer/work experience in high school on the employment and wage decisions of youths. In my final chapter, I examine flexible work hours as a moderator in the relationship between workplace strategy and organizational performance. The first chapter highlights the importance of the type of training provided to the employee in order to avoid voluntary turnover. I compare the impact of institutional training compared to course training on voluntary turnover. Estimates indicate that employees who receive course training are more likely to leave the firm for another job, while employees who receive institutional training are more likely to stay with the firm. The results indicate that different types of training have differential impacts on the employee’s turnover decision. The second chapter utilizes a provincial policy reform that requires either working at a paid job or volunteering as a mandatory high school graduation requirement and examines its impact on employment outcomes. I propose that this reform causes a change in the perceptions of work by individuals which may lead them to sacrifice income for an altruistic purpose. In addition, the low quality of jobs found working or volunteering in high school may result in a distaste for work and hence provide motivation for enrolling in post-secondary education. The empirical results support this argument as the reform resulted in an increased likelihood of high school graduates to pursue post-secondary education, while those who entered the labour force had a lower probability of employment and lower wages. The final chapter examines the generalizeable conditions under which flexible work schedules are beneficial to firm performance. I find that flextime is not a best practice that is applicable across all firm environments. Instead, flextime only increases profitability when implemented within a workforce strategy focused on employees. Conversely, flextime when implemented with a cost-reduction strategy has detrimental effects on firm profits. | PhD | employment, labour, wage | 8 |
| Lee, Holly | Mabury, Scott A. | Environmental Chemistry of Commercial Fluorinated Surfactants: Transport, Fate, and Source of Perfluoroalkyl Acid Contamination in the Environment | Chemistry | 2013-06 | Perfluoroalkyl carboxylates (PFCAs) and perfluoroalkane sulfonates (PFSAs)are anthropogenic fluorinated surfactants that have been detected in almost every environmental compartment studied, yet their production and applications are far outweighed by those of other higher molecular weight fluorinated surfactants used in commerce. These fluorinated surfactants are widely incorporated in commercial products, yet their post-application fate has not been extensively studied. This thesis examines various biological and environmental processes involved in the fate of these surfactants upon consumer disposal. Specific focus was directed towards the environmental chemistry of polyfluoroalkyl phosphate esters (PAPs), perfluoroalkyl phosphonates (PFPAs), and perfluoroalkyl phosphinates (PFPiAs), and their potential roles as sources of perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) in the environment. PAPs are established biological precursors of PFCAs, while PFPAs and PFPiAs are newly discovered PFAAs in the environment. Incubation with wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) microbes demonstrated the ability of PAPs to yield both fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs), which are established precursors of PFCAs, and the corresponding PFCAs themselves. WWTP biosolids-applied soil-plant microcosms revealed that PAPs can significantly accumulate in plants along with their degradation metabolites. This has implications for potential wildlife and human exposure through the consumption of plants grown and/or livestock raised on farmlands that have been amended with contaminated biosolids. A number of compound-and environmental-specific factors were observed to significantly influence the partitioning of PFPAs and PFPiAs between aqueous media and soil, as well as, aquatic biota during sorption and bioaccumulation experiments respectively. In both processes, PFPAs were primarily observed in the aqueous phase, while PFPiAs predominated in soil and biological tissues, consistent with the few environmental observations of these chemicals made to date. Detection of the PAP diesters (diPAPs), PFPiAs, and fluorotelomer sulfonates (FTSAs),all of which are used commercially, in human sera is evidence of human exposure to commercial fluorinated products, but the pathways by which this exposure occurs remain widely debated. Overall, this work presents novel findings on the environmental fate of commercial fluorinated surfactants and each of the process studied shows a clear link between the use of commercial products and the fluorochemical burden currently observed in the environment. | PhD | consum, production, environment | 12, 13 |
| Lee, Jack Tsung-Ying | Hayhoe, Ruth | Education Hubs in the Making: Policy Rationales and International Relations | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | Since the late 1990s, several governments worldwide have launched initiatives to transform their countries into education hubs in order to attract large numbers of foreign students, scholars, education providers, research institutes, and multinational companies. While many observers consider these initiatives as entrepreneurial projects typical of cross-border education, a proper analysis demands a closer examination of the multiple realities of education hub development and their implementation challenges. This thesis investigates the development of Malaysia, Singapore, and Hong Kong as education hubs. The research examines national initiatives as well as those that are specific to an economic zone (EduCity Iskandar) and a discipline (Islamic finance education hub). What are the rationales driving the development of theses education hubs? What patterns of engagement are evident as these societies forge regional and international ties through higher education? Through policy document analysis and interviews with 36 policymakers and 42 context informants, this study has identified four key rationales: 1) economic benefits, 2) talent development, 3) educational capacity, and 4) soft power. Each rationale generates specific policy objectives and implementation strategies. While Malaysia is keen to generate revenue through student fees and improve its quality of education by injecting competition, Singapore is eager to commercialize research innovations and develop talent in all forms (local, foreign, and diaspora). In contrast, Hong Kong remains skeptical of the economic benefits of an education industry and instead emphasizes talent development while cultivating local institutions. All three societies also aim to exert influence regionally and internationally though ties based on cultural heritage or networks with leading experts (i.e., soft power). These efforts meld a realist approach to international relations with neoliberalism and social constructivism. Nevertheless, serious contextual factors such as the prevailing political climate, deepening ethnic divisions, and the lack of academic freedom present challenges to the development of education hubs. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Lee, Susan S. | Titchkosky, Tanya | Disability, Underemployment and Social Change | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2013-11 | Informed by the disciplines of disability studies and interpretive sociology, and using the social model of disability and the collective identity model, this dissertation pursues an investigation of underemployment. Underemployment, conceptualized as the underutilized skills and knowledge of the employed and unemployed, occurs at higher levels amongst disabled persons than among non-disabled people (Canada, 2009). Semi-structured interviews with 14 underemployed disabled people conducted, to investigate the experiences of disabled persons who worked in the fields of education, computer, healthcare, fitness, environment, travel, social work, government and non-government agencies. In addition, Canadian social policies were analyzed to address the research questions: 1) How do disabled workers understand and address experiences of underemployment? 2) How do organizations and social policies account for underemployment amongst disabled persons? 3) How can practices which acknowledge and enhance collective identity be used to address underemployment and advance the disability movement? 4) How can underemployment amongst disabled persons be addressed at the organizational level? The texts of these narratives and Canadian social policies were analyzed using a critical interpretative textual analysis approach. The analysis demonstrates the depths of the negative consequences of high levels of underemployment resulting from structural, environmental and attitudinal barriers. Such consequences include lack of opportunities for recognition, compensation, promotion, accommodations, and career fulfillment, as well as poor mental, physical, emotional and social health. This research study is unique as it reveals the struggles that disabled persons experienced in work contexts, their narratives of resistance, and their recommendations for socio-political change to build more inclusive work environments | PhD | inclusive, employment, worker | 4, 8 |
| Lee, Theresa Min-Hyung | Tu, Karen||Gershon, Andrea S | Using Electronic Medical Records to Assess and Improve Primary Care Physicians’ Performance of Chronic Disease Management in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-06 | Through five original studies, this thesis studies if and how electronic medical records (EMRs) can be used meaningfully to target improvements in chronic disease management in primary care practices in Ontario. The thesis answers four areas concerning primary care EMRs. First, it identifies if EMRs can be used to accurately identify patients with chronic disease (COPD). Second, it studies if EMR systems can measure primary care physicians’ adherence to clinical practice guidelines for patients with respiratory or cardiovascular diseases (CVD) or risk. Third it looks at if EMRs can be used to assess provider or patient characteristics that are associated with the provision or receipt of guideline adherent care respiratory or vascular disease management. Finally, this thesis examines the barriers to and facilitators for the adoption and routine use of EMR tools designed to increase guideline-adherence in primary care. Identifying patients with certain conditions is essential to target quality improvement initiatives and audit current performance. The thesis demonstrates that EMRs could be used to accurately identify patients with COPD. Aspects of chronic disease care, namely primary care physicians’ adherence to clinical practice guidelines and quality indicators for CVD and COPD are possible to measure when they are quantifiable or coded in semi-structured or structured formats in the EMR. It is possible to link EMR data to external data sources to investigate if there are provider or patient characteristics associated with meeting the quality indicator criteria (including the effects of health service utilization data, socioeconomic data and clinical data). This thesis provides insight into important considerations for building a quality improvement intervention using EMR data as a platform or data source by identifying key barriers to, and facilitators for the adoption of EMR-based tools designed to increase guideline-adherence in primary care. We identified key limitations to using EMR data to measure primary care quality, which would be important to consider in future efforts to use EMRs for primary care quality improvement and performance management. It is essential that policymakers take into consideration sociotechnical aspects of the healthcare system and delivery when considering the use of EMRs for quality improvement. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lefevre, Kara Lynn | Rodd, F. Helen | The Influence of Human Disturbance on Avian Frugivory and Seed Dispersal in a Neotropical Rainforest | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2008-06 | Habitat loss and disturbance due to human activity are major causes of global biodiversity decline. Beyond outright species loss, one potential outcome is modification of species interactions that are integral to ecosystem functioning. To investigate this possibility, I asked whether human activity influences avian frugivory and seed dispersal, bird-fruit interactions that facilitate plant reproduction. On Tobago (West Indies), I compared patterns of frugivory in three adjacent rainforest habitats along a gradient of increasing disturbance: primary forest in a reserve, unprotected intermediate forest outside the reserve, and nearby forest that was moderately disturbed by subsistence resource use. I assessed plant and bird community composition, seedling species, fruit removal, and bird fecal samples, to estimate human effects on seed dispersal and plant recruitment in this ecosystem. Disturbed forest had different species assemblages than primary forest, characterized by more light-demanding plants, more birds, and a shift in the relative abundance of avian feeding guilds: insectivores and frugivores declined, while nectarivores and omnivores increased. Canopy cover declined with disturbance; along with plant abundance, this explained much of the variation in bird species composition. The rate of avian fruit consumption in removal experiments varied considerably but tended to be highest in primary forest. Fecal samples showed that fruit composition of avian diets also varied with disturbance; birds captured in disturbed forest consumed more seeds from light-demanding plants. Seeds in the samples provided evidence of some seed transfer between habitats—from disturbed forest into the reserve and vice versa. Seedling composition was consistent with plant species fruiting in the same study plots, and illustrated some successful recruitment of light-demanding plants in primary forest and shade-tolerant plants in disturbed forest. Notably, the plant community of intermediate forest was more similar to disturbed than primary forest. This suggests that habitat adjacent to areas of human activity can be susceptible to ecological change, even though it does not experience the same direct disturbance. In summary, the unprotected portion of Tobago’s rainforest has a markedly different plant and bird community than the forest reserve, and my results indicate that avian frugivory and seed dispersal can be influenced by moderate human activity. | PhD | conserv, urban, forest, biodiversity | 11, 15 |
| Legge, Robyn | Piran, Niva | As the Body Unfolds: Examining Girls’ Changing Experiences with the Socially Constructed Labels ‘Tomboy’ and ‘Girly Girl’ | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-11 | This study explored the lived experiences of girls with the socially constructed labels ‘tomboy’ and ‘girly girl’. Using a prospective, life history, qualitative methodology, girls between the ages of nine to fourteen years old were interviewed up to four times over five years for an extensive embodiment project. The present study investigated girls’ narratives of the ‘tomboy’/ ‘girly girl’ dichotomy to deepen an understanding of how gender discourses affect how girls learn to live in their bodies. A total of 87 interviews were collected from 27 girls representing diverse social and cultural backgrounds as well as different urban and rural Canadian locations. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed for themes using the constant comparison method from Grounded Theory. Examining the data from a feminist poststructuralist theoretical approach, three main dimensions emerged that described these girls’ experiences of living with these labels from childhood through adolescence. The first dimension described the shared cultural stereotypes of the ‘tomboy’ and ‘girly girl’ labels. The second dimension delineated the social outcomes in terms of the privileges and consequences associated with each label in childhood and in adolescence. The third dimension highlighted girls own negotiated self experiences and identities in relation to this gender dichotomy. Through its prospective design, this research uniquely delineated the complex range of experiences girls have within gender discourses and explored how labels work to control and restrict girls’ freedom to stay connected to their self and body. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| LeGrow, Karen Suzanne | Hodnett, Ellen | A Feasibility Study of a Bourdieu-informed Parent Briefing Intervention to Improve Parents' Satisfaction with Decision Making for Hospitalized Children with Complex Health Care Needs | Nursing Science | 2011-11 | Children with complex health problems who are dependent upon medical technology require frequent hospitalizations, during which parents must make difficult decisions regarding their child’s care. Although principles of “family-centred care” have been widely adopted by paediatric hospitals, studies indicate that many parents are dissatisfied with their roles in decisions about their child’s care. Pierre Bourdieu’s Logic of Practice, specifically his concepts of field, capital, and habitus, as they relate to cultural and symbolic capital within the field of pediatric medicine, were used to guide the design of a parent briefing intervention aimed at improving parents’ satisfaction with decision making. Briefings were conducted during daily hospital rounds. Physicians and nurses were asked to sit while using a checklist as a communication guide. A two-part study was conducted to determine feasibility of a randomized controlled trial of a parent briefing. One component was a psychometric evaluation of an instrument to measure parents’ satisfaction with decision making. The other was a phase I single group, post-test study of the parent briefing. Eighty-two parents of children admitted to an in-patient unit in a large metropolitan pediatric health centre, with an expected length of stay ≥ 3 days, completed the Family Satisfaction with Decision Making (FS/DM) subscale and the Decisional Conflict Scale (DCS) prior to discharge. A subgroup of parents participated in the parent briefing study. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of the FS/DM was 0.87, and it was inversely correlated with the DCS (r2= -0.635, p<0.0001). Eighteen physicians, 25 nurses, and 31 parents participated in the phase I trial of the briefing intervention. Sixty-eight out of an expected 93 briefings were carried out as per study protocol. Nineteen parents did not receive the required “dose” of the study intervention. Mean time to complete the intervention was 11.9 minutes (SD = 6.9). Parents and nurses rated the acceptability and usefulness of the intervention favourably, whereas physicians’ ratings were mixed. The FS/DM instrument is a suitable primary outcome measure for an RCT. However, more work needs to be done, to ensure the feasibility of the intervention, including more intensive clinician training. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Lemphers, Nathan | Bernstein, Steven | Beyond the Carbon Curse: a Study of the Governance Foundations of Climate Change Politics in Australia, Canada and Norway | Political Science | 2020-06 | Without risking hyperbole, climate change is the greatest political challenge humanity has ever faced. The world must achieve net-zero emissions by mid-century if the most catastrophic damage is to be avoided. The prospect of environmental transformation is most remote for major fossil fuel-exporting countries. Yet amongst the world’s largest exporters of carbon, three countries are more likely to make a transition: Australia, Canada and Norway. Across these three countries, significant climate policy variation exists. Norway developed an early, broad, diverse and durable suite of climate policies compared to Australia and Canada. In this dissertation, I explain the climate policy variation of these three countries and why responses from sympathetic governments were able to make headway and entrench policies in some cases but not others. A novel analytical framework is created to explain these outcomes using within-case process tracing and a comparative case study. Data is obtained largely through interviews with 124 informants and primary document analysis. My central finding is that the governance foundations of climate policy are critical in explaining climate policy. State strength matters. A strong and democratic state has the potential to assuage the political risk facing economic and regime elites from climate policy. It can restructure policy networks to empower civil society so that transformative climate policy is more likely to be announced and implemented. State strength can explain why switching governments in Australia and to some degree in Canada, as opposed to Norway, meant slow shifts and easy reversal. This dissertation contributes in several ways to the scholarship on comparative environmental politics and green state political theory. First, it foregrounds the role of the state in comparative environmental politics by emphasizing the unique and critical role that states play in providing the governance foundations needed to domestically decarbonize. Second, it theorizes linkages that can reconcile the green state literature with the economic growth imperative and the biogeochemical limits of the planet. Lastly, it provides theoretical insights into the transformative and democratic role of the strong state in addressing climate change by stressing inclusivity throughout the policymaking process. | Ph.D. | economic growth, climate, environment, governance | 8, 13, 16 |
| Lennon, Mary Catharine | Jones, Glen A | In Search of Quality: Evaluating the Impact of Learning Outcomes Policies in Higher Education Regulation | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | This study presents evidence on the impact of learning outcomes policies in quality enhancement and accountability in higher education regulation. The purpose of this research was to determine how learning outcomes polices are being used in regulatory schemes, and what (if any) impact the policies have had. In order to answer these two questions the research employed and then triangulated findings from a survey, case study analyses, and meta-evaluation research methods. Seventy-four regulatory agencies participated in a global survey, providing insight on the policy trends in articulating, incorporating and measuring learning outcomes. A primary aim of the survey was to identify policy evaluations that had taken place. While few policy evaluations were reported, the survey findings show a substantial difference in the impressions of impact and the research findings on impact. Nine policy evaluations uncovered through the global survey were analysed and coded as cases studies. The case studies determine positive, neutral or negative implications of the policies, and also provide qualitative insight into operational challenges leading to policy success or failures. The coded case studies were then pooled into a meta-evaluation to uncover the relative impact of policies. When analysed in a meta-evaluation, the results of existing research show learning outcomes policies are having limited impact. When triangulated, findings from the three research methods confirm the limited impact of learning outcomes policies and also reveal possible reasons for failures. One explanation is that the policies are poorly designed (being misaligned, misapplied, or misdirected), and that rectifying the policy issues will produce positive change. Another reason is that the way the regulatory agencies operate is a hindrance to policy success: that their roles, goals, and spheres of power are incongruent with the desired impact of learning outcomes. The most significant finding from this study is the critical role of policy evaluation in higher education regulation in order to provide summative information on impact. In both the microcosm of learning outcomes cycles of ‘articulate, incorporate, measure’, and the macrocosm of the ‘formulate, implement, evaluate’ policy cycle, the value of closing the loop through evaluation is critical for success. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Lenon, Suzanne Judith | Razack, Sherene | A White Wedding? The Racial Politics of Same-sex Marriage in Canada | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2008-11 | In A White Wedding? The Racial Politics of Same-Sex Marriage, I examine the inter-locking relations of power that constitute the lesbian/gay subject recognized by the Canadian nation-state as deserving of access to civil marriage. Through analysis of legal documents, Parliamentary and Senate debates, and interviews with lawyers, I argue that this lesbian/gay subject achieves intelligibility in the law by trading in on and shoring up the terms of racialized neo-liberal citizenship. I also argue that the victory of same-sex marriage is implicated in reproducing and securing a racialized Canadian national identity as well as a racialized civilizational logic, where “gay rights” are the newest manifestation of the modernity of the “West” in a post-9/11 historical context. By centring a critical race/queer conceptual framework, this research project follows the discursive practices of respectability, freedom and civility that circulate both widely and deeply in this legal struggle. I contend that in order to successfully shed its historical markers of degeneracy, the lesbian/gay subject must be constituted not as a sexed citizen but rather as a neoliberal citizen, one who is intimately tied to notions of privacy, property, autonomy and freedom of choice, and hence one who is racialized as white. The critical race/queer analytic also attends to the temporal and spatial registers framing this legal struggle that re-install various troubling racial hierarchies in a “gay rights” project often lauded as progressive. This analysis of the discursive terrain of same-sex marriage reveals the race shadow that lies at the heart of this equality-rights struggle. The conclusion of this thesis provides reflections for developing an ethics of activism that dislodges and resists the (re)production of racialized relations of power in lesbian and gay equality rights activism. In so doing, I seek to provoke, question and re-draw the landscape of our thinking, not only about same-sex marriage but also about the terms with which we conceive, articulate and practice racial and sexual justice. | PhD | equality, queer, rights | 5, 16 |
| Lesage-Landry, Antoine | Taylor, Joshua A | Online Optimization for Demand Response | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2019-11 | Electric power systems are shifting away from conventional fuel-burning generation and moving towards renewable energy generation. Flexibility from energy storage and demand response is needed to accommodate the variability of renewable power sources. A key challenge to demand response is the uncertainty of loads. In this thesis, we design online optimization-based algorithms for demand response. Using the performance-guaranteed frameworks we develop, we can utilize flexible loads for demand response in real-time while accounting for uncertainty. We first design online convex optimization algorithms for power setpoint tracking with flexible loads. We deal with different types of feedback from the loads: full and limited feedback and two intermediary feedback levels. This is done to account for different plausible communication scenarios. We apply our approaches to thermostatically controlled loads and charging electric vehicles. We then formulate a two-level method for the energy management of multi-energy buildings. A scheduling level and a tracking level are utilized to leverage the building's several sources of flexibility for providing ancillary services while satisfying its different energy requirements. Next, we establish a predictive online convex optimization framework in which estimates about future rounds are used to improve the performance of online convex optimization algorithms. We apply this framework for frequency regulation and curtailment, and observe performance improvement over standard algorithms. Thereafter, we extend the multi-armed bandit framework to an instance where the number of arms to play evolves according to a wide-sense stochastic process. We use this extension to curtail flexible loads' power consumption in response to random power imbalance due to renewables. Our approaches rely only on algebraic operations and projections onto a compact and convex sets. They thus are computationally efficient and can be scaled up to very large numbers of loads for real-time decision making. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable | 7 |
| Lesch, Matthew | White, Linda A | Playing with Fiscal Fire: The Politics of Consumption Tax Reform | Political Science | 2018-03 | Drawing on the case of consumption tax reform, this thesis investigates the varying capacity of governments to enact and institutionalize “general-interest reforms” (Patashnik 2003). The study advances a two-stage theory of policy reform. The first part explains why some governments, in spite of the political risks, decide to pursue general-interest reforms. In this first stage, two variants of policy learning—rational learning and emulation—are proposed to explain policy uptake. The second stage of the theory builds on policy feedback scholarship (Pierson 1993; Mettler and SoRelle 2014), claiming that the durability of a reform hinges on policy design. It proposes that governments can prompt various policy feedback effects through policy design and communications. Such efforts can shape the political incentives and perceptions of interest groups, opposition parties and voters at key junctures in the policy process. The study illustrates the analytic value of this approach through two distinct but complementary empirical strategies. First, through comparative case analysis using mainly qualitative techniques of elite interviews and document analysis, it compares the varying experiences of two Canadian provincial governments—Ontario and British Columbia (BC)—with value-added tax (VAT) reform. While each government chose to pursue VAT reform in the late 2000s, only in the case of Ontario was it successfully implemented while the BC government was forced to reverse its policy decision. Second, through a series of survey experiments, the study tests whether issue framing and policy design can shape mass receptivity to various tax reforms (e.g., carbon, sales and income taxes). The findings from the case studies as well as the survey experiments provide novel insights into the importance of policy design. The study holds important implications for our broader understanding of the mechanisms underpinning policy change and stability. | Ph.D. | consum, institution | 12, 16 |
| Leslie, Kathleen | Nelson, Sioban | Balancing Tensions in Regulatory Reform: Changes to Regulation of Health Professions in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ontario, Canada | Nursing Science | 2017-06 | Regulation of health professions is a dynamic field that continues to cause strife among policy, government, and regulatory actors. At the heart of these debates is the question of how to balance the potentially conflicting policy tensions in the regulatory agenda: professional versus public interests, transparency versus privacy, and accountability versus autonomy. In recent years, the balance of these tensions has shifted in many jurisdictions through legislative reform, impacting the relationship between governments and health profession regulators. This changing balance and the factors and forces behind it were examined using a qualitative multiple case study research design of Australia, the United Kingdom, and Ontario, Canada. In Australia, the struggle between striving for national uniformity while still achieving adequate accountability was dominant after the enactment of a nationally coordinated regulatory scheme and subsequent state-based deviations. In the United Kingdom, the balance between autonomy for regulators and legislated consistency was contentious following the creation of a powerful meta-regulator and the elimination of elected professional majorities on regulatory bodies. Reform in Ontario was more incremental, with continued adherence to elements of traditional self-regulation, including professional majorities on governing councils of regulators and considerable delegated power for these professional regulators. Despite this, the nature of health profession self-regulation in Ontario has been altered through enhanced government oversight powers, heightened accountability and transparency requirements, and constrained discretion for regulatory bodies. The level of autonomy and freedom from state intrusion that self-regulated health professions previously enjoyed are unlikely to be seen in Ontario again. It is clear there is no panacea for perceived problems in regulation of the health professions. Reform agendas were coloured by the modern political, legal, and social context of each jurisdiction. These findings help elucidate the different policy tensions that have informed the reform. Certain values are gaining greater traction in each regulatory framework, including the importance of transparency and collaboration, the need to balance regulatory force to ensure economic viability, the utility of articulating regulatory principles, and the necessity of sustaining governmental and societal confidence in the ability to do what regulation of health professions is supposed to: protect the public. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Leslie, Susannah Rose | Brunnée, Jutta R | No Emissions Trading Scheme is an Island: Building a Global Linking Agreement from the "Bottom Up" | Law | 2014-11 | The global climate change regime is at a crossroads. There remains little prospect states will agree to urgently needed binding commitments through a "top down" climate agreement, but the ability of national and sub-national policies to produce sufficient emission reductions in its place faces significant challenges. This paper proposes a possible alternative model for building a centralised climate regime from the "bottom up" through linking national and sub-national emissions trading schemes in stages under a global linking agreement. This model is argued as preferable to waiting for a global carbon price to develop from decentralised linkages, or for a "top down" linking agreement to emerge. The paper then considers how the legal design of such an agreement could best facilitate linking of different schemes, concluding that parties should agree to "low end" mutual recognition of allowances under an umbrella treaty structure, with less essential elements left to non-binding arrangements. | LL.M. | climate | 13 |
| Lett, Tristram AP | Kennedy, James L||Voineskos, Aristotle N | Genetic Contribution to Heterogeneity in Brain Morphology with Applications to Schizophrenia | Medical Science | 2014-11 | Schizophrenia is a highly heterogeneous disorder. Differences among patients with schizophrenia have been reported in clinical features, cognitive functioning, and brain structure. This thesis investigates the impact of the well supported genetic risk variants on brain structure and also considers the role of imaging-genetic changes on heterogeneous phenotypes relevant to schizophrenia. In the first study, the genome-wide supported NRXN1 gene, associated with schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorders, was examined with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) volumetric measures and measures of sensorimotor function. Study two investigated the effect of the genome-wide identified schizophrenia risk variant in the MIR137 gene for association with age-at-onset and brain structures implicated in disease severity, as well as white matter fractional anisotropy (FA) and cortical thickness. Risk allele carriers had earlier age-at-onset and aberrant brain structure suggesting that MIR137 may predict a more severe schizophrenia subphenotype. Study three examined the role of the GAD1 gene on brain structure and executive function. Among patients and controls the GAD1 variant predicted changes in white matter FA and multiple working memory tasks. Using voxel-wise mediation analysis, we were able to infer the functional relevance of GAD1 on structural connectivity by showing these FA changes statistically cause impaired working memory performance. In the final study, we investigated relationships among polygenic additive risk, brain-wide measures, and cognition in schizophrenia patients and healthy controls. Schizophrenia patients with low polygenic risk were similar in brain structure and cognitive performance to healthy controls. In contrast, high polygenic risk in patients led to large reductions in cortical thickness and white matter skeleton FA, in addition to impaired semantic memory and motor functioning. Taken together, these studies suggest that neuroimaging and genetics can be used to meaningful disentangle heterogeneity of schizophrenia phenotypes, and may move towards neurobiological based treatment options. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Leung, Andrew Chi Wai | Gough, William A | The Impacts of Climate and Climate Change on Aviation in the Canadian North | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2019-06 | Aviation is inherently linked to meteorology as severe weather is often responsible for flight delays, cancellations and sometimes accidents. Climate change is expected to change the Arctic environment and the warming rate in this region is greater than most locations on Earth. With a changing climate, the risks of flying will also be changing. In Canada, many Arctic communities in Hudson Bay, Nunavik in northern Quebec and western Labrador rely heavily on aviation to transport passengers, mail and groceries because they lack road networks or railway to access larger settlements and shipping is limited to brief periods in summer. Using historical hourly and daily climate data, this thesis examines four topics related to flying: 1) wind pattern changes (1971 to 2010) at seven locations around Hudson Bay, northern Quebec and western Labrador; 2) fog and visibility trends at 16 Hudson Bay communities (1953-2014); 3) historic long-term soil temperature trends at 5 to 150 cm depths and future projections under three greenhouse gas concentration trajectories at Kuujjuaq, Quebec; 4) appearance and climate conditions for frostquakes. The results of these topics are: 1) an increase in hourly average and daily maximum wind speed around Hudson Bay region and declining trends in western Labrador, plus prevailing wind direction changed at two communities; 2) fog and ice fog frequencies declined but reduced and low visibility trends varied spatially within the Hudson Bay region; 3) soil warming at approximately 1oC per decade from 1967 to 1995 and future soil temperature will be above 0oC under all projected trajectories at Kuujjuaq; 4) identified that water-saturated soil, minimal snow cover and rapid temperature drop to below freezing causes frostquakes and that observations were somewhat dependent on the density of the observational network. Passengers travelling to and from Hudson Bay will benefit from the results of this research to better understand the risks associated with flying to these communities. Pilots, airport operators and airlines will improve their awareness of this issue and increase their understandings of the risks caused by climate change in this area. Improved safety will be achieved by anticipating, adapting to and mitigating these changes. | Ph.D. | water, wind, climate, greenhouse gas, environment, weather | 6, 7, 13 |
| Leung, Doris | Esplen, Mary Jane | The Experiences of Cancer Nurses’ Existential Care in Response to the Threat of Patients' Mortality within the Culture of Cure | Nursing Science | 2010-11 | Patients are living longer with many types of cancer; however, often they face sudden possibilities of dying, not only due to their advancing illness but due to complications of their treatment. Consequently, they can express substantial existential distress. Nurses’ close proximity to patients puts them in an ideal place to assess and engage with patients’ existential distress; yet this kind of research has been scarce. The purpose of this doctoral thesis was to explore nurses’ experiences of being with patients facing the threat of mortality. Yalom describes this threat as the fear of death, isolation, anxiety and responsibility about freedom, and meaninglessness. The study took place in a cancer setting where care is highly technological and goals of cure dominate, specifically, two bone marrow transplant units of one institution in Canada. Benner’s methodology of interpretive phenomenology guided data collection and analysis of focused observations and interviews with 19 registered nurses. The experience of fighting cancer while preparing for the possibility of letting go was the main theme. Letting go did not reflect nurses’ intents to abandon life but to release patients (if only briefly) from perceived norms of the curative culture. More specifically, the main theme was characterized by: 1) working within the culture of cure and the possibilities of patients dying, 2) concern about “bursting the bubble of hope,” 3) whether to and how to respond to patients’ distress and dying, and 4) coping with patient involvement. In the context of responsive relationships (patients and their families, and healthcare colleagues), nurses reported engaging in communication about the threat of patients’ mortality, and responding with letting be and supporting families to let go, the management of technology and prevention of technological intrusions, and striving for patients to have “easier” deaths. Results indicate a potential to enhance nurses’ supportive care constituted by their perceived responsibility to engage and respond to patients’ existential distress. Moreover, this study suggests that more attention is warranted not only to policy, education, and research that focuses on patients’ existential well-being, but to the well-being of nurses working within tensions of curing and comforting. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Leung, Felicia Ga-Yin | Knight, Julia A | Dietary Factors Associated with Abdominal Adiposity in Postmenopausal Women | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-06 | Elucidating modifiable dietary factors for adiposity, particularly abdominal adiposity, has important public health implications for the prevention of obesity and subsequent health risks. The emerging epidemiological evidence suggests that the nature of carbohydrate intake may be an etiological factor in adiposity. The objectives of the thesis were to examine the associations between various carbohydrate-related dietary factors (carbohydrate intake, dietary fibre intake, dietary patterns, dietary glycemic index, GI, and dietary glycemic load, GL) and measures of abdominal and total adiposity. These relationships were investigated in a cross-sectional study of Canadian postmenopausal women aged 50–69 years. Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) measures of abdominal adiposity and total adiposity were utilized, in addition to standard anthropometric measures. We found that total dietary fibre intake, but not total carbohydrate intake, was inversely associated with trunk fat mass (β = −0.127 kg; 95% confidence interval, CI: −0.210, −0.044). However, associations with trunk fat mass varied by food source, where there were positive associations between potato sources of carbohydrate (β = 0.096 kg; 95% CI: 0.019, 0.173) and fibre intake (β = 1.110 kg; 95% CI: 0.157, 2.064) and trunk fat mass. Additionally, a Western dietary pattern (high intake of meats, potatoes, and sweetened products) was positively associated with all measures of abdominal and total adiposity, while a Prudent dietary pattern (high intake of vegetables, fruit, legumes, grains, and cereals) was inversely associated with all measures of adiposity. Specifically, postmenopausal women with the greatest adherence to a Western dietary pattern had 4.52 kg (95% CI: 2.58, 6.45) greater trunk fat mass versus those with the lowest adherence, while postmenopausal women with the greatest adherence to a Prudent dietary pattern had −2.68 kg (95% CI: −4.45, −0.09) trunk fat mass compared to those with the lowest adherence. However, there was no evidence of linear associations between dietary GI or dietary GL and measures of abdominal and overall adiposity. Our findings of the contrasting associations with abdominal adiposity by carbohydrate and dietary fibre food sources and dietary patterns characterized by distinct carbohydrate food groups, suggest a potential role of carbohydrate quality in the accumulation of adipose tissue. | Ph.D. | food | 2 |
| Leung, Kinson | Gough, Williams A | Projecting the Influence of Climate Change on Extreme Ground-level Ozone Events in Selected Ontario Cities | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2015-11 | Ground-level ozone (O3) is perhaps one of the most familiar pollutants in Ontario, Canada because it is associated with most smog alerts in the province. O3 varies on a number of spatial and temporal scales, primarily due to meteorological variability and the impact of long-range transport of its precursors on the photochemical processes. The goal of this thesis is to project the change in the probability of occurrence of future Extreme Ground-level Ozone Events (EGLOEs) due to changes in atmospheric conditions as a result of climate change for cities located in the southern, eastern and northern parts of Ontario, Canada by using a combination of General Circulation / Global Climate Models (GCMs) and statistical downscaling. These Ontario cities are Toronto, Windsor, London, Kingston, Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Sudbury and North Bay. The successful downscaling method used in this research to generate city-specific climate change scenarios was the Statistical DownScaling Model (SDSM) version 4.2.2, which is a hybrid of regression-based and stochastic weather-generator downscaling methods. The results indicate that the mean values of the daily maximum ground-level ozone concentrations could increase by up to 12 – 17% in Southern Ontario, 8 – 16% in Eastern Ontario and 1.5 – 9% in Northern Ontario by the end of the century due largely to changes in long-range transport. Three important themes emerge from the results: 1) the research successfully model O3 concentration in a region where long-range transport plays a substantial role. 2) The clear confirmation regarding the role of long-range transport in determining O3 concentration in most areas of Ontario. 3) The projected increase of ozone in Ontario, due largely to an increase of long-range transport, caused by shifting atmospheric dynamics rather than a direct temperature effect on ozone production. Moreover, the results indicate that the future Southern, Eastern and Northern Ontario’s EGLOEs with the O3 concentration ≥ 80 ppb (the current Ontario 1-hour Ambient Air Quality criterion for extreme ozone concentration) will have an increase of over 60%, 50% and 62% respectively by the year of 2100 under the different future scenarios in the third version of the Coupled Global Climate Model (CGCM3) and the Hadley Centre’s Climate Model (HadCM3). | Ph.D. | wind, cities, production, climate, weather, pollut | 7, 11, 12, 13 |
| Leustean, Florenta Teodoridis | Ajay, Agrawal | Three Essays on the Impact of Knowledge Accumulation on the Process of Knowledge Creation with a Focus on Collaboration | Management | 2014-11 | The cumulative nature of knowledge constantly alters the innovative landscape and thus the process of knowledge creation. In this dissertation, I explore the impact of cumulativeness on individual-level collaboration as it shapes the production of new ideas. I focus on two main influencing factors: conditions of access to knowledge and knowledge accumulation as it leads to increased specialization. This is important since the ability to build on knowledge influences the evolution of innovation trajectories.In the first study, I explore the composition of collaboration and the impact of a researcher level of expertise on the type of knowledge created. Leveraging a natural experiment, the launch of Microsoft Kinect, which triggered an unanticipated reduction in the cost of motion-sensing technology, I examine how individuals respond to opportunities for knowledge creation opened by a change in conditions of access to knowledge. Despite growing emphasis on the importance of specialists for knowledge creation, I identify generalists - researchers with broader exposure to knowledge - as playing a particularly important role in the process of innovation with implications for the type of knowledge created. Specifically, generalists have a higher propensity than specialists to respond to opportunities for knowledge creation that span knowledge areas and play a central role in coordinating collaboration between specialists required to execute on the opportunities. In the second study, I focus on the impact of increased specialization due to knowledge accumulation on the rate of collaboration. The knowledge burden hypothesis - that reaching the knowledge frontier is progressively costly due to knowledge accumulation and results in increasing specialization and collaboration - is one of several theories advanced to explain the widely documented observation that researcher team size is increasing over time. I exploit a natural experiment, the collapse of the USSR as an exogenous shock to the knowledge frontier in theoretical mathematics, to provide results of a first causal test in support of the knowledge burden hypothesis. This identification exercise is important since this hypothesis leads to policy implications that do not apply to other explanations of increases in team size. Lastly, in the third study, I discuss the influence of collaboration and individual-level breadth and depth of expertise in potentially influencing the rate and direction of a big science project. A narrative on commercial quantum computing innovation, a controversial contemporaneous endeavour, suggests the influential role of an entrepreneurial venture coordinating large-scale collaboration to exploit an opportunity at the intersection of knowledge areas. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Levin, Jamie | Kopstein, Jeffrey | Rethinking Disarmament: The Role of Weapons in the Resolution of Internal Armed Conflicts | Political Science | 2015-11 | Since the end of Cold War there has been an increase in the number internal conflicts and with it a corresponding rise in the number of third party interventions. Third parties, motivated by humanitarian concerns and spillover effects, have sought to create stable conditions for the termination of internal conflicts and the reconstruction of shattered societies. The disarmament of combatants has emerged as a leading practice. Disarmament is based on the arrestingly simple logic that the elimination of weapons removes the means by which combatants fight, thereby forcing them to commit to peace. Despite this emergent practice, however, belligerents consistently retain, and, in some cases, acquire weapons, even after signing peace agreements. Proponents of disarmament tend to view the retention of weapons as evidence of spoiling, yet disarmament leaves actors with little recourse in the likely event that a peace process collapses and conflict resumes. I argue that actors often retain weapons because the risk of violent reversal remains high even after the signing of a peace agreement. In the likely event of the breakdown of peace, weapons can be used to help ensure survival of those who retain them. This research explores the role of weapons and disarmament in internal conflicts with reference to both historical (the American War of Independence) and contemporary examples (Israel-Palestine and El Salvador). Though not all are examples of successful peacemaking, weapons played a productive role not only securing combatants, but also by allowing them to make more credible commitments and take greater risks associated with peace. This research reveals a paradox: while weapons provide belligerents with much-needed insurance, allowing them to take risks associated with peacemaking, retaining weapons appears to magnify the likelihood that an agreement will fail. Nevertheless, belligerents have at their disposal various ways to overcome this problem. I conclude by discussing the ways in which third parties may better support such initiatives. | Ph.D. | peace | 16 |
| Levin, Melissa Romy | Eyoh, Dickson | Unimagined Communities: Post-Apartheid Nation-Building, Memory and Institutional Change in South Africa (1990-2010) | Political Science | 2017-06 | Studies of nationalism insist that the construction of usable pasts is central to the creation of national solidarities and the identity of a nation. However, this scholarship is limited by the scant attention that is paid to how those pasts are constructed, and the mechanisms through which decision-making occurs. The results of this neglect are often abstracted assumptions asserting a voluntarism and coherence that most often do not exist. Repeatedly, studies focus on the products of memorialization which imposes consistency and statist intentionality, after the fact, on what is a contingent, messy and complicated process. In addition, studies often assume a singularity of power, located in an unfragmented state, with authoritarian capacity to produce meaning. This dissertation remedies these flaws by paying attention to the processes and procedures through which national memorialization unfolds. It focuses specifically on the partial critical juncture that enabled South Africaâ s transition, which has produced multiple continuities with and changes from Apartheid institutions. Imagining the memory-nation here is thus theorized as both path-dependent and contingent. There are numerous factors at play in understanding memory-making including the character of transition, fractions within the governing party, frictions in the state, and the relationship between national, international and local contexts. In tracing the processes of memory-making as they are attached to nation-building, this dissertation pays careful attention to processual analysis that rejects the reification of â the nationâ and its memory. It argues that on-going dynamics of power in bureaucratic states tend to lend formal benefit to the already empowered with the so-called previously disadvantaged reliant on more informal mechanisms of asserting voice; in other words, in the context of the post-Apartheid dispensation, democratization and decolonization are not necessarily simultaneous processes. The dissertation does not present a puzzle for resolution, but instead suggests a method of reading the construction of the memory-nation. This method takes context and contingency not as variables in theory, but as theory itself. Thus, the unexceptional exceptionalism that is the nation-state in this global conjuncture can be analyzed and understood. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Levine, Matthew | Fadel, Mohammad | Canadian Law on Foreign Corruption and The Development Turn | Law | 2017-11 | The significance attributed to corruption, and especially foreign corruption, has been subject to a long series of shifts in political and legal thought. In addition to moralism and self-interest, a third motivation for legal control over foreign corruption has emerged in recent decades: the notion that bribery by businesses from wealthy states plays a material role in perpetuating poverty within developing states. The growth of this idea is the 'Development Turn'. This thesis critically examines, through a broadly interdisciplinary lens, both the Development Turn and associated law in Canada. | LL.M. | poverty | 1 |
| Levkoe, Charles | Wakefield, Sarah | Mobilizing Collaborative Networks for a Transformative Food Politics: A Case Study of Provincial Food Networks in Canada | Geography | 2014-06 | In this dissertation I focus on the diversity of alternative food initiatives (AFIs) that have emerged amidst concerns about the corporate-led industrial food system. While there have been significant successes, critics suggest that many AFIs are an inadequate response to the complex problems within the food system, and further, are complicit in propagating neoliberal ideals and facilitating the retrenchment of the state. While these critics identify important challenges, they tend to consider place-based AFIs as operating independently on particular projects, with specific claims, or in isolated sectors of the food system. There has been little documentation or analysis situating AFIs within a broader community of practice. To fill this gap, my research builds on the existing literature to investigate the increasing collaborations among AFIs in Canada. Using a community-based action approach, I explore the development of provincial food networks in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia. I pay particular attention to efforts that foster and maintain these networks by exploring their history, structure and processes of collaboration. My findings reveal that the provincial food networks can be characterized as assemblages constituted by the self-organization of diverse actors through non-hierarchical, bottom-up processes with multiple and overlapping points of contact. Further, I find that AFIs have used networks strategically to contest the rules and institutions of the dominant food system and to develop participatory and democratic practices that challenge the logics of neoliberalism. Based on the results from this research, I argue that besides developing viable place-based alternatives to the dominant food system, AFIs are also involved in prefigurative ways of being - establishing democratic governance structures, building new institutions, and engaging in different kinds of social relations - in the belly of the existing (food) system. | PhD | food, industr | 2, 9 |
| Lewallen, Eric | Lovejoy, Nathan | Evolution and Ecology of Flyingfishes (Teleostei:Exocoetidae) | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2012-06 | The flyingfishes (Teleostei: Exocoetidae) are a family of 53 epipelagic marine species distributed throughout tropical and subtropical surface waters. They form a key mid-trophic link between zooplankton and predators, and have evolved special adaptations to survive in the open ocean. However, little is known about their basic evolutionary history and ecology. Here, I apply a multidisciplinary approach to better understand the evolution and ecology of flyingfishes. I propose the first species-level phylogenetic hypothesis for the group, based on nuclear and mtDNA sequences, and show that the most speciose genus (Cheilopogon) is paraphyletic. Gliding evolved progressively from two- to four-wing strategies, and habitat preference is correlated with species range size. I also analyzed patterns of genetic diversity within the most abundant genus, Exocoetus, and found no evidence of cryptic species. Instead, I found that this genus likely consists of three genetically distinct species (in contrast to the five currently recognized) and two indistinct species that diverged very recently. Population genetic analysis of Exocoetus volitans (266 samples from 97 localities) indicates a single, circum-tropical population that is well connected; yet the Isthmus of Panama and an Equatorial barrier limit gene flow. Finally, I investigated species abundance, richness, diversity, and distributions within the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean (11,125 specimens). My results provide critical updates on species distributions and habitat preferences. Predictive modeling indicates that sea surface temperature is important for defining flyingfish habitat. This thesis addresses central issues concerning both evolution and ecology in the epipelagic zone, and highlights the need for better understanding remote marine regions and organisms. | PhD | water, marine | 14 |
| Lewis, Joshua | Siow, Aloysius ||Stabile, Mark ||Benjamin, Dwayne ||McMillan, Robert | The Impact of Technological Change within the Home | Economics | 2014-06 | During the first two thirds of the 20th century, electricity, running water, and a host of new consumer durables diffused into most American homes. These new household technologies revolutionized domestic life by freeing up time from basic housework. In this dissertation, I study the consequences of household technological change on families, focusing on fertility, child health, marriage, and female labour force participation. Chapter 1 provides a short history of household modernization. I then present an econometric framework for evaluating the effects of household technological change, and discuss the main estimation challenges. To address these issues, I introduce an estimation strategy based on a newly-assembled dataset that captures the rollout of the U.S. power grid during the mid-20th century. In chapter 2, I study the impact of household technological change on fertility and child health, exploiting substantial cross-county and cross-state variation in the timing of when households acquired new consumer durables. Modern household technologies led families to make a child quantity-quality tradeoff favouring quality: household modernization is associated with decreases in infant mortality and decreases in fertility. The declines in infant mortality were particularly large in states where households had relied heavily on coal for heating and cooking, where the potential to improve indoor air quality was greatest. Health improvements were also larger in states that had previously invested heavily in maternal education, suggesting that household modernization led parents to provide better infant care. Overall, household technological change can account for between 25% and 30% of the total decline in infant mortality between 1930 and 1960. In chapter 3, I examine the relationship between household modernization, investment in children, and female employment. I present a conceptual framework in which household technological change has little immediate impact on female employment, but generates increased investment in daughters' human capital, ultimately causing a rise in employment for subsequent cohorts of women. I find empirical support for these predictions. Further, the results suggest that the diffusion of modern technology into the home during the first half of the 20th century can account for a significant fraction of the rise in female employment after 1950. | PhD | health, women, water, employment | 3, 5, 6, 8 |
| Lewison, Elsie | Rankin, Katharine||Boland, Alana | Organic Frontiers: The Politics of Agricultural Market-making in Jumla, Nepal | Geography | 2019-11 | In 2008, Jumla District, located in northwest Nepal, declared itself “organic.” The declaration was made in the context of a rise in identity-based territorial claims and reinvigorated state territorialisation following the end of a decade-long civil conflict. The declaration was also broadly aligned with a diverse range of socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable market-making initiatives targeting Nepal’s agrarian frontiers. Such initiatives have aimed to capitalize on the “quality turn” in globalized agro-food markets and expert re-assessments of the socio-ecological value of bio-diverse and chemical-free agro-ecologies. These market development initiatives are framed as having the potential to conserve vulnerable frontier ecologies by rendering them economically valuable, while also extending market access into marginalized regions where farmers have been unable to compete with large-scale, industrial producers on the basis of price alone. This dissertation builds on critical development, agrarian and governmentality studies and contributes to a growing body of critical scholarship studying alternative agro-food initiatives outside of the Global North. Drawing on an analysis of state and donor archives, semi-structured interviews and ethnographic participant observation, I examine how changes in globalized food markets and expert understandings of frontier ecologies are transforming governmental projects of market-making. Using Jumla’s organic district declaration and donor-led value chain development projects as examples, I demonstrate how eco-governmental discourses and development strategies are assembled within specific territorial logics and political agendas, resulting in multiple—and at times contradictory—priorities and approaches. The research further examines how ostensibly technical projects intended to develop socially inclusive and ecologically sustainable markets deliberately blur public-private boundaries. I argue that the new sites of state-society-market encounter created by these projects can bring markets into view as targets of political practice, particularly as development agents and subjects negotiate the contradictions between and within different market-making initiatives. While the politicization of markets can contribute to processes of accumulation and dispossession, it can also present new opportunities for rights-based claims-making. | Ph.D. | food, industr, conserv, rights | 2, 9, 14, 16 |
| Ley, Lukas | Li, Tania M||Barker, Joshua | Building on Borrowed Time: The Temporal Horizons of Infrastructural Breakdown in the Delta of Semarang | Anthropology | 2017-11 | Based on 12 months of ethnographic fieldwork and one month of archival research, this doctoral thesis describes the predicament of residents of a coastal sub-district in the city Semarang, Indonesia. They must constantly adapt to the sinking foundations of their houses as well as dysfunctional drainage infrastructure. As neighbourhoods threaten to sink below sea level, daily incidents of tidal flooding demand timely adaptation and constant repair of houses and river banks. “Building on Borrowed Time” portrays the multiple ways of enduring this situation, exploring the divergent and often contradictory temporalities that congregate around water. It argues that residents endure a situation of chronic breakdown. It is through the logic of chronic breakdown that ecological transformations as well as political shifts are analyzed in this thesis. While it describes the temporal horizons of breakdown from the perspective of riverside residents, it also offers a historical account of the emergence of coastal settlements in late colonial times. Here, state interventions force indigenous coastal dwellers into a marginal position regarding the city’s spatial and political configuration. Today, in view of the region’s advanced disconnect from the ‘modern’ spaces of the city, the post-colonial state’s concern with sanitation, crime, and ecological degradation explains the emergence of a specific governance of local time. This governance reproduces a present in which ecological disaster in the lives of coastal dwellers is recursive and requires constant managing. Drawing on Cazdyn’s notion of the ‘chronic’ and Povinelli’s concept of ‘quasi-events,’ I show that state agencies, through neighbourhood-level organs of power and bottom-up development schemes, cultivate a ‘meantime’ that does not produce lasting relief, but further “colonizes” the future. An ethnography of the present reveals the temporal practices of this meantime, such as repair and maintenance of infrastructure. These practices effectively replace development (“pembangunan”) projected in plans with continuous but desultory stacking-up (“peninggian”) and fixing of infrastructure. While a spirit of ‘real’ development converges upon the area, driven by crisis scenarios of Dutch and Indonesian water experts, these plans are characteristic of a neoliberal remaking of lifeworlds that ultimately reinforces the chronic. | Ph.D. | sanitation, infrastructure, governance | 6, 9, 16 |
| Li, Jak | Lian, Keryn K | Investigation of Hydroxide Ion Conducting Polymer Electrolytes for Solid Supercapacitor Applications | Materials Science and Engineering | 2020-06 | Growing clean energy demands have been incentivizing the development of next-generation energy storage technologies such as solid supercapacitors that are safe, compact, low cost, and capable of high-throughput reel-to-reel processing. While many advanced solid supercapacitors are demonstrated using hydroxide (OH-) ion conducting polymer electrolytes, the fundamental understanding of the performance of the electrolyte and its role in solid-state devices requires substantial elucidation. In this thesis, alkaline polymer electrolytes (APEs) for solid supercapacitors were developed based on tetraethylammonium hydroxide (TEAOH) and polyacrylamide (PAM) that exhibit (i) high ionic conductivity, (ii) long-term environmental stability, and (iii) good accessibility with electrode materials. An in-depth understanding of OH- ion conduction in polymer matrix and the interactions between the ionic conductor, polymer matrix, and various organic and inorganic additives has been established. The synergistic pairing of PAM and TEAOH enhanced the OH- ion conduction and prolonged its storage-life. Investigations of the dielectric properties of the TEAOH-PAM APE revealed the influence of H2O:TEAOH crystal hydrates on the ionic conductivity of the polymer electrolyte. Evaluations at elevated temperatures showed that the OH- ion conduction in the polymer electrolyte involves an interplay of segmental motion and OH- ion hopping. Correlative spectroscopic and electrochemical studies are used to determine the effects of crosslinking and the addition of inorganic filler additives on TEAOH-PAM. It was discovered that the presence and size of SiO¬2 alters the crystallization dynamics. Solid supercapacitors using TEAOH-PAM were fabricated in 3D sandwiched and 2D interdigitated configurations. The APE shows excellent compatibility with multiwalled carbon nanotubes as well as ultra-high surface area activated carbon electrodes, resulting in capacitances of ca. 10 F g-1 and ca. 240 F g-1, respectively. TEAOH-PAM was also matched with vertically-oriented graphene nanosheet (VOGN) electrodes as a 2D interdigitated device to replace traditional electrolytic capacitors for high frequency filtering applications. The combination of the highly electronically conductive VOGN electrodes and the highly ionically conductive, thermally tolerant TEAOH-PAM APE enabled a solid supercapacitor with ultra-high rate capacitive performance up to 120 Hz and outstanding thermal resiliency up to 120 °C. | Ph.D. | energy, resilien, environment | 7, 13 |
| Li, Xiaoxu | Jones, Glen A. | The Role of the Board of Trustees in Public Universities in China | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-11 | Inherited from the American tradition of lay boards and first introduced into the public higher education system in the 1920s, the board of trustees in Chinese public universities has, over time, played a changing role, from being an autonomous top governing body, to being manipulated by government officials, to being completely removed from institutional governance structures. After China adopted reform policies in the late 1970s, boards of trustees were reintroduced in some public universities. However, higher education regulations and ideological influences have given the board an ambiguous and elusive role, little known to those both outside and inside the university sector. This thesis investigates the role, function and structure of boards of trustees in Chinese public universities. By examining the policies and operations of these boards, the study aimed to identify whether and how these boards facilitate interaction between universities and their external stakeholders in the overall national context of adaptive institutional change. Following a qualitative approach, the study gathered data from document analysis, a national survey of 40 board secretariats, and semi-structured interviews with secretariat staff of 37 institutions. The study found that boards of trustees can be found in 84 public institutions. Predominantly composed of members from industry and government, the boards mainly serve as a medium for fundraising and a conduit for university–industry collaboration in teaching and research. The relationship between an institution and its board members is ostensibly interest-oriented and can even involve economic and personal gain. The board is essentially an advisory body, albeit its role in giving advice is very limited. The many challenges associated with board operation and functioning suggest that adaptive governance, which is characteristic of the Chinese party-state, has had both positive and negative impacts on the board. This thesis advances our understanding of the Chinese board through interlocking political, social, and educational dimensions. | Ph.D. | governance | 16 |
| Li, Young Feng | Ozin, Geoffrey A | Hydrogen Bronzes of WO3 and MoO3 as Active (Photo)-catalyst Supports for CO2 Reduction | Chemistry | 2020-06 | The exponentially growing global energy demands currently satisfied by the consumption of the ever-depleting sources of fossil energy has emitted hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 into Earth’s atmosphere since the industrial revolution. This has generated concerns over the sustainability of the fossil energy dependence and the effects the CO2 emissions will have on the future climate. A solution to both problems exist in the form of harnessing renewable energy such as sunlight to close the carbon cycle, reclaiming the CO2 emitted for feedstock as a carbon source in fine chemical and fuels. This thesis focuses on the renewable conversion of CO2 into value added products utilizing tungsten (VI) oxide (WO3) and molybdenum (VI) oxide (MoO3) based photocatalysts. The interest in WO3 and MoO3 stems from their capability to form highly defected hydrogen bronze states (HyMO3-x, M = W, Mo) under hydrogen atmospheres which have strong optical absorbance across the entire solar spectrum, high stability, and high capacity for catalytically active defect sites (OHs and oxygen vacancies). Early attempts at utilizing WO3 and MoO3 to catalyze hydrogenation and deoxygenation reactions have observed sluggish formation of defects as H2 activation and oxygen vacancy formation may have limited reactivity. Here, we demonstrated that the decoration of Pd nanocrystals as H2 spillover catalysts can significantly accelerate the formation of HyMO3-x, resulting in highly photoactive oxide supports for CO2 reduction by H2. The high cost of Pd however, motivated our search for more cost-effective catalysts for H2 spillover, leading to developing a novel method of depositing Ni onto WO3. Ni was observed to improve CO2 conversion compared to WO3, but relative to Pd, H2 activation was slower, likely due to slower H2 dissociation and hydrogen mobility. Finally, to further improve the kinetics of Pd@HyWO3-x, we functionalized the surface by hydrolyzing CuOtBu and Ba(OEt)2 over the activated HyWO3-x’s surface hydroxides. The addition of Cu and Ba atoms onto the surface was observed to greatly enhance the activity of the system, attributed to the improved surface chemistry revealed by in-situ diffuse reflectance infrared Fourier transform spectroscopy. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, solar, industr, climate | 7, 9, 13 |
| Li, Zhe | Shi, Shouyong | Essays on Environmental Policy, Heterogeneous Firms, Employment Dynamics and Inflation | Economics | 2009-11 | This thesis covers three issues: the aggregate and welfare effects of environmental policies when plants are heterogeneous; what causes the different patterns of employment dynamics in small versus large firms over business cycles; and the welfare costs of expected and unexpected inflation. In the first chapter, we show that accounting for plant heterogeneity is important for the evaluation of environmental policies. We develop a general equilibrium model in which monopolistic competitive plants differ in productivity, produce differentiated goods and choose optimally a discrete emission-reduction technology. Emission-reduction policies affect both the fraction of plants adopting the advanced emission-reduction technology and the market shares of those with high levels of productivity. Calibrated to the Canadian data, the model shows that the aggregate costs of an emission tax to implement the Kyoto Protocol are 40 percent larger than the costs that would result with homogenous plants. In the second chapter, we incorporate labor search frictions into a model with lumpy investment to explain a set of firm-size-related facts about the United States labor market dynamics over business cycles. Contrary to the predictions of standard models, we observe that job destruction is procyclical in small firms but countercyclical in large ones. Calibrated to U.S. data, the model generates this asymmetric pattern of employment dynamics in small versus large firms. This is because a favorable aggregate productivity shock tightens the labor market. A tighter labor market hurts investing small firms. As a result, workers move from small to large firms during booms. In the third chapter, we analyze the welfare costs of inflation when money is essential to facilitate trades among anonymous agents and information about nominal shocks is incomplete as in Lucas (1972). In the model, the transactions in which money is essential coincide with those in which agents are affected by monetary shocks. Consequently, the average value of money and its variation in value in different markets affect agents simultaneously when the supply of money changes. Calibrated to U.S. data, we find that the welfare costs of expected inflation are almost three orders higher than the welfare costs of unexpected inflation. | PhD | employment, environment | 8, 13 |
| Li, Zihao | Cameron, Linda ||Lee, Bartel ||Warner, Mary Jane ||Brown, Ann Kipling ||Booth, David | Adolescent Male Dancers' Embodied Realities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2010-06 | This dissertation looks at adolescent male dance students who challenge the dominant perceptions of masculinity by participating in dance, an art form which has been subjected to feminine and homosexual stereotypes. With a multi-methodological approach—qualitative, arts-informed, autobiography, interviews, videotape, and performance—this research investigates and explores the largely unknown realities regarding adolescent male dance students; why they decide to take dance; what makes them continue or stop dancing; how their perceptions of dance are transformed over time; how they feel when they are dancing; the realities they embody in studio and on stage; their message to the public about who they were, who they are, and what they want to be in and through dance. The researcher challenges the socially constructed epistemology that dance is merely an entertainment while exploring the relationship between mind and body; gender, race, and identity; literature and literacy; physical education and dance; the professional and the novice; the hows and the whys; female and male dance educators; dance pedagogy (theory) and curriculum delivering (practice); and the association of homosexuality and heterosexuality in the context of dance and its effect on adolescent male students’ willingness to dance. This study shows that families, friends, teachers, school administrators, dance class environment, media (So You Think You Can Dance), and technology (internet) have all created various levels of impact on adolescent males’ decision to participate in dance at a high school. Data and implication from this research can serve as a catalyst for future studies on adolescent male dance students. Findings can also be applied to dance programs at all levels, curriculum development, and teacher education. This electronic dissertation encompasses graphs, photos, audio and video clips, webpage links, and even a full-length documentary movie to enhance the research finding and maximize the power of a multimodal design (Jewitt & Kress, 2003). | PhD | gender, equality | 5 |
| Lichtenstein, Tatjana | Penslar, Derek | Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918-1938 | History | 2009-06 | Dissertation Abstract “Making Jews at Home: Jewish Nationalism in the Bohemian Lands, 1918-1938.” Tatjana Lichtenstein Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Department of History, University of Toronto This dissertation examines the efforts of Jewish nationalists to end Jews’ social marginalization from non-Jewish society in the Bohemian Lands between the world wars. Through the 1920s and 1930s, the Jewish nationalist movement sought to transform Czechoslovakia’s multivalent Jewish societies into a unified ethno-national community. By creating a Jewish nation, a process challenged by the significant socio-cultural differences dividing the country’s Jews, Jewish nationalists believed that they could restore Jews’ respectability and recast the relationship between Jews and non-Jews as one of mutual respect and harmonious coexistence. The dissertation explores Jewish nationalists’ struggle to make Jews at home in Czechoslovakia by investigating a series of Zionist projects and institutions: the creation of an alliance between Jews and the state; the census and the making of Jewish statistics; the transformation of the formal Jewish communities from religious institutions to national ones; Jewish schools; and the Jewish nationalist sports movement. Exploring a Jewry on the crossroads between east and west, the dissertation delves into broader questions of the impact of nationalism on the modern Jewish experience. Within the paradoxical context of a multinational nation-state like Czechoslovakia, Zionists adopted a strategy which sought integration through national distinctiveness, a response embodying elements of both west and east European Jewish culture. The study thus complicates the history of Zionism by showing that alongside the Palestine-oriented German and Polish factions, there were significant ideological alternatives within which ideas of Jewish Diaspora nationalism co-existed with mainstream Zionism. Moreover, the study points to the continuities in the relationship between Jews and the state. As in the time of empire, Jews cultivated partnerships with the political elite, a strategy developed to balance the interest of the state and its Jewish minority. In the interwar years, Jewish activists thus looked to the state for assistance in transforming Jewish society. This dissertation seeks to broaden our understanding of Jewish responses to nationalism, the relationship between Jews and the modern state, and more broadly, about the complex ways in which marginalized groups seek to attain respectability and assert their demands for equality within modern societies. | PhD | equality, institution | 5, 16 |
| Lilly, Meredith Lenore | Coyte, Peter C. | The Labour Supply of Unpaid Caregivers in Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2008-06 | The Labour Supply of Unpaid Caregivers in Canada, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Meredith Lenore Lilly, Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation, University of Toronto, 2008. As medical care increasingly shifts from the hospital to the home, responsibility for care has also shifted from the state and paid care, to the family and unpaid care. Unpaid caregivers are family members and friends who provide homecare services to recipients in their place of residence without financial compensation, as a result of their close personal relationships. This research tests the multiple hypotheses that unpaid caregiving has an impact on (1) the probability of labour force participation (LFP); (2) hours of labour force work; and (3) earnings by caregivers in Canada. We analyzed the 1996 and 2002 General Social Surveys, applying multivariate probit, logistic, and OLS regression analyses to four equations: 1) the probability of labour force participation; 2) the hourly wage; 3) weekly hours of labour market work; and 4) the probability of being an unpaid caregiver. Results indicate that unpaid caregiving was negatively associated with labour force participation; however, the impact on hours of labour market work and wages was uncertain. Women and men caregivers were impacted differently: only caregiving men in 1996 had significantly lower wages than non-caregivers, and only women in 1996 worked significantly fewer hours in the labour market. When caregiving was defined broadly, only men in 1996 were significantly less likely to be employed than non-caregivers. Yet when we controlled for caregiving intensity in 2002, both male and female primary caregivers were much less likely to be in the labour force than non-caregivers, while secondary caregivers were no less likely to be employed than non-caregivers. We conclude that when caregiving responsibilities are relatively small, individuals seem able to balance both caregiving with employment. Yet when caregiving commitments become heavy, it becomes increasingly difficult to balance employment with caregiving. We make a number of policy recommendations ranging from improving caregiver access to financial supports, formal care and respite services, particularly for primary caregivers. We also encourage the development of workplace legislation and caregiver friendly workplaces for the majority of caregivers who remain in the labour market. | PhD | health, employment, wage, labour | 3, 8 |
| Lin, Janie | Muzzin, Linda | Understanding How Minoritized Female Legal Professionals Negotiate Extra-corporate Commitments and Legal Practice | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-06 | ABSTRACT This thesis examines the experiences of minoritized female legal professionals working in law and aims to explore how minoritization is reproduced in the legal profession. How lawyers, law clerks and legal assistants navigate legal practice as well as practices in social justice throughout their careers is revealed through professional and personal narrative. The study documents their struggle to “fit” in the profession filling in the everyday/everynight reality of working in law, and reveals there is negotiation at every stage of their careers. Methodologically, I have chosen an anti-racist theoretical analysis as well as Clarke and Smith's theories. Using institutional ethnography, I start with the broad question of what is the lived experience of minoritized women working in corporate law? I employed a mixed method design using interviews to examine the experiences of 12 minoritized female legal professionals, including myself, at various stages in their legal careers. I also analyze certain “texts” used and relied upon by the legal community to understand how they are informed by the ruling relations and how they in turn, inform governance and social relations. The study reveals there is systemic discrimination and disadvantage in the profession and the story of disadvantage for minoritized female legal professionals working in law is one of cumulative inequity and trauma. | Ph.D. | women, equitable | 4, 5 |
| Lin, Nimrod | Penslar, Derek | People Who Count: Zionism, Demography and Democracy in Mandate Palestine | History | 2018-11 | This dissertation examines the ways in which demographic knowledge shaped Zionist attitudes towards majority rule and minority rights in Mandate Palestine (1917-1948). In 1917, Jews comprised 10% of Palestine’s population; by 1947, their share of the population rose to 30%, almost entirely due to immigration from Europe. The Zionist Organization was aware of this trend and articulated its political demands in accordance with not only the current number of Jews living in Palestine, but also statistical projections of the number of Jews who would enter the country in the future. I argue that from a demographic-political point of view, the Mandate years should be divided into two periods. Between 1917 and 1937, the Zionist leadership successfully prevented the establishment of majoritarian self-governing institutions, and espoused the principle of mutual non-domination, which dictated that Jews would not rule over Arabs and vice versa. In practice, the Zionists advocated the creation of two separate autonomous national communities under British federal rule, or complete parity between Jews and Arabs in Palestine’s self-governing institutions. Although the British and the Arabs rejected both proposals, the Zionist leadership was able to prevent the creation of a joint political structure in which the Arabs would enjoy a clear majority. The second period began when the Zionist Organization tentatively accepted the 1937 British proposal to establish a Jewish state in part of Palestine, a decision that radically changed Zionist political discourse. Given the demographic makeup of Palestine, according to the partition proposal almost half of the future Jewish state’s inhabitants would have been Arab. This meant that the Zionist leadership had to jettison the principle of mutual non-domination and think seriously about the rights of the Arab minority in the Jewish state to be. The issue of mass transfer of Arabs out of the Jewish state now became an inextricable part of Zionist political discourse, since it was seen by most Zionist leaders as a measure that would consolidate the Jewish character of the state. This discourse, which revolves around the management of the Arab minority’s size and rights, has persisted in Israeli politics to this day. | Ph.D. | institution, rights | 16 |
| Lin, Zhongjie | Liu, Hugh H.T. | Multiple UAV Cooperation For Wildfire Monitoring | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2017-11 | Wildfires have been a major factor in the development and management of the world's forest. An accurate assessment of wildfire status is imperative for fire management. This thesis is dedicated to the topic of utilizing multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to cooperatively monitor a large-scale wildfire. This is achieved through wildfire spreading situation estimation based on on-line measurements and wise cooperation strategy to ensure efficiency. First, based on the understanding of the physical characteristics of the wildfire propagation behavior, a wildfire model and a Kalman filter-based method are proposed to estimate the wildfire rate of spread and the fire front contour profile. With the enormous on-line measurements from on-board sensors of UAVs, the proposed method allows a wildfire monitoring mission to benefit from on-line information updating, increased flexibility, and accurate estimation. An independent wildfire simulator is utilized to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. Second, based on the filter analysis, wildfire spreading situation and vehicle dynamics, the influence of different cooperation strategies of UAVs to the overall mission performance is studied. The multi-UAV cooperation problem is formulated in a distributed network. A consensus-based method is proposed to help address the problem. The optimal cooperation strategy of UAVs is obtained through mathematical analysis. The derived optimal cooperation strategy is then verified in an independent fire simulation environment to verify its effectiveness. | Ph.D. | environment, forest | 13, 15 |
| Lindeman, Katherine Marie | Goering, Joseph||Meyerson, Mark | "Go Manfully": Masculine Self-Fashioning in Late Medieval Dominican Sources | Medieval Studies | 2015-06 | In a world where men often demonstrated their masculine identity through violent action and sexual expression, how did the Dominican friar, forbidden to physically fight and committed to chastity, reconcile his sense of being a man with his vocational prerogatives? Often raised outside the convent and inculcated in lay understandings of maleness, the friar then entered a world of preachers, whose vocation required both commitment to conventual life, which emphasized separation from the world, and extensive involvement with lay society through pastoral work. This dissertation looks at how these two seemingly disparate behavioral codes--lay definitions of masculine behavior and religious ideals--found expression in the corporate identity of the Dominican Order from 1220-1350. In the process of defining the Order's vocational goals, behavioral ideals, and overall function in late medieval society, the early Dominican writers simultaneously created behavioral ideals for men that reflected those defining laymen as men. By comparing the values, behavioral norms, and ideology presented in the Order's important nascent texts with the secular ideals of masculinity described in anthropological studies, gender theory, late medieval literature, rhetorical sources, medical theory, legal records, letters, art, and religious traditions, this study explores the porous boundary between societal expectations for laymen and vocational models for Dominican friars during the Order's formative period. Viewed through the gendered habitus of late medieval society, the Dominican Constitutions, hagiographic texts, liturgical settings, preaching manuals, and encyclical letters collectively showed friars how to simultaneously function as a Dominicans and as men, while providing a valuable window into the relationship between religion and masculinity in the late medieval period. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Linden, Amy | Oreopoulos, Philip | The Motherhood Penalty and Maternity Leave Duration: Evidence from a Field Experiment | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2015-11 | There is evidence that women continue to struggle in the labour market across a number of employment outcomes. This is despite the adoption of policies and practices that are designed to support women in achieving equality in the workplace. There is also evidence that women with children face particular challenges in the labour market. This is commonly referred to as the motherhood penalty. The literature offers evidence of the motherhood penalty in the recruitment process but the role of maternity leave has not been examined directly. The purpose of this study is to explore the motherhood penalty in employment-to-employment and nonemployment-to-employment transitions. A field experiment is conducted to examine the effect of maternity leave duration on firm behaviour in the hiring decision. The results indicate that the probability of receiving a callback from potential employers decreases initially with a maternity leave absence but it does not continue to decrease with longer maternity leave absences. There is recent experimental research on duration dependence that does not find similar results for unemployment spells. The evidence from this study then suggests that policies to increase the employment of and the labour force participation of women should be targeted specifically to women, in particular women with young children. | Ph.D. | women, equality, employment | 5, 8 |
| Linklater, Renee Broadbridge Legge | Edmund, O'Sullivan | Decolonising Trauma Work: Indigenous Practitioners Share Stories and Strategies | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-11 | This dissertation explores the areas of healing and wellness within Indigenous communities on Turtle Island. By drawing on a decolonising approach to Indigenous health research, this study engaged 10 Indigenous healthcare practitioners in a dialogue regarding Indigenous worldviews; notions of wellness and wholistic health; critiques of psychiatry and psychiatric diagnoses; and the cultural strategies that Indigenous healthcare practitioners utilise while helping their clients through trauma, depression, and experiences of “parallel and multiple realities.” Importantly, this study addresses a gap in literature and puts forth a necessary contribution in regards to Indigenous peoples and psychiatry. Indigenous healthcare practitioners reveal their thoughts and strategies in relation to psychiatric diagnoses, cultural treatment, and psychotropic medication. The stories and strategies gathered during the interview dialogues created a broader discussion that is situated among the existing literature. This research found that Indigenous knowledge and experience was deeply embedded in the practises of Indigenous healthcare practitioners. The strategies presented by these practitioners offer purposeful and practical methods that originate from Indigenous worldviews, yet can be utilised by any practitioner that is seeking therapeutic strategies to help traumatised individuals and communities. Moreover, this research will be a particularly relevant resource for health policy initiatives, agency programming, and education and training institutes. Bringing forth Indigenous strategies for helping and healing is a vitally important contribution to the field of trauma work. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Liu, Jian | Hayhoe, Ruth | Expansion and Equality in Access to Chinese Higher Education: A Cultural Perspective | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | This study is a sequential multi-methods research effort which examines the issue of equality in Chinese higher education after the recent expansion, and explores how educational equality has been shaped by policies which reflected the shifting value orientations of the government since 1949. Quantitative methods were used to discover the current patterns of educational equality. The dataset is derived from a survey carried out under a project supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Logistic regressions were conducted to discover the relations between students’ social background characteristics and their likelihood of studying in different part of the differentiated higher education system. The findings show that while overall access has increased greatly, advantaged groups have maintained their advantage in gaining entry to higher status universities and attractive disciplines. The study went deeper to explore the changing patterns of educational equality through historical analysis of policy using the lens of culture, since social phenomena are context-based and culture is a deep yet decisive force which has previously been given inadequate attention in relation to this issue. Applying a multidisciplinary approach, an indigenous analytical framework was developed which identified six dimensions of culture relating to educational equality, and Chinese cultural values were then organized along these dimensions. This framework was used to explain the results of the quantitative analysis at a deeper level. It was also used to construct ideal types of elitism and populism as a means of analyzing the historical process of policy change. The study found that policies regarding educational equality swung between these two poles in post 1949 China, due to an internal tension in the Chinese cultural value system which was in turn stimulated or provoked by diverse external influences. Four major modes were identified: politically restrained elitism, politically restrained populism, inclusive elitism, and a tendency toward harmony. This approach represents an original attempt to develop an indigenous framework to interpret educational equality through a cultural lens. The dissertation also seeks to contribute to knowledge and theory development in the comparative research on educational equality more widely, and to provide insights that may inform policy making. | PhD | inclusive, equality | 4, 5 |
| Liu, Jingxian Jane | Jones, Dylan | Tropospheric Ozone over the Middle East and Its Interannual Variability: An Integrated Analysis with Satellite Observations and a Global Chemical Transport Model | Physics | 2010-11 | Tropospheric ozone is a major atmospheric pollutant and a greenhouse gas. Nevertheless, many processes influencing its spatio-temporal distribution are still poorly understood, mainly due to the lack of adequate observations. One such region is the Middle East, where ozone measurements are scant. In this study, the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model is used to interpret newly available tropospheric ozone data from the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) satellite instrument. TES reveals elevated ozone in the mid-troposphere (500-300 hPa) over the Middle East in summer 2005. This study demonstrates that the Arabian anticyclone in the mid-troposphere over the Middle East plays a critical role in facilitating the buildup of ozone. Additionally, the South Asian High in the upper troposphere helps transport ozone from the Asian monsoon region. Transport from Asia and local production are predominantly responsible for the ozone buildup, each contributing 30-35% to the ozone abundance in the region. Ozone transported from the boundary layer accounts for about 25% of local production. TES retrievals of water vapour and deuterated water are used for the first time to provide an independent assessment of the ozone transport pathways. Using a GEOS-Chem simulation from 1987 to 2006, it is found that this ozone buildup fluctuates interannually by about ±7% (or ±6 ppbv). The major contributors, ozone transported from Asia and ozone produced locally, vary by ±30% (±7 ppbv) and ±15% (±3 ppbv), respectively. The variations of Asian and local sources are related to the strengths of the South Asian High and the Arabian anticyclone, respectively. It is found that in years when the Asian influence is weaker in the region, transport from other areas, such as North America, is enhanced. This tradeoff between transport from Asia and other regions is found to be linked to the position and strength of the subtropical westerly jet over central Asia. These results suggest that climate-related changes in the general circulation of the atmosphere will have implications for the transport of pollution into the Middle East. Such changes in pollution in the region could have feedbacks on the climate through changes in the radiative forcing associated with tropospheric ozone. | PhD | water, production, climate, greenhouse gas, pollut | 6, 12, 13 |
| Liu, Mengxia | Sargent, Edward H | Colloidal Quantum Dots for Solar Energy Conversion | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2018-11 | Increasing global energy demand requires the development of clean energy sources that will help reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. Solar energy, the most abundant renewable source, is converted to electricity using photovoltaic devices. The photovoltaics market has witnessed rapid growth in the past decade, and today many photovoltaic strategies aim at low-cost, solution-processed manufacture. Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs), an emerging semiconductor material, have attracted attention in view of their spectral tunability. The bandgap of CQDs is readily tuned to harvest infrared solar energy. This could enable both full-spectrum devices and also tandem solar cells that can be integrated with wider-bandgap semiconductors. Unfortunately, a high density of surface-associated trap states, low carrier mobilities, and an inhomogeneous energy landscape have previously limited CQD photovoltaic performance. I introduce three strategies to address these problems. Through new materials processing approaches, I succeeded in increasing charge extraction, reducing bandtail states, and lowering the barrier to carrier hopping in CQD solids. The benefits from enhanced charge extraction were demonstrated in a double-sided junction architecture enabled by the engineering of an electron-accepting layer. This architecture resulted in an increase in the width of the carrier depletion region and a resultant decrease in recombination. I elucidated the effect of bandtail states on carrier transport and designed a solution-phase ligand-exchange method to create CQD inks that can be deposited as an active layer in a single step. The resulting CQD films exhibited a flattened energy landscape that increased the carrier diffusion length and contributed to solar cells having certified solar power conversion efficiencies of 11.3%. I then explored the translation of this strategy to small-bandgap infrared CQDs. Through management of surface ligands, I improved CQD passivation while reducing CQD fusion. I conclude with a new strategy for the design of a hybrid material system that combined CQDs with epitaxially-grown inorganic metal halide perovskites. The matrix-passivated CQD films showcased a two-fold increase in carrier mobility and superior thermal stability compared to pristine CQDs. This work provides promising pathways to achieve more fully the potential of CQD solids, and to showcase these advances in improved performance for CQD solar cells. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, solar, consum | 7, 12 |
| Liu, Ning | Ray, Joel G | Induced Abortion in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-11 | Induced abortion is one of the most commonly performed procedures among women of reproductive age. Most induced abortions occur in women experiencing unintended pregnancies, largely for non-medical reasons. To maximize a woman’s health and wellbeing, it is important to not only identify factors that heighten her need for induced abortion, but any negative consequences that may follow, including those directly related to the induced abortion procedure and the provider performing it. To address these points, three population-based studies were completed using data within Ontario’s publicly funded health care system, where induced abortion is legal and funded by the province’s health insurance plan. Project 1 investigated the intergenerational pattern of induced abortion between a mother and her teenage daughter. Project 2 examined the relation between induced abortion and the risk of venous thromboembolism soon after the procedure. Project 3 evaluated the surgical procedure volume of physicians who perform induced abortion and the associated risk of adverse outcomes following surgical induced abortion. Project 1 found that a teenage daughter is nearly twice as likely to have an induced abortion if her mother has had one. The greater the number of induced abortions a mother has had, the more likely her daughter is to have one as a teenager. Project 2 showed that up to 42 days after an induced abortion, a woman’s risk of having a diagnosed venous thromboembolism event is nearly double the risk of a woman without a recent pregnancy, although the risk is significantly lower than that after a livebirth. Project 3 observed that women whose surgical induced abortion is performed by a physician with a low procedure volume have an increased risk of experiencing an adverse event within 42 days after the procedure; however, adverse event rates vary widely between physicians, and are only partly explained by physician procedural volumes. This body of research may guide clinical, research and health policy efforts aimed to both reduce unintended pregnancy among young women, and improve the quality of care provided to women who receive abortion care. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Liu, Sam | Nolan, Robert P | Hypertension Treatment Using an Internet-based Lifestyle Intervention | Medical Science | 2015-11 | Lifestyle change is important to blood pressure (BP) management. A health care challenge is to extend the reach of these lifestyle programs without over taxing health care resources. The rapid growth of Internet use presents an opportunity to tackle this challenge. However, meta-analytic data examining the efficacy of Internet-based lifestyle interventions to reduce BP in patients with hypertension is lacking. The optimal design strategies of effective Internet-based interventions also remain unclear; specifically, the effectiveness of clinical methods used (User- vs. Expert-driven protocols). Furthermore, self-monitoring of physical activity (PA) can help participants improve adherence to PA and reduce BP. Thus, it is important to find a user-friendly, low-cost and valid tool to measure PA that can be used in an Internet-based intervention. To address these questions, the first study examined the efficacy of Internet-based interventions in reducing BP in a meta-analysis and identified key components of an Internet-based intervention that are associated with BP control. The second study validated the XL-18 pedometer, which was a critical instrument in measuring daily steps used in the third study. The third study examined the influence of User- vs. expert-driven approaches used in an Internet-intervention aimed at promoting BP control and adherence to lifestyle changes. The first study showed that self-guided Internet-based lifestyle programs can be effective in reducing BP; specifically, interventions may be more efficacious when they were 6 months or longer, delivered proactively, and provided at least five behavioural techniques. The second study found that the XL-18 pedometer is a suitable tool to measure steps under controlled and free-living conditions. The third study demonstrated that it may be advisable to integrate an expert-driven e-counselling procedure into future Internet-based interventions in order to accommodate participants with greater levels of motivation for behaviour change. Overall, these findings have significant implications in designing the next generation of Internet-based lifestyle interventions. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Livingstone, Stuart William | Cadotte, Marc W||Isaac, Marney E | Consequences of Plant Invasion in a Peri-urban Ecosystem: A Case Study of the Invasive Vine Vincetoxicum rossicum | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2018-06 | The impacts of non-indigenous invasive plant species on peri-urban ecosystems are known to be highly variable and are the subject of much debate within the discipline of invasion ecology. Yet, there is a desperate need to quantify those impacts, investigate the potential for control and engage with the stakeholders that are affected by invasion. Using the invasive species Vincetoxicum rossicum in and around Canada’s Rouge National Urban Park, I 1) quantify its impact on biodiversity and ecosystem functionality, 2) examine the effectiveness of a bio-control agent (Hypena opulenta) in reducing the reproductive ability of V. rossicum in different light environments, 3) examine the ecological significance of rare and functionally unique species, and whether or not those species are disproportionately affected by V. rossicum invasion, and 4) examine stakeholder valuation of ecosystem services that are threatened by the spread of V. rossicum. I show that V. rossicum invasion is associated with significant declines in plant biodiversity and the impairment of several ecosystem functions including aboveground biomass production, floral resources and the diversity and abundance of local pollinators. I then show that, contrary to previous laboratory work, defoliation of V. rossicum by H. opulenta in shade conditions results in significantly greater seed production via a compensatory growth response. Then, through a combination of modelling simulations and empirical data collection I show that there are no general trends regarding the ecological significance of rare and/or functionally unique species, but that some rare plant species are ecologically important in the face of invasion. Then, by employing stakeholder analysis, I show that park-user knowledge of V. rossicum, operationalized as “ecological engagement”, results in significantly greater valuation of ecosystem services, but also that there is substantial neutrality and disagreement about the ecological impact of V. rossicum among stakeholders. As V. rossicum invasion is undoubtedly having negative impacts on ecosystem functions and services, this work points to the need for continued research on the potential for control options. Furthermore, given that the spread of V. rossicum is prolific in urban environments, conservation practitioners would do well to develop more effective communication strategies that can engage local stakeholders. | Ph.D. | urban, environment, ecology, conserv | 11, 13, 14 |
| Loder, Angela | Relph, Ted ||Wakefield, Sarah | Greening the City: Exploring Health, Well-being, Green Roofs, and the Perception of Nature in the Workplace | Geography | 2012-03 | This five-paper thesis explores office workers perceptions of green roofs and how this influences their health/well-being in Toronto and Chicago. Paper 1 examines the underlying paradigms and world-views of major research programs that look at the human relationship to nature and health/well-being, showing that despite some convergence between their methods and integration of different paradigms, continued differences and lack of clarity on the normative assumptions underlying each approach leads to confusion in the specification of ‘nature’ in health/well-being and place research. Paper 2 is a comparative analysis of the implementation of green roof policies in Toronto and Chicago. Paper 2 demonstrates the importance of ‘selling’ green roofs by linking them to larger environmental programs and of the municipal power structure that influences how and if environmental programs are implemented. Paper 3 examines the awareness, attitudes, and feelings towards green roofs by office workers with access to them (visual or physical) from their workplace in Toronto and Chicago. Using a phenomenological analysis of semi-structured interviews (n=55), Paper 3 shows that the hinterland, expectations of different kinds of ‘nature’ and aesthetics in the city, and access all influence perceptions of green roofs and sense of place. Paper 4 explores office workers awareness of and attitudes towards green roofs and the possible influence on their well-being in Toronto and Chicago from a large survey (n = 903). Participants showed a high literacy on the environmental benefits of green roofs. Chi-square analysis showed mixed results for health, but a significant association between visual access to a green roof and improved concentration. Paper 5 tests whether the relationship found in Paper 4, improved concentration with visual access, was still significant when other confounding variables were added to the model. Using a logistic regression on the same survey population (subset n =505), results found that concentration was no longer significant but that there was a trend towards improved concentration. | PhD | environment, well being | 3, 13 |
| Lofters, Aisha Kamilah O. | Glazier, Richard H. | Cervical Cancer Screening Among Ontario's Urban Immigrants | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2012-11 | Aisha Kamilah O. Lofters Cervical Cancer Screening Among Ontario’s Urban Immigrants Doctor of Philosophy, 2012 Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation University of Toronto Background: The majority of cervical cancers can be prevented because of the highly effective screening tool, the Papanicolaou (Pap) test. Relevant guidelines recommend routine screening for nearly all adult women. However, inequities in screening exist in Ontario. This dissertation, consisting of three studies, uses administrative data to advance knowledge on barriers to cervical cancer screening for Ontario’s urban immigrant population. Methods: First, we developed and validated a billing code-based algorithm for cervical cancer screening. We then implemented this algorithm to examine screening rates in Ontario among women with various sociodemographic characteristics for 2003-2005. Second, we compared the prevalence of appropriate cervical cancer screening in Ontario in 2006-2008 among immigrant women from all major geographic regions of the world and Canadian-born women. Third, we used a stratified multivariate analysis to determine if the independent effects of various factors that could serve as screening barriers were modified by region of origin for immigrant women for 2006-2008. Results: Our first study showed that our algorithm was 99.5% sensitive and 85.7% specific, and that screening inequities in Ontario’s urban areas are largest among women 50 years and older, living in the lowest-income neighbourhoods and new to the province. In our second study, we determined that immigrant women had significantly lower screening rates than their peers, with the most pronounced differences seen for South Asian women aged 50 years and above. In the final study, we demonstrated that living in the lowest-income neighbourhoods, being younger than 35 years or older than 49 years, not being enrolled in a primary care enrolment model, having a male provider, and having a provider from the same region of the world each significantly influenced screening for immigrant women regardless of region of origin. Conclusion: These results add to the literature on health equity in cancer screening. Our findings demonstrate that Ontario’s urban immigrant women experience significant inequities in cervical cancer screening, and may offer guidance toward targeted patient and physician interventions to decrease screening gaps. | PhD | health, equitable, women | 3, 5 |
| Logan, Camille D. | Dei, George S | A Critique of School Board Selection Practices and the Under-representation of Racialized Educators in the Principalship | Social Justice Education | 2018-11 | Abstract School leaders are “ultimately responsible for how well students are doing and the extent to which achievement is improving” (Ontario. Ministry of Education, 2012b, p. 2). With changing demographics leading to an increased population of racialized stakeholders, schools must be responsive to the diverse needs of students and ensure equity of outcomes. This qualitative study identified factors contributing to continued under-representation of racialized educators in formal school leadership roles. Interview data collected from senior level personnel of three Greater Toronto Area (GTA) school boards was used to consider the question: How might current school board selection, identification, and subsequent hiring practices contribute to the under-representation of racialized school principals? This research utilizes anti-racism and critical race theories and Whiteness studies as conceptual frames for analysis. The twelve participants who were identified by their respective school board and/or colleagues, articulated their understanding of their district’s recruitment, identification and selection process for school leadership. Participants also shared their perceptions regarding the outcomes and/or patterns of under-represented racialized educators promoted into the principalship for their board. An analysis of the responses and an in-depth review of the literature uncovered prevailing dominant conceptualizations of leadership, derived from mainstream educational leadership scholarship. Problematically, the unique knowledges, perspectives, and lived experiences of racialized educators are siloed in the educational leadership scholarship and excluded from the mainstream literature used to identify and select school leaders. These findings have significant implications for who and how school leaders are selected, given that leaders who demonstrate Equity-based leadership models have particular competencies and skills that include identifying and removing barriers for marginalized students. Understanding the relationship between hiring and the under-representation of racialized educators in the cadre of school leaders is imperative, given Ministry mandates to close achievement gaps. This research contributes to greater understanding of the ways social identities can be determinants of advancement within systems of education that reflect an absence of marginalized identities within the ranks of school leadership. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Logie, Carmen | Newman, Peter A. | Exploring the Experiences of Sexual Stigma, Gender Non-Conformity Stigma and HIV-related Stigma and their Associations with Depression and Life Satisfaction Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in South India | Social Work | 2010-11 | Marginalization and stigmatization heighten the vulnerability of sexual minorities to inequitable health outcomes. Although men who have sex with men (MSM) are at elevated risk for HIV infection in India in comparison with the general population, there is a lack of MSM-focused research—particularly regarding stigma and mental health outcomes. This dissertation aimed to explore the influence of sexual stigma, gender non-conformity stigma and HIV-related stigma on depression and life satisfaction among MSM in South India. This study used a cross-sectional survey design and was conducted with MSM (n=200) in two locations in Tamil Nadu, South India: Chennai (urban) and Kumbakonam (semi-urban). Due to multicollinearity between sexual stigma and gender non-conformity stigma, the stronger predictor of each outcome (gender non-conformity stigma) was included in regression models. Results were analyzed to identify the associations between independent (gender non-conformity stigma, HIV-related stigma), moderator (social support, resilient coping) and dependent (depression, life satisfaction) variables. Due to significant differences between locations across a substantial number of variables, block regression analyses were conducted separately for each location. Higher levels of depression were predicted by gender non-conformity stigma in both locations, and also by HIV-related stigma in Kumbakonam. Lower levels of depression in both locations were predicted by higher levels of social support and resilient coping. Higher life satisfaction was predicted by social support and resilient coping in both Chennai and Kumbakonam. Lower life satisfaction was predicted by gender non-conformity stigma and HIV-related stigma in Kumbakonam, but not in Chennai. Social support and resilient coping did not moderate the impact of stigma(s) on depression or life satisfaction in either location. The results indicate that the majority of participants experienced stigmatization based on same-sex sexual behaviour and/or gender non-conformity. Another striking finding of the study was the alarmingly high rates of depression, whereby over half of participants in each region reported moderate to severe depression scores. Practice and policy implications include the development, implementation and evaluation of: multi-level stigma reduction interventions that account for socio-environmental and contextual factors; mental health interventions that promote resiliency and build social support; and policy initiatives to advance human rights protection. | PhD | health, equitable, gender, equality | 3, 4, 2005 |
| Lombardo, Nicholas Sebastian | Lewis, Robert | Enframing Infrastructural Place: Manhattan's Waterfront, 1686-1921 | Geography | 2019-11 | In 1870, Manhattan’s waterfront was a mixed-use site of abattoirs, storage-yards and factories. These buildings lined the rotting wooden boards of dilapidated too-small piers built on privately-owned land. This close-in, messy waterfront was unambiguously part of the rest of the city in terms of law, operation, and governance. Over the next 50 years, the waterfront would be trans-formed. By 1921, the waterfront was dominated by publicly-owned and built concrete and steel piers on parcels that were legally distinct from the rest of the propertied urban landscape. The world’s largest steamships tied up at exclusive berths governed by an institution that sought to ensure their frictionless circulation in and out of the city. By 1921, Manhattan’s waterfront was the exclusive site of large-scale transportation circulation – an infrastructural place. In this re-search I ask how the mixed-use urban waterfront became infrastructural place: the exclusive site of transatlantic circulation. I examine how state and private sector actors negotiated, contested, and cooperated to enframe the waterfront as infrastructure – a space ruled according to the logic of circulation– that enabled global-scale flows through Manhattan. This involved on a process of enframing which relied on the separate legal categories of property leveraged to produce new conceptual, institutional, and material boundaries separating the waterfront from the rest of the city. These processes were articulated through power geometries to produce the waterfront as infrastructural place. This research demonstrates how an analysis of infrastructure as place allows us to examine it as an ongoing process of social production. | Ph.D. | water, infrastructure, buildings, urban, institution | 6, 9, 11, 16 |
| Long, Andrew Milam | Short, Steven M | Persistence of algal viruses and cyanophages in freshwater environments | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-06 | Algal viruses and cyanophages exert top-down population controls upon primary producers in aquatic environments. Despite their clear importance, many ecological phenomena related to viruses are poorly understood. For instance, several studies suggest that phytoplankton viruses often exist at stable abundances, even when their hosts are absent. However, estimates of algal virus and cyanophage decay suggest that they decay too swiftly for these stable abundance patterns to occur. This paradox is the primary impetus for my research. In order to begin to address this knowledge gap, the seasonality of algal virus decay was assessed using decay incubation experiments across all four seasons using infectivity assays with cultivated viruses to estimate decay rates, which found high decay rates in the summer and spring and low decay rates in the winter. This seasonal study found that the low algal virus decay rates during winter allowed for survival after 126 days under ice cover in a seasonally frozen freshwater pond. This work was expanded upon by developing and validating molecular assays to estimate decay of environmental viruses with either unknown or uncultivated hosts, which represent the majority of viruses in nature. Upon validation of molecular assays for estimating decay rates, environmental algal virus and cyanophage decay rates were found to vary seasonally in the same way that cultivated algal virus decay rates did. Further, environmental algal viruses were found to have lower decay rates than cyanophages. In the molecular study, viruses were also found to persist in the winter under/within the ice cover for 126 days. However, the spring and summer decay rates estimated in both studies were often too high to permit virus population maintenance for long periods without ongoing production, which would require the presence of host cells at relatively high abundances. As such, the ability of freshwater sediment to serve as an environmental refugium for phytoplankton viruses was assessed using molecular methods. Freshwater sediments from Lake Erie were found to harbor diverse assemblages of both algal viruses and cyanophages. Some algal virus and cyanophage genotypes were found at high abundances in putatively 50 year old sediments, suggesting that sediments may aid in the persistence of viruses. In conclusion, over-wintering of algal viruses in the water column appears to be one mechanism that maintains a viral â seed-bank,â and the sediments of aquatic environments may be an environmental refugium for algal viruses and cyanophages alike. | Ph.D. | water, environment | 6, 13 |
| Longmuir, Patricia Elayne | McCrindle, Brian W. | Understanding Physical Activity from the Perspectives of Children with Complex Heart Defects, their Parents and their Cardiologists | Medical Science | 2010-11 | Children with complex heart defects lead sedentary lives that limit involvement in peer activities, impact their growth and development, and jeopardize their long-term health. The goal of this research was to better understand the factors that influence daily moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), which is associated with physical and psychological health. The physical activity levels of 64 children (25 female, 5 to 11 years of age) with a single pumping chamber in the heart were measured by accelerometry. Fitness and gross motor skill measures and medical history information were analyzed to identify factors associated with MVPA participation. Increased activity was related to the use of antithrombotic medication, spring season of the year, better motor skill and male sex. Group and individual discussions further explored psychosocial influences on the children’s level of MVPA. The children indicated physical activity was primarily motivated by having fun and being with their friends, while other children being more skilled discouraged participation. Parents of children with complex heart defects had dramatically different perceptions. They believe their child’s activity is primarily influenced by the heart condition and report often feeling uncertain about which activities are appropriate for their child. Finally, sources of parental uncertainty were examined by comparing the physical activity advice provided by the cardiologist to parent reports of the child’s activity restrictions, a content analysis of published activity guidelines and interviews with paediatric cardiologists. Parent uncertainty about activity was supported by the lack of agreement between parent and cardiologist reports of medically necessary activity restrictions. Parent reports of vague or variable activity advice were reflected in the published literature and cardiologist perspectives on activity counselling. These results suggest enabling children with complex heart defects to achieve an active lifestyle may rest on ensuring that the child and parents have appropriate physical activity beliefs and expectations. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Longo, Mark Stephen | Stacey, Richard | Cannabis Regulation and Public Health: Using the Experience of Alcohol Regulation to Maximize Public Health Outcomes in Ontario | Law | 2017-11 | The Government of Canada has signalled that it will legalize recreational cannabis on or before July 1, 2018. While there are numerous anticipated benefits of this change, including a reduction in the costs of enforcement and an increase in tax revenues, the consumption of cannabis is not risk-free. The many negative effects related to cannabis consumption include increased cancer risk, impairment of cognitive and psychomotor functioning, and a greater likelihood of manifesting mental health issues. A regulatory approach aimed at reducing these harms associated with use – and not use per se – is called a “public health” approach. In order to contribute to the design of a regulatory framework for cannabis in Ontario, this paper reviews and synthesizes the literature on the efficacy of specific regulatory tools in maximizing public health outcomes with respect to alcohol, including taxation and price controls, controlling the physical availability, and advertising and marketing restrictions. | LL.M. | health, taxation | 3, 10 |
| Loopstra, Rachel Cornelia | Tarasuk, Valerie | Household Food Insecurity in Canada: Towards an Understanding of Effective Interventions | Nutritional Sciences | 2014-06 | Over 12% of households were food insecure in Canada in 2011. Despite recognition of this problem, there remains no targeted public policy to address it. To inform interventions, examined in this thesis were how changes in financial resources related to changes in severity of food insecurity, the needs of food insecure households, and the effectiveness of current interventions. Studies 1, 2, 4, and 5 utilized data from a sample of 485 low income families living in high poverty neighbourhoods in Toronto, and Study 3 used data from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 2009-2011. In Study 1, the sensitivity of severity of food insecurity to changes in employment and income was observed. In Study 2, it was found that severity of food insecurity was associated with increasing probability of experiencing hardships in other domains such as delayed bill payments and giving up household services. The relationship between food insecurity and obesity among women was examined in Study 3, and it was shown that diagnoses of mood disorder partially explained the association. Patterns of association also varied by family status and severity of experiences. In Studies 4 and 5, use and non-use of current interventions focused on alleviating hunger (i.e. food banks) and improving healthy food access in communities (i.e. community gardens, Good Food Box) were examined among food insecure families. There was a low prevalence of use of all types of programs. Programs were not used because programs were not accessible or were not viewed as appropriate supports to meet needs. Taken together, findings suggest that interventions focused on potential manifestations and consequences of food insecurity are misplaced, and reinforce the urgent need for interventions to alleviate the financial insufficiency and insecurity that underpins food insecurity. | PhD | poverty, food, health | 1, 2, 2003 |
| Lord, Elizabeth | Boland, Alana | Building an Ecological Civilization across the Rural/Urban Divide and the Politics of Environmental Knowledge Production in Contemporary China | Geography | 2018-06 | Over the past four decades, China’s environment has been transformed markedly, both in terms of pollution and degradation, but also through protection initiatives. This dissertation draws on political ecology, including theories of environmental knowledge production, and uneven development, to examine how China’s ‘green’ turn unfolds onto, and through, rural/urban inequalities, and how it reconfigures this profound divide that organizes society. This dissertation examines how these two ‘crises’ — one environmental and the other socio-economic — are in conversation with each other, and in many ways, build off each other. My analysis is based on first-hand research in the Qinling Mountains (Shaanxi), interviews (including with academics, officials and villagers), participatory observation, as well as on secondary literature on rural-environmental questions. Based on this data, I identify two paradoxical processes transforming rural environments: the ruralization of pollution and the mobilization of rural efforts to ‘green’ the nation. I propose the concept of socio- environmental reproduction as a useful lens to understand this paradox. This concept illustrates how the rural/urban divide is constitutive of the environmental project; it also helps to understand the mechanism by which national greening initiatives further re-assert rural/urban differences. This dynamic appears most clearly when examining the politics and logics of environmental research including limits on fieldwork, pressures to commercialize research and political decisions about what is, or not, acceptable environmental knowledge. This study therefore analyzes institutional, political and discursive frames that regulate rural-environmental research to explore the parameters that shape what is known, or made invisible, about rural-environmental realities. I suggest that the political and economic context shaping environmental research in contemporary China is productive of the invisibility of urgent rural-environmental questions — a process which contributes to reproducing rural/urban inequalities, and illustrates one of the new ways through which uneven development unfolds in contemporary China. | Ph.D. | urban, rural, environment, pollut, ecology | 11, 13, 14 |
| Lord, R. Cassandra | Trotz, D. Alissa||Alexander, M. Jacqui | Performing Queer Diasporas: Pelau MasQUEERade in the Toronto Pride Parade | Social Justice Education | 2015-03 | Performing Queer Diasporas documents and critically examines the public performance of "Pelau MasQUEERade," an organized self-identified Caribbean queer diasporic group that includes non-Caribbean queers. Pelau MasQUEERade draws on the cultural and historical aesthetic of the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival and the Toronto Caribbean Carnival Parade, and brings its performance to the largely "white" queer space of the Toronto Pride Parade. I situate Pelau MasQUEERade in relation to the Toronto Pride Parade to investigate processes of racialization in queer spaces. My study challenges normative queer narratives about the Toronto Pride Parade that construct sexuality, citizenship and belonging as fundamentally de-racialized processes. I argue that the Toronto Pride Parade serves as an ostensible marker for white queer inclusion and belonging to the Canadian nation-state, placing queers of colour outside of the boundaries of belonging. I bring queer into conversation with diaspora to disrupt seemingly fixed boundaries of race and sexuality and to disturb the whiteness of the Toronto Pride Parade. My study utilizes an interdisciplinary framework. I draw on Caribbean, black/feminist queer diaspora scholarship to demonstrate how Pelau MasQUEERade emerges from a black diasporic tradition but simultaneously establishes itself as a queer of colour group. I further draw on theories of space and performance to illuminate how Pelau MasQUEERade offers alternative ways to re-imagine freedom, desire, and pleasure as a mode of survival. My study draws upon twenty semi-structured interviews with Pelau MasQUEERade participants and Toronto Pride organizers; two summers of ethnographic fieldwork; and an analysis of Internet, magazine and newspaper documents. There are three central aspects to my study: First, I examine how whiteness becomes normalized in Pride through the conflation of white with queer. This conflation enables queer claims for citizenship and belonging but excludes queers diasporics of colour. Second, I explore how Pelau MasQUEERade disturbs the whiteness of Pride by creating a mobile "queer diaspora" space. Third, I illustrate how queer diasporics of colour use performative practices to address exclusion and to create transformative spaces of belonging. Overall, my study illuminates how complex practices of belonging are imagined, spatially negotiated, embodied and articulated through Pelau MasQUEERade's performance. | Ph.D. | queer | 5 |
| Louie, Wing-Yue Geoffrey | Nejat, Goldie | A Learning Based Robot Interaction System for Multi-User Activities | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2017-11 | The population of the world is rapidly aging and there is presently an increasing demand for residential care facilities to provide care for older adults. Understimulation can be a major concern in such facilities due to high resident-to-staff ratios and a decreasing number of healthcare staff to facilitate cognitive, social, and physical activities for older adults. Currently, socially assistive robots are being developed to assist in providing such stimulation. However, the existing robots are limited to only facilitating a set of activities that have been pre-programmed on the robot and cannot be customized to the needs of a facility. Furthermore, the majority consider only one-on-one activities, rather than providing stimulation to groups of users at the same time. This thesis focused on developing a learning based interaction system for socially assistive robots to: 1) autonomously facilitate multi-user activities while providing individualized assistance; 2) learn new customized activities from caregivers; and 3) personalize robot assistive behaviours to obtain user compliance. Numerous human-robot interaction experiments were conducted with the system integrated into the socially assistive robot Tangy for the multi-user activity of Bingo. The participants for the experiments consisting of caregivers and older adults. The results showed that: 1) participants had positive attitudes towards interacting with the robot and found it easy to use, 2) older adults were engaged during the activity and complied with the robotâ s behaviours, and 3) caregivers were able to successfully teach a new activity to the robot with moderately low perceived workload. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lowndes, Ruth | Angus, Janet Elizabeth | Diabetes Care and Serious Mental Illness: An Institutional Ethnography | Nursing Science | 2012-11 | People with serious mental illness are genetically predisposed to diabetes. Their risk is heightened with the use of atypical antipsychotic medications. Contextual conditions also influence diabetes care and outcomes. There is a lack of research on diabetes care for the mentally ill in residential care facilities. Therefore, there is little understanding of the social relations that contribute to this group’s health disparities. Institutional ethnography was chosen to explore this phenomenon in a group of 26 women in a rural for-profit group home in southern Ontario. Work activities of residents and providers were examined to map out the social organization of health inequities. Interviewees included residents with diabetes, care providers, field workers, and health professionals. Observations and analysis of coordinating texts were further methods used to reveal disjunctures between discourses embedded within diabetes care guidelines and the actualities of living within imposed constraints of group home care. The overarching State interest in cost containment creates rationing that limits the care afforded residents, resulting in poor dietary intake and lack of quality of life opportunities. Further, group home policies regulate systems of safety, reporting, and financial accountability, but do not promote health. The medical and psychiatric divide also contributes to health disparities. Diabetes care provision supports ‘self-care,’ which is challenging for this group, and health providers lack understanding of contextual constraints. Combined, these social circumstances perpetuate disease development and make illness management difficult. These findings warrant the need for State financial support and policy changes that give primacy to illness prevention, health promotion, and medical management so the mentally ill can realize health and wellbeing. A linkage between mental and physical health care is also crucial. Further, health providers are urged to be critical of social ideologies that sustain health inequalities, and to deliver services that are sensitive to unique particularities. | PhD | health, women, rural | 3, 5, 11 |
| Lu, Bing | He, Yuhong | Estimating Grassland Biophysical and Biochemical Properties Using Remote Sensing and Modelling | Geography | 2017-11 | Grasslands comprise about 42% of the world's plant cover and provide critical ecosystem services to the planet. In recent decades, worldwide grasslands have degraded greatly in terms of area and condition, mainly due to human activities and environmental changes. It is therefore critical to investigate grassland heath and adopt corresponding conservation strategies. Remote sensing is an efficient tool for investigating grasslands, owing to its broad spatial coverage and capability of acquiring data repeatedly. Previous studies have utilized remote sensing to investigate various grassland features, such as disturbances (e.g., wildfire, grazing), species composition, and vegetation properties (e.g., leaf area index, chlorophyll). However, limited by the attributes of remote sensing data (e.g., spatial or spectral resolution) or image analysis methods, there are still research gaps in studying grasslands using remote sensing that warrant further exploration. In this research, multi-source remote sensing data with different spatial, temporal, and spectral features were applied to investigate different grassland properties. Specifically, multi-temporal medium-spatial resolution multispectral imagery acquired by satellite was utilized to investigate a wildfire disturbance on a mixed grassland. Multi-temporal ultra-high spatial resolution multispectral imagery acquired by Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was processed to identify species composition and estimate vegetation properties in a tall grassland using an empirical method. Lastly, multi-temporal high-spatial resolution hyperspectral imagery acquired by manned helicopter was utilized to estimate vegetation properties of a tall grassland using radiation transfer modelling. Results show that grassland features can be accurately retrieved from the chosen imagery, but one should keep in mind that different imagery types have differences in spectral, spatial, and temporal characteristics, and thus are suitable for different research purposes. These research findings provide insights on selecting appropriate remote sensing data and processing techniques for investigating different grassland features, and further contribute to the understanding of grassland ecosystems and grassland conservation. | Ph.D. | urban, environment, conserv | 11, 13, 14 |
| Lucas, Jon William | White, Graham | Explaining Institutional Change: Local Special Purpose Bodies in Ontario, 1810-2010 | Political Science | 2014-11 | This dissertation examines the institutional histories of local special purpose bodies in Ontario from their origins in the nineteenth century to the present. The analysis is organized around two research questions. First, how have the institutional structures of special purpose bodies changed over the long term? Second, what can an analysis of the long-term dynamics of these institutions contribute to our present theories of institutional and policy change? The dissertation is divided into two parts. In the first part, I focus on special purpose bodies in the midsized city of Kitchener, Ontario. This part tracks a wide range of ABCs - from water commissions to conservation authorities to police commissions, among many others - through the course of Kitchener's history. In the second part, I examine changes to school boards, boards of health, and hydro commissions in municipalities across the province of Ontario. I make three general arguments in this dissertation. First, I argue that changes to local special purpose bodies have a distinctly patterned character, with just one or two kinds of change occurring again and again for long periods of time. Second, I argue that we can explain these patterns, and the shifts from one pattern to another, using a synthetic theoretical approach that I call "Policy Fields". This approach focuses our attention on the institutional and cultural structure of the environment or "field" in which policy decisions occur, as well as the wider interaction among those fields over time. Finally, I argue that we can understand the timing of institutional changes within the broader patterns using a typology of policy fields. This three-part typology enables us to understand the factors that tend to trigger changes within different kinds of fields. | Ph.D. | water, conserv, institution | 14, 16 |
| Luk, Jason | MacLean, Heather L | Advancing Life Cycle Comparisons of Future Alternative Light-duty Vehicles | Civil Engineering | 2015-11 | The overall objective of this thesis is to systematically compare the life cycle energy use, air emissions and costs of future alternative light-duty vehicles in a more robust manner than is done in the literature. Models are developed using GREET (Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation), Autonomie vehicle simulation software, Vehicle Attribute Model, Air Pollution Emission Experiments and Policy (APEEP) analysis model, and Crystal Ball (Monte Carlo analysis). Four questions are investigated: • Should the transportation sector use ethanol or bio-electricity? Life cycle assessment results indicate that neither has a clear advantage in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or energy use. This finding is in contrast to those in the literature that favor the use of bio-electricity because this thesis develops pathways with comparable vehicle characteristics. • Do plug-in electric vehicles provide incremental life cycle air pollutant impact benefits over internal combustion engine vehicles using the same primary energy source? The results based on natural gas-derived fuels show that battery electric vehicles (BEV) may not provide benefits, in terms of climate change and health impacts, over hybrid electric vehicles (HEV). This can be attributed to the many sources of uncertainty and stringent tailpipe emissions regulations. • How can vehicles be designed to meet future CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards? Case study results for a reference vehicle show that the 66% increase in fuel economy targets between model years 2012 to 2025 can be met with a 10% vehicle price increase (lightweight HEV powertrain), 31% increase in 0-96 km/h acceleration time (smaller engine), 17% interior volume decrease (smaller body), or 94% driving range decrease (BEV powertrain), while other attributes are maintained. • How might CAFE standards affect the ability for non-petroleum vehicles to mitigate GHG emissions by displacing petroleum vehicles? Life cycle costing results indicate that there is a financial incentive for automakers to produce CNG vehicles that could emit higher well-to-wheel GHG emissions on a per kilometer basis than gasoline vehicles. This is permitted by CAFE standards because non-petroleum fuel incentives allow vehicles using CNG to be less efficient, and thus potentially more affordable, than those using gasoline. | Ph.D. | energy, climate, greenhouse gas, pollut | 7, 13 |
| Lundsgaard-Nielsen, Vanessa Blair | Sage, Tammy L | The Effect of Heat Stress on Reproduction in Arabidopsis thaliana, Camelina sativa, and Oryza sativa: A Carbonyl-targeted Proteomics Approach | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-11 | The intensity and frequency of global heat stress events are predicted to increase in the coming decades as a result of global warming. The negative effect of high temperature (HT) on reproductive development in plants is a major cause of reduced yields in natural and arable ecosystems. During HT (≥ 32 °C) the accumulation of reactive carbonyl species (RCS), resulting from lipid peroxidation, damage plant cells by irreversibly carbonylating proteins and rendering them non-functional. Heat-induced RCS may induce failure of male and female reproductive development thereby reducing yields. If so, mitigating the effects of HT stress and HT-induced RCS should be a primary target of crop improvement. This dissertation examined the impact that chronic HT stress has on protein carbonylation, reproductive development, and genetic components in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, the emerging biofuel crop Camelina sativa, and the staple food crop, rice. The effect of HT (33 °C) on pollen development and the role of two genes encoding pollen-localized RCS-detoxifying enzymes are examined in Arabidopsis. One of these enzymes, HTT1, is shown to confer pollen thermotolerance in temperature-tolerant Arabidopsis ecotype by detoxifying RCS in pollen, thereby maintaining pollen function and seed set. HT also impacts pollen development and seed production in agronomic Brassicaceious species, such as C. sativa, where reductions in pollen tube growth, ovule number, and embryo sac development were associated with increased protein carbonylation at 35 °C. Reduced pollen tube growth, in conjunction with reduced ovule number and impaired embryo sac development, resulted in reduced seed number in Camelina at HT. The genetic resources available for C. sativa have recently expanded, and a QTL analysis identified candidate genes for improving ovule number at HT. HT (36°C) also induced protein carbonylation and was associated with a failure in pollen development in rice at the uninucleate stage. Across all species examined in this thesis, heat stress resulted in the production of RCS in reproductive tissues and reduced yields, suggesting that the production of RCS may be a universal response to heat stress. Identification of protein targets for heat-induced oxidative stress will highlight organelles and processes sensitive to heat and thus aid in the production of thermotolerant crop species. | Ph.D. | production, global warming | 12, 13 |
| Lung, Jonathan | Easterbrook, Steve M | Design and Use of Tree-Based Argument Graphs for Reducing Energy Consumption | Computer Science | 2018-06 | Decisions that individuals make, in aggregate, have a large impact on global energy consumption -- a major contributor to climate change -- and the science shows it is in humanity's best interest to cut back on our energy use. The literature shows that informing and educating individuals about the impacts of their decisions can result in long-term reductions in energy use while introducing other forms of motivation such as financial incentives can fail. I show a method of presenting/visualizing information that I call a tree-based argument graph (T-BAG) is an effective enabler of rational decision-making by reducing the impact of cognitive biases. With the use of a controlled experiment, I demonstrate that T-BAGs can counteract biases that hinder rational thought. Furthermore, I present Inflo and InfloGraphic, two T-BAG tools, as proofs-of-concept which enabled me to explore barriers to adoption of T-BAGs. In this thesis, I not only show how T-BAGs can reduce biases in the decision-making process, I develop a foundation for a collaborative platform that enables users to create a shared executable knowledge base. | Ph.D. | energy, consum, climate | 7, 12, 13 |
| Lunny, Allyson M. | Gartner, Rosemary | Victimhood and Socio-legal Narratives of Hate Crime Against Queer Communities in Canada, 1985-2003 | Criminology | 2011-06 | This dissertation analyzes personal and institutional narratives that shape the Canadian phenomenon of anti-LGBT violence as hate crime and locate queers within and without the discursive figure of the responsible, legitimate and undeserving victim of hate crime. These socio-legal narratives were taken from interviews with LGBT community activists involved in anti-violence projects, mainstream and gay print news media reportage of two notable homicides, Parliamentary debates of the enhanced sentencing provision that sought to include ‘sexual orientation’ to the list of biased motivating factors, Senate witness testimony on the amendment to Canada’s hate propaganda statutes which sought to include ‘sexual orientation’ to the list of protected groups, interviews with police officers who had direct experience with anti-hate crime initiatives, and judicial reasons for sentence. Utilizing an interdisciplinary analysis and drawing on hate crime scholarship and victimology, this dissertation asks: how is legitimate and, consequently, illegitimate LGBT hate crime victimization being represented and constituted through Canadian socio-legal narratives? In revealing how socio-legal actors and institutions have positioned LGBT individuals discursively within or without legitimate victimhood, that is, within and without the status of innocent victim deserving of social empathy and socio-legal institutional response, my dissertation illustrates how the spectre of illegitimate victimization is repeatedly invoked in socio-legal narratives of anti-LGBT hate crime. My analysis of these narratives about queer victimization and hate crime suggests that the figure of the responsible, legitimate and undeserving victim of hate crime remains an elusive and unstable identity for the queer victim of hate crime. Insofar as hate crime scholars have argued that the mobilization of hate crime activism has produced a victim whose hate crime status ensures its legitimacy, I contribute to this scholarship by arguing that this status is particularly challenging for the queer victim of hate-motivated violence. I demonstrate that the resiliency of the figure of classic victimology’s self-endangering and risky ‘homosexual’ and the sustained ideological resistence to LGBT individuals as full citizens, despite their notable legal gains, positions LGBT individuals, particularly gay men, ambiguously, situating them conceptually both without and within legitimate victimhood. | PhD | queer, institution | 5, 16 |
| Luo, Xiangzhong | Chen, Jing M | Estimation of global land surface evapotranspiration with the consideration of vegetation structural and physiological status from remote sensing | Geography | 2018-03 | Global land surface evapotranspiration (ET) is a critical constituent of the global energy and water budgets. The average of perennial terrestrial ET accounts for around 60% of precipitation and consumes about 50% of the absorbed solar radiation on the land surface. At least 50% of terrestrial ET is comprised of transpiration – the water efflux through leaf stomata – the variations of which are subject to vegetation status. The structural status of vegetation determines the radiation distribution inside a canopy and the available energy for transpiration and photosynthesis, while physiological status describes the activity of pigments and enzymes associated with the biochemical processes that control photosynthesis and stomata. Currently, the status of vegetation is often underrepresented in terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs) – the principle tools used to simulate terrestrial ET, due to the difficulty of direct measurements of vegetation traits over large scales. Chapter 2 uses ground measured leaf area index (LAI) and clumping index (CI) over nine flux towers to form several upscaling schemes for a TBM and suggests that a two-leaf scheme (TL) is the best upscaling scheme for modelling ET, based on a comprehensive comparison. TL captures the instantaneous features of the radiation distribution and avoids uncertainties in calculating canopy-scale biochemical parameters. Chapter 3 incorporates the ground measured leaf chlorophyll content (LCC) from a forest site into a TBM and establishes a framework to use LCC in TL. Chapter 3 reveals that LCC can work as a robust proxy for the leaf photosynthetic capacity in TBMs, with the estimates of gross primary productivity (GPP) and ET in being considerably improved in spring and autumn. After the site-level study, Chapter 4 uses satellite-derived LAI, CI and LCC to simulate ET and GPP at 124 sites across nine plant functional types distributed globally. Satellite-derived LCC can reduce the biases of ET and GPP estimates at around 60% of the 554 site-years, with the greatest reduction for plant functional types with strong seasonal cycles. This study demonstrates the critical role of vegetation in simulating global ET and GPP, and develops the optimal way to incorporate vegetation structural and physiological parameters in ET modelling. | Ph.D. | water, energy, solar, consum | 6, 7, 12 |
| Lutsch, Erik | Strong, Kimberly | The Influence of Biomass Burning on the Arctic Atmosphere | Physics | 2019-11 | Evaluating the influence of biomass burning on the Arctic requires continuous and long-term measurements of the transported emissions. In this thesis, ground-based Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) solar-absorption spectroscopic measurements at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) in Eureka, Nunavut, Canada from 2006-2018 are used to retrieve the atmospheric abundance of the biomass burning species CO, HCN, C2H6, C2H2, CH3OH, H2CO, HCOOH and NH3 . The retrievals of NH3 from Eureka FTIR measurements are the first long-term ground-based measurements of NH3 in the high Arctic. Measurements of NH3, CO, HCN and C2H6 were simultaneously enhanced in July-August 2014 and attributed to the 2014 Northwest Territories wildfires. Enhancements were observed in FTIR measurements at Toronto, and due to the differences in traveltimes between the sites, an approximate 2-day lifetime of NH3 in a smoke plume was determined, allowing for NH3 to undergo long-range transport and therefore suggesting that boreal wildfires may be a considerable episodic NH3 source to the Arctic. The greatest enhancements of NH3, CO, HCN, and C2H6 were observed from FTIR measurements at Eureka (2006-2017) and Thule, Greenland (2006-2017) from 17-22 August 2017 and attributed to the 2017 British Columbia and Northwest Territories wild- fires. A GEOS-Chem simulation illustrated that these wildfires contributed to surface-layer NH3 enhancements in the Canadian Archipelago of 0.01-0.11 ppbv from 15-23 August 2017, 0.14-5.50 times the background due to local seabird-colony sources, further indicating that boreal wildfire NH3 is an important episodic source of NH3 in the summertime high Arctic in addition to the persistent seabird-colony source. Detection of wildfire pollution events was performed for Eureka FTIR measurements and nine other Northern high- and mid-latitude Network for the Detection of Atmospheric Composition Change (NDACC) FTIR sites from 2003-2018. Enhancements of CO were detected and correlated with simultaneous enhancements of the biomass burning tracers HCN and C2H6, providing a means of wildfire pollution detection. Source attribution of the detected events was performed using a GEOS-Chem tagged CO simulation. Boreal North America and boreal Asia were the largest contributors to anomalous enhancements at all sites, with a recent increase in the boreal North American contribution from 2013-2018. | Ph.D. | pollut, environment | 13 |
| Lyander, Mary Judith | Anderson, Stephen E | Orientation to Teaching as a Lifelong Career in Sub Saharan Africa – A Tanzanian Case Study | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-11 | Many developing countries in Sub Saharan Africa are facing mounting pressure to seek effective and efficient approaches to recruiting, preparing, supporting, and retaining committed teachers in the education sector. This research project explores recruitment, and retention factors that may influence a commitment to teaching of secondary school teachers in rural Tanzania. This study draws on a framework developed by Sher (1993) of three factors that affect the commitment and retention of teachers working in rural schools: teachers’ characteristics, conditions and compensation. Data included semi-structured interviews with 16 secondary school teachers from four secondary schools and a focus group interview with retired teachers from the Geita district in Tanzania. The interviews and focus group explored teachers’ commitment to teaching, and their perceptions of recruitment and retention factors that influence commitment to the teaching career. The findings show that participants believe highly committed teachers identify with educational goals and values, demonstrate positive job performance behavior and a desire to maintain membership within the education sector. The findings also confirm the influence teachers’ characteristics, working and living conditions, and compensation on teacher commitment, recruitment and retention. In addition, the societal status and image of teachers emerges as an important factor. This study discusses implications for education practices and policies that develop and support teachers’ commitment in the rural context. | Ed.D. | educat | 4 |
| Lyons, Elizabeth | Ajay, Agrawal | The Organization of Online Outsourcing: Observational and Field Experimental Studies | Management | 2014-11 | This thesis explores how digitized international labor markets affect hiring and the organization of production using experimental and observational data from the world's largest online contract labor market, oDesk. Team-based production in knowledge work is becoming increasingly important for firm success, and with the globalization of economic activities, teams of workers are increasingly diverse in their nationality and skill sets. In the first chapter of this thesis I test whether these differences have meaningful implications for performance by designing and conducting a natural field experiment to examine how national diversity affects the returns to team work. I find that team work improves outcomes when workers are from the same country, and worsens outcomes when workers are from different countries relative to groups independent workers. I also find that these results are most pronounced for groups of workers with specialized skills sets. These findings suggest that while technology is facilitating cross-border interactions with potentially large benefits such as knowledge transfer, market growth, and access to higher paying jobs, participants in international markets may benefit from investing in managing the costs associated with national diversity. Aside from the costs national diversity introduces into team work, international labor markets may also introduce informational costs for employers trying to hire from countries they know little about. Using observational data from the same market, oDesk, the second chapter of my dissertation considers how employers from developed countries and contract workers from developing countries overcome the information asymmetries associated with remote work. This chapter finds that workers from less developed countries are disadvantaged relative to those from developed countries in terms of their likelihood of being hired by employers from developed countries, but that verifiable information benefits them relatively more. This suggests that reliable and easily understood information can overcome some of the difficulties associated with hiring foreign workers. The final chapter of my thesis considers some of the broader implications of the digitization of contract labor for workers and firms by taking advantage of observational and survey data from oDesk. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| Lys, Candice Lorene | Gesink, Dionne | Development of Coping Strategies and Sexual Subjectivity among Female Youth in the Northwest Territories, described through Body Mapping | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-11 | Background: The sexual and mental health of young women in the Northwest Territories (NWT) is a serious public health concern. In response, I developed an arts-based intervention called FOXY (Fostering Open eXpression among Youth). FOXY is grounded in social ecological theory and guided by a trauma-informed lens. Objectives: To learn about sexual and mental health from young women in the NWT attending FOXY, using the arts-based method of body mapping. Specifically, to 1) describe and evaluate body mapping an as approach for educational intervention and research data collection with young NWT women; 2) discover the self-identified strategies that young women in the NWT use to cope with mental health issues; and 3) explore how young NWT women develop their sexual subjectivity within the context of contraception use and access. Results: 41 female FOXY youth (aged 13 to 17 years) from six NWT communities completed in-depth interviews, and seven FOXY facilitators provided written reflections. Body mapping was an intervention tool that supported and encouraged participant self-reflection, introspection, personal connectedness, and processing difficult emotions. The process catalyzed data collection that enabled trust and youth voice in research, reduced verbal communication barriers, and facilitated collection of rich data regarding personal experiences. Participants used five mental health coping strategies: grounding via nature, strength through Indigenous cultures, connection with God and Christian beliefs, expression using the arts, and relationships with social supports. Barriers to the development of sexual subjectivity included a culture of stigma and shame surrounding sexuality; pervasive alcohol use in communities; predatory behaviours by older men; poor quality sexual health education offered in schools; and, issues with accessing health services. Comprehensive sexual health education; widespread access to free condoms; and, positive health support networks with female relatives, peers, and some teachers were identified as facilitators for the development of sexual subjectivity. Conclusion: A trauma-informed, holistic, culturally relevant framework of multiple intervention strategies at the intrapersonal, interpersonal, community, and societal levels within a comprehensive social ecological model can address the complex interplay of sexual and mental health needs of young NWT women. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Lysova, Alexandra | Gartner, Rosemary | Dynamics of Violence between Intimate Partners in the Narratives of Incarcerated Women in Canada: A Violent Events Perspective | Criminology | 2015-06 | While we have learnt much in the last forty years about the prevalence of and risk factors for violence perpetrated by individual men and women in their intimate relationships, little research has focused on the interaction between intimate partners within a violent situation. I argue that given the complex nature of intimate relationships and intertwining roles, behaviours, and emotions of both partners, examining the couple's interaction -- rather than the disconnected behaviours of individual men or women -- can provide a deeper understanding of and new insights into the process of violence between intimate partners. Using a sample of 295 violent incidents reported by 135 incarcerated women, I explore the interactional aspects of violence in the incidents from a violent events perspective. Identifying and drawing on different dimensions of violent dynamics, e.g., initiation of violence, reaction to initial violence, the use of violence in the entire incident, and injuries to partners, I used Latent Class Analysis to identify specific classes of violent incidents that represent more general patterns of violent dynamics. This incident-based analysis identified four distinct classes of violent incidents and characteristics associated with each of them at the individual, relationship and situational levels. My study finds evidence consistent with previously identified violent types and also detects a novel type of violent dynamics in the relationships of high-risk incarcerated women. Moreover, the context-based and interaction-based approach in my study reveals the heterogeneity of women's behaviour in a violent situation. These findings question a `one size fits all' approach to address such a complex and multidimensional phenomenon as intimate partner violence and suggest carefully tailored interventions for different violent types/incidents. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Macaraig, John Marvin Rodriguera | Andre, Sorensen | Urban Greenspace, Civil Society and Science: The Creation and Management of the Rouge Park, Ontario, Canada. | Geography | 2013-06 | Earth is becoming more urban. As the human population continues the current trend of migrating towards urbanized regions, the pressures to develop urban greenspaces will inevitably increase. Greenspaces play a critical role in urban livability for both human and non-human beings. This research examines the creation and management of the Rouge Park (Ontario, Canada), which is a large greenspace approximately 46 km2 located in the eastern portion of the Greater Toronto Area. The output of this research consists of three parts. The first provides an identification of the relevant actors, and a detailed chronology of the social and political events that led to the establishment of the Rouge Park. The second section explores the competing narratives of science, conservation, and development that were fundamental in shaping the protected area that we see today. The final section examines the governance and administration of the Rouge Park, and investigates the activities and involvement of civil society actors working in its day-to-day management. Using qualitative methods, I demonstrate that science and scientific expertise can be powerful tools of legitimization for civil society actors. In particular, I examine the benefits and pitfalls of placing ecologically-based rationalizations at the forefront of conservation policy deliberations. Furthermore, I show that despite shortcomings in the governance structure of the park, the current arrangement has provided civil society actors with increased opportunities to shape their community. My results show that a locally grounded nature conservation movement can serve as a powerful motivating force for citizens to enact long-term environmental planning initiatives. | PhD | urban, environment | 11, 13 |
| Macdonald, Rona | Kontos, Pia | 'Ms-Understandings'?: A Discourse Analysis of the Talk of Older Single Women | Rehabilitation Science | 2018-11 | Older ‘never married’ women are often identified as a ‘problem group’. Frequently characterized in stereotypically negative terms as loneliness, risk, and vulnerability, singleness is often considered ‘bad’ for health, especially for women who remain single. From a critical perspective, the implications of this for occupational therapy (OT) are multi-dimensional. Where marriage and motherhood are taken-for-granted life trajectories, older single women are marginalized, which affects assessments, interactions, and outcomes of care. By theorizing singleness from a social constructionist perspective, by attending closely to language and issues of identity, and by tracing out the connections between women’s accounts and broader social and cultural beliefs and values, this thesis contributes to a ‘critical OT’. Drawing on a theoretical blend of constructionist thinking established in social psychology, the talk of lifelong single women is considered from the critical/discursive psychological perspective. Employing interpretive repertoires, subject positions, and ideological dilemmas as analytical tools, the question explored by this thesis is ‘What interpretive repertoires do the speakers draw upon, and what strategies do they use to negotiate their identities?’ The available speaking resources were found to be strongly polarized into two repertoires: ‘singleness as deficit’ and ‘singleness as freedom’. The identity negotiation strategies employed by the participants included anticipating criticisms and objections to mild positive claims about the freedoms of singleness, rhetorically distancing themselves from damaging associations generated from the deficit repertoire, and troubling the applicability of the category ‘single’, which involves implementing discursive ‘tricks’ to close down conversations. In order to improve the quality of care for older single women, the profession of OT needs to recognize how socio/cultural discourses about singleness significantly shape research, theory, and practice. This thesis thus has important implications for critical OT, OT policies and norms of professionalism, and to the micro-politics of everyday OT practice. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Macedo, Ester Pereira Neves | Boyd, Dwight | Philosophy of the Many: High School Philosophy and a Politics of Difference | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-11 | As we start a new millennium, the conviction that exclusionary practices need to be fought at all levels of society is becoming gradually more accepted. Nevertheless, as I show in this thesis, many if not most researchers on High School Philosophy (HSP) operate from what Iris Marion Young (1990) calls a logic of identity, which continues to be exclusionary even when it attempts to reach “all.” My objective in this thesis, therefore, is to map out the HSP literature in terms of Young’s “Politics of Difference,” and, by doing that, to suggest ways in which it could be more inclusive. This adaptation of Young’s Politics of Difference to HSP is presented in this thesis in six chapters. In chapter 1, I summarize the main aspects of Young’s argument. In chapter 2, I give an overview of the current literature on HSP, showing that it is scarce and scattered. This thesis’s first contribution, therefore, is as a representative, though not exhaustive, catalogue of the HSP literature. In chapter 3, I present a deeper analysis of the HSP literature, dividing it into two main strands, “the selective” and the “universal” approaches to HSP. I also argue in this chapter that both these approaches are problematic, because they exclude many, privileges some over others and alienate all. In chapter 4, I present a brief analysis of the epistemology informing both the selective and the universal approaches to HSP. In this chapter, I focus on the so-called “Myth of Neutrality,” which is another manifestation of the logic of identity. Using as illustration the works of two authors, Robert Simon and Harvey Siegel, I show in this chapter how the myth of neutrality manifests the positivism and reductionism typical of the logic of identity. Finally, in chapter 5 I present my positive proposal for HSP, which I called “Philosophy of Many” (PoM), as a more inclusive alternative to both the selective and the universal approaches to HSP. The final chapter reviews the main conclusions of this study and suggests direction for further research. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Macias, Teresa | Razack, Sherene | “On the Pawprints of Terror": The Human Rights Regime and the Production of Truth and Subjectivity in Post-authoritarian Chile | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-06 | In 1990, Chile made a successful transition from the authoritarian dictatorship that had ruled the country since 1973 to a democratically elected government. The authoritarian regime was characterized by massive and systemic practices of human rights abuses, and it left an official toll of 5,000 deaths, about 2000 of which constitute “detained and disappeared people”, and an additional 27,000 people who have been officially recognized as victims of torture. These figures do not take into account the unknown numbers of Chilean exiles, or those who were internally displaced or who lost their jobs due to their suspected political affiliations. The human cost of the military regime has continued to be one of the most enduring issues confronting the post-authoritarian Chilean nation. This thesis builds on the work of critical researchers who locate the Chilean authoritarian regime in the transnational politics of the Cold War and their effect in implementing neo-liberalism in Chile. This literature demonstrates that terror was a constitutive, rather than an incidental, element of neo-liberal governmentality: governmentality that inscribed itself on Chilean bodies through terror practices and that remains unscathed through the transition to democracy. With that premise in mind I explore, through a historical analysis of major conjunctures in the history of human rights debates in Chile, how the post-authoritarian nation accounts for the human rights legacies of authoritarianism while obscuring the continuity of authoritarian governmentality. I propose that human rights constitute a biopolitical governmental regime that in a manner comparable to the authoritarian terror captures human life within the realm of state power. As a regime, human rights submit experiences of terror to specific power-knowledge technologies that render terror intelligible, manageable and governable. Rather than promoting essential values of truth and justice, the human rights regime produces specific discourses of truth and justice as well as specific discourses of subjectivity and nation. In concrete terms, this thesis explores how the post-authoritarian nation and it subjects use the human rights regime to discursively construct a national truth in order to promote and protect specific governmental arrangements. | PhD | justice, rights | 16 |
| Maciver, Elizabeth J. | McKneally, Martin | Deciding about Heart Transplantation or Mechanical Support: An Empirical Study and Ethical Analysis | Medical Science | 2012-11 | Purpose: Patients living with advanced heart failure experience dyspnea, fatigue, poor quality of life, depression and cognitive impairment which may threaten their ability to provide informed consent to undergo heart transplant (HTx) or mechanical support (LVAD). Using qualitative and quantitative methods, we asked how patients with advanced heart failure make decisions regarding HTx and LVAD. The variables chosen to reflect the elements of consent included quality of life and symptom severity (voluntariness), depression and cognitive impairment (capacity) and treatment preferences (decision-making). Methods: 76 patients enrolled in the quantitative arm completed the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire; Visual Analog scales for dyspnea, fatigue and overall health; Beck Depression Inventory; Montreal Cognitive Assessment; Standard Gamble and Time Tradeoff. Qualitative methods were used to discover concepts, relationships and decision-making processes described by 17 of the 76 patients considering HTx and LVAD. Results: Patients reported poor quality of life and high symptom severity scores which compelled them to consider surgery as a way to relieve unpleasant symptoms and improve quality of life. Although 30% of patients had evidence of depression and/or cognitive impairment, no patient was deemed incapable of decision-making. Patients were willing to take considerable risk (35%) and trade considerable time (4months) to improve their health. While heart failure-related concepts were important to the decision, entrustment emerged as the meaningful process for decision-making. Conclusions: Patients who participated in this study were capable of decision-making and understood the risks associated with the surgery. Voluntariness was diminished by disease but not absent, and decisions were free of coercion. These results suggest the entrustment model of decision-making is the dominant process for patients considering high-risk surgical procedures and meets criteria for informed consent. Understanding the process of decision-making will help clinicians support and enable treatment decisions made by patients living with advanced heart failure. | PhD | health | 3 |
| MacKendrick, Norah | Johnston, Josée | The Individualization of Risk as Responsibility and Citizenship: A Case Study of Chemical Body Burdens | Sociology | 2011-11 | This dissertation examines how changing conceptions of risk responsibility relate to changing ideas of citizenship and the public sphere. Using the empirical case study of chemical body burdens, and drawing on focus groups and in-depth interviews, in addition to a twenty-year framing analysis of Canadian news media coverage of environmental contamination, this dissertation examines how risks are individualized through an ideology of “precautionary consumption.” Precautionary consumption encourages self-protection through consumer-based vigilance (e.g., by buying organic produce or “natural” cleaning products) and shifts the focus away from the state’s responsibility to regulate human and environmental exposure to contaminants. Three key findings emerge from this research. First, over twenty years of Canadian media coverage, precautionary consumption is increasingly prominent in shaping the problem frame around chemical contamination. As a media frame, the ideology of precautionary consumption reconceptualises chemical body burdens as an environmental problem affecting everyone equally to an individual problem that afflicts unaware consumers. Second, interview data suggests that the practice of mediating individual exposure to chemicals is overwhelmingly characterized as a caregiving responsibility requiring a mother’s vigilance. Interview respondents interpreted this responsibility through a dual ideological lens comprised of intensive mothering and precautionary consumption. Interviews with mothers from low-income households furthermore suggest that practices of chemical mediation vary by social class, and that access to protective commodities is highly uneven. Third, interview data also suggest that respondents viewed vigilant shopping practices as part of accepting greater personal responsibility for chemical pollution as a health threat and larger environmental problem. Respondents dismissed the transformative potential of the state in addressing body burdens; in contrast, they expressed confidence in their power as consumers and in the responsiveness of the market to protect them from chemical threats. The concluding chapter of the dissertation discusses how precautionary consumption draws our attention away from the universality of risk, and the responsibilities of the state for managing body burdens as a collective risk. | PhD | environment, pollut | 13 |
| MacKenzie, Brooke | Yoon, Albert | Effecting a Culture Shift: An Empirical Review of Ontario's Summary Judgment Reforms | Law | 2016-11 | This paper presents an empirical analysis of all reported summary judgment decisions in Ontario between 2004 and 2015, in order to explore whether amendments to the court rules actually achieved their intended effects of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of dispute resolution and making the civil justice system more accessible and affordable. By reviewing trends in the number and outcomes of summary judgment motions throughout the study period, we can conclude that the amendments to Ontario’s summary judgment rules have made strides towards their intended goal. We observe an increase in the number of summary judgment motions determined, an increase in the number of summary judgment motions granted, and, broadly, an increase in the proportion of successful summary judgment motions since the reforms. The data analyzed in this study demonstrate that the “culture shift” promoted by the Supreme Court of Canada following the implementation of the new rule is underway. | LL.M. | justice | 16 |
| MacKenzie, Gaelan | Morrow, Peter | Essays on International Trade and Market Power | Economics | 2020-06 | This thesis contains three papers exploring topics related to international trade and market power. In Chapter 1, I develop a quantitative model of international trade in which firms have endogenous market power in both product and labor markets that depends on their sizes in those markets. I use the model to evaluate the importance of accounting for oligopsony power on firm-level outcomes, welfare, the distribution of aggregate income, and the gains from trade. I calibrate the model to Indian plant-level data and import data for manufacturing sectors. I find that oligopsony causes small decreases in welfare but large decreases in aggregate real wages compared to perfect competition in labor markets. Trade increases large firms’ labor market power. Additionally, the welfare gains from trade are larger with oligopsony but the real wage gains from trade are smaller. Chapter 2, which is based on joint work with Stephen Ayerst, Faisal Ibrahim, and Swapnika Rachapalli, examines how technology embodied in traded goods generates spillovers across countries and sectors that increase aggregate growth. Using patent citation data from the United States, we construct a knowledge input output (IO) table and compare it to the production IO table. We use these IO structures and data on bilateral sector-level trade flows to measure embodied technology in imports. We show that increases in this measure are positively associated with increases in sectoral innovation expenditures. We build a quantitative model of firm-level innovation and trade with knowledge spillovers and calibrate it to trade and production data. We find that spillovers are an important contributor to growth, particularly in developing countries. Chapter 3 investigates how the strength of intellectual property rights affects firms’ make-or-buy decisions for specialized input purchases. I study a model of vertical integration and outsourcing in which a firm and an input supplier have asymmetric information about the supplier’s ability to use the firm’s knowledge capital outside of the relationship. I show that under outsourcing some relationships break down in equilibrium, which causes ex-post inefficiencies. When intellectual property rights are weak, increasing their strength may not reduce these inefficiencies unless the increase is large enough. | Ph.D. | wage, trade, innovation | 8, 10 |
| MacKinnon, Kenneth Hugh | Farmer, Diane | "Thank goodness you are a man!": Troubling Gender and Principal Leadership in Elementary Schools | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | This study identifies and critically examines gendered discourses of leadership amongst elementary school principals. Interviews with 15 female and male elementary school principals in the Greater Toronto Area were carried out as a means of discovering and revealing these gendered discourses. A discourse analysis of their responses is conducted. A feminist post- structuralist approach to analysis gives rise to a series of gendered discourses of principal leadership, revealing the manner in which these discourses act upon elementary principals. These discourses are divided into three areas: discourses of female principal leadership, discourses of male principal leadership and finally, discourses of reluctance and denial. The work of Michel Foucault is used to understand how dominant discourses work upon the subject through disciplinary power and governmentality. The revelation of these discourses provides opportunities to challenge them. This study illustrates the way these discourses work to both limit and, in some cases, legitimize the elementary principal depending on each principal’s gender. A process by which principals deny the influence of gender on their leadership, then accept and recognize its influence, is analyzed. Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence is used to explore the workings of masculine domination upon both men and women, revealing the suffering experienced by principals as a result of this domination. The wider implications of these gendered discourses on the role of elementary principal are discussed. Moments of resistance to the dominant discourses and agency are also discussed when they are revealed through dialogue with the principals. The work of Judith Butler is used to explore the presence of agency amongst these principals and the implications it has for principals as they navigate these gendered discourses. This study positions principalship as a place where resistance and agency can be explored and realized. Implications for theory and further research are considered. | Ed.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Macpherson, Jane Elizabeth | Ryan, James | Leading for Equity: Principals' Strategies | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | LEADING FOR EQUITY: PRINCIPALS’ STRATEGIES Doctor of Education, 2016 Jane Macpherson Department of Educational Leadership and Policy University of Toronto ABSTRACT The purpose of this research was to learn about the strategies principals use in leading for equity in their schools. This study is intended to illuminate the status of principals’ equity efforts following the four year implementation of Ontario’s Equity and Inclusivity Strategy and to better understand the supports necessary for doing school site equity work. A qualitative research approach was used which included personal interviews with twelve principals who self identify as leaders for equity in an Ontario school district. The participants shared a rich breadth of understanding of equity issues that included the notion of equity as fairness, and recognized the barriers that exist for marginalized groups as a result of the interplay of power and privilege. The obstacles to equity work identified by participants included system constraints that result from workload issues, standardized testing, funding policies, and frequent transfers of principals. Other barriers identified by participants were the perceived lack of value placed on equity work, resistance encountered from staff, parents and senior administration, ignorance of equity issues, the preponderance of a deficit mindset amongst educators, inequitable hiring practices, collective agreement constraints, the political context surrounding administrators, and the personal toll equity efforts often takes on principals. The participants described strategies they employ in moving understanding and conditions for equity forward in their schools. They articulated a strong ability to gather data and formulate goals, strategies and monitoring measures in school improvement plans. The principals described the importance of building relationships with staff, parents and students to create an environment where open and honest discourse might take place. They expressed a belief in the importance of shifting their knowledge of equity to action through their ability to challenge existing inequities, advocate for marginalized groups, and empower others to act. The principals spoke to the need to develop and utilize political savvy to navigate the difficult waters that often exist in schools and throughout the district. The thesis concluded that there are current and desired supports that can enable the work of equity leaders in schools. These supports include professional development for principals, human resource support, increased accountability for equity initiatives (at the Ministry and District levels), and validation by system leaders of the efforts of leaders for equity. | Ed.D. | equitable | 4 |
| MacRae-Buchanan, Constance Ann | Wolfe, David A. | The Social Citizenship Tradition in Anglo-American Thought | Political Science | 2013-11 | The right to belong and participate in some form of political community is the most fundamental social right there is. This dissertation argues that social rights have not been understood broadly enough, that there has not been enough attention paid to their historical roots, and that they must not be viewed as being simply passive welfare rights. Rather, they must be seen in their historical context, and they must be seen for what they are: a much larger and more substantive phenomenon than what liberal theory has projected: both theoretically and empirically. I am calling this body of discourse “the social citizenship tradition.” This dissertation hopes to show that there was more than one definition of social citizenship historically and that social rights are certainly not “new.” In surveying a vast literature in Britain, the United States, and Canada, it points to places where alternative social rights claims have entered politics and society. By looking at writings from these three countries over three centuries, the evidence points to some similarities as well as differences in how scholars approached questions of economic and social rights. In particular, similar arguments over labour and property figured prominently in all three countries. The contextual ground of right was different in each country but the voice of social action was similar. The objective here is to reunite this common tradition of social citizenship with its past. It is because of classical liberalism that social right has lost focus and power, and a whole tradition of political thinking has been lost.This tradition has been narrowed to the point that it might be unrecognizable to the more radical forces, those who also fought for it, in the American, Canadian and British pasts. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Madan, Athena P | George, S Dei | State-sanctioned Violence and Mental Health: Implications for Learning and Treatment | Social Justice Education | 2014-11 | This qualitative study examines how Canadian mental health systems may better accommodate people from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who are living now in Canada and who may be suffering psychosocial consequences of political violence. Using an anti-racist-feminist lens, analysis of seven interviews highlights the significance of socio-political histories and conceptualisations of trauma in mental health education. Discussions focus on mental health dimensions of war and aspects of resilience in complex life-experiences which are only recently gaining representation (and transformation) in medical discourse. By correlating social and political forces with particular mental health outcomes, I focus on treatment-areas that may be discriminatory for a subset of refugees.As immigrant and refugee experiences may lack reference within traditional treatment paradigms, it becomes essential to understand specificities within which healing and social change for refugees may be relevant. A first objective looks at processes of resilience where recovery may be more meaningful, countering notions of illness as pathology within systems of deficit. Similarly, greater considerations of state-sanctioned violence, its nature and intentions, are needed to plan comprehensive mental health supports. A second objective is then to identify social indicators which may more fully articulate, express, or enable change at group and family levels. Finally, as interventions are most effective when informed by group realities, a third objective brings forward cultural, political, and social forces currently underrepresented in what we know about `treating war trauma'. In sum, this study highlights that greater attention to structural violence in mental health education may lead to better treatment outcomes. Treatments may be more effective by offering alternate pathways to care, considering broader conceptualisations of trauma, and encouraging notions of participatory, group-level initiatives. Findings critically suggest that present mental health systems may unintentionally (re)produce victims, more than enable survivors to rebuild lives after fleeing the complexity and brutality of war-affected circumstances. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Madon, Natasha Sam | Doob, Anthony N | Intersections of Youths' Perceptions: Youths' Perceptions of Their Treatment by the Criminal Justice System and Other Social Institutions | Criminology | 2015-11 | In three studies, I explore the manner in which young people's encounters with the justice system affects their views of the system as whole. Framed within the procedural justice perspective, I examine how adolescents perceive their treatment by criminal justice actors and explore the relationship of these views to their views of other parts of the justice system and to their views of other social institutions (e.g., the education system and employment sector). In this way, this research seeks to examine whether treatment by the justice system matters to young people in the same way that it has been reported to be important for adults. The findings, although somewhat mixed, suggest that treatment does matter to young people, but that the ways in which they understand the police, courts and corrections may differ from the more cohesive or consistent views of adults. Young people appear to be in the process of developing their views of the criminal justice system during adolescence and have not forged generalized views of the criminal justice system as a whole. Rather, they distinguish their experiences and views of the police from those of the courts and corrections. Similarly, young people do not appear to possess a negativity bias to all authority figures and social institutions, with the findings here suggesting that the ways in which young people view their treatment by criminal justice actors and the legitimacy of the criminal justice system are quite different from how they are viewing teachers and the educational system as well as future employment and success in later life. Taken together, the findings point to a more nuanced perspective on the nature of youths' views of the criminal justice system and other civic institutions. | Ph.D. | justice, nstitution | 16 |
| Magesan, Arvind | Aguirregabiria, Victor | Essays on Empirical Dynamic Games and Imperfect Information | Economics | 2011-06 | This thesis collects three papers that study applied problems in economics dealing with dynamic strategic behavior and imperfect information. In the first chapter I study the relationship between participation in United Nations Human Rights Treaties (HRT), foreign aid receipts and domestic human rights institutions. I provide empirical evidence that countries with relatively high HRT participation rates receive more foreign aid. Further, countries with high quality institutions are more likely to participate in HRTs, but that high levels of HRT participation leads to a decline in the quality of domestic human rights institutions. Based on these findings, I propose and estimate a dynamic game of HRT ratification. The estimates show that economic factors play an important role in HRT ratification and that the ratification costs countries incur vary significantly across treaties and country regime types. I use the estimated model to evaluate the effects of counterfactual policies on HRT ratification decisions, human rights behavior, and the distribution of foreign aid. The second chapter considers environmental regulation under imperfect information and political constraints. We compare the value of two types of information to a regulator: the cost of pollution and the profitability of firms in the economy. We find that in environments where small increases in the losses to regulated firms greatly affect the regulator's ability to implement the policy, it is most valuable to learn the types of firms, while it is most valuable to learn the cost of pollution when small increases in losses are relatively ineffectual. The third chapter deals with the identification and estimation of dynamic games when players maximize expected payoffs given beliefs about other players' actions, but their beliefs may not be in equilibrium. First, we derive conditions for point-identification of structural parameters and players' beliefs, and propose a simple two-step estimation method and sequential generalization of the method that improves its asymptotic and finite sample properties. We also present a procedure for testing the null hypothesis of equilibrium beliefs. Finally, we illustrate our model and methods with an application of a dynamic game of store location by retail chains. | PhD | environment, pollut, institution | 13, 16 |
| Magnan, André | Friedmann, Harriet | The Canadian Wheat Board and the Creative Re-constitution of the Canada-UK Wheat Trade: Wheat and Bread in Food Regime History | Sociology | 2010-06 | This dissertation traces the historical transformation of the Canada-UK commodity chain for wheat-bread as a lens on processes of local and global change in agrofood relations. During the 1990s, the Canadian Wheat Board (Canada’s monopoly wheat seller) and Warburtons, a British bakery, pioneered an innovative identity-preserved sourcing relationship that ties contracted prairie farmers to consumers of premium bread in the UK. Emblematic of the increasing importance of quality claims, traceability, and private standards in the reorganization of agrifood supply chains, I argue that the changes of the 1990s cannot be understood outside of historical legacies giving shape to unique institutions for regulating agrofood relations on the Canadian prairies and in the UK food sector. I trace the rise, fall, and re-invention of the Canada-UK commodity chain across successive food regimes, examining the changing significance of wheat- bread, inter-state relations between Canada, the UK, and the US, and public and private forms of agrofood regulation over time. In particular, I focus on the way in which changing food regime relations transformed the CWB, understood as the nexus of institutions tying prairie farmers into global circuits of accumulation. When in the 1990s, the CWB and Warburtons responded to structural crises in their respective industries by re-inventing the Canada-UK wheat trade, the result was significant organizational and industry change. On the prairies, the CWB has shown how – contrary to expectations -- centralized marketing and quality control may help prairie farmers adapt to the demands of end-users in the emerging ‘economy of qualities’. In the UK, Warburtons has led the ‘premiumisation’ of the bread sector, traditionally defined by consumer taste for cheap bread, over the last 15 years. The significance of the shift towards quality chains in the wheat-bread sector is analyzed in light of conflicts over the proposed introduction of genetically engineered (GE) wheat to the Canadian prairies. | PhD | food, trade, industr | 2, 9, 10 |
| Magrath, Bronwen | Mundy, Karen | Advocacy as Political Strategy: The Emergence of an “Education for All” Campaign at ActionAid International and the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2013-11 | This dissertation explores why and how political advocacy emerged as a dominant organizational strategy for NGOs in the international development education field. In order to answer this central question, I adopt a comparative case-study approach, examining the evolution of policy advocacy positions at two leading NGOs in the field: ActionAid International and the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE). Although these organizations differ in significant ways, both place political advocacy at the centre of their mandates, and both have secured prominent positions in global educational governance. Through comparative analysis, I shed light on why these organizations have assumed leadership roles in a global advocacy movement. I focus on how the shift to policy advocacy reflects the internal environment of each organization as well as broader trends in the international development field. Ideas of structure and agency are thus central to my analysis. I test the applicability of two structural theories of social change: world polity theory and political opportunity theory; as well as two constructivist approaches: strategic issue framing and international norm dynamics. I offer some thoughts on establishing a more dynamic relationship between structure and agency, drawing on Fligstein and McAdam’s concept of strategic action fields. In order to test the utility of these theoretical frameworks, the study begins with a historical account of how ActionAid and ASPBAE have shifted from service- and practice- oriented organizations into political advocates. These histories are woven into a broader story of normative change in the international development field. I then examine the development of a number of key advocacy strategies at each organization, tracing how decisions are made and implemented as well as how they are influenced by the broader environment. I find that while it is essential to understand how global trends and norms enable and constrain organizational strategy, the internal decision-making processes of each organization largely shape how strategies are crafted and implemented. These findings offer insight into the pursuit of advocacy as a political strategy and the role of NGOs in global social change. | PhD | educat, governance | 4, 16 |
| Mah, Catherine Ling | Deber, Raisa Berlin | Governing Immunization in Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2009-11 | Modern immunization’s role in health systems is threefold: it is simultaneously a pharmaceutical product, a personal health care intervention, and a public health measure, each constituting a distinct, yet overlapping set of governance arrangements. This thesis examines immunization policy change and governance at the federal-provincial interface over the last decade (1997-2008) in Canada, situated against broader trends in public policy and public health. The research is based upon a case study design and a discursive approach to policy analysis, using documentary sources, supplemented with archival information, direct observations, and decision-maker informants. Over time, structures and instruments used to deal with immunization at the federal-provincial interface have undergone adaptation. New decision-making structures include the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Pan-Canadian Public Health Network; new instruments include the National Immunization Strategy, accompanied by targeted federal funding. Consistent with other sectors, however, the decade also witnessed an ongoing emphasis on fiscal prudence, risk-based regulation, and informal networks to accomplish policy goals. This thesis concludes that effective federal governance and lasting policy change for immunization requires resolution of two major tensions in the policy ideas underlying national processes. First, the interpretation of federal authority over matters of national concern remains ambiguous. While the National Immunization Strategy reflected dominant ideas around equitable access to vaccines and a broad conception of the federal sharing community, persistent gaps, particularly linking national-level decisions, financing, and delivery, have reinforced the existing notion of the appropriate degree of federal influence for immunization, rather than expanding it. Second, an increasing focus on personal security dimensions of immunization amid structural changes intended to address public security concerns is in tension with a situation that predisposes the state to avoid an unjust application of compulsory measures rather than to protect from harm those individuals who consent freely to immunization. Immunization in Canada requires a new paradigm that expands the notion of the state’s role in prevention as it applies to immunization, that addresses specific needs for protection in the life of the individual, and that reasserts the importance of strong, substantive, and sustained federal contributions to matters of national concern. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Maintenay, Andre Luc | Schmidt, Lawrence ||Scharper, Stephen | Green Ethics and Green 'Faith': An Exploration of Environmental Ethics and Spirituality in a Technological Age | Religion, Study of | 2008-11 | The main concern of this dissertation is exploring and elucidating the nature and the relationship of religion/spirituality and ethics in the context of environmentalism, within the larger arena of liberal, technological society. It is driven foremost by a need for clear understanding of not only what these terms mean and what they represent, but also what it all means for where we stand today as ethical and spiritual beings. For in pursuing this topic, one must necessarily ask larger questions, namely: What does it mean to be ethical in technological society? What does it mean to be ‘spiritual’ in a ‘secular’ society? Are either of these things even possible? These questions form the backdrop of my particular focus on environmentalism. Through analysis of my own ethnographic research with members of the Sierra Club of Canada, and through use of the theoretical frameworks provided by four primary thinkers (Juan Luis Segundo, Alasdair MacIntyre, Charles Taylor and Jacques Ellul), I conclude that environmentalism, though far from problem-free, represents a ‘healthy’ form of ethical and spiritual expression in modern technological society. Part of this conclusion is the position that we are still very much ethical beings in technological society, and very much spiritual beings in secular society (though the latter is far more dependent on individual definitions of this term), and that in fact these two things relate directly. | PhD | health, environment | 3, 13 |
| Maiolino, Teresa-Elise | Taylor, Judith | Identity Politicking: New Candidacies and Representations in Contemporary Canadian Politics | Sociology | 2017-11 | This dissertation centres on the candidacies and leaderships of three politicians—Justin Trudeau, Olivia Chow, and Kathleen Wynne. It examines the ways in which gender, race, sexuality, and other salient aspects of politicians’ identities are strategically negotiated and mobilized by politicians, political actors, the media, and the grassroots. The cases herein question the extent to which identity matters in Canadian electoral politics at the municipal, provincial, and federal levels, bridging sociological understandings of power and authority with feminist analyses of identity. The project engages broadly with qualitative methods—discourse analysis, media analysis, participant observation, and interviewing. The research contributes to understandings of: (1) the durability of masculinity in Canadian electoral politics; (2) dispositional requirements for leaders; (3) the compensatory labour that minority politicians perform; (4) alignments and allegiances between politicians and grassroots movements.The first case of the dissertation examines media coverage of a charity-boxing match between Liberal Member of Parliament Justin Trudeau and Conservative Canadian Senator Patrick Brazeau. It offers the concept recuperative gender strategies to describe how political leaders work to restore their public gender identities. The second case is focused on the candidacy of visible minority Toronto mayoral candidate, Olivia Chow. The case offers three concepts that illuminate forms of identity work that minority politicians navigate on the campaign trail: dispositional requirements, ideological alignment, and political compensatory labour. The final case analyzes social movement actors’ assessments of Premier Kathleen Wynne—the first woman and openly lesbian premier of Ontario—and presents a typology of words and deeds to map the terms under which social movement actors judge progressive politicians. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Maiorano, John | Quarter, Jack | Forms of Rationality and Uncertainty: Energy Efficiency in Ontario Hospitals | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-06 | This dissertation explores the dynamics surrounding energy efficiency practices in Ontario hospitals using a manuscript-based approach, and consisting of a chapter dedicated to a theoretical overview, and two separate but related studies with first-hand data. The theoretical overview reviews the diverse perspectives, approaches and theories used to understand energy behaviour at multiple levels of analysis: the individual, organizational and institutional level. The first study is based on a grounded theory approach to generate theory on how energy efficiency practices occur. The research explores how individuals and organizations make sense of their environment, the rationalities and implicit assumptions that shape their understandings, and the approaches they use to deal with uncertainty surrounding energy efficiency decision-making. Structural conditions are identified, frames for considering energy efficiency are uncovered, and two approaches for dealing with uncertainty are interpreted. For hospitals ‘Demanding Certainty’, management demands uncertainties be completely controlled. Energy efficiency is communicate by presenting, pitching and confirming to management, resulting in risk avoiding organizations where individuals absorb associated risks and energy efficiency stalls. For hospitals ‘Managing Complexity’ energy efficiency is complementary to patient care. Leadership is understanding of inherent risks and buy-in fosters communication through negotiation and collaboration, resulting in improved energy efficiency performance. The second study utilizes a quantitative approach to operationalize constructs developed in the first study to test theory and to drive further understandings. The results support the earlier findings and suggest that forms of rationality and dealing with uncertainty are intertwined, with both predicting energy efficiency performance. Applying these findings more broadly to climate policy can ensure new policies contextualize the risk-taking needed by both government and external stakeholders to drive not only innovation, but also the risk-taking needed to achieve their objectives. Finally, a conclusion summarizes the overall findings, presents limitations, and directions for future research. | Ph.D. | energy, innovation, climate | 7, 9, 13 |
| Maitra, Srabani | Mirchandani, Kiran | Redefining “Enterprising Selves”:Exploring the “Negotiation” of South Asian Immigrant Women Working as Home-based Enclave Entrepreneurs | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-03 | This study examines the experiences of highly educated South Asian immigrant women working as home-based entrepreneurs within ethnic enclaves in Toronto, Canada. The importance of their work and experiences need to be understood in the context of two processes. On the one hand, there is the neoliberal hegemonic discourse of “enterprising self” that encourages individuals to become “productive”, self-responsible, citizen-subjects, without depending on state help or welfare to succeed in the labour market. On the other hand, there is the racialized and gendered labour market that systematically devalues the previous education and skills of non-white immigrants and pushes them towards jobs that are low-paid, temporary and precarious in nature. In the light of the above situations, I argue that in the process of setting up their home-based businesses, South Asian immigrant women in my study negotiate the barriers they experience in two ways. First, despite being inducted into different (re)training and (re)learning that aim to improve their deficiencies, they continue to believe in their abilities and resourcefulness, thereby challenging the “remedial” processes that try to locate lack in their abilities. Second, by negotiating gender ideologies within their families and drawing on community ties within enclaves they keep at check the individuating and achievement oriented ideology of neoliberalism. They, therefore, demonstrate how the values of an “enterprising self” can be based on collaboration and relationship rather than competition, profit or material success. The concept of “negotiation”, as employed in this thesis, denotes a form of agency different from the commonly perceived notions of agency as formal, large-scale, macro organization or resistance. Rather, the concept is based on how women resort to multiple, various and situational practices of conformity and contestation that often can blend into each other. | PhD | labour, women, gender | 5, 8 |
| Majerski, Maria | Erickson, Bonnie | Networks of Mobility and Constraint: The Economic Integration of New Immigrants to Canada | Sociology | 2017-11 | Using data from the 2008 General Social Survey (GSS) of Canada, this dissertation extends the traditional immigration literature, while drawing on prominent issues in the network literature, by examining inequality in access to social capital, and the degree to which structural factors within Canadian immigrant social networks yield socio-economic returns and constraints. The dissertation consists of three thematically linked publishable papers. The first publishable paper (Chapter 2) compares sources of social capital including membership in voluntary organizations, comparing foreign-born and native-born. This paper highlights the reasons for the relative inadequacies of immigrant networks. Particularly for recent immigrants, factors include less time in Canada, lower rates of participation in voluntary organizations, a lack of Canadian educational qualifications, poor English/French linguistic skills, and ethnic/racial minority status. These factors contribute to embeddedness within smaller, more homogenous networks. The second publishable paper (Chapter 3) looks at the role of social networks on male immigrantsâ earnings because earnings determination differs for men and women. The paper finds that recent immigrant men have significantly lower earnings than their native-born counterparts in large part because immigrants have more close ties and fewer of the varied weak ties that are more useful in attaining employment upon arrival to Canada. The third publishable paper (Chapter 4) compares the economic returns from network resources between immigrant men and women across immigrant entry cohort. The paper finds that immigrant women have lower earnings than men and that the effect of each network characteristic on earnings significantly differs between immigrant men and women. The aim of this dissertation is to offer greater insight into the relationship between immigrantsâ social network characteristics and their earnings in Canada. There are several broad implications for this project. First, the research develops new theoretical insights concerning economic mobility within Canada, beyond race, language proficiency, and Canadian labour and work experience. Second, by recognizing the network characteristics associated with newcomer welfare, this study contributes to immigrant policy and research within Canada and elsewhere. | Ph.D. | equality, labour, inequality | 5, 8, 10 |
| Majstorovic, Vojin | Viola, Lynne | Ivan Goes Abroad: The Red Army in the Balkans and Central Europe, 1944-1945 | History | 2017-11 | Ivan Goes Abroad: The Red Army in the Balkans and Central Europe, 1944-1945 explores the Red Army’s occupation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Austria in World War II, focusing on the issue of sexual violence against women. In order to explain the Soviet troops’ behavior, Ivan Goes Abroad examines the Kremlin’s policies in each country that they occupied, the Red Army’s propaganda line, the leadership’s disciplinary policies toward criminals in the ranks, and the frontline soldiers’ and officers’ attitudes to the local population. A potent mix of factors from above and below resulted in mass rapes. Many Soviet male troops viewed women primarily as sex objects, believing that their membership in a victorious Red Army entitled them to women’s bodies, even by force. Furthermore, as the Red Army’s soldiers and officers moved across the Balkans and Central Europe, they developed a series of stereotypes about countries that they encountered. These views were mostly independent of the official line, although they were extremely common among the rank and file and higher ranking officers. When soldiers attributed to a nation positive characteristics, as was the case in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, they behaved with relative restraint. In contrast, when they assigned negative characteristics to a nation, as was the case in Romania, Hungary, and Austria, they wreaked havoc against the civilians. The high command sent mixed signals to the rank and file about the acceptability of violence against civilians. Although robberies, rapes, and murders of civilians were always illegal in the Red Army, the commanding officers’ permissive attitude towards the violence, the dehumanizing hate propaganda against Romanians, Hungarians, and Austrians, as well as the inability of the high command to impose discipline on the frontline troops, signalled to the rank and file that their crimes would go largely unpunished. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Malachowski, Cindy | Kirsh, Bonnie | An Organizational Study of Mental Health in the Workplace | Rehabilitation Science | 2015-06 | Workplace mental health is becoming of increasing importance, in part due to the rising social and economic costs of mental health issues in the workplace. Little is known about how the experience of workers with mental health issues is actively produced through their participation in workplace procedures and associated supports. The purpose of this research is to better understand how employees actively engage in institutional practices and associated social relations that ultimately coordinate and produce their workplace experience. Using institutional ethnography, I take up the standpoint of the employee living with mental health issues to explore the coordinating relations associated with workplace mental health. This approach sheds light on how employees' experiences are socially produced and coordinated across and between institutional processes and practices. Data collection included over 140 hours of ethnographic observations, the analysis of associated texts and documents, and interviews that were conducted with 17 informants. This research details some of the challenges experienced by one novice health science researcher while conducting ethnographic research, and provides techniques for addressing personal and professional boundaries, negotiating ethical dilemmas, and reconciling the emotional experience of transitioning back and forth between being an `outsider' and `insider'. In addition to these insights, the findings explicate the social relations and institutional processes that coordinate sick time utilization for workers experiencing mental health issues. We revealed that employee's work of managing workplace absence management programs while negotiating episodes of mental ill health was perceived as overwhelming, unfair, and even punitive. Employees would require formal and informal respite from work, and would often utilized vacation time when unwell in order to avoid institutional processes all together. The biomedical focus of the absence management program created uncertainty about what constitutes a bona fide illness, and caused managers to come to know their work activities as distinctively separate from the work of healthcare practitioners. This research contributes to the literature by highlighting how tensions are created through textually coordinated work activities within and between the corporate and healthcare sector. These insights are important in establishing where and how to enact change from the standpoint of the worker. | Ph.D. | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Malik, Akhtar Hassan | Livingstone, David W. | A Comparative Study of Elite-English-medium Schools, Public Schools, and Islamic Madaris in Contemporary Pakistan: The Use of Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory to Understand "Inequalities in Educational and Occupational Opportunities" | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-11 | A Comparative Study of Elite-English-Medium Schools, Public Schools, and Islamic Madaris in Contemporary Pakistan: The Use of Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory to Understand "Inequalities in Educational and Occupational Opportunities" Doctor of Education, 2012 Akhtar Hassan Malik Department of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education University of Toronto ABSTRACT This thesis has attempted to understand the role of mainstream schools: elite English-medium schools, public schools and Islamic madaris in reproducing various social classes in Pakistan. Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction serves as a major conceptual framework in this study, and it has been complemented by Anyon’s thesis about social class and school knowledge. My study suggests that an unequal availability of capital resources, agents’ class-habitus, and the type of their “cultural currency” act as selection mechanisms that clearly favour some social groups over others. This consolidates existing social-class hierarchy. The ruling classes ensure the transfer of their power and privilege to their children by providing them quality education in elite schools. The disadvantaged classes have no other option than to educate their children either in public schools or Islamic madaris. The new non-elite private schools have blatantly made education a commodity. This has contributed towards educational apartheid in the country. My study underscores that the working-class parents possess cultural capital which they transmit through building efficient learning environments in family settings. Yet, their class-habitus plays a causal role in keeping aspirations low. The three types of schools constitute distinct fields of education and provide a fairly different schooling experience to their students. For instance, these schools have different standards of material/human resources that are likely to instil a hierarchical view of the world among students. Likewise, differing curricular, pedagogical, and student evaluation practices emphasize different cognitive and behavioural skills. These differences can become central features for the reproduction of the division of labour at work and in society between those who plan and manage and those in the work force whose jobs primarily entail carrying out policies made by others. Public school knowledge has some exchange value in the marketplace, but it legitimates the ideology of production for consumption. I recommend that an integrated and equitable system of “national education” is vital for nation building. For future research, I suggest both considering different components of cultural capital other than exposure to high culture and exploring a wide range of dispositions to better understand how they influence one’s actions. | EDD | educat, equitable, inequality | 4, 10 |
| Mallory, Julie | Park, Andreas ||Aivazian, Varouj | Is the Financial Market a Mechanism for Environmental Overcompliance? | Economics | 2012-06 | Climate change legislation is financially and politically costly. Financial markets have the capacity to encourage companies to do more than what is required by law (i.e. overcomply), and this could lead to socially optimal outcomes without the costs. First, I examine how the responses of Canadian companies to a voluntary survey regarding carbon emission levels affect those companies' valuations. I employ a signaling framework where companies choose between two signals - disclosure and nondisclosure - and where investors are uncertain about the likelihood of legislation in addition to company type. I test the prediction of the model that disclosure increases company value only when investors believe legislation is likely. I find that withholding emissions information resulted in average daily abnormal returns of 3 basis points, and that disclosure resulted in average daily abnormal returns of -11 basis points in the days surrounding the submission of survey responses. The level of emissions disclosed is found to be irrelevant. Second, I examine the credibility of green legislative threat. The economic climate impacts the government's ability to credibly threaten new environmental law, and so I model a company's pollution decision as a function of the economic climate. In times of recession, companies may choose to pollute heavily since they believe that the likelihood of legislation is low. As a first step in evaluating the model empirically, I use differences-in-differences regressions to estimate the effect of legislative threat during recession on company value. Although the value of carbon-intensive companies decreased initially in reaction to legislative threat, the relative value of these companies increased as the depth of the recession becomes more apparent. I find that on average the legislative threat of an emission trading scheme reduced Tobin's Q by 18% in the initial stages of the recession, but as the recession deepened the legislative threat effect was eliminated. My results suggest that financial markets combined with a credible threat of legislation could provide encouragement to companies to overcomply with current regulations, possibly to the extent that is socially optimal. More research on factors affecting company carbon emissions levels and intensity is required. | PhD | financial market, climate, environment, pollut | 10, 13 |
| Maltseva, Elena | Solomon, Peter | Welfare Reforms in Post-Soviet States: A Comparison of Social Benefits Reform in Russia and Kazakhstan | Political Science | 2012-11 | Concerned with the question of why governments display varying degrees of success in implementing social reforms, (judged by their ability to arrive at coherent policy outcomes), my dissertation aims to identify the most important factors responsible for the stagnation of social benefits reform in Russia, as opposed to its successful implementation in Kazakhstan. Given their comparable Soviet political and economic characteristics in the immediate aftermath of Communism’s disintegration, why did the implementation of social benefits reform succeed in Kazakhstan, but largely fail in Russia? I argue that although several political and institutional factors did, to a certain degree, influence the course of social benefits reform in these two countries, their success or failure was ultimately determined by the capacity of key state actors to frame the problem and form an effective policy coalition that could further the reform agenda despite various political and institutional obstacles and socioeconomic challenges. In the case of Kazakhstan, the successful implementation of the social benefits reform was a result of a bold and skilful endeavour by Kazakhstani authorities, who used the existing conditions to justify the reform initiative and achieve the reform’s original objectives. By contrast, in Russia, the failure to effectively restructure the old Soviet social benefits system was rooted largely in the political instability of the Yeltsin era, and a lack of commitment to the reforms on the part of key political actors. And when the reform was finally launched, its ill-considered policies and the government’s failure to form the broad coalition and effectively frame the problem led to public protests and subsequent reform stagnation. Based on in-depth fieldwork conducted in Russia and Kazakhstan in 2006 and 2008, my study enriches the literature on the transformation of post-communist welfare regimes, and contributes important insights to the central question in the literature on public policy, that is, when, why and how policies change. It also enhances our understanding of political and public policy processes in transitional and competitive authoritarian contexts. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Manesh, Maryam Edalat | Sain, Mohini | Utilization of Pulp and Paper Mill Sludge as Filler in Nylon Biocomposite Production | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2012-06 | The biological treatment of pulp and paper mills effluents results in the production of waste secondary sludge which is hard and costly to dewater and dispose. Secondary sludge, which is structurally comparable to the municipal sewage sludge, is composed of microbial cells, organic woody materials, and ash. In this work, the use of this waste biosolid as renewable and cost-cutting filler in the composite industry is proposed. Moreover, the effect of enzymatic treatment of the waste biosolid on the final properties of the manufactured biocomposite is studied. The high protein content of the secondary sludge (35 ± 5%) and the surface thermodynamics measured by Inverse Gas chromatography (IGC) led us to choose Nylon 11 as the main polymeric matrix. The biocomposites samples produced by compounding and injection molding of different mixtures of dried secondary sludge and Nylon were tested. The results of mechanical strength tests showed that a 10% sludge content does not lead to any significant deterioration of either tensile or flexural strengths. Therefore, it is concluded that the secondary sludge may be used as filler to reduce the cost while maintaining the mechanical properties of Nylon. Enzymatic modification of the waste biosolid to advance its application from cheapening filler to reinforcing filler has also been proposed in this work. Lipase and laccase utilized for the modification of the sludge in order to reduce the hydrophobicity and increase the molecular weight, respectively. Lipase application did not lead to any significant changes in either tensile or flexural strengths. This is attributed to the rather low content of lipids in the sludge. On the other hand, enzymatic modification of the sludge by laccase which increases the molecular weight of the existing lignins, resulted in significant improvement of the flexural strength of the manufactured biocomposite. | PhD | water, renewable, waste | 6, 7, 12 |
| Manion, Caroline | Mundy, Karen | Girls' Education as a Means or End of Development? A Case Study of Gender and Education Policy Knowledge and Action in the Gambia | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-06 | Girls’ education has been promoted by the international development community for over two decades; however, it has proven harder to promote gender equality through education than it has been to promote gender parity in education. Of significance is the global circulation and co-existence of two competing rationales for the importance of girls’ education: economic efficiency and social justice. The cost of ignoring how and why Southern governments and their development partners choose to promote girls’ education is high: an over-emphasis on economic efficiency can mean that the root causes of gendered inequalities in society remain unchallenged, and more social justice-oriented reforms become marginalized. This thesis uses a critical feminist lens to qualitatively investigate the role and significance of human capital, human rights, and human capabilities policy models in the context of the production and enactment of gender equality in education policy knowledge in The Gambia, a small, aid-dependent Muslim nation in West Africa. The purpose of the study was to assess the scope education policies provide for positive change in the lives of Gambian women and girls. Towards illuminating relations of power in and the politics of gender equality in education policy processes, the study compares and contrasts written texts with the perspectives of state and non-state policy actors. The study is based on data drawn from interviews, participant observation, and documentary analysis. The findings suggest that different gender equality in education ideas and practices have been selectively mobilized and incorporated into education policy processes in The Gambia. At the level of policy talk, girls’ education is framed as important for both national economic growth, and “women’s empowerment”. However, the policy solutions designed and implemented, with the support of donors, have tended to work with rather than against the status quo. Power and politics was evident in divergent interpretations and struggles to fix the meaning of key concepts such as gender, gender equality, gender equity, and empowerment. Religious beliefs, anti-feminist politics, and the national feminist movement were identified as important forces shaping gender equality in education knowledge and action in the country. | PhD | educat, gender, women, equality, economic growth, justice | 4, 5, 8, 16 |
| Mansfield, Elizabeth | Eakin, Joan | The Politics of Collaborative Prevention: A Sociological Account of Commemoratives and a Young Worker Safety Campaign | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-11 | In public health, prevention is a fundamentally political process as both the selection of problems to be addressed and solutions recommended reflect decisions that are informed by economic, social and cultural forces. Yet prevention is often presented as a monolithic enterprise, an objective and scientific discourse that does not take sides. Behind this facade of political neutrality, diversely positioned individuals and groups often fail to find and/or sustain a common ground for shared prevention initiatives. Increasingly, many prevention awareness campaigns focus upon true accounts or injury narratives that serve both as a catalyst to build multipartite consensus through developing shared collaborative prevention discourses and practices and to mobilize public support for health and safety issues. While the use of the true account form is a recommended strategy in the public health literature directed toward practitioners, the engagement of true accounts in prevention campaigns has not been adequately problematised and examined from a critical social theoretical perspective. A qualitative, sociologically oriented case study of the use of the true account form, the commemorative, in young worker safety campaigns is proposed to deepen our understanding of this particular type of prevention intervention in particular and prevention as an enterprise more generally. The study investigates the socio-historical context in which the Young Worker Memorial LifeQuilt, a Canadian young worker educational initiative, emerged and unraveled as a multipartite prevention campaign centered upon the true account form of consensus commemoratives. A key finding is that true accounts of young workers killed on the job are socially mediated to diffuse blame and build consensus between diversely positioned occupational health and safety practitioners and the family survivors of workplace tragedies. What is included and excluded from these true accounts of workplace injuries, as socially constructed narratives in multipartite prevention awareness campaigns, may be, in part, a product of the terms and conditions negotiated between lead players. The true accounts included in collaborative, cross-institutional prevention campaigns, while referencing real events, may be told in ways that accommodate and harmonize the political perspectives of diversely positioned stakeholders. Conversely, the true account form is a potentially problematic strategy for collaborative prevention discourses and practices, as consensus commemoratives can be retold as critical remembrances of workplace death, with the result that the unifying narrative of a shared, collective memory project is undermined. This dissertation finds that the activity of collaboration shapes prevention as a socio-political activity/practice. | PhD | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Manyimo, Lincoln Chivaraidze | Titchkosky, Tanya | The Strggle of the Struggling: Access to Higher Education for Physically Disabled People in Zimbabwe | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-11 | Abstract This dissertation examines questions of accessibility in relation to physically disabled high school graduates in Zimbabwe who are seeking to further their education. The work aims at giving voice to those who have been rendered voiceless in society in matters affecting their lives while also attending to how cultural experts and educational officials make sense of the lack of access to education faced by these disabled students. The study builds on previous research on poverty alleviation in Zimbabwe by the author (Manyimo, 2005) that showed that disabled people are among the poorest in the country and that lack of education together with low societal expectations exacerbates their poverty. Employing a qualitative research methodology, one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-two participants. The interviewees included 12 disabled high school graduates; selected 4 mothers of the graduates; two cultural experts; four senior administrators of universities and colleges; two members of associations of and for disabled people and eight government officials from ministries of education. Findings show that indigenous culture plays a significant role in determining how far disabled people can progress in education in Zimbabwe. The role of indigenous culture was characterized by the interviewees in relation to how they are marginalized by their own families, their own communities and the society. Due to the introduction of other cultures and religions in the country, the population suffers from competing cultural conceptions of disability that manifest themselves through societal attitudes toward disabled people. This dissertation, therefore, demonstrates the need to attend to indigenous knowledges as a framework for engaging and theorizing how students with physical disabilities can better achieve their educational aspirations. The work proposes an alternative model of disability based on indigenous cultural beliefs of the indigenous people in Zimbabwe. A set of recommendations was developed that reflect this need. Thus the dissertation makes significant contributions not only to Zimbabwe, but also to the field of disability studies research especially among societies with strong indigenous belief systems by documenting and attending to the usually unheard voices of students with physical disabilities. | PhD | poverty, equality, educat | 1, 4, 2005 |
| Marinoni, Astrid | Gans, Joshua | Three Essays on the Interplay between Entrepreneurship, iInnovation and Socioeconomic Phenomena | Management | 2020-06 | My dissertation is composed of three chapters that explore the relationships between entrepreneurship, innovation, and the broader economic and social dynamics that are shaping the modern world. In the area of entrepreneurship and innovation, one aspect that is often examined is that of the relationship between individuals and firms. In my work, I examine the role that social and economic factors play in shaping the environment within which entrepreneurs and innovators work and grow. The first chapter of the dissertation focuses on the impact of immigration on entrepreneurship and explores the consequences of start-up location on the number of immigrant-founded start-ups and their performance. I find that immigration has a positive effect on immigrant entrepreneurship only in non-enclave areas. Additional analyses uncovering the mechanism suggest that discrimination faced by immigrants in non-enclave areas might be the main driver for the increased entrepreneurship. In a second chapter on entrepreneurship, jointly authored with John Voorheis, we explore how entrepreneurship influences income inequality and social mobility in the United States. Shedding light on who gains from entrepreneurship is crucial to understanding whether investments in incubating potentially innovative start-up firms will produce socially beneficial outcomes. We find that entrepreneurship increases income inequality. Further, we find that this increase in income inequality arises because almost all the individual gains associated with increased entrepreneurship accrue to the top section of the income distribution. In the third chapter, joint with Michela Giorcelli and Nico Lacetera, we study the interplay between scientific progress and culture through text analysis on a corpus of about eight million books, with the use of machine learning techniques. We focus on a specific scientific breakthrough: the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin. Besides examining the diffusion of certain concepts that characterized this theory, we document their semantic changes over time. Our findings thus show a complex relationship between two key factors of long-term economic growth: science and culture. We argue that considering the evolution of these two factors jointly can offer new insights to the study of the determinants of economic development, and machine learning is a promising tool to explore these relationships. | Ph.D. | income distribution, equality, economic growth, innovation | 1, 5, 8, 9 |
| Markoulakis, Roula | Bonnie, Kirsh | The Social Relations of Accessibility: Explicating the Work of Accommodation for Students with Mental Health Problems in University | Rehabilitation Science | 2014-11 | Providing accessible education for students with mental health problems is an important aspect of social inclusion, as it increases educational attainment, subsequent employment opportunity and community participation. In universities, accommodations are provided where necessary with the intent of ensuring equal opportunity for all students. Despite the availability of accommodations, students with mental health problems continue to experience difficulty achieving academic success, suggesting a disjuncture between accommodations and their expected favourable outcomes within the social organization of the university. This Institutional Ethnography explores the social organization of university accessibility for students with mental health problems. Sixteen students with mental health problems and eight staff members of a large university in an urban setting participated in interviews focusing on the processes of seeking and implementing accommodations. I explored institutional texts for their ability to coordinate the actions of people in this setting, as the social organization of this university is informed by numerous texts that guide participants' work. Data analysis focused on asking questions of the data and mapping work processes, in order to develop an understanding of the social organization of accessibility and accommodation for these students. In the findings, I map and explicate what I have termed an "institutional accessibility mechanism", the set of work and texts that guide the university's social relations around accommodation and accessibility. These social relations involved staff and student work processes that maintained the mechanism and preserved institutional relations. Through the Institutional Accessibility Mechanism, the university appeared to place a focus on accommodation over accessibility and created work for individual students seeking access. This Mechanism also operated under assumptions of mental wellness and presented challenges for students with mental health problems. These findings have important implications for the development of higher education policies, which can enable students with mental health problems to have better chances of success in their academic endeavours. Promoting the inclusion of students with mental health problems in university can improve their educational and employment opportunities and further the prosperity of society as a whole. | Ph.D. | health, institution | 3, 16 |
| Markovic, Stefan | Wortmann, Ulrich G | QUATERNARY SULFUR CYCLE DYNAMICS | Earth Sciences | 2014 | The past 3 million years of Earth history are characterized by dramatic changes, which greatly affected the biogeochemical cycling of elements like carbon, sulfur and phosphorous. Here I investigate the effect of these changes on sulfur fluxes and microbially mediated sulfur cycling in marine sediments. Climate driven sea level fluctuations and dynamic topography have greatly affected the areal extent of the continental shelf during the Quaternary. In turn this affects organic matter burial rates and the relative importance of different organic matter remineralization pathways. Since microbial sulfur cycling is the dominant organic matter re-mineralization pathway in marine sediments, this must have affected marine sulfur cycling. Furthermore, previous studies suggested that Quaternary sea level fluctuations caused a considerable increase in the erosion of shelf sediments, which is closely tied to the re-oxidation of pyrite. Here, I use the marine barite record of sulfur and oxygen isotope ratios (d34S and d18O) of seawater sulfate for the past 4Ma to evaluate the implications of Quaternary sea level changes on the sulfur cycling. Quantitative interpretation of d34S and d18O data suggests that erosion during sea level lowstands was only partly compensated by increased sedimentation during times of rising sea levels and sea level highstands. Furthermore, my findings indicate that shelf systems reached a new equilibrium state about 700 kyr ago, which considerably slowed or terminated erosion of shelf sediments. Modeling results also show that microbial sulfur cycling changes proportionally with shelf area, resulting in a 15% reduction of microbial sulfur cycling over the last 2 Ma. This results in a 1-1.5 / drop in the marine sulfate d18O isotope value. While further work is needed to understand how shelf area changes affect the cycling of carbon, phosphorous and other elements, results presented here highlight the dynamic role of continental shelves in the global biogeochemical cycles. | Ph.D. | marine, climate | 13, 14 |
| Marshall, Lysandra | Wortley, Scot N | Racial Disparities in Police Stops in Kingston, Ontario: Democratic Racism and Canadian Racial Profiling in Theoretical Perspective | Criminology | 2017-03 | This study takes a quantitative and qualitative approach to examine police stops in an Ontario city. The author finds that Black residents were over stopped by police, and the over stopping may not be fully explained by the police-reported reasons and dispositions of the stops. In other words, the author suggests that police stops have less to do with crime control models of criminal justice, and more to do with surveiling marginalized populations. The author uses critical discourse analysis to examine news coverage of the racial profiling controversy in Ontario, including news reports on the study. The author argues that public discourse (both liberal 'anti-profiling' advocates and conservative supporters of police) contributes to the continued targeting of certain groups, by constructing an ideal victim of racial profiling (middle class, respectable), thus excluding all other subjects from legitimately seeking freedom from being hassled by police and having freedom of movement enjoyed by the nonprofiled population. The study also uncovers the influential role of police unions in Ontario in manipulating political discourse on race and policing. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Martensen, Alexandre Camargo | Fortin, Marie-Josee | Spatio-Temporal Connectivity in Dynamic Tropical Fragmented Landscapes | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-06 | Expanding human occupation on the planet reduces and fragments native habitats, threatening biodiversity, ecosystem functioning, and services. Tropical regions have recently been experiencing unprecedented amounts of forest conversion and fragmentation. As tropical forests harbor a large fraction of the worldâ s biodiversity, their loss and fragmentation has spearheaded the sixth mass extinction. Nevertheless, the tropical regions experience unique low intensity land-use and bioclimatic characteristics that result in highly dynamic forested landscapes. These dynamical landscapes, when subjected to the current scenario of intense global change, poses particular challenges for biodiversity conservation in human-modified landscapes. This thesis provides insights towards (i) the development of new metrics to quantify landscape dynamics; (ii) the assessment of the effects of land-use intensification on spatio-temporal dynamics and connectivity; and (iii) the quantification of potential drivers of these changes in the spatial dynamics. In the first part of my thesis, I developed a graph-theoretical method that incorporates the spatial dynamics of the landscape in the evaluation of landscape connectivity. I tested this method using a large set of Atlantic Forest landscapes of Brazil. In the second part of the thesis, I evaluated the effects of different drivers of landscape spatial dynamics, particularly focusing on land-use intensification alongside its economic and social drivers. My results pointed to the fact that land-use intensification reduces spatio-temporal dynamics of landscapes, as a large fraction of the land is locked up into one or a few intensified land cover types and the proportion of land abandoned to native habitat regeneration is low. Taken together, my findings have two broad impacts: (i) the new spatio-temporal indices reveal insights about landscape connectivity missed by purely spatial connectivity indices; and (ii) land-use intensification is happening across the globe, independent of the agricultural commodity that is being produced, reducing spatial dynamicity, which will lead to a decline in connectivity. Therefore, more land should be spared for biodiversity conservation in more highly intensified landscapes. Both findings have direct implications for spatial planning for conservation. | Ph.D. | conserv, forest, biodiversity | 15 |
| Martin, Adam | Thomas, Sean C. | Interspecific and Size-dependent Variation in Carbon Concentration and Wood Chemical Traits of Tropical Trees | Forestry | 2012-11 | Tropical forests play a major role in global carbon (C) dynamics and maintain some of the highest biological complexity on Earth; however, little is known about how variation in wood chemical traits contributes to tropical forest structure and function. This research examines inter- and intraspecific patterns in wood chemical traits in order to understand 1) the role wood chemical traits play in tropical forest C dynamics, and 2) the adaptive significance of wood chemical traits in tropical trees. I found wood C concentration varies widely among co-occurring tropical tree species, with average C concentration (47.4 ± 0.33% w/w (S.E.)) being significantly lower than values assumed in prominent forest C accounting protocols. Failing to account for this variation leads to overestimates of ~3.3 – 5.3% in tropical forest C accounting, an error that compounds significantly at larger spatial scales. I also show that oven drying samples prior to elemental analysis underestimates wood C concentration by 2.5 ± 0.17%, due to the loss of the “volatile C fraction”. Counter to expectations, I found wood C concentration is not ii phylogenetically conserved nor correlated to species demography or life history traits. Wood chemical traits showed consistent size-dependent patterns: wood C (in 16 of 24 species) and lignin (in 15 of 16 species) was higher in saplings vs. conspecific canopy trees. These patterns, complimented by phylogenetic analyses, suggest saplings require wood chemical traits that confer greater pathogen defense. When analyzed across a continuous size spectrum, I found wood C concentration (and leaf structural traits) increases linearly, while wood starch concentration (and leaf traits associated with C gain) shows “hump-shaped” patterns with peak values closely preceding reproductive onset; the latter result suggests C may limit growth in larger trees. Overall, my dissertation provides one of the first comprehensive examinations of wood chemical trait variation in tropical trees. In doing so it provides novel, timely, and critical insights into how wood chemical traits contribute to tropical forest structure and function. | PhD | conserv | 15 |
| Martin, Mary S. | Troper, Harold M. | The 1990 Kirpan Case: Cultural Conflict and the Development of Equity Policy in the Peel District School Board | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | In 1990, a case came before the Ontario Human Rights Commission involving the collision of a religious rights policy enshrined in the Ontario Human Rights Code 1981 and a Peel Board of Education disciplinary policy prohibiting weapons including the kirpan, a dagger-like article of religious faith worn by baptized Sikhs. Harbhajan Singh Pandori claimed infringement of his religious rights as a Sikh under the Code. In a joint complaint, the Ontario Human Rights Commission alleged the Code had been violated in a Peel Board policy restricting the religious rights of Sikhs by prohibiting the kirpan. Attempts to mediate between complainant Sikhs and the Peel Board failed. The dispute went before an Ontario Human Rights Commission tribunal adjudicated by Rabbi W. Gunther Plaut who ruled that the kirpan was a religious symbol and could be worn to school subject to restrictions. The Pandori kirpan case illustrates the complexity of resolving issues of cultural and religious conflict in public institutions undergoing demographic change. Significant to the kirpan case were Canadian immigration policy changes which eliminated race and ethnicity from admission criteria. As a result, the Region of Peel witnessed significant intake of immigrants including Sikhs, some of whom insisted on their right to wear a kirpan. The extensive public debate that followed afforded valuable insight on the political process of policy-making in education and accommodating diversity in public educational institutions. The debate also set the stage for the development of the Peel Board’s equity policy documents--Manifesting Encouraging and Respectful Environments and The Future We Want launched in 2000. Despite the new equity documents, some observers have remarked that institutional change is slow unless pressure is applied by the courts or the Ontario Human Rights Commission. While the kirpan issue has been put to rest in Canada, issues of competing rights continue to challenge Canadians. The kirpan case demonstrates that balancing competing rights in a multicultural society is an ongoing struggle with no final resolution. In the twenty-first century, as Canada continues to diversify, debates concerning accommodation continue to be reflected in the public schools. | EDD | rights | 16 |
| Mashford-Pringle, Angela Rose | Young, T. Kue | Self-determination in Health Care: A Multiple Case Study of Four First Nations Communities in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-06 | The perceived level of self-determination in health care in four First Nations communities in Canada is examined through a multiple case study approach. Twenty-three participants from federal, provincial and First Nations governments as well as health care professionals in the communities of Blood Tribe, Lac La Ronge, Garden Hill and Wasagamack First Nations provided insight into the diversity of perception of self-determination in First Nations health care. The difference in definition between Aboriginal and the federal and provincial governments is a factor in the varying perceptions of the level of control First Nations communities have over their health care system. Participants from the four First Nations communities perceived their level of self-determination over their health care system to be much lower than the level perceived by provincial and federal government participants. The organization and delivery of health care is based on the location of the community, the availability of the human resources, the level of communication, the amount of community resources, and the ability to self-manage. The socio-political history including impact of contact, residential schools, and integration of Aboriginal worldview are factors in the organization and delivery of health care as well as the perceived level of self-determination that the community sees. The duration and intensity of contact influences how health care is organized as the communities become more familiarized with the biomedical model that most Canadians use. Having a holistic health care system that includes acknowledging the socio-political history, culture, language, worldview and traditional medicines is important to the four First Nations communities, but this has not been fully embraced in any of the communities. Despite their differences, all four communities are working toward self-determination that hopefully would result in an ‘ideal’ First Nations health care system which is holistic, cultural, spiritual, and interdisciplinary and ultimately lead to full management of the health care system. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Mason, Stephanie | Nathens, Avery B||Jeschke, Marc G | A population-based evaluation of long-term outcomes following major burn injury | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-06 | Introduction: Advances in critical care and the regionalization of burn care have resulted in a significant decrease in mortality after burn injury such that most burn-injured patients are expected to survive. This thesis aimed to evaluate and characterize long-term outcomes following major burn injury. Methods: Using linked health administrative data, we identified adults who sustained major burn injury during 2003-2014. First, we evaluated temporal changes in the incidence and in-hospital mortality of burn injury. We then estimated five-year risk-adjusted rates and principal causes of emergency department visits and readmissions. A self-matched longitudinal cohort study was performed to compare rates of mental illness-related healthcare utilization in the 3 years before and after burn. Finally, a matched cohort study was performed to estimate 5-year mortality after burn. Results: The incidence of burn injury remained stable over time, and significant reductions in the overall in-hospital mortality rate occurred; the odds of death in 2010-2013 were significantly lower than 2003-2006 (odds ratio (OR) 0.39, 95% CI 0.25-0.61). In the five years after discharge from the index burn admission, 70% of patients had >1 emergency department (ED) visit, and 30% had an unplanned readmission. The principal cause of healthcare utilization was unintentional injury, followed by mental illness and respiratory disease. Patients who received burn center care had significantly lower rates of ED visits (rate ratio 0.64, 95% CI 0.56-0.73) and readmissions (hazard ratio 0.77, 95% CI 0.65-0.92). Burn injury was not associated with a higher rate of mental health visits compared to the pre-injury period (RR 0.97, 95% CI 0.78-1.20), but was associated with a two-fold increase in self-harm (RR 1.95 (95% CI 1.15-3.33). Five-year mortality after burn injury was 11%, compared to 4% among matched controls. The hazard ratio was greatest during the first year after discharge (HR 4.15, 95% CI 3.17-5.42). Conclusions: Burn injury confers a physical and psychological impact up to five years after discharge, associated with high rates of healthcare utilization and increased late mortality compared to matched controls. Further development of consolidated and focused burn care, and improved mental healthcare, offer an opportunity to improve outcomes after burn injury. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Masoom, Hussain | Simpson, Andre J. | The Development of Environmental Comprehensive Multiphase Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy | Chemistry | 2015-11 | Soil is the most complex mixture on this planet and is central to the transport of contaminants, carbon cycling and sustainable agriculture. However, our understanding of soil is limited in large part due to the lack of analytical approaches that can provide detail information on molecular structure and interactions in the native state. Current pre-treatment practices remove key synergies between components that are responsible for soil's reactivity, kinetics, interactions and numerous other characteristics. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has played an integral role in furthering soil research because of its versatility and non-destructive nature, but has not been able to study all phases of matter (solid, liquids, and gels) at once in a whole unaltered soil. Recently, comprehensive multiphase NMR (CMP-NMR) was introduced and combines traditional NMR techniques resulting in an instrument that has capabilities allowing for whole soil analysis. After an introduction of soil and NMR, the rst two research chapters focus on solving two key issues with environmental NMR, sensitivity and water suppression through experimental means. Sensitivity is increased by focusing NMR signals into one single spike and forgoing chemical shift. The result is an experiment that can determine experimental run time in low concentration samples as well as a rapid detection system for use in kinetics or dynamics. In the next chapter, a robust water suppression method is developed and applied to real environmental samples including soil by building on the current standard, SPR-W5-WATERGATE. The latter two research chapters apply CMP-NMR to soil research by rst characterizing the composition and structure of soil in its native state. It is found that aliphatic and carbohydrate components are available at the water interface while proteins from microbes and lignin are buried under the surface with hydrogen bonds and hydrophobicity playing a key role in their protection. Finally, contaminant interactions are probed in all phases where kinetics, sorption orientation, and soil binding domains are characterized in all phases. As a whole, this thesis helps to develop CMP-NMR for use in soil research and positions it as an important novel NMR technology with potential widespread application in a range of elds including materials research, biology, biochemistry and medicine. | Ph.D. | agriculturel environment, water | 2, 6, 13 |
| Mathew, Jaby | Williams, Melissa S. | Representation in the Shadow of Colonialism: Conceptions of Political Representation in 19th and 20th Century India | Political Science | 2017-11 | The starting point of this dissertation is the persistent political underrepresentation of Muslims in Indian legislatures since independence, and how this impugns Indian democracyâ s claim to be egalitarian and inclusive. The study argues that specific institutional arrangements for enhancing democratic representation of marginalized groups must be understood in their historical context. Therefore, this dissertation examines the debates over political representation in colonial India, and the terms of settlement in the Constituent Assembly of India, where group representation rights were acknowledged for certain groups but not for religious minorities. Mapping these debates, this work illustrates how the political sociology underlying constituency definition shifted over time and generated the contemporary structure of political exclusion for Muslims. Further, the specific history of political representation in India reveals its use for both non-democratic (representation for ruling or governance) and democratic (representation for self-rule or self-governance) purposes. This dissertation argues that Indian thinkersâ ideas of political representation bear a dual relationship to colonial thinking about representation as a tool for control and governance â a duality that engendered possibilities for an alternative version of liberalism in India. However, rather than fully institutionalize available alternatives to standard liberal ideas of political representation, the Constituent Assembly replicated colonial strategies and mechanisms. Through the historical reconstruction of arguments for group representation, I offer a normative defense for remedial measures to the problem of underrepresentation of Muslims in India and to move away from the shadow of colonialism on matters of political representation. | Ph.D. | inclusive, equality, institution, rights | 4, 5, 16 |
| Mathews, Vanessa Kirsty | Leslie, Deborah ||Lewis, Robert | Place Differentiation: Redeveloping the Distillery District, Toronto | Geography | 2010-11 | What role does place differentiation play in contemporary urban redevelopment processes, and how is it constructed, practiced, and governed? Under heightened forms of interurban competition fueled by processes of globalization, there is a desire by place-makers to construct and market a unique sense of place. While there is consensus that place promotion plays a role in reconstructing landscapes, how place differentiation operates – and can be operationalized – in processes of urban redevelopment is under-theorized in the literature. In this thesis, I produce a typology of four strategies of differentiation – negation, coherence, residue, multiplicity – which reside within capital transformations and which require activation by a set of social actors. I situate these ideas via an examination of the redevelopment of the Gooderham and Worts distillery, renamed the Distillery District, which opened to the public in 2003. Under the direction of the private sector, the site was transformed from a space of alcohol production to a space of cultural consumption. The developers used a two pronged approach for the site’s redevelopment: historic preservation and arts-led regeneration. Using a mixed method approach including textual analysis, in-depth interviews, visual analysis, and site observation, I examine the strategies used to market the Distillery as a distinct place, and the effects of this marketing strategy on the valuation of art, history, and space. Two central arguments direct the thesis: first, in an attempt to construct place differentiation, what emerges is a sense of sameness which limits the potential of the district and produces a disconnect between the space and its users; second, it is only by understanding how differentiation operates in discourse and practice that alternative formations of place-making can emerge and socio-spatial disconnectedness can be rethought. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Matte, Nicholas | Elspeth, H. Brown | Historicizing Liberal American Transnormativities: Media, Medicine, Activism, 1960-1990 | History | 2014-11 | Historicizing Liberal American Transnormativities: Medicine, Media, Activism, 1960-1990Nicholas MatteDoctor of PhilosophyGraduate Department of HistoryUniversity of Toronto2014AbstractHow did trans people emerge as a minority group in the United States between 1960 and 1990? Trans people and advocates have been articulating ways to improve the social lives of trans people throughout the second half of the twentieth century by drawing on discourses of American liberalism. "Historicizing Liberal American Transnormativities" provides insight into the norms, definitions, expectations and tactics developed by trans advocates in social and cultural conditions not of their choosing. It draws on trans-centric primary sources including conference proceedings, newsletters and magazines produced by, for, or about trans people, as well as mainstream media coverage of trans people and issues. These sources enrich existing accounts of pathologization, gay liberation, employment discrimination, sex activism, and other topics of broad concern.The first two chapters show that the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF) worked with trans advocates and "helping professionals" in fields such as medicine, law, religion, and social work to promote social acceptance on the basis of medicalized notions of transsexuality, gender dysphoria, and various diagnostic and treatment options. The third chapter looks at the worlds of female impersonators, transvestites, and the Queens Liberation Front to argue that trans people like Lee Brewster and Sandy Mesics developed their politics in the contexts of commercial and entertainment cultures, gay liberation, feminism, and pornography. The final chapter looks at a series of cases in which a number of white transsexuals, including Paula Grossman, Steve Dain, Joanna Clark, Karen Ulane, and Bobbie Lea Bennett, each fought against the discrimination they faced in employment and health care. They asked the courts to apply the Civil Rights Act and the Rehabilitation Act to their situations and they became galvanizing public figures in social debates about the nature of gendered participation in American economy and society. Overall, "Historicizing Liberal American Transnormativities" shows that American liberalism has been central to trans advocacy and the formation of trans people as a minority group in the United States between 1960 and 1990. | Ph.D. | gender, queer, equality, rights | 5, 16 |
| Maunula, Laena | Robertson, Ann | Citizenship in a Post-Pandemic World: A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of H1N1 in the Canadian Print News Media | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-11 | The 2009/2010 outbreak of H1N1 thrust pandemic influenza into the media spotlight. Not only did the outbreak dominate media coverage during that time, but news coverage also played an integral part in the official public health response for public communication across Canada. As influenza pandemics are notoriously fraught with scientific uncertainty, much of that news coverage centred on risk (e.g. infection, vaccination). Over the past several decades, risk has emerged as a central organizing principle and a prevailing characteristic of modernity, and recent studies on the discursive constitution of risk claim that risk discourses operate as a technology of governance within neoliberal societies. To date, very little work has been done to explore the discursive constitution of H1N1, or H1N1 risk, within the news media. To address this gap, I analyzed print news coverage of the H1N1 outbreak within two major English-language, Canadian daily newspapers, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star. Applying a governmentality and risk perspective as an analytic lens, and informed by the theoretical concepts of biopower and biopedagogy, I explored how media discourses on risk made possible particular ways of acting, seeing, and talking about ourselves, both as individuals and in social groups. The results indicate that three distinct strands of risk discourse were operating in the media during the H1N1 pandemic: ‘causal tales’ which serve as explanations of risk; ‘cautionary tales’ which warn of expanded H1N1 risk; and, ‘precautionary tales’ which offer instructions for managing H1N1 risk. I argue that these results suggest a shifting discursive terrain surrounding H1N1 risk and its management, in which each new ‘tale’ recalibrates the conditions of possibility for H1N1, and hails the audience into a new H1N1 storyline and a heightened awareness of H1N1 risk. Further, I argue that this expansion of ‘risk space’ makes possible a particular kind of ‘pandemic subject’ which operates as a neo-liberal bio-citizen. Lastly, I posit that there is a heretofore untheorized risk rationality, operating in the context of pandemic influenza, that pertains to the case-by-case assessment of risks located within the social interactions of daily life, which I term ‘social-interactive risk’. | Ph.D. | health, governance | 3, 16 |
| Mauthner, Oliver Erich | Angus, Jan | The New Normal: A Bourdieusian Examination of Living into Young Adulthood being a Paediatric Heart Transplant Recipient | Nursing Science | 2014-03 | Improved success of paediatric cardiac transplantation has resulted in increased survival of recipients into young adulthood (19 to 29 years of age). Young adults who received a heart transplant during childhood have experienced multiple life sustaining procedures. As survival and longevity increase, it is clear that transplant recipients experience negative physiological, psychological and social sequelae. With heart transplant offering individuals a chance to extend life into young adulthood, recipients need lifelong care and at age 18 they will transition from paediatric to adult healthcare facilities. The study addressed young adults circumstances of existence and their competing interests within various social environments. This research project applied Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical concepts of habitus, field and capital, to conceptualize and engage with empirical knowledge production about young adults who have received a heart transplant during childhood. Using visual methodology, focused open-ended interviews were conducted with 12 young adults who had a heart transplant during childhood. Bourdieu’s work provided a theoretical framework to investigate transplant recipients’ identities and social repositioning in relation to dominant discourses of organ transplant and shifting relationships with health services providers. This study involved an iterative process to identify recipients’ encounters and new compositions in relation with others, in order to answer the research objective. These findings highlight that young adult transplant recipients struggle with relational dispositions that excludes them from various fields of social engagement; their struggle and exclusion from various fields is symbolic and is embedded in the structure of the dominant social order of the field from where they become excluded; the social order is taken up and embodied, leading young transplant recipients to practices of accommodation and “normalization”. Changes in healthcare practices, attuned to person implications and peer relationships can begin to address young transplant recipients’ contradictory social positions. Such an approach can potentially lead to improvement in ongoing care and services for young adults who require a lifetime of care. At the same time, it will allow nurses to better prepare and counsel young individuals who are preparing for a heart transplant. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Mawani, Farah N | O'Campo, Patricia | Conceptualization, Measurement, and Association of Underemployment to Mental Health Inequities between Immigrant and Canadian-born Labour Force Participants | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-06 | This thesis aims to increase understanding of the association of underemployment (unemployment or overqualification) to mental health inequities between immigrant and Canadian-born labour force participants. The first paper provides a theoretical framework to guide design, analyses and interpretation of findings for this thesis, and future research on social determinants of mental health inequities. The second paper uses the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) Cycle 1.2 to assess the construct validity of self-rated mental health (SRMH) for the overall population, and sub-groups by immigrant status and sex. Positive associations between SRMH and a comprehensive array of mental morbidity measures were large and consistent, but a sizeable percentage of respondents with mental morbidity did not rate their mental health as fair/poor. SRMH is useful for assessing social determinants of inequities in general mental health, but not specific mental health morbidities. The third paper uses CCHS Cycle 2.1 (2003) to examine the association of underemployment to fair/poor self-rated mental health (SRMH) in: 1. labour force participants (18-64yrs) in Canada, and 2. between a. immigrants vs. Canadian-born labour force participants, and b. recent immigrant ( | Ph.D. | employment, equitable, labour | 4, 8 |
| Mawji, Nazira | Razack, Sherene | Raced and Gendered Subjectivities in the Diasporas: Exploring the Role of Generationally Transferred Local ‘Subjugated’ Knowledges in the Education of Canadian Ismaili Women of Indian East African Heritage | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06 | Ugandan Canadian Ismaili Muslim women are often subsumed within the larger immigrant ‘South Asian’ (Brown) women collective and pathologized as passive or docile victims of oppressive systems rather than actors who express a feminist commitment. This thesis is an inquiry that transforms this stereotypical image by examining the local forms of agency exhibited by fifteen twice/thrice immigrant East African Ismaili women who trace their roots to the Indian subcontinent. Through life narratives of five triads of three generations of women from the same families – Grandmothers, Mothers and Daughters – I historicize the experiences of the women of the first two generations in two different geographical locations, East Africa and Canada, to demonstrate how the encounter between a) traditional gender role expectations, b) the modernizing policies and gender reform strategized by the third and fourth Aga Khans, and c) newer influences in the places of settlement cause these women to experience contradictions in their multiple subject positions in their intersectional locations of gender, race/colour, class and religion. As a result, these Ismaili women create, utilize and transmit local knowledges, based on a local ideology, to subsequent generations of women that enables them to negotiate cultural patriarchy and White hegemony to establish home and belonging in places of settlement. This local ideology teaches them to be mindful; to practice ethics of hard work, diplomacy, and resourcefulness; to make investments in family and community and not physical places or material things; and to attain self-sufficiency through formal education and financial independence. Through the locally constructed covert and overt resistance technologies women create and utilize, these Ismaili women demonstrate that their agency is endemic to their diaspora history, taking subtle and ambivalent forms as the women negotiate at the margins of power, at times constrained but also resisting and undermining power relations to survive and even thrive in diaspora space. | Ph.D. | women, gender | 5 |
| Maxwell, Krista | Birn, Anne-Emanuelle ||McElhinny, Bonnie | Making History Heal: Settler-colonialism and Urban Indigenous Healing in Ontario, 1970s-2010 | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-06 | This thesis focuses on the interrelationship between Canadian colonial histories and Indigenous healing. I begin by problematising how colonialism is invoked in contemporary scholarship on Aboriginal health and healing, and arguing for more precise historical methods and a more relational understanding of colonial processes. Historicising Indigenous agency is integral to this analysis. Whilst colonial continuities in contemporary Canadian public policy discourse is an important theme, I also attend to social movements, institutions, professions, and political and economic forces beyond the state. Indigenous healing as a socio-political movement itself has a history dating at least to the late 1960s. Urban Indigenous healing discourse is characterised by linking present-day suffering to collective historical losses, and valorizing the reclamation of Indigenous identity, knowledge and social relations. Drawing on urban Indigenous social histories from Kenora and Toronto, I consider the urban healing movement as an example of Indigenous resistance influenced by the international decolonization and North American Red Power movements, but which over time has also engaged with dominant institutions, professions, policies, and discourses, such as the concept of trauma. My analysis considers professionals and patients invoking historical trauma as political agents, both responding to and participating in broader shifts in the moral economy. These shifts have created the conditions of possibility for public victimhood to become a viable strategy for attracting attention and resources to suffering and injustice. The thesis highlights the centrality and complexity of self-determination in urban Indigenous healing, drawing on historical and ethnographic analysis from three southern Ontario cities. I analyse how the liberal multiculturalism paradigm dominant in health policy and health care settings contributes to mental health professionals’ failure to recognise Aboriginal clients and issues. I argue that characterising pan-Aboriginal and ethno-national healing as approaches in opposition to one another produces an insufficiently nuanced analysis in the context of urban Indigenous subjectivities and social relations, where both approaches are valuable for different reasons. The thesis urges greater attention to the role of languages and local histories, and to the threat which dominant policy discourses on residential schools and mental health pose to the maintenance of distinct ethno-national histories, epistemologies and traditions in urban Indigenous healing. | PhD | health, institution | 3, 16 |
| May, Jeffrey John | Ruddick, Susan ||Walks, Alan | Race, Gender, Youth, and Urban Space: Young Men of Colour and Homelessness in the Greater Toronto Area | Geography | 2013-11 | What are the relationships between race, gender, homelessness, and urban space? This research explores these relationships through the experiences of Canadian-born young men of colour in the Greater Toronto Area. Foregrounding their lived experience through ethnographic methods, I ask how does homelessness affect the lives of young men in different spaces of a large city and in relationship to race and gender? How do these young men’s experiences of the city help us understand the city? This research draws upon diverse bodies of theory in urban, cultural, feminist, and anti-racist geographies. I expand these literatures to illustrate connections between systems of socio-spatial domination such as racism, sexism, and classism. Through 40 interviews and 8 of what I call ‘Where-I-Live-Tours’, a tour of urban space I conduct with the participant, I explore the material and affective dimensions of space in the lives of these young men. By paying attention to the material and affective dimensions of homelessness, I illustrate how relationships between race, gender, homelessness, and urban space emerge in everyday experiences. In investigating the non-conscious affective dimensions of urban life, I combine representational and material understandings of the city to afford an understanding of the complex micro-geographies of urban space. I investigate the affective forces that shape how people live in the city, moving them through some spaces and attracting them and repelling them from others. Research findings indicate micro-geographic racial ‘vibrations’ that see race emerge differently around the GTA. Young men of colour also negotiate a variety of (in)visibilities in their lives in the city, including physical, imagined, political, and social. Their homelessness means they have atypical experiences of ‘home’ and they create multiple alternative forms of home or belonging. This research follows in feminist and anti-racist research traditions that examine marginalization and oppression to critique dominance and privilege. It allows us to see how marginalized actors can enact resiliencies and resistances and be creative and productive of identity and urban space. This research illustrates the multifarious relationships people have with city space and how an accumulation of forces shapes people’s everyday lives in the city. | PhD | gender, poverty | 1, 5 |
| Mayrand, Helene | Brunnée, Jutta | Protecting the Arctic Environment in the Climate Change Context: A Critical Legal Analysis | Law | 2014-06 | The environmental challenges the Arctic region faces in the climate change context have prompted an abundant literature on what is to be done to protect the Arctic environment. The thesis addresses the question of what is international law’s role in promoting Arctic environmental protection, but taking a different perspective than previous research on the issue. It develops a new critical approach to analyze how international law adopted to protect the environment is in fact part of the problem. The theoretical framework bridges Martti Koskenniemi’s critical approach and the interactional account of international law developed by Jutta Brunnée and Stephen Toope. These two approaches provide conceptual and methodological tools to understand the mutual influence of international actors and structures on legal discourse. This framework is applied to four main Arctic environmental challenges in the context of climate change: increased oil and gas activities, increased shipping, adverse effects on indigenous peoples’ environment and culture and biodiversity depletion. For each case study, the thesis provide a three-stage analysis to understand the development of international law to address these issues, the influence of political considerations on such law and the normative potential of each of the different rules, standards, principles and rights to create a sense of legal obligation. This analysis sheds light on when international has enabled practices of legality, where international actors support the rule, right or standard at issue, fell bound by it and follow it in practice. The analysis also reveals the influence of the bias in favour of neoliberal development in legal discourse. This bias has favoured the development, interpretation and application of international law to promote the assertion of sovereignty over natural resources, industry deregulation, the promotion of trade, little consideration for indigenous peoples’ human rights and the consideration of biological resources in economic terms. | SJD | industr, natural resources, environment, biodiversity, rights | 9, 13, 15, 16 |
| Mayuzumi, Kimine | Acker, Sandra | Seeking Possibilities in a Transnational Context: Asian Women Faculty in the Canadian Academy | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-06 | This dissertation examines the questions: “What are the experiences of Asian women faculty in the Canadian academy?” and “How do they navigate this space?” The study aims to generate new insights into how this understudied and underrepresented population negotiates various aspects of identity, such as gender, race, language and citizenship, as they pursue their academic careers. It provides an original examination of how “Asian” women faculty who have transnational life experience interpret the Canadian academy. Using a qualitative inquiry methodology with a transnational feminist perspective, I conducted in-depth interviews with nine Asian women faculty members in Canadian universities concerning their motivations, desires, contradictions, struggles, and coping strategies within their academic lives. Themes for the analysis arose from the literature, the conceptual framework, my own background and the data. Four major themes organize the analysis: 1) what impact the socially constructed discourse of Canadian citizenry has in the everyday lives of Asian women faculty and how “Asian-woman-ness” operates in the given contexts; 2) what technical difficulties and social barriers emerge from Asian women faculty’s experiences with spoken and written English language; 3) what “cultural logics” Asian women faculty utilize in order to survive/thrive in their social locations as Asian women in the Canadian academy; and 4) how Asian women faculty create their own legitimate space from their marginalized points of view. Through the dual process of their citizenry being de-legitimized in the academy and the nation-state, Asian women faculty strive to become legitimate through creating alternative understandings and definitions of their academic lives. This study was meant to initiate and promote reconfiguration of study on faculty’s lives by foregrounding the transnational feminist framework, which looks at/beyond the institutional, national and temporal borders and at the same time pays close attention to gender and race within the different types of borders. The study suggests that efforts to make higher education more diverse are more complex than some might imagine. | PhD | gender, women, institution | 5, 16 |
| McAuliffe, Corey | Di Ruggiero, Erica||Sellen, Daniel | A Phenomenological Account of Women Graduate Students: Lived Experience of Challenges in Global Public Health Practice | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-06 | During the last two decades academic global public health grew dramatically, including higher student demand to participate in internationally-based fieldwork. As a foundational space for graduate level training, practice, and research activities, the university plays a primary and significant role in the formation and future practice of students. While academic research and practice opportunities within international settings may provide unique experiences for U.S. and Canadian graduate students, it remains an overlooked area of inquiry. At times, these experiences can be intensely challenging or distressing, with additional burdens experienced by women. This study aims to gain insight into the lived experience of Canadian and U.S. women graduate students participating in global public health practice, and how they experience this phenomenon. This study is situated within Max van Manen’s qualitative methodology, phenomenology of practice. This hermeneutic approach is aimed at meaning-making through emotional, embodied, existential, and pathic ways of knowing. Seven women participated in 18 in-depth phenomenological interviews, while 18 women completed a guided writing exercise. Data creation methods were designed to capture lived experience descriptions of global public health practice. Key themes discussed in this dissertation include sexual and gender-based violence and harassment, discomfort with privilege, mental health challenges (specifically depression), and not being heard. Further findings focused on the burden of hidden labor performed by women to keep themselves safe from sexual and gender-based violence, including discussion on travel safety and transportation, witnessing or experiencing violence, lack of preparedness or follow-up, financial burdens and stress, and support networks and peer relationships as protective. The experience of participating in global public health practice is of particular consequence to the training, education, and future practice of graduate students. This study holds the potential to positively affect an individual’s experience, and thus practice, through offering new meaning structures, language for an unfamiliar experience, or ways to describe, conceive of, and respond to global public health fieldwork. Furthermore, by dedicating space to this phenomenon and giving voice to women graduate students’ lived experience, public health institutions may be better able to recognize, validate, respond to, and support students participating in global public health practice. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| McCaig, Brian | Brandt, Loren | Empirical Essays on Poverty, Inequality, and Social Welfare | Economics | 2009-11 | This thesis consists of three empirical chapters related to distributional outcomes, such as poverty and inequality, in three different contexts. Chapter 1 outlines a class of statistical procedures that permit testing of a broad range of multidimensional stochastic dominance hypotheses. We apply the procedures to data on income and leisure hours for individuals in Germany, the UK, and the USA. We find that no country first-order stochastically dominates the others in both dimensions for all years of comparison. Furthermore, while in general the USA stochastically dominates Germany and the UK with respect to income, in most periods Germany stochastically dominates with respect to leisure hours. Finally, we find evidence that bivariate poverty is lower in Germany than in either the UK or the USA. On the other hand, poverty comparisons between the UK and the USA are sensitive to the subpopulation of individuals considered. Chapter 2 provides a detailed description of the evolution of income inequality in Vietnam between 1993 and 2006. We construct consistent estimates of annual household income using five nationally representative household surveys. Our main finding is that Vietnam’s rapid growth was accompanied by a reduction in inequality between 1993 and 2002 and an unchanged level of inequality between 2002 and 2006. We find that strong growth in employment income and robust growth of cropping income played an important role in decreasing rural inequality, while the growth of wage income and the stagnation of household business income similarly contributed to the reduction in urban inequality. Chapter 3 examines the impacts of the 2001 U.S.-Vietnam Bilateral Trade Agreement on provincial poverty level in Vietnam. My main finding is that provinces that were more exposed to the U.S. tariff cuts experienced faster decreases in poverty between 2002 and 2004. I subsequently explore three labour market channels from the trade agreement to poverty alleviation. Provinces that were more exposed to the tariff cuts experienced (1) increases in provincial wage premiums for low-skilled workers, (2) faster movement into wage and salaried jobs for low-skilled workers, and (3) more rapid job growth in formal enterprises. | PhD | poverty, equality, inequality, employment | 1, 5, 8, 10 |
| McCallum, Lindsay Catherine | Stefanovic, Ingrid | Development and Application of Strategies for Health Impact Assessment of Projects and Policies | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2017-02 | Health Impact Assessment (HIA) is a combination of procedures, methods and tools used to evaluate potential health outcomes associated with proposed projects, programs and policies. An HIA differs from other types of assessments in its consideration of both positive and negative health outcomes, and inclusion of social and economic determinants of health. Although HIA has evolved over the past two decades, it remains underutilized. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that HIA methodology is lacking in clarity, consistency and transparency. This doctoral thesis tackles this issue through development of novel HIA tools that address specific research gaps associated with different steps of the HIA process. The first step is screening, which determines whether or not an HIA should be conducted. A unique screening tool that considers the practicality of conducting an HIA by comparing the value of the process versus the required investment was developed and tested by HIA practitioners around the world. Scoping is the next step, which outlines the details and boundaries of the assessment. A scoping tool was developed to systematically identify and prioritize health determinants to be included in HIA. The assessment step is where the health outcomes scoped into the HIA are evaluated for potential positive and negative effects. A new assessment framework was created to provide a transparent method of evaluation in order to characterize impacts and reach a clear, well-justified conclusion. This framework was tested on an actual oil drilling project, allowing for identification of strengths and weaknesses of the tool. The framework was then revised to addresses issues, and was redeveloped so that it could be applied within the Environmental Assessment process. Each of these tools addresses a specific research need in the field of HIA, and promotes the inclusion of health in assessing impacts of projects and policies. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| McCarthy, Vanessa Gillian | Terpstra, Nicholas | Prostitution, Community, and Civic Regulation in Early Modern Bologna | History | 2015-06 | While during the late Middle Ages most major European cities legalized and regulated prostitution, historians have argued that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries religious reform and shifting ideas about acceptable sexual and gendered behaviour resulted in the criminalization and repression of prostitution. Scholars have also demonstrated that early modern cultural depictions and social attitudes increasingly cast prostitutes and their clients as greedy and immoral, as socially and publically disruptive, and as sinners in need of reform. This dissertation argues, however, that in the northern-Italian city of Bologna secular and religious civic authorities, magistrates, law enforcement, and the general populace approached prostitution primarily as an issue of economics and public order, and secondarily as an issue of morality and public decorum. Due to the city's economic reliance on university students who sought sex and companionship, since the late Middle Ages civic authorities regulated prostitution as a civic, commercial issue and prostitutes as fee- and fine-paying workers governed by their own civic magistracy, the Ufficio delle Bollette. This approach developed further in the early modern period due to Bologna's continuing economic reliance on students, the demands and needs of workers (both male and female) in its growing, seasonal silk industry, its particular political traditions, and its local social customs. As a result, late sixteenth- and early seventeenth century Bolognese civic authorities neither criminalized prostitution nor attempted to repress it, but instead issued comparatively relaxed, moderately restrictive legislation. Likewise, the Bollette's officials and functionaries negotiated between legislation, their own desires, and the needs of individual prostitutes when enforcing regulation. Finally, the hundreds of women who registered annually as prostitutes were more-or-less integrated into local communities through residence and through familial, work, and affective relationships and had greater opportunities for agency than broader cultural, religious, and social ideals would lead us to expect. | Ph.D. | gender, women, rights | 5, 16 |
| McCleave, Sharon | Quarter, Jack | Social Contexts in Postsecondary Pathophysiology Textbooks: How Type 2 Diabetes is Understood | Leadership, Higher Education and Adult Education | 2013-06 | Abstract Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a disease that has trebled in incidence over the last 25 years, affecting both adults and increasingly children. The rapid increase of the disease mirrors the gradients of social position and income distribution, and parallels the accelerated environmental changes witnessed with the rise of neoliberal capitalism. This research situates neoliberal capitalism as a collection of political and economic policies that form an ideology suited to protect discrete elite interests. The current ideology has permeated all social aspects of society, including education and healthcare. Therefore, it is argued that the practice of healthcare and the education of healthcare students are shaped by the sociopolitical environment in which they exist. Ten best-selling postsecondary textbooks in pathology, pathophysiology, and disease processes were selected for content analysis to determine if the interpretation of type 2 diabetes in pathophysiology textbooks reflects neoliberal thinking. The data were interpreted within the tradition of critical discourse analysis and theoretically enriched using Foucault’s descriptions of governmentality, biopolitics, and discursive formations. The results indicate that notions consistent with neoliberal capitalism permeate pathology textbooks in the understandings of type 2 diabetes. Consistent with how neoliberal thought embodies and explicates social conditions, type 2 diabetes is described in a way that stresses iii self-responsibility and culpability for falling ill. The texts also impart the importance of biomedical industry interventions for the treatment of the sick and the surveillance of the healthy. Finally, in a way that substantiates the degradation of the environment and retrenchment of social welfare policies, the textbooks fail to make any reference to the ecological factors that contribute to type 2 diabetes, including urbanisation and the propagation of food deserts, environmental toxins, income inequality, the steepening of the social gradient, and the deleterious effects of globalisation on human nutrition. | PhD | income distribution, health, equality | 1, 3, 2005 |
| McConaghy, Mark Frederick | Yue, Meng | Writing Villages: Language, Objects, and Spirituality in the Discovery of Rural China, 1911-1949 | East Asian Studies | 2017-11 | This dissertation examines the explosion of writings about rural life that emerged during the Republican period (1911-1949) in China, found in the essays, short stories, long-form novels, folklore journals, and ethnographic surveys that dotted the mediascape of the time period. Situating its arguments at the cross-section of Republican era village studies, intellectual history, and literary criticism, this dissertation argues that such writings did not merely reflect an already existing social reality beyond the text, but were themselves productive of the very concepts by which such a reality was to be imagined and acted upon. As such, they produced an imaginative binary that had not, hitherto, been dominant in Chinese cultural life: the urban vs. the rural. While such writings evidenced a persistent fascination with the languages, objects, and spiritual ideas that defined village cultures, they were not produced from within the geographic boundaries of village life. They were created by cosmopolitan intellectuals imbedded in translingual print networks of global reach. Such writings must thus be situated within the properly global context in which they were produced: a world roiled by the unevenness of capitalism in its imperialist form. The world system produced by capitalism sought to fix peoples into monolingual national units arranged hierarchically across historical time. When seen from this developmental lens, the rural emerged in 20th century China as a site of “backwardness,” in need of social and linguistic “reconstruction.” I track how folklorists, writers, and language reformers responded to, but also complicated, this ethnographic drive to study, classify, and transform village life. Challenging a long standing axiom in the field of modern Chinese history that Republican era intellectuals “invented” the cultural figure of the peasant as a depressed allegory of the national condition, I argue that the songs, objects, and votive practices of village life remained key points of inquiry and negotiation for intellectuals throughout the era. As such, I tell a more nuanced story regarding the urban/rural binary, one that emphasizes that the incorporation of the village into the cultural life of the new republic was not an epistemologically enclosed process. | Ph.D. | urban, rural | 11 |
| McCormack, Killian | Gilbert, Emily | Global Health and Global War: The US Military’s Health Engagement in Africa, 1952-2018 | Geography | 2020-06 | In this dissertation, I trace the changes in the US military’s health engagement practices in Africa from the beginning of the Cold War through to the current global war on terror. My project reveals trends in the overlaps between military and humanitarian networks and highlights how the military’s health engagement practices are articulations of a changing American imperialism. Grounded on colonial legacies, the US military’s health engagement practices are underpinned by processes of militarization, perpetuate uneven power relations, open up spaces for processes of territorialization, and are connected to larger market-centric processes. Drawing on archival material from the US National Archives and Records Administration and a wider array of documents from across the US national security complex, I focus on three interrelated case studies. First, I trace the history of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research’s infectious disease research and surveillance practices on the continent, with a detailed focus on their work in Kenya. Secondly, I look at the changes in the US military’s medical civic action practices in Africa from the early Cold War to the current work of US Africa Command. Finally, I explore the US military’s response to the 2014 West African Ebola crisis, Operation United Assistance, and the military’s role in pandemic response going forward. Each case study brings its own discrete contributions: my study of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research shows how the military has adapted to a changing international development context and is now embedded in a network of global health actors; my analysis of medical civic action demonstrates the ways in which military practices of care are connected to processes of territorialization and war readiness; and my study of Operation United Assistance shows the trajectory of the military’s practices in disaster response and its changing role in what are traditionally civilian practices. My project reveals an underexplored history and geography of American imperialism in Africa. In doing so, it makes important contributions to the understanding of the military’s changing position in a global humanitarian context, as well as the changing ways humanitarian practices have been co-opted towards military ends. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| McCormick, Sarah Anne Louise | Peterson-Badali, Michele||Skilling, Tracey A. | The Role of Responsivity in Youth Rehabilitation: The Case of Mental Health | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2015-06 | Mental health problems are a significant concern for justice-involved youth. Yet there is substantial variability in how mental health problems have been understood in terms of their role in offending and their significance to treatment planning and outcomes. Perspectives on mental health from a predominantly clinical literature differ from the conceptualization found in the rehabilitation-focused Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) literature. This dissertation consists of two papers addressing the role of mental health issues in justice system involvement, with a focus on youth. Paper 1 provides a conceptual analysis of the two literatures to elucidate points of contrast and potential for common ground. I argue that the two literatures differ in seven ways: major goals, definition of risk, predictors studied, outcomes of interest, timelines of interest, features- versus disorder- based approaches, and what is included in the category of mental health concerns. Using these identified differences as an interpretative framework, areas of concordance are then identified. Directions for research include the role of mental health in offending, especially for youth in a developmental context, and gender differences. Implications for policy and practice are reviewed. Paper 2 presents an empirical study that examined probation services and reoffending outcomes for 232 youth following comprehensive assessments of their mental health and criminogenic risk/needs. The role of mental health functioning was examined in the context of assessed and treated criminogenic needs. Youth with identified mental health needs were no more likely than youth without such needs to reoffend, regardless of whether those needs were treated. Youth who received mental health treatment were more likely than other youth to have their criminogenic needs treated, suggesting that mental health treatment was associated with intermediate treatment targets. However, criminogenic needs treatment reduced the risk of reoffending regardless of mental health; mental health treatment did not significantly moderate the effectiveness of criminogenic needs treatment. These findings are discussed in terms of possible interpretations of responsivity, reflecting either that treatment of mental health problems facilitated engagement in criminogenic needs treatment, or that youth received higher quality or more comprehensive services due to systems-level variables. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| McGirr, Ashleigh | Fisman, David N | Pertussis Persistence in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-06 | Pertussis, or whooping cough, is a vaccine preventable disease. However, despite having a robust childhood, adolescent, and adult immunization program in Ontario, we continue to see hundreds of reported pertussis cases each year. The goal of this dissertation is to explore the gaps in current immunization programs. By developing a well calibrated transmission model to predict the spread of pertussis in the community, I estimated the underlying burden of pertussis in adolescents and adults and estimated the degree to which pertussis is under-identified in different age groups. I estimated that there are a considerable number of under-identified patients who contribute to the force of infection of pertussis and silently transmit the disease to others. Using a systematic review and meta-analysis, I estimated that the pertussis vaccine, DTaP, is associated with a much shorter duration of immunity than previously thought. This level of waning immunity allows for pertussis to spread amongst previously vaccinated individuals contributing to the persistence of the disease. Finally, using a microsimulation model, I estimated the age- specific costs and health burden associated with pertussis in Ontario. Using these values, I estimated the substantial health and economic impact that pertussis has in both Ontario and Canada. Individually, these findings provide critical insight into the persistence of pertussis in Ontario, but together the results of this dissertation can be integrated into cost-effectiveness analyses to evaluate new immunization schedules and strategies to contain the spread of pertussis. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| McGuire, Maygan L. | Evans, Greg J. | Characterizing the Origins of Atmospheric Aerosol through Receptor Modeling of Multiple Time-scale Chemical Speciation Measurements | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2014-11 | Atmospheric aerosol is known to have adverse effects on visibility, population health, and climate. The sources and processes that contribute to atmospheric aerosol can be studied through a variety of aerosol chemical speciation techniques, and results from these analyses can be analyzed through factor analytic receptor modeling to identify origins and ultimately design effective mitigation strategies. While receptor modeling has been applied to nearly every type of aerosol speciation measurement, there has been little discussion in regards to how inputs, in terms of different aspects of measurement, relate to the answers that receptor modeling can provide in terms of air quality management and atmospheric processes. In this thesis, the factor analytic technique Positive Matrix Factorization (PMF) was applied to four sets of aerosol chemical speciation measurements of varied time resolution and chemical breadth, from the receptor region of greater Windsor, Ontario. At the outset of this research, receptor modeling was dominated by the use of long-term, low time-resolution integrated filter measurements. This research involved the extension of receptor modeling towards more advanced, state-of-the-art sub-hourly time-resolution aerosol measurements, including trace element measurements from a semi-continuous elements in aerosol sampler (SEAS), bulk aerosol mass spectra from an Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer (AMS), and single particle mass spectra from a TSI Aerosol Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (ATOFMS). Receptor modeling of measurements from these techniques each yielded insights specific to the method, time of year and duration of sampling. Taken together, receptor modeling results from the high time-resolution measurement methods provided a far more detailed understanding of the variety of the sources and processes that contribute to aerosol composition and concentration in greater Windsor, as compared to long-term, low time-resolution integrated filter measurements alone. In total, 14 different factors were identified. Receptor modeling of integrated filter measurements established that secondary aerosol dominated greater Windsor's PM2.5 mass (e.g., Secondary Sulphate and Nitrate contributed 37 and 24% respectively to Windsor's average PM2.5 of 12ug m-3); other local, and local-to-regional anthropogenic factors, such as Traffic, Steel Mills, and Oil Combustion emissions, also contributed (18%, 4%, and 2% by mass respectively). However, receptor modeling using high time-resolution measurements provided more detailed perspectives into aerosol origins. For instance, receptor modeling of AMS and ATOFMS measurements highlighted that secondary nitrate, identified in past studies in the region as mostly regional, is actually a superposition of regional and local nitrate, with local nitrate forming overnight in both winter and summer. Single particle mass spectral measurements confirmed as hypothesized, that regional summertime secondary sulphate and nitrate aerosol consists of a homogeneous external mixture of particles that are internally mixed with sulphate, nitrate, organic and elemental carbon. Traffic aerosol was shown to contain fresh, hydrocarbon-like organic aerosol, as well as black carbon and trace elements such as Ba and Fe, but showed a wide range of average concentrations (0.94 - 2.18ug m-3), specific to the circumstances of measurement. An integrated analysis across all four studies highlighted the strengths and limitations of the various chemical speciation techniques and receptor modeling approaches used in each study. For instance, receptor modeling of SEAS measurements that included refractory elements provided a source-based perspective useful for primary source identification, while receptor modeling of non-refractory combined organic and inorganic mass spectra from the AMS provided a more process-based perspective useful for characterizing the degree of aerosol chemical processing. Receptor modeling results of ATOFMS single particle measurements provided the most detailed representation of factors, highlighting both the internal and external mixing states of particle-types. An overarching conclusion emerged from this work, in that the degree of factor deconvolution in factor analytic receptor modeling is inter-related with the variability in chemical composition of the aerosol being measured, the properties of measurement, and modeling parameters. With a priori consideration given to this conclusion and more intentional study design, receptor modeling studies can lead to improved factor resolution, and ultimately more reliable and useful results. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| McKay, Stephanie Martha | Ravindran, V Arun | Neurohormonal Correlates of Altered Eating Behaviour in Depressive Disorders | Psychology | 2014-06 | Depression and obesity are widespread, significant global public health concerns. Weight and appetite disturbances are common symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder that can complicate treatment and prognosis and, similarly, obesity increases vulnerability to depression. Proposed shared etiologies for depression and elevated body weight include altered stress perceptions and eating behaviours, as well as neurohormonal mediation. The latter includes altered hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis activity, and changes in hunger and satiety signals, adding further evidence to phenotype overlap. There are few investigations on eating behavior, weight changes, and HPA axis alterations in depression. The aim of this series of interlinked investigation was to examine the influence of stress and of food ingestion on hormones involved in appetite regulation along side HPA axis activity. Cortisol, ghrelin, and leptin secretory response to two physiological challenges, i.e., psychosocial stress, and food, was evaluated in eighteen patients with clinical depression, and seventeen matched healthy controls. Neurocognition, eating behavior, and stress perception measures were obtained. In response to the stress challenge, depressed participants exhibited elevation of leptin levels in comparison to controls. Such elevation was influenced by the chronicity of illness. No differences between patients with depression or controls were found in cortisol or ghrelin response to either set of experiments. However, among the participants, emotional eaters exhibited significantly lower levels of ghrelin in response to food. In addition, significant associations between leptin and cognition were noted. Results suggest possible alteration in appetite regulation in both depressed and emotional eaters. It is suggested that appetite and weight increase often seen in chronic depression may be in part be mediated by HPA axis leptin interactions. Potential alterations in feedback systems regulating appetite may be suggested as leading to increased vulnerability for future weight gain in depression. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| McKechnie, Jonathan | MacLean, Heather L. | Assessing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Mitigation Potential through the use of Forest Bioenergy | Civil Engineering | 2012-06 | Bioenergy production from forest resources offers opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with fossil fuel use, reduce non-renewable energy consumption, and provide investment and employment in the forestry sector. These opportunities, however, must be considered within the broader contexts of forest systems. Of particular interest is how bioenergy opportunities impact carbon storage within the forest. This thesis develops a method to integrate life cycle assessment and forest carbon analysis approaches to quantify the total GHG emissions associated with forest bioenergy. Bioenergy production and utilization decisions are then investigated to evaluate opportunities to increase GHG mitigation performance. An accounting method is developed to evaluate the impact of emissions timing on the cost-effectiveness of GHG emissions reductions from biomass-based electricity generation. Applying the integrated life cycle assessment/forest carbon analysis method to a case study of forest bioenergy production in Ontario reveals significant reductions in forest carbon associated with bioenergy production. Wood pellet production from standing trees or harvest residues (displacing coal in electricity generation) would increase total GHG emissions over periods of approximately 40 and 15 years, respectively. Ethanol production (displacing gasoline) would increase GHG emissions throughout the 100-year model period if produced from standing trees; emissions would increase over a period of approximately75 years if produced from harvest residues. Strategic ethanol production decisions (e.g., process energy source, co-location with other processes, co-product selection) can improve GHG mitigation. Co-production of biomass pellets with ethanol performs best among co-product options in terms of GHG emissions; co-location with facilities exporting excess steam and biomass-based electricity further increases GHG mitigation performance. Delayed GHG reductions due to forest carbon impacts the cost of GHG emissions reductions associated with electricity production from forest biomass. Cost-effectiveness is heavily dependent on the time horizon over which global warming impacts are measured and influences the ranking of biomass electricity pathways (biomass co-firing is the most cost-effective pathway between 2020 and 2100; biomass cogeneration is the most cost-effective pathway beyond year 2100). The accounting tools and methods developed within this thesis will to help inform decision-makers in the responsible development of forest bioenergy opportunities and associated policies. | PhD | energy, renewable, greenhouse gas, global warming, forest | 7, 13, 15 |
| McKee, Derek | Rittich, Kerry | Internationalism and Global Governance in Canadian Public Law | Law | 2013-06 | Globalization presents domestic lawmakers with a dilemma. Because of internationalist moral commitments, they may be inclined to use domestic law to protect the rights or interests of people beyond their borders. But globalization also challenges conventional assumptions about the primacy of state law. The increasing global interconnectedness of economic, social, and cultural life raises doubts about the governance capacity of state institutions. And new forms of global governance, based on international organizations and global networks, have become more prominent. In the last few decades, Canadian lawmakers have enacted a number of statutes and regulations that appear to mobilize domestic law for the pursuit of internationalist values. These include the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act (2008), legislation providing for the environmental assessment of projects outside Canada, and Canada’s Access to Medicines Regime (2004). In this dissertation, I apply post-realist analytic techniques to these legal texts and to the legislative debates surrounding them. These techniques include the analysis of indeterminacies, distributive and constitutive effects, background rules, and historical contingencies. I argue that these law reform projects are less Canadian than they might appear. They draw on a wide variety of discourses, policy models, and norms imported from other countries, from international organizations, and from expert networks. Rather than reflections of Canadians’ moral and political choices, these legislative regimes appear as nodes in larger configurations of global governance. I also examine the specific legal and institutional techniques used by Canadian lawmakers to deal with claims of global justice. A number of themes appear in multiple case studies. These include the use of a paired set of arguments about non-discrimination and sovereignty; reliance on procedures; deference to expertise, and the invocation of a public/private distinction. On the whole, Canadian internationalist legislation in the post-Cold War era reflects the influence of neoliberalism. | SJD | environment, governance | 13, 16 |
| McKellar, Jennifer Marie | MacLean, Heather L. | Techno-economic and Environmental Assessments of Replacing Conventional Fossil Fuels: Oil Sands Industry Case Studies | Civil Engineering | 2012-03 | Conventional fossil fuels are widely used, however there are growing concerns about the security of their supply, volatility in their prices and the environmental impacts of their extraction and use. The objective of this research is to investigate the potential for replacing conventional fuels in various applications, focusing on the Alberta oil sands industry. Such investigations require systems-level approaches able to handle multiple criteria, uncertainty, and the views of multiple stakeholders. To address this need, the following are developed: life cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle costing models of polygeneration systems; a life cycle-based framework for multi-sectoral resource use decisions; and a method combining LCA and real options analyses to yield environmental and financial insights into projects. These tools are applied to options for utilizing oil sands outputs, both the petroleum resource (bitumen) and by-products of its processing (e.g., asphaltenes, coke), within the oil sands industry and across other sectors. For oil sands on-site use, multiple fuels are assessed for the polygeneration of electricity, steam and hydrogen, in terms of life cycle environmental and financial impacts; asphaltenes gasification with carbon capture and storage (CCS) is the most promising option, able to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 25% of those of current natural gas-based systems. Coke management options are assessed with the life cycle-based framework; the most promising options are identified as: Electricity generation in China through integrated gasification combined cycle; and, hydrogen production in Alberta, either for sale or use by the oil sands industry. Without CCS, these options have amortized project values ranging from $21 to $160/t coke. The application of the combined LCA and real options analyses method finds that uncertainty in natural gas and potential carbon prices over time significantly impacts decisions on coke management; the formulated decision tree identifies increases of 29% and 11% in the financial and GHG emissions performance, respectively, of the overall coke management project compared to pursuing the decision identified by the life cycle-based framework. While promising options for replacing conventional fossil fuels are identified through systems-level analyses, there are trade-offs to be made among the financial, risk and environmental criteria. | PhD | industr, greenhouse gas, environment | 9, 13 |
| McKie, Michael James | Andrews, Robert C||Andrews, Susan A | Evaluation and Application of Alternative Drinking Water Biofilter Monitoring Techniques | Civil Engineering | 2019-11 | Drinking water biofiltration research has increased dramatically in the past decade as new monitoring techniques have become available, resulting in widespread implementation at municipal treatment facilities. However, biofiltration is still considered a “black-box” technology which offers limited process control. This research examined biofiltration using a variety of techniques to develop a practical understanding of the underlying biological processes and provide guidance for improved design and operation. This research focussed on three primary topics: i) modelling processes critical to biofiltration, ii) applying biological monitoring to improve treatment, and iii) demonstrating benefits beyond providing improved water quality. Initial studies evaluated the application of a biofilter scaling model to determine the significance of biofilm shear loss and mass transport resistance with respect to a variety of biomass (density, function, and community composition) and water quality (organics, nutrients, disinfection by-product formation potential) parameters. Biofilm shear loss was observed to be the critical design parameter when scaling biofilter processes from pilot- to bench-scale, as enzyme activity, indicative of biological function, was not equivalent to pilot filters when mass transport resistance was deemed to have primacy. Subsequent studies further examined enzyme activity as a monitoring parameter for biofilter function; esterase and phosphatase were identified as being quantifiable and meaningful. Combining enzyme activity and filter empty bed contact time (EBCT) was defined as “Effective Activity”. Effective esterase activity was observed to correlate to carbon removal whereas effective phosphatase activity was correlated with phosphate removal. These relationships were observed for a range of pre-treatments (coagulation, pre-ozonation, ultrafiltration, UV), filter media (granular activated carbon, anthracite or sand) and operating conditions (EBCT, daily shutdown) suggesting that effective activity may serve as a useful design and operation parameter. Finally, two water treatment facilities were examined to determine potential energy cost savings associated with cyclical biofilter operation. It was shown that production costs could be reduced by >20% by scheduling production during low energy cost periods (e.g. 10 PM – 7 AM). This research demonstrated that monitoring biofilter enzyme activity may allow for optimal design and operation when compared to other monitoring parameters. Cyclically operated biofilters may dramatically reduce operating costs without impacting water quality. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| McLaughlin, Janet Elizabeth | Cunningham, Hilary | Trouble in our Fields: Health and Human Rights among Mexican and Caribbean Migrant Farm Workers in Canada | Anthropology | 2009-11 | For many years Canada has quietly rationalized importing temporary “low-skilled” migrant labour through managed migration programs to appease industries desiring cheap and flexible labour while avoiding extending citizenship rights to the workers. In an era of international human rights and global competitive markets, the Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) is often hailed as a “model” and “win-win” solution to migration and labour dilemmas, providing employers with a healthy, just-in-time labour force and workers with various protections such as local labour standards, health care, and compensation. Tracing migrant workers’ lives between Jamaica, Mexico and Canada (with a focus on Ontario’s Niagara Region), this thesis assesses how their structural vulnerability as non-citizens effectively excludes them from many of the rights and norms otherwise expected in Canada. It analyzes how these exclusions are rationalized as permanent “exceptions” to the normal legal, social and political order, and how these infringements affect workers’ lives, rights, and health. Employing critical medical anthropology, workers’ health concerns are used as a lens through which to understand and explore the deeper “pathologies of power” and moral contradictions which underlie this system. Particular areas of focus include workers’ occupational, sexual and reproductive, and mental and emotional health, as well as an assessment of their access to health care and compensation in Canada, Mexico and Jamaica. Working amidst perilous and demanding conditions, in communities where they remain socially and politically excluded, migrant workers in practice remain largely unprotected and their entitlements hard to secure, an enduring indictment of their exclusion from Canada’s “imagined community.” Yet the dynamics of this equation may be changing in light of the recent rise in social and political movements, in which citizenship and related rights have become subject to contestation and redefinition. In analyzing the various dynamics which underlie transnational migration, limit or extend migrants’ rights, and influence the health of migrants across borders, this thesis explores crucial relationships between these themes. Further work is needed to measure these ongoing changes, and to address the myriad health concerns of migrants as they live and work across national borders. | PhD | labour, rights | 8, 16 |
| McMahon, Dominique | Thorsteinsdottir, Halla ||Daar, Abdallah | Regenerative Medicine Innovation in Emerging Economies: A Case Study Comparison of China, Brazil and India | Medical Science | 2011-11 | Regenerative medicine (RM) has the potential to develop new treatments for chronic disease and injury that are desperately needed in developing countries. Several emerging economies are actively participating in RM, producing new knowledge and initiating clinical trials. This thesis presents case studies of RM in China and Brazil and a comparative analysis of RM across Brazil, China and India. I aim to better understand the state of RM, how it has developed and what is needed for RM innovation to succeed within these countries. Case studies were conducted using face-to-face in-depth semi-structured interviews with RM experts from different areas including research institutes, hospitals, firms, educational institutes, government, policy agencies, and bioethics groups. Interviews were analysed using thematic analysis and triangulated with the analysis of research articles, government reports, laws and other primary and grey literature. China is now the 5th most prolific publisher on stem cells in the world. Chinese RM benefits from permissive regulations and the expertise of Chinese returnees that have trained abroad, but the field’s reputation is challenged by a weak regulatory system and the clinical availability of untested stem cell therapies. Brazil has created a small but strong RM program, but needs to address challenges to the field including inconsistent funding, slow importation of materials, and weak linkages between stake-holders. Comparative analysis of the three countries identifies several common elements that support RM, including linkages between stake-holders, government support, infrastructure, human resources, and good governance. RM capacity is clustered in large urban centres, which could exacerbate socio-economic and health disparities unless measures are taken to ensure equitable distribution of benefits. RM does not adhere to classical views of southern innovation, suggesting that new models are needed to describe innovation in emerging technologies, where countries are keeping up instead of catching up. | PhD | health, equitable, innovation | 3, 4, 2009 |
| McPherson, David | Karney, Bryan William | An Integrated Design Approach for Pipelines and Appurtenances Based on Hydrodynamic Loading | Civil Engineering | 2013-11 | Water and wastewater conveyance research is steeply based in advancements of numerical methods and models. Design engineers need more than refinements in analysis methods to evolve the standards of practice and the related design guidelines. In an effort to improve the design efficiency and operating reliability of pipeline systems, design guidelines have been developed to enfold the various technological advancements and elevate the standard of care used in the pipeline design process. In this respect, the guidelines have been successful. However, design engineers, manufacturers, and owners have developed a level of dependency on the success of the guidelines. The guidelines, which were developed as and are clearly still held to be by the various publishing associations, a minimum standard of care, have become the default standard of care. Such statements are, of course, gross generalizations, but this thesis is dedicated to move the standard of care forward through an integrated design approach that provides a roadmap to inter-relate the independent design guidelines into a composite design approach based on hydrodynamic loading. Hydrodynamic loading introduces of a temporal parameter into the design process. With the temporal parameter this work demonstrates how the consideration of both the frequency and the influence of acceleration head on the magnitude of the hydraulic loading can be used to integrate and evolve the individual component designs into a more efficient, cost effective, reliable composite design result. With a temporal parameter present in design, many opportunities present themselves to advance the current design procedures outlined in the present design guidelines. This thesis identifies some of the present shortcomings found in the modern pipeline and appurtenance design standards and introduces a recommended path forward. Specific changes to the present standards are proposed in this work and a unique analysis procedure to identify the failure potential of cement mortar lining has been developed. Introducing the integrated design approach will allow for a significant evolution to the present standard of practice in water and wastewater conveyance system designs. | PhD | waste | 12 |
| McPherson, Madeleine Myrna | Karney, Bryan | Integrating Variable Renewable Energy on Electricity Grids Through a Multi-Scaled Energy Modelling Approach: from Capacity Expansion to Production Cost Modelling | Civil Engineering | 2017-11 | The global wind and solar PV industry has transitioned from a subsidy-dependent niche market to a commercially viable sector that is dominating global capacity expansions. However, integrating these renewable energy resources, with their variable nature, onto the electricity grid poses new challenges for system operations. This thesis explores variable renewable energy (VRE) integration, through multiple scales of energy modelling and analysis from the integrated assessment model MESSAGE, to the country-scale electricity system model LEAP, and the production cost model introduced in this work entitled SILVER. The MESSAGE and LEAP models have large-scale, long-term representations of the energy system that enable analysis of alternative energy policies, cross-sector environmental impacts, and overarching cost trends, but do not have the spatial-temporal resolution to represent site-specific, variable VRE generation profiles. Thus, SILVER, for the Strategic Integration of Large-capacity Variable Energy Resources, is designed as a highly flexible production cost dispatch tool. Technologically, SILVER represents the full gamut of grid balancing strategies: building flexible and dispatchable generation assets, interconnecting geographically dispersed resources and VRE types, shifting flexible loads through demand response, shifting generation profiles through storage technologies, curtailing excess generation, interconnecting the electricity sector with the transport sector, and improving VRE forecasting methodologies. SILVER relies on hourly wind and solar generation time-series data, produced by the newly developed GRETA (Global Renewable Energy Atlas Time) tool, which has been launched as an open access web-portal. SILVER is applied to three VRE integration applications: moving towards a fully-renewable Ontario electricity system including 87% VRE penetration, demand response, electric vehicles, storage assets, and an expanded transmission network; quantifying storage asset commercial viability in electricity systems with different flexibility factors, VRE penetrations, and financial remuneration mechanisms; and exploring the role of decentralized generation and electric vehicles at a city-scale in a developing country context. The results demonstrate the highly system-specific nature of VRE integration, with the VRE resource typology, the non-VRE system flexibly, VRE penetration, and degree of VRE centralization having significant impacts. The interdependence between these electricity system factors in terms of curtailment rates, GHG emissions, electricity system costs, and flexibility requirements recommends an integrated planning approach. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, solar, production | 7, 12 |
| McQuarrie, Jonathan Robert | Penfold, Steve | From Farm to Firm: Canadian Tobacco c. 1860-1950 | History | 2016-06 | This dissertation examines the transformation of Canadian tobacco cultivation from its roots in local markets and personal consumption to a multi-million dollar concern featuring corporate plantations and multi-acre tobacco farms. It focuses on how tools of agricultural modernization— abstraction, expertise, experimentation, fertilization, government policy, land ownership, and marketing associations—produced unanticipated challenges that complicated any linear development of tobacco cultivation. The dissertation places everyday experiences of tobacco cultivation alongside the broader sweep of agricultural modernization to argue that the deployment of the tools of modernization produced new limitations over expert control of the environment and markets. The dissertation considers cultivation in Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia, and includes moments of rapid expansion, such as the rise of the flue-cured tobacco “New Belt” in Norfolk and Elgin counties during the late 1920s, and instances of gradual failure, like efforts to encourage commercial tobacco in the Okanagan and Sumas Valley regions of B.C. Various farmer organizations and cooperatives feature in the exploration of the responses and initiative of farmers to the evolving requirements of tobacco companies for their raw material. The role of both federal and provincial government officials also receives considerable attention, as they promoted modern, commercial-orientated tobacco cultivation while attempting to remain an intermediary force between farmers and corporations. The records of the federal Tobacco Division and various government investigations collectively demonstrate that this position was not always tenable, as the government would find itself drawn into fierce disputes over farm prices and the monopolistic character of Imperial Tobacco. These disputes illustrate how modernization produced instabilities even as it improved farm revenues. Collectively, this dissertation’s consideration of farm work, environmental change, and markets demonstrate how the possibilities of agricultural innovation produced their own tensions and limitations that are fundamental to understanding the lived experience of capitalism and modernization in rural Canada. | Ph.D. | innovation, environment, land use, AGRICULTURE | 2, 9, 13, 15 |
| Means, Alexander | Gallagher, Kathleen | Schooling in the Age of Austerity: Public Education, Youth, and Social Instability in the Neoliberal City | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-11 | This dissertation examines the dynamics of “security” and “insecurity” in U.S. public schooling within the context of neoliberal urbanism and austerity. It argues that the entrenched problems confronting urban public schools today can be attributed largely to systemic failure—a toxic mixture of global economic change and volatility, profiteering and corruption, stunted imagination, and misguided policies, values and priorities. This has contributed to deepening material insecurity and inequality in the urban sphere and the erosion of social commitments to public schools and young people, especially the most disadvantaged and vulnerable. This thesis analyzes these forces through an ethnographic case study in a neighborhood and public high school in Chicago: Ellison Square and Ellison High School (EHS). It asks: What are the pragmatic and imaginative limits of security in urban public schooling in a moment of escalating economic and social dislocation? Through the perspectives of those most affected, namely youth and their teachers, it documents the contradictions and effects of educational privatization, disinvestment, commercialization of curriculum, and the rise of a militarized culture of policing and securitized containment in urban schools and neighborhoods. It argues that these processes represent forms of enclosure that are undermining the democratic and ethical purpose of public schools and thereby making the daily lives and future of young people ever more insecure and precarious. Drawing inspiration from the perspectives of young people and their teachers, the thesis ultimately advocates for an educational vision that locates public schooling not as a commodity valued primarily for its role in shoring-up technical economic and military demands, but as a commons—a site critical to developing human security, economic justice and democratic life. | PhD | equality, inequality | 5, 10 |
| Mehrabian, Sasan | Bussmann, Markus||Acosta, Edgar J | Balance of Forces in Bitumen-particle-water Systems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-11 | The oil sands in Canada are an abundant source of energy, but must be utilized in a way that bitumen can be extracted economically while it is environmentally responsible. This thesis focuses on three distinct studies on the interaction of bitumen-particle-water systems from a fluid dynamic perspective. The goal of this work is to understand the role of viscosity, interfacial tension, shear rate, shearing time, bitumen chemistry, and other process variables on separation processes related to bitumen production. These processes include the separation of oil from particles, the separation of particles from oil-particle clusters, and the separation of water from a water-in-bitumen emulsion. Results are quantified using different image analysis techniques, and characterized using dimensionless numbers, including capillary and Reynolds numbers, to understand the fundamentals of the governing forces and their mutual interactions. The first part of this thesis describes the separation of oil from an oil-coated sphere falling through an aqueous solution. Results reveal that maximum separation takes place when the capillary number is close to unity. The experiments are then extended to a more complicated geometry, where we examined the breakup and separation of oil-particle clusters in a simple shear flow. At high solid volume fraction, the oil that binds the particles together governs the dynamics of the cluster deformation, and therefore the critical capillary number for cluster breakup is the same as those already published in the literature for oil droplet breakup. Also, at capillary numbers above unity, clean particles separate from the cluster. Results from both studies show that maximum separation takes place when the oil-to-water viscosity ratio is between 0.1 and 1. An analytical solution shows that at those viscosity ratios, both normal and tangential stresses at the oil-water interface contribute to greater separation. In the final study, the formation of water in diluted bitumen emulsions was evaluated as a function of hydrodynamic conditions, pH, dilution ratio, and bitumen composition. A bimodal population of drop sizes was identified. The viscosity ratio was found to be a determining factor in the fraction of sub-micron droplets. A process of dilution and shear was introduced to mitigate this sub-micron fraction. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Melchiorre, Luke | Eyoh, Dickson | Building Nations, Making Youth: Institutional Choice, Nation-State Building and the Politics of Youth Activism in Postcolonial Kenya and Tanzania | Political Science | 2018-11 | This dissertation explains why, while societies in both postcolonial Kenya and Tanzania were undergoing similar socioeconomic and demographic pressures during the initial decades of independence (1961-1989), university students’ responses to these changes strikingly diverged across these two cases. Eschewing explanations of youth activism that prioritize socioeconomic or demographic variables, this study opts for a historical institutional explanation, situating these divergent trajectories of student activism within broader histories of postcolonial nation-state formation. My analysis reveals that the different institutional choices and arrangements, which undergirded Kenya and Tanzania’s respective nation-state building strategies, harnessed and channeled the energies of young people (i.e. university students) into systems of power in significantly different manners, legitimating and de-legitimating certain forms of political participation and violence among youth in the decades following independence, with lasting implications. The first part of this study explores the historical origins of divergent strategies of nation-state building in Kenya and Tanzania, explaining institutional origins primarily in relation to societal constraints that confronted these new African regimes on the ground at independence. Here I argue that distinctive colonial political economies and institutional architectures produced different spaces of possibility for these countries’ respective postcolonial nation-state building projects. Part II examines how these distinctly configured states opted to incorporate the university and its students into their nation-state building projects differently. In Kenya, the relationship between the state and university students was marked by the ruling party’s unwillingness to institutionalize party control over the university throughout the 1960s and 1970s, enabling university students to organize and operate politically on campus beyond the realm of state or party control. As a result, when students became increasingly discouraged by the authoritarian political direction of the ruling party during the 1980s, levels of protest, unity and anti-regime sentiment within this group reached their height. In Tanzania, the TANU state utilized a different set of co-optative institutional implements in managing their university students. As a result of these institutional strategies, the Tanzanian state was better prepared to manage and limit overt student dissert during the decade of the 1980s, because the state had effectively usurped university students’ organizational autonomy. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, institution | 1, 16 |
| Melymuk, Lisa | Diamond, Miriam L. | Semi-volatile Organic Contaminants in the Urban Atmosphere: Spatial and Seasonal Distributions and Implications for Contaminant Transport | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2012-06 | Spatial and temporal patterns of semi-volatile organic contaminant (SVOC) concentrations in air and precipitation were investigated at the urban scale in order to improve our understanding of emission sources and factors affecting intra-urban variability. Toronto, Canada was used as a case study. Advances were made in two methods used to examine intra-urban variability, namely passive air sampling and land use regression analysis. The study showed that these methods are useful for assessing local-scale variability, and that passive air sampler concentrations are most reliable when using homologue-specific sampling rates obtained from a co-located low volume sampler. The results of the spatially and temporally distributed sampling demonstrated that the highest atmospheric concentrations of SVOCs were associated with the highest density regions of the urban area. Temporal patterns of elevated concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in warm seasons were consistent with temperature-related emission processes such as volatilization and/or ventilation of indoor air. Spatial patterns in air concentrations were influenced by local sources on a scale of <5 km and were explained by factors related to human population activities such as building volume (PBDEs), population density (polycyclic musks, or PCMs), residential, commercial and transportation infrastructure (PAHs), and chemical inventory (PCBs). Industrial activities were not important factors. The link between elevated environmental concentrations and the in-use stock of banned chemicals, such as PCBs and PBDEs, suggest that efforts to control emissions and reduce environmental concentrations must address the removal of current use products, in addition to the bans on new uses of the SVOCs. | PhD | infrastructure, urban, environment, land use | 9, 11, 13, 15 |
| Menashy, Francine | Portelli, John P. ||Mundy, Karen | Education as a Private or a Global Public Good: Competing Conceptual Frameworks and their Power at the World Bank | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | This thesis presents the argument that the World Bank’s education policies are discursively inconsistent due to the concurrent adoption of conceptual frameworks – namely the neoliberal and global public goods frameworks – which are arguably in conflict with one another. More specifically, the World Bank presents education as both a public and a private good. This assessment is reached via a critical analysis of the Bank’s education policy discourse. The Bank’s policies are furthermore argued to be grounded in market economics and therefore are in tension with the notion of education as a human right – a legal and political framework, advocated by other development organizations, but neglected by the Bank. Over the course of this thesis, neoliberal influences on the World Bank’s education policies are critiqued on several levels, including potential ethical ramifications concerning equity, discursive logic and questionable use of evidence. This dissertation furthermore suggests that the Bank can re-conceptualize education in a light that does not engender these critiques, by embracing a rights-based vision of education. It is argued that it is not necessary for the Bank to relinquish an economic conceptualization of education, and that it is possible for the human rights and economic discourses to go hand-in-hand. Despite some tensions, education can be supported by both a public goods and rights-based framework, and that via such measures as collaboration with organizations that conceive of education as a right and reducing the dominance of economists within the organization, the Bank’s policies will become aligned with this rights-based vision. This thesis argues that World Bank education policies can take steps toward improvement if the neoliberal notion of education as an exclusive, private good is abandoned in favour of education as a non-exclusive, public good, and a right. | PhD | educat, rights | 4, 16 |
| Mepham, Adam Hunter | Kelley, Shana O | Micro- and Nano-scale Approaches for Disease Detection and Characterization | Biomedical Engineering | 2019-06 | Devices that diagnose and characterize disease have the potential to greatly improve healthcare worldwide. This thesis explores a number of different elements pertaining to device design and application. A microfluidic device for the capture and profiling of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) is tested against a rabbit model of cancer. This device demonstrates both an increase in CTC load and aggressiveness which correlates with traditional computed tomography measurements. CTC biology is also shown to differ markedly from tumour precursor cells. Next, a study of gold microelectrode architecture is performed with the aim of improving performance towards biosensing. A unique regime of gold ion concentration, applied voltage, and electrolyte viscosity is determined which drives the assembly of a highly structured morphology. Further studies illustrate growth mechanisms and the sensitivity of the electrode towards biomolecule detection. Additionally, a microfluidic device for instrument-free manipulation of microscopic fluid quantities is developed. This design allows the metering and dispensing of reagents in an intuitive manner by combining a series of capillary valves and a simple push-button. This “Digit Chip” is applied to the detection of antibacterial susceptibility alongside a simple smart-phone based fluorimeter. Together these studies explore the application of electrochemical and microfluidic modalities to the realm of disease monitoring. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Mfoafo-M'Carthy, Magnus | Williams, Charmaine | "Experience is the Best Teacher." Community Treatment Orders (CTOs) among Ethno-Racial Minority Communities in Toronto: A Phenomenological Study | Social Work | 2010-11 | Since de-institutionalization, numerous community based treatment modalities have been implemented to provide treatment for individuals diagnosed as seriously and persistently mentally ill. CTOs are a recent addition to the community mental health care system designed to provide outpatient mental health services to seriously mentally ill clients and using legal mechanisms to enforce a contractual obligation to participate in those services. Although there is a growing body of literature on CTOs and other mandated outpatient treatment programs for people diagnosed with mental illnesses, the research predominantly focuses on the perspectives of service providers and family members. Little attention has been given to how clients view the experience of receiving the treatment and no attention has been given to the experience of clients who are of ethno-racial minority background. As Ontario is a racially and ethnically diverse environment in which many people of minority backgrounds are placed on CTOs. This study, utilizing a phenomenological methodology, interviewed twenty-four participants of ethno-racial minority background who are either on CTOs or have been on a CTO in the past. The focus of the study was to explore the views and lived experience of the participants regarding the treatment. The outcome of the study showed that the participants did not experience the treatment as racially motivated but felt it was necessary and beneficial. The participants discussed the impact of power in the treatment process. Implications of the study were that it would enhance the mental health literature by providing an understanding of serious mental illness among individuals of ethno-racial minority background. The study would provide insight for policy makers and practitioners on providing effective support for the marginalized. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Miedema, Theresa | Trebilcock, Michael | Violent Conflict and Social Capital in Ethnically-polarized Developing Countries | Law | 2010-11 | This dissertation explores the problem of violent ethnic conflict in ethnically polarized developing countries using the concept of social capital. Ethnically polarized developing countries typically have high levels of intra-ethnic social capital (social capital existing within groups) but low levels of inter-ethnic social capital (social capital existing between groups). Violent conflict can be averted by cultivating higher levels of inter-ethnic social capital. High levels of inter-ethnic social capital create incentives for elites to adopt moderate strategies. A civic compact emerges when the general population internalizes the norms of inter-ethnic social capital (the rule of law; the right to participation; and the right to continued physical and cultural existence). The civic compact is associated with a general expectation that elites will not pursue extra-institutional strategies such as violence to advance their interests. Peace processes that originate in “hurting stalemates” afford fragile opportunities to begin to cultivate inter-ethnic social capital. At such moments, elite incentive structures align in such a way as to overcome barriers to reform associated with path dependence. The cultivation of inter-ethnic social capital is initiated by integrating the norms of inter-ethnic social capital into the structure of the peace process, although eventually state institutions (which must incorporate these norms into their design) will also re-enforce these norms. Elites begin to internalize the norms of inter-ethnic social capital by repeatedly engaging with each other during the peace process in a manner that actualizes these norms into their experiences. I explore how the norms of inter-ethnic social capital can be integrated meaningfully into the peace process so that elites begin to absorb these norms and so that the institutions that emerge from the process are perceived to be legitimate. Inter-ethnic social capital is developed among the masses primarily through the interactions that the masses have with state institutions. The peace process must focus on rehabilitating the relationship between the masses and the state. This dissertation assesses how this relationship may be rehabilitated and how the norms of inter-ethnic social capital can be integrated into the process of rehabilitating this relationship so that the masses can begin to internalize these norms. | SJD | peace | 16 |
| Mikhail, Andrew | Allen, Christine | Development and Intratumoral Distribution of Block Copolymer Micelles as Nanomedicines for the Targeted Delivery of Chemotherapy to Solid Tumors | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2013-06 | Recent advancements in pharmaceutical technology based on principles of nanotechnology, polymer chemistry, and biomedical engineering have resulted in the creation of novel drug delivery systems with the potential to revolutionize current strategies in cancer chemotherapy. In oncology, realization of significant improvements in therapeutic efficacy requires minimization of drug exposure to healthy tissues and concentration of the drug within the tumor. As such, encapsulation of chemotherapeutic agents inside nanoparticles capable of enhancing tumor-targeted drug delivery is a particularly promising innovation. Yet, initial investigations into the intratumoral fate of nanomedicines have suggested that they may be heterogeneously distributed and achieve limited access to cancer cells located distant from the tumor vasculature. As such, uncovering the determinants of nanoparticle transport at the intratumoral level is critical to the development of optimized delivery vehicles capable of fully exploiting the therapeutic potential of nanomedicines. In this work, the chemotherapeutic agent, docetaxel (DTX), was incorporated into nano-sized, biocompatible PEG-b-PCL block copolymer micelles (BCMs). Encapsulation of DTX in micelles via chemical conjugation or physical entrapment resulted in a dramatic increase in drug solubility and customizable drug release rate. The use of multicellular tumor spheroids (MCTS) was established as a viable platform for assessing the efficacy and tumor tissue penetration of nanomedicines in vitro. A series of complementary assays was validated for analysis of DTX-loaded micelle (BCM+DTX) toxicity in monolayer and spheroid cultures relative to Taxotere®. Cells cultured as spheroids were less responsive to treatment relative to monolayer cultures due to mechanisms of drug resistance associated with structural and microenvironmental properties of the 3-D tissue. Computational, image-based methodologies were used to assess the spatial and temporal penetration of BCMs in spheroids and corresponding human tumor xenografts. Using this approach, the tumor penetration of micelles was found to be nanoparticle-size-, tumor tissue type- and time- dependent. Furthermore, spheroids were found to be a valuable platform for the prediction of trends in nanoparticle transport in vivo. Overall, the results reported herein serve to demonstrate important determinants of nanoparticle intratumoral transport and to establish computational in vitro and in vivo methodologies for the rational design and optimization of nanomedicines. | PhD | innovation | 9 |
| Miller, Boaz | Chakravartty, Anjan | A Social Theory of Knowledge | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2011-03 | We rely on science and other organized forms of inquiry to answer cardinal questions on issues varying from global warming and public health to the political economy. In my thesis, which is in the intersection of philosophy of science, social epistemology, and science and technology studies, I develop a social theory of knowledge that can help us tell when our beliefs and theories on such matters amount to knowledge, as opposed to mere opinion, speculation, or educated guess. The first two chapters discuss relevant shortcomings of mainstream analytic epistemology and the sociology of knowledge, respectively. Mainstream epistemology regards individuals, rather than communities, as the bearers of knowledge or justified belief. In Chapter 1, I argue that typically, only an epistemic community can collectively possess sufficient justification required for knowledge. In Chapter 2, I present a case study in computer science that militates against the sociological understating of knowledge as mere interest-based agreement. I argue that social interests alone cannot explain the unfolding of the events in this case. Rather, we must assume that knowledge is irreducible to social dynamics and interests. In Chapter 3, I begin my positive analysis of the social conditions for knowledge. I explore the question of when a consensus is knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus. I identify three conditions – social diversity, apparent consilience of evidence, and meta agreement, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus. In Chapter 4, I illustrate my argument by analyzing the recent controversy about the safety of the drug Bendectin. I argue that the consensus in this case was not knowledge based, and hence the deference to consensus to resolve this dispute was unjustified. In chapter 5, I develop a new theory of the logical relations between evidence and social values. I identify three roles social values play in evidential reasoning and justification: They influence the trust we extend to testimony, the threshold values we require for accepting evidence, and the process of combining different sorts of evidence. | PhD | global warming | 13 |
| Miller, Bradley | Phillips, Jim | Emptying the Den of Thieves: International Fugitives and the Law in British North America/Canada, 1819-1910 | History | 2012-06 | This thesis examines how the law dealt with international fugitives. It focuses on formal extradition and the cross-border abduction of wanted criminals by police officers and other state officials. Debates over extradition and abduction reflected important issues of state power and civil liberty, and were shaped by currents of thought circulating throughout the imperial, Atlantic, and common law worlds. Debates over extradition involved questioning the very basis of international law. They also raised difficult questions about civil liberties and human rights. Throughout this period escaped American slaves and other groups made claims for what we would now call refugee status, and argued that their surrender violated codes of law and ideas of justice that transcended the colonies and even the wider British Empire. Such claims sparked a decades-long debate in North America and Europe over how to codify refugee protections. Ultimately, Britain used its imperial power to force Canada to accept such safeguards. Yet even as the formal extradition system developed, an informal system of police abductions operated in the Canadian-American borderlands. This system defied formal law, but it also manifested sophisticated local ideas about community justice and transnational legal order. This thesis argues that extradition and abduction must be understood within three overlapping contexts. The first is the ethos of liberal transnationalism that permeated all levels of state officials in British North America/Canada. This view largely prioritised the erosion of domestic barriers to international cooperation over the protection of individual liberty. It was predicated in large part on the idea of a common North American civilization. The second context is Canada’s place in the British Empire. Extradition and abduction highlight both how British North America/Canada often expounded views on legal order radically different from Britain, but also that even after Confederation in 1867 the empire retained real power to shape Canadian policy. The final context is international law and international legal order. Both extradition and abduction were aspects of law on an international and transnational level. As a result, this thesis examines the processes of migration, adoption, and adaptation of international law. | PhD | justice | 16 |
| Milligan, Scott | Andersen, Robert | Socially Cohesive Nations: Evidence from the Individual, Community, and National Levels | Sociology | 2014-06 | Written as three publishable papers, this dissertation examines the individual, community and national level factors related to social cohesion with emphasis placed on the role of economic inequalities. The core of dissertation revolves around two main arguments: The first argues that there is a direct negative association between economic inequality and social cohesion. The second states that this connection is influenced by other factors that include the individuals’ position in the stratification system. The contextual effects are of particular importance because they influence both the relationship between individual economic realities and economic inequality and the link between social cohesion and economic inequality. Focusing on two aspects of social cohesion—civic engagement and social tolerance—I present evidence that (a) high levels of inequality are related to low levels of social cohesion and inclusion; (b) high levels of inequality are associated with lower commitment to democratic principles; and (c) low levels of inclusion are associated with lower commitment to democratic principles such as social tolerance. This dissertation provides links between these topics by exploring the comparative role of inequality in varying social, economic, political, and religious contexts. It examines contextual effects at both the community-level and at the cross-national level to illustrate the patterns and results of social cohesion. | PhD | inequality | 10 |
| Mirotchnick, Nicholas | Cadotte, Marc | Ecosystem Functioning in the Real World | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-06 | Ecosystem functions are components of an ecosystem that change over time. We rely on many of these functions, such as carbon or water cycling, for survival. For over twenty years, ecologists have been vigorously testing the effects of biodiversity loss on ecosystem functioning. These experiments have nearly all been done either in growth chambers or carefully cultivated field communities. As ecologists frequently acknowledge, it remains to be determined how accurately the results of these studies portray the effects of biodiversity on ecosystem functioning in nature. Ecosystem functioning research has also emphasized biodiversity as the key variable, while other community properties and processes have gone largely ignored. I studied carbon cycling in Arctic tundra plants by focusing on the ecophysiology of respiration rates rather than biodiversity. I also conducted a biodiversity and ecosystem functioning experiment using natural, unmanipulated communities. Finally, I used the data from both of these experiments to quantify intraspecific variation in functional traits, a crucial tool in studies of ecosystem functions. I found that respiration rates in the unique constant daylight environment in the Arctic are much higher than would be expected from studies in temperate environments. In the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning experiment, I was unable to find any measurable effect of biodiversity on biomass production, marking a stark contrast from previous results in controlled experiments. I also found extensive intraspecific variation in many common functional traits, highlighting the importance of including these measurements in similar studies. | Ph.D. | water, ecosystem, environment | 6, 13, 14 |
| Mirtchev, Peter | Ozin, Geoffrey | Investigations of Earth-abundant Metal Oxide Nanomaterials for Solar Fuel Generation | Chemistry | 2015-11 | Developing renewable energy technologies to mitigate anthropogenic climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. Making use of the Sun’s bountiful energy is society’s best hope for achieving cheap, efficient renewable power on a global scale. Solar-assisted conversion of abundant resources such as CO2 and H2O into valuable hydrocarbons is an attractive proposition in this respect. This work investigates the synthesis and characterization of nanoparticulate metal oxides based mainly on abundant iron and copper, and their application as photocatalysts for CO2 reduction and H2 evolution from water. We begin by presenting a general introduction to artificial photosynthesis and a brief literature review of progress in the field. The synthesis, characterization, and hybrid properties of novel Fe2O3/Cu2O hetero-nanocrystals are then described. These nanoparticles represent one of the few examples of colloidal oxide-oxide hetero-structured nanocrystals in the literature. In subsequent work, we explore Cu2O nanocubes as a semiconducting scaffold for the synthesis of multi-component photocatalytic architectures. This work then led us to study the activity of metallic Cu on TiO2 as a model H2 evolution system and examine the effects of alcoholic scavengers on product distribution in water splitting experiments. Finally, we discuss iron-copper delafossite CuFeO2 which was found to be an active catalyst for the light-assisted hydrogenation of CO2 to CO. We conclude by summarizing some of the lessons learned over the course of this work in trying to develop cheap, efficient artificial photosynthesis catalysts, and attempt to provide useful guidelines that may aid future researchers in this pursuit. | Ph.D. | water, energy, renewable, solar | 6, 7 |
| Mitchell, Carrie L. | Maclaren, Virginia W. | Recycling the City: The Impact of Urban Change on the Informal Waste-Recovery Trade in Hanoi, Vietnam | Geography | 2008-11 | This three-paper dissertation explores how broader (and often unchallenged) changes to political economy at multiple geographic and economic scales impact long-standing ‘informal’ practices of waste recovery and recycling in Hanoi, Vietnam. This research is based on a survey of 575 informal waste collectors and 264 waste intermediaries as well as 73 in-depth interviews. Paper I engages in a critique of methodological disclosure in current academic writings on informal waste-recovery activities and discusses the methodological difficulties of researching informal populations. My aim in this paper is to highlight that the lack of methodological disclosure in waste-recovery literature is problematic because it compromises the academic rigour of this field and impedes the reliability of researchers’ policy recommendations as well as to initiate a dialogue with the aim of improving methodological rigour in waste-recovery literature. Paper II examines urbanization processes in contemporary Vietnam and how these changing spaces accommodate labour, and in turn support livelihoods. I argue that Vietnam’s globalizing economy and urban transition have been a catalyst for the growth of the informal waste collector population in Hanoi, as well as a partial player in the gendering of the industry. Paper III explores how one particular segment of the informal waste-recovery trade, waste intermediaries, is impacted by Hanoi’s rapid urban change. I demonstrate in this paper that 1) waste intermediaries simultaneously gain and lose as a result of Hanoi’s urban transition; and 2) the underlying forces of urban spatial change in different areas of the city are quite distinct, which will have an impact on the future of waste-recovery in Hanoi. The key findings of this dissertation are: 1)A more thorough engagement with methods and a broader approach to understanding waste-recovery actors (through an engagement with political economy at multiple geographic and economic scales) will produce a more context-appropriate and compassionate understanding of this group of urban actors. 2)The livelihoods of informal waste-recovery workers are both directly and indirectly impacted by shifts in political economy, albeit in Hanoi these impacts (both positive and negative) vary by sex and sub-occupation (with respect to waste collectors), and scale of business and location in the city (with respect to waste intermediaries). | PhD | labour, waste, recycl | 7, 8, 12 |
| Mizevich, Jane | Piran, Niva | Resilient Women: Resisting the Pressure to Be Thin | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-11 | The purpose of this study was to explore protective factors that help women resist societal pressures for thinness. The present study used a qualitative life history methodology to examine the experiences of women who identified themselves as resilient to pressures to be thin and as liking their bodies regardless of size. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 women, ages 18 to 25, representing diverse social and ethno-cultural backgrounds and body physiques. In the interviews, the participants were inquired about their experiences related to anything they felt was helpful for them in developing a positive body image from childhood, adolescence, and to present day. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed for themes using constructivist grounded theory methodology. Data analysis was informed by the feminist theoretical approach, with attention paid to social and contextual factors. Three core categories emerged from the analysis, which included protective factors associated with participants’ experiences of identity, ways of inhabiting their bodies, and the nature of social influences in their lives. This research highlighted the women’s active role in maintaining a resilient stance in the face of pressures for thinness as well as the importance of social factors that assist them in this process. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Moalem, Shira | McDonald, Lynn | Using Photo-Elicitation Methods to Explore Spirituality among Persons with Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias | Social Work | 2019-06 | Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and related dementias involve irreversible memory decline, personality changes and other neuropsychiatric and cognitive impairments for which there is currently no cure. Research has shown that spirituality can be a beneficial coping mechanism to deal with the deleterious psychosocial aspects of disease progression. The central objective of the present study was to examine the experiences of spirituality from the perspective of persons’ who suffer from dementia since no empirical research from a social work perspective currently exists as a basis for enhancing knowledge and practice. Using a participant-inclusive qualitative research methodology of photo-elicitation and qualitative interviews, this inquiry explored the relationship between spirituality and persons with dementia by directly soliciting their views and experiences. Personhood, social constructivism, and symbolic interactionism informed the theoretical basis for this study and purposive sampling was used. The group of participants included 12 persons with a mild-moderate dementia diagnosis, and the methodology was modified in the field to accommodate participant preferences in selecting existing photos as well as taking new ones, which was then followed by in-depth, semi-structured interviews (N = 12). Thematic analysis techniques resulted in the emergence of four core themes. Participants’ rich accounts illustrated their ongoing engagement with spirituality in their daily lives, suggesting that, those with dementia can communicate integrated, nondualist definitions of spirituality. Participants described different ways of accessing spirituality, for example, through adherence to spiritual or religious practices, participation in the arts, reminiscence, humanitarian service, and reflecting on the lives of family members. While dementia impacted aspects of how participants experienced spirituality, they did not abandon it but instead adapted spirituality in order to continue to engage. The core findings in this research underscored the importance of self-defined meaning and purpose for those with dementia, while highlighting the significance of relationships to enhancing quality of life. The results of this study include suggestions for broadening future social work gerontological practice and education so that as the number of older adults diagnosed with dementia increases significantly we may more competently address their needs within an ongoing ethic of care. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Mohammed Mohammed, Ahmed Mostafa | Iravani, Mohammad Reza | Impacts of High-depth of Wind Power Penetration on Interconnected Power Systems Dynamics | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2016-06 | The main objective of this work is to investigate the impact of the high-depth, e.g., 35%, of penetration of the wind power, as Wind Power Plants (WPPs), on the low-frequency (0.1-2Hz) dynamics of interconnected power systems. Due to the lack and/or inadequacy of the analytical and the digital time-domain simulation tools for this class of studies, this undertaking 1. Develops enhanced nonlinear dynamic models of Type-3 and Type-4 WPPs for transient stability studies. 2. Develops a MATLAB-based transient stability time-domain simulation tool and integrates the WPP models in the tool. 3. Develops small-signal (linearized) models of Type-3 and Type-4 WPPs from their corresponding enhanced nonlinear models. 4. Develops a MATLAB-based linear platform for eigen analysis of large power systems including linearized models of Type-3 and Type-4 WPPs. 5. Introduces and develops a measurement-based coherency identication method for power system coherency identication in the presence of WPPs. Based on the develops of items 1-5 above, this thesis investigates the impacts of the (i) depth of wind power penetration, (ii) locations of WPPs and (iii) types of WPPs on transient stability, damping ratios of electromechanical modes and coherency phenomena of the New York/New England power system. The studies conclude that: i. Addition of WPPs do not introduce new inter-area oscillatory modes however it can aect existing ones. ii. Impact of WPPs on the damping ratio of an inter-area mode is determined based on the location(s) of the added WPP(s) with respect to the areas. If the WPPs increase the power exchange between two areas, the damping of the inter-area mode decreases. iii. Addition of WPPs close to synchronous generators equipped with DC exciters re- sults in the reduction of the damping ratio of the corresponding local modes due to interactions among the fast reactive power controllers of the WPPs and the slow excitation systems of the generators. iv. As the depth of penetration of wind power increases, the power system exhibits higher degree of nonlinearity and the impact of wind power on the system transient stability can be determined only from the time-domain simulation of the system nonlinear model. This indicates that the results of the transient stability assess- ment of the power system for lower depth of penetration of wind power cannot be extrapolated to higher levels. v. Addition of WPPs to a power system results in altering the coherency structure. Based on the WPPs allocation patterns, the impact of wind power on the system coherency is limited to the formation of new areas that are totally dominated by the added WPPs and the base case coherency structure of the synchronous generators is preserved. | Ph.D. | wind | 7 |
| Mohareb, Eugene | Kennedy, Christopher A. | Quantifying the Transition to Low-carbon Cities | Civil Engineering | 2012-06 | Global cities have recognized the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and have begun to take action to balance of the carbon cycle. This thesis examines the nuances of quantification methods used and the implications of current policy for long-term emissions. Emissions from waste management, though relatively small when compared with building and transportation sectors, are the largest source of emissions directly controlled by municipal government. It is important that municipalities understand the implications of methodological selection when quantifying GHG emissions from waste management practices. The “Waste-in-Place” methodology is presented as the most relevant for inventorying purposes, while the “Methane Commitment” approach is best used for planning. Carbon sinks, divided into “Direct” and “Embodied”, are quantified using the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) as a case study. “Direct” sinks, those whose sequestration processes occur within urban boundaries, contribute the largest share of carbon sinks with regional forests providing a significant proportion. “Embodied” sinks, those whose sequestration processes (or in the case of concrete, the processes that enable sequestration) are independent of the urban boundary, can contribute to the urban carbon pool, but greater uncertainty exists in upstream emissions as the management/processing prior to its use as a sink are generally beyond the consumer’s purview. The Pathways to Urban Reductions in Greenhouse gas Emissions (or PURGE) model is developed as a means to explore emissions scenarios resulting from urban policy to mitigate climate change by quantifying future carbon sources/sinks (from changes in building stock, vehicle stock, waste treatment and urban/regional forests). The model suggests that current policy decisions in the GTA provide short-term reductions but are not sufficient in the long term to balance the pressures of economic and population growth. Aggressive reductions in energy demand from personal transportation and existing building stock will be necessary to achieve long-term emissions targets. | PhD | energy, urban, waste, climate, greenhouse gas | 7, 11, 12, 13 |
| Mohsin, Tanzina | Gough, William A. | Greater Toronto Area Urban Heat Island: Analysis of Temperature and Extremes | Geography | 2009-11 | This study analyzes the trends in temperature, and their extremes, in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in the context of urban heat island. The trends in annual and seasonal temperature changes were investigated in the GTA over the past century and a half with special focus on 1970-2000. The Mann-Kendall test is used to assess the significance of the trends and the Theil-Sen slope estimator is used to identify their magnitude. Statistically significant increasing trends for mean and minimum temperatures are observed mainly at the urban and suburban stations. The sequential Mann-Kendall test is used to identify any abrupt change in the time series of temperature (31 -161 years), and the results indicate that increasing trend for annual mean temperature has started after 1920 at Toronto downtown, after the 1960s at the suburban stations, and has increased significantly during the 1980s at all stations, which is consistent with the pace of urbanization during these periods in the GTA. The observed urban heat island (UHI) in Toronto is quantified and characterized by considering three different rural stations. The UHI intensity (∆Tu-r) in Toronto is categorized as winter dominating or summer dominating depending on the choice of a rural station. The results from the trend analysis of annual and seasonal ∆Tu-r suggest that the choice of the rural station is crucial in the estimation of ∆Tu-r, and thus can overestimate or underestimate its prediction depending on the location and topographical characteristics of a rural station relative to the urban station. The trends in extreme temperature indices are also investigated and the results indicate that indices based on daily maximum temperature are more pronounced at the urban and suburban stations compared to that at the rural stations. The changes in the trends for extreme indices based on daily minimum temperature are consistent at all stations for the period of 1971-2000. With the decrease in the percentage of cold nights and the increase in the percentage of warm nights, the diurnal temperature range has decreased throughout the GTA region. The analysis of heating degree days and cooling degree days revealed that the former is associated with decreasing trends and the latter exhibited increasing trends at almost all stations in the GTA. Finally, it is evident from the results that urban heat island phenomenon exerts warmer influence on the climate in cities, and with the current pace of urbanization in the GTA, it is imperative to understand the potential impact of the emerging UHI on humans and society. | PhD | climate, cities | 11, 13 |
| Moir, Jonathon William | Ozin, Geoffrey | Electrochemical and Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation Using α-Fe2O3 | Chemistry | 2016-06 | There is a global need to reduce the use of fossil fuels due to the negative impacts of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions on climate change. An alternative to a carbon-based energy system is therefore necessary, and hydrogen is considered one of the most promising energy carrier replacements. This thesis focuses on the renewable production of hydrogen via photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting using Earth-abundant iron oxide (α-Fe2O3, or hematite) as a photoanode. Hematite is considered a promising semiconductor candidate for PEC water oxidation due to its strong absorption of visible light, long-term stability under operating conditions, and low cost. However despite these benefits, rapid recombination of charge carriers and sluggish water oxidation kinetics have hindered its commercial applicability. Here, we have demonstrated that the effective application of three-dimensional nanoscaffolds, composed of a transparent conducting oxide, can significantly enhance the electrochemical surface area of solution-processed iron oxide thin films. The underlying scaffolds were also found to enhance the activity of the surface catalysts due to an electronic “spacer” effect, and light absorption was increased within the disordered structures due to effective trapping of photons and increased catalyst loading. Following this, we demonstrated that the solution-processed films, which were initially PEC-inactive, could be activated via high-temperature treatment under flowing hydrogen gas. The result was the formation of a non-stoichiometric α-Fe2O3-x photocatalyst that suppressed charge recombination and increased photoactivity. This photoactivity was further correlated to the build-up of charged species at the photoanode surface that mediate the water oxidation reaction. Finally, to improve the kinetics of our newly activated material, we functionalized our α-Fe2O3-x thin films with a stable homogeneous iridium co-catalyst. The co-catalyst was found to greatly enhance the activity of the system, and extensive electrochemical testing revealed that this was almost entirely due to improved kinetics at the semiconductor-electrolyte interface. | Ph.D. | water, energy, renewable, production, climate, greenhouse gas | 6, 7, 12, 13 |
| Molina-Alfaro, Irma | Napolitano, Valentina | Indigeneity, Warfare & Representation: The Zapatista Case (1994-2003) | Anthropology | 2010-11 | This thesis deals with issues of indigeneity, warfare and representation as they relate to the Zapatista struggle in Chiapas, Mexico between the years of 1994-2003 –a period widely known as a period of low intensity warfare. During this period, militants of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) engaged fiercely in the creation and defence of de facto “indigenous” municipalities and territories, posing a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the Mexican “state” and its faculty to govern. The environment of war, accompanied by a prevalent Indianist discourse, highly structured the ways in which Zapatista lives came to be represented by activist and academic writings alike. Generic images of Zapatista militants came to dominate the literature. Within this context, my thesis argues for the importance of moving away from images of Zapatistas as public figures and investigating, instead, everyday Zapatista lives. I argue that a refocus on specific-situated-local-everyday politics necessarily entails engaging with “internal” conflict, division, hierarchies, and power differentials. Framed by an ethnographic approach, the analysis presented here is based on 17 months of fieldwork. My discussion on indigenous autonomy and self-determination, therefore, goes well beyond claims to indigenous rights and engages, instead, historical as well as on-the-ground expressions of what self-determination looked like on an everyday basis. My discussion on warfare, moves beyond condemnations of militarization in the area and pays attention to some of the ways in which warfare worked to structure peoples’ lives and daily perceptions as well as outsiders’ understanding of the conflict. While generally my analysis is confined by the particularities of time and space, a generous examination of an ample literature gives it theoretical depth and political relevance beyond the Zapatista case. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Molinaro, Dennis | Radforth, Ian | State Repression and Political Deportation in Canada, 1919-1936 | History | 2015-06 | Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada was in force from1919 to 1936. The dissertation traces the way in which Canada incorporated emergency law, created during the First World War under the War Measures Act, into the Criminal Code as Section 98 after the war to combat political radicalism from 1919 to 1936. In contrast to existing scholarship, this work not only explains how a liberal democracy like Canada can legally use emergency legislation outside of a state of emergency through a process of `normalization' but it also examines the effects of such laws on their human targets through case studies of criminal trials and deportation hearings. Targets included political activists, immigrants and women. It makes contributions to Canada's legal, immigration, labour and intelligence history. The study also examines the international influences on Canadian policy makers in creating such laws and the complex international identities of the transnational activists at whom these laws were often directed. The work examines how culture played a crucial role in underpinning the intelligence cycle that led to the prosecution of leading Communist Party of Canada (CPC) members. It also complicates our understanding of the CPC during Moscow's `Third Period.' It was a party that both marginalized and welcomed immigrant workers. The dissertation provides an in-depth examination of the trial of Rex v. Buck et al and the ways in which political ideology was interpreted by the court as a criminal act. It examines cases of deportation that resulted from the trial, such as the case of the `Halifax Ten,' and traces what happened to the deportees after their deportation making use of Finnish, Polish, Croatian, and German primary sources. In addition, this work demonstrates how the communist led organization, the Canadian Labour Defense League (CLDL) initiated Canada's civil rights movement by joining with moderate leftists during the `Third Period,' and before the Communist International's shift to the `United Front' policy, to repeal Section 98. It demonstrates how the normalization of emergency law continued after Section 98's repeal when its core elements were retained and folded into Canada's sedition laws where it remains today. | Ph.D. | labour | 8 |
| Moll, Sandra | Eakin, Joan | Mental Health Issues and Work: Institutional Practices of Silence in a Mental Healthcare Organization | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2010-11 | Over the past decade, mental illness in the workplace has become a key issue in the health and business communities, fueled in part by recognition of the high prevalence rates and significant costs for individuals and organizations. Although research in the field is starting to emerge, there are significant gaps in what is known, particularly with respect to the workplace context and its impact on workers. The overall objective of this study was to characterize, from a sociological perspective, the experiences of healthcare workers with mental health issues, and to account for how their experiences were shaped by the social relations of work. A qualitative approach, based on principles of institutional ethnography, guided exploration of the interactional, structural and discursive dimensions of work within a large mental health and addictions treatment facility. Data collection included in-depth interviews with twenty employees regarding their personal experiences with mental health issues, interviews with twelve workplace stakeholders regarding their interactions with workers, and a review of organizational texts related to health, illness and productivity. Analysis of the transcripts and texts was based on an institutional ethnography approach to mapping social processes; examining connections between local sites of experience and the social organization of work. The study findings revealed a critical disjuncture between the public mandate of advocacy, open dialogue, and support regarding mental health issues, and the private experience of workers which was characterized by silence, secrecy and inaction. Practices of silence were adopted by workers and workplace stakeholders across the organization, and were shaped by discursive forces related to stigma, staff-client boundaries, and responsibility to act. The silence had both positive and negative implications for the mental health of workers, as well as for relationships and productivity in the workplace. In accounting for the practices and production of silence, I argue that silence is complex, multi-dimensional, and embedded within the social relations of healthcare work. It serves to maintain institutional order. This conceptualization of silence challenges current beliefs and practices related to stigma, disclosure, early identification, support, and return to work for employees with mental health issues. | PhD | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Monchalin, Renee | Smylie, Janet | Digging up the Medicines: Urban Métis Women’s Identity and Experiences with Health and Social Services in Toronto, Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | Métis Peoples comprise over a third of the Indigenous population in Canada while experiencing major gaps in access to culturally safe health services. These gaps are problematic given the severe disparities in health determinants and outcomes that Métis Peoples experience, compared to the non-Indigenous Canadian population. To address the Métis health service gap, this qualitative study applied a conversational method to follow up with a subgroup of Métis women who participated in the Our Health Counts Toronto longitudinal cohort. Guided by a Decolonizing Praxis woven with Indigenous Feminist Theory, conversations explored Métis women’s perspectives on identity and their experiences with health and social services in Toronto. The three manuscripts presented in this dissertation expose the multitude of barriers Métis women face when trying to access services in Toronto. In the first manuscript, Métis women share about the influence of patriarchy in health and social services in Toronto. This included men dominating policies regarding Métis identity; cultural mentors crossing barriers; physicians who were judgmental and sexually violent; and being forced to advocate for basic services. This manuscript highlights the need for Métis women to be re-centered in positions of leadership. The second manuscript reveals the experiences with racism and discrimination that Métis women face when trying to access health and social services in Toronto. This included witnessing, absorbing, and facing racism, feeling unwelcomed, and experiencing lateral violence. This manuscript underscores the urgency and importance of understanding and addressing racism as a determinant of Métis Peoples’ health. The third manuscript provides recommendations by Métis women to improve access to health and social services in Toronto for the Métis community. This included having a Métis presence within services; culturally relevant design; Métis specific and/or informed services; welcoming reception; and service providers with an understanding of Indigenous Peoples’ histories and complexities. This research illustrates the multitude of barriers that Métis women have experienced when trying to access health and social services in Toronto. At the same time, this research demonstrates that Métis women hold practical solutions to develop culturally-specific, appropriate, and effective health programs and services for Métis Peoples in Toronto. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Moniruzzaman, Md | Cunningham, Hilary | "Living Cadavers" in Bangladesh: Ethics of the Human Organ Bazaar | Anthropology | 2010-11 | The “miracle” success of transplant technology, alongside the commercialization of health care, and the increasing polarization between rich and poor have created the conditions for an illegal but thriving trade in human body parts. Based on 15 months of challenging fieldwork, my research examines the ethics of the organ bazaar, particularly the experiences of 33 kidney sellers living in Bangladesh. On the underground bazaar, not only human kidneys but also livers and corneas are advertised for sale. Recipients, sellers, and brokers regularly post newspaper advertisements to buy and sell organs. The average price for a kidney is US $1,500 in Bangladesh, a country where 78% of people live on less than $2 a day. My research examines serious ethical questions, such as these: Is it right to purchase an organ, even if the organ sought provides longevity? Is the sale of one’s organ a justifiable means of fighting poverty? These questions allow me to examine the ethics of harvesting organs, particularly from the bodies of impoverished people. Narrating the victims’ deeply moving testimonies, my ethnography reveals how organ buyers (both recipients and brokers) tricked and pressured Bangladeshi poor into selling their kidneys. In the end, these sellers were brutally deprived and deceived, and their suffering was extreme. In the post-vending period, sellers’ health, economic, and social conditions significantly deteriorated, yet none of them received the promised post-operative care—not even one appointment. My research therefore concludes that organ commodification is serious structural violence against the poor, at the terrible cost of harm and suffering to them. Examining the organ market proposition, I argue that the resulting violence and injustice against the poor provide a hefty reason to rebut this trade. Bangladeshi kidney sellers also stood up against organ commodification, speaking out about their suffering, and about various detrimental and unethical outcomes incurred in this deal. My research aims to offer insights to bioethics and to broaden the debate on human rights by exposing how technological advancement, structural violence, and grinding poverty intersect in the violation of justice to the poor, turning them into “living cadavers.” | PhD | poverty, health, equality | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Montanari, Gino | Blair, Mascall | The Ontario Leadership Framework for Catholic Principals and Vice-Principals: Purpose versus Practice | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | Education is a field that experiences a number of policy initiatives and changes all in an effort to improve the system. The success of these initiatives is dependent in large part on the way the policies have been received by those expected to implement the changes. This study explored the experiences of seven Catholic secondary principals and seven Catholic secondary vice-principals with the Ontario Leadership Framework (OLF) in one school district of Ontario. As a provincially mandated policy change, the OLF was part of an initiative to support and sustain current school leaders in their work by providing a catalogue of leadership practices and competencies that have been found to be highly effective both in the research literature of educational leadership and from current practitioners. A review of the policy implementation and educational change literature was used to provide a perspective on how innovations can be understood to go through a process that involves 3 phases: initiation, implementation, and institutionalization. Of particular interest to this study is the presence of factors that influence how an innovation is implemented. This conceptual framework was used to explore and understand the presence of these factors in the experiences of this study's participants. Qualitative data were collected through personal interviews with participants and provided opportunities for them to reflect on their experiences with the OLF.Findings suggest that participants' experiences were largely influenced by the way their school district unpacked the OLF. More specifically, participants identified the framework as a tool for performance appraisals, a reference for job interviews, and a source of a common leadership language. Despite the intent to embed core leadership practices and competencies into the professional learning and daily practices of school leaders, study participants only used the framework to complete two administrative tasks. Further, principals and vice-principals noted aspects of their work that were not reflected in the framework. Results of this study suggest a number of implications for practice for governments, school districts, and for principals and vice-principals. | Ph.D. | educat, innovation | 4, 9 |
| Montazer, Shirin | Wheaton, Blair | Country of Origin as a Modifier of the effect of Generation and Length of Residence on the Mental Health Outcomes of Immigrants to Canada | Sociology | 2012-11 | In this thesis I study the mental health trajectory of the children of immigrants and adult immigrants to Canada. I argue for a reorientation of the study of immigrant adaptation to a more systematic recognition of the influence of country of origin in the migration process. I reexamine the study of the adjustment of the children of immigrants over generation and adult immigrants with time in the host county by arguing that the socioeconomic fit between country of origin and country of destination defines and shapes the adaptation process across generations and over time. In Chapter 2, coauthored with Blair Wheaton, we use a sample of children in Toronto, Canada, and demonstrate that generational differences in the mental health of children occur only in families from countries of origin at the lowest levels of economic development. In Chapter 3, I use the same data to examine the mental health trajectory of married immigrant men and women by country of origin. Results show a clear pattern of mental health trajectory, especially, among those from low GNP countries of origin. But unlike the prediction that those from the most distinct origins than the host country would benefit from initially better mental health than the reference group, which dissipates with time in the host country, results show that these immigrants initially experience worse mental health than the native born that follows a J-shape evolution with increase in length of residence (LOR) in Canada. Finally, in Chapter 4, I utilize longitudinal data to examine the mental health trajectory of adults to three metropolitan cities in Canada. Again, results show a clear pattern of mental health change, specifically among one group of immigrants: those from low GNP countries of origin. In this chapter, I find that whereas age at immigration matters in the relationship between LOR and log rate of alcohol consumption in the past week, it does not affect the relationship between LOR and the log rate of depression among adult immigrants to Canada. Each chapter is a free-standing paper that constitutes a contribution to the field of immigration and mental health. | PhD | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Montgomery, Ann | Jha, Prabhat | Pregnancy-related Deaths in India: Causes of Death and the Use of Health Services | Medical Science | 2014-03 | Introduction: The distribution of the causes of maternal deaths, and the impact of facility-based obstetric care access (obstetric access) at the individual and population level in India have not yet been quantified. Objectives: (i) estimate the physician agreement for coding of maternal deaths; (ii) explain the distribution of maternal mortality in India; and (iii) quantify the effect of obstetric access on the probability of maternal death, accounting for effect modification of state level skilled attendant coverage. Methods: I used the nationally representative Million Death Survey (MDS) of the causes of death from 2001-3. I identified context-specific risk factors from the field reports to provide information on care patterns before deaths. The 1096 MDS maternal deaths were matched to 147 001 controls of non-fatal deliveries from a representative fertility survey. Findings: 1.Inter-rater reliability was substantial for two physicians assigning a cause of death. 2. Three-quarters of India's maternal deaths were clustered in rural areas of poorer states, although these regions have only half the estimated births in India. The distribution of major causes of maternal deaths (most notably hemorrhage, obstruction, sepsis, abortion) did not differ between poorer and richer states. Two-thirds of maternal deaths died seeking healthcare, most in a critical medical condition. 3. The probability of maternal death decreased with increasing skilled attendant coverage, among both women who had and had not accessed obstetric care. The risk of death among women who had obstetric access was higher (at 50% coverage, OR=2.32) than among those women who did not. However at higher population levels of coverage of safe birth, obstetric access had no effect. This effect appears to be driven partially by reverse causality, in which critical illness is shown to confound the association between care seeking and death. Conclusions: Simple MDS methods enable measurement of the levels, determinants of maternal deaths. Currently, obstetric access in India appears to be an indicator for inequitable access and poor quality even though it is a life-saving intervention. Reduction in maternal mortality in India will require expanded population-based coverage of skilled birth attendance and improved and early access to high quality obstetric care. | PhD | health, equitable, women | 3, 4, 2005 |
| Montgomery, Michael S. | Christopoulos, Constantin | Fork Configuration Damper (FCDs) for Enhanced Dynamic Performance of High-rise Buildings | Civil Engineering | 2012-03 | The dynamic behaviour of high-rise buildings has become a critical design consideration as buildings are built taller and more slender. Large wind vibrations cause an increase in the lateral wind loads, but more importantly, they can be perceived by building occupants creating levels of discomfort ranging from minor annoyance to severe motion sickness. The current techniques to address these issues include stiffening the lateral load resisting system, reducing the number of stories, or incorporating a vibration absorber at the top of the building. All of which have consequences on the overall project cost. The dynamic response of high-rise buildings is highly dependent on damping. Full-scale measurements of high-rise buildings have shown that the inherent damping decreases with height and recent in-situ measurements have shown that the majority of buildings over 250 meters have levels of damping less than 1% of critical. Studies have shown that small increases in the inherent damping can lead to vast improvement in dynamic response. A new damping system, the viscoelastic (VE) Fork Configuration Damper (FCD), has been developed at the University of Toronto to address these design challenges. The proposed FCDs are introduced in lieu of coupling beams in reinforced concrete (RC) coupled wall buildings and take advantage of the large shear deformations at these locations when the building is subjected to lateral loads. An experimental study was conducted on 5 small-scale VE dampers to characterize the VE material behaviour and 6 full-scale FCD samples in an RC coupled wall configuration (one designed for areas where low to moderate ductility is required and one with built-in ductile structural “fuse” for areas where high ductility is required). The VE material tests exhibited stable hysteretic behaviour under expected high-rise loading conditions and the full-scale tests validated the overall system performance based on the kinematic behaviour of coupled walls, wall anchorage and VE material behaviour. Analytical models were developed that capture the VE material behaviour and the FCD system performance well. An 85-storey high-rise building was studied analytically to validate the design approach and to highlight the improvements in building response resulting from the addition of FCDs. | PhD | buildings | 9 |
| Moore, Hollis Leigh | Muehlebach, Andrea | Imprisonment and (Un)Relatedness in Northeast Brazil | Anthropology | 2017-11 | This dissertation – based on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in and around a men’s and a women’s prison – explores imprisonment and (un)relatedness in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. From the vantage point of a prison compound and the heavily penalized neighbourhoods surrounding it, I describe and analyze inextricable connectivities which bind this compound to its social milieu, prison cells to houses, and prisoners to non-prisoners. I focus in particular on the gendered experiences and life projects of male and female “subjects of incarceration” – social actors whose entanglements with the prison are relatively intense, namely: (ex-)prisoners, visitors, and non-visitors (people with an imprisoned relation who do not visit the prison). In short, what is at stake in this dissertation is the question of how social reproduction occurs in a context in which imprisonment has come to be a regular, predictable part of life for poor and racialized groups. To grasp material and symbolic continuities, ruptures, and interconnections constitutive of prison-society relations I have developed the concept of “carceral forms.” This concept offers an approach to delineating objects of inquiry and a set of questions that will enrich multidisciplinary conversations about imprisonment as well as punishment and society. Anthropological insights regarding (un)relatedness have informed my theoretical-methodological approach to practices of imprisonment. This means that I approach penality and penal effects through the ethnographic investigation of gendered social relations forged, maintained, strained, and severed within and across prison boundaries. I also use the ethnographic fact of relatedness theoretically. I draw on anthropological theorizations of (un)relatedness to trouble taken-for-granted carceral boundaries and devise an innovative object of inquiry which I call carceral forms. In conceptualizing imprisonment in this way, I take inspiration from Strathern (1989) and her emphasis on immanent sociality. That is, I take “the relation” (1995) as a starting point to rethink the prison as a social institution. Rather than presume the boundaries, and the boundedness, of this institution, I attend to the statements and practices of people who negotiate imprisonment in a manner that at once (re)produces differences between carceral and non-carceral domains and establishes connections between these emergently distinct domains. | Ph.D. | gender, women, institution | 5, 16 |
| Morales, Juan Sebastian | Bobonis, Gustavo J | Essays in the Economics of Violence and Conflict | Economics | 2017-11 | Chapter 1 studies the impact of the arrival of displaced individuals on the wages of residents at receiving locations. To do this, the study employs an enclave IV strategy, which exploits both social distance between origin and destination locations and forced migration. I compare the effects on four different subgroups of the population, partitioned by skill (low-skilled versus high-skilled) and by gender. The analysis suggests that a conflict-induced increase in population leads to a short-run negative impact on wages, but that subsequent out-migration from receiving municipalities helps to mitigate these effects. Chapter 2 studies the relationship between political violence and congressional decision-making. I examine how politicians and their constituents respond to attacks by FARC, Colombia's largest rebel group, using data from politicians' Twitter accounts and roll-call voting records, and employing both an event study and a difference-in-differences research design. The analysis finds that tweets from incumbent politicians and tweets which exhibit "right-wing" language receive higher user engagement (a proxy for popular support) following rebel attacks. In congress, politicians were more likely to align their legislative votes with the right-leaning ruling party following an attack, before the government started negotiations with the rebels in 2012. However, this relationship breaks down after the start of the peace process. The empirical results are consistent with a political economy model of legislative behaviour in which events that shift median voter preferences, and the presence of rally 'round the flag effects, elicit different politician responses depending on the policy position of the ruling party. Chapter 3, joint work with Gustavo Bobonis and Roberto Castro, provides evidence of the long-term relationship between male-to-female spousal violence and the Oportunidades conditional cash transfer program in rural Mexico. It uses data from three nationally representative surveys that include detailed information on the prevalence of spousal abuse and threats of violence against women. Constructing comparable groups of beneficiary and nonbeneficiary households within each village to minimize potential selection biases, the analysis finds that, in contrast to short-run estimates, physical and emotional abuse rates over the long term do not differ significantly between existing beneficiary and nonbeneficiary couples. | Ph.D. | wage | 8 |
| Morden, Michael | White, Graham | "With a Vow to Defend": Indigenous Direct Mobilization in Canada | Political Science | 2015-06 | Since 1969, Indigenous contentious mobilization has become a fixed feature of public life in Canada. Demonstrations, marches, blockades and occupations are important repertoires of action for Indigenous peoples pursuing historical redress, contemporary recognition, and redistribution of lands and resources. Moreover, institutionalized action channeled primarily through Indian Act band councils and associated peak advocacy organizations increasingly faces legitimacy challenges in Indigenous communities. Adopting theory from the comparative study of intergroup conflict, this dissertation explains the emergence of Indigenous contentious mobilization over the past forty years, and explores the dynamics of individual protest actions. I argue that Indigenous mobilization is best explained by models that emphasize norms and value rationality over interests and instrumental rationality. Historical change cannot be explained without reference to the changes to the complex of norms and institutions that govern Indigenous-Settler relations. Micro-level protest action follows a "calculus of right", wherein mobilization swells and declines with the perceived righteousness of contentious action, rather than material cost-benefit analysis. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Moretti, Myla | Ungar, Wendy J | A Cost-effectiveness Analysis of Maternal Genotyping to Guide Treatment for Postpartum Pain and Avert Infant Adverse Events | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-11 | BACKGROUND: The maternal and infant benefits of breastfeeding are numerous, however maternal exposure to medications during lactation raises concerns of infant exposure and may be an impediment to breastfeeding. Recent concerns about the safety of codeine, an analgesic commonly used after delivery, have arisen. Evidence suggests that mothers with an ultrarapid metabolizer phenotype may put their infants at risk for adverse events by producing more active metabolite, which is excreted into milk. Pharmacogenetic screening may be a valuable tool to identify such mothers, and avert adverse events. OBJECTIVES: The objective of the study was to determine the incremental costs of genotyping to averting neonatal adverse events during maternal pharmacotherapy. METHODS: A cost effectiveness analysis to determine the incremental costs of genotyping to guide codeine therapy compared to standard care to avert adverse events was performed. The base case was a prenatal patient whose metabolizer status was unknown, but who may require codeine analgesia after delivery. Parameter estimates and costs were ascertained from a concurrent clinical study, from the literature and expert opinion. RESULTS: Pharmacogenetic screening resulted in a cost of $9,997.43 per adverse event averted or $2,173.35 per infant symptom day averted, when compared to standard care. The results were not sensitive to most variables in one way analysis, with the exception of the costs of a hospital admission. This study was limited by a small number of trials from which parameter estimates could be extracted and the very small number of adverse events reported in infants in the literature. CONCLUSIONS: Although genotyping to guide pharmacotherapy was not cost saving, the cost to avert an infant adverse event may represent good value for money. It is not yet known whether implementation would be clinically viable, however these findings will have implications for new mothers and their health care providers world-wide. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Morton-Chang, Frances Margaret | Williams, Paul | Tipping Points to Institutional Care for Persons Living with Dementia: Analyzing the Policy Trajectory in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-06 | Most people, if given a choice, would remain in their own home and community as they age. This desire does not diminish for persons living with dementia (PLWD), yet many end up prematurely or inappropriately in residential long-term care (LTC), or waiting in a hospital bed for placement. While institutional care is valuable for those in need of high intensity care, it is ill-suited for those with lower intensity care needs. Premature or inappropriate placement of PLWD is not good for individuals (PLWD and their caregivers), or for the system (inappropriate use of resources), yet occurs in part because PLWD often have multiple complex, ongoing health and social needs; however, this thesis argues that it also is a result of care systems focused on episodic, curative care, and by fragmented services that are ill-equipped to support PLWD safely and cost-effectively in the community.While much policy analysis has focused on demand side issues (e.g., an aging population, dementia projections and needs), this research addresses supply side factors - particularly local system capacity to provide needed community-based care options for PLWD to live safely and cost-effectively in the community for as long as possible. It uses Neo-institutionalism, a high-level theory drawn from political science, to explore the historical and policy legacies for community based care of PLWD and predict what one would expect to see in the future if Ontario remains on the same familiar path. It also uses a Balance of Care (BoC) simulation methodology to explore what the system will actually provide PLWD to age safely at home. The conceptual and applied approaches combined are expected to provide a greater understanding of the policy trajectory for home and community care, its impact on current resource allocation decisions at the local level in Ontario and the potential for H and concerted health and social care interventions to help offset the growing healthcare costs for high intensity users of the system like PLWD. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Morton, Hermia Eddris | Wane, Njoki | Decolonizing Narratives:Kittitian Women, Knowledge Production and Protest | Social Justice Education | 2018-03 | Abstract The thesis acknowledges how women contest domination and challenge us to re-examine the subjects of our history. It centers the stories of 21 African women, who remember a popular uprising in St. Kitts in 1935. Their stories explore how these embodied narrators reconstruct a defining moment in the islandâ s history for insertion into the gaping holes of history that had been left for the imagination, conjecture, and a hegemonic discursive shaped by archival records. Their stories are worth remembering, demand examining and not just to be recorded for posterity. They must be accorded equal value as academic knowledge. The use of storytelling as a methodological approach introduces the Kittitian language to text, removes the burden of colonized linguistic syntax and grounds the epistemological context of the findings and analysis. It provides new evidence of the invasiveness of coloniality and how it interlocks with Caribbean rebel consciousness to usurp decolonial exertions, discursively and institutionally. The work does not claim to provide a representative sample of the hundreds of protestors in 1935, nor do the women speak for all the citizens who were impacted by the social unrest. It questions the processes that normalize the silencing of valuable knowledge that can only be found in the language and memories of subjugated populations. Finally, this study reconstitutes the tellers as knowledge producers, decolonizes their womanhood, and depathologizes the resistance movement. It focuses on how these culture bearers remember the protest and how they reconstruct themselves in relation to the historical event and how they reconstitute their subjectivities through their understanding of what the protest meant for themselves, their families, and communities. The study has implications for further research and knowledge production designed to decolonize Caribbean histories, to accelerate the process of healing the psychological scars and other residual effects of colonization and attests to the resilience of cultural memory. Keywords: Caribbean cultural forms, womanism, feminism, indigenous research, decolonization, liberation, knowledge production, historiography, social justice education | Ph.D. | women, production, justice | 5, 12, 16 |
| Morton, Tanya Rosemary | Hulchanski, J. David | Neighbourhood Correlates of Child Injury: A Case Sudy of Toronto, Canada | Social Work | 2012-06 | This study identifies the extent to which neighbourhood socioeconomic trends are related to intentional and unintentional child injuries in Toronto, Ontario. Children living in lower socioeconomic status (SES) neighbourhoods have often been found to face a higher injury death and morbidity rate than more well‐off children. A likely explanation is an increase in the unequal exposure to injury-promoting environments on the basis of the income polarization (a declining middle income group). However, the strength of the inverse relationship between SES and injury is related to a number of factors, including the SES indicator chosen by the researcher. Hence, a goal of the study is to determine whether neighbourhood socioeconomic trends toward income polarization have predictive power in explaining variation in injury rates in young children aged 0-6, over and above more typical measures of SES and neighbourhood disadvantage. Census data were used to determine socioeconomic trends. Neighbourhoods (census tracts) were divided into three distinct categories based on neighbourhood change in average individual income: neighbourhoods that have been improving, declining, and those displaying mixed trends. This analysis of neighbourhoods was merged with geo-coded hospital-based emergency department data to calculate rates of overall injuries, falls, burns and poisoning. The predictive power of neighbourhood socioeconomic trends on injury was compared to more typical neighbourhood disadvantage measures such as income (high, medium, low), neighbourhood employment rates, education levels, and housing quality from the 2006 census. Socioeconomic trends contributed significantly to injury outcomes, but the contribution of other neighbourhood disadvantage indicators was higher. Housing in need of repair and individuals with no university degree in a neighbourhood were positively correlated with three of four outcomes. A high immigrant population in a neighbourhood was negatively correlated with three of four outcomes. Neighbourhood socioeconomic trends had slightly more predictive power than the more typical measure of SES (high, medium or low income). Researchers should carefully consider their socioeconomic status measures when predicting injury outcomes. | PhD | socioeconomic, employment | 1, 8 |
| Moscou, Kathy | Kohler, Jillian C | Pharmacogovernance in Low- and Middle-income Countries: a case study of Brazil and Kenya | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2016-11 | Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are a global public health threat leading to illness, disability and death. Yet, few countries have a framework to guide postmarket drug safety policy despite increasing access to pharmaceuticals worldwide and the growing trend of gathering information about medicines in the postmarket (rather than the premarket) period. This gap is addressed by â pharmacogovernanceâ , a new theoretical concept that is introduced in this thesis. Pharmacogovernance is defined as the manner in which governing structures; policy instruments; and institutional authority (e.g., ability to act, implement and enforce norms, policies and processes) are managed to promote societal interests for patient safety and protection from ADRs. An analytic framework for examining pharmacogovernance is presented that clarifies the relationship between governance and pharmacovigilance in order to explain how pharmacogovernance influences pharmacovigilance. The research investigates how and why the State (at all levels), global actors and the pharmaceutical industry interact to affect pharmacogovernance and ultimately postmarket drug safety in a low and upper-middle income country (Kenya and Brazil); and how patterns of governance (e.g., devolved and decentralized) affect pharmacovigilance. A new application for Network Governance Theory is presented to explain state and non-state actorsâ interactions regarding pharmacovigilance. Qualitative research methods that included key informant interviews, document analyses and scoping review were conducted. Key findings show that the pharmacogovernance framework can guide policy making for postmarket drug safety. Policy, law and regulations are important for advancing pharmacovigilance and ensuring enforcement however gaps in other pharmacogovernance domains may impede pharmacovigilance in areas such as risk communication and regional equity in postmarket surveillance. The current funding model for pharmacovigilance in Brazil and Kenya is inadequate leading to ad hoc investment in pharmacovigilance and fluctuating priorities. Positive interdependency between pharmacogovernance structure, institutions and networks comprised of domestic and global actors can enhance pharmacogovernance and pharmacovigilance. Research results illuminate how in Brazil and Kenya, investments in pharmacogovernance processes, institutions and network engagement may further improve pharmacovigilance. Investments include: strengthening medicines regulatory authorities; establishing a sustainable funding model for pharmacovigilance; strengthening social participation and inclusion in regulatory decisions pertaining to pharmacovigilance; and increasing interdependency amongst pharmacogovernance structure, institutions, and networks. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Mosher, Matthew Scott | Miller, Heather M.-L. | The Architecture of Mohenjo-Daro as Evidence for the Organization of Indus Civilization Neighbourhoods | Anthropology | 2017-06 | The Architecture of Mohenjo-Daro as Evidence for the Organization of Indus Civilization Urban Neighbourhoods Matthew S. Mosher Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology University of Toronto 2017 Abstract The Indus Civilization of South Asia (c.2600-1900 B.C.) is one of the earliest and most geographically extensive complex urban-based societies in the world. The near-standardized proportions of its architectural components, technically-elaborate pyrotechnologies, undeciphered writing system and, perhaps most famously, its elaborate networks of urban water management, are well known elements that attest to the highly ordered coherence of its civic culture. However, the basic means of urban organization in the Indus Civilization are poorly understood. This thesis attempts to address this lack of understanding by examining the architectural record of its largest and best-studied city, Mohenjo-Daro, for the foundational elements of urban society: neighbourhoods. Through the reanalysis of its original published reports created in the 1930s, this thesis reveals that much of the built environment of Mohenjo-Daro consists of a limited number of recurring building types, leading to the creation of the first functional architectural typology for the Indus Civilization. The distribution of these architectural types was used to identify the cores of distinct neighbourhoods in the city, locales typified by scaled-down replicas of Mohenjo-Daro's iconic buildings in its Upper Town. Anthropological theory concerned with spatiality, interaction, and identity in urban contexts was applied to examine the relationship between these separate neighbourhoods. While being united to one another in a broad program of stylistic symmetry ultimately tied to the corporate aesthetic of most Indus Civilization cultural expressions, the separate neighbourhoods of Mohenjo-Daro manipulated these same expressive practices to proclaim localized and distinct civic identities, and in so doing architecturally mimicked the tension between the centralizing forces of the Mohenjo-Daro state and the decentralizing tendencies of local manners of association. This balance between local community and larger polity is one of the defining elements of both urban neighbourhoods and complex societies generally. The revelation that Mohenjo-Daro was subject to these tendencies helps to clarify its internal urban organization, and allows for the Indus Civilization to be more firmly situated into comparative studies of urban and political processes. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Moss Gamblin, Maud Kathleen | Thiessen, Dennis | Becoming a Sustainability Chef: An Empirical Model of Sustainability Perspectives in Educational Leaders | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-06 | This dissertation reports a study exploring adult engagement with sustainability learning practices in EcoSchools-certified secondary schools in Canada, Lithuania and Sweden as a means towards shaping a liveable future. The study is situated in the area of education for sustainable development. The study design was initially based on an interest in revealing specific practices of sustainability education as a means of improving the relationship between environmental impact and wealth. While echoing findings in the existing literature, this research contributes to the development of the field through insight into the perspectives that adults bring to sustainability education. Primary data collected in the spring of 2006 were recorded (mostly single) semistructured interviews with 30 individuals (national coordinators, caretakers, teachers and administrators), including 10 Canadians from four schools, 14 Lithuanians from four schools, and six Swedes from two schools. Four phases of qualitative analysis were used on the data: initial transcript coding and trends; précis document trends; a six-stage model of interview responses allowing vertical (between question) and horizontal (between stage) comparisons; word maps of subthemes as a scaffold to detail participants’ four primary views (long, wide, deep, dynamic) regarding sustainability. Ultimately, the results of this study point less than expected to revealing specific transferable practices regarding success and challenge in EcoSchools. Rather, these findings provide some insight into a means of shaping a sustainable future through an individual’s sustainability perspective: a living responsiveness based on a sense of connection, supported by improved sustainability cognition, and realized through sustainability practice and considered engagement. | PhD | sustainable development | 12 |
| Mostafa Muhammad, Toka S. | Roorda, Matthew J. | A Microsimulation Platform of Firm Evolution Processes | Civil Engineering | 2017-06 | Firmography is a fundamental component of urban systems that has not received much research attention. Firmographic events of entry, exit, growth, and relocation affect economic growth, labour dynamics, and result in a complex system of goods movements. This dissertation develops a firm modelling framework, called the firmographic engine. The goal of the framework is to evaluate the implications of policy on firm evolution over time by simulating and forecasting firm behaviour. The engine is composed of firm generation, market introduction, performance evaluation, and firm evolution modules. Firm generation simulates entrepreneurial decisions of firm entry. Market introduction involves the specification and completion of operational strategies. Performance evaluation assesses the outcomes of the operational strategies. Firm evolution simulates growth/shrinkage and exit decisions depending on performance evaluation results. Three firmographic events are studied in detail: firm start-up size, growth, and survival. Ordered logit models are estimated for firm start-up size in terms of the firmâ s number of employees and tangible assets. Autoregressive Distributed-Lag models (ARDL) are estimated to represent firm growth. Parametric and non-parametric analyses for firm survival are presented. The non-parametric analysis introduces survival and hazard rates characterized by industry class, province, firm age, and firm size. The parametric analysis includes a discrete-time hazard duration model of firm failure. The results show that firm start-up size, growth and survival are influenced by economic growth, industry dynamics, competition, and firm location and characteristics. Models of freight outsourcing decisions by Canadian manufacturers are also presented. Binary logit and multinomial logit models are estimated. The models show that freight outsourcing is driven by firm strategies, supplier locations, government incentives, innovation and technology, industry dynamics, economic conditions, and competition. Models of international versus local outsourcing are also explored. Statistics Canadaâ s T2-LEAP and Survey of Innovation and Business Strategy (SIBS) databases are utilized for this research. The longitudinal T2-LEAP dataset is used to estimate models of firm start-up size, firm growth, and firm failure of Canadian firms for the period of 2001 to 2012. The cross-sectional SIBS dataset, for the years of 2009 and 2012, is used to estimate models of freight outsourcing by Canadian manufacturers. | Ph.D. | economic growth, industr, institution | 8, 9, 16 |
| Mouftah, Nermeen | Mittermaier, Amira | Building Life: Faith, Literacy Development and Muslim Citizenship in Revolutionary Egypt | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2014-11 | Days after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak, the NGO Life Makers announced the launch of Knowledge Is Power, a campaign to eradicate illiteracy in Egypt. Led by one of the country's most prominent Muslim preachers, Amr Khaled, Life Makers calls on `faith development' (tanmiyya bi-l-Îmân) for a revolutionary literacy movement that sets out to fundamentally reshape religio-political subjectivities in order to build the new Egypt. Based on sixteen months of fieldwork in Cairo, Egypt (June 2011-August 2012, and April-May 2013), this study uncovers how Islamic notions of knowledge and the foundational injunction to read (the first words revealed of the Quran are believed to be "Read in the name of your Lord") inform what I call Islamic literacy development. I examine how the campaign is conceptualized and mobilized from above, and interrogate the politics and ethics of how it unfolds on the ground. The ethnography pivots between campaign volunteers' ethic of action on the one hand, and on the other, the implementation of the campaign in two sites: among mothers in a slum of Old Cairo, and workers at a shipyard in an industrial zone. This dissertation reaches across the anthropology of Islam and development to understand how conceptions and practices of faith and nationhood are cultivated and disputed. One of the political effects of the campaign is the mobilization of and contestation over what I call Muslim citizenship. Life Makers fosters Muslim citizenship as a way of being and political relation in revolutionary Egypt. They maintain that the country will progress only when its people look within and turn towards God. Knowledge Is Power is therefore an Islamic-civic project of self-making that makes literacy a virtuous practice to cultivate a specifically Islamic form of modern citizenship. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Moyser, Melissa Holmes | Schieman, Scott | How Socioeconomic Status Shapes Individuals' Experiences of the Work-family Interface in Canada | Sociology | 2015-06 | Work-family conflict and time pressure have emerged as potent and pervasive stressors in the daily lives of Canadian workers. Yet little is known about the socioeconomic distribution of these work-family outcomes, or the underlying mechanisms, because previous research has largely focused on homogeneous samples, typically consisting of well-educated managers and/or professionals. Drawing on the Stress Process Model as an overarching framework, and through statistical analyses of confidential data from Cycle 20 of the General Social Survey (2006), the dissertation at hand seeks to address this significant gap in knowledge by exploring how and why socioeconomic status (i.e., education or occupation) affects exposure to work-family conflict and time pressure. The findings of this dissertation are largely consistent with (limited) previous research, demonstrating that higher-status individuals in terms of education, occupation, or income are more exposed to work-family conflict and time pressure than their lower-status counterparts. Only in the case of work-to-family conflict do the findings diverge somewhat from this pattern, as individuals in both the highest and lowest occupational groups have the greatest and identical exposure to this work-family outcome. Further, the socioeconomic distribution of work-family conflict is invariant across gender and parental status. However, gender and parenthood jointly condition the occupational distribution of time pressure, such that mothers in managerial occupations have the greatest exposure. Job- and home-related demands and resources consistently affect work-family conflict and time pressure across socioeconomic groups. However, constellations of job- and home-related demands and resources tend to differ between socioeconomic groups, largely accounting for the observed socioeconomic distributions of work-family conflict and time pressure. This suggests that, in order to be effective, government and workplace policies and programs intended to ease earning- and caring-role combination must be designed with an understanding of the unique circumstances that give rise to work-family issues among higher- and lower-status individuals. | Ph.D. | worker, gender, socioeconomic | 1, 5, 2008 |
| Mui, Amy B. | He, Yuhong | A Multi-temporal Remote Sensing Approach to Freshwater Turtle Conservation | Geography | 2015-11 | Freshwater turtles are a globally declining taxa, and estimates of population status are not available for many species. Primary causes of decline stem from widespread habitat loss and degradation, and obtaining spatially-explicit information on remaining habitat across a relevant spatial scale has proven challenging. The discipline of remote sensing science has been employed widely in studies of biodiversity conservation, but it has not been utilized as frequently for cryptic, and less vagile species such as turtles, despite their vulnerable status. The work presented in this thesis investigates how multi-temporal remote sensing imagery can contribute key information for building spatially-explicit and temporally dynamic models of habitat and connectivity for the threatened, Blanding’s turtle (Emydoidea blandingii) in southern Ontario, Canada. I began with outlining a methodological approach for delineating freshwater wetlands from high spatial resolution remote sensing imagery, using a geographic object-based image analysis (GEOBIA) approach. This method was applied to three different landscapes in southern Ontario, and across two biologically relevant seasons during the active (non-hibernating) period of Blanding’s turtles. Next, relevant environmental variables associated with turtle presence were extracted from remote sensing imagery, and a boosted regression tree model was developed to predict the probability of occurrence of this species. Finally, I analysed the movement potential for Blanding’s turtles in a disturbed landscape using a combination of approaches. Results indicate that (1) a parsimonious GEOBIA approach to land cover mapping, incorporating texture, spectral indices, and topographic information can map heterogeneous land cover with high accuracy, (2) remote-sensing derived environmental variables can be used to build habitat models with strong predictive power, and (3) connectivity potential is best estimated using a variety of approaches, though accurate estimates across human-altered landscapes is challenging. Overall, this body of work supports the use of remote sensing imagery in species distribution models to strengthen the precision, and power of predictive models, and also draws attention to the need to consider a multi-temporal examination of species habitat requirements. | Ph.D. | biodiversity, conserv, water | 14, 15 |
| Muir-Pfeiffer, Graedon Sean | Chiao, Vincent | Restorative Justice Responses to Sexual Violence as Non-Domination Promoting Instruments | Law | 2017-11 | This paper introduces two international restorative justice responses (RJR) to sexual violence. I draw on these examples to propose a RJR to sexual violence that could be implemented in Canada. I analyze the RJR using Braithwaite and Pettitâ s Republicanism model. I use the Republican value of non-domination to explore the process of a RJR as against the CJS process. I focus only on offenders who are willing to admit some responsibility for their crime. The work that follows focuses on the process of both the CJS and RJR, it asks the simple question: would a RJR process promote dominion in excess of CJS process? I argue that a RJR leads to greater dominion for the survivor/victim (SV) of the sexual assault, the offender and the public. I argue that a RJR employs a process that is more efficient at rectifying the harm caused by the initial act of domination. | LL.M. | justice | 16 |
| Mukhi, Shaheena | Deber, Dr. Raisa | Primary Health Care Performance Measurement and Accountability in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-06 | Ontario was used to explore the meaning, approaches, and measures of accountability, and examine the connection between primary health care (PHC) key attributes, performance measurement and accountability. This research study used qualitative research methods design and a theoretical framework to guide the inquiry, collection, analysis and interpretation of data (i.e., documents and 28 semi-structured interviews). This study offers empirical knowledge about the scope of accountability in PHC—who is accountable to whom, for what and how is accountability implemented and measured. These insights are valuable lessons for other jurisdictions, and suggest future research topics for scholars. This study found that in a public contract model, the key aspects of the PHC system performance measurement are: access to and utilization of insured services; and cost of reimbursing private providers. These are components of financial and political accountability of the funder. PHC providers and clinics have multiple lines of accountability. Clinical performance accountability is implicit and not routinely monitored. PHC providers are self- regulated and trust is placed on them to deliver evidence based care to achieve desirable patient outcomes. In this governance structure, metrics used in PHC are those that are easy to measure and within the control of clinicians. Metrics involving co-production of services and tacit use of clinical knowledge are left out because it is complex to get access to this data from disparate standalone systems, which results in low measurability of many services. If data sources could be linked, it may be feasible to align PHC performance and accountability with the four key PHC attributes: access, person-focused care, coordination and comprehensiveness. With this, relevant metrics can be fed back to PHC providers and publicly reported to enable patients to exercise their right as consumers to select care from high performing PHC teams. The latter could advance accountability in PHC. | Ph.D. | health, governance | 3, 16 |
| Mungall, Emma Louise | Abbatt, Jonathan PD | Natural Sources of Volatile Organic Compounds to the Summer Arctic Troposphere | Chemistry | 2018-03 | Due to chemistry-climate coupling, observations of chemical processes in the atmosphere are crucial to improving understanding of the Earth system and enabling future climate predictions. Quantifying the effect on climate of current and future anthropogenic influence requires first understanding natural processes. This task is complicated by the interactions between natural and anthropogenic emissions. Because the summer Arctic experiences limited anthropogenic influence, it is considered an analog for some pre-industrial atmospheres. Due to its remoteness, observations in the region are scarce. The goals of this thesis were to 1) make observations of the tropospheric composition of the summer Canadian Arctic Archipelago and 2) improve understanding of the sources of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the region. To achieve the first goal, two new datasets were collected by field deployment of chemical ionization mass spectrometers. The second goal was addressed through analysis of the newly collected data sets, modeling experiments, and laboratory experiments. This work confirmed that local marine sources are the major contributors to high levels of dimethyl sulfide (DMS) in the summer Arctic, and supported the hypothesis that DMS emissions from melt ponds on top of the sea ice may be significant. Unexpectedly, we found that heterogeneous chemistry at the sea surface microlayer emits large quantities of formic acid to the atmosphere, as well as smaller amounts of many other OVOCs, some of which may play a role in the formation of secondary organic aerosol. Methane sulfonic acid in aerosol particles, which has traditionally been considered a conservative tracer for DMS, was shown to be degraded by heterogeneous oxidation during atmospheric transport. Finally, the presence of high levels of formic and acetic acids in the summer Arctic calls into question the current understanding of the sources of these acids. In summary, this thesis begins to paint a clearer picture of the chemical composition of the summer Arctic troposphere while emphasizing that further measurements are badly needed to bring that picture into focus. | Ph.D. | clinate, marine | 13, 14 |
| Murphy, John Harvey | Cockerill, Rhonda | Corporate Board Health and Safety Governance Committees: Do They Make Any Difference? | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-11 | A three phase mixed methods study (records research, survey, case analysis) was undertaken to develop understanding of board of director health and safety governance committees (â BHSCsâ ) amongst large market capitalization Canadian public companies, and ascertain their impact on company health and safety performance outcomes. This goal was deconstructed into a series of 12 research questions. The study determined that as of 2010, 58 companies with market capitalizations of $1.5 billion or higher (out of 146) had BHSCs. Forty percent had BHSCs dating back to 2001, and 60% formed BHSCs between 2002 and 2010. Factors accounting for the emergence of BHSCs included legislative changes, liability concerns, risk reduction objectives, corporate social responsibility pressures, emulation of peers, and industry sector guidelines and standards. Approximately 2/3rds of the companies with BHSCs were in mining or oil and gas. Most companies with BHSCs published descriptive information on their structures and processes in annual sustainability reports, and / or in filings with securities regulators. Using those sources it was possible to characterize patterns over the 2001-2010 period in the evolution of BHSC mandates, terms of reference, member composition and characteristics, levels of activity, and governance practices. Information was also available for many companies on occupational health and safety program evolution and injury rates for all or portions of the period 2002-2014. A conceptual framework consistent with available empirical research and theory was created to describe mechanisms whereby BHSCs could be instrumental in the achievement of improvements in company injury rates. Evidence for the existence and operation of those mechanisms was obtained via review of company data, survey responses, and case analyses of three specific companies. The study found evidence of BHSC instrumentality in company health and safety performance improvements, and that the conceptual framework presents a plausible model of this phenomenon. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Murphy, Joshua | McMillan, Robert | The Costs, Benefits, and Efficiency of Air Quality Regulation | Economics | 2017-11 | Air pollution poses serious risks to public health. Combatting it sensibly requires credible empirical estimates of the relevant costs and benefits. The intent of this thesis is to provide such estimates. Chapter 1 examines the value of reducing emissions from power plants, an important source of air pollution in several countries. Within a model of health, consumption, production, power generation, and resource extraction, I derive a 'sufficient statistics' formula for the change in social welfare due to a small reduction in emissions. The formula simplifies to a comparison of marginal benefits (in terms of reduced mortality risk, monetized using the value of a statistical life) and the marginal cost of abatement. I estimate these inputs using quasi-experimental variation induced by the Clean Air Interstate Rule, a policy that capped power plant emissions in the United States. Results indicate that further reducing those emissions would be worthwhile. Chapter 2 re-examines the effect of a county's regulatory status under the US Clean Air Act on the change in its air pollution concentration, the 'first-stage' underlying causal estimates of the benefits of reducing air pollution in several studies. Using data thought no longer to exist, I find that one of the commonly-used measurement approaches -- a regression-discontinuity estimator -- is invalid. The other commonly-used approach -- a difference-in-differences estimator -- delivers inflated estimates of the effects of regulation on air pollution. These findings suggest that the literature substantially understates the benefits of reducing air pollution. Chapter 3, joint with Robert McMillan, provides causal estimates of the effects of sustained exposure to severe air pollution on mortality risk. Our research design is based on the 'smoke control' provisions of the UK's Clean Air Act of 1956, which granted local authorities power to address emissions from the domestic chimney. We find that smoke control caused significant reductions in air pollution in areas that implemented it relative to those that did not. Our 2SLS estimates, which combine this exogenous variation in air quality improvements with local mortality data, indicate a significant reduction in probability of death. They are relevant when calculating air pollution's costs in coal-burning middle-income countries today. | Ph.D. | health, pollut | 3, 13 |
| Murphy, Shidan | Collins, Nicholas | The Importance of Thermal Habitat Quality for Pumpkinseed (Centrarchidae: Lepomis gibbosus) in Small and Constructed Coastal Embayments Along the Northwest Shoreline of Lake Ontario | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2011-11 | Along the Toronto shoreline, small coastal embayments (0.4 – 32 ha) are being constructed or modified to restore warmwater fish habitat. I describe how Lake Ontario (hereafter the Lake) alters the thermal regime of these small coastal embayments, how the altered thermal regimes affect growth and survival of age-0 warmwater fishes, and how the thermal habitat quality for such fishes can be improved by altering embayment design. During the warming period of the ice-free season, embayments warm faster than the Lake and so are cooled by exchanges with the Lake. Later in the year Lake exchange warms the rapidly cooling embayments, but the net effect of Lake-embayment exchange is cooling. The degree of cooling in Toronto’s small coastal embayments varies; many have temperatures near that of the Lake, and a few warm as much as local ponds. Age-0 pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus) can fail to reach sufficient size to survive the winter in cooler embayments because their spawning is delayed and their growth is slowed. Most embayments along the Toronto shoreline are too cold to produce age-0 fish that can survive the winter, but all embayments are occupied by age >1 pumpkinseed, suggesting movement from warmer to cooler embayments. Using otolith microchemistry to identify natal embayments of fish, I confirm that age-0 and age-1 pumpkinseed, as well as age-0 largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides) and age-0 yellow perch (Perca flavescens), exist in metapopulations. Embayment bathymetry is a poor predictor of temperature because almost all embayment flushing rates are very fast, usually 1-2 days. Warmer embayments are located in protected areas of Lake Ontario and receive waters that have already heated substantially. Cold embayments are located along the exposed shoreline of Lake Ontario. To protect embayments from cold lake waters, the cross-sectional area of embayment channels need to be reduced to 1-10% of their current size. | PhD | water, fish | 6, 14 |
| Mutamba, Rainos | Portelli, John P | In the Breath of Learning: Place-based social movements, Learning, and Prefiguration of Other Worlds | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | Social movements have been and continue to be an integral part of the lifeworld as they create and promote conditions for the transformation of micro and macro aspects of socio-ecological relationships. From the vantage point of the present, we can argue that it is through the work and agitation of feminist, civil rights, LGBTQ, anti-colonial, socialist and environmentalist social movements (among others) that we have experienced socially just changes around the world. The study of social movements is therefore critical for learning about the knowledge-practices necessary to achieve socially just change. This project sought to explore, understand and conceptualize the epistemic ecologies of place-based social movements whose work centers the construction of urgently needed life-affirming human knowledge-practices. Specifically, it sought to illuminate on the scarcely studied connections among learning, knowledge, and society, by examining the social construction of reality in the context of social movement action. The flesh and blood of the project come from the work of social actors in Kufunda Learning Movement and my organizing with Ubuntu Learning Village. The study found that in these contexts, social movement actors are learning and constructing emancipatory knowledge-practices through their engagement with place-based social action. By means of learning through practice, reflection and embodiment, the actors produce and develop practices, skills, and processes that address ecological, political, social and economic relationships. In doing so, they produce subjectivities and critical capacities that enable Other social and political ecologies and societies to emerge. Beyond the learning by movement actors and people that interact with the movement, the study argues that these movements are proposals of counterhegemonic life-affirming realities. Ultimately, Kufunda and Ubuntu knowledge-practices are useful for the movements, the society within which the movements are doing work and the global community, to the extent that their knowledge-practices have analytic validity for social theory. | Ph.D. | cities, rights | 11, 16 |
| Myers, Anne | Scott, A Mabury | Identification and Analysis of Halogenated Contaminants Formed in Thermal Decomposition of Halogenated Materials | Chemistry | 2014-11 | Fires release a wide array of contaminants that contribute to detrimental environmental and health effects. The thermal decomposition of halogenated materials in fires produces complex mixtures that include unidentified environmentally persistent and toxic halogenated contaminants. Resulting complex mixtures pose an analytical challenge in assessing the hazards of a fire site where burn conditions and contents are unknown. Non-targeted analytical approaches can facilitate identification of novel compounds in complex mixtures to direct further study. This thesis investigates the thermal decomposition mechanisms and products of halogenated materials using non-targeted analytical techniques, and assesses the environmental relevance of these thermal processes. Mass defect filtering of high-resolution mass spectra is an effective approach to visually resolve and interpret complex chemical information. This non-targeted approach was used to characterize the thermal decomposition products of polychlorotrifluoroethylene (PCTFE) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF). High-resolution mass spectra, obtained by Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR-MS), were interpreted using mass defect plots based on unique mass scales. Novel halogenated compounds were identified, including perchlorinated/fluorinated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (X-PAHs, X=Cl,F), and polyfluorinated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (F-PAHs). Congener profiles of thermal decomposition products provided evidence of associated decomposition mechanisms. The potential of non-targeted analyses to characterize complex environmental samples was further exemplified through studies examining the environmental relevance of combustion-derived contaminants. Using mass defect plots as a screening tool, a variety of brominated contaminants, including polybrominated/chlorinated dibenzofurans (PXDFs, X=Br/Cl), were identified in air and particulates collected from simulation fire studies. Mass defect filtering, in combination with comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography high-resolution time of flight mass spectrometry (GCxGC-HRToF) and gas chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) was used to identify bioaccumulative contaminants in aquatic species exposed to soil from an industrial fire site. Compounds identified as bioaccumulative included polybrominated/chlorinated, anthracenes/phenanthrenes and pyrenes/fluoranthenes (X-PAHs, X=Br,Cl). The majority of environmental analyses is targeted and thereby only examines a small subset of compounds present in the environment. This work demonstrates the potential of non-targeted techniques to screen complex environmental samples for halogenated contaminants. This is particularly applicable to combustion-derived mixtures, the complexity of which varies with fire conditions and contents. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Myers, David | Macklem, Patrick | The Unfinished State : Territorial Status, State Creation, and United Nations Mismanagement Within the Borders of the Mandate of Palestine | Law | 2014-11 | The international laws and customs that decreed a right for a Jewish state to be created within the former British Mandate of Palestine provided the same in equal measure for an Arab state within the same Mandate. What they did not provide for, however, thanks in no small part to UN mismanagement and recalcitrant warring parties, were borders separating the two states to be. By chronicling the international legal situation of the territory over the last century, it becomes possible to make determinations about minimum state level territorial rights. While failing to provide instant and obvious border location, the application of international law renders certain positions beyond debate. This narrows the scope of territorial negotiations to a 'simple' determination of which lands are necessary for the creation of a viable Palestinian state, whose citizens' freedom of movement within its peaceable borders is unimpeded by even Israel's most ardent security concerns. | LL.M. | peace, right | 16 |
| Myers, Jeffrey Anthony | Burstow, Bonnie | The Institution of Becoming Canadian: A View From the Margins | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2013-11 | Combining historical and ethnographic approaches, this thesis explores the relationship between marginality and the Canadian state's organization of national belonging through the technologies of immigration, settlement and citizenship. In the process it reveals how the lives of people who navigate this institution of becoming Canadian from or into marginalized social positions are shaped in complex ways by the relations of ruling underpinning the nation as a whole, such as colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy. Data-gathering and analysis proceeded from the standpoint of people whose religion, sexuality, "race", gender, or class positioned them in the margins of a textually mediated and hierarchical policy matrix that justified either their outright exclusion or else inclusion on certain conditions. The impact of this arrangement is queried and we find that, while the fact of being Canadian often leads to improvement in life quality, this is in addition to—or even in spite of—the institutional process of becoming Canadian. The institutional process, by contrast, was found to cause things like downgrading, separation, fear, and changed beliefs and behaviours. The study also examined how people deal with this system, including the purposeful acquisition of knowledge or skills, and reliance on support networks among family, friends, and fellow migrants. Finally, some strategies of mitigation (e.g. rule-breaking) are explored. The study concludes by contrasting the institution of becoming Canadian against a universalist philosophy premised on "global citizenship" and the possibility of a world without borders. Unsurprisingly, there is considerable distance between them, but this contrast reveals inspiring areas for resistance, action and change. | PhD | inclusive, gender | 4, 5 |
| Myers, Karen | Myles, John | Taking a Risk: Does Human Capital Investment Pay Off for Educationally Disadvantaged Adults? | Sociology | 2009-11 | Although human capital investment is often proposed as a solution to improve the labour market prospects of individuals who reach adulthood without obtaining a post-secondary credential, little is known about whether skills upgrading actually pays off. Using three national cross-sectional surveys on adult education as well as longitudinal data from the Panel Survey of Income Dynamics (1992-2005), I analyze how returning to school affects the earnings trajectories of men and women who enter the labour force with low levels of initial education. There are two major findings related to the earnings and advancement question. First, although both Canadian and American adults with low levels of initial education are significantly less likely than their more educated counterparts to participate in education and training, when they do participate, they are more likely to report it helped them increase their earnings. Second, these perceived gains are matched by substantial gains in actual earning growth. While the opportunity cost of returning to school is quite high – returnees experience a sharp drop in annual earnings during the years while they are in school – for both women and men, this investment yields a significant increase in earnings in the post schooling period. In addition, I address the question of why – if the earnings gains are so substantial – do so few less educated adults return to school? There are three key findings related to the participation question. First, even after accounting for a rich set of covariates, the effects of family of origin socio-economic status on educational attainment persist over the life course. Second, despite these enduring effects, current family and labour market dynamics matter as well. Consistent with the human capital model, I find evidence that, educationally disadvantaged individuals return to school to improve their labour market prospects. Taken together these results demonstrate that at least for some educationally disadvantaged adults, human capital investment is an effective strategy for labour market advancement. This conclusion challenges the standard ‘cumulative disadvantage’ view of adult education as simply another mechanism that serves to reproduce inequality. | PhD | labour, equality | 5, 8 |
| Mykhaylova, Nataliya | Evans, Greg J | Low-cost Sensor Array Devices as a Method for Reliable Assessment of Exposure to Traffic-related Air Pollution | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-11 | The exposure to air pollutant mixtures is a well-known risk factor for inducing and increasing the severity of diseases. Combining low-cost sensors in arrays holds great potential for real-time monitoring of pollutant exposure because of versatility and aptitude for tracking multi-pollutant exposure. While many low-cost air pollution monitoring devices have been proposed, several underexplored opportunities remain, including sensor-derived pollution indices, source analysis and exposure assessment. A thorough investigation of different low-cost commercial gas and particulate matter sensors from 5 manufacturers has been conducted and best-performing sensors were identified. A device for monitoring air quality has been developed and tested. Each device consists of an array of commercially available metal oxide semiconductor for monitoring NOx and O3, CO, CO2 and optical sensors for monitoring PM2.5. Level of pollutant exposure has been characterized at different locations in Toronto over 3 different campaigns between 2013 and 2016. These deployments allowed long-term sensor performance to be evaluated under different meteorological conditions as well as different ranges of pollutant concentrations. Analysis of a large range of gas sensors revealed several key challenges, including high intra-sensor variability, interference from temperature and nonlinearity. Air quality health index estimation from sensor readings was successfully demonstrated. Three aspects of device reproducibility were evaluated: drift over time, impact of interferences and impact of site-specific mixtures. Three categories of approaches for improving sensor accuracy and reproducibility were tested: nonlinear calibration models, variable transformations and training data selection. Model reproducibility, ability to adjust for multiple combinations of interferences and ability to resolve sites was improved when devices were calibrated at multiple sites. Analysis showed that both short-term and long-term temporal patterns could be resolved and compared at different sites. Background subtraction helped further emphasize the differences and rank sites in terms traffic-related pollution. | Ph.D. | pollut | 13 |
| Naderkhani Zarrin Ghabaei, Farnoosh | Makis, Viliam | Multivariate Bayesian Control Chart with Dual Sampling Scheme | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2017-11 | Recently, there has been a growing interest among industrial practitioners and researchers for applying economically designed control charts in quality control, condition monitoring, and condition-based maintenance (CBM). Control charts are powerful tools for process control which are used extensively to ensure the process stability over the production run. It has been proved that traditional control charts are not optimal and the control chart parameters should be determined based on the posterior probability that the process is out of control. Design and development of Bayesian control charts in both quality control and CBM applications are the main focuses of this thesis. Traditionally, in designing of a control chart, the observations are collected periodically. However, in many real applications, high sampling cost is associated with collecting observable data, therefore, it could be beneficial to monitor the process/system less frequently when it is in a healthier state and more frequently when a sample shows some indication of a change in the process/system state. The motivation of this thesis comes from such applications when collecting observations is costly, and observations carry partial information about the process or system state. To overcome the drawback of period monitoring, this thesis proposes an optimal control problem in Bayesian framework which uses a novel sampling strategy referred to as dual sampling scheme (DSS) and dual control limits. The system/process is monitored less frequently using a longer sampling interval when the posterior probability is below the warning limit. If the posterior probability exceeds the warning limit, switching to the shorter sampling interval occurs. If the posterior probability exceeds the control limit, the system/process is stopped and full inspection is performed. The proposed model is formulated in both semi-Markov decision process and renewal theory frameworks to obtain the optimal control chart parameters as well as the minimum long-run expected average cost per unit time. For the first time in quality control literature, an explicit formula is derived for computation of average time to signal for multivariate Bayesian control chart with DSS. In addition, the closed-form expressions are derived for system residual life and reliability as functions of the posterior probability statistics. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Nagra, Baljit | Peng, Ito | Unequal Citizenship: Being Muslim and Canadian in the Post 9/11 Era | Sociology | 2011-06 | My dissertation is the first empirically based study to closely examine the impacts of 9/11 on Canadian Muslim youth. It develops a critical analysis of how the general public supported by state practices, undermine the citizenship of Canadian Muslims, thereby impacting their identity formation. Conducting qualitative analysis, through the use of 50 in-depth interviews with Canadian Muslim men and women, aged 18 to 30, I have arrived at several important findings. These include findings related to citizenship, the racialization of gender identities and identity formation. First, despite having legal citizenship, Canadian Muslims often do not have access to substantive citizenship (the ability to exercise rights of legal citizenship), revealing the precarious nature of citizenship for minority groups in Canada. My research shows that the citizenship rights of Canadian Muslims may be undermined because they do not have access to allegiance and nationality, important facets of citizenship. Second, young Canadian Muslims are racialized and othered through increasingly stereotypical conceptions about their gender identities. Muslim men are perceived as barbaric and dangerous and Muslim women are imagined as passive and oppressed by their communities. As a result of these dominant conceptions, in their struggle against racism, young Canadian Muslims have to invest a great deal of time establishing themselves as thinking, rational, educated and peaceful persons. Third, to cope with their marginalization, many young Canadian Muslims have asserted their Muslim identities. In order to understand this social process, I extend the work done on ‘reactive ethnicity’ and theorize Muslim identity formation in a post 9/11 context, something not yet been done in academic literature. To do so, I coin the term ‘reactive identity formation,’ and illustrate that the formation of reactive identities is not limited to strengthening ethnic identity and that religious minority groups can experience a similar phenomenon. Furthermore, I find that while claiming their Muslim identity, most of my interviewees also retain their Canadian identity in order to resist the notion that they are not Canadian. By doing so, they attempt to redefine what it means to be Canadian. | PhD | gender, women, inclusive, rights | 4, 5, 16 |
| Nam, Austin | Krahn, Murray D | The Feasibility and Usefulness of Applying a Health Economic Framework to Prioritize Quality Indicators: A Demonstration with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-06 | The modern quality movement has placed increased attention on health care performance. As a result, quality indicators, which are quantitative measurements of health care performance, have become increasingly prevalent in health care systems. Although many health systems define improving population health and reducing health care costs as priorities, many quality indicators are selected using criteria that do not always align with these priorities. Health economics offers a framework for explicitly bringing considerations of population health and health care costs into the process of prioritizing quality indicators. This research sought to demonstrate the feasibility of operationalizing the health economic framework to prioritize quality indicators and explore the usefulness of this method. Quality indicators for smoking cessation and oxygen therapy in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease were used as examples to demonstrate the feasibility of associating variations in indicator values with variations in quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and costs. The joint variation in QALYs and costs was represented as incremental net health benefit (INHB), which represents the QALYs gained less its opportunity cost. The first two studies demonstrated how quality indicators could be ranked by their relationships to QALYs and costs. However, uncertainty in the values of candidate indicators could affect how quality indicators are prioritized. Linear meta-models offer a method that is partially successful in prioritizing indicators in the presence of uncertain indicator levels. Focus groups, with participants representative of stakeholders who would select or use quality indicators, were conducted to explore their perceived usefulness of prioritizing quality indicators under a health economic framework. The usefulness and applicability of the framework appeared to revolve around three main themes of incorporation of evidence, ease of understanding or interpretation of health economic outputs, and the scope of the framework. Ease of interpretation appeared to be the main barrier to the utility of the health economic framework in prioritizing quality indicators. Collectively, these studies show how a health economic framework can be operationalized to prioritize quality indicators in a way that is potentially useful, but resource requirements and barriers in interpretation of the health economic framework may limit its adoption. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Nanglu, Karma | Caron, Jean-Bernard | Revisiting the Cambrian Burgess Shale Palaeocommunity in Light of New Field Discoveries from Marble Canyon, Kootenay National Park, British Columbia | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-03 | The 508-million-year-old Burgess Shale (British Columbia) is among the most important fossil localities in the world as it provides a direct window into the Cambrian Explosion, the phenomenon whereby most metazoan groups appeared rapidly in the fossil record for the first time. For over 100 years, Burgess Shale fossils have provided unique insights into the early evolutionary history of animal life, but a holistic description of the community ecology of the Burgess Shale has remained elusive. This dissertation aims to reinvestigate the Burgess Shale paleocommunity in light of the recently discovered Marble Canyon fossil site in Kootenay National Park, integrating this new dataset with those from the type areas in Yoho National Park, 40km to the northwest (Walcott Quarry, Raymond Quarry, and Tulip Beds). The first three chapters of this dissertation focus on the organismal level. An experimental decay study (Chapter 1) provides a framework for the interpretation of taphonomic bias in community reconstructions. The redescription of three enigmatic Cambrian taxa (Chapters 2 and 3) provide novel phylogenetic and ecological information for understanding the patterns of diversity and niche structure at Marble Canyon. The community analysis (Chapter 4) represents the largest quantitative study of the Burgess Shale to date. Patterns of faunal stasis between most adjacent bedding assemblages followed by periodic variations in abundance and species identity are found at both Marble Canyon and Walcott Quarry, the two best-studied sites with the finest level of stratigraphic/temporal data. Across the entire Burgess Shale paleocommunity, major shifts in representative taxonomic groups and ecological modes occur between major localities. The results of this work suggest that the Burgess Shale as a paleocommunity was highly heterogeneous in both its taxonomic and ecological composition. Shifting abiotic and environmental variables are determined to be more significant in the long-term structuring of Burgess Shale communities than species interactions such as predation, which was previously considered paramount. | Ph.D. | ecology | 14 |
| Nangwaya, Ajamu | Quarter, Jack | Race, Resistance and Co-optation in the Canadian Labour Movement: Effecting an Equity Agenda like Race Matters | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-11 | The purpose of this research project was to analyze the dialectic of co-optation/domestication and resistance as manifested in the experience of racialized Canadian trade unionists. The seven research participants are racialized rank-and-file members, elected or appointed leaders, retired trade unionists, as well as staff of trade unions and other labour organizations. In spite of the struggle of racialized peoples for racial justice or firm anti-racism policies and programmes in their labour unions, there is a dearth of research on the racialized trade union members against racism, the actual condition under which they struggle, the particular ways that union institutional structures domesticate these struggles, and/or the countervailing actions by racialized members to realize anti-racist organizational goals. While the overt and vulgar forms of racism is no longer the dominant mode of expression in today’s labour movement, its systemic and institutional presence is just as debilitating for racial trade union members. This research has uncovered the manner in which the electoral process and machinery, elected and appointed political positions, staff jobs and formal constituency groups, and affirmative action or equity representational structures in labour unions and other labour organizations are used as sites of domestication or co-optation of some racialized trade unionists by the White-led labour bureaucratic structures and the forces in defense of whiteness. However, racialized trade union members also participate in struggles to resist racist domination. Among some of tools used to advance anti-racism are the creation of support networks, transgressive challenges to the entrenched leadership through elections, formation of constituency advocacy outside of the structure of the union and discrete forms of resistance. The participants in the research shared their stories of the way that race and gender condition the experiences of racialized women in the labour movement. The racialized interviewees were critical of the inadequacy of labour education programmes in dealing effectively with racism and offer solutions to make them relevant to the racial justice agenda. This study of race, resistance and co-optation in the labour movement has made contributions to the fields of critical race theory, labour and critical race feminism and labour studies. | PhD | gender, trade, labour, institution, equality | 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Narisada, Atsushi | Schieman, Scott | The Social Antecedents and Consequences of the Sense of Distributive Injustice | Sociology | 2019-11 | Roughly half of working adults in Canada and the United States report a sense of distributive injustice––that their earnings are unjustly too low. This evidence provides an impetus to document the antecedents and consequences of the sense of distributive injustice. More specifically, it encourages us to examine two fundamental questions in the study of distributive justice: (1) What do people think is just and why? (2) And, what are the consequences of the sense of injustice for individuals? Using population-based data, I address these questions through an interdisciplinary lens by integrating perspectives in the social psychology of distributive justice, the sociology of mental health, and occupational health psychology. I assess the first question by fusing ideas in distributive justice and the work-family interface. I argue that the conceptualization of work-related inputs can be elaborated by considering the intersection of work and family roles. Specifically, I propose a model that delineates how excessive job pressures––and the ensuing role blurring behavior and work-to-family conflict––shape the expectation for greater rewards. My findings provide an updated account of the nature of work contributions for contemporary workers that shape their ideas of what they should justly earn. The second part of the dissertation examines the consequences of underreward, focusing on the situational factors that function as moderators. In one study, I show that the relationship between underreward and job dissatisfaction is contingent on forms of security, such that the association is attenuated for those with high job and financial security, and for those employed in the public sector. The interpretation of the patterns for job security encourages the integration of the Job Demands-Resources Model and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In another study, I examine the ways in which two dimensions of SES––education and income––moderate the effects of perceived underreward on mental and physical health. I test two competing hypotheses––buffering-resource and status-disconfirmation––that delineate the moderating role of SES. Taken together, this dissertation draws upon and integrates diverse theoretical perspectives to identify new forms of work-related contributions that shape perceptions of a fair reward and the situational factors that modify reactions to underreward. | Ph.D. | wage, worker | 8 |
| Naujokaitis-Lewis, Ilona | Fortin, Marie-Josee | Influence of Climatic and Non-climatic Factors on Range Dynamics and Conservation Priorities of Long-distance Migratory Birds | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2014-11 | Understanding factors influencing species' distributions and their dynamics over space and time is a fundamental question in ecology that is receiving renewed interest given increasing threats of global climate change to species persistence. Species are shifting their distributions in response to climate change; however in spite of general directional trends northwards and up in elevation there is substantial interspecific variation. The complexity of species' responses is challenging to explain and limits our predictive capacity to anticipate future consequences of climate change. In addition to climatic factors, species' range dynamics are influenced by non-climatic factors including the biotic interactions, demography, dispersal, and the temporal and spatial scale of threatening processes. The objective of this thesis is to test the role of climatic and non-climatic factors on seasonal range dynamics of long-distance migratory birds over multiple spatial scales, in the recent past, present, and in the future. An understanding of the determinants of Nearctic-Neotropical migratory bird distributions across their interconnected seasonal ranges remains unclear, and few climate change vulnerability assessments consider the complement of habitat dependencies required across their annual cycle. To address these research gaps, I applied multiple modeling methods with outcomes that are increasingly process-oriented. These include correlative species distribution models, dynamic occupancy modeling that account for detection probabilities, and coupled species distribution-metapopulation demographic models. Such modeling approaches allow for deeper inferences regarding the biological processes that actually drive shifts in species distributions over space and time. The main findings of my thesis include: (1) biotic vegetation factors improve species distribution model predictive accuracy measures across both seasonal ranges, and this has non-negligible consequences for spatial conservation priorities under climate change, (2) determinants of seasonal distributions of migratory birds tend to be dominated by abiotic factors, while seasonal differences within species suggest a role for dynamic seasonal niches, (3) short-term habitat changes can more strongly influence local extinction probabilities relative to inter-annual variation in weather suggesting that the temporal scale of climate change and habitat loss requires careful consideration, and (4) accounting for multiple sources of uncertainties is essential for improving models and can help inform robust management actions. | Ph.D. | climate, weather, ecology | 13, 14 |
| Nault, Johnathan Daniel | Karney, Bryan W. | Comprehensive Simulation of One-Dimensional Unsteady Pipe Network Hydraulics: Improved Formulations and Adaptive Hybrid Modeling | Civil Engineering | 2017-11 | From municipal water supply to wastewater collection, pressurized pipe networks form the basis of many urban water systems. Numerical models are essential for analyzing their unsteady hydraulics, but there are multiple types of models with poorly understood ranges of applicability. Water hammer models feature greater physical accuracy, making them suitable for highly dynamic conditions. They are, however, more computationally demanding than the simpler yet less accurate rigid water column (RWC) and quasi-steady models. Unsteady hydraulic analyses require solution methods that are both physically accurate and computationally efficient; accordingly, there is an accuracy-efficiency trade-off. To balance these competing demands, this thesis presents an adaptive hybrid transient model (AHTM) capable of simulating the full range one-dimensional unsteady pipe network hydraulics. In developing the comprehensive AHTM, a number of gaps in the literature are addressed. A novel RWC formulation is first proposed, one that overcomes the numerical challenges of previous published work. This is subsequently combined with unsteady flow characterization indices and an adaptive scheme to form an incompressible flow AHTM. Essentially, a more demanding yet more physically accurate model is used only when necessary for efficiency; though powerful, the framework does not consider unsteady-compressible flow. The third objective concerns models for such conditions. A flexible water hammer formulation is introduced that generalizes the method of characteristics and the wave characteristics method, two predominant numerical approaches. Finally, the culmination of this thesis combines each of the aforementioned into a single comprehensive, flexible, and efficient AHTM. The AHTM is shown to adapt to the degree of unsteadiness and, more importantly, individual analyses. Results of this work ultimately benefit practical analyses of unsteady pipe network hydraulics. Not only can simulations be performed more efficiently, but they may encompass multiple transient flow regimes. Moreover, the key advantages of the comprehensive AHTM are its generality and adaptability. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Neff, Margaret Rose | Jackson, Donald Andrew | Abiotic Conditions in Contrasting Environments: An Examination of Precambrian Shield Lotic Communities | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2011-11 | The inherent complexity of the natural world has long been a central theme in ecological research, as the patterns and processes that govern ecosystems can operate at multiple spatial and temporal scales. It is clear that to develop general ecological frameworks, we must consider many different factors at different scales, and incorporate ideas from other disciplines. This thesis touches on several of these ideas, first through an analysis of literature, and then with field research examining the role of broad-scale abiotic factors on lotic systems. To determine how integrated aquatic science is currently understood among different researchers, I provide an analysis on communication and exchange of ideas among various subfields in aquatic science. I show that there are clear divisions within the aquatic science literature, suggesting that there is progress to be made on the integration of methods and ideas. Next, I examine the impact of a large-scale geological feature, the Canadian Precambrian Shield, on abiotic conditions in lotic systems, and how these conditions in turn influence the species assemblages of aquatic organisms. This is addressed with both historical survey data, as well as contemporary data, and as a whole, incorporates ideas concerning the relative influence of regional versus local factors, the importance of historical factors on species distributions, and the relationship between the abiotic environment and biological communities. These analyses show that there are distinct fish and macroinvertebrate communities in Shield lotic systems compared to those found in nearby off-Shield sites, indicating that the Shield is an important broad-scale factor influencing local biological communities. This finding, in conjunction with previous knowledge on the influence of historical factors, provides further insight on the structuring of lotic fish and macroinvertebrate communities in Ontario. | PhD | environment | 13 |
| Nejad, Mojgan | Cooper, Paul | Coating Performance on Preservative Treated Wood | Forestry | 2011-06 | Wood service life is significantly prolonged by the use of preservatives. Unfortunately, preservative treated wood is still susceptible to weathering degradation (UV and moisture) and subsequent leaching of preserving components. These negative impacts of weathering can be reduced by the application of a coating; however, the effectiveness of the coating depends on its characteristics, especially its compatibility with preservative treated wood. In this project, the performance characteristics of semitransparent deck stains were evaluated for untreated wood samples and for samples treated with chromated copper arsenate (CCA), alkaline copper quat (ACQ) and copper azole (CA) over three years of natural and three months of accelerated weathering conditions. The parameters measured were water permeability, colour change, general appearance, checking of wood, and the coating‟s ability to reduce preservative leaching. Coatings were characterized in terms of glass transition temperature (Tg), solid content, viscosity, density, contact angle, surface tension, and film thickness. Also penetration depth of a polyurethane (PU) coating was examined using Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (ToF-SIMS). iii All the stains evaluated effectively reduced cumulative leaching of preservative components by about 60% on average. An analysis of the preservative gradients and residual soluble components in the ACQ-samples after weathering indicated that preferential leaching of monoethanolamine (Mea) is most likely responsible for the reduced amounts of available copper in coated treated wood samples. Also, a two-week screening test was able to provide accurate predictions of the long-term leaching performance of different coatings. There was a significant interaction effect between coatings and preservatives: solvent-based coatings showed better water repellency for CCA and untreated wood, but there was no significant difference in water repellent effectiveness between water-based and solvent-based coatings for ACQ or CA-treated wood. Overall, preservative treatments greatly enhanced coating performance. Image analysis of the samples subjected to 3 years weathering showed that coatings reduced surface checking by 30-40%. Partial least squares regression (PLS-R) modeling was used to correlate measured coating properties with their weathering performance characteristics. The modeling results showed that coatings with low Tg and high viscosity effectively reduce the leaching of preservative components and improved water repellency and visual ratings | PhD | water, weather | 6, 13 |
| Nelles, Jen | Wolfe, David A. | Civic Capital and the Dynamics of Intermunicipal Cooperation for Regional Economic Development | Political Science | 2009-06 | This thesis concentrates on the interplay of structural and societal factors in the development of regional governance though a comparative study of two Canadian (Toronto and Waterloo) and two German (Frankfurt and the Rhein-Neckar) city regions. It was inspired by the tendency, in both scholarship and practice, to turn to formal institutional reform to solve problems of regional coordination. Debates of new regionalism advocate a role for governance solutions, which encourage a broader spectrum of actors to engage in the policy process. However, the emphasis in most jurisdictions has remained on formal, institutionalized structures, imposed by senior levels of government. As a result, the construction and potential for bottom-up and collectively negotiated regional solutions are typically under-explored. This thesis builds a case for intermunicipal cooperation as an alternative approach to regional coordination, uniting the participatory concept of regional governance with functional flexibility of cooperative networks. It analyses what factors affect the emergence of these networks for governance in three areas of regional economic development: regional marketing, cultural policy and regional transportation. It argues that while regional structural, institutional and contextual variables are useful in understanding the emergence of development partnerships, they tend to have different effects in different cases. The thesis formulates and applies an innovative concept – civic capital – to capture the dynamics of building and sustaining regional governance networks. It is both a critique and extension of social capital approaches to regional development. Using the four cases the thesis argues that, where civic capital is high intermunicipal cooperation is more likely regardless of institutional and structural contexts. Consequently, the thesis makes a theoretical contribution to both literature on intermunicipal cooperation and broader debates on the dynamics of regional governance, development and social networks. | PhD | governance | 16 |
| Nelson, Elizabeth Amber | Thomas, Sean C. | Climate Change in the Canadian Boreal Forest: The Effect of Warming, Frost Events, Cloud Cover and CO2 Fertilization on Conifer Tree Rings | Forestry | 2011-11 | Anthropogenic climate change is expected to dramatically affect boreal forests, not only through warming effects, but through changes in seasonal and diurnal temperature patterns, precipitation, cloud-cover, and direct effects of rising CO2. My doctoral research examines the impact of these changes on dominant boreal forest conifer species, using dendrochronological methods. Through my analysis of white spruce (Picea glauca) and lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) tree rings across five Yukon Territory sites, I found that white spruce growth is showing growth declines in response to all three measured climate changes, with negative correlations between tree ring increment and spring and summer temperature, spring frost events, and growing season cloud cover. Lodgepole pine populations exhibited growth enhancement with increasing spring maximum daily temperatures, but generally neutral responses to warming summers, higher frost event frequency and increased cloud cover. To evaluate the effect of rising CO2 on boreal forest growth, I examined three representative managed forest stands across Canada, first building a model of climate effects, and examining temporal trends in the residual growth patterns. I found evidence for CO2 fertilization in Ontario black spruce (Picea mariana) and Manitoba white spruce populations, particularly at younger ages, but no growth enhancement in Yukon lodgepole pine. These results taken together suggest that Yukon white spruce may suffer pronounced growth declines under continued climate change, but more eastern spruce populations may be better able to benefit from increased carbon availability. Yukon lodgepole pine populations are less vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, but are also unlikely to exhibit significant growth increases in response to increasing temperature, frost events, cloud cover or rising CO2. The results from this thesis have important implications for future management of the Canadian boreal forest under progressive climate change. | PhD | climate, forest | 13, 15 |
| Nelson, Sarah Elizabeth | Wilson, Kathi | "They Seem to Want to Help Me": Health, Rights, and Indigenous Community Resurgence in Urban Indigenous Health Organizations | Geography | 2019-06 | At least 52 percent of the Indigenous population of Canada lives in cities (Statistics Canada, 2017a), yet urban Indigenous experiences continue to be underrepresented in both research and policy (Place, 2012; K. Wilson Young, 2008). Health care policy in particular is jurisdictionally complex for Indigenous people living in urban areas, leading urban Indigenous people to have limited options for culturally safe health care. Indigenous people living in urban areas frequently report negative experiences in health care settings, often associated with discrimination based on Indigenous identity (Browne et al., 2011a; Evans, White, Berg, 2014). Indigenous-led health organizations are one way that urban Indigenous communities have developed of counteracting such difficulties. This dissertation uses qualitative methods, grounded in principles drawn from Indigenous and decolonizing research, to examine the everyday experiences of Indigenous clients in health care settings in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada. Interviews and focus groups involving 50 Indigenous community members and 15 health services workers were conducted in 2015-2016. Intent on investigating the connections between urban Indigenous peoples’ inherent rights and Indigenous peoples’ experiences accessing health care, this research also draws on the growing body of literature on Indigenous community resurgence. It is guided by the following question: How does the work of Indigenous-led health organizations, in the context of settler colonialism, bring together Indigenous rights and Indigenous community resurgence for Indigenous community members in urban areas? Discussions about how to improve Indigenous people’s experiences in health care rarely touch on Indigenous rights, in spite of the fundamental importance of rights to self-government and self-determination to the health of Indigenous individuals and communities (Greenwood, de Leeuw, Lindsay, Reading, 2015). This study examines how discourses of rights, relationships, and resurgence come together in Indigenous-led health organizations. | Ph.D. | health, worker, cities, urban | 3, 8, 11 |
| Nerenberg, Jacob Aaron | Li, Tania | Terminal Economy: Politics of Distribution in Highland Papua, Indonesia | Anthropology | 2018-11 | Anthropologists have long debated the relationship between local scales of politics and global capitalism. This dissertation examines regional politics in (West) Papua—a contested territory where Indonesia encompasses New Guinea—in relation to the forces that incorporate the region into the world economy. It focuses on the Balim region of the Central Highlands, home to Papua’s largest indigenous population. It examines struggles around the distribution of material goods, especially basic food staples sold by merchants or distributed as government aid and rations. State distribution programs in the region have expanded under Special Autonomy, a decentralization reform implemented to defuse the conflict between Jakarta and the West Papuan independence movement. Combining ethnographic interpretation with economic history, the dissertation proceeds in three steps. First, it traces the transformation of the Balim food regime under the extractive forces of global capital—which has targeted Papua as a resource frontier, and compelled Indonesian migrant livelihoods to depend on commerce in Papua. The history of extraction and commerce set the stage for Autonomy’s expansion of food distribution—an expansion that has accelerated the indigenous shift away from self-sufficient food production. Next, the dissertation examines key sites in the incorporation process: peri-urban markets and minivan terminals that are nodes in regional distribution. These sites, where indigenous women sell produce and newcomer merchants sell imported goods, have been theaters of indigenous uprisings, inter-ethnic conflict, and commercial regulation initiatives. Finally the dissertation traces trajectories of indigenous youth who work in and around infrastructures, to show that the labor of mobile youth shapes how state distribution functions. Together, these threads illustrate how indigenous participation in Balim regional politics has sought to enact some control over the process through which the regional economy is relegated to an end-point position. Overall, the dissertation advocates for a world-systems anthropology that shows how global and material forces recur across scales. These forces confront populations at contested peripheries of Global South countries with the double burden of responding to their incorporation, and experiencing state distribution partly as a form of displacement. | Ph.D. | food, infrastructure, urban | 2, 9, 11 |
| Nesbitt, Michael | Dyzenhaus, David | Taking the (International) Rule of Law Seriously: Legality and legitimacy in United Nations Ad hoc Commissions of Inquiry | Law | 2013-11 | Contemporary ad hoc United Nations Commissions of Inquiry (UN COIs) operate during or in the aftermath of many of the world’s worst conflicts. Over the years they have met with mixed success, and a good deal of criticism, yet are thought to provide a vital and unique benefit. Today, that benefit is seen either as the promotion of accountability for criminal wrongdoing, where quasi-criminal inquiries investigate whether war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide has taken place; or, it is seen as laying the foundation for transitional justice reforms, whereby UN COIs map the social, political, legal and even economic landscape and provide “holistic” transitional justice recommendations. Yet despite these lofty goals and the perceived importance of UN COIs, there is very little research on UN COIs. That which does exist tends not to question their purposes or seriously interrogate their procedures; instead, it focuses on incremental measures to improve UN COIs’ processes and legal analyses. This dissertation seeks to provide the basis of a theoretical, principled approach to the creation and work of UN COIs, a normative platform upon which human rights monitoring methods can expand and a continuity of investigatory practice can develop. By treating UN COIs as legal bodies with legal obligations, this dissertation draws on Fuller’s conception of legality and the theory of “interactional law-making” to question the very purposes for which UN COIs are seen to exist and the procedures by which they operate. It finds that neither the holistic transitional justice purpose nor the quasi- criminal purpose is legally or practically tenable. Instead, UN COIs should operate as post-conflict bodies, and delve deeply into a relatively narrow aspect of a systemic problem. A commitment to legality and interactional law-making can also offer a curative to the most salient criticisms of UN COI procedures by improving the credibility, reliability, and impartiality – the legitimacy – of their operations and how they are created. | SJD | justice | 16 |
| Neumann, Alexey | George, B. Arhonditsis | Environmental Risk Assessment and Adaptive Management Implementation in Lake Simcoe, Ontario | Geography | 2014-11 | Addressing the problems of low deep-water oxygen concentrations and impairment of cold-water fish habitats in Lake Simcoe as a case study of a dimictic mesotrophic lake requires reduction of external phosphorus (P) loading. However, the efficiency of restoration efforts can be hindered by persistent internal P loading. This thesis develops a series of ecological and biogeochemical models, aiming at advancing our understanding of internal P recycling mechanisms in mesotrophic dimictic lakes. Special emphasis is given to sediment diagenesis processes and their interplay with the water column, macrophyte-mediated P retention, and the nutrient nearshore shunt induced by dreissenids. First, a continuous Bayesian network is presented to investigate the cause-effect relationships among physical conditions, ambient nutrient concentrations, and plankton dynamics. P sediment internal loading is subsequently quantified with a reactive-transport simulation model of the transformation of P binding forms. Sediment dynamics are then assessed under conditions of varying organic matter sedimentation and hypolimnetic oxygen levels. Finally, an integrated P mass-balance model is used to elucidate the internal P fluxes stemming from sediments, macrophytes and dreissenids. The model predicts that P diffusive fluxes from the sediments account for less than 30-35% of the exogenous P loading in Lake Simcoe. In the post-dreissenid invasion era, the limited decrease of the ice-free TP concentrations is indicative of the presence of active nutrient recycling pathways, potentially magnified by the particular morphological features and hydrodynamic patterns of Lake Simcoe, which counterbalance the direct effects of dreissenid filtration. | Ph.D. | water, recycl, fish | 7, 14 |
| Ng, Carmina | Young, Kue | Obesity among Pff-reserve First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Peoples in Canada’s Provinces: Associated Factors and Secular Trends | Medical Science | 2012-03 | Aboriginal Canadians (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) have the highest prevalence of overweight and obesity compared to other ethnic groups in Canada. In order to assess the evolution of the problem over time and to understand potential risk factors, three studies were conducted using nationally-representative survey data. Direct comparisons between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians from the same surveys provide important perspectives on the magnitude of health disparities that cannot be obtained by small regional studies that dominate the current available literature. Body mass index (BMI) trajectories from 1994 to 2009 were estimated for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. Aboriginal Canadians experienced higher rates of BMI increase over the 14-year period between 1994 and 2009. Rate of BMI increase was specifically higher for Aboriginal adults born in the 1960s and 1970s when compared with non-Aboriginal adults, and later-born cohorts had consistently higher BMI compared with earlier-born cohorts. The role of potentially modifiable lifestyle factors in obesity among Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth was also investigated. Compared to non-Aboriginal youth, consumption of fruits/vegetables and dairy products was lower, and more Aboriginal youth were "high" TV watchers. Physical activity participation did not differ between "high" and "low" TV watchers for both groups, and was associated with lowered odds for obesity only among Aboriginal youth. The complex relationship between obesity and socioeconomic status for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians was explored. Employment status was strongly and negatively associated with obesity among Aboriginal men and women. Aboriginal men of high socioeconomic status (SES) were most likely to be obese, whereas Aboriginal women of high SES were least likely to be obese. Important descriptive and analytical information on an emerging and serious public health issue among Aboriginal people in Canada can inform the design and planning of intervention programs and development of public health strategies targeted at obesity. | PhD | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Ng, Edwin | Muntaner, Carles | The Politics of Population Health in Canada: Testing Provincial Welfare Generosity and Leftist Politics as Macro-social Determinants of Population Health | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-11 | This dissertation pools time-series and cross-section data among Canadian provinces to examine: (1) whether provincial welfare generosity (health, social services, and education expenditures), power resources and political parties (unions and left, centre, and right political parties), and political democracy (voter turnout and women in government) affects population health; (2) whether the effect of leftist politics channels through or combines with provincial welfare generosity to affect population health; and (3) whether provinces cluster into distinct political regimes which are predictive of population health. Data is retrieved from the Canadian Socio-Economic Information Management System (CANSIM) II Tables from 1976 to 2008 and Canadian Parliamentary Guides from various years. Population health is measured using total, male, and female age-standardized mortality rates. Estimation techniques include Prais-Winsten regressions with panel-corrected standard errors (PCSE), a first-order autocorrelation correction model (AR1), and fixed unit effects. Hierarchical cluster analysis is used to identify how provinces cluster into distinct regimes. Primary findings are three-fold. First, provincial welfare generosity has a significant impact in lowering mortality rates, net of other factors, such as demographic and economic variables. Second, the political power of left and centre political parties and women in government have significant negative effects on mortality rates. Whereas left political parties and women in government combine with provincial welfare generosity to improve population health, the effect of centre political parties is channeled through provincial expenditures. Third, provinces cluster into three distinct regimes based on left political party power and women in government: 1) leftist (Saskatchewan, British Columbia, and Manitoba); 2) centre-left (Ontario and Quebec); and 3) conservative (Alberta, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland). Compared to the leftist regime, centre-left and conservative provinces have significantly higher mortality rates; however, provincial welfare generosity accounts for most of the observed inter-provincial differences in population health. | PhD | health, educat, institution | 3, 4, 16 |
| Ng, Peter Quincy | Gough, William A | Assessing Forest Tree Communities and Assisted Migration Potential in Toronto’s Urban Forest as a Result of Climate Change | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2018-11 | Projected climate change in the Toronto, Ontario, Canada area could greatly alter tree composition within the urban forest. Investigating biological change as a result of climate change is complicated due to the variability among climate model outputs and non-climatic influences on local vegetation. This study approaches the issues of composition change in tree species in Toronto through three interdependent studies. The first study is a comparison of Global Climate Models (GCMs) available through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports, AR4 and AR5 respectively. Using a performance metric based on how well the GCMs simulate climate relative to observation, GCMs GFDL-CM3, IPSL-CM5A-LR and MPI-ESM-LR were determined to provide the best Canada-wide coverage for annual average temperature and precipitation changes. The second study correlates a series of biologically-relevant climatic variables to tree distributions of 134 North American trees east of the 100th meridian. The geographical absence or presence of a species was correlated to concurrent climate data, creating a species' climate envelope. Using climate projections from an ensemble of the GCMs GFDL-CM3, IPSL-CM5A-LR and MPI-ESM-LR for the year 2050, a suite of statistical regression and machine-learning techniques were used to predict a likelihood of suitability of trees in the Toronto area based on the derived climate envelopes. While the dominant beech-maple communities are largely projected to stay intact, future climate suitability is likely to shift away from conifers and northern hardwoods into more southerly deciduous trees. The third study evaluates using projected tree suitability whether an assisted migration through the translocation of tree species would be effective in the Toronto area. Of particular interest is the increasing climate suitability that likely will be beneficial to Ontario’s Species at Risk trees. However, the conservation of Ontario’s Species at Risk trees cannot be based solely upon projections of climate, a vulnerability assessment conducted in this study indicate that current pest and diseases threats coupled with and the loss of genetic diversity are also cause for concern. | Ph.D. | urban, climate, conserv, forest | 11, 14, 15 |
| Ng, Ryan | Rosella, Laura C | Risk Factor Epidemiology and Predictive Modelling Approaches to Understanding Chronic Disease Incidence | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | The chronic disease burden is a public health priority with most Canadian adults having chronic disease. Addressing this burden is a complex task requiring multiple stakeholders, including researchers. While researchers have traditionally studied chronic diseases individually “in silos”, studying multiple chronic diseases together is important because the results provide a comprehensive understanding of the overall health of the individual and the population. This dissertation contributes to the field of chronic disease research by elucidating the relationships between a person’s first chronic disease with shared lifestyle risk factors and applying this knowledge to create a predictive tool. To enable fresh perspectives about chronic disease incidence, various survival analysis techniques were applied. The first objective examined the relationships between shared lifestyle risk factors and the incidence of first chronic disease at a given age over the life course. This study found that most individuals will develop chronic disease prior to death, and heavy, daily smoking was the most important lifestyle factor for chronic disease incidence at a given age. The second objective focused on the Royston-Parmar model and its application for prognostic modelling in health research. The study found that this relatively new model was suited for prediction but has not been widely adopted for health research. The third objective developed and validated the Chronic Disease Population Risk Tool (CDPoRT), a population risk algorithm that predicted the incidence of multiple chronic diseases simultaneously over a ten-year period in the general adult population using routinely-collected data. The end product was a tool that consistently demonstrated strong predictive performance in estimating chronic disease risk. Overall, the studies capitalized on representative health survey data linked to administrative data to study the relationships between shared lifestyle risk factors and multiple chronic diseases, and leveraged these findings to create CDPoRT using traditional and novel survival analysis methods. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Ng, Winnie Wun Wun | Jackson, Nancy | Racing Solidarity, Remaking Labour: Labour Renewal from a Decolonizing and Anti-racism Perspective | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2010-11 | The study examines how Aboriginal workers and workers of colour experience union solidarity and explores the necessary conditions for the remaking of solidarity and the renewal of the labour movement. Grounded in anti-colonial discursive framework, the study analyzes the cultures and practices of labour solidarity through the lived experiences of Aboriginal activist and activists of colour within the Canadian labour movement. Utilizing the research methodologies of participatory action research, arts-informed research and critical autobiography, the research draws on the richness of the participants’ collective experiences and visual images co-created during the inquiry. The study also relies on the researcher’s self-narrative as a long time labour activist as a key part of the embodied knowledge production and sense making of a movement that is under enormous challenges and internal competing tension exacerbated by the neoliberal agenda. The findings reveal sense of profound gap between what participants experience as daily practices of solidarity and what they envisioned. Through the research process, the study explores and demonstrates the importance and potential of a more holistic and integrative critical education approach on anti-racism and decolonization. The study proposes a pedagogical framework on solidarity building with four interlinking components – rediscovering, restoring, reimagining and reclaiming – as a way to make whole for many Aboriginal activists and activists of colour within the labour movement. The pedagogy of solidarity offers a transformative process for activists to build solidarity across constituencies in the pursuit of labour renewal and social justice movement building. | PhD | inclusive, labour | 4, 8 |
| Ngo, Andre | Robert, Murphy | The Search for Genetic Structure and Patterns in Vietnamese Frogs | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2008-06 | Vietnam has the greatest biodiversity of any country in Indochina. This diversity may be due to its topographically complex nature, with hills and mountains, drained by several independent river systems, covering three quarters of its area. Topographic complexity has undoubtedly had profound effects on the flora and fauna of the region. Recent surveys have uncovered several cryptic species in what were previously considered single widespread species. These discoveries have led some researchers to propose that widespread forest species do not, in fact, exist in Southeast Asia. To test these hypotheses, I examined patterns of mitochondrial phylogeny in several groups of frogs, both at and below the species level. Additionally, these analyses helped clarify the otherwise chaotic picture of anuran taxonomy and systematics. The stream–tied waterfall frogs of the genera Amolops and Odorrana were examined, the monophyly of the ranid subfamily Amolopinae was rejected, and taxonomic adjustments were made. The phylogeny of the Vietnamese narrow–mouthed frogs of the genus Microhyla was recovered and the current taxonomy examined. Patterns of maternal dispersal and genetic differentiation in mitochondrial DNA were further examined within Microhyla heymonsi, revealing geographic structuring and the existence of two sympatric lineages. Lastly, frogs of the Polypedates leucomystax complex were examined and two major, largely sympatric lineages recovered. Within these groups, 11 separate mitochondrial lineages identified. These represented separate species on the basis of advertisement call and allozyme evidence. The relationship of genetic differentiation and river systems was also investigated and common patterns among the different groups were explored. Clear genetic breaks occurred across both the Red River and the Annamite Mountain range, though most common patterns were groupings of populations along river drainages. While several cryptic species were identified, widespread groups likely representing single species still exist, and a phylogenetic component to broad distribution were noted. | PhD | water, biodiversity | 6, 15 |
| Nguyen, Brian | Sinton, David | Analytical Methods and Devices for Bioenergy and Global Change Science | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-11 | Human activity is driving global change. Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel combustion results in global effects including increases in temperatures as well as ocean acidification. Further, human-induced global change extends beyond carbon dioxide to pollution including microplastics. It is important to understand the impacts of global change and to optimize ways to mitigate it via technologies like biofuels. This thesis details devices and methods developed with the overall goal to enable experiments to increase this understanding. Specifically, this thesis presents devices and methods to (1) increase experimental throughput, enabling larger, multi-parameter experimental designs; (2) measure endpoints previously impractical to measure; and (3) inform laboratory experiments by improving the methods for obtaining data from environmental samples to set appropriate dosing levels. First, I developed a device which maps microalgae growth as a function of light and nutrients using a hydrogel-based concentration gradient generator to address experimental throughput in the biofuel context. Second, I developed a platform, incorporating a long-range aerogel-based gradient generator, a projector, and well plate compatibility to screen the effect of multiple environmental parameters on biota to further address experimental throughput. The third contribution is a digestible fluorescent coating for plastic particles that is stripped from the plastic upon ingestion by an organism; this can be used to determine if a plastic particle has been ingested in laboratory exposure experiments – providing the ability to measure cumulative plastic ingestion – a new endpoint. The last contribution is a method to bind iron nanoparticles to plastic in environmental samples enabling magnetic recovery, suited to recovering the smallest size fractions of microplastics from environmental samples for analysis– providing the ability to inform laboratory experiments. Overall, the four Chapters that make up the primary contributions of this thesis are technologies that allow experimenters to answer research questions in bioenergy and environmental science more efficiently. The methods and devices described in this thesis make technological progress but have limitations that prescribe caution when applying to new kinds of experiments. Nevertheless, with some adaptation, these technologies could further be applied to help answer several questions inside and outside of environmental science and bioenergy. | Ph.D. | energy, environment, pollut | 7, 13 |
| Nguyen, Patricia | Koren, Gideon | Optimizing the Pharmacology of Periconceptional and Prenatal Multivitamin Supplementation | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2009-06 | It is highly recommended for women to take multivitamin/mineral supplements during the periconceptional and prenatal periods. Studies have confirmed that taking prenatal multivitamins prevents maternal iron deficiency anemia, and reduces the risk for neural tube defects (NTDs). To date, research aimed at optimizing the use of multivitamins before and during pregnancy has been minimal. My thesis focused on two challenges of periconceptional and prenatal multivitamin supplementation. The first challenge was gastrointestinal (GI) adverse events such as nausea and constipation which may be attributed to iron content and tablet size. Pregnant women are highly susceptible to GI adverse events since 80% experience nausea and vomiting of pregnancy. A prospective, randomized, controlled, open-label study was conducted to investigate whether a low-iron, small-tablet prenatal multivitamin can reduce GI adverse events, and improve supplement tolerability and adherence, relative to a high-iron, small-tablet prenatal multivitamin. We determined that low iron dose did not produce a significant difference, while small tablet size could be considered an important factor. Moreover, our results confirmed that adherence was poor in pregnant women. We were prompted to identify determinants which could predict adherence to prenatal multivitamins. Our retrospective study determined that predictors of adherence are rooted in women’s prior experiences with multivitamin use. The second challenge we addressed was achieving adequate blood folate concentrations for prevention of NTDs. If adherence is poor, standard dosing of 0.4-1 mg folic acid may not produce the blood folate concentrations needed in women prior to conception. We investigated the pharmacokinetics of 5 mg folic acid. Our prospective, parallel, open-labeled study, comparing a single dose of 5 mg to 1.1 mg folic acid, confirmed that folic acid follows linear (proportional) pharmacokinetics. However, our prospective, randomized, controlled, open-labeled, multiple-dose study determined that repeated use of folic acid at these 2 doses followed non-linear pharmacokinetics. Nevertheless, our data confirmed that 5 mg folic acid can produce higher blood folate concentrations, with a faster rate, which can counter the effect of poor adherence. In conclusion, optimal use of prenatal multivitamins requires improvements in supplement tolerability, adherence, and pharmacokinetics which depend on supplement formulations, and individualized assessment and counseling. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Nguyen, Phong Thanh | Sinton, David | Microfluidic and Micro-core Methods for Enhanced Oil Recovery and Carbon Storage Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-06 | Injection of CO2 into the subsurface, for both storage and oil recovery, is an emerging strategy to mitigate atmospheric CO2 emissions and associated climate change. In this thesis microfluidic and micro-core methods were developed to inform combined CO2-storage and oil recovery operations and determine relevant fluid properties. Pore scale studies of nanoparticle stabilized CO2-in-water foam and its application in oil recovery to show significant improvement in oil recovery rate with different oils from around the world (light, medium, and heavy). The CO2 nanoparticle-stabilized CO2 foams generate a three-fold increase in oil recovery (an additional 15% of initial oil in place) as compared to an otherwise similar CO2 gas flood. Nanoparticle-stabilized CO2 foam flooding also results in significantly smaller oil-in-water emulsion sizes. All three oils show substantial additional oil recovery and a positive reservoir homogenization effect. A supporting microfluidic approach is developed to quantify the minimum miscibility pressure (MMP) - a critical parameter for combined CO2 storage and enhanced oil recovery. The method leverages the inherent fluorescence of crude oils, is faster than conventional technologies, and provides quantitative, operator-independent measurements. In terms of speed, a pressure scan for a single minimum miscibility pressure measurement required less than 30 min, in stark contrast to days or weeks with existing rising bubble and slimtube methods. In practice, subsurface geology also interacts with injected CO2. Commonly carbonate dissolution results in pore structure, porosity, and permeability changes. These changes are measured by x-ray microtomography (micro-CT), liquid permeability measurements, and chemical analysis. Chemical composition of the produced liquid analyzed by inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectrometer (ICP-AES) shows concentrations of magnesium and calcium. This work leverages established advantages of microfluidics in the new context of core-sample analysis, providing a simple core sealing method, small sample size, small volumes of injection fluids, fast characterization times, and pore scale resolution. Lastly, a microfluidic approach is developed to analyze the complex, multiphase fluid interactions in CO2 enhanced oil recovery at relevant reservoir temperature and pressure. Fluorescence imaging is applied to visualize and measure the effect of CO2 pressure on contact angles changes at the pore scale. | Ph.D. | water, climate | 6, 13 |
| Ni, Qing | Kirk, Donald W||Thorpe, Steven J | Ti/SnO2-Sb2O5 as an Anode Material in Electro-oxidation of Organic Compounds for Wastewater Treatment | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2016-11 | Titanium-supported antimony-tin oxide (Ti/SnO2-Sb2O5) is a type of anode material that has shown high current efficiency in the electro-oxidation of organic compounds. It has potential application in the treatment of municipal wastewater. This work has advanced the theoretical background and application of this anode material for the oxidation of organics. First, anodes were fabricated using various techniques developed in this work. Different fabrication methods resulted in different levels of antimony-to-tin ratios in the coating and consequently affected its electrocatalytic ability to degrade organics. The fabricated electrodes were tested for their catalysis and kinetics in the oxidation of organics, using oxalic acid as a model target organic compound. The measured catalytic efficiency of the anode was determined to be associated with its composition and surface structure. Then, an in-depth analysis of the structure of the electrodes was carried out using photoelectron spectroscopy. The transient oxide layers discovered in this study were associated with the impedance of the anode and could contribute to the deactivation of this anode material. The long-term stability of some of the electrodes was tested, and the results suggested that these anodes were stable under mild operating conditions. To investigate the effect of the operating conditions on the efficiency of organic oxidation, electrolysis experiments were conducted in simulated and real wastewater. The outcomes of these tests suggested that the mass transport of the dissolved organic species in the wastewater was a major limiting factor that lowered the current efficiency in the electro-oxidation of organic compounds. Fluid dynamics and mass transport inside an electrolyzer was modeled, in order to understand the influence of operating conditions on the transport of organic compounds and the energy economy in a wastewater treatment plant. The findings in this study will contribute to the understanding of the wastewater treatment on the antimony-tin-oxide electrode material and the application of electrochemistry in environmental protection. | Ph.D. | waste, water | 6, 12 |
| Nichol, Kathryn Anne | Holness, Dorothy Linn | Behind the Mask: Determinants of Nurses' Adherence to Recommended Use of Facial Protective Equipment to Prevent Occupational Transmission of Communicable Respiratory Illness in Acute Care Hospitals | Medical Science | 2010-11 | Background - Communicable respiratory illness is a serious occupational threat to healthcare workers. A key reason for occupational transmission is failure to implement appropriate barrier precautions. Facial protective equipment, including surgical masks, respirators and eye/face protection, is the least adhered to type of personal protective equipment used by healthcare workers, yet it is an important barrier precaution against communicable respiratory illness. Objectives - To describe nurses’ adherence to recommended use of facial protective equipment and to identify the factors that influence adherence. Methods - A two-phased study was conducted. Phase 1 was a cross-sectional survey of nurses in selected units of six acute care hospitals in Toronto, Canada. Phase 2 was a direct observational study of critical care nurses. Results – Of the 1074 nurses who completed surveys (82% response rate), 44% reported adherence to recommended use of facial protective equipment. Multivariable analysis revealed four organizational predictors of adherence: ready availability of equipment, regular training and fit testing, organizational support for health and safety, and good communication. Following the survey, 112 observations in 14 intensive care units were conducted that showed a 44% competence rate with proper use of N95 respirators. Common gaps included failure to verify the seal and touching the face piece. Multivariable analysis revealed knowledge of recommended use of facial protective equipment as a significant predictor of competence. Discussion – Despite the SARS experience and the resulting investment in our public health system, nurses’ adherence to recommended use of facial protective equipment and competence in effective use of N95 respirators remains suboptimal. To improve adherence, organizational leaders should focus on equipment availability, training and fit testing, organizational support for health and safety, and positive communication. To improve competence in effective use of N95 respirators, strategies to increase knowledge should be implemented. These efforts should assist to reduce occupational transmission of communicable respiratory illness and foster a healthier and safer working environment for nurses. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Nichols, Joshua | Gibbs, Robert B. | The Mark of the State: Reading the Writing of 'Right' in Hegel's Political Philosophy | Philosophy | 2009-11 | This project is a critique of the connection between lethal violence and justice within Hegel’s Philosophy of Right. Our critique focuses on three specific moments—moments that Derrida touches upon in Glas, but does not address in detail—namely, heroic vengeance, execution and warfare. By subjecting each of these moments to a close reading we will be calling into question the very possibility of an act of violence that can lay claim to being absolutely ‘necessary’ or ‘just’ either within its specific historical moment or from beyond it. The theoretical basis of the project closely parallels Jacques Derrida’s work on Hegel, in that it stems from a deconstruction of the connection between epistemology and ontology. This also has serious implications for the question of ethics. By tracing the play of différance through the semeiological structure of both theoretical and practical cognition Derrida’s work makes it possible to address the ethical implications of speculative dialectics from a non-dialectical angle. Figuratively speaking, the relationship between theoretical and practical cognition can be thought of as the relationship between reading and writing. As such, the title of the project is to be taken as a figurative reference to the connection between theoretical (i.e. reading) and practical (i.e. writing) cognition and by extension to the connection between epistemology, ontology and ethics. Addressed in this manner our project begins by tracing the silence (i.e. the ‘a’ of différance) that is, at one and the same time, a condition of the possibility and impossibility of meaning. This silence has serious ramifications for Hegel’s political philosophy. Hegel’s system sets out to ground the law within the ‘positive’ infinity of the Concept [Begriff] and thus, close the circle of philosophy. This project will attempt to expose the ethical stakes—and the ultimate impossibility—of Hegel’s ‘positive’ infinity by taking up the thread of lethal violence in the Philosophy of Right. | PhD | justice | 16 |
| Nielsen, Daiva Elena | Ahmed, El-Sohemy | Disclosure of Genetic Information for Personalized Nutrition and Change in Dietary Intake | Nutritional Sciences | 2014-11 | Background: Personal genetic information has become increasingly accessible as a result of consumer genetic tests. Proponents claim that the information may motivate positive behavioural changes aimed at chronic disease prevention, however, the effects of disclosing genetic information on dietary behaviour have not been well explored.Objectives: To determine the effects of DNA-based dietary advice on intakes of caffeine, vitamin C, added sugar and sodium, as well as to explore individual perceptions of genetic testing and personalized nutrition. Methods: A randomized trial was conducted with men and women aged 20-35 years (n=138). Subjects in the intervention group (I) were given DNA-based dietary advice and those in the control group (C) were given general dietary recommendations. Food frequency questionnaires were collected at baseline, 3- and 12-months and general linear models were used to compare changes in intake between groups. A survey was completed at baseline, the intervention point, and 3- and 12-months to assess perceptions between groups. The chi-square test and Wilcoxon signed-rank test were used to compare responses.Results: Subjects in the intervention group were more likely to agree that the advice would be useful when considering diet (88% [I] vs. 72% [C]; p=0.02). A significant reduction in sodium intake was observed at 12-months among subjects who received DNA-based advice when compared to the control group (mean ± SE: -287.3 ± 114.1 mg/day [I] vs. 129.8 ± 118.2 mg/day [C]; p=0.008). Compared to baseline, subjects rated higher agreement with the statement "I am interested in the relationship between diet and genetics" at 3-months (mean change ± SD: 0.28 ± 0.99, p=0.0002) and 12-months (0.20 ± 1.04, p=0.02). The majority of subjects indicated that a university research lab (47%) or healthcare professional (41%) were the best sources for obtaining accurate personal genetic information, while direct-to-consumer genetic testing company received the fewest selections (12%). Most subjects (56%) considered registered dietitians to be the best source of personalized nutrition.Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that DNA-based dietary advice is more effective than general dietary recommendations at motivating individuals to adopt dietary changes for certain nutrients, and therefore, may be more useful for chronic disease prevention. | Ph.D. | food, health, consum | 2, 3, 12 |
| Ninglekhu, Sabin | Rankin, Katharine N | Mutable Aspirations and Uncertain Futures: Everyday life and The Politics of Urgency in Kathmandu | Geography | 2016-11 | This dissertation interrogates the right to the city as a category of analysis with recourse to an account of extreme marginality. As a starting premise, it seeks inspiration from Kristin Ross’ (1987) take on everyday life as a site of dominant relations of power on the one hand, and an incubator of utopian possibilities on the other. To this end, the dissertation probes three key questions. The first question asks: what are the conditions of possibility enabling the “slum dwellers” (sukumbasi in Nepali) in Kathmandu, Nepal, to make claims for the right to the city? I document the rituals of everyday life and the capacity to make claims that are organized through a metaphorical framework of a “house with three pillars." The second question broaches the issue of how claims for a right to the city come up against governmental programs seeking to secure norms of private property, environmental sustainability, and elite aesthetics. It asks: How does the threat of violence forge sukumbasi political subjectivity and inform renewed strategies of inhabitance? The third question investigates what implications these strategies have for diminishing, or modifying, the right to the city project? The last two questions prompt us to locate the practices of the poor within the context of a “politics of urgency” – an ad hoc creative and counterintuitive “non-movement” forged in the crucible of crisis, in which the organized ritual of everyday life is disrupted and stretched in new and uncertain directions. It is under these conditions that the demand for the right to the city loses its aspirational spirit on the one hand, while ushering in an evolving politics of possibility, on the other. In considering the politics and contingencies of the right to the city, we are presented with a stark understanding of the possibilities and limits of the political aspirations of the poor. The dissertation draws on ethnographic research of “the slum” in Kathmandu, and aims to combine Postcolonial Urbanism, Planning Theory and Critical Urban Studies to constructively probe the role of urban everyday life in troubling the political contours of the right to the city project. | Ph.D. | urban, environment | 11, 13 |
| Njelesani, Janet E. | Polatajko, Helene J. | Examining Sport-for-development Using a Critical Occupational Approach to Research | Rehabilitation Science | 2012-11 | Operating under the rubric of sport-for-development, nongovernmental organizations have mobilized sport activities as a tool for international development. Along with these initiatives, a scholarly analysis of the phenomenon has emerged. However, this body of research has not included analysis from a critical occupational perspective. This is a conspicuous shortcoming since, in the language of occupational science, sport-for-development initiatives are occupation-based programs. This study explored sport-for-development using a critical occupational approach to research I constructed, wherein the central site of knowledge production was occupations used in sport-for-development programs. Through five case studies with sport-for-development organizations in Lusaka, Zambia, I describe how staff and youth participants spoke about and understood the use of sport occupations in sport-for-development programs and the sport-for-development ideologies and practices in Zambia and how these shaped the participation of youth. Data generation included observing program activities, interviewing participants, and analyzing organization documents. The findings drew attention to the form, function, and meaning of the sport occupations used in sport-for-development, and illuminate that football, which is a heavily gendered and segregated sport, was constructed as the preferential activity for programs. This prioritization of football, in conjunction with a hierarchical, authoritative approach to decision making, and focus on the development of youths’ sports skills, led to athletic, non-disabled boys living in urban areas being the primary beneficiaries of the programs. I argue that the ideological beliefs that re/produced these understandings contributed to occupational injustices by (1) contributing to the practice of sport being used uncritically as an activity for all youth, (2) perpetuating what were considered acceptable activities for boys and girls in the local context to do, and (3) defining boys in opposition to girls, rural youth, poor youth, and youth with disabilities from both genders. Finally, I propose directions for institutionally-orientated actions to address occupational injustices and consideration of the wider uses and implications of a critical occupational approach within health and social research. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Norman, Alison Elizabeth | Morgan, Cecilia | Race, Gender and Colonialism: Public Life among the Six Nations of Grand River, 1899-1939 | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-06 | Six Nations women transformed and maintained power in the Grand River community in the early twentieth century. While no longer matrilineal or matrilocal, and while women no longer had effective political power neither as clan mothers, nor as voters or councillors in the post-1924 elective Council system, women did have authority in the community. During this period, women effected change through various methods that were both new and traditional for Six Nations women. Their work was also similar to non-Native women in Ontario. Education was key to women’s authority at Grand River. Six Nations women became teachers in great numbers during this period, and had some control over the education of children in their community. Children were taught Anglo-Canadian gender roles; girls were educated to be mothers and homemakers, and boys to be farmers and breadwinners. Children were also taught to be loyal British subjects and to maintain the tradition of alliance with Britain that had been established between the Iroquois and the English in the seventeenth century. With the onset of the Great War in 1914, Six Nations men and women responded with gendered patriotism, again, in ways that were both similar to Anglo-Canadians, and in ways that were similar to traditional Iroquois responses to war; men fought and women provided support on the home-front. Women’s patriotic work at home led to increased activity in the post-war period on the reserve. Six Nations women made use of social reform organizations and voluntary associations to make improvements in their community, particularly after the War. The Women’s Institutes were especially popular because they were malleable, practical, and useful for rural women’s needs. Women exerted power through these organizations, and effected positive change on the reserve. | PhD | gender, women | 5 |
| Norman, Moss Edward | MacNeill, Margaret | Living in the Shadow of an "Obesity Epidemic": The Discursive Construction of Boys and Their Bodies | Exercise Sciences | 2009-11 | This dissertation is about boys and fatness. In it I explore the central discourses that shape young men’s (13-15 years) experiences of their bodies, particularly in relation to body size, shape, and fatness. A central objective is to listen, hear, and take seriously the embodied health rationalities of young men as they negotiate the multiple and contesting discourses that confront them in their daily lives. I employ a feminist poststructural lens to account for the nuanced, alternative, and contextually specific ways young men think about and do health. Data collection was divided into three phases (non-participant observation, photo(focus) groups, and interviews) and was implemented at two Toronto area sites, including an exclusive private school and a publicly funded parks and recreation community centre. I demonstrate that there is not one way of experiencing fatness and masculinity, rather the young men’s constructions of fatness and health were fluid, shifting, contradictory and cross cut by other salient identity categories such as gender, race, ethnicity, social class, and age. Using Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, I show how obesity discourse provides a set of resources by which young men are able to construct themselves as autonomous, rational, neoliberal subjects, and how these subjectivities are differentially constituted depending on social and cultural positioning. I also reveal how differently raced and classed young men take up and embody normative ideals of the lean muscular male body through culturally appropriate masculine technologies of the self (i.e. sport and heterosexuality). The multiplicity of health and body discourses available to the young men gave rise to contested and ambivalent experiences and practices, such that dominant discourses were not always articulated in a straightforward and predictable manner, but were imbued with alternative and, in some cases, subversive meanings. To date, the social sciences have neglected to account for the relationship boys and men have with fatness discourses. By centering the analysis on the embodied experiences of diverse racialized and classed youth, this research demonstrates that weight and shape is more than a biomedical problem to be eradicated, but a discursively compelled embodiment that exists at the crossroads of the social, cultural, psychic, and biologic. | PhD | health, gender | 3, 5 |
| North, Michelle Leanne | Silverman, Frances ||Scott, Jeremy A. | L-arginine Metabolism Regulates Airways Responsiveness in Asthma and Exacerbation by Air Pollution | Medical Science | 2011-06 | Asthma is a chronic respiratory disease with a high prevalence in Western countries, including Canada, and increased exacerbations have been associated with ambient air pollution. The maintenance of airways tone is critically dependent on the endogenous bronchodilator, nitric oxide (NO). The nitric oxide synthase (NOS) isoenzymes produce NO from the amino acid, L-arginine, and competition for substrate with the arginase isoenzymes can limit NO production. Imbalances between these pathways have been implicated in the airways hyperresponsiveness (AHR) of asthma. The overall objective of this work was to determine whether arginase and downstream polyamine metabolites are functionally involved in airways responsiveness in animal models of asthma and the adverse responses of allergic animals to air pollution. To this purpose, the expression profiles of proteins involved in L-arginine metabolism were determined in lung tissues from human asthmatics and murine models of ovalbumin (OVA)-induced airways inflammation. Expression of arginase 1 was increased in human asthma and animal models. Competitive inhibition of arginase attenuated AHR in vivo. The roles of the downstream metabolites of arginase, the polyamines (putrescine, spermidine and spermine) were examined by administering them via inhalation to anaesthetized mice. It was demonstrated that spermine increases methacholine responsiveness in normal and allergic mice. Additionally, inhibition of polyamine synthesis improved AHR in a murine model. Thus, arginase and downstream polyamine metabolites contribute to AHR in asthma. Finally, the potential role of arginase in the exacerbation of asthma by air pollution was investigated. For this purpose, murine sub-acute and chronic murine models of allergic airways inflammation were employed, which exhibit inflammatory cell influx and remodeling/AHR, respectively, to determine the role of arginase in the response to concentrated ambient fine particles plus ozone. Allergic mice that were exposed to air pollution exhibited increased arginase activity and expression, compared to filtered air-exposed controls. Furthermore, inhibition of arginase attenuated the air pollution-induced AHR. Thus, the studies of the arginase pathway and downstream metabolites described in this thesis indicate that arginase inhibition may be a therapeutic target in asthma and may also protect susceptible populations against the adverse health effects of air pollution. | PhD | health, pollut | 3, 13 |
| Novak, Christine | Katz, Joel | Biomedical and Psychosocial Factors Associated with Pain and Disability after Peripheral Nerve Injury | Medical Science | 2010-11 | The main objective of my dissertation was to evaluate the biomedical and psychosocial factors associated with pain and disability in patients following traumatic upper extremity nerve injuries. This was approached by conducting 3 studies. The first study surveyed peripheral nerve surgeons regarding the assessment of pain in patients with nerve injury. The results showed that only 52% of surgeons always evaluate pain in patients referred for motor/sensory dysfunction. Pain assessment frequently includes verbal response and assessment of psychosocial factors is infrequent. The second study was a retrospective review to assess disability, as measured by the Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH), in patients with chronic nerve injury. Results showed substantial disability (mean DASH 52 + 22) and a significantly lower health status (p < 0.001) compared with well-established norms. In the regression model, the factors associated with the DASH (R2 = 44.5%) were pain, older age and nerve injured. The third study was a cross-sectional evaluation of the biomedical and psychosocial factors associated with pain and disability after upper extremity nerve injury in 158 patients. DASH scores were significantly higher in patients with workers’ compensation or litigation (p = 0.03), brachial plexus injuries (p < 0.001) and unemployed patients (p < 0.001). In the multivariable regression analysis, the final model explained 52.7% of the variance with these predictors; pain intensity (Beta = .230, p = 0.006), nerve injured (Beta = -.220, p = 0.000), time since injury (Beta = -.198, p = 0.002), pain catastrophizing (Beta = .192, p = 0.025), age (Beta = .187, p = 0.002), work status (Beta = .179, p = 0.008), cold sensitivity (Beta = .171, p = 0.015), depression score (Beta = .133, p = 0.066), workers’ compensation/litigation (Beta = .116, p = 0.049) and gender (Beta = -.104, p = 0.09). Future investigation regarding treatments of the factors that are associated with disability and chronic pain will assist to improve health related quality of life in patients with traumatic nerve injury. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Novak, Elizabeth Nancy | Pascal, Charles | Creating Culture Change: A Study Of How Evidence Is Moved Into Practice For Implementation Of A Public Policy Initiative In Ontario | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-06 | The Ontario government, in an effort to close the gap between what we know (scientific inquiry) and what we do (public policy and practice) has, since 2009, supported implementation of the enhanced 18-month well-baby visit (18-month EWBV), in primary care practices throughout the province. Informed by the evidence, the 18-month EWBV represents innovation, an opportunity to expand the current, universal, 18-month check-up to a provision of care that supports standardized assessment at 18 months of age for each child in Ontario.This thesis begins in the author's experience, as a Program Consultant (Nursing), whose work it is to coordinate the development and implementation of provincial child development programs. As seen through the case of the 18-month EWBV, the study and its research are about knowledge work. Defined as a process that sees the creation of new knowledge during the transfer of knowledge in the context of the application of knowledge to clinical decision-making (Quinlan, 2009), the study is one of empirical inquiry. Understood that knowledge alone is insufficient to change practice, the study takes seriously the social and organizational processes of work and relations, often coordinated by documents (text) that shape the everyday experience of health professionals as they "invite or reject innovation" (Kontos Poland, 2009) that the 18-month EWBV represents.Using insights from institutional ethnography (IE) (D. Smith, 1987, 1999, 2005, 2006) as its method of inquiry, the study used experience as data and documents (text) as data. In its discovery, the study offers interview and document (text) analysis and maps knowledge work as those processes of work and relationship for the cause and effect of people's activities, made visible for how things happen as they do, in real life settings, for action that is coordinated, linked in relationship through documents (text), language, ways of speaking, and discourse, to organize experience (Turner, 2003, 2008; Webster, 2009).In its conclusion, the study moves beyond appreciation of knowledge translation (KT) as a set of individual processes and moves towards a new way of looking to understand and learn of the forces and processes of work and relation that shape change in the local context. | Ph.D. | health, institution | 3, 16 |
| Nowak, Joanne | Cranford, Cynthia | Extending the Social Model of Migration and Incorporation to Include Migrant Occupational Communities: The Case of Ghanaian Nurses | Sociology | 2016-11 | The flow of skilled migrants to Canada has increased significantly over recent decades. Considerable research has focused on explaining skilled migration and economic incorporation outcomes, with a focus on economic factors. This qualitative dissertation examines how skilled workers come to the decision to migrate to Canada, and how they navigate the skilled economic incorporation process and challenges that emerged along the way, with a focus on the social forces influencing these processes. To do so, the dissertation drew on the early social migration model advanced by Massey and his colleagues (Massey et al.1987; Massey et al. 1993), but extended this model by analyzing the influence of the migrant occupational community among skilled migrants. The project primarily draws on 18 interviews with Ghanaian nurses of varying ages, seniority levels and types of nursing training who migrated to Canada. The analysis revealed key social processes, within both the migrant residential community and what this dissertation has termed the â migrant occupational communityâ , which influenced skilled migration and incorporation. The migrant residential community had a generally positive influence on skilled migration perceptions and aspirations through a local culture of migration, as well as on migration decision-making via general information on better living conditions transmitted via migrant residential networks, similar to that predicted in the early social model. The migrant occupational community also had an importance influence on skilled migration. The migrant occupational culture influenced skilled migration perceptions and aspirations in positive and negative ways, while migrant occupational networks influenced migration decision-making by providing information and encouragement related to occupational conditions and opportunities abroad. The migrant occupational community played an even more significant role in shaping the skilled incorporation process, primarily via migrant occupational networks and to some extent migrant occupational associations, which helped navigate the numerous steps to skilled incorporation to resume the nursing profession. This dissertation makes two contributions. First, and primarily, it extends the early social migration model to include the migrant occupational community found among skilled migrants. Second, this project moves beyond an analysis of skilled migration and incorporation outcomes, to an in-depth analysis of the processes of skilled migration and incorporation, in line with Masseyâ s holistic social migration model focused on low-skilled migration, as well as a growing number of skilled migration studies. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| Nowgesic, Earl | Myers, Ted | Antiretroviral Therapy Access, Acceptance and Adherence among Urban Indigenous Peoples Living with HIV in Saskatchewan: The Indigenous Red Ribbon Storytelling Study | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-06 | Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) can be managed effectively with antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. However, Indigenous peoples living with HIV (IPLWH) in Canada are less likely than non-Indigenous peoples living with HIV to access and adhere to ARV therapy. To date, most studies examining this issue aim for statistical generalization and do not focus enough on contextual factors. To investigate this imbalance, a collaborative research effort called the Indigenous Red Ribbon Storytelling Study (IRRSS) was developed by the study investigator and 11 community partners. The purpose of the IRRSS was to examine how IPLWH construct and understand their experiences of ARV therapy use. The study used an Indigenous qualitative research design, critical ethnography, and a community-based participatory research orientation. Study participants included adults from two cities in Saskatchewan. Informed consent was obtained from all study participants, who also accepted a traditional offering of tobacco. The study involved two Indigenous sharing circle interviews comprising a total of 15 key informants including IPLWH, 20 individual IPLWH interviews, six IPLWH participant observation sessions, and a survey of socio-demographic and health information. Thematic data analysis was conducted using the Behavioral Model of Health Services Use and sensitizing concepts within the context of critical Indigenous qualitative research. Themes included holistic health care, culture, family and friends, and the value placed on respect and trust. The majority of IPLWH live with three interacting dimensions of social vulnerabilities. Their identity living with HIV is compounded by their substance use disorder and their social contexts as a culture-sharing group impacted by relations with the Nation State of Canada. Nonetheless, they are able to adapt positively to adversity, especially when appropriate underlying socio-structural mechanisms are in place to support their resilience. Recommendations were developed to improve the lives of IPLWH, most notably to involve IPLWH in anything that affects their lives, including needle exchange programs and holistic health care that is founded on Indigenous values, cultures and beliefs. Any consideration of access to, acceptance of and adherence to ARV therapy among IPLWH should view biomedical, behavioural and social aspects of care for IPLWH as an integrative system. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Noyce, Genevieve LaBombard | Basiliko, Nathan||Fulthorpe, Roberta | Biochar and Wood Ash Impacts on Soil Microbial Community Structure and Biogeochemical Functioning in Managed Ontario Forests | Geography | 2016-06 | Biochars and wood ash could be used as valuable soil amendments in managed Canadian forests to counteract effects of full-tree harvesting and N deposition, such as soil acidification and nutrient depletion. However, large-scale application cannot be recommended without a thorough assessment of the impacts of these amendments on key aspects of the ecosystem. Characterizing microbial responses is crucial for predicting the overall forest response to biochar and wood ash additions, because soil microbial communities affect ecosystem health and functioning and aboveground plant communities. However, for biochars in particular, the long-term effects on the soil microbial community in temperate forested ecosystems are still unknown. Similarly, while there have been ongoing ash-addition experiments in northern European and South American forests, the variability in microbial responses makes it challenging to extrapolate to other forest types and few field-scale ash addition studies have been conducted in Canadian forests. This thesis examines the effects of adding biochars and wood ash to Great Lakes' St. Lawrence and Boreal forest soils, particularly focusing on changes to the structure of the soil microbial community and its biogeochemical functional ability. In a north-temperate, selection-harvested forest, biochar application had only minor effects on bacterial and fungal community composition, fungi:bacteria ratios, microbial biomass, and microbial C mineralization two years after addition. Ash addition to a clear-cut boreal forest and the same selection-harvested forest had similarly minor effects on microbial community composition and did not alter overall microbial biomass or microbial C mineralization. In a microcosm experiment, biochar and ash addition effects on P bioavailability depended on soil texture and tree species. A comparison of four-year-old biochar particles and adjacent soil showed that even when there were phylogenetic differences between biochar and bulk soil microbial communities, both groups had very similar functional abilities. Across all experiments, site-specific factors played a strong role in chemical and biological responses to biochar and ash addition. However, most observed effects were minor and transient, indicating that biochar and ash can likely be used as soil amendments in these systems without negatively disrupting the soil microbial community. | Ph.D. | forest | 15 |
| Nugent, James Patrick | Prudham, Scott | Resistance Along the Rails: Confronting Deindustrialization and Urban Renewal as a Neoliberal Socio-Ecological Fix through Social Movement Alliance-Forming in Toronto, Canada | Geography | 2018-06 | This dissertation analyzes post-Fordist social movement coalitions between labour, community and environmental groups that responded to, but also helped constitute, processes of deindustrialization and so-called urban renewal in Toronto, Canada between 2004-2015. I theorize this urban restructuring not only as a spatio-temporal fix but as a more encompassing “socio-ecological fix” that better accounts for the socio-ecological constraints and opportunities placed on the production of urban space for and by capital, labour and a wider range of social (movement) actors. The emergence, development, efficacy and impacts of two labour-community coalitions in Toronto are analyzed by integrating macro-scale theories of coalitions (i.e., eco-Marxist and Gramscian approaches) with social movement theory and ethnographic approaches. The Mount Dennis Weston Network (2007-2012) sought to create “green jobs” on a brownfield site before scaling-up into the Toronto Community Benefits Network (TCBN). The TCBN (2013-2015) aimed to win Ontario's first “community benefits agreement” (CBA) as a tool for leveraging rapid transit infrastructure investments to achieve other social and environmental policy objectives (e.g., employment equity, social procurement, environmental design, etc.). I appraise these coalitions as efforts to demand a right to the city—i.e., more democratic and egalitarian production of urban space (including the regulation of the urban metabolism)—and in terms of social movement alliance-forming that I define as a two-way shift in scale: an institutional broadening (or organizational scaling-up) and an ideological deepening (i.e. praxis). These social movement processes require more extensive on-the-ground organizing within neighbourhoods and unions without which coalitions risk becoming coopted and confined to negotiating minor concessions and trade-offs that deepen socio-ecological tensions and contradictions. In this way, discourses around “green jobs,” “sustainable cities,” and “community benefits” have been used by the state and corporations to organize consent for neoliberal urban governance (i.e., increased privatization and deregulation of the transit and energy sectors, and transit-led gentrification). | Ph.D. | energy, employment, labour, infrastructure, trade, cities, urban, environment, institution | 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 16 |
| Nulman, Irena | Feldman, Brian M | Methodology Challenges in Behavioural Teratology Drug Safety Studies on Depression | Medical Science | 2014 | Numerous medical conditions in pregnancy require pharmacotherapy. A conflict between optimal maternal treatment and risk of fetal teratogenicity arises if drug safety is not assured. Behavioural teratology, the science of central nervous system impairments due to a variety of prenatal exposures, is an inseparable part of reproductive drug safety studies and addresses the long-term neurodevelopment of exposed children. Research in behavioural teratology is sparse due to lack of funding priorities and methodological obstacles related to statistical power, cost/time effectiveness, and multiple confounders (with the genetics being the most difficult to control for). Implementing an appropriate study design is critical in overcoming these challenges. Depression is the most common psychiatric disorder in women, and up to 16% of pregnant women with depression require pharmacotherapy. Selective transmitter reuptake inhibitors (STRIs) are widely used to control depression in pregnancy. The objectives of this thesis were to define the long-term neurodevelopment of children exposed in utero to STRI antidepressants and to develop an advanced methodology for behavioural teratology in order to achieve the highest possible degree of evidence. Three studies were conducted using different designs. The first study measured the intelligence of three groups of children exposed in utero to either the serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor drug venlafaxine, other STRIs (a disease control), or children of healthy women exposed to non-teratogenic agents. The second study included an additional group of children prenatally exposed to maternal depression, but not pharmacotherapy, in order to separate the effects of maternal depression from the effects of the antidepressant medications. The third study compared long-term neurodevelopmental outcomes of children prenatally exposed to STRIs to their unexposed siblings. It was found that untreated depression is associated with adverse pregnancy outcome and increased rates of postpartum depression. Children of depressed mothers may be at risk of future psychopathology. Factors other than prenatal STRIs strongly predict children's intellect and behaviour. The sibling design was able to better control for genetic and environmental factors, was more cost-effective, and able to achieve more valid results with a much smaller sample size. This novel design should be implemented in behavioural teratology drug safety studies. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Nwalutu, Michael Onyedika | Wane, Njoki | From Africa to Europe, Youth and Transnational Migration: Examining the Lived Experiences of Nigerian Migrant Youth in Malta | Social Justice Education | 2016-06 | Innovations in communication and transportation industries have improved and increased the potential for the movement of individuals, commodities, and capitals across international borders as they respond to global environmental and socio-economic stimuli. Extant studies have focused on adult transnational migrants, and youth migration is highlighted only in relation to the adult experiences. However, movement of young adults as independent transnational migrants is an emerging trend in international migration. There is a general lack of awareness on the working and living conditions of youth migrants. This research was therefore informed by the urgent need to understand the migration experiences of youth with the view of protecting young migrants and ensuring that migration leads to their development and those of their home and host countries. The thesis employs data collected with interpretative phenomenological analysis, IPA in a qualitative field study conducted in 2013 in the Republic of Malta to examine the lived experiences of Europe-bound migrant Nigerian youth. By resisting the banal Push and Pull explanations for transnational migration, which literally blames migrants and the countries of origin for current trends in global migration, the thesis advances the understanding of global youth migration from the perspectives of Indigenous world views, anti-colonial, and antiracist theories. It disturbs, and by so doing, unpacks as colonial project, the existing dominant imaginaries around immigrants from the developing world. These imagined mindsets have informed immigration policies and praxis that have continued to generate and sustain the migrant other. The study uncovered the enormous transit and settlement challenges that transnational migrant youth contend with as they are polarized into social and demographic opposites (male and female migrants, legal and illegal, citizen and alien) by the advanced border-surveillance technologies and authorities of receiving states. Within this intersectionality lies migrant struggles and resistance as they aim for the countries of their destination. It therefore concludes by recommending a holistic and multilateral approach to resolving the issues of global youth migration. The approach (es) adopted must include addressing the major driving forces of the 21st century migration, which is social insecurity and economic marginalization. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Nyaga, Dionisio | Dei, George | Re-imagining Black Masculinity: Praxis of Kenyan Men in Toronto | Social Justice Education | 2019-11 | This study examined Black masculinity, the representation of Black men, and by extension the Black community. Black men in North America historically have been racially targeted and profiled in employment and education (school/prison pipeline). Black masculinity scholarship has actively represented this demography through diverse scholarships. While this may be the case, the opposite is equally true; the scholarly lens does not provide the overall picture of Black men. This exploratory/descriptive qualitative Afrocentric Indigenous narrative study applied post-colonial, anti-colonial, and critical masculinity theoretical frameworks to argue that Black masculinity is implicated in epistemological violence and imperialism. The study encompassed semi-structured interviews with 10 participants (Kenyan men in Toronto), allowing for open expression of their experiences. The Kenyan story has been missing in action; that is, the Kenyan racial experiences in immigration, education, and labour remain expunged and absent. Black masculinity has not focused on accents as a racial and gendered concept of erasing Kenyan men from social and political processes. The study is framed around the limits of Black masculinity and looks at immigration, education, and labour policies in Canada and how they expel Kenyan men from the body politic. Kenyan men that were interviewed said that though they are Black they are also African based on the complex act of accent multiplier. | Ph.D. | gender, employment | 5, 8 |
| O'Brien, Lisa | Koren, Gideon | Critical Determinants of the Risk-benefit Assessment of Antidepressants in Pregnancy: Pharmacokinetic, Safety and Economic Considerations | Medical Science | 2009-03 | Untreated depression in pregnancy may result in adverse health outcomes to both the mother and her unborn child. Pharmacotherapy with antidepressants is the most common treatment option for depression; however, the decision to treat with medication becomes complicated by pregnancy. Risk benefit assessments are critical tools to guide the treatment decision. Factors that should be included in these analyses include the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of antidepressants in pregnancy and their maternal and fetal safety. The economic cost of untreated maternal depression is also important to keep in mind. When the pharmacokinetics of the antidepressants venlafaxine and bupropion were studied in pregnancy it was found that the apparent oral clearance rate of bupropion was increased in late pregnancy when compared to early pregnancy (p = 0.03). There was a trend for lower area under the curve for these medications when the third trimester was compared to the first trimester. When the metabolism of antidepressants was investigated using hair analysis it was found that there was increased metabolism in pregnancy when compared to the postpartum period for citalopram (p = 0.02) but not venlafaxine (p = 0.77). Follow up of depressive symptoms throughout pregnancy identified that depression scores were highest in the first trimester of pregnancy, which may be due to concurrent nausea and vomiting of pregnancy. A meta-analysis of paroxetine use in early pregnancy demonstrated that there was no increased risk for cardiac malformations; case-control studies had an odds ratio of 1.18 (CI95: 0.88 – 1.59) while a weighted average difference of 0.3% was found in case-control studies (CI95: -0.1 – 0.7%, p = 0.19) The direct medical costs incurred by the Ontario government due to discontinuation of antidepressant medications in pregnancy was estimated to exceed $20,000,000 CAD. The management of depression in pregnancy with pharmacotherapy is an important and complex issue. My study documents the advantages of conducting risk benefit assessments for vulnerable populations such as pregnant women with depression. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| O'Brien, Paul | Kherani, Nazir P. | Selectively Transparent and Conducting Photonic Crystals and their Potential to Enhance the Performance of Thin-film Silicon-based Photovoltaics and Other Optoelectronic Devices | Materials Science and Engineering | 2012-03 | The byproducts of human engineered energy production are increasing atmospheric CO2 concentrations well above their natural levels and accompanied continual decline in the natural reserves of fossil fuels, necessitates the development of green energy alternatives. Solar energy is attractive because it is abundant, can be produced in remote locations and consumed on site. Specifically, thin-film silicon-based photovoltaic (PV) solar cells have numerous inherent advantages including their availability, non-toxicity, and they are relatively inexpensive. However, their low-cost and electrical performance depends on reducing their thickness to as great an extent as possible. This is problematic because their thickness is much less than their absorption length. Consequently, enhanced light trapping schemes must be incorporated into these devices. Herein, a transparent and conducting photonic crystal (PC) intermediate reflector (IR), integrated into the rear side of the cell and serving the dual function as a back-reflector and a spectral splitter, is identified as a promising method of boosting the performance of thin-film silicon-based PV. To this end a novel class of PCs, namely selectively transparent and conducting photonic crystals (STCPC), is invented. These STCPCs are a significant advance over existing 1D PCs because they combine intense wavelength selective broadband reflectance with the transmissive and conductive properties of sputtered ITO. For example, STCPCs are made to exhibit Bragg-reflectance peaks in the visible spectrum of 95% reflectivity and have a full width at half maximum that is greater than 200nm. At the same time, the average transmittance of these STCPCs is greater than 80% over the visible spectrum that is outside their stop-gap. Using wave-optics analysis, it is shown that STCPC intermediate reflectors increase the current generated in micromorph cells by 18%. In comparison, the more conventional IR comprised of a single homogeneous transparent conducting oxide film increases the current generated in the same cell by just 8%. Moreover, the benefit of using STCPC IRs in building integrated photovoltaics is also presented. | PhD | energy, solar, production | 7, 12 |
| O'Byrne, Marianne | Piran, Niva | A Prospective Analysis of the Influence of the Macrosystem, Biological, Psychological, Relational and Behavioral Factors on the Experience of Embodiment, Body Esteem, and Disordered Eating of Mothers during their Transition from Pregnancy to Postpartum | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2017-11 | This investigation involved a prospective study of women’s experiences with their bodies during advanced pregnancy and at 3 and 6 months postpartum. The predictors included measures related to the macrosystem (Ethnicity, Socioeconomic Status, and Pressures for Thinness), and biological (Weight Difference from Prepregnancy, Fatigue, and Labour and Delivery Control), psychological (Depression, Anxiety, Internalization of the Thin Ideal, Maternal Beliefs about Competence, and Comfort with Breastfeeding), relational (Social Support and Relationship with Partner), and behavioral factors (Physical Activity, Breastfeeding Practice, and Sexual Relationships). In order to enhance the understanding of shifts in body experiences from pregnancy to postpartum, three different measures of women’s experiences with their bodies were used: Experience of Embodiment, Body Esteem, and Disordered Eating. A sample of 208 women completed these measures online, ages 19-46. Women were found to have more negative embodied experiences, lower body image and a higher rate of disordered eating patterns at postpartum compared with the pregnancy phase. Regression analyses were conducted to predict postpartum adjustment, highlighting the predictive power of pressures for thinness, the internalization of the thin ideal and pregnancy related weight change on women’s embodiment, body image and eating patterns at postpartum. In addition to these three factors, psychological factors, specifically anxiety and depression, appeared to play a stronger role than biological, relational, or behavioral factors or variables related to the macrosystem. Taken together, the results of this investigation highlighted the adverse impact of weight related pressures on women’s experiences with their bodies and the need to address psychological experiences. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, women | 1, 5 |
| O'Hagan, Fergal T. | Thomas, Scott | Return to Work with Cardiac Illness: A Qualitative Exploration from the Workplace | Exercise Sciences | 2009-06 | Objectives: Research literature points to a range of “factors” that are associated with return to work outcomes but little understanding of the experience of workers, the strategies used to adapt, how work shapes and influences adjustment, and the trajectories that describe their return to work experience. The aim of this qualitative, workplace-based study was to characterize workers readaptation to the workplace and develop a substantive framework for return to work following disabling cardiac illness. Methods: The study used a concurrent, nested, mixed methods approach, using grounded theory to inform the sampling and analysis framework. Participant workers were 12 males having suffered occupational disability owing to cardiac illness and returning to work at a large auto manufacturing plant. Participants were purposefully sampled for a range of disease and disability experiences as well as a range of work roles in the plant. Data were derived from semi-structured in-depth interviews, standardized questionnaire measures of health-related quality of life and work limitations, observations within the plant, and extensive field notes and memos. Longitudinal information was obtained through follow-up interviews over a two to ten month period. Results: Participants had a range of illness impacts and representations and fulfilled diverse roles in the plant including assembly jobs and trade work. Thematic analysis revealed that participants used adaptive strategies including changing mindset in relation to work, building physical capacity and efficiency, managing relationships and work schedules, and using supports in the plant. Thematic analysis highlighted the importance of the nature of work, the quality of work relationships, organizational practices around accommodation and supports in the workplace including occupational health support. Conclusions: Worker adaptation following disabling cardiac illness involved a process of self-regulation including elements of illness and work representations, deployment of adaptive strategies to compensate for ongoing impairments, self-monitoring, goal setting and adaptive selection of work activities. Work demands, relationships and structures provide a range of possibility for self-regulation and quality of life. Implications for practice for work and health researchers and professionals as well as potential linkages to theory are discussed. | PhD | worker | 8 |
| O'Neill, Kristie L.J. | Schneiderhan, Erik||Silver, Daniel | Reframing the Nutrition Transition: Stabilizing Subsistence and Changing Diets | Sociology | 2018-03 | As the pace of food production and trade intensifies, and as distant localities find themselves impacted by global demands, scholars are raising questions about how diets are impacted. I examine how “subsistence expectations” (Haugerud 1995: 10-11 in Edelman 2005: 332) are forged in the face of changing trade practices, as governments and citizens make decisions about the kinds of foods to be eaten, and make decisions as to the kinds of foods to be avoided. The subsistence expectations that governments and communities forge about savouring traditional foods, adopting new foods, and even re-defining questionable foods can be at odds with “nutrition transition” predictions about dietary changes, and sociological predictions about how dietary changes are engendered in a global economy. Collectively, my research papers point to the importance of examining how countries, regional communities, and national communities regulate their food systems, and how the ways that countries and communities uphold and re-envision subsistence expectations are integral to the pace and character of dietary changes. | Ph.D. | food, trade, production | 2, 10, 12 |
| Obadia, Maya | McCrindle, Brian | Informing Physician Communication with Children Regarding Weight: Family Perceptions and Motivational Interviewing Tools | Medical Science | 2013-11 | The goal of this research was to understand perceptions of children with obesity (study 1), their parents (study 2), and physicians (study 3) regarding weight-related communication in primary care through qualitative methods. These perceptions informed a randomized clinical trial (Motivational Interviewing (MI) vs. education) (study 4) addressing physician identification and communication about weight in primary care. Studies 1, 2, and 3: Separate focus groups and individual qualitative interviews with 35 children with obesity (5-17 years of age), their 42 parents and 12 primary care physicians were completed. The aims were to understand how the three participants of weight-related discussions in primary care perceived communication and obesity management. Data analysis was completed using the fundamental descriptive method for content analysis. Children identified factors perceived to hinder and promote positive attitudes towards weight-related behaviour change. Parents identified familial factors and feelings, perceived physician practices (parent-physician interactions and child-physician interactions), and recommendations from parents. Physicians identified barriers to weight management, how they cope and their needs for addressing weight with children. Study 4: The aim of this randomized controlled trial of MI vs. education-based training for primary care physicians was to improve the identification of obesity and communication with children with obesity, and to determine the efficacy of the MI training on MI skill retention. Outcomes included changes in rates of BMI calculating, tracking and identification of obesity, change and retention of MI scores in those randomized to the MI group. Factors associated with primary outcomes were also identified. This study indicated that primary care physicians are a difficult group to engage as subjects for training interventions. Collective physician training in management of obesity is effective at improving BMI calculation and obesity identification rates. The MI training curriculum can be applied in a brief session and group format and results indicate adoption and maintenance of MI scores on empathy, collaboration and autonomy support. The studies in this thesis identify areas where communication about weight in primary care can be targeted. They highlight a potential for MI training and adoption of technique as means of improving counseling confidence. It also identifies challenges in physician enrollment and participation in trainings. | PhD | well being | 3 |
| Ogbogu, Ubaka Leo | Trudo, Lemmens | Vaccination and the Law in Ontario and Nova Scotia (1800 - 1924) | Law | 2014-11 | Since the discovery of smallpox vaccination in the late eighteenth century, Western societies have often confronted the question of whether the state can justifiably impose the procedure on its citizens in the interest of safeguarding general public health. This question is at the heart of ongoing controversies regarding whether to require mandatory vaccination to check a resurgence of childhood diseases such as measles. While there are social and medical histories of the application of vaccination to the problem of infectious diseases in Canada, much remains unknown about the legal history of the procedure, including, specifically, the nature and scope of legal mechanisms used to enforce vaccinations and the factors -- legal, social or otherwise -- that account for the effectiveness, success or failure of these mechanisms. This dissertation addresses this gap through the lens of the legal history of smallpox vaccination in Ontario and Nova Scotia in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. It provides an original, comprehensive account of vaccination law and policy in nineteenth century Canada, encompassing the factors and ideologies that triggered and shaped the legal regulation of smallpox vaccination, the processes, design, content and outcomes of legal regulation, challenges associated with the implementation and enforcement of vaccination laws, and the influence or impact of broader social and political arrangements and norms. It also provides a firsthand account of why and to what extent mandatory approaches to vaccination were utilized in preventing the introduction and spread of smallpox, how such approaches were fashioned, and the reasons why they succeeded or failed to achieve stated regulatory aims. The study shows that approaches to vaccination varied between Ontario and Nova Scotia, and that the effectiveness of vaccination policies depended on the design of legal measures utilized, strong and responsive (local) government, holistic approaches that eschew a singular focus on vaccination over other methods of fighting infectious diseases, the absence of ideological contests over the legitimacy of mandatory vaccination, availability of financial resources to support the administration of vaccination, heightened and sustained threats of infectious diseases, and a population that is generally supportive of public health interventions. | S.J.D. | health | 3 |
| Oldfield, Margaret A. | MacEachen, Ellen | Staying in the Workforce with Fibromyalgia | Rehabilitation Science | 2015-11 | Remaining employed with fibromyalgia can be difficult in the increasingly precarious work world, where employees are expected to be healthy and able to consistently meet their job demands. Fibromyalgia also lacks medical legitimacy, which brings a risk of damaged workplace relationships and potential workplace discrimination for people with this illness, affecting mostly women. Their home lives may also impact their ability to remain employed, in conjunction with their impairments. Yet, despite varying degrees of pain, fatigue, and other health issues, 44% of Canadians with fibromyalgia remain in the workforce. How do they do it? This thesis aimed to understand how, given the challenges of remaining employed, these women stay at work. It also considered other stakeholders in the women’s employment and what discourses underlie the accounts of all three groups. The thesis comprised two studies. First, a critical discourse analysis of fibromyalgia information materials found that they generally portray employment as incompatible with fibromyalgia and, when they very rarely mention work, employees are seen as responsible for self-managing their symptoms on the job. The second study sought the perspectives of women with fibromyalgia, their family members and workmates on how the women remained employed. That study found that employed women with fibromyalgia improvised disclosure dances to respond to everyday disclosure risks in workplace relationships. They and their family members and workmates portrayed the women as normal, valuable employees who had not ‘given in’ to their fibromyalgia. Social relationships, from empathetic to conflicted, figured prominently in these two identity-management strategies, through which participants tried to stop the stigma process. The thesis findings highlight the importance of workplace social relations to job retention for employees with invisible impairments. Implications for work disability literature, research using the triad/dyad data-collection method, workplace practice, internal and state workplace policy, and rehabilitation practice are discussed. | Ph.D. | health, employment | 3, 8 |
| Omand, Jessica | Maguire, Jonathon L||O'Connor, Deborah L | VITAMIN D AND HEALTH SERVICE UTILIZATION FOR UPPER RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTIONS AND ASTHMA IN YOUNG CHILDREN | Nutritional Sciences | 2018-11 | Upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) and asthma are major causes of childhood morbidity. They are two of the most common reasons for children seeking health care in the outpatient and inpatient settings, posing a large burden on society and the health care system. It has been suggested that vitamin D may decrease airway inflammation and have an immune protecting effect, which may lead to a reduced risk of health service utilization (HSU) for URTI and asthma in childhood. If vitamin D has an impact on HSU for these common health issues, measures to increase vitamin D status could potentially reduce the burden of these diseases. This doctoral thesis uses observational methods to examine the relationship between 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration in children ages 0-6 years, vitamin D supplementation during pregnancy and childhood and HSU over 2 years for URTI and asthma in childhood. Healthy children ages 0-6 years were recruited through the TARGet Kids! practice based research network from 7 primary care clinics in Toronto ON, Canada. Data from Ontario’s publicly funded health-care system was linked to TARGet Kids! data at the individual level and used to evaluate the relationship between vitamin D and HSU for URTI and asthma in childhood. I did not find statistically significant evidence to support an association between 25-hydroxyvitamin D concentration, vitamin D supplementation in pregnancy and childhood and HSU for URTI or asthma in a sample (n=2926) of healthy children ages 0-6 years that generally had adequate vitamin D concentrations. However, due to the relatively low frequency of asthma outcomes, future studies could be conducted in an asthma prevalent cohort with low 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels. Measuring asthma prevalence in young children is challenging, thus I conducted a measurement study to evaluate the agreement between the Ontario Asthma Surveillance Information System (OASIS) algorithm (a validated health services algorithm) and parent-reported asthma in children ages 1-5 years. The OASIS algorithm performed similarly to parent-reported asthma and may be a useful tool for identifying children 1-5 years of age to develop a cohort of children with a high likelihood of having asthma for inclusion into future studies. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Ooi, Su-Mei | Pauly, Louis | The Transnational Protection Regime and Democratic Breakthrough: A Comparative Study of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore | Political Science | 2010-11 | This dissertation explains why Taiwan and South Korea experienced democratic breakthrough in the late 1980s, when Singapore failed to do so. It explains this variation in democratic outcomes by specifying the causal mechanisms underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development in these cases. New empirical evidence discovered in the course of this research has confirmed that transnational networks of nonstate and substate actors were an indisputable source of external pressures on the authoritarian governments of Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore during the late 1970s and early 80s. Foreign human rights activists, Christian missionaries and ecumenical workers, members of overseas diaspora communities, journalists, academics and students, along with legislators in key democratic countries allied to the target governments, were found to have raised the international profile of political repression by flagging them as reprehensible human rights abuses. Within the context of an international normative environment where human rights was increasingly considered a legitimate international concern, these transnational actors generated a negative international opinion of the target governments. Such grassroots pressures had the potential to raise the cost of political repression for these target governments with the effect of curbing repressive state behavior, thereby protecting key domestic actors with the potential to effect democratic breakthrough. The extent to which these external pressures could effectively constrain repressive state behavior depended, however, on the immediate geopolitical circumstances of each case. Geopolitical circumstances were also important because they could affect the strength of the protection regime. Thus, the exposition of the transnational protection regime as the causal mechanism underpinning the international-domestic political interface of democratic development requires that we specify the exact role of agency within the international normative and geopolitical contexts in which they operate. This dissertation develops such an abstracted causal model for the purposes of application in other cases and for policy analysis. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Ooms, Matthew David | Sinton, David | Applied Plasmonics for the Cultivation and Study of Photosynthetic Microorganisms | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-06 | This thesis explores nano-scaled plasmonic solutions to the problem of light capture and distribution in microalgae cultivation schemes. An evaluation of the effect of light quality on productivity under different photobioreactor geometries shows a 2x increase in productivity under 630-nm red light for low density cultures under low light intensity, compared to 534-nm green light. The opposite was true however when high density cultures are exposed to high intensity light â 534-nm performed 4x better than strongly ab-sorbed 630-nm red light. These results highlight the coupled influence of light quality and conventional photobioreactor design parameters. Wavelength specific, near-field plasmonic phenomena are then used as a means to couple light into cyanobacteria biofilms showing that plasmonic fields can be used to drive photosynthesis in living cells. 10-Âľm thick biofilms with maximum cell volume density of 20% vol/vol (2% more total accumulation than control experiments with direct light) were cultivated over three days. Far-field plasmonic phenomena were also applied to bulk cyanobacteria cultures to demonstrate a 6.5% enhancement in productivity. Resonant light is scattered back towards the culture increasing total ab-sorption while off-resonance light is transmitted. Supporting technology that enables patterning of plas-monic nano-features with a commercial CO2 laser system is also presented. Patterning speeds of 30 mm2/min and patterning costs of $0.10/mm2 are demonstrated which are ~30 fold faster and ~400 fold less expensive than e-beam lithography. Finally, crude oil characterization based on surface plasmon reso-nance is demonstrated, with applicability to both conventional and alternative energy industries. Bitumen-toluene mixture tests show a measurement sensitivity of 74o RIU-1, and a limit of detection below 1% toluene. Seven crude oils from around the world are differentiated with refractive indices spanning 1.44 to 1.56, with a sensor limit of detection of 0.0006 RIU. | Ph.D. | energy, solar | 7 |
| Orava, Brianna | Tourangeau, Ann | Retention of Primary Health Care Nurse Practitioners | Nursing Science | 2017-11 | The Nurse Practitioner (NP) role has emerged to meet the growing need for access to primary health care (PHC). To ensure that the NP role is sustainable and provides access to PHC for Ontarians, there is a need to examine NP work environments and NP responses to their work environments, such as retention. Currently, factors influencing the retention of primary health care NPs in Ontario are not well known. As Ontario continues to invest a large amount of health care spending in emerging PHC organizational structures to enable access to primary care, health human resource strategies for NP retention are essential. However, there is a paucity of literature on NP work, work environments, and their impact on important NP and health care system outcomes, including retention. The primary objective of this study was to investigate the underlying factors influencing retention of NPs in PHC in Ontario. The primary research question was: what are the effects of individual NP characteristics, NP practice characteristics, and NP organizational characteristics on PHC nurse practitioner intent to remain employed (ITR) in Ontario? A non-experimental descriptive cross-sectional survey design was implemented. Self-administered surveys were mailed to primary health care NPs in Ontario with follow-up using a modified Dillman approach. Two hundred and seventy-three surveys were completed resulting in a useable response rate of 52.9%. A hypothesized model of the underlying factors influencing ITR of NPs in PHC in Ontario was tested using multiple regression. Regression results indicate that administration-NP relations, work-life balance, and family situation significantly explained 14% of the variance in primary health care NP intent to remain employed in Ontario (p | Ph.D. | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Orlowsky, Neil | Dei, George J. Sefa | Adoptive Witness - The Transmission of Collective Memory and Identity in the Israeli History Curriculum | Social Justice Education | 2017-11 | Discussions on formal education in Israel focus more on debating whether violent undertones, negation, othering and incitement exist in resources, and less on how curriculum fosters democracy and tolerance. This thesis study investigates how the adoptive witnessing of history embedded within mandated secular Jewish-Israeli history curriculum may be used as a tool of political indoctrination, through its reinforcement of psycho-cultural narratives and dispositions that perpetuate an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ siege mentality. This study analyzes one part of the Israeli Ministry of Education mandated history curriculum intended for use within Israeli state schools. Central topics within the examined Unit 5: Modern Israel’s teaching focus emphasize the birth of the “new-Jew” and a dominant narrative of Jews seeking to no longer be victims at the hands of oppressive Others. All data was coded according to four guiding themes, examining how the intended content may (or may not) legitimize and humanize the Other and their national aspirations, how it may be used to overcome suspicion of the Other, and whether the curriculum provides a balanced presentation of the Arab (Palestinian) – Jewish Israeli conflict. Findings reveal that the curriculum appears explicitly intended to promote the acknowledgement, legitimization, and humanization of a Palestinian Other, an understanding of causes and effects of decisions made at the time, and an awareness of the Palestinian perspectives during the events of 1948. Although findings show a shared responsibility perspective, the use of Jewish-Israeli force is presented as defensive security measures and aligned to similar perspectives on experiences Jews endured within Islamic countries in the same time period. This thesis reveals that the creation and reinforcement of a dominant collective Jewish-Israeli identity through formal education depends on the selective nature of the Other’s narrative that is presented within the discussion of key episodic events. As of the time of writing this thesis, it is concluded that while the secular Jewish-Israeli official history curriculum has made efforts to acknowledge, legitimize and humanize the Palestinian Other, this can only happen so long as the curriculum explicitly exposes students to the interconnectivity between their accounts of history and those of the Other. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Orr, Scott | Trefler, Daniel | Essays on International Trade and Industrial Organization | Economics | 2019-03 | This thesis contains three papers examining topics related to international trade and industrial organization. In Chapter 1, I develop a flexible methodology that uses profit maximization conditions to solve for unobserved input allocations, TFP, and quality across product lines in multi-product plants. I apply this methodology to a panel of plants manufacturing machinery in India from 2000-2007. I find that there is substantial variation in both TFP and quality across product lines within a given plant, and that quality and quantity based TFP (TFPQ) are negatively correlated. Finally, I find that increases in Chinese import competition led plants to reallocate their inputs towards higher quality products and away from their high TFPQ products, thereby generating within plant quality improvements, rather than productivity gains. In Chapter 2, which is based on joint work with Daniel Ershov and Jean-William Lalibert\'{e}, we use consumer level data from Nielsen to look at two products with natural demand complementarities and a history of regulatory activity - potato chips and carbonated soda pop. We estimate a discrete choice model that allows for demand complementarity across pop and chips, using a novel estimator that leverages information on bundle specific purchases from consumer micro data, as well as aggregate scanner data. We then simulate a number of anti-trust counterfactuals in the chips and carbonated soda market. Once demand complementarity is taken into account, a merger between the chips and soda producer PepsiCo/Frito-Lay and the soda producer Dr. Pepper will reduce chip prices. Soda prices will either increase or fall, depending on the market. By contrast, the standard discrete choice model predicts that soda prices would always increase following the merger. In Chapter 3, which is based on joint work with Daniel Trefler and Miaojie Yu, we review some recent methods for estimating productivity. We apply these methods to Chinese manufacturing data for 2000-2006, with the goal of determining the strengths and pitfalls of the various approaches. We find that irrespective of the approach used to estimate productivity, gross output production functions generate more sensible estimates than value added production functions. | Ph.D. | industr, production | 9, 12 |
| Osborne, Bethany Joy | Mojab, Shahrzad | The Art of Remembering: Iranian Political Prisoners, Resistance and Community | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | Over the last three decades, many women and men who were political prisoners in the Middle East have come to Canada as immigrants and refugees. In their countries of origin, they resisted oppressive social policies, ideologies, and various forms of state violence. Their journeys of forced migration/exile took them away from their country, families, and friends, but they arrived in Canada with memories of violence, resistance and survival. These former political prisoners did not want the sacrifices that they and their colleagues had made to be forgotten. They needed to find effective ways to communicate these stories. This research was conducted from a critical feminist‒anti-racist perspective, and used life history research to trace the journey of one such group of women and men. This group of former political prisoners has been meeting together, using art as a mode of expression to share their experiences, inviting others to join their resistance against state violence. Interviews were conducted with former political prisoners and their supporters and artist facilitators who were part of the art workshops, performances, and exhibits held in Toronto, Canada from January 2010 through December 2011. This dissertation examines the importance of memory projects and of remembering in acts of public testimony and the significance of providing spaces for others to bear witness to those stories. This research also contributes to the body of knowledge about the role that remembering, consciousness, and praxis play in individual and community recovery, rebuilding community, and continued resistance. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Oswald, Claire Jocelyn | Branfireun, Brian | Hydrological, Biogeochemical and Landscape Controls on Mercury Distribution and Mobility in a Boreal Shield Soil Landscape | Geography | 2011-11 | Mercury (Hg)-contaminated freshwater fisheries are a global toxicological concern. Previous research suggests that the slow release of Hg in runoff from upland soils may delay the recovery of Hg-contaminated aquatic systems. Four complementary studies were undertaken in a small boreal Shield headwater catchment as part of the Mercury Experiment to Assess Atmospheric Loading in Canada and the U.S. (METAALICUS) to assess the controls on the retention and release of historically-deposited Hg (ambient Hg) and newly-deposited (spike Hg) in the soil landscape. In the first study, hydrometric and GIS-based methods were used to quantify thresholds in terrestrial water storage and their relationship to observed rainfall-runoff response. It was found that event-scale hydrologic response displayed a threshold relationship with antecedent storage in the terminal depression and predictions of event runoff improved when storage excesses from upslope depressions were explicitly routed through the catchment. In the second study, it was shown that the dominant source of ambient Hg to the lake was likely derived from shallow soil-water flowing through the lower, well-humified organic soil horizon. Throughout the catchment, ambient Hg to soil organic carbon (SOC) ratios increased with depth and the experimentally-applied spike Hg was concentrated in the surface litter layer, suggesting that the vertical redistribution of Hg in the soil profile is a function of the rate of decomposition of SOC. In the third study, canopy type was found to be a good predictor of ambient Hg and spike Hg stocks in the lower organic horizon, while drainage conditions were not, suggesting that vertical fluxes of Hg dominate over lateral fluxes in topographically-complex landscapes. Lastly, it was shown that catchment discharge, antecedent depression storage and antecedent precipitation were the best predictors of dissolved organic carbon (DOC), ambient Hg and spike Hg concentrations in catchment runoff. A comparison of DOC, ambient Hg and spike Hg dynamics for two storm events showed that distinct shifts occurred in the concentration-discharge relationship as a result of differences in antecedent moisture conditions. Combined, the results of the four studies demonstrate the need to incorporate hydrological, biogeochemical and landscape controls into predictive models of terrestrial-aquatic Hg export. | PhD | water | 6 |
| Otis, Melissa | Morgan, Cecilia | At Home in the Adirondacks: A Regional History of Indigenous and Euroamerican Interactions, 1776 - 1920 | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2013-11 | This dissertation is a social history of Algonquian and Iroquoian people in the Adirondacks of New York State, a rural, borderlands region that shares geography and history with parts of Canada. My study is a microhistory that brings a local history into a larger national dialogue and debates about Indigenous people in colonial and nineteenth century North American history. It argues the Adirondacks have always been an indigenous homeland to Iroquoian and Algonquian peoples and that they contributed to the fabric of its culture there. It also examines and complicates the history of landscapes known as hunting territories or, as I have also called them, locations of exchange, defined as “a purposeful and occupied place where reciprocal acts occur, creating opportunities for entangled exchanges between people and the land.” These themes run throughout the thesis. My dissertation briefly investigates the pre-colonial relationship between Algonquian and Iroquoian-speaking people with this place and then focuses on the entangled relationships that formed post-contact, over time, between Indigenous people and Euroamerican Adirondackers, as well as visiting urban sportsmen and tourists. My work examines nineteenth century relationships in the Northeast between men and women in both social and economic endeavours; it is also a history about labour, including performance. In addition to ethnicity, gender, and class, this study examines the nature of rural society in this time and place, to further complicate our understanding of Indigenous histories. I suggest that class relations and rural society are important lenses to view contact history during the nineteenth century and later, especially in the East where contact was longer and the trope of the “vanishing Indian” was privileged. Moreover, my dissertation demonstrates the ability and need to extend Native peoples’ history past the contact period in any historical narrative about place or culture in North America. | PhD | gender, women, labour, urban, rural | 5, 8, 11 |
| Otsuki, Tomoe | Portelli, John||Di Paolantonio, Mario | God and the Atomic Bomb: Nagasaki's Atomic Bomb Memory and Politics of Sacrifice, Forgiveness and Reconciliation | Social Justice Education | 2016-06 | There is very little doubt that Hiroshima has become a testament to the destructive capacity of mankind over the last seven decades. Many influential world leaders have visited Hiroshima, pledging themselves to the project of eternal peace. However, very few of them have ever extended their trip to the second atomic bomb city Nagasaki. Likewise, the existing literature and media representations of the atomic bombing of Japan invariably views Japan’s atomic experience through a “Hiroshima first” optic. Studies devoted to the experience of Nagasaki are scarce even within Japan. If Nagasaki is considered at all within the context of these studies, its trauma and its historical significance are assumed to be identical to, or contained within that of Hiroshima. As Greg Mitchell, an American journalist and writer, observed: “no one ever wrote a bestselling novel called Nagasaki or directed a film entitled Nagasaki, Mon Amour.” Nagasaki has been the “forgotten atomic bomb city” (Mitchell, August 9, 2011). My dissertation critically inquires the conception of “forgotten atomic bomb city,” and explores what can account for Nagasaki’s self-effacing attitude from the remembrance of the atomic bomb memory and history and how Nagasaki has become overshadowed by Hiroshima’s powerful symbolism of the nuclear age over the last decades. Put another way, this dissertation examines what have normalized the absence of Nagasaki in the remembrance of the atomic bombing both in Japan and abroad. My dissertation demonstrates that Nagasaki has never been forgotten by American and Japanese policymakers. Rather, I argue that the second atomic bomb city has been firmly incorporated within the U.S-Japan Security Alliance since the end of the war. My work shows how Nagasaki’s remembrance and postwar history has been shaped by the politics of sacrifice, forgiveness and reconciliation between the United States and Japan over the last seventy years, and illuminates how the legacy of Japanese imperialism continues to rule contemporary Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Japan. | Ph.D. | peace | 16 |
| Ouellette, Olivier | Sargent, Edward H | Optoelectronic Investigations of Colloidal Quantum Dot Solar Cells | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2019-11 | Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) are solar photovoltaic materials synthesized and processed as an ink, a potential advantage in scaling manufacture. The power conversion efficiency (PCE) of CQD solar cells has progressed well in recent years, from under 4% in 2010 to 13% today. In this thesis I seek to understand further and improve the CQD solid at both the materials and device levels with the goal of maximizing power conversion efficiency. I begin by developing an analytical model for the design and realization of optically-enhanced infrared CQD solar cells: here I focus on devices intended to operate as the junction behind a silicon solar cell collecting otherwise-unabsorbed infrared light. This optical strategy leads to a record peak external quantum efficiency of 60% in the infrared in devices employing ~100 nm-thick active layers. Next I present an optical model that uses experimental inputs from spectroscopic ellipsometry, and calculations based on the transfer matrix method, to obtain, for the first time, the spatial distribution of photocurrent losses in CQD solar cells operando. I then deploy this capability to observe depletion widths and interfacial energy barriers in operating CQD devices. Moving from photocurrent to photovoltage investigations, I then provide a model to quantify the impact of CQD size distributions on absorption and photoluminescence spectra, and that allows prediction of voltage losses, low-energy absorption tails, and the Stokes shift. These results provide physical insight into CQD absorption and photoluminescence spectra; and offer a quantitative picture of open-circuit voltage losses in CQD solar cells. They indicate that suppressing deep trap states is the most promising path forward in improving CQD solar cell performance. I then develop spectrally-tailored infrared solar cells that lever the engineering of ensembles of CQDs, achieving a record of 1% additional power points on top of a silicon cell’s efficiency. The studies herein improve understanding of the operating principles of CQD solar cells and offer quantitative guidance to chemists, materials scientists and engineers towards improved syntheses, processes, and designs. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable | 7 |
| Outerbridge, Donna May | Walcott, Rinaldo | The Social and Historical Construction of Black Bermudian Identities: Implications for Education | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2013-11 | This dissertation looks at the historical and social construction of Black Bermudian identities, and how identities have been shaped in contemporary Bermuda by its education system. I grapple with, and attempt to make sense of the complexities, messiness, ambiguity, disappointments, and painful reality of Black Bermudians’ identity and cultural dynamics. It is necessary to have a total understanding of identity and its connections not only to enslavement and colonization but also the rest of the Caribbean and Africa. The present understanding creates an amputated sense of self. Through the use of three concepts: Afrocentricity, Anti-colonialism and creolization, this dissertation seeks to reunify Bermuda with the rest of the Caribbean and Africa by moving Bermuda from the peripheral of international discourses to the larger and broader discussions on African-diasporic identity. It is through the synthesis of these theories that Black Bermudian identities and how Black Bermudians self-identify are understood through their various forms of resistance to dominant narratives. The dissertation also proposes a re-examination of the role of schooling and education—through teaching curriculum, texts and pedagogical practices—in producing a particular narrative of Black identity and the implications of such knowledge in constructing Blackness in Bermuda. The dissertation note that dominant forms of knowledge and epistemological orientation can shape the way Black Bermudians tend to understand themselves in relations to their history, culture, values, worldviews, and identity. Consequently, a fragmented self or what Frantz Fanon refers to as "amputation" is produced within Bermudian classrooms. The dissertation concluded with four key steps that are essential for Black Bermudians to re-engage through counter-hegemonic knowledge that is rooted in Anti-colonial, Creolization, and Afrocentric discourses and theories. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Owusu-Bempah, Akwasi | Scot, Wortley | Black Males' Perceptions of and Experiences with the Police in Toronto | Criminology | 2014-11 | Canada is commonly depicted as a diverse and tolerant immigrant-receiving nation, accepting of individuals of various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Nevertheless, Canadian institutions have not been immune to allegations of racial bias and discrimination. For the past several decades, Toronto's Black communities have directed allegations of racial discrimination at the police services operating within the city. Using a mixed-methods approach, this thesis examines Black males' perceptions of and experiences with the police in the Greater Toronto Area. In order to provide a comprehensive examination of this issue, this thesis is comprised of three studies with three distinct groups of Black males. The first of these three studies utilizes data from a representative sample of Black, Chinese, and White adults from the Greater Toronto area to examine racial and gender differences in perceptions of and experiences with the police. The second study draws on data from a sample of young Black men recruited from four of Toronto's most disadvantaged and high crime neighbourhoods to examine the views and experiences of those most targeted by the police. The final study involves interviews with Black male police officers in order to draw on the perspectives of those entrusted with enforcing the law. In line with a mixed-model hypothesis, the findings suggest that Black males' tenuous relationship with the police is a product of their increased involvement in crime, as well as racism on the part of police officers and police services. Using insights drawn from Critical Race Theory, I suggest that both the increased levels of crime and the current manifestations of racism have a common origin in Canada's colonial past. | Ph.D. | gender, institution | 5, 16 |
| Ozsu, Faik Umut | Brunnee, Jutta ||Knop, Karen C. | Fabricating Fidelity: Nation-building, International Law, and the Greek-Turkish Population Exchange | Law | 2011-11 | This dissertation concerns a crucial episode in the international legal history of nation-building: the Greek-Turkish population exchange. Supported by Athens and Ankara, and implemented largely by the League of Nations, the population exchange showcased the new pragmatism of the post-1919 order, an increased willingness to adapt legal doctrine to local conditions. It also exemplified a new mode of non-military nation-building, one initially designed for sovereign but politico-economically weak states on the semi-periphery of the international legal order. The chief aim here, I argue, was not to organize plebiscites, channel self-determination claims, or install protective mechanisms for vulnerable minorities – all familiar features of the Allied Powers’ management of imperial disintegration in central and eastern Europe after the First World War. Nor was the objective to restructure a given economy and society from top to bottom, generating an entirely new legal order in the process; this had often been the case with colonialism in Asia and Africa, and would characterize much of the mandates system throughout the interwar years. Instead, the goal was to deploy a unique mechanism – not entirely in conformity with European practice, but also distinct from non-European governance regimes – to reshape the demographic composition of Greece and Turkey. I substantiate this argument by marshalling a range of material from international law, legal history, and historical sociology. I first examine minority protection’s development into an instrument of intra-European nation-building during the long nineteenth century, showing how population exchange emerged in the Near East in the 1910s as a radical alternative to minority protection. I then provide a close reading of the travaux préparatoires of the 1922-3 Conference of Lausanne, at which a peace settlement formalizing the exchange was concluded. Finally, I analyze the Permanent Court of International Justice’s 1925 opinion in Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, examining it from the standpoint of wide-ranging disputes concerning the place of religion and ethnicity in the exchange process. My aim throughout is to show that the Greek-Turkish exchange laid the groundwork for a mechanism of legal nation-building which would later come to be deployed in a variety of different contexts but whose precise status under international law would remain contested. | SJD | peace, governance | 16 |
| Oztok, Murat | Brett, Clare | The Hidden Curriculum of Online Learning: Discourses of Whiteness, Social Absence, and Inequity | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2013-11 | Local and federal governments, public school boards, and higher education institutions have been promoting online courses in their commitment to accommodating public needs, widening access to materials, sharing intellectual resources, and reducing costs. However, researchers of education needs to consider the often ignored yet important issue of equity since disregarding the issue of inequity in online education may create suboptimal consequences for students. This dissertation work, therefore, investigates the issues of social justice and equity in online education. I argue that equity is situated between the tensions of various social structures in a broader cultural context and can be thought of as a fair distribution of opportunities to participate. This understanding is built upon the idea that individuals have different values, goals, and interests; nevertheless, the online learning context may not provide fair opportunities for individuals to follow their own learning trajectories. Particularly, online learning environments can reproduce inequitable learning conditions when the context requires certain individuals to assimilate mainstream beliefs and values at the expense of their own identities. Since identifications have certain social and political consequences by enabling or constraining individuals’ access to educational resources, individuals may try to be identified in line with culturally-hegemonic perspectives in order to gain or secure their access to educational resources or to legitimize their learning experiences. In this interview study, I conceptualize online courses within their broader socio-historical context and analyze how macro-level social structures, namely the concept of whiteness, can reproduce inequity in micro-level online learning practices. By questioning who has control over the conditions for the production of knowledge, values, and identification, I investigate how socially accepted bodies of thoughts, beliefs, values, and feelings that give meaning to individuals’ daily-practices may create inequitable learning conditions in day-to-day online learning practices. In specific, I analyze how those who are identified as non-White experience “double-bind” with respect to stereotypification on one hand, anonymity on the other. Building on this analysis, I illustrate how those who are identified as non-White have to constantly negotiate their legitimacy and right to be in the online environment. | PhD | educat, equitable, institution | 4, 16 |
| Packalen, Maara Susanna | Finkelstein, Sarah A | Holocene Carbon Dynamics in the Patterned Peatlands of the Hudson Bay Lowland, Canada: Reducing Landscape-Scale Uncertainty in a Changing Climate | Geography | 2015-11 | Northern peatlands have accumulated ~500 Pg of carbon (C) over millennia, and contributed to a net climate cooling. However, the fate of peatland C pools and related climate-system feedbacks remain uncertain under scenarios of a changing climate and enhanced anthropogenic pressure. Here, Holocene C dynamics in the Hudson Bay Lowland, Canada (HBL) are examined at the landscape scale with respect to glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA), climate, and ecohydrology. Results confirm that the timing of peat initiation in the HBL is tightly coupled with GIA, while contemporary climate explains up to half of the spatial distribution of the total C mass. Temporal patterns in C accumulation rates (CARs) are related to peatland age, ecohydrology, and possibly paleoclimate, whereby CARs are greatest for younger, minerotrophic peatlands. Rapid and widespread peatland expansion in the HBL has given rise to a globally significant C pool, in excess of 30 Pg C and two-thirds of which is of late Holocene age. Yet, long-term decomposition of previously accrued peat has potentially resulted in some C losses, especially during the late Holocene when the landscape was occupied by an abundance of minerotrophic peatlands and climate was characterized by more precipitation and similar-to-colder temperatures than present. Model deconstruction of HBL C dynamics indicate that 85% of C losses occurred during the late Holocene, while spatio-temporal scaling of modern methane (CH4) emissions suggest a potential flux of 1 – 7 Pg CH4 to the late Holocene atmosphere, which provides evidence of a peatland contribution to the late Holocene CH4 rise recorded in ice cores. Although HBL peatlands may continue to function as a net C sink, conservative climate scenarios predict warmer and wetter conditions in the next century – beyond the HBL’s range of past climate variability, yet within the peatland climate domain – with implications for primary production and decomposition. Further investigation into controls on spatial-temporal C dynamics may reduce uncertainty concerning the HBL’s potential to remain a net C sink under future climate and resource management scenarios, and contribute to our understanding of global peatland C-climate dynamics. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Padure, Lucia | Jones, Glen A. | The Politics of Higher Education Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe. Development Challenges of the Republic of Moldova | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2009-11 | This thesis examines factors that underscored higher education reforms in Central and Eastern Europe during the transition period from 1990 to 2005. The study explores higher education reforms in three national settings – Hungary, Romania and the Republic of Moldova, and presents a detailed analysis of the Moldovan case. Rooted in critical approaches to development, transition reforms and policy analysis in higher education, it addresses the new realities of global capitalism, inequitable distribution of power between the industrialized nations and the rest of the world, and the ways in which this power distribution impacts higher education systems in Central and Eastern Europe. Historical analyses, a qualitative cross-national analysis of HE systems in three nations, and interviews with Moldovan higher education policymakers provided rich data on higher education reforms in the region and selected nations. Higher education evolved from institutions serving very select elite in the Middle Ages to universities driving modernization in the 19th and the first half of the 20th century, and to diverse institutional types - universities, colleges, institutes - underscoring the massification of higher education after WWII. Policies pursued by Hungarian, Romanian and Moldovan leaders to expand higher education were informed by the national socio-economic, political and demographic contexts, the dominant global development agenda, and international institutional practices. The capacity of national leaders to carry out higher education reforms was limited by the colonial and post-colonial relationships that were established over centuries between each of these nations and stronger regional powers, such as the Habsburg, Ottoman and Russian Empires, the Soviet Union, and the European Union. Major regional powers had a significant role in the formation of nation states, educational institutions and higher education politics. At the same time, national elites used language and ethnic policies to shape social and higher education developments and build national identities. By bringing an international perspective to the analysis of reforms in Central and Eastern Europe, by focusing on Hungary, Romania and Moldova, and by drawing on critical theory and post-colonial studies, this research study contributes to the international scholarly discussion of higher education and development reforms, enriches methodological developments in the field of higher education, and advances the discourse of comparative higher education. | PhD | educat, equitable, institution | 4, 16 |
| Page, Brent | Gunning, Patrick | Small Molecule Inhibitors of Stat3 Protein as Cancer Therapeutic Agents | Chemistry | 2013-11 | Advances in anti-cancer drug development have vastly improved cancer treatment strategies over the past few decades. Chemotherapeutic agents are now being replaced with targeted therapies that have much greater potency and far fewer unpleasant side effects. At the center of this, cell signaling pathways have been targeted as they moderate gene expression, control proliferation and are often dysregulated in cancer. The signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) proteins represent a family of cytoplasmic transcription factors that regulate a pleiotropic range of biological processes in response to extracellular signals. Of the seven mammalian members described to date, Stat3 has received particular attention, as it regulates the expression of genes involved in a variety of malignant processes including proliferation, survival, migration and drug resistance. Aberrant Stat3 activation has been observed in a number of human cancers, and its inhibition has shown promising anti-tumour activity in cancer cells with elevated Stat3 activity. Thus, Stat3 has emerged as a promising target for the development of cancer therapeutics. While Stat3 signaling can be inhibited by targeting upstream regulators of Stat3 activation (such as Janus kinase 2), direct inhibition of Stat3 protein may offer improved response, larger therapeutic windows for treatment and fewer side effects. The work presented within this thesis is focused on optimizing known Stat3 inhibitor S3I-201, a small molecule Stat3 SH2 domain binder that was discovered in 2007. We have performed an extensive structure activity relationship study that has produced some of the most potent Stat3 inhibitors in the scientific literature. These compounds showed high-affinity binding to Stat3’s SH2 domain, inhibited intracellular Stat3 phosphorylation and selectively induced apoptosis in a number of cancer cell lines. Lead agents further inhibited tumour growth in xenograft models of human malignancies and had favourable pharmacokinetic and toxicity profiles. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Pakes, Barry Noah | Ross, EG Upshur | Ethical Analysis in Public Health Practice | Medical Science | 2014-11 | Background: Despite a burgeoning public health ethics literature, there are few empirical studies of public health practitioners' ethical perspectives, and how they identify and resolve ethical dilemmas they encounter in their work. There is no dominant, comprehensive public health ethics framework for use in research, education and practice. Methods: This project used a sequential mixed-model approach with mixed-method studies. A comprehensive literature review and a series of interviews using convenience-within-frame sampling were used to develop a framework and guide subsequent studies. Using an integrated knowledge translation approach, two formative and three core studies used web-based and paper-based surveys to gather quasi-representative data from public health practitioners (PHPs), including public health physicians, nurses, inspectors, policy-makers and trainees as part of conferences and educational workshops. The surveys solicited responses to questions regarding PHPs perspectives on ethical aspects of public health practice and dilemmas they encountered, as well as responses to several scenarios. Qualitative data were coded into open themes. Quantitative data were analysed using SPSS 21. Data between groups were compared when appropriate and significant differences were noted. Results: The Public Health Ethical Reflection Matrix (PHERM) Framework was developed and data were collected from 8 interviews and surveys of 16 Canadian Public Health Physician trainees, 70 Public health ethics conference attendees, 76 Canadian Public Health Physicians, 52 Public Health nurses and 456 Public Health Inspectors. There were areas of similarity and of remarkable heterogeneity of responses within and between professional groups regarding prioritization of values and meta-ethical justification of ethical norms. Specifically, respondents were divided with regards to prioritization of overarching goals and specific values, the relative importance of different value types, respecting the law, and treatment of marginalized and vulnerable populations. Ethical dilemmas encountered by participants and approaches to dilemma resolution also varied considerably. Conclusions: Ethical dilemmas were prevalent in public health practice with public health practitioners holding a variety of disparate views regarding ethics in public health across PHERM domains. Explicit acknowledgement and exploration of these views may improve ethical decision-making in practice. The PHERM Framework appears to be an effective way of approaching complex public health ethical dilemmas. Further applied research is necessary to confirm the PHERM Tool utility in practice. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Palangi, Angela Zahra | Gillis, Roy | Resilience Factors and Mental Health among LGBTQ Adults in Canada and the United States | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-06 | There is compelling evidence suggesting that LGBTQ individuals face markedly higher rates of mood and anxiety disorder, as well as lifetime suicidality compared to heterosexual individuals. While most of the research on the psychological health of LGBTQ individuals has taken a deficit-based approach, more recent research has begun to explore the importance of resiliency in this population. Drawing on resilience theories, this study examined individual and community resources and stressors that contribute to the resiliency of LGBTQ individuals living in Canada and the United States and the degree to which these factors played a role in mitigating the adverse effects of mental health problems in LGBTQ individuals. Using multiple regression and mediation analysis, this study determined the predictability and mediation of model variables: internalized homophobia, coping skills (emotion-focused, problem-focused, and avoidant-focused), levels of optimism, attachment dimensions (anxious and avoidance), level of perceived social support, level of LGBTQ community connectedness, homonegative microaggressions, family acceptance, and overall psychological distress (depression, anxiety, and stress) on resilience. A total of 322 self-identified LGBTQ individuals were recruited through a variety of online venues. Results found optimism to be positive predictor of resilience and anxiety, depression, as well as anxious attachment dimension to be negative predictors of resilience. Further, higher levels of optimism, and lower levels of anxious and avoidance attachment related dimensions were all found to be significant partial mediators of the relationship between psychological distress and resilience. The results shed lights on ways mental health care professionals can promote resilience and mitigate the adverse effects of mental health in LGBTQ individuals. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Palmer, Seth Thomas | Lambek, Michael||Dave, Naisargi | In the Image of a Woman: Spirited Identifications and Embodied Interpellations Along the Betsiboka Valley | Anthropology | 2019-11 | Amidst ongoing political turmoil and economic instability across Madagascar, sarimbavy (male-bodied, same-sex desiring and/or gender-expansive persons) are increasingly conceived of as timely subjects by HIV-prevention industries, homonationalist LGBT rights projects backed by the United States Embassy, and Christian religious publics. Based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Betsiboka Valley, this dissertation both considers and diverges from these biomedical and moral panics by attending to the dynamic and often ambiguous relationship between sarimbavy and tromba spirit mediumship. In focusing upon the epistemological and hermeneutical labor that possession provides for those who live “in the image of a woman,” tromba (spirits of former reigning members of the Sakalava monarchy), and the wider social worlds in which they all reside, In the Image of a Woman offers a portrait of burgeoning sarimbavy counterpublics in Antananarivo, Mahajanga, and the rural district of Ambato-Boéni. This dissertation charts how these queer networks have flourished within the entangled milieus of possession pilgrimage, the use of an in-group “secret” sociolect, and the development of MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) activism. In the Image of a Woman bypasses strict functionalist explanations for the affinity between tromba and sarimbavy subjectivity. Nevertheless, this dissertation meditates upon how future-oriented MSM/LGBT rights-work and its attendant HIV-prevention activism (widely conceptualized by interlocutors as modern phenomena connected to foreign intervention) were uncannily facilitated through spirit mediumship (generally articulated by interlocutors as a longstanding “custom of the ancestors”). In thinking alongside these shifting temporal allegiances of sarimbavy medium-activists, the ethnography contained therein intervenes in the literature on global LGBT rights movements and religiosity by troubling the assumption that their relationship is inherently antagonistic. | Ph.D. | gender, queer, rights | 5, 16 |
| Pan, Gang | Guisso, Richard | Prodigals in Love: Narrating Gay Identity and Collectivity on the Early Internet in China | East Asian Studies | 2015 | This dissertation concerns itself with the eruption of a large number of gay narratives on the Chinese internet in its first decade. There are two central arguments. First, the composing and sharing of narratives online played the role of a social movement that led to the formation of gay identity and collectivity in a society where open challenges to the authorities were minimal. Four factors, 1) the primacy of the internet, 2) the vernacular as an avenue of creativity and interpretation, 3) the transitional experience of the generation of the internet, and 4) the evolution of gay narratives, catalyzed by the internet, enhanced, amplified, and interacted with each other in a highly complicated and accelerated dynamic, engendered a virtual gay social movement. Second, many online gay narratives fall into what I term "prodigal romance," which depicts gay love as parent-obligated sons in love with each other, weaving in violent conflicts between desire and duty in its indigenous context. The prodigal part of this model invokes the archetype of the Chinese prodigal, who can only return home having excelled and with the triumph of his journey. The romantic part imbues love between men with the power of shaping and transforming the self and the weight of anchoring an identity. The result is often the parting of the two lovers, with one returning home a good son to his duty and another continuing as a gay orphan, wandering in pursuit of his desire. The latter is a new desiring subject who chooses to integrate his desire as a core of his identity; and he is the figure bearing the purpose of the movement. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Panahi, Shirin | Anderson, G. Harvey | Milk and its Components in the Regulation of Short-term Appetite, Food Intake and Glycemia in Young Adults | Nutritional Sciences | 2014-06 | The hypothesis that milk consumption decreases short-term appetite and food intake and improves glycemic control compared with other caloric beverages in healthy young adults was explored in four experiments. The first two experiments compared isovolumetric amounts (500 ml) of milk (2% M.F.), chocolate milk (1% M.F.), a soy beverage, infant formula, orange juice and water on satiety and food intake and blood glucose before and after a meal provided at 30 min (Experiment 1) and 120 min (Experiment 2). Pre-meal ingestion of chocolate milk and infant formula (highest in calories) reduced food intake at 30 min, but not 2 h. Only milk reduced post-meal blood glucose in both experiments suggesting that its macronutrient composition is a factor in blood glucose control. Experiment 3 compared the effects of ad libitum consumption of milk (1% M.F.), regular cola, diet cola, orange juice and water at a pizza meal on fluid and ad libitum food intake and post-meal appetite and glycemia. Fluid volume consumed was similar, but all caloric beverages added to total meal-time energy intake. However, milk lowered post-meal blood glucose and appetite score. In Experiment 4, the effect of isovolumetric (500 ml) beverages of whole milk (3.25% M.F.) and each of its macronutrient components, protein (16 g), lactose (24 g), and fat (16 g) on glycemic control and gastrointestinal hormonal responses were examined. The reduction in post-prandial glycemia was mediated by interactions between its macronutrient components and associated with hormonal responses that slow stomach emptying and increase glucose disposal. Thus, the results of this research do not support the hypothesis that milk consumption decreases short-term appetite and food intake compared with other beverages; however, milk improves glycemic control by insulin-dependent and independent mechanisms. | PhD | food, nutrition, consum | 2, 12 |
| Panda, Rajesh | Sain, Mohini Mohan||Nayak, Sanjay Kumar | Investigation of Thermal, Mechanical, and Tribological Behaviour of Biobased-resin-crosslinked, Sisal-fibre-reinforced Epoxy Composites | Forestry | 2016-11 | The wide-reaching potential demands for exchanging petroleum-derived raw materials with renewable plant-based ones in the production of valuable polymeric materials and composites are quite substantial from the collective and ecological viewpoints. Hence, cheap renewable sources has profoundly drawn attention by many investigators for polymer composite processing. Among them, biobased resin and natural fibres are likely to be the ideal alternative feedstock, derived from plant sources, are found in abundance in the world.The significant feature of these types of materials is that they can be designed and tailored to meet diverse requirements.The actual challenge exists in finding applications, which would use adequately large amounts of these materials allowing biodegradable polymers to compete economically in the market.Absence of materialsâ s mechanical and tribological characterization have created an awareness to accomplish this crucial objective. In order to comprehend the feasibility of biobased materials incorporation in polymer composite processing for structural and tribological application , this thesis work elucidates the study of friction and wear characteristics of epoxy matrix and composites made out of biobased crosslinking agent and natural fibre available profusely in plants. An epoxy resin was cross-linked with synthetic and bio-based cross-linking agents, and the effects of this cross-linking on the resinâ s mechanical and tribological properties were investigated.The determined concentration of biobased crosslinking agent was optimized by comparing epoxy network tensile strength properties. The effect of crosslinker concentration, reinforcement agent was studied under dry sliding.The dry-sliding wear resistance property of bio-based cross-linker-cured, sisal fibre reinforced epoxy network was found to be superior, due to enhanced flexibility. The functional groups, nature of curing and degradation of epoxy resin with different crosslinking agent was studied through Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and thermograviemetric analysis technique. The wear tracks were quantified with scanning electron microscope and optical microscope.The numerical analysis of the dry sliding wear testing process further confirmed the experimental findings as they related to the effects of normal load on the specific wear rate of composites. An empirical relationship between wear behavior and mechanical properties of epoxy network was established. | Ph.D. | renewable | 7 |
| Pandalangat, Nalini | Seeman, Mary | Cultural Influences on Help-seeking, Treatment and Support for Mental Health Problems - A Comparative Study using a Gender Perspective | Medical Science | 2011-11 | This qualitative research used the Long Interview method to study cultural and gender influences on mental health, health beliefs, health behaviour, help-seeking and treatment expectations for mental health problems in newcomers to Canada who are members of an ethnocultural, visible minority population - the Sri Lankan Tamils. The study employed a comparative design and analyzed data from interviews with Tamil men (N=8) and Tamil women (N=8) who self-identified as having been diagnosed with depression, and service providers (N=8) who provide frontline mental health and related services to the Sri Lankan Tamil community. The objectives were to a) understand cultural and gender factors inherent in the Sri Lankan Tamil community; b) investigate how these cultural and gender factors impact mental health and influence the trajectory of help-seeking and treatment for depression in the Sri Lankan Tamil community; c) explore the intersection of culture and gender as it relates to health behaviour; and d) explore service providers’ perceptions of the influence of culture and gender in relation to help-seeking for mental health problems and the application of this understanding to service delivery. The study found that the respondents equated social function with health and that this concept informed help-seeking and treatment expectations. Socially appropriate functioning was seen as an indicator of health, and this differed by gender. Gender-differentiated social stressors contributed to depression. Women played a role as enablers of care, both for family members and acquaintances. Men were more resistant to help-seeking and tended to disengage from care. There was a distinct preference for service providers who understood the culture and spoke Tamil. Religious groups served a social support function. Family physicians and Tamil service providers in the social service sectors were identified as key players in the pathways to care. Service providers did not appear to understand the community’s holistic view of health; however, they did use their knowledge of the community to make adaptations to practice. Recommendations that result from these findings include health promotion and prevention strategies beyond the traditional health care system, targeted culture and gender-informed interventions, and the need for multisectoral collaborations. | PhD | health, gender | 3, 5 |
| Pandit, Aditya Vikram | Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan | On the Effectiveness and Challenges of Electrosynthesis Strategies in Escherichia coli | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Conventional bioprocesses that aim to convert CO2 to fuels and chemicals do so through a supply chain that begins with agricultural products such as corn, intermediaries like dextrose, and eventually produce chemicals by fermentation. However, it has long been desired that bioprocesses be established to convert CO2 point source emissions to chemicals. Fundamentally, this is a thermodynamics problem since the use of CO2 as a feedstock requires an efficient mechanism to deliver energy to produce chemicals. The focus of this work is to examine several strategies for microbial electrosynthesis, the delivery of electrical energy to microbial cell factories, for producing chemicals. The study encompasses four areas type of microbial electrosynthesis and the results are summarized here: 1) Experimental work was performed to evaluate the affect of neutral red mediated charge transfer in mutant strains of Escherichia coli for the purpose of producing succinic acid. The results of this task showed wild-type cells exhibited the greatest molar increase in succinate yield with an 89% increase while an ldhA deficient strain showed 40% increase. The lack of direct charge transfer was implicated as the cause since an electron balance was not able to account for an increase in succinate. 2) We explored the use of mediators such has formate that can be generated from carbon dioxide and renewable electricity as a carbon source for cell growth and chemical production. An auxotrophic strategy was employed to engineer formate assimilation, and growth rate on formate as a C1 donor for folate was determined to be 0.33 h-1. This was 78% of the wild-type strain. 3) We developed a framework for analyzing how metabolic pathways can be efficiently engineered into microbes to produce chemicals. This orthogonality framework showed ethylene glycol to be a highly promising substrate for electrosynthesis applications. 4) Finally, a bioprocess for the conversion of ethylene glycol to glycolic acid was characterized and its suitability to replace glucose as a feedstock was examined. The maximum glycolate titres for the best performing conditions reached 10.6 g/L. The highest substrate uptake rate for ethylene glycol was determined to be ca. 5 mmol/gDW-h. | Ph.D. | production, renewable, energy | 7, 12 |
| Panjwani, Antum Amin | Niyozov, Sarfaroz | Representations of Muslim Cultures and Societies in Children's Literature as a Curriculum Resource for Ontario Classrooms: Promises and Prospects | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2017-06 | Situated in the context of multiple challenges and possibilities faced by Muslim students and communities in the Western socio-political and educational contexts, this qualitative research examines curriculum perceptions pertaining to Muslim children’s literature and attempts to answer the major research question: “How can Ontario curriculum be enriched with curriculum resources comprising of Muslim children's literature?” This question touches several chords within curriculum studies, teacher development and schooling in general, therefore, an integrated framework combining insights and concepts from critical pedagogy, anti-racism, post-coloniality, multiculturalism, as well as, anti-orientalism are applied to guide the research’s data collection and analysis. Additionally, my own situatedness within the study as a minority Muslim woman teacher with experiences from East and West plays a critical role in engaging and deconstructing the complex webs of Muslim representations in curricular resources. The near absence of Muslim children’s literature in Ontario curriculum and paucity of the Muslim content for elementary students are investigated through a three-pronged approach: (1) Examination of the Trillium List; (2) Engaging with the voices of contemporary writers of Muslim children’s literature; and (3) Critically dissecting the contents of select literary pieces, which have potential of being used as curricular resources. The understanding created through engagement with the above exploration generate opportunities for relevant conversations and awareness for both Muslim and non-Muslim stakeholders. This research is thus a unique study of Muslim children’s literature through application of systematic frameworks to bring social justice and offers a promise of development of cosmopolitan ethics in young Canadians. It assures equipping Ontario teachers with significant knowledge to validate experiences of elementary children through stories. The use of Muslim children's literature as curricular resources has the capacity to promote bridging of cultures, create responsiveness around Muslim students' background, alleviate misconceptions in the students and promote confidence in parents of Muslim children, especially those in the public schools. The findings show limited authors writing Muslim stories, little literacy and reading culture amongst immigrant Muslims, lack of publishers and not enough recognition of Muslim literature and authors in Canada. This study helps teachers and policy makers to develop a deeper appreciation of multicultural ethos of the Canadian education system and recommends stakeholder involvement for a more inclusive holistic, authentic and credible State curriculum with pluralist Muslim representations. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Pant, Anjili Sophia | Stiegelbauer, Suzanne | Exploring the Attributes, Experiences, and Motivations of Female Public Elementary School Administrators of Colour in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | EXPLORING THE ATTRIBUTES, EXPERIENCES, AND MOTIVATIONS OF FEMALE PUBLIC ELEMENTARY SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS OF COLOUR IN ONTARIO Doctor of Education 2016 Anjili Sophia Pant Graduate Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto Abstract This study explores how the attributes, experiences, and motivations of female public elementary school administrators of colour in Ontario have contributed to their entry into administration. Data were obtained through qualitative life-history interviews with 3 currently practicing, middle-aged administrators: 2 African Canadian (a principal and a vice-principal) and 1 South Asian (principal). Resilience theory was used to investigate internal and external attributes of the participants, disruptions they faced, and motivational factors that enabled them to become administrators. Cross-case analysis revealed relevant attributes the participants shared: focus, resourcefulness, independence, social competence, a capacity for hard work, self-discipline, optimism, a positive attitude, perseverance, and a willingness to learn. Barriers to their entrance into administration were: the interview process, the struggle to obtain Canadian credentials, politics, and difficulty having their leadership skills acknowledged. Motivations to enter administration were: encouragement from others, persistence after unsuccessful attempts to enter administration, being able to meet interviewers’ expectations, and a passion for the work. Among the findings were participants’ recommendations for aspiring female administrators of colour: Keep your ambitions to yourself. Know that it is a lonely job. Understand what the work entails. Recognize that administrative positions are not powerful ones. Avoid interacting only with people from your own ethnic background. Do not use the “race card” as an excuse for not succeeding in the interview process. Remain calm when discriminated against. Most importantly, pursue the necessary credentials: Prepare for administration early in your career (work at the family of schools level, community, culture and caring, and numeracy and literacy). Seek out a variety of mentors. Stay connected with people who support you. Master a specific skill. Be resourceful. Keep current with educational jargon. Continue to develop professionally. Write and present at workshops. Use the media to showcase your school and practice. Finally, support the advancement of quality women of colour. Suggestions for future research include: (a) repeat this study in 5 and 10 years; (b) examine leadership programs and determine whether women of colour are being hired; and (c) compare and contrast the career paths of women and men (both of colour and White). | Ed.D. | educat, women | 4, 5 |
| Panthaki, Neville Gustad | Hayhoe, Ruth | Conceptualizing the State-nation via Education Reform: From Multicultural to Intercultural Citizenship | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2016-11 | Transnational movements of sociopolitical culture defy the integrity of the nation-state. Its organizational principle of singularity, and struggles to accommodate increasing diversity within homogeneity, are challenged by the increasing prominence of alternate and multiple ways of being and knowing. Nation-state education systems organized to deliver citizenship values, fail to rectify the fracture between their quest for multicultural participation and their promotion of conformity within a single ‘national’ identity. Systems of education are products of their respective sociopolitical systems. Hence, notions of citizenship (inclusion) and democracy (participation) must be reformed to facilitate genuine education reform. The nation-state is a sociopolitical project that confines pedagogical reform within the framework of a paradigm. Education reform can only be achieved by substituting the concept of multi-cultural, with inter-cultural citizenship, thereby transforming the unidimensional nation-state into a pluralist state-nation. The state-nation is an ideal-type conceptual framework which is predicated upon a constant (re-)negotiation of categories and their corresponding belonging-identities, so that all boundaries remain liminal and permeable rather than immutable and exclusionary. India has witnessed the longest sustained attempt at education reform, as well as the largest in size and scope, by any national government, international organization or non-government organization. This dissertation examines the participation of statist, civil society and multi-national participants, within the context of education reform in India. It also explores the capacity of the state-nation model of education reform to contribute to an Indian education diplomacy that could influence global Education For All (EFA). Intercultural citizenship as the root of the state-nation, has the potential to become an avenue for South-South dialogue and a means to create alternate notions of ‘modernity’, ‘development’, and ‘globalization’. De-linking education from the nation-state and viewing it in relation to the state-nation, makes possible a profound and far reaching ‘reform’ of ‘education’ from a social justice perspective. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Papaconstantinou, Efrosini A. | Robyn, Stremler | The Feasibility and Acceptability of a Behavioral-educational Intervention - the Relax to Sleep Program - to Increase Pediatric Sleep during Hospitalization: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial | Nursing Science | 2014-11 | Background: Hospitalization can contribute to common sleep difficulties related to environmental, physiological, and psychological factors. Interventions aimed at hospitalized children need to be developed and piloted with rigorous evaluative methods. The primary purpose of this study was to examine the feasibility and acceptability of a behavioral-educational intervention - the RELAX TO SLEEP program - aimed at increasing nighttime sleep for hospitalized children. Methods: This study was a pilot randomized controlled trial. Children between the ages of 4 and 10 years, expected to stay for 3 nights in hospital, with a parent staying overnight were included. Children were excluded if they were receiving palliative care; were diagnosed with a sleep or anxiety disorder; had limited movements of extremities or had cognitive impairment; or received sedation. Forty-eight children and their caregivers consented and were randomized to either the RELAX TO SLEEP intervention group (n=24) or the Usual Care control group (n=24). The RELAX TO SLEEP program consisted of a one-on-one discussion with the researcher about sleep and sleep hygiene, a standardized educational booklet about sleep, and a relaxation breathing (RB) exercise for the child. Usual Care participants received no information about sleep or relaxation. Children wore actigraphs for 3 days and nights and completed sleep diaries. Sleep outcomes included: total nocturnal sleep (19h30-07h29), number of nighttime awakenings, longest period of uninterrupted nocturnal sleep, and total daytime (07h30-19h29) sleep. Other outcomes measured at baseline and at 7 days post-discharge, included anxiety (Spence Pre-school/Children Anxiety Subscales), sleep habits (Children's Sleep Habits Questionnaire [CSHQ]), and post-hospital maladaptive behaviours (Post-Hospital Behaviour Questionnaire [PHBQ]). Results: Of the 68 eligible families approached, 71% (n=48) agreed to participate. Both the RELAX TO SLEEP and Usual Care group were compliant in wearing the actigraph and completing sleep diaries. Eighty-five per cent (n=19/22) of the Relax to Sleep participants reported using the RB at least once per day in hospital, and over half used it 2-3 times per day. Parental reports indicated that their child enjoyed using RB (18/22; 82%), that it was easy to use (21/22; 95%), and would use it again in the future (18/22; 82%). Parents also reported that they enjoyed the discussion about sleep and found the information helpful (21/22; 95%). Children in the RELAX TO SLEEP group obtained a mean of 50 minutes more nighttime sleep compared to the UC group (419 Âą 7.84 min vs. 369.7 Âą 106.4 min, group difference 49.64 min, t= 1.76, p=0.085), despite having the same number of nighttime awakenings (14.7 [SD 5.83) and 14.7 [SD 4.7] respectively). Improved CSHQ scores at follow-up were noted for the RELAX TO SLEEP group (baseline score 44.04 [SD 7.17] to follow-up 42.38 [SD 5.41]) compared to the increase in sleep disturbance behaviour noted in the Usual Care group (baseline score 45.58 [7.82] to follow-up 47.52 [7.47]). There were no notable differences in anxiety or PHBQ scores; however, the majority of children in this sample (73%, n=32/44) scored 81 or higher on the PHBQ indicating the development of at least one new-onset maladaptive behaviour during the post-discharge period. Conclusion: The RELAX TO SLEEP program proposed in this study was feasible and acceptable to children and their caregivers. Further evaluation of the intervention with a large scale, multicenter RCT is needed. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Papastavrou, Sophia | Mojab, Shahrzad | Women Organizations for Peace: Moving Beyond the Rhetoric of the Cyprus Problem | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2019-03 | Abstract This research examines enduring women’s organizations working towards women’s rights and a peaceful solution to the Cyprus Problem which has taken precedence over gender equality on the island. This study was based on a 13-year period from 2001 to 2014 examining Hands Across the Divide (HAD), the Gender Advisory Team (GAT), and the Mediterranean Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS) as important groups who have played a key role in women's activism that spans the long-standing partition of Cyprus. This qualitative research-based project applies a transnational feminist lens the following research questions: The central research questions for this study are: 1) How have women’s groups organized for peace? 2) What have been their key issues and organizing strategies? 3) What have been their organizing successes and challenges? I use feminist methods to collect data through participant observation, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups to show how women's organizing within these long-standing groups have played a key role in bicommunal women's activism on the island including the mobilization of the women, peace and security agenda during significant periods in Cypriot history. Each organization is examined through the multi-layered and fragmented ways that the demand for women’s rights has occurred on the island, as well the ways that multigenerational women have sought to make their voices heard in the midst of Cyprus Problem. I conclude with an analysis of how working against ethno-nationalist culture and the need to move beyond the binary of ethnicity and ethnic divisions has resulted in the fight against gendered violence and the marginalization of women’s rights. There is a need to develop a third space in which intersectionality allows women’s groups to engage island-wide with groups fighting other forms of oppression and to create opportunities to work together. | Ph.D. | gender, equality, rights | 5, 16 |
| Papillon, Martin | Simeon, Richard | Federalism From Below? The Emergence of Aboriginal Multilevel Governance in Canada. A Comparison of the James Bay Crees and Kahnawa:ke Mohawks | Political Science | 2008-11 | Using the language of rights and national self-determination, Aboriginal peoples have mounted a fundamental challenge to Canadian federalism in the past forty years. In order to move beyond the imposed structure of colonial governance, Aboriginal peoples have sought to establish their own form of federal relationship with contemporary Canadian governments and society. While much attention has been devoted to the constitutional and legal dimensions of Aboriginal challenges to state authority, this thesis argues that incremental yet fundamental changes are also taking place in the less visible but nonetheless important arena of policy-making. Aboriginal claims for greater political recognition, combined with the redefinition of the role of the state associated with neoliberal ideas, have led to the emergence of multilevel governance practices between Aboriginal governing authorities and their federal and provincial counterparts. While they do not alter the formal nature of state authority as defined in the constitution, multilevel policy exercises are characterized by growing interdependencies between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal governing actors, leading to a partial displacement of formal rules of authoritative decision-making in favor of joint decision-making processes and negotiated solutions to policy disputes. Building on comparative analyses of the transformations in the governance regimes of the James Bay Crees and Kahnawa:ke Mohawks, this thesis argues that these multilevel exercises can become transformative spaces for Aboriginal peoples to reshape their relationship with the state and establish themselves as representatives of distinct political communities with their own sources of authority and legitimacy independent of federal and provincial parliaments. As a result, I argue a new form of federalism may well be emerging not through constitutional negotiations or treaty-making exercises, but from below, in everyday practices of governance. | PhD | governance, rights | 16 |
| Paquin-Pelletier, Alexandre | Bertrand, Jacques | Radical Leaders: Status, Competition, and Violent Islamic Mobilization in Indonesia | Political Science | 2019-06 | Why do some Muslim leaders radicalize while others do not? Drawing on a study of radical mobilization in Indonesia, this dissertation argues that Muslim leaders radicalize when they find religious authority hard to gain and maintain. It makes two specific points: 1) radical mobilization is more likely among weak and precarious religious leaders, those with few followers and little institutionalization; and, 2) weak and precarious leaders are more likely to radicalize in crowded and competitive religious markets, because they need to be creative if they want to survive. It argues that weak Muslim leaders, in competitive environment, are the ones most likely to use strategies of outbidding, scapegoating, and provocation. The dis-sertation’s empirical puzzle is the cross-regional variations in Islamist mobilization observed in post-transition Java, Indonesia. Since 1999, radical groups have proliferated and mobi-lized more in some regions than others. The study finds that in regions with radical groups and mobilization, most clerics have weak religious institutions, fragmented networks, and operate in competitive religious markets. In these markets, radical mobilization provides low-status clerics with a cheap and efficient way to bolster their religious authority. In re-gions where radical groups did not proliferate, most clerics have strong religious institutions with deep roots in society, extensive networks, and operate in much less competitive reli-gious environments. In these markets, clerics do not feel the same urge to mobilize, as reli-gious authority is more secure, stable, and routinized. The origins of these religious markets are traced back to sub-regional variations in the process of state building. State building strategies had long-lasting consequences on contemporary Muslim institutions by shaping subsequent political cleavages and state policies toward Islam. This dissertation is based on 13 months of fieldwork in Indonesia, 126 interviews with Muslim clerics and activists, and a new dataset of Java’s 15,000 Islamic boarding schools and their 30,000 Muslim clerics. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Paradis, Emily Katherine | Burstow, Bonnie | A Little Room of Hope: Feminist Participatory Action Research with "Homeless" Women | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2009-11 | In April 2005, a group of women gathered for a human rights workshop at a Toronto drop-in centre for women experiencing homelessness, poverty, and isolation. One year later, the group sent a representative to address the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This dissertation describes and analyzes the feminist participatory action research-intervention project that began with the workshop and led to the United Nations. Over the course of 15 months, more than 50 participants attended weekly meetings at the drop-in. They learned about social and economic rights, testified about their experiences of human rights violations, and planned and undertook actions to respond to and resist homelessness. This thesis draws upon observations of meetings, documents produced by the group, and interviews with thirteen of the participants, in order to examine the project from a number of angles. First, the project suggests a new understanding of women’s homelessness: testimonies and interviews reveal that homelessness is not only a material state, but more importantly a social process of disenfranchisement enacted through relations of harm, threat, control, surveillance, precarity and dehumanization. Understanding homelessness as a social process enables an analysis of its operations within and for a dominant social and economic order structured by colonization and neoliberal globalization. Secondly, the thesis takes up participants’ assessments of the project’s political effectiveness and its impacts on their well-being and empowerment, and reads these against the researcher’s experiences with the project, in order to explore how feminist participatory methodologies can contribute to resistance. Finally, the thesis concludes with recommendations for theory, research, service provision, and human rights advocacy on women’s homelessness. | PhD | poverty, women, rights | 1, 5, 16 |
| Parajulee, Abha | Wania, Frank | The Sources and Transport of Organic Contaminants in Urban Watersheds: Unraveling the Effects of Land Use, Hydrology, and Chemical Properties | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2017-11 | The goal of this thesis was to expand the limited body of knowledge surrounding chemodynamics of organic contaminants in urban streams during runoff events. Specifically, this work assessed effects of urbanization, hydrology, and chemical properties on sources and transport of organic contaminants. To fulfill this objective, high frequency sampling was conducted in paired urban and rural watersheds during rainfall and snowmelt. The analytes included both classic (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and emerging organic contaminants (benzotriazole ultraviolet stabilizers, benzotriazole corrosion inhibitors) covering a range of properties. Area-normalized fluxes for the three chemical groups averaged across the sampling events were 8 to 24 times higher in the urban watershed, likely due to a combination of greater in-watershed emissions and reduced retention. Temporal patterns in contaminant concentrations were relatively homogeneous across chemical groups in the urban watershed. During rainfall, concentrations of more hydrophilic chemicals with a longer history of emissions leading to relatively contaminated groundwater were consistently diluted at higher stream discharges. Hydrophobic chemicals instead showed increasing concentrations with increasing discharge, due to their affinity for suspended sediment (SS) and effective mobilization of different sediment caches during the event. Differences in modes of emission and transport pathways controlled patterns in hydrophobic contaminant concentrations that were normalized to SS weight. Contaminants travelling from watershed surfaces to the stream network showed early flushes, while those emitted directly to stream banks and stream channels were diluted with relatively clean surface inputs. During snowmelt, the urban landscape was the major driver of patterns in contaminant concentrations. Early maxima occurred for all contaminant groups due to quick transport of meltwater, including particles, over impervious surfaces and via sewer networks. This also applied to SS-weighted concentrations of hydrophobic chemicals. In general, this work has contributed knowledge required to develop suitable strategies for monitoring and mitigating organic contamination in urban streams. | Ph.D. | water, rural, urban | 6, 11 |
| Pardhan, Almina | Pelletier, Janette | Women Kindergarten Teachers in Pakistan: Their Lives, Their Classroom Practice | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2009-06 | This dissertation explores how women kindergarten teachers in Pakistan understand the concept of gender as evident from their own reflections of their life experiences and from their interaction with their students. Early childhood education and gender equality in education are critical policy issues in Pakistan. Women pre-primary teachers have received little specific attention and little is known about their experiences. Seven women kindergarten teachers from one co-educational, private, English-medium school in the urban city of Karachi, Pakistan were involved in this mixed-method study. Multiple methods were used, namely, life history interviews with the women teachers, classroom observations of their teaching practice and interactions with girls and boys, and document analysis. Data were qualitatively and quantitatively analyzed. The findings were presented and discussed through the five nested interrelated structures – microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem - of Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model of human development. Study findings reveal that the family and school are critical microsystems that have shaped the women kindergarten teachers’ understanding of gender in terms of possibilities and impossibilities for girls and boys, women and men within the norms of the broader patriarchal macrosystem. Throughout their lives across the chronosystem, they have had to negotiate multiple positions in their patriarchal extended families, schools, and, to some extent, the larger community in response to social change across diverse geographical spaces. Compromise and conformity have formed much of how they have understood their role and position as women in this patriarchal context. As women and as kindergarten teachers, they are doubly disadvantaged. They have been inadequately prepared to take up positions as pre-primary teachers. Nevertheless, their developing knowledge of teaching young children based on their practice and in-service training in a school with a positive outlook towards teaching has led to a more professional perspective of themselves and their careers. They are committed to teaching, but face the challenge of coping with their professional and familial demands. Often times, they draw upon their religion for strength and to make sense of their gendered experiences. Tensions are evident in their understanding of gender, particularly in relation to their own children and their kindergarten students, about following ascribed gender norms or allowing for more change in tradition in a context being rapidly influenced by globalization and socio-economic change. For the most part, their interaction with their students reflected their internalization of dominant patriarchal values and their active role in perpetuating them. Nevertheless, their gendered teaching practice has also presented possibilities for change in their unconscious and, occasionally conscious, attempts to push gender boundaries towards more equitable gender relationships in this patriarchal context. This study is significant for bringing to the fore women kindergarten teachers’ lived experiences to provide a dimension of education which has gone largely unexamined locally and globally, and which, in the context of Pakistan, are critical to consider in light of issues related to quality, access, and gender equity in early childhood education. | PhD | equitable, gender, women, equality | 4, 5 |
| Parizeau, Katherine Marie | Maclaren, Virginia W. ||Daniere, Amrita | Urban Dirty Work: Labour Strategies, Environmental Health, and Coping Among Informal Recyclers in Buenos Aires, Argentina | Geography | 2011-06 | This dissertation investigates informal waste recycling practices in the modern urban centre of Buenos Aires, Argentina. My research sets a baseline for the living and working conditions of the approximately 9,000 informal recyclers (cartoneros) in the city, focusing on their health, socio-economic status, and access to social and material resources. The research methods included a survey (n = 397) and interviews (n = 30) with cartoneros, as well as key informant interviews and an analysis of newspaper articles addressing informal recycling in the city. My findings indicate that Buenos Aires’ cartoneros, while not the poorest of the poor, are of a relatively low socio-economic status. Their health outcomes and determinants of health are poor compared to others in the Greater Buenos Aires region, and these workers are often stigmatized and discriminated against because of their associations with waste. Cartoneros’ experiences of the city are characterized by a series of social, political, and physical exclusions, revealing a state of urban inequality in Buenos Aires. I argue that municipal agendas of neoliberal urban development are implicated in both the symbolic and physical marginalization of these workers. Cartoneros draw upon many resources in coping with the multiple vulnerabilities that they face (particularly social resources and assets derived from their labour). They also occasionally engage with urban processes of exclusion through collective action and rhetorical redefinitions of their role in society. These workers are therefore active agents in their own destinies, and potential actors for social change. The municipal government of Buenos Aires has recently implemented a formalization plan for some of the city’s cartoneros; the dissertation includes an assessment of these plans, as well as recommendations for other policy-based interventions to informal recycling practices. | PhD | health, equality, labour, inequality, urban, waste, recycl | 3, 5, 10, 11, 12 |
| Park, Jiwon Tina | Bothwell, Robert | From Strangers to Partners: Canadian-Korean Relations (1888-1978) | History | 2018-06 | From Strangers to Partners: Canadian-Korean Relations (1888 – 1978) Jiwon Tina Park Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto 2018 Abstract This dissertation focuses on the transformation of Canadian-Korean relations between the 1880s and the 1970s. Drawing on archival materials from both Ottawa and Seoul, the study approaches the bilateral relationship primarily through the lens of Canadian attitudes, priorities and policies. Canadian missionaries, who first travelled to Korea in 1888, established the earliest bridges between the two countries. Canada’s official engagement with Korea began with its participation on the UN Temporary Commission on Korea (1947-48), followed closely by the Korean War (1950-53), which elevated South Korea’s geostrategic importance for Ottawa. Over the course of the Cold War, these humanitarian concerns soon blossomed into significant commercial and political interests, a change aided by South Korea’s remarkable economic growth under President Park Chung Hee’s leadership. By the 1970s, Canada and South Korea saw each other as significant partners and allies, marked by a rapid expansion in trade and immigration. Shifting alliances and geopolitical interests of the Cold War had important consequences for bringing the two nations together, as South Korea searched for new partners to counterbalance American dominance and expand into new markets. From Seoul’s perspective, Canada, in addition to growing commercial interests, was an important ally for its diplomatic competition against North Korea. The case of the CANDU nuclear reactor sales to Korea at the height of the détente era clearly demonstrate the shifting dynamics in Canadian-Korean relations. Ultimately, this study concludes that comprehensive study of the evolution of Canadian-Korean relations enriches our understanding of Canadian history, Canadian-Asian relations, and international history. | Ph.D. | economic growth | 8 |
| Park, Laura | Laupacis, Andreas | Evaluating the Harm of Drugs in the Post-marketing Environment using Observational Research Methods | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2011-11 | Our knowledge of a drug’s potential for harm is incomplete at the time of drug licensing leaving residual questions about the long-term safety and effectiveness of drugs in the ‘real world’. Pharmacoepidemiologic research can contribute to the study of the unintended effects of drugs. The central aims of this dissertation were to create new knowledge about drug-related harm in the postmarketing environment using pharmacoepidemiologic methods and larged linked databases, and understand how various types of design and analytic strategies can be applied to reduce bias and threats to internal validity when studying drug harm. The aims of the thesis were achieved by performing three studies. The first study examined elderly individuals hospitalized with bradycardia and identified an association with recent initiation of cholinesterase inhibitor therapy (adjusted odds-ratio 2.13, 95% confidence interval 1.29 to 3.51). The second study examined the measurement properties of administrative diagnostic codes for subtrochanteric and femoral shaft fractures and found the positive predictive value and sensitivity of the codes to be reasonably good (90% and 81%, respectively). This study was linked to the third study which explored the association between long-term bisphosphonate use and subtrochanteric or femoral shaft fractures in postmenopausal women and found an increased risk of these unusual fractures in women with greater than 5 years of bisphosphonate use. The research performed as part of this thesis provides an example of the types of new knowledge about drug-related harm that can be generated using pharmacoepidemiologic designs and analytic strategies. The pharmacoepidemiologic studies will play an important and dynamic role in the larger evolving focus on post-marketing drug safety and effectiveness as new data sources become increasingly available and and the methods within the pharmacoepidemiologic discipline become more sophisticated and refined. | PhD | consum | 12 |
| Parke, Elizabeth Chamberlin | Yue, Meng | Infrastructures of Critique: Art and Visual Culture in Contemporary Beijing (1978-2012) | East Asian Studies | 2016-11 | This dissertation is a story about relationships between artists, their work, and the physical infrastructure of Beijing. I argue that infrastructure’s utilitarianism has relegated it to a category of nothing to see, and that this tautology effectively shrouds other possible interpretations. My findings establish counter-narratives and critiques of Beijing, a city at once an immerging global capital city, and an urban space fraught with competing ways of seeing, those crafted by the state and those of artists. Statecraft in this dissertation is conceptualized as both the art of managing building projects that function to control Beijing’s public spaces, harnessing the thing-power of infrastructure, and the enforcement of everyday rituals that surround Beijinger’s interactions with the city’s infrastructure. From the spectacular architecture built to signify China’s neoliberal approaches to globalized urban spaces, to micro-modifications in how citizens sort their recycling depicted on neighborhood bulletin boards, the visuals of Chinese statecraft saturate the urban landscape of Beijing. I advocate for heterogeneous ways of seeing of infrastructure that releases its from being solely a function of statecraft, to a constitutive part of the artistic practices of: Song Dong (宋冬b. 1966), Cao Fei (曹斐b. 1978), Lu Hao (卢昊b. 1969) and Ning Ying (宁瀛b. 1959) where it is reconfigured as a space of critique. Structured around four typologies, I begin with roads and Ning’s films where the outdated roads refuse to keep pace with the rise in private car ownership. From traffic, I move to Song’s trash based works that make visible the contemporary buying habits of Beijingers in contrast to earlier state policies of frugality and recycling. Then, I consider the migrant workers whose labour is building the city, whose multitudes the state strives to conceal, and whose bodies artists exploit as a medium. Lastly, from embodied practices and spaces, I excavate the buried fiber optic networks that produce the immateriality of the Internet to discuss how Cao’s online practice parodies China’s rapacious urbanization predicated on the real estate market. Iconic buildings of contemporary China colonize her works, but instead of being aesthetically pleasing monuments to the global contemporary, they are a critical commentary on state policies that monetize collectively owned land. | Ph.D. | labour, infrastructure, buildings, urban, recycl | 8, 9, 11 |
| Parker, Alison J. | James, D Thomson | The Ecological Context of Pollination: Variation in an Apparent Mutualism | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2014-11 | What makes a good pollinator? As pollinators perform the function of pollination, exporting and delivering grains between conspecific plant species, the floral visitor's foraging interests and the messy process of pollination interfere; many pollen grains are removed but not delivered. "Conditionally parasitic" floral visitors "waste" so much pollen (from a plant perspective) that they sometimes reduce total pollen delivery, the total number of pollen grains transferred to conspecific plant stigmas. Most pollinators visit plants with a diverse assemblage of other floral visitors; as pollinators remove, transport, and deposit pollen, they interact indirectly with one another through the supply of available pollen. These interactions can result in conditional parasitism because they affect the number of pollen grains that are successfully transported to stigmas. In this thesis, I explore how pollinator wastefulness and variation in pollinator assemblages may affect pollen export and delivery. I document a particular ecological situation in which a pollen-specialist ("oligolectic") bee and a nectar-collecting fly visit concurrently. In this system, pollen removal by the oligolectic bee results in substantial and rapid pollen depletion, which suggests that pollen wastefulness may be costly. The assemblage of pollinators varies widely throughout the geographic range of the plant; citizen scientists and I documented a consistent geographic pattern. These geographic differences correspond with variation in floral traits that are linked to pollen transfer by bees and flies. Finally, I use a simulation model to explore what ecological contexts will cause a floral visitor to increase or decrease overall pollen delivery. As a whole, these data provide substantial evidence that conditional parasitism may occur, and help elucidate aspects of plants, pollinators, and mechanisms of pollen transfer that may make it more likely. Moreover, I document plant traits that may be a result of selection mediated by conditionally parasitic floral visitors. | Ph.D. | waste | 12 |
| Parker, Christina Ashlee | Bickmore, Kathy | Inclusion in Peacebuilding Education: Discussion of Diversity and Conflict as Learning Opportunities for Immigrant Students | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-11 | Ethnocultural minority immigrant students carry diverse histories, perspectives, and experiences, which can serve as resources for critical reflection and discussion about social conflicts. Inclusion of diverse students’ identities in the curriculum requires acknowledgement and open discussion of diversity and conflictual issues. In democratic peacebuilding education, diverse students are encouraged to express divergent points of view in open, inclusive dialogue. This ethnographic study with a critical perspective examined how three teachers in urban public elementary school classrooms with ethnocultural minority first- and second-generation immigrant students (aged 9 to 13) implemented different kinds of curriculum content and pedagogy, and how those pedagogies facilitated or impeded inclusive democratic experiences for various students. In these classrooms, peers and teachers shared similar and different cultural backgrounds and migration histories. Data included 110 classroom observations of three teachers and 75 ethnocultural minority students, six interviews with three teachers, 29 group interviews with 53 students, document analysis of ungraded student work and teachers’ planning materials, and a personal journal. Results showed how diverse students experienced and responded to implemented curriculum: when content was explicitly linked to students’ identities and experiences, opportunities for democratic peacebuilding inclusion increased. Dialogic pedagogical processes that encouraged cooperation among students strengthened the class community and invited constructive conflict education. The implicit and explicit curriculum implemented in these three diverse classrooms also shaped how students interpreted democracy in the context of multiculturalism in Canada. Teaching students as though they were all the same, and teaching curriculum content as if it were neutral and uncontestable, did not create equitable social relations. Explicit attention to conflict provided opportunities to uncover the hidden curriculum and to acknowledge structures of power and domination, creating space for development of critical consciousness. Thus culturally relevant curricula and democratic learning opportunities encouraged social and academic engagement and resulted in the inclusion of a wider range of diverse students’ voices. | PhD | peace, equitable, inclusive | 4, 16 |
| Parlette, Vanessa | Cowen, Deborah ||Walks, Alan | On the Margins of Gentrification: The Production and Governance of Suburban 'Decline' in Toronto's Inner Suburbs | Geography | 2014-11 | In many North American cities, the last two decades have witnessed not only the large-scale return of investment priorities to central cities, but also a rise in the suburbanization of poverty. This dissertation examines the problem of ‘suburban decline’ by investigating how it is produced, its effects on sub/urban populations, and the responses that it generates. I interrogate the processes through which relations of political-economic and cultural dominance are obscured, enacted, and reproduced through the production of sub/urban investment and decline. In doing so, I identify the ongoing colonial practices, classism, and systemic racism that are embedded into the neoliberal state and through it, the production and management of marginalized spaces and populations. I trace the mechanisms and techniques through which this power is mobilized to control populations and contain dissent. Finally, I demonstrate, through moments of social struggle, that growing unrest and changing demographics related to ‘suburban decline’ represent crises to the dominant structures of power. In this three-paper dissertation I document processes of political-economic and racialized marginalization in Scarborough, an inner suburb of Toronto. My analysis centres around three key moments of major contestation that are also central to social and political change in this area of the city: a failed mobilization to save community space that had taken root in a local retail mall; the implementation of a motel shelter system; the roll-out of the priority neighbourhood strategy for social investment and community governance. Highlighting struggles over suburban space and belonging, I trace the growth and decline of Toronto’s postwar suburbs, through the lens of Southeast Scarborough. I probe the tensions arising from suburban decline by excavating responses from the state at multiple levels, popular media, social agencies, faith groups, and residents. More broadly these struggles inform key dynamics that are central to contemporary transformations in sub/urban socio-spatial relationships: the production of racialized space; the targeting of poor communities; and devolution of governance responsibilities through third-sector organizations. | PhD | poverty, cities, urban, production, governance | 1, 11, 12, 16 |
| Parr, Lennox Michael | Ryan, James | The Principals' Role in Facilitating Inclusive School Environments for Students Considered to be Experiencing Behavioural Problems in Intermediate Level Schools | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-11 | This research examines the understandings and practices of inclusive minded principals toward facilitating the development of inclusive school environments for intermediate level (Grade 7 and 8) students who are experiencing behavioural problems in their schools. Qualitative interviews with 16 principals across 4 school districts were conducted to explore how these inclusive minded principals conceptualize and understand the needs of this particular group of students, and what they consider to be their roles and responsibilities as principals in meeting these needs. The data suggest that despite the number of barriers that serve to hamper principals’ efforts to develop the ideal inclusive school, there are a great many strategies principals intentionally use to facilitate change toward more inclusive school cultures and pedagogy. These strategies emanate from, and are reflective of, an inclusive philosophy that is common among participants. Principals’ individual philosophies and ideologies serve as a compass in guiding decision-making and actions that affect staff, students, and the wider school community. In an inclusive school, these ideologies are reflective of the principles of inclusion, such as the need to create a culture of care wherein all students feel valued, supported, and experience a sense of belonging and individual self worth. The implications of this research toward improving the schooling experiences of students with behavioural problems as well as other marginalized groups of learners are discussed in the context of the call for a re-culturing of schools toward more inclusive environments. | PhD | inclusive | 4 |
| Parsaud, Leon | Yeung, Rae | The Role of T-cell Costimulation in the Pathogenesis of Kawasaki Disease | Medical Science | 2019-06 | Kawasaki disease (KD) is a multisystem vasculitis that mainly targets the coronary arteries in young children. Both environmental factors along with genetic factors play a role in the susceptibility, severity and response to treatment of KD. Regardless of the initial trigger of the immune response in KD, the role of costimulatory signals remain a critical component in the survival of T-cells and the pathogenesis of the disease. Genome wide association studies have found costimulatory molecules to be associated with KD. In this work we show that, enhanced costimulation rescued superantigen-stimulated T-cells from apoptosis. CD28 mediated signaling resulted in up-regulation of the anti-apoptotic factors, Bcl-xL and cFLIP. Bcl-xL expression was dependent on costimulatory signals and decreased with administration of CTLA-4Ig. Furthermore, expression of survival molecules cFLIP, MCL1 and NAIP were significantly upregulated in patients who did not respond to IVIG treatment. Taken together, our findings point to the important role of costimulation in the immunopathology of KD. Moreover, activation of another costimulatory molecule CD40 (via CD40L) resulted in significantly elevate lymphocyte proliferation in combination with superantigen activation. However, splenocytes from CD28 knockout mice do not exhibit this elevated response and the CD28 antagonist CTLA4-Ig was able to mimic the effects seen in the splenocytes from CD28 knockout mice. This suggests that CD28 is the intermediary that mediates the proliferative effects of CD40 activation. Furthermore, the role of platelets the largest source of sCD40L was examined. Through co-culturing experiments CD40L on activated platelets was shown to promote both splenocyte proliferation and T-cell survival upon SAg stimulation. In vivo experiments using the LCWE mouse model of KD demonstrated that coronary aneurysms are reduced in the absence of CD40L. Hence, our results indicate that costimulation mediates T-cell survival in both mice and man developing KD and regulates disease severity and treatment response, pointing to a potential new target for treatment. These studies add to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underpinning the immunopathology of KD and identify potential biomarkers of disease and novel targets for therapy. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Pashang, Soheila | Mojab, Shahrzad | Non-Status Women: Invisible Residents and Underground Resilience | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-06 | Although activists’ conservative estimate of the number of non-status people living in Canada is well over 500,000, the Canadian government, through its exclusionary immigration, civic, and public policies, has criminalized their existence and forsaken its responsibility for their human rights. It has been abetted by international law, which largely leaves it to individual states to resolve their own issues with unregulated migration by means of deportation or regularization. This anti-racist feminist research relied on multiple methods to collect 155 survey questionnaires distributed by service providers to non-status women within the Greater Toronto Area; it also relied on thirteen individual and two focus-group interviews with service providers and activists in order to: (1) explore the lived conditions of non-status women, and (2) examine how the activities of service providers and activists address these women’s needs. The results show that living without legal immigration status has dire consequences for non-status women, placing them at high risk of physical and sexual abuse, labour exploitation, sexual and mental health challenges, excessive caring responsibilities, and unstable housing conditions. Since most publicly funded human-service agencies come under governmental control through the process of funding allocation, practitioners must meet their non-status clients’ needs in an underground manner or on compassionate grounds, while facing dual workloads, limited referral sources, and work-related burnout. This adversely affects the quality of the care these women receive. As a result, in recent years, many frontline practitioners and human-rights activists have formed campaigns and networks to confront neoliberal state policies and act as the voice of non-status women. At the same time, non-status women’s resilient power, informal learning mechanisms, and social networks have enabled them to learn new skills, navigate the system, and make Canada their new home. | PhD | women, resilien | 5, 13 |
| Pashby, Karen | Joshee, Reva | Related and Conflated: A Theoretical and Discursive Framing of Multiculturalism and Global Citizenship Education in the Canadian Context | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2013-06 | There is a public perception that Canada is an ideal place for cultivating global citizenship because of its culturally plural demographics and official policies of multiculturalism. Global Citizenship Education (GCE) is a growing field in Canadian education and is an explicit focus in the Alberta social studies curriculum. This thesis brings together four conversations within which multiculturalism and GCE are both related and conflated: (a) the public perceptions of Canada as a model of cultural diversity and global citizenship, (b) the scholarly discussions of GCE and multiculturalism, (c) the policy context where multiculturalism is set alongside GCE, and (d) the practical ways that the two are mutually related in curriculum and lesson documents. There are four interrelated sections to this thesis; each identifies the tensions inherent to multiculturalism, GCE, and the perceived relationship between these fields. First is a wider philosophical and theoretical framing of the topic. Second is the examination of educational research on the topic. Third is a critical discourse analysis of policy, curriculum, and lesson plan documents in the province of Alberta. Last is a synthesis of the findings from all three sections. The analysis finds that there are philosophical and ideological tensions inherent to both fields and to the relationships between them. This contributes to conceptual and ideological conflation and confusion. This finding raises some important concerns in terms of possibilities and constraints to thinking about cultural diversity and social inequities in new ways. It highlights how multicultural contexts of GCE can lead to the recreation of tensions, conflation, and ambiguity. However, the Alberta context demonstrates that a multicultural context can also open critical spaces and possibilities for GCE through engagements with tensions and complexities. Thus this thesis contributes theoretically, by presenting a framework and perspective for interrogating and critically inquiring into the relationship between the two fields. It also contributes to the policy and curriculum discussions in educational research and practice by highlighting the importance of foregrounding key tensions inherent to each field and by identifying the potential negative consequences of leaving these tensions implicit. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Pasternak, Shiri | Prudham, W. Scott ||Cowen, Deborah | Jurisdiction and Settler Colonialism: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the Federal Land Claims Policy | Planning | 2013-11 | This dissertation analyzes tensions between Indigenous and Canadian authority over land and governance through a critical inquiry into jurisdiction. I examine jurisdiction in the context of the Algonquins of Barriere Lake’s territory, located about three hours north of Ottawa in the northernmost boreal region of Quebec. To undertake this study of overlapping jurisdiction, I analyze the struggle over resource management across the past thirty years on the territory and their struggle against the federal land claims policy. I map the ways in which space is differentiated under competing legal orders, where on the one hand, jurisdiction is produced by the sovereign territorial state through operations of economic and political calculation, and on the other, by the Algonquin nation through a kinship nexus of allocated hunting and trapping grounds, and by the daily caretaking practices associated with Anishnabe life on the territory. I raise questions as to how simultaneous operations of law may take place in a single area, across distinctive epistemological and ontological frameworks, and how jurisdictions are produced in this context. My dissertation examines how the Algonquins of Barriere Lake have contested the socio-spatial production of state sovereignty claims through the exercise of jurisdiction over their lands. My focus on jurisdiction in this dissertation turns our attention to the practices of settler colonial sovereignty in Canada, and especially to the role Indigenous law plays in resisting intervention on their lands. I examine the role Indigenous law plays in shaping the political economy of this country, seeking to identify whether a “distinct form of accumulation” emerges in the dialectic of settler colonialism and Canada’s staple state economy. The interpretive framework of jurisdiction allows us to examine the overlapping authority claims between Indigenous, state, regional, and private interests, and to parse out the ways in which these jurisdictional claims produce different kinds of political space. | PhD | governance | 16 |
| Patankar, Rajit | Thomas, Sean C. ||Smith, Sandy | A 'Mitey' Influence? Life History, Impacts and Distribution of a Gall-inducing Arthropod in a Temperate Forest Canopy | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2010-11 | Mature forest canopies worldwide sustain an enormous diversity of arthropods, many of which are specialist natural enemies. However, with the exception of species that exhibit massive outbreaks, host-specific canopy arthropods are thought to have relatively little influence on tree health and overall forest productivity. My thesis examines the role of one such arthropod in a temperate forest stand in central Ontario. The maple spindle gall mite Vasates aceriscrumena (Riley) (Acari: Eriophyoidae) is a host-specific canopy parasite that induces galls on leaves of sugar maple Acer saccharum Marsh. I examine three diverse topics related to this host-parasite system: 1) the seasonal phenology of this mite in mature sugar maple canopies, 2) the impacts of galling on host physiology and growth and 3) the distribution of this mite across host ontogeny and within the broader context of the local forest community. With respect to phenology, I document a previously unobserved interaction between the gall-inducer and a gall-invading mite (ubiquitous in the canopy but new to science) and consequences of this on the bionomics of galling mite populations. This work is also the first to examine differential physiological responses to galling across two distinct stages in the ontogeny of the host. Infected leaves in mature trees show drastic reductions in gas-exchange processes (photosynthesis, stomatal conductance and water use efficiency) while infected sapling leaves show no such detectible responses. Further, I find a significant negative correlation between radial increment growth in mature trees and levels of mite galling, as well as significantly increased galling frequency in mature trees compared with understory saplings. Finally, I explore the relationship between galling abundance and abiotic and biotic variables within a large mapped forest plot and show that gall densities are most strongly correlated with local species diversity and less so with host densities. Overall, my research provides a new perspective on the influence of host-specific, dispersal-limited canopy arthropods as major drivers of ‘age-dependent’ reductions in physiological performance and growth of older trees and as natural enemies that are strongly associated with local forest community distribution patterns. | PhD | forest, water | 14, 15 |
| Patitsas, Elizabeth Ann | Easterbrook, Steve M.||Craig, Michelle W. | Explaining Gendered Participation in Computer Science Education | Computer Science | 2019-06 | Amongst scientific fields, computer science (CS) is the only one in which the percentage of women undergraduates has decreased since the 1980s; in the US and Canada, this percentage has hovered around 15%. Since the 1990s, a great deal of effort and resources have been put toward trying to improve the representation of women in computing. Unfortunately, these wide-spread efforts have not resulted in any macro-scale improvements. Using theoretical and conceptual tools from critical sociology, policy analysis, and systems thinking, I examine the question of why the efforts to improve gender diversity in CS education have not had a more discernible effect on a macro scale. I begin by classifying gender diversity initiatives, and observe that the most prevalent types of initiatives are low-leverage. I examine the history of women in computing, finding that enrolment booms are key times for gendering participation: when universities faced enrolment booms in the late 1980s and dot-com era, the percentage of women decreased, in part from gatekeeping measures enacted by CS departments. And as CS is currently facing its third enrolment boom, I survey CS faculty to see what factors are influencing their current policy discussions about enrolments. I find that diversity is seldom considered, nor is history; this approach to policymaking could exacerbate the gendered participation in CS. I also extend Etzkowitz et al.’s framework of “generations” of women in STEM, noting that different generations of women in CS have had differing and conflicting goals for gender equality. Through re-examining the historical variations in gendered participation in computing, and considering the contemporanous global variations, I determine that Anne Witz’s occupational closure theory provides an explanation for the historico-geographical variations. I find that policies (e.g. educational gatekeeping) and discourses (e.g. you need to be brilliant to be a computer scientist) are the primary ways in which the boundaries of CS are closed. For CS to improve its gender diversity, we need to make higher leverage changes; identifying policies and discourses as critical levers allows for change-agents to more effectively push for gender diversity. | Ph.D. | women, equality | 5 |
| Paton, Michael James | Barfoot, Timothy D | Expanding the Limits of Vision-Based Autonomous Path Following | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2018-03 | Autonomous path-following systems allow robots to traverse large-scale networks of paths using on-board sensors. These methods are well suited for applications that involve repeated traversals of constrained paths such as factory floors, orchards, and mines. Through the use of inexpensive, commercial, vision sensors, these algorithms have the potential to enable robotic applications across multiple industries. However, these applications will demand algorithms capable of long-term autonomy. This poses a difficult challenge for vision-based systems in unstructured and outdoor environments, whose appearances are highly variable. While techniques have been developed to perform localization across extreme appearance change, most are not suitable or untested for vision-in-the-loop systems such as autonomous path following, which requires continuous metric localization to keep the robot driving. This thesis extends the performance of vision-based autonomous path following through the development of novel localization and mapping techniques. First, we present the following generic localization frameworks: i) a many-to-one localization framework that combines data associations from independent sources of information into single state-estimation problems, and ii) a multi-experience localization and mapping system that provides metric localization to the manually taught path across extreme appearance change using bridging experiences gathered during autonomous operation. We use these frameworks to develop three novel autonomous path-following systems: i) a lighting-resistant system capable of autonomous operation across daily lighting change through the fusion of data from traditional-grayscale and color-constant images, ii) a multi-stereo system that extends the field-of-view of the algorithm by fusing data from multiple stereo cameras, and iii) a multi-experience system that uses both localization frameworks to achieve reliable localization across appearance change as extreme as night vs. day and winter vs. summer. These systems are validated through a collection of extensive field tests covering over 213 km of vision-in-the-loop autonomous driving across a wide variety of environments and appearance change with an autonomy rate of 99.7% of distance traveled. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Patrician, Penelope (Penny) Anne | Campbell, Carol | Rhetoric to Reality: Practices of Schools in Challenging Circumstances to Support Parent Engagement in their Children’s Mathematics Learning | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-06 | Parent engagement in their children’s learning is widely accepted as having positive influence on academic success, and recently a growing body of research has acknowledged the benefit of parent engagement to their children’s mathematics achievement specifically. The finding that the influence of parent engagement can mitigate differences in socio-economic status and family background is of particular significance. The purpose of this study was to examine the practices high-performing elementary schools in challenging circumstances used to engage parents in their children’s mathematics learning, and the conditions and supports for these practices. Data from a large urban school board showed that elementary schools with a higher level of challenge (including income, adult education, and lone-parent families) generally had lower mathematics achievement (students that meet or exceed the standard on a provincial assessment). Case studies of five schools, in which mathematics achievement exceeded what would be predicted by their level of challenge, reveal three central components to a model of parent engagement in their children’s mathematics learning for high-performing schools in challenging circumstances. First, educators and parent leaders, guided by their beliefs and values, and their ethic of care, provided a welcoming climate and caring culture conducive to parent engagement. Next, within this environment an asset-based approach addressed barriers and inequity, and built trusting, mutually respectful relationships and social networks in which family needs were served and parent engagement in their children’s schooling was nurtured. Finally, upon this foundation of authentic partnerships, subject-specific strategies addressed potential additional barriers of parental mathematics anxiety and lack of familiarity with how mathematics is being taught, while nurturing parental contributions to their children’s positive affect, motivation, and confidence. Strategies to engage parents in their children’s mathematics learning were multi-faceted and addressed all aspects of Hoover-Dempsey and Sandler’s (1997, 2005) theoretical model of parents’ motivation to be involved. As nested layers, the primary locus of parent-teacher partnership was found to be the classroom, enhanced by actions at the school level—leadership in particular—and similarly, the school’s efforts were enhanced by school board actions. | Ph.D. | educat, socioeconomic | 1, 4 |
| Patterson, Erin Elizabeth | Tourangeau, Ann E | Examining Variation in Access to Long-term Home Care Services for Ontario Seniors | Nursing Science | 2016-11 | Background: As Canadaâ s population ages, a greater number of seniors will require formal and informal care to remain in their homes. To effectively maintain seniors in their homes, equitable access to home care services is required. However, variations in access to these services have persisted in Ontario for decades. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine factors affecting access to long-term home care for seniors identified as at moderate risk of adverse outcomes and to determine whether variation in access to these services exists across Ontario. Methods: Administrative data were used to conduct a secondary analysis. A non-experimental design was employed. Factors associated with three dimensions of access to home care (propensity, intensity, wait time) were examined across four outcome categories: no home-based care, home-based nursing services alone, home-based supportive care services alone, and home-based nursing and supportive care services together. Results: Personal characteristics, caregiver characteristics and regional characteristics were found to affect all dimensions of access. Factors associated with propensity to receive services varied across outcome categories and included having a dementia diagnosis, dependence in performing activities of daily living, having a previous fall, previous health care utilization, and the region in which the patient resides. Similarly, factors associated with intensity of services were dependent on type of care received and included education, continence and living with a caregiver for nursing services and cognitive status, functional status, health status, and living with a caregiver for supportive care services. While, intensity of nursing services did not vary across regions, intensity of supportive care services was significantly different across the province. Factors affecting wait times included sex, functional status, health status, and receiving nursing care. Conclusions: Inequity in access to home care services persists across Ontario. Variation in propensity to receive services, intensity of supportive care services received, and wait times was evident across regions. Inequitable access to services could result in negative outcomes for those unable to access services. Equitable access to home-based care is vital to ensuring Ontario seniors are able to live and receive care in their preferred location, which for most seniors is at home. | Ph.D. | health, equitable | 3, 4 |
| Patterson, Matt | Hannigan, John | Icons and Identity: A Study of Two Museums and the Battle to Define Toronto | Sociology | 2015-11 | Iconic architecture has become a popular “hard-branding” strategy among urban policymakers hoping to elevate the global status of their city and attract outside investment, tourists, and skilled migrants. However, iconic architecture is more than just an economic tool; it is an attempt to create a symbolic representation of place which, in the process, physically reshapes the urban landscape itself. As such, iconic architecture offers an important opportunity to study the relationship between abstract notions of place and concrete urban development practices. Focusing on this relationship, this dissertation investigates two museum expansion projects in Toronto: the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Both museums hired internationally-renowned architects to design striking, iconic facades and both projects became mired in political controversy that pitted the museums against members of the surrounding community. Focusing specifically on the role of culture and meaning, the dissertation offers three main findings. First, it reveals that public cultural institutions (the primary clients of iconic architecture) use this development strategy to generate political legitimacy and, by extension, attract outside financial support. By asserting themselves physically within the cityscape, they similarly attempt secure a central place within local public life. Second, the dissertation demonstrates how competing notions of place can emerge between different groups of urban inhabitants and subsequently become the basis for urban political struggle. Employing cognitive mapping analysis, the dissertation demonstrates how the museums’ cosmopolitan vision for Toronto contradicted more locally-focused notions of place held within the community. Finally, in examining how this political conflict played out during development, the dissertation reveals the importance of “performative power” in forging community consensus and overcoming initial differences. More specifically, the success of the projects depended on how well the museum leadership conformed to existing cultural expectations held within the community. These findings, taken as a whole, provide important empirical and theoretical insights into how urban inhabitants understand place, and how these understandings inform their actions within the context of major urban development projects. | Ph.D. | urban, institution | 11, 16 |
| Pattison-Meek, Joanne Margaret | Bickmore, Kathy | Democratic Citizenship Education in Rural High Schools: Navigating Difference and Conflict in Three Ontario Classrooms | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2016-06 | Citizenship education is a key means to support understanding and respect of Canada’s diversity. How are various visible and invisible social, political, cultural, and ethnic identity diversities negotiated in some predominantly white, rural classroom contexts in Canada? How may these differences surface, intersect with, or be denied through teachers’ pedagogical choices? This thesis compares three case studies of how democracy-committed social studies teachers in rural public high school classrooms in southern Ontario selected and taught subject matter, and implemented pedagogies, to facilitate students’ expression in relation to various social and cultural differences and conflicts. Data include 56 classroom observations, 6 teacher interviews, 10 group interviews with a total of 29 students, and analysis of documents including teacher handouts and student written work. The case studies brought to light pedagogical challenges and opportunities for citizenship teachers to affirm social, political, and ethnocultural diversity and justice. Some students had had few prior opportunities to interact across difference, especially (visible) ethnocultural difference. One teacher organized a rural-urban encounter to introduce her students to racialized newcomer youth, to exchange their different and similar lived experiences. Others presented information and discussion opportunities about various social differences such as immigration experience. The three teachers’ pedagogical choices also surfaced the less visible differences that did exist among their students – such as ideological (opinions on contemporary issues), religious, socioeconomic, and mental health – as (additional) important elements of pluralistic democracy. Pedagogies that invited expression of contrasting, sometimes unpopular, views provided students with opportunities to hear alternate perspectives beyond their own, thus to experience social difference and conflict as valuable conditions of living in a democracy. This study challenges notions of difference typically embedded in some citizenship literature, by drawing upon learners (as well as experienced teachers) as sources of knowledge about less visible social diversities in (under-studied) rural contexts. This study contributes to teacher education and citizenship teacher theory and practice, concrete ways of teaching for democratic pluralist citizenship, especially in relation to apparently homogeneous student populations. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, urban, rural , justice | 1, 11, 16 |
| Patton, Anna Katherine Berenice | Coupland, Gary | Reconstructing Houses: Early Village Social Organization in Prince Rupert Harbour, British Columbia | Anthropology | 2011-06 | In this dissertation, I investigate the nature of social relations on the northern Northwest Coast during the Late Middle Period (500 BC to AD 500) through the rubric of House Societies as defined by Levi-Strauss (1982). In House Societies, corporate groups hold estates and wealth that are transmitted from one generation to the next. Houses were, and still are, the fundamental organizing principle in Tsimshian society. In the 19th century, Houses were central to systems of property ownership and social ranking. The antiquity of this institution however, is not clear. In this study, I ask whether Houses existed in the past in the Prince Rupert area and if so, what implications they might have had on social and economic relations. To investigate this question, I excavated two house depressions at GbTo-77, a small village site in Prince Rupert Harbour and considered whether evidence existed for long-term investment in place, the transmission of dwellings across multiple generations, and for owned estates or resource locations. The results suggested that one house depression (house D) showed some evidence for house reconstruction and maintenance, but over a relatively short period of time, particularly in comparison to other locations across the Northwest Coast. A second house depression, however, may have been used intermittently, or for an even shorter period of time than house D; no evidence was found for continuity between occupations or long-term investment in architecture. Faunal remains from both house depressions were very small and could not be reliably used to infer differences in owned resource locations. As such, the results of this study indicate that the house depressions at GbTo-77 likely do not represent Houses. These results are significant because archaeologists have often assumed that the house depressions forming organized, rowed villages, such as GbTo-77, are the remnants of Houses or incipient Houses. I explored also how architectural, stratigraphic and faunal evidence at GbTo-77 compared with these data at four other village sites in Prince Rupert Harbour. Few other house depressions were excavated sufficiently in order to adequately compare architecture remains between villages. The comparison of faunal remains between village sites in Prince Rupert Harbour, however, showed that there may have been important differences between villages in terms of economic systems, particularly in terms of salmon abundance, when compared with other fish taxa. The most significant differences in abundance were observed within column, bulk and auger samples (equal volume samples), indicating the importance of using small mesh screens (<2.8 mm) in faunal analyses. These data suggest that villages may have exerted control over important resource locations. The extent to which this control, or ownership, might reflect differences between houses, rather than villages, is not entirely clear for the Late Middle Period villages. I also observed significant differences in terms of shellfish composition at each village site. Variability in local resources may relate primarily to the precise location of these villages within the harbour, but may also have implications for our understanding of pre-contact land tenure practices in Prince Rupert Harbour. | PhD | fish | 14 |
| Pauchulo, Ana Laura | Simon, Roger I. | Living with Loss: Mapping Derechos Humanos on the Landscape of Public Remembrance of the 1976-1983 Dictatorship in Argentina | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-06 | The Argentine landscape is marked by countless sites of remembrance of the 1976-1983 dictatorship drawn by human rights groups in Argentina, producing a seemingly infinite command to remember the violence of this period and the 30,000 who were disappeared. Though this landscape can seem chaotic, this impression discounts the context of loss on which it is constructed as well as the deeply affective and contested political issues that motivate its construction. This study thus maps the ways demands for human rights mobilized through public remembrance of the dictatorship articulate a continual learning to live with loss. Investigating the specificities of loss in Argentina, I explore how human rights claims are made in the name of the disappeared who, neither dead nor alive, are at once everywhere and nowhere. I draw largely from my conversations with members of human rights groups to illuminate how the demand for derechos humanos is articulated in particular ways to address present-day social injustices and to affirm the living’s relationship with the disappeared. The study aims to contribute to an understanding of public remembrance as a continual process of teaching and learning about the past that is intended to motivate the formation of a public committed to constructing a better present and future. | PhD | rights, justice | 16 |
| Paul, Glavin | Schieman, | Perceived Job Insecurity and Health Across the Life Course | Sociology | 2012-06 | Job loss and unemployment have been consistently shown to have deleterious consequences for health. However, less is known about how insecure employment experiences and the threat of job loss influence well-being. Given the high levels of uncertainty associated with threatened and insecure employment, perceptions of job insecurity are thought to constitute a potent form of work stress because the ambiguity over a future undesirable event—job loss—undermines coping strategies and attempts at stress reduction. It has been suggested, then, that health penalties should be greatest with prolonged exposure to this threat. Further, since the meaning of job loss likely varies across working life, individual reactions may be contingent on life course position. Drawing from the Stress Process Model and the life course perspective, this dissertation explores whether the two factors of timing and duration influence the health penalties associated with perceived job insecurity, along with its impact on personality traits that are fundamental to well-being. iii Findings reveal the detrimental social-psychological and health implications of perceived job insecurity based on a national panel study of American workers surveyed in 2005 and 2007. Health penalties associated with perceived job insecurity are greatest for middle age workers reporting prolonged exposure to the threat of job loss. In addition, a personality trait—a high sense of personal control over one’s life—is demonstrated to alleviate the stress of perceived job insecurity; but this trait is itself prone to erosion with prolonged exposure to insecure employment. Collectively, this dissertation contributes to knowledge about the social-psychological processes through which insecure employment impacts individual well-being, and how these processes are shaped by age as a key social status and life course marker. | PhD | worker, employment | 8 |
| Pautler, Brent Gregory | Simpson, Myrna J. | Novel Analytical Approaches for the Characterization of Natural Organic Matter in the Cryosphere and its Potential Impacts on Climate Change | Chemistry | 2013-11 | Climate change is predicted to be the most pronounced in high latitude ecosystems, however very little is known about their vulnerability to the projected warmer temperatures. In particular, natural organic matter (NOM) in the high latitude cryosphere which includes dissolved organic matter (DOM) and cryoconite organic matter (COM) from glaciers and soil organic matter (SOM) in permafrost, is highly susceptible to climate change which may lead to severe consequences on both local and global carbon biogeochemical cycles. Examination of DOM in glacier ice by a novel 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) water suppression pulse sequence at its natural abundance revealed and quantified the composition and the organic constituents in ice samples from Antarctica. 1H NMR spectra of samples from several glaciers were acquired and compared to the dominant fluorescent DOM fraction. This comprehensive approach showed that glacier ice DOM was mainly composed of small, labile biomolecules associated with microbes. Examination of the organic debris found on glacier surfaces (COM) from both Arctic and Antarctic glaciers were determined to be derived from microbes. Samples from Arctic glaciers were more chemically heterogeneous with small inputs of plant-derived material detected after targeted extractions. Therefore the COM carbon composition was determined to be dependent on the local glacier environment, suggesting a site specific contribution to the carbon cycle. Finally, the distribution of extracted branched glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraether (GDGT)microbial membrane lipids and the deuterium incorporation of plant-wax n-alkane biomarkers extracted from dated permafrost SOM (paleosols) were independently applied for Canadian Arctic climate reconstruction during the last glacial maximum. Overall, the branched GDGT based temperature reconstructions from the Arctic paleosols reconstruct higher temperatures, likely when bacterial activity was optimal. The deuterium composition of the C29 n-alkane plant lipids appears to integrate an average annual signal. Further analysis by both non-selective NMR spectroscopic and targeted biomarker techniques on these paleosol samples revealed that the major vegetative sources from this paleoecosystem originated from woody and non-woody angiosperms. This thesis demonstrates several novel analytical characterization techniques, along with the major sources and composition of NOM in the cryosphere while demonstrating its use in paleoclimate applications. | PhD | water, climate | 6, 13 |
| Pauzé, Enette | Barnsley, Janet | Working Together across Primary Care, Mental Health & Addictions: Exploring the Association between the Formalization of Organizational Partnerships & Collaboration among Staff Members | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2012-11 | The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the formalization of inter-organizational partnerships and collaboration among staff members working together across primary care, mental health and addition organizations to provide services to adults with complex mental health and addiction needs. Phase I of the study provided an environmental scan of existing partnerships among Family Health Teams (FHTs) and Community Health Centres (CHCs), and the Mental Health and/or Addiction (MHA) organizations they partner with, in the province of Ontario (Canada). Phase II explored the relationship between formalization and a) administrative collaboration and b) and service delivery collaboration. The hypotheses proposed that staff members who are part of formalized partnerships would report higher levels of collaboration. Phase III explored how formal and informal partnerships and collaboration are experienced by the administrative and service provider staff members who work across FHTs, CHCs and MHAs organizations. Using a mixed methods approach, data were collected using electronic surveys and telephone interviews. The results of Phase I indicated that FHTs and CHCs in Ontario have between 1-3 partnerships with MHA organizations. Most are informal partnerships, have existed for less than 5 years, and most staff members (partners) interact on a monthly basis. The quantitative results of Phase II showed no significant relationship between formalization and either form of collaboration. The qualitative findings from Phase III provide two key contributions. First, the results of the interviews may help explain why collaboration was not higher in formalized partnerships, as demonstrated by the range of advantages and disadvantages experienced by administrators and service providers in both formal and informal partnerships. Second, the findings illuminate factors related to the process of creating and/or formalizing partnerships, suggesting that there may be other factors that mediate or have a direct impact on the relationship between formalization and collaboration. By bringing together the study findings, the study addresses a gap in the literature by proposing a pathway through which formalization may be associated with collaboration. The results of the study provide opportunities for future research to help improve the quality and accessibility of services to adults with complex mental health and addiction needs. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Pavlou, Maria | Diamandis, Eleftherios | Developing a Proteomic Prognostic Signature for Breast Cancer Patients | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2014-06 | Breast cancer is a major health issue, affecting annually approximately 1.4 million women worldwide. It is a highly heterogeneous disease with the different subtypes having distinct clinical outcomes and different sensitivity to various treatment modalities. The focus of the present dissertation was the identification of novel proteomic prognostic markers for patients with early stage breast cancer. Three different approaches to identify potential prognostic markers were undertaken. First, we hypothesized that since different breast cancer subtypes have distinct clinical outcomes, breast cancer subtype-specific proteins may retain prognostic potential. Second, given the central role of estrogen signaling in breast epithelial cell biology, we hypothesized that estrogen-regulated proteins may be useful in predicting patient outcome. Finally, we hypothesized that genes related to survival based on meta-analyses of publicly available breast cancer tissue microarray data, may also demonstrate prognostic potential at the proteome level. As such, a variety of mass spectrometry-based approaches and biological samples were utilized for the discovery of these potential prognostic protein markers resulting in twenty-four candidates. Upon the identification of candidate biomarkers, a mass spectrometry-based assay for the simultaneous quantification of these proteins in breast cancer tissue samples was established. The developed assay was used for measuring the relative expression levels of the potential biomarkers in a cohort of 96 breast cancer tissue samples from untreated patients with early stage breast cancer. This exercise uncovered two proteins that showed the potential to discriminate between ER-positive patients at high and low risk of disease recurrence, namely KPNA2 and CDK1. In conclusion, the present dissertation describes the development of a preclinical exploratory study, from the discovery to the preliminary verification of potential prognostic biomarkers for breast cancer patients. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Payne, Greg Jason | Coyte, Peter C. | Health Expenditures, Time to Death, and Age: A Study of Individual-level, Longitudinal Data to Identify the Combined Role of Age and Mortality in Determining Health Utilization of the Elderly | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-11 | While there is great concern about the potential impact of aging populations on health care systems in the developed world, evidence from recent decades has shown at best a weak relationship between population aging and health expenditures at the aggregate level. This thesis explores the literature that frames the relationship between age and health care utilization in the context of reduced mortality and shorter periods of morbidity at the end of life. We add to this literature with an empirical study of individual health expenditures of the British Columbia senior population in the years 1991-2001 in the categories of hospital services, continuing care, doctor billings, and pharmaceutical prescriptions. Expenditures for decedent and survivors of the same age are compared and are fitted to a model using age and time-to-death as explanatory factors. The partial derivative of the model with respect to age is analyzed for empirical estimates of the effect of age after controlling for time-to-death. Results show that decedent costs rose over the study period while costs for survivors fell, particularly in continuing care, so that the relative cost of dying increased. The effect of age, after controlling for time to death, was muted or negative for hospitals, doctors, and drugs, but strongly positive for continuing care and, as a result, for all services combined. Overall, these results suggest that age is not a ‘red herring’, as some researchers have suggested, with respect to forecasting future demands on health systems. While future reductions in mortality and morbidity could mitigate pressures on hospitals, aging populations will put increased pressure on long-term residential care and other forms of social care. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Pearce, Megan Louise | Knop, Karen | Gendering the Compliance Agenda: Feminism, Human Rights and Violence Against Women | Law | 2014-11 | Driven by the work of feminists, the last three decades have seen international human rights law reformed to respond better to the scourge of violence against women. A central feature of these reforms - the due diligence standard - extends state responsibility into the private sphere, where women are most often subject to violence. This thesis examines why feminist progress at the level of law has not delivered real change. It argues that the work of feminists, whose efforts helped transform the law, must be extended to address the next challenge: the gap between the promise of the law, and reality. Applying feminist observations to the prevailing set of compliance theories, this thesis reveals some blind spots in current theories of compliance with international law, and illuminates some of the reasons why the due diligence standard has not been effective in eliminating violence against women. | LL.M. | women, rights | 5, 16 |
| Peasley, Elyse Michelle | Piran, Niva | Women's Experiences of Embodied Joy: Resisting the Cultural Dictate of Bodily Dissatisfaction | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2013-06 | Among women in North America, body dissatisfaction is prevalent and well documented. Women are often unhappy with their bodies and strive to change their bodies to fit the dominant cultural ideal of beauty and femininity. Within this context, in which women are expected to focus tremendous resources, time, and energy on bodily striving and body dissatisfaction, some women are able to resist these expectations. They experience joy with their bodies—joy that is not contingent on their appearance, size, or weight. With respect to women’s embodied experiences of joy, a number of significant gaps exist in the research literature. The current study examined women’s experiences of embodied joy through the use of qualitative research methods, including individual interviews and a focus group. A feminist constructivist grounded theory frame was utilized. The findings of this analysis indicated the presence of four core dimensions of women’s joyful body experiences as a form of resistance to bodily dissatisfaction. The first core dimension addressed the experience of embodied joy, which included attunement, growth, liberation, and thriving. The second core dimension addressed participants’ active creation of environments that nurtured joy, including: creating spaces that facilitated embodied joy, creating internal openness to the experience of joy, and seeking supportive social relationships. The third core dimension addressed enacting joy in the context of resistance and struggle, specifically when navigating the imposition of the other’s external gaze. This core dimension included the themes of media deconstruction, disengagement from problematic relationships, personal practices of resistance, and critical political consciousness. The fourth core dimension involved enacting joy in the context of resistance and struggle as a journey towards joy, which included reclaimed childhood experiences, disruption and reconnection, and guiding other girls and women. The present study has implications for clinical work as well as for health promotion. Ultimately, women’s experiences of embodied joy both reflected their resistance to cultural dictates and further enabled them to resist the dictate of bodily dissatisfaction. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Peckham, Alexandra Lee | Williams, Paul A. | Caring for Caregivers: Establishing Resilience through Social Capital | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2016-06 | There is growing agreement in the research literature that informal caregivers play a crucial role in supporting high needs populations as well as contributing to the sustainability of formal healthcare systems. This dissertation uses a convergent parallel design consisting of three main research phases: analysis of secondary qualitative data from two case studies providing supports to informal caregivers of community-dwelling high-needs persons, including both seniors and children with complex medical needs; collection and analysis of primary qualitative interview data from providers involved with the case studies; and qualitative interviews with informal caregivers and care providers from across Ontario. The dissertation applies social capital theory as a conceptual framework to analyze how care providers and informal caregivers perceive different formal approaches to supporting informal caregivers as contributing to caregiver resilience. Within the policy and academic literature, there has been increased recognition for supporting people and their informal caregivers. Yet, this focus remains largely at the individual level, and caregiver burden and burnout continues to be assessed solely as a byproduct of the complex (mainly medical) needs of the care recipient. The findings from this dissertation suggest the importance of cultivating broader understandings of the â caregiver problemâ in order to identify, support, and assess networks of support (both formal and informal). Applying social capital theory and the concept of resilience, this dissertation identifies the importance of the healthcare system and connecting people to it and within it. This dissertation provides evidence for supporting the development of formal and informal ties, particularly at the bridging and linking levels to improve a care networkâ s access to resources and produce longer-term capacity and resilience. The use of social capital presents a novel conceptual advance in research on caregiver resilience, the relationship between caregiver and system sustainability, and the benefits that can derive from the multidimensional aspects of social capital. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Peer, Michal | Steiner, Meir | DOES PERCEIVED STRESS IN PREGNANT IMMIGRANT WOMEN PREDISPOSE THEIR INFANTS TO ALLERGIC DISEASE DEVELOPMENT? | Medical Science | 2017-06 | Prenatal maternal stress (PNMS) is linked with a multitude of negative outcomes in the exposed offspring, including allergic disease development. Pregnant Canadian immigrant women often experience high levels of stress; however, psychosocial contributors to PNMS and their physiologic sequelae remain understudied in this group. This pilot study prospectively examined whether PNMS in Canadian immigrant women was associated with allergic outcomes in their infants, focusing on potential mediators and underlying mechanisms. Seventy-eight women were examined in early-/mid-pregnancy, in late pregnancy, and at a minimum of one year postpartum. Assessments included questionnaires concerning PNMS and other psychosocial determinants of health, collection of saliva samples throughout the day for measurement of cortisol activity, collection of blood samples for measurement of serum cytokine levels, and administration of a skin-prick test on mothers and infants for measurement of allergic sensitization. Low levels of perceived stress in early-/mid-pregnancy were associated with a greater likelihood of allergic sensitization in infants, but this association was mediated by a lack of financial hardship (i.e., high socioeconomic status). Financial hardship and a greater number of prenatal stressful life events were associated with lowered cortisol activity in early-/mid-pregnancy. A trend was also seen for higher levels of IL-10 during late pregnancy in women reporting financial hardship. These results are limited by a small sample size that further decreased at each subsequent study (i.e., significant participant attrition). Nevertheless, the novelty of this study and the numerous strengths in its design (including women with a language barrier, objectively measuring atopy in mothers and infants, and examining underlying mechanisms) make this a unique contribution to the literature. Furthermore key facilitators and barriers to conducting health research in this group were identified that may aid future studies aiming to test these preliminary results in a larger sample size. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health, women | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Peixoto, Murilo | Sage, Rowan F | Low Temperature Performance of Leading Bioenergy Crops Utilizing the C4 Photosynthetic Pathway | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015-06 | The use of bioenergy has been considered one of the most important solutions for the reduction in the dependence on fossil fuels and to mitigate global climate change. C4 perennial grasses stands as the best alternative for biofuel feedstock and Miscanthus x giganteus has shown outstanding performance in cool climates. In addition, sugarcane has a history of high productivity and success in the biofuel industry of Brazil. The high photosynthetic rate at low temperature (14º to 20ºC) and radiation use efficiency of M. x giganteus allow this plant to build a vast canopy early in the spring, allowing it to intercept high amounts of solar radiation once temperature rise in summer, obtaining high yields of biomass by the end of growing season. It is unclear, however, how Miscanthus will tolerate the severe winter cold and frequent episodic frost in the spring of higher latitudes, like Canada. Here, I show that rhizomes of diploid Miscanthus can tolerate temperatures above -14ºC if sub-zero acclimation is allowed, while allopolyploid Miscanthus are tolerant to temperatures above -6.5ºC. Also, in contrary to M. sinensis, shoots of Miscanthus hybrids were killed when exposed to sunlight at temperatures below 10ºC in the spring. However, triploid Miscanthus showed great recovery and three weeks later plants had a vast and closed canopy while M. sinensis plants had a poor canopy. Lastly, I show that upland and lowland Hawaiian sugarcane grown at two moderate temperatures have little variation in temperature response and acclimation to low temperature. Because of its high productivity, Miscanthus should be considered in areas where it can securely be grown. According to the results found here, rhizomes of diploid Miscanthus have the potential to be grown up to 60ºN, but the frequency of episodic chilling events should also be taken into consideration. Here, I show that the genepool of the Miscanthus genus has the potential to increase cold tolerance in the most productive lines, which will increase the range for this crop. Sugarcane is still restricted to tropical and subtropical zones, but higher cold tolerance can be achieved by hybridizing this plant with Miscanthus. | Ph.D. | energy, climate, solar | 7, 13 |
| Peleato, Nicolas Miguel | Andrews, Robert C||Legge, Raymond L | Application and refinement of fluorescence spectroscopy for organic matter characterization in drinking water | Civil Engineering | 2017-11 | This research examined the use and advancement of fluorescence spectroscopy as an organic characterization method in drinking water treatment, providing novel insight into the performance of and fundamental mechanisms of water treatment processes. Using fluorescence spectroscopy coupled with analysis techniques including parallel factors analysis (PARAFAC) and peak shifts, biofiltration was found to have variable impact on individual fluorophores. The fluorescence method identified production of humic-like matter by the microbial communities, ultimately resulting in a unique treated organic character of the treated water. Through correlations with formation potentials of halogenated furanones, polysaccharides were identified as possible precursors. Pre-oxidation, was suggested to result in increased proportionality of carbonyl-containing functional groups and greater carbon oxidative state. A continuous fluorescence system was developed as part of this research and implemented in two studies focused on fouling mitigation of ultrafiltration (UF) membranes. A full-scale study was conducted that continuously monitored membrane feed water organic character. Utilizing the continuous fluorescence, improved prediction accuracy of membrane fouling was found using a neural network approach. A second study, conducted at bench-scale focused on understanding the role of organic surface changes and irreversible fouling potential. Low coagulant doses ( | Ph.D. | water, production | 6, 12 |
| Peled, Inbar | Moreau, Sophia R | From Michael Brown To Yosef Salamsa: The Racialization of Ethiopian Jews in Israeli Law | Law | 2018-11 | This thesis presents a comparative analysis of the racialization of Israelis of Ethiopian descent in the Israeli justice system. Located at the intersection of criminal law doctrine and Critical Race Theory, the thesis analyses Israeli search and seizure cases by comparing them to Fourth Amendment law cases in the U.S. I argue that the lack of a lexicon with which to express harms caused to racialized minorities in the Israeli context stems, in part, from a reciprocal relationship between the Israeli national and legal cultures. I will show how aspects of this relationship can be used to reform the legal system. As the first extensive legal research on racial disadvantage faced by Ethiopian Israelis in the criminal justice system, this thesis seeks to add to the conversation regarding the lived experience of vulnerable communities of colour. | LL.M. | justice | 16 |
| Pelvin, Holly | Gartner, Rosemary I | Doing Uncertain Time: Understanding the Experiences of Punishment in Pre-trial Custody | Criminology | 2017-11 | On any given day in Ontarioâ s provincial prisons, there are more legally innocent people in prison than there are sentenced prisoners. Yet, little is known about the experiences of these prisoners and the challenges they pose for correctional institutions. I seek to fill this gap by drawing on in-depth interviews with 120 pre-trial detainees (60 men and 60 women) and 40 staff at four maximum-security facilities in Ontario. My analysis focuses on the three temporal dimensions distinctive to what is known as pre-trial custody or â remand imprisonmentâ that have been neglected by prior research: experiences of arrest and police custody, making bail and court appearances, and daily life on remand. My findings indicate that this process inflicts a series of state-sanctioned harms on legally innocent prisoners. Much of the harm of this experience can be traced back to the fact that the criminal justice system is ignorant of or unconcerned with the human costs of this process. Police, acting under their authority to arrest, can apprehend and hold an individual, and have no legal obligation to allow a personal phone call so that arrangements about their lives can be made. Court appearances typically require some advance preparation; yet remand prisoners in Ontario must grapple with an outdated phone system that permits collect-calls to landlines but not cellular devices, leaving many unable to contact lawyers or loved ones, and seriously limiting their ability to prepare for court. Daily life in these facilities is characterized by uncertainty for both prisoners and staff, who must grapple with whatever challenges come their way in the form of an unpredictable flow of new admissions. In this thesis, I argue that disruption and uncertainty are unique features of pre-trial imprisonment and I examine the costs of these on the individuals confined to and working inside these facilities. | Ph.D. | women, institution, justice | 5, 16 |
| Pelz, Michael E. | Hansen, Randall | Europeanization, National Party Systems and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights: The Cases of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania | Political Science | 2016-06 | In recent years, there has been a growing divergence in national policies towards lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) persons within a growing European Union (EU). This variation is surprising given that support of LGBT persons, and more specifically, of state recognition of gender-neutral partnerships has become a widely disseminated EU value. In explaining why this variation has occurred, this dissertation forwards two central arguments: First, the EU’s ability to achieve policy convergence in the sphere of LGBT rights across all 28 member states is limited by a lack ‘hard tools’ at the EU’s disposal. In absence of a larger horizontal equality directive, the EU must increasingly rely on elite persuasion to achieve its goals in member states. This contrasts with the reality in applicant states, such as Montenegro, where the promise of eventual membership in the EU provides strong external incentives to comply with policies supported by Brussels. As this thesis finds, such direct pressure is absent for countries already within the Union, and elevates the importance of domestic factors that can challenge pro-LGBT EU norms. Secondly, through a closer examination of the Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, it is argued that the stability of national party systems, measured through the number of political parties, ideological polarization and issue cleavages, as well as system volatility, can significantly shape whether a country adopts EU LGBT norms or not. The relative stability and more programmatic nature of the Estonian party system made it easier for a minimal number of elites to adopt EU-supported gender-neutral partnerships. By contrast, the highly volatile and unstable Latvian and Lithuanian party systems made the passage of laws touching on socially contentious issues, such as gay rights, extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible to pass, despite a supranational environment strongly encouraging such laws. While this analysis derives centrally from the Baltic countries, it may have larger generalizable potential, as many countries within the EU with underdeveloped or unstable party systems have shown resistance to adopting pro-EU LGBT laws. | Ph.D. | rights, equality | 5, 16 |
| Peña, Jaime Camilo Sapag Muñoz de la | Rush, Brian | Developing a Framework to Evaluate Collaborative Mental Health Services in Primary Care Systems in Latin America | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-11 | Mental health, including substance and concurrent disorders, is a major public health challenge worldwide. Approaches to collaborative mental health care (CMHC) are being implemented in Latin America to strengthen the accessibility and delivery of mental health services in primary health care settings. However, there are no well-defined frameworks to evaluate CMHC. Objective: To develop a feasible and meaningful evaluation framework to support the ongoing improvement and performance measurement of services and systems in Latin America regarding CMHC. Methods: Three public health networks were selected in Mexico, Nicaragua and Chile. The study included: (1) a critical review of the literature focused on relevant health services research approaches, theory and evaluation models; (2) an environmental scan at each of the three research sites, comprising document reviews, key informant interviews with decision makers, focus groups with front line clinicians, and a survey for other key stakeholders, to better understand the local context and evaluation needs, as well as to identify some implementation challenges and opportunities; (3) a Delphi group with experts to identify the main areas of consensus, as well as disagreements about the importance and feasibility of evaluation dimensions; and (4) a final consultation in the three sites aimed at discussing preliminary results and refining the evaluation framework. Quantitative and qualitative data were integrated in the analysis. Results: A comprehensive evaluation framework for CMHC in Latin America was developed. It includes 5 levels, 28 dimensions and 40 domains, as well as examples of indicators and an implementation plan. A knowledge exchange strategy was developed aimed at reaching the research sites as well as the academic community and other stakeholders. Conclusion: The evaluation framework represents an important effort to foster accountability and quality regarding CMHC in Latin America. Recommendations to build upon current capacity and to successfully address the existing implementation challenges are further discussed. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Perciani, Catia Taniela | MacDonald, Kelly S | Setting the Stage for a Potential Varicella Zoster Virus (VZV)- based HIV Vaccine: Characterization of the Mucosal Immune Response Induced by VZV Vaccination in Humans | Immunology | 2019-06 | In the face of enormous “Treatment as Prevention” efforts, we are still faced with new HIV infections every year. In 2017 alone, there were 1.8 million new HIV infections worldwide; experts feel we will never eliminate HIV in the absence of a vaccine. Among the vaccine strategies tested to date, those involving replicating recombinant viral vectors show the most promise. However, results obtained with multiple human adenovirus-vectored HIV vaccines raised concerns about the impact of pre-existing immunity boosted by the vector backbone on the safety and efficacy of an HIV vaccine. Studies in both human and non-human primates demonstrated that a protective HIV vaccine would most likely have to induce and sustain immunity at the genital and rectal mucosa, the portal of entry of HIV, without fueling disproportionate local inflammation. Varicella-zoster virus (VZV), the causative agent of chickenpox, holds several advantages as a vaccine vector such as its long-standing record of safety and immunogenicity in humans and its ability to maintain long-term immunity. However, the mucosal immune response induced by live-attenuated VZV vaccination remains unknown. I conducted a primary human clinical trial in a cohort of healthy VZV- seropositive Kenyan women (n=45) to assess this response. The immune activation status and VZV-specific immune responses were characterized longitudinally in systemic and mucosal specimens, including cervical cytobrushes and rectal biopsies, pre- and post-vaccination with the commercial live-attenuated VZVOka vaccine. Our data revealed that vaccination with VZV significantly boosted VZV-specific antibody responses in blood and in the female genital tract. Importantly, VZV vaccination did not increase the frequency of activated CD4 T cells or CD4 T cells expressing the HIV co- receptor CCR5 in blood, cervix or rectum. Additionally, there was no significant vaccine- induced change in the concentration of the pro-inflammatory cytokines in either cervico- vaginal or rectal secretions. These results support the downstream development and evaluation of a VZV-vectored chimeric HIV vaccine. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Peregrina-Kretz, Diliana | Seifert, Tricia | The Experiences of Postsecondary Students with Learning Disabilities in Summer Transition Programs: A Multi-case Study of Six Programs in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-11 | Students with Learning Disabilities (LD) are the largest and fastest growing sub group of students with disabilities in postsecondary education. Despite their increasing enrollment, students with learning disabilities remain an under-represented group, and are categorized at risk due to the low graduation rates compared to their peers, specifically at the university level. The first year is a critical year for all students entering postsecondary education as it is this year where students are most likely to drop-out. For students with learning disabilities, the first year is particularly important as they must adjust to a new academic environment and accommodations from what they are accustomed to in high school. Understanding what supports and influences improve these experiences for students with learning disabilities at the onset of their postsecondary education is a crucial step in augmenting their persistence and graduation prospects. Using a multi-case study design, I examine the experiences of students with learning disabilities in six summer transition programs in public universities in Ontario, Canada and how these programs prepared students in making the transition from high school to university. The summer transition programs under investigation resulted from the recommendations made by Ontario’s Learning Opportunity Task Force to the Ministry of Training Colleges and Universities to fund transition programs to increase the retention and graduation of students with learning disabilities. Findings from this study show that students with learning disabilities who participate in transition programs gain academic tools and strategies that help them transition into their first year of university (and beyond) such as time-management, note taking, and seeking disability related support services and accommodations; learn about the importance of self-advocacy and communicating with faculty, staff, and peers regarding their disability; and learn how to navigate the university and the services available to help them succeed. In addition, participants noted that attending the transition program helped them find new confidence in themselves and find a sense of community amongst other participants in the program. | Ed.D. | educat | 4 |
| Pereira Marsiaj, Juan Pedro | Rayside, David | Unpacking Social Movements' Democratizing Impact: The Case of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Travesti Movement in Brazil | Political Science | 2017-06 | This dissertation examines the impact of the Brazilian lesbian, gay, bisexual, and travesti (LGBT) movement on the construction of a more inclusive democracy. In order to do this, I develop a framework for assessing the “whether,” “how,” and “why” of social movements’ democratizing impact, based on an understanding of substantive democracy that sees the inclusion of marginalized groups as a central test. Substantive democratic inclusion would require the autonomous agency of the social movement fighting for the interests of the marginalized group in question; public recognition of the marginalized group via the increased visibility and more widespread toleration of its members in the public sphere; the participation of marginalized groups in decision-making institutions, by increasing their access and influence over policy-makers, as well as their presence in relevant institutional spaces; concreteness of the gains made by the movement, particularly in the form of public policies; and universality in policy effect, addressing more systemic inequalities that affect those most strongly marginalized within that population. By focusing on the period from the emergence of the LGBT movement in 1979 to the end of the first term of Dilma Rousseff’s presidency in 2014, and examining movement activity in the public sphere and actions aimed at the State (federal executive, legislative, and judiciary branches), I argue that the movement has achieved an incomplete democratic inclusion of sexual minorities. This incompleteness is characterized by headway in terms of autonomous agency, recognition, and participation, but limitations on the concreteness and universality of gains. This pattern of impact is shaped by three broad factors, namely the historical structures of marginalization, the institutional framework activists face in their engagement with the State, and the dominant regime of interest mediation. In the conclusion, I engage in a comparison with other social movements in Brazil to contextualize these findings. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Pereira, David A | McCready, Lance T | Identity, Subjectivity, and Schooling: Portugueseness and the Educational Deselection of Portuguese-speaking Students in Toronto | Social Justice Education | 2018-11 | The academic trajectories of Portuguese-speaking students in Toronto, Canada, have been characterized as underachieving and truncated. Concurrently, the voices of Portuguese-speaking students themselves have been relatively absent from reports on their rates of underachievement and school dropout. This critical school ethnography explores Portuguese-speaking students’ school experiences in a Toronto high school to contextualize these statistics and expose how identity and subjectivity inform their school (dis)engagement. While peers and parents inform aspects of said (dis)engagement, thus far these have been the main if not only factors to explain this underachievement phenomenon. This ethnography, however, demonstrates that school personnel and their expectations appear to also play a role in some students’ decisions to deselect schooling. This dissertation exposes discourses that circulate in classrooms and other school spaces that construct Portuguese-speaking students and their parents in Toronto as working class immigrants. These discourses (inclusive of phrases and actions) draw on language, nationalism and diaspora, and class and labour to construct dominant depictions of what I and others (da Silva, 2012) have termed portugueseness. Portugueseness becomes a subjectivity that marks the Portuguese-speaking student subject for certain experiences in schools. In addition to reflecting on their experiences to illustrate how portugueseness is constructed, participants’ experiences and narratives revealed that association with portugueseness (or being marked as Portuguese(-speaking)) placed them disproportionately at risk of experiencing certain disciplinary practices in school. These disciplinary practices reference dominant depictions of portugueseness, namely disciplining language, dropout and disability. And, participants recounted both their defiant and compliant responses to these disciplining practices. Finally, disciplinary practices appear to inform educational deselection, a process that sees some students drop out of school and others remain enrolled despite deeply disengaging with school and putting forth a bare minimum of effort to be pushed through, rather than be pushed out of, their high school trajectory. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Perhar, Gurbir | Arhonditsis, George | Modelling the Effects of Seston Food Quality on Zooplankton Growth: Implications for Broader food Web Dynamics | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2012-11 | An increasing number of contemporary studies in aquatic ecology emphasize the im- portance of highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFAs) at the plant-animal interface. Studies have demonstrated a wide range of fatty acid profiles in primary producers, forcing her- bivorous zooplankton to differentially retain fatty acids to meet somatic requirements. Herbivores also vary in their somatic fatty acid profiles; cladocerans collect Eicosapen- taenoic Acid (EPA), copepods prefer Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA). Fatty acid internal reserves can be broken down to meet structural needs (i.e. phospholipid synthesis), fuel reproduction and may play a role in cold weather adaptation. Several authors have noted increases in HUFA concentration with lowering ambient temperatures. Cladoceran membranes form a gel at lower temperatures, while copepod membranes remain fluid and allow active overwintering. Both fish and crustaceans accumulate high concentrations of HUFAs during periods of rapid growth, but colimitation with elemental resources may exist. Recent modeling results suggest food webs with high quality (nutritional and biochemical) primary producers can attain inverted biomass distributions with efficient energy transfer between trophic levels. The adoption rate for this material into man- agement studies remains low, and while other sectors of the scientific community thrive on the potential of HUFAs, planktonic food-web studies are choosing traditional view points over forward thinking. Bearing in mind the emerging hypotheses on the critical factors that drive the energy flow in the plant-animal interface, my dissertation will at- tempt to address the following general questions: What are the distinct signatures of food quality and food quantity on planktonic food web dynamics? How do nutritional and biochemical factors affect the flow of energy at the plant-animal interface? What is our current understanding of the role of highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFAs) in aquatic food webs? To what extent can the current generation of plankton models reproduce the lower food web patterns when explicitly accounting for HUFAs? Is the integration of the HUFA role into water quality management models feasible? Explicitly accounting for HUFAs requires integrating factors of animal physiology with macro-ecology: what are the ramifications? Finally, what are the evolutionary aspects of animals coping with food quality? | PhD | food, nutrition, water, energy, ecology | 2, 6, 7, 14 |
| Perrault, Andrew | Boutilier, Craig | Developing and Coordinating Autonomous Agents for Efficient Electricity Markets | Computer Science | 2018-11 | Whether for environmental, conservation, efficiency, or economic reasons, developing next generation electric power infrastructure is critical. Temporally relevant, granular data from smart meters provide new opportunities for data-driven management of the power grid. New developments—for example, electricity markets with multiple suppliers, the integration of renewable power sources into the system, and spikier demand patterns due to, say, electric vehicles—create new challenges for efficient grid operation. Computer science is uniquely positioned to assist with increasingly sophisticated techniques for handling and learning from large amounts of data. The methods of game theory and multi-agent systems provide a natural framework for modeling the competing incentives of electricity market participants. This thesis focuses on the use of learning, optimization, mechanism design, and preference elicitation methods to coordinate electricity demand and supply while respecting the incentives of market participants. Specifically, we propose an approach where an autonomous agent acts on behalf of each household, coordinating with inhabitants to relay information and make decisions on their behalf about electricity consumption. We focus on three problems that arise in developing such agents: (i) how to coordinate consumers' electricity use, (ii) how to share the costs of consumption among households (via their agents), and (iii) how to gather consumption preference data from consumers. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on different aspects of the first two problems. Both use a matching markets approach. In Chapter 3, we focus on the impact of demand smoothness and peaks on the supplier’s cost, and in Chapter 4, on the impact of predictability. In both chapters, we develop new cost sharing schemes that are resilient to certain forms of strategic behavior on the part of the agents and that achieve strong performance in experiments. Chapter 5 studies the third problem. Motivated by control of heating and cooling systems, we present a new approach to preference elicitation, where the cost and accuracy of query responses is dependent on the user’s familiarity with the conditions specified in the query. We show that despite the theoretical difficulty in this setting, we can build solvers that perform well in practice. | Ph.D. | renewable, infrastructure, resilien, environment, conserv | 7, 9, 13, 14 |
| Perreira, Tyrone | Berta, Whitney | Insights into Nurses’ Work: Exploring Relationships among Work Attitudes Work-related Behaviours | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-03 | Work motivation has been associated with work productivity. In health care, low motivation levels are associated with low productivity and linked to poor performance, decreased patient safety, and overall poor quality care. Hence the importance, ascribed in the literature, to clearly identifying the relationships between and among factors associated with work motivation, including work attitudes, and behaviours linked to work performance such as extra-role behaviours. Despite their importance to performance in health care, these relationships are understudied and poorly understood. The purpose of this study is to better understand work attitudes and their relationships to one another and to extra-role behaviours amongst nurses working in hospitals, the community, and long-term care settings in Ontario. This study comprises two stages: first, a scoping review focused on identifying individual-, unit-level, and organization-level characteristics that influence work motivation in health service organizations. The findings from the scoping review, augmented by a more in-depth review of the literature, aided in the development of a conceptual framework that guided the second stage of the study, to examine relationships amongst a specific set of nurses’ work attitudes - including perceptions of organizational justice, perceived organizational support, and affective commitment - and extra-role behaviours – specifically, organizational citizenship behaviours - in Ontario health care settings. In the second stage of the study, a survey was developed and administered to frontline nurses actively working in hospitals, the community, and long-term care settings in Ontario. Relationships amongst the constructs of interest were examined using structural equation modeling and path analysis. Examining the relationships of these concepts in a single model is novel, and offers insights regarding their complexity. The analyses further suggest that prior studies may be under-nuanced, and approaches to conceptualizing the concepts of perceived organizational justice and affective commitment in particular may have led to erroneous conclusions regarding their associations with perceived organizational support and organizational citizenship behaviours. This study further addresses four significant gaps previously identified in the work motivation and work behaviour literature: (1) how affective commitment relates to behavioural efforts, specifically organizational citizenship behaviours; (2) utilization of reliable and validated instruments to study work motivation; (3) use of a sufficiently large sample to have empirical support for generalizability; and (4) examination of these phenomena, among nurses, across diverse health care settings. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| Perrott, Katherine Joy | Rankin, Katharine | The Image of the Suburbs: Planning Urbanity in the Toronto Region | Geography | 2018-11 | This dissertation examines the discursive production of new developments and the reinvention of suburban image in the municipalities arcing around the City of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Planning policies promoting densification, alongside rising housing prices, and persistent concerns about car-dependence, set the context for aspirations of urbanity in planning and development. Discourses analyzed include transcripts of interviews with housing and community producers (planners, municipal councillors, and developers), the planning policies produced by government, and the marketing materials produced by the development industry. Studies examining the historic planning and promotion of the suburbs have shown the prominence placed on symbolic distinction from the city with references to nature, rurality and countryside, where residents are promised a healthy retreat, privacy, safety, and an ideal place to raise children. This dissertation argues that suburban planning and housing marketing discourses in the Toronto region reveal an emerging reversal in the suburban script that downplays the urban-suburban distinction and promotes a more urbane place image, representing a case study of broader contemporary efforts to urbanize the suburbs. In the first of three empirical papers, the research shows how stacked and back-to-back townhouses are planned and promoted by intertwining discourses of suburban "evolution" and "routes to maturity" through homeownership where smaller units offer a type of fix to market constraints, and young adults are produced as suburban-re-inventor subjects. The second paper demonstrates the importance of aesthetics and modern design in the discursive production of competitive and attractive world-class growth nodes and corridors as part of the ideological-political trajectory towards post-suburbanization. The third paper examines the gap that producers describe between the promises of compact city theory and the in-practice realities of car-dependence and separated land uses. While some marketing materials draw on the long-standing discursive production of the suburbs as the "best of both worlds," producers describe the contemporary suburbs as increasingly compact in residential areas, but still car-dependent leading to concerns about being "squished-in" and stuck in traffic. Practitioner perspectives on the successes and challenges of current strategies signal the need for additional theories and policies, beyond residential densification, to resolve the challenges of the suburbs. | Ph.D. | urban, industr, rural, production, land use | 9, 11, 12, 15 |
| Perry, Joseph Adam | Burstow, Bonnie | Bunkhouse Drama: An Examination of Control and Agency among Migrant Farm Workers in Ontario, Canada | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2015-06 | This thesis examines workers' experiences of control and agency at the micro-political level of the dormitory/workplace in the context of Canada's Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP). I ask: 1) How are individual migrant workers responding to workplace and (im)migration policies and practices that aim to produce a flexible and compliant workforce; and 2) what forms of creative research strategies are best suited to documenting and examining the private, largely hidden lives of migrant farm workers? The thesis sheds light on the daily forms of resilience, opposition and survival among an entrenched, yet largely hidden workforce on the margins of Canada's labour market. I conducted my fieldwork in the town of Leamington, Ontario, a well-established hub of Canada's greenhouse industry, and as such a significant terminus for SAWP workers. In order to fully engage workers in the research process, I incorporated a qualitative, embodied, active and participatory approach to research grounded in life history, personal narrative, and drama-based methods. Through my interactions with workers I explore in detail how colonial attitudes operate alongside Canada's official policy of multiculturalism in the context of migration and employment among `low-skilled' guest workers. Throughout the thesis I examine workers' stories through the conceptual lenses of worker agency, workplace relations and worker emancipation. My research reveals that in tightly controlled and surveilled workplace environments workers learn to be intensely competitive and to distrust each other as a means of survival, resulting in a deep sense of isolation among workers, thus stifling potential opportunities for building group solidarity. However, I found that workers' participation in non-work related activities during leisure hours produced small breaches in the accepted norms of control, offering potentially rich opportunities for critical reflection and dialogue. I argue that an analysis of complex and even contradictory worker subjectivities that are developed and performed in everyday life among Canada's SAWP workers offers a more nuanced understanding of worker solidarities, collective social movements and the potential for labour education at the margins of Canada's labour market. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, worker, industr | 8, 9 |
| Persaud, Malini | Pringle, Dorothy | Pleasure in the Daily Lives of People Living with Advanced Dementia in a Long-term Care Facility: A Multiple Case Study Approach | Nursing Science | 2009-06 | According to the Canadian Study of Health and Aging most of the 12,630 Canadians living with advanced dementia reside in long-term care facilities. This number is rising due to an aging population. The purpose of this study is to address an identified gap in our knowledge about what creates pleasure in people with advanced dementia, through first understanding family caregivers’ ways of eliciting and interpreting positive emotions in their relatives and then having the personal support worker (PSW) try these same approaches to see if similar responses are achieved. This study used a qualitative multiple case study design. Data collection methods included digitally recorded interviews and video-recorded observations of interactions between residents and caregivers. A case is defined as a resident with moderately to severely advanced dementia. Each case had two informants: a family member and a PSW meeting inclusion criterion. There were seven cases. The resident participants spanned a range from moderately advanced to severely advanced dementia. Data analysis used both inductive and deductive coding with sensitizing concepts of selfhood, personhood, continuity of personality and well-being. The results of this study centred on four main themes related to the research questions about the sources and indicators of pleasure and the potential for PSWs to replicate what family members did with residents. Some sources of pleasure were lost, some were maintained and new ones developed post-illness in all of the residents. Both family members and PSWs were knowledgeable about sources and indicators of pleasure for the people with dementia they were involved with. The analysis demonstrated that for individuals with very advanced dementia, the concept of pleasure or enjoyment is not applicable. The family members of the two residents with very advanced dementia used music, touch and sweets to elicit a pleasurable response but the resident did not display indicators of pleasure in response; instead, the residents responded with grasping or other responses which require further research to understand fully. Future research should build upon these findings in order to further understand the concept of positive affect: pleasure, interest and enjoyment in people with advanced dementia of the Alzheimer type. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Pervaiz, Muhammad | Sain, Mohini | Protein Recovery from Secondary Paper Sludge and Its Potential Use as Wood Adhesive | Forestry | 2012-11 | Secondary sludge is an essential part of biosolids produced through the waste treatment plant of paper mills. Globally paper mills generate around 3.0 million ton of biosolids and in the absence of beneficial applications, the handling and disposal of this residual biomass poses a serious environmental and economic proposition. Secondary paper sludges were investigated in this work for recovery of proteins and their use as wood adhesive. After identifying extracellular polymeric substances as adhesion pre-cursors through analytical techniques, studies were carried out to optimize protein recovery from SS and its comprehensive characterization. A modified physicochemical protocol was developed to recover protein from secondary sludge in substantial quantities. The combined effect of French press and sonication techniques followed by alkali treatment resulted in significant improvement of 44% in the yield of solubilized protein compared to chemical methods. The characterization studies confirmed the presence of common amino acids in recovered sludge protein in significant quantities and heavy metal concentration was reduced after recovery process. The sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis analysis revealed the presence of both low and high molecular weight protein fractions in recovered sludge protein. After establishing the proof-of-concept in the use of recovered sludge protein as wood adhesive, the bonding mechanism of protein adhesives with cellulose substrate was further elucidated in a complementary protein-modification study involving soy protein isolate and its glycinin fractions. The results of this study validated the prevailing bonding theories by proving that surface wetting, protein structure, and type of wood play important role in determining final adhesive strength. Recovered sludge protein was also investigated for its compatibility to formulate hybrid adhesive blends with formaldehyde and bio-based polymers. Apart from chemical cross-linking, the synergy of adhesive blends was evaluated through classical rule-of-mixture. The findings of this study warrants further investigation concerning other potential uses of recovered sludge protein, especially as food supplements and economic implications. | PhD | waste, environment | 12, 13 |
| Peterson, Jessica Zara | Hall, Linda McGillis | Job Stress, Job Satisfaction and Intention to Leave Among New Nurses | Nursing Science | 2009-06 | The difficulties new nurses experience when first entering acute care work environments have been recognized since Kramer’s seminal work in the 1970s. Despite the implementation of interventions designed to help ease the transition, the literature continues to report that new graduates undergo stress when beginning their careers as nurses. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of perceived demands, control, social support and self-efficacy on the job stress, job satisfaction and intention to leave of new nurses. The conceptual framework used in the study was Karasek’s (1979) Job Demands-Control-Support (JDC-S) model. This model posits that job demands increase employee stress, but that increasing control can alleviate the negative effects of high demands. Social support and self-efficacy were included in this study as potential moderators of the relationships between demands and control and the outcome variables. This was an exploratory study that utilized a cross-sectional survey was used to gather data. Surveys were mailed to the homes of new nurses working in acute care hospitals across Ontario, Canada. Data were received from 232 new nurses, a response rate of 23.8%. Nurses in the sample had an average of 18.2 months of experience. Data were analyzed using separate hierarchical regression models for each dependent variable. The results showed that the main effects of job demands, social support and self-efficacy provided partial support for the JDC-S model when examining job stress, job satisfaction and intention to leave the job. Only self-efficacy was significantly related to intention to leave the profession. There was no evidence of moderating effects of social support or self-efficacy. An understanding of factors in the work environment that influence new nurses may assist in supporting them during the transition. By exploring the effects of demands, control, social support and self-efficacy on new graduates’ job stress, job satisfaction and intention to leave, this study may provide direction to nursing leaders who are working new nurses in acute care. | PhD | worker | 8 |
| Petrella, Anika Rae | Sabiston, Catherine M | The Ball’s in Our Court: The Development of a Sport-based Supportive Care Program for Testicular Cancer Survivors | Exercise Sciences | 2020-06 | The need for age-appropriate supportive care for young adults with cancer is well recognized given the number of life-years affected. Yet engagement by testicular cancer survivors has been historically low in available supportive care research initiatives and usual care programs. This lack of engagement may be credited, in part, to an absence of gender-sensitized programming. In non-cancer populations, physical-activity has been leveraged as a way to increase engagement from men in health-promotion initiatives. The purpose of this mixed methods, theoretically-informed program of research was to better understand the association between physical activity and survivorship experiences of young men diagnosed and treated for testicular cancer. In study one, the associations between psychological needs, exercise (a sub-component of physical activity), and self-rated physical and mental health among testicular cancer survivors were tested using a cross-sectional design. Needs satisfaction was positively associated with self-rated physical and self-rated mental health, and exercise mediated the relationship between needs satisfaction and self-rated physical health. Study two used a concurrent mixed methods design (qualitative interviews and a cross sectional survey). The survivorship experiences of men with testicular cancer were described, and information specific to supportive care intervention preferences were provided. In study three, the perspectives of key clinical (e.g., oncologists) and sport (e.g., coaches) stakeholders on the development and implementation of a physical activity-based supportive care program were explored. Buy-in from key stakeholders was identified, along with critical program components (e.g., psychoeducational workbook topics) and recommendations for intervention delivery. Results from studies one through three informed the foundation of the intervention design, which was then piloted and evaluated in study four. Findings supported the feasibility, acceptability and preliminary effectiveness of a group, sport-based supportive care model in this population. Collectively, this work highlights the unique survivorship profile of men with testicular cancer. Moreover, these studies identified barriers to supportive care engagement and the value of gender-sensitized care in addressing the needs of this underserved population. Findings suggest that physical activity can be used as a gender-sensitized approach to engage men in supportive care and may be useful for improving health and wellness throughout survivorship in this population. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Petrescu, Maria Claudia | Rena, Helms-Park | Minority Language Acquisition and Retention: A study of Canadian-born Romanian Speaking Bilingual Children | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2014-11 | Preserving a minority first language has been found to be very important for the overall personal and educational development of immigrant children. However, successful bilingual development involving a minority language is often challenging in situations where the majority language dominates communication not only provincially and nationally but also internationally. This dissertation investigates the conditions under which a first language (Romanian) can be acquired and maintained in an English-dominant setting as well as any impact that the L1 has on the L2 (English), to which the children are formally introduced upon entry to junior kindergarten. Three children participated in this longitudinal study from the commencement of junior kindergarten (~ 4;0) until the start of grade 1 (~ 6;0). For the purposes of charting development (or possible attrition), language proficiency was assessed in Romanian and in English through separate measures of lexical (PPVT and Romanian-adapted PPVT), phonological (CTOPP and Romanian-adapted CTOPP), and syntactic and narrative (picture-story based instruments) abilities. In addition, the children's communicative competence in the two languages was evaluated more holistically through audio recorded data of the children's interactions in various naturalistic situations. Information about the children's home language practices was also obtained through interviews conducted with their parents.The data collected allowed for a unique, psycholinguistically rich, and culturally well-rounded account of the bilingual development of Romanian-Canadian children. The results demonstrated that the children continued to develop their minority language alongside the majority language. However, the lack of formal schooling in Romanian seemed to have impeded the growth of the children's academic vocabulary and, possibly, narrative skills in Romanian. This could be rectified through formal minority language education. The findings also demonstrate that two years of schooling in English narrows and, in some respects, even erases the gap between the English-as-L2 children and their monolingual counterparts. This study provides unique data on bilingual Romanian-Canadian children. The specially adapted vocabulary and phonological tests in Romanian make it possible to examine the development of the minority and majority languages side by side. Also, the longitudinal design allows for capturing change over multiple points in time within each of the two languages. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| Petrosyan, Yelena | Wodchis, Walter P | The quality of care among older adults with diabetes comorbid with other chronic conditions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-06 | The management of people with multiple chronic conditions requires understanding the extent to which concurrent chronic conditions contribute and interact to affect the patientâ s health status, as well as assessing the risk and benefits of various strategies for the treatment of complex needs in patients. A single condition focus in both clinical care and research remains and limits the assessment of care for people with multiple chronic conditions. The overall aim of this project was to evaluate the quality of overall care for older adults with selected disease combinations in ambulatory care settings. The first study aimed to identify a set of evidence-based and valid quality indicators for evaluating ambulatory care for older adults with selected chronic conditions, including diabetes, hypertension, chronic ischemic heart disease, major depression and osteoarthritis. The second study aimed to critically appraise the identified quality indicators and select a set of indicators for evaluating the quality of care for older adults with diabetes with comorbid concordant and discordant chronic conditions. The third study aimed to examine the difference in the quality of care between patients with 2 vs. 1 selected concordant vs. discordant comorbid conditions, and to examine associations of quality of care and hospitalizations among older adults with selected disease combinations. The study findings suggest that older adults with diabetes are at risk of suboptimal care with additional selected comorbid conditions, especially those with discordant comorbid conditions. The study findings also support the importance of continuity of care for older diabetes patients with comorbid chronic conditions. The study findings suggest that the likelihood of hospitalizations increases with the number of prescribed drugs among older adults with comorbidities. There is a need for a holistic approach in education and clinical care of older adults with diabetes taking into account concomitant conditions that affect patientâ s health status. Future research is needed for measuring the quality of care in the larger diabetes population and reporting by different stratifications, including age, sex, primary care models to see if there are any patterns in certain groups and target the interventions towards improving practices for specific sub groups. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Petrov, Andrey | DiFrancesco, Richard J. | Marginal Regions in Discursive Space: An Examination of Socio-economic Conditions, Development Paths and Spatial Differentiation in the Economic Systems of the Canadian and Russian North | Geography | 2008-11 | Marginal regions in discursive space: an examination of socio-economic conditions, development paths and spatial differentiation in the economic systems of the Canadian and Russian North Andrey N Petrov Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Department of Geography University of Toronto 2008 This dissertation is an effort to provide a new insight into the problem of regional development in remote areas under changing global and national political and economic conditions. It undertakes an assessment of shared economic histories, recent changes and future possibilities of socioeconomic prosperity and sustainability in marginal regions of Canada and Russia. The first chapter re-examines the structure of Canada’s and Russia’s space-economies by evoking the concept of regional multichotomies and economic marginality. I consider whether outcomes, geographic patterns and spatial logics of regional differentiation in the two countries are similar and explore the evidence of similarity between the North(s). Finding development outcomes in the Russian and Canadian North strikingly similar, the second chapter uses a combination of discursive analysis and regulation theory to re-interpret the origins of present-day problems and examine the genealogy of northern development. It argues that the Canadian and Russian northern development regimes shared profound commonalities. From these positions, the chapter compares and critiques past and present policies of regional development in the two Norths, and discusses their viability. The third chapter dwells upon a concept of ‘development regimes’ to analyze and compare contemporary regional development policies. It further investigates how recent economic development policies in the two Norths are adapting to changing economic and political realities, and if they were able to deliver desirable results to northern communities. The chapter compares and critiques contemporary policies and discusses possible alternative perspectives that reconcile an emerging postcolonial paradigm of development and realities of post-Fordism. It introduces the notion of the neo-staple development regime and describes its manifestations (Impact and Benefit Agreements). The fourth chapter presents a case for fostering knowledge based development and creative capital in the North. It builds on the innovation systems and institutional geography literatures to argue that the creative capital in the periphery is a pivotal factor of regional development. The chapter provides a conceptualization and empirical analysis of the creative class in remote regions. Contrary to the metropolitan bias, I argue that creative ‘hot spots’ beyond metropolis exist, and could become the centres of regional reinvention, if appropriate policies are introduced in support. | PhD | socioeconomic, innovation | 1, 9 |
| Pham, Quynh | Cafazzo, Joseph A | Innovative Research Methods to Evaluate Effective Engagement with Consumer Mobile Health Applications for Chronic Conditions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-11 | Consumer mobile health applications (mHealth apps) hold enormous potential to provide effective, efficient, economical, and scalable chronic health care. The opportunities afforded by these interventions to positively disrupt traditional chronic care models are significant, but require a cumulative evidence base to inform policy and practice. Evaluating these interventions, however, presents unique challenges. Traditional research methods are poorly suited to accommodate the rapidly changing technology landscape, which requires mHealth apps to constantly evolve and update just to remain usable, let alone effective. Moreover, they cannot characterize the complex, multilevel, and temporally dense patterns of effective engagement required to realize improved outcomes. This program of research sought to (1) investigate the complexity of conducting innovative evaluations of consumer mHealth apps for chronic conditions, and (2) build a research analytics platform to streamline evaluations and optimize mHealth apps. We established in Study 1 that mHealth evaluation methodology has rarely deviated from common methods, despite the need for more relevant and timely evaluations. This finding led us to explore the potential of analytic research methods in Study 2, where we discerned that digital health innovators were gaining nuanced insights into engagement, but had not yet characterized effective engagement for improved outcomes. To support innovators with this effort, our research in Study 3 focused on designing, developing, and evaluating a resource to consolidate, analyze, and visualize analytic indicators of effective engagement. The Analytics Platform to Evaluate Effective Engagement with digital health interventions—APEEE for short—provided innovators with a means to characterize the breadth and depth of mHealth app engagement required to achieve intended outcomes. Motivated by the potential for APEEE to power data-driven research methods, we directed Study 4 toward studying the implementation of the platform—and research analytics more broadly—in digital health evaluative practice, and surfaced the rich complexity of engaging in this practice to evidence mHealth apps. Raising the standard of mHealth evidence may enable greater confidence in the causal effect of apps on improved chronic health outcomes. It is this opportunity afforded by innovative research methods to close the gap between promised and realized health benefits that is most meaningful. | Ph.D. | health, innovation | 3, 9 |
| Phan, Diem | Dong, Vy Maria | Enantioselective Rhodium-catalyzed Hydroacylation of Alkenes and Ketones & Silver-catalyzed Hydroamination of Cyclopropenes | Chemistry | 2012-06 | Due to the scarcity of energy resources that we are facing today, there is an increasing need for new methodology developments that are green and sustainable while minimizing unnecessary substrate pre-functionalization, by-product formation and waste generation. In this context, asymmetric rhodium-catalyzed hydroacylation is an atom-economical method for the preparation of chiral ketone derivatives from aldehyde and olefin precursors. This transformation is also applicable to keto-aldehyde precursors en route to chiral lactones. This dissertation describes the development of three specific methodologies, namely: 1) the synthesis of enantioenriched cyclopropyl ketones by enantio- and diastereoselective intermolecular rhodium-catalyzed hydroacylation of cyclopropenes, 2) the synthesis of enantioenriched phthalides by enantioselective rhodium-catalyzed intramolecular hydroacylation of ketones, and 3) the synthesis of tertiary branched allylic amines by silver-catalyzed ring-opening hydroamination of cyclopropenes. | PhD | energy | 7 |
| Phillips, Anna | Cowling, Sharon A||Finkelstein, Sarah A | Modelling Riverine Dissolved Silica on Different Spatial and Ttemporal Scales using Statistical and Machine Learning Methods | Earth Sciences | 2020-06 | Changes in riverine delivery of dissolved silica (DSi) from continents to the ocean have consequences for the global carbon cycle and marine ecosystem health because (i) rivers are the main source of DSi to the oceans, (ii) diatoms, photosynthetic algae, depend on DSi to build their siliceous frustules, (iii) diatoms are an important foundation of many marine food webs, and (iv) diatoms dominate marine primary productivity and carbon export to the deep ocean. However, despite its importance, the controls of river DSi export are not fully constrained and there is no satisfactory model of riverine DSi yield (DSiY). This thesis investigates river DSiY using statistical and machine learning (ML) methods at different spatial and temporal scales. First, relationships between DSiY and environmental variables were analysed in western Canada to explore the controls of river DSiY on a regional scale. Statistical analyses indicated that land cover and climate are the best predictors of river DSiY in western Canada. Second, a ML model was developed to predict global river DSiY using 30 environmental variables including temperature, precipitation, land cover, lithology, and terrain. Of eight ML algorithms tested, one-step boosted random forest was the best method to predict river DSiY and climate and land cover were the most important predictors in the model, indicating that vegetation affects river DSiY on a global scale. Third, the ML model was used to predict changes in global river DSiY for the future (2090-2099, 2190-2199, and 2290- 2299) and mid-Holocene (6000 years ago). Global mean DSiY is projected to decrease in the future, but predictions have high spatial variability. And, global mean mid-Holocene river DSiY was estimated to be 30% lower than present-day, indicating that changes in paleo-river DSiY may be underestimated. This work demonstrates that DSiY is not only affected by climate and land cover, but that changes in climate and land cover have the potential to influence DSiY on different time scales. This thesis contributes the first study to use ML to model river DSiY and uses a more exhaustive set of variables than other studies, particularly a wider range of land cover variables. | Ph.D. | climate, environment, ocean, marine | 13, 14 |
| Phillips, Kaye | Kohler, Jillian | Canada's Contribution to Neglected Tropical Disease Research: A Co-authorship Network Analysis | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2014-11 | Objective: NTDs are a group of thirteen communicable diseases that thrive in impoverished settings and are a prime example of a global health issue in need of collaborative research solutions. The aim of this study was to design and apply an accessible yet systematic approach for analyzing the publication trends and collaboration structure of Canada’s neglected tropical disease (NTD) research network. Co-authorship network analysis is an emerging technique for understanding the complex dimensions and results of collaborative research. Methods: Multiple methods and measures were used to support this study including: an academic and grey literature review; a systematic bibliometric procedure (publication activity, quality, specializations and collaboration rates) and a co-authorship network analysis (network size, components, density, cliques, clustering, centralization and core-periphery) of countries and institutions contributing to Canada’s NTD research. Results: Over the past sixty years (1950-2010) there has been a notable increase in Canada’s NTD publication activity. Canada’s NTD researchers specialize in Leishmania and African sleeping sickness research and are mainly affiliated with academic institutions within Canada (McGill University, Laval University and University of British Columbia). International co-authorship activity is largely with OECD countries (United States, United Kingdom and France) and some non-OECD countries (Brazil, Iran, and Peru). The core of Canada’s NTD research network includes a tightly connected group of OECD countries and two African countries (Uganda and Kenya). The countries on the periphery of the network are predominantly non-OECD countries which fall within the networks lowest GDP percentile. Canada’s Leishmania research network is regionally clustered with central ‘bridging’ and ‘bonding’ institutions. This contrasts to the more permeable structure of Canada’s African sleeping sickness institution network. Conclusion: The methods and findings from this study implicate Canada’s global health research and institutional policies. The findings suggest that if North-South research collaborations are a strategic global health funding priority, then methods and mechanisms to map existing networks and leverage the work of leading and emerging researchers and institutions are needed. Support to reform Canadian institutional policies related to inventions, patenting and technology transfer is required to transform existing insular practices and incentivize global health innovation and research partnerships. | PhD | health, institution | 3, 16 |
| Piche, Pierre Gilles | Jones, Glen | Systemic and Climate Diversity in Ontario’s University Sector | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | The extent and nature of institutional differentiation is a design choice among many that must be considered by policymakers not only when developing a higher education system but also when introducing policy changes to an existing system. Modifications to the design of Ontario’s higher education system have been suggested over the years in an effort to increase its quality (instruction and research) and accessibility in a cost effective manner. The fiscal climate of restraint has recently intensified the debate for structural changes through increased institutional differentiation in Ontario’s higher education system. Institutional diversity was examined using a mixed research method in two phases. This study first used hierarchical cluster analysis which suggested that there has been very little change in diversity between 1994 and 2010 as universities were clustered in three groups for both 1994 and 2010.However, by adapting Birnbaum’s (1983) diversity matrix methodology to Ontario’s university sector, there appears to have been a decrease in systemic diversity (differences in the type of institution and size of institution) and climate diversity (differences in campus environment and culture) between 1994 and 2010 and a projected further decrease to 2018. The second phase of this study used policy analysis and drew on mutually related theoretical perspectives from organizational theory as its primary conceptual framework to interpret and corroborate the decrease in diversity between 1994 and 2010. Interviews were also conducted with university presidents to gain a greater understanding of the key factors or barriers in Ontario’s reticence in proposing design changes in its higher education system. Having been informed by the policy analysis, interviews and projections of the extent of diversity to 2018, the study proposed a diversity policy for Ontario’s university sector. Diversity can be increased in Ontario’s university sector by providing institutions with competitive incremental funding allocations within each of three clusters that would specifically address government diversity objectives through a revised strategic mandate agreement process. Additional research funding should also be provided by the federal government to a limited number of research-intensive universities to ensure that Canadian institutions remain competitive on the world stage. | PhD | institution, climate, educat | 4, 13, 16 |
| Picton, Roger M. | Hackworth, Jason | “A Capital Experience:” National Urban Renewal, Neoliberalism, and Urban Governance on LeBreton Flats in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Geography | 2009-06 | This thesis investigates both Keynesian and neoliberal urbanism on LeBreton Flats, a mixed working-class district deemed a “blighted” slum unfit for a national capital. By studying the time-delayed embourgeoisement of the Flats, this study considers the production of the modern capital as an “event” with significant “afterlives” – both backwards and forwards. Using a historical and comparative perspective, this thesis engages with the literature on neoliberal urbanism and neoliberal urban governance to show how the NCC has adopted and adapted neoliberal practices and strategies of New Urban Policy (NUP) to postwar modernist planning imperatives. The initial expropriation of LeBreton Flats in April 1962, and the dislocation of its marginalized, stigmatized, and racialized residents emerged from an ambitious state-led initiative to remodel Ottawa into a centennial showcase. The model urban redevelopment was part of national subject formation anchored in “pedagogies of the nation.” Although the Keynesian dream ultimately faltered, three decades later, a new project to fill the “empty” national space was initiated. The NCC’s updated redevelopment plan promised to re-write the script, this time governed according to the “Golden Path” of urban entrepreneurialism. The present-day state-led redevelopment of LeBreton Flats can be considered simultaneously as part of the imagined community of nation-ness and as a variegated form of neoliberal policy experimentation. Both federal interventions on LeBreton Flats are part of a longer project of state-led intervention in the National Capital. These backwards and forwards governance timelines exemplify the many ways in which neoliberalism is not a radically new project, and how the enforcement of dispossession is part of an ongoing process of socio-spatial displacement. However, there are important distinctions. In the contemporary neoliberal redevelopment, cultural logic has merged with economic rational. Discourses and images of nature and culture have been mobilized to create a site-specific redevelopment for the expression of the nation. In the synergy of capital investments and cultural meanings, this thesis provides evidence on how nature and national pedagogy are mobilized as part “naturalized” behaviour and practices of urban neoliberalism. | PhD | urban, governance, inclusive | 4, 11, 16 |
| Pikkov, Deanna | Myles, John | The Practice of Voting: Immigrant Turnout, the Persistence of Origin Effects, and the Nature, Formation and Transmission of Political Habit | Sociology | 2011-11 | This dissertation is a multi-layered examination of the practice of voting, with a focus on the electoral turnout of immigrants. Chapter Two’s statistical analyses show that pre-migration cultural familiarity with democracy, formalized as levels of democratization in source countries, strongly shapes the likelihood of post-migration voting among Canadian immigrants. These origin effects, comparable in size to the best predictors of turnout that we have, exert a persistent influence – affecting turnout not only among the foreign-born, but also among the native-born second generation. Multilevel models demonstrate that the shifting source country composition of immigrant period-of-arrival cohorts provides an alternate explanation for what have previously been identified as generational, racial, and length of residence or ‘exposure’ effects among immigrant voters. This provides further evidence that voting is in most cases habitual, and raises questions about the acquisition, transmission, and reproduction of a voting practice. Chapter Three’s narratives of political development, gathered through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, confirm the importance of parental influence, and suggest that the ‘stickiness’ of practical capacities like voting may be the result of powerful processes of observational social learning. Providing a new twist on dominant models of political socialization, observation of parental voting appears to be the pivotal event in a path-dependent process of political learning, with acquisition of values and beliefs playing a supporting, rather than a leading role. Chapter Four reviews recent efforts among sociologists to amend action theory to make more room for habit, and these efforts are discussed in reference to contemporary research on turnout. I argue that these theoretical revisions still retain too sharp a focus on the cognitive aspects of practice. There is a lack of appreciation for the ways that action itself – our own previous actions and the actions of those close to us – can directly structure outcomes. Evidence from cognitive neuroscience is used to more precisely delineate habitual behaviour and thought. Where the intergenerational transmission of voting behaviour is concerned, culture is often coded directly into embodied practice. Efforts to encourage electoral participation should be built on a better understanding of voting’s substantial behavioural aspects. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Pilkington, Richard David | Pruessen, Ronald | A "Time When Principles Make Best Politics"? The Western Response to "Genocide" in East Pakistan | History | 2016-11 | This study examines the formulation of and interplay between the US, Canadian, and British policies generated in response to the mass atrocities perpetrated by Islamabad authorities in East Pakistan during 1971. It focuses on the reactions of these three closely-connected North Atlantic powers to the gross human rights abuses, analyzing the decision-making processes in Washington, Ottawa, and London during the crucial first few months of the crisis, identifying the forces at play in determining policy, and investigating the nature, development, and resolution of debates over national interests and ethical concerns. The analysis is built primarily upon documentary evidence from the US National Archives, the Nixon Presidential Materials Project, Library and Archives Canada, and the National Archives of the United Kingdom. In Washington, President Richard Nixon and his national security advisor, Henry Kissinger, exerted great personal influence over the determination of policy and favored a strategy of appeasement. Importantly, their secret initiative to secure rapprochement with China, which only sprang into life at the end of April, did not drive their thinking during the vital first month after the clampdown began as Kissinger has previously claimed. In Ottawa, the Canadian government developed a tentative four-strand response, unwilling to hazard bilateral ties with Islamabad or draw attention to its own separatist issue in Quebec. In the UK, notably strong public sympathy for the victims of the clampdown only influenced policy to a limited extent. Nevertheless, Londonâ s response, though similar in form to that of Ottawa, in substance demonstrated a greater willingness to coerce Islamabad into ending its oppressive action. This work considers the limited interplay between the North Atlantic powers in determining their reactions, discussing the collaborative opportunities both accepted and spurned. The overall conclusion compares policies and their determinants, assesses the alternative options available, considers the blinkered nature of government institutional cultures formed around the protection of national interests narrowly construed, and explains the techniques of obfuscation and excuse employed by officials to avoid demands for firmer action. | Ph.D. | rights, institution | 16 |
| Pinto, Meital | Weinrib, Lorraine | Equality of Cultural Identity | Law | 2009-11 | I address claims of offence of feelings, religious freedom and language rights, which are all justified by the intrinsic interest individuals attach to their culture. I call them ‘claims from cultural identity’. I develop a conception of substantive equality, understood as distributive justice and underpinned by dignity, for regulating claims from cultural identity in the legal system of multicultural states. I call it Equality of Cultural Identity. It is a ‘complex equality’ model, which takes cultural identity to be a sphere in peoples’ lives. Unlike majority members, cultural minority members are usually under constant pressure to compromise their cultural identity and assimilate in the majority culture to succeed in other spheres of their lives like education and career. In accordance with Walzer’s theory of Spheres of Justice, I propose a regulative principle to determine the extent of cultural protection minority members deserve, according to which the influence of other spheres of their lives on their sphere of cultural identity should as minimal as possible. I apply this principle to claims of offence to feeling, which I re-conceptualize as claims from integrity of cultural identity. I suggest the vulnerable identity principle: The more vulnerable a person’s cultural identity, the stronger her claim from integrity of cultural identity. This principle enhances a just distribution of symbolic goods between majority and minority members, is based on objective evaluation standards, and avoids legal moralism. Thus, it overcomes the major liberal worries about regulating speech. With respect to the language rights and religious freedom, I comparatively analyze them qua cultural rights. I argue that the right to religious freedom, which is generously interpreted by courts, bears all of the allegedly unique features of language rights that are used to support their restrained judicial interpretation. Thus, the existing arguments for their restrained interpretation are not valid. I identify a novel argument for their restrained interpretation, which is that they impose a cultural burden on majority members, but drawing on my conception of equality, I argue that it is not sound as the burden they impose is not great. | SJD | equality, justice, rights | 5, 16 |
| Piryonesi, Sayed Madeh | El-Diraby, Tamer | The Application of Data Analytics to Asset Management: Deterioration and Climate Change Adaptation in Ontario Roads | Civil Engineering | 2019-11 | Infrastructure asset management is the science and practice of driving the maximum value and levels of service from physical infrastructure systems (e.g. roads, bridges, water and wastewater). This is not limited to regular maintenance, however, and expands to assessing actual conditions, predicting future deterioration, estimating the risks of failure or reduced levels of service, considering the impacts on sustainability and using financial and life-cycle analysis tools to allocate budgets. This field of practice is based on data-intensive analyses. Nonetheless, because of the limited investments and attention paid to this field, the available data is typically inadequate, and what is available is not reliable in most cases. This study therefore aims to explore and exploit advances in data science to address these two obstacles. First, can future deterioration be predicted through noncausal (circumstantial) attributes when more data is already available? In other words, can climate and generic roadway attributes (which are freely and reliably available) be used to predict future deterioration? Examples of such attributes are temperature ranges, freeze–thaw cycles, levels of precipitation, road functional class and traffic counts. Second, having linked deterioration to climatic attributes, this research examines whether the proposed approach could be used to study the impact of climate change on road infrastructure. It is crucial to point out that the developed models are not causal. Instead of relying on a single equation or a causal relationship, machine learning algorithms predict outcomes by discovering patterns in data. In other words, what are the typical values of certain attributes that have been observed or co-occurred with historical levels of deterioration (not necessarily causing deterioration)? To this end, this study did not attempt to investigate the main causes of deterioration. Rather, in line with new data-driven decision-making practices, this study investigates which attributes increase the quality of pattern detection, without any claims on causation. This study focused on analyzing performance indicators for asphalt pavements—particularly, pavement condition index (PCI) and the international roughness index (IRI). The data used was extracted from the Long-Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) database. The LTPP database is one of the largest, most reliable and well-maintained datasets in the domain. In analyzing LTPP data, the study examined the following machine learning algorithms: decision trees, logistic regression, naïve Bayes classifier, naïve Bayes classifier with kernel estimation, random forest, gradient boosted trees, k-nearest neighbours, linear regression and random forest regression. The conducted analyses show that the following attributes can be used to predict asphalt pavement deterioration: initial condition, annual average of daily minimum (and maximum) air temperatures, number of freeze–thaw cycles, annual average daily traffic (AADT), annual precipitation, functional class of road, number of years since last remedial action, type of last remedial action, granular base equivalence (GBE) and pavement type. Among the most informative attributes were the initial condition, maintenance history (type and interval), traffic and GBE. The accuracy varies depending on algorithm, prediction interval, data size, data quality and the type of performance indicator. Therefore, the effect of each of these factors was studied one by one. Increasing the size of the training set increased the accuracy, and so did segmenting the data into smaller climatic regions. For instance, the mean accuracy of a gradient boosted trees algorithm for predicting the PCI in three years was 82 percent and reached 91 percent in a certain climatic region. The numbers for IRI prediction were 85 and 94 percent, respectively. An observation with regard to type of performance indicator was that simpler algorithms, such as linear regression or decision tree, had a higher performance when predicting the IRI. Considering the range of variation in these predictive attributes, the impact of a sample climate change scenario was analyzed. The focus of the analysis was Ontario asphalt roads. However, a base (control) set of roads with a significant climate difference (in Texas) were also analyzed to put the Ontario results in perspective. In general, while precipitation is expected to increase, Ontario roads will have lower deterioration levels in the future, possibly due to the increase in temperature and the reduction in freeze–thaw cycles. Texas roads will experience a more aggressive deterioration. بەڕێوەبەرایەتیی سامانی ژێرخانەکان زانست و کاری دەرھێنانی زیاترین بەھا و ئاستی خزمەتە لە ژێرخانە فیزیکییەکان (وەکوو ڕێگە، پرد و ژێرخانی ئاو و ئاوەڕۆ). ئەم زانستە تەنیا لە بازنەی نۆژەنکردنەوەی بەردەوامدا نامێنێتەوە و دەگاتە بوارەکانی تر وەک ھەڵسەنگاندنی بارودۆخی ژێرخانەکان، پێشبینیی داوەشانی داھاتوو، مەزەنە کردنی ئەگەری تێکشکان یا ھاتنەخوارەوەی ئاستی خزمەتی ژێرخانەکان، بەرچاوگرتنی کاریگەریی ژێرخانەکان لەسەر پەرەسەندی بەرقەرار و بەکارھێنانی ئامرازەکانی فاینانس و بازنەی ژیان بۆ تەرخان کردنی باجێتەکان. بەڕێوەبەرایەتیی سامان بوارێکە کە بە چڕوپڕی دراوەی تێدا بەکار دێت. بەڵام، لەبەر کەمتەرخەمی و سنوورداربوونی باجێتەکان لە بەشی ژێرخانە شارییەکاندا، ئەو دراوەیەی کە لە بەردەستدایە یا کەمە یا جێی بڕوا نیە. بۆیە ئەم توێژینەوەیە دەیھەوێت بە بەکارھێنانی شیکاریی دراوە ئەم دوو کۆسپە تەخت بکات. بۆیە، یەکەم دەپرسین ئایا دەکرێت داوەشانی داھاتوو لە ڕێگەی تایبەتمەندییە ناھۆییەکانەوە پێشبینی بکرێت کاتێک کە دراوەی زیاترمان ھەیە؟ یانی ئایا دەکرێت کەڵک لە تایبەتمەندییە ئاووھەواییەکان یا تایبەتمەندییە گشتییەکانی ڕێگەکان (کە دراوەکەی خۆڕایییە) وەربگیرێت بۆ پێشبینیی داوەشان؟ نموونەی ئەو تایبەتمەندیانە بریتین لە پلەی گەرمی، بارین، سیکلەکانی بەستن-توانەوە، پۆلی ڕێگە و ترافیک. دووھەم، ئایا دەکرێت ئەم شێوازە بەکار بھێنرێت بۆ توێژینەوە لەسەر کاریگەریی گۆڕانی ئاووھەوا لەسەر ڕێگەکان. پێویستە ڕوون بکرێتەوە کە مۆدیلە پێشکەشکراوەکان لەم توێژینەوەیەدا ھۆیی نین. لەجێی پشتبەستن بە ھاوکێشەیەک یا دروستکردنی پەیوەندییەکی ھۆیی، ئەلگۆریتمەکانی فێربوونی ماشین لە ڕێی دۆزینەوەی پەتێرن لە دراوەکاندا پێشبینی دەکەن. واتە، ئەو تایبەتمەندیانەی کە لەگەڵ داوەشانی مێژوویی ڕێگەکاندا پەیوەندییان ھەیە دەدۆزنەوە، بێ ئەوەی کە بڵێن کە ئەو تایبەتمەندیانەن کە دەبن بە ھۆی داوەشانەوە. بۆیە ئەم توێژینەوەیە نایھەوێت ھۆکارە سەرەکییەکانی داوەشان بدۆزێتەوە، بەڵکوو ھاوشێوەی بڕیاردانی پشتبەستوو بە دراوە، لەم لێکۆڵینەوەیەدا تەنیا جەخت لەسەر ئەو تایبەتمەندیانە دەکرێت کە کاری پێشبینی ئاسانتر و دروستتر دەکەنەوە، نەک ئەوانەی دەبن بە ھۆی ڕوودانی دیاردەی داوەشانەوە. ئەم لێکۆڵینەوەیە سەرنجی وردی دایە سەر شیکاریی پێوەرەکانی کارایی ڕێگە – بە تایبەت نیشانەی بارودۆخی ڕووی ڕێگە (PCI) و نیشانەی نێودەوڵەتیی زبری (IRI). ئەو دراوەیەی لەم لێکۆڵینەوەیەدا بەکارھات لە بنکەدراوەی کارایی درێژخایەنی ڕووی ڕێگە (LTPP) دەرھێنرا. بۆ شیکاریی دراوەکە ئەم ئەلگۆریتمانە بە کار ھێنران: درەختی بڕیار، ڕیگرێشنی لۆجیستیک، پۆلێنکەری بەیزی ساویلکە، پۆلێنکەری بەیزی ساویلکە لەگەڵ کێرنێڵ، دارستانی بەھەڵکەوت، درەختەکانی گرادیانی بەھێزکراو، k-نزیکترین ھاوسێکان، ڕیگرێشنی ھێڵی و ڕیگرێشنی دارستانی بەھەڵکەوت. بەرھەمی شیکارییەکان نیشانیان دا کە ئەم تایبەتمەندیانە دەکرێ بۆ پێشبینیی داوەشانی ڕووی ڕێگەی ئاسفاڵتی بە کار بێن: بارودۆخی سەرەتایی، ئەڤریجی کەمترین (و زۆرترین) پلەی گەرمیی ڕۆژانە لە ساڵدا، ژمارەی سیکلەکانی بەستن-توانەوە، ترافیکی ڕۆژانەی ئەڤریج لە ساڵدا (AADT)، پۆلی ڕێگە، ژمارەی ساڵەکان لە دوایین نۆژەنکردنەوەوە، جۆری دوایین نۆژەنکردنەوە، بنکەی داناری ھاوتا (GBE) و جۆری ڕووی ڕێگە. پڕزانیاریترین تایبەتمەندییەکان بریتی بوون لە بارودۆخی سەرەتایی، مێژووی نۆژەنکردنەوە، GBE و ترافیک. ڕاستیی مۆدیلەکان فەرقی کرد بە گۆڕینی جۆری ئەلگۆریتمەکان، مەودای پێشبینی، ئەندازەی دراوەکان، کواڵیتیی دراوەکان و جۆری پێوەری کارایی. بۆیە کاریگەریی ھەرکام لەم فاکتەرانە یەک بە یەک بە وردی سەرنجی پێدرا و باس کرا. زیادکردنی ئەندازەی دراوەکە بوو بەھۆی بەرزبوونەوەی ئاستی ڕاستیی مۆدێلەکانەوە، ھەروەک دابەشکردنی دراوەکە بەسەر بەشی ئاووھەوایی بچووکتردا کە ھەمان ئەسەری بوو. بۆ نموونە ڕاستیی ئەلگۆریتمێکی درەختەکانی گرادیانی بەھێزکراو بۆ پێشبینیی PCI لەدوای سێ ساڵ ٨٢ لەسەددا بوو و لە بەشێکی ئاووھەوایی تایبەتدا گەشتە ٩١ لەسەددا. ئەم ژمارانە بۆ پێشبینیی IRI، بە تەرتیب، گەشتنە ٨٥ و ٩٤ لەسەددا. سەبارەت بە کاریگەریی جۆری پێوەری کارایی، تێبینییەک ئەوە بوو کە ئەلگۆریتمە ساکارترەکان، وەک ڕیگرێشنی ھێڵی و درەختی بڕیار، کاراییەکی باشتریان بوو لە پێشبینیی IRIدا. بە بەرچاوگرتنی ئاستی گۆڕانی ھەرکام لەم تایبەتمەندیانە، کاریگەریی سیناریۆیەکی گۆڕانی ئاووھەوا وەک نموونە خرایە بەر توێژینەوە. سەرەتا ڕێگە ئاسفاڵتەکانی ئانتەریۆ وەک نموونە بە کار ھێنران. بەڵام دواتر نموونەیەکی ھاوئەندازە لە ڕێگەکانی تێگزاس، کە ئاووھەوایەکی تەواو جیاوازی ھەیە، بە کارەکە زیاد کرا کە بەرھەمی شیکارییەکان ڕوونتر دەرکەوێت. بە گشتی ئەگەرچی چاوەڕێ دەکرێت کە بەفر و باران لە ئانتەریۆ زیاد بکات، بەڵام ڕێگەکانی ئانتەریۆ تووشی داوەشانێکی کەمتر دەبن، کە ڕەنگە لەبەر بەرزبوونەوەی پلەی گەرمی و کەمبوونەوەی ژمارەی سیکلەکانی بەستن-توانەوە بێت. لە بەرامبەردا، ڕێگەکانی تێگزاس تووشی داوەشانێکی توندوتیژتر دەبن. | Ph.D. | water, infrastructure, waste, climate | 6, 9, 12, 13 |
| Pitt, Gabrielle Erica | Mishna, Faye | Living with Uncertainty: The Experiences of Parents and Children When a Parent is Living with and Dying from, Advanced cancer | Social Work | 2017-11 | Living with Uncertainty: The Experiences of Parents and Children When a Parent is Living with and Dying from, Advanced cancer Gabrielle Erica Pitt Doctor of Philosophy, 2017 Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work University of Toronto Abstract Advanced cancer and its progression and treatment deeply affect members of a family, especially the children. The limited research contends that the complexities of advanced cancer and the anticipated loss of a parent result in greater psychosocial vulnerability for children, compromising their well-being (Beale et al., 2004; Bugge et al., 2008; Christ, 2000). Conducted at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, the purpose of this interpretive research was to investigate the experiences of parents and children six to eighteen years coping with a parent living with, and dying from, advanced cancer. This study focused on the meaning children and parents ascribe to this time of uncertainty, in addition to aspects such as emotional security, and the role of parents in understanding, and ameliorating, potential effects to children. Seven families participated in the study (seven parents with advanced cancer, four children, and four well parents). A review of the existent literature was presented thematically, and demonstrated critical gaps and meagreness of the research. The theoretical framework encompassed social constructivism and sociocultural theory, in addition to the relational theories of attachment and intersubjectivity. Aspects of neurobiology underpinned the framework. Each facet of the framework was situated within the context of children and parents coping with advanced cancer and anticipatory loss. A theoretical model depicts this framework. Hermeneutic interpretive phenomenology was the methodology incorporated in this study. The primary method of data collection was semi-structured interviews with children and parents separately. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (Smith et al., 2009) guided the data analysis and interpretation. Results of the study are presented as a discussion of the themes, illustrated in an accompanying map. A review of the findings in relation to the research questions, the empirical literature, and theoretical framework reveals potential contributions of this research. This study concludes with implications for scholarly knowledge, social policy, social work education and practice, and recommendations for future research. Results of this research will advance the understanding of the experiences of parents and children, inform social work education and practice, and facilitate the development of interventions promoting positive outcomes for children and families. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Pitzul, Kristen Blythe | Jaglal, Susan B | Outcomes and Costs of Post-Acute Care Pathways in Hip Fracture Patients: Implications of Trade-Offs in Resource Allocation | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-06 | There is a gap in evidence with respect to the delivery of quality post-acute care for hip fracture patients. The primary objective of this thesis is to describe the post-acute care pathways of hip fracture patients and their associated outcomes (i.e., mortality and re-hospitalizations) and health system costs. The secondary objective is to explore the use of system dynamics modelling to determine the impact of trade-offs in resource allocation on patient outcomes and health system costs. Population-level administrative databases were used to capture older adults admitted to acute care for hip fracture between 2008 and 2012 in Ontario, Canada. Study one describes the variation in post-acute care pathways for hip fracture patients and concluded that four health regions discharge a relatively higher proportion of patients to inpatient rehabilitation (IPR) compared to the remaining 10 health regions. In study two, patients discharged directly from acute care to the community (i.e., community patients) were matched to patients discharged directly from acute care to IPR (i.e., IPR patients). A substantially higher proportion of community patients died or re-hospitalized and had substantially lower health system costs compared to their matched IPR counterparts. Results of study three suggest that only 60% of community patients receive post-acute rehabilitation, and of the community patients who do receive it, they have substantially lower rehabilitation intensity and specialistsâ visits compared to their matched IPR counterparts, regardless of health region. Study fourâ s system dynamics model predicts the increased health system costs required to increase the number of hours of home-based rehabilitation to attenuate these differences in re-hospitalizations. Taken together, results suggest that the variations in hip fracture post-acute delivery are pervasive in Ontario and that the impact of this variation on patient outcome may be attenuated through increased allocation of resources to home-based rehabilitation. Results can be used by policymakers, clinicians, and researchers to further improve and understand the post-acute quality of care delivered to hip fracture patients. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Pleet, Jordan Joseph | Rodd, Helen F||Shuter, Brian J | Some Causes and Consequences of Non-random Animal Movement | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015-11 | Throughout the animal kingdom, individuals have been found to move non-randomly in response to the environment and differ in movement strategies from other individuals in the population. Chapter 2 uses a two-patch consumer-resource model to investigate how phenotypic variation in movement can evolve when the consumers are able to sense the patches and move adaptively to the more resource abundant patch. Considering the case when dispersers are inferior competitors compared to less dispersive phenotypes, variation in dispersal behaviours can evolve and persist when dispersal is cost-free, fast, and adaptive. In the other case, when dispersers are superior competitors compared to less dispersive phenotypes, variation in dispersal behaviours can evolve and persist when dispersal is more costly, slow, and random. Chapter 3 and 4 are case studies of non-random movement in two fish species. Chapter 3 examines lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) telemetry data to determine the daily movement patterns of the fish and infer how smaller morphs are able to persist in the presence of larger, cannibalistic morphs. In the summertime---when the water temperatures force the small and large lake trout morphs into the same parts of the lake---the small morphs avoid the large morphs by using shallower waters in the day, but when the larger cannibals have poorer vision at night, both morphs overlap in the same part of the lake. This daily routine movement of the small lake trout morphs away from the larger cannibals is probably critical in maintaining the size variation within the population. Chapter 4 examines some factors that influence dispersal in guppies (Poecilia reticulata) and predicts the long-term consequences of dispersal on population dynamics in natural stepping-stone metapopulations. Guppy dispersal between pools can depend on intrinsic factors, like physiology and sex, and extrinsic factors, like the type of stream environment, season, and the conditions in the pools. The individual dispersal events can influence population dynamics: without dispersal, guppy pool populations within most metapopulations are predicted to be sinks in the wet season and at equilibrium in the dry season; therefore, dispersal may play a role in the persistence of these guppy populations. | Ph.D. | water, environment, fish | 6, 13, 14 |
| Plitman, Eric | Graff-Guerrero, Ariel | Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging to Study Neurometabolic and Neuroanatomical Alterations in Patients with Schizophrenia | Medical Science | 2018-11 | Schizophrenia is a debilitating mental illness that places a large burden on patients, their families, and society-at-large. The glutamate hypothesis of schizophrenia puts forth a compelling mechanism to characterize features of the illness. To this end, we explored the neurometabolic and neuroanatomical profiles of patients with schizophrenia using magnetic resonance imaging, with a particular focus on the glutamatergic system. First, we explored associative striatum neurometabolite levels using proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS) within a sample composed of antipsychotic-naïve patients experiencing their first-episode of psychosis (FEP) and age- and sex-matched healthy controls. The FEP group had elevated myo-inositol, choline, and glutamate levels compared to the healthy control group. Second, again within a sample of antipsychotic-naïve patients with FEP and age- and sex-matched healthy controls, we investigated whether elevated levels of glutamatergic neurometabolites within the precommissural dorsal caudate (PDC), as assessed by 1H-MRS, were related to measures of brain structure. In addition to widespread cortical thinning and suggestions of possible precommissural caudate volume (PCV) deficits within the patient group, a negative association between PDC glutamate+glutamine levels and PCV was found in the FEP group. Third, striatal neurometabolite levels were examined using 1H-MRS within a sample of patients with schizophrenia who had undergone long-term antipsychotic treatment and healthy controls. No group differences in neurometabolite levels were identified. Multiple study visits permitted a 1H-MRS reliability assessment. Taken together, the results from this body of work suggest elevated levels of striatal glutamatergic neurometabolites within the early, antipsychotic-naïve stages of schizophrenia, which are contrastingly shown to be comparable to those of healthy controls in the later, medicated stages of illness. Findings also provide evidence for glial activation that may resultantly disrupt glutamatergic tone, as well as a striatal excitotoxic mechanism that may account for some of the vast structural compromise that exists in patients with schizophrenia. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Polak, Shely | Alaggia, Ramona | Mental health professionals' practice of reintegration therapy for parent-child contact disputes post-separation: A phenomenological study | Social Work | 2017-06 | Over the last decade, family courts have seen an increase in the number of parent-child contact problems and allegations of alienation. Children resisting or refusing contact with a parent post-separation pose considerable challenges to the mental health professionals tasked to work with them. Reintegration therapy (RT) has recently evolved to help ameliorate parent-child contact issues and alienation. However, little is known about what consensus exists on RT, or how it is defined and delivered by mental health practitioners. Limited evidence exists on treatment models, or evaluations of RT, and no standards or practice guidelines are available for the treatment of parent-child contact issues. The purpose of this study was to: 1) Explore how RT is defined and practiced among experienced mental health professionals in Canada and the United States; 2) identify underlying theory informing practitionersâ understanding of the issues and on clinical practice in RT; and 3) use findings for practice recommendations to advance knowledge for clinical practice with this population. To this end a hermeneutic, phenomenological design was chosen to elicit thick descriptions for a phenomenological analysis and theme development. A purposive sample of fourteen (14) practitioners was obtained. Initial analysis revealed substantial variance among practitioners' training, underlying theoretical frameworks, clinical approaches and service delivery models utilized. Three distinct themes/subthemes emerged from in-depth analyses representing a measure of consensus among respondents. First, RT is generally viewed as a therapeutic process to help improve family relationships as a whole. Second, participants identified frequently used assessment criteria necessary for determining suitability for RT. Finally, agreement on overall treatment goals for families participating in RT was identified. These study findings illustrate the need for more and better-developed training in RT, integrated theory development, and the creation of best practice guidelines based on scientific and rigorous evaluation preferably using a longitudinal approach. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Pollex, Erika | Koren, Gideon | Fetal Exposure to Antidiabetic Drugs: The Role of the Placenta | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2010-06 | Gestational diabetes, a common medical complication in pregnancy, may lead to severe fetal consequences if left untreated. A major concern with the use of antidiabetic drugs in pregnancy is the potential for placental transfer and fetal toxicity. The presence of endocytic pathways and several ABC transporter proteins has been demonstrated in the human placenta and are believed to play an important role in determining fetal exposure to drugs used in pregnancy. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the safety and transfer of the oral hypoglycemic agent, glyburide, and the new long acting insulin analog, insulin glargine, across the human placenta. The oral antidiabetic, glyburide, has been shown to be actively effluxed across the placenta in the fetal to maternal direction. The transport of glyburide in the presence of a breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP) inhibitor was investigated in the dually perfused human placenta model. The results of the perfusion studies indicate that BCRP plays a role in protecting the fetus from the accumulation of glyburide. Subsequently, cellular studies were carried out to determine the effect of the naturally occurring single nucleotide polymorphism within the coding region of BCRP (C421A/Q141K) on glyburide transport. Results suggest that glyburide transport may be reduced in the presence of the Q141K polymorphism. While insulin remains as the gold standard, the potential for maternal hypoglycemia with insulin injection has resulted in the development of insulin analogs. Insulin glargine, a human insulin analog, has a long half life with no pronounced peak when compared to currently used NPH insulin. Human placental perfusion experiments examining the extent and rate of transfer of insulin glargine across the placenta demonstrated that, at therapeutic concentrations, insulin glargine does not cross the placenta to a measurable extent. To further determine the fetal safety of insulin glargine therapy compared with NPH insulin, a systematic review and meta-analysis were performed. No evidence was identified for increased adverse fetal outcomes with the use of insulin glargine during pregnancy. Overall, the results of this research serve to provide improved treatment options for women with diabetes in pregnancy. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Polonyi, Anna Elizabeth | Luong, Hy Van | Contradictions of Neoliberal Development Interventions and Market Transition in Northern Lao PDR | Anthropology | 2012-03 | This thesis examines the trajectory and role of development within the context of transition from a command to market economy, in a northern region of the Lao PDR. It looks at how the long-term effects of development interventions have contributed to a context of regional integration where the role of foreign investment and the private sector are increasing. In particular, it examines the role of development interventions in the processes of diversification and differentiation that accompany market integration. The village of Ban Jai illustrates this process as a site where despite the failures of development projects a diversification of livelihoods have developed. The implementation of UNDP projects in Ban Jai raises questions regarding the role of international projects and suggests that rather than alleviating poverty they produce a chain of effects that contribute to the tensions that result from structural changes to the village household economy. My analysis examines the tensions produced by such shifts and how villagers negotiate their engagement with the market economy. The experience of women traders illustrates how relations of solidarity are reworked in an attempt to negotiate tensions produced through processes of market integration. As structural shifts take place with increasing economic integration, international agencies also respond in particular ways by shifting strategies. I also ask what changes shifts in strategy introduce at the local level and how this intersects with the way policies are rationalized by local officials and the UNDP. An examination of this trajectory over a period of two decades, suggests that changing strategies in development have involved a shifting role between international development organizations and the private sector. I ask what kind of context this intersection of structural shifts, policy shifts and institutional shifts produces on the ground and how such shifts are negotiated locally. | PhD | poverty, women, institution | 1, 5, 16 |
| Polsky, Yavgenia Jane | Glazier, Richard H||Booth, Gillian L | The Retail Food Environment in Relation to Socio-economic Characteristics, Weight Status and Diabetes | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-06 | The food environment is drawing increasing attention as an important population-level determinant of diet, obesity and related health outcomes. Using retail food data sourced from a commercial database, we examined several dimensions of the local retail food environment in relation to area socio-economic characteristics, and weight status and diabetes risk among adult residents of three urban regions in southern Ontario. The first study showed that local access to different types of food retail was patterned by level of neighbourhood material deprivation. More deprived neighbourhoods generally provided better access to stores and restaurants of all types, including those selling more or less healthful foods. These patterns were partially explained by urban form factors. Relative access to unhealthy food retailers (as a proportion of all outlets) showed little variation by level of neighbourhood material deprivation. In the second study, we found that measures of absolute and relative availability of different types of restaurants (volume and proportion) within walking distance of residential areas had differential effects on the weight status of local residents. We also identified a novel interaction between absolute and relative restaurant measures, whereby exposure to a higher proportion of fast-food relative to all restaurants was directly related to excess weight, particularly in areas with high volumes of fast-food restaurants (e.g. odds ratio for obesity=2.55 in areas with 5+ fast-food restaurants, 95% confidence interval: 1.55-4.17, across the interquartile range). The third study showed a similar synergistic effect between absolute and relative dimensions of fast-food restaurant exposure in relation to the development of diabetes. Among younger adults (20-65 years), a greater proportion of fast-food restaurants was directly associated with incident diabetes after adjustment for individual- and area-level covariates, but only in areas with high volumes of fast-food outlets (hazard ratio=1.79, 95% confidence interval: 1.03-3.12, across the interquartile range). No significant associations were observed in areas with low volumes of fast food or among older adults. This dissertation contributes to a better understanding of how different aspects of the retail food environment relate to health, which may help to guide the design of programs and policies to create healthier and more equitable food environments. | Ph.D. | health, equitable, socio economic | 1, 3, 2004 |
| Polvi, Elizabeth Johanna | Cowen, Leah E | Dissecting Mechanisms of Echinocandin Drug Resistance and Filamentation in the Fungal Pathogen Candida albicans | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2018-06 | Invasive fungal infections have a devastating impact on human health worldwide, in part due to the limited repertoire of antifungal drugs available to treat these infections. Candida albicans is a primary cause of systemic mycoses with mortality rates of ~40%, even with current treatment options. Thus, the development of novel therapeutic strategies to combat fungal infections is of utmost importance. My research aims to explore novel therapeutic approaches to treat mycotic infections. This includes strategies to combat antifungal resistance and strategies to target a key C. albicans virulence trait, the ability to transition between yeast and filamentous states. To uncover novel therapies to combat resistance, I explored compounds that potentiate activity of the cell wall-targeting echinocandin antifungal drug caspofungin. A screen of 1,280 pharmacologically active compounds identified 19 that reduced caspofungin resistance. The most potent molecule was a chelator, DTPA, which potentiated echinocandin activity via chelation of magnesium, modulating signaling through the Hog1 stress response pathway. DTPA also induced C. albicans filamentation through zinc chelation, and the combination of caspofungin and DTPA had in vivo therapeutic utility in a murine model of candidiasis. Further, to explore genetic circuitry governing C. albicans morphogenesis, I characterized the role of the transcriptional regulator Mfg1 in mediating filamentous growth. Mfg1 is a core regulator of filamentation in the model yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and in C. albicans, and interacts with Flo8 and Mss11 to form a complex important for regulating morphogenesis. Unexpectedly, I identified divergent roles for these complex members in regulating C. albicans filamentation. Experimental evolution exploiting a novel selection strategy revealed triplication of chromosome 6, the genomic location of FLO8, as an adaptive mechanism enabling filamentation in the absence of MFG1. Collectively, this research uncovered new circuitry governing C. albicans drug resistance, evolution, and virulence, suggesting novel therapeutic strategies to treat fungal infections. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Pong, Steven Michael | Fernie, Geoff | Increasing Hand Hygiene Performance in Health Care Workers with Electronic Real-time Prompting | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-06 | Poor hand hygiene (HH) by health care professionals is a major cause of healthcare-acquired infections. Improving HH compliance among staff is the most effective way to reduce healthcare acquired infections. This thesis evaluates the ability of an electronic monitoring system with real-time prompting capability, to improve HH behaviours, its ability to capture high resolution audit data, and presents alternate system deployment strategies. To investigate HH behaviours, 120,441 dispenser activations on a nursing unit were counted before, during, and after installation of the system. The effect of changing the prompt duration on HH performance was determined by a randomized control trial including 90,776 HH opportunities from 185 participants on three nursing units. Sustainability of performance and participation was observed on four nursing units including observations from 419 participants over a year. Results showed that real-time prompts of 20 seconds’ duration nearly doubled HH activity and caused HH to occur sooner after entering a patient room. These improvements were sustainable over a year. Analysis of HH audit capabilities was conducted on data collected on a musculoskeletal rehabilitation unit over 12 weeks. Results showed that continuous collection of HH data that included temporal, spatial, and personnel details provided information on actual HH practices, whereas direct observation or dispenser activation counts showed only aggregate trends. Aggregate performance at patient and soiled utility rooms were both 67%, although individual compliance varied greatly. The number of HH events that occurred inside patient rooms increased with longer visits, whereas HH performance at patient room exit decreased. Eighty-three percent of missed HH opportunities occurred as part of a series of missed events, not in isolation. The system was deployed two more times on the unit at six month intervals. There was a significant increase in aggregate dispenser use with every deployment and a decrease over several weeks following each withdrawal. Intermittent deployment of the system counteracted potential declines in participation rates sometimes seen with continuous system use. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Poon, Maurice Kwong-Lai | George, Usha | The social construction of gay male partner abuse: Power, discourse and lived experience | Social Work | 2010-11 | Recent research has found high rates of abuse in gay male relationships; however, little is known about their lived experience. This study aims to explore (1) the social construction of abuse in gay male relationships, (2) its discursive effects on clinical practice and (3) the lived experience of gay men involved in abusive relationships. This study included three sets of data. Using a discourse analysis, articles published in popular queer media and academic literature were analyzed to understand the social construction of partner abuse. Three focus groups, with 16 service providers, were conducted to examine the discursive effects of partner abuse on clinical practice. In-depth interviews with 21 gay men involved in partner abuse were conducted to understand their lived experience. Transcripts of the focus groups and interviews were reviewed in detail to highlight themes and concepts. Analysis revealed that gay male partner abuse is not a self-evident or natural category but, rather, socially constructed. Current discourse created two opposite categories (the victim who is powerless and helpless; the perpetrator powerful and evil) that both informed and limited the way in which service providers saw and, thus, worked with gay men involved in partner abuse. Yet, as shown in the analysis, the lived experience of partner abuse does not always fit neatly into the rigid victim and perpetrator roles. Instead, the roles are frequently unclear and contradictory. We social workers need to be aware of the discursive effects of gay male partner abuse and critically examine how they impose certain assumptions on us. Instead of seeking a “true” experience of partner abuse, we need to help these men search for meaning within the events that are relevant to them, regardless of how they fit into the normative discourse of gay male partner abuse. | PhD | queer | 5 |
| Poon, Yeesha | Krahn, Murray | Relative Effectiveness of Osteoporosis Treatments to Reduce Hip Fractures in Patients with Prostate Cancer on Continuous Androgen Deprivation Therapy: | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2018-11 | Background: Androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is widely used in men with advanced prostate cancer, and can lead to loss of bone mineral density (BMD) and fractures. Osteoporosis treatments are effective in improving BMD, and reducing risk of hip fractures. Given the potential benefits, risks, and widely varying costs of osteoporosis treatments in our population, we assessed the effects and cost-effectiveness of treatments. Methods: A systematic review and a network meta-analysis were conducted using randomized controlled trials (RCT) that evaluated bisphosphonates, denosumab, toremifene, and raloxifene in patients with non-metastatic prostate cancer on ADT. Outcomes included percentage change in BMD from placebo at different bone sites and incidence rates of any fractures. A cost-utility model was developed using a state transition model simulating the progression of prostate cancer, the incidence of hip fractures and an adverse event from osteoporosis treatments. The risk of fracture was conditional on BMD changes, which were modeled as the means of determining the effect of treatment on health and cost outcomes. The outcomes were predicted hip fracture incidence, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), expected costs, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios. Results: Thirteen RCTs were included for analysis. The largest BMD improvement compared to placebo at 12-month at femoral neck site was risedronate 6.77% (95% CrI:-6.87-20.27%). Two studies reported fractures; toremifene and denosumab studies reported improved incidence of new vertebral fracture outcome vs placebo (2.5% vs 4.9%;p | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Poos, Mark S. | Jackson, Donald Andrew | Conservation by Consensus: Reducing Uncertainty from Methodological Choices in Conservation-based Models | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2010-06 | Modeling species of conservation concern, such as those that are rare, declining, or have a conservation designation (e.g. endangered or threatened), remains an activity filled with uncertainty. Species that are of conservation concern often are found infrequently, in small sample sizes and spatially fragmented distributions, thereby making accurate enumeration difficult and traditional statistical approaches often invalid. For example, there are numerous debates in the ecological literature regarding methodological choices in conservation-based models, such as how to measure functional traits to account for ecosystem function, the impact of including rare species in biological assessments and whether species-specific dispersal can be measured using distance based functions. This thesis attempts to address issues in methodological choices in conservation-based models in two ways. In the first section of the thesis, the impacts of methodological choices on conservation-based models are examined across a broad selection of available approaches, from: measuring functional diversity; to conducting bio-assessments in community ecology; to assessing dispersal in metapopulation analyses. It is the goal of this section to establish the potential for methodological choices to impact conservation-based models, regardless of the scale, study-system or species involved. In the second section of this thesis, the use of consensus methods is developed as a potential tool for reducing uncertainty with methodological choices in conservation-based models. Two separate applications of consensus methods are highlighted, including how consensus methods can reduce uncertainty from choosing a modeling type or to identify when methodological choices may be a problem. | PhD | conserv | 13 |
| Poshtkouhi, Shahab | Trescases, Olivier | Modular AC Nanogrid with Four-quadrant Micro-inverters and High-efficiency DC-DC Conversion | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2016-06 | A signicant portion of the population in developing countries live in remote communities, where the power infrastructure and the required capital investment to set up local grids do not exist. This is due to the fuel shipment and utilization costs required for fossil fuel based generators, which are traditionally used in these local grids, as well as high upfront costs associated with the centralized Energy Storage Systems (ESS). This dissertation targets modular AC nano-grids for these remote communities developed at minimal capital cost, where the generators are replaced with multiple inverters, connected to either Photovoltaic (PV) or battery modules, which can be gradually added to the nano-grid. A distributed droop-based control architecture is presented for the PV and battery Micro-Inverters (MIV) in order to achieve frequency and voltage stability, as well as active and reactive power sharing. The nano-grid voltage is regulated collectively in either one of four operational regions. Effective load sharing and transient handling are demonstrated experimentally by forming a nano-grid which consists of two custom 500 W MIVs. The MIVs forming the nano-grid have to meet certain requirements. A two-stage MIV architecture and control scheme with four-quadrant power-flow between the nano-grid, the PV/battery and optional short-term storage is presented. The short-term storage is realized using high energy-density Lithium-Ion Capacitor (LIC) technology. A real-time power smoothing algorithm utilizing LIC modules is developed and tested, while the performance of the 100 W MIV is experimentally verifed under closed-loop dynamic conditions. Two main limitations of the DAB topology, as the core of the MIV architecture's dc-dc stage, are addressed: 1) This topology demonstrates poor efficiency and limited regulation accuracy at low power. These are improved by introducing a modified topology to operate the DAB in Flyback mode, achieving up to an 8% increase in converter efficiency. 2) The DAB topology needs four digital isolators for driving the active switches on the other side of the isolation boundary. Two Phase-Locked-Loop (PLL) based synchronization schemes are introduced in order to reduce the number of required digital isolators, hence increasing reliability and reducing the implementation costs. One of these schemes is demonstrated on a discrete 150 W DAB prototype, while both of them are implemented on-chip in a 0.18um 80V BCD process. In addition, the power-stage of the primary-side of a 1 MHz, 50 W DAB converter is fully integrated on the same die. By using such a high switching frequency, the size of passive elements in the DAB is reduced, resulting in further cost reductions for the MIV. The results of this dissertation pave the way for affordable nano-grids with minimal capital cost, reliable performance and reduced complexity. | Ph.D. | energy, infrastructure | 7, 9 |
| Pottruff, Benjamin Wray | Halpern, Rick | The Anarchist Peril: Industrial Violence and the Propaganda of Fear in Turn of the Century America, 1886-1908 | History | 2015-06 | Between 1886 and 1908, in the crossover between the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, people all across America felt the growing pains wrought by the second industrial revolution. Overproduction, exploitative working conditions, labor shortages, and increased rural and foreign immigration all made the country ripe for civil unrest to burst through the cracks of the Gilded Age. In particular, assassinations and bombings followed by murmurs of anarchist conspiracies within the labor movement gave social elites cause to fear for the stability of their nation-building project. The Anarchist Peril examines five sets of violent outbursts that disrupted the status quo: the 1886 Haymarket bombing, the 1892 assault on Henry Clay Frick, President William McKinley's assassination in 1901, the assassination of Frank Steunenberg in 1905, and the 1908 anarchist scare. In reaction to these events, journalists, police officers, court officials, and state and federal legislators, who feared the effects of the anarchist tactic of Propaganda by Deed, used their powers to shape public opinion against anarchy. These acts of violence, which were endorsed by a minority within radical circles, took on greater significance when emerging ranks of middle-class professionals reshaped the meaning of anarchists' deeds to legitimize their own competing claims to power. Since they placed so little value on anarchism's political critique, social elites ignored the class implications of anarchists' words and deeds and instead examined their bodies for signs to marginalize their actions, silenced them in the courtroom, and legislated against further acts of violence. While this approach did disrupt the propaganda of their deeds, it did not deter further acts of violence. | Ph.D. | production, rural, industr | 9, 11, 12 |
| Poudineh, Mahla | Sargent, Edward H | On-chip Manipulation and Sorting of Cancer Cells for Next-generation Diagnostic Technologies | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2017-03 | Cancer is a leading cause of death and disability. Early detection can significantly improve long-term survival in cancer patients. The advent of point-of-care technologies, which are typically based on lab-on-chip tools, enables convenient and real-time healthcare at or near the patient bedside. Development of point-of-care cancer testing can keep the advantages of, but overcome the high cost of, existing expensive genetic analysis methods. It can do so while providing the results promptly to physicians as they seek to customize and improve disease treatment. The central aim of this thesis is to develop new strategies to detect cancer prior to the spread of cancer cells to the distant organs. Metastasis relies on the release of migratory cancer cells, and is responsible for as much as 90% of cancer associated mortality. The factors that determine the invasiveness of these circulating cells remain poorly defined, and it is difficult to distinguish cancer cells having high versus low metastatic potential. New technologies are required that sort heterogeneous cancer cells into relevant subpopulations, and profile thereby small numbers of cells according to their phenotypes. Herein we describe a powerful new capability for the monitoring of cancer progression. We developed a novel fluidic chip that selectively isolates rare cancer cells that exhibit different levels of phenotypic surface markers. We show that the device successfully profiles the surface expression of very small numbers of cells; and it accomplishes this directly from whole blood. We couple the surface marker profiling approach with a migration platform with single cell resolution: this allows us to characterize more deeply, still on-chip, the biological behavior of invasive cancer cells. We deploy these new techniques to reveal the dynamic phenotypes of these rare cells. We prototype the system and prove it out using samples of unprocessed blood from mice. We characterize the samples as a function of tumor growth and aggressiveness and prove that the new profiling technology provides powerful and relevant information that correlates with tumor stage and aggressiveness. The strategies presented offer to guide the development of sensitive and specific approaches for cancer diagnosis that provide new information not available using prior methods. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Poulin, Patricia Anik | Schneider, Margaret | Mindfulness-based Wellness Education: A Longitudinal Evaluation with Students in Initial Teacher Education | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2009-11 | Mindfulness-based wellness education (MBWE) is an 8-week program teaching formal mindfulness practices as a foundation for cultivating an awareness of one’s health or ill-health in the physical, social, emotional, ecological, vocational, mental and spiritual domains of human existence. It is designed as a health promotion intervention for individuals who are at risk of developing stress related problems, such as is the case of human services professionals. This dissertation focuses on teachers-in-training. Two groups of teacher trainees completed MBWE as part of an elective course focusing on stress and burnout. In comparison to control participants, who completed other optional courses, MBWE participants experienced improvements in mindfulness, health, and teaching self-efficacy. In one group, the intervention was also effective in reducing psychological distress and augmenting satisfaction with life. Interviews with participants after graduation revealed that although they struggled with independent mindfulness practice, they benefited from their participation in the class, which led to specific health behavior changes such as increased physical activity. Some participants reported that they relied on their mindfulness practices in times of crisis; others shared the knowledge they learned with their students and observed that this was an effective and beneficial response to the needs of their classrooms. Ideas for future inquiries include the need to explore factors influencing participants’ responses to the MBWE program and how to support on-going practice. | PhD | well being | 3 |
| Pouliot, Vincent | Adler, Emanuel | Security Community in and through Practice: The Power Politics of Russia-NATO Diplomacy | Political Science | 2008-11 | How do security communities develop in and through practice? For more than forty years, security relations between Russia and NATO member states were structured by the spectre of mutual assured destruction as symbolized by thousands of nuclear missiles targeted at each other. Less than a generation after the end of the Cold War, the possibility of military confrontation between these former enemies has considerably receded. Taking inspiration from Pierre Bourdieu, this dissertation develops a theory of practice of security communities that argues that on the ground of international politics, the social fact of peace emerges when security practitioners come to debate with diplomacy—the non-violent settlement of disputes—instead of about diplomacy. It is doxa, a relationship of immediate adherence to the order of things, that makes such a peaceful practical sense possible. In the empirical analysis, the dissertation reveals an intriguing paradox in the post-Cold War Russian-Atlantic relationship. On the one hand, over the last fifteen years Russia and NATO member states have solved each and every one of their disputes, including fierce ones over the double enlargement, by nonviolent means. Such a track record of peaceful change is testimony to security-communitybuilding processes. But on the other hand, diplomatic success was often bought at the price of a growing mistrust on the Russian side. As the Russian Great Power habitus resurfaced, hysteresis—a disconnect between players’ dispositions and their positions in the game—steadily increased to the point of inconclusive symbolic power struggles over the rules of the international security game and the roles that each player should play. A decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, Russian-Atlantic relations have left the terrain of military confrontation but have yet to settle on that of mature peace. Building on several dozen interviews with Russian and NATO security practitioners, the dissertation discovers that diplomacy has become a normal though not a self-evident practice in Russian-Atlantic dealings. | PhD | peace | 16 |
| Preston, Michael David | Basiliko, Nathan | Microbial Community Composition and Activities Across Northern Peatlands | Geography | 2013-11 | Northern peatlands are large repositories of carbon and little is known about the effect the microbial community has on carbon mineralization rates, and there is concern that a loss of microbial diversity due to environmental change may lead to reduced ecosystem functioning. Microbial communities vary among peatland types and abiotic variables such as temperature and pH have a large influence on carbon dioxide production, but distinguishing between abiotic controls and the role of microbial community structure has proved challenging. Microbial activity and community composition was characterized in three peatlands within the James Bay Lowlands, Ontario. Similar dominant microbial taxa were observed at all three peatlands despite differences in nutrient content and substrate quality and geographic location. In contrast, microbial activity differed among the sites, indicating that it is influenced by the quality of the peat substrate and the presence of microbial inhibitors. A series of reciprocal field and laboratory transplant experiments were conducted at a rich and poor fen near White River, Ontario to more explicitly distinguish between the abiotic and microbial controls on carbon mineralization. The effect of transplantation differed between the laboratory and field studies and when viewed individually could lead to different interpretations of the effect of substrate change. Surprisingly, intensive sampling within both fens was unable to reveal a difference between the rich and poor fen microbial community due to high within site temporal and spatial variation. Thus studies with small sampling effort will have a very incomplete understanding of microbial community structure and thus microbial ecology. A reciprocal sterilization transplant experiment was also conducted to examine how different microbial communities adapted to various peat substrates influenced C-mineralization patterns. Post-inoculation/incubation bacterial communities across peatlands converged towards a similar community structure, suggesting that abiotic variables are the dominant control on peatland microbial activity and community composition. The studies presented in this thesis collectively show that across a broad range of temperate and sub-arctic peatland types dominant members of the microbial community are generally similar, and decomposition rates can be predicted by broader controlling environmental factors rather than temporal niche or distributional constraints of the microbial community. | PhD | production, environment, ecology | 12, 13, 14 |
| Price, Alex P. | Schwartz, Robert | Chasing the Promise of Performance: A Case Study Exploring the Implementation of a Standards-Based Accountability Policy Intervention in the Ontario Public Health System | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-11 | OBJECTIVE: This research project examines the development and implementation of Ontario’s system of public health accountability and performance management through two cross-cutting themes: control and results. This research project represents one of the first attempts to bridge the fields of public administration and new public management, policy implementation, and quality improvement in an examination of accountability and performance improvement in the public health sector. METHODS: This study involved semi-structured, in-depth interviews with informants in three public health units (n=20) and with representatives from the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC) (n=4). A web-survey of public health managers (n=53) was also carried out. Document review supplemented these two main data sources. Qualitative data were coded and analyzed using Atlas.ti 6.2 and quantitative data were exported to SPSS for descriptive and bivariate analysis. FINDINGS: Control, emphasizing compliance-based accountability, top-down implementation, and performance measurement for quality assurance had a dominant presence in policy development and implementation that negatively affected the pursuit of results (i.e. emphasis on performance, bottom-up implementation, and measurement for quality improvement). Pre-existing accountability structures challenged efforts to establish performance improvement as a key consideration. Despite evidence of consultation with the field, the MOHLTC’s exercise of final decision rights in policy development reinforced limitations on managerial discretion. Top-down implementation featured considerable conflict over the means of policy achievement (i.e. measurement components, resources, timelines, and some service protocols). Conflict was often met with concern amongst local public health informants over the prospective utility of performance information for improving population health outcomes. The province’s adoption of continuous quality improvement, presenting both barriers and facilitators, also confounded the prospect of substantial systemic improvement. CONCLUSION: This empirical examination of a nascent and evolving system of public health accountability and performance management strongly emphasized a control orientation with some elements supporting results. The bridging of these three fields and the application of these two cross-cutting themes provided a useful basis on which to understand public health accountability and performance improvement in Ontario. This approach merits use in future examinations of this or similar systems, particularly where performance output and outcome information is available. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Price, Jennifer Anne Devereux | Doran, Diane | A Pilot Trial of a Coaching Intervention Designed to Increase Women's Attendance at Cardiac Rehabilitation Intake | Nursing Science | 2012-11 | Cardiovascular disease (CVD) continues to be the leading cause of death of Canadian women and while treatment for CVD has improved dramatically, women typically fare worse than men with regards to morbidity following cardiac event. Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is well established as a key intervention in the treatment of coronary artery disease and has been shown to be effective in both men and women. CR remains largely underutilized, especially in women who comprise only 12 – 24% of contemporary CR programs, even though the prevalence of CVD in men and women is similar. The objectives of this pilot trial were to test the feasibility of all procedures, specifically to determine: 1) an estimate of patient recruitment rates, 2) acceptability and feasibility of the intervention and 3) barriers to CR attendance and resources required. Additionally, exploratory research questions were used to determine the effects of telephone coaching on women’s attendance at CR intake appointment, self-efficacy for cardiac exercise and self-efficacy to attend CR. A RCT design enrolled women with CVD referred for CR at a single site in Ontario. Patients were randomized, stratified for age, to either a usual care group or an intervention group. Participants allocated to usual care received a referral to CR. In addition to usual care, women assigned to the intervention group received individualized telephone coaching, designed to support self-management prior to CR intake. Eighty-three patients were approached and 70 consented to participate (usual care n = 36, intervention n = 34). Participants in the intervention group were significantly more likely to attend CR intake (p = 0.048). Participants were highly satisfied with their coaching experience; they found the information provided to be helpful with goal setting, action planning and assisted them in their interactions with their health care providers. Barriers to attendance identified included transportation, health concerns, timing and lack of physician endorsement. Most common resources identified included problem solving support, assistance with communication with physicians and information concerning CR. The evidence obtained from this pilot trial suggests that a telephone coaching intervention designed to enhance self-management is feasible and may improve attendance at CR intake for women following hospital discharge with a cardiac event. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Price, Sheri | Hall, Linda McGillis | The Experience of Choosing Nursing as a Career: Narratives from Millennial Nurses | Nursing Science | 2011-11 | The critical and growing shortage of nurses is a global concern. The growth and sustainability of the nursing profession depends on the ability to recruit and retain the upcoming generation of professionals. Understanding the career choice experiences of Millennial nurses is a critical component of recruitment and retention strategies. An interpretive, narrative methodology, was used to understand how Millennial explain, account for, and make sense of their choice of nursing as a career. Individual, face to face interviews were conducted with 12 Millennial Nursing students (born 1980 or after), for whom nursing was their preferred career choice. Participants were interviewed twice and chronicled their career choice experiences within reflective journals. Data was analyzed using Polkinghorne’s method of narrative configuration and emplotment. The participants’ narratives present a shift from understanding career choice within a virtuous plot to one of social positioning. Career choice was initially emplotted around a traditional and stereotypical understanding of nursing as a virtuous profession: altruistic, noble, caring, and compassionate. The narrative scripts evolved from positioning nursing as virtuous towards understanding the meaning of career choice in relation to one’s position in the social world. The narratives position career choice in relation to the participants’ desire for autonomy, respect and quality of life. Pragmatic considerations such as lifestyle, job security, salary and social status were also emphasized. The narratives represent career choice as a complex consideration of social positioning, fraught with hopes, dreams, doubts and tensions. The participants’ perceptions and expectations in relation to their future nursing careers were influenced by a historical and stereotypical understanding of nursing; an image that remains prevalent in society. Insight gained from this inquiry can inform recruitment, education, socialization and retention strategies for the upcoming and future generations of nurses. | PhD | employment | 8 |
| Priyo, Asad Karim Khan | Xiaodong, Zhu | Essays on Macroeconomics and Finance | Economics | 2014-11 | This dissertation expands our understanding of the determinants of cross-country sectoral productivity differences, excess reserve holdings of U.S. commercial banks and excessive continuation by U.S. firms. In the first chapter I employ a two-sector general equilibrium model to investigate the roles of sectoral human capital, sectoral physical capital and labor market distortions in explaining the large disparities in agricultural and aggregate labor productivity that exist between the rich and the poor countries. Using a sample of 43 countries and calibrating the model to the U.S. economy, I demonstrate that the impact of labor market distortions is more prominent than both sectoral physical and human capital in explaining international productivity differences. In the second chapter using U.S. banking institution-specific data for the period 1999 to 2009, I observe that reserve and lending behaviors of large and small commercial banks are significantly different. The data suggest that the sizeable increase in excess reserves and substantial decrease in real sector lending of the U.S. commercial banking industry during the financial crisis of 2007-2008 are driven by large as opposed to small banks. Employing a two-stage model of the banking industry and calibrating the model to the U.S. banking sector, I show that volatility of deposit and short term funding and investments in risky trading securities play major roles in explaining the patterns observed in data. In the third chapter I, along with two co-authors, investigate the pervasiveness of the problem of excessive continuation among U.S. firms and study its effects and potential determinants. Using firm-specific data for the period 1970 to 2011, we employ a discrete-time hazard model using multi-period Logit regressions and find that greater liquidity, greater debt maturity, weaker debt covenants and greater principal-agent conflict are all positively associated with excessive continuation. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Proctor, Cameron | He, Yuhong | Quantification of Belowground C Flow from Root Exudation of Peatland Sedges and Shrubs | Geography | 2017-11 | A large range of labile organic compounds are secreted by roots into the soil, which inevitably leads to changes in nutrient availability and C cycling. Little is known about root exudation variability among species, or at the individual root level, hampering estimates of total C deposition. Environmental controls are believed to influence root exudation at the single root scale, yet are rarely accounted for. Quantifying exudation heterogeneities within the root system permits more accurate upscaling to the whole plant and landscape level, provided the sites of exudation and belowground biomass are well quantified. Root exudate composition was characterized in two model organisms - Eriophorum vaginatum and Rhododendron groenlandicum utilizing localized sampling of root segments. E. vaginatum roots were distinguished into three classes by age, and R. groenlandicum into four classes by fine root abundance and root diameter. Considerable variations in the total efflux, as well as the composition of exudates, was documented at both the species and root class level, confirming that exudation is not homogenous within the root system. Existing root biomass data has little correlation with the vertical gradients of exudation. Whole plant root systems were excavated and digitally mapped at sufficient detail to explicitly distinguish the depth distribution of the roots associated with exudation. Measurements of the normalized root length fraction per depth interval were tested against a variety of density distribution models to infer a suitable function to represent roots for upscaling a single root to the landscape scale. The abundance of key species such E. vaginatum that deposit C directly into the anoxic zone are poorly mapped in peatlands. A new detection methodology, based on phenological timing and the spectral contrast of decomposing litter, was investigated utilizing an expanded version of PROSAIL. Close range imagery indicated the calibrated model was capable of quantifying decaying monocot litter as a unique class, which bodes well for detection at the landscape scale. The studies presented in this thesis document root exudation rates and root distribution data necessary to conduct a simple upscaling from the single root to the landscape level. Collectively, they permit the C flow via the exudation pathway to be estimated, with consideration for vertical gradients that partition exudation into the oxic and anoxic zone. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Prodger, Jessica L | Kaul, Rupert | Defining Immune Correlates of HIV Susceptibility in the Foreskin | Medical Science | 2014-06 | HIV is a predominantly sexually transmitted infection that has infected over 60 million people and been responsible for 60 million deaths. To date, non-antiretroviral microbicides have failed to prevent HIV acquisition, or even increased it. This is likely because HIV preferentially infects activated immune cells (CD4+ T cells), taking advantage of the body’s attempts to defend itself. Therefore, relative immunoquiescence, as opposed to immune activation, may be protective. I hypothesized that men who are biologically more susceptible to HIV would have increased foreskin CD4 T cell activation, while the opposite would be true of men who are relatively resistant. The foreskin has recently been identified as a major site of HIV acquisition, but little previous research has been performed on this tissue. I therefore developed novel techniques to isolate viable, immunologically functional T cells from foreskin tissue. I then worked with the Rakai Health Sciences Program in Uganda to identify men undergoing elective circumcision who are HIV-Exposed but have remained SeroNegative (HESN, relatively resistant to HIV), and men with Herpes Simple Virus-2 infection (HSV-2+, relatively susceptible to HIV). I collected sub-preputial swabs and foreskin tissue from these men, and characterized numerous immune parameters in their samples. I found that HSV-2+ men had an increased relative abundance of CD4 T cells co-expressing the HIV receptor CCR5. In contrast, I found that HESN men had a decreased relative abundance of activated T cells (CD4/8 T cells producing TNFα) and Th17 cells (a pro-inflammatory T cell subset known to be particularly susceptible to HIV). Additionally, foreskin secretions from HESN men were more likely to have antibodies (IgA) able to neutralize HIV, and had more innate anti-viral peptides. I therefore propose HIV resistance may be driven by decreased T cell activation in genital tissue, in combination with increased secretion of anti-HIV immune proteins. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Puentes Jacome, Luz Adriana | Edwards, Elizabeth A | Anaerobic Biodegradation of Chlorinated Benzenes and Hexachlorocyclohexane by Mixed Microbial Cultures Derived from Contaminated Field Sites | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-11 | Environmental contamination with toxic organohalides is of worldwide concern. Chlorinated ethenes, benzenes, and pesticides are organohalides frequently found in contaminated soil and groundwater. Bioaugmentation with mixed microbial cultures derived from contaminated sites has been successfully applied to remediate groundwater contaminated with chlorinated ethenes and ethanes, in which the halogenated compounds are electron acceptors in microbial respiration. On the other hand, in situ bioremediation of soil, sediment, and groundwater contaminated with chlorinated benzenes and the pesticide γ-hexachlorocyclohexane (lindane) has yet to be comprehensively explored. Hexachlorocyclohexane has been reported to dechlorinate into a mixture of chlorinated benzenes, so the bioremediation of these two types of organohalides is highly interrelated. In this thesis, the organohalide bioremediation potential of previously established and novel anaerobic mixed cultures was investigated using analytical and molecular omics techniques. In the commercial chlorinated ethene-to-ethene dechlorinating culture KB-1, cobalamin (vitamin B12), an essential corrinoid cofactor for the reductive dehalogenation of vinyl chloride, was determined to be supplied to organohalide-respiring Dehalococcoides by a growing Acetobacterium population. After switching the electron acceptor from trichloroethene to 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene, native KB-1 Dehalobacter populations that respire chlorinated benzenes were identified along with a KB-1 reductive dehalogenase enzyme that dechlorinates 1,2,4-trichlorobenzene to 1,3- and 1,4-dichlorobenzene. In addition, the metagenome-assembled genomes of three distinct KB-1 Dehalobacter spp. were shown to contain more than 70 reductive dehalogenase genes (rdh) which considerably increases the number of known KB-1 rdh genes and will allow for the examination of evolutionary relationships in Dehalobacter genomes. A Dehalobacter-containing culture (referred to as GT), enriched from soils and sediments contaminated with hexachlorocyclohexane, was shown to dechlorinate lindane to monochlorobenzene and benzene, and was found to contain a Dehalobacter population that use γ-hexachlorocyclohexane as terminal electron acceptor. A GT culture was combined with a KB-1 subculture that dechlorinates monochlorobenzene to benzene, and a benzene-degrading culture, to achieve complete biotransformation of lindane to non-toxic end products. Using metagenomics and proteomics data, a novel reductive dehalogenase enzyme, HchA, was for the first time identified. Altogether, this body of work demonstrates that the mixed cultures KB-1 and GT have bioremediation potential against the chlorinated benzenes and hexachlorocyclohexane, respectively. | Ph.D. | water, environment | 6, 13 |
| Pugliese, Stephanie Christina | Murphy, Jennifer | Observational constraints on air quality and greenhouse gases in the Greater Toronto Area | Chemistry | 2017-11 | Urban areas are highly complex environments that are large sources of a variety of atmospheric pollutants. To better understand the spatial and temporal variability of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the GTA, we developed the Southern Ontario CO2 Emissions (SOCE) inventory, a fine resolution inventory based on emissions from seven source sectors for the year 2010. When the SOCE inventory was used in combination with a chemistry transport model, agreement with mixing ratios measured in southern Ontario was strong. We found that contributions from area sources (primarily natural gas combustion) played a dominant role overnight (contributing >80 %) while on-road sources played a significant role during the day (contributing >70 %). When a fine-resolution CO2 inventory is not available, stable carbon isotopes (δ13CO2) are often used as tools to source apportion CO2. We combined model output CO2 mixing ratios with GTA-specific δ13CO2 signatures of the dominant anthropogenic sources of CO2, determined as part of this work, to simulate hourly δ13CO2. When the simulated δ13CO2 was compared to measurements at the Downsview site, the agreement was generally good. To evaluate the use of Keeling and chemical mass balance (CMB) analyses, we estimated the δ13CO2 signature of the local enhancement from both model output and measurements and found that it was heavier (~3 per mil) than that calculated by the SOCE inventory. The emission of primary pollutants in urban areas (e.g. nitrogen oxides (NOx) and carbon monoxide (CO)) can also contribute to the production of secondary pollutants such as ozone (O3). Data from a governmental monitoring network in the GTA from 2000-2012 were used to explore the impact of O3 precursors on local O3 levels. Non-linear chemistry and influence of meteorology explained why reductions in precursor levels did not lead to improvements in O3, particularly for 2012. | Ph.D. | urban, environment, pollut | 11, 13 |
| Pulido-Santacruz, Paola | Weir, Jason T | Dynamics of Speciation in Neotropical Birds: Diversification Rates, Introgression and Reproductive Isolation | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2017-06 | Tropical rainforests â covering 7% of the earth's surface â are areas of exceptionally high biodiversity compared to other ecosystems. However, no consensus has been reached as to the primal cause of high tropical diversity. In this thesis, I used a combination of phylogenetic and population genetic methods to address whether speciation is an important driver of diversification patterns and to determine the genetic architecture of reproductive isolation and the frequency of introgression during the diversification process in the species-rich Neotropics. I developed and fit a character-state dependent diversification model to a global avian phylogeny and found consistent support across replicate clades for extinction as a key driver of species richness gradients. In contrast, an association between speciation or dispersal rates with species richness was not consistently found. To better understand the process of speciation in the tropics, I studied reproductive isolation in two genera of suboscine birds. My results showed that pre-zygotic reproductive barriers play a less important role in the tropical speciation process than at high latitudes, with reproductive isolation driven largely by post-zygotic genetic incompatibilities. I also found evidence of frequent introgression events during the diversification process in the Neotropical genus Dendrocincla. My analyses showed different instances of historical introgression events among closely and distantly related lineages of Dendrocincla, demonstrating that introgression may often be a common phenomenon during the diversification process in the Neotropics. These results contribute to our understanding of the evolutionary processes that drive diversification and how speciation evolves in areas of high species richness. | Ph.D. | forest, biodiversity | 15 |
| Purandaré, Nanda | Nedelsky, Jennifer ||Kopstein, Jeffrey | Democracy by Association: A Comparative Exploration of the Effects of Inequality and the State on Civic Engagement | Political Science | 2011-11 | The dominant civic engagement literature has focused on the many positive outcomes that stem from leading an active associational life, linking it to lower crime rates, economic growth and a healthy democracy. However, it has been less effective at recognizing how much of a dependent variable civic engagement actually is, exploring what shapes it and how. Yet, in light of its centrality to the democratic process and the benefits that accrue from strong, active communities, it is important to understand what shapes civic engagement to establish who is in a better position to participate and why. Drawing on personal interviews with single mothers, policy analyses, and World Values and ISSP survey data, this dissertation explores how inequality and the state shape civic engagement. The findings underscore the impact of class- and status-based inequalities on civic engagement, focusing on women as a case study. Women’s dual roles as caregivers in the home and paid workers in the labour market contribute to the gender gap in participation. However, the presence of children is linked to higher levels of participation for women, and parent-, child- and care-related groups are found to build trust, foster a sense of community, and act as a catalyst for civic involvement. The thesis also highlights the extent to which the state structures citizenship and participation, focusing on welfare regimes as case studies. It develops theories that test the effect of interventionism, egalitarianism and statism on the civic engagement levels of welfare regime-types. The findings suggest that while egalitarian policies may help reduce the impact of inequality on civic life, comprehensive social policies alone do not necessarily lead to more active societies. The way political authority is structured can have a deep impact on civic habits, and creating openings and opportunities for citizens to participate can inspire collective action. | PhD | inequality, worker, economic growth, equality, women, gender | 5, 8, 10 |
| Purdon, Mark | Bernstein, Steven Franklin ||Handley, Antoinette ||Skogstad, Grace | State Power for Low-Carbon Development: A Comparative Investigation into the Effectiveness of Carbon Finance Projects in Tanzania, Uganda and Moldova | Political Science | 2013-11 | Empirical investigation into afforestation and bioenergy carbon finance projects in Tanzania, Uganda and Moldova demonstrates that effective projects—both in terms of sustainable development and the generation of genuine carbon credits—are more likely to result when the state is able to bring carbon finance initiatives into alignment with national development objectives. Amongst the countries investigated, the most important factor in such alignment was, paradoxically, commitment liberal economic reforms. Contrary to the expectation that the performance of projects under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) would be the same in states with similar administrative capacities, carbon finance projects were more effective in Uganda and Moldova than Tanzania. Commitment to liberal economic reforms in Uganda functions as an animating set of ideas that allows the state apparatus to work in a more purposeful manner and establish institutions and organizations which allow it to generate state power for low-carbon development. For CDM forest and bioenergy projects, the risk of unsustainability is mitigated by a land tenure system and investment regime that (i) offer opportunities for individual smallholders to engage directly with the carbon market and create incentives for domestic investors while (ii) also accommodating historical land governance practices. Genuine carbon credits were associated with project developers who possessed a latent organizational capacity for implementation and were motivated to pursue market opportunities—state forest agencies in Uganda and Moldova. However, the ability of the state to retain latent organizational capacity was restricted to sectors such as forestry that are less sophisticated technically; in the energy sector, such capacity was ceded to the private sector in Uganda and Moldova during structural adjustment. More skeptical of liberal economic policy, Tanzania has retained capacity in the energy sector; however, for the same reasons, it has not treated the CDM as a genuine opportunity. At current carbon prices, CDM projects investigated were effective when the state was able to play a developmental role in the economy. Whether commitment to liberal economic reforms can have similar developmental effects in other parts of the developing world is questionable—a different animating set of ideas may be important. | PhD | energy, sustainable development, cities, institution | 7, 8, 11, 16 |
| Qian, Miao | Lee, Kang | Reducing Implicit and Explicit Racial Biases among Young Children | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2019-06 | Racial biases exist in our society. These biases, when left unchecked, exert far-reaching adverse impacts at personal and societal levels in education, health care, employment, and justice. The preschool period is formative in the development of racial bias. Until the present thesis, it was unknown whether children at preschool-age would display racial biases against other-race people, and if yes, how to reduce them. In Chapter 2, I developed a child-friendly implicit racial bias test and found the early emergence of implicit and explicit racial biases among children as young as 3-years old. The same pattern was consistently found in three distinct cultures: China, Cameroon, and Canada. I also found that the level of racial bias was affected by perceived social status between own- vs. other-race and their level of contact with other-race members. It was the first set of studies that examine the phenomenon of racial bias in preschool-age children from various cultures. In Chapter 3, I developed a novel training method, referred to as individuation training, in which children practiced the process of treating other-race members as unique individuals rather than members of social groups. I provided the evidence that individuation training reduced implicit racial biases among children in China (Experiment 1) and Canada (Experiment 2), and that the training effects were sensitive to children’s exposure to racial diversity. In Chapter 4, I further examined the long-term effects of the novel individuation training method. I found that repeated individuation training reduced Chinese children’s implicit racial bias for the long term (60 days). Together, my thesis suggests that racial bias emerges early in preschool-age and training children to treat other-race members as unique individuals reduce implicit racial bias in both short and long terms. | Ph.D. | health, employment | 3, 8 |
| Quinio, Ariel Evalle | Gagne, Antoinette | From Policy to Reality: A Study of Factors Influencing the Employment Trajectories of Internationally Educated Professionals | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2015-11 | Over the past decade there has been a changing policy landscape in Ontario that aimed at assisting foreign-trained immigrants to integrate into their intended professions. However, many foreign-trained immigrants continuously face barriers in the labour market such that their employment experiences are often contrary to their expectations. This study explores and examines the factors influencing the employment trajectory of Internationally Educated Professionals (IEPs) in Canada. In particular, the study focuses on selected Filipino immigrants and IEPs from other cultures, and examines their employment trajectories and shifts in professional status. Recent literature indicates that there is a widening gap between the policies of immigrant inclusion and equity in many Western countries and the social realities of immigrants in the workforce. This study is an interpretive qualitative research with a critical orientation using Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction as a lens. A total of 30 participants were divided into three categories according to their year of arrival in Canada. Interview data were analyzed using critical discourse analysis and grounded theory. Findings reveal four broad sets of factors (socio-demographic, individual, sociolinguistic and contextual) influencing the employment trajectories of IEPs and their resulting shifts in professional status. Government immigration policies and economic conditions at the time of participants’ arrival were found to be important influences on IEPs employment success. The contented IEPs and struggling IEPs who had both different years of arrival experienced frequent changes in employment. High achieving IEPs who arrived in Canada between 1988-1994 and 2002-2008, had successfully navigated the employment trajectory with frequent job changes. However, low achieving IEPs, were also found among immigrants arriving between 2002-2008 who experienced less and/or no movement in their occupations. Findings are discussed in relation to relevant policy implications for the economy, educational practice, curriculum, theory-building and new knowledge construction for socioeconomic equity. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, employment, labour | 1, 8 |
| Quiñonez, Carlos | Locker, David | The Political Eeconomy of Dentistry in Canada | Dentistry | 2009-06 | Publicly financed dental care has recently increased its profile as a health policy issue in Canada. The media have championed the challenges experienced by low-income groups in accessing dental care. Governments across the country have responded with targeted funds. Social concern has even promoted the Canadian Medical Association to call for the inclusion of dental care within Medicare, and in changing a policy position that is over one hundred years old, the Canadian Dental Association now recommends that governments establish a dental safety net for all disadvantaged Canadians. In this environment, important questions have emerged: Why did Canada never incorporate dental care into Medicare? How have governments been involved in dental care? What are governments doing now? What are the disparities in oral health and dental care? What gaps exist in the system? What does the profession think? What does the public think? Through a document review, administrative survey, expenditure trend analysis, and public and professional opinion surveys, this dissertation answered these questions with the aim of clarifying the many issues that surround publicly financed dental care in Canada. It appears that dental care was not included in Medicare due to material and ideological reasons; namely decreases in dental caries and human resource limitations, the belief in viable options to large-scale service delivery, and the belief that maintaining one’s oral health and the ability to seek out dental care are individual responsibilities, not social ones. As such, there has developed in policy and programming a predilection to support dental care for children, for social assistance recipients, for seniors, and for select marginalised groups, or those groups where personal responsibility is not totalising. There is also a bias, developed over the last thirty years, towards structuring publicly financed dental care in private ways. This has resulted in a system that has certain biases, inconsistencies, and gaps, such that it cannot clearly and fully respond to current disparities. It is in the conciliation of public and private approaches to care that publicly financed dental care can achieve a stable footing and a clear direction forward. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Qutob, Akram | Leake, James ||Birch, Stephen ||Zakus, David ||Ghaznawi, Hassan | A Needs-based Approach for Health Human Resources Planning for Dentistry in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia | Dentistry | 2009-06 | This study aims to provide a human resource planning example to inform government bodies in Saudi Arabia to reallocate community resources towards better dental health. This was achieved by: conducting an inventory on government human and structural oral health care resources in Jeddah and Bahrah; assessing the oral health status and treatment needs for Saudi citizens following the WHO criteria for oral health surveys; exploring the potential differences between oral health supply and treatment needs; and providing 16 models of the number and mix of dentists and hygienists to balance requirements and supply. We conducted a population-based sample survey to collect data on dental status and service requirements through self-administered questionnaires and clinical examinations. We also conducted a census of dentists and assessed their total service output by means of self-administered questionnaires. The population’s treatment needs time was estimated using the clinically assessed treatment needs multiplied by time units contained in the 2001 ODA fee-guide. Dentists’ available time was calculated from dentists’ questionnaires and the activity assessment forms. The times for treatment needs and supply of services were compared to identify differences in treatment hours. Of the 2000 participants aged 6, 12, 16, 24-29 and 35-44, 76.8% rated their oral health as excellent and 29.2% reported visiting the dentist at least once a year. The prevalence of periodontal conditions as described by the CPITN was 86.1%. The caries prevalence for the permanent and deciduous dentitions was 71.3% (mean DMFT=4.92) and 85.5% (mean dmft=5.45) respectively. One hundred seventy-five government and university dentists (56.6% response rate) completed the total service output instruments. When the projected total FTE-dentists needed to treat the incidence of oral diseases/ conditions (11,214) is contrasted with the total available supply in Jeddah and Bahrah (289 dentists) the remaining FTEs needed to meet the needs becomes 10,925 FTE-dentists. Health promotion strategies and increased productive hours could reduce this to 2,729 dentists and 1,595 hygienists. The General Directory of Health Affairs of Jeddah will need to develop different approaches to oral health promotion and/or care provision to meet the population needs. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Racey, C.Sarai | Gesink, Dionne | The Use of Self-sampling for HPV Testing to Improve Cervical Cancer Screening Participation among Under-screened Women Living in Rural Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-11 | Papanicolaou (Pap) testing has greatly reduced the incidence of and mortality due to cervical cancer. However, human papillomavirus (HPV) testing is being increasingly recommended for primary cervical cancer screening. One benefit of HPV testing is the opportunity for self-sampled specimen collection. The purpose of this dissertation was to determine if HPV self-sampling can improve participation in cervical cancer screening in under-screened rural communities. A systematic literature review and mixed methods study design addressed three objectives. A systematic literature review and meta-analysis calculated a pooled estimate of HPV self-sampling uptake in under-screened women (objective 1). Qualitative thematic analysis of community focus groups explored barriers to cervical cancer screening in an under-screened rural population and described women’s initial attitude towards HPV self-sampling (objective 2). These findings supported the design and implementation of a pragmatic randomized HPV self-sampling pilot study that determined the feasibility and acceptability of at-home HPV self-sampling to increase uptake of cervical cancer screening in an under-screened rural community (objective 3). Meta-analysis of the literature found under-screened women were 2.1 (95%CI 1.3 – 3.5) times more likely to participate in screening when HPV self-sampling was offered compared to re-call letters for Pap testing. Thematic analysis found logistical, procedural, and knowledge barriers to cervical cancer screening. HPV self-sampling addressed logistical barriers, such as inconvenient clinic hours, and procedural barriers, such as embarrassment and lack of privacy. However, self-sampling does not address knowledge barriers, specifically a women’s fear of cancer or lack of awareness of the benefits of screening. The HPV self-sampling pilot study included 818 eligible women. Women who received a HPV self-sampling kit were RR=3.7 (95%CI 2.2 – 6.4) times more likely to be screened (HPV self-sampling or Pap testing) compared to women with no intervention, and RR=2.1 (95%CI 1.5 – 2.8) times more likely to be screened compared to women who received a Pap test reminder letter. The absolute participation with HPV self-sampling was moderate at 20.9% (95% CI 16.7–25.7%), indicating that barriers to screening remain. Together these results contribute further evidence for the use of HPV self-sampling to increase uptake of cervical cancer screening in under-screened rural women. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Rachlis, Beth Stephanie | Cole, Donald | Losses to Follow-up from an Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) Program in the Zomba District of Malawi | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-11 | Losses to Follow-Up from Antiretroviral Therapy (ART) programs remain a challenge in Malawi. The objectives of this doctoral project were to explore factors that influence loss to follow-up, to describe patterns of follow-up, to identify a definition of lost to follow-up (LTFU) that predicts whether a patient will return to care and to determine the predictors of becoming and remaining LTFU, among patients receiving ART through Dignitas International (DI) in Zomba, Malawi. DI has been working with the Malawi Ministry of Health since 2004 to deliver comprehensive HIV/AIDS care. In collaboration with DI, this project used a mixed-methods approach to explore losses to follow-up from ART. New data collection in the form of concept mapping with Malawian stakeholders was first used to determine why patients on ART become LTFU. Descriptive analyses involving Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) was used to describe patterns of follow-up among patients who initiated ART from 1 January 2007 to 1 July 2010. Survival functions were plotted to identify the cut-off that can be used to define LTFU. GEE logistic regression was used to model the predictors of becoming and remaining LTFU at each FU visit. In concept mapping, 90 participants consisting of ART patients, ART providers, Health Surveillance Assistants and Zomba District Health Office team members participated. A nine-cluster concept map solution was generated. In the descriptive analyses, n =7,815 patients with n =76,417 follow-up visits were included. Patients did not show a consistent pattern of follow-up over time (e.g., not always late). Plotted survival functions indicated that a LTFU cut-off of ≥9 weeks late was relevant in this context. Based on the GEE models, 5 factors that were explored were consistent in predicting both LTFU risk and a return to care within 12 months of an expected visit (transferring in, duration on ART, World Health Organization stage at ART initiation, duration on ART and being in centralized care). Five variables demonstrated statistical differences across models (female gender, being married, cumulative proportion of non-adherent visits, a ≥10% weight gain and reporting side effects, and being in centralized care). This dissertation points to the dynamic complexities which individuals face during the course of their treatment that affect their ability to return to the clinic for scheduled follow-up. There is a need for a variety of program strategies to adequately address the diverse challenges faced by patients. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Radmilovic, Vuk | Hirschl, Ran | Between Activism and Restraint: Institutional Legitimacy, Strategic Decision Making and the Supreme Court of Canada | Political Science | 2011-11 | Over the last couple of decades or so, comparative public law scholars have been reporting a dramatic increase in the power and influence of judicial institutions worldwide. One obvious effect of this “judicialization of politics” is to highlight legitimacy concerns associated with the exercise of judicial power. Indeed, how do courts attain and retain their legitimacy particularly in the context of their increasing political relevance? To answer this question I develop a novel theory of strategic legitimacy cultivation. The theory is developed through an application of the institutionalist branch of the rational choice theory which suggests that institutional structures, rules, and imperatives provide behavioural incentives and disincentives for relevant actors who respond by acting strategically in order to attain favourable outcomes. The theory shows that courts cultivate legitimacy by exhibiting strategic sensitivities to factors operating in the external, political environment. In particular, legitimacy cultivation requires courts to devise decisions that are sensitive to the state of public opinion, that avoid overt clashes and entanglements with key political actors, that do not overextend the outreach of judicial activism, and that employ politically sensitive jurisprudence. The theory is tested in the context of the Supreme Court of Canada through a mixed-method research design that combines a quantitative analysis of a large number of cases, case-study approaches, and cross-policy comparisons. One of the central findings of the dissertation is that understanding judicial institutions and judicial policymaking influence requires taking close accounts of external contexts within which courts operate. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Radsma, Johanna | Livingstone, David W. | Clerical Workers: Acquiring the Skills to Meet Tacit Process Expectations Within a Context of Work Undervaluation and Job Fragility | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2010-06 | Since the late nineteenth century, clerical work has transformed from a small cluster of respected occupations dominated by men to a rapidly changing group of occupations 90 percent of which are held by women. Due to bureaucratization and the feminization of clerical work, clerical jobs are assumed to be routinized and simple, and clerical workers deemed easily replaceable. With further changes to the occupation caused by technology and globalization, clerical workers today have become increasingly vulnerable to unemployment, precarious employment and underemployment. In this research, an Ontario-wide survey with approximately 1200 respondents (including 120 clerical workers) and in-depth interviews with 23 Toronto clerical workers were combined to explore the employment situation of Ontario clerical workers. It is apparent that clerical workers are underemployed along all measured conventional dimensions of underemployment, including credential, performance and subjective as well as work permanence, salary levels and job opportunities. Relational practice is a largely unexamined aspect of clerical work that is often essentialized as a female trait and seldom recognized as skilled practice. In this dissertation, I argue that relational practice is critical to the successful performance of clerical roles and that relational practices are not innate but rather learned skills. I explore some ways in which clerical workers acquire these skills. I conclude by noting that recognizing and valuing relational skills will make the value of clerical workers more apparent to their employers, potentially reducing for clerical workers both their subjective sense of underemployment and their vulnerability to job loss. | PhD | worker, employment, women | 5, 8 |
| Raitsin, Sofia | Meyer, Jeffrey H | Influences On Monoamine Oxidase Activity In The Brain And Translation Into Major Depressive Disorder | Medical Science | 2018-03 | Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the 3rd-leading cause of disease burden worldwide. It is frequently treatment resistant, which could be explained by poor pathology targeting. Human brain imaging studies implicate elevated monoamine oxidase-A (MAO-A) density, particularly in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), in the development of MDD. While MAO inhibitor antidepressants are available, their utility is limited by dietary restrictions and medication contraindications. Finding novel ways of normalizing MAO-A could have great clinical benefits. First, we investigated the influence of several alterations underlying important pathologies of MDD on MAO-A activity in rats to better understand factors affecting MAO-A. Glucocorticoids increased MAO-A activity in the PFC and ACC, glutathione depletion increased MAO-A activity in the PFC, a simulated pseudopregnancy model lead to elevated MAO-A activity in the ACC days 4 to 7 postpartum, while serotonin supplementation and depletion had no effect. Second, since glutathione depletion increased MAO-A activity and low PFC glutathione levels have been shown in MDD, we hypothesized that glutathione loss may contribute to elevated MAO-A density in MDD and attempted normalizing it with adjunct N-acetylcysteine (NAC), a glutathione precursor. NAC did not affect MAO-A VT in MDD, an index of MAO-A density measured with positron emission tomography. Third, we explored several directions to improve interpretation of this negative result. Applying magnetic resonance imaging in an overlapping sample, we found that NAC did not increase glutathione levels. Subsequently, a higher dose of NAC also had no effect on MAO-A activity in rats. Finally, in an expanded sample, glutathione levels did not overall differ between MDD and health, but decreasing glutathione levels were associated with increasing duration of untreated illness. This has implications for using NAC in MDD, because it has been posited that NAC may only restore deficiency of glutathione rather than achieve elevated levels. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Rajan, Doris | Mojab, Shahrzad | A Pedagogy of Solidarity: Indigenous, Refugee Women and Women with Intellectual and Psychosocial Disabilities and Structural Violence | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2019-06 | Strategies to-date have been ineffective in curtailing violence against Indigenous and refugee women and women with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities in Canada. Such strategies aim to address the manifestations, rather than the foundation of the problem, namely, the relationship between capitalism, patriarchy, poverty and violence against women. Motivated by the need to address the persistent violence against these populations of women, this research offers the theoretical and practice foundations for a critical-feminist pedagogy of solidarity that would unite these groups of women to challenge structural violence. The research design employs secondary research and the primary qualitative data collection methods of focus groups and semi-structured key informant interviews. A marginalized women’s solidarity aims to refute uncritical understandings of why violence occurs, recognizing that how we understand violence informs the types of strategies we develop to address it. The findings purport that it is imperative that this feminist solidarity be exclusive to grassroots women from these specific populations, to avoid dominant ‘white’ and middle-class distractions, encouraging a narrow focus on the core structural inequities that maintain oppressive relations. The learning and critical engagement pedagogic processes aim to support women to think through the contradictions between women’s material reality and hegemonic messaging from the state. Theatre and film is highlighted as an effective tool to use in the engagement process. Solidarity learning can lead to a local to national community development strategy, led by grassroots marginalized women working on a common local need. This strategy supports local lead activities to expand nationally, resulting in a growing presence of marginalized women’s issues and dreams. The study concludes with a call for a transnational marginalized women’s solidarity that nurtures a shared understanding of structural violence against women with the aim of enacting global actions. | Ph.D. | poverty, women | 1, 5 |
| Ralevic, Peter | Smith, Tat | Evaluating the Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Potential and Cost-competitiveness of Forest Bioenergy Systems in Ontario | Forestry | 2013-06 | Recent literature has recommended that life cycle assessments (LCA) of forest bioenergy supply chains consider the impact of biomass harvest on ecosystem carbon stocks as well as the net emissions arising from combustion of various forms of biofuels compared with reference fossil fuel systems. The present study evaluated the magnitude and temporal variation of ecosystem C stock changes resulting from harvest of roadside residues and unutilized whole trees for bioenergy. The Carbon Budget Model (CBM-CFS3) was applied to the Gordon Cosens Forest, in northeastern Ontario, along with the Biomass Opportunity Supply Model (BiOS-Map), for cost analysis of different types of biomass comminution. Natural gas (NG) steam and electricity, grid electricity, and coal electricity reference systems were analyzed for a pulp and paper mill. The findings showed that the forested landscape becomes a net sink for carbon following the 20th year of roadside residue harvest, compared to whole-tree harvest, where the forested landscape remained a net source of carbon over the entire 100 year rotation. The cumulative ecosystem carbon loss from whole-tree harvest was 11 times greater compared to roadside residue harvest. BiOS-Map analysis suggested that due to technical and operational limits, between 55%-59% and 16%-24% of aboveground biomass was not recovered under roadside residue and whole-tree harvest respectively. The cost of delivering roadside residues was estimated at $52.32/odt–$57.45/odt, and for whole trees $92.63/odt–$97.44/odt. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis showed break-even points of 25, 33 and 6 years for roadside residues displacing NG steam, NG electricity, and coal, respectively. No GHG reduction was achieved when forest biomass was used to displace grid electricity that is generated in Ontario. Whole-tree bioenergy resulted in no GHG reduction for NG displacement, and a break-even point of 70-86 years for coal. A net GHG reduction of 67% and 16% was realized when roadside residues and whole trees were used to displace coal, compared to 45% and 38% when roadside residues were used to displace NG steam and NG electricity, respectively. Therefore, it is recommended that bioenergy deployment strategies focus on the utilization of roadside residues, if the main goal is GHG mitigation. | PhD | energy, forest | 7, 15 |
| Ramsingh, Brigit Lee Naida | Mazumdar, Pauline M. H. ||Dacome, Lucia | The History of International Food Safety Standards and the Codex alimentarius (1955-1995) | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2012-03 | Following the Second World War, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) teamed up to construct an international Codex Alimentarius (or “food code”) in 1962. Inspired by the work of its European predecessor, the Codex Europaeus, these two UN agencies assembled teams of health professionals, government civil servants, medical and scientific experts to draft food standards. Once ratified, the standards were distributed to governments for voluntary adoption and implementation. By the mid-1990s, the World Trade Organization (WTO) identified the Codex as a key reference point for scientific food standards. The role of science within this highly political and economic organization poses interesting questions about the process of knowledge production and the scientific expertise underpinning the food standards. Standards were constructed and contested according to the Codex twin goals of: (1) protecting public health, and (2) facilitating trade. One recent criticism of Codex is that these two aims are opposed, or that one is given primacy over the other, which results in protectionism. Bearing these themes in mind, in this dissertation I examine the relationship between the scientific and the ‘social’ elements embodied by the Codex food standards since its inception after the Second World War. I argue that these attempts to reach scientific standards represent an example of coproduction– one in which the natural and social orders are produced alongside each other. What follows from this central claim is an attempt to characterize the pre-WTO years of the Codex through a case study approach. The narrative begins with a description of the predecessor regional group the Codex europaeus, and then proceeds to key areas affecting human health: 1) food additives, 2) food hygiene, and 3) pesticides residues. | PhD | agriculture, food, health, trade | 2, 3, 2009 |
| Ranasinghe, Ashantha | Restuccia, Diego | Idiosyncratic Distortions, Misallocation and TFP Losses | Economics | 2013-03 | How resources are allocated across plants is crucial for understanding cross-country output and productivity differences. This thesis contributes to the growing literature on resource misallocation by studying the particular channels through which misallocation can arise. In Chapter 1, I examine extortion at the plant-level, its effects on individual incentives to become an entrepreneur, and how production is affected by the presence of extortion. I show that extortion is especially burdensome on moderate-ability entrepreneurs forcing them to either forgo entry into entrepreneurship or produce at an inefficiently small scale. When property rights are weak, the frequency of extortion is higher producing a society where much of it's entrepreneurial talent is heavily under-utilized. In Chapter 2, I study plant-level distortions and it's effects on incentives to improve productivity. I build a model where plant innovation improves future productivity so that productivity dynamics are endogenous. Distortions that are tied to productivity are introduced to the model to examine how plant innovation is affected. All plants lower innovation resulting in a distribution over productivity that is right-skewed and a distribution over plant size that is left-skewed, consistent with empirical findings in developing countries. The final Chapter is closely related to Chapter 1 but is more empirically focused. I study the role of theft as a means to explaining the abundance of small plants in developing countries and estimate the causal effect of theft on plant capital demand. I find that plant capital would be significantly higher if theft is eliminated. | PhD | production | 12 |
| Rancourt, Laurie-Anne Marie | Sa, Creso | Who Decides and Why it Matters: Institutions, Differentiation and Northern Rural Higher Education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11 | The purpose of this research was to study the impact of institutional forces on higher education policy processes. The project involved a case study analysis of the alignment between intention and perceived impact, focused specifically on the implementation of higher education differentiation policy within two of Canada’s provincial norths (Northern Alberta and Northern Ontario). These provinces were chosen because they represent two of the largest jurisdictions in Canada by population, and because they have both implemented differentiation policy frameworks within the last decade and a half. The research was undertaken within a theoretical framework that combined elements of new institutionalism (North, 1990; DiMaggio Powell, 1991; Thelen, 1999; Peters, 2012; Lowndes Roberts, 2013; Scott, 2014), strategic reaction theory (Oliver 1991), pragmatism (Allison Pomeroy, 2000; Duemer Zebidi, 2009; Anderson Shattuck, 2012; Kaye, 2013), and power (Foucault, 1980; Mills, 2003). Through examination of the ways in which similar policy goals were implemented in Northern and Rural Central Alberta, and in Northern Ontario, it was possible to identify institutional forces that impacted the policy process in each jurisdiction. The central argument of this study was that, in order to improve alignment between policy intentions and policy outcomes, policy makers (political decision makers) and policy implementers (organizational decision makers) must take these institutional forces into account at every stage in the higher education policy process. | Ph.D. | educat, rural | 4, 11 |
| Rangel, Jaime Cristian | Korteweg, Anna | Reluctant Subjects: The Place of Gay Men in Canadian Media Discourse on HIV | Sociology | 2018-03 | This dissertation maps the struggles for gay menâ s inclusion into the national and global health imaginaries of HIV/AIDS over the past three decades. I order to do so, the author analyzes three instances of public discourse on vulnerability and risk, and their representation in the continuum between individual and collective victimhood and responsibility in the aftermath of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, as reported in Canadian media. The central claim is that national and global health discourses are underpinned by the double helix of biopolitical and humanitarian imaginations, which I argue, require the production of morally worthy subjects for anchoring political and material responses to the pandemic. This is the case because biopolitical and humanitarian imaginations nurture specific ways of collecting, understanding, reporting, and responding to epidemiological data. Equally important, these ways of imagining morally worthy subjects nurture the symbolic, that is, political and cultural moves that inform priority setting and shape resource allocation for different populations. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Rao, Meghana | Valverde, Mariana | Troubling Suicide: Law, Medicine and Hijra Suicides in India | Criminology | 2017-06 | Attempting suicide is a criminal offense in India, although in the recent past there have been many public and legal discussions considering decriminalizing suicide attempts. How is suicide conceptualized within criminal law? What are the knowledges that inform the complex and shifting views, claims, and legal decisions that constitute the legal regulation of suicide, in India today? Informed by Foucauldian works on governmentality and biopolitics, postcolonial studies, sociolegal scholarship, and queer theory, this dissertation attempts to answer these questions by tracing the discourses that inform the regulation of suicide in India and showing how they are put together (or kept apart) in various legal and governance networks. In addition to a systematic, original study of how suicide appears in criminal court decisions, law reform documents, and proposed laws, this dissertation also studies the framing of suicide within psychiatric and psychosocial public mental health programming. Along with studying the framing and the governance of suicide within law and medical systems, I also study a kind of suicide that exists at the edges of both medical and legal rights systems: hijra suicides. “Hijra” is a gender/sexual identity specific to the South Asian region that does not necessarily fit well under the label of ‘transgender’ (a label that has come into prominence in Indian rights law in recent years). Based on my fieldwork in Bangalore, I study hijra suicides to demonstrate that these experiences exist at the edges of both public health programs and rights/legal discourses. In existing at the fringes of all current forms of governmentality, I demonstrate that hijras continue to exert their personhood through expressing their experiences with suicide, which makes the more general point that sociolegal studies of medical-legal assemblages should not be reduced to studies of successful governmentalization. | Ph.D. | health, gender, queer, governance, rights | 3, 5, 16 |
| Raponi, Sandra | Heath, Joseph | The Global Rule of Law: Between a State of Nature and a World State | Philosophy | 2010-11 | Based on the domestic model of law, many assume that the global rule of law requires a world government with a central law-making body, a hierarchical court system, and a supranational system of coercive enforcement. Since there are important problems with the practicality and desirability of a world government, I defend a decentralized conception of the global rule of law without a world government. I begin by examining Immanuel Kant’s theory since he argued that a supreme sovereign is required for a lawful condition within states while recognizing certain limitations with applying this idea to the international level. I argue that Kant proposed a voluntary league of states without coercive public law in part because a supreme coercive authority at the global level would conflict with the sovereignty of nation-states and undermine the civil condition within states. In Chapter Two, I argue that theories of dispersed or shared sovereignty can resolve this problem. However, since there are further problems with even a federal world government, I consider whether the rule of law can be developed without a world government. I argue that the most important feature for the global rule of law is the impartial determination, interpretation and application of international law by various authoritative adjudicative and administrative institutions. There are two important challenges to my view. First, many argue that international law is not really “law” unless it is effectively enforced through a central system of sanctions; without this, it can at most create moral obligations but not true legal obligations. To the extent that such arguments assume a coercion-based conception of law, my response draws on H.L.A. Hart’s rejection of the command theory of law. The second challenge concerns democratic legitimacy. I argue that global administrative law can partly address concerns with legitimacy by using rule of law principles to limit the arbitrary exercise of power by transnational institutions and increase their accountability. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Rashad, Ramy | Zingg, David W | High-fidelity Aerodynamic Shape Optimization for Natural Laminar Flow | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2016-06 | To ensure the long-term sustainability of aviation, serious effort is underway to mitigate the escalating economic, environmental, and social concerns of the industry. Significant improvement to the energy efficiency of air transportation is required through the research and development of advanced and unconventional airframe and engine technologies. In the quest to reduce airframe drag, this thesis is concerned with the development and demonstration of an effective design tool for improving the aerodynamic efficiency of subsonic and transonic airfoils. The objective is to advance the state-of-the-art in high-fidelity aerodynamic shape optimization by incorporating and exploiting the phenomenon of laminar-turbulent transition in an efficient manner. A framework for the design and optimization of Natural Laminar Flow (NLF) airfoils is developed and demonstrated with transition prediction capable of accounting for the effects of Reynolds number, freestream turbulence intensity, Mach number, and pressure gradients. First, a two-dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) flow solver has been extended to incorporate an iterative laminar-turbulent transition prediction methodology. The natural transition locations due to Tollmien-Schlichting instabilities are predicted using the simplified e^N envelope method of Drela and Giles or, alternatively, the compressible form of the Arnal-Habiballah-Delcourt criterion. The boundary-layer properties are obtained directly from the Navier-Stokes flow solution, and the transition to turbulent flow is modeled using an intermittency function in conjunction with the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model. The RANS solver is subsequently employed in a gradient-based sequential quadratic programming shape optimization framework. The laminar-turbulent transition criteria are tightly coupled into the objective and gradient evaluations. The gradients are obtained using a new augmented discrete-adjoint formulation for non-local transition criteria. Using the e^N transition criterion, the proposed framework is applied to the single and multipoint optimization of subsonic and transonic airfoils, leading to robust NLF designs. The aerodynamic design requirements over a range of cruise flight conditions are cast into a multipoint optimization problem through a composite objective defined using a weighted integral of the operating points. To study and quantify off-design performance, a Pareto front is formed using a weighted objective combining free-transition and fully-turbulent operating conditions. Next we examine the sensitivity of NLF design to the freestream disturbance environment, highlighting the on- and off-design performance at different critical N-factors. Finally, we propose and demonstrate a technique to enable the design of airfoils with robust performance over a range of critical N-factors. | Ph.D. | energy, industr | 7, 9 |
| Ravensbergen-Hodgins, Lea | Buliung, Ron N. | Toward Feminist Geographies of Cycling | Geography | 2020-06 | Transport cycling uptake is on the rise in many cities; in Toronto, Canada, cycling is the fastest growing mode of transportation. In many of these cities there is evidence that cycling participation rates are not distributed equally across the population. Notably, a gender-gap in cycling has been observed in many cities with low cycling rates, including Toronto, whereby approximately two thirds of commuter cyclists identify as men and one third identify as women. This thesis is concerned with gender and cycling. Drawing from perspectives from feminist geography, this research examines how the embodied experience of cycling shapes, and how is it shaped by, intersecting axes of identity. A critical literature review of articles concerned with gender and cycling finds that two hypotheses are commonly explored to explain the gender-gap in cycling: (1) that women cycle less than men due to greater concerns over safety and (2) due to their tendency to complete more household-serving travel, a type of travel said to be more challenging to do by bike because it often involves carrying goods and/or children. The social factors underpinning these trends, as well as the ways in which other axes of identity intersect with gender to shape cycling behaviours is lacking from the current literature. This research aims to address this research gap by providing a feminist geography of cycling. To do so, a research project was completed in collaboration with Bike Host, a cycling mentorship program targeting immigrants and refugees in Toronto, Canada. Amongst other research activities, semi-structured interviews were completed with participants to explore the embodied experience of cycling. Key results from this study are presented in three chapters. The first examines the gendered and classed embodied practices that shape and are shaped by cycling. Then, the social, temporal, and spatial dimensions of many different types of fear of cycling are explored. Finally, the ways in which participants used bicycles to complete household-serving travel, a gendered mobility, are reported. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates the role patriarchal and classist power relations play in shaping who cycles. | Ph.D. | gender, cities | 5, 11 |
| Rawlings, Gertrude | Mojab, Shahrzad | A Critical Exploration of Contingent Workers' Training and Access to Information and Communication Technology | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-06 | In the late 1990s, many Western governments introduced policy programs to make information and communication technology (ICT) accessible to all. More than a decade later, however, such universal access is far from a reality. Between 2002 and 2005, in response to a request from a group of contingent workers who felt excluded from effective access to ICT training, a university research group on contingency conducted an applied research project in the form of a series of basic ICT courses. This qualitative dissertation both critically examines the training process and treats it as a case study for exploring broader issues of exclusion and resistance in the context of access to ICT. Specifically, it explores: (1) the symptoms of exclusion as they relate to ICT, social capital, and the community; (2) possibilities for resistance that can alleviate the conditions of exclusion; (3) the assumptions, theories, knowledge construction, policy methods, and processes that underlie the symptoms of exclusion; and (4) alternative assumptions, strategies, and activities that offer possibilities for resistive action. The case study provided an environment in which exclusionary and resistive experiences with access to ICT and training were examined from the perspective of excluded contingent workers, as supported by a university research group. A key finding is that generational behaviour in the domestic sphere erects barriers that contribute to the silencing and exclusion of immigrant contingent women; these barriers then reinforce similar patterns of exclusion in institutionalized ICT training. Another major finding is the need for alleviating the barrier that limited English skills create for ICT learning; addressing this issue must be part of any recommendations for curricular change. Guided throughout by a critical approach that focuses on the concept of ruling relations, this dissertation marshals critical knowledge gained from below in support of change by policymakers, educators, and community practitioners. | PhD | institution, worker, women, educat, inclusive | 4, 5, 8, 16 |
| Rawlins, Renée Nicole | Guttman, Mary Alice | African/Caribbean-Canadian Women Coping with Divorce: Family Perspectives | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-11 | In this dissertation, African/Caribbean-Canadian women’s experiences of coping with divorce were explored using a qualitative methodology. This study was approached from a Black Feminist paradigm using the lived experiences of Black women as a source of knowledge. Divorce and coping literature provided a theoretical framework for understanding the issues related to divorce in the Black community and effective coping efforts among Black women, particularly as it pertains to divorce. Six separated/divorced women from the same family, representing two generations, were interviewed individually and as a group using a semi-structured interview guide. The participants discussed their reflections on marriage and marital disruption, their post-separation experiences and challenges, and the coping resources they accessed during the divorce process. The participants also discussed how their own marriages and divorces were influenced by the marriages and marital disruptions of their family members. The results from the interviews were reported in a case study format using the voices of the participants to tell their own stories. A grounded theory analysis found that Black women faced the common challenges of starting over, single parenting, financial loss, lifestyle adjustment, and emotional adjustment during the divorce process. To cope with these challenges, the majority, if not all, of the women cited a support network, a sense of responsibility, a positive perspective, spirituality, and independence as effective coping resources. It was the hope of the participants and the researcher that this study would help other women experiencing divorce by illustrating how effective coping efforts can lead to greater happiness after divorce. | EDD | women | 5 |
| Rawn, Barry Gordon | Maggiore, Manfredi ||Lehn, Peter W. | Ensuring Safe Exploitation of Wind Turbine Kinetic Energy : An Invariance Kernel Formulation | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2010-03 | This thesis investigates the computation of invariance kernels for planar nonlinear systems with one input, with application to wind turbine stability. Given a known bound on the absolute value of the input variations (possibly around a fixed non-zero value), it is of interest to determine if the system's state can be guaranteed to stay within a desired region K of the state space irrespective of the input variations. The collection of all initial conditions for which trajectories will never exit K irrespective of input variations is called the invariance kernel. This thesis develops theory to characterize the boundary of the invariance kernel and develops an algorithm to compute the exact boundary of the invariance kernel. The algorithm is applied to two simplified wind turbine systems that tap kinetic energy of the turbine to support the frequency of the grid. One system provides power smoothing, and the other provides inertial response. For these models, limits on speed and torque specify a desired region of operation K in the state space, while the wind is represented as a bounded input. The theory developed in the thesis makes it possible to define a measure called the wind disturbance margin. This measure quantifies the largest range of wind variations under which the specified type of grid support may be provided. The wind disturbance margin quantifies how the exploitation of kinetic energy reduces a turbine's tolerance to wind disturbances. The improvement in power smoothing and inertial response made available by the increased speed range of a full converter-interfaced turbine is quantified as an example. | PhD | wind | 7 |
| Ray, Monali | Thorsteinsdottir, Halla | Canada Reaching Out? A Study of Collaboration between Canada and the Emerging Economies in Health Biotechnology | Medical Science | 2011-11 | This dissertation discusses research on Canada’s collaboration with emerging economies, specifically Brazil and India, in the field of health biotechnology. In recent years Canada has shown interest in engaging with emerging economies including Brazil and India in S&T fields. However, little is known about the levels and characteristics of such collaboration. Without greater understanding of this phenomenon it is difficult to inform public policy on how to best encourage collaboration. In this dissertation, the levels of Canada-emerging economies research and entrepreneurial collaboration are gauged. The motivations driving Canada-emerging economies research as well as entrepreneurial collaboration, its challenges and outcomes are examined. The roles of wider institutional actors – funding agencies, intellectual property experts, regulators, etc – in both Canada and the two emerging economies that support international collaboration are analyzed. The research reveals that north-south collaboration in health biotechnology has the potential to lead to a wide range of scientific and commercial benefits for both partners. They include access to expertise, technologies, biodiversity, as well as increasing potential to publish in high impact journals. The benefits are mutual. Northern academics and entrepreneurs are not necessarily in a dominant position in the partnerships, thus contradicting stereotypical notions of partners in north-south relationships. The systems of innovation conceptual framework is useful to uncover how institutions in both the north and the south shape S&T collaboration, and also to develop multi-pronged policy approaches to promote such partnerships and mitigate risks. The framework enables moving away from a donor-recipient, linear model of S&T interactions between the north and the south, and towards conceptualizing north-south collaboration as complex interplay of two innovation systems. | PhD | health, innovation, biodiversity | 3, 9, 14 |
| Rayfield, Bronwyn | Fortin, Marie-Josee | Maintaining Habitat Connectivity for Conservation | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2009-11 | Conserving biodiversity in human-dominated landscapes requires protecting networks of ecological reserves and managing the intervening matrix to maintain the potential for species to move among them. This dissertation provides original insights towards (1) identifying areas for protection in reserves that are critical to maintain biodiversity and (2) assessing the potential for species' movements among habitat patches in a reserve network. I develop and test methods that will facilitate conservation planning to promote viable, resilient populations through time. The first part of this dissertation tests and develops reserve selection strategies that protect either a single focal species in a dynamic landscape or multiple interacting species in a static landscape. Using a simulation model of boreal forest dynamics, I test the effectiveness of static and dynamic reserves to maintain spatial habitat requirements of a focal species, American Marten (Martes americana). Dynamic reserves improved upon static reserves but re-locating reserves was constrained by fragmentation of the matrix. Management of the spatial and temporal distribution of land-uses in the matrix will therefore be essential to retain options for re-locating reserves in the future. Additionally, to include essential consumer-resource interactions into reserve selection, a new algorithm is presented for American marten and its two primary prey species. The inclusion of their interaction had the benefit t of producing spatially aggregated reserves based on functional species requirements. The second part of this dissertation evaluates and synthesizes the network-theoretic approach to quantify connectivity among habitat patches or reserves embedded within spatially heterogeneous landscapes. I conduct a sensitivity analysis of network-theoretic connectivity analyses that derive least-cost movement behavior from the underlying cost surface which describes the relative ecological costs of dispersing through different landcover types. Landscape structure is shown to aff ect how sensitive least-cost graph connectivity assessments are to the quality (relative cost values) of landcover types. I develop a conceptual framework to classify network connectivity statistics based on the component of habitat connectivity that they quantify and the level within the network to which they can be applied. Together, the combination of reserve design and network connectivity analyses provide complementary insights to inform spatial planning decisions for conservation. | PhD | resilien, conserv, biodiversity | 14 |
| Raykov, Milosh M. | Livingstone, David W. | Underemployment and Health-related Quality of Life | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2009-11 | Considering the increasing levels of unemployment and underemployment, and the limited evidence concerning the impact of underemployment on health, my study examines the relations between subjective, objective, and time-related underemployment and employees’ health-related quality of life, as manifested through self-rated health, activity limitations and work-related stress. The study compares an expanded model of work-health relations that, along with the factors addressed by control-demand, and social capital theories, includes characteristics of the physical work environment, and employees’ economic class. In addition to the commonly examined factors related to employment and health (control-demand and social capital), my study explores the impact of the work environment (hazards, discomfort and physical demands) and economic class to determine the specific effects of underemployment on an employee’s health-related quality of life. My main argument is that underemployment, in conjunction with lower economic class, higher exposure to a harmful work environment, lack of control over work, and lower social capital, contributes to increased work-related stress and diminishes health-related quality of life. The study applies a mixed methodological approach based on data from the Canadian Work and Lifelong Learning Survey and the US General Social Survey, and qualitative analysis of interviews from the Ontario Survey on Education-Job Requirements Matching. Evidence based on cross-sectional and qualitative data analysis provides consistent findings and confirms the main assumption that high levels of underemployment have a significant effect on employees’ health-related quality of life. The study shows that employees’ economic class, characteristics of work environment and control over work carry the highest associations with health-related quality of life, while underemployment has a significant additive association with health-related quality of life, most importantly with work-related stress. | PhD | employment, health | 3, 8 |
| Read, Robyn | Mundy, Karen | KNOWLEDGE COUNTS: A BIBLIOMETRIC ANALYSIS OF THE EDUCATION FOR ALL GLOBAL MONITORING REPORTS | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-06 | Empirical evidence has a vital role to play in the international development of education. However, knowledge production in development involves important issues of power and vested interests, and is often viewed as a North / South asymmetrical process where knowledge production is dominated by the Northern elite. This study examines the evidence-base informing one of the most influential publications in the field of international education development, the Education for All Global Monitoring Reports (EFA GMRs), and illuminates broader discussions in the development literature as to what knowledge counts and who gets to decide? Through the application of bibliometric methods, this study examines the combined 8271 references listed in the 12 EFA GMRs published between 2002-2015 to gain empirical insight into (a) individual and organizational knowledge actors engaged in the production and dissemination of the evidence referenced, (b) the knowledge networks, or underlying patterns of relationships between actors and organizations, (c) the extent of the influence wielded by individual and organizational actors over the knowledge network, and (d) how the EFA GMR knowledge networks changed over time. In addition to a range of descriptive statistics, this study calculated for Lotkaâ s Law of authorship distribution and Bradfordâ s law of publisher distribution, and utilized network analysis to provide a deeper look at the EFA GMR knowledge networks. Several organizations were found to be far more central to the EFA GMR knowledge networks than others, with the most central being the World Bank, UNESCO and the EFA GMR. Despite the prominence of these organizations, this study found that EFA GMR knowledge networks grew over time, with more actors (and more types of actors) joining the reports each year. However, while the knowledge networks underpinning the EFA GMRs grew over time, network density and fragmentation measures conclude these networks are not becoming increasingly interconnected. This study adds to our empirical understanding of what capacity for knowledge production and mediation currently exist, and where is it located. This in turn allows us to identify what levers exist that could potentially help create a more equitable and inclusive version of evidence-based development, particularly in the education sector. | Ph.D. | inclusive, equitable | 4 |
| Reaume, Michele | Flessa, Joseph | Listening, Learning and Relationships: An Investigation of How Principals Facilitate Student Voice | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-11 | The idea that students should play a greater role in their educational experience has emerged with fervor over the past twenty years. The importance of consulting students about their views of school and learning is not only progressively more accepted, it is becoming inscribed within policies and directives. Student voice is defined as pedagogies in which youth have the opportunity to influence decisions that will shape their lives and those of their peers inside and outside of school settings. The research shows an abundance of benefits that consulting students offers to both the students themselves and to schools. Lacking in the literature is research specifically examining the role of the school administrator in student voice initiatives. This qualitative study sought to investigate the experiences of elementary administrators who were committed to student voice. Twelve administrators from a variety of school boards in Ontario were interviewed about their experiences facilitating student voice. It was found that participants used similar strategies, and experienced comparable supports and constraints. When examining the external constraints, a richer picture emerged, which led to the examination of the student experience using a spectrum of student voice proposed by Toshalis and Nakkula (2012). Based on this, four participants were examined in further detail because they were the only administrators who experienced student voice within the classroom domain. The importance of bringing student voice into the classroom domain is discussed. The role relationships play in student voice was highlighted; parents, teachers, administrators, and of course students all impact student voice initiatives. In order for partnerships to happen, various stakeholders need to play a role, and thus suggestions are offered. Recommendations have been made for teaching the necessary skills to students, professional development for staff, parent involvement, suggestions for boards and Ministry and the necessity for developing the climate of the school. When relationships are at their best, it is more likely that student voice will meaningfully occur in both the school and the classroom domains. | Ed.D. | educat | 4 |
| Rebeira, Mayvis A | Coyte, Peter | Essays on the Economics of Longevity | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-11 | The dissertation focuses on the topic of longevity and aging; specifically, how changes in pension income and income inequality affect mortality and the risk factors associated with chronic health conditions. Through three separate essays, I examine the impact of the aforementioned factors on three, disparate population cohorts in Canada, the United States and in developed countries. In the first essay, I investigate risk factors for chronic physical and mental health conditions in an understudied group: Canadian veterans. My research helps identify high-risk veterans as they transition from military to civilian life. The findings show the importance of service-oriented factors, notably military branch (land forces) and overseas deployment as significant risk factors for a subset of chronic health conditions. In addition, veterans experienced improved health as their income levels increased. In the second essay, I investigate how differences in pension income affect mortality by analyzing pensions received by US Confederate veterans. I exploit exogenous variation in pension income across two adjacent states (Texas and Oklahoma), as a result of regional differences in pension laws, to determine the effect of pension income on health. I compiled a novel database through primary data collection that details dates of birth and death of veterans. I show that receiving higher pension increased longevity in Texan veterans by 1.23 years relative to their counterparts in Oklahoma. The results remain significant after controlling for county-level differences in the two states. In the third essay, I focus on the effect of macroeconomic conditions – specifically income inequality on mortality risk for men and women in a subset of OECD countries from 1950-2008. Using the latest available data on the inverted Pareto-Lorenz coefficient and a panel co-integration framework, I address econometric challenges (e.g. causality, omitted variable bias) posed by more conventional methods. I show that for industrialized countries with co-integrated series, income inequality has a long-run significant negative effect on mortality risk for both men and women, that is, an increase in income inequality lowers annualized adult mortality risk. These essays fill a major gap in the health economics literature on factors that affect health and longevity in understudied populations. | Ph.D. | inequality, industr, equality, women, health | 3, 5, 9, 10 |
| Reda, Frank | Green, Andrew | Trade and Economic Growth: A Latin American Perspective | Law | 2015-03 | Although the World Trade Organization has played a significant role in world trade and in the development of world economies it has not been able to evenly distribute the gains from trade across both the developed and developing world. With the effects of the 2008 financial crises still encumbering economic growth for many countries, Mercosur members face serious challenges to accessing world trading markets, attracting foreign direct investment and promoting competition for domestic industries. As such, for Mercosur to recapture the economic growth experienced in the 1990s Mercosur must abandon hopes of achieving success through the special and differential treatment provisions within the WTO and instead pursue a trade liberalization agenda, one which includes negotiating a free trade agreement with the European Union and implementing comparative advantage based structural, social and political reforms. | LL.M. | economic growth, trade | 8, 10 |
| Reeser, Dorea Irma | Donaldson, D. James | Effects of Aqueous Organic Coatings on the Interfacial Transport of Atmospheric Species | Chemistry | 2013-11 | Species must interact with air—aqueous interfaces in order to transport between either phase, however organic coated water surfaces are ubiquitous in the environment, and the physical and chemical processes that occur at organic coated aqueous surfaces are often different than those at pure air—water interfaces. Three studies were performed investigating the transport of species across air—aqueous interfaces with organic coatings in an effort to gain further insight into these processes. Gas and solution phase absorption spectroscopy were used to study the effect of octanol coatings on the formation of molecular iodine (I2) by the heterogeneous ozonation of iodide and its partitioning between phases. Compared to uncoated solutions, the presence of octanol monolayers had a minor effect on the total amount of I2 produced, however, it did significantly enhance the gas to solution partitioning of I2. Incoherent broadband cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy (IBBC-EAS) was used to measure the gas-phase nitrogen dioxide (NO2) evolved via photolysis of aqueous nitrate solutions either uncoated or containing octanol, octanoic acid and stearic acid monolayers. Both octanol and stearic acid reduced the rate of gaseous NO2 evolution, and octanol also decreased the steady-state amount of gaseous NO2. Alternatively, octanoic acid enhanced the rate of gaseous NO2 evolution. Finally, the loss of aqueous carbon dioxide (CO2) from aqueous solutions saturated with CO2 was measured using a CO2 electrode in the absence and presence of stearic acid monolayers and octanol coatings, and a greenhouse gas analyzer was used to measure the evolution of gaseous CO2 from solutios with octanol monolayers. Enhanced losses of aqueous and evolved gaseous CO2 were observed with organic coated solutions compared to those uncoated. The results of these studies suggest that organic coatings influence the transport of I2, NO2 and CO2 via one, or a combination of: barrier effects, surface tension effects, chemistry effects and aqueous – surface – gas partitioning effects. These results, particularly the enhanced partitioning of these species to octanol coated aqueous surfaces, have important implications for species transport at air—aqueous interfaces, and may provide useful insight for future studies and parameters for atmospheric models of these species. | PhD | greenhouse gas | 13 |
| Reeves, Allison | Stewart, Suzanne | Biskanewin Ishkode (The Fire that is Beginning to Stand): Exploring Indigenous Health and Healing Concepts and Practices for Addressing Sexual Traumas | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2013-11 | Multiple traumas, including sexual vulnerabilities, sexual abuse, and sexualized violence, remain substantially higher among Indigenous peoples in Canada than among non-Indigenous peoples. These trends are rooted in a colonial history that includes systemic racism, a deprivation of lands and culture and other intergenerational traumas. Mental health sequelae following sexual vulnerabilities such as abuse and violence may include mood disorders, low self-worth, posttraumatic stress and a range of issues related to anxiety—yet Western mental health services are typically under-used by Indigenous peoples managing these issues. Indigenous mental health and healing services are explored as a more culturally appropriate and successful alternative for Indigenous clients experiencing multiple traumas. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Regan, Anne Elizabeth | Rittich, Kerry | Examining the Delineation of Jurisdiction Between Human Rights and Labour Arbitration After Figliola and Penner | Law | 2015-11 | There has been a long-time debate over whether issues conclusively decided at labour arbitration should be subject to a subsequent proceeding before a human rights tribunal. The author examines Supreme Court of Canada decisions dealing with re-litigation of issues before multiple decision-makers, and demonstrates how they are interpreted by the human rights tribunal. This paper identifies principles from cases before other decision-makers that can be applied to the problem of shared jurisdiction between labour arbitration and human rights. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Reid-Musson, Emily R. | Walks, Alan R. | Claiming the Road: Intersectional Mobilities and Unfreedom among Migrant Farmworkers in Canada | Geography | 2017-06 | This study considers the travel patterns, practices and conditions that shape how migrant farmworkers circulate in rural southwestern Ontario. While migrants in Canada’s Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP) do not exercise occupational mobility and are housed in employer-provided accommodations, they are otherwise legally entitled to circulate freely in Canada. In practical terms, however, most experience significant mobility barriers. The study investigates the mechanisms by which migrant farmworkers are confined and immobilized to farm spaces on systemic levels, contributing to a vein of research on the immobilities that pervade everyday life for transnational, low-wage labour migrants. I show how localized mobility controls placed around migrants as well as inadequate transportation create a “mobility fix” for farm operators and state actors. Technologies of confinement that immobilize migrant farmworkers are justified through racial and sexual ideologies about migrants being a threatening presence in rural Canada, while permitting high levels of value to be extracted from migrants’ labour. The dissertation is organized as three empirical journal articles which are preceded by a chapter on research methods. In the first article I document how a purported problem with transient farm labour migration to Ontario from Quebec and Atlantic Canada was constructed in the 1960’s and 1970’s. In response, the Canadian government devised the SAWP as an institutional mechanism to undercut transnational migrants’ constitutional and practical mobility rights, rights that transients harnessed. This chapter reveals how enacting controls around migrants’ local mobilities has been crucial to the “making” of migrant agricultural workforces in Canada. In the second article I identify how systemic immobilities for SAWP workers are enacted by Canadian family farm operators. I show how Canadian family farms benefit from high levels of personal and intimate interaction with SAWP employees. I identify how operators impose high limitations and constraints as to when, where, and how migrants can travel beyond formal work hours. Finally, the third article examines how migrants have forged bicycling geographies in rural places and how migrant bicyclists are perceived in Canadian communities. Migrants are more vulnerable as bicyclists, do not bike out of choice, and have become subjects of bike safety education. I argue that racial and economic forms of exploitation as well as socio-spatial exclusions inflect actually existing bicycling geographies. | Ph.D. | educat, labour, worker, wage, rural, rights | 4, 8, 11, 16 |
| Reid, Audrey Helen | Sprules, W. Gary | The Influence of Spatial Heterogeneity of Prey on Predator Growth and Energetics | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2016-11 | Ecosystems are inherently heterogeneous, with organisms distributed in an uneven manner due to physical and biological forces. Animals have evolved to exploit the â patchinessâ of prey items to increase food consumption, yet the energetics associated with foraging in a patchy environment, along with the relationship between prey patches and consumer growth, is not fully understood. To investigate how the patchiness of food influences consumer consumption and growth I devised a series of experiments utilizing the common freshwater cladoceran | Ph.D. | food, consum, water | 2, 6, 12 |
| Reid, Nadine | Cockerill, Rhonda||Durbin, Janet | A Realist Evaluation of Family Navigation in Youth Mental Health and Addictions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-11 | In Canada today, many families of youth with mental health and/or addiction concerns are struggling to access the care they need. The Family Navigation Project is a service affiliated with Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto, Ontario, which aims to provide needs-based, family-centred system navigation to families of youth aged 13 to 26 with mental health and/or addiction concerns. The current study is a Realist Evaluation of the Family Navigation Project. The objectives of this study were a) to describe the population being served by the Family Navigation Project; b) to develop a conceptual framework for family navigation and a program theory for the Family Navigation Project; and c) to test the program theory, and refine it based on the results. This multi-phase, mixed methods study applied a Realist Evaluation framework and a cross-sectional methodological design in which both quantitative and qualitative data were collected through an online survey package in order to evaluate the sample characteristics; perception of navigation; the impact of perceived experience on family empowerment, family quality of life, and service satisfaction; and the influence of context. Data was collected from a convenience sample of 134 families seeking care on behalf of youth, who were registered with the Family Navigation Project at the time of the study. Descriptive, inferential and qualitative analyses were performed. Results indicated that the Family Navigation Project reached its target population in this sample; that families in this sample were highly satisfied with the services they received; that most families in this sample perceived care to be accessible, continuous, and family-inclusive; that this perceived experience significantly influenced family empowerment, family quality of life, and service satisfaction; and that both individual and systemic-level contexts influence experience and outcomes to varying extents. The conceptual framework and program theory were subsequently refined. Applications, contributions and limitations are noted. | Ph.D. | health, inclusive | 3, 4 |
| Reid, Sarah M. | Wheaton, Blair | Women, Work, and Family: Estimating Married Women's Status Achievement Over Their Careers | Sociology | 2013-11 | My dissertation project examines women’s family lives, career trajectories, and status attainment. I draw on the concept of the work-family interface to highlight how work and families operate as contextual layers that cross-over in shaping definitions and appraisals of mothers as workers and workers as mothers. Utilizing data on married mothers’ complete working histories, I demonstrate that job exits due to motherhood negatively impact women’s occupational status attainment (SES), but I also show that women face penalties when changing jobs involuntarily and also due to personal reasons not tied to the maternal role. Importantly, in each instance, I demonstrate that these effects operate independently of the non-employment durations they engender, offering broad support for the status characteristics framework which points to the role of employer appraisals of women’s work commitment in shaping their SES outcomes. I also bring families back into the discussion of the work-family interface via the construction of a family-level framework that draws on mothers’, fathers’ and children’s attitudes about maternal employment as a platform for the development of discrete family configurations. I reveal a wide array of family attitude configurations that underscore that maternal employment continues to be contested moral terrain in some families while it is ii supported in others. In particular, I show that in egalitarian families—where maternal employment is not seen as a risk to ‘good’ mothering—mothers report more positive experiences of family and marital relations, less housework and more paid work, and higher earnings. I argue that family contexts represent an important yet understudied contextual reality that is more than the sum of individual views and which have unique consequences for women’s family lives and status trajectories. | PhD | worker, employment, women, gender | 5, 8 |
| Reilly, Katherine Margaret Anne | Deibert, Ronald J. | Open Networking in Central America: The Case of the Mesoamerican People's Forum | Political Science | 2010-06 | This dissertation considers the case of the Mesoamerican People’s Forum (MPF), a Central American ‘cousin’ of the World Social Forum, and manifestation of the Global Justice Movement. It argues that the MPF cannot be adequately understood as a transnational social movement or as an ‘open space.’ Rather, it is best understood as a political playing field on which the leaders of locally rooted social movements contested the future of the Central American left within an uncertain and changing political context. Based on extensive ethnographic field work and grounded analysis, it argues that well-placed actors within forum spaces can best be thought of as ‘mediators’ between state and society. The emergence of de facto federated governance structures in Central America, plus weak democratic institutions, have placed new pressures on mediators. Leaders within the Central American left find that they need to build up and/or maintain power bases to shield their positions within an uncertain political environment. They mobilize people to participate in transnational forum spaces because of the legitimating benefits, but shape networked flows within these spaces to limit the potential for networking to erode established positions. Thus I conclude that openness is neither the condition nor the objective of social forums, but rather a pawn strategically deployed or retracted in the course of networked interactions. The work advances thinking about the nature of collective political subjectivity in an era of transformationalist globalization. It also argues in favor of critical realist perspectives on collectivization in a post-development, globalizing world. Specifically, scholars can best advance an ‘epistemology of the south’ by promoting and protecting cognitive justice, which in turn can be achieved through the use of realist approaches that serve to uncover the practices of power at work within networked spaces. | PhD | institution, justice | 16 |
| Reist, Thomas A | Zingg, David W | Scaling of Hybrid Wing-body-type Aircraft: Exploration Through High-fidelity Aerodynamic Shape Optimization | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2016-11 | Unconventional aircraft configurations have the potential to reduce aviationâ s contribution to climate change through substantial reductions in fuel burn. One promising configuration which has received much attention is the hybrid wing-body (HWB). Due to the lack of design experience for unconventional configurations, high-fidelity design and optimization methods will be critical in their development. This thesis presents the application of a gradient-based aerodynamic shape optimization algorithm based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations to the aerodynamic design of conventional tube-and-wing (CTW) and HWB aircraft. The optimal aerodynamic shapes and performance for a range of aircraft sizes including regional, narrow-body, midsize, and wide-body classes are found so as to characterize the aerodynamic efficiency benefits of the HWB configuration with respect to equivalent CTW designs. Trim-constrained drag minimization is performed at cruise, with a large design space of over 400 design variables. The smaller optimized HWBs, including the regional and narrow-body classes, while more aerodynamically efficient, burn at least as much fuel as to the equivalently optimized CTWs due to their increased weight, while the larger wide-body-class HWB has almost 11% lower cruise fuel burn. To investigate alternative configurations which may yield improved efficiency, exploratory optimizations with significant geometric freedom are then performed, resulting in a set of novel shapes with a more slender lifting fuselage and distinct wings. Based on these exploratory results, new lifting-fuselage configurations (LFCs) are designed. The slenderness of the LFC fuselage decreases with aircraft size, such that, for the largest class, the LFC reverts to a classical HWB shape. This new configuration offers higher aerodynamic efficiency than the HWBs, with the smaller classes seeing the largest benefit from the new configuration. This new lifting-fuselage concept offers 6% lower cruise fuel burn than the CTW in the regional class, and a marginal benefit in the narrow-body class. The effects of cruise altitude, stability requirements, and weight sensitivity are also examined. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Rekers, Josephina Veronica Maria | Gertler, Meric S. | Considering Adoption: How are Innovations Validated in Cultural and Science-based Industries? | Geography | 2010-11 | This thesis examines the process by which innovative new products come to be accepted and adopted in the marketplace. As these products are inherently uncertain and not readily accepted and adopted, market intermediaries play an important role in the validation and subsequent diffusion of innovations. In this thesis I demonstrate that these social processes have significant impact on the spatial organization of the market development process. Drawing on a diverse but complementary set of literatures – including the economic geography of innovation, communities of practice, social networks, the sociology of scientific knowledge and reception studies – I sketch out an adoption-centric approach to understanding the social dynamics of the innovation process. Using comparative case studies of musical theatre and pharmaceutical vaccines, this research finds that the process of market development involves a range of participants that are each embedded in their own distinctive community. The social and geographic configuration of these intermediaries varies for different knowledge-intensive products: validating expertise for cultural products such as theatre is situated predominantly in ‘global nodes of excellence’, whereas for science-based goods such as vaccines this is situated in the local marketplace. These findings have implications for marketplaces in ‘beta-cities’ such as Toronto, which are not global nodes of excellence. Without these validating intermediaries, what role do beta cities play in the development and diffusion of cultural products? Akin to research on users’ involvement in the development of innovations, findings suggest there are qualities that make beta cities important sites for experimentation and the testing of new theatrical works. An adoption-centric perspective such as the one developed in this thesis sheds light on the social and geographic forces that shape the uptake of innovations. Application of this perspective has potential to significantly strengthen policy initiatives in support of the demand-side of regional innovation systems. | PhD | innovation, production | 9, 12 |
| Rennie, Michael | Sprules, W. Gary ||Johnson, Timothy | Influence of Invasive Species, Climate Change and Population Density on Life Histories and Mercury Dynamics of Two Coregonus Species | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2009-06 | Non-indigenous species can profoundly alter the ecosystems they invade and impact local economies. Growth and body condition declines of commercially fished Great Lakes lake whitefish coincide with the establishment of non-native dreissenid mussels and the cladoceran Bythotrephes longimanus. Declines in lake herring abundance—a key prey item for other commercially important species—have also been reported. Though additional stressors such as climate change may have contributed to changes in coregonid populations, they have not been thoroughly evaluated. Here, I present data that condition and contaminant declines in coregonids are associated with increasing density or warming climate, but growth declines in lake whitefish are likely due to ecosystem changes associated with dreissenids and Bythotrephes. In South Bay, Lake Huron, changes in lake whitefish diet composition and stable isotope signatures were consistent with increased reliance on nearshore resources after dreissenid establishment; lake whitefish occupied shallower habitats and experienced declines in mean diet energy densities post-dreissenid invasion. Growth of South Bay lake whitefish declined after environmental effects were statistically removed, whereas condition declines were explained best by changes in lake whitefish density. Among four lake whitefish populations, growth declined after dreissenids established, but not in uninvaded reference populations. Growth also declined among four lake whitefish populations after the establishment of Bythotrephes relative to reference populations. In contrast with growth, condition of lake whitefish did not change as a result of dreissenid or Bythotrephes invasion. Bioenergetic models revealed that activity rates increased and conversion efficiencies decreased in lake whitefish populations exposed to dreissenids, despite higher consumption rates in populations with dreissenids present. Condition declines among many lake whitefish and lake herring populations (and declines in mercury among herring populations) reflected regional differences and were not related to the presence of Bythotrephes or Mysis relicta. Declines in condition were more pronounced in northwest Ontario populations where climate has changed more dramatically than in southern Ontario. This work suggests that projected range expansions of dreissenid mussels and Bythotrephes will likely affect native fisheries, and their effect on these fisheries may be exacerbated by declining fish condition associated with climate change. | PhD | energy, consun, environment, fish | 7, 12, 13, 14 |
| Reny, Marie-Eve | Bertrand, Jacques | Thinking Beyond Formal Institutions: Why Local Governments in China Tolerate Underground Protestant Churches | Political Science | 2012-06 | That authoritarian regimes adopt various strategies of societal control to secure their resilience has been widely explored in comparative politics. The scholarship has emphasized regimes’ reliance upon tactics as diverse as cooptation, economic and social policy reforms, and multiparty elections. Yet, existing comparative studies have predominantly focused on formal institutions, largely ignoring authoritarian states’ resort to informal rules as effective governance and regime preservation strategies. Local governments in China have tolerated underground Protestant churches, and in doing so, they have failed to enforce the central government’s policy of religious cooptation. This dissertation explores the reasons underlying local government tolerance of underground churches. I argue that accommodative informal institutions emerge out of a bargaining process involving agents (state and society) with a mutually compatible set of interests. Both parties need to reduce uncertainty about the other’s political intentions, and for that reason, they are likely to choose to cooperate strategically with one another. On the one hand, local officials view policies of religious cooptation as ineffective to curb the expansion of underground religion, and as increasingly risky to enforce in a context where an extensive use of coercion could be subject to severe professional sanctions. On the other hand, underground pastors seek to maximize their autonomy under authoritarian constraints; to that extent, they have used informal compliance as a strategy to earn local government acceptance. Compliance manifests itself in four ways: openness to dialogue with local authorities, the proactive sharing of sensitive information about church affairs, gift-giving and -receiving, and the maintenance of a low profile in terms of church size and rhetoric. Strategic cooperation brings benefits to both parties. It provides local public security officials’ with a stable source of intelligence about the underground space, which is key to ensuring an effective management of religious affairs. Moreover, it allows underground churches to remain autonomous from the state and decreases risks that they face coercion. Yet, inasmuch as informal arrangements are self-enforcing and rule-bound, they ultimately serve regime interests by increasing the costs of political mobilization for the compliant clergy, and by accentuating divisions between the latter and politicized pastors. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Reza Ugalde, Arturo | Naguib, Hani||Kesler, Olivera | Fabrication of Carbon-based Nanocomposite Materials for Energy Storage Processes | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-06 | Our society’s development depends on the way we use, store, and transform the energy. Currently, we have multiple sources of clean energy to cover the demand of a growing population. However, a big gap remains in the technology to efficiently store the energy that is not being consumed. The purpose of this thesis is to explore carbon-based composite materials to promote the development of new systems for the efficient conversion, use, and storage of energy: first, at small-scale storage (batteries) and second, at large-scale storage (power to gas). In both cases, different carbon allotropes and functionalization methods were considered. The first half of the thesis describes materials and methods to improve the air cathode in Zn-air batteries. These batteries are considered promising energy storage devices because of the numerous advantages such as high energy density, low-cost and abundance of Zn, environmental friendliness, and safety. The first study is focused on developing a double layer membrane fabricated with thermoplastic polyurethane, carbon nanotubes, and activated carbon membrane to improve the oxygen diffusivity and to prevent electrolyte leakage. For the second study, we developed a bifunctional electrocatalyst to promote the oxygen reactions in Zn-air batteries and achieve an electrically rechargeable configuration. The electrocatalyst was fabricated with Co3O4 particles attached to a functionalized carbon support. The second half of the thesis is focused on the catalytic methanation of CO. This process allows the reduction of the main greenhouse gas, through the power-to-gas technology. Renewable energy can be used to power a reactor where the CO/CO2 is reduced to methane, which can be transported and stored in current systems. We considered Ni-based catalysts and carbon-based supports with the purpose of improving the CO conversion, the selectivity to CH4, and the catalyst stability. This study first compares Ni supported on AC and Ni3Sn supported on AC to determine the effectiveness of Sn as a carbon fiber suppressor. In a second step, the study describes the fabrication method and catalyst performance of a core-shell structure using silica spheres grown on SWCNTs coated with the catalysts Ni3Sn and FeNi3 to improve the thermal stability and catalyst activity. | Ph.D. | environment, greenhouse gas, renewable, energy | 7, 13 |
| Rezaee, Kasra | Baher, Abdulhai | Decentralized Coordinated Optimal Ramp Metering using Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning | Civil Engineering | 2014-11 | Freeways are the major arteries of the transportation networks. In most major cities in North America, including Toronto, infrastructure expansion has fallen behind transportation demand, causing escalating congestion problems. It has been realized that infrastructure expansion cannot provide a complete solution to congestion problems owed to economic limitations, induced demand, and, in metropolitan areas, simply lack of space. Furthermore, the drop in freeway throughput due to congestion exacerbates the problem even more during rush hours at the time the capacity is needed the most. Dynamic traffic control measures provide a set of cost effective congestion mitigation solutions, among which ramp metering (RM) is the most effective approach. This thesis proposes a novel optimal ramp control (metering) system that coordinates the actions of multiple on-ramps in a decentralized structure. The proposed control system is based on reinforcement learning (RL); therefore, the control agent learn the optimal action from interaction with the environment and without reliance on any a priori mathematical model. The agents are designed to function optimally in both independent and coordinated modes. Therefore, the whole system is robust to communication or individual agent's failure. The RL agents employ function approximation to directly represent states and action with continuous variables instead of relying on discrete state-action tables. Use of function approximation significantly speeds up the learning and reduces the complexity of the RL agents design process. The proposed RM control system is applied to a meticulously calibrated microsimulation model of the Gardiner Expressway westbound in Toronto, Canada. The Gardiner expressway is the main freeway running through Downtown Toronto and suffers from extended periods of congestion every day. It was chosen as the testbed for highlighting the effectiveness of the coordinated RM. The proposed coordinated RM algorithm when applied to the Gardiner model resulted in 50% reduction in total travel time compared with the base case scenario and significantly outperformed approaches based on the well-known ALINEA RM algorithm. This improvement was achieved while the permissible on-ramp queue limit was satisfied. | Ph.D. | environment, cities, infrastructure | 9, 11, 13 |
| Rezaie, Abdolrahim | Singer, Peter | Health Technology Innovation by Enterprises in China, India and Brazil | Medical Science | 2011-06 | This thesis explores health technology innovation within indigenous enterprises in China, India, and Brazil. The main discussions are presented in five papers/manuscripts. The first is a case study of Brazil’s health biotechnology sector. It concludes that systemic tensions between the country’s public and private sectors may be detracting from its overall innovative success. The second paper gauges vaccine and medicinal innovation within enterprises in the stated countries by analyzing new technologies in their pipelines or on the market. It concludes that that a growing number of health enterprises in these countries are tackling more technologically challenging and costly innovations. The third paper explores how national institutions and industry globalization interact to shape commitments to new drug and vaccine innovations by enterprises in the three countries. It concludes that; a) the introduction of pharmaceutical product patent regimes has had a modest impact on entrepreneurial attempts to develop new technologies, b) key challenges that diminish patent incentives tend to be institutional in nature and, c) the increasingly globalized nature of health product innovation limits what countries can achieve independently. The fourth paper analyzes key issues and trends in health biotechnology firms’ transition to innovation in China, India, Brazil, and South Africa. It concludes that this transition often entails greater integration into the global system. The fifth paper ponders the implications for global health of the emerging market firms’ transition to innovation. It concludes that these enterprises have the potential to simultaneously address global health needs while exploiting global markets, provided support mechanisms are put in place to enable product development for the poorest market segments. This research suggests that to succeed in biopharmaceutical innovation, nations need to adjust scientifically, sectorally and globally all at the same time. Also, that national governments and the global health community need to enhance engagement of emerging market enterprises in related efforts. | PhD | health, innovation, industr | 3, 9 |
| Rice, Kathleen Frieda | Boddy, Janice||Wardlow, Holly | "Most of them, they just want someone to under them:" Gender, Generation, and Personhood among the Xhosa | Anthropology | 2015-06 | Drawing on seventeen months of ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation focuses on gendered and generational conflicts about social reproduction in a rural Xhosa community in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. By exploring locally-contentious topics such as human rights, gender equality, love marriage, bridewealth, bride abduction, and the deployment of sexuality, I make several related arguments about personhood, the deployment of tradition, and the experience of modernity. The forms of personhood, tradition, and modernity that I discuss are all vernacular concepts, and are not overarching analytic tools. Firstly, I show that local people interpret these contests in generational, gendered, and also temporal terms, framing rural life and the will of elders as timeless tradition, in contrast with modern city life, and with the habits and aspirations of youth. The predilections of elders thus bear the moral authority of both imagined history, and ancestral will. Secondly, I show various ways in in which experiences of and aspirations about tradition and modernity are themselves deeply gendered, and that these divergent aspirations are sources of considerable interpersonal conflict. Thirdly, I demonstrate that inequality is intrinsic to the subject positions through which people understand their identity. Accordingly, idioms such as gender equality and (egalitarian) human rights render the meaning of these subject positions unclear. Accordingly, sociality between genders and generations is often characterized by antagonism and uncertainty. Finally, I identify a deep, ironic contradiction at the core of domestic life: worsening economic austerity means that people of all ages and genders are becoming more interdependent. However, this increasing interdependency, which has historically been central to local forms of personhood, is concurrent with the rising prominence of an ideological system which privileges autonomous, independent, choice-oriented forms of personhood as the cornerstone of a worthy self. Thus, South Africa's economic crisis is also a crisis of meaning about equality, gender, age, sexuality, and spirituality, played out through the messy intimacy of social reproduction and rural domestic life. | Ph.D. | gender, equality, inequality, rural, rights | 5, 10, 11, 16 |
| Richard, Nadine Marie | Levine, Brian | Rehabilitation of Executive Dysfunction in Multiple Sclerosis: Cognitive, Behavioural and Neurophysiological Effects of Goal Management Training | Psychology | 2013-11 | Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic, progressive central nervous system disease characterized by distributed white matter injury. Particularly prevalent in Canada, MS is a leading cause of disability with extended personal and societal costs given its early onset (on average between 20-40 years of age). Deficits in executive functioning are common and detrimental to employment, daily functioning and quality of life, however their precise nature remains underspecified. Two studies were undertaken to: (1) describe the executive processes affected in MS, including neurophysiological correlates, and (2) explore, in a double-blind randomized controlled trial, patients' response to an intervention for improving behavioural self-regulation. Study 1 described significant functional limitations and impairments in processing speed and executive control of attention, memory and working memory in MS patients, both relative to neurologically healthy controls and as a monotonic function of disease severity. Mean amplitudes for event-related potentials (ERPs) including the P3 and the error-related negativity and positivity (ERN, Pe) were linked to behavioural markers of attention control and performance monitoring. ERP amplitudes and ERP-behavioural associations appeared sensitive to the presence and severity of executive dysfunction related to disease progression. In Study 2, these impaired MS patients were randomly assigned to a modified version of Goal Management Training (GMT) or a psycho-educational control group (Brain Health Workshop, BHW). In GMT, patients learned stepwise strategies (Stop-State-Split) to keep on track in their daily activities, including mindfulness training to enhance attentional awareness and control. Rehabilitation outcomes were assessed post-training and at a 6-month follow-up using a multi-level battery. Compared to BHW, GMT was associated with greater improvement on tests of executive-attentional processes as well as functional task performance and observable functioning in daily life activities. ERP-behavioural changes provided corollary evidence of improved self-regulatory processing. This study is among the first to demonstrate improvement in executive functioning compared to an active control condition in MS patients with a range of disease severity and with effects remaining visible at six months. While replication in a larger sample size is needed, results suggest GMT as a potentially effective approach for executive and self-regulatory impairment in people with MS. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Richardson, David B | Harvey, Danny | Modeling, Optimization and Large-scale Grid Integrations of Solar Photovoltaic Energy in Ontario's Electricity System | Geography | 2016-06 | Modern societies' increasing demand for and reliance on energy, primarily supplied by fossil fuels, and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions that lead to climate change is a complex issue with significant implications for the future well-being of society and the environment. Decoupling economic activity and energy production from carbon is essential to effectively deal with both issues simultaneously. Solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity has the potential to help meet future energy demands while significantly reducing the climate impact of energy production; however, large-scale integration of solar PV into existing electricity systems presents technical challenges that must be addressed if solar is to contribute to a sustainable energy future. This thesis presents four research modules that form a comprehensive evaluation of the technical and economic feasibility of integrating renewable energy, specifically solar PV energy, into the Ontario electricity system. The findings indicate that solar PV can supply a significant portion (8-30%) of total electricity supply if substantial changes are made to the existing grid. Specifically, energy storage and more flexible supply are required to deal with increased ramping rate requirements. As the effects of global warming and peak oil become apparent, and as new technologies for smart grids and distributed generation are introduced into the grid, it will be useful to have a comprehensive understanding of how to plan for the integration of renewables from an electricity generation perspective. The research in this thesis is a thorough analysis of one aspect of solar PV deployment that will be useful to encourage grid integration. This research can be combined with similar assessments by others of storage, demand management, wind and biomass energy sources to give a comprehensive understanding of how to plan energy generation investments to sustainably meet future needs. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, solar, production, environment, climate | 7, 12, 13 |
| Richardson, Emma | Kenneth, R Allison | ‘Uno tiene que cuidar también de sí mismo’: Guatemalan Family Planning Decisions in the Context of Social Cognitive Theory and a Political Economy Approach | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014-11 | Understanding the persistent inequalities in family planning rates between indigenous and non-indigenous women in Guatemala requires localized explorations of the specific barriers faced by indigenous women. This thesis presents, across three papers, a novel framework for simultaneously considering proximal, intermediate and distal factors affecting family planning.Based on Social Cognitive Theory, elicitation interviews were carried out with 16 young women, aged 20 to 24, married or in union, from rural districts of Patzun, Chimaltenango in Guatemala. Content analysis was carried out using the constant-comparison method to identify the major themes raised by participants in terms of barriers to accessing and using family planning. Barriers not directly mentioned by participants were distinguished through the application of a political economy approach. The first paper presents this augmented elicitation interview methodology and the resulting family planning self-efficacy scale.In the second paper, a political economy approach contextualizes structural issues that affect current family planning decisions, including: social exclusion and repression of indigenous people dating back to colonial times and exacerbated by the recent civil war; gender inequity; the influence of the Catholic Church at the state level, and on individual beliefs; and the evolution of population politics at the global and national levels.The third, methodological, paper draws on this inter-cultural research to highlight recommendations for: early involvement of a local team in preparing research instruments, recruitment and conducting interviews; multilingual interviewing, transcription and team analysis; and inclusive reporting and dissemination.The combination of theoretical approaches extends the application of either perspective in isolation: Social Cognitive Theory incorporates more structural influences on individual decisions about family planning and the political economy perspective links impacts and interactions at the individual level. This approach may be useful for a more complete understanding of health issues both within and outside the realm of reproductive health. | Ph.D. | inclusive, inequality, gender, women | 4, 5, 10 |
| Richardson, Murray | Branfireun, Brian | Landscape Structure and Watershed Mercury Sensitivity in Boreal Headwater Regions | Geography | 2010-11 | Aquatic mercury (Hg) contamination caused by industrial Hg emissions, atmospheric transport and deposition to sensitive ecosystems is an ongoing concern in many parts of the world. Boreal ecosystems are particularly sensitive to Hg deposition, and large soil-Hg burdens in these regions may prolong recovery of Hg impacted surface waters for many decades. Four studies were undertaken to examine interactions between watershed characteristics, hydro-climatic variability and terrestrial-aquatic export of key chemical parameters linked to watershed Hg sensitivity. Two new quantitative techniques, hydrogeomorphic edge detection and characteristic morphology analysis, were developed to explicitly map and characterize the spatial distribution, geomorphic form and hydro-biogeochemical function of forested wetlands using airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) surveys. The results demonstrate the critical contribution of forested wetlands and upland-wetland interactions to the production and mobilization of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and methyl-mercury (MeHg) - respectively - to downstream surface waters. Results of strategic, event-based hydrochemical sampling also demonstrate the critical contribution of summer high-flow periods to terrestrial-aquatic MeHg export. Finally, an analysis of historical monitoring databases of streamflow volume, hydrochemistry and Hg concentrations in yearling perch in two contrasting headwater lake basins was conducted. The results indicate strong potential for short-term, hydrologically-driven shifts in terrestrial-aquatic coupling and watershed Hg sensitivity, but only for the wetland-dominated, humic lake that exhibited consistent, summertime hypolimnetic anoxia. These various findings suggest that accurate characterization of watershed structure can help researchers identify first-order limitations on whole-watershed methylation efficiency, particularly in relation to hydro-climatic drivers of terrestrial-aquatic coupling in Boreal headwater regions. | PhD | industr, water, production | 6, 9, 12 |
| Richmond, Sonya | Malcolm, Jay R. | Effects of Single-tree Selection Harvesting on Rose-breasted Grosbeaks (Pheucticus leudovicianus) in a Predominantly Forested Landscape | Forestry | 2011-11 | Single-tree selection harvesting is frequently used in the tolerant hardwood forests of North America but relatively little is known about how this silvicultural system affects wildlife, including many avian species. I investigated Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Pheucticus leudovicianus) habitat use, survival, and nestling provisioning behaviour in twelve hardwood stands in Algonquin Provincial Park which had been harvested by single-tree selection 0-5, 16-20, 21-25, and > 50 years previously. Density, pairing success, and the number of fledglings per successful nest were all significantly lower in the > 50 years post-harvest stands than in at least one other post-harvest treatment. Density and pairing success were significantly higher in the 16-20 year post-harvest stands than in other treatments. Neither nest nor fledgling survival differed significantly among post-harvest treatments, but all stands were population sinks except those cut 16-20 years previously. Nests that were initiated earlier in the season and built in areas with higher basal area were more likely to survive, whereas fledgling survival increased with days since fledging. Nest sites had higher cover from regenerative growth, saplings, and understory, and lower basal area than random locations. During their first week out of the nest, fledglings used locations with significantly higher cover from regenerative growth, saplings, small shrubs, and raspberry and elderberry bushes than were present at random locations. Habitat characteristics at nest and fledgling locations were significantly different, and estimates of nest and fledgling survival were not correlated among harvested stands. Nests attended by after-second-year (ASY) males were initiated significantly earlier, and territory density and productivity were significantly higher for ASY males than for second-year (SY) males. Nestling provisioning rates, male contribution to nestling provisioning and nest attendance, and mean nestling weights at the time of fledging were also significantly higher at nests attended by ASY males than at nests with SY males. This study found that single-tree selection did not have significant negative effects on Rose-breasted Grosbeaks breeding in a predominantly forested landscape, but like many other species of birds, experienced breeders were more successful than less experienced breeders were. | PhD | forest | 15 |
| Ridgley, Jennifer | Ruddick, Susan M. ||Daniere, Amrita | Cities of Refuge: Citizenship, Legality and Exception in U.S. Sanctuary Cities | Geography | 2010-11 | In the 1980s, in support of the Sanctuary Movement for Central American refugees, cities across the United States began to withdraw information and resources from the boundary making processes of the federal state. Inspired in part by a 1971 initiative in Berkeley, California to provide sanctuary to soldiers refusing to fight in Vietnam, “Cities of Refuge” issued statements of non-cooperation with the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). They passed policies that prevented police and service providers from asking the immigration status of the people they came into contact with in the course of their daily duties, and limited information sharing with the federal authorities. Drawing on archival research and interviews, this dissertation maps the shifting meaning of Sanctuary as a constellation of practices and logics which has troubled the boundaries of national citizenship. Struggles to establish Cities of Refuge reveal the complex interplay between two different political trajectories in the United States: one deeply implicated with the state’s authority over migration controls and what Agamben has understood as the sovereign exception, and the other with city sanctuary, as a form of urban citizenship. The genealogy of city sanctuary reveals the multiple and sometimes contradictory threads or genealogies that have been woven into American citizenship over time, raising questions about the ostensibly hardened relationship between sovereignty, membership, and the nation state. Exploring the interactions between the daily practices of state institutions and Sanctuary reveals the performative aspects of exception: it is produced and maintained only through the constant repetition of discourses and practices that maintain the boundaries of citizenship and reproduce the state’s authority to control the movement of people across its border. Bringing the study of sovereignty into the city, and exploring alternative assertions of sovereignty reveals the exception not as an underlying logic, but a geographically specific, ongoing struggle. | PhD | cities, institution | 11, 16 |
| Riley, Nicole Marie | Chipman, Mary | Injuries Among Elderly Canadians: Psychotropic Medications and the Impact of Alcohol | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-11 | Psychotropic medication use is widely implicated as a risk factor for injuries, and it is believed that the adverse effect profiles of these medications are exacerbated by the consumption of alcohol. The objectives of this study are (a) to examine the associations between the use of specific classes of psychotropic medications and injuries among elderly participants of the National Population Health Survey (NPHS), and (b) to determine whether and how associations between psychotropic medications and injuries are modified by the consumption of alcohol. Data from Cycles 1 (1994/95), 2 (1996/97), and 3 (1998/99) of the NPHS household longitudinal file were used in this study, selecting community-dwelling participants aged 65 years of age and older in 1994/95. Among antidepressant medications, the magnitude of the risk of injuries was higher for users of tricyclic derivatives (OR=1.4; 95%CI: 0.7 – 2.9) than SSRIs (OR=0.3; 95%CI: 0.1 – 1.0). Benzodiazepine use for any indication increased the risk of injuries, but that effect was not consistent across indications. The use of benzodiazepine antianxiety medications resulted in an increased risk of injuries (OR=2.0; 95%CI: 1.3 – 3.1), but there were no significant effects on the injury risk among benzodiazepine hypnotic and sedative users (OR=0.8; 95%CI: 0.4 – 1.7). Results pertaining to the second objective of this study raised as many questions as they resolved. Alcohol consumption decreased the odds of injury among hypnotic and sedative users, but otherwise, no consistent results were observed. Findings from this study underscore the importance of identifying appropriate alcohol measures for research among elderly populations. They also stress the need to separately consider the impact of different classes of psychotropic medications on injuries (tricyclic antidepressants separate from SSRI antidepressants and antianxiety benzodiazepines separate from hypnotic and sedative benzodiazepines). | PhD | health, consum | 3, 12 |
| Ritchie, Allison | Esmonde, Indigo | Participation, positioning, and power: Opportunities to learn in a university Kinesiology Classroom | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06 | Past studies in science education research have documented that people of colour and women continue to be underrepresented in science-related university programmes and careers. To better understand issues of equity and student achievement, providing equitable opportunities to learn (OTL) in diverse, content-focused classrooms has been recognized as an important aim in educational research. This critical microethnographic study examines a Canadian, undergraduate, Kinesiology classroom and how the professor’s framing of science learning made space for a range of OTL. Then I explore how students’ navigation of scientific discussions shaped their access to particular OTL. Drawing from cultural-historical activity theory and positioning theory, this dissertation brings into focus the sociohistorical and discursive practices of students and teachers in a science classroom. The research draws data from classroom videotapes, interviews, and stimulated recalls, wherein two participants were the foci of analysis. The analyses consider students’ verbal and non-verbal acts of positioning, highlighting how these positions can facilitate and/or constrained their access to OTL. In one group, a focal student appeared to take up the position of a facilitator, and in another, there appeared to be no expert or facilitator. The second student adopted a powerful role in one activity, then shifted from an initially more passive role to a mediator position in another group. My findings show how a common task led to differential contexts for learning. In particular, conflicts and student differential uptake of positions in small-group settings are examined for their ability to potentially foster unique OTL. My study’s theoretical contributions include a synthesis of sociocultural theories of learning, as well as how these theories can be strengthened through sustained attention to multi- levels of inquiry. The different grains of video analysis afford a broader look at how students learn together in scientific discussions; what resources they draw upon to make meaning; how they negotiate the multiple, interactional demands of the task; and how power and social relations shape available OTL. Implications for science education research are also raised, including suggestions for a greater analytic focus on student-led spaces, and bringing together conversations of learning, identity, and power. | Ph.D. | equitable, women | 4, 5 |
| Ritchie, Lisa M. Puchalski | Zwarenstein, Merrick | Development and Evaluation of a Tailored Knowledge Translation Intervention to Improve Lay Health Workers Ability to Effectively Support TB Treatment Adherence in Malawi | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2013-03 | Background: Task shifting provision of basic health care services to lay health workers (LHWs) is increasingly employed to combat the global shortage of skilled health workers, particularly in low and middle income countries, where the shortage is greatest. Despite evidence for the effectiveness of LHWs in improving access to basic health services and positively impacting a variety of health outcomes, questions remain as to how recognized weaknesses in training and supervision are best addressed. This thesis employed a sequential-concurrent mixed-methods design and is composed of 3 studies with the objective of designing and rigorously evaluating a knowledge translation (KT) intervention tailored to address identified barriers to LHWs ability to function optimally as TB adherence supporters in Zomba district, Malawi. Methods & Findings: The first study utilized the qualitative methods of focus groups and interviews conducted with LHWs routinely involved in provision of care to TB patients. Lack of TB knowledge and job-specific training were identified as the key barriers to LHWs in their role as TB adherence supporters. Based on these findings, a KT intervention was developed and tailored to the identified training gaps. The second study, evaluated the effectiveness of the intervention in improving TB treatment adherence in a cluster randomized controlled trial, which showed no evidence for effectiveness of the intervention. The third study, conducted concurrently with the cluster trial, employed qualitative interviews to explore LHWs experiences with the intervention to identify ii aspects of the intervention found to be helpful and areas in need of improvement. Study 3 found that the intervention was well received and valued, with reported benefits to LHWs through improved knowledge and skills, and increased confidence. Suggestions for improvement varied considerably, with an anticipated concern with the lack of stipends and conduct of training on-site, raised as an issue by a minority of participants. Conclusion: This thesis suggests that a multi-component KT strategy tailored to address local barriers, was well received and valued by LHWs, and may represent a cost-effective approach to LHW training. However, given the trend for effectiveness did not reach significance in this underpowered study, further research is needed. | PhD | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Ritter, Moritz | Shi, Shouyong | Essays on Money, Trade and the Labour Market | Economics | 2010-03 | This dissertation consists of three essays in Macroeconomics. The first essay assesses the impact of offshoring on aggregate productivity and on labour market outcomes by developing a dynamic general equilibrium model in which workers acquire task-specific human capital. The dynamic nature of the model allows for differentiation between short and long run effects. While the welfare effects are unambiguously positive and independent of the skill-content of the offshored and inshored tasks, the distribution of the gains from trade critically depends on the time horizon. Workers with human capital specific to the inshored tasks gain over those performing offshored tasks in the short term. In the long run, the gains from trade are equally distributed among ex-ante identical agents. The model is calibrated to the U.S. economy; welfare gains from increased offshoring are found to be substantial even after taking into account losses in specific human capital for workers in the offshored occupations along the transition path. The second essay integrates the insight that exporting firms are typically more productive and employ higher skilled workers into a directed search model of the labour market. The model generates a skill premium as well as residual wage inequality among identical workers. Trade liberalization will cause a reallocation of workers both within and across industries, which will affect both types of inequality in a way that is consistent with findings from the empirical literature on trade and inequality. A calibrated version of the model can account for much of the effect of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement on the Canadian labour market. The final essay incorporates a distortionary tax into the microfoundations of money framework and revisits the optimum quantity of money. An optimal policy may consist of both a positive tax rate and a positive nominal interest rate: if the buyer's surplus share is inefficiently small, the intensive margin is distorted and the constrained optimal policy combines a sales tax with a money growth rate above that prescribed by the Friedman rule. Monetary, but not fiscal, policy alters the agent's bargaining position, leaving a special role for a deviation from the Friedman rule. | PhD | inequality, trade, industr, wage, worker, equality | 5, 8, 9, 10 |
| Rivas Vera, Maria José | Lemmens, Trudo | Sexuality Education in Paraguay: Using Human Rights and International Policies to Define Adolescents' Right to Sexuality Education | Law | 2015-03 | This dissertation explores the issue of sexuality education through the lens of international human rights obligations and policy commitments, with a focus on the Paraguayan context. It identifies relevant international human rights instruments and international policy commitments related to sexuality education, and explores their legal and political value. Making use of human rights analytical frameworks, it elaborates on Paraguay's concrete obligations with regards to sexuality education. It argues that standards reveal a clear link between sexuality education and adolescents' enjoyment of their fundamental rights. Taking a substantive equality approach, it argues that the lack of sexuality education policies has a disproportionate effect on certain groups. The dissertation concludes by offering concrete standards for the implementation of sexuality education policies. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Rizvi, Ali | Park, Chul B | Functional Polymer Foams from In-situ Fibrillated Polymer Blends | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2015-06 | Polymer foams are utilized in a range of applications such as absorption, mechanical cushioning, thermal and sound insulation, and medical devices. In comparison with amorphous polymer foams, foams of semicrystalline polymers are desirable in applications that require higher service temperatures and chemical resistance, but preparing foams of semicrystalline polymers is challenging due to their weak melt strength near processing temperatures. Blending of immiscible polymers has emerged as a convenient route to tune the viscoelastic and crystallization properties of polymers. Here we show that the in-situ generation of a fibrillar morphology during physical blending of immiscible polymers can broaden the foam processing window of semicrystalline polymers. These results formed the basis for a W.O. Patent. We anticipate that these results will help in the development of alternative polymer formulations and optimization of existing ones for the large-scale manufacture of semicrystalline polymer foams with unique properties for advanced applications. For example, novel superhydrophobic and oleophilic open-cell foams were obtained from polypropylene (PP) containing polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) fibrillar dispersed phases in a fully scalable extrusion process. These open-cell foams are technologically promising for applications such as oil-spill cleanup, organic pollutant removal, and field water remediation. | Ph.D. | pollut, water | 13, 14 |
| Roach, Lisa Aretha Nyala | Edwards, R. Nigel | Temporal Variations in the Compliance of Gas Hydrate Formations | Physics | 2012-03 | Seafloor compliance is a non-intrusive geophysical method sensitive to the shear modulus of the sediments below the seafloor. A compliance analysis requires the computation of the frequency dependent transfer function between the vertical stress, produced at the seafloor by the ultra low frequency passive source-infra-gravity waves, and the resulting displacement, related to velocity through the frequency. The displacement of the ocean floor is dependent on the elastic structure of the sediments and the compliance function is tuned to different depths, i.e., a change in the elastic parameters at a given depth is sensed by the compliance function at a particular frequency. In a gas hydrate system, the magnitude of the stiffness is a measure of the quantity of gas hydrates present. Gas hydrates contain immense stores of greenhouse gases making them relevant to climate change science, and represent an important potential alternative source of energy. Bullseye Vent is a gas hydrate system located in an area that has been intensively studied for over 2 decades and research results suggest that this system is evolving over time. A partnership with NEPTUNE Canada allowed for the investigation of this possible evolution. This thesis describes a compliance experiment configured for NEPTUNE Canada’s seafloor observatory and its failure. It also describes the use of 203 days of simultaneously logged pressure and velocity time-series data, measured by a Scripps differential pressure gauge, and a Güralp CMG-1T broadband seismometer on NEPTUNE Canada’s seismic station, respectively, to evaluate variations in sediment stiffness near Bullseye. The evaluation resulted in a (- 4.49 x10-3± 3.52 x 10-3) % change of the transfer function of 3rd October, 2010 and represents a 2.88% decrease in the stiffness of the sediments over the period. This thesis also outlines a new algorithm for calculating the static compliance of isotropic layered sediments. | PhD | energy, climate, greenhouse gas, ocean | 7, 13, 14 |
| Roberts, David Jay | Mahtani, Minelle | (Un)Mapping The Contested Geographies Of Urban Knowledge Production During the 2010 World Cup In South Africa | Geography | 2012-06 | In 2010, South Africa became the first country on the continent of Africa to host a World Cup. This thesis analyzes aspects of the planning process for this mega-event. My analysis focuses on three interrelated phenomena: public order policing and re-branding through the control of public space; policy transfer and the attempt to clone the 'world-class' city in South Africa; and, the influence of consciously planning for an external television audience on the uneven geographies and temporalities of the mega-event. First, in analyzing the processes of public order policing and its connection to city branding in Durban, South Africa during the World Cup, I trace three mechanisms: the regulation of nuisance behaviors, the restriction of social movement activities, and the introduction of welcome ambassadors. I argue that this policing strategy reveals what city planners believe to be appropriate uses of public space as well as a future vision of the city. Second, using “cultural cloning” as a metaphor, I argue that policy mobility and the valorization of “best practices” can reinforce hegemonic conceptions of a 'world class' city that exacerbate already existing social inequalities. Such notions, also, work to foreclose on alternative visions of how a 'world class' World Cup host city might act such as those articulated in the World Class Cities for All campaign. Third, I examine how the particular medium of television works to shape urban planning, the production of space and the processes of urban knowledge production during mega-events. Such a theoretical approach necessitates closer examination of the relationship between urban planning and urban knowledge production through television. In the conclusion of my dissertation, I put my work in context of recent events and struggles that have emerged in Brazil as that country gets set to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. Additionally, I highlight what I believe to be the key scholarly contributions of this project and outline a future research agenda that emerges from this work. | PhD | cities, urban | 11 |
| Robinson-Vincent, Krystie | Hodnett, Ellen | A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of the Effects of Continuous Glucose Monitoring on Metabolic Control in Children with Type 1 Diabetes | Nursing Science | 2015-11 | Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is one of the most common chronic illnesses affecting children. Rigorous metabolic control helps delay longterm health complications in children with T1D. Continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII) with continuous glucose monitoring (CGM) provides information not available with self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) alone. Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of CGM on metabolic control in children using CSII. A 12-week multi-site pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) was carried out in order to provide preliminary indicators of the effects of CGM compared to SMBG on metabolic control and fear of hypoglycemia, as well as provide an estimate of recruitment rates, assess compliance with allocated treatment, and determine participants’ satisfaction with allocated treatment. Children in the intervention group were asked to wear CGM for up to five days per week and perform three SMBG calibration checks per day. Children in the usual care group were asked to perform three SMBG checks per day. Forty children and adolescents participated, 24 in the intervention group and 16 receiving usual care. After 12 weeks of CGM use, there was no statistically significant difference between groups in changes in mean HbA1c (CGM, -0.32 + 0.89; SMBG, -0.05 + 0.70; -0.27 [-0.83, -0.28], t=-0.99, p=0.33). There was a statistically significant difference between groups, favouring the intervention group, in changes in mean fear of hypoglycemia scores (CGM, -5.00 + 6.89; SMBG, 3.13 + 10.49; 8.13 [-13.92, -2.34], t=-2.85, p=0.007). The findings from the pilot trial addressed several feasibility questions. Enrollment rate (48% of those eligible) and percentage of children who would participate again in a larger trial (n = 27; 71%) approached pre-set acceptability parameters, but compliance was low (only 9 participants met pre-set parameters; 39%). Currently, a larger RCT is not warranted until further studies evaluate methods to improve compliance with CGM. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Roblin, Blair Arthur | Deber, Raisa | Ontario's Retirement Homes and Long-Term Care Homes: Policy Implications for Care Services, Funding and Governance Regimes | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-11 | Abstract Purpose: The Province of Ontario is experiencing substantial growth in the seniors’ population requiring care, with capacity, cost and regulatory pressures across all settings. This study compares long-term care homes (LTCHs) and retirement homes (RHs), significant residential care alternatives for seniors in Ontario, regarding pricing, levels of care and availability of services, in the context of different government funding and regulatory oversight. Attention is given to the way owners of homes shape their services in response to prevailing policy instruments and other environmental factors. Methods: The research uses an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, with a first phase involving the analysis of quantitative data regarding LTCHs and RHs, and a second phase involving qualitative (interview) data from key informants. The first phase informs the interview questions for the second phase, with integration occurring after Phase 2. Results: Substantial overlaps exist in the characteristics of the two resident populations (LTCHs and RHs), which are most evident among the population of seniors requiring high levels of care and support. However, the two sectors are funded and regulated differently, which affect how services are delivered. Most care costs in LTCHs are publicly funded, while residents in RHs generally cover these expenses personally. Equity of access issues arise from shortages of beds in LTCHs and limited government funding for care services in RHs. LTCH owner strategies are affected by excess demand for beds and by regulatory instruments that limit profit for care and accommodation. With RHs, more flexible owner strategies are evident for care levels, pricing and location. However, without public funding, availability and affordability of RHs to the resident suffer and owner strategies focus on areas of higher income, population density or community infrastructure. The two sectors are also regulated differently in respect of care standards, security and enforcement. Conclusions: Policy instruments influence the features of residential care service offerings by shaping how the owners of seniors’ residential care offer services, with important consequences regarding access to those services. Policy instruments play an important part in determining the availability and affordability of seniors’ residential care, and consistency of governance. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, governanxe | 9, 16 |
| Rocksborough-Smith, Ian Maxwell | Halpern, Rick | Contentious Cosmopolitans: Black Public History and Civil Rights in Cold War Chicago, 1942-1972 | History | 2014-06 | This dissertation looks at how teachers, unionists, and cultural workers used black history to offer new ways of thinking about racial knowledge from a local level. Numerous efforts to promote and teach this history demonstrated how dissident cosmopolitan political currents from previous decades remained relevant to a vibrant and ideologically diffuse African American public sphere despite widespread Cold War dispersions, white supremacist reactions, and anticommunist repressions. My argument proceeds by demonstrating how these public history projects coalesced around a series of connected pedagogical endeavors. These endeavors included the work of school teachers on Chicago's South side who tried to advance curriculum reforms through World War II and afterwards, the work of packinghouse workers and other union-focused educators who used anti-discrimination campaigns to teach about the history of African Americans and Mexican Americans in the labor movement and to advance innovative models for worker education, and the activities of important cultural workers like Margaret and Charles Burroughs who politicized urban space and fought for greater recognition of black history in the public sphere through the advancement of their vision for a museum. Collectively, these projects expressed important ideas about race, citizenship, education and intellectual labors that engaged closely with the rapidly shifting terrains of mid-20th Century civil rights and international anti-colonialisms. Ultimately, this dissertation offers a social history about how cosmopolitan cultural work in public history and similar forms of knowledge production were at the intersections of political realities and lived experience in U.S. urban life. | PhD | rights, urban, worker | 8, 11, 16 |
| Rodney, Ruth | Gastaldo, Denise | BUILDING HEALTHIER RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN COMMUNITIES: THE CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF GUYANESE PERSPECTIVES ON ADOLESCENT DATING VIOLENCE AND ITS PREVENTION | Nursing Science | 2017-11 | Dating in adolescence is an experience that has been thought to provide positive opportunities to learn and enhance social and interpersonal skills. However, some adolescents are exposed to physical, psychological, sexual, and economic forms of violence in their dating relationships, which can lead to poor health outcomes for both perpetrators and victims regardless of gender, race, or class. To prevent such negative outcomes, adolescents as well as their communities need community-specific opportunities to discuss and tackle dating violence. While adolescent dating violence research has increased internationally, there remains a paucity of information for the Caribbean region. For this reason, I completed a critical exploratory qualitative study in Guyana, a country that has the highest reported incidence of domestic violence for the Caribbean. The aim of my study was to provide a contextualized understanding of the phenomenon, by examining how discourses on race, gender, age, and class shape perspectives on adolescent dating violence and its prevention. A postcolonial feminist lens guided this study and data collection included 6 key informant interviews and 8 focus group discussions with parents, teachers, school officials, and adolescents at a public secondary school. Students who attended this school were from low-to-middle income families in the city of Georgetown and surrounding areas. In total, the study had 36 participants (5 boys and 8 men; 10 girls and 13 women). Three key findings emerged: 1) community perspectives on dating violence are primarily shaped by dominant discourses on respectability, colonial discourses on gender norms, family, and education, resulting in dating being unacceptable during adolescence; 2) Current authoritarian interpersonal relationships between adults and adolescents limit the possibility of engaging in conversations on dating violence; 3) Adolescents are yearning for more information on dating relationships, however, parents and teachers lack institutional and social support to promote healthy relationships and environments, which leads to frustration and fatigue. I suggest that a more effective way of addressing adolescent dating violence in Guyana is to approach it as a community issue. This approach includes continuously questioning dominant discourses and social systems in Guyanese society and creating more opportunities for people to relate to each other in ways that promote less authoritarian interactions in the current environment. | Ph.D. | institution, women, gender, health | 3, 5, 16 |
| Rodrigues Aragao, Rodrigo | El-Diraby, Tamer E. | Using Network Theory to Manage Knowledge from Unstructured Data in Construction Projects: Application to a Collaborative Analysis of the Energy Consumption in the Construction of Oil and Gas Facilities | Civil Engineering | 2018-11 | This research provides an approach to capture the knowledge in unstructured data related to the energy consumption in the construction of oil and gas projects. Because of the challenges of this industry in managing knowledge more efficiently, this work is relevant for planning/assessments during the construction of future projects. As a starting point, a concept map, which organizes thirty-four construction activities, systems, and factors that influence energy consumption during the construction, is presented. This concept map is a simplified taxonomy that guarantees consistency across different projects. As such, three case studies of oil and gas projects are conducted based on semi-structured interviews to design the respective concept networks. The method represents the concepts in the form of a network. The nodes of the network are the thirty-four concepts, and a tie is defined whenever there is a relationship between two concepts that impact the energy consumption in the construction stage. Network analysis is used to retrieve the knowledge, which is contextualized in the case-based projects. Then, the networks of the three cases are compared with a baseline, which was developed using an expert survey. With the survey focusing on the experts' general knowledge, blockmodeling is used to capture knowledge constructs in each case network. The research is evaluated using a test with one of the case studies and a system as an online interface for collaboration. The results collected from a questionnaire and a focus group with the participants of the test indicate that the proposed approach is satisfactory. Although this study is not an energy assessment, each project has its unique, contextual network; therefore, comparing them with the network of future projects constitutes a valuable source of knowledge. This work also highlights the importance of supporting collaboration between project team members to study and decide on the plans to manage/reduce energy consumption during the construction phase in oil and gas facilities. While the energy savings are smaller than the upstream and operation phases, it has received much less attention. It is also a phase with much more subjective and contextualized knowledge – making the use of case-based analyses more suitable. | Ph.D. | energy, industr, consum | 7, 9, 12 |
| Rodriguez, Uribe Arturo | Sain, Mohini | Fundamentals and Characterization of Fungally Modified Polysaccharides for the Production of Bio-plastics | Forestry | 2010-06 | Starch and microbial exo-polysaccharides produced by prokaryotes (i.e. Eubacteria and Archaebacteria) and eukaryotes (i.e. phytoplankton, fungi, and algae) are recognized as a permanent source of biopolymers for the packaging industry. However, the unsuitable mechanical properties for thermoplastic applications and/or high cost of production have restricted their generalized use. Fungal isolates of the genus Ophiostoma are able to produce exo-polysaccharides or protein-like compounds in a medium containing starch as the substrate. Various analytical techniques were used as an approach to investigate the interaction between starch and the fungal extracellular metabolites and the effect of the molecular-structural modifications on the functional properties of the materials. Native starches were used as control in all experiments. Analyses performed by dynamic mechanical thermal analysis (DMTA), which provides information related to the viscoelastic properties, showed that the storage modulus (E') increased substantially after the modification of the starch showing a process of chain stiffness. The determination of the glass transition temperature (Tg) by tan d and loss modulus (E'') peaks showed various thermal transitions indicating a complex molecular aggregation due to the potential presence of dissimilar amorphous polymers. Experiments performed in DSC confirmed the presence of the various thermal transitions associated to the Tg of these materials. The first derivative of mass loss with respect to temperature during the thermogravimetric (TG) analysis was slightly lower compared with native starches (at ~630 and 650°C). However, modified starches can withstand high temperatures showing residues up to 20% at 1000°C. Studies on the characterization of the flow properties of the polymers by capillary rheology showed in both samples a shear thinning behavior. The double logarithmic plot of the shear rate vs. shear viscosity produced a straight line and in consequence a power law equation was used to describe the rheological behavior (s = Kg'n). The results showed that in order to achieve the same shear rate (g') in both samples (modified and native starches) it is necessary to apply a higher shear stress (s) in the fungal treated materials. As a result, the consistency power law index (n) decreased and the consistency value increased (K). The practical consequence is that the melting point of these polysaccharides shifted to higher temperatures. By using various analytical techniques (including chromatography, spectroscopy, spectrometry) it was found that these phenomena may be due to the interaction of starch with protein-like or exo-polysaccharides or both which may influence the viscosity, bind adjacent molecules (i.e. network-like) and restrict the molecular motion. Evidences of the presence of pendant groups attached to high molecular weight compounds were also found. This information will give guidance to further structural studies and it is intended to pave the way for a variety of industrial applications. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Roerecke, Michael | Rehm, Jürgen | Heavy Drinking Episodes and Heart Disease Risk | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-03 | Background: The relationship between average alcohol consumption and heart disease is well researched, showing a substantial cardioprotective association. This dissertation examined the epidemiological evidence for an effect of heavy episodic drinking (HED) over and above the effect of average alcohol consumption on heart disease. Methods: Electronic databases were systematically searched for epidemiological studies on the effect of HED on heart disease and identified articles were quantitatively summarized in a meta-analysis. Meta-regression models were used to examine the effect of characteristics of primary studies. Using individual-level data, semi-parametric Cox regression models were used to investigate HED exposure within narrow categories of average alcohol consumption in a US national population sample (n = 9,937) in relation to heart disease mortality in an 11-22 year follow-up. Frequency of heavy drinking episodes was used to identify latent classes of drinking history using growth mixture modeling in a sub-sample of this US cohort. Retrieved classes were used as independent variables in Cox regression models with heart disease mortality as the outcome event. Results: A pooled relative risk of 1.45 (95% confidence interval (CI): 1.24-1.70) for HED compared with non-HED drinkers with average alcohol consumption between 0.1-60 g/day was derived in a meta-analysis. A strong and consistent association with HED was found among current drinkers consuming an average of 1-2 drinks per day in the US cohort. There was no evidence of increased heart disease mortality resulting from the frequency of heavy drinking episodes before the age of forty. Conclusions: There is reasonable and consistent evidence for an association of HED and heart disease in current drinkers, negating any beneficial effect from alcohol consumption on heart health. History of frequency of heavy drinking episodes, however, showed no evidence for such an effect modification. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Rogachov, Anton | Davis, Karen D | Regional and Cross-Network Brain Dynamics in Acute and Chronic Pain | Medical Science | 2019-11 | Chronic pain is a major societal burden, affecting nearly 1 in 5 Canadians. Chronic pain patients demonstrate a great degree of variability in the way they perceive and cope with pain, experience symptoms, and respond to treatment. These individual differences may in part be due to the brain dynamics associated with the processing and modulation of nociceptive signals. Thus, the overall goal of this thesis was to understand the role of regional brain dynamics in acute and chronic pain. Towards this goal, I first established a link between regional BOLD signal variability and pain sensitivity and the effect of pain on cognitive performance in healthy individuals. I then examined frequency-specific regional BOLD signal variability abnormalities in chronic pain patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and related these abnormalities to pain intensity. Finally, I investigated the brain plasticity in regional and cross-network brain dynamics that subserve successful response to ketamine therapy in patients with refractory chronic neuropathic pain (NP). Healthy individuals and chronic pain patients (AS and NP) underwent a resting-state fMRI scan and completed a psychophysical session and a battery of questionnaires (e.g., assessing pain intensity etc.). The main findings of this thesis are: 1) Regional BOLD signal variability within the ascending nociceptive pathway and networks of the dynamic pain connectome are increased in healthy individuals who are less pain sensitive and have good cognitive performance during a pain-interference task; 2) Patients with AS exhibit elevated regional frequency-specific BOLD signal variability in the ascending nociceptive pathway and networks of the dynamic pain connectome; these abnormalities are related to chronic pain intensity; 3) Ketamine reduces regional BOLD signal variability within the default mode network (DMN); and 4) Effective ketamine-treatment outcome is associated with decreased static functional connectivity of the DMN with the salience network and with the sensorimotor network. Therefore, this thesis demonstrates that regional BOLD signal variability serves as a functional metric that underlies individual differences in acute pain, and the clinical symptoms and treatment outcomes in chronic pain. These findings provide novel insight into chronic pain etiology that serve to advance the knowledge base needed to develop new treatment options. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Rogers, Luke | Krkosek, Martin | Complex Dynamics of Exploited Populations: Tipping Points, Instability, and Phenological Diversity | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-03 | Understanding the consequences of complex population dynamics for population persistence, ecosystem functioning, and wildlife management is vital as our biosphere becomes increasingly shaped by anthropogenic change. Exploited populations are commonly recognized to exhibit complex population dynamics, which often affect the harvest of economic and culturally important species. How social learning, harvest, and population diversity shape population dynamics are not well understood, and I therefore undertook studies to investigate their effects. (1) I developed novel theory to assess the population dynamic consequences of migratory homing acquired via social learning, called the adopted migrant life history. Simple mechanistic assumptions led to dynamical behaviours ranging from stable coexistence of local populations to local extirpations, depending on the encounter potential between dispersing juveniles and migrating adults. Local populations were especially vulnerable under unequal adult survival, suggesting that uneven harvest pressure could exacerbate the risk of local collapses that are difficult to reverse. (2) I verified that harvest can increase temporal variability in the abundance of exploited populations by analyzing a harvest experiment on Daphnia magna. Harvest elevated population variability by amplifying deterministic nonlinear dynamics rather than increasing the effect of environmental stochasticity alone. This implies high short-term predictability but also the possibilities of oscillations, tipping points, and hysteresis. (3) I identified a large contraction in Pacific herring spawning phenology between 1951 and 2016 in British Columbia, Canada. Herring are a vital forage fish in northeast Pacific food webs, and support fisheries both directly and indirectly. The contraction represents a type of population diversity loss, which may impact population stability via erosion of portfolio effects. My results show the dynamic consequences of social learning and harvest, and identify a population diversity decline in an important forage fish. Together these results open a new perspective on complex population dynamics in exploited populations. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Rogers, Nelson Paul | Bascia, Nina | Campus in the Country: Community College Involvement in Rural Community Development | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-11 | This study is an investigation into college involvement in rural community development through an examination of three cases in eastern, western and northern Canada where this work was reported to be going well. The inquiry revolved around what colleges do, that is, what kinds of approaches and projects are undertaken, how this work is supported or constrained, how college staff are recruited and trained for this work, and how well it is being done, or how success is defined and evaluated. The observations from these cases were compared with relevant research around the roles of community colleges, the nature of rural challenges, and the field of community development. Community development revolves around increasing the skills, knowledge, and abilities of residents, and building the ability of the community to respond to changing circumstances. The cases in this study were in contexts of resource industries in transition, usually related to trends in economic globalization. The communities were also impacted by their distance from urban economic and political centres. As community needs were identified, it was apparent that economic and social challenges were inter-related, and that available opportunities required specialized workforce training or retraining, as well iii as supports for business development. Although community development activities were not well supported by public policy and programs, the colleges were involved in a wide range of development approaches, some embedded into regular college operations, and others specifically organized for particular purposes. Theories of forms of capital, particularly those based on the writings of Bourdieu (1986, 1993) enhance the understanding of college involvement in rural community development. College staff, particularly rural campus managers, took the lead in community work, and relied heavily on their connections and networks, or social capital, as well as “border knowledge”, or local cultural capital, to facilitate community projects. However, the reliance on local social and cultural capital was often associated with the neglect of some important groups and issues. But overall, in spite of many challenges, these colleges were key players in their communities and demonstrated the value of the diverse and flexible roles that community colleges can play. | EDD | rural | 11 |
| Rokeach, Alan | Wiener, Judith | Friendship Quality in Adolescents with Attention-deficit Hyperactivity Disorder | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2019-06 | The majority of research investigating the social functioning of youth with ADHD has examined peer rejection and social skills deficits while generally overlooking their friendships. The goal of this dissertation was to provide detailed information about friendship quality in adolescents with and without ADHD. The first manuscript compared ratings of social support and negative interactions in same- and other-sex friendship dyads in adolescents with and without ADHD, while examining the potentially moderating effects of age and gender. The second manuscript examined empirically supported correlates of friendship quality including friendship stability, co-morbid psychopathology, and interpersonal competence. A sample of 115 adolescents, ages 13-18, were recruited to participate in the present study of whom 61 were classified as having ADHD (21 female) and 54 without ADHD (29 female). The measures used included parent and self-report rating scales and questionnaires assessing ADHD symptoms, friendship quality, friendship stability, externalizing behaviour (conduct problems, oppositional behaviour), internalizing behaviour (anxiety, depression), and interpersonal competence (social skills, social perspective taking). Results from study one indicated that ratings of friendship social support diminished across age groups in youth with ADHD, but increased in typically developing youth. Adolescents with and without ADHD, however, did not differ on ratings of negative interactions experienced in their friendships. Compared to males, females rated their friendships to be more supportive, irrespective of ADHD status. Adolescents with and without ADHD rated their same-sex friendships to be simultaneously more supportive and more conflictual than their other-sex friendships. Results from study two indicated that friendship stability, social skills, social perspective-taking, oppositional behaviour, and anxiety explained unique variance in the prediction of friendship social support. However, results of exploratory mediation analyses indicated that the direct effects of oppositional behaviour and anxiety were no longer significantly predictive of friendship quality, after controlling for the mediators social skills and social perspective-taking, respectively. These findings, clinical implications, and future directions are discussed within the context of the existing peer relations literature. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Rolfe, Danielle Elizabeth | Thomas, Scott ||Yoshida, Karen | Meeting Women’s Health Needs in the Community: Assessment of the Physical Activity and Health Promotion Practices, Preferences and Priorities of Older Women Living with Cardiovascular Disease | Exercise Sciences | 2012-11 | Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death among Canadian women, and accounts for up to 30% of deaths among women worldwide. Women with CVD are typically older than their male counterparts, experience worse functional status, are more likely to experience non-CVD health conditions such as diabetes or arthritis, and will live with these health conditions for more years than men. Physical activity (PA) and cardiac rehabilitation (CR) participation is lower among women compared to men, but little is known about the PA and health promotion experiences, priorities and practices of older women living with CVD. Guided by a socioenvironmental approach to health promotion, a mixed method design involving a mail survey (N=127) and qualitative interviews (N=15) was employed to describe and explore the PA and health promotion practices, preferences and priorities of older women (≥65 years) living with CVD in the Champlain health region of Ontario. Nearly 60% of survey respondents were referred to CR. Logistic regression analysis revealed urban residence as a predictor of CR referral (p<0.01, OR=3.24; 95% CI: 1.44-7.30). Nearly 55% of respondents attended CR, which was predicted by CR referral (p<0.01, OR=32.26; 95% CI: 9.26-111.11), availability of transportation (p<0.05, OR=9.96; 95% CI: 1.22-81.41), and a history of structured PA (p<0.05, OR=3.64; 95% CI: 1.16-11.36). Respondents were more active than their peers, but received little support from their physician for PA. Older women’s incidental PA (walking six or more hours/week for transportation) was predicted by their sense of community belonging (p<0.05, OR=2.6; 95% CI: 1.05-6.29) and having energy for PA (p<0.05, OR=5.8; 95% CI: 1.21-27.92). Interview participants (including four who had attended CR) described health as a resource that enables them to lead busy, active lives. Most participants attributed CVD to genetics or stress, but still engaged in health-promoting activities, including structured and incidental PA. Participants engaged in ‘incidental’ activities such as walking, gardening, and housekeeping tasks purposefully, with the intention of maintaining or improving their health. This research can inform public health initiatives and health care services (including CR) to better meet the needs and preferences of the growing population of older women with CVD. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Romain, Sandra Jane | Schillaci, Michael A | The Delivery of Pharmaceutical Health Care in Nunavut, Canada: Language, Culture and Policy | Anthropology | 2016-11 | Pharmaceuticals are an essential component of modern health care as their therapeutic properties are often required to achieve optimal health outcomes. The pharmaceutical market is also a significant contributor to health care expenditures, with global sales exceeding US$300 billion and expenditures predicted to increase. These global factors necessitate the development of pharmaceutical policies that are adaptive to local contexts and address the complexities of purchasing, distribution, prescribing and administration practices that best suit the needs of local populations. Through multi-method research, my doctoral thesis explores three areas of pharmacy health care in Nunavut, Canada: policy and practice, discordance in health models, and language translation. First, this research examines the pharmacy policy currently serving remote communities in Nunavut, a territory affected by weather-related access issues, scarce human resources and complex financial allocations. Current policies are often in conflict with patient-centred care and result in significant pharmaceutical waste. Revised policies may better support health providers, and address distribution issues to optimize financial expenditures. Second, pharmaceutical health care is part of biomedicine, which offers sharp contrast to the more holistic Inuit wellness model. In Nunavut, although the majority of inhabitants are Inuit, biomedical health care is delivered primarily by Qallunaat (non-Inuit) health providers. This research uses a comparative framework to contrast these two health models to explain how multiple levels of cultural discordance layered with postcolonial inequalities may influence patient-provider relationships and patient adherence to pharmacotherapy. Third, this research considers language discordance in pharmacy health care in Nunavut, where pharmacy services are delivered in English to predominantly Inuit language speaking patients. Pharmacy language discordance can result in adverse drug events and serious patient harm. This situation is currently in transition as language legislation in Nunavut will soon require pharmacy services to be available in Inuit languages and efforts are underway to standardize Inuit-language pharmaceutical terminology. Together, these three issues influence the quality of pharmacy health care in Nunavut and this thesis contributes to a greater understanding of issues which hold the potential to direct future endeavours towards the optimization of pharmacy health care in Nunavut. | Ph.D. | health, weather | 3, 13 |
| Romano, Donna M. | Goering, Paula N. ||McCay, Elizabeth | Reshaping an Enduring Sense of Self: The Process of Recovery from a First Episode of Schizophrenia | Medical Science | 2009-06 | Although many advances in the treatment of schizophrenia have been made over the past decade, little is known about the process of recovery from a first episode of schizophrenia (FES). To date, the study of recovery in the field of mental health has focused on long-term mental illness. This in depth qualitative study drew upon Charmaz’s (1990) constructivist grounded theory methodology to address the following questions: How do individuals who have experienced a FES describe their process of recovery? How does an identified individual (e.g. friend, family member, teacher, or clinician) describe their role during the participant’s process of recovery, and their perception of the recovery process? Ten primary participants (who self-identified as recovering from a FES) had two interviews; in addition, there was a one-time interview with a secondary participant, for a total of 30 interviews. Data collection sources included participant semi-structured interviews, participant selected personal objects that symbolized their recovery, and clinical records. The results provide a substantive theory of the process of recovery from a FES. The emergent process of recovery model for these participants is comprised of the following phases: ‘Lives prior to the illness’, ‘Lives interrupted: Encountering the illness’, ‘Engaging in services and supports’, ‘Re-engaging in life’, ‘Envisioning the future’; and the core category, ‘Re-shaping an enduring sense of self,’ that occurred through all phases. A prominent distinctive feature of this model is that participants’ enduring sense of self were reshaped versus reconstructed throughout their recovery. The emergent model of recovery from a FES is unique, and as such, provides implications for clinical care, future research, and policy development specifically for these young people and their families. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Root, Jennifer Lynn | Ramona, Alaggia | Building Conditional Safety "Brick by Brick": Conceptualizing Safety among Women who Experience Intimate Partner Violence | Social Work | 2014-11 | Empirical evidence and practice wisdom indicates women simultaneously endure and resist intimate partner violence (IPV) in an effort to protect themselves - to be safe. But what does it mean to be safe? Contemporary discourses and interventions often position physical safety, and reducing the threat of future harm, to be the primary goal of women's help-seeking behaviour, and by extension, the primary feature of what it means to be safe. However, there is no evidence indicating the elimination or minimization of direct physical harm is the primary feature of feeling safe. The purpose of this study was to examine 1) women's conceptualizations of safety and 2) how safety was achieved, in order to theorize about the broader construct of safety. Underpinned by intersectional and feminist theories, and guided by grounded theory methodology, 14 semi-structured interviews were conducted with women who self-identified as experiencing IPV. Analysis revealed women who experience IPV conceptualized safety in complicated, complex, and conditional ways. A key finding of this study revealed the notion of safety goes beyond the direct, embodied harms inherent in many abusive relationships. A broader formulation of safety emerged suggesting the concept spans economic, physical, emotional, psychological, and social domains. Building conditional safety across these various domains contributed to a variety of possible safety dispositions ranging from provisional safety to considerable safety. Data suggested women feel safest when they have power to make decisions; access to information about IPV; time and space to heal; housing and economic self-sufficiency; access to unconditional support; and most importantly no ongoing experience of IPV. While working to eliminate the impacts and consequences of IPV should certainly remain at the core of social work prevention and intervention strategies, the dynamic and ever-changing sense of safety women experience over the course of an abusive relationship must be more fully considered in future practice with survivors. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Rosenberg-Yunger, Zahava R. S. | Martin, Douglas K. | Priority Setting for Expensive Biopharmaceuticals: An Analysis of Six Drug Case Studies | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2009-11 | Priority setting for expensive biopharmaceuticals is one of the most important challenges for publicly funded health systems. One of the drivers of rising healthcare expenditures is pharmaceuticals (i.e., drugs). Moreover, people are living longer and their expectation of, and demand for, health care, drugs, and services are continually increasing. The overall aim of this research was to describe and evaluate reimbursement decisions for six expensive biopharmaceuticals across five countries in order to ascertain if the processes were legitimate and fair. I conducted qualitative case studies of six expensive biopharmaceuticals in order to describe and evaluate the priority setting activities of eight committees across five countries, including Canada, England and Wales, Australia, Israel and the United States. Data sources included: 1) 32 documents and 2) 56 interviews with informants. The recommendations process of each committee partially met the four conditions of ‘accountability for reasonableness’. My main finding is that, while a number of values were considered by committees when making reimbursement decisions, committees tended to focus on values of evidence, effectiveness and efficiency, but not the full range of relevant values. Thus, these contexts did not fully meet the conditions of legitimacy and fairness. I have provided an in-depth description of the eight committees’ priority setting activities regarding the study drugs, as well as committee members’, patients’ and industry representatives’ views regarding the process. I developed practical guidance for leaders for improving reimbursement decisions for expensive biopharmaceuticals, the implementation of which would enhance the fairness and legitimacy of priority setting. This study has demonstrated that in order to create a fair and legitimate drug reimbursement process, we need to ensure the incorporation of a wide range of values, and the involvement of multiple stakeholder groups within the deliberative and appeals/revisions processes. | PhD | health, industr | 3, 9 |
| Ross, Michael Stephen | Bickmore, Kathy | Building Peaceful Secondary School Climates: A Comparison of Anti-violence, Equity, Engagement and Community-Building Practices | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2015-06 | Regularized daily practices in schools that exacerbate competition and exclusion in social relationships create environments in which conflicts are more likely to escalate into severe violence (Aronson 2000). School practices that rely on harsh punishment to prevent violence are often ineffective because punishment tends to fracture or impede the development of healthy relationships (Gladden 2002). This qualitative case study research examines various practices employed in three Ontario public high schools, linked to reducing the incidence of violence. Based on semi-structured interviews with school administrators, staff members and students, contextualized in relation to analysis of publicly-available documents, I describe, compare and analyze anti-violence, relationship-building, engagement and community-building practices and their perceived effectiveness in building peaceful school climates. Results show that proactive opportunities for students to develop a strong sense of attachment to their school, practice cooperation, and develop positive student-student and adult-student relationships seemed to be associated with building and/or sustaining peaceful school climates. School practices that placed students in cooperative horizontal relationship structures with peers, and communicative vertical relationship structures with adults, seemed to encourage peaceful interactions and support the development of social capital (relationship resources) for some student participants. In contrast, punitive practices to conflict and violence, such as suspensions, showed no evidence of building peace. Opportunities to engage in restorative peacemaking dialogue practices, although minimally used, seemed promising to resolve broken relationships in each school. This research supports the theory that reducing competition and exclusion and cultivating cooperative social relationships are promising practices that can reduce the risks of physical violence, bullying and other forms of aggression in schools. Unlike correlative survey research that may link incidence of aggression to individual student characteristics, this research points to proactive patterns of policy implementation and practice by school-based staff--based on inclusive interaction instead of harsh and exclusionary punishment--that may contribute to the achievement of sustainably peaceful climates. | Ed.D. | inclusive, peace | 4, 16 |
| Rotberg, Shahar | Kuruscu, Burhanettin||Kambourov, Gueorgui | Essays on Housing Markets, Housing Market Policies, and Taxation | Economics | 2019-06 | This thesis collects three papers studying topics related to housing markets, taxation, and macroeconomics. In Chapter 1, I study how capital and housing should be taxed. I formulate a housing model where credit is limited and the ability to invest capital varies across households. I calibrate the model to U.S. data and use it to determine the effect of housing and capital income taxation on the housing market and societal welfare. My main finding is that housing should be taxed at a positive rate and capital income should be subsidized. On the one hand, the housing tax raises housing costs for both renters and home-owners. On the other hand, the capital income subsidy encourages the most productive households to increase their capital investments, and thus, wages paid to labor rise. Since wages rise more rapidly than housing costs, overall welfare rises. In Chapter 2, I examine the misallocation of residential land in Israel and its implications for income taxation and societal welfare. I develop a methodology to calibrate a housing model to a transition path of over 50 years of Israeli data on land sales and show that Israel's government substantially oversold land and could have reduced its income tax rate by 1.8 percentage points. Restricting land sales is optimal because initial retired households own little land, initial housing demand is low and grows faster than interest rates, and because of the need to preserve land for large future generations. In Chapter 3, I explore the effect of wage income expectations on housing prices. I build a housing model, calibrate it to U.S. data, and show that wage income expectations alone can explain about 20% of the 2008 boom-bust in U.S. housing prices. The result is an outcome of households' perception that their expected life-time wage income is going up (down) during a sequence of good (bad) income shocks, which leads to a rapid increase (decrease) in housing demand and thus housing prices. This phenomenon is absent with rational expectations. | Ph.D. | wage, taxation | 8, 10 |
| Rottmann, Cynthia | Bascia, Nina | Organized Leadership for Equitable Change: Union-active Teachers Dedicated to Social Justice | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | Historically, teachers’ unions have been some of the major organizational sites of social justice leadership in K-12 education (Kuehn, 2007; M. Murphy, 1990; Urban, 1982), but until the mid 1990s, the term “social justice unionism” (Peterson & Charney, 1999) had little currency in teacher union circles. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to examine the concept of social justice unionism in context. In particular, I asked how teacher union activists contributed and responded to the institutionalization of social justice in their organization. I used a critical constructionist (Ball, 1987; Berger & Luckmann, 1966; D. E. Smith, 1987) perspective to analyze 25 career history (Goodson, 1994) interviews with teachers, staff and elected officials affiliated with the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation between 1967 and 2007, and found that successive generations of union-involved activists dedicated to labour solidarity, feminism, multiculturalism, anti-colonialism and anti-homophobia used networks of like-minded colleagues to counter bureaucratic norms within their organization, the education system and society. A qualitative depiction of these changes suggests that they were layered, multi-dimensional and uneven. They played out on a contested, uphill gradient shaped, but not determined, by four factors: the organizational prioritization of teacher welfare over social justice; historically persistent micro-political struggles between two federation caucuses; the centralizing tendencies of union leadership in response to the provincial government’s centralization of educational authority; and broader ruling relations in Canadian society. Still, despite this uphill gradient, all activist networks left a durable trace on federation history. The major significance of this finding for critical theorists and social justice activists is a modestly hopeful alternative to the traditional conceptions of change embedded in organizational theory: revolution, evolution or despair. | PhD | justice | 16 |
| Rouf, Kazi | Quarter, Jack | The Impact of the Grameen Bank upon the Patriarchal Family and Community Relations of Women Borrowers in Bangladesh | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-11 | The purpose of the study is to: (1) examine the degree to which women borrowers of the Grameen Bank are being empowered to participate in familial decision-making around the management of income and expenditures like food, children’s education, dowry and teenage marriages; and (2) to examine women borrowers’ engagement in community activities such as the degree of freedom women are granted to visit public places like schools, local councils, banks and markets. In particular, the study explores the role of the Grameen Bank (GB) in women’s empowerment through the Sixteen Decisions, an educational program designed to empower women in the family and community. This study used a mixed-methods research design that included 61 GB women borrowers selected through purposive sampling. The data suggest that the participants have assumed leadership roles within their families: more than 80% of the study’s participants led decision making within their family; more than 90% supported their children’s education financially; 91% reported that they worked together with family members to manage day-to-day expenses; 80% reported that they manage their family incomes; 98% reported they do not like dowry marriages and teenage marriages; and 33% view male-dominant values as a hindrance to women’s development. The findings indicated that 98% of GB women borrower participants are engaged in community organizations and 94% do not face problems with this engagement. In the 2009 UpZilla (Municipal Sub-district) Election, out of 481 seats, 114 Female Chairs (25% of the total) were elected from the GB women borrowers and their families (Grameen Bank, 2009). In addition, the number of women borrowers serving as councilors has increased from 1,572 in 1997 to 1,950 in 2003; these data indicate that the number of women borrowers acting in formal leadership roles is increasing (Grameen Bank, 2009). The study finds the GB program has had a positive impact upon the borrowers’ relations in the family and community. In spite of these developments, one-fifth of GB women borrowers’ husbands control their wives’ loan money, an indication of the strength of patriarchy in Bangladesh. Although GB’s Sixteen Decisions have included economic issues and other social issues, none directly discusses gender inequality, which the study findings suggest is important. Hence a revision of the Sixteen Decisions is suggested. | PhD | inequality, equality, women, educat | 4, 5, 10 |
| Rozanski, Erin | Nyquist, Mary | Gender, Race and Reading: Relationality in Alice Munro, Joan Riviere, Jane Campion and Alice Walker | English | 2017-11 | This thesis considers the question of femininity in psychoanalysis and cultural life, through an analysis of how short stories by Alice Munro and Alice Walker and film by Jane Campion stage and engage with it. In chapters one and two, I argue that Munro’s stories in Open Secrets assemble myths of feminine survival that take on a truth value as plausible alternative descriptions of culture to those stories which psychoanalysis describes as ultimate. As such, “The Jack Randa Hotel” and “Open Secrets” provide a complex commentary on gender and its relationship to questions of knowledge. My contention is not so much that Munro’s stories “resist” or parody psychoanalytic understandings of gender, as that they disclose latent possibilities in the original that are not fully available to distanced, linear/discursive thought. Correspondingly, my work considers psychoanalysis not as a closed or discrete set of textual practices, but as a cultural text open to continual signification and resignification by successive generations of writers – and thus, to ameliorative reinterpretations. This approach offers a way of moving beyond the false dualism of a “psychoanalytic” perspective which disregards the claims of history and an historical one which reifies a transparently self-available subject – by embracing, in order to qualify, the validity of each. Chapters three and four consider the normativity of “whiteness” in the construction of gender in the West, as it bears on a specific psychoanalytic text and concept (chapter three) and shows up in the grammar of Jane Campion’s film (chapter four). Chapter three reads Joan Riviere’s “Womanliness as a Masquerade” (1929) in terms of how it encodes this norm. Chapter four considers the implications of my reading of feminine masquerade in chapter three for film theory. I analyze how Campion’s In the Cut deploys signifiers of racial difference to foreground its white female lead’s crisis of subjectivization. In a final chapter, I conclude the thesis with a reading of Alice Walker’s “Advancing Luna—and Ida B. Wells,” which speaks to the possibilities for (or limitations on) solidarity between white and black women, and to the omissions of white feminist theory with which Campion’s film contends. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Ruben, Nicolás Ernesto Jose Campione | Evans, David C.||Reisz, Robert R. | Inferring Body Mass in Extinct Terrestrial Vertebrates and the Evolution of Body Size in a Model-Clade of Dinosaurs (Ornithopoda) | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-11 | Organismal body size correlates with almost all aspects of ecology and physiology. As a result, the ability to infer body size in the fossil record offers an opportunity to interpret extinct species within a biological, rather than simply a systematic, context. Various methods have been proposed by which to estimate body mass (the standard measure of body size) that center on two main approaches: volumetric reconstructions and extant scaling. The latter are particularly contentious when applied to extinct terrestrial vertebrates, particularly stem-based taxa for which living relatives are difficult to constrain, such as non-avian dinosaurs and non-therapsid synapsids, resulting in the use of volumetric models that are highly influenced by researcher bias. However, criticisms of scaling models have not been tested within a comprehensive extant dataset. Based on limb measurements of 200 mammals and 47 reptiles, linear models were generated between limb measurements (length and circumference) and body mass to test the hypotheses that phylogenetic history, limb posture, and gait drive the relationship between stylopodial circumference and body mass as critics suggest. Results reject these and instead recover a highly conserved relationship that provides a robust method to estimate body mass in extinct quadrupedal tetrapods. The constrained model is then used to derive a mathematical correction that permits the body mass of bipedal taxa to be estimated from the quadrupedal-based equation. These equations thus form the empirical baseline dataset with which to assess the accuracy of mass estimates derived from volumetric reconstructions, which, although subjective, are crucial for interpreting biomechanical and physiological attributes in extinct forms. The models developed through this research provide accurate and consistent estimates of body size in terrestrial vertebrates, with important implications for generating large datasets aimed at reconstructing macroevolutionary patterns of body size in association with changing Earth systems. | PhD | ecology | 15 |
| Rubenstein, Richard Samuel | Arnold, Mary Louise | Different But Equal? A Developmental Analysis of Variability in Adolescents' Understandings of Social Justice | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2016-06 | Coming of age in an increasingly diverse social world, contemporary youth must make sense of the complexities of social differences and the disparities that exist between privileged and marginalized groups. This mixed methods study had two main objectives: (1) to examine adolescents’ understandings of social justice through their social awareness and perspective taking in the areas of racism, sexism, and classism; and (2) to assess whether these understandings varied as a function of cognitive (critical thinking, moral judgment) and affective (empathy) skills. Ninety-eight adolescents in Grades 9 and 12, evenly divided by sex, race/ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, completed a questionnaire measuring their awareness of social (in)justice in society at large and also participated in a semi-structured interview designed to assess their perspective-taking in hypothetical peer conflicts depicting these problems. Results showed that adolescents were moderately aware of social injustice overall, demonstrating greatest awareness of classism and least awareness of sexism. Qualitative analyses of interview responses revealed five levels of perspective taking, signifying increasingly mature interpretations of group differences. On average, participants assumed a `nominal` perspective that was naïve to social disparities and emphasized concerns about ‘equality’ over ‘equity’. Perspective taking was most sophisticated in the area of racism and least regarding sexism. Variability was also observed across grade, social location, and cognitive and affective skills. As expected, older adolescents demonstrated more mature understandings of social justice than younger adolescents. Furthermore, age-related differences were larger among adolescents attending higher SES schools. Minority youth showed greater awareness of racism than majority participants. Females demonstrated more mature understandings of sexism than males, and adolescents attending higher SES schools showed more mature understandings of classism than their lower SES counterparts. In addition, controlling for the effects of grade moral judgment predicted both social awareness and perspective taking, having the greatest effect in the area of classism and weakest in the area of sexism. Similarly, adolescents’ empathy levels predicted perspective taking in the area of sexism. These findings underline the importance of fostering adolescents’ understandings of social justice for the development of attitudes and behaviours that promote equity among all members of society. | Ph.D. | justice, socioeconomic, equality | 1, 5, 16 |
| Rudoler, David M. | Deber, Raisa||Laporte, Audrey | Paying for Primary Care: The Relationship between Payment Change and Primary Care Physician Behaviour | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-11 | The Ontario government introduced several alternatives to fee-for-service (FFS) payment for primary care physicians (PCPs), including age-sex adjusted capitation (CAP). There is concern that this reform encouraged PCPs to avoid sicker, more complex patients due to incentives inherent in the new payment schemes. This dissertation analyzed the extent to which this occurred. We conducted a series of studies using patient and PCP level administrative data (1999/00 â 2010/11) from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences to analyze changes in patient cost and case-mix across payment models in Ontario. Our data captured all Ontarians and PCPs in FFS, enhanced- FFS and CAP payment models during the study period. To ensure our findings were robust we analyzed PCP characteristics associated with selection into different payment models, and controlled for this selection effect in our analysis of the impact of the payment incentives. In our studies, we used both non-parametric (relative distribution) and parametric methods (multinomial selection models). Our results demonstrate that there are differences in cost and case-mix across payment models and that these differences were both pre-existing and a result of responses to payment incentives. PCPs who self-selected into CAP models were more likely to have healthier and wealthier patients than PCPs in FFS models. Furthermore, we found that PCPs who treated healthier patients, benefited financially from payment reform. We did find evidence that PCPs altered the composition of their rosters because of payment incentives; however, the effects were small and largely accounted for by PCP self-selection effects. The mixed CAP payment scheme allowed PCPs to treat sicker patients off roster, which may have ameliorated some of the financial incentives to risk select. Our findings demonstrate that PCPs did respond to financial incentives. In particular, PCPs self-selected into payment models, based on pre-existing characteristics that allowed them to maximize their preferences for consumption and leisure. We did not find strong evidence in support of risk-selection, but did find evidence that age-sex adjusted capitation disproportionately benefited PCPs with pre-existing patient rosters that were less complex. Future reforms to PCP payment should take into account how PCPs sort themselves into payment models, and better account for the heterogeneity of PCP and patient populations. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Rudzik, Nicholas James | Smith, Sandy | Temporal Changes in Reproduction, Competition, and Predation after Establishment of Introduced Populations of the greater European Pine Shoot Beetle, Tomicus Piniperda (L.) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae) | Forestry | 2009-11 | The establishment of exotic species in novel environments is a major environmental concern, however, few long-term studies have examined the effects of these species on their host environment and community, especially in forest ecosystems. The arrival and subsequent spread of the greater European pine shoot beetle, Tomicus piniperda (L.) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae), into southern Ontario pine forests provided a natural experiment to assess biotic interactions between an exotic species and its new community over several years. Reproductive success of Tomicus piniperda colonies of various ages was studied between 2001 and 2004. The size and composition of competitor and natural enemy complexes present in these communities were also quantified over time. The impact of the natural enemy complexes on T. piniperda reproduction was assessed, Brood production (no. eggs and galleries/female) by T. piniperda populations rapidly approached those reported from its native range in Europe, with lower densities of parental adults. Thus, reproduction remained consistently above the replacement level for this beetle over all four years of study suggesting that these recently-introduced populations were growing rapidly and at a greater rate than in their country of origin. Tomicus piniperda successfully integrated into a large bark beetle community, and appeared to be capable of displacing native beetles to more marginal bark habitats, however, these competitors were not eliminated during the course of the study. The long-term effect of this marginalization on populations of native beetles is uncertain. Tomicus piniperda rapidly acquired natural enemies in the introduced areas, however, natural enemy-caused mortality did not show a regulating effect on its populations. It seems that intraspecific competition, rather than predation, regulates T. piniperda populations following introduction. The implications of these findings for the establishment and spread of exotic species in forest systems are examined, especially with reference to a prominent theory for success, the Enemy Release Hypothesis. In short, the Enemy Release Hypothesis is not applicable to an exotic species that is not regulated by natural enemies in its native range, and assessments of the Enemy Release Hypothesis should always include a determination of enemy regulation of the exotic in its native range. | PhD | forest, environment | 13, 15 |
| Rueda, Sergio Ismael | Mustard, Cameron | Labour Force Participation and Health-related Quality of Life in People Living with HIV | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2011-11 | This dissertation consists of four papers aimed at understanding the complex relationship between employment and health. One paper is a systematic review of the return to work literature, while the other three papers used secondary data from three cohorts of people with HIV to examine the association between employment and health-related quality of life. The systematic review looked at longitudinal studies that reported health outcomes associated with return to work in relation to other employment trajectories. This review supported the beneficial effect of return to work on health in a variety of populations, times, and settings, and also found evidence that poor health interferes with the prospects of returning to work. Two other papers looked at the association between employment and health-related quality of life in people with HIV; one paper used a cross-sectional sample of people with HIV, while the other paper used a longitudinal sample of men who have sex with men. These two studies found evidence to support the association between employment and both physical and mental health-related quality of life. They also found that employment had a stronger relationship with physical than mental health, suggesting an adaptation process to the experience of unemployment. Finally, another paper examined the cross-sectional association between job security and quality of life in men and women living with HIV. This study found that job security offered additional mental health quality of life benefits, over and above participation in employment alone, for men living with HIV. On the other hand, women benefited from the availability of work, but the perception of job security failed to offer additional health benefits. The current level of evidence on the relationship between work and health in HIV needs to be strengthened by further research to develop and support practical clinical and policy recommendations. | PhD | employment, women | 5, 8 |
| Ruppert, Jonathan Leo William | Fortin, Marie-Josée | Top-predators as structuring agents in dynamic marine environments | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-11 | Global declines in top-predators are occurring due established and ongoing fisheries throughout the world’s oceans. In particular, dramatic declines have been observed for Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in the boreal sub-arctic and for reef sharks (mostly Carcharhinidae spp.) in coral reefs. The impact of these declines on marine communities still remains largely unclear due to food web complexity, interacting factors, confounding variables, and fluctuating ecosystem states. Furthermore, as the impact of disturbances on communities can be press (e.g. fisheries), pulse (e.g. environmental variability) or combine, fisheries contribute to disturbance regimes that can generate heterogeneity in communities, meaning that their effects are likely not uniform across space and time. Determining the ecological role of top-predators, as top-down structuring agents, alongside ecosystem disturbances is fundamental to understanding baseline conditions and ultimately may help to inform conservation efforts. This thesis investigates the relative roles of top-predators and disturbances to build an understanding of how marine communities and food webs may be structured. This thesis aims to address: (i) how environmental variability may impact the role of top-predators, (ii) determine the ecological role of top-predators in coral reef environments, (iii) how top-down and bottom-up structuring agents impact variability in food webs, and (iv) how humans are modifying the role of top-down and bottom-up structuring agents. In this thesis I present three main findings: (i) top-predators have a strong top-down influence on marine communities and food webs alongside other disturbances, (ii) combined effects (between top-down and bottom-up structuring agents) can impact communities at broad and fine spatial scales, and (iii) spatial heterogeneity in structuring agents caused by human activities, impacts food web dynamics across multiple spatial scales. The findings in this thesis provide a foundation from which management decisions can be made to ultimately address restoration and conservation goals. | PhD | food, urban, environment, ocean, conserv, fish | 2, 11, 13, 14 |
| Russel, Gail | Sawchuk, Peter | Canadian Arctic Policy and Program Development and Inuit Recognition: A Neoliberal Governmentality Analysis of Canada's Northern Strategy and "The Missing Piece" | Social Justice Education | 2015-06 | In 2007, the Canadian government announced its commitment to the development of the Canadian North through launching Canada's Northern Strategy. The purpose of the Strategy was to address the issue of climate change and its associated effects of increased natural resource extraction and shipping activity in the Canadian Arctic region. Different from past federal government policy and program development initiatives in the Canadian Arctic, this Strategy appeared to make central Inuit voices by way of involving them in the four pillars that constituted the Strategy: Exercising our Arctic sovereignty, promoting social and economic development, protecting our environmental heritage, and improving and devolving northern governance. As the Strategy began to unfold, however, responses from Inuit communities suggested otherwise. Current literature in regards to this issue agrees that Inuit have been placed on the periphery of Canada's Northern Strategy. Instead of asking how this took place, focus has been placed on ways to better insert Inuit voices into the Strategy as it moves forward. As a consequence, this issue does not get fully resolved. My dissertation examines the question: How do Inuit get positioned on the periphery of Canada's Northern Strategy in the first place? I posit that it is in illuminating the political rationale that underpins the Strategy where this question can be addressed. Using a neoliberal governmentality framework, I examine three case studies from Canada's Northern Strategy that are all in their beginning stages of development, in order to reveal how a neoliberal political rationale is operating within each of these projects and, consequently, how it defines the way in which Inuit communities are able to participate. The intention of this analysis is to illuminate both the objective and associated technologies that are responsible for placing Inuit communities on the periphery, in order to be able to reconsider how these aspects influence the Strategy and its relationship with Inuit communities moving forward. | Ph.D. | climate, environment, governance | 13, 16 |
| Rutledge, Lynn Margaret | Rappolt, Susan G||Bisaillon, Laura | Everyday Tragedies: People with Severe Traumatic Brain Injury in the Liminal Spaces of a Level I Trauma Centre | Rehabilitation Science | 2019-06 | Sustaining a severe traumatic brain injury (sTBI) can have a devastating and permanent impact on a person’s ability to function, on their selfhood, on their families, and on the spaces where they can exist in the world. Individuals with sTBI in Ontario are often transported to Level I Trauma Centres, as textually mediated by the provincial Life or Limb Policy, to ensure access to expert lifesaving medical care. After entering these trauma centres, transitions across the spaces of the trauma centre, from critical care to intensive care to a trauma ward, can signify recovery through decreased reliance on medical technology and medical care. Rehabilitation is required as individuals with sTBI become medically stable to ensure further improvement. This rehabilitation is needed to prepare these individuals to move to other healthcare spaces, such as inpatient rehabilitation, repatriation hospitals, or to return home. Textually mediated institutional relations through the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (MOHLTC), specifically the Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) Resource Rehab Tool, ignite sites of struggle in the provision of rehabilitation for individuals with sTBI. These sites of struggles reveal ruling relations that remain hidden until the institution is brought into view using an empirical method of inquiry, institutional ethnography. Specific methods in this dissertation included: participant observation, interviews, a focus group, and analysis of texts. Findings of this study suggest language in the ABI Resource Rehab Tool, specifically the discursive organizer “rehab ready” cleaves individuals with sTBI into two groups: (1) those with faster recoveries able to gain access to inpatient rehabilitation, and (2) those with slower recoveries who do not meet these restrictive guidelines and become unaccounted for in healthcare spaces, with limited options for rehabilitation. Trauma centres are medicalized spaces, whereby provincial funding is distributed on the basis of medical procedures, not rehabilitation. One notable contradiction in funding is revealed for individuals with stroke, who access beds for rehabilitation in acute care and other initiatives outlined by the provincial stroke strategy. No such provincial strategy exists for individuals with sTBI, leaving these individuals marginalized through more limited access to rehabilitation within the healthcare continuum. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Ryan, Kathleen | Smith, Sandy ||Groot, Peter de | Interactions between the Woodwasp Sirex noctilio and Co-habiting Phloem- and Woodboring Beetles, and their Fungal Associates in southern Ontario | Forestry | 2011-06 | In its introduced southern hemisphere range, Sirex noctilio causes considerable mortality in non-native pine forests. In its native Eurasian range however, S. noctilio is of little concern perhaps due to interactions with a well-developed community of pine-inhabiting insects and their associated microorganisms. If such interactions occur, they may limit the woodwasp’s impact in its newly introduced range in North America. My research addresses two broad questions: 1) Does S. noctilio share its habitat with other insects and if so, with whom? 2) Is there evidence that co-habitants affect S. noctilio, and if so how might such interactions occur? Field studies undertaken to describe the woodwasp’s host-attack ecology in Pinus sylvestris showed S. noctilio activity occurred between mid-July and late August, and other phloem- and woodborers sometimes entered the tree after the woodwasp. Tree mortality occurred from two weeks to several months after initial woodwasp symptoms. Suppressed or intermediate trees, those with ≤ 25% residual foliage, or those with stem injury or previous woodwasp symptoms were most likely to have symptoms of woodwasp attack. A second field study conducted to identify associated insect species in S. noctilio-infested Pinus sp. showed the wasp was sometimes found alone, but usually shared the tree with other phloem- or woodboring insects, most commonly the curculionids Tomicus piniperda, Pissodes nemorensis and Ips grandicollis and the cerambycid Monochamus carolinensis. I found no indication that wasps were absent when beetles were present, but there was evidence that woodwasps were less abundant, but larger, when beetles were present. Experiments showed that indirect interactions can occur between the two insect groups via fungal associates of one or both. In the laboratory, the woodwasp symbiont was outcompeted by two beetle-associated fungi, Leptographium wingfieldii and Ophiostoma minus, over a range of temperatures. Under field conditions the woodwasp was able to detect and avoid ovipositing in P. sylvestris inoculated with L. wingfieldii, but its oviposition was unaffected by O. minus. My results show that insects co-habiting pine with S. noctilio have potential to exert a measure of biological control on the woodwasp and may help to limit its impact in North America. | PhD | forest | 15 |
| Saadatnia, Zia | Naguib, Hani E||Esmailzadeh, Ebrahim | Design and Development of Triboelectric Nanogenerators for Water Wave Energy Harvesting | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-11 | Mechanical energy harvesting from the motion of water waves is a very promising direction toward the replacement of batteries and fossil fuels with a clean and sustainable energy resource. Triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG) has been introduced recently as a novel and potent technology for this purpose, and the use of TENG for water wave energy harvesting has been investigated to some extent. However, there are two main challenges in this path including: A) design of advanced TENG systems for effective wave energy harvesting, and B) development of novel methods and materials for improving the performance of TENG systems. This research addresses the two challenges in three directions including development and analysis of advanced structural designs for TENG-based wave energy harvesters, development of a surface modification technique for the TENG improvement, and development of advanced materials for high performance TENG systems. For the advanced structural design direction, initially a comprehensive analysis is carried out on the performance of a hybridized TENG and electromagnetic (EMG) wave energy harvester based on the duck-shaped structure. Then, a hybridized TENG-EMG wave energy harvester is developed and analyzed based on the heaving point absorber mechanism. Lastly, the heaving hybridized TENG-EMG is fabricated and experimentally evaluated to demonstrate the application of proposed design. For the surface modification direction, a novel and facile method is developed for improving the surface morphology of polymeric layers which are embedded into the TENG. This method is based the hot embossing of polymers on self-assembled micro particles which can effectively boost the output performance of TENG systems. For the advanced materials direction, highly porous polymeric aerogels namely polyimide and polyurethane aerogels are developed and synthesized to be used as the main contact materials in the TENG which can remarkably enhance the TENG electrical output characteristics. In overall, this research provides guidelines toward design and development of high performance TENG-based systems for wave energy harvesting. | Ph.D. | water, energy | 6, 7 |
| Saari, Margaret Elizabeth | Tourangeau, Ann E | Home and Community-Based Service Utilization Patterns for Seniors with Alzheimer's Disease and Related Dementias | Nursing Science | 2017-11 | Background: Half a million Canadians are living with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias. Approximately half these individuals live in the community, supported by informal caregivers. In this population, utilization of formal services is low and patterns of utilization are not well understood. Previous studies examining predictors of service use have examined services in isolation however, often multiple services are utilized, with little coordination between services. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to provide a better understanding of the community-based services utilized concurrently by seniors with dementia and their caregivers. Methods: Administrative data were utilized to conduct a secondary analysis. Using latent class analysis, cases were categorized into patterns of home and community-based health and support service use. Multinomial logistic regression was employed to identify predictors of identified service use patterns. Results: A broad range of services were utilized by seniors with dementia in this sample. Services supporting patients’ functional needs were utilized most frequently, while services addressing patients’ medical needs, rehabilitation and caregiver relief were used less often. Utilization of all services, except nursing and occupational therapy, varied by level of cognitive impairment. Seven unique patterns of home and community-based service use were identified. Key patient and caregiver characteristics impacting service use patterns included living arrangement, functional impairment, location of care, cognitive impairment, age, continence, and caregiver relationship. Conclusions: The majority of community-based seniors with dementia did not access formal services. For those who did access formal services, availability of informal caregivers, living arrangement, caregiver relationship and location of care impacted the pattern of service use. A proactive approach to supporting caregivers and reducing the impact of functional limitations is recommended. Further research is needed to understand caregivers’ decision-making processes affecting service utilization and to assess the impact of patterns of service utilization on both patient and caregiver outcomes. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Saary, Maria Joan | Holness, Dorothy Linn | A New Conceptualization of Occupational Outcome | Medical Science | 2008-06 | This thesis presents a new conceptual model of occupational outcome based on the results of input from 5 key stakeholder groups in the field of occupational health including patients, healthcare providers, employers, unions, and insurers. Data from 77 participants who took part in one of either 18 individual interviews or 11 focus groups were qualitatively content analyzed. The goals were to: 1) compare the range of meanings given to the concepts of health, occupational health, and occupational outcome, 2) understand the range of opinions among stakeholders and identify areas of agreement or disagreement and, 3) to develop a framework of occupational outcome incorporating the views of all key stakeholders. Health, occupational health, and occupational outcome were found to have different and complex meanings that extended beyond those in existing research, and that related to the role a variable is hypothesized to have in a larger framework. Stakeholders differed in the depth, breadth, and qualitative nature of the themes discussed. Natural alignments among some stakeholder groups emerged which varied depending on the context, however a specific focus could be identified for each group. No single stakeholder group alone expressed all the themes and the complexity of the relationships among them; the whole could only be understood in terms of the sum of the stakeholder parts. A new model emerges in which occupational outcome is encompassed by the interactions of 3 key factors: Function and Ability, Individual Behaviours, and Environmental Factors. These are embedded within larger models of both occupational health that includes both individual health and workplace health, and of quality which is comprised of the interactions between structure variables, system participant factors, and outcome. The new model and the process undertaken to develop it meet two important needs for occupational health; enhancing understanding and conceptualization of occupational outcome, and enhancing understanding of the perspectives of stakeholders in the occupational healthcare system. The findings have implications for research, and delivery of quality care to patients with occupational disease or injuries. Some next steps include model validation and testing, measurement scale development, clarifying new variables through ongoing stakeholder discussion, and model application. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Sabaliauskas, Kelly | Evans, Greg J | Toronto Residents' Exposure to Ultrafine Particles | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2015-06 | In urban areas, ultrafine particles (UFP: defined as particulate matter with diameters less than 100nm) are emitted in significant quantities from vehicles and form through a complex series of secondary reactions in the atmosphere. Large uncertainties surrounding the long-term behaviour and spatial distribution of UFP in urban areas have been a significant obstacle for exposure assessment. This research examined one of the longest existing urban UFP data sets, collected at a roadside location in downtown Toronto. Between 2006 and 2011, the concentration of particles with diameters | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Sabbahi, Dania Abdulelah | Lawrence, Herenia | Association between Oral Health Literacy and Patient-Centred and Clinical Outcomes | Dentistry | 2013-11 | During the last decade, oral health literacy (OHL) has received significant attention as an important factor that might affect oral health outcomes. Few published instruments are available to measure OHL. Most of these instruments focus on measuring the functional OHL (word recognition, comprehension and numeracy skills) with no attempt in the literature to measure other levels of oral health literacy (communicative and critical OHL). The aim of this PhD thesis was to cover some of the deficiencies in OHL research. A conceptual framework for the factors or outcomes affecting or affected by OHL was developed. Several factors and outcomes were included in the model, including: socio-demographics, dental usage and oral health behaviour variables, self-perceived oral health status, dental knowledge, oral health impact, quality of patient-dentist communication, caries experience and periodontal condition. In the first part of the project, a new communicative and critical OHL instrument (CCOHLI) was developed. CCOHLI displayed high internal consistency and good test-retest reliability. Construct validity of the CCOHLI was established against other health literacy and OHL instruments. Predictive validity was established by significant associations with oral hygiene behaviours, self-perceived oral health status, and caries experience at a multivariate level. The aim of the second part was to confirm the predictive and construct validity of the previously developed and validated OHL instrument (OHLI). The construct validity of the OHLI was confirmed against medical and dental word recognition tests. The predictive validity of the OHLI was confirmed with significant associations with some of the socio-demographics, oral health knowledge, prevalence of oral health impact, and caries experience at multivariate level. In the third part, the validity of a set of questions as a quick tool to identify patients with limited OHL was established. These screening questions can provide a rapid and inexpensive way to identify patients with limited oral health literacy in a busy clinical setting or to conduct large-scale studies. The fourth part shed light on patient-dentist communication as one of the factors that might be influenced by the level of OHL. This area requires special attention in order to improve the quality of the communication process. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Sabin, Jerald Jeffery Devlin | White, Graham | Contested Colonialism: The Rise of Settler Politics in Yukon and the Northwest Territories | Political Science | 2016-06 | Despite forty years of institutional innovation across Northern Canada â including the creation of Indigenous governments and Nunavut â why do the governments of Yukon and the Northwest Territories (NWT) so closely conform to the established norms of Canadian parliamentary and bureaucratic governance? In this study, I argue that these governments reflect the political preferences of non-Indigenous settlers, and that these preferences were embedded in the design of territorial institutions during their formation in the 1960s and 1970s. The institutional legacy of this period continues to structure political and economic dynamics in the territories today. To make this argument, I develop the theoretical concept of contested colonialism, which explains the distinct position of non-Indigenous peoples in Northern society as actors who simultaneously bring colonialism to the North, while also contesting elements of that same colonial order. It is marked by the emergence of a stable settler society, the structural alignment of settler interests with those of colonial federal administrators, and the capacity of settlers to take advantage of political opportunities to further their own interests. Using interpretivist and qualitative methods, including extensive archival research, I trace the rise of settler politics through the prism of liberal autonomy movements and the development of responsible government in both territories. Demographic, geographic, and economic factors account for differences in the effectiveness of settler movements across Yukon and the NWT. | Ph.D. | innovation, governance | 9, 16 |
| Sacco, Jocelyn | Tarasuk, Valerie | An Examination of the Population Health Implications of Voluntary Food Fortification and Nutrition-related Marketing Practices in Canada. | Nutritional Sciences | 2012-11 | The 2004 Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) revealed many indicators of poor diet quality in Canada which, together with the high rates of obesity and diet-related chronic disease, suggest that shifts in dietary patterns are urgently needed. Given the widespread promotion of foods on the basis of nutrition and health, the aim of this work was to explore the population health implications of voluntary food fortification and nutrition-related marketing in Canada. Using the CCHS, the potential impact of a proposed discretionary food fortification policy on nutrient inadequacies and excesses was examined, in addition to the relationship between consumption of foods eligible to be fortified under this policy and indicators of dietary quality. To better understand the potential risk associated with liberal fortification practices, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-08) was used to examine potential for risk of excess associated with voluntarily fortified food consumption in the US, where these practices have long been permitted. The results suggest that proposed changes to voluntary fortification may reduce inadequacy and increase excess, and may reinforce poor diet patterns. Excessive nutrient intakes were also found to be associated with consumption of voluntarily fortified foods in the US, particularly among children. Therefore, there appears to be real potential for risk associated with voluntary fortification practices in Canada. The extent, nature, and population health implications of nutrition marketing in Canada was examined, using a survey of front-of-package nutrition-related marketing on foods within three large grocery stores in Toronto. Nutrition-related marketing was found on 41% of all foods surveyed, and was widely found on highly processed, often fortified foods. References to nutrients of public health concern (e.g. sodium, vitamin D) were infrequently found. Overall, this practice provides limited nutritional guidance. Current directions in nutrition policy in Canada should be re-evaluated, to ensure that they support healthy diet patterns. | PhD | consum, nutrition, health | 2, 3, 12 |
| Sadat, Somayeh | Carter, Michael W. | Theory of Constraints for Publicly Funded Health Systems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2009-06 | This thesis aims to fill the gaps in the literature of the theory of constraints (TOC) in publicly funded health systems. While TOC seems to be a natural fit for this resource-constrained environment, there are still no reported application of TOC’s drum-buffer-rope tool and inadequate customizations with regards to defining system-wide goal and performance measures. The “Drum-Buffer-Rope for an Outpatient Cancer Facility” chapter is a real world case study exploring the usefulness of TOC’s drum-buffer-rope scheduling technique in a publicly funded outpatient cancer facility. With the use of a discrete event simulation model populated with historical data, the drum-buffer-rope scheduling policy is compared against “high constraint utilization” and “low wait time” scenarios. Drum-buffer-rope proved to be an effective mechanism in balancing the inherent tradeoff between the two performance measures of instances of delayed treatment and average patient wait time. To find the appropriate level of compromise in one performance measure in favor of the other, the linkage of these measures to system-wide performance measures are proposed. In the “Theory of Constraints’ Performance Measures for Publicly Funded Health Systems” chapter, a system dynamics representation of the classical TOC’s system-wide goal and performance measures for publicly traded for-profit companies is developed, which forms the basis for developing a similar model for publicly funded health systems. The model is then expanded to include some of the factors that affect system performance, providing a framework to apply TOC’s process of ongoing improvement in publicly funded health systems. The “Connecting Low-Level Performance Measures to the Goal” chapter attempts to provide a framework to link the low-level performance measures with system-wide performance measures. It is claimed that until such a linkage is adequately established, TOC has not been fully transferred to publicly funded health systems. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Saebimoghaddam, Abdolreza | Grabinsky, Murray | Liquefaction of Early Age Cemented Paste Backfill | Civil Engineering | 2010-06 | Modern mines require systems that quickly deliver backfill to support the rock mass surrounding underground openings. Cemented Paste Backfill (CPB) is one such backfilling method, but concerns have been raised about CPB’s liquefaction susceptibility especially when the material has just been placed, and if it is exposed to earthquakes or large mining induced seismic events. Conventional geotechnical earthquake engineering for surface structures is now relatively advanced and well accepted, and so the objective of this thesis is to consider how that framework might be extended to assess the liquefaction potential of CPB. Seismic records were analyzed for earthquakes and for large mining induced events. Important seismological trends were consistent for rockbursts and earthquakes when the signals were recorded at distances as proximate as one kilometre, suggesting that the conventional earthquake engineering approach might plausibly be adapted for such design situations. For production blasts and for more proximate locations to rockbursts, much higher frequencies dominate and therefore new design methods may be required. Monotonic triaxial tests conducted on normally consolidated uncemented mine tailings demonstrated that the material is initially contractive up to a phase transition point, beyond which dilation occurs. Most importantly the material never exhibits unstable strain softening behaviour in compression, and only temporary or limited liquefaction in extension. The addition of 3% binder results in initial sample void ratios that are even higher than their uncemented counterparts, and yet the material friction is slightly enhanced when tested at 4 hours cure. These results suggest that the flow liquefaction phenomenon commonly associate with undrained loose sand fills will not occur with paste backfill. Cyclic triaxial test results analyzed in terms of number of cycles to failure for a given cyclic stress ratio exhibited a trend consistent with previous tests on similar materials. However, the addition of 3% binder and testing at 4 hours cure resulted in an order of magnitude larger number of cycles to failure – a surprising and dramatic increase, suggesting good resistance of the material to cyclic mobility. Future research is recommended to build on these results and develop more robust methods for liquefaction assessment of CPB. | PhD | production | 12 |
| Safieddine, Hicham | Hanssen, Jens | Economic Sovereignty and the Fetters of Finance: The Making of Lebanon's Central Bank | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2015-06 | Lebanon gained formal political independence from France in 1943. Yet, its Central Bank, Banque du Liban, was not founded until 1964. This study is a critical history of the making of Banque du Liban. I trace the Central Bank's formation from its Ottoman origins in the mid-19th century up to its inauguration in 1964 and restructuring a few years later following a major banking crisis. I analyze this history in the context of theoretical questions of state formation and institution-building in a Middle Eastern context. Employing a structural empiricist approach, I argue that Banque du Liban, as an instrument of monetary policy and a set of rules and regulations governing banking operations, was constituted by a complex interaction of war economies, international financial regimes, post-colonial state-building, global currents of technocratic knowledge, and private business interests. I show that despite its representation by Lebanese authorities as a symbol of economic sovereignty and growth, the resultant institution seldom acted as a lever for asserting monetary autonomy or pursuing economic development. It was, to a large extent, an apparatus that reproduced colonial monetary policies and, more significantly, served rather than challenged the interests of the indigenous banking class. My study questions dominant accounts of Lebanon's post-WWII political economy. It eschews a sectarian framework of analysis, challenges the division of Lebanon's post-WWII economic history into a laissez-faire period and a later planned phase, and emphasizes the institutional dimension of how political and economic forces shape the state. The study also aims to illustrate the historical specificity of the process of state building and the limits of economic sovereignty in a neo-colonial setting while simultaneously probing the degree of rupture and continuity in the evolution of financial institutions over time. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Sagaris, Lake | Sorensen, Andre | Citizens, Complexity and the City Lessons from Citizen Participation in Urban (Transport) Planning in Santiago Chile, 1997-2012 | Planning | 2013-06 | Abstract Twentieth century, citizen “revolts” against highway projects have influenced thinking about public transport (Toronto, Vancouver, New York), governance (Portland), and cycling (The Netherlands) to this day. Less is known about how these emerge in developing countries, and what they can tell us about citizens’ role in innovation to achieve more socially just, good and livable cities. Using a complexity-based approach, this dissertation explores lessons from an anti-highway movement in Santiago, Chile (1997), which challenged authoritarian planning paradigms inherited from the Pinochet regime (1973-1990). In 2000, these leaders of diverse communities founded a citizen institution, Living City (Ciudad Viva), which today is a prize-winning, citizen-led planning institution. Participation is recognized as important to community development, health and urban planning. Nonetheless, a rich literature notes many limitations. Is improving participation just a matter of “getting the process right”? Or does it require re-formulating frameworks to redistribute power, fostering self-generating civil society organizations, and treating democratization as ongoing rather than a “steady state”? Re-formulating frameworks has far-reaching implications. It requires acting consistently with the premise that the local is central to change in human living systems, and the need to create the civic “infrastructure” conducive to citizen learning and the emergence of multiscalar citizen organizations, able to mobilize ecology of actors for innovation. To effectively address the challenges of climate change, loss of biodiversity, the social determinants of health, the “obesity epidemic” and other issues, the answers lie in city neighbourhoods and human settlements. If we aspire to good, just and livable cities, uncertain futures require planning for change. This research suggests that we can identify dynamics likely to leverage significant change and activate capacities throughout a system. This requires moving to an inclusive planning paradigm that fully integrates citizen planners. | PhD | inclusive, infrastructure, innovation, cities, urban, climate, biodiversity, governance | 4, 9, 11, 13, 14, 16 |
| Sage, Michael Douglas | McIlroy, William E||Roy, Eric A | Priming the Brain for Recovery from Stroke: The Role of Aerobic Exercise as an Adjunct to Upper-limb Therapy | Rehabilitation Science | 2015-06 | Following a stroke, the majority of individuals are left with residual deficits and there is a need to continue to improve strategies to augment recovery. This dissertation explores the approach of optimizing central nervous system conditions using aerobic exercise prior to task training. In healthy individuals a single session of aerobic exercise influences arousal and attention however, it is unknown if these effects translate to a stroke population. Further, little is known about the effect of a single bout of aerobic exercise on subsequent skill adaptation. Therefore, the main objectives of this thesis were to investigate the effect of a single bout of aerobic exercise on: (1) CNS arousal and attention in a stroke population; and, (2) short-term skill adaptation in healthy individuals and those who have suffered a stroke. Overall, for individuals recovering from a stroke, CNS arousal may be augmented as indicated by faster reaction times in some conditions and consistently faster movement times across conditions following exercise. However, attention did not appear to be influenced by the exercise bout as reaction time variability was unchanged in study 1 and absolute change was comparable across tasks with differing attentional demands in study 2. While exercise positively enhanced short-term adaptation in healthy individuals, for individuals recovering from stroke the exercise bout did not appear to benefit upper-limb movement adaptation compared to a control condition. This dissertation highlights the potential for using exercise to influence CNS state after stroke, though results revealed significant between and within-subject variability in this population. Future work should progress to evaluating the longitudinal multi-session effects of pairing aerobic exercise with ecologically valid task training to determine if the observed single session benefits augment neurorehabilitation and aid long-term recovery from stroke. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Salama, Yasmin | Brunnee, Jutta | The Worst Is Still Ahead: The Privileging of Free Investment over Environmental Protection under NAFTA | Law | 2015-03 | When created, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was considered historic since it was the first multilateral trading regime to incorporate environmental considerations. This dissertation argues that NAFTA's model of liberalized investment has instead given priority to economic growth over environmental protection.It is true that in some cases, foreign investment triggered through NAFTA brought clean technologies; however, these gains are exceptions rather than the rule. I contend that economic stimulation under NAFTA is coupled with a weak environmental institutional framework, made up of side agreements and institutions that are inhibited by, inter alia; the uncertainty of interpretation of its environmental provisions; the expansive definitions of measures covered, and is exacerbated by the existence of Chapter 11 dispute settlement mechanism. | LL.M. | economic growth, trade, institution | 8, 10, 16 |
| SALAMANCA-BUENTELLO, FABIO | Upshur, Ross E. G. | The Ethical, Social, and Cultural Dimensions of Screening for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents in the Developing World | Medical Science | 2018-11 | This thesis formally and systematically identifies and prioritizes, for the first time, the most pressing ethical, social, and cultural challenges related to the screening for mental, neurological, and substance abuse disorders (MNSDs) in children and adolescents (C&A) living in the developing world, and proposes targeted strategies to address them. C&A mental health has been sadly neglected despite the severe life-long burden of C&A MNSDs and the large and growing number of C&A living in low- and middle-income countries. I carried out a three-round international Delphi survey completed by 135 experts from 37 countries. This multi- and inter-disciplinary panel selected and ranked 39 challenges, organized into eight themes, and 32 related solutions, arranged into seven topics. A 100% response rate was attained in Round 3. Near consensus was achieved in several areas, and a high degree of correlation was found between the challenges and their proposed solutions. The experts recommended integrating screening into primary health care; addressing potential sociocultural dissonances by designing and implementing accessible, affordable, cost-effective, and culturally and socially appropriate screening tools and programs, and post-screening follow-up; addressing resource issues by securing long-term programs funding, strengthening education and training for mental health, and incorporating well-supervised local non-specialists and lay individuals in the screening programs; increasing trust and decreasing stigmatization of at-risk C&A, their families, and their communities by engaging stakeholders throughout the screening initiatives, protecting the rights of the C&A screened, guaranteeing privacy, confidentiality, and free, uncoerced informed consent and assent, and determining the baseline acceptance, motivation, and support for screening programs in target populations; and regularly implementing empowering, culturally sensitive public and community engagement initiatives. My findings encompass all MNSDs, focus on developing countries, and represent the combined global wisdom of the leading authorities in C&A mental health. They can become a guide for policy- and decision-making, resource allocation, and international cooperation in global mental health, offering a novel approach to reduce the burden of C&A MNSDs by encouraging timely and context-sensitive prevention and management of MNSDs, and helping to mitigate the lifelong suffering that they inflict on C&A and their families in the developing world. | Ph.D. | rights, health | 3, 16 |
| Salami, Oluwabukola Oladunni | Nelson, Sioban | “All for the Family”: A Case Study on the Migration of Philippine Educated Nurses to Ontario through the Live-in Caregiver Program | Nursing Science | 2014-06 | Despite evidence that suggests that nurses migrate to Ontario through the Live-in Caregiver Program, no research has been conducted on this group of nurses in Ontario. This study addresses that gap utilizing the transnational feminist concept of “global care chains” in a single holistic case study design to explore the experience of nurses who migrate to Ontario through the Live-in Caregiver Program (2001-2011), and examine the diverse perspectives of stakeholders on issues of rights and obligations of these nurses. Fifteen live-in caregivers and nine policy stakeholders were interviewed, and an analysis undertaken of immigration and nursing policy documents. Findings indicate that familial discourses and perspectives on global social status shape these women’s decision to migrate from the Philippines to Canada, often via a second country (especially Saudi Arabia), as well as their subsequent Canadian experiences. Results are consistent with Rhacel Parrenas’ idea of ‘contradictory class mobility’ that describes the phenomenon of decrease in social status coupled with an increase in financial status among immigrant care workers. As professional women undertaking unskilled work, the nurses’ contradictory class status was reinforced by the emotional labour and domestic work they were required to perform. Furthermore, as temporary workers on a path to permanent residency, their professional integration as nurses was complicated by Canada’s immigration policy and the paradox between the government’s stated short-term goal (to address labour force shortage of live-in caregivers) versus its long-term goal (to ensure the integration of permanent residents). Within this policy paradox immigration policy makers emphasized the short-term obligation of fulfilling labour needs, while live-in caregivers and advocacy groups emphasized the long-term obligations of the Canadian government related to gaining permanent residence status. The lack of congruence between the Live-in Caregiver Program policy and nursing policy concerning internationally educated nurses, as well as prioritization of their familial obligations complicated the process of professional integration for this group of women. Recommendations arising from the study concern the need to bridge these policy gaps and address the shortcomings of the Live-in Caregiver Program to leverage the integration of this group of internationally educated nurses in Canada. | PhD | women, worker, rights | 5, 8, 16 |
| Salvador, Rommel | Rogerson, Carol | Child Participation in the Philippines: Reconstructing the Legal Discourse of Children and Childhood | Law | 2013-11 | This thesis explores the participation of children within legal discourse by looking at how laws and policies engage or disengage children. The basic premise is that to understand children’s participation is to confront the discourse of children and childhood where we uncover underlying assumptions, interests and agendas that inform our conception of who the child is and what the experience of childhood entails. Specifically, the thesis examines child participation within the Philippine legal framework by looking at the status, conditions and circumstances of children in four contexts: family, educational system, work environment and youth justice system. It argues that our conceptions of children and childhood are not only produced from a particular discourse but in turn are productive of a particular construction and practices reflected in the legal system. In its examination, the thesis reveals a complex Philippine legal framework shaped by competing paradigms of children and childhood that both give meaning to and respond to children’s engagements. On the one hand, there is a dominant discourse based on universal patterns of development and socialization that views children as objects of adult control and influence. But at the same time, there is some concrete attraction to an emerging paradigm influenced by childhood studies and the child rights movement that opens up opportunities for children’s participation. In advocating for broader acceptance of the emerging paradigm, the thesis identifies distinctive understandings of this paradigm in the Philippine context. A central argument is that in reconstructing the legal discourse of children and childhood, children’s participation grounded on the emerging paradigm does not necessarily introduce “new” understandings of children and childhood in the Philippines but, in fact, confirms existing beliefs and practices that articulate deeply held indigenous relational values. Within this contextualized understanding of the emerging paradigm, the thesis articulates children’s participation as: recognition of children as rights-bearers; acknowledgment of children’s realities as lived and experienced by them; and respect for the meaningful and constitutive relationships that children establish. Consequently, the intrinsic quality and meaning of actions of the child and towards the child take on a significant legal, social and moral value. | SJD | justice, rights | 16 |
| Salway, Travis James | Gesink, Dionne | Stigma, Stress, and Stories: Refining our Understanding of Suicidal Behavior among Adult Gay, Bisexual, and other Sexual Minority Men | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-06 | Background: Sexual minority men are approximately four times more likely than heterosexual men to have attempted suicide. Epidemiologic evidence of this disparity is robust; however, research exploring how and why this disparity persists is sparse. Objective: To refine our understanding of suicidal behavior in adult sexual minority men, with the goal of improving relevant public health strategies to prevent suicide. Methods and aims: Data were drawn from adult sexual minority men who participated in: the population-based Canadian Community Health Survey (N=4675), a gay menâ s community-based national online survey (N=7872), and in-depth interviews with men who attempted suicide (N=7). Quantitative bias analysis was used to estimate the degree of misclassification of sexual orientation and associated bias in estimates of suicidal ideation among sexual minority men in general population-based surveys (Aim 1). Structural equation modeling was used to identify specific psychosocial challenges that mediate relationships between constructs of sexual stigma and recent suicide attempts (Aim 2). Dialogical narrative analysis was used to construct life narratives used by sexual minority men with histories of suicide attempts (Aim 3). Results: Disparities in suicidal ideation comparing bisexual (odds ratio[OR]=4.91) and gay (OR=3.63) to heterosexual men persisted after adjustment for misclassification bias but were attenuated, with greater attenuation for bisexual (adjusted OR=3.53) than for gay (adjusted OR=3.52) men. Three measured constructs of sexual stigma (enacted stigma, anticipated prejudice, and sexuality concealment) were associated with suicide attempts (p | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Samarasin-Dissanayake, Pasan | Rodd, Helen||Shuter, Brian J | From Genes to Communities: Effects of Habitat Change over Space and Time on Fish Diversity | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015-11 | Rapid habitat changes, caused by human activities within the last century, have resulted in biodiversity loss at all levels of biological organization. In light of these changes in the recent past, this thesis explores some of the effects of such changes on fish and wildlife populations, species, and communities using theoretical and empirical approaches. Using simulated genetic data, I first investigated the effects of recent population connectivity changes on the reliability of genetic inferences about connectivity. I found that, when connectivity has declined in the recent past, commonly-used genetic methods for estimating connectivity tend to overestimate current connectivity and underestimate historical connectivity. This could lead to incorrect inferences about gene flow and have negative consequences for conservation of populations and species at risk. Next, I conducted two empirical studies focusing on Canadian fishes that are threatened by habitat changes, making them excellent systems to investigate the effects of habitat change on their ecology and evolution. For Sockeye salmon populations in the Fraser River, I found that hydroelectric dams have fragmented habitats, changed connectivity among populations, and had significant effects on the ecology and evolution of some populations. Based on molecular data, I found evidence indicating very early differentiation between anadromous and resident forms of Sockeye salmon within one reservoir, where a dam has prevented the historically anadromous salmon from migrating to the ocean. In a second case study, on freshwater fish communities in northern Canadian lakes that were thought to be depauperate in biodiversity, I found higher species diversity and fish biomass than expected based on species-energy theory. My analyses indicate that fish diversity and biomass in northern lakes are not substantially lower than southern Canadian lakes. Thus, northern lakes could be important reserves of coldwater fish in light of climate change. In summary, I examined some effects of habitat change on populations, species and communities, and my thesis highlights: (i) areas for the improvement of methodologies and inferences used by conservation biologists; and (ii) specific northern communities of Canadian fishes that warrant attention to preserve Canadian fish diversity. | Ph.D. | water, energy, hydroelectric, climate, ocean, conserv, fish, biodiversity | 7, 13, 14 |
| Sameni, Javad Khadem | Sain, Mohini||Krigstin, Sally | Physico-chemical Characterization of Lignin Isolated from Industrial Sources for Advanced Applications | Forestry | 2015-11 | Lignin is generated in large quantities as by-products in pulping industries and biorefineries through various processes. Lignin is currently isolated from the by-products but its application is limited due to non-uniform structure and unique chemical reactivity. However, advanced pulping industries and biorefineries involve improvement of the value derived from their lignin-containing by-product by converting them into new, advanced and high-value added products. This endeavor not only improves resources but also return revenue to their operations. The important strategy in this research is the isolation of lignin from pulping industry and biorefinery by-products and its further conversion into advance products such as microspheres. The specific objective was to investigate the physico-chemical and thermal characteristics of isolated lignin as well as fundamental studies of lignin solubilization in different organic solvents for the synthesis of lignin microspheres. The physico-chemical properties and the thermal behavior of lignin samples were characterized by using different analytical and thermal techniques. The solubilities of lignin samples were determined in different organic solvents and compared with the computed solubility parameter. For synthesis of lignin microspheres, either lignin was modified to lignin acetate to improve its solubility or the the soluble part of lignin in organic solvent was used in the process. The results showed that the molecular structure, functional groups, molecular weight, glass transition temperature and onset decomposition temperature of isolated lignins depend on the extraction process and plant source. Solubilities of lignins isolated from different sources vary in different organic solvents. However, the solubility of lignin in organic solvents is not predictable due to poor correlation between the solubilities of lignins and their solubility parameters. Uniform lignin acetate microspheres were synthesized with a size of about 1 μm and narrow size distribution by using dichloromethane independent on the lignin source. Ethyl acetate was found as an alternative organic solvent useful in preparing lignin microspheres, which has relatively lower toxicity to human and the environment than dichloromethane. Finally, uniform lignin microspheres were synthesized from solubilized parts of two industrial lignins (hardwood kraft and non-wood soda lignins) in ethyl acetate under controlled conditions which have not been reported before. | Ph.D. | industr, environment | 9, 13 |
| Sampson, Kathleen Louise | Bender, Timothy P | Solution-Processable Boron Subphthalocyanines for Organic Photovoltaics | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-11 | Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) are cheaper, less energy intensive manufacturing, and solution- printable options compared to current for solar energy generation technologies and can provide solutions to the growing global energy demand. Boron subphthalocyanines (BsubPcs) are an organic material of interest for OPVs due to their strong absorption near the maximum irradiance from the Sun and ability to fine-tune their properties, such as electronic and solubility, using various straightforward organic chemistry techniques. For example, substituents in the axial (to the boron center atom) and peripheral (outside aromatic groups) positions can be altered to improve solubility for solution-deposition methods and to lower the frontier energy levels, enabling BsubPc to function as a non-fullerene acceptor. Typical fullerene electron acceptor derivatives have weak absorption in the visible spectrum, require high energy and low yielding synthetic steps, and lack the ability to fine-tune the energy levels for OPV performance optimization. By screening both soluble polymer and small molecule versions of BsubPc with the optimal energy levels, electrochemical and absorbance stability, polymer electron donor pair, and OPV device architecture type, it was found that small molecule BsubPc electron acceptors in solution-deposited BsubPcs hold promise, with performance close to a fullerene baseline. In particular, a BsubPc derivative with a phenoxy or chlorine axial ligand and peripheral chlorine substituents demonstrated ideal solubility, electrochemical oxidation and reduction reversibility, and overall OPV device results when paired with high performing benzodithiophene-based polymer electron donors in orthogonally solution-printed OPVs. These conclusions pave the way for future developments in device processing conditions for solution-deposited BsubPcs as well as for the overall OPV field. | Ph.D. | solar, energy | 7 |
| Samuel, Jeannie | Birn, Anne-Emanuelle||Myers, Ted | Struggling with the State: Rights-based Governance of Reproductive Health Services in Puno, Peru | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-06 | This dissertation explores the complex process of how socially excluded women carry out rights-based governance in state-operated health facilities. It addresses a central tension: how can marginalized actors exercise a governance influence over institutions that have systemically excluded them? The study examines the efforts of a group of Quechua-speaking indigenous women in the southern Peruvian Andes who act as citizen monitors of their reproductive health services. In a country where profound inequalities are embedded in the health care system, the monitors (aided by a network of strategic allies) seek to combat abuse and strengthen health service provision. Key to their governance strategy is the use of a human rights-based approach to health, intended to influence monitors' power by repositioning them as rights holders. Theoretically, the dissertation draws on feminist political economy to examine the emergence of reproductive health care as a site of struggle between civil society and the state in Puno, Peru since the 1990s. It examines the monitoring initiative in Puno as an example of ongoing struggles with the state for the provision of quality reproductive health care. Methodologically, it uses institutional ethnography to link the work of citizen monitors with broader social, political and economic forces that shape their governance efforts. The study's findings suggest that human rights-based approaches can help monitors to exercise power in governance struggles. Citizen monitoring in Puno has produced some important gains, including curbing everyday injustices such as discriminatory treatment and illegal fees in health facilities. Monitors have been less effective at influencing other types of systemic problems, such as understaffing. The initiative has created opportunities for hands-on learning and the creation of new kinds of alliances. More broadly, the study suggests that rights-based governance can contribute to the democratization of reproductive health service delivery and the promotion of inclusive citizenship. | Ph.D. | health, inclusive, women, justice | 3, 4, 5, 16 |
| San Martin, Ruth Magaly | Bakan, Abigail | Transnational Latina Feminism in Toronto, Canada, 1970s–2000s: Treading the New Avenues | Social Justice Education | 2018-06 | Latin American women have a long history of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist political engagement, expanding into feminist praxis with diverse women’s movements across Latin America. Following connections with the Chicana cannon and establishing connections with other racialized grassroots groups in Canada, a particular Latina feminist subjectivity emerged that complicates Canadian feminism and challenges dominant narratives of Latin American political activities. Canadian feminist historiographies regularly engage in processes of erasure that inscribes Whiteness and imperialism into the Canadian landscape. In this context, Latin American women’s agency, experience, and lives have tended to disappear—along with other racialized women—from Canadian consciousness and literature, relegating them to the perpetual and exclusive role of victims. In this dissertation, four historical junctures have been selected that illustrate the transnational praxis of Latin American women’s feminist subjectivities in the city of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. These key moments showcase complex political debates, including the political crisis in Latin America, the imposition of neo-liberal policies, political repression, and exile. Diasporic Latin American women from the 1970s to the early 2000s developed organizations that responded to the political exigencies of the times, maintaining transnational connections with women’s and feminist movements in Latin America while also creating new spaces in Canada, ultimately evolving a unique diasporic Latina feminist subjectivity. These junctures are: (1) the solidarity movement of the 1970s to the 1990s, focusing on two women’s organizations; (2) the formation of the Latin American Coalition to End Violence against Women and Children (LACEV) in the 1990s; (3) the organization of the First Latin American and Caribbean Women’s Encounter in 1995; and (4) the foundation of MUJER in 2003. These four examples are neither linear nor lacking in controversy. This study is based on a mixed methodology that includes interviews with leading activists, document analysis, and personal experience. Throughout their historical journeys, Latin American women contributed not only to the processes of democratization in their countries of origin but also to Toronto’s feminist political milieu, providing a vital contribution and translating into invaluable organizations that continue to support Latin American women’s agencies and political praxis. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Sander, Beate | Krahn, Murray | Supporting Public Health Policy Decision-making through Economic Evaluation: Applications and Methods | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2011-11 | The extent to which economic evaluations of public health programs in Ontario are conducted and used by decision makers is currently very limited. This thesis supports public health decision-making through applied and methodological work. The applied work demonstrates different methods to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of public health interventions using the examples of seasonal and pandemic influenza immunization programs. The methodological component explores whether time horizon choice, one methodological consideration in economic evaluations, introduces bias. The economic evaluation of Ontario’s universal influenza immunization program (UIIP) uses primarily provincial health administrative databases to assess the impact of UIIP on health outcomes (quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), mortality), health care resource use (physician office visits, emergency department visits, and hospitalizations), and costs due to seasonal influenza. Ontario’s UIIP was found to be cost-effective compared to a targeted program. The economic evaluation of Ontario’s H1N1 (2009) mass immunization program uses a mathematical modeling approach to describe the pandemic as observed in Ontario. By removing immunization from the simulation, the impact of the program was evaluated. Outcome measures include health outcomes (attack rate, deaths, QALYs), resource use, and cost (physician office visits, emergency department visits, hospitalizations). The analysis found Ontario’s mass immunization program to be highly cost-effective despite high program cost. The methodological component investigates whether time horizon choice, a major methodological choice, introduces bias to economic evaluations. The existence, magnitude and direction of time horizon bias are demonstrated using a formal model. This work supports current guidelines in recommending a lifetime time horizon and provides a framework to discuss bias in economic evaluations. This thesis demonstrates different approaches to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of public health interventions, informs decision-making, and establishes the groundwork to guide future economic evaluations of public health interventions. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Sanders, Rebecca | Welch, David A. | Exceptional Security Practices, Human Rights Abuses, and the Politics of Legal Legitimation in the American “Global War on Terror” | Political Science | 2012-06 | Given the contradictory reality of a well-developed human rights and humanitarian regime alongside extensive human rights abuses committed in the “Global War on Terror,” the dissertation asks how and why law has shaped contemporary security policy. Focusing on the American case over time, I examine this problem empirically by tracing the changing impact of both international and domestic legal and normative constraints on torture and interrogation, detention and trial, and surveillance practices, culminating in post-9/11 counterterrorism doctrine. I find that policy makers have increasingly violated rules with the adoption of controversial security and intelligence policies, but have simultaneously employed legalistic arguments to evade responsibility for human rights abuses. Using contrasting realist, decisionist, liberal, and constructivist accounts of the nature of state compliance with norms and law found in International Relations and legal scholarship, the dissertation theoretically explains this outcome and with it, law’s ability to moderate national security practice. In so doing, I propose an original reading of law as a permissive constraint, which challenges us to rethink paradigmatic assumptions in a way that accommodates both strategic and normative factors and recognizes the role of practice in giving content to rules. | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Sanford, Sarah | McDonough, Peggy | Integrating Pandemic through Preparedness: Global Security and the Utility of Threat | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-03 | Emerging infectious disease has become a paradigmatic way of thinking about disease in recent years. In response to the widely-held view that an emerging pandemic is an imminent, albeit uncertain, event linked to global interconnectedness, pandemic preparedness has been the target of considerable political concern and economic investment. To date, there has been relatively little critical research questioning the broader social and political implications of this seemingly natural undertaking. My research addresses this knowledge gap by exploring pandemic influenza planning as a global approach to the regulation of emerging infectious disease. I investigate how pandemic is framed and the ways in which these framings link to broader political and economic contexts. I undertake a Foucauldian-informed, critical discourse analysis of four key pandemic planning documents produced by the World Health Organization between 1999 and 2009. I ask how infectious disease is constructed in particular ways, and how these constructions can be interpreted in relation to broader global contexts. My findings, which describe a range of discursive strategies in governing pandemic, are four-fold. First, I examine the characterizations of the influenza virus, and their effect of rendering normal and pandemic circumstances as indistinct. I describe how these constructions are implicated in the framing of preparedness as a continuous engagement with the process of emergence. Next, I explore how the delineation and regulation of boundaries simultaneously constitutes bodies and territories as distinct. Third, I describe the discursive construction of a particular kind of global geopolitics which represents vulnerability according to the interconnectedness of states. Finally, the pandemic virus acquires a form of utility that portrays preparedness as having the potential for securing society against a broad range of potential threats. Anticipating the exceptional features of pandemic is to be achieved through the integration of contingency mechanisms into existing systems of preparedness whose objective is continued economic and social functioning. The regulation of circulation central to pandemic preparedness establishes an ongoing engagement in decisions about freedom and constraint in relation to different forms of mobility or circulation. My findings are interpreted in light of their implications for understanding the global regulation of, and intervention into, molecular life. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Santhosh Thomas, Agnes | Sawchuk, Peter | Immigrant Women and their Work in the Informal Economy in Toronto: Impacts and the Potential for Critical Transformations | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | This research examines the everyday experiences of immigrant women working informally in the City of Toronto (Canada). The study is based on analysis of original in depth interview (n = 27) and focus group data (n = 19). The thesis begins from the belief that the choice of highly educated immigrant women, with and without professional work experiences from their home countries, to do informal work in Canada is part of a fact that they are going through a particularly intensive process of change. With special attention to the potential for critical transformative learning (e.g. Mezirow; Freire) - how this change is produced, experienced, and addressed is the key focus in this study. The study considers three avenues of experience potentially influencing change in the lives of immigrant women post-immigration: i) the ways of knowing, frames of reference, and worldviews of these women as shaped by the complex relationship between their private (e.g. as mothers and wives) and public (e.g. as community members and informal product/service workers) lives; ii) the various economic and cultural relations and shifting locations that mediate how the individual makes choices regarding (formal and/or informal) work activities; and, iii) the social relations shaping the changing experiences and interpretations of interlocking systems of power relations involving gender, race, class and disability.Agentive participation and learning in the context of economic participation are key in understanding women's choices, experiences, and outcomes in the context of their work and life experiences in Canada. This study reveals the multidimensional, often contradictory, processes of change that individuals in marginalized situations post-immigration go through and their awareness of and influence over these change processes. The analysis suggests a multilayered process that supports and sometimes inhibits the creation of a new foundation for various types of transformative learning trajectories; one that keeps the loose threads together and moves people towards and along a path they individually or collectively choose to follow in order to find meaning and realize positive change. | Ph.D. | gender, women, worker | 5, 8 |
| Santokie, Kara | Nedelsky, Jennifer | "Caring" Global Policy? Sex Trafficking and Feminist International Ethics | Political Science | 2012-11 | Current approaches to sex trafficking appear to be neither very successful in stopping sex trafficking nor, more importantly, very effective in helping those women for whom it is intended. Rather, the overwhelming focus on the issue of prostitution obscures the more fundamental issue of providing relevant assistant to trafficked women. The theoretical debates among academics and feminist activists do not delve sufficiently deep enough into this issue, while the policy discussions and the resulting international policy reflect the moral positions of abolitionist activists and policy-makers regarding the unacceptability of prostitution as a legitimate income-generating activity— a debate that is distinct from the issue of sex trafficking. I will argue that existing national anti-sex trafficking policies in India and Nepal, the regional policy for the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation, and the United Nations Trafficking Protocol are ineffective because they reflect an association of sex trafficking with prostitution. A more effective policy would dissociate sex trafficking from moral judgments about prostitution. This can be accomplished by applying a feminist ethic of care as a methodology and as a political practice. Trafficked women emerge from a context of complex life histories and decision-making processes. Anti-sex trafficking governance structures are meant to provide care for trafficked women. As a methodology, an ethic of care would employ a critical moral ethnography to distill the experiences and articulated needs of trafficked women in order to show whether this is being accomplished and, if not, why. As a political practice, it can use the information that its methodology necessitates to provide guidance on how these governance structures might best be designed to provide care for trafficked women. | PhD | women, governance | 5, 16 |
| Sarathy, Subram Maniam | Thomson, Murray J. | Chemical Kinetic Modeling of Biofuel Combustion | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2010-06 | Bioalcohols, such as bioethanol and biobutanol, are suitable replacements for gasoline, while biodiesel can replace petroleum diesel. Improving biofuel engine performance requires understanding its fundamental combustion properties and the pathways of combustion. This study's contribution is experimentally validated chemical kinetic combustion mechanisms for biobutanol and biodiesel. Fundamental combustion data and chemical kinetic mechanisms are presented and discussed to improve our understanding of biofuel combustion. The net environmental impact of biobutanol (i.e., n-butanol) has not been studied extensively, so this study first assesses the sustainability of n-butanol derived from corn. The results indicate that technical advances in fuel production are required before commercializing biobutanol. The primary contribution of this research is new experimental data and a novel chemical kinetic mechanism for n-butanol combustion. The results indicate that under the given experimental conditions, n-butanol is consumed primarily via abstraction of hydrogen atoms to produce fuel radical molecules, which subsequently decompose to smaller hydrocarbon and oxygenated species. The hydroxyl moiety in n-butanol results in the direct production of the oxygenated species such as butanal, acetaldehyde, and formaldehyde. The formation of these compounds sequesters carbon from forming soot precursors, but they may introduce other adverse environmental and health effects. Biodiesel is a mixture of long chain fatty acid methyl esters derived from fats and oils. This research study presents high quality experimental data for one large fatty acid methyl ester, methyl decanoate, and models its combustion using an improved skeletal mechanism. The results indicate that methyl decanoate is consumed via abstraction of hydrogen atoms to produce fuel radicals, which ultimately lead to the production of alkenes. The ester moiety in methyl decanoate leads to the formation of low molecular weight oxygenated compounds such as carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, and ketene, thereby reducing the production of soot precursors. The study concludes that the oxygenated molecules in biofuels follow similar combustion pathways to the hydrocarbons in petroleum fuels. The oxygenated moiety's ability to sequester carbon from forming soot precursors is highlighted. However, the direct formation of oxygenated hydrocarbons warrants further investigation into the environmental and health impacts of practical biofuel combustion systems. | PhD | environment, production, consum | 12, 13 |
| Sarmadi, Behzad | Barker, Joshua | Transformation and Standstill: Iranian Experiences of Splintering Urbanism in Dubai | Anthropology | 2016-11 | This dissertation focuses on Dubai’s recent urban transformation, and its descent into crisis. Conducted between 2010 and 2012, it examines how the city splintered into a series of upscale “mega-projects” in the periphery known as “New Dubai”, while inner city neighborhoods grew congested with “unskilled” labor and targeted for policing. Through political economic analysis, I argue that New Dubai was not just a geographic category but a techno-political regime working to conflate local real estate with global capital through strategies of flexible sovereignty. Through ethnographic analysis focusing on middle and working class Iranian immigrants I show how immigrants in Dubai variously engaged with or were marginalized by this urban transformation as they inhabited new relations of debt and property in pursuit of “the good life,” or found themselves at risk of eviction, debtor’s jail, and deportation. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Sasaki, Aya | Erb, Suzanne | Influence of Maternal High Fat Diet, Stress and Cocaine on Neural Mechanisms of Reward and Anxiety in Rat Offspring | Cell and Systems Biology | 2017-06 | Maternal obesity has important health consequences for the mother and her offspring. Experiments presented in this dissertation explored the role of maternal overnutrition with a high fat diet (HFD) on several aspects of offspring phenotype: reward- and stress-related behaviours, the endocrine stress response, and associated neural gene expression. First, I examined maternal HFD effects on offspring phenotype in stress-related brain regions. Maternal HFD was associated with altered expression of stress-related genes, a heightened endocrine stress response and increased anxiety behaviour in adult offspring. Genes central to stress and drug addiction (TH and CRF) were upregulated in HFD offspring, suggesting that maternal HFD alters neural systems underlying related processes. Second, I investigated the role of maternal HFD on offspring phenotype following chronic cocaine exposure. Maternal HFD increased anxiety in saline-treated control females, reduced anxiety in cocaine-treated females, but did not interact with cocaine-primed locomotor activity or neural gene expression. These findings suggest that maternal HFD modulates offspring anxiety behavior with chronic cocaine exposure. Third, I investigated the role of maternal HFD and maternal stress on offspring phenotype given acute cocaine exposure. Maternal HFD did not interact with cocaine at the level of behavior or gene expression. However, there was an increase in locomotor activity in males exposed to maternal HFD, and with maternal stress at a high dose of cocaine. These findings suggest that, overall, maternal HFD and stress increase cocaine-induced locomotor activity in offspring through common but not identical neural mechanisms. Finally, in parallel I investigated the role of pre-gestational cocaine on offspring phenotype, and demonstrated an effect on the locomotor activating effects of cocaine in adult male offspring, as well as dopamine receptor 1 expression in the medial prefrontal cortex. These findings suggest increased sensitivity to cocaine in the male offspring of mothers given pre-gestational cocaine. The collective findings are discussed within a framework of maternal influences on cocaine sensitivity in offspring, wherein maternal HFD and pre-gestational cocaine confer increased sensitivity of stress- and reward-related responses in offspring. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Sattar, Schroder | Puts, Martine | Falls in Community-dwelling Older Adults with Cancer: Impact on Cancer Treatment, Circumstances, Assessment, Management, and Reporting | Nursing Science | 2018-11 | Falls are major health issues among older adults and even more so in older cancer patients due to cancer and its treatment. Knowledge on circumstances surrounding falls and fear of falling is vital for understanding how various factors may precipitate falls and for informing development of effective interventions to prevent falls in this population. Delays in cancer treatment caused by fall injuries may have significant implications on disease trajectory and patient outcomes. However, a systematic review found gaps in knowledge in terms of how falls impact cancer treatment in this population. The aim of this research was to explore the circumstances of falls and fear of falling in community-dwelling older adults with cancer, as well as to examine how falls are assessed, reported, and managed in outpatient oncology clinics, and how falls might impact cancer treatment in this population. A cross-sectional study using a convergent-parallel mixed-methods design was conducted at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Canada. Data were collected by self-reported survey, chart review, and open-ended interviews. One hundred older adults (aged >=65) and 14 oncologists participated in this study. Falls were not commonly reported by patients to their oncologists (43%), and were rarely assessed by oncologists (7%). One in twenty who fall appears to lead to change in cancer management. However, falls were not commonly reported by patients nor prioritized by oncologists. Older patients perceived falls as minor incidents not worth mentioning (57%). When a fall was reported, oncologists’ actions included determining cause of falls (64%), asking circumstances of falls (36%), and referrals (29%). Oncologists indicated that the majority of older patients were not forthcoming in reporting falls. Circumstances of falls seem to be similar to those in the general geriatric population. This research shows that incorporating routine fall assessment in oncology clinic appointments may help identify those at risk for falls so that timely interventions can be triggered. Additionally, strategies for fall prevention and management used in the general geriatric population can potentially benefit this population as well. Attention may be warranted regarding medication review, health-teaching on fall safety, home evaluation, and referral for balance training. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Saunders-Currie, Avril | Bascia, Nina | Alternative Education for Low German Mennonite Students: A Negotiation of Education for Equity and Inclusion | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2017-06 | ABSTRACT Research on inclusive education indicates that education goals of most Westernized nations are aimed at developing the potential of students to be the most knowledgeable and skilled citizens, prepared for their participation in a global society. However, educational processes pay little attention to broader conceptions of what students need in order to achieve academic, social, and economic success other than for this end. Most educators have not been suitably prepared to respond to student needs as these relate to culture, ethnicity, language, or religion that complicate the reach for successful outcomes. The tension created by difference in school communities is often due to narrow interpretations of policies, often leaving students who do not meet the expectations of public systems of education systemically marginalized, if not excluded. This qualitative case study explores the perceptions of educators of a secondary alternative education program (AEP) of what Low German-speaking Mennonite (LGM) students need to achieve academic, social, and economic success, and how they respond to these in their practices. In response to the Ontario Ministry of Education’s equity and inclusive education policy calling for more schooling options, the number of alternative education programs offered has increased. Through this study, I highlight one AEP in a rural region of southwestern Ontario, initiated primarily in response to the issue of poor attendance of LGM students. Their ethno-culturally oriented worldview and lifestyle have not fit well into the structure and value system of mainstream public schools, keeping them out of school. Taking work of the AEP administrative team and teachers as the case, the data for this study have been triangulated from three sources: semi-structured one-on-one interviews with three secondary school administrators, a district school board superintendent, nine teachers, two Low German Mennonite community leaders, and two cooperative education workplace supervisors; field notes from18 observation sessions at various off-campus locations (e.g., at public libraries and the homes of LGM students); and collections of documents, such as local newspaper articles, data graphs of graduation rates, newsletters, course booklets, and improvement plans available within the environment of the AEP. The data were analyzed using the constant comparative method. Coded data assisted in profiling the AEP educators and responding to the research inquiry using emergent themes. Four main findings from this research include: (1) the role of advocacy, adopted by AEP educators for LGM non-mainstream students, negotiating the two worldviews of their social contexts; (2) recognition of relationships of trust as leverage for the consent of LGM families for their children to be educated within a system of public education; (3) the need for professional knowledge capacity building or “cultural proficiency” for educators to respond to perceptions of LGM student needs; and (4) professional accountability that recognizes the knowledge and skills that LGM students demonstrate outside of public school as legitimate demonstrations of student achievement. I offer recommendations for policy and practice, including designing policies that offer spaces for expanded definitions of terms that take into account other ways students experience the world and achieve success. | Ed.D. | inclusive, rural | 4, 11 |
| Sauter, Gabriela | Daniere, Amrita | Resort Urbanism: Understanding the Power, Planning and Politics of Urban Development in Bávaro-Punta Cana, Dominican Republic | Geography | 2014-06 | In many developing countries, particularly Small Island Developing States (SIDS), coastal tourism impacts local economies and societies in significant ways, and plays an important role in transforming the environment. Rather than simply interpreting the changes that occur around coastal tourist enclaves as impacts, I argue that it is important to recognize the urban nature of spaces proliferating around these enclaves and to understand the role of the actors of coastal tourism in the production of these spaces. Utilizing a case study (Bávaro-Punta Cana, Dominican Republic), my research draws from over one year of fieldwork, including 97 semi-structured interviews with local residents, researchers, and various stakeholders. I examine the power relations between the private sector, local residents, and different levels and sectors of the State in the area’s urban development process. The context of Bávaro-Punta Cana is characterized by the following three issues. First, the newly established local government is generally impotent vis-á-vis other State actors and powerful private sector interests, and is unable to ensure the public good for its citizens. Second, many local residents live in conditions that are worse than traditional urban areas in the country. Third, the private sector has inserted itself as pivotal actor in the development and governance of the newly urbanizing area through practices of corporate social responsibility. Based on my analysis, I refer to the realities of Bávaro-Punta Cana as ‘resort urbanism.’ I utilize this term to illustrate the manifestations of tourism-related urbanization. Drawing from planning concepts, namely splintering urbanism, informality and citizenship, I analyze the physicality and spatiality of urbanization, the processes of urban development, and the rights of citizens and the relations between actors in the production of this new urban space. First, I argue that urban space in Bávaro-Punta Cana is produced as a form of ‘splintered urbanism.’ Second, this space is materially shaped by practices of informality or what is known locally as arrabalización. Last, the area lacks a local governance structure through which residents can adequately make claims to fulfill their basic needs, raising important questions regarding the rights and responsibilities of different actors in urban development. | PhD | urban, environment, governance | 11, 13, 16 |
| Savage, David William | Martell, David Lee | Strategic Forest Management Planning Under Uncertainty Due to Fire | Forestry | 2009-11 | Forest managers throughout Canada must contend with natural disturbance processes that vary over both time and space when developing and implementing forest management plans designed to provide a range of economic, ecological, and social values. In this thesis, I develop a stochastic simulation model with an embedded linear programming (LP) model and use it to evaluate strategies for reducing uncertainty due to forest fires. My results showed that frequent re-planning was sufficient to reduce variability in harvest volume when the burn fraction was low, however, as the burn fraction increased above 0.45%, the best strategy to reduce variability in harvest volume was to account for fire explicitly in the planning process using Model III. A risk analysis tool was also developed to demonstrate a method for managers to improve decision making under uncertainty. The impact of fire on mature and old forest areas was examined and showed that LP forest management planning models reduce the areas of mature and old forest to the minimum required area and fire further reduces the seral area. As the burn fraction increased, the likelihood of the mature and old forest areas satisfying the minimum area requirements decreased. However, if the seral area constraint was strengthened (i.e., the right hand side of the constraint was increased) the likelihood improved. When the planning model was modified to maximize mature and old forest areas, the two fixed harvest volumes (i.e., 2.0 and 8.0 M. m3/decade) had much different impacts on the areas of mature and old forest when the burn fraction was greater than 0.45%. Bootstrapped burn fraction confidence intervals were used to examine the impact of uncertain burn fraction estimates when using Model III to develop harvest schedules. I found that harvest volume bounds were large when the burn fraction was ≥0.45%. I also examined how the uncertainty in natural burn fraction (i.e., estimates of pre-fire suppression average annual area burned) estimates being used for ecosystem management can impact old forest area requirements and the resulting timber supply. | PhD | forest, urban | 11, 15 |
| Savage, Michael Gray | Kazal, Russell A | “The Metropolitan Moment: Municipal Boundaries, Segregation, and Civil Rights Possibilities in the American North” | History | 2018-11 | Exploring battles over school desegregation in metropolitan Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia in the 1960s and 1970s, “The Metropolitan Moment” examines how black and white city dwellers at odds over integration within the city pursued – and sometimes allied over – efforts that crossed municipal lines to incorporate the suburbs in desegregation remedies. Though possessing divergent motivations, such as the white tactical aim of ensuring white majorities in all area schools by enlarging the desegregation area and the black desire for improved educational opportunities, both groups sought access to white suburban schools and at times acted together in court in an attempt to implement metropolitan desegregation. The search for such solutions opened a “metropolitan moment” across the urban North in the late 1960s and early 1970s when proposed regional remedies offered real possibilities of heading off white flight, fostering interracial coalitions, and substantively combatting segregation. Though this moment was foreclosed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1974 decision in Milliken v. Bradley – a case prompted in part by just such a surprising urban black-white alliance in Detroit – its legacies, including suburban anti-busing movements that helped fuel the rise of the New Right and the transformation of the Democratic Party, and the larger retreat from metropolitan solutions to metropolitan dilemmas of race, schooling, services, and inequality, echo down to today. The findings complicate several historiographies pertaining to the long civil rights movement, post-World War II urban and suburban history, the rise of the right, and representations of the “busing” controversy. Throughout, “The Metropolitan Moment” broadens the conception of the municipal reformer to include both ordinary black parents and white reactionaries. | Ph.D. | educat, equality, inequality, urban | 4, 5, 10, 11 |
| Savage, Rachel Deanne | Crowcroft, Natasha S||Rosella, Laura C | Reducing the impact of imported infections in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-06 | Public health must remain responsive to the population’s changing health needs. As Canada’s diversity grows through immigration, protecting the health of immigrants when they travel to visit friends and relatives (VFR) is one such need. Immigrants comprise a growing proportion of international travelers and experience disproportionate travel-related infectious disease morbidity and mortality. While many infections are preventable, few immigrant travelers access pre-travel health services, in part because they are not covered under provincial health insurance plans. In my dissertation, I present three studies designed to respond to current gaps in evidence regarding how immigrant travelers perceive and respond to travel health risks, and how to measure travel-related disease burden. In the first study, I use qualitative methods to explore how South Asian travelers in Peel region conceptualize travel health risks. I found that travelers face many health challenges when traveling but adjust their behaviours to avoid or minimize key risks where possible. Their responses to risks, however, can be constrained by competing concerns (e.g. rushed travel, wanting to avoid family conflicts, cost, and a desire to enjoy traditional cuisine). These results highlight the importance of the social context in which travelers make health decisions. In the second study, I use novel data linkages to evaluate the utility of health administrative data for identifying hepatitis A, malaria and enteric fever infections. While diagnostic codes were sensitive, and additionally identified individuals who were likely unreported to public health, I found that their predictive value for accurately identifying cases was low. These results caution against the use of health administrative data, on its own, for this purpose. In the third study, I use a matched cohort design to estimate the health care utilization and attributable cost of hepatitis A, malaria and enteric fever infections in Peel region. Over three years, 318 cases resulted in more than $2 million dollars in direct health care spending, and attributable medical costs ranged from $4,500 - $8,000 per case. These results highlight that travel-related infections require substantial resources for diagnosis and treatment as most medically-attended cases require inpatient health care. Together, results from this dissertation advance our understanding of the complex social settings in which immigrant travelers make health-related decisions, and identify how much these avoidable infections cost Ontario’s health care system. Findings point to concrete opportunities to reduce disease burden through tailored health promotion strategies that are sensitive to the unique challenges immigrant travelers face. Costing estimates provide necessary model parameters to explore the cost-effectiveness of policies designed to improve access to pre-travel health services for high risk travelers. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Savia, Roy Della | Peter, Sawchuk | Job Developers in Transition: A Study of Informal and Nonformal Job Skills Training of Job Developers in Nonprofit Organizations in Ontario | Social Justice Education | 2014-11 | Job Developers have complex and demanding jobs that require balancing the needs of organizations, employers, and job seekers. Job Developers must meet new employers and potential employees every day, earn their trust, and learn their needs. A common role Job Developers play is helping people find jobs and helping employers find employees. Job Developers attempt to learn what employers and job seekers need and what each can offer to match the right applicants to the right employers.Competent Job Developers must have organization, research, marketing, selling, communication, and negotiation skills. Job development has become a high growth occupation. Because the nature of their jobs changes constantly, Job Developers must also stays updated on employment trends and labor market information. While these changes provide opportunities for practitioners to expand their roles, they also impose increased demands and challenges to build their skills and capacity to perform their jobs. The job developer profession (also known as employment specialist) is a recently new concept in the nonprofit sector. Job Developers' potential as advocates for the unemployed, those with disabilities, and new immigrants is fundamental in today's competitive job market and in the context of equitable opportunity for employment. Informal and nonformal learning are well-recognized and well-used in the job development field. Job Developers rely on informal and nonformal learning for professional development and occupational autonomy. | Ed.D. | equitable, employment | 4, 8 |
| Sawchuk, Elizabeth Anne | Pfeiffer, Susan | Social Change and Human Population Movements -- Dental Morphology in Holocene Eastern Africa | Anthropology | 2017-11 | Millions of Eastern Africans are pastoralists, yet the origins of mobile herding in this region are unclear. Global climate change at the end of the African Humid Period pushed humans and their livestock out of desiccating areas of the Sahara, Sahel, and/or Ethiopian Rift. Herding subsequently entered Eastern Africa through the Turkana Basin, where the earliest domesticated animals coincide with the construction of megalithic â pillar sitesâ between 5200-4200 BP. The appearance of monumentality, along with new ceramic and lithic technologies, is used to argue that the first herders were migrants. Other lines of evidence support diffusion and local adoption. Excavations at three pillar sites have revealed dense cemeteries with zoomorphic artifacts and goat remains, suggesting those interred engaged in herding. This new skeletal sample can be compared to earlier foragers and later pastoralists to determine whether the arrival of herding technologies is associated with a population shift. Tooth size and morphology are often used to study population relationships in the past because they are highly heritable, minimally impacted by natural selection, and preserve well in archaeological contexts. To test the migration hypothesis, dental metric and non-metric traits are compared between the pillar sites (n=25 dentitions) and archaeological skeletons from Holocene Later Stone Age (n=40), early herder (n=53), and Pastoral Neolithic (n=91) sites from Kenya and Tanzania. The results suggest that the transition to food production in Eastern Africa did not involve population replacement. Biological affinity among these archaeological samples indicates that herding likely spread through small-scale population movements with gene flow between herders and foragers. However, there are significant differences between these pre-Iron Age Eastern Africans and contemporary North, sub-Saharan, and Southern Africans, suggesting diachronic changes in African dental complexes. Recent Africans may therefore be poor proxies for genetic relationships in antiquity, particularly in high contact zones like Eastern Africa. | Ph.D. | climate, food | 2, 13 |
| Sawyer, Cindy | Flessa, Joseph | Making Sense of the First Nation, Metis, and Inuit Education Policy Framework | Leadership, Higher Education and Adult Education | 2013-06 | Abstract In 2007 the Ministry of Education in Ontario identified Aboriginal education as one of its key priorities with the release of the First Nation, Métis and Inuit Education Policy Framework (FNMI). Improving educational outcomes and closing the achievement gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students is the focus of this policy. This study examines the policy implementation process in one school board in Ontario by focusing on how teachers in two elementary schools made sense of the policy expectations and how this sense-making impacted their professional practice. In order to examine how implementation was understood and acted upon by these teachers, the sense-making/co-construction model developed by Datnow, Hubbard, & Mehan (2002) provides the starting point for analysis. This study seeks to make visible the sense-making cues that teachers used to notice and select new information and to examine how these cues impacted teacher enactment of the FNMI policy. Sense-making theory supports the examination of change at the micro level of local policy actors; while the co-construction model with its meditational system of individual agency, organizational structure/culture, and environmental messaging contextualizes the individual sense-making of teachers within a larger social environment. The research methodology included teacher interviews designed to collect evidence of teacher sense-making during the policy implementation process, and school visits to observe evidence of school culture and structure. Interview responses of 15 elementary teachers and 2 principals were analyzed for sense-making cues. The findings revealed clusters of sense-making cues connected to three main sense-making frameworks or discourses. These discourses included the teacher as professional, equity and inclusion, and leadership and change. These findings support previous research on sense-making and policy implementation and contribute further insight into the micro processes of policy implementation, which could be leveraged to improve policy implementation. Key Words: policy implementation, teacher sense-making, leadership, co-construction model | EDD | educat | 4 |
| Scheepstra, Traci Laine | Gaztambide-Fernández, Rubén | Making meaning of gender-based violence: Elite subjectivity and gender performance in a Canadian private school | Philosophy | 2018-11 | School-related gender-based violence is a global epidemic that affects students at all levels of public and private education. The study outlined in this dissertation started from a need to understand the scope of sexual harassment and sexism in schools to support my daughter through her experience of gender-based violence. Situated in an elite, Canadian private school, in the heart of a large urban city in Southern Ontario, this five-month study examines how “smart” Grade 7 and 8 Oak Lane Academy students make meaning of gender-based violence. I articulate what it means to “become” elite, and how smart and elite subjectivity was not the same for all students in a place committed to gender equity. In theorizing the ethnographic experience through a feminist poststructural lens, I was able to question normative gender discourses and assumptions by observing student performances of masculinity and femininity, which revealed a deeper understanding of the cultural narratives and social practices of the school. I illustrate how “boys” received privileges that were not afforded to “girls,” reinforcing patriarchal ideologies of entitlement, superiority, and hegemonic masculinity. I also address the hidden curriculum as a mechanism for maintaining dominant gender discourses, which enforced gender inequality and set the conditions for gender-based violence to exist and persist. In particular, I highlight symbolic violence as the seed of larger systemic violence. In the process of conducting classroom observations, interviews, and focus groups, I was able to look closely at what it means to be “a boy” and “a girl” at Oak Lane Academy, which perpetuated male privilege. Transitioning from subjectivity to relationality, I apply these meanings to demonstrate how students embodied and enacted masculinity and femininity, directly impacting how they navigated, negotiated, resisted, and redefined peer relationships and understood love. Lastly, I illustrate the implicit and explicit ways the Grade 7 and 8 students engaged in “play” through games and game-like behaviour inside and outside of the classroom. The implications of these findings offer new understandings of school policies and procedures, curriculum, pedagogy, and the curricular spaces in which students learn in order to more effectively address school-related gender-based violence. | Ph.D. | gender, equality, inequality | 5, 10 |
| Schmidt, Marc-Antoine | McMillan, Robert | Understanding Short-term Labor Supply Decisions | Economics | 2019-11 | In this thesis, I study the short-term labor supply decisions of workers involved in flexible work arrangements. In the first chapter, I develop and estimate the first dynamic model of within-day labor supply. The model includes several factors that influence the decision to take breaks: fatigue, opportunity costs, preferences across hours of the day, and random utility shocks. I estimate the model using high-frequency data covering millions of taxi trips in New York City during an entire year. The estimated parameters indicate that the fixed costs of taking a break are high, suggesting that a policy aimed at increasing the availability of taxi parking spaces could reduce the aggregate level of fatigue. In Chapter 2, I use the previously developed model to quantify the value of flexibility and evaluate the effect of a 'mandatory breaks' policy. This chapter proposes a novel methodological approach to deal with unobserved heterogeneity: I estimate the model separately for each driver. My results show that flexibility is valued highly with the average driver in my sample requiring a 23 percent increase in revenue to accept a counterfactual fixed work schedule. I then study the effects of a realistic 'mandatory breaks' policy and show that such a policy would substantially increase the frequency of breaks but would reduce labor supply between 6 and 9 percent. Chapter 3 presents empirical evidence indicating that the daily labor supply elasticity of workers is large and negative in response to small windfall gains, contrary to the prediction of the standard neoclassical model. In the main specification, I identify windfall gains using tips received by drivers and find that the drivers respond to these shocks by decreasing their labor supply substantially. I also find that these shocks do not affect future labor supply, indicating that standard neoclassical income effects cannot explain this result. In contrast, a positive shock to average hourly earnings causes drivers' labor supply to increase, consistent with the neoclassical model. My findings suggest that increasing the wage and reducing the income earned through tips or bonuses could increase labor supply in a cost-neutral way. | Ph.D. | worker, wage | 8 |
| Schriever, Tiffany | Williams, D. Dudley | Energy Flow and Food Web Ecology along a Hydroperiod Gradient | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2012-11 | Identifying the ecological mechanisms that determine food web structure is critical for understanding the causes and consequences of diversity. The objective of this thesis was to identify the mechanisms structuring aquatic food webs across environmental gradients from a multi-level perspective (individual to ecosystem) using integrative methodology and field experiments to test classic ecological theory. My results demonstrate support for the dynamic constraints hypothesis, which predicts habitats with greater disturbance should have shorter food chains, but are not consistent with the ecosystem size hypothesis that predicts larger ecosystems have longer food chains. Insect and amphibian richness increased with increasing pond size and hydroperiod, indicating that insertion of new consumers into pond communities was driving variation in food-chain length. A multivariate analysis testing the influence of physicochemical variables on food-web characteristics revealed that hydroperiod and pond area had a strong influence on amphibian and invertebrate assemblages, trophic diversity and d15N range. Food-chain length did not respond strongly to any one variable, but instead responded weakly to multiple environmental variables, suggesting interacting influences on food-web structure. Conversely, the trophic niche of amphibian larvae was not influenced by pond hydroperiod, but did exhibit ontogenetic diet shifts. Populations of amphibian larvae with broader niche widths also had increased individual variation, supporting the niche variation hypothesis. In addition, I assessed whether species diversity influenced the magnitude of cross-habitat resource flow between aquatic and terrestrial habitats via emerging aquatic insects, metamorphosing amphibians, and litter deposition. Deposition into ponds far exceeded carbon exported via insect and amphibian emergences. We found a negative relationship between resource flux and the diversity of amphibians and insects, which contradicts the general pattern of positive biodiversity-ecosystem function relationships. My research strongly suggests environmental variation is a key process in shaping food-web structure and function and that multiple methodologies are needed to understand temporal and spatial dynamics of aquatic ecosystems. | PhD | food, consum, environment, biodiversity | 2, 12, 13, 15 |
| Schuler, Siegfried | Mishna, Faye | The Relationship between Exposure to Pornography, Victimization History, Attachment to Parents, and the Sexual Offence Characteristics of Adolescents who Sexually Offend | Social Work | 2014-06 | This study was focused on exploring the relationship between victimization history, attachment to parents, pornography exposure/use, and characteristics of the sexual offences committed by male adolescents. It was hypothesized that, the poorer the attachment to parents, the greater number of abuses experienced, and the more exposure to pornography, the more likely an adolescent would be to have had more victims, have offended against more age groups, have both male and female victims, have committed penetration in his sexual offences, and have been forceful or violent in his sexual offences. The study involved secondary analysis of a large data set that was based on prior administration of an extensive survey which also included a number of psychological measures and questionnaires. A total of 308 male participants ranging in age from 13 to 20 at the time of completing the survey were included in this study. Participants were 12-17 years of age at the time of their sexual offending. A series of regressions were used to examine if attachment to parents, history of abuse/neglect, and pornography use could predict the number of victims, age group of victims, gender of victims, sexual intrusiveness, and level of force in the sexual offences that had been committed by the participants. Predictor variables that emerged as important in this study were the duration of the sexual offending, having experienced three or more types of abuse, and exposure to live sex. In general, it was suggested that treatment efforts should focus on intervening promptly and reducing the duration of an adolescent’s sexual offending and that intervention for all types of abuse be prioritized. Additionally, it was recommended that future research seek to identify characteristics that might predispose certain victimized individuals to develop sexual offending behaviours in the future. In general, it was noted that further explorations are needed regarding applicable theoretical approaches, as well as the various factors, and interactions among factors, that contribute to the characteristics of sexual offences committed by male adolescents. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Schumaker, Katherine | Fuller-Thomson, Esme | An Exploration of the Relationship between Poverty and Child Neglect in Canadian Child Welfare | Social Work | 2012-11 | Objectives: Concerns have been raised that child welfare systems may inappropriately target poor families for intrusive interventions. The term “neglect” has been critiqued as a class-based label applied disproportionately to poor families. The objectives of the study are: to identify the nature and frequency of clinical and poverty-related concerns in child neglect investigations and to assess the service referral response to these needs; to examine the contribution of poverty-related need to case decision-making; and to explore whether substantiated cases of neglect can be divided into subtypes based on different constellations of clinical and poverty-related needs. Methods: This study is a secondary analysis of data collected through the 2008 Canadian Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (CIS‑2008), a nationally representative dataset. A selected subsample of neglect investigations from the CIS‑2008 (N = 4,489) is examined through descriptive analyses, logistic regression, and two-step cluster analysis in order to explore each research objective. Results: Children and caregivers investigated for neglect presented with a range of clinical and poverty-related difficulties. Contrary to some previous research, the existence of poverty-related needs did not influence case dispositions after controlling for other relevant risk factors. However, some variables that should be, in theory, extraneous to case decision-making emerged as significant in the multivariate models, most notably Aboriginal status, with Aboriginal children having increased odds of substantiation, ongoing service provision and placement. Cluster analyses revealed that cases of neglect could be partitioned into three clusters, with no cluster emerging characterized by poverty alone. Conclusions: The majority of children investigated for neglect live in families experiencing poverty-related needs, and with caregivers struggling with clinical difficulties. While poverty-related need on its own does not explain the high proportion of poor families reported to the child welfare system, nor does it account for significant variance in case decision making, cluster analysis suggests that there exists a subgroup of “neglected” children living in families perhaps best characterized by the broader notion of social disadvantage. These families may be better served through an orientation of family support/family welfare rather than through the current residual child protection paradigm. | PhD | poverty | 1 |
| Schurman, Jonathan Scott | Thomas, Sean C | From Plant Properties To Forest Function In Temperate Mixed Angiosperm-conifer Old Growth | Forestry | 2016-06 | Ecosystem functions are the processes that cycle matter among vegetation, soils and the atmosphere. These processes are conventionally modelled as the physiological response of homogeneous plant cover driven by abiotic conditions over large areas. However, efforts invested in understanding how structural complexity within these homogeneous pixels influences ecosystem functions, especially the abundance and distribution of tree species, have led to substantial improvements in predictive accuracy. The ecosystem consequences of adaptive variation among plants were explored in a 13 ha old-growth plot located in Central Ontario's mixed conifer-angiosperm forest. Topography, soil moisture and soil nitrogen were found to structure the distribution of tree species: Conifers dominated the less fertile, xeric lake margin and tolerant hardwoods dominated the richer mesic interior. Patterns in functional composition reflected the trade-offs that have influenced the evolution of plant traits, especially the Leaf Economics Spectrum. Functional composition based on species-level traits, more than acclimation of growth rates along environmental gradients, translated into variability in stand structure and consequently biomass and productivity. Functional diversity was positively correlated with productivity. Rates of litter production and decomposition were quantified along the conifer-angiosperm gradient. Functional composition of litter assemblages accurately predicted decomposition rates and dominated temperature and moisture effects. Organic-horizon dynamics that resulted from coevolved green-leaf and litter properties have presumably acted to stabilize relative abundances in these plant-soil systems, through cultivation of nutrient levels more beneficial to existing assemblages than invaders. Functional diversity was negatively correlated with decomposition, which has likely favored conifers in mixed-species communities. Impacts of tree ontogeny on soil respiration were investigated for the hyper-dominant species, Acer saccharum Marsh. Following an intense rainfall, soil respiration was especially amplified in tree root zones. Post-rain root-zone fluxes increased with tree size, implying that ontogenetic processes have contributed soil-carbon dynamics. A trait-based perspective has linked adaptive variation among trees to ecosystem function. Important diversity effects on productivity and decomposition were detected, implying that increased representation of community structure in ecosystem models can lead to improved predictions. Investigating relationships between community and ecosystem processes in remaining old-growth forests is necessary to evaluate the potential functioning of degraded landscapes. | Ph.D. | forest, ecosystem | 15 |
| Schwan, Kaitlin Jessica | Hulchanski, J. David | Why Don’t We Do Something? The Societal Problematization of “Homelessness” and the Relationship between Discursive Framing and Social Change | Social Work | 2016-11 | Despite decades of public support for ending homelessness, there is little evidence that homelessness has decreased in Canada. Instead, Canadian communities continue to respond to rising numbers of people without homes through emergency response measures that do little to prevent or end the problem. In sharp contrast, research has documented that homelessness is not inevitable and can be addressed with relatively insignificant government financing. Canada has the ability to end this problem. The question is: why don’t we? This study explores Canada’s political response to this issue by tracing the social construction of “homelessness” since its emergence in the 1980s. Drawing on social problem theory, this interpretive study uses a grounded theory approach to explore the construction of this problem by homelessness advocates and the Canadian media. Triangulating this data with social policy and key events, this study proposes a stage model to explain the “career” of this social problem. This research constitutes the first comprehensive study of the development of homelessness as a social problem in Canada. Results of the study suggest that homelessness has progressed through six stages in Canada and currently stands at a crossroads between institutionalization and transformation. Over the history of this problem, understandings of this issue have shifted from an emergency/disaster framework to an economic, bureaucratic, and scientific framework. Shifts in homelessness advocacy have been crucial to this transformation and are reflected in the development of two distinct “waves” of homelessness advocacy over the course of this problem’s history. This study argues that the differences between these waves are structurally produced through each wave’s divergent class-based experiences of early twenty-first century social and political changes. This study also offers the largest historical analysis of Canadian newspapers’ coverage of homelessness to date. Analysis revealed that newspaper coverage peaked in 1999 and has since declined. Findings suggest that Canadian reporters have frequently depoliticized and individualized this issue in class-based ways, while often failing to elucidate the connections between homelessness and Canada’s economic and social policies. This thesis concludes with an analysis of the contributions of this study to social problem studies, homelessness research, and social work. | Ph.D. | poverty | 1 |
| Schwartz, Deborah H. | Paus, Tomas | Adiposity and Brain Health: A Study of Adolescents and Middle-aged Adults | Psychology | 2015-11 | Obesity, the excess accumulation of adipose tissue, presents a substantial public health burden. Research emerging over the past decade has shown that midlife obesity is associated with altered brain structure and increased risk of developing dementia. Prior research examining obesity-brain health relationships have utilized anthropometric measures of obesity (such as body mass index) and focused on adult populations. The current research aims to build on our understanding of obesity-brain health relationships by a) moving beyond the limitation of body mass index to examine the unique contributions of visceral vs. peripheral adiposity and b) examining two populations: adolescents and middle-aged adults to gain a clearer understanding of how these relationships progress across the lifespan. To this end, four investigations of obesity-brain health relationships were conducted. First, the relationship between adiposity and cognitive performance was examined in adolescents, and revealed a negative association between visceral fat and executive functioning that was more pronounced in females than in males. Second, the relationships between adiposity and two measures of structural brain integrity, signal intensity and magnetization transfer ratio, were assessed in adolescents. Robust relationships were found, possibly indicating variations in membrane phospholipid composition. Third, the relationship between adiposity and cortical thickness was examined in adolescents, revealing age-moderated relationships between adiposity and cortical thickness in males. Fourth, the relationships between adiposity and brain volumes, white matter integrity and cognition were examined in middle-aged adults, demonstrating a negative relationship between adiposity and brain volumes, as well as measures of white matter integrity. Overall these results suggest that high adiposity in adolescents is associated with altered brain structure and cognition, while in middle-aged adults, high adiposity is associated with altered brain structure. Given the rising rates of obesity worldwide, this research has implications for brain health throughout the lifespan. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Schwindt, Graeme C. | Black, Sandra E | Towards Functional Imaging Biomarkers of Alzheimer's Disease | Medical Science | 2014-11 | There is a growing need for biomarkers of Alzheimer's Disease (AD) to aid in early detection, tracking of treatment response, and drug development. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been a focus of efforts, offering a dynamic view of the affected organ. We first examined the existing fMRI literature in AD research using a quantitative meta-analysis of episodic memory studies comparing AD patients and healthy older adults. We found a consistent loss of medial temporal lobe (MTL) activation in patients, but both reduced and increased cortical activation outside of the MTL, including areas of increased activation likelihood in the ventral lateral prefrontal cortex (VL-PFC). These findings suggest some evidence for compensatory hyperactivation in individuals with AD. We next collected both task- and resting-state fMRI data in 16 individuals with mild AD and 13 healthy older adults, and examined the default mode network (DMN) dysfunction in order to determine whether DMN abnormalities vary depending on how they are measured (i.e., rest vs. task). Patients showed resting state deficits in the multiple regions but none during task completion. The change in DMN connectivity in the posterior cingulate between rest and task was predictive of cognitive status in patients, while measures at rest or task alone were not. This suggests that a measurement of change in DMN connectivity may provide unique clinical information unavailable to a single state scan. In chapter 4 we examined the sensitivity of a simple visual task and resting state DMN measures to pharmacological treatment with a cholinesterase inhibitor (ChEI) in AD. Twenty-three patients with AD and 13 healthy matched controls were scanned twice, an average of 7 months apart, with patients receiving ChEI treatment after scan 1. ChEI treatment was associated with increases in visual, parietal and VL-PFC activation in patients, which persisted after controlling for perfusion in individuals with perfusion MRI data. DMN connectivity was disrupted at baseline within the right MTL and showed increased left MTL coactivation with treatment. Controls showed no changes over time. These results suggest that long term ChEI treatment is associated with changes in task-relevant cortical activation and MTL-DMN connectivity, but these changes were not associated with measures of clinical status. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Scollard, Sharon Marie | Bascia, Nina | Updating Vocational Curriculum in Two Year Diploma Programs at One Ontario College of Applied Arts and Technology to Align with Current Industry Practices | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-11 | One of the most important functions of a College of Applied Arts and Technology is to provide vocational training and thus supply employers with skilled employees. Job skills include technologies and processes that change over time, and the academic program curricula at a College of Applied Arts and Technology must be updated regularly to align with current and near-future industry practices. How does a College of Applied Arts and Technology identify current worker competencies? How is the curriculum updated to incorporate these changes to reflect current and near-future industry practices? The answer to these questions at one College of Applied Arts and Technology is the focus of this study. This study describes, for four academic programs at one Ontario College of Applied Arts and Technology, the processes used by the college, corresponding accreditors and the government to identify current job skills, and the processes used to update academic programs and standards at each organization. Programs studied spanned the spectrum of Regulated, Accredited and Unregulated programs. Cyclical update processes for college curriculum, Ministry Program Standards and Accreditor competencies were examined and they map to the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle used in Quality Improvement processes. Activity Theory provides a system model framework that is used to examine the college program curriculum, and the external standards including the Ministry Program Standards and Accreditor competencies for practice. The transitions systems literature reveals that in a liberal market economy, the qualification for regulated programs tightly matches the job in the labour market and the qualification for broad occupational areas loosely matches the jobs in the labour market. This study proposes a framework for understanding the relationship between vocational education curriculum and the labour market. | Ph.D. | labour, worker | 8 |
| Scott, Caren Elizabeth | Zimmerman, Ann ||Jackson, Donald Andrew | Lake Benthic Algal Production and Extracellular Material | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-06 | Littoral zone primary production is under-studied relative to the pelagic zone, despite recent work indicating its importance to the lake as a whole. Benthic extracellular material, shown to be important for food web dynamics and stabilization of the surrounding ecosystem in the marine intertidal, is even less frequently studied in lakes. I examined the environmental and community level drivers of benthic primary production, and found production to increase over the summer and to decrease with disturbance. I also found that maximum photosynthesis and efficiency under sub-saturating light both increased with depth, contrary to the existing, laboratory-derived paradigm of a trade-off between the two. I also examined how benthic primary production and environmental factors were correlated with the amount of extracellular material. I found that loosely bound colloidal extracellular material decreased with in situ photosynthesis and was affected by algal community composition, whereas tightly bound capsular extracellular material was affected only by date, indicating that capsular material is refractory in lakes just as it is in marine systems. Contrary to what is seen in marine systems, however, there were no direct effects of the environmental factors, possibly the result of physical differences between these systems. I also performed the first cross-ecosystem comparison of extracellular material. Despite relatively few studies from lakes and streams, and methods which have not been standardized, I found that lakes were similar to marine intertidal zones both in their median amounts of extracellular material and their relationships between extracellular material and chlorophyll a. This relationship appeared to be quite different in streams, with very low amounts of extracellular material found at sites with either high or low chlorophyll a concentrations. While the above studies will improve future estimates of lake carbon budgets and whole-lake production, my development of a permutation test for path analysis, and a novel application of the Bayesian principal components analysis, will assist all ecological studies that are often restricted in their sample sizes or compromised by missing data. | PhD | environment, marine | 13, 14 |
| Scott, Catherine | Andrade, Maydianne CB | Mate Searching and Choosiness are Shaped by Spatial Structure and Social Information in Western Black Widows | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2020-06 | The relative importance of different episodes of sexual selection for fitness varies with environmental and social context, so inferring the net effect of selection requires understanding how each mechanism operates in nature. Theory predicts that links between ecology, information availability, and mechanisms of sexual selection can have substantive effects on plasticity and behaviour, but these links are rarely demonstrated in the field. Using the western black widow, Latrodectus hesperus, I investigated how ecological factors including demography, OSR, and spatial structure influence male and female reproductive behaviour in the field, and how these are linked by chemical information. I found that the OSR is extremely male biased for most of the mating season, and this imposes strong selection on males to find females before rivals. Mate searching males use social information, likely encoded by chemicals on silk draglines produced by rivals, to efficiently locate females even in the absence of female sex pheromone. In the face of intense scramble competition over access to receptive adult females, I found that males commonly guard and mate with subadult females using a recently-described alternative reproductive tactic: immature mating. Success at this tactic requires contests with rivals, which likely favours different traits than does pure scramble competition over adults, and may help to maintain extreme variation in male size. Moreover, because subadults apparently do not produce volatile chemical cues that would allow males to locate them, the clumped spatial distribution of females in the field is a critical factor influencing the feasibility of immature mating; males only found subadults when there were signaling adults nearby. I also found that for females, proximity to conspecifics during development and early adulthood influences encounter rates with potential mates, such that some females risk remaining unmated in nature. Consequently, females adjust mate-choice decisions in response to chemical information about their local social environment; females in relatively isolated locations display decreased choosiness relative to females in close proximity to conspecifics. Together these studies provide insights into how mate competition and mate choice, key factors driving sexual selection, are related to the spatiotemporal distribution of conspecifics in a natural population. | Ph.D. | ecology | 14 |
| Scott, Helen M. | Chipman, Mary ||té, Pierre Cô | Family Matters: An Examination of the Association between Family Structure and Youth Injury | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2009-11 | Injury is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality among Canadian youth. In order to develop successful prevention strategies for this major public health problem, it is necessary to determine injury risk factors. Despite reasons to believe that family structure (parents’ marital and living arrangements) may be associated with youth injury, this link has been largely overlooked in injury research. The objectives of this thesis were to determine whether family structure was associated with youth injury in a manner described by theory, after considering alternative explanations for the observed association and to explore how engaging in high risk behaviour mediated the impact of family structure on youth injury. The association was explored using cross-sectional and longitudinal data. This study was based on a representative, cross-sectional World Health Organization, Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (2006) survey of 9, 068 Canadian students, aged 11–15 years, from 186 schools. A sub-sample of 1, 885 Ontario students surveyed in 2006 and again in 2007 comprised the longitudinal sample. The associations were assessed using generalized estimating equations with classroom clusters and Poisson distribution, adjusting for identified potential confounders and examining mediation by high-risk behaviours. There were three main findings: 1) Family structure was associated with medically treated injury in females, after accounting for confounding. Results showed that females from non-intact families had slightly increased risk of any injury than those from intact families (PR=1.11; 95% CI: 1.04-1.19). However, they had a greater risk of non-sports (PR=1.30; 95% CI: 1.16-1.77) and severe, non-sports (PR=1.46; 95% CI: 1.12-1.91) injury. 2) Only a small portion of the association between family structure and injury was explained by engaging in high risk behaviour. 3) There was an inconsistent relationship between family structure and male non-sports injury (Canadian cross-sectional, PR=1.05; 95% CI: 0.94-1.16; Ontario longitudinal, PR=1.58; 95% CI: 1.20-2.07). The findings of this thesis call attention to the importance of non-intact family structures as a risk factor for youth injury. More research is needed to improve our understanding of the mechanisms through which family structure influences youths' risk of injury in order to guide policy development. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Scourboutakos, Mary J. | L'Abbe, Mary R | Eating-out: A Study of the Nutritional Quality of Canadian Chain Restaurant Foods and Interventions to Promote Healthy Eating | Nutritional Sciences | 2016-11 | Canadians are increasingly eating outside-the-home. At the outset of this thesis there were no data on the nutritional quality of Canadian chain restaurant foods, the Sodium Working Groupâ s plan to monitor sodium reductions in the food supply was abandoned, and despite interest and numerous bills, there was no existing menu-labelling legislation in Canada. The specific objectives of this thesis were to 1) investigate the nutritional quality of the Canadian chain restaurant food supply; 2) explore consumersâ use of menu-labelling; and 3) test the potential of alternative forms of labelling in non-chain restaurant settings. Objective 1 was investigated by developing and analyzing a national database of over 9000 menu-items from Canadian fast-food and sit-down chain restaurants which was created in 2010. There was wide variation in calorie levels within each restaurant and food category; furthermore, portion size, as opposed to calorie density, was the most important driver of this variation. Sodium levels in menu items often exceed daily recommendations and despite reported efforts by the restaurant sector to improve, as of 2013, reductions were minimal. Objective 2 used an online, national consumer survey to test three menu-labelling treatments (calories; calories and sodium; and calories, sodium and serving size labelling). The effect of labelling on consumer choice varied depending on the restaurant setting, however, overall, labelling sodium in addition to calories led consumers to choose meals with significantly less sodium. There was no additional benefit from adding serving size information. Objective 3 was examined in a quasi-experimental, population-level nutrition labelling/education intervention study in a campus cafeteria. Results showed that this intervention could modestly increase fruit and vegetable consumption, and decrease sugar-sweetened beverage consumption among University students. Overall, this thesis provides food supply and consumer data to inform public health policy debates around issues concerning food consumed outside-the-home. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Sealey, Anthony James Linsell | Vipond, Robert | New Old Politics? Explaining Popular Support for Redistributive Public Policies | Political Science | 2018-06 | The central argument advanced by the dissertation is that three key sources of variation are critical for understanding popular support for redistributive public policies. First, redistribution is not a single undifferentiated policy goal. This dissertation distinguishes between ‘generalized’ and ‘targeted’ redistribution, and argues that critical determinants of citizens’ redistributive policy preferences play out differently depending on whether the redistribution is generalized or targeted in nature. Second, attitudes toward redistribution vary both across space and over time. The dissertation contends that many critical macrolevel determinants of citizens’ policy preferences illuminate how and why these variations occur. Third, in exceptional cases, specific political contexts matter. The dissertation maintains that while there is a range of common factors that influences popular support for redistribution throughout most advanced industrial democracies, in a limited number of cases, the citizens of distinct political contexts have substantially different orientations toward redistributive public policies. The dissertation draws on both cross-national data from eighteen advanced industrial democracies as well as cross-provincial data from the Canadian case to evaluate hypotheses constructed from these theories. The empirical findings support the dissertation’s core hypotheses. The evidence suggests that those with higher income tend to be more opposed to generalized redistribution, whereas those with more right-wing economic beliefs are more inclined to oppose targeted redistribution. There is also clear support for the contention that cross-sectional and longitudinal variations in redistributive policy preferences are differently affected by changes in key macroeconomic factors. For instance, when comparing between states, higher levels of economic inequality tend to be linked to lower levels of support for redistribution, but as economic inequality within a state increases over time, support for redistribution also tends to increase. There is also substantial evidence that specific political contexts matter. For instance, Americans are much less likely to support targeted redistribution than the citizens of other advanced industrial democracies, whereas Quebecers are much more likely to support generalized redistribution than the residents of other Canadian provinces. And in the cases in which political context matters, these critical differences tend to be a result of differences in in these citizens’ values and beliefs. | Ph.D. | equality, inequality | 5, 10 |
| Sears, Nancy A. | Baker, G. Ross | Harm from Home Care: A Patient Safety Study Examining Adverse Events in Home Care | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2008-06 | Research into adverse events in home care is at a very early stage worldwide. Adverse event research in other health care sectors has demonstrated that patients can and do suffer harm, much of which is preventable, during the receipt of health care services. A stratified, random sample of patients who had received home care nursing service and were discharged in 2004/05 from three Ontario home care programs was studied to develop basic exploratory and descriptive evidence to advance the understanding of AEs in home care. The outcome is an estimate of the incidence of adverse events among patients, description of adverse event types and factors associated with adverse events, and the development of models predictive of home care patients with higher and lower potential for adverse events, and of the location of patients with adverse events. Positive critical indicators were identified in 66.5% of 430 cases. Sixty-one adverse events were identified in 55 (19.2%) of these 286 cases. When adjusted for sampling methodology, the adverse event rate was 13.2 per 100 patients (95%, CI 10.4% - 16.6%, SE 1.6%). Thirty-three percent of the adverse events were rated as having more than a 50% probability of preventability; 1.4% of all patients experienced an adverse event related death. Eight of the 45 factors significantly associated with adverse events formed a single factor model predictive of adverse events. Six two-factor interactions and the absence of one factor were also predictive of the occurrence of adverse events. Five of the 12 critical indicators significantly related to adverse events, as well as 7 critical indicator combinations formed models that reliably located about two-thirds of patients who had, and almost all patients who had not, experienced an adverse event. This study suggests that a significant number of home care patients experience adverse events, two-thirds of which are preventable. Use of adverse event sensitive factors as a screening tool for patients that may benefit from enhanced case management and clinical vigilance, and those unlikely to be placed at increased adverse event risk by maintaining current levels of vigilance, presents an opportunity to improve patient safety. Retrospective critical indicator models identifying home care patients who have experienced an adverse event can be used to estimate adverse event incidence rates and changes in rates over time. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Sediako, Anton D. | Thomson, Murray J. | In Situ Electron Microscopy for Characterization and Development of Clean Energy Nanomaterials | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-11 | Since the industrial revolution, the hunt has been on for larger, cleaner, and more efficient energy systems. This growth has been met primarily by combustion of oil, coal, and gas; yielding an enormous amount of harmful emissions in the form of carbon nanoparticulates (i.e. soot). To mitigate the production of these pollutants, a more thorough understanding of how these products are formed is required. Apart from the harmful effects, flame formed carbon nanomaterials have crucial uses in material science - ranging from energy storage to rubber reinforcement. Through a deeper understanding of how nanomaterials form and change, we can not only achieve cleaner combustion but also apply this understanding to high volume, low cost production of the next generation of functionalized nanomaterials. Combustion formed nanoparticulates form and evolve in milliseconds, under high temperatures, and their reactions follow multiple branching pathways. These characteristics make the process ideal for high volume production, yet challenging to study and understand. Therefore new experimental methods are required to peek inside, model carbon nanoparticle formation, and fine tune production processes. The goal of this work has therefore been to collaborate with Hitachi Higher Technologies Canada in developing a new environmental transmission electron microscopy technique and applying it for the in situ studies of functional nanomaterials. Work was performed and published in three key areas: combustion produced soot, nanocatalysts for soot filtration, and applied carbon nanomaterials for energy storage. Following the publications in these areas, focus was then moved into upgrading the instrument for nanomaterial growth and synthesis. This consisted of funding, upgrade design, and professional development of the next generation of students advancing this work. Ultimately, this thesis summarizes the cumulative effort of over 5 years of research, 10 publications, 5 international collaborations, and presentation of our work at 8 conferences. Over this time, our work advanced research in soot oxidation, high pressure combustion, soot filtration, carbon black aftertreatment, nanomotors, and carbon/silicon battery materials. The outreach and collaborations have allowed us to apply our expertise to areas outside the traditional combustion lab focus and cement the in-situ ETEM technique in a wide range of nanomaterial fields. | Ph.D. | energy, industr, production, environment, pollut | 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Seitz, David Kroening | Cowen, Deborah E.||Georgis, Dina S. | "A House of Prayer for All People": Promises of Citizenship in Queer Church | Geography | 2015-11 | Queer theory’s tradition of subjectless critique, which refuses to limit an understanding of sexuality to LGBTQ identity, dreams not only of more dexterous scholarly analysis, but of nourishing coalitional solidarities among differently marginalized subjects. My dissertation argues that subjectless critique’s capacious ethico-political aspirations make it possible to imagine citizenship differently. Although queer studies often regards citizenship as a hazardous object, exclusively bound up with nation-state violence and Eurocentric universalism, I follow geographers in mapping citizenship as multiscalar and teeming with radical potential, particularly at the urban scale. Advocating a reparative – but not optimistic – approach to the concept, I propose what I call “subjectless queer citizenship” to imagine bundles of solidarity, sympathy, rights and redistribution that take neither the nation-state nor LGBTQ identity as an exclusive referent. I ground this theoretical exploration in analysis of three years of ethnographic study at the Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, a large, predominantly LGBTQ Toronto congregation that promises “a house of prayer for all people.” While the church has played a key role in a range of citizenship struggles, I focus on four: refugee rights, debates on race and gender in religious leadership, global outreach to LGBTQ Christians, and activism around urban police-minority relations. On the one hand, I point to the church as a space that realizes subjectless queer citizenship. I highlight the church’s refugee program, which has resisted pressure from the Canadian nation-state to weed out “fake” refugee claimants who are not “really” LGBTQ, and insisted on providing support and resources to all refugees on the basis of vulnerability alone. On the other hand, I trace the church’s considerable limits – moments of racialized and gendered exclusion; failure to criticize forms of police and geopolitical violence; and unreflexive, dangerous aspirations to save the world. I take inspiration, however, from the affective, spiritual and political praxis of church leaders, particularly women of color, who integrate the church’s good and bad fragments in order to pursue capacious, “minor” visions of citizenship. The promise of a subjectless queer citizenship, I contend, ultimately depends not on good political analysis alone, but on people’s capacity for affective reparation. | Ph.D. | gender, women, queer, rights | 5, 16 |
| Seto, Emily | Leonard, Kevin | Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Phone-based Remote Patient Monitoring System for Heart Failure Management: A Focus on Self-care | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2011-06 | Methods to improve self-care and clinical management of heart failure are required, especially in light of the anticipated increase in heart failure prevalence and associated high costs. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) has been shown to improve heart failure outcomes, but the feasibility and efficacy of mobile phone-based RPM systems are still unknown. The main objectives of this research were to investigate the optimal design of a mobile phone-based RPM system, and to determine the effects of the system on self-care, clinical management, and health outcomes. A mobile phone-based RPM system was first developed using a user-centric design process. It was then evaluated with a six-month randomized controlled trial consisting of 100 patients attending a heart function clinic. The quality of life improved only for the intervention group, but both intervention and control groups improved with respect to self-care, heart function, and heart failure prognosis. The clinic was determined to be a confounder. Patients who were enrolled into the clinic for less than six months showed significantly greater improvements (six months is required for patients to stabilize from medication optimization). Therefore, a subgroup analysis using data from the 63 patients who were enrolled into the clinic for over six months at time of recruitment was performed. The results from the subgroup analysis indicated that the RPM system improved self-care, heart function, and heart failure prognosis at statistically significant and clinically meaningful levels. These improvements were found to be a result of enhanced self-care knowledge and practices, as well as enhanced clinical management enabled by the system. No differences in mortality or hospital admissions were found between groups, but the trial was underpowered to detect changes in these outcome measures. In summary, mobile phone-based RPM was found to be a feasible and effective tool to help improve heart failure management and outcomes. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Seto, So Yan | Muzzin, Linda | A "Tricky Business" - Knowledge Production in Children's Environmental Health | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | Using critical feminist theories and methodologies, my research investigates the power relations and influences at play within the field of children's environmental health. I begin with the research question of how a parent's everyday purchase of a toy or other children's product is "hooked into" extra-local governance (agenda-setting, rule-making and monitoring). Focusing on Bisphenol A and phthalates as an example, in-depth interviews were conducted with six government officials (three federal and three municipal), three non-governmental organization (NGO) representatives, a politician, six higher education faculty members and a parent, as well as two focus groups of 23 parents. Legislation and other relevant documents from governments, NGOs, industry and media were analyzed together with reports of their activities and attitudes to theorize "how things work" in the identification and management of toxic substances in products for sale, with a special interest in how this affects children's environmental health. My research revealed the influence of neo-liberalism, corporate power and over-reliance on strictly evidence-based biomedical reductionism in slowing down assessment and regulation of chemicals while many health professionals and grassroots activists have called for swifter responses based on the precautionary principle, as favoured by European governments. That is, politics and bureaucracy, with the approval of industry, over the past two decades, have clung to reductionist science as the only paradigm for understanding toxicity, thus slowing down regulatory processes. Although the historical and epistemological power relations mapped in my research work together to legitimize scientific certainty rather than the precautionary principle, I argue that the resulting regulatory logjam has been and could be addressed by reference to European examples, knowledge produced by collectives and the establishment of upstream and equity-based public health strategies with public input into the process. | PhD | health, environment | 3, 13 |
| Settels, Jason | Schafer, Markus H | The Multi-contextual Effects Through Which Environmental Economic Declines Impact Older Persons’ Quality of Life | Sociology | 2019-11 | The effects of city and neighbourhood contexts on individuals’ well-being have long garnered sociological interest. Within this broader topic, scholarship has shown that the changing economic fortunes of cities and neighbourhoods influence residents’ quality of life. However, the dynamics that determine whether and how contexts in decline impact residents’ mental health and social lives are understudied. The three papers of this dissertation extend beyond current research by examining the mechanisms and contingencies that determined how declines in American cities and neighbourhoods through the Great Recession of 2007-2009 affected older residents’ quality of life. As this recession was the greatest economic crisis the world had experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it is an ideal context within which to study the effects of economic declines. First, I study how rising home foreclosure rates and declining home prices in American cities led to rising depressive symptoms. Most research on the effects of this recession upon mental health has focused on personal financial losses. My results show that features of cities in decline affect residents’ depressive symptoms above and beyond the effects attributable to their own total household assets declines. Second, my results reveal how declining resources at the city level and rising concentrated disadvantage within city neighbourhoods interacted multiplicatively as they impacted depressive symptoms. Despite much scholarship arguing for a greater integration of city- and neighbourhood-level effects, few studies have investigated how these two contextual levels operate multiplicatively as they affect residents’ health and well-being. Third, my findings show that rising concentrated disadvantage in American neighbourhoods led to smaller social networks through time, largely due to less acquisition of new close social ties. Within the context of the Great Recession, each paper thus makes a unique contribution to our understanding of whether and how contexts undergoing economic declines affect an important dimension of older persons’ quality of life. | Ph.D. | cities, health | 3, 11 |
| Shabaga, Jason A. | Basiliko, Nathan | The Influence of Selection Silviculture Biomass Harvesting on Soil Carbon, Nutrients, and Respiration in a Northern Mixed-Deciduous Forest | Geography | 2016-11 | Concerns have been raised about soil fertility following increased recovery of biomass in northern mixed deciduous forests. Several studies suggest that biomass extraction and enhanced decomposer activity can lead to losses of soil C and nutrients, increased nitrification, and reduced soil CO2 efflux (FCO2) from compaction and root senescence. However, results are inconsistent; differences may be linked to insufficient investigation and characterisation of variability in forest structure, silvicultural methods, and intensity and heterogeneity of disturbances. Without a comprehensive understanding of how soil biogeochemical processes respond to different types and intensities of harvesting disturbances, we cannot accurately predict losses and ecological sustainability of harvesting. My thesis tests this by evaluating changes to forest structure and various soil edaphic and physical properties following tree-length (TL) and more intensive biomass selection-harvests for 3 years and on primary and tertiary skid trails. Several metrics of forest harvesting intensity were correlated to higher post-harvest FCO2 rates and losses of soil and dissolved soil organic C (SOC/DOC), K+, and NH4+. Increased canopy openness and soil temperatures accounted for 34-41% of elevated FCO2. Woody debris inputs and SOC/DOC losses correlated to higher autumn FCO2 rates and NH4+ losses, while harvested tree biomass correlated to lower summer rates and higher nitrate concentrations. Primary skid trails had low SOC/nutrient concentrations and FCO2 from compaction and inhibited regrowth, potentially functioning as C sources. Biomass harvesting halved woody debris inputs relative to TL harvesting; otherwise, short-term treatment differences were nominal. However, estimated base cation losses through additional biomass recovery may produce net long-term soil depletion not observed in conventional harvesting. These results support my hypotheses that harvesting increased decomposer and nitrification activity, losses of C and nutrients, and that harvesting and trail use intensity can potentially predict these changes. Ecosystem-scale projections of forest C and nutrient storage that do not distinguish between spatiotemporally variable source/sink components (e.g. skid trails, harvested forest) may not effectively estimate changes. Combined with a detailed mensuration of pre/post-harvest forest structure and environmental covariates, future studies that representatively sample these different areas may improve our ability to predict system responses to disturbances. | Ph.D. | urban, environment, forest | 11, 13, 15 |
| Shafique, Sohana | Zlotkin, Stanley | Preventing Linear Growth Faltering and Reversal of Stunting Among Low Birth Weight Infants in Bangladesh: A Community-based Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial | Nutritional Sciences | 2013-11 | Background: Low birth weight (LBW) infants in low income countries are vulnerable to frequent infections and suboptimal breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices, which together may result in postnatal linear growth faltering and poor neurodevelopment. Objectives: To measure the relative effect of directed use of benzalkonium chloride-containing, water-based hand sanitizers (HS) and broad-range multiple micronutrient powder (MNP) along with nutrition, health and hygiene education (NHHE) to prevent infections and linear growth faltering among LBW infants. Methods: A prospective 2X2 factorial, cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted among 467 full-term LBW infants from 0-12 months, using 48 clusters randomly assigned as follows: A. From 0 to 6 months, i) NHHE alone or ii) NHHE plus HS; B. From 6-12 months i) NHHE alone; ii) NHHE plus HS; iii) NHHE plus MNP (to be provided with complementary foods); and iv) NHHE plus both HS and MNP. Results: Combined intervention of ‘directed hand-sanitizer use’ and ‘micronutrient powder’ along with ‘NHHE’ significantly improved linear growth of low birth weight infants compared to ‘NHHE’ alone. At the end of 12-month intervention, the ‘NHHE+HS+MNP’ and ‘NHHE+MNP’ groups had significantly lower prevalence of moderate and severe stunting (length-for-age <−2 Z-score) compared to the ‘NHHE only’ group, (P<0.01, for both). A marked increase in linear growth was found only during the second half of infancy (from 6-12 months) through provision of MNP with complementary foods. Mean duration of diarrhea episodes during infancy (0-6 mo) was significantly lower in the ‘HS plus NHHE’ group compared to the ‘NHHE alone’ group (3.1±1.2 vs. 5.8±1.6 days, P<0.01). Upper respiratory tract infections (URTI) and cough were also significantly lower in the ‘HS plus NHHE’ group compared to the ‘NHHE alone’ group (22.5% vs. 27.1% and 8.1% vs. 11.2%, P<0.05, for both). Although HS independently reduced infections, no impact of HS on linear growth was found in the first six months. Conclusions: The use of hand sanitizer in combination with MNP reduced infections and impacted on rates of stunting among term LBW infants in the first year of life. Implications: Further evidence is needed to confirm the beneficial effects of hand sanitizers and MNPs among other populations of infants. Trial registration: http://www.clinicaltrials.gov (identifier NCT01455636) | PhD | nutrition, socioeconomic | 1, 2 |
| Shah, Vidya | Flessa, Joseph | Urban District Reform for Equity: The Case of the Model Schools for Inner Cities Program in the Toronto District School Board | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2016-06 | Urban districts have failed to change the schooling and life outcomes of marginalized and racialized students, resulting in persistent achievement and opportunity gaps. This study explores urban district reform for equity through the lens of critical pedagogy, by exploring the case of the Model Schools for Inner Cities (MSIC) Program in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) from 2004-2014. TDSB is Canada's largest school district and is situated in a highly centralized and Neoliberal, provincial education system. The MSIC Program serves 150 elementary schools (over 1/4 of the schools in the TDSB), whose students face the greatest external barriers to success. Using the conceptual argument, Districts as Institutional Actors (Rorrer, Skrla Scheurich, 2008), this study explores how the MSIC Program implemented practices and pedagogies aimed at increasing student success, access and opportunities, with considerations for how the reform was initiated and sustained over time, and how participants understood and measured district reforms for equity. This study aims to explain, rather than evaluate the MSIC Program, and describes the tensions in implementing this reform in an era of accountability. Data was triangulated using two sets of interviews with 15 participants and 12 key documents using discourse analysis. Participants have been actively connected to the Program for a minimum of 2 years and include 3 from each of the following stakeholder groups: district leaders, MSIC Program staff, key principals, community partners and elected officials. Documents are publicly available in print and/or online, and include: program documents, district-level policy documents, professional articles, and program data. Findings suggest two main ideological approaches to closing opportunity gaps (charitable and transformative) that significantly influenced the direction of reform efforts. Reforms were further influenced by politics within and outside of the reform, and mediated by the leadership of key decision-makers. Ideological, political and leadership influences impacted three major tensions: accountability and responsibility; centralization and decentralization; and when and how to scale up reforms for equity. Key findings from this study highlight the need for a focus on transformative, social justice approaches to education, critical democracy in engagement and training in social justice leadership. This study informs future research and/or implementation for similar district reforms for equity. | Ed.D. | justice, institution, urban, cities | 11, 16 |
| Shahi, Chander Kamal | Kant, Shashi | Economic Analysis of the North American Softwood Lumber Markets | Forestry | 2008-06 | Markets have an important role to play in advancing an improved understanding of international trading relationships. Two most important economic issues, which contribute to improved national welfare and ensure long-run competitive market equilibrium in international markets, are market integration and market efficiency. To provide softwood lumber markets related information to the policy makers, economic analyses relating market integration and market efficiency of the combined markets of Canada and the US have been conducted. The economic analyses include: (i) testing cointegration of prices among North American softwood lumber markets; (ii) identifying price leading markets in long-run price structure of these cointegrated markets; (iii) examining the degree of market integration among these markets; and (iv) testing the efficiency of spatial arbitrage among these markets. First, the price linkages in the North American softwood lumber markets have been explored over different trade regimes. The results indicate that market integration is affected by product aggregation of data. Further investigations of market integration are, therefore, limited to homogeneous softwood lumber product markets. Second, oligopsonistic pricing behavior of traders is identified as the possible reason for imperfect competition among Douglas Fir product markets, while imperfect competition among the markets of Spruce-Pine-Fir and Hem Fir products can not be explained by this behavior. Third, a comprehensive picture of the adherence to price parity is formulated by evaluating the magnitude and persistence of deviations from equilibrium relation of prices. It is found that large volumes of trade, product substitutability, lower prices, and certainty of trade are the factors which contribute to higher degree of market integration among North American softwood lumber product markets. Finally, the inter-temporal shifts in regime probabilities of competitive market equilibrium are assessed over different trade regimes. It is found that lower transaction costs, large volumes of trade, short distances between markets, and certainty of trade contribute to high market efficiency among softwood lumber product markets of North America. | PhD | trade | 10 |
| Shahrokhi Tehrani, Shervin | Ching, Andrew T||Moorthy, Sridhar | A Heuristic Approach to Explore: Value of Perfect Information | Management | 2018-11 | How do consumers choose in a dynamic stochastic environment when they face uncertainty about the return from their choice? The classical solution to this problem is to assume consumers use dynamic programming to obtain the optimal decision rule. However, this approach has two drawbacks. First, it is computationally very expensive to implement because it requires solving a dynamic programming problem with a continuous state space. Second, a decision maker is assumed to behave “as if” she optimally processes information regardless of its cognitive tractability. To address these two issues, we propose a new heuristic decision process called Value of Perfect Information (VPI), which extends the idea first proposed by Howard (1966) in the engineering literature. This approach provides an intuitive and computationally tractable way to capture the value of exploring uncertain alternatives. Intuitively, in VPI, a decision maker investigates a subset of information which is expected by her to improve her myopic decision outcome. We argue that our VPI approach provides a “fast and frugal” way to balance the trade-off between exploration versus exploitation. More specifically, the VPI approach only involves ranking the alternatives and computing a one-dimensional integration to obtain the expected future value of exploration. In terms of computational costs, we show that the VPI approach is significantly simpler than the standard dynamic programming approach, making it a very practical learning model for consumers to employ. Also, the VPI approach captures asymmetric switching patterns with respect to price promotions in the data. Using individual-level scanner data, we find evidence that our VPI approach is able to capture consumers' choice well. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Shaikh, Sobia Shaheen | Ng, Roxana ||Dehli, Kari | Negotiating Activism: Women of Colour Crafting Antiracist Feminist Organizational Change | Humanities, Social Sciences and Social Justice Education | 2013-06 | Starting from the standpoint of antiracist feminists in Southern Ontario, Canada, I examine the everyday social organization of antiracist feminist activism. Using key concepts from institutional ethnography and other critical research methods, I explore how women of colour activists engage, contest and modify existing social relations within women’s organizations to craft antiracist feminist organizational change. I describe how women of colour negotiate their antiracist, feminist and social justice commitments in ways which both respond to, and are constitutive of, contradictory social relations within women’s organizations. An analysis of in-depth interviews with women of colour activists reveals dialectic processes of accountability in their everyday antiracist feminist practice. Activists are accountable, on the one hand, to hierarchical relations within the daily practices of women’s organizations, and, on the other hand, to other feminist, antiracist and social justice activists. I describe how relations of accountability, named respectively, organizational accountability and activist responsibility, socially organize women of colour’s everyday experience of antiracist feminist activism. In particular, I argue that organizational accountability must be understood as relations of hierarchical answerability within the organization that extend outside the organization, while activist responsibility needs to be seen as the relations by which activists become accountable to other activists in the enactment of an explicitly antiracist feminist praxis. I describe further how women of colour creatively and consciously do antiracist feminist activism by mobilizing and negotiating both sets of relations of accountability to develop antiracist feminist social and organizational change. I highlight the importance of everyday activist work by revealing the ways women of colour seize the potential for crafting antiracist feminist change through relations of accountability. Significantly, this study offers a conceptualization of everyday antiracist feminist activist practice as a negotiation of relations of accountability. | PhD | justice, institution, women | 5, 16 |
| Shaindlinger, Noa Tova | Hanssen, Jens | Remembering Past(s), Imagining Futures: The Politics of Hope in Palestine | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2016-08 | Using hope as a category of experience, this dissertation explores the ways Palestinians and their Israeli-Jewish allies undermine urban spatial expropriations under Israeli-settler-colonialism. Focusing on the city of Jaffa, I analyze the ways in which the Israeli state and the Tel Aviv municipality succeeded in ‘burying’ histories of mass expulsions, organized violence and appropriations of private and public spaces. I then follow the fortunes of Palestinians – those who remained in Jaffa and became a minority under regimes of neoliberalization and Judaicization, and those who were expelled, found themselves de-nationalized and precarious refugees, some confined to decrepit camps, while others pursued opportunities for meaningful political engagement and armed struggle. The dissertation ends with a powerful gesture towards a future that undermines the colonial present and its attendant sense of hopelessness: I explore how both Palestinians and Israeli-Jews engage with the ideas of reconciliation and “living together” in the “Jaffa of tomorrow.” My focus on hope as a category of experience hinges on two main intersecting axes: temporality and place. Just as political identities are rooted in the refugee camp experience and informed by the quotidian and the present, on the one hand, and memory and absence on the other, so, I argue, is Palestinians’ understanding of the local. Rather than accepting normative assertions that define the local as a bounded place that is both community-making and exclusive of those outside of it, I wish to suggest that locality, and attachment to it, is much more multi-directional, dispersed in time and space. This understanding brings to our line of sight those people who are geographically external to place, in this case Jaffa, but have nonetheless powerful attachment to it. In many ways, then, Palestinians are fighting for the right to belong against submerged histories of ethnic cleansing and entrenched colonial denial of their attachments to places they were expelled from. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Shairsingh, Kerolyn Katrina | Evans, Greg J | Improving Land-Use Based Estimation of Traffic-Related Air Pollution by Extending Models over Space and Time | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-11 | Land-use regression (LUR) modeling is used to predict traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) at the urban-scale; which makes it a common tool for estimating exposure in health studies. However, these models are developed for a specific time and geographic area. This can lead to inaccurate exposure assessments when TRAP estimations are required for past or future years, or in cities beyond the model’s geographic area. This research used mobile sampled data to identify ways to improve the accuracy of model estimations when predicting exposure across time and space. Mobile measurements were separated into three resolved concentrations (local, neighbourhood- and regional- background) based on the spline of minimums method, a time-series approach. Associations between concentrations and land-use data (proximity to highways, industries, parks) were stronger for resolved than unresolved concentrations. To more accurately model observed concentration patterns across a wider geographic area, LUR models were developed from these resolved concentrations. For most air pollutants (ultrafine particles, nitrogen dioxide and nitric oxide), the resolved models were better able to assess exposure than unresolved models (those developed with total ambient concentrations) when they were spatially extended to areas bordering the model’s geographic area. Furthermore, these improvements in the resolved models’ estimations were observed for similar and different land-use practices between the model’s geographic area and bordering areas. Traditional LUR models contain only spatial predictor variables and these can be backcasted or forecasted through linear scaling for past or future exposure estimates. Spatiotemporal are another type of model that contain both spatial and temporal predictor variables; these can estimate past or future concentrations by updating the temporal predictor variables (wind speed, temperature, reference monitor concentrations) within the model. This research found that spatiotemporal models were better able to estimate observed concentration patterns in present-day and historic concentrations, but backcasting of spatial models showed more accurate historical estimates. In addition, this work developed hybrid land-use models (coupling machine learning techniques and land-use data) that were used to estimate historical concentrations. The hybrid models were better able to estimate present-day exposure than traditional LUR models, however, LUR models were better able to assess historical exposure. | Ph.D. | industr, cities, urban, pollut | 9, 11, 13 |
| Shakur, Abdul Yaseer | O'Connor, Deborah Louise | The Impact of Folic Acid Fortification on the Folate Intake of Canadians, Factors Associated with Sub-optimal Blood Folate Status among Women, and the Effect of Vitamin/Mineral Supplemental Use | Nutritional Sciences | 2011-11 | Food fortification and nutrient supplementation are important strategies to address micronutrient deficiencies. Mandatory folic acid fortification was implemented in Canada and the U.S. in 1998 to reduce the incidence of neural tube defects (NTD). However, the actual amount of folic acid added to foods has not been reported in Canada. We analyzed 95 fortified foods and found that there is 50% more folate in foods than that reported in food composition tables, which are primarily based on minimum mandated fortification levels. We then determined if these observed folate overages impacted the prevalence of dietary folate inadequacy or intakes above the Tolerable Upper Intake Level (UL). Using data from the 2004 nationally-representative Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) 2.2 (n = 35,107), adjusted for folate overages, we found a low prevalence of folate inadequacy in Canada post-fortification. However, few women 14-50y consumed 400µg/d of synthetic folic acid, an amount associated with maximal protection against an NTD. Conversely, we also showed that use of folic acid-containing supplements led to intakes >UL in the general population. To develop a tool that would help clinicians identify women with red blood cell (RBC) folate concentrations that were not maximally protective against an NTD (<906nmol/L), we used data from the nationally-representative U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2003-2006 to define risk factors of RBC folate <906nmol/L. We found that 35% of American women 19-45y had RBC folate <906nmol/L. Younger age, low dietary folate intake, not consuming supplemental folic acid, smoking, and being African-American were associated with increased risk of RBC folate <906nmol/L. Given our observations of a low prevalence of folate inadequacy and folic acid supplement use leading to intakes >UL, we used CCHS 2.2 data to compare the diets of supplement users and non-users in terms of inadequacy and intakes >UL for other nutrients. We showed that the prevalence of inadequacy was low for most nutrients, and from diet alone, supplement users were not at increased risk of inadequacy compared to non-users. Furthermore, inclusion of supplements led to intakes >UL above 10% for vitamins A, C, niacin, folic acid, and iron, zinc and magnesium. | PhD | nutrient, health | 2, 3 |
| Shallwani, Sadaf | Corter, Carl | Ready Schools in Pakistan: School and Classroom Factors Associated with Children's Success in Early Primary | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2015-11 | The school system in Pakistan seems to be failing children from the very start – with low levels of enrolment, retention (staying in school), and learning, especially in early primary. What makes a ready school in Pakistan, a school that is ready to support children they first transition into early primary? This study used mixed methods to investigate school and classroom factors associated with children’s transition outcomes: entry, adjustment, and learning in early primary. Quantitative methods examined relationships between school factors and transition outcomes at 35 schools. Grade 1 enrolment was higher at schools in urban areas, with better toilet and water facilities, with higher levels of intervention in the Grade 1 classroom, and with pre-primary programmes, particularly better quality pre-primary classrooms. Grade 1 attendance rates were also higher at schools with pre-primary programmes. Grade 1 learning achievement scores were associated with levels of intervention in the Grade 1 classroom, as well as with Grade 1 and pre-primary classroom quality. Qualitative interviews and focus group discussions were conducted at four of the schools. Grade 1 teachers and parents were asked about their perspectives on school factors affecting children’s transition outcomes. Respondents highlighted the affordability of government schools as important for children’s enrolment. The teacher’s attention towards children was described as affecting children’s attendance and retention. For children’s adjustment to school, respondents emphasized the teacher’s approach and interactions towards children, peer interactions, and pre-primary programmes easing the transition. For children's learning, respondents gave importance to the teacher’s instructional effectiveness, in addition to her/his attention and approach towards children. In addition, Grade 1 children’s perspectives on their school were gathered through drawings and interviews. In their drawings, children focused on peers, particularly siblings and close cousins, as well as elements of the school’s physical environment (e.g., furniture). These findings indicate that education reforms in Pakistan should focus on improving access and quality in government-provided education, developing teachers’ relational skills as well as instructional skills, and providing pre-primary education. | Ph.D. | educat, urban, women | 4, 5, 11 |
| Shama, Dossa | Kiran, Mirchandani | Re(art)iculating Empowerment: Cooperative Explorations with Community Development Workers in Pakistan | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-03 | Situated in the postcolonial modernizing discourse of development, many empowerment narratives tend to pre-identify, pre-construct and categorize community development workers/ mobilizers as empowered bodies, catalysts, and change agents. These bodies are expected to and are assumed will facilitate a transformation in oppressed peoples’ self image and belief’s about their rights and capabilities. Although feminist academics/activists have been critical of imperialist, neo-liberal and politico-religious co-optations of understandings of empowerment, limited attention seems to have been paid to the material effects of empowerment narratives on the lives of these community development workers. Nor does there appear to be sufficient analysis into how local community development workers/mobilizers who find themselves in precarious positions of employment, engage with these narratives. Provided with guidelines based on project objectives and lists of targets, many development workers/mobilizers in Pakistan tend to live with expectations of how best to ‘translate/transform’ empowerment from the abstract into the concrete while restricted in their space to critically reflect on theoretical notions that drive their practice. This thesis provides insight into the economy of empowerment narratives and the potential they have to mediate ‘encounters’ shaping ‘subject’ and ‘other’ by critically exploring how bodies of community development workers are put to work and are made to work. Drawing on feminists poststructuralist and postcolonial theory my work explores how these community workers/mobilizers located in the urban metropolis of Karachi, embedded in a web of multiple intersecting structures of oppression and power relations ‘encounter’, theorize, strategize and act upon understanding of empowerment and community development through an arts informed cooperative inquiry. Through the use of prose, creative writing, short stories, photo narratives, artwork and interactive discussions my participants and I begin to complicate these narratives. As a result empowerment narratives begin to appear as colliding discourses, multi-layered complex constructs, which may form unpredictable, messy and contradictory assemblages; as opposed to linear, universal, inevitable and easily understood outcomes and processes. I conclude that the insistence to complicate and situate such messy understandings in specific contexts is important for women’s movements if empowerment is to retain its strategic meaning and value in feminist theorizing. | PhD | rights, urban, worker, employment, women | 5, 8, 11, 16 |
| Shan, Hongxia | Ng, Roxana | Learning as Socially Organized Practices: Chinese Immigrants Fitting into the Engineering Market in Canada | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2009-11 | My research studies immigrants’ learning experiences as socially organized practices. Informed by the sociocultural approach of learning and institutional ethnography, I treat learning as a material and relational phenomenon. I start by examining how fourteen Chinese immigrants learn to fit into the engineering market in Canada. I then trace the social discourses and relations that shape immigrants’ learning experiences, particularly their changing perceptions and practices and personal and professional investments. I contend that immigrants’ learning is produced through social processes of differentiation that naturalize immigrants as a secondary labour pool, which is dismissible and desirable at the same time. My investigation unfolds around four areas of learning. The first is related to immigrants’ self-marketing practices. I show that core to immigrants’ marketing strategies is to speak to the skill discourse or employers’ skill expectations at the “right” time and place. The skill discourse, I argue, is culturally-charged and class-based. It cloaks a complex of hiring relations where “skill” is discursively constructed and differentially invoked to preserve the privilege and power of the dominant group. The second area is immigrants’ work-related learning. I find that workplace training is part of the corporate agenda to organize work and manage workers. Amid this picture, workers’ opportunity to access corporate sponsorship for professional development is contingent on their membership within the engineering community. To expand their professional space, the immigrants resorted to learning and consolidating their knowledge in codes and standards, which serve as a textual organizer of engineering work. The third area is related to workplace communication. My participants reported an individualistic communication ‘culture’, which celebrates individual excellence and discourages close interpersonal relations. Such a perception, I argue, obscures the gender, race and class relations that privilege white and male power. It also leaves out the organizational relations, such as the project-based deployment of the engineering workforce that perpetuate individualistic communicative practices. My last area of investigation focuses on immigrants’ efforts to acquire Canadian credentials and professional licence. Their heavy learning loads direct my attention to the ideological and administrative licensure practices that valorize Canadian credentials and certificates to the exclusion of others. | PhD | inclusive, labour | 4, 8 |
| Shannon, Brett | Kaul, Rupert | The Immune Impact of Common Sexually Transmitted Viruses and the Vaginal Microbiota: Implications for HIV Susceptibility in African, Caribbean, and other Black Women from Toronto | Immunology | 2018-06 | Genital inflammation is a key determinant of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) transmission and may increase the availability of HIV-susceptible target cells at sites of exposure. The African, Carribean, and other black (ACB) community is at increased risk of HIV acquisition in Toronto and several genital conditions that increase HIV risk are also more prevalent, including bacterial vaginosis, herpes simplex virus type-2 (HSV-2) and human papillomavirus (HPV) infection. Therefore, we assessed the impact of these three genital conditions on mucosal immune cells and cytokines in the female genital tract of ACB women. Endocervical cells and cervicovaginal secretions were collected by cytobrush and Instead Softcup, respectively. T cells and dendritic cells were assessed by flow cytometry, proinflammatory cytokines and chemokines by multiplex enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and the microbiota by 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid gene sequencing. HSV-2 infection was associated with elevated levels of endocervical HIV target cells (CCR5+ CD4 T cells), Lactobacillus-deficient microbiota was associated with elevated proinflammatory cytokines, prevalent HPV infection was associated with Lactobacillus-deficient microbiota, and HPV clearance was associated with higher numbers of Langerhans cells in the female genital tract. These results suggest multiple ways in which genital conditions are associated with factors that have been shown to influence HIV susceptibility and provides novel targets for future HIV prevention strategies. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Sharda, Priya | Wane, Njoki | Exploring the Relationship between Skin Tone and Self-esteem Among Females in South Asian Families in India: A Multigenerational Comparison | Social Justice Education | 2020-06 | Colourism or skin colour stratification is a persistent dilemma for people in India. Socially and culturally constructed definitions of beauty based on skin tone, represent Western realities and continue to sustain beauty ideals that shape the beliefs and practices around fair skin for women. The study of skin tone and its relationship to self-esteem is essential in expanding upon the limited research examining the intersections between body image and the sociocultural experiences of South Asian Indian women. Against the backdrop of Western hegemony, the research discusses how a fair skin beauty ideal impacts different generations of women in New Delhi. More specifically, investigating the relationship between skin tone and self-esteem among women in South Asian families through a multigenerational comparison, provides a deeper understanding of how skin tone bias is perpetuated, while reinforcing and normalizing white heteropatriarchy. Skin tone bias is disseminated through the family, culture and media. The narratives highlight how skin tone bias manifests itself among adult women in different South Asian family units according to their life stage and membership in the family. Women from the young age group (generation) had the lowest self-esteem and faced the most pressure to conform to white skin beauty ideals when compared to older generations in their families. Skin tone appeared to be heavily emphasized for these young women, namely in the context of marriage. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Sharifkhani, Ali | Kan, Raymond||Simutin, Mikhail | Essays in Empirical Asset Pricing | Management | 2019-03 | In my dissertation, I study different channels through which shocks in the real economy can affect financial asset returns. The first chapter studies immigration policy shocks as a source of risk in the financial markets. Using a comprehensive set of data on H-1B visa petitions, I construct an occupation-level measure for labor market competition between skilled immigrant and local workers. I find that stocks of firms with a high share of labor for which skilled immigrants are close substitutes outperform their peers with a low share. I show that this premium is explained by firms' differential exposures to priced immigration policy shocks that shift the supply of skilled immigrant labor. These shocks differentially impact wages across occupations, leading to an asymmetric effect on firms' cash flows through labor expenditure. In the second chapter, based on a joint work with Esther Eiling and Raymond Kan, we investigate the asset pricing implications of sectoral labor reallocation shocks that change the optimal allocation of workers across industries. We find that a proxy for this type of labor market shocks has very strong predictive power for future stock market returns. We propose a production-based asset pricing model that links the return predictability to time-varying labor adjustment costs. When human capital is tied to the industry, hiring workers from other industries involves more search and training costs. Hence, sectoral reallocation shocks lead to lower returns to hiring and therefore lower future stock returns. In the third chapter, we identify inter-sectoral trade networks as important conduits of industry shocks and provide the first explanation for an empirical regularity in the term structure of industry returns. Specifically, my co-author Mikhail Simutin and I show that industry shocks propagating along this network can feed back to the originating industry, causing an "echo'' - intermediate-term autocorrelation in returns. Adopting techniques from graph theory, we find that the strength of the trade network feedback is a crucial determinant of the echo effect in industry returns. Consistent with limited-information models, the relation between feedback strength and echo profits is strongest in industries with information diffusion frictions along the feedback loop. | Ph.D. | worker, wage, financial market, industr | 8, 9, 10 |
| Sharpe, Sarah | Baker, Ross | Mobile technology and health apps: Patient and provider experiences in cardiac rehabilitation | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2017-11 | This study focused on the use of mobile health and wellness applications (apps) in chronic disease management. There are over a hundred thousand health apps available for download on public app stores. These include apps in key areas for chronic disease management such as exercise and diet. However, there is little evidence on patient use of health apps to support self-management of chronic conditions. Therefore, the study objective was to describe cardiac rehabilitation patient and provider experiences with health apps and perceived impact on self-management and the patient-provider relationship. An exploratory mixed methods design was used to gain an understanding of patient and provider perspectives and experiences. The study was conducted in a cardiac rehabilitation program in Ontario, Canada. A quantitative survey (n=242) focused on patient demographics and technology use profiles. Patient interviews (n=30) and a provider focus group (n=8) were conducted to explore perspectives on mobile technology and health app use as a part of self-management and the patient-provider relationship. Results from this study describe an aging patient population with a range of cardiac diagnoses and co-morbidities. Ninety-two percent of patients in this study used mobile technology and 50% of those with mobile technology were using health apps. Most patients and providers felt that health apps can support chronic disease management, particularly with respect to tracking progress against exercise and diet goals. Patients and providers also felt that they needed more support in using health apps and integrating them into care processes. This included the need for education on how to use apps as well as access to information on app accuracy and how to choose or recommend health apps given the large number available. Participants also emphasized the desire for health apps to connect patients and providers during and after the rehabilitation program. Health apps were mostly used by patients in the study in the absence of provider recommendations and without connectivity between patients and providers. Findings highlighted the need for health care practices to leverage and support health apps as a part of care during rehabilitation and post-discharge for patients self-managing in the community. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Shaw, Tiffany A. | Shepherd, Theodore G. | Energy and Momentum Consistency in Subgrid-scale Parameterization for Climate Models | Physics | 2009-11 | This thesis examines the importance of energy and momentum consistency in subgrid-scale parameterization for climate models. It is divided into two parts according to the two aspects of the problem that are investigated, namely the importance of momentum conservation alone and the consistency between energy and momentum conservation. The first part addresses the importance of momentum conservation alone. Using a zonally-symmetric model, it is shown that violating momentum conservation in the parameterization of gravity wave drag leads to large errors and non-robustness of the response to an imposed radiative perturbation in the middle atmosphere. Using the Canadian Middle Atmosphere Model, a three-dimensional climate model, it is shown that violating momentum conservation, by allowing gravity wave momentum flux to escape through the model lid, leads to large errors in the mean climate when the model lid is placed at 10 hPa. When the model lid is placed at 0.001 hPa the errors due to nonconservation are minimal. When the 10 hPa climate is perturbed by idealized ozone depletion in the southern hemisphere, nonconservation is found to significantly alter the polar temperature and surface responses. Overall, momentum conservation ensures a better agreement between the 10 hPa and the 0.001 hPa climates. The second part addresses the self-consistency of energy and momentum conservation. Using Hamiltonian geophysical fluid dynamics, pseudoenergy and pseudomomentum wave-activity conservation laws are derived for the subgrid-scale dynamics. Noether’s theorem is used to derive a relationship between the wave-activity fluxes, which represents a generalization of the first Eliassen-Palm theorem. Using multiple scale asymptotics a theoretical framework for subgrid-scale parameterization is built which consistently conserves both energy and momentum and respects the second law of thermodynamics. The framework couples a hydrostatic resolved-scale flow to a non-hydrostatic subgrid-scale flow. The transfers of energy and momentum between the two scales are understood using the subgrid-scale wave-activity conservation laws, whose relationships with the resolved-scale dynamics represent generalized non-acceleration theorems. The derived relationship between the wave-activity fluxes — which represents a generalization of the second Eliassen-Palm theorem — is key to ensuring consistency between energy and momentum conservation. The framework includes a consistent formulation of heating and entropy production due to kinetic energy dissipation. | PhD | energy, climate | 7, 13 |
| Sheldon, C. Tess | Ferris, Lorraine | Meds on the Menu: The Covert Administration of Psychotropic Medication to Adult Inpatients Determined to be Decisionally-Incapable in Ontario's Psychiatric Settings | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015 | Drawing on the fields of human rights and public health, this research explores the covert administration of medication: the concealment of medication in food or drink so that it will be consumed undetected. Adopting a rights-based approach, it explores multiple understandings of the impact of the practice on inpatients' rights-experiences. Relying on critical approaches, it also explores the practice's underlying socio-political-legal structures. The common themes of policies, protocols or guidelines that govern its practice in Ontario are identified. Focus groups and individual interviews were held with three groups of stakeholders (nurses, legal experts and psychiatrists), relying on fictional clinical scenarios. Few policies, protocols or guidelines govern the practice in Ontario's psychiatric settings. The practice impairs access to knowledge by patients and substitute decision-makers. It also precludes healthcare practitioners' access to information about side effects and underlying reasons for medication refusal. It may interfere with therapeutic relationships and patients' meaningful recovery as they transfer from hospital without knowledge of the fact of the covert medication. It may be characterized as autonomy restoring since patients may become capable of making treatment decisions after having received the medication surreptitiously. Covert medication reflects an inflexible approach to capacity determination; it is distinguishable from approaches that imagine capacity as able to be fostered with support. It is primarily concerned with the management of "risky" inpatients in the short-term. The practice relies on a faith that medication will be effective, deferring to medical decision-making. While covert medication is understood to have "something to do" with rights, there is confusion about how those rights play out on the ground. Institutional silences underlie and reinforce the practice. This research will support the development of effective, safe and appropriate approaches to treatment non-adherence that maximize patient dignity. Most pressing, this research concludes that the covert administration of medication warrants an overt discussion. | Ph.D. | health, institution | 3, 16 |
| Shelley, Jacob | Lemmens, Trudo | Food as a Dangerous Product: The Promise of Private Law for Public Health | Law | 2017-11 | Obesity and diet-related chronic diseases are a critical public health problem facing Canadians. Interventions aimed at improving diet and the overall food environment have had limited success, and as a consequence, many have suggested an increased use of legal tools, including litigation. This project examines the potential of the duty to warn, part of product liability law, as a strategy for addressing obesity and other diet-related chronic diseases. To this end, the project proceeds in two parts. Part one project examines the potential of tort law to be used to address public health problems. It begins by establishing the congruence between tort law and public health, and suggests that there are potential benefits of public health litigation for obesity prevention. This sets the foundation for part two, which argues that Canadian jurisprudence clearly establishes that food manufacturers have a duty to warn consumers about the risks associated with consuming food products. Part two examines key aspects of a tort claim based on a failure to warn, namely, the duty of care, standard of care, and factual causation. It sets out an approach to failure to warn cases that is consistent with general principles of negligence law, but that is sensitive to the particularities of a failure to warn case. This project establishes that food manufactures are required to provide warnings that are consistent with the standards of adequacy as set out by the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Buchan v Ortho Pharmaceutical. Buchan, which has been affirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada, sets out explicit criteria for determining adequacy, including prohibitions against collateral efforts to negate or neutralize warnings. It is clear that food manufacturers are neither fulfilling their obligation to provide warnings nor adhering to the Buchan standard. This project concludes that food manufacturers should be held accountable for this failure. | S.J.D. | food, health | 2, 3 |
| Shen, Jing | Erickson, Bonnie | The Joint Use of Formal and Informal Job Search Methods in China: Institutional Constraints, Working Mechanisms, and Advantages | Sociology | 2013-11 | Using data drawn from in-depth interviews collected in three Chinese cities and the countrywide China General Social Survey, this dissertation examined how people found jobs during the historic period of China’s employment system change. This dissertation is written in the format of three publishable papers. The first paper revisited China’s employment system change, by focusing on individual reactions towards the changing employment policies. Perceiving the persistent political authority, individuals pursued higher education, accumulated political advantages, and mobilized network resources, to get state-assigned jobs. Individual job-seeking strategies, in turn, boosted the state’s hiring criteria, as well as facilitated the growth of the market principle. Consequently, state power and market strength have been co-developed in this process. Following my analysis of institutional constraints, in the second paper, I addressed the question of how individual job seekers and job positions are matched together. I examined how contact use matches individual qualifications to the employer’s hiring expectations, from an innovative perspective of the certifiability of job requirements. I demonstrated that informal methods facilitate job-person matching success when used in combination with formal methods, rather than being used alone. My third dissertation paper provides strong empirical evidence of the advantages of the joint use of formal and informal methods. I found that individuals who used formal and informal job search methods jointly tend to obtain more job information and thus apply for more positions. They are also more likely to exit job search successfully within a three-month time period. Using the Endogenous Switching Regression (ESR) model, I found that the joint channel itself is more likely to lead one to late-stage career success, as indicated by one’s recent income. Above all, my dissertation systematically investigated the use of contacts in the labor market of post-socialist China, regarding its institutional constraints, working mechanisms, and advantages. | PhD | employment | 8 |
| Shen, Leilei | Trefler, Daniel | Essays on International Trade, Productivity, and Growth | Economics | 2012-11 | This thesis investigates the role of institutions and firm behaviours in international trade. Chapter 1 estimates a dynamic general equilibrium model of entry, exit, and endogenous productivity growth. Productivity is endogenous both at the industry level (firms enter and exit) and at the firm level (firms invest in productivity-enhancing activities). Three key findings emerge. First, there is no evidence of learning by exporting: the observed positive correlation between exporting and productivity operates entirely via the impact of exporting on productivity-enhancing investments. Restated, exporting decision raises productivity, but only indirectly by making investing in productivity more attractive. Second, there is evidence of learning by producing multiple products: product-mix raises productivity directly in addition to the investment channel. Third, there are strong complementarities among the product-mix, exporting and investment decisions. Finally, we simulate the effects of reductions in foreign tariffs. This increases exporting, investing, and wages. Productivity rises at the economy-wide level both because of the between firm reallocation effect and because of within firm increases in productivity. Chapter 2 incorporates credit constraints into amodel of global sourcing and heterogeneous firms. Following Antras and Helpman(2004), heterogeneous firms decide whether to source inputs at arm’s length or within the boundary of the firm. Financing of fixed organizational costs requires borrowing with credit constraints and collateral based on tangible assets. The party that controls intermediate inputs is responsible for these financing costs. Sectors differ in their reliance on external finance and countries vary in their financial development. The model predicts that increased financial development increases the share of arm’s length transactions relative to integration in a country. The effect is most pronounced in sectors with a high reliance on external finance. Empirical examination of country-industry interaction effects confirms the predictions of the model. Chapter 3 examines whether financial development facilitates economic growth by estimating the effect of financial development on reducing the costs of external finance to firms. The data reveal substantial evidence of decreasing returns to the benefit of financial development in industries that are more dependent on external finance and countries with less financial frictions. | PhD | economic growth, wage, industr, trade | 8, 9, 10 |
| Sheppard, Amanda Joan | Chiarelli, Anna Maria | Breast Cancer Survival in Ontario's First Nations Women: Understanding the Determinants | Medical Science | 2010-06 | This study builds on previous research showing that breast cancer survival is poorer for First Nations (FN) women compared to other Ontario women. Few studies have examined breast cancer survival in Indigenous populations compared to general populations; all of these report poorer survival among Indigenous people. Fewer still have examined potential factors related to the poorer survival, but these often suggest poorer prognosis even after adjustment for them. Study objectives were: to compare the distribution of demographic, prognostic and treatment factors between FN and non-FN women; to investigate factors associated with later diagnosis in FN women; to compare stage specific survival for FN and non-FN women controlling for important factors potentially associated with breast cancer survival; and to examine potential determinants of survival for FN women by stage at diagnosis. A case-case design was employed to compare FN women (n=287) diagnosed with invasive breast cancer to a frequency-matched random sample of women (n=671) from the general population diagnosed with breast cancer within the Ontario Cancer Registry. Women were matched (2:1) on period of diagnosis (1995-1999 and 2000-2004), age at diagnosis (<50 vs. 50≥), and Regional Cancer Centre (RCC). Stage at diagnosis and data relevant to the determinants of breast cancer survival were collected from medical charts at the RCCs. FN women were diagnosed with breast cancer at later stages compared to non-FN women. Having a non-screened method of detection and increasing BMI were associated with a later breast cancer diagnosis. FN women with comorbidity however were less likely to be diagnosed at a later stage. An unforeseen novel finding was that the survival disadvantage occurred after an early breast cancer diagnosis, whereas the survival experiences for those diagnosed at stages II+ were similar. In a multivariate analysis, elevated risk was observed for FN women in stage I, and significant risk was seen in women with comorbidity. These findings are actionable and can be used to improve the prognosis of FN women with breast cancer. It is likely that the same or similar factors are largely responsible for the survival disadvantage observed among Ontario FN people for most other major cancers. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Sherman, Amanda | Grusec, Joan E | Overprotective and Overcontrolling Parenting of Emerging Adult Survivors of Childhood Cancer: Links to Coping Styles, Anxiety, and Depression | Psychology | 2015-11 | The goals of this study were, in a sample of emerging adult survivors of childhood cancer, 1) to compare levels of psychological distress with general population norms, 2) to examine the association between overprotective parenting and psychological distress, 2) to differentiate between maternal overprotection and maternal overcontrol, and 3) to uncover mechanisms linking overprotective parenting to psychological distress, including the assessment of emerging adults’ coping styles and perceptions of their mothers’ overprotective parenting. Participants were 109 emerging adult survivors of childhood cancer, ranging in age from 18 to 30 years (M = 23 years; 60% female). Ninety of the emerging adults’ mothers also participated in this research. Survivors were recruited from the waiting room of The Pediatric Cancer AfterCare Clinic at Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Canada. Emerging adults and their mothers provided ratings of mothers’ overprotective and overcontrolling parenting practices on the Overparenting of Emerging Adults Scale (OPEAS), a measure designed for this study. Emerging adults’ coping styles and symptoms of anxiety and depression were also assessed. Factor analysis of the OPEAS revealed seven overparenting subscales; four subscales conceptually similar to the construct of overprotection: infantilization, medical management, parenting anxiety, and harm reduction, and three subscales conceptually similar to the construct of overcontrol: problem solving intervention, intrusive decision making, and discounting of opinions/ideas. Nearly half of the sample reported clinically significant levels of anxiety symptoms, although levels of clinically significant depression symptoms did not differ from general population norms. Further analyses revealed that mother-reported overprotective practices of infantilization and parenting anxiety were indirectly related to emerging adults’ anxiety and depression symptoms through serial multiple mediation, and that the mother-reported overcontrolling practice of intrusive decision making was indirectly related to depression symptoms through serial multiple mediation. Specifically, the mediators were emerging adults’ perceptions of the overparenting and emerging adults’ nonproductive coping style. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the relations of overprotective and overcontrolling parenting to emerging adults’ mental health, and importance of the socialization of coping. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Shi, Ruoyun | Lehn, Peter W | An Integrated Charge and Drive System for Electric Vehicles | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2019-11 | Market penetration of electric vehicles (EVs) is largely hindered by the lack of a nationwide fast charging network and limited drive range. The fast charging electric vehicle supply equipment (EVSE) is costly to implement on a large-scale due to the need for high power charging hardware comprising of multiple power electronic stages dedicated to delivering controlled power to the EV battery. This thesis proposes an integrated charge and drive system for EVs. The concept is to utilize the on-vehicle powertrain as the EVSE, thus offering a cost-effective solution by eliminating the DC/DC power conversion stage from the EVSE. The integrated system consists of two energy sources paired with drive inverters that are connected in series through an electric motor with a simple open-stator winding, where the charging input is accessed from the differential connection of the inverters. In comparison to previous fast charging integrated solutions that require the use of two power stages in the traction system to enable integrated charging, the proposed integrated solution only requires a single power stage in the traction drive. While the dual energy sources integrating hybrid energy storage media may consist of two identical battery packs, the powertrain can be further leveraged to potentially extend drive range. Charging and driving features of the integrated system are verified in simulation and experiment, through development of a 110kW motor drive test bench integrating dual energy sources of both similar and differing characteristics. The experimental results demonstrate feasibility of utilizing traction hardware to regulate the charging current under established constant-current and constant-voltage battery charging modes. A balancing control strategy is also developed to equalize the energy between the dual energy sources. For vehicle propulsion, the results demonstrate flexible power sharing between two energy sources under static dynamic driving conditions, where in the case of a battery and supercapacitor, power energy management of the supercapacitor is achieved without reliance on a two-stage power electronic solution. Numerical efficiency comparison between existing traction drives and the proposed traction drive shows up to 14% additional range from an electric vehicle using the proposed system in an urban setting. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Shield, Kevin David | Rehm, J端rgen T | The Utility of Measuring Disability, Functioning and Other Factors when Assessing Mental Health in both the General Population and a Patient Population that Seeks Treatment at a Psychiatric Emergency Department | Medical Science | 2015-11 | The social, economic and health burdens of mental and behavioural disorders are large, and although treatment rates for such disorders are low, the use of emergency departments for mental and behavioural disorders is high. Accordingly, this thesis compares the use of disability, functioning, non-specific psychological distress and diagnosis to characterize mental and behavioural disorders. Furthermore, this thesis examines if predisposing and levels of mental illness factors are correlated to baseline and subsequent emergency department visits. The general population surveys of the 2011, 2012 and 2013 Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) Monitors were used as a general population sample of Ontario adults. Data from patients were obtained by time-based sampling from August 2011 to February 2012 in the emergency department of CAMH (a psychiatric hospital that provides services to adults); the CAMH emergency department database was used to track subsequent emergency department visits. Disability and functioning were measured using the World Health Organization Disability Assessment Schedule, and non-specific psychological distress was measured using the General Health Questionnaire. Data from the CAMH Monitors indicated that although disability, functioning and non-specific psychological distress are correlated (except for people with somatic illnesses), all such measures are needed to accurately describe mental health. Among patients in the psychiatric emergency department, differences in disability and functioning were not significant across diagnoses; however, a substantial heterogeneity in disability and functioning was observed within diagnoses. Furthermore, using data from patients in the psychiatric emergency department, we observed that the number of previous visits, the WHODAS scores, and employment status were predictors of psychiatric emergency department recidivism. Based on the results of this study, it is clear that measures of disability, functioning and non-specific psychological distress may be needed to adequately describe the mental health of the general population. Furthermore, in psychiatric as well as in general hospital emergency departments, data on disability and functioning and on the number of previous visits if collected in addition to diagnosis data for patients with mental and behavioural disorders could lead to more effective triaging of these patients, alignment with the appropriate intensity of resources, and prediction of recidivism. | Ph.D. | health, socioeconomic | 1, 3 |
| Shilton, Elizabeth | Rittich, Kerry | Gifts of Rights?: A Legal History of Employment Pension Plans in Canada | Law | 2011-03 | This thesis explores the role played by law in the current breakdown of the employment pension system, focusing on the legal status of pension plans within the employment relationship, and on the way lawmakers have defined, shaped and enforced employee pension rights. It traces the legal status of employment pensions from their 19th Century characterization as gifts to reward employees for long and faithful service, to their current 21st Century construction as terms of the contract of employment. The thesis argues that Canadian lawmakers within all three legal regimes structuring rights and obligations within the employment relationship – the common law, collective bargaining law and statute law – have contributed significantly to the overall dysfunction of the system by cultivating both substantive and procedural legal rules that locate critical issues concerning the scope, design, durability and distribution of employee pension rights within the control of employers. Predictably, Canadian employers have used that control to shape pension plans to meet their distinct business needs, needs that frequently collide with worker needs and expectations for good pensions. Even in the heyday of the ‘Fordist’ work structures that fostered employment pension plans, the system delivered benefits very unequally, privileging the interest of elite workers who fit the ‘male breadwinner’ mould, and failing to provide adequate and secure pensions for the majority of Canadian workers. Changes in the organization of work in Canada, including trends towards more precarious work, will continue to exacerbate the problems inherent in the system, escalating its distributional inequalities. In the current round of pension law reform, Canada’s policy makers should abandon the effort to repair a system which is flawed at its core, and should instead seek a new foundation for pensions outside the employment relationship, a foundation which will not subordinate the pension interests of workers to the business interests of employers. | SJD | employment, rights | 8, 16 |
| Shimoda, Yuko | Arhonditsis, George B | Integration of Novel Mathematical and Statistical Techniques to Support Model-based Water Quality Management | Geography | 2015-11 | Environmental modelling has been an indispensable tool for addressing water quality problems in freshwater ecosystems. A variety of data-oriented and process-based models have been used to examine the impact of external stressors to ecosystem integrity and to set water quality goals. The main objective of this thesis is to introduce methodological refinements of the current generation of water quality models that can strengthen their foundation as a scientific/predictive tool. One of the central water quality issues revolves around the elucidation of the mechanisAms that shape the composition of phytoplankton assemblages and their capacity to predict the occurrence of harmful algal blooms. My research proposes the introduction of an extra layer of causality into plankton models by connecting algal metabolic processes with species-specific morphological features (cell volume, surface-to-volume ratio, shape). This strategy can effectively delineate model parametric uncertainty, and may be an excellent solution to the identifiability problem of complex over-parameterized model. The motivation of this approach was provided by a meta-analysis of 122 models published in the peer-reviewed literature, which provided ample evidence that our ability to reproduce the observed aggregated and compositional phytoplankton variability is limited, despite the plethora of mathematical expressions aiming to describe different ecophysiological facets of species populations. Hierarchical Bayesian inference offers an appealing ad-hoc strategy to gradually increase model complexity and subsequently enhance their mechanistic underpinning, whenever possible and relevant. The advantages of hierarchical Bayes are illustrated with phosphorus loading models and with the development of risk assessment tools of cyanobacteria dominance. The central message of my dissertation is that the integration of process-based and empirical models offers an appealing methodological prospect, as it allows combining our best mechanistic understanding of ecosystem processes and feedback loops, while remaining within the bounds of data-based parameter estimation and therefore facilitating rigorous error analysis. | Ph.D. | water, environment | 6, 13 |
| Shirokova, Veronika | Ferris, Grant | Microbial Iron Geochemistry of a Pristine Glaciofluvial Groundwater System | Earth Sciences | 2015-11 | The biogeochemical cycling of iron by microorganisms has a strong impact on groundwater resources due to their influence on aqueous geochemistry, including contaminant mobility. This thesis expands on knowledge of groundwater-surface transitions through the characterization of an iron cycling biofilm dominated groundwater spring, and presents the first in situ investigation of microbial iron cycling in a pristine, glaciofluvial aquifer that has not been used as a groundwater resource, anthropogenically contaminated, or stimulated to enhance microbial activity. Metagenomic evidence from the groundwater spring with a sharp reduction-oxidation gradient demonstrated the presence of iron biofilm forming microbes in the groundwater system being studied, as well as showing a diversity of nitrogen and sulfur cycling microorganisms. Changes in redox potential along the length of the stream corresponded with pronounced shifts in the relative abundance of bacteria known to mediate the biogeochemical cycling of iron, sulfur, and nitrogen. Five years of geochemical surveying showed a spatiotemporally persistent zone of elevated iron concentrations in an aquifer which had previously been shown to have potential for microbial iron cycling through genomic characterization. Based on the analysis of terminal electron acceptor concentrations in the groundwater, the aquifer was found to be graded into zones of O2 reduction, NO3- reduction, Fe3+ reduction, oxygen-dependent Fe2+ oxidation, and nitrate-dependent Fe2+ oxidation. Hydrogeological and geophysical evidence suggested that groundwater flow conditions differed in the vicinity of the elevated iron zone, which may have contributed to conditions conducive to the growth of a subsurface microbial community. Environmental electron scanning microscopy showed bacterial morphologies similar to known iron cycling bacteria were present in the elevated iron zone, but not outside of it. The findings of this thesis are broadly applicable to other aquifers of glacial and glaciofluvial origin, where reducing conditions will arise through non-aerobic forms of microbial respiration, and observed patterns of redox zonation will be affected by the mixing of groundwater along three dimensional flow paths. Taken together, this thesis underscores the importance of iterative interdisciplinary collaboration, including hydrogeology, geochemistry, near-surface geophysics, and microbiology, as a means of building the most complete possible representations of groundwater resources. | Ph.D. | water, environment | 6, 13 |
| Shivanna, Sowmya | Rozakis Adcock, Maria | PHIP Promotes Breast Tumor Initiation by Facilitating Histone Modifications of the Genes that Drive Metabolic Reprogramming | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2020-06 | Breast cancer is a common form of cancer among women worldwide and leads to a considerable number of deaths every year in spite of various methods of treatment. One of the major advances has been the identification of a small population of cells in breast tumors known as ‘cancer stem cells’; these cells are associated with high rates of tumor recurrence and resilience to any existing method of treatment. Extensive research from past decades has led to a better understanding of the development and progression of breast cancer. However, substantially less is known about the deregulated signaling and metabolic pathways in cancer cells. In this study, we investigated the role of a bromodomain (BRD)-containing protein, Pleckstrin Homology domain Interacting Protein (PHIP) in breast cancer. PHIP has been implicated in the regulation of insulin signaling in fibroblasts, and cell proliferation and survival of pancreatic β-cells, yet its role in cancer is largely unknown. Here we show that endogenous PHIP is elevated in breast cancer cells, and that certain cell lines depend on PHIP for their growth. Overexpression of PHIP in immortalized mammary epithelial cells (MCF10A) increased the mammosphere number and also enriched the CD44high/CD24low cancer stem cell population. Moreover, the induction of PHIP promoted mammary tumor formation in NOD SCID mice. Consistent with its function as an epigenetic modifier, some of these effects only required transient induction of PHIP. Indeed, PHIP initiated an epigenetic reprogramming of cell metabolism toward aerobic glycolysis through up-regulation of Myc and hypoxia inducing factor 1α (HIF1α). We also show that PHIP increases post translational modifications (PTMs) that are associated with gene activation such as H3K27ac, H3K9ac and H3K4me3 on its key target gene promoter/hypoxia response elements (HRE) regions. In addition, knockdown of either Myc or HIF1α blocked PHIP-induced increase in mammosphere-forming ability of MCF10A cells. Thus, PHIP is a major driver of tumorigenesis in certain tumor cells, providing a new target for the treatment of aggressive breast cancer driven by this oncogene. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Shnall, Adriana Noemi | McDonald, Lynn | When Least Expected: Stories of Love, Commitment, Loss and Survival - The Experience and Coping Strategies of Spouses of People with an Early-onset Dementia | Social Work | 2015-03 | Abstract Understanding the needs of families and in particular spouses of people with early-onset dementia (e.g., those who develop a dementia under the age of 65), has become increasingly recognized as an area of importance by the healthcare community because of the negative biopsychosocial consequences to patients and families. However, there is a dearth of research about the experiences of younger spousal caregivers. The goal of this qualitative, grounded theory study was to understand the experiences of spouses of people who have frontotemporal dementia and early-onset Alzheimer's disease, throughout the disease trajectory. I conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 participants; 17 had partners with frontotemporal dementia and 13 had partners with early-onset Alzheimer's disease. Spouses were recruited with the intention of capturing various stages of the caregiving career. The participants ranged all the way from spouses of people who were newly diagnosed, to individuals who had already been placed in long term care. Three themes emerged from the data analyses initially: (1) issues related to life-stage, (2) disease invisibility and (3) living with continuous uncertainty. These themes led to a fourth theme of caregivers feeling like they were falling through the cracks of the healthcare and social support systems since there are no appropriate services/policies set up for younger people affected by dementia. Finally, a core theme of surviving chronic crises emerged as spouses described how they coped with the continuous challenges related to their partner's dementia. Spouses live through series of crises that they need to constantly manage, leading to a feeling that they are barely surviving. The most common coping strategies that spouses employed through the illness trajectory included: advocacy, reframing, self-care and spirituality. Over the caregiving trajectory, spouses adapted to the impact of having a partner with early-onset dementia. The applicability of the findings is that they point to the timing, to the types of clinical interventions and to policy initiatives. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Shrestha, Namrata | Conway, Tenley | Exurban Development: Mapping, Locating Factors, and Ecological Impact Analysis using GIS and Remote Sensing | Geography | 2012-06 | Anthropogenic disturbance in a landscape can take various forms, including residential development, which has substantial impact on the world’s ecosystems. Exurban development, characterized by low density residential development outside urban areas, was and continues to be one of the fastest growing forms of residential development in North America. It has disproportionately large ecological impacts relative to its footprint, yet is mostly overlooked in scientific studies. Specifically, a lack of spatially explicit (disaggregate) data on exurban development at regional level has contributed to a very limited understanding of this interspersed low density development. The main goal of this dissertation is to provide an increased understanding of exurban development in terms of its location, locating factors, and conservation and ecological implications at regional level, especially to enable incorporation of exurban information in the decision making processes. For this I asked four specific questions in this dissertation: (i) Where exactly is exurban development? (ii) What are the most likely factors that influence exurban development location? (iii) How does current and future development conflict with conservation goals? And (iv) What is the extent of the exurban development’s ecological impacts? Using a heterogeneous landscape, the County of Peterborough (Ontario, Canada), as the case study this dissertation undertook a number of separate yet related analyses that collectively provided the improved understanding of exurban development. The investigation of traditionally used surrogates for development, like roads and census data, and a more direct remote sensing method, using moderate resolution SPOT/HRVIR imagery, provided insights and contributed to development of spatially explicit data on exurban development. The evaluation of several commonly hypothesized locating factors in relation to exurban development revealed some of the major influences on the location of this development, especially in the context of Ontario. This research contributed to our understanding of the future risks of land conversion and identification of potential conflict areas between development and conservation plans in the study area. Lastly, examining the ecological impact of exurban development including associated roads, in terms of functions such as barrier effects and landscape connectivity, highlighted the importance of these seldom included anthropogenic disturbances in land and conservation planning. The contributions of this research to the existing body of knowledge are threefold. First, this dissertation reveals the limitations associated with existing methods used to map exurban development and presents a relatively easy, effective, automated and operational method to delineate exurban built areas at regional level using GIS and remote sensing. Second, the analyses conducted in this dissertation repeatedly highlights the importance of incorporating fine level details on exurban development in land and conservation planning as well as ecological impact assessments and presents methods and tools that can systematically and scientifically integrate this information in decision making framework. Third, this study conducted one of a kind, comprehensive and spatially explicit study on exurban development in Canada, where there is near absence of such research. With the rarely available exurban built footprint data delineated for the study area, this study not only identified the potential locating factors, future conversion risk, and conflict areas between development and conservation plans, but also quantified ecological impact in terms of landscape function, namely barrier effects and landscape connectivity, using a relatively novel circuit theoretic approach that can directly inform land and conservation decision planning process. | PhD | urban | 11 |
| Sibbald, Shannon L. | Martin, Douglas K. | Successful Priority Setting: A Conceptual Framework and an Evaluation Tool | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2008-11 | A growing demand for services and expensive innovative technologies is threatening the sustainability of healthcare systems worldwide. Decision makers in this environment struggle to set priorities appropriately, particularly because they lack consensus about which values should guide their decisions; this is because there is no agreement on best practices in priority setting. Decision makers (or ‘leaders’) who want to evaluate priority setting have little guidance to let them know if their efforts were successful t. While approaches exist that are grounded in different disciplines, there is no way to know whether these approaches lead to successful priority setting. The purpose of this thesis is to present a conceptual framework and an evaluation tool for successful priority setting. The conceptual framework is the result of the synthesis of three empirical studies into a framework of ten separate but interconnected elements germane to successful priority setting: stakeholder understanding, shifted priorities/reallocation of resources, decision making quality, stakeholder acceptance and satisfaction, positive externalities, stakeholder engagement, use of explicit process, information management, consideration of values and context, and revision or appeals mechanism. The elements specify both quantitative and qualitative dimensions of priority setting and relate to both process and outcome aspects. The evaluation tool is made up of three parts: a survey, interviews, and document analysis, and specifies both quantitative and qualitative dimensions and relates to both procedural and substantive dimensions of priority setting. The framework and the tool were piloted in a meso-level urban hospital. The pilot test confirmed the usability of the tool as well as face and content validity (i.e., the tool measured relevant features of success identified in the conceptual framework). The tool can be used by leaders to evaluate and improve priority setting. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Siciliano, Amy | Goonewardena, Kanishka | Policing Poverty: Race, Space and the Fear of Crime after the Year of the Gun (2005) in Suburban Toronto | Geography | 2010-11 | In 2005, firearm homicides in Toronto spiked to unprecedented levels, prompting mainstream media to label 2005 as the ‘Year of the Gun’. While the majority of those killed were young black men in Toronto’s impoverished post-war suburbs, the shooting death of a young white woman downtown reframed the problem of gun violence in popular and policy discourse from the perspective of those it least affected: the predominantly white middle-classes in the gentrified urban core. This dissertation attempts to situate dominant narratives of the problem of gun violence and policy responses to it as an event in a history of Toronto, especially with reference to transformations in urban space and governance. It argues that the Year of the Gun can be understood as a destabilizing moment in the city’s collective history that helped normalize ways of narrating and governing a growing socio-spatial divide between the city and the post-war suburbs. Through analyses of government proceedings, media discourse, social scientific research, participant observation, and key informant interviews it identifies how intersecting discourses, practices and representations framed racialized poverty and crime in ways that further solidified causal links between the two. It offers a history for these causal links, illustrating how race and space have long played a vital role in real and imagined divisions between the city and its suburbs. It explores the formation and administration of three policy approaches responding to the crisis: a municipal policy framework for social investment, a targeted policing strategy, and non-profit faith-based programs for young black men. It analyses how each defined social problems for government in ways that eclipsed broader processes generating social inequality in the city. The findings of this research suggest that dominant narratives and practices governing poverty and crime have prevented public discussions about the racialized architecture of neoliberal urbanism while enforcing one of suburban decline. They have prevented dialogue about the correlation between whiteness and wealth in the core, while enforcing causal relations between blackness, poverty and crime in the suburbs. And they have prevented critiques about the surveillance of the city’s young black men, while enforcing projections of these same men through the prism of masculinist culture. | PhD | governance, urban, inequality, equality, poverty | 5, 10, 11, 16 |
| Sikstrom, Laura | Wardlow, Holly | "He is almost a normal child": An Ethnography of Malawi's National Pediatric HIV Treatment Program | Anthropology | 2015-11 | My dissertation is an ethnographic exploration of what it means to raise a child with HIV in one of the poorest countries in the world. Throughout I follow a small number of children and their caregivers as they engage with a new Global Health Initiative (GHI) to provide free universal access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), or anti-AIDS treatment, for infected children at a government run hospital in rural Northern Malawi. To date very little is known about how the roll-out of pediatric ART in decentralized health settings is progressing. The few studies that exist tend to emaphasize access to medicines as the key barrier to treatment, which decontextualizes patients from their social milieu. My project focuses on the clinic-household nexus in order to better understand how historically emdedded social relations impact treatment pathways for young children living with HIV. Specifically, I trace how gendered norms within marriage, disease etiologies, the clinical encounter, land tenancy and migration affect diagnosis and long term treatment adherence. My findings indicate that access to and the long term benefits of ART for children are mediated along socioeconomic fault lines. Although ART is an essential component of any HIV/AIDS care and treatment programme, I argue thoughout that the distribution of medicines alone is ineffective in the absence of loving caregivers, good living conditions, sustainable food sources or a robust public health care system. My research contributes to academic debates about the mechanisms behind embodied inequalities and calls for a broadened scope beyond the individual patient in the development and implementation of HIV care and treatment services for children living with HIV. | Ph.D. | rural, gender, health, socioeconomic | 1, 3, 5, 11 |
| Simiyu, Kenneth Walumbe | Singer, Peter A. | Commercialization of Health Products from Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges and Opportunities | Medical Science | 2011-06 | Despite the global progress made in improving health of people and increasing the life expectancy, Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be plagued by many health problems. Commercialization of health products from Sub-Saharan Africa presents opportunities to solve some of these health problems as well as generate economic returns. This thesis explored science based health product commercialization in sub-Saharan Africa through three studies. The objective was to identify opportunities and challenges facing health product commercialization in Sub-Saharan Africa. A qualitative case study approach was used and data collected using interviews. The first study involved looking at science based health product commercialization at a national level. Rwanda was chosen for this study. Thirty eight key informants selected from various institutions that form the health innovation system in Rwanda were interviewed. The results of the study show that opportunities exist in Rwanda for health product commercialization mainly because of the strong political will to support health innovation. However the main challenge is that there are no linkages between the actors involved in health innovation in Rwanda. The second study looked at health innovation at the level of a research institution. The Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) was studied where eight key informants were interviewed. The results show that KEMRI faced many challenges in its attempt at health product development, including shifting markets, lack of infrastructure, inadequate financing, and weak human capital with respect to innovation. However, it overcame them through diversification, partnerships and changes in culture. The third study looked at health technologies that are being developed in sub-Saharan Africa but have stagnated in laboratories. Thirty nine key informants were interviewed. A total of 25 technologies were identified, the majority being traditional plant medicines; other technologies identified included diagnostic tests and medical devices. Many of these technologies require further validation. Other key challenges to commercialization of these technologies that were identified included a lack of innovative culture amoung scientists and policy makers and lack of proof of concept funds including venture capital. Overall, this thesis identified opportunities for science based health commercialization in Africa, and also provides recommendations on how to overcome major challenges. | PhD | health, infrastructure, innovation | 3, 9 |
| Simons, Frances Elinor | To, Teresa||Dell, Sharon D | The Timing of Modifiable Environmental Exposures during Childhood Affects the Age of Asthma Development | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2015-03 | Background: Childhood asthma is a multifactorial condition influenced by hereditary and modifiable environmental traits. Objective: I investigated longitudinal associations between childhood asthma development and three modifiable environmental exposures: maternal second-hand smoke exposure in pregnancy, neighborhood walkability, which captures community features that promote walking, and material deprivation, a comprehensive measure of socioeconomic status. Methods: In a population-based cohort of 5619 seven-year-old Toronto children, parents reported age of physician-diagnosed asthma development and maternal active and passive smoking in pregnancy. Administrative data housed at the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences described the 1997-2003 Toronto birth cohorts (326 383 children). Home neighborhood walkability and deprivation quintiles were reported in validated indices and incident asthma was defined by time of entry into the validated Ontario Asthma Surveillance Information System (OASIS) database. The associations between incident asthma and the exposures were measured using Cox proportional and discrete-time hazard survival analysis. The associations between asthma visits and walkability or deprivation in each year of life were measured using Generalized Estimating Equations and generalized linear mixed models. Results: In the population-based cohort, 15.5% of children developed asthma. Children of non-smoking mothers with home second-hand smoke exposure during pregnancy were more likely to develop asthma (HR 1.34; 95% CI, 1.01-1.76). In the administrative data cohort, OASIS asthma criteria were met for 21% of children. Low birth neighborhood walkability (HR 1.11; 95% CI, 1.08-1.14) and high birth neighborhood deprivation (HR 1.11; 95% CI, 1.09-1.13) were associated with increased risk of incident asthma. These trends persisted for currently-symptomatic incident asthma, lifetime exposure to low walkability or high deprivation and healthcare visits for asthma in each year of life. Conclusions: Home second-hand smoke exposure for non-smoking mothers during pregnancy is associated with incident childhood asthma. Children living in neighborhoods with low walkability or high deprivation are also at increased risk of asthma. | Ph.D. | environment, health | 3, 13 |
| Simonsen, Anna | Stinchcombe, John | The Evolutionary and Ecological Consequences of Partner Variation in the Mutualism between Legumes and Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-06 | A fundamental goal in ecology and evolutionary biology has been to understand how microevolutionary forces affect the origin and maintenance of mutualisms over ecological and evolutionary time scales. Mutualistic partners vary in the reciprocal benefits they provide, yet the role of partner variation on microevolutionary forces that impact the maintenance of mutualisms is unclear. Using the mutualism between legumes and nitrogen fixing symbionts, my dissertation investigated the ecological and evolutionary consequences of variation in partner quality. In the first experiment, I demonstrate how insect herbivory can change the costs and benefits of associating with exploiters, and that some degree of exploitation from non-beneficial rhizobia can reduce insect herbivory, thus removing the fitness advantage of associating purely with beneficial rhizobia. In the second study, I examine how rhizobia genotype modifies competition between hosts grown in kin and non-kin groups. I show that lower fitness in plant kin groups can simply be a by-product of genetic variance in plant size and non-linear relationships between plant size and fitness. I further show that the symbiotic community can change difference in fitness between kin and non-kin groups independent of these by-product effects. In my last chapter, I provide the first empirical evidence that an important mechanism for mutualism stability-- the ability for hosts to preferentially associate with beneficial rhizobia-- is genetically variable and can evolve in response to exploitation. I also show that host preference for beneficial rhizobia can be maintained in legume populations, even in the absence of exploitation. My dissertation provides insight into the potential evolutionary dynamics of stabilizing mechanisms by suggesting that the agents of selection that affect the level of host exploitation can come from biotic factors other than the exploiters themselves. My dissertation has also shown that inclusion of other ecological interactions, such as herbivory, can provide valuable perspective on fitness effects of symbionts on their hosts, and can even change our fundamental assumptions about the effects of exploitation on host fitness, which has formed the backbone of mutualism theory. | PhD | ecology | 15 |
| Sinclair, Deborah Ann | Aleggia, Ramona | A Living History (1973-1993): How the Experiences of Early Activists Shaped the Violence Against Women (VAW) Movement in Ontario: A Case Study | Social Work | 2019-06 | This dissertation shines a light on a group of women who helped to create a violence against women (VAW) movement that changed the course of history in Ontario, Canada for countless women, their families and their communities. This study centres the voices of activists, positioning them as knowledge producers with expertise and wisdom gleaned during five decades of work in the VAW movement in Ontario. A feminist analysis of the VAW movement begins from the standpoint of women. In particular, an intersectional feminist analysis begins from the standpoint of diverse women who embrace the tenets of critical feminist standpoint theory. This study draws on social movement theory (SMT) literature, particularly the scholarship of feminist SMT researchers, to examine the state of the VAW movement in Ontario, Canada. This dissertation is a story about a social movement, specifically the VAW movement in Ontario—a strand of the women’s liberation movement frequently referred to as the second wave, but also on the cusp of ushering in third wave feminism. I document the time period from 1973 to 1993—a period that spans the start of the era when all of the participants in this study began their activist work—until the time of their interviews, which took place between 2014 to 2018. In this dissertation, I challenge the notion that the VAW movement has been reduced to a VAW sector, merely creating and delivering services to select populations of women. This interpretation suggests that there is a loss or erosion of an expressed political commitment to uncovering and eliminating the root causes of VAW. Using a case study methodology, I argue that the VAW activists in this study have been persistently engaged in and committed to ending VAW, although their activism shifts and manifests in several forms throughout the life cycle of the movement. The findings of this dissertation research are intended to bring practical and useful implications that can enhance future strategies for change in the VAW movement, contribute to the knowledge base of social work, and infuse the VAW movement with renewed energy and critical vision. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Sinclair, Ruvashtre Cindy | Olson, Paul | Qualified, Yet Denied: Life Experiences of Immigrant Medical Doctors After Denial of Medical Recertification in Ontario | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2017-06 | Canada’s non-discriminatory immigration policy, advanced medical research, ongoing need for doctors, and promises of transitioning immigrant professionals to professional jobs, attract many doctors from developing and non-English-speaking countries. Medical doctors arrive in Canada in anticipation of a better life and to continue their medical careers. However, the majority end up in underemployed low-wage jobs outside of medicine. They risk termination of their lifelong professional identity and status after arrival in Canada. Despite passing the Canadian medical exams and meeting the requirements for re-licensure, immigrant medical doctors (IMDs) face systemic denial of access to the profession. Foreign credentials, culture, and language are identified as ongoing barriers that set IMDs apart. This study explores the professional, personal, and social impacts on the lives of IMDs who are qualified for medical recertification in Ontario, yet denied opportunities for a license to practice medicine. I briefly ¬trace the history of the medical profession for a better understanding of how the profession was established, organized and regulated. I seek to understand how IMDs of visible minority backgrounds are viewed within the existing structure of the profession. Using a qualitative research methodology, I interviewed 15 IMDs from countries in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South America, and the West Indies. Participants’ motivation for continuing to seek opportunities for medical recertification, after being denied, struggles and frustrations they face as desperate need for doctors continue to exist, are revealed in this study. I make recommendations for re-imagining and adapting IMDs’ foreign skills as a valuable contribution to the patient-care delivery in Ontario’s diverse population. I provide suggestions for change to resolve the prevailing IMD problem and including more IMDs in residency training and the medical workforce. Keywords: Immigrant doctors, IMDs/IMGs, Immigration, History of medicine, Medical recertification, CanMEDS, Anti-colonialism, Motivation, Governance, Social justice. | Ph.D. | governance | 16 |
| Singer, Abraham Andrew | Carens, Joseph||Heath, Joseph | The Form of the Firm: A Critical and Normative Theory of the Corporation | Political Science | 2016-06 | This dissertation explores the corporation from the perspective of normative political theory. As I argue, the corporation is not easily located within the theoretical matrix of liberal democracy. Because of this, a political theory of the corporation is required in order to evaluate whether our corporate institutions are consonant with the liberal democratic values we affirm. The first half of the dissertation explores the Chicago School’s political theory of the corporation. In this view corporations are taken to be the result of market-like individual voluntary initiatives, and therefore should be left alone for the sake of efficiency and liberty. The Chicago School argues for this, however, at the expense of coherence and sociological rigor. The better way to approach the corporation, I argue, is by seeing it as enabling what I call “norm-governed production.” On my account, firms overcome market inefficiencies by drawing on social and cooperative scripts that allow for cooperative activity that the market under-produces or does not produce at all. This analysis opens up an avenue for prescription and critique that does not deny the economic aspects of the corporation; if we admit that the efficiencies produced by the corporation entail normative scripts, and not merely voluntary contracts, then we can ask whether or not such scripts are compatible with our notions of fairness and justice. We can also ask whether changing scripts in the direction of fair or just relationships can be done without sacrificing too much in the way of corporate efficiency. In the second half of my dissertation I leverage this account of corporate efficiency into an alternative political theory of the corporation. I argue that our legal and political institutions ought to be restricted so as to protect corporations’ vulnerable parties and to encourage ownership patterns that empower those who make the most personal investments. I further argue that, from the perspective of business ethics, the corporation ought to be reconceived as an agent in maximizing efficiency while also being an agent for mitigating social injustice. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Singh, Devita | Zucker, Ken | A Follow-up Study of Boys with Gender Identity Disorder | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2012-11 | This study provided information on the long term psychosexual and psychiatric outcomes of 139 boys with gender identity disorder (GID). Standardized assessment data in childhood (mean age, 7.49 years; range, 3–12 years) and at follow-up (mean age, 20.58 years; range, 13–39 years) were used to evaluate gender identity and sexual orientation outcome. At follow-up, 17 participants (12.2%) were judged to have persistent gender dysphoria. Regarding sexual orientation, 82 (63.6%) participants were classified as bisexual/ homosexual in fantasy and 51 (47.2%) participants were classified as bisexual/homosexual in behavior. The remaining participants were classified as either heterosexual or asexual. With gender identity and sexual orientation combined, the most common long-term outcome was desistence of GID with a bisexual/homosexual sexual orientation followed by desistence of GID with a heterosexual sexual orientation. The rates of persistent gender dysphoria and bisexual/homosexual sexual orientation were substantially higher than the base rates in the general male population. Childhood assessment data were used to identify within-group predictors of variation in gender identity and sexual orientation outcome. Social class and severity of cross-gender behavior in childhood were significant predictors of gender identity outcome. Severity of childhood cross-gender behavior was a significant predictor of sexual orientation at follow-up. Regarding psychiatric functioning, the heterosexual desisters reported significantly less behavioral and psychiatric difficulties compared to the bisexual/homosexual persisters and, to a lesser extent, the bisexual/ homosexual desisters. Clinical and theoretical implications of these follow-up data are discussed. | PhD | gender | 5 |
| Singh, Herveen | Portelli, John P. | From Elusive Conceptions to Arrested Developments: Leadership for Social Justice | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-11 | The general question guiding this research is: how do equity minded administrators lead for social justice? The following specific questions are addressed in this study: How have participants become oriented to social justice? How do educational administrators conceptualize leadership for social justice? What are the barriers and supports that participants experienced in leading for social justice in diverse contexts? What are some (participant-identified) examples of how they lead for social justice? From a critical perspective this study examines the experiences of educational administrators leading for social justice. Vital to this examination are analyses of power relations and the locatedness of participants within those relations. At the core of these power relations are participant experiences of social justice as contingent on the interconnectedness between their lived realities and the “doing” of social justice as espoused by and evidenced in their approaches to leadership for social justice. For this study I have interviewed ten administrators from Southern Ontario, who self-identify as being committed to and leading for social justice and have been in formal positions of leadership for at least five years. Interviewees were able to identify and articulate the interconnected experiences of lived realities and their commitments to leadership for social justice; critical examples of social justice praxis; and facets of the educational systems which supported and, conversely, erected barriers to their leading for social justice. Conclusions, implications and recommendations can be broadly organized as issues related to systemic and structural processes, support and accountability for the hiring, retention and promotion of diverse school personnel who have evidenced commitments to social justice, the retraining and retooling of educators and leaders through curriculum centred on social justice, the dramatic restructuring of educational administrative thought by practitioners and researchers, and the critical inclusion of the community, students, parents and trustees in roles that substantively impact the decision making power within the educational system (from the overall governance of the educational system to everyday activities). | PhD | equitable, justice | 4, 16 |
| Singh, Rashmee Dadabhai | Valverde, Mariana | Grassroots Governance: Domestic Violence and Criminal Justice Partnerships in an Immigrant City | Criminology | 2012-11 | My dissertation is a critical ethnography of grassroots feminist agencies and immigrant organizations involved in the governance of gender violence in Toronto, Ontario. Along with examining the agencies operating on the outskirts of the law, I also observe the organizations that contract directly with the provincial government to counsel abusers prosecuted through the city’s specialized domestic violence courts. Drawing on the methodological and theoretical insights of socio-legal studies, postcolonial feminism, and governmentality scholarship, my research explores the governance of domestic violence through the community. Specifically, I examine how the voluntary sector performs the state’s work of prosecuting domestic violence, punishing offenders and building citizens. My research reveals the significant influence that community organizations exert on the prosecution of gender violence and in defining the conditions of punishment for offenders. Through court observation of Toronto’s domestic violence plea court, I show how grassroots administrative workers transform into hybrids of the prosecutor and defense within governance networks. In addition, based on interviews with service providers delivering counseling to offenders, I document how non-profit organizational habits add distinctive flavors to the administration of punishment, materializing in governing regimes that emphasize care in some contexts and discipline in others. Finally, I also explore the dual constructions of immigrant counselors as both the experts and the “others” to the nation with regards to gender violence. In contrast to assumptions of ignorance amongst the immigrant “other” in the liberal imaginary, my findings indicate that the notion of women’s empowerment is nothing new or unfamiliar within Toronto’s diasporic communities; several of the immigrant anti-violence experts involved in this research credit their politicization and training “back home” as foundational to their involvement in feminist and the anti-violence movement. These findings challenge liberal assumptions of the East as a space devoid of the cultural material of women’s empowerment, which form the backbone of Western performances of modernity. | PhD | gender, women, governance | 5, 16 |
| Singh, Samuel Chet | Walcott, Rinaldo | Changing the System from Within: Three Phases of Human Rights Policy Struggles in an Urban Community College | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-03 | This case study documents the work of this researcher and others to transform oppressive ideologies and practices in an urban community college through human rights policy development and implementation. Analysis of policy processes examines how contestations of equity discourses by various organizational stakeholders influenced organizational constructions of equity as ideology, policy and practice. Policy struggles over the three administrations are examined using a typology of equity discourses defined as assimilationist (status quo: resisting human rights/equity), managing diversity (organizational benefits: liability protection, commodifying equity/human rights) and transformative (structural/curricular change). In this particular case study, a human rights crisis during the 1990’s led to substantive policy change as human rights was framed as organizational change. These changes were resisted and recuperated by the next cadre of change agents and senior and middle managers and human rights were administered as rights based complaints management. However, the large complaints bureaucracy was unable to contain underlying systemic issues and complaints increased dramatically. Management responded with neoliberal influenced managing diversity/cultural competency training, proposed as a customer service model to train faculty and staff how to deal with the Other - ‘culturally diverse’ clients/students. This discourse of equity was challenged by this researcher (who was seconded to develop institution wide cultural competencies for faculty). This curriculum project was used to recoup some of the transformative elements of the policy and refocus institutional efforts towards system wide organizational change. This attempt at tempered radicalism was recouped by senior management and the competencies developed were contained in a single course during the next administrative turnover. This research builds on the survey studies of equity practitioners by Westerman (2008) and Agocs (2004) that examine how the positionality of institutional change agents influences opportunities to advance equity in institutions (in areas of complaints management and/or employment equity). It differs from previous studies in three ways: first I expand the definition of equity as the totality of all institutional functions including curriculum. Second, in addition to examining the scope and impact of these ‘expert’ roles, this study examines the influence of larger societal discourses of equity, the motivations of managers and other important stakeholders such as unions in shaping what constitutes equity work, how this is embraced and/or resisted by change agents and others in spite of ‘official’ policy. And third, it is a historical case study examination of one institution over a sustained period of time. The conclusions drawn from this institution’s policy struggles suggest that transformative equity initiatives can shift organizational cultures by changing the conversation about was constitutes equity work, however their effectiveness in bringing about structural change remains tenuous. Neocolonial societies are premised on relations of inequality, and dominant neoliberal discourses have imposed business models of managerial efficiency, standardization and profitability on public institutions which ensures that managers will continue to translate the demands of equity-seeking groups into bureaucratic procedures. | PhD | rights, institution, urban, inequality, employment, equality | 5, 8, 10, 11, 16 |
| Singhal, Sonica | Quiñonez, Carlos||Tenenbaum, Howard | The Role of Dental Treatment in Welfare-to-Work | Dentistry | 2015-11 | Background: Social assistance recipients in Canada receive limited dental care in order to meet health needs and to promote the move from welfare-to-work. Policy advocates argue for the expansion of such services for similar reasons. However, the hypothesis that dental care can improve the chances of employment has been rarely tested. This project was designed to provide policy makers better understanding about the relationship between dental treatment and employment outcomes among social assistance recipients of Ontario, Canada. Methods: First, we conducted a systematic review of the relevant existing literature. Then we designed a retrospective cohort study using large administrative data (total n = 8742) from five Ontario regions and from the province’s social assistance ministry. We also conducted an exploratory pilot study of a convenience sample of assistance recipients (n = 30) using a pre- and post-dental treatment survey. Results: Systematic review revealed minimal and weak evidence concerning the idea that dental services can improve employment outcomes. Our retrospective cohort study showed no significant difference in employment outcomes between treatment and no-treatment group (adjusted odds ratio = 0.93; 95% CI: 0.83-1.03). However, over the one year, people who received treatment (124% increase) had significantly better trajectory (p=0.0014) of leaving assistance as compared to their counterparts (83% increase). Our pilot study revealed that both oral health related quality of life (OHRQoL) and job-seeking self-efficacy (JSS) improved significantly after receiving dental care and there was a significant correlation between these two outcomes. Conclusion: Our research suggests that at one year, dental treatment does not appear to be significantly associated with leaving social assistance for employment. However, people who received dental treatment appeared to be particularly disadvantaged and dental treatment may have helped to level them up in terms of employment outcomes over time. Also, our results indicate that OHRQoL and JSS are correlated. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Sinichi, Sayeh | Diosady, Levente L | Production of Biodiesel from Yellow Mustard Compatible with Food Protein Production | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2016-11 | Mustard is produced in Canada in sufficient quantities that it can be used for both the food and fuel markets without having adverse agricultural effects. While mustard hulls are useful food ingredients, mustard seed oil is well-suited for use as a bio-fuel as it contains erucic acid, which is responsible for its high lubricity. Oil-seed extraction with IPA is an emerging alternative to hexane-based extraction due to its ability to eliminate the dangers associated with hexane processing while allowing recovery of high-quality protein products and vegetable oils. In this thesis, a novel rapid method for extracting oil from de-hulled yellow mustard flour using isopropyl alcohol (IPA) was developed. This method recovers the released oil in the form of a single-phase oil-IPA miscella. The extraction parameters that increase the oil yield without any loss or damage to the meal protein were ascertained followed by optimization of the direct ester formation from yellow mustard flour. The effect of process variables such as contact time, number of extraction stages, contact ratios, pH, temperature and water on extraction efficiency and miscella (IPA+oil) composition were examined. The results were used to develop parameters for an industrial process for oil extraction and increase the oil extraction yields. Multiple-stage extractions gave an oil yield of 94.7 % with a four stage extraction at a 2:1 IPA:flour (volume:weight) ratio at room temperature. At 45˚C, a 91.5 % oil yield was achieved with three stage extraction at a 2:1 IPA:flour (v:w) ratio. When compared with dry IPA, the oil yields determined from water-containing IPA extraction (13 % water) were lower by more than 40 %, the sugar content was nearly doubled, and the protein extraction did not change significantly in either single or multiple-stage extractions. Five rounds of recycling of IPA in the extraction process resulted in approximately a 1.4 % water increase in the recovered IPA, which is far below the water threshold determined to be 5% in this study. Therefore, the process and costs of dehydrating the IPA will not hinder the overall biodiesel production process or viability. The recovered miscella could be used in a direct ester conversion process to produce high-quality biodiesel. The IPA-extracted mustard oil had 3.53 ± 0.18 % and 2.61 ± 0.33 %, free fatty acid (FFA) and phospholipid contents respectively. The water content of the miscella was 2.13 ± 0.09 %, which was higher than the 0.3 % (w:w miscella) target for transesterification. Transesterification of the dehydrated miscella was performed using 1.2 % potassium hydroxide (w:w of the oil) as the base-catalyst at 72 ˚C for 2 hours and resulted in a relatively low isopropylester formation (29.33 ± 6.08 %). The addition of methanol to the miscella resulted in an oil conversion to ester of 86.96 ± 3.94 % at room temperature in 1hour. A phase separation technique was then developed in order to reduce the water and IPA content and the impurities of the miscella. The transesterification of the oil-rich phase separated from the miscella resulted in a 99 % ester. The recovery and recycling of IPA from the waste produced during the process was investigated in order to improve the efficiency and reduce the solvent cost of the overall system. A salting out method (using potassium carbonate) combined with azeotropic distillation, as well as pervaporation, was explored with the aim of recovering IPA during both the oil extraction and the transesterification process. Potassim carbonate was shown to be effective in modifying the liquid-liquid equilibrium of an IPA-water system in favour of IPA extraction from IPA-water mixtures. About 95 % and 96 % of the IPA (99% purity) was recovered from bulk solutions with 5 % and 13 % water contents, respectively, when using 20 % potassium carbonate (w:w). In azeotropic distillation, potassium carbonate was more effective in modifying the liquid-liquid equilibrium of an IPA-water system in favour of IPA extraction from the bulk solution (~99 % IPA extraction, ~94 % IPA content in the extract). IPA suitable for recycling into the oil extraction process ( | Ph.D. | industr, production, environment | 9, 12, 13 |
| Sirotich, Frank | Regehr, Cheryl | Putting Criminal Violence into Context: A Multi-level Analysis of the Correlates of Violence Severity among Early- and Late-start Mentally Disordered Offenders | Social Work | 2009-11 | The current research utilizes a multi-level analysis of historical, clinical, situational and neighbourhood factors to predict violence severity among persons with major mental illness. In addition, it draws on the typologies of offenders proposed by Moffitt (1993) and Hodgins and Janson (2002) to explore whether different predictors of violence severity exist for early-start, persistent offenders and late-start offenders. Finally, it compares early-start and late-start offenders with major mental illness to determine if differences exist in their criminal history, clinical presentation, motive for violence, crime-scene behaviours and neighbourhood backgrounds. A retrospective chart review of a mental health court support program in Toronto, Canada is utilized to explore the correlates of violence severity. Clinical charts and supplemental arrest records are content analyzed to extract data on arrestee/offender characteristics and on crime scene behaviours and tract-level data from the 2001 Canada Census is used to identify structural features of the neighbourhood environment of arrestees/offenders at the time of their arrest. Violence severity is measured using the Cormier-Lang System of Quantifying Criminal History (Quinsey, Harris, Rice, & Cormier, 1998). In total 1806 charts were reviewed and 245 subjects were subsequently included within the analyses. Using a variety of analytic techniques, the following results were obtained: 1) offense characteristics such as victim gender, victim-offender relationship, instrumental motive, and use of a weapon were the most robust predictors of violence severity while clinical factors such as diagnosis and comorbid clinical conditions were marginally significant predictors and historical factors such as previous violence and early-start offending were not significant predictors of violence severity; 2) context-specific measures accounted for more of the explained variation in violence severity than did individual-specific measures; 3) early-start and late-start offenders did differ with respect to history of violence, presence of a comorbid clinical condition such as a personality disorder or substance abuse and current life circumstances. Implications for theory refinement, clinical practice and program development are discussed and future avenues of research are considered. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Sit, Victoria | Stermac, Lana | The Development and Psychometric Evaluation of the Sexual Assault Help-seeking Barriers Scale | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-11 | Recent research indicates that rape and sexual assault continue to be among the most underreported crimes and that post-assault service use rates remain low. While a large body of research has sought to understand factors that deter help-seeking, existing measures used to assess barriers to help-seeking among sexual assault survivors have not been psychometrically validated. Moreover, many measures do not include barriers that are relevant to seeking assistance from a range of service providers, or relevant to survivors from ethnic minority and low-income backgrounds. The goal of this research project was to develop and evaluate the psychometric properties of the Sexual Assault Help-seeking Barriers Scale (SAHBS), a theoretically grounded and empirically based measure of barriers to help-seeking for sexual assault. Two studies were undertaken based on independent samples of adult women recruited from the Greater Toronto Area and online community (n = 206 and n = 320). Results of Study 1 revealed a 6-factor solution with the following factors: Stigma of Sexual Assault, Negative Attitudes towards Help-seeking, Distrust of Support Providers, Accessibility Issues, Minimization of Sexual Assault, and Lack of Support. Support was found for internal consistency and one-week test-retest reliability. Tests of known-groups construct validity, convergent validity, and concurrent validity provided preliminary evidence for validity of the measure. The SAHBS can be routinely used in future studies of help-seeking among sexual assault survivors, contribute to the identification of barriers faced by diverse groups of survivors seeking assistance from a range of support providers, and inform the development of interventions that can encourage help-seeking. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Sivarajah, Sivajanani | Thomas, Sean C.||Smith, Sandy M. | Shade Trees in Schoolyards: their Role in Protection from Ultraviolet Rradiation and Improving Childhood Learning | Forestry | 2020-06 | Urban trees are widely recognized to improve the physical environment for humans, but little work has been done to quantify differences among tree species in their ability to mitigate ultraviolet radiation, or on tree effects on learning in the context of primary education. My research examines the environmental services of schoolyard shade trees, and specifically evaluates the potential for different tree species to attenuate UV radiation reaching the ground and to provide psychological benefits as indicated by standardized test score performance. My thesis examines three different approaches to address specific questions that add to our understanding of both mechanisms and net effects, namely: (1) the analysis of leaf optical and morphological traits and their impact on the transmittance and reflectance of UV radiation, particularly UV-B and UV-C radiation of most concern from a human health perspective; (2) the determination of typical UV radiation levels beneath different urban tree species in schoolyards and public parks across Toronto, Ontario; and (3) the assessment of tree canopy cover, diversity, and species composition on the academic performance of primary-school-age children. I found both estimated leaf-level UV reflectance and transmittance were substantially higher than prior published estimates. UV reflectance ranged from 20.06-49.69% (UV-A), 30.13-62.68% (UV-B), and 37.18-73.29% (UV-C), and UV transmittance ranged from 0.33-10.14% (UV-A), 0.44-13.13% (UV-B), and 1.61-29.73% (UV-C) among sampled leaves. When analyzed at the canopy-level, UV protection factor (PF) varied significantly among species, ranging from ~1.3-3.4. Additionally, I found crown transparency (%), crown radius/height of live crown (m), and shade tolerance were important as predictors of UV protection factors. Lastly, tree cover is a significant positive predictor of children’s academic performance, and the effects of tree cover and species composition were most apparent in schools that showed the highest level of external challenges to excel in academic settings. More broadly, this dissertation examines the potential for shade trees in typical urban settings to provide both physical and mental health benefits to children through the attenuation of UV radiation and enhanced educational performance. | Ph.D. | educat, urban, environment, forest | 4, 11, 13, 15 |
| Sivasubramaniam, Malini | Mundy, Karen | Household Educational Decision-making in Low-fee Private Primary Schools in Kenya: An Exploratory Mixed Methods Study | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | Despite the pronouncement of Free Primary Education (FPE) made by the Government of Kenya in 2003, not all households have equally benefitted from its implementation. Children from many poor households, particularly in urban informal settlements, continue to attend fee-charging private schools which have continued to grow exponentially and to figure prominently on Kenya's educational landscape. To address this conundrum as to why poor Kenyan households are using low-fee private schools (LFP) when there is free primary education in the public schools, I apply notions of social capital and habitus to examine household decision-making pathways. Specifically, I ask which households are using low-fee schools, why, and how do these households navigate and negotiate this emerging educational market.In this study I problematize choice processes as a complex interaction between macro-level institutional policy frameworks, meso-level organizational practices, and micro-level decisions. This mixed methods multilevel study was based on a survey of 209 households from one village in Kibera, and involved five target schools, one public and four low-fee schools. Qualitative in-depth interviews at the state level with Ministry of Education officials, donors, and civil society organizations, as well as school level interviews with school proprietors, teachers, pupils and school management committee (SMC) members, and household level interviews with a smaller set of 21 parents were used to triangulate and to complement findings from the household survey. Overall the study found that decision-making for the economically disadvantaged households in this study was differentiated by the social, cultural, and economic capital they own. As households navigate between public and LFP schools, the results suggest that choice is not equitable as not all households are able to fully exercise their right to choose nor, do they have agency. In many cases households are pushed into a decision. Based on these findings, I propose a categorization of households based on their decision-making pathways into two groups: default decision-makers and strategic decision-makers. The analysis also shows that households rely on social networks, and ethnicity considerations in making school decisions. These decisions however, appear to be reinforcing existing boundaries of social class, and exacerbating stratification in the schools. | Ph.D. | equitable, urban, educat | 4, 11 |
| Slavin, Philip | Goering, Joseph | Feeding the Brethren: Grain Provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory, c. 1280-1370 | Medieval Studies | 2008-11 | The present dissertation attempts to follow and analyze each and every individual stage of food provisioning of a late medieval monastic community. Chapter One is an introductory survey, describing the topic, its status quaestionis, problems and methodology. Chapter Two establishes the geography of crops in the rural hinterland of Norwich, with each manor specializing in different crop. A close analysis of the crop geography partially supports the Von Thünen thesis. Chapter Three looks at the agricultural trends of the demesnes. Roughly speaking, the period between c. 1290 and 1370 was a history of wheat’s expansion at the expense of rye, on the one hand, and legume shrinkage at the expense of grazing land. Chapter Four discusses annual grain acquisition, its components and disposal. It shows that about eighty per cent of the total supply derived from harvest, while the remainder came in form of tithes, grants and purchases. Chapter Five deals with the human and equine interaction. The bovine population was certainly dominant, but the draught horses easily outnumbered the oxen. Each year,the Priory authorities saved a great deal of money, because of (virtually) free customary carting service. Chapter Six explores the space for storing and processing of the annual grain supply. The five adjacent buildings, namely the Great Granary, brewery, bakery, mill and staples, allowed most effective cooperation between dozens of Priory labourers working in victual departments, on the one hand, and decreased transportation costs. Chapter Seven attempts to establish the relation between the Priory population, its annual grain supply and demand. Conversion of the grain into approximate calorific and financial equivalent reveals that the supply must have exceeded the demand. Chapter Eight is deals with the actual consumption of the grain supply. As far as Norwich monks are concerned, their annual bread and ale supply has certainly exceeded their normal requirements and there is no hint about selling the surplus. Joining the bread and ale accounts with those of the cellar, we arrive at astonishing calorific figures. Chapter Nine discusses the charity activities of Norwich Priory, particularly connected to the distribution of bread and ale among the needy. There were three distinctive groups: hermits, prisoners and paupers. According to almoner’s accounts, the Priory allocated generous sums of loaves and ale to the paupers. | PhD | food, rural | 2, 11 |
| Sloos, Renee | Gagliardi, Anna R | Integration of Services in Child and Youth Mental Health: A Case Study | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-11 | Background: Although approximately one in five children and youth in Canada deal with mental health issues, only a third access specialized care. Difficulties accessing and navigating the health care system are commonly reported. Integration holds promise as a mechanism to address care access and system navigation issues. Objectives: This dissertation aims to explore integration in child and youth mental health care by: identifying components of integration that improve outcomes for children and youth; describing how mental health services for children and youth are integrated and identifying factors that influence integration in Ontario, Canada; and refining an integration framework that can function as a guide for integration in child and youth mental health care settings. Methods: A multi-methods framework was utilized. A scoping review methodology was used to examine the international literature to identify components of integration. A case study methodology was used to examine integration in child and youth mental health care settings in Ontario, Canada. The case study included interviews with 33 key informants from the child and youth services, education and health sectors as well as a review of relevant government documents. A comparative mapping methodology was used to assess congruence of an integration framework with the international literature and the case study results. Results: Several common structural, infrastructure, and operational components were reported in the integration literature. While many of these components aligned with shared mental models (SSMs) of integration, SMMs were not commonly acknowledged in the literature. Additionally, the language describing integration in the child and youth literature differs from the health care literature. Numerous facilitators and barriers influence the integration of child and youth mental health care in Ontario, however two critical features: the absence of guidance in government policies and poor system-level planning are of importance as they demonstrate the lack of a system level shared mental model of integration. Conclusions: The absence of consistent system-level planning and inadequate guidance from policy documents are obstacles that need to be addressed to optimize integration planning and implementation. Addressing these issues may also influence the development of a system level SMM of integration. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Smith-Carrier, Tracy A. | Neysmith, Sheila | Challenging the Dominant Discourse of ‘Welfare Dependency’: A Multi-episode Survival Analysis of Ontario Works Spells | Social Work | 2011-06 | This dissertation examines the dominant discourse of welfare dependency and its implications for lone mothers in Ontario, Canada. This hegemonic discourse has been instrumental in positioning lone mothers as deviant, pathologically flawed and ineffective citizens. Using a repeated survival analysis, I examine the spells of participants identifying the significant variables influencing social assistance exit rates. Social constructionism and critical feminism are the theoretical lenses underpinning the analysis. The quantitative study examines the current composition of the Ontario Works caseload, interrogates the legitimacy of the welfare dependency supposition, debunks numerous social constructions surrounding welfare receipt and highlights the barriers impeding participants. The study culminates with a new understanding to counter the welfare dependency paradigm, recognizing the overlooked provisioning work of women in the neoliberal post welfare state. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Smith, Brendan Tyler | Mustard, Cameron A||Smith, Peter M | Socioeconomic Position, Modifiable Risk Factors and Coronary Heart Disease Incidence in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-11 | Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in Canada. Socioeconomic position (SEP; typically measured as education, occupation and/or income) is an important CHD risk factor, in addition to conventional risk factors (e.g. smoking, poor nutrition, physical inactivity, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes or cholesterol). Evidence to inform which population health interventions will optimally reduce both the population level and social inequalities in CHD is urgently needed in Canada. The overall goal of this dissertation was to explore the relationship between SEP, modifiable risk factors and CHD incidence. The dissertation consists of four related manuscripts, each making a contribution to this area of research. The first manuscript assessed the potential use of mathematical simulation models to evaluate the impacts of population health interventions on social inequalities in CHD. This review served as a conceptual framework for this dissertation, highlighting a number of gaps in research evidence further explored in dissertation chapters. The second manuscript undertakes a causal mediation analysis to examine the direct and indirect pathways linking SEP and incident heart disease in a Canadian population-based cohort study. By assessing individual mediation pathways through modifiable CHD risk factors, the goal of this manuscript was to highlight potential targets for population health interventions that will result in the greatest reduction in social inequalities in CHD. In the third manuscript the ability of the Framingham CHD Risk Score prediction algorithm to predict future CHD incidence across SEP groups was assessed. The results from this study tested an important methodological assumption regarding the risk prediction tool used in the Population Health Model for Cardiovascular Disease (POHEM:CVD), to enable accurate simulation of CHD incidence by SEP group. Finally, the fourth manuscript assessed the validity of socioeconomic trends in modifiable CHD risk factors in Canada from 2001 to 2021 using POHEM:CVD. Combined, this body of work provides evidence regarding the potential benefit of targeting modifiable CHD risk factors on reducing population and social inequalities in CHD in Canada. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, health | 1, 3 |
| Smith, Carrie Jean | Mishna, Faye||Fluke, John D. | Organizational structure and child welfare decisions: The influence of role specialization and service integration | Social Work | 2017-06 | The objective of this dissertation was to contribute to the understanding of child welfare organizations by testing the hypothesis that the characteristics of organizations influence decisions made by child protection staff for vulnerable children. Two aspects of organizational structure were examined: 1) role specialization, or the division of tasks to accomplish the mandate of the organization; and 2) service integration, or whether child welfare organizations and other services such as childrenâ s mental health are integrated. Other organizational factors proposed by the theoretical and empirical literature as salient to understanding child welfare decisions were included in the analyses (e.g., the location of the organization, service availability, etc.). The dissertation tests a theoretical framework that integrated the Decision-Making Ecology Framework (Baumann, Dalgleish, Fluke, Kern, 2011) and Yoo, Brooks, and Pattiâ s (2007) conceptual framework of organizational constructs as predictors of service effectiveness. Three decisions along the child protective services Decision-Making Continuum (Fluke, Baumann, Dalgleish, Kern, 2014) were examined: service referrals, provision of ongoing services, and placement in out-of-home care. Secondary data analysis of the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect 2013 (OIS-2013) was conducted. A subsample of 4,949 investigations from 16 agencies was included in the multi-level models. The results confirm the importance of clinical factors to child welfare decisions. Organizational factors also influence decisions; specifically, investigations conducted at agencies with a specialist structure were less likely to include a service referral. Although structure did not influence the ongoing service decision, urban agencies were less likely than rural agencies to keep a case open following an investigation. Structure had no effect on the decision to place a child in out-of-home care, and there was no variance at the organizational level. The utility of the theoretical framework was demonstrated and should be applied to future studies. This dissertation contributes to the limited empirical evidence regarding the association between organizational structure and decisions. | Ph.D. | health, urban, rural | 3, 11 |
| Smith, Christopher Gary | Walcott, Rinaldo | Apprehending Black Queer Diasporas: A Study of Black Pride Festivals and Their Emplacements | Social Justice Education | 2020-06 | “Apprehending Black Queer Diasporas is a historical consideration of Black Pride festivals. Emerging as an alternative to “mainstream” Pride parades, Black Pride has its origins in grass-roots community organizing by Black LGBT+ populations in response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in major US metropolitan cities in the early 1990s. As both a celebration of Black LGBT+ life and a space for political organizing, the model of Black Pride would be adopted throughout the United States, and internationally in London, U.K., and South Africa. Examined through a “black queer diasporic analytic” this dissertation traces the movement of this festival to assess how it was enabled through diasporic affinities among Black LGBT+ populations, globally. Utilizing a transnational comparative approach this study was conducted in three global cities; Toronto, Los Angeles, and London, U.K. Through key informant interviews with the founders of the Black Pride festivals selected, this dissertation offers a cultural history of the festival to capture the political contexts that prompted their emergence. Methodologically, I supplement the ethnographic component with archival research conducted in select LGBT archives to assess what the major political priorities were that served as the impetus for Black Pride festivals. Moving between ethnography, cultural history and social and cultural geography I discuss the historical origins of the festivals, in tandem with the spatial politics that are engendered when Black LGBT+ communities assert and cultivate communal space. Through a “black queer diasporic analytic” this project traces the transnational circuits of cultural exchange among Black LGBT+ communities that enabled Black Pride to become a global movement. | Ph.D. | gender, queer | 5 |
| Smith, David | Jennings, Eric | 'French like the others': Colonial Migrants in Wartime France, 1939-1947 | History | 2013-06 | This dissertation explores the largely unknown history of how migrants from across the colonial empire experienced the Second World War in France. By the 1930s France possessed the second-largest colonial empire in the world. Although people from across the French empire had resided in the métropole during the interwar period, the declaration of war against Nazi Germany in September 1939 necessitated the recruitment of thousands more French colonial subjects to serve as workers for the war effort. There were perhaps 100,000 from across the French empire living in France at the start of the war, and this number swelled to more than 140,000 by June 1940. While historians have recently begun to uncover the history of migration between France and its colonies, this is the first study to comparatively examine the heterogeneous mix of Southeast Asians and North Africans living on metropolitan soil. Placing colonial migration in a comparative framework reveals the extent to which racial perceptions and hierarchies within French colonial thought impacted the existence of people of color in France. I have deliberately eschewed previous ways of examining how colonialism affected French society, which tend to favor representation or exoticism, and instead constructed a social history of race and immigration geared around daily life. Utilizing over twenty public and private archival collections, this dissertation is focused on quotidian interactions between colonial workers, French men and women, employers, and officials from the French state. This reveals the dynamic between local and national issues in shaping the experience of colonial migrants in France; gives insight into how access to food, employment and social welfare was determined by colonial status; and the extent to which fears over policing, health, and non-white migration animated exclusionary policies. This dissertation argues that France should be viewed as a colonial and metropolitan space where migrants from across the empire met forms of colonial knowledge, power, and discipline. Focusing on the inherent tension between France and its empire, rather than constructing an intellectual framework that subsumes France and empire together, reveals the true impact of colonialism on metropolitan society. My focus on the 1930s and 1940s, which crosses the Third Republic, Vichy and Liberation eras, demonstrates the treatment of colonial migrants was not just about specific political regimes but firmly rooted in entrenched racial stereotypes of North Africans and Vietnamese that persist in France today. | PhD | food, health, employment | 2, 3, 2008 |
| Smith, Kristin | Dehli, Kari | Activist Social Workers in Neoliberal Times: Who are We Becoming Now? | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2011-06 | My thesis explores the knowledge, subjectivities and work performances that activist social workers bring to their practice in Ontario, Canada during a period of workplace restructuring that includes cuts to services, work intensification, increased surveillance and the evolving discourses of neoliberalism. A key aspect of my dissertation is the exploration of tensions between the attachments, desires and aspirations of the activist social work self and what that self must do every day to get by. I am interested in how it is that social workers produce and maintain their sense of identities – their integrity, ethics and responsibilities as activists – while also managing to navigate the contradictions of restructured workplaces. My aim is to understand not how power in the form of restructuring policies is imposed on people, but rather, how power acts through subjects who find themselves both implicated in, and struggling to resist neoliberal restructuring. My research lens draws on Michel Foucault’s ideas about governmentality and on feminist poststructural, critical race, and postcolonial theories. I use these theories to see neoliberal strategies of rule as working in diffuse ways through social and health service workplaces, encouraging service providers to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for particular performances that enact specific types of change. My research findings reveal that activist social workers respond to neoliberal strategies of rule in multiple ways while constituting themselves through a variety of competing discourses that exist in their lives. Social workers subjectivities appear to be produced through a range of discourses drawn from their family histories, unique biographies and the intersections of socially produced distinctions that are based on gender, race, class, sexuality, age and nationalism. My dissertation traces some of the many ways that social workers position themselves within and beyond the changing context of neoliberalism. In doing so, my research reveals tentative pathways for building critical resistance practices and suggests future social welfare measures that are based on social justice and equity. | PhD | justice, worker | 8, 16 |
| Smith, Maxwell James Adamson | Upshur, Ross EG | Public Health as Social Justice? A Qualitative Study of Public Health Policy-makers' Perspectives | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-11 | Background: ‘Social justice’ is routinely identified as a core value for the field of public health. Yet, outside of the theoretical literature it is seldom accompanied by a robust definition or an explanation of what it requires for policy and practice. If social justice is intended to be, or ought to be, a core value in public health, its meaning and normative requirements must be understood and articulated in a way that is applicable to, and practicable for, public health policy and practice. This study takes a first step in responding to this charge by (1) exploring public health policy-makers’ perspectives on the meaning and role of social justice in their practice, (2) examining the extent to which distinct perspectives on social justice exist in different programmatic areas of public health (chronic disease prevention and public health emergency preparedness and response), and (3) analyzing these perspectives in light of existing normative social justice theory. Methods: This study involved qualitative, semi-structured interviews with public health policy-makers purposively recruited from municipal, provincial, and federal public health organizations in Canada. Twenty interviews were conducted, analyzed via thematic analysis, and subsequently interpreted in light of, and situated within the context of, normative social justice theory. Findings: Two overarching themes emerged from the interviews, in addition to three unique themes from interviews with participants involved in chronic disease prevention and three themes from those involved in public health emergency preparedness and response. Social justice was not uniformly interpreted among study participants, and the meanings and roles attributed to social justice appeared to be influenced, in part, by the perceived goals and contextual features that belong to the programmatic area of public health in which they practiced. Conclusions: The findings of this study provide an understanding of how the meaning and role of social justice is interpreted by public health policy-makers. They point to key areas in normative social justice theory where further attention ought to be directed, as well as key areas in the public health policy and practice context where normative social justice theory could enhance and refine the value’s practical interpretation and role. | Ph.D. | health, justice | 3, 16 |
| Smith, Romney David | Meyerson, Mark | Across an Open Sea. Mediterranean Networks and Italian Trade in an Era of Calamity | Medieval Studies | 2016-11 | In the eleventh century, commercial dominance of the Mediterranean passed from the Muslim and Jewish traders of the House of Islam to the Italians of such maritime cities as Pisa or Amalfi. Although the outcome of this economic transition is well-known, the purpose of this study is to consider the mechanisms that motored Italian takeover. An examination of the characteristics of the trade network, both before and after the economic transition, finds that little structural change occurred; it is therefore argued that Italian merchants operated in conformity with the commercial paradigms of the existing Muslim and Jewish trade network, which are known to us from the Cairo Geniza. It was only the coincidence of major political failure in the large Mediterranean polities that enabled a realignment of Italian merchants from participants to dominant players in the existing trade network. This political failure, which I term “the great calamity,” saw the end of the Caliphate of Cordoba and left both Byzantium and the Fatimid Caliphate much reduced, a situation which rebounded to the advantage of smaller polities. Among them, the city of Pisa serves as a test case for this study’s assertions about Italian integration into the Mediterranean network of Muslim and Jewish traders Following the emphasis of the “New Mediterranean Studies” on interconnectivity, a key conclusion is that the spaces defined by trade, such as the decks of ships shared between Jewish, Muslim and Christian merchants, provided an almost neutral medium for the exchange not only of commodities, but also their conceptual, material or stylistic commensals. The final chapters of this thesis concentrate on the social mechanisms that propelled merchants, material culture and knowledge across the Mediterranean. They look at the shared visual culture that permeated the Mediterranean and its concomitant lexicon of shared symbols and motifs. This common visual culture includes architecture, the famous bacini of Pisa, and the broad category of spices, incense and materia medica. This last group, it is suggested, marked an expanding locus of practices shared across both the Christian and Muslim shores of the Mediterranean. | Ph.D. | trade | 10 |
| Snell, Rebecca | Cowling, Sharon A. | Simulating Vegetation Migration in Response to Climate Change in a Dynamic Vegetation-climate Model | Forestry | 2013-03 | A central issue in climate change research is to identify what species will be most affected by variations in temperature, precipitation or CO2 and via which underlying mechanisms. Dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) have been used to address questions of habitat shifts, extinctions and changes in carbon and nutrient cycling. However, DGVMs have been criticized for assuming full migration and using the most generic of plant functional types (PFTs) to describe vegetation cover. My doctoral research addresses both of these concerns. In the first study, I added two new tropical PFTs to an existing regional model (LPJ-GUESS) to improve vegetation representation in Central America. Although there was an improvement in the representation of some biomes such as the pine-oak forests, LPJ-GUESS was still unable to capture the distribution of arid ecosystems. The model representations of fire, soil, and processes unique to desert vegetation are discussed as possible explanations. The remaining three chapters deal with the assumption of full migration, where plants can arrive at any location regardless of distance or physical barriers. Using LPJ-GUESS, I imposed migration limitations by using fat-tailed seed dispersal kernels. I used three temperate tree species with different life history strategies to test the new dispersal functionality. Simulated migration rates for Acer rubrum (141 m year-1) and Pinus rigida (76 m year-1) correspond well to pollen and genetic reconstructed rates. However, migration rates for Tsuga canadensis (85 m year-1) were considerably slower than historical rates. A sensitivity analysis showed that maturation age is the most important parameter for determining rates of spread, but it is the dispersal kernel which determines if there is any long distance dispersal or not. The final study demonstrates how northerly refugia populations could have impacted landscape recolonization following the retreat of the last glacier. Using three species with known refugia (Acer rubrum, Fagus grandifolia, Picea glauca), colonization rates were faster with a northerly refugia population present. The number of refugia locations also had a positive effect on landscape recolonization rates, which was most pronounced when populations were separated. The results from this thesis illustrate the improvements made in vegetation-climate models, giving us increasing confidence in the quality of future climate change predictions. | PhD | climate, forest | 13, 15 |
| Sniekers, Daphne | Carter, Michael W. | A Generic Simulation-based Perioperative Decision Support Tool for Tactical Decision | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2013-06 | In Canada and around the world, there has been an increased focus on the efficiency, cost and access to health care services. One area of particular focus is surgical procedures, often with government funding and policies focused on reducing wait times through pay for performance and volume target initiatives. In Ontario, an expert panel was assembled to evaluate the current state of surgical processes and provide recommendations to improve access, efficiency and quality. This thesis addresses the panel's recommendation for a simulation-based decision tool to help hospitals inform decisions that can lead to improved access and efficiency. A generalised, simulation based perioperative decision tool is presented that can be used to test a variety of tactical decisions. The generic model has been applied to six hospitals of varying sizes, ranging from large academic centres to small rural community hospitals. The model remains in use at some of the hospitals to regularly inform decisions. The model is also being applied to additional hospital sites. During application of the generic model, challenges in design decisions and validation were encountered. As a result, a series of principles are proposed to guide future generic modelling design and achieving user acceptance. These principles add to the generic simulation modelling and healthcare modelling research fields by laying some groundwork for a formalised approach to designing effective generic simulation models and achieving confidence in results. Finally, the research demonstrates two uses of the generic model: as decision tool and as a demonstrative tool. As a decision tool the model is used to compare numerous potential tactical decision options under consideration. As a demonstrative tool, the model is used to quantify the effect of poor practices on hospital performance. The design of the generic model only considers efficient processes and best practices. When model results are compared to historical performance, decision makers are able to quantify the effect of existing poor practices on their performance and decision making. The tool enables users to base their tactical level decisions on the assumption that good practices and procedures are followed. | PhD | rural, health | 3, 11 |
| Snyder, Marcie Rachel | Wilson, Kathi | Aboriginal Peoples' Mobility and Health in Urban Canada: Traversing Ideological and Geographical Boundaries | Geography | 2013-11 | In recent decades, the Aboriginal population in Canada has become increasingly urbanized. Urbanization has been accompanied by high rates of mobility between reserve/rural and urban areas, as well as within cities. While research has documented Aboriginal peoples’ mobility rates, little attention has been given to mobility experiences, and an understanding of the socio-political and historic context in which mobility is set remains underdeveloped. Furthermore, little is known about the impact of mobility on movers’ holistic health (i.e., physical, mental, emotional, spiritual), and while research has suggested that mobility may impact access to urban social and health services, little is known in this area. The objectives of this dissertation are therefore to examine: the broader motivations that shape mobility, the link between mobility and health as well as service use, and to produce a more comprehensive understanding of the relationship between service providers and movers. These objectives are addressed using multiple methods. Quantitative analyses of the 2006 Aboriginal Peoples Survey identified mobility as a significant correlate of conventional (physician/nurse) and traditional (traditional healer) health care use. In order to explore nuanced links between mobility, health, and urban service delivery, a collaborative, community-based research relationship was established with an urban Aboriginal-led organization and 46 in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with Aboriginal service providers, non-Aboriginal service providers, and urban Aboriginal movers in the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. These research findings reveal the importance of service delivery that actively supports urban Aboriginal movers, and demonstrates the relationship between mobility and holistic health as well as service access in urban areas. Furthermore, current scales of service delivery are found to be insufficient for meeting the needs of mobile urban Aboriginal populations. Despite these findings, urban Aboriginal movers are maintaining important networks of support between their points of origin and destination, and are creating new spaces of engagement within cities. | PhD | urban, cities, rural | 11 |
| Sobol, Magdalena Kingda | Finkelstein, Sarah A | Impacts of Late Quaternary Climate Changes on the Southern African Savanna Biome | Earth Sciences | 2019-06 | Understanding the role of climate in driving vegetation change over recent geological time provides critical information for predicting future changes. Pollen analysis can be used to track past vegetation change, and to reconstruct Late Quaternary paleoenvironments. Pollen assemblages can assist in understanding biome responses to climate change if there is reasonable probability that they represent specific biomes. To test if biomes can be statistically described in terms of pollen assemblages, supervised machine learning methods are used to classify modern African biomes using modern pollen data. The Random Forest classifier is identified as the best method for classifying biomes using high dimensional pollen data with the ability to predict African biomes (arid, montane, tropical and subtropical closed and open systems, e.g. forests and savanna/grassland) to a high degree of accuracy and precision. The Random Forest classification model is then regionally developed for Southern Africa to investigate past savanna-grassland dynamics. An expanded modern pollen dataset for Southern Africa was compiled, and linked with contemporary biomes to build regional classification models. After validation, the models are applied to a fossil pollen record for probabilistic reconstructions of past biomes. The results show that savanna likely dominated this region for most part of the past 60,000 years. However, the glacial-interglacial transition (10,000-11,900 years ago) shows increased likelihood of grassland and rapid shifts in biome positions, offering a more complex and nuanced view of past savanna vegetation dynamics. Lastly, a late Holocene record is examined to understand more iirecent changes in savanna biome in semi-arid Southern Africa. A gradual development of relatively wetter local conditions beginning with the Northgrippian-Meghalayan transition (ca. 4.5-4 ka) is evidenced by multiple proxy records obtained from a paleomarsh context. The wet phase lasts ca. 2000 years and is characterized by increased organic matter content, dominance of taxa indicative of marshy conditions, presence of freshwater fungi, and isotopic composition of soil organic matter consistent with the presence of woody vegetation. This record provides evidence for wet conditions starting around 4.2 ka cal BP that is consistent with other regional and global records. | Ph.D. | water, climate, environment, forest | 6, 13, 15 |
| Soczynska, Joanna K. | Kennedy, Sidney K||McIntyre, Roger S | Exploring the Role of Inflammatory Cytokines in the Pathophysiology, Cognitive Dysfunction and Treatment of Bipolar Disorder: Integrative Evidence Provided by a Proof-of-Concept Study with Adjunctive Minocycline | Medical Science | 2016-11 | Background: Bipolar disorder (BD) is associated with increased levels of inflammatory cytokines, which may contribute to cognitive dysfunction. Anti-inflammatory intervention with minocycline is hypothesized to exert antidepressant and pro-cognitive effects in BD. The aims of the investigations were: 1) to identify inflammatory cytokine abnormalities in BD; 2) to identify inflammatory cytokines associated with cognitive dysfunction in BD; 3) to evaluate the efficacy of adjunctive minocycline for symptoms of bipolar depression and cognitive dysfunction. Method: The first two study aims were evaluated with cross-sectional exploratory methods, comparing 29 depressed (HAMD-17 ≥ 20) and 46 euthymic (4 week verification) adults with DSM-IV-TR-defined BD as well as of 31 healthy controls (HCs). Plasma cytokine levels were measured with a 30 V-PLEX immunoassay. Evaluated cognitive domains were verbal memory, executive function and psychomotor speed. The efficacy of adjunctive minocycline (100 mg b.i.d.) was evaluated in an overlapping sample of depressed individuals (intent-to-treat: n=27) using an 8-week, open-label study. The primary efficacy measure was the MADRS, while, cognitive composites and plasma cytokines were secondary outcome measures. Results: Results from multinomial logistic regression analyses indicate that IL-6 levels were increased in depressed and euthymic individuals with BD when compared to HCs, while, levels of CCL3, IL-15, and IL-17A were reduced below levels of HCs in euthymic individuals (Pseudo R2=.648, p | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Sohal, Ramanjeet | Bhattacharyya, Onil | Scaling Up Health Services Delivery for Bottom of the Pyramid Populations in Lower-and-Middle-Income Countries | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-06 | Context: While there have been many successful global health pilots and initiatives that have been implemented, often organizations struggle to scale interventions that have proven efficacy and effectiveness. Within the global health literature, there are limited studies that examine the strategies health services organizations employ to advance delivery for disadvantaged populations in lower-and-middle-income countries. Objectives: The objectives of this thesis are three-fold. First, the thesis provides in-depth case study analysis of an organization that has successfully scaled its operations for the bottom of the pyramid populations in multiple countries in Africa. Second, the thesis analyzes strategies private sector organizations use to achieve scale in lower-and-middle-income countries. Third, the thesis illustrates how value chain integration strategy advances scale up of health services delivery in resource-poor settings. Design: We use a qualitative research methodology to provide rich nuance about empirical phenomena by extending prior research on scaling up health services delivery and applying strategic management frameworks to analyze the phenomenon. While we predominantly employ qualitative case study methodology, we supplement our analysis using exploratory statistical analysis. Results: Many health services organizations operating in lower-and-middle-income country contexts struggle to achieve goals of scale, sustainability and inclusion. Using value chain integration as a framing logic, this research demonstrates that organizations should not try to do everything themselves, especially activities where other actors in the ecosystem have superior skills and positions. We identify three main mechanisms for using value chain integration strategy to scale up health services delivery: identifying mutual dependency with partners, creating an efficiency core and building a strong set of four types of management skills, including financial skill, quality management, supply chain management, and client relationships. Conclusion: The novel contribution of this thesis emerges from the use of a strategic management conceptual framework (i.e., value chain integration) to analyze a health services research context and problem (i.e., health care delivery by an NGO in Africa). Further mixed-methods research, which includes disconfirming or negative case sampling, is needed to examine whether and how health services organizations in resource-constrained environments deploy value chain integration strategies to achieve expansion and deliver services to disadvantaged populations. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Sohn, Jacqueline | Bascia, Nina | The Politics of Evidence-Informed Policymaking: a case study of the Ontario Poverty Reduction Strategy | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-11 | In the last several decades, increasing pressure to reduce child poverty through better public policies has resulted in the prioritization of “evidence-based” social policy reform agendas worldwide, as well as a proliferation of research on effective evidence-informed policymaking (EIPM). However, studies on evidence use in policymaking tend to focus on singular aspects of the policy process, using ambiguous definitions and concepts for EIPM. Through a case study on the Ontario Poverty Reduction Strategy (OPRS), this thesis contributes knowledge on the policy process, examining how policy actors understood and worked towards EIPM. Drawing from policy theory and EIPM literature, this qualitative study explores the research question: How was evidence used to inform the policymaking process for the OPRS? Along with three sub-questions that address distinct aspects of EIPM: 1) Who and what were the influential sources of evidence? 2) What were the enabling and constraining conditions for evidence use? 3) How did external policy advisors bring evidence to the policy table? Phase I addresses the first sub-question through a website scan of EIPM attributes and activities of poverty reduction organizations in Ontario (n=210) in comparison to the external advisors to the OPRS (n=54). Phase II addresses sub-questions 2 and 3 through interviews with elite policy advisors (n=19) serving in distinct stages of the policymaking process. Findings show that influential evidence producers were politically astute in utilizing evidence through framing and persuasion strategies, and invested in long-term alliances to leverage political opportunities. Results from the website scan show that OPRS advisors displayed higher levels of policy engagement work and activities (or, “push mechanisms”) than peripheral stakeholders. The interview data reveal that the EIPM opportunity for the OPRS was contingent upon a policy window that emerged out of the “perfect storm” of people, power, and political context. However, the role of evidence was pervasive in the critical and mutually influential interactions between structure and agency. Understanding the dynamic connections between these elements provides important insights for evidence producers and users alike in working towards effective evidence utilization for policymaking. Based on the findings, recommendations for policy engagement strategies are provided to research producers. | Ph.D. | poverty | 1 |
| Sokhanvaran, Samira | Mansoor, Barati | Molten Salt Electrodeposition of Silicon in Cu-Si | Materials Science and Engineering | 2014-11 | Widespread use of solar energy has not been realized to date because its cost is not competitive with conventional energy sources. The high price of solar grade silicon has been one of the barriers against photovoltaic industry achieving its much anticipated growth. Therefore, developing a method, which is energy efficient and will deliver inexpensive silicon feedstock material is essential. The electrodeposition of Si from a cryolite-based melt was investigated in the present work as a possible solution. This study proposed electrowinning of Si in molten Cu-Si alloy, to decrease the working temperature and increase the efficiency. Solvent refining can be used to recover Si from Cu-Si and also as a second purification method. The physicochemical properties of the potential electrolyte, cryolite-SiO2 melts, were studied in the first step of this work. The deposition potential of Si on a graphite cathode was measured to determine the working potential and the effect of SiO2 concentration on it. In the next step, the deposition potential of Si from cryolite-SiO2 melt on Cu and Cu-Si cathodes was determined using cyclic voltammetry. Next, the cathodic and the anodic current inefficiencies of the process were measured. Continuous analysis of the evolved gas enabled the instantaneous measurement of the current efficiency and the kinetics of the deposition. Finally, the effectiveness of the process in delivering high purity Si was investigated. Si dendrites were precipitated out of the Cu-Si cathode and recovered to determine the purity of the final product as the final step of this study. The produced Si was separated from the alloy matrix by crushing and acid leaching and the purity was reported. The findings of this research show that the proposed method has the potential to produce high purity silicon with low B content. Further development is required to remove some metallic impurities that are remained in Si. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, industr | 7, 9 |
| Solana Moreno, Vivian | Muehlebach, Andrea | REGENERATING REVOLUTION: Gender and Generation in the Sahrawi Struggle for Decolonisation | Anthropology | 2017-06 | This dissertation investigates the forms of female labour that are sustaining and regenerating the political struggle for the decolonization of the Western Sahara. Since 1975, the Sahrawi national liberation movement—known as the POLISARIO Front—has been organizing itself, while in exile, into a form commensurable with the global model of the modern nation-state. In 1991, a UN mediated peace process inserted the Sahrawi struggle into what I describe as a colonial meantime. Women and youth—key targets of the POLISARIO Front’s empowerment policies—often stand for the movement’s revolutionary values as a whole. I argue that centering women’s labour into an account of revolution, nationalism and state-building reveals logics of long duree and models of female empowerment often overshadowed by the more “spectacular” and “heroic” expressions of Sahrawi women’s political action that feature prominently in dominant representations of Sahrawi nationalism. Differing significantly from globalised and modernist valorisations of women’s political agency, the model of female empowerment I highlight is one associated to the nomadic way of life that predates a Sahrawi project of revolutionary nationalism. I speak of a labour of “regeneration” rather than one of “reproduction” to foreground the political agency inherent to women’s daily work whilst also attending to intergenerational differences in political habitus. Enquiring into how Sahrawi women reckon with the contradictions produced by the conditions of a colonial meantime, I examine transformations in women’s labour of love, collective remembrance, hospitality, institutional participation, and practices of marriage/reproduction, to trace the inchoate ways in which Sahrawi women are contributing to multiply the possible futures of a revolutionary process initiated more than forty years ago. | Ph.D. | women, labour, peace | 5, 8, 16 |
| Solomon, Steven D. | Mishna, Faye | Run Like a Girl? That's So Gay: Exploring Homophobic and Sexist Language among Grade 7 and 8 Students in the Toronto District School Board | Social Work | 2015-11 | Homophobic name-calling abounds in schools, especially at the high school level. Driving much of this research is the negative impact of anti-gay language and epithets on lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) identified students, students with LGBT parents and guardians, and students overall. Studies in the US, UK, and Canada report regular use of phrases such as ‘that’s so gay’, ‘faggot’, and the word “gay” itself to denote something or someone with little to no value. However, a dearth of research looking at the prevalence of homophobic language at the middle school level exists. Furthermore, there is even less research looking at the relationship between homophobic and sexist language use. Using a mixed methods explanatory sequential design, this three-paper dissertation explored homophobic and sexist language use in middle school, specifically investigating, among other things, how often and under what conditions grade seven and eight students use these types of language. A stratified random sample of middle school students (n=488) completed a survey that included the Homophobic Content Agent Target Scale (HCAT). The newly developed Sexist Content Agent Target Scale (S-CAT) explored sexist language. Students reported their frequency of homophobic and sexist language use in five relationship domains including friends, strangers, and antagonists. As well, five focus groups explored more deeply students’ perceptions and understandings of homophobic and sexist language use at school. A number of important findings were produced including the prevalence of homophobic name-calling prior to high schools as well as the strong association between homophobic and sexist language use. These empirical findings join the literature that has long conceptually linked sexism and homophobia, whereby their interlocking nature manifests in name-calling experiences of middle school students. Students (boys in particular) as either agents or targets of sexist language had increased likelihood of being agents or targets of homophobic language. Given the often contentious nature of anti-homophobia education, the hesitancy of school staff to intervene regularly (even in the presence of this language), the findings presented here suggest anti-sexist education as another means to address homophobic language, thereby contributing to creating and maintaining more positive learning environment for all students. | Ph.D. | queer, gender | 5 |
| Solorzano-Filho, Jorge Alberto | Malcolm, Jay R. | On Small Mammal Sympatry in the Southeastern Amazon and Ecological Relationships with Brazil Nut Dispersal and Harvesting | Forestry | 2009-11 | The Amazon rainforest harbors the planet's highest biodiversity among terrestrial ecosystems; however, the biology and ecology of most of its species are unknown. Niche partitioning is considered a key factor allowing species co-existence, especially for morphological similar species such as spiny rats of the genus Proechimys. I examined the extent to which habitat differentiation, species body mass, and diet could explain the community composition of small mammals at a site in the southeastern Amazon. Moreover, I radio-tagged sympatric species of Proechimys spp. and Mesomys stimulax (an arboreal spiny rat) to obtain detailed autoecology information, including habitat use and use of space. I found support for niche partitioning among species and associated small mammal species with distinct successional phases of gap dynamics. I also observed among Proechimys spp. a typical polygynous organization: females appeared to be territorial against females of any species of their genus; but male territories overlapped with those of several females. Mesomys stimulax showed evidence of monogamy and possible sociality, although sample sizes were small. To identify the importance of small mammals as seed disperser of Brazil nut seeds, I conduct experiments using a combination of fluorescent powder, seed exclosures, and track plates in forests with and without Brazil nut groves, and in forests with and without Brazil nut harvesting. Among small mammals, only Proechimys spp. removed, dispersed, and preyed upon Brazil nut seeds. Proechimys spp. sometimes scatterhoarded these seeds, and hence have the potential to play a significant role in recruiting new Brazil nut trees. I also trapped small mammals and measured forest structures on the same sites used for the seed dispersal experiment, to determine the ecological effects of Brazil nut harvest on small mammal communities; however, my results showed little evidence of changes associated with the seed exploitation. My results highlight the importance of habitat heterogeneity in structuring small mammal communities, and indicate that forest management practices that alter habitats, such as partial logging, also can be expected to alter small mammal composition and diversity. Proechimys spp. have the potential to play an important role in the ecological restoration of intensive exploited Brazil nut groves. | PhD | ecology, biodiversity, forest | 15 |
| Soloway, Geoffrey B. | Miller, Jack | Preparing Teacher Candidates for the Present: Exploring the Praxis of Mindfulness Training in Teacher Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2011-11 | The fields of medicine and health care continue to demonstrate the benefits of mindfulness-based practice for stress reduction and well-being. Research is also beginning to reveal the professional benefits of mindfulness training with human service professionals, as well as the impact with children and youth, and more broadly within the field of education and human development. This qualitative action research study uses a grounded theory approach to elucidate the added value of the Mindfulness-Based Wellness Education (MBWE) program within three main areas of teacher education: dispositional development, content knowledge, and instructional repertoire. Two years being engaged in the iterative process of teaching, interviewing teacher candidates, and program development brought forth five main themes: (1) Personal and Professional Identity, Reflective Practitioner, (3) Constructivist Learning & Holistic Vision of Teaching, (4) Social and Emotional Competence on Practicum, and (5) Engagement in Teacher Education. Additional findings outline key curricular and pedagogical components of the MBWE program that facilitate teacher candidate learning. Finally, a holistic model of pedagogical well-being presents an avenue for understanding the integration of mindful wellness into teacher education, and the K-12 classroom. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Soma, Tammara Rica | Maclaren, Virginia | Planning from "Table to Dump": Analyzing the Practice of Household Food Consumption and Food Waste in Urban Indonesia | Geography | 2018-06 | By analyzing the ways in which diverse households shop, cook, consume, and waste, this dissertation reveals the complex relationship between space, class, and social relations in the generation of household food waste in Indonesia. Several themes are explored in four empirical chapters. First, a food waste regime conceptual framework is employed to better understand unequal power relations between "modern" food provisioning infrastructures such as supermarkets, and traditional food provisioning infrastructures, specifically in relation to space restriction and predatory pricing. Secondly, the food waste regime framework is also applied to examine the role of class and privilege in determining an individual's ability to define "what is food and what is waste" within the boundaries of the household. Thirdly, the application of the conceptual framework of "distancing" articulates the role of urbanization in the spatial and mental distancing of both the food supply chain and waste management infrastructure. Finally, from a statistical perspective, the dissertation examines whether income level and where people choose to shop (for example, the type of retail) impact the amount of household food waste generated in Indonesia. Using practice theory, planners are encouraged to take a closer look at different types of retail formats to understand how space may impact consumption. This study draws upon a qualitative study of 21 upper (n=7), middle (n=7) and lower (n=7) income households in Bogor, 12 key informant interviews with government officials, traditional food vendors, supermarket managers, and a waste collector, as well as the result of a quantitative study on 323 households. To conclude, this dissertation argues that there is a need to offer infrastructural support that can protect traditional food retail and promote more sustainable food waste management. Furthermore, considerations for social and environmental justice are key in the search for a systemic and dignified solution to the issue of food waste in Indonesia. | Ph.D. | food, waste, infrastructure, urban, consum, environment | 2, 9, 11, 12, 13 |
| Song, HeeJin | Cummins, James | Languages, Cultures and Identities of Newcomer Adolescent Learners: Deconstructing Multicultural Education in South Korea | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2016-06 | Despite the South Korean government’s recent policy interventions to accommodate the emerging social and classroom reality that has increasingly become multicultural, few guidelines have been provided for multicultural education practice at the local and municipal levels in South Korea (Henceforth, Korea). In particular, investigations focusing on newcomer adolescents’ linguistic and cultural identities are scarce. In this light, this doctoral inquiry investigates how multicultural students, their languages and cultures are reflected in Korean society and schools and especially, how newcomer adolescents’ linguistic and cultural identities are negotiated in terms of their own success in Korea. 8 multicultural education policies and 27 news media publications as well as the narratives of 7 students and 6 educators from two high schools are analyzed through Fairclough’s (1992, 2003) critical discourse analysis. Based on the analysis, the discourses of diversity embedded in the nation-state texts and popular media as well as in the institutional contexts are discussed in relation to five orientations to diversity, which are derived from Ruiz’s (1984) theoretical framework of three orientations to language planning and Cummins’(2001) empowerment framework. The study reveals that an ideology of Korean ethnocentrism is reflected throughout the policy and news media articles as well as school administrators’ conceptualizations of diversity and multicultural education. Despite the emergent progressive orientations of viewing diversity as a right and resource, the predominant discourses of viewing diversity are that diversity is a problem/threat to society and is a problem/impediment to multicultural students’ social integration. It is evident that diversity is only appreciated once multicultural students are fully assimilated into Korean society. Thus, the notion of multicultural identity is absent or at best hidden in the Korean context. The study highlights that schools and policy makers need to make a shift in their orientations to diversity toward diversity as a right, resource and a form of empowerment through critical multicultural education in order to instill just and equitable worldviews in students. Educators’ negligence in considering these possibilities contributes to reproducing unequal power relations that disadvantage linguistic and cultural minorities and perpetuate the hegemonic status quo in Korean society. | Ph.D. | equitable | 4 |
| Sonnentag, Oliver | Chen, Jing Ming | Spatially Explicit Simulation of Peatland Hydrology and Carbon Dioxide Exchange | Geography | 2008-06 | In this research, a recent version of the Boreal Ecosystem Productivity Simulator (BEPS), called BEPS-TerrainLab, was adapted to northern peatlands and evaluated using observations made at the Mer Bleue bog located near Ottawa, Ontario, and the Sandhill fen located near Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. The code was extended and modified with a major focus on the adequate representation of northern peatlands' multi-layer canopy and the associated processes related to energy, water vapour and carbon dioxide fluxes through remotely-sensed leaf area index (LAI) maps. An important prerequisite for the successful mapping of LAI based on remote sensing imagery is the accurate measurement of LAI in the field with a standard technique such as the LAI-2000 plant canopy analyzer. As part of this research, a quick and reliable method to determine shrub LAI with the LAI-2000 instrument was developed. This method was used to collect a large number of LAI data at the Mer Bleue bog for the development of a new remote sensing-based methodology using multiple endmember spectral unmixing that allows for separate tree and shrub LAI mapping in ombrotrophic peatlands. A slight modification of this methodology allows for its application to minerotrophic peatlands and their surrounding landscapes. These LAI maps were used to explicitly represent the tree and shrub layers of the Mer Bleue bog and the tree and shrub/sedge layers of the Sandill fen within BEPS-TerrainLab. The adapted version of BEPS-TerrainLab was used to investigate the in fluence of mescoscale topography (Mer Bleue bog) and macro- and mesoscale topography (Sandhill fen) on wetness, evapotranspiration, and gross primary productivity during the snow-free period of 2004. This research suggests that future peatland ecosystem modelling efforts at regional and continental scales should include a peatland type-specific differentiation of macro- and mesoscale topographic effects on hydrology, to allow for a more realistic simulation of peatlands' soil water balance. This is an important prerequisite for the reduction of currently existing uncertainties in wetlands' contribution to North America's carbon dioxide and methane annual fluxes from an ecosystem modelling perspective. | PhD | water, energy | 6, 7 |
| Sonneville, Camille | Henderson, Grant S||Mermet, Alain | Étude des propriétés élastiques des verres d’oxydes sous haute pression : implications structurales | Earth Sciences | 2013-07 | The structural study of glasses under pressure is of fundamental interest in Physics, Earth Science and is technologically important for the comprehension of industrial material properties. The elastic anomaly at 2.5GPa in pure silica glass is a well known phenomenon and its existence is more than likely in GeO2 glass. In this work the persistence of the elastic anomaly in more complex and more widely glass compositions as sodium alumino silicate glasses was studied. The elastic anomaly was studied in situ in GeO2 and three sodium alumino silicate glasses by Brillouin and Raman scattering. The studied sodium alumino silicate glasses had the following compositions : (Al2O3)X(Na2O)25-X(SiO2)75 where X=0, 6 et 12% and is the molar percentage of Al2O3. The elastic anomaly was shown to persist in a broad domain of chemical compositions thus its existence is not reduced to pure silica glass. Its existence seems to be linked to the presence of 6 membered rings. Beyond the elastic limit, the structural modifications was studied in pure silica, GeO2 glass and sodium alumino silica glasses (with X=0, 2, 6, 9, 12 et 16% of Al2O3) in order to structurally better understand the densification phenomenon. Firstly the elastic anomaly was studied by Brillouin scattering experiments, was shown to progressively disappear with the densification. This progressive disappearance was interpreted in terms of a progressive structure induced transformation from a Low Density Amorphous form (LDA) into a High Density Amorphous form (HDA). In situ and ex situ studies by Brillouin and Raman scattering, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) showed that the pressure induced structural transformation was highly dependent of the glass chemical composition. For instance the presence of sodium cations promotes short range order modifications, such as formation of highly coordinated species (Al, Si) and network depolymerization. On the other hand, glasses with a high aluminum concentration show a densification process closer to that of pure silica glass, with mainly middle range order structural modifications such as a decrease of the inter-tetrahedral angle or ring size decrease. The structural study of glasses under pressure is of fundamental interest in Physics, Earth Science and is technologically important for the comprehension of industrial material properties. The elastic anomaly at 2.5GPa in pure silica glass is a well known phenomenon and its existence is more than likely in GeO2 glass. In this work the persistence of the elastic anomaly in more complex and more widely glass compositions as sodium alumino silicate glasses was studied. The elastic anomaly was studied in situ in GeO2 and three sodium alumino silicate glasses by Brillouin and Raman scattering. The studied sodium alumino silicate glasses had the following compositions : (Al2O3)X(Na2O)25-X(SiO2)75 where X=0, 6 et 12% and is the molar percentage of Al2O3. The elastic anomaly was shown to persist in a broad domain of chemical compositions thus its existence is not reduced to pure silica glass. Its existence seems to be linked to the presence of 6 membered rings. Beyond the elastic limit, the structural modifications was studied in pure silica, GeO2 glass and sodium alumino silica glasses (with X=0, 2, 6, 9, 12 et 16% of Al2O3) in order to structurally better understand the densification phenomenon. Firstly the elastic anomaly was studied by Brillouin scattering experiments, was shown to progressively disappear with the densification. This progressive disappearance was interpreted in terms of a progressive structure induced transformation from a Low Density Amorphous form (LDA) into a High Density Amorphous form (HDA). In situ and ex situ studies by Brillouin and Raman scattering, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) showed that the pressure induced structural transformation was highly dependent of the glass chemical composition. For instance the presence of sodium cations promotes short range order modifications, such as formation of highly coordinated species (Al, Si) and network depolymerization. On the other hand, glasses with a high aluminum concentration show a densification process closer to that of pure silica glass, with mainly middle range order structural modifications such as a decrease of the inter-tetrahedral angle or ring size decrease. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Sornpaisarn, Bundit | Rehm, Jürgen | The Effectiveness of an Alternative Alcohol Taxation Method in a Middle-income County: A Case Study of Thailand | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-06 | Background: While specific taxation has been found to be effective in reducing alcohol consumption and its related harms in High-Income Countries, it theoretically encourages drinking initiation in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMIC) with a high prevalence of lifetime abstainers. This dissertation aims to systematically review the existing evidence of the effects of taxation in LMIC on alcohol consumption, alcohol-related harms, and the rate of drinker initiation, and to examine how changes in Thailand’s Two Chosen One (2C1) taxation rates affect alcohol consumption, related harms and drinking initiation. Method: (1) A systematic review and meta-analysis that examines the effects of taxation policy on alcohol consumption, alcohol-related harms and the rate of drinker initiation in LMIC. (2) A quasi-experimental study using interrupted time-series analysis that examines the effects of alcohol taxation increases in Thailand on alcohol consumption and traffic fatalities. (3) An analysis of four consecutive national surveys on alcohol consumption behaviours to examine the effect of alcohol tax increases on drinking initiation prevalence in Thailand. Result: There were only 10 published studies that quantitatively examined the effect of alcohol taxation policy on consumption in LMIC. In LMIC the price elasticity of demand was -0.64 for all alcohol consumption, -0.50 for beer consumption, and -0.79 for consumption of other alcohol. No studies were found that examined the effects of taxation policy on alcohol-related harms and drinking initiation in LMIC. Thailand’s alcohol taxation increase in 2009 was associated with a reduction in alcohol consumption (tax elasticity of -1.95) and in traffic fatalities (tax elasticity of -1.90). Increased taxation prevented drinking initiation among young people 15 – 24 years of age during 2001-2011 in Thailand (tax elasticity of -0.40). Conclusion: Increases in taxation under the 2C1 taxation method were associated with decreases in alcohol consumption, alcohol-related harms and drinking initiation. | PhD | taxation | 10 |
| Soske, Jon | Hawkins, Sean | 'Wash Me Black Again': African Nationalism, the Indian Diaspora, and Kwa-Zulu Natal, 1944-60 | History | 2009-11 | My dissertation combines a critical history of the Indian diaspora’s political and intellectual impact on the development of African nationalism in South Africa with an analysis of African/Indian racial dynamics in Natal. Beginning in the 1940s, tumultuous debates among black intellectuals over the place of the Indian diaspora in Africa played a central role in the emergence of new and antagonistic conceptualizations of a South African nation. The writings of Indian political figures (particularly Gandhi and Nehru) and the Indian independence struggle had enormous influence on a generation of African nationalists, but this impact was mediated in complex ways by the race and class dynamics of Natal. During the 1930s and 40s, rapid and large-scale urbanization generated a series of racially-mixed shantytowns surrounding Durban in which a largely Gujarati and Hindi merchant and landlord class provided the ersatz urban infrastructure utilized by both Tamil-speaking workers and Zulu migrants. In Indian-owned buses, stores, and movie theatres, a racial hierarchy of Indian over African developed based on the social grammars of property, relationship with land, family structure, and different gender roles. In such circumstances, practices integral to maintaining diasporic identities—such as religious festivals, marriage, caste (jati), language, and even dress and food—became signifiers of ranked status and perceived exclusion. Despite the destruction of this urban landscape by forced removals beginning in the late 1950s, these social relationships powerfully shaped African and Indian identities in Natal, the popular memory of different communities, and the later politics of the anti-apartheid struggle. Although a few recent publications have attempted to break down the bifurcation that characterizes Natal’s historiography, the majority of academic writing on the province employs a race-based framework that focuses on either Indians or Zulu-speaking Africans. As a result, Natal’s African/Indian racial dynamic plays, at most, a secondary role in most scholarship on the region. In turn, Natal itself generally appears in histories of the anti-apartheid struggle as either an exception or a momentary interruption to a “national” narrative overwhelmingly centered on events, organizations, and individuals in the Transvaal. Rejecting a “race relations” approach that hypostatizes coherent racial groups, my dissertation examines how segregationist policies, African and Indian political organizations, and everyday social practices continuously reproduced an “African/Indian divide” despite both the enormous heterogeneity of each group and the quotidian intimacies of urban life. At the same time, it explores the ways in which this division shaped the development of the anti-apartheid struggle in Natal and the consequences of Natal’s politics for South Africa as a whole. | PhD | urban, infrastructure, worker | 8, 9, 11 |
| Sotomayor, Luisa Fernanda | Daniere, Amrita | Planning through Spaces of Exception: Socio-spatial Inequality, Violence and the Emergence of Social Urbanism in Medellín | Geography | 2015-06 | Medellín, a city known as one of the most unequal and violent in the world, has recently been praised as an example of urban innovation. Grounded on claims to social justice and democracy, mayors Fajardo (2004-2007) and Salazar (2008-2011) adopted a policy called social urbanism. With this approach, Medellín expanded infrastructure and social investments to marginalized districts, instituted participatory programs, and sought to integrate precarious enclaves in the "formal" city through transit policy, public spaces, and emblematic architecture. This dissertation is about the emergence of "social urbanism." It seeks to reveal its origins, political rationalities, and tactics on the ground. Based on document analysis, semi-structured interviews with key actors, and focus group data, I examine the connections among socio-spatial marginality, conflict, urban politics, and entrepreneurial urban governance arrangements. Most crucially, I identify the gaps and ambivalences that emerge between the politics of three disparate logics at play: first, goals of development and socio-spatial redistribution; second, the pressures cities face to repair local economies and attract foreign resources; and third, the influence of violent actors, including both organized crime and the repressive arm of the state. While the promises of social urbanism are commendable and have been loudly conveyed internationally, an analysis of social urbanism at the neighbourhood scale reveals a mode of emergency planning that turns areas of intervention into spaces of exception from city ordinances and governance arrangements. Through a large-scale Urban Development Project approach, social urbanism seeks to expedite implementation and generate a swift sense of transformation. I argue that, the implications of relying on exceptions need to be carefully considered since vested interests can easily co-opt the planning process. Furthermore, violence, and social and economic dislocations in the city are still profound, particularly in areas such as Comuna 13, where non-state armed groups prevent residents from capturing many of the benefits of urban upgrading. Despite new public works projects and state presence, criminal networks have retained their territorial influence. Because Medellin's urban innovations are being implemented along the ongoing sway of illegal violent actors, governance in these spaces can be characterized as a contradictory "orderly disorder." | Ph.D. | infrastructure, innovation, cities, urban, inequality, justice | 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Souleymanov, Roustam | Brennan, David J | Party-n-Play and Gay and Bisexual Men: Critical Discourse Analysis Study | Social Work | 2018-11 | Party-n-Play (PNP) is a social practice of gay and bisexual men, which refers to sex that occurs under the influence of drugs. This dissertation approached this social practice from a socio-linguistic perspective by examining the discourses of gay and bisexual men who PNP. The dissertation investigated: 1) how discourses on HIV and pleasure influence the sexual practices of gay and bisexual men who PNP, 2) how gay and bisexual men who PNP make sense of the various forms of social exclusion, stigma, and resilience in their lives, and 3) the role that online information and communication technologies play in the lives of gay and bisexual men who PNP. The study utilized a critical discourse analysis methodology and was conceptualized using critical theory and Foucaldian frameworks of biopolitics and governmentality. In-depth 1-hour interviews were conducted between October 2016 and January 2017, with 44 gay, bisexual, queer, and Two-Spirit men who were living in Toronto, and who used drugs (crystal methamphetamine, GHB, cocaine, ketamine, MDMA/ecstasy, poppers) before or during sex with another man. Recruitment took place through social media, online ads, and flyers distributed through community-based organizations. The findings from this dissertation indicated that HIV discourses have a powerful influence on the normalization of condomless anal intercourse among many study participants. However, HIV treatment optimism has not translated into a unifying disposition among all study participants. The findings also demonstrated that gay and bisexual men knowingly give in to their pleasures with awareness of the HIV risks associated with PNP. Furthermore, the dissertation findings revealed that while social exclusion and stigma were perpetuated through multiple discourses of gay and bisexual men who PNP, these men also evoked resilience discourses, and described social bonds, friendships, and relations of care in their PNP networks. Finally, this dissertation identified that PNP as a subculture provided a set of shared discourses, social languages, values, and ideologies for a diverse group of gay and bisexual men who were connected to this subculture through online information and communication technologies. This dissertation provided recommendations with regard to HIV prevention and culturally sensitive interventions for this population. | Ph.D. | queer | 5 |
| Southmayd, Stephanie Stonehewer | ten Kortenaar, Neil | India On the Line: Globalized labour in postmillennial Indo-Anglian literature | English | 2017-11 | In this dissertation I look at the eruption of new subjectivities in postmillennial Indo-Anglian literature in an era of globalization and neoliberalism, and, concurrently, the seeming disappearance of old myths and identities – at how, for example, the telephone of the call centre, in joining one person to another, is shown to create fissures in identity, family, and what is described as “traditional” Indian culture. I also examine the ways in which technology, particularly in the form of machines like the tape recorder, industrial factory equipment, and the Internet, is depicted as mapping the formation of cyborg subjectivities in an era of rapidly changing and ever-broadening and improving modes of communication. These technologies seem at once to bring us closer together and further apart, fostering a greater sense of global solidarity and “connectivity” in previously isolated communities, in John Tomlinson’s terms (1999, 30), but also setting out battle lines for revolutionary new Indian movements: between the international rich and poor, and more frequently the US and India. In the “pulp fiction” books addressed in this dissertation, written by such authors as Chetan Bhagat, Neelesh Misra, and Brinda S. Narayan, globalization is depicted as oppressing and poisoning Indians but also freeing them from the chains of Western capitalism and even providing routes for nationalist innovation, creativity, and solidarity. Meanwhile, the more “highbrow” cosmopolitan texts, written by Aravind Adiga, Bharati Mukherjee, Indra Sinha, and Altaf Tyrewala, tend to evince a greater suspicion of nationalism and the utopian promises of neoliberalism. Each dissertation chapter addresses a different type of depressed and alienated protagonist – from the call-centre worker to the entrepreneur, to the cyborg-sahiborg and the exorcist-hacker – whose various triumphs of upward mobility and community-building are often, ultimately, oddly unconvincing and unmoving. Indian neoliberalism leads to a sense of anomie among these characters; even when they find community or professional and economic success, it never seems to be entirely or effectively dispelled. The unhappiness of these globalized literary avatars serves as warning – in some cases, probably involuntary – of the dark side of the glamour and glitz of globalized labour in India. | Ph.D. | labour, worker | 8 |
| Spady, Samantha | Tuck, Eve | Troubled Knowledge: Land, Race, and Logics of Extraction in Alberta’s Tar Sands | Social Justice Education | 2020-06 | This dissertation examines how tar-sands extraction comes to be seen as normal and an inevitable consequence of present-day lifestyles. The research is built from interviews with 30 white oil-industry workers involved in oil-extraction projects in the Athabasca tar-sands deposit. The ways in which oil has shaped economic and social relations not only in Fort McMurray, AB, but in the Canadian state generally are significant to unravel and examine. This study attempts to capture the ways that tar sands are made possible through state policy, investment, and economic structuring, as well as how these things are experienced at the level of the individual. I analyze the logics, and rationales used to justify continued extraction in this region, and I work to debunk them and also to understand how and why they are so powerful. Furthermore, I contrast the ways in which oil extraction comes to make sense to itself, besides the ways in which Indigenous people have demonstrated this logic to be limited and, in many cases, untrue. I work through these different ways of relating to—and understanding—oil, in order to contrast the different worlds that are competing in this place. | Ph.D. | labour | 8 |
| Spanos, Grigorios | Gilles, Duranton | Three Essays on Firm Organization and Trade | Economics | 2014-11 | This thesis examines how firms organize production and its relationship to international trade.In Chapter 1 I examine the assignment of workers to layers and firms. I use an administrative dataset of French workers to study the organization of manufacturing firms. First, I test whether higher ability workers are employed in the higher layers of firms. Second, I test whether there is positive assortative matching between workers in the different layers of firms. Third, I test whether abler managers supervise more workers. Finally, I test whether abler workers allow their managers to increase their span of control. I emphasize four results. First, abler workers are employed in the higher layers of firms. Second, I find evidence of positive assortative matching between workers in the different layers of firms. Third, I find evidence that abler managers supervise less workers. Finally, I also find weak evidence that abler workers allow their managers to increase their span of control.In chapter 2 I investigate the effect market toughness has on the organization of firms. To understand this relationship I develop a monopolistically competitive model with endogenous markups and heterogeneous firms. As in Garicano (2000) and Caliendo and Rossi-Hansberg (2012), production requires physical labour and knowledge. In the model, market size affects markups which then affects how firms organize production and their productivity. I also analyze how the distribution of organizations varies across markets of different sizes. The model predicts that in larger markets firms will have more layers, consistent with the data.In chapter 3 I examine the impact of international trade on the sorting of heterogeneous agents into sectors and occupations, and within sectors the matching of agents into teams, as well as the impact of trade on the distribution of earnings. To understand this relationship I extend Garicano and Rossi-Hansberg (2004) to two goods and two countries. I emphasize three results. First in an open economy, factor price equalization does not hold. Second, in a given sector, the returns to managers and production workers change in the same direction. And third whether international trade increases or decreases income inequality depends on the knowledge of the country. | Ph.D. | production, inequality, trade, worker, labour, equality | 5, 8, 10, 12 |
| Spence, Martha E. | Bascia, Nina | Can the Assembly of First Nations Education Action Plan Succeed? Colonialism’s Effect on Traditional Knowledge in Two Communities. | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2010-11 | have altered the context and practices of the First Nations culture and by so doing, compromised their will and capacity to implement traditional education policies, a situation that must be linked to realization of the Education Action Plan’s goals. The goal of the study was to assist policy makers, community leaders, and educators in recognizing the attitudes, social norms, and practices that are interwoven with post-colonial trust issues at the community level and to focus on the viability of preservation of First Nations heritage and culture. The inquiry documented and analyzed, in a case study approach, the dynamics of colonialism on two First Nations communities. Interviews and questionnaires, utilized in communities, were based on a matrix that directed comments to areas associated with traditional knowledge, remnants of colonialism and areas of will and capacity. The focus of the inquires referred to curriculum content, funding, school and community structure, as well as traditional knowledge, communication, participation, and the role of members in shaping the community values and school curricula. In all, 32 people were formally interviewed including teachers, Elders, education council members, principals, and community leaders. The study comprised 14 interviews and 17 questionnaires in Two Rivers, and 18 interviews and 8 questionnaires in Round Rock. The study intended to establish whether colonialism would play out in the implementation of the traditional knowledge aspect of the Education Action Plan and if so, in what areas and in what manner. Through research, it was | EDD | educat | 4 |
| Spencer, Elaine Brown | Dei, George Jerry Sefa | The Black Oneness Church in Perspective | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2009-11 | This qualitative study examines the social, spiritual and political role the Black Oneness Churches play in Black communities. It also provides an anti-colonial examination of the Afro-Caribbean Oneness churches to understand how it functioned in the formation and defense of the emerging Black communities for the period 1960-1980. This project is based on qualitative interviews and focus groups conducted with Black Clergy and Black women in the Oneness church of the Greater Toronto area. This study is based on the following four objectives: 1. Understanding the central importance of the Black Oneness Pentecostal Church post 1960 to Black communities. 2. Providing a voice for those of the Black Church that are currently underrepresented in academic scholarship. 3. Examining how the Black Church responds to allegations of its own complicities in colonial practices. 4. Engage spirituality as a legitimate location and space from which to know and resist colonization. The study also introduces an emerging framework entitled: Whiteness as Theology. This framework is a critique of the theological discourse of Whiteness and the enduring relevance of the Black Church in a pluralistic Afro-Christian culture. The data collected reveal that while the Black Church operated as a social welfare institution that assisted thousands of new black immigrants, the inception of the church was political and in protest to racism. Hence, the Black Church is a product of white racism, migration and colonization. The paradox of the Black Church lies in its complicity in colonization while also creating religious forms of resistance. For example, the inception of the Afro-Caribbean Oneness Church was an anti-colonial response to the racism in the White Church. But 40 years later, the insidious nature of colonization has weaved through the church and “prosperity theology” as an impetus of colonialism has reshaped the social justice role of Black Churches. | PhD | women, cities, justice | 5, 11, 16 |
| Spencer, Gregory Martin | Gertler, Meric S. | The Creative Advantage of Diverse City-regions: Local Context and Social Networks | Geography | 2009-06 | Local diversity is often credited with being a driver of creative economic activity. Comparative research on this topic is often however highly structural in nature and does little to address questions of agency. This work seeks to link the traditional regional science approach to questions of potential advantages of local diversity with a more bottom-up view of the creative process. From a theoretical perspective this involves incorporating the social psychology literature on the creative process as well as concepts from social network analysis with more aggregated spatial notions of creativity and diversity. More specifically, it addresses how different knowledge is connected through social interaction and how this fuels the creation of new ideas and ultimately creative economic activity. A number of empirical innovations are made in order to test these theoretical constructs beginning with an agent-model/simulation which illuminates how social networks form and evolve over space and time. These artificial networks suggest how agents embedded in diverse local contexts have a creative advantage by possessing greater access to a variety of knowledge. Subsequent statistical analysis of large secondary datasets seeks to provide external validity to the agent-model. The first demonstrates a strong relationship between local diversity and the concentration of creative economic activities across 140 Canadian city-regions. A key implication of this finding is that local diversity is more closely associated with certain types of economic activity, rather than overall economic performance. The second statistical analysis uses the Canadian General Social Survey to compare the social network characteristics of individuals. This analysis shows that people engaged in creative industries and occupations tend to have larger, more dynamic, and more diverse sets of social relations than any other category of worker. The dissertation concludes with a model that suggests policy interventions should focus on developing local environments that provide the necessary conditions in which creative activity can thrive, rather than attempting to intervene directly in the creative process itself. | PhD | environment, industr | 9, 13 |
| Spigel, Benjamin | Bathelt, Harald | The Emergence of Regional Cultures and Practices: A Comparative Study of Canadian Software Entrepreneurship | Geography | 2013-11 | Despite the ‘cultural turn’ in economic geography, the discipline has yet to conclusively describe the processes through which culture influences actors’ daily economic and social practices. Without a better understanding of the role of culture, it is difficult to explain the emergence and influence of the heterogeneous landscapes of regional business culture we readily observe. This problem is particularly acute in the study of entrepreneurial environments, where regional culture is theorized to play an important role in the local entrepreneurship process. This dissertation proposes an alternative approach to culture which draws on the work of Pierre Bourdieu to reveal the underlying social processes connecting culture with entrepreneurial action. Through qualitative case studies of software entrepreneurs in three Canadian cities — Kitchener- Waterloo, Ontario; Ottawa, Ontario and Calgary, Alberta — this dissertation examines the emergence and evolution of regional cultures and how they have helped to create distinct contexts which encourage unique forms of entrepreneurial practices, outlooks and strategies. This new perspective allows for a more detailed and dynamic analysis of regional cultures and provides new tools for researchers and policy makers to understand the role of cultures within regional economic development. | PhD | water, environment, cities | 6, 11, 13 |
| Srikantha, Pirathayini | Kundur, Deepa | Distributed Optimization of Sustainable Power Dispatch and Flexible Consumer Loads for Resilient Power Grid Operations | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2017-06 | Today's electric grid is rapidly evolving to provision for heterogeneous system components (e.g. intermittent generation, electric vehicles, storage devices, etc.) while catering to diverse consumer power demand patterns. In order to accommodate this changing landscape, the widespread integration of cyber communication with physical components can be witnessed in all tenets of the modern power grid. This ubiquitous connectivity provides an elevated level of awareness and decision-making ability to system operators. Moreover, devices that were typically passive in the traditional grid are now `smarter' as these can respond to remote signals, learn about local conditions and even make their own actuation decisions if necessary. These advantages can be leveraged to reap unprecedented long-term benefits that include sustainable, efficient and economical power grid operations. Furthermore, challenges introduced by emerging trends in the grid such as high penetration of distributed energy sources, rising power demands, deregulations and cyber-security concerns due to vulnerabilities in standard communication protocols can be overcome by tapping onto the active nature of modern power grid components. In this thesis, distributed constructs in optimization and game theory are utilized to design the seamless real-time integration of a large number of heterogeneous power components such as distributed energy sources with highly fluctuating generation capacities and flexible power consumers with varying demand patterns to achieve optimal operations across multiple levels of hierarchy in the power grid. Specifically, advanced data acquisition, cloud analytics (such as prediction), control and storage systems are leveraged to promote sustainable and economical grid operations while ensuring that physical network, generation and consumer comfort requirements are met. Moreover, privacy and security considerations are incorporated into the core of the proposed designs and these serve to improve the resiliency of the future smart grid. It is demonstrated both theoretically and practically that the techniques proposed in this thesis are highly scalable and robust with superior convergence characteristics. These distributed and decentralized algorithms allow individual actuating nodes to execute self-healing and adaptive actions when exposed to changes in the grid so that the optimal operating state in the grid is maintained consistently. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Srikukenthiran, Sivakrishna | Shalaby, Amer | Integrated Microsimulation Modelling of Crowd and Subway Network Dynamics For Disruption Management Support | Civil Engineering | 2015-06 | In many large cities around the world, public transit networks have been carrying an ever-increasing burden of commuters. This has resulted in large movements of crowds in major transit hubs, and high levels of congestion in systems running near or at capacity. In such situations, service disruptions can negatively impact service and transit users well after they are resolved. Currently, transit agencies handle these disruption situations in an ad-hoc fashion. This is due to the lack of a tool capable of analyzing the network-level impacts of response strategies, especially with performance sufficient to handle large-scale systems. Existing tools are limited in their ability to accurately simulate all dynamic facets of the transit network, or model the behaviour of passengers following disruption events. As a result, they do not adequately capture the two-way interaction between crowds and mass transit service, or the complexities of train operation. This dissertation presents Nexus, an innovative crowd dynamics and transit network simulation platform, that enables full simulation of all actors in the transit system and integrated dynamic transit assignment, while being both flexible and scalable to handle large-scale networks. Instead of developing new simulators for surface transit, trains and stations, Nexus enables interfacing of existing simulators together to form a network. An agent-based framework was overlaid to allow for responsive agents, while a virtual communication system permitted on-the-fly modifications to transit service operation. With crowd behaviour in stations key to network performance, new models were constructed to better explain passenger behaviour at two critical locations. First, discrete choice models were developed of passenger choice of stairs versus escalators. Second, a simulation-based model of passenger behaviour on train platforms was developed using a diffusion-inspired approach and accounting for preferred waiting locations. Field data collected across several Toronto subway stations informed both models. Finally, a proof-of-concept case study was conducted on the Toronto transit network. The impact of disruptions of various lengths at a key platform in the network was examined, and an illustrative example was conducted to show how the system could be used to test strategies to reduce impact on transit passengers. | Ph.D. | cities | 11 |
| Sritharan, Jeavana | Demers, Paul A | Investigating the occupational etiology of prostate cancer in Canadian men | Medical Science | 2018-06 | Prostate cancer is one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide and the etiology of prostate cancer is poorly understood. Aside from non-modifiable factors, there is limited understanding of modifiable risk factors for prostate cancer, including occupation. In epidemiological studies, job titles are generally classified into occupational or more broadly industry groupings. Previous studies have reported inconsistent findings between occupation, industry, and prostate cancer, with weak associations for farming and agriculture, rubber manufacturing, and transportation. In Canada, there have been very few large population studies that include a range of occupation and industry groups, prostate cancer outcomes, and information on non-occupational factors. The purpose of this thesis was to further investigate the occupational etiology of prostate cancer in Canadian men. By identifying occupations and industries using multiple large Canadian population based datasets, we aimed to identify consistent patterns of the multi-faceted prostate cancer – job-industry relationships. Three population based studies and one meta-analysis were conducted. Significant associations between natural resource based (agriculture, forestry, logging, wood, paper), administrative, protective services (firefighters, police, and armed forces), construction, transportation, and prostate cancer risk were observed in the three population studies. Consistent evidence for increased prostate cancer incidence and mortality among firefighting and police work was observed in the meta-analysis. Non-occupational factors including lifestyle factors and screening behaviours were also potential confounders in the relationship between occupation and prostate cancer. Overall, the results of this work provide strong evidence associating specific occupations to prostate cancer risk. Specific occupational exposures to be considered in the future are pesticides, diesel exhaust, whole body vibrations, wood dust, wood preservative chemicals, among other factors of shift work, stress, sedentary behaviour, screening patterns. These findings indicate the need for more focused studies with better exposure assessment methods and improved understanding of related non-occupational factors. Examining these factors together will inform prevention strategies for job-specific exposure and prostate cancer risk reduction. The evidence from this thesis and proposed future directions will improve knowledge on occupational risk factors related to the etiology of prostate cancer, ultimately informing policies and programs for reduction in prostate cancer risk. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Stack, Alexander | Trebilcock, Michael | International Patent Law: Cooperation, Harmonization and An Institutional Analysis of WIPO and the WTO | Law | 2008-11 | This work considers international cooperation or harmonization in patent law and analyzes the two main international patent law governance institutions: the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). A welfarist approach is adopted, proposing that international patent law should improve global welfare, subject to assumptions that the preferences of the world population are heterogeneous, that governments try to maximize the welfare of their citizens, and that international legal organization faces collective action problems. Normatively desirable patent law harmonization reconciles strong reasons for preserving diversity (including the static and dynamic satisfaction of local preferences and adapting to unpredictable change) with strong reasons for cooperation (reducing duplication in patent prosecution, and reconciling imbalanced national externalities, incentives to innovation and costs). The last reason leads to a system of national treatment and minimum standards. The risks presented by the skewed nature of invention are addressed in the international patent system through a form of regional insurance. These reasons for cooperation present two linked but separable collective action problems, supporting the existence of two international institutions to govern patent cooperation. WIPO is best positioned to address duplication in patent prosecution. The WTO is best positioned to address imbalanced national externalities, incentives and costs. However, both the WIPO and the WTO are needed to provide a comprehensive international governance system. Questions about the WTO dispute resolution system, the TRIPs Council, and the WTO’s legitimacy are addressed by advocating a trade stakeholders’ model. Whether international patent law should be seen as a multilateral obligation or a nexus of bilateral obligations is explored. Given diverse national preferences and high uncertainty surrounding the welfare effects of specific patent policies, the process of harmonization is inevitably a political process. This political aspect directly connects the topic of patent law harmonization with the institutional analysis of WIPO and the WTO. The implementation of welfare-enhancing patent law cooperation is best guarded by a process with a wide range of political inputs and transparency. Ultimately, only good international governance can deliver on the potential of the international patent system to promote international innovation, economic growth and world-wide prosperity. | SJD | governance, trade, innovation, economic growth | 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Stanevich, Ilya | Strong, Kimberly||Jones, Dylan B. | Variational data assimilation of satellite remote sensing observations for improving methane simulations in chemical transport models | Physics | 2018-06 | Atmospheric concentrations of methane (CH4), the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas, have been rapidly rising since 1850, however, the rate of increase has varied in recent decades. In order to attribute these trends, significant effort has been put into characterizing CH4 surface emissions using inverse modelling ("top-down") approaches, which rely on the ability of chemical transport models (CTMs) to simulate atmospheric CH4 fields. However, systematic errors in models can significantly reduce the quality of the CH4 simulation and result in biased CH4 emission estimates. Until now, errors in models have been poorly characterized. The objective of this thesis was to characterize and investigate the origin of the CH4 model errors in the GEOS-Chem CTM and quantify their impact on inferred CH4 emission estimates. The weak constraint four-dimensional variational data assimilation scheme in GEOS-Chem, together with CH4 data from the Greenhouse gases Observing SATellite (GOSAT), were used to characterize model errors in GEOS-Chem at the horizontal resolutions of 4x5 and 2x2.5. Large biases in CH4 were found in the stratosphere and in vertical transport in the troposphere at mid-latitudes. The identified errors were significantly larger at 4x5 than at 2x2.5. It was determined that a major cause of the biases at 4x5 is excessive mixing due to increased numerical diffusion manifested in enhanced stratosphere-troposphere exchange, and stronger quasi-isentropic mixing through the edges of the "tropical pipe" and the polar vortex in the stratosphere. Coarsening of the model grid also weakened vertical transport in the troposphere due to the loss of advective air mass fluxes and sub-grid tracer eddy mass fluxes. A key outcome of this work is the recommendation that the 4x5 version of GEOS-Chem should not be used for inverse modeling of CH4 emissions. The thesis also investigated the sensitivity of North American CH4 emission estimates in the nested version of GEOS-Chem (at the 0.5x0.67) to biases in boundary conditions from the coarse global resolution model. It was shown that biases not fully mitigated in the global CH4 simulation could result in biases as large as 30-35% in monthly mean surface emission estimates on local to regional scales. | Ph.D. | greenhouse gas | 13 |
| Stanimirovic, Aleksandra | Berta, Whitney B | Insights into the Impact of Med Rec Implementation at admission in Acute and Long Term Care Settings in Alberta | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-11 | Introduction: In Canada, adverse drug events (ADEs) pose a significant public health problem. Various clinical tools have been created to mitigate ADEs and/or their impacts. Medication reconciliation (Med Rec) has been created as a clinical process intended to address the limitations associated with the use of previous clinical tools. Typically, Med Rec interventions have been implemented and evaluated at a single hospital ward and/or among vulnerable patient populations, thus limiting the generalizability of findings. In Alberta, a medication reconciliation intervention, the Medication Reconciliation Alberta (MRQA Med Rec), has been concurrently implemented in acute care hospitals and continuing care facilities with the aim of enhancing medication safety. The intervention has the potential to reduce ADE-related healthcare utilization by ensuring that all medication changes are adequately documented. Primary Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of MRQA Med Rec in Alberta’s healthcare settings. Secondary Objectives: 1) To characterize Alberta’s healthcare institutions participating in the MRQA Med Rec intervention and compare with non-participating institutions; 2) To determine the consistency (fidelity) of MRQA Med Rec implementation by assessing the Quality Audit Bundle Compliance at Admission; 3) To evaluate whether the impact of the MRQA Med Rec intervention differs among care settings; and 4) To assess the impact of organizational factors on the effectiveness of MRQA Med Rec interventions both between and within healthcare settings. Study population: Cohort consisted of Alberta’s acute care hospital units and LTC facilities, participating in the initiative as of June 2014. Data collection: Administrative data from the following sources were linked by facility identifier: NACRS; DAD; Guide to Canadian Health facilities database; and MRQA Med Rec dataset. Data was obtained from the period between June 1st 2013 and March 31st, 2015. Analysis: Continuous variables were described with measures of central tendency and dispersion and categorical variables were described using contingency tables. Outcomes associated with ADE related healthcare utilization (ADE related ED visits and ADE related hospitalizations), consistently measured over time, were analyzed using repeated measures with the generalized linear mixed model procedures in SAS. For all parameter tests, α level was set to 0.05. Results: Alberta has 328 healthcare facilities, whereas as of June 2014, 116 healthcare organizations have implemented MRQA Med Rec including: hospitals (n=52); hospice (n=1) and publicly funded LTC facilities (n=63). MRQA Med Rec implementation in hospitals was not associated with changes in number of ADE related ED visits (p-value =0.1090) yet organizational factor analysis found that intervention’s positive effect may be more pronounced in hospitals with fewer than 50 beds (p-value | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Stanton, Colleen Maura | Carol, Rolheiser | A Health Promoting Continuous Learning Sustainable Education System | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2014-11 | Abstract This thesis was inspired by a new, evolving vision of a health promoting, continuous learning, education system with an ecological consciousness and focus on sustainability. In health promotion we are coming to a greater understanding of what creates health and how it is created in complex living systems - individuals, organizations, communities, and our planet. The setting is a large school district in Ontario involved in transformational systems change through creating collaborative learning environments, distributed leadership, and networking - locally and internationally. The research questions were: 1) Why and how do the top three most influential system environments (leadership, a culture of continuous learning, and interrelatedness of work and life) promote the optimal health, well-being, and sustainability of individuals (teachers, principals and supervisory officers) and the school district as a whole?; 2) What are the principles, patterns, relationships, and synergies that are integral to creating a health promoting, continuous learning, sustainable system? and; 3) Is there one or possibly two system environment(s) that might be a major enabler(s) for creating a health promoting, continuous learning, sustainable system? This study was a purposive qualitative study involving sixty semi-structured interviews with teachers, principals, and district leaders. The data were analyzed using thematic analysis and an ecological, holistic systems approach, involving dialogue with experts in systems thinking, theory and change.The findings identify: (a) 12 major themes emerging from three system environments; (b) the synergy point; (c) leadership as the major enabler (d) one major pattern of increasing complexity and consciousness of health, well-being, and sustainability; (e) three sub-patterns: leadership, a culture of continuous learning, and interrelatedness of work and life; and (f) four tensions and paradoxes. This study makes five substantial contributions: * drawing on an ecological, holistic systems approach to health, well-being, and sustainability;* using a systems approach to research design and methodology;* using three knowledge lenses to draw on literature across diverse fields; *identifying 12 Principles of a Health Promoting, Continuous Learning, Sustainable System; *developing a Reflective Framework: Five Levels of Complexity and Consciousness of Health, Well-Being, and Sustainability.Recommendations and suggestions for further study are outlined. | Ph.D. | health, environment | 3, 13 |
| Stanton, Kim Pamela | Moran, Mayo ||Dyzenhaus, David | Truth Commissions and Public Inquiries: Addressing Historical Injustices in Established Democracies | Law | 2010-06 | In recent decades, the truth commission has become a mechanism used by states to address historical injustices. However, truth commissions are rarely used in established democracies, where the commission of inquiry model is favoured. I argue that established democracies may be more amenable to addressing historical injustices that continue to divide their populations if they see the truth commission mechanism not as a unique mechanism particular to the transitional justice setting, but as a specialized form of a familiar mechanism, the commission of inquiry. In this framework, truth commissions are distinguished from other commissions of inquiry by their symbolic acknowledgement of historical injustices, and their explicit “social function” to educate the public about those injustices in order to prevent their recurrence. Given that Canada has established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on the Indian Residential Schools legacy, I consider the TRC’s mandate, structure and ability to fulfill its social function, particularly the daunting challenge of engaging the non-indigenous public in its work. I also provide a legal history of a landmark Canadian public inquiry, the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry, run by Tom Berger. As his Inquiry demonstrated, with visionary leadership and an effective process, a public inquiry can be a pedagogical tool that promotes social accountability for historical injustices. Conceiving of the truth commission as a form of public inquiry provides a way to consider the transitional justice literature on truth commissions internationally along with the experiences of domestic commissions of inquiry to assemble strategies that may assist the current TRC in its journey. | SJD | justice | 16 |
| Start, Denon | Gilbert, Benjamin | The Evolutionary Ecology of Traits and Trait-mediated Interactions | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11 | As biologists, we seek to understand the sources of biodiversity, and the consequences of that diversity for ecological and evolutionary dynamics. But what do we mean by biodiversity? An evolutionary biologist might consider the traits of a population, while an ecologist may invoke differences among species. A key complexity of biological systems is that these facets of biodiversity occur simultaneously—all biological systems span levels of biological organization. In the first half of my thesis, I use gall-makers and dragonfly larvae to address a key facet of natural selection; species live, reproduce, and die in complex webs of interacting species, all of which can directly and indirectly shape evolutionary change. I show that subtle differences in the traits of ‘keystone’ individuals (Chapter 1), populations (Chapter 2), and indirectly interacting species (Chapter 3) all modify interactions and natural selection. These links can be further modified by environmental conditions (Chapter 4), and spatial processes that have random (Chapter 5) and deterministic (Chapter 6) effects on species composition and traits; traits, interactions, and selection are intimately linked. In the second half of my thesis, I investigate some of the ways in which a process occurring at one level of organization (e.g. evolution) can influence processes and their consequences occurring at other levels (e.g. community assembly and trophic cascades). Using dragonfly larvae, I show that ontogenetic differences (Chapter 7), individual differences (Chapter 8), and community-level differences generated by macroevolution (Chapter 9) all shape predation. In a unifying experiment, I determine that intraspecific variation may be particularly consequential for trophic dynamics and ecosystem functioning (Chapter 10). To understand classic ecological patterns (e.g. biodiversity-ecosystem functioning) requires an understanding of traits and their functions across biological scales of organization. The broad conclusions of this thesis are two-fold. First, trait variation across biological levels can reshape natural selection. Second, it will be difficult to understand patterns of diversity in ecological communities without considering trait variation at other biological levels. To understand biological systems, we require a synthesis of the causes and consequences of diversity across levels—we require a rapprochement of evolutionary biology and community ecology. | Ph.D. | biodiversity | 15 |
| Stead, Virginia Phillips Morse | Bascia, Nina | Teacher Candidate Diversification Through Equity-based Admission Policy | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2012-06 | This research responds to the problem of minority teacher under-representation within North America’s increasingly diverse urban school systems. It weaves together what is known about educational equity, teacher education admission policy, and policy implementation to explore the research question, “How did equity-based admission policy shape candidate diversification in an urban Canadian teacher education program?” The conceptual framework grounds this study within organizational culture and describes how culture both shapes and is shaped by interactions between structure and agency. The conceptual question asks, “How did institutional norms and individual will work to support or constrain equitable candidate diversification?” Data collection occurred during private interviews with members of three organizational groups: Policymakers, policy implementers, and policy beneficiaries. Policymakers were senior administrators with several years’ experience in their respective positions. Policy implementers were admission personnel, ad hoc faculty, and field-based educators. The policy beneficiaries were candidates who self-identified as future French and Physics teachers, and as members of Aboriginal, Disabled, Gendered/Invisible, and Racialized/Visible minorities. Data analysis was an iterative process of applying demographic, thematic, and editorial coding to the interview transcripts. Discussion highlighted several themes that shaped the admission process: External admission policy context, Faculty of Education Equity Policy, admission policy instrumentation, qualification precedence and weighting, academic qualifications, non-academic identity-based and experience-based qualifications, admission policy gaps, and last-minute Policy disclosure. It also addressed admission personnel recruitment, training, and performance during candidate personal information form assessment. Significant findings emerged in the areas of preservice program partnerships, candidate support services, qualification transparency, labeling of identity-based candidate characteristics, and admission personnel training. Research applicability extends to consecutive and concurrent teacher education programs, other tertiary professional licensing programs, and multi-site qualitative research projects. Recommendations for policy and practice target teacher education admission, policy implementation, and equity policy development. | EDD | educat, equitable | 4 |
| Steele, Astrid | Wallace, John | A Confluence of Traditions: Examining Teacher Practice in the Merging of Secondary Science and Environmental Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2010-06 | Embedding environmental education within secondary science curriculum presents both philosophical and practical difficulties for teachers. This ethnographic/narrative study, with its methodology grounded in eco-feminism and realism/constructivism, examines the work of six secondary science teachers as they engage in an action research project focused on merging environmental education in their science lessons. Over the course of several months the teachers examine and discuss their views and their professional development related to the project. In the place of definitive conclusions, eight propositions relating the work of secondary science teachers to environmental education, form the basis for a discussion of the implications of the study. The implications are particularly relevant to secondary schools in Ontario, Canada, where the embedding of environmental education in science studies has been mandated. | PhD | environment | 13 |
| Steele, Sarah Elizabeth | López-Fernández, Hernán | Body Size Evolution and Diversity of Fishes using the Neotropical Cichlids (Cichlinae) as a Model System | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-06 | The influence of body size on an organism’s physiology, morphology, ecology, and life history has been considered one of the most fundamental relationships in ecology and evolution. The ray-finned fishes are a highly diverse group of vertebrates. Yet, our understanding of diversification in this group is incomplete, and the role of body size in creating this diversity is largely unknown. I examined body size in Neotropical cichlids (Cichlinae) to elucidate the large- and small-scale factors affecting body size diversity and distribution, and how body size shapes species, morphological, and ecological diversity in fishes. Characterization of body size distributions across the phylogeny of Neotropical cichlids revealed considerable overlap in body size, particularly in intermediate-sized fishes, with few, species-poor lineages exhibiting extreme body size. Three potential peaks of adaptive evolution in body size were identified within Cichlinae. I found freshwater fishes globally tend to be smaller and their distributions more diverse and right-skewed than marine counterparts, irrespective of taxonomy and clade age, with a strengthening of these trends in riverine systems. Comparisons of Neotropical cichlid body size diversity and distribution to this broader context shows that body size patterns are largely abnormal compared to most freshwater fishes, particularly those of the Neotropics. This implies that small body size is rarer in Cichlinae, despite several independent cases of body size decrease in this lineage. I found that these small-bodied lineages are miniaturized cichlids, exhibiting strong reduction in body size, as well as paedomorphic characters and ontogenetic truncation compared to their sister taxa. Further examination of ontogenies across Neotropical cichlids found considerable shape conservatism over ontogeny and phylogeny, with cichlids following similar ontogenetic trajectories. Therefore, ontogenetic pathways do not contribute considerably to morphological divergence seen in adults, with divergence likely occurring in the larval stage or perhaps during embryology. The evolution of ontogeny, body size, and shape did not correspond to a unique adaptive peak in miniatures, or three body size optima predicted from the distribution of size across the phylogeny. Rather, it is complex and, like early trait divergence previously seen, diversifies early in the phylogeny across the major lineages of Neotropical cichlids. | Ph.D. | ecology, fish, marine | 14, 15 |
| Steffens, Travis | Lehman, Shawn M | Biogeographic Patterns of Lemur Species Richness and Occurrence in a Fragmented Landscape | Anthropology | 2017-06 | Determining the factors that affect species richness and occurrence is vital to the study of primate biogeography. In this study, I investigate the biogeographic patterns of a lemur community within a fragmented landscape in Ankarafantsika National Park, Madagascar. The landscape consists of 42 deciduous dry forest fragments ranging in size from 0.23 to 117.7 ha. I conducted a total of 1218 surveys for lemurs between June and November 2011 in the 42 fragments. I recorded a total of 1023 individual or group sightings of six species. I conducted vegetation sampling in 38 of 42 forest fragments. I measured human disturbance within each fragment and determined fragment isolation and proximity to human settlements. I explored biogeographic patterns of lemur species richness and occurrence using the species-area relationship, metapopulation dynamics, and landscape ecology. I found that lemurs in a fragmented landscape show a species-area relationship in the form of a convex power model. I did not find a sigmoidal pattern for the species-area relationship and I found no evidence of a â small island effect.â Human disturbance and tree height also influence species richness, but it is unclear how. Lemur species form different metapopulations within the same landscape. Metapopulation dynamics suggest that area was a stronger factor determining individual lemur species occurrence than fragment isolation. However, for Microcebus species, area seems to have less influence than for other species (Cheirogaleus medius and Eulemur fulvus). I investigated the landscape ecology of lemur species occurrence and found species-specific scale responses to habitat amount. Area predicted species occurrence for C. medius and M. murinus, but not for M. ravelobensis. M. ravelobensis occurrence may be mediated by factors other than area, such as dispersal ability and edge tolerance. My study shows the importance of a multi-scale approach to lemur biogeography and how it is critical for understanding how lemur species respond to high amounts of forest loss and fragmentation. | Ph.D. | urban, forest, ecology | 11, 15 |
| Steflja, Izabela | Handley, Antoinette | (In)Humanity on Trial: On the Ground Perceptions of International Criminal Tribunals | Political Science | 2015-06 | The purpose of this dissertation is to understand how international criminal tribunals (ICTs) are received in different contexts. The dissertation is driven by the following puzzle: Why has there often been a negative response to international criminal tribunals (ICTs) in local communities that have been victim to the crimes that these institutions are prosecuting? I examine this puzzle through local responses to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Serbia, and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) in Rwanda. The findings are based on three research trips to each country, including nine consecutive months of fieldwork in Rwanda and six consecutive months of fieldwork in BiH and Serbia, and over 136 successful semi-structured and open-ended interviews with a variety of local actors. My data suggest that the two ad hoc tribunals were not successful at establishing themselves as legitimate and credible mechanisms of transitional justice. The locals in each country believed that they were not the primary beneficiaries of ICTs, and that that the ICTs paid insufficient attention to the dynamics between tribunal demands and proceedings, and political events on the ground. My findings show that, first, in each case, local actors in power - those connected to past regimes who were responsible for the 1990s atrocities, and those who were part of new regimes - adapted well to the conditions set by ICTs, manipulating the tribunals for their own political goals and influencing the perception of these institutions among the local populations. Second, ICTs had a serious impact on domestic politics, feeding into power struggles between domestic and international actors and between factions on the ground. This outcome had significant implications for political transitions in the three countries, many of which were unintended and contrary to the aims and expectations of the tribunals. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Stephenson, Anne | Hux, Janet ||Corey, Mary | Predictors of Hospitalization Among Cystic Fibrosis Patients in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-11 | This dissertation involved linking a clinical cystic fibrosis (CF) data registry with administrative databases to evaluate clinical, demographic, and geographical predictors of hospitalization in CF patients living in Ontario over a 10 year period. In addition, this work assessed the ability of administrative data to identify individuals with CF using the clinical registry as the reference standard. Sex was an independent predictor of hospitalization rates for individuals with CF. Females had a significantly higher hospitalization rate compared to males even after adjusting for important clinical factors suggesting that this finding is not simply due to worse CF disease. In those between 7 and 19 years of age, the adjusted hospitalization rate was 38% higher in females (rate ratio[RR] 1.38, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.11-1.73). Similarly in those over the age of 19, females had a 30% higher hospitalization rate compared to males (RR 1.30, 95% CI 1.06-1.59). Other significant predictors associated with higher hospitalization rates in both age groups were lower lung function, worse nutritional status, pancreatic insufficiency, and the presence of CF-related diabetes. The presence of Burkholderia cepacia complex in the sputum was a significant predictor in those over the age of 19 years (RR 1.54, 95% CI 1.26-1.89). Distance to CF centre, community size and socioeconomic status were not significant predictors of hospitalization rates in either age group. There was no significant trend in hospitalization rates over time once rates were adjusted for markers of disease severity (p=0.08). Comparing administrative data with the CF registry data, administrative data captured hospitalizations more comprehensively. Despite CF being a specific diagnosis, health administrative databases alone were insufficient to reliably and accurately identify individuals with CF unless they had been hospitalized. The reason for the gender disparity seen within this dissertation is likely multifactorial. There may be differences in outpatient management between the sexes, hormonal influences may modulate disease severity causing higher hospitalization rates, and patient and provider-level influences may affect the decision to hospitalize a patient. Further research is needed in this area to elucidate the factors contributing to this gender gap. | PhD | socioeconomic, heakth | 1, 3 |
| Stergiou-Kita, Mary Melpomeni | Rappolt, Susan ||Dawson, Deirdre R. | Inter-professional Clinical Practice Guideline for Vocational Evaluation following Traumatic Brain Injury | Rehabilitation Science | 2011-11 | Due to physical, cognitive and emotional impairments, many individuals are unemployed or under-employed following a traumatic brain injury. The research evidence links the rigour of a vocational evaluation to future employment outcomes. Despite this link, no specific guidelines exist for vocational evaluations. Using the research evidence and a diverse panel of clinical and academic experts, the primary objective of this doctoral research was to develop an inter-professional clinical practice guideline for vocational evaluation following traumatic brain injury. The objective of the guideline is to make explicit the processes and factors relevant to vocational evaluation, to assist evaluators (i.e. clients, health and vocational professionals, and employers) in collaboratively determining clients’ work abilities and developing recommendations for work entry, re-entry or vocational planning. The steps outlined in the Canadian Medical Association's Handbook on Clinical Practice Guidelines were utilized to develop the guideline and include the following: 1) identifying the guideline’s objective/questions; 2) performing a systematic literature review; 3) gathering a panel; 4) developing recommendations; 4) guideline writing; 5) pilot testing. The resulting guideline includes 17 key recommendations within the following seven domains: 1) evaluation purpose and rationale; 2) initial intake process; 3) assessment of the personal domain; 4) assessment of the environment; 5) assessment of occupational/job requirements; 6) analysis and synthesis of assessment results; and 7) development of evaluation recommendations. Results from an exploratory study of the guideline’s implementation by occupational therapists in their daily practices revealed that clinicians used the guideline to identify practice gaps, systematize their evaluation processes, enhance inter-professional and inter-stakeholder communication, and re-conceptualize their vocational evaluations across disability groups. Statistically significant improvements were also noted in clients’ participation scores on the Mayo-Portland Adaptability Inventory–4 following guideline use. This guideline may be applicable to individuals with TBI, clinicians, health and vocational professionals, employers, professional organizations, administrators, policy makers and insurers. | PhD | employment | 8 |
| Stevens, Marianne Elizabeth | Nixon, Stephanie A | Rehabilitation and how it Applies to Stigma using HIV as an Example | Rehabilitation Science | 2019-06 | Adults living with HIV face numerous challenges and the application of rehabilitation principles may help alleviate many of them. Stigma is a challenge many individuals living with HIV face every day and it can have important consequences for their participation in valued activities and roles in their lives. The impact of stigma associated with HIV has not been well studied from a rehabilitation science perspective. This thesis explores research on the rehabilitation interventions used by adults living with HIV to help them manage their experiences of disability and investigate how stigma intersects with the rehabilitative framework of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). A series of interrelated investigations – a scoping review, a theoretical analysis and an empirical study – were completed. The scoping review revealed the extent, range and nature of research on rehabilitation interventions used by adults living with HIV to manage their experiences of disability. The theoretical investigation illustrated how stigma and rehabilitation interrelate, specifically demonstrating how three forms of stigma (enacted, self and structural) interrelated with the ICF domains of participation restrictions, environmental and personal contextual factors. A final empirical study illustrated the real-world application of the theoretical contribution through secondary analysis of interviews with Zambian women living with HIV. These women faced enacted, self and structural stigma, which were shown to interrelate with the domains of the ICF, through accounts of their lived experiences. The concepts of rehabilitation, stigma and HIV are uniquely connected in this dissertation. The findings illustrate how stigma and rehabilitation are interrelated both theoretically and empirically using HIV as an example. The resulting insights have implications for rehabilitation professionals and researchers who can apply this information to their clinical and scientific work to strengthen the role of rehabilitation in mitigating stigma as experienced by people living with HIV. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Stewart, Katherine Ellen | Polatajko, Helene J||Du Mont, Janice | Life, Irrupted: An Occupational Perspective on the Lives of Women Who Experienced Sexual Assault While at University | Rehabilitation Science | 2019-06 | Although sexual assault that occurs during university is known to have numerous significant consequences, many are believed to remain “hidden.” This dissertation research employed an occupational perspective to provide a more fulsome examination of the aftermath of sexual assault that occurs during university. Three distinct studies, yielding four manuscripts, were conducted. First, a review of the sexual assault literature was carried out. Findings suggested a clear but narrowly examined occupational aftermath of sexual assault. Next, women’s experiences of everyday living in the aftermath of sexual assault were explored through different forms of narrative: (a) memoirs written by women who had experienced sexual assault during university, and (b) interviews with women who had experienced sexual assault during university. These studies suggested an extensive occupational aftermath of sexual assault. Together, the findings of this dissertation research make five unique contributions to the sexual assault and occupational science literature. First, the findings suggest that an occupational perspective may be used to uncover some of the hidden consequences of sexual assault, specifically those related to human occupation. Second, the findings suggest that sexual assault that occurs during university is occupational life-altering. Sexual assault was found to have significant, widespread, and lasting consequences for women’s daily occupations, as well as for their occupational trajectories. Third, the findings suggest that sexual assault alters women’s occupational lives in ways that at once follow a pattern and are particular to the individual. Although broad patterns in changes to women’s occupations were identified, occupational choice and engagement were found to be idiosyncratic in the aftermath of sexual assault during university. Fourth, the findings suggest that the alterations produced by sexual assault necessitate the (re)building of one’s occupational life and self through conscious engagement in occupation. Last, the findings are suggestive of a model of occupational response following major life disruption. Further research is warranted to continue to develop an expanded understanding of what everyday living looks like after life disruption beyond sexual assault that occurs during university. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Stewart, Thomas Joseph | Sprules, W. Gary ||Shuter, Brian ||Minns, Charles Ken ||Abrams, Peter | Invasion-induced Changes to the Offshore Lake Ontario Food Web and the Trophic Consequence for Bloater (Coregonus hoyi) Reestablishment | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2010-03 | I compared changes in offshore Lake Ontario major species-group biomass, production and diets before (1987-1991) and after (2001-2005) invasion-induced ecological change. I synthesized the observations into carbon-based mass-balanced food webs linking two pathways of energy flow; the grazing chain (phytoplankton-zooplankton-fish) and the microbial loop (autotrophic bacteria-heterotrophic protozoans) and determined how the structure and function of the food web changed between time-periods. I use the food web descriptions to simulate the reestablishment of native deepwater bloater. I developed empirical models describing spatial variation in temperature and applied them to investigate predator temperature distributions, bioenergetic consequences of alewife diet and distribution shifts, and zooplankton productivity. Primary production declined as did the biomass and production of all species-groups except Chinook salmon. Total zooplankton production declined by approximately half with cyclopoid copepod production declining proportionately more. Zooplankton species richness and diversity were unaffected. Alewife adapted to low zooplankton production by consuming more Mysis, increasing their trophic level. The increased prey-size and exploitation of spatial heterogeneity in resource patches and temperature may have allowed alewife to maintain their growth efficiency. The trophic level also increased for smelt, adult sculpin, adult alewife and Chinook salmon. Phytoplankton grazing rates declined and predation pressure increased on Mysis, adult smelt and alewife, and decreased on protozoans. Resource to consumer trophic transfer efficiencies changed; increasing for protozoans, Mysis, Chinook salmon and other salmonines and decreasing for zooplankton, prey-fish and benthos. The changes suggest both bottom-up and top-down influences on food web structure. The direct trophic influences of invasive species on the offshore Lake Ontario food web were minor. Carbon flows to Mysis indicated an important, and changing ecological role for this species and we hypothesize that Mysis may have contributed to Diporeia declines. Simulations suggest that only a small reestablished bloater population, limited by Diporeia production, could be sustained. | PhD | food, water, consum, production, fish | 2, 6, 12, 14 |
| Stinson, James | Bamford, Sandra | The Will to Conserve? Environmentality, Translation, and Politics of Conservation in Southern Belize | Anthropology | 2017-06 | Over the last 20 years, community-based conservation (CBC) emerged as a dominant global regime of natural resource management, promoted as a means of reconciling diverse interests around a shared goal of biodiversity conservation. In recent years, however, there has been a backlash against CBC, with some calling for a return to more exclusionary and protectionist forms of conservation. This dissertation explores the rise and fall of community-based conservation. It does this through a detailed analysis of the co-management of the Sarstoon-Temash National Park (STNP) in southern Belize. Despite being unilaterally imposed on surrounding indigenous communities in 1994, the STNP was later recognized as one of the most participatory, innovative and effectively managed protected areas in Belize and promoted internationally as a model for balancing the goals of biodiversity conservation with the interests of indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, in 2008 the Government of Belize terminated the management regime governing the park amidst growing conflict with surrounding communities over oil exploration and indigenous land rights. The key question addressed by this dissertation is not whether community-based conservation succeeds or fails, but how the success and failure of CBC is produced. In doing this, this dissertation examines how diverse actors and groups are enrolled in the project of CBC; how the rationality of CBC (the will to conserve) is translated into specific projects and technologies of government; and how variously positioned social actors and organizations experience, interpret and respond to CBCâ s effects. The central argument of this dissertation is the following: Community-based conservation does not work by reconciling the interests of diverse actors around a shared â will to conserveâ ; nor does it operate as by simply displacing or concealing politics through the promotion of technical and bureaucratic interventions. Rather, community-based conservation is assembled through political acts of translation, processes of representation and interpretation through which actors construct meaningful linkages between their own individual or collective interests and the rationality of particular projects. As a result, projects do not fail when they do not meet their stated objectives, but when practices of translation fail to produce interpretations that engender political support. | Ph.D. | rights, biodiversity, conserv | 15, 16 |
| Stockley, Lisa Marie | Bobonis, Gustavo J | How Do Expectations Influence Labour Supply? Evidence from Framed Field Experiments | Economics | 2018-03 | Models of reference dependence have improved the connection between economic theory and documented labour supply behaviour. In particular, the Kőszegi and Rabin (2006, 2007, 2009) [hereafter "KR"] theory of expectation based reference dependent preferences appears to be a disciplined way to unify the conflicting wage elasticity estimates, and recent laboratory and natural experiments suggest this theory may work in practice as well. I take this theory to the field in a pair of laboratory-like experiments designed to test if expectations determine the effort of a group of impoverished individuals involved in piece-rate work in Northeast Brazil. I use Abeler, Falk, Goette, and Huffman's (2011) experimental mechanism, which is a clear test of KR preferences in effort provision, in two experiments: first to test if rational expectations act as a reference point that influences effort, and second to test if adaptive expectations act as a reference point that influences effort. In both experiments, I find that although people do not behave in accordance with KR preferences, they do not behave as though they make their decisions following canonical lines either. I then outline a speculative rationale for the observed behaviour in these experiments—the adaptive heuristic of regret matching—where workers are able to evaluate their ex-post feelings of regret, even if they do not know the source of those feelings, to optimize behaviour going forward. | Ph.D. | labour, worker, wage | 8 |
| Storm, Elliot Johann | Bejarano, Ana MarĂa | Power and Politics in Venezuelan Higher Education Reform, 1999-2012 | Political Science | 2016-06 | This dissertation explains why Venezuelan state and government elites were able to successfully design, adopt, and implement some higher education reforms but not others during the presidencies of Hugo Chรกvez (1999-2012). Conceptualizing universities as political institutions that occupy a liminal position within the borderlands of state and society, and using an approach that emphasizes the relational and procedural nature of political change, I compare four higher education initiatives advanced by Venezuelan reformers: a series of universalization programs, the 2001 Organic Education Law, the 2009 Organic Education Law, and the 2010 University Education Law. My analysis reveals that the adoption and implementation of these initiatives primarily depended upon how the distribution of institutional autonomy and capacity between the state and the oppositional university sector conditioned the strategic choices of key actors. In the case of universalization reform, actors within the executive branch were enabled by considerable autonomy relative to oppositional forces in the agenda-setting, design, and adoption stages of reform, while material capacity facilitated the implementation process. In the legislative arena, reformers relied upon similar institutional autonomy to set the agenda and design the three bills, but the constitutional guarantee of university autonomy and an increasingly deft use of intra- and inter-institutional connective structures (including governing councils, faculty unions, and student organizations) allowed the oppositional universities to form a cohesive bloc that constrained reformers and prevented the full implementation of any new legislation. This dissertation therefore challenges accounts of the Venezuelan state as exceptionally strong, provides a detailed account of extra-parliamentary opposition to the Chรกvez government, and foregrounds the university as an important but significantly understudied political actor in the context of state-society relations. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Story, Brett | Cowen, Deborah | Dis-placing the Prison: Carceral Space, Disposable Life, and Urban Struggle in Neoliberal America | Geography | 2015-11 | This dissertation contributes to the emerging field of carceral geography by demonstrating how carceral space produces and manages social disposability in late capitalist American life. In so doing, it posits that carceral space must be conceived as a complex geography, one that inscribes the production of racialized poverty, incarceration, and devalued life into its everyday socio-spatial relations. Carceral space encompasses the whole chain of relationships that make up the prison system: from the sites of criminalization, arrest and conviction to the landscapes of building construction; from edifices of captivity to the spaces deployed for the circulation and transfer of bodies. Carceral space also, I argue constitutes those social relations and geographic practices through which the stateâ s capacities of containment, displacement and dispossession are put to work for racial capitalism. The dissertation examines several illustrative carceral spaces at different points along the continuum of penal coercion in order to answer the question: How does carceral space help produce and manage social disposability? Using qualitative methods, including in-depth interviews, ethnographic participant observation, and textual analysis, my four case studies demonstrate that the production of disposability is an active process, spatialized in a range of places and forms that are politically mutable, highly contested, and differentially experienced. Throughout my case studies, geographies of spatial isolation and individuation function alongside the neoliberal logic of individual responsibility, to undermine black sociality and the forging of collective counter-power to racial capitalism and the carceral state. I argue that the racialized production of the â criminalâ provides powerful legitimizing cover for the making and social differentiation of surplus populations. The criminal is a paradigmatic category of disposability in capitalist liberal democracies precisely because the project of neoliberalism makes it so hard to divest from the economy of individualized responsibility and accountability. Finally, the dissertation points to some of the ways in which the capacities of the carceral state are being retrofitted for the current political-economic conjuncture, producing new spatial fixes for managing surplus life under the pretext of penal reform. I conclude that so long as the actual social relations for which the carceral state is put to work remain unchallenged, the spatial organization of racialized unfreedom and surplus life remain a pressing and pernicious threat. | Ph.D. | poverty, cities | 1, 11 |
| Strazzeri, Charlie | Lewis, Robert | Networks, Boundaries and Social Capital: The Historical Geography of Toronto's Anglo Elites and Italian Entrepreneurs, 1900-1935 | Geography | 2010-06 | This dissertation examines how social inequalities are reinforced over time and in place by addressing a central question: How are power relations maintained and reproduced in space? I outline ways in which social networks contributed to the reproduction of social and economic power in early twentieth-century Toronto. I also pay particular attention to the ways in which particular spaces acted as a nexus for the reproduction of power and unequal social relations. My research captures the dynamism and complexity of social capital networks that stretched across space. These networks demonstrate that Toronto’s Anglo elite and Italian entrepreneurs lived in a world where persons interacted over a number of regions and scales. This study contributes to the body of knowledge in social capital, network and social boundary research. Although this dissertation is largely concerned with early twentieth-century Toronto class and power relations, the results have implications beyond this case study. This research makes a significant contribution to historical geography by providing scholars interested in contemporary power relations and social networks with an empirically rich historical perspective. This study extends previous examinations of social inequality by examining how power relations were reproduced over time and through space. I analyze how social capital can be conceptualized as set of processes that is 1) integral to the acquisition of economic capital, 2) significant in constraining the action of others by redrawing the social boundaries of class and ethnicity, and 3) critical for the building of alliances across space. This research offers a complementary method to the inequality studies of David Ward, Joe Darden, Nan Lin, Richard Harris, James Barrett, and David Harvey by historically situating questions about the reproduction of social inequality through the examination of social networks. | PhD | equality, inequality, production | 5, 10, 12 |
| Strickman, Rachel Jean | Mitchell, Carl P.J. | Methylmercury in Managed Wetlands | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2017-06 | Methylmercury (MeHg), a bioaccumulative neurotoxin, is microbially produced in anoxic wetland environments. The direct or indirect management of wetlands is pervasive, but many questions remain regarding the impact of wetland management on MeHg biogeochemistry. To address this, I investigated the extent, drivers, and consequences of MeHg production in important types of managed wetlands, as well as the response of MeHg to specific management interventions. In a field study which simulated industrial increases and legislated decreases in sulfate deposition to peatlands, I found evidence that MeHg production in peatlands is quantitatively related to sulfate-mediated changes in the community structure of the Deltaproteobacteria, rather than simple metabolic stimulation of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB), one in the best studied groups of mercury methylators. Furthermore, the structure of the bacterial community, as well as MeHg accumulation, was resilient to the end of sulfate amendments, demonstrating the value of this management intervention. In a series of observational biogeochemical field studies in artificial wetlands, I found similar evidence that the wetland microflora was resilient to the disturbance of wetland dredging, which only temporarily reduced MeHg production and concentrations. Methylmercury production in stormwater wetlands was carried out by SRB, with their activity modulated by availability of inorganic mercury, labile and total organic carbon, and competition with nitrate reducers. MeHg production in stormwater wetlands was overall dampened in comparison to those managed for habitat provision. Finally, I used a controlled greenhouse experiment to study the source of MeHg and IHg to paddy grown rice, a staple food recently shown to be a significant dietary source of MeHg to some populations. I confirmed the soil origin of MeHg to rice grains, and identified a window of elevated MeHg uptake during vegetated growth. Inorganic mercury, by contrast, appears to derive from the atmosphere alone, presenting challenges in controlling its concentrations in rice. | Ph.D. | water, environment, production, resilien, urban, industr, wind | 6, 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Strudwick, Gillian | McGillis Hall, Linda | Understanding nurses' perceptions of electronic health record use in an acute care hospital setting | Nursing Science | 2017-06 | As Canadian healthcare organizations implement electronic health records (EHRs), nurses are expected to use the technology in their practice. Findings of a literature review suggest that usability (ease of use, functionality, navigation and impact on workload), the organizational context (support from leadership, level of training, level of on-going support, physical environment and implementation process) and individual nurse characteristics (sex, age, nursing unit, years of experience as a registered nurse, country of nursing education, years of experience using an EHR, previous EHR use and formal informatics training) influence nurses’ use of these systems. Thus, the purpose of this doctoral research was to better understand the relationships between the variables that make up usability, organizational context, individual nurse characteristics, and nurses’ perceptions of EHR use. This study was conducted using a sequential mixed methods design with two phases. Phase One consisted of a cross sectional survey that was piloted and then administered to nurses in an acute care teaching hospital in Toronto, Canada. The aim of the survey was to obtain information about nurses’ perceptions of the usability of the EHR, the organizational context, their individual nurse characteristics and their use of the system. Phase two involved focus groups to better understand the findings identified in the survey. Multivariable and hierarchical linear regression was conducted. A multivariable model made up of the variables ease of use, navigation and impact on workload, explained 13% of the variance in nurses’ perceptions of EHR use, however navigation was the only significant predictor in the model. In the data from the focus groups, nurses described how they navigated through the EHR, and which functionalities supported or hindered their use of it. Results of this study provide insights into factors that may influence nurses’ use of EHRs in an acute care hospital setting that have implications for research, nurse leaders, vendors, healthcare settings and nursing practice. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Sturman, Susan Michele | Boler, Megan | 'Women in Computing' as Problematic: Gender, Ethics and Identity in University Computer Science Education | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2009-11 | My study is focused on women in graduate Computer Science programs at two universities in Ontario, Canada. My research problem emerges from earlier feminist research addressing the low numbers of women in university Computer Science programs, particularly at the graduate level. After over twenty years of active feminist representation of this problem, mostly through large survey-based studies, there has been little change. I argue that rather than continuing to focus on the rising and falling numbers of women studying Computer Science, it is critical to analyze the specific socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions which produce gendered and racialized exclusion in the field. Informed by Institutional Ethnography – a method of inquiry developed by Dorothy Smith – and by Foucault’s work on governmentality, I examine how specific institutional processes shape the everyday lives of women students. Through on-site observation and interviews with women in graduate Computer Science studies, Computer Science professors and university administrators, I investigate how the participants’ everyday institutional work is coordinated through external textual practices such as evaluation, reporting and accounting. I argue that the university’s institutional practices produce ‘women in computing’ as a ‘problem’ group in ways that re-inscribe women’s outsider status in the field. At the same time, I show that professionalized feminist educational projects may contradict their progressive and inclusive intentions, contributing to the ‘institutional capture’ (Smith) of women as an administrative ‘problem’. Through ethnographic research that follows women students through a range of experiences, I demonstrate how they variously endorse, subvert and exploit the contradictory subject positions produced for them. I illustrate how a North American-based institutional feminist representation of ‘women in computing’ ignores the everyday experiences of ethnoculturally diverse female student participants in graduate Computer Science studies. I argue that rather than accepting the organization of universal characteristics which reproduce conditions of exclusion, North American feminist scholars need to consider the specificity of social relations and forms of knowledge transnationally. Finally, I revisit how women in the study engage with ‘women in computing’ discourse through their lived experiences. I suggest the need for ongoing analysis of the gender effects and changing socio-cultural conditions of new technologies. | PhD | inclusive, gender, women | 4, 5 |
| Styler, Sarah Anne | Donaldson, D. J. | Heterogeneous Photochemistry of Atmospheric Dusts and Organic Films | Chemistry | 2014-06 | Little is currently known regarding the nature and consequences of interactions between photoactive surfaces, including mineral dust and ‘urban film’, and gas-phase pollutants in urban environments. In order to address this knowledge gap, this thesis explores the photochemical reactivity of these environmental surfaces in controlled laboratory settings. The photoenhanced ozonation of pyrene, a toxic product of incomplete combustion, proceeds at different rates and via different mechanisms at three model ‘urban film’ surfaces. These results are important because they suggest that the reactivity of a molecule on simplified surfaces may not accurately reflect its reactivity in the real environment. The photooxidation of isopropanol at the surface of TiO2, here used as a proxy for the photoactive component of mineral dust, yields gas-phase acetone. This chemistry is amplified by nitrate, a major surficial component of atmospherically processed dust. These results suggest that dust has the potential to convert non-absorbing species to photochemically active species, and thereby serve as a source of reactive organic radicals for further gas- or surface-phase chemistry. Oxalic acid, the most atmospherically abundant dicarboxylic acid, is efficiently oxidized to gas-phase CO2 at the surface of Mauritanian sand and Icelandic volcanic ash. These experiments indicate that the lifetime of oxalic acid may be limited in arid regions by Fe and Ti-catalyzed aerosol-phase photochemistry. Fluorotelomer alcohols (FTOHs), a class of industrial chemicals used in the production of surface coatings, undergo photooxidation at the surface of sand and ash to yield toxic and persistent perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs). These results provide the first evidence that the metal-catalyzed heterogeneous oxidation of FTOHs may act as a local source of aerosol-phase PFCAs. Illumination of Nigerien sand in the presence of gas-phase SO2 leads to the formation of surface-sorbed sulfate. This chemistry proceeds more efficiently on fine sand than on coarse sand. In chamber experiments, the illumination of SO2 in the presence of realistically produced dust aerosol results in new particle formation. Together, these results suggest that SO2 photochemistry at the dust surface has the potential to change not only dust hygroscopicity but also the net scattering potential of dust-containing air masses. | PhD | pollut, environment, production, urban | 11, 12, 13 |
| Suarez, Eliana | Williams, Charmaine | Surviving the Sasachacuy Tiempu [Difficult Times]: The Resilience of Quechua Women in the Aftermath of the Peruvian Armed Conflict | Social Work | 2011-11 | Resilience and post trauma responses often coexist, however, for the past decades, the trauma paradigm has served as the dominant explanatory framework for human suffering in post-conflict environments, while the resilience of individuals and communities affected by mass violence has not been given equal prominence. Consequently, mental health interventions in post-conflict zones often fail to respond to local realities and are ill equipped to foster local strengths. Drawing primarily from trauma, feminist and structural violence theories, this study strengthens understanding of adult resilience to traumatic exposure by examining the resilience of Quechua women in the aftermath of the political violence in Peru (1980-2000), and their endurance of racially and gender-targeted violence. The study uses a cross sectional survey to examine the resilience and posttraumatic responses of 151 Quechua women. Participants were recruited from an urban setting and three rural villages in Ayacucho, Peru. The study examines the associations between resilience, past exposure to violence, current life stress and post-trauma related symptoms as well as the individual and community factors associated with the resilience of Quechua women. In doing so, this study makes a unique contribution by simultaneously examining posttraumatic responses and resilience in a post-conflict society, an area with a dearth of research. Results indicate that resilience was not associated with overall posttraumatic stress related symptoms, but instead higher resilience was associated with lower level of avoidance symptoms and therefore with lesser likelihood of chronic symptoms. Findings also demonstrate that enhanced resilience was associated with women’s participation in civic associations, as well as being a returnee of mass displacement. Lower resilience was instead associated with lower levels of education, absence of income generated from a formal employment and the experience of sexual violence during the conflict. These results were triangulated with qualitative findings, which show that work, family, religion, and social participation are enhancing factors of resilience. The study highlights the courage and resilience of Quechua women despite persistent experiences of everyday violence. The importance to situate trauma and resilience within historical processes of oppression and social transformation as well as other implications for social work practice and research are discussed. | PhD | health, gender, employment, urban | 3, 5, 8, 11 |
| Subbiah, Rajkumar | Sain, Mohini M||Nayak, Sanjay K | Vacuum Infusion Molding of Natural Fibre Reinforced Biobased Resin Composite | Forestry | 2016-03 | The increasing demand in the field of bio material research for an in-depth understanding of processing phenomenon to convert it into a useful product is essential. Besides, there is inadequate information regarding the dependency between their processing mechanism and mechanical performance. The main focus of this work is to address the issues of the resin flow behavior of natural fibre in vacuum infusion molding, the determination of permeability and validation of the proposed contact angle model with experimental data. The proposed model shows greater accuracy when validated with experimental observation. The outcome of this research emphasizes the wetting mechanism and fibre network of sisal mats are the major factors that reduces 26% of permeability as compared to glass fibres. In addition, it is observed that the swelling phenomenon had a minimal influence on the permeability of the sisal fibre mat. The complex phenomena occurring during wetting of natural fibres with epoxidized soybean oil (ESO) in terms of contact angle and surface energy are investigated. The fibres are treated with various reagents to improve the wetting behavior. It is noted that NaOH treatment provides considerable amount of increase in surface area of the exposed cellulose that aids in enhancement of wettability characteristics by increasing the surface energy from 18 mN/m to 23.5 mN/m while reducing the contact angle from 530 to 310. Conversely, there is a formation of virtual layer on the fibre when treated with silane and isocyanate. Moreover, isocyanate treated fibre exhibits improved wetting behaviour in terms of increase in surface energy from 18 mN/m to 25.5 mN/m when wetted with ESO. The kinetics study of the curing reaction of the resin is performed by differential scanning calorimetry. A new empirical model is proposed to analyze the kinetic data obtained experimentally. The results highlighted that the proposed model attained significant improvement to predict the experimental cure kinetic data qualitatively and quantitatively. The addition of 30% ESO in the conventional system increases the activation energy of the system up to 108 kJ/mol. The effect of the surface treatments of natural fibre, fibre loading direction, and resin flow direction on the tensile properties of developed composites are investigated. The longitudinal tensile strength of developed composites demonstrated a 7-8 fold increment, as compared to the transverse direction tensile strength. The flow along the fibre provides 10% increment in tensile strength due to higher permeability. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Sugar, Lorraine | Kennedy, Christopher | Urban Scaling and the Dynamics of Cities | Civil Engineering | 2019-06 | Cities connect people with various skills and interests in a multi-component, interconnected system, which displays properties consistent with other complex systems observed in nature, such as scaling. Urban scaling is the empirical observation that as cities increase in size, they achieve agglomeration economies in socioeconomic indicators (i.e., superlinear scaling in GDP, income, crime) and economies of scale in terms of physical infrastructure (i.e., sublinear scaling in road length, length of electricity cables). This thesis focuses on the foremost (if not only) model in the literature for explaining scaling of internal indicators in cities, the Origins of Scaling in Cities model by Bettencourt. The model derives a number of superlinear, sublinear, and linear scaling exponents for different indicators from basic first principles in economic geography and physics. It combines classic ideas in economic geography of cities, particularly spatial equilibria, with the properties of social and infrastructural networks. In doing so, the model introduces new variables for describing internal processes in cities. The thesis consists of three papers, each with foundations in the Origins of Scaling in Cities model but adding new contributions to the field. The first paper, Dynamics of Urban Scaling, brings in a temporal component to the model by looking at how scaling parameters changes in cities over time, particularly in response to growth or decline, as well as urban planning policies. The second paper, A New Metric for City Sustainability Based on Urban Scaling Theory, takes a closer look at the costs and benefits of cities that are outlined in the model, and it examines the point at which cities can be considered to be maximizing net benefit. The third paper, The Physics of Urban Growth Revealed by City Scaling, looks at scaling in the context of the city as a thermodynamic system, presenting a new approach to understanding energy use in cities and the transformations that occur as urban populations and economies grow. The thesis is book-ended by discussion surrounding the ability of cities of different sizes to meet the needs of their residents, and the inevitable tradeoffs that exist in rapidly growing cities. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, energy, infrastructure, cities | 1, 7, 9, 11 |
| Sultmanis, Stefanie Daina | Wright, Stephen I.||Stinchcombe, John | Developmental and Expression Evolution in C3 and C4 Atriplex and their Hybrids | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-11 | Maintaining global food security amidst climate change requires improved photosynthetic efficiency in C3 crops. Above 30°C, photosynthesis and yield are reduced 30-50% by photorespiration. The C4 photosynthetic pathway incorporates biochemical and structural features to minimize photorespiration by concentrating CO2 around Rubisco. Engineering C4 into C3 crops requires an understanding of the molecular and genetic control of C4 photosynthesis. I combined transcriptomic and developmental analyses to investigate the molecular control of leaf development in C3 Atriplex prostrata compared to A. rosea, a C4 species with Kranz anatomy. Plants with Kranz-type C4 photosynthesis have two photosynthetic cell types, mesophyll and bundle sheath. Mesophyll cells contain phosphoenolpyruvate carboxylase, the primary carbon fixation enzyme, whereas bundle sheath contains Rubisco and houses photosynthetic carbon reduction. I used C3 x C4 Atriplex F1 hybrids and allele-specific expression analysis to investigate the role of cis- and trans-regulatory effects on gene expression divergence. The majority (~80%) of expression divergence between C3 and C4 species arose from cis-only regulatory divergence, suggesting that numerous independent expression changes across the genome drove C4 photosynthesis evolution. For genes in the C4 pathway, expression divergence arose from cis-acting changes to individual genes, with little contribution from trans-changes. Genes of interest including regulators of plasmodesmata and chloroplast function did not have distinct patterns of regulatory divergence. Inheritance pattern analysis showed that misexpression was common in F1 hybrids and was supported by phenotypic evidence. I next performed comparative studies of C3 and C4 leaf development. I detected significant species*time interaction effects for a large proportion of genes, implying that evolutionary shifts in expression timing were widespread between these species. Cis-regulation was also implicated in many of these evolutionary shifts in expression timing. C4 Atriplex showed accelerated vascular tissue initiation and formation, supported by earlier expression decline of vascular tissue development and core cell cycle genes. Plasmodesmata-associated genes were differentially expressed between during secondary plasmodesmata formation. Mature leaves of F2 hybrids exhibited variation in biochemistry, leaf tissue patterning, and bundle sheath ultrastructure and would be suitable for future large-scale transcriptomic studies. Combined, these studies facilitated identification of the underlying genetics of C4 evolution and development. | Ph.D. | food | 2 |
| Sumra, Monika K. | Schillaci, Michael A | The Human Alpha Female: Social and Biological Perspectives | Anthropology | 2019-11 | Today, in the popular and academic literature, women in the West who exhibit dominance-seeking behaviors to attain or maintain higher positions in social and professional networks are often referred to as “alpha females” or “alpha women”. Within this context, the term “alpha female” has become synonymous with the term leadership. Much of the research on the human alpha female takes its cues predominantly from the nonhuman primate literature on the social and biological factors that may predispose an individual to be an “alpha”, in particular, an “alpha male”. What are considered traditionally masculine traits in the West, such as aggression, leadership, and dominance, are often used to describe the alpha female. More recently, traits such as collaboration, teamwork, coalition building, and affiliative behavior, considered typical “feminine” traits in the West, have also been used to describe the alpha female. To date however, whether women socially occupy and/or biologically express this identity has not been researched.. The purpose of this thesis is to address the gaps in the literature and following what has been studied in the nonhuman primate literature, to investigate whether women who identify as alpha female are distinguishable from other women. For the present study, I examined the associations between alpha female status with the expression of specific alpha female related traits, hormone concentrations in hair, as well as differences in finger lengths, or the 2D:4D ratio, a prenatal biomarker of testosterone exposure. For the women in this study, the results suggest, that though specific masculine traits were found to be predictors of alpha female status, neither the specific hormones evaluated in the present study nor the 2D:4D ratio were associated with the expression of the alpha female identity. These results challenge present assumptions about what it means to be an alpha woman, as well as challenge what is known about the alpha female nonhuman primate as being representative of the human alpha female. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Sun, Ling | Shi, Shouyong | Essays on Money, Business Cycles and Household Formation | Economics | 2013-06 | This dissertation consists of three independent essays in Macroeconomics. The first essay studies whether efficiency can be improved by introducing government-issued illiquid bonds to an economy where money is the only asset and essential. In contrast with perfectly liquid bonds, illiquid bonds can increase societal welfare in two ways: First, allocating consumption goods among heterogeneous agents more efficiently; second, stimulating consumption and output level by loosening the liquidity constraints of households. More importantly, since societal welfare is elevated persistently when the inflation rates range from a level slightly above Friedman Rule to an upper bound, this essay provides an insight into the essentiality of illiquid bonds. The second essay provides a novel propagation mechanism of productivity shocks to explain an empirical fact: The response curve of output to a positive productivity shock reaches its peak up to eight quarters after the shock. Using a micro-founded monetary search model and focusing on agents’ decisions on establishing long-term trading relationships in the goods market, I show that when a positive shock takes place in the economy, marginal agents break down previous trading relationships and explore better matching opportunities. As a result, shortly after the shock, the average productivity level of transactions increases, but the total number of transactions decreases. The calibrated model shows that the latter effect dominates, resulting a slightly decrease of aggregate output after a positive productivity shock. The search friction, together with the monetary channel, gives rise to a delayed output response at the aggregate level. The third essay develops a general equilibrium theory of household formation – i.e., marriage – following Coase’s theory of firm formation. Individuals in the model consume both market-and home-produced commodities, and home production is facilitated through marriage. Market frictions, including taxation, search and bargaining problems, increase marriage rates when home and market goods are substitutes. In particular, inflation, as a tax on market activity, makes household production and hence marriage more attractive, as long as singles use cash more than married individuals, which is supported by data. The prediction that inflation and other taxes affect household formation is also supported by evidence. | PhD | taxation, consum | 10, 12 |
| Sun, Sun | Liang, Ben||Dong, Min | Management of Electrical Grids with Storage and Flexible Loads under High Penetration Renewables | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2016-03 | With growing concerns about environment and energy independence issues, more and more renewable energy resources such as wind and solar are expected to be integrated into the future power grid. Due to the intermittence and limited dispatch-ability of renewable generation, its large-scale integration could upset the balance between supply and demand, and affect grid reliability. To maintain grid reliability, traditional approaches include adding more operating reserves such as fast-responsive generators, which in turn incurs an increased cost and meanwhile discounts the environmental benefits of renewable generation. To combat the intermittence of renewable generation, in this thesis, an alternative solution is considered, which leverages the flexibility of energy storage and loads in grid-wide services. With the assistance of advanced ``smart grid'' technologies (e.g., information technology, control, and economics), the general objective of this thesis is to facilitate the large-scale renewable integration so as to improve the long-term performance of power grids (e.g., reliability, social welfare, or cost effectiveness). In achieving this goal, several challenges are encountered, such as system uncertainty, coupling of system operational constraints, and large scale of power grids. Compared with previous works, this work builds on more complete system models that can accommodate a wide spectrum of vital characteristics of a power system. We explicitly incorporate system uncertainty (e.g., uncertainty of renewable generation, electricity price, and loads) into the problem formulation. For the control of energy storage and loads, we provide centralized algorithms that are easy to implement in reality, and at the same time ensure strong analytical performance. Furthermore, we propose distributed implementation of the centralized algorithms, which converges fast and only requires limited information exchange. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, wind, solar, environment | 7, 13 |
| Sun, Yajun | Wells, Mathew | Mixing Patterns of Discharged Ballast Water and the Implications for Biological Invasions in the Huron-Erie Corridor of the Great Lakes | Geography | 2014-03 | Ballast water discharge (BWD) is the main vector of aquatic invasions in the Great Lakes. The process of aquatic invasions is subject to both water mixing, which increases the difficulty of establishment due to dispersion, and strong Allee effects, which correspond to the Allee threshold A, below which a population will go extinct. However, the magnitudes of both processes remain unknown in the Huron-Erie Corridor (HEC), which is composed of the St. Clair River, Lake St. Clair and Detroit River. The HEC has become the most notable invasion hotspot within the Great Lakes. To explore the physical mixing of BWD, dye releases were conducted in the St. Clair River. Strong jet mixing was observed during BWD, with a 100-fold initial dilution. The subsequent mixing in the St. Clair River was two-dimensional, resulting in a power-law decay of peak concentration Cp over time t, with the exponent ~ −1. To quantify the Allee effects, a new model of population dynamics was developed and calibrated by empirical life-history scalings to body mass. The protocol provides an elegant way to estimate A and demonstrates a linear relationship between A and carrying capacity. To investigate the invasibility in Lake St. Clair, spatial patterns of zooplankton were measured by the High Resolution Laser Optical Plankton Counter across the lake. The results reveal distinct ecological zones characterised by disparate zooplankton size spectra, implying heterogeneous carrying capacity therefore heterogeneous A. In summary, the observed mixing can dilute most discharged species below the estimated A; however, the dilution could be dwarfed by biological aggregation for non-passively-distributed species. The observed high invasibility in the HEC can be ascribed to its unique ecological setting: littoral habitats (high suitability) dominated by pelagic water (low A). These findings will assist in the management of BWD and invasion biology. | PhD | water | 6 |
| Sundar, Aparna | Barker, Jonathan | Capitalist Transformation and the Evolution of Civil Society in a South Indian Fishery | Political Science | 2010-11 | This thesis employs Karl Polanyi’s concept of the double-movement of capitalism to trace the trajectory of a social movement that arose in response to capitalist transformation in the fishery of Kanyakumari district, south India. Beginning in the 1980s, this counter-movement militantly asserted community control over marine resources, arguing that intensified production for new markets should be subordinated to the social imperatives of subsistence and equity. Two decades later, the ambition of “embedding” the market within the community had yielded instead to an adaptation to the market in the language of “professionalization,” self-help, and caste uplift. Polanyi is useful for identifying the constituency for a counter-movement against the market, but tells us little about the social or political complexities of constructing such a movement. To locate the reasons for the decline of the counter-movement in Kanyakumari, I turn therefore to an empirical observation of the civil society within which the counter-movement arose. In doing this, I argue against Partha Chatterjee’s influential view that civil society as a conceptual category does not apply to “popular politics in most of the world,” and is not useful for tracing non-European, post-colonial, and subaltern modernities. By contrast, my case shows the presence of civil society – as a sphere of autonomous and routinized association and publicity – among subaltern groups in rural India. I argue that it is precisely by locating the counter-movement of fishworkers within civil society that one can map the multiple negotiations that take place as subaltern classes are integrated into the market, and into liberal democracy, and explain the difficulties of extending and sustaining the counter-movement itself. | PhD | worker, rural, production | 8, 11, 12 |
| Sutton, Erica J. | Uphsur, Ross E.G. | A Public Health Ethics Analysis of Consent as a Least Restrictive Alternative for Newborn Screening in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2013-11 | Background: Public health ethics (PHE) is a theoretical lens used to analyze public health initiatives. PHE strives to find a balance between achieving population health goals and promoting individual liberty. To reach this balance PHE scholars encourage the use of least restrictive alternatives. However, least restrictive approaches are often taken for granted as presumed goods and their ability to protect individual liberty and the common good is often assumed. I examine this presumption through an examination of informed consent – implied and express – for newborn screening (NBS) in Ontario. Methods: I conducted an exploratory qualitative case study to understand how 57 individuals involved in the lobbying, development, and implementation of expanded NBS in Ontario perceive consent policy for NBS. Semi-structured interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Data transformation was descriptive, analytic, interpretive, and applied. Findings: Participants described their attitudes towards informed consent for NBS. PHE principles of least restrictive alternatives, effectiveness, autonomy, and social justice were key themes within implied consent data. Participants appreciated implied consent’s capacity to achieve high screening uptake, yet doubted its ability to generate informed decisions. Regarding express consent, participants introduced a host of concerns – interpreted as harm-causing – perceived to threaten NBS’s public health goals and individual autonomy. I applied the practice of consent to a PHE framework as a mechanism through which to consider consent policy for NBS in a way that moves towards achieving a balance between fulfilling public health goals and respecting individual rights and freedoms. Conclusion: What participants in advisory capacities (and those to whom they turn for input) think about consent for NBS arguably influences their recommendations to the government. Challenging informed consent as a presumed good and submitting the practice of consent to the same ethical scrutiny as the NBS program itself legitimates the concerns of those wary of consent, illuminates the perceived benefits and risks of consent, and creates an opportunity to mitigate risks before implementing or adjusting consent policy. Treating the practice of consent as an intervention in theory could work to ensure that the ideals reflected in the concept of consent are realized in NBS practice. | PhD | health, cities, justice | 3, 11, 16 |
| Suttor, Gregory | Alan, Walks | Canadian Social Housing: Policy Evolution and Impacts on the Housing System and Urban Space | Geography | 2014-11 | The social housing system is analysed as an element of the evolving welfare state, housing system, and urban space, focusing on a 1965-1995 prime period in Canada, Ontario and Toronto. The theoretical concerns pertain to welfare state evolution and impacts. These include: in policy change, the relation between institutional continuity, structural factors, and political forces; in the housing system, decommodification in a liberal-welfare regime in shifting eras; and in urban space, the structuring of social mix by socio-tenure segregation. The policy history, using archival sources, interviews, and reinterpreted secondary literature, is the first detailed overview all turning points including the critical junctures of the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. Its structured narrative analyses the reshaping of policy by the political-economic context, housing market and urban development factors, ideas, and specific events. The housing system analysis reviews impacts in production, housing mix, rents paid, mobility (choice), and the value of rent-geared-to-income (RGI) assistance as a social transfer. The spatial analysis uses administrative and census data to analyse, for Greater Toronto 1971-1996, the evolving locations of low-income RGI tenants vis-Ă -vis low-income market renters and all households. The close relation of social housing policy change to critical junctures in welfare state evolution is confirmed, but also the large impact of housing market conditions and urban development agendas; shifting ideas; and particular political actors and events. Social housing accounted for about 10 percent of production, while RGI reduced rents to under 40 percent of market levels for almost 40 percent of low-income renters, and accounted for about one-fifth of their residential mobility. The thirty-year social housing prime created a mixed economy of urban development, its non-market housing sector altering urban space and mitigating the low-end extremes of inequality: comparable to what Canada's then `mid-Atlantic' welfare state effected generally in that era. | Ph.D. | equality, inequality, urban, institution | 5, 10, 11, 16 |
| Swee, Eik Leong | Benjamin, Dwayne | Essays in Empirical Development Economics | Economics | 2010-11 | This thesis consists of three empirical chapters that examine issues in development economics. Chapter 1 focuses on the effects of civil wars on the welfare of individuals. I use a unique data set that contains information on war casualties of the 1992-1995 Bosnian War, and exploit the variation in war intensity and birth cohorts of children, to identify the effects of the war on schooling attainment. I find that cohorts affected by war are less likely to complete secondary schooling, if they resided in municipalities that endured higher levels of war intensity. Ancillary evidence suggests that my estimates are most likely picking up immediate, rather than long-term effects. Furthermore, direct mechanisms such as the destruction of infrastructure and the out-migration of teachers do not seem to matter; instead, the ancillary evidence suggests that youth soldiering may be more important. Chapter 2 studies the impact of the partition which ended the Bosnian War on the post-war provision of public goods at the municipality-level. Comparing trends in the provision of public schooling across partitioned and unpartitioned municipalities during the 1986-2006 period, I find that partitioned municipalities provide 58 percent more primary schools and 37 percent more teachers (per capita). I also find evidence which suggests that convergent preferences - operating via ethnic politics - for ethnically oriented schools may be an important driver of the results, although I cannot rule out the possibility of mechanical explanations. In addition, as the increase in public goods provision may be ethnically oriented, only the ethnic majority profits from this arrangement. Chapter 3 provides an estimation of network effects among rural-urban migrants from Nang Rong, Thailand, by using heterogeneous migration responses to regional rainfall shocks among villagers as exogenous variation affecting network size. I find that social networks significantly reduce the duration of job search, and surprisingly, draw new migrants into the agricultural sector. I argue that this is not because agricultural jobs are more attractive than non-agricultural ones, but rather that my estimates are essentially local average treatment effects that are estimated off agricultural workers who are most affected by rainfall shocks. | PhD | worker, infrastructure, urban, rural | 8, 9, 11 |
| Symchych, Natalie | Pfeiffer, Susan | An Ecogeographic Study of Body Proportion Development in the Sadlermiut Inuit of Southampton Island, Nunavut | Anthropology | 2016-09 | This thesis explores growth status and body proportion development in past North American Arctic populations. Living in one of the most extreme environments on the planet, Arctic foragers provide an opportunity to explore how human morphological variation is shaped by growth and climate. The study focuses on the Sadlermiut Inuit, who lived on Southampton Island in Hudson Bay, Nunavut. This main sample is comprised of 111 juveniles and 160 adults (62 F, 52 M, 46 und). Comparative samples are derived from Northwest Hudson Bay, Point Hope (Alaska), and Greenland, and are comprised of 106 juveniles and 151 adults (76 F, 75 M). Growth status in four long bones is assessed by comparing the samples' tempo of growth to normative values from a modern North American sample. Body proportion development is assessed by calculating brachial index, crural index, and limb length relative to skeletal trunk height. Plots of index values versus dental age are assessed visually, and compared to results from the literature. Sadlermiut individuals who died as juveniles show a predominant pattern of growth faltering as compared to the North American tempo of growth. Most Sadlermiut juveniles who died in infancy either began life lagging in proportional growth, or fell behind quickly after birth. Most Sadlermiut juveniles who died later in childhood/adolescence had continued to falter in growth, indicating either insufficient, or a lack of, catch-up growth. This contrasts with Point Hope, which showed a broad range of growth outcomes: individuals with growth in line with the North American tempo, as well as individuals with lagging and accelerated growth. The analysis of body proportion development demonstrates that Sadlermiut infants exhibit a wide range of index values, and adult-type body proportions appear by early- to mid-childhood. Adult proportionality is achieved by most older Sadlermiut juveniles, despite a lag in linear growth. This demonstrates that linear growth is more environmentally labile, while body shape is more conserved. Moreover, the timing of body proportion development is consistent across samples from this study and the literature, suggesting a consistent pattern of growth with regard to body proportionality, regardless of latitude/climate and ultimate adult proportionality. | Ph.D. | conserv, environment, climate, rural | 11, 13, 15 |
| Szawiola, Anjuli | Bender, Timothy P | Applications of Piers-Rubinsztajn Chemistry: Synthesis of Materials for Organic Electronics | Chemistry | 2017-11 | Since the advent of the age of organic electronics, new materials are being developed regularly for use in these types of devices. Their processing methods have also evolved over the years, resulting in new, commercially-available applications. The application of these materials from solution, also known as solution processing, is lower-cost and less energy intensive with many other added benefits. To that end, this thesis explores the Piers-Rubinsztajn reaction as a tool to enable the solution processing of organic electronic materials. Piers-Rubinsztajn chemistry is a versatile, expedient reaction using an organic Lewis acidic catalyst tris(pentafluorophenyl)borane to couple a Si-H bond with an oxygen based nucleophile. This type of chemistry is underexplored in the field of materiasl development for organic electronics applications. This chemistry can be used to incorporate different types of siloxane oligomers into the structure of an organic electronic material, thus merging the properties of siloxane materials, such as flexibility, with those of the original compound. This methodology is used in this thesis to alter the physical properties of a variety of organic electronic materials to enable and ameliorate their solution processing. Chapters 2 to 5 explore the use of Piers-Rubinsztajn chemistry to cross-link triarylamine derivatives, to allow sequential solution processing for its application in an organic light emitting diode. Chapter 6 involves the synthesis of phenoxylated siloxane polymers, via Piers-Rubinsztajn chemistry, as a new material with improved organic-phase miscibility, for potential application in an organic electronic device. Chapters 7 and 8 follow the scale-up synthesis and application of a liquid triarylamine derivative in a dye-sensitized solar cell. Finally, Chapter 9 will cover the use of Piers-Rubinsztajn chemistry to functionalize insoluble silicon phthalocyanine derivatives to enable their use in bulk-heterojunction organic photovoltaics. | Ph.D. | energy, solar | 7 |
| Sztainbok, V. | Razack, Sherene | Imagining the Afro-Uruguayan Conventillo: Belonging and the Fetish of Place and Blackness | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2009-11 | This thesis explores the symbolic place occupied by a racialized neighbourhood within the Uruguayan national imaginary. I study the conventillos (tenement buildings) of two traditionally Afro-Uruguayan neighbourhoods in Montevideo, Barrio Sur and Palermo. These neighbourhoods are considered the cradle of Afro-Uruguayan culture and identity. The conventillos have been immortalized in paintings, souvenirs, songs, and books. Over the years most of the residents were evicted due to demolitions, which peaked during Uruguay’s military dictatorship (1973-1984). I address the paradox of how a community can be materially marginalized, yet symbolically celebrated, a process that is evident in other American nations (Brazil, Colombia, etc.). I show how race, class, and gender are entangled in folkloric depictions of the conventillo to constitute a limited notion of blackness that naturalizes the relationship between Afro-Uruguayans, music, sexuality, and domestic work. The folklorization of the space and it residents is shown to be a “fetishization” which enhances the whiteness of the national identity, while confining the parameters of black citizenship and belonging. Utilizing a methodology that draws on cultural geography, critical race, postcolonial, and feminist theory, my dissertation analyzes the various ways that the Barrio Sur/Palermo conventillo has been imagined, represented, and experienced. Specifically, I examine 1) autobiographical, literary and popular (media, songs) narratives about these neighbourhoods; 2) the depiction of the conventillo by a prominent artist (Carlos Páez Vilaró); 3) spatial practices; 4) the performance of a dancer who emerged from the conventillo to become a national icon (the Carnival vedette Rosa Luna); and 5) interviews with nine key informants. My analysis focuses on how bodies, subjects, and national belonging are constituted through relations to particular spaces. By foregrounding the “geographies of identity” (Radcliffe and Westwood, 1996, p. 27), I show that the symbolic celebration of black space goes hand in hand with material disavowal. This study thus connects the imagining of a local, racialized space to how national belonging is constituted and experienced. | PhD | equitable, gender | 4, 5 |
| Szuroczki, Dorina V. | Baker, Robert | Characterizing the Role of Dietary Antioxidants as Immune-enhancing Molecules in Larval Anurans | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2014-11 | The effects of stress (disruption of homeostasis) and stressors (factors that cause changes in homeostasis) and their impacts on animal health, physiology, behaviour and fitness have received enormous attention within the scientific community. From an evolutionary stand point, understanding the way in which animals cope with stress or how stress tolerance has evolved is important, as chronic stress can lead to loss of fitness. From an ecological stand point, identifying stressors within the environment and understanding how additive stressor effects can impact the way in which animals cope is crucial for understanding population declines and or possible extinctions. One coping mechanism used by some animal taxa is diet. When consumed, dietary antioxidants (secondary metabolites produced by plants) can provide protection from oxidative damage that can result from exposure to stressors. My dissertation focuses on the effects of these compounds on tadpole immune function. I choose to focus on tadpoles, as populations of numerous amphibian species are declining worldwide and some have gone extinct. In addition, tadpoles, which are strictly aquatic, are exposed to a wide variety of both abiotic and biotic stressors. I focus on three areas of study: 1) the effect of dietary antioxidants and natural stressors on immune function; 2) whether or not tadpoles detect these compounds in their food and whether or not they have the ability to self-medicate; 3) a potential trade-off between immune function and antipredator defense mediated by dietary antioxidants and the environmental availability of these compounds in natural tadpole habitats. My work will contribute to the field of ecology and amphibian biology by investigating the effects of these potentially beneficial compounds and the effects on amphibian immune function, in an attempt to determine if there are any natural immune enhancers to help amphibian's combat mortality via immunosuppression. | Ph.D. | health, ecology | 3, 15 |
| Taghipour, Sharareh | Jardine, Andrew K. S. ||Banjevic, Dragan | Reliability and Maintenance of Medical Devices | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2011-06 | For decades, reliability engineering techniques have been successfully applied in many industries to improve the performance of equipment maintenance management. Numerous inspection and optimization models are developed and widely used to achieve maintenance excellence, i.e. the balance of performance, risk, resources and cost to reach to an optimal solution. However, the application of all these techniques and models to medical devices is new. Hospitals, due to possessing a large number of difference devices, can benefit significantly if the optimization techniques are used properly in the equipment management processes. Most research in the area of reliability engineering for medical equipment mainly considers the devices in their design or manufacturing stage and suggests some techniques to improve the reliability. To this point, best maintenance strategies for medical equipment in their operating context have not been considered. We aim to address this gap and propose methods to improve current maintenance strategies in the healthcare industry. More specifically, we first identify or propose the criteria which are important to assess the criticality of medical devices, and propose a model for the prioritization of medical equipment for maintenance decisions. The model is a novel application of multi-criteria decision making methodology to prioritize medical devices in a hospital according to their criticality. The devices with high level of criticality should be included in the hospital’s maintenance management program. Then, we propose a method to statistically analyze maintenance data for complex medical devices with censoring and missing information. We present a classification of failure types and establish policies for analyzing data at different levels of the device. Moreover, a new method for trend analysis of censored failure data is proposed. A novel feature of this work is that it considers dependent failure histories which are censored by inspection intervals. Trend analysis of this type of data has not been discussed in the literature. Finally, we introduce some assumptions based on the results of the analysis, and develop several new models to find the optimal inspection interval for a system subject to hard and soft failures. Hard failures are instantaneously revealed and fixed. Soft failures are only rectified at inspections. They do not halt the system, although they reduce its performance or productivity. The models are constructed for two main cases with the assumption of periodic inspections, and periodic and opportunistic inspections, respectively. All numerical examples and case studies presented in the dissertation are adapted from the maintenance data received from a Canadian hospital. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Taha, Mai Amr | Knop, Karen | Nation and Class Subjectivity in International Law and its Institutions in the Middle East (1919-1939) | Law | 2015-06 | This dissertation makes visible the neglected economic dimensions of the interventions by interwar international institutions in three cases: the League of Nations' intervention in the dispute between Turkey and the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon over the province of Alexandretta (1936), the dispute between Turkey and the British Mandate of Iraq over the province of Mosul (1925), and the technical assistance missions of the International Labour Organization (ILO) to Egypt (1931). To different degrees, international legal institutions were involved in nation-building projects in the interwar Middle East, over-determining "the problem of nationalities" at the expense of other factors. These three episodes problematize the absence of "class" as an analytical category in both critical international legal scholarship and the actual politics of international institutions, and similarly the inattention to the struggle over capital that operated beneath the legal mechanisms used by the League and the ILO. They show the specificities of the Arab semi-periphery that reflected the nationalist anger and revolutionary anti-colonialism of the periphery and yet served, at the same time, as ideal places for capital accumulation and foreign investments from the core countries. Therefore, the episodes presented in this dissertation illuminate the ways in which class society and capital accumulation together with national self-determination were constitutive of the new interwar global order imagined for the semi-periphery by international legal institutions. | S.J.D. | institution, cities | 11, 16 |
| Tahseen, Samiha | Karney, Bryan W. | The Water-Energy Nexus â A Modern Case Study to Reassess Hydropower in the Niagara River | Civil Engineering | 2017-11 | The advent of variable renewable energy has created an urgent need for demand-based generation and storage. At present, with batteries still awaiting a major technological breakthrough, hydropower combined with pumped storage is suggested as a key response to demand variability. Even overlooking the technical demands, developing this potential resource in a sustainable way presents formidable challenges. While sustainability is a concern, the vulnerability of the resource to changing climatic conditions poses a major threat. The present study proposes five modelling approaches (and/or frameworks) as a foundation to a systems approach to hydropower and shows how these tools address the key challenges. Overall, the research addresses the current demand for dispatchable generation particularly in Ontario and proposes several alternatives including their sustainability assessment. Of the five models, the first two explore a variety of remuneration structures for pumped storage in the context of Ontario. The work begins with an optimization approach that evaluates the wholesale market for optimal profit. The tradeoff between hydropower and ecological targets is explored using a Constraint Method. The results are compared with models based on contracted price and an integrated valuation approach that accounts for the socioeconomic attributes of storage using representative applications. While the first two approaches concentrate on the project economies, the third model evaluates the potential for increased hydroelectric generation and assesses its vulnerability scenarios of climate change. A 1D simulation model of the existing power system at Niagara is used to evaluate a variety of innovative operating plans. One such scenario includes a revised approach to daily operation with use of additional storage during the night and timed release during peak demand hours. The final section seeks to improve the existing frameworks for sustainability assessment and then to use these improved metrics to evaluate various proposed generation options. The developed decision support framework, applied to Niagara, allows quantitative evaluation based on survey responses from key stakeholders. In contrast, the fifth and final approach uses the concept of resilience within probabilistic graphical model to account for the inherent uncertainty associated with climate projections. Overall, the five approaches (optimization, integrated valuation, simulation, sustainability and resilience assessment) facilitate rethinking the hydropower system with changing circumstances and subsequent shift in priorities by the development, analysis, and interpretation of models. This thesis contributes towards evaluating the merits of transitions between these approaches for future modelling applications. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, energy, renewable, hydroelectriv, resilien, climate | 1, 7, 13 |
| Tait, Christopher | Rosella, Laura C | Dietary Patterns, Food Insecurity, and Type 2 Diabetes Risk: A Novel Platform for Population-Based Nutrition Research Using Linked Survey and Health Administrative Data in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-06 | The burden of type 2 diabetes has consistently grown in Canada over the past several decades. As current prevention efforts have been unsuccessful in curbing the diabetes epidemic, there is a need to advance our understanding of the pathways between modifiable risk factors and diabetes incidence at the population-level. Unhealthy diet has been characterized as a leading risk factor for morbidity and mortality in Canada and across peer nations over the last 20 years. Despite this observation, the majority of research considering the relationship between diet and type 2 diabetes has focused on the influence of individual nutrients as opposed to real-world patterns of dietary intake, and in the absence of considering the broader social determinants that influence these dietary patterns, such as food insecurity. At the same time, research on food insecurity rarely considers this construct beyond a descriptive marker of economic deprivation, resulting in a dearth of literature examining the diet-related chronic disease effects that stem from food insecurity. Throughout this dissertation, four studies were conducted to rigorously examine the poorly understood pathways by which modifiable dietary exposures and upstream nutrition-related social factors relate to the incidence of type 2 diabetes in the Canadian population. In doing so, a breadth of methodological approaches were applied to a unique platform for population-based nutrition research that was established through linked survey and administrative data in Ontario. The first manuscript synthesizes the published literature on dietary patterns and type 2 diabetes, as a means to understand how different methodologies can be used to comprehensively study the relationship between diet and diabetes. I found that the literature is heterogeneous with respect to viable measurement approaches for conceptualizing dietary patterns, but also gained a perspective on which approaches were the most meaningful for the Canadian context. The second manuscript investigates the prospective relationship between dietary patterns and type 2 diabetes risk for the first time in the Canadian population, improving upon many of the methodological limitations identified in studies captured in the systematic review. I found that dietary patterns most congruent with Canadian dietary recommendations were not associated with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, challenging findings that have persisted in the extant literature. The third study moves beyond considering the proximal relationships between diet and disease to consider the influence of food insecurity as an upstream nutrition-related social determinant of diabetes risk. I found that food insecurity is associated with a greater than 2-fold risk of type 2 diabetes over 12 years of follow-up. The fourth study extends this work to gain insight into the mechanisms by which food insecurity increases the risk of type 2 diabetes in the Canadian population. In this final study, I found that nearly 45% of the association observed in study 3 may be explained by the pathway through obesity, using sophisticated methods for causal mediation analysis. Overall this dissertation provides necessary and contemporary evidence to inform the development of population-based dietary interventions and the potential impact of social nutritional policies on the future burden of type 2 diabetes in Canada. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Taiyeb, Aamir | Hayhoe, Ruth | Understanding External Policy Influences in Pakistani Higher Education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11 | Pakistan, the sixth most populous nation in the world, faces complex and multifaceted challenges as it seeks to achieve middle-income country status in the 21st century. To achieve this objective, Pakistan must address the quality, access and governance issues facing its higher education (HE) sector. With barely 1 in 10 Pakistanis being able to access tertiary-level studies, external agencies have stepped in to assist the Pakistani HE sector meets its development needs. Despite several decades of involvement, and hundreds of millions of dollars spent by international donors and aid agencies, little has been achieved. This dissertation examines the nature and extent of participation by international actors in Pakistan’s HE sector. The study explores the underlying dynamics between the external and the internal in the context of the sector, and seeks to identify points of convergence and divergence in terms of a preferred future. The central research question motivating the study is: How have external actors influenced Pakistan’s HE system, and in particular, its governance? To answer this question, 43 qualitative research interviews were conducted over 5 months in 3 large urban centres in Pakistan (Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad) with senior governors active in the Pakistani HE sector including representatives of Pakistani government agencies, international organizations and HE institutional leaders. The data reveals the extent of external influences in the system by type (e.g., foreign aid, policy borrowing), and by actor (e.g., the World Bank, USAID, British Council). The findings suggest that Pakistan’s HE sector is affected by external policy influences in a multitude of ways, and that endogenous and exogenous actors do not always see eye-to-eye, resulting in a mismatch of policy prescriptions at times. Above all, the findings suggest that the lack of an indigenous policy community has resulted in a sector that is outward-facing and looking for solutions from without, rather than from within, thereby resulting in an externally-oriented path dependency. Such external policy pressures will likely continue to exercise an out-sized influence on the Pakistani higher education sector unless tools for effective self-governance and self-regulation are developed. | Ph.D. | educat, inclusive, institution | 4, 16 |
| Tajrobehkar, Bahar | MacNeill, Margaret | From Aleph to Z: Iranian Female Immigrants’ Experiences of Linguicism, Orientalism and Marginalization in Education and Physical Education | Exercise Sciences | 2020-06 | Using a feminist postcolonial methodology, this research (protocol #33957) examines and compares the retrospective perceptions of young women who experienced education and physical education (PE) in Iranian schools prior to immigration, and education and PE in Canadian schools in the province of Ontario after immigration. Two sets of interviews with 10 young Iranian women (ages 18-25) who self-identified as immigrant were conducted (for a total of 20 interviews). Three areas of inquiry were interrogated: 1) experiences of immigration; 2) experiences of education; 3) experiences of physical education and the body. The three articles included in this portfolio dissertation discuss the participants’ perceptions of marginalization, and their negotiations with power relations in Iran and Canada. Findings suggest: 1) the participants negotiated colonial discourses in Canada by internalizing them, and re-Orientalizing other Iranians and recent immigrants; 2) Linguistic (rather than racial) discrimination was the main form of ‘Othering’ that Iranian immigrants in this study experienced in their social interactions; and 3) the participants were critical of prohibitive forms of body oppression in Iran (such as compulsory veiling and sex-segregation), but they were uncritical of the more subtle, productive forms of bodily oppression (such as discourses of thinness and healthism) in Canada. The overall theme emerging from the interviews was the hegemony of Western narratives and norms. Whiteness emerged as the main frame of reference among the participants, and their conformity to whiteness was expressed in relation to race/ethnicity, language and embodiment. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Takahashi, Hidenori | Aguirregabiria, Victor | Essays on Procurement Auctions | Economics | 2015-03 | This thesis empirically investigates important phenomena surrounding procurement auctions. The first chapter examines the effect of uncertain design evaluations on firms' behaviour in public procurement auctions in which firms compete on both price and design proposal. The second chapter takes a closer look at the source of variation in design evaluations. The last chapter then examines the costs and benefits of two widely used auction formats in procurement of construction projects. In chapter 1, we investigate firms' competition over price and product design in the context of Design-Build (DB) auctions. In a DB auction, firms' design proposals are independently evaluated by reviewers of the government. Reviewers' evaluations contain uncertainty from a bidder's point of view, leading luck to curtail differences in firms' chances of winning. The estimated model predicts that uncertain evaluations exacerbate auctioneer's uncertainty in auction outcomes. An alternative mechanism that shuts down the impact of uncertain evaluations on bidders' behaviour would mitigate the auctioneer's uncertainty in the price and the design quality by 22% and 33% , respectively.In chapter 2, we study strategic interactions among expert reviewers in evaluating a set of proposals. As expert reviewers may be concerned about their own career, they may not truthfully report the signal of proposal quality. We model and estimate the effects of such an incentive on reviewers' behaviour using a sample of public procurement auctions, so called Design-Build (DB) auctions, where potential contractors compete on price and design quality. The DB auctioneer assigns a set of expert reviewers to independently evaluate each design proposal submitted by the potential contractors. The challenge in identifying the strategic effects comes from unobserved heterogeneity in design quality. We circumvent the confounding issue by exploiting the exclusion restriction that peer's observed characteristics are independent of one's quality signals. We find that (i) reviewers have incentive to conform to the experienced reviewer's score, and also that (ii) reviewers bias his/her evaluation of favourite design upward. The empirical results suggest a need for careful mechanism design that takes into account of experts' incentives in various competitive environments where the outcome relies on experts' opinions.In chapter 3, we empirically investigate the costs and benefits of two widely used procurement auction formats: Lump-Sum Auction (LSA) and Unit-Price Auction (UPA). In an LSA, each bidder submits a single price for an entire project, and receives its price bid upon completion of the project if there is no contractual change. In a UPA, each bidder submits a price for each construction component of a project, and the final pay to the contractor depends on quantity change on contracted components during the construction phase. The existing literature only provides partial predictions about the performance differences between the two auction formats. In order to deal with the procurer's selection of auction formats, we exploit exogenous variation in (i) procurer's capacity constraints, and (ii) expected weather disturbances conditional on its realization. We estimate that LSA would reduce the final pay to the contractor by more than 19% relative to UPA for the projects with medium level of project risk. We find no evidence of differences in the degree of cost overruns/underruns between LSA and UPA projects. The empirical results indicate a potential for saving in infrastructure expenditure, and suggests a need for a model that takes into account for both ex-ante and ex-post bidders' behaviour in both types of auction formats. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, urban | 9, 11 |
| Takeuchi, Miwa | Esmonde, Indigo | Pedagogical Orientations towards the Integration of Language and Content: English Language Learners’ Opportunities to Learn in Mathematics Classrooms | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-06 | Achieving equitable opportunities to learn has been recognized as an important issue in multilingual content classrooms. However, partially because mathematics is conceptualized as a language-free subject, there is limited research examining linguistic minority students’ opportunities to learn in mathematics classrooms. The purpose of this research is to identify linguistic minority students’ opportunities to learn in mathematics classrooms in a Canadian multilingual urban elementary school, where English was the main instructional language. Drawing on cultural historical activity theory, this study focuses on two aspects of learning: externalization, which emphasizes learners’ creation of new cultural artifacts and new contexts to apply the given artifacts, and internalization, which emphasizes learners’ acquisition of preexisting cultural artifacts. In this ethnographic study, I examined the activity systems of participatory action research (PAR) with the activity system of regular mathematics lessons. Within these activity systems, I focused on newly-arrived English language learners’ (ELLs) participation. Specifically, I examined the range of opportunities to learn afforded to students in the two activity systems and identified how focal ELLs accessed these opportunities to learn. In the activity system of PAR, which emphasized externalization, students conducted research and presented their conclusions in order to implement changes in their school environment. All students, however, did not participate equally. Specifically, the focal ELLs were not able to access these opportunities to learn as a result of group dynamics, marginalized social identities, and other students’ perceptions of their linguistic ability. In the activity system of regular mathematics lessons, which emphasized internalization, the teacher organized lessons in ways that allowed focal ELLs to receive extra support and resources to reach the curriculum expectations. These mathematics lessons allowed focal ELLs to increase their participation through mathematical reasoning, problem solving, and explanations with a variety of resources including visual representations. A critical examination of the interactions revealed that focal ELLs’ opportunities to learn were expanded or limited depending upon classroom configurations. Furthermore, this research suggests that students’ social identities serve as both a medium and a product of learning. These results have valuable implications for developing inclusive classroom practices and curriculum in multilingual content classrooms. | PhD | inclusive, equitable, urban | 4, 11 |
| Talebi, Ashkan | Sleep, Brent E | Modelling Evapotranspiration and Flow Processes in the Shallow Subsurface with Application to Green Roof Technology | Civil Engineering | 2019-06 | Mathematical models in engineering play an important role in understanding and predicting the behaviour of a system. Three different mathematical models were developed in this study, with an increasing level of complexity in the simulation of water and heat transfer in the shallow subsurface. These developed models have been used to answer several questions relevant to the application of green roof (GR) technologies in storm water management and building energy consumption, and to non-isothermal processes in bare and vegetated soils. A simplistic modelling approach (lumped model) was implemented to study the performance of a GR system in storm water reduction in various Canadian climate conditions. In the light of enhancing the water retention performance of GR technologies in each climate, further study was conducted on the GR configuration design parameters including substrate depth, substrate porosity and vegetation types. To predict substrate temperature and evaporation rates in the shallow subsurface of bare soils, a mechanistic model (coupled liquid water, water vapour, and heat transfer model) was developed. The model was validated comprehensively against several measured field data from the GR test modules. The validated model was used to study the non-isothermal processes in the shallow subsurface with the objective of enhancing the modelling results and simplifying the model. The developed mechanistic model was updated to incorporate the impact of vegetation layer on non-isothermal subsurface processes. The new model was fully validated against measured data from the field (drainage rate, evapotranspiration rates, vegetation and substrate temperature), and then used to study the thermal and hydraulic performance of GR technologies associated with different design parameters including vegetation coverage, substrate thickness. The performance of GR with climate change, during rainfall and in a shaded area were investigated as well. | Ph.D. | water, energy, climate, consum | 6, 7, 12, 13 |
| Tam, Andrew | Gough, William A | The Impacts of Climate Change on Potential Permafrost Distributions from the Subarctic to the High Arctic Regions in Canada | Geography | 2014-06 | A climate change impact assessment on the potential permafrost distributions is presented in four research studies that was conducted using various locations along a geographical south-to-north study transect from 52.2°N to 82.5°N within Canada. The transect begins in Lansdowne House, Ontario, and ends at Alert, Nunavut, with intermediate locations at Big Trout Lake, Peawanuck, Fort Severn, Rankin Inlet, Resolute Bay, and Eureka. The first study established the climatic potential for permafrost at Peawanuck from 1959-2011 using the Stefan Frost (Fs) Number index and Stefan equation for active layer thicknesses. Fs and the Stefan depths demonstrated favourable potential for permafrost; however, freezing degree-days were observed to be declining. The second study examined active layers developments at five locations from 2004-2011 using the Xie-Gough Algorithm for multilayered soil profiles. Climate conditions for potential permafrost distributions were assessed and compared using Fs. The third study explored the changes in the potential permafrost using Fs under future climate warming scenarios projected by an ensemble of Global Climate Models for 2011-2100. Climate change projections within the transect indicate warming above the 1971-2000 mean air temperature baseline by +1.5 to +2.4°C for 2011-2040; +2.6 to +4.1°C for 2041-2070; and +3.3 to +7.1°C for 2071-2100. For this century, Fs projections indicate that climate conditions will remain supportive for continuous permafrost distributions at Resolute Bay, Eureka, and Alert. By 2040, conditions for Rankin Inlet indicate change from continuous to discontinuous permafrost. For Peawanuck, conditions by 2100 are projecting to be suitable for sporadic permafrost. The fourth study focuses at Peawanuck and three other locations within northern Ontario, and assessed the behaviour of palsa formation and occurrence in the context of climate change for the 2020s, 2050s, and 2080s. By the end of this century, warming projections support palsa occurrence; however, conditions will no longer support new palsa formation. | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Tam, Benita | Gough, William A. | The Effects of Weather and Climate Variability on the Well-being of a Rural and Urban Aboriginal Group in Ontario, Canada | Geography | 2012-11 | The role of weather and climate variability on the health of Aboriginal people in Fort Albany and Toronto, Ontario, Canada is explored through four complementary research studies. The first study examined past temperature trends of Fort Albany (using climate records of Moosonee) and Toronto. Temperature variability was found to be greater in Moosonee than in Toronto, and day to day temperature minimum (Tmin) threshold exceedances of 5 degrees Celsius was found to have significantly declined in both Toronto and Fort Albany. The second study explored the effects of climate change on a rural First Nation group in Fort Albany. Observed environmental changes include changes in the timing of seasons, spring melt and ice freeze-up; warmer seasons, an increase in extreme and unpredictable weather, and changes in animal patterns. These changes have affected subsistence harvesting activities and community infrastructure, which have lead to increased health risks, though many community members have exhibited resiliency and adaptation. The third study compared current health status between an urban Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal group. Urban Aboriginal participants were found to be at greater risk to psychological distress and seasonal affective disorder (SAD) than non-Aboriginal participants. Moreover, those who self-rated their health as poor/fair were more likely to exhibit psychological distress than those who self-rated their health as good/very good/excellent. The fourth study compared the effects of weather and seasonal change among a rural First Nation group, an urban Aboriginal group and an urban non-Aboriginal group. Urban Aboriginal participants were most affected by weather while rural Aboriginal (i.e. First Nation) participants were least affected by weather. These studies demonstrate that both urban and rural Aboriginal groups may be at risk to climate change and weather-related changes; though specific implications may differ due to different lifestyles and capacities to adapt to environmental conditions. | PhD | well being, infrastructure, urban, rural, resilien, climate, environment | 3, 9, 11, 13 |
| Tam, Carolyn Yuen Chong | Boyd, Norman F. | Lifestyle and Breast Cancer Risk Factors in Postmenopausal Caucasian and Chinese-Canadian Women | Medical Science | 2010-03 | Striking differences exist between countries in the incidence of breast cancer, with rates higher in the West than in Asian countries. The causes of these differences are unknown, but because incidence rates change in migrants, they are thought to be due to lifestyle rather than genetic differences. The objective of this thesis was to compare established breast cancer risk factors, physical activity, and diet in three groups of postmenopausal women at substantially different risks of developing breast cancer – Caucasians (N = 413), Chinese born in the West or who migrated to the West before age 21 (N = 216), and recent Chinese migrants, 99% of whom coming from urban China (N = 421). In this cross-sectional study, information on risk factors and diet were collected by telephone, and physical activity and anthropometric data were obtained at a home visit. Compared to Caucasians, recent Chinese migrants weighed on average 14 kg less, were 6 cm shorter, had menarche a year later, were more often parous, and less often had a family history of breast cancer or a benign breast biopsy. Estimating 5-year absolute breast cancer risks using the Gail Model showed that risk estimates in Caucasians would be reduced by only 11% if they had the risk factor profile of recent Chinese migrants for the variables in the Gail Model. Compared to Caucasians, recent Chinese migrants had lower average total physical activity over lifetime, and also spent less time on moderate- and vigorous-intensity activity. Compared to Caucasians, recent Chinese migrants consumed per day on average 175 fewer calories, 6 more grams of energy-adjusted protein, 16 more grams of energy-adjusted carbohydrates, and 5 fewer grams of energy-adjusted fat. Also, recent Chinese migrants consumed higher amounts of grains, fruits, vegetables, fish, and soy products, and lower amounts of alcohol, meat, dairy products, and sweets than Caucasians. Western born Chinese and early Chinese migrants had values intermediate between the other two groups for most of the variables. These results suggest that in addition to the established risk factors, some dietary factors may also contribute to the lower breast cancer risk in urban Chinese women. | PhD | women, health | 3, 5 |
| Tam, Sandra Ho See | Neysmith, Sheila | Young Women's Provisioning: A Study of the Social Organization of Youth Employment | Social Work | 2007-11 | This study uses institutional ethnography (IE) to address the question of how young women, considered to be “at risk” youth, make decisions about their working lives. Based on interviews with young women and program workers in housing, employment, young mothers’ and girls’ programs, field observations, and document analysis at Gen-Y (pseudonym for a women’s community-based social services agency), young women’s provisioning experiences are used to critique current program and policy models that feature notions of choice and risk. Provisioning is a concept that captures a wide range of work and work-related activities that young women perform for themselves and people they feel responsible for. IE is applied to understand how institutional processes and practices give rise to the conditions under which young women participants at Gen-Y make career and life decisions. | PhD | women, employment, worker | 5, 8 |
| Tan, Qian | Tannock, Ian F | Autophagy as a Survival Mechanism for Tumor Cells Exposed to Chemotherapy or Hypoxia, and its Inhibition by Pantoprazole to Improve Outcome of Treatment | Medical Biophysics | 2015-11 | Chemotherapy is widely used as treatment for patients with metastatic cancer, and is also used to prevent disease recurrence and metastatic spread after local treatment. Autophagy allows recycling of cellular components and may facilitate cell survival after chemotherapy. The clinically used proton pump inhibitor (PPI) pantoprazole inhibits proton pumps, and is reported to inhibit autophagy. This thesis aims to gain insight as to whether pantoprazole inhibits autophagy to improve penetration and activity of anticancer drugs in solid tumors, thereby enhancing chemotherapy effectiveness. The first objective was to evaluate effects of pantoprazole to modify cytotoxicity of the anticancer drug docetaxel and underlying mechanisms. I found that autophagy is a mechanism of resistance to docetaxel that modified by pantoprazole to improve therapeutic index. The second objective addressed whether induction of autophagy is a general mechanism of resistance to chemotherapy, whether autophagy hence drug resistance can be inhibited by pantoprazole. It was found that seven clinically-used anti-cancer drugs induced autophagy in vitro and in vivo. Induction of autophagy was inhibited by pre-treatment with pantoprazole. The third objective determined whether autophagy is a survival mechanism for hypoxic cells. I found that hypoxia induced autophagy in vitro and inhibited by pantoprazole. Hypoxia-induced cell death was more rapid for autophagy deficient cells. Xenografts generated from autophagy-deficient cells grew more slowly than wild type tumors and the proportion of hypoxia cells was markedly decreased in xenografts generated from knockdown tumors. The work presented here highlights the importance of the tumor- microenvironment in determining response to chemotherapy and suggests that induction of autophagy is a common mechanism of drug resistance. Effects of anti-cancer drugs might be improved by using PPIs to inhibit autophagy. Based on these data, a phase I trial of pantoprazole +doxorubicin has been undertaken in patients with advanced solid tumors and a phase II study of pantoprazole + docetaxel is underway in men with castrate-resistant prostate cancer. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Tan, Sue Vern | BrunnĂŠe, Jutta | Licence to Spill? Developing a Framework for International Liability and Compensation for Transboundary Pollution Arising From Offshore Drilling Activities | Law | 2015-11 | As new drilling technology enables exploitation of more and more previously inaccessible areas, there is renewed concern over the risk of catastrophic oil spills. Drilling in deeper waters increases the difficulties of remedying a blowout. Thus, there is a greater risk of extensive oil pollution damage. The Montara and Deepwater Horizon incidents illustrate the potential damage that catastrophic oil spills from offshore platforms may cause. Under the no-harm rule, states have an obligation of due diligence to ensure that offshore drilling activities within their jurisdiction do not cause harm to the environment of another state. However, even if a state has exercised its obligation of due diligence under the no-harm rule, a catastrophic oil spill may still occur. Under such circumstances, there is a gap in the law where liability and compensation is concerned. Hence, there is a need for an international civil liability convention for offshore drilling activities. | LL.M. | water, pollut, environment | 6, 13 |
| Tang, Ada | Brooks, Dina | Cardiac Rehabilitation After Stroke | Medical Science | 2010-06 | In contrast to cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programs, traditional stroke rehabilitation aims to maximize functional independence and does not have a strong focus on exercise training and risk factor modification. Given the parallels between stroke and heart disease in cardiovascular etiology and risk factors, CR may be suited to supplement stroke rehabilitation by providing opportunities to enhance fitness and manage stroke risk factors. The aim of this work was to 1) examine the use of a non-adapted CR program of care with individuals with stroke and/or transient ischemic attack (TIA) through a retrospective database review, 2) using a prospective trial, determine the feasibility and effects of an adapted CR program for people with mild to moderate impairment from stroke, and 3) explore characteristics related to degree of program response in aerobic and functional capacity through secondary data analysis. The results from Study 1 demonstrated that traditional CR is an underutilized service for individuals with stroke or TIA, yet improvements in aerobic fitness were comparable to their non-stroke counterparts. In Study 2, adapted CR was feasible for individuals with a range of stroke-related disability and effective in increasing aerobic capacity. The anticipated carry over to improved walking capacity was not observed. There were no changes in health-related quality of life or stroke risk factors. Study 3 identified subgroups of participants who improved or declined in aerobic and ambulatory capacity after the adapted CR program. There were no differences in baseline characteristics, indices of time, intensity or volume of exercise performed across the response subgroups. In summary, given the parallels between stroke and heart disease, the needs of the stroke population and dearth of community-based exercise programming available for them, the CR model of care may be applied for individuals with stroke to provide opportunities for exercise training and risk factor modification. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Tang, Jiang | Sargent, Edward H. | Materials Engineering for Stable and Efficient PbS Colloidal Quantum Dot Photovoltaics | Materials Science and Engineering | 2010-11 | Environmental and economic factors demand radical advances in solar cell technologies. Organic and polymer photovoltaics emerged in the 1990's that have led to low cost per unit area, enabled in significant part by the convenient manufacturing of roll-to-roll-processible solution-cast semiconductors. Colloidal quantum dot solar cells dramatically increase the potential for solar conversion efficiency relative to organics by enabling optimal matching of a photovoltaic device's bandgap to the sun's spectrum. Infrared-absorbing colloidal quantum dot solar cells were first reported in 2005. At the outset of this study in 2007, they had been advanced to the point of achieving 1.8% solar power conversion efficiency. These devices degraded completely within a few hours’ air exposure. The origin of the extremely poor device stability was unknown and unstudied. The efficiency of these devices was speculated to be limited by poor carrier transport and passivation within the quantum dot solid, and by the limitations of the Schottky device architecture. This study sought to tackle three principal challenges facing colloidal quantum dot photovoltaics: stability; understanding; and performance. In the first part of this work, we report the first air-stable infrared colloidal quantum dot photovoltaics. Our devices have a solar power conversion efficiency of 2.1%. These devices, unencapsulated and operating in an air atmosphere, retain 90% of their original performance following 3 days’ continuous solar harvesting. The remarkable improvement in device stability originated from two new insights. First, we showed that inserting a thin LiF layer between PbS film and Al electrode blocks detrimental interfacial reactions. Second, we proposed and validated a model that explains why quantum dots having cation-rich surfaces afford dramatically improved air stability within the quantum dot solid. The success of the cation-enrichment strategy led us to a new concept: what if - rather than rely on organic ligands, as all prior quantum dot photovoltaics work had done - one could instead terminate the surface of quantum dots exclusively using inorganic materials? We termed our new materials strategy ionic passivation. The goal of the approach was to bring our nanoparticles into the closest possible contact while still maintaining quantum confinement; and at the same time achieving a maximum of passivation of the nanoparticles' surfaces. We showcase our ionic passivation strategy by building a photovoltaic device that achieves 5.8% solar power conversion efficiency. This is the highest-ever solar power conversion efficiency reported in a colloidal quantum dot device. More generally, our ionic passivation strategy breaks the past tradeoff between transport and passivation in quantum dot solids. The advance is relevant to electroluminescent and photodetection devices as well as to the record-performing photovoltaic devices reported herein. | PhD | solar, energy, environment | 7, 13 |
| Tang, Kenneth | Beaton, Dorcas | Work Disability Among Injured Workers with Chronic Upper Extremity Disorders: Measurement and Determinants | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2014-11 | Work disability represents an important source of the burden for individuals recovering from a work-related upper-extremity disorder (WRUED). Historically, a small subset of injured workers has shown to experience a prolonged recovery course characterized by poor health and work outcomes, which are associated with high workers' compensation costs. Beyond achieving an initial return-to-work, the sustainability of work (i.e. staying at work) and health-related work limitations (i.e. "on-the-job" problems) are increasingly recognized as relevant concerns in this population. In this thesis, three quantitative studies were conducted to contribute insights to the measurement and determinants of work disability associated with WRUEDs, using survey data gathered from injured workers attending a Workplace Safety Insurance Board Upper-Limb Specialty Clinic in Ontario. Specifically, these studies investigated 1) the factorial validity of the Work Limitations Questionnaire (WLQ-25), 2) the predictive ability of the Upper-Limb Work Instability Scale (UL-WIS) for subsequent transitioning out of work (i.e. poor sustainability of work), and 3) the relationship between the work environment and health-related work limitations, among injured workers with a WRUED. Study findings suggest that: 1) due to a specific area of psychometric underperformance, some adaptations are needed for the WLQ-25 before it is suitable for use; 2) the UL-WIS is an independent predictor of transitioning out of work, although some limitations as a standalone prognostic tool were also revealed; and 3) against initial hypothesis, broad differences in the work environment (based on variations across 12 specific workplace characteristics) did not have significant associations with the extent of health-related work limitations experienced by injured workers with a WRUED. Study findings were discussed in terms of how they advance current understanding on the measurement and determinants of work disability, and potential implications in terms of the assessment and management of work disability among injured workers recovering from a WRUED. Future research directions were also proposed to build on current work. | Ph.D. | worker, health | 3, 8 |
| Tang, Xiaoli | Kant, Shashi ||Laaksonen-Craig, Susanna | An Economic Analysis of North American Pulp and Paper Markets, and A Competitiveness Study of the Canadian Pulp and Paper Products | Forestry | 2009-11 | North America is the world’s largest pulp and paper producing region as well as the largest consuming region. An understanding of market integration is critical for designing relevant policies since it is important to improve national welfare and ensure long-run competitive market equilibrium. In addition, it is crucial for the Canadian industry to maintain the competitiveness for its pulp and paper products in the world market, because any deterioration in the performance of the Canadian pulp and paper industry will have negative social and economic impact on the well-being of Canada and affect Canadian balance of payment. This thesis contains three essays that investigate the market integration of the combined markets of Canada and the US, and the competitive position of Canadian pulp and paper products in the US market. The first essay presents an econometric analysis of spatial integration of the US and Canada newsprint markets as reflected in newsprint prices. It applies the Johansen multivariate cointegration procedure to test the law of one price for five regional markets (British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, US east, US west) of newsprint using monthly data for the 1988 to 2004 period. Preliminary data analysis shows that all price series are non-stationary I(1) processes. The hypothesis that the Law of One Price (LOP) holds for all five regional newsprint markets simultaneously was not supported by the Johansen multivariate test. The LOP was also tested for national markets, and it was found to hold between US west and US east newsprint prices. The results suggest that there is a single newsprint market in the US, whereas there are several distinct newsprint markets in Canada. The second essay examines the degree of market integration among US import markets for three pulp and paper products, and further analyses the dynamic interaction between US domestic and US import markets. Persistence profile results show that long-run equilibrium exists in the US import markets for three pulp and paper products of interest; moreover, given a system-wide shock, a new equilibrium could be reached in a relatively short period. Forecast error variance decomposition suggests that US markets are critical since shocks to domestic US prices for relevant pulp and paper products explain a substantial amount of movements in import prices. The third essay studies substitution between main categories of imported pulp and paper products and between imported and domestic pulp and paper products in the US market. A restricted translog subcost function approach was employed to derive the elasticity of substitution. The results suggest that Canadian pulp and paper products are still competitive and have maintained their competitiveness in the US market. However the consecutive demand decline for pulp and paper in the US has brought hard times to Canada. It seems that if Canadian pulp and paper industry wants to retain a dominant position in the world market place, it will have to create global reach and develop new markets. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Tanguy, Nicolas R. | Yan, Ning | Wireless Sensors using Radio-frequency Identification Technology: Developing Carbon Nanocomposites for Improved Sensing and Detection of Ammonia Gas and Volatile Amine Vapors | Forestry | 2019-06 | Nowadays, the emergence of Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) devices at costs comparable to barcodes are providing an incredible opportunity for designing interconnected networks of “things” that allow for the wireless identification of products and monitoring of the chemical composition of the surrounding environment. This has major implications for the chemical and food sectors, for which the design of interconnected networks with sensing capabilities has many practical applications. My thesis focuses on exploiting the advantageous characteristics of novel carbon nanomaterials, carbon nanotubes and graphene to design conductive nanocomposites with improved sensing capabilities for ammonia gas and amine vapours. For this purpose, we developed two types of conductive nanocomposites; one that consisted of carbon nanomaterials, maleic anhydride and electrically insulating polyethylene-co-vinyl acetate polymer matrix; and the other that consisted of carbon nanomaterials and an intrinsically conductive polymer, polyaniline. For the first type of nanocomposite system, we demonstrated that grafting the maleic anhydride on the carbon nanotubes significantly improved the sensitivity of the nanocomposites toward amines. It was postulated that these improvements were the result of the binding of putrescine between the carbon nanotubes, which facilitated a more effective disruption of the conductive network. For the second type of nanocomposite, we demonstrated that conferring n-type semiconductive behavior to the graphene nanosheets, via nitrogen or phosphorus doping, improved the sensitivity of graphene/polyaniline nanocomposite by a factor 2 and 5, respectively, to reach a detection limit in the sub-ppm range toward ammonia gas. The enhancement was due to the formation of localized p-n heterojunctions in the nanocomposites and the modification of the semiconductive behavior of the nanocomposite during exposure to ammonia. Furthermore, we tested the novel polyaniline/phosphorus doped graphene nanocomposite sensing elements on RFID split-ring resonators and showed that the wireless sensor had excellent detection capabilities toward ammonia gas down to the sub-ppm range of concentration. Based on the sensing performance achieved, this thesis demonstrates the potential of RFID technology as a platform for the design of wireless sensor networks with high detection capabilities, and are thus practically applicable in the chemical, medical and food sectors, among others. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| Tarasoff, Lesley Ann | Ross, Lori E||Strike, Carol J | A Qualitative Study of Embodiment among Women with Physical Disabilities during the Perinatal Period and Early Motherhood | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-11 | Although there are over 500,000 mothers with disabilities in Canada, little is known about how women with disabilities experience becoming and being mothers. This dissertation qualitatively explores how thirteen women with physical disabilities in Ontario experienced their embodiment during the perinatal period and early motherhood. Informed by feminist disability scholarship, embodiment here is understood as relational; that is, the intertwining of the body and the mind and the interplay between the material body and the social world. Findings are presented according to three “stages”: pregnancy, breastfeeding, and mothering. I found that participants’ embodied experiences across these interrelated “stages” were shaped by dominant discourses of pregnancy, breastfeeding, and motherhood, as well as dominant discourses of disability, often enacted through social interaction. Participants desired to be perceived of as “good mothers,” seemingly to avoid being perceived of as “unfit” and in turn affirming stigmatizing discourses of disability. Meeting the expectations of the “good mother” proved to be challenging, however, as disability limited what participants could physically do. Consequently, some experienced ambivalent and negative feelings about disability. Importantly, I also found that disability was experienced as valuable in the context of becoming and being a mother. The embodied experience of disability provided opportunity to subvert the sometimes-unrealistic expectations associated with pregnancy, breastfeeding, and mothering, as well as discourses of disability as defective and undesirable. Regarding pregnancy, the embodied experience of disability was appreciated, offering a reimagination of the “unruly” pregnant body. Disability in the context of breastfeeding and mothering called attention to the need for self-care and challenged understandings of accessibility and independence. In sum, participants’ embodied experiences of the perinatal period and early motherhood both aligned with and subverted dominant discourses. In documenting how these discourses shaped embodied experience, I discuss their potential implications for health research and practice. Notably, I argue that the ways in which participants’ embodied experiences subvert dominant discourses evoke new ways to think about the body, disability, and parenting. These new ways of thinking add to feminist disability and perinatal embodiment scholarship, as well as present opportunities for more inclusive and equitable health research and practice. | Ph.D. | health, equitable, women | 3, 4, 2005 |
| Tate, Jude | DEHLI, KARI | A Thin Veil of Inclusion: Sexual and Gender MIinorities in Ontario Universities | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-06 | This thesis seeks to address the paucity of research about the experiences of sexual and gender minority students, staff, and faculty in Canadian university settings. It does so by exploring these groups' perceptions of institutional equity and inclusion policies, and by asking what bearing does campus climate have on learning and working outcomes. I administered an online survey to elicit responses to questions on how sexual and gender minority students, staff, and faculty in 21 public universities in Ontario experience the campus climate and understand the influence of equity and inclusion policy and discourses in these university settings. The conceptual framework to guide the analysis of 447 survey participants is drawn from Astin's (1993) input-environment-outcome model (I-E-O). The I-E-O model is an established conceptual model known for its usefulness in analyzing a range of variables that may contribute to comprehensive understanding of factors that influence the educational outcomes of students and employee experiences. A positive correlational relationship is demonstrated between the campus climate and student educational outcomes (intent to persist) and employee experiences (career consequences). The analysis indicate that sexual and gender minority students, staff, and faculty were three times more likely to seriously consider leaving their university when experiencing campus environments as uncomfortable/unaccepting, and twice as likely to consider doing so when experiencing harassment based on sexual identity, gender identity, and/or gender expression. In spite of Ontario universities having equity and inclusive policies in place for some time, the findings suggest a disjuncture for some in the stated commitments to inclusion. I argue that equity and inclusive policy regimes in Ontario universities function as a thin veil of inclusion for some LGBTQ people. Such "inclusive" frameworks may disguise the limitations of equity policies and discourses (Ahmed, 2007) and fail to address covert forms of homonegativity and transphobia in universities in Ontario. By making visible the perceptions and experiences of LGBTQ students, staff, and faculty, this study offers a contribution to the literature illuminating the complex and multifaceted spaces between policy frameworks, educational outcomes and employee experiences for sexual and gender minorities in universities. | Ph.D. | inclusive, gender, equitable | 4, 5 |
| Tavares, Brian | Kambourov, Gueorgui | Three Essays on Macroeconomic Labour Search | Economics | 2015-11 | Abstract Three Essays on Macroeconomic Labour Search Brian Tavares Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Economics University of Toronto 2015 This thesis examines heterogeneous worker productivity in labour search models. In Chapter 1 I examine how involuntary part-time employment varies over the business cycle. It is known that the proportion of workers claiming to be involuntarily part-time employed increases during recessions and decreases during normal times and expansions, but the mechanism through which this occurs has been generally under-studied. A model incorporating heterogeneous worker productivity, on the job search and a firm’s ability to operate jobs part-time or full time is considered. The model is therefore similar to Menzio and Shi (2010) with the novel inclusion of worker specific productivity and the ability to operate jobs part-time. Three primary goals are considered: 1) to provide a framework for future research in not only involuntary part-time employment, 2) to determine the relative importance of worker specific and match specific productivity in determining involuntary part-time employment and 3) to determine the impact of involuntary part-time employment on the unemployment rate and the level of welfare in the economy. It is found that while match-specific productivity is important in explaining the fluctuations of involuntary part-time employment over the business cycle, such employment is concentrated among workers with fixed low productivity. The welfare effects of involuntary part-time employment are found to be modest for the economy as a whole but relatively important for the low fixed productivity workers. In Chapter 2, I examine the relationship between wage-tenure contracts and heterogeneous fixed productivity. As a proxy for this productivity, I use educational achievement. I then investigate the relationship between the wage profile for workers with less than high school, high school and college education, respectively. I consider a directed search model with on the job search similar to Shi (2009) with workers of heterogeneous fixed productivity. Following the model, I estimate a baseline wage profile which is the implied relationship between the current wage and future wage growth for a worker. I find that more educated workers do indeed enjoy a steeper wage-tenure profile.The model explains the steeper profile solely based on wage-tenure contracts, demonstrating that higher learning rates for more educated workers is not necessary to explain their steeper wage profile. The calibration exercise establishes this qualitatively, but not quantitatively, leading to the conclusion that differential learning rates are an important part of the steeper wage profiles. In Chapter 3, I examine the interaction of wage-tenure contracts and on the job learning. In combining these two effects I am able to deduce the relative importance of each of them in explaining tenure wage growth. The model is a directed search model with on the job search and wage-tenure contracts similar to Shi (2009), but workers learn on the job. A natural extension of this study is combining it with the second Chapter, in order to better identify the relative importance of learning on the job among workers with differing educational achievement. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, worker, wage | 8 |
| Tawfik, Amy | Krahn, Murray | Comparative and Cost-effectiveness of Stroke Prevention Treatments in Atrial Fibrillation: A New Generation of Drugs | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2015-11 | Objectives: To develop a state-transition model evaluating the cost-effectiveness of all antithrombotic treatments for atrial fibrillation (AF) patients, at varying risks for stroke and bleeding, and to generate high-quality effectiveness and cost data to inform the model. Methods: Bayesian network meta-analyses (NMA) were conducted to determine the comparative effectiveness of the following treatments: no treatment, aspirin, aspirin+clopidogrel, warfarin, dabigatran (110mg and 150mg), rivaroxaban, apixaban, and edoxaban (low-dose [LD] and high-dose). Cost data were generated from a cohort of real-world AF patients identified through administrative data, to estimate the costs associated with clinical events corresponding to health states in a state-transition model. The resulting model evaluated the cost-effectiveness of treatments in patients at varying CHADS2 and HAS-BLED scores. Patients were stratified into six risk groups, denoted as stroke/bleeding risk. The analysis was undertaken from the Canadian payer perspective using a lifetime horizon. Cost-effectiveness was measured in quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) using the net health benefit (NHB) framework. Results: At a willingness-to-pay of $50,000/QALY, the most cost-effective strategy was edoxaban LD for patients in all groups, except those at Moderate/Low and High/Low risk, for which apixaban was more cost-effective. The incremental NHBs (INHBs) of the first and second most cost-effective strategies for each group are presented. The INHBs of edoxaban LD versus apixaban were: Low/Low=0.01 QALYs, Moderate/Low= -0.03 QALYs, Low/High=0.25 QALYs, Moderate/High=0.21 QALYs, and High/High= 0.10 QALYs. The INHB of apixaban versus dabigatran 150mg in patients in the High/Low risk group was 0.06 QALYs. The model was sensitive to variations in the cost of edoxaban. For each group, the optimal strategy was cost-effective in 50% or less of the simulations. Discussion and Conclusion: Depending on a patient’s risk for stroke and bleeding, the most effective and cost-effective strategy is dabigatran 150mg, apixaban or edoxaban LD. This thesis serves as the first economic evaluation of antithrombotic treatment in AF to include an original NMA and costing study. We have produced a robust economic evaluation, based on high-quality effectiveness and cost data that can inform future economic evaluations, and provided an example of how to employ best practices when conducting them. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Taylor, Benjamin | Rehm, Juergen | The Mortality and Morbidity of Alcohol-attributable Injury | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014-06 | Alcohol is a recognized cause of over 60 injuries and diseases and is consistently in the top 5 most important risk factors for global burden of disease. It is important to be able to measure how drinking alcohol affects our health, and how our risk of getting injured or acquiring diseases caused by alcohol is dependent on how much alcohol we drink. This type of information allows us to make personal choices about our health and is an integral piece of public health evidence to inform how alcohol policy is informed, implemented, or monitored. This analysis will, for the first time, model the effects of alcohol for injury outcomes over the entire drinking lifetime for men and women separately using a new method that aims to improve upon existing calculations by accounting for different patterns of drinking – both acute consumption and average daily drinking. In both cases, both the amount consumed and the number of times it is consumed is taken into account. Within acute consumption, the number of occasions and the amount ii consumed at each occasion was counted. What’s more, for the first time in this field, a lifetime approach was adopted – risks will no longer be seen as discrete, individual events that occur independently of each other. In this study, risks are combined much like other exposures to environmental substances or contaminants – in a cumulative manner over a lifetime of drinking. The method combines data sources from experimental data, from meta-analyses, Canadian mortality and hospital data, and survey data, making this a rich, yet complicated analysis. Its products were dose-response risk curves for each injury outcome, by sex, and age group, and alcohol-attributable fractions and their variance estimation for mortality and morbidity for injury. This study has important implications for forming and planning health policy, represents advancements in absolute risk calculation, and will result in important consumer-level information that will enable development of limits around healthy drinking. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Taylor, Jackie Schleifer | Verrier, Mary M||Landry, Michel D | Transition to Adult Health Care for Youth with Disabilities: Implications for Health Policy | Rehabilitation Science | 2015-11 | This dissertation contains three papers, each on a different aspect of transition to adult healthcare for youth with disabilities. The overall aim of this dissertation research was to identify system level health care transition strategies for youth with disabilities, determine the amount and degree to which Canadian jurisdictions reflect those transition strategies in government posted documents and policy, and to understand the current status of national healthcare transition policy in Canada, the UK, and Australia. The first paper describes the results of a scoping review identifying system level strategies for policy addressing continuity of care and care transitions to adult health care for youth with disabilities. The second paper is an analysis of the match of those system level strategies to current Canadian provincial and territorial government documents and policies related to transitions to adult health care for youth with disabilities. The third paper is an analysis of international alignment and variance between Canada, the UK and Australia with respect to transitions related government policies and direction. Collectively, this dissertation research found that system level strategies in support of continuity of care and transitions to adult health care for youth with disabilities exist. The challenge of achieving effective health care transition for youth with disabilities moving from the paediatric to adult health systems is identified as an area of importance by paediatric and adult health care service providers, clients and families. However, there are considerable variances in government attention and action in addressing the issue of health care transition, and thus, variability in existing policy inclusive of transition strategies across Canada, the UK and Australia. The combined findings of these studies suggest that health system strengthening, in the area of transitions to adult health care for youth with disabilities, should be supported through health policy implementation and/or change. Policy addressing transitions to adult health care for youth with disability could drive change through: (a) bringing awareness to the issue; (b) mitigation of client-specific and system wide impacts of ineffective health care transition; and through (c) the promotion of accountability mechanisms for effective continuity of care for youth with disabilities. | Ph.D. | health, inclusive | 3, 4 |
| Taylor, Keri S. | Davis, Karen | Sensorimotor Recovery, Functional and Structural Brain Plasticity, and the Development of Chronic Pain Following Upper Limb Peripheral Nerve Transection and Microsurgical Repair | Medical Science | 2010-06 | Following peripheral nerve transection and microsurgical repair (PNIr) most patients retain significant sensorimotor impairments, a proportion of which also develop chronic neuropathic pain. Individual psychological factors may contribute to the development, intensity and duration of chronic pain. Furthermore, a large body of evidence has indentified beneficial and maladaptive cortical plasticity following disease or injury. The general aim of this thesis was to determine the extent of sensory and motor recovery, functional and structural brain changes, and the impact of chronic neuropathic pain on sensorimotor outcomes following upper limb PNIr. Towards this main aim a sensorimotor psychophysical assessment (that included psychological assessments), nerve conduction testing, and an MRI session that examined brain function and structure was performed in patients with peripipheral nerve injury induced neuropathic pain (PNI-P) and those with no neuropathic pain (PNI-NP). Nerve conduction testing demonstrated that all patients had incomplete peripheral nerve regeneration, and that PNI-P patients had worse sensory nerve regeneration. Psychophysical assessment confirmed that all PNIr patients had significant sensorimotor deficits. Additionally, deficits on tests of vibration detection, sensorimotor integration, and fine dexterity were significantly greater in PNI-P patients. Psychological measures clearly distinguished PNI-P from PNI-NP and healthy controls (HC). Vibrotactile stimulation of the deafferented territory in PNI-NP patients results in reduced BOLD activation within the primary and secondary somatosensory cortices. Interestingly, the regions of reduced BOLD corresponded with gray matter thinning which was negatively correlated with behavioural measures of sensory recovery. Structural abnormalities were also identified in the right insula. PNI-P patients had thinning within the right middle insula and a corresponding decrease in white matter pathways projecting into/out of that region. PNI-P patients also had white matter abnormalities in pathways feeding into/out of the contralesional primary somatosensory cortex and thalamus. In conclusion, PNIr is clearly associated with sensorimotor impairments and brain plasticity. Furthermore, neuropathic pain is associated with worse peripheral nerve regeneration, sensorimotor deficits, different psychological profiles, and structural alterations in brain regions involved in pain perception and somatosensation. These results provide insight into peripheral regeneration, the development of chronic pain, brain plasticity and structure-function-behavioural relationships following nerve injury and have important therapeutic implications. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Taylor, Luke | Cossman, Brenda | We Are Family (I Got All My Children With Me): The Regulation of Gay Families in North America | Law | 2014-11 | In the 1980s, North America witnessed the emergence of a discourse on gay families, defined largely by choice and in opposition to nuclear, biological norms. Since then, there has been a general shift amongst lesbians and gay men towards a conception of family that accepts, rather than opposes, state-sanctioned relationships between two adults, and actively seeks to incorporate children as much if not more than extended networks of chosen family members. This paper addresses how the law in the United States and Canada has responded to (and been influenced by) the shift to the nuclear amongst lesbians and gay men, and how the discourse on gay families in North America has unfolded at a regulatory level. In particular, it is concerned to map and critique the law pertaining to queer families, and with how differences in levels and modes of recognition at sub- and supra-national levels affect gay families. | LL.M. | queer | 5 |
| Taylor, Shira | Calzavara, Liviana M. | SExT: Sex Education by Theatre - Theatre as a Pedagogical Tool for Sexual Health e\Education in a Newcomer Priority Neighbourhood | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-06 | Background: Despite rising rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and inequitable access to sexual health education and services, few studies have addressed the unique sex education needs of newcomer youth in an increasingly demographically diverse Canada. This study involved the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel and innovative participatory action research project, Sex Education by Theatre (SExT). SExT is a theatre-based, culturally-relevant, peer education intervention piloted in a multicultural immigration destination of Toronto. Methods: Youth were trained as peer educators (n=19) through participation in theatre-based workshops, designed with youth input. Peer educators devised and performed a play for their peers on sexual health topics. A mixed methods evaluation consisting of surveys, focus groups, peer interviews, and arts-based data collection was applied within a realist evaluation framework to examine intervention effects. Paired-samples t-tests were conducted to investigate changes in sexual health self-efficacy (protection; STI/HIV testing; sexual limit-setting) and personal/social development outcomes (personal growth; social inclusion; social engagement) over three time-points (pre-intervention; post-intervention; 4-month follow-up). Thematic analysis was used to gain a deeper understanding of outcomes and context and to identify the specific mechanisms leading to intervention effects. Results: Quantitative and qualitative data indicated increased sexual health self-efficacy and improved personal/social development among peer educators after participating in SExT. Paired-sample t-tests demonstrated significant improvements on outcome measures from pre- to post-intervention that were maintained at follow-up. Qualitative analysis identified five theatre pedagogy mechanisms (pleasure; creative engagement; personal relevance; role-play and embodiment; vicarious role-play and modelling). Context-Mechanism-Outcome configurations were developed. Conclusion: Pilot study findings demonstrate the potential of a theatre-based, culturally empowering, peer education intervention to positively contribute to the sexual health and personal/social development of newcomer youth. The identification of specific mechanisms through which individual and structural barriers to sexual health were overcome may inform future interventions in diverse contexts. | Ph.D. | health, equitable | 3, 4 |
| Taylor, Zachary Todd | Wolfe, David | The Politics of Metropolitan Development: Institutions, Interests, and Ideas in the Making of Urban Governance in the United States and Canada, 1800-2000 | Political Science | 2015-06 | The urban form and local government organization of Canadian and American cities differ in consequential ways. These differences are typically explained by political cultural or economic and social structures. On the basis of archival and interview research, and supported by descriptive statistics and mapping, this dissertation argues that the long-term development of different national urban forms is the product of how Canadian and American subnational political institutions structured contention among societal interests and processed policy ideas within a changing normative context. During long-term periods of single-party dominance during the early postwar period (1945-70), Westminster institutions in Canadian provinces were highly autonomous from societal influence, which enabled them to establish land-use planning systems administered by metropolitan governments as recommended by American reformers. Fragmented authority and permeability to societal interests kept American state governments from doing the same. As a result, metropolitan land-use and infrastructure policies guided a greater proportion of urban development in Canadian cities than in their American counterparts. In some American states, highly organized bipartisan civic elite networks briefly overcame state governments' centrifugal nature to install metropolitan institutions. On both sides of the border, institutions and policies were enabled by a normative context of faith in government and deference to elites and expert knowledge. In the later postwar period (1970-2000), however, they were delegitimized by a new normative context that rejected narrow technical rationality in favour of livability concerns, participatory policymaking, and the protection of the natural environment and urban place qualities. At the same time, political contention became increasingly polarized, especially in the United States. It became more difficult to create new metropolitan institutions and policies, however the historical analysis shows that earlier, technocratic institutions may be brought into alignment with the new normative context if policies are framed in relation to new concerns and institutions cultivate new support coalitions. The analysis challenges the narrowly municipal, present-oriented, and single-case focus of urban political research, instead arguing for a multi-level, long-term historical, and comparative perspective. To this end, the argument is made through a comparative analysis of two Canadian-American pairs of cities (Toronto and Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Vancouver and Portland, OR) over the course of their development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. | Ph.D. | institution, urban, cities, infrastructure | 9, 11, 16 |
| Tchistiakova, Ekaterina | MacIntosh, Bradley J | Identifying Associations between Vascular Risk Factors and Measures of Brain Health using Multimodal Magnetic Resonance Imaging | Medical Biophysics | 2016-06 | Recent epidemiological evidence indicates that vascular risk factors (VRFs) play a significant role in cognitive decline that can contribute to the onset of dementia among older adults. The link between VRFs and dementia is supported by common neurological findings of structural deficits, cerebrovascular dysfunction and amyloid accumulation in both conditions. Despite the growing literature on VRFs and the brain, there are still many unanswered questions about their roles in pathoetiology and best imaging methods for detecting neurological effects of VRFs. The main goal of this thesis was to characterize the effect of increasing number of VRFs on brain health. Measures of structural brain integrity and cerebrovascular health were acquired using non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The first study of this thesis identified regions of impaired vascular reactivity and thinning of the cortical mantle in older adults with type 2 diabetes and hypertension compared to hypertension only. The next two studies focused on the associations between VRFs and brain health in two common neurodegenerative conditions: older adults with small vessel disease and older adults with mild cognitive impairment. In adults with white matter hyperintensities, a hallmark of small vessel disease, higher VRF number was associated with lower vascular reactivity in cognitively relevant regions. In older adults with mild cognitive impairment, increasing VRF number was correlated with cortical thinning in regions implicated in Alzheimer's Disease. Together, findings of this thesis highlight an association between increasing VRF number and exacerbated brain health in otherwise healthy older adults and individuals with comorbid neurodegenerative disorders. To conclude, the implications of these findings for clinical practices are discussed with focus on proper VRF management as well as the need to properly account for VRFs in neuroimaging studies. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Teague, Sharon | Gervers, Michael | Patterns of Bequest within the Family: Testamentary Evidence from the Ecclesiastical Registers of Canterbury and York c. 1340-1440 | Medieval Studies | 2013-06 | This dissertation examined the strategies and decisions made by 200 English testators who used their wills to provide for the safety and success of their spouses and children. From this analysis, patterns of bequest emerged that were clearly linked to testators’ gender and marital and social status. External factors, such as the type of tenure by which the family held property also played a primary role. Those who held by military or feudal tenure made choices strongly shaped by the rules of English common law and custom; those who held by burgage tenure cared for their family within the framework of customs and statutes established for an urban environment. Husbands, for example, entrusted their wives with the role of executor, while widows chose their sons, and widowers their friends and clergy. Analyzing bequests to children revealed that commoner parents, unlike their chivalric counterparts, exhibited little bias toward their offspring based on the child’s gender. Parents influenced by the rights of primogeniture, however, strongly favored their sons and their sons’ families. The wills selected were chosen from two sources: James Raine’s Testamenta Eboracensia and E. F. Jacob’s The Will Register of Henry Chichele. The sample included 76 women (48 widows, 23 wives, and 5 single women) and 124 men (104 husbands and 20 widowers) whose wills were probated between c. 1340 and 1440 in the ecclesiastical courts of either York or Canterbury, England. The goal, to understand more clearly the familial behavior and politics involved when parents and spouses transferred power and property, made it essential that the analytical methodology employed be both flexible and accurate. Microsoft’s Access data base allowed the findings to shape the results, avoiding as far as possible the imposition of 21st-century categories on fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sensibilities. | PhD | gender, women, urban | 5, 11 |
| Teall, Tanya L. | Piran, Niva | A Quantitative Study of the Developmental Theory of Embodiment: Implications to Health and Well-Being | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2015-06 | This study involved the first quantitative testing of the Developmental Theory of Embodiment (DTE), developed by Piran and colleagues, through the Embodiment Scales for Women (ESW). The ESW includes one scale that assesses the quality of a woman's experience of inhabiting her body as she engaged with the world, namely: the Experience of Embodiment (EE) scale, as well as three scales of social experiences theorized to impact embodiment: Physical Freedom (PF), Mental Freedom (MF) and Social Power (SP). Social experience scales involved a retrospective rating for Childhood and Adolescence, as well as an Adulthood rating, and EE was assessed only for Adulthood. A sample of 412 women, aged 18-45 years, completed the study. Exploratory factor analyses (EFA) were conducted to assess the dimensionality of the scales and correlation and regression analyses were conducted to assess the relationship and relative contribution of the social domain scales to EE. Reliability, in terms of internal consistency, as well as construct validity of the ESW was also assessed to further provide evidence of the scale's psychometric properties. As predicted, EFA for all scales demonstrated the multi-dimensional nature of the ESW, with factors similar to domains produced in previous qualitative work on the DTE. Further, as predicted, correlations between social domain scales, and each social domain scale with EE, were significant. Simultaneous multiple regression analyses found that, when each social domain scale was assessed independently by developmental periods, only the Adult scale was a significant predictor of EE. Further, as predicted, when each social domain Adult scale was assessed together in a simultaneous multiple regression, all were significant predictors of EE. Cronbach's alpha and Pearson correlations with additional measures of well-being supported the ESW's reliability and construct validity. Taken together, results generally support predictions made by the DTE. Theoretical innovations and clinical implications are discussed. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Teeple Hopkins, Carmen | Goonewardena, Kanishka | Precarious Work in Montreal: Women, Urban Space, and Time | Geography | 2016-06 | This dissertation examines the impact of precarious work on women in Montreal. Precariousness is increasingly common in Quebec, where women are overrepresented in part-time, temporary, and self-employed work. Based on three years of fieldwork, the thesis argues that while many women experience precariousness in the labour market, they do not experience it in the same ways. The neighbourhoods in which women live significantly shape their lives at work and home. Building critically on the literature on precariousness and social class, my research theorizes precarious workers as members of the working class, not as a marginalized social class outside it. Specifically, the dissertation asks how urban space influences precarious work and how time pressures impact experiences of work and home. First, while noting that precarious workers across industries (e.g. art, teaching, service) face housing pressures similar to those experienced by other members of the working class, the research shows that precarious women workers living in central neighbourhoods are especially at risk of being displaced by the middle-class. Second, the project brings important attention to paid and unpaid domestic work. Most research in the field of “time-use” at work focuses on sectors outside the home, even though women have long performed unwaged housework and many women continue to undertake paid employment or self-employment in the home. The dissertation demonstrates the ways in which women’s workloads have increased in the sphere of the home, diminishing their physical health and rendering them more precarious. Third, with reference to women who continue to perform large amounts of unpaid work, the research considers the relevance of historical and contemporary debates around the relationship between paid and unpaid labour, illustrating how women’s wages are negatively impacted by this unpaid work. This dissertation brings together the social dimensions of gender, race, social class, and urban space. In so doing, the project contributes a multi-scalar analysis to antiracist feminist political economy and reaffirms the importance of social class within feminist geography. Bridging these two broader traditions – political economy and economic geography – the project provides a critical framework for understanding the specificities of precarious work for women in Montreal. | Ph.D. | health, gender, women, employment, labour, worker, wage, industr | 3, 5, 8, 9 |
| Tenenbaum, Silvia Linda | Suzanne, E Stewart | Forbidden Access? Exploring the Nature of and Access to Culturally Pertinent Psychotherapy for Indigenous Latino Border-gender Youth Living in Toronto | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-11 | Indigenous Latino border-gender youth form the fastest growing refugee seeker population in Canada. Indigenous Latino border-gender residents in Canada between the ages of 16 and 29 have a higher prevalence of mental health problems than their non-Indigenous trans-youth counterparts. Furthermore, there is a gap in culturally specific mental health services for Latino border-gender youth who do not access or remain in mainstream counselling services, despite this high prevalence of mental health problems. Currently, very little is known about their experiences of mental health services, and even less is known about how their identities as Indigenous affects these experiences. This study aimed to answer the following question: What are the intersections of cultural identity and counselling experiences for Indigenous Latino border-gender youth as they relate to mental health access? The study employed a qualitative narrative inquiry methodology, in which six Latino border-gender youth were interviewed and the data analyzed using a narrative story map tool. Overall results include metathemes of spirituality; trust and leadership; and, gender transition and the immigration process. The results will be used to inform counselling programs and services for Indigenous Latino border-gender youth and reduce the gap in service for this population. | Ed.D. | gender, health | 3, 5 |
| Teruelle, Rhon | Shade, Leslie R | Social Media, Red Squares, and Other Tactics: The 2012 Québec Student Protests | Information Studies | 2016-06 | Recent social uprisings worldwide have evidenced people’s desire for social change. From the Arab Spring, to the Occupy Movement, to the protests in Brazil, Israel, and Greece, resistances worldwide cannot and should not be ignored. Although the Québec student strike of 2012 began as the students’ measured response to a proposed university tuition fee increase by the provincial government, what resulted instead was a social movement that stood against neoliberalism, austerity measures, economic injustice, the criminalization of protest, and the corporatization of the university. The thesis documents this successful youth-led struggle against their provincial government during what is now referred to as “Maple Spring.” Utilizing free-format semi-structured interviews, textual analysis, and rich media archives, this study allows for a better understanding of the Québec student strike, and the tactics used by the students during the strike, including their use of social media. The thesis draws from political economic theory, and posits that social media lends itself as a political tactic due to the structural foundations of social media (ownership, profit models, production practices, and cultural capital). The research explores techno-optimist versus techno-pessimist arguments regarding social media's abilities for emancipation and social justice. It also addresses the students' use of social media in their roles as citizen journalists. This thesis provides empirical evidence of the Québec students’ tactical use of social media. Although it was but one of many tactics utilized by the students, the impact of social media was clearly displayed throughout the strike. For one, social media enabled the students and supporters to organize and demonstrate in the streets of Montreal for over 100 nights in a row. Similarly, organizing approximately 300,000 students to protest in the streets of Montréal in the largest expression of civil disobedience in Canadian history was also made possible because of the use of social media. Moreover, by using the symbol of the red square, the physical act of banging on casserole dishes, and an event such as the well-attended (almost) nude march(es) in May, otherwise known as the “maNUfestation,” the student strike became visible worldwide because of the students’ diverse and creative tactics. My research into the Québec student strike of 2012 provides analysis and results of a successful and unique social struggle, given Québec’s rich history of student strikes. It was a resistance that captivated the imaginations of many around the world. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Tessaro, Danielle Angela | Restoule, Jean-Paul | Environmental Policy and Discourse: An Exploration of the Toronto Green Standard | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11 | This project is a qualitative case study of the Toronto Green Standard (TGS), Toronto’s first ever green building policy, affecting all new developments in Toronto since 2010 (City of Toronto Planning and Development, 2018a). The research uses Foucault’s (1972, 1980) notions of discourse, and analyzes for various environmental policy discourses (Dryzek, 2005; Hajer, 1995; Robinson, 2004), in order to identify and question the discourses that are produced, and reproduced by the TGS. By assessing the dominant discourses, I also question what discourses are excluded, and the implications of these findings for who or what is served or excluded. Data was collected through document analysis, interviews, and the observation of TGS sites. Data was analyzed according to a six-step analytic method, which served to make discursive truths visible, and to denaturalize and destabilize the orders and hierarchies produced through discourse (Foucault, 1980; Graham, 2005; Hook, 2001). I found that the more radical, pro-environment discourses of sustainability and survivalism were present in the conception phases of the TGS. However, certain aspects of the institutional policy-making process meant the deprioritization of these discourses early on. Key moments were the Cost-benefit analysis, and stakeholder review and approvals. Through these processes, TGS discourse assumed a prioritization of development “as-is” almost from the get-go, creating a space for the production and dominance of economic development discourses. The result is that the economic-focused discourses of ecological modernization and economic rationalism are reproduced as dominant. These discourses serve Toronto’s leading, largest developer firms, such as through market transformation — the expansion of the green building sector — and through a process that I refer to as “urban environmental classism”. I argue that “urban environmental classism” is an outcome of ecological modernization, whereby being “green,” costs more, and excludes those who cannot afford it. I found that the TGS reproduces this phenomenon in the building sector. The dissertation discusses other implications of the economic-focused discourses, and concludes that in addition to economic factors, social factors should be considered during the creation of environmental policy, so that environmental policy does not exacerbate social and economic inequalities. | Ph.D. | institution, environment. Urban, production | 11, 12, 13, 16 |
| Tevlin, Alexandra Germaine | Murphy, Jennifer | Surface-atmosphere and Gas-particle Partitioning of Ammonia: Measurements, Modelling, and Trend Analysis | Chemistry | 2016-11 | Atmospheric ammonia is of interest because of its impacts on ecosystem and human health, as well as climate. Processes of surface-atmosphere and gas-particle exchange were investigated through measurements, modelling, and long-term trend analysis. A Quantum Cascade-Tuneable Infrared Laser Differential Absorption Spectrometer (QC-TILDAS) was characterised for the purposes of making direct eddy covariance (EC) flux measurements of bi-directional surface-atmosphere ammonia exchange. While this instrument has great potential, improvements are needed in both sensitivity and time response of the instrument if it is to be used to make EC flux measurements. This instrument was further used to measure vertical profiles of ammonia mixing ratios, investigating the influence of the surface on column distribution, and the variation in diurnal trends with altitude. Ammonia mixing ratios were found to increase towards the surface, with greater variability during the daytime than at night. Diurnal trends in ammonia were found to change with altitude: all heights showed a daytime maximum, and the lowest measurement height showed an additional nighttime maximum. Atmospheric ammonia is closely tied to aerosol particle composition, especially in terms of particle acidity, which can alter the health and climate impacts of such particles. A 21 year dataset of particle composition was used to determine spatial and temporal trends in particle acidity. It was found that particle acidity decreased significantly over this time period, concurrent with decreases in emissions of SO2 and NOx, with implications for air quality and atmospheric chemistry. Additionally, there is a need for greater consistency in metrics used to describe particle acidity. Finally, thermodynamic and kinetic models were used to explore the potential impacts of this particle acidity on gas-particle, and consequently surface-atmosphere exchange of ammonia, demonstrating the connection between these two equilibrium processes. | Ph.D. | health, climate | 3, 13 |
| Tewfik, Christine N. | Shi, Shouyong||Faig, Miquel | Essays in Macroeconomics and Financial Frictions | Economics | 2017-11 | My dissertation is comprised of three papers on the causes and consequences of the U.S. Great Recession. The emphasis is on the role that financial frictions play in magnifying financial shocks, as well as in informing the effectiveness of potential policies. Chapter 1, "Financial Frictions, Investment Delay and Asset Market Interventions," co-authored with Shouyong Shi, studies the role of investment delay in propagating different types of financial shocks, and how this role impacts the effectiveness of asset market interventions. The topic is motivated by the observation that, during the Great Recession, governments conducted large-scale asset market interventions. The aim was to increase the level of liquidity in the asset market and make it easier for firms to obtain financing. However, firms were observed to have delayed investment by hoarding liquid funds, part of which were obtained through the interventions. We construct a dynamic macro model to incorporate financial frictions and investment delay. Investment is undertaken by entrepreneurs who face liquidity frictions in the equity market and a collateral constraint in the debt market. After calibrating the model to the U.S. data, we quantitatively examine how aggregate activity is affected by two types of financial shocks: (i) a shock to equity liquidity, and (ii) a shock to entrepreneurs’ borrowing capacity. We then analyze the effectiveness of government interventions in the asset market after such financial shocks. In particular, we compare the effects of government purchases of private equity and of private debt in the open market. In addition, we examine how these effects of government interventions depend on the option to delay investment. In Chapter 2, "Housing Liquidity and Unemployment: The Role of Firm Financial Frictions," I build upon the role that firms' ability to obtain funding plays in the severity of the Great Recession. I focus specifically on how the housing crisis reduced the ability of firms to obtain funding, and the consequences for unemployment. An important feature I focus on is the role of housing liquidity, or how easy it is to sell or buy a house. I analyze how an initial fall in housing market liquidity, linked to rising foreclosure costs for banks, affects labor market outcomes, which can have further feedback effects. I focus on the role that firm financial frictions play in these feedback effects. To this end, I construct a dynamic macro model that incorporates frictional housing and labor markets, as well as firm financial frictions. Mortgages are obtained from banks that incur foreclosure costs in the event of default. Foreclosure costs also affect the ease with which firms can borrow, and this influences their hiring decisions. I calibrate the model to U.S. data, and find that a rise in foreclosure costs that generates a 10% fall in the firm loan-to-output ratio results in a 3 percentage point rise in the unemployment rate. The rise in unemployment makes it more difficult for indebted owners to avoid defaulting on their mortgage. This rise in default, on the order of 20 percent, creates further slack in the housing market by both increasing the number of houses on the market and reducing the amount of buyers. Consequently, there are large drops in housing prices and in the size of mortgage loans. Notably, when firm financial frictions are absent, I observe a counter-factual fall in the unemployment rate, which mitigates the effects on the housing market, and even results in a fall in the mortgage default rate. The results highlight the importance of the impact of the housing market crisis on a firm’s willingness to hire, and how firms' limited access to credit magnifies the initial housing shock. In Chapter 3, "Housing Market Distress and Unemployment: A Dynamic Analysis," I add to the contributions of my second paper, and extend the analysis to determine the dynamic effects of the housing crisis on unemployment. In Chapter 2, I focused on comparing stationary equilibria when there is a rise in the foreclosure costs associated with mortgage default. However, a full analysis must also take into account the dynamic effects of the shock. In order to do the dynamic analysis, I modify the model in my job market paper to satisfy the conditions of block recursivity. I do this by incorporating Hedlund’s (2016) technique of introducing real estate agents in the housing market that match separately with buyers and sellers. Doing this makes the model’s endogenous variables independent of the distribution of households and firms. Rather, the impact of the distribution is summarized by the shadow value of housing. This greatly improves the tractability of the model, and allows me to compute the dynamic response to a fall in a bank's ability to sell a foreclosed house, thus raising the costs of mortgage default. I find that the results are largely dependent on the size and persistence of the shock, as well as the level of firm financial frictions that are present. When firm financial frictions are high, as represented by the presence of an interest rate premium charged to firms, and the initial shock is large, the shock is transferred to firms via an endogenous rise in the cost of renting capital. Firms scale back on production and reduce employment. The rise in unemployment increases the debt burden for households with large mortgages. They can try and sell, but find it difficult to do so because they must sell at a high price to be able to pay off their debt. If they fail, they are forced to default, thus further raising the mortgage costs of banks, further reducing resources to firms, and propagating the initial shock. However, the extent of the propagation is limited; once the shock wears off, the economy recovers to its pre-crisis levels within two quarters. I discuss the reasons why, and what elements would be needed for greater persistence. | Ph.D. | employment | 8 |
| Thavorn, Kednapa | Coyte, Peter C. | Demand for Health among Canadians: Roles of Immigration Status, Country of Origin and Year since Migration | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2012-11 | This thesis investigates the effects of immigration status, country of origin, and duration in Canada on three main health outcomes, namely health care utilization, occurrences of hypertension and heart disease, and body mass index. The first two chapters are cross-sectional studies that utilize data derived from linked national health survey and Ontario databases, whereas the third chapter is a longitudinal study which draws data from the longitudinal National Population Health Survey (NPHS). The first chapter examines the role of immigration status and country of origin in explaining the use of three types of health services: primary care physicians, specialists, and hospitals. The findings suggest that immigrants, especially those who are male and have low educational attainment, use more primary care physicians than comparable non-immigrants. However, immigrants are found to use fewer expensive health services, i.e. specialist and hospital care, compared to Canadian-born residents. Likewise, immigrants from non-traditional source countries make even fewer visits to specialists than do those who came from traditional source countries. The second chapter investigates the associations of immigration status, occurrence of hypertension, and occurrence of heart disease. Findings from this chapter show that immigrants have comparable odds of hypertension and heart disease to those of Canadian-born residents after adjusting for other factors. The third chapter examines the effects of time since arrival in Canada on the change in BMI over the 14-year period. This chapter shows that, holding other factors constant, an additional year in Canada leads to a 0.14% increase in an individual’s BMI. This association is found to be more pronounced for women than men and for married than non-married individuals. The effect of time since arrival in Canada on the change in BMI is reduced to 0.07% after controlling for sample selection bias, suggesting that by ignoring the sample selection issue, the effects of time since arrival in Canada on the change in BMI may be overestimated. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Theriault, Leah | Chapman, Bruce | A User Innovation Theory of the Numerus Clausus | Law | 2012-03 | Limitations on the customizability of property rights (the numerus clausus principle) are a puzzling feature of the common law conception of property. An economic rationale, built upon 1) the pivotal role that rules of exclusion play in fostering user innovation, and 2) the role that psychological ownership plays in preventing recontracting around governance rules, is offered to explain the modern persistence of the doctrine. Application of the numerus clausus principle limits the proliferation of governance rules in the economy (governance), replacing them with rules of exclusion (exclusion). Exclusion unifies rights of use and possession in assets, while governance separates, to a greater or lesser degree, possession from use rights. Full user, sale and the policy against restraints on alienation are the paradigmatic examples of exclusion; while governance is exemplified by servitudes and contractually-burdened assets. Exclusion plays a critical role in user innovation because it allows the possessors of assets to unilaterally seek out new uses of those assets. Whenever the law replaces governance with exclusion, user innovation is more likely to occur because the possessors of assets can apply their unique, rival and nontransferable human capital inputs to tangible assets, generating outputs (the new uses) that move resources to their higher-value uses. This is how all innovation, both high-tech and low-tech, occurs. In addition to negatively impacting user innovation, governance hinders recontracting because both possession and legal entitlements (rights of use in an asset) give rise to feelings of psychological ownership, and individuals will not recontract over uses that they feel they already ‘own’. The user innovation theory’s focus on search, innovation and human capital explains why the numerus clausus principle remains most robust in the areas of personal and intellectual property (where users generate a significant amount of innovation), and why it has been somewhat attenuated in the area of real property (where we restrict search in order to facilitate coordination of land uses). It also explains why the law enforces the principle even when the cost of providing notice of governance rules is low. | SJD | innovation, land use, governance | 9, 15, 16 |
| Thiagavel, Jeneni | Ratcliffe, John M | Sensory and Cognitive Constraints and Opportunities in Bats | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11 | Here I report on three comparative studies and one review chapter addressing the relationships between sensory reliance, neuroanatomy, skull morphology and body size, as they relate to diet and foraging in bats. In chapter two, I use morphological and echolocation data to test whether (i) mass-signal frequency allometry or (ii) emitter-limited (maximum gape) signal directionality better explain the negative relationship between size and peak frequency in bats. The results suggest that body mass and forearm length were important predictors of open space echolocation call peak frequency in ways that (i) reflect species-specific size differences, and (ii) suggest the influence of preferred foraging habitat. In chapter three, I test the predictions that the ancestral bat had (i) an auditory brain design capable of supporting early laryngeal echolocation, but (ii) eyes of insufficient absolute size to allow insect tracking at night. The results suggest that bats’ common ancestor had eyes too small to allow for successful aerial hawking of flying insects at night, but an auditory brain design sufficient to afford echolocation. Further, we find that those with less sophisticated biosonar have relatively larger eyes than do sophisticated echolocators. In chapter four, I continue to explore apparent trade-offs between echolocation call design and vision in predatory bats. I also explored the effects of foraging strategy, roost preference, and migration on the brains and eyes of predatory bats. I found that external roosters had large relative eyes, as did those with conserved calls which also had larger visual regions than those with more derived calls. The results also suggest that gleaners and sedentary bats have larger brains than aerial hawking and migrating bats, respectively. In chapter five, I provide an overview of sensory and cognitive ecology as they relate to foraging ecology and diet in the Phyllostomidae. These bats have a wide spectrum of feeding ecologies and sensory system specializations. Here, I use the Phyllostomidae to illustrate the influences that foraging ecology and diet selection have on the evolution of sensory systems and relative brain and brain region volumes. | Ph.D. | trade, conserv, ecology | 10, 15 |
| Thielen-Wilson, Leslie | Razack, Sherene | White Terror, Canada's Indian Residential Schools, and the Colonial Present: from Law Towards a Pedagogy of Recognition | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-03 | What does it mean to say that settler states have a colonial present? In this thesis, I first draw upon the anti-colonial theory of Frantz Fanon (1963, 1967) and contemporary anti-colonial theorists, to understand the nature of colonial power and settler occupation. I develop the theoretical framework of “white terror as colonial force field” structured by the triadic relation of land—terror—white identity, and emphasize that any given site within a colonial force field must be understood as systematically interrelated with other sites, maintained by a settler collectivity. The old European political rationality of “possessive individualism,” the historical rationale for not only capitalist accumulation but modern liberal law, government, and sovereignty, is especially useful for tracing interconnections (symbolic and material) among sites within a colonial force field. This ideology functions, in Fanon’s words, to “bring settler and native into being” through processes which dehumanize the latter as property. Marking the Indigenous collective as inherently damaged, reconstitutes the settler collective as legitimate occupiers of land. Next, I provide an illustration of this theoretical framework. I argue that the Canadian government and law’s response to Indigenous peoples’ demand for justice regarding the genocidal violence of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools (IRS) must be read within the context of a contemporary colonial force field. I trace possessive individualism and the ontological force of property in IRS case law, specifically, R v. Plint, Blackwater v. Plint, Cloud v. Canada and Baxter v. Canada. I also examine the 2006 IRS Settlement Agreement and Canada’s 2008 Apology to “former students” of IRS. I show how discursive strategies on the part of Canada, recuperate and perpetuate anew the familiar relation of colonized and colonizer. Canada’s response is thereby intimately tied to issues of land, white identity and sovereignty today. Finally, I lay the groundwork for an anti-colonial pedagogy of recognition which requires settler occupiers to recognize the re-colonizing moves which reconstitute settlers as racially dominant in relation to Indigenous nations and their lands. This pedagogy has relevance for the Government’s (now unfolding) IRS Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and other anti-colonial social change and education initiatives. | PhD | justice | 16 |
| Thomas, Bryan | Moreau, Sophia | Public Reason and Canadian Constitutional Law | Law | 2008-11 | Liberals claim that the exercise of state power must be justified on terms that all citizens can reasonably accept. They also support democracy. The challenge is to bring these two desideratum in line-- to ensure that democratic deliberations are somehow predicated on claims that all citizens can reasonably accept. Put differently, the challenge is to set the terms of public reason. Liberal philosophers advance grand theories of political justice towards this end. They claim that a reasonable argument in the political sphere is one that conforms to theory x. The difficulty is that there will be those who reasonably reject theory x, preferring theory y or z, or eschewing theory altogether. Pessimism at the prospect of agreement on higher-order theories of justice leads some to advocate simple majority rule. The thesis argues that convergence on higher order theory is not essential to public reason. The Supreme Court of Canada’s method of adjudication under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is used as a model. Where basic rights are engaged, or are alleged to be engaged, the Court examines the reasonableness of law and policy using a series of open-ended tests. These tests discipline their deliberations by focusing attention on generally accepted facts and values (notably, the values expressed by the Charter). The thesis contends that the Court’s open-ended, contextual approach can serve as a model for broader public reasoning. The thesis then explores the role of religious arguments within this model. In a polity committed above all to Charter values, what is the place of religion in the justification of law? It is argued that religion is understood to be private and inscrutable under the Charter. This is what justifies the Court’s generous reading of the right to religious freedom. It also justifies our forbidding state coercion in the name of religion. With the preceding ideas in mind, the thesis examines Canadian law and public discourse on the issues of therapeutic cloning (ch.4) and same sex marriage (ch.5). | PhD | rights | 16 |
| Thomas, Paul Edwin James | White, Graham | Across Enemy Lines: A Study of the All-party Groups in the Parliaments of Canada, Ontario, Scotland and the United Kingdom | Political Science | 2016-11 | The Parliaments of Canada, Ontario, Scotland and the United Kingdom are now home to a growing number of informal bodies that are formed by politicians from all parties who wish to cooperate on specific policy issues or relations with other countries. Such all-party groups (APGs), which deal with topics from the steel industry to genocide prevention, work to share information, meet with stakeholders, and conduct policy studies. Most also have partnerships with external actors who support their activities. This dissertation explores why the number of APGs is rising in each jurisdiction, but also why there are relatively fewer APGs in the two Canadian cases. Using statistical analyses of APG membership patterns as well as interviews with parliamentarians, lobbyists, and journalists, it finds three main factors behind APG expansion. First, the growth of APGs has helped both parliamentarians and external actors to continue to achieve their goals despite changes in the external political environment such as rising policy complexity and increased demands from citizens. Second, APG expansion has been facilitated by the evolution and increasing modularity of the APG format, which has allowed it to be adapted to a broader range of issues and activities. Finally, the increasing acceptance of APGs as a standard tool of political advocacy has led to the creation of groups by parliamentarians and external actors who feel it is important do so as part of broader lobbying campaigns, even if APG activity is not the most effective way to achieve their goals. The dissertation also finds that differences in APG prevalence are caused primarily by variations in levels of party discipline, with those jurisdictions that feature high discipline, such as Canada, tending to have fewer groups. Strong party discipline also limits the policy advocacy conducted by those APGs that do form in those legislatures. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Thompson, Debra Elizabeth | Nedelsky, Jennifer | Seeing Like a Racial State: the Census and the Politics of Race in the United States, Great Britain and Canada | Political Science | 2012-03 | This thesis compares the political development of racial categories employed by the United States, Canada and Great Britain on their national censuses, particularly focusing on the enumeration of mixed-race individuals in the late 20th century. Though literature on race and the U.S. census often stresses the causal influence of social mobilization, this analysis reveals that the common explanations for the development of racial classifications such as interest group mobilization, demography and civil rights legislation are not viable in comparative context. To explore and explain how the racial state sees, this thesis conceptualizes race as a system of power relations and develops a framework of the schematic state, which operates concurrently as both an actor responsible for putting the underlying organizational pattern of race into place, solidifying a particular set of racial meanings, and implementing a scheme for the racial configuration of society, and an arena in which policy alternatives are contested and where the state itself participates among other actors. This characterization demonstrates that the schematizing impetus of the census is not an exemplar of a dichotomous relationship between an all-powerful state and powerless racial subjects; instead, the power and meaning of race exist well beyond the control of the fragmented and sometimes contradictory schematic state, from the transnational realm to the level of the group or individual. Contrary to the majority of the literature on race, this thesis demonstrates that state institutions do not act for purely domestic reasons; rather, institutions mediate between national nuances and transnational ideas about race that exist in excess of national boundaries. Thus, while the decision to count mixed-race can be explained by a crystallization of transnational ideational trends that are mediated by national politics, the domestic arena of policy making – or the policy network itself – emerges as a key factor that determines the method of multiracial enumeration. However, these domestic political and policy outcomes are not contained by borders. Once a policy is in place, it has the potential to reinforce domestic policy and contribute to the global discourse of race itself – and in its travels among these levels of abstraction, race transforms. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Thorogood, Adrian | Lemmens, Trudo | Towards Legal Interoperability in International Health Research | Law | 2019-11 | Interoperability is the ability to exchange meaningful data across complex systems. Connectivity is essential for international health research, but can be hindered by incompatible laws and legal tools. First, this paper considers compatibility between intellectual property law regimes and research data licenses. Second, it reviews data privacy law regimes and how treaties, codes of conduct, and standard safeguards can maintain interoperability across borders. Third, it reviews health research regulation, seeking to reconcile the tension between openness and participant/community control over research data. This paper concludes with a critique of two generic strategies for promoting legal interoperability. The first is access governance, where policies and due diligence processes interface between different legal and organizational contexts. The second is algorithmic access, where researchers submit algorithms to run on secure datasets. Ultimately, interoperability is an essential consideration when designing norms and legal tools to support international health research. | LL.M. | governance | 16 |
| Thorpe, Hilary Claire | Thomas, Sean C. ||Caspersen, John | Clearcut Solutions? An Evaluation of Partial Harvesting in the Black Spruce Boreal Forest | Forestry | 2008-11 | Bringing together field-based empirical studies, a simulation modelling experiment, and a critical analysis of the natural disturbance emulation paradigm, this thesis evaluates partial harvesting in the black spruce boreal forest. Forest management in Ontario is required to emulate natural disturbances, but in regions of the boreal forest where fire cycles are long, regulated even-aged management by clearcutting has truncated forest age-class distributions. Partial harvesting has been proposed as a means to maintain the structural complexity and biodiversity associated with old forests while allowing continued timber production. Despite the potentially important role of partial harvesting in a strategy for sustainable boreal forest management, little research has examined post-harvest stand development, a critical determinant both of habitat and timber supplies.I used a chronosequence approach in combination with dendroecological techniques, a neighbourhood modelling framework, and maximum likelihood statistical methods to quantify stand dynamics over the first decade after partial harvest in the black spruce (Picea mariana) boreal forest of northeastern Ontario, Canada. Residual trees displayed large but time-lagged growth responses to partial harvest. The largest responses were found in young trees, while old trees were largely unable to react to improved post-harvest resource availability. Growth responses were offset by elevated rates of residual-tree mortality, which peaked in the first year after harvest at nearly 13 times the pre-harvest level. Proximity to harvest machinery trails severely escalated the risk of mortality for residual trees. Considering growth and mortality responses together in a forest simulator model, I found that stand development proceeded most rapidly where skidding intensity was reduced and retention areas were aggregated. Given appropriate prescriptions, my results indicate that partial harvesting can be a viable silvicultural option for black spruce boreal forests. However, the ability of partially harvested stands to emulate natural disturbance is questionable, particularly given the strong influence of harvest machinery impacts on post-harvest stand development. I argue that the natural disturbance emulation framework has important flaws and falls short of a justifiable approach for forest management in Ontario. | PhD | biodiversity, forest, production | 12, 15 |
| Thulien, Naomi | Gastaldo, Denise | PRECARIOUS LIVES: A CRITICAL EXAMINATION OF HOMELESS YOUTH TRANSITIONS TO INDEPENDENT HOUSING | Nursing Science | 2017-06 | Precarious Lives: A Critical Examination of Homeless Youth Transitions to Independent Housing Naomi S. Thulien Graduate Department of Nursing Science University of Toronto 2017 ABSTRACT Homelessness has reached epidemic proportions in Canada, with youth comprising a significant segment of this population. While we know a great deal about the risk factors associated with young people entering street life, we know much less about how to facilitate and sustain homeless youth transitions off the streets. To date, there have been only a handful of longitudinal studies designed to examine the trajectories of youth who exit homelessness. Moreover, none of these longitudinal studies were designed to exclusively examine the experiences of youth transitioning to independent housing, where youth pay market rent and are required to be more self-sufficient. The goal of the study was to address this knowledge gap by producing an emic (insider) perspective on the experiences of formerly homeless youth as they transitioned into independent housing and attempted to achieve meaningful social integration. To achieve a more nuanced understanding of the subjective and objective aspects of meaningful social integration, the study was guided by a Postcolonial Feminist theoretical framework alongside the World Health Organization Commission on Social Determinants of Health conceptual framework. A critical ethnography was utilized to reveal socioeconomic and political factors that shape the transition to independent housing and to meaningful social integration. During ten months of fieldwork, I met every other week with nine formerly homeless youth who had recently moved into independent housing. The majority of youth were individually interviewed 13 to 19 times. In total, I conducted 119 hour-long informal interviews. Three key findings emerged: 1) youth appeared “successfully” housed but lived in chronic precarity; 2) youth experienced a shift in identity and employed this as a self-preservation strategy; and 3) the process of independently maintaining housing undermined the youths’ sense of mastery and control. Despite their remarkable agency, participants’ lack of tangible and intangible resources meant they were housed in poverty and remained marginalized. I propose a new conceptual framework, highlighting the tangible and intangible resources needed by youth attempting the daunting task of transitioning off the streets. | Ph.D. | poverty, socioeconomic | 1 |
| Thwaites, Rayner Bartholomew | Dyzenhaus, David | Judicial Responses to the Indefinite Detention of Non-citizens Subject to Removal Orders: A Comparative Study of Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada | Law | 2010-11 | In the period 2004-2007, the highest courts of Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada handed down judgments on the legality of the indefinite detention of non-citizens, specifically non-citizens subject to a removal order whose removal was frustrated. Each of the governments claimed that its intention to remove the non-citizens if and when it became viable to do so sufficed to establish that their detention fell within an ‘immigration’ exception to non-citizens’ rights. The cases thus raised fundamental questions about the relationship between non-citizens’ rights and governments’ power to control national borders. I argue that the indefinite detention of a non-citizen subject to a removal order is illegal. The detention of a non-citizen subject to a removal order is lawful if it can be justified as a proportionate measure to effect his or her removal. Indefinite detention fails this proportionality test and as such is an unlawful violation of a non-citizen’s rights. I develop my argument through case studies from the three jurisdictions. I argue that the law of all three jurisdictions contained ample resources to support a ruling that indefinite detention was unlawful. The question then arises as to why this view did not prevail in every jurisdiction. I demonstrate that, taking into account variations in legal frameworks and doctrines, a judge’s response to indefinite detention is at base determined by his or her answer to the question ‘does a non-citizen, against whom a valid removal order has been made, retain a right to liberty?’ The judge’s answer to this question flows through his or her adjudication on the scope of ‘immigration’ exceptions to legal protections of the personal liberty of non-citizens considered in the case studies. I consider the best justification for the view that a removal order revokes a non-citizen’s right to liberty, provided by John Finnis. I argue that it rests on questionable understandings of citizenship, and in operation inevitably undermines the values of community solidarity it seeks to promote. | SJD | rights | 16 |
| Timms, Laura | Smith, Sandy | What Happens after Establishment? The Indirect Impacts of the Gypsy Moth on Native Forest Caterpillar Communities | Forestry | 2010-11 | Invasive insects are considered one of the most serious threats affecting forests today; however, surprisingly little research has addressed the impacts of invasive species establishment on native forest insect communities. Such information is lacking for even the most thoroughly studied invasive forest insect, the gypsy moth. Using gypsy moth as a case study, my thesis addresses the questions: What are the ecological impacts of an exotic forest insect upon its establishment in a new community of native species? Does the community shift after the invasive establishes, and if so, what are the drivers in this realignment? I used multivariate analysis to assess native caterpillar communities collected in forest stands with and without a history of gypsy moth outbreak. I found that gypsy moth outbreak history had no significant effects on native caterpillar communities; however, current gypsy moth abundance was related to shifts in the structure of late season caterpillar assemblages. These results suggest that gypsy moth may affect native caterpillar communities through short-term mechanisms but not through long-term ecological changes. I used quantitative food webs to investigate the effects of gypsy moth on native host-parasitoid webs from the same caterpillar communities, and found that food web structure was resilient to both gypsy moth outbreak history and current abundance. The gypsy moth shared few parasitoids with native species in my study sites, none of numerical significance, thus minimizing the opportunity for enemy-mediated indirect interactions. Finally, I conducted a greenhouse experiment and found that early spring feeding by forest tent caterpillar can indirectly influence gypsy moth susceptibility to its virus, demonstrating that the complex interactions that can occur between native and exotic species do not always benefit the invader. Overall, I argue that the establishment of the gypsy moth into North American forests will not cause major changes in native caterpillar communities. | PhD | food, resilien, forest | 2, 15 |
| Tiplady, Oona | Stermac, Lana | Posttraumatic Symptoms in Therapists Following the Suicide of a Client | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2017-11 | Research has shown that client suicide can be an alienating, isolating and frightening experience for therapists, whether it occurs at the beginning of their career or well after they have established themselves as professionals. Previous research has failed to examine the therapistâ s experiencing of posttraumatic symptoms in response to client suicide and the factors that affect this, particularly the history of prior trauma, the presence of prior psychological problems, number of previous client suicides, gender, education, working alliance, and perceived support following the client suicide. Ninety-one clinicians who live in North America who experienced a client suicide in the past five years completed measures assessing trauma history (stressful life experiences), prior client suicide, demographics, working alliance, training preparedness, and posttraumatic adjustment. Furthermore, clinician survivors were given the opportunity to reflect on what they found most and least helpful following the suicide of a client, and what advice they would give to another clinician who is experiencing the suicide of a client for the first time. The results of this study indicate that overall clinicians experience posttraumatic distress following a client suicide and that this decreases for most clinicians over time. When a number of factors were examined (e.g., working alliance, setting, gender, multiple client suicides, prior graduate training in client suicide, prior stressful life events, and perceived social supports), it was found that previous graduate school training in client suicide and perceived social support were associated with lower levels of posttraumatic distress, both immediately and several months following a client suicide. In addition, multiple client suicides was associated with higher levels of distress immediately post suicide but prior stressful life events and gender (i.e., women) were associated with higher levels of impact six months following the suicide of a client The type of social support that was recommended to be most useful following the suicide of a client was collegial and supervisorial support. Furthermore, prior graduate training in client suicide was correlated with lower levels of distress, both at seven days and six months post client suicide. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| To, Kim Lun Sharon | Helwig, Charles C | Autonomy, Rights, and Parenting in Changing Chinese Cultural Contexts | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-06 | Drawing on both a universalistic perspective (self-determination theory) and a cultural psychological perspective (Greenfield’s theory of cultural change), the papers presented in this dissertation examine the joint role of universal psychological processes and cultural transformation in accounting for variations and similarities in parenting, children’s rights attitudes, and their outcomes in diverse settings within China. One hundred and twenty-eight Chinese adolescents (12-16-year-olds) and their mothers from urban and rural China - two settings that have been rapidly changing at a different pace over the past decades with the rise of modernization - participated in the current study. The first paper focuses on how cultural parenting practices are transmitted across generations, and their impact on Chinese adolescents’ psychological well-being. The second paper narrows the focus and examines how the socialization environment and other socio-demographic factors may contribute to the development of children’s rights conceptions amongst Chinese mothers and adolescents. Comparing mothers and adolescents from different settings coexisting within the same nation, encompassing urban social ecologies of the Gesellschaft form to the rural social ecologies of the Gemeinschaft form (Greenfield, 2009), these studies provide insight into how the extent of urbanization impacts parenting practices, beliefs and attitudes, and consequently affects children’s development in a non-Western cultural setting. Overall, findings from both of the studies demonstrated converging evidence supporting the universalist claim that children in a variety of cultural contexts benefit from family environments which are responsive and promote children’s needs to exercise autonomy. Findings also suggested that there has been a shift in cultural parenting practices in China (with a different pace of change in urban versus rural areas), consistent with Greenfield’s theory of cultural change. | Ph.D. | urban, rural, rights | 11, 16 |
| Tombe, Trevor | Zhu, Xiaodong | Structural Change and Income Differences | Economics | 2011-11 | Economic growth and development is intimately related to the decline of agriculture’s share of output and employment. This process of structural change has important implications for income and productivity differences between regions within a country or between countries themselves. Agriculture typically has low productivity relative to other sectors and this is particularly true in poor areas. So, as labour switches to nonagricultural activities or as agricultural productivity increases, poor agriculturallyintensive areas will benefit the most. In this thesis, I contribute to a recent and growing line of research and incorporate a separate role for agriculture, both into modeling frameworks and data analysis, to examine income and productivity differences. I first demonstrate that restrictions on trade in agricultural goods, which support inefficient domestic producers, inhibit structural change and lower productivity in poor countries. To do this, I incorporate multiple sectors, non-homothetic preferences, and labour mobility costs into an Eaton-Kortum trade model. With the model, I estimate productivity from trade data (avoiding problematic data for poor countries that typical estimates require) and perform a variety of counterfactual exercises. I find import barriers and labour mobility costs account for one-third of the aggregate labour productivity gap between rich and poor countries and for nearly half the gap in agriculture. Second, moving away from international income differences, I use a general equilibrium model of structural transformation to show a large labour migration cost between regions of the US magnifies the impact improved labour markets have on regional convergence. Finally, I estimate the influence of structural change on convergence between Canadian regions. I construct a unique dataset of census-division level wage and employment levels in both agriculture and nonagriculture between 1901 and 1981. I find convergence is primarily due to region-specific factors with structural change playing little role. | PhD | agriculture, employment, economic growth, labour | 2, 8 |
| Tomory, Leslie | Langins, Janis | Progressive Enlightenment: The Origins of the Gaslight Industry 1780–1820 | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2009-06 | Gaslight, an Industrial Revolution technology, developed in the period 1780–1820. The foundations for the technology are partly found in the pneumatic chemistry of the eighteenth century, both in terms of the knowledge of gases and their properties, and the instruments used to manipulate them, such as the gasometer, making gaslight one of the earliest instances of a technology heavily based on science. Although many people experimented with lighting with gases in the late eighteenth century, the move to a commercial technology began with Philippe Lebon and William Murdock who had a clear commercial purpose in mind. The technology in its early phases was found everywhere in Europe, but it was at Boulton & Watt in Birmingham that it was first successfully applied. As Boulton & Watt developed the technology they identified many and solved some of the problems associated with scaling up the technology. They were not, however, very interested in gaslight and only sporadically gave attention to it, before effectively abandoning it around 1812. They nevertheless had an important role to play in its development not only because if their technical work, but also because they demonstrated the technology’s viability to the broad public, and by giving people experience in gas engineering. The technology's final form as a network utility was partly as a result of a battle fought between Boulton & Watt and Frederick Winsor's Gas Light and Coke Company in London during 1807–1810. Boutlon & Watt did not want a large limited-liability corporation as a competitor, and the contest in Parliament between the two groups resulted in a negotiated compromise where the Gas Light and Coke Company gave up all rights to manufacture apparatus, and focused exclusively on gas provision, effectively making it a utility. The years from 1812–1820 saw the technology mature into a large network which included not only technical development, such as the pressure balancing with valves and regulators, but also political and social elements, such as the control of user expectations through education and usage enforcement through inspectors. By 1820, the technology was sufficiently developed to be transferred to the Continent. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Toney, Jared Glen | Kazal, Russell | Locating Diaspora: Afro-Caribbean Migrations and the Transnational Dialectics of Race and Community in North America, 1910-1929 | History | 2014-11 | This dissertation examines the migration of West Indians from the Anglophone Caribbean to the U.S. and Canada in the early twentieth century. It focuses on the transnational negotiations of racial community and conceptions of blackness, a process enacted through Afro-Caribbean migration networks and the encounters between peoples of African descent in North America. The comparative element considers how conceptions of race, and specifically blackness, were differently constituted and expressed among communities in three different locales: New York, Montreal, and Toronto. The transnational dimension illuminates the connective elements between those sites and the mediation of ethnic and national difference among black Canadians, Americans, and West Indians. It proposes three scales by which to analyze formations of community and diasporic conceptions of race in North America. The first scale of analysis is the nation. In their migrations, Afro-Caribbean immigrants encountered different constructions of blackness within the respective national contexts; black peoples themselves expressed multiple and sometimes conflicting identifications with nation, state, and empire in Canada and the U.S. Second, this dissertation evaluates communities at the local level, identifying the characteristics of urban sites that framed the West Indian experience and the formulations of racial communities therein. The third scale of analysis is the transnational. Here, it focuses on how different expressions of race in the respective local and national contexts were mobilized between sites and across space, and how the terms of blackness traveled and translated across geographic, political, and cultural borders. Ultimately, this dissertation illustrates the process and practice of diaspora among peoples in the respective U.S. and Canadian cities, and their transnational engagements with a broader racial community. In the early twentieth century, the category of blackness had increasing resonance among an otherwise diverse, disparate, and ethnically heterogeneous community. Diasporic blackness was rooted in the North American experience, and routed through West Indian migration networks between New York, Toronto, and Montreal. It not only incorporated differences among peoples of African descent, it was contingent upon them. As a result of these cross-border encounters and interactions, racial, ethnic, and national communities were remade through diaspora. | Ph.D. | cities | 11 |
| Tong, Dehui | Berman, Oded ||Krass, Dmitry ||Milner, Joseph | Optimal Pricing and Capacity Planning in Operations Management | Management | 2011-06 | Pricing and capacity allocation are two important decisions that a service provider needs to make to maximize service quality and profit. This thesis attempts to address the pricing and capacity planning problems in operations management from the following three aspects. We first study a capacity planning and short-term demand management problem faced by firms with industrial customers that are insensitive to price incentives when placing orders. Industrial customers usually have downstream commitments that make it too costly to instantaneously adjust their schedule in response to price changes. Rather, they can only react to prices set at some earlier time. We propose a hierarchical planning model where price decisions and capacity allocation decisions must be made at different points of times. Customers first sign a service contract specifying how capacity at different times will be priced. Then, when placing an order, they choose the service time that best meets their needs. We study how to price the capacity so that the customers behave in a way that is consistent with a targeted demand profile at the order period. We further study how to optimally allocate capacity. Our numerical computations show that the model improves the operational revenue substantially. Second, we explore how a profit maximizing firm is to locate a single facility on a general network, to set its capacity and to decide the price to charge for service. Stochastic demand is generated from nodes of the network. Customers demand is sensitive to both the price and the time they expect to spend on traveling and waiting. Considering the combined effect of location and price on the firm's profit while taking into account the demand elasticity, our model provides managerial insights about how the interactions of these decision variables impact the firm's profit. Third, we extend this single facility problem to a multiple facility problem. Customers have multiple choices for service. The firm maximizes its profit subject to customers' choice criteria. We propose a system optimization model where customers cooperate with the firm to choose the facility for service and a user equilibrium model where customers choose the facilities that provide the best utility to them. We investigate the properties of the optimal solutions. Heuristic algorithms are developed for the user equilibrium model. Our results show that capacity planning and location decisions are closely related to each other. When customers are highly sensitive to waiting time, separating capacity planning and location decisions could result in a highly suboptimal solution. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Toor, Arif Mahmood | Wheelahan, Leesa | Ontario’s Graduate Certificate Programs: An Exploration into Colleges’ Perspectives and Students’ Decision-making Processes | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-06 | This mixed methods study explored the nature and role of one of the credentials offered by the Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) – graduate certificates – in school to work transition of Ontarians and it explored students’ decision-making processes when enrolling in these programs. The role of education in human capital theory underpins specific ways qualifications can be used for economic progress; however, in liberal market economies where an education logic dominates, such a role is not clearly defined. The conceptual frameworks that grounded my study included Iannelli and Raffe’s (2007) concept of transition systems, differentiation (cited in Parsons Platt, 1973, Rhoades, 1983), Perna’s (2006) model of student choice, and Reverse Transfer (cited in Clark, 1960; Hossler et. al, 2012). These were used to analyze data from: 335 program websites; statistical data from the Ontario government and Colleges Ontario documents; and, interviews with six institutional leaders, five program coordinators from five selected CAATs (out of 24), four third-party professionals and 17 students. The quantitative data included all graduate certificates offered by 22 English language Ontario CAATs in fall 2017. The conclusions drawn from this study suggest that graduate certificate programs are the only post-diploma credential offered by the CAATs where degrees are one of the key entry requirements. Due to the government’s policies and market pressures, these programs are relatively homogenous which contributes to isomorphism in Ontario CAATs. These programs produce highly positive labour-market outcomes and this study’s participants considered these program curricula to be closely linked with the job market. However, the system-wide data show that more than half of the graduates get jobs outside their fields of study. Participants perceived the level of these programs to be higher than baccalaureate programs and students enrolled in these programs to gain applied skills which were not offered by their previous education. This study contributes to the existing literature on role of qualifications in liberal market economies and may inform policy, improve program design and delivery, and help increase the understanding of role of these credentials in Ontario’s transition and higher education systems. | Ph.D. | labour | 8 |
| Topouzova, Lilia | Viola, Lynne||Lahusen, Thomas | Reclaiming Memory: The History and Legacy of Concentration Camps in Communist Bulgaria | History | 2015-03 | In the immediate aftermath of 1989, following the collapse of the Eastern European communist regimes, it was revealed that communist Bulgaria had operated one of the most extensive and repressive forced-labor camp networks in the entire socialist bloc. In a country of 7 million people spread across 111,000 square kilometers, there were close to forty camp complexes where people were interned, often without trial during different stages of the communist regime. The camps were fully operational from late 1944 until 1962. Furthermore, the Bulgarian camp network was never completely dismantled and camps continued operating into the 1980s, albeit at a significantly diminished scale and with reduced visibility. In early 1990, news of the atrocities committed in the camps attracted the attention of local and foreign media, earning Bulgaria the rather sinister moniker "Little Siberia." The revelations of human rights abuses prompted post-communist Bulgarian governments to attempt various transitional justice initiatives aimed at overcoming the repressive legacy. To date, however, the history of the Bulgarian concentration camp system and its aftermath remain largely untold. This dissertation focuses on the camp system as a way of exploring the experience of political violence in Bulgaria during the communist era and the diverse post-communist forms of representing this experience. The study uses a wide variety of sources, including recently declassified archival material, private archival collections, oral history interviews, memoirs, unpublished manuscripts, films, and media investigations. More than thirty interviews were conducted with individuals impacted by the Bulgarian camp system, over twenty of which with camp survivors. Archival research was conducted in the collections of Bulgaria's Ministry of the Interior (AMVR) in Sofia, the Central State Archive (TsDA) in Sofia, the National Archives in London, UK, and the Open Society Archives in Budapest, Hungary. | Ph.D. | cities, labour | 8, 11 |
| Torres, Rose Ann | Olson, Paul | Aeta Women Indigenous Healers in the Philippines: Lessons and Implications | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2012-06 | This study investigates two central research problems. These are: What are the healing practices of Aeta women? What are the implications of the healing practices of Aeta women in the academic discourse? This inquiry is important for the following reasons: (a) it focuses a reconsidered gaze and empirical lens on the healing practices of Aeta women healers as well as the lessons, insights and perspectives which may have been previously missed; (b) my research attempts not to be 'neutral' but instead be an exercise in participatory action research and as such hopefully brings a new space of decolonization by documenting Aeta women healers’ contributions in the political and academic arena; and (c) it is an original contribution to postcolonial, anti-colonial and Indigenous feminist theories particularly through its demonstration the utility of these theories in understanding the health of Indigenous peoples and global health. There are 12 Aeta women healers who participated in the Talking Circle. This study is significant in grounding both the theory and the methodology while comparatively evaluating claims calibrated against the benchmark of the actual narratives of Aeta women healers. These evaluations subsequently categorized my findings into three themes: namely, identity, agency and representation. This work is also important in illustrating the Indigenous communities’ commonalities on resistance, accommodation, evolution and devolution of social institutions and leadership through empirical example. The work also sheds light on how the members of our Circle and their communities’ experiences with outsider intrusion and imposed changes intentionally structured to dominate them as Indigenous people altered our participants and their communities. Though the reactions of the Aeta were and are unique in this adaptive process they join a growing comparative scholarly discussion on how contexts for colonization were the same or different. This thesis therefore joins a growing comparative educational literature on the contextual variations among global experiences with colonization. This is important since Indigenous Peoples' experiences are almost always portrayed as unique or “exotic”. I can now understand through comparison that many of the processes from military to pedagogical impositions bore striking similarities across various colonial, geographical and cultural locations. | PhD | health, women, institution | 3, 5, 16 |
| Tortell, David Maurice | Roach, Kent | Surfing the Surveillance Wave: Online Privacy, Freedom of Expression and the Threat of National Security | Law | 2017-03 | This thesis explores the emergence of s. 2(b) of the Charter as a response to privacy breaches flowing from government surveillance of online personal information. My study begins by examining two competing views of the relationship between free speech and privacy: opposites in conflict versus complimentary, interconnected rights. I then proceed to look at privacy itself, addressing difficulties faced in defining this concept and ways in which privacy has been read into, and excluded from, the Charter. Next, I focus on aspects of s. 2(b), including freedom of thought, the chilling effects of surveillance and jurisprudence like the 2014 Supreme Court of Canada R. v. Spencer decision which isolates privacy as a vehicle for expression. I conclude by reviewing the advantages and challenges of this privacy-centric approach to s. 2(b), and discuss two ongoing Canadian constitutional lawsuits which adopt this approach in attacking Bill C-51 and other national security legislation. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Touchie, Frances Marianne | Pressnail, D Kim | Improving the Energy Performance of Multi-unit Residential Buildings Using Air-source Heat Pumps and Enclosed Balconies | Civil Engineering | 2014-06 | Existing multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) are important assets for urban regions such as Toronto, Canada. These buildings provide high-density housing and allow for the efficient provision of public services and utilities. However, MURB energy-use imposes a significant environmental burden. A preliminary part of the study presented here found that the median energy intensity of MURBs in Toronto is 300ekWh/m | Ph.D. | energy, buildings, urban, environment | 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Tozer, Laura | Maclaren, Virginia | Urban Decarbonization: Politics and Practices of Carbon Neutrality | Geography | 2018-11 | Urban transformation for decarbonization is a significant challenge. Despite widespread and growing adoption of local goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, climate change mitigation action in cities has taken a piecemeal rather than systemic approach. This dissertation examines how urban low carbon transformations are being imagined, implemented and evaluated. The research design uses a mixed methods approach, including discourse analysis of policy storylines, textual network analysis of planned urban carbon neutrality configurations, and three in-depth urban case studies of Stockholm, London and San Francisco. First, the research examines how urban decarbonization is being imagined by identifying visions for the built environment in carbon neutral urban futures and the storylines driving those urban imaginaries. Key findings include that the developing sociotechnical imaginary of urban carbon neutrality is structuring shifts in policy and practice and that different imaginaries of energy futures are sending cities down divergent sociotechnical paths. Second, the research analyzes the implementation of urban decarbonization. Using a material politics approach, the dissertation examines patterns in which aspects of buildings and energy infrastructure are made to matter as actors implement low carbon measures in the case study cities and finds that emerging patterns in practice carry implications for whether or not cities are on trajectories toward decarbonization. Third, the dissertation contributes to methods of evaluating urban decarbonization by applying a different measure for assessing the effectiveness of urban climate measures – transformative capacity. Using this approach, the dissertation concludes that transformative capacity is under development for new urban space in the case studies, but the effort to change the existing built environment has faced challenges that have limited implementation. This research makes two main contributions to climate governance literature. First, it advances new ways to consider successful progress in urban carbon governance. By combining an examination of the material politics of implemented decarbonization efforts in cities with a policy scaling and entrenchment lens, this dissertation opens up the consideration of progress in carbon governance to encompass the messy, materially embedded and contested transformation of infrastructure. Second, this research develops a deeper understanding of urban carbon neutrality, which represents a new scope of urban action that is aiming for transformative change. The dissertation not only breaks down the building blocks of planned decarbonization, but also considers the ways that these elements are woven together to become narratives that tell an engaging story about the future of cities. Responding to the climate crisis means disruptive change to many of society’s systems in order to avoid catastrophe. While the scope of the transformation is daunting, the process of reimagining and reconfiguring cities can also open the door for new possibilities. | Ph.D. | energy, infrastructure, buildings, cities, urban, greenhouse gas, climate, environment | 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Tracey, Patti Lynn | Muntaner, Carles | Non-governmental Organization's (NGOs) Impact on Health Care Services in Rural Honduras: Evaluating a Short-Term Medical Mission (STMM) Utilizing a Case Study Approach | Nursing Science | 2015-11 | Non-Governmental Organization’s (NGOs) Impact on Health Services in Rural Honduras: Evaluating a Short-Term Medical Mission (STMM) Utilizing a Case Study Approach Canada is a leading, international country that engages in Non-Governmental Organization (NGO)-led STMMs to low and middle-income countries for the provision of health care, education or structural development. Honduras, a chief destination country, is one of the poorest, most politically unstable in Central America. Health expenditure is among the lowest in the Americas, approximately 30.1% of the population receives no health care, and there is marked exclusion of ethnic and rural minorities. In Honduras, there is a paucity of evidence on the expectations, coordination and outcomes of STMMs. Guided by World Health Organization’s Primary Health Care (PHC) framework, an exploratory, type 2, single case study with a multiple embedded units design was used to address two research questions relating to the processes and outcomes of STMM services, and how stakeholders assess services. Eight propositions supported the data collection and a 12-day STMM involving 7 rural villages in Gracias a Dios (client n = 1120) constituted the case over three time periods (pre, during, and 10-weeks post STMM). Other data sources were key stakeholders (regional health/host officials, Honduran and Canadian health care providers). A revised, adapted Harvard evaluation tool was the principal data collection instrument. According to a review of English publications, this is the first longitudinal assessment of STMM processes, outcomes and community perspectives. Community members provided rich details regarding factors that impact their health, such as their impoverished situation and environmental challenges and risks (water, sanitation, food scarcity, poverty, and limited transportation). Diagnoses and treatments were consistent with the evidence of predominant health issues and medications provided in similar regions. Due to limited resources and/or unavailability of services STMM, clients had no opportunity to follow up on referrals. The results suggest that the existing STMM model is limited to adequately meet the needs of the people living in a rural and remote region of Honduras where poverty is extreme. The discussion situates the findings within the context of a country where, despite individuals’ constitutional right for health, political instability and multiple, intersectoral complexities challenge such right and reveal that STMM’s contributions are valued but fragmented with largely unknown outcomes. Recommendations for STMM quality and accountability, policy, education, and future research are presented. | Ph.D. | poverty, health, sanitation, rural, environment | 1, 3, 6, 11, 13 |
| Trachtenberg, Lianne Jill | Piran, Niva | Illness- and Gender- Related Identity Processes and Psychosocial Well-being among Young Breast Cancer Survivors: A Mixed Method Study | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2017-11 | The purpose of the current investigation was to explore Identity Integration, defined as the reformation of post-illness identities, and its impact on psychosocial well-being among young breast cancer survivors. Two key aspects of identity were assessed: a) illness-related identity—women’s experience of themselves in relation to developing breast cancer and b) gender-related identity—women’s experience of themselves in relation to stereotypic and hegemonic gender constructions. A triangulation mixed method design was utilized to collect data on identity processes and related shifts among young breast cancer survivors. In the quantitative inquiry, 113 young women breast cancer survivors, diagnosed at age 36.25 (SD=5.89), mostly between stages I-III (93.9%) completed a measure of illness-related identity: the Impact on Self-Concept Scale (ISCS), four measures of gender-related identity: Gender Role Socialization Scale (GRSS), Objectify Body Consciousness Scale (OBCS), Mental Freedom Scale (MF), and Silencing the Self Scale (SS), as well as two measures of well-being: the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B), and the Experience of Embodiment Scale (EES). As predicted, the illness- and gender-related identity subscales were significantly correlated with both measures of well-being. In the multiple regression models, GRSS and MF significantly predicted FACT-B scores, R2=40.0%. In contrast, OBCS and MF predicted EES scores, R2=61%. In the qualitative inquiry, 12 women between the ages of 24 and 44 at diagnosis participated in one interview about identity processes and related shifts before, during, and after their breast cancer experience. Six core dimensions of women’s identity emerged in the Constructivist Grounded Theory analysis: 1) Loss and Adversity, 2) Connection to the Physical Body, 3) Social Power Related to Bodily Experiences, 4) Internalization Versus Rejection of Gender- and Illness-Related Discourses, 5) Relational Connections, and 6) Meaning and Life Goals. Related to the centrality of body experiences in these emergent themes, the results suggested that identity was intertwined with bodily experiences and was therefore referred to as ‘embodied identity’. Taken together, findings from the study highlighted a critical relationship between young women’s altered bodies, illness- and gender-related identities, and their psychosocial well-being after a breast cancer experience. Unlike previous research in psychosocial oncology, which considered identity as disconnected from the body, this study underscored the importance of examining identity through an embodied lens. Theoretical innovation and clinical implications for psychological intervention are discussed. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Tran, Tuan Tony | Beck, J. Christopher||Nejat, Goldie | Decomposition Models for Complex Scheduling Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2017-06 | The efficient scheduling of tasks on limited resources is important for many manufacturing and service industries to keep costs low and efficiently use resources. However, scheduling problems are often difficult and common scheduling approaches are inadequate for solving problems at the scale necessary for some applications. Therefore, customized scheduling methods are important for the practical application of scheduling techniques. The central thesis of this dissertation is that the understanding of the capabilities of current scheduling technologies and the use of this knowledge to partition a problem into smaller, more manageable parts that are better suited to these technologies is effective for increasing scheduling performance. These decompositions advance the state-of-the-art scheduling methodologies and extend the capabilities of automated scheduling techniques for real-world applications. In this dissertation, three decompositions have been developed with varying levels of integration between solvers. Each decomposition addresses the limitations of a technology and improves upon the current techniques so that they can be used for specific application problems. The first decomposition model is concerned with scheduling a team of robots in a retirement home. The scheduler must consider a complex, multi-objective problem, where it must respect user preferences and schedules. The problem is partitioned into two parts that are each solved using constraint programming. This decomposition shows the improvements that can be obtained when comparing a decomposed model and a non-decomposed model. The second application studied is a large-scale data center. Here, jobs arrive dynamically and are processed on one of approximately 10,000 machines. The decomposition model makes use of techniques developed in two research areas: queueing theory and scheduling. By segmenting a problem into parts that are amenable to the techniques from queueing theory and scheduling, a state-of-the-art scheduling algorithm is crated. Finally, the third decomposition model combines different paradigms of computation, quantum and classical computation, into a cohesive algorithm for use in three different scheduling problems. The hybrid classical computing and quantum computing algorithm develops the capabilities of quantum annealing, a quantum algorithm run on specialized quantum hardware. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Tremblay, Arjun | Bertrand, Jacques | Explaining Multiculturalism's Survival: Electoral Outcomes, Policy Design, and Veto Players | Political Science | 2017-06 | Multiculturalism, by which I mean the recognition and accommodation of cultural minorities borne out of individual and familial immigration, is a political project of the old political left, one that is logically inconsistent with the ideological positions of the political right. Due to this inconsistency, we should therefore expect multiculturalism to retreat following an ideological shift to the right in national level politics. However, this study shows that this does not always happen: sometimes multiculturalism survives an ideological shift to the right. This study argues that the likelihood of multiculturalism surviving an ideological shift to the right in national level politics is affected by electoral outcomes, by policy design and by the actions of critical veto players. More precisely, it argues that multiculturalism is more likely to survive an ideological shift to the right in national level politics when (1) parties of the political right secure enough votes in national level elections to govern but not to decide unilaterally (i.e. when they fail to form a minimum winning coalition), (2) failing that, when multiculturalism policies have been written into formal rules, have multiple stakeholders, or are ‘locked-in’ and therefore immune to the vagaries of electoral competition and (3) if multiculturalism policies are either de-institutionalized, have a single stakeholder, or are ‘open’ to re-examination, when critical veto players intercede to maintain the status quo despite strong partisan opposition to multiculturalism. Ironically, when the fate of multiculturalism rests in the hands of veto players their decisions to maintain the status quo seems to have little if anything to do with a genuine belief in the recognition and accommodation of cultural minorities. This study’s hypothesis of multiculturalism’s survival is developed through a step-by-step comparison of recent policy developments in three immigrant-receiving countries: Canada, Britain, and the United States. These countries share three things in common. Firstly, they were all part of a vanguard of immigrant receiving countries that turned towards multiculturalism during the latter half of the 20th century. Secondly, they have each recently experienced an ideological shift to the right in national level politics resulting from the electoral victories of center-right political parties. Thirdly, each of these cases demonstrates that multiculturalism has survived, albeit to varying degrees and in different ways, following an ideological shift to the right in national level politics. Due to these similarities, we can control for a stimulus that should have, all things being equal, entailed multiculturalism’s retreat across the three cases and, in so doing, identify the factors that provide the basis for a plausible explanation of multiculturalism’s survival. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Trentham, Barry | Cole, Ardra | Old Coyotes: Life Histories of Aging Gay Men in Rural Canada | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2010-11 | Current understandings of aging and the life course are largely based on taken-for-granted hetero-normative assumptions. Gay men lack aging road maps that are unique to their life course experiences and which consider the changing contextual and social conditions that shape their participation choices in family and community roles. This is particularly so for gay men aging in rural environments as most studies of aging gay men focus on the urban experience. This study adds to understandings of aging and the life course by examining the lives of three gay men aging in rural environments. I use a life history approach to shed light on how sexual identity development and marginalization within rural environments intersect with shifting social contexts to shape the aging process in terms of engagement in social role opportunities, namely, community and family participation. As a life course researcher, I pay particular attention to the tensions between individual agency and structural constraints and how they are revealed through the life histories. Epistemological and methodological assumptions based on social constructivism, critical and queer theory inform the study while my own lived experiences as a gay man and an occupational therapist practitioner and educator ground the study. Cross-cutting themes identified in the life narratives reveal connections between sexual identity development and the coming out processes with patterns of social relationships and the gay aging process. These themes are then discussed in terms of their relevance to broader aging and life course constructs including generativity, social capital and gay aging; agency and structure in identity development; and expanded notions of family and social support for gay men. Findings from this study have implications for current explanations of ageing and life course processes; challenge limiting stereotypes of older gay men; inform health and social service professionals who work with older gay people; and provide examples of alternative queer life pathways for gay people of all ages. | PhD | queer, rural, urban | 5, 11 |
| Tripp, Lianne | Sawchuk, Lawrence A | Early Twentieth Century Infectious Diseases in the Colonial Mediterranean | Anthropology | 2017-06 | Disease during adulthood can shape the quality of life at both the personal and familial level, interfere with economic productivity, reproductive success and ultimately one’s survival. The objective of this research has been to explore the 20th century health of small-scale populations (Malta, Gozo and Gibraltar) in the context of infectious disease using traditional statistical, anthropological, demographic and epidemiologic methods. This thesis brings us closer to a deeper comprehension of how disease and humans interact. With respect to the differential undulant experience between Malta and Gibraltar, tradition, non-compliancy, along with the scale effect contributed to the persistence of undulant fever in Malta throughout the study period. Other factors were: Gibraltar’s effective health-directed policies that dealt with herding and milk consumption, its greater enforcement of policies and higher levels of intra-group compliancy. Gozo’s heightened and unique 1918/19 influenza disease experience compared to its sister island of Malta, was shaped by limited exposure to influenza as a consequence of isolation and rurality, along with a community interconnectedness because of the small-scale society, and limited social distancing measures. There were significantly higher rates of influenza morbidity in reproductively aged women (15 to 44 years) compared to men (z-score=5.28; p | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Tseung, Victrine Wing-Yee | Cameron, Jill I.||Jaglal, Susan B. | Considerations for the Implementation of Caregiver Education and Support Programs in a Regional Stroke System | Rehabilitation Science | 2018-06 | Family caregivers need education and support to care for themselves and their loved ones but caregiver programs have not been formally implemented in the Canadian healthcare system. The overall objective of this research was to explore the organizational/system perspective regarding the implementation of caregiver education and support programs into standard clinical practice in a regional stroke system. This research had 2 phases: 1) Key Informant Study and 2) Qualitative Descriptive Study. The objective of the first phase was to gain insight from key informants from the regional stroke system, health authorities, and government to identify organization and system level considerations associated with implementing stroke caregiver programs to inform data collection and participant groups to include in a large-scale qualitative descriptive study of the Ontario Stroke System. Findings from 12 participants suggested program implementation requires consensus on the need for caregiver programs in the health care system, evidence to support implementation, and engagement of stakeholders. Findings indicated specific system and program level considerations to explore and participant groups to include in the large-scale qualitative descriptive study. There were 72 participants in the qualitative descriptive study. Findings suggested program implementation requires establishing the need for caregiver programs in the health care system, incorporating caregiver programs into the system of care, resolving the uncertainty regarding ownership and responsibility for implementation, and addressing regional variations. Program level considerations included evidence to support local implementation, personnel requirements, barriers related to workflow processes and integration with current practice and existing workflow processes. Implementing caregiver programs in a regional stroke system is a multi-faceted issue that requires a concerted effort from stakeholders across the health care system. This research can be used to inform the development of implementation strategies for such programs to ensure that family caregivers receive the support they need. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Tsimicalis, Argerie | Stevens, Bonnie | Costs Incurred by Families of Children Newly Diagnosed with Cancer in Ontario | Nursing Science | 2010-06 | Problem: Financial strain has been reported by families of children with cancer. However, the specific costs and their impact on these families remain unknown. Objectives: (a) to identify the costs incurred by families of children newly diagnosed with cancer in Ontario, (b) to determine the variables that influence these costs, and (c) to explore the impact of these costs on families. Conceptual Framework: The conceptual framework incorporated the social, economic, disease, and treatment cost predictors with the direct and indirect cost of illness components. Setting: Two university-affiliated tertiary paediatric hospitals in Canada. Sample: English speaking parents of children newly diagnosed with cancer who were receiving treatment. Design: A prospective concurrent mixed method design. Instrumentation: The Ambulatory and Home Care Record © (AHCR) (Guerriere & Coyte, 1998) was used to record costs and an interview guide was developed to explore the impact of these costs on families. Procedure: Parents recorded the resources consumed and costs incurred during one week per month for three consecutive months beginning the 4th week following diagnosis and listed any additional costs incurred since diagnosis or between the face-to-face interviews. Parents also discussed the impact of these costs on their families in an audio taped interview. Data Analysis: Descriptive statistics and multiple regression modelling were used to describe families’ total costs (expressed in 2007 Canadian dollars) and to determine factors that influenced them. Descriptive qualitative content analytic methods were used to analyze the transcribed interview data. Results: In total, 99 parents including 28 fathers and 71 mothers completed three sets of cost diaries. The mean total three month expenditure was $28,475 (SD $12,670; range $2013 to $79,249) per family. There were no statistically significant factors that influenced families’ direct costs; however, 23% of the variance for indirect costs was explained by inpatient tertiary hospitalizations, language spoken at home, and distance to the hospital. Parents described the costs associated with their child’s illness and coping and management strategies used to lessen the financial impact including managing their expenses and seeking ways to increase their cash flow. Significance: Findings will inform health professionals and policy makers about families who are faced with potentially catastrophic costs following their child’s diagnosis with cancer. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Tsuyuhara, Kunio | Shi, Shouyong | Essays on Dynamic Contracts: Microfoundation and Macroeconomic Implications | Economics | 2011-06 | This thesis consists of three chapters pertaining to issues of long-term relationships in labour markets. In Chapter 1, I analyze a model of a two-period advice game. The decision maker chooses to retain or replace the advisor after the first period depending on the first period events. Even though the decision maker and the advisor have identical preferences, this potential replacement creates incentive for the advisor to avoid telling the truth. I show the condition under which the decision maker can find a random retention rule that induces a truthful report from the advisor, and I characterize an optimal retention rule that maximizes the decision maker's expected payoff. In Chapter 2, I propose a search theoretic model of optimal employment contract under repeated moral hazard. The model integrates two important attributes of the labour market: workers' work incentive on the job and their mobility in the labour market. Even though all workers and firms are ex ante homogeneous, these two factors jointly generate (1) wages and productivity that increase with worker's tenure and (2) endogenous dynamic heterogeneity of the labour productivity of the match. The interaction of these factors provides novel implications for wage dispersion, labour mobility, and the business cycle behaviour of macroeconomic variables. Lastly, in Chapter 3, I quantitatively assess wage dispersion and business cycle implications of the model developed in Chapter 2. In terms of wage dispersion, the model with on-the-job search with wage-tenure contracts seems to accommodate sizable frictional wage dispersion. The model, however, generates very small productivity difference among workers, and shows weak evidence that the productivity difference generated by the endogenous variations in incentives is responsible for frictional wage dispersion. In terms of business cycle implications, workers' endogenous effort choice first amplifies the effect of productivity shock on unemployment rate. Second, responses of workers to productivity shocks generate marked difference between the effects of temporary productivity shock and that of permanent shock. Third, the analysis shows the importance of the distributional effect on macroeconomic variables during the transitory periods after a shock. | PhD | employment, labour, worker, rights | 8, 16 |
| Tu, Ran | Hatzopoulou, Marianne | Traffic Emission Modelling for Robust Policy Design in Connected and Electric Transportation | Civil Engineering | 2020-06 | Traffic emissions such as greenhouse gases (GHGs, in CO2eq), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and traffic-related air pollution lead to global problems including climate change and public health issues. In order to mitigate the impacts of growing urban traffic on emissions and air pollution, travel demand management, driving operation control, and advanced technology initiatives have been implemented in many cities. The aim of this research is to realize robust transportation policy decisions with improved emission estimation approaches at local and regional levels. In the first module of the thesis, the emission factor (EF, in grams of traffic emissions per unit distance) within one traffic condition, which is commonly defined as a single value, is expanded to a distribution. A regional emission distribution is therefore established using the EF distribution, enhancing the robustness of policy analysis. Meanwhile, the identification of the EF variation leads to the development of a machine-learning based emission estimation approach, CLustEr-based Validated Emission Re-calculation (CLEVER). The CLEVER approach can accurately estimate regional traffic emissions without heavy data collection burden through refined traffic condition categories and representative EFs using traffic data of multiple resolutions. In the second module, several traffic emission control strategies are tested from perspectives of emissions, air pollution, and energy consumption. First, a travel demand management targeting on high-emitting trips is tested. Compared to a short-distance trip management, the proposed strategy is more effective on reducing GHG emissions and improving traffic conditions. Second, a travel-time minimized routing algorithm with connected automated vehicles is applied in an urban road network and the application causes potential increases of near-road NO2 concentrations. Lastly, electric vehicle charging schedules are optimized to minimize GHG emissions from electricity generation. The optimized plan demonstrates high potentials for reducing GHG emissions. However, trade-offs between emission reductions and charging facility costs are identified by comparing the optimized plan with non-optimized plans. This research achieves a reliable regional traffic emission estimation with much less data requirement. Based on that, innovative control strategies proposed in this research and their comprehensive evaluation process can contribute to a robust transportation policy decision. | Ph.D. | pollut, greenhouse gas, climate, consum, urban, energy | 7, 11, 12, 13 |
| Tucker, Caroline | Cadotte, Marc | Biodiversity in Two Parts: Environmental Heterogeneity and the Maintenance of Diversity, and the Prioritization of Diversity | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-11 | Questions surrounding the causes and consequences of diversity lie at the centre of community ecology. Understanding the mechanisms by which species diversity is maintained motivates much experimental and theoretical work, but this work often focuses on fluctuation-independent mechanisms. Variability in habitat suitability is ubiquitous through space and time however, and provides another important path through which species diversity can be maintained. As a result, considering environmental variability has value for conservation and management. Finally, differences through space and time in the mechanisms that promote and maintain diversity produce spatially varying patterns of diversity. Spatial variation in different forms of diversity (species (SR), phylogenetic (PD), and functional diversity (FD)) creates difficult decisions about prioritization and reserve locations. This thesis uses experimental, observational, and theoretical methods to explore the causes and consequences of diversity. I show that variation in space and time has important implications for species coexistence and diversity maintenance. In microbial nectar communities, temperature variation through space and time alters the importance of priority effects on community assembly. Using models of warming temperatures in annual plant communities I show that considering temporal partitioning of flowering (a strategy to minimize competition) introduces constraints on phenological shifts: this has implications for phenological monitoring programs. Finally, I show that variability in the timing of fire events in Mediterranean shrublands contributes to coexistence between life forms, suggesting that it should be considered for fire management. In the final two chapters, I focus on conservation prioritization. Comparisons of species richness and evolutionary diversity through space in the Cape Floristic Region of South Africa show that existing reserves protect Proteaceae richness, but fail to capture evolutionary distinct species. More generally, in the final chapter I suggest that SR and PD should be congruent through space when species are of similar ages, regions are depauperate, or ranges are discontinuous. | PhD | environment, conserv, ecology | 13, 15 |
| Tufford, Lea | Bogo, Marion | Clinician Mandatory Reporting and Maintenance of the Therapeutic Alliance | Social Work | 2012-11 | The objectives of this study are two-fold: (a) to delineate the factors that guide Ontario social workers’ decision-making when rendering judgments on the mandatory reporting of child maltreatment and (b) to understand how social workers maintain the therapeutic alliance with children and families following the decision to report suspected child maltreatment. The study is informed by two distinct bodies of literature: the decision-making theoretical literature within the fields of medicine, psychology, social work, and marriage and family therapy and the therapeutic alliance theoretical literature. Harnessing the advantages of online survey technology, the study surveyed registered members (n = 480) of the Ontario Association of Social Workers who provide direct service to children and families. Participants responded to prepared vignettes of suspected child maltreatment followed by Likert-scale questions (strongly agree to strongly disagree) and open-ended questions on strategies to maintain the alliance. Open-ended questions allowed respondents to offer further commentary regarding their opinions on mandatory reporting and on maintaining the therapeutic alliance. These comments added a rich source of information to the quantitative data. Multiple logistic regression analyses showed that social workers’ ethical responsibility to the College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers, their legal responsibility to the provincial mandatory reporting laws of Ontario, and consultation with peers or eliciting direction from a supervisor comprised the main factors in their decision-making around reporting suspected child maltreatment to the Children’s Aid Society. Qualitative analyses showed that social workers employ a plethora of strategies to repair the alliance following a disclosure of child maltreatment including reporting strategies, information strategies, affect regulation strategies, advocacy strategies, and resource strategies. The major limitation of the research design was the use of vignette research, which in proscribed circumstances may not reflect what the social worker does in actual practice. Design features that compensate for this limitation include (1) use of a 5-point Likert-item response of strongly agree to strongly disagree to allow respondents a range of responses; and (2) use of open-ended questions to allow respondents the opportunity to express their opinions on the issues. | PhD | worker | 8 |
| Tuite, Ashleigh | Fisman, David N | Using Mathematical Models to Inform Syphilis Control Strategies in Men Who Have Sex with Men | Medical Science | 2015-11 | Syphilis is resurgent in many high-income countries, disproportionately affecting urban men who have sex with men (MSM). Frequent screening of at-risk individuals remains the best available tool for syphilis control, but current public health efforts are not resulting in reduced disease burden. The aim of this thesis was to use mathematical modeling to understand the effect of different approaches to syphilis screening on epidemic dynamics and the health of MSM. An agent-based model of syphilis transmission in a core group of sexually active MSM was parameterized with data on the epidemiology of the current epidemic to evaluate plausible screening strategies that might be employed for epidemic control. Of the strategies evaluated, more frequent screening of at-risk MSM already accessing screening, rather than expanding outreach to provide screening to unscreened individuals, was found to be the most effective means of reducing syphilis incidence over a 10-year intervention period. A state-transition microsimulation model of syphilis natural history and medical care was developed to determine the cost-effectiveness of incorporating routine syphilis testing into the blood-work of MSM under care for HIV. When rates of syphilis acquisition were high, opt-out syphilis screening in HIV-infected MSM was projected to be a highly cost-effective intervention. A risk-structured deterministic compartmental mathematical model of syphilis transmission in MSM was used to examine the impact of sustained syphilis screening at varying levels of population coverage. Increasing screening in a population with initially low levels of coverage was shown to lead to increases in infection incidence. Although screening has the potential to control syphilis outbreaks, suboptimal screening coverage may result in the establishment of higher equilibrium infection incidence than that observed in the absence of the intervention, possibly contributing to outbreak persistence. The results of this research suggest that current control efforts are not expected to reduce syphilis incidence, with more effective screening programs required to reduce syphilis burden in MSM. The work presented in this thesis provides some insight into factors that may lead to screening programs that both improve the health of individuals and reduce the overall population burden, ultimately resulting in improved epidemic control. | Ph.D. | health, urban | 3, 11 |
| Tungohan, Ethel Antoinette | Carens, Joseph | From the Politics of Everyday Resistance to the Politics From Below: Migrant Care Worker Activism in Canada | Political Science | 2014-06 | The purpose of this dissertation is to understand why, when, and how migrant care workers in Canada have engaged in political actions to resist their living and their working conditions. I do so by analyzing primary source documents at the National Archives of Canada and the Canadian women’s movement archives, conducting interviews with 103 migrant care worker activists across Canada and in various activist sites in Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines and Geneva, Switzerland and attending and observing various events sponsored by local and national organizations in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, by mainstram international organizations like the International Labour Organization (ILO) and by grassroots international organizations like the International Migrants Alliance (IMA). By assessing the multiple scales where migrant care worker activists resist their living and working conditions, I was able to trace the interlinkages between the ‘politics of everyday resistance’, of which migrant care workers’ individual and organizational forms of micro-rebellion are a part, and the ‘politics from below’ that characterizes the Canadian migrant care workers’ ‘movement.’ In doing so, migrant care workers counter academic and popular representations depicting them as being docile and compliant. They demonstrate their capacity to contest individual micro-aggressions at home and at work, to form ‘new’ transnational family arrangements to meet their needs, to shift the discourse on migrant care work, to faciliate important changes to Canada’s policies on migrant care work, to help ensure the passage of the landmark international “Convention on Domestic Work,” and to begin discussions on alternatives to labour migration and to sending countries’ economic dependence on receiving countries, among their many activities. Although the Canadian migrant care workers’ movement has key divisions – namely surrounding activist scope, strategy and normative inclinations – organizations representing migrant care workers are united in their conviction that migrant care workers’ interests matter and merit representation. | PhD | worker, labour | 8 |
| Turgeon, Luc | Simeon, Richard | Tax, Time and Territory: The Development of Early Childhood Education and Child Care in Canada and Great Britain | Political Science | 2010-06 | This dissertation examines the evolution of Britain’s and Canada’s early childhood education and child care (ECEC) sectors, especially the growing number of policy initiatives adopted in both countries over the past thirty years. I contend that policy coalitions in both countries have been able to promote gradual but nevertheless important policy changes by grafting new purposes onto inherited institutions. The result of these incremental changes has been ECEC systems that often appear incoherent and disjointed. The dissertation also explores how Canada and Great Britain have increasingly followed distinct trajectories. In particular, I demonstrate that while a growing proportion of ECEC services are provided by the commercial sector in Britain, Canada has instead increasingly relied on the non-profit sector to deliver such services. I contend in this dissertation that differences between the two cases are the result of distinct policy coalitions that have emerged in both countries. I make the case that the character of these coalitions and their capacity to promote, institutionalize, protect and further their policy preferences are the result of, first, the sequence of policy development and, second, the territorial organization of the welfare state in both countries. In short, as a result of the federal nature of Canada, Canadian child care activists were able to ensure the early institutionalization of a regulatory framework that constrained the expansion of for-profit services. By the time Britain adopted a national framework, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, on the other hand, the for-profit sector had already established a strong presence. Covering more than one hundred twenty five years of policy development in both countries, this dissertation draws both on extensive archival research and on interviews with policy-makers and ECEC activists. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Turley, Nash Elia | Marc, T J Johnson | Ecological and Evolutionary Consequences of Herbivory on Plant Communities | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2014-11 | Understanding the consequences of species interactions is central to ecological and evolutionary research. My research focused on better understanding the evolutionary ecology of plant- herbivore interactions by asking two broad questions: 1) How do herbivores shape the composition and diversity of plant populations and communities? And, 2) How does genetic variation and ongoing evolutionary dynamics in herbivores influence plant ecology? To test the first question, I utilized long-term herbivore manipulations in the grasslands of Silwood Park, England. I tested ecological and evolutionary consequences of rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) grazing on plant populations by collecting seeds from rabbit exclosures ranging in age from 4 months to >20 years and growing them in common environments. I found that rabbit exclusion caused evolution of multiple plant defensive traits in three plant species and influenced the costs and benefits of a mutualistic interaction between a grass and its fungal endophyte. In another experiment at Silwood Park I investigated how multiple groups of herbivores (rabbits, insects, and mollusks) and nutrient additions shaped plant species richness and phylogenetic diversity. I found that nitrogen addition strongly reduced species richness while rabbit grazing increased plant phylogenetic diversity. To test the second question, I conducted field experiments where I manipulated the genotypic composition of green peach aphid (Myzus persicae) populations on two host plant species. I found that genetic variation in M. persicae had large impacts on plant growth, that M. persicae populations changed in genotype frequency (i.e. they evolved) over 5 generations, and that in some cases faster evolving populations had larger negative impacts on plant growth. Together these results demonstrate how herbivory can concurrently shape the ecology and evolution of plants at multiple levels of organization and that herbivore genetic variation and evolution can have important consequences on plant ecology. | Ph.D. | ecology | 15 |
| Turnbull, Sarah Louise | Hannah-Moffat, Kelly | Reconfiguring Canadian Penality: Gender, Diversity, and Parole | Criminology | 2012-11 | This research provides a local case study of responses to ‘gender’ and ‘diversity’ within Canada’s federal parole system. I examine the following questions: How are certain ‘differences’ and categories of offenders constituted as targets for ‘accommodation’ or as having ‘special needs’? How do penal institutions frame ‘culturally relevant’ or ‘gender responsive’ policy and, in doing so, use normative ideals and selective knowledge of gender, race, culture, ethnicity, and other social relations to constitute the identities of particular groups of offenders? I explore these questions by tracing the history of policy discussions about gender and facets of diversity within legislation and penal and parole policies and practices, as well as the current approaches to managing difference used by the National Parole Board (NPB). Specific focus is given to the organizational responses and approaches developed for Aboriginal, female, and ‘ethnocultural’ offenders. In this study, I show that the incorporation of diversity into the federal parole system works to address a variety of organizational objectives and interests, including fulfilling the legislative mandate to recognize and respond to diversity; appealing to human rights ideals and notions of fairness; managing reputational risk and conforming to managerial logics; instituting ‘effective’ correctional practice; and addressing issues of representation. At the same time, the recognition of gender and diversity produces new penal subjectivities, discourses, and sites upon which to govern. I argue that the accommodation of gender and diversity provides a narrative of conditional release and an institutional framework that positions the NPB as responsive to the diverse needs and/or experiences of non-white and non-male offenders. In the Canadian context, the penal system strives to deliver ‘fair’ punishment through the selective inclusion of difference, and without altering or reconsidering fundamental structures, practices, and power arrangements. Diversity and difference are instead added onto and/or incorporated into preexisting penal policy and logics, including risk management and managerialism. | PhD | gender, rights | 5, 16 |
| Turner, Gary R. | Levine, Brian | Investigating the Impact of Diffuse Axonal Injury on Working Memory Performance following Traumatic Brain Injury Using Functional and Diffusion Neuroimaging Methods | Psychology | 2008-06 | Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of disability globally. Cognitive deficits represent the primary source of on-going disability in this population, yet the mechanisms of these deficits remain poorly understood. Here functional and diffusion-weighted imaging techniques were employed to characterize the mechanisms of neurofunctional change following TBI and their relationship to cognitive function. TBI subjects who had sustained moderate to severe brain injury, demonstrated good functional and neuropsychological recovery, and screened positive for diffuse axonal injury but negative for focal brain lesions were recruited for the project. TBI subjects and matched controls underwent structural, diffusion-weighted and functional MRI. The functional scanning paradigm consisted of a complex working memory task with both load and executive control manipulations. Study one demonstrated augmented functional engagement for TBI subjects relative to healthy controls associated with executive control processing but not maintenance operations within working memory. In study two, multivariate neuroimaging analyses demonstrated that activity within a network of bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) and posterior parietal regions was compensatory for task performance in the TBI sample. Functional connectivity analyses revealed that a common network of bilateral PFC regions was active in both groups during working memory performance, although this activity was behaviourally relevant at lower levels of task demand in TBI subjects relative to healthy controls. In study three, diffusion-imaging was used to characterize the impact of diffuse white matter pathology on these neurofunctional changes. Unexpectedly, decreased white matter integrity was not correlated with working memory performance following TBI. However, markers of white matter pathology did inversely correlate with the compensatory functional changes observed previously. These results implicate diffuse white matter pathology as a primary mechanism of functional brain change following TBI. Moreover, reactive neurofunctional changes appear to mediate the impact of diffuse injury following brain trauma, suggesting new avenues for neurorehabilitation in this population. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Turner, Sarina | Chan, Timothy C.Y. | Advancing Sustainability Research Using Mathematical Programming Techniques | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2015-06 | The central thesis of this dissertation is that mathematical programming techniques can be successfully applied to gain novel insight into problems in the energy sector related to building assessment systems and wind farms. We focus on the novel application of mathematical programming to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, and wind farm layout optimization (WFLO). In the first part of this dissertation, we use an inverse optimization technique to assess and propose improvements to the LEED rating system for buildings. Due to the large dimensionality of the inverse optimization problem, we develop an approximation to improve tractability, and provide numerical evidence to validate the approximation method. Based on the results from our inverse model, we perform a statistical analysis and determine that some of the valuation of LEED credits by building designers may be based on specific building attributes not previously considered. Second, we develop a new mathematical programming approach for wind farm layout optimization. We use Jensen's wake decay model to represent multi-turbine wake effect, develop mixed-integer linear and quadratic optimization formulations, and apply our formulations to several example layouts cases. Compared to previous approaches, our models generate layouts that are more symmetric and produce more power. We also develop a heuristic bounding policy for a special class of quadratic integer programs to speed up computational times, useful in this case, and potentially other applications. Finally, in the last part of this dissertation, we develop a comprehensive WFLO framework that simultaneously takes into account wake effect, sound regulations, turbine infrastructure, and landowner compensation. A financial analysis is performed to determine a common measure of comparison for these different factors, and we develop various mixed-integer linear formulations by combinations of specific factors. We perform six different experiments using our formulations to demonstrate the value of our framework, and from the results we determine the factors impact on the optimal positioning of turbines, infrastructure, and landowner compensation. | Ph.D. | energy, wind,, infrastructure, buildings, environment | 7, 9, 13 |
| Tustin, Jordan Lee | Crowcroft, Natasha S | The Internet and Childhood Immunizations in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-06 | The Internet has been identified as a potential determinant in parental fears of immunization and subsequent sub-optimal immunization coverage. Facebook is the most popular social media (SM) platform in Canada, and as more people abandon landlines, this platform presents an opportunity for novel recruiting of vaccine hesitant (VH) parents. In this thesis, I investigate Facebook as a tool to recruit VH Canadian parents and examine the determinants of vaccine hesitancy among Canadian parents, including the influence of the Internet. The aims are to describe the methods in studying health behaviours via SM; investigate Facebook as a tool to recruit VH parents compared to Random digit dialing (RDD) methods and describe their determinants of vaccine hesitancy; quantify the association between seeking vaccination information online and parental perception of risk on childhood immunization; and assess the vaccination sentiments and themes in an unsolicited online debate on immunization. My systematic review revealed limited research using SM to study health behaviours and limitations in terms of representativeness and validity. Notwithstanding, SM was shown to be a useful tool in gathering data from targeted populations. I recruited Canadian parents by Facebook advertisements linked to an online survey on childhood immunization, and compared methodological parameters, key demographics, and vaccine hesitancy indicators to a population-based RDD sample of Canadian parents. Facebook recruitment yielded a large sample size within a short time period and at lower costs compared to RDD recruitment, and was superior in reaching VH mothers with young children. Lack of knowledge/awareness and misperceptions on the risk of immunization were the most reported determinants of vaccine hesitancy. Multivariate ordinal regression on both datasets revealed the odds of perceiving vaccines as less safe were significantly higher for parents who seek vaccination information online compared to parents who do not, after adjusting for income, Internet reliability, parental age and region. Analysis of online user-driven comments revealed the main themes in the anti-vaccination comments were inaccurate information and misperceptions on the risks of immunization. The majority of the pro-vaccination comments communicated the risks of not vaccinating, and judgments on the knowledge level of non-vaccinators. The results provide evidence to inform the development of targeted interventions on immunization. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Tyrrell, Pascal Norman | Silverman, Earl | Assessment for Early Cardiovascular Risk in Pediatric Rheumatic Disease | Medical Science | 2012-06 | Objectives: 1) Evaluate the risk of atherosclerosis in rheumatic disease compared to healthy controls; 2) Assess the lipid profile of children with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) at presentation before treatment with corticosteroids; 3) Compare the lipid profiles of children with juvenile dermatomyositis (JDM), systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (SJIA), and SLE; 4) Evaluate the extent of early atherosclerosis in children with JDM, SJIA, and SLE; 5) Investigate the progression of early markers of atherosclerosis in children with SLE. Methods. The methods include a systematic review, a cross sectional study of serum lipid levels of a cohort of children with SLE, an analysis of the first time point of a prospective study of cardiovascular disease risk factors and vascular function measures of a cohort of children with JDM, and SJIA, and SLE and a longitudinal study of vascular function measures of a prospective study of a cohort of children with SLE. Results. Our systematic review demonstrated that carotid intima media thickness (CIMT), a surrogate marker of early atherosclerosis, was significantly increased in rheumatic disease populations. We found that newly diagnosed children with SLE before corticosteroid treatment exhibited a pattern of dyslipoproteinemia of increased triglycerides and depressed HDL-cholesterol. When we measured the lipid profiles in children with the rheumatic diseases of JDM, SJIA, and SLE, one third of children had at least one abnormal lipid value. The most common abnormalities were found for total cholesterol and triglyceride levels and most often in children with JDM. One quarter of all patients were found to have insulin resistance. Lastly, when we considered the effects of treatment in children with SLE, we found that improvement in CIMT was possible and it correlated with a higher cumulative dose of prednisone over the study period. Conclusions. Early markers of atherosclerosis in pediatric rheumatic disease are important for determining the risk of these children in developing heart disease as young adults. Chronic inflammation plays a significant role and should be considered an important predictor of premature atherosclerosis. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Tzanetakis, Tommy | Thomson, Murray J. | Spray Combustion Characteristics and Emissions of a Wood derived Fast Pyrolysis Liquid-ethanol Blend in a Pilot Stabilized Swirl Burner | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2011-11 | Biomass fast pyrolysis liquid (bio-oil) is a cellulose based alternative fuel with the potential to displace fossil fuels in stationary heat and power applications. To better understand the combustion behavior and emissions of bio-oil, a 10 kW spray burner was designed and constructed. The effect of swirl, atomization quality, ignition source (pilot) energy, air/fuel preheat and equivalence ratio on the stability and emissions of bio-oil spray flames was investigated. A blend of 80% pyrolysis liquid and 20% ethanol by volume was used during the tests and the results were compared to burner operation with diesel. It is important to have good atomization, thorough mixing and high swirl in order to stabilize ignition, promote the burnout of bio-oil and decrease CO, hydrocarbon and particulate matter emissions. The total amount of primary air and atomizing air that can be used to improve turbulence, mixing, droplet burnout and overall combustion quality is limited by the distillable fraction and narrow lean blow-out limit associated with pyrolysis liquid. Air and fuel preheat are important for reducing hydrocarbon and CO emissions, although subsequent fuel boiling should be avoided in order to maintain flame stability. The NOx produced in bio-oil flames is dominated by the conversion of fuel bound nitrogen. The particulate matter collected during bio-oil combustion is composed of both carbonaceous cenosphere residues and ash. Under good burning conditions, the majority consists of ash. Pilot flame energy and air/fuel preheat have a weak effect on the total particulate matter in the exhaust. Generally, these results suggest that available burner parameters can be adjusted in order to achieve low hydrocarbon, CO and carbonaceous particulate matter emissions when using pyrolysis liquid. Total particulates can be further mitigated by reducing the inherent ash content in bio-oil. Comparative burner tests with diesel reveal much lower emissions for this fuel at most of the operating points considered. This is due to the fully distillable nature, better atomization and improved spray ignition characteristics associated with diesel. Because of its superior volatility, diesel can also operate over a much wider range of primary air and atomizing air flow rates compared to bio-oil. | PhD | energy | 7 |
| Tzekova, Ekaterina | Pressnail, Kim D | Improving the Thermal Performance and Durability of Historic Masonry Buildings | Civil Engineering | 2015-06 | Historic buildings are less energy efficient than modern structures due to the nature of their construction. Although envelope improvements can reduce operating energy, such retrofits can potentially accelerate the deterioration of the historic facade. Consequently, the challenge is to improve the energy performance while maintaining a durable facade. This research proposes a retrofit approach for historic buildings that addresses both energy consumption and durability of the masonry facade. To improve energy performance, an 1879 historic solid masonry home was retrofitted using an innovative Nested Thermal Envelope Design (NTED). An envelope controlling heat, moisture and air movement was constructed around Core and Perimeter zones that were independently operated. Conditioning the entire house provided 36% space heating energy savings below the Ontario Building Code 2012, while turning off the heat to the Perimeter areas increased savings to 68%. To address durability concerns arising from insulating the masonry walls, the use of a vented airspace installed between the masonry and the thermal insulation was explored. The vented airspace at the first field trial increased the drying potential of the historic masonry during the winter when the brick was most vulnerable to freeze-thaw damage. An estimated 1.1 kg/m2/a was removed at South and East walls. The second field trial showed drying between 4.3 kg/m2/a and 5.7 kg/m2/a at the South and 0.08 kg/m2/a wetting at the North. In situ moisture content levels of the brick varied between 10% - 15% while laboratory testing of similar brick revealed a saturated moisture content of 29%. Both field trials showed that the vented airspace drying potential was influenced by facade orientation and solar radiation levels. An alternative way of constructing the airspace was then tested in the laboratory to explore the use of air permeable insulation in lieu of a clear airspace. Walls constructed with rock wool insulation and vent holes, but with no clear airspace, removed between 52% - 90% of moisture, depending on the insulation density and vent hole area. Walls featuring a clear airspace removed between 59% - 95% of moisture. These laboratory tests showed that enough air was able to move through the air permeable insulation thereby improving the drying potential of the walls. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, buildings | 7, 9 |
| Uda, Mariko | Kennedy, Christopher | Sustainable and Resilient Neighbourhood Design | Civil Engineering | 2016-06 | The objective of this thesis is to support initiation of resilience work at the neighbourhood scale, where “resilience” is the capability of dealing with future shocks and stresses (climate change related and non-related) and continuing to function. First, a framework for analyzing and improving neighbourhood resilience is developed. The key parts of this framework are the definition of the essential needs of the community, identification of future shocks/stresses, and the execution of a series of resilience analyses. This framework was partially applied to a case study neighbourhood, a proposed mixed use neighbourhood in Ontario. It was applied to identify ways to improve the resilience of the neighbourhood with respect to energy, and was found to be straightforward to use and effective in generating ideas. Second, the relationship between sustainability and resilience was explored, by examining the resilience potential of actions in the LEED for Neighbourhood Development (LEED-ND) sustainability rating system to a wide range of future shocks/stresses. LEED-ND was found to contribute resilience to a number of future shocks/stresses (especially energy shortage and heat waves), and had minimal conflicting qualities, but did not address resilience needs comprehensively, thus confirming the need for a neighbourhood resilience framework. Third, literature reviews were conducted to come up with a single set of resilience strategies to aid design for resilience. A design aid was developed consisting of 59 resilience strategies (e.g., avoidance, diversity, social capital) that improve “core,” “specified,” and “general” resilience. The design aid was used to find ways to improve the resilience of the case study neighbourhood to any threat, and also to heat waves specifically. It was found to be effective in generating many ideas, and relatively straightforward to use, albeit a little difficult in some parts and lengthy in process. Finally, a step-wise procedure for showing how the framework and design aid can be used together is presented. | Ph.D. | climate, resilien, energy | 7, 13 |
| Um, Seong Gee | Lightman, Ernie | At the Bottom: Migrant Workers in the South Korean Long-term Care Market | Social Work | 2012-06 | This thesis explores Korean-Chinese migrant workers’ local experiences of the global phenomenon of international migration of care labour, focusing on how the care labour of migrant workers is being constructed through the intertwined social and political processes in South Korea’s shifting long-term care sector for the elderly. The thesis uses a qualitative case study method and relies on data collected through participant observation, interviews, and textual analysis during field research between November 2009 and May 2010. The analysis is based on a global economy of care framework, which understands care work as being made of products that are socially and politically constructed in the global processes. My study findings illuminate the roles and relations of the state, the employers, and the workers in producing a huge migrant workforce in South Korea’s segregated elder care labour market. The policy analysis at the intersection of elder care, labour market, and immigration policies shows that, over the last decade, the South Korean government has significantly reconstructed the boundaries of elder care work through the expansion of publicly-funded programmes for the elderly and the institutionalisation of care work in those programmes. In the institutionalisation process, the government’s ignorance about the care work performed in the private care sector has resulted in different regulations and working conditions for care workers in the publicly-funded versus the private sector. My empirical findings highlight how employers’ search for ‘cheap’ and ‘flexible’ labour and older female migrants’ disadvantageous status in the labour market have placed these workers in the less regulated private sector and their pay and working conditions at the bottom of hierarchical elder care workforce. In advocating for migrant care workers’ labour rights, this thesis challenges the current discriminative employment practices and the government’s lack of protection and regulation of care work in the private sector. | PhD | employment, labour, worker, rights | 8, 16 |
| Urajnik, Diana J. | Ferguson, Bruce | Attrition from Child/Youth Mental Health Treatment: The Role of Child Symptoms | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2012-06 | This study examined the associations between social adversity, barriers-to-care (logistical obstacles, wait-time) and participation in children’s mental health treatment. The theoretical role of child symptoms (impact on the child, family burden) was addressed. Records were obtained for 1,963 parents who had accessed community-based care for their child (3-17 years). Data were collected as part of a provincial (Ontario, Canada) screening and outcome measurement initiative. The data were analyzed using multivariate logistic regression. Children with behavioural problems were at increased risk for attrition from treatment (OR=1.47, p < 0.001). The effect held upon controlling for age, gender, and co-morbid emotional symptoms; however, it was explained by child functional impairment. Similar effects were not found for the impact of symptoms on the family. Dropout was greater for adolescents (OR=1.43, p < 0.01) than younger children. Disadvantaged youth were more likely to drop out than more advantaged clients (OR=1.86, p < 0.001). Perceptions of difficulties in attending treatment were associated with a decreased risk (OR=0.89, p < 0.001). The adversity and service relationships were not mediated by child behavioural symptoms, functioning, or family burden. Waiting for care did not influence parent decisions to participate. Moderation analyses showed effects for adversity, service obstacles, emotional symptoms, functional impairment, and family burden for clients with behavioural problems. These children were more likely to drop out if they were socially disadvantaged, or had functional impairment at intake to services. However, completion was more likely for co-morbid children, and parental reports of burden. Families were also willing to overcome access difficulties in order to continue with treatment. There were few findings for children without behavioural problems. The results suggest a focus on other constructs, such as parent cognitions, that may link adversity and barriers with participation. The effects for symptoms as a moderator, suggests different levels of service provision based on sub-types of children. Efforts to engage “high-risk” clients are necessary. On the other hand, resources for intensive services would be appropriate for clients with more severe problems. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Urch, R. Bruce | Corey, Paul ||Silverman, Frances | Controlled Human Exposures to Concentrated Ambient Fine Particles and Ozone: Individual and Combined Effects on Cardiorespiratory Outcomes | Medical Science | 2010-11 | Epidemiological studies have shown strong and consistent associations between exposure to air pollution and increases in morbidity and mortality. Key air pollutants that have been identified include fine particulate matter (PM) and ozone (O3), both major contributors to smog. However, there is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms involved and the relative contributions of individual pollutants. A controlled human exposure facility was used to carry out inhalation studies of concentrated ambient fine particles (CAP), O3, CAP+O3 and filtered air following a randomized design. Exposures were 2 hrs in duration at rest. Subjects included mild asthmatics and non-asthmatics. This thesis focuses on acute cardiovascular responses including blood pressure (BP), brachial artery reactivity (flow-mediated dilatation [FMD]) and markers of systemic inflammation (blood neutrophils and interleukin [IL]-6). Results showed that for CAP-containing exposures (CAP, CAP+O3) there were small but significant transient increases in diastolic BP (DBP) during exposures. Furthermore, neutrophils and IL-6 increased 1 - 3 hrs after and FMD decreased 20 hrs after CAP-containing exposures. Responses to O3 were smaller, comparable to filtered air. The data suggests that adverse responses were mainly driven by PM. The DBP increase was rapid-developing and quick to dissipate, which points to an autonomic irritant response. The magnitude of the DBP increase was strongly negatively associated with the high frequency component of heart rate variability, suggesting parasympathetic withdrawal as a mechanism. In comparison, IL-6, neutrophil and FMD responses were slower to develop, indicative of an inflammatory mechanism. An intriguing finding was that IL-6 increased 3 hrs after CAP, but not after CAP+O3. Further investigation revealed that exposure to CAP+O3 in some individuals may trigger a reflex inhibition of inspiration, decreasing their tidal volume and inhaled pollutant dose, leading to a reduction in systemic IL-6, a potential protective mechanism. Together the findings support the epidemiological evidence of adverse fine PM health effects. Many questions remain to be answered about the health effects of air pollution including a better understanding of how inhaled pollutants result in cardiovascular effects. It is hoped that the insights gained from this thesis will advance the understanding of air pollution health effects. | PhD | pollut | 13 |
| Vachhrajani, Shobhan | Kulkarni, Abhaya V||Beaton, Dorcas E | School Function In Children After Traumatic Brain Injury: Developing A New Outcome Measure | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-06 | Trauma remains the leading cause of morbidity and mortality for children. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is responsible for large population-level costs, and protracted burden on family and caregivers. TBI can significantly impact a child's ability to learn and attain important educational and social milestones. Coordinated reintegration into the school environment is paramount in order to achieve optimal outcome. To date, no validated instrument exists for teachers to be able assess the function of children in school after suffering TBI. By using Food and Drug Administration guidelines on Patient Reported Outcomes (PRO), and National Institutes of Health guidelines on mixed methods research, this thesis aims to develop a validated measure of school function in children after TBI, as assessed by the educational professional most closely involved with that child's education. There are multiple intended uses of this instrument. It will serve as a means for teachers to assess the function of their injured students in the classroom. It will also serve as a vehicle to provide tailored rehabilitation services to injured students. Clinicians will be able to assess the recovery of their patients who have returned to school using this outcome measure. Finally, it will serve as a validated outcome measure for clinical trials in pediatric TBI. This work was carried out in three phases. First, qualitative research methodology was used to develop a measurement concept of school function after TBI. School function was defined as the observable traits and behavioural manifestations of multiple cognitive, psychosocial, and neurologic processes, as well as performance on in-classroom academic tasks that represent a child's ability to achieve expected academic and social milestones. The qualitative data informed the second phase of instrument development, in which items were generated and reduced to form a 95-item prototype questionnaire. In the third phase, field testing was performed in order to validate the concept of school function and further reduce items. Only 58 questionnaires were completed; much further work is necessary to achieve the goal of generating a valid and reliable instrument. When complete, it will fill a large gap in the outcome assessment of this vulnerable population. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Vahid Shahidi, Faraz | Siddiqi, Arjumand||Muntaner, Carles | Unemployment, Unemployment Protection, and Health in the Era of Neoliberal Welfare State Retrenchment | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | Research in the field of public health has generated a broad consensus that the organization of the welfare state has a major influence on the distribution of health within and across populations. By and large, extant contributions to this body of scholarship have adopted a relatively static view of the welfare state. Yet, due to the rise of neoliberalism and its attendant political consequences, contemporary welfare state arrangements differ in important respects from the prevailing regimes of the past. In fact, over the last several decades, governments in a vast majority of advanced capitalist countries have undertaken substantial efforts to reduce the scope and generosity of their social protection systems. From a public health standpoint, these developments raise important questions concerning the extent to which neoliberal-era welfare state policies remain effective levers with which to protect population health and promote health equity. In the present dissertation, I pursue this line of inquiry with specific reference to the neoliberal-era connections between unemployment, unemployment protection, and health in two retrenched welfare states: Canada and Germany. Through a series of empirical studies, I show that: (i) health inequalities between employed and unemployed workers are widening over time; (ii) unemployment benefits play an important role in protecting workers against the adverse health consequences of unemployment; and (iii) the neoliberal retrenchment of unemployment benefits has negatively impacted the health of unemployed workers. Taken together, my findings implicate the neoliberal restructuring of the welfare state as a significant factor contributing to adverse trends in the health of the unemployed and, by extension, as a driving force behind widening unemployment-related health inequalities. These insights, in turn, add empirical weight to growing political demands for the expansion of the welfare state. Beyond illustrating the value and importance of adopting a dynamic view of the welfare state determinants of health, this dissertation makes a contribution to outstanding efforts on the part of public health researchers and practitioners to tackle the problem of persistent health inequalities in our neoliberal times. | Ph.D. | worker, employment, inequality | 8, 10 |
| Vaillancourt, Anita | Mishna, Faye | Understanding Social Assistance in Northern Ontario: 1997-2010 | Social Work | 2016-11 | This study explores how the post-1997, redeveloped Ontario Works welfare system, together with the economic and social conditions in northern Ontario, influenced the administration and delivery of social assistance. In particular, this research aims to expand the limited knowledge of welfare in northern rural and non-metropolitan contexts and to increase understanding of how economic and social conditions influence the provision of the Ontario Work program. Using a constructivist grounded theory methodology, the experiences of Ontario Works program deliverers were drawn upon to foster an increased understanding of issues commonly encountered when providing social assistance to northern Ontario residents. Data were gathered over two primary periods through in-depth interviews, and follow-up interviews conducted throughout a several year data collection and analysis process. Forty-three northern Ontario Works program deliverers comprised of Ontario Works managers, supervisors, and caseworkers from across northern Ontario participated in the study. The analysis of the data reveals that northern Ontario Works program deliverers experience a multitude of resource constraints arising from local northern conditions as well as those situated within the welfare system. Research participants across northern Ontario reported that northern areas had limited economic capacity to provide adequate social services and infrastructure necessary to support the fulfillment of social assistance employment objectives. This study also found that social assistance employment objectives were compromised by limited local control over decision-making, under-resourcing within the Ontario Works program, and â urban-centricâ funding arrangements that disadvantaged northern areas. In addition, northern Ontario Works program deliverers reported substantive barriers to employment due to extremely low human capital among welfare recipients. Moreover, findings indicate that these constraints are compounding. In other words, northern Ontario Works program deliverers frequently encountered multiple and simultaneously occurring resource barriers. The result was described as intensifying resource deficiencies and inhibiting efforts to facilitate sustained labour market attachment among welfare recipients. | Ph.D. | rural, urban, infrastructure, worker, labour | 8, 9, 11 |
| Vakili, Keyvan | McGahan, Anita | The Interaction between Competition, Collaboration and Innovation in Knowledge Industries | Management | 2013-11 | The three studies in this dissertation examine the relationship between the decision of market participants to compete or collaborate on their innovation strategies and outcomes as well as the broader industry structure and technological progress. The first study analyzes the impact of modern patent pools on the innovative performance of firms outside the pool. Theories generally predict that modern patent pools have a positive impact on innovation by reducing the cost of access to the pool’s technology, but recent empirical research suggests that patent pools may actually decrease the innovation rate of firms outside the pool. Using a difference-in-difference-with-matching methodology, I find a substantial decline in outsiders’ patenting rate after the pool formation. However I find that the observed reduction is mainly due to a shift in firms’ investment from additional patentable technological exploration toward implementing the pool technology in their products. The results shed light on how the interaction between cooperation, in the form of patent pooling, and competition shapes firms’ innovative strategies by enabling opportunities for application development based on the pooled technologies. In the second study, I examine the impact of restrictive stem cell policies introduced by George W. Bush in 2001 on the U.S. scientists’ productivity and collaboration patterns. Employing a difference-in-differences methodology, I find that the 2001 Bush policy led to a decline in the research productivity of U.S. scientists. However, the effect was short-lived as U.S. scientists accessed non-federal funds within the United States and sought funds outside the United States through their international ties. The results suggest that scientists may use international collaborations as a strategic means to deal with uncertainties in their national policy environment. In the third study, I examine the effects of the fragmentation of patent rights on subsequent investment in new inventions. Using a theoretical model and an empirical analysis of the semiconductor industry, I seek to shed light on the contingency factors that shape the role of technological fragmentation in explaining the investment decisions and appropriation strategies of firms. The results provide a dynamic explanation of the interplay between firms’ R&D investment, their patenting strategies, and technological fragmentation. | PhD | rights, industr, innovation | 9, 16 |
| Valenta, Kim | Shawn, M Lehman | Primate-Plant Interactions in the Tropical Dry Forests of Northwestern Madagascar: Seed Dispersal and Sensory Ecology of Eulemur fulvus. | Anthropology | 2014-11 | Fruiting plants and frugivores are involved in a complex set of interactions. Frugivores rely on fruiting plants as critical food resources, while fruiting plants rely on frugivores for seed dispersal services. Here, I measure the interrelatedness of brown lemurs (Eulemur fulvus) and the endemic fruits they disperse in the tropical dry forests of Ankarafantsika National Park, northwestern Madagascar. I analyze fruit traits across all fruits consumed by brown lemurs over the course of one year of behavioral study of three groups of habituated, individually identifiable brown lemurs. Using non-invasive genetic sampling, I determine that brown lemurs are dichromatic, or red-green color blind. Using spectroscopy, I quantify fruit color, and model it according to the brown lemur dichromatic phenotype and known optical morphology. I additionally quantify fruit puncture resistance using a modified force gauge and fruit odor using XAD filtration and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. I determine that many ripe fruits colors are conspicuous to brown lemurs against a background of leaves, and that ripe fruits are significantly different chromatically from unripe fruits. I also determine that ripe fruit odors are significantly higher in ripe versus unripe fruits, and that during foraging, fruit odor and fruit size are the two strongest determinants of brown lemur foraging behavior and efficiency. Understanding the degree of fruit-frugivore interrelatedness is critical in the dry forests of Madagascar, where habitat and species loss is proceeding at a rapid pace. | Ph.D. | food, forest | 2, 15 |
| Valentovitch, Igor Igorievitch | Deibert, Ronald J. | Development and Pluralization of the Media of Security Sensitive Ethnic Minority Groups: the Experience of South Eastern European States | Political Science | 2014-06 | This thesis is about the media of security sensitive ethnic minority groups in South Eastern Europe. Why some of them enjoy developed media spheres whereas others are media-deprived? Why operating in similarly structured liberal contexts, the media spheres of some minorities develop as pluralist and liberal, whereas those of others as non-pluralist and authoritarian? In search for answers to these questions, this dissertation compares the media of Turks in Bulgaria, Albanians in Macedonia and Hungarians in Romania. It proposes a model of development of pluralist media spheres of security sensitive ethnic minorities, incorporating variables from three levels of analysis (group, state and system), namely, political cohesion of ethnic minority groups, their level of education, status of interethnic relations, media funding mechanisms, external system pressure and grand polity design. | Ph.D. | inclusive | 4 |
| van der Ven, Hamish | Bernstein, Steven | Eco-labeling and the Conditions for Rigorous and Credible Transnational Governance | Political Science | 2016-06 | Eco-labeling schemes now exist in nearly every country on Earth and are gaining traction with some of the world’s largest companies. However the rigour and credibility of these schemes varies widely. Whereas some eco-labeling organizations (ELOs) adhere to best practices designed to increase the likelihood that their schemes will be rigorous and credible, others do not. In this dissertation, I explain variation in the level of adherence to best practices amongst transnational eco-labeling organizations using a two-phased mixed-method research design. In the first phase, I build and analyze an original dataset comprising information on the policies and practices of 123 transnational ELOs. In the second phase, I build on my statistical findings by further investigating both deductive and abductive hypotheses in the context of two representative case studies, sustainable aquaculture and carbon labeling. My central argument is that who an eco-labeling organization targets for governance holds a strong relationship to its propensity to follow best practices. Specifically, ELOs that “aim big” – meaning those that target a large proportion of a relevant global market – are more likely to follow best practices than those with narrower ambitions. “Aiming big” subjects ELOs to heightened critical scrutiny, increases demand for democratic legitimacy, and over time, augments their organizational capacity. These three conditions, in turn, drive attention to best practices and help create rigorous and credible eco-labels with a better chance of meeting environmental objectives. This dissertation contributes in several ways to scholarship on private authority and global governance. First, it suggests that renewed scholarly attention be directed towards the targets of governance, since pressure towards procedural rigour often comes from the governed community and not the owners of a governance scheme. Second, it argues that there is no unitary pathway to rigorous and credible governance; different causal mechanisms and multiple behavioral logics are operative in steering ELOs towards increased best practice adherence. Lastly, it holds implications for policy by suggesting that ELOs should purposively seek global presence and target large businesses when seeking to maximize their environmental impacts. | Ph.D. | environment, governance | 13, 16 |
| Van Rythoven, Adrian David | Schulze, Daniel J. | Chemical, Isotopic, and Textural Characteristics of Diamond Crystals and Their Mineral Inclusions from A154 South (Northwest Territories), Lynx (Quebec), and Kelsey Lake (Colorado): Implications for Growth Histories and Different Mantle Environments | Geology | 2012-06 | Parcels of diamond crystals from the A154 South kimberlite diatreme, Northwest Territories (n=281), and the Lynx kimberlite dyke, Quebec (n=6598) were examined in terms of colour, size, morphology, and UV fluorescence (A154 South samples only). A subset of stones from each parcel (A154 South: n=60, Lynx: n=20) were cut and polished to expose internal zonation and mineral inclusions. Exposed primary mineral inclusions were quantitatively analyzed for major elements by EMPA. Diamond crystals from the Kelsey Lake kimberlite diatreme, Colorado (n=20), were cut into plates and analyzed for nitrogen aggregation states by FTIR. Twelve of these stones were then analyzed with further subsets from A154 South (n=18) and Lynx (n=16) for carbon isotope ratios and nitrogen abundances by SIMS. Every diamond crystal cut and polished had its internal zonation imaged with CL. Mineral inclusion data from A154 South and Lynx show that the mantle keel of the Slave craton is slightly less depleted than that of the Superior craton, and both are less depleted than those of the Kaapvaal and Siberian cratons. Equilibration conditions plot on hotter geothermal gradients (surface heat flows ~42 mW/m2) than for those of typical Archean cratons (≤40 mW/m2). Equilibration temperatures (~1150-1250°C) are ~100-200°C hotter than previously reported from Kelsey Lake (~1020°C). Kelsey Lake and A154 South samples have carbon isotope ratios and nitrogen contents typical of most diamond populations worldwide. Diamond crystals from Lynx are entirely different, consisting of mostly Type II diamond with δ13C (vs. PDB) values from approximately -3.6 ‰ to +1.7 ‰. These 13C-enriched samples are suggested to be the result of extreme Rayleigh fractionation of diamond from a carbonate fluid and possibly input of carbon sourced from subducted abiotic oceanic crust. Also notable is that growth trends (δ13C-[NT]) for most of the samples studied show little or no consistency with published fractionation models. | PhD | geothermal, ocean | 14 |
| Vanderwel, Mark Christopher | Malcolm, Jay R. ||Caspersen, John | Modelling Effects of Partial Harvesting on Wildlife Species and their Habitat | Forestry | 2009-11 | In Canada’s eastern boreal forest region, partial-harvest silviculture has garnered increasing support for maintaining wildlife species and habitat structure associated with late-successional forests. If late-successional species can find suitable habitat in managed stands that retain a certain number, type, and pattern of live trees, then partial harvesting might represent a viable tool for maintaining species associated with old and complex forests. I used several indirect forms of inference to evaluate whether late-successional vertebrate species can be maintained within partially harvested stands in the eastern boreal forest. A meta-analysis of studies across North America showed that no bird species decreased in abundance by half where light harvesting retained at least 70% of live trees. However, adverse effects occurred at lower levels of retention, with some bird species unlikely to use harvested stands with less than 50% retention until appropriate habitat structure returned. A spatially explicit stand dynamics model showed that while partial harvesting can promote development of understory saplings, downed wood, and heterogeneity, it can also induce long-term decreases in the abundances of large trees and snags. Consequently, species dependent on the latter, such as brown creepers (Certhia americana) and northern flying squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus), were projected to be more susceptible to partial harvesting than those associated with other types of structure. At a more detailed scale, a neighbourhood model developed from live-trapping data revealed that southern red-backed voles (Myodes gapperi) exhibited local associations with several late-successional features within boreal mixedwood stands. Their associations with some features depended on stand-level habitat conditions, which suggested that vole habitat in managed stands could be improved by retaining live trees and downed wood. A spatially explicit model of optimal home range establishment that incorporated these relationships fit vole abundance data marginally better than an aspatial habitat model. When the home range model was applied to simulated partially harvested stands, it predicted that spatial heterogeneity could have a positive effect on vole abundance, but only at harvest intensities of 70-90% with suppressed shrub cover. With careful attention to issues such as these, partial-harvest silviculture could be useful in maintaining vertebrate biodiversity within eastern boreal forests. | PhD | forest, biodiversity | 15 |
| Varley, Emma E.A. | Lambek, Dr Michael J. | Belaboured Lives: An Ethnography of Muslim Women's Pregnancy and Childbirth Practices in Pakistan's Northern Areas | Anthropology | 2012-03 | My doctoral thesis, “Belaboured Lives,” examines the relationship between Sunni Muslim women’s reproductive and maternal health practices, Islamic conservatism, federal and non-governmental health programming, intense Shia-Sunni conflict, interpersonal enmity and ‘occult’ forces in Gilgit Town, economic and administrative capital of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous, federally neglected and multi-sectarian Northern Areas. Over 14 months between 2004 and 2005, my doctoral ethnographic fieldwork involved research interviews and participant-observation among Sunni women and Gilgit Town’s biomedical, traditional and Islamic therapeutic service providers, as well as in household, community, mosque and clinical-settings. With Gilgit District’s maternal morbidity and mortality rate (MMR) being among the highest in Pakistan, my thesis argues that Gilgiti Sunni women’s reproductive and maternal health outcomes were the product of restrictive, inter-linked or mutually interacting structural and ideological forces, which were socio-economic, political, familial and religious in nature. By providing an ethnography not only of women’s home-centered health practices but also their in-clinic experiences, I address the wide array of physical, symbolic and cosmological threats women perceived as being interwoven with their fertility, pregnancy and childbirth-related health. To different degrees and in different ways, women, their families and health providers described how the socio-spatial constraints associated with Islamic pardah (veiling, gender seclusion) and izzat (honour) paradigms, conflict-related service exclusions, iatrogenic risk and hospital funding insufficiencies, ‘black magic’ and spirit ‘attacks’ were contributory factors to women’s poor health outcomes. But my participants’ reproductive health was not only the arena for wellness-seeking and crisis resolution, but also for the enactment and expression of cultural values and sectarian identity; the tension between doctrinal Islam and local interpretations, modern/traditional divides; Sunni militarism, symbolic and structural violence. Moreover, Gilgiti Sunni women’s reproductive and maternal health narratives demonstrated subjectivity, inter-subjectivity and reflexivity, resistance and negotiation, and gendered and reproductive agency. Within this context, any one pregnancy could evidence and communicate multiple domains of experience, as well as patient-provider interaction, access to care, its quality and relation to socio-economic factors, ideological stance or community-bound interpersonal relations. Ultimately, by using pregnancy and childbirth as a central point of inquiry, my thesis examines different aspects of Gilgiti Sunni women’s health experiences: biomedical and traditional; urban and rural childbirth and post-partum practices; Family Planning, fertility and infertility, unwanted pregnancies and abortions; conflict-related constraints, medical malpractice and cosmological harm. | PhD | health, gender, women, rural | 3, 5, 11 |
| Varughese, Anil Mathew | Sandbrook, Richard | Democracy and the Politics of Social Citizenship in India | Political Science | 2013-06 | Why do some pro-poor democracies in global South enact generous and universal social policies accompanied by empowering outcomes while others, similar in many ways, do not? If lower-class integration and programmatic commitment steers policy outcomes to be more egalitarian, what explains the variance in redistributive commitment within the cluster of radical democracies? These questions are examined in the context of two celebrated cases of pro-poor reform in the developing world: the Indian states of Kerala and West Bengal. Despite a host of similar background conditions (democratic framework, programmatic political parties, strong labor unions, and a high degree of subordinate-class integration), the cases display considerable variation in their redistributive commitment. Using the comparative-historical method, this dissertation seeks to explain the variance. It argues that the welfare divergences of Kerala and West Bengal are a function of their divergent modes of lower-class integration. In Kerala, a radical-mobilizational mode of lower-class integration has organized the poorer sections of the working classes—landless laborers and informal sector workers—in autonomous class organizations. This has enabled them to vigorously assert their interests within the working-class movement and harness state power to advance their interests through a wide range of legislative protections and statutory entitlements. In contrast, a clientelist-corporatist mode of lower-class integration in West Bengal relies on dependent mobilization of the poorer sections, without effective self-representing class organizations and without the strategic capacity to pursue class action independent of middle-class collaborators. These distinct modes of lower-class integration engender qualitatively different state-poor relationships and, in turn, divergent visions of social citizenship. The origins of these distinct modes are then traced to their historical and peculiar patterns of class formation, class struggle, and class compromise. This dissertation provides nuance to the welfare-state literature by proposing analytical differentiation within a subset of radical democracies and then by specifying the conditions under which lower-class power and state power can be harnessed to create more redistributive and empowering social outcomes in the global South. It also makes a contribution in linking agrarian labor movements to the nature of welfare regimes and more broadly to social citizenship. | PhD | worker, gender | 5, 8 |
| Venayak, Naveen | Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan | Dynamically controlling metabolic valves to decouple and switch between phenotypic states. | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-11 | Microorganisms are well positioned to address many societal concerns in areas such as health, sustainability, and energy. Rapid progress in systems biology and synthetic biology has drastically improved our ability to understand and engineer complex biological systems. Sustainable biochemical production has received significant attention over the past 30 years; however, these processes must often reach near theoretical maximum performance to become competitive with petroleum alternatives. Here, we implement synthetic biological circuits in order to gain finer control over microorganisms and surpass the theoretical limits of organisms lacking such control. To do so, we aim to identify a set of important reactions which can be dynamically controlled to redirect flux between two phenotypes: growth and production. Then, cells can rapidly accumulate in a growth stage, before a phenotypic switch to production. We have shown that this strategy can significantly improve process rates in two-stage production processes. Since the process of metabolic engineering is iterative, we tackle diverse challenges through the design-built-test-learn cycle. First, we implement and characterize a bistable transcriptional controller as a genetic memory element to drive gene expression. We show that an optimized controller can effectively decouple growth from lactic acid production and can be implemented for two-stage production. Second, we develop a strain design algorithm (MoVE) which can use a stoichiometric metabolic model to predict genetic engineering strategies using two distinct interventions: static knockouts and dynamically controlled metabolic valves. Using this algorithm, we have identified promising candidates for metabolic valves which can be used for a range of products. Finally, we develop liquid handling workflows and a data analysis framework (Impact) to allow for the rapid and thorough characterization of microbial physiology. We anticipate that these tools and techniques will expedite the implementation of efficient dynamic control strategies. Furthermore, we expect studies which improve the accuracy of metabolic models will reduce the development time to commercialization of metabolic engineering technologies. | Ph.D. | production, energy, health | 3, 7, 12 |
| Venturelli, Paul Anthony | Shuter, Brian ||Abrams, Peter | Life History, Maternal Quality and the Dynamics of Harvested Fish Stocks | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2009-11 | Knowledge of offspring production (recruitment) is fundamental to understanding and forecasting the dynamics of a population. In this thesis, I focus on two demographic characteristics of fish stocks that are important to recruitment: population density and age structure. First, populations produce more recruits at low density, but quantifying this response has proven difficult. Using data from hundreds of populations of walleye (Sander vitreus), an economically important freshwater fish, I demonstrate that the growing-degree-day metric (a temperature index) is better than age at explaining variation in density-dependent growth and maturity both within and among populations. I then incorporate multi-lake measures of density-dependent life history change into a temperature-based biphasic model of growth and reproduction to predict sustainable rates of mortality for walleye throughout most of their range. Second, the age (or size) structure of a population may also affect recruitment because of positive effects of maternal age on offspring production and survival; however, evidence for these ‘maternal influences’ on recruitment is limited. Using both an analytical model and a meta-analysis of stock-recruitment data from 25 species of exploited marine fish, I show that (i) maximum reproductive rate increased with the mean age of adults in a population, and (ii) the importance of age structure increased with a species’ longevity. I then demonstrate a similar effect of maternal influences on reproductive rate in a detailed study of Lake Erie walleye. By highlighting the importance of fisheries-induced demographic change to recruitment, this thesis provides insight into past and present failures. However, it also demonstrates clearly the benefits of proactive management strategies that (i) identify and respect the limits of exploitation, (ii) protect from exploitation reproductively valuable individuals—principles that apply generally to any freshwater, marine, or terrestrial species that is of recreational, commercial, or conservation value. | PhD | water, marine, fish, conserv, production | 12, 14 |
| Veryard, Joseph | Jane, Gaskell | The Implementation of Suspension and Expulsion Programs in Two Ontario School Boards | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2014-11 | In 2008, the Ontario Ministry of Education made it mandatory that school boards in the province institute programs to serve suspended and expelled youth. These programs have now been in place for five years. Limited information has been collected as to how effective they are in addressing the needs of these students and little is known about the factors that have had an effect on the implementation of these policies. This study provides a description of the programs and focuses on the factors that have impacted policy implementation in this area. Research has shown that several factors impact policy implementation in general. Among the main influential factors are the impact of policy actors, the conditions that exist, supports that are available and the level and type of central control that is in place. Through one-on-one interviews involving thirteen school and board personnel in two Ontario school boards, this research explored how these four factors had an impact on the policy implementation process as it relates to the suspension and expulsion programs. The study participants believed that the relationships within and between these four factors and the creativity and flexibility this allowed were important in their ability to implement the new policies. Collaborative relationships between school board personnel and their community partners were highlighted in both participating boards as encouraging policy implementation. Strong relationships between staff, the students, and their families were important in finding program solutions for the particular conditions that existed, especially in the rural board that participated in the study. The importance of strong relationships between board personnel and community partners was also stressed, especially in the board that had a combined urban and rural make-up. Two-way communication between board and Ministry personnel allowed for the provision of appropriate supports in order to keep the programs viable. I conclude that when it comes to implementing new policies, central control from the Ministry should demonstrate an understanding of the distinct situations that exist in each board, the importance of key relationships, and the need for flexibility in allowing for creative responses to the needs that exist. | Ed.D. | educat, urban, rural | 4, 11 |
| Vitale, Patrick | Lewis, Robert | The Atomic Capital of the World: Technoscience, Suburbanization, and the Remaking of Pittsburgh during the Cold War | Geography | 2013-11 | Using metropolitan Pittsburgh as an example, this dissertation traces the relationship between suburbanization, the remaking of urban space, technoscience, and the Cold War. It argues that producing spaces for technoscience was a central part of the remaking and suburbanization of metropolitan Pittsburgh. An elite regional alliance enrolled scientists and engineers in their efforts to transform the region from a center of manufacturing to a place focused on rationalizing, administering, and financing production that took place elsewhere. In doing so they created a technological landscape that cast the region’s transformation as part of an inevitable search for progress and as a widely deployable symbol of capitalist rebirth. To enroll scientists and engineers in their efforts they created spaces – research centers, residential suburbs, and urban renewal projects among others – that helped reproduce scientists and engineers’ privilege and authority. Metropolitan Pittsburgh became a key site where technoscience took place, but it was also remade through technoscience. This points to the need for a broader understanding of the processes that reproduce scientists and engineers and their authority and the spaces where technoscience takes place. | PhD | urban, production | 11, 12 |
| Vitopoulos, Antigone Nina | Peterson-Badali, Michele||Skilling, Tracey | What's Good for the Goose? Examining the Impact of Gender-neutral and Gender-specific Factors in the Assessment and Treatment of Female and Male Justice-involved Youth | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2016-06 | In response to female youths’ increased visibility in the legal system, more attention has been paid to understanding girls’ pathways to justice system involvement, risk for re-offending, and rehabilitative needs. Widely-used risk assessment and case management tools based on the Risk Need Responsivity (RNR) framework are largely gender neutral. Gender-responsive scholars have long advocated for the importance of additional gender-specific factors in guiding the assessment and treatment of female justice-involved youth. The dissertation is comprised of two papers which examine the contribution of proposed gender-specific factors alongside well established RNR factors in the prediction of recidivism, and how service provision aimed at intervening with these factors impacts recidivism for both male and female justice-involved youth. Paper 1 explores the relationship between trauma, criminogenic needs and recidivism. I first sought to define the distinct constructs often referred to under the umbrella term ‘trauma’: PTSD symptomology, maltreatment, and childhood adversity. The relationships between these factors, well-established criminogenic needs, and recidivism were examined and compared in a matched sample of 50 female and 50 male justice-involved youth. Females were significantly more likely than males to have experienced multiple forms of maltreatment. Several maltreatment and childhood adversity factors were significantly and positively related to criminogenic needs. PTSD symptomology and childhood adversity were not significant predictors of recidivism; however, maltreatment was the strongest predictor of recidivism for both males and females in a model that included well established risk factors. Gender was not found to be moderating the relationship between maltreatment and recidivism. Implications of the findings for theory and practice are discussed. Paper 2 examines the contribution of both criminogenic needs and several additional proposed ‘female’ gender-specific factors to risk assessment and rehabilitative treatment. Female youth were more likely than male youth to have proposed ‘female’ gender-specific needs but these needs alone did not predict recidivism. Successfully matching services to youths’ criminogenic needs predicted reduced recidivism for both male and female youth. For youth who had ‘female’ gender-specific needs, successful matching of services to these needs also predicted reduced recidivism for both genders. Theoretical and practice implications of these results are discussed. | Ph.D. | justice, gender | 5, 16 |
| Vogan, Patrick | Sage, Rowan F. | The Physiological Ecology of C3-C4 Intermediate Eudicots in Warm Environments | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2010-11 | The C3 photosynthetic pathway uses light energy to reduce CO2 to carbohydrates and other organic compounds and is a central component of biological metabolism. In C3 photosynthesis, CO2 assimilation is catalyzed by ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco), which reacts with both CO2 and O2. While competitive inhibition of CO2 assimilation by oxygen is suppressed at high CO2 concentrations, O2 inhibition is substantial when CO2 concentration is low and O2 concentration is high; this inhibition is amplified by high temperature and aridity (Sage 2004). Atmospheric CO2 concentration dropped below saturating levels 25-30 million years ago (Tipple & Pagani 2007), and the C4 photosynthetic pathway is hypothesized to have first evolved in warm, low latitude environments around this time (Christin et al. 2008a). The primary feature of C4 photosynthesis is suppression of O2 inhibition through concentration of CO2 around Rubisco. This pathway is estimated to have evolved almost 50 times across 19 angiosperm families (Muhaidat et al. 2007), a remarkable example of evolutionary convergence. In several C4 lineages, there are species with photosynthetic traits that are intermediate between the C3 and C4 states, known as C3-C4 intermediates. In two eudicot genera, Flaveria (Asteraceae) and Alternanthera (Amaranthaceae), there is evidence that these species represented an intermediate state in the evolution of the C4 pathway (McKown et al. 2005; Sanchez-del Pino 2009). The purpose of this thesis is to ascertain the specific benefits to plant carbon balance and resource-use efficiencies of the C3-C4 pathway relative to C3 species, particularly at low CO2 concentrations and high temperatures, factors which are thought to have been important in selecting for C3-C4 traits (Ehleringer et al. 1991). This will provide information on the particular advantages of the C3-C4 pathway in warm, often arid environments and how these advantages may have been important in advancing the initial stages of C4 evolution in eudicots. This thesis addresses the physiological intermediacy of previously uncharacterized C3-C4 species of Heliotropium (Boraginaceae); the water- and nitrogen-use efficiencies of C3-C4 species of Flaveria; and the photosynthetic performance and acclimation of C3, C4 and C3-C4 species of Heliotropium, Flaveria and Alternanthera grown at low and current ambient CO2 levels and high temperature. | PhD | environment, energy | 7, 13 |
| Voineskos, Aristotle | Kennedy, James | Imaging and Genetics Investigations in Schizophrenia and Aging: A Focus on White Matter | Medical Science | 2012-03 | Schizophrenia has long been considered a disorder of impaired brain connectivity, and such disconnectivity might be due to disruption of white matter tracts that connect brain regions. This thesis investigates the oligodendrocyte/myelin/white matter pathway in schizophrenia in vivo, and also considers aging effects, as similar substrates are affected during the healthy aging process. In study one, association of oligodendrocyte/myelin genes is examined with schizophrenia, and in study two association of a myelin gene is examined with basic MRI volumetric phenotypes. Then, in study three, diffusion tensor tractography, a technique that can visualize and measure white matter is applied, and is shown to be reliable in healthy controls and schizophrenia patients using a novel clustering segmentation method. In study four, this method is then used to examine interaction of schizophrenia and aging with respect to white matter, where fronto-temporal disconnectivity is demonstrated in younger chronic schizophrenia patients, but not in elderly community dwelling schizophrenia patients compared to age-matched controls. In study five, relationships among age, white matter tract integrity, and cognitive decline in healthy aging are demonstrated using diffusion tensor tractography and structural equation modeling. Genetics and neuroimaging are then combined using the intermediate phenotype approach in study six to demonstrate a key role for the BDNF gene across adult life in healthy aging. In these individuals, the BDNF val66met variant influenced neural structures and cognitive functions in a pathological aging risk pattern. Finally, in study seven, complex relationships are then demonstrated among oligodendrocyte gene variants, white matter tract integrity and cognitive performance in both healthy controls and schizophrenia patients. The combination of genetics and neuroimaging can parse out heterogeneity of disease phenotypes, and characterize the effects of gene variants on at-risk neural structures and cognitive functions in healthy and disease populations. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Voineskos, Daphne Zaharoula Ageliki | Daskalakis, Zafiris J | Indexing Cortical Reactivity with TMS in Major Depressive Disorder and Response to Therapeutic Brain Stimulation | Medical Science | 2019-11 | The neuropathophysiology of Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) appears to be linked to aberrant cortical inhibition and excitation. These processes are mediated by g-amino butyric acid (GABA) and glutamate, the main inhibitory and excitatory neurotransmitters of the cortex, and modified by therapeutic brain stimulation, such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Cortical inhibition and excitation can be indexed via transcranial magnetic stimulation, affording high potential as biomarkers of illness state and response to brain stimulation. When combined with electromyography (TMS-EMG), the motor cortex response is assessed. When combined with electroencephalography (TMS-EEG), TMS indexes cortical inhibition and excitation over other cortical regions, more closely associated with MDD. In study one, cortical inhibition was indexed with TMS-EMG over the motor cortex before and after a course of ECT. A TMS-EMG measure of GABAB receptor-mediated cortical inhibition, the cortical silent period, was shorter at baseline in patients who responded to ECT, when compared to the non-responder group. Contrary to evidence, neither cortical silent period nor short interval cortical inhibition (both TMS-EMG measures of cortical inhibition) were altered by a course of ECT. In study two, TMS-EEG indexed cortical inhibition and excitation over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) in healthy subjects and patients with MDD. MDD patients had larger TMS-EEG amplitudes of markers of cortical inhibition (N45 and N100) and excitation (P60 and GMFA Area Under the Curve). In fact, the N45 predicted illness state with high accuracy, and N100 was associated with illness severity. In study three, DLPFC response to rTMS was indexed via TMS-EEG in patients recruited for a trial comparing active rTMS to sham rTMS. Sham rTMS did not alter TMS-EEG markers. Active rTMS resulted in differences in the markers of cortical inhibition. The N100 amplitude, a marker associated with GABAB receptor mediated inhibition, decreased in amplitude after rTMS in association with improvement in depressive symptoms. Moreover, a local dampening of cortical activity over the DLPFC, where rTMS was applied, was noted only with active rTMS. TMS markers of cortical inhibition and excitation therefore demonstrate high potential as biomarkers of MDD and response to therapeutic brain stimulation. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Voronka, Jijian | Razack, Sherene | Troubling Inclusion: The Politics of Peer Work and 'People with Lived Experience' in Mental Health Interventions | Social Justice Education | 2015-11 | Abstract This thesis is a study of how some mad people come to be known as ‘people with lived experience,’ an emerging identity and strategic essentialism which attempts to valorize the knowledge of those with experiences of distress/mental health system encounters. Currently, claiming such an identity authorizes us to work professionally as peer workers within mental health research and service systems. Thus, by virtue of our ‘lived experience,’ the peer worker becomes enmeshed in the governance of ‘similar others.’ This study maps the emergence, performance, and performativity of the peer worker through the case study of the At Home/Chez Soi project (2009-2013), a national research demonstration project which both implemented services and studied their effects to learn how to best manage the ‘chronically homeless mentally ill’ in Canada. Because peer inclusion is now considered a best practice in mental health interventions, peer workers are key paraprofessionals recruited to be part of the project assemblage. Through ethnographic and interview data, I offer a critical analysis of how peer participation is mobilized and put to work within the confines of mental health governances. By demonstrating how peers actively work to self-govern our subjectivity and subject-positions to become recognizable as peers, this work denaturalizes peer identity. I argue that peer work is ‘bridge work:’ we work as informants to bridge the divides between respectable and degenerate bodies in order to help inform neoliberal governance. Key to this process is peer storytelling, a central way in which our experiences become commodities, consumed as recovery narratives which help maintain us as the problems that need to be fixed. The study elaborates two main conclusions that elucidate a paradox inherent to peer work. First, that our participation is conceived as useful when the target of our experiential knowledge is directed at managing abject populations. Secondly, that when we make attempts to deploy our knowledge to challenge the regimes of truth and practices that govern us, this work is troubled and managed. In this way, peers workers, through practice, learn the rules of engagement that govern our inclusion within the folds of systems of power. | Ph.D. | health, worker | 3, 8 |
| Voruganti, Rishi T. | Grunfeld, Eva | Team-based electronic communication in the care of patients with complex conditions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-11 | Background: The management of patients with complex care needs often involves specialized care from multiple providers in different settings. Care coordination is often inadequate, leading to poor continuity of care. Digital health tools can connect patients and their team of providers to facilitate communication across institutions, disciplines and health events. This dissertation examines digital health tools for patient-provider team-based communication, their feasibility in practice and role in improving continuity of care. Methods: Three studies were conducted. The first study was a scoping review of web-based tools for text-based communication between patients and providers, including those for team-based communication. The second study was a cluster randomized controlled feasibility trial evaluating the feasibility of implementation and preliminary effectiveness of a web-based tool for asynchronous, patient-provider team-based communication on continuity of care relative to usual care. Finally, a qualitative descriptive study was conducted with participants from the trial to understand their perceptions on the value of the tool. Results: The first study identified tools for a variety of chronic conditions, the majority of which targeted diabetes, chronic respiratory diseases and mental illness for purposes of providing symptom updates or to facilitate lifestyle/behavior change. Few tools were found specifically for team-based communication. In the second study, it was shown that implementation of a tool for patient-centered, team-based communication was feasible. Numerically-higher continuity of care scores were observed in the intervention arm relative to the control arm. In the third study, participants felt that web-based communication tools provided more opportunity to seek clarification between appointments. Patients, however, viewed such communication as supplemental to clinical appointments, highlighting traditional face-to-face interaction with their providers as an integral aspect of the therapeutic relationship. Conclusions: Patient-provider team-based communication tools are promising. It is suggested that patient-centered and team-specific implementation approaches are needed to optimize uptake of tools for team-based communication in the complex care population. Further study is needed to establish the effectiveness of improving continuity of care. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Vyushin, Dmitry | Kushner, Paul | Statistical Approximation of Natural Climate Variability | Physics | 2010-06 | One of the main problems in statistical climatology is to construct a parsimonious model of natural climate variability. Such a model serves for instance as a null hypothesis for detection of human induced climate changes and of periodic climate signals. Fitting thismodel to various climatic time series also helps to infer the origins of underlying temporal variability and to cross validate it between different data sets. We consider the use of a spectral power-law model in this role for the surface temperature, for the free atmospheric air temperature of the troposphere and stratosphere, and for the total ozone. First, we lay down a methodological foundation for our work. We compare two variants of five different power-law fitting methods by means of Monte-Carlo simulations and their application to observed air temperature. Then using the best two methods we fit the power-law model to several observational products and climate model simulations. We make use of specialized atmospheric general circulation model simulations and of the simulations of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3 (CMIP3). The specialized simulations allow us to explain the power-law exponent spatial distribution and to account for discrepancies in scaling behaviour between different observational products. We find that most of the pre-industrial control and 20th century model simulations capture many aspects of the observed horizontal and vertical distribution of the power-law exponents. At the surface, regions with robust power-law exponents—the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, and the Southern Ocean — coincide with regions with strong inter-decadal variability. In the free atmosphere, the large power-law exponents are detected on annual to decadal time scales in the tropical and subtropical troposphere and stratosphere. The spectral steepness in the former is explained by its strong coupling to the surface and in the latter by its sensitivity to volcanic aerosols. However power-law behaviour in the tropics and in the free atmosphere saturates on multi-decadal timescales. We propose a novel diagnostic to evaluate the relative goodness-of-fit of the autoregressive model of the first order (AR1) and the power-law model. The collective behaviour of CMIP3 simulations appears to fall between the two statistical models. Our results suggest that the power-law model should serve as an upper bound and the AR1 model should serve as a lower bound for climate persistence on monthly to decadal time scales. On the applied side we find that the presence of power-law like natural variability increases the uncertainty on the long-term total ozone trend in the Northern Hemisphere high latitudes attributable to anthropogenic chlorine by about a factor of 1.5, and lengthens the expected time to detect ozone recovery by a similar amount. | PhD | climate | 13 |
| Wadgymar, Susana Maria | Weis, Arthur E | Climate Change and Reproductive Phenology: Context-dependent Responses to Increases in Temperature and Implications for Assisted Colonization | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015-11 | Contemporary changes in climate have rapidly increased temperatures worldwide, extending the length of the growing season and eliciting large shifts in reproductive and growth traits across a diversity of plant taxa. The role of phenotypic plasticity in alleviating immediate changes in selection pressures must be thoroughly explored in order to identify the circumstances under which the survival of particular species may require active management. The major goals of my thesis were to characterize the contexts in which responses to warming occur and are adaptive, and to provide insight on the feasibility of assisted colonization (the movement of species beyond their current range boundary to climatically favorable habitat) and assisted gene flow (the relocation of multiple, genetically distinct populations to facilitate local adaptation). Focusing on the annual legume, Chamaecrista fasciculata, I applied artificial warming to simple plant communities to mimic the thermal regimes expected by the mid-21st century. Among experiments, I manipulated aspects of the abiotic and biotic environment likely to contribute to variation in plastic responses to warming, including plant genotype, community diversity, population density, internal patterns of resource allocation, and the frequency of rainfall. Reproductive phenological traits varied in their degree of response to warming, and photoperiodic constraints prevented optimal responses in populations of C. fasciculata from lower latitudes. In all cases, temperature-induced phenotypic plasticity was adaptive or neutral, but only sufficiently alleviated selection pressures in particular situations. Variation in competitive dynamics, pollinator access, and rainfall frequency did not modify responses to changes in temperature. This work identified barriers to assisted colonization across latitudes that arise when reproductive phenology is dependent on photoperiodic cues. Phenotypic plasticity may ameliorate some of the negative effects of increases in temperature, but persistent, directional selection pressures will require the evolution of life history traits for adaptation to climate change. | Ph.D. | climate, environment | 13 |
| Wahab, Abdurrahman Ahmad | Portelli, John P. | Education in Kurdistan Region at the Intersection of Nationalism and Democracy | Social Justice Education | 2017-06 | This dissertation studies the condition of formal education in Kurdistan Region-Iraq by taking a critical theoretical approach to examine major educational policy documents in both K-12 and higher education. The critical examination of the documents reveals major policy frameworks, which are related to the Kurdish nationalist agenda of establishing a nation-state. These policy frameworks in education are: Kurdish nationalism, democratization and bureaucratization. Analyzing the documents reveals the intricate relationship among these policy frameworks in forming the overall national agenda of state building of Kurdistan Regional Government, as well as their relationship with developing and perpetuating various educational issues in Kurdistan Region. By analyzing the documents through a critical democratic lens, I elaborate on the ways in which Kurdish ethno-nationalism, a titular, rhetorical and institution- and market-friendly notion of democracy, and an overriding, top-down bureaucratization, all within the political context of establishing a Kurdish nation-state for the past 25 years, have rendered a non-democratic, socially unjust and oppressive educational system. The main argument in this dissertation concerns presenting a transformative democratic framework in education as an alternative to the current pervasive nationalist paradigm. Rather than framing education and society within the paradigm of Kurdish ethno-nationalism, which depends on the exercise of power, hegemony, violence and indoctrination within the parameters of a modern nation-state, the transformative democratic framework, which promotes democratic relationships based on substantive moral values, such as equity, inclusion, empathy and human relatedness, can become the basis for establishing a more equitable and just society in Kurdistan Region. | Ph.D. | educat, equitable, institution | 4, 16 |
| Waito, Ashley Anne | Steele, Catriona M | Swallowing Physiology and Impairment in Individuals with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) | Rehabilitation Science | 2019-06 | Dysphagia, or swallowing impairment, is a common symptom of bulbar disease in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Dysphagia in ALS significantly affects quality of life and places an affected individual at risk of developing chest infections, becoming malnourished, and shortened life expectancy. The purpose of this doctoral thesis is to provide a comprehensive overview of swallowing physiology in ALS and elucidate potential relationships between swallowing physiology and clinical swallowing function. The first chapter of this thesis provides an introductory overview of normal swallowing, dysphagia, and ALS pathology, highlighting commonly reported swallowing impairments and associated complications in individuals with ALS. Chapter 2 builds on this discussion through a comprehensive review of research literature on dysphagia in ALS. Following scoping review methodology, we identified research trends and areas for further exploration, including a need for further quantitative analysis of swallowing physiology. Chapter 3 involves a retrospective, cross-sectional study of swallowing physiology in ALS, using quantitative videofluoroscopic analysis. Measures of pharyngeal area at maximum constriction and swallow-related hyoid kinematics were obtained and compared against reference data to test face validity of the measures and identify changes associated with disease pathology. Through this analysis, we identified reductions in maximum pharyngeal constriction and anterior hyoid movement, compared to healthy reference data. Further, we revealed relationships between enlarged maximum pharyngeal constriction areas and measures of swallowing inefficiency. Expanding on these findings, we completed a comprehensive summary of swallowing physiology and function in ALS, summarized in Chapter 4, comparing additional metrics of swallowing physiology against healthy norms, examining relationships between parameters of swallowing physiology and function (i.e., safety/efficiency), and exploring modulatory effects of liquid thickness. Proposed approaches to future research, incorporating theories of motor control and methodological frameworks, are provided in Chapter 5. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Walji, Rishma | Boon, Heather | Reporting Adverse Drug Reactions Associated with Herbal Products: Consumer, Health Food Store Personnel and Pharmacist Perspectives | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2008-11 | Natural health products (NHPs) are sold over-the-counter and are often perceived to be safe, despite potential risks. The current Canadian reporting system collects information on suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and suffers from severe under-reporting. As retailers, pharmacists and health food store personnel may be in a position to facilitate collection of herbal ADR reports because of their accessibility to consumers. Objective: To investigate retailer and consumer responses to herbal ADRs. Methods: In-depth interviews were conducted with retailers and consumers across Toronto until theoretical saturation was achieved (n=36). Participants were purposefully selected to ensure diverse backgrounds and experiences. Interviews were transcribed and coded for key emerging themes. Results: Consumers tended to self-prescribe NHPs and were only likely to discuss their NHP use with people they trusted – usually health food store personnel, family and friends. Many consumers did not have good relationships with their conventional health providers, which inhibited discussions about NHP-related ADRs. When consumers did disclose suspected ADRs to retailers, the retailers generally did not report these NHP-related ADRs to Health Canada. Most pharmacists found workplace challenges insurmountable, although pharmacist approaches to herbal ADRs tended to vary depending on their professional disposition. Pharmacists who saw themselves as knowledge generators were more likely to report. Health food store personnel offered generous product return policies and actively returned NHPs suspected of causing an ADR to the manufacturer. However, they had no knowledge of the Canadian ADR reporting system and thus did not submit any reports. Conclusion: Consumers tended to disclose suspected NHP-related ADRs only rarely and to retailers with whom they had developed previous good relationships. This highlights the importance of improving patient-practitioner (or retailer) communication. Pharmacists generally did not report ADRs due to workplace challenges, unless they had a very strong professional disposition. These results have important implications with respect to pharmacy education. Health food store return policies resulted in suspected ADR reports to the manufacturers. Manufacturers are mandated to report ADRs to Health Canada, so this finding may have important implications within industry for the future of ADR reporting systems involving herbal products and public health. | PhD | food, health, industr, consum | 2, 3, 9, 12 |
| Walker, Meghan Jane | Anna, M Chiarelli | Breast Cancer Screening Behaviours and Outcomes in Women with a Family History of Breast and/or Ovarian Cancer in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2014-11 | Having a family history of breast and/or ovarian cancer is one of the most important risk factors for developing breast cancer. It is unknown if the survival benefit from mammography screening extends to women with a family history, and if prognostic features differ by level of familial risk. The relationship between perceived breast cancer risk and breast screening has been widely studied in women with familial risk; however, most studies are cross-sectional, precluding insight into the directionality of this relationship. The objectives of this thesis were to: examine the impact of mammography screening and familial risk on diagnoses and prognostic features of breast cancer and benign breast disease (BBD); and examine the effect of perceived risk on breast screening. An additional methodological objective was to evaluate the validity of self-reported mammogram data. The data source for this thesis was the Family History Study (FHS), a prospective cohort study of women from the Ontario site of the Breast Cancer Family Registry with a family history of breast/ovarian cancer. Women with high familial risk were more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer (OR = 2.84; 95% CI:1.50-5.38), or BBD (OR = 1.94; 95% CI:1.03-3.66), than women with low/moderate risk. No significant differences were detected in prognostic features by level of risk; however, symptomatic cancers were larger (OR = 9.72; 95% CI:1.01-93.61) and diagnosed at a later stage (OR = 7.80; 95% CI:1.18-51.50) than screen-detected cancers. In low risk women, women who perceived their risk as >50% were more likely to have a mammogram (OR = 1.13; 95% CI:0.59-2.16), and clinical breast examination (CBE (OR = 1.11; 95% CI:0.63-1.95) than women who perceived their risk as 50%. In moderate/high risk women, women who perceived their risk as >50% were less likely to have a mammogram (OR = 0.70; 95% CI:0.40-1.20), and CBE (OR = 0.52; 95% CI:0.30-0.91) than women who perceived their risk as 50%. Over 90% of women in the FHS accurately reported their mammogram use in the previous year. Together, these studies make an important contribution to understanding the effectiveness and use of breast screening in women with familial risk. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Walker, Pamela Anne | Muzzin, Linda | Caring About Racism: Early Career Nurses' Experiences With Aboriginal Cultural Safety | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-06 | The Aboriginal population in Canada is the youngest and most rapidly growing demographic in the country, and more than half of the 1.4 million Aboriginal people in Canada live in urban centres (Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 2013). As a result, all nurses can expect to provide nursing care to Aboriginal peoples during the course of their work, regardless of the setting of their employment. Since the beginning of the new millennium, however, Canadian researchers have documented that Aboriginal people encounter racism and discrimination at the hands of health professionals when they access health care in this country. In an effort to address this racism and improve the experience of Aboriginal peoples in health care, the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing (2013) now recommends that undergraduate nursing students receive cultural safety education during their nursing programs. This recommendation is significant because cultural safety differs in important ways from cultural competence, the dominant model of attending to cultural differences practiced by health professionals in North America. The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of early career nurses translating knowledge of cultural safety into nursing practice. This qualitative research study used Adele Clarkeâ s (2005) Situational Analysis to interrogate the complex forces and colonial discourses that influence the practice of nurses with Aboriginal people in contemporary health care environments. Thirteen early career nurses and seven experienced northern nurses were interviewed as part of this study, and results showed that for these nurses, a culturally safe approach is one where respect and relationship are centred. The nursesâ narratives also revealed that health care professionals make use of discriminatory labels to withhold and delay care for Aboriginal patients, and that intervening on behalf of patients can provoke strong opposition from nursing colleagues in some settings. However, findings also suggest that cultural safety education can help early career nurses to resist and disrupt pervasive colonial discourses in the health care arena. Further, bearing witness to the suffering created by colonialism also informs the nursesâ motivation to work as allies with Aboriginal peoples, revealing the link between cultural safety and reconciliation. | Ph.D. | health, worker, urban, rights | 3, 8, 11, 16 |
| Walker, Samuel | Wakefield, Sarah | Crisis-Opportunity, Liability-Asset: Governing Vacant Land Reuse in Cleveland, Ohio | Geography | 2018-06 | This dissertation contributes to the literatures on post-2007 urban governance and urban greening by drawing novel connections between vacant land reuse, including urban agriculture, and the structures of urban governance. Through a historical analysis of housing vacancy, an institutional analysis of Cleveland’s community development industry’s response to the 2008 foreclosure crisis, and a case study of a vacant land reuse project, I argue that Cleveland’s community development industry shifted towards vacant land reuse and intervention to stabilize property values in response to the foreclosure crisis. This shift reveals a temporary resolution of the failure of subsidized housing construction following the crisis, but does not represent a significant departure from neoliberal community development. While the City has been effective in fostering certain forms of reuse, the heavy involvement of the community development industry and community foundations, combined with a local government facing fiscal pressure, has resulted in a constrained political field of opportunity for vacant land reuse. By devolving the labor of lot maintenance onto residents and continuing to prioritize traditional economic development, many of the possibilities for using vacant land reuse for social and environmental justice have been limited. However, I also show that the incorporation of vacant land reuse within the community development industry in Cleveland was the outcome of a process of weak contestation, negotiation, and path dependency, not a simple imposition of neoliberal ideology. Additionally, my findings concerning reuse projects on the ground reveals the shortcomings of relying on under-resourced resident labor and shows cracks in the hegemony of private property and market logics in high-abandonment neighborhoods. My findings point to the importance of studying how greening projects are interacting with preexisting structures of urban governance. It suggests that the commodification of land and market-based community development places limits on vacant land reuse that directly benefits residents and works towards environmental and food justice. | Ph.D. | governance, justice, environment, urban, agriculture, environment | 2, 11, 13, 16 |
| Walker, Thomas | Jones, Dylan | Applications of Adjoint Modelling in Chemical Composition: Studies of Tropospheric Ozone at Middle and High Northern Latitudes | Physics | 2014-06 | Ozone is integral to tropospheric chemistry, and understanding the processes controlling its distribution is important in climate and air pollution contexts. The GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model and its adjoint are used to interpret the impacts of midlatitude precursor emissions and atmospheric transport on the tropospheric ozone distribution at middle and high northern latitudes. In the Arctic, the model reproduces seasonal cycles of peroxyacetyl nitrate (PAN) and ozone measured at the surface, and observed ozone abundances in the summer free troposphere. Source attribution analysis suggests that local photochemical production, ≤ 0.25 ppbv/day, driven by PAN decomposition accounts for more than 50% of ozone in the summertime Arctic boundary layer. In the mid-troposphere, photochemical production accounts for 30-40% of ozone, while ozone transported from midlatitudes contributes 25-35%. Adjoint sensitivity studies link summertime ozone production to anthropogenic, biomass burning, soil, and lightning emissions between 50N-70N. Over Alert, Nunavut, the sensitivity of mid-tropospheric ozone to lightning emissions sometimes exceeds that to anthropogenic emissions. Over the eastern U.S., numerous models overestimate ozone in the summertime boundary layer. An inversion analysis, using the GEOS-Chem four-dimensional variational data assimilation system, optimizes emissions of NOx and isoprene. Inversion results suggest the model bias cannot be explained by discrepancies in these precursor emissions. A separate inversion optimizes rates of key chemical reactions including ozone deposition rates, which are parameterized and particularly uncertain. The inversion suggests a factor of 2-3 increase in deposition rates in the northeastern U.S., decreasing the ozone bias from 17.5 ppbv to 6.0 ppbv. This analysis, however, is sensitive to the model boundary layer mixing scheme. Several inversion analyses are conducted to estimate lightning NOx emissions over North America in August 2006, using ozonesonde data. The high-resolution nested version of GEOS-Chem is used to better capture variability in the ozonesonde data. The analyses suggest North American lightning NOx totals between 0.076-0.204 Tg N. A major challenge is that the vertical distribution of the lightning source is not optimized, but the results suggest a bias in the vertical distribution. Reliably optimizing the three-dimensional distribution of lightning NOx emissions requires more information than the ozonesonde dataset contains. | PhD | climate, pollut | 13 |
| Walkerley, Shelley | Sidani, Souraya | Providing Smoking Cessation Interventions: A Survey of Nurses in Primary Health Care Settings in Ontario, Canada | Nursing Science | 2013-11 | Globally tobacco use and exposure to tobacco smoke represent some of the greatest risk factors for mortality. Best practice guidelines and standards of practice support nurses' provision of smoking cessation interventions. Nurses employed in primary health care settings interact with large numbers of people who smoke, and have the potential to significantly reduce tobacco use in the population. Evidence shows that nurses do not consistently implement smoking cessation interventions. The purpose of this cross-sectional study was to describe nurses' perceptions of factors that influence their intentions related to providing smoking cessation interventions in primary health care settings. A conceptual framework derived from the Theory of Planned Behavior and relevant empirical literature guided the study. A questionnaire measuring the concepts of interest was mailed to a random sample of Registered Nurses and Nurse Practitioners in Ontario. Responses of 237 eligible participants were available for analysis. Multiple regression analyses were used to examine the hypothesized relationships between nurses' attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, and their intention to implement smoking cessation interventions, and the association between intention and practice related to smoking cessation. The Theory of Planned Behavior concepts explained up to 48.5% of variance in behavioural intention. Perceived behavioural control was most strongly associated with intention to provide smoking cessation interventions. Behavioural intention was correlated with smoking cessation practice. Analysis of responses to open-ended questions identified factors that facilitated (wish to improve patients' health, organizational support, access to resources, a perception of patient readiness to quit, and training in smoking cessation) and hindered (lack of time, lack of patient readiness, lack of support and resources, and lack of knowledge) nurses' provision of smoking cessation interventions. Overall, the study results suggest that nursing intention to engage in smoking cessation practices in primary health care settings was associated with organizational factors. Further research is required to explore how primary health care organizations can support nurses so that they fully realize their role in reducing the impact of tobacco use on the health of the people in Ontario. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Walls, Matthew | Friesen, Max | Frozen Landscapes, Dynamic Skills: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Inuit Kayaking Enskilment and the Perception of the Environment in Greenland | Anthropology | 2014-03 | This dissertation is an ethnoarchaeological study of kayaking – a skill that has been practiced by Inuit in the Eastern Arctic since the first Thule migrants explored and settled the region around 1250 A.D. In this project, I aim to better understand the archaeological record of Inuit culture by working closely with a community in Greenland that builds kayaks and practices traditional hunting skills. Although kayaking is no longer a primary mode of subsistence, the community finds meaning in the persistence of the skill because it is an important mechanism of intergenerational experience, and because it contains types of cultural and environmental knowledge that can only exist through practice. The community is specifically focused on the physicality of enskilment – the process through which individuals develop unique capacities for awareness and response through environmentally situated practice. Through enskilment, kayakers attune their senses to subtleties and nuances of the environment which would not otherwise be apparent, and they embody a heritage of resilience and creative responsiveness in both the natural and social environment. Drawing on three field seasons of ethnoarchaeological fieldwork, I document the process through which individuals become skilled kayakers and explore the constitution of the kayaking community through practice. As demonstrated in this dissertation, the acquisition of skill in kayaking is not a passive process where knowledge is simply handed from one generation to the other. This is an important observation for archaeologists who study the past through the interpretation of material culture. It will be argued that understanding the impermanence and inherent creativity through which environmentally situated knowledge is re-grown in the experiences of each generation allows for more nuanced archaeological narratives which emphasize skilled practice on the part individuals as causative agents at work in the deeper history of Inuit culture. | PhD | cities, reselien, environment | 11, 13 |
| Walsh, Christopher James | dos Santos, Claudia | Transcriptional Profiling and Regulation in Survivors of Critical Illness with Muscle Weakness and Meta-analysis across Human Muscle Diseases | Medical Science | 2019-11 | ICU acquired weakness (ICUAW) is a common complication of critical illness characterized by decreased muscle mass and function with resulting physical impairment that may persist for years after ICU discharge. Transcriptomic profiling of peripheral muscle biopsies in patients with muscle weakness and healthy controls may detect changes in key biological processes related to muscle impairment. We hypothesized that abnormal expression of mRNAs and miRs related to muscle repair may be an important feature of ICUAW compared to controls. In study 1, we integrated clinical data and mRNA transcriptomic data from quadriceps muscle biopsies from patients with ICUAW at day 7 post-ICU discharge and at follow up at month 6 post-ICU discharge and compared to healthy controls. A gene co-expression network analysis method detected groups of co-expressed genes related to muscle repair that were downregulated in ICUAW compared to healthy controls. In study 2, we aimed to identify miRs that are significant regulators of mRNAs and mRNA networks in ICUAW. Mir-424-5p was found to regulate the greatest number of mRNAs in early ICUAW, including downregulated mRNAs related to striated muscle cell differentiation. At month 6 post-ICU, a differentially expressed miR signature was found between patients that increased quadriceps muscle mass (“Improvers”) from those who did not (“Non-improvers”). In study 3, we performed meta-analysis of mRNA transcriptional profiles from muscle biopsies from human muscle diseases and healthy controls to identify a common signature of genes dysregulated across muscle diseases as well as those genes with expression changes that are unique to ICUAW. We detected a common muscle signature of 131 genes similarly expressed across five categories of muscle diseases. Finally, removing the genes common to muscle disease from meta-analysis of only ICUAW cohorts revealed uniquely down-regulated muscle development and contraction genes specific to ICUAW. In summary, dysregulation of mRNAs and miRs related to muscle repair was detected in ICUAW compared to controls. Transcriptional changes unique to ICUAW versus other categories of muscle disease were detected using meta-analysis strategy. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Walsh, Hedy Anna | Faye, Mishna | Cultural Considerations in the Delivery of Homecare Services: "Beyond 2 kitchens and a disability/ più di due cucine e disabilità " | Social Work | 2014-11 | This study explored the experiences, interpretations and cultural beliefs of older Italian immigrants who were receiving culturally specific formal homecare services through an assisted living facility in Ontario, to examine how their identity and life history influenced their experiences of receiving care.The current study builds on the existing body of knowledge about Canada's older Italian immigrants, in particular their caregiving traditions and current need for formal care. This research study employed phenomenology to explore the subjective experiences of Canadian Italian older immigrants who were receiving formal homecare services to capture the personal meanings and interpretations of their immigration experiences, as they related to their need for formal homecare services. Interviews were conducted with 25 older Italian immigrants over the age of 75 that were receiving culturally specific homecare services. The participants shared their immigration stories, fears, work history, healthcare challenges and descriptions of arrival, family, losses, and life in Canada. The Life Course Framework was selected to guide this research study, to represent the process of aging and human development that continuously occurs across the life span. The Social Identity Theory was also used to provide additional guidance in understanding the social, cultural and historical influences of their life histories, as they related to their living arrangements in an assisted-living facility in Ontario and need for caregiving services. Three major themes emerged: 1. the importance of communication and relationship building in the provision of care and the barriers in accessing health care services, 2. retaining identity and control, and 3. facing an uncertain future. These themes reveal the importance of language, cultural practices and residential location. At the micro level, these findings demonstrate the importance individuals assign to their immigration history and cultural traditions. At a macro level, the findings reveal the need to provide cost-effective care that enhances the physical and mental well-being of individuals. These findings also reflect the importance assigned to the home environment and the need for workers to develop relationships with clients that are reflective of their cultural needs. Social workers have the ability to appreciate the historical context of Canada's immigrants; to develop policies in support of their cultural practices, traditions and acculturative interests, and the ability to appreciate the aging process and the associated need for formal services. As Canada's multicultural population continues to grow, social workers will be increasingly challenged to deliver culturally competent healthcare services. The findings are intended to offer additional guidance into the meaning of culture and its importance in furtherance of these goals. | Ph.D. | health ,worker | 3, 8 |
| Walter, Eleanor Jane | Lilge, Lothar | Optical Spectroscopy for Breast Cancer Risk Screening | Medical Biophysics | 2018-06 | Breast cancer (BC) has the highest mortality rate among women’s cancers worldwide, and incidence rates are rising in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC). Screening programs are well-established in most high-income countries, but there is much debate about screening frequency and the optimal screening ages. In LMIC screening infrastructure is insufficient. Optical spectroscopy (OS) can be used as a pre-screening technique to measure breast composition and predict mammographic density (MBD), a known BC risk factor. The goal of this thesis was to develop and evaluate an OS device which is portable, low cost and requires minimal operator interaction. The device was based on a research prototype used in previous studies, with two major changes: (1) a 13-laser-wavelength module replaced the broadband light source and (2) the source and detector positions were fixed within rigid holders of different sizes. The wavelengths critical for distinguishing between BC risk groups were selected using a principal components analysis of data from previous studies. Source and detector positions were chosen to match the optically-interrogated volumes of the original device via Monte Carlo simulations of photon propagation. Two versions were developed – one for women (the Cups device) and one for girls (the LEGACY device). The Cups device was evaluated in comparison with the research prototype on its ability to predict MBD. For both devices, women with high MBD could be identified from spectra with high sensitivity and specificity and correlation between mammographic percent density (MPD) and OS-predicted MPD was significant, although slightly weaker for the Cups device (r = 0.62 vs. r = 0.74). For girls, OS had been used as an objective method for distinguishing between breast development stages. Spectral analysis using only the wavelengths from the LEGACY device showed that the reduced spectral content does not affect the ability to distinguish between development stages. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Walters, Dylan David | Laporte, Audrey | Economics of Maternal and Child Nutrition: Food Fortification with Vitamin A in Tanzania | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-11 | In 2011, Tanzania mandated the fortification of edible oil with vitamin A to help address its vitamin A deficiency public health problem. By 2015, only 16 percent of edible oil met the standards for adequate fortification. The MASAVA project initiated the production and distribution of unrefined sunflower oil fortified with vitamin A by small- and medium-scale producers in the Manyara and Shinyanga regions of Tanzania. A quasi-experimental non-equivalent control group research trial and an economic evaluation were conducted to study 1) the determinants of vitamin A deficiency in children aged 6 to 59 months, 2) the effectiveness of fortification by small- and medium-scale producers and fortification standards, and 3) the cost-effectiveness of fortification in preventing vitamin A deficiency. Data collection was conducted through a household baseline survey with a sample of 568 mother and child pairs before the intervention and a follow-up survey 18 months later. This study found that the primary determinants of vitamin A deficiency in young children at the time of the baseline household survey were not being breastfed and the low retinol binding protein concentration level of mothers. This study demonstrated that fortification by small- and medium-scale producers was feasible and may have increased the mean retinol binding protein concentration levels in children but did not have a significant effect on the prevention of vitamin A deficiency due to insufficient coverage. Mandatory fortification standards and fortification by large-scale producers increased the mean retinol binding protein levels in children by 3.5 µg/ml as well as reduced the prevalence of vitamin A deficiency by 21.4 percentage points in the Shinyanga region. From a social perspective, the incremental cost of fortification could be as low as US$0.13, $0.06 and $0.02 per litre for small-, medium- and large-scale producers respectively. The estimated cost per disability-adjusted life year averted was $281 for large-scale producers and could be as low as $626 for medium-scale and $1,507 for small-scale producers under ideal conditions. According to World Health Organization thresholds, this is very cost-effective for large- and medium-scale producers, and cost-effective for small-scale producers. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Walters, Grant William | Sargent, Edward H | Extending the Breadth of Metal Halide Perovskite Applications to the Control and Modulation of Light | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2019-06 | The rapid rise of metal halide perovskites as photovoltaic materials has been an impressive achievement. Their performance as solar energy harvesters stands out amongst solution processed materials. Metal halide perovskites have also emerged as efficient light emitters for potential use in light emitting diodes and lasers. Their promise derives from a combination of their solution processing, desirable optical and electronic properties, and compositional flexibility. Perovskites can be engineered to have sharp absorption onsets, high photoluminescence quantum yields, and low trap state densities. In this thesis I present applications of metal halide perovskites in the control and modulation of light. I expand their applicability by exploiting nonlinear and electro-optic processes in these materials. I begin by investigating the electro-optic behaviour of germanium halide perovskites. The electro-optic coefficients of these compounds are calculated using density functional theory. CsGeI3 is predicted to have an electro-optic coefficient of 47 pm·V-1 at the communications wavelength of 1550 nm, exceeding the greatest coefficient of lithium niobate. This study is the first exploration of the linear electro-optic process in metal halide perovskites. Next, I study quantum-confined Stark effects in layered perovskites. Electroabsorption spectroscopy is conducted with thin films of two-dimensional metal halide perovskites featuring either methylammonium or cesium cations bound in the quantum well structures. While the cesium compounds display conventional energetic red-shifts, methylammonium compounds exhibit blue-shifts. These anomalous blue-shifts are attributed to extraordinary weakening of the exciton binding energy ultimately induced by polarization of the methylammonium dipoles. Both the red-shifts and blue-shifts are engineered to produce modulations in the amplitude of the absorption coefficient of 70 cm-1 for 56 kV·cm-1 applied fields, the strongest modulation amplitudes reported for solution processed materials at room temperature. Lastly, I characterize two-photon absorption in methylammonium lead bromide perovskite crystals. I determine the nonlinear absorption coefficient, along with its polarization dependence. A two-photon absorbing photoconductor was fabricated to autocorrelate ultrafast laser pulses and demonstrate the applicability of this process in metal halide perovskites. | Ph.D. | solar, energy | 7 |
| Walz, Leah Claire | Sawchuk, Lawrence A. | Malta, Motherhood, and Infant Mortality: Integrating Biological and Sociocultural Insights | Anthropology | 2008-06 | Because infants are the most vulnerable members of a community, their deaths – and the resulting infant mortality rate (IMR) – are said to signal more fundamental problems that are likely to affect the general health of a community. However, a focus on proximate- and intermediate-level risk factors in epidemiological analyses presents a decontextualized picture and ignores the role of larger forces on health, disease, and illness. In response to this trend, this project will contribute to a revitalization of the use of infant mortality as an index of larger social problems by tempering statistical analyses with critical reflection regarding the effects of the liminal position of Malta within the British imperial system, prior to the Second World War. In addition, by bringing together several analytic approaches which often proceed in parallel, rather than in dialogue – historical epidemiology, social history, and the analysis of colonial discourse – this dissertation highlights the problematics of knowledge production at both the theoretical and methodological level. As a result, my work is not just about Malta, one moment in history, the calculation of infant mortality rates, or the disentanglement of various determinants of infant mortality in this context; it is about the dynamics and repercussions of power differentials and of social, economic, and political inequalities, as they define and structure health outcomes and experiences. Specifically, I will show that fluctuations in international tensions affected Malta’s population on a number of levels because of the island’s importance as a British military and naval base and its location in the middle of the Mediterranean. I will demonstrate how Malta’s “strategic position” restricted political and economic development in the island and articulated with colonial perceptions of the Maltese as “Other” and Malta as “overpopulated.” Finally, I will argue that international tensions, Malta’s location within Empire, and perceptions of the island and its inhabitants in the early twentieth century affected the ways in which infant deaths were explained and understood and the strategies of intervention initiated in the island to curtail infant mortality – all of which had a tremendous impact on the rates at which infants in Malta died. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Wang, Bei | Sain, Mohini | DIispersion of Cellulose Nanofibers in Biopolymer Based Nanocomposites | Forestry | 2007-11 | The focus of this work was to understand the fundamental dispersion mechanism of cellulose based nanofibers in bionanocomposites. The cellulose nanofibers were extracted from soybean pod and hemp fibers by chemo-mechanical treatments. These are bundles of cellulose nanofibers with a diameter ranging between 50 to 100 nm and lengths of thousands of nanometers which results in very high aspect ratio. In combination with a suitable matrix polymer, cellulose nanofiber networks show considerable potential as an effective reinforcement for high quality specialty applications of bio-based nanocomposites. Cellulose fibrils have a high density of –OH groups on the surface, which have a tendency to form hydrogen bonds with adjacent fibrils, reducing interaction with the surrounding matrix. The use of nanofibers has been mostly restricted to water soluble polymers. This thesis is focused on synthesizing the nanocomposite using a solid phase matrix polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene (PE) by hot compression and poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA) in an aqueous phase by film casting. The mechanical properties of nanofiber reinforced PVA film demonstrated a 4-5 fold increase in tensile strength, as compared to the untreated fiber-blend-PVA film. It is necessary to reduce the entanglement of the fibrils and improve their dispersion in the matrix by surface modification of fibers without deteriorating their reinforcing capability. Inverse gas chromatography (IGC) was used to explore how various surface treatments would change the dispersion component of surface energy and acid-base character of cellulose nanofibers and the effect of the incorporation of these modified nanofibers into a biopolymer matrix on the properties of their nano-composites. Poly (lactic acid) (PLA) and polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB) based nanocomposites using cellulose nanofibers were prepared by extrusion, injection molding and hot compression. The IGC results indicated that styrene maleic anhydride coated and ethylene-acrylic acid coated fibers improved their potential to interact with both acidic and basic resins. From transmission electron micrograph, it was shown that the nanofibers were partially dispersed in the polymer matrix. The mechanical properties of the nanocomposites were lower than those predicted by theoretical calculations for both nanofiber reinforced biopolymers. | PhD | water, energy | 6, 7 |
| Wang, Cheng (Marshal) | Chan, Timothy | Stochastic Integer Programming: Decomposition Methods and Industrial Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2014-06 | Many practical problems from industry that contain uncertain demands, costs and other quantities are challenging to solve. Stochastic Mixed Integer Programs (SMIPs) have become an emerging tool to incorporate uncertainty in optimization problems. The stochastic and mixed integer nature of SMIPs makes them very challenging to solve. Decomposition methods have been developed to solve various practical problems modeled as large-scale SMIPs. In the thesis, we propose a scenario-wise decomposition method, the Dynamic Dual Decomposition method ($D^3$ method), to decompose large-scale SMIPs in order to solve practical facility location problems more efficiently. The Lagrangian bounds are dynamically determined. We also consider alternative ways to represent non-anticipativity conditions to improve computational performance. The $D^3$ method efficiently solved moderate and large sized instances whose deterministic equivalent problem could not be solved or solved much slower by a state-of-the-art commercial solver. Three-stage models are also studied and solved by the $D^3$ method, which is found to be effective as well. We combine the $D^3$ method and Column Generation approach to solve a stochastic version of the set packing problem. The proposed method is quite effective in numerical experiments and outperforms the commercial solver dramatically in most cases. We study the sensitivity of different density of patterns and find our proposed method is more robust than solving the whole problem by the commercial solver or by implementing the conventional column generation method directly.We use the $D^3$ method as a framework and combine it with Benders Decomposition Method (BDM) to solve the Stochastic Multi-plant Facility Location Problem. The mathematical formulation of the model is a two-stage SMIP problem with integer first stage variables and mixed integer second stage variables. The integer variables in both stages cause the large-scale SMIP model to be intractable. Some strategies for accelerating BDM have been developed in solving scenario subproblems which are decomposed by $D^3$ method. We develop the aggregation method to aggregate scenarios in solving decomposed Benders Dual subproblems and approximate the solution of the original problems. Our computational experiments on benchmark data and randomly generated data shows that the proposed method can solve large-sized problems more efficiently than conventional Benders Decomposition or a commercial solver. The computational comparisons also show that the aggregation method can reduce the number of scenarios in large problems and obtain approximately optimal solutions in much shorter computational time. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Wang, Ding | Hofmann, Ron | Application of the UV/Chlorine Advanced Oxidation Process for Drinking Water Treatment | Civil Engineering | 2015-06 | This research investigated the feasibility of a novel advanced oxidation process (AOP) using ultraviolet light combined with free chlorine (UV/chlorine) in drinking water treatment. A bench-scale study using a medium pressure UV collimated beam apparatus showed that the UV/chlorine process was more efficient than the UV combined with hydrogen peroxide (UV/H2O2) AOP for the destruction of trichloroethylene (TCE) at pH 5 in a laboratory prepared water, but was less efficient than the latter at pH 7.5 and 10. A Matlab® mathematical model made accurate predictions of the observed experimental rates of TCE decay. The model predicted that increasing concentrations of hydroxyl radical scavengers in the treated water would tend to raise the pH at which UV/chlorine would remain competitive relative to UV/H2O2. Full-scale experiments at the City of Cornwall Water Purification Plant (Ontario, Canada) and pilot-scale tests in a Rayox® batch UV reactor using water from the Keswick Water Treatment Plant (Ontario, Canada) demonstrated comparable performance of UV/chlorine AOP to UV/H2O2 for geosmin, 2-methylisoborneol (MIB), and caffeine destruction. Organic and inorganic disinfection by-products (DBPs) were also monitored in the full- and pilot-scale tests. Minimal trihalomethane and haloacetic acid formation was observed across the UV reactor, while dichloroacetonitrile and bromochloroacetonitrile were produced rapidly, although overall concentrations were below 6 mg L-1. Adsorbable organic halide was formed rapidly (up to 70 mg Cl L-1) in water that had not been prechlorinated, while little formation was observed in previously chlorinated water. Chlorate and bromate were formed, equivalent to approximately 2-17% and 0.01-0.05% of the photolyzed chlorine, respectively, while no perchlorate or chlorite formation was observed. In addition, the 24 h organic DBP formation potential was increased by UV/chlorine pretreatment to an extent that was similar to that observed when the water was pretreated with UV/H2O2. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Wang, Fei | Ryan, James | Leading Diverse Schools: Tempering Accountability Policy with Social Justice | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2012-03 | This qualitative research examines how school principals perceive social justice and accountability, the actions they take, and the reasoning process they use in their attempt to satisfy accountability mandates while simultaneously tackling the various causes of social injustices in their schools. This constructive study aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meaning of their experiences, and to uncover their lived world. It employs semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions guided by the conceptual framework developed from review of literature on social justice, educational leadership, and accountability policy. Twenty-two school principals and vice-principals from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) were interviewed. The findings show that some participants define social justice as equity, which goes from the economic and political dimensions of resource distribution and equality of opportunity and access, to the cultural aspect of social representation and inclusion. Some view public education as a social justice endeavour with a particular reference to the purpose of public education. Others construe social justice by focusing on its end goal – the academic and social outcomes of students and the impact on their lives. Study participants implement their social justice beliefs and values in praxis by engaging all stakeholders and catalyzing them to be the new force for the social justice movement. Evident in this study is that participants enacted their social justice practices by putting students at the centre, positioning themselves as social justice leaders, developing people for social justice, building school climate through justice, and fostering positive relationship with families and communities. Under current accountability context, principals in this study responded to the current reform by going beyond its narrow focus through instilling a sense of moral responsibility in their perceptions of accountability itself. As social justice activists, they are proactively engaged in expanding its parameters by encompassing the moral, social, and professional aspects of their accountability. Leading for social justice thus becomes a process of constantly confronting and tearing down such obstacles and barriers by leveraging the politics of accountability and social justice to move towards what is best for students. | PhD | equality, justice | 5, 16 |
| Wang, Hui | Siow, Aloysius ||Aguirregabiria, Victor ||Brandt, Loren | Three Essays in Applied Microeconomics | Economics | 2010-11 | In this thesis, I investigate economic and policy implications of individual choice decisions, including consumers’ choices among differentiated products and households’ decisions on intra-household resource allocations. In the first chapter, I develop a consumer demand model for US retail banking services in which consumers have preference over the geographical convenience of their banks’ networks. The purpose of the study is to identify consumers’ taste for branch network convenience in the US banking industry and to assess the effect of this demand motive on bank revenues, consumer surplus, and market structure. I show that consumers value the geographical convenience of their bank branch network to a large extent. Specifically, a branch that is one mile closer is equivalent to a branch with a 0.4 percent higher annual interest rate. Furthermore, consumers value proximity of the branch network to both their residence and workplace. The counterfactual experiment shows that banks with a larger number of branches enjoy greater network benefits in terms of revenue. Meanwhile, consumers benefit from the reduction in their expected travel distance by choosing depository institutions with large-scale networks. The second chapter examines how parents adjust bride-prices and land divisions to compensate their sons for differences in their schooling expenditures in rural China. The model is tested using data from a unique household interview survey carried out in Hebei Province. The main estimate implies that when a son receives one yuan less in schooling investment than his brother, he will obtain 0.7 yuan more in observable marital and post-marital transfers as partial compensation. This marginal compensation estimate is quantitatively larger than any comparable estimate using North American data, suggesting that the unitary model is a useful model of resource allocation for sons in traditional agricultural families. As a supplement to Chapter 2, Chapter 3 investigates matchmakers’ negotiation role in rural Chinese marriages and its impact on marital transfer from the parents to the children at the time of marriage. Using a unique household-level dataset collected in Hebei province, I find that a negotiator’s involvement can raise the total marital transfer by 20 percent, which supports my public goods story. | PhD | institution, consum | 12, 16 |
| Wang, Jonathan M. | Evans, Greg J | Air Quality Impacts of Vehicle Emissions on the Urban Environment: Real-World Emission Factors and Capturing the Fleet Signal | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-06 | Human exposure to vehicle emissions and traffic-related air pollution is a major concern with the increasing population living near major roadways and in urban areas. Although there has been a growing interest in near-road measurements and deployment of near-road monitoring networks, isolating and quantifying vehicle emissions from these measurements have always been a challenge. Emission factors has proven to be a method that is invaluable in targeting vehicle emissions while normalizing for the effects of local dilution and dispersion. Algorithms were developed to automatically capture and calculate emission factors from exhaust plumes from vehicles. The individual plume emission factor method utilized high time resolution measurements and provided insight on inter-fleet emission dynamics and trends, providing mean emission factors for the downtown Toronto on-road fleet, co-emitted pollutants from various emitter groups, relative contributions from heavy emitters, and compared well with real-world emission factors from past studies. Additionally, discrepancies were observed between past laboratory and the measured real-world emission factors, with differences upwards of an order of magnitude for the more dynamic pollutants such as particle number concentration. Temporal variation in emission factors were also observed diurnally, weekday vs. weekend, and seasonally, where influences were found to be from changes in fleet make-up, fuel composition, and ambient conditions. A simplified daily-integrated emission factor method was subsequently applied to nearly two years of continuous measurements made at three near-road sites with varying site and fleet characteristics, as well as different meteorological conditions. Emission factors proved to be a useful metric in normalizing the site differences, and provided insight on inter- and intra- fleet emissions characteristics. | Ph.D. | pollut, urban | 11, 13 |
| Wang, Lifei | Jackson, Donald Andrew | Species Distribution Modeling: Implications of Modeling Approaches, Biotic Effects, Sample Size, and Detection Limit | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2013-11 | When we develop and use species distribution models to predict species' current or potential distributions, we are faced with the trade-offs between model generality, precision, and realism. It is important to know how to improve and validate model generality while maintaining good model precision and realism. However, it is difficult for ecologists to evaluate species distribution models using field-sampled data alone because the true species response function to environmental or ecological factors is unknown. Species distribution models should be able to approximate the true characteristics and distributions of species if ecologists want to use them as reliable tools. Simulated data provide the advantage of being able to know the true species-environment relationships and control the causal factors of interest to obtain insights into the effects of these factors on model performance. I used a case study on Bythotrephes longimanus distributions from several hundred Ontario lakes and a simulation study to explore the effects on model performance caused by several factors: the choice of predictor variables, the model evaluation methods, the quantity and quality of the data used for developing models, and the strengths and weaknesses of different species distribution models. Linear discriminant analysis, multiple logistic regression, random forests, and artificial neural networks were compared in both studies. Results based on field data sampled from lakes indicated that the predictive performance of the four models was more variable when developed on abiotic (physical and chemical) conditions alone, whereas the generality of these models improved when including biotic (relevant species) information. When using simulated data, although the overall performance of random forests and artificial neural networks was better than linear discriminant analysis and multiple logistic regression, linear discriminant analysis and multiple logistic regression had relatively good and stable model sensitivity at different sample size and detection limit levels, which may be useful for predicting species presences when data are limited. Random forests performed consistently well at different sample size levels, but was more sensitive to high detection limit. The performance of artificial neural networks was affected by both sample size and detection limit, and it was more sensitive to small sample size. | PhD | environment, forest | 13, 15 |
| Wang, Luhang | Brandt, Loren | Three Essays on the Chinese Economy | Economics | 2013-03 | This dissertation comprises three essays. In the first two chapters, I examine the performance of Chinese firms in the context of trade liberalization: one chapter looks at the quality of China's exports and the other investigates the productivity impact of China's tariff reduction. In the third chapter, I study the change induced by a tax reform in the institutional incentive structure faced by Chinese village leaders. | PhD | trade, economic growth | 8, 10 |
| Wang, Lurong | Heller, Monica | Immigration, Literacy, and Mobility: A Critical Ethnographic Study of Well-educated Chinese Immigrants’ Trajectories in Canada | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-03 | This dissertation interrogates the deficit assumptions about English proficiency of skilled immigrants who were recruited by Canadian governments between the late 1990s and early 2000s. Through the lens of literacy as social practice, the eighteen-month ethnographic qualitative research explores the sequential experiences of settlement and economic integration of seven well-educated Chinese immigrant professionals. The analytical framework is built on sociocultural approaches to literacy and learning, as well as the theories of discourses and language reproduction. Using multiple data sources (observations, conversational interviews, journal and diary entries, photographs, documents, and artifacts collected in everyday lives), I document many different ways that well-educated Chinese immigrants take advantage of their language and literacy skills in English across several social domains of home, school, job market, and workplace. Examining the trans-contextual patterning of the participants’ language and literacy activities reveals that immigrant professionals use literacy as assistance in seeking, negotiating, and taking hold of resources and opportunities within certain social settings. However, my data show that their language and literacy engagements might not always generate positive consequences for social networks, job opportunities, and upward economic mobility. Close analyses of processes and outcomes of the participants’ engagements across these discursive discourses make it very clear that the monolithic assumptions of the dominant language shape and reinforce structural barriers by constraining their social participation, decision making, and learning practice, and thereby make literacy’s consequences unpredictable. The deficit model of language proficiency serves the grounds for linguistic stereotypes and economic marginalization, which produces profoundly consequential effects on immigrants’ pathways as they strive for having access to resources and opportunities in the new society. My analyses illuminate the ways that language and literacy create the complex web of discursive spaces wherein institutional agendas and personal desires are intertwined and collide in complex ways that constitute conditions and processes of social and economic mobility of immigrant populations. Based on these analyses, I argue that immigrants’ successful integration into a host country is not about the mastery of the technical skills in the dominant language. Rather, it is largely about the recognition and acceptance of the value of their language use and literacy practice as they attempt to partake in the globalized new economy. | PhD | inclusive, employment | 4, 8 |
| Wang, Po-Hsiang | Edwards, Elizabeth A | ESSENTIAL COFACTORS IN ANAEROBIC MICROBIAL CONSORTIA USED FOR BIOREMEDIATION: BIOSYNTHESIS, FUNCTION AND REGENERATION | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-11 | Most microorganisms in nature live in communities and have developed tightly coordinated metabolism via metabolite exchanges. Cofactors are “helper molecules” in all cells, modulating the activity of many enzymes or serving as the electron shuttle. However, biosynthesis of cofactors, such as cobamides, is sometimes accomplished by only one specific phylogenetic group of microorganisms. Therefore, cofactors and their producers play pivotal roles in the functionality, metabolic rates, and population structure of a microbial community. This thesis focuses on three types of cofactors: (i) cobamides, (ii) NADPH, and (iii) prenylated flavin mononucleotide (prFMN) that are involved in anaerobic bioremediation of chlorinated solvents and aromatic pollutants. Cobamides are a family of cobalt-containing tetrapyrroles involved in biochemical reactions including methyltransfer reactions, isomerizations, and reductive dehalogenation. This thesis reports the identification of a functional cobamide prosthetic group in tetrachloroethene dehalogenases (PceA) of Desulfitobacterium hafniense and Geobacter lovleyi using a tiered blue-native polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (BN-PAGE) and liquid chromatography-mass spectroscopy (LC-MS) method. The metabolic annotations of Dehalobacter restrictus (Dhb), a model organism for bioremediation of chlorinated solvents, were experimentally verified. The verified annotations were written into a constraint-based metabolic model, which identified that NADPH regeneration and de novo serine biosynthesis could be bottlenecks in Dhb metabolism. Using an integrated computational/experimental approach, the stringent nutrient requirements of Dhb were characterized. Further experimental analysis on the Dhb-enriched ACT-3 consortium has revealed an interspecies malate-pyruvate shuttle system between Dhb and its syntrophic partner. prFMN is a newly identified cofactor of UbiD reversible aromatic decarboxylases that are involved in ubiquinone biosynthesis, biological decomposition of lignin monomers, and anaerobic biodegradation of aromatic pollutants. We discovered that in Escherichia coli, dimethylallyl-monophosphate (DMAP), the prenyl donor of prFMN, can be produced from either prenol phosphorylation or from dimethylallyl-pyrophosphate dephosphorylation. In conclusion, this thesis reports biosynthesis and function of new cofactors as well as new mechanisms for reconciling cofactor regeneration in anaerobic microbial communities. Realizing these metabolic interdependencies generates opportunities to manipulate the microbiomes for better outcomes in bioremediation and industrial biotechnology. Interestingly, the identified interspecies cofactor exchange mechanism also provides insights into how life gradually evolved into complexity. | Ph.D. | pollut, industr, water | 6, 9, 13 |
| Wang, Rong | Chen, Jing M. | Improving the Estimation of Seasonal Leaf Area Index of Coniferous Forests for Better Carbon and Water Flux Estimation | Geography | 2017-11 | The availability of global products of leaf area index (LAI) using remote sensing (RS) data makes it possible to model land surface processes at regional and global scales. Due to the lack of continuous observations of in-situ LAI, studies on the seasonal variability of RS LAI products are rare in the literature. Moreover, the application of existing global LAI products is largely restricted by the underestimation of winter LAI over high-latitude evergreen coniferous forests. Low winter LAI values, due to the influence of background, the presence of ice and snow on leaves and the seasonal variation of leaf pigments, exaggerate the LAI seasonality, possibly causing errors in land surface modeling. The aim of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of the quality of existing RS LAI products, to improve these products, and to further investigate the influence of the improvements on modeling carbon, water and energy fluxes. Frequent measurements of LAI in all seasons were conducted at two white pine sites near Turkey Point, Ontario, Canada, using direct and indirect methods. The in-situ LAI measurements were then used to validate the University of Toronto RS LAI product Version 2. Results show that RS LAI captures mostly canopy structural information from the onset of needleleaf growth to the seasonal peak, but captures both leaf chlorophyll and structural information from the seasonal peak to the completion of needleleaf fall. This finding has significant implications for the application of current RS LAI products to terrestrial productivity modeling and prompts the need for separating leaf structure and chlorophyll information. A simple scheme for correcting the distorted LAI seasonality of evergreen conifers is proposed in my research, through which an improved LAI product over conifers in Canada has been developed. It is demonstrated that the improved product greatly increases the accuracy of the simulation of land surface carbon, water and energy fluxes in coniferous forests in Canada. | Ph.D. | water, energy, forest | 6, 7, 15 |
| Wang, Yu | Chen, Li | Listening to the State: Radio and the Technopolitics of Sound in Mao’s China | History | 2019-11 | My dissertation argues that radio played vital roles in state building and social integration in the 1950s and 1960s China. Radio as a technological infrastructure brought about a series of radical changes that fundamentally affected the state’s self-perception as well as its agenda in transforming everyday life. My dissertation demonstrates that the acoustic state heavily utilized the senses and techniques of hearing and listening. The state incorporated listening techniques into government bodies during the management of everyday life to inform, educate and mobilize the masses and to modernize the country. The techniques of speaking and their institutionalization in return signaled the state’s efforts to search for and naturalize a voice for its presence in daily life. The dissemination of the voice further gave birth to a new type of state-agents, the radio operators, who carried radio sets with them to areas beyond the reach of electricity. As radio became integral to listeners’ work and life, it triggered further political and social changes, one of which was that listeners learned to circumvent local authorities and contact the higher-level radio stations for solving their concerns. Listeners also became not only selective in listening to state-sanctioned programs but also curious enough to transgress the state’s acoustic boundary to listen to radio programs from abroad. Radio also played a crucial role in drawing the boundaries between enemies and people, which was crucial to the creation and maintenance of the socialist regime. Such transgressive listeners prompted the state to perceive sound as sovereign territory and consequently led it to territorialize sound to defend itself from the sonic invasion of capitalist countries. To conclude, radio not only equipped the state with new techniques of governance but also fundamentally changed the way the state interacted with the masses, reshaping socialist modernity and subjectivity. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, institution | 9, 16 |
| Wanigaratne, Susitha | Urquia, Marcelo||Cole, Donald | Maternal and Perinatal Health of Refugees in Ontario: A Population-based Perspective | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2015-06 | Refugee women and their newborns are suspected to experience greater risk of adverse maternal and perinatal health outcomes. However, little systematic refugee-specific research has been done. This dissertation poses the research question - "are refugee immigrant women and their newborns at higher risk of adverse maternal and perinatal outcomes compared to 1) non-refugee immigrant and 2) non-immigrant women?" Large population-based immigration (1985-2010) and hospitalizations databases (2002-2010) from Ontario, Canada were used (all women eligible for health insurance). The first manuscript examined severe maternal morbidity (SMM) and SMM subtypes among refugee immigrants compared to both non-refugee immigrants and non-immigrants. The rate of any SMM was elevated among refugees (n=30,420) compared to non-refugee immigrants (n=235,540) (adjusted rate ratios (ARR)=1.22, 95% confidence interval: 1.09-1.36) and non-immigrants (n=878,709) (ARR=1.34 (1.23-1.47)). HIV (SMM subtype) among refugees was 8 and 17 times that of non-refugee immigrants and non-immigrants, respectively. The SMM rate among refugees was no longer elevated when deliveries with HIV were excluded. The second manuscript examined the risk of severe neonatal morbidity (SNM) among neonates born to refugees compared to those of non-refugee immigrants and non-immigrants. SNM risk among non-sponsored refugees (i.e., asylum seekers) was also compared to that of sponsored refugees (i.e., government, privately sponsored). The risk of severe neonatal morbidity was significantly higher among newborns of refugee compared to non-refugee immigrants (ARR=1.10 (1.03-1.17)) but lower in comparison to non-immigrants (ARR=0.94 (0.89-0.99)). There was no difference by sponsorship status. The objective of the third manuscript was to determine if the relationship between refugee status and risk of preterm birth (PTB) was modified by secondary (migration to another country prior to Canada) or primary (direct to Canada) migration. A secondary objective was to examine whether this relationship varied by maternal region of birth. Secondary refugees and primary refugees experienced a significantly higher cumulative probability of PTB (22-31, 32-36, ≥37 weeks) compared to their secondary and primary non-refugee counterparts (adjusted cumulative odds ratio (ACOR) =1.59 (1.25-2.01) and ACOR=1.12 (1.02-1.23)), respectively. These associations were also significant for Asian immigrants. This dissertation makes a substantial contribution towards understanding the health and the determinants of health of refugee immigrant mothers and their infants in Canada. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Ward, Courtney | Benjamin, Dwayne ||Stabile, Mark | Essays on the Economics of Public Health | Economics | 2012-03 | This dissertation considers the economics of public health in the context of respiratory disease, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. The pervasive nature of respiratory illness represents a significant reduction to health and longevity, but private actions to prevent illness may not consider the full-scale benefit of societal health improvement. In this thesis, I consider two determinants of respiratory illness: (1) the spread of influenza disease and (2) air pollution. In both cases, public policy aims to attenuate the effects of these factors by incentivizing or mandating preventative action. Because such interventions come at a cost, it is important to consider the magnitude of benefits associated with these actions. I consider each determinant in turn. First, I provide causal evidence on the health and economic consequences of an ongoing broad-scope vaccination program. The Ontario Influenza Immunization Campaign expanded the scope of vaccine coverage leading to a 20-percent increase in vaccination. Using the timing of this campaign and exogenous variation in vaccine quality, I link higher vaccination rates to decreases in lost-work-time, hospitalization, and death. Results indicate that, when vaccine quality is high, the program leads to higher gains for Ontario relative to other provinces and in short, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Second, I provide evidence of the impact of air pollution on respiratory health. Recent changes in standards for air pollution are highly contentious and represent stringent constraints on economic activity. Evidence from this dissertation directly informs this debate. By linking daily pollution to hospital admissions for municipalities across Ontario, I study the impact of air pollution at levels below those historically considered. Results indicate that particulate matter has a significant effect on respiratory health of children but that ozone and carbon monoxide have little effect on respiratory hospitalizations for all age groups. | PhD | pollut | 13 |
| Warrick, Natalie Irene | Williams, A P | Caregiver Support Policies in Ontario: Analyzing the Pace and Direction of Policy Change | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11 | Population aging and concomitant growth in the number of older Canadians experiencing multiple chronic health and social needs has sparked inquiry respecting the support of informal caregivers—the family, friends and neighbours who provide the bulk of the everyday personal, instrumental and emotional help required by persons with chronic needs to maintain well-being and independence. The central argument proposed in this thesis is that, although there have been advances in caregiver support policies in Ontario, for the most part, progress in this area has been uneven, halting, and at the policy margins. Chapter 2 (Study 1) identifies policy instrument use, programmatic interventions, and the comprehensiveness of supports targeting caregivers among five OECD Member States: Canada, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Policies for informal caregivers of seniors in Ontario are also examined from 1981 to 2016. Results demonstrated despite a similar policy context, heterogeneity exists among interventions and policy instruments across the OECD. Additionally, as early as the mid-1980s a large and growing body of evidence documented the difficulties of Ontario’s caregivers, and yet, their situation remains only minimally addressed by policymakers. Chapter 3 (Study 2), examines the Caregiver Framework for Seniors Project (CFSP) using quantitative analysis. Results demonstrated that the mix, cost, and volume of supports selected in care plans signaled that program resources were deployed to cross-subsidize and offset rising care burden amidst constricted home and community care budgets. Chapter 4 (Study 3), examines the dynamics of policy change and/or stasis in Ontario. As neo-institutional theory would predict, change is heavily influenced by political and historical factors, including: (1) powerful interests and the structure of health system design on resource allocation, (2) economic and demand side factors, and (3) institutional factors that limit scale and spread. Chapter 5 reviews key findings, strengths and limitations. Recommendations for future research are also presented in this concluding chapter. The findings of this thesis confirm that progress across Canada has been halting. With few exceptions, including the Ontario case, even promising initiatives such as the CFSP have not scaled or spread. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Wasilewski, Marina Bastawrous | Cameron, Jill I | Peer Similarity and Use of Online and In-person Supports Amongst Adult Children Caregivers: A Mixed Method Study | Rehabilitation Science | 2016-11 | Background: Due to current demographics, adult children are increasingly caring for an elderly parent, which can threaten their health. Social support from similar peers can mitigate caregiving-related health declines. Studies have only explored ‘peer similarity’ within the intervention context, limiting our understanding of its role in naturally occurring support. Many carers are turning to the Internet for convenient and efficient access to peer support. Literature to date has largely focused on Internet-based interventions, overlooking carers’ everyday engagement in peer support across communication modalities. Objective: To explore: 1) the relationship between peer similarity and perceived support; and 2) carers’ experiences with online and in-person peer support. Methods: A mixed method study guided by the Interactional Cognitive Model of Social Support. Twitter was used as an innovative recruitment avenue similar to snowball sampling. A web-based survey measured peer similarity and perceived support. Interviews explored carers’ perspectives on peer similarity and experiences with online and in-person peer support. A hierarchical regression analyzed quantitative data and interviews were thematically analyzed. Results: Seventy-one adult children carers (ACCs) participated, with 15 completing qualitative interviews. The mean age of ACCs was 51 and 90% were daughters. Thirty-eight percent of carers were recruited through Twitter and found to be demographically comparable to those recruited through other strategies. ACCs mobilized their existing networks for support and used a blend of communication modalities to meet practical and relational support needs. Type of support received was consistent across online and in-person modalities. Peer similarity positively and significantly influenced perceived support. ‘Shared caregiving experience’ was described as the most important aspect of similarity since it was multi-faceted and optimized support and relationship quality. Conclusion: Interventions for ACCs should emulate their naturally pragmatic support-seeking style. ‘Shared caregiving experience’ and its various dimensions should be comprehensively investigated to inform measurement instruments and peer-matching interventions. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Watson, Tara Marie | Hannah-Moffat, Kelly | Risks Inside and Beyond Institutional Walls: Organisational Responses to Substance Use in Canadian Federal Prisons | Criminology | 2014-06 | My dissertation examines substance abuse policy and related practices within Canadian federal prisons. I triangulated across three data sources: 16 interviews with former Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) senior administrative officials, former frontline staff, and external stakeholders; publicly available CSC documents; and testimony from a relevant House of Commons Standing Committee study. Thematic analysis was used to examine themes of interest and emergent themes. I attempted to interview current CSC employees, but access was denied. I turn my access experience into a case study and use reputational risk as a conceptual tool, whereby my proposed research is interpreted as a risk to be managed from the organisation’s point of view. I view CSC’s enhanced drug interdiction response through an organisational risk management lens and examine “unintended”, negative effects that have resulted. Five key themes emerged: 1) continued efforts by offenders to bring substances into prisons; 2) climate of tensions and violence; 3) offenders switching substances; 4) health-related harms; and 5) culture of distrusting visitors. I thread through my analysis two divergent framings – a dominant, safety-reaffirming framing versus one that challenges enhanced interdiction. I provide an in-depth account of political barriers that prevent implementation of prison-based harm reduction programs. Four interrelated issues are central to the politics: 1) a narrower definition of harm reduction in corrections; 2) the Conservative government with a tough-on-crime agenda; 3) strong union opposition; and 4) stakeholder perceptions of ongoing constraints. Contributing knowledge as an external researcher is made difficult by an overprotective organisation with formal research access that appears to favour certain kinds of research over potentially critical research. A downside of such protectionism is the curtailment of studying innovative approaches. Viewing CSC as a complex organisation reveals how embedded practices and cultures are resistant to change, even when the traditional response (i.e., zero tolerance) has adverse effects. CSC could be at an impasse in terms of overcoming political and operational logics that align to oppose in-prison harm reduction services. Despite a highly challenging policy environment, future researchers can move forward by asking new questions and devising strategic ways of entering the political-operational dialogue. | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Watt, Graham Alexander | Sandy, Smith | Enhanced Vertical Fuel Continuity in Forests Defoliated by Spruce Budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana Clem.) Promotes the Transition of a Surface Fire into a Crown Fire | Forestry | 2014-11 | Evidence exists for a link between spruce budworm defoliation and large-scale forest fires. However, the underlying mechanisms of the spruce budworm-wildfire interaction have yet to be adequately explained. A driving factor for the occurrence of crown fires is the vertical distribution of fuels. Therefore I first describe the vertical fuel restructuring that took place during sustained, aerially-mapped spruce budworm defoliation in boreal mixedwood forest of northern Ontario and then investigate stand breakdown and surface fuel accumulation during and after a period of defoliation. Forest structural data were then modeled using Van Wagner's (1977) conditions for the start and spread of crown fire and the Fire Behaviour Prediction (FBP) system as well as in the Crown Fire Initiation and Spread (CFIS) simulator to develop an estimate of the associated changes in the probability of a surface fire crowning (PSC) after different lengths of defoliation. Vertical fuel continuity increased with years of continuous defoliation, with the highest measured occurring after sixteen years. The PSC due to stand breakdown and surface fuel accumulation increased with successive years of defoliation, and in the years following the end of defoliation, as mapped by the Forest Insect and Disease Survey (FIDS). Likewise, in the simulator, higher continuity and surface fuel loads were associated with increased PSC. This investigation unites past research into the interaction between spruce budworm and fire and provides a common framework for future study. Once refined for the range of variations in climate and forest characteristics in Ontario, it may provide a useful tool for the assessment of fire hazard from the FIDS defoliation maps. This in turn could ultimately lead to improved organization and deployment of fire detection and initial attack resources and a more effective management of large fires. | Ph.D. | forest, climate | 13, 15 |
| Watts, Alexander Gordon | Fortin, Marie-Josee | Effects of Landscape Spatial Heterogeneity on Host-Parasite Ecology | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2015-11 | Landscape spatial heterogeneity interacts with ecological processes that influence pathogen emergence and infectious disease spread. Modification of landscape composition and configuration is hypothesized to alter host densities, frequency of host-parasite interactions, host community assembly processes, and dispersal processes of host, vector, and parasite populations. Understanding the spatial and environmental dependence on host-parasite interactions is, therefore, critical in predicting the response of disease dynamics to widespread habitat modification. I combine wildlife disease ecology with landscape ecological concepts and varied modeling techniques (i.e., multivariate redundancy analyses, network connectivity models, bipartite mutualistic networks, beta diversity analyses) to test the mediating role of landscape spatial heterogeneity on the spread of a vector-borne disease system (chapter 2), and the effect of urban landscape spatial heterogeneity on host exposure to parasitism (chapter 3), host-parasite interaction structure (chapter 4), and host-parasite beta diversity (chapter 5). My results demonstrate that landscape spatial heterogeneity has a differential influence on tick dispersal than pathogen dispersal by the movement of a host community, most critically mediated by stepping-stone habitat. I also provide evidence that urban landscape spatial heterogeneity affects the exposure likelihood of a single host population, the structure of host-parasite interactions in multiple host populations, and the spatial contributions of host and parasite beta diversity. My work demonstrates that landscape spatial heterogeneity has a mediating role in multiple disease systems whereby spatial and environmental factors play a critical role in the likelihood of short- and long-distance pathogen invasion, the persistence of environmentally-mediated parasites, and the selection of generalist host and parasite species in urbanized habitat. Overall my research contributes to our theoretical understanding of the multi-scalar ecological interactions between landscape change and disease dynamics and our applied understanding of the role of landscape in the emergence of infectious diseases. | Ph.D. | urban, ecology | 11, 14 |
| Weadick, Cameron James | Chang, Belinda ||Rodd, F. Helen | Molecular Evolution of Visual System Genes in Fishes | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2012-03 | For many species, vision contributes to a number of fitness-related tasks, including mating and the detection of prey and predators. Selection on the visual system should therefore be strong, especially when ecological or genomic changes open new avenues for evolutionary changes. Visual system proteins are thus attractive systems for molecular evolutionary analyses. This thesis presents a collection of evolutionary studies on two gene families, opsins and crystallins. Opsin proteins determine the wavelengths of light detected by the retina, while crystallin proteins contribute to lens transparency and refractory power. My studies focus on teleost fishes, because teleost visual ecology is exceptionally diverse and because gene duplication is common in this group. In Chapter One, I outline the relevance of protein variation to organismal evolution and describe the analytical methods employed throughout this thesis. Chapter Two considers the long-wavelength sensitive (LWS) opsins of the guppy (Poecilia reticulata). The guppy is shown to possess multiple LWS opsins that have accumulated differences at functionally important amino acid sites since duplicating. Chapter Three focuses on the guppy’s main predator, the pike cichlid Crenicichla frenata, which is shown to have a greater capacity for short-wavelength vision than previously believed. However, this cichlid possesses three fewer opsins than closely-related African cichlids, a difference partly due to duplication of a green-sensitive (RH2) opsin in African cichlids. In Chapter Four, this RH2 duplication event is studied in greater depth; variation in selective constraint is documented following gene duplication and between species from different lakes. Some of the analytical methods employed in Chapter Four were newly developed, as detailed in Chapter Five, where a test for functional divergence among clades is evaluated and then improved upon through the presentation of a new null model that better accommodates among-site variation in selection. In Chapter Six, phylogenetic relationships within the βγ lens crystallin superfamily are clarified, and the functionally distinct γN family is shown to have evolved conservatively compared to other crystallin families. The thesis concludes with suggestions for future directions for evolutionary research on opsins and crystallins, and summarizes recent work that has built on these studies. | PhD | ecology, fish | 14 |
| Weaver, Daniel | Strong, Kimberly | Water Vapour Measurements in the Canadian High Arctic | Physics | 2019-06 | This thesis provides an evaluation of atmospheric H2O measurements at the high Arctic site in Eureka, Nunavut made using ground-based and satellite instruments. The focus is on measurements acquired using a solar absorption Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (the 125HR) located at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL), as part of the MUSICA project. Close agreement is observed between H2O total columns from seven PEARL instruments, with mean differences ≤ 1.0 kg/m2 and correlation coefficients (R) ≥ 0.98, except for a comparison between a microwave radiometer and a radiosonde product, which had a correlation coefficient of 0.92. Comparisons revealed a 6% wet bias in the 125HR MUSICA product. Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer measurements were shown to provide accurate H2O measurements, e.g. within 4% of radiosondes. The PEARL 125HR and Eureka radiosondes were used to demonstrate that the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) satellite instruments, ACE-FTS and ACE-MAESTRO, produce accurate H2O profiles in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. ACE-FTS showed a wet bias of up to 6 ppmv (6 to 13%) of 125HR measurements between 6 and 14 km and was within 6 ppmv (12%) of radiosondes between 7 and 11 km. ACE-MAESTRO profiles showed a dry bias relative to the 125HR of between 7% and 12% between 6 and 14 km. ACE data showed closer agreement with the radiosondes and 125HR than did other satellite datasets, e.g. MIPAS, MLS, SCIAMACHY, and TES, except AIRS, which showed mean differences within 5%. In addition, TCCON H2O and δD total column datasets, retrieved from near-infrared 125HR spectra, and not yet assessed in detail, were compared with the well-validated MUSICA products at Eureka and six other globally-distributed sites. The results showed TCCON measurements agree well with MUSICA, although the H2O product had a small dry bias (6%) and the δD had a high bias (40‰). | Ph.D. | solar, environment | 7, 13 |
| Weaver, Jennifer Elisabeth | Conway, Tenley ||Fortin, Marie-Josee | Invasive Species Distribution Models: An Analysis of Scale, Sample Selection Bias, Transferability and Prediction | Geography | 2012-11 | Species distribution models must balance the need for model generality with that for precision and accuracy. This is critical when modelling range-expanding species such as invasive species. Given the increased use of species distribution models to study invasive species-landscape relationships, a better understanding of the effect of spatial scales, sampling biases, model transferability and discrepancies between different models’ future predictions is necessary. This dissertation addresses these knowledge gaps using mute swans (Cygnus olor) as a case study species. I specifically examine mute swan’s distributions in parts of their native range of Britain and their non-native range of Ontario, Canada. I first investigate which environmental variables at which spatial scales best explain mute swan’s distribution in its non-native range. Second, I perform a sample selection bias study to examine predictive accuracy when species distribution models are built using varying ranges of environmental variables and applied to broader spatial extents. Third, I examine the potential for, and limitations of model transferability between native and non-native regions. Finally, I use two different modelling approaches and three different climate change and land use change scenarios to predict future mute swan habitat suitability. The results indicate that (1) models with better predictive accuracy include environmental variables from multiple ecologically-meaningful scales and measured at spatial extents that include a broad range of environmental variable values; (2) models can exhibit asymmetrical transferability; (3) climate change will facilitate mute swan range expansion in the future more than land use change; and (4) mute swans are often found near urban waterbodies. When modelling invasive species distributions, I suggest that ecologists consider: (I) spatial scale of the underlying landscape processes and species’ use of the landscape; (II) variability and range of each environmental variable used for building models; and (III) stage of establishment of the invasive species. | PhD | land use, water, environment, climate, urban | 6, 11, 13, 15 |
| Webb, Christopher | Hunter, Mark | Liberating the Family: Education, Aspiration and Resistance Among South African University Students | Geography | 2019-06 | In October 2015, South Africa witnessed the largest student protests since the end of apartheid over rising tuition costs. Based on qualitative research conducted between 2015-2016, this dissertation analyses these protests through the experiences of working-class students from Khayelitsha, an urban township in Cape Town, South Africa. Education-based resistance since the end of apartheid occurs in a context of rapid and shifting patterns of class formation, in which higher education is both critical to ensuring social mobility and avoiding chronic unemployment. At the same time, higher education access is constrained by the endurance of racial and spatial inequalities, and limited forms of state support for working class students. My research reveals how working-class students develop aspirations toward higher education and how these are intimately connected to circumstances of household poverty. For these students, support for the protests did not merely involve opposition to commodification, but was connected to shared experiences of racialized poverty, aspirations toward collective social mobility, and the debilitating role of student debt. By focusing on how higher education reconfigured young people’s bonds with family and generated anticipated financial obligations, I highlight how the protests spoke to a crisis of social reproduction affecting working-class households. In doing so, I highlight young people’s role as economic actors in household distributive economies. This dissertation also reveals how higher education is frequently a contradictory resource for working class youth. It provides pathways toward social mobility for a limited number, while simultaneously binding them into systems that reproduce wider forms of social inequality. Rather than simply struggles against neoliberalism then, the protests reveal the multiple and contradictory functions of higher education in South Africa, as it is aimed at addressing racialized inequalities while meeting the human capital requirements of a globalized economy. Finally, I highlight the importance of relational approaches to youth studies, that understand young people’s agency as embedded within wider social, political and economic structures. | Ph.D. | poverty, equality, employment, inequality, urban | 1, 5, 8, 10, 11 |
| Webber, Jeanine Anne | Stern, Susan | The Difference between Ecological Context and Treatment Progress of Young Girls with Comorbid Externalizing and Internalizing Disorders and Young Girls with Only Externalizing Disorders | Social Work | 2010-11 | Many children and their families who seek assistance for childhood behaviour disorders experience comorbid disorders, namely the presence of two or more disorders. Although comorbid disorders are recognized as a frequent clinical complication, minimal direction exists within the literature about the risk factors for comorbid conditions and how best to provide intervention services. In this study an ecological framework was used to compare the individual, family, and community environmental contexts of young girls who presented at intake at a children’s mental health centre with comorbid externalizing and internalizing disorders, and girls who presented at intake with externalizing disorders only. The treatment response to a cognitive-behavioural intervention for externalizing behaviour disorders was examined, by comparing externalizing scores over time between girls with comorbid externalizing and internalizing disorders and girls with externalizing disorders only. Additionally, internalizing scores over time for girls with comorbid disorders were examined. Results indicated that a history of abuse and a cluster of individual characteristics placed girls at higher risk to present with comorbid conditions. The results also indicated that girls with comorbid disorders experienced a reduction of both externalizing and internalizing symptoms. Only 1 in 7.4 girls, however, scored below the clinical range for both externalizing and internalizing disorders at the end of the treatment phase, in comparison to 1 in 5 girls scoring below the clinical range for externalizing disorders in the noncomorbid group. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Webber, Jeffery Roger | Teichman, Judith A. | Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Bolivia, 2000-2005 | Political Science | 2009-11 | This dissertation provides an analytical framework for understanding the left-indigenous cycle of extra-parliamentary insurrection in Bolivia between 2000 and 2005. It draws from Marxist and indigenous-liberationist theory to challenge the central presuppositions of liberal-institutionalist understandings of contemporary indigenous politics in Latin America, as well as the core tenets of mainstream social movement studies. The central argument is that a specific combination of elaborate infrastructures of class struggle and social-movement unionism, historical traditions of indigenous and working-class radicalism, combined oppositional consciousness, and fierce but insufficient state repression, explain the depth, breadth, and radical character of recent left-indigenous mobilizations in Bolivia. The coalition of insurrectionary social forces in the Gas Wars of 2003 and 2005 was led by indigenous informal workers, acting in concert with formal workers, peasants, and to a smaller degree, middle-class actors. The indigenous informal working classes of the city of El Alto, in particular, utilized an elaborate infrastructure of class struggle in order to overcome structural barriers to collective action and to take up their leading role. The supportive part played by the formal working class was made possible by the political orientation toward social-movement unionism adopted by leading trade-union federations. Radicalized peasants mobilized within the broader alliance through their own rural infrastructure of class struggle. The whole array of worker and peasant social forces drew on longstanding popular cultures of indigenous liberation and revolutionary Marxism which they adapted to the novel context of the twenty-first century. These popular cultures ultimately congealed in a new combined oppositional consciousness, rooted simultaneously in the politics of indigenous resistance and class struggle. This collective consciousness, in turn, strengthened the mobilizing capacities of the popular classes and reinforced the radical character of protest. At key junctures, social movement leaders were able to synthesize oppositional consciousness into a focused collective action frame of nationalizing the natural gas industry. Finally, throughout the left-indigenous cycle, ruthless state repression was nonetheless insufficiently powerful to wipe out opposition altogether and therefore acted only to intensify the scale of protests and radicalize demands still further. The legitimacy of the neoliberal social order and the coercive power required to reproduce it were increasingly called into question as violence against civilians increased. | PhD | institution, rural, cities, industr, infrastructure, worker | 8, 9, 11, 16 |
| Weber, Nadya | Mundy, Karen | A Comparative Study of the Shifting Nature of International Non-governmental Organization Global Education Programming in Canada and the United Kingdom | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-11 | International development non-governmental organizations (INGOs) in the United Kingdom and Canada have demonstrated a distinct withdrawal from education programming towards campaigns and fundraising. This study explores how the nature of INGO global education programming has shifted over time. The purpose of this research is to gain a better understanding of a) the place of INGO-produced global education within the context of international development and the field of global education, and b) what type of role (if any) INGOs have to play in future global education programming. The shifts in INGO global education over time are identified through a comparative historical analysis of the socio-political and funding conditions affecting INGO-produced global education programming in Canada and the UK including the embedded case studies of two sister organizations, Save the Children UK and Save the Children Canada. This study looks broadly at the fifty year history of INGO global education, then focuses on the current experiences of two INGOs that are representative of conditions of INGO dependency within their country contexts. A conceptual framework based on the work on the educational typologies of Askew and Carnell (1998) and the ethical positionings of Barnett and Weiss (2008) is used to analyze, evaluate, explore, and describe the global education programming mechanisms prioritized by INGOs. The trend of INGO global education programming as fundraising campaigns lacks the commitment to relationship building, and the acquisition of the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are important for developing informed and capable constituencies who would understand systemic inequalities. This begs the question as to whether INGOs are satisfied with the short-term, socially regulatory outcome of fundraising when they have the potential to facilitate the dialogical, equitable relationships that can increase the possibilities for social transformation. | PhD | equitable | 4 |
| Weinberg, Brenda J. | Conle, Carola | Visual and Verbal Narratives of Older Women Who Identify Themselves as Lifelong Learners | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2009-11 | Abstract: My inquiry, involving participant-observation and self-study, explores the stories of four older women through verbal and visual narratives. Showing how two specific types of visual narratives—sandpictures and collages—stimulate experiential story-telling and promote understanding about life experiences, I also illustrate how engagement with images extends learning and meaning-making. Effective in carrying life stories and integrating experience, the visual narratives also reveal archetypal imagery that is sustained and sustaining. Considering how visual narratives may be understood independently, I describe multiple strategies that worked for me for entering deeply into the images. I also elaborate on the relationship of visual narratives to accompanying verbal narratives, describing how tacit knowing may evolve. Through this process, I offer a framework for a curricular approach to visual narratives that involves feeling and seeing aesthetically and associatively and that provides a space for learners to express their individual stories and make meaning of significant life events. Salient narrative themes include confrontation with life-death issues, the experience of “creating a new life,” an avid early interest in books and learning, and a vital connection to the natural world. New professions after mid-life, creative expression, and volunteerism provide fulfillment and challenge as life changes promote attempts to marry relationships with self and others to work and service. My therapy practice room was the setting for five sessions, including an introduction, three experiential sandplay sessions, and a conclusion. Data derive from transcripts from free-flowing conversations, written narratives, photographs of sandpictures, and field notes written throughout the various phases of my doctoral process. This study of older women, with its emphasis on lifelong learning, visual narratives, and development of tacit knowing, will contribute to the field of narrative inquiry already strongly grounded in verbal narrative and teacher education/development. It may also promote in-depth investigations of male learners at a life stage of making meaning of, and integrating, their life experiences. New inquirers may note what I did and how it worked for me, and find their unique ways of extending the study of visual narratives while venturing into the broad field of diverse narrative forms. | EDD | women | 5 |
| Weinrib, Jacob | Ripstein, Arthur | Authority, Justice, and Public Law: A Unified Theory | Philosophy | 2013-11 | In articulating the juridical relationship between the individual and the state, a theory of public law must confront a fundamental problem. The practice of public law involves appeals to ideas of both authority and justice, but these ideas appear to be antagonistic rather than complementary. On the one hand, persons must act in conformity with legal obligations enacted through the contingent exercise of public authority. On the other, persons must act in conformity with timeless ideals of public justice. The theoretical puzzle at the core of public law stems from the incompatibility of these convictions. Because enacted laws are often unjust and just laws are rarely enacted, persons often find themselves simultaneously pulled in one direction by the demands of public authority and pulled in another by the demands of public justice. To escape this tension, the leading theories invariably fragment their subject matter by reducing the whole of public law to one of its aspects, authority in abstraction from justice or justice in abstraction from authority. The purpose of this project is to articulate a unified theory of public law that integrates the distinctive claims of authority and justice into a common framework. My central claim is that once authority and justice are appropriately conceived and justified, they are neither antithetical virtues of opposing theoretical frameworks nor isolated notions. Instead, authority and justice are the mutually implicating principles of a legal system: the right of rulers to exercise public authority is always accompanied by a duty to govern justly; the right of the ruled to just governance presupposes the presence of publicly authoritative institutions. By setting out the character and interrelation of the fundamental components of a legal system, the unified theory illuminates the general practice of public law from the legal systems of the ancient world to the inner workings of modern constitutional states. | PhD | institution, justice | 16 |
| Weinrib, Julian | Hayhoe, Ruth | South-South-North Research Partnerships: A Transformative Development Modality? | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2012-11 | This thesis investigates development assistance programming in the research activities of higher education institutions by studying the case of the Norwegian Programme for Education, Research and Development (NUFU) and its activities in two sub-Saharan African (SSA) nations. In this thesis, North-South Research Partnerships (NSRPs) are conceptualized through the construction of an ideal-type based on the historical record of NSRP progrmaming. A conceptual framework and analytical tool are developed in order to present the dominant norms associated with mainstream North-South research programming over the past sixty years, as firmly embedded in exploitative core-periphery dynamics. The main research questions ask to what extent the NUFU model differs from other NSRP programs, including South-South collaborative opportunities, and to what extent the program creates spaces for endogenous research needs and priorities to take precedent over exogenous demands and targets. A qualitative investigation is used to gather data from textual analysis, participant observation and key informant interviews in order to investigate how the NUFU program establishes demand-driven programs in Southern universities while negotiating the Norwegian and global political economies. A case study of a single NUFU North-South-South project demonstrates how the program framework influences the construction of the partnership modality. The findings indicate that the North-South component of the model presents significant opportunities for demand-driven research, but that changing trends in Norway are placing pressure on the program and researchers. With regard to the South-South component, the study concludes that the modality is under-conceptualized, lacks clarity of purpose and has failed to generate sustainable collaboration within the SSA region. The implications of these findings for NSRP programming, the NUFU program in particular, are that historical asymmetries remain firmly entrenched; without a radical reconstitution of the economic and political relations between Northern and Southern states, the most powerful international actors, be they states, private entities or multilateral agencies, will continue to dominate and determine knowledge production capacities and outputs. The study concludes by suggesting opportunities for NSRP programs to augment their support of Southern universities and by reflecting on how ongoing changes in current geo-political configurations could open new spaces for alternative development trajectories. | PhD | institution, cities | 11, 16 |
| Weisman, Alanna | Hawker, Gillian A | Associations between Allopurinol and Cardiovascular and Renal Outcomes in Diabetes | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-06 | Diabetes is a leading cause of cardiovascular and kidney disease, and novel therapies to reduce these adverse diabetes outcomes are urgently required. Allopurinol, a uric acid-lowering therapy traditionally used for the treatment of gout, may reduce mortality and cardiovascular and kidney disease through reductions in oxidative stress and improved endothelial function, but this has not been well-studied in diabetes. Through three related projects, this thesis examines the associations between allopurinol and all-cause mortality, cardiovascular and renal outcomes in individuals with diabetes using population-based administrative health care data in Ontario, Canada. The first project examined patterns of allopurinol use and their predictors, to inform the design of subsequent studies. In 38,416 individuals with diabetes newly prescribed allopurinol, discontinuation and interruption of allopurinol were common. Female sex and greater severity of gout were associated with worse adherence. The second project evaluated the association between allopurinol-exposed time and all-cause mortality and cardiovascular outcomes in 38,416 new allopurinol users with diabetes. Allopurinol-exposed time was associated with a reduced risk of the primary composite outcome of all-cause mortality, atherothrombotic cardiovascular events (myocardial infarction, revascularization, stroke), or heart failure, which was primarily driven by a reduction in all-cause mortality. However, healthy user bias could not be completely excluded. The third project evaluated the association between allopurinol use and progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) or development of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). In 5937 individuals with a gout flare and Stages 1 to 3 CKD at baseline (1911 with diabetes), renal outcomes did not differ between allopurinol users and non-users after weighting by the inverse probability of treatment. Based on the thesis results, allopurinol may reduce mortality and atherothrombotic cardiovascular events in individuals with diabetes, but does not appear to reduce heart failure, CKD progression, or development of ESRD. Defining allopurinol exposure in pharmacoepidemiology studies is challenging due to frequent interruptions and discontinuation. Thus, study designs incorporating time-varying exposure and time-varying confounders may be more robust. A clinical trial designed to evaluate the effect of allopurinol on atherothrombotic cardiovascular events in individuals with diabetes and hyperuricemia is strongly justified. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Wellen, Christopher Charles | Arhonditsis, George ||Conway, Tenley | Quantifying Urban and Agricultural Nonpoint Source Total Phosphorus Fluxes Using Distributed Watershed Models and Bayesian Inference | Geography | 2013-11 | Despite decades of research, the water quality of many lakes is impaired by excess total phosphorus loading. Four studies were undertaken using watershed models to understand the temporal and spatial variability of diffuse urban and agricultural total phosphorus pollution to Hamilton Harbour, Ontario, Canada. In the first study, a novel Bayesian framework was introduced to apply Spatially Referenced Regressions on Watershed Attributes (SPARROW) to catchments with few long term load monitoring sites but many sporadic monitoring sites. The results included reasonable estimates of whole-basin total phosphorus load and recommendations to optimize future monitoring. In the second study, the static SPARROW model was extended to allow annual time series estimates of watershed loads and the attendant source-sink processes. Results suggest that total phosphorus loads and source areas vary significantly at annual timescales. Further, the total phosphorus export rate of agricultural areas was estimated to be nearly twice that of urban areas. The third study presents a novel Bayesian framework that postulates that the watershed response to precipitation occurs in distinct states, which in turn are characterized by different model parameterizations. This framework is applied to Soil-Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) models of an urban creek (Redhill Creek) and an agricultural creek (Grindstone Creek) near Hamilton. The results suggest that during the limnological growing season (May – September), urban areas are responsible for the bulk of overland flow in both Creeks: In Redhill Creek, between 90% and 98% of all surface runoff, and in Grindstone Creek, between 95% and 99% of all surface runoff. In the fourth chapter, suspended sediment is used as a surrogate for total phosphorus. Despite disagreements regarding sediment source apportionment between three model applications, Bayesian model averaging allows an unambiguous identification of urban land uses as the main source of suspended sediments during the growing season. Taken together, these results suggest that multiple models must be used to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of total phosphorus loading. Further, while urban land uses may not be the primary source of sediment (and total phosphorus) loading annually, their source strength is increased relative to agricultural land uses during the growing season. | PhD | water, urban. Pollut, land use | 5, 10, 12, 14 |
| Wellum, Caleb | Brown, Elspeth | Energizing the Right: Economy, Ecology, and Culture in the 1970s US Energy Crisis | History | 2017-11 | Taking up Janet Roitman’s charge to think critically about the epistemology of crises, this dissertation is an interdisciplinary cultural history of the 1970s “energy crisis” in the United States. It asks how a crisis of energy came to be, how different experts and interests interpreted its meaning, and how it has shaped US political culture. My central claim is that the energy crisis fostered neoliberalism in the United States by cultivating speculative discourses about energy futures that ultimately supported free market trade and energy policies by the early 1980s. Indeed, the energy crisis itself was always largely speculative, concerned with the possibility of greater scarcity in the future, and it generated competing visions of the future that ultimately moved the country further to the economic right. But this story is not just about the market. It is also about the ecological critiques of carbon capitalism that the energy crisis inspired and the ways in which they both challenged and overlapped with neoliberal formations. I first explore the evolution of the energy crisis as a historically specific assemblage that was only possible in the 1970s. I then consider the political flexibility of the crisis by tracing competing interpretations of its meaning. This theme continues in a chapter on the conservation ethic – a widely proposed solution to the energy crisis that excoriated the waste inherent in the American “way of life,” but for competing ends. Neoliberalism enters the story in my final chapters, which consider how “car films” valorized the white neoliberal subject through unfettered auto-mobility, and the establishment of oil futures contracts as a free market solution to the energy crisis. My interdisciplinary approach broadens the historiography of the energy crisis to consider the concepts, meanings, affects, and practices that comprised it, providing deeper context for the policy and geopolitical concerns that other scholars explore. I conclude that the articulation of a “crisis” was an insufficient foundation upon which to build a large scale energy transition. | Ph.D. | energy, trade, waste, conserv | 7, 10, 12, 14 |
| Wentworth, Gregory Ross | Murphy, Jennifer G | Ammonia in Rural and Remote Environments | Chemistry | 2016-11 | Ammonia (NH3) can harm ecosystems through deposition and react in the atmosphere to increase fine particulate (PM2.5) levels which impact climate and degrade air quality. Despite an abundance of field studies and modelling efforts there are still large uncertainties regarding the sources, sinks, and transport of NH3. These uncertainties are magnified in rural and remote regions where measurements are sparse. The Ambient Ion Monitor – Ion Chromatograph (AIM-IC) was deployed on three separate occasions to measure hourly averages of ambient NH3, SO2, and HNO3 as well as PM2.5 constituents (NH4+, SO42-, NO3-). AIM-IC measurements at a rural field in Ontario, in conjunction with soil measurements, revealed that a non-fertilized grassland exhibits bi-directional soil-atmosphere NH3 exchange. A “morning spike” of NH3 was occasionally observed around 7:00 to 9:00 local time and was investigated in a subsequent study at a remote park in Colorado. Simultaneous observations of dew composition, dew amount and NH3 suggested that the frequently observed, yet currently unexplained, morning spike is caused by NH3 released from evaporating dew. The AIM-IC was operated aboard a research icebreaker throughout the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. NH3 ranged between 30-650 ng m-3 and was usually sufficient to fully neutralize SO42-. Low values of NH4+ in the Arctic Ocean and melt ponds revealed they were always a net NH3 sink. Decomposing seabird guano and wildfires were identified as the primary NH3 sources through the use of a chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) and particle dispersion model (FLEXPART-WRF). Lastly, AIM-IC measurements from a campaign in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region showed that air masses that had recently passed over bitumen upgrading facilities were enriched in NH3, SO2, HNO3, NH4+ SO42-, and NO3-. Comparison of observed NH3 to that predicted by the Extended – Aerosol Inorganics Model (E-AIM) implies that the aerosol system was in disequilibrium in polluted airmasses. | Ph.D. | rural, climate, ocean, pollut | 11, 13, 14 |
| Wessels, Anne Elizabeth | Kathleen, M Gallagher | Three Performances of the Postmetropolis: Youth, Drama, Theatre, and Pedagogy | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2014-11 | Three Performances of the Postmetropolis: Youth, Drama, Theatre, and PedagogyAnne Elizabeth WesselsOntario Institute for Studies in Education,University of Toronto2014ABSTRACTThis Canadian arts-infused ethnography inquires into youth and their social relations in a Mississauga secondary school and in the rehearsals of a production of Concord Floral at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. This study analyzes three performances of the suburb for what they suggest regarding the lives of youth, drama, and theatre pedagogy and the changing geography of the suburb. The first performance is a production of Concord Floral by Jordan Tannahill enacted by eight youth from the suburbs. The second set of performances is composed of place-based rituals of schooling presented by students in the spaces of the school where they originally occurred. The final performance takes place on the same school grounds where I conduct walking interviews with youth. Our walks are interrupted and we become spectators to a third performance of the suburb orchestrated by the nonhuman. The social relations observed in this study suggest both normalized privilege and reaction against it. Drama and theatre are used methodologically to produce data rich with affect, including pleasure in rehearsal and the frustrations of a tension-ridden class. Drama and theatre, however, are analyzed for more than their methodological use. This research offers aesthetic approaches that open notions of both drama and theatre pedagogy as they are practiced with youth as ethical, social and environmental art forms Social geographers Edward Soja (2011) and Doreen Massey's (2005) spatial theory and Gilles Deleuze's concepts of the "minor" (1997) and "difference" (1968/94) frame the study theoretically (1997, p. 141). The findings suggest multiple diversities ranging from artists-in-the-making to the nonhuman. Methodologically, doing drama enhances focus groups and conducting the interviews while walking results in the creation of hybridized methods. The analysis attempts to find what Patti Lather (2013) calls a "difference driven analytic" (p. 639). This study analyzes theatre rehearsal, school, and suburban spaces for their potential to become increasingly heterogeneous and equitable (Sibley, 2011, p.131). It closes with an analysis of the school grounds and its potential as a place for socially-engaged artistic practices working with, and alongside, the community to address issues of inadequate infrastructure, environmental concerns, and the quandaries associated with being young in the contemporary suburb. | Ph.D. | environment, production, infrastructure, urban, equitable | 4, 9, 11, 12, 13 |
| Whaley, Cynthia | Kimberly, Strong | Improvements to our Understanding of Toronto-area Atmospheric Composition | Physics | 2014-11 | Using eleven years of trace gas column measurements at the University of Toronto Atmospheric Observatory (TAO), along with data from complementary sources, such as satellites, surface in situ measurements, and nearby rural column measurements, thisthesis aims to improve our understanding of the sources of air pollution and the causes of variability in atmospheric composition over the Toronto area.The relative influence of chemical production and direct emissions on Toronto-area O3 and CO were determined using GEOS-Chem model simulations. 28 pollution events (defined as enhanced O3 or CO lower-tropospheric (0-5 km) columns that coincided with surface O3 exceedances) were found in the TAO dataset between 2002 and 2010. O3 columns over Toronto during pollution events are influenced by urban and industrial anthropogenic NOx emissions, biogenic isoprene emissions from the eastern United States, and soil NOx emissions from the mid- and western United States. During pollution events, Toronto CO columns are greatly influenced by nearby fossil fuel emissions and isoprene oxidation. C2H6 columns are often enhanced during pollution events, as the sources of C2H6 are similar to those of O3 and CO. HCN columns are assumed to be enhanced in biomass burning plumes, and thus, aid in identifying transport of biomass burning emissions over Toronto. Sensitivity to meteorological conditions was examined as well, and five case studies were presented in detail.Passage of the polar vortex over the Toronto area was determined by increases in scaled potential vorticity (PV) that coincide with outliers in the HF stratospheric time series. Confirmed with polar PV maps and reductions in N2O stratospheric columns, 53 polar intrusion events were identified in the 2002 to 2013 TAO time series. The effect on HF, HCl, O3, and N2O was studied, and we found these events caused a significant increase in HF-column winter/spring variability, and a small increase (on average) in stratospheric O3 columns.The results of this thesis have contributed to improving our understanding of the causes and variability of ozone air quality and stratospheric ozone over a major metropolitan area. | Ph.D. | industr, urban, rural, production, pollut | 9, 11, 12, 13 |
| Wheeler, Glenn Frederick | Sanderson, Douglas||Lemmens, Trudo | Duty, Breach and Remedy: A Fiduciary Argument for Government Funding of Aboriginal Health | Law | 2015-06 | This thesis argues that there is a fiduciary duty on the Government of Canada to provide extended health benefits to Aboriginal peoples. These benefits are the legal remedy for the Crown's multiple breaches of its fiduciary duty to Aboriginal peoples. The duty is rooted in the status of Aboriginal peoples as original inhabitants of Canada and who never ceded their sovereignty, which included a right to maintain traditional ways of life. The Crown acknowledged this duty in the Royal Proclamation of 1763, whose protective language is evocative of fiduciary obligations. The Crown breached its obligation through sharp practice in the negotiation of and failure to implement treaties, introduction of the Indian Act, and in the establishment of the residential schools system. These acts of omission or commission led to a dispossession of Aboriginal peoples from traditional lands and to the appalling levels of health in Aboriginal communities today. | LL.M. | health | 3 |
| White, Heather Lynn | Glazier, Richard H | Assessing the Prevalence, Penetration and Performance of Hospital Physicians in Ontario: Implications for the Quality and Efficiency of Inpatient Care | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2016-03 | Hospitalist physicians have emerged over the past two decades to become dominant providers of inpatient care in North American hospitals. Despite their widespread adoption, quantitative data characterizing the penetration of Canadian hospitalists or their influence on the quality of inpatient care within the Canadian context has not been explored. The primary objectives of this dissertation were to synthesize the existing findings on hospitalist performance, to describe the prevalence and penetration of hospital physicians working in the province of Ontario, and to assess the current performance of physicians practicing general hospital medicine within the province with regards to their clinical effectiveness and operating efficiency. The three papers included in the dissertation demonstrated clear trends that hospital-based physicians are increasingly prevalent in Ontario hospitals and deliver a sizable proportion of the province’s inpatient medical care. Increased inpatient workloads amongst these physicians translated to lower mortality, fewer readmissions and longer lengths of stay for patients under their care. There is a pressing need in Canadian healthcare to improve the processes of acute care provision in order to reduce unnecessary utilization, improve patient safety, and enhance patient experience. Findings in this dissertation provide support for the practice of hospital medicine and concentrated hospital care in Canada, suggesting that high-volume physicians practicing general hospital medicine, including hospitalists, could have a pivotal impact on quality improvement. Research can now turn to understanding the specific practice characteristics and processes of care that differentiate hospital generalists from their colleagues. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| White, Lisa | Margaret, Schneider | Lesbian and Gay Career Development and Super's Life-span, Life-space Theory | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2014-11 | Abstract The primary goal of the present study was to examine the influence of sexual minority identity on the career decision and trajectory of 15 lesbian women and 14 gay men, between the ages of 18-57. Next, the phase of career development and the social context of these participants were examined through the lens of Super's (1990) life-span, life-space theory of career development. Three main findings emerged from this study. First, although oppressive forces, such as heterosexism, homophobia, and discrimination pervasively influence the career development of sexual minorities, there is evidence of a process by which they mediate the impact of these influences on career development, namely, by minimizing exposure to homophobia, maximizing exposure to affirming professional and personal supports, and by capitalizing on strength and resilience gained over the course of developing a sexual minority identity. Next, although participants' phase of career development was consistent with what Super's (1990) life-span theory would predict, factors related to sexual orientation and homophobia influenced how they maneuvered within and between these phases. Finally, the situational determinants-portion of life-span theory were determined to have limited efficacy for describing the social context within which sexual minorities choose and pursue careers, as it does not take into consideration the systemic heterosexism and homophobia that qualify the life-space of sexual minority persons. The addition of oppression as an over-arching influence on the life-space of marginalized persons in general, and sexual minority persons in particular, is proposed. Limitations of the present study, as well as implications for research and counselling practice are presented. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Whitehead, Krista | Taylor, Judith ||Fox, Bonnie | Great Expectations: Maternal Ideation, Injustice and Entitlement in the Online Infertility Community | Sociology | 2013-11 | Motherhood is one of the most enduring and consequential rites of passage to adult femininity for women. Indeed "motherhood changes everything" (Nelson 2009, p. 3, Fox 2009). However, not all women have access to motherhood. What happens then when women do not have access to the gender ideal of motherhood or to the cultural spaces that define it? How do women deal with this exclusion? In the course of this research I answer these two questions through an examination of women’s blogging in the online infertility community. Women in the online infertility community characterize their fertility challenges as unfair and unjust, wherein their expressions of desire to become mothers are made in direct relation to, and in comparison with, the women around them who are on their way to becoming mothers (i.e., pregnant) or have already become mothers. In characterizing their experience as an injustice, I argue that women begin to lay claim to motherhood as an entitlement. They do so by drawing on, engaging with, and seeking out a multiplicity of cultural and scientific discourses associated with motherhood and women’s bodies. Through an examination of these discourses, I argue that the pursuit of motherhood is a journey that is relational and comparative, and one that happens in a single-gender, homo-social environment. Conceptualizing motherhood as a gendered entitlement, rather than a gender identity achievement allows us to recognize that women’s relationality and sociality are central to how women negotiate gender norms and expectations more broadly. In the face of infertility women in the online community express incredulity about the prospect of never having a biological child of their own and become industrious in navigating their circumstances. Their industrious responses help us locate infertility as a gendered penalty in the larger context of misfortune, which is often overlooked by sociologists. | PhD | gender, women, justice | 5, 16 |
| Whyte, Tanya | Skogstad, Grace||Cochrane, Christopher | Quantitative Measurement of Parliamentary Accountability using Text as Data: the Canadian House of Commons, 1945-2015 | Political Science | 2019-11 | How accountable is Canada’s Westminster-style parliamentary system? Are minority parliaments more accountable than majorities, as contemporary critics assert? This dissertation develops a quantitative measurement approach to investigate parliamentary accountability using the text of speeches in Hansard, the historical record of proceedings in the Canadian House of Commons, from 1945-2015. The analysis makes a theoretical and methodological contribution to the comparative literature on legislative debate, as well as an empirical contribution to the Canadian literature on Parliament. I propose a trade-off model in which parties balance communication about goals of office-seeking (accountability) or policy-seeking (ideology) in their speeches. Assuming a constant context of speech, I argue that lexical similarity between government and opposition speeches is a valid measure of parliamentary accountability, while semantic similarity is an appropriate measure of ideological polarization. I develop a computational approach for measuring lexical and semantic similarity using word vectors and the doc2vec algorithm for word embeddings. To validate my measurement approach, I perform a qualitative case study of the 38th and 39th Parliaments, two successive minority governments with alternating governing parties. I find that similarity scores are positively related with the substantive quality of opposition questions and government responses. In the quantitative analysis phase, I study Question Periods from 1975-2010 and daily debates from 1945-2015 using the lexical similarity measurement. I find that minority parliaments are more account- able than majority governments since the 30th Parliament, but find no significant relationship between government seat percentage and parliamentary accountability. I show that Parliament becomes more accountable as a government’s popularity decreases. However, the data more strongly support a non-linear model. A structural break analysis yields one significant break at 33%: below this critical value, polling popularity and parliamentary accountability are positively related, and above, are negatively related. Finally, I confirm that the correlation between measures of lexical and semantic similarity varies in strength and direction across parliamentary sessions, suggesting two distinct generative processes are indeed at work. | Ph.D. | institution | 16 |
| Widdifield, Jessica | Bombardier, Claire | Accuracy of Ontario Health Administrative Databases in Identifying Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2013-06 | Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, destructive, inflammatory arthritis that places significant burden on the individual and society. This thesis represents the most comprehensive effort to date to determine the accuracy of administrative data for detecting RA patients; and describes the development and validation of an administrative data algorithm to establish a province-wide RA database. Beginning with a systematic review to guide the conduct of this research, two independent, multicentre, retrospective chart abstraction studies were performed amongst two random samples of patients from rheumatology and primary care family physician practices, respectively. While a diagnosis by a rheumatologist remains the gold standard for establishing a RA diagnosis, the high prevalence of RA in rheumatology clinics can falsely elevate positive predictive values. It was therefore important we also perform a validation study in a primary care setting where prevalence of RA would more closely approximate that observed in the general population. The algorithm of [1 hospitalization RA code] OR [3 physician RA diagnosis codes (claims) with ≥1 by a specialist in a 2 year period)] demonstrated a high degree of accuracy in terms of minimizing both the number of false positives (moderately good PPV; 78%) and true negatives (high specificity: 100%). Moreover, this algorithm has excellent sensitivity at capturing contemporary RA patients under active rheumatology care (>96%). Application of this algorithm to Ontario health administrative data to establish the Ontario RA administrative Database (ORAD) identified 97,499 Ontarians with RA as of 2010, yielding a cumulative prevalence of (0.9%). Age/sex-standardized RA prevalence has doubled from 473 per 100,000 in 1996 to 784 per 100,000 in 2010, with approximately 50 new cases of RA emerging per 100,000 Ontarians each year. Our findings will inform future population-based research and will serve to improve arthritis surveillance activities across Canada and abroad. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Widger, Kimberley Ann | Tourangeau, Ann | Development and Testing of an Instrument to Measure the Quality of Children’s End-of-life Care from the Parents’ Perspective | Nursing Science | 2012-06 | Background: The Senate of Canada asserts that quality end-of-life care is the right of every Canadian. Yet, little is known about the quality of end-of-life care for dying children and their families. Purpose: The study purpose was to develop and test an instrument to measure parents’ perspectives on the quality of care provided to families before, at the time of, and following the death of a child. Methods: In study Phase I, key components of quality pediatric end-of-life care were synthesized through a systematic review of research literature then validated and extended through focus groups with bereaved parents. In Phase II, instrument items were developed to assess structures, processes, and outcomes important to quality end-of-life care, then tested for content and face validity by health professionals and bereaved parents. In Phase III, the instrument was administered to bereaved mothers from across Canada and psychometric testing conducted. Results: Instrument items were developed based on review of 67 manuscripts and 3 focus groups with 10 parents. The Content Validity Index for the instrument was 0.84 as assessed by 7 health professionals. The instrument was assessed by 6 bereaved parents for face and content validity as well as their cognitive understanding of the items. In the final phase, 128 mothers completed the instrument and 31 of those completed it twice. Initial evidence for test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and construct validity was demonstrated for 7 subscales: Connect with Families, Involve Parents, Share Information with Parents, Share Information among Health Professionals, Support Parents, Provide Care at Death, and Provide Bereavement Follow-up. Additional items with demonstrated content validity only were grouped into three domains: Support the Child, Support Siblings, and Structures of Care. Implications: This study is a significant step forward in comprehensive measurement of the quality of children’s end-of-life care. The instrument provides a mechanism for feedback to health professionals, health systems, and policy makers to improve care provided to families facing the death of a child. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Wigdor, Ernest Mitchell | Trebilcock, Michael | Inside the Black Box: Understanding the Role of Institutions in Bridging the Digital Divide | Law | 2010-11 | This dissertation is about the role of institutions in bridging the Digital Divide. Its thesis is that governments must encourage the consistently increased use of information and communications technology (“ICT”) if they hope to foster sustained economic growth. Superficially, the Digital Divide describes differences in ICT usage between rich and poor nations, but it is more profoundly concerned with poor nations’ integration into a global economy. Intensive academic study demonstrates that four factors are critical to the relationship between ICT usage and economic growth: institutions; telecommunications infrastructure; investment in ICT; and human capital. The dissertation addresses three perceived shortcomings in the literature. First, proponents of institutions’ importance use the term vaguely, often obscuring important distinctions between policies, laws and institutions, thereby inhibiting detailed analysis. Second, many writers see the institutional reform needed for growth as an exceedingly slow process due to factors beyond governments’ control. Third, the literature does not adequately address which institutions are salient to the relationship between ICT usage and economic growth or how to create them. The dissertation attributes more precise meanings to key terms and contests the view that institutional reform can only proceed at a glacial pace. Its primary goal, however, is to identify specific institutions that help mediate the relationship and to suggest how they might be built relatively quickly. Good institutions can create the enabling environment that allows for the building of telecommunications infrastructure, investment in ICT goods and services and the development of human capital to lead to economic growth. The analysis of institutions identifies several salient institutions and concludes that the manner in which they are designed often determines their effectiveness. Case studies of Singapore and Malaysia examine their successful, but divergent, development paths. Their different rates of development can be attributed, in part, to the quality of their institutions. | SJD | economic growth, infrastructure, institution | 8, 9, 16 |
| Wijeysundera, Duminda | Laupacis, Andreas | Preoperative Internal Medicine Consultation for Elective Intermediate-to-high Risk Noncardiac Surgery in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2010-11 | This dissertation uses population-based administrative healthcare data to evaluate the outcomes, processes-of-care and practice variation associated with preoperative medical consultation in Ontario, Canada. First, a multicentre cross-sectional study was conducted to develop a novel algorithm for identifying preoperative medical consultations using administrative data. The optimal claims-based algorithm was a physician service claim for a consultation by a cardiologist, general internist, endocrinologist, geriatrician, or nephrologist within 120 days before the index surgery. This algorithm had a sensitivity of 90% (95% confidence interval [CI], 86 to 93) and specificity of 92% (95% CI, 88 to 95). Second, we conducted a population-based cohort study to evaluate the association of preoperative medical consultation with outcomes and processes-of-care. After adjustment for measured confounders using propensity-score methods, consultation was associated with increased preoperative testing, preoperative pharmacological interventions, 30-day mortality [relative risk (RR) 1.16; 95% CI, 1.07 to 1.25], 1-year mortality (RR 1.08; 95% CI, 1.04 to 1.12), and mean hospital stay (difference 0.67 days; 95% CI, 0.59 to 0.76). These findings were stable across subgroups, as well as sensitivity analyses that tested for unmeasured confounding. Third, temporal trends and practice variation in consultation were evaluated within the population-based cohort. The proportion of patients undergoing consultation remained relatively stable over the study period, at approximately 39%. Although patient-level and surgery-level factors did predict consultation use, they explained only 6.8% of variation in consultation rates. By comparison, inter-hospital differences in rates were substantial (range, 1.9% to 86.8%), were not explained by surgical volume or teaching status, and persisted after adjustment for patient-level and surgery-level factors. Overall, this dissertation highlights the need for research to identify interventions for safely decreasing perioperative risk, define mechanisms by which consultation influences outcomes, examine factors that influence practice variation in medical consultation, and identify patients who benefit most from preoperative medical consultation. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Wilczak, Jessica | Boland, Alana | Reconstructing Rural Chengdu: Urbanization as Development in the Post-Quake Context | Geography | 2017-11 | On 12 May 2008 Western China was struck by an 8.0-magnitude earthquake (the Wenchuan Earthquake) that left over 87,000 people dead or missing, and destroyed nearly 8 million homes. The epicenter of the quake lay less than 100 km away from Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province. Although the central city itself was not damaged by the quake, many settlements in Chengdu’s rural periphery had to be completely rebuilt. This dissertation examines how the Chengdu government used post-quake reconstruction as an opportunity to urbanize rural areas in the metropolitan region under the policy of “urban-rural integration”. But urban-rural integration was not merely urbanization in the sense of an expansion of the built-up urban core; it was a far more comprehensive project that was framed as a means of developing the rural economy, improving living environments, and bolstering peasants’ rights. I argue that Chengdu’s urbanization is best understood as a developmental project—a form of “development qua urbanization”—and as a form of governmental power in the Foucauldian sense. I further interpret the underlying logics of urban-rural integration—that rural areas are best developed through urbanization—in the context of China’s current historical conjuncture. In doing so, I turn to Polanyi’s description of the transition to a market society, and Lefebvre’s prediction of the transition to an urban society. Drawing on media and policy analysis, academic debates on Chengdu’s urban-rural integration project, and participant observation work and in-depth interviews conducted in peri-urban Chengdu over a period of nearly two years, I examine the multiple forms that post-quake urbanization in Chengdu took, including rationalizing land use throughout the metropolitan region, building concentrated villages, assigning individual titles to rural collective land, developing markets for rural property rights, encouraging large-scale agribusiness, extending social services to rural areas, reforming rural governance institutions, and transforming peasants into self-managing citizens. | Ph.D. | urban, rural, environment, land use, governance | 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Wilder, Matt | Skogstad, Grace | Canadian Industrial Policy in Comparative Perspective | Political Science | 2019-06 | This thesis utilizes an institutional theory of economic organization and technological innovation called regime theory to explain the origins, operation, and outcomes of industrial policy in Canada. The first part of the thesis elaborates the theory using formal logic, spatial modelling techniques, and game theory. The second part evaluates cross-national quantitative evidence in support of the theory and undertakes three detailed case studies involving shipbuilding, agricultural biotechnology, and green energy manufacturing. Consistent with the varieties of capitalism literature, it is demonstrated that liberal political economies are institutionally-poised toward radical innovation but struggle with late innovation. The introductory chapter defines industrial policy, explains why the study of industrial policy is important, details the argument of the thesis, summarizes the methods used, and lays out how the thesis is organized. The second chapter engages with the literature on collective action and entrepreneurship to advance three components of regime theory: a theory of regime origins, a theory of regime operation, and a theory of regime outcomes. The third chapter introduces the structure of the economy and state of technological development as situational variables, consideration of which yields four archetypical models of industrial policy and ten predictive hypotheses about the causes and consequences of industrial policy coordination. Chapter 3 concludes with a summary of the propositions and implications of the theory. The fourth chapter analyzes three cases studies —aluminum shipbuilding industrial policy in British Columbia; federal-provincial biotechnology policy in support of the canola industry; and Ontario’s green energy industrial strategy— and evaluates the ability of regime theory to explain industrial policy in Canada. The fifth and final chapter summarizes the theory and evidence presented in the thesis and discusses the inferences that can be drawn from the findings. | Ph.D. | energy, innovation, industr, institution | 7, 9, 16 |
| Wilkinson, Amy Ann | Taylor, Margot J | Attention and Inhibitory Control in Children with Traumatic Brain Injury: Outcomes and Prediction Using Biomarkers | Psychology | 2016-11 | Children with traumatic brain injury (TBI) have a range of cognitive problems, notably in the domain of executive functioning and attention. Previous studies have attempted to relate performance on measures of executive function and attention in groups of children with TBI to pre-injury variables and measures of TBI severity, to predict outcome, but clear relations have not emerged. This is likely due to variability in both patient and injury characteristics. Prior studies also have not found consistent results as to why these cognitive difficulties are so frequently seen as sequelae to TBI in children. This thesis evaluated a variety of patient variables, along with serum biomarkers (proposed objective measures of brain injury), as predictors of long-term (one to six years) attention and executive function outcome in children following TBI. A secondary aim of this thesis was to investigate performance monitoring through the use of the stop signal task (SST) in children following TBI compared to age-matched controls. Significant relations were found between serum biomarkers (such as neuron specific enolase [NSE] and soluble neuron cell adhesion molecule [sNCAM]), pre-injury functioning, and persistent attention and executive function difficulties at long-term follow-up time points. Other standard clinical measures (Glasgow Coma Scale, age) were not reliable predictors. During performance monitoring, children with TBI did not show the expected slowing in reaction time following an error on the SST that was observed in an age-matched healthy control group, but the group differences were not significant. When validated in future research studies, the findings of the predictive value of certain serum biomarkers and pre-injury measures could contribute to acute clinical and long-term rehabilitation decisions, with the expectation of improving the quality of life in survivors of paediatric TBI. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Wilkinson, Jeffrey J. | Goldstein, Tara | Israel/Palestine Experience and Engagement: A Multidirectional Study of Collective Memory Through an Analysis of Trauma, Identity and Victim Beliefs | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2017-06 | Abstract The ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict has sparked a debate in Canada (and elsewhere) that is as intractable as the conflict itself. This study looks at two Diasporas, Palestinian and Jewish, in the Toronto area, as typical of the challenges within these communities worldwide when it comes to deeply understanding the Other. Collective memory, a representation of the past shared by a group, is viewed in this study as a prime factor in how conflicts become intractable, insulating the groups from deeply acknowledging the Other and the Other’s history. I look at three primary catalysts that concretize memory within groups: identity, trauma and victim beliefs. This study engages in the experiences and memories of these experiences in the eight participants who I have interviewed for this study. The participants engaged in two interviews, a narrative interview where they shared their stories with me and an interaction interview where they responded to the stories of the Other. This research is not a peace plan or even a path towards peace, but is a process of unraveling. As the researcher I unravel my own victimhood as a Jew from a family of the Shoah. I am also unraveling two seemingly disparate realities, the ways in which collective memory has become ensconced within the two groups and the reality that the two groups’ situations today are starkly different. While both groups have experienced very traumatic histories, the trauma of Occupation is ongoing for Palestinians. This research offers an alternative to typical “dialogue”, acknowledging the importance of hearing the Other’s stories within a framework of social justice and human rights. While recognizing the importance of sharing in the experiences of the Other, the Jewish community has a greater responsibility to alter the situation on the ground for those living in the Occupied territories. | Ph.D. | justice, peace, rights | 16 |
| Williams, Dinsie | Kohler, Jillian C | Facilitating Sustainable Access to Medical Devices in Sierra Leone and Ghana through Transnational Funders: Challenges and Opportunities | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2018-06 | Background Transnational funders provide up to 80% of funds for medical devices in resource-limited settings where an estimated 72% of medical devices are reportedly abandoned. This means that for every dollar that funders spend on medical devices, 65 to 90 cents are wasted. The objective of this study was to inform public health care policy reform to facilitate sustainable access to medical devices by characterizing current transnational funding policies and practices from the perspectives of recipients and funders. Methods A case study was developed in March 2016 involving a review of policy documents; semi-structured interviews of frontline and administrative public health care staff, and representatives of funding organizations; and direct observation of medical devices in Sierra Leone. Subsequently, case study was conducted in Ghana between January and April 2017 using the same research instruments. Following thematic analysis, the data from the interviews were cross-referenced with information from the document reviews and direct observations. Results The national governments of Sierra Leone and Ghana have guidelines on donating medical devices; however, neither are linked to enforceable regulations nor are they promoted among frontline health care staff. Study participants in Sierra Leone underscored the importance of communication and collaboration; quality, functionality and appropriateness of medical devices. In Ghana, interviews revealed that donation guidelines were obscure and that there were technical leadership gaps in government hospitals. Conclusion To ensure sustainable access to medical devices, the national governments of Sierra Leone and Ghana, must establish coherent and enforceable policies that foster the development of a cohesive network of funders, medical device manufacturers and distributors, and service providers; mandate purposive funding of medical devices; foster technical leadership on hospital management teams; and establish a comprehensive device acquisition and management framework. To complement the efforts of recipient governments, funders should proactively incorporate principles of good governance such as collaboration, transparence, and accountability into their practices. By being more purposive, funders may finally achieve a worthwhile mission of sustainably enhancing the medical device capacity of health care providers in government-owned facilities in Sierra Leone and Ghana. | Ph.D. | health, governance | 3, 16 |
| Williams, Siobhan | Halfar, Jochen | Testing the Use of the Proxy Archive Clathromorphum compactum for Climate Reconstructions | Earth Sciences | 2018-11 | The coralline alga Clathromorphum compactum is an important annual to sub-annual resolution archive of Arctic and Subarctic environmental conditions. Annual Mg/Ca cycles and growth measured in C. compactum’s high Mg calcite growth increments have been used as proxies for past sea surface temperatures (SST) and sea ice off North America going back more than 600 years. However, uncertainties remain with respect to environmental controls influencing growth and elemental incorporation in C. compactum. Furthermore, proxy capabilities of C. compactum crusts have never been compared to other coralline algal genera or growth morphologies or tested in Arctic regions outside North America. Following an assessment of advantages and disadvantages of different techniques used for analyzing coralline algal Mg/Ca ratios for paleoclimate reconstructions, I here compare two different growth morphologies of coralline algae: massive crusts and free-living branching algal nodules, known as rhodoliths. I tested whether either of these growth morphologies is more suitable for proxy reconstructions by comparing Mg/Ca ratios in rhodoliths of Lithothamnion glaciale and in rhodoliths as well as encrusting specimens of C. compactum. Mg/Ca ratios derived from both coralline algal growth forms can yield SST information, however, massive encrusting forms yield higher correlations to SST than rhodoliths, which only allowed for the generation of short time series due to frequent growth irregularities. To achieve a better understanding of environmental controls influencing coralline algae, I processed the data of an 11-month microcosm experiment comparing specimens of C. compactum grown under a range of temperature and light conditions. I show that both light and temperature significantly affect MgCO3 in C. compactum. For specimens grown at low temperature (2°C), the effects of light are smaller, than at higher (10°C) temperature. Finally, I demonstrate the ability of C. compactum Mg/Ca to act as a proxy for SST and glacial runoff in Greenland. | Ph.D. | climate, environment | 13 |
| Willis, Megan Drake | Jonathan, Abbatt PD | Natural and Anthropogenic Influences on High Arctic Aerosol | Chemistry | 2018-03 | The Arctic is a harbinger of global change, and is warming at a rate twice the global average. While Arctic warming is driven by increased greenhouse gases, short-lived climate forcers such as tropospheric ozone and aerosol are important drivers of Arctic climate. Aerosol impacts on Arctic climate are insufficiently understood, largely owing to poor constraints on the physical and chemical processes controlling aerosol. This thesis presents observations of sub-micron aerosol in Arctic summer and spring, which capture different regimes of the Arctic aerosol seasonal cycle. Aircraft-based observations of aerosol physical and chemical properties address various aspects of Arctic aerosol sources, removal and chemical processing. Under chronic Arctic Haze conditions in spring, we observed evidence for vertical variations in both aerosol sources and removal mechanisms. We show evidence for sources of partially neutralized aerosol with higher organic aerosol (OA) and black carbon content in the mid-troposphere and sources of acidic sulfate in the lower troposphere. With support from model calculations, we demonstrate that mid-tropospheric air influences the Arctic Boundary Layer (ABL) on ~1-week time scales. We observed evidence for aerosol depletion relative to carbon monoxide, both in the mid-to-upper troposphere and within the ABL. Dry deposition, with low removal efficiency, contributed to aerosol removal in the ABL while precipitation scavenging contributed to efficient aerosol removal during transport at higher altitudes. Under clean Arctic background conditions in summer, we observed evidence for marine influenced secondary OA formation. We demonstrated a relationship between methansulfonic acid and OA with the residence time of air over open water. Sea salt aerosol was externally mixed from a larger number fraction of OA, sulfate and amine-containing particles. High OA fractions coincided with elevated cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) concentrations, suggesting a role for secondary OA formation in growing particles to CCN-active sizes. A case study of aerosol growth over open water supports these observations. This work contributes to our understanding of aerosol vertical variability and its connection to observations made at the surface in Arctic spring and, to our understanding of aerosol sources and composition in Arctic summer. | Ph.D. | water, marine, greenhouse gas, climate | 13, 14 |
| Willison, Kevin Donald | Myers, Ted | Massage Therapy Visits By The Aged: Testing a Modified Andersen Model | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2009-11 | Growing evidence suggests that chronic health conditions and disability act as reliable predictors of complementary/ alternative medicine (CAM) use. Such use may have the potential for some to increase independence and quality of life. Moreover, research indicates that older people are significant consumers of CAM services. Yet, understanding profiles of older individuals of these services continues to remain under researched. Here, a widely used type of CAM was considered – massage therapy (MT). Towards better understanding MT user profiles, this study tested a modified version of the Andersen Health Behavior Model to help ascertain if it is useful towards understanding factors associated with massage therapy (MT) utilization. Respondents represented an elderly sample (aged 60+) that resided within a large urban city in Ontario Canada (Toronto). Eligible respondents at the time of the study were non-institutionalized and self-reported having one of more current chronic illness conditions which they have had for six months or more, and had been diagnosed by a medical doctor. Using a quantitative method, retrospective data were gathered using a pre-tested English-only mail questionnaire, developed specifically for this study. Data were gathered over a period of 6 months, between late 2000 to mid 2001. Bivariate analysis suggests that inequity exists whereby the ability to access massage therapy varies according to one’s socioeconomic status. This is further supported using backwards step-wise regression analysis, whereby one’s total annual household income was a strong predictor of MT use status. One’s CAM-related health and social network as well as having back problems also emerged as strong predictors of MT use. Overall findings suggest that a modified Andersen model as used in this study does have utility in relation to helping to identify potential factors associated with the utilization of massage therapy. Based on regression analysis, findings here suggest, for example, that those with higher incomes are 1.5 times more likely to use MT. This provides support that there are existing inequities regarding access to rehabilitation-oriented health care services. With population aging and rising numbers of people needing restorative and rehabilitation services, study findings will increasingly have important public health as well as health care policy related implications. | PhD | socioeconomic, health, urban | 1, 3, 11 |
| Wilmot, Sheila | Mojab, Shahrzad | The Social Organization of the Ontario Minimum Wage Campaign | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2011-11 | My dissertation research is interdisciplinary in nature, at the nexus of three areas of scholarly work and actual practices: union renewal and non-unionized workers-rights organizing in Canada and the US; feminist, anti-racist Marxian approaches to class relations as being racialized, gendered and bureaucratic; and, the institutional ethnographic method of inquiry into social reality. My empirical focus is on the Ontario Minimum Wage Campaign (OMWC). The OMWC was a Toronto-based labour-community project to raise the minimum wage to $10 per hour. It was started in 2001 by Justice for Workers (J4W), was carried on by the Ontario Needs a Raise coalition (ONR) from 2003 to 2006, and was re-launched in 2007 by the Toronto and York Region Labour Council (TYRLC) in association with some community groups. The OMWC brought together across time and space activist groups, community agencies and labour organizations, all of whose volunteers, members, clients, educators, officials and staff were the agents and/or targets of the campaign. The apparent victory of the OMWC is quite contested. Local campaign realities were compartmentalized in numerous ways and OMWC involvement met different institutionally specific and coordinated needs. And while coalitions generally arise as vehicles to transcend such institutional separation, the campaign was challenged to materially bridge such compartmentalization. The fragmentation of reality amongst institutions and how it was managed in practice affected how collaboration, participation, and decision-making happened and appeared to have happened in organizing and educational activities. While there were at times transformative intentions, there was generally a pragmatic anti-racist organizing practice and effect. I contend that the complexity of contemporary society poses great challenges for the possibilities for human-agency based labour-community workers-rights organizing with a broad-based, political capacity for movement building orientation. I suggest that this is largely so because the social coordination of what we do and what we understand about what we do turns on at least three components of social reality: an institution-based organization of multi-layered social relations that is generally locally circumscribed but extralocally driven; a conditioned individually-driven orientation to meeting human needs; and an ideological orientation to both the content of ideas and thought, and the process of that reasoning. | PhD | educat, gender, labour, worker, wage, rights | 4, 5, 8, 16 |
| Wilson, Kinsley Rose | Kohler, Jillian Clare | A Manufactured Solution? The Transfer of Technology for the Local Production of Affordable Antiretrovirals: Case Studies from Tanzania and South Africa | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2009-06 | Statement of the issue: Facing large HIV-infected populations, Sub-Saharan African countries are producing antiretroviral (ARV) drugs under provisions of the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPS). Article 7 states that the protection of intellectual property should increase technology transfer to developing countries. This clause and the debate over domestic manufacturers’ ability to provide low-cost ARVs need examination. Methods: Case studies from ARV manufacturing initiatives in Tanzania and South Africa analyzed conditions affecting two outcomes: the type of technology transfer arrangement entered (voluntary license or imitation) and the affordability of ARVs. Data were collected and analyzed from documents, key-informant interviews, and observation. Chi-squared and phi correlation statistics were then conducted across developing countries to test the association of voluntary ARV licensure with TRIPS-compliant patents and domestic firm ownership (state or private). Results: Tanzania’s weak patent system and poorly-financed, partially state-owned firm dissuaded industry investment, but attracted a non-government organization to transfer technology through imitation. Donor-financed ARV tenders, however, restrict competition to international quality-accredited products not produced by the firm. Without large volumes and manufacturing capacity, it cannot achieve economies of scale to reduce prices below imported ARVs. In South Africa, civil society challenged the strong patent system and poor government commitment that inhibited an ARV rollout. This and a well-financed, publicly-traded firm leveraged voluntary licenses. With international quality approval, the firm increased first-line ARV affordability; however, limited domestic competition keeps treatment prices above those of neighbouring countries. A multi-country analysis found 321 generic ARV manufacturing initiatives in 86 firms across 25 developing countries. Voluntary ARV licenses had a strong positive association with TRIPS-patent compliance (ф=.56, p<.0001) and a weak negative association with state-ownership (ф=.19, p<.0001). Firms in South Africa and India were granted 77% of licenses and accounted for most quality accredited generic ARVs. Conclusion: Despite positive association, technology transfer does not readily result from patent protection, particularly to state-owned firms. Developing countries must enact policies to enable affordable ARVs; yet, they must be cautious using local production to increase ARV access, as most initiatives cannot compete with high-volume generic manufacturers. | PhD | industr, production | 9, 12 |
| Winsborough, Carolyn Louise | Basiliko, Nathan | Soil Nutrient and Greenhouse Gas Cycles in Managed Mixed Deciduous Ontario Forests: The Role of Elevated Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition and Nutrient and Biochar Amendments | Geography | 2015-11 | Canada’s temperate forests are experiencing an environmental disturbance in the form of atmospheric nitrogen deposition arising from fossil fuel burning and agricultural practices. Nitrogen, a major nutrient required for plants and soil microorganisms, is normally in short supply in temperate forest ecosystems. However, when soil nitrogen is in excess, various negative impacts can result such as nutrient leaching, increased nitrous oxide emissions and disturbances to carbon cycling, including reduced soil methane uptake. Research has revealed a shift from nitrogen to phosphorus limitation in forests in central Ontario where chronic nitrogen deposition rates are high, and introducing soil amendments might have the potential to mitigate these negative effects. Before management strategies can be devised, it is important to characterize the degree of nitrogen excess, and how soil nutrient cycling and fluxes of greenhouse gases are being influenced, which may offset carbon gains from increased primary productivity. In an assessment of ambient soil characteristics representing natural topographic heterogeneity at Haliburton Forest, high inorganic nitrogen pools did not result in elevated nitrous oxide effluxes in upland soils, though hot spots and hot moments of nitrous oxide efflux occurred in wet depression areas where ammonium concentrations and moisture were high. Rapid methane efflux was also observed including what appear to be the highest rates in forest systems reported to date. A reduction in longer- (>5 year) and shorter-term (0-3 year) inorganic nitrogen pools in upland phosphorous-amended sites does support that the forest is phosphorous limited, however, there was no evidence of increased nitrous oxide emissions, even in nitrogen-amended sites that would be expected under nitrogen saturated conditions. Phosphorous limitation may be ameliorated by amending soils with biochar, which resulted in increased soil phosphorus, pH, and cation retention. The results of this research reveal that soils in temperate forests in Ontario are at a stage of nitrogen excess relative to ecosystem demands, but do not appear to have reached nitrogen saturation. However, with elevated exchangeable nitrogen pools and increasing nitrogen deposition, denitrification and methanogenic potentials, particularly under predicted increasing moisture regimes, may substantially impact and offset the overall carbon sink at this forest. | Ph.D. | forest, environment, greenhouse gas, urban | 11, 13, 15 |
| Wiseman-Hakes, Catherine | Colantonio, Angela | Sleep and Wake Disorders Following Traumatic Brain Injury: Impact on Recovery of Cognition and Communication | Rehabilitation Science | 2012-11 | Objective: To examine sleep and wake disorders following traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their impact on recovery of cognition, communication and mood. Research Design: This three-manuscript thesis comprises an introduction to sleep in the context of human function and development. It is followed by a systematic review of the literature pertaining to sleep and wake disorders following TBI, and then explores the relationship between sleep and arousal disturbance and functional recovery of cognitive-communication through a single case study, pre–post intervention. Finally, a larger study longitudinally explores the impact of treatment to optimize sleep and wakefulness on recovery of cognition, communication and mood through objective and subjective measures, pre-post intervention. The thesis concludes with a chapter that addresses the implications of findings for rehabilitation from the perspective of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), and a presentation of future research directions for the field Methods: The first manuscript involved a systematic review and rating of the quality of evidence. The second manuscript involved the evaluation of sleep and wakefulness by objective measures, and longitudinally by self-report through the Daily Cognitive-Communication and Sleep Profile (DCCASP, © Wiseman-Hakes 2008, see Appendix S). Cognitive-communication abilities were also measured by the DCCASP. The third manuscript utilized a single case series and cohort design to evaluate sleep and wakefulness, and to examine cognition, communication and mood at baseline and following optimization of sleep and wakefulness. Results: For Manuscript One, 43 articles were reviewed for levels and quality of evidence across 5 domains: epidemiology, pathophysiology, neuropsychological implications, intervention and paediatrics. In Manuscript Two, we showed that there was a statistically and functionally significant relationship between perceived quality of sleep and language processing, attention and memory, seen across the phases of the intervention. In Manuscript Three, we showed that there were statistically and functionally significant improvements across several domains of cognition, communication and mood in response to treatment. Conclusions: Sleep and wake disorders after TBI are pervasive, and can negatively impact rehabilitation and recovery. There is a need for systematic evaluation and intervention for these disorders in all persons with TBI. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Witherow, Katherine | Levin, Ben | Research Use and the Impact in Secondary Schools | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2011-06 | The purpose of this research was to learn more about the ways that school and system leaders, access, engage with, share, and use research in their work. This research began with a framework developed by Levin (2004) and similar framing by Nutley et al (2007) suggesting that knowledge and use of research in schools depends on characteristics of the research itself (such as accessibility and perceived quality), characteristics of the educators and context (research background, interest level, supporting processes and structures) and the role of third party facilitators (such as professional media, experts, professional development providers) as distributors of knowledge. This study is meant to add to our understanding of the way research is taken up in secondary schools and districts by replicating and extending the recent work by Levin et al (2009) in a research study conducted with the Canadian Education Association (CEA) and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) entitled, “Research Use and its Impact in Secondary Education”. In general, educators, like other professionals, have relatively limited direct knowledge of current research and rely on versions of research findings that they encounter in their daily work or from colleagues (Levin et al, 2009). This study examined the processes and practices in place within secondary schools and across a district school board to determine the facilitators and barriers to research use. The study addressed the following research questions: 1. How do secondary school leaders access and use relevant research findings? 2. What are the main perceived barriers to the use of research by secondary school leaders? 3. In what ways does the school district support or hinder the use of research? These questions were designed to focus on the dynamics at the district level and the organizational capacity for knowledge mobilization. Data were collected through an online anonymous survey and semi-structured interviews. The online survey suggests that educators have a high regard for research in their professional practice, and that there is an array of opportunities for teachers and school administrators to engage with research. And, according to the respondents, the greatest challenge is finding the time to access the research. The findings also reveal that the although there is a high regard for research, research is generally not a priority in secondary schools and practice is based more on knowledge gained from colleagues or personal experience than from evidence-based research. The thesis concluded that there are many factors that both enable and hinder engagement with research and research use. Findings include the importance of culture and context of the school, the relationship between leaders’ actions and expectations and practice, relevancy of research to practice, the role of facilitation, the use of technology, and starting small to build a critical mass of teachers engaging with and using research in their practice. | EDD | educat | 4 |
| Withrow, Diana Robin | Marrett, Loraine D||Pole, Jason D | Cancer Survival in First Nation and Métis Adults in Canada: Follow-up of the 1991 Census Mortality Cohort | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2016-06 | Internationally, Indigenous persons tend to have poorer cancer survival than their non-Indigenous peers. Measuring cancer survival among Indigenous populations presents a particular set of challenges owing largely to their small share of the population and a lack of reliable and valid ethnic identifiers in cancer registries and vital statistics registries. The objectives of this thesis were to explore these challenges and how they are or are not overcome internationally, to produce the first Canada-wide estimates of cancer survival for First Nations and MĂŠtis, and to estimate the extent to which different methods of measuring cancer survival yield different results in this application. The systematic review conducted to achieve the first objective revealed that the majority of studies of this topic internationally use a cause-specific approach to measuring survival and that despite common threats to validity posed by information biases, rarely discussed these risks or their potential consequences. Data from the 1991 Census Mortality Cohort, a linkage of the 1991 Long Form Census to the Canadian Cancer Registry and the Canadian Mortality Database through to 2009, were used to accomplish the second and third objectives. Compared to non-Aboriginal cohort members, First Nation and MĂŠtis people had poorer survival for nearly all of the most common cancers and the disparity remained after taking differences in income and rurality into account. The differences in results yielded by common methods for survival analysis were shown to vary depending on the population, the type of cancer and whether survival itself or survival disparities were being measured. Taken together, this work advances our knowledge of cancer disparities between First Nation, MĂŠtis and non-Aboriginal people in Canada and our understanding of how the data and methods we use impact the magnitude of disparities we measure. | Ph.D. | rural | 11 |
| Wonch, Kathleen Elizabeth | Fleming, Alison S | Responsiveness to Infant Cues in Postpartum Depressed and Non-Depressed Mothers: Functional Neural Correlates and Their Relation to Behaviour | Psychology | 2017-06 | Postpartum depression (PPD) is the most common maternal birth complication, affecting approximately 5-20% of women. PPD disrupts the normal repertoire of parenting abilities and is thought to have long-term consequences for the developing infant, even after the mothers’ depression remits. Despite its prevalence and potentially enduring effects, we understand very little about the neural correlates of PPD. Recent evidence suggests that postpartum depression (PPD) is associated with reduced amygdala (AMY) response to negative stimuli. However, given the anhedonic features of PPD, it is also important to consider the brain response of depressed mothers specifically to positive infant stimuli and to other positively valenced stimuli. In the current work, mothers with clinically determined PPD (n=31) and without PPD (n=23) viewed smiling pictures of infants (both their own and other), and positive non-infant stimuli during an fMRI. Four studies were completed which examined: 1) multidimensional measures such as current parenting stress, early experiences (e.g., being parented themselves as well as experiences of trauma), current mood and anxiety levels, and relationship satisfaction to better characterize our sample of mothers with and without PPD, 2) PPD and Non-PPD mothers’ response to infants and other positive non-infant stimuli, using AMY region-of-interest as well as amygdala connectivity analyses, 3) subregion-level differences in AMY response and connectivity during the viewing of infant and non-infant stimuli 4) whether and/or how behavioural measures of maternal sensitivity and responsiveness (quality of mother-infant interaction) relate to brain response in the AMY as a whole as well as at the subregion level. Knowing how a depressed mother’s brain responds to her own and other infants is critical as many of the symptoms of PPD focus on the mother-infant dyad and involve a subjective evaluation of one’s parenting abilities. This work adds to the existing literature that examines the brain response of mothers with PPD to various stimuli. Furthermore, it has the long-term potential to inform treatment and intervention programs designed for PPD. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Wong, Alan | Rini, James | Receptor Binding Domains and Coronavirus Adaptation and Evolution | Biochemistry | 2018-06 | Coronaviruses are enveloped RNA viruses that cause respiratory diseases in humans and other animals. The continued circulation of human coronaviruses and the large reservoir of non-human coronaviruses that have the potential to infect humans represent a significant health concern. Similar to other RNA viruses, coronaviruses are characterized by a high mutation rate, and evolution and adaptation has accompanied the diversification of coronaviruses. The coronavirus spike protein is a viral membrane protein involved in host receptor binding and fusion of the viral and host cell membranes. Reported here is work performed on the spike proteins of two human common cold causing coronaviruses: HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43. Specifically, the X-ray crystal structures of the following were determined: i) the receptor binding domain (RBD) of the S-protein of HCoV-229E in complex with human aminopeptidase N (hAPN) and ii) the carbohydrate binding domain (CBD) of the S-protein of HCoV-OC43 in complex with 9-O-Acetyl-N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5,9Ac2). In addition, viral sequence analysis, binding studies, and comparative sequence and structural analysis among closely related coronaviruses were performed. The observation that the greatest variability shown by natural viral isolates of HCoV-229E is located in the receptor binding loops is quite surprising from a receptor binding standpoint. However, this observation suggests that the receptor binding region is changing due to viral selection. Indeed, our results indicate that the optimization of receptor binding affinity and/or immune evasion, two known determinants of viral fitness, are operative in the emergence of new viral isolates. Although less well characterized at this point, natural viral sequence variation at or near the carbohydrate binding site of HCoV-OC43 is also observed, an indication that similar selection pressures are operative. Together, our results provide mechanistic insights into coronavirus adaptation and evolution. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Wong, Anson Sze Tat | Park, Chul B. | In Situ Observation of Plastic Foaming under Static Condition, Extensional Flow and Shear Flow | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2012-06 | Traditional blowing agents (e.g., hydrochlorofluorocarbons) in plastic foaming processes has been phasing out due to environmental regulations. Plastic foaming industry is forced to employ greener alternatives (e.g., carbon dioxide, nitrogen), but their foaming processes are technologically challenging. Moreover, to improve the competitiveness of the foaming industry, it is imperative to develop a new generation of value-added plastic foams with cell structures that can be tailored to different applications. In this context, the objective of this thesis is to achieve a thorough understanding on cell nucleation and growth phenomena that determine cell structures in plastic foaming processes. The core research strategy is to develop innovative visualization systems to capture and study these phenomena. A system with accurate heating and cooling control has been developed to observe and study crystallization-induced foaming behaviors of polymers under static conditions. The cell nucleation and initial growth behavior of polymers blown with different blowing agents (nitrogen, argon and helium, and carbon dioxide-nitrogen mixtures) have also been investigated in great detail. Furthermore, two innovative systems have been developed to simulate the dynamic conditions in industrial foaming processes: one system captures a foaming process under an easily adjustable and uniform extensional strain in a high temperature and pressure environment, while the other achieves the same target, but with shear strain. Using these systems, the extensional and shear effects on bubble nucleation and initial growth processes has been investigated independently in an isolated manner, which has never been achieved previously. The effectiveness of cell nucleating agents has also been evaluated under dynamic conditions, which have led to the identification of new foaming mechanisms based on polymer-chain alignment and generation of microvoids under stress. Knowledge generated from these researches and the wide range of future studies made possible by the visualization systems will be valuable to the development of innovative plastic foaming technologies and foams. | PhD | industr, environment | 9, 13 |
| Wong, Christina | L'Abbe, Mary R | The Prevalence and Consumer Attitudes and Understanding of Nutrient Content and Disease Risk Reduction Claims: Evaluating the Implementation of Nutrition-related Claims on Foods in Canada | Nutritional Sciences | 2015-06 | An amendment to the Food and Drugs Regulations in 2002 made nutrition labelling mandatory (i.e. the Nutrition Facts table, NFt), formally regulated nutrient content (NC) claims and permitted the first five disease risk reduction (DRR) claims to be used on food labels in Canada. These changes were presented as a population-wide public health intervention to help consumers make healthier food choices. To this date, the implementation of nutrition-related claims has received little evaluation compared to the NFt. This thesis comprises four studies aimed at evaluating the implementation of Canadian regulations on nutrition-related claims. Study 1 uses the largest national database of Canadian food label information to estimate the prevalence of NC and DRR claims in Canada. Studies 2 to 4 evaluate consumer attitudes and understanding of a variety of permitted Canadian nutrition-related claims, including NC and DRR claims on sodium, plant sterols and oat fibre. Results show that consumers are exposed most often to NC claims that only describe the level of the nutrient and do not mention health. Therefore, the onus is on the consumer to know the claimed nutrient's health benefits. The consumer studies demonstrate that consumers respond more positively to any nutrition-related claim (NC, function and DRR) compared to a control claim on taste. The manner in which consumers respond to different types of nutrition-related claims depends highly on contextual factors, such as familiarity of the claim and the product carrier, and therefore attitudes and understanding of claims are not generalizable. Depending on familiarity, NC claims can perform as well as DRR claims or less so, but the criteria to carry these claims differ substantially. These studies demonstrate that the current implementation of nutrition-related claims in Canada is not optimized to help Canadians identify healthier food choices. Based on the study results, potential recommendations to improve implementation are discussed. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Wong, Fiona | Wania, Frank ||Bidleman, Terry F. | Air-Surface Exchange of Persistent Organic Pollutants in North America | Chemistry | 2010-11 | This thesis examines the air-soil and air-water gas exchange of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) with emphasis on organochlorine pesticides (OCPs). The current status of net exchange, factors which influence the exchange process, and different approaches used to estimate the surface exchange were explored. The net exchange of chemicals was evaluated using the fugacity approach, with the aid of chemical tracers (congener profiles of complex mixtures and enantiomer proportions of chiral chemicals) to infer current use vs. legacy sources to the atmosphere. DDT in southern Mexico was undergoing net deposition from air to soil. Occurrence of fresher DDT residues in the south was indicated by a higher proportion of p,p’-DDT relative to p,p’-DDE and racemic o,p’-DDT in air and soils. Congener profiles of toxaphene suggested soil emissions as the source to air. The influence of chemical aging on soil-air exchange and bioaccessibility was studied in a high organic soil. The use of nonexhaustive extraction with hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin (HPCD) to predict bioaccessibility was optimized for OCPs and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Reduced volatility of spiked chemicals correlated with reduced HPCD extractability for soil that had been aged under indoor and outdoor conditions for 730 d and infers volatility could be used as a surrogate for bioaccessibility. Measured soil-air partition coefficients (Ksa) were lower than those predicted from the Karickhoff relationship, which considers octanol as a surrogate for soil organic matter. The role of soil moisture, organic carbon, temperature, depth of soil surface horizon and dissolved organic carbon in the fate of organic contaminants in soil were assessed using chemical partitioning space maps. These maps allow instant visual prediction of the phase distribution and transport process of a chemical among the three major phases in soil; i.e., air, water and solid. Net volatilization of alpha-hexachlorocyclohexane from water to air was found in the southern Beaufort Sea using fugacity calculations and flux measurements. The influence of ice cover on volatilization was indicated by a winter-summer shift from racemic to nonracemic alpha-HCH in boundary layer air. | PhD | water, pollut | 6, 13 |
| Wong, Jenny Pui Shan | Abbatt, Jonathan P. D. | Role of Water in the Formation, Transformation and Fate of Secondary Organic Aerosol | Chemistry | 2015-06 | Particle-phase water is the most abundant atmospheric aerosol constituent, yet the importance of water for the formation, transformation and fate of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) remains not fully characterized. In order to address this knowledge gap, this thesis explores the role of water in SOA formation, chemical aging and fate as cloud condensation nuclei. The formation of SOA from the photooxidation of isoprene in the presence of various sulfate seed particles was investigated using a flow tube reactor. Under constant environmental conditions, particle-phase water was found to have the largest effect on the amount of SOA formed where this additional organic material was highly oxidized, likely arising from enhanced uptake of organic acids due to their high water solubility. The amount of high molecular weight compounds increases with acidity, suggesting the role of acidity in governing organic composition. The relative humidity (RH) dependence of SOA aging by photolysis was examined using particles containing water-soluble α-pinene SOA material in an environmental chamber at three RH conditions (5, 45 and 85 %). Photolysis led to substantial mass loss where the rate of mass loss increased with increasing RH, suggesting that moisture-induced changes in SOA phase have implications to particle reactivity. Aging of ambient SOA sampled at Whistler, British Columbia found that aging by both gas and aqueous-phase OH increased the degree of oxygenation and CCN activity of the organic material, confirming the hypothesis that there is a simple relationship between the hygroscopicity of organic aerosol and its oxygen-to-carbon ratio. Addition of various types of organic material onto sulfate particles resulted in the suppression of water uptake during droplet growth. Experiments using sulfate particles with different acidity suggest that high molecular weight compounds, formed via acid-catalyzed condensed phase reactions, are the species affecting water uptake kinetics. | Ph.D. | water, pollut | 6, 13 |
| Wong, Josephine Pui-Hing | Poland, Blake ||McDonough, Peggy ||Fusco, Caroline | Being-doing-becoming Manly Men: A Bourdieusian Exploration of the Construction of Masculine Identities and Sexual Practices of Young Men | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2011-06 | Dominant discourses on youth sexual health construct young people as at-risk subjects who engage in risky behaviours due to ignorance or poor decision-making. This dissertation challenges the prevailing assumption embedded in these discourses that young people’s sexual behaviours are based on individual rational choices. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice and R. W. Connell’s notion of hegemonic masculinity, this dissertation uses an interpretive approach to analyze the narratives and resonant texts of 24 young men in Toronto. It explores how young men construct and perform their masculine identities in the context of their socio-spatial environment; it also examines the strategies that young men use to compete for cultural capital and dominant positions in the homosocial and (hetero)erotic fields. The analysis yields a number of findings. First, it shows that gender identity is a state of being-doing-becoming. Guided by their gender-class-race habituses, young men engage in an unceasing process of defining, affirming, declaring, and validating not only their sense of who they are (self-identity) and where they belong (collective identity), but also the boundary that differentiates the ‘Self’ from the ‘Other’. Second, there is a dialectical relationship between the young men’s masculine habituses and their sexual practices. While all the young men engaged in hegemonic masculine practices to gain ‘respect’ from their peers, their practices varied according to their classes and ethnoracial backgrounds. At the same time, their (hetero)erotic practices are intricately intertwined with their homosocial practices, whereby the intra-group masculine expectations coupled with the broad hegemonic masculine discourses assert significant influences on their interactions with both young women and other young men. Finally, hetero-guy-talk constitutes an important everyday social interaction in which young men actively engage in the (re)production and/or resistance of hegemonic masculine discourses and practices. These results suggest that effective sexual health promotion (SHP) must go beyond the focus on individual sexual behaviours to address the historical, cultural, economic, and political contexts that shape the collective sexual health practices of young men. Furthermore, it may be useful to explore ‘hetero-guy-talk’ as an important ‘third’ space where young men are invited to interrogate and resist misogynist, masculinist, and homophobic practices and be supported to engage in humanizing sexual practices. | PhD | health, gender, women | 3, 5 |
| Wong, Julia Man Wai | Jenkins, David J. A. | Colonic Fermentation, Equol Status and the Hypocholesterolemic Effect of Soy | Nutritional Sciences | 2009-11 | Background: The value of soy, as an effective component of a cholesterol lowering diet, is currently questioned due to smaller lipid reductions than previously reported for the currently approved US FDA health claim for soy. Nevertheless, intrinsic and extrinsic factors may exist that influence the effectiveness of soy, but little research has been done in this area. Such factors include the soy isoflavone content, dietary components that alter colonic fermentation and the colon’s ability to biotransform isoflavones (i.e. equol status). Objective: To determine if specific factors, such as dose of soy isoflavones and those that alter colonic fermentation, influence the hypocholesterolemic effect of soy. Furthermore, whether cholesterol reductions differ depending on the interindividual variation in isoflavone biotransformation (i.e. equol status), when soy is consumed under different dietary conditions (i.e. with specific factors). Methods: 85 men and postmenopausal women (42M, 43F) with hyperlipidemia participated in one of three substudies where soy foods, containing 30-52g/d of soy protein, were provided over a one-month period under the following conditions: 1) high-normal (73mg/d) or low (10mg/d) soy isoflavones (N=41); 2) with or without a prebiotic (10g/d polyfructans) to increase colonic fermentation (N=22); or 3) with a reduced carbohydrate diet (26% of calories) to decrease colonic fermentation (N=22). Results: Unmodified soy foods significantly reduced LDL-C by 5.1%±2.0% (P=0.016). LDL-C reductions were not altered with increased soy isoflavone content nor were the effects dampened with reduced carbohydrate. However, coingestion of soy with a prebiotic improved the cholesterol lowering effect of soy. Equol producers (N=30) showed a relative increase of 5.3±2.5% in HDL-C (P=0.035) after soy compared to nonproducers (N=55), but no significant differences were observed for LDL-C or other lipids. Equol excretion was increased with increased soy isoflavone content, but not with the addition of a prebiotic. Conclusion: The effectiveness of soy, as a cholesterol lowering food, may be improved with the addition of prebiotics, but not with decreased carbohydrate or increased isoflavones. Equol status appears to alter the HDL-C, but not the LDL-C response. These data support the continued use of soy foods as part of the dietary approach to coronary heart disease risk reduction. | PhD | consum, nutrition, health | 2, 3, 12 |
| Woo, Gloria | Krahn, Murray | Evolving Paradigms in the Treatment of Hepatitis B | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2010-11 | Hepatitis B is a serious global health problem with over 2 billion people infected worldwide and 350 million suffering from chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection. Infection can lead to chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) accounting for 320,000 deaths per year. Numerous treatments are available, but with a growing number of therapies each with considerable trade-offs, the optimal treatment strategy is not transparent. This dissertation investigates the relative efficacy of treatments for CHB and estimates the health related quality of life (HRQOL) and health utilities of mild to advanced CHB patients. A systematic review of published randomized controlled trials comparing surrogate outcomes for the first year of treatment was performed. Bayesian mixed treatment comparison meta-analysis was used to synthesize odds ratios, including 95% credible intervals and predicted probabilities of each outcome comparing all currently available treatments in HBeAg-positive and/or HBeAg-negative CHB patients. Among HBeAg-positive patients, tenofovir and entecavir were most effective, while in HBeAg-negative patients, tenofovir was the treatment of choice. Health state utilities and HRQOL for patients with CHB stratified by disease stage were elicited from patients attending tertiary care clinics at the University Health Network in Toronto. Respondents completed the standard gamble, EQ5D, Health Utilities Index Mark 3 (HUI3), Short-Form 36 version-2 and a demographics survey in their preferred language of English, Cantonese or Mandarin. Patient charts were accessed to determine disease stage and co-morbidities. The study included 433 patients of which: 294 had no cirrhosis, 79 had compensated cirrhosis, 7 had decompensated cirrhosis, 23 had HCC and 30 had received liver transplants. Mean standard gamble utilities were 0.89, 0.87, 0.82, 0.84 and 0.86 for the respective disease stages. HRQOL in CHB patients was only impaired at later stages of disease. Neither chronic infection nor antiviral treatment lowered HRQOL. Patients with CHB do not experience lower HRQOL as seen in patients with hepatitis C. The next step in this area of research is to incorporate the estimates synthesized by the current studies into a decision model evaluating the cost-effectiveness of treatment to provide guidance on the optimal therapy for patients with HBeAg-positive and HBeAg-negative CHB. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Wood, Peter | Balsillie, David | Public Forests, Private Governance: The Role of Provincial Governments in FSC Forest Certification | Forestry | 2009-06 | This dissertation examines changes that companies made in order to obtain Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification in the Canadian provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec, and the role that provincial governments have played in the implementation of this emerging market-based form of governance. It analyzes the indirect roles that governments have played in either encouraging or inhibiting the adoption of certification through their policies, as well as the direct roles played in response to particular certification attempts that occurred on public land. Through the use of case studies of individual operations in each province, the interaction between state and non-state authority is explored, as well as the role that forest tenure played in each operation’s ability to obtain certification. The results reveal that the changes required to obtain certification were substantial but associated with only a small subset of the FSC’s Principles and Criteria, heavily weighted towards environmental issues. While corrective action requests are issued to the company pursuing certification, the results show that non-exclusive tenure limits a company’s ability to respond to these requests without the cooperation of the provincial government and resource users with overlapping tenure rights. However, limited duration of forest tenure does not preclude certification, and for the most part, provincial governments are found to play important facilitative roles in certification, both through their policies and regulations, and as providers of information and technical support. Further, the majority of the corrective actions were not required to be implemented prior to certification being awarded, but within the five year term of the certificate. This appears to have acted as a flexibility mechanism, allowing the certification system to secure the participation of companies in the short term, with the hope of leveraging greater change in the long term from the company, the government in question, and other resource users with overlapping tenure rights. | PhD | environment, forest, governance | 13, 15, 16 |
| Woodall, Lora | Hewitt, James | Transitioning to Online Education in the Caribbean: The UWI Open Campus | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2011-06 | As a result of the increasing demand for tertiary education in many developing countries, institutions are seeking ways to increase educational access in difficult economic times. This paper describes the development of the University of the West Indies Open Campus as the mechanism for online distance education delivery to students across sixteen islands in the Caribbean region. The shift from the use of print based distance education to online education was examined from the perspectives of the administration, the instructors and the students in order to determine which factors were important for a successful transition. Factors examined included institutional context, vision, curriculum, organizational structure, finances, leadership, stakeholder attitudes towards online courses, staff training, student support and programme quality. The study also examined whether online education could promote a regional cultural identity. The research design used was a qualitative single case study with multiple data sources including archival records, semi-structured interviews and online surveys. Research findings indicate that implementing online education requires a deep understanding of the institutional context, clear vision, effective leadership, understanding attitudes towards online education and the provision of effective student support mechanisms. Context and aspects of culture (specifically communication) emerged as important factors that strongly influenced the transition, both pedagogically and in terms of the organizational culture and structure required to support online education. A lack of communication resulted in staff resistance both internally and externally. Communication was also the major stumbling block in the pedagogical changes required for online teaching and learning. Both students and instructors found teaching and learning online more difficult than in traditional classes as a result of the differences in communication modes between online classes and the wider culture. Students in online classes specifically desired the immediate feedback available in face-to-face classes and indicated a strong preference for blended learning. The study presents some suggestions for successful transitions and provides support for institutions preparing to use online education as a mode of distance education delivery, especially in the Caribbean context. | PhD | educat | 4 |
| Woods, Gwen | Simpson, Andre | Structural Characterization of Freshwater Dissolved Organic Matter from Arctic and Temperate Climates Using Novel Analytical Approaches | Chemistry | 2012-03 | Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is comprised of a complex array of molecular constituents that are linked to many globally-relevant processes and yet this material is still largely molecularly uncharacterized. Research presented here attempted to probe the molecular complexity of this material from both Arctic and temperate climates via multifaceted and novel approaches. DOM collected from remote Arctic watersheds provided evidence to suggest that permafrost-disturbed systems contain more photochemically- and biologically-labile material than undisturbed systems. These results have large implications for predicted increasing temperatures where widespread permafrost melt would significantly impact stores of organic carbon in polar environments. In attempting to address the complexities and reactivity of DOM within global environments, more information at the molecular-level is necessary. Further research sought to unravel the molecularly uncharacterized fraction via use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy in conjunction with hyphenated and varied analytical techniques. Directly hyphenated high performance size exclusion chromatography (HPSEC) with NMR was explored. This hyphenation was found to separate DOM into structurally distinct fractions but proved limited at reducing DOM heterogeneity. Of the many high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) techniques tested, hydrophilic interaction chromatography (HILIC) was found the most effective at simplifying DOM. HILIC separations utilizing a sample from Florida resulted in fractions with highly resolved NMR signals and substantial reduction in heterogeneity. Further development with a 2D-HILIC/HILIC system to achieve additional fractionation was employed. This method produced fractions of DOM that were homogenous enough to produce excellent resolution and spectral dispersion, permitting 2D and 3D NMR experiments to be performed. Extensive NMR analyses of these fractions demonstrated strong evidence for the presence of highly oxidized sterols. All fractions, however, provided 2D NMR spectra consistent with oxidized polycyclic structures and support emerging data and hypotheses suggesting that cyclic structures, likely derived from terpenoids, are an abundant, refractory and major component of DOM. Research presented within this thesis demonstrates that HILIC and NMR are excellent co-techniques for the analysis of DOM as well as that oxidized sterols and other cyclic components with significant hydroxyl and carboxyl substituents are major constituents in DOM. | PhD | water, climate, environment | 6, 13 |
| Wootten, Sarah E. | Gillis, J. Roy | Correlates of Well-Being Following Anti-LGBT Trauma or Discrimination | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-11 | Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals continue to experience anti-LGBT trauma and discrimination. However, relatively little is known about the well-being of these individuals despite experiencing anti-LGBT events. Using multiple regression and mediation analyses, this study assessed the correlates and mediators of the following positive psychology character strengths, including coping styles, authenticity of LGBT identity, level of belonging to the LGBT community, perceived levels of available emotional social support, the degree of centrality of an anti-LGBT event to identity, and disclosure and concealment of sexual orientation or gender identity to determine levels of overall well-being. This study also measured the severity of the anti-LGBT event and overall distress. Participants, recruited online, included 168 LGBT-identified individuals who reported having experienced anti-LGBT trauma or discrimination based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity. Problem-focused coping and emotional support were positive correlates of well-being. Avoidant coping, distress, and centrality were negative correlates of well-being. Further, higher levels of problem-focused coping, lower levels of overall distress, and higher levels of perceived availability of emotional support were all found to be significant partial mediators of the relationship between the centrality of the anti-LGBT event to identity and overall well-being. These findings suggest that by helping individuals (1) gain a greater sense of control over their lives, (2) reconceptualise the anti-LGBT event as less central to their narrative, and (3) create meaning, that mental health providers may help to increase overall well-being of LGBT individuals following anti-LGBT events. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Wray, Heather | Andrews, C Robert | Air Sparging and Pre-coagulation on Ultrafiltration Fouling and Pharmaceutical Retention | Civil Engineering | 2014-06 | This research examined pre-coagulation and air sparging (surface shear stress) as fouling control strategies for ultrafiltration (UF) membranes during drinking water treatment of natural water matrices. In addition to fouling control, these treatment strategies were also examined with respect to any added benefit for the retention of organic micropollutants. A low coagulant dose (0.5 mg/L) was identified as optimum for biopolymer (foulant) removal, based on a point of diminishing returns analysis in three natural water matrices. This dose resulted in lower or equivalent fouling relative to a dose of 15 mg/L while providing similar retention of organic micropollutants (up to 40%). At pilot-scale, a 0.5 mg/L coagulant dose resulted in lower fouling (up to 77%) when compared to a 6 mg/L dose, while providing a similar reduction (up to 14%) of DBP formation. Shear stress at the membrane surface, associated with varying air sparging conditions, was found to significantly reduce UF fouling for all waters investigated. Fouling reduction was most pronounced in waters with higher concentrations of organics and biopolymers, as shear stress was determined to decrease the fouling rate via back-transport of biopolymers from the membrane surface, preventing or slowing their deposition. The greatest fouling reduction was achieved with shear stress representative of large, pulse bubble (>100 mL) air sparging. With respect to fouling control, the potential for significant cost savings (up to $1 million/year for a 100 MGD treatment plant) was observed with the application of either pulse bubble sparging or low coagulant dose (0.5 mg/L), based on fouling reduction and longer membrane run times between backwashes, leading to increased water production. In addition to fouling control, pulse bubble sparging may also significantly increase the retention of organic micropollutants by UF membranes, by reducing cake-enhanced concentration polarization at the membrane surface. | Ph.D. | water, pollut, production | 6, 12, 13 |
| Wu, Chin-Yen | Ruddick, Susan M. | The Spatiality of Social Identities: Taiwanese Migrant Women Practice Everyday Spaces in Toronto | Geography | 2008-11 | What part does migration play in the construction and reconstruction of social identity? What kind of social relations are produced and reproduced through the migration process? What are the manifestations of power involved in the process of constructing and negotiating social identities through space? These are the central questions in this research. This research not only draws upon current literature on migrant women, but also expands it to address the complexity of construction of social identities and places through migration processes by incorporating critical social theories and feminist geography into the research. I examine embodied geographical experiences and the geography of emotions, by looking at current Taiwanese migrant women’s everyday practices in Toronto. This research provides concrete examples – from a substantial sample of individuals – to support feminist geographers’ arguments on women’s experiences in space. I employ Bourdieu’s concept of habitus to illustrate how personal and private space is constructed and reconstructed by a complex interplay between different discourses and practices, and how new spaces and practices are created for new identity claims. I also examine how the dynamics of habitus shifts through displacement. By looking at the generative aspect of habitus, this research extends the existing scope of the notion of habitus. Collecting more than 125 hours of in-depth interviews with Taiwanese migrant women in Toronto, I examine multidimensional re-configurations of the everyday practices of Taiwanese migrant women in Toronto. Research findings regarding the hidden geography of everyday language practice, the reconstruction of food culture and the exploration of culinary practice, the negotiation of home practice, and the creation of new spaces for new identity claims provide a complicated picture that grasps the contingency and fluidity of identity construction. In addition to concepts of ‘third space’ and ‘paradoxical space,’ my research shows that metaphoric expressions, what I call ‘glass wall’, ‘comfort zone’, ‘unlocked spaces’, ‘dialogical space’ and ‘provocative space’ are important to unveil dynamic pictures of geographical experiences along migration. Indeed, space plays an integral role in the making of social identity. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Wu, Gang | Yaffe, Martin | Image Quality of Digital Breast Tomosynthesis: Optimization in Image Acquisition and Reconstruction | Medical Biophysics | 2014-06 | Breast cancer continues to be the most frequently diagnosed cancer in Canadian women. Currently, mammography is the clinically accepted best modality for breast cancer detection and the regular use of screening has been shown to contribute to the reduced mortality. However, mammography suffers from several drawbacks which limit its sensitivity and specificity. As a potential solution, digital breast tomosynthesis (DBT) uses a limited number (typically 10-20) of low-dose x-ray projections to produce a three-dimensional tomographic representation of the breast. The reconstruction of DBT images is challenged by such incomplete sampling. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the effect of image acquisition parameters on image quality of DBT for various reconstruction techniques and to optimize these, with three specific goals: A) Develop a better power spectrum estimator for detectability calculation as a task-based image quality index; B) Develop a paired-view algorithm for artifact removal in DBT reconstruction; and C) Increase dose efficiency in DBT by reducing random noise. A better power spectrum estimator was developed using a multitaper technique, which yields reduced bias and variance in estimation compared to the conventional moving average method. This gives us an improved detectability measurement with finer frequency steps. The paired-view scheme in DBT reconstruction provides better image quality than the commonly used sequential method. A simple ordering like the “side-to-side” method can achieve less artifact and higher image quality in reconstructed slices. The new denoising algorithm developed was applied to the projection views acquired in DBT before reconstruction. The random noise was markedly removed while the anatomic details were maintained. With the help of this artifact-removal technique used in reconstruction and the denoising method employed on the projection views, the image quality of DBT is enhanced and lesions should be more readily detectable. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Wu, Hantian | Hayhoe, Ruth | China's Outward-Oriented Higher Education Internationalization: A Multidimensional Analysis and an Empirical Inquiry into the Views of International Students | Theory and Policy Studies in Education | 2017-11 | This study investigates China’s present situation of shifting from a mainly inward-oriented higher education internationalization to a more balanced approach, and the existing gaps between China’s goals of using outward-oriented higher education internationalization to enhance its international influence and status in the world knowledge system, also the challenges it faces in the response to this approach. According to a new typology proposed by the author, “outward-oriented higher education internationalization” refers to the process of exporting/introducing domestic knowledge, culture, higher education models and norms, and educational philosophies to the world through higher education internationalization primarily for the sake of enhancing worldwide influence. This study examines the three major dimensions of China’s outward-oriented HE internationalization: 1) Cultural diplomacy based on Sino-foreign higher education collaboration (i.e. the Confucius Institute program), 2) international development aid for higher education in developing countries, and 3) international student recruitment at the higher education level. The theoretical framework of this study is developed based on several interrelated neo-Marxist theories and concepts including dependency theory, the center-periphery model, and world-system theory, as well as the notions of soft power, public diplomacy, and knowledge diplomacy. China’s outward-oriented higher education internationalization can be understood as a reciprocally beneficial instrument used by the Chinese government for enhancing its international status, as it attempts to move from the periphery to the center of the world knowledge system. Using the problem approach in comparative education developed by Brian Holmes, a post-positivist methodology is developed. One part of it constitutes an exploratory survey of international graduate students in English instruction programs in education-related majors in three Chinese universities to explore their attitudes towards China’s related strategies, as well as policy formulation and implementation. This unique population is selected due to their “triple identity” as 1) foreigners in China and thus outsider observers; 2) international students in Chinese universities and thus policy recipients; and 3) graduate students in education-related majors and thus insiders of this research field. Through both quantitative and qualitative data analysis, this study tests and modifies hypothetical policy solutions developed on the basis of a comprehensive review of relevant literature that makes possible an intellectualization of China’s present challenges and opportunities. | Ed.D. | educat | 4 |
| Wu, Jiahua | Joseph, Milner | Analysis of Sales Processes with Social Interaction | Management | 2014-11 | My thesis work focuses on modeling consumers' decision making under various online contexts with social externalities, and studying the optimal policies and strategies for firms in response. Recent innovations in digital economies bring both opportunity and challenges to practitioners. Firms try to leverage innovations, such as online group buying and social media, to improve their profitability. However, without a clear understanding of how the consumers participate in the process, firms are not able to utilize these innovations to their full potential. My research delves into individuals' decision making under various online contexts, investigating how consumers interact under novel sales mechanisms and how this interaction impacts on firms' profitability. Using the proposed demand models, I then study operational and marketing policies and strategies that can improve the management of various sales processes by firms.In particular, my thesis consists of two projects, namely online group buying and social-influence moderated demand process. I study the group-buying project from two perspectives. First, in Chapter 2, I investigate the information management strategy for group-buying mechanisms from an analytical perspective. Second, I study the effect of thresholds on consumers' sign-up behavior from an empirical perspective in Chapter 3. The empirical study is made possible by a real-time dataset extracted from online group-buying firms, such as Groupon and LivingSocial, using a data crawler built on a major cloud platform. Chapter 4 summarizes the results of the second project, where I study how social-influence moderated demand process, often facilitated by internal and external social media, affects the profitability of a newsvendor-type firm. | Ph.D. | consum, innovation | 9, 12 |
| Xiong, Hui | Kambourov, Gueorgui||Restuccia, Diego | Human Capital and Occupational Mobility | Economics | 2015-03 | This thesis contains three chapters. Chapter 1 uses underutilized SIPP to analyze occupational mobility in the U.S. from 1988 to 2003. I propose two additional mobility rates to do robustness check, with careful treatment of the coding error. I classify all occupational switches into three categories: horizontal, vertical and special. I find horizontal switches dominate the other two in shares; aging decreases mobility while education's role ambiguous. I examine the interaction between occupational mobility and labor market status. Developing an algorithm to extract nonemployment information from SIPP, I find most occupational switchers do not experience nonemployment between jobs, similar to job-changing occupational stayers, but duration variation is less for the former. As time goes by, the job-job mobility fraction declines for both.Chapter 2 utilizes SIPP to uncover additional occupational mobility facts. I find occupational behavior exhibits strong persistence among nonemployed as well as employed workers; occupational switchers do not always switch to an occupation similar to previous one; and average length of transition duration between jobs varies with previous occupation. Motivated by these facts I build a directed search model that includes aggregate and idiosyncratic shocks, occupational human capital and search frictions. The model can account for the bulk of data. I use the model to study relative importance of idiosyncratic vs. aggregate shocks, and barriers to occupational mobility. I find idiosyncratic shocks are much more important than aggregate ones in generating mobility; fixed mobility costs and search frictions constitute significant barriers to mobility while transfer loss of occupational human capital does not.Chapter 3 studies returns to occupational human capital assuming all occupations are distinct and occupational human capital is partially transferable. I name the associated tenure variable "General Occupational Tenure" and propose an empirical Transfer Rate function that relates its transferable portion with occupation distance. Combining SIPP and DOT, I perform a generalized wage regression under 1-, 2-, and 3-digit occupational classifications and find three patterns: returns to General Occupational Tenure demonstrate great variation across occupations; fixed returns generally dominate variable returns; and they are negatively correlated. Finally I generalize the result to a larger family of Transfer Rate functions. | Ph.D. | labour, employment | 8 |
| Xiong, Yan | Yang, Liyan | Essays in Financial Economics | Management | 2019-11 | This thesis consists of three essays on financial markets, product markets, information markets, and their interaction. Chapter 1 offers an introduction of the essays and summarizes the main findings. Chapter 2 studies how product markets shape managerial short-termism (myopia). It shows that under market competition, managerial short-termism may arise endogenously as a means for firms to commit to competing aggressively. Such managerial short-termism is facilitated by financial markets as firms tie their managers' pay to the short-term stock prices. The following two chapters focus on the interaction between financial markets and information markets; both chapters demonstrate that information markets are crucial in determining asset prices and market quality in financial markets. Chapter 3 develops an information-sales model in which investors acquire uncertain skills to interpret purchased data, thereby changing the behavior of data sellers. It leads to several novel results (e.g., price informativeness increases with skill-acquisition costs), which help clarify certain empirical regularities. Chapter 4 examines sales of financial market information in an economy with two information sellers. In equilibrium, the two sellers form either orthogonal or overlapping clientele, depending on the similarity of the information to be sold. When the two sellers' information is very distinct and the sellers have relatively large bargaining power in sharing trading profits, investors' information purchase behavior exhibits complementarity, leading to the possibility of multiple equilibria. | Ph.D. | financial market | 10 |
| Xiu, Lin | Gunderson, Morley | Three Essays on Employment and Compensation in China | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2010-11 | The three essays in this dissertation address two prominent labour market and human resource management issues in contemporary China: gender pay differentials; and pay-performance relationship in managerial compensation. Using three unique data sets, this dissertation examines three areas: the managerial gender pay gap in top corporate jobs; the effect of state ownership and managerial power on CEO compensation; and the gender pay compensation differentials in base pay, performance pay and total pay. | PhD | labour | 8 |
| Xu, Haoyu | Christoffersen, Susan | Two Essays on Financial Markets and Institutional Investors | Management | 2016-11 | My thesis consists two studies on financial markets and institutional investors. In Chapter 2, I study the trades immediately after the market open and immediately before the market close. The trades in the morning positively predict future returns and cause price continuation. The trades in the afternoon negatively predict future returns and cause price reversals. The momentum trading strategies based on morning returns and the reversal trading strategies based on afternoon returns generate significant abnormal returns, which cannot be explained by standard risk factors including momentum and reversal factors. The results provide strong evidence that trades in the morning are mostly information driven and trades in the afternoon are mostly liquidity driven. In Chapter 3, we explore the properties of equity mutual funds that experience a loss of assets after poor performance. We document that both inflows and outflows are less sensitive to performance because performance-sensitive investors leave or decide not to invest after bad performance. Consistent with the idea that attrition measures the sorting of performance-sensitive investors, we find that attrition has less of an impact on the fundâ s flow-performance sensitivity for institutional funds where there is less dispersion in investor performance-sensitivity. Also, attrition has no effect on the flow- performance sensitivity when attrition arises after good performance or investors invest for non-performance reasons. | Ph.D. | trade, financial market | 10 |
| Xu, Huilan | Shi, Xianwen | Essays on Experimentation | Economics | 2019-06 | This thesis studies different directions of experimentation in contests (Chapter 1), experimentation in a principal-agent environment (Chapter 2), and information acquisition during the experimentation process (Chapter 3). While Chapter 1 and Chapter 3 focus on how players choose between different risky arms in different environments, Chapter 2 analyzes how to induce the agent to conduct the efficient amount of experimentation using retention policies. Chapter 1 studies firm innovation in terms of different directions of experimentation, where directions that expedite innovation success are often more costly. In a winner-takes-all contest where player action choices are public, players choose the faster but socially less efficient arms, leading to over-investment in inefficient directions of experimentation. We find that a social planner can restore full efficiency by setting a dynamic reward structure that offers a relatively small share of the prize to the winner initially, when players are still optimistic, and gradually increases the winner's prize share as beliefs drop over time in absence of a success. Finally, while information disclosure makes no difference in a two-armed bandit model winner-takes-all contest, we find that concealing player action choices in a three-armed bandit model improves efficiency. Chapter 2 studies a dynamic principal-agent problem where a principal hires an agent to experiment. We study how the principal can employ a retention policy to induce the agent to make the optimal decision in strategic experimentation, and show that, if the principal cannot commit to a retention policy, efficient experimentation cannot be achieved. However, when the principal can commit to a retention policy upfront, with probationary periods followed by infinite tenure, efficient experimentation can often be achieved. Chapter 3 builds an exponential bandit model with an experimentation arm and an information arm, where the information arm provides positive but inconclusive evidence about the state of the world, to study whether and when an agent would benefit from acquiring information. We find that a pessimistic agent often chooses the information arm as a last-ditch effort before he quits. Moreover, the presence of the information arm induces the agent to experiment more than what he would have otherwise. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| XU, JIELAN | Sorensen, André||Hess, Paul | A Good Place to Age in Place? Exploring the relationships between the built environment, activity participation and healthy aging | Geography | 2018-06 | The concept of aging-in-place has gained growing popularity in public policy. Integrating a planning perspective on this interdisciplinary research topic, this dissertation focuses on the place where people age in place. This dissertation analyzes aging-in-place with a planning perspective, by exploring relationships between the built environment, activity participation and healthy aging in Canada. The first section analyzes spatial patterns and neighborhood contexts of aging-in-place with census data. It categorizes neighborhoods by their age structures, and compares the built environment and housing characteristics between neighborhoods with distinct age-structure types. The second section takes a closer look at aging in a car dependent built environment. By pooling multiple time-use cycles from the General Social Survey, it examines the changing travel behaviors by gender and cohorts, and the differentiated activity participation between car-users and non-car-users over the life course. Results suggest that a large percentage of neighborhoods in Canada are at the mature-stage (characterized by a high percentage of residents in the baby boomer cohorts). These neighborhoods tend to age steadily and have highly car-dependent built environments. Automobility remains important over the life course for each generations of Canadians, yet older females are more likely to travel by active modes and by transit than are their male counterparts in each cohort. Increased participation gaps (in shopping and obtaining services, active sports, socializing and social participation) are found between car users and non-car-users in older age. Shopping and obtaining services stands out as the most car-dependent activity for older Canadians. Examining the existing neighbourhood contexts of aging-in-place and the current patterns of activity participation among the aging populations is important for developing practical planning visions of a good place for aging-in-place. This dissertation is a preliminary exploration on this interdisciplinary research topic. With extensive analysis of survey data across Canada, this study integrates a planning perceptive and provides original insights on the academic discussion of aging-in-place. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| XU, Jixian | Sargent, Edward H | Materials interface engineering in perovskite photovoltaics | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2017-06 | Solar photovoltaics (PV) offer a sustainable solution to the daunting challenge of meeting the global energy demand. Perovskite solar cells, whose high efficiencies are attainable via low-cost and high-throughput solution processing, are an emerging technology that has captivated the PV research community. Further advances in efficiency are limited by the abundant interfaces that make up these polycrystalline devices. Important issues in perovskite device operation, such as instability and hysteresis, arise from perovskitesâ ionic nature, and need to be addressed for this technology to fulfill its potential. In this thesis, I explore interfaces within perovskite devices: grain boundaries, and electron- and hole-extraction junctions. With the aid of density functional theory (DFT) simulations and nano-probe characterization, I provide insight into the origins of defect formation and hysteresis. By leveraging these findings, I demonstrate control of film growth conditions and interface materials chemistry to create new device architectures with improved performance. The DFT-based analysis of defect formation energies identifies the key defects (Pb atom substituted by I, known as antisites) and indicates that films grown under iodine-rich conditions are prone to forming deep electronic traps. This finding motivated my exploration of a new precursor (anhydrate lead acetate) for device-quality films. I then report the first perovskite-PCBM hybrid solid. Here, I find that PCBM, when it infiltrates throughout the grain boundaries and electron-extraction interfaces, suppresses hysteresis in devices. Materials characterization and DFT simulations reveal the PCBM-perovskite interaction: the PCBM passivates the key defects during the perovskite self-assembly. Using conductive AFM, I reveal the memristive properties of perovskite films and identify the major origin of hysteresis as ion, especially halide, migration. I close by developing the first crosslinked hole-extraction top contact with the goal of obviating degradation of the underlying perovskite. A remote-doping strategy introduces the needed hole conductivity. The new top contact produces an insoluble and heat-resistant protecting interlayer that is band-aligned with the perovskite. The resultant family of devices is hysteresis-free, with fill factors exceeding 80% and resilience to thermal stresses that exceed 100Ë C, conditions under which conventionally-contacted devices fail. This top contact methodology also paves the way for building multi-junction devices on top of the perovskite cell. I close this work by offering a roadmap for future improvements in perovskite photovoltaics. | Ph.D. | resilien, solar, energy | 7 |
| Xu, Junshi | Hatzopoulou, Marianne | Individual and Environmental Determinants of Traffic Emissions and Near-road Air Quality | Civil Engineering | 2020-06 | On-road motor vehicles are responsible for a considerable proportion of near-road air pollution. While background levels of air pollutants are continuously tracked by regional monitoring networks, assessing near-road air quality remains a challenge in urban areas with complex built environments, traffic composition, and meteorological variation, leading to significant spatiotemporal variability in air pollution. This research addresses current gaps in the literature on local traffic emissions and near-road air quality. This thesis first investigates the effect of traffic volume and speed data on the simulation of vehicle emissions and hotspot analysis. Traffic emissions are estimated using radar data as well as simulated traffic based on various speed aggregation methods. It provides recommendations for project-level analysis and particulate matter (PM) hotspot analysis. We further compare fleet averaged emission factors (EFs) derived from a traffic emission model, the Motor Vehicle Emissions Simulator (MOVES), with EFs using plume-based measurements. This second module stresses the need to collect local traffic information for a better understanding of on-road traffic emissions. Besides, we validate default drive cycles in MOVES against representative drive cycles derived based on real-world GPS data. The validation results are helpful for transportation planners to quantify uncertainties in emission estimation and employ appropriate methods to improve the estimation of on-road emission inventories. The third module develops eco-score models and evaluates the effect of various factors such as driver and trip characteristics on emission intensities. The results shed light on the impact of driving style on emissions and identify the most important factors affecting the amount of emissions generated by every individual driver. The fourth module focuses on the impact of traffic emissions on near-road air quality and presents the results of two different experiments. First, it explores the effect of various factors on near-road ultrafine particle (UFP) concentrations based on short-term fixed monitoring, which stresses the significance of using local traffic characteristics to improve near-road air quality prediction. In addition, it captures the distribution of truck movements in urban environments and investigates the impacts of land-use variables and detailed traffic information on near-road Black Carbon (BC) concentrations. | Ph.D. | environment, pollut | 13 |
| Xu, Yiming | Aivazian, Varouj A.||Cziraki, Peter | Essays on Capital Structure and Firm Investment | Economics | 2019-06 | In this thesis, I study the interactions between firms' capital structure and real decisions. First, I investigate how a firm's financial leverage will impact its investment contingent on whether future growth opportunities are anticipated. Second, I test the under and over investment hypothesis related to debt financing contingent on whether the firm is likely to under or over invest. Last, I investigate how a firm's production technology can impact its production and capital structure decisions. In Chapter 1, I investigate the impact of anticipations of future growth opportunities on leverage-investment interactions. I show that when growth opportunities are unanticipated, the negative impact of leverage on investment is up to two times larger than when they are anticipated. The presence of institutional stockholdings significantly reduces the under investment problem. An instrumental variable analysis reveals that the leverage-investment relationship is weak when the problem of endogeneity is controlled. The results provide strong evidence that Canadian firms take ex ante leverage adjustments to mitigate the debt overhang problem. Chapter 2 studies the extent to which leverage-investment interactions depend on the level of initial investment as well future investment opportunities in US firms. I find a strong negative relationship between leverage and investment for firms with low levels of (initial) investment and high investment opportunities. I also find a positive relationship between leverage and investment for firms with high levels of (initial) investment and low growth opportunities. I distinguish between Tobin's Average Q and Marginal Q as proxies for firms' investment opportunities and propose a novel method to estimate Marginal Q. Chapter 3 is a joint work with Varouj Aivazian. In this chapter, we investigate the interactions between the flexibility of a firm's production and its financial structure. This chapter shows that production flexibility is an important factor explaining the cross sectional variations in financial leverage among U.S. firms. Alternative empirical measures of production flexibility are all shown to be positively associated with financial leverage. This chapter also develops a novel measure of inter-temporal production flexibility and identifies important linkages between production and financing decisions. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Xuereb, Amanda | Fortin, Marie-Josée | Dispersal, Connectivity, and Population Genetic Structure in the Sea | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-11 | The spatial distribution of genetic variation across landscapes is influenced by physical features that facilitate or restrict movement and natural selection driven by environmental heterogeneity. Many marine organisms undergo a pelagic larval stage, during which time ocean currents influence dispersal and the degree of gene flow. Furthermore, gradients in temperature, salinity, and other environmental conditions produce spatially varying selection pressures across species ranges. In the first part of my thesis, I offer a novel perspective for marine conservation that emphasizes the importance of considering both connectivity (where connectivity is maintained by dispersal) and the potential for marine populations to adapt to their environment. To do so, I highlight how genomic data can be used to infer population connectivity (i.e. based on neutral genetic variation) and environmental selection (i.e. based on putatively adaptive genetic variation) in the context of marine reserve networks. Next, using a genomic dataset derived from restriction-site associated DNA sequencing (RADseq), I investigated the impact of ocean currents and environmental variables on spatial patterns of neutral and adaptive genetic variation in the commercially harvested giant California sea cucumber (P. californicus) along the northeastern Pacific coast. The results showed evidence for population structure despite the potential for widespread gene flow, and demonstrated that accounting for directionality of ocean currents explained genetic variation better than between-site geographic distances. Strong associations between sea bottom temperature and putatively adaptive loci were identified at a broad spatial scale, as well as moderate evidence that surface salinity and bottom current velocities contribute to regional patterns of adaptive differentiation. In a study using simulations of larval dispersal coupled with demo-genetic simulations, I found that potential dispersal was spatially restricted with shorter pelagic larval duration (PLD), but there was no difference between a model of diffusive (isotropic) larval transport and oceanographic (anisotropic) transport. However, several important caveats were highlighted that should be addressed in future work. Collectively, my thesis integrates genomic, environmental, and oceanographic data to understand the role of seascape features on connectivity and adaptation, with implications for marine conservation plans that aim to connect marine populations and support adaptive responses to environmental change. | Ph.D. | cities, environment, ocean, marine, conserv | 11, 13, 14 |
| Yahyaie, Farhad | Lehn, Peter W | Examination of Harmonics in Power Systems with Embedded Power Electronic Converters during Transients and Steady State | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2016-06 | Rapid growth in the renewable energy sector and the upcoming growth of the electrical energy storage sector are resulting in an ever-growing number of grid-connected power converters. These converters inject harmonic currents into the grid that can lead to unacceptable levels of harmonic pollution during both transients and steady state. To study transient harmonics of power converters, the concept of generalized averaging has recently attracted considerable interest. Two distinct approaches have been employed in the literature to obtain dynamic harmonics. However, embedded in these approaches are restricting assumptions that have been overlooked by some researchers. This has resulted in several misconceptions and misapplications of models. This thesis determines implicit underlying assumptions and identifies appropriate and inappropriate areas of applications for these two approaches. A simple circuit is employed to clearly communicate ideas. To study steady state harmonics of power converters, few pragmatic tools presently exist for utilities to predict the impact of grid-connecting a new power converter or to assess the potential grid impact of one converter versus another. Converter data sheets contain insufficient information to make such determinations. It is generally known that the amount of harmonic injection depends not only on the background voltage harmonics, but also on the interactions that occur between the grid harmonic impedance and the converter. The thesis proposes new pragmatic techniques based on the frequency coupling matrix concept that permit accurate modeling and analysis of power converters, without requiring detailed information about the internal parameters of the converters. An online technique for identification of the frequency coupling matrix model of grid-connected converters is also proposed. Proposed techniques are verified through experimental measurements on a commercial, three phase, photovoltaic inverter. | Ph.D. | pollut, renewable, energy | 7, 13 |
| Yan, Ruoyu | Master, Emma R | Characterization of novel GH115 Îą-glucuronidases for enzymatic tailoring of xylans | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Xylans represent abundant renewable resources for developing applications ranging from prebiotics to plastic-replacing packaging materials. Accessory hemicellulases can be used to tailor the side-group chemistry of xylans to thereby control properties such as nutrient value, rheology, solubility, adsorption behavior, as well as barrier characteristics of xylan-based films and coatings. Glucopyranosyluronic acid (GlcA) and (methyl)-glucopyranosyluronic acid (MeGlcA) are common substituents of the major forms of xylan in hardwood and coniferous softwoods as well as many cereal grains. α-Glucuronidases from glycoside hydrolase family GH115 have the potential to tailor high-molecular-weight xylans, because they are the only known enzymes that can target GlcA/MeGlcA from both internally and terminally substituted regions of xylans. Two family GH115 enzymes (SdeAgu115A from the marine bacterium Saccharophagus degradans 2-40T and AxyAgu115A from alkaliphilic bacterium Amphilbacillus xylanus) were selected for characterization. Both enzymes demonstrated activity towards glucuronoxylans and oligomers thereof with preference towards internally substituted residues. The first five-domain crystal structure of a GH115 enzyme was also reported, which comprised an additional insertion C+ domain likely to participate in substrate binding. Consistent with the natural habitats of the source organisms, AxyAgu115A demonstrated better performance in alkaline condition compared to other reported GH115 α-glucuronidases, whereas salt activation was only observed for SdeAgu115A. Unlike SdeAgu115A, AxyAgu115A displayed similar activity towards beechwood glucuronoxylan and the more highly branched spruce arabinoglucuronoxylan. The ability of AxyAgu115A to accommodate comparatively complex xylans was consistent with conclusions that could be drawn through docking analysis. Synergistic action between SdeAu115A and AxyAgu115A, and two α-arabinofuranosidases from families GH51 (E-AFASE) and GH62 (SthAbf62A) towards spruce arabinoglucuronoxylan was identified, suggesting that MeGlcA and Araf could sterically hinder α-arabinofuranosidase and/or α-glucuronidase activity. Finally, AxyAgu115A was applied herein to recover xylan-derived oligosaccharides extracted from mixed hardwood chips through liquid hot water extraction. As part of this study, an LC-MS/MS method was developed to facilitate label-free characterization of diverse xylooligosaccharides. | Ph.D. | water, marine, renewable, water | 7, 14 |
| Yanar, Basak | Gunz, Hugh P. | Facing the Glass Wall: The Effects of Perceived Characteristics of Career Boundaries on Immigrant Professional Identity Salience and Career Outcomes | Management | 2011-11 | The present study examines the effects of characteristics of perceived career boundaries (permeability, stability, legitimacy) on immigrant professionals’ subjective career outcomes in a longitudinal design. Based on social identity theory framework, I propose a model that examines how immigrant professionals’ perceptions of career boundaries influence two important areas for establishing a satisfying career and successful social integration in Canada: (1) perceptions of career-based success (career satisfaction and career anxiety) and (2) subjective well-being (life satisfaction and regret for immigrating to Canada). I further propose that perceptions of career boundaries act on subjective career outcomes through the quality of employment individuals obtained and the salience of immigrant professional identity. Perceived characteristics were assessed (N = 227) at Time 1, and measures of subjective career outcomes, employment quality, and immigrant professional identity salience were obtained (N = 101) at Time 2, six months later. In addition to the survey study, 12 immigrant professionals were interviewed for an in-depth understanding of the career experiences of immigrant professionals and immigrant professional identity salience. The longitudinal design of the study provides support for the temporal dimension of perceived characteristics; immigrant professionals’ initial perceptions about the career boundaries still predicted their beliefs about career-based success and subjective well-being six months later. Also, the findings provided some support for the mediating effects of employment quality and immigrant professional identity salience on the relationship between perceived characteristics and subjective career outcomes. This study sheds light on the relationship between the perceptions formed by immigrant professionals of the obstacles that they face in integrating into their new labour market, the employment decisions they take, and the impact this has on their sense of career and life well-being. It also reveals the way in which subjects invoke the intersectional identity of “immigrant professional” as a result of their experiences, and of the effect that this has on them. The findings can inform the practice of the various parties assisting the integration of immigrant professionals into the workforce, an ever-growing and not well-understood group of workers that populate many of today’s workplaces. | PhD | employment, labour, worker | 8 |
| Yang, Feng'e | Kant, Shashi | Economic Analyses of Ontario's Stumpage Pricing System | Forestry | 2008-11 | The softwood lumber trade dispute between Canada and the United States has centered on the debate over the existence of a stumpage subsidy in Canada and recently on dumping by the Canadian softwood lumber producers in the U.S. markets. This thesis contains three essays that investigate the subsidy and dumping issues in this dispute. The results of these analyses indicate the economic performance of Ontario’s stumpage system. The first essay investigates the market performance of Ontario’s stumpage system by examining the long-run equilibrium and Granger-causality relationships between the stumpage prices and the market prices of various end products (lumber, pulp and wood composites) from June 1995 to February 2005 using Johansen’s multivariate co-integration approach and the Granger-causality test. Test results indicate that in terms of SPF (spruce, pine, fir) for lumber and pulp, Ontario’s stumpage system can establish stumpage prices that have the potential to reflect the market values of timber. However, there is a need to modify the system for the other products. In the second essay, an Enhanced Parity Bounds Model (EPBM) is developed and used to examine the discrepancy between the stumpage price of SPF timber for producing lumber and its market value from June 1995 to January 2007. The results show that in the short run, the stumpage prices were below or above the market values. However, in the long run, the underpayment and overpayment will even each other out. The results, therefore, imply that Ontario’s stumpage system has the ability to capture the full economic rents in the long run and thus does not confer a subsidy to Ontario’s softwood lumber producers. The third paper examines the issue of whether Ontario’s softwood lumber industry had dumped softwood lumber into a major US market from April 1996 to September 2006 using the EPBM. This is a critical issue for Ontario’s stumpage system because dumping could lead to lower stumpage prices under the current stumpage system. This analysis indicates that the industry gained considerably more profit from the U.S market than from the home market and did not dump lumber in the US market during this period. | PhD | trade, industr | 9, 10 |
| Yang, Jian | He, Yuhong||Caspersen, John P. | Multi-Source Remote Sensing Data for Automated Extraction of Fine-scale Attributes in a Northern Hardwood Forest | Geography | 2017-11 | Forest resources require careful management and planning as they are under increasing pressure to support wood industry and conservation needs. The management of structurally complex, uneven-aged, deciduous-dominated forests requires detailed and accurate data on fine-scale forest attributes (e.g., gap dynamics, crown sizes, species distributions). New advances in remote sensing techniques will transform traditional forest inventory practices that have relied on expensive ground-based measurements or less accurate interpretation of aerial photography. Recently, multiple sources of high spatial resolution remote sensing data have demonstrated great potential for automated extraction of fine-scale forest attributes. In this context, my PhD research aims to utilize multi-source high spatial resolution remote sensing data to develop methods for automated extraction of fine-scale forest attributes in deciduous-dominated forests, including canopy gap identification, crown delineation, and species classification. This study was carried out in Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve, an uneven-aged, deciduous-dominated forest located in the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence region of Central Ontario, Canada. Specifically, the thesis first quantified the accuracy of canopy gap segmentation and classification by integrating optical and LiDAR data. Thereafter, the thesis proposed a novel method for individual tree crown (ITC) delineation, involving multispectral watershed segmentation and multi-scale fitting. Finally, the thesis explored the feasibility of using multi-seasonal WorldView-3 images to map tree species using the delineated ITCs. Results indicated that: (1) the independent use of LiDAR data performed the best segmentation of canopy gaps while the synergistic use of optical and LiDAR data provided higher classification accuracy for non-forest and forest gap identification; (2) the proposed multispectral watershed segmentation and multi-scale fitting method was able to produce ITC maps of higher quality; (3) the combined use of late-spring, mid-summer, and early-spring images substantially improved the accuracy of individual tree-based species classification. The goal of this study was to develop automated methods for extracting fine-scale forest attributes for operational purposes. Although the proposed methods were mainly designed for temperate deciduous-dominated forests, they could be implemented in other types of temperate or boreal forests, such as coniferous-dominated forests. | Ph.D. | water, industr, conserv, forest | 6, 9, 15 |
| Yang, Jinsuk | Heller, Monica | ENGLISH EDUCATION AND SOCIAL REPRODUCTION: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF ADOLESCENTS IN A KOREAN PUBLIC SCHOOL | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-03 | This research examines the relationship between English and social reproduction through a group of Korean adolescents in a public school. I address how social reproduction occurs through English education by focusing on two social categories: Returnees from Early Study Abroad (ESA) and Underachievers in English. They embody differential access to English by social class. I draw upon both Bourdieu’s legitimate language (Bourdieu, 1977, 1991), and language ideology (Lippi-Green, 1997), and their application to sociolinguistic studies (Heller, 2007; Heller Martin-Jones, 2001). Based on a one and a half-year ethnography, I focus on students’ language learning practices and identity construction across four sites: English classrooms, the English Speech Festival, Afterschool Class, and a summer English camp. I analyzed the ways in which school reproduces the “English gap” by social class. First, a systematic curricular gap and academic streaming reinforced students’ differential achievement. Second, according to “native-like” ideology, Returnees enjoyed full-fledged membership in English-only events while Underachievers remained as bystanders. Third, school welfare programs specifically engineered to support Underachievers (i.e., Afterschool Class and psychiatric counselling) did not take their life patterns, peer networks and norms into account. Finally, teachers’ emphasis on grammatically correct English did not allow Underachievers a legitimate speaking position in a communication-oriented class. In accounting for some Underachievers’ low motivation, teachers assessed them as either Responsible or Irresponsible and referred the latter to psychiatric counselling. Despite their marginal status, Underachievers challenged Returnees in reference to the gendered peer culture, which portrayed Returnees’ native-like English as a feminine quality. Returnees were thus socialized to perform Korean-accented English to blend into their peer society. This dissertation challenges the assumption that input-oriented English education policy should address the widening English gap along social class. I argue that the Irresponsible Underachievers’ non-participation in English reflects their development of working-class consciousness, in which few think of getting middle-class jobs through education. Contrary to marginalization in classrooms, experiences in the low-skilled job market give Underachievers confidence to challenge school authority. In the long-term, however, the lack of English skills will prevent Underachievers from achieving middle-class employment in Korea, where English functions as a key gatekeeper. | Ph.D. | production, employment, gender, educat | 4, 5, 8, 12 |
| Yang, Kyung-Eun | Tsang, Ka Tat | Economic Integration or Segregation? Immigrant Women's Labor Market Entrance and Their Support Service Utilization in South Korea | Social Work | 2016-06 | This dissertation is comprised of three independent yet interconnected studies. The main objective of the three chapters was to examine the economic integration/segregation of immigrant wives in South Korea, with a particular focus placed on their entrance into the labor market and their utilization of immigrant support services. Possible reasons for immigrant wives’ relatively low position within the labor market compared to their native counterparts were examined based on a framework that encompasses human capital theory, dual labor market theory and statistical discrimination theory. Specifically, the first study identified underlying forces that contribute to the different employment outcomes between Korean and immigrant wives. Data from the National Survey on Multicultural Families and the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study, both conducted in 2009, were used to obtain information on immigrant and native Korean wives. A decomposition technique was used to assess the extent to which the gap between the two groups was attributable to discrimination. Focusing on the heavy concentration of immigrant wives in the informal-sector labor market, the second study documented some possible mechanisms assigning this group to such a bottom segment of the labor market. Specifically, the study paid attention to identifying the causes of different qualities of career positions between immigrant and native Korean women in the labor market. Finally, by utilizing Gelberg-Anersen’s behavioral model, the third study examined factors that determined immigrant wives’ support services use. A structural equation modeling method was used to examine possible differences in service utilization patterns depending on immigrant their employment status situations. Overall, the findings from the three studies suggest that immigrant wives have been incorporated into the Korean labor market in a segregated way. Immigrant wives appear to be employed predominantly in precarious jobs where their human capital credentials are not fully recognized. In line with statistical discrimination theory, employers’ preference to native Korean workers over immigrant wives seems to persist in the formal sector. Further, regarding immigrant support services, the cleavages that exist between the intended purposes and the actual usage patterns raise questions about the effectiveness of the services. This dissertation hopes to augment the relatively thin research on the economic integration of immigrant women in newly emerging immigrant destination countries, especially in the context of East Asia. | Ph.D. | women, employment, worker | 5, 8 |
| Yang, Laurence | Cluett, William R. ||Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan | Mathematical Optimization of Biological Systems | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2014-11 | System-level design and optimization of cell metabolism is becoming increasingly important for the renewable production of fuels, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Mathematical models of the metabolism of biological systems are improving in terms of their accuracy and scope of predictions, but are also growing in complexity. Consequently, efficient and scalable algorithms are needed for performing simulations and metabolic system design using these models. Such algorithms are being actively developed and are used in industry today. However, many of the existing algorithms scale poorly to the genome-scale, due to an exponential increase in computational effort with model size or design scope. Therefore, there is difficulty in applying these algorithms for the identification of more complex designs using detailed models. This thesis is aimed at meeting these challenges. First, we present EMILiO, a strain design algorithm that identifies individually fine-tuned flux levels with unprecedented speed via successive linear programming. To test the algorithm, we efficiently generate over 100 strain designs for several industrially important biochemicals. We then develop a framework to assess the robustness of strain designs to industrially relevant perturbations and uncertainties. We then explore how metabolomics, an emerging technology for high-throughput measurement of many metabolites, can be used to improve model precision, despite the high variability typically found in these data sets. Accordingly, we develop an algorithm to randomly sample both fluxes and concentrations and use the algorithm to design a sequence of experiments, in which high-variance metabolomics data are used to identify a subset of metabolites needing more precise measurements. Finally, we evaluate some approaches for extending the methods developed in this thesis for strain design to the identification of optimal enzyme manipulations using nonlinear kinetic models of cell metabolism. The methods developed in this thesis should aid metabolic engineers for the efficient design of robust microbial strains. | PhD | production, industr, renewable | 7, 9, 12 |
| Yang, Minqing | Allen, D. Grant||Edwards, Elizabeth A. | The Effect of Anaerobic Treatment of Pulp Mill Effluents on Reactor Performance and Granular Sludge | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2015-06 | Pulp mill wastewaters contain high concentrations of organic compounds that can be partially converted into methane. Granulation of sludge is the key to successful treatment of pulp mill effluents in high rate anaerobic reactors. This research focused on the anaerobic treatment of a high strength pulp mill alkaline effluent from sulphite pulping (AE) of softwood chips, which was characterized by rich COD content and relatively high concentrations of resin acids and long-chain fatty acids (RFAs) known to be compounds inhibitory to methanogens. Two continuous reactor experiments were conducted to study the treatment of this softwood AE. In the first experiment, different concentrations of AE were treated for one month in four reactors. In the second experiment, increasing loadings of AE were added to the test reactor over a nine-month period. The negative impact of the addition of AE on reactor performance and granulation was confirmed, shown as poorer organic removals, lower biogas production, and smaller and weaker granules in the AE sludge. Larger amounts of RFAs (>50mg RFAs / g TSS sludge) were found to associate with the sludge solids receiving a high AE loading, with palmitic acid being the most dominant RFA. RFA loadings were found to be significantly negatively correlated to the biogas production. Therefore, RFAs were proposed to play an important role in the negative impact of AE. Microbial community analysis using pyrotag sequencing of amplified 16S rRNA genes from various samples collected from the two studies revealed that the communities of the sludge treating AE were very different than those of the AE-free sludge. In terms of the organisms affected by the addition of AE, Oscillospira was significantly positively correlated to AE loadings. The sludge treating AE also contained significantly lower percentages of methanogens. Furthermore, no clear sign of sludge acclimating to AE with enhanced biogas production was found. It is recommended that AE should be pretreated to reduce its toxic effect and to achieve greater COD removals toward higher biogas production. | Ph.D. | water, production, waste | 6, 12 |
| Yang, Nathan | Aguirregabiria, Victor | Economic Spillovers and Learning from Others | Economics | 2013-06 | In chapter 1, I study how spillover effects from competitors' choices affect a firm's decision to open a store. Using panel data from the United Kingdom's fast food industry, I propose and estimate a game of entry under incomplete information that incorporates spillover effects between firms' entry decisions. A positive spillover is identified for Burger King - increasing the stock of existing McDonald's by 1 outlet increases Burger King's estimated equilibrium probability of opening a new store by approximately 18 percentage points. Chapter 2 advances our collective knowledge about the impact of learning from others in industry dynamics, and whether it can generate the clustering of rival retailers. Uncertainty about new markets provides an opportunity for learning from others, where one firm's past entry decisions signal to others the potential profitability of risky markets. The setting is Canada's hamburger fast food industry from its inception in 1970 to 2005, where I introduce a new estimable dynamic oligopoly model of entry/exit with unobserved heterogeneity, common uncertainty about demand, learning through entry, and learning from others. I find that the presence of uncertainty induces retailers to herd into markets that others have previously done well in. Finally, chapter 3 (joint with Feng Chi) studies the early adoption of Twitter in the 111th House of Representatives. Our main objective is to determine whether successes of past adopters have the tendency to speed up Twitter adoption, where past success is defined as the average followers per Tweet - a common measure of "Twitter success" - among all prior adopters. The data suggests that accelerated adoption can be associated with favorable past outcomes: increasing the average number of followers per Tweet among past adopters by a standard deviation (of 8 followers per Tweet) accelerates the adoption time by about 112 days. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Yang, Pearl | Thomas, Scott ||Oh, Paul | Exercise Rehabilitation Efficacy and Optimal Exercise Training Prescriptions for Improved Health Outcomes in People with Type 2 Diabetes | Rehabilitation Science | 2010-11 | This dissertation examines the impact of exercise rehabilitation and the components of exercise prescriptions on optimizing health outcomes for people with diabetes (DM). Exercise is an accepted part of the diabetes management regime to help prevent or slow the progression of the disease. A combined aerobic and resistance training protocol is the recommended exercise regime for people with DM, but the question remains as to what the optimal dose may be for glycemic control and reduction of cardiovascular risk. This thesis aims to address three objectives surrounding optimal exercise prescriptions for diabetes: 1) To investigate aerobic exercise prescription efficacy in people with DM, coronary artery disease (CAD) and both CAD and DM to determine if there are population-specific VO2peak responses to exercise prescription; 2) To determine the optimal volume and intensity of resistance training exercise, in combination with aerobic training, that may improve glucose control, cardiovascular risk factors and body composition in people with type 2 DM (T2DM); and 3) To study the relationship between exercise performance, physiological changes and depressive mood in people with T2DM participating in a supervised, exercise program. Encouraging participation in an appropriately prescribed aerobic and resistance training program may help to improve adherence to exercise and elicit optimal health outcomes in people with T2DM. Tailoring the exercise prescription to suit the patient’s lifestyle, history and capacity is the utmost challenge for health care providers who hope to provide a complementary, non-pharmacologic therapeutic option for their patients. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Yang, Qiao | Maheu, John Mac||Burda, Martin | Bayesian Applications in Financial Econometrics | Economics | 2016-11 | This thesis consists of three chapters in Bayesian financial econometrics. The three chapters apply both Bayesian nonparametric and parametric methods to financial market and macroeconomic time series. Chapter 1 extends popular discrete time short-rate models to include Markov switching of infinite dimension. This is a Bayesian nonparametric model that allows for changes in the unknown conditional distribution over time. Applied to weekly U.S. data we find significant parameter change over time and strong evidence of non-Gaussian conditional distributions. Our new model with an hierarchical prior provides significant improvements in density forecasts as well as point forecasts. We find evidence of recurring regimes as well as structural breaks in the empirical application. Chapter 2 studies the joint dynamic behaviour between stock market returns and real economic growth rates. Their relationship is an important empirical question in finance and macroeconomics. This chapter investigates their linkage by proposing a vector autoregressive infinite hidden Markov model. Our model has two advantages over the existing approaches in the literatures. In contrast to Markov switching models with fixed states, our model will learn the number of states from the data rather than fixing it a priori. The vector autoregressive setting in our model allows the joint time series of stock market returns and real growth rates to share the same unobserved state variable. Compared to existing models, our model shows significant improvements in out-of-sample density forecast accuracy. This paper demonstrates the predictive power of stock market returns for future growth rates are better captured by the unobserved states variables, rather than the lagged stock market returns. Chapter 3 studies the predictive power of oil price information for forecasting the U.S. industrial production. Oil price information is divided into two distinct categories: nominal oil price changes and oil price shocks using four definitions proposed in the literature. Previous work has documented lack of predictive relationship of oil price changes but significant predictive power of oil price shocks for U.S. economic growth. However, existing studies focused only on predicting the mean of the economic growth using classical point forecast techniques. As a contribution to the existing literature, we propose a new forecasting model for the analyzed relationship where oil price shocks have the additional flexibility to influence both the mean and the variance of U.S. industrial production. Our forecast is well performed using the Bayesian predictive likelihood as opposed to classical point estimate. We show that the new model for oil price shocks outperforms existing models in terms of forecasting ability. We further confirm previous findings regarding the lack of predictive power of nominal oil price changes. | Ph.D. | economic growth | 8 |
| Yang, Sunyoung | Song, Jesook | The Korean Internet Freak Community and Its Cultural Politics, 2002–2011 | Anthropology | 2015-11 | In this dissertation I will shed light on the interwoven process between Internet development and neoliberalization in South Korea, and I will also examine the formation of new subjectivities of Internet users who are also becoming neoliberal subjects. In particular, I examine the culture of the South Korean Internet freak community of DCinside.com and the phenomenon I have dubbed “loser aesthetics.” Throughout the dissertation, I elaborate on the meaning-making process of self-reflexive mockery including the labels “Internet freak” and “surplus (human)” and gender politics based on sexuality focusing on gender ambiguous characters, called Nunhwa, as a means of collective identity-making, and I explore the exploitation of unpaid immaterial labor through a collective project making a review book of a TV drama Painter of the Wind. The youth of South Korea emerge as the backbone of these creative endeavors as they try to find their place in a precarious labor market that has changed so rapidly since the 1990s that only the very best succeed, leaving a large group of disenfranchised and disillusioned youth. I go on to explore the impact of late industrialization and the Asian financial crisis, and the nationalistic desire not be left behind in the age of informatization, but to be ahead of the curve. I argue that DCinside users are ambivalent subjects who try to become a desirable and successful neoliberal subject but, at the same time, are aware of their subordinated status in which they can easily become a failure and fall into a position of social loser. The culture “anything goes” of DCinside enables its users to speak out their voice and belie the consequences of neoliberalization, which makes up the politics of loser aesthetics in DCinside. As DCinside users challenged the protocols of their predecessors the netizens, so now a more extremist group has evolved to challenge the current status quo. | Ph.D. | industr, gender | 5, 9 |
| Yang, Yu-Shen | Veneris, Andreas | Automated Software Solutions to Logic Restructuring and Silicon Debug | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2010-11 | With the growing size of modern integrated circuit designs, automated design tools have taken an important role in the development flow. Through the use of these tools, designers can develop circuits in a robust and systematic manner. However, due to the high complexity of the designs and strict resource constraints, it is inevitable that mistakes will be made during the design process. Today, a significant amount of development time is dedicated to pre- and post-silicon verification and debug, which can increase the production cost and jeopardize the future growth of the industry. Hence, there is an urgent need for scalable automated verification and debugging techniques, as well as new methodologies that improve circuits in order to reduce errors. This dissertation presents a set of methodologies to automate three important processes in the VLSI design flow that are related to improving the quality of designs. The first contribution, automated logic restructuring, is a systematic methodology used to devise transformations in logic designs. This technique can be used for a wide range of post-synthesis applications, such as logic optimization, debugging and engineer change orders, which modify synthesized designs to accommodate their goals. Better results can be achieved if there are various transformations for those applications to select. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed technique is capable of re-structuring designs at a location where other methods fail and also identifies multiple transformations for each location. The second contribution is a logic-level, technology-independent soft error rate mitigation technique. Soft errors are transient logic pulses induced by radiation from the environment or released from the silicon chip package materials. This technique identifies conditions where soft errors can cause discrepancies at the primary outputs of the design, and eliminates those conditions through wire replacement. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed technique and show that the soft error rate can be reduced at no or small additional overhead to other design parameters. The final contribution of the dissertation is a software environment for post-silicon debug. The proposed algorithms analyze the data collected during operating silicon chips at speed in the test system and provide useful information to expedite the debugging process. Experiments show that the proposed techniques eliminate one third of design modules, which are suspected as the root cause of the failure. Such a reduction can save engineers time on manual inspection and shorten the turnaround time of silicon debug. | PhD | industr, production, environment | 9, 12, 13 |
| Yang, Zhengbao | Zu, Jean W | High-performance Nonlinear Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting in Compressive Mode | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2016-06 | With the rapid development of low-power electronic devices such as wireless sensor networks, wearable devices and medical implants, the need for long-lifespan and high-efficiency power sources has become more and more pressing. The commonly used electrochemical batteries cannot meet the demand due to their limited capacity, low energy density, and maintenance and disposal requirements, which has spurred interest in the vibration energy harvesting technique. Over the past decade, many endeavors have been undertaken to improve the performance of energy harvesters, especially those using piezoelectric materials. Piezoelectric energy harvesters (PEHs) however, are still in the laboratory stage and cannot be widely deployed in practice. The main blocking factors stem from their low power output and poor environmental adaptability. This thesis aims to explore new methods to improve energy harvester performance in terms of power output, frequency bandwidth and directional sensitivity. Specifically, by taking advantage of the nonlinear dynamics of thin beams and the compressive mode of piezoceramics, a high-performance compressive-mode piezoelectric energy harvester (HC-PEH) is proposed. A multi-stage force amplification mechanism is embedded into the coupling system, which significantly increases the voltage responses. Finite element analysis and analytical modeling are conducted to analyze the stress state, the force amplification effect and the nonlinear characteristics of the system. Prototypes are fabricated and tested . The experimental data, closely matched with the analytical estimations, demonstrates great performance enhancement. The bandwidth is effectively extended by the strong nonlinear responses. A maximum power 54.7 mW is generated under an acceleration of 4.9 m/s^2, which is about one order of magnitude higher than the state of the art. Furthermore, this study proposes a simple method to enhance the tailorability of energy harvesters by shifting the dynamic responses between the hardening and softening nonlinearity. To deal with the unidirectional sensitivity issue, a multi-directional compressive-mode piezoelectric energy harvester (MC-PEH) is developed. Theoretical and experimental studies demonstrate that the MC-PEH is capable of isotropically harnessing vibration energy from multiple directions. Apart from the structural aspect, new piezoelectric materials (PMN-PT PZN-PT) and interface circuits (SSHI) have also been investigated to improve the efficiency of whole energy harvesting systems. | Ph.D. | energy, environment | 7, 13 |
| Ye, Jianhuai | Chan, Arthur W. H. | Biogenic-Anthropogenic Interactions in Secondary Organic Aerosol Formation and Health Effects of Atmospheric Organic Aerosol | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formed from oxidation of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), comprises a major fraction of atmospheric submicron particulate matter, which is crucial for global climate change and human health. While biogenic VOCs are naturally emitted and cannot be directly controlled, field measurements and satellite observations have shown that biogenic SOA (BSOA) formation correlates well with anthropogenic pollutants and may be anthropogenically controlled. In this work, the formation of the “anthropogenically controllable BSOA” was examined. BSOA from α-pinene ozonolysis was investigated in the presence of laboratory-generated or ambient organic aerosol such as Toronto ambient particles. It is shown that SOA was not equally miscible with all organic species. Aerosol mixing thermodynamics in the atmosphere is composition dependent. Based on laboratory observations, an empirical framework using bulk elemental ratios was developed to predict atmospheric organic miscibility and SOA yield enhancements. Besides organic aerosol, interactions between BSOA formation and SO2 was also examined. Synergistic effects were observed between BSOA formation and SO2 oxidation through Criegee and peroxide chemistry under atmospherically relevant RH conditions. In addition to the physicochemical properties of SOA, health impacts of SOA were examined. An atmospheric simulation reactor (ASR) was developed to investigate the health effects of air pollutants by permitting controlled chronic in vivo exposure of mice to combine particulate and gaseous pollutants at ‘real-life’ concentrations. Results show that daily exposure to SOA from naphthalene photooxidation led to increased airway hyperresponsiveness (AHR) to methacholine in a dose-dependent manner. Multi-pollutant exposures with ozone and/or NO2 in conjunction with a sub-toxic concentration of SOA resulted in additive effects on AHR to methacholine. Inflammatory cell recruitment to the airways was not observed in any of the exposure conditions, indicating the increased AHR was not associated with airway inflammation and may occur through other mechanisms. | Ph.D. | pollut, climate | 13 |
| Ye, Mingxiao | Mathewson, Frank | Essays in Industrial Organization: Market Performance | Economics | 2011-11 | This thesis consists of three papers. Industries that motivated this analysis range are exclusive clubs (Chapter 1) and pharmaceuticals (Chapters 2 and 3). A common thread is the study of the strategic behavior of monopoly or monopoly-like firms and the implications of such behavior. Chapter 1 studies an “invitation only” strategy for a durable goods monopolist. “Invitation only” functions as a commitment device, enabling the extraction of more profit than the conventional durable goods setting. In addition, the effectiveness of commitment devices in profit-extraction can be compared: each commitment device is modeled as an extra condition in the profit maximization of the general durable goods monopolist, enabling straightforward comparisons across commitment devices. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the effect of patent protection on innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, in particular competition to produce drugs that follow-on from pioneer drug discovery, and any feedback effects on pioneer innovation. Despite the conventional notion, I show that longer patent protection may reduce or distort the incentives of innovation: with longer patents, the increased need of pioneer inventors in deterring the production of follow-on drugs may translate to less profitability for the pioneer inventor. Chapter 2 serves as a background and a literature review for Chapter 3. It explains the multi-stage drug discovery process and the phenomenon of follow-on drugs; it reviews strategic entry deterrence theories and summarizes the behavior of brand-name drug firms in deterring generic entry studied in the literature; it also reviews the optimal patent length and breadth literature. Chapter 3 presents several observed puzzles in the pharmaceutical industry and provides a unified explanation for these puzzles within a strategic entry deterrence model. The central conclusion is that under some general conditions, longer patent life distorts incentives for innovation and lowers research productivity: pioneer research is discouraged relative to follow-on research; inexpensive R&D projects are discouraged, and ceteris paribus expensive projects are favored instead, especially those with large clinical trial costs. Other predictions from the model accord with industry observations, including mid-development cancellations of potential drugs for non-medical reasons and early development of follow-on drugs in large markets. | PhD | innovation, industr, production | 9, 12 |
| Yee, Samantha Sze-Man | Esme, Fuller-Thomson | Using an Integrated Decision-making Framework to Identify Factors Associated with Receipt of a Fertility Consultation by Canadian Female Cancer Patients | Social Work | 2015-11 | Backgrounds: Infertility is often a distressing consequence of cancer treatment for young women who have a desire for motherhood but have not yet completed their family at the time of cancer diagnosis. Guided by the Integrated Fertility Preservation Decision-Making Framework developed in my comprehensive paper, the overarching goal of this study is to identify the factors associated with young Canadian female cancer patients having a fertility discussion with their oncologists and receiving fertility preservation services prior to commencing cancer treatment. Methods: A total of 188 young women who received a cancer diagnosis between the ages of 18 and 39 were recruited from cancer organizations, survivor networks, and digital media. Data were collected from September 2012 to June 2013 using an anonymous online survey. Results: Although the survey participants were young women in their prime childbearing years when they received their cancer diagnosis, one quarter (n=45, 23.9%) did not recall having a fertility discussion with their oncologists. Of the three quarters who had a fertility discussion (n=143, 76.1%), discussions were equally initiated by oncologists (n=71) and patients (n=72). Of the 49 women (26%) who consulted a fertility specialist to discuss their cryopreservation options, 17 underwent a fertility preservation procedure to preserve unfertilized oocytes and/or embryos; this represents only 9% of the full sample. Cancer patients who had a high degree of fertility concern at the time of cancer diagnosis had increased odds of receiving fertility services at all three decision points. The findings suggest that not only was the proactive behavior of oncologists in initiating a fertility discussion important, the qualities of the discussion were equally critical in supporting patients in their decision-making process. Conclusions: Fertility preservation in oncology is an emerging area that requires partnerships involving health providers in the areas of both oncology and reproductive medicine. This study provides insight into the process that Canadian female cancer patients use to make their fertility preservation decisions in a stressful time-pressured situation. It also explores the validity of the newly developed decision-making framework and identifies significant factors associated with the receipt of fertility consultations. | Ph.D. | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Yeganegi, Maryam | Bocking, Alan ||Challis, John R. G. | The Effect of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 Supernatant on Cytokine Production and Prostaglandins in Gestational Tissues | Physiology | 2010-06 | Preterm birth remains a major challenge in obstetrics. It complicates up to 13% of all pregnancies and accounts for approximately 80% of neonatal mortality and morbidity. Bacterial Vaginosis (BV) is associated with a 1.4-fold increased risk of preterm birth. Due to ineffectiveness of antibiotics in preventing preterm labour, probiotics have been proposed to serve as an alternative for treatment of BV and prevention of preterm birth. The objectives of this thesis were to determine 1) the effect of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 (L. rhamnosus GR-1) supernatant on cytokine profile and prostaglandin (PG)-regulating enzyme expression in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated human chorion and placental trophoblast cells from human placentae, 2) the potential signaling pathways through which lactobacilli act and 3) the potential role of immune and placental trophoblast cells in initiating a response to LPS and L. rhamnosus GR-1 treatments. Primary cultures of human placental trophoblast cells were pre-treated with lactobacilli supernatant and then with LPS. In addition, immune cells were removed from cell suspensions using a magnetic purification technique to determine their role in modulating cytokine levels. The expression of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and prostaglandin-regulating enzymes was then determined. We found sex-specific differences in the ability of LPS to increase the output of TNF-α, IL-10, and PTGS2. We also showed that L. rhamnosus GR-1 is able to act through the JAK/STAT and MAPK pathways to increase IL-10 and G-CSF, and independently down-regulates PTGS2 and TNF-α and up-regulates PGDH. The increase in G-CSF and PGDH were only observed in women carrying a female fetus. L. rhamnosus GR-1 may serve as an alternative to antibiotics in preventing some infection/inflammation-mediated cases of preterm birth. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Yegorov, Sergey | Kaul, Rupert | Exploring the Effects of Endemic East African Co-infections on HIV Susceptibility in the Female Genital Tract | Immunology | 2018-11 | RATIONALE: Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) remains a leading cause of global morbidity with the highest burden in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). For reasons that are incompletely understood, the likelihood of HIV transmission is several fold higher in SSA than in higher income countries, and most of these infections are acquired by women. Residents of SSA are also exposed to a variety of endemic infections that could elevate HIV susceptibility through effects on mucosal and systemic immunology. In the East African Lake Victoria region high HIV transmission geographically overlaps with endemic malaria and Schistosoma mansoni infections. Therefore in this thesis I aimed to explore the impact of these infections on HIV susceptibility in the female genital tract. MAIN FINDINGS: The prevalence of malaria in adult women from Entebbe, Uganda was much lower than expected, but this low prevalence was masked by high rates of over-diagnosis in public health facilities. The prevalence of S. mansoni infection approached 50% and was associated with systemic immune alterations and several socio-behavioral HIV risk factors, emphasizing the importance of controlling these confounders in mucosal studies. A longitudinal clinical trial of S. mansoni treatment effects [ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02878564] demonstrated a substantial anthelminthic treatment-induced reduction of HIV entry into both genital and blood CD4 T cells for two months after standard therapy, despite transient mucosal and systemic immune activation. Furthermore, schistosomiasis treatment was associated with the induction of Type I Interferon pathways, providing a possible mechanism for the reduced HIV entry seen in the trial. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, the findings presented in this thesis i) highlight the importance of understanding the epidemiology of endemic infections and associated socio-behavioral factors that could confound studies of mucosal HIV susceptibility, and ii) suggest that S. mansoni treatment may lead to new HIV prevention strategies in SSA. ОБОСНОВАНИЕ: Вирус иммунодефицита человека (ВИЧ) является ведущей причиной глобальной заболеваемости с самым высоким уровнем инфекций в Африке к Югу от Сахары (АЮС). По причинам, которые не полностью изучены, вероятность передачи ВИЧ в несколько раз выше в АЮС, чем в странах с более высоким уровнем дохода, и большинство ВИЧ инфекций наблюдается у женщин. Жители АЮС также подвергаются воздействию множества эндемичных инфекций, которые могут влиять на восприимчивость к ВИЧ на иммунитет слизистой и на общесистемном уровне. В Восточно-Африканском регионе, в районе озера Виктория, высокая передача ВИЧ географически перекрывается с эндемичной малярией и шистосомой Мэнсона (Schistosoma mansoni). Цель этой диссертации- изучить влияние этих инфекций на восприимчивость к ВИЧ в женском половом пути. ОСНОВНЫЕ РЕЗУЛЬТАТЫ: Распространенность малярии у взрослых женщин из Энтеббе, Уганда, была намного ниже по сравнению с ожидаемым уровнем, но эта низкая распространенность была замаскирована высокими показателями чрезмерного диагноза малярии в медицинских учреждениях. Распространенность инфекции S. mansoni достигала 50% и была связана с иммунными изменениями в крови и несколькими социально-поведенческими факторами связанными с риском ВИЧ инфекции, что указало на необходимость принятия во внимание эти факторов в дальнейших клинических исследованиях. Проспективное клиническое исследование эффектов лечения S. mansoni [ClinicalTrials.gov ID: NCT02878564] продемонстрировало существенное снижение уровня ВИЧ инфекции CD4 Т-клеток изолированных из эндошейки матки и крови в течение двух месяцев после стандартной терапии шистосомоза, несмотря на временную иммунную активацию. Кроме того, лечение шистосомоза было связано с индукцией антивирусного интерферона типа I, что объясняет возможный механизм снижения уровня ВИЧ-инфекции. ВЫВОДЫ: В совокупности результаты, представленные в этом тезисе, i) подчеркивают важность понимания эпидемиологии эндемических инфекций и связанных с ними социально-поведенческих факторов в исследованиях восприимчивости к ВИЧ ii) указывают на то, что лечение S. mansoni может быть включено в стратегическую профилактику ВИЧ в АЮС. | Ph.D. | women, health | 3, 5 |
| Yeung, Charles See Ho | Dong, Vy Maria | Transition Metal Catalysis: Activation of CO2, C–H, and C–O Bonds En Route to Carboxylic Acids, Biaryls, and N-containing Heterocycles | Chemistry | 2011-11 | Transition metal catalysis is a powerful tool for the construction of biologically active and pharmaceutically relevant architectures. With the challenge of continually depleting resources that this generation of scientists faces, it is becoming increasingly important to develop sustainable technologies for organic synthesis that utilize abundant and renewable feedstocks while minimizing byproduct formation and shortening the length of synthetic sequences by removing unnecessary protecting group manipulations and functionalizations. To this end, we have developed four new methods that transform inexpensive starting materials to valuable products. This dissertation covers the following key areas: 1) activation of CO2 for a mild and functional group tolerant synthesis of carboxylic acids, 2) oxidative twofold C–H bond activations as a strategy toward biaryls, 3) migratory O- to N-rearrangements in pyridines and related heterocycles for the preparation of N-alkylated heterocycles, and 4) asymmetric hydrogenations of cyclic imines and enamines en route to chiral 1,2- and 1,3-diamines and macrocyclic peptides. | PhD | renewable | 7 |
| Yeung, Lok-Kin | Barense, Morgan D | Cognitive Correlates of Anterolateral Entorhinal Cortex Volume Differences in Older Adults | Psychology | 2017-11 | Alzheimer’s disease pathology first appears in the medial temporal lobe (MTL): in particular, in the anterolateral region of the entorhinal cortex (alERC). However, the scientific community has only recently begun to appreciate the importance of the subdivision of the human entorhinal cortex, and as such, our understanding of the alERC’s cognitive roles and how it fits into models of MTL function remains limited. In this dissertation, I describe a series of studies inspired by findings from the animal literature, which shed light on the cognitive functions supported by the alERC. Using structural volumetry, I quantified the volumes of the alERC and other MTL regions in a group of ostensibly healthy older adults with varying degrees of cognitive decline. I compared participants’ structural differences to their performance on behavioral tasks that we hypothesized represented cognitive functions supported by the alERC. Specifically, I investigated how alERC structural differences were related to performance on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), a standard neuropsychological assessment used in the diagnosis of AD (Chapter 2), as well as eyetracking-based behavioral tasks assessing intra-item configural processing (Chapter 3) and object-in-place memory (Chapter 4), cognitive functions which the rodent literature suggest are supported by the alERC. I found that participants who scored below the MoCA threshold score (indicating possible AD) had smaller alERC volumes (Chapter 2), demonstrating that alERC volume is related to cognitive decline. Further, intra-item configural processing – regardless of an object’s novelty – was strongly predicted by alERC volume, but not by the volume of any other MTL subregion (Chapter 3). Finally, alERC (and parahippocampal cortex) volume was also related to object-in-place memory for items in everyday scenes, but no such relationship was found for object-trace memory (Chapter 4). Together, these studies suggest that the alERC may support aspects of the spatial processing of objects, advancing our understanding of the cognitive correlates of the alERC. More pragmatically, the alERC-specific tasks I developed may prove useful in early screening for AD and evaluating its progression. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Yi, Juliana | Miller, Fiona A | The Influence of Organizational and Health System Arrangements on Priority-setting for Health Technology Assessment: A Comparative Case Study of Canada and the United Kingdom | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-06 | While HTA organizations employ formal and explicit processes to decide on what health technologies to prioritize for evaluations, HTA priority-setting remains a challenge due to the complex environment in which prioritization decisions are made. Currently, however, there is a lack of understanding of the complex environment, in which HTA is embedded and how particular features of HTA organizations and health systems affect HTA priority-setting. This dissertation explored how HTA organizations formally conduct HTA priority-setting and the specific role of organizational priorities, and health system policies and actors in shaping structural arrangements of HTA and conditioning HTA priority-setting. A comparative case study design was employed to examine HTA priority-setting in Canada (Alberta and Ontario) and the United Kingdom (England and Scotland) in two phases. The first phase explored the visible and intended priority-setting processes that are used in all four jurisdictions and how HTA is organized within health systems and organizations. The second phase focused on two jurisdictions, Ontario and Scotland, and identifying the dynamics and pressures arising from structural arrangements of HTA that influence HTA priority-setting. A total of 31 semi-structured key-informant interviews were conducted and analyzed along with various documents through a constructivist grounded theory approach. Findings of the study reveal that while formal and explicit processes are often employed to set HTA priorities, wider organizational priorities, and health system policies and actors can also shape HTA priorities. Dynamics arising from how HTA structurally interacts with these health system and organizational features directly and indirectly shape i) the overall allocation of HTA resource; ii) how topics are mobilized assessment; and iii) the health system policies that HTA resources serve. Overall, this dissertation shows that HTA priority-setting is far more complex - occurring in structural and tacit ways - than it is often typically considered. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Yi, Tae Joon | Kaul, Rupert | The Impact of Herpes Therapy on Genital and Systemic immunology | Immunology | 2013-11 | HIV infects more than 34 million people globally. Herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) has been associated with a 3-fold increase in the rate of HIV acquisition, which may be due to physical breaks in the mucosal barrier during symptomatic episodes and/or an increased number of HIV target cells being exposed in the genital tract. Although clinical trials have demonstrated that herpes suppression in HIV uninfected individuals had no impact on HIV incidence, acyclovir was associated with a decrease in plasma HIV viral load and delayed disease progression in HSV-2 co-infected individuals. In addition, many HIV infected individuals display persistent systemic immune activation, which correlates with disease progression, despite successful antiretroviral therapy (ART). It is hypothesized that HSV could be one of the drivers of this activation. To further assess these relationships, my thesis focused on examining the impact of herpes therapy on genital tract immunology and systemic immune activation in HIV uninfected women and a comparison of systemic immune activation in individuals co-infected with HIV and HSV-2 on ART randomized to valacyclovir or placebo. A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blinded, cross-over trial was conducted in HSV-2 infected, HIV uninfected, women using valacyclovir. No differences were observed in the number of various HIV target cells in the endocervix between valacyclovir and placebo phases. Further, valacyclovir had no impact on systemic immune activation in the same cohort. In a second clinical trial, the role of herpes therapy on systemic immune activation and inflammation in HIV and HSV-2 co-infected individuals on ART was evaluated. It was concluded that valacyclovir therapy had no impact on these parameters in this population. In summary, we were unable to demonstrate that herpes therapy was able to reduce the number of HIV target cells in the endocervix of HSV-2 infected, HIV uninfected women or systemic immune activation in either HIV uninfected or HIV infected individuals. These findings demonstrate that currently available herpes therapy in standard doses does not appear to reverse the immunological changes associated with HSV-2 infection. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Yoon, Minn-Nyoung | Steele, Catriona | Oral Health for Long-term Care Populations: From Pneumonia Pathogenesis to Front-line Oral Care Provision | Speech-Language Pathology | 2011-11 | Oral health has dramatically improved in most industrialized countries over the latter half of the 20th century. However, profound oral health disparities still exist especially for those most at risk of developing oral diseases and associated systemic consequences such as populations residing in long-term care facilities. Despite the growing body of literature that supports the link between oral microflora and the importance of oral hygiene in limiting the risk of pneumonia development, there are still gaps in our knowledge to effectively manage this risk. The research included in this dissertation sought to further our understanding of oral health and oral care in the context of pneumonia pathogenesis (chapter 3) and, by exploring the perspective of various stakeholders in oral health, we sought to further understand the factors that influence care provision (chapter 5). Additionally, a novel knowledge translation approach was tested to challenge traditional oral care interventions in order to promote improvements in front-line oral care practices (chapter 6). The relationship between oral microflora, oral care and pneumonia was found to be complex. It directs us to consider converging risk factors including a patient’s health status, health behaviours and access to oral care services. Different professional groups were found to possess different definitions of oral health, which influenced both their motivation to provide care as well as their focus of care. Definitions of oral health could also potentially influence the saliency of different types of oral care information to different targeted groups; therefore, this should be considered in developing education and training initiatives aimed at improving the provision of oral care. An appreciative knowledge translation approach was found to be effective in bridging the gap between oral care knowledge and the provision of care. Regardless of the type of intervention chosen, organizations were reported to play a crucial role in promoting oral health and supporting the successful implementation of oral care programs. | PhD | health, industr | 3, 9 |
| Yoon, Sung-Hee Seanna | Mitchell, Jane||Grynpas, Marc | Potential Therapies for Bone Health in Glucocorticoid-Treated Mdx Mouse Model of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy | Pharmacology | 2019-06 | Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) is an X-linked genetic disease, affecting 1 in 3500 boys. It is a progressive disease, presented with chronic inflammation, severe necrosis and degeneration of muscle. There is no cure, and most patients receive long-term glucocorticoid therapy to delay the disease progression. In addition to their muscle phenotype, DMD patients also suffer from bone fragility due to chronic inflammation in muscle, suboptimal vitamin D levels, and lack of mechanical loading from the muscle on bone. Their bone health is even further compromised by the use of long-term glucocorticoids, which are known to significantly suppress osteoblasts, resulting in osteoporosis. In this study, we wanted to identify the roles of vitamin D insufficiency/deficiency in bone health, with or without glucocorticoids, using the Mdx mouse model of DMD (Study 1). Then, we also wanted to determine the effectiveness of using intermittent PTH (Study 2) and growth hormone (Study 3) as bone anabolic agents, as glucocorticoids dramatically suppress bone turnover. These bone treatments were concurrently done with glucocorticoids to ameliorate the development of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis, during rapid bone growth to mimic young DMD boys receiving the glucocorticoid treatment. We found that suboptimal 25-(OH)D (lower than 50nmol/L) did not have significant effects on musculoskeletal health in growing Mdx mice, regardless of glucocorticoid treatment. However, intermittent PTH treatment improved the glucocorticoid-induced cortical bone loss, as well as dystrophic muscle-driven osteopenic phenotype in trabecular bone. PTH treatment also maintained beneficial effects of glucocorticoids on muscle or further exerted positive effects on dystrophic muscle phenotype. Growth hormone treatment had minimal effects on bone microarchitectures, but significantly improved biomechanical properties in both cortical shaft and vertebrae. On the top of the beneficial effects of glucocorticoids on dystrophic muscle, growth hormone treatment further enhanced muscle function and histomorphometry by reducing fiber size variation and percentage of fibers with central nuclei. This study suggested PTH and growth hormone as potential treatments for musculoskeletal health in glucocorticoid-treated DMD boys during growth. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| York, Rachel Alice | Linda, Cameron | Re-connecting with Nature: Transformative Environmental Education Through the Arts | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2014-11 | Environmental educators are seeking ways to make learning relevant in an environment in which students are increasingly disconnected from the natural world and the places where they live, and more connected to digital media and technology. This theoretical study, guided by Thomas Berry's influential cosmological vision and David Orr's environmental education work, examines how the arts may re-direct thinking, awareness, and learning and help learners of all ages to re-imagine our connections to the biotic communities, of which we are a constituent part. It also offers a critical view of modern technologies, and how they may be useful in the environmental learning. By examining different worldviews, educational paradigms, the role of arts in learning, and the use of media and modern technologies, in light of childhood identity development, this study explores how a connection to nature and animal species can develop through experiences with the arts and time outside, help students build ecological identities, and promote sustainability in communities. The argument is made for bringing art into the environmental education curriculum in order to promote collaborative learning, a sense of place and community, 'hybrid thinking,' transdiciplinary learning, and a co-creative dialogue with nature and culture. | Ph.D. | environment | 13 |
| York, Thomas P. | DiCenso, James J. | Kant's Philosophy of Religion and Climate Change | Religion, Study of | 2017-11 | This thesis argues that Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) may be applied to climate change issues. This thesis makes use of James DiCenso’s interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of religion (2011, 2012), which argues that Kant’s key text on religion conveys a social and political vision. This thesis addresses both traditional religious worldviews and secular political movements engaged in climate politics. It argues for the need to ethically assess these social formations’ evolving responses to the climate crisis. The failure (to date) of religious traditions to adequately address the climate crisis, and possible reasons for this, are addressed. Examples of social formations, ideologies, and religious responses examined include consumerism, environmental theology, religiously motivated climate change denial and dispensationalist theology, as well as the secular climate justice movement. Kant locates the source of many of our problems in the power of choice and determining ground of morality. In this sense, his ethical system is distinct from the neo-Marxist interpretation of “systems of power.” The theory of what DiCenso refers to as “shared representations” of “supersensible” cognition is helpful for understanding the dynamics of belief that inform complex social and political formations. Kant’s philosophy of religion may be of value for those trying to understand how religions and political ideologies that employ powerful symbols and ideals play a role in the unfolding of historical events. | Ph.D. | justice, environment, climate | 13, 16 |
| Young, Chris J. | Grimes, Sara M | Game Changers: Everyday Gamemakers and the Development of the Video Game Industry | Information Studies | 2018-06 | This dissertation examines the emergence of everyday gamemakers and their roles in transforming the cultural norms and practices of the global video game industry. Everyday gamemakers are digital game creators who share multiple professional and leisure-based gamemaking identities, including developers, “indies,” modders, user-generated content creators, and writers of interactive fiction. Since the Apple App Store opened in 2008, game engines and digital venues have developed and enabled widespread production and distribution of digital games. Game engines such as Unity3D, GameMaker Studio, and Construct 2, which simplify the process of making a digital game using “drag-and-drop” tools and editors, have enabled a range of gamemakers with no programming or artistic experience and training to create digital games. The simultaneous release of digital platforms such as Google Play, Steam, and itch.io, has also streamlined the process of distributing digital games into new and traditional communities of players. These developments have emerged because the video game industry perceives everyday gamemakers to be innovators in diversifying and producing products, creating jobs, and increasing profits. However, I argue that the inclusion of the everyday gamemaker has simultaneously enabled local and grassroots norms and practices to transform the production process of digital game creation in the global video game industry. To demonstrate how these gamemakers are changing norms and practices across the industry, I focus on gamemakers’ work and leisure identities as creators of digital games; the cultural activities of the scenes in which they participate; the game engines and tools of production they use to make their games; the working conditions in which they build their games; and the distribution platforms on which they release their games. I argue that gamemakers wear many labour hats within their craft of gamemaking, which not only diversifies the work and leisure contexts of digital game production, but also enables the mixing and transformation of cultural norms and practices within the mainstream industry and the places of leisure more broadly. | Ph.D. | labour, industr, production | 8, 9, 12 |
| Young, Cora Jean Louise | Mabury, Scott A. | Atmospheric Chemistry of Polyfluorinated Compounds: Long-lived Greenhouse Gases and Sources of Perfluorinated Acids | Chemistry | 2010-06 | Fluorinated compounds are environmentally persistent and have been demonstrated to bioaccumulate and contribute to climate change. The focus of this work was to better understand the atmospheric chemistry of poly- and per-fluorinated compounds in order to appreciate their impacts on the environment. Several fluorinated compounds exist for which data on climate impacts do not exist. Radiative efficiencies (REs) and atmospheric lifetimes of two new long-lived greenhouse gases (LLGHGs) were determined using smog chamber techniques: perfluoropolyethers and perfluoroalkyl amines. Through this, it was observed that RE was not directly related to the number of carbon-fluorine bonds. A structure-activity relationship was created to allow the determination of RE solely from the chemical structure of the compound. Also, a novel method was developed to detect polyfluorinated LLGHGs in the atmosphere. Using carbotrap, thermal desorption and cryogenic extraction coupled to GC-MS, atmospheric measurements can be made for a number of previously undetected compounds. A perfluoroalkyl amine was detected in the atmosphere using this technique, which is the compound with the highest RE ever detected in the atmosphere. Perfluorocarboxylic acids (PFCAs) are water soluble and non-volatile, suggesting they are not susceptible to long-range transport. A hypothesis was derived to explain the ubiquitous distribution of these compounds involving atmospheric formation of PFCAs from volatile precursors. Using smog chamber techniques with offline analysis, perfluorobutenes and fluorotelomer iodides were shown to yield PFCAs from atmospheric oxidation. Dehydrofluorination of perfluorinated alcohols (PFOHs) is poorly understood in the mechanism of PFCA atmospheric formation. Using density functional techniques, overtone-induced photolysis was shown to lead to dehydrofluorination of PFOHs. In the presence of water, this mechanism could be a sink of PFOHs in the atmosphere. Confirmation of the importance of volatile precursors was derived from examination of snow from High Arctic ice caps. This provided the first empirical evidence of atmospheric deposition. Through the analytes observed, fluxes and temporal trends, it was concluded that atmospheric oxidation of volatile precursors is an important source of PFCAs to the Arctic. | PhD | water, environment, greenhouse gas, climate, water | 6, 13 |
| Young, Marisa | Wheaton, Blair | The Impact of Neighbourhood Context on Work-Family Conflict and Psychological Distress | Sociology | 2013-03 | Does neighbourhood context influence work-family conflict (WFC) and its mental health consequences? If so, how do these associations unfold? And do these processes differ for men and women? My dissertation research addresses these significant and timely questions. Recent changes in work and family domains have led to unprecedented levels of WFC. However, theories and research on the topic to date remain limited, because they emphasize individual-level antecedents to the exclusion of broader contexts, including individuals’ neighbourhood of residence. My study is among the first to effectively examine the impact of neighbourhood context on WFC and mental health consequences. I outline three overarching mechanisms through which neighbourhood influences WFC, including (a) the social composition of the neighbourhood, (b) processes of neighbourhood structural amplification; and, (c) the objective and perceived presence of community resources. I test my hypotheses using data from Toronto, Canada, compiled from a variety of sources, including individuals, the Canadian census, and municipal data on community resources. I use Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) techniques for all analyses to appropriately distinguish individual and neighbourhood-level variations. Collectively, the results from my dissertation research contribute to a more advanced framework of the antecedents of WFC and its mental health consequences compared to previous approaches—one that incorporates the importance of place. | PhD | health, women | 3, 5 |
| Young, Thomas Hugh Niven | Prudham, W. Scott | Stances on the Land: Political Perspectives on Land Use Governance in Vermont | Geography | 2011-11 | Vermont, like many rural places in the developed world, has been the destination of many urban migrants seeking lifestyle amenities unavailable in the city. This migration has been blamed for intractable conflicts over land use governance, with newcomers pitted against long-time residents on such issues as wilderness designation, agricultural impacts and motorized recreation. How accurate, though, are these representations of political visions polarized along lines of residential status? This dissertation maps out the complexity of popular outlooks on land use governance in Vermont using a Q-method survey and semi-structured interviews. Analysis of the survey found evidence for two distinct perspectives on land use governance, which were termed Green Governance and Government Scepticism. While distinct, these perspectives were not diametrically opposed; on many issues of concern to one group the other group was neutral. These groups did not map directly onto residential status; in particular, long-time residents were clearly evident in both groups. Looking deeper into the stances on land use, tensions between stances are evident at both the level of the group and the individual. The dissertation traces these tensions and considers their implications for how individuals are enrolled in larger political projects such as neoliberalism. In many cases, uncertain enrolment suggests places where groups could productively engage each other and develop less antagonistic relationships. The dissertation fits the political orientations it examines into a broader cultural reading of social divisions that goes beyond residential status. It posits the existence of cultural complexes with an array of components contributing to social identity. These components – which include residential status and political orientation – influence each other without being determining. Compared with more established moral economy frameworks, this model seeks to provide a more flexible theorization of the relationship between social identity and political outlook. | PhD | urban, rural, land use, governance | 11, 15, 16 |
| Yu, Bowen | Hoffmann, Matthew J. | Between Chinese and Western Norms: Local Policy Deliberation and Cross-issue-area Variations in China’s Global Governance Strategies | Political Science | 2019-11 | As a rising power, China sometimes plays an ideational leadership role in global governance by constructing homegrown norms and policy ideas, but at other times it embraces Western global governance norms and rules and even imports them for domestic reforms. When will China provide alternative global governance ideas, and when will it learn from the West? This study argues that varied Chinese global governance strategies are produced by varied trajectories of the local policy deliberation mechanism. Local policy deliberation is a pragmatic mechanism of ideational change taking place within local policy communities (i.e., communities of ministry-level bureaucrats and their advisors). Its trajectories are shaped by two conditions. First, uncertainty build-up and problematization of local orthodoxy trigger local ideational change and determine the scope of change. Second, local policy communities’ evaluations of local-idea-informed policy experiments determine the outcome of policy selection. While local policy communities facing uncertainty tend to prioritize local-centric policy innovation, idea importation incentives emerge when the governance performance of such local-centric innovations are perceived as negative. The two conditions can be influenced by multiple factors but are profoundly shaped by policy communities’ interpretations and interests. I illustrate the theory using a comparative case study and process tracing. In the international development cooperation (IDC) case, two rounds of local policy deliberations have focused on absorbing novel local ideas for policy innovation, and local-centric policy experiments were politically endorsed by a passive local policy community. The products were homegrown IDC norms and practices. In the climate case, although local policy deliberation initially brought in local ideas (i.e., the command and control measure), the governance performance of local-centric policy experiments was seen as negative. This generated strong incentives for importing foreign ideas (e.g., ET). In the finance case, a lack of local financial governance knowledge gave Western actors more influence over Chinese financial policy community’s beliefs from the very beginning. The local commitment to norm integration has been robust since the 1990s. | Ph.D. | innovation, climate, governance | 9, 13, 16 |
| Yu, Jingshu | Ng, Wai Tung | A Smart Gate Driver IC for GaN Power Transistors | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2019-11 | With the growing demands for high frequency, high temperature, and high power density applications in power electronics industry, silicon is reaching its theoretical limits. Wide band gap materials, such as GaN and SiC, have become the most popular successor candidates to keep "More than Moore" alive, due to their superior properties and mature technological process. However, there are many design challenges for driving GaN power transistors, including tight restriction on the gate voltage, EMI and reliability issues due to the large dv/dt and di/dt slew rates, the precision timing control, etc. In this thesis, an integrated smart gate driver IC with segmented output stage topology, programmable sense-FET, current sensing circuits and an on-chip stacked-based CPU for flexible digital control is presented. This IC is fabricated using TSMC's 0.18 um BCD GEN2 technology process for driving a d-mode GaN power HEMT in cascode configuration. The embedded CPU can configure all the digital control bits on-the-fly, with only 6 I/O pins. By using segmentation technique, this IC can suppress gate voltage spike and achieve switching node slope control. Compared with conventional fixed ROUT driving scheme, the gate voltage overshoot during transition is reduced by 89% with a load current of 5 A. In an 8 V to 15 V, 7.5 W boost converter operating at 1 MHz, an average EMI reduction of 4.43 dB is achieved between 40 MHz to 200 MHz, by utilizing dynamic driving strategy. When fSW = 2 MHz, the overall power conversion efficiency is improved by 6% at the rated output power. The programmable sense-FET and current sensing circuit can provide peak-current detection with a response time of 26 ns. This IC has many other add-on functions, including the active driving mode, which can change the best driving pattern on-the-fly. Compared to conventional gate drivers, the proposed driver IC offers a fully integrated solution, which eliminates the need for external controller, addition passive components, and analog circuit building for close loop regulation. System volume is reduced, while the design exibility is greatly improved. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Yu, Zhou | Davidson, Alan R. | New Insights into the Structure, Function and Evolution of TETR Family Transcriptional Regulators | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2010-03 | Antibiotic resistance is a worsening threat to human health. Increasing our understanding of the mechanisms causing this resistance will be of great benefit in designing methods to evade resistance and in developing new classes of antibiotics. In this thesis, I have used the TetR Family Transcriptional Regulators (TFRs), which constitute one of the largest antibiotic resistance regulator families, as a model system to study the structure, function and evolution of antibiotic resistance determinants. I performed a thorough examination of the variation and conservation seen in TFR sequences and structures using computational approaches. Through structure comparison, I have identified the most conserved features shared by the TFR family that are crucial for their stability and function. Based on my findings on conserved TFR structural features, a quantitative assay of binding affinity determination was developed. Through sequence comparison and a residue contact map method, I discovered the existence of a conserved residue network that correlates well with the known allostery pathway of TetR. This predicted allosteric communication network was experimentally tested in TtgR. I have also developed methods to identify TFR operator sequences through genomic comparisons and validated my prediction through experiments. In addition, I have developed an in vivo system that can be used to identify and characterize proteins that mediate resistance to almost any antibiotic. This system is simple, fast, and scalable for high-throughput applications, and could be used to discover a wide range of novel antibiotic resistance mechanisms. The principles that I applied to the TFR family could also be applied to other protein families. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Yuan, Zhe | Aguirregabiria, Victor | Essays on Network Competition in the Airline Industry | Economics | 2016-11 | This thesis studies the network structure and network competition (Chapter 1), strategic entry deterrence (Chapter 2) and demand (Chapter 3) in the airline industry. Chapter 3 extends the pricing competition stage in Chapter 1 and estimates a structural model of demand and price competition. However, both Chapters 1 and 3 ignore the entry deterrence motives of the airlines which are analyzed in Chapter 2. The first chapter studies network competition in the US airline industry. I propose a structural model of oligopoly competition where the set of endogenous strategic decisions of an airline includes its network structure (i.e., the set of city-pairs where the airline operates nonstop flights), capacities (i.e., flight frequency and number of seats) for every city-pair where they are active, and prices for nonstop and one-stop routes. In this paper, I propose and implement simple methods for the estimation of the model and for the evaluation of counterfactual experiments that avoid the computation of an equilibrium. The estimation of the model shows that ignoring the endogenous network structure in this industry implies a substantial downward bias in the estimates of marginal revenues and marginal cost of capacity. The estimated model is used to evaluate the effects of the counterfactual entry of JetBlue into the segment between Atlanta and New York. I find that the JetBlue entry into this city-pair (segment) would have substantial competition effects in other city-pairs, even in those that that are not directly connected to Atlanta or New York. The second chapter empirically studies three different but not mutually exclusive hypotheses on entry deterrence that have been proposed to explain the observed patterns of airline entry-exit decisions in city-pair markets. The first hypothesis establishes that the dominant positions of an airline in an airport can help to deter entry. The second hypothesis is based on product proliferation: an incumbent airline may want to provide more differentiated products (schedules) in order to lower the potential profitability of its competitors. The third hypothesis establishes that a hub-and-spoke network can be an effective mechanism to deter entry in spoke markets. I propose an approach to empirically distinguish the contribution of these hypotheses to explain airline entry and exit decision in city-pair markets. My results are based on new measures from combining of two U.S. Department of Transportation databases: DB1B and T100. I construct and estimate a structural entry game with incomplete information, and use the estimated model to separate the contributions of these three hypotheses. I find empirical evidence for all of the three hypotheses. The third chapter studies how different network structures and flight frequencies affect consumer willingness-to-pay and airline ability to serve passengers, for both nonstop and one-stop services. In this paper, I propose and construct new measures of airline flight frequencies in each of nonstop and one-stop service. I consider a discrete choice demand model where airlines' flight frequencies and hub status enter into consumer utility. I separate the contribution of these two product characteristics: airline flight frequencies and airline hubs indexes on consumer willingness-to-pay and marginal cost of serving passengers. My empirical findings show that when nonstop flight frequency of an airline increases by one daily flight, average consumer utility increases by $9. When one-stop flight frequency of an airline increases by one unit, average willingness-to-pay by $2.4. Although scheduling additional flights is costly for airlines, I find that, in addition to the positive effect it has on consumer demand, it also reduces the marginal cost of serving passengers. My estimates show that an increase in flight frequency by one daily flight implies reductions of $1.6 and $0.4 in the marginal cost of serving nonstop passengers and one-stop passengers, respectively. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Yuen, Tracy | Ungar, Wendy J | Generating Evidence to Streamline the Clinical Pathway in Autism Spectrum Disorder Using Simulation Models: Cost-effectiveness Comparisons of Screening and Genetic Testing Strategies | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2017-11 | The clinical pathway to diagnosis in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is complex. The objective of this thesis was to estimate the health and monetary impact of changes in the provision of select ASD screening and diagnostic health services. First, a meta-analysis estimated that the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, a commonly used ASD screening tool, performed at a low-to-moderate accuracy among children with developmental delay (pooled sensitivity: 0.83, 95% credible interval [CrI] 0.75, 0.90; specificity: 0.51, 95% CrI: 0.41, 0.61; positive predictive values [PPV] in high-risk children: 0.55, 95% CrI: 0.45, 0.66; PPV in low-risk children: 0.07, 95% CrI: <0.01, 0.16) and its performance changed with patient characteristics. The second study evaluated the cost-effectiveness of universal or high-risk screening compared to standard care, surveillance monitoring, in ASD using discrete event simulation. Results demonstrated that universal screening would greatly burden the healthcare system by heightening demand for diagnostic services and increasing healthcare expenditure. High-risk screening, on the other hand, could be a cost-effective strategy, yielding incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs) of $1100-1900/child initiated treatment or diagnosed earlier. The last study compared the cost-effectiveness of genome (GS) or exome sequencing (ES) to chromosomal microarray (CMA) using a microsimulation model. The use of ES in children with syndromic features after a negative CMA could be cost-effective compared to CMA alone (ICERs $5800-6000/child with pathogenic variant). If CMA was to be replaced by sequencing, GS would be the more cost-effective option. Findings from this thesis indicate that strategic resource allocation is crucial in ASD. Given the network of health, psychosocial and educational services required by individuals with ASD, changes in one component can have a large impact on the wait time, resource use and expenditure on downstream services that can affect children without ASD and extend beyond the healthcare system. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Yuk, Jimmy | Simpson, Andre | The Application of NMR-based Metabolomics in Assessing the Sub-lethal Toxicity of Organohalogenated Pesticides to Earthworms | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2012-11 | The extensive agricultural usage of organohalogenated pesticides has raised many concerns about their potential hazards especially in the soil environment. Environmental metabolomics is an emerging field that investigates the changes in the metabolic profile of native organisms in their environment due to the presence of an environmental stressor. Research presented here explores the potential of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)-based metabolomics to examine the sub-lethal exposure of the earthworm, Eisenia fetida to sub-lethal concentrations of organohalogenated pesticides. Various one-dimensional (1-D) and two dimensional (2-D) NMR techniques were compared in a contact filter paper test earthworm metabolomic study using endosulfan, a prevalent pesticide in the environment. The results determined that both the 1H Presaturation Utilizing Gradients and Echos (PURGE) and the 1H-13C Heteronuclear Single Quantum Coherence (HSQC) NMR techniques were most effective in discriminating and identifying significant metabolites in earthworms due to contaminant exposure. These two NMR techniques were further explored in another metabolomic study using various sub-lethal concentrations of endosulfan and an organofluorine pesticide, trifluralin to E. fetida. Principal component analysis (PCA) tests showed increasing separation between the exposed and unexposed earthworms as the concentrations for both contaminants increased. A neurotoxic mode of action (MOA) for endosulfan and a non-polar narcotic MOA for trifluralin were delineated as many significant metabolites, arising from exposure, were identified. The earthworm tissue extract is commonly used as the biological medium for metabolomic studies. However, many overlapping resonances are apparent in an earthworm tissue extract NMR spectrum due to the abundance of metabolites present. To mitigate this spectral overlap, the earthworm’s coelomic fluid (CF) was tested as a complementary biological medium to the tissue extract in an endosulfan exposure metabolomic study to identify additional metabolites of stress. Compared to tests on the tissue extract, a plethora of different metabolites were identified in the earthworm CF using 1-D PURGE and 2-D HSQC NMR techniques. In addition to the neurotoxic MOA identified previously, an apoptotic MOA was also postulated due to endosulfan exposure. This thesis also explored the application of 1-D and 2-D NMR techniques in a soil metabolomic study to understand the exposure of E. fetida to sub-lethal concentrations of endosulfan and its main degradation product, endosulfan sulfate. The earthworm’s CF and tissue extract were both analyzed to maximize the significant metabolites identified due to contaminant exposure. The PCA results identified similar toxicity for both organochlorine contaminants as the same separation, between exposed to the unexposed earthworms, were detected at various concentrations. Both neurotoxic and apopotic MOAs were observed as identical fluctuations of significant metabolites were found. This research demonstrates the potential of NMR-based metabolomics as a powerful environmental monitoring tool to understand sub-lethal organohalogenated pesticide exposure in soil using earthworms as living probes. | PhD | environment | 13 |
| Yule, Carolyn Frances | Gartner, Rosemary | Mothering in the Context of Criminalized Women's Lives: Implications for Offending | Sociology | 2010-11 | While it is widely known that most women convicted of crime or serving time in prison are mothers, little research has focused specifically on whether and how the daily activity of mothering affects women’s criminal behaviour. On the one hand, criminalized women often report that parenting is important to them. If mothering reduces the opportunities to engage in crime, strengthens informal controls, and increases the costs of crime, it should discourage offending. On the other hand, the challenges of mothering are particularly onerous for women who are economically disadvantaged, marginalized, and socially isolated – that is, the types of women who are most likely to engage in crime. If children create an imperative for resources that women cannot accommodate legally while simultaneously exacerbating psychological and emotional strains, women may turn to criminal behaviour. Using a sample of 259 criminalized women, I explore the mothering-crime relationship by examining whether the daily responsibilities and demands of living with children affect month-to-month changes in women’s involvement in offending. Controlling for criminalized women’s relationships, socio-economic contexts, living arrangements, and leisure pursuits, I provide quantitative evidence about the relationship between mothering and property crime, drug use, drug dealing, and women’s use of violence against their intimate partners. I supplement this analysis with qualitative evidence from in-depth interviews with these women. Results indicate a non-uniform effect of mothering on criminalized women’s offending: living with children discourages women from engaging in property crime and using drugs, makes no difference to whether or not they deal drugs or engage in ‘mutual’ violence with intimate partners, and increases their use of ‘sole’ violence against intimate partners. I discuss why living with children is an important “local life circumstance” shaping variation in criminalized women’s commission of some, but not all, offences, and consider the policy implications of these findings. | PhD | women | 5 |
| Zahedi, Payam | Allen, Christine | Sustained Intraperitoneal Chemotherapy via an Injectable Depot Delivery System for the Treatment of Ovarian Cancer | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2012-06 | Ovarian cancer has the highest mortality rate of all gynecological malignancies, due to inadequate treatment strategies and poor early diagnosis. Intraperitoneal (IP) chemotherapy administered on an intermittent schedule has been pursued for ovarian cancer treatment. However, local toxicities and complications associated with indwelling IP catheters required to deliver the chemotherapeutics have been documented. Furthermore, shortening or completely removing treatment-free periods between each chemotherapy cycle has shown improved efficacy compared to intermittent chemotherapy. The focus of this thesis was to develop and characterize a biocompatible and biodegradable IP injectable depot sustained drug delivery system as a new treatment strategy for ovarian cancer. A polymer-lipid injectable formulation (PoLigel) was developed and used for sustained docetaxel (DTX) delivery. The PoLigel resulted in homogeneous DTX peritoneal distribution and sustained plasma levels in healthy mice, which was in contrast to Taxotere®, the clinically used formulation of DTX. Sustained plasma, tissue, tumor and ascites DTX concentrations were observed in mice bearing IP SKOV3 tumors or ID8 ascites over a 3 week period following IP administration of the PoLigel. The intratumoral distribution and tumor penetration of DTX in subcutaneous (SC) and IP SKOV3 tumors were characterized. DTX distributed more towards the tumor core and diffused 1.5 fold further from blood vessels of the IP tumors compared to the SC tumors. The high efficacy observed in the IP SKOV3 and ID8 models and the SC SKOV3 model was attributed to favorable drug distribution at the whole-body, peritoneal and intratumoral levels in combination with local and systemic sustained drug exposure. Sustained chemotherapy with DTX alone and in combination with a drug efflux transporter inhibitor was investigated in multidrug resistant (MDR) ovarian cancer. In vitro, combination delivery via the PoLigel resulted in more apoptosis, greater intracellular accumulation of DTX, and lower DTX efflux in MDR ovarian cancer cells. Sustained combination chemotherapy was more than twice as efficacious as intermittent Taxotere® treatment in MDR ovarian cancer. Significant anti-tumor efficacy was also observed in the MDR model following sustained DTX chemotherapy compared to intermittent Taxotere®. Overall, results presented here encourage the clinical investigation of IP sustained chemotherapy for ovarian cancer treatment. | PhD | health | 3 |
| Zahraei, Sajedeh | Williams, C Charmaine | Memory, Trauma, and Citizenship: Arab Iraqi Women | Social Work | 2014-06 | This dissertation examines Arab Iraqi refugee women's experiences of the "war on terror" from a gendered historical perspective within the contemporary structural violence of state policies and practices in the Canadian context. Drawing on critical anti-racist and anti-colonial feminist theoretical frameworks, I argue that Iraqi refugee women experience the "war on terror" as both a historical and contemporary phenomenon. Historical ideological constructions of Arab Muslim women as terrorists, unsuitable for integration into Canadian society, facilitate their current social exclusion and eviction from civil society. Examining the trauma of the "war on terror" and Iraqi women's everyday experiences in this light shifts the focus away from disease focused psychiatric conceptualizations of trauma while centering the participants' experiences and varied responses to their circumstances in the Canadian context. Using a historically-based multi-level trauma framework of the "war on terror" enables us to move away from artificial binaries of "us" and "them" and facilitate a better understanding of the structural dynamics of our interconnected world in order to foster alliances across transnational borders and boundaries aimed at developing multi-level transformative interventions. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Zaiotti, Ruben | Adler, Emanuel ||Bernstein, Steven Franklin ||Hansen, Randall | Cultures of Border Control: Schengen and the Evolution of Europe's Frontiers | Political Science | 2008-11 | The dissertation examines one of the most remarkable and controversial developments in the recent history of European integration, namely the institutionalization of a regional policy regime to manage the continent’s frontiers. By adopting this regime (known in policy circles as ‘Schengen’), European governments have in fact relinquished part of their sovereign authority over the politically sensitive issue of border control, thereby challenging what for a long time was the dominant national approach to policy-making in this domain. In order to account for the regime’s emergence and success, a constructivist analytical framework centred on the notion of ‘cultures of border control’ is advanced. From this perspective, the adoption of a regional approach to govern Europe’s frontiers is the result of the evolution of a nationalist (‘Westphalian’) culture—or set of background assumptions and related practices about borders shared by a given policy community—into a post-nationalist one (‘Schengen’). The cultural evolutionary argument elaborated in the dissertation captures the unique political dynamics that have characterized border control in Europe in the last two decades and offers a more nuanced account of recent developments than those available in the existing European Studies literature. It can also shed light on current trends defining European politics beyond border control (e.g., Europe’s policy towards its neighbours) and on other attempts to regionalize border control outside Europe (e.g., the proposal for a North American security perimeter). | PhD | institution | 16 |
| Zajac, Natalia Anna Makaryk | Cochelin, Isabelle||Smith, Allan | Women Between West and East: the Inter-Rite Marriages of the Kyivan Rusâ Dynasty, ca. 1000-1204 | Medieval Studies | 2017-11 | This dissertation examines the marriage alliances of the Riurikids, the Orthodox rulers of Kyivan Rus’, with western-rite (Latin Christian / Catholic) rulers. Using both narrative and legal sources, it considers the process by which the brides in these marriages acculturated to the environment of their husbands’ courts, and the degree to which they were able to maintain ties with the culture of their birth. Through the prism of these women’s lives, the dissertation adds to our understanding of the social history of Orthodox-Catholic interaction among lay elites from the early eleventh century to 1204. While individual clerics such as Metropolitan Ioann of Kyiv disapproved of Orthodox-Catholic marriages in the 1080s, such condemnation was an extreme position for its time, and was rooted in concerns with preserving the ritual purity of Orthodox believers. Beginning in the late twelfth century, some western lay persons and clerics also may have disapproved of ties with Rus’, but their views remained in the minority. The dissertation confirms previous findings that the so-called Church Schism of 1054 was not an essential factor in the formation of these marriages until the thirteenth century. It demonstrates that brides in these inter-rite marriages did not experience a complete conversion to the religious tradition of their husbands nor rigidly maintain their allegiance to the culture of their birth; rather, they were able to keep some aspects of their former confessional and cultural identity, depending also on the specific court culture in which they found themselves. Cultural continuity with Rus’ was especially strong when brides were sent to areas of so-called “New Europe” (neighbouring Scandinavia, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary). The dissertation concludes that marriages between the Riurikids and western-rite dynasties contributed to a cosmopolitan court culture among medieval elites at a time when barriers between Orthodoxy and Catholicism still remained porous. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Zankowicz, Katherine | Cecilia, Morgan | In Her Hands: Women's Educational Work at the Royal Ontario Museum, the Canadian National Exhibition and the Art Gallery of Toronto, 1900s-1950s | Social Justice Education | 2014-11 | Women educators initiated, shaped, developed and practiced experiential, multisensory or object-based education in art galleries, exhibitions and museums in Toronto. Examining women educators' roles in developing educational programming in three sites, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), the Art Gallery of Toronto (now known as the Art Gallery of Ontario or AGO) and the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), sheds light on women's work to make museums and galleries accessible to more diverse publics. Educators were white middle class women, often university educated; their work during the first half of the twentieth century in the development and practice of educational programming was geared to broader publics and ultimately resulted in institutional change. Women working in museums, galleries and exhibitions tailored their programming to: women; children and youth; newcomers to Canada and differently abled community members. By working within the gendered hierarchical structures of large cultural institutions, these educators were able to exercise their own agency and independence through the programming they developed. This gendered geneaology of museum education practice enables us to understand the history of many of the pedagogical practices in place today within these institutions. Coupled with a deeper understanding of museum education origins, this study also reveals that women played integral roles in establishing and developing educational practices that were aligned with progressive education reforms, thereby situating museums and galleries as crucial sites for these pedagogies. These learner-centered experiential pedagogies broadened museum and gallery publics and laid the groundwork for social inclusion in cultural institutions today. This study adds important recuperative historical narratives to the story of Canadian museum education and clears a space for new historical understandings of Canadian museum and exhibition practices. By historicizing museum education, and acknowledging the gendered and racialized nature of these educative spaces, this study will address how issues of access and public education have played out in the city of Toronto. | Ph.D. | educat, gender, women | 4, 5 |
| Zargham, Meysam | Gulak, Patrik Glenn | Fully Integrated Wireless Power Transfer System For Biomedical Applications | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2014-11 | Wireless power transfer (WPT) is commonly realized by means of near-field inductive coupling and is critical to many applications. It is highly desirable to fully integrate the receiver coil (Rx) and power shaping circuits on a single chip in a standard CMOS process with no additional post-processing steps or external components. This thesis investigates the feasibility of a fully integrated WPT system that is capable of wirelessly providing milliwatts of power at centimeter distances. We present a closed form analytical solution for the optimum load that achieves the maximum possible power efficiency under arbitrary input impedance conditions based on the general two-port parameters of the network. Our results generalize several well-known special cases. The formulation allows the design of an optimized WPT link through biological media using readily available electromagnetic (EM) simulation software and effectively decouples the design of the inductive coupling two-port from the problem of loading and power amplifier design. As a proof of concept, we present a 2x2.18mm2 on-chip coil with proper power shaping blocks such as a rectifier, and a regulator in addition to an adaptive matching network, which are co-integrated on a single die in a 0.13um CMOS process. The receiver is separated from the transmitter (Tx) by 10mm of biological media. The on-chip coil demonstrates a peak WPT efficiency of 1.42% in air, 0.97% efficiency while receiving power through a combined 7mm of 0.2 molar NaCl (with similar conductivity and permittivity as blood) and 3mm of air, and 0.8% of efficiency through a combined 7.5mm of bovine muscle and 2.5mm of air. Fully integrating the receiver coil introduces new challenges and opportunities that led to new circuit innovations in each power shaping block. The adaptation block employs a synchronous sampling scheme and provides the optimum susceptance on the basis of the mathematical derivations for the optimum load. The rectifier demonstrates an efficiency of 80% and uses a positive feedback structure to avoid plasma-induced gate-oxide damage caused by the on-chip coil. Finally the integrated regulator employs an auxiliary rectifier to provide better than 24dB of power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) over all frequencies with a low quiescent current of 6uA and no off-chip components. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Zemlyanukhina, Viktoriya | Hyatt, Doug | Aspects of Linguistic Integration of Recent Immigrants to Canada: Determinants of English Language Proficiency, Role of English in Labour-market Integration Outcomes and Skills Utilization | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2011-11 | The thesis explores the determinants of English proficiency as well as its role in labour-market integration outcomes and skills utilization. The Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Canada provides the data for the empirical analysis. The introductory chapter offers insight into the recent changes to the Canadian immigration policy as well as immigration trends. This chapter also outlines chapters Two through Six and establishes the conceptual framework that unifies them. Chapter Two introduces two theoretical approaches, human capital theory and macro-level factors of the source and destination countries’ framework. It presents a review of the literature and introduces a theoretical model of linguistic integration that is subsequently tested in Chapters Three and Four. Chapters Three and Four focus on the application of human capital theory and macro-level factors of the source and destination countries’ framework. Chapter Three explores the factors that contribute to the immigrant’s English proficiency upon arrival. Chapter Four investigates the role of human capital and destination country’s macro-level factors in English proficiency four years after migration. The principal empirical results indicate that macro-level factors of the source country are significantly related to the English proficiency at arrival, while macro-level factors of the destination country are significantly related to English proficiency four years after migration. The results also corroborate findings described in the human capital literature aiding comprehension of the relationship between human capital endowments and English proficiency. Chapter Five investigates the role of English proficiency in such labour-market integration outcomes as employment seeking, incidence of employment, and employment within ethnic enclaves. The study finds that English proficiency is associated with higher odds of employment seeking and employment in Canada. It also significantly increases the likelihood of being employed outside ethnic enclaves. Chapter Six integrates human capital theory and language as a dimension of ethnicity framework. The analysis concentrates on the role of English in immigrants’ skills utilization. The principal results add to human capital theory, indicating that English proficiency significantly increases the odds of skills utilization. The findings also reveal that immigrants who speak standard English are more likely to utilize their skills than non-standard English speakers. | PhD | employment | 8 |
| Zengin, Asli | Wardlow, Holly||Dave, Naisargi | Sex Under Intimate Siege: Transgender Lives, Law and State Violence in Contemporary Turkey | Anthropology | 2014-11 | My doctoral research is about the production of marginalized sexualities through both the exercise of power and resistance to it. Focusing on legal codes and regulations surrounding sex reassignment surgeries (SRSs), sex work, hate crimes targeting trans people, and state officials' (juridical actors, police, doctors, forensic medicine people) legal and extralegal relations with trans people in Beyoglu, Istanbul, I scrutinize the transformation of trans lives into the microphysical domain of state power for the symbolic and material production of sexual and gender difference in Turkey. I also analyze how trans people respond to this process in their everyday lives. Starting with the queer history of Beyoglu, and trans people's everyday experiences of spatial discrimination, marginalization and displacement by the police, capital owners, landlords, and neighbors since the 1960s, I investigate how myriad forms of everyday violence shape trans people's political and intimate subjectivities. The construction and deployment of "transsexuality" as a medico-legal category is also part of this violent process. I elaborate on the work of this category to discuss how medico-legal actors of the state evaluate transsexuality, and hence, one's "true" sex, and open trans people's bodies to violent proximities and intimacies. Overall I argue that the categories of sex and gender are integral to the formation and intimate workings of Turkish state power as the state seeks to govern and regulate not only bodies and sexuality, but also subjects' intimate conducts and desires. The second part of my dissertation focuses on trans people's responses to these relations of violence, including the making of transgender community - a form of family and trans activism. In many cases, practices that are understood culturally as essential family duties (i.e. providing emotional and financial protection, caring for the body at death) are re-claimed by the trans community, replacing the assumed role of the family and announcing the community as "the real family." I discuss family as one of the most contested intimate sites in transgender people's lives, a site that is intimately intertwined with an ethics of care in the face of everyday violence. Arguably another expression of this ethics of care is trans activism in Istanbul. By looking at how trans people organize and mobilize around hate crimes, police violence and state control over SRSs, I scrutinize trans people's definitions of and struggle for queer justice in institutional spaces, as well as the street. | Ph.D. | gender, queer, institution, justice | 5, 16 |
| Zhang, Haofei | Mondria, Jordi | Essays in Financial Economics: Empirical Corporate Finance | Economics | 2019-06 | In this thesis, I study important firm events and their interactions with the market. Chapter 1 is a joint work with Kose John, Xu Tian, and Yihan Liu. In this chapter, we analyze the market reaction to CEO turnover announcements in the presence of information frictions. We find that the market reaction to forced CEO turnover announcements is negatively related to the level of asymmetric information between a firm and its investors. No such relation exists for voluntary turnovers. We also find that in cases where information frictions are high, companies attempt to present forced turnover as voluntary and this behavior leads to a less negative market response. Overall, our results suggest that firms act strategically when disclosing information about CEO turnover to avoid a negative market reaction. Chapter 2 shows that firms in highly competitive industries can benefit from good corporate governance. I analyze the stock market reaction to CEO/chairman consolidation announcements, and find that the market reacts positively to these events if the announcing firm has strong governance within an industry of high product market competition. The benefit of CEO duality comes from efficiency gains by management, and is positively related to market competition. Only firms with strong governance can capture this benefit. Overall, my results suggest that product market competition and corporate governance are complements for firms desiring to gain managerial efficiency through granting its CEO additional power. This chapter also provides evidence against potential one-size-fits-all policies aiming to mandate the separation of CEO and chairman roles. Chapter 3 provides novel evidence of how product market competition affects firm CEO turnover decisions through unexpected tariff cuts. I find that the likelihood of CEO turnover increases with the unexpected surge in industry competitiveness. Moreover, I find that this CEO turnover effect due to tariff cuts tends to be concentrated amongst firms with weak governance, and only affects non-exporting firms. Exporting firms, on the other hand, can benefit from increased export sales due to tariff cuts and so do not generally experience a fall in CEO-firm match quality as with non-exporting firms. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Zhang, Huiquan | Brym, Robert | Contextual Effects and Support for Liberalism: A Comparative Analysis | Sociology | 2018-03 | This dissertation examines how variation in political freedom shapes individuals’ liberal attitudes and challenges existing explanations on value change. I begin by demonstrating that mainland China does not follow the path anticipated by Inglehart’s popular theory of value change, which expects protracted economic development to result in growing liberalism (Chapter 2). Many societies sharing similar economic and cultural backgrounds (such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan) have successfully embraced liberal values. I argue that it is necessary to consider a neglected contextual factor—level of political freedom—to explain the variation. I validate this argument by comparing a wide range of societies with different economic, cultural and political contexts in Chapter 3. My analysis shows that countries with different levels of political freedom exhibit markedly different patterns of value change. Specifically, while members of politically free societies largely follow the pattern sketched by Inglehart, relatively well-educated and well- to-do people in politically unfree societies experience little value change or even express growing conservativism (compared to other demographic groups) as their societies develop economically. To explain this finding, I suggest that political regimes, especially non-free regimes manipulate cultural institutions, including the educational system, to impede value liberalization. To investigate this process, Chapter 4 compares educational reform and value change in Taiwan and mainland China since the late 1940s. These two societies share economic and cultural backgrounds but have radically different political systems. My analysis finds that the value change mechanisms in the two societies differ greatly from each other. In sum, this dissertation demonstrates that political context is critically important in shaping individual value orientations. This argument adds to existing literature on how democratic values provoke democratization by emphasizing the other side of the story: how regimes, especially non- democratic ones, actively prevent value liberalization. The educational system is an important medium through which a political system promotes its preferred ideology. The main policy implication of this dissertation is that economic growth is insufficient to generate liberal values. Political freedom is a critical prerequisite for successful democratization and a healthy civil society. | Ph.D. | institution, economic growth | 8 |
| Zhang, Jiachen | Diller, Eric David | Design, Modelling, and Control of Soft-Bodied Magnetic Miniature Robots | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2018-11 | Miniature robots promise radical improvements in microengineering and disease diagnosis and therapy. Their microscopic sizes allow them to access small and constrained workspaces that cannot be reached previously and perform tasks with accuracy and delicacy. However, their minute bodies also prevent them from carrying on-board components, such as electronics, batteries, and sensors. Thus, there exist a number of unique open problems in miniature robotics, which require novel strategies other than the conventional ones for robots at a larger size scale. In particular, the design, modelling, and control of soft-bodied magnetic miniature robots, which deform in magnetic fields to realize functionalities, have not been well studied, whilst their potential significant impacts have been shown on several areas. In this research, I design, fabricate, model, and control soft-bodied magnetic miniature robots to achieve functionalities at the millimeter and submillimeter scale. A microgripper, a miniature swimmer, and a microobject sorter are developed for cargo picking-and-placing, microscopic propulsion, and microobject sorting, respectively. A global magnetic field serves as the sole medium to deliver power and signals to these small-scale devices that work as robotic end-effectors. The magnetization pattern of each robot is programmed such that it exhibits the desired reactions in the magnetic field. Models are derived to explain and predict the behavior of these devices. Feedback controllers are developed to manipulate them in autonomous robotic tasks. Moreover, novel schemes are formulated to independently and simultaneously control two devices of the same kind using a single magnetic field without additional inputs. The successful realizations of these fundamental functionalities at (sub)millimeter scale using soft-bodied magnetic miniature robots indicate their promising potentials of achieving a large variety of complex capacities and being applied to a wide range of applications. The knowledge obtained from this research could provide insights for designing miniature robots with respect to specific task requirements. Preliminary biocompatibility tests reveal no negative effect on living cells from these robots, suggesting a promising outlook of these devices in bio-related areas. Potential applications of the proposed miniature robots include targeted drug delivery, minimally invasive surgery, on-chip cell diagnosis, microassembly, and generic laboratory operations. | Ph.D. | innovation | 9 |
| Zhang, Jinyue | El-Diraby, Tamer | A Social Semantic Web System for Coordinating Communication in the Architecture, Engineering & Construction Industry | Civil Engineering | 2010-06 | The AEC industry has long been in need of effective modes of information exchange and knowledge sharing, but their practice in the industry is still far from satisfactory. In order to maintain their competence in a highly competitive environment and a globalized market, many organizations in the AEC industry have aimed at a move towards the development of learning organizations. Knowledge management has been seen as an effective way to have every member of an organization engaged in learning at all levels. At the very centre of knowledge management and learning is knowledge sharing through effective communication. Unfortunately, however, there is a big gap in the AEC industry between existing practice and the ideal in this area. In order to effectively coordinate information and knowledge flow in the AEC industry, this present research has developed a framework for an information system – a Construction Information and Knowledge Protocol/Portal (CIKP) which integrates within it a publish/subscribe system, Semantic Web technology, and Social Web concepts. Publish/subscribe is an appropriate many-to-many, people-to-people communication paradigm for handling a highly fragmented industry such as construction. In order to enrich the expressiveness of publications and subscriptions, Semantic Web technology has been incorporated into this system through the development of ontologies as a formal and interoperable form of knowledge representation. This research first involved the development of a domain-level ontology (AR-Onto) to encapsulate knowledge about actors, roles, and their attributes in the AEC industry. AR-Onto was then extended and tailored to create an application-level ontology (CIKP-Onto) which has been used to support the semantics in the CIKP framework. Social Web concepts have been introduced to enrich the description of publications and subscriptions. Our aim has been to break down linear communication through social involvement and encourage a culture of sharing, and in the end, the CIKP framework has been developed to specify desired services in communicating information and knowledge, applicable technical approaches, and more importantly, the functions required to satisfy the needs of a variety of service scenarios. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Zhang, Laurina | Ajay, Agrawal | Essays on Digitization and the Market for Intangibles: Evidence from Creative and Technology Settings | Management | 2014-11 | This thesis examines the impact of intellectual property (IP) on firm-level performance outcomes in the market for intangibles. While the market for intangibles plays an expanding role in economic growth, it is often susceptible to market failure. In particular, digitization adds additional challenges to how firms shape their IP strategies by significantly lowering the cost of copying and sharing digital content, and thereby impacting firm appropriability in many settings. The first chapter analyzes the impact of a firm-level IP strategy commonly used by media industries to combat piracy - digital rights management (DRM) - on music sales. To do this, I exploit a natural experiment, where different record labels remove DRM from their entire catalogue of music at different times, to examine whether relaxing an album's sharing restrictions increases sales. Specifically, I compare sales of similar albums with and without DRM before and after DRM removal, and I find that removing DRM increases digital music sales. However, relaxing sharing restrictions does not impact all albums equally; it increases the sales of lower-selling albums (i.e., the ``long tail'') significantly but does not benefit top-selling albums. My results are consistent with theory that shows lowering search costs can facilitate the discovery of niche products, and suggest that the optimal strength of IP in creative industries depend on the distribution of products (e.g., mainstream vs. niche) within the firms' portfolio. My second and third chapters examine whether structural features of the market for intangibles, impact firm-level outcomes in technology-oriented industries. My second chapter reports the first empirical evidence linking the three main sources of failure emphasized in the market design literature (lack of market thickness, congestion, lack of market safety) to deal outcomes using novel survey data on technology licensing. This chapter disaggregates the licensing process into three stages and finds variation in the salience of market features. In the final chapter, I document the rated importance of different forms of IP and explore the extent to which firm and industry factors influence organizations' motivations for developing IP assets. | Ph.D. | economic growth, innovation | 8, 9 |
| Zhang, Min | Faig, Miquel | Unemployment Insurance Eligibility and the Dynamics of the Labor Market | Economics | 2009-11 | This thesis examines a number of issues regarding the Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching model’s empirical performance. Chapter 1 documents the volatility puzzle with the Canadian data. The combined data from both Canada and the United States present an additional difficulty. Even if the unobserved value of leisure is allowed to be as high as required to fit the business cycle in the United States or in Canada, the model cannot reconcile the similar labor cycles with the large policy differences in the UI benefits and income taxes in the two countries when the value of leisure is assumed to be the same in both countries. Chapter 2 takes into account the realistic institutional features of the UI system and investigates the impacts of the UI benefits on the labor market outcomes. If entitlement to UI benefits must be earned with employment, generous UI is an additional benefit to an employment relationship, so it promotes job creation. If individuals are risk neutral, UI is fairly priced, and the UI system prevents moral-hazard unemployed workers, the generosity of UI has no effect on unemployment. Chapter 3 shows that the Mortensen-Pissarides search and matching model can be successfully parameterized to generate observed large cyclical fluctuations in unemployment and modest responses of unemployment to changes in the UI benefits. The key features behind this success are the endogenous eligibility for UI benefits and the heterogeneity of workers. With the linear utilities commonly assumed in the Mortensen-Pissarides model, a fully rated UI system designed to prevent moral hazard has no effect on unemployment. However, the UI system in the United States is neither fully rated nor able to prevent workers with low productivity from quitting their jobs or rejecting employment offers to collect benefits. As a result, an increase in UI generosity has a positive, but realistically small, effect on unemployment. This chapter answers the Costain and Reiter (2008) criticism with the Mortensen-Pissarides model. | PhD | employment, worker | 8 |
| Zhang, Mingfeng | Liu, Hugh | Vision-Based Estimation and Tracking Using Multiple Unmanned Aerial Vehicles | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2013-11 | Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have very limited payload capacity and power supply, while they are envisioned to be deployed in complicated environments to perform challenging tasks; therefore, it is imperative to improve their overall autonomy and energy efficiency. This thesis presents a vision-based target surveillance system for small fixed-wing UAVs, which provides them with the capability of autonomously localizing and tracking an uncooperative ground moving target (GMT) using passive vision sensors such as monocular cameras. This system could greatly improve the autonomy of UAVs since target estimation and tracking are critical functions involved in many UAV missions. In this thesis, the UAV-GMT tracking problem is studied from various perspectives, and three different tracking algorithms are developed. The first tracking algorithm is based on sliding mode control, and it enables a fixed-wing UAV to maintain a constant distance relative to a GMT with a speed up to the UAV's cruising speed. The second tracking algorithm is designed to deal with an evasive GMT. It is derived in the framework of the pursuit-evasion game theory and guarantees persistent observation of the GMT. The third one, based on visual servoing control, directly uses visual measurements as feedback signals to close the control loop, so it does not require the GMT's states to assist tracking. The second part of this thesis presents a formation flight algorithm which enables multi-UAV cooperation in target tracking and target motion analysis. The motion of the formation is solely determined by its virtual leader; therefore, tracking algorithms developed for a single UAV can be directly extended to a multi-UAV formation through implementations on the virtual leader. The third part of this thesis develops a cooperative nonlinear filter in order to recover the states of a GMT using multiple vision-enabled UAVs. Through fusing visual measurements from multiple sources, the observability of this bearing-only estimation problem is ensured. Special attention is taken in the filter design in order to accommodate the GMT's unknown dynamics. The tracking, estimation, and formation algorithms developed in this thesis are verified in extensive numerical simulations. | PhD | energy | 7 |
| Zhang, Shiny | Aivazian, Varouj||Cziraki, Peter | Three Essays in Financial Economics | Economics | 2016-11 | This thesis discusses how innovations, managerial skills, and labour policies affect firms. In Chapter 1, I study how broadening innovation capacity through Mergers and Acquisitions (M) is costly for firms but beneficial for firm managers. I show that expanding a firm's innovation breadth through M leads to lower abnormal returns. I also show that despite this lower M performance, executives fare better in acquisitions that expand innovation breadth; specifically, increases in innovation breadth through acquisitions are associated with higher executive compensation and lower executive turnover. Overall, these findings suggest that expanding innovation breadth through M reduces firm value but benefits managers. In Chapter 2, I explore how well general versus specific managerial skills are allocated across firms and industries. In general, a manager with specific skills creates greater job value to the firm that requires these specific skills than does a manager with only general (i.e., transferable) skills. I provide empirical evidence that the differentiation between general and specific skills matters. I find that the match between a firm and its internally promoted executive, who brings firm-specific skills to a firm requiring more specific skills, increases firm value more than the mismatch does. My research suggests that a firm should choose to promote internally or hire externally based on its reliance on specific versus general skills. In Chapter 3, written jointly with Miquel Faig and Min Zhang, we calculate that the extension of unemployment insurance benefits during downturns has significantly increased the variability of unemployment and vacancies in the U.S. Taking this into account reduces the value of leisure necessary to match the wide labor market business cycles experienced in the U.S. using the Mortensen-Pissarides model. We analyze a version of the model where unemployment insurance benefits not only expire but they must be earned with prior employment. Our preferred calibration predicts that the standard deviation of unemployment since 1945 would have fallen by around 37 percent if there had not been programs extending unemployment benefits during recessions. We also find that the enactment of the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program in 2008 increased the unemployment rate by 0.5 percent. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, innovation | 8, 9 |
| Zhang, Tingting | Gunderson, Morley K||Gomez, Rafael | The Regulation of Occupations and Labour Market Outcomes in Canada: Three Essays on the Relationship between Occupational Licensing, Earnings and Internal Labour Mobility | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2017-11 | The thesis begins with an introductory chapter that discusses the current state of occupational licensing research and motivates the analysis through the importance of occupational licensing, similar to unionization, to both labour market theory and public policy. The first paper in this thesis asks whether or not Canadian licensed workers earn higher wages than unlicensed workers. The paper also compares licensing pay premium to union wage premium. Based on longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) from 1993 to 2011, a pay premium of approximately 12.0% is estimated for occupational licensing, slightly higher than the union wage premium, as 9.0%. These results are based on a cross-section of respondents using Ordinary Least Square (OLS) estimates. Fixed-effect estimates from the longitudinal data (2.6% and 4.0% for licensing and unionization, respectively), however, are much lower than the OLS amounts, suggesting the importance of unobservable factors that are correlated with licensing and union status in determining the wage premium of workers. The second paper further investigates whether or not wage premiums are uniform across the wage distribution. Using unconditional quantile regression methods, I investigated how occupational licensing and unionization impact the wage distribution of Canadian workers between 1998 and 2014. Unionization decreases wage inequality in upper-wage earners, but increases wage inequality in lower-wage earners. Occupational licensing, on the other hand, increases inequality across the entire wage distribution. The third paper focuses on the impacts of occupational licensing and unionization on young workers inter-provincial mobility decision. Using Canadian Longitudinal data from the Canadian Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) from 1993 to 2010, the results of both multilevel modeling analysis and linear probability models with clustered standard errors show that, unlike unionization which restricts labour mobility, individualsâ licensing status is not correlated with the likelihood of moving across provincial boundaries for young Canadians aged 21-34. The final component of the thesis is an Appendix that presents a newly constructed occupational licensing index, which is based on an authoritative Canadian jurisdictional review. I define occupational licensing based on the exclusive-right-to-practice clause, and occupational certification based on the exclusive-right-to-title clause in the legislation, and construct licensing indicators to carry the empirical analyses of the effects of occupational licensing in Canada. | Ph.D. | equality, labour, worker, wage, inequality | 5, 8, 10 |
| Zhang, Yi | Allen, D. Grant | Understanding Defloccation of Activated Sludge Under Transients of Short-term Low Dissolved Oxygen | Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry | 2008-06 | Deflocculation is a common upset event in biological wastewater treatment plants and causes significant problems in biosolids discharge and environmental management. However, fundamental understanding of deflocculation is limited. The overall objective of this work was to explore the fundamentals for deflocculation under transients of short-term low dissolved oxygen (DO). The investigation was carried out in a sequence of batch and continuous experiments on activated sludge, followed by batch experiments on E. coli suspensions. Both batch and continuous experiments on activated sludge demonstrated deflocculation of bioflocs under the transients of low DO (< 0.5 mg/L). Under the short-term low DO (in hours), turbidity increased by 20 times in the batch system and by 1-2 times in the continuous system, concentrations of suspended solids increased by 1-2 times, number of small particles (< 12.5 mm) increased by 2 times, more soluble EPS (proteins and humic substances) were released into supernatant or treated effluents, the removal efficiency of organic compounds was reduced by 50-70%. A 40% of increase in bulk K+ but a 30% of decrease in bulk Ca2+ under the DO limitation were observed in the batch experiments. There were significant increases in bulk K+ and decreases in bulk Ca2+ in the continuous experiments. Reversible changes were observed within 24 hours once the DO stress was removed. Floc strength of the remaining bioflocs after deflocculation increased. Deflocculation under the short-term low DO was consistent with an erosion process. The addition of selected chemicals (i.e., Ca2+, tetraethylammonium chloride, glibenclamide, and valinomycin) did not prevent deflocculation under the short-term low DO. It is proposed that a DO stress causes an efflux of cellular K+ but an influx of extracellular Ca2+, resulting in a decreasing ratio of Ca2+/K+ in extracellular solution and thereby causing deflocculation. The E. coli tests supported that increasing bulk K+ under the DO limit was due to the release of cellular K+ and was a stress response to the DO limitation. | PhD | water, environment | 6, 13 |
| Zhang, Yimin | MacLean, Heather L. | Life Cycle Environmental and Cost Evaluation of Bioenergy Systems | Civil Engineering | 2010-06 | Energy derived from biomass has been proposed as a means to attain various environmental, economic and social goals. However, bioenergy production and utilization may also result in undesirable environmental and social consequences. This thesis investigates, from a life cycle perspective, environmental and cost implications of near-term bioenergy applications in the transportation and electricity sectors. Key tradeoffs related to the attributes of the systems are elucidated. Three case studies are conducted to consider the site-specific nature of bioenergy systems. The first two studies analyze the environmental and cost implications of displacing coal with biomass for electricity generation in Ontario’s coal generating stations. The third study examines implications of replacing gasoline with ethanol for use in California’s light-duty vehicle fleet to meet the State’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). The Ontario studies show that, relative to coal-based electricity generation, electricity generated from co-firing 10% (energy input) biomass with coal reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 8% at a cost of $22/tonne CO2 equivalent for agricultural residues ($50/dry tonne residues delivered), and by 9% at a cost of $70-$84/tonne CO2 equivalent for wood pellets ($160/tonne pellets delivered), on the basis of one kWh of electricity generated (all costs are in U.S. dollars). One hundred percent pellet firing reduces GHG emissions by 91% compared to the coal system; however, the cost of GHG reduction is $99-$106/tonne CO2 equivalent. Displacing a portion of gasoline with ethanol is a feasible option to meet California’s LCFS, which calls for a 10% carbon intensity reduction of the State’s transportation fuels by 2020. Assuming current production methods and an indirect land use change effect of 30 g CO2/MJ, average Midwest corn ethanol is ruled out as an option to meet the LCFS. Using lignocellulosic ethanol to meet the LCFS is more attractive than using Brazilian sugarcane ethanol due to lower direct agricultural land requirement, dependence on imported energy, projected ethanol cost, required refuelling infrastructure modifications, and penetration of flexible fuel E85 vehicles. The thesis demonstrates that a life cycle approach is useful for analyzing and comparing different bioenergy applications, and providing insights into tradeoffs necessary in decision making for the development of next generation energy systems. | PhD | energy, greenhouse gas, environment, land use | 7, 13, 15 |
| Zhao, Kangxian | Gagne, Antoinette | Internationally Educated Teachers in Canada: Transition, Integration, Stress, and Coping Strategies | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2012-11 | This research investigates internationally educated teachers' (IETs) motivations to become teachers in Canada, learning in the initial teacher education programs, employment seeking experiences, as well as stress and coping strategies during their transition from the teacher education programs to the workplace. Twenty IETs from 12 different countries and areas participated in the study. Research data includes semi-structured interviews, field notes, short questionnaires, email, online chat records, and participants' writings. Narrative approaches (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000; Polkinghorne, 1995) were used to analyze interview and other qualitative data. In addition, I conducted descriptive analysis upon the questionnaires to triangulate the research findings. Research findings show that a number of intrinsic and extrinsic factors motivated IETs to take up or return to the teaching profession in Canada. All of the IETs in the study considered their studies in the teacher education programs useful, but a number of them expressed the wish that the programs should include more practical aspects. Some IETs experienced difficulties during their practicum due to their language and accents, heavy workload, classroom management issues, as well as balance between work and life. A few IETs also experienced conflicts and tension with their mentor teachers. Due to the challenging teaching job market in Ontario, and the disadvantaged situation for IETs, finding a teaching position was not easy for IETs. The main challenge was to obtain eligibility for teaching positions with school boards. IETs were frustrated with their employment, underemployment and unemployment. Research data from the IET Stress Scale showed that the top five stress factors for IETs in transition included finding a teaching position, teacher identity construction, balance between work and family, being observed and assessed, and heavy workload. Similar themes emerged from the interview data. IETs utilized various strategies to cope with their difficulties and stress. Most of the IETs expressed their desire to stay in the teaching profession in Canada. However, two IETs were reluctant to look for teaching positions due to their frustrating experiences with their mentor teachers. Two other IETs stayed in nonteaching or looked for jobs in other professions due to their difficult job seeking experiences. | PhD | employment | 8 |
| Zhao, Ran | Abbatt, Jonathan PD | Aqueous-phase Organic Chemistry in the Atmosphere | Chemistry | 2015-01 | Atmospheric aqueous phases (i.e. cloud, fog and aerosol liquid water) are important reaction media for the processing of organic compounds. Quantitative data on aqueous-phase organic chemistry under the atmospheric context are sparse compared to the data from comparable gas-phase processes. A series of studies was conducted to provide fundamental information on this topic. An online analytical technique, Aerosol Chemical Ionization Mass Spectrometry (Aerosol CIMS), was employed to quantitatively monitor aqueous-phase OH oxidation of glyoxal and methylglyoxal. Quantification of all the major reaction products was achieved, permitting complete reaction mechanisms to be presented. An unexpected class of compounds, α-hydroxyhydroperoxide (α-HHP), was observed during the experiments, and the formation of this class of compounds was further quantified. Formation of α-HHP can be potentially important in aerosol liquid water, affecting aerosol toxicity and the gas-particle partitioning of small aldehydes. Aerosol CIMS was further applied to the OH oxidation of levoglucosan, using a high mass resolution CIMS. Unique reaction trends were observed, from which novel mechanism analysis frameworks were introduced. Aqueous-phase photochemical processing of a variety of light-absorbing organic compounds (Brown Carbon (BrC)) was investigated in the laboratory. The light absorptivity of BrC was significantly altered via these processes, indicating that the chemical processing of BrC species needs to be considered for a sound assessment of their atmospheric implications. Finally, cloud-partitioning of a toxic compound, isocyanic acid (HNCO), was investigated in the field, representing the first online measurement of gas-phase compounds dissolved in cloudwater. A secondary source of HNCO in the ambient air was also observed. Overall, aqueous-phase chemistry leads to reaction products which likely contribute to secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation. At the same time, aqueous-phase chemistry also facilitates the transformation and removal of specific species with atmospheric significance (e.g. tracer compounds, pollutants, BrC). | Ph.D. | water, climate, pollut | 6, 13 |
| Zhao, Shuze | Trescases, Olivier | Moving Beyond Worst-Case Power Design in Datacenters - Distributed UPS and Dynamic Voltage Scaling for FPGAs | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2018-06 | Millions of datacenters are operating all over the world, consuming up to 3% of the global electricity power and leaving a significant carbon footprint. Due to the uncertainty in the server load profile, most existing power-delivery designs are rated for the worst-case scenario, leading to significant design guard-bands, which results in unnecessary power losses and cost. This thesis addresses two areas that lead to inefficiency in datacenters: 1) unnecessary power losses in the central Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), and 2) conservative operation in Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The central UPS units in datacenters have a poor efficiency due to their back-to-back architecture, especially at light-load. A novel distributed UPS architecture and control scheme are proposed to provide granular local energy backup and increase the system efficiency. Lithium-Ion Capacitors (LIC) and a bi-directional dc-dc converter are used to provide short-term UPS functionality. A 200-kHz bi-directional multi-phase dc-dc converter operating in Hysteretic Current Mode Control (HCMC) is built to demonstrate the proposed scheme on a server, leading to a 33% reduction in average reactive power for one particular dynamic workload. Datacenter-level behavior is simulated, and the results show that the proposed architecture leads to 75% lower losses in the power delivering path compared to the datacenter with a central UPS. FPGAs are most commonly operated at their nominal supply voltage, which in most applications is severely conservative. During compilation of the application-specific FPGA design, the Computer-Aided Design (CAD) tool determines the maximum achievable frequency of the user application. This analysis is based on the worst-case timing analysis of the critical path at a fixed nominal voltage, which usually results in significant voltage or frequency margin in a typical chip. Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) has great potential to reduce the power in FPGAs; however, unlike in microprocessors, the critical-path delay of FPGAs is application-dependent, which creates unique challenges for the DVS of FPGAs. To address this issue, a robust universal DVS scheme for FPGAs is demonstrated which includes two phases: offline self-calibration and online DVS. The proposed DVS scheme is demonstrated on a 60-nm Intel Cyclone IV FPGA with a digitally-controlled dc-dc converter, leading to approximately 40% power savings in two typical applications. Modern FPGAs operate with a core voltage of ∼1 V and can consume tens of Amps, and therefore load-dependent voltage fluctuations can lead to timing violations and logic errors. This is even more critical for DVS operation in FPGAs with limited voltage head-room. For reliable DVS operation of FPGAs, two schemes are presented: 1) automatic extraction of the DC resistance in the Power Delivery Network (PDN) for the resistive voltage drop (IR-drop) compensation, and 2) identification of the high-impedance frequency band(s) in the PDN to avoid large supply voltage ripple caused by the PDN resonance. The embedded impedance extraction tool is synthesized within the FPGA load, in coordination with a mixed-signal current-mode dc-dc converter. Two fully synthesizable self-calibrated Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) are used for core voltage sampling. The proposed schemes are demonstrated on a Cyclone IV FPGA board and real-time IR-drop compensation is shown to eliminate logic errors in an FIR filter application. It is also shown that by modifying the PDN based on the extracted results, the voltage operating range and reliability of a crossbar application is greatly extended. The new techniques outlined in this thesis should lead to significant energy savings in future datacenters, which can help to increase their power density and reduce their carbon footprints. | Ph.D. | conserv, energy | 7, 14 |
| Zhao, Xiaoyi | Strong, Kimberly | Studies of Atmospheric Ozone and Related Constituents in the Arctic and at Mid-latitudes | Physics | 2017-06 | Two UV-visible differential absorption spectroscopy (DOAS) ground-based spectrometers (GBSs) were installed at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL) in the Canadian High Arctic (80.1o N, 86.4o W). These two instruments have been used to measure stratospheric trace gases since 1999 and 2006 respectively. In 2010 and 2014, two solar-tracking systems were integrated with the GBSs to make tropospheric trace gas measurements. One goal of this work was to study surface ozone depletion events (ODEs) in the Arctic, using data from the GBSs. The measurements of ozone and BrO, combined with model results, indicate that both high wind/blowing snow and low wind/stable boundary layer are favorable environmental conditions for bromine explosion events, and in some cases, the combination of these two conditions will extend the lifetime of a bromine explosion event. In addition, during a strong surface ODE (ozone VMR | Ph.D. | wind, solar, environment | 7, 13 |
| Zhao, Yong | Yan, Ning | Development of Bio-based Phenol Formaldehyde Resol Resins Using Mountain Pine Beetle Infested Lodgepole Pine Barks | Forestry | 2013-06 | Phenol formaldehyde (PF) resol resins have long been used widely as wood adhesives due to their excellent bonding performance, water resistance and durability. With the growing concern for fossil fuel depletion and climate change, there is a strong interest in exploring renewable biomass materials as substitutes for petroleum-based feedstock. Bark, rich in phenolic compounds, has demonstrated potential to partially substitute phenol in synthesizing bio-based PF resins. In this study, acid-catalyzed phenol liquefaction and alkaline extraction were used to convert mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) infested lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) barks to phenol substitutes, liquefied bark and bark extractives. Two types of bio-based phenol formaldehyde (PF) resol resins, namely liquefied bark-PF resin and bark extractive-PF resins, were then synthesized and characterized. It was found that acid-catalyzed phenol liquefaction and alkaline extraction were effective conversion methods to obtain phenol substitute with the maximum yield of 85% and 68%, respectively. The bio-based PF resol resins had higher molecular weights, higher polydispersity indices, shorter gel times, and faster curing rates than the lab synthesized control PF resin without the bark components. Based on the lap-shear tests, the bio-based PF resol resins exhibited comparable wet and dry bonding strength to lab PF resin and commercial PF resin. The post-curing thermal stability of the bio-based PF resins was similar to the lab control PF resin. The liquid-state 13C nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) study revealed significant influences on the resin structures by the inclusion of the bark components. Methylene ether bridges, which were absent in the lab PF resin, were found in the bio-based PF resins. The bark components favored the formation of para-ortho methylene linkages in the bio-based bark extractive-PF resins. The liquefied bark-PF resin showed a higher ratio of para-para/ortho-para methylene link (-CH2-), a higher unsubstituted/substituted hydrogen (-H/-CH2OH) ratio and a higher methylol/methylene (-CH2OH/-CH2-) ratio than the bark extractive-PF resin. Both tannin components of bark alkaline extractives and phenolated barks contributed to the acceleration of the curing rate of the bio-based resins. This research demonstrated the promise of the bio-based PF resins containing either bark alkaline extractives or liquefied barks as environmentally friendly alternatives to PF adhesives derived solely from fossil fuel based phenol and proposed a novel higher value-added application of the largely available barks from the mountain pine beetle-infested lodgepole pine trees. | PhD | water, renewable, climate, environment | 6, 7, 13 |
| Zholdoshalieva, Rakhat | Sawchuk, Peter | Rural Youth within Changing Education, Formal Labour Market and Informal Economic Conditions during Post-Soviet Transition Period in the Kyrgyz Republic | Social Justice Education | 2016-06 | This qualitative case study examines the experiences, expectations and aspirations of education, employment, and future prospects of a group of rural youth growing up in the postsocialist era in southern Kyrgyzstan. Despite popular conceptions that youth are the authors of their life projects with an abundance of choice (Du Bois Reymond, 1995), the socially determining categories of social class, gender, ethnicity, and place still structure these choices and shape the life chances of contemporary youth (Roberts, 2010). This study shows how the postsocialist transformation has increased the burdens and uncertainties of young people and undermined the stability and security of their futures (DeYoung, 2010; Korzh, 2014; Roche, 2014; Walker, 2011). It identifies educational and social inequalities persisting from traditional Kyrgyz and Soviet society, as well as those emerging in the post-Soviet period, and analyzes the effects of these on the experiences and aspirations of rural Kyrgyz youth. Three types of rural Kyrgyz youth emerged from the data set of the study and three illustrative cases were: the trajectory of youth from the rural intelligentsia class with aspirations for a professional future; that of youth from the emerging successful stratum of kommersants (merchants) with aspirations for an entrepreneurial future, and that of youth from the former kolkhoz (Soviet collective farm) working class, who face the precarious future of the migrant worker. These three social trajectories are explained, following Bourdieu, as manifestations of the class and gendered habitus of the rural Kyrgyz youth and their families. The findings of the study reveal the ways that the social resources of kinship-oriented families, specifically their economic, cultural, social, and symbolic forms of capital, determine rural youth experiences and future chances in postsocialist transformation in Kyrgyzstan. | Ed.D. | educat, rural , worker | 4, 8, 11 |
| Zhong, Junjie | Sinton, David | Nanofluidics: A Window into Transport and Phase Change in Nanoporous Systems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-06 | Fluid transport and phase change in nanoporous media are of fundamental importance in a range of applications including fuel cells, water treatment, solar steam production, electrocatalytic conversion of CO2, as well as importantly natural gas and oil in nanoporous reservoirs. Shale resources are massive, controversial, and provide an increasing share of global energy with a broad group of stakeholders in academia, industry, and government. However, there is much uncertainty regarding the underlying fluid fundamentals of ultra-low permeability nonporous media – a nanoscale fluid challenge which is extremely complex, coupled and largely uncharacterized. The challenge is multi-component fluid mixtures within radically multi-scale geometries (a few nanometers to bulk), and is behind the shale resources efficient recovery as well as its global environmental impact now under debate. Probing fluid behaviors at the nanoscale is challenging due to difficulties in creating representative nanoconfinement and measuring properties within. Silicon-glass micro/nanofluidics provides an opportunity in overcoming these challenges. Here, the innovation and application of silicon-glass nanofluidic devices to directly quantify fluid behaviors in nanoconfinement using optical microscopy down to sub-10 nm is introduced. This nanofluidic approach is compatible with industrially-relevant high temperatures (up to 573 K) and pressures (up to 20 MPa). Fundamental nanoscale single component hydrocarbon condensation, hydrocarbon mixture phase transitions and large molecule diffusion are studied, deviating significantly from bulk. The results highlight mass-transport governed phase change dynamics, mixture bubble points depressed even below bulk dew points, and order of magnitude reduced molecular diffusivity at nanoscale. In addition, the nanofluidic approach is also applied to screen emerging gas injection strategies for enhanced tight oil recovery as a demonstration of its industrial application potential. Efficient evaluation of different recovery strategies indicates the significance of capillary pressure as a barrier in nanoporous shale and how it can be applied to improve recovery. | Ph.D. | water, environment, innovation. Energy, industr | 6, 7, 9, 13 |
| Zhou, Gao | Cooper, Paul | Extraction of Preservative Components from Treated Wood Waste | Forestry | 2012-06 | The preservative concentration difference in treated wood was investigated to understand the component distribution; a study of different chemical extractions of treated wood waste was carried out and certain reagents were realized to be feasible to the preservative component removal. During fixation, the preservative components redistributed between earlywood and latewood and concentration gradients at depths also developed. Different solvent extractions of CCA treated wood were tested and ion exchange, chelation and metal dissolving were all mechanisms for component extraction. The transition of Cr(III) to Cr(VI) by oxidizing reagents (NaClO and H2O2) can make possible the direct reuse of extracted chemicals as a preservative. Different reaction factors in the oxidant extractions were compared and higher pHs significantly improved the oxidizing capability of the reagents and CCA component removal. Fresh and aged CCA treated wood generally responsed similarly to the oxidant extractions. However, arsenic in aged wood was more difficult to be removed by NaClO, while, H2O2 was more efficient to extract CCA components from aged wood than fresh wood. Monoethanolamine (Mea) efficiently extracted copper (above 90%) from ACQ treated wood and the formation of stable neutral Cu(Mea)2 in sufficient Mea solution is the main mechanism for Mea extraction. Little wood structure degradation occurred during the process. Mea (10%~15%) extraction was fast and the effect of temperature was insignificant. Cu diffusion in the longitudinal direction was the most significant compared to other wood directions. To further promote Mea extraction, repeated extraction (batch-based and column-based) was performed and proved to be more efficient, feasible and economical than one-time extraction. Column-based continuous Mea extraction showed both high Cu removal (up to 99%) and Cu accumulation in the extract. After the preservative treated wood waste is decontaminated significantly, the extract solution can be reused by directly mixing with the preservative treating solution, which is the most straightforward procedure for the recycling of chemicals removed from the preservative treated wood. | PhD | waste, recycl | 7, 12 |
| Zhou, Jun | Booth, Laurence | Industry Influences on Corporate Financial Policies | Management | 2010-11 | This thesis examines how industry differences affect both corporate financial policies and valuation. Chapter 1 studies the impact of a firm‟s product market power, through the channel of business risk, on its dividend policy. Using three measures of market power – the Herfindahl-Hirschman index, the degree of import competition and the Lerner Index, I find that market power positively affects a firm‟s dividend decision, both in terms of the probability of paying a dividend and the amount of the dividend. I also provide evidence that the route through which market power affects the dividend decision is business risk: a firm with greater market power is less risky and hence more likely to pay dividends and pay more dividends. Chapter 2 examines industry differences on the level of corporate cash holdings since the 1970s with a focus on high-tech versus non-high-tech firms. In contrast to the average cash-to-assets ratio of non-high-tech firms, which remained stable at a level close to that of the 1970s, the average cash ratio of high-tech firms more than tripled from 1980 to 2007. I find that this difference can be explained by changing firm characteristics across these two industrial sectors. This is due to high-tech new listings, whose changing characteristics and increasing proportion have caused the population characteristics of the high-tech sector to tilt toward those typical of firms that hold more cash. Chapter 3 investigates the industry impact on the marginal value of corporate cash holdings and how it has evolved over time. I find that on average the difference in the marginal value of cash between high-tech and non-high-tech firms has become larger during the sub-period which covers the 1990s and 2000s, as compared to earlier time periods. Furthermore, I show that this increase can be explained by changing firm characteristics related to the precautionary demand for holding cash. Overall, this thesis shows that industry differences, represented by varying degrees of market power and changing firm characteristics, have significantly affected corporate financial policies, both in terms of dividend policy and optimal cash holdings. | PhD | industr | 9 |
| Zhou, Yun | Hu, Ming | Pricing and Matching in the Sharing Economy | Management | 2017-11 | We study operational problems related to the sharing economy. Sharing economy platforms such as Uber offer the crowdsourced suppliers a wage for providing services/goods, and charge the customers a price for using them. In Chapter 2, we study the fixed commission rate contract practiced by many sharing economy platforms. We show that by using the optimal flat-commission contract, the platform achieves at least 75% of the optimal profit of the first-best benchmark, in which the platform freely chooses the price and wage under various market conditions. In Chapter 3, we consider a platform's problem of dynamically matching random demand and supply of heterogeneous types in a periodic-review fashion. The platform decides the optimal matching policy to maximize the total discounted rewards minus costs. We provide sufficient and robustly necessary conditions only on matching rewards such that the optimal matching policy follows a priority hierarchy among possible matching pairs. In Chapter 4, we study the dynamic matching problem in Chapter 3 under two specific forms of reward structures. First, we consider the problem with horizontally differentiated supply and demand types. In that problem, supply and demand types locate on a unidirectional circle. The unit matching reward between a supply type j and a demand type i is a decreasing function with respect to the unidirectional distance from the location of j to that of i on the circle. We then study the problem with vertically differentiated supply and demand types, for which we impose a reward structure in which types have â qualityâ differences. For both cases, we apply the results in Chapter 3 to characterize the optimal matching policy. In Chapter 5, we study the pricing behaviors of two agents under incentives generated from social comparison. We demonstrate how opposite-directional social comparisons interact with demand variability to change competitive behaviors. In particular, we show that the stronger the behind aversion behavior, the more intense the price competition, and that there is a threshold on the market variability above which price competition is more alleviated and below which price competition is more intensified, when the agents exhibit stronger ahead-seeking behavior. | Ph.D. | wage | 8 |
| Zhu, Tianyu | Gans, Joshua | Start-ups as Buyers in Technology Markets: Evidence from the Bio-pharmaceutical Industry | Management | 2019-11 | My dissertation studies start-ups’ strategies in the market for technologies, with a focus on their role as technology buyers, in the context of the bio-pharmaceutical industry. The first chapter clarifies when and what start-ups are likely to buy. Building on the classic assumption that start-ups are most advantaged in developing early-stage technologies and drawing on research examining M resource reconfigurations, I argue that start-ups will have opportunities to buy from sellers that experienced recent M events because M resource reconfigurations release early-stage technologies that would otherwise be further developed and sold to incumbents when late-staged. To test the predictions, I exploit a novel data set involving 97,202 U.S. bio-pharmaceutical patents, and adopt a quasi-experimental approach, using M that unexpectedly failed to go through. The results show that sellers’ M events increase the probability that a patent will be bought by a start-up by around 50%, a finding that is driven primarily by an increase in start-ups’ acquisitions of early-stage technologies. The second chapter studies the possible impact of venture capital (VC) backing for start-ups’ probability of buying external technologies. An analysis of nearly 3,137 U.S. bio-pharmaceutical start-ups founded between 1996 and 2012 suggests that start-ups are about 2% more likely to acquire external technologies after they receive VC funding. To address the concern that a firm’s VC backing status might not be random, I construct an instrumental variable, capturing exogenous variation in VC funding at the MSA level. IV regression results reveal that VC backing status causes over 30% increase in start-ups’ probability of acquiring external technologies. The third chapter examines a puzzle in the literature explaining technology transaction timing: why some quality signals that reduce information asymmetries promote early licensing (e.g., licensors’ alliance experiences), whereas others do not (e.g., patents). By building a formal model and exploiting a novel data set comprising 124 U.S. exclusive licensing agreements announced between 2009 and 2015, I show that patents, in addition to reducing information asymmetry, induce licensors’ over-optimism regarding buyer competition, which delays licensing timing. Overall, my dissertation contributes to a more comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the market for technologies. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Zhu, Tingting | Dittrich, Maria | Potential of Cyanobacterial Carbonate Precipitation for Concrete Restoration | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2017-11 | Concrete is a widely used construction material with a global production growing by 2.5% annually. However, concrete can easily be cracked and has a limited lifespan. Among strategies for healing cracks and recycling concrete, microbial carbonate precipitation (MCP) by nitrogen-involved heterotrophic bacteria showed great potential. In this study, an alternative technology using autophototrophic cyanobacteria is proposed to overcome the pollution generated by urea-based MCP. This study investigated cyanobacterial carbonate precipitation (CCP) in concrete and mortar, and its impact on their performance. Solution composition and cell viability were monitored, morphology of precipitates and the relation of precipitate-cell-substrate was observed with scanning and transmission electron microscopy as well as atomic force microscopy and epifluorescence microscopy. Chemical components were analyzed by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy. The performance of concrete/mortar were evaluated using water absorption tests, sonication tests, compressive strength tests and mercury intrusion tests. Results show that cyanobacteria were able to survive in cement solution for a certain period, the biotic-formed precipitates were different in morphology and achieved higher amount compared to abiotic-formed precipitates. In addition, the calcite-cell aggregate layer was more cohesive on concrete/mortar than the calcite layer formed in the abiotic condition. The durability of concrete/mortar was greatly enhanced by CCP through decreasing the water absorption and porosity, and increasing the compressive strength. Nevertheless, the capability of cyanobacteria improving concrete/mortar properties is strain-dependent, and varies according to environmental conditions. This study concluded that Synechocystis PCC6803 works better than Synechococcus PCC8806 and Synechococcus LS0519. Generally, UV pretreatment of cyanobacteria contributes to better results by producing higher amount of EPS. Consequently, cyanobacteria, especially UV-killed cells, show a great potential for restoring concrete/mortar. | Ph.D. | water, energy, production, recycl, environment, pollut | 6, 7, 12, 13 |
| Zhu, Yidan | Mojab, Shahrzad | Practising Ideology: Chinese Immigrant Mothers' Learning in Canadian Immigration Settlement Organizations | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2017-11 | This research examines how Chinese immigrant mothers’ learning has been socially organized in a Canadian immigration settlement organization (ISO) and how mothering as an ideology shapes immigrant mothers’ learning practice. Drawing on a feminist and anti-racist theoretical framework and a critical ethnography, this dissertation problematizes motherhood learning through exploring the ideology of mothering, unpacking the ruling relations behind the learning practice, and examining immigrant mothers’ standpoint. I argue that immigrant mothers’ everyday experience of learning, mothering and settlement, which are socially organized by the state and its agencies, are not only a cultural nexus of transnational encounters, but also social relations with race, gender and class inequalities. The findings of this dissertation were generated from three parts. First, I revisit the meaning of motherhood. I challenge the ideology of mothering, which is based on Westernized and neoliberalized ideas of “intensive mothering” (Vandenbeld Giles, 2014). I unpack the ruling relations behind Chinese immigrant mothers’ learning and find out how the ruling idea of mothering shapes Chinese immigrant mothers’ learning, settlement, mothering and everyday practice. Second, I examine the social organization of motherhood learning in Canadian immigration settlement organizations. Through critical ethnographical research at MOSAIC, a Vancouver-based immigration settlement organization, I detail how hierarchical actors including the state, program organizers, social workers, and different individuals co-participate in the making of “immigrant mothers.” I provide an account of how Canadian immigration settlement organizations play a role mediating the state’s policy and immigrants’ actual settlement practice to ensure immigrant mothers’ learning is associated with the state’s neoliberal immigration policy. Finally, I investigate Chinese immigrant mothers’ experience as standpoints to understand motherhood learning as an ideological practice. I show that the discursive and material practice of Chinese immigrant mothers’ learning contains unequal social relations, hierarchically structured by race, gender, and class differences. This dissertation contributes to the understanding of migration and motherhood in the field of adult education, women’s and gender studies, anthropology and comparative and international education. The implications for immigration policy and settlement service involve a reframing of Canadian immigration policy and suggestions on the transformative practice in local immigration settlement organizations. | Ph.D. | worker, women, gender | 5, 8 |
| Zhu, Zixing | Tyndale, F. Rachel | The Interaction Between Genetics and Tobacco Consumption in Light Smokers | Pharmacology | 2014-06 | Smoking is the largest preventable cause of death globally. In North America, although the overall smoking prevalence has been declining, an increasing number of smokers consume less than 10 cigarettes per day and are referred to as light smokers. Today, light smokers represent more than 30% of the smoking population and are at risk for smoking related mortality and morbidity. For example, light smokers have approximately 15 times higher risk of developing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and approximately 20 times higher risk of developing lung cancer compared to non-smokers. Yet despite the high prevalence and substantial negative health consequences, light smokers are generally excluded from smoking related studies. Genetic variants in CYP2A6, encoding for the major nicotine-metabolizing enzyme, and CHRNA5-A3-B4, encoding for alpha5, alpha3, and beta4 nicotinic receptors, are associated with altered tobacco consumption in heavy smokers, yet little is known about the influence of CYP2A6 and CHRNA5-A3-B4 genetic variants on tobacco consumption and smoking cessation in light smokers. In a cross sectional study of 400 Alaska Native individuals, we demonstrated that light smokers had similar nicotine exposure (as indicated by their urinary total nicotine equivalents) as heavy smokers despite self-reporting lower number of cigarettes per day. Like heavy smokers, these light smokers titrated their tobacco consumption according to their CYP2A6 activity and CHRNA5-A3-B4 genotype. In addition, gene variants in CYP2A6 and CHRNA5-A3-B4 acted in combination to modify tobacco consumption. Furthermore, our biomarker analyses showed that variation in CYP2A6 metabolic activity, such as those that exist between CYP2A6 genotypes or the sexes, altered cotinine removal to a greater extent than cotinine formation. As a result, cotinine accumulates in individuals with lower CYP2A6 activity resulting in substantially higher cotinine levels for a given tobacco exposure. Overall, the characterization of tobacco consumption levels and the genetic contribution to tobacco consumption in light smokers improved our understanding of smoking behaviors in this increasingly prevalent population and could aid the development of more efficacious smoking cessation strategies. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Zia, Afiya | Mojab, Shahrzad||McElhinny, Bonnie | FAITH AND FEMINISM IN PAKISTAN: Religious Agency or Secular Autonomy? | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2017-11 | Numerous post 9/11 ethnographic studies on Islamist/Muslim women have focused almost exclusively on their piety, spiritual drive, agency and subjectivities. Against this trend, the academic and political interest of Faith and Feminism is to recall attention to the political ideologies and routine struggles of women in Muslim majority contexts. This thesis tracks some epistemological tensions that define the growing antagonism between faith-based and secular feminist politics in Pakistan. It argues that there are serious limitations to the religious agency sometimes celebrated by scholars in Western academia as a manifestation of Muslim women’s imaginaries or subjectivities (Abu-Lughod 2013, Jamal 2013, Iqtidar 2011, Mahmood 2005). The influence of postsecularist scholarship that discredits secular feminisms and liberal aspirations is studied with reference to Pakistan. The thesis finds that such criticism relies on a forfeiture of equality and freedoms for Muslim women and minorities only and offers a rationalisation of patriarchy and conservatism. At the same time, this study also recognises the limitations and ineffectual strategies of liberal resistance to Islamic conservatism; the ideological tensions amongst feminists; and the futile dependence on popular culture as a mode of resistance. The post 9/11 developmental model of “donor-driven Islam” (as a strategy of embedding progressive Islam under the guise of servicing gender empowerment while promoting a communalised ‘Muslim human rights’) is found to hinge on postsecularist arguments. In contrast to the above trends, this thesis documents and analyses some examples of the nation-wide working women’s movements in Pakistan that were active through the decade of the “War on Terror” (2001 – 2013). These struggles and campaigns have been secular, or free of theological underpinnings, motivations, slogans or props, and have taken no recourse from faith or religious debates, yet they remain the direct targets of Islamist conservatism and militancy. The thesis argues for political investment in these movements of secular resistance for meaningful feminist progress. | Ph.D. | gender, women, equality, rights | 5, 16 |
| Zimmerman, Naomi | Evans, Greg J||Wallace, James S | Linking Laboratory Engine Studies to Real-world Observations: Assessing the Air Quality Implications of Gasoline Direct Injection Engines | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2016-06 | In response to stringent regulations on fleet-average fuel economy, vehicle manufacturers have increasingly replaced port fuel injection (PFI) engines with gasoline direct injection (GDI) engines. These engines emit substantial quantities of ultrafine particulate matter (PM) and black carbon (BC) which is of concern due to their associated health and climate effects, respectively. This thesis investigated GDI emissions, with a focus on the particle phase, in both laboratory and real-world environments to help understand the air quality impacts of this engine technology. As part of the study, advanced PM measurement techniques were assessed, and a correction protocol for a popular high-time resolution particle sizing instrument needed to accurately measure vehicle exhaust size distributions was developed. A laboratory study to quantify phase-partitioned polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) concentrations was also conducted. Compared to PFI engines, GDI engines emitted elevated concentrations of heavy molecular weight PAHs, including benzo(a)pyrene, a PAH with established associations to negative health outcomes. The GDI engine exhaust also had elevated concentrations of the PAHs pyrene and fluoranthene; these PAHs also exhibited the greatest extent of particle-gas partitioning. A study of real-world GDI emissions in an urban environment showed that GDI particle number and BC emissions were in the upper end of the fleet distribution, and that exhaust plumes exhibited dynamic behaviour in the near-road region, with increasing particle number emission factors with increasing distance from the roadway. This behaviour was unique to GDI vehicles, the same effects were not observed for heavy-duty garbage trucks or a PFI-equipped vehicle. Comparing size distributions at different distances from the roadway, rapid particle growth of sub-5 nm soot cores due to condensation of low volatility organic gases, such as pyrene and fluoranthene, was proposed to be the dominant growth mechanism in GDI vehicle exhaust. Comparing laboratory and real-world emission factors, BC emission factors were in good agreement, while real-world particle number emission factors were up to an order of magnitude higher. An estimate of the climate impacts of increased BC relative to fuel savings from GDI also showed that fuel economy gains of up to 12% may be needed to offset the radiative forcing of BC. | Ph.D. | urban, climate, environment | 11, 13 |
| Zimmermann, Camilla C. U. | Tannock, Ian | Effectiveness of Specialized Palliative Care for Patients with Advanced Cancer | Medical Science | 2010-06 | Despite the rapid development of palliative care teams, evidence for their effectiveness in oncology care is lacking. This thesis reviews and contributes towards this evidence, focusing on the randomized controlled trial as a research method. We conducted a systematic review of 22 trials reviewed that measured effectiveness of specialized palliative care. Family satisfaction with care improved in seven of 10 studies, but only four of 13 trials assessing quality of life and one of 14 assessing symptoms showed a benefit of the intervention. Conclusions were limited by methodologic problems in all of the trials. We conducted a phase II study of the efficacy of a palliative care team for symptom control and satisfaction of 150 patients with advanced cancer. Symptom severity (Edmonton Symptom Assessment System Distress Score) improved at one week and one month, as did patient satisfaction (all p<0.0001). We investigated factors associated with symptom severity and response for patients enrolled in the phase II study. Symptoms at baseline were worse for women and those with worse performance status (both p<0.005); female gender and worse baseline symptom severity independently predicted symptom improvement (both p<0.05). We planned and initiated an RCT of the effectiveness of an early palliative care intervention for improvement of health-related quality of life (HRQL) and satisfaction with care. Using baseline data from this RCT, we examined factors associated with HRQL in patients with advanced cancer. The strongest determinants of overall HRQL (combined FACT-G total score and FACIT-Sp Meaning and Peace subscore) were increased age (p<0.001), good performance status (p<0.001) and survival time >6 months (p=0.001). Compared to patients receiving cancer treatment, those awaiting new treatment had worse emotional well-being (p<0.001) while those on surveillance or whose treatment had been stopped had worse existential well-being (p=0.03). Male gender predicted better emotional and physical well-being and lower income predicted worse social well-being. Lastly, we developed recommendations for those planning an RCT in a palliative care population, incorporating information from the studies presented. Although such RCTs are challenging to conduct, they are feasible and necessary to improve the evidence base for the treatment of patients with advanced cancer. | PhD | women, gender, health | 3, 5 |
| Zinabou, Genet Emilie Wilma | Li, Nicholas||Trefler, Daniel | Three Essays in Development and Cultural Economics | Economics | 2020-06 | This thesis collects three papers studying topics in development and cultural economics. In Chapter 1, I study the role of culture in driving entrepreneurship. I present robust evidence that cultural groups which emphasize obedience as a moral value produce fewer entrepreneurs. First, I document this relationship at the language group level, exploiting within-country variation in group-level values. Second, I show that these group-level values continue to predict entrepreneurship rates and related occupational choices among first- and second-generation immigrants to Canada. Third, I present evidence that obedience values form as a function of values received both from parents and from the wider community during childhood. In Chapter 2, I present joint work with Limin Fang and Tongtong Hao on the effects of China's One Child Policy on the education and early labour market outcomes of those born in its wake. We present evidence from a difference-in-difference design that individuals who grew up as only children as a result of the policy obtained significantly more education than their counterparts with siblings, while early labour market outcomes were less affected. We place our results in context of the large literature on quantity-quality tradeoffs and argue that they are consistent with existing theoretical models, which allow for non-linearity in the effect of child quantity on quality. In Chapter 3, I study the effect of natural resource abundance on human development in Sub-Saharan Africa between 1970 and 2013. I use cross-section and panel IV analysis to identify the long- and short-run impacts of resource wealth on human development, measured primarily by infant mortality. I find that natural resource revenue has had zero average impact on infant mortality rates in the short run and a potentially negative impact in the long run, despite increasing budget resources and reported health spending. I further find that while democratic transitions are generally followed by a drop in infant mortality, this is not true in resource rich nations with weak constraints on power. I conclude that the pass-through of natural resource wealth to broad-based development in Africa has been weak and that electoral competition without deeper political reform is unlikely to turn things around. | Ph.D. | labour, trade | 8, 10 |
| Zisman Newman, Laine Yale | Goldstein, Tara | Placefull Spaces: Queer Women and Non-Binary Artists Resisting an Emptied Stage | Drama | 2018-06 | For marginalized queer artists, inequitable distribution of and access to performance space impact both the development process and production of artistic works. While a lack of ongoing or resident performance space for women’s productions in Canada has been documented (see, for example, Rina Fraticelli; Rebecca Burton; and Michelle MacArthur), less research has been conducted on queer women’s and non-binary artists’ experience of space in the industry. Theatre and performance scholars (see, for example, Gay McAuley, Una Chaudhuri, Jill Dolan, and Laura Levin) have provided the groundwork for exploring the relationship among theatre sites, identities, and productions; and queer geographers such as Natalie Oswin, Julie Podmore, Catherine Nash, and Kath Browne have developed invaluable theories and methodologies to unsettle the assumed neutrality of space. However, few scholars have brought these fields together, particularly in the context of performance in Canada. This doctoral project applies queer and feminist theories of geography to queer women’s and non-binary artists’ performance to explore how insecure and inequitable access to physical space affects both experiences of finding one’s place in the theatre industry and articulations of an imagined place on stage. The germinal Western conceptions of the stage as placeless or “empty” (Brook) work to neutralize the theatre space by assuming all creators, performers, and audience members are easily oriented within it. For marginalized bodies, which are simultaneously hyper-visualized and unseen in dominant cultural spaces, the necessary conditions to access placelessness may be unobtainable, or may be experienced as a form of violent erasure of histories. Through a process of “unmapping” venues and close description and analysis of performances, this doctoral study questions how an intentional engagement with space and place on stage can actively destabilize the presumed universality and neutrality of performance space and combat broader gendered spatial inequities. Focusing on performances and events in Toronto, Ontario and Vancouver, British Columbia, this project develops a theory of “placefullness” as a means of understanding how artists actively resist spatial inequities in the theatre and performance industry in Canada. | Ph.D. | equitable, gender, women, queer | 4, 5 |
| Zomer, Limor | Watson, Jeanne | The Relationships Among Emotional Intelligence, Gender, Coping Strategies, and Well-being inthe Management of Stress in Close Interpersonal Relationships and the Workplace | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2012-06 | People with high levels of emotional intelligence (EI) seem to possess emotional skills that allow them to cope effectively with the challenges they face and promote well-being. Considering the role of EI in coping research may yield significant benefits for individuals because EI has consistently been linked with positive outcome measures, including life and work satisfaction, interpersonal functioning, healthy relationships, job performance, psychological well-being, physical health, and psychophysiological measures of adaptive coping (Martins, Ramalho, & Morin, 2010). Although the theoretical significance of EI to coping has been recognized (e.g., Bar-On & Parker, 2000; Snyder, 1999), relatively few studies explore the relationships among these constructs. The current research explores and compares how emotional intelligence (EI) facilitates adaptive coping across both interpersonal and occupational contexts – two central areas of our lives. It provides evidence in support of an extended adaptational model contextualizing EI within the transactional model of stress and coping (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). In general, results from an online survey (N = 300) showed that most participants (approximately 66%) did not cope adaptively with stress. Results are consistent with a model which suggests that EI and the coping strategies people use when dealing with interpersonal and occupational stressors have significant effects on psychological well-being. The findings linked EI with adaptive coping behaviour, exposing both similarities and differences in the types of coping strategies people implement across interpersonal and occupational contexts, as well as their relationships to well-being. In addition, the results demonstrated that certain coping strategies (i.e., social support, venting/self-blame, and alcohol/drug use) partially mediated the relationship between emotion skills and well-being in these two contexts. Finally, gender differences in both EI and coping strategies emerged, with the differences being mostly attributed to the socialization of gender role (i.e., the degree of agentic and communal traits) rather than sex (i.e., being male or female). Moderation models suggested that gender did not interact with EI to influence coping strategy choice (i.e., social support, venting/self-blame, alcohol/drug use) or well-being. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for the therapeutic context, organizational policy, theoretical considerations, as well as future research directions. | PhD | health, gender | 3, 5 |
| Zou, Christopher | Peterson, Jordan B.||Andersen, Judith P. | The Quantification and Prediction of Graduate School Performance | Psychology | 2016-06 | In today’s competitive job market, many students graduate with a bachelor’s degree and move on to pursue higher education in hopes of standing out from the crowd. As the number of graduate students has steadily increased in the recent years, there is also growing interest in understanding how to cultivate successful graduate careers. Surprisingly, there has been little empirical work examining this topic. The current dissertation has two primary aims: 1. to quantify graduate school performance and 2. explore some of the potential predictors of success. Because publication output is believed to be the most valuable metric of success, the primary focus was on publications. Chapter 1 examines the publication trajectories of graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior faculty members to establish a benchmark of success. Junior faculty members had twice the number of publications as post-doctoral fellows, who had twice the number of publications as senior graduate students. Chapter 2 and 3 aim to better accurately quantify a researcher’s scientific output beyond just the number of publications with the introduction of a new bibliometric index called the zp-index. The zp-index, compared to other bibliometric indices, better discriminated the productive output of high-functioning academics. Finally, Chapter 4 identifies potential personality predictors of graduate school performance. Industriousness was a key variable that predicted publication success. Results across the studies provide practical recommendations to apply to the current graduate school system and highlight some potential avenues for future research on this understudied topic. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Zou, Ping | Parry, Monica | Examination of a Culturally Sensitive Dietary Education Intervention to Treat Hypertension for Chinese Canadians in the Community: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial | Nursing Science | 2015-11 | Numbering about 1.3 million, the Chinese compose approximately 3.9% of Canada’s population and roughly 24% of the country’s visible minorities. The hypertension prevalence rate of Chinese Canadians reaches 15.1%. Hypertension has been identified as the most important risk factor for cardiovascular diseases and accounts for a large proportion of stroke, myocardial infarction and heart failure in the Chinese population. While unhealthy diet has been identified as a modifiable risk factor for hypertension, there is a lack of culturally sensitive dietary intervention targeting Chinese Canadians. The primary research objective was to determine the feasibility of the Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension with Sodium (Na) Reduction for Chinese Canadian (DASHNa-CC) intervention. Secondary objectives were to examine its potential effects on blood pressure, health-related quality of life, and health service utilization. This study was a pilot randomized controlled trial, with a sample size of 60, in a Chinese Canadian community in Greater Toronto Area. Self-identified Chinese Canadians, older than 45 years old and with grade one hypertension, were included in this pilot randomized controlled trial. The control group received usual care and the intervention group received usual care plus the DASHNa-CC intervention. The 8-week DASHNa-CC intervention incorporated Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, sodium reduction with the food therapy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and included an intervention manual, two sessions of classroom instruction delivered in Mandarin, and 20-minute telephone follow-up. Descriptive statistics and t-tests were used to analyze the data. In a Chinese community in Toronto, 618 Chinese Canadians participated in blood pressure screening, 54.5% (n = 337) had hypertension, and 17% (n =105) were eligible to participate in this pilot trial study. Among eligible individuals, 60 (57.1%) consented to participate. Participants adhered well to the DASH diet pattern, sodium reduction and TCM food therapy strategies. The lost to follow-up rate was 5%. Participants were highly satisfied with the intervention and perceived that intervention contents were helpful, delivery approaches were suitable, participation in this pilot trial brought them benefit rather burden on their lives. Compared to the control group, the intervention group had greater systolic blood pressure reduction. At week eight post randomization, while the control group decreased 6.9 mmHg and 3.1 mmHg on systolic and diastolic blood pressure, the intervention group decreased 10.7 mmHg and 5.5 mmHg respectively. Compared to the control group, the intervention group decreased 3.8 mmHg [t (55) = -1.58, p = 0.12] more on systolic blood pressure and 2.4 mmHg [t (55) = -1.22, p = 0.23] more on diastolic blood pressure. Although these blood pressure reductions were not statistically significant, they were clinical important to reduce hypertension-related mortality and morbidity. In relation to health-related quality of life, the intervention group had a significant improvement from baseline to week eight post randomization in physical component score [t (55) = 2.13, p = 0.04]. There was no group difference regarding the use of various health care services. It is concluded that it is feasible to conduct a DASHNa-CC trial in a Chinese community. The DASHNa-CC intervention has potential to decrease systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and improve health-related quality of life for Chinese Canadians. A powered randomized controlled trial should be undertaken to further investigate the effectiveness of the intervention. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Zuk, Aleksandra | Rosella, Laura C | Exploring the Contribution of Vitamin D and Periodontitis on Glycemic Outcomes | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-11 | Type 2 diabetes is an important public health problem. Though there are various known risk factors, much of the disease etiology is largely unexplained. Vitamin D insufficiency and periodontitis are independently associated with diabetes, and both amenable to therapeutic action. Periodontitis is pro-inflammatory response to oral microbiota resulting from the accumulation of plaque. Vitamin D is shown to have anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial properties, and may possibly influence periodontitis. But the mechanism of how serum vitamin D and periodontitis function together is unclear. The overall goal of this dissertation is to assess the effect of serum vitamin D and periodontitis on dysglycemia. This dissertation consists of three manuscripts each addressing key research gaps through advanced analytical techniques and using diverse data sources. The first manuscript was a systematic review of randomized controlled trials assessing the effect of oral vitamin D supplementing on inflammatory and glycemic markers among adults with overweight/obesity, a group at risk for obesity-induced inflammation, and related outcomes such as insulin resistance and diabetes. The second manuscript examined joint effects of serum vitamin D insufficiency and periodontitis on insulin resistance, prediabetes, and type 2 diabetes using data from the National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey. The results from this cross-sectional study showed synergistic joint effects between vitamin D3 insufficiency and periodontitis on diabetes. This supported the rationale for the final manuscript, which used causal mediation analysis techniques to decompose total effects into natural direct and direct effects. The final study investigated the mediating role of periodontitis in the association between serum vitamin D3 insufficiency and follow-up fasting plasma glucose using data from the Oral Infections, Glucose Intolerance and Insulin Resistance Study, a longitudinal cohort. In conclusion, these studies are the first to assess joint effects and causal mechanisms between vitamin D insufficiency, periodontitis and glycaemia. | Ph.D. | nutrition | 2 |
| Zuliani, Jocelyn Ellen | Jia, Charles Q||Kirk, Donald W | Effect of Pore Structure and Chemistry on the Performance of Activated Oil Sands Petroleum Coke Electrodes for use in Electrochemical Double-Layer Capacitors | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2017-11 | Electrical energy storage is a limiting barrier to widespread usage and commercialization of sustainable and renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar energy, as well as integration of electric vehicles. Electrochemical double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) are a promising energy storage technology that offers the benefits of high power density, long cycle life, rapid charging rates, and moderate energy density. The energy storage mechanism of EDLCs is physical ion adsorption on the surface of porous carbon electrodes. This thesis is an investigation of three different sections relating to EDLCs: 1) techniques to properly characterize novel porous carbon electrode materials, 2) investigation of activated oil sands petroleum coke (APC) as the electrode material for EDLCs, and 3) a systematic study of the effects of porous carbon structure and chemistry on EDLC performance. In the first section, it was shown that variations in operating conditions and testing techniques can lead to discrepancies in measured and reported capacitance. Therefore, it was concluded that a standardized approach is necessary in order to properly compare different porous carbon electrodes. In the second section, APC was investigated as a novel electrode material for EDLCs. PetCoke is a carbon dense material that can be activated with potassium hydroxide to generate high surface area porous carbon materials. These materials show promising electrochemical performance in EDLCs, with capacitance values up to 400 Fg-1 in 4M potassium hydroxide aqueous electrolytes, depending on the operating conditions. Additionally, the power density of these materials is comparable to that of other carbon nanomaterials, which are more costly and challenging to produce. Finally, the third section investigates the relationship between measured capacitance, and carbon macrostructure, meso-structure, microstructure, and oxygen content. In each of these studies, the desired parameter was varied, while all others (surface area, pore size, chemistry) were maintained constant. Through this systematic approach, this thesis investigates and quantifies the relationship between EDLC performance and important characteristic parameters through isolation of each individual parameter. By understanding the key structural and chemical features that improve EDLC performance, focus can be placed on engineering a sustainable and economic porous carbon material that has these desired features. | Ph.D. | energy, renewable, wind | 7 |
| Zwick, Austin | Hackworth, Jason | Resource Boom to Revitalization: The Local Economic Planning and Governance Implications of Fracking in Northern Appalachia | Geography | 2018-06 | Small cities in Appalachia have been battling an ongoing struggle against economic decline for decades, but now some find themselves amidst a new natural resource boom. The technological innovation of hydraulic fracturing drilling, commonly known as ‘fracking’, has revolutionized global energy markets overnight, leaving a gap of understanding about its local implications in the process. Most early research focused on documenting the environmental risks of fracking, but little work has gone into understanding its local economic and planning impacts. Promises of economic growth and blue-collar jobs give hope to this declining region, but resource extraction municipalities often struggle with inadequate fiscal and administrative capacity to deal with the environmental and infrastructure externalities caused by the industry. As municipalities grapple with these challenges, the ‘boom-bust cycle’ may become reflected on their balance sheets, putting their fiscal health at risk. What are the local economic planning and governance implications of the fracking boom in Northern Appalachia? Additionally, because of the newness of fracking, this specific industry in this specific region offers a rare opportunity to study the impact the introduction of natural resource development impacts local economic resilience. My doctoral dissertation offers a unique theoretical contribution, as tension in literature exists on whether contemporary extractions industries positively or negatively impact diversification. It also offers a practical contribution, considering that little research exists on job estimates and governance issues that arise with fracking. Each chapter of this dissertation, intended to be independent academic works with their own literature reviews and methods, contributes to our understanding through: (Chapter 1) introducing the geography of the region, (Chapter 2) overviewing the economic history of Northern Appalachia; (Chapter 3) testing changes in economic diversity indices; (Chapter 4) investigating migration, housing, and employment patterns; and (Chapter 5) surveying local planners about regulatory responses. Finally, my dissertation concludes with a review of findings and a brief set of policy recommendations. The goal of this research is to provide information that helps small cities best plan and manage the fracking boom; finding that the industry is not dramatically altering patterns of long-term decline in Appalachia. | Ph.D. | governance, resilien. Cities, industr, innovation, infrastructure, economic growth. Employment | 8, 9, 11, 16 |
| Zylberman, Ariel | Ripstein, Arthur | The Relationship of Right: A Constitutive Vindication of Human Rights | Philosophy | 2013-11 | What is the fundamental justification of the idea of human rights? In this dissertation I argue that human rights are justified in virtue of the special role they play in practical thought: they function as the constitutive conditions of the relationship of right. This answer has two distinctive features: it justifies human rights non-instrumentally and relationally, as those claim rights universally necessary for relating to each other as juridical equals, as lacking authority over one another. This constitutive argument for human rights contrasts with the predominant theories of human rights, which tend to justify human rights instrumentally as means for the protection of an independently intelligible (and non-relational) purpose (e.g., basic needs, urgent interests, autonomy, capacity-development). A strong reason for endorsing the account proposed here is that it explains better than its instrumentalist competitors the universal validity of human rights while offering a more robust response against the human rights skeptic. Furthermore, this constitutive argument gives us the resources for seeing how human rights form an indivisible whole comprising civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights and how human rights structure an international order of peace. My account thus promises to offer a much-needed defense of the ideals enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. | PhD | peace | 16 |
| Zysset, Alain | Dyzenhaus, David | The Right to Rule of the European Court of Human Rights: A Democratic Defense | Law | 2014 | In this thesis, I develop an objection to the claim that the "right to rule" of the European Court of Human Rights cannot be reconciled with the democratic-procedural standards by which state parties, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, decide about the content and scope of human rights norms. First, I suggest drawing the attention to the neglected balancing exercise of the review process, in which the Court has to determine whether a violation is nevertheless "necessary in a democratic society". Second, I shed light on the role that "pluralism" plays in the balancing of the Court and on the implications it has on the identification of duties and duty-bearers (with particular emphasis on Articles 8-11). Third, I argue that Thomas Christiano's egalitarian argument for democracy can best illuminate the Court's emphasis on pluralism, making the search for public equality the implicit normative ideal of the Court. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Levinsky, Zachary | Hannah-Moffat, Kelly | ‘Don’t Under React’: The Limits of Compassion and Risk Management in Toronto School Safety from 1999-2007 | Criminology | 2020-11-01 | The purpose of this dissertation is to situate school safety policies within the emergence of organizational risk management. I argue that the turn to a risk management of everything re-shapes safety and discipline in the school system. Concomitantly, the compassionate and pastoral aspects of schooling re-shapes risk management. This is important because risk management and school discipline practices are often described as cold exclusionary turns whereas my research shows that the inclusionary pull and dream of mandatory education, if never fully realized, impacts how risk management is achieved in the school system. The main question addressed by this dissertation is how does the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) manage risk to students, educators and its reputation by looking at three distinct areas: 1) the disappearance of zero-tolerance policies; 2) the role of the centralized Safe Schools Office in handling student discipline; and 3) the organizational responses to school shooters via lockdown and threat assessments. As part of this turn to risk management, institutions are becoming insular to external research so I had to rely on creativity to collect data. I attended training seminars and received resources normally reserved for school principals and conducted by senior administrators in the TDSB. I augmented the data from the training materials with TDSB policy and procedural memoranda; debates by politicians (School Board Trustees and Members of Provincial Parliament) and the work that emerged from two TDSB led task forces on discipline and safety. The research provides greater nuance to the literature by focusing on how inclusivity and compassion have implications for risk management strategies. The research also suggests how to approach and stifle purely exclusionary policies. | Ph.D. | institut, inclusiv, educat | 4, 16 |
| Freitas, Danielle | Gagne, Antoinette | “It Kind of Made Me Think: Is This the Real Me? Is This Really Who I Am?” A Mixed Methods Investigation of Teacher Learning and Teacher Development in CELTA Courses | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-03-01 | Every year, tens of thousands of English language teachers worldwide graduate from the University of Cambridge Certificate in Teaching English to Speaker of Other Languages (CELTA). Despite the significant impact this pre-service certificate exerts in the English language teaching (ELT) profession, research on Language Teacher Education (LTE) has traditionally relied on studies conducted in academic-based programs at higher education institutions. This mixed methods research investigates what it means for student teachers to learn how to teach and develop as English language teachers in CELTA courses. It also investigates the nature of such learning and development, and the ways in which student teachers learn how to teach and develop as teachers in CELTA. A three-phased “enhanced” exploratory sequential mixed methods research design was employed. In Phase 1, data from semi-structured interviews, course documents, classroom observations, field notes, diaries and a WhatsApp group chat were collected at 2 CELTA programs: one in the US, where the researcher co-taught the course, and the other in Canada. Findings showed that student teachers learned teaching knowledge and skills and that, through this learning, they interacted with teacher educators, peers and ESL students, interactions which influenced and were influenced by their emotions and teacher identity. In Phase 2, these findings were used to develop the teacher learning and development (TLD) Scale. Data collected from CELTA graduates and student teachers (N = 880) from 78 countries were analyzed and a novel TLD construct was identified. In Phase 3, mixed methods synthesis occurred, and findings revealed how, by self-regulating and being regulated by teacher educators and peers through the use of course activities, artifacts and concepts, student teachers internalized teaching knowledge and developed pedagogical content knowledge. Findings also showed how student teachers developed as individuals and teachers by resolving the dialectical contradictions that constituted the moving force for their teacher development as well as the forms of their teacher development. The importance of perezhivanie (commonly translated as “lived experience”) as a lens to explain teacher development in LTE is discussed, and the concepts of teaching knowledge as praxis (TKP) and teacher’s teaching knowledge as praxis (TTKP) are proposed. | Ph.D. | institut, educat | 4, 16 |
| Helferty, Anjali Tara | Restoule, Jean-Paul | “We’re really trying, and I know it’s not enough”: Settler Anti-pipeline Activists and the Turn to Frontline Solidarity with Indigenous Peoples | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | The logics and worldviews of settler environmentalism perpetuate settler colonialism and white supremacy; settler environmentalism has consistently failed to work in relation to Indigenous peoples in a good way. This research engages with the efforts of settler anti-pipeline activists in Canada to solve these problems of environmentalism by turning to frontline solidarity. Frontline solidarity relies on systems of power; the framework hinges on a solidarity group making use of their privileges to support the struggles of a frontline group while simultaneously attempting to de-emphasize this privilege through, for example, following frontline leadership. Frontline solidarity does not solve settler environmentalism; it does not enable settler environmentalists to become the “good ally.” However, this framework at times enabled settler anti-pipeline activists to productively support Indigenous-led legal battles and land defence. Separating the goal of stopping pipelines from the goal of supporting Indigenous self-determination has the potential to clarify roles for settlers on Indigenous land. Layered onto the contradictions of frontline solidarity, many of the settler activists worked at environmental organizations and were funded to stop pipelines through a collective campaign. Like frontline solidarity, philanthropy hinges on white settler power and fails to address systemic injustices. The organizational requirements of funded campaign engagement and the campaign absorbing solidarity goals into an “outreach” model worked primarily to maintain settler power. At the same time, the flexibility of campaign networks provided opportunities for relationships and learning between settler activists and Indigenous peoples; while not themselves decolonizing, the relationships provide an opening to work together against climate change and colonial power. Settler anti-pipeline activists are steeped in multiple oppressive systems and were at times “called out” for racist or colonial actions. Narratives of Indigenous trauma and white fragility led to the creation of a feeling rule in which settler activists did not allow themselves to feel the pain these callouts caused. This contributed to burnout and limited opportunities for learning and healing. This dissertation contributes to the literatures on solidarity, social movements, critical philanthropy, and politics of emotion. As an activist researcher, I am also motivated to contribute to the transformation of my own movement. | Ph.D. | justice, environment, climate | 13, 16 |
| Mandair, Sharon | Karney, Bryan W | 1D and 3D Water-hammer Models: The Energetics of High Friction Pipe Flow and Hydropower Load Rejection | Civil Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Hydraulic systems are a critical part of modern infrastructure. In systems such as water distribution and electricity generation, perturbations in operations and therefore transient flow conditions are unavoidable. In light of the potential damage they can inflict, the study of hydraulic transients remains an important field of interest; one in which numerical methods play a key role. Numerical techniques are therefore at the heart of this investigation, applying the one-dimensional Method of Characteristics (MOC), and the three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using finite volumes. These two models are complementary. MOC is simple and cost effective but only applicable to pipe systems and networks; whereas CFD has a more native representation of the physics, and can model multi-dimensional features, but at a steep computational cost. The MOC and CFD models are applied to two case studies of water-hammer hydraulics. The first is high shear pipe flow, looking closely at the fundamental physics of water-hammer, acoustic wave propagation and reflection, and dissipation. The physics are explored in energetic terms, applying the integral total energy analysis. In a context where MOC solvers are ideal, CFD is used to evaluate potential gaps in these simple models. The second case study is a load rejection at a large hydropower station. In the context of a changing electricity supply, which includes more variable renewable sources, the inherent dispatchability of hydropower begins to play a new role. Consequently, the underlying mechanical infrastructure is being exposed to damaging transient hydraulics. In this case study, MOC and CFD solvers are coupled to study the influence of a long penstock during a load rejection. MOC is used to represent the penstock, while CFD represents the turbomachine from the spiral casing to the draft tube. The study identifies the risk for severe wear and tear on the machine blades; however, importantly the role of the penstock seems to be limited to the determination of the background flow and pressure seen by the machine. The analysis shows that vortex circulation within the runner is the source of high amplitude pressure loading, while compressibility have a limited effect. Les systèmes hydrauliques sont des composantes critiques des infrastructures modernes. Les systèmes de distribution d'eau et de production hydro-électrique subissent inévitablement des changements de leur mode d’opérations, et doivent par conséquent composer avec des écoulements transitoires. Puisqu’ils peuvent endommager les machines et les structures, les transitoires hydrauliques constituent un domaine d’études important, où les méthodes numériques jouent un rôle clé. Les techniques numériques sont donc au coeur de cette étude qui utilise la méthode des caractéristique (MOC) uni-dimensionnelle, ainsi que la dynamique des fluides numérique (CFD) en trois dimensions avec des volumes finis. Les deux modèles sont complémentaires. Le modèle MOC est simple et efficace, mais c’est une approximation qui ne s'applique qu’aux systèmes et aux réseaux de conduite. La CFD utilise une représentation plus proches des lois de la physique, et permet de modéliser les phénomènes multidimensionnels, mais au prix d’un temps de calcul important. Ces modèles, MOC et CFD, sont appliqués à deux cas de coup de bélier. Le premier est l'écoulement dans une conduite avec un fort cisaillement. L’étude se concentre sur la physique du coup de bélier, la propagation et la réflexion d'un front d’onde acoustique, et sa dissipation. Ces phénomènes physiques sont explorés en termes énergétiques, en appliquant le concept d'énergie totale intégrée. Dans un contexte où les modèles MOC sont idéaux, la CFD est utilisée ici pour évaluer les limitations de ces modèles simples. Le deuxième cas est l’étude d'un rejet de charge dans une grande centrale d’hydro-électricité. Dans un contexte où la production électrique change pour inclure les énergies renouvelables et variables, la flexibilité intrinsèque de l’hydro-électricité commence à jouer un rôle nouveau. Par conséquent, les transitoires hydrauliques sont une source de dommages potentiels aux infrastructures mécaniques. Dans cette étude, les modèles MOC et CFD sont couplés afin d’évaluer l'importance de la conduite forcée lors d'un délestage. Un modèle MOC est utilisé pour simuler la conduite, et un modèle CFD pour simuler la turbine, de la bâche spirale à l'aspirateur. L'étude identifie des risques d’endommagement sur les aubes. Le rôle de la conduite semble limité à la détermination du débit et du niveau de pression moyens vus par la machine. L'analyse démontre que les vortex qui circulent entre les aubes de la roue créent de grandes fluctuations de pression; toutefois le rôle de la compressibilité est limité. | Ph.D. | production, infrastructure, renewabl, energy, water | 6, 7, 9, 12, 14 |
| Do, Minh Thuy | Olive, Andrea||Schertzer, Robert | A “Consultation Dance” for Legitimacy: The Supreme Court and The Duty to Consult in B.C.’s Environmental Assessment Process | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | The duty to consult is an Aboriginal right under s. 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982. Under the duty, the Crown must consult with Indigenous nations if their asserted or recognized rights may be negatively impacted by a proposed Crown action. The Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) has explained that all parties in consultation need to act in good faith and that the Crown is expected to act honourably in order to discharge the duty. This dissertation posits a framework to evaluate whether the Crown upholds its honour throughout decision-making. The framework of input, throughput, and output legitimacy can demonstrate whether the Crown is acting legitimately towards Indigenous peoples’ and their concerns throughout various stages of decision-making. The dissertation then applies this framework to B.C.’s Environmental Assessment (B.C. EA) process in order to assess how the duty to consult is implemented. I find that the Crown does not attain some key aspects of input, throughput, and output legitimacy. In particular, Indigenous parties perceive that they do not have adequate resources to participate effectively in consultation activities; there is a lack of accountability and transparency regarding the Crown’s decision-making throughout the EA process; and the Environmental Assessment Office does not sufficiently explain how its preferred course of action provides superior protection for Aboriginal rights over alternative actions. The Crown exhibits these shortcomings because it prefers to fulfill the duty in a way that is least disruptive to existing norms and practices, even when doing so increases the risk of Indigenous peoples pursuing litigation to challenge the Crown. Consequently, contentious politics and expensive, time-consuming legal challenges continue, ultimately casting doubt on the duty to consult’s ability to advance reconciliation between the Crown and Indigenous peoples. | Ph.D. | rights, environment, consum | 12, 13, 16 |
| Ma, Jennifer | Alaggia, Ramona | A critical analysis of the overrepresentation of First Nations children and families in the Ontario child welfare system and disparities in providing ongoing child welfare services | Social Work | 2018-11-01 | First Nations children are chronically overrepresented in the child welfare system in Canada. This is largely a result of the effect that colonization has on Aboriginal peoples, but also evidence of colonialism being reproduced through current discriminatory legislation and practices. This three-paper dissertation employed a secondary analysis of data to examine the extent of the overrepresentation of First Nations children involved with child welfare in Ontario. Moreover, this study critically examines investigations of reported maltreatment to understand what is driving the overrepresentation of First Nations children. The results show that overrepresentation is a predictable outcome in a system predicated on assimilative objectives. In Ontario, First Nations children represent 2.5% of the child population; they represent 7.4% of child maltreatment-related investigations. For every 1,000 First Nations children in Ontario, 160.3 were involved in investigations compared to 54.4 per 1,000 White children. Overrepresentation was most pronounced for investigations of neglect. Rates of substantiation (3.4 times), ongoing services (4.2 times), child welfare court (5.7 times), and child welfare placement (7.5 times) were higher for the First Nations child population and disparities increased as children moved further into the child welfare system. Caregiver concerns were the main drivers of transfers to ongoing services for both First Nations and White children. For investigations involving White children, after controlling for caregiver concerns, workers were more likely to transfer a case for ongoing services when child psychological harm was present. While the proportion of children identified with psychological harm was similar across both groups, workers placed more weight on a White child experiencing psychological harm. The notion that workers might have different standards for decision-making for First Nations children compared to White children is concerning. Overall, the findings indicate that structural risks have not been addressed, putting First Nations families at risk for child welfare involvement. Structural issues such as chronic poverty and systemic racism are indicative of the legacy of the residential school system and produce the conditions that result in children coming to the attention of child protection services. Overrepresentation will continue unabated if the immense social inequities for First Nations children are not addressed. | Ph.D. | worker, poverty | 1, 8 |
| DuBois, Denise | Gibson, Barbara||Nalder, Emily | A Critical Interrogation of Inclusion in the Context of Residential Service Provision for Persons with Developmental Disabilities in Ontario | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-06-01 | In an occupationally just context, people can experience social inclusion through enablement of occupation. Thus, social housing provision has power to shape occupational possibilities and inclusion of residents. Despite the goals of deinstitutionalization, persons with developmental disabilities continue to experience social exclusion (e.g., in terms of quality/quantity of available social housing). In Ontario, Canada, thousands of persons with developmental disabilities are inadequately housed. In order to surface occupational injustices experienced by persons with developmental disabilities in social housing, I adopted a critical occupational science (COS) approach to consider discourses (e.g. what is said) and practices (e.g., what is done) that constitute an ‘inclusive home’. I aimed to problematize inclusion shaped and was shaped within the situation (i.e., sociopolitical, economic, cultural, and material) of residential service provision in Ontario by considering the complex transactions amongst discourses about inclusion, everyday practices, and macro-level forces.I conducted a community-based, multimethod qualitative study. I interviewed 9 agency directors from five housing agencies and 18 residents with developmental disabilities across 14 residences. Each resident was interviewed twice using participatory (i.e., go along and photo elicitation) methods. In Session 1, we toured their residence while I interviewed them about daily life and how they are or want to be included in it (or not) and took photos with them. In Session 2, we explored the photos to deepen conversations about inclusion and home. Interview data (N= 42.5 hours) were audio recorded, transcribed, and abductively coded. Drawing on COS, I wrote analytic summaries for each participant to ‘interrogate’ the data with problematizing questions. I attended to rigour through prolonged engagement, multiple data sources, and extensive field/reflexive memos. I linked participant accounts to five interlinked dimensions of inclusion (Mainstream to Specific; Far from to Near Others; Private to Collective; Transient to Stable; and Unsupported to Supervised) each of which had effects on inclusion (e.g., through available resources and practices). At one extreme, the accounts echoed neoliberal notions of personal responsibility and individualism. At the other extreme, the accounts included types of resistance about intentional community and disabled spaces. From these accounts, I interpreted an inclusive home as accommodating diverse needs through spatial flexibility, balancing private/communal spaces, intentionally considering disability-specific needs/choices, and having stable connections to meaningful community networks that may open up occupational possibilities for residents through inclusion. These culminated in five principles of an inclusive home: Fluidity of Design, Flexibility of Space, Proximity to the Centre, Stable Connections to Varied and Active Networks, and Building Opportunities for Active Involvement of Residents in Housing Planning. By applying the socially transformative COS lens, these findings contribute to a richer understanding of assumptions and ideologies that underlie occupation in residential service provision for persons with developmental disabilities, and potentially, other disabled populations. | Ph.D. | justice, institut, inclusiv | 4, 16 |
| Mickleborough, Timothy | Muzzin, Linda | A Foucauldian Discourse Analysis of the Construction of Canadian International Pharmacy Graduate (IPG) Professional Identities and Subjectivities | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | This research explores the construction of professional identities and subjectivities of former international pharmacy graduates or IPGs. It is a study of the reprofessionalization of pharmacy practice in the Canadian context and the resocialization of IPGs into a profession that is in transition. My thesis adopts a bricolage approach in which I theorize professional identity construction through the theoretical lenses of Michel Foucault, Stuart Hall, Judith Butler and the race and space literature. These related theories facilitate the understanding of professional identity construction through the take up of professional discourses and the ‘translation’ experiences of internationally-trained professionals navigating discursive border crossings while integrating into the host country’s labour market. A Foucauldian governmentality approach was employed to analyze an archive of professional journals to determine how the profession governs its members to become the ‘right’ type of pharmacist at this time in the profession’s history. I also analyzed interview data from 17 participants examining the multiple discourses that former IPGs adopt to construct their professional subjectivities. The study reveals that former IPGs readily take up professional discourses in becoming a ‘Canadian’ pharmacist and that the process of identity construction for racialized professionals requires conducting oneself ‘professionally’ when managing racist encounters in the workplace. | Ph.D. | labour | 8 |
| Schranz, Kristen Michelle | Levere, Trevor H. | A New Narrative for “Keir’s Metal”: The Chemical and Commercial Transformations of James Keir’s Copper Alloy, 1770–1820 | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2018-11-01 | In the 1770s, the chemist and industrialist James Keir (1735–1820), along with the English manufacturer Matthew Boulton (1728–1809), developed an alloy of copper, zinc, and iron that became known as “Keir’s metal”. The material was initially marketed for ship parts, but later became the “Eldorado metal” of Georgian windows and décor. Production of Keir’s metal ceased in the 1820s, which has led to the assumption that it was a failed material of the early Industrial Revolution. Seemingly short-lived materials, however, can still be important inroads for histories of chemistry, consumption, and technology. Upon closer inspection, “Keir’s metal” is a label that has been applied to iterations of the same substance. Because the material was a product of different sites of inquiry and industry, the alloy had unique functions and meanings imparted to it over several decades. Hence, the alloy is a multifaceted material in need of a new historical narrative. I argue that Keir’s metal is a complex substance whose nuanced identities resulted from movement between sites of production and application, where chemical, social, and technological factors shaped the alloy’s properties and purposes. This new narrative for Keir’s metal unfolds in three parts. The first chapter demonstrates the centrality of Matthew Boulton’s Soho Manufactory in producing, protecting, and promoting the new material. The second part analyzes the collaboration of Keir and the London-based coppersmith William Forbes as they improved Keir’s metal between two different sites of industry and reintroduced it to the Navy Board for ship bolts. The third chapter examines the intentional transformation of Keir’s alloy into the Eldorado metal of neoclassical architecture through a new name, location, and marketing strategy. As an object on the move, Keir’s metal prompts analyses of the perceptions of eighteenth-century materials, the influences of place and space in material production, and the interface of science and technology (knowledge of the head and hand). Investigating the provenance and use of this metal reveals a wealth of relatively underexamined sources on James Keir and is important for present-day conservation of period buildings by restoration architects and decorators. | Ph.D. | conserv, production, consum, buildings, industr, labor, wind | 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Schumacher, Charles John | Friedland, Martin L||Roach, Kent | A Paper Examining Reactive Attachment Disorder and the Canadian Criminal Justice System | Law | 2016-06-01 | Reactive attachment disorder (“RAD”) is a recognized behavioural disorder arising from the failure to develop an “attachment” to a primary caregiver in early childhood. RAD can most often be traced to neglect or abuse or both in a child’s first 5 years of life. Some relevant symptoms are incessant lying, a lack of conscience and often a complete inability to have or to show empathy or remorse. The relevance to the operation of our criminal justice system is that the impressions left as a result of these traits are critical to the eventual outcome. From the moment the accused is interviewed and then throughout the process, their demeanor is being scrutinized. Their level of emotion and the “correctness” of that emotion and especially their ability to express empathy and remorse are judged during each phase. The problem is that these behaviours can lead to wrong impressions and, therefore, mistakes and injustice. | LL.M. | justice | 16 |
| Balter, Alice-Simone | Pascal, Charles E | A Study of Ontario Full-day Kindergarten Educators’ Responses to Children’s Emotions | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-03-01 | It is well documented that children’s negative behaviours and emotions are stressors for educators (Jennings Greenberg, 2009). The ways educators respond to children’s dysregulation are dependent, in part, on their social emotional competencies (SECs) (Jennings Greenberg, 2009) and a contributing factor in socializing children’s emotional development (Morris et al., 2013). In this dissertation, I examine the relationship between Ontario Full-Day Kindergarten (FDK) educators’ emotion regulation strategies, dispositional mindfulness, and their contingent responses to children’s negative behaviours. A total of 47 FDK educators, both Registered Early Childhood Educators (RECEs) (n=13) and Ontario Certified Teachers (OCTs) (n=34) working within a large school board in Ontario, completed an online survey measuring two emotion regulation strategies (cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression), dispositional mindfulness, and their positive and negative responses to children’s negative emotions. The descriptive statistics show educators used more cognitive reappraisal than emotion suppression strategies and also reported a lack of both pre-service education and professional development training in relation to stress and coping in FDK classrooms. Regression analysis resulted in a significant relationship between educators’ cognitive reappraisal and their positive responses to children’s negative emotions. Dispositional mindfulness was an insignificant variable within the model of educators’ emotion regulation and contingent responding. The relationship between educators’ cognitive reappraisal and their positive responses to children’s negative emotions is addressed within the broader literature on educators’ SECs, and within the prosocial classroom model (Jennings Greenberg, 2009). I re-examine psychometric and Buddhist conceptualizations of dispositional mindfulness to explain its non-significance within this study. The implications of the study findings are discussed within their practice and policy implications, specifically around pre-service education and professional learning opportunities, and future research in both education and parenting fields is addressed. Understanding educators’ SECs, and specifically cognitive reappraisal as skills that underlie mental health in general, which contribute to socializing children’s emotions, drives the need for more research and skill building in this area. | Ph.D. | educat, health | 3, 4 |
| Vallejo Toledo, Esteban | Sanderson, Douglas | A Theory About Indigenous Taxation Powers | Law | 2018-11-01 | This paper proposes that taxation powers are culturally specific constructs by analyzing the content and underlying values, social organization, customs and institutions determining how Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast (Northwest Coast communities) understand taxation and exercise their taxation powers. The first chapter examines the non-monetary socio-economic organization of Northwest Coast communities to determine whether or not these communities practice taxation and exercise taxation powers. The second chapter analyzes, from a tax law perspective, the socio-economic characteristics of Northwest Coast communities to identify the criteria of legitimacy, limits and principles that inform how these communities understand taxation and exercise taxation powers. The final chapter explains why the emergence of market economies and monetary exchanges has not changed how Northwest Coast communities understand taxation and exercise taxation powers and explains how Northwest Coast taxation systems function according to kinship values, organization, customs and institutions. | LL.M. | institut, taxation, socio-economic | 1, 10, 16 |
| Nicholls, Rachael Marlene | Flessa, Joseph | A Walk Around the Lake: Critical Reflections on Place of Identity, Equity, and Inclusion in a Rural Ontario School Board | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | Although issues of equity and inclusion in schools have been discussed in academic discourses for decades, the nature of the exploration of these ideas has remained vague and uncritical (Gérin-Lajoie, 2008; Solomon et al., 2011). In 2009, the Ontario Ministry of Education released Realizing the Promise of Diversity: Ontario’s Equity and Inclusive Education Strategy, demonstrating a shift that appeared to signify a renewed effort to address inequities in education. Within rural school settings, this shift towards equity comes with unique challenges. My doctoral research analyzes how one rural school board interprets and administers equity-related policies. The study delves into how educators’ ideas impact the implementation process, contributing to the development of equitable policies across the province, particularly in rural settings. Current literature often conceptualizes rural classrooms as homogeneous, in contrast to diverse urban school classrooms (Corbett, 2006b; Solomon Sekayi, 2007; Tuters, 2009; Wallin Reimer, 2008). Since the majority of Ontario citizens live in urban centres, teachers are not taught ways to address to conceptualize how place impacts their teaching. Education policymakers, through centralization and standardization, have often failed to consider the lives of rural students and communities as shaped by, and within, their natural and cultural landscapes. To address this disparity, my key questions are: How do rural educators create relevant, equitable, and inclusive schools? What are the barriers to teaching and developing rural school environments where all individuals are respected or represented? This qualitative research, drawing on case study and portraiture methodology, included fifteen educators, who were members of a rural school board’s Equity and Inclusivity in Education committee. Data were collected between January and June of 2014. After developing themes, I crafted a portrait of how rural educators’ engage with ministry-directed policy, and work as a driving or restraining force for institutional change. This work contributes to discourses of equity in education with a focus on the perspectives of those teaching in rural Ontario. The work will play a role in teachers’ professional development, and will aid both new and experienced rural teachers in the ongoing struggle to create relevant and respectful curriculum for all students. | Ph.D. | institut, environment, rural, urban, equitable, inclusiv, educat | 4, 11, 13, 16 |
| McEwen, Karen Dewart | Keilty, Patrick | Actuarial Bodies: Data, Value, and Fairness in Insurance and Workplace Wellness Programs | Information Studies | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation examines the data practices of personalized interactive insurance (PII) and workplace wellness programs (WWP) in the Canadian and American contexts. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with PII and WWP industry professionals and participants, direct observation at industry events, and analysis of industry documents, I analyze the logics and data practices of PII and WWPs. I argue that the insurance industry’s historical methods of valuing human life, with their raced, gendered, and classed notions of financial value, inform PII’s and WWPs’ data practices. I show how PII and WWPs deploy actuarial data practices to identify ‘burdens’ and ‘crises’ amongst policyholders and employees, frame ‘lifestyle’ and ‘behaviour’ as sites of investment for insurers and employers, and establish rewards as means of activating the future value of health and wellness. I also show how, in the face of uncertainty or doubt around their efficacy, PII and WWPs reorient the way they articulate the value of their services.I analyze the broader power dynamics in these programs, showing how industry actors position themselves as data curators who can facilitate ongoing experimentation on policyholders and employees. I argue that PII and WWPs demand datafied performances of value in the form of ‘healthy behaviour’ and ‘engagement’ from participants. I show how PII and WWPs frame ‘personalized’ data profiles and rewards as a way of increasing actuarial fairness, and argue that ‘fairness’ operates as a strategy of power that plays on an individual desire to control how we are perceived as different than or similar to others in an effort protect social status. Finally, I show how PII and WWPs continue the long-established practice of mobilizing both care and neglect for corporate profit, and argue that the actuarial logic of allocating costs, burdens, and (potential) value creates investable and disposable populations. | Ph.D. | industr, gender, health | 3, 5, 2009 |
| Killackey, Tieghan | Peter, Elizabeth | Advance Care Planning in Advanced Heart Failure: A Relational Exploration of Autonomy | Nursing Science | 2020-11-01 | Advance care planning (ACP) is the process of understanding and sharing personal values and goals to ensure people with serious illnesses receive healthcare and treatment that is consistent with their goals and preferences. With the increasing number of treatment options available to patients living with advanced heart failure (HF), ACP is regarded as a means of preserving individual autonomy throughout the illness trajectory. Despite significant public awareness campaigns, research and interventions developed to increase participation in ACP, this practice remains severely under-utilized by those who are chronically ill. This gap in practice highlights the need for further exploration of how patients, families and healthcare providers (HCP) engage with ACP as a practice that is intended to promote patient autonomy. Therefore, the aim of this research was to gain an understanding of how patients, families and healthcare providers (HCP) understand and express their autonomy within the process of ACP. Critical qualitative multiple case study methodology, guided feminist ethics and relational autonomy, was used. Patients with advanced HF were purposefully recruited from two sites; cases were constructed using data from 19 interviews with seven patients, eight caregivers, and nine HCPs. Constructions of autonomy were developed using within and across-case analysis, guided by relational conceptualizations of autonomy. There were three key findings that resulted from this study. First, ACP is understood as external to treatment decision making within the current biomedical landscape, with a specific focus on the power of the legal model. Second, the experience of autonomy in advanced HF is incongruent with the dominant individualistic approach and instead, is a relational experience that is based on relationships of trust. Finally, ACP is influenced by interpersonal relationships and responsibilities as well as interpersonal and social power dynamics. Although ACP is considered a practice that preserves individual autonomy, interpersonal, institutional and societal level relationships were all heavily influential in this practice. Future research and practice endeavors should consider the advancement of ACP (and the enactment of autonomy) using a relational framework that acknowledges autonomy is experienced within the context of institutional, social, and interpersonal relationships. | Ph.D. | institut, health | 3, 16 |
| Lortie, Marie | Harney, Elizabeth | Afrique en Créations 1990-2011: Transnational Patronage in the Francophonie | History of Art | 2018-11-01 | This dissertation analyzes Afrique en Créations, a French government patronage program devoted to contemporary arts from Africa and the diaspora. Established in 1990 as a foundation, Afrique en Créations operated at arms length from the French government until 2000, when it was placed under the purview of the French ministries of Culture and Foreign Affairs. Afrique en Créations is best known for its high-profile biennials on the continent, the “Bamako Encounters: African biennial of photography” held in Bamako, Mali since 1994 and “Dance Africa Dance!” an itinerant dance biennial established in 1995. However, it has also funded and organized residencies, workshops, exhibitions and touring programs for artists working in various media in France and Africa. My project examines Afrique en Créations in relation to French post-colonialism, the globalization of the contemporary art world and the growing presence of contemporary arts from Africa and the diaspora within it. It argues that Afrique en Créations, controlled primarily by members of France’s elite political class and later embedded in the French bureaucracy, has been strongly informed by the continuing legacies of primitivism in France, French politics in the Francophonie and neoliberal business practices, particularly “vertical integration.” While this may be the case, my dissertation also contends that curators and arts administrators from the diaspora working for Afrique en Créations have challenged primitivistic stereotypes and improved the relevance of its initiatives to artists and audiences on the continent. It also argues that several artists patronized by Afrique en Créations in the diaspora have made works that encourage the recent re-appraisal of French culture and identity from a post-colonial perspective. Thus, while specific to France and the Francophonie, this study sheds light on the role of institutions such as NGOs, foundations and government cultural agencies in the art world and therefore, its workings in our contemporary, post-colonial era. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Fan, Jonathan | Smith, Peter M | Age-related Differences in Work Outcomes: Developing a Better Understanding of Variations in Return-to-work, Wage-replacement and Retirement Outcomes using Better Methods and Data | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | Background: Age-related differences in work outcomes, such as return-to-work after work injury (RTW) and early labour market exit, are of renewed interest because they can impact organizational planning and worker well-being. Yet, age-related variations in work outcomes have yet to be fully understood. While existing data sources often do not contain items specifically intended to measure other age dimensions (e.g., functional, psychosocial, organizational, life-stage), they can contain items that could be used to assess these dimensions. If age dimensions could be assessed using existing data sources, which also contain relevant work outcomes, this can provide a feasible and efficient approach to examine the relationships between chronological age, age dimensions and outcomes of interest in existing large samples. Objectives: 1) Better understand the overall association between chronological age and wage-replacement duration, RTW and retirement expectations; 2) demonstrate a methodological approach that could be used to create indices of age dimensions using existing data sources; 3) examine the extent to which each age dimension explains the overall relationship between chronological age and work outcomes. Methods: This research used a combination of survey and administrative data collected from samples of working-age individuals across Canada and Australia. Regression and path models examined the overall relationship between chronological age and work outcomes, and the proportion mediated via age dimensions. Results: Older versus younger age was associated with greater wage-replacement duration, non-RTW and earlier retirement expectations. Differences in wage-replacement duration and non-RTW also varied as a function of follow-up time. Path models found that 25-30% of the overall relationship between older chronological age and work outcomes was mediated through functional age, life-stage age and RTW status at earlier time points (for non-RTW) and through life-stage and organizational age (for earlier retirement expectations). Conclusions: Findings indicate that both individual and contextual factors play a role in explaining relationships between older age and work outcomes. We derived novel measures of age dimensions using a variety of existing data sources and demonstrated the utility of an analytic approach to examine the relative contribution of age-related factors. This approach can be employed in future studies, although conceptual and measurement work needs to be refined. | Ph.D. | wage, worker, labour, well-being | 3, 8 |
| Larratt-Smith, Charles | Handley, Antoinette | Agrarian Social Structures, Insurgent Embeddedness, and State Expansion: Evidence from Colombia | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | In the context of civil war, the efficacy of counterinsurgency strategies varies dramatically across space and time. While this process of state expansion produces different outcomes between different national level cases, it also engenders diverging results at the sub-national level. Counterinsurgent responses can lead to notable reductions in violence, an achievement mirrored by improved stability and order in contested zones. Quite frequently, however, violence will increase as stability and order worsen. The fact that state expansion into contested spaces produces such different results across areas of extremely close proximity begs the following questions: How is the state able to establish control, and by extension order, in some contested spaces more easily than in others? Conversely, what enables armed non-state actors to withstand and survive this massive onslaught in some cases, while failing elsewhere? Since 2002, the Colombian state has embarked upon a massive state expansion project in many volatile areas of the country that were previously controlled and governed by armed non-state actors. This projection of military, bureaucratic, and economic power into these contested spaces has not always brought peace and stability with it, casting into doubt the efficacy of the central government’s larger attempt at state expansion. This dissertation explores the above research puzzle through a comparative historical analysis of two sub-national counterinsurgency laboratories in rural Colombia which demonstrate enormous variation in counterinsurgent outcomes: Montes de María and Arauca. I provide a longitudinal qualitative model that highlights the importance of pre-existing agrarian social structures on the process of insurgent institutionalization in these spaces, or the ability of these armed non-state actors to embed themselves in rural civilian communities. I find that those actors that are better able to appropriate local cleavages in favor of specific constituencies will achieve a higher level of embeddedness in these spaces and thus possess a higher level of populational control over civilians. These advantages are crucial for insurgents during periods of state expansion, as they are better equipped to protect civilian populations from counterinsurgent violence and to prevent potential defection to their rivals. | Ph.D. | peace, institut, rural, labor, gender | 5, 8, 11, 16 |
| Haller, Sarah | Goldstein, Abby L | An Examination of Instagram Use and Body Image in a Sociocultural Model of Disordered Eating | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | Instagram has been identified as a particularly problematic social media site for emerging adults and has been linked to body image concerns (Fardouly, Willburger, Vartanian, 2018) and disordered eating (Holland Tiggemann, 2017; Turner Lefevre, 2017). There is limited research on the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between the use of image-based social networking sites, such as Instagram, and disordered eating. Phase I of the present study assessed thin-ideal internalization, appearance comparison, and body dissatisfaction as mediators of the relationship between frequency of overall Instagram use and disordered eating. One hundred and sixty women (ages 18-24) completed questionnaires regarding frequency of Instagram use, thin-ideal internalization, trait appearance comparison, body dissatisfaction, and disordered eating. Frequency of Instagram use and thin-ideal internalization were directly and separately associated with body dissatisfaction and disordered eating. The proposed mediators were not found to underlie the relationship between Instagram use and disordered eating. To date, there is limited research on how Instagram use impacts daily experiences of mood and body dissatisfaction, which has important implications for capturing potential negative effects of Instagram use on women’s lives. Daily changes in mood and body dissatisfaction might influence decisions to engage in weight control behaviours and cannot be fully captured through retrospective assessment. In order to make research-based recommendations regarding Instagram use, we need to know more about how it impacts users daily. In Phase II of the present study, ninety-two women (ages 18-24) who completed Phase I were randomly assigned to an experimental (Instagram) or control (Reddit) condition and completed daily measures of mood and body dissatisfaction pre- and post-Instagram (or Reddit) use. Body dissatisfaction increased significantly post-Instagram use. In addition, participants low on trait appearance comparison experienced greater positive affect post-social media exposure. Findings from the current study reveal the potentially harmful impact of brief exposures to Instagram use, specifically on how women feel about their bodies and, more broadly, how they feel in general. Policy implications include social media companies ensuring safer online platforms and educational initiatives aimed at increasing young women’s body satisfaction and reducing tendencies to engage in appearance comparisons while online. | Ph.D. | women, educat | 4, 5 |
| Shuh, Janet Joanne | Jones, Glen | An Examination of Institutional Structures, Policy, Narratives and Professorial and Other Stakeholder Perceptions and Experiences vis-à-vis Academic Integrity | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-03-01 | An Examination of Institutional Structures, Policy, Narratives and Professorial and Other Stakeholder Perceptions and Experiences vis-à-vis Academic Integrity Janet Joanne Shuh Doctor of Philosophy Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto 2020 Abstract This study explores the academic integrity mandate of a large multi-campus University in Ontario, Canada through the examination of faculty, staff, and administrator perceptions and experiences as well as the institution’s structures, policies and narratives. The study analyzed findings from three discrete data sources: institutional documents and structures; key informant interviews; and a faculty survey. The research questions and methodology drew from an emerging body of literature that has challenged researchers and practitioners to reframe their understanding of academic integrity from a “student” to an “institutional” (Bertram Gallant, 2016); “educational” (Bretag, 2016a; Fishman, 2016); and “academic literacy” (Howard, 2016) issue. Bolman and Deal’s (2003) four-frame model was used to explore the University’s approach to academic integrity through the structural, human resource, political, and symbolic “frames” as lenses for understanding organizational emphasis and leadership change vis-à-vis academic integrity. Faculty members’ experiences and perceptions were assessed, for the: prevalence of student dishonesty; salience of the underlying factors (individual student versus institutional/situational); and the impact of eroding integrity on core University functions, and the value of the four frames. The survey data were also analyzed for significant differences across the respondent characteristics of: academic discipline; primary campus of teaching; and length of teaching career.The study found that the University’s responses to academic integrity as well as the importance of approaches and considerations as assessed by faculty members were largely reflective of a structural lens. This was expected in that the structural frame (Bolman Deal, 2003) includes the central components of organizations, including “roles, goals, policies, technology, and environment” (p. 16) that are foundational to the post-secondary sector’s response to academic integrity concerns and/or opportunities. Key recommendations include creating more fulsome opportunities for academic integrity dialogue especially with students; acknowledging and mitigating inherent power imbalances; and incorporating symbolic and values-based strategies. The study also recommends aligning academic integrity more closely with the University’s quality assurance, research mandate, and institutional purpose; and fostering a commitment to continuous improvement of academic integrity policy, procedures, and governance. | Ph.D. | governance, institut, fish, environment, educat | 4, 13, 14, 16 |
| Ryu, Grace Hojung | Childs, Ruth | An Exploration of the Experiences of Post-secondary Education for Ontario’s Multi-barriered Female Mature Students | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | This study explores the experiences of multi-barriered mature students in Ontario’s colleges, specifically female students that have been out of school for at least 10 years attending post-secondary education (PSE) through the Government of Ontario’s Second Career program. Having qualified for the Second Career program means, by definition, these women have recently been laid off, have low socio-economic status, and for most, this is their first time attending PSE in Canada. Informed by the intersectionality and capabilities approach frameworks, the study considers the multiple and complex dimensions of marginalization, as well as the real opportunities and freedoms the participants have in pursuing the lives they find reason to value. Through a series of in-depth interviews with 12 students, using a life history methodology, this study investigates the following research questions: how do mature students embodying various marginalities experience PSE and how do they understand the difficulties they encounter? This study also inquires why the students think they are facing the stated difficulties, how they have come to make sense of them, and how they have been coping with or managing the difficulties. Findings show that most had positive memories of their earlier schooling experiences. The participants viewed the opportunity to begin PSE as ‘a way out’ of their current situations by enhancing their capabilities for education and work. The participants also reported feelings of great anxiety and fear about entering PSE. Some of the difficulties they experienced in PSE were low English proficiency skills; an age gap; and being time poor. Some attributed the difficulties they faced as being signs of personal failure, while others saw barriers embedded in the systems. Support from family, friends, and other mature student peers, and finding their own ways to cope were described as important in helping to overcome the difficulties or to at least ‘get by.’ Two sub-groups of participants are identified, with very different needs, suggesting that a one-size-fits-all model of supporting multi-barriered mature students is not appropriate. Based on the findings, recommendations for future research, PSE institutions, and policy and government are provided. | Ph.D. | institut, women, educat, socio-economic | 1, 4, 5, 16 |
| Boakye, Priscilla Nailatu | Peter, Elizabeth H | Analysis of the Moral Habitability of Obstetric Settings in Ghana | Nursing Science | 2020-11-01 | Morally habitable workplaces are essential for enhancing the ability of nurses and midwives to meet their caring responsibilities and to limit the experience of moral distress and other work-related adversities. Morally habitable places are those that promote recognition, cooperation, and shared goods as compared to those that create suffering, distress, oppression, and violence. While there have been studies exploring moral habitability or moral climate and its impact on nurses in Western countries, little is known about the moral habitability of the workplaces of nurses and midwives in resource-constrained settings. The purpose of this research was to examine the moral habitability of the work environment of nurses and midwives and its influence on their moral agency. The philosophical works of Margaret Urban Walker and Kwame Gyekye were used as interpretive lenses. A critical moral ethnography was conducted with 30 nurses and midwives working in obstetric settings in Ghana. Data were collected through interview, observation, and documentary materials. Five themes were identified reflecting the moral habitability of the obstetrics settings and moral agency including: 1) holding onto the values, identities, and responsibilities of being a midwife/nurse; 2) scarcity of resources as limiting capacity to meet caring responsibilities; 3) gender and socio-economic inequities shaping the moral social context of practice; 4) working with incoherent moral understandings and damaged identities in the context of inter- and intra-professional relationships; and 5) surviving through adversity with renewed commitment and courage. The nurses and midwives work in a context dominated by the scarcity of resources, overwhelming incoherent moral responsibilities, oppressive conditions, and workplace violence that constrained their moral agency, endangered patient lives, and provoked suffering and distress. Nurses and midwives negotiated their practice and adversity through the influence of their moral values. Creating morally habitable workplaces through a collaborative effort from institutional managers, nurse leaders, doctors, and policymakers may promote a culture of ethical and ideal nursing and midwifery care for childbearing women and professional well-being. Given the ethically laden nature of the work environment, there is a need for an enhanced ethics education and consultation to help the nurses and midwives confront the issues with confidence. | Ph.D. | institut, environment, climate, urban, labor, women, gender, educat, well-being, socio-economic | 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 13, 16 |
| Pacholik-Samson, Katrina | Flessa, Joseph | Approaches to Leadership Development and Succession Planning in Canadian Accredited Independent Schools | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | Despite the significant research on succession and leadership development in the management literature, similar research in K–12 education is limited, including very few studies on Canadian K–12 independent schools. Meanwhile, Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS) face a significant wave of leadership change, with 6 out of 10 CAIS leaders citing plans to leave or retire from their current school within five years, and board chairs citing leadership succession as a top concern facing their schools. This study examines how CAIS school leaders are approaching leadership development and succession planning in their organization, via qualitative interviews with 20 leaders (heads, HR leaders, board chairs) in seven CAIS schools. An analysis of these interviews reveals significant variation in the sophistication of these schools’ leadership development and succession planning processes. Additionally, from these interviews, six key findings emerged: (1) succession practices across schools are varied, and most of what is being done across schools is replacement rather than succession planning; (2) organizational elements that inhibit or support succession planning and leadership development include: presence of strategic HR, a culture of professional development, access to stretch opportunities for emerging leaders, and the tenure and career stage of current head; (3) succession efforts need to be driven by the head and board chair to be successful; (4) governance succession processes in CAIS schools are strong, if not always well-executed; (5) heads feel that search committees’ reluctance to appoint first-time heads has limited leadership development efforts within CAIS schools, and they raise concern over the rise of international head appointments to CAIS schools; and finally, (6) sponsors who advocate for high-potential leaders are important. The recommendations from this research highlight the desire CAIS school leaders have for more support in structuring succession and leadership development processes in their schools, as well as a call for a national body, like CAIS, to promote the leadership training programs they operate with school boards and executive search firms. This research establishes the groundwork for future, further examination of leadership and succession pathways in Canadian independent schools. | Ph.D. | governance, educat | 4, 16 |
| Ahn, Ju-Hye | Gérin-Lajoie, Diane | Artistic Identity and Space: The Journey of a Group of Graduates from an Arts High School | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | While there is an abundance of information about how the arts are used to express and explore identity among at-risk or underprivileged youth, the relationship between school contexts and artistic identity is not well documented. This study aims to address this gap by investigating how artistic identity is shaped through the experiences students encounter in school settings. This narrative research examines the ways in which the notion of artist is conceptualized and explores how artistic identity is constructed in the discourse of participants. Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, I explored the perception of the schooling experiences of 24 graduates from one arts high school in Toronto to better understand how these graduates, with the distance of time, perceive this experience in the context of their lives. The descriptive accounts provided in the graduates’ narratives unearthed the artistic identities that emerged from their early childhood experiences, in addition to revealing a sense of belonging they fostered at school that helped to shape their artistic identity. A major finding of this research is the process by which participants began to understand themselves as artists in relation to others, and within the social milieu of the arts high school. The research findings showed that the school shaped and reinforced the very concept of what it means to be an artist. Understanding the various paths that students take after graduation will shed light on the role of the arts in schools, and provide further understandings of the drives and motivations of the graduates who choose a career in art (or not) and how these factors challenge preconceived notions about what it means to be an artist. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Millares, Myrtle D. | Dolloff, Lori-Anne | Artistic Knowledge and Performance Identity Formation in Toronto's Hip-hop Communities of Practice | Music | 2020-11-01 | This research project illustrates, through the voices of Toronto hip-hop artists, how the complex, mutually influential interactions between individuals and their communities shape and create knowledge, while encouraging the articulation of difference through unique performance identities. Their learning spaces are not institutional classrooms, but rather public spaces such as community centres, church basements, and concrete city squares, where the line between teacher and student is crossed and blurred. I employ narrative methodology as a means of obtaining the rich accounts necessary to illuminate these community-based learning processes. Hip-hop’s history is passed on orally and aurally as artists cultivate their craft. Artists’ personal stories are essential to the way hip-hop’s history, together with its teaching philosophies, are internalized and passed on in community spaces. Narratives elicited through interviews, conducted as dialogue, have the potential to more respectfully trace these individual-communal relationships. As such, the body of my data consists of the narratives of three Toronto hip-hop artists – B-boy Jazzy Jester, DJ Ariel, and MC LolaBunz – presented and interpreted according to the themes or moments that they have voiced as significant to the development of their skills and of their performance identities. The narratives presented here show the dialogic relationship between musical creativity and identity-building, resulting in embodied, performed expressions of an engagement with the tensions of lived experience. Each artist reveals their personal engagement with layers of normative discourses that are constantly at play, accepted, rejected, and creatively manipulated to fashion one’s own performance identity expressed as style. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Harripaul, Ricardo Simeon | Vincent, John B | Autosomal Recessive Variants in Intellectual Disability and Autism Spectrum Disorder | Medical Science | 2021-03-01 | The development of the nervous system is a tightly timed and controlled process where aberrant development may lead to neurodevelopmental disorders. Two of the most common forms of neurodevelopmental disorders are Intellectual Disability (ID) and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). These two disorders are intertwined, but much about the etiological relationship between them remains a mystery. Little attention has been given to the role recessive variants play in ID and ASD, perhaps related to the ability of recessive variants to remain hidden in the population. This thesis aims to help determine the role of recessive variants in ID and ASD and identify novel genes associated with these neurodevelopmental disorders. Technological advancements such as Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) and large population-scale sequencing reference sets have ushered in a new era of high throughput gene identification. In total, 307 families were whole-exome sequenced (192 consanguineous multiplex ID families and 115 consanguineous trio ASD families), representing 537 samples in total. This work identified 26 novel genes for ID such as ABI2, MAPK8, MBOAT7, MPDZ, PIDD1, SLAIN1, TBC1D23, TRAPPC6B, UBA7, and USP44 in large multiplex families with an overall diagnostic yield of 51 %. ASD often has other comorbid features and the connection with ID and ASD has been observed in literature with an estimated 40-70% if ASD probands also have comorbid ID. Extending the use of consanguineous families in autosomal recessive variant identification in ASD, the diagnostic yield for this ASD trio cohort was ~26 %, with 28 of the known variants coming from previously known genes. This study identified putative variants with functional mouse models that display behavioural and nervous system abnormalities involving genes such as EPHB1, VPS16, CNGA2 and EFR3B. Of the neurodevelopmental genes from this cohort, ZNF292 is the most associated with ID with or without syndromic features and ASD. The overall body of work highlights the clinical and genetic heterogeneity in neurodevelopmental disorders and demonstrates the important role that recessive variants have in neurodevelopment disorders, including ASD. The identification of novel genes will hopefully provide better diagnosis and clinical management for patients. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Retrouvey, Helene | Zhong, Toni||Baxter, Nancy N | Barriers to Access to Breast Reconstruction in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-11-01 | Background: Breast reconstruction (BR) surgically restores the breast mound and provides long-term quality of life benefits. Despite these benefits, BR fails to be consistently integrated as part of the treatment of breast cancer (BC) patients, in part due to inequitable access to BR. Methods: I first performed a systematic review of the literature to comprehensively summarize the known barriers to BR. Access was defined as “the degree of fit between the [patient] and the system”. The access to care framework by Penchansky served as mid-level theory to inform this research. Then, in order to extend knowledge of barriers to BR access in Ontario, I performed semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders (BC patients as well as providers and administrators responsible for the delivery of BR) to explore their perceptions of BR access. Qualitative descriptive methodology guided this research. Results: The systematic review identified 99 articles published between 1996 and 2016 discussing barriers to BR access. Barriers were related to the six Penchansky access to care domains: accessibility, availability, awareness, affordability, acceptability, and accommodation. Interviews with 28 patients, 22 clinicians and 8 administrators (58 total) revealed two novel barriers to BR access in Ontario. Barriers were lack of BR acceptability to patients and lack of interprofessional collaboration among physicians. For BC patients, the main barrier to BR access was their lack of acceptability of the procedure. Although patients could recognize the value of BR, many felt judged when thinking or selecting to undergo BR. These negative perceptions of BR as a “vain” or “cosmetic” procedure could impact access to BR. For providers, ineffective interprofessional collaboration amongst the interprofessional BC team was perceived as a barrier to BR delivery. No clearly identified clinician leader as well as tensions regarding the role of plastic surgeons negatively influenced collaboration. Without effective collaboration between physicians, the delivery of BR could be adversely affected. Conclusions: This research improves our understanding of barriers faced by BC patients when attempting to access BR. Future studies that engage with key stakeholders are needed in order to develop targeted interventions which will facilitate BR access for all BC patients. | Ph.D. | labor, equitable | 4, 8 |
| Smitka, Julie A. M. | Springgay, Stephanie | Being Within and Without: Cases of Phenomenological Embodiment in Art Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-11-01 | Intrigued by the body’s place within education, I investigate the diverse ways that embodiment manifests in secondary school visual arts classrooms. This thesis presents a multiple case study analysis of two school residency projects, which were part of a multi-year research-creation project, The Pedagogical Impulse (TPI) led by Dr. Stephanie Springgay (PI) and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). The data used in this thesis was generated within the larger TPI project. The two case studies were conducted in two different visual arts classrooms in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) during the 2012 academic year. I was the lead research assistant at the two school sites. TPI engaged with transpedagogy, a term noted by Pablo Helguera (2011), meaning that the focus of the study is not on the refinement of artistic techniques but on the creation of artwork through processes and experiences. The research-creation projects worked with social practice artists, Hazel Meyer and Sarah Febbraro, who took up residency in two secondary schools. Students from grades 10, 11, and 12 and their art teachers participated in these case studies. For my thesis research, I focus on delineating elements of embodiment experienced throughout the case studies. I observe a time lapse/incubation period in the development of certain embodied processes in myself, the teachers and the students in the two cases. Using various theories of embodiment, phenomenology and practitioner research, I develop a theory of embodiment, body-in-the-making, to support my analysis. I engage in and examine the inside and outside spaces that enfleshed the TPI study, and how they have interjected themselves into spaces in teaching and learning systems. Although there have been numerous studies related to the phenomenology of embodiment within arts education, there is a lack of clarity about what embodiment looks like in visual arts education from the perspective of the visual arts teacher. My study demonstrates the many intricacies that exist in education as an institution and how making changes to the concept of the body in schools may alter the many institutional structures that exist around the Cartesian divide in schools. | Ph.D. | institut, educat | 4, 16 |
| Whitney, Ryan Anders | Hess, Paul M | Best Practices, Trendy Urbanists, and Hybrid Policy Mobilities in the Laboratory for the City in Mexico City | Geography | 2020-11-01 | In this thesis I explore the referencing of mobility and urban sustainability best practices by decision makers who are working within the asymmetrical institutional power dynamics of Mexico City’s government. Specifically, I use the Laboratory for the City to emphasize the assumed equitable outcomes of best practices by decisions makers versus their actual outcomes during and following implementation. I conceptualize the Laboratory for the City, designed to translate transnational best practices to Mexico City to foster urban livability, as representative of how the policy making process can be inadvertently skewed to favor the values of the already privileged. I pay special attention to the race and class of the Laboratory for the City’s employees to illustrate how privilege manifests itself through connections to transnational knowledge networks that celebrate best practices as local solutions to urban sustainability issues. I argue that best practices are given preference in neighborhoods ripe for economic development and, when implemented in economically marginalized neighborhoods, tend to reflect the needs and values of decision makers. I conclude that the ad hoc adoption of best practices within Mexico City is perpetuating an established history of elite-based decision making by inflating the urbanism desires of the already privileged. I call for equity to be conceptualized based on the local context as opposed to within the transnational knowledge networks influencing the global urbanism agenda. | Ph.D. | institut, urban, innovat, labor, equitable | 4, 8, 9, 11, 16 |
| Kriger, Debra Anne | MacNeill, Margaret | Beyond the Present: Risk and Body Stigma in Public Health | Exercise Sciences | 2018-11-01 | Risk is a quotidian concept in public health, but how do individuals make sense of it as an embodied phenomenon? What does a present, embodied stigmatized relationship have to do with risk and health? This research brings together public health, sociology of risk, and sociology of the body theories to answer these overarching research questions. Using a post-structural, interpretive research paradigm, 13 participants sculpted, life-lined, and were interviewed to share their understandings of embodied health risk. Key findings from this research include that sculpting and life-lining are useful in critical qualitative research methods; normality and health identity can be de-stabilized when temporality is introduced to understanding embodied health risk; and there are multiple approaches to understanding risk. There are four risk approaches outlined in this thesis: (1) the ‘shit happens’ approach, (2) the sequelae approach, (3) the risk as heuristic approach, and (4) the knowledge approach. These findings have implications for the fields of qualitative methodologies, physical cultural studies, and public health. Methodologically, absurdity, creativity, imagination and embodiment/tactility are proposed as important characteristics of critical qualitative health research. The innovative methods of sculpting and life-lining in health research can facilitate further research of complex social phenomena, and imagination can be explored as an integral piece of health justice. In physical cultural studies, understandings of the relationship stigma represents between normality and identity is extended by including considerations of risk and temporality to questions of biopedagogy. For public health, this research opens new ways of making sense of risk, and new ideas on how individuals’ everyday experiences relate to population-level health statistics. The findings foster development of a public health ethic that is sociologically informed, and can be used to inform future ideas on health risk communication. | Ph.D. | justice, innovat, health | 3, 9, 16 |
| Diloreto, Zachary A. | Dittrich, Maria | Biogeochemical Investigations of In-Situ Dolomite Formation: Providing New Insights into an Old Enigma | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-03-01 | temperature dolomite has remained an enigmatic mineral for over a century. The formation mechanisms have been controversial debated as there are large abundances of low-temperature dolomite in ancient rocks, but a continual decrease as time progressed with little to no low-temperature dolomite forming today. Indeed, the mechanisms controlling ancient abundances of dolomite can still not be explained. Recent laboratory experiments have shown that dolomite can be mediated by functional groups along cell surfaces and excretions referred to as exopolymeric substances (EPS). It has been theorized that biologically formed functional groups of EPS act as nucleation surfaces which reduced the energy required to form dolomite. Although, the formation of low-T dolomite in association with EPS has been shown in the laboratory it does not explain observations in the rock record. It also remains unclear why many modern environments do no host dolomite despite its supersaturation. Thus, this thesis aimed to examine in-situ formation of dolomite from a select modern environment, the hypersaline sabkhas of Qatar, and to provide new insight into an old enigma. Through a series of field and laboratory investigations this thesis shows that specific environmental drivers, such as salinity, facilitated a particular microbial community dynamic that produced EPS specifically suited to nucleating dolomite. The microbial community dynamics were represented by fluctuations in oxygenic and anoxygenic phototrophs which appear to have become sparse through geologic time due to the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere. This connection provided a possible explanation for the decreased abundance of low-T dolomite in the rock record. Furthermore, this work has shown through laboratory experiments that natural extracted EPS achieves rates of carbonate/dolomite nucleation at many times the rate of abiotic surfaces, such as clays. Additionally, the presence of carotenoid pigments associated with these dynamics provide potential targets for biomarker analysis, which have implications for astrobiology as well as oil and gas exploration. Overall, these findings help improve established models of dolomite precipitation and highlight the importance of considering microbe communities-mineral interactions with regard to global bio-geochemical cycles. | Ph.D. | environment, labor, energy | 7, 8, 13 |
| Wong, Mabel T | Master, Emma R||Edwards, Elizabeth A | Bioprospecting Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes in Lignocellulose-Degrading Microcosms Enriched from Pulp Mill Anaerobic Granules and Digestive Microbiomes of Canadian Beaver and North American Moose | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-11-01 | Lignocellulosic biomass, including wood fibre, is an abundant resource for biorefining; however, the structural heterogeneity and occurrence of inhibitors present challenges to corresponding bioconversion technologies. In an effort to identify carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) with potential to transform wood-derived feedstocks, multiple lignocellulosic microcosms were established from pulp mill anaerobic granules, beaver droppings and moose rumen and cultivated for over 3 years on (i) cellulose, (ii) cellulose + lignosulphonate, (iii) cellulose + tannic acid, and (iv) pretreated poplar. Microbial community analysis of 16S rRNA amplicons revealed post-enrichment decrease in species richness and substrate-induced convergence. Amendment with added inhibitors (ii, iii) or pretreated poplar particularly enriched known biomass degraders along with microbes belonging to poorly-described lineages including BSV26, SJA-28, TG3 classes, OPB54 and Cloacamonales orders. Comparative metagenomics targeting cellulose- and pretreated poplar-fed microcosms revealed CAZyme profiles that converged based on substrate for gut microbiomes, while a separate cluster for anaerobic granules revealed the impact of inoculum. Compared to the cellulose-fed microcosms, the pretreated poplar-fed counterparts were enriched with reported broad substrate families with cellulolytic and hemicellulolytic activities (GH2, GH3, GH5, and GH43), as well as putative β-L-arabinofuranosidases (GH127), glucuronoyl methylesterases (CE15), and pectinases (PL1, GH28, CE8, and GH105). While no major differences emerged from the profiles of proteins with unknown function within the 416 predicted polysaccharide utilization loci and catalytic cellulosomal subunits, 2 carbohydrate-binding proteins with domains of unknown function (DUF3459-CBM48-GH13_10 and DUF5011-CBM4) were consistently present in pretreated poplar-fed microcosms only. Metasecretomes from the microcosms at ~50% and ~80% g COD substrate to biogas conversion were functionally characterized. Despite the similar saccharification capacities of different enrichments, protein profiles of the pretreated poplar-fed microcosms observed by SDS-PAGE were distinct from the cellulose-fed ones. Moreover, the emergence of new bands and greater activity on pectin, xylans and mannans from secretomes at the later stage implied a succession of enzymes that hydrolyze β-(1→4)-glycosidic bonds in cellulose before other polysaccharides. Collectively, putative lignocellulolytic proteins specialized for processing forest fibre were revealed via comparative meta-analyses for downstream characterization. Also, the potential of the microcosms serving as a repertoire of biocatalysts for developing wood specific-enzymatic cocktails was confirmed. | Ph.D. | forest, cities | 11, 15 |
| Klass, Keren | Lehman, Shawn M||Teichroeb, Julie A | Black Howler Monkey (Alouatta pigra) Demography and Behaviour in Unprotected Forest Fragments around Palenque National Park, Chiapas, Mexico | Anthropology | 2020-11-01 | Habitat loss and fragmentation are urgent threats to primate species worldwide. Species’ responses to these threats are mediated by many factors, and there remains an urgent need to generate species- and habitat-specific knowledge to better understand their effects. I examined how living in unprotected forest fragments shapes Endangered black howler monkey (Alouatta pigra) demography and behaviour in a single fragmented landscape around Palenque National Park (PNP) in Chiapas, Mexico. I surveyed 34 fragments and collected demographic and behavioural data on the black howlers inhabiting them (62 groups, 407 individuals). I collected data on fragment size, shape, isolation, and forest composition. I found that the demographic population structure of the black howler population in the fragmented landscape has been stable over the last 17 years, while patch occupancy and ecological density have increased. Compared to the PNP black howler population, the study population was denser, and differed mainly in a lower proportion of adult males and fewer adult males per group. I then examined how variation in fragment isolation and habitat characteristics affected the population composition of black howler monkeys within fragments, and whether this variation differentially affected adult males and females. My results showed a significant effect of fragment variables on population demography in fragments. Population size increased with fragment area while density decreased, and the proportion of adult males and females, and their average number per group, were differentially affected by variation in fragment characteristics: there were more females in larger, less isolated fragments, and more males in more isolated, secondary-growth fragments. Lastly, I analyzed how variation in fragment habitat shaped time budgets and group movements of black howler monkeys in the study fragments. Fragment habitat variables significantly explained over half of the variation in these behaviours. Results showed that black howlers employed variable strategies (energy-minimizing or energy-maximizing) in response to variation in fragment habitat quality. Taken together, my results indicate that habitat loss and fragmentation are affecting the study population via demographic and behavioural changes simultaneously, with implications for the likelihood of long-term persistence of black howlers in unprotected forest fragments around PNP. | Ph.D. | ecolog, forest, conserv, energy | 7, 14, 15 |
| Meyers, Alice L | Restoule, Jean-Paul | Blossoming Multiliteracies: Stories of How W̱SÁNEĆ, Quw’utsun, Gitga’at, and Líl̓wat Nations Reclaim Indigenous Languages and Food Systems through Pedagogies of the Land | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | Indigenous languages are windows into a myriad of worldviews (Simpson, 2011). They are repositories of botanical, environmental, and kinship knowledges, and, perhaps more importantly, are central to Indigenous identity (McCarty et al., 2018). As W̱SÁNEĆ, Quw’utsun, Líl̓wat and Gitga’at communities (re)inhabit social, physical, spiritual, and emotional spaces to speak their languages of SENĆOŦEN, Hul’q’umi’num’, Ucwalmícwts, and Sm̓algya̱x, respectively, they use pedagogies of the land. Teaching styles are grounded in Indigenous land education (Calderon, 2014; Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua, 2013) and decolonizing botanical knowledges (Geniusz, 2009) as (w)holistic curricula, upholding ontologies of lands and waters. As a settler researcher on these lands, I engaged in conversations with nine Elders and educators from Coast Salish (SȾÁUTW̱, W̱JOȽEȽP, W̱SÍKEM, Quw’utsun), Gitga’at, and Líl̓wat First Nations, and two settlers. Research questions inquired into how youth and Elders approach language reclamation. I learned pedagogies of the land are a return to ancestral ways of being, counter-hegemonic actions that pull children and adults towards nature-based spaces, nurturing whole beings. Conceptual frameworks integrate anti-colonial (Carlson, 2016), Indigenous-centred methodologies (Smith, 2012). Conscious of “unsettling” (Regan, 2010) my positionality as active witness (Atkinson, 2001), I gathered knowledges through conversational interviews (Kovach, 2010) and storywork (Anderson, 2011; Archibald, 2008), contributing through eco-cultural restoration. Knowledge Keepers shared stories of teaching on the land, drawn to sacred places through keystone food systems, interweaving Oral Histories with Indigenous languages. Stories are linked thematically through an iterative framework, and shed light into how Indigenous languages are transmitted intergenerationally, grounded in local epistemologies. Findings show how first (L1) and second (L2) language acquisition connects with ethnobotanical knowledges; blending mariculture, prayer names, traditional practices, and songs. Foods and medicines are harvested in reciprocal acts of gratitude. Through this work, multiple layered literacies develop, with students learning and speaking Indigenous languages through (w)holistic, land-centred education (heart- and community-literacies), while regenerating lands, waters, and medicines (food- and ecological-literacies). Languages grow as part of linguistic ecologies (Twitchell, 2017), thriving within the seen and unseen, more than human world. This thesis may interest those in the fields of language revitalization; food sovereignty, security, and native plants; language policy; eco-justice; and land-based Indigenous pedagogies. | Ph.D. | justice, ecolog, environment, wind, water, educat, food | 2, 4, 6, 7, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Smither, Devon | Cheetham, Mark | Bodies of Anxiety: The Female Nude in Modern Canadian Art, 1913-1945 | History of Art | 2016-11-01 | Bodies of Anxiety: The Female Nude in Modern Canadian Art, 1913-1945 Doctor of Philosophy, 2016 Devon Smither Department of Art, University of Toronto Often censored and much debated, the female nude in Canadian art has held a contentious position since the early twentieth century. In 1927, Canadian artist John W. Russell was driven to return to Paris following public outcry over his nude paintings. In 1931, Bertram Brookerâ s Figures in Landscape was removed from an Ontario Society of Artists exhibition at the Art Gallery of Toronto and in 1933 Lilias Torrance Newtonâ s painting Nude was deemed too immodest and censored from a Canadian Group of Painters show. The nude garnered moral criticism from conservatives; yet, according to critics and artists, it remained central to the development of modern art in Canada. While the nude in Europe has been the subject of both theoretical and historical studies there exists to date no scholarly study of the nude in Canada. The historic focus within Canadian art history on the landscape painting of the Group of Seven has meant that themes concerning the figure and the nude have largely gone unexamined. This study examines the female nude as an artistic genre in Canada from 1920 to 1940 in an effort to understand how it became the site of moralizing discourse, as well as attending to the reasons for the disenfranchisement of the genre in Canadian art history. It is important to read the nude in modern Canadian art for what it reveals about concerns over gender, class, race, and national identity. I address how masculinity was central to the historic emphasis on the Group of Sevenâ s work, an emphasis that has meant that predominantly urban themes concerning the figure and the nude have been censored and repressed. In my analysis of a selection of artworks by Canadian artists from the interwar period I contend that the nude was a nexus point for the often diverse, and at times incompatible, ways that artists and the public responded to the development of modern art and the conditions of modernity. | Ph.D. | conserv, urban, gender | 5, 11, 14, 15 |
| Steele, Sarah Elizabeth | López-Fernández, Hernán | Body Size Evolution and Diversity of Fishes using the Neotropical Cichlids (Cichlinae) as a Model System | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-06-01 | The influence of body size on an organism’s physiology, morphology, ecology, and life history has been considered one of the most fundamental relationships in ecology and evolution. The ray-finned fishes are a highly diverse group of vertebrates. Yet, our understanding of diversification in this group is incomplete, and the role of body size in creating this diversity is largely unknown. I examined body size in Neotropical cichlids (Cichlinae) to elucidate the large- and small-scale factors affecting body size diversity and distribution, and how body size shapes species, morphological, and ecological diversity in fishes. Characterization of body size distributions across the phylogeny of Neotropical cichlids revealed considerable overlap in body size, particularly in intermediate-sized fishes, with few, species-poor lineages exhibiting extreme body size. Three potential peaks of adaptive evolution in body size were identified within Cichlinae. I found freshwater fishes globally tend to be smaller and their distributions more diverse and right-skewed than marine counterparts, irrespective of taxonomy and clade age, with a strengthening of these trends in riverine systems. Comparisons of Neotropical cichlid body size diversity and distribution to this broader context shows that body size patterns are largely abnormal compared to most freshwater fishes, particularly those of the Neotropics. This implies that small body size is rarer in Cichlinae, despite several independent cases of body size decrease in this lineage. I found that these small-bodied lineages are miniaturized cichlids, exhibiting strong reduction in body size, as well as paedomorphic characters and ontogenetic truncation compared to their sister taxa. Further examination of ontogenies across Neotropical cichlids found considerable shape conservatism over ontogeny and phylogeny, with cichlids following similar ontogenetic trajectories. Therefore, ontogenetic pathways do not contribute considerably to morphological divergence seen in adults, with divergence likely occurring in the larval stage or perhaps during embryology. The evolution of ontogeny, body size, and shape did not correspond to a unique adaptive peak in miniatures, or three body size optima predicted from the distribution of size across the phylogeny. Rather, it is complex and, like early trait divergence previously seen, diversifies early in the phylogeny across the major lineages of Neotropical cichlids. | Ph.D. | ecolog, fish, conserv, marine, water | 6, 14, 15 |
| Lord, Elizabeth | Boland, Alana | Building an Ecological Civilization across the Rural/Urban Divide and the Politics of Environmental Knowledge Production in Contemporary China | Geography | 2018-06-01 | Over the past four decades, China’s environment has been transformed markedly, both in terms of pollution and degradation, but also through protection initiatives. This dissertation draws on political ecology, including theories of environmental knowledge production, and uneven development, to examine how China’s ‘green’ turn unfolds onto, and through, rural/urban inequalities, and how it reconfigures this profound divide that organizes society. This dissertation examines how these two ‘crises’ — one environmental and the other socio-economic — are in conversation with each other, and in many ways, build off each other. My analysis is based on first-hand research in the Qinling Mountains (Shaanxi), interviews (including with academics, officials and villagers), participatory observation, as well as on secondary literature on rural-environmental questions. Based on this data, I identify two paradoxical processes transforming rural environments: the ruralization of pollution and the mobilization of rural efforts to ‘green’ the nation. I propose the concept of socio- environmental reproduction as a useful lens to understand this paradox. This concept illustrates how the rural/urban divide is constitutive of the environmental project; it also helps to understand the mechanism by which national greening initiatives further re-assert rural/urban differences. This dynamic appears most clearly when examining the politics and logics of environmental research including limits on fieldwork, pressures to commercialize research and political decisions about what is, or not, acceptable environmental knowledge. This study therefore analyzes institutional, political and discursive frames that regulate rural-environmental research to explore the parameters that shape what is known, or made invisible, about rural-environmental realities. I suggest that the political and economic context shaping environmental research in contemporary China is productive of the invisibility of urgent rural-environmental questions — a process which contributes to reproducing rural/urban inequalities, and illustrates one of the new ways through which uneven development unfolds in contemporary China. | Ph.D. | institut, ecolog, pollut, environment, production, rural, urban, socio-economic | 1, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Nay, Eric | Bakan, Abigail | Canonizing Le Corbusier: The Making of an Architectural Icon as Colonial Hegemony | Social Justice Education | 2018-11-01 | In 2016, it was announced that iconic Franco-Swiss modern architect, Le Corbusier, and his nearly complete oeuvre of seventeen buildings, would be enshrined on the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)’s World Heritage List. With this notable decision, Le Corbusier, the figure, moved from beatification as a “modern master” to achieving the architectural status of canonical sainthood. No other architect had been so completely enshrined on UNESCO’s list. The discussions and debates centered on this landmark decision provide evidence regarding how and why Le Corbusier’s figuration persists and is sustained. The Corbusiern figure remains foundational in architectural pedagogy, modern architectural history text writing and in the imaginaries formed in aspiring students of architecture as a global project that is both colonial and hegemonic. How this decision to reify Le Corbusier came about after a decade of debate and deliberation provides the basis for this project. The argument suggests ways to explain how we continue to tell and perform the history of modern architecture today, using Le Corbusier as a figure, as well as the legacy of the Bauhaus and International Style modernism, as pedagogical tools to perpetuate an ongoing hegemonic colonial regime situated in architectural knowledge production and pedagogy. | Ph.D. | production, buildings, educat | 4, 9, 12 |
| Kokorelias, Kristina Marie | Kokorelias, Jill I | Caring for the Caregiver: An Examination of Support Needs and Service use across the Alzheimer’s Disease Trajectory | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-03-01 | Background: Many family caregivers support individuals with Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) from symptom onset to death. Caregivers often require their own support from family, friends, health care professionals, and service agencies. Currently, we know little about how caregiving support and service needs change from symptom onset to the later stages of disease. Additionally, it is unclear how caregivers decide which services to use to better support themselves. It is also not clear whether caregiver gender and relationship type influences evolving experiences.Objectives: This study aimed to generate a conceptual framework to illuminate caregivers’ needs for support and the decision-making process regarding use of supports from family, friends, health care professionals and services across the disease and caregiving trajectory. Methods: A constructivist grounded theory methodology guided this research. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 40 spousal and adult children caregivers. Topics explored included experiences and responsibilities of caregivers across the disease trajectory and the services used to help them in their caregiving role. Data were analyzed using a constant comparison method. Results: Participants described five phases related to their caregiving responsibilities including monitoring initial symptoms, navigating the diagnosis, assisting with instrumental activities of daily living, assisting with basic activities of daily living, and preparing for the future. The phases are described in the Caregiver-Identified Phases Across the Alzheimer’s disease Care Trajectory (CIP-AD) framework. Key support and service needs were often specific to phase of care. AD caregivers made service use decisions to sustain care in the community, but factors that influenced service decision-making evolved over the CIP-AD, including the goals of caregiving and the practicalities associated with accessing services. A gender and relationship type analysis found that the evolving caregiving experience cannot be described by gender or relationship type alone. Conclusion: This thesis enhances our understanding of the complexity of providing care throughout the AD trajectory from the perspective of spousal and adult children caregivers. The CIP-AD can inform best practice and clinical guidelines related to caregivers evolving needs for support and services. The timely delivery of supports and services can improve the quality of life for family caregivers. | Ph.D. | gender, health | 3, 5 |
| Lwin, Kristen | Mishna, Faye||Fluke, John | Challenging Assumptions: Using Research to Evaluate Child Welfare Worker Qualifications | Social Work | 2018-06-01 | Child welfare workers are the conduit between child welfare systems and children and their families. Required qualifications for practice include certain educational and practice experiences, skills, and knowledge. The overall goal of this dissertation is to increase understanding of the child welfare workforce. To meet this goal, the objectives of this dissertation are: 1) to assess the evidence for the necessary education and training qualifications required for child welfare practice; 2) to examine how worker qualifications have shifted in response to changes in child welfare system mandates and child and family needs; and 3) to contribute to the understanding of the role worker characteristics play in the ongoing services provision. Three studies were undertaken to meet the goal of this dissertation. The first paper is a synthesis of a portion of the child welfare workforce literature and reveals a lack of evidence regarding the specific educational background, skills, and experience that best equip child welfare workers for the demands of practice. Paper two is the first provincial study in Canada to examine how the profile of workers who conduct child maltreatment investigations has changed alongside shifts in child welfare legislation and mandate. Ontario data over the past 20 years illustrate changes in caseload size, training attendance, pre-service education, ethnicity, and years of child welfare worker experience. Paper three, the final study of this dissertation, uses multilevel analyses to examine the decision to transfer a family for ongoing services. Findings reveal that clinical and organizational characteristics predict this service provision, whereas worker characteristics (i.e., education, training attendance, experience, age, position, caseload size) did not. Overall findings suggest that there is little empirical evidence to suggest that valued qualifications actually equip workers with the skills and knowledge for effective child welfare practice and that the efficacy of these qualifications are based primarily on assumptions. Recommendations for future research and practice are provided. | Ph.D. | worker, educat | 4, 8 |
| Ghoussoub, Mireille Fleury | Ozin, Geoffrey A. | Characterization and Modelling Studies of Turanite for the Catalytic Conversion of CO2 to Methanol | Chemistry | 2021-03-01 | Capturing and converting greenhouse gas CO2 into carbon-based fuels and chemical feedstock offers a sustainable substitute to fossil resources in chemical manufacturing and a means to remove excess carbon emission from the atmosphere. This work offers a comprehensive study into the structural, chemical, and thermal properties of turanite, Cu5(VO4)2(OH)4, a naturally-occurring mineral, relevant to its catalytic activity towards methanol production from CO2. Activated Cu5(VO4)2(OH)4 is demonstrated to exhibit significant catalytic activity towards methanol formation at relatively low temperatures and ambient pressure conditions. The reduction of nanostructured Cu5(VO4)2(OH)4 by hydrogen is investigated using a combination of diffraction, microscopy, in situ spectroscopy, first-principles calculations, and kinetic analysis based on thermogravimetry. A two-step mechanism is proposed, in which Cu5(VO4)2(OH)4 is first reduced, following exponential growth kinetics, to form a stable intermediate consisting of a mix of Cu3VO4, Cu2O, and CuV2O5. The intermediate phase is then subsequently reduced in a diffusion-limited process to form two segregated phases consisting of Cu metal and V2O3 particles. Results obtained from in situ infrared spectroscopy and first-principles calculations suggest that the reaction pathway for methanol production involves a formate intermediate. This study demonstrates the importance of using combined in situ characterization techniques to study heterogeneous metal oxide catalysts and the potential for employing naturally-occurring minerals that contain earth-abundant metals for the conversion of CO2 to value-added products. | Ph.D. | greenhouse gas, production | 12, 13 |
| Varmuza, Petr | Perlman, Michal | Child Care Utilization and Stability of Quality: Implications for System Management and Oversight | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | Child care can be a public service tool capable of supporting multiple social and economic goals including improving gender equity and reducing inter-generational transfer of poverty through high quality early learning and care for all children, but especially those in low income families. Recent estimates indicate that almost 60% of preschool-aged children regularly spend time in non-parental care (Statistics Canada, 2019b). Yet, Canadian families also rank very low on the OECD’s measures of child care affordability and access to licensed care. This means that families must use unlicensed care which receives virtually no government oversight. Current government statistics provide accurate counts of child care centre capacities. However, little is known about licensed home child care (HCC). Even less is known about the families who utilize unlicensed care, or do without any non-parental care. Beyond access, with very few exceptions, little is known about quality of care most families can access. Such data must form the basis for a social investment strategy that reduces existing inequalities. The dissertation consists of three papers that address gaps in our knowledge of child care in Canada. The first study, used data from the 2011 General Social Survey of Canada. Study findings show substantial heterogeneity in usage rates across the country as well as inequality whereby the families with the fewest resources are more likely to use unlicensed care or to have no care at all. The second study outlines a model for individually licensing and ensuring quality in HCC providers, including requirements for annual health and safety inspections, independent quality assessment and a wide-ranging system of quality supports and enhancements. Cost estimates are provided which are substantially lower on a per provider basis than the current agency-based licensing approach to HCC used in a number of provinces. Using administrative data from the City of Toronto the third study investigated the stability of quality ratings of 1,019 preschool classrooms over a three year period. The results show significant levels of instability suggesting that the frequency of ratings cannot be reduced. Implications for service oversight, system management and further research are discussed. | Ph.D. | cities, inequality, equality, gender, educat, health, poverty | 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11 |
| Eisazadeh, Nazila | Stagg Peterson, Shelley | Children’s Literate Identities: Exploring the Literacy Discourses That Permeate the Lives of Two Young Children | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | This thesis reports on a multiple case study in which I explored the literate identities of two children. I examine how the literacy values, beliefs, dispositions etc. of family members, as well as those enacted during tutor sessions with me as their tutor, support or constrain children’s positive literate identities. Two children, their parents and siblings, who reside in Ontario, Canada, participated in this study. Participant observations, informal and semi-structured interviews, videos of children during tutor sessions, pictures of children’s communicative artifacts and my reflective diary, were the sources of data. Informed by Ivanic (2004) and Wohlwend (2009), I analyzed 372 interview responses for literacy discourse. I then analyzed 9853 meaning-making acts across videos for social purpose, which was informed by Peterson et al. (2019). I also coded meaning-making acts for literacy discourse. I coded 29,559 literacy discourses in total. Patterns of discourse were identified by first making comparisons across participants’ interview responses, then making comparisons between the two children’s tutor sessions. Social purpose and activity/task were also included in the comparisons between the children’s tutor sessions. I found that restrictive views of literacy, such as those pertaining to the skills-mastery discourse, were more likely to constrain children’s (re)construction of positive literate identities. I also found that participants’ interview responses predominantly reflected the skills-mastery discourse. Furthermore, children’s schools often assigned homework that enforced such restrictive views of literacy, influencing the discourses taken up during tutor sessions. I as the children’s tutor, however, played a significant role in exposing children to alternative views/discourses of literacy. My findings point to the need for tutors to move beyond a “shadow education” service model, where tutors closely follow the curricula of schools – private or public – by providing homework or test preparation support no matter the messages about literacy homework tasks enforce. This study advances research in this field by describing the connections between tutors and families’ perceptions of literacy and by highlighting how tutors can open up reflective dialogues with families, with the goal of encouraging broadened notions of literacy. My study contributes to improvements in teaching, particularly for tutors, and children’s literacy development. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Budak, Turkan Gulce | Green, Andrew J | Climate Clubs: Minilateral Approach to Climate Change | Law | 2020-11-01 | The global challenge of climate change can be solved with effective mechanisms. In this context, commitments for combating climate change should be scrutinized with high deterrent sanctions or strong incentives. This thesis explores climate clubs, which is offered as one of the solutions to climate change, and how to encourage and accommodate countries with different concerns into this mechanism. The paper first addresses the issues of free-riding, carbon leakage, and competitiveness, which are the problems of current climate change mitigation efforts. Then, it examines which trade tools can be employed as a linking instrument within the climate clubs to achieve effective results and encourage the membership of various countries. Subsequently, the compatibility of these linking tools with WTO law was researched. Finally, the structure of climate clubs is evaluated in the context of developing countries. | LL.M. | climate, trade | 10, 13 |
| Kim, Yangsook | Cranford, Cynthia J||Chun, Jennifer J | Competing Subjectivities: A Comparative Study of Low-paid Care Workers in Greater Seoul and the Los Angeles Koreatown | Sociology | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation examines how low-paid care workers, who are stratified into different sectors of the care labor market along gender, ethnicity, migration, and citizenship, form agentic political subjectivities. Through a comparative analysis of four different groups, I analyze how low-paid care workers who do similar work but are unequally positioned within social contexts give meaning to their work and cultivate a sense of worth, entitlement and dignity in relation to other care workers as well as vis-à-vis the state. Through multi-sited ethnographic research, including 98 in-depth interviews with workers in domestic service and eldercare sectors in Greater Seoul, South Korea and the Koreatown community of Los Angeles, California, I find that care workers develop distinct political subjectivities in response to their continuing precarity. This subject formation is a multi-level process that is mediated by three contexts: policy regimes, labour markets, and organizations, such as labour unions and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). At the policy regime level, state policies sort and channel marginalized women into the low-paid care market through targeted forms of recruitment that rely on discourses such as “co-ethnics,” “self-sufficient women,” and “care experts.” These discourses define the kind of care that different groups of workers are expected to provide, yet workers complement and further articulate the meanings of policy discourses through their own re-interpretations of policies. In doing so, they contribute to and reinforce the structure of inequality that hierarchically divides care workers along ethnicity, migration and citizenship. In this process, organizations play a significant role in translating state policies in different ways, providing workers with sources of pride, alternative language and sense of entitlement as legitimate right-bearers. Each empirical chapters of the dissertation focuses on a specific care worker group to elaborate how divergent configurations of state policies, labour organization and labour market dynamics shape multi-level processes of subject formation. By analyzing distinct subjectivity building projects, this dissertation shows that care workers’ struggles for survival and dignity are often linked to boundary drawing practices against other care workers, limiting the possibilities for cross-ethnic solidarity and the emancipatory potential of their struggles. | Ph.D. | inequality, worker, labor, labour, equality, women, gender | 5, 8, 10 |
| Wei, Mingyang | Sargent, Edward H. | Composition and Dimensionality Engineering of Perovskite Materials for Photovoltaic Applications | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2020-11-01 | In recent years, metal halide perovskites have attracted research interest due to their remarkable optoelectronic properties, including strong optical absorption and long carrier diffusion lengths, combined with low-cost fabrication. As soft ionic solids, metal halide perovskites exhibit versality in chemical composition and structural dimensionality: this enables tunable bandgaps and luminescence. In this thesis, I focus on engineering the composition and dimensionality of metal halide perovskites with the goal of advancing photovoltaic applications. I begin by developing and investigating a cation-engineering strategy that enables wide-bandgap perovskites to show high defect-tolerance. Cation-engineering increases the device performance of wide-bandgap perovskite solar cells to exceed 20% PCE. I attribute the excellent performance to the reorientation of MA dipoles, which heals deep-level defects. Next, I study carrier diffusion in mixed-cation perovskites. MA-based perovskite thin films exhibit a high carrier diffusivity of 0.047 cm2s-1, whereas CsFA films show an order of magnitude lower carrier diffusivity. Experimental characterization suggests that the graded composition of CsFA films curtails electron diffusion. The incorporation of MA leads to a uniform composition of CsMAFA films, giving rise to a diffusivity of 0.034 cm2s-1. I then explore dimensionality engineering in narrow-bandgap perovskites. I develop a processing approach that enables the passivation of 3D perovskite surfaces using ultra-thin 2D perovskite passivants. The 2D layer retards the oxidation of 3D perovskites while maintaining their charge-transport properties. This enables a certified PCE of 18.95% and a 200-hour operating stability for narrow-bandgap perovskite solar cells. Lastly, I study perovskite nanoplatelet (PNPL) synthesis and phase-control, as well as energy transfer within mixed-phase PNPLs. I find that tuning the phase-distribution of PNPLs engineers their photoluminescence quantum yield and Stokes shift, allowing the corresponding perovskite luminescent solar concentrators to exhibit low optical loss. This work showcases the crucial role of composition and dimensionality in extending the applicability of perovskites to tandem and building-integrated photovoltaics. It concludes with a discussion of paths towards the eventual commercialization of these PV technologies, in light of the need to improve their efficiency and stability, to achieve up-scaling, and to address concerns regarding material toxicity. | Ph.D. | solar, energy | 7 |
| Tihanyi, Deborah V. | Pietropaolo, Domenico | Conceiving Dramaturgical Practice in English Canada: Histories, Methods, and Models, Post-WWI to the 1990s | Drama | 2018-06-01 | The thesis provides both a historical exploration and a theoretical model of the practice of developmental dramaturgy in the 20th century in English-speaking Canada. From the end of WWI to the 1990s, the notion of the importance of a uniquely Canadian drama took hold, and institutions and practices arose to achieve that end. However, much of what has been documented and analyzed has focused on the period roughly following Canada’s centennial, when the formalization and funding of those institutions and practices took place. As a result, the purpose of this work is two-fold: first, to reclaim the voices of early practitioners and the historical record of dramaturgical practice, and second, to bring these voices into the contemporary discourse of developmental dramaturgy to create a working model of dramaturgical practice. Through an examination of a series of case studies, including the Art and Little Theatres, educational theatre, radio, and professional theatres, a consistency of practice across time and contexts is evident: the impetus to create an original body of Canadian drama (the meta-dramaturgical project), as well as the institutions and practices (macro- and micro-dramaturgy respectively) that arose to carry it out. What emerges through this examination is the recurrence of meta-dramaturgical questions—and macro-dramaturgical models and micro-dramaturgical strategies to address them—which serve as a starting point for a discussion of dramaturgical practice in Canada. That discussion includes, first, an examination of the influences, especially from the United States, in shaping dramaturgical practices—and the reciprocal emphasis Canadian practices had south of the border; second, the common elements—including the importance of encouraging playwrights and the need to educate audiences in the intricacies of new play development—and the varying contexts that led to the prioritization of the playwright or the production; and third, the cycles of articulation, negotiation, and concretization through which a play or theatrical event emerges, as well as notions of (shared) authority made possible by the creation of group language and governing structure of the piece. What is remarkable is that, despite instances where there is no connection between persons or resources, or, indeed, a knowledge of historical practice, the same strategies, the ways of doing the work, exist. This repetition serves to highlight the recurrence of micro-dramaturgical practices in the creation of individual works, macro-dramaturgical institutional models within which those works emerge, and the meta-dramaturgical frameworks that create the environment for them to exist and thrive. | Ph.D. | rights, institut, environment, production, educat | 4, 12, 13, 16 |
| Baird, Stephanie Lynn | Alaggia, Ramona | Conceptualizing and Responding to Trauma Among Women Who Have Experienced Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) | Social Work | 2018-11-01 | Background: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a prevalent worldwide problem with devastating outcomes. Trauma is one particularly concerning outcome of IPV that requires further understanding. Despite a growing recognition of the traumatic impacts of IPV, there is scant research investigating how women who have experienced IPV understand and experience trauma, from an intersectional perspective. In response, this dissertation explores women’s views of IPV-related trauma in connection to other experiences in their lives. Methods: This dissertation employed an intersectional, qualitative design, using a constructivist grounded theory approach to address the following over-arching research questions: 1) How is trauma conceptualized and experienced among women who have experienced IPV; and 2) From the perspectives of women who have experienced IPV, how do counselling services respond to IPV and IPV-related trauma? Fifteen women who experienced IPV and had attended one or more related counselling session at social service and/or counselling settings in southern Ontario, Canada participated in in-depth individual interviews. Theoretical sampling ensured a diverse sample (range of IPV experiences, geographic/service locations, social locations, identities). Interviewing continued until the identification of theoretical saturation, when no new themes were identified. Memoing, reflexive journaling, and iterative stages of coding (line by line, initial, focused) formed the basis of data analysis. Results: The results of the study produced this three paper dissertation: 1) constructing theory on women’s intersectional experiences of trauma and IPV; 2) developing knowledge on how service providers can better meet the needs of IPV survivors and respond to trauma; and 3) providing implications for future intersectional and trauma-related research. Implications: This dissertation provides important practice, policy, and research implications. First, this dissertation provides an in-depth understanding of IPV-related trauma from an intersectional lens. Second, it provides guidance to service providers on responding to IPV and trauma in ways that address the complexity of women’s lives. Third, it demonstrates that an intersectional lens is long overdue in trauma-related and other social work research. From the perspectives of women affected by IPV, this dissertation illustrates the complexity of experiences of IPV-related trauma, and the next steps needed to address this trauma in more comprehensive ways. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Danyluk, Martin Andrew | Cowen, Deborah | Conflict at the Crossroads: Redrawing Global Supply Lines in the Age of Logistics | Geography | 2018-06-01 | This dissertation examines the landscapes of logistics, the fast-growing industry responsible for managing the movement of goods, materials, and related information in the global economy. As commodity flows increase in volume, velocity, and distance, they depend on increasingly large-scale transformations of the physical and social environment. How is space being refashioned to accommodate new methods and patterns of circulation? And how do popular forces intervene in these processes? This research employs a multi-sited, relational methodology to investigate how the circulation of commodities is influencing the production of space at multiple scales. Its empirical focus is the recent expansion of the Panama Canal, a logistics megaproject with global reverberations, and the consequent rivalry among North American ports seeking to attract a new generation of oversized container ships. Drawing on a year of mixed-methods fieldwork in Panama City, Los Angeles, and New York, the dissertation analyzes competitive efforts to remake space in the image of smooth, efficient circulation and the struggles that have ensued over land, labour, and the environment. I argue that the landscapes of logistics are contradictory and conflictual spaces: even as global supply chains deliver the material provisions that make possible the reproduction of contemporary life, their development and functioning are undergirded by violent processes of community dispossession, labour exploitation, and environmental degradation. These impacts are disproportionately borne by poor and racialized residents and workers, whose struggles play a fundamental role in shaping corporate production and distribution networks. The research offers a critical reappraisal of the prevailing view that logistics provides a progressive and sustainable path to economic development. It shows that, as logistics has become increasingly vital to the operations of capitalism, the circulation of commodities exacts a heavy toll on those who live and labour in the arteries of global trade. | Ph.D. | environment, production, urban, trade, industr, worker, labour | 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 |
| Aylward, Erin | Hoffman, Matthew | Contested Rights: Abortion and Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the United Nations | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation examines how contentious issues emerge as norms within international organizations (IOs). To do so, I use the case studies of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) and abortion in the United Nations (UN) from 1994 to 2019. I develop a theoretical model that addresses how normative claims experience contestation during the process of emergence within IOs. This model demonstrates how differences in the breadth of state support required by different venues influence how, whether, and where a norm emerges. These structural factors also present norm entrepreneurs and norm “antipreneurs” (opponents) with different strategic choices and trade-offs. This research is informed by 59 elite interviews, participant observation at various UN proceedings, and archival research. I demonstrate how the differences in abortion’s emergence and SOGI’s non-emergence in consensus-driven UN conferences in the 1990s was partially a result of abortion entrepreneurs’ greater willingness to compromise their proposed norm’s clarity, strength, and scope. I then demonstrate how normative gains related to SOGI (but not abortion) have become more attainable in contemporary vote-driven UN venues as a result of differences in how these two issues map onto pre-existing normative communities/negotiating blocs and as a result of abortion’s greater vulnerability to “framejacking” on the part of antipreneurs. Turning to UN agencies and mechanisms, I highlight how SOGI and abortion can attain a surprising degree of support within the technical/expert-driven components of IOs – irrespective of state support – when norm entrepreneurs link their prospective norm with agency-relevant issues and objectives. This research advances the literature on norm emergence by conceptualizing the early stages of emergence and contestation, and by specifying how a norm is likely to change in the process. My research also contributes to the IO literature by demonstrating how decision-making rules and norm entrepreneurs’ and antipreneurs’ strategic choices influence a contested norm’s trajectory. Empirically, my research offers detailed analyses into the often-inaccessible nuances of UN negotiations and venues. Finally, this dissertation provides in-depth insights into the trajectories of abortion and SOGI within the UN over the past twenty-five years. | Ph.D. | rights, trade, gender, health | 3, 5, 10, 16 |
| Salehizadeh, Mohammad | Diller, Eric | Control of Multiple Magnetic Microrobots for Biomedical Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11-01 | My PhD dissertation takes an innovative approach to using the fundamental tools of robotics and control to solve the underactuated control problem of multiple magnetic microrobots for biomedical applications. The ability to use a team of microrobots to run a task can offer many advantages. However, the integration of on-board powering and sensing circuitry has not yet become possible at the microscale. Therefore, all magnetic microrobots (micro-agents) of the team have to share a single driving signal, whereas the system has multiple states to be independently controlled. Another major challenge with magnetic team control is that when multiple magnetic microrobots work together in close proximity, the agents tend to irreversibly stick together due to strong magnetic inter-agent forces. Previous studies either ignored the inter-agent forces by simply assuming their robots were far apart or treated these forces as disturbances without verifying the stability in close proximity. I solved for the first time this problem for a pair of magnetic agents in close proximity in 2D (and later in 3D) by making full use of inter-agent forces to control the motion of agents. In my approach, the positions of microrobots were controlled independently. As a practical demonstration, I showed for the first time that the motion of two functional magnetic microrobots as microgrippers can be controlled in 3D to run a task. Subsequently, to generalize the inter-agent force control to more agents, I introduced two solutions: 1) via optimization-based control (as a control technique), and 2) via motion planning and tracking (as a robotics technique). My PhD research enabled for the first time the collision-free autonomous navigation of a team of magnetic microrobots in close proximity. This solution allows magnetic microrobots to potentially act in a cluttered environment, such as the human body or microfluidic channels. To this end, I employed rapidly-exploring random tree (RRT) motion planning. I further incorporated the idea to run two practical demos that could be applied to cell testing/manipulation. The results of this PhD work can be applied to actuation and sensing, especially in the design of field-activated medical devices and for localized targeted drug delivery. | Ph.D. | environment, urban, innovat | 9, 11, 13 |
| Weiler, Anelyse | Johnston, Josée | Core Values: Cider Production, Agrarian Livelihoods and Tuning Tastes in the Pacific Northwest | Sociology | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation draws on a case study of emerging craft cider production in the U.S. and Canadian Pacific Northwest. It is guided by the overarching question: To what extent has the contemporary craft cider industry in the Pacific Northwest constrained or enabled agrarian change in land, labour, livelihoods and consumer embodiment? Through a regional analysis encompassing British Columbia, Washington State and Oregon, I draw on ethnographic data from participant observation and in-depth interviews with actors across the craft cider industry from 2017-2019. This dissertation is organized into three distinct analytic chapters. First, I find that while craft cider has helped buffer some farm producers against the volatility of selling raw fruit to large commodity markets, the benefits of this value-added niche market do not widely support continued primary production or farm succession. Some young cidermakers wish to maintain a connection to agrarianism but are shifting away from full-time farming due to lifestyle preferences and political-economic constraints, as exemplified by token forms of on-site production that carry great symbolic weight. Given the craft industry’s emphasis on elevating performances of manual labour intensity and ethical ingredient sourcing, a second analytic chapter focuses on how cidermakers account for the labour of predominantly racialized (im)migrant farmworkers. I find that actors in the craft cider industry engage with inequalities affecting farmworkers through structural obfuscation, ideological justification, and ambivalence or critique. This analysis illuminates both barriers and opportunities to strengthen equity for farmworkers as part of movements to advance food system sustainability. Third, I investigate how actors who are attempting to “tune” people’s tastes away from industrial-scale production navigate the contradictions of their simultaneous dependence on an industrial food system. I find that cidermakers attempt to re-tune consumers’ tastes by appeasing consumers, whose bodies reflect the influence of food system industrialization in the form of taste preferences. Simultaneously, cidermakers endeavour to ease consumers into more diverse possibilities for taste and ecologically resilient farming. Taken as a whole, this dissertation advances scholarly understandings of rural livelihoods, labour in alternative food initiatives, and embodied social change. | Ph.D. | ecolog, production, consum, rural, resilien, industr, worker, labour, food, agricultur | 2, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15 |
| Vanderhout, Shelley | Maguire, Jonathon L | Cow’s Milk Fat and Child Growth, Development and Nutrition | Nutritional Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Background: Health Canada and the Canadian Paediatric Society suggest that children over age 2 years transition from whole (3.25%) to reduced fat (0.1-2%) milk in effort to lower dietary fat intake and reduce the risk of overweight and obesity. However, observational studies have demonstrated that higher milk fat intake is associated with lower child adiposity. The optimal milk fat for child growth, development and nutrition is unknown. Objectives: 1) Determine the relationship between milk fat and child adiposity among existing literature, 2) Understand parent and physician perspectives about milk fat for children, 3) Evaluate the relationship between milk fat and child zBMI among children aged 9 months-8 years in the TARGet Kids! cohort, and 4) Design and launch a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to determine the effect of recommendations for whole vs. reduced fat milk on zBMI among children aged 2-4 years. Methods: 1) A systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted, 2) A qualitative study which sought to understand current practice, attitudes and preferences about milk fat for children aged 2-5 years, 3) A prospective cohort study was conducted using linear mixed effects models, and 4) A RCT protocol (Cow’s Milk Fat Obesity pRevention Trial or CoMFORT) was developed to be embedded in TARGet Kids!. Results: Among 20,897 children aged 9 months-18 years, those who consumed whole milk had 0.61 (95% CI 0.52-0.72, p | Ph.D. | consum, health, nutrition | 2, 3, 12 |
| Naimi, Kevin | Farmer, Diane | Creativity as Intra-action: Relational Entanglement and Creative Becoming within the Space of Schooling | Social Justice Education | 2021-03-01 | This thesis explores creativity as a relational process of entangled becoming and develops a relational theory of creativity as intra-action (Barad, 2007) which is then put to work to conduct an analysis of everyday creation within the space of schooling. Engaging with central debates in new materialism and posthumanism this thesis explores the intra-active entanglements at the heart of everyday schooling. An intra-active approach to creativity foregrounds how the material and the discursive, the human and the nonhuman, are ongoingly entangled in processes of co-creation and attunement (Ingold, 2017a) throughout everyday life culminating in larger processes of worldmaking (Goodman, 1978).This perspective is developed in contrast with the prevalent view of creativity as a human-centred ability or instrument for success; a view that is central to both human capital and neoliberal approaches creativity. This prevalent view, I argue, ultimately distorts and obscures the rich creative dynamism at the heart of everyday intra-active entanglements. Integrating classroom observations, interviews, and a craft activity, in this research I seek to better understand What types of intra-active entanglements characterize the space of schooling? How are students intra-actively entangled in the material-discursive reconfiguration of the world within the space of schooling? And what kinds of new and alternative realities become possible as a result of these differential entanglements? Through a meticulous analysis of the intra-activity central to schooling, this research illustrates that young people participate in significant intra-active processes of co-creation renegotiating the basic outlines of the material-discursive in subtle ways. Equally, however, despite this rich intra-activity, the participants in this study consistently characterized their own creative processes as relatively inconsequential, failing to measure up to the standard of ‘real’ creativity. This analysis demonstrates how the radical reimagination of everyday space as relational and intra-active can reveal important processes that often remain unheeded. It suggests the need for an alternative discursive framework that challenges the individualistic and instrumental while forefronting the powerful possibilities of everyday becoming latent in the material-discursive entanglements central to schooling. | Ph.D. | justice, educat | 4, 16 |
| Fusco, Leah Marie | Prudham, Scott | Crude Regulation: Environmental Assessments and the Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Oil Industry | Geography | 2020-11-01 | This research examines the role that environmental assessment and strategic environmental assessment processes play in the commercial development of oil in the Newfoundland and Labrador (NL) offshore. It draws on the Regulation Approach as a way of examining the geographical and cultural specificity of the oil industry and environmental regulation in NL and how this ties to broader questions of development and capitalism, specifically the development and perpetuation of petro-capitalism in NL. Through document analysis, meeting observation, and interviews, this work examines environmental assessment processes in two locations. First, in offshore eastern NL, where all commercial offshore oil development and a significant amount of exploration has taken place. Dozens of environmental assessments have been done in the region but there has been little public contention or opposition to oil. The second location, the west coast of the island of Newfoundland, has far less experience with environmental assessment processes and oil activities. However, overlapping assessments for offshore drilling and fracking, as well as a strategic environmental assessment, led to the mobilization of communities in five provinces around the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Examining the history, current experiences, and outcomes of environmental assessments and oil industry activities in these locations illustrates the somewhat contradictory role that environmental assessments play in both supporting and challenging oil development in the province. The overarching emphasis on oil as a source of jobs and revenue in NL, especially since the cod fishery moratorium in 1992, has meant that environmental assessments often support and facilitate oil development and thus help to maintain provincial petro-capitalism. They help to contain and diffuse contention that could, if not addressed, lead to disruptions in oil-based accumulation. Yet at the same time, environmental assessments are also a space of contention where there are opportunities to challenge development projects and potentially question the province’s dependence on oil. | Ph.D. | fish, environment, industr | 9, 13, 14 |
| Hathaway, Mark D. | Scharper, Stephen B. | Cultivating Ecological Wisdom: Worldviews, Transformative Learning, and Engagement for Sustainability | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2018-06-01 | The ecological crisis—encompassing interrelated challenges like climate change, biodiversity loss, and the widening gap between rich and poor—threatens the future of entire species, ecosystems, and human civilisation. This crisis is not only a political, economic, and technological challenge, but also has roots in the way that people—particularly those living in industrialised, affluent societies—perceive their relationship to other humans, living beings, and the Earth itself. Therefore, a shift towards more ecological worldviews and the cultivation of an ecological wisdom that enables persons to perceive reality relationally and discern ecologically-appropriate actions for the common good can play a key role in addressing the crisis. Based on in-depth interviews with 24 ecological educators and activists and extensive biographical and theoretical research, this inquiry examines how ecological worldviews and wisdom may be cultivated in practice. To do so, it explores both the nature, meaning, and manifestations of ecological wisdom as well as how different significant life experiences contribute to the cultivation of ecological wisdom. Using an organic, thematic-narrative approach, the stories of the research participants are presented and analysed, endeavouring to maintain the narrative gestalts to communicate the experiences in a way that is meaningful and transformative. Ecological wisdom may be understood as a process of perceiving reality as relational and interconnected; attuning oneself to the wisdom of other beings and Earth itself; and acting cooperatively and co-creatively to bring forth an ecologically regenerative, socially just, and meaningful way for humans to live harmoniously within specific contexts. Transformative ecological learning—which reshapes consciousness, feelings, thoughts, relationships, and actions to cultivate ecological wisdom—involves a variety of processes. Primary is practicing mindfulness—while letting go of destructive habits and mentalities—to enable one to connect and relate to other beings, learn from them, and work co-creatively with them. Other key processes involve immersions into novel cultures, ecosystems, states of consciousness, and Indigenous wisdom; concretely practicing new ways of perceiving and acting; exercising imagination, art, and responsive creativity; sharing stories embodying ecological wisdom; analysing the crisis and seeking insights from scientific and traditional knowledge; and organising with others to effect transformation. La crisis ecológica no es solo un desafío político, económico y tecnológico, sino que también tiene sus raíces en la forma en que las personas - particularmente aquellas que viven en sociedades industrializadas y prósperas - perciben su relación con otros seres humanos, otros seres vivos y la Tierra misma. Por lo tanto, un cambio hacia cosmovisiones más ecológicas y la cultivación de una sabiduría ecológica que permita a las personas percibir la realidad relacionalmente y discernir acciones ecológicamente apropiadas para el bien común puede desempeñar un papel clave al abordar la crisis. Basado en entrevistas profundas con 24 educadores y activistas ecológicos, esta investigación examina cómo las cosmovisiones y la sabiduría ecológicas pueden cultivarse en la práctica. Para hacerlo, explora tanto la naturaleza, el significado y las manifestaciones de la sabiduría ecológica y al mismo tiempo cómo las diferentes experiencias de la vida significativas contribuyen a la cultivación de la sabiduría ecológica. La sabiduría ecológica puede entenderse como un proceso de percibir la realidad como relacional e interconectada; sintonizándose con la sabiduría de otros seres y la Tierra misma; y actuando de manera cooperativa y co-creativa para generar una forma ecológicamente regenerativa, socialmente justa y significativa para que los humanos vivan armoniosamente dentro de contextos específicos. El aprendizaje ecológico transformador - que transforma la conciencia, los sentimientos, los pensamientos, las relaciones y las acciones para cultivar la sabiduría ecológica - implica una variedad de procesos. Primaria es la práctica de la atención plena, mientras se libera de hábitos y mentalidades destructivas, para permitir que uno se conecte y se relacione con otros seres, aprenda de ellos y trabaje de manera cooperativa con ellos. Otros procesos claves incluyen inmersiones en culturas y ecosistemas nuevas además de estados de conciencia alternados y la sabiduría indígena; practicando concretamente nuevas formas de percibir y actuar; ejercitando la imaginación, el arte; compartiendo historias que manifiesten la sabiduría ecológica; analizar las causas profundas de la crisis; contemplando ideas del conocimiento científico y tradicional; y organizándose con otros para efectuar la transformación. | Ph.D. | ecolog, biodivers, environment, climate, industr, educat | 4, 9, 13, 15 |
| Barnes, Claire | Moodley, Roy | Cultural Diversity and the Treatment of Trauma | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | The current study sought to address a concerning treatment disparity within the psychological profession. While cultural minority groups are more likely to experience trauma and psychological distress, they are less likely to access and benefit from mental health services. Furthermore, it is clear that cultural meanings and practices shape how trauma is experienced and understood. There remains critical need for culturally competent trauma services in Canada. The current study sought to address this need by exploring the broad research question: how do therapists take into account cultural diversity in their treatment of trauma? The aim of this study was to understand how trauma therapists working with culturally diverse clients conceive of trauma and culture, and how they employ interventions in order to deliver culturally sensitive and effective trauma therapy. The participants were comprised of ten registered psychologists who identified as working with culturally diverse trauma clients for at least one year and who agreed to partake in an in-depth interview about their clinical practice. Qualitative methods were used to develop a rich understanding of the process of delivering culturally sensitive trauma therapy. The data was analyzed thematically using grounded theory methodology and an integrative model of culturally competent trauma therapy was proposed. The study findings revealed three key ideas: developing self-awareness, contextualizing trauma and outside the therapy room. These themes suggest that therapists begin with themselves: they develop self-awareness about how their personal history and social position informs their perspectives, biases and therapeutic approach. They also conceive of trauma and trauma responses as shaped by sociocultural context. Despite therapists’ attempts at providing culturally sensitive care, external structural barriers often prevent culturally diverse trauma clients from the receiving the mental health services they need. This study suggests that truly providing culturally sensitive trauma therapy requires structural changes within the field of psychology and society. To that end, therapists working at the intersections of trauma and diversity are broadening the scope of their practice to include advocacy and activist efforts. The broad implications of these findings for research, education and clinical practice are addressed. | Ph.D. | educat, health | 3, 4 |
| Dyer, Julian | Blouin, Arthur||Bobonis, Gustavo | Culture, Institutions and Development in Africa | Economics | 2020-11-01 | In my dissertation I explore the economic development of Sub-Saharan Africa with a particular focus on the role played by institutions and culture. In the first chapter, The Fruits (and Vegetables) of Crime, I provide experimental evidence that weak institutions that are unable to provide full protection of farm output causes distortions to agricultural production and reduced output as well as imposing social costs through local disputes. In the second chapter, How Cultures Converge with Arthur Blouin, we show, using a novel empirical approach identifying loanwords among languages, that the rate and direction of cultural convergence is endogenous to economic incentives and is shaped by strategic decisions reflecting these incentives. Finally, in the third chapter, Pumps, Prosperity and Household Power with Jeremy Shapiro, we provide experimental evidence that distributing small-scale irrigation pumps to women in farming households is an effective intervention to increase incomes and empowerment of women, in a context where institutional capacity has long constrained the adoption of large-scale irrigation investments. | Ph.D. | institut, production, women, agricultur | 2, 5, 12, 16 |
| St-Laurent, Julie | Havercroft, Barbara | D’un corps à l’autre, le genre sexuel en question dans les poésies française et québécoise depuis 1990 | French Language and Literature | 2018-11-01 | Cette thèse étudie la représentation du genre sexuel et sa mise en question dans six œuvres poétiques contemporaines québécoises et françaises. Elle expose comment le motif du corps constitue dans le poème l’empreinte à la fois d’une chair modelée par l’identité sexuelle et d’un corps neutre, signe de déprise lyrique. Le premier chapitre interroge l’articulation entre poésie et genre sexuel dans une approche féministe et poétique, visant à comprendre selon quelles modalités l’émergence d’un sujet éthique – fidèle à une circonstance d’écriture (Jarrety, 1996) – est possible en poésie et à montrer que le corps en signifie l’expression sensible (Pinson, 1995 ; Collot, 1997 ; Maulpoix, 2009). La performativité du poème (Rabaté, 1996 ; 2013 ; Combe, 1996) répond à la performativité au coeur du constructivisme social (Butler, 1990 ; 1993 ; 2004) : le corps genré se matérialisant dans le poème est redevable à un processus énonciatif imprégné de normes, que l’écriture poétique cherche à resignifier. À ce parcours théorique succèdent trois chapitres d’analyse de textes. Les corps masculins dans Peau d’Antoine Emaz (2008) et dans Des ombres portées (2000) de Paul Chanel Malenfant témoignent d’une délicate perméabilité, qui octroie la réalité la plus tangible à l’émotion. Les écritures des chairs au féminin de Dormans (2006) de Marie Étienne et de Musée de l’os et de l’eau (1999) de Nicole Brossard engagent un mouvement existentiel qui dépersonnalise l’écriture et invite à toucher l’intime porosité du soi. Enfin, Cœurs, comme livres d’amour (2012) d’Hélène Dorion et en laisse (2005) de Dominique Fourcade présentent des corps qui empêchent la cristallisation de l’ordre binaire de la différence sexuelle. Cette thèse met en valeur la tendance de la poésie contemporaine à mettre en dialogue la pensée de l’identité, ici figurée par le genre sexuel, et la recherche d’intersubjectivité. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Anderson, Vidya | Gough, William | Deep Adaptation: A Framework for Climate Resilience, Decarbonization, and Planetary Health in Ontario | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2018-11-01 | The focus of this doctoral thesis is the development of a comprehensive framework for Deep Adaptation in Ontario through the implementation of green infrastructure. Green infrastructure may be described as a series of networks of green space that provide various ecosystem services. Examples of green infrastructure include green roofs, growing roofs, green walls, urban vegetation and forestry, wetlands, stormwater and retention ponds, rain gardens, bioswales, hedgerows, riparian buffers, woodlots, and tree-based intercropping systems in agricultural settings. This research provides a clear understanding of how green infrastructure works as a complex intervention, its characteristics, the metrics for performance and regulatory enforcement, and the multiple co-benefits that can be leveraged if green infrastructure is strategically applied. This framework for Deep Adaptation has been developed using an interdisciplinary approach supported by systematic review: health equity impact assessment, regulatory impact assessment, controlled field study, and logic modelling to demonstrate green infrastructure as a complex adaptation intervention that moderates harm and capitalizes on beneficial opportunities, in addition to evaluating its capacity as an intervention to perform the dual function of both climate change adaptation and mitigation. This Deep Adaptation framework has the potential to mainstream complex adaptation by examining green infrastructure as a complex intervention using the multiple lenses of urban design, land-use planning, public policy, and public health. | Ph.D. | forest, climate, resilien, urban, infrastructure, water, health, agricultur | 2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Mohamad Alizadeh Shabestary, Soheil | Abdulhai, Baher | Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach to Multimodal Adaptive Traffic Signal Control | Civil Engineering | 2019-06-01 | With perpetually increasing demand for transportation as a result of continued urbanization and population growth, it is essential to increase the existing transportation infrastructure. Optimizing traffic signals in real time, although is one of the primary tools to increase the efficiency of our urban transportation networks, is a difficult task, due to the non-linearity and stochasticity of the traffic system. Deriving a simple model of the intersection in order to design an appropriate adaptive controller is extremely challenging, and traffic signal control falls under the challenging category of sequential decision-making processes. One of the best approaches to resolving issues around adaptive traffic signal control is reinforcement learning (RL), which is model-free and suitable for sequential decision-making problems. Conventional discrete RL algorithms suffer from the curse of dimensionality, slow training, and lack of generalization. Therefore, we focus on developing continuous RL-based (CRL) traffic signal controller that addresses these issues. Also, we propose a more advanced deep RL-based (DRL) traffic signal controller that can handle high-dimensional sensory inputs from newer traffic sensors such as radars and the emerging technology of Connected Vehicles. DRL traffic signal controller directly operates with highly-detailed sensory information and eliminates the need for traffic experts to extract concise state features from the raw data (e.g., queue lengths), a process that is both case-specific and limiting. Furthermore, DRL extracts what it needs from the more detailed inputs automatically and improves control performance. Finally, we introduce two multimodal RL-based traffic signal controllers (MCRL and MiND) that simultaneously optimize the delay for both transit and regular traffic, as public transit is the more sustainable mode of transportation in busy cities and downtown cores. The proposed controllers are tested using Paramics traffic microsimulator, and the results show the superiority of both CRL and DRL over other state-of-practice and state-of-the-art traffic signal controllers. In addition to the advantages of MiND, such as its multimodal capabilities, significantly faster convergence, smaller model, and elimination of the feature extraction process, our experimental results show significant improvements in travel times for both transit and regular traffic at the intersection level compared to the base cases. | Ph.D. | urban, cities, infrastructure | 9, 11 |
| Vatankhahghadim, Behrad | Damaren, Christopher J. | Deployment Dynamics and Stability of a Boom-supported Solar Sail | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2021-03-01 | The deployment dynamics and stability of a flexible space structure, namely a solar sail consisting of membranes attached to booms, are considered. The assumed deployment is achieved by extending the booms—modelled as Euler-Bernoulli beams with no axial deflections—at a constant rate. The overall approach involves obtaining the system's equations of motion using a time-varying generalization of the extended Hamilton's principle. These equations are then discretized upon expressing the relevant deflections as truncated series involving time-varying generalized coordinates and both time- and space-varying basis functions. The basis functions are selected based on the eigenfunctions of a cantilevered beam and a clamped membrane, but given the time-varying sizes of the components involved, they are termed "quasi-modes" and viewed as snapshots of the system's modes at given times. Two models are developed: a linear model that only accounts for the out-of-plane deflections, obtains the stress field by assuming a linearly increasing pretension at the boom-membrane interfaces, and reaches discretized equations of motion that are linear in the states (generalized coordinates); and a nonlinear model that accounts for the deflections in all directions, assumes plate strains and a suitable constitutive relation to obtain the stress field, and features nonlinear terms in its discretized equations of motion. To increase the computational efficiency, coordinate transformations and linear algebraic manipulations are performed to render all necessary spatial integrals time invariant. The extension of the linear formulation from a quadrant to a complete sail is also discussed. The linear model is used for stability analysis using two approaches: by obtaining a simple analytic expression for the rate of change of vibration energy in a quadrant, which implies decreasing energy during extension and increasing energy during retraction; and using a "frozen" eigenvalue study—assuming instantaneously constant lengths—on a complete sail, which indicates possibility of divergence depending on the extension rate and the pretension. The nonlinear model also attempts to provide wrinkling predictions using the Miller-Hedgepeth model: a coarse mesh is used, the instantaneous state of each region is determined using a wrinkling criterion and averaged principal stresses, and each region's constitutive relation is adjusted based on its wrinkling state. | Ph.D. | solar, energy | 7 |
| Memarian , Bahar | McCahan, Susan | Design for Assessment of Engineering Problem-solving Skills | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-03-01 | Problem-solving is central to engineering education and assessment has been identified as a weak link in learning to problem solve. Our goal in this research is to improve feedback provided on problem-solving activities in engineering courses. I first examined how teaching assistants (TAs) perceive marking using a typical freeform approach to marking problems. Surveying 30 participants I identified seven themes that represent challenges with freeform feedback delivery. Insufficient time and lack of assessment guidance were noted most frequently. I also found that the efficiency and consistency of freeform feedback delivery were highly correlated. To examine conventional marking practice more fully, I propose a novel classification scheme to code notations on problem solutions. I then analyzed the feedback notations TAs provided in 440 problem solutions in three undergraduate circuits courses. Findings revealed that failing solutions on average received a lower and less consistent degree of elaborating feedback in comparison to passing solutions. Further, both the total mark and granularity (i.e., marking breakdown) set by the instructor significantly correlated with the quantity of TA feedback. These gaps motivated us to design a new instrument called the Constructive Alignment Integrated Rating (CAIR) system. CAIR enables a theory-informed connection between the type and depth of errors made in engineering problem-solving. Teaching Assistants (n=52) were tasked with marking student solutions from three electrical engineering courses: two first-year circuits, and one second-year electromagnetics course. The participants marked the solutions in a three-part study using either CAIR or a conventional grading scheme in each part. Factors such as apparency (e.g., descriptive quality and quantity of feedback), consistency (e.g., consistent speed and frequency of feedback delivery), and usability and mental workload were examined. The CAIR tool significantly improved the apparency and consistency of feedback delivery. However, the usability of conventional practice was rated significantly higher. This motivated us to offer a novel conceptual design of a display to situate CAIR in a digital space and improve its usability. Future work should focus on testing of CAIR with students, TAs, and instructors using the digital display. | Ph.D. | labor, educat | 4, 8 |
| Soberman, Mark | Farnood, Ramin R||Tabe, Shahram | Design, Characterization, and Performance of Composite Electrospun Nanofiber Membrane Adsorption Systems for the Removal of Pharmaceutical and Personal Care Products from Water | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-03 | The contamination of water bodies by pollutants such as pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) is a globally widespread phenomenon resulting mainly from incomplete removal in wastewater treatment. Several technologies exist to remedy this problem, among them adsorption onto micro- and nanoparticles. However, a disadvantage of treatment by adsorbents such as powdered activated carbon (PAC) by dosing is the requirement to remove them in a subsequent step. A system capable of anchoring adsorbents onto a membrane to prevent leaching into treated water has the potential to present significant advantages in the field.Electrospun nanofiber membranes (ENMs) are a new generation of membrane with a large void fraction and interconnected pore structure. Although often used as size-exclusion membranes, they can also be used as adsorptive membranes. It was found that carbonaceous adsorbents can be successfully immobilized by ENMs either in sandwich membrane or co-electrospun configurations. In this study, single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNT) and PAC were sandwiched by two superimposed ENM sheets, which prevented the adsorbents from leaching into the permeate while achieving high removals of the 6 tested PPCPs. PAC was also successfully co-electrospun into an adsorptive ENM. To maximize their exposure, two aspects of ENM design were addressed: controlling fiber diameter via the addition of salt and controlling particle diameter by sieving the PAC particles into different size bins. Addition of salt produced PAC-ENMs with thinner fibers and enhanced surface area. This resulted in an enhancement of adsorption capacity, faster adsorption kinetics, and delayed breakthrough behaviour of a model contaminant. Electrospinnig membranes with different PAC size fractions showed that surface area, adsorption capacity, and adsorption kinetics were strongly correlated to the external surface area of PAC particles, and were thus maximized for the smallest size fraction of PAC. A model representing the initial fractional removal as a function of residence time in dynamic filtration was developed, and an exponential relationship was elucidated. In static adsorption, the correlation between the kinetic constants and the surface area of the adsorptive ENM was modelled by the predictively accurate Active Layer Diffusion Model (ALDM). | Ph.D. | pollut, environment, waste, water | 6, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Udugama, Buddhisha Nayanthara | Chan, Warren CW | Developing Equipment-free Tools to Improve Accessibility of Diagnostics to Resource-limited Settings | Biomedical Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Diagnostics play an important role in the management of infectious diseases, from factoring in on the treatment of patients to responding to a worldwide pandemic. Point of care diagnostics are especially important to conduct diagnoses near patients to facilitate rapid responses. This allows for early detection, treatment, surveillance and containment of infectious diseases. In order to develop diagnostics that are amendable at the point of care, they need to be less reliant on expert training and infrastructure. The goal of my thesis was to develop equipment-free tools to improve the accessibility of diagnostic assays to the point of care, specifically in resource-limited settings. My thesis focuses on building a toolkit to help conduct assays outside of centralized labs. The first project focuses on developing a tablet to provide thermal stability to diagnostic reagents, allowing for transporting and storing reagents without the need for refrigeration. The second project focuses on building a multi-layered tablet to time-programmatically release reagents to conduct a diagnostic assay, minimizing the need for manual intervention and technical expertise. The last project focuses on building an electricity-free and portable heater to provide tunable and precise temperatures for conducting multi-step assays. Together, these tools can be used in the future to conduct diagnostic assays at any location, outside of centralized labs. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Xiao, Sarah | Tourangeau, Ann | Development and Evaluation of an Instrument to Measure Discharge Planning Processes in Mental Health Care | Nursing Science | 2020-11-01 | Objective: The purpose of this study was to develop and test an instrument to measure and evaluate the quality of discharge planning processes in mental healthcare settings. Methods: Three major study phases were involved in the development of the instrument: 1) conceptualization of discharge planning, 2) item development, structure, and format, and 3) pilot testing of the instrument. Phase I comprised three components: a concept analysis and literature review to identify domains and indicators of discharge planning, focus groups with key informants to validate these findings, and a two-round Delphi study with a multidisciplinary expert panel to determine which indicators were most important for measuring the quality of discharge planning processes. In Phase II, indicators that reached expert consensus in Phase I were formatted into instrument items. In Phase III, the instrument was pilot tested through chart reviews and cognitive interviews. Results: The concept analysis and literature review yielded 73 quality indicators in six domains: Comprehensive Needs Assessment; Collaborative, Patient-Centered Care; Resource Availability Management; Care and Service Coordination; Discharge Planner Role; and Discharge Plan. Following the focus groups, two additional domains were created (i.e., Information Gathering and Synthesis, Patient Capacity Assessment), nine indicators were added, and three indicators were removed. In the first Delphi round, 37 panelists rated the importance of 79 quality indicators. Fifty-four indicators were retained and the Discharge Planner Role domain was removed after this survey round. In the second Delphi round, 36 panelists rated the importance of three new indicators. Two indicators were retained, resulting in a final set of 56 indicators. In Phase II, each indicator was assigned an item response option. In Phase III, the instrument was pilot tested and revisions were made to the instrument items, response scales, and overall format and instructions. These refinements resulted in a 57-item instrument. Conclusions: The instrument developed in this study can be used by healthcare providers to provide insight into practice and knowledge gaps in care, organizational leaders to inform process and structural improvements in mental healthcare settings, and policymakers to design more effective policies and practice guidelines for safer care transitions from hospital to community. | Ph.D. | labor, health | 3, 8 |
| Wang, Liping | Mrad, Ridha Ben | Development of a Variable Displacement Electric Oil Pump | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Power savings and CO2 reduction are prominent issues that continue to be a major focus in the automotive industry. Both in internal combustion engines and electric vehicles, it is important to reduce the power consumed by any of the auxiliary devices causing parasitic loss. An oil pump is one such device, used for lubrication, cooling and actuation purposes, and which consumes high power. In this work, a novel approach to reduce power consumption is proposed by regulating the displacement of the electric oil pump (EOP). This approach includes an advanced soft magnetic composite (SMC) motor, a Field Oriented Control (FOC) vector motor controller, a pump, and developing and testing a piezo motor used for pump displacement regulation in a closed-loop configuration. Variable displacement electric oil pumps (VDEOP) can potentially deliver flow rate to meet the oil requirements in the transmission and engine systems while enhancing system overall efficiency and overcoming the high torque at cold start. Piezo motors are well known for their excellent performance in terms of large load capability, fast response and accuracy. In VDEOP development, an actuation stroke of several millimeters is needed to regulate the displacement of the pump in real-time. For that purpose, a piezo motor is developed to generate such a stroke to regulate the pump’s flow rate. Modern cars have 40 electric motors or more, with varying requirements. The novel SMC structure Brushless Direct Current (BLDC) motor is developed to drive the oil pump to meet different system requirements. The FOC algorithm controls the pressure, which provides signals for the closed-loop control of the piezo motor position. This dissertation introduces a novel design of a VDEOP with a compact structure based on a single piezo stack, which regulates the displacement of the pump. The simulation and experimental results indicate that the piezo motor can regulate the pump displacement based on achieving the stroke requirement while meeting the pump dynamic response requirements of minimum to maximum pump flow rates within 2 seconds. | Ph.D. | consum, industr | 9, 12 |
| Shorten, Andrew William | Ng, Wai Tung | Digital Control for Switched Mode Power Supplies with Improved Power Device Behaviour and Reconfigurable Functionalities | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2020-11-01 | A segmented gate driver IC for mitigating the unwanted current overshoot during the turn-on of Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors (IGBTs) is presented. The proposed IC is fabricated using TSMCs 0.18μm BCD Gen-2 process. Unlike existing collector current (IC) over-shoot reduction techniques, the proposed technique does not require significant additional external components or any increase in turn-on energy (EON ). A 37% reduction in IC overshoot (2.1 A to 1.3 A) is achieved while maintaining the same EON . A 54% reduction in EON (405 nJ to 185 nJ) is achieved for the same IC overshoot. A 15.5 dBm reduction in Conducted Electro-Magnetic Interference (CEMI), is observed when compared to operation with a constant ROU T and similar EON . In order to reduce the complexity of implementing the proposed gate drive technique (and other intelligent power module control techniques), an embedded stack based processor is developed. This processor is implemented in TSMCs 0.18 μm BCD Gen-2 process on the same die as a segmented gate driver. The compact design of the SPRUCE (Stack Processing Unit For Controlling Energy) processor allows reprogrammable functionality to be easily added to Intelligent IGBT Power Modules. A power consumption of 120 μA/MHz is achieved for SPRUCE. SPRUCE is used to develop a novel duty cycle correction technique. The proposed technique is shown to reduce the harmonic distortion in the output current of an IGBT based Intelligent Power Module by 13.1 dB. SPRUCE enables the logic of the proposed technique to be fully integrated within the Intelligent Power Module with no external controller needed. This completely integrated approach drastically improves the practicality of the proposed technique. Finally, SPRUCE is used to develop a programmable over current protection circuit for a boost converter. Further applications of SPRUCE as well as potential future enhancements to the design are presented in the final chapter. | Ph.D. | consum, energy | 7, 12 |
| Smirnova, Yulia | Kerekes, Julie||Rehner, Katherine | Discoursal Identity Construction in English Language Learners’ Graduate Personal Statements | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | The graduate personal statement (GPS), one of the key components of a graduate school application in Canadian universities and thus a high-stakes academic genre, is neither explicitly taught in writing classrooms nor practiced by applicants. Since it is a self-promotional genre, positioning of self in discourse, or discoursal identity construction, is crucial in a GPS. Discoursal identity construction may pose a particular challenge to English language learners (ELLs) crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries as they write their GPSs in their non-dominant language, English. Although this genre has been examined by scholars for about two decades, studies exploring identity construction in the ELLs’ GPSs are scarce. This is particularly true for the research set within Canadian educational institutions. My qualitative multiple-case study aims to fill this research gap by analyzing the GPSs written by ELLs who have applied to social science master’s programs in Canadian universities. In particular, the study explores (1) the ELL applicants’ understandings of the genre of a GPS; (2) the most salient identities constructed in their GPSs; and (3) the discourse resources and rhetorical organization employed by the ELLs for self-positioning in their texts. Part of my understanding is gained through a comparison with the GPSs of English-dominant individuals (EDIs) who also submitted a GPS as part of their application to social science master’s programs in Canadian universities. Drawing on questionnaires, semi-structured interviews, and successive drafts of the participants’ GPSs, I analyze the data using a social constructionist view of identity (Bucholtz Hall, 2005), Ivanič’s framework of writing as enactment of identity (Burgess Ivanič, 2010; Ivanič, 1998), and two genre theories, Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics (Halliday, 1985) and Swalesean English for specific purposes (Swales, 1990). My key findings related to the participants’ understandings of a GPS as a genre include, among others, perceived major purposes of a GPS (such as self-introduction and self-promotion) and different assumptions about self-promotion linked to the participants’ (lack of) exposure to Canadian/Western beliefs and values. I also uncover the writers’ assumptions about the program gatekeepers, their perceptions of the requirements for a GPS, and their metalinguistic awareness as reflected in the content and textual features of their GPSs. Emphasizing the emergent, dynamic, multidimensional, yet relational and partial nature of discoursal identities, I identify and describe, across the GPS drafts, eight salient aspects of the ELLs’ and EDIs’ identities and demonstrate multiple identity shifts (and role shifts within the applicants’ academic identities). Finally, I identify and illustrate a wide range of salient discourse resources employed by the writers for their identity construction, along with seven broad genre moves that support the participants’ self-positioning. This dissertation also provides theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical implications of the study and outlines a genre-based workshop series that can be designed and implemented to teach students how to write a GPS in the Canadian post-secondary context. | Ph.D. | institut, educat | 4, 16 |
| Borwein, Sophie Elizabeth | Haddow, Rodney | Distant Neighbours: Social Distance, Mobility Prospects, and Government Redistribution | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation is about income inequality – how it shapes preferences for redistribution, whether governments are responsive to these preferences, and whose preferences matter most. Income inequality has become a salient topic in recent decades, as the gap between rich and poor has widened across advanced industrial economies. Models of rational self-interest would predict that the increased concentration of income at the top of the distribution would increase public demand for government action to redress this inequality, yet public support for redistribution in many advanced economies has remained constant or even declined. At the same time, governments have often pursued greater redistribution in low rather than high market inequality settings. How can we understand these trends? This dissertation addresses this question by focusing on the Canadian provincial context, examining both demand for, and supply of, government redistribution. On the demand side, I argue that social distance – perceptions of similarity or difference among groups – affects how people think about their own economic prospects, in turn shaping their preferences for redistribution. Demand for redistribution depends not only on an individual’s position in the income distribution; instead, the distribution of income within neighbourhoods, among income groups, and across ethnic groups all influence preferences for government inequality reduction. On the supply slide, this dissertation also examines how micro-patterns of preferences and inequality are translated into government supply of redistribution, and in particular whether governments are more responsive to middle- or high-income groups. Despite concern in recent American politics research about the outsized influence of high-income voters on government policy, I show that provincial governments are responsive to the economic conditions of the middle class. However, high-income voters are often as – or more – responsive than middle-income voters to shifts in the income position of the middle class, suggesting that governments can respond to the middle class without opposition from higher-income voters. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the relationship between group membership and redistributive preferences, the other-regarding versus self-interested bases of support for redistribution, and research on unequal government responsiveness to the public’s preferences. | Ph.D. | inequality, industr, equality, income distribution | 1, 5, 9, 10 |
| Oleschuk, Merin | Johnston, Josée | Domestic Foodwork in Value and Practice: A Study of Food, Inequality and Health in Family Life | Sociology | 2020-03-01 | This dissertation explores home-cooked family meals – the ideals and expectations around them, as well as how they are navigated by parents in diverse social positions. This exploration assesses how discourses and practices surrounding family foodwork reflect and shape inequalities in a variety of realms including gendered labour, economic disparities, health outcomes and consumer politics. It utilizes diverse methods including a discourse and content analysis of North American news media, as well as qualitative interviews, cooking observations and food recall conversations with parents in the Greater Toronto Area who are primary cooks in their families. These varied methods facilitate investigation into how home cooking is publicly presented, automatically understood, and emotionally experienced by parents from diverse backgrounds. The dissertation explores these ends in three analytically distinct chapters, offering three key insights. First, the media analysis reveals that public discourse promotes a complex allocation of responsibility for family meals that recognizes multiple structural conditions constraining meals (such as unhealthy food environments and inflated normative standards), yet assigns responsibility for resolving them to individuals (i.e. parents should work harder to combat these constraints and cook more at home). These findings apply to family meals but can also be extended to consider responsibility for social problems within neoliberalism more broadly. Second, interview analysis identifies the ubiquity of a cultural schema of “cooking by our mother’s side”: an automatic, semi-conscious understanding of learning to cook that privileges culinary knowledge acquired during childhood through the social reproductive work of mothers. Analysis of this schema reveals its role in reproducing gendered inequalities and obscuring diversity in food learning, especially by overemphasizing the importance of childhood and masking learning later in life. Third, I qualitatively analyze how socio-economic disadvantage (alongside its intersections with gender and race/ethnicity) negatively impacts the emotional experience of foodwork but does not necessarily predict cooking pleasure. In identifying and exploring five conditions of cooking pleasure, I examine how certain conditions can operate relatively independently from class and facilitate cooking enjoyment for low-income groups. Collectively, the dissertation advances scholarly understanding of the ideals, meanings and emotions encompassing family foodwork, their embeddedness with social inequalities, as well as opportunities for resistance and social change. | Ph.D. | environment, consum, inequality, labour, equality, gender, health, food, socio-economic | 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 12, 13 |
| Lumactud, Rhea Amor | Fulthorpe, Roberta R | Ecological, functional, and genomic characterization of the bacterial endophytes in plants growing in a hydrocarbon contaminated oil field site | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2018-11-01 | In the last decade, there has been an increasing awareness of the plant microbiota’s role in plant growth and fitness. Of particular interest is the plant-bacterial endophytes’ partnership to degrade organic contaminants. This thesis assessed the ecological diversity and function of bacterial endophytes (BEs) in pioneer plants growing in highly contaminated soil around the vicinity of a crude oil pump in Oil Springs, Ontario, Canada. This study focused on the bacteria in the stem endosphere, an understudied ecological niche in the plant-bacterial system. The plants are not only exposed to both soluble petroleum hydrocarbons from the soil, but also to volatile atmospheric hydrocarbons in the ambient air. BEs were isolated and analyzed through culture-dependent and -independent means. 16S-based terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis revealed significant differences between the endophytic bacterial communities, showing them to be plant host specific. Culture-dependent analyses revealed predominance of Actinobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria in the spring and summer seasons, respectively. Notably, there was a >50% taxonomic overlap (genus level) of 16s rRNA high-throughput amplicon sequences with cultivable endophytes. BEs demonstrated hydrocarbon degrading and plant growth promoting potential. Interestingly, our findings revealed that functional capabilities of bacterial isolates being examined were not influenced by the presence of contamination, and that the stem endosphere supports the same predominant BEs in all plant hosts in both contaminated and noncontaminated sites. Genomic analyses of BEs that were present in all the plants sampled in Spring–Plantibacter flavus 251 and Microbacterium foliorum 122 revealed absence of known hydrocarbon degrading genes despite demonstrated utilization of hydrocarbon substrates, indicating potentially novel hydrocarbon degrading genes. | Ph.D. | ecolog | 15 |
| Kamiya, Tsukushi | Mideo, Nicole | Ecology of Vector-borne Diseases at the Interface of Theory and Data | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2020-09-01 | Infectious diseases continue to impact human lives. However, surprisingly little is known about the fundamental biology of disease-causing organisms and their interactions with the host. This thesis focuses on vector-borne diseases which account for 17% of all known human infections and put more than half of the global population at risk of infection. An overarching focus of the work presented is heterogeneity within species, which is ubiquitous and fundamental to biology, yet has often been neglected outside of evolutionary biology. In infectious disease biology, a better understanding of individual heterogeneity is needed across scales. At the within-host level, infection dynamics and health outcomes are highly variable between hosts. Therefore, a single clinical intervention strategy will likely not achieve the desired cure in all individuals infected with the same parasite. At the between-host level, it is important to map the consequences of heterogeneity because a small fraction of the host population contributes disproportionately to disease transmission and determines the fate of an epidemic. By combining mathematical modelling and empirical data, this thesis develops conceptual and methodological frameworks that are rooted in ecology, but shift away from the strict focus on the average often found in biological sciences, dubbed the “tyranny of the golden mean”. This thesis uncovers within-host origins, and explores the between-host consequences, of heterogeneities in vector-borne diseases. In the first half, I outline how differences in within-host ecological processes generate variation in parasite population dynamics and health outcomes of malaria infection across inoculum sizes and host genetic backgrounds. In the latter half, I present host population-level consequences of variation generated by tri-trophic interactions be- tween parasites, hosts, and arthropod disease vectors, and of temperature-dependent heterogeneity in within-vector processes that govern the timing of infectivity. Overall, this thesis showcases the synergistic benefit of combining mathematical and computational modelling with empirical data to achieve better understanding and management of infectious diseases. | Ph.D. | ecolog, health | 3, 15 |
| Meredith, Christina Elizabeth | Portelli, John P | Enacting Social Justice Leadership in the Division of Student Affairs | Social Justice Education | 2020-11-01 | Heads of Student Affairs in the Ontario College sector are leaders who hold responsibility for services and programs designed to serve diverse student populations, outside of the classroom. In the College of Applied Arts and Technology system, these administrators are typically VPs of Student Affairs and Services, Deans of Students or Executive Directors of Student Services. Given their location in the institutional hierarchy these leaders can play a significant role in challenging and disrupting policies and procedures that reproduce dominance and oppression yet how they express and enact social justice leadership is significantly understudied in the higher education and student affairs literature. Grounded in two large bodies of literature in higher education, and informed by critical theory, eleven student affairs leaders were asked to reflect on ways their work related to social justice and then to discuss when and how their work reflected social justice; the central research question was: How do Heads of Student Affairs enact social justice in their leadership practice? The findings from this study reveal how student affairs leaders, who self-identified as leading from a social justice perspective, enacted social justice in their leadership practice as they attempted to transform student operations, policies and structures of power, by calling into account, seemingly unproblematic practices in efforts to reveal problems, strengths, and possibilities for sustainable change. The data also highlights that those leaders who were able to articulate a deeper understanding of how their identity impacts and informs their leadership practice tended to be more critical in their approach and, as a result, were more likely to face barriers and consequences to enacting social justice leadership. As a result, this study has the potential to provide timely insights for current and emerging leaders to develop robust policies and programs that advocate, and transform educational spaces, for our increasingly diverse student populations from a social justice perspective. | Ph.D. | justice, institut, educat | 4, 16 |
| Acosta Mejia, Camilo Andres | Baum-Snow, Nathaniel | Essays on the Spatial Organization of Firms and the Effects of Land Use Regulations | Management | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation is composed of three chapters that explore different issues within urban economics. The first two, jointly authored with Ditte Lyngemark from the Kraks Fond Institute for Urban Economic Research, focus on the spatial organization of firms, while the third one studies different effects of land use regulations within cities. The first chapter studies the spatial structure of firms by considering the location and occupational composition of establishments within firms. Using Danish employer-employee data, we document that the average number of establishments per firm increased by 36% between 1981 and 2016. Moreover, the average distance of establishments and workers to their headquarters (HQ) increased by more than 200%. These changes are mainly driven by the decentralization of production and business services. Finally, HQ establishments have become more manager intensive, despite increasing wages in their locations. The second chapter investigates the forces governing the previous facts, especially the roles of regional wage differences and communication costs. Our study proceeds theoretically and empirically, concluding with the first structural analysis of this issue. Using immigration shocks as the source of identifying variation, our estimates indicate that increases in the wage of managers at HQ relative to non-HQ explain 50% of the increase in HQ managerial intensity. Increasing demand for headquarter services as satellite establishments become larger is the main mechanism behind this effect. Wider wage gaps across locations also lead to more establishments per firm, and this effect strengthens as communication costs fall. In the last chapter, I study the incidence and general equilibrium effects of land use regulations. I use detailed geographic data for Chicago in 2016, together with a quantitative model with worker heterogeneity and real estate developers facing regulations. For identification, I use the 1923 Zoning Ordinance. I find that an increase of 10 percentage points in the share of residential zoning in a location leads to a 1% decrease in housing prices, a 15% decrease in wages and a 2.5% increase in amenities. I find that more residential and mixed-use zoning lead to welfare gains for both types of residents, but increase welfare inequality. | Ph.D. | institut, land use, production, urban, cities, inequality, wage, worker, equality | 5, 8, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16 |
| Serhal, Eva | Kurdyak, Paul | Evaluating System-level Implementation of Telepsychiatry in Ontario from 2008-2016: Implications for the Sustainability and Growth of Telepsychiatry | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-06-01 | Objectives The objective of this thesis was to understand the implementation of clinical telepsychiatry in Ontario. To do this, paper 1 described the characteristics of psychiatrists who delivered and patients who received telepsychiatry, calculated how many in-need patients received telepsychiatry, and identified trends in the distribution of telepsychiatry (where care was delivered to and from). Paper 2 described characteristics and predictors of family physicians who referred patients to telepsychiatry and paper 3 compared the costs of telepsychiatry with other traditional models of psychiatric outreach. Study Designs This thesis employed several study designs, including a serial panel study and retrospective cross-sectional studies using linked data from ICES, as well as a cost-minimization analysis. Results Paper 1 found that, in fiscal year (FY) 2012, a total of 3,801 people had 5,635 telepsychiatry visits, and 7% of Ontario psychiatrists provided these visits. Of 48,381 people discharged from a psychiatric hospitalization, 60% saw a local psychiatrist, 39% saw no psychiatrist, and less than 1% used telepsychiatry within 1 year of discharge. Paper 2 showed that the number of patients using telepsychiatry, and the number of family physicians referring to telepsychiatry increased fifteen-fold and nine-fold, respectively, from FY 2008 to FY 2016. 32% of Ontario family physicians referred to telepsychiatry in FY 2016, however, less than 1% of their rostered patients used telepsychiatry (n =12,449/3,513,638). Family physicians that referred to telepsychiatry were more likely to be from a rural residence, to have more nurse practitioners in their practice, and to be part of a Family Health Team, while their patients were more likely to live in rural areas, have increased complexity, and higher rates of mental health service utilization. Paper 3 found that costs per visit were lowest in telepsychiatry ($360), followed by travelling physicians ($558) and patient reimbursement for travel ($620). Conclusions This dissertation has demonstrated that while telepsychiatry has been increasingly adopted by providers, adoption by patients remains fairly low. Telepsychiatry is less costly than other in-person outreach models and shows signs of sustainability, such as the persistent increase in adoption and penetration throughout Ontario over the study period. | Ph.D. | rural, health | 3, 11 |
| Williams, Gregory Evan | Uliaszek, Amanda A | Evaluating the Construct of Emotion Differentiation: Methodological Considerations and Extension of Current Theory | Psychological Clinical Science | 2020-11-01 | Emotion differentiation is a multifaceted construct, referring to the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between emotional experiences as well as the ability to describe individual emotional experiences with a high degree of nuance and specificity. Studies to date have demonstrated that emotion differentiation is associated with indices of psychological well-being, such that greater emotion differentiation performance is presumed to be adaptive. Theory posits that emotion differentiation functions as a precursor to more successful emotion regulation by providing the experiencer with more precise information to contextualize their emotional experience and respond to it more optimally, but this relationship needs further empirical support. Several other issues persist with the construct as currently operationalized, including: (1) it is unknown how the underlying construct empirically relates to similar constructs in the literature, and if it uniquely relates to psychological well-being incrementally beyond these other constructs; (2) it is unknown if emotion differentiation can be measured via self-report and do such measures correlate with performance-based approaches; and (3) emotion differentiation lacks measures in the context of individual emotional experiences, suggesting the full theoretical construct is not being captured. This research was therefore undertaken with the goal of systematically addressing each of these lingering issues. Results of Study 1 suggested that emotion differentiation is best conceptualized as an aspect of emotional complexity, separate from emotional awareness, and that it does not uniquely relate to psychological well-being after accounting for empirical overlap with awareness. Study 2 results indicated that a coding-based measure of differentiation within individual emotional experiences related to indices of psychopathology but did not relate to emotion differentiation between emotional experiences. All associations between indices of emotion differentiation and psychopathology were accounted for by mean affect intensity. In Study 3, those who were instructed to appraise their emotions with less nuance reported more emotion regulation success following one negative emotion-inducing video, and those from this group who reported high trait emotional awareness reported the greatest emotion regulation success following the other negative video. Collectively these results highlight continuing concerns with emotion differentiation theory and measurement. | Ph.D. | well-being | 3 |
| de Almeida Gutierrez, Eduardo | Chang, Belinda SW | Evolution and functional specializations in nocturnal environments: insights from visual pigments in Chiroptera | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-11-01 | Sensory systems act as a direct interface between organisms and their environment, constituting an ideal model to investigate how diverse evolutionary pressures shaped sensory adaptation. At the molecular level, vision is initiated through activation of visual pigments, light-sensitive complexes expressed in photoreceptor cells in the retina that have been shown to evolve in response to changes in ecology and light environment. In this thesis, I employ molecular evolutionary analyses and experimental characterization of visual pigments to study the molecular basis of visual system specializations in bats, one of the most striking and ecologically diverse mammalian radiations. In Chapter 2, I review recent work on the ecological and evolutionary pressures mediating sensory adaptation in vertebrates, including remarkable specializations of bats. In Chapter 3, I use comparative sequence analysis to test whether ecological factors known to influence bat visual ecology mediate shifts in evolutionary pressure in cone opsin genes, Lws and Sws1. I find significant evidence that long-term shifts in selection constraint in cone opsins occur in response to ecological factors underlying reliance on visual information and exposure to varying light environments. In Chapters 4 and 5, I focus my study on the evolution of the dim-light visual pigment rhodopsin (Rh1) in response to echolocation, a remarkable sensory adaptation of bats. In Chapter 4, I experimentally characterize rhodopsin of several bat species and find that changes in kinetic properties that influence dim-light visual performance are associated with differing echolocation abilities. In Chapter 5, I reconstruct and experimentally resurrect the ancestral rhodopsin pigment of Chiroptera and Scrotifera. I find that changes in rhodopsin kinetics occurred during the evolution of bats are likely associated with the origins of echolocation. This thesis combines in vitro and in silico approaches to investigate visual pigment evolution in Chiroptera. More broadly, this thesis also discusses the role of diverse ecological pressures in shaping visual gene evolution, the molecular underpinnings of visual pigment function and adaptation to light-limited environments as well as the complex interactions between sensory specializations. | Ph.D. | ecolog, environment | 13, 15 |
| Micsinszki, Samantha | Stremler, Robyn | Examining Factors Associated with Sleep Quality in Parents of Children 4-10 Years with Autism Spectrum Disorder | Nursing Science | 2020-11-01 | Background/Rationale: Sleep quality is an important health indicator, yet parents of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) often report poorer sleep compared to parents of typically developing children. When parents do not obtain enough good quality sleep, health and daytime functioning may be compromised. This means that the onus of care is placed on already stressed and exhausted parents. Although poor sleep quality may lead to significant negative health consequences, it has been remarkably understudied in parents of children with ASD. Purpose: This study examined the prevalence of poor sleep quality in parents of children 4-10 years with ASD and tested a model of parent factors (i.e., resources, appraisals, and coping) expected to moderate the relationships between child sleep problems, parenting stress, and parent sleep quality at a single point in time. Methods: In this cross-sectional observational research, 214 parents of children with ASD completed the study. Parent sleep quality was examined using survey methods. Sleep measures included the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) (parent sleep) and the Children’s Sleep Habits Questionnaire (CSHQ) (sleep in children of parents in this study). Six regression models were tested using multivariable linear and moderated regression. Results: Mean (SD) PSQI scores for parents in this sample was 8.81 (3.76), with most parents scoring above the clinical cut-off of >5 (152, 77.6%). Mean (SD) CSHQ scores for children of the parents in this sample was 54.03 (8.32), which exceeds the clinical cut-off of >41, with most parents scoring their child above the clinical cut-off (182, 96.3 %). Overall, when parenting stress, child sleep problems, and all expected moderators were modelled together with parent sleep quality, child sleep problems was the only significant predictor (Beta = 0.081, p = 0.031). Significance/Implications: Findings from this study suggest that children’s sleep problems was the single most important factor when considering what impacts parent sleep quality. However, both parents and their 4-10-year old children with ASD experienced sleep disturbances. Although the expected moderators help to explain the variance in parent sleep quality, their buffering effects may not be enough when parents sleep poorly. | Ph.D. | urban, health | 3, 11 |
| Luu, Kien Nam | Flessa, Joseph | Experiences, Challenges and Preparation of Instructional Coaches | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | This study explored the professional experiences and challenges of instructional coaches in one Canadian educational jurisdiction. While school districts throughout North America build the instructional capacity of teachers through summer institutes, professional learning communities (PLCs), and additional qualification courses (AQs), instructional coaching is a recent addition to this repertoire. There is abundant instructional coach (IC) research that is situated in the USA. Instructional coach studies conducted in Ontario, Canada are salient but are limited. This study investigates the perspectives of ten instructional coaches employed by a large, urban Ontario school district. The data collected from these participants led to five major findings: (1) Instructional Coaches were not fully aware of their roles and responsibilities; (2) Instructional Coaches supported educators on many levels: facilitated professional learning, provided resources, collaborated on school improvement planning and trained other IC colleagues; (3) Instructional Coaches were not fully prepared for the role and duties of instructional coaching; (4) Instructional Coaches identified a lack of clear communication among various stakeholder groups; and (5) Instructional Coaches suggested preparation planning for aspiring ICs. These included enrolling in additional qualification courses, developing sound instructional skills, being flexible, being able to handle resistance and being able to build professional rapport with other educators. Instructional coaches carried out a multitude of responsibilities while providing pedagogical support to educators and navigating complex environments. This study will inform decisions on implementation of IC support in school districts and provide further insights into the training, preparation and support for ICs. 摘要本研究旨在探討加拿大某教育管轄區教學指導員的專業經驗、面臨挑戰及準備狀況。在加拿大安大略省進行的教學指導的相關研究是突出，但依然有限的。摘要本研究以安省市區某大型學區為研究對象，對十名教學指導員的觀點進行調查。從這些參與者收集的數據導致了五個主要的發現:(1)教學指導員沒有充分意識到自己的角色和責任;(2)教學指導員在多個層面支持教育工作者:促進專業培訓、提供資源、 協作學校改進計劃和培訓其他教學指導組同事;(3)教學指導員對其角色和職責沒有做好充分準備;(4) 教學指導員發現各教育參與方群體之間缺乏清晰的溝通;和(5)教學指導員建議為有抱負的準教學指導員提供準備計劃，包括參加額外的資格認證課程，發展良好的教學技能，靈活，能夠處理阻力，能夠與其他教育工作者建立專業的融洽關係。 教學指導員承擔了大量的責任，同時為教育者提供教學支持，並在復雜的環境中為教學領航。本研究將為學區實施教學指導支持的決策提供依據，並對教學指導員的培訓、準備和支持提供進一步的見解。 | Ph.D. | institut, environment, urban, labor, educat | 4, 8, 11, 13, 16 |
| Massey-Garrison, Angela Michelle | Geva, Esther | Exploring Latent Profiles of Writing in Linguistically Diverse Students in the Middle School Grades | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-03-01 | This thesis consists of two studies that investigate longitudinally narrative writing development and factors that lead to low performance in writing in the middle school grades with native English speakers (EL1) and English Learners. The first study consists of two parts. Part A examined writing profiles in Grade 4 and 6 and the resulting relationships to reading outcome measures as well as the effect of language status and gender. Three distinct writing profiles were found in Grade 4 and 6 (low performing, average, and strong writers) which corresponded to similar ability levels on the word reading and reading comprehension outcome measures. There was no EL-EL1 effect on the writing profiles, however there was a gender effect showing that boys were more at risk for writing difficulties than girls. Part B investigated the transition patterns of these writing profiles between Grades 4 to 6. The writing profiles were fairly stable across the middle school grades with a high proportion of students remaining in the same latent profile across time (76.4%). Differences were noted in the transition profiles of boys and girls with more boys remaining in the low performing group over time.The second study investigated the contribution of oral language (vocabulary and syntactic skills) to low performing writing status, beyond that of a base set of predictors, that included rapid naming, working memory, and spelling. In Grade 4, both vocabulary and syntactic skills contributed independently to low performing writing status beyond the base measures. By Grade 6, only syntactic skills were found to be a unique predictor of low performing writing status beyond the base measures. Overall, this thesis provides support that distinct and stable writing profiles can be recognized by the middle school grades in EL and EL1 students and offers insight into the characteristics of low performing writers. The implications of these findings for assessment and intervention and directions for future research are discussed. | Ph.D. | girl, gender | 5 |
| Pulver, Ariel | Urquia, Marcelo L | Exploring Maternal Birthplace and Child Gender Disparities in Markers of Neglect and Maltreatment among Young Children of Immigrants | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-06-01 | Significant immigration to Canada has brought many cultures and parenting practices together, highlighting differences in child health and wellbeing. Given the increasingly large amount of migration from countries with high gender inequality, it is unknown how parental immigration interacts with child gender to affect healthcare and wellbeing in early childhood. In this dissertation, I present four studies regarding variation in routine preventive health care and maltreatment in very early childhood by maternal birthplace and child gender. The first study is a scoping review where I mapped the use of gender-based analysis in research on the health of children in immigrant families. I found that child gender is an understudied aspect of immigrant children’s health, thereby presenting an opportunity for further research. Next, in three population-based retrospective cohort studies, I compared the risk of three markers of child health care and well-being across immigrant maternal birthplaces in comparison to mothers born in Canada—immunizations, well-child visits at 24 months, and early child maltreatment at five years of age. To explore whether son preference affects child routine preventive care and maltreatment, I also compared outcomes between daughters and sons within families. I demonstrate that children of immigrants are well cared for concerning routine immunizations and are less likely to experience maltreatment in early childhood than children of non-immigrants. Maternal birthplaces associated with high levels of gender inequity do not seem to place daughters at risk of adverse outcomes compared to sons, except for a select case. Results support addressing vaccine hesitancy and child maltreatment in the general population to promote well-being in early childhood, as well as select targeted approaches among specific immigrant groups. My studies provide a model (including data sources, study design, and analytic techniques) to monitor and detect gender inequality in the general population as well as among minority groups. My research adds to the evidence around gender equity, which will hopefully ensure girls continue to achieve the same level of health care and well-being as boys. | Ph.D. | inequality, girl, equality, gender, well-being, wellbeing, health | 3, 5, 10 |
| Ho, Bernard | Pedretti, Erminia | Exploring Students’ Perspectives on Critical Thinking Integration in College Pre-health Science Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | Educators and healthcare practitioners increasingly recognize the importance of critical thinking (CT) in health sciences education. CT encompasses knowledge, its evaluation/synthesis, and habits of mind. Perspectives from scholars emphasize features that inform a range of theories on CT integration. This research foregrounded the perspectives of college pre-health science students. A case study was conducted to address three research questions: What are the students’ perspectives on 1) what constitutes CT; 2) its role as integrated in pre-health science courses; and 3) the challenges experienced with CT integration? Quantitative/qualitative data was gathered from survey questionnaires at the start of the program. Qualitative data was collected from classroom observations during CT-integrative activities, and individual semi-structured interviews. Inductive-deductive content analysis revealed several themes. Students collectively characterized CT as habits of mind, content and processes aimed at comprehensively, objectively, rationally and normatively ascertaining “truth”. During integrative science activities, students applied CT to learn science content intuitively or consciously depending on their prior science knowledge. CT’s amenability for integration within subjects depended on the students’ prior subject knowledge and perceptions of the comparative nature of subjects to that of CT. Furthermore, how students anticipated CT in healthcare framed their beliefs on CT integration into science curriculum. Challenges with CT integration stemmed from incongruencies between its expected manifestations in healthcare versus its portrayal in education. In education, formalized CT and subject-specific incompatibility felt inauthentic, and risked undermining the learning of science content. A lack of socialization to ambiguity due to CT integration begged more guidance from professors to provide definitiveness over scientific claims. Therefore, authentic CT integration that resonates with students hinges upon a threshold of prior knowledge in individual subjects and CT. Acclimation to CT that is simultaneous with building foundational scientific knowledge might reveal opportunities for conscious and complex integration. Sustained opportunistic integration leveraging natural intersections might acclimate students to CT as part of their education, and further reveal its relevance in healthcare. This thesis concludes with recommendations for theory and practice. | Ph.D. | climate, educat, health | 3, 4, 13 |
| Orlando, Elaina | Baker, G. Ross | Exploring the Connection between Physician Involvement in Quality Improvement and Medical Engagement | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-11-01 | Substantial efforts are required to improve the performance of healthcare systems, however, healthcare organizations tend to have structures and cultures that are highly resistant to change. Though such resistance will make significant changes in healthcare challenging there has been a call for reform in Canada’s healthcare system (e.g. Atkinson et al., 2011; CMA, 2012; Clark, 2012; Denis et al., 2013; Dickinson Ham, 2008; Dickson, 2011; Gosfield Reinertsen, 2007; Kirby, 2002; Romanow, 2002; Tuohy, 1999, 2002; Willis et al., 2012).Medical engagement has been suggested as one means of achieving this desired reform and overcoming the challenges of resistance to change (Baker Denis, 2011; Singer Shortell, 2011). Similarly, the involvement of physicians in quality improvement has been purported to contribute to improved health outcomes and decreased costs (Peterson, Jaen Phillips, 2013). Baker Denis (2011) note that many of the growing efforts to engage physicians in leading change are focused on changes in organizational structure and in broader system-wide leadership; however, there have been few studies examining the extent to which these changes have resulted in the enhanced levels of engagement. Similarly absent is empirical work examining the role of physician involvement in quality improvement in building medical engagement, despite suggestions that both will contribute to enhanced organizational and systems outcomes. The role that organizational commitment has on medical engagement is also of interest, given the recognized theoretical links between commitment and engagement. This thesis reports a mixed methods investigation to explore the connection between physician involvement in quality improvement, organizational commitment and medical engagement levels in two healthcare organizations in Ontario. In the first phase of the inquiry, organizational commitment and organizational support for quality improvement were quantified in a survey to determine the relationship among these concepts. The secondary, qualitative phase, allows for a deeper understanding of physicians’ perspectives regarding the connection between quality improvement, organizational commitment and medical engagement while exploring the results of the survey. Overall, this dissertation furthers our knowledge of how Canadian healthcare organizations can effectively work with physicians to drive changes to improve healthcare. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Serenko, Natalia | Fang, Lin | Exploring Therapists’ Use of Creativity in Direct Practice in Social Work | Social Work | 2021-03-01 | This study employs constructivist grounded theory to explore the experiences of direct practice social workers who use creativity, their perceptions of creativity, their individual characteristics, the role of the external social environment, the factors impeding and facilitating their use of creativity, and the benefits of creativity. To fill the research gaps above, this study applies an interdisciplinary approach by using four relevant theoretical perspectives: practice wisdom, the componential theory of creativity, systems theory, and four Ps theory. Twenty-one registered social workers who were employed in direct clinical practice in Ontario, Canada participated in semi-structured interviews. This study clarifies the definition of creativity relevant to the field of social work direct practice. Creativity is defined as synergetic interconnection of usefulness, novelty, and ubiquity, which may be accompanied by the state of creative flow. Similar to a magic cauldron that must be constantly stirred to preserve a high temperature, ubiquity refers to a constant presence of creative intention, an enduring commitment to discover useful and novel solutions. It represents the tension, consistent effort, or necessity that therapists experience to address their clients’ issues. Clients provide context for creative therapeutic flow when therapists and their clients are engaged in the process of discovery and healing. The findings reveal that creativity contributes to the essence and identity of the social work profession. Specifically, Pro-C (professional creativity) influences therapists’ professional identity. This study extends the list of Pro-C characteristics by identifying four important elements that must be present in Pro-C: 1) intentionality, 2) the use of the self and intuition, 3) mastery, and 4) practice wisdom. The use of creativity may be considered a scientific art that may be taught through best creativity practices. This study also presents a new theoretical framework of creativity in social work direct practice. This framework explicates the notion of creativity, best creativity practices, factors fostering and impeding the use of creativity, and creativity benefits for clients and therapists. It is concluded that creativity is a domain-specific concept, and it requires the active engagement of both a therapist and a client during a therapeutic process. | Ph.D. | environment, worker | 8, 13 |
| Wang, An | Hatzopoulou, Marianne | Extending Boundaries of Emission and Dispersion Modelling with Uncertainty Analysis and Data-Driven Models | Civil Engineering | 2021-03-01 | Urban transportation systems are undergoing revolutionary changes, including vehicle automation and electrification, and their environmental impacts remain uncertain. Can existing emission and air quality modelling techniques adequately perform in the face of these drastic changes? How can we extend the capabilities of current physical emission models and empirical air quality models? This thesis addresses these questions focusing on two themes: 1) regional traffic emission inventories; 2) data-driven models for local emission and air quality characterization.In theme 1, we first developed a modelling approach to generate a regional emission inventory of passenger transportation (public transit and private household vehicle trips) in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA). When including only public transit and private household vehicle trips, the latter contributed 96% of regional GHG emissions for passenger transportation. With the introduction of AVs, additional private household vehicle kilometres were expected. Moreover, the GHG emission reduction potential of EVs was highly dependent on the GHG emissions of the local power grid. We identified various sources of uncertainty in current vehicular emission models and quantified these sources of uncertainty with a Monte-Carlo approach. Vehicle operating emissions dominated the total GHG emissions and dominated the uncertainty from other sources. The introduction of EVs also reduced emission uncertainty. Theme 2 focuses on local scale emission and air quality modelling. Noticing the importance of uncertainty in operating emissions, we proposed a novel modal emission modelling approach for vehicle hot stabilized running emissions, based on measured emissions. Our approach can effectively balance computational complexity and accuracy by tuning the resolution of explanatory variables. The last part of this thesis explored the use of a traditional empirical air quality model compared to novel machine learning techniques. Both empirical models were applied to air quality data collected during a mobile sampling campaign in downtown Toronto. We explored their application boundaries by contrasting how explanatory variables were expressed in these data-driven models. We concluded that machine learning could perform better with abundant data, and the prediction power of the traditional empirical model was dependent on the monotonic relationship between explanatory and response variables. 城市交通系统的发展日新月异。首当其冲的是车辆的自动化和电动化。然而相应的环境和能源影响尚未被人们所了解。现行的汽车尾气排放和扩散模型是否能充分捕捉到交通系统变化带来的影响？我们如何能够拓展这些模型的应用范围？本文主要从以下两个主题入手解决这些问题：1. 区域交通排放清单的建立；2. 数据驱动模型在本地尾气排放和扩散模型中的应用。在第一个主题中，我们首先设计了大多伦多和汉密尔顿地区内的客运排放清单的计量方法（包括公共交通和私人交通）。我们发现私人交通产生的温室气体排放占到了客运交通排放的96%。自动驾驶车辆的引入导致了更多的私人交通出行里程。同时，我们观察到电动车带来的温室气体排放减少受到本地电网清洁性的影响。我们进一步确定了数个在现行车辆排放清单模型中的不确定性因素，并将它们用蒙特卡洛方法进行量化。车辆运行中的排放不但占据了区域内燃油生命周期排放的主体，还对区域内车辆排放清单的不确定性产生了主要影响。推行电动车可以减少区域车辆排放清单中的不确定性。 主题二主要探讨了多伦多本地背景下的车辆排放和扩散模型。注意到运行中排放对于区域排放总量和不确定性的影响，我们对此提出了一种新型的排放模型，并用本地采集的排放数据进行开发。我们的方法可以根据具体应用条件来有效平衡计算复杂度和模型准确性。这主要是通过调节解释变量的解析度来实现的。本文的最后一部分探讨了传统的污染物扩散模型（土地利用回归）和机器学习经验模型的比较。我们使用了在多伦多本地采集的空气质量数据来训练这两类模型。通过揭示自变量（空气质量）和因变量（土地利用，交通，天气等）在不同模型中是如何进行表达的，我们探索了不同模型的应用范围。我们发现机器学习模型在有充足数据的情况下可以达到较高的准确度，传统回归模型的鲁棒性需要依靠自变量和因变量之间的单调性关系来保证。 | Ph.D. | environment, urban | 11, 13 |
| Schumann, Rachel | Kruttschnitt, Candace | Extending Carceral Control Pre-conviction: the Reception, Resistance, and Repercussions of Being Legally Responsible for People Accused of a Crime | Sociology | 2020-11-01 | In Canada and the United States, the control, supervision, and rehabilitation of criminalized people often falls on the shoulders of non-state agents and organizations. Surety bail releases are a seemingly clear embodiment of this trend as the courts call upon relatives, friends, and employers to supervise the pre-conviction activity of people accused of a crime. The resulting diffusion of responsibility is said to increase the penal state’s power and control over criminal justice involved individuals while minimizing reputational risks. However, by analyzing data from a year’s worth of bail court observations from a mid-sized jurisdiction in Ontario and interviews with sureties, I find that how friends and family assume the role of surety varies considerably and regularly diverges from court expectations. Because sureties are not legal professionals, their understanding of and ability to enforce court-ordered conditions and report bail violations is primarily shaped not by court instructions and legal mandates but by their ever-changing relationship with the accused, existing biases towards the law, and extenuating life circumstances. In this way, carceral control is not just assumed by sureties but also resisted, ignored, and subsequently transformed in the context of their everyday lives. Under surety bail releases, the governance of accused individuals therefore represents a patchwork of different and sometimes competing modalities that are stitched together by both state representatives and ordinary citizens. Yet, for accuseds and their sureties, this involvement can come at a cost. While surety releases have the potential to improve the accused’s relationship with their friends and family and increase their surety’s willingness to continue their support, the rules of the court are like an omnipresent force that continually threaten to disrupt the ties that bind. Indeed, the constant pressure of having to enforce court-ordered conditions subjects sureties to a more punitive experience, demonstrating punishment drift in action. The results of this study inform a series of recommendations geared towards offsetting the pains of pre-conviction for accused and their loved ones. | Ph.D. | governance, justice | 16 |
| Williams, Dinsie | Kohler, Jillian C | Facilitating Sustainable Access to Medical Devices in Sierra Leone and Ghana through Transnational Funders: Challenges and Opportunities | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2018-06-01 | Background Transnational funders provide up to 80% of funds for medical devices in resource-limited settings where an estimated 72% of medical devices are reportedly abandoned. This means that for every dollar that funders spend on medical devices, 65 to 90 cents are wasted. The objective of this study was to inform public health care policy reform to facilitate sustainable access to medical devices by characterizing current transnational funding policies and practices from the perspectives of recipients and funders. Methods A case study was developed in March 2016 involving a review of policy documents; semi-structured interviews of frontline and administrative public health care staff, and representatives of funding organizations; and direct observation of medical devices in Sierra Leone. Subsequently, case study was conducted in Ghana between January and April 2017 using the same research instruments. Following thematic analysis, the data from the interviews were cross-referenced with information from the document reviews and direct observations. Results The national governments of Sierra Leone and Ghana have guidelines on donating medical devices; however, neither are linked to enforceable regulations nor are they promoted among frontline health care staff. Study participants in Sierra Leone underscored the importance of communication and collaboration; quality, functionality and appropriateness of medical devices. In Ghana, interviews revealed that donation guidelines were obscure and that there were technical leadership gaps in government hospitals. Conclusion To ensure sustainable access to medical devices, the national governments of Sierra Leone and Ghana, must establish coherent and enforceable policies that foster the development of a cohesive network of funders, medical device manufacturers and distributors, and service providers; mandate purposive funding of medical devices; foster technical leadership on hospital management teams; and establish a comprehensive device acquisition and management framework. To complement the efforts of recipient governments, funders should proactively incorporate principles of good governance such as collaboration, transparence, and accountability into their practices. By being more purposive, funders may finally achieve a worthwhile mission of sustainably enhancing the medical device capacity of health care providers in government-owned facilities in Sierra Leone and Ghana. | Ph.D. | governance, waste, labor, health | 3, 8, 12, 16 |
| Matheson, Justin | Brands, Bruna | Factors Influencing the Acute Subjective and Cognitive Effects of Smoked Cannabis in Young Adults | Pharmacology | 2020-11-01 | Cannabis is associated with acute and chronic harms, including cognitive impairment and addiction. Legalization of non-medical cannabis led to increased number and diversity of cannabis products and users, challenging the generalizability of previous human laboratory studies of the mood and cognitive effects of cannabis. Study 1 examined the acute and residual effects of higher-potency smoked cannabis (12.5% THC vs. placebo) on mood and cognition in 91 young adults (cannabis use 1-4 days/week). Cannabis had acute effects on mood, with minimal evidence of cognitive impairment, and little evidence of a “hangover” effect 24 or 48 hours after exposure. Study 2 used data from this sample (26 females, 64 males) to examine sex differences in the acute subjective, physiological, and cognitive effects of cannabis, as well as THC concentrations and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic relationships. Females smoked less of the cannabis cigarette and reached lower blood concentrations of THC and metabolites than males, yet experienced similar acute effects, suggesting sex differences in the relationship between peripheral THC concentrations and pharmacodynamic outcomes. iii Study 3 explored relationships between gender and cannabis use in qualitative interviews conducted with two men and one woman who identified their cannabis use as problematic. We identified numerous relevant themes, including the greater masculine presence in the cannabis community, increased stigma faced by women cannabis users, and the important relationship between initiation of cannabis use and affiliation with same-gender peers. Study 4 examined the acute and residual effects of alcohol (target breath alcohol content of 0.08%) on mood and cognition in 30 young adults. Alcohol had acute effects on all cognitive tasks, yet no significant effect on mood, and no residual effects 24 or 48 h after alcohol consumption. The acute effects of alcohol were nearly opposite to the cannabis effects in Study 1, which likely relate to differences in pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics. These findings highlight the importance of cannabis potency, smoking behaviour, sex, and gender as factors that contribute to variability in the acute mood and cognitive effects of cannabis, and caution against straightforward comparisons of the effects of single doses of cannabis and alcohol. | Ph.D. | consum, labor, women, gender | 5, 8, 12 |
| Drake, Laurie | Jennings, Eric T | Feeding France’s Outcasts: Rationing in Vichy’s Internment Camps, 1940-1944 | History | 2020-11-01 | During the Second World War, Vichy interned thousands of individuals in internment camps. Although mortality remained relatively low, morbidity rates soared, and hunger raged throughout. How should we assess Vichy’s role and complicity in the hunger crisis that occurred? Were caloric deficiencies the outcome of a calculated strategy, willful neglect, or an unexpected consequence of administrative detention and wartime penury? In this dissertation, I argue that the hunger endured by the thousands of internees inside Vichy’s camps was not the result of an intentional policy, but rather a reflection of Vichy’s fragility as a newly formed state and government. Unlike the Nazis, French policy-makers never created separate ration categories for their inmates. Ultimately, food shortage resulted from the general paucity of goods arising from wartime occupation, dislocation, and the disruption of traditional food routes. Although these problems affected all of France, the situation was magnified in the camps for two primary reasons. First, the camps were located in small, isolated towns typically not associated with large-scale agricultural production. Second, although policy-makers attempted to implement solutions, the government proved unwilling to grapple with the magnitude of the problem it faced and challenge the logic of confinement, which deprived people of their autonomy, including the right to procure their own food. Although Vichy bears full responsibility for the hunger it thrust upon thousands of inmates, the absence of a clear hunger policy created room for the development of schemes, programs, and plans that allowed camp administrators, internees, and aid organizations to implement solutions to stave off the threat of starvation. Administrators developed agricultural projects which yielded grains and vegetables, while internees relied on friends and family for money and provisions. At the same time, Vichy officials urged camp administrators to work closely with aid organizations able to donate foodstuffs. Despite these efforts, nothing could fully alleviate the myriad problems that plagued the camps, and internees remained hungry. Still, these programs, projects, and partnerships helped stave off death in many cases—at least for those who escaped eventual deportation. | Ph.D. | production, food, agricultur | 2, 12 |
| Charania, Gulzar R. | Razack, Sherene H. | Fighting Feelings: Racial Violence in Everyday Life | Social Justice Education | 2015-11-01 | This dissertation explores how women of colour live with and learn about racism. Through interviews, I mine microsites and memories of early racial aggression to examine their enduring effects and the varied meanings and practices that they produce. Integrating insights from feminist, critical race, queer and Foucauldian analytics, I trace understandings of racism formed under pressure from neoliberal interpretations of racial oppression and its attendant remedies. Principally, this study gives an account of racism and its effects and traces the accounts of racism that it is possible for people of colour to give. Women of colour are often caught between feelings and experiences that materialize oppression in their daily lives—and dominant postracial and neoliberal horizons that evacuate collective histories, politics and a public language with which to name racism. In other words, racial injury is privatized. I explore the tensions that they negotiate, of becoming entrepreneurs of the harm and pain that racism deposits in their lives and throwing responsibility for racism back to the people and conditions that produce it. Fighting Feelings: Racial Violence in Everyday Life renders a social, historical and structural account of encounters with racism, the harm that it leaves behind and the divergent orientations to racial politics that it engenders. Attending to women of colour’s everyday lives reveals and challenges the power of standardized accounts of racism that spatially and temporally contain racism to other times, places and people. In harder to find moments, racial and social justice materialize as a possibility and aspiration. I consider the conditions that cultivate it, the openings that it affords and sometimes, how hard it is to hold onto. | Ph.D. | justice, queer, women, gender, educat | 4, 5, 16 |
| Lumsden, Daniel George | McDougall, Douglas | Flipping The Secondary Mathematics Classroom: Teachers’ Perceptions on the Use of Video Instruction | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06-01 | The Flipped Classroom is an instructional strategy that reverses the traditional classroom that is more teacher-directed learning, to an environment where it is more student-centred and the instructor acts a facilitator. This is achieved through technology, where students can access teacher instructional videos online through different media sources. Four secondary school mathematical teachers took part in the initial stages of the research study, where I conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews. Out of the four participants, one participant went further with this research study, that included observing his class, viewing his videos, post interviews after each class, and perceptions of student surveys once the observation period was completed. The observation period took place over five months, which included reviewing instructional videos used in the participant’s flipped classroom along with in-class observations of the participant’s teaching. At the end of the observation period, students took an online survey based on their engagement and experiences regarding the flipped classroom. An exit interview was also conducted at the end of the observation period with this participant, in order to get a better understanding of their experiences and challenges within the flipped classroom. The themes reported as strengths of video instruction included: flipped classroom engagement, student interactions, and mitigating learner challenges. However, when identifying challenges, themes included: technology, lack of student engagement, time, and buy-in. The main four findings of this research are: (1) students were in favour of shorter video instruction; (2) videos that provided multiple examples with different levels of difficulty helped with learning; (3) students preferred a blend between the non-flipped classroom as well as a flipped classroom format; and (4) students benefited from having teacher-directed instruction at the beginning of class as a way to engage with the material. The flipped classroom is a model of teaching that could help teachers implement strategies that hold students accountable for their learning. The flipped classroom can provide opportunities for students to become more familiar and comfortable with the use of technology. Flipped learning can provide students that may struggle with mental health, like student anxiety, a pathway to learning through a combination of independent learning and reflection, collaboration, active learning and one-on-one conversations with their teacher. | Ed.D. | environment, labor, health | 3, 8, 13 |
| Schwartz, Naomi | Buliung, Ron||Wilson, Kathi | Food Access and Insecurity in Adults with Mobility Disabilities | Geography | 2020-11-01 | People with disabilities experience greater risk of food insecurity compared to people without disabilities. Lower incomes and higher relative expenses are often understood as the major causes of this inequality. Some scholars have also posited that people with mobility disabilities (PWMD) experience greater difficulty procuring or preparing food. Yet, limited research examines upstream factors related to food insecurity risk, lived experiences of food access, or environments that present access barriers among PWMD. Responding to these knowledge gaps, I sought to examine place-based influences on the relationship between mobility disability and food insecurity, questioning environmental, political, and institutional contexts that impact economic and physical access to food. Throughout my work, I use different theoretical approaches to conceptualize disability including, the social model, a critical ableist perspective, and an assemblage perspective. In adopting these perspectives, I challenge how bodies and mobility are typically understood in the food desert literature. My dissertation contains a scoping review followed by a series of empirical chapters set within a mixed-methods research design. In my scoping review of the literature, I discovered an important and widespread association between disability and food insecurity. In an analysis of microdata from the Canadian Community Health Survey, I examined sociodemographic and geographic risk factors of food insecurity among people with mobility impairment. Across Canada, I found an important inequality in food insecurity between people with and without mobility impairment. Province was associated with risk of food insecurity among people with mobility impairments, potentially reflecting different political and institutional contexts. I then conducted a qualitative study, using mobile go-along interviews with PWMD in Toronto, Canada, to understand lived experiences of food access. I found that food access was often restricted for PWMD related to different systems (e.g., social assistance) and places of access, on food trips, at home, and in food destinations. In subsequent research, I showed how the home acts as an important site shaping physical, social, and economic access to food. Together, my findings suggest the need to address socioeconomic disadvantage among PWMD while considering disabling contexts that limit access to functional housing, outdoor environments, transport systems, and food destinations. | Ph.D. | institut, environment, inequality, equality, health, food, socioeconomic | 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 13, 16 |
| Fearon, Stephanie | Flessa, Joseph | For our Children: Black Motherwork and Schooling | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | Ontario’s Parent Engagement Policy (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2010) compels school officials to identify and remove discriminatory practices and structures to ensure the full participation of all parents in their children’s schooling. Yet Canadian literature and media highlight ongoing challenges faced by Black mothers in their relationships with their children’s schools. This arts-informed study uses storytelling to investigate the relationships between Black mothers and school officials. The study presents insights obtained from 10 in-depth interviews with African Caribbean mothers living in Toronto. Participants shared personal stories to articulate their understanding of Black motherwork and its impact on their relationships with school officials. Data collected from these oral recounts, along with the review of the literature, addressed the questions: What is Black women’s motherwork? How does Black women’s motherwork shape their relationships with school officials? How do Black mothers draw on communities of support to respond to challenges and successes encountered in their relationships with school officials? This research draws on African Indigenous, Black feminist and Black maternal theories to investigate Black women's motherwork and their relationships with one another and school officials. Using a comprehensive analytic process, participants' oral accounts are compiled into interconnected creative non-fiction stories. These stories are informed by African storytelling traditions like call-and-response, improvisation and audience participation. This structure prioritizes Black mothers’ voices and honours arts-informed methodologies, all while illustrating links to previous scholarship. The personal/self-stories, cultural stories, and metanarratives presented in this arts-informed study uphold Black mothers as educational leaders in their homes, communities and schools. The study revealed Black Canadian motherwork as a form of activism that is integral to the health and wellbeing of Black women and children. Black mothers understand their motherwork as collective action involving community parents. For Black mothers, school officials do not always fulfill their roles as community parents. Black mothers work with members in their women-centred networks to affirm their leadership and safeguard their children’s rights to safe, inclusive schooling spaces. This arts-informed study contributes to a deeper understanding of the ways that Black mothers practice educational leadership amongst themselves and with school officials. | Ph.D. | rights, women, inclusiv, educat, wellbeing, health | 3, 4, 5, 16 |
| Boza Troncoso, C. Americo | Acosta, Edgar J | Free Energy Models for Surfactant-Oil-Water Systems | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2015-11-01 | This work introduces thermodynamic free energy models to predict and explain the behavior of surfactant-oil-water systems based on molecular and functional group approaches. Using a functional group approach, the Universal Functional Activity Coefficient (UNIFAC) was modified for use with surfactant-oil-water systems. Temperature dependence was provided to the interactions of functional groups known to establish hydrogen bonds. This UNIFAC version predicts the partition coefficient of alkyl and alkyl phenol ethoxylate surfactants in the excess alkane-water phases of middle phase microemulsions, alkane-water systems at equilibrium and bioconcentration factors. The molecular approach consists in estimating the free energy of transferring oil from its continuum liquid phase and surfactants from empty micelles to form oil-swollen micelles. The lipophilic and hydrophilic energetic contributions to this process are balanced to evaluate the extent of the solubilization of non-polar oils in micelles of non-ionic surfactants. This framework was implemented in the so called Integrated Free Energy Model (IFEM). The lipophilic contributions arise mainly from van der Waals (VDW) molecular interactions estimated with the microscopic approach of Hamaker using either classical or Lifshitz-based Hamaker constants. To estimate these interactions, VDW sphere-shell and cone-shell interaction potentials were introduced and validated with the concepts of surface tension and cohesive energy. The hydrophilic energetic contributions to oil solubilization were estimated considering conformational changes in the hydrophilic shell of the micelle during the solubilization of oil. IFEM`s oil solubilization predictions considering variations of alkane, surfactant tail size and headgroup size agree well with experimental data. A comparison between IFEM and the semi-empirical Hydrophilic-lipophilic-difference+Net-Average-Curvature (HLD-NAC) revealed that both oil solubilization prediction trends agree. In addition, IFEM predicts the Equivalent Alkane Carbon Numbers (EACNs) of aromatics and cycloalkanes, a parameter that was only experimentally measured before. | Ph.D. | energy, water | 6, 7, 14 |
| Mak, Joyce Yan Lok | Geva, Esther | Friendship Across Cultures: Supporting Unaccompanied, International High School Students with Intercultural Friendships | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation examined the characteristics and socio-emotional needs of international Chinese students in Canadian high schools and evaluated the outcomes of a program designed to reduce acculturative stress, provide social support, and promote intercultural friendship between international and Canadian students. Twenty-four international students from China (mean age = 16.25 years), eight Canadian students (mean age = 15.56 years), and four teachers from two schools in a large Canadian multicultural metropolis participated in this research. Students participated in the Friendship Across Cultures program in one of two groups: monocultural (international students only) and intercultural (both international and Canadian students). Qualitative and quantitative data were collected pre- and post-intervention on language/literacy skills, acculturative stress, and intercultural and psychosocial functioning. Data on pre-intervention cognitive skills were also gathered. Study 1 examined the needs and characteristics of international, Chinese high school students in Canada from student and teacher perspectives. Most students demonstrated low levels of English ability, wished for more Canadian friends, and did not appear to have clinical levels of mental health symptoms and acculturative stress. They participated in the 10-session Friendship Across Cultures afterschool program, which focused on psychoeducation and social support. Study 2 provides the results of the program evaluation. While comparisons of pre- and post-intervention data were not significant, effect sizes suggested unexpected trends: decreased self-reported intercultural communication competence and increased acculturative stress. Trends were more heightened for intercultural group participants than monocultural group participants, perhaps due to increased self-awareness from cross-cultural contact. Nevertheless, participants in the intercultural group tended to rate the program more positively and did not demonstrate a corresponding increase in psychological symptoms, in contrast to the monocultural group. Exit interviews illustrated that intercultural participants made Canadian friends, increased their understanding of Canadians, and practiced English. Monocultural participants endorsed more knowledge-based aspects (e.g., learning about mental health, how to make friends, and how to adapt to Canadian life). Canadian students endorsed increased understanding of international students, increased empathy for their needs and challenges, learning how to befriend international students, and the value of reaching out. These findings warrant further study. Clinical and educational implications are discussed. | Ph.D. | educat, health | 3, 4 |
| Birze, Arija | Einstein, Gillian | From Behind the Scenes to Under the Skin: The Social Bodily Experiences of Stressful, Gendered Work in Police Communicators | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11-01 | Gender and work are complex social determinants of health. Little is known about how they intersect to shape health inequities. Differences in the acute strains and chronic stressors of particular occupations are systematically related to other socially structured categories, such as gender. Physiological representations of social structures like gender can be discerned through acute and chronic stress responses at work. The body cumulatively records the complexity of the social world, like work, translating gendered work into health inequities. Police communications (911 call-takers/dispatchers) is a gendered, high-stress occupation that requires intense emotion work and persistent social interactions. Engaging in this type of high-stakes emotionally demanding work – that I hypothesize is embodied – has the potential to shape health along gendered divisions of labour. Allostatic Load (AL) – a framework used to assess physiological dysregulation due to prolonged secretion of stress hormones – represents a construct through which the material embodiment of social life can be demonstrated. Long-term dysregulation, however, is the accumulation of repeated short-term responses that have become dysfunctional. Thus, acute physiological responses and AL, as biological registrations of social life, are used to examine how gendered work shapes health. Eighty-one communicators were individually observed as they worked. Participants wore a heart-rate-variability (HRV) monitor and received take-home questionnaires and salivary cortisol kits. Blood and physiological markers were collected for AL scores. A subset of 25 acutely stressful events also occurred, after which, saliva samples were collected for cortisol and oxytocin responses. Results indicate gender plays a role in the relationship between emotional labour and AL. Furthermore, the experience of posttraumatic stress is associated with increased AL. During acutely stressful events, changes in cortisol, oxytocin, and HRV are evident. Central to social stress responses, these physiological changes are differentially predicted by gendered workplace stressors. Findings suggest that gender structures might influence health through conformity to norms and the associated stress these relational beliefs/acts provoke. Furthermore, associations between physiological and subjective stress also point to mechanisms through which cumulative exposures to stressful events might increase the risk of stress-related disorders. Implications for future research on this biological embedding of gendered social experiences are discussed. | Ph.D. | labour, gender, health | 3, 5, 2008 |
| Noone, Rebecca Jane McGuire | Hartel, Jenna | From Here To: Everyday Wayfinding in the Age of Digital Maps | Information Studies | 2011-11-01 | These days, navigation is often associated with “asking” Google Maps for directions. Over one billion people per month use Google Maps and Google estimates that one-in-three mobile searches are location-related. What do spatial information practices look like in these everyday information contexts? To explore this question of street-level wayfinding, I used exploratory performance-based and drawing-based research. I approached people in the streets of Toronto, New York, Amsterdam and London, and asked for directions, requesting they draw directional instructions for me. In total, I collected 220 sets of drawings, corresponding observational fieldnotes, and 20 interviews. Following collection, I used visual grounded theory and situational analysis to assess the data from the interdisciplinary theoretical perspective of everyday life information seeking and critical information studies research. Findings show the complexity of everyday wayfinding, negotiated through the tacit and material forms of technological interventions, urban configurations, and information affects. I present the findings through a qualitative account of these modalities at play on the ground. The empirical findings build a theoretical framework to evaluate Google Maps’ affordances and discursive framings. In addition to establishing a critical information framework, my work contributes methodologically to the study of spontaneous and ad-hoc drawings in information studies. My research follows a trajectory of emerging critical internet scholarship in information studies, positioned in the context of everyday information practices. | Ph.D. | urban | 11 |
| Park, Jiwon Tina | Bothwell, Robert | From Strangers to Partners: Canadian-Korean Relations (1888-1978) | History | 2018-06-01 | From Strangers to Partners: Canadian-Korean Relations (1888 – 1978) Jiwon Tina Park Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Toronto 2018 Abstract This dissertation focuses on the transformation of Canadian-Korean relations between the 1880s and the 1970s. Drawing on archival materials from both Ottawa and Seoul, the study approaches the bilateral relationship primarily through the lens of Canadian attitudes, priorities and policies. Canadian missionaries, who first travelled to Korea in 1888, established the earliest bridges between the two countries. Canada’s official engagement with Korea began with its participation on the UN Temporary Commission on Korea (1947-48), followed closely by the Korean War (1950-53), which elevated South Korea’s geostrategic importance for Ottawa. Over the course of the Cold War, these humanitarian concerns soon blossomed into significant commercial and political interests, a change aided by South Korea’s remarkable economic growth under President Park Chung Hee’s leadership. By the 1970s, Canada and South Korea saw each other as significant partners and allies, marked by a rapid expansion in trade and immigration. Shifting alliances and geopolitical interests of the Cold War had important consequences for bringing the two nations together, as South Korea searched for new partners to counterbalance American dominance and expand into new markets. From Seoul’s perspective, Canada, in addition to growing commercial interests, was an important ally for its diplomatic competition against North Korea. The case of the CANDU nuclear reactor sales to Korea at the height of the détente era clearly demonstrate the shifting dynamics in Canadian-Korean relations. Ultimately, this study concludes that comprehensive study of the evolution of Canadian-Korean relations enriches our understanding of Canadian history, Canadian-Asian relations, and international history. | Ph.D. | trade, economic growth | 8, 10 |
| Abdel-Latif, Sara | Saleh, Walid | Gendering Asceticism in Medieval Sufism | Religion, Study of | 2020-11-01 | Medieval Sufis reoriented the practice of Islamic mysticism away from asceticism and towards a structured program of inner cultivation under the guidance of elite male teachers. This dissertation argues that this inward turn represents a key historical moment in which Sufi identity was deliberately constructed upon idealized elite masculinity to combat rival groups in fifth/eleventh-century Nishapur. While previous scholars suggest medieval Sufism arose out of the Baghdadi context, an examination of the writings of two influential Nishapuri authors, Abū ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Sulamī (d. 412/1021) and Abū al-Qāsim al-Qushayrī (d. 465/1074) reveals sociopolitical conflicts unique to Nishapur that provoked the formation of an urban institutionalized Sufism that excluded all but the male elite. The gendered consequences of this institutionalization is explored through the legacy of al-Sulamī and al-Qushayrī and the reproduction of their gendered discourse in the writings of Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) and Abū al-Faraj b. al-Jawzī (d. 597/1200). Through a gender-sensitive critical re-reading of asceticism in historicizations of medieval Nishapur, I demonstrate the role of opposition to rival ascetic groups in the institutionalization and perpetuation of elite androcentric Sufism. This study investigates shifting gendered discourses in representations of four early ascetic practices: bodily mortification (zuhd), wandering without provision (siyāḥa), sexual abstinence (ʿuzla, ʿafāf), and excessive voluntary fasting (jūʿ, ṣawm). The decline in popularity of these exercises came with increasingly more obvious language of gender differentiation in the writings of Sufi authors. Through an intersectional gender analysis that compares elite male depictions of women to those of youths, the enslaved, and racialized individuals, I problematize modern scholarship on Sufism and Islam that employs gender binaries without considering other social markers of difference in Islamicate literatures. I conclude that authors of medieval Sufism reinvented asceticism to oppose those they deemed deviant to their own hegemonic masculinity. Understanding that elite social actors negotiate orthodoxy and regulate practice through the language of gender demonstrates the usefulness of gender analysis as a method of exposing discourses of power in the formation of religious identity. | Ph.D. | institut, production, urban, women, gender | 5, 11, 12, 16 |
| Blanchard, Rebecca | Tcheuyap, Alexie | Griots de la banlieue. Représentations de la périphérie française dans le roman contemporain | French Language and Literature | 2019-11-01 | Depuis 2005, la scène littéraire en France s’est largement enrichie de textes qui présentent des portraits alternatifs aux représentations médiatiques dénigrant systématiquement les banlieues françaises. Cette thèse examine la représentation romanesque de ces périphéries urbaines et les stratégies de subversion mises en récit par ces écrivains, notamment Thomté Ryam, Insa Sané, Abd al Malik et Kaoutar Harchi. Ce travail s’articule autour de cinq chapitres qui examinent la cohabitation d’une écriture souvent dite « engagée » avec une esthétique innovante qui se révèle grâce à une écriture intime et percutante. Empruntant des concepts de la géocritique (Westphal), de la théorie postcoloniale et des diaspora studies, notre étude débute par une réflexion sur la banlieue en tant qu’espace littéraire. Dans le deuxième chapitre, nous nous penchons ensuite sur l’emploi de stratégies narratives tels que le témoignage fictif et la polyphonie afin d’examiner l’évolution des récits de banlieue. Le troisième chapitre étudie l’intertextualité en tant qu’outil incitant dès lors à la réévaluation des relations binaires et dialectiques ainsi que des constructions sociales fondamentalement artificielles associées à l’altérité. Le quatrième chapitre se penche sur la thématique polyvalente du « retour » ainsi que sur la poétique de l’appartenance et du dépaysement. Afin de mettre en valeur l’hétérogénéité de ces représentations littéraires, le cinquième chapitre est consacré aux romans qui s’inspirent de l’uchronie, du roman d’anticipation et de l’écriture dystopique. La dimension transgressive de ces romans s’opère à deux niveaux, par la diversification des représentations littéraires des banlieues ainsi que par la remise en question de l’identité nationale et de la citoyenneté telles qu’on les conçoit aujourd’hui en France. Cette thèse détermine ainsi les modalités par lesquelles la littérature produite en périphérie s’insère dans la littérature « diasporique », révélant les aspects transnationaux d’une culture nationale devenue globale. Since 2005, there has been an increase in literary texts presenting alternative portraits of the French banlieues. These new depictions provide a counterpoint to media discourse that often vilifies the neglected urban peripheries of French cities. Through an examination of novels written by Thomté Ryam, Insa Sané, Abd al Malik and Kaoutar Harchi, this thesis examines the subversive strategies employed by these writers in their literary representations of the banlieues. This study is structured around five chapters which examine the coexistence of politically ‘engaged’ writing alongside innovative aesthetic techniques in intimate and powerful literary texts. Drawing on concepts from geocriticism (Westphal), postcolonial theory and diaspora studies, this analysis begins by reflecting on the banlieue as a literary space. The second chapter explores the evolution of these fictions and the use of narrative strategies including fictional testimony and polyphony. The third chapter focuses on intertextuality as a tool that encourages the re-evaluation of binary and dialectical relationships as well as the fundamentally artificial social constructs associated with otherness. The fourth chapter then considers the multifaceted theme of origins and homecoming as well as the poetics of belonging and displacement. Finally, in order to highlight the heterogeneity of these literary representations, the fifth chapter analyzes novels inspired by uchronia, the roman d’anticipation and dystopian fiction. The transgressive nature of these texts operates on two levels: the diversification of representations implicitly calls into question the compartmentalization of banlieue literature, while the novels themselves deconstruct traditional conceptions of national identity and citizenship in France. In sum, this thesis examines the ways in which a literature produced on the margins engages with ‘diasporic’ structures, thus revealing the transnational dimension of a national culture that has gone global. | Ph.D. | urban, cities, innovat | 9, 11 |
| Maier, Katharina | Gartner, Rosemary | Half Way to Freedom: The Role of Halfway Houses in Canada's Penal Landscape | Criminology | 2018-11-01 | Each year in Canada, roughly 6,500 individuals are released from federal prisons. Ex-prisoners face a range of challenges as they rejoin the community, including finding employment, reconnecting with family and friends, receiving care for physical and mental health issues, and navigating parole conditions. Not surprisingly, former prisoners tend to identify the weeks and months immediately following prison release as particularly overwhelming and daunting. The Parole Board of Canada often mandates that federal prisoners (i.e., those sentenced to a prison term of at least two years) spend the first six months of release at a community-based residential facility, commonly known as a halfway house. These transitional, NGO-operated institutions are officially tasked with providing reentry support (e.g., basic social services and rehabilitative programming), as well as ongoing supervision of individuals on conditional release. Despite their central role in ex-prisoner reintegration/supervision, little is known about how these penal institutions work and operate in ex-prisoners’ lives, and the role they occupy in broader penal processes. I seek to fill this gap by examining the perceptions and experiences of halfway house residents and workers in a north-western Canadian city. My analysis focuses on how halfway houses workers seek to govern halfway house residents during the early stages of reentry, and how former prisoners, in turn, experience, navigate, and make meaning of their time at the halfway house. I show that the diverse, and sometimes conflicting, perceptions of both halfway house residents and workers call for varied conceptualizations of halfway houses as penal sites. Specifically, I propose three ways to think through the role of halfway houses in Canada's penal system; those are (1) halfway houses as liminal sites; (2) halfway houses as mobility-producing sites; and (3) halfway houses as open prisons. These conceptualizations provide a more nuanced understanding of the different ways in which halfway houses impinge on ex-prisoners’ lives in both repressive and productive ways. Drawing on studies of punishment and prisoner reentry, I reflect on what these conceptualizations reveal about the lived realities of ex-prisoners and workers of the Canadian penal state. | Ph.D. | institut, worker, employment, health | 3, 8, 16 |
| Cheng, Richard Yi-Hsiu | Guenther, Axel | Handheld Microfluidic Bioprinter for In Situ Delivery of Skin Tissue Constructs | Biomedical Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Full-thickness burns where both the epidermal and dermal layer of the skin are destroyed lead to high patient mortality due to complications like dehydration, infection, and shock. The current standard of care involves isolating healthy skin from uninjured regions, followed by meshing and grafting onto the debrided wound site. However, this approach is not appropriate for patients with large area burns covering over 40% of the total burn surface area as insufficient quantities of healthy skin remain. Although many bioprinting approaches have been developed to meet this demand by converting biopolymer solutions, or “bioinks”, into three-dimensional tissue structures, current bioprinters are primarily designed for laboratory use and allow only small, centimeter-sized tissues to be prepared. Here, a novel handheld bioprinting system for in situ delivery of cell-containing biomaterial constructs was designed to deliver a variety of cell types embedded in alginates, collagens, or fibrins, accounting for unique physical properties and gelation mechanisms of each biomaterial. This technology was shown to be compatible with primary keratinocytes, dermal fibroblasts, and mesenchymal stem cells, allowing cell organization into distinct patterns such as stripes, spots, and bilayers using a microfluidic printhead. To enable conformal and consistent biomaterial construct delivery onto physiological substrates, a two degree-of-freedom rotational printhead and a compliant silicone wheel was integrated into the printhead setup. A fibrin-hyaluronic acid bioink composition was optimized to promote the formation of tissue constructs on tilted surfaces, balancing appropriate enzymatic gelation times with resistance to material drainage. In a case study to determine the utility of this approach, mesenchymal stromal cells delivered using the handheld bioprinter were shown to improve wound healing outcomes on four porcine models of full-thickness burn. Lastly, the capabilities of the instrument were further developed by implementing active and passive temperature control to allow consistent deposition of collagen-based bioinks, and by integrating disposable thermoplastic printheads fabricated using silicon wafer-based thermal embossing to enable sterile operation in a clinical setting. Taken together, this handheld bioprinter enables the conformal delivery of cell-containing extracellular matrix bioinks in situ and lays the foundation for future human clinical trials for the treatment of large-area, full-thickness burns. | Ph.D. | labor, health | 3, 8 |
| Oneka, Goldameir | O'Campo, Patricia | Health in all Policies (HiAP): A Realist Multiple Explanatory Case Study Examining the Implementation of HiAP | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-11-01 | Health in All Policies (HiAP) is a health promotion strategy that aims to improve population health and equity through a whole-of-government approach to the development and implementation of public policy. This dissertation tests the hypotheses about factors that shape implementation of health in all policies in multiple jurisdictions. The study: (1) through a narrative review, reviewed public health perspectives on HiAP, focusing on the role of politics in implementation, (2) using a single explanatory case study, advanced theory about buy-in for HiAP in California, and (3) through a multiple explanatory case study, advanced theory about the influence of non-state actors in HiAP implementation in a number of jurisdictions, namely, California, Norway, Ecuador, Thailand, and Scotland. Data for the narrative review were obtained from the peer-review literature and data for the explanatory case studies relied on primary data collected during 2012 to 2015 and secondary data extracted from the HARMONICS (HiAP Analysis using Realist Methods On International Case Studies) study at the St. Michael’s Hospital Centre for Urban Health Solutions. The narrative review provided broad perspectives on political considerations in the HiAP literature, while the realist explanatory case study methodology advanced theories of the mechanisms involved in the implementation of HiAP in multiple jurisdictions. These methodologies were complemented by the systems framework which serves as a heuristic tool to aid policy makers and HiAP researchers better understand how government sectors implement HiAP initiatives, and how non-governmental actors shape implementation. Primary findings are multifaceted. First, the narrative review revealed a paucity of political considerations in the public health literature on HiAP implementation. Second the findings revealed strong evidence on the factors that contributed to buy-in in California. We found buy in for HiAP occurs when: 1) there is a history of prior experience, 2) governments employ knowledge translation, 3) governments employ sectoral language, 4) governments use dual outcomes, 5) governments use expert advisors and, 6) governments employ consensus building. Third, the findings of the cross-case analysis of non-state actors influence on HiAP implementation found weak support for the influence of supranational institutions, medium support for private sector, low support for civil society. | Ph.D. | institut, urban, health | 3, 11, 16 |
| Noumi I Tchoula , Gides Christian | Jones, Glen A | Higher Education Policymaking in Africa: The Role of National Actors in Senegal and Ghana | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | Abstract While there is a considerable body of research on the role of international actors in higher education policy in Africa, this thesis explores the role of national actors in higher education policymaking in Senegal and Ghana. Specifically, it examines the nature of national higher education policy actors, their role and strategies to influence policies, as well the factors that influence their role in the policymaking process. The study uses a qualitative case study research approach to collect and analyze relevant data. Neo-corporatist policy network and postcolonial theory were adopted as analytical frameworks. Findings of this study revealed that in addition to the state, faculty, students, and higher education institutions were active policy actors in Senegal. While these constituencies exhibited different levels of organization, they were able to influence policies using several strategies, including expertise and strike actions. The policy network in Senegal pointed towards neo- corporatism, with the multiplication of functional groups representing specific constituencies, and the positioning the state as a facilitator of the policy process. In Ghana, faculty, students, and higher education institutions were similarly actively involved in the policy process. In contrast to Senegal they had a higher level of organization, with more formal and institutionalized involvement in policymaking. The policy network in Ghana was comparatively more neo-corporatist than that of Senegal, as illustrated by the presence of highly organized interest groups, but also by the role of the state that actively positioned itself as neutral in the policy process. In both countries, various factors influenced the role of national actors in the policy process, including a tradition of consultation reinforced by the recent democratization. In addition, the development of the state’s financial capacity to implement reforms was found to be a determinant in achieving policy autonomy. While the colonial legacy of each higher education system influenced the nature and involvement of policy actors, in both countries, there was a trend towards exploring other higher education models. Overall, national actors expressed strong agency in the policy process, suggesting a postcolonial approach to policymaking that criticized aspects of Western influence while embracing the potential for modernization of higher education. Résumé Au-delà des travaux de recherche considérables qui existent sur le rôle des acteurs internationaux dans les politiques publiques d’enseignement supérieur en Afrique, cette thèse explore le rôle des acteurs nationaux dans l’élaboration des politiques d’enseignement supérieur au Sénégal et au Ghana. Spécifiquement, cette thèse examine la nature de ces acteurs nationaux, leurs rôles et leurs stratégies d’influence, aussi bien que les facteurs qui influencent leurs rôles dans le processus d’élaboration des politiques publiques. Cette étude qualitative utilise l’étude de cas comme approche de recherche pour collecter et analyser les données pertinentes. Le réseau de politique néo-corporatiste et la théorie postcoloniale ont été adoptés comme cadres analytiques. Pour le Sénégal, les résultats de cette étude démontrent qu’en plus de l’État, le corps professoral, les étudiants et les institutions d’enseignement supérieur étaient des acteurs politiques engagés. Malgré le niveau varié d’organisation de ces différents acteurs, ceux-ci étaient néanmoins capables d’influencer les politiques en utilisant plusieurs stratégies, notamment leur expertise et les grèves. Le réseau de politique au Sénégal s’orientait vers un néo-corporatisme, avec la multiplication des groupes fonctionnels représentant des acteurs spécifiques. L’État se positionnait également comme facilitateur du processus de développent des politiques publiques. Au Ghana, le corps professoral, les étudiants et les institutions d’enseignement supérieur étaient également activement impliqués dans le processus d’élaboration des politiques publiques d’enseignement supérieur. À l’inverse du Sénégal, les acteurs au Ghana avaient un haut degré d’organisation et leur implication dans le processus était plus formelle et institutionnalisée. Le réseau de politique publique au Ghana était comparativement plus néo-corporatiste qu’au Sénégal, comme l’illustrait la présence de groupes d’intérêt très organisés, mais aussi par le rôle que jouait l’État, qui se positionnait de manière active comme neutre dans le processus de développement des politiques publiques d’enseignement supérieur. Dans les deux pays, plusieurs facteurs influençaient le rôle des acteurs nationaux dans le processus de développement des politiques publiques d’enseignement supérieur. Parmi ces facteurs on peut citer une tradition de consultation nationale renforcée par la démocratisation récente observée dans les deux pays. Par ailleurs, le développement de la capacité financière de l’État pour implémenter les réformes était considéré comme déterminant pour atteindre l’autonomie nationale dans le développement des politiques publiques. Alors que l’héritage colonial de chacun des deux systèmes d’enseignement supérieur influençait la nature et le niveau d’implication des acteurs nationaux, il y avait une tendance dans les deux pays à l’exploration d’autres modèles d’enseignement supérieur. Généralement, les acteurs nationaux des deux pays exprimaient leur sentiment profond d’action dans le processus de développement des politiques publiques. Ceci suggère une approche postcoloniale du développement des politiques publiques, qui critique certains aspects de l’influence occidentale tout en reconnaissant le potentiel de modernisation que représente l’enseignement supérieur. | Ph.D. | institut, labor, educat | 4, 8, 16 |
| Skolnik, Terry | Thorburn, Malcolm | Homelessness and the Commons: A Theory of Expressively Egalitarian Regulation | Law | 2019-03-01 | This doctoral thesis examines homelessness and the regulation of public property from the perspective of the republican theory of freedom (or republicanism). Republicanism construes freedom as non-domination, meaning the absence of others’ power to interfere with an individual’s actions and purposes. Expressive egalitarianism is a political ideal whereby the state expresses equal respect for individuals. This doctoral thesis advances A Theory of Expressively Egalitarian Regulation. Its central claim is that republicanism provides new insight into the reality of homelessness and how the regulation of public property undermines homeless people’s liberty in ways that existing theories ignore. Republicanism also serves as the foundation for a theory of how laws that govern public property in Canada and the U.S. can operate in a more expressively egalitarian manner, by mitigating domination and treating homeless people with greater respect. This project culminates with concrete proposals that aim to eliminate the most egregious forms of domination that homeless people experience from those laws. A Theory of Expressively Egalitarian Regulation elucidates why laws that govern public property subject homeless people to two distinct forms of domination. First, others can exert control over homeless people’s opportunities to obey laws that regulate public property. Second, homeless people must make non-egalitarian sacrifices to their basic interests to obey laws that manage public property. A core tenet of A Theory of Expressively Egalitarian Regulation is that the justifications for regulating public property result in two fundamental problems for homeless people that are elucidated by the republican theory of freedom: the non-egalitarianism and entrenchment problems. The non-egalitarianism problem implies that the state has a greater capacity to regulate and police homeless people’s basic human acts (e.g.: urinating, defecating, sitting, sleeping, etc.), whereas people with access to housing are meaningfully protected against such regulation and its enforcement. The entrenchment problem implies that the state possesses the power to entrench people in the condition of homelessness, where individuals will continue to be subject to domination that stems from the non-egalitarianism problem. Certain practical limitations (both constitutional and political), however, currently stand in the way of eliminating the domination to which homeless people are subject exclusively through the allocation of resources and entitlements by the state. For that reason, it is necessary to consider how laws that govern public property can subject homeless people to less domination and express greater respect for homeless people. This thesis concludes by offering concrete proposals for how the state can strive to achieve those aims. | S.J.D. | poverty | 1 |
| Kumar, Pradeep | Kant, Shashi | Households' Preferences, Strategic Interactions, and Joint Forest Management outcomes | Forestry | 2017-06-01 | Joint forest management (JFM), which seeks to involve local communities in the management of state-owned forests, was started in India in 1990. One of the prime objectives of JFM was to restock degraded forest areas, which has not been uniformly achieved across the country. Variation in the success of JFM has been attributed to several socioeconomic and organizational factors. Existing literature, however, has ignored the role of intracommunity strategic interactions in JFM outcomes. Similarly, roles of social preferences and individual time preferences have also been overlooked. In this research, JFM outcomes have been analyzed through the lens of intracommunity strategic interactions, social preferences, and endogenous and good-specific time preferences. A model of strategic interactions among households of a village has been developed, and it has been shown that in JFM households play a public goods game. Equilibrium of the game has been analyzed, and effects of various model parameters on equilibrium participation have been investigated. An empirical study has been carried out in five villages in central India to observe the role of social preferences in JFM outcomes. It has been found that the presence of social preference is strongly correlated with success in JFM in the village. Since in JFM households incur costs in the beginning and get benefits later, individual time preferences are crucial for JFM outcomes. Time preference analysis is usually done using Samuelson’s discounted utility (DU) model, which expresses individual time preference by a unitary construct – discount rate, and does not consider endogenous and good-specific time preferences. In this research, a theoretical model is developed, and an empirical study is used to show that households’ time preferences are endogenous and good specific. A model for the evolution of other-regarding preferences in JFM has also been developed, and it has been shown that other-regarding preferences may evolve in JFM provided a stimulus is given, community’s dependence on the forest is high, and alternatives to forest resources are available. | Ph.D. | forest, socioeconomic | 1, 15 |
| Tao, Ye | Murphy, Jennifer G | Identification of Major Factors Influencing Aerosol pH and the Quantitative Relationship between pH and Ammonia Gas/Particle Partitioning | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Aerosol pH is a crucial parameter controlling the gas-particle phase partitioning of semi-volatile species, the formation rate of secondary organic matter, and the health effects of inhalable particulate matter. In order to understand the dominant factors influencing aerosol pH and its quantitative relationship with the phase partitioning of total ammonium (NHx), I studied the 10-year record of aerosol pH at six Canadian urban and rural sites which revealed that meteorological conditions, especially temperature, strongly influenced the variability of aerosol pH. The pH sensitivities to changes in chemical composition were also distinctly different in different seasons. A simple calculation framework shows the quantitative relationship between NHx phase partitioning and aerosol pH, which can more quantitatively express the influence of different factors on pH sensitivities, values and variations. The seasonal variation of aerosol pH also led to a seasonal oscillation of PM2.5 oxalate and water-soluble Fe concentrations, which suggested complex interactions among aerosol pH, organic acids phase partitioning and particulate metal dissolution. The potential contribution of other organic acids to NHx phase partitioning was also studied. By using a custom designed sampling apparatus, I found a significant amount of organic acids balancing particulate ammonium but both of them evaporated during collection as sampling artefacts. Chemical reactions of low-volatility organic acids producing formic and acetic acid were very likely involved. I derived a double phase partitioning method that can calculate pH based on the observed ammonium and nitrate phase partitioning behavior to evaluate the impact of particulate organic ammonium. This approach can also be used to evaluate the extent to which non-volatile cations are participating in the phase partitioning of nitrate. | Ph.D. | rural, urban, water, health | 3, 6, 11, 14 |
| Williams, Vanessa | Scholey, James W | Identification of Novel Therapeutic Approaches to the Progression of Chronic Kidney Disease | Medical Science | 2020-11-01 | Progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) to renal failure is a substantial international public health problem. Existing treatments have limited effectiveness as they slow, but do not prevent, progression. This is particularly true for rare forms of CKD. Accordingly, we sought to identify and test new therapeutic approaches to Alport syndrome (AS), a rare genetic condition characterized by progressive CKD. AS is caused by mutations in the genes encoding collagen, type IV, alpha (COL4A) chains present in the glomerular basement membrane. Mutations interfere with normal assembly of the COL4A network necessary for maintenance of the glomerular filtration barrier, leading to glomerular injury, proteinuria, and interstitial fibrosis. We studied Col4a3–/– mice, an experimental model displaying these hallmarks of AS. We have reported that intrarenal expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), a peptidase that catalyzes conversion of angiotensin (Ang) II to Ang-(1–7), is decreased in Col4a3–/– mice. We therefore examined effects of recombinant ACE2 (rACE2) administration on kidney injury in Col4a3–/– mice. Treatment with rACE2 affected turnover of renal ACE2 likely through suppression of tumor necrosis factor alpha-converting enzyme. rACE2 also mitigated kidney mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) activation, fibrosis, and oxidative stress. Utilizing an unbiased approach, we defined a disease progression signature reflecting transcript-level expression patterns detected in Col4a3–/– kidneys during development of CKD. We performed computational drug repurposing by querying the Connectivity Map for potential compounds to reverse signature gene expression. Vorinostat, a lysine deacetylase (KDAC) inhibitor emerged as a potential treatment. Vorinostat reduced tubulointerstitial fibrosis and prolonged survival of Col4a3–/– mice. In tubular epithelial cells, vorinostat prevented Ang II- and albumin-induced MAPK phosphorylation and activator protein 1 activation. Taken together, this work identified two novel treatment approaches to AS: rACE2 delivery and KDAC inhibition. These studies also demonstrated that regulation of Ang peptide metabolism and lysine acetylation via ACE2 and KDACs, respectively, are important determinants of disease progression in experimental CKD, at least in part, due to their impact on MAPK signaling and evolution of interstitial fibrosis. This dissertation provides a rationale for rACE2 therapy and KDAC blockade in humans with CKD. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Elbayoumi, Usama | Austin, Zubin | Identifying the Perceived Factors Affecting Career Transition Among International Pharmacy Graduates (IPGs) Who are in the Process of Obtaining Their License in Ontario | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-03-01 | Every year, Canada welcomes thousands of Internationally Educated Health Professionals (IEHPs), including International Pharmacy Graduates (IPGs). While many IEHPs integrate into their career of choice, many others face challenges that make it difficult to enter the workplace in the profession for which they have qualified. Those in the latter group tend either to accept low-paying jobs or leave Canada to return to their home country. Accepting a low-paying job or returning to the origin country are true examples of “brain waste” and “brain drain” respectively. The cost of brain drain and brain waste is significant. To minimze the economic impact, many initiatives have been launched to support career transition among IEHPs. The literature discusses many determinants of career transition, yet it falls short on identifying factors that influence career transition among IEHPs who cannot get into the career of their choice. The purpose of this qualitative research is to identify the factors that affect career transition among IPGs. Twenty-five English-speaking IPGs who are in the process of obtaining their licence and living in Ontario were interviewed. Participants’ responses were analyzed deductively, using a set of integrated-model-of-career-transition-derived codes, as well as inductively. Motives and three categories of factors affecting career transition among IPGs were identified. The categories include person/career correspondence, personal factors, and availability of alternative career. The identified factors appear consistent with the integrated model for career transition. Three new factors—professional identity, culture, and knowledge—were identified. To better theorize the factors affecting career transition among IPGs, a model was proposed to describe these factors and their interaction. The findings of this research and the proposed model are a step toward building a body of knowledge about factors affecting career transition among IEHPs, yet more studies are needed. | Ph.D. | waste, educat, health | 3, 4, 12 |
| Relucio, Maria Angelica de Leon | Bakan, Abigail | Identities-at-Intersections: The Case of Racialized Female Migrant Teachers in Canada | Social Justice Education | 2018-11-01 | This research focuses on the unemployment and underemployment of racialized female migrant teachers in Canada, particularly in Ontario. It investigates how the social categories of the identities of female migrant teachers affect their access to the labour force. Identity is conceptualized as produced by the meanings of difference placed upon these social categories, through the power relations one navigates. The research asks: how have the identities of racialized female migrant teachers in Canada, as embedded within the social categories of race and ethnicity, sex and gender, economic class and political status, language/s spoken and linguistic accents, affected their access to the Canadian teaching workforce? The main argument is that the racialized female migrant teachers’ identities are identities-at-intersections. These identities greatly affect their access to the teaching workforce, place them in politically challenging positions, and are produced by and through their navigation within the intersections. Intersections are the created, perceived, visible, and invisible links between and among the social categories that form an identity. The social spaces within the intersections affect the positioning of minoritized subjects, such as racialized female migrant teachers, within education as a polity and other structures of hegemony. Narratives of 17 female migrant teachers, registered with the Ontario College of Teachers, from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Ontario, are utilized as standpoint epistemologies to support the main argument. In examining how racialized female migrant teachers face barriers in their access to the teaching workforce and political contexts, the conceptual analysis draws on the concept of identities-at-intersections to consider: (1) the global process of feminization of migration instigates social reproduction mechanisms and inequality; (2) the practices of racialization in societal structures, in education as a polity, in the labour market, and within Canadian nation-building, further complicate the exercise of employment and citizenship rights of minority groups, such as racialized immigrant women; (3) the persistence of neo-colonial and capitalist practices results in the continuous segregation and racialization of immigrant women; (4) despite the structural forces that work against racialized female migrant teachers as identities-at-intersections, their lived experiences manifest the use of agency and forms of resistance. | Ph.D. | rights, production, inequality, labour, employment, equality, women, gender, educat | 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, 16 |
| Wan, Yuchao | Diamond, Miriam L.||Siegel, Jeffrey A. | Impacts of Household Characteristics, Activities and Building Characteristics on Indoor Concentrations of Semi-volatile Organic Compounds | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2020-11-01 | When compared to outdoors, the indoor environment often has higher concentrations of some SVOCs, such as brominated flame retardants (BFRs), organophosphate esters (OPEs) and phthalates that are used as additive flame retardants and plasticizers from consumer products and building materials. Some outdoor SVOCs, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), can be transported into indoor environments, increasing indoor exposures to these compounds. With the increasing concerns about the implications of exposure for human health, attention has turned towards concentrations of SVOCs in indoor environments, particularly in residential dwellings where North Americans spend more than 60% of their time. This thesis documented concentrations of these SVOCs in residential buildings, focussed on the exposure disparities in SVOCs according to socio-economic status (SES), and developed SVOC sampling methods in low-SES homes. Quantitative filter forensics (QFF) was extended to portable air cleaners with portable filters to quantitatively estimate indoor particle-bound SVOCs, overcoming the limitations of traditional QFF requiring forced-air heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, while also improving indoor air quality by removing particular matter (PM). This thesis also advanced knowledge on the impacts of household characteristics, activities and building characteristics on indoor SVOC concentrations. The research found SVOC exposure disparities according to SES in Canada, reinforcing the importance of better understanding of the intersection between contaminant exposure, housing quality, household characteristics, and activities that can elevate SVOC levels, and SES, with the aim of reducing exposures from residences in an equitable manner. | Ph.D. | environment, consum, buildings, equitable, health, socio-economic | 1, 3, 4, 9, 12, 13 |
| Sun, Christopher L.F. | Chan, Timothy C.Y. | Improving Out-of-hospital Cardiac Arrest Outcomes and Automated External Defibrillator Placement Guidelines through Optimization and Predictive Modeling | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-11-01 | Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) is an often fatal, time-sensitive emergency event. OHCA survival decreases significantly for every minute without treatment. Defibrillation, an effective means to resuscitate OHCA victims, can be safely delivered by untrained bystanders using an automated external defibrillator (AED). The dissemination of AEDs in public areas for bystander use has been shown to reduce the time to defibrillation and triple OHCA survival. However, bystander AED use and OHCA survival remain low despite the increasing amount of resources dedicated to AED placement. Identifying the limitations of existing AED network design and exploring new strategies for AED deployment are crucial to ensure efforts and resources spent on AED placements directly translate to improved OHCA outcomes. To address these questions, this thesis focuses on increasing the understanding of spatiotemporal OHCA risk and developing novel tools to improve the assessment and design of AED networks, using optimization and machine learning techniques, with the ultimate goal of increasing bystander AED use and OHCA survival. Specifically, we analyzed AED placement guidelines, existing AED networks, bystander response records, and real OHCA patient data from Toronto, Canada, and Copenhagen, Denmark and identified limited temporal AED accessibility as a key factor responsible for low AED use rates. Motivated by this finding, we developed a spatiotemporal AED placement optimization model that maximizes spatial and temporal AED accessibility. We showed our model reverses the effects of limited temporal AED accessibility in both Toronto and Copenhagen, two vastly different cities with distinct geographies, populations, and EMS systems. This demonstrated the effectiveness and generalizability of our optimization approach. To validate the clinical value of our optimization model, we developed a novel in silico trial framework that computationally evaluates AED networks in a real-life deployment situation. Using this framework, we conducted two in silico trials and established the superiority of optimization approaches to current practices and established placement guidelines, which represent the gold standard of evidence-based AED placement recommendations, in improving estimated OHCA outcomes. In conclusion, our findings identify the importance of temporal AED accessibility, data-driven AED placement optimization models, and centralized decision making in improving AED use and OHCA survival. | Ph.D. | cities, health | 3, 11 |
| Toukan, Elena | Gaztambide-Fernández, Rubén | In Search of Community: A Comparative Case Study of Education-for-development and Local Community Ownership in Chile and Central Africa | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | Education evokes a powerful promise in development discourses. However, the role of local communities within these discourses has been unclear––often either romanticized or relegated to a passive context. In this comparative case study, I examine the role that local communities play in two transnational education-for-development projects: in the national capital region of the Central African Republic (CAR) and in the Williche territories of Chiloé, in Southern Chile. I examine the limitations of predominant theories of education in development and indicate how concepts of development are being redefined by populations and communities reading their own material, social, and spiritual realities in a given time and place. I draw on concepts from community studies and social solidarity to conceptualize “community” along several dimensions: place, structure and process, meaning, and time. To these, I suggest an additional dimension of capacity for protagonism. Empirically, I employ ethnographic and participatory methods in this study, building on participatory program evaluations solicited from funding partners in Luxembourg and Canada. I analyze the cases comparatively along three axes: horizontal, vertical, and transversal. Data from this study illustrate multifaceted ways that local communities respond to distinct conditions. Communities express ownership, capacity, and agency in the CAR in the midst of civil conflict to raise a network of community schools from grassroots neighbourhood and village settings. In Chiloé, communities prioritize the resurgence of Indigenous patterns of community life and systems of knowledge. In these two contexts, communities re-evaluate and reform curriculum and pedagogy according to local frameworks and exigencies: gradually in the case of the CAR, and through the creation of entirely new curriculum and pedagogical approaches in Chiloé. In conclusion, my findings indicate the importance of shifting conceptions of community away from a passive context to that of a protagonist in education-for-development discourses. The cases in this study illustrate how, when empowered through the development of capacities and abilities, communities stimulate educational development according to distinct needs, exigencies, and conceptual frameworks. As protagonists of their own paths of development, communities employ education to mobilize other vital community processes including agricultural development, cultural production, family health, and environmental protection. | Ph.D. | environment, production, cities, educat, health, agricultur | 2, 3, 4, 11, 12, 13 |
| Jamieson, Jack Robert George | McEwen, Rhonda | Independent Together: Building and Maintaining Values in a Distributed Web Infrastructure | Information Studies | 2021-03-01 | This dissertation studies a community of web developers building the IndieWeb, a modular and decentralized social web infrastructure through which people can produce and share content and participate in online communities without being dependent on corporate platforms. The purpose of this dissertation is to investigate how developers’ values shape and are shaped by this infrastructure, including how concentrations of power and influence affect individuals’ capacity to participate in design-decisions related to values. Individuals’ design activities are situated in a sociotechnical system to address influence among individual software artifacts, peers in the community, mechanisms for interoperability, and broader internet infrastructures. Multiple methods are combined to address design activities across individual, community, and infrastructural scales. I observed discussions and development activities in IndieWeb’s online chat and at in-person events, studied source-code and developer decision-making on GitHub, and conducted 15 in-depth interviews with IndieWeb contributors between April 2018 and June 2019. I engaged in critical making to reflect on and document the process of building software for this infrastructure. And I employed computational analyses including social network analysis and topic modelling to study the structure of developers’ online activities. This dissertation identifies how values of import to IndieWeb’s community are employed in designing its material architectures as well as community policies. This includes an ongoing balance between supporting individuals’ agency over personal design decisions and a need to maintain commensurability for the sake of interoperability. In many cases, early decisions about this balance have contributed to barriers for certain types of participants. Yet, those who can cross those barriers experience a lack of stabilization in IndieWeb’s infrastructure as a means of achieving richer engagements with technology. By studying design activities as longitudinal and situated within broader infrastructures, this dissertation describes how changing situations and a variety of influences affect possibilities for articulating values through material engagement, offering insights about how to support positive and healthy relationships with technology. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, health | 3, 9 |
| Scribe, Megan | Tuck, Eve | Indigenous Girlhood: Narratives of Colonial Care in Law and Literature | Social Justice Education | 2020-11-01 | As Canada assumes legal responsibility over an unprecedented number of Indigenous girls entering carceral facilities, educational boarding arrangements, and foster care, it is important to examine how the state is implicated in harming these girls. While these institutions ostensibly exist to provide Indigenous girls with care, they actually place Indigenous girls at greater risk of violence, disappearance, and death. Rather than focus on children or women more broadly, this dissertation considers how Indigenous girls' unique social location and legal minor status subjects these girls to greater state surveillance and management. What’s more, this analysis establishes connections between state violence against Indigenous girls and Canada’s settler colonial regime. This dissertation is organized into two parts. In part one, I examine the production of colonial narratives about violence against Indigenous girls through the Inquiry into the Circumstances Surrounding the Death of Phoenix Sinclair (2013) and the Inquest into the Deaths of Seven First Nations Youth (2016). In part two, I shift my attention toward Indigenous feminist literature on Indigenous girlhood. Through a close reading of Tracey Lindberg’s Birdie (2015) and The Break (2016) by Katherena Vermette, this study considers the theoretical and methodological possibilities of Indigenous feminist storytelling. Through an extensive examination of legal processes and Indigenous feminist literature, this dissertation offers innovative theoretical and methodological tools for addressing settler colonialism and other structures of oppression targeting Indigenous girls, as well as paths forward. | Ph.D. | institut, production, innovat, girl, women, educat | 4, 5, 9, 12, 16 |
| van den Boogaard, Vanessa | Prichard, Wilson | Informal Revenue Generation and the State: Evidence from Sierra Leone | Political Science | 2020-11 | How states raise revenue is critical to understanding how they govern. Orthodox analyses of the state, however, have tended to focus only on formal taxation, formal budgets, and formal revenues. I correct his bias by extending the analysis of taxation and the state beyond formal tax systems, capturing the informal dynamics of public finance that affect the majority of citizens in low-income countries. By examining informal revenue generation in the context of formal taxation, I shed light on the how and why of the state and institutional development. This study presents a new approach to understanding formal–informal institutional interactions and offers insight into a set of tangible issues of critical importance to the citizens of modern states. Classic theories of statehood anticipate that the state should always seek to control informal revenue generation. In practice, states often coexist with this informality. Informal taxing actors can reinforce state authority in unexpected ways and the relationship between the state and informal taxing actors is not necessarily zero-sum. State engagement with informal revenue generation is not always driven by a desire to gain a monopoly on taxation and authority. Instead, informal revenue generation may align with or even underpin the state’s governing strategy. Informal revenue generation can also have counterintuitive effects on statebuilding. Though informality is usually seen as detrimental to statebuilding, I show that informal revenue generation can strengthen state institutional capacity. The politics of statebuilding are, at least in part, played out at the local level in conjunction with informal institutions. It is in these local processes where informal revenue generation and informal taxing actors can reinforce modern statehood and statebuilding processes. The state that emerges may not look like a rational, Weberian institutional model. Nevertheless, it may prove more resilient and dynamic than expected. | Ph.D. | institut, resilien, taxation | 10, 11, 16 |
| Lancia, Gabriella E. | Woodruff, Earl | Instructor’s Emotional Responses during Online Asynchronous Teaching | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-03-01 | Online instruction is becoming a more dominant method of instruction; over 69% of higher education institutions now say that online learning is a critical part of their long-term strategy (Allen and Seaman, 2017). The expansion of online education can create multiple challenges for educators due to a lack of resources, time, training, and experience. Faculty are faced with learning curves around course content and delivery while simultaneously adapting to new technologies (Keengwe Kidd, 2010; Rehfuss, Kirk-Jenkins, Milliken, 2015). Therefore, online instructors' emotions are of central importance, as the well-being and general demeanour of instructors, even behind the computer, can impact their relationships with their students. Students and instructors in online learning should develop a reciprocal relationship where both understand and communicate effectively to prevent negative emotions, such as frustration and contempt. However, little is known about instructor emotional experiences in online learning, and most studies on teacher and instructor emotions are done through self-report. Survey results showed a high level of well-being and positive emotions across all instructors. Open-ended responses on the emotional profile were coded into four themes, technical and organizational, communication, instructor experiences and attention and engagement. Instructors expressed that their online learning emotions were largely dependent on student attention and engagement, with achievement specifically being the prime influence in their emotions while completing instructional activities. Further investigation of four instructors in IMotions, all of which chose to complete student feedback activities as their filmed task, highlighted the use of comments on student assignments as a means of communication between instructor and student and a method of understanding student profiles. This task proved to be a highly emotional experience, with frustration and contempt being the two most consistently reported emotions in IMotions throughout each recorded task.. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of capturing instructor emotions in real-time and through self-report. Each method captures a specific point of the instructional experience and instructors' expressed emotions during instructional tasks and their emotional state while completing these tasks. | Ph.D. | institut, educat, well-being | 3, 4, 16 |
| Meshel, Tamar | Knop, Karen | International Law and Transboundary Fresh Water Resources: A Dispute Resolution Perspective | Law | 2018-11-01 | Transboundary fresh water resources are rapidly depleting while human dependency on them continues to grow, suggesting that disputes between states over such resources are increasingly likely to arise. Whereas the dominant focus in the literature is on preventing transboundary fresh water disputes, this thesis addresses the complementary need for effective resolution of such disputes if and when they do arise. Scholarship and practice tend to belittle the utility of international law principles and dispute resolution mechanisms in this context. After identifying possible extra-legal reasons for the limited role of international law in the resolution of transboundary fresh water disputes, the thesis turns to the possible legal reasons. It examines, first, the applicable principles of international water law and, second, the available dispute resolution mechanisms. Findings from an original database of transboundary fresh water disputes that arose between 1920 and 2017 around the world lead to a conceptual reassessment of the roles that the principles of equitable and reasonable utilization and no significant harm are conventionally understood to play. The thesis proposes a reformulation of these two principles, together with the duty to cooperate, that might better guide states in the resolution of transboundary fresh water disputes. The thesis then canvasses the types of dispute resolution mechanisms available to states, and argues that restoring an earlier form of arbitration as a quasi-diplomatic process would increase the appeal and potential effectiveness of this mechanism, given the unique character of transboundary fresh water disputes. Finally, the ongoing Nile River dispute between Ethiopia and Egypt is used to illustrate the difference that the proposed reforms might make in the resolution of this, and other, transboundary fresh water disputes. | S.J.D. | water, equitable | 4, 6, 14 |
| Chang, Chi-Dan Vicky | Cotterchio, Michelle | Investigating the Association between Iron and Breast Cancer Risk and Factors Associated with Iron Status among Canadian Women | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | Iron is an essential nutrient but also a potent contributor to oxidative stress. Changes in iron status across reproductive stages may have important implications for women’s health. This dissertation investigates the role of iron as a potential risk factor for breast cancer and assesses determinants of body iron status among Canadian women. First, a systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate associations between iron and breast cancer risk. When comparing the highest vs. lowest category, heme iron intake and serum iron, but not other measures of iron intake or body iron status, were positively associated with breast cancer risk, with pooled relative risks of 1.12 (95% CI: 1.04–1.22) and 1.22 (95% CI: 1.01–1.47), respectively. Nonlinear dose-response was also observed. Second, in a population-based case-control study of Ontario women (3030 cases, 3402 controls), iron intake was not associated with overall breast cancer risk. Among premenopausal women, higher intakes of total, dietary, and dietary nonheme iron were associated with increased risk of hormone receptor-negative breast cancer. Among postmenopausal women, heme iron and supplemental iron were positively and inversely associated with breast cancer risk, respectively. Among women providing DNA (1696 cases, 1761 controls), those with genotypes resulting in reduced antioxidant capacity, particularly glutathione S-transferase deletions, were most susceptible to the effects of higher dietary iron intake. Third, based on nationally representative data from the Canadian Health Measures Survey, iron deficiency affects 16% and 4% of pre- and postmenopausal women, respectively, whereas 21% of postmenopausal women have elevated iron stores as defined by serum ferritin levels. Age, East/Southeast Asian (vs. White) race/ethnicity, alcohol consumption, and red meat (main source of heme iron) consumption were positively associated with serum ferritin in both pre- and postmenopausal women; aspirin use and dairy consumption were inversely associated with serum ferritin in postmenopausal women. Overall, these results suggest that heme iron may be a major contributor to body iron stores and a potential risk factor for breast cancer, especially among postmenopausal women. This dissertation provides additional insights into iron’s role in breast cancer etiology and highlights the importance of considering elevated iron stores in addition to iron deficiency. | Ph.D. | consum, women, health | 3, 5, 12 |
| Rosevear, Evan | Hirschl, Ran | Judicial Interpretation of Social Rights: The Rights to Education, Health, and Housing in Brazil and South Africa | Political Science | 2021-03-01 | This work examines how legal education, the organization of the legal profession, and the structure of the judiciary shape and reproduce jurisdiction-specific judicial logics of appropriateness—judicial cultures—in Brazil and South Africa and the impact of the jurisdiction-specific judicial cultures on the interpretation of constitutionalized social rights. I argue that variation in the pre-existing judicial culture of the two countries is key to explaining their different interpretations of the rights to education, health, and housing entrenched in both of their constitutions. My findings suggest that social rights jurisprudence tends toward one of two ideal types. Countries with a diffuse system of judicial review, a large and relative inexperienced judiciary, and an approach to legal reasoning emphasizing theoretical consistency with a limited role for stare decisis will tend to develop an individualized social rights jurisprudence that focuses on remedying specific harms suffered by individuals. In contrast, countries with a more centralized system of judicial review, characterized by a small number of experienced judges operating in a system which has a strong adherence to stare decisis, will develop a more policy-oriented social rights jurisprudence that emphasizes the importance of addressing structural problems faced by groups or classes of people. | Ph.D. | rights, educat, health | 3, 4, 16 |
| Flaminio, Anna Louisa | Nedelsky, Jennifer | Kiyokewin: Urban Indigenous Kinship-Visiting Methodology Approach for Urban Indigenous Youth | Law | 2018-06-01 | My research presents urban Indigenous kinship-visiting as a methodology, analytical lens, a deliberative approach and forum. An Indigenous kinship-visiting approach emphasizes the second step of R v. Gladue: how the legal community responds to the collective harms against Indigenous peoples and the present-day rehabilitative healing needs that colonialism has created. My research demonstrates an urban Indigenous kinship-visiting approach is beneficial to ensure a more thorough implementation of the Gladue decision and the Youth Criminal Justice Act. In bringing to bear an Indigenous kinship-visiting approach, I focus on Cree, Métis, and Saulteaux laws including: wahkotowin (laws of kinship relationships) and kiyokewin (laws of visiting). Through these Indigenous legal principles, I suggest a viable urban Indigenous kinship-visiting procedural and deliberative approach. An Indigenous-led kinship-visiting approach assists urban Indigenous youth to connect and build kinship relationships with the urban Indigenous community. My case study focuses on urban institutions serving Indigenous youth in Toronto: Aboriginal Legal Services and the Aboriginal Youth Court. They represent two institutions that are visiting with each other to improve the healing services to urban Indigenous youth. Both urban institutions respond to the unique needs of urban Indigenous youth and both are committed to connecting urban Indigenous youth with Indigenous-led talking circles and wellness programs. The intention is for urban Indigenous youth to feel a sense of belonging within the urban Indigenous community. The success of the Aboriginal Youth Court lies in the healthy partnership with, and informal transfer of jurisdiction to, Aboriginal Legal Services to provide Indigenous-led consensus-based deliberation and healing options. Finally, based on the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, I consider future Indigenous Law Institutes where unique Indigenous juridical systems and urban Indigenous kinship-visiting approaches can be respected. | S.J.D. | rights, justice, institut, urban, health | 3, 11, 16 |
| Sinke, Mark | Restoule, Jean-Paul | Learning to settle: Young students learning Indigenous and Canadian histories in the figured worlds of social studies classrooms | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | This research study is an investigation into how children in public elementary schools are educated through social studies curricula into ways of understanding themselves and their relationships to the nation-state, the land, and people with whom they share the land. The questions that have driven this research are these: 1) How do young students construct and negotiate the figured worlds of a social studies classroom where they engage in inquiry-based learning about settler colonialism? 2) What do students connect with, and what are they doing with the stories they hear about Indigenous and Canadian history in public school classrooms? 3) How do students in public school classrooms take up or reject settler colonialism in their learning about history? Examining these questions through the theoretical frame of figured worlds and employing a post-structural ethnographic methodology, the author relies on the fields of curriculum studies and settler colonial studies to ground this study into the experiences of young students in public schools. The frame of figured worlds allows the author to examine the ways that students talk about and enact identities-in-practice as they learn stories about Canadian and Indigenous histories. This thesis sheds light on the specific ways students configure, negotiate, and enact their own subjectivities as they learn about the settlement and growth of Canada on the Indigenous territory it now occupies. Data for this study were gathered through research groups, interviews, and classroom observations at two elementary schools in Hamilton, Ontario. Analysis and discussion of these data reveal the complex ways students both take up and\or reject discourses and narratives about settler colonialism, Indigenous resurgence, and reconciliation. The stories and experiences of students in this research reveal ways that education works to maintain settler structures of inequality and elimination through the teaching of social studies. This work also points to ways this can be challenged, and how counter-narratives and discourses are being taken up by students as they navigate their identities-in-practice in response to what they learn, who they learn it with, and the multiple voices that they listen to for guidance. | Ph.D. | inequality, equality, educat | 4, 5, 10 |
| Fried, Audrey | Hadfield, Gillian K. | Learning to Think Like a Lawyer: Solving Ill-structured Problems | Law | 2020-11-01 | Law schools often say that they aim to teach students to think like a lawyer. But what it means to think like a lawyer has never been static. Modes of legal analysis and argumentation have changed over time. Now, social and technological changes have transformed what it means to think like a lawyer once again. This time, though, thinking like a lawyer has expanded beyond different modes of analytical thinking to include judgment and creative thinking as well. Thinking like a lawyer in this more expansive sense increasingly involves solving complex, ill-structured problems, which have unknown elements, multiple solutions paths, vaguely defined goals, and for which the concepts, principles, and rules needed to reach a solution are uncertain. To prepare students, law schools should adopt a curriculum that emphasizes both a deep conceptual understanding of the law and opportunities to solve a wide variety of complex, ill-structured problems. | LL.M. | educat | 4 |
| Lowe, Julie | Fadel, Mohammad||Moumtaz, Nada | Legal Conceptions of Sexual Violation in Late Islamic Law and Modern Jordan | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2020-11-01 | Despite the miscarriages of justice that occur when modern governments purport to implement Islamic laws on rape, and despite continuing interest among some Muslims in present-day applications of Islamic law, not enough research exists on the approach to sexual violations in Islamic jurisprudence. Further, little is known regarding the legal approach of most Muslim-majority countries to sexual violence. Therefore, this dissertation addresses two main questions: First, how does Islamic law, as conceived by the Ḥanafī, Mālikī and Shāfīʿī schools from the 15th CE/9th h century onward, conceptualize sexual violence? Second, how does the law in Jordan conceptualize this issue? Based on analysis of fiqh and fatwās, and building on Hina Azam’s work, Muslim jurists primarily conceive of rape as a moral transgression against God rather than a crime against an individual victim. The association of rape with zinā (illicit intercourse), where jurists aim to cover the sin, precludes prosecution and compensation in many rape cases and impacts related issues such as reporting of sexual violence and standards of coercion. Further, alternate approaches to rape under usurpation (ightiṣāb) and banditry (ḥirāba), as well as tort compensation for injuries from sexual violence, are intertwined with moral considerations. Moreover, the moral framework combined with gendered concepts leads to additional difficulties for male victims. Analysis of criminal legislation, commentaries and a sample of court decisions indicates that Jordan has adopted a secular system for criminal law that contains little direct relation to Islamic jurisprudence. However, despite largely treating sexual violence as a crime against an individual victim, Jordan maintains a partially moral notion of sexual offences. While the moral slant has decreased in recent years, and although court judgments do not explicitly incorporate notions not found in the Criminal Code, there is some indication of non-written social mores guiding aspects of judicial proceedings. | Ph.D. | justice, gender | 5, 16 |
| Edwards, Joan Elizabeth | Howell, Doris | Life After Colorectal Cancer: A Qualitative Study of Health and Illness Post-treatment | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | Approximately 1 in 14 Canadians will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer (CRC) in their lifetime. Physical, psychosocial, and practical issues are experienced post CRC treatment. Given the rise of chronic disease, “health” can be defined as the ability to adapt and self-manage in the face of physical, emotional, and social challenges (Huber et al., 2011) and “cancer survivorship” has been reframed as a public health issue (CDC, 2004). The objective of this study was to explore, through the lens of Structural Interactionism (Eakin MacEachen, 1998), how individuals who have completed curative treatment for early-stage CRC understand, experience, and respond to health, illness, and recovery. The methodological framework of Critical, Post-structural Interaction (Sundin Fahy, 2008) facilitated the examination of the interplay between individual and structural factors in participants’ post treatment experiences. Despite the presence of debilitating and potentially stigmatizing post treatment side effects, participants (n = 16) generally characterized their current state as one of “health” versus “illness.” Significant effort was exerted to minimize the impact of CRC on daily life. Participants appeared to preserve a strong identification as “healthy” through involvement in valued roles and activities; however, this was threatened by worry about the return of cancer. Self-taught cognitive and behavioural strategies were used to maintain this balance. Participants generally disagreed with and actively distanced themselves from the term “survivor.” Study findings are organized into three major themes: (1) “Cancer is an inconvenience,” (2) “I am healthy,” and (3) “I am not a cancer survivor.” The interaction between and among themes is illustrated in a conceptual model that depicts the core process of “working hard to minimize illness.” This study highlights the complexities inherent in CRC recovery and contributes to the body of knowledge from which initiatives to improve the health of this population may be derived. Collectively, study findings highlight the importance of considering both individual and structural factors to advance research and programming to support those recovering from CRC. Rethinking the cancer survivorship discourse, as well as the organization of survivorship care, may be important first steps in efforts to support this growing population. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Bonin, Pierre-Olivier | Cochrane, Christopher B | Linguistic Asymmetries, Relative Deprivation, Discrimination, Cosmopolitanism, and Localism Among Official Language Minorities: Three Studies on the Anglo-Quebecer and Franco-Ontarian Communities | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation comprises three studies on the Anglo-Quebecer and Franco-Ontarian communities using original survey data collected in 2017. The first study assesses Canada’s two official languages with updated census data, then compares how their status is perceived. Evidence reveals that, while Canadian society is becoming increasingly multilingual, and while English and French are both losing ground as mother tongues and languages used most often at home, both are not equally used at work. English is making progress in the province of Québec as a language of work, whereas French is only rarely used by workers outside the province of Québec and is becoming increasingly marginal in the province of Ontario. A group comparison shows that Franco-Ontarians are much more likely than Anglo-Quebecers to judge that the language of the outgroup (or the language of the majority group) is “useful”. Conversely, Anglo-Quebecers are much more likely than Franco-Ontarians to judge that their own language, or the language of the ingroup, is “useful”. The second study finds that there is evidence of a state of relative deprivation among Anglo-Quebecers respondents. The latter judge that their group is at a disadvantage in comparison with francophones and consider their minority group to be the victim of discrimination in the province of Québec. Updated census data on family income of the majority and minority groups reveal that Anglophones are over-represented in the lower income brackets and under-represented in the middle categories, thus challenging conventional wisdom about Anglophones being a wealthy class of citizens in Québec. Predictive models show that, contrary to expectations, the higher the state of relative deprivation and perceived discrimination, the lower the likelihood of being an organizational activist. The third study compares the strength of local, provincial, federal, and global affiliations of Anglo-Quebecers and Franco-Ontarians and examines whether organizational engagement is a determinant of belonging. Results reveal that organizational activists among both minority groups are less likely to identify as cosmopolitan than rank-and-file members and more likely to identify with other, more local types of affiliation. As a whole, the dissertation highlights the relevance of language in understanding Canadian politics. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| Krenca, Klaudia | Chen, Xi Becky | Literacy Development in Canadian French Immersion Students: The Role of Oral Language | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | The overarching goals of this dissertation were to examine the extent to which lower-level oral language skills facilitate phonological awareness and to investigate the importance of higher-level oral language skills in the development of reading comprehension among children enrolled in Canadian French immersion programs. The first study investigated how lexical restructuring can stimulate children’s phonological awareness in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages. Sixty-two emerging English (L1) – French (L2) bilingual children were taught new English and French word pairs differing minimally in phonological contrast. The results indicated that lexical specificity in English at the beginning of Grade 1 mediated the relationship between English vocabulary and English phonological awareness both concurrently and longitudinally. Furthermore, a longitudinal relationship was established among French vocabulary, French lexical specificity, and French phonological awareness at the end of Grade 1. Notably, cross-language transfer from English was a better predictor of development in French phonological awareness, especially for words that contained phonological contrasts common to both languages. The second study was designed to understand the extent to which second graders’ comprehension monitoring predicts reading comprehension in the third grade. The ability to monitor one’s comprehension was assessed by the proficiency to detect internal inconsistencies in orally presented stories among 115 emerging bilingual children. The concurrent results revealed that in Grade 3, children’s comprehension monitoring served as a unique predictor of reading comprehension within English and French, over and above the contribution of word reading and vocabulary. This relationship was not observed in Grade 2. Moreover, the longitudinal analyses indicated that Grade 2 children’s comprehension monitoring in English made a significant contribution to English reading comprehension in Grade 3, even after controlling for word reading, vocabulary, and the autoregressor variable. However, this relationship was not established in the L2. Overall, the results from this study lay the groundwork for the development of screening measures that can be used by educators to support phonological foundations of literacy. Furthermore, the findings suggest there is a need to include support for higher-level language skills, such as the ability to monitor one’s comprehension, in the early stages of bilingual reading instruction. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Ozonder, Gozde | Miller, Eric J. | Longitudinal Analysis of Out-of-home Activity Generation in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area | Civil Engineering | 2020-11-01 | “Activity generation” is a critical component of any agent-based, activity-based travel demand model since it determines the overall activity/travel levels, which are then utilized for answering various transportation-, land use- and environment-related research/policy questions. This thesis reports on significant progress in three research areas regarding activity generation modelling with a focus on activity participation/frequency and timing (start time/duration) decisions. The analyses cover investigating the behaviour associated mainly with work- and school-related activities, in addition to shopping and other activities, in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area over a 20-year period between 1996 and 2016. First, cross-sectional models and four types of “joint/pooled” models of activity/trip generation are estimated for various activity purposes to examine changes in behaviour over time. Strong temporal stability is observed in utility-based econometric model parameters when the parameter estimates of cross-sectional and joint models are statistically compared. This major contribution supports the development and use of robust parametric joint models for forecasting applications in the region utilizing full information accrued over the years. Second, to explore the interpretability of machine learning models and to inspect how these powerful tools can be leveraged within a microsimulation framework, longitudinal models of work and school activity participation are developed using a diverse set of algorithms, which are compared to microeconomic models. Remarkable parallelism is detected between microeconomic models and machine learning algorithms in terms of activity frequency model specifications. This notable finding encourages researchers to benefit from both modelling domains, integrating their strengths. Third, joint models of activity start time and duration are built adopting a copula approach for work and school activities of agents/individuals from mutually exclusive population subsamples: “worker”, “student”, and “both worker and student”. Simultaneous activity episode start time and duration simulation models show that complex timing behaviour can be captured with relatively parsimonious models. Each of these three modelling applications additionally demonstrates the significance of establishing a comprehensive disaggregation structure for the analyses, since considerable differences have been observed across distinct agent classes and activity types. | Ph.D. | land use, environment, worker | 8, 13, 15 |
| Hamlyn, Erin Grace | Munjic, Sanda | Magic Mirrors: Body Politics and Representations of Femininity in Contemporary Hispanic and French Caribbean Women’s Writing | Spanish | 2021-03-01 | This dissertation examines femininity as mythological imagery, historical narrative, cultural cornerstone, and physical entity, both sexual and sexualized in a selection of short stories by Caribbean women authors who consider the French and Spanish Caribbean home. This study aims to unpack ways in which women are re-creating femininity through writing and story-telling, and how they are challenging pre-existing structures of “History” and institutionalized metanarrative as a community of writers, while also addressing corporeality on individual and personalized levels. This project positions this type of writing as an emerging genre that pushes for open dialogue surrounding conceptualizations of femininity and women’s sexuality as intrinsic components of identity. Comparative readings of experience-oriented literary texts with critical theory, developed by female scholars and writers, show that sharing and participation establish a platform for dialogue from which socio-historical change may ensue. The first chapter utilizes theories of corporeality and writing, and themes of sexual fluidity emerge in the study of female-authored short stories, traditionally disseminated in the Caribbean through orality and periodical-style publications. Within the framework of feminist theory, the writing female body is posited as a surface of inscription and projection, but also as a site of production and revolution. The second chapter focuses on ecofeminism as a theoretical mechanism that may bridge the gaps between socially constructed notions of femininity and living women. The importance of physical experience and relationships with the natural world are prominent here, as explored through texts that tie environmental preservation to corporeal ideology through supernatural aspects of being. The third and final chapter highlights the role of collective consciousness and memory-keeping in the creation and development of history and human narrative, where femininity and desire are positioned on an energetic continuum rather than a purely gendered abstraction. The overarching scope of this project is to explore a body of work that is novel, subversive, specifically female-produced, and of critical importance in an ever-globalized world, and that reveals the power of the personal in the collective, and of the collective in the personal. | Ph.D. | institut, environment, production, women, gender | 5, 12, 13, 16 |
| Li, Yi | Jones, Dylan B | Mainland Southeast Asia Precipitation: Natural Variability, Teleconnection, and Response to External Forcing | Physics | 2020-11-01 | Mainland Southeast Asia (SEA) has been considered to be a particularly vulnerable region to climate change. Reducing uncertainty in future projections of changes in SEA precipitation requires a better understanding of the processes that drive variability in present day SEA precipitation. Here we examined the impact of natural climate variability and anthropogenic forcing associated with anthropogenic aerosols on precipitation in SEA. We also investigated the resolution dependence of modeled precipitation extremes in SEA using the Community Earth System Model (CESM). The sources of moisture for local precipitation over mainland SEA and the interannual variability in precipitation during the Indian summer monsoon period were examined using a version of CESM with water tagging capability. We found that interannual variability in precipitation over mainland SEA during the monsoon onset is associated with an El Niño and Southern Oscillation (ENSO) induced shift in the Indian summer monsoon onset, whereas variations in precipitation later in the monsoon period reflect variations in the monsoon circulation and tropical cyclonic activity. We examined the capability of a variable resolution version of CESM to simulate regional climate features in SEA, especially extreme precipitation events. Compared to coarse-resolution versions of CESM, we found that variable-resolution CESM (VR-CESM) significantly improved the tail distribution of precipitation, with smaller biases in N-year-return-period events with respect to the reference data sets. In addition to a more accurate representation of the topography, the better resolved vertical moisture flux in VR-CESM increased resolved-scale precipitation, leading to better simulation of the precipitation extremes. The impact of anthropogenic aerosols on regional climate over the Asian monsoon region was also examined using VR-CESM. It was found that anthropogenic aerosols tend to cause an overall reduction in the summer mean and extreme precipitation over the Asian continent through a weakening of the Asian summer monsoon circulation. The decrease in the precipitation over mainland SEA was due to an ocean-mediated response to the aerosol forcing, whereas the reduction in precipitation over East Asia was likely caused by a direct atmosphere adjustment to the aerosol forcing. | Ph.D. | ocean, climate, water | 6, 13, 14 |
| Yu, Leqian | Boland, Alana | Making Rural Finance in Contemporary China: National Policies, Local Practices, Geographical Embeddedness | Geography | 2020-11-01 | Since the 2000s, the changing global financial landscape has attracted increasing attention from geographers, particularly after the 2008 financial crisis. China’s rural banking sector, still a marginal site in research on the geographies of finance, is a fast-growing financial frontier. In the decade since 2008, bank credit issued to the rural sector has increased six fold to 4.6 trillion USD in 2018. The rapid expansion of this financial frontier owes much to ongoing reforms led by the Chinese state. Since 2003, the Chinese government has been initiating a series of market-based reforms aimed at building a “modern rural financial system” to better support farmers, agriculture and rural development. This dissertation explores the changes that have reshaped the banking system in rural China as a distinct case of financialization. Building on economic geography scholarship that argues the need for financialization to be understood as place-specific social processes, this research adopts a multi-scalar approach. I link a macro-level political economic analysis of China’s rural financial policies with ground-level observation of financial practice. Primary research methods include ethnographically-informed research in a rural bank in Greater Chengdu Area (Sichuan Province), and textual analysis of policy documents and historical archives. The research finds that the transformation of the banking system in rural China that began in the early 2000s has an internal logic shaped by the political economic conditions of contemporary China, with traces of the ideals and practices of socialist development in China. Given such, China’s rural financialization cannot be framed as following a straightforward neoliberalization process, the often-applied meta-frame for financialization. Rather than providing a local variant of neoliberal globalization, I argue that financialization in rural China needs to be understood as a localized, contextualized process – the trajectory of which is shaped by contested logics operating at multiple scales. | Ph.D. | rural, agricultur | 2, 11 |
| French, Sarah Kathryn | McCauley, Shannon J | Mechanisms Structuring Dragonfly Communities across Canopy and Forest Cover Gradients | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-11-01 | Forest regrowth, which is occurring across North America, may have large impacts on the structure of larval dragonfly assemblages. My thesis examined how habitat selection, movement behaviour, and species-sorting shape aquatic larval dragonfly assemblages in response to landscape heterogeneity, including forest cover in the landscape and canopy cover over ponds. The mechanisms structuring aquatic communities across environmental gradients are often difficult to distinguish, so I used multiple approaches to assess the contributions of different mechanisms to these observed patterns. Firstly, I tested the role of adult habitat selection versus larval species-sorting in structuring larval dragonfly assemblages across a canopy gradient using artificial aquatic habitats (i.e. mesocosms) placed across gradients of artificial shading and of natural canopy cover. Adult dragonflies preferentially visited aquatic mesocosms situated under open canopy. I tested for species-sorting effects by placing larvae in mesocosms across a natural canopy cover gradient, but found no evidence of differential mortality or growth. Secondly, I examined the effects of forest cover in the terrestrial landscape on adult dragonfly movement. Adults showed preferences for open field environments rather than closed forest environments, moving marginally more often in fields, more often towards fields, and flying longer in fields. However, adults’ direction of movement also depended on what environments they were released in, and their flight times were species-specific. Lastly, I investigated how forest cover in the landscape and pond canopy cover affected the distribution of larval dragonflies, as well as their reassembly in ponds following a drying event. Both local (pond canopy cover, permanence, and area) and landscape (pond connectivity based on distance and amount of forest cover between ponds) heterogeneity affected species diversity and recovery following a drying event. My thesis work provides new insights into how aquatic communities are structured by forest and canopy cover, and how they might respond to forest regrowth. | Ph.D. | forest, environment | 13, 15 |
| Goel, Mukesh | Childs, Ruth | Mental Health Literacies of Secondary School Teachers in Ontario: A Mixed Methods Study | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | The purpose of this mixed methods study is to investigate the mental health literacies (MHL) of secondary school teachers in Ontario – specifically, how they understand and address the mental health (MH) challenges of students. Over the past decade, the Ontario Ministry of Education (MOE) has encouraged the improvement of teachers’ MHL; this study, therefore, also investigates what opportunities teachers have access to and what barriers they face in supporting students’ MH. A total of 211 secondary school teachers completed an online survey and 21 teachers participated in one-on-one interviews. Approximately three-quarters of the interviewed teachers showed little interest in advancing their knowledge and understanding; the ones who showed interest either had someone in their family, extended family or friends’ circle impacted with MH challenges or their school had a strong focus on MH. Based on the 211 survey respondents, survey results showed that 61.1% of teachers did not support students with MH challenges in the academic session 2017-2018. For the interviewees and survey respondents who participated in the study, the study also showed that teachers from Co-op Education, Special Education, and Guidance Departments were more aware of MH challenges and had more confidence in assisting students with MH challenges. Analyses of the interview data suggest that motivation and exposure to opportunity are the two factors that could drive a teacher’s interest in learning about MH challenges. If a teacher with high intrinsic or extrinsic (administration driven) motivation is provided with many opportunities and/or resources, she or he will take interest and learn about MH of students. However, based on the survey results of survey respondents, only 24.6% of the teachers surveyed in this study worked in schools where principals were attempting to make teachers aware of MH resources. This study has implications for the MOE and the school boards. It is imperative for the MOE to ensure that the school boards provide consistent and continuous professional development to improve educators’ MHL so that they are able to assist students with MH challenges. | Ph.D. | educat, health | 3, 4 |
| Peat, William George | Joshee, Reva | Mind the Gap: How Economically Disadvantaged Students Navigate Elite Private Schools in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | “Mind the gap” is a qualitative study rooted in the sociology of education, dealing with educational inequality in Canada. It asked: what is the experience of working-class students in elite secondary schools, and are the benefits of achieving social mobility worth the costs? In a country whose populace has long seen itself as middle class, but where social inequality is a growing concern and social mobility increasingly rare, the study examined the journey of three working-class students seeking to become upwardly mobile by attending elite private schools in Ontario. The study examined their experiences, and employed a combination of semistructured, in-depth interviews, and follow-up conversations. It also drew on relationships that formed as a result of them, as well as on the researcher’s knowledge of the culture of the schools the students attended. In addition, it drew upon the lived experience of the researcher, who shares similar elements of the participants’ socioeconomic background. The data produced was used to develop literary and visual portraits. The process was collaborative and enabled the participants to become co-creators in the creation of their portraits, which were subject to analyses. More broadly, the study examined the ways in which the participants acquired social capital, and the role this capital played facilitating the acquisition of the Three C’s (credentials, connections, confidence), and personal agency. It explored the ways the participants’ social networks evolved. It revealed that the unconditional support of the participants’ families mediated their experience of habitus clivé, and that elite private schools provided a pathway to become socially mobile. The study affirmed that the benefits of achieving social mobility outweighed the costs, whether they were psychic, social, or financial. It also identified trace elements of class status that endured, and demonstrated that elite schools served as incubators of innovation. It revealed that the policies, practices, and cultures that characterize elite private schools in Ontario are worthy of consideration for policy makers and practitioners, as they seek to assist students to become socially mobile, wherever they may be. | Ph.D. | inequality, innovat, labor, equality, educat, socioeconomic | 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 |
| Lee, Michael | Koga, Midori | Mindsets: Case Studies on Incremental and Entity Theories in Undergraduate Music Students | Music | 2021-06 | American psychologist Carol Dweck coined terms for two dichotomous theories of intelligence––entity and incremental theories––which depict the general trends of learners. Fixed mindset learners internalize entity theories and view their intelligence or ability as a fixed, stable unit that is incapable of growth past the individual’s own genetic limitations. Growth mindset learners believe in incremental theories and see their intelligence as dynamic, wherein their abilities are a direct product of their efforts. Dweck argues that adopting an incremental theory of learning (a growth mindset) can be beneficial to the learning process. Combining this body of psychological literature with auxiliary areas of psychology (e.g. self-determination theory), I conducted two case studies to analyze how these beliefs manifested in second-year instrumental music majors at Canadian post-secondary institutions. Through a six-week research period of one-on-one lessons, independent practice sessions, and interviews, I investigated the participants’ respective upbringings, their methods of framing goals, and their responses to challenges and criticisms with the aim of understanding how music students’ beliefs about mindsets affect their learning, as well as how music teachers may be able to maximize growth-oriented thinking in their interactions with students. After an analysis of the data, I concluded that the nurturing of growth mindsets had a positive effect on the students’ respective levels of patience, self-compassion, and resilience in dealing with the learning challenges inherent in music performance. The data highlighted how the participants’ implicit theories of intelligence were instilled in them by their parents and educators throughout their childhoods, and how growth-minded beliefs may be further nurtured through empathetic and process-oriented guidance. | D.M.A. | institut, resilien, educat | 4, 11, 16 |
| Marcel, Faith | Piccardo, Enrica | Mobile Mixed Reality Technologies for Language Teaching and Learning | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | Mobile learning technologies have become ubiquitous, accessible tools for many teachers and learners in higher education contexts across the globe; however, the uptake of emerging, innovative mobile applications is not always reflected in their implementation in language learning classrooms. Mixed Reality (MR) applications, which include both Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) represent examples of such largely unexplored, state-of the art, immersive technologies in language education. Recent literature suggests the use of MR technologies can offer benefits to language learners in enhancing vocabulary development (Godwin-Jones, 2016; Liu Tsai, 2013), motivation and engagement (Ibáñez, Kloos, Leony, Rueda, Maroto, 2011; Liu, Tan, Chu, 2010; Dunleavy Dede, 2014) and collaborative, multimodal meaning-making (Ho, Nelson, Müeller-Wittig, 2011). Despite these advantages, there has been limited empirically-based research which explores specific benefits and affordances in language learning. Research revealing the advantages of AR and VR exists, however, in other educational settings, including: Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences, Business, Law, Science, Engineering and Health (Lok et al., 2006; Bacca, Baldiris, Fabregat, Graf, 2014; Marcel, 2019). Through the implementation of VR in a quasi-experimental, mixed-methods research study in a college in Canada, with teachers and learners in a multi-level English for Academic Preparation (EAP) program, this study explores benefits, challenges and affordances of MR technologies within a Canadian higher education context. The analysis of data from EAP students (N = 95) and instructors (N = 6) includes vocabulary assessments, surveys, Nearpod data, VoiceThread reflections, interviews, and classroom observations. Results reveal trends in learning gains by the experimental groups in vocabulary scores and a number of benefits and affordances of the VR technology implementation reported by both students and instructors. While the main goal of this research was to explore how mobile MR applications could be used in language learning contexts in higher education to improve learning outcomes through experiential learning activities with these innovative technologies, it is hoped that this research will also serve to inform practice for educators in their selection and use of educational learning technologies and contribute to the growing body of knowledge and research in this field. | Ph.D. | innovat, labor, educat, health | 3, 4, 8, 9 |
| Sato, Hiromitsu | Cowling, Sharon A | Modeling Neotropical Ecosystems during the Last Glacial Maximum | Earth Sciences | 2019-11-01 | Rich biodiversity and biogeochemical significance has long motivated research on Neotropical ecosystems, though regionally-focused modeling studies remain relatively sparse and limited in scope. Three individual projects were performed to address potential issues in the modeling of Neotropical ecosystems in past and present contexts with particular emphasis on the Last Glacial Maximum. The first project was focused on discerning the effects of low atmospheric carbon dioxide and temperature on the carbon exchange of a well-watered tropical forest using a canopy-scale ecophysiological model. The radiative transfer regime and canopy energy balance were used to interpret the effect of environmental variables on carbon fluxes, as well as the reproduction of an observed phenomena where leaf temperature drops below air temperature. The second project was an analysis of a four-year data set of ecosystem fluxes designed to assess the seasonal patterns of carbon uptake and the impacts of drought from a tropical dry forest site in Santa Rosa National Park, Costa Rica. A hyperbolic light response function was used to partition net ecosystem exchange into gross primary productivty and ecosystem respiration, while extracting estimates of ecosystem-level photosynthetic radiation and saturated rates of uptake. Bursts of carbon dioxide were observed at the onset of the rainy season suggesting the occurrence of the `Birch Effect' within tropical dry forest ecosystems. The third project was a regional-scale modeling study of vegetation cover in the Neotropics during the Last Glacial Maximum, focusing on the individual and interactive effects of fire and low carbon dioxide on biome distribution and tree cover. Inclusion of fire and the effects of low carbon dioxide improved agreement with pollen records and suggest the past prevalence of grassier, more open ecosystems. Modeling evidence was found to support the existence of hypothesized routes and barriers to dispersal during the Last Glacial Maximum, bolstering theories of range expansion and diversification over Pleistocene climatic oscillations. | Ph.D. | ecolog, biodivers, forest, environment, production, energy, water | 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Liu, Xingchen | Behdinan, Kamran | Modelling and Experimentation for Temperature Prediction of a Serpentine Belt Drive System | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11-01 | The scope of this thesis includes the development of three thermal models that can predict thermal distributions in an arbitrary serpentine belt drive system. The wide use of fibre-reinforced polymers (FRPs) pulleys in transmission systems has improved the systematic dynamic respond time and efficiency but also increased the possibility of pulley thermal destruction. To overcome this issue, this thesis presents three innovative and advanced thermal models for efficiently and accurately calculate temperature distributions. The first model uses the classical heat partitioning equations and analytically develops ordinary differential equations (ODEs) to calculate the thermal distribution inside irregular geometric structures of a pulley in the pulley thermal analysis. The second model adds a new set of analytical equations to determine the thermal flows of each pulley and belt temperature and integrate the pulley thermal analysis in the first model to calculate the temperature plots of pulleys. The third model replaces the previous analytical pulley thermal analysis with an innovative analytical-numerical method. It modifies pre-calculated numerical thermal simulations based on baseline conditions to deliver temperature plots for pulleys in working scenarios, so that it could maintain the fast solving speed and high accuracy. The substantial advantage of these models is that the time currently consumed by existing methods can be reduced to a few seconds without compromising the accuracy of the results. Validation experiments were conducted to obtain temperatures in the test cases, and these results demonstrate good agreement with the calculated temperatures. The temperature deviation between the calculated and experimental results are below 20% of absolute temperature rise and the solution time is less than ten seconds, making these models presented here successfully applicable for belt system design and materials research for pulleys. | Ph.D. | consum, innovat | 9, 12 |
| Hammadi, Ayad Ali | Miller, Eric J. | Modelling Transportation System Impacts of Housing Supply Dynamics | Civil Engineering | 2020-11-01 | This thesis investigates housing supply dynamics in the City of Toronto and the related transportation impacts in two parts. In the first part, the dynamic temporal interaction of housing starts, public transit ridership, and national/regional socioeconomic factors is investigated using a multichannel singular spectrum analysis (MSSA). Recognizing the importance of a holistic view of the relationship between the interacting variables temporal movements supports research to integrate methods from different analytical domains, or “silos”. The research strategy is to fuse the nonparametric MSSA analysis of the variables series collection with Granger bidirectional/bivariate causality and feedback tests to build a statistically significant causal loop that can empirically explain the oscillatory components in the system. A system view of the temporal interaction of the variables is constructed from the MSSA analysis spectrum decomposition and Granger causality tests. The system’s nonlinear dynamic fingerprint is identified using cause-effect diagrams of the system’s components. Stock components are introduced to absorb the interactions’ lags and to actuate the system’s dynamical behaviour. In the second part of the thesis a traffic impact sketch planning (TISP) model is developed and implemented for estimating the likely travel demand and behaviour generated by Bayside mixed-use development (MXD), a major land development project at Waterfront Toronto. TISP model deploys the operational TASHA-based GTAModel V4.1 travel demand model system for a detailed transportation impacts assessment of the proposed precinct development. To enable the use of an agent-based microsimulation (ABM) model, a population synthesis procedure is developed that converts the architectural design of the development; that is, number and type of dwellings by number of bedrooms and non-residential floorspace into relevant attributes of households, persons, and employment that are likely to occupy the units. Datasets of different geographic areas of Toronto, with some common control variables, are synthesized and cascaded into a disaggregate population of residents and non-residents for Bayside MXD. The diurnal peaking travel times trips estimated by TISP model are compared with the peak period trips shown in the project’s traffic impact study and the Trip Generation Manual peak-hour weekday trip rates of relevant land uses. | Ph.D. | land use, employment, water, socioeconomic | 1, 6, 8, 14, 15 |
| Ross, Megan | Cossman, Brenda | Morality Police: Sexuality Governance at the League of Nations | Law | 2020-11-01 | During the interwar period, the international community was zealously involved in the regulation of sexuality and vice under the auspices of the League of Nations. The roaring twenties had ushered with it a revival of morality policing in Europe and North America. The League of Nations Sex Trafficking Committee, led by social purity reformers and religious organizations, operated to create policy aimed at eliminating vice districts, music halls, and cabarets. Once this international policy was issued, volunteer organizations (spread literally around the globe) would carry out the carceral policy directives. Morality Police is the first genealogy of this remarkable period, providing an “ontology of ourselves” that seeks to expose the disreputable origins of anti-sex trafficking campaigns. This project narrates how the international community policed morality, following the twists and turns as they occurred on the Sex Trafficking Committee and at local levels from France to India. Drawing on over 10,000 archival documents collected from the League of Nations archive, this project argues that rather than being primarily concerned with abolishing state regulated prostitution, the Sex Trafficking Committee more insidiously engaged in a campaign of sexuality governance. While this campaign to halt changing sexual and cultural norms was ultimately unsuccessful, it was remarkably effective at repressing and disciplining sexual outlaws during its tenure. This project concludes with a stark reminder that while the campaign to stamp out vice and immorality in the interwar period was ultimately a failure, its legacy is still with us. Arguing that the laws and propaganda campaigns during this period created stories of international trafficking that were so powerful, the narratives became folklore that survived generations awaiting another eruption of moral panic. | S.J.D. | governance, women | 5, 16 |
| Ghaffari Mosanenzadeh, Shahriar | Naguib, Hani||Park, Chul B | Multifunctional Polyimide Aerogels with Tailored Nanostructure Assembly and Enhanced Properties | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Aerogels are highly porous solid materials with more than 80% porosity and the cell size in mesoporous, 2-50 nm, range. The nanostructure assembly and high porosity provided the aerogels with unique electrical, thermal, physical, and mechanical properties. With respect the fast development of the modern technology and the need for the metamaterials with improved performance, recently the aerogels are received significant attention from the scientist. Based on the previous studies among the aerogel types, the polyimide aerogels presented the capability to achieve high mechanical flexibility in thin film geometries as well as moisture resistance. These along with the higher service temperature over the other organics, presented the potential of polyimide aerogels to be used in wide range of industrial applications. However, with respect to the very sensitive relations between the aerogel nanostructure configuration and its properties, the lack of control on aerogel nanostructure formation significantly reduced the possibility of tailoring polyimide aerogel properties to fit with in the industrial requirements. Given this background, the focus of this research is to design and develop robust methods to tailor the aerogels nanostructure configuration to achieve the aerogels with optimum performance. From the results four different successful strategies in tailoring the aerogel nanostructure assembly and controlling its properties are implemented in this work, and the properties of the fabricated aerogel prototypes are characterized through fully parametric studies. The capability of tailoring and improving the properties of polyimide aerogels may warrant their penetration in wide range of industrial applications. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Rauen Firkowski, Carina | Fortin, Marie-Josée||Cadotte, Marc W | Multi-trophic Metacommunity Responses to Disturbances in a Heterogeneous World | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2020-11-01 | Environmental heterogeneity is a fundamental component of ecological systems, shaping patterns of diversity and stability through dispersal, across space and time. However, intense anthropogenic activities undermine the ecological mechanisms that maintain diversity and the resilience of ecological systems. Although the influence of environmental heterogeneity, dispersal, and species interactions on disturbances have been extensively studied in isolation, a unified approach is needed to understand disturbance and post-disturbance recovery when all these ecological mechanisms vary or are themselves influenced by anthropogenic activity. The objective of my thesis is to evaluate the role of environmental heterogeneity, dispersal and trophic structure in influencing the response of multi-trophic metacommunities to disturbances. In Chapter 1, I offered an introduction to the metacommunity concepts of environmental heterogeneity, dispersal, species interactions, and disturbances, summarizing how metacommunity studies have addressed their relationships. The results of a literature review show that metacommunity studies are greatly skewed to evaluate the various roles of dispersal in homogeneous environments. I explicitly discuss how future metacommunity studies can incorporate further complexity to address the interactive effects of environmental heterogeneity, dispersal, species interactions, and disturbances. In Chapter 2, I evaluated the effects of temporal environmental heterogeneity on metacommunity synchrony, stability and diversity, using a complementary simulation model and microcosm experiment. Environmental fluctuations resulted in greater asynchrony and regional stability, through increased species richness and compositional heterogeneity. For Chapter 3, I investigated the contributions of spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity to buffer the impacts of a local disturbance of direct mortality, using a model and microcosm experiment. While spatial or temporal environmental heterogeneity allowed for greater metacommunity biomass recovery following disturbance compared to homogeneous environments, spatio-temporal heterogeneity led to the greatest recovery potential. In Chapter 4, I contrasted the contributions of spatio-temporal heterogeneity and dispersal to the simulated impact of different sources of disturbance: connectivity loss, habitat destruction, patch depletion and metacommunity depletion. Results highlighted the importance of maintaining multi-trophic interactions, environmental heterogeneity and species dispersal abilities for heightened resistance to disturbances. Altogether, the findings of my thesis underscore the value and importance of evaluating ecological responses through the interaction of key ecological processes. | Ph.D. | ecolog, environment, resilien, urban, food | 2, 11, 13, 15 |
| Cherry-Reid, Katharine A | Goldstein, Tara | Music to our Ears: Using a Queer Folk Song Pedagogy to do Gender and Sexuality Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | This study is situated in current social-political conversations in Canada about how to do gender and sexuality education, and what content should and should not be included in Ontario’s Health and Physical Education curriculum. This research documents a 2 and a ½ month study in which a queer folk song pedagogy was used to conduct gender and sexuality education with 13 students, ages 16-20 years old, in an alternative secondary school classroom in Ontario. Using a practitioner research methodology, the students, the classroom teacher, and the researcher listened to a set of queer folk songs previously composed from interviews with LGBTQ2S+ families and queerspawn; wrote journal reflection responses to each song; and then participated in sustained, engaged dialogue with one another about a wide range of subject matter related to gender and sexuality. Analysis focused on three main themes. The first key theme was that LGBTQ2S+ individuals and queerspawn are often not expected in certain spaces and have to explain their identities, bodies, and relationships to others. The second key theme was that LGBTQ2S+ individuals often begin making sense of and orient toward their own queer identities in relation to queer and trans others they encounter. The third key theme was that LGBTQ2S+ individuals also make sense of themselves and navigate their own identities in relation to various discourses about gender, sexuality, bodies, and relationships, whether this discourse is positive or harmful. Overarching conclusions from this study include the following: a queer folk song pedagogy opens up generative dialogic spaces creating an effective learning environment; students seek and construct much of the knowledge they have related to gender and sexuality outside of schools; queer teachers make a difference in delivering queer pedagogy; and queer curriculum and pedagogy can help orient LGBTQ2S+ students and queerspawn in schools. This research makes a case for listening as an important pedagogical strategy in classrooms, and a queer folk song pedagogy as an example of queer caring that has the potential to move students toward alternate possibilities for learning, relating, and living. | Ph.D. | environment, queer, gender, educat, health | 3, 4, 5, 13 |
| Lavergne, Sophia | Boonstra, Rudy||McGowan, Patrick | Neurobiology of Predation Risk and the Inheritance of Stress in Snowshoe Hares (Lepus americanus) | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-11-01 | The population dynamics of snowshoe hares (Lepus americanus) are fundamental to the ecosystem dynamics of Canada’s boreal forest. During their 8-11 year population cycle, hare densities can fluctuate up to 40-fold. Predators in this system (lynx, coyotes, great-horned owls) affect hare demography not only through direct mortality but also through non-consumptive effects on reproduction that are mediated by chronic stress. There is strong evidence for the acute physiological sensitivity of snowshoe hares to fluctuating predator pressure, characterized by major shifts in glucocorticoid profiles, energy mobilization, immunity and body condition under situations of extreme risk. This thesis aimed first to determine whether the predator-induced variation in hare stress physiology seen across the cycle is associated with predictable neurobiological changes in transcriptional activity and the expression of corticosteroid receptors in key limbic regulatory regions of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, and second, whether predation risk has intergenerational impacts on offspring phenotype that may act to prolong the lag in population recovery that follows the decline phase of the cycle, even though food resources are plentiful and predators have all but disappeared. I found changes in the expression of gene networks that mediate hormone responses and hematological condition, and in the expression of glucocorticoid-sensitive receptors that regulate the HPA axis as a function of increasing predation risk in the natural population. During the increase and peak phases of the cycle, predator-induced maternal stress programmed for a neuroresilient offspring phenotype characterized by key transcriptional changes that allow for sensitive physiological responses to environmental stress through activation of the amygdala, balanced by gene activity that confers neuroendocrine resilience and maintains basal HPA function in the hippocampus. Offspring stress physiology was associated with a number of anti-predator behaviours that could confer an initial survival advantage in risky environments, but become maladaptive when conditions change. Taken together, these results provide support for predator-induced maternal stress effects on offspring phenotype that could become important mediators of the lag in population recovery under conditions of chronic maternal stress. | Ph.D. | forest, environment, production, consum, resilien, energy, food | 2, 7, 11, 12, 13, 15 |
| Massaquoi, Notisha | Bisaillon, Laura | No Place Like Home: African Refugees and the Making of a New Queer Identity | Social Justice Education | 2020-11-01 | For reasons of necessity, urgency, and sometimes choice, queer Africans cross borders and find their lives unfolding in diasporic spaces. Refugee claims based on sexual orientation and gender identity persecution make up 12% of all refugee cases in Canada, with queer African refugees constituting the largest group within this category. With this in mind, we now have to ask, “what kind of history will be written about the collision between queer Africans dislocated from post-colonial nations and the Canadian settler nation?” In this study, qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted to explore the individual lived experiences of queer African refugees, with a focus on the intricate realignment of sexual orientation, sexual identity, sexual politics, and sexual desire that inevitably emerges through forced migration and the refugee process in Canada. The deep meaning of life experiences is captured in the participants’ own words, providing detailed, in-depth insights into the complexities of their lives, their reflections, and their subsequent responses. These narratives call attention to the specific features of queer African refugees, who test the limits of the current homonational refugee apparatus. Participants’ experiences of resisting social roles, structures, identities, and expectations that limit queer African refugees and keep them “in their place,” both in their countries of origin and in Canada, are interrogated. The construction of boundaries that decide who belongs and deserves protection within Canada and who does not provides a foundation for engaging in research as a practice of freedom, in order to counter the global narrative of refugee life that excludes queer Africans. The findings in this research require us to look at practices of exclusion and inclusion in the Canadian refugee system and the tensions that emerge for queer African claimants. In the end, we are left with strategies for how to engage with the politics of knowledge production and advocate for an agenda of social justice and transformation for queer Africans globally. | Ph.D. | justice, production, queer, gender | 5, 12, 16 |
| Berryhill, Ryan | Veneris, Andreas | Novel Approaches to Hardware Safety Checking and Certificate Minimization | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Verification is an ever-growing challenge in hardware design due to the complexity of modern designs. As a result, formal verification methodologies are seeing rapid adoption in the industry. Formal verification of safety properties is an essential verification task and a key component of algorithms that verify other types of properties. Due to the computational resources required, scalability is a significant concern in this area. Additionally, when a safety property passes verification, safety verification algorithms return only a machine-checkable certificate, which may leave the user with little confidence that the property passes for the “right” reasons rather than, for instance, because the property itself is written incorrectly. This dissertation presents contributions aimed at improving the scalability of formal safety verification algorithms and addressing the lack of feedback from such algorithms. The first contribution is an algorithm called Truss that extends the state-of-the-art safety verification algorithm IC3 with novel heuristics and reasoning capabilities to achieve better runtime performance. Experiments demonstrate a significant speedup relative to the state of the art. The second contribution is a set of techniques to minimize machine-checkable certificates of safety produced by IC3 and similar algorithms. Given such a certificate represented by a Boolean formula, the algorithms find minimal subformulas that are also valid certificates, called minimal safe inductive subformulas (MSISes). Experiments are presented comparing the techniques and demonstrating theireffectiveness. The third contribution is a set of techniques to produce and minimize inductive validity cores (IVCs), which are abstractions of the circuit that are sufficient to prove the given property. Several techniques are presented to compute all minimal IVCs for a safety property and are evaluated experimentally. The final contribution is a set of results related to the computational complexity of the certificate minimization problems noted above. Results are presented showing that two decision problems related to MSIS computation are D P -complete and Σ P2 -complete, respectively, while similar problems for MIVC computation are in PSPACE. The results are also extended to cover a more general class of problems related to finding minimal subsets subject to a monotone predicate (MSMPs). | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| You, Shenglong | Bussmann, Markus||Tran, Honghi | Numerical Modeling of Recovery Boiler Deposit Removal under Sootblower Jet Impingement | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Deposit buildup on heat transfer surfaces in recovery boilers is undesirable as it lowers the overall boiler thermal efficiency and can result in unscheduled boiler shutdowns. To prevent excessive fouling, sootblowers are used to remove deposits by blowing supersonic steam jets onto them. However, sootblowing is not very effective and can be very expensive, as it consumes 3-12% of the total steam a boiler generates. This thesis aims to better understand the sootblower jet impingement process, and to suggest means of lowering the cost of sootblowing. A numerical model is developed to simulate sootblower jet impingement, and to predict the resulting deposit internal stress by coupling Computational Fluid Dynamics and Finite Element Analysis modeling. The removal mechanism is postulated to be due to the tensile stress induced at the deposit-tube interface. The simulation results are used to evaluate the effectiveness of different sootblowing operating conditions. In addition, a geometric model is developed to assess sootblowing efficiency over the full working cycle. Based on the results on a predefined deposit geometry and tube layout, the maximum possible sootblowing efficiency is calculated to be less than 10%. One reason for the low efficiency is the large gap between tube platens in the superheater, because most steam is wasted by blowing into space. The other reason is that the removal mechanism of using compression to induce a tensile stress is very inefficient. More efficient sootblowing could be achieved by dynamically changing the sootblower translational velocity or steam flow rate based on local sootblowing effectiveness. However, such changes will add significant complexity to the mechanical design of sootblowers. Finally, the overall modeling approach is a framework for analyzing sootblowing effectiveness and efficiency, and can be used to evaluate different sootblowing configurations, deposit geometries and tube layouts. | Ph.D. | waste, consum | 12 |
| Gunn, Virginia | Muntaner, Carles | Nursing Professionalization, Gender Equality, and the Welfare State: Identifying Macro-level Factors that Advance Nursing Professionalization | Nursing Science | 2019-11-01 | Nursing professionalization has important benefits for the nursing workforce, patients, and health systems. Given the large number of associated goals, the process is ongoing and of continuous relevance to all countries where nursing is practiced. Although the body of research focusing on this topic is vast, the macro-level structural determinants of this process are currently less understood. The objectives of this thesis were to examine the effects of (a) welfare state and gender regimes and (b) measures of education, health, family, labour market, and gender policies on nursing professionalization in high-income countries. The literature review conducted synthesised health and socio-political studies, bringing attention to key links between nursing professionalization and welfare state policies. The empirical analysis consisted of two studies, the first one focused on the welfare state and the second one on gender equality, both using a time-series, cross-sectional design and fixed-effects linear regression models. The analysis covered 16 years and 22 countries. The findings suggest that both the average regulated nurse and the nurse graduate ratios differ among welfare state and gender regimes. In addition, the following policy measures were found to be predictive of (a) the regulated nurse ratio: total government expenditure on education, total and public health care spending, length of paid paternity leave, female share of tertiary education graduates, female share of employment in managerial positions, gender wage gap, and female share of seats in national parliaments; and of (b) the nurse graduate ratio: total government expenditure on education, total health care spending, length of both paid maternity and paid paternity leaves, female share of employment in managerial positions, gender wage gap, female share of seats in national parliaments, and female labour force participation rate. This study’s findings could add to existing upstream advocacy efforts to strengthen nursing and the nursing workforce through healthy public policy. | Ph.D. | wage, labour, employment, equality, gender, educat, health | 3, 4, 5, 8 |
| Ly, Lynn | Yoneyama, Lisa||Diaz, Robert | Ocean of Storms: Vietnam War Photography and Queer Transpacific Critique of Militarized Intimacies | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2021-03-01 | This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study into Vietnam War photography as a site of relational struggles that exceed the vision of violence, freedom, and humanity currently normalized by liberal humanist imaginaries of war. It forwards what I am calling a “queer transpacific critique”, which disrupts normative Cold War epistemologies by interrogating the Pacific region as a place of relations, connections, desires, and racial and sexual formations that are disciplined by and diverge from liberal humanist thought. It examines disciplinary, historical, conceptual, social and intellectual connections that are made possible by the war, but are masked under liberal narratives of progress and freedom. The radical relationality the Vietnam War’s visual archive performs makes visible the co-implication of settler colonialism, mass incarceration, and racial-sexual violence in overseas war, and relatedly, the co-constitution of Asian, Black, Indigenous, and queer histories. The Vietnam War’s visual archive brings into relation often separated histories of colonial and racial subjection, and opens a discussion about how these entangled histories might found the basis of another collectivity beyond Man and its inhuman Others. Indeed, the Vietnam War was made possible by the violent, militarized intimacies of contemporary life, and but was also a site and moment of collective refusal of the liberal humanist episteme that mandates such violences. It is my hope that this work can announce a different politics of “being with” in the world. That is, a desiring orientation towards one another, and an elsewise possibility for modern relationality grounded in the struggles and joys of those who exist outside of state-organized human life. It is these intimacies between those struggling against imperialism that offer possibilities of new ways of being with each other without conquest. | Ph.D. | ocean, queer | 5, 14 |
| McKnight, Scott Christopher | Breznitz, Dan | Oil-sector Strategies of States in the Global South: Comparing State Involvement in the Oil Sectors in Brazil, China and Mexico | Political Science | 2021-03-01 | Oil-producing states in the Global South adopt different strategies to influence and control their oil sectors. Why does an oil-producing state choose one approach over others? Why does a state change its approach? This dissertation argues that a government’s ideological orientation and a country’s oil balance combine in different ways to generate an oil-sector strategy that is either closed, mixed or open. While the variable of orientation represents the degree to which the government wants to intervene in the economy, the variable of oil balance constrains, facilitates or moderates a government’s preferred oil-sector strategy, depending on the interaction effects that occur from the specific aligning of these independent variables.This research presents four key findings. First, the strategy that immediately follows oil-sector nationalization sets the parameters for politically acceptable oil-related policies going forward. This original strategy often has lasting effects. Second, these constraints allow for change to occur but often limit the extent of that change. Third, a radical change in a government’s orientation or oil balance opens space for major change to an oil-sector strategy. Fourth, the new strategy that comes after this critical juncture sets new parameters for oil policy. This argument emerged inductively from intensive study of ‘big’ Global South oil-producing countries of Brazil, China and Mexico, which included elite interviews as well as studying relevant works in political science, especially historical institutionalism, constructivism and certain theories of public policy. The methods of process-tracing and comparative historical analysis helped uncover the causal variables of government orientation and oil balance, and to identify the processes and logic that ultimately produced this mid-range theoretical argument about oil strategies. The need to identify causes and systematize explanations for a state’s choice of oil-sector strategy stems from the fact that an oil industry is often the most capital-intensive, largest tax contributor and employer in an oil-producing country of the Global South with far-reaching impacts on governance and policy, as well as on political institutions and economic development. | Ph.D. | governance, institut, industr | 9, 16 |
| Miltenburg, Mark Benjamin Adrian | Seferos, Dwight S | Organic Materials for Energy Generation and Storage | Chemistry | 2020-11-01 | In this thesis, I describe my efforts in developing organic materials for energy storage and generation. Chapter 1 introduces the broad classes of organic materials that are the focus of the thesis, including graphene, small molecules and conjugated polymers. It provides background into the principles of energy storage in supercapacitor devices, including the mechanism, performance metrics, and common materials. It provides a brief overview of energy generation in photovoltaic devices, with a focus on the electron transport layers of perovskite solar cells. Chapter 2 explores synthesis of a graphene quantum dot/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) film for application as a supercapacitor electrode. I demonstrate the first electrochemical polymerization of functionalized graphene quantum dots. I determined that the graphene quantum dot/PEDOT films have significantly higher capacitance than control films, but reduced cycling stability. Chapter 3 investigates a polymer comprising PEDOT with tetrachlorinated perylene diimide pendant units. This polymer was designed to serve as a stable ambipolar electrode for application in symmetric type III supercapacitor devices. It demonstrates moderate capacities, but the donor-node-acceptor architecture grants it extremely good charge cycling stabilities in both positive and negative regions. In Chapter 4, I examine a graphene quantum dot/perylene diimide material for application in perovskite solar cells. This material was demonstrated to successively quench the fluo- rescence of a perovskite material, indicating its potential as an electron transport layer. It is hoped the graphene will facilitate electron extraction at the electrodes, in addition to providing improved stability to ultraviolet, thermal and chemical degradation to perovskite solar cell. Chapter 5 examines the potential to dope graphene with tellurium for use as a non-precious metal catalyst for the electrochemical reduction of oxygen in basic aqueous medium. It was demonstrated that graphene oxide could be simultaneously thermally reduced and doped with tellurium, and the resulting Te-doped graphene showed potential as an electrocatalyst. The doping was unable to be suitably controlled and resulted in inconsistent Te-doping, tellurium oxidation states and oxygen content within the Te-doped graphene. In Chapter 6, I detail a simple microwave-assisted synthesis of carbon nanodots, and screen potential precursors to allow the controlled doping of carbon nanodots with heteroatoms. It was demonstrated that the carbon nanodots could be rapidly synthesized, and heterogeneous mixtures of precursors allowed modification of the optical properties of the synthesized carbon nanodots. Chapter 7 serves to summarize the thesis, provides future outlooks on the topics covered, and proposes future research directions in the field to generate high performance organic ma- terials for energy storage and generation. | Ph.D. | cities, solar, energy | 7, 11 |
| Inoue, Carlos | McGahan, Anita | Organizational Governance in the Public Interest | Management | 2020-11-01 | This thesis examines how the interaction between organizations, institutions, and key stakeholders shapes organizational performance. It includes three studies, each of which examines in detail the relationship between actors engaged in promoting the public interest. The first study investigates how elected state officials shape the performance of government-controlled organizations over time. This study argues that the political incentives of state officials create systematic trends in the behavior and performance of government-controlled organizations, which are particularly common in industries such as power distribution, transportation, and water and sanitation. State officials seeking votes manipulate government-controlled organizations to boost employment just before elections. As a result, these organizations exhibit both higher employment levels and lower financial performance in election years. Data from Brazil’s water sector—an industry managing a crucial societal resource—support these predictions. The second study investigates how the engagement of highly productive workers affects the operational performance of organizations. The research isolates these workers’ direct contributions to organizational performance from their indirect contributions—i.e., the influence on the performance of coworkers in the organization. Exploiting the temporary absences of high-volume physicians, I find that in-hospital patient mortality increases during these absences for two reasons: first, because the physician is absent; and second, because of the impact of the absence on the performance of colleagues. This second pathway—the role of indirect contributions—accounts for about 38 percent of the overall increase in patient mortality. This research shows that highly productive workers have sizeable influence on the performance of organizations, but this influence occurs, to a large extent, through peer effects. The third study investigates how the implementation of strong intellectual property rights for pharmaceuticals in emerging markets influences the strategy of pharmaceutical firms. Prior research suggests that patents shape the behavior of firms by affecting prices. This study argues that patents can shape the market strategy of firms through mechanisms other than price. The results show that patent holders modify their product market strategy despite little changes in drug prices. | Ph.D. | rights, governance, institut, industr, worker, employment, sanita, water | 6, 8, 9, 14, 16 |
| Rice, Joanna Magdelana | Jung, Courtney | Pardoning Profit: Neoliberal Transitional Justice in Côte d’Ivoire | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation builds on an emerging critical literature that contends transitional justice aligns with neoliberal governance by overlooking socioeconomic harms and by protecting elite interests. Using Côte d’Ivoire as a case study, the dissertation argues that contemporary transitional justice does not merely align with neoliberalism in postwar contexts; it advances this reordering of governing and social order by limiting the moral obligation on government and society to respond to structural injustices. By restricting the moral obligation to address the suffering of others to a limited set of human rights violations, transitional justice establishes a new moral order where harms caused by individual rights violations are recognised as intolerable and demands justice, but the suffering caused by grave inequality, deprivation and other forms of structural injustice are implicitly tolerated and hence more easily overlooked by the state and by fellow citizens. Transitional justice institutions thus shape post-conflict justice into a process that protects elite interests and excludes transformative reforms or more radical demands such as wealth or land redistribution. The national reconstruction process that followed Côte d’Ivoire’s decade long civil war combined neoliberalisation and transitional justice as core priorities of the post-conflict regime. This dissertation shows that transitional justice in Côte d’Ivoire had the dual function of reinforcing neoliberal reforms while also legitimizing this reordering of governance as just and democratic. As such, it served as the ideological foundation for President Alassane Ouattara’s expansive and market-oriented governance reform agenda while simultaneously advancing a discourse domestically and abroad about the rights-respecting and liberal democratic nature of the new government. | Ph.D. | rights, peace, governance, justice, institut, inequality, equality, socioeconomic | 1, 5, 10, 16 |
| Azim, Muhammad | Bova, Francesco||Mohanram, Partha | Passive Demand but Active Pay: The Effect of ETFFlows on CEO Stock Option Compensation | Management | 2020-11 | The rising prominence of exchange-traded funds (ETFs) over the past decade has resulted in a non-fundamentals driven demand for stocks held in ETF baskets. Prior research on ETFs finds both ETF-related stock price mis-valuation and ETF-related increases in the co-movement of stock prices. Separately, prior research on CEO compensation suggests that firms should use less stock option compensation when stock prices are less informative about firm performance as it becomes more difficult to mitigate the moral hazard problem, but more stock option compensation when there is increased co-movement, as stock options become a more effective tool for retention. Motivated by the fact that stock prices play a key role in CEO compensation decisions, this study tests the effect of ETF flows on CEO stock option compensation. I find that stock option compensation is increasing with ETF flows. Further, I find that the positive relation between stock option compensation and ETF flows is prominent in cross-sections where there is an ex ante motivation to compensate executives with options for retention purposes. Additionally, I do not find a positive relationship between risk-taking or firm performance with ETF flows, but do find a decrease in CEO turnover with increased ETF flows. The combined results suggest that: 1.) ETF flows may have affected firm incentives to compensate managers with stock options for retention purposes, and 2.) incentive alignment does not appear to be a prominent factor in awarding CEO stock options. | Ph.D. | governance, trade | 10, 16 |
| Lapointe-Shaw, Lauren | Bell, Chaim M | Patient Readmissions After Hospital Discharge | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-06-01 | Many readmissions after hospital discharge may be preventable through improved transitional care. This thesis seeks to inform clinical practice and policy development to reduce avoidable readmissions. The three included projects use health administrative data to examine the post-discharge care processes and outcomes for patients hospitalized in Ontario, Canada. In the first study, we compared the outcomes for patients discharged during the extended December holiday to outcomes for patients discharged from hospital at other times, over a 14 year period. We found that December holiday-discharged patients were at greater risk of 30-day death or readmission, while also being less likely to have outpatient physician follow-up within 14 days of discharge. The second study evaluated the effects of a physician financial incentive (an additional billing code) on timely follow-up after discharge. Despite physician uptake of the incentive code, there was no change in 14-day follow-up rates after incentive introduction, suggesting that it was not effective in changing physician behavior. In our third study, we compared the outcomes of post-discharge patients receiving a community pharmacy-based medication review to those not receiving one. Among older adults filling a prescription in a community pharmacy, receipt of a medication review was associated with a reduced rate of 30-day death or readmission. These thesis findings provide evidence to support decision- and policymaking relating to the clinical care of patients transitioning home from hospital. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Hay, Stephanie | Kushner, Paul J | Pattern Scaling Methods for Understanding the Response to Polar Sea Ice Loss in Coupled Earth System Models | Physics | 2020-11-01 | The response to polar sea ice loss is separated, using dedicated coupled modelling experiments and multi-parameter pattern scaling, from the response to tropical warming and from general greenhouse warming. In the first chapter, the motivation for this work is presented with an overview of the existing literature and knowledge gaps. The second chapter presents a cross-comparison of the atmospheric near-surface sensitivity of two coupled models to Arctic sea ice loss and to low-latitude warming. The models agree well with more similarities found in the sensitivity to sea ice loss than to low-latitude warming. Warming and moistening of the Arctic, a dipole of sea level pressure between Eurasia and North America, and an equatorward shift in 850 hPa winds is found to scale with sea ice loss. In the third chapter, a larger pool of coupled experiments are used that largely confirm the results of the previous chapter. This chapter also covers the sensitivities of the zonal mean atmospheric circulation. Two-parameter pattern scaling of the surface ocean is carried out for the first time, and, unlike the atmosphere, the sensitivity to low-latitude warming is more robust than to sea ice loss. The subpolar North Atlantic is found to be a region of poor inter-model agreement due to complex dynamics and non-linearities, but qualitatively consistent signals can be found in response to sea ice loss; deep water formation decreases in the Labrador Sea and the meridional overturning circulation weakens. In the fourth chapter, the focus is expanded to include the impacts of Antarctic sea ice loss. New simulations are carried out to assess the response to sea ice loss in either hemisphere separately or coincidentally under different albedo parameter settings. Contrary to expectations, the response to Antarctic sea ice loss, mediated by tropical warming, is non-negligible in the Northern Hemisphere. With these new simulations, three-parameter pattern scaling is derived and we simultaneously compute the sensitivities to Arctic sea ice loss, Antarctic sea ice loss, and tropical warming, with a focus on the Northern Hemisphere's response. Finally in the fifth chapter, the results are summarized and remaining knowledge gaps are highlighted alongside suggestions for future work. | Ph.D. | ocean, climate, wind, water | 6, 7, 13, 14 |
| Ratnapalan, Savithiri | Lang, Daniel W | Perceptions of Change Among Emergency Department Staff in a University Teaching Hospital in the United Kingdom | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-03-01 | University teaching hospitals provide acute and emergency care in most healthcare systems. One of the priority areas in hospitals are emergency departments (ED) where practice changes are the norm due to the unpredictable and open “public good access” nature of service demands. At present changes to EDs are implemented to improve efficiency and reduce costs in the United Kingdom (UK) and other developed countries. Also, at present, there is limited evidence on how or why change is successful in some instances and not in others. The objective of this research was to study staff perceptions of change and the factors influencing the implementation of changes at a university teaching hospital in the UK. A modified grounded theory methodology was used to perform a secondary analysis of 41 interview transcripts to answer the research questions. Interview transcripts from participants consisted of 20 physicians, 13 nurses, two support workers and six managers involved in paediatric emergency care at the hospital. Data analysis provided answers to the first research question of how changes happen in the emergency department by identifying triggers and barriers to both planned and emergent changes. The second research question of what factors impact change identified three themes; communication, education and leadership. The concept that permeated all identified themes was that change provokes emotional responses at individual, team, and organizational levels. Good communication leading to staff involvement, education about new processes and credible trusted leadership, encouraged positive emotions and reduced negative emotions. In this study, negative emotions stemmed from a perceived inability of healthcare professionals to function effectively and efficiently to ensure safe patient care with changes. Professional values dictated the actions or inactions that transpired either as a result of these emotions or despite these emotions in health professionals. The study findings illustrate an emerging concept of emotions in change and the importance of acknowledging the reasons for negative emotions and fostering positive emotions in individuals and groups through communication, education and good leadership. I hope this concept will ultimately advance the theoretical understanding and practical strategies to help the process of change management in healthcare organizations. | Ph.D. | worker, educat, health | 3, 4, 2008 |
| Ortuzar, Jimena | Quayson, Ato | Performing Invisible Labour: The Globalization of Care in Aesthetic and Everyday Practice | Drama | 2019-03-01 | This thesis examines how labour associated with the reproductive sphere—labour historically consigned to women and continually undervalued yet needed to sustain and reproduce daily life—is politicized or made visible through aesthetic and social practices. Tracing the transformation of reproductive work from an unpaid and unrecognized duty shouldered by housewives to a feminized, racialized, and globalized form of waged labour performed by migrant women, I explore the entanglements between labour, gender, migration, and performance in the context of post-Fordist, neoliberal, advanced capitalism. Through close analysis of artistic production, political struggles, commercial interests, market forces, and urban practices that reveal distinct ways of rendering the private public, I show how domestic labour has changed in site, character, and value, and argue that current efforts to theorize, analyze, and valorize such work must respond to shifting divisions of labour and changing social relations of value production. This project begins with social feminist and artistic efforts to visibilize and politicize women’s hidden labour at key moments in the development of global capitalism. It is followed by close readings of gendered labour and durational performance in narrative films that query cinema’s capacity to render visible the otherwise invisible labour of women through its explorations in extended duration and everyday spaces. Next, I explore the affective performances of transnational domestic workers captured in audition videos by online employment agencies. I argue that mobility for these migrant women is dependent on their performances of servility, and that the circulation of these videos on YouTube reproduces the ‘foreign maid’ as a global commodity. I then turn to Filipina domestic workers occupying public spaces in Hong Kong. Considering their increased visibility, their community-building efforts, and their growing awareness of the social and economic value of their labour, I explore the possibilities of transnational domestic labour as a site from which political subjectivities might be constituted. These various case studies, while operating along different aesthetic categories, social registers, and geopolitical contexts, are key sources of analysis for understanding social reproduction and provide distinct perspectives from which to theorize care work, its value and meaning, in the twenty-first century. | Ph.D. | production, urban, wage, worker, labour, employment, women, gender | 5, 8, 11, 12 |
| Cossette-Lefebvre, Étienne | Katz, Larissa | Personality, Privacy, and Property: Trans-systemic Perspectives on Self-ownership | Law | 2020-11 | In this Thesis, I supply a conceptual foundation for an understanding of the “rights of the personality” at civil law and of the “right of privacy” at common law as expressing the fundamental idea of self-ownership. While this is not an uncontroversial proposition, a conceptualisation of personality as an object of property, and of the “rights of the personality” and the “right of privacy” as property rights, yields at least three conceptual and doctrinal advantages: first, it may serve as a legal justification for the recognition that personality should be protected by property rules, and not by mere liability rules; secondly, it may explain why personality rights at civil law and privacy rights at common law should be understood as protecting non-economic as well as economic interests; and thirdly, it may bring coherence to the law governing the status of the human body. | LL.M. | rights | 16 |
| Asgarian, Ali | Chattopadhyay, Kinnor||Bussmann, Markus | Physical and Mathematical Modeling of Water Atomization for Metal Powder Production | Materials Science and Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Water atomization (WA) of a molten metal is a well-established and cost-effective industrial approach to producing low-reactive metal powders. However, WA powders are characterized by a wide spread of particle size unsuitable for certain powder metallurgy applications. To address this limitation, this thesis examines some of the poorly understood fluid mechanics phenomena involved in WA, to develop fundamental knowledge that describes the relationships between the design and operating conditions of a water atomizer, and the particle size distribution (PSD) of the resulting powder. In the first part of the thesis, a flat fan water spray is studied by experiment and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. The disintegration of a liquid sheet into a spray is examined, an optical technique to measure a multi-range droplet size distribution (DSD) in a developing spray is presented, and an enhanced model to quantify the momentum flux of a spray where it impinges a melt stream is proposed. The model suggests that the momentum flux of a spray, and thus the atomization capacity, increases with spray pressure and decreases with the travel distance of the spray from the nozzle to the impingement point and with the spray spreading angle. In the second part of the thesis, the above findings are examined via production of a low melting point alloy (Bi-42% Sn) powder using a laboratory-scale water atomizer that was designed and built for this work. The effects of various design and operating parameters, including water pressure, melt superheat, apex angle, and spray configuration on the mass median size (d50) and standard deviation (SD) of the powder PSD are investigated, and correlations proposed. These correlations can be used to control the size features of water atomized powders produced at industrial scale, by engineering various design and operating parameters, and thus expanding the market for water atomized powders. | Ph.D. | production, industr, labor, water | 6, 8, 9, 12, 14 |
| Yan, Shu Liang Karl | Pauly, Louis W.||Falkenheim, Victor C. | Planning Like a State: Railway Modernization in China | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | Railroads in China represent something special. As China enters the third decade of the 21st century, one of its hallmark achievements has been the remarkable modernization of its railway system. However, post-1949 sectoral modernization did not occur in a linear fashion. The Party-state failed to develop this critical sector, both during the 27 years of the Mao era (1949 to 1976) and the first 25 years of Deng’s reform and opening (1978 to 2002). China’s railway dream—sustained rapid development—only took off in the early 2000s. Against such a backdrop, my research questions are as follows: 1) Why did China’s railway dream only take off in the early 2000s, despite five decades of centralized Party rule? 2) What were the obstacles to sectoral modernization, and how were they finally overcome? 3) What political and economic factors, both internal and external, most decisively shaped the evolution of China’s railway system? 4) Finally, what do the distinctive patterns of railway development tell us about the broader political economy of industrial development in China? This dissertation argues that the practice of “concentrating powers to accomplish big things” was the principal reason behind sustained rapid modernization, and China’s accession to the World Trade Organization provided the crucial catalyst. I define “power concentration” as an institutionalized and centralized means of shaping and supporting a particular approach to sectoral development in order to meet the broader developmental challenges of the time. Power concentration manifested as the alignment of a clear developmental approach, professionalized and institutionalized macro-economic planning agencies and strategic industrial policies with restrictive targets that focus on overall planning and top-level design. In the absence of such policy guidance and environment, railway development was meagre as during the Mao era and early periods of reform and opening. | Ph.D. | institut, environment, trade, industr | 9, 10, 13, 16 |
| Gute, Ellen | Abbatt, Jonathan PD | Pollen Ice Nucleating Particles and Their Response to Atmospheric Processing | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Clouds are crucial to life on Earth as they help regulate temperature and distribute water resources. Yet, large uncertainties exist around cloud development and evolution with many open questions about processes spanning from micro- to macro-scales. On the micro-scale, ice formation contributes to precipitation formation and cloud radiative properties; yet our understanding of this process is limited. This thesis assesses the ice nucleating (IN) ability of pollen and subpollen particles (SPPs) under mixed-phase and cold cloud conditions. In a first step, pollen IN activity was investigated under mixed-phase cloud conditions where IN activity was found to vary between pollen types and that submicron SPPs drive pollen IN activity. Additionally, one pollen type, grey alder, was identified to initiate freezing above −10°C, thus contributing to a small set of highly active ice nucleating particles (INPs). In a second step, atmospheric processing of SPPs was investigated, as SPPs can experience atmospheric transport and exposure to varying environmental conditions. Several processing pathways were found to compromise pollen IN activity. The largest impacts were observed for the most IN active pollen by exposure to simulated solar radiation. Under cold cloud conditions, chemical oxidation negatively impacts the IN activity of silver birch and grey alder pollen, occurring on a similar timescale as changes to the molecular structure were observed. The findings from laboratory INP measurements were translated to parametrize INP concentrations from SPPs, indicating INP concentrations below 10-2 m-3 in one modeling scenario. To overcome potential barriers in detecting such low INP concentrations by commonly used INP instruments, a Portable Fine Particle Concentrator was evaluated for INP measurements in the field. Enrichment factors are found to be particle size dependent while an INP enrichment factor of 16±5 was achieved in a mountain-top field study. The insights gained from this thesis will help assess the importance of pollen as INPs and reduce uncertainties that cloud processes currently impose on weather and climate predictions. | Ph.D. | weather, environment, climate, labor, solar, water | 6, 7, 8, 13, 14 |
| Ball, Christopher | Smith, David G | Princess Point: Inter-community Variation and Localized Settlement-subsistence Practice | Anthropology | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation examines Princess Point macrobotanical remains as a means of identifying and exploring the nature and extent of inter-community variations in local subsistence practice, small-scale habitat production, and the operation of settlement-subsistence based communities of practice in Early Late Woodland Period (AD 500-1050) southern Ontario. The Princess Point Complex is one of a number of pre-contact cultures that existed throughout South-Central Ontario during the Early Late Woodland period and are likely ancestral to later Iroquoian societies (Saunders 2002). By employing multi-scalar, comparative analyses of eight Princess Point botanical assemblages, this project seeks to identify the critical similarities and differences between them as a means of better understanding to what extent Princess Point communities were either characterized by a strict adherence to a single, uniform settlement-subsistence strategy or differentiated from one another by variations in localized human-environmental relationships as evidenced by a reliance on differing suites of target resources. This study is also concerned with generating understandings of the social dynamics and environmental factors which may have underlain Princess Point settlement-subsistence decision-making processes. This study also explores the relative importance of localized subsistence-based communities of practice among the Princess Point and the degree to which Traditional Ecological Knowledge may have either been shared via cooperative action or developed in relative isolation via the independent operation of otherwise neighbouring or spatially affiliated pre-contact communities. Beyond the identification of significant inter-community variability in localized subsistence practice and site-level subsistence-based communities of practice among the Princess Point, this study also identifies a number of broader trends in Princess Point human-environmental relationships and highlights the flexible, often idiosyncratic, nature of localized Princess Point settlement-subsistence decision-making processes. Evidence presented in this study also suggests the parallel operation of a broader, more regionally consistent community of practice at the regional level. This study also engages more directly with questions pertaining to the organization of Princess Point community social dynamics. In this regard, Princess Point subsistence-based communities of practice appear to have represented largely autonomous social units within a broader, overarching cultural landscape characterized, in part, by an adherence to a shared set of traditional subsistence practices. | Ph.D. | ecolog, environment, production | 12, 13, 15 |
| Karanicolas, Michael | Su, Anna | Privatized Censorship – Developing Solutions to the Increasing Role of Platforms in Moderating Global Freedom of Expression | Law | 2019-11-01 | This paper addresses the challenges in online content moderation by private sector platforms, proposing an approach rooted in international human rights standards as the only legitimate source for defining the contours of global speech, and the best potential bulwark against platforms being subverted as tools for abusive government censorship. The paper begins by introducing freedom of expression as an international human right, and discussing its applicability to online speech, and the challenges in enhancing freedom of expression protections among online platforms. The paper then discusses the evolution of platforms’ content policies, and the role of global governments and their growing demands for aggressive moderation. The paper introduces a proposed solution, whereby international freedom of expression rules are adapted to create general standards for private sector content moderation structures, which may be interpreted and enhanced through a self-regulatory system. The paper ends by addressing potential challenges in implementing this system. | LL.M. | rights, governance | 16 |
| Modupe, Oluwasegun | Diosady, Levente L. | Process Development for Quadruple Fortification of Salt | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2020-11-01 | This process was developed to simultaneously deliver iron, iodine, folic acid, and vitamin B12 for holistic prevention of anaemia and other risk factors for prenatal complications in vulnerable populations. Salt was chosen as the ‘vehicle’ for the micronutrients because ‘doses’ of the micronutrients can be predicted. The process was based on a cold forming extrusion-based microencapsulation (for making premix) that ensures that added micronutrients are stable, indistinguishably mixed with salt, do not segregate, and do not cause changes to the sensory characteristics of salt and foods. The dusting of the micronutrient premix with titanium dioxide masked its brown colour while its coating with soy stearin prevented the adverse moisture aided interaction between iron and iodine. The hydrophobic nature and the initial amount of soy stearin used for coating caused the micronutrient premix to float; contamination of TiO2 due to its recycling caused dark spots on the surface premix. Double coating with 5% hydroxypropyl methylcellulose and 5% soy stearin solved the floating problem; coating with a mixture of 15% TiO2 and 10% soy stearin solved both problems. The required pH (≥ 8) for full dissociation of folic acid, its solubility, and stability caused vitamin B12 instability; hence, both micronutrients cannot be added to salt through a solution. In salt, they were lost through oxidative degradation. The coextrusion of folic acid and vitamin B12 with ferrous fumarate (a reducing agent) minimized the oxidative degradation of the micronutrients. The colour masking and coating of the premix ensured that the micronutrients did not affect the colour of the salt. Also, the coextrusion prevented the micronutrients from photodegradation. The salt samples can deliver 50-200% recommended dietary allowances of the micronutrients based on the consumption of 10g of salt per day. The micronutrients were very stable in the salt and met the set target (70% retention after 6-month storage). Over 85% of the micronutrients were retained in salt after 6-month storage, even at 45 oC/60-70% RH. The micronutrients were stable in cooking and did not cause any changes to the sensory properties of the salt or food. | Ph.D. | recycl, consum, food | 2, 12 |
| Davies, Adam | Sykes, Heather | Queering App-propriate Behaviours: The Affective Politics of Gay Social-sexual Applications in Toronto, Canada | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-03-01 | In conversation with affect theory, queer theory, and relevant social scientific literature, this thesis investigates the affective and feeling politics of gay socio-sexual applications (GSSAs). Specifically, this thesis investigates how GBQ men’s understandings of emotional connections—a term used in GSSAs, such as Grindr, to advertise the potentialities of such applications—are involved in the socio-sexual politics and constitution of normative gay men’s sexual subjectivities online and how online outreach workers and social service workers are implicated in and involved with such politics. Applying a feminist poststructural affect theory lens, this thesis uses Jackson and Mazzei’s (2011) process of “plugging-in” with different poststructural theories, such as Michel Foucault’s (1991) governmentality, Julia Kristeva’s (1982) abjection, and Sara Ahmed’s (2004a, 2004b, 2010a, 2010b) affective economies and promises of happiness to analyze what I term “fractions” of data. In the first data chapter, I apply Foucault’s theorization of governmentality to argue that subjects learn to navigate GSSAs through discourses of emotional regulation and restraint, while analyzing the politics of “emotional risk.” In the second data chapter, I apply Kristeva’s (1982) theorization of abjection to argue that the abjection of others and the abjection of the “self” take place within GSSAs through the rejection of emotional dependency upon others, romantic love, as well as the aspiration for neoliberal norms of individuality. In my third data chapter, I apply Sara Ahmed’s (2004a, 2004b, 2010a, 2010b) work on the promises of happiness and affective economies to argue that GSSAs promote certain affective economies of confidence and self-assuredness whereby subjects are encouraged to perform neoliberal subjectivities through promises of self-pleasure. In particular, I note how GSSAs, such as Grindr, hold differing “promises” for individuals that keep subjects bound to them and using them, even if they might seek to disconnect from such applications. Within each data chapter, I write a Deleuzian “intermezzo” section in reflection on my experiences in what I term “thinking/feeling/writing” within the affective assemblages of my research project. I close with a very un-final not-conclusion that articulates some further thoughts for online outreach as well as my own becomings within my research. | Ph.D. | worker, queer | 5, 8 |
| Fontaine, Kathryne | Riendeau, Pascal | Raconter la Guerre dans la Littérature Contemporaine : éthique d’une poétique | French Language and Literature | 2021-03-01 | Cette thèse étudie la poétique instaurée par le récit littéraire pour raconter la guerre telle qu’elle se déroule à l’époque contemporaine. Les textes de théâtre Littoral (1999) et Incendies (2003) de Wajdi Mouawad et Cendres sur les mains (2002) de Laurent Gaudé, et les romans Zone (2008) de Mathias Énard, Les Événements (2014) de Jean Rolin et Écoutez nos défaites (2016) de Laurent Gaudé permettent d’y explorer quelles stratégies la fiction déploie pour surmonter les difficultés que suscite le thème de la guerre, qui renvoient toutes de près ou de loin au danger de fausser la mémoire d’un événement historique traumatisant pour des collectivités. L’objectif de cette étude est d’offrir une description et une analyse des univers sémiotiques créés par ces constructions narratives et de commenter leur valeur éthique et heuristique. Le premier chapitre fait ressortir le caractère interrelié des considérations narratologique et philosophique qui sous-tendent l’ensemble de la thèse, soit l’esthétique du récit, suivant des théoriciens comme Gérard Genette, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Michael Riffaterre, Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, Dominique Maingueneau et Paul Ricœur, et l’éthique, de Wayne Booth à Martha Nussbaum, en passant par Jacques Bouveresse et Pierre Macherey. Les trois chapitres subséquents rassemblent autour d’axes directeurs l’analyse narratologique, thématique et stylistique des œuvres du corpus. Le premier axe est celui de la transmission, explorée dans le chapitre 2. L’épistémologie des sciences historiques, le devoir de mémoire, des tactiques d’immersion fictionnelle et des indices de réflexivité y apparaissent comme autant de façons pour les récits de guerre d’assumer leur fonction indéniablement transitive. L’axe de la transgression est appréhendé au chapitre 3 sur le plan narratif, occasion de mesurer la portée du comique, de l’euphémisme et de l’horreur pour parler de la guerre, sur le plan institutionnel, où est jaugé le poids de tradition littéraire et de l’éthos auctorial, et sur le plan moral, où est effectuée une réflexion sur la responsabilité et sur la culpabilité. Le chapitre 4 porte sur la transposition. Il examine la façon dont les œuvres manient les récits traditionnels, les symboles, l’agentivité et la question des morts pour traduire l’expérience contemporaine de la guerre dans le langage. This dissertation studies the poetics established by the literary text to narrate war as it unfolds in contemporary times. Through the plays Littoral (1999) and Incendies (2003) by Wajdi Mouawad, Cendres sur les mains (2002) by Laurent Gaudé, and the novels Zone (2008) by Mathias Énard, Les Événements (2014) by Jean Rolin and Écoutez nos défaites (2016) by Laurent Gaudé, the study explores the strategies employed in fiction writing to overcome the difficulties inherent to the subject of war, which always, directly or indirectly, risks the danger of distorting the memory of a historical event which was traumatizing to a collectivity. The objective of this study is to provide a description and an analysis of the semiotic universes created by these narratives constructs, and to comment on their ethical and heuristic value. The first chapter explores the interrelated nature of the narratological and philosophical considerations underlying the study, namely the aesthetics of narrative, as theorized by Gérard Genette, Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Michael Riffaterre, Jean-Pierre Esquenazi, Dominique Maingueneau and Paul Ricœur, and ethics, from Wayne Booth to Martha Nussbaum through Jacques Bouveresse and Pierre Macherey. The three subsequent chapters contain detailed narratological, thematic, and stylistic analyses of the primary works under consideration along three main axes. The first axis is that of transmission, examined in Chapter 2. The epistemology of historical sciences, the concept of the “duty to remember,” fictional immersion tactics and reflexivity indicators all appear in this chapter as ways for the war narrative o acknowledge its undeniable transmissive function. Chapter 3 analyzes the axis of transgression on the narrative plane to measure the possibilities of comedy, euphemism and horror to tell the story of war; on the institutional plane to gauge the weight of the literary tradition and of the author’s ethos; and on the moral plane to reflect on responsibility and guilt. Chapter 4 is about transposition. It details the way in which works of fiction employ traditional stories, symbols, agency, and matters surrounding the dead to translate the experience of the contemporary war into language. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Da Silva, Michael Edward | Flood, Colleen M | Realizing the Right to Health Care in Canada | Law | 2018-06-01 | International and domestic laws increasingly recognize health rights; international law clearly recognizes a right to health that includes health care entitlements and approximately 69% of domestic constitutions include a right to health care. Recognition of a positive right to health care has been slower to emerge in Canada, but there are nascent signs that the judiciary is receptive to the idea in principle. Challenges nonetheless remain – existing articulations of rights to health care do not easily fit the traditional ‘claim-right’ model of rights and questions remain over how to operationalize health rights, including how to do so without overwhelming the public fisc. It is difficult to resolve these issues in a manner that accounts for the structure of health rights in domestic constitutional laws, international human rights law, and philosophy. This work addresses these challenges and offers an account of the right to health care that is philosophically sound and operationalizable by courts and policymakers. I argue that a positive right to health care is best understood as a set of claims to related morally important goals. This pluralist understanding of the right can fit a modified version of the claim-right model and is independently justifiable. It is also consistent with the structure of health rights in international human rights law and some existing positive constitutional health rights. I next explain how to measure compliance with this pluralist right, providing an account of what the right to health care must accomplish in concrete terms. I then apply the metrics that I developed to the Canadian health care system and explore how three branches of public law (constitutional law, human rights law, and administrative law) can improve Canada’s scores on those metrics. I ultimately argue that all three branches can be reformed to better realize the pluralist right to health care. | S.J.D. | rights, health | 3, 16 |
| Feinig, Nicholas | Satsuka, Shiho||Bamford, Sandra | Rearing the Family, Moving Society: Rethinking Gender, Kinship, and Work through Japan’s Fathering Movement | Anthropology | 2020-11-01 | Based on fieldwork conducted in Tokyo from 2015 to 2016 around the non-profit organization “Fathering Japan”, this ethnography follows the practice of fatherhood among participants of ikumen movements. Often translated as “childrearing man”, ikumen refers to fathers who actively engage in chores and childcare. Ikumen movements emerged as Japan’s powerful corporations weakened following the economic downturn of the early 1990s. Neoliberal restructuring across the following decades has further undercut the financial stability of households as secure fulltime positions with a “family wage” are replaced by precarious contract work. With dual income homes becoming the norm, ikumen have become a key figure in the renegotiation of the gendered division of labour. While originally a grassroots effort led by activist fathers campaigning for the recognition and legal protection of paternity leave, the ikumen concept has since been adopted by the state and industry. Recent state initiatives promote ikumen as national heroes shoring up the nation’s sagging birthrate and economy, while branded “masculine” lifestyle publications hail ikumen as fashionable consumers. In this context, how do ikumen movement participants negotiate the existing middle-class masculine norm of the salaryman – a salaried corporate worker – and this emerging model of nurturing fatherhood? By closely attending to the complexities and nuances of the everyday practice of fatherhood among ikumen, this dissertation documents how these men weave their experience as fathers and employees together with family history and memory. In this process, they cultivate diverse forms of relationality beyond the parent-child bond. By enacting caring fatherhood in their homes, communities, and workplaces, they also compose fluid and flexible masculine identities. The dissertation argues that the “fathering” or “rearing” of a child is a practice that not only changes men’s relationship with children and spouses, but also forges new kinds of relationships with neighbors, “papa” friends, co-workers, and society. | Ph.D. | consum, industr, wage, worker, labour, gender | 5, 8, 9, 12 |
| Ellis, Adam R | Wortley, Scot | Reconceptualizing Urban Warfare In Canada: Exploring the Relationship between Trauma, Post-traumatic Stress, And Violence Among Male Combat Soldiers and 'Street Soldiers' | Criminology | 2020-11-01 | When we hear the word “trauma” we often conflate this term with the experiences of combat soldiers returning from war. While the current state of the art on trauma/Dissociation and PTSD has predominantly focused on the traumatic experiences of combat soldiers, less is known about other vulnerable populations who are exposed to similar types of war-related violence, including gang members (or street soldiers). Drawing on a multiple-case study approach, including, in-depth qualitative interviews, my study compared and contrasted the experiences/stories of combat veterans with those of ex-gang members as a way to understand the psychological sequelae of “gang violence”. Building on the knowledge on combat trauma, I sought to develop a Trauma-Based Theory of Gang Violence that identifies how pre-existing (i.e. poverty, masculinity and exposure to “pre-war” violence), peri-traumatic (i.e. indoctrination and exposure to violence) and post-traumatic factors (i.e. transition stress, post-traumatic stress and the reenactment of trauma) may contribute to gang membership and the cycle of violence that permeates marginalized/gang-dominated communities. | Ph.D. | urban, poverty | 1, 11 |
| Orr, Krystn | Arbour-Nicitopoulos, Kelly P | Recreational Sport Programs for Emerging Adults with a Disability: Exploring Quality Experiences and the Social Environment | Exercise Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Recreational sport provides leisure and community opportunities to many individuals. Specifically, recreational sport can provide continuity during the transition from adolescence to adulthood when many life changes occur (e.g., school, work). For individuals with a disability, this transitional period (ages 18 – 25 years) may be extremely important as there is an abrupt ending to community programming after adolescence. This doctoral research program explored the social and transitionary experiences of emerging adults with a disability in recreational sport programs. Study 1, a scoping review of the peer-reviewed literature, identified limited research and a lack of explicit discussion of peer interactions in recreational sport programs for emerging adults with a disability. Study 2 used a mixed methods approach to observe and explore the peer interactions that occur for emerging adults with a disability within recreational sport programs. Conducted in communities across Ontario (two women, six men, and three sport programs), Study 2 combined dynamic systems and qualitative approaches to highlight the non-normative ways individuals with a disability may interact and achieve a sense of belonging on a recreational sports team. Finally, Study 3 presents a case study of a recreational paddling program for individuals with an intellectual disability. All persons involved in the program (i.e., administration, coaches, athletes, and parents) engaged in a multi-method, two-month case study of the social environment, development, and experiences of participating in such a program with attention focused on the role peers may (not) have. Study 3 highlights issues of disablism – socially-imposed barriers to full participation – that occurred within the paddling program and the necessity of coach training regulation to ensure coaches understand foundational coaching strategies along with disability-relevant knowledge (e.g., communication strategies). Overall, this doctoral research program highlights the individuality in social experiences within recreational sport contexts, the extended role of parents in their adult children’s lives, and the role that recreational sport can play on the transitionary experiences of emerging adults with a disability. | Ph.D. | environment, women | 5, 13 |
| Guzman, Igor | Papangelakis, Vladimiros G||Thorpe, Steven J | Redox Potential Measurements of Aqueous Systems at High Temperature and High Pressure | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2018-06-01 | Redox potential is an essential variable for characterizing aqueous systems. Its measurement can be beneficial in providing insight into hydrometallurgical processes. An Ir electrode was validated for redox potential measurements at high temperature and high pressure. Measurements were performed using two different flow-through electrochemical cells (FTEC): one with a Ag/AgCl flow-through external pressure balance reference electrode (FTEPBRE), and the second one was a linear FTEC with an Ir quasi-reference electrode. The potential was measured for the H2SO4-FeSO4-Fe2(SO4)3-H2O system for concentrations of 1 M H2SO4, 10-2 M Fe(III), and 10-4–10-2 M Fe(II) at 34 MPa, up to 200 °C, and, for the linear FTEC, at flow rates of 0.2–1.5 mL/min. The change in potential measured with the Ir electrode behaved according to the Nernst equation upon changes in the test solution, and were consistent with the corresponding estimated potential variation predicted by the Aqueous model from the OLI® System software. The Ir working electrode combined with the Ir quasi-reference electrode were fit into a 2 L autoclave to measure the solution potential during pressure oxidation (POX) of two sulfide materials, pyrite and a refractory gold ore, at 200–230 °C, 345–760 kPa O2 overpressure, and, for the refractory ore, 10–30 wt-%, conditions found in the industry. The measured potentials were related to the ratio [Fe(III)]/[Fe(II)], indicating that the mixed potential in solution is dictated by the Nernst potential of the Fe3+/Fe2+ half reaction. An acidic solution is necessary to sustain soluble iron and therefore accomplish meaningful potential measurements; the Ir electrode operated properly at concentrations 0.3–100 mM for Fe(II) and Fe(III). The measured potential, together with the oxygen consumption during POX of the refractory ore, were used to identify the moment when maximum conversion of sulfide material was achieved. Most POX processes operate at conditions that allows the implementation of the developed sensor and the measured potentials could be used to optimize these processes. | Ph.D. | consum, industr | 9, 12 |
| Tersigni, Elisa Maria | McLeod, Randall | Reforming English: English Catholic and Protestant Propaganda, 1526–1563 | English | 2018-11-01 | The ecclesiastical and political reformations of sixteenth-century England were paralleled by an English linguistic reformation, during which the language itself was reformed to have Protestant associations or erase perceived Catholic bias. To illustrate this thesis, I move from micro- to macro-analysis of language. Chapter One examines the relationship between a woman writer and a male editor of Protestant propagandist literature: Anne Askew and John Bale. With his interventions in The Examinations of Anne Askew, Bale not only controlled a woman’s language, but also altered it to have her speak in a Protestant register. To complement this chapter, I append three editions of works edited by Bale—The Examinations of Anne Askew, The Examinations of John Oldcastle, and Princess Elizabeth Tudor’s Glass—which I prepared to allow readers to grasp the scope of Bale’s editing. Chapter Two identifies Catholic and Protestant vocabularies, located by searching Early English Books Online for phrases I argue served as intra- and inter-textual techniques for marking the “common” tongue, with which Catholic words are associated, and technical registers, one of which is Protestant. The chapter also suggests that the change in English of the period might be understood as a “lexoclasm” that mirrored the iconoclasm of the period. Chapter Three uses a corpus I developed of 43 English letterwriters from 1450 to 1730 to situate the linguistic reformation within what is recognized as the transition from pre-modern to early-modern English. I identify six registers (men’s and women’s, early and late, rural and urban). I then return to the issue of gender, to argue that men’s editing of women’s early-modern English writing erases some feminine qualities of their English. This erasure of feminine qualities paradoxically has the effect of promoting these women in the long run by reducing spelling variation and thereby making their texts more searchable in databases. The project concludes with a reflection on the difficulties of historical research amid a shift towards digital technologies. Here, I detail my struggles to produce a project within a shifting body of evidence, and I liken it to the struggles of English propagandists writing within a linguistic reformation. | Ph.D. | rural, urban, women, gender | 5, 11 |
| Cameron, Geoffrey | Hansen, Randall | Religion and Refugees: The Evolution of Resettlement in the United States and Canada | Political Science | 2018-11-01 | This dissertation compares the evolution of refugee resettlement policy in the United States and Canada between 1945 and 1980. The contingent responses of both countries to displaced people after the Second World War evolved in the context of subsequent refugee crises during the Cold War, generating institutional configurations that became formalized in major refugee legislation passed in 1976 (Canada) and 1980 (United States). The mobilization and engagement of religious groups with the policy process was a central dynamic over time. In the United States, their interaction with Congress produced a corporatist structure of cooperation that persists to this day; nine voluntary groups implement the entirety of the United States’ annual resettlement program. In Canada, decision-making was centred in the bureaucracy, where a reluctant partnership with religious groups produced privately-funded refugee sponsorship as a complement to government-managed refugee programs. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Shickluna, Dawn Marie | Mojab, Shahrzad | Remembering as Praxis: Reconceptualizing Structural and State-sanctioned Violence, Oppression, and Trauma through Radical Survival Narrative Pedagogy | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | This study looks at women’s narratives as entry points to understanding the gendered and racialized nature of the experiences of violence, oppression, trauma, resistance, and survival, and their connections to patriarchal capitalist relations of imperialism and colonialism across national and cultural boundaries. The first section establishes the theoretical and epistemological framework of transnational feminist theory and Dialectical Historical Materialism, forming a praxis that posits the need to examine macro structures such as imperialism and colonialism, in ways that forefront the material realities of women’s lives and the historical, material conditions that have produced their experiences and stories. The second section presents a narrative analysis within this theoretical framework. The data include narratives by Indigenous survivors of Residential Schools in settler colonial Canada, testimonios of revolutionary struggle from Central America, and political prisoner memoirs from the Middle East. The analysis traces threads of violence, trauma, resistance, and survival which emphasize the connections between the personal and the political, and between private and public memory, and call us to consider how we may challenge, decolonize, and confront dominant ideologies and collective post-trauma/survival subjectivities and solidarities. From this analysis and a critique of mainstream conceptualizations of trauma and the concept of ‘trauma texts,’ I offer the concept of ‘radical survival narratives,’ informed by the narratives themselves, as well as by the concept of ‘radical vulnerability’ from Social Justice and Critical Disability Studies, and the Indigenous literary theory concept of ‘survivance.’ The third section is the development of an arts-based pedagogic framework for community-based and formal education settings. Through both its content and process, this pedagogy of the radical survival narratives is aimed at developing learners’ understanding of the social relations of colonialism and imperialism within patriarchal capitalism and reframing our understanding of violence and trauma through a pedagogy of these narratives. The pedagogy further highlights resistance and survival, pushing back against capitalist, colonialist, imperialist structures and agendas, and building strength and solidarity. | Ph.D. | justice, women, gender, educat | 4, 5, 16 |
| Tarhan, Mumtaz Derya | Vieta, Marcelo A | Renewable Energy Co-operatives and the Struggle for “Critical” Energy Democracy: The Case of Ontario | Adult Education and Counselling Psychology | 2020-11-01 | The introduction of the Feed-in tariff (FIT) program in Ontario in 2010, with specific considerations for community-owned renewable energy (CE) initiatives, was a turning point for renewable energy co-operatives (RE co-ops) in the province as their numbers jumped from only two to 111 by 2016. RE co-ops, along with other CE initiatives, are considered to be important actors in the democratization of electricity systems by a growing body of activist and, recently, a field of scholarship called “energy democracy”. In the light of this recent surge of RE co-op activity in Ontario, I ask: In what ways did RE co-ops democratize Ontario’s electricity system and what are their limitations and future potential in doing so? In order to answer this question, I develop a theoretical framework called “critical energy democracy”, rooted in critical theories of capitalist political economy, technology, and democracy. Through this lens, I assess RE co-op activity in Ontario by deploying a novel combination of three research methods: (1) A political economy analysis of the history of electricity governance and infrastructure in Ontario, based on a combination of literature review and documentary research. (2) Semi-structured interviews with what I call “leading RE co-op members”, or those closely involved in the governance of their co-op, to reveal the experiences of RE co-ops in Ontario. And (3) semi-structured interviews with what I call “investor-members”, based on a social learning theory and method, to reveal instances of nonformal, informal, and tacit member learning. Overall, this study reveals that market-based policies under capitalist social relations severely constrain the application of community energy models to affluent communities. Given their inaccessibility to marginalized community members and lack of an explicit anti-capitalist social justice agenda, RE co-ops’ impact and potential in advancing a critical form of energy democracy in Ontario has been limited at best. Further, Ontario’s experiment serves as a lesson to policy-makers, academics, and social movements alike that public policies and programs should by design prioritize the immediate energy-related needs of marginalized communities. | Ph.D. | governance, justice, infrastructure, renewabl, energy | 7, 9, 16 |
| Hepburn, Shamette | Coloma, Roland S. | Residential Selection at Retirement: A Visual Ethnography Exploring the Later Life Mobilities of Jamaican Canadian Transmigrants | Social Justice Education | 2018-06-01 | This thesis focuses on the migratory life course and everyday life geographies of Jamaican Canadian older adults in order to document, analyze, and share how they sustain their social and economic wellbeing. My research questions are: What are the experiences of Jamaican Canadian transmigrant older adults who live in and across Canada and Jamaica? As racialized older adults, what factors determine their geographical options at retirement? How do systemic barriers stemming from intersections of age, race, gender, and class impact their mobility strategies and decisions? My research is informed by my preliminary empirical studies (Hepburn, 2011; Hepburn et al., 2015) and by my five-year professional background as a gerontological social worker in Toronto. To understand the life course of racialized transmigrant older adults, my study utilizes visual ethnography, operationalized as photovoice in conjunction with constructivist grounded theory methods, to advance a new theoretical framework propitious for social work practice. To address the study’s central questions, my data collection took place in Toronto, Canada and in Trelawny and Manchester, Jamaica. I examined the lives and living conditions of 12 Jamaican Canadian older adults categorized into three groups: those who decided to stay in Canada permanently; those who reside in both Canada and Jamaica; and those who returned to Jamaica permanently. For feasibility, data from five participants who represented information-rich cases were selected for this thesis. In what is largely a critique of mainstream social gerontology and migration studies, I propose a “critical transnational ethnogerontology framework” based on the ways in which Jamaican Canadian older adults navigate transnational spaces. This framework is generative for social work because it broadens the gerontological imagination and revises social work’s theoretical, methodological and practice models that are bounded within the nation-state and linear conceptions of the life course. Transmigrant mobility presents social workers with challenges, such as how to deliver services to older adults who move between countries, what their needs are, and how to develop support networks beyond a singular state. My study provides a new theoretical framework, relevant empirical data, methodological innovation, and policy and practical recommendations for the later life adaptations of transmigrant racialized older adults to an increasingly insecure, globalized world. | Ph.D. | innovat, worker, gender, wellbeing | 3, 5, 8, 9 |
| Banerjee, Kiran Meisan | Carens, Joseph||Bertoldi, Nancy | Rethinking Membership: Statelessness, Domination, and the Limits of Contemporary Citizenship | Political Science | 2016-11-01 | This dissertation examines the politics and ethics of forced migration from both a conceptual and normative perspective. The dissertation does so by focusing on the phenomenon of what Hannah Arendt referred to as ‘statelessness’—a term which is deployed in this project in an extended sense that includes all persons who might be in need of international protection because their own state is unable or unwilling to effectively secure their human rights. In approaching statelessness from the perspective of political theory, the primary task of my dissertation is to offer a novel conceptual account of the harm that is done by statelessness or the de facto loss of membership within a political community and what this entails for how we ought to respond to the global reality of forced displacement. In doing so, this project challenges conventional approaches and intuitions regarding our ethical responsibilities to refugees and others categories of displaced persons. The goal of this critical reconstruction is to recast the nature of our responsibilities as obligations of justice, as opposed to those of humanitarian assistance. At the same time, this account also foregrounds the importance of constructing fair and effective responses to these forms of exclusion that attend to the role of agency in remedying the loss of membership. | Ph.D. | rights, justice | 16 |
| Shoikhedbrod, Igor | Chambers, Simone||Kohn, Margaret | Rights Discourse and Economic Domination: Thinking Beyond the Narrow Horizon of Liberal Justice | Political Science | 2018-06-01 | This dissertation offers a theoretical reconstruction of Karl Marx’s materialist conception of right through a re-examination of his critique of liberalism. The liberal conception of justice regards individuals as equal rights-bearers in abstraction from material circumstances and asymmetries of economic power. The dominant interpretation among leading Marxist and Anglo-American political theorists is that Marx’s critique of liberalism culminates with the “withering away” of right and rights in post-capitalist society. Explanations for this view have been framed around the postulation that communist society transcends the “circumstances of justice,” and that the end of class domination would pave the way for the disappearance of juridical relations. The first part of the dissertation questions this longstanding interpretation by reconstructing Marx’s materialist conception of right. The central thesis of the dissertation is that Marx regards right as an essential feature of any mode of production, including the future communist society, and that standards of right undergo transformation throughout history. The historical expansion of human freedom also provides Marx with a normative basis for assessing between higher and lower standards of right across different modes of production. The second part of the dissertation tracks the enduring legacy of Marx’s critique of liberal justice by examining how leading contemporary political theorists have responded to Marx’s challenge in the face of global financial capitalism and the hollowing out of democratically-enacted law. The dissertation also reconsiders the relationship between Marxism and the idea of the rule of law in the current era of neoliberal hegemony. Taken together, the dissertation aims at reconstructing Marx’s views on right and rights in ways that resonate with ongoing debates in political theory and the broader public sphere. | Ph.D. | rights, justice, production | 12, 16 |
| Aitken, Craig | Stern, Simon | Rights to Confidential Information at Private Law | Law | 2020-11-01 | This thesis explores what it means to control, own, or have a proprietary interest in information. The Anglo-American civil litigation system rejects property as an actionable basis to assert rights over secret or confidential information. Simultaneously, other components of our legal system allow private actors to treat confidential information as intangible property, at least in the sense of constituting a controllable asset. We explore the melange of legal doctrinal developments that have allowed firms to commodify information, including trade secrecy law, the breach of confidence action, intellectual property law, and certain contractual mechanisms. Within legal theory this question is wound up in the information-property debate and the Legal Realist bundle of rights depiction of property. We use a Hohfeldian-Honoré analytical lens to untangle this perspective, and to articulate the contours of the zone of control that information rights holders wield over informational assets. | LL.M. | rights, trade | 10, 16 |
| Chien, Yi-Chun | Wong, Joseph||Peng, Ito | Rights to Settle? —Comparing Migrant Care Worker Policies in Taiwan and South Korea | Political Science | 2019-03-01 | Industrialized countries around the world are facing rapid demographic changes, including declining fertility rates, greater longevity, and an aging population, and these are creating unprecedented challenges in care provision. Many East Asian countries have used migrant care workers to solve the challenges of labour shortages in the social welfare sector. The purpose of this dissertation is to understand why East Asian countries have adopted different policy approaches to recruit migrant care workers. Specifically, it investigates why Taiwan’s policies are designed to recruit “household care workers with a temporary contract” while South Korea’s policies focus on “institutional care workers with access to long-term settlement”? The dissertation explores this question by probing the politics of eldercare and care migration and tracing the development of migrant care worker policies. By employing a framework that intersects care, employment and migration regimes, it highlights the institutional contexts that shape how a country designs its migrant care worker policies. It argues that migrant care worker policies manifest how care work, citizenship, and gender equality are defined and contested by the receiving society. It also demonstrates how the development of migrant care worker policies reflects the legacies of earlier policy decisions, by illuminating the political actors with access to the policymaking process. Based on archival research and 53 personal interviews with government bureaucrats, policymakers and migrant worker activists, the dissertation maps out the political mechanisms that determine the levels of rights, labour mobility, and access to membership rights for migrant care workers in Taiwan and South Korea. It challenges conventional understandings of policy as formal and static and posits the formation of migrant care worker policy as an organic process which is modified and contested as part of a political process. | Ph.D. | rights, institut, industr, worker, labour, employment, equality, gender | 5, 8, 9, 16 |
| Khoo, Yishin | Khoo, Yishin | River Flowing and Fire Burning: A Narrative Inquiry into a Teacher’s Experience of Learning to Educate for Citizenship — from the Local to the Global — through a Shifting Canada-China Inter-School Reciprocal Professional Learning Landscape | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-11-01 | Situated within a Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Partnership project (2013-2020) funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, this four-year study adopts practical narrative inquiry as its theoretical and methodological framework to explore how selected Toronto-based teachers developed their storied experiences and knowledge to educate for citizenship, while teaching in their globalized professional settings shaped by Canada-China Sister School reciprocal learning partnerships. By restorying and inquiring into the curriculum-making experience of one particular teacher, Ann Barton, on her evolving Canada-China Sister School landscape, this study engages the metaphors of river flowing and fire burning to illustrate how a teacher becomes a more globally oriented and informed citizenship educator, through telling and living, and retelling and reliving her stories of building a democratic classroom community on a changing Sister School landscape. It also repositions “narrative inquiry” as an educative and generative Way that could be practiced and engaged to nurture a collaborative professional reciprocal-learning community on a Canada-China inter-school landscape that supports teachers in their effort to retell and relive their cultural and historical narrative of educating for citizenship in the midst of their daily classroom-curriculum making. Such a collaborative reciprocal learning community has the potential to transform teachers’ classroom/school into a space where in-service citizenship professional learning can take place within a global-local dialectics, and where practicing teachers can not only educate for citizenship from the local to the global, but also learn to develop their passion, integrity and identity as citizen-teachers in a globalized, multicultural, still problematic and fragmented world. The study ends with an invitation for educators and learners to rethink and reimagine citizenship teaching and learning using the paired imageries of river flowing and fire burning, and through personal and collective storytelling and reflections, across geographies, boundaries and differences. | Ph.D. | labor, educat | 4, 8 |
| Dai, Changsheng | Sun, Yu | Robotic Cell Manipulation for Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection (ICSI) | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Infertility is a global health issue and affects millions of people. ICSI is the most commonly used technique for infertility treatment, and it achieved higher live birth rate than artificial insemination. ICSI involves the injection of a single sperm into an oocyte with a sharp glass micropipette. However, manual operation of ICSI suffers from inconsistency and potential damage to the cells. This research has addressed these two limitations by developing techniques of automation and less invasiveness for ICSI. Automated system was developed for measuring both motility and morphology of individual live sperm, to provide quantitative data for embryologists to select a single sperm for ICSI. The system has been validated to be highly reproducible and reliable. With customized design to add rotational degree of freedom, robotic micropipette alignment was developed based on kinematics modeling and controller design. The accurate alignment helped increase the success rate of sperm immobilization. Automated sperm aspiration was also proposed by establishing a nonlinear dynamics model and an adaptive controller to achieve high positioning accuracy within micropipette. To reduce cell damage during ICSI operation, robotic orientation control of deformable cells was developed. Polar body needs to be rotated towards 12 o'clock orientation before injection to prevent damaging the spindle. Deep neural networks were trained for robust detection of polar bodies to provide visual feedback. By force modeling and optimal control, an oocyte can be effectively rotated while consistently maintaining minimal cell deformation to avoid cell damage. Oocytes also suffer large deformation during injection, and cytoplasm needs to be aspirated into the micropipette to break oolemma. A new piezo drill was designed to penetrate the oocyte with less deformation and without cytoplasm aspiration. Robotic techniques were also developed to minimize the disturbance of piezo drill to cytoplasm. These techniques of robotic cell manipulation for clinical ICSI can achieve consistent outcomes independent of operator training and experience, increase operation safety by removal of human errors, and improve outcomes by reducing cell damage. | Ph.D. | urban, health | 3, 11 |
| Vedadi, Farhang | Valaee, Shahrokh | Robust Egomotion Estimation for Automatic and Crowdsourcing-Based Indoor Localization and Tracking | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2018-06-01 | Indoor localization has been an active research in recent years. Among many different algorithms proposed, fingerprinting-based methods have found a great popularity due to ease of deployment and high accuracy. A major disadvantage to fingerprinting-based methods, is the burden of the training phase in which fingerprints of a certain type of a signal are recorded in many known locations inside the indoor environment. The collected dataset of fingerprints and corresponding locations is then used to model the relationship between fingerprints and locations in order to use that model to localize future queried fingerprints. This process is usually time consuming and requires considerable human effort and expertise. To overcome the burden of the training phase, in this thesis, we discuss two different perspectives towards solving these problems. We refer to these perspectives as: automatic fingerprinting and, crowdsourcing-based fingerprint-location dataset generation. The former, aims to reduce the time and effort put by an expert to generate the fingerprint dataset by automatically estimating the location of the collected fingerprints while the expert walks in the environment, hence reducing the training time from typically several hours to a few minutes needed to walk in the target indoor area. The latter method, aims to approach the problem by leveraging the shared data from the users in an indoor environment, hence eliminating the need for an expert to repeat the training process to update the dataset of fingerprints. Both perspectives above can expedite the widespread use of fingerprinting-based methods of localization for indoors by alleviating the burden of the training phase which currently seems to be the major drawback for this popular category of indoor localization systems. We will propose, design and validate algorithms for each of these methods. | Ph.D. | environment, consum | 12, 13 |
| Bejan, Raluca | Tsang, A. Ka Tat | Sameness and Difference in Canada and the UK: Interrogating whiteness as a categorical marker within interpretative matrices of inclusion and exclusion | Social Work | 2018-11-01 | This dissertation contests the ontological social work interpretations addressing issues of societal inclusion and exclusion for migrant populations. Outcomes of societal advantage and disadvantage, of privilege and oppression, as the colloquial social work jargon designates, resulting from distributive inclusionary-exclusionary processes, are generally abstracted on identitarian categorical markers (i.e., gender, class, race) and subsequently interpreted through intersectional matrices of analysis. Categorical whiteness, taken as a fixed classification to denote fair skin colour possessed by those originating from Caucasian racial ancestries, particularly from European ethnic backgrounds, has grown to represent the universal marker grounding analyses of privilege. Yet the assumption that whiteness is the same (i.e., European, biologically marked by skin colour and privileged) across the globe, in every social circumstance, and universally traversing national communities of value, is highly problematic, since interpretations of categorical markers depend on particular geo-political and national referential frames. In comparing and contrasting the inclusionary and exclusionary logic determining aspects of societal marginalization for two populations, skilled migrants to Canada, and Romanian and Bulgarian migrants to United Kingdom (UK), this dissertation demonstrates that: 1) a universal taxonomy of whiteness as explanatory for outcomes of inclusion and exclusion does not hold within transnational contexts; 2) current understandings of ontological whiteness are constructed on a false epistemological presumption of equivalence that synonymizes colonialism with Europeanness, Europeanness with whiteness, and whiteness with colonialism; 3) the theory of intersectionality, generally used to contextualize particular outcomes of privilege and oppression, is limited in analyzing inclusionary-exclusionary processes; and it proposes, in turn: 4) the adoption of a sameness-difference dialectical reasoning to guide inclusionary/exclusionary analyses for transnational migrant populations. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Ross, Timothy Paul | Buliung, Ronald | School Travel for Families Living with Childhood Disability | Geography | 2019-06-01 | The rise of automobility during the past century has contributed to children becoming more sedentary and isolated from public life and, correspondingly, exhibiting reduced independent mobility and a troubling range of chronic health problems. Concern over these issues has led to an increase in attention to school transportation among planning scholars and practitioners. School transportation has come to be regarded as an opportunity for creating change since converting sedentary trips to and from school into trips involving active modes could help to mitigate the children’s health issues. Unfortunately, the increased attention to school transportation has come to pass with little regard for childhood disability. This dissertation engages school transportation’s childhood disability gap. Using a critical ableist studies perspective, attention is given to questioning and unsettling the ableist normative ordering of childhood disability as excludable within the planning and design of school transportation and school sites. A systematic review of disability’s treatment in the active school travel and children’s independent mobility literatures demonstrates and offers insight into the childhood disability gap. Following this is a presentation of an ethnographic research design that used photovoice, institutional ethnographic conceptual tools, and numerous inclusive measures to study how families living with childhood disability experience everyday school travel across Ontario, Canada’s Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. Pilot study findings are then presented and discussed to demonstrate the value of piloting qualitative research designs involving disabled children. Lastly, findings about how families of disabled children experience parking at school are considered. The findings show how the families are expected and relied on to take on various types of inequitable work (e.g., work that is social, physical, and temporal in nature) to overcome normalized, ableist school site designs. | Ph.D. | institut, equitable, inclusiv, health | 3, 4, 16 |
| Sperling, Erin R. | Gagné, Antoinette | ScienCivic Literacy: An Ethnographic Case Study of Food Justice Education Through an Ecojustice Lens | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | In a time of crisis, during a global pandemic, climate change and racial unrest, access to food is a heavily pressing issue, impacting and impacted by overlapping social, cultural, sustainability and physiological spheres. This dissertation presents an ethnographic case study, as a participant-observer, of community-based research with teenage women and adult facilitators in an afterschool program of a food justice organization in an urban centre in Canada over the course of a year. It is guided by the overarching question of what are the envisioned, enacted and experienced curricular moments in a community-based after school food justice education program. It examines the factors that impacted the envisioned and enacted curriculum as developed and delivered by adult facilitators, as well as the factors that influenced the youth experiences of the enacted programming, and the nature of those impacts. Sources of data included field notes, interviews, documents and artefacts. Ecojustice education is presented as an integrated conceptual framework for analysis through overlapping fields of environmental education as a subset of science education, citizenship education and social ecology theory, all within a critical pedagogy of place, highlighting both the potentials and challenges encountered in this case of food justice education. The findings show facilitators provided insight to the mainly structural challenges that may have inhibited deeper experiences for the youth, such as access to and continuity in the program, staffing, and space constraints. Notably, youth expressed an increase in their leadership capacity and desire to make changes for themselves and their families in relation to food. As an interdisciplinary topic, food justice education offered participants a means to the integration of narrative, agency development, and community building for individual and social change. Ultimately, this research articulates the reciprocal relationship of learning through food and learning for food justice as a space for the development of ‘ScienCivic’ literacy, the development of knowledge and skills for engagement with complex socioscientific issues. | Ed.D. | justice, ecolog, environment, climate, urban, women, educat, food | 2, 4, 5, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Loiacono, Matthew M | Grootendorst, Paul||Chit, Ayman | Seasonal Influenza Vaccine: Factors of Uptake and Interventions to Increase Coverage | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-03-01 | Seasonal influenza vaccines (SIVs) are the most effective means of reducing influenza associated morbidity and mortality, conferring both substantial public health and economic benefits to society. Yet, SIV coverage remains suboptimal and stagnant across many jurisdictions. Effective policy and strategies to improve SIV coverage are built upon a sound understanding of the underlying determinants of SIV uptake. Further, there is an apparent need to develop and assess of innovative, low-cost, scalable interventions so as to increase coverage.Accordingly, there are two primary objectives we aim to accomplish in this Thesis: 1) investigate the factors of SIV uptake among an age-stratified at-risk adult population, and 2) develop and assess innovative, scalable interventions to increase SIV uptake. 1. Investigate Factors of SIV Uptake among an Age-Stratified At-Risk Adult Population Using a large primary care database from England, we investigate patient-, practice-, and season-level factors associated with SIV uptake among an age-stratified population of at-risk adults. With this study, we aim to not only identify uptake determinants, but also identify factors that are differentially associated by age, as these findings may help inform policy and the design of targeted interventions. 2. Develop and Assess Innovative, Scalable Interventions to Increase SIV Uptake First, leveraging big data and predictive modeling, we develop and validate a clinical prediction tool for seasonal influenza vaccination. Based solely upon patient characteristics identified in a primary care database, we train and validate models to predict patient-level SIV uptake among a population of at-risk adults. With HCPs under increasingly restrictive time constraints, timely identification of patients likely to miss influenza vaccination may help HCPs tailor services and to improve efficiency.Second, in collaboration with a national network of retail pharmacies (Walmart, US), we design, implement, and evaluate a multimodal approach to improving SIV uptake during the 2019/20 influenza season. Specifically, we assess the impact of a randomized Peer Comparison (PC) intervention and a previously developed relational communications training on pharmacy-level SIV uptake across more than 4,500 retail pharmacy sites in the US. | Ph.D. | innovat, labor, health | 3, 8, 2009 |
| Eaton, Andrew David | Craig, Shelley L||Walmsley, Sharon L | Selecting Interventions, Engaging Community, and Implementing a Pilot Randomized, Controlled Trial of Group Therapy for People Aging with HIV-associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND) | Social Work | 2021-03-01 | Cognitive impairment is an important comorbidity for people aging with HIV. Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and its associated medical complications are common causes for cognitive impairment, termed HIV-Associated Neurocognitive Disorder (HAND). Up to 30-50% of those living and aging with HIV may experience some form of HAND, primarily its mild-to-moderate form. The symptoms of HAND may increase stress and anxiety and impede coping, yet practitioners lack non-medical techniques to address these psychosocial factors. Exploratory research and a stated community need point towards the potential role for group therapies that integrate the complementary intervention strategies of mindfulness and brain training strategies as promising ways to support emotional and practical coping with cognitive challenges. This dissertation is comprised of an introduction, three distinct papers, and a conclusion. Paper 1 is a realist review of mindfulness and cognitive training interventions that social workers have used to address cognitive challenges in older adults, forming the background to consider implementation of these techniques for people aging with HIV. Paper 2 discuss the importance of community-based participatory research (CBPR) through the author’s previous CBPR studies and a description of community engagement in the development of a pilot study of group therapy for people aging with HAND. Paper 3 describes the design, conduct and implementation of a pilot randomized, controlled trial that compared feasibility, acceptability, fidelity, and exploratory outcomes of a novel Cognitive Remediation Group Therapy (CRGT) to an active control of Mutual Aid Group Therapy for people aging with HAND. As the first exploratory trial of group therapy for people with cognitive impairment related to HAND, this dissertation provides insight into designing and implementing psychosocial supports to address the complexity of aging with HIV who experience cognitive challenges. Results demonstrate that combining mindfulness and brain training may ameliorate symptoms of cognitive impairment in people aging with HIV. An important lesson learned was that limiting study criteria to a formal HAND diagnosis may be unnecessary for group therapy; a briefer test of cognition may be more preferential for screening. Implications for social work are proposed and directions for further research in this area are recommended. | Ph.D. | worker, health | 3, 8 |
| Hauser, Frances Elisabeth | Chang, Belinda SW||Lopez-Fernandez, Hernan | Selection, Constraint, and Adaptation in the Visual Genes of Neotropical Cichlid Fishes and Other Vertebrates | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2018-06-01 | The visual system serves as a direct interface between an organism and its environment. Studies of the molecular components of the visual transduction cascade, in particular visual pigments, offer an important window into the relationship between genetic variation and organismal fitness. In this thesis, I use molecular evolutionary models as well as protein modeling and experimental characterization to assess the role of variable evolutionary rates on visual protein function. In Chapter 2, I review recent work on the ecological and evolutionary forces giving rise to the impressive variety of adaptations found in visual pigments. In Chapter 3, I use interspecific vertebrate and mammalian datasets of two visual genes (RH1 or rhodopsin, and RPE65, a retinoid isomerase) to assess different methods for estimating evolutionary rate across proteins and the reliability of inferring evolutionary conservation at individual amino acid sites, with a particular emphasis on sites implicated in impaired protein function. In Chapters 4, and 5, I narrow my focus to devote particular attention to visual pigments in Neotropical cichlids, a highly diverse clade of fishes distributed across South and Central America. In Chapter 4, I find accelerated evolutionary rates in RH1 are associated with cichlid colonization of Central America. I experimentally characterize a South American cichlid rhodopsin pigment and assess the functional consequences of a unique amino acid variant. Finally, in Chapter 5, I examine diversity in UV, violet, and blue-sensitive opsins across the Neotropical cichlids. I identify several putative pseudogenization events in the UV opsin, as well as complete loss of this opsin in several South American cichlid species. Conversely, the UV opsin was under strong purifying selection in Central American cichlids. My results also indicate a burst of episodic positive selection in the blue-sensitive opsin at the base of an ancient adaptive radiation in South American cichlids. This thesis combines computational and experimental work investigating visual pigment evolution in Neotropical cichlid fishes. More broadly, this thesis also considers the evolutionary forces governing visual gene loss and inactivation, as well as the molecular mechanisms mediating visual protein function and adaptation. | Ph.D. | ecolog, fish, conserv, environment, wind | 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Albanese, Carolyn A | Flessa, Joseph | Sensemaking: How is the Equitable and Inclusive Education Policy Understood, Explained, and Implemented by School Administrators in Ontario? | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | The Ontario Ministry of Education’s policy related to equitable and inclusive education (PPM 119) has been in existence for some 25 years, starting from what was called the Antiracism and Ethnocultural Equity Policy (1993) up to the 2013 version, which includes additional marginalized groups as well as strategies and timelines to support these groups. This study examines, from cognitive and social identity perspectives how secondary school administrators in a school board near Toronto, Ontario, make sense of their school board’s complexly-encoded policy and how it works with various stakeholders to explain and implement two areas of that policy: a) curriculum and assessment and b) school climate and the prevention of harassment and discrimination. Composed of 10 qualitative interviews with self-identifying equity-minded secondary school administrators, as well as analysis and synthesis of the policy and literature, this study investigates the interaction between these administrators’ familiarity with a school board’s version of the Ministry policy and their individual cognitive and social identities as they are situated in the sensemaking of this policy. While the findings reveal a strong commitment from all participants to engage in this work to better support and serve their communities, there are wide and varying understandings of the policy, how sense is made of it, conceptions of what the policy asks administrators to consider, and how personal and social experiences, values, and beliefs inform their work in these two areas. The findings support discussion in terms of creating specific professional development opportunities for administrators—including fostering a knowledge of the historical understandings that underlie the policy—with the goal of moving towards centering the work of equity and inclusion on improved student support in this area, as part of a social determinant of a person’s health and life outcomes. | Ph.D. | climate, equitable, inclusiv, educat, health | 3, 4, 13 |
| Sivak, Kristin | Sakaki, Atsuko | Serving Stories: Servant Characters in Twentieth Century Japanese Literature | East Asian Studies | 2020-11-01 | While the servants who appear in twentieth-century Japanese literature are often minor characters, they are far from insignificant. Rather, these servant characters in fact play a vital role in the narrative discourse seemingly out of proportion with the attention that their class, gender, and employment status—as well as a surface reading of the story—might lead us to expect. By exploring some of the different kinds of structural ‘work’ they do, then, as well as the ways in which their very literary nature grants them a degree of authority beyond that of their real-life corollaries, this dissertation aims to construct a narrative about a type of character whose impact on literary fiction well exceeds the bounds of the textual space they occupy. With this in mind, I take up an examination of servant characters in the works of three canonical authors who themselves experienced life with servants, Natsume Sōseki (1867-1916), Tanizaki Jun’ichirō (1886-1965), and Mishima Yukio (1925-1970). An analysis of servant characters offers an opportunity to explore issues of representation, power, and authority in modern Japanese fiction. From the ethical question of how to acknowledge those we cannot speak for, to examining the connections between domestic spaces and literary spaces, to uncovering the latent power of traditionally undervalued forms of labor, this dissertation proposes a narratological examination of the role of servants in twentieth-century Japanese fiction as a means for rethinking questions of representation and the plurality of perspectives in literature. Over three chapters, I discuss questions of literary ethics and what it means to respect and acknowledge the blind spots that always accompany difference, how servant characters share and construct the domestic space with their employers, and how the embodied intimacy and unbridled access afforded servant characters might empower them even to take control over their employers’ narratives. In doing so, I argue for a reconsideration of what it means for the minor to assert itself from within the canon, proposing new ways of thinking about the structural dimensions of representation, power, and authority as revealed through the roles of minor servant characters. | Ph.D. | labor, employment, gender | 5, 8 |
| Ho, Emily S | Wright, Virginia | Shared Decision Making in Youth with Brachial Plexus Birth Injury and Their Families | Rehabilitation Science | 2019-06-01 | Introduction: This dissertation used an overarching interpretivist qualitative framework in the development of a patient decision aid (PtDA) for youth with brachial plexus birth palsy (BPBI) and their parents when making preference-sensitive decisions regarding rehabilitation and surgical treatment options for an elbow flexion contracture. The objective was to develop a tool containing evidence-based information and a values clarification method to help these youth (ages 8 and 18 years) and their families discern what they value most related to their options. Methods: PtDA development was guided by a conceptual framework built on existing PtDA models and standards. A philosophical hermeneutic approach combined with arts-based methods was used to conduct a decisional needs assessment based on two qualitative sources: in-depth interviews with 5 young adults and 14 youth-parent dyads, and 15 participant observation sessions of families and clinicians in the clinic setting. These qualitative findings were integrated with evidence from knowledge synthesis methods on elbow flexion contractures and its treatment options to develop the PtDA prototype, which was in turn field-tested with 17 youth via cognitive-based interviewing. Results: Several substantive contributions to the fields of BPBI and pediatric shared decision making were achieved through the process of developing this PtDA. A PtDA for youth with BPBI was created and an arts-based qualitative approach provided a unique way to interpret and understand the family-team clinic experience. Overall, the shared decision making in youth with BPBI was influenced more by a family’s appearance-related concerns and the strength of their trust relationship with clinicians, and less by their activity and participation concerns. Although decisional conflict in these families seemed rare, once rehabilitation treatment was initiated, decision regret was sometimes expressed. Regret was associated with youth-parent decision discord that was influenced by parental emotions, youth’s response to external pressures, and experiences with treatment adherence. Conclusions: By revealing the complexities of shared decision making in youth with BPBI, this research reflects the real-world concerns of these families in the design of this PtDA. The insights gained offer guidance for future PtDA implementation that optimize its potential to promote positive health outcomes in youth with BPBI and their families. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Demidov, Valentin | Vitkin, I. Alex | Shedding Light on Radiotherapy: Quantifying Radiiological Response of Irradiated Tissues with Functional Optical Coherence Tomography | Medical Biophysics | 2021-03-01 | Radiation therapy (RT), alone or in combination with other therapies, is one of the most commonly used treatment strategies for managing cancer. Recent advances in RT delivery and monitoring of radiobiological tumor effects have led to the development of stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT) with improved local control and lower damage to surrounding normal tissues. Despite the rapid dissemination of this tremendously advanced technology in the community to manage many disease sites, it remains somewhat ‘blind’ – its relative success and outcome are often not known for weeks or months following treatment. As well, there are indications that the radiobiology involved in the SBRT regime may be different from the conventional 2Gy/fraction RT, specifically with respect to its effect on microvascular response. This thesis investigates optical coherence tomography (OCT) as an imaging modality for the detection and quantification of early (days to weeks) and late (months) tissue changes induced by radiotherapy. Innovative methods are developed to apply non-invasive, depth-resolved and label-free OCT technology for in-vivo assessment of tumor microvascular and microstructural response to radiation and evaluation of late radiation toxicity to normal tissues at resolution approaching optical microscopy. Pre-clinical models of human tumor xenografts subjected to 10-30Gy single doses are investigated for vascular remodeling following RT. Texture analysis of volumetric OCT images of tissues is performed to delineate irradiated tumors and detect subtle changes within the first weeks after 15Gy single-dose irradiation with RT-response metrics. An OCT-based method for in-vivo assessment and quantification of radiation-induced fibrosis-associated microvascular changes in tissue is proposed and tested on murine models 6 months after a 40Gy single dose irradiation. Finally, a label-free lymphangiography / neurography method is developed and validated with histopathological studies, opening new exciting ways for assessment of tumor lymphatics and nerves development and response to RT. These innovative methods build a solid foundation for future studies that will aim to discover fundamental insights into SBRT radiobiology after specific dose-fractionation schedules (e.g., 8Gy per fraction at 5 fractions delivered within two weeks) and correlate the outcomes with clinical treatment and imaging protocols, in an effort to better understand and improve the SBRT treatment strategies. | Ph.D. | innovat | 9 |
| Shibaike, Takumi | Wong, Wendy H | Small NGOs in Global Governance: Agenda Setting in the Governance of Biodiversity and Wildlife | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | International relations theories have conceptualized nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as, inter alia, agenda setters for global governance. To date, existing research on NGO agenda setting has overwhelmingly focused on how advocacy is supplied by well-established, leading NGOs, but overlooked how and why advocacy is demanded in the first place. Contrary to the assumption that small NGOs are "bandwagoners," I argue that small NGOs substantially influence the variation of issue salience in a given issue area due to the interdependence of demand and supply in the advocacy market. Drawing on the insight of public opinion research, I argue that the demand for advocacy is concentrated in a small segment of the public, referred to as the issue public. Leading NGOs cannot target their advocacy to the issue public alone because they cannot maintain their social and economic resources with a small segment of the public. By contrast, small NGOs can frame their advocacy to resonate with the identities and shared values of the issue public. The stability of attention from the issue public legitimates small NGOs' agenda and allows them to exercise influence over policymakers with expert knowledge. The implications are important: the existing literature overestimates the agenda-setting power of leading NGOs while trivializing small NGOs' issue entrepreneurship. I evaluate my theory in the issue area of biodiversity and wildlife conservation to overcome a persistent problem in the study of NGO agenda setting: selection bias. As NGOs cannot advocate for non-existent species, all conservation issues are observable regardless of the outcome of advocacy work. Three empirical tests were conducted. First, I quantitatively explored the relationship between small NGOs and issue salience among Northern publics, leveraging the computational text analysis of 20,000 newspaper articles and 350,000 mission statements. Second, I analyzed the causal linkage between types of NGOs, locational issue characteristics, and their interaction with survey experiments in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Finally, I qualitatively investigated the recent case of issue emergence, pangolin (scaly anteater) conservation, through in-depth interviews. I conclude with the reviews of my overall findings and contributions and potential applications for future research. | Ph.D. | governance, biodivers, conserv | 14, 15, 16 |
| Ramraj, Chantel | Siddiqi, Arjumand | Socioeconomic Inequalities in Distributions of Birth Outcomes: A Cross-National Comparative Study of Canada and the United States | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2018-11-01 | Background: Despite well-established associations between entire distributions of birth outcomes (i.e., birth weight and gestational age) and health outcomes across the life course, the extant literature on socioeconomic inequalities has focused almost exclusively on examining inequalities in their high-risk range (i.e., low birth weight and preterm birth). Objective: To examine if, and why, socioeconomic inequalities in low birth weight and preterm birth extend to inequalities over the entire distributions of birth weight and gestational age, in Canada and its peer nations. Methods and aims: A scoping review was conducted to understand how researchers have conceptualized and analyzed social inequalities in distributions of birth outcomes (Aim 1). Data from the U.S. 2006 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) (N=892,635) were used to measure and explain socioeconomic inequalities across distributions of birth outcomes (Aim 2). Harmonized data from the 2006 U.S. PRAMS and the 2006 Canadian Maternity Experiences Survey (MES) (N=61,230) were used to examine whether socioeconomic inequalities in distributions of birth weight and gestational age vary between two comparable countries, Canada and the United States. Results: This dissertation uncovered the presence of socioeconomic inequalities not only in low birth weight and preterm birth, but also over the entire distributions of birth weight and gestational age. Compared to the United States, Canada was characterized by more favourable birth-outcome distributions (i.e., a greater proportion of infants weighing between 2500 and 4000 grams and born between 37 and 41 weeks of gestation), both for the full populations and between similar socioeconomic groups. Observed individual level characteristics could not fully explain cross-national disparities, pointing to the explanatory power of unobserved (and perhaps structural) factors. Conclusions: Applying a distributional lens to investigate health inequalities within and between societies provides further insights regarding the population-level scope of the problem of health inequalities. Socioeconomic inequalities are present over the entire birth outcome distributions, which have implications both for clinical guidelines and population health prevention strategies. | Ph.D. | health, socioeconomic | 1, 3 |
| Feng, Ying | Yoon, Albert | Special Judicial Treatment on Sensitive Cases: Institutional Judicial Deviation from Law in China | Law | 2020-11-01 | Sensitive cases exist in different historical periods, and they are closely linked to the economic and social environment of the times in China. For now, sensitive cases are those involving group disputes that may affect social stability. Special judicial treatment on sensitive cases is the embodiment of the social governance model with a preference for stability in the judicial system. In China, judges are responsible for assessing social risks of all the cases in their hands in China. There are a series of institutions with regard to how to handle sensitive cases within Chinese judicial system, including judges’ preliminary screening, judge meetings and judicial committee. This special treatment to sensitive cases manifests the institutional excessive defense in the judicial system, might legalize some judicial results that violate laws and legal logic, and would damage public trust in and respect to the rule of law and the judiciary in China. | LL.M. | governance, institut, environment | 13, 16 |
| MacKinnon, Kinnon Ross | Ross, Lori E | Standardizing Injustice in Transition-related Medicine?: An Institutional Ethnography of How Assessment Protocols Coordinate Inequitable Access to Hormones and Surgeries in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11-01 | Transgender (trans) people experience barriers to transition medicine such as cross-sex hormones and sex reassignment surgeries. In response, standardized care protocols, such as the World Professional Association of Transgender Health standards of care (WPATH-SOC), are recommended to improve gaps in care. To better understand how standardized care protocols shape access to transition medicine in Canada, I draw on institutional ethnography as a critical research strategy. In this dissertation I thus explicate how the main protocols used to assess trans people’s psychosocial readiness for hormones or surgeries serve a powerful coordinating function. Although significant advocacy targets the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders for pathologizing trans identity through the gender dysphoria diagnosis, my research demonstrates that the WPATH-SOC standardizes an entire model of care based in pathologization. This research project uses data obtained through talking with twenty-two trans people, clinicians, clinician-educators, and hospital administrators, observing clinician-education workshops, and analyzing pertinent assessment protocols and healthcare policy texts. My dissertation makes three substantive contributions to the areas of public health, trans studies, and health professions education research. First, I show that standardized readiness assessments previously understood as innocuous instead contribute to inequities and further pathologize trans people. Second, I argue that in the absence of trans health in the formal health professions education curricula, standardized assessment protocols serve as a form of curriculum, coordinating how health professionals learn and teach this clinical sub-specialty. Third, the results of this research hold the potential to bolster trans health advocacy efforts by identifying how assessment protocols rule health professionals’ and trans people’s resistance practices. In the spirit of activist institutional ethnography this dissertation concludes with a discussion on recommended future advocacy and systems change in the areas of policy, education, and practice. | Ph.D. | justice, institut, gender, equitable, educat, health | 3, 4, 5, 16 |
| Pant, Vikram Aditya | Yu, Eric | Strategic Coopetition - A Conceptual Modeling Framework for Analysis and Design | Information Studies | 2021-03-01 | In complex socio-technical multi-agent systems, agents cooperate and compete simultaneously to increase combined welfare through cooperation while maximizing individual gains through competition. Coopetition requires agents to adopt strategies that maximize benefits and minimize costs from concomitant cooperation and competition. Analyzing coopetition can be challenging since cooperation and competition are paradoxical social behaviours that are undergirded by contradictory logics, hypotheses, and assumptions. Therefore, the ability of systems designers to represent and reason about coopetition in a structured and systematic manner can benefit their efforts to design win-win strategies.This thesis proposes an approach for modeling and analyzing strategic coopetition. This approach was developed by following three main steps: (i) first, we identified primary characteristics for modeling and analyzing strategic coopetition (complementarity, trustworthiness, interdependence, and reciprocity) by surveying scholarly literature; (ii) second, we developed requirements for articulating and assessing these characteristics; and (iii) third, we constructed a framework comprised of artefacts for expressing and evaluating these characteristics. This framework consists of a modeling language, analysis techniques, knowledge catalogues, and a method. It is used to discriminate among alternative coopetitive strategies, and to generate strategies in search of positive sum outcomes. We combine and extend extant modeling approaches including strategic actor modeling, value modeling, and game-theoretic modeling to represent and reason about strategic coopetition. Strategic actor modeling, based on i* (iStar), is used to articulate and assess interdependence among actors as well as trustworthiness of actors. Value modeling, based on e3value, is used to express and evaluate the complementarity between actors as well as synergy among activities. Game-theoretic modeling, specifically Game Trees, is used to articulate and analyze reciprocity of actions by actors. This modeling framework is supported by catalogs of design knowledge that include: (i) generic strategies for competing and cooperating; as well as (ii) targeted approaches for information-sharing and assessing trustworthiness. We evaluated the usability and usefulness of this modeling framework by applying it to: (i) a published case study of coopeting mega-vendors in the global software industry; and (ii) an empirical study of startups under coopetition in the market of data science professional development. | Ph.D. | industr | 9 |
| Swyer, Ian | Wheeler, Aaron R | Strategies for Interfacing Digital Microfluidics with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy | Chemistry | 2019-06-01 | Digital microfluidics (DMF) is a fluid handling paradigm wherein minute droplets (with volumes in the range of 100 nL - 1 mL) are actuated through electrostatic forces over an electrode array. The discrete nature of DMF makes it a perfect fit for delivery of samples and other reagents to microcoil sensors used for high field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. This thesis describes the outcome of several years of work towards the development of a DMF-NMR interface. Chapter 2 considers a one-plate DMF design with a 1 mm outer diameter (OD) planar microcoil and demonstrates how the system can be used to manipulate, mix, and sense droplets within the NMR spectrometer. Chapter 3 is motivated by the need to ensure reliable droplet movement in an NMR spectrometer (where there is no visualization of droplet movement). This section evaluates how to determine best practices for droplet manipulation on the basis of the relationship between applied force and droplet velocity. Chapter 4 describes a two-plate DMF device configuration, enabled by altering the microcoil substrate to include a copper grounding plate to serve as the DMF counter-electrode. The increased droplet control of this design allows for better spectral resolution and better time resolution when studying reacting droplets. Finally, chapter 5 proposes a method to overcome the space limitations within the NMR spectrometer that limit the DMF device size by mindfully engineering the electrodes to allow for continuous forward motion using only two electrical channels. I propose that these innovations establish DMF as a useful new tool sample handling in conjunction with micro-NMR detectors like the planar microcoils described here, with potential extension to microslots, microstriplines, and other geometries in the future. | Ph.D. | innovat | 9 |
| Gardhouse, Katherine | Ruocco, Anthony | Stressed, Sick, and Sad: A Transdiagnostic Investigation of the Translation of Stress into Depression through Neuroendoimmune Disruptions | Psychological Clinical Science | 2020-11-01 | Depression is a prevalent and disabling form of psychopathology that is frequently precipitated by experiences of stress. Disruptions in stress-sensitive biological systems, notably the immune system and hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, are strongly implicated in depression, and disturbances in these systems could reflect potential pathways through which experiences of stress are translated into depression. These systems, broadly subsumed within the neuroendoimmune system, may be highly responsive to stress and cognitive abilities related to stress management. To characterize the links between stress and depression and the potential influence of immune activity, the present study investigated the following: (1) the associations among perceived stress (across different time periods of life), proinflammatory immune markers, and depressive symptoms; (2) whether neuroendoimmune activity mediates the relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms; and (3) whether perceived stress and immune activity mediate the relationship between cognitive control and depressive symptoms. Fifty-nine medically healthy adult females with varying levels of depression participated in the study. Participants provided dimensional ratings of their depression symptoms and perceived life stress, and they completed a neuropsychological test of cognitive control. Plasma biomarkers of stress, including pro-inflammatory cytokines, C-reactive protein, and free cortisol, were assayed following a fasted morning blood draw. Consistent with hypotheses, both greater perceived stress and higher concentrations of the proinflammatory immune marker, interleukin-6 (IL-6), were associated with greater depressive symptoms. Although levels of IL-6 alone did not significantly mediate the relationship between perceived stress and depressive symptoms, when considered together, elevated concentrations of IL-6 and lower free cortisol mediated the relationship between severity of childhood stress and current depressive symptoms. Contrary to expectations, cognitive control was not significantly associated with stress, immune markers, or depression. The findings are interpreted in the context of a potentially long-term reduction in glucocorticoid tone triggered by early life stress that curbs cortisol output, produces chronic low-grade immune activation, and leads to depression vulnerability later in life. Overall, the study provides new insights into potential pathways among stress, the neuroendoimmune system, and depression, shedding light on how early life stress may be translated into depression in adulthood. | Ph.D. | urban, health | 3, 11 |
| Jia, Yongfang | Sawchuk, Peter | Struggles between Rural and Urban Ways: A Qualitative Study of Informal Learning amongst Female Migrant Domestic Workers in China | Social Justice Education | 2018-06-01 | There are existing researches regarding the subject matter of Chinese rural migrant workers, mainly focusing on economic and social effects of migrant workers, instead of regarding their thoughts, feels and needs. To fill these gaps, this dissertation conducted in-depth interviews involving 30 interviewees as a kind of primary research. It answers three research questions on barriers women migrant domestic workers face, with solutions, informal learning they obtain in workplace, and suggestions to governments, agencies and communities in facilitating their migration process. The thesis presents findings which shed lights to the related researches on the Chinese female rural migrant domestic workers, including the changing requirements as the globalization and urbanization deepen in China, the rural migrants’ active participation into urban life and their enhancing themselves for social upward mobility. The primary focus of analysis in this research is on women’s informal learning that stems from their economic migration between rural and urban areas as well as their work as domestics in the latter. Therefore, this informal learning takes place across a number of locations: within their workplaces (i.e. the homes of employers) but also extends beyond the workplaces (e.g. in discussions with family members or the community). Since this informal learning stems from the relationship of economic migration and domestic work specifically, the learning content is quite diverse. It involves content directly related to work tasks, skills and knowledge as well as relationships with employers (and their families), but it also includes learning content implicated by the context of rural-urban economic migration, such as effects on a worker’s children, husband or parents, aspects of urban living as well as the pendulum swings between their rural and urban lives, and much more. In keeping the type of observations that Malcolm, Hodkinson and Colley (2003) that aspects of informality and formality are likely part of all learning, we will also see how certain aspects of training and even educational attainment of these workers does shape how informal learning occurs, and vice versa learning done informally shapes interest and activity related to training interests, goals and practices as well. | Ed.D. | rural, urban, worker, women, educat | 4, 5, 8, 11 |
| Rousseau, Rodney Kyle | Kaul, Rupert | Suboptimal Immune Restoration in People Living with HIV | Immunology | 2020-11-01 | Despite antiretroviral treatment (ART), people living with HIV continue to have a reduced life expectancy compared to the general population. During HIV infection, non-AIDS health burdens, such as cardiovascular or liver disease, are explained only in part by lifestyle factors, and are thought to be driven in part by chronic systemic immune activation. Moreover, immunologic non-responder (INR) individuals are a subset of people living with HIV who, despite virally suppressive ART, do not achieve optimal CD4+ T cell numbers in blood (typically to >350 cells/mm3); these individuals are at increased risk of adverse health events, and are a worthy target of interventional studies, including those of popular alternative therapies. First, I hypothesized that HIV-positive INR individuals would have increased peripheral CD8+ T cell activation, as measured as percent co-expression of HLA-DR and CD-38, a combination of markers that is linked to disease progression in untreated HIV infection. In a cross-sectional study I confirmed that INR individuals had elevated peripheral CD8 activation and also increased CD4+ T cell activation, measured by the percent expression of HLA-DR. Using validated markers as an outcome, I next assessed whether a complementary therapy intervention reduces these parameters. In a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled phase 2b clinical trial, I assessed whether 48 weeks of probiotic supplementation reduced systemic immune activation in the INR context. Not only was no reduction observed in association with probiotic supplementation on CD8+ T cell activation, but in fact CD4+ T cell activation actually increased in the active drug arm. Finally, I assessed whether probiotic supplementation improved markers of gut immune function. Nested in part within the clinical trial, a predefined mucosal sub-study observed no changes associated with probiotic supplementation in gut T cell function or subset composition. Nevertheless, INR individuals had a unique gut immunopathologic profile, including, surprisingly, an upward skewing in the Th17 cell proportion and an increase in the Th17/Treg ratio. These findings emphasize not only that systemic immune activation during HIV-associated suboptimal immune restoration is a persistent problem, and that probiotic therapeutics are unlikely to confer a benefit, but also that gut immunopathology in INR individuals remains insufficiently understood. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lokku, Armend | Pullenayegum, Eleanor M | Summary Measures for Quantifying the Extent of Visit Irregularity in Longitudinal Data | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | A common feature of observational longitudinal data is variability in the timings of visits across individuals. Irregular visits merit careful scrutiny as they can be associated with the outcome trajectory and lead to biased results if not properly addressed. Similar to missing data, exploring the extent of irregularity is important because it can help determine whether specialized methods for irregular data are needed. However, there are currently no measures for quantifying the extent of irregularity. This thesis proposes visual and numerical measures of irregularity which are based on bins constructed across the study duration. To visually assess the extent of irregularity, the bin widths are varied and the mean proportions of individuals with 0, 1, and >1 visits per bin are plotted. With perfect repeated measures, the mean proportions of individuals with 1 visit per bin are 1, and the mean proportions of individuals with 0 and >1 visits per bin are 0. Missingness leads to individuals with 0 visits per bin while irregularity leads to both individuals with >1 visit per bin and individuals with 0 visits per bin. To numerically assess the extent of irregularity, we use the area under the curve (AUC) of the mean proportions of individuals with 0 visits per bin plotted against the mean proportions of individuals with >1 visit per bin. To be an effective measure of irregularity, the AUC should increase with increasing irregularity, be intuitive, and be invariant to sample size and follow-up length. Ideally, the AUC should be invariant to missingness, but the AUC increases as the level of missingness increases due to increased proportions of individuals with 0 visits per bin. To allow judgement solely on irregularity and not missingness, likelihood-based estimation will be used to derive an AUC assuming no missingness. Simulation results demonstrate that the AUC increases with increasing irregularity and is invariant to sample size and the number of scheduled measurement occasions. Overall, these measures can lead to an improved quality of statistical analyses by informing the modelling approach. Health administrative data are increasingly available, but are susceptible to irregular visit timings. It is thus crucial to assess the extent of irregularity to inform the need for specialized methods for irregular data that minimize the potential for biased results. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Xu, Yi | Sinton, David | Systems for CO2 Utilization: Property Measurement and Electrocatalytic Conversion | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-03-01 | Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions account for approximately 80% of anthropogenic contributions to greenhouse gas emissions and there is a growing need for CO2 utilization strategies. CO2 at supercritical conditions can be employed as a green solvent for extractions and separations, or can be injected in the subsurface for storage. CO2 can also be used as a reactant, a raw material to be converted into valuable chemicals via electrocatalysis. It is likely that all such approaches are needed, and more, to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study of the physical and chemical properties of CO2 informs these climate-critical CO2 mitigation approaches. Understanding the CO2 phase behavior of complex fluid mixtures – liquid, gas, supercritical – at different thermodynamic conditions is essential to many industrial and chemical processes. In this work a phase behavior measuring chip was developed that can simultaneously determine the phase behavior of fluids at multiple combinations of temperature and pressure within the application’s scope. This phase chip testing method demonstrated a hundredfold decrease in the processing time comparing to the current industrial testing processes while maintaining experimental resolution and high accuracy (Chapter 3). At the same time, this work provides a platform for exploring CO2 mixture phase behavior, interface behavior, and mass transport. Electrochemical reduction of CO2 to valuable liquid fuels and chemical feedstocks is a sustainable approach to intermittent electricity utilization. Gas diffusion heterogeneous reaction electrodes facilitate effective CO2 mass transport to the catalyst, enabling electrolyzers to operate at the current densities required for industrial deployment. However, the complex interactions between a solid catalyst, liquid electrolyte, and gas reagents of heterogeneous electrodes significantly influence the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) performance. This work focuses on CO2 local availabilities/pressure (Chapter 4), microstructure wetting capabilities (Chapter 4), pH distribution (Chapter 5), and electromigration (Chapter 5) with the goal of improving the performance of the CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) in practical systems. Together these efforts improve efficiencies, selectivities, and current densities of CO2 electrocatalytic systems, and advance the field of CO2 utilization more generally. | Ph.D. | greenhouse gas, climate, industr, renewabl, energy | 7, 9, 13 |
| Whitmell, Theresa Elizabeth | Campbell, Carol | Teachers Navigating Their Experiences of "Going Gradeless" in Ontario, Canada | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of Ontario secondary school teachers, navigating conceptual, pedagogical, cultural and political challenges as they shifted their practice from marks to "gradeless". Twenty-eight teachers from fifteen schools in seven school districts in the province of Ontario in Canada participated in semi-structured, face-to-face interviews. The 28 teachers in this study shared complex journeys of growth and innovation, providing feedback and supporting student learning through use of clear goals, and explicit communication of success criteria. The study provides models of gradeless classroom assessment that range from hidden or deferred marks to four-level rubrics to single-point rubrics to rich descriptive feedback, and from task criteria to curriculum expectations to overarching learning goals. The interviewees described concepts of assessment that centre on the learner, and pedagogical approaches that support student voice and choice. They experienced challenges from the cultural expectations of students, parents and colleagues, but none of the interviewees were restricted by policy requirements from making the changes in assessment practice that they identified as "gradeless", and which serve to support the learning of their students. This study suggests that teachers' conceptual understanding begins with their personal experiences of assessment, is developed through the pedagogy they employ, the cultural influences on their professional and school community, and the policy that underpins their practice. The study demonstrates that when teachers discover processes that improve the achievement of their students, they will persist with the new process even if faced with strong cultural pressure. It suggests that greater communication to, and education of, the school community, parents and students is needed to shift cultural expectations of assessment. The study reveals that given clear policy, grounded in research, teachers can develop stronger conceptual understanding of assessment, and are empowered to move forward, even in the face of strong cultural pressures. Implications for future research in classroom assessment, teacher change, and 21st century learning are further discussed. | Ph.D. | innovat, educat | 4, 9 |
| Gordon, Kayleigh Helen | Seto, Emily | Telemonitoring for Patients with Complex Chronic Conditions in Nurse-led Integrated Care | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-03-01 | Patients with complex chronic conditions (CCC) represent a significant challenge to the Canadian health care system. The heterogeneity of patients with complex and multi-morbid conditions does not align with current models of care delivery. The system of health care delivery in Canada is built on a foundation which continues to be focused on single chronic conditions. These single silos do not effectively bridge sudden, and frequent episodic health encounters to broader care plans impeding the delivery of person-centered care overall. This dissertation explores a nurse-led integrated chronic care delivery model, using telemonitoring (TM) as an intervention to facilitate better information sharing, improved patient self-care and needs-based clinical care practices. A multi-method study was conducted in three phases to determine 1) what are the opportunities of nurse-led models of care in complex chronic disease management, 2) to explore the needs and perspectives of patients and providers to inform the development of an innovative integrated model of care and the needs of TM for patients with CCC, and 3) to determine the feasibility of implementing a smartphone-based TM system into a nurse-led integrated care model. This work details how TM can be introduced and embedded within the processes of everyday clinical work for clinicians caring for this complex chronic patient population. Patients demonstrated high adherence rates and perceived the smartphone-based TM platform for CCC as useful in managing their everyday routines. The nurse-led team successfully embedded the technology into their regular clinical work as TM aligned well existing complex chronic care delivery practices and could facilitate the high-touch care requirements as a co-located interdisciplinary team. TM-enabled nurse led care models were viewed as a ‘wedge' to fill the growing gap between primary and acute care, fulfilling a need care for complex chronic patients. To our knowledge, this is the first study to evaluate feasibility of TM in this novel nurse-led integrated care model for patients with CCC. This thesis lays the foundations for future research to improve implementations of nurse-led integrated care models as well as outline opportunities which evaluate efficacy and health utilization of TM in this high-risk and high-needs population. | Ph.D. | innovat, health | 3, 9 |
| Sun, Zhuolu | Coyte, Peter | Temporal Trends in Home-based Palliative Care: Evidence from Ontario, Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2018-11-01 | With health care restructuring in Canada and a general preference by patients and their families to receive palliative care at home, attention to home-based palliative care continues to increase. However, little is known about the changing temporal trends in home-based palliative care in Canada during the past decade. This dissertation assessed three aspects of the temporal trends of home-based palliative care: the use of formal palliative care service, the relationship between informal and formal care, and place of death among patients receiving palliative care. The dissertation focused on informal care provided by relatives and friends, and three types of home-based formal palliative care services: home-based palliative care physician visits, nurse visits, and care by personal support workers. Using survey data collected in a home-based palliative care program by the Temmy Later Center for Palliative Care in Ontario from 2005 to 2016, a two-part utilization model was built to analyze home-based palliative care service utilization and the relationship between informal and formal home-based palliative care. A multivariate logistic regression model was used to assess the temporal trends in the place of death. The findings demonstrated increased use of home-based palliative care and a shift (or substitution) in care away from nurses to less expensive care provided by personal support workers over the last decade. Informal care was a substitute for care by personal support workers, but a complement to home-based physician visits and nurse visits. In the case of nurse visits, an increased complementary effect was observed in more recent years. The place of death for patients receiving home-based palliative care changed over time, with more patients dying at home over 2006-2015 when compared to 2005. Understanding the temporal trends in home-based palliative care is essential for effective improvements in home-based palliative care programs and the development of palliative care policies. | Ph.D. | worker, health | 3, 8 |
| Kopack, Robert | Lewis, Robert||Farish, Matt | The Afterlives of Soviet Secret Cities: Environment and Political Economy in Kazakhstan's Defense Industry Sites After 1991 | Geography | 2020-11-01 | During the Cold War, the Soviet Union built a number of military industries and secret defense sites in the vast Kazakh steppes. These included the world’s first space complex, large nuclear and biological weapons production and test sites, and massive ballistic missile research areas. These sites and their adjacent bedroom communities have experienced enormous stress resulting from large-scale political economic transformations due to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Environmental destruction is a common and troubling legacy from the past for all of these sites. In this dissertation, I examine the political, economic, and environmental afterlives of Soviet governance and Cold War defense investments in Kazakhstan through a study of three formerly secret military installations: Baikonur, Priozersk/Sary Shagan, and Stepnogorsk. My research shows how the destabilizing political economic rupture of the early 1990s was driven by both new market-based opportunities, such as commercial space endeavors, mining, heavy industry, tourism, and renewed forms of closure and secrecy in order support them. In what follows, I explore how these military assets, their industrial landscapes and their dependent communities have been reorganized and drawn into new business ventures across national and global economic networks, how the Russian Federation has played a partial role in governance at the national and local scale, and how the politics of environmental degradation has shaped the course of development. | Ph.D. | governance, justice, environment, production, cities, industr | 9, 11, 12, 13, 16 |
| Hrdina, Amy Irene Hiromi | Murphy, Jennifer G | The Characterization of Ammonia Sources in Forested, Urban and Agricultural Areas | Chemistry | 2019-11-01 | To better characterize NH3 sources, field campaigns were conducted in a Colorado montane forest, the Salt Lake City urban area, and an agricultural field south of Ottawa. An Ambient Ion Monitor coupled with Ion Chromatographs (AIM-IC) was utilized in two campaigns to measure gas phase NH3 and particle phase NH4+ (pNH4+), in addition to other significant gases and PM2.5 chemical components (e.g. HNO3, SO2, HCl, pCl-, pNO3-, pSO42-, pNa+, pK+, pCa2+, and pMg2+). Measurement-based estimates of NH3 fluxes in the montane forest showed the soil is the predominant NH3 source. The changes observed in soil NH4+ content implied the indirect role of soil microbial processes on soil NH3 emissions. In Salt Lake City, where wintertime pollution is dominated by NH4NO3, my observations revealed the potential impact of mineral dust on the HNO3 availability, which was examined by thermodynamic aerosol modeling. Surface footprints derived from a Stochastic Time-Inverted Lagrangian Transport (STILT) model indicated that area sources are responsible for 78 % of the total NH3 emissions impacting the measurement site. Observed tracer relationships of NHx (NH3+pNH4+) with CO and NOx for each emissions sector (area, mobile, nonroad, and point) showed NH3 emissions from all source sectors are underestimated. To directly measure the surface-atmosphere exchange, i.e. flux, a continuous online Relaxed Eddy Accumulation coupled with Ion Chromatographs (REA-IC) was developed. The REA-IC was deployed in a urea-fertilized corn field in 2017 and 2018. Developments following the 2017 deployment led to improved 2018 flux measurements, in which the flux detection limit ranges ± 2 ng m-2 s-1 to ± 137 ng m-2 s-1. The REA-IC measurements showed average NH3 emissions of 39 ± 12 ng m-2 s-1 from August to October 2018 indicating that NH3 emissions can also occur later in the growing season. Afin de mieux caractériser les sources de NH3, des campagnes sur le terrain ont été menées dans une forêt de montagne du Colorado, la zone urbaine de Salt Lake City et un champ agricole au sud d’Ottawa. Un moniteur d’ions ambiant couplé à des chromatographes ioniques (AIM-IC) a été utilisé dans deux campagnes pour mesurer le NH3 en phase gazeuse et le NH4 + en phase particulaire (pNH4 +), en plus d’autres gaz importants et de composants chimiques contenant de la PM2.5 (HNO3, SO2, HCl, etc.) , pCl-, pNO3-, pSO42-, pNa +, pK +, pCa2 + et pMg2 +). Les estimations des flux de NH3 basées sur la mesure dans la forêt de montagne ont montré que le sol constituait la principale source de NH3. Les changements observés dans la teneur en NH4 + du sol impliquent le rôle indirect des processus microbiens du sol sur les émissions de NH3 du sol. À Salt Lake City, où le NH4NO3 domine dans la pollution hivernale, mes observations ont révélé l'impact potentiel des poussières minérales sur la disponibilité de HNO3, qui a été examiné par modélisation thermodynamique par aérosol. Les empreintes de surface dérivées d'un modèle de transport lagrangien à inversion temporelle stochastique (STILT) ont indiqué que les sources locales étaient responsables de 78% des émissions totales de NH3 ayant une incidence sur le site de mesure. Les relations observées entre les traceurs de NHx (NH3 + pNH4 +), de CO et de NOx pour chaque secteur d'émissions (zone, mobile, non routier et ponctuel) ont montré que les émissions de NH3 provenant de tous les secteurs sources étaient sous-estimées. Pour mesurer directement l’échange surface-atmosphère, c’est-à-dire le flux, une accumulation continue en ligne de tourbillons décontractés couplée à des chromatographes à ions (REA-IC) a été développée. Le REA-IC a été déployé dans un champ de maïs fertilisé à l'urée en 2017 et 2018. Les développements consécutifs au déploiement en 2017 ont permis d'améliorer les mesures de flux en 2018, dans lesquelles la limite de détection du flux se situe dans une plage de ± 2 ng m-2 s-1 à ± 137 ng. m-2 s-1. Les mesures REA-IC ont révélé des émissions moyennes de NH3 de 39 ± 12 ng m-2 s-1 d'août à octobre 2018, ce qui indique que les émissions de NH3 peuvent également se produire plus tard au cours de la saison de croissance. | Ph.D. | forest, pollut, urban, agricultur | 2, 11, 14, 15 |
| Hamandi, Bassem | Papadimitropoulos, Emmanuel A||Grootendorst, Paul | The Clinical and Economic Burden of Infections in Hospitalized Solid Organ Transplant Recipients in Canada | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2020-11-01 | To date, there has been limited literature describing the epidemiology, healthcare resource utilization, and economic burden of infections in hospitalized solid-organ transplant (SOT) recipients. The first study reports on the rate and timing of these syndromes and describes the associated microbiological epidemiology in a single-centre cohort. Infections were the most common (43%) complication among the 603 hospitalizations at a rate of 0.43 episodes per 1000 transplant-days, with 85% occurring greater than 6 months post-transplantation. The most frequent infection involved the respiratory tract (27%), with 53% of patients presenting without fever, 45% having no pathogen isolated, and multi-drug resistant organisms being isolated in 27% of cases. The second study reported on measures of clinical and economic burden, along with the impact of infectious disease specialist consultation. After propensity score matching, infectious disease consultation resulted in greater 28-day survival estimates (Hazards ratio (HR) =0.33, log-rank P=0.026), and reduced 30-day rehospitalization rates (16.9% vs. 23.9%, P=0.036). The median length-of-stay and hospitalization costs were increased for patients receiving an infectious disease consultation (7.0 vs. 5.0 days, P=0.002, and $9652 vs. $6192, P=0.003). However, the median length-of-stay (5.5 vs. 5.1 days, P=0.31) and hospitalization costs ($8106 vs. $6912, P=0.63) did not differ significantly among those receiving an early ( | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lau, Clarissa Hin-Hei | Jang, Eunice E | The Complexity of Young Learners: Rethinking Assessment Methodologies to Model Cognitive, Metacognitive, and Psychological Traits | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | Rapid changes to student demographics and learning environments call for reconceptualization of what and how we assess. There is growing consensus on the importance of assessing students’ growth in multidimensional traits such cognitive, affective, metacognitive, and psychological characteristics. However, traditional assessment methods rely on selected-response formats, which are poorly equipped to support valid interpretations about complex learner traits. This dissertation seeks to address methodological challenges with multimodal data sources by probing ways to profile students’ reading competencies with fine-grained processing skills, track changes in self-regulated learning behaviours over time, and model students’ writing competence as a function of reading comprehension and self-efficacy. These issues were addressed through three distinct empirical studies. The first study explored the potential of cognitive diagnostic modelling for profiling students’ reading achievement focusing on cognitive reading processes instead of aggregated total scores. Five core reading processing skills were identified through the content analysis of the curriculum expectations and subsequently were mapped onto assessment item specifications called a Q-matrix. Results demonstrated the prospective of profiling using processing skills. This calls for further research on the appropriate granularity of processing skills to maximize their interpretability and pedagogical usefulness for teachers and students. The second study examined the dynamic nature of self-regulated learning in a technology-rich learning environment. Latent transition analysis was employed to investigate how self-regulated learning progressed across two time points. Findings showed that learners displayed different combinations of judgment of learning and content evaluation to regulate learning at different times, revealing the transitory characteristic of self-regulated learning. The third study approached a long-standing challenge of utilizing written responses for assessment by investigating the potential of machine learning applications for automated scoring. Multinomial naïve Bayes was applied to investigate whether this method can accurately evaluate written responses. Results demonstrated that reading ability and self-efficacy could be accurate classification labels of written responses. Collectively, this dissertation explored the utility of multimodal data including responses to reading items, process data of self-regulated learning strategies, and written responses of reading comprehension. By applying measurement-modelling approaches on multimodal data, this dissertation demonstrated a broader capacity to understand multivariate learning characteristics. | Ph.D. | environment, innovat | 9, 13 |
| Janzwood, Amy Alexandra | Neville, Kathryn J.||Bernstein, Steven F. | The Contentious Politics of Mega Oil Sands Pipeline Projects | Political Science | 2021-03-01 | While the vast majority of oil pipeline projects in Canada have been successfully built, several mega oil sands pipelines within and passing through Canada have been cancelled or significantly delayed. In recent years, oil sands pipelines have received intense scrutiny from a variety of actors. While there has been significant contestation in response to a wave of pipeline proposals, scholars have not yet understood the linkages between social movements and the outcomes of pipeline projects. I identify the causal influence of social movement campaigns, what I call campaign coalitions, against new mega oil sands pipelines. Considering the power and momentum of the oil and gas industry in the early-2000s, this movement’s success in frustrating pipeline development has been truly remarkable. I first use qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to understand combinations of causal conditions that co-occur across cases of proposed new oil pipelines and pipeline expansions. The findings from the QCA lead me to focus on campaign coalitions, which involve sustained cooperation and communication between resisting groups. I then use in-depth case studies of contested proposed mega oil sands pipeline proposals—the Northern Gateway Pipelines and Trans Mountain Expansion Project—to understand the strategies the anti-pipeline coalitions employed to influence project outcomes and the conditions that produced the project outcomes. I argue that campaign coalitions strongly shaped the project outcomes in both cases. In the NGP case, the alignment of the political and legal opportunities, with the 2015 election and a federal court of appeal ruling, resulted in the project’s cancellation. In the TMEP case, sustained opposition, in combination with a powerful new political ally with the 2017 provincial election in British Columbia created multiple, mutually reinforcing risks that made the project unviable for Kinder Morgan. In understanding the influence of campaign coalitions, I contribute to public policy and social movement scholarship in three ways. First, I refine our understanding of the processes and conditions that facilitate campaign coalition formation. Second, I identify important linkages between the processes of coalition building and mechanisms of influence. Third, I identify how coalition strategies and conditions interact to influence pipeline outcomes. | Ph.D. | environment, industr, energy | 7, 9, 13 |
| Tatangelo, Mark | Bombardier, Claire | The Costs and Clinical Consequences of Rheumatoid Arthritis: Applying Novel Causal Attribution Methods to a Complex Chronic Disease | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-11-01 | Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a lifelong chronic disease affecting about 300,000 Canadians (1% of the population). The complicated treatment pathways and patterns of care for rheumatoid arthritis combined with a high burden of disease make RA a fascinating candidate for testing new methodological approaches to measure the clinical and economic impact of chronic diseases. The treatment pathway for RA involves patients presenting with potentially non-specific symptoms (fatigue, unspecified joint pain etc.), receiving a diagnosis, then being treated with 1 of 4 conventional synthetic disease modifying anti rheumatic drugs (csDMARDS) or 1 of 10 biologics (bDMARDs). Treatment changes in drug regimens are common when medications fail to control disease activity, or initially control disease activity but eventually fail to control disease activity. The treatment structure is unique because csDMARDS (500-900 CAD/yr), can be prescribed in combination with each other or biologics (15,000-30,000 CAD/yr) which can only be prescribed 1 biologic at a time, resulting in thousands of potentially unique treatment pathways. Furthermore, the clinical paradigm of RA has shifted to target inflammation reduction to reduce the direct effects of RA and the systemic inflammatory effects of the disease through adequate control with medications. This unique clinical pathway has led to several important questions. These questions centre around what the true costs and comorbidities attributable to RA are, what proportion of costs and comorbidities are attributable to RA related inflammation, and how have the introduction of biologic medications affected costs and comorbidities over time. This thesis applies causal attribution methods that have not been used in the field of RA, while also utilizing best-practice methods in longitudinal study1-4 design by carefully considering the selection of matched case-control cohorts over time. We used all available follow-up and disease history and available covariates to implement a data-driven approach to case-control matching. Using the population of Ontario RA cases, we applied these methods to determine the associated attribution RA to the acquisition of health care costs and comorbid conditions over a 22-year time horizon. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Nguyen, Christine | Stewart, Bryan A | The Electrophysiological Characterization of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Using 3D Human Bioengineered Skeletal Muscle Tissue and Neuromuscular Junctions | Cell and Systems Biology | 2020-11-01 | Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is the most severe and common form of inherited muscular disease, affecting 1 in 3,500 boys. Patients with DMD experience progressive muscle weakness, where most children with DMD are subject to a wheelchair by age 13 and eventual fatality occurs during their third decade of life. More than 25 years ago, mutations in the Dystrophin gene were found to cause DMD. Dystrophin is an important cytoplasmic protein in the Dystrophin-associated glycoprotein complex (DGC) that underlies the plasma membrane of skeletal muscle. The lack of Dystrophin in the DGC causes muscle cells to be susceptible to muscle membrane damage. My view is that there is a problem with skeletal muscle homeostasis in DMD, where the balance between muscle damage and muscle repair strongly favours damage. One area of DMD research which appears understudied is the pathophysiology of the DMD neuromuscular junction (NMJ). In this thesis, I use a 3D culture system to model skeletal muscle and the neuromuscular junction, using immortalized muscle cell lines from healthy and DMD patient biopsies, as well as human embryonic stem cell (hESC) derived motor neurons. The findings of my thesis provide a comprehensive analysis of muscle cell physiological of healthy and DMD skeletal muscle tissue, and provide preliminary synaptic physiological data for in vitro NMJ. The results lead me to conclude that DMD muscle alone-constructs as well as DMD NMJ co-cultures have a more positive resting membrane potential, and a lower muscle membrane resistance when compared to healthy muscle and healthy muscle co-cultures. DMD muscle alone-constructs were unable to achieve muscle excitability, and all DMD co-cultures had varying recordings of spontaneous muscle excitability. Furthermore, DMD muscle membrane fragility is an aspect that can be studied further using my 3D muscle culture system. All together my thesis provides the first comprehensive analysis of muscle cell physiology of engineered muscle, and I provide the first report of a human NMJ that shows successful innervation seen through synaptic physiological recordings. The results of my research contribute to the basic biological role of dystrophin, and provides a characterized 3D muscle culture system that could be used for disease modeling and drug screening. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Mersereau, Michel | Shade, Leslie | The Essential Internet: Locating Internet Contingent Practices Activities at the Toronto Community Housing Corporation | Information Studies | 2021-03-01 | This doctoral dissertation examines household internet use amongst residents of the Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC), North America’s second largest social housing undertaking, comprised of 60,000 residential units that provide housing for more than 100,000 low-income individuals. Primary data was collected from rent-geared-to-income residents at three facilities characterized by elderly, single, and family occupancy. The research methodology utilizes a Social Systems Theory framework which situates household internet service as a technical resource employed by residents in the course of their basic needs undertakings. Five basic needs activity areas were investigated in order to ascertain the extent to which internet services facilitate and support household routines: education, health, childcare, nutrition, and finances. The results of the study suggest that household internet services can elevate the productivity of residents by multiplying the volume of tasks they are able to perform, and with greater efficiencies across interconnected basic needs activity areas. As internet use becomes normalized within the household, basic needs activities and routines that are arranged around household internet services can become contingent on access to the technology, and are consequently at risk of being destabilized during periods of long-term internet service disruption. This precarity is heightened by the experience of fixed and limited income resources liminal to the poverty threshold in TCHC households. The data collected in this study suggests that traditional policy approaches to remediating digital exclusion, such as retail market incentives and investment in community intermediaries, are insufficient to support the internet needs of the TCHC households who participated in the study. First, income to expense ratios in family households further tension the affordability constraints associated with maintaining their retail internet services. Second, the temporary access facilitated by community intermediaries, such as public schools and public libraries, is insufficient in supporting household routines which have been patterned on household internet services, and should not be situated as proxies for fixed at-home internet services. The results of this study broaden the scope of scholarship concerned with issues of digital exclusion, as well as public policy interested in ameliorating digital divides and fostering digital inclusion. | Ph.D. | educat, health, nutrition, poverty | 1, 2, 3, 4 |
| De Mello, Tanya | Childs, Dr. Ruth | The Fit Interview and Cultural Matching: Examining Equity in Hiring Processes in Law Firms in Canada | Social Justice Education | 2020-11-01 | When someone says, “This person is a perfect fit for the job,” I find myself asking, “what does it mean to fit?” and “who fits and who doesn’t?” In many interview processes, recruiters assess a candidate’s fit, that is how well suited they believe the candidate is to a given workplace. Big law firms in Toronto have developed a structured interview process that formalizes the practice of assessing candidates for fit, which is referred to in this study as the fit interview. This study examines how racialized candidates are affected by the fit interview, documenting their stories to understand how they made meaning of their experiences. Semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with 25 racialized interviewees and 5 recruiters, two of whom were racialized, who have participated in recruitment in big law firms in Toronto. The participants’ narratives were interpreted using critical qualitative analysis, rooted in critical race, feminist, and intersectional theories. All participants described experiences in the fit interview as consistent with cultural matching, that is recruiters tending to hire candidates similar to themselves in terms of personal interests, values and backgrounds, which are often linked to social identities (i.e., race, gender, class, etc.). Participants confirmed that cultural matching was more determinative in assessing candidates than competence, skills, or professional background. Participants believed that their race, gender, and class affected recruiters’ perception of whether they were a cultural match. In general, interviewees found the fit interview alienating, invalidating, and traumatizing. This study suggests that the fit interview may serve as a barrier to racialized candidates’ entry into law firms. I conclude by making recommendations for operational change, informed by the participants’ experiences and suggestions, the literature, and my experience consulting on diversity, equity, and inclusion. The theories in which this study is rooted call on researchers to catalyze systemic change by conveying findings to those who have the capacity to enact change and transform systems. Although this study is focussed on experiences of racialized people in big law firms, my hope is that the findings prompt other businesses and organizations in Canada to critically re-examine their recruitment and retention practices. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Caterini, Jessica Elizabeth | Wells, Greg D | The Impact of CFTR Modulator Therapy on Exercise Intolerance and Oxygen Transport Metabolism in Cystic Fibrosis | Exercise Sciences | 2020-06-01 | Cystic fibrosis (CF) is a fatal autosomal-recessive genetic disorder with multiorgan effects. Exercise intolerance is a common symptom, and exercise capacity is an important prognostic indicator in CF. Some CF patients now have access to novel pharmacological “modulator therapies” that improve pulmonary function by directly targeting the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (CFTR) protein defect. However, the impact of these therapies on other organ systems and exercise tolerance remains unknown. This is compounded by the ongoing debate related to the pathophysiological impact of CF on central and peripheral contributors to oxygen transport metabolism that determine exercise tolerance. The purpose of this research was therefore to explore central and peripheral contributors to exercise tolerance in healthy controls, patients with CF, and CF patients treated with modulator therapy using non-invasive magnetic resonance-based assessments. Thirty-two participants were included in the study: 10 healthy non-CF controls, 10 CF controls naïve to modulator therapy, and 12 CF patients on long-term CFTR modulator therapy. Participants completed resting and exercise MRI testing to quantify quadriceps blood flow, mitochondrial metabolism, and oxygen extraction. Results showed that there were no differences in pulmonary function and central cardiac limitations at rest. However, there were differences in peripheral factors of the oxygen transport chain in patients taking modulator therapies. Peripheral arterial blood flow in participants on modulator therapy was significantly increased at rest versus healthy controls (healthy control: 120.4±24.8 mL•kg-1•min-1; CF Control: 135.5±45.3 mL•kg-1•min-1; CF Orkambi: 171.2±45.3 mL•kg-1•min-1, p=0.016). CF controls naïve to modulator therapy had a significantly slower recovery of muscle metabolism post-exercise measured by tau of phosphocreatine recovery (healthy control: 28.5±9.2s; CF Control: 41.0±9.4s; CF Orkambi: 36.0 ±9.7, p=0.025). Aerobic muscle metabolism measured using MR spectroscopy was correlated with resting arterial flow in modulator-naïve CF participants (r=0.78, p=0.013), but was not correlated in healthy controls or patients on modulator therapy. Results suggest that there are peripheral limitations to exercise capacity in patients with CF that may be alleviated by CFTR modulator therapy. These include a) blood flow delivery of substrates to tissues, and b) improvements in muscle metabolism. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Fontenelle de Araujo Freire da Silva, Joao Pedro | Lovejoy, Nathan R | The Influence of Environment, Landscape and Paleogeography on the Evolution and Diversification of Two Neotropical Fish Groups | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Different factors drive the origin and maintenance of biodiversity. Although much debate around this topic exists, the importance of the environment in shaping diversity and evolution is undeniable. Changes in environmental properties, from connectivity to physicochemical factors, play fundamental role in diversification. In this thesis, I use two distinct groups of Neotropical fishes as model groups and use different molecular techniques to explore and characterize their molecular diversity. Using traditional and high-throughput sequencing, I have generated thorough phylogenies for the Neotropical freshwater stingrays and the barred knifefish (genus Steatogenys). Combining molecular and environmental data, I explore how geology (paleogeography) and physicochemical factors (water-types) have influenced their evolution across different time scales. Using paleogeographical evidence and fossil data, I generated a continental-level biogeographical hypothesis for the diversification and distribution of the Neotropical freshwater stingrays. I proposed that the evolution of this subfamily is related to changes in the connectivity of bodies of water in the last 20 million years, particularly in paleo mega wetlands in the Amazon region. I then discussed their diversification patterns, identifying an under-estimated diversity for this group and that recent diversification events, mostly related to changes in environment connectivity, are reflected in the incomplete sexual isolation between morphospecies. Using genomic evidence, I identified hybridization between species and proposed a scenario of serial diversification events. For the genus Steatogenys, both mitochondrial and genomic datasets highlighted the under-estimated diversity of this group. Using environmental data and multivariate statistics, I tested for the effects of different water types over diversification and distribution patterns. I proposed that environmental gradients affect population distribution and composition, and that confluence areas act as genomic interchange regions between populations. I found evidence of different species occurring in sympatry, but isolated sexually and with similar patterns of partial gene flow disruption between water bodies with different water types. My thesis combines computational and experimental work investigating the effects of the environment over the diversification of distinct fish groups. Broadly, I highlight the importance of the environment for evolutionary patterns, and that understanding environmental patterns is fundamental in the investigation of diversity and evolution. | Ph.D. | biodivers, fish, marine, environment, water | 6, 13, 14, 15 |
| LeMesurier, David | Lemmens, Trudo||Lessard, Michaël | The Law Society of Ontario’s Assessment of Capacity in Relation to Mental Illness: A Critical Analysis | Law | 2020-11-01 | Over the past 20 years, a number of studies across the globe have found that mental health issues—including substance abuse, depression, anxiety, and other forms of psychopathology—are especially acute in the legal profession. The Law Society of Ontario (“Law Society”), the regulator of the legal professions in the province, has a role to play in addressing these issues, particularly due to its statutory jurisdiction over the capacity of lawyers and paralegals (“licensees”). In this paper, I review in depth the Law Society’s current approach to licensee capacity concerns in its applications before the Law Society Tribunal. My critical examination of the current coercive processes is informed by their impacts on the autonomy interests of licensees. Ultimately, I argue that in light of these impacts, the Law Society’s authority with respect to licensee capacity must be strictly and narrowly interpreted, to the greatest benefit of the individuals at issue. | LL.M. | health | 3 |
| Chen, Yin Yuan | Flood, Colleen M | The Law, Policy, and Ethics of Migrants’ Health Care Entitlement | Law | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation examines laws and policies in Western receiving countries concerning migrants’ health care entitlement and queries their defensibility. Using Canada as a case study and drawing international comparisons where appropriate, it is shown that Western receiving countries often provide migrants with a level of health care coverage inferior to what is bestowed on their respective citizens. Proponents of such unequal health care entitlement between migrants and receiving-country citizens have commonly rationalized it as a measure to reduce public spending and to deter immigration-related fraud. Available evidence, however, challenges the validity of these claims. Instead, migrants’ lesser health care entitlement is more appropriately understood as a product of their social exclusion in receiving societies. To characterize all migrants as “others” fails to appreciate the reality that certain migrants constitute rightful members of receiving communities according to the theory of social membership. Like their citizen counterparts, migrants who are ordinarily resident and those whose establishment of ordinary residence can be confidently foretold are closely linked to Western receiving countries given their communal affiliations, involvement in social cooperation, self-identification, and subjection to the relevant state’s coercive authority. As their members, Western countries ought to afford these migrants the same extent of health care entitlement as they do their citizens in order to satisfy the dictates of equality and reciprocity. In contrast, differential health care entitlement between citizens of Western receiving countries and migrants whose residence therein is not ordinary in nature is morally permissible. In a world that largely depends on broad-based, ongoing resource redistribution within each nation to realize individuals’ right to health care, membership in these political communities is key to generating the solidarity needed to sustain such communal resource sharing. The inclusion of migrants who are not members of receiving societies in these redistributive processes raises concerns about illegitimacy. Nevertheless, given their territorial presence, pursuant to the principles of causation and remedial capacity, even non-member migrants should be entitled to a basic set of health care rights in Western receiving countries, including, at minimum, coverage for primary care and provision of medical treatment that cannot be deferred. | S.J.D. | rights, equality, health | 3, 5, 16 |
| Li, Constance | Boutros, Paul C | The Molecular Associations of Host Characteristics in Cancer Genomics | Medical Biophysics | 2020-11-01 | Epidemiological studies have identified myriad differences in cancer burden between people of different sexes, ancestries, and ages. Male individuals are more likely to develop most cancers and die of their disease. While overall cancer incidence is comparable between individuals of African vs. European ancestry, cancer mortality is higher in those of African ancestry. Increasing age is a well-known cancer risk factor, yet there are exceptions such as in pediatric cancers. These are only a few examples of epidemiological differences associated with fundamental characteristics of the cancer host. Since cancer is driven by genomic alterations, it is likely that epidemiological differences can be explained by differences in the cancer genomic landscape. I assessed this by performing a comprehensive pan-cancer analysis of sex-, ancestry-, and age-associated differences in 12,774 tumour genomes across 33 tumour-types using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and the International Cancer Genome Consortium. I investigated genome-wide and localized phenomena including measures of mutation density and tumour evolution, mutational signatures, and the frequency of single nucleotide variants and copy number aberrations. I used multivariable methods to identify sex-, ancestry-, and age-associations that persisted even after adjusting for confounding factors such as smoking history and tumour stage. Sex-, ancestry-, and age-associations span the spectrum of somatic genomic features across all except three tumour-types studied. While some genomic associations were detected in pan-cancer analysis, many others were tumour-type specific. Finally, I leveraged sex-, ancestry- and age-biased genomic features to identify functional associations. Using transcriptomic data, I found that many sex-, ancestry-, or age -biased mutations were themselves associated with changes in mRNA abundance. Some mRNA abundance changes were also dependent on the context of sex, age, or ancestry. Similarly, I identified biased genomic features that were associated with survival. Some genomic features were only associated with survival in one sex or age group, suggesting host characteristics influence the prognostic potential of genomic features. Ultimately, my findings suggest that tumour genomics are biased to host characteristics, that there are many underlying sources for these genomic differences, and that they can be leveraged to improve biomarker design. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Kristalovich, Katherine Ann | Campbell, Elizabeth | The Moral and Ethical Dimensions of Dialogic Critical Literacy Learning | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11-01 | Dialogic learning is an essential element of the high school English language arts (ELA) classroom and the foundation of critical literacy. Critical literacy dialogues explore controversial and conflictual issues of social justice, including topics of power, race, gender, and politics. However, while the examination of power and social justice that promote reflection and understanding is an objective of critical literacy, some dialogues may become contentious and raise ethical issues for teachers who acknowledge the importance of critical literacy but are pedagogically unprepared for dialogical conflict. Teachers must recognize their ethical role in determining the quality of students’ education and the ethical concerns of politicized classroom dialogues. Notwithstanding the Manitoba English language arts (ELA) curriculum’s promotion of critical literacy praxis, only a limited examination of the ethical complexities within critical literacy research has been conducted. In response, this philosophical inquiry examines the theoretical foundations of critical literacy and dialogic learning, their respective moral and ethical dimensions, and explores the ethical implications teachers and students face when engaged in conflictual dialogic learning in the ELA classroom. | Ph.D. | justice, gender, educat | 4, 5, 16 |
| Marsella, Riccardo | Bartel, Lee | The Musical Playground as a Vehicle for Community-building | Music | 2021-03-01 | This study hovers around one central problem: the struggle between structured and unstructured learning models in education, the creative arts and community building. In this research study, I sought to outline how an alternative music education site, such as a musical playground can positively impact creative expression, music education, and community. An instrumental case study was conducted on the Music Box Village (MBV) in New Orleans, Louisiana as run by the collective and not-for-profit organization, The New Orleans Airlift. Through interviewing over 20 related stakeholders, observing grade four students playing for three consecutive days in the space, and analysis of secondary data, I learned that a musical playground itself can act as a co-composer (Morgan, 1980), a third teacher (Gandini, 1998), and a conduit for social change. The MBV is a stage for creative expression, supporting exploration, improvisation and composition through its aesthetics and design. The post-modern space celebrates rebellion in music, while honouring New Orleans tradition at the same time. As a music education environment, the MBV celebrates free play, physical and musical risk, and unstructured learning models. MBV embraces the tenets of community music (Higgins, 2012) in that it is a space outside of traditional music education which coalesces the New Orleans Bywater neighbourhood in the Upper Ninth Ward. A meta-theme of radical collaboration emerged, which was prevalent in many of the working relationships fostered by the New Orleans Airlift organization, who founded and run the MBV. An exemplar for this model is explored, as well as educational curricular development ideas. Keywords: architecture, community, community music, design, experiential learning, experimental music, free play, mechanical music, music, music education. | D.M.A. | environment, labor, water, educat | 4, 6, 8, 13, 14 |
| Pue, Kristen | Breznitz, Dan | The Nonprofitized Welfare State: Examining the Relationship between Social Welfare Nonprofitization and Service Expansiveness in Canada and the United Kingdom | Political Science | 2021-03-01 | When governments reach out to nonprofit organizations to provide social welfare services, a common argument posits, service expansiveness is weakened: either contracting out is an explicit abdication of public duty or it creates incentives that undermine service expansiveness over time. And yet the evidence does not seem to support this simple explanation of welfare state nonprofitization. This dissertation presents a comparison of nonprofitized welfare in two countries – Canada and the United Kingdom – and two policy areas – homelessness and emergency management. It argues, first, that there is no necessary relationship between the level of nonprofitization and social welfare expansiveness. Nonprofitization occurs within a context where the public duty is being continuously renegotiated, meaning that the boundaries of the welfare state are always in flux. Two pathways to nonprofitization result from the different directions of these fluctuations: cost-cutting and co-optation. While the cost-cutting pathway is linked to service contraction, co-optation is linked to the expansion of public duty. Thus, there is no single overarching relationship between welfare nonprofitization and service expansiveness: nonprofitization operates in both directions. However, this dissertation also argues that the choices that governments make about how to institutionalize nonprofit social welfare can influence whether welfare expansiveness erodes over time or, indeed, actually increases. Service expansiveness is undermined when institutions of acquisition embed values of free-market competition, rather than collaboration or service stability. Service expansiveness is facilitated where the policy structure offers opportunities for nonprofit voice through advocacy, shaping the service, and piloting. | Ph.D. | institut, labor | 8, 16 |
| Sadovina, Irina | Jagoe, Eva-Lynn | The Nonsovereign Subject and Sexual Violence in Contemporary North American and Russian Culture | Comparative Literature | 2018-11-01 | Through stories about sexual violence, societies confront the condition of nonsovereignty that underlies the reality of suffering, self- and other-inflicted, in the lives of sexed beings. Analyzing theoretical, fictional, and popular media texts, written in the United States, Canada, and Russia from the 1980s to the 2010s, this dissertation formulates a structural approach to narratives about sexual violence and nonsovereignty. This approach avoids naturalizing the opposition between the “progressive” West and “traditional” Russia, enabling more informed discussions of cultural narratives about sexual violence and a more critical use of the discursive tools available for dealing with it. I identify three modes of approaching the problem of sexual violence: reparative, radical and prosaic. These modes shape subject positions and patterns of power relations. Each chapter analyzes the structure of a particular mode, its manifestations in cultural myths and in specific texts, and ultimately, its limitations. Chapter 1 discusses the reparative mode, which aims to heal the subject or the world, and its manifestations: the Western speakout model in Sapphire’s Push (1996) and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak (1999), and the Russian ideal of kenosis in Viktor Astafiev’s “Lyudochka” (1989) and Guzel Yakhina’s Zuleikha Opens Her Eyes (2015). Reparative projects can be totalizing and easily appropriated by neoliberalism and conservative nationalism. The radical mode, discussed in Chapter 2, seeks to avoid appropriation by foregrounding identification with trauma. I analyze its manifestations in North American discourses of feminist and queer negativity and the Russian “literature of evil.” Reading Kate Zambreno’s Green Girl (2011) and Vladimir Sorokin’s Marina’s Thirtieth Love (1987), I argue that the radical mode reinscribes abjection as a source of empowerment and supports identity politics and structures of inequality. Chapter 3 formulates the prosaic mode, which focuses on processes of adaptation and survival without resolution or liberation. Reading Lyudmila Petrushevskaya’s The Time: Night (1992) and Tamara Faith Berger’s Maidenhead (2012), I articulate a prosaic vision of the subject as headquarters for self-maintenance in a world both sustaining and hostile. Understanding the three modes as at once fundamental and mutable, I argue for their critical and pragmatic use in debates about sexual violence. | Ph.D. | conserv, inequality, queer, girl, equality | 5, 10, 14, 15 |
| Bolton, Elizabeth | Piccardo, Enrica | The Poetics of Postpartum: Dwelling in Poetic Space to Parent the Self | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-03-01 | Explorations of how expressive writing improves physical and psychological health began with Pennebaker’s expressive writing experiments in 1986. Pennebaker found that the association between nonfiction writing about trauma and improved health was strong enough to warrant continued research on the practice. Since then, no studies on the health benefits of writing have yet been carried out that examine the efficacy of writing that is not trauma-centered, nor have any studies analyzed data using a poetic phenomenological method. This project asks whether a reflective, nonfiction writing practice that prioritizes rigor of craft and poeticization of language has similarly transformative effects on the writer, and offers a poetic response to the phenomenological question of what it is like for a body to dwell in the psychic, poetic space(s) opened up in the act of reflective writing. The project combines prose-poetic data on the experience of postpartum depression with poetic phenomenological analysis in the style of Bachelard (1969; 1994) to offer a poetic presentation of results indicating the supportive, consciousness-ordering sensations experienced by the writing, reflective body which contribute to an overall urge to move through life with intention and purpose. While conclusions offer no concrete guarantee that reflective nonfiction writing consistently amounts to any sort of “writing cure”, the results embody an enactment of a creative writing practice that pertains directly to the literacy-based, empowered development of the self in times of emotional need. The project suggests various focal points for replicating the practice and applying it in educational and personal settings. | Ph.D. | educat, health | 3, 4 |
| Gagne, Marie | Teichman, Judith | The Politics of Large-scale Land Acquisitions: State Support, Community Responses, and Variations in Corporate Land Control in Senegal | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | Over the last two decades, Senegal has experienced an unprecedented wave of large-scale land acquisitions. Despite the apparent surge, however, many of the reported spectacular land deals never materialized, have been facing major operational difficulties, or collapsed altogether. This observation was the starting point of this doctoral investigation, which asked: What factors explain the variations in the capacity of external investors to acquire and maintain control over land for the conduct of their agribusiness projects in Senegal? It is the primary contention of this dissertation that central state responses to investors critically shape corporate land acquisition and control. The governments of both Presidents Abdoulaye Wade (in power from 2000 to 2012) and Macky Sall (in power since 2012) have encouraged private investments in the agricultural sector and extended help to facilitate corporate land acquisition and control. But, contrary to expectations, state support for seemingly powerful investors has not been systematic and steady. In particular, the government has to a large extent been responsive to social opposition and has ended controversial land projects even though they squarely aligned with government priorities. If, among the myriad actors involved in land deals in Senegal, the central government has the greatest capacity to guarantee corporate land control, state behaviour is itself moulded by social interactions and political struggles that take place within interlocking arenas of power at the local, regional, national, and international levels. The combination of actors’ normative positions, objectives, resources, and strategies define their bargaining power, that is their capacity to affect land control outcomes. Based on a documentary analysis of private collections and public materials, 309 in-depth qualitative interviews with key actors, and sustained field observations in Dakar and the countryside, this dissertation advances an original analytical framework that takes into consideration the multilayered configurations of power shaping corporate land control. By grasping how external investors handle their insertion in complex arenas of power, this dissertation reframes our current understanding of the so-called “scramble for land,” and illustrates that Africa is not as amenable to corporate takeover as usually pictured by both proponents and critics of industrial agriculture. | Ph.D. | industr, agricultur | 2, 9 |
| Fender, Jennifer Mae | Teichman, Judith | The Politics of the Middle Class and the Left in Uruguay: Feelings of Insecurity, Solidarity, and Support for Redistribution | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation explores the relationships between the middle class and the Left with a specific focus on attitudes towards redistributive policies. The work is based on an examination of the social attitudes and political propensities of the Uruguayan middle class during the Left governments of the Frente Amplio (FA) (2005-2014) including the lead up to their re-election in 2014. In investigating the attitudes and political proclivities of members of the Uruguayan middle class, I incorporate a consideration of the significant political and economic changes that occurred from the middle of the twentieth century onward. The work combines historical analysis and analysis of in-depth interviews conducted by the author. I argue that the presence of two sets of factors that shape individual’s senses of insecurity and solidarity help to explain middle class support for, or opposition to, redistributive policies. One set involves the presence or absence of a complex of insecurity mitigating factors; the second involves socialization processes that inculcate support for the social norms of equality and collective responsibility. I argue that a combination of insecurity mitigating factors and exposure to socialization processes that inculcate norms of equality and collective responsibility, producing social solidarity, tends to contribute to middle class support for the Left and the redistributive measures it stands for. On the other hand, the absence of these two sets of factors increases feelings of insecurity and erodes social solidarity. Particularly when combined with economic and political uncertainly, this tends to result in middle class resistance to redistributive measures. This complex of factors is therefore important in contributing to the necessary cross-class coalition of support required for the election of Left governments and ensuing redistributive measures. | Ph.D. | inequality, equality | 5, 10 |
| Jamal, Alainna J | McGeer, Allison J | The Prevention and Control of Carbapenemase-Producing Enterobacterales (CPE) in Ontario, Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-11-01 | Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales (CPE) are an important threat to human health. CPE spread appears to occur primarily in healthcare facilities, and transmission is usually patient-to-patient but can sometimes be from contaminated hospital drains to patients. The extent to which community transmission occurs is unknown. This thesis aimed to inform CPE infection prevention and control (IPAC) measures in Ontario, Canada. First, we surveyed all acute care hospitals in Ontario to determine whether their CPE IPAC practices were in accordance with provincial guidelines. Only 60% of hospitals screened patients with prior healthcare abroad or high-risk travel on admission, despite guidelines recommending this. Even fewer hospitals (20%) screened patients with prior hospitalization in Canada on admission, possibly because guidelines do not recommend this despite recent evidence revealing considerable local CPE transmission. Second, we cultured all hospital drains previously exposed to inpatients with CPE at ten hospitals in Southern Ontario (N=1,209) and used whole-genome sequencing to determine whether drain CPE could be linked to patient exposure. Drain contamination was uncommon (53, 4%) but dispersed across 7 (70%) hospitals, and only 4 CPE-contaminated drains could be linked to prior patient exposure. This suggested contamination of drains by prior room occupants whose CPE was undetected, further highlighting insufficient patient screening practices. Finally, we examined risk of CPE household transmission. Of 177 household contacts, only 5 (3%) were detected as colonized due to confirmed or probable household transmission, suggesting little community transmission. Given that screening is cost-effective in low prevalence populations, household contacts of known CPE cases should be included in hospital admission screening programs. In summary, this thesis revealed an urgent need for methods to improve uptake of provincial guidelines for CPE prevention and control in Ontario hospitals, particularly with respect to admission screening. This thesis also shone a light on aspects of provincial guidelines that require updating, such as recommendations for admission screening to include patients with prior hospitalization in Canada and household contacts of known cases. We should continue to focus our IPAC efforts for CPE in healthcare facilities, where most transmission appears to occur, as opposed to the community. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Lapp, Jessica Margaret | MacNeil, Heather M. | The Provenance of Protest: Conceptualizing Records Creation in Archives of Feminist Materials | Information Studies | 2020-11-01 | Archives of feminist materials are unique material and affective assemblages that represent, condition, and constrain the lives and experiences of those who identify as feminist. Occupying a distinct corner of the community archiving universe, feminist archival projects have been taken up intellectually by scholars located in both archival studies and feminist cultural studies, offering an opportunity for conceptually rich cross-disciplinary insights. Simultaneously memory and aspiration, the feminist archive is a site of knowledge generation, meaning making, political organizing, public history, collectivity, speculation, and desire. Despite a fascination with feminist archival practice across both archival studies and cultural studies disciplines, the acts of archival creation that constitute these materials and sites remain, for the most part, undertheorized. This dissertation studies the acts of archival creation occurring in aggregations of feminist materials in order to better explicate and understand how feminist movement materials are generated, used, preserved, and re-activated over time. Focusing on five archives in the United States and Canada ranging from the institutional to the community-run, I weave together the acts of creation identified through site specific examples and interviews with archivists, volunteers, and archival collaborators, in order to demonstrate how feminist archival materials push archival creatorship, and traditional understandings of provenance, to their theoretical limits. I argue for understanding creation in archives of feminist materials as an iterative and ‘heavy’ feminist process; as digitally attenuated and fabulatory; and as marked by boundary breaching, presence and absence. In doing so, I question, challenge and explicate what it means to ‘do feminist archiving,’ while at the same time, suggesting that a feminist orientation towards archival practice has the ability to elaborate the core principles of the archival field to better enunciate the complexity of records creation. | Ph.D. | institut, labor | 8, 16 |
| Koester, Carolyn Elizabeth | Krementsov, Nikolai | The Public Good: Eugenics and Law in Ontario, 1910 to 1938 | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2018-11-01 | In the early twentieth century, interest in eugenics swept the world. Seen as a scientific solution to social ills of the day like prostitution, venereal disease and the supposed rise in “feeble-mindedness,” its principles were based on the notion that humanity could be improved through selective breeding, as was already being done with plants and animals. Many jurisdictions, including thirty American states as well as Alberta and British Columbia in Canada, implemented legislation which required certain “unfit” individuals to undergo reproductive sterilization. Others passed legislation requiring pre-marital certificates of medical “fitness.” Surprisingly, Ontario never followed suit. This has led to the assumption that “not too much” of a eugenic nature happened in that province. However, by investigating the relationship between eugenics and law using primary sources relatively unknown to historians of medicine, science and technology, I have found evidence of considerable eugenic activity in Ontario. This dissertation focusses on the period from 1910 to 1938 and three specific legal processes. First, I examine the story of Dr. Forbes Godfrey, MPP, who, between 1910 and 1921, introduced eight private members’ bills in the legislature, four to implement sterilization and four to implement marriage restrictions. All eight failed to pass. Second is the story of three Royal Commissions, established in 1917, 1929, 1938, which all recommended eugenic solutions to the problems they were set up to consider. Once again, none of their proposed eugenic solutions were adopted. Third is the story of industrialist A. R. Kaufman and the Parents’ Information Bureau he incorporated to promote birth control and sterilization. This work led to a 1936 criminal prosecution now known as the Eastview Trial in which the judge determined, partly because of an argument based explicitly on eugenic principles, that distributing birth control information and devices served the “public good.” | Ph.D. | industr, health | 3, 9 |
| Chan, Aaron Lorheed | Gazzarrini, Sonia | The Role of the Transcription Factor FUSCA3 in Reproductive Development of Arabidopsis thaliana | Cell and Systems Biology | 2019-03-01 | Reproduction is a fundamental stage in the cycle of life. In flowering plants, this begins with flowering and ends with seed setting. Although extensive work has been done on these complex processes, there are many gaps in our understanding of the underlying mechanisms and genetic networks. The B3 transcription factor FUSCA3 (FUS3) plays a key role in controlling seed maturation processes and developmental phase transitions through the modulation of hormone levels. Many downstream targets have been identified through transcriptomic and chromatin immunoprecipitation studies, however, the regulation of FUS3 activity is poorly understood. Recently, it was shown that FUS3 interacts with and is phosphorylated by AKIN10, a kinase subunit of the Sucrose non fermenting 1 (Snf1)-RELATED KINASE 1 (SnRK1) complex. SnRK1 is a central regulator of carbon levels and stress response that is conserved among eukaryotes. This opens the possibility that stress signals working through SnRK1 may regulate seed development through FUS3 phosphorylation. In this study, I investigated the function of FUS3 phosphorylation in Arabidopsis thaliana. The SnRK1 phosphorylation site of FUS3 is embedded in the basic B2 domain, which is strongly conserved among eudicot species. Characterization of the loss-of-function fus3-3 mutant, as well as transgenic fus3-3 lines carrying phosphonull and phosphomimic FUS3 variants, showed that FUS3 phosphorylation does not affect seed maturation, but regulates reproductive and early seed development, uncovering novel roles for FUS3. FUS3 was found to regulate pollen viability and the developmental rate of the endosperm, integument and embryo. Fertility was reduced in fus3-3 as a result of both pollen defects and maternally-derived post-fertilization seed abortion. Intriguingly, pollen and seed abortion in fus3-3 were higher under heat stress compared to the wild type. Except for pollen defects, all these novel fus3-3 phenotypes were rescued by wild type and phosphomimic FUS3 variants, while the phosphonull FUS3 variant enhanced them. Together, these findings demonstrate that FUS3 phosphorylation plays an important role in reproductive and early seed development, and that FUS3 regulates adaptive reproductive responses by acting downstream of stress signals in Arabidopsis thaliana. | Ph.D. | conserv, production | 12, 14, 15 |
| Mecija, Casey | Georgis, Dina||Diaz, Robert | The Sound of Queer Diaspora: Sonic Enactments of Filipinx Desire, Loss and Belonging | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2020-11-01 | In this dissertation, I foreground Filipinx cultural production in building an aesthetic archive of transpacific aesthetic expression. From this point, I listen for its queer sounds. My research draws on queer theory, performance studies, and Filipinx diaspora studies to suggest that sound offers a methodological framework that can uniquely register modes of collectivity and desire that may otherwise go unrecognized. I also deploy psychoanalytic concepts of mourning and reparation to elaborate a definition of sound that explains its material and metaphorical force as it creates conditions for new relational possibilities. Broadly, I suggest that sound has an affective quality that capaciously allows Filipinx diasporic subjects to create forms of home, desire, and belonging that defy racialized ascriptions born from racism, colonialism, and their gendered dimensions. This dissertation includes four chapters, each offering a critical reading of an aesthetic object. The objects that I have assembled in this dissertation include videos that feature performances by Filipinx children, visual art and music by Filipinx artists, and a film that expresses the queer dynamics of sound. By critically listening for queer sound as it is produced by these aesthetic objects, I hope to contribute a theory of diaspora that may otherwise be rendered unintelligible due to hegemonies of vision, empire, and heterosexuality. Ultimately, this project seeks to expose how sonicity can inhabit the affective force of desire, loss, and belonging in queer, transpacific representation. | Ph.D. | production, labor, queer, gender | 5, 8, 12 |
| Tam, Derrick Y | Fremes, Stephen E. | The Surgical Management of Severe Aortic Stenosis In the Era of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-11-01 | Transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has emerged as a treatment option for severe and symptomatic aortic stenosis across the spectrum of surgical risk and has potentially transformed the surgical management of aortic stenosis. The objectives of this dissertation were: (1) To determine if the widespread introduction of TAVR had an impact on valve selection trends in those undergoing surgical aortic valve replacement (SAVR); (2) To compare valve-in-valve TAVR to redo surgery for a failed biological prosthesis; (3) To determine the safety and efficacy of adjunctive aortic root enlargement (ARE) to SAVR; (4) To determine the impact of various hypothetical scenarios of TAVR valve durability on the life expectancy of low-risk patients. Our piece-wise regression of 214,390 patients undergoing isolated primary mechanical or bio- logical SAVR from 2004-2016 in the United States estimated that the proportion of mechanical valves was decreasing more quickly during 2004-2009 (-2.81%/year, 95% confidence interval [95% CI], -3.03% to -2.60%), compared with 2010-2016. This suggest that the widespread introduction of TAVR did not, in of itself, accelerate the decline in mechanical valves. In a propensity-score matched analysis of 131 patient-pairs undergoing either valve-in-valve TAVR or redo surgery for a failed biological prosthesis, 30-day mortality (absolute risk difference: -7.5%; 95%CI: -12.6% to -2.3%), permanent pacemaker implantation, and blood transfusions were significantly lower with valve-in-valve. A multi-institutional propensity-score matched analysis showed that the addition of ARE to isolated SAVR was safe and did not confer additional early mortality or morbidity in 809 matched patient-pairs. Overall, these two analyses suggest ARE should be performed when necessary and may facilitate future valve-in-valve procedures, which may be the preferred approach for a failed biological prosthesis. Finally, in our discrete event simulation model, the durability of TAVR valves must be 70% shorter than that of surgical valves to result in reduced life expectancy in patients with similar demographics to those enrolled in the low-risk trials. However, in younger patients, the threshold for TAVR valve durability was substantially higher. These findings suggest that durability concerns should not influence the initial treatment decision regarding TAVR versus SAVR in older low-risk patients based on current evidence. | Ph.D. | institut, health | 3, 16 |
| Antonacci, Gina Marie | Wheelahan, Elizabeth | The Transformation of Three Colleges to Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | This qualitative, exploratory study focuses on the transformation of three of Ontario's public colleges as they became Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning (ITALs) with the capacity to offer up to 15 percent of their programming as baccalaureate degrees. The data were gathered through interviews with 11 past and present policy and institutional leaders, as well as 21 current ITAL administrators and faculty members. In addition, a document analysis provided insight into the manner in which the transformation was reflected through publications and documents. The theoretical framework that grounds this study includes historical institutionalism, legitimacy theory, as well as Burton R. Clark’s theory related to hierarchy and power in post-secondary institutions. These theories provide a view to understanding the incremental manner in which the ITALs changed and offer insight into the challenges that the ITALs face as they build legitimacy related to their new degree offerings This study found that as the ITALs transformed incrementally, there was a shift in their institutional identities. As they began to offer degrees, in addition to their traditional credentials, the ITALs changed. They introduced new regulations, policies and processes, resulting in a change to the manner in which the institutions operated on a daily basis. In expanding their degree provision, the ITALs were required to create a degree culture, including the introduction of an applied research infrastructure, a staffing policy for the hiring of PhD-prepared faculty and a rigorous degree quality assurance framework. The study found that the ITALs continue to address challenges related to building legitimacy among internal and external stakeholders, critical to the persistence and success of degree offering. As they transformed, the ITALs experienced challenges as the new rules, regulations and responsibilities of degree offering were introduced and layered on to their traditional program offerings. At the same time, the transformation provided meaningful opportunities for the ITALs as their mandate evolved to include degree offerings. This study addresses the transformed mandate of the ITALs and contemplates the possibility of an alternate post-secondary system design in Ontario. | Ph.D. | institut, infrastructure | 9, 16 |
| Byun, Eunji | Finkelstein, Sarah A||Cowling, Sharon A | The Underestimated Role of Temperate Wetlands in the Late Quaternary Terrestrial Carbon Cycle | Earth Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Organic matter stored in wetlands constitutes a globally significant terrestrial carbon pool interacting with atmospheric carbon via unique ecological processes that release CH4 but take in CO2. Efforts are ongoing to quantify the role of wetlands in terrestrial-atmosphere carbon exchanges, but observational data are unavoidably limited. Wetland drainage and losses have been profound in many countries, particularly in temperate latitudes; these losses took place prior to any eld measurements of carbon stocks or fluxes. Temperate wetlands have often been assumed to accumulate little to no peat, and thus, have had minimal importance in wetland carbon inventories. This thesis aims to point out the underestimated role that the temperate wetlands have played in the terrestrial carbon cycle, by conducting three case studies during the Anthropocene, the Holocene, and the late glacial period. First, the distribution of pre-settlement wetlands in southern Ontario was reconstructed using geospatial map overlays—the locations, peat depths and carbon densities from extant wetlands were used to assign pre-settlement wetlands to wetland types (bog, fen, swamp or marsh). More than half of the pre-settlement wetlands disappeared with potential carbon release up to 2 Pg since the early 19th century. Second, southern Ontario's largest swamp was investigated for paleoecological history using peat coring and pollen counting. This analysis indicated that the swamp established by about 8000 years ago, perhaps in response to the intensification of lake-effect snow, and it has accumulated thick organic-rich deposits since that time. Third, a model-simulated peatland expansion in the American Midwest was linked spatially to the distribution of enigmatic "no-analog" pollen assemblages during the last deglaciation. Estimates of early settlement era forest composition were used in conjunction with wetland simulations and machine learning algorithms to reconstruct natural wet forests in the deglacial landscape. These results show that wetland extent exceeded that of uplands, and this explains the key components of the no-analog pollen assemblages. During the Bølling-Allerød period, rivers transporting ice-sheet meltwater may have increased wetland cover across the region, causing the unprecedented dominance of wet forests, which potentially contributed to the northern hemispheric CH4 source enhancement. | Ph.D. | ecolog, forest, water | 6, 14, 15 |
| Barth, Lauren Emily | Sprules, W Gary||Shuter, Brian J | The Utility of Zooplankton Size Spectrum Parameters as Ecological Indicators | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2020-11-01 | The overarching goal of this thesis is to assess the sensitivity of the zooplankton community size spectrum to ecosystem change in lakes. This was accomplished using two large-scale datasets to investigate the temporal and spatial patterns of the zooplankton normalized abundance size spectrum (NASS). First, using a 30-year time series from eight lakes (Dorset lakes) I characterized the range of variability in the zooplankton NASS associated with among-lake differences and long-term environmental change and documented its common seasonal pattern. The slope (relative abundance of small and large organisms) was a relatively stable feature of the zooplankton community compared with the height (total abundance). I detected a relatively strong seasonal signal in both the slope and the height, with an overall decline in height and increase in slope over the ice-free season. Second, I used the Dorset lake dataset to investigate the among-lake and among-year drivers of variability in the zooplankton NASS and its responsiveness to invasion by Bythotrephes, a spiny water flea. Morphometric characteristics were the best predictors of both the slope and the height. Temporal variability in the slope was related to changes in lake phosphorus levels, while in the height it was related to dissolved organic carbon and ice duration. The NASS changed in both central tendency and variability after Bythotrephes invaded, demonstrating its usefulness as an indicator of a top-down perturbation. Last, I used a diverse group of Ontario lakes to better understand the drivers of among-lake variability in the zooplankton NASS. Consistent with previous results, morphometry was a strong driver of variability. Additionally, there was a strong spatial signal in the slope and seasonal signal in the height. Once these factors were controlled for, I was able to detect an influence of the fish community and anthropogenic stressors. Taken together, the zooplankton size spectrum is responsive to both bottom-up and top-down factors, with unusual size spectrum slope values potentially indicating a strong perturbation. I have offered some recommendations for continued development of the zooplankton community size spectrum as a universal tool for lake monitoring. | Ph.D. | ecolog, fish, environment, water | 6, 13, 14, 15 |
| Roderique, Hadiya | Casciaro, Tiziana | The Workplace Social Networks of Professional Parents | Management | 2020-11-01 | Social networks provide several benefits related to ascension and success at work. In this dissertation, I investigate the impact of motherhood and fatherhood on the characteristics of two types of social relationships: instrumental relationships, which provide job-related inputs required for job performance and career advancement; and expressive relationships, which provide emotional support and friendship that support professionals in the workplace. I take the position that relative to the image of an ideal worker, negative implications of motherhood and positive implications of fatherhood have different impacts on the formation and maintenance of social relationships. Specifically, I propose that fathers can use their parenthood as a source of similarity distinctly from mothers, resulting in different effects on gender homophily, relationship closeness, frequency of contact, multiplexity, the number of internal and external ties, and the perceived resources gained. I investigated this hypothesis with two studies—a network survey and qualitative study of lawyers working at large law firms. The results did not support any effects of fatherhood on instrumental and expressive relationships. Instead, I found an effect of motherhood on expressive relationships with other mothers supported by qualitative evidence of mothers forming closer connections with other mothers and relying on them for instrumental advice and expressive support to navigate being a working professional mother. Despite signaling strong work commitment, the challenges of dealing with persistent stereotypes of conflict between the ideal mother and ideal worker images described by mothers appeared to translate into a higher need for such homophilous expressive support. | Ph.D. | worker, gender | 5, 8 |
| Bachour, Mary-Kay | Silvey, Rachel | Toronto's Housing Crisis: An Intersectional Politics of Housing and Settlement Services for Refugees | Geography | 2020-11-01 | In this dissertation, I unpack the intersectional politics of the housing crisis in Toronto through the perspectives of frontline staff working in non-profit organisations. Two critical questions frame this study. Firstly, how have service providers addressed the housing and settlement needs of refugees in the context of Canada’s housing crisis? Secondly, how are race, class, language and citizenship status tied into the politics of housing and settlement service provision in Toronto? Utilising semi-structured interviews with frontline staff employed in various non-profit across Toronto, this research identifies and analyses systemic barriers to housing access among newly arrived refugees in Canada as they cut across race, class, language and citizenship status. This study interrogates the disjuncture between immigration and housing policies, programs and procedures and access to rental housing among refugees in Toronto. I draw on antiracist feminist frameworks, particularly intersectionality and theories of home-making, to enrich current conceptualisations of housing access and inequality in Canada. I unpack barriers refugees face when accessing the private rental market in Toronto, to reveal the multilayered ways in which marginalized communities experience housing inequality in Canada. In doing so, this dissertation reveals the limitations of the reliance on private housing stock for housing refugees as they face barriers, including lack of Canadian references and credit scores, lack of employment, language barriers and housing discrimination. Additionally, this study underscores the limitations of settlement and housing service provision available to vulnerable populations, such as refugees in Toronto. By engaging with the voices of frontline staff who consistently interact with refugees, this study sheds light on the intersectional praxis of service provision and the limitations service providers confront when administering programs for vulnerable populations in Toronto. Finally, this study unveils the roles community and grassroots organisations, such as the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, and Parkdale Organize!, play in (re)imagining housing justice in Toronto. This study identifies and contributes a novel methodological and conceptual approach to housing research in geography by bringing to the fore frontline staff as a key category of analysis seldom featured in studies on Canada’s housing system. | Ph.D. | justice, inequality, employment, equality, poverty | 1, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Murphy, Stephanie Miranda | Orwin, Clifford | Toward an Understanding of the Novelistic Dimension of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Emile | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | The multi-genre combination of philosophic and literary expression in Rousseau’s Emile provides an opportunity to explore the relationship between the novelistic structure of this work and the substance of its philosophical teachings. This dissertation explores this matter through a textual analysis of the role of the novelistic dimension of the Emile. Despite the vast literature on Rousseau’s manner of writing, critical aspects of the novelistic form of the Emile remain either misunderstood or overlooked. This study challenges the prevailing image in the existing scholarship by arguing that Rousseau’s Emile is a prime example of how form and content can fortify each other. The novelistic structure of the Emile is inseparable from Rousseau’s conception and communication of his philosophy. That is, the novelistic form of the Emile is not simply harmonious with the substance of its philosophical content, but its form and content also merge to reinforce Rousseau’s capacity to express his teachings. This dissertation thus proposes to demonstrate how and why the novelistic dimension of the Emile belongs to it not mechanistically, but integrally. To illustrate this central idea, this dissertation is divided into three sub-themes, each of which is motivated by a corresponding major research question: (1) Rousseau as a writer of a novel: What is the function of the novelistic structure of the Emile? (2) Rousseau as an appropriator of a novel: To what end does Rousseau use (and abuse) novels in the Emile as part of Emile’s and Sophie’s pedagogical programs? (3) Rousseau as a fictional character in a novel: What is the function of Rousseau’s fictionalized self-representation in the Emile as Jean-Jacques the tutor? The findings of each chapter prompt a re-thinking of Rousseau’s novelistic technique in the Emile as it relates to the substance of his broader philosophical teachings. | Ph.D. | educat | 4 |
| Belford, Liora | Legge, Elizabeth | Toward Listening as a Curatorial Method: Histories, Methodologies, Propositions | History of Art | 2021-03-01 | From the 1960s through the 1980s, an ever-expanding exploration of sound occurred within the visual arts field, helping give birth to sound art (and its exhibition) as a unique genre. The number of sound art exhibitions has grown exponentially over time, reaching into major art institutions. Building on information gathered about more than 250 sound art group exhibitions from the 1960s to the present, involving works made by a number of artists/musicians, I recognized three main approaches for curating sound: The sonic image, the exhibition as spatial music, and musical composition for visual objects. This dissertation follows these three sound curating methodologies, their histories, and the propositions and influence they have contributed to the production, positioning, and reception of sound in art today. I start with a question: Why does the most common method for displaying multiple sound works (or works with sound) within the same gallery space invariably involve constraining these sounds with acoustic barriers to keep them separate? I maintain that this separation of sounds in museums follows how we see, and not how we hear. I argue that this method, which I have termed the “sonic image,” is made in order to ‘help’ us experience sound works as we do visual objects—to hear a sound only when we see it. Since the sonic turn of the 1990s a few composers curated sound art group shows demonstrating an auditory approach to sound curation: the “exhibition as spatial music.” Composing exhibitions as spatial music means addressing sound’s materiality and applying listening philosophies into the intricacies of the exhibitionary. In doing so, these composers composed exhibitions which—like music—stimulate an inner subjective space within the listener. The third methodology—the “musical composition for visual objects”—belongs to John Cage, who composed three compositions for museum later in his life. By relating to objects as musical notes, and curating by using a musical score, Cage’s exhibitions demonstrate that listening should not be limited to the sphere of sound, and thus methodologies informed by auditory perception can stimulate multiple layers of perception in the gallery. | Ph.D. | institut, production | 12, 16 |
| Suraweera, Dulani Pradeepa | Mojab, Shahrzad | Towards Integrating Antiracism into Teaching English as a Second Language Training Programs in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | The adult English language education sector in Canada has gained momentum as a revenue-generating service ostensibly designed for new immigrants and international students in Canada. However, ESL teaching approaches and theories reproduce unequal power structures underpinned by settler-colonial mindsets that devalue and marginalize non-White and non-native speakers in the ESL/TESL sector. In this study, I argued that current ESL curricula, assessment, and classroom management procedures in Canada do not adopt antiracist pedagogies, even though many ESL learner and ESL/TESL teacher populations in Canada are racially diverse. Although ample research looks at how ESL curricula and teaching and hiring practices exclude and devalue ESL learners and non-native speaker ESL teachers in Canada, not many critical studies have explored TESL training programs in Canada. The twofold purpose of this study therefore was to: (a) investigate how 3 TESL Ontario accredited programs address race, racism, and antiracist praxis in their TESL curricula; and (b) explore how the experiences of TESL Ontario accredited ESL/TESL practitioners may inform the development of an antiracist TESL curriculum that addresses race and racism more effectively, explicitly, and practically. The qualitative inquiry comprised a content analysis of 3 TESL curricula, 3 focus group discussions with ESL teachers, and 8 semi-structured interviews with TESL trainers, curriculum developers, and program coordinators. I used a theoretical framework derived from multiple theories and debates around the issues of race, class, gender, Whiteness/White power, postcoloniality, neoliberalism, culture, cultural difference, and treatment of culture to analyze my data. Study findings identified problems at practical and theoretical levels for ESL teachers, TESL trainers, and curriculum developers seeking to identify, analyze, and act upon perceived social exclusions related to racism. Through their experiences and analysis, I identified the challenges, strengths, and gaps of current TESL programs in addressing social exclusions, particularly racism. Finally, the pedagogical and theoretical suggestions put forward by ESL teachers, TESL trainers, program coordinators, and curriculum developers can help create an antiracist TESL curriculum that will be pragmatic and effective in explicitly addressing and minimizing existing power hierarchies associated with the process of learning and teaching English as a second language in multicultural Canada. | Ph.D. | gender, educat | 4, 5 |
| Alawattage, Udeani Prasanga | Dei, George | Transcolonial Politics of Poverty: Educating the Civil Society and Creating Neoliberal Citizenship in the Periphery | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2020-11-01 | Transcolonial Politics of Poverty: Educating the Civil Society and Creating Neoliberal Citizenship in the periphery Ph.D. -Social Justice Education, 2020 Udeani Prasanga Alawattage Department of Social Justice Education Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) University of Toronto Abstract Microfinance has been one of the most extensive social engineering programs in less developed countries (LDCs). It entails a “credit plus” approach of neoliberal development constituting a massive civil society education program that links the grassroots poor with the neoliberal development doctrines and ideologies through a well sophisticated institutional infrastructure of development education. In this institutional setting, microfinance education is projected to the grassroots poor as an emancipatory form of education, especially capable of liberating the poor women. The existing research on microfinance has often been functionalist and managerial which lopsidedly concentrated mainly on the assessment of the efficacy of microfinance with very little attention on the ‘neoliberal politics’ of microfinance’s educational and discursive elements. There has been no substantive ethnographic study that attempts to offer a critical theorization of the ways in which microfinance subjugates the lives of the peripheral poor. As such, this study offers a critical theorization of the ‘neoliberal politics’ embedded in microfinance education. It reveals the ways in which microfinance creates a new form of neoliberal citizenship through the discourses of financial inclusion, financial literacy, and entrepreneurship and how it connects the grassroots poor with the intensification and acceleration of the circuit of the global financial capital. Methodologically this thesis draws on an ‘extended case study’ of Sri Lankan microfinance industry covering nine villages in six districts. It extends its micro ethnographic data to its macro-political, historical, and institutional contexts to explain the transcolonial political character of microfinance pedagogy. Theoretically, it draws eclectically on several Foucauldian, postcolonial/anticolonial frameworks to relate such ethnographic data to underlying structural and discursive apparatuses of global neoliberalism. In this manner, the thesis provides a theoretically informed rich empirical narrative of how the microfinance subjugates and objectifies the grassroots poor through its pedagogy of financial literacy, financial inclusion, and entrepreneurship in order to place them within the circuit of global capital. It reveals not only the transcolonial nature of microfinance discourses but also the ways in which the poor accommodate and resist such discourses. Keywords: Microfinance education; Sri Lanka; transcolonialism; civil society education; neoliberalism; ontological politics and poverty | Ph.D. | justice, institut, industr, infrastructure, women, educat, poverty | 1, 4, 5, 9, 16 |
| Allen, Shannon Melissa Jean | Gough, William | Trends in the Frequency of Extreme Temperatures for Canadian Urban Centres from 1971 to 2000 | Geography | 2020-11-01 | Extreme temperature trends for Canadian urban centres during the latter portion of the 20th century were explored in four complementary research studies. The analysis used a novel methodology of frequency of extreme occurrences using extreme temperature records as the metric. A second methodological innovation, day-to-day temperature variability, was used to characterize climate stations as urban, rural and peri-urban. The first study examined extreme temperature seasonal trends for five stations in the Greater Toronto Area over a 30-year period. This analysis also completed a 50-year annual extreme temperature analysis for two of the stations. Statistically significant decreases in extreme minimum temperature counts annually and seasonally, in the spring and winter months, indicated localized urban heat islands were present. The second study characterized urban-rural station pairings for Vancouver, Edmonton, Montreal and Halifax using day-to-day temperature variability. A subset of the urban stations were identified as peri-urban using this analysis. The third study using these characterizations examined annual extreme temperature record counts for 14 stations across four urban centres in Canada. Urban and peri-urban stations had statistically significant decreasing extreme cold temperature record counts while rural stations tended not to. The coincident increase in minimum temperatures was indicative of urban heat island development. Montreal experienced statistically significant decreases at all stations that likely indicated an underlying localized climate change signal or nascent urbanization at the local rural station. Edmonton experienced an above average warm 1980s and thus net temporal trends in extreme temperature record counts were not evident. In the fourth study, the results of the frequency of occurrence analysis for Halifax were compared to standard climate extreme indicators. The comparison of the results determined that the frequency of occurrence methodology aligned with the more generally used climatic indicator findings. These studies have indicated that the extreme frequency of occurrence and day-to-day variability methodologies could be effectively used in climate data analysis. These studies have also shown that trends in extreme minimum temperatures have decreased more rapidly than extreme maximum temperatures have increased for multiple urban centres across Canada for the latter portion of the 20th century. | Ph.D. | climate, rural, urban, innovat | 9, 11, 13 |
| Yao, Yao | Verma, Anil||Gomez, Rafael | Uberizing the Legal Profession? Three Essays on Lawyers in Digital Platform-based Legal Services | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2021-03-01 | Using a set of data from an Internet-based legal service platform in China, this thesis examines the impacts of digital platform-based legal services on lawyers and their work. With interview data with lawyers actively working on this platform, Chapter 1 finds that supplementary income and flexibility are the two major motives for lawyers to engage in platform work. Nevertheless, when working online, lawyers face lower intra-professional status and lower professional autonomy. Despite its growth, the digital legal market is imposing a minimal threat to the traditional legal market due to the lack of interference in labour supply and demand between these two markets.Building on the concept of “counter-institutional identity”, Chapter 2 uses a grounded theory approach to develop a theoretical model that explores the processes of the emergence of identity threats and lawyers’ coping tactics as they work on this platform, a work setting that opposes the dominant norms in the legal field. I find that identity threats emerge when lawyers’ existing professional identity is challenged by counter-institutional work features. Moreover, some lawyers are able to restructure their professional identity to adapt to the counter-institutional work, while some are prone to protect their old identity and resist changes. Individuals’ belief in professional dynamism, the belief that the legal profession is and will be experiencing constant changes, underlies the divergence between identity restructuring and protection. Chapter 3 examines the ways in which technology-driven innovations impact professional stratification in digital platform-based legal services. With topic modeling to uncover the platform work content and thereby locate the involved lawyers’ market positioning, this study finds that digital platform-based services are dominated by low-status personal legal work. No evidence is found for higher levels of activity among young and female lawyers on this platform, suggesting that digital platform-based practices may not enlarge the disparities between demographic groups of lawyers. Moreover, digital legal work provides more equal opportunities for disadvantaged lawyers: young lawyers have earnings advantages over older lawyers and a gender earnings gap is not observed. | Ph.D. | institut, innovat, labour, gender | 5, 8, 9, 16 |
| Tong, Fei | Christopoulos, Constantin | Uncoupled Base Rocking and Shear Mechanisms for Controlling Higher-mode Effects in High-rise Buildings | Civil Engineering | 2020-11-01 | While modern seismic design philosophies prioritize life safety under major earthquakes, structural damage is not precluded. As for high-rise buildings, earthquake-induced damage can be rather extensive and exacerbated as a result of higher-mode effects. This may lead to repair and replacement being infeasible or uneconomical. A large body of research has been conducted on low-damage systems for high-rise buildings. Concepts involved in these systems essentially fall into three categories including rocking mechanisms, seismic isolation, and the combination thereof. While rocking systems have limited efficiency in limiting higher-mode effects, , base isolation can also be challenging for high-rise buildings due to base isolators being overloaded axially while undergoing significant lateral deformations. Combining both concepts by allowing base-isolated structures to rock at the base as well cannot fully resolve all these problems, leading to design and implementation challenges. This dissertation proposes a novel system consisting of uncoupled rocking and shear mechanisms incorporated at the base of RC core-wall buildings. Acting in parallel, the dual mechanism allows for an independent control of the flexural and shear responses of structures and an effective mitigation of the higher-mode response. A physical implementation is developed for the proposed system after the fundamental kinematics defining the system are understood. This physical embodiment is then designed, detailed, and numerically validated using a reference 42-storey benchmark building. Results of extensive nonlinear dynamic analyses indicate that the proposed system is efficient in mitigating higher-mode effects and minimizing damage to RC core-wall high-rise buildings. To generalize the design of the proposed system, closed-form analytical studies and parametric nonlinear time history analyses are conducted. Based on these analyses, general procedures are developed for the preliminary design of the proposed system. | Ph.D. | resilien, buildings | 9, 11 |
| Sawan, Joseph Eli | Sawchuk, Peter H | Understanding (De)alienation in Social Movements: Resident Activism and Anti-poverty Organizing in the Toronto-area | Social Justice Education | 2020-11-01 | This study revisits Marx’s theory of alienation, primarily through a sociological and adult learning theory lens, emphasizing how collective activity is a means to overcome structural and systemic forms of alienation. This study is theoretically-driven and makes use of empirical materials to examine the forms and dynamics present in social movement activity as they relate to overcoming alienating conditions. The empirical observations uncover how an analysis of social movement activities through a lens of learning de/alienation allows for a unique contribution to the literature on social movement learning. In exploring motivational dimensions of social movement activity, this study demonstrates how a conceptual framework centred on recovering Marx’s theory of alienation can contribute a unique understanding of the learning processes in social movement activities. In exploring indicative narratives from a case in the Toronto-area, this dissertation examines; 1) how learning de/alienation can be identified as motivation for activist engagement, and 2) the role of movement organizations in facilitating learning de/alienation. The operationalization of Marx’s theory of alienation is furthered by integrating key concepts from Bourdieu’s theory of practice as well as Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) in order to emphasize a dialectic approach to examining the forms of learning and activity that take place in the sites examined. The indicative narratives selected for both analytic chapters are presented to demonstrate how a recovery of Marx’s theory of alienation can prove fruitful in understanding the underlying dynamics of movement participation as well as the opportunities for emphasizing use-value mediated activities that relate to broader struggles for critical social change. The contributions of this dissertation are three-fold in its examination of movement activity and activist learning; 1) a recovery of traditional conceptual ideas surrounding human de/alienation in dialogue with the literature in social movement learning, 2) an examination of how habitus mediates learning de/alienation in community activism with particular attention to Marxist CHAT concepts as a multi-dimensional approach, and 3) an empirical demonstration that dialogues with first two areas in order to better understand opportunities for identifying activist learning and engagement for critical social change. | Ph.D. | poverty | 1 |
| Lacombe-Duncan, Ashley | Newman, Peter A | Understanding access to HIV-related and gender-affirming healthcare for trans women with HIV in Canada: A mixed methods study | Social Work | 2018-11-01 | Background: Trans women living with HIV (WLWH) have lower access to HIV care compared to cisgender (cis) people living with HIV. US-based research describes barriers (e.g., trans stigma) and facilitators (e.g., integration of gender-affirming and HIV care) to HIV care engagement among trans WLWH. Scant research has explored factors associated with HIV or gender-affirming care access among trans WLWH in Canada. This three-paper dissertation aims to expand an intersectional and social ecological understanding of the experiences of trans WLWH in Canada accessing HIV, gender-affirming, and other types of healthcare. Methods: A transformative, convergent parallel, mixed methods design was used whereby quantitative and qualitative data were rigorously collected and analyzed, then purposefully merged. Quantitative data was drawn from baseline cross-sectional survey data collected 2013-2015 from the Canadian HIV Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health Cohort Study (CHIWOS) (n=54 trans WLWH/n=1422 participants) and analyzed using descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses. In-depth semi-structured individual interviews (25-100 minutes) were conducted with a purposive sub-set of trans WLWH (n=11) 2017-2018 who completed the baseline CHIWOS survey, analyzed using framework analysis. Qualitative and quantitative results were merged by comparing data and considering how results converged, diverged, or expanded understanding. Inequities were highlighted and recommendations made, consistent with a transformative design. Results: Three empirically-based chapters report on: (1) the HIV care cascade and factors associated with HIV care cascade outcomes (ever accessed HIV care, received any HIV care in the past year, currently use antiretroviral treatment (ART), ART adherence, and virological suppression); (2) transition and gender-affirming healthcare experiences of trans WLWH; and (3) resilience and empowerment exhibited by trans WLWH as they navigate intersecting stigmas in healthcare settings. Conclusions: Findings suggest a need for multi-level interventions to address barriers to accessing care. Intersecting stigmas were a pervasive barrier to accessing multiple types of healthcare. Trans WLWH resist and reduce stigma in healthcare settings; however, widespread stigma-reduction training for providers, administrators, and students is recommended. These findings inform a trajectory of social work research, theory development, and practice at policy, organizational, and individual levels, all of which may further contribute to health equity for trans WLWH in Canada. | Ph.D. | ecolog, resilien, women, gender, health | 3, 5, 11, 15 |
| Pinsker, Ellie B. | Beaton, Dorcas E. | Understanding and Measuring Self-perceived Outcome following Ankle Reconstruction | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-03-01 | The importance of capturing the patient’s perspective of the impact of their health condition and treatment is well-recognized. This information is often collected using patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs); however, such measures may overlook the patients’ perspective in favour of clinician or researchers’ opinions. The literature lacks sufficient evidence for the conceptual foundation and content validity (i.e. how well an instrument reflects the target construct) of existing PROMs used to assess ankle reconstruction (total ankle replacement and ankle fusion) based on patients’ lived experience. Guidelines for PROMs recommend qualitative research with the target population to support their conceptual development and establish content validity. This thesis investigates outcomes that are important to end-stage ankle arthritis patients who have undergone ankle reconstruction, and lays the foundation for their measurement. This is examined, first, by comparing the contents of commonly used PROMs to issues raised by patients. Broad domains (e.g. pain, physical function) were found to be important, but there were gaps in content, casting doubt on the comprehensiveness of these measures. Subsequently, an in-depth qualitative study explored patients’ experiences with ankle reconstruction. Two new concepts were identified that have not been previously described in the ankle literature. Recovery describes patients’ perception of ‘being better’, involving a series of appraisals and coping efforts based on the presence and importance of ongoing issues, sufficient resources for coping, and whether coping efforts are viewed as satisfactory. Vigilance represents patients’ perceived need to focus attention on their environment and ankles. These concepts offer a new understanding of how ankle reconstruction affects patients’ lives. This thesis then models a rigorous method for operationalizing these novel concepts for development of future PROMs for ankle reconstruction. A conceptual framework for vigilance is presented, which preserves the meaning of the qualitative data and grounds content- and format-related decisions necessary for PROM development in patients’ experiences. Measuring these outcomes is necessary and worthwhile to capture all meaningful outcomes to patients. These findings broaden the medical community’s definition of a ‘successful outcome’, and improve clinicians’ ability to communicate with individuals who have undergone ankle reconstruction or are considering the procedures. | Ph.D. | environment, health | 3, 13 |
| Fajber, Robert | Kushner, Paul J | Understanding the Role of Latent Heating in the Heat and Mass Transport of the Global Atmospheric Circulation | Physics | 2020-11-01 | Almost one quarter of the insolation from the sun evaporates water vapor at the surface, which adds thermal energy to the atmosphere through latent heating. The main goals of this thesis are to diagnose and quantify the role that this latent heating plays in atmospheric transport and the global general circulation. Using the equivalent potential temperature ($\theta_e$) as a variable to study the circulation implicitly accounts for the effects of latent heating on the dynamics, suggesting that tropospheric transport should follow these surfaces. In chapter 2 this idea is heuristically tested using an idealized moist general circulation model with perturbed midlatitude surface temperatures; the atmosphere responds by transporting warm air along climatological $\theta_e$ surfaces. In chapter 3 we study the mass transport of the general circulation projected onto $\theta_{e}$ surfaces using the Statistical Transformed Eulerian Mean (STEM), which parameterizes this circulation using zonal mean statistics. The functional dependence of the STEM is exploited to understand the response of the circulation on $\theta_{e}$ surfaces to climate perturbations, by calculating the functional derivatives. One key finding is that the sensitivity of the circulation is inversely proportional to the zonal mean standard deviation of $\theta_{e}$. The preceding analysis using $\theta_{e}$ is complemented in chapter 4 by a novel heat tagging method developed in this thesis which allows us to attribute the potential temperature ($\theta$) content of the atmosphere to specific diabatic processes. The heat tags includes both locally produced and remotely advected tagged tracer content, providing insight into regions which may be sensitive to remote diabatic processes. This method is applied to an idealized moist general circulation model. The majority of $\theta$ in the troposphere is from latent heating, even in the poles here where there is no latent heating. The variability of the heat tags, their use in decomposing heat transport, and the response to a CO$_{2}$ doubling experiment are also studied. | Ph.D. | climate, energy, water | 6, 7, 13, 14 |
| Kepkiewicz, Lauren | Wakefield, Sarah | Unsettling food sovereignty in Canada: Settler roles and responsibilities; tensions and (im)possibilities | Geography | 2018-06-01 | Critical Indigenous food sovereignty activists and scholars have called settler food sovereignty movements to complicate our understandings of food and food systems in so-called Canada (Coté, 2016; Morrison, 2011; Manson, 2015). These calls include requests for settlers to rethink interrelationships between land, food, colonialism, and Indigenous sovereignty. Learning from these calls for change, I examine whether and how settler food activists are responding. I do so through a series of five independent papers framed by an introduction and conclusion, which make up this dissertation as a whole. First I outline the methodological and theoretical frameworks and implications of this dissertation. Next, I outline three main themes that arose from the interviews and participant observation I conducted. First, interviewees emphasized that settler food activists need to self-educate about Canadian colonialism and Indigenous struggles for land. Second, interviewees talked about settler food activists’ visions for future food systems that perpetuate colonial food systems. Third, interviewees highlighted the importance of changing settler food activists’ relationships to land, including returning land to Indigenous nations. Based on interviewees’ experiences and insights, I argue that settler food sovereignty movements have not adequately responded to Indigenous critiques and requests and that, through this lack of response, settler food sovereignty movements reify colonial logics. At the same time, interviewees’ experiences also demonstrate that a small number of settlers have begun to engage with Indigenous critiques around Canadian food sovereignty narratives and praxis, and through this engagement are working to support Indigenous food sovereignty. Lastly, I argue that if food sovereignty is a movement rooted in addressing systemic inequities, it cannot be achieved without radically transforming Indigenous-settler relations. It is therefore essential that settler activists are aware of whether and how we are responding to Indigenous calls for change and what work still lies ahead in order to support Indigenous resurgence. | Ph.D. | educat, food | 2, 4 |
| Li, Yanfei | Meng, Yue | Urban Writing on Disappearing Alleyways and Courtyard Houses, Beijing, 1950-2008 | East Asian Studies | 2018-11-01 | Beijing has transformed tremendously in the recent four decades, and the decline of the signature residential space, alleyways and courtyard houses, is at the center of social and cultural debates. For some, it is an outcome of a profit-driven real estate market that favours international capital rather than local communities. For others, marketization and globalization have otherwise created a niche for the gentrified and commercialized vernacular space as a cultural selling point of Chineseness. This project poses the question differently: what is the role of the cultural intermediaries in this picture of decline with the market and capital on the one hand and the physical changes on the other? This project investigates the cultural intermediaries formed by the architectural trends, planning thoughts, policy tendencies, and heritage system that the capital and market depend on to concretely shape the cityscape. Focusing on multiple genres of texts in urban writing from the 1950s to the 2010s, this project examines them through metaphors. Urban amnesia reveals an architectural forgetting system that marginalizes alleyways and courtyard houses in the fifty years of architectural discourse. City tank provides a cautious approach to housing, land, and demolition and relocation policies that demonstrates how difficult it is for the vernacular space users to cultivate a long-lasting connection with their living environment. The city as organism shed light on the alternative planning practice to preserve vernacular space. Its adaptation into heritage policies in the context of cultural and historical city preservation ironically illuminates on the limitations of organic renewal. The meanings of these metaphors collectively present a complicated picture of how cultural intermediaries promote, oppose to, and negotiate with the erasure of vernacular space in urban redevelopment. To trace these meanings opens up new space to test ideas and practices that emphasize both architectural preservation and social preservation. | Ph.D. | environment, urban | 11, 13 |
| Yasseen, Abdool Shafaaz | Crowcroft, Natasha S||Kwong, Jeff C | Viral Hepatitis Among Immigrants: A Population-based Comparison using Linked Laboratory and Health Administrative Data | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | Viral hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) are two of the most common causes of hepatitis disease and are among the most burdensome infectious diseases in Ontario, Canada. HBV is found predominantly among foreign-born individuals, whereas HCV is more of an issue among long-term residents. The health administrative data provides a potential avenue for identifying disease incidence and prevalence that can be leveraged as a public health assessment tool. In this dissertation, I examine whether it is appropriate to use the health administrative data for this purpose and then quantify the population-level cascades of care for HBV and HCV, in Ontario, Canada. Through a validation study, I found there to be few health administrative diagnosis codes for HBV/HCV infections, and the diagnostic performance of these codes were sub-optimal for population-level health assessment. Expanding on these conclusions, through a data mining study, I included additional health administrative data and developed case finding algorithms for the identification of laboratory confirmed HBV/HCV infections. This exercise showed that the additional information improved diagnostic performance, but was still sub-optimal for use as a population-level health assessment tool. I quantify the HBV cascade of care and show that HBV was predominantly observed among immigrant groups, more specifically those from HBV endemic countries. Additionally, I present estimates of the population level HCV cascade of care and show that HCV is more prevalent among long-term residents, but those from HCV endemic countries were important to consider since they represent a non-negligible portion of the population. These findings show that diagnosis and engagement with care is an issue experienced in both cascades of care and that there is significant heterogeneity between and within immigrant subgroups. I commented on the incremental contribution of this dissertation and the general use of health administrative data as a health care assessment tool for viral hepatitis in Ontario, Canada. Future work should be aimed at improving the Ontario’s health care diagnosis and fee management system. Both cascades of care models outline provide population-based benchmarks for future work geared at evaluating the efficiency and uptake of policies and initiatives for reducing HCV burden in Ontario. | Ph.D. | labor, health | 3, 8 |
| Awad, Yomna Reda | Bickmore, Kathy | Voluntary Teacher Professional Learning: To Educate for Democratic Peace in Egypt and in Canada | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-11 | Education for democratic peacebuilding citizenship includes four essential components: encounters with conflict, practice of dialogue, recognition of diversity and building pedagogical community. Teachers can help one another to interpret, to learn, and to implement these pedagogical practice dimensions, in order to equip their students with democratic agency and values to participate in peacebuilding social change. This comparative case study research examines how two groups of private school teachers—four of mixed faith in a Muslim-majority context (Cairo) and three Muslim teachers in a Christian and secular-majority context (Toronto)—voluntarily embarked on two journeys of non-formal professional learning to improve their teaching for democratic peace. The researcher developed and facilitated a six-session reflective and dialogic professional learning course for democratic peacebuilding, and studied how each group of teachers understood and taught democratic peacebuilding and how they participated in the learning processes of this course. Data included asynchronous discussion transcripts and semi-structured interviews before and after course participation. The teachers in both contexts described using similar dialogic pedagogies to teach for democratic peacebuilding citizenship (including constructive communication, active listening, discussions and debates), while addressing different types of conflicts relevant to each political-cultural context. In Egypt, a relatively authoritarian country, teachers chose to emphasize conflicts pertaining to inclusion and re-humanization of diversity and identity recognition, within and beyond their school communities. In Canada, a relatively democratic country, teachers chose to discuss one conflict issue with which they all particularly identified— Islamophobia—from the viewpoint of Muslim minoritized communities in Canada. Other conflicts they addressed were broad current and historical issues such as Syrian refugees and colonialism. Participating teachers’ dialogic interactions evidently promoted their understandings of and engagement with democratic peacebuilding. In particular, all seven teachers in both groups apparently gained awareness of how they could infuse conflict (resolution) and peacebuilding pedagogies into their entire interactions with students, including their students’ own roles and involvement in the classroom, versus limiting peace education to teaching discrete lessons. This comparative inquiry contributes to understanding the principles of quality teacher education and peacebuilding education practices, relevant both to conflict zones and to democratic, culturally diverse settler societies. | Ph.D. | peace, educat | 4, 16 |
| Young, Mischa | Farber, Steven | What Happens when the Uber Tailpipe Smoke Clears: An Examination of the Impacts of Ride-hailing in Canada | Geography | 2020-11-01 | Despite starting as a more convenient way to hail taxis, ride-hailing services (e.g. Uber and Lyft) have rapidly evolved into much more with the introduction of their peer-to-peer services in 2014. By no longer confining their algorithms to matching passengers with taxis, and allowing private vehicle owners to also serve as drivers, ride-hailing companies drastically expanded their pool of available drivers and experienced monumental growth in the process. Ride-hailing services have now become ubiquitous in the urban mobility landscape of cities worldwide, and have rapidly positioned themselves among the most valuable companies within the transportation sector. Yet, despite their growing role within cities, the impacts of this mode remain contested and largely misunderstood. The purpose of this dissertation is to explore several of the key impacts of ride-hailing on existing transportation systems and their users within the Greater Toronto Area and assess whether policies should be developed to encourage or deter its usage. In Chapter 2, I identify potentially marginalized groups – both socioeconomically and spatially – that may be excluded from ride-hailing, and define improvements to the data collection process that must take place to ensure ride-hailing limits transport inequalities. I further expose how the benefits of this mode may not be distributed equally in Chapter 3 by exploring the socioeconomic and trip characteristics of ride-hailing users. In Chapter 4, I show that ride-hailing behaves both as a substitute and supplement to transit, and demonstrate the need to consider trips individually. Chapter 5 focuses on shared ride-hailing services, and identifies factors that influence the matching propensity and detour penalty associated with shared trips. Lastly, Chapter 6 is my attempt to partake in the broader ride-hailing regulation discussion, as I caution against the premature legalization of this service. Together, the results of this research substantially improve our understanding of the many ways in which ride-hailing services impact our cities, and offer a practical contribution to policymakers seeking to properly regulate this service. | Ph.D. | urban, cities, socioeconomic | 1, 11 |
| Houtman, Eveline | Simon, Rob | What Shapes Academic Librarians’ Teaching Practices? A Holistic Study of Individual Librarians, their Contexts, and their Professional Learning Activities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-03-01 | For academic librarians, teaching is often a core part of their work, but they typically receive limited preparation for this role in their professional education. The literature on librarians’ development as teachers generally stresses their professional development opportunities. This qualitative study explored the range of experiences, professional contexts, and professional learning activities that shape 12 academic librarians’ teaching practices. As both librarian and researcher, I was positioned as an insider-outsider. I took a bricolage approach that combined narrative, case study, and analysis based on an a priori model that situated the individual librarians in their local, professional, higher education, and societal contexts. I recruited 12 teaching librarians from Canada and the United States and conducted two semi-structured interviews with each. I stitched together a composite picture of the participants’ unique, varying experiences, with rich examples of the ways they understood and developed their teaching roles in relationship to their varied contexts, and in relationship to their own values (e.g., a commitment to social justice; an ethic of care), identities, and prior experiences. I identified two stages in their learning: 1) an initial “learning to teach as a librarian” stage, in which they required (but did not always receive) greater support, and 2) lifelong learning. Librarians in both stages were strongly self-directed and employed a variety of strategies. The professional context served as a broad community of practice that supported their development of a teacher identity and provided them with norms and guidelines. The individuals and their contexts varied enough, however, that no single picture of librarians’ teaching could emerge. This holistic approach to studying librarians’ development as teachers suggests new approaches for practice as well as new questions for research. In particular, the initial “learning to teach as a librarian” stage demands more attention. More broadly, studying and valuing the librarians’ experiences provides important and often absent perspectives on the work of academic librarians in the United States and Canada. It positions librarians as practitioners with important emic perspectives that enable them to generate knowledge that is both local and public. | Ph.D. | justice, educat | 4, 16 |
| Rayment, Erica Jane | Bashevkin, Sylvia | Women in the House: The Impact of Elected Women on Parliamentary Debate and Policymaking in Canada | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | This study examines the impact of elected women in Canada on patterns and processes of parliamentary debate and policymaking from 1968 to 2015. It argues that women’s presence in parliament matters for the substantive representation of women, particularly under conditions of threat to women’s equality. The study refines core concepts in the literature on women’s political representation to explain how the substantive representation of women occurs in Canadian parliamentary institutions. It disaggregates the concept of substantive representation and expands the scope of the critical actors framework to include actions that defend women’s equality against regressive policy initiatives. Building on these refinements, the study argues that gender is a key factor in determining whether an MP will represent women in parliamentary debate, but the institutional role MPs occupy and the political context in which they operate influence the mechanisms they use to advocate for women’s equality in policymaking and their chances of success. Through an automated analysis of the content of nearly 50 years of parliamentary debate, the study finds that women MPs, regardless of party affiliation, are consistently more likely than their male colleagues to make representative claims about women. Using supervised and unsupervised machine learning to analyse the content of these representative claims, the study finds that parliamentary speeches about women focus almost entirely on issues relating to women’s equality and autonomy. The analysis of parliamentary debate shows that the number of speeches about women spiked during parliaments when governments initiated policies that threatened women’s equality. Qualitative case studies examine these two instances of policymaking, focusing on the actors involved, the processes through which they advocated for women, and the impact of their actions. The study finds that women MPs led the charge against hostile government policy initiatives but their varying ability to influence policy outcomes was shaped by their institutional positions and the political conditions under which they operated. The study concludes by suggesting the presence of women in Canadian politics matters as a tool for guarding against policies that would roll back previous equality gains. Efforts to increase women’s presence in electoral politics in Canada therefore remain important. | Ph.D. | institut, equality, women, gender | 5, 16 |
| Hwang, Christina J. | Hayhoe, Ruth | World Mission and Higher Education Internationalization: A Comparative Study of Christian Universities in South Korea and Canada | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11-01 | This thesis explores the nature of internationalization activities at two Christian higher education institutions comparatively—one in South Korea and the other in Canada. A qualitative study, it examines the question of the extent to which an institution’s internationalization policies and programs reflect the core values of the evangelical Christian faith stated in their mission and vision statement. A conceptual framework was created using Jane Knight’s (2004) framework for internationalization and the concept of Holistic Christian world mission found in the Lausanne Covenant. This enables understanding of how the current theories of Christian world mission and the secular ideas of internationalization come together to influence the institutional mission. The history and context of each school also were studied to see how much they influence the internationalization strategies. The study found the evangelical core values of the Christian faith in the mission statements at each of the Christian higher education institution are strongly reflected in internationalization policies and programs. They are the driving force behind what they do in terms of internationalization ‘at-home’ and abroad. This is due to underlying motivation for the strategies of internationalization being the scriptural calling of Holistic Christian world mission. Consequently, a new values-based conceptual framework for internationalization emerged. The study revealed there are several intersections between the secular notions of internationalization and the values of Christian world mission in the precepts of the Lausanne Covenant. The socio-cultural rationales of Social and Community Development fuse closely with the motivations of Christian Social Responsibility which are tied with values of compassion, justice, reconciliation and mercy. Knight’s (2004) rationale of global citizenship development also intersects with the Great Commission’s calling to reach out to all nations. It is also linked to the Second Greatest Commandment of love and service for others and building of community through Christian discipleship and mentoring. The secular political rationale of technical assistance alongside peace and mutual understanding has values in common with those of the Lausanne Covenant, including Christian and Social Responsibility, Churches in Evangelistic Partnership, and Cooperation in Evangelism. However, context does affect the degree and types of engagement in internationalization programs. | Ph.D. | peace, justice, institut, educat | 4, 16 |
| Grinberg, Amit Omri | Kalmar, Ivan||Paz, Alejandro | Writing Rights, Writing Violence: The Bureaucracy of Palestinian Testimonies in Israeli Human Rights NGOs | Anthropology | 2019-03-01 | This dissertation is an ethnography of Israeli non-governmental organizations (NGOs), that document the violations of Palestinians’ human rights (HR) perpetrated by Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories. Israeli anti-occupation NGOs rely on a rigid bureaucratic logic in their processing of testimony – a written-down narration of a subjective experience of violence into a coherent narrative in document-form: violence is translated into a written text that can be used for legal-action purposes, research, media circulation, and is eventually archived. By anthropologically examining bureaucratic lugubriousness in NGOs, I theorize HR as a project of documentation and archiving that legitimates itself as a subversive bureaucracy. Simultaneously, this project’s own critical authority is undermined since it relies on colonial modes of knowledge production and representation. Based on 18 months of participant-observation in four NGOs, I trace the trajectory of Palestinians’ testimonies as NGOs’ main source of data and as HR’ dominant genre of representation. NGO practices are considered against the backdrop of growing disdain in Israel/Palestine towards HR, not only in the populist rhetoric and efforts of anti-liberal politicians, but also amongst activists, critical scholars, Palestinians living under the occupation, and within NGOs’ own staff. The main recurring critique is that HR fail to protect Palestinians or curb Israel’s settler-colonialism. Some detractors claim that NGOs are complicit with Israel’s violence. This study explores why Palestinians continue to testify for Israeli NGOs that, in turn, persist in documenting Palestinians’ testimonies. I suggest that HR are a genre of anti-colonial historiography that is itself based on colonial reason, mainly genealogies of surveying and bureaucratic writing: NGOs rely on what I term as “frames of in/validation” - phases of incessant verification and adaptation of Palestinian experiences of violence into simplified narrative structures, that conform to legal-moral discourses and definitions of HR. While the strictures of documentation and writing problematically limit the moral claims and political clout of NGOs, HR paradoxically remain relevant through the relational foundation affirmed by frames of in/validation, namely: between a violent past written as a bureaucratic document, and a distant future in which imagined publics make moral-political judgments based on NGOs’ archives. | Ph.D. | rights, production | 12, 16 |
| Constantinof, Andrea | Matthews, Stephen G | Transgenerational Effects of Antenatal Synthetic Glucocorticoid Exposure on Transcription and Methylation in the Developing Brain | Physiology | 2018-06-01 | The early environment has long term influences on future health that are heritable over multiple generations via maternal and paternal lineages. Antenatal synthetic glucocorticoids (sGC) are administered to women at risk for pre-term delivery because they reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with newborn respiratory distress syndrome. However, the administration of multiple courses of antenatal sGC results in long-term programing of behavioral and physiological responses to stress. In this research, we performed transcriptomic and epigenomic analyses to ascertain the long-term programming effects of antenatal sGC in the brains of first generation (F1) juvenile males and three generations of juvenile female offspring of the paternal lineage. We hypothesized that antenatal sGC exposure results in transgenerational changes in transcription and DNA methylation in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN), prefrontal cortex (PFC) and hippocampus, due to their role in the regulation of the HPA-axis. We observed that antenatal sGC results in generation-, sex-, and brain region-specific changes in gene expression and DNA methylation in three generations juvenile female offspring of the paternal lineage. In the PVN, exposure to sGC programmed large transgenerational changes in gene expression, including type II diabetes, thermoregulation, and collagen formation gene networks. The PFC was the only brain region to show overlap in the significantly differentially expressed genes across all three generations of juvenile females and F1 males. In the PFC, the expression of four genes that were significantly decreased in sGC offspring explained 20-29% of the variability in locomotor behavioral phenotypes. Epigenetic analyses of the hippocampus identified significant changes in CpG methylation in regulatory regions of small non-coding RNAs involved in transcription and splicing. These findings may implicate alternative splicing as a mechanism involved in the transgenerational transmission of the effects of antenatal sGC. This is the first study to show that antenatal sGC exposure, a clinically relevant treatment, results in transgenerational changes in gene expression, and methylation over three generations, via paternal transmission. | Ph.D. | women, health | 3, 5 |
| Largo, Marissa | Coloma, Roland S | Unsettling Imaginaries: The Decolonial Diaspora Aesthetics of Four Contemporary Filipinx Visual Artists in Canada | Social Justice Education | 2018-06-01 | In the dominant Canadian imaginary, Filipinx subjects are largely seen as serving the neoliberal priorities of the nation’s economy, which figure the Filipinx as always on the periphery of full national belonging. As a counternarrative, this study examines the practices and oral histories of four Filipinx artists in Canada: Leslie Supnet, Marigold Santos, Julius Poncelet Manapul, and Kuh Del Rosario. To understand the ways in which these racialized and diasporic artists respond to nonbelonging, the researcher utilizes contextual analysis that weaves together interpretations of the artists’ work and their oral histories, which are read through the lens of contemporary art criticism and cultural studies. Key findings reveal that these artists activate their discontent in productive ways that disrupt normative notions of whiteness, sexuality, gender, nuclear family, and nationalisms. Their subject positions are in excess to the dominant stereotypes that persist in the midst of racist and colonial discourses enmeshed in the political, social, and cultural dimensions of Canadian society. Further, this study suggests that Filipinx artists in Canada are complicating visibility politics by adopting non-objective and feminist self- representations. Taken together, this research evidences what the author calls a “decolonial diaspora aesthetic.” Ultimately, they are unsettling dominant conceptions of Filipinx-ness that work to manage difference within the nation’s white settler colonial dominance. The study capaciously draws implications for pedagogy, as this project offers new imaginaries that take into account race, diaspora, and difference in ethical ways that promote antiracism and decolonial relations in Canada. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Liu, Celina | Lanctot, Krista | Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Improve Cognitive Function in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Dementia | Pharmacology | 2020-11-01 | Introduction: Cognitive deficits are key clinical features of Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Current first-line pharmacotherapies demonstrate only modest efficacy in AD and lack efficacy in MCI. Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS), a non-invasive neuromodulatory technique, has been used to improve cognitive functions with positive results, but with wide variability in response. This research aims to optimize tDCS for cognition by evaluating the effects of electrode placement, the efficacy of exercise primed tDCS, and examining mechanistic correlates of tDCS response in MCI and mild AD patients. Methods and Results: Study 1. To evaluate the effects of electrode placement on cognition, MCI and mild AD participants (n=17) received a single session (2mA, 20 minutes) of bifrontal (F3/F4), bitemporal (T3/T4), and sham stimulations. There was a significant effect of stimulation condition on working memory (F(2,28)=5.28, p=0.01, ηp=0.27), with greater improvements following bitemporal tDCS compared to bifrontal and sham stimulations. Study 2. To investigate the efficacy of exercise primed tDCS on cognition, MCI and mild AD participants (n=19) were randomized to either exercise primed tDCS, exercise primed sham tDCS, or treatment as usual (exercise education only) with tDCS. Ten sessions of bitemporal (T3/T4, 2mA, 20 minutes) or sham tDCS were applied following personalized moderate-intensity aerobic exercise (30 minutes). The trial is ongoing and to maintain blindness, the treatment groups are named as Group A, B, and C. There was a significant effect of time (F(1,14)=11.40, p=0.005), but no group by time interaction on recognition memory (F(2,14)=1.00, p=0.38). However, post hoc analysis revealed significantly greater improvements on recognition memory over time within Group A only (t(5)=-3.70, p=0.02). Study 3. To examine mechanistic correlates of tDCS response, serum vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and endostatin concentrations were analyzed from participants who completed Study 2 (n=18). After controlling for diagnosis, lower VEGF concentrations at screening predicted greater improvement in recognition memory following tDCS treatment with or without exercise priming (b[SE]=-0.66[0.004], p=0.03). Conclusion: Single-session and repeated-session exercise primed bitemporal tDCS may be effective at improving specific cognitive domains in MCI and mild AD patients. Angiogenic mechanisms may underlie tDCS-induced cognitive improvements in these patients. | Ph.D. | educat | 3, 4 |
| McLaughlin, Kelsey | Parker, John D||Kingdom, John CP | Vascular Effects of Low-Molecular Weight Heparin in Pregnant Women at High-Risk of Preeclampsia | Pharmacology | 2017-06-01 | Preeclampsia (PE) is a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy characterized by new-onset hypertension with evidence of organ injury. Women with severe PE demonstrate cardiovascular impairment during pregnancy and are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease postpartum. There is currently no effective therapy for the prevention of PE in high-risk pregnant women. Low-molecular weight heparin (LMWH) has been investigated for the prevention of severe PE, although the underlying mechanisms of action are unknown. The objective of the first experiment was to assess cardiovascular function in pregnant women at high-risk of PE compared with low-risk pregnant controls at 24 weeksâ gestation. High-risk women demonstrated a lower cardiac output, higher resistance hemodynamic profile with impaired radial artery flow-mediated dilation (FMD), compared to controls. Baseline plasma and urine levels of placental growth factor (PlGF) were significantly lower in high-risk women compared with controls. These findings demonstrate that pregnant women at high-risk of PE exhibit impaired endothelial function prior to the clinical presentation of PE. The acute cardiovascular effects of LMWH in pregnant women at high-risk of PE were then investigated. LMWH significantly increased FMD in high-risk women and maternal plasma levels of PlGF, suggesting that LMWH may exert beneficial effects on maternal endothelial function. To further elucidate the effects of LMWH on the maternal endothelium, the effects of patient serum and LMWH on in vitro endothelial cell function were investigated. Serum from high-risk women impaired angiogenesis and increased PlGF-1 and PlGF-2 expression compared to serum from low-risk subjects. Co-exposure of high-risk serum with LMWH improved the angiogenic response, such that it was equivalent to that of low-risk serum, and promoted PlGF secretion from endothelial cells. These observations provide further evidence that LMWH modifies endothelial cell function, possibly through enhanced PlGF bioavailability. In conclusion, the present experiments indicate that LMWH improves endothelial function in pregnant women at high-risk of developing PE, possibly mediated through increased PlGF bioavailability. These findings are consistent with previous clinical studies in non-pregnant populations and animal studies in which LMWH improved endothelial function. Future trials are needed to assess the effectiveness of LMWH for the prevention of severe PE in high-risk women. | Ph.D. | women | 3 |
| Mohabeer, Amanda Lakshmi | Bendeck, Michelle | The Role of Type VIII Collagen in Carotid Artery Stiffness and Physiology | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-03-01 | Cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Over the last decade, arterial stiffening of conduit vessels has emerged as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease development and mortality. In elastic arteries, stiffening refers to the gradual loss and fragmentation of elastic fibers, with a progressive increase in collagen fibers. Type VIII collagen (Col-8) is dramatically upregulated in aged and diseased vessels characterized by arterial stiffening, yet its biophysical impact on the vessel wall remains unknown. The purpose of this thesis was to test the hypothesis that Col-8 functions as a matrix scaffold to maintain vessel integrity during extracellular matrix (ECM) remodelling. In my first study, I determined a novel interaction between Col-8 and elastin. Mice deficient in Col-8 (Col8-/-) had reduced blood pressure and increased vessel compliance, indicating an enhanced Windkessel effect. Differences in both the ECM composition and VSMC activity resulted in a Col8-/- carotid artery that displayed increased diameters with pressure, but enhanced catecholamine-induced VSMC contractility to compensate. In vitro studies revealed that the absence of Col-8 dramatically increased tropoelastin mRNA and elastic fiber deposition in the ECM, which was hindered with exogenous Col-8 treatment. These findings suggest a causative role for Col-8 in reducing mRNA levels of tropoelastin and the presence of elastic fibers in the matrix. In my second study, I tested the hypothesis that Col-8 deficiency would improve carotid artery compliance in two murine models of vessel stiffening, ApoE-/- and Eln+/-. I determined that the reliance on Col-8 was model dependent since there were no differences in vessel stiffness between Col8+/+;ApoE-/- and Col8-/-;ApoE-/- mice. In contrast, Col8-/-;Eln+/- mice had increased carotid artery compliance and reduced blood pressure indicative of an rescued Windkessel effect. These results further potentiate the inverse relationship between elastin and Col-8. In summary, the research presented in this thesis outlines a novel role for Col-8 in regulating elastin which impacts on vessel stability and function. These studies further our understanding of Col-8 function and open a promising new area of investigation related to elastin biology. | Ph.D. | wind | 3 |
| Soedirgo, Jessica | Bertrand, Jacques | The Threat of Small Things: Patterns of Repression and Mobilization against Micro-sized Groups in Indonesia | Political Science | 2020-06-01 | Why do very small groups become targets of mobilization and repression? Given their economic and political insignificance, most theories of ethnic and religious conflict expect groups that are less than 1 percent of the population—what I call micro-sized groups—to be ignored. Yet, micro-sized groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Eastern Europe and the Baha’i in Iran have been targets of high levels of state repression and collective mobilization. I argue that the threat of micro-sized groups is linked to fears about group boundaries in flux. When micro-sized groups challenge the institutions, routines, and practices that form the foundations of group belonging through the marking of public space (“visible constitutive threat”), it is seen as a danger to the larger group’s continued existence. Micro-sized groups thus become seen as a perceived threat to the larger ethnic, religious, or national group when: 1) they present a visible constitutive threat; and 2) political entrepreneurs are incentivized to amplify these visible constitutive threats for their own interests. Using archival data, a geo-coded events dataset, and over 135 interviews collected over 17 months of fieldwork, I develop my argument through a study of the Ahmadiyah sect in Indonesia. I show that Ahmadis were a constitutive threat to Muslims in Indonesia because their practices challenged those that allowed a diverse people to belong to a single category. However, Ahmadis were only seen as threatening when these constitutive challenges were publicly visible. When electoral reforms increased the relevance of local clientelist networks, political entrepreneurs were incentivized to exploit and amplify the Ahmadiyah threat. Rates of anti-Ahmadiyah activity consequently multiplied. By identifying why and how micro-sized groups come to be seen as threats, my work challenges longstanding assumptions about the necessary material dimensions of threat. It instead suggests that threat construction and perception is not just driven by concerns around access to resources, but is shaped by a group’s public visibility. Broadly, understanding how visible constitutive threats operate can shed light on political phenomena that appear to be costly, inefficient, and irrational. Finally, my work speaks to the burgeoning literature linking clientelism to conflict. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Au, April | Einstein, Gillian | The Effect of Bilateral Salpingo-Oophorectomy on Cognition in Women Prior to Natural Menopause | Psychology | 2018-06-01 | In this dissertation, I examined the effects of 17β-estradiol on cognitive functioning in middle-aged women, using a model of ovarian removal. Women with a BRCA1/2 mutation who have undergone bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) for cancer prevention prior to natural menopause were enrolled in an accelerated longitudinal study designed to examine cognition up to 10 years post-surgically. The literature has found that women who have experienced an iatrogenic loss of estrogens following BSO are at increased risk of cognitive decline and dementia. The objective of my dissertation was to characterize two periods that have not been previously studied: up to 10-years post surgically and the timeframe leading up to dementia. I present here findings from the first year of cognitive testing in an accelerated longitudinal study, and retrospective analyses using the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI) database. I examined the effects of oophorectomy on verbal memory (Chapter 3), and executive functioning (Chapter 4) based on localization of estrogen receptors in the hippocampus and frontal cortex. In Chapter 5, I explored the interaction between a BRCA mutation and BSO on spatial memory. In Chapter 6, I examined if elderly women (aged >55 baseline) with a history of oophorectomy and mild cognitive impairment were at greater risk of conversion to Alzheimer’s disease using the ADNI database to understand the trajectory leading up to dementia. Overall, results indicate that performance of women with BSO were similar to controls except for a measure of verbal, episodic memory. In addition, a number of factors within the BSO group modulate cognitive functioning. This included levels of endogenous estrogens, the age at surgery, time since surgery, hormone therapy and education attainment. Results suggest that there are protective factors that modulate the risk of cognitive decline post-BSO, and more generally, underscore the complexity of the relationship between estrogens and cognition in middle-aged women. | Ph.D. | women, educat | 3 |
| Patel, Shaista | Tuck, Eve | THE "INDIAN" OF FOUR CONTINENTS: READING FOR HORIZONTAL RELATIONS OF VIOLENCE, COMPLICITY, AND THE MAKING OF WHITE SETTLER COLONIALISM | Social Justice Education | 2018-11-01 | This research study asks: How do we theorize the place of non-Black people of colour vis-à-vis Indigenous peoples and Black people in North America? Paying attention to transnational power relations, and colonial entanglements of differential racialization, I particularly inquire into the place of South Asian diaspora in North America. This study draws upon critical Indigenous, Black, anti-caste, and transnational feminist theories to argue for the urgent need to place analyses of white settler colonialism here in conversation with other entangled histories, presented through discrepant spatialities and temporalities, in order to examine what we know and have yet to learn about entanglements of race, Indigeneity, gender, sexuality, caste, and relations of labor. My “unlikely archive” (Lowe, 2015) of complicity consists of a wide array of legal, representational and cultural artifacts. Drawing upon Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading of texts, and Lisa Lowe’s methodology of paying attention to past conditional temporality, this study travels from analyzing lingering coloniality in a series of photographs titled An Indian from India by a contemporary South Asian artist to Bengal of 19th century where I study Neel Darpan, an anti-colonial protest play. In both these chapters, I show how anti-colonial resistance narratives can often replicate the logics of Empire and leave the very people who are the most marginalized subjects of history as subaltern, silent, and vestigial. My chapter on the figure of the wide circulation of the "Indian Queen" in 18th century Europe examines how she is formed at the nexus of race, coloniality, and capitalism but also understudied or suppressed histories of Europe's Crusades against its Muslim Other. This analysis places anti-Muslim sentiments of the Old World into a much- needed conversation with conquest of the New World. In my last chapter, I study "Indian Arrival Day" a national holiday in the Caribbean celebrating the first arrival of Indians as indentured laborers. This chapter adds to the growing scholarship that moves us away from binaries of free versus unfree or coercive labor and towards more complex readings of modern racialized division of labor. | Ph.D. | labor, gender | 10 |
| Moody, Lesley | Deber, Raisa||Longo, Christopher J | Preferences for the Role in Making Treatment Decisions: A Comparison between Patients and Patient Advocates in the Neuroendocrine Cancer Population | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-11-01 | Background: Patient engagement has become a common focus for healthcare organizations in the last decade and is a priority in Canadian healthcare policies and research strategies. Objectives: The objective of this thesis was 1) to examine the association between the preferred role in treatment decisions that adult patients and patient advocates with a rare cancer, neuroendocrine (NETs), wish to play in their care, and 2) to test the hypothesized relationship with ehealth literacy, trust in physician, information seeking behaviours and sociodemographic variables within and across both groups (patients and patient advocates). Design: A cross-sectional survey design was used to measure preferred roles in problem solving and decision-making. Methods: Preferred roles were measured across two health vignettes: ‘current health condition’ and ‘chest pain’. Bivariate analysis was conducted to determine associations between socio-demographic variables and preferences for problem solving (PS) and decision-making (DM). PS is preference-independent and relates to tasks in determining the nature of the problem, structuring the decision tree and determining probabilities, such as who should determine the risks and benefits of different treatment options. Conversely, DM tasks relate to determining patient preferences (including risk attitude) and making the decision, considering what matters to you as an individual. Associations between the eHealth literacy score, Trust-in-Physician score, information seeking behaviour and continuous socio-demographic variables were calculated. Results: There were significant differences between preferred roles and trust in the physician and whether a participant was a patient or a patient advocate. There are three main categories of preferred roles: passive, shared and autonomous. The results of this research showed that most patients preferred a passive or shared-leaning passive role, had a high level of perceived health information literacy, and had high levels of trust in their physician. Patient advocates more often preferred a shared role, had a lower trust in their physician and lower perceived ehealth literacy compared to patients. Results of the binary logistic regression showed that trust in the physician predicted respondents of both groups’ preferred roles for both vignettes; chest pain and neuroendocrine treatment decisions. Conclusion: This study provides new knowledge that advances the understanding of the association of preferred roles of problem solving and decision-making for patients as well as patient advocates with a rare cancer. | Ph.D. | health | 3 |
| Iankilevitch, Maria | Chasteen, Alison L | Perceptions of Individuals in Mixed-race Relationships | Psychology | 2020-11-01 | Although the number of mixed-race couples is increasing at an exponential rate in North America, these couples continue to experience stigma and discrimination, which can have deleterious effects on the physical and mental health of the individuals in these relationships. Given that first impressions of individuals can be formed instantaneously and that these first impressions can greatly influence subsequent attitudes and behaviours, in three studies I examined perceivers’ first impressions of targets in mixed-race romantic relationships when viewed on their own versus with their romantic partners. In three studies, I examined perceivers’ first impressions of targets in mixed-race relations when viewed on their own versus with their romantic partners, including perceptions of targets’ warmth and competence (Study 1), global morality (Study 2), and sub facets of morality (i.e., likelihood to betray, to conform, and prejudice level; Study 3). I found that perceptions of warmth and competence did not differ based on whether targets were viewed alone or with their partners, however, perceptions of morality did. In particular, all targets viewed with their partners were perceived as more moral and less likely to betray close others than when viewed alone, however, individuals with same-race partners were perceived as most moral and least likely to betray. Furthermore, individuals in mixed-race couples were rated as less conforming and less prejudiced than individuals in same-race couples when viewed with their partners. In sum, when viewed with their romantic partners, individuals in mixed-race dyads were perceived less favourably than those in same-race dyads in terms of morality, betrayal likelihood, and conformity. However, individuals in mixed-race dyads were perceived more favourably than those in same-race dyads in terms of prejudice. These results were largely driven by the presence of romantic partners given that perceptions of global morality, betrayal, conformity, and prejudice were similar across targets viewed alone. Together, these studies suggest that evaluations of targets’ morality are affected by whether their romantic partner is same- or other-race. These studies lay the foundation for understanding the unique challenges faced by members of mixed-race couples. | Ph.D. | health | 10 |
| Qian, Longhao | Liu, Hugh H.T. Prof. | Path Following Control for Multiple Quadrotors Carrying A Rigid-body Slung Payload | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2021-03-01 | Novel robust path-following flight controllers for quadrotors carrying a tethered payload are extensively studied from the perspective of dynamic modelling, control design, and experimental verification. By using multiple quadrotors to cooperatively carry a payload, their payload capacities can be significantly boosted. The number of vehicles can be adjusted according to the weight of the payload, resulting in a flexible and efficient use of drone resources. The presented model development starts from a single quadrotor with a point-mass payload to multiple quadrotors with a rigid-body payload. The payload is towed by quadrotors with cables. The systems are decomposed into the payload subsystem and the quadrotor attitude subsystem by assuming the cable is tethered at the center of mass of each quadrotor. The controller designs are then developed for a single quadrotor with a point-mass payload, followed by controller of multiple quadrotors with a rigid-body payload. Both controllers resemble a cascade form in structure. The outer loop offers a robust path-following controller that stabilizes the payload subsystem by assuming the lift vector of each quadrotor can point instantaneously to a given direction. An uncertainty and disturbance estimator is designed to estimate and eliminate the lumped disturbances caused by exogenous wind and parameter imperfection. The inner loop, on the other hand, is an attitude tracker implemented on each quadrotor to follow a reference attitude generated by the outer-loop controller. The overall stability of the complete system is proven using the Lyapunov method and the Reduction Theorem. Aside from the analytical control law, a model predictive controller (MPC) method is also studied and implemented on quadrotor for cooperative slung payload delivery. The MPC method utilizes the equivalent damping force from the previous controller as the baseline stabilizing inner loop. The linearized closed-loop model is then calculated. Finally, the optimum controller is calculated after a prediction horizon and a cost function are defined. The MPC scheme achieves better performance and requires less parameter tuning. Extensive simulations and experiments show that the controller designs are capable of stabilizing the payload under model imperfection and exogenous disturbances simultaneously. | Ph.D. | urban, cities, wind | 9 |
| Bryant, Katelyn | Willows, Dale M. | Parent Concern About Children's Reading | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2018-11-01 | This dissertation used mixed methods to explore the phenomenon of parent concern about children’s reading. In Study 1, an existing database was used to consider the value of parent concern as a predictor of, and screening measure for, word-level reading difficulties. Parents of grade 2 children (N = 294) responded to the question “Have you ever been concerned about this child’s ability to learn to read?” and their children completed a timed test of word-level reading skills and a test of sentence memory. A subgroup of children (n = 91) received additional reading-related tests, including tests of phonological awareness, rapid naming, language, memory, and verbal IQ. In the overall sample, 23% of parents responded affirmatively to the parent concern question. Parent concern was a significant predictor of reading skill, and, for some outcomes, added value beyond the other reading-related predictors. It identified children with word-level reading difficulties with acceptable specificity but not always with adequate sensitivity. When parents appeared inaccurate, this corresponded with variation in children’s reading-related skills, as well as their time of birth relative to the school year. Study 2 elaborated on these results by asking a new group of 70 parents the same question. Eleven of 17 concerned parents who met study criteria were interviewed and their children received a battery of reading and reading-related tests. Similar to the results of Study 1, parent concern was reliably accompanied by reading and/or reading-related difficulties. Factors that appeared to influence parent concern included feedback from others, comparisons parents made (between the child and others, their own development, and standards), and children’s emotions and behaviours. Parents doubted their concern and were uncertain about what constituted normal reading development. However, they reported many signs of reading difficulty, including poor word reading, reading fluency, comprehension, spelling, and writing, as well as difficulties with work completion, lack of interest in reading independently or reading challenging material, and negative emotions related to reading. The results from both studies are discussed and practical implications are provided. Overall, this dissertation provides support for the value of parent concern in identifying children with reading difficulties. | Ph.D. | labor | 4 |
| Luk, Annie | Joshee, Reva | Only in a Collective: A Narrative Inquiry into Leadership in a Collective Organizational Structure | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-03-01 | Parkdale Project Read (PPR) has been providing adult literacy programming in the Parkdale neighbourhood west of Toronto, Canada since the 1980s. The staff at PPR work as a collective in which everyone shares the same title and pay rate as part of a commitment to equality, democracy and collaboration. The collective structure serves as an alternative to hierarchical models. Three research questions guided this study to understand leadership in a collective structure: (1) How do the staff members who work in a collective organizational structure share the work of leadership as a group; (2) What is considered the work of leadership in a collective in terms of the staff members’ day-to-day work; and (3) How does the collective organizational structure influence the staff members’ understanding and performance of the work of leadership as individuals and as a group. Using narrative inquiry as methodology which included interviews, observations and a group writing exercise, I worked with eight participants representing all four of the current collective members at PPR (at the time of the study) and four former collective members. The participants told their stories of working in the collective and of sharing leadership with others in the collective. In retelling the stories shared with me by the participants and drawing from Bourdieu’s thinking tools of habitus, capital and field, I discuss how the collective structure influences the understanding and performance of leadership by the collective members as individuals and as a group through the way they relate to each other. At the same time, the collective members change the way the collective operates with their actions and relationships. The results from this study highlight how a collective shares leadership among its members and challenge how we typically conceptualize leadership by illustrating the dynamic interactions between agency and structure. | Ph.D. | labor, equality | 4, 8, 10 |
| Calderon Peralvo, Francisco Fernando | Miller, Eric J | Modelling On-demand Mobility Services with Agent-based Travel Demand Model Systems and Implementation of a Ridehailing Case Study | Civil Engineering | 2021-03-01 | This thesis develops a comprehensive framework for modelling on-demand mobility service provision within large-scale, multimodal, long-term Agent-Based Microsimulation model systems of person activity and travel. Conventional model systems lack the required flexibility to accommodate operations and spatiotemporal features of highly dynamic mobility services. This gap is addressed by formally introducing service provision as a major generic model component within such models. The generic framework developed is demonstrated through an extended ridehailing case study.A comprehensive literature review addresses existing ambiguity in on-demand mobility service definitions and characterises their operational activities (matching, rebalancing, dynamic pricing). Focus is shifted from modelling individual services in isolation towards key generic operational activities integrated into a generic service provision process. This supports modelling a range of on-demand mobility services as well as service-specific configurations (within-service variation). Current modelling efforts have predominantly been conducted for autonomous vehicles (AVs), creating a gap in modelling human-driven vehicle fleets. Given the high degree of uncertainty regarding AV adoption timelines, formal representations of drivers’ activity and behaviour are required to model many current services. This gap is addressed by developing explicit models of drivers’ decision-making processes. Moreover, the proposed modelling framework is flexible enough to seamlessly accommodate AV and non-AV services, by representing vehicle technology as an attribute of vehicle fleets. The flexible framework can also accommodate a Mobility as a Service (MaaS) environment, which is not constrained to operate in a centralised manner, as direct interactions among users and service providers are supported – the model system is fully functional without MaaS. Applicability of the framework is demonstrated through extensive implementation efforts for a ridehailing case study, namely: data mining methods to infer supply levels and driver activity logs; in-depth analyses of generic operational tasks (matching, rebalancing, and dynamic pricing); driver activity models of key decisions of independent human drivers (entry/exit/re-entry to the system); and a model implementation of a holistic ridehailing service provision process with human-driven vehicle agents, designed to circumvent data scarcity challenges. Future work involves testing the framework through implementation of other on-demand mobility services in addition to the ridehailing use case (bikeshare, demand responsive transit, etc.). La presente tesis reporta el desarrollo de un amplio marco conceptual para el modelamiento de procesos de provisión de servicio de servicios de movilidad en-demanda, en el ámbito de sistemas de modelamiento de viajes y actividad, y enfocados en microsimulación basada en agentes a larga escala, multimodal, y a largo plazo. Actualmente, los sistemas de modelamiento convencionales carecen de la flexibilidad necesaria para acomodar operaciones y aspectos espaciotemporales de servicios de movilidad cuya naturaleza es altamente dinámica. Esta brecha se puede cerrar al introducir la provisión de servicio formalmente, como un componente principal y genérico dentro de modelos de viajes. El marco conceptual desarrollado, y su generalidad, son demostrados por medio de un caso de estudio de servicios de movilidad tipo “Uber”.La ambigüedad existente respecto a las definiciones asignadas a servicios de movilidad en-demanda se esclarece mediante una extensa revisión de literatura, caracterizando actividades operacionales de dichos servicios (emparejamiento de vehículos y usuarios, rebalanceo de la flota y precios dinámicos). Esta tesis se aleja de un enfoque de modelamiento de servicios de manera individual, para dar lugar a la definición de actividades operacionales genéricas y su integración dentro de un proceso de provisión de servicio genérico. Dicho enfoque permite modelar un amplio rango de servicios de movilidad en-demanda, así como configuraciones específicas de cada servicio individual (variaciones de un mismo servicio). Los esfuerzos reportados en materia de modelamiento en la actualidad se han enfocado predominantemente en vehículos autónomos (AVs, por sus siglas en inglés), creando una brecha en la literatura en lo que respecta a flotas operadas por conductores humanos. Dado el alto grado de incertidumbre que existe respecto al tiempo que tomaría una adopción masiva de AVs, se necesita representar formalmente los patrones de actividad y comportamiento de los conductores en los servicios de movilidad pertinentes. La presente tesis cierra esta brecha al desarrollar modelos explícitos de los procesos de toma de decisiones de conductores. En este sentido, al representar la tecnología como un atributo de la flota vehicular, el marco conceptual de modelamiento propuesto es lo suficientemente flexible como para acomodar servicios basados en AVs, así como en conductores humanos. El marco conceptual es también lo suficientemente flexible como para acomodar escenarios de Movilidad como un Servicio (MaaS, por sus siglas en inglés), los cuales no están limitados a operar de manera centralizada. En específico, se permiten interacciones directas entre usuarios y proveedores de servicio – el sistema de modelamiento es completamente funcional en la ausencia de MaaS. La aplicabilidad de esta tesis se demuestra por medio de una extensa implementación enfocada en un caso de estudio de servicios de movilidad tipo “Uber”. Incluyendo métodos de mineo de datos para inferir niveles de oferta y registros de actividad de conductores; estimación de modelos de actividad de conductores que capturan decisiones clave tomadas por conductores humanos independientes (entrar/salir/regresar al sistema); y la implementación de un modelo holístico del proceso de provisión de servicio de un servicio de movilidad tipo “Uber”, el cual opera con flotas vehiculares conducidas por agentes humanos – dicho modelo tiene la capacidad de superar las barreras impuestas por la falta de disponibilidad de datos. Trabajo futuro involucraría la puesta a prueba de el marco conceptual de modelamiento propuesto para la implementación de varios modelos de servicios de movilidad como bicicletas compartidas, sistemas de transporte público en demanda, etcétera. | Ph.D. | environment | 9 |
| Ferreira, Tadeu Augusto | Jaimungal, Sebastian | Machine Learning in Algorithmic Trading leading to Reinforced Deep Kalman Filters | Statistics | 2020-11-01 | In this thesis, we develop machine learning frameworks that are suitable for algorithmic trading, where environments are volatile, heteroscedastic, and driven by latent factors. The thesis contains two main parts increasing in the complexity of the frameworks we develop. In the first part, we model the dynamics of ask-bid prices using and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) and compare its performance against First Order Markov Models (MM). A supervised learning method is developed for making binary (buy or sell) market order predictions using Restricted Boltzmann Machines (RBMs). The RBMs are adapted to Gaussian-Bernoulli (GB-RBM), and later to discriminative GB-RBMs (DGB-RBM). The algorithm's performance is compared to predictions made using the industry standard of naive bid-ask depth imbalances. We demonstrate that the DGB-RBM outperforms the industry standard by up to 18% increment in the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC). In the second part, we use traditional reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms to solve an optimal execution problem – where an agent seeks to optimally sell stocks to simultaneously mitigate the risk of price movements and price impact in a stochastic environment. We develop optimal policies using variants of Q-Learning, DynaQ-ARIMA and DynaQ-LSTM algorithms, which are used as benchmarks. The analysis shows that idiosyncrasies of the optimal execution problem require delicate treatment of data inefficiency and model bias issues, which we address next. We propose a model-based RL approach, coined Reinforced Deep Kalman Filter (RDKF), designed to integrate desirable properties of a reinforcement learning algorithm acting as an automatic trading system. The network architecture allows for the possibility that market dynamics are partially visible and are modified by the agent's actions. The RDKF filters incomplete and noisy data to create better-behaved input data for RL planning. The policy search optimisation also properly accounts for state uncertainty. We perform ablation studies to understand the contributions of individual components of the RDKF. The experiments show that the RDKF is data-efficient and provides financial gains compared to the benchmarks in the optimal execution problem using real data sets from the limit order book of Facebook, Intel, Vodafone and Microsoft. | Ph.D. | environment, industr | 9 |
| Lengyell, Marguerite R | Moodley, Roy | Interracial Couples and Parenting: An Exploration of Interracial Couples’ Experiences with Parenting Mixed-race Children in the Greater Toronto Area | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | The number of interracial couples in Canada continues to rise, particularly in metropolitan regions such as the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) with a consequent increase in the number of mixed-race children. The importance of fostering positive racial identities in mixed-race children is well documented. However, there is little research investigating the processes through which interracial couples parent their children together or how they make meaning of their parenting experiences. To address this deficiency, the purpose of the current study was to explore the joint experiences of six interracial couples who were negotiating the parenting process of their school-aged mixed-race children. By employing interpretative phenomenological analysis, in-depth interviews were used to generate descriptions of the interracial couples’ experiences across three relationship phases (i) courtship and early stages of the interracial relationship, (ii) becoming parents and early parenting experiences, and (iii) experiences with co-parenting school-aged mixed-race children. Across these relationship phases, this analysis yielded three core transecting themes that reflected the experiences of jointly parenting mixed-race children. First, participants described how relationship and parenting experiences led to transformative racial identity experiences, both as individuals and couples. Second, experiences with their racially different partner, their mixed-race children, and the external world, led to the realization of their unique experience as interracial couples and mixed-race families in the context of a racially stratified society. Third, in terms of parenting, all six couples described the process through which they framed their interracial status as a strength for their mixed-race children, referencing the benefits of dual racial exposure. Parenting had clear impacts on the racial identity formation processes of the six interracial couples which manifested differently across different phases of their interracial relationship. Generally, the needs of mixed-race families are unique and in the context of a rapidly shifting sociopolitical climate, the perspectives of these families need to be understood to ensure the provision of culturally sensitive and competent practice and pedagogy. Although the findings of this study are an important contribution, more extensive research is needed to further understand the strengths and needs of interracial partners and their journeys of parenting their mixed-race children. | Ed.D. | climate | 10 |
| Rwigema, Marie-Jolie | Williams, Charmaine | Fragments, Webs and Weavings: Rwandan-Canadian Perspectives on the 1994 Genocide against Tutsi | Social Work | 2018-11-01 | Since 1994, many survivors of the Rwandan genocide against Tutsi have migrated to Canada to re-build their lives. The literature has established that a large proportion of the Rwandan population suffers from post-traumatic stress and depression. However, there is also a large body of ‘psycho-social’ and ‘anti-colonial’ literature that problematizes ‘Western’ mental health constructs such as post-traumatic stress and depression. Similarly, anti-oppressive social work theories argue that social workers need to recognize the politics of suffering and helping in order to practice effectively. Some have argued that ‘Western’ approaches (namely: bio-medical), that are harmful, continue to dominate work with survivors of mass violence, whose own views are rarely heard. To address the lack of Rwandan voices in the discourse about the genocide, I conducted 1-on-1 interviews with 9 members of Rwandan-Canadian survivor communities to find out what they have to tell us about their perspectives on genocide survival and healing in the Canadian context. My findings identified a total of eleven interrelated themes re: how Rwandan-Canadian survivors are affected by, deal with and make sense of the 1994 genocide. Ultimately my research supported the findings of psycho-social and anti-colonial frameworks that link individual mental health ‘healing’ to political resistance. My research, integrating literature reviews with the interviews and critical discourse analysis concluded that trauma among Rwandan-Canadian genocide survivors is an individual and collective process rooted in a history of anti-Tutsi systemic discrimination borne out of colonialism. Thus, I argue that supporting survivors requires collective politicized processes of recovery. For Rwandan-Canadians, these collective processes of recovery would include addressing ruptures within Rwandan communities and supporting survivor communities in processes of remembering and authoring Rwandan histories in resistance to ongoing structural and epistemic violence, including genocide denial. | Ph.D. | worker, health | 10, 16 |
| Yoshinari, Mary Ann Hiloko | Tavakoli-Targhi, Mohamad | Economic Sovereignty in Iran vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, 1921-1946 | History | 2018-11-01 | My dissertation analyzes Iran’s national economy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union and global conditions. In Chapter I, I elucidate the importance of legislation enacted by the Iranian Parliament in preparation for studies of the country’s economy and subsequent measures for the establishment of state economic institutions during the second half of the 1920s. At the same time, I discuss ongoing trade relations with the Soviet Union and their impact on Iran’s economy. In Chapter II, I link the formation of domestic monopolies and other enterprises with state banking institutions and corporations. Moreover, I show how fundamental shifts in trade relations with the Soviet Union had shaped these developments in the early 1930s. In Chapter III, I demonstrate that changes in the Iranian government’s political landscape and the further capitalization of national banks resulted in the expansion of industrialization from 1934 onwards, as well as the fusion of the trade monopoly system with the corporations, and the increasing centralization of domestic capital. Finally, in Chapter IV, I explain how the foreign occupation of Iran, including that of the USSR, had been preceded by the consolidation of state institutions, and then led to increasing cooperation between disparate Iranian statesmen in an effort to regain autonomy over the country’s economic affairs in 1941-46. Conversely, there were a promising signs of regeneration during this tumultuous period, particularly with regard to Iranian industry and the monopoly system, which were both indicative of future developments in the postwar period. | Ph.D. | institut, trade, industr | 9, 10, 16 |
| Hassan, Samah | Stevens, Bonnie | Development and Initial Evaluation of a Novel Pain Competence Assessment Tool | Medical Science | 2020-11-01 | Many primary care practitioners lack the knowledge, and the interprofessional skills needed for treating chronic pain patients. Competency-based interprofessional education is currently the key educational approach, especially for continuing professional education on the topic of pain. This type of education necessitates a competency-based assessment tool to show learners’ progression and to evaluate the impact of these educational interventions. This research aimed to develop and initially evaluate the psychometric properties of a new Pain Competence Assessment Tool (PCAT) designed to assess the core competencies for pain management relevant to primary care practitioners involved in managing patients with chronic pain. To develop the PCAT, case-scenarios were created reflecting real-life chronic pain situations commonly seen in primary care. Each case was followed by key-feature questions. The tool was uploaded on a custom-designed online web interface. To assess its content, pain experts representing different professions, reviewed the PCAT, and reached consensus on the most appropriate questions using the modified Delphi technique. Then a small sample of primary care practitioners, representing the target population, completed the PCAT to assess the response process through a cognitive interview study. Finally, a representative sample of practitioners and trainees completed the PCAT to preliminary evaluate the internal structure and the relation of the PCAT scores to other variables in separate pilot studies. After a series of refinements, the PCAT consisted of five cases with 17 questions. Through preliminary evaluation, the results showed that the PCAT questions reflected the specified construct intended to be measured and their relevance to the target population. Apart from six questions, the PCAT questions demonstrated homogeneity and acceptable reliability. The PCAT showed substantial stability and excellent preliminary validity. The PCAT scores reflected the participants’ expected level of competency defined by their previous training and current practices. The PCAT is the first competency-based assessment tool that has the potential to assess the core competencies for pain management among primary care practitioners. Critical next steps are needed for further validation and adaptation for the assessment of pain educational outcomes. | Ph.D. | educat | 3, 4 |
| Carianopol, Carina Steliana | Gazzarrini, Sonia | The Role of Sucrose Non-fermenting Related Kinase 1 (SnRK1) in Abscisic Acid and Abiotic Stress Response in Arabidopsis thaliana | Cell and Systems Biology | 2020-11-01 | Environmental stress greatly affects plant growth and reproduction, posing challenges to food security. The yeast SNF1 (Sucrose non-fermenting1), mammalian AMPK (5' AMP-activated protein kinase) and plant SnRK1 (-Related Kinase1) are highly conserved heterotrimeric kinase complexes, which are activated under metabolic stress to re-establish energy homeostasis in eukaryotes. Despite the pivotal role of SnRK1 in plant development and stress response, only few SnRK1 targets have been identified so far. In plants, the hormone abscisic acid (ABA) plays a crucial and well-known role in stress response. Activation of SnRK1 or ABA signaling results in overlapping transcriptional changes, suggesting that these two important stress pathways share common targets. To investigate how SnRK1 and ABA interact to regulate stress responses in Arabidopsis thaliana, the six SnRK1 complex subunits were screened by high-throughput yeast two-hybrid against a library of 258 proteins that are transcriptionally regulated by ABA and enriched for the SnRK1 phosphorylation motif. A set of 125 SnRK1-complex interactors were uncovered, which included ABA metabolic and core signaling components, suggesting that SnRK1 may modulate the ABA response pathway at multiple levels. Network analysis indicates that a subset of SnRK1 kinase interactors, which are highly interconnected and coexpressed under stress, form a signaling module in response to osmotic and salinity stress. Functional studies using T-DNA insertion mutants show the involvement of the catalytic SnRK1a2 subunit and four interacting partners in salinity stress responses. Furthermore, the characterization of SnRK1-ABI5 BINDING PROTEIN2 (AFP2) interaction elucidated a role for SnRK1a1 in inhibiting AFP2-induced cell death when overexpressed in Nicotiana benthamiana. This targeted approach uncovered the largest set of SnRK1 interactors identified so far in plants and highlights an important role for SnRK1 and its interactors in ABA and stress response. The ABA-responsive SnRK1 interaction network identified in this study can be used to further characterize the role of SnRK1 and its ABA-responsive partners in plant survival under stress. | Ph.D. | conserv, environment, production, energy, food | 2 |
| Gibson, Erin Alexandra | McIntosh, Randy | The States and Traits of EEG Variability | Medical Science | 2021-03-01 | The States and Traits of EEG VariabilityErin Gibson Doctor of Philosophy Institute of Medical Science University of Toronto 2021 Neurons in the brain are seldom perfectly quiet. They continually receive input and generate output, resulting in noisy, highly variable patterns of ongoing activity. Yet the functional significance and behavioral consequences of this variability remains largely unknown. We hypothesize that brain signal variability is tightly coupled to the processing of task-relevant information and serves as an important indicator of cognitive function. To test this, we examine EEG activity in young, healthy adults as they perform a cognitive skill learning and resting state task. Several measures of EEG variability and signal strength are calculated at multiple timescales, or in overlapping time windows that span the trial interval. We perform a systematic examination of the factors that most strongly influence the variability and strength of EEG activity. Study 1 examines the relative sensitivity of each measure to trait-level variation across subjects and state-level variation across task blocks. We find that EEG variability is most sensitive to trait-level differences across individuals that remain relatively stable across blocks. Study 2 examines the sensitivity of each measure to different sources of state-level variation across task blocks. We find that key task-driven changes in EEG activity are better reflected in the strength, rather than the variability, of EEG activity. Study 3 examines trait-level variation in each measure and its relationship with behavior. We find that differences in learning speed and acquired skill across individuals are better reflected in relative changes in the variability, rather than the strength, of EEG activity. These results demonstrate that EEG variability is particularly sensitive to stable trait-level variation across individuals and relative changes in EEG variability around a particular level, rather than the level itself, are a strong indicator of behavioral performance in young, healthy adults. | Ph.D. | institut, wind, health | 3 |
| Hamid, Usman | Subtelny, Maria E||Ruffle, Karen | Tracing the Footsteps of the Prophet across the Indian Ocean: The Materiality of Prophetic Piety in Mughal India | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2021-03-01 | This dissertation adopts theoretical and methodological insights from the study of religious materiality to explore how Indian Ocean travel gave rise to religious discourses and practices in South Asia. It traces how the circulation of people, objects, and knowledge between North India and the Hejaz led to new forms of Muslim piety in the imperial centers of the Mughal Empire. A characteristic feature of this piety was belief in the auspicious nature of the Prophet Muḥammad’s body. This belief was expressed both in scholastic discourse and ritual practice as evidenced by the history of Prophetic relics and tradition examined in this dissertation.The introduction lays forth the concept of Prophetic piety and outlines what it means to study it from the perspective of material religion. It draws attention to the way material culture has been mobilized to preserve the memory of the Prophet Muḥammad. Chapter one looks at the arrival of a qadam or footprint relic associated with the Prophet to the court of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605), and focuses on the religious debates and royal rituals of veneration it engendered. The analysis offers insight on the practice of religious inquiry at the Mughal court and its role in the performance of sovereignty. Chapter two looks at the development of two monumental reliquary shrines, one in Delhi and the other in Ahmedabad, whose central relics shared a connected history. By focusing on the religious economy of the shrines, the chapter looks at how various actors invested in the shrine, including the Mughal court, Chishtī Sufis, and Sayyids, and how their interventions may have shaped devotees’ relic practices. Chapter three contextualizes these ritual practices at the reliquary shrines within new scholastic discourses that began circulating in seventeenth century Delhi. These discourses are found in the scholastic writings of North Indian Sufis who expressed a strong devotion to the Prophet and who had travelled to the Hejaz for pilgrimage and studying hadith. It is in their writings that we see clear expression of the belief in the auspicious nature of the Prophet’s body. | Ph.D. | ocean, gender | 10 |
| Tong, Zhichao | Balot, Ryan K | The Imperative of Competition: Epistemic Democracy in the International Context | Political Science | 2020-11-01 | This dissertation offers an epistemic theory of democracy from an international perspective. Generally speaking, an epistemic theory of democracy can take two possible forms. One is a purely normative investigation focusing on whether the justification of democracy includes an epistemic dimension in addition to traditional considerations of procedural fairness, consent, and political equality. The other is a more practical inquiry that regards political decision-making partially as an epistemic endeavor oriented toward identifying and advancing certain interests commonly shared by members of a political community, and which further explores how and under what conditions democracy can outperform other, non-democratic alternatives with respect to the pursuit of those common interests. The epistemic theory that I lay out in this dissertation bears more resemblance to the second, more practical, body of work. In particular, I provide a realistic defense of three key assumptions of epistemic democracy that distinguish it from procedural democracy: (1) the existence of certain interests that are commonly shared by members of a political community, and which are not reducible to their subjective preferences, beliefs, or judgements; (2) an independent standard of good decisions, which can be used to identify those common interests and the better policies aiming at their advancement; and (3) an epistemic account of democracy as an effective regime in advancing those common interests. | Ph.D. | equality | 16 |
| Nouemsi Njiké, Elvis | Tcheuyap, Alexie | Polars Africains et Enjeux de Justice | French Language and Literature | 2019-11-01 | Cette thèse traite des enjeux de justice dans la fiction criminelle en Afrique subsaharienne francophone. Elle examine plus précisément les questions terminologiques (1), les problématiques inhérentes à la nouvelle criminelle (2), le caractère participatif de la criminalité en postcolonie (3) et la concurrence de légitimité à laquelle se livrent justice d’État et entités non étatiques (4). La nature protéiforme de la fiction criminelle a conduit les critiques à une certaine généralisation terminologique. Voilà pourquoi, dès le premier chapitre, la thèse questionne des expressions telles que « roman policier » aujourd’hui considérées comme des évidences alors qu’elles ne tracent pas toujours efficacement les contours d’une littérature qui n’a jamais dérogé à son engagement à dire le crime, mais qui s’est si souvent éloignée de la police. L’expression « roman policier » fait en plus l’impasse sur l’existence au sein de la fiction criminelle, en Afrique notamment, d’un important corpus de nouvelles criminelles qui traitent des questions sociétales avec une efficacité qui n’est en la matière pas celle du roman criminel. C’est la raison pour laquelle le deuxième chapitre est consacré à la nouvelle criminelle. Le troisième chapitre utilise le néologisme criminofiction (fiction criminogène) pour établir le fait que l’environnement postcolonial secrète le crime en abondance et contraint de ce fait les personnages à la violation des lois. Cette abondante criminalité débouche sur une concurrence de légitimité entre un État postcolonial délinquant et des individus – ou des entités non étatiques – auxquels les populations font appel. Des exemples de vengeance pure et de vindicte populaire se multiplient dès lors, comme le montre le quatrième chapitre. En définitive, la thèse établit que dans la fiction criminelle postcoloniale la justice s’émancipe des canons de légitimité en vigueur dans le droit dit positif, ces canons qui sont également à l’œuvre en métropole. | Ph.D. | justice | 16 |
| Goel, Sachin | Ramchandran, Arun | The Roles of Dissolution, Coalescence, and Interfacial Tension in the Formation and Stability of Extremely Fine Water Drops in Concentrated Bitumen Solutions | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-03-01 | In this thesis, we investigate the formation and stability of extremely fine water drops (<10 mm) in the final diluted bitumen (dilbit) product as the existence of these emulsions is highly undesirable for the oil sands industry due to their negative economic impact. There are three primary objectives of this thesis: to comprehend and characterize the solubilization process as a potential emulsification mechanism to produce the most stubborn extremely fine water drops in bitumen, to measure the interfacial tension behavior of the water-bitumen system, and to understand the practically-relevant parameter regimes for which the concentration of these small water droplets could be minimized. In pursuit of achieving these objectives, novel microfluidic platforms have been developed in-house. Our shallow channels have enabled us to conduct studies at the industrially-relevant solvent-to-bitumen (S/B) ratios (0.5 to 2), which is a major improvement over most studies conducted to date. iii A microfluidic extensional flow device (MEFD) is employed to examine the solubilization of water in concentrated bitumen solutions and to measure the interfacial tension of the water-bitumen interface. One of the key outcomes of these studies is that the behavior of the water-bitumen interface appears to be fundamentally different under flowing conditions as compared to stagnant conditions. Moreover, a modified micropipette technique is implemented to carry out the coalescence of water droplets in dilbit. Our study shows that the coalescence of water drops in concentrated bitumen solutions is possible, unlike most of the previous studies, provided that the right combination of the contact time and the contact pressure is available. These microscale results are also used to predict coalescence regimes on a map of drop radius vs strain rate (or power dissipation) in a mixer. Besides the experimental studies, a theoretical study is also performed to examine the stability of water-in-bitumen emulsions. Overall, this thesis is a step towards the ultimate objective of mapping the regimes of operating parameters that could circumvent the formation of sub-micron droplets, or, in the event of the absence of such a regime, propose a way to remove them. | Ph.D. | water | 9 |
| McGee, Meghan | O'Connor, Deborah L||Hamilton, Jill | The Effect of Donor Breastmilk Compared to Preterm Formula on Body Composition in 5.5-Year-Old Children Born Preterm | Nutritional Sciences | 2019-11-01 | Background: Infants born very low birth weight (VLBW, <1500 g) have an increased risk for cardiometabolic diseases in early childhood and beyond; the etiology of this increased risk is poorly defined. Early nutrition and physical activity are modifiable risk factors in term-born individuals, but their impact on body composition and obesity risk in early childhood among those born VLBW has not been thoroughly investigated. Objectives: (1) To determine the effect of supplemental nutrient-enriched pasteurized donor milk (DHM) compared to preterm formula (PTF) and; to determine the associations between (2) dietary intake and quality and (3) physical activity, sedentary time, and sleep with body composition in 5.5-year-old children born VLBW. Methods: This was a 5.5-year follow-up (NCT02759809) to the Donor Milk for Improved Neurodevelopmental Outcomes double-blind randomized controlled trial, where VLBW infants were randomized to receive either DHM or PTF when mother’s milk was unavailable. All 316 participants who completed the trial were invited to attend a study visit at the Hospital for Sick Children at 5.5-years-old. Child’s diet quality (Healthy Eating Index-2010 [HEI-2010]) was iii calculated from two parent-reported 24-hour dietary recalls (ASA24), physical activity and sedentary time were measured using 7-day accelerometry, and sleep was parent-reported. Body composition outcomes were BMI and waist circumference z-scores, skinfold thicknesses, and total fat and fat-free mass (air displacement plethysmography). Results: At follow-up, 158 (50%) children (53% male) participated. Mean (SD) age was 5.7 (0.2) years, birth weight was 1013 (264) grams, and gestational age was 27.9 (2.5) weeks. Average HEI-2010 score was 58.2/100 and 27% of children consumed poor quality diets (scores ≤50). Only 52% of children achieved the recommended 60 min/day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. In-hospital DHM had no effect on growth or body composition at 5.5 years. HEI-2010 scores and fruit/vegetable intake were inversely associated with several measures of adiposity and light physical activity was positively and sedentary time was negatively associated with fat-free mass. Conclusions: Results indicate supplemental DHM supports growth and body composition comparably to PTF. Increasing diet quality and physical activity may be important strategies for improving body composition and mitigating long-term cardiometabolic disease risk in individuals born VLBW. | Ph.D. | nutrition | 2, 3 |
| Graham, Allison | Mills, Kenneth | "For the Honour and Good of the Republic": Institutional Enclosure in Spanish Colonial Manila, 1590-1790 | History | 2019-11-01 | In this study, I examine the place of institutional enclosures, including religious houses, colegios (schools, orphanages, and female reform houses), and hospitals, in Spain’s colonial project in Manila from the end of the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century. The immediate goals of these institutions, predominantly founded within the walled city of Intramuros, varied: they sought to regulate monastic life, educate the city’s orphaned and non-orphaned children, reform ‘scandalous’ women, and both physically and spiritually heal the city’s ill. However, the overarching objective of these institutions was to contribute to the creation and maintenance of an idyllic republic in what was represented as a remote but significant colony in the Pacific. This long-term approach to Manila’s institutions reveals how ideas about social propriety, reform, and urban order were not only a result of the ‘enlightened’ Bourbons across the Spanish colonies. Such expressions of colonial paternalism can be seen from the earliest foundations of Manila’s institutions at the end of the sixteenth century, and evolved and endured over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Manila’s institutional enclosures were perceived to benefit the republic because they had implications for the world beyond their walls; the supervised communities within the walls were to provide models of behaviour and morality for unenclosed city dwellers to emulate. Each institution offered a protected environment in which caste categories and gendered models could be constructed and regulated. Institutional administrators and inhabitants were involved in the process of delineating a caste system which would contribute to the creation of a racialized hierarchy in Manila. Administrations also emphasized models of femininity and masculinity that conformed to a monastic model of gender because the idyllic female and male religious represented a controlled, moral population. Despite the goal of establishing an orderly republic, the personal desires and ambitions of enclosed individuals could, and did, take priority over institutional rules, potentially causing scandal. Across this study, we see that institutional enclosure was not only a colonial projection and strategy, but was also an individual, lived experience for a range of women, men, and youths. | Ph.D. | gender, women, female, urban, institut | 5, 11, 16 |
| Falconer, Chantelle Alena | Krupa, Chris | "No to Mining Yes to Life": An Ethnographic Account of Buen Vivir in Postneoliberal Ecuador | Anthropology | 2019-06-01 | At a time of heightened, global conflict over resource extraction, the Intag valley, Ecuador is an exemplary case of long-term mining resistance, halting the development of a mega-mining project for over two decades. Significantly, extractive politics in Intag mobilizes a politics of life, a shift from protests of the past that have employed a politics of labor. The politics of life uses a relational worldview where assuring livelihoods goes hand in hand with the reproduction of nature. This has unfolded within the landscape of postneoliberal Ecuadorian politics, where the state has asserted its role in extractive development. President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) rejected neoliberal political economy in favor of a model adapted from the Quechua life philosophy, sumak kawsay (buen vivir or good living) -which prioritizes (non)human well-being. But, the buen vivir political project is at odds with the economic model of the postneoliberal state, neoextractivism –a type of resource nationalism. Considering the importance of communities and the state as negotiators of mega-mining projects under the neoextractivist model, as well the propensity of these two groups to have conflicting objectives, my research follows state-led development programs, from the vantage point of Intag. I ask how are the politics of life used to legitimize neoextractivism? I contend that the legitimacy of the postneoliberal era hinges on buen vivir -an emergent conceptual apparatus. A conceptual apparatus is a purposefully crafted political ideal that congeals a set of objectively desirable values and meanings that justify a political economic model of development, both enabling and inhibiting politics. Intag is a place where two spectral forces -the utopian ideal of buen vivir and the mine that has never been -saturate sociality and politics. It is a place where what it means to live well, and how this can best be achieved, is debated and informs everyday practice. Once a place defined by its remoteness, Intag is exactly the kind of place that the postneoliberal state has sought to bring into its orbit. My exploration of the politics of life traces how meanings of buen vivir are contested, negotiated, and fixed by the postneoliberal state and Inteños. | Ph.D. | well-being, worldview, labor, production, political ecology, ecolog, land, nationalism | 3, 4, 8, 12, 13, 15, 16 |
| Benson-Sokmen, Susan Lyn | Hanssen, Jens | "The Dream of Kurdistan is Buried Here": History, Violence, and Martyrdom in the Borderlands of the Modern Middle East | History | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation attempts to answer two main questions. Firstly, how do you tell a history of national struggle that has not ended in the foundation of a nation state? Secondly, is here a way to include women in histories of national resistance without erasing their own desires for and understandings of liberation or reducing their participation in national struggle to accommodation or critique? This dissertation poses these questions from Kurdistan, what many Kurdish scholars describe as the largest nation without a state. Rather than attempting to explain why Kurds have not achieved statehood despite a long history of national resistance, the dissertation’s four chapters explore ways to narrate the nation that has not ended in a nation-state. The dissertation is about the writing of history from Kurdistan and the processing of the past in Doğubayazıt, a Kurdish town in Turkey that sits in the foothills of Mount Ararat. How do ‘ordinary’ Kurdish men and women make sense of an unfinished history of national resistance? How do they use this history to make sense of the ongoing history of state violence? There is no attempt to corroborate or verify the histories told in Doğubayazıt. Rather, the dissertation engages ethnographically with the past. Tracing and following the reanimation of the defeat of the Mount Ararat Rebellion (Ağrı Dağı İsyanı, 1926-1931) by its ‘descendants,’ this dissertation attempts to ‘rescue’ Kurdish history from the triumphal narrative of the nation-state. The reanimations of the defeat of the Mount Ararat Uprising by Kurdish resistance needs to be read as a critique rather than a celebration of the nation-state. Despite the profound transformations in the thought, practices, and goals of Kurdish nationalism over the last decades, scholars continue to confine the “dream of Kurdistan” to what Turkish Foreign Minister Tewfik Rüştü Bey described in 1927 as the two options for “smaller groups”—to “disappear” or to wait.. But if grasped as Walter Benjamin suggests as “it flashes up at a moment of danger,” Kurdish resistance is no longer the tragedy or romance of the nation-state in the Middle East but a desire for the possibility of other forms of belonging. | Ph.D. | women, feminis, land, nationalism, violence | 5, 15, 16 |
| Dzhyoyeva, Mariya | Sarabia, Rosa | “En el Lugar del Otro:” Género, Poder, Violencia y Exilio en las Novelas de Tomás Eloy Martínez | Spanish | 2021-03-01 | My doctoral research is focused on gender representations in the novels of Tomás Eloy Martínez. It seeks to conceptualize ways in which gender manifests itself within contexts of power, violence, and exile in order to establish Martínez’s unique approach to gendering these aspects of the human condition. Because Martínez is not commonly considered an author with a gender-centered agenda but rather representative of the postmodern writing, it is necessary to clarify the relationship between his narrative strategies and those of ‘gendered’ writing. These include feminist, queer, and new masculinity constructions. To this end, I explore contentious issues in the debate between these approaches, such as identity, subjectivity, sexuality, corporeality, and emancipation, to better understand Martínez’s strategies with regard to these proposals and uncover the theoretical meaning of his postmodern heterogeneity.My study suggests that the ways in which Martínez understands and represents gender struggles are reflective of the tense relationship between gender studies and the postmodernist paradigm. While the gendered approach translates in his novels into feminist representations of patriarchal oppression, gender violence, and masculine domination, the postmodern influences are responsible for the distortion and subversion of gender roles. The resulting hybrid discourse shows that traditional patriarchal roles serving as a metaphor for state oppression and violence coexist with the queerness that erodes authoritarian power and resemantizes gender as a result of exilic trauma. The point of convergence between gender studies and postmodernism in Martínez’s novels is the author’s overarching attention to the subjectivity of his characters. Although Martínez does not advocate for feminine, masculine, or queer subjectivity exclusively, he emphasizes the fact that violence, power, and exile are experienced by individuals as gendered beings and that experiencing these conditions may, in fact, disrupt and alter the very notion of gender. Acknowl- edging the gendered aspects of power struggles, violence, and exile, in turn, validates the authenticity of these discourses lending them a personal dimension and allowing the author to take a bolder stance on themes crucial to Latin American literature in his era. | Ph.D. | gender, queer, feminis, authoritarian, violence | 5, 16 |
| Mah, Katherine Elisabeth Ying | Reed, Nick | “Freaked out” by Pediatric Concussion: An Exploration of Drawing and Interview Data Produced by Children ‘at risk’ of and Living with Concussion | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation provides a critical examination of how children experienced concussion as a social phenomenon. Oriented by the post-structuralist theory of Michel Foucault (1926-1984), namely concepts of discourse, power/knowledge, and the subject, I explored how children responded to what I have identified as the Pediatric Concussion Discourse (PCD), a convergence of discourses of risk, childhood vulnerability, and responsibility that construct children as especially ‘at risk’ of concussion, and as responsible (at least in part) for protecting themselves from risk. I conducted a critical qualitative arts-based research study, using drawing and semi-structured interviewing methods. My analysis draws on data produced with 43 participants, with and without a history of concussion, between nine and 16 years of age. My findings suggest that children responded to the PCD as neoliberal citizens-to-be, on their way to becoming the responsible and self-reliant citizens that are valued in contemporary Western society. Notably, there were differences in how children at the younger and older end of the age range in this study responded to the PCD. While older children re/produced normative assumptions of citizenship that expect ‘good’ citizens-to-be to assume responsibility for their health as they age, younger children drew on notions of childhood vulnerability, representing themselves as ‘just’ naïve children who required adult protection and could not be solely responsible for their own health. In a field of study and practice dominated by developmentalism, these findings might appear self-evident, as differences of ‘age and stage’. However, by re/framing these findings through a critical social lens, I came to see that children, ‘younger’ and ‘older,’ acquired specific social competencies in relation to concussion. Findings suggest that children were forced into this social competence through an absence of adults in protective roles, an absence that was consequential for children regardless of age or stage. Children were “freaked out” by concussion, the risk it posed, and the responsibilities and competencies it demanded, particularly in the absence of adult protectors. This research suggests a need to re/consider how the PCD and child/adult relations shape how children experience concussion. Suggestions are made for clinical and research practice. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, knowledge, citizen | 1, 4 |
| McGee, Nicholas Robert | Lam, Tong | “Freeing” the Chinese Migrant: Diasporic Entanglements of Qing and British Universal Empire | History | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation critically reconstructs the historical emergence of the “free migrant” in China through the encounter of the Qing and British empires across the 18th and 19th centuries. It challenges dominant narratives of the Qing state’s British-guided transition from disdaining Chinese migrants to embracing them as free subjects. Instead, this project traces complex entanglements between the all-encompassing ideologies or “universalisms” of these two imperial powers as they attempted to govern Chinese mobilities in Asia and around the world. While Qing elites did not originally conceive of Chinese circulating overseas as free subjects, I argue that over a long 18th century, the imperial state ultimately chose to enable certain freedoms for migrants within the expanding framework of a centering emperor-focused universalism. In the 19th century, British agents guided by a liberal imperial universalism aggressively sought to “free” Chinese migrants, but chronically subordinated the freedoms of racialized Chinese in the production of freedoms for white liberal subjects. A crisis in human trafficking triggered by British interventions provided an opportunity for British liberal advisors to incorporate and subordinate the Qing within a global order of capitalist nation-states, but also for Qing elites to mobilize liberalism’s terms to contest this subordination. In parallel, jurisdictional contests over the colonial “Anglo-Chinese” in China highlighted the conceptual gap between British legal and liberal subjects, and opened the door for both powers to develop syncretic strategies that appealed to international law. Finally, as Qing thinkers followed diaspora into liberalism’s worlds of racially stratified colonial capitalism, their strategies drew deeper and deeper from its principles, reimagining migrants as political, economic, racial, and ultimately “free” subjects beholden to these regimes. Collectively, this dissertation tells a global history of China, following human and capital flows across a transformative age of mass migration. In doing so it helps us understand not only the emergence of the modern relationship between China and its diaspora, but the broader global order of states and subjects, and the racial inequities built into it. | Ph.D. | trafficking, capital, equit, gini, transit, production, trafficking | 5, 16, 9, 10, 11, 12 |
| El Samaty, Mona | Labrie, Normand | “La langue est la porte d’entrée pour un sentiment d’appartenance”: An Investigation of the Complex Relationship Between Language and Sense of Belonging among Second-generation Arab Canadian Young Adults in Montreal | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | Immigration, an important component of the population growth of Canada, has resulted in an increasing diversity that has changed the demographic, religious, and linguistic make-up of the country. Two topics, sense of belonging and language, are frequently brought into question in relation to immigrants, and specifically the second-generation. Despite the strong connection between the two categories, Canadian studies rarely explored the relationship between them. To address this gap, this research investigates the relationship between language and sense of belonging among second-generation Arab Canadian young adults in Montreal, Canada, using an intersectional lens. Following case study methodology, I conducted two 90-minute semi-structured interviews with 14 second-generation Arab Canadian youth, ages 20-33, to examine their identities, territorial sense of belonging to Canada, the province of Quebec, the city of Montreal, and to their heritage countries, and factors that may impact their sense of belonging. I also examined their language practices and language attitudes towards French, English and Arabic. Findings showed that participants’ strongest sense of belonging was to the city of Montreal, followed by Canada/French-speaking Canada. Most participants revealed the complexity of having multiple identities and belonging. Findings also identified participants’ upbringing, educational and social experiences as three main factors that may have impacted their sense of belonging. Participants recalled instances of discrimination in schools, in the labour market, and on the streets of Montreal, which they resisted with agency or assimilationist strategies. For most participants, French/English bilingualism was crucial for studying and for obtaining employment, while Arabic had an affective role for some, in relation to family and religion. Standard varieties of French were favoured among many participants due to their formality, yet a Quebec French accent was perceived as an asset for employment. It was also found that the Quebec accent was a site of power, causing inequalities. As for the relationship between language and sense of belonging, it was found that a positive attitude towards a language/accent corresponded to a sense of belonging to the territory related to that language/accent, and vice-versa. However, neither language proficiency nor the frequency of language/accent usage necessarily corresponded with territorial sense of belonging. L'immigration, composante importante de la croissance démographique du Canada, a entraîné une diversité croissante qui a modifié la composition démographique, religieuse et linguistique du pays. Deux sujets, le sentiment d'appartenance et la langue, sont fréquemment évoqués en ce qui concerne les immigrants, et plus particulièrement la deuxième génération. Malgré le lien étroit entre ces deux éléments, peu d’études canadiennes ont exploré leur relation. Pour combler cette lacune, cette recherche examine la relation entre la langue et le sentiment d'appartenance chez les jeunes adultes canadiens arabes de deuxième génération à Montréal, Canada, en utilisant une lentille intersectionnelle. En suivant la méthodologie de l'étude de cas, j'ai mené deux entretiens semi-structurés de 90 minutes avec 14 jeunes canadiens arabes de deuxième génération, âgés de 20 à 33 ans, afin d'examiner leurs identités, leur sentiment d'appartenance territoriale au Canada, à la province du Québec, à la ville de Montréal et à leurs pays d'origine, ainsi que les facteurs qui peuvent avoir un impact sur leur sentiment d'appartenance. J'ai également examiné leurs attitudes envers le français, l'anglais et l'arabe. Les résultats montrent que le sentiment d'appartenance le plus fort des participants est celui envers la ville de Montréal, suivi du Canada, ou du Canada francophone. Ceux-ci ont également identifié l'éducation, les expériences éducatives et sociales des participants comme étant les facteurs principaux qui ont pu affecter leur sentiment d'appartenance. Les participants se souviennent aussi de cas de discrimination auxquels ils ont résisté par des stratégies d'agence ou d'assimilation. Pour la plupart des participants, le bilinguisme français/anglais est crucial pour l’étude et l’emploi, tandis que l'arabe a un rôle affectif pour certains. Les variétés standard du français sont privilégiées par de nombreux participants tandis que l'accent québécois est perçu comme un atout pour l'emploi, mais aussi comme un lieu de pouvoir, causant des inégalités. Quant à la relation entre la langue et le sentiment d'appartenance, les données montrent qu'une attitude positive envers une langue/accent correspond à un sentiment d'appartenance au territoire lié à cette langue/accent, et vice-versa. Cependant, ni la maîtrise, ni la fréquence d'utilisation de la langue/accent ne correspond nécessairement au sentiment d'appartenance territoriale. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, invest, equalit | 8, 9, 10 |
| Dodds-Eden, Lara Jane | Packman, Jeff | “Play your broken music to my broken song?” Contemporary Implications of Performing Schubert Lieder in English Translation | Music | 2021-06-01 | This study uses the songs of Franz Schubert as a foundational example to consider the contemporary implications of performing Lieder in English translation. Over the last 150 years such translations have been written, published, performed, and rationalized in a variety of ways. However, their “validity” is now broadly dismissed in both pedagogical and performance contexts. This begs the question: how did performance in the original language become an essential aspect of Lieder performance across the English-speaking world? In probing this question, my objective is to reimagine the possible role of such a translational approach in mediating, or even repairing something that is currently “broken” in Anglophone encounters with Lieder. To fulfil this objective, an initial discussion of ontologies of Lieder attempts to examine singing translations alongside other approaches that extend, transform or otherwise challenge the traditional boundaries of the genre, and the ways that these approaches aim to satisfy less dominant notions of “authenticity”. This is followed by an examination of the historical and contemporary debate and attempts to establish adequate translational methodologies amongst a range of aesthetic, nationalistic, and theoretical issues. In addition to this engagement with public documents (including translations, paratextual materials, articles and reviews), I have solicited the views of a range of contemporary stakeholders on the implications of the practice and assembled a collection of thirty-three distinct singing translations of “Der Leiermann”, the final song of Schubert’s 1828 song cycle, Winterreise (D911, op. 89). This collection serves to demonstrate a plurality of translational approaches, the inevitable subjectivity of the translational role, the impossibility of a “definitive” translation, and new avenues of expression engendered by that lack of definition. In considering “the English Lied”, this study has two aims: to provide insight into the complicated relationship we have with language and meaning in this repertoire, and to prompt a reconsideration of singing in translation: one that does not limit itself to concepts of fidelity and failure, but rather opens itself to the creative possibilities of interacting with the repertoire in this way. | D.M.A. | gender | 5 |
| Edwards, Will | Simon, Rob | “Some people get lost”: A Practitioner Inquiry into the Transnational, Diasporic, and Educative Experiences of Participants in an After School Reading and Writing Group | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | This practitioner research study documents the experiences and perspectives of nine Academic Upgrading students in an After School Reading and Writing Group who were enrolled within an urban college in Toronto. The group is composed of multilingual participants who count among their primary or secondary languages: Arabic, Bajan (A variation of West African Creole), Dhalik, English, Tigrinya, Spanish, and Urdu. These students were placed within an Academic Upgrading program to improve their literacy skills with the hopes of attaining entrance into the mainstream college. Drawing inspiration from practitioner research studies that intentionally research and “teach against the grain” (Cochran-Smith Lytle, 2009, p. 23), the After School Reading and Writing Group co-selected diasporic literature. Through discussions and writing, members recounted their own complex engagements across cultural, linguistic, and educational contexts. This research explores what happens when students narrate their own educational histories in a literary discussion group with texts that offer them an opportunity to explore the intersections between migration, race, power, identity, and schooling. I locate this work within the research on out-of-school literacies (Bronkhorst Akkerman, 2016; Hull Schulz, 2002), critical literacy (Duncan-Andrade, 2007b; Freire Macedo, 1987; Morell, 2009) and counternarratives of schooling (Delgado, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Sandoval, 2000). I document central tensions that influenced members’ educational histories and trajectories. These include literacy shaming, language policing, racial discrimination, the medical model of disability, and academic assumptions about what they could and could not accomplish. Findings surface the complexity of the group’s engagements with texts, the internalized deficit perspectives that often haunt their writing, the compulsion and reluctance to share vulnerable stories—their struggle to see themselves as legitimate writers with authorial voices. This study has implications for practitioners, policymakers, and researchers concerned with deepening understandings of teaching writing and reading to academically marginalized students. | Ph.D. | disabilit, pedagogy, marginalized, urban | 3, 4, 10, 11 |
| Fisk, Bethan Ruth | Newton, Melanie | “The Wilderness Within”: African Diasporic Religion in New Granada, 1690-1790 | History | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation examines African diasporic religions in New Granada in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In particular, it argues for the constitutive role of black mobility, space, and state institutions in their creation and circulation. Africans and their descendants—whether black or of mixed African, indigenous, and European heritages—had a deep engagement with Catholicism and its material culture in New Granada. There were significant common experience and variations in African-descended experience of the religious world and interactions with colonial institutions, shaped by ethnicity, gender, geography, mode of labour, and place of birth. This dissertation challenges the notion of separate histories of Caribbean and Pacific African-descended communities in Colombia through an examination of the movement of black bodies, religious knowledges, and ritual objects. It examines African diasporic religious creations situated within their social contexts, as well as the church and state’s criminalization of black ritual, medicine, and family life. New Granada was a space where culture and capital flowed between different regimes of slavery and systems of free labour. Diverse everyday epistemologies and material objects circulated among people of African descent across eighteenth-century New Granada within a shared world, one created by the power structures of the Catholic church, the colonial state, and the institution of slavery. This dissertation is based on a close reading of archival fragments from civil and criminal trials, government correspondence, and ecclesiastical records from collections in Colombia, Spain, and the United States. It seeks to challenge prevailing chronologies of African diaspora populations, moving away from political periodizations, and is framed around black experience—with the years 1690 and 1790 coming soon after fundamentally different campaigns of conquest of free communities of colour. | Ph.D. | knowledge, knowledges, gender, labour, capital, of colour, indigenous, institut, indigenous | 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Henry, Samer | Sousa, Elvino | 3D Antenna Placement for Cellular Communications | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The evolution of wireless communications continues to be driven by the ever-increasing demand for higher capacity and throughput rates to enable new digital applications. While this demand creates bottlenecks across wireless systems, the limited availability of radiofrequency resources remains the most challenging of these bottlenecks. A key approach to circumventing limited spectrum availability employs antenna arrays to enable the transmission of higher data rates using high-gain beams using hybrid or phased-array MIMO antennas. Critical to the performance of antenna arrays is the placement and number of array elements, with most wireless systems employing a limited number of antenna elements arranged in a basic linear or two-dimensional geometry that limits the angular coverage of antenna elements. Nevertheless, such an approach for antenna element placement has limited scalability and thus fails to meet the needs of contemporary wireless communication systems. This thesis addresses this challenge by providing an effective and novel approach for antenna array structuring using Three-dimensional (3D) array structures. A detailed spatial and angular analysis of 3D antenna arrays is provided, and substantial gains are showcased for both single, MIMO and hybrid transmission setups. To maximize the performance of antenna arrays in general and 3D phased-MIMO transmission in particular, algorithms for the structuring of antenna arrays and selection of array elements being used for transmission/reception are introduced. Specifically, a distribution algorithm is introduced to distribute antenna elements in any defined space to maximize the achievable throughput rate along with a reduction algorithm to minimize energy consumption by utilizing the lowest possible number of available elements in any antenna array to achieve the required performance. Furthermore, the proposed approach and algorithms are shown to enable the optimization for substantial performance gains in various deployment setups of wireless cellular communication systems and paves the way for empowering various emerging applications such as various vehicular communication setups and deployments utilizing higher frequency bands. | Ph.D. | energy, consum | 7, 12 |
| Khaled, Pamelia | Gitari, Wanja | A Comparative Inquiry Into Religious and Secular Students’ Perspectives on Peace and Conflict Resolution through Science Education in Bangladesh | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | This ethnographic study based in Bangladesh analyzed Grade 10 students’ perspectives on the learning of science regarding peace and conflict resolution, and the use of science in their everyday lives to negotiate peace and resolve conflicts. The in-class delivery of the secondary science curriculum in Religious and Secular educational streams was documented, including the teachers’ pedagogical approaches to teaching science; the students’ preferred approaches to learning science; and the students’ conception of science in everyday life with reference to the sociocultural factors affecting peace and conflict resolution. A theoretical framework, which I termed the integrated theory of pedagogy, was constructed using Tagore’s comprehensive models of learning that promote peace through science, juxtaposing the models with Gandhi’s non-violent approach, Dewey’s experiential learning, and J. P. Miller’s holistic pedagogy, frameworks that also support peace education. Twenty-four Grade 10 science students from the two educational streams were selected using purposive sampling. Data collection tools included classroom observation, in-depth interview, focus group discussion, and field journal. Six science teachers and two head teachers were consulted for contextual information and to corroborate findings from the students. Information was also gathered from science textbooks. Data were analyzed using an inductive approach. The findings indicate that peace and conflict resolution through science education was not taught in those classrooms. There was also a lack of transactional and transformational pedagogical approaches to teaching science. The predominant teaching approach was teacher- and textbook centred, echoing the need to cover the syllabus for impending standardized examinations. For learning science, the students from both streams preferred hands-on activities. Students explained their awareness of conflict in society and were eager to explore the role of the science curriculum in peace, conflict resolution, tolerance, and indirect peace states. This dissertation offers an analysis that may be helpful to local and international peace and science educators, curriculum designers, administrators, teachers, and policy makers interested in developing peace through science pedagogy. The study recommends “school approach” in peace education, including the concept of peace and conflict resolution as an additional emphasis in the science curriculum, and a peace-and-spirituality-based, science-pedagogy-engaging, action-centred education: PEACE. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning, peace, peace | 4, 16 |
| Piette, Benjamin L. | Taipale, Mikko||Gingras, Anne-Claude | A comprehensive characterization of human Hsp70 and J-domain protein interactomes reveals their functions in maintaining proteostasis | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | Protein homeostasis, or proteostasis, maintains cells’ and organisms’ health, protecting them from diverse intrinsic and extrinsic stresses. Proteostasis dysregulation is associated with different human diseases, such as neurodegenerative disorders or cancer. Proteostasis is regulated by a wide variety of chaperones and other quality control factors. Key players in the proteostasis network include the Hsp70 heat-shock protein and their J-domain protein co-chaperones (JDPs). JDPs dictate specificity to the Hsp70s by recruiting them to specific client proteins or cellular compartments. The human genome encodes 13 different Hsp70s and, remarkably, 49 unique JDPs. However, the client specificity of most JDPs has remained elusive, limiting the understanding of how the Hsp70 machinery can regulate distinct aspects of proteostasis.For my PhD project, I have employed complementary proteomic approaches to characterize the interactome of all human Hsp70s and JDPs. Affinity purification coupled to mass spectrometry (AP-MS) was performed to reveal physical interactors and proximity biotinylation (BioID) was utilized to uncover transient interactors and/or insoluble proximal partners. My results revealed a striking client specificity, connecting JDPs to diverse biological pathways. For example, an essential nuclear JDP, DNAJC9, interacts specifically with histone H3 and H4, whereas a previously uncharacterized JDP DNAJC27 interacts with novel and conserved centriolar satellite proteins. Hsp70 inhibition or DNAJC27 knockdown strikingly impairs ciliogenesis, establishing a novel function for Hsp70 in this process. Surprisingly, only the DNAJC27 J domain and no other J domain could rescue the ciliogenesis defect due to DNAJC27 silencing. By contrast, overexpressing specific J domains from other JDPs abolishes ciliogenesis in a dominant-negative manner. This suggests that the functional specificity of JDPs is not only provided by their unique domains, but can also be encoded in the J domain itself. In summary, this doctoral research provides a comprehensive map of JDP and Hsp70 interactions, revealing previously unknown potential biological functions for many JDPs. This unbiased mapping explains how Hsp70s and J-domain proteins are integrated to the larger proteostasis network with other major chaperone and protein quality control factors, and provides functional links between individual JDPs and cellular processes including histone chaperoning and ciliogenesis. Afin d’accomplir sa principale fonction dans la cellule, chaque protéine doit adopter une structure tridimensionnelle stable, doit être transportée à la bonne organelle, et, ultimement, doit être dégradée. Ces trois étapes constituent la base de l’homéostasie des protéines, la protéostasie. Un débalancement de la protéostasie résulte notamment en diverses maladies neurodégénératives ou cancers.La protéostasie est maintenue grâce à différents mécanismes moléculaires. L’un d’eux assiste au repliement des protéines – les protéines clientes – dans leur forme tridimensionnelle active, prévenant la formation d’agrégats protéiques non fonctionnels et toxiques pour la cellule. Ce repliement est initié par les protéines chaperonnes Hsp70s et leurs co-chaperonnes, les protéines à domaine J (JDP, pour « J-domain proteins » ci-dessous). Ces dernières interagissent spécifiquement avec certaines protéines clientes, suivi du recrutement d’une chaperonne Hsp70. Les JDPs catalysent alors l’activité de la chaperonne Hsp70 grâce à leur domaine J, permettant le repliement de la protéine cliente. Le nombre d’Hsp70s est demeuré constant parmi les différents organismes eucaryotes. En revanche, la famille des JDPs a grandement évolué, passant de 22 JDPs chez l’organisme modèle S. cerevisiae à plus de 49 chez l’homme. Cette augmentation marquée suggère que les fonctions biologiques des chaperonnes Hsp70s se sont diversifiées via leurs différentes co-chaperonnes JDPs. Malheureusement, très peu de recherches ont, jusqu’à présent, établi les protéines clientes pour chacune de ces chaperonnes et co-chaperonnes. Il est donc primordial de connaître les différentes protéines clientes, et donc les processus biologiques, régulés par chacune de ces chaperonnes si l’on veut remédier à divers débalancements de la protéostasie. Pour ce projet de doctorat, j’ai caractérisé l’interactome de chacune des chaperonnes Hsp70s et des co-chaperonnes JDPs en utilisant deux techniques complémentaires de protéomique fonctionnelle. J’ai utilisé la purification par affinité suivie de la spectrométrie de masse (AP-MS) pour identifier les protéines clientes capable de se lier avec les différentes Hsp70s ou JDPs. De plus, parallèlement, j’ai utilisé une technique de biotinylation par proximité nommée BioID pour identifier les protéines qui se trouvent en proximité des Hsp70 ou JDPs dans les cellules vivantes, suggérant un lien fonctionnel. L’utilisation de ces deux méthodes hautement complémentaires a révélé une grande spécificité entre les co-chaperonnes JDPs et ces dernières. Par exemple, deux JDPs, DNAJC8 et DNAJC17, interagissent respectivement avec les complexes U2 et U5/PRP19 impliqués à différentes étapes de l’épissage de l’ARN messager, alors que DNAJC15 semble réguler le complexe I de la chaîne de transport d’électrons de la mitochondrie via son interaction avec le complexe MCIA. Mes résultats de protéomique suggéraient que la co-chaperonne essentielle DNAJC9 interagit spécifiquement avec l’histone H4. J’ai alors pris l’opportunité de caractériser plus spécifiquement le rôle de DNAJC9 dans la régulation des histones. J’ai tout d’abord démontré la spécificité de DNAJC9 pour l’interaction avec les histones H3 et H4 in vitro. J’ai aussi démontré par microscopie à immunofluorescence qu’une forme inactive de DNAJC9 peut causer des mitoses multipolaires ou des cellules ayant des micronoyaux. Ces phénotypes corroborent avec ceux observés avec d’autres chaperonnes spécialisées pour les histones, révélant donc la fonction de DNAJC9 comme chaperonne pour histones. Cette fonction fut finalement approfondie en comparant les sites de la chromatine où DNAJC9 interagit avec ceux de d’autres chaperonnes spécialisées en histones, dévoilant un attachement de DNAJC9 aux sites actifs de la chromatine. Mes expériences de protéomique ont aussi révélé plusieurs protéines clientes potentielles n’ayant jamais été étudiées de façon fonctionnelle. J’ai donc procédé à la caractérisation protéomique d’une de ces protéines, FAM184A, une protéine cliente potentielle de la co-chaperonne DNAJC27, révélant son interaction et colocalisation avec des protéines en périphérie du centrosome. En regardant la conservation des gènes codants pour DNAJC27 et FAM184A, j’ai remarqué leur préservation chez les eucaryotes ayant des cils (ou flagelles). J’ai donc poursuivi la caractérisation de DNAJC27 et FAM184A pour leur fonction potentielle avec la ciliogénèse. J’ai tout d’abord démontré que DNAJC27 est important pour la localisation de FAM184A en périphérie du centrosome, révélant donc son rôle pour sa protéine cliente. Qui plus est, une réduction de l’expression génique de DNAJC27 ou FAM184A réduit considérablement la longueur de cils émergents, et ce phénotype est renversé par une réexpression de DNAJC27, validant l’hypothèse de leur fonction biologique pour la ciliogénèse. Étonnamment, la surexpression du domaine J de DNAJC27 parvient aussi à renverser cette réduction de ciliogénèse lors de la réduction de son expression. Au contraire, la surexpression de d’autres domaines J cause un phénotype complètement inverse, ils préviennent la ciliogénèse de façon dominante négative. Cette découverte suggère que les différents domaines J possèdent différentes spécificités et/ou affinités pour les Hsp70s, causant alors un phénotype dominant négatif sur ces chaperonnes. Pour confirmer cette hypothèse, j’ai testé différents composés chimiques inhibiteurs des Hsp70s, démontrant la nécessité de ces chaperonnes pour la ciliogénèse, révélant finalement un nouveau processus biologique régulé par ces chaperonnes. En conclusion, ce projet de doctorat fournit la première cartographie exhaustive des interactions entre les chaperonnes Hsp70s, les JPDs et leurs protéines clientes respectives, révélant une panoplie de processus biologiques moléculaires régulés par ces chaperonnes et co-chaperonnes. Cet atlas d’interactions explique les diverses raisons pour lesquelles les Hsp70s et les protéines à domaine J sont impliqués au maintien constant de la protéostasie. | Ph.D. | smes, reuse, conserv, conserv | 8, 12, 14, 15 |
| Tran, Lina | Frankland, Paul W. | A Computational Study of the Role of Neurogenesis in Learning and Memory | Physiology | 2021-11-01 | Neurogenesis persists throughout life in the dentate gyrus of the mammalian hippocampus. There is a large body of evidence that neurogenesis may impact cognition, particularly concerning learning and memory, though it is unclear what mechanisms underlie these processes. Computational models have established that the addition of neurons degrades existing memories (i.e., produces forgetting). These predictions are supported by empirical observations in rodents, where post-training increases in neurogenesis also promote forgetting of hippocampus-dependent memories. However, in these models that use 10-1,000 neurons to represent the dentate gyrus, forgetting is only observed at new neuron addition rates that greatly exceed adult neurogenesis rates observed in vivo. To address this, we generated an artificial neural network that incorporated more realistic features of the hippocampus – including increased network size, sparse activity, and sparse connectivity and explored how these properties modulate the impact of using biologically relevant rates of neurogenesis in a pattern categorization task. Our model captures several mnemonic phenomena associated with neurogenesis, including forgetting and enhanced reversal learning. These effects were sensitive to changes in increased output connectivity and excitability of new neurons. Crucially, forgetting was observed at lower rates of neurogenesis in larger networks, with the addition of as little as 0.1% of the total DG population sufficient to induce forgetting. We also propose a role for neurogenesis in the generalization of memories using traditional deep learning architectures. At rates of 3% turnover, we found that neurogenesis alone improved generalization on unseen data in two commonly used categorization tasks, the MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets. Together, we suggest not only that low rates of neurogenesis can have an impact on cognition, but that we can use biologically-inspired and artificial neural networks to investigate the computational functions of neurogenesis that may mirror those occurring in vivo as well. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Bazira-Okafor, Annette Atugonza | Todorova, Miglena | A Culturally Relevant "NoBody's Perfect" Parenting Program for African Immigrant Women in Canada | Social Justice Education | 2021-06-01 | This study examines the curriculum and impact of The Nobody’s Perfect parenting program delivered by the Public Health Agency of Canada. Specifically, the study challenges notions of this program as an adaptable and effective model for training first time, young and immigrant mothers in parenting skills that empower both families and children. The present study highlights the program’s deeply Eurocentric and Western values and imaginations through the case of 17 African immigrant mothers whose voices and knowledge are erased and devalued by such modern Canadian parenting training schemes presuming these racialized women’s cultures backward and their childrearing experiences unusable in the Canadian context. Drawing from 17 personal interviews with immigrant women from 12 countries in Africa, the study illuminates the complex nature of the childrearing experiences of these women, shining light especially on their transnational and hybridized parenting practises informed by African and indigenous cultural values and beliefs yet already internalized parental models disseminated by European colonialism and political domination over Africa. The analysis leads to recommendations for ways to ground parental support in Canada in immigrant cultures thus positioning immigrant children and families for prosperity and wellbeing in Canada. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, public health, knowledge, knowledges, women, feminis, indigenous, indigenous | 3, 4, 5, 10, 16 |
| Huchuk, Brent | Sanner, Scott||O'Brien, Liam | A Data-driven Study of Connected Residential Thermostats to Investigate user Behavior, Thermal Modelling, and Optimal Control of HVAC Systems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Approximately a tenth of North America’s total energy usage is for space conditioning of residential buildings -- the majority of which is controlled by a thermostat. Despite these energy implications, thermostats have been difficult to study and their controls have remained reactive and heuristic-driven. Fortunately, with the latest generation of devices, connected thermostats, it is now possible to address these limitations. This thesis is among the first major bodies of research to exploit the emerging data from connected thermostats. Specifically, we seek to accomplish three main objectives: (1) extend the understanding of how users utilize these devices to manage their preferences, (2) develop predictive models of occupant behavior and thermal response of houses, and (3) optimize the control of residential HVAC systems using only existing available data.For objective (1), we determined that factors such as location and seasonality affected setpoint preferences, but that it was unclear if truly distinct user types emerged -- instead users appeared more on a spectrum of preferences. With schedule overrides, the behavior of users was found to be more complex than previously understood, with ultimately only a small group of users remaining in permanent and energy-intensive overrides. For objective (2), we found standard, well-tuned machine learning models (namely, random forest and ridge regression) were the most robust performers beating simple baseline and deep learning methods for predicting occupancy and thermal responses of the houses. Finally, for objective (3), we found that a data-driven model predictive controller outperforms a model-free reinforcement learning method and a standard deadband controller. In summary, this thesis makes multiple novel and significant contributions which improve the understanding of connected thermostat users, how to develop customized data-driven models, and how to improve the comfort and energy use associated with connected thermostats controlling the HVAC in our homes. | Ph.D. | learning, energy, buildings, invest, forest | 4, 7, 9, 15 |
| Imoka, Chizoba Mary | Portelli, John P | A Decolonial Analysis of Student Success in Nigerian Secondary Schools | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-06-01 | Through a mixed-methods research approach, this thesis investigates how Nigerian secondary schools are preparing Nigerian youth for decolonial social leadership. Specifically, the main research question is: To what extent are Nigerian secondary school students prepared to engage in and contribute to the political, economic, and cultural development of their communities without reproducing coloniality? This question was investigated by: critically analyzing Nigeria’s education policy documents, conducting surveys with 768 students across the six geo-political zones in Nigeria, and interviewing 30 of the surveyed students. The data show that the Nigerian secondary school system is not preparing students for decolonial social leadership. Specifically, students are being educated through a banking education model that measures their success through socially disconnected high stakes examinations. The study shows that the education system: violates poorer students, especially vulnerable female students, perpetuates oppressive social understandings amongst students, reproduces oppressive social hierarchies, and divides students along class and ethnic lines. Also, students are educated in a way that intellectually estranges them from: their immediate social environments, the diverse social issues in their communities and their contested communal social histories. Put together, coloniality is being reproduced in the schooling experiences of students in seven distinct ways. To position Nigeria’s education system towards developing a new generation of decolonial-inclusive leaders, the thesis argues for a complete system overhaul guided by a decolonial theoretical lens. Specifically, the thesis recommends a shift from its current Eurocentric, adult centered and managerial orientation towards a multi-centric, student-centered and decolonial approach to schooling. This recommended approach involves reduced high stakes examinations and the adoption of communal/formative forms of assessment, the use of a trans-disciplinary curriculum, privileging problem-based teaching and learning methods, and a commitment to nurturing the unique passion/talents of every Nigerian student. | Ph.D. | learning, decolonial, female, invest | 4, 5, 2009 |
| Pino, Fritz Luther | Tsang, Ka Tat | A Different Shade of Grey: Intimacies of Older Filipino Gay Men in Canada | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation is a qualitative study, which examined the experiences of intimacy of the older Filipino gay men in Canada. These group of men identify as bakla, which is the Filipino term for queer or non-normative gender and sexual identity, practices, and performances. I specifically investigated how older bakla engage and express their intimacies with the three significant groups of people in their lives, namely, their sexual partner, their family or bloodrelated kin, and their friends. The purpose of such inquiry was to understand the relationship dynamics that older bakla have with these three groups. Such significant figures are the potential sources of social and emotional support of the older bakla. Intersectionality theory from a queer diasporic–feminist gerontological lens informed the study that takes into account the social location of the informants in terms of sexuality and gender, race, diaspora, age, and class. In this study, I used both participant observations and in-depth interviews as the main methods of data collection. These methods were informed by a culturally-grounded approach, called kuwento, a Filipino version of storytelling. This type of storytelling allowed the informants of the study to articulate their experiences in a manner that was comfortable, accessible, and convenient for them. Using grounded theory for data analysis, older bakla revealed a different experience of iii intimacy with their significant others. A story of difference exists, because they do not necessarily resonate to the dominant stories of aging. Their stories of intimacies offer critique of the norms and dominant discourses of identity. As well, older bakla’s intimacies illuminate their sense of agency in negotiating the norms of gender, sexuality, ageing, class, diaspora, and race that have marginalized and oppressed their beings and subjectivities. In the conclusion, I discuss how their intimacies with significant others, which are conditioned by uncertainty, impact their well-being and ageing bodies and how these informed critical social work education and practice. This study offers important contributions to the field of gerontological social work, sexuality and queer studies, migration and transnationalism, and anti-oppressive epistemologies. | Ph.D. | well-being, gender, queer, feminis, invest, marginalized, anti-oppressive, accessib, nationalism | 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Schut, Kirsten Jean | Pickavé, Martin||Armstrong, Lawrin | A Dominican Master of Theology in Context: John of Naples and Intellectual Life Beyond Paris, ca. 1300-1350 | Medieval Studies | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation provides the first comprehensive biography of the Dominican scholar John of Naples (Giovanni Regina di Napoli), who flourished during the first half of the fourteenth century. John studied and taught at the Dominican schools in Naples and Bologna, and at the University of Paris, where he was made a master of theology in 1315. He spent most of the rest of his life in Naples, where he was closely associated with the Angevin court. Chapter 1 surveys John’s life and works, setting his career in its Neapolitan context. Chapters 2-4 deal with different aspects of his teaching. Chapter 2 contrasts his contributions to debates about the nature of theology at Paris with the way he introduced this subject to his Dominican students in Naples. Chapter 3 examines the role of medicine in his theological teaching, where it served as a tool for interpreting core texts as well as a source of material for preaching. Chapter 4 analyzes the symbiotic relationship between his quodlibets and the literature of pastoral care. Chapter 5 looks at John as a Dominican friar and preacher, turning to his sermon collection as a source of information about Dominican life in southern Italy, and Chapter 6 investigates his relationship with the Angevin rulers of Naples and the role of politics and political theory in his works. Appendices to chapters 2-6 provide transcriptions of unpublished quodlibetal questions, sermons, and other texts used as the basis for this study. Two additional appendices provide descriptions of the main manuscripts and discuss the dating and placing of John’s works. This study considers John from a variety of angles – teacher, preacher, friar, courtier, Neapolitan – and suggests that these overlapping identities cannot be productively separated from one another. It highlights the vibrancy of intellectual life in early-fourteenth-century Naples, and the strong cultural ties between Naples, Paris, and Avignon, as well as other regions such as the Kingdom of Hungary. Furthermore, it illustrates how mendicant convents could help to disseminate theological teachings from the University of Paris to the provinces, while also serving as sites of innovation in their own right. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Lubelski, Sarah Joann | Galey, Alan | A Gentlewoman's Profession: The Emergence of Feminized Publishing at Richard Bentley and Son, 1858-1898 | Information Studies | 2019-06-01 | Publishing has evolved into a feminized profession, with women filling approximately 84 percent of positions under the managerial level. Well into the twentieth century, however, it was men publishers, booksellers and librarians who dominated the book trade. Histories of the publishing industry have not explored this gendered shift in depth. Using the London-based firm of Richard Bentley and Son (1829-1898) as a site of investigation, this dissertation considers the gender identity of publishing processes, organizations, and labour through the history of the firm’s women publisher’s readers. Drawing primarily on archival materials, I explore how the women publisher’s readers gained power and influence over the publishing process and used their positions as gatekeepers to challenge traditional gender ideology. This shift in the gendering of publishing and print materials at Bentley and Son reflects changes within the broader industry, and the evolution of gender ideology within the nineteenth-century social, cultural, political and legal landscapes. Beyond attending to a gap in historical scholarship, this exploration of the feminization of the publishing industry illuminates how gender ideology has shaped women’s entrance into, and movement within, professional environments, and provides a framework for analyzing print production through a gendered lens. Chapter one examines how women publishing workers have been constructed and represented within scholarship and popular culture. In chapter two, Bentley and Son’s organizational structure is analyzed to highlight women’s labour and demonstrate the impact of gender on the circuit of literary production. Women’s professionalization within the firm and the industrialization of publishing is considered in tandem in chapter three. Chapters four and five explore how women’s entrance into publishing has impacted the nature of print. Microanalyses of individual titles’ publication histories show how Bentley and Son’s women publisher’s readers perpetuated the values and ideologies of the Victorian women’s movement through the publication of print materials that supported women’s empowerment. A macroanalysis of the firm’s publishing lists further showcases the feminization of the firm, revealing an increase in fiction titles for women in gender-progressive genres, and the publication of women-oriented works in previously masculinized non-fiction categories. | Ph.D. | gender, women, labour, worker, invest, industrialization, trade, production, land | 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15 |
| Youssef, Alaa Talaat | Sockalingam, Sanjeev | A Mixed-method Study of Bariatric Patients’ Experiences in Integrated Care: Implications for Patient-centered Care | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Patient-centered care is a hallmark of high-quality care. Despite the significant attention and quality improvement efforts that followed the 2001 ‘Crossing the Quality Chasm’ report by the Institute of Medicine, notable gaps in care delivery persist for patients with chronic diseases. A challenge to addressing these gaps is the ability of current patient experience measures to capture important aspects of care delivery, such as chronic disease self-management, from the patient’s perspective. Development of reliable measurement tools that truly assess patient-centered care is critical to bridging these care gaps. In this dissertation, I investigated the relationship between patient-centered care and patient outcomes in the context of the integrated care model for chronic disease management. The primary aim of this research was to determine the key aspects of integrated care delivery that promote patient-centered care from the patient’s perspective and improve health-related quality of life (HRQoL) outcomes in an integrated bariatric surgery program. Study 1 generated the “Caring About Me” framework, which defines patient-centered care from the patient’s perspective. Study II demonstrated distinct differences in bariatric patients physical and mental HRQoL following bariatric surgery. Study III examined bariatric patients’ personal care experiences to explain difference in HRQoL trajectories. Results from this mixed-methods research program revealed that integrated care can enable patient-centered care that impacts long-term clinical outcomes by enabling positive patient-care team interactions, promoting access to responsive treatment interventions and empowering patients through the development of long-term self-management skills. Overall, this dissertation illuminated the core care elements that promote patient-centered care and improve clinical outcomes in integrated care. This relationship reinforces the importance of integrated care pathways that address the personalized care needs of the target patient population. | Ph.D. | mental health, invest, institut | 3, 9, 16 |
| Liendo, Anrdrea J. | Stagg-Peterson, Shelley | A Narrative Study About Teacher Knowledge and How It is Reflected in Pedagogical Choices, Practices, and Views When teaching Emergent Writing | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | AbstractThis research investigated how teachers’ various forms of knowledge are reflected in their pedagogical views, practices, and choices when teaching emergent writing. Emergent writing is one of the most understudied areas of literacy with limited research regarding primary writing instruction. Prior to attending school, most young children demonstrate emergent writing skills that include marks, scribbles, drawings, letters and words. Development of emergent writing abilities contribute to student self-regulation, higher order thinking skills, and concept formation. Additionally, these skills are good predictors of later school success in reading and writing, as well as better opportunities in the workplace. This research embraced a wholistic perspective to honour teachers’ lived experiences and stories. A narrative approach was used. Data collection consisted of narrative interviews with four kindergarten teachers who taught in Ontario, Canada. Teachers were encouraged to share their stories and experiences when teaching emergent writing. Narratives were analyzed inductively to develop a better understanding about teacher knowledge and how it is reflected in daily practices when teaching emergent writing. In alignment with a social constructivism perspective, teacher narratives described a play-based classroom where daily peer interaction, rich multimodal and oral language opportunities were encouraged through a variety of learning centres that included an art table, a drama centre, a science touch table, as well as various other language activities. Teachers shared stories of drama centres that included pretend restaurants, a doctor’s office, and a post office, as well as props to re-enact classroom read-alouds. These meaningful activities supported independent student exploration and meaning making. Using a multi-layered view of language writing, and employing a deductive approach, I identified understandings and beliefs using Ivanič’s (2004) framework of six discourses of writing and learning to write. Findings of this second layer of analysis indicated that teachers viewed writing as multimodal. Their description of daily classroom contexts reflected beliefs and perspectives within five of the six discourses. The use of all six discourses was found in only one participant’s narrative. Teachers’ narratives often included elements of three or more discourses (that were sometimes conflicting) in the same writing event. A complex understanding of emergent writing was found in all narratives. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Kramer, Derek J | Schmid, Andre | A New Kind of Energy: Atomic Science in the Cold War Koreas: 1945-1958 | East Asian Studies | 2021-11-01 | This study takes up discourses on atomic science and technology in the mid-twentieth century Koreas. By doing so, it demonstrates how, well before either North or South Korea was capable of developing a domestic nuclear program, atomic science served as a discursive channel for the aspirations and apprehensions connected to decolonization. Broadly, the project examines writing on atomic technology in colonial, socialist, and liberal renditions of the Korean nation. In each of these settings, intellectuals reduced liberation and historical advancement to the capacity of the people to embrace a developmentalism built on science in general and atomic technology in particular. However, these proscribed entanglements also posited versions of science that reified Europe as the singular wellspring of the discipline, and in turn, historical progress. Rather than reduce the question of nuclear proliferation to the whims of political leadership or the contours of international exchange, this study focuses on the social and cultural dimensions of science in the nation-building process. With implications for the broader issue of global nuclear proliferation, this project is the first study to comparatively explore the sociopolitical character of atomic science in the two Koreas. This work provides a broad examination of atomic science in technology in North and South Korea through five sections. Chapter one explores science writing in post-1945 Seoul, and the colonial era roots of a belief in an apolitical and individualist science capable of creating an atomic bomb. Chapter two follows the genre in the north where Pyongyang-based science journals explored the atomic promise of a centrally planned socialist science. Chapter three analyzes the confluence of visions in the north and south on the developmentalist horizons of limitless atomic energy. A fourth chapter highlights how science influenced narratives of the past; specifically, Korean accounts of the Asia-Pacific War and the atomic bombings that coincided with its conclusion. Finally, chapter five reorients towards the future. This section considers the meaning of a postcolonial sovereignty in a world defined by the geographies of fallout and the threat of atomic war. | Ph.D. | energy, decolonization, sovereignty | 7, 10, 16 |
| Lazarakis, Peter | Portelli, John | A Path Forward: Empowering Teachers to Implement More Inclusive Special Education Frameworks in Ontario | Social Justice Education | 2022-03-01 | This qualitative study employs a social-critical constructivist framework to investigate current Ontario teachers’ knowledge and opinions of inclusive education (IE) initiatives for special education in Ontario. Twenty-two participants were interviewed to gather data on their current understandings of IE policies and initiatives, as well as how they might re-define their current roles to actualize these IE policies across their broader school communities. Current IE empirical research that gathers similar attitudinal data represents teachers as uninformed, uncritical, and powerless; any recommendations that these studies present come from the researchers rather than the participants. Research findings also demonstrate that while teachers philosophically agree with IE, they question the extent to which they can successfully implement IE due to time constraints, limited resources, and inconsistent administrative support. This study’s constructivist framework demonstrates that participants have carefully reflected on IE within their instructional contexts. Participants are determined, engaged, knowledgeable, and conscientious professionals who are currently mobilizing to take on future IE implementation initiatives. Their critical perspectives helped to form the basis of this study’s recommendations. This study’s detailed policy analysis of Ontario Ministry of Education equity documents also reveals that these documents do not include teachers’ voices. This study specifically examines IE through a special education lens in order to achieve a deeper understanding of the knowledge gaps that significantly hamper teachers' abilities to successfully implement IE initiatives. To address these professional knowledge gaps, this study makes four significant recommendations. First, teachers should engage in professional learning that specifically focuses on Ontario IE policies. Second, job-embedded professional learning should serve as the departure point for all future IE implementation initiatives in Ontario. The third recommendation is that teachers must be given direct consultative opportunities to share their visions for future IE initiatives. Fourth, Ontario schools must move away from their traditional bell schedules to more flexible timetabling and staffing allocations. These recommendations are also significant because they are informed by participants’ lived experiences and have been proven successful in comparable North American education systems. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, equity, invest, equit | 4, 9, 10 |
| Komparic, Ana | Thompson, Alison K | A Public Matter? : An Ethical Analysis of the Canadian Pharmacare Public Policy Debate, 1997-2019 | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Background: Canada lacks universal pharmaceutical coverage (pharmacare). Calls for the implementation of national pharmacare date back to the introduction of Canadian Medicare and have recently resurfaced on the federal health policy agenda. Although public policies raise ethical and political questions, to date there has been limited analysis of the normative rationales that underpin arguments in the Canadian pharmacare debate. Accordingly, the objective of this study was to examine how bioethics—as a practically-oriented, normative inquiry—could contribute to understanding and informing the contemporary pharmacare policy debate. Methods: I conducted a qualitative, empirical bioethics case study of the Canadian pharmacare public policy debate from 1997 to 2019. I used an adapted thematic analysis to characterize the main policy arguments in 72 policy documents and transcripts in terms of their underlying normative rationales. To inform my analysis and interpretation of the data, I drew on a theoretical framework of four philosophical accounts of the division of public and private responsibility in the organization, financing, and delivery of health insurance. Findings: The contemporary pharmacare policy debate has shifted from considering whether to determining how universal pharmaceutical coverage ought to be realized; three main forms of universal coverage have been considered: public single-payer, a ‘fill-in-the-gaps,’ multi-payer program that builds on the existing mix of public and private insurance, and catastrophic coverage. The three proposals appeal to distinct normative rationales and accounts of political responsibility vis-à-vis health and health insurance. In turn, they frame and justify the problems of access, costs, and appropriateness and their attendant policy solutions differently. Growing support for public single-payer pharmacare in the contemporary debate is justified in reference to more explicit appeals to its efficiency-promoting features in addition to its equity- and community-promoting ones. Conclusion: This study provides an understanding of how arguments in the Canadian pharmacare policy debate are justified normatively. It suggests that the pharmacare debate is a politically normative debate that will require adjudicating between distinct policy objectives. The analysis illustrates how normative policy analysis can help discern and reframe underlying normative disputes in public policy debates. | Ph.D. | public health, universal health coverage, equity, equit, judic | 3, 4, 10, 16 |
| Haag, Julius | Wortley, Scot | A Qualitative Examination of the Impacts of Police Practices on Racialized and Marginalized Young People in Toronto | Criminology | 2021-11-01 | Canada enjoys an international reputation for tolerance, diversity, and inclusivity. However, a closer examination reveals Canada’s long-standing history of systemic racism, including in its public-sectors organizations and, most notably, the criminal justice system. In particular, Black people are among the primary recipients of disparate treatments at the hands of the police. However, while these issues are well-studied in the United States and United Kingdom, there remains a lack of Canadian scholarship examining the intersections of race and the criminal justice system. My dissertation seeks to better inform the discourse around these issues through an examination of the lived experiences of young people in Toronto, Ontario with policing, violence, and community safety. Drawing on 42 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with young people, ages 16-29, my study explores how aggressive, order-maintenance policing, economic marginalization, and geographic segregation have impacted young people’s perceptions of the police, the criminal justice system, and Canadian society. In doing so, I engage with dominant theoretical perspectives related to urban policing, including procedural justice and legitimacy, subcultural violence, legal cynicism, and social disorganization. My findings explore several important themes, including the contours of long-standing rivalries between non-gang youth who reside lower-income communities or ‘opp blocks’ (Chapter 2); the salience of anti-snitching discourses among young people and the relationship between perceptions of police legitimacy and efficacy and willingness to comply with police investigations (Chapter 3); and the collective impacts of police practices through a comparison between Black and white youths, including the role of direct and vicarious contacts in shaping perceptions of the police (Chapter 4). Taken together, my findings demonstrate the pervasive and wide-spread impacts of proactive policing practices that have disproportionately targeted Black youths and Black communities, including diminished perceptions of the police, reduced social and spatial mobility, and involvement various self-help behaviours, including private violence. I conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of my findings, which are particularly salient as Toronto continues to face mounting levels of youth violence, racialized poverty, and spatial segregation. | Ph.D. | poverty, racism, invest, inequality, equalit, marginalized, income, urban, criminal justice, violence | 1, 4, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Buchholz, Maximilian | Bathelt, Harald | A Relational Approach to Regional Economic Development: Essays on Migration, Globalization, and Inequality | Geography | 2021-11-01 | The rise of economic populism and movements for greater racial, gender, and class equality over the last few years have foregrounded the massive problems of spatial and social inequality in the United States. Academic research focused on these disparities increasingly suggests that a mix of rising economic inequalities across the U.S. urban system, as well as inadequate attention to deep historical economic injustices, have eroded economic mobility for many people and places. Providing concrete solutions to this issue is a thorny problem for social science and policy which requires that we address inter-regional, intra-regional, and inter-personal inequalities, as well as their interconnections. The following chapters argue that a relational perspective of economic development – one that centers how the behaviors, interactions, and organization of economic actors shape economic development – is a fruitful way forward to understanding and mitigating these inequalities. Focusing on how globalization and emerging migration patterns shape and respond to actors’ (e.g. workers, firms, and other collective organizations) economic relations, the three papers in this thesis show how a relational approach to regional economic development can be employed to better understand inequality and opportunity for different people and places across the U.S. urban system. | Ph.D. | gender, worker, globaliz, inequality, equalit, urban, housing, injustice | 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Stringer, Rodney Raymond | Bialystok, Lauren | A Rhetorical Approach to Moral Argumentation | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | I argue in this dissertation that our North American educational institutions are obligated to formally attend to the inherent pervasiveness and complexities of rhetoric in preparing students to be fully-participating members of democratic society. The definition of rhetoric relevant here involves the use of language and stylistic elements to convince an audience of something. I advocate for rhetoric in two senses. I believe that our students, and societal members generally, should be knowledgeable of what makes rhetoric effective. I also claim that a form of “productive” rhetoric, not to be confused with solely “effective” rhetoric, is best suited for moral argumentation, deliberation and public debate. The first sense involves ‘knowledge of’ while the second concerns appropriate contextual ‘use’. A number of prototypical examples of productive rhetoric are offered as well as a depiction of what is and what is not conceived as productive, growth-oriented usage. The emotive, motivational and contextual elements of a rhetorical approach to moral argumentation need to be given more attention. Rhetoric holds potential to be an invaluable resource in moral argument, decision-making processes and education. Furthermore, it has the capacity to uniquely cause participants to cohere or connect. It can facilitate a shared affective foundation upon which common ends might be pursued. Not only does rhetoric hold this potential, but it is always already imbued with certain moral qualities. Directed by this claim, I survey the relationship between rhetoric and moral argumentation in the three major normative philosophical traditions: consequentialism, aretaic virtue ethics, and deontic discourse ethics. I also defend Rortyan and Davidsonian conceptions of rhetorical communication. The various traditions drawn from in this thesis all point to certain features of and opportunities for rhetoric in relation to possible growth among participants in moral discourse and education. While rhetoric is usually used to urge one conceptual framework over another, I champion its use to bridge frameworks. Certain forms of productive rhetoric canreasonably be expected to open up dialogue in an effort to create innovative solutions, mutual understandings, and sustainable agreements. | Ph.D. | knowledge, institut, democra | 4, 16 |
| Adamek, Lukas | Savard, Pierre | A Search for the H mm Decay and a Measurement of the Mass of the Higgs Boson using H- 4l Events with 139 fb-1 of Proton-proton Collision Data Collected by the ATLAS Experiment | Physics | 2022-03-01 | Using a dataset collected with the ATLAS detector during run-2 of the Large Hadron Collider, a search for the decay of the Higgs boson to two muons and a measurement of its mass are presented. Common to both measurements, an overview of the theoretical background, the Large Hadron Collider, the ATLAS experiment and particle reconstruction algorithms is provided. When the work in this thesis was performed, no evidence for the H ! μμ decay had been observed. The search presented in this thesis uses multivariate classification algorithms to classify events and maximize the expected statistical significance of the result. A signal excess of 2.0 was measured when testing the background-only (no H ! μμ) hypothesis and the signal strength was found to be in agreement with the Standard Model prediction, to within statistical and systematic uncertainties. The measurement of the Higgs boson’s mass was performed using H ! 4l events. Although the measurement of the Higgs boson’s mass has been performed in the same channel by the ATLAS collaboration in the past, the run-2 dataset used in this thesis is approximately four times larger than before, which is expected to reduce the uncertainty by a factor of two. The measurement uses multivariate machine learning techniques to discriminate signal and background events and exploit the inhomogeneous resolution of the ATLAS detector. The measurement is yet to be performed on data, but the expected uncertainty is ± 0.19 (± 0.18 Stat only) GeV. | Ph.D. | learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Kipkoskgei, Evelyn Jeruiyot | Wane, Njoki N | A Situational Analysis of Women in Higher Education Leadership Positions in Kenya | Social Justice Education | 2019-11-01 | A Situational Analysis of Women in Higher Education Leadership Positions in Kenya Doctor of Philosophy (2019) Evelyn Jeruiyot Kipkosgei Department of Social Justice Education University of Toronto ABSTRACT Gender imbalance among senior university academics is an acknowledged problem in many countries, including Kenya. This thesis gives a situational analysis of women academics in senior leadership positions in institutions of higher education in Kenya. This study sought to determine the requisite attributes that propelled women to higher management positions in institutions of higher education in Kenya; to identify strategies adopted by women to attain leadership in higher education in Kenya; and to explore the lessons that can be drawn from the experiences of women in higher education leadership positions in Kenya. The research is anchored in feminist and leadership theories. The study uses data collected from 18 participants in senior leadership ranks derived through purposive and snowballing sampling technique across 32 public universities. A qualitative approach of in-depth semi-structured interviews aided by a questionnaire was used to collect primary data whereas secondary data was obtained by document analysis. Preliminary findings indicate that success largely depends on a combination of individual’s initiatives, institutional structures, and governmental interventions. Results indicated that women success in leadership positions at higher education institutions in Kenya is attributable to individual paradigm shifts, external networks, pro-women movements, and enforceable affirmative action plans. Strategies employed by women to attain leadership were identified as continuous education, determination and tenacity, performativity, goodwill, and the use of role models and mentors. Major attributes to emulate were: defining marks of leadership and identity, collaboration, spirituality, and performativity. It was concluded that women in this study merited their success since they possessed the required qualifications and experience. They had the ambition, drive, and patience to succeed against all odds. Going by their small numbers in managerial positions, there seems to be other underlying factors over and above qualifications that affect women career mobility. The study recommended an urgent and deliberate effort to address structural and sociocultural hurdles constricting the upward mobility of women. Recommendations include formulation of implementable affirmative action policies and introduction of egalitarianism in education curriculum. It is recommended that women get trained on to negotiation skills which exclude counterproductive confrontational approaches. | Ph.D. | knowledge, gender, women, feminis, labor, institut, social justice | 4, 5, 8, 16 |
| Adam, Edmund | Wheelahan, Leesa L | A Study of the Influence of Global University Rankings on Institutional Strategies, Decision-Making, and Policy Choice: The Case of Four Canadian Research Universities | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | Since 2003, global rankings have continued to impact higher education at both the systemic and institutional levels. Emerging in an unprecedented period of intensified global economic competition in which the competitive advantage of individual countries runs on knowledge and innovation, these novel rankings have risen rapidly to the forefront of higher education policies in many countries, leading governments to institute new jurisdictional priorities for universities. In implementing rankings, universities have adopted practices and processes that sometimes have had deleterious effects for both sound educational administration and accountability (Hazelkorn, 2011). This multiple-case study examined how the senior leaders of four Canadian research universities formulate responses to their institutions standing in global university rankings.Theoretically, the topic was intellectualized through the lens of two organizational theory perspectives: institutional theory and resource dependence theory. This integrated approach led the researcher to theorize that due to the intensification of reputational advantage mediated by rankings, the four institutions under analysis would change practices, processes, and administrative structures to improve and/or sustain their positions in global rankings. Empirically, the study used a multi-method approach. Thus, data were derived from three qualitative research strategies: (i) document analysis, (ii) 15 semi-structured interviews with senior administrators of participating universities, (iii) website analysis. This provided triangulation and allowed cross-validation of findings. Data analysis revealed three primary areas wherein rankings exert direct influence: rankings-related capacity, international collaborations, and branding. Rankings additionally influence other interrelated areas: legitimacy seeking, strategic positioning, and internal accountability. Additionally, while the analytical framework has shown to have explanatory power, the study found that the leading drivers of these behaviours are isomorphism and resource dependence, with mimetic isomorphism in pursuit of legitimacy trumping rational considerations of resources. Moreover, interviews showed that the source of such nonrational conduct stems from assumptions which predispose senior administrators to overstate the importance of adopting procedures oriented to rankings. The study identifies implications of these sorts of institutional behaviours for the administrative cost of university education and diversity. Implications for policy and practice are also presented that audiences, such as higher education leaders, university administrators, and future researchers may find useful. | Ph.D. | knowledge, labor, institut | 4, 8, 16 |
| Jamali, Nima | Meacham, Tirzah TM||Harrak, Amir AH | A Study of the Interactions among Zoroastrian, Jewish and Roman Legal Systems during the 7th and 8th Centuries CE Based on a Critical Edition of Īšō‛-boḵt’s Corpus Juris with Commentary and an English Translation | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2021-11-01 | This project is a comprehensive study of a Syriac legal text of the late seventh century CE of the literary heritage of the Church of the East. The text is known as Īšō‘-boḵt Corpus Juris (ICJ) after its author. In this regard, this dissertation consists of two main parts: 1) a study of legal tradition in the Church of the East, 2) an edition and a translation of ICJ followed by a commentary. The first part is composed of two sections. It begins with a study of the legal tradition in the Church of the East from its advent in the late fifth century with figures such as Barṣauma, Mār Acacius and Mār Abā down to the end of the seventh century and Ḥenān-Išo‘ I, the last influential individual in the tradition prior to Īšō‘-boḵt. The main purpose of this study is to understand ICJ against the backdrop of the rich tradition to which it belongs. The second section of the first part is an analysis of ICJ itself. The study tries to locate the text at the intersection of the aforementioned legal traditions of Sasanian and post-Sasanian Zoroastrian, Jewish and Roman legal cultures. However, these legal cultures did not evenly distribute their traces on every section of ICJ. The Jewish and Roman influences are more recognizable in the first four chapters before they gradually fade out while parallels to the Zoroastrian legal system become numerous in the last two chapters. For the second part of this thesis, this study provides a critical edition of ICJ based on the Vatican manuscript and Abdišō‘ collection of laws with an English translation facing the edition. This edition and translation are accompanied by commentary discussing details of almost every passage of the text. The final part of the thesis is the appendices including translations of three Syriac texts and one Middle Persian text which are of crucial importance for understanding ICJ. | Ph.D. | legal system | 16 |
| Carr-Harris, Gillian Sankey | Joshee, Reva | A Study on Nonviolence: Constructing Narratives of Leadership | Cinema Studies | 2021-11-01 | Abstract This research explores nonviolence and leadership. Based on the experiences of five narrator-leaders working with marginalized communities in India, it shows how they grounded nonviolence in their organizations, and how they mentored others to carry out work, service, and social action. Each narrator-leader sought to make social change, even though they were aware of the resistance it generated. For this reason, the narrator-leaders mentored their associates in nonviolent action to face social injustice. The primary research question that drives this research is in two parts: how do each of the narrator-leaders exemplify nonviolent leadership, and secondly, what are the areas of convergence they exhibit in relation to one another…? And the two sub-questions are: how did they learn nonviolence and nonviolent leadership practices? And how do they convey these nonviolent leadership practices to those with whom they are associated and what do learn from them? The research drew from narrative method so that the narrator-leaders could elaborate nonviolent practices both in terms of their individual, as well as in community contexts, what is referred to as co-relationship. The community contexts were made up of those ‘unheard’ voices from marginal communities. This important relationship of autonomy, both at the individual and community level, shows when individual agency combines with the power of social groups, it becomes a force for change, no matter how marginalized people are from the mainstream. Using portraiture as the method to draw out each narrator-leader’s experience, allows the reader to experience a way of being-in-the-world, which is action-based. Although they built off inherited knowledge of (Gandhi’s) nonviolence over the two previous generations, it was in their own application of nonviolence that the story revolves. By juxtaposing the stories of the five diverse narrator-leaders, some larger issues arise about peace and nonviolence. These portraits can be used for training a next generation in peace and nonviolent leadership. | Ph.D. | knowledge, peace, women, labor, marginalized, peace, injustice, social change, violence | 4, 16, 5, 8, 10 |
| Seroussi, Uri | Claycomb, Julie J | A Systematic Analysis of Argonaute Proteins in Caenorhabditis elegans | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | RNA interference (RNAi) pathways, consisting of Argonaute proteins and small RNAs that provide sequence specificity, play key roles in gene regulation across all domains of life. Studies of Argonautes in many species have revealed that they impact gene expression at nearly every stage in the life cycle of a transcript—from transcription to translation. Due to their central role in RNAi and profound impact on development and differentiation in numerous organisms, uncovering new and conserved molecular mechanisms of Argonautes advances our fundamental knowledge of cellular function and has the potential to provide more precise means to manipulate gene expression, relevant for biotechnology and therapeutics.The C. elegans genome encodes an expanded family of 27 ago genes, 19 of which produce functional proteins. In this thesis I have undertaken a systematic study of every functional C. elegans Argonaute to develop a comprehensive portrait of the molecular mechanisms of these mostly uncharacterized proteins throughout development. Using CRISPR/Cas9 genome-editing, I epitope-tagged each Argonaute with GFP::3xFLAG. I used confocal microscopy to characterize the expression patterns of each Argonaute throughout development and defined the tissue specific and subcellular localizations of each Argonaute. High-throughput sequencing of 1) small RNAs associated with each Argonaute, and 2) total small RNA pools from argonaute mutants versus wild type uncovered the stratification of subsets of Argonautes into distinct gene regulatory modules. Directed by the localization and small RNA sequencing data, I employed phenotypic analyses of argonaute mutants under normal and stressful conditions. These revealed previously unappreciated phenotypes, including a transgenerational loss of fertility known as the Mortal Germline (mrt) defect, and resistance to the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Overall, my systematic and pioneering studies provide an unprecedented view of the small RNA regulatory landscape throughout the development of a complex animal. | Ph.D. | knowledge, conserv, species, animal, conserv, species, animal, land | 4, 14, 15 |
| Laflamme, Bradley John | Desveaux, Darrell||Guttman, David S | A Systems-level Study of Effector-triggered Immunity in Arabidopsis thaliana | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11-01 | Despite the continued prevalence of agricultural crop failures due to pathogen attack, any given plant host is resistant to most pathogen diversity. This phenomenon, often described as “broad-spectrum disease resistance,” is well-documented though poorly understood in terms of how various facets of defense contribute to its overall potency. Effector Triggered Immunity (ETI) is a major branch of plant innate immunity which entails the recognition of pathogen virulence factors, termed effectors, by intracellular Nucleotide-Binding Leucine Rich Repeat (NLR) proteins. We used the Arabidopsis thaliana-Pseudomonas syringae pathosystem to explore the contribution of ETI to broad-spectrum resistance. Though most P. syringae strains utilize a type III secretion system to translocate effectors into host cells, there is extensive genetic diversity across strains at effector-coding loci. We hypothesized that the effector sequence diversity of P. syringae, most of which has never been cloned and studied, contains hitherto unidentified ETI responses. We thus developed PsyTEC (P. syringae Type III Effector Compendium), a collection of 529 effectors from across 494 genetically diverse P. syringae strains, to screen for interactions between P. syringae effectors and the A. thaliana immune system, ultimately identifying 59 effectors spanning 19 protein families which elicit ETI. We found that the majority of P. syringae strains have the capacity to elicit ETI on A. thaliana, and that this broad-spectrum resistance to P. syringae diversity is conferred by a small repertoire of NLRs. Two NLRs, ZAR1 and CAR1, can potentially recognize 94.7% of strains due to their recognition of multiple broadly distributed effectors. We further explored ZAR1’s recognition of 5 P. syringae effectors and identified other genetic requirements for these ETI responses. We propose that ZAR1’s capacity for broad effector recognition is achieved by monitoring several cytoplasmic kinases for perturbation by effectors. This indirect monitoring enables a single NLR to guard against many virulence factors from diverse pathogen backgrounds. These systems-level insights into the ETI landscape of A. thaliana-P. syringae highlight its importance to the plant host’s broad-spectrum resistance strategy: ETI is ubiquitous in this system, and sophisticated mechanisms of indirect recognition enable immune responses to be disseminated through a small repertoire of NLRs. | Ph.D. | agricultur, land | 2, 15 |
| Huberman, Pinchas | Benson, Peter | A Theory of Tort Liability for Autonomous-machine-caused Harm | Law | 2019-11-01 | Developments in artificial intelligence and robotics promise increased interaction between humans and autonomous machines, presenting novel risks of accidental harm to individuals and property. This thesis situates the problem of autonomous-machine-caused harm within tort law’s doctrinal and theoretical framework, conceived as a practice of corrective justice. Crucially, due to machine-learning capabilities, harmful effects of autonomous machines may be principally un-foreseeable, and therefore, not legally attributable to the human agency of designers, manufacturers or users. This thesis assesses which tort doctrines—negligence, strict liability or vicarious liability—are most amenable to developing a theory of liability for autonomous-machine-caused harm. To this end, it argues that the doctrine of vicarious liability may be reconceived to hold human or corporate deployers vicariously liable for tortious harm caused by autonomous machines in the course of deployment. Under this approach, autonomous machines constitute a novel category of legal subject: pure legal agents without legal personhood. | LL.M. | learning | 4 |
| O'Keefe, Rachel | Gerson, Lloyd P | A χαλεπὸν καὶ ἀμυδρὸν εἶδος: Plotinus’ Theory of Matter | Philosophy | 2021-11-01 | I put forward a unified account of Plotinus’ theory of matter with a focus on why it is necessary to explain how things exist at each level of his metaphysics. I argue that matter is a quasi-principle, insofar as it is a necessary condition for the generation of all products of the One, the first principle. It is not a principle on a par with the One, however, because matter is itself generated by the One. It is also not on a par with the One because matter, as non-being, does not make a causal contribution to the generation of all existents. I arrive at this conclusion by investigating what Plotinus says about the role that matter plays in the generation of the sensible realm. The existents in the sensible realm are bodies, which are composed of qualities and extended in three dimensions. I argue that Plotinus thinks bodies can only exist if there is a matter that exists to receive all these qualities, while nonetheless never joining with any of them. The bodies in the sensible realm also undergo change by losing and gaining the qualities. I claim that Plotinus explains this by rejecting the Aristotelian idea that matter becomes a numerical unity with the forms it receives. I also explain how matter can be understood as responsible for the existence of evil in bodies and souls, despite its lack of causal influence. The evils that exist in the sensible realm are a necessary result of the proliferation of goodness, which matter makes possible by providing a space for the higher principles to produce in. I also examine what Plotinus says about matter as it exists in the intelligible realm, where the Intellect and the intelligible Beings reside. I show that previous assumptions about the nature of this matter are wrong and that we must presuppose that the same matter exists among the intelligibles as exists among the bodies of the sensible realm. I then explain how matter – both sensible and intelligible, since they are the same – is generated directly from the One as a place for its product. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Steenhof, Naomi Myra | Mylopoulos, Maria||Woods, Nicole N | Abandoning the Path of Least Resistance: Struggle in Health Professions Education | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | A significant challenge when assessing health-professions trainees is that our assessment methods tend to be retrospective. As such, we are missing the ability to assess how adaptive our students will be when they begin practising in the healthcare system. To address these gaps and to advance the science of health professions education, this dissertation draws on theories from psychology and the learning sciences to explore systems of instruction and assessment that develop adaptive expertise and the ability to continue learning in the future. In this dissertation, I investigate the relationship between productive failure and active generation, the flexibility of learning through struggle, and the role of conceptual knowledge formation when designing instruction that prepares students to learn in the future. I designed the studies in this dissertation to achieve the following research aims: 1) to characterize the relationship between productive failure and active generation, 2) to study whether the manipulation of pretesting questions by difficulty can support performance on future learning assessments, 3) to examine the role of prior knowledge when learning through struggle, and 4), to examine the role of conceptual knowledge as a cognitive mechanism when learning through failure. The results from my first study emphasize the crucial role of generation in learning. The results of my second study demonstrate that we can leverage testing using theories of productive failure to support the development of expertise and that the quality of the struggle experienced by the learner depends on the learner's prior knowledge. The results from my third study establish that productive failure allows students to develop conceptual knowledge that facilitates transfer. Collectively, the manuscripts presented here show how learning through struggle relates to conceptual knowledge development and preparation for future learning. These instructional design strategies have the value of accentuating the difference between performance and learning and ensuring that measures of learning are central to assessing learner’s success. Practically, the research lays the groundwork for designing educational interventions and curricula to develop pharmacist trainees who can be adaptive and flexible with their knowledge to solve future, unforeseen problems that will inevitably arise in their practice. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge, learning, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Sleep, Sylvia | MacLean, Heather L | Accounting for Variability and Uncertainty in Life Cycle Assessments: Oil Sands Case Studies | Civil Engineering | 2019-06-01 | Along the life cycle of oil sands-derived products, variability in terms of resource heterogeneity, operating decisions, as well as extraction and processing technologies affect a project’s GHG intensity. Previous LCAs that have quantified emissions from bitumen production and processing have not captured all sources of variability along the life cycle, either by including only some projects or employing simplified refinery modeling or modeling refining only of some crude types. Three studies are completed to address this literature gap. In the first study, a statistically-enhanced version of the GreenHouse gas emissions of current Oil Sands Technologies model (GHOST-SE) is developed. Median lifetime GHG intensities for projects producing synthetic crude oil (SCO) range from 89-137 kg CO2eq/bbl SCO and for the project producing dilbit are 51 kg CO2eq/bbl dilbit. Projects show significant temporal variability. No project reaches steady-state in terms of GHG intensity. Next, GHOST-SE is integrated with a pipeline transportation model (COPTEM) and a refinery model (PRELIM) and variability in life cycle emissions intensities are quantified. Allocation to products affects the relative GHG intensities of different projects (e.g., Project 1 has lowest median life cycle GHG intensity per MJ gasoline but highest per MJ diesel). These results demonstrate that there is no representative project or crude type, even across projects within the same pathway (e.g., Mining SCO pathway). In the final study, expert elicitation methods are employed to assess the potential role for emerging technologies to decrease upstream GHG intensity between 2014 and 2034. Experts surveyed do not expect emerging technologies to play a major role in reducing upstream oil sands energy consumption but are more likely to be applied to access marginal resources not economic with current production technologies. Accurate characterizations of the emissions from the life cycle of oil-sands derived fuels has the potential to assist oil sands operators and policymakers to: set benchmarks, develop projections of future emissions, and identify opportunities for GHG intensity reductions along the life cycle of the fuel. The findings of this thesis can also inform operators and policymakers about the potential unintended consequences of policy decisions. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, greenhouse, consum, production, greenhouse gas, emissions, co2 | 7, 12, 13 |
| Faith, Laurie Christine | Martinussen, Rhonda | Achieving Learning Regulation Support: How a Socially Shared Approach Fits, Functions, and Thrives | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-03-01 | Across three studies, the purpose of this dissertation was to explore how socially shared learning regulation (SSLR) “fits” as a suitable solution to the lack of learning regulation support in Ontario, “functions” to support teachers’ professional learning and students’ independence, and best “thrives” among teacher implementers who face a range of constraints. Three different research methodologies were used with the overall goal of providing guidance to educators and researchers regarding the use of socially shared learning regulation as a classroom teaching approach. In Study 1, data gathered from 50 key Ontario Ministry of Education (MOE) documents were analysed to measure the alignment between SSLR and the practices and mandates that are prescribed as guidance for educators in Ontario; considerable “fit” between the MOE publications and the central tenants of SSLR was discovered. Especially within these areas of fit, a lack of pedagogical specificity for educators was both apparent and remarked upon by the documents themselves. These seem as though they could be addressed, at least partly, through the use of SSLR. In Study 2, a qualitative interview method was used to explore the way an SSLR pedagogy may “function” to support teachers’ pedagogical learning, personal learning regulation development, and student independence. A second researcher was heavily involved in the recruiting, interviewing, transcribing, and coding for this study to supply greater objectivity and place the first researcher at an arms-length from a topic in which she had a vested interest. In this study, a wide range of pedagogical learning resulting from teachers’ use of SSLR was revealed, as well as an epistemological shift in the way teachers viewed their students as learners. In Study 3, a mixed methods approach was used to gather descriptive information about the types of enablers and constraints faced by teachers as they attempted to engage in SSLR – a brand new pedagogical approach for most. Survey and short answer data was collected over 3 months and 3 timepoints from 81 kindergarten to Grade 8 teachers who were genuinely dissatisfied by their status quo practices, ready for change, and largely eager to implement the novel teaching approach presented to them. Building on established theories of planned change implementation, the findings of this study indicated a minimal effect of teachers' approval of the intervention on implementation. Rather, specific drivers to the implementation of complex, communal pedagogical interventions included the support of high-status supervisors and peers, while constraints to implementation included fears regarding management of student behavior. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning | 4 |
| Saha, Shumit | Yadollahi, Azadeh Prof. | Acoustic Assessment of Sleep Apnea and Pharyngeal Airway | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Sleep apnea is a chronic respiratory disorder that is characterized by recurrent reductions in breathing during sleep. The gold standard diagnosis of sleep apnea is an overnight sleep study with polysomnography (PSG), which is expensive and time-consuming. Furthermore, questionnaires are used for screening of sleep apnea during wakefulness, but they are highly subjective and do not provide the assessment of pharyngeal airway anatomy. This thesis presents acoustic technologies to diagnose sleep apnea during sleep and to assess the pharyngeal airway dimension during wakefulness. To diagnose sleep apnea during sleep, we recruited 69 individuals who underwent full-night PSG in the sleep laboratory. Simultaneously with PSG, we recorded the tracheal breathing sounds and respiratory-related movements with a microphone and an accelerometer, respectively. We developed a novel machine-learning algorithm utilizing random forest and logistic regression; and achieved 90% accuracy in detecting sleep apnea. We also identified each respiratory event with over 80% accuracy in patients with severe sleep apnea. Furthermore, we utilized deep convolutional networks to use breathing sounds and distinguish the two major sleep apnea types, obstructive and central events, with 84% accuracy. These algorithms can be used in a wearable device for monitoring sleep apnea. To assess the pharyngeal airway during wakefulness, we investigated vowel articulation and acoustic features of vowel sounds. To measure the pharyngeal airway effectively during vowel articulation, we used ultrasonography. We have shown that ultrasonography can be effectively used to measure the dimensions of the pharyngeal airway and the dimensions are different between individuals with and without sleep apnea. Furthermore, we have shown that patients with sleep apnea have had less variation in the pharyngeal airway dimension, which can be interpreted as less tongue movement than control groups while articulating vowels. Moreover, we have shown that the vowel sound features can estimate the pharyngeal airway dimension with high accuracy. These algorithms can be used for developing a vowel-based assessment of sleep apnea. Overall, the results of these studies showed the promise of breathing and vowel sounds to assess the pharyngeal airway and monitor sleep apnea. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, invest, consum, forest | 4, 8, 9, 12, 15 |
| Park, Seong Hyun | Lefebvre, Jéremie | Adaptive myelination and its synchronous dynamics in the Kuramoto network model with state-dependent delays | Mathematics | 2021-06-01 | White matter pathways form a complex network of myelinated axons that play a critical role in brain function by facilitating the timely transmission of neural signals. Recent evidence reveals that white matter networks are adaptive and that myelin undergoes continuous reformation through behaviour and learning during both developmental stages and adulthood in the mammalian life cycle. Consequently, this allows axonal conduction delays to adjust in order to regulate the timing of neuron signals propagating between different brain regions. Despite its newly founded relevance, the network distribution of conduction delays have yet to be widely incorporated in computational models, as the delays are typically assumed to be either constant or ignored altogether. From its clear influence towards temporal dynamics, we are interested in how adaptive myelination affects oscillatory synchrony in the brain. We introduce a plasticity rule into the delays of a weakly coupled oscillator network, whose positions relative to its natural limit cycle oscillations is described through a coupled phase model. From this, the addition of slowly adaptive network delays can potentially lead coupled oscillators to a more phase synchronous limit cycle. To see how adaptive white matter remodelling can shape synchronous dynamics, we modify the canonical Kuramoto model by enabling all connections with phase-dependent delays that change over time. We directly compare the synchronous behaviours of the Kuramoto model equipped with static delays and adaptive delays by analyzing the synchronized equilibria and stability of the system's phases. Our mathematical analysis of the model with Dirac and exponentially distributed connection delays, supported by numerical simulations, demonstrates that larger, more widely varying distributions of delays generally impede synchronization in the Kuramoto network. Adaptive delays act as a stabilizing mechanism for the synchrony of the network by adjusting towards a more optimal distribution of delays. Adaptive delays also make global synchronization more resilient to perturbations and injury towards network architecture. Our results provide insights about the potential significance of activity-dependent myelination. We hope that these results lay out the groundwork to computationally study the influence of adaptative myelination towards large-scale brain synchrony. | Ph.D. | learning, resilien | 4, 11 |
| Huang, Ziru | Sargent, Edward H | Additive Material and Device Engineering for Stable Perovskite Solar Cells | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Metal-halide perovskite solar cells (PSCs) have risen rapidly in solar power conversion efficiency over the past decade. However, practical impact for PSCs will require stable materials and device architectures. The thesis focuses on strategies to improve the stability of PSCs and to realize devices that achieve high efficiency combined with good stability. In particular, the use of chemical additives – those that transform 3D lattices into quantum wells, additives that stabilize desired 3D crystal structures, and dopants that help shape the electric field profile in devices – adds a degree of freedom that I exploit in perovskite engineering with the goal of uniting performance and stability.I begin by analyzing ion-migration-induced degradation in PSCs operating at maximum power point (MPP). I find that using quasi-2D perovskites suppresses this undesired ion migration process. Compared to 3D devices that operate reliably for less than 10 hours, optimized quasi-2D perovskites show negligible performance degradation over 80 hours of operation while providing efficiency comparable to that of 3D perovskite devices. Next, I investigate the structural stability of CsPbI3 perovskite. I propose a method to create stable tetragonal Cs-based perovskites with a bandgap near 1.7 eV by adding small amounts of large A-site cations into the crystal lattice. Using mixed Cs and large organic cations, I stabilized Cs-based perovskites and achieve a power conversion efficiency (PCE) of 15.2% and MPP stability of 230 hours. Finally, I investigate the stability and efficiency of devices that exploit perovskites with a p-i-n structure that is thermally stable at 85°C. CsFA perovskite is known to be thermally stable but has previously yielded low performance due to a low charge carrier diffusion length. I propose a band-engineering method to enhance the extraction of photocharges. Compared to the original p-i-n CsFA solar cells with a PCE of 18%, band-engineered solar cells achieved 20.3% stabilized power output and survive an 85°C heating test. This work presents a suite of strategies to improve the stability of PSCs, an important step toward economic and environmental impact. The understanding of PSC degradation and the countermeasures provided in this work contribute to further development of perovskite-based devices. | Ph.D. | solar, invest, environmental | 7, 9, 13 |
| Brittain, Pamela | McDougall, Douglas | Addressing Math Content Knowledge and Math Anxiety in a Teacher Education Program | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | This study is an in-depth mixed methods study of a math content knowledge (MCK) course from a large scale, urban university’s faculty of education teacher program. The focus of this research is to describe the effect of this course on the math content knowledge and math anxiety levels of elementary teacher candidates. The participants were the course creators, the instructors and the teacher candidates. Quantitative data, in the form of pre- and post-course diagnostic tests and anxiety scales (collected by the course creators), and qualitative interviews were assessed to answer the research questions. This research found that the course had a significant effect on both improving the math content knowledge and decreasing the math anxiety levels of the teacher candidates enrolled in the course. It also helped the teacher candidates to improve their self-efficacy and confidence with mathematics. From an administrative perspective, the course seems to have met the expectations that teacher candidates improve their scores on the diagnostic tests and the teacher candidates interviewed for this study found a direct benefit from the course. In addition, there were suggestions for improvement in the areas of instructor selection, breadth and depth of topics covered in the course, and the creation of targeted course materials. Implications of this research indicate that this course could be applied to other faculties of education, that it could be improved to more closely align with the newly implemented provincial math proficiency testing, and that there are some suggestions for expanding the effectiveness of the course. Further areas of research are also provided. | Ph.D. | knowledge, urban | 4, 11 |
| Ciga, Ozan | Martel, Anne ALM | Addressing the Data Annotation Bottleneck in Breast Digital Pathology | Medical Biophysics | 2021-11-01 | Early diagnosis and targeted therapies are priorities in the treatment of cancer. Advancements such as whole-slide scanning of a tissue sample can help experts assess cancer more precisely; however, analysis of a tissue specimen is expensive and time-consuming. Machine learning can alleviate the load for the expert by providing an objective assessment complementary to the pathologist, or by highlighting possible regions of interest on the slide to reduce the examination time. The number of labeled images in machine learning tasks is found to be positively correlated with the task performance; however, labeled data is scarce and expensive. The problem is exacerbated in medical image analysis tasks, where an expert must exhaustively annotate data to cover both common and rare cases of disease. In this thesis, I propose techniques to either expedite the labeling step, or to reduce the requirements for labeled data. I start by addressing the generalization gap, where an automatic diagnostic tool (e.g., breast cancer detection) trained using data from a specific scanner or a hospital performs poorly on data from another hospital for the same task. My aim is to achieve similar performance on the unseen data by identifying features that are common in both the training and the unseen data. Later, I propose a technique to train a segmentation network by leveraging easier-to-label image-level patches combined with a few pixel-level segmentation annotations. Thirdly, I utilize a learning paradigm called self-supervision which is used to learn salient features from unlabeled images without any supervision. These learned features are later used to train for tasks such as classification, regression, and segmentation. The experiments show that the accuracy can be improved by up to 30% on various tasks, including breast cancer, prostate cancer, and colorectal tissue classification tasks. Finally, I outline unique challenges associated with whole-slide images (WSIs), and find techniques that achieve satisfactory performance on smaller images may not translate to good performance in a more clinically relevant workflow involving WSIs. I propose alternative methods to overcome this discrepancy, and verify the efficacy of the proposed technique in a clinically challenging breast cancer task. | Ph.D. | learning, consum | 4, 12 |
| Desai, Naaz A | Popovic, Milos R | ADDRESSING THE GAPS IN ASSESSMENT AND TREATMENT OF THE UPPER EXTREMITY IN REHABILITATION OF INDIVIDUALS WITH NEUROLOGICAL CONDITIONS | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-11-01 | Regaining upper extremity function is critical following stroke and spinal cord injury (SCI). The objectives of this thesis were to develop and assess the psychometric properties of a 3D printed version of an upper extremity outcome assessment tool called the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute-Hand Function Test (TRI-HFT) and to assess the feasibility of stimulating interscapular muscles using transcutaneous functional electrical stimulation (FES). The first study explored the feasibility of 3D printing the original TRI-HFT objects and assessed its inter and intra-rater reliability and convergent validity in chronic stroke. The second study focused on assessing its psychometric properties in the sub-acute and chronic SCI populations. We hypothesized that the TRI-HFT could be 3D printed and that the 3D printed test would have high reliability and validity in stroke and SCI populations. In the third study I explored the feasibility and benefits of stimulating the Lower Trapezius (LT), Serratus Anterior (SA) and Upper Trapezius (UT) along with Anterior Deltoid during forward flexion and along with Middle Deltoid during abduction in able-bodied individuals. The underlying hypothesis was that it would result in an increased range and more natural reaching movement. In the first and second study we found that all objects of the TRI-HFT could be successfully 3D printed with an error margin of less than 10% except for the Paper and the Sponge objects. The 3D TRI-HFT showed high inter and intra-rater reliability in stroke and SCI.The 3D TRI-HFT showed strong criterion validity when compared to the Graded Redefined Assessment of Strength, Sensibility and Prehension test in the SCI population. The 3D TRI-HFT showed moderate to strong construct validity when compared to the Chedoke-McMaster Stroke Assessment-Arm and Hand and the Fugl Meyer Assessment-Hand in chronic stroke. In the third study, the LT, SA and UT could be successfully stimulated using surface FES. The maximum reach in abduction for FES of middle deltoid along with the interscapular muscles was 51.77°±17.54° compared to FES for middle deltoid alone which was 43.76°±15.32°. This work essentially builds on the current state of assessment and FES treatment of the upper extremity in the rehabilitation domain. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Costa Del Pozo, Giorgio | Kwon, Roy H | Advances in Risk Parity Portfolio Optimization | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Risk parity is an asset allocation strategy that seeks to equalize the risk contributions of the constituent assets in a portfolio. The resulting portfolio is fully diversified from a risk perspective. However, like other asset allocation strategies, risk parity is susceptible to estimation errors. Moreover, its mathematical formulation imposes some fundamental limitations. This thesis aims to modernize risk parity by addressing all of the aforementioned issues. We address the susceptibility to estimation errors through three different frameworks. First, we introduce a robust framework that quantifies estimation error and embeds this information during optimization to construct a robust risk parity portfolio. Our second framework takes a different approach, introducing robustness during the parameter estimation step. This is formulated as a game-theoretic minimax problem to make an optimal investment decision against the most adversarial estimate of our parameters. Our third framework improves the quality of our estimated parameters before optimization takes place. We posit that we can embed the cyclical information of financial markets directly into our estimates, resulting in risk parity portfolios aligned with the current market regime. The result is a Markov regime-switching factor model of asset returns from which we can naturally derive regime-dependent parameters for use during optimization. The final component of this thesis addresses the fundamental limitations of risk parity: its lack of accountability for the investor's risk and reward appetite and its prohibition of short sales. We propose a generalized risk parity framework where the investor's risk and reward appetite define our objective, while still enforcing a desirable degree of risk-based diversification. Moreover, we propose an algorithm that allows us to consider portfolios with short positions. Thus, our generalized framework addresses the fundamental limitations of risk parity while retaining the desirable property of risk-based diversification. The frameworks proposed in this thesis can be used independently or in tandem, depending on the investor's needs and goals. The unifying subject of this thesis is to advance risk parity by addressing its fundamental weaknesses. This is achieved by proposing different frameworks and algorithms, with the overarching property of preserving the interpretability and computational tractability of our solutions. | Ph.D. | invest, financial market | 9, 10 |
| Walji, Noosheen | Young, Edmond W. K. | Advancing Microfluidic Tumour-on-a-chip Technologies by Integrating Multicellular Tumour Spheroids and Angiogenic Vessels | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-03-01 | Angiogenesis, the development of new blood vessels from existing vasculature, is a key mechanism in cancer progression. Solid tumours that are depleted of nutrients induce angiogenesis to recruit blood vessels for access to nutrients and a pathway for metastasis. Anti-angiogenic therapies have been developed, but toxicities, resistance, and limited efficacy have been reported and there remains a strong need for development of in vitro platforms that can model tumour-induced angiogenesis to conduct fundamental and clinical research. Traditional in vitro assays include 2D cell cultures that do not recapitulate cellular functions that are unique to a 3D geometry and are therefore unsuitable for investigations of complex phenomena such as tumour angiogenesis. Microfluidic technology has emerged as a popular tool for 3D cell cultures such as tumour-on-a-chip models that recapitulate the physiological complexities of a tumour microenvironment. The development of a microfluidic model for tumour-induced angiogenesis would facilitate fundamental research on the underlying cellular mechanisms, and clinical research to develop new drug candidates. To accomplish this, a deeper understanding of the microfluidic cell culture components is needed, along with a device design that is well suited for analysis of tumour-induced angiogenesis. The objective of this thesis was to examine the elements of a microfluidic model of tumour-endothelial interactions and develop a microfluidic cell culture where tumour-induced angiogenesis can be observed and quantified. We first characterized 3D spheroids, revealing correlations between external, internal, and secretory profile characteristics of 3D tumour spheroids as they relate to angiogenic potential. Next, we sought to understand how best to incorporate fibroblasts for their critical role in achieving 3D sprout morphology. We identified the utility of fibroblast configuration for influencing the extent of endothelial response in microfluidic co-culture. Finally, we introduced a new microfluidic device for spheroid-endothelial co-cultures where spheroid-induced sprouting was demonstrated using multiple spheroid types and quantified using image analysis. Overall, these studies have developed insights on the characteristics of 3D tumour spheroids, fibroblasts, and endothelial sprouts that allow these cell culture features to be wielded as biological tools, and demonstrated the utility of microfluidics for complex cell cultures to study tumour angiogenesis and cancer progression. | Ph.D. | invest, cities | 9, 11 |
| Overchuk, Marta | Zheng, Gang | Advancing Photodynamic Therapy via Targeting and Nanomedicine | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a cancer treatment modality that relies on a combination of non-toxic photosensitizers, oxygen, and light to generate cytotoxic reactive oxygen species. PDT traditionally has been used in superficial cancers, but with the advent of fiber optic technologies and laparoscopic surgical techniques it has become feasible in a variety of deep-seated tumours. Despite these technological and clinical advancements, PDT has several limitations that prevent it from becoming a mainstay clinical modality. First, clinical PSs lack tumour specificity, which results in prolonged photosensitivity in patients as well as suboptimal PS tumour accumulation. Secondly, PDT combination with systemic therapies such as chemotherapy, remains underexplored, which restricts PDT indications. This thesis seeks to address these limitations by advancing PS design and investigating PDT in combination with systemic chemotherapy.Chapters 3 and 4 of this thesis describe the development of two porphyrin-based prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted PSs with complementary phototherapeutic and imaging properties. These PSMA-targeted porphyrins demonstrated excellent specificity and favorable tumour accumulation, which translated into potent PDT. Furthermore, it was discovered that the inclusion of a 9-amino acid D-peptide linker between the porphyrin molecule and the targeting ligand is a robust strategy to improve pharmacokinetics, particularly half-life, of a targeted PS that further enhanced its tumour accumulation. This dissertation also explores whether the use of porphyrin supramolecular interactions within nanoparticles could yield phototheranostic agents with tunable properties. Specifically, Chapter 6 of my thesis probes the effects of different porphyrin conjugates on the resulting nanoparticle’s imaging and phototherapeutic properties. While photodynamic therapy can be effective as a stand-alone modality, its combination with other mainstay clinical techniques such as chemotherapy is extremely promising as it expands the range of cancers it can be applied to. Chapter 5 explores the use of subtherapeutic photodynamic treatment as a priming strategy to modulate the tumour microenvironment and enhance delivery of various nanoparticles including clinically approved nanomedicines. Overall, this dissertation pursues several research avenues for PDT advancement, which will hopefully aid the development of next generation clinical photosensitizers and more precise and versatile PDT protocols. | Ph.D. | invest, species, species | 9, 14, 15 |
| Khamidehi, Behzad | Sousa, Elvino Silveira | Aerial Robots for Wireless Coverage, Traffic Monitoring, and Transport Applications: A Path Planning and Fleet Management Perspective | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have recently attracted significant attention in a wide range of commercial and civilian applications. Wireless coverage, traffic monitoring, and transport are among the emerging applications of UAVs for future smart cities. This study focuses on developing efficient path planning and fleet management algorithms for the UAVs in the mentioned applications. We begin by modeling a UAV-assisted communication network where the UAVs are used as the aerial base stations. We solve the trajectory optimization and resource allocation problem for the UAVs to improve the coverage of ground users. We extend this study to the Internet of Things (IoT) networks where UAVs are utilized to collect data of IoT devices. We propose an efficient algorithm that generates multi-channel representations from the data collection problem and uses deep reinforcement learning (RL) to solve it. Next, we study the path planning problem under connectivity constraints, which is important for applications such as traffic monitoring and drone delivery. We propose a model-aided path planning algorithm that uses federated learning to create a model of the connectivity in the environment. Using this model and rapidly exploring random trees, our algorithm optimizes the UAV path to guarantee connectivity. We extend our study to a traffic monitoring system where a team of UAVs monitors the traffic condition in a road network. To address the stochastic nature of traffic events, we define an uncertainty metric for the road network. We develop a scalable algorithm based on distributed RL to solve the multi-UAV traffic monitoring problem. Our goal is to minimize the network’s average uncertainty even in scenarios where the UAVs’ observations are partial, and the information exchange between the UAVs and the traffic management center is limited. Finally, we study the dynamic UAV-assignment problem for a drone delivery system. We adopt a queuing theoretic approach to model the customer-service nature of the problem and use deep RL to relocate the UAVs in the system. Our RL-based method guarantees a probabilistic upper bound on the queue length of the packages waiting in each package distribution center. Moreover, it outperforms state-of-the-art schemes for different arrival classes. | Ph.D. | learning, internet, cities | 4, 9, 11 |
| El-Halwany, Sarah | Bencze, John Lawrence L | Affective Contours of Two College Microbiology Laboratories: Potentializing International Students' Be-longings with Science, Education and Canada | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation explores affective politics of two college microbiology laboratory courses. Drawing from studies of affect, care and politics of aesthetics, I examine how bodies of science education and science education bodies are reproduced and transformed through particular affective attachments or be-longings. Accounting for student demographics in the two courses observed — International students from India — my analyses further situate those be-longings in relation to what it means to have ‘the good life’ in Canada. While one course (project 3) depicts affectivities of precarious living and being (for various participants involved), the other course (project 2) gestures to how a disciplining of the biotechnician body meets histories of subjugation that entangle nature (simplistically here, bacteria) and women. Pedagogies of the college microbiology laboratory (existing within larger networks) work affectively to coalesce epistemic privileges of science (as hard, objective, masculinist) with production of more-than-human subjects for capitalist markets (in this case, food and pharmaceutical industries). Seeking affect through its productive (and not merely reproductive) intensities in educational situations, I approach my contexts of study as already ripe with pedagogical openings for being, thinking and caring differently within science and science education. I further describe such openings in relation to a new pedagogical approach, ‘STEPWISE’ (Bencze, 2017), that creates some interruptions in this context, potentializing new be-longings. Particularly evident in project 3, STEPWISE turns into a ‘warm’ pedagogy that meets with friendship flows and possibilities for being in renewed relationships with science, knowledge, bacteria, education and the job market. This research contributes to studies of emotions/affect in science education from a political perspective. A proposed direction for future research seeking productive ways to engage with emotions/affect in science education may start by contaminating cultural analyses of science education with an affectivity lens that can open new horizons for be-longing with science education and research. For instance, what could be some pedagogical possibilities for a science education that departs from a main preoccupation with ‘critical thinking’ towards centering ‘critical care’? | Ph.D. | precarious, pedagogy, knowledge, women, labor, capital, production | 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12 |
| Sookhai, Fiona Shamila | Mirchandani, Kiran | Affective Indignities at Work: Exposing the Inequality of Feelings in Canadian Professional Workplaces | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | Despite the “talk” of diversity and inclusion, power in professional workplaces in Canada remains in the hands of a dominant white network. In order to devise effective strategies to achieve workplace equality, a deeper understanding of how power flows in professional workplaces is needed. In this thesis, I connect the framework of white institutional space, and the concept of feeling rules to explore how 20 foreign-trained South Asian (FTSA) women who occupied professional and/or managerial jobs in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) conceptualized the power differences that produced and reproduced the form of workplace inequality they experienced. Based on a narrative analysis of the feeling rules experienced and navigated by FTSA women in the professional workplace, I conceptualize the workplace inequality they experienced in two interconnected ways to demonstrate the hegemonic nature of feelings in the professional workplace (i.e., the inequality of feelings). Firstly, through the structural lens afforded by connecting the concept of feeling rules and the framework of white institutional space, I argue that the cumulative impact of years of engaging in multidimensional emotional labour to constantly manage recurring racialized and gendered emotions is a form of workplace inequality. The emotions that FTSA women managed daily did not dissipate each day; instead they accumulated daily and as such are irreducible to invisible work (Daniels, 1987). Secondly, I use Ahmed’s (2004) critical concept of impression and the process of racialization to argue that the accumulation of racialized and gendered emotions through repeated performances of gratitude work, shame work, and empathy work, as directed by the five distinct feeling rules that FTSA women experienced–namely, to be hyper-pleasant, grateful, fearful, not angry, and not lonely–resulted in an intensification of emotions that produced affective associations that racialized their bodies. The impact of these affective associations on an FTSA woman’s bodily and embodied experiences in the workplace is a unique form of workplace inequality as it constrains her agentic actions. I have termed this form of workplace inequality affective indignities as it sustained the racialized relations of power in white institutional spaces that diminished the capacity of FTSA women to act. | Ph.D. | gender, women, labour, inequality, equalit, institut | 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Warren, Laura | Rosella, Laura||Walker, Jennifer | Ageing Among Off-reserve Indigenous Populations in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | Indigenous populations in Canada experience ageing differently than non-Indigenous populations. The intergenerational effects of colonization on Indigenous Peoples’ health combined with Indigenous populations’ holistic approach to health and ageing warrant the need for Indigenous-specific ageing research. In the past decade there has been an increased focus on Indigenous-specific ageing research. However, there remain many areas of ageing research to be explored. In this thesis, Indigenous and epidemiologic research methods were utilized in combination with a community-engaged approach to fill some of these research gaps. This is the first study to investigate both the physical and emotional health aspects of ageing for off-reserve Indigenous populations in Canada. I collaborated with a Community Advisory Board to develop research questions relevant to Indigenous Peoples, inform my data analysis plan to produce meaningful results and to use Indigenous perspectives to interpret the research findings. Data from the Canadian Community Health Survey were used to estimate the prevalence of and factors associated with frailty among off-reserve Indigenous populations ≥45 years of age. The same survey data was used to study ageing from a more holistic approach by investigating life satisfaction as a measure of successful ageing. The prevalence of frailty was approximately 18% for Indigenous men and 20% for Indigenous women. The age- and sex-adjusted prevalence estimates were higher for both Indigenous men and women compared to non-Indigenous men and women. Although the prevalence of frailty was high for Indigenous populations, 90% of Indigenous people included in this study reported high levels of life satisfaction. A strong sense of community belonging, and physical activity were associated with lower levels of frailty and higher levels of life satisfaction. Recommendations were made based on the findings for community-led policies and programs to promote healthy ageing through access to culturally appropriate health services, land-based exercise programs and facilitating connections between older Indigenous people and their community. In addition to the quantitative research findings, the unique methodology used in this thesis may serve as a guide to approach future Indigenous epidemiological studies, an area that has received little research attention to date. | Ph.D. | women, labor, invest, indigenous, land, indigenous | 5, 8, 9, 10, 16, 15 |
| Reiner, Adam Joshua | Jamieson, Gregory A||Hollands, Justin G | Aided Navigation and SkyMap – An Investigation of Human Spatial Navigation with an Augmented Reality Mirrored Map | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Augmented reality (AR) displays may represent the next major advance in navigation aid technology due to the ability to overlay virtual information directly over a user’s view of the environment. SkyMap is a virtual mirror-like surface presented in the upper field-of-view, that reflects the topographic layout of the environment below, such that an object in the environment is reflected at approximately the same depth and orientation by SkyMap’s mirror. To better characterize differences between SkyMap and current aids, a framework that considers an aid’s perspective on spatial information and its technological capability was developed. Aided navigation was evaluated on the following tasks: spatial visualization and information access (the cognitive and physical processes for using an aid, respectively), wayfinding (with four subtasks: orientation, route planning, route control, and destination recognition), and spatial learning/recall. Two experiments compared SkyMap to electronic 2D maps in a virtual environment presented in virtual reality (VR). In Experiment 1, participants compared a route in the aid (SkyMap or track-up 2D map) to the location of threats in the environment (to evaluate spatial visualization). After each trial, participants were asked to recall threat positions. Participants with prior VR-experience showed higher spatial visualization accuracy with SkyMap than the 2D map. However, recall performance favoured the 2D map. Experiment 2 recruited soldiers to participate in a simulated military reconnaissance scenario that compared SkyMap to a north-up 2D map. Participants followed a predefined route while rerouting around threats (to evaluate wayfinding performance), then recalled threat positions. Wayfinding and recall performance both favoured the 2D map. Findings from Experiments 1 and 2 were compared to the results of five other studies that investigated SkyMap. Across all studies, SkyMap’s greatest strength relative to 2D maps was for spatial visualization. Information access showed mixed results, as did the wayfinding subtasks of orientation, route control, and destination recognition. For the more complex navigation tasks of route planning and recall, SkyMap fared poorly versus familiar 2D map conditions. SkyMap’s unique perspective and size were a strength for some aspects of navigation and SkyMap showed potential as a future AR navigation aid. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Hilker, Nathan Anthony | Evans, Greg J.||Brook, Jeffrey R. | Air Pollution Measurements near Roadways: Verifying Measurements and Discerning Traffic-related Signal from Background | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | The work in this thesis examined multiple years of air quality data collected in near-roadway and urban background environments as part of an air quality monitoring pilot study, the first of its kind in Canada. In addition to validation strategies involved in assuring accuracy of these data, near-road pollutant concentrations were compared with urban background concentrations (between 2-10 km away from each near-road receptor) in order to isolate excess pollution arising from vehicle emissions, understood to be approximately equal to the difference between the two locations. One major hypothesis in this work was that these excess pollutant quantities can be estimated using the near-road data alone, an important research question as oftentimes studies do not have concurrent background measurements, and two strategies for doing this were compared with the measured site differences. Namely, utilizing differences between measurements made downwind and upwind of the roadway, and applying a background-subtraction algorithm to the near-road time series data. It was found that, relative to the explicitly measured site differences, downwind/upwind differences were 40% larger on average and not universally applicable, whereas an optimized background-subtraction algorithm replicated the site differences well and was robust across all sites. After isolating these local vehicle-related concentrations, the role of meteorological variability on vehicular plume dispersion in the near-road environment was quantified. It was found that the relationship between normalized local concentrations and wind speed was well-described with a simple exponential equation. Wind direction had the effect of enhancing this by a factor of 1.5-2.0 when downwind of the roadway, and suppressing it by a factor of 0.25-0.50 when upwind at these sites. Lastly, 15 years of continuous ambient near-road ultrafine particulate matter data were analyzed utilizing this background-subtraction methodology. It was found that local concentrations contributed ~45% to total ambient concentrations, and while these total concentrations have been steadily declining, this local fraction has remained relatively consistent. Future utilization of the methodologies developed and validated in this thesis will be useful for continued monitoring of vehicular fleet emissions. | Ph.D. | pollution, wind, emission, urban, emissions, pollut, pollut | 3, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Li, Tianyuan | Siegel, Jeffrey A | Air Quality and Energy Implications of Filtration System and Operation Strategies in Residential Buildings | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Central forced-air HVAC systems with filters are commonly used in North American homes to reduce particle concentrations and occupant exposure. The filtration performance of these systems is strongly influenced by many system-, filter-, and building-specific parameters including system runtime, cycle on-time, recirculation rate, in-situ filter efficiency, and building air change rate. These parameters vary considerably across homes, and in the same home over time. Thus, characterization of these parameters is essential for filtration system performance evaluation. The goal of this dissertation is to improve the performance of residential filtration systems by advancing the understanding of their influencing parameters. This work first assesses the runtimes in both heating- and cooling-dominated climates. The results show that there were large variations in runtimes and the mean daily runtime was less than 20% in the studied homes. Secondly, this work evaluates the in-situ efficiency of four types of filters in 21 residences in Toronto, Ontario. The results show that the variations for the same type of filters across homes were greater than the differences between filter types. Comparisons between in-situ and lab-tested filter performance further confirm that the lab-tested results of a filter may not well represent its in-situ performance – they generally overestimate the efficiency and underestimate the pressure drops. Lastly, this work examines the range of effectiveness of the HVAC filtration systems with varying influencing parameters through a time-varying mass balance model. The results show that in addition to runtimes, when and how long (i.e., cycle on-time) the system operates also influences its performance. Based on this finding, four filtration operation strategies (concentration, source, pulsed, and concentration pulsed) are evaluated, and the results show that operating the system during periods with high indoor concentrations could achieve a comparable level of effectiveness as continuous operation but at runtimes as low as 80%. This strategy provides opportunities to reduce indoor particle concentration while conserving fan energy use. Overall, this dissertation provides a framework with tools and models to characterize the influencing parameters of residential filtration, evaluate filtration performance, and provide guidance on operation strategies for performance improvement. | Ph.D. | energy, buildings, climate, conserv, conserv | 7, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Richmond, Joel Craig | Saleh, Walid | Al-Ghazālī’s Moral Psychology: From Self-control to Self-surrender | Religion, Study of | 2021-11-01 | A central difficultly when reading al-Ghazālī (d. 1111) is understanding why he attempts to bring together seemingly disconnected aspects of ethical theory. He inclines toward a more philosophical influence of virtue ethics in his earlier book, The Scale of Action (Mizān al-‘amal), while in his vast encyclopedic work, The Revival of the Religious Sciences (Iḥyā’ ‘ulūm al-dīn), his conception of religious practice was greatly informed by the emerging Sufism of his time. These two works, in particular, lay the foundation for understanding his program for Islamic practice and his unique balance of reason and revelation. Al-Ghazālī’s ethical writings are not easily explained by the existing categories and demarcations found in contemporary ethical discourse, so it becomes essential to present what was at the centre of his pedagogy. This dissertation argues that the thread connecting each method of expression is al-Ghazālī’s dramatic and explicit emphasis on self-control as the path to felicity. It demonstrates that the underlying substrate of al-Ghazālī’s ethics is his constant focus on restraining and redirecting the body, emotions, and thought. The study first examines the destructive vices, specifically in relation to eating, sexual desire, anger, and speech. It is then followed by looking at al-Ghazālī’s early work, The Scale of Action which explains his views on controlling the body and achieving moderation through the process of habituation. It then turns to investigate al-Ghazālī’s views on controlling the emotions and how he understands thought and its role in unification of the fragmented self. It is only in the final chapter, entitled self-surrender, that the study attempts to answer the question of why, for al-Ghazālī, the subject of self-control takes such great importance. His directions for self-control are not without purpose and are designed to culminate in a unique form of knowledge. Although the aim of acquiring knowledge is initially for the purpose of inducing proper action, the final result, according to al-Ghazālī, must culminate in a recognition and love of God. For these reasons, the study naturally concludes by answering the question of why these techniques of restraint were of such great significance to al-Ghazālī. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Keeshan, Sarah | Cochelin, Isabelle||Conklin Akbari, Suzanne | Altered Landscapes: The Process of Conquest in the Eleventh-century Norman Chronicles of the Mezzogiorno and Sicily | History | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation examines the first generation of Latin chronicles patronized by the Norman conquerors of southern Italy and Sicily in the eleventh century: Amatus of Montecassino’s Ystoire de li Normant, William of Apulia’s Gesta Roberti Wiscardi, and, Geoffrey Malaterra’s De Gestis Rogerii Comitis et Roberti Guiscardi Ducis. These chronicles constitute meaningful assertions regarding the nature and actuality of Norman lordship in the region at a time of great precarity for the Siculo-Norman imperial project: the succession of the second generation of Norman lords. Indeed, I argue that these early texts must be examined in their pre-kingdom context, as the heavy work of conquest is often clearest in spaces of imperial precarity and anxiety. In addition, this dissertation is grounded in an understanding of the world-creating function of historical texts. It contends that each chronicle’s curated historical world reveals the ways in which the eternally-incomplete process of conquest continuously remade the collective identities, affinities and alterities, that gave shape to the socio-political, historical, emotional, and geographical landscapes of Norman Italy and Sicily. It first explores the internal logic of each history (and its respective historical world) individually, focusing on the specific preoccupations and aims of each historian, in order to explore their implications for current historians’ understanding of medieval conquest. These three distinct and interconnected worlds are then brought into conversation with each other in order to examine the logic of the Norman conquest more broadly. In particular, this dissertation contends that the process of conquest embodied in these histories was grounded in the twinned forces of alienation and appropriation as the chronicles worked to naturalize the bodies, emotions and lineage of the foreign conquerors within the landscape while simultaneously alienating their local subjects from it. In doing so, the chronicles obscured the rupture inherent in conquest behind the mask of continuity provided by these acts of naturalization. | Ph.D. | precarity, land | 1, 15 |
| qin, zhen | Jaimungal, Sebastian SJ | Ambiguity Aversion in Commodity Markets | Statistics | 2021-11-01 | This thesis explores the impact of model uncertainty on commodity market models. The commodity markets include various idiosyncratic uncertainties that are not present in other markets, and this thesis is the first to provide a thorough and detailed analysis of their effects. We assume that agents acknowledge the possibility of model misspecification, adopt the framework of ambiguity aversion to protect themselves, and utilize a robust indifference pricing framework for valuation and hedging. Most exotic financial options written on commodities are valued by discretizing continuous-time and state models. Thus, in the first part of this thesis, we study the impact of ambiguity aversion in discrete-time and state using trinomial trees. We develop a general mathematical framework for incorporating model uncertainty, compare it with existing methodologies, and look at practical examples, including the valuation of swing options with model uncertainty. Next, we consider the continuous-time formulation of model uncertainty by investigating option pricing with both stochastic volatility and Levy jumps. We provide analytical characterization of ambiguity, robust prices, and resulting hedging strategies and provide perturbative approximations when analytical methods fail. A key insight is that the effect of ambiguity aversion is the strongest at-the-money and the weakest deep-in- or deep out-of-the-money. Finally, we study electricity interconnectors from the perspective of statistical arbitrage with model uncertainty. We provide closed-form optimal strategies when there is no ambiguity and obtain perturbative approximations of the robust optimal strategies. We illustrate the efficacy of the resulting strategies on simulated data. We propose a calibration algorithm on jump-diffusion data to bridge the abstract mathematical theory and real-world dynamics. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Lee, Yena | McIntyre, Roger S | An Anti-cytokine Agent for Anhedonia: Investigating the Immune-inflammatory System as a Therapeutic Target for Dimensional Disturbances in Mood Disorders | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Patients with depression are conventionally treated with the assumption that a treatment will be broadly effective across multiple dimensions. However, depression is a heterogeneous clinical syndrome that is subserved by multiple convergent and divergent disease processes. Data-driven and ecologically valid phenotypes of phenomenology are needed to parse the heterogenous etiology of depression. Moreover, mechanism-of-action studies should target domain-based pathology with mechanistically plausible treatments and aim to inform disease models.The thesis herein investigated the immune system as a putative therapeutic target for anhedonia, a transdiagnostic, yet specific, and clinically relevant symptom dimension. Anhedonia represents a disturbance in reward- and motivation-related neurobiological processes and is characterized by a diminished ability to enjoy previously enjoyable activities. Brain circuits, nodes, and networks, as well as cellular and molecular pathways (eg dopaminergic transmission, excitotoxicity, synaptic plasticity), subserving anhedonia are preferentially affected by inflammatory processes. Hitherto, no curative treatments have been identified or developed for the treatment of anhedonia. Infliximab, an anti-inflammatory agent that specifically targets tumour necrosis factor-α signalling, reduced anhedonic symptoms in a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled clinical trial. Furthermore, we identified a data-driven inflammatory biotype of adults with bipolar depression who were more likely to derive anti-anhedonic benefit from infliximab. We provide a framework for conceptualizing the therapeutic and mechanistic relevance of the TNF-α signalling pathways in the treatment of anhedonia. Taken together, our findings instantiate the relevance of inflammatory processes and the immune system in the phenomenology and etiology of mood disorders and provide the impetus to develop scalable treatments targeting the immune system to mitigate transdiagnostic, dimensional disturbances (eg anhedonia). A domain-based approach to drug discovery and development, informed by an understanding of disease processes, is needed to target brain-based pathology. Future studies investigating viable anti-anhedonic treatment avenues should demonstrate target engagement in neural systems subserving reward learning and valuation (eg cognition, habit formation), as well as reward-motivated behaviours (eg seeking, consummatory). | Ph.D. | learning, invest, urban, consum, ecolog | 4, 9, 11, 12, 15 |
| Prevost, Marie-Annick | Crawford, Gary W. | An Archaeobotanical Contribution to Foodways, Wood Collecting Strategies, and Niche Construction at the Late and Terminal Archaic Site of Côte Rouge in Southern Québec | Anthropology | 2019-11-01 | This thesis illustrates the varied contributions of archaeobotany to our understanding of precontact groups in southern Québec, using the site of Côte Rouge (CeEt-481 and CeEt-211) as a case study. This location has been known to First Nations since at least the Late Paleoindian period (11 200-9500 cal. BP), and gained popularity during the Laurentian/Late Archaic (6800-4500 cal. BP) and post-Laurentian/Terminal Archaic (4500 to 3200 cal. BP) to become a significant place that was still sporadically visited during the Woodland period (3200 cal. BP-contact). Euro-Canadian settlement added to the palimpsest of the archaeological deposits characterized by a thin soil with active bioturbation. Different strategies, including the systematic collection of large samples, the inclusion of control samples, and abundant radiocarbon dates, led to the isolation of contaminated areas and to the detection of waste disposal patterns. Because hunter-gatherers tend to abandon their hearths frequently and favor mobility over trash relocation, the analysis focused on the hearths and their close periphery. The cooking techniques recognized include pit roasting, hot rock boiling and direct cooking on rock griddles. The wood charcoal assemblages did not reveal a correlation between the types of hearths and the wood taxa found in them, suggesting wood collection practices followed the principle of least effort. The size of the hearths decreased through time, which may be a linked to a change in the social context of meal consumption or an increase of plants in the diet. Charred seeds and fruits are documented only for the Terminal Archaic, in the samples dated from 3800 to 3300 BP (4200 and 3500 cal. BP). More frequent visits to Côte Rouge may have enhanced gap phase succession and favored the establishment and maintenance of nuts, fleshy fruits, and berries, an ecological inheritance that subsequent groups benefited from. The low densities of charred nuts and the absence of processing or storage features suggest they were not amassed to be stored at the site. Acorns have not been attested in the form of charred nutshells or starch granules on pebble tools. Finally, the potential for a local pollen analysis was judged poor but the observation of a selection of stone tools under high magnification revealed the presence of a few starch grains and brown and red residues thought to be resin and/or birch bark pitch. | Ph.D. | consum, waste, ecolog, land, soil | 12, 15 |
| Mitera, Gunita | Dobrow, Mark | An Assessment of How Targeted Health Policies were used to Influence Access to Radiation Therapy Services in Ontario, Canada between 1997 and 2017 | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-03-01 | This research provides a broad understanding of the impact of policy on access to radiation therapy (RT) in Ontario. A suite of policies implemented over 20 years address RT wait times and utilization aspects of access to care. The overarching research question was: “What was the impact of provincial and cancer centre level health policies on access to RT in Ontario between 1997 and 2017?” A case study design with multiple embedded units was used. The case was Cancer Care Ontario (CCO), and the embedded units included four representative regional cancer centres. Methods included a document review, longitudinal quantitative data collection, and key informant interviews. The theoretical underpinning was an extension of Kingdon’s Multiple Streams Framework, which collectively examines the problem, solutions and politics surrounding an issue. The access to RT problem evolved from a wait times issue to a utilization issue. Thirty-seven policies were identified and categorized as: (1) improving existing RT capacity, (2) system planning, (3) performance management, (4) human resources, and (5) building new RT capacities. During the first decade, policies were reactive in design, resulting in short-term wait time improvements. Policies in the second decade were more proactive and strategic, providing longer-term solutions. Building new cancer centres yielded the largest sustainable improvement to RT access. Restructuring CCO’s role to an oversight body, and changes to funding mechanisms were necessary system planning policies that also supported access improvement. Politics was highly influential across all levels, with negative media press, public pressure, local politics, and a healthy economy as factors. The Ontario cancer systems’ Regional Vice President role operated as an effective policy entrepreneur. They were able to adapt provincial policy to implement innovative access solutions locally. This longitudinal study provides useful insights into the evolution of Ontario’s cancer system as a more close-knit community of stakeholders, allowing the approach to policy implementation to mature from more reactive to proactive. Access to care continues to be a government priority, particularly as the world struggles through the COVID-19 pandemic. Learnings from this study can inform policy implementation decision-making surrounding access to RT and more broadly cancer and health services. | Ph.D. | learning, entrepreneur, cities | 4, 8, 11 |
| Hiratsuka, Hiroyoshi | Hayhoe, Ruth | An Evaluative Case Study of Japanese Undergraduate Students’ Changes in Intercultural Competence as Learning Outcomes in Malaysia and Thailand | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | Japan’s policy on outbound student mobility reflects the national commitment to preparing the next generation of Japanese professionals in terms of intercultural understanding. However, very little evidence is available for evaluating a relationship between Japanese students’ gains in intercultural understanding and their study abroad participation. Addressing the current shortcomings in several areas, including evidence, methodologies, diversity of destination, and theoretical application, this thesis designed a mixed-methods case study to evaluate Japanese students’ gains in their intercultural competence as a measurement of learning outcomes from their study abroad in Malaysia and Thailand. The main framework was based on the cultural learning theory in the Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive (ABC) model through the Sociocultural Adaption Scale (SCAS). The cultural learning theory gave a behavioral emphasis to my study, and the existing theories of intercultural competence in the literature were integrated into it. This study’s sample came from two cohorts of the School of Global Studies and Collaboration (GSC), Aoyama Gakuin University (AGU). My results affirmed that research on study abroad learning outcomes in Japan needs to improve in terms of the availability and quality of evidence. The quantitative results illustrated that traditional variables such as language proficiency, destination countries, and gender are poor indicators for evaluating changes in the intercultural competence of Japanese students. One promising result was the role of GPA in the 2015 cohort; this cohort showed a negative relationship between GPA and ICC changes. The qualitative findings were significant as they extended the existing intercultural competence theories by integrating concepts of cultural self-awareness and young adult development. The findings also formulated thematic relationships that identified students’ perceived concerns and excitement in the pre-departure phase and perceived positive and negative learning outcomes in the post-return phase. The results of the data integration illustrated a correlation between the ICC scores and the comments in the 2016 cohort. Furthermore, the data integration uncovered a limitation of a self-administered instrument like SCAS. Although this study has acknowledged several limitations, it was possible to make recommendations to Japanese stakeholders to overcome the current shortcomings of both research and program administration relating to study abroad. 現在の日本の留学政策は、「異文化能力を持った次世代の日本人職業人を育成する」というコミットメントの表れである。しかし、日本の学生の異文化理解と留学への参加の関係性に関する評価エビデンスは、非常に限られている。エビデンス・研究手法・渡航先・理論の改善の必要性のため、本研究は、混合手法研究をデザインし、異文化能力という概念を留学効果測定の評価方法として採用した。この研究の理論の枠組みは、ABCモデルにおける「文化学習理論」を採用した。測定方法は、文化学習理論に反映された、SCASというアンケートを採用した。本研究のサンプルは、青山学院大学の地球社会共生学部から協力を得た。本研究における結果は、現状を改善するエビデンスを提供した。まず、量的結果は、今後も引き続き研究を継続する必要性を明示した。唯一可能性としてあげられたのは、2015年度の学生グループの学力と異文化力の変化には、負の関係性があるということである。更にユニークな結果は、質的分析である。質的結果は、学生の渡航前と渡航後の多様な現状を説明し、これまでの異文化教育における概念を異文化能力理論へ統合することができた。また、データ統合結果からは、SCASのようなアンケート利用における方法的限界を示唆する内容となった。本研究は、手法的にも課題を残すこととなったkが、日本国内のステークホルダーに対して、研究と実践におけるエビデンスをもとにした提案をすることに成功した。 | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, gender, labor, land | 4, 5, 8, 15 |
| Zagrodney, Katherine Ann Patterson | Laporte, Audrey | An Examination of Factors Affecting the Labour Supply of Personal Support Workers in Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-03-01 | Despite rising concern over Personal Support Worker (PSW) supply, relatively little literature is available that describes the PSW workforce and addresses issues of PSW labour supply. This thesis provides an overview of the current PSW labour supply literature, followed by four analytical chapters all based on analyses of the Statistics Canada longitudinal Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID). The first empirical chapter, chapter 4, provides a comprehensive descriptive analysis of socio-demographic, family and household, health, and education characteristics of the PSW labour force with a focus on sector-specific findings across Canada. Chapter 5 examines hours worked, employment history, unionization, pensions, and wages as well as employing non-parametric techniques to understand the distributional changes in PSW wages across sectors. Chapter 6 estimates a two-part selection model to investigate the determinants of PSW wages. Chapter 7 applies a multi-nomial fixed effects model to investigate the factors which affect PSWs’ choice of care sector of employment, treating wage as endogenous to sector choice. Descriptive analyses reveal that the PSW workforce varies significantly across the sectors by many socio-demographic and job characteristics (proportions of women, older individuals, immigrants, and those belonging to visible minority groups). Wage differences by care sector were identified through both averages and non-parametric relative distribution analyses. In the econometric analyses, PSW wages were positively and significantly associated with a variety of factors, including unionization and employment in the hospital sector. Multiple variables had a significant effect on employment in one sector versus another, e.g., being female, older age, and being an informal caregiver were found to have a significant and positive effect on the decision to work in the home and community sector. Understanding factors influencing PSW labour supply outcomes such as wages and sector choice is of particular relevance when designing policies aimed at improving PSW recruitment and retention. PSW labour policies should give due consideration to the implications for existing disparities between PSWs by sector, the inter-connectedness of care sectors and the connection between PSWs and opportunities for these workers in labour markets outside of health care. | Ph.D. | health care, women, female, employment, labour, worker, wage, invest, minorit, income | 3, 5, 8, 9, 10 |
| Kelly, Mary Ellen | Davies , Scott | AN EXPLORATION OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP IN PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS IN KUWAIT: NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY, DIVERSITY AND MARKET INFLUENCES | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | AN EXPLORATION OF SCHOOL LEADERSHIP IN PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL SCHOOLS IN KUWAIT: NAVIGATING COMPLEXITY, DIVERSITY AND MARKET INFLUENCES Doctor of Education 2021 Mary Ellen Kelly Leadership, Higher and Adult Education University of Toronto Abstract The rapid and global growth of the private international school sector has raised demand for qualified school administrators to lead schools in that sector. Many school administrators hired into private international schools enter from national public school systems in other countries. The purpose of this qualitative study was to gather data on the experiences of school leaders working in private international schools in Kuwait. It probed ways those leaders transitioned from their original national education systems to teaching and leadership positions in the private international sector. Semi- structured interviews were conducted with 17 international school leaders (Vice Principals, Principals, School Heads and Superintendent) of private, international schools in Kuwait. These interviews explored how their previous experiences informed their transitions and the challenges they faced when navigating their leadership roles, and their strategic adaptations and sensemaking. Three key challenges for leaders emerged in the interviews: (1) the need to navigate highly ambiguous and uncertain roles; (2) being governed by new bureaucratic and institutional norms in highly transient and transnational spaces; and (3) reconciling their roles as educators with new marketing and business dictates. These challenges echo findings from other studies of leadership in international schools. This dissertation ends with suggestions for further research on the development of support and training for school leaders who transition into private international schools. | Ed.D. | transit, institut, governance | 11, 16 |
| Mehta, Shelly | Pelletier, Janette | An Exploratory Study of Kindergarten Children’s Understandings About the Pedagogical and Social Nature of Kindergarten | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-03-01 | This study was conducted to investigate what children saw as the pedagogical and social purposes of their kindergarten experiences during the 2010-2011 school year when education in Ontario began a transition in the length and focus of kindergarten programs. In a large suburban region of Ontario, junior kindergarten (JK) children and senior kindergarten (SK) children (N=263) from kindergarten programs in 12 elementary schools were interviewed, with sampling from the new Full-Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program (FDELK) as well as from traditional kindergarten programs where it had not yet been implemented. Using a puppet technique, children were interviewed about the pedagogical aspects of kindergarten, such as what activities they liked and what they felt were important, and what their teachers did. They were also asked about the social nature of kindergarten, for example how they would solve social problems in kindergarten, including dealing with social conflicts involving themselves and other children. Children’s responses to interview questions demonstrated that they distinguished between ‘play’ and ‘work’ (academic skills such as pre-reading and numeracy), in the activities they favoured (play) and in those they saw as being important (work), and in what they perceived their teachers do (work). The study showed a relationship between children’s responses to the interview questions and higher receptive vocabulary and early reading ability scores. Children who mentioned work-related concepts and who reported multiple strategies in peer conflict situations had higher scores in vocabulary and early reading. A common theme across most children’s responses was the importance that they attached to learning rules and to following them. Children associated their teachers’ roles with behaviour guidance and rule enforcement in addition to leading instruction and distributing academic work. Few children mentioned that their teachers’ role was to play with them. There were slight demographic differences found in this study. SK children’s pedagogical perceptions were work- and rule-related, and social perceptions included more strategic solutions to conflict in comparison to JK children. English language learners (ELL) were more likely to mention play and work to be important, and their teachers’ role to be work-related compared to English first language children (EFL). | Ph.D. | learning, invest, urban, transit | 4, 9, 11 |
| Reese, Carolyn A | Sutherland, Meghan | An Intermedial Incision: Ana Mendieta's Moving Image Media | Cinema Studies | 2021-11-01 | Ana Mendieta’s body of work has received attention and praise for contributions to performance art, sculpture, and earth-body art. This dissertation takes on a different aspect of Mendieta’s oeuvre, looking at moving image media as a central concern in her artistic process. Following methods from film and media theory that look to visual form as the production of thought, the dissertation focuses on formal elements of Mendieta’s films, producing close readings that make an argument for the centrality of mediation to her work and how this media-focus can change the way we think about Mendieta’s art as a whole. The dissertation focuses on three groups of questions that arise within Mendieta’s moving image-based work, dictating each chapter. The first questions arise from the abundance of figure-based expression in not only her paintings and performances, but also her films. How does Mendieta’s relationship to film change her abstract figure work that emerged from her early years studying painting? How does Mendieta’s addition of sound to her film X-Ray (1974) enhance the conversations about figure, identity, and mediation of such? The second group of questions concerns the mediatic iterations of truth and evidence that emerge from statements concerning violence and violence against women. I argue that Mendieta grapples, artistically, with crime scenes, public encounter, and the concept of justice as related to truth through a careful articulation of visual testimony. These questions unfold in her blood-work films including Blood Writing (1974) and Moffit Building Piece (1973). Lastly, the dissertation interrogates the way that an image of the cut emerges as an aesthetic gesture in Mendieta’s Sweating Blood (1974). This gesture alludes to a series of ideas including the erasure of the labor of editing or cutting, a job largely done by women. It also provokes the question about the role of violence in Mendieta’s work. Drawing together each chapter is Mendieta’s training in intermedia, which she completed at the University of Iowa. This intermedial practice, the dissertation affirms, informs Mendieta’s work to a degree much greater than previously explored. | Ph.D. | women, violence against women, labor, production, violence | 5, 8, 12, 16 |
| Cripps, Jenna | Stermac, Lana | An Intersectional and Ecological Approach to Undestanding Cyber-sexual Violence Vulnerability: Connecting Individual, Environmental, and Sociocultural Factors | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11-01 | Cyber-sexual violence is an emerging social and public health concern, yet our knowledge and understanding of this issue is limited. In light of this, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the factors that create a vulnerability for cyber-sexual violence at each level of social ecology, using an ecological and intersectional framework as a guide. In order to fulfill the above research objective, a cross-sectional research design was employed in which a sample of Canadian adults completed an online self-guided survey. The results of this study indicate that cyber-sexual violence vulnerability can be conceptualized as emerging from an interplay among the individual level variables of age and gender identity; the microsystem level variables of time spent online, time spent using online dating sites, and engagement in sexting; as well as the chronosystem variable of sexual violence victimization history. Moreover, when considered independently, engagement in sexting and sexual violence victimization history were the sole variables that significantly predicted cyber-sexual violence vulnerability. The results of this study indicate that in order to establish effective cyber-sexual violence prevention and intervention, we must take into account the various aspects of an individual’s identity, environment, and experiences as well as the sociocultural context in which they exist. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, public health, knowledge, gender, invest, environmental, ecolog, violence | 1, 3, 4, 5, 9, 13, 15, 16 |
| Laffafian, Azadeh | Tepass, Ulrich | Analysis of Apical Vesicle Trafficking in Drosophila Photoreceptor Cells | Cell and Systems Biology | 2019-06-01 | Vesicle trafficking is an essential process required for a multitude of cell behaviors, including cell signaling and membrane polarization. Problems in vesicle trafficking have been linked to many human diseases. I investigated the mechanisms of vesicle trafficking of apical proteins in Drosophila photoreceptor cells (PRCs). Individual ommatidia in the Drosophila compound eye house 8 PRCs that surround a matrix filled lumen, called the interrhabdomeral space (IRS). My goal was to further clarify the mechanisms that control vesicle trafficking of apical proteins including the photopigment Rhodopsin1 (Rh1), which localizes to the rhabdomere, the apical determinant Crumbs (Crb), which is enriched at the stalk membrane, and the proteoglycan Eyes shut (Eys), which is secreted into the IRS. Rh1, Crb, and Eys are critical for proper PRC development, and are linked to retinal degenerative disease in humans and flies. Therefore, in addition to furthering our understanding of polarized trafficking in a model epithelial cell, my research has implications for understanding human retinal diseases. I performed RNAi and dominant-negative-based genetic screens to assess the function of 240 trafficking-related genes in apical trafficking of Rh1, Crb, and Eys. I identified 28 attractive candidates and further analyzed 5. I found that (i) the Arf GEF protein Sec71 is required for biosynthetic traffic of both apical and basolateral proteins, that (ii) the exocyst complex and the motor protein dynein promote the secretion of Eys and Rh1, and that (iii) the syntaxin Avalanche is involved in the endocytosis of Rh1, Crb, and Eys. In addition, I executed an in depth analysis of the small GTPase Rab19, which has not been characterized to date. Using CRISPR/Cas9 I produced a Rab19 null mutant that caused light-dependent PRC degeneration. My data suggest that degeneration is due to cytoplasmic accumulation of Rh1 in PRCs following light exposure as a result of a defect in Rh1 recycling. | Ph.D. | trafficking, invest, recycl, trafficking | 5, 16, 9, 12 |
| Wang, Zhiyu | Weaver, Donald F | Anthranilate Analogs as a Druggable Target for the Proteopathy and Immunopathy of Alzheimer's Disease | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-11-01 | β-Amyloid (Aβ) triggered proteopathic and immunopathic processes are a postulated cause of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Monomeric Aβ is derived from amyloid precursor protein, whereupon it aggregates into various assemblies, including oligomers and fibrils, which disrupt neuronal membrane integrity and induce cellular damage. Aβ is directly neurotoxic, but may also induce neuroinflammation through activation of microglia. This project aims to identify drug candidates that may concomitantly inhibit Aβ aggregation and neuroinflammation, and further investigate their mechanism of actions. Previous work has demonstrated that 3-hydroxyanthranilic acid, an endogenous tryptophan metabolite, is a bifunctional inhibitor against Aβ aggregation and neuroinflammation. This study therefor sought known drugs with an anthranilate backbone, hypothesizing that anthranilate analogs may provide a platform for drug design targeting both the proteopathy and immunopathy of AD. Furosemide was initially identified as a lead compound. The results demonstrate that furosemide is a probe molecule for the treatment of neuroinflammation in AD. It inhibits proinflammatory responses, enhances anti-inflammatory responses, and promotes phagocytic activity. Mechanism studies further demonstrate that furosemide suppresses upregulation of endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-stress marker genes during inflammation, suggesting an interplay between ER-stress and inflammation. To further explore the pharmacologic effects of furosemide, this study devised and synthesized a series of furosemide analogs that target both Aβ aggregation and neuroinflammation. Forty compounds were synthesized and evaluated. Compounds 3c, 3g (SI-W052), and 20 inhibit Aβ oligomerization; 33 and 34 inhibit Aβ fibrilization; 3g and 34 inhibit the production of tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6, and nitric oxide while downregulating the expression of cyclooxygenase-2 and inducible nitric oxide synthase and promoting microglial phagocytosis, addressing the combined proteopathic-immunopathic pathogenesis of AD. This study further investigates the mechanism of compound 3g. Based on the potent activity and its structure similarity with furosemide, the mechanism study focuses on the downstream signaling of ER-stress, autophagy. The data identify a beneficial anti-neuroinflammatory role for mild ER-stress mediated autophagy. This protective mechanism is impaired during prolonged neuroinflammation. Compound 3g is capable of restoring the protective effects of autophagy through mTOR. In addition, 3g attenuates the downregulation of ER-phagy receptor TEX264 during neuroinflammation, suggesting promoted ER self-renovation. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Fung, Karen Yin Yue | Fairn, Gregory D.||Lee, Warren L. | Apolipoprotein A1 and High-density Lipoprotein as a Cargo and Regulator of Endothelial Transcytosis | Biochemistry | 2021-06-01 | Lipoproteins are circulating lipid carriers that regulate lipid homeostasis; low density lipoprotein (LDL) provides cholesterol, while high density lipoprotein (HDL) removes cholesterol from peripheral tissue. An imbalance of these processes leads to dyslipidemias and atherosclerosis, the accumulation of LDL in the arteries. To reach the target tissue, lipoproteins cross a protective monolayer of endothelial cells through transcytosis. Current understanding of transcytosis is limited and further complicated because endothelial cells vary depending on the tissue and vessel of origin. Indeed, brain endothelial cells are the most impermeant due to limited endocytic trafficking. In this dissertation, I investigate the relationship of HDL with the endothelium under physiological and pathophysiological states. Specifically, I aimed to elucidate the mechanism of HDL internalization in the brain endothelium in one study while determining the role of HDL in atherosclerosis in the other. In the brain endothelium, I found that HDL internalization is partially mediated by Scavenger receptor B1 (SR-B1) in a cholesterol-dependent, caveolae- and clathrin- independent manner. Furthermore, HDL internalization is independent of PDZK1 and the production of nitric oxide, which belong to the signaling pathway stimulated by the association of HDL with SR-B1. Together this suggests that HDL internalization is dependent on SR-B1 and cholesterol through brain- specific mechanisms. Given that atherosclerosis is also due to SR-B1-mediated transcytosis of LDL across coronary endothelial cells, I aimed to determine whether ApoA1, the protein found in HDL can prevent LDL transcytosis and how this is affected by the lipid state of ApoA1 as well as the natural mutant called Milano ApoA1. The Milano mutation results in half the plasma HDL levels, yet carriers do not develop atherosclerosis - the mechanism of which is not clear. I observed that ApoA1 can decrease LDL internalization and transcytosis by competition for SR-B1, while lipid-associated ApoA1 is more effective in inhibiting LDL internalization. The Milano protein is a slightly better inhibitor of LDL internalization but is comparable to wild-type ApoA1 in inhibiting LDL transcytosis and associating with SR-B1. Together this suggests that HDL is athero-protective by also inhibiting LDL transit across the endothelium, a process not affected by the Milano mutation. | Ph.D. | trafficking, invest, transit, production, trafficking | 5, 16, 9, 11, 12 |
| Cheung, Samantha Lee | Allen, D. Grant||Short, Steven M | Application of Molecular Tools to Determine Effects of Key Growth Factors on Cultivated Algal Biofilm Communities | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Cultivating microalgae as a biofilm may overcome some of the challenges of conventional suspended cultivation for the production sustainable biofuels and bioproducts. However, strategies to enhance the growth of product-producing species within biofilms should be investigated to optimize the profitability of algal bioprocesses. The objective of this thesis was to investigate how biofilm attachment material, wastewater, and inoculation strategy influence the accumulation of algal biofilm biomass and the composition of the community. To achieve specific and accurate quantification of target algal species, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) assays were designed to estimate the cell abundance of Chlorella vulgaris and Scenedesmus obliquus. Additionally, a workflow was developed to simultaneously estimate absolute abundance of bacterial and algal taxa by targeting 16S rRNA genes. These tools were used to determine how manipulating the growth factors influence the biomass and composition of biofilms cultivated in a parallel-plate air-lift reactor. Pretreating reactors with wastewater and growing biofilms on cotton increased biofilm biomass by up to a factor of 5.6, and inoculating S. obliquus into cotton attachment materials increased its abundance in biofilms by up to a factor of 13.5. Depending on inoculation strategy or presence of wastewater, biofilm community compositions were distinct from that in their corresponding suspensions and that in the inoculum. In conclusion, the interactions between wastewater, attachment material, and inoculation strategy can have significant, species-specific influences on algal biofilm growth, thus may be exploited to simultaneously increase biomass and the growth of target species in cultivated biofilms. The experimental work described in this thesis contributes to the suite of molecular tools available for the analysis of species in algal biofilms and demonstrates the utility of qPCR and amplicon sequencing for evaluating the performance of algal biofilm cultivation systems, specifically determining the abundance of desired species in biofilms. The developed tools and findings in this thesis can be used to inform, not only the optimization of biofilm cultivation systems for the commercialization of algal products, but also the study of mixed algal communities in the environment. | Ph.D. | water, biofuel, invest, production, waste, species, species | 6, 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Bamford, Thomas Michael David | Esmaeili, Kamran | Application of Unmanned Aerial Systems to Blast Monitoring in Open Pit Mines | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Current techniques used for monitoring the blasting process in open pit mines are manual, intermittent, and inefficient and can expose technicians to hazardous conditions. This thesis presents the application of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) for monitoring and improving blasting processes in open pit mines.A laboratory setup was developed to fast-track development of UAS applications for blast monitoring. The first application investigated was the measurement of post-blast rock fragmentation because it affects the productivity and efficiency of all downstream operations. The results of lab development showed that automated UAS fragmentation measurement produced similar accuracy and required significantly less time when compared to manual photograph analysis. The progress and results in the lab motivated field studies in open pit mines. These field studies investigated the accuracy of the 3D model generated, estimated image scale, and fragmentation in comparison with sieving analysis. Again, UAS techniques were found to produce results with similar accuracy to sieving; however, significant manual editing was required during photograph analysis. To increase the accuracy and efficiency of UAS fragmentation measurement, deep learning models were developed and trained to measure fragmentation from muck pile images. Model validation on muck pile orthophotos found that the deep learning methods achieved good accuracy compared to manual image labelling. Validation on screened piles showed that the deep learning measurement performed similar to manual photograph analysis accuracy when compared with sieving. Based on benefits found for UAS fragmentation measurement, other applications in blast monitoring and blasting process improvement in open pit mines were investigated. The UAS-based monitoring was done in three different stages during field experiments in different open pit mines. In the pre-blasting stage, production blasthole patterns were mapped to investigate drillhole alignment. To monitor the blasting process, a high-speed camera was mounted on the UAS to investigate blast initiation, sequencing, misfired holes and stemming ejection. In the post-blast stage, the muck pile was monitored to estimate fragmentation, assess muck pile configuration, and bench floor condition. The collected aerial data provided detailed information and high spatial and temporal resolution on the quality of the blasting process and highlighted significant opportunities for process improvement. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, invest, production | 4, 8, 9, 12 |
| Grathwohl, Will Sussman | Zemel, Richard||Duvenaud, David | Applications and Methods for Energy-based Models at Scale | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | Energy-Based Models (EBMs) are a class of generative models like Variational Autoencoders, Normalizing Flows, and Autoregressive Models. It is a commonly held belief that generative models like these can help to improve downstream discriminative machine learning applications. Generative models present an avenue for learning about underlying low-dimensional structure hidden within high-dimensional datasets and they can be trained on unlabeled data, enabling a pathway for building more label-efficient learning systems. Unfortunately, this dream has not been fully realized as most classes of generative models perform poorly at discriminative applications. EBMs parameterize probability distributions in a fundamentally different way than other generative models which allows them to be more expressive and have more architectural flexibility. We demonstrate that we can take advantage of this additional freedom to apply EBMs successfully to downstream discriminative tasks, notably improving performance over alternative classes of generative models and many other baselines. Unfortunately, this freedom comes at a price, and in practice, EBMs are notoriously difficult to work with, train, scale, and evaluate. The remainder of the thesis covers my work to address these issues. In particular, we explore the use of alternative (non-KL) divergences for EBM training and evaluation. Next, we explore the use of generators to improve EBM training and reduce their dependency on MCMC sampling. Finally, we present a new approach to sampling from discrete distributions which enables recently developed methods for training EBMs on continuous data to be applied to discrete data as well. | Ph.D. | learning, energy | 4, 7 |
| Weisbaum, Elli | Ahola Kohut, Sara||Wong, Agnes | Applied Mindfulness for Physicians: A Prospective Qualitative Study | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Background: Physician burnout is increasingly recognized as having adverse impacts on the wellbeing of individual physicians, and by extension the healthcare delivery systems of which they are part. Amidst growing evidence showing increased physician burnout, mindfulness has been recommended as one potential approach for addressing physician burnout and enhancing physician wellbeing. Few empirical studies have been published on Mindfulness-Based Interventions (MBIs) adapted for physicians, and none based on the foundational teachings of internationally renowned scholar, Zen Master and Noble Peace Prize Nominee Thích Nhất Hạnh. Moreover, the majority of these studies have been quantitative, leaving a gap in understanding the lived experience and practical application of mindfulness in the context of physicians’ daily lives. Methods: Through a prospective qualitative study, forty-five physicians participated in a five-week Applied Mindfulness Program for Medical Personnel (AMP-MP) on-site at a tertiary care hospital in Toronto, Canada. The program content, based on the teachings of Thích Nhất Hạnh, was tailored to meet the interests and needs specific to the population of physicians. To inform this innovative and novel approach, an iterative reciprocal relationship was established with Thích Nhất Hạnh’s international Plum Village community. Following participation in AMP-MP, semi-structured interviews were completed with twenty-eight program participants. Interviews were transcribed and then analyzed using thematic analysis. To develop rigorous high-quality qualitative research, the study was theoretically grounded in the interpretive paradigm and utilized the middle range theory the Mechanisms of Mindfulness for analysis and interpretation. Results: Based on participants’ accounts, a thematic map was developed that illustrates a learning pathway for developing mindfulness in five phases: 1) Initial intention; 2) Establishing a mindful environment; 3) Development and application of practices concepts; 4) Broadening the conceptualization of mindfulness; and 5) Mindfulness becomes “a way of life”. The data indicates that participants developed a foundational competency in Applied Mindfulness that benefitted their personal sense of wellbeing, along with enhancing their interactions with their patients, colleagues and administrators. While these findings are encouraging, further research is needed to identify necessary systems-level changes to support broader implementation and long-term maintenance of mindfulness. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, healthcare, mindfulness, learning, peace, peace | 3, 4, 16 |
| Kasirzadeh, Atoosa | Brown, James | Applying Mathematics to the Natural and Social World | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2021-11-01 | My dissertation explores the roles that mathematics plays in explanations and action-guidance. In particular, I address epistemic and ethical aspects of applying mathematics in empirical and normative inquiry. In Chapter 2, I examine whether mathematical explanations can be analyzed in terms of counterfactual conditionals. I offer three challenges for such analyses and tentatively conclude against countermathematical explanations. In Chapter 3, I extend the epistemic resources of a popular framework for applying mathematics in sciences. In particular, I use two case studies from biology and physics in order to argue that this framework for applying mathematics in the empirical sciences must be complemented by a distinct role, which I name the bridging role. I show how considering the bridging role would capture mathematical practice in the sciences in a more holistic way. In Chapter 4, I investigate and compare the conditions for applying mathematics in the empirical sciences and normative inquiry. Using two case studies from fair algorithmic decisions and the allocation of scarce resources, I identify two typical sets of different conditions for the applicability of mathematics. Finally, in Chapter 5, I explore the ramifications of the arguments from Chapter 4 to a novel field of research known as Explainable Artificial Intelligence. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Michielsen, Edwin | Sakaki, Atsuko | Assembling Solidarity: Proletarian Arts and Internationalism in East Asia | East Asian Studies | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation examines the theories and practices of proletarian international solidarity during the 1920s and 30s in East Asia, found in various writings and activities. Locating its arguments in concurrent scientific studies, linguistic theory, and literary and art criticism, this dissertation argues that such theoretico-practical manifestations of solidarity did not merely follow a party and union allegiance based on unidirectional and monolithic forms of organization, but were assembled in constant-changing and multidirectional configurations. Through practice in and experience of solidarity emerging in encounters, exchanges, and events, intellectuals, writers, visual artists, activists, workers, and farmers produced networks of international solidarity of unprecedented scale in East Asia. They understood the literary and artistic production that accompanied these transnational networks not so much supplementary to its realities but rather coeval in constructing realities beneficial to forging relations of solidarity. Grappling with hierarchal divisions inherent in capitalism, proletarian writers aimed to portray strategies for how to evade such divisive mechanisms installed by imperial and nation-state apparatuses and constructed alternative narratives of social relations and organizations of life. Chapter 1 introduces how proletarian cultural movements across East Asia prepared and organized May Day, the international day of the proletariat, to illuminate how they experimented with various artistic and literary techniques to assemble numerous proletarian struggles into cohesive relations of solidarity. Chapter 2 examines Esperanto as the aspired proletarian language and how proletarian cultural movements reconfigured language as a mode of resistance. They facilitated exchange among Esperantists, created learning materials for proletarians and sympathizers, and wrote literature in Esperanto as attempts to create mutual comprehensible narratives beyond imperial languages. Chapter 3 probes anti-natalist narratives in relation to international debates on birth control politics among proletarian movements, in which writers grappled with the tensions of how to assemble a gendered proletarian solidarity. Chapter 4 analyses the cooperation among East Asian POW’s, soldiers, workers, and activists agitating against war and militarism in proletarian literature that reveals how international solidarity was essential in resisting Japanese imperialism and fascism, presenting a transnational history of proletarian antiwar literature in East Asia. | Ph.D. | learning, gender, worker, capital, production, nationalism | 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 16 |
| Montgomery, Fielding Alexandra | Mandrak, Nicholas E||Reid, Scott M | Assessing and Mitigating Threats of Anthropogenic Disturbance to Freshwater fishes | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11-01 | Freshwater ecosystems are an essential component of biodiversity as they support 10% of the world’s known species, yet occupy | Ph.D. | water, urban, anthropogenic, fish, species, biodivers, ecosystem, biodivers, species, ecosystem | 6, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Demi, Suleyman Mohammed | Dei, George J.S | Assessing Indigenous Food Systems and Cultural Knowledges Among Smallholder Farmers in Ghana: Towards Environmental Sustainability Education and Development | Social Justice Education | 2019-11-01 | Suleyman Mohammed Demi Doctor of Philosophy Department of Social Justice Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education University of Toronto 2019 Abstract Africa is expected to experience elevated temperatures and frequent drought that will decrease crop yields by half (Boko et al., 2007). Unpredictable weather patterns negatively impact Indigenous food systems (IFSs) across Africa, including Ghana. This study sought to (a) examine Indigenous food production practices among smallholder farmers in Ghana; (b) investigate how cultural knowledge(s) offer pedagogical lessons in environmental sustainability education in Ghanaian schools; (c) identify specific environmental challenges and adaptation strategies confronting smallholder farmers in their food production activities and their implications on IFSs and farmersʼ livelihoods; and (c) identify the implications of development as understood by smallholder farmers on IFSs. The study is grounded in three theoretical frameworks: political ecology, anti-colonial theory, and Indigenous knowledge (IK) perspectives. The mixed-methods study surveyed 136 participants and selected 105 for in-depth interviews and focus group discussions in addition to workshops, participant observations, and document analysis. Quantitative data were analyzed using SPSS 24 and Excel while coding and thematization using NVivo software for qualitative data. Results indicate that although smallholder farmers use considerable IK in in their farming practices with Indigenous food crops—including soil and seed selection, food processing and preservation, management of various diseases, and adaptation to adverse environmental conditions—IK is seldom taught in schools. The study further indicates farmers face numerous environmental challenges including prolonged drought, deforestation, indiscriminate grazing, and misuse of agrochemicals, resulting in acute water shortages, extinction of Indigenous food crops, and increases in poor health and social insecurity. Participants understand development as any happenings in human life both negative and positive be it on a personal, community, or nationwide scale. The study recommends that civil society and farmer groups should demand the government of Ghana to improve its meteorological resources and services for greater precision in weather forecasting and better support farmers in growing both Indigenous and new varieties of crops. Research institutions should identify Indigenous sciences that can be included in the science curriculum to augment Western-based sciences. | Ph.D. | food system, agro, knowledge, knowledges, sustainability education, water, drought, invest, indigenous, production, weather, environmental, political ecology, forest, ecolog, soil, deforestation, institut, social justice, indigenous | 2, 4, 6, 9, 10, 16, 12, 13, 15 |
| Nguyen, Linh Viet | Diamond, Miriam L.||Arrandale, Victoria H. | Assessing Occupational Exposure to Flame Retardants and Plasticizers using Silicone Passive Samplers and other Measurement Methods | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Occupational exposure to the complex mixtures of semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs), including flame retardants (FRs) and plasticizers, used in personal care products and electronic and electrical equipment is a serious concern. This thesis documents occupational exposure to FRs and plasticizers in e-waste facilities and nail salons using silicone passive samplers and other measurement methods, including dust collection and active air sampling. The thesis advances the understanding of the use of silicone passive samplers for measuring SVOC exposure in personal exposure monitoring and assessment. Three silicone passive sampler configurations (brooches, wristbands and armbands) accumulated detectable amounts of FRs and plasticizers within a relatively short deployment time (~8 hours) in both e-waste and nail salon environments. Among these samplers, silicone brooches showed the strongest correlations with active air samplers for most compounds. The correlations between brooches and active air samplers were stronger in e-waste facilities than in nail salons. This thesis found that silicone brooches and wristbands can be useful for indicating internal exposure to SVOCs with relatively long biological half-lives, like decabromodiphenyl ether (BDE-209), but their uses for compounds with relatively short half-lives, like organophosphate esters (OPEs), is unclear. Overall, results suggest that silicone brooches and wristbands are valuable screening tools for qualitative exposure studies, but are not reliable for quantitative exposure measurement. The thesis contains the first reports of FR and plasticizer exposure at elevated levels in Canadian e-waste recycling facilities and nail salons. Higher exposures via air and dust to FRs were found in formal e-waste facilities in Ontario and Quebec compared to previous studies in formal and informal facilities across the globe. E-waste workers in an Ontario facility were exposed to FRs in respirable particles, raising concerns for worker health in e-waste environment. Exposure to some OPEs in nail salons at relatively high levels was an unexpected finding as these chemicals are known to be FRs and have not been reported to be used in personal care products. Results presented here call attention to FRs and plasticizers exposure among workers in e-waste facilities and nail salons where these chemicals are, largely, not addressed by current occupational exposure limits. | Ph.D. | worker, waste, recycl | 8, 12 |
| Miller, Erin Keely | Brooks, Dina||Mori, Brenda | Assessing the Competence of Physical Therapists who Perform Airway Suctioning with Adults | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-11-01 | Airway suctioning is a treatment technique used to remove retained secretions from the lungs. Given the higher-risk nature of this technique, it is important to ensure the competence of health care professionals who perform it. This dissertation explores the process used to develop and evaluate a new measure intended to assess the clinical competence of physical therapists who perform suctioning with adults, the Physical Therapy Competence Assessment for Airway Suctioning (PT-CAAS). Assessing the competence of physical therapists is of interest because they have fewer opportunities to perform suctioning in practice compared to other health care professionals, such as nurses and respiratory therapists. Consequently, they may be at greater risk for erosion of competence. The first study used a scoping review methodology to explore the nature and extent of measures to assess the competence of health care professionals who perform suctioning with adults. In that review, we failed to identify any existing measures that would be appropriate for current use with physical therapists who perform suctioning within the Canadian health care context. In the second study, expert consensus was used to develop an initial version of the PT-CAAS and assess its sensibility. In that study, we found preliminary evidence in support of the PT-CAAS’s face and content validity. In the third study, qualitative interviews were used and we found further evidence to support the PT-CAAS’s content validity. In the fourth study, scoring rules were developed and the inter-rater and intra-rater reliability of the PT-CAAS were assessed. We found evidence of moderate to good inter-rater reliability and good intra-rater reliability; however, the precision of the reliability estimates was a concern. Based on our findings, the initial version of the PT-CAAS was revised. Further assessments of the PT-CAAS’s reliability and validity are recommended. | Ph.D. | health care, erosion | 3, 15 |
| Rupf, Robert | Thomas, Scott | Assessing the Validity and Reliability of using One Inertial Measurement Unit to Measure Wheelchair Kinematics on Elite Wheelchair Court Sport Athlete | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2021-11-01 | The measure of wheelchair speed and rotation (kinematics), using Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) can help athletes, coaches and practitioners identify important training paradigms in wheelchair court sports. However, there are several different IMU algorithms currently used. One of these algorithms uses three IMU (3IMU), and is considered the “gold standard” for measurements in the field. It has shown high levels of validity in field testing and incorporates methods to handle common errors, but the cost of outfitting an athlete with three sensor may limit sports from using this technology. An algorithm that uses only one IMU (1IMU) placed on the wheel hub of a wheelchair, and uses the Madgwick filter to measure the orientation the sensor, has been developed to measure the speed and rotation of the chair. While some preliminary validation work on 1IMU outputs has been promising, this algorithm not been rigorously tested. However, if this algorithm proves to be reliable and valid, the cost of measuring wheelchair kinematics for a whole team becomes substantially less. The purpose of this investigation was to further assess the ability of 1IMU to accurately and reliability measure continuous and discrete kinematic data, during basic movement patterns in wheelchair court sports. Elite wheelchair basketball and wheelchair rugby players were recruited, and they performed maximal sprint and agility tests. The validity and the reliability of the 1IMU outputs were measured and compared to 3IMU as well as timing gates and video. Further, the impact on these kinematic outputs because of poor measurements in wheel sizes as a reduction in sampling rates from 200Hz to 25Hz was evaluated. It was determined that 1IMU provides good to excellent levels of agreement with 3IMU and video for most kinematic data. Further, it was determined that sampling rates of 100Hz should be used to ensure that kinematic metrics defining peak linear and rotational speeds are preserved. However, it was also determined that further investigations are required to generate more accurate data for linear speed during turns. Overall, it is recommended that 1IMU can be used in testing protocols to measure wheelchair kinematics. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Asare, Afua Oteng | Wong, Agnes M.F.||Maurer, Daphne | Assessing the Value and Impacts of Vision Care Services for Children in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | BACKGROUND: Refractive errors and amblyopia cause the most vision impairment in children. Early vision testing is crucial to prevent permanent impairment. The uptake of optometry exams amongst children in Ontario is unknown. Limited evidence exists on the accessibility and value of vision care services. This evidence is needed for equitable and cost-effective services to prevent needless vision loss in Ontario. OBJECTIVES: To 1) determine the uptake of comprehensive eye exams and test its associations with socioeconomic status amongst young children in Ontario, 2) synthesize and appraise the literature on economic evaluations of vision screening to detect vision impairment in children, and 3) determine the cost-effectiveness of (a) mandatory comprehensive eye exams by optometrists once between 2 to 5 years of age (CEE); and (b) universal school screening by contracted screeners at age 5 years (USS) compared to (c) usual care (i.e., vision screening as part of well-child visits annually from age 3 to 5 years [WCC(RS)] in Toronto, Ontario. METHODS: A population-based cohort study, systematic review of the literature, and a cost-utility analysis using a probabilistic health-state microsimulation model. RESULTS: Sixty-five percent of children in Ontario had at least one comprehensive eye exam by their 7th birthday, with children in neighborhoods of least material deprivation having a higher odds [adjusted odds ratio (aOR) 1.43; 95%CI 1.36, 1.51] compared to children in most deprived neighborhoods. The review yielded 13 economic evaluation studies, six of high quality with incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICER) between C$1,056 to C$151,274/case detected or prevented and between C$9,429 to C$30,254,703/QALY gained. From the societal perspective of the cost-utility analysis, USS was less costly and less effective than WCC(RS), and the ICER was C$500/QALY gained comparing CEE to WCC(RS). There was significant parameter uncertainty in the probabilistic analysis. At a willingness-to pay of C$50,000/QALY gained, USS was cost-effective in 19% of iterations relative to WCC(RS), CEE was cost-effective in 26% of iterations relative to WCC(RS). CONCLUSION: Low socioeconomic status is associated with poor uptake of comprehensive eye exams in Ontario however, USS and CEE are not cost-effective alternatives to usual care screening [WCC(RS)] at a willingness-to-pay of C$50,000/QALY gained. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, equitable, equitable, equit, accessib | 1, 4, 10, 11 |
| Navaranjan, Garthika | Brook, Jeffrey R.||Diamond, Miriam L. | Association Between Early Life Exposure to Phthalates and Organophosphate Esters and the Development of Childhood Asthma and Wheeze | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06-01 | Asthma is the most common chronic disease among children. Children spend most of their early life indoors, exposed to chemicals used in consumer and building products, which may present a risk to asthma development, including phthalates, used as plasticizers, and organophosphate esters (OPEs), used as flame retardants and plasticizers. Few epidemiological studies have examined early life exposure to these chemicals and the development of childhood asthma, as well as the interplay with genetics, which was examined by this dissertation using data from the Canadian CHILD Cohort Study. Using urine samples from 1,578 children collected across early life and 726 house dust samples collected at 3-4 months, I found that Canadian children have ubiquitous early life exposure to phthalates and OPEs. I found higher phthalate metabolite concentrations among children in lower income families. OPE concentrations were higher in dust collected here compared to other studies, possibly due to sampling of the child’s sleeping environment that contains sources of OPEs and phthalates. Using a case-cohort study, I examined the association between early life exposure to phthalates and OPEs, measured in house dust samples collected at 3-4 months, and the development of asthma at 5 years and recurrent wheeze between 2 to 5 years. I found a four-fold increased risk of asthma associated with the highest concentration quartile of di(2-ethyl-hexyl) phthalate (DEHP) and a two-fold increased risk of recurrent wheeze across all quartiles of DEHP compared to the lowest quartile. For OPEs, I observed a two to four-fold increased risk of asthma diagnosis across quartiles of tris(2-butoxyethyl) phosphate exposure compared to the lowest quartile. Using a Genetic Risk Score (GRS) combining multiple genetic loci, I examined whether genetics modifies the association between early life phthalate exposure and the risk of childhood asthma and recurrent wheeze. The GRS did not modify the association with childhood asthma or recurrent wheeze. These results highlight the need to reduce exposure to phthalates and OPEs during early life, especially the first year of life, and the importance of exposures among low-income populations and within the sleeping microenvironment. | Ph.D. | low-income, income, consum | 1, 10, 12 |
| Jeblee, Serena Frances | Hirst, Graeme | Automating disease diagnosis and cause-of-death classification from medical narratives using event extraction and temporal ordering | Computer Science | 2021-06-01 | The digitization of health records has provided a wealth of data that can be used for machine learning tasks such as automated diagnosis of illness or cause of death. However, crucial contextual information such as time and duration have often been omitted from such models. Although the words and phrases describing time can be modeled with semantic representations such as word embeddings, these representations often fail to capture the temporal value of such time phrases. The goal of this work is to present models for identifying symptoms and time information in the text of different types of health documents (while explicitly modeling temporal value), determining the chronological order of the extracted symptoms, and classifying the documents according to diagnosis or cause-of-death. Since the style and content of health text documents can be widely variable, these models are evaluated on three different types of health records: clinical notes (formal written health records), verbal autopsies (informal written records of deaths that occurred outside of health facilities), and transcripts of clinical conversations (verbal dialogues between medical staff, patients, and caregivers). We conduct end-to-end disease classification using neural network models trained on free-text narratives. The system includes supervised learning models for event and time extraction, listwise temporal ordering of events, and classification. We find that classification models that include event timeline representations perform better than methods that use only the raw text of the narrative. Furthermore, we present several models and metrics for listwise temporal ordering, including the ability to model simultaneous events. These models can be applied to different types of medical narratives, and can improve the performance of automated classifiers which can be used in real-world contexts to improve cause-of-death coding efficiency and clinical decision support. | Ph.D. | illness, learning | 3, 4 |
| Zhao, Xu | Yuan, Ding | Automating Log-based Software Debugging on Distributed Server Stacks | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Debugging is one of the oldest yet hardest problems in the computer engineering field. People have been spending billions of dollars each year fighting with software bugs, yet debugging is still a highly inefficient process that requires a lot of manual efforts. While computer systems are getting more complicated, manual debugging has become extremely time-consuming. This thesis aims to automate debugging from a log-based perspective. Log-based debugging,or printf debugging, is important for three reasons. First, logs contain rich debugging information. They are printed by log printing statements that are manually inserted by software developers. Second, logs are cheap. The cost of printing logs is often lower comparing with other tools. Finally, logs are sometimes the only source of runtime information in production environments. However, current log-based debugging is largely manual, which has severe limitations. First, it is hard for manual logging to control the log quality. In practice, people don’t spend enough time on writing log printing statements. Second, logs are often outputted in high volumes,making it hard for manual analysis. This thesis aims to solve these two problems. First, it solves the problem of “where to log” based on the following observation: the decision of where to print log messages is a trade-off between their usefulness in debugging and the cost to print them. We further define the logs’ usefulness by their abilities to differentiate execution paths. On top of this, we build a tool, Log20, that can automatically insert the optimal log printing statements under a given performance threshold. Second, it solves the problem of “how to correlate the logs”. Correlating log messages from the same execution flow is a critical step in debugging, where an execution flow is a sequence of computer instructions triggered by a user request. We solve this problem by proposing the Flow Reconstruction Principle: programmers will insert sufficient information in the logs in order to reconstruct the execution in post-mortem diagnosis. We further apply this principle in the Stitch tool, and demonstrate its usefulness by performing real world system diagnosis tasks in a user study. | Ph.D. | trade, consum, production | 10, 12 |
| Fatigati, Michael | Black, Deborah L | Avicenna on Emotions: Their Nature and Significance for Knowledge and Morality | Medieval Studies | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation examines the view of emotions found in the writings of the philosopher and medical doctor Avicenna (Ibn Sīna, d. 1098 CE). Avicenna is known to have influenced the course of cognitive psychology in the Muslim East and the Latin West, yet little has been written on his affective psychology. Over the course of five chapters, I examine his accounts of animal and human emotions, their physiology, and their relation to voluntary action and moral dispositions. Avicenna is notable for the degree to which he highlights uniquely human emotions, while simultaneously giving attention to the complexity of emotions able to be felt by animals. He also stands out for the way that he integrates his knowledge of physiology into his analysis of philosophical questions. Emotions, according to Avicenna, are acts of the animal motive faculty, caused by cognitions of varying complexity. For example, uniquely human emotions are caused by cognitions of which only humans are capable, but they are fundamentally actualizations of the same motive faculty shared by animals and humans alike. Emotions are also to be understood as inclinations (Ar: inbiʿāthāt/nizāʿāt), meaning that they incline us towards various objects and courses of action, but do not on their own initiate any type of movement. This dissertation includes a full translation of Avicenna’s section on emotion in his Healing: Rhetoric. | Ph.D. | knowledge, animal, animal | 4, 14, 15 |
| Lee, Dennis Sang Won | Gommerman, Jennifer L | B Cell Responses in an Animal Model of Neuroinflammation – Implications for Multiple Sclerosis | Immunology | 2021-11-01 | Multiple sclerosis is a complex disease with no definitive cause or cure. Positive clinical trials such as those with anti-CD20 and negative clinical trials such as those with TACI-Ig – all of which deplete B cell subsets – have revealed unexpected complexities with respect to the role of B cells in MS. In this thesis, I use multiple models of experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) to characterize B cells functions during EAE, from antigen-driven activation to trafficking. In chapter 1, using Aicda-/- and Ung-/- mice, I found that class switch recombination is critically required for the full manifestation of B cell-dependent (hMOG) EAE. In chapter 2, using competitive and mixed bone marrow chimeras, I determined that, while mice that lack CCR6 on B cells exhibit an altered germinal center reaction, these mice exhibit normal B cell accumulation in the CNS and unimpaired B cell-dependent (hMOG) EAE. In chapter 3, I showed that MOG35-55-induced EAE is more severe in Aicda-/- mice and this increased severity is associated with alterations in the microbiota. Gaining a better understanding of the function of B cells in EAE provides opportunities to improve B cell directed therapies for patients living with MS. | Ph.D. | trafficking, animal, animal, trafficking | 5, 16, 14, 15 |
| Thiessen, Torrey | Poon, Joyce||Menezo, Sylvie | Backside-integrated III-V-on-Silicon Lasers and Modulators | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | III-V-on-silicon (III-V-on-Si) bonding has emerged as a viable way to integrate lasers with Si photonic circuits at the wafer-scale. However, hybrid III-V-on-Si integration is often plagued by high thermal impedance and difficulty in co-integration with other materials. In this thesis, we design and demonstrate the first active devices on a new Back-Side-on-Buried-Oxide (BSoBOX integration process, in which the III-V material is introduced from the back of the silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer to address the common problems of III-V-on-Si integration. While designing and characterizing devices on the BSoBOX platform, the merits and limitations of the platform are also evaluated. First, we develop an optimization technique for producing short, broadband transitions between the SOI waveguides and the hybrid III-V-on-Si waveguides. The eigenmode-expansion based optimization process manipulates the lengths of short sub-tapers to produce a transition that maintains adiabaticity in the shortest length possible. Compared to an 80 µm long linear taper, with a power transfer efficiency of ∼85% at 1310 nm, the optimized design has a length of 80 µm and an efficiency ≥99.5% across the O-band. Next, two types of lasers are evaluated. We demonstrate distributed feedback lasers with threshold currents as low as 32 mA and 20 mW of waveguide-coupled power from a single end of the device. The side mode suppression ratio (SMSR) is around 50 dB within the range of 20 °C-60 °C and operation up to 80 °C is observed. We also demonstrate the first III-V-on-Si discrete-mode lasers, with the best device exhibiting 17 mW of waveguide-coupled power, a Lorentzian linewidth of 18 kHz and a SMSR ≥60 dB. The performance of these devices is comparable to the state-of-the-art III-V-on-Si lasers, despite this being the first iteration of the BSoBOX platform. Lastly, the first high-speed InP-on-Si modulators are designed and characterized on a frontside integrated platform that can be later converted to BSoBOX integration. The DC efficiency is 1.3 V·cm, roughly twice as high as lateral PN junction designs, while maintaining a comparable bandwidth of 30 GHz. Simulations show the BSoBOX designs will lead to a ∼4x improvement in efficiency and roughly 50% improvement in bandwidth compared to the current work. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Liu, Kuan | Pullenayegum, Eleanor M | Bayesian causal inference with longitudinal data | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | Bayesian statistical methods are becoming increasingly in demand in clinical and public health research. In the context of causal inference, Bayesian methods propagate estimation uncertainty, allow direct probability summaries of the causal parameters of interest, and afford us the ability to incorporate prior clinical/expert beliefs. Despite their unique estimation features and wide applicability, Bayesian causal inference methods for handling longitudinal data under observational designs have received little attention in the statistical literature. Under the observational setting, treatment assignment at each clinical visit follows a patient-adaptive decision strategy, where the clinician tailors treatment to the individual patient based on the current and past clinical measurements, as well as the treatment histories. Given the inherent time-dependent structure with longitudinal data, any additional data complexity, such as a repeatedly measured outcome, censoring, and high dimensional time-dependent covariates, brings substantial analytical challenges. In this thesis, two novel Bayesian causal methods to account for time-dependent confounding and time-dependent treatment in longitudinal observational studies are proposed. The first method extends Bayesian propensity score analysis and Bayesian marginal structural models to estimate visit-specific treatment effects with a repeatedly measured outcome. The second method introduces a Bayesian latent class approach to achieve causal inference from a joint model of time-dependent covariates, treatment and an end of study outcome. These proposed methods are compared to existing frequentist causal methods in simulation studies and their use is illustrated using real-world pediatric clinical data. | Ph.D. | public health | 3 |
| Stringer, Alex | Stafford, Jamie | Bayesian Inference for Extended Latent Gaussian Models | Statistics | 2021-11-01 | Additive regression models cover the analysis of many types of data which exhibit complex dependence structures. Models for continuous, bounded or unbounded count, multivariate and multinomial, time-to-event, and other types of data exhibiting nonlinear covariate effects, group-specific dependence as well as serial dependence in time and space, and other types of complexities can all be fit under this single framework. Such generality is handled using a Bayesian hierarchical model which accommodates quantification of uncertainty for all unknown parameters but introduces computational challenges. In this thesis I introduce a novel class of additive models called Extended Latent Gaussian Models and an algorithm for fitting these models using approximate Bayesian inference. The new class covers a much broader range of models than previous classes and the new algorithm is faster and scales to larger datasets than previous algorithms. I implement the method in open-source software which is transparent and accessible to statisticians and include a detailed discussion of the theoretical properties of the approximations, a subject which has remained unaddressed in the literature for similar existing approaches. I demonstrate the utility of the new model class and algorithm in seven substantial examples. To illustrate the breadth of the ELGM class specifically I fit a fully Bayesian log-Gaussian Cox process for inferring the spatial pattern in Malaria risk in Madagascar at a high resolution where the observed data are aggregated to predefined administrative regions; a Cox Proportional Hazards model with partial likelihood and a latent spatial process for inferring the spatial pattern in Leukemia survival times in Northern England; and a multivariate model for estimating the mass of the Milky Way Galaxy accounting for measurement uncertainties. I then fit four additional examples more briefly to illustrate the use of the new software: a simple model for infectious disease spread; another astrophysical model; an over-dispersed, zero-inflated mixed Poisson regression where the mean, dispersion, and zero-inflation parameters depend on covariates and random effects; and a zero-inflated geostatistical binomial regression for mapping the spatial pattern in risk from a tropical disease in West Africa, for which no Bayesian implementation previously existed. | Ph.D. | accessib, land | 11, 15 |
| Hitchings, Philip Matthew Norman | Bertrand, Jacques J.B. | Bayesian Optimal Allocation of Search Effort in Archaeological Survey: Seeking the Late Neolithic in Wadi Qusaybah, Northern Jordan | Anthropology | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation explores the use of predictive modelling and optimal allocation in an archaeological survey designed to optimize the allocation of effort in the search for evidence of Late Neolithic activity in Wadi Qusaybah, northern Jordan. The allocation algorithm assigns daily effort to discrete survey units delineated in a Geographic Information System (GIS). These units are landscape elements that are likely fragments of early Holocene land surfaces that have survived millennia of erosion, sedimentation, and anthropogenic alteration. Demarcation of these landscape elements is the first in a two-step predictive model. The second step involves eliciting probabilities of detecting Late Neolithic remains in each search space from experts on the Late Neolithic of the southern Levant and especially northern Jordan. These a priori estimates are updated iteratively in a Bayesian framework as each day’s survey provides new information. New information comes in the form of estimated coverage for each space, as determined by multiplying “sweep widths” by the total length of surveyors’ search paths, coupled with either discovery or non-discovery of Late Neolithic artifacts. These Bayesian updates result in posterior probabilities that serve as new priors for the following iteration and are used by the optimal allocation algorithm to determine how much effort, if any, the survey team should expend in each search space on the next day’s survey. Use of this method in Wadi Qusaybah led to the discovery of several certain and several candidate Late Neolithic sites. As these sites are often small, ephemeral, and difficult for conventional surveys to detect, this approach allows us to evaluate hypotheses about a Late Neolithic settlement system, while also demonstrating that conventional archaeological surveys are likely overestimating their thoroughness. | Ph.D. | anthropogenic, land, erosion | 13, 15 |
| Youssef, Joseph | Daswani, Girish||Coleman, Simon | Becoming Saints: Coptic Orthodox Monasticism, Exemplarity, Negotiating Christian Virtue | Anthropology | 2019-06-01 | Based on 13 months of transnational ethnographic fieldwork between Egypt, Southern California, and Toronto, this dissertation examines questions around exemplarity, morality, and the cultivation of virtue among Coptic Orthodox Christians. Specifically, this thesis investigates the relationship between Coptic monks and the wider Coptic community. Many Copts view monasticism as a morally exemplary way of life. The monk as one who has forsaken all social ties and lives in the desert is regarded as one who has attained the highest form of virtue. This view results in different levels of engagement with monastic practice and competing voices for what it means to be a Coptic Christian. As will be demonstrated through ethnographic details, there is a gap between the ideals of the Coptic monastic imaginary and the lived reality of negotiating Christian virtue for monks and laity alike. Furthermore, this dissertation unpacks the ways in which Coptic monasticism is (re-)imagined and (re-)produced in North America and how Coptic subjectivity is (re-)negotiated in relation to Egypt and the Mother Church. | Ph.D. | invest, nationalism | 9, 16 |
| SPRING, Lauren | Goldstein, Tara | Beyond PTSD: Moving Military Trauma out of the Realm of Psychiatry and into an Arts-Based Education and Community-Oriented Framework | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | Guided by the question: “what is military trauma, really?” this two-part research project is underscored by the assumption that hegemonic bio-medical framings of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and resulting treatment approaches fall short and that military trauma is significantly more complex, gendered, morally injurious and community-based than popular culture and well-intentioned “de-stigmatization” campaigns suggest. Employing a feminist and mad-informed existential embodied phenomenological methodology, the initial stage of this research involved in-depth narrative interviews with nine veterans of the Canadian Armed Forces who participated in the recent war in Afghanistan and with three health care workers who specialize in veteran care. In order to move conversations about military trauma out of the realm of psychiatry and into an adult education and community-oriented framework, the data from the interviews was transformed into a research-based play that was written with the express objective of transcending individual experiences of madness into a critique of culture, systems, and dominant practices and convictions. This play also seeks to offer a counterpoint to popular naturalistic and documentary approaches to creating research-based theatre that lay claim to an “aesthetics of objectivity” as the “view from nowhere” such approaches assume, is both impossible and undesirable. Drawing instead on mad approaches to storytelling, feminist theory, magic realism and expressionism in the visual arts, and Brechtian theatrical estrangement devices, this play embraces embodiment and subjectivity and encourages deep emotional and intellectual engagement. The playwriting process necessitated a secondary research question: “How might the creation of a ‘mad aesthetic’ in research-based theatre disrupt both biomedical ways of conceptualizing military trauma and objectivist attempts at representing mad stories?” In order to answer this question, the play also upends classic war hero narratives and the militarized hyper-masculine ideals they propagate. Such narratives and ideals risk further isolating traumatized veterans from their own experiences, knowledge, and coping strategies as well as from members of the public who have not been to war but who, if given access to the deep nuances of military trauma and moral injury, might be vital allies in helping veterans who are suffering transition from military to civilian life. | Ph.D. | mental health, health care, knowledge, gender, feminis, worker, transit | 3, 4, 5, 8, 11 |
| Hanson, Cori | Hildyard, Angela | Beyond the Numbers: An Intersectional Exploration of the Undergraduate Engineering Student Experience | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | The engineering profession seeks to diversify the people studying and practicing engineering. In Canada, diversity initiatives have focused on achieving gender parity for women, but progress has been slow. Little research exists that considers cultural systemic barriers, or the experiences of engineering students which could help explain why more progress to increase diversity in the engineering profession has not been made. This study explores inclusivity through the experiences of undergraduate students studying engineering at Ontario universities. Utilizing intersectionality as my framework and approach, I considered the complexities of students’ experiences through the dimensions of oppression and multiple identities. This mixed-methods study collected quantitative and qualitative responses from fifty-two undergraduate engineering students through an online survey and semi-structured one-on-one interviews with ten of the participants to answer the following research questions: how do students from marginalized groups describe their experiences in engineering education and how do those experiences vary for students of different genders, races, sexual orientations, disabilities, and socio-economic statuses? This study explored how identity impacted students’ experiences, whether students felt advantaged or disadvantaged by those experiences, and what students think their universities could do to provide a more inclusive learning environment. The key finding of this study was that students’ identities did impact their experiences in engineering education. Participants shared stories of marginalization and limited access to the whole engineering experience, meaning some students were underserved by their engineering programs and not fully engaged by the opportunities available to them. Women, queer students, racialized students, and students from lower socio-economic status described being excluded from the engineering student culture and community. Students from lower socio-economic backgrounds, students with disabilities, Black students, and women described experiences of othering, microaggressions, and discrimination. The stories and experiences shared by participants provides some evidence of a culture in engineering education that upholds maleness, whiteness, ableism, and classism. This finding implies that to be effective diversity initiatives need to address the culture and systemic socio-cultural constructs of power found in engineering education. Based on my findings and implications I provide recommendations for future research and outline strategies that engineering educators might utilize to make engineering more inclusive. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, disabilit, learning, equity, gender, women, queer, equit, underserved, marginalized | 1, 3, 4, 5, 10 |
| Anwer, Muhammad Abdul Samad | Naguib, Hani E. | Bio and Synthetic Derived Carbon Based Nanofillers for Fracture Enhancement of Epoxy for Structural Composite Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-11-01 | Nanocomposites are highly sought after for their potential to solve a vast array of engineering problems. One application of nanofillers is the enhancement in fracture and mechanical properties of structural composites when utilized as reinforcement for the matrix resin. This is important for epoxy matrices, which is the primary matrix for many structural composites, including those used in aircrafts. Many of the nanofillers currently utilized/suggested in research and practice to reinforce epoxies are expensive with complex production processes. The focus of this research is to develop methodologies to effectively incorporate carbon nanofibers (CNFs) and chitin nano-whiskers (CNWs) into epoxy matrices for enhancing its fracture, mechanical and thermal characteristics. CNFs are synthetically produced, high performance fillers also comprised of the same fundamental graphitic planes in carbon nanotubes, at a fraction of their cost. Chitin is a vastly available bio-resource from which can be extracted CNWs; similar in mechanical performance to cellulose nano-whiskers. The primary challenges for incorporation of these fillers are to maximize dispersion and filler-matrix adhesion. For the dispersion and adhesion of CNFs in epoxy, two approaches are adopted: 1) development of a novel method for solvent extraction and functionalization in two stages assisted by shear and 2) hybridization of CNF-epoxy nanocomposites with GNPs which are two dimensional nanoparticles. While the latter approach involved less fabrication complexity, the former resulted in significant enhancement of the fracture and dispersion characteristics of epoxy CNFs nanocomposites. Despite possessing richer surface functionality than nanocellulose, research in CNWs reinforcement of polymer matrices has been more limited, particularly in the case of epoxy CNWs nanocomposites. Through this research, optically transparent epoxy-CNWs nanocomposites are developed with enhanced fracture, mechanical and thermal characteristics. Rate dependency on the evolution of fracture behavior is characterized and intriguing characteristics of CNWs reinforcement is revealed, such as the tendency to promote localized ductility at the crack tip. This research is expected to pave way to further interest and development of composites of CNFs and CNWs for enhancement of not just epoxy, but other polymer matrices. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Orrell, Kathleen Elizabeth | Melnyk, Roman A | Biochemical and Genomic Insights into the Translocation of Large Clostridial Toxins across Host Cell Membranes | Biochemistry | 2021-06-01 | Large Clostridial Toxins (LCTs) are a family of bacterial exotoxins that infiltrate and destroy target cells and tissues. Members of the LCT family include C. difficile toxins TcdA and TcdB, P. sordellii toxins TcsL and TcsH, C. novyi toxin TcnA and C. perfringens toxin TpeL. From the 19th century to present day, LCT-secreting bacteria have been isolated from the wounds, blood and organs of diseased individuals, and LCTs have been implicated as the primary virulence factors in a variety of infections, including C. difficile infection and wound-associated gas gangrene. To invade cells and cause infection, LCTs utilize their multi-domain architecture – containing a glycosyltransferase domain (GTD), a cysteine protease domain (CPD) and a receptor-binding and translocation domain (T-domain) – to bind host cell receptors, triggering internalization into acidified vesicles and translocation of the cytotoxic GTD across the endosomal membrane and into the cytosol. The focus of this thesis is on the translocation of LCTs across the endosomal membrane, a process that is essential for intoxication yet remains poorly understood. Using biochemical and genomic approaches, we have determined the membrane-inserting regions within the LCT T-domain that form the putative translocation pore, and have uncovered an evolutionarily conserved translocase that is present in the T-domain of LCTs and distant homologues. We also have shown that LCT homologues are functional translocases of novel, cytotoxic proteins, and may function as plant pathogens in the environment. In summary, this thesis provides new insights into the elusive process of LCT translocation and future perspectives for understanding LCT translocation and LCT homologue function. | Ph.D. | conserv, conserv | 14, 15 |
| Steadman, Patrick | Frankland, Paul W | Biological Network Tuning in Memory Systems Consolidation | Medical Science | 2020-06-01 | The growth of civilization stems from our collective ability to encode, store and retrieve more facts than ever before; progressing from oral histories to vast digital databases. Central to that progress has been our own individual ability to encode, store and retrieve information. The brain’s mechanisms for processing experiences reflect a pillar of neuroscience research. Systems consolidation is the process by which encoded features of an experience are stored and refined within a network of neurons. The work presented in this thesis examines the tuning of these neuronal networks as a component of systems consolidation. First, it finds that the formation of new oligodendrocytes and myelin supports successful memory consolidation. Second, it finds that these same processes contribute to the synchrony of neural activity between the hippocampus and anterior cingulate cortex following learning, and that without this synchrony, consolidation is impaired. Third, it develops a method for mapping brain-wide neuronal networks. Fourth, it finds that unsuccessful remote memory retrieval, due to neurogenesis-mediated forgetting, surprisingly results in a state of global cortical synchrony relative to the successful retrieval state. Fifth, that this failed retrieval stems from the neuronal network being biased to motifs for processing external rather than internal cues. This is in contrast to successful retrieval, where the consolidated network emphasizes internal cues and motifs. Together, these results show how the tuning of a neuronal network facilitates memory systems consolidation and that incomplete tuning biases the state of the network to one where external information processing dominates. These findings collectively contribute new data on the circuit mechanisms underlying memory systems consolidation and retrieval. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Attwells, Sophia Meera Stephanie | Meyer, Jeffrey H | Biomarkers of Neuroinflammation in Psychiatric Illnesses and their Relationship to Anti-inflammatory Medication | Pharmacology | 2019-11-01 | Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide, with inadequate response to current pharmacotherapies being present in over 50% of cases. A logical explanation for treatment resistance is that MDD and other similarly treatment resistant psychiatric illnesses such as obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), may have multiple pathologies which present treatments do not effectively target. Interestingly, neuroinflammatory and immunological abnormalities have been documented in some patients with psychiatric disorders, leading to a theory of inflammatory processes affecting the brain and contributing to the pathogenesis of psychiatric illnesses. Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging enables the quantification of gliosis by measuring the level of translocator protein (TSPO), which is increased during neuroinflammation. Accordingly using [18F]FEPPA PET, in study one, we examined the relationship of TSPO distribution volume (VT), in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and insula (INS) to duration of untreated MDD. In study two, we determined whether TSPO VT is elevated in the cortico-striato-thalamo-cortical circuit of OCD. In study three, we assessed a serum blood marker to predict PFC, ACC, and INS TSPO VT in unmedicated MDD and treatment resistant depressed (TRD) participants and dorsal caudate TSPO VT in OCD participants. In study four, we determined whether oral minocycline can reduce elevated PFC, ACC, and INS TSPO VT in TRD participants. In study five, we determined the relationship of PFC TSPO VT to reduction in symptom severity associated with celecoxib administration. In study one, the results suggest that there is an increasing glial response in MDD reflecting neuroprogression of this illness. In study two, the results strongly argue that neuroinflammation, in particular glial activation is a pathological abnormality of OCD. In study three, the results suggest systematic assessment of selected peripheral inflammatory markers is promising for developing low cost predictors of TSPO VT. In study four, the results suggest that oral minocycline is not effective enough to elicit a change in TSPO VT in MDD. In study 5, we demonstrate that oral celecoxib has a differential effect on depression symptom severity, depending on the level of microglial activation as indexed by the baseline TSPO VT value. | Ph.D. | disabilit, illness, emission | 3, 7 |
| Timerman, David | Barrett, Spencer C.H. | Biomechanical and Ecological Insights on Evolutionary Transitions from Animal to Wind Pollination in Flowering Plants | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-06-01 | Wind pollination (anemophily) has evolved from animal pollination (zoophily) at least 65 times among angiosperm lineages and is associated with a characteristic syndrome of floral traits, probably reflecting convergent adaptation to aerodynamically driven processes. In this thesis, I investigated the floral trait modifications promoting wind pollination, their fitness effects in contrasting environments, and the evolutionary significance of ambophily, in which both wind and insect pollination occur. I focused on traits promoting pollen release in air because it is the critical first stage of wind pollination and is constrained in most zoophilous taxa. I begin by reviewing the aerodynamic principles governing pollen release to identify likely targets of selection for anemophily. I then performed a comparative biomechanical analysis of pollen release using Thalictrum (Ranunculaceae), an herbaceous genus with multiple independent transitions between pollen vectors. I demonstrated that turbulence-induced vibration of stamens is the primary mechanism of pollen release, and is more likely to occur in species with lower natural frequencies, an intrinsic property of materials in which length and mass vary inversely. I also investigated intraspecific variation in natural frequency and its effects on fitness in dioecious ambophilous T. pubescens. I detected heritable population differences in natural frequency and thus pollen release, and demonstrated using field experiments that selection favours lower natural frequencies when pollinators limit seed set. I then investigated the evolutionary stability of ambophily in T. pubescens by evaluating how variation in density and sex ratio affects pollination success through animal versus wind pollination. I demonstrated that fitness losses resulting from declining pollinator service are offset by wind pollination suggesting that the reproductive flexibility provided by ambophily may be adaptive in populations facing demographic uncertainty. Finally, I examined factors causing male-biased sex ratios in T. pubescens. Several lines of evidence indicated that the bias is likely established early in the life cycle, perhaps at the seed stage, perhaps reflecting an adaptive bias of the primary sex ratio. My thesis provides novel results and insights on the biomechanics of wind pollination and the microevolutionary processes operating during the early stages in the transition from animal to wind pollination. | Ph.D. | wind, invest, transit, species, animal, ecolog, species, animal | 7, 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| DeMichelis, Carey Rose | Volpe, Richard | Biomedical Refusal: Pediatric Decision-making and the Settler State | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation focuses on a recent case in which an 11-year-old Mohawk girl (whom I call Lyra) attempted, along with her family, to refuse chemotherapy in favor of Haudenosaunee healing practices. Drawing from 3 years of fieldwork, I unpack Lyra’s case at two interrelated levels. At the micro level, I foreground the lived experience of Lyra and her family, as well as the clan mothers, healers, clinicians, and state agents who became entangled in her care. I paint a thick picture of the decision to resist treatment and then of sticking to and living with that decision – one that illuminates the way participants’ moral worlds, discursive practices, and local epistemologies came together to shape their decision-making. At a macro level, I illuminate the sociocultural mechanisms and ideologies that structure “choice” in pediatric decision-making. Young people like Lyra who resist treatment reveal an intricate legal and medical infrastructure that dictates who is seen as capable of making medical decisions and who is not. Throughout I attend to the complex ways Indigenous sovereignty is asserted in settler states. | Ph.D. | settler, girl, infrastructure, indigenous, indigenous, sovereignty | 4, 5, 9, 10, 16 |
| Spraakman, Sylvie | Drake, Jennifer | Bioretention Systems for Stormwater Management: Assessment, Performance and Changes Over Time | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Bioretention systems function to mimic natural hydrology, by retaining stormwater runoff from routine rain events and returning it to infiltration and evapotranspiration, instead of runoff. This thesis consists of four studies which answer these research questions: How do we assess performance, and how does bioretention performance change over time? A systematic scoping review of 320 studies found that bioretention performance is defined in terms of hydrologic controls, while investigations into mechanisms of contaminant transport and fate are overlooked. Bioretention field research has been primarily conducted by a small number of institutions (26 institutions were responsible for 50% of the research) located mainly in high income countries, and primarily on new systems for a short period of time. Following the definition of performance, a field survey of mature systems (>3 years operation) was conducted on bioretention cells across Ontario, Canada. Saturated hydraulic conductivity (KSat) (a measure of hydrologic performance) was above minimum guidelines for all sites, and KSat improved for 6 of 9 sites. Soil-water interaction properties, such as plant available water and wilting point, more closely resembled loam soils than sandy soils, which may be due to the development of a soil structure over time. A more in-depth analysis of bioretention performance was conducted using a bioretention cell located in Vaughan, Ontario. The hydrologic and water quality performance was compared over two monitoring periods: new (immediately post-construction) and mature (4-5 years post-construction). The hydrologic performance was maintained in the mature system (median volume reductions of 100%) and mature effluent water quality was improved compared to the new condition for some parameters (e.g., dissolved solids, nitrogen species). A complete water balance of the system was performed using inflow, outflow and evapotranspiration data (via a weighing lysimeter). The water balance was further broken down by event size, where the event size was determined by rainfall frequency analysis. Recharge was the largest component of the water balance overall (86 % of inflow), and evapotranspiration was the next largest water balance component (7 % of inflow overall). Evapotranspiration was a significant component of inflow (21 %) when considering small events with a 50% chance of occurrence. | Ph.D. | water, stormwater management, low impact development, green infrastructure, infrastructure, invest, income, green infrastructure, low impact development, species, species, soil, institut | 6, 11, 9, 10, 14, 15, 16 |
| Zhao, Yimu | Radisic, Milica | Biowire II Platform: High Fidelity Heart-on-a-chip for Drug Screening and Disease Modeling | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-11-01 | Cardiotoxicity is a major cause of drug failure at the late stages of clinical trials and it is linked to unqualified candidates as early as possible is key for reducing the costs of drug discovery and preventing the patient fatality. Tissue engineering using cardiomyocytes derived from human pluripotent stem cells holds a promise to revolutionize drug discovery, but only if limitations related to tissue maturation, cardiac chamber specification and platform versatility can be overcome. The plastic-based platform developed in this thesis, Biowire II, facilitates the scalable, miniaturized 3D tissue cultivation with multiple cell sources in a low absorption environment. The platform deploys two fluorescent, elastic polymer wires to serve as tissue anchors and force sensors, and enables on-line, non-invasive, recording of passive tension, active force, contractile dynamics, Ca2+ transients, endpoint assessments of action potentials and conduction velocity. The conditions of cardiac tissue formation, including cell seeding density, non-myocyte populations and hydrogels, were characterized in detail to ensure the consistent production of functional tissues with hallmarks of adult myocardium. The temporary electrical pacing and long-term electrical conditioning were incorporated and optimized for the platform to facilitate standardized drug testing and chamber-specific cardiac tissue maturation. By combining directed cell differentiation with electrical field conditioning, we engineered electrophysiologically distinct atrial and ventricular tissues with chamber-specific drug responses and gene expression. This study is the first to report the engineering of the heteropolar cardiac tissues, which contain well-separated atrial and ventricular ends, and demonstrate their spatially confined responses to serotonin and ranolazine. More importantly, Biowire II platform enabled modeling of polygenic left ventricular hypertrophy with induced pluripotent stem cell derived cardiomyocytes from six different patients, using uniquely designed 8-months-long electrical conditioning protocol. The platform was scaled up into a 96 well-plate format with all the key features, such as plastic culture environment, elastic force sensors and embedded carbon electrodes. An innovative fabrication method was developed to rapidly cast suspended force sensors on top of a patterned surface. This advanced version of platform eliminates adhesives, standardizes and further increases the throughput of tissue production and drug testing. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Windeyer, Richard Charles | Budde, Antje | Black Box Exposures: Enriching Public Engagement with Human-Data Relations Through Intermedial Performance Strategies | Drama | 2021-06-01 | Through a combination of this artistic and scholarly research rooted in praxis, this dissertation demonstrates how the medium of theatre provides an accessible, alternative laboratory space wherein the changing relations between humans, data and informatics may be examined. This study begins by examining several topics: the diverse array of analogies and metaphors that currently characterize data out in the world; popular notions surrounding data as a material for ‘telling stories’ about events, objects or people; and growing communities of practice that prioritize intimate and hand-made forms of engagement with data as material for creative expression. In the process, the metaphor of a black box is established as an evocative means of conjoinment between theatre studies, critical data studies and information design, while identifying three salient cross-disciplinary themes—velocities, assemblages, and representativeness. These three themes provide a useful framework for examining several recent theatrical productions wherein aspects of data production, processing and representation are juxtaposed with lived human experiences. These themes are further elaborated through two praxis-based experiments designed and run by the author: a collection of intermedial performance prototypes and an experimental university course. Drawing upon methods and materials developed by the Quantified Self Movement and the Data Humanism Movement, both experiments emphasized strategies of creative resistence in which the activities of data production, processing and representation are explored through forms of enactment. The resulting contribution is a provisional model for both artistic and pedagogical praxis in which these activities are translated into ‘stages of informatic enactment.’ Infused with the methods, practices and sensibilities of the Quantified Self and Data Humanism movements, this model encourages intimate and bespoke forms of creative engagement with data in a performing arts context, but with a greater emphasis on exploring the underlying systems and processes that produce it. | Ph.D. | labor, cities, accessib, production | 8, 11, 12 |
| Quitasol, Matthew | Fournier, Marc A | Blind Spots in Personality Traits and Interpersonal Problems: The Roles of Narcissism and Self-esteem | Psychological Clinical Science | 2022-03-01 | Across clinical theory, clinical diagnostic criteria, and social/personality psychological research, narcissism has been conceptualized as having pathological presentations as well as normative, adaptive presentations that align more closely with self-esteem. Previous research has demonstrated that narcissistic individuals have some awareness about how others view them. However, much of this research has focused exclusively on grandiose and normative presentations of narcissism. Given these various accounts of narcissism and the general findings of meta-accuracy research focusing on its grandiose presentation, I sought to examine how pathological narcissism and both of its grandiose and vulnerable dimensions are related to blind spots in self-knowledge compared to more normative and adaptive presentations of narcissism. Moreover, given the relationship between normative narcissism and self-esteem, I also sought to examine how narcissism and its various presentations are related to blind spots in self-knowledge in comparison to self-esteem. In the first study, I examined how narcissism and self-esteem moderate meta-accuracy for personality traits and interpersonal problems in a university sample. In the second study, I sought to replicate the first study in an adult community sample while also controlling for depressive symptoms and cognitions which are often comorbid in vulnerable narcissism. For personality traits, people with higher self-esteem were more accurate in their understanding of their reputations, tended to assume that other people see them as more normative, and tended to assume that they were more transparent with others. Conversely, people higher in pathological narcissism and its vulnerable dimension were less accurate in their understanding of their reputation and tended to assume that others saw them as less normative. Normative and grandiose narcissism were inconsistently associated with bright spots and blind spots in people’s self-knowledge. For interpersonal problems, people higher in vulnerable narcissism tended to assume that they were less transparent with others, especially when controlling for depression symptoms and dysfunctional attitudes. Overall, both self-esteem and narcissism were inconsistently associated with bright spots and blind spots in people’s reputations about their interpersonal problems. These findings suggest that a more authentic positive self-image is conducive for understanding of one’s reputation relative to a more pathological positive self-image. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| McIntire, Matthias | Hatzis, Christos | Bluegreen Ecstatic Grey | Music | 2021-11-01 | My DMA Thesis Composition, Bluegreen Ecstatic Grey, is a large ensemble work for woodwind quintet (flute doubling on piccolo, oboe, clarinet in B flat, bassoon doubling on contrabassoon, and french horn), percussion quartet, string quintet (first violin, second violin, viola, cello, and double bass), piano solo, and electronics. Bluegreen Ecstatic Grey is a personal musical exploration and metaphor for the process of uncovering and healing latent grief. Held within this metaphor is the idea that the human qualities of love and truthful self-expression are the keys to and rewards for healing one’s grief.The composition is approximately 18 minutes in duration and has two parts, the first running ‘attacca’ into the second. This structure reflects the guiding metaphor of the piece: part one expresses what life is like before the uncovering of repressed grief, as well as the process of uncovering, while part two expresses the process of feeling and healing this grief. A significant change in instrumentation, from the full ensemble in part one to the extended piano solo writing in part two, enhances the metaphor — the piano leaves the other instruments much like pretense is discarded when one ventures into a truthful, unfiltered expression of previously repressed emotion. My DMA Thesis Composition is also linked to my research into field recording as well as live-electronic composition and performance practise. Bluegreen Ecstatic Grey merges acoustic instrumental writing with the live-triggering of forty-seven pre-recorded electronic audio cues. These cues were created with various electronic instruments as well using my own field recordings of nature and bird sounds. These sounds are used with the utmost care and serve to enhance the musical metaphor. For example, the second half of the work prominently features the sounds of a single Blue Jay I recorded in my backyard. The Blue Jay holds meaning for me as a symbol for love, communication, and truthful self-expression since my wife and I were fortunate to see one at our wedding site on the day we were married. | D.M.A. | wind | 7 |
| Wang, Yu Fang Grace | Taylor, Mark S. | Borinic Acid-catalyzed Ring-opening of Epoxy Alcohols | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | Borinic acid catalysis has been used by our group to effect ring-opening and rearrangement reactions of 2,3-epoxy alcohols via reversible borinate ester formation. This work focuses on expanding the mode of borinic acid catalysis to the activation of 3,4-epoxy alcohols for regioselective ring-opening reactions with various nucleophiles. The current work is inspired by the methodology void for C3-selective ring-opening of homoallylic alcohol-derived epoxides, as literature precedence uses transition metal-based approaches that result in C4-selectivity. The prevalence of amino-, thiol-, and halodiol motifs in biologically important compounds, natural products, and synthetic intermediates for pharmaceutically pertinent molecules further encouraged research efforts in developing methodologies for the organoboron-catalyzed ring-opening reactions of epoxy alcohols.Chapter 1 discusses the development of a highly regioselective borinic acid-catalyzed methodology for ring-opening 3,4-epoxy alcohols with amines and thiols. A catalytic tethering mechanism that enables intramolecular delivery of the nucleophile to the epoxide is postulated to be responsible for the enhanced rate acceleration and regiocontrol observed. The resulting C3-ring-opening products from a broad substrate scope—including ones sterically biased to favour C4-selective outcomes—suggest the complementarity of this methodology to the current state-of-the-art C4-selective, transition metal-based protocols. Chapter 2 probes the mechanistic underpinnings of the catalytic cycle for the aminolysis of 3,4-epoxy alcohols. RPKA experiments using in situ reaction monitoring by NMR and ATR-IR spectroscopy are used to decipher the kinetic order dependences in catalyst and nucleophile. The derived rate law under catalyst inhibition by aniline agrees with results obtained using the VTNA method. Chapter 3 expands the borinic acid-catalyzed regioselective ring-opening methodology to halide nucleophiles, yielding C3-selective outcomes consistent with a boron-tethered mechanism. The regiocontrolled synthesis of halohydrin diols, from both 2,3- and 3,4-epoxy alcohols, presents a synthetically useful method for accessing these ubiquitous motifs in biologically relevant compounds. Chapter 4 discusses possible starting points for furthering the development of borinic acid catalysis relating to epoxy alcohol activation. Conducting more RPKA experiments can help elucidate the full catalytic cycle and shed insight on other promising nucleophiles that are compatible with the catalytic tethering mechanism exhibited by boron. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Seha, Sherif Nagib Abbas | Hatzinakos, Dimitrios | Brain Biometrics under Auditory Stimulation for Human Identity Recognition | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The demand for security and user authentication has recently become an essential part of all aspects of our lives thus increasing the popularity of biometric recognition. As this technology becomes more common, the potential of spoofing attacks is of rising concern. For instance, conventional biometric traits, like face or fingerprints, are highly vulnerable to presentation attacks as these traits are exposed and can be easily replicated. This urges the scientific community to investigate other biometric modalities that are less prone to such attacks. Biomedical biometrics is an emerging technology that adopts vital signals acquired from the human body for biometric recognition. Such biosignals inherently provide liveliness detection and robustness to circumvention against presentation attacks as these modalities are difficult, if not impossible to replicate. Among various biomedical biometrics, the feasibility of the electrical activity of the brain, or Electroencephalogram (EEG), has been extensively examined for human identification tasks. This thesis proposes a new acquisition protocol to establish an EEG-based biometric system. The acquisition protocol adopts auditory stimulation to elicit a special class of brainwaves known as steady-state Auditory Evoked Potentials (AEP). AEPs, as neural responses share the same advantages of biomedical biometrics in terms of circumvention prevention and liveliness detection. Besides, steady-state AEPs share unique advantages that do not apply to other biosignals; being modular (i.e., stimulus-dependent) steady-state AEP supports cancellable biometrics, additionally, it can be linked to a user-selected PIN to implement a two-step authentication system. However, one of the most challenging aspects of deploying brainwaves in biometric systems is the high time-variability of the EEG signals. This study addresses this issue by investigating two different approaches: 1) exploiting BCI-spatial filtering techniques for target identification to maximize the intra-subject repeatability of the task-induced responses, 2) addressing inter-subject variability using a new training procedure for deep learning to improve the time-permanence of AEPs. Additionally, the feasibility of enhancing the collectability of EEG signals was also examined by reducing the acquisition time and the number of EEG electrodes. Overall, this thesis provides a framework that enhances the cross-session repeatability of brainwaves under auditory stimulation allowing the possibility of employing the AEP signals in biometric recognition. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Watts, Jeremy Joseph | Mizrahi, Romina||Ross, Ruth A | Brain Endocannabinoid Metabolism and Hippocampus Glutamate Metabolites in Young Adults with and without Psychotic Disorders: Multimodal Imaging with [11C]CURB Positron Emission Tomography and Proton Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy | Pharmacology | 2021-06-01 | The brain’s endocannabinoid neurotransmitter system, the primary target of cannabis, has been implicated in psychosis. The endocannabinoid anandamide is elevated in cerebrospinal fluid of patients with schizophrenia. Fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) controls brain anandamide levels; however, it is unknown if FAAH is altered in vivo in psychosis or related to psychotic symptoms. The endocannabinoid system is a key regulator of neurotransmission throughout the brain including the hippocampus, a major site of glutamate dysfunction in schizophrenia. In vivo neuroimaging studies report alterations in cannabinoid CB1 receptors in psychotic disorders, however, no other endocannabinoid system target has been imaged in vivo in this population. Further, although the endocannabinoid system is related to functional brain activity, the relationship between regional endocannabinoid system markers and brain glutamate remains virtually unexplored. In this work we measured brain FAAH and hippocampal glutamate neurometabolites (glutamate and glutamate-glutamine) using [11C]CURB positron emission tomography (PET) and proton magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS), respectively, in patients with psychotic disorders and healthy control participants. Brain FAAH availability did not differ between patients with psychotic disorders and healthy controls, however, low FAAH availability was associated with greater severity of positive dimension psychotic symptoms in patients. FAAH differed across brain regions, with the highest availability observed in hippocampus and striatum. Further, FAAH was higher in females than in males. Hippocampal glutamate metabolites did not differ between patients and healthy controls and were not significantly associated with psychotic symptoms. Combining imaging data from both modalities, we observed that higher FAAH was associated with higher hippocampal glutamate-glutamine and this effect did not differ between patients and healthy control participants or across brain regions. This report provides novel findings that expand the existing picture of endocannabinoid system function in young adults with and without psychotic disorders. Although FAAH did not differ between patients and healthy controls, its relation to psychotic symptom severity may indicate that FAAH serves as a state but not trait biomarker for psychotic symptoms. Regional brain FAAH was associated with hippocampal glutamate metabolite concentrations, providing evidence that the link between glutamate and FAAH activity observed in other species is conserved in humans. | Ph.D. | female, emission, conserv, species, conserv, species | 5, 7, 14, 15 |
| Kang, Kyurim | Thaut, Michael||Chau, Tom | Brain Synchronization with Electroencephalography (EEG) for Children/Youth with Disabilities, their Parents, and Neurologic Music Therapists | Music | 2021-06-01 | Research investigating ‘physiological empathy’ in neurodevelopmental and pediatric neurorehabilitation settings is very limited. Previous research has suggested that music may be a potent language to drive interpersonal synchronization, at both socio-emotional and neurophysiological levels. The most practical approach to study neurophysiological synchrony is via electroencephalographic (EEG) hyperscanning, which is the measurement of activity in two or more brains simultaneously. We carried out two empirical studies using EEG hyperscanning to investigate the neural mechanisms of real-time social interactions in children with neurodevelopmental disorders during music and storytelling (as a comparison condition) conditions. In the first study, we investigated interbrain synchronization in a “youth with cerebral palsy-mother” (YM) dyad and a “youth-therapist” (YT) dyad. We found significantly higher interbrain synchronization during music condition only in the YM dyad, possibly due to music familiarity, and maternal cognitive-empathy and emotional predisposition. In addition, interbrain synchronization occurred in empathy-related frequency bands (delta: 0-3 Hz) in the YM dyad and in cognition-related frequency bands (alpha: 8-15 Hz) in the YT dyad. Both YM and YT dyad also experienced synchronization in empathy-related brain regions. The findings in the first study established the feasibility of using interbrain synchronization as an objective measurement of socio-emotional responses in a youth with CP. Thus, in the second study, we extended our protocol to include an expanded sample, comprising of both verbal and non-verbal children with CP or autism spectrum disorders (ASD) to confirm the presence of interbrain synchronization in both dyads. Additionally, we explored the directionality of interbrain synchronization and its correlation to measures of behavioral empathy. Patterns of interbrain synchronization similar to those of the first study were observed. In terms of directionality, we found a significantly higher directed coupling from adult (mother or music therapist) to child compared to the coupling from child to adult, potentially due to adult anticipation of child responses and lower child propensity for synchrony. In sum, this thesis lays the foundation for follow-on research that seeks to understand the socio-emotional responses of children with neurodevelopmental disorders, and thereby guide parental care and care provider intervention. | Ph.D. | disabilit, invest | 3, 9 |
| Phillips, Jennie | Deibert, Ronald | Building Resilience in Virtual Online Networks: A Case Study on Developing Resilience in Digital Response Networks (DRNS) through Networked Operational Resilience (NOR) | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-11-01 | As society becomes increasingly embedded in a complex array of networks, connected within and across physical and virtual, online and offline domains, the risk implications need to be understood. The pace of innovation exceeds the rate it can be studied, however, and risks are progressively difficult to identify and characterize. Managing unexpected risk can be accomplished largely through resilience (Weick Sutcliffe, 2011; McManus, Seville, Vargo, 2008). All networks possess some level of resilience (Weick Sutcliffe, 2011); yet, little is known about why some networks collapse and others succeed. Building this understanding involves identifying what resilience looks like in complex networks like virtual online networks, specifically the characteristics that define a resilient network and the measures and approaches to developing resilience. Yet little research exists supporting the assessment and development of resilience in virtual online networks. This manuscript-based thesis includes four research papers focused on the assessment and development of resilience in virtual online networks. Contextual research consists of multiple-case study of Digital Response Networks (DRNs) — a term coined in this research. DRNs are citizen-driven networks that work together online during crises to support affected communities and formal responders. Theoretical research consisted of theory creation which combined original network, risk and resilience frameworks with Operational- Resilience (OR) theory to develop the Networked Operational Resilience (NOR) framework. NOR provides a four-step guide to developing resilience in complex networks like DRNs; resilience is thus developed by defining an operation in-situ (as part of the broader network), evaluating risk while considering inherent resilience, and capturing, sharing and importing requirements for resilient operations (through the tableau) across a network. Research suggests that some networks may be more resilient than others due to the relationship between their network configuration and resilience characteristics. Eighteen network traits that can build resilience capability in a network were identified. Clear links are made between each of these characteristics and the inherent characteristics of resilience that accompany them. One network is deemed more resilient than another based on the frequency and distribution of each of these resilience characteristics. | Ph.D. | citizen, humanitarian, resilien, resilience, resilience | 4, 10, 11, 13, 15 |
| Piccinin, Vanessa E. | Janzen, Katharine | Canadian Post-secondary Institutional Response to Students’ Off-campus Behaviour | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | This study sought to explore how Canadian post-secondary institutions [CPIs] address students’ off-campus behaviours [OCBs]. Findings were generated through document analysis of 41 Student Codes of Conduct [SCCs], an examination of four relevant illustrative cases, and semi-structured interviews with five CPI administrators responsible for student discipline. These three sources were then triangulated for further analysis and consideration of key research questions. My original contribution to the research phenomenon is to present an informed understanding of how SCCs are used at CPIs in the context of five participating institutional key informants’ responses to incidents of student OCBs. This research also examined the legitimacy and authority of CPIs institutional responses to alleged instances of student misbehaviour which occur off-campus in four illustrative case studies.Key findings revealed that SCCs varied widely in terms of their scope and authority. While some do acknowledge OCBs as meriting administrative response, a clear connection to the CPI is needed to enact such a response. In the illustrative case studies this was also seen in how the CPI administrators determined how and when to respond to students’ OCBs. Interviews with key informants echoed this need to determine each act of misconduct as a standalone case and to determine best outcomes with taking what external parties may view as extreme measures. In all three data sets, specific processes of progressive discipline were taken to enforce ‘perceived’ fairness for all parties involved. The four illustrative cases also highlighted both the use of SCCs and the administrative response to students’ OCBs in that procedural fairness is not always framed in the same manner nor are policies implemented with universal use in that policy revision and reimplementation is often incited by significant occurrences of student misconduct. As such, consideration was given to the cyclical nature of policy design and implementation in addressing the research phenomenon. Implications of the findings include a consideration of additional areas of research study such as meta-analysis of SCCs, intersectionality of CPI administrators and potential expansion of scope and authority of CPIs as online and remote learning expands. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, institut | 4, 16 |
| Kofler, Danielle | Goldstein, Abby L | Cannabis Use Motives in Emerging Adulthood: Using Daily Diary Method to Inform Intervention | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | The increasing rate of cannabis use among emerging adults is a growing public health concern in Canada. Research has shown that frequent cannabis use is associated with a myriad of negative mental health outcomes. However, little is known about the motivations or reasons behind such use in emerging adulthood. Daily diary data provides information on both the proximal and distal factors for cannabis use, which can inform interventions to prevent and treat problematic use in emerging adulthood. The first phase of the study assessed four trait motives (coping, sleep, enjoyment, and celebration) that were hypothesized to moderate the daily relationships between negative and positive affect and cannabis use and related consequences. A sample consisting of 63 emerging adults (ages 18-25) recruited from the community completed baseline questionnaires followed by 14 daily reports on mood, motives, cannabis use, and consequences. Across the 14 days, daily negative mood was associated with greater cannabis consequences, although for those who use cannabis to cope, the strength of this relationship was greater on days when participants reported less negative mood. Enjoyment motives moderated the relationship between daily positive mood and consequences, such that the relationship was even stronger on days when participants experienced less positive mood, acting as a buffer against cannabis-related consequences. The second phase of the study investigated the impact of using a daily diary as a self-monitoring tool to enhance motivation to change cannabis use. Additionally, at the end of the daily diary period, participants were randomly assigned to either receive a brief personalized feedback intervention or to a control condition. Although there were no differences in cannabis use or consequences between the intervention and control groups, men exhibited a significant reduction in cannabis consequences from baseline to follow-up, supporting the efficacy of self-monitoring via an electronic device as an intervention tool. Overall, findings highlight that the relationship between daily mood and cannabis motives contribute to daily cannabis consequences and ought to be considered when developing prevention and interventions for emerging adults. | Ph.D. | mental health, public health, invest | 3, 9 |
| Abdinejad, Maryam | Kraatz, Bernie||Zhang, Xiao-an | Capture and Electrochemical Reduction of Carbon Dioxide to Value-added Material | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2020-11-01 | The atmospheric concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs) has increased substantially in the past 50 years, particularly in recent years. In response, interest in CO2 capture technologies and methodologies to reduce it to valuable synthetic building blocks, such as carbon monoxide (CO), methanol (CH3OH) and methane (CH4), has increased. Although proposing to tackle the climate issue with current carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies is unrealistic, chemical utilization of CO2 has great potential. Controlled and selective electrochemical CO2 reduction to fuel from renewable energy, such as electricity, is a promising approach to remove and utilize CO2 from air. Electrochemical CO2 reduction reactions (CO2RRs) are among the most promising techniques for this purpose due to their simple operation and environmental economy. To achieve a system viable for industrial implementation, thoughtful design of the electrochemical cell and the molecular catalysts are both important. This body of work demonstrates a wide range of potential applications for CO2 capture and utilization. Strategies involving CO2 capture and its reduction are described and systematically evaluated in different electrolyzer setups, and a series of new catalysts sporting tunable features fit for both homogeneous and heterogeneous applications are reported herein. Successful reduction of CO2 to several gaseous products, including CO, CH4 and a CH3OH liquid product, were achieved using metallated and non-metallated porphyrin electrocatalysts as well as cost-effective and commercially available linear amines. In sum, electrochemical reduction of CO2 using homogeneous porphyrin catalysts in non-aqueous environment as well as heterogeneous immobilized porphyrin catalysts in an aqueous environment was investigated using H-Cell and Flow-Cell technologies for potential industrial applications. We have also introduced new and cost-effective primary amine catalysts for CO2RR, which is a unique approach for industrial applications. The work herein demonstrates the potential of facile porphyrin-based systems and reports on their remarkable performance as CO2 reductive electrocatalysts. Moreover, it serves as an example of an adaptive synthetic design that can demonstrate the value of reductive CO2 technology for industrial large-scale applications to fight climate change issues. | Ph.D. | energy, renewabl, carbon capture, greenhouse, invest, climate, greenhouse gas, environmental, anthropogenic, carbon dioxide, co2, methane, carbon capture, carbon capture | 7, 13, 15, 9 |
| Morrison, Zachary Austin | Nitz, Mark | Carbohydrate-based Inhibitors of PNAG-dependent Biofilm Formation | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Many bacteria form biofilms, surface-attached communities within an extracellular matrix. They are medically significant since they provide pathogens with increased tolerance to antibiotics and protection from the host immune response. The biofilms of various bacterial pathogens contain a common exopolysaccharide, PNAG: a partially de-N-acetylated polymer of β-1,6-linked N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc). PgaABCD and IcaADBC comprises the biosynthetic machinery which assembles, modifies, and exports this polymer In E. coli and S. epidermidis, respectively. Here, synthetic carbohydrate derivatives are used to probe the mechanisms of these biosynthetic components and study PNAG biosynthesis. First, GlcNAc derivatives were evaluated as inhibitors of the PNAG de-N-acetylases PgaB, IcaB, and related peptidoglycan deacetylase PgdA. In one study, GlcNAc analogs bearing substitutions at the C3 position were examined, replacing the hydroxyl with metal chelating groups including amine and thiol. Though most of this series was inactive, a 2-thioacetamido 3-thio GlcNAc analog was identified as a potent, mechanistically unusual PgdA inhibitor. Additionally, α-hydroxyphosphonamidate transition state analogs were investigated. These compounds had limited activity, providing insights into substrate recognition and active site differences between the CE4 enzymes. Next, PNAG metabolic labelling was attempted using azido and thio GlcNAc analogs. Though metabolic labelling was not observed, 3-thio and 3-azidoGlcNAc were identified as inhibitors of gram-positive PNAG-dependent biofilm formation. Lastly, C6-substituted UDP-GlcNAc analogs were evaluated as inhibitors of the glycosyltransferase complex PgaCD. These compounds inhibited through chain termination, providing evidence that PgaCD elongates PNAG from its non-reducing end. Furthermore, a method to deliver these inhibitors into E. coli was developed by introducing an unnatural GlcNAc salvage pathway. These substrate analogs reduced PNAG-dependent biofilm formation, primarily through disruption of PgaCD. | Ph.D. | arid, invest, transit | 6, 9, 11 |
| Bonsignore, Lynne Jean Alis | Thomas, Scott | Cardiovascular Disease Risk and Cardio-oncology Rehabilitation (CORE) Referral in Breast Cancer Survivors | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2021-11-01 | Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer among Canadian women. Due to advancements in cancer prevention, treatment and screening, more breast cancer survivors are living longer, for whom, survivorship issues have become a significant concern. Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is recognized as the leading non-cancer cause of death in this population, and is the number one cause of death in older cancer survivors (≥65 years of age). The American Heart Association recently endorsed the use of multi-modal exercise-rehabilitation programs, similar to cardiac rehabilitation (CR), to help mitigate CVD risk in breast cancer survivors. This approach has been coined as cardio-oncology rehabilitation (CORE). Despite this, there are no clinical guidelines on who should be prioritized for CORE among people with cancer and referral of all patients would quickly overwhelm current CR programs. Against this background, we aimed to identify which early-stage breast cancer survivors should be prioritized for CORE referral until greater program capacity is available. Novel measures that were explored included, cardiac biomarkers, echocardiography derived global longitudinal strain, cardiopulmonary fitness, measures of vascular function and structure, and clinical data that is prognostic and diagnostic for CVD events in breast cancer survivors. Our research revealed that women treated with potentially cardiotoxic therapies and the presence of ≥2 CVD risk factors, vascular impairments, history of cardiotoxicity, diastolic impairment and impaired GLS ( | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Friesen, Isaac | Mittermaier, Amira | Casual Crossings: The Muslim Attendance of Coptic Spaces in Provincial Egypt | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation examines overlapping ethics, traditions and histories at four Coptic sites frequented by Muslims in the provincial Egyptian city of Beni Suef. Despite operating beneath the weight of a narrative of worsening sectarian relations, these sites, like many others in Egypt, reveal patterns of casual and confident interfaith crossing. Based on years of participant observation, interviews and institutional archives, this dissertation argues that these crossing practices relied on the ubiquity of practical ethical judgement in people’s everyday lives. At the same time, this dissertation illustrates how powerful traditions and institutions can also be marked by fluidity, flexibility and pragmatism. Critiquing the great explanatory power some anthropologists have granted to formal concepts (such as secularism), this dissertation employs historicism to better elucidate the social and political contexts of a particular place in time. When people at these sites of crossing did express feelings of doubt, failure or anxiety, it was almost always related to historically-situated socioeconomic and political pressures. Hence, while interactions at these interfaith sites usually did not hinge on religious difference, they provide a compelling lens into how provincial Egyptians have experienced neoliberalism, colonialism, the religious revivals, globalization, secularism, and the state in their everyday lives. In turn, this project reveals how these complex historical processes have shaped “Muslim-Christian relations” in Egypt. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, globaliz, institut | 1, 9, 16 |
| Saha, Sudipta | Saarela, Olli | Causal Inference Methods for Secondary Analysis of Randomized Screening Trials | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-03-01 | The primary objective of randomized trials is usually pre-specified in the protocol and typically adheres to the intention-to-treat (ITT) principle, allowing for simple comparisons between intervention arms. However, trials often collect high-quality data that can be utilized for secondary analysis. This thesis is focused on randomized screening trials where asymptomatic individuals are assigned to receive a series of screening examinations or standard care and subsequently followed for a pre-specified period. While the primary analysis in randomized screening trials estimates the effect of intention-to-screen (ITS) on cancer-specific mortality, among the screening-detectable subgroup we might also be interested in the causal effect of early (screening-induced) treatments compared to delayed treatments in the absence of screening. The first objective of this thesis is to develop estimators for the effect of early versus delayed cancer treatments among the screening-detectable subgroup. Using the framework of Rubin’s causal model, we consider two alternative measures, proportional and absolute mortality reductions in the subgroup. We propose estimators for these using the instrumental variable principle as well as outline their identifying assumptions. These estimators generalize existing IV estimators to allow for time-dependent exposure/latent subgroup. The existing models for screening trials, primarily proposed for planning future trials with adequate power for the ITS analysis, are unnecessarily complex for defining and estimating the causal effect of screening-induced early treatments. To address this, we formulate a simplified structural multi-state model, in which the causal effect of early treatments is summarized using a time-invariant, cause-specific structural hazard ratio. For estimating the hazard ratio, we propose two methods, based on an estimating equation and a likelihood expression. Finally, with the aim to generalize the IV methods outside of the trial setting and to allow for covariate-dependent censoring, we introduce covariate adjustment into the estimation. We consider both parametric and non-parametric covariate adjustment using hazard regression models and machine learning algorithms. For the latter, we propose a sub-sampling approach to avoid large-counting process datasets. The performance of all the proposed estimators in this thesis are illustrated through simulation studies and real data examples. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Walpole, Glenn Franklin Wilson | Grinstein, Sergio||Brumell, John | Cell Physiology of Innate Immunity and Its Subversion by Intracellular Pathogens | Biochemistry | 2021-11-01 | Innate immune cells are embodied by their dynamic and responsive nature. In addition to housekeeping functions, they actively survey for danger by sampling their local niche, migrate into and out of the parenchyma of various tissues in response to minute chemical cues, secrete both pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines to either provoke or resolve inflammation, and deftly counter infectious threats with a unique microbicidal toolkit. Of paramount importance to innate immunity is phagocytosis, the receptor-mediated uptake of extracellular particles (pathogens, effete cells, debris). The resulting membrane-bound intracellular compartment −the phagosome− undergoes a cascade of biochemical transformations to create a hostile, degradative lumen that is normally incompatible with microbial life. By presenting portions of their findings to lymphocytes, a means to couple innate and adaptive immune systems is borne out. To perform their many functions, innate immune cells rely on intricate signal transduction pathways that result in equally intricate changes in cell behaviour. At the heart of this is a specialized class of membrane second messengers called phosphoinositides that couple extracellular cues to intracellular protein recruitment, membrane transport, and actin cytoskeletal reorganization. From an evolutionary standpoint, pathogenic organisms noted the effectiveness of these pathways and developed means to overcome them, thereby disarming a fundamental function of the innate immune system. In this dissertation, I explore how human pathogens manipulate both the actin cytoskeleton of phagocytes to promote intracellular survival, and how they employ sophisticated toxins to manipulate phosphoinositide signaling for their selective advantage. Chapter 1 reviews fundamental aspects of the cytoskeleton and lipid metabolism in the context of immune cells; pathogenic organisms which evolved remarkable means to manipulate the underlying biology of these systems are highlighted. The overarching aims and hypotheses of my work are described in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3, I detail how the secretion of a bacterial effector into macrophages by Burkholderia cenocepacia modifies phagosome maturation via local actin polymerization. Finally, Chapter 4 uncovers an unprecedented mechanism by which a bacterial effector delivered by Salmonella species synthesizes an important phosphoinositide signaling molecule. This work contributes to understanding several fundamental cellular pathways and their complex manipulation by human pathogens. | Ph.D. | species, species | 14, 15 |
| Veitch, Shawn | Fish, Jason E. | Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Endothelial Dysfunction in Diabetic Cardiomyopathy | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-11-01 | Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is associated with cardiac microvascular dysfunction, which is thought to contribute to the development of diastolic dysfunction and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF). The molecular mechanisms responsible for HFpEF remain unclear, and no effective diagnostics or main-stay treatments are available. To gain insight into biomarkers and disease mechanisms we measured the microRNA content of circulating extracellular vesicles (EVs) during pathogenesis in two animal models of T2D-associated HFpEF (i.e., obese mouse [Lepr-/-] and lean rat [Goto Kakizaki]). We found that miR-30d and miR-30e were increased prior to echocardiographic evidence of diastolic dysfunction in T2D mice, and they were also elevated in T2D rats with established diastolic dysfunction. These microRNAs may serve as biomarkers of cardiac microvascular dysfunction as they are upregulated in the endothelial cells (ECs) of the left ventricle of the heart, but not other organs. Furthermore, the miR-30 family is secreted in response to activation of senescence pathways, a characteristic feature of diabetic ECs. Assessment of pathways regulated by miR-30d/e revealed a large number of target genes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis and metabolism. Importantly, over-expression of miR-30e in ECs increased fatty acid oxidation and the production of reactive oxygen species, while inhibiting the miR-30 family decreased fatty acid oxidation. Additionally, miR-30e over-expression synergized with fatty acid exposure to dramatically down-regulate the expression of eNOS, an important regulator of microvascular and cardiomyocyte function. Thus, miR-30d/e may represent early biomarkers of diastolic dysfunction that reflect altered fatty acid metabolism and microvascular dysfunction in the heart. Furthermore, the pathways regulated by miR-30 may represent therapeutic targets for diabetes-associated HFpEF. | Ph.D. | production, species, animal, species, animal | 12, 14, 15 |
| Jaiswal, Arushi | Reedijk, Michael | Cellular Stress Induces TRB3/USP9x-dependent Notch Activation in Cancer; Therapeutic Implications | Medical Biophysics | 2021-11-01 | Compared to other subtypes of breast cancer (BC), triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) has a poor prognosis and limited therapeutic options. Activation of the Notch developmental signaling pathway is a defining feature of TNBC and is an independent predictor of outcome in this malignancy. For this reason, anti-Notch agents have been explored as potential anti-cancer therapeutics. Although Notch inhibitors have demonstrated efficacy in pre-clinical studies of breast cancer, owing to the ubiquity of Notch in normal tissues, dose-limiting toxicities in humans have limited their clinical usefulness. Thus, there is a need to devise novel approaches to block Notch signaling specifically in cancer cells. We have shown that through its control of the MAPK and TGFb signaling pathways, the pseudokinase Tribbles homolog 3 (TRB3), regulates the expression of the Notch ligand, JAG1. As a stress-sensor, TRB3 is markedly upregulated during hypoxia, nutrient deprivation and ER stress (ERS), prominent features of TNBC associated with tumor progression and relapse. Through its scaffolding properties, TRB3 promotes enzyme-substrate interactions, signaling pathways, and transcriptional outputs. To further understand how TRB3 is regulated in TNBC, a proteomic screen was conducted which identified the deubiquitinase USP9x as a binding partner of TRB3. USP9x activates the Notch pathway in two ways: (1) as a deubiquitinase it protects stress-generated TRB3 from ubiquitin-mediated proteasomal degradation, resulting in JAG1 up-regulation in cancer cells and (2) USP9x regulates cancer-intrinsic Notch activation by stabilizing Mind Bomb 1 (MIB1), an E3 ligase required for JAG1 ubiquitination and stabilization. Thus, in stressed TNBC cells USP9x promotes JAG1-mediated Notch activation via both the transcriptional and post-transcriptional mechanisms. Next, we used murine models of TNBC to explore TRB3/USP9x as potential therapeutic avenues to block Notch-dependent TNBC progression. While knock-out of TRB3 showed modest anti-tumor efficacy, USP9x knock-out significantly reduced Notch activation and tumor growth. This was accompanied by a switch of the tumor immune microenvironment from a “cold” immunosuppressive to a “hot” immunoreactive, tumoricidal phenotype. Consistent with these findings, pharmaceutical inhibition of USP9x occurs without appreciable toxicity in mouse models of TNBC. This work identifies a novel therapeutic approach to block cancer-intrinsic Notch activation without affecting Notch-dependent tissue homeostasis. | Ph.D. | cities | 11 |
| Wong, Frances Tin Ming | Cox, Brian J | Cellular Systems Biology of Trophoblast Heterogeneity in Human Early Placenta Development | Physiology | 2019-11-01 | Chorionic villi, the functional units of the human placenta, form the only inter- face between fetal and maternal systems facilitating exchange of nutrients, metabolic waste, and signaling factors. Complex and branched villi structures composed of cy- totrophoblast, extravillous trophoblasts, syncytiotrophoblasts, and stromal cells arise from a single epithelial layer of a blastocyst. How a single cell monolayer specifies and differentiates into the three trophoblast lineages during early development re- mains uncharacterized. Additionally, heterogeneity within each trophoblast lineage has described on the basis of varying cell morphologies but a wide scale investigation to characterize functional differences has not been conducted. In this thesis, I inves- tigate the cellular composition of the human placenta in order to characterize hetero- geneity within trophoblast lineages and how population dynamics change during the first trimester. Firstly, I identified dynamic trophoblast subpopulations through cell surface proteomics and single cell transcriptomics. A novel EpCAM positive popula- tion identified with greater expression before gestational week 6 is further explored as candidate progenitor marker. This population is more mitotically active than the respective negative population and does not express markers of terminally differentiated trophoblasts. Temporal information is required to investigate the role of these cell populations in the development of a placenta. This motivated me to create a cell atlas of first trimester development by integrating four individual single cell sequencing datasets. Single cell transcriptomics of over 65 000 cells covering placenta develop- ment from gestational week 2 to 12 suggests the existence of a transient bipotential progenitor during early first trimester compared to two separate developmental cen- ters for EVT and STB lineages in late first trimester. Work in this thesis highlights first trimester trophoblasts are much more heterogeneous than perviously believed and due to their rapidly dynamic nature, gestational age is an important consideration for future studies. | Ph.D. | invest, waste | 9, 12 |
| Hutton Ferris, Daniel | Williams, Melissa S | Centripetal Representation | Political Science | 2021-11-01 | Growing political complexity is one of the defining features of contemporary rich post-industrial society. Patterns of electoral, administrative, and societal representation have become more complex over the past fifty years as organizations and policymaking processes have stretched across borders, as relatively stable patterns of post-war party competition have broken down, and as more dynamic and ad-hoc governance networks have sprung up alongside older bureaucratic hierarchies. While populist leaders have capitalized on voters’ desire to “take back control” of institutions whose opacity they find alienating, deliberative democratic and constructivist theorists of representation tend to express substantial enthusiasm for more complex representative systems. They show why pluralizing processes of representation can promote wiser, more inclusive, more dynamic, and, ultimately, more democratically legitimate processes of self-rule. However, the fragmentation of processes of political representation can pose a serious threat to democratic legitimacy and should be countered by a specific kind of democratic simplification. Complexity exacerbates information asymmetries between representatives and constituents that afflict the resource-poor worse than others, biasing the representative system against them. Simplifying systems of political representation can help ordinary people understand and engage with their representatives and push back against gridlock, collusion, capture, and shirking. Broad inclusion of pluralistic claims, actors, and institutions on the periphery of the representative system should therefore be combined with substantial democratic simplicity at its core, with networked responsiveness in between. I use the metaphor of centripetal motion to captures the idea that pressure and influence should flow “inwards” from a heterogeneous assemblage of claims, actors, and institutions on the periphery to a relatively small and organized group at the centre. The theory of centripetal representation can help political theorists, social scientists, and political practitioners think about how to manage complexity and shape our evolving systems of representation in ways that promote democratic legitimacy by helping ordinary people to be seen and heard, rather than allowing the powerful to hide. | Ph.D. | capital, institut, governance, democra | 9, 16 |
| Mirzaei, Javad | Adve, Raviraj||ShahbazPanahi, Shahram | Channel Estimation in TDD and FDD-Based Massive MIMO Systems | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | There are three parts to this thesis. In the first part, we study the channel estimation problem in frequency-selective multi-user (MU) multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, where, a time-domain semi-blind channel estimation technique is proposed. Compared to frequency-domain, the time-domain channel estimation requires fewer parameters be estimated. Importantly, the time-domain estimation has enough samples for an accurate channel estimate. Given this many samples in the time-domain, the proposed channel estimation technique obtains a better estimate of the channel. Here, there is no assumption on orthogonality of users' channels, knowledge of large-scale fading coefficients, and the orthogonality between the training symbols of the users in all cells. The second part of the thesis studies the channel estimation problem in correlated massive MIMO systems with a reduced number of radio-frequency (RF) chains. Leveraging the knowledge of channel correlation matrices, we propose to estimate the channel entries in its eigen-domain. Due to the limited number of RF chains, channel estimation is typically performed in multiple time slots. Using the minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criterion, the optimal precoder and combiner in each time slot are aligned to transmitter and receiver eigen-directions, respectively. Meanwhile, the optimal power allocation for each training time slots is obtained via a waterfilling-type expression. In the final part, we study the downlink channel estimation for frequency-division-duplex (FDD) massive MIMO systems. Acquiring downlink channel state information in these systems is challenging due to the large training and feedback overhead. Motivated by the partial reciprocity of uplink and downlink channels, we first estimate the frequency-independent channel parameters, i.e., the path gains, delays, angles-of-arrivals (AoAs) and angles-of-departures (AoDs), via uplink training, since these parameters are common in both uplink and downlink. Then, the frequency-specific channel parameters are estimated via downlink training using a very short training signal. To efficiently estimate the channel parameters in the uplink, the underlying distribution of the channel parameters is incorporated as a prior into our estimation algorithm. This distribution is captured using deep generative models (DGMs). The proposed channel estimation technique significantly outperforms the conventional channel estimation techniques in practical ranges of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). | Ph.D. | knowledge, water | 4, 6 |
| Rizzolo, Kamran Daniel | Houry, Walid A | Chaperone Systems in Model Organisms | Biochemistry | 2019-06-01 | Molecular chaperones are typically promiscuous interacting proteins that function globally in the cell for quality control and maintenance of protein homeostasis. They are highly conserved across all organisms. A comprehensive view of their cellular function was obtained through a systematic global integrative network approach. We deciphered interactions involving all core chaperones of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Our analysis revealed the presence of a large chaperone functional supercomplex encompassing Hsp40, Hsp70, Hsp90, AAA+, CCT, and small Hsps, that is central to the topology of the proteome network. Chaperone interactor properties demonstrate preferential protein domains and folds such as the WD40 repeat domain. We further found that many chaperones interact with proteins that form condensates under stress conditions. This expanded view of the chaperone network in the cell clearly demonstrates the distinction between chaperones having broad versus narrow substrate specificities. From an extensive genomic analysis in bacteria we demonstrate the conservation of the close proximity of the tig gene, coding for the ribosome-associated chaperone trigger factor (TF), and the genes coding for the ClpXP proteolytic complex suggesting a possible functional association between the protein folding and the protein degradation systems. The effect of TF on ClpXP-dependent degradation varied depending on the nature of the substrate. For a class of substrates, TF increased the degradation rate. The ClpXP-dependent degradation was enhanced for the λ phage replication protein λO, the master regulator of stationary phase RpoS, and SsrA-tagged proteins by TF in vitro and in vivo. Globally, it is estimated that TF enhances the degradation of about subset of newly synthesized E. coli proteins. Through extensive biochemical and structural analyses, it was found that TF interacts through multiple sites with the ClpX oligomer in a highly dynamic fashion. TF binds the ATPase-domain of ClpX and consequently promotes the movement of the protruding N-terminal zinc binding domain (ZBD) of the chaperone towards the ClpP cylinder. With this movement, TF enhances the degradation of ZBD-bound substrates. These results reveal a novel function of TF as a ClpXP adaptor protein and highlight its broad substrate specificity. This chaperone-protease cooperation constitutes a novel aspect of cellular protein homeostasis. | Ph.D. | cities, conserv, conserv | 11, 14, 15 |
| Hooda, Yogesh | Moraes, Trevor F | Characterization of Slam-mediated Surface Lipoprotein Translocation across the Bacterial Outer Membrane | Biochemistry | 2019-06-01 | Surfaces of many Gram-negative bacteria are decorated by peripheral membrane proteins that are anchored in the membrane by a lipid group, commonly referred to as surface lipoproteins or SLPs. SLPs play key role in nutrient acquisition, immune evasion and have been proposed as excellent vaccine antigens. Previously our lab had shown that the proper display of host transferrin binding SLP TbpB in Neisseria meningitidis required an outer membrane protein called Slam. The aim of the present study was to investigate the role Slam plays in SLP biogenesis. Using bioinformatic analysis, we show that Slams are present in a number of Gram-negative bacteria. Putative Slam genes are often found adjacent to their putative SLP substrates. In N. meningitidis, we discovered two Slam paralogs, Slam1 and Slam2, that are specific for SLPs TbpB and HpuA respectively. All putative Slam-dependent SLPs contain a C-terminal 8-stranded soluble barrel domain. The last two strands of the SLP were found to be essential for TbpB translocation and the C-terminal 8-stranded barrel domain mediated Slam specificity. Using GST-fused TbpB, we showed that the Slam-dependent translocation occurs from the C-terminus to the N-terminus. To investigate Slam mechanism, we developed an in vitro translocation system. Upon the addition of the periplasmic chaperone LolA, SLPs can be released from spheroplasts into the supernatant. We discovered that Slam containing proteoliposomes can successfully translocate spheroplast released SLPs into the liposomal lumen. Addition of other outer membrane factors such as the Bam complex did not increase the efficiency of SLP insertion and Slam12 retained their specificity in the assay. Interestingly, Slam1 proteoliposomes were also able to translocate purified unfolded TbpB into the lumen. Collectively, these findings show that Slams are both necessary and sufficient for the translocation of SLPs across the outer membrane, indicating that they act as translocons. | Ph.D. | vaccine, invest | 3, 9 |
| Meng, Ying | Lipsman, Nir||Hamani, Clement | Characterization of the Safety and Biological Effects of Low-intensity Focused Ultrasound for Blood-brain Barrier Opening | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Focused ultrasound (FUS) is a disruptive medical technology and its implementation in the clinic includes non-invasive thermoablation, blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption, and neuromodulation among others. Transient BBB opening with FUS is one of the most exciting aspects of this technology given the potential to deliver advanced therapeutics that are generally restricted by the BBB, resulting in novel treatment options. While these aspects have been extensively tested in small to large animal models, the data in clinical patients with neuropathology is limited. We hypothesize that initial clinical testing of transcranial FUS BBB opening will be well-tolerated in patients with neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease (AD). The specific challenges include the widespread nature of the pathology in AD and the vulnerability of the AD brain to BBB disruption. Therefore, the safety and biological impact of this procedure is extensively characterized in mild-to-moderate AD patients using conventional clinical examination and cognitive testing, functional neuroimaging, and liquid biomarkers.The BBB permeability of widespread regions in the brain was successfully and transiently increased without any serious adverse events or long-term cognitive behavioral changes. An acute decrease in functional connectivity was shown on fMRI after FUS, but these changes were transient and not associated with long-term disruptions in known resting state networks. Finally, analysis of liquid biomarkers these patients showed FUS did not AD pathology or result in persistent BBB dysfunction. Transient increases in sensitive markers of cellular injury might reflect the mechanical forces exerted by microbubble activity. Taken together, the data support the continued investigation of this technology in an early efficacy trial, while highlighting important considerations and current limitations when applying FUS BBB opening for drug delivery in patients with underlying neurodegeneration. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, invest, animal, animal | 1, 9, 14, 15 |
| White, Heidi Anne | Abraham, Roberto G | Characterizing Star Formation Processes in Clumpy Turbulent Disk Galaxies with DYNAMO | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2021-11-01 | The redshift range 1 < z < 3 (referred to as “cosmic noon”) defines a characteristic epoch for the formation of stars and heavy elements in galaxies. Understanding the processes that drive and regulate star formation at this period is essential for linking the earliest phases of galaxy evolution with those observed in the local Universe and remains a key missing component of a comprehensive evolution model for galaxies. The population of systems dominating this era of massive galaxy assembly and disk growth are particularly important in that they are responsible for the majority of stellar mass density in the Universe. However, efforts to directly resolve star formation in z > 1 galaxies are substantially challenged by redshift and resolution effects. This doctoral thesis aims to investigate the mechanisms driving clumpy star formation in turbulent, high-z disks using a subset of galaxies from the DYnamics of Newly-Assembled Massive Objects (DYNAMO) sample. DYNAMO comprises a sample of extremely rare, nearby (z ∼ 0.07 & 0.12) galaxies whose system properties closely resemble those observed in z ∼ 1 − 2 main-sequence galaxies. Using a combination of CO[1-0] NOEMA-PdBI observations and blackbody modeling of infrared Herschel data we assess the molecular gas content and explore the state of the ISM in DYNAMO. Coupling these measurements with resolved kinematics, we test predictions from Toomre instability theory and find the first direct observational evidence indicating the role the internal gas velocity dispersion plays in the formation of massive star forming clumps within galaxies. Using high-resolution imaging from Keck Telescope we discover 32 stellar clumps in 5 DYNAMO targets via KP -band maps of star light and perform robust stellar mass estimates for these clump-like structures. For one galaxy in DYNAMO, G04-1, we present a detailed case study of stellar clumps using multi-filter follow-up observations from Hubble Space Telescope and find evidence of radial gradients in clump mass and color. These findings provide new, crucial insight into the global and resolved star formation properties of z ∼ 1 − 2 galaxies and underscore how advantageous high-z analogue samples are for obtaining the high-resolution imaging and kinematics necessary for a comprehensive study of star formation at cosmic noon. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Salo, Zoryana | Whyne, Cari M | Characterizing the Mechanical Behaviour of the Human Pelvis Through Finite Element Analysis | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11-01 | In the human musculoskeletal system, the pelvis functions as a crucial transfer point for upper body loads to the lower extremities. Existing treatments in the field of pelvic reconstructive surgery do not account for versatile structural differences in pelvic geometries and variations in pelvic bone properties. This thesis aims to develop a novel approach to facilitate and automate the creation of multiple specimen-specific finite element (FE) models of the pelvis and to utilize these models to characterize mechanical behavior of the pelvis, under healthy and pathologic conditions. Robust generation of pelvic FE models is necessary to understand variations in mechanical behaviour resulting from differences in gender, aging, disease, and injury. A new semi-automated landmark-based FE morphing and mapping approach was developed for pelvic FE model generation without the need for segmentation. A cohort of specimen-specific pelvic FE models was generated using the new approach and the models were validated against experimental data in double leg stance configuration. The validated cohort of specimen-specific pelvic FE models was utilized to examine pelvic strains at different phases of the gait cycle (double leg stance, heel-strike/heel-off and midstance/midswing). The FE models revealed that the strain patterns throughout the pelvic structure between the double leg stance and heel-strike/heel-off configurations are not significantly different, whereas a significant difference was found in the midstance/midswing configuration. The morphing methodology was further extended to generate pelvic FE models of different shapes and to analyze their biomechanical behaviour. A significant difference was found in the strain patterns between the android (classic male shape) and gynecoid (classic female shape) pelvises. Finally, a specimen-specific pelvic FE model of an open book fracture was developed and validated against experimental data. The strain patterns identified in the fractured model aligned with the clinical understanding of open book fracture pathology. Overall, the findings of this thesis provide new understandings into the complex biomechanical behaviour of the human pelvis. This work creates a platform for more complex future FE modeling investigations to continue to study the behaviour of this multifaceted skeletal structure. | Ph.D. | gender, female, invest, land | 5, 9, 15 |
| Wlodarek, Lukasz | Li, Ren-Ke | Characterizing the Mechanism of Young Bone Marrow-derived Microglia-like Cells on Restoring Cognitive Function in the Aged Brain and After Ischemic Injury | Physiology | 2022-03-01 | Neurodegeneration in the aged population is the leading cause of death, disability, and impaired quality of life worldwide. Among the many proposed mechanisms for neurodegenerative diseases, emerging evidence indicate microglial deterioration to be at the center of this. Here, microglia in the aged brain become primed and acquire a pro-inflammatory phenotype marked by increased secretion of inflammatory chemokines and cytokines. This in turn can lead to synaptic pruning, neuronal death, and cognitive impairments. In this work I propose a novel approach to address this important issue: bone marrow (BM) reconstitution with young stem cell antigen-1 (Sca-1)-expressing hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) for the introduction of healthy blood borne-derived microglia-like cells into the aged brain for attenuation of age- and injury-induced loss of neuronal and cognitive function. My findings reveal that transplanted young HSCs repopulate the aged recipient BM and home to the brain to ultimately give rise to several thousand microglia-like cells in regions of the brain involved in neurogenesis, learning and memory, reward circuitry, and emotional regulation. Multicolor flow cytometry revealed these cells to be distinct from brain-resident microglia, while immunofluorescence staining demonstrated young and old BM-derived microglia-like cells to be positive for markers associated with anti- and pro-inflammatory phenotypes, respectively. These BM-derived microglia-like cells were seen to populate the hippocampus 1- and 3-months post-reconstruction, effectively reversing age- and ischemic injury-induced loss of novel object recognition and spatial memory and learning. The presence of these cells was significantly diminished from the hippocampus 3-months post-reconstitution; however the benefits in behavior, synaptic plasticity, and dendritic spine density in pyramidal neurons persisted. Selective BM-derived microglia-like cell depletion at 1-month post-reconstitution using generated Cx3cr1CreER/+R26iDTR/+ mice revealed the necessity of these cells as there was a loss-of-function on behavioral performance. RNA and protein screening on ex vivo microglia-like cells revealed significant upregulation in brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and proteins involved in cytoskeletal remodeling. Blocking BDNF binding in reconstituted animals 1-month post-transplantation using the antagonist, ANA-12, abolished functional improvements and dendritic spine arborization. In summary, I demonstrate the sufficiency and necessity of young, but not old, BM-derived microglia-like cells on restoring cognitive capacity in aged recipients. | Ph.D. | disabilit, learning, animal, animal | 3, 4, 14, 15 |
| Atluri, Sravya | Farzan, Faranak||Wong, Willy | Characterizing the Role of Neural Dynamics in the Treatment of Depression | Biomedical Engineering | 2019-06-01 | Selecting an appropriate treatment for patients with depression is challenging for several reasons. There is no clear understanding on (i) the pathophysiology of depression, (ii) heterogeneity in depression, and (iii) targets for successful treatment outcome. As such, although treatments for depression are effective, their average efficacy seems to be poor. It is widely accepted that seizures induced in the brain are highly effective for severe, treatment-resistant cases of depression. Seizures are also known to impact the dynamics of neural activity. Based on this knowledge, we investigated whether treatments for depression impact neural dynamics for therapeutic efficacy. We also evaluated whether measures of neural dynamics can predict response. Seizure therapy (electroconvulsive therapy and magnetic seizure therapy) and pharmacotherapy (escitalopram) were studied. It is hypothesized that modulations of neural dynamics in several frequencies, timescales, regions and networks, previously shown to be affected in depression, are associated with therapeutic outcome. These modulations are also hypothesized to be distinct from modulations associated with non-response. In this work, measures of neural dynamics were derived from power spectral density analysis, multiscale entropy analysis and microstate analysis of resting-state, eyes-closed EEG data. Results suggest that successful seizure therapy potentially impacts several characteristics of neural dynamics for therapeutic efficacy. In responders of seizure therapy, modulation of neural dynamics was observed in regions (posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, occipital pole) and networks (salience, fronto-parietal) previously known to be impaired in depression. In responders of escitalopram, modulation of neural dynamics was observed after 2 weeks into the 8-week course of escitalopram treatment. These changes were observed in regions known to be impaired in depression (posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex) but not within networks. In non-responders of escitalopram, an early modulation of neural dynamics (i.e., baseline to 2 weeks) was observed. Finally, using measures of neural dynamics, prediction of response to escitalopram achieved an accuracy of 83.2%. Knowledge from this work will guide the development of antidepressant response prediction tools and potentially improve treatment efficacy in depression. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Dorland, Steven Gordon | Smith, David G | Childhood Learning on Turtle Island: A Ceramic Analysis of Late Woodland Villages in the Lower Great Lakes Region | Anthropology | 2019-06-01 | This study applies a multi-scalar pottery analysis of 15th century assemblages to investigate northern Iroquoian childhood learning experiences in the Lower Great Lakes prior to European contact. My analysis is based on the two villages in southern Ontario: Keffer and Draper, and three villages in upstate New York: Garoga, Smith-Pagerie and Klock. I employ an ontogenetic approach that recognizes childhood perspectives and the different cognitive and physiological experiences of children as they develop. I rely on ethnographic and child development data to reconstruct past learning experiences. Through this framework, I integrate a modified approach to meshworks through a systematic study of the material interactions of social learning of community members involved with the forming, shaping, and decorating of pottery vessels. Meshworks of learning allow for the identification of the development of knowledge and skills related to a technological practice. These learning growths further included new spatial interactions in their communities, and so I conducted a spatial analysis of Keffer and Draper vessels to investigate the presence of specialized learning locales, and how spatial areas around the village were involved in learning and craft production. The results of my analysis demonstrate a learning practice that did not isolate younger potters from adult activities but relied on flexible learning that encouraged a certain level of artistic freedom with minimal adult interference that adhered to fundamental principles of potting traditions. Pottery learning did not take place in specialized learning locales, but throughout the village. Furthermore, the data indicates regional patterning in which potters in Ontario and upstate New York learned to make pottery through similar practices. I argue that during the process of making pottery, learning experiences were mediated by deeply rooted cosmologies and traditions built around maintaining balanced social relations between community members of all ages and genders in Lower Great Lakes communities. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, gender, invest, production, land | 4, 5, 9, 12, 15 |
| Hawley, James Richard | Lupien, Mathieu | Chromatin Architecture Aberrations Contribute and Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia Relapse | Medical Biophysics | 2022-03-01 | Cancer results from aberrations at the molecular level that enable biological hallmarks. These aberrations can be found within the chromatin architecture of cancer cells that includes the genome, molecular modifications to the genome, and the three-dimensional organization of the chromatin fiber. The majority of genetic variants target non-coding regions of the genome and many genes affected by genetic and epigenetic variants have important roles in chromatin remodelling and maintenance. Thus, understanding the origins of cancer progression requires investigating the targets of these aberrations and how they impact the chromatin architecture. First, I investigated the impact of non-coding single nucleotide variants that converge on cis-regulatory elements for the FOXA1 gene in primary prostate tumours. We found that deletion and repression of these cis-regulatory elements significantly decreases FOXA1 expression and prostate cancer cell growth by altering the potential of transcription factors to bind at these loci. These results identify cis-regulatory elements that control FOXA1 expression in primary prostate cancer as potential targets for therapeutic intervention. Secondly, I used chromatin conformation capture of 12 primary prostate cancer tumours and 5 benign prostate tissues to characterize the three-dimensional genome organization. We found that large-scale organization, including topologically associated domains and compartments, is largely stable over oncogenesis but that small-scale focal chromatin interactions change between benign and tumour tissue. We also investigated the impact of structural variants on chromatin organization and identify novel enhancer hijacking events. These results indicate that enhancer hijacking of prostate cancer oncogenes may be a more common driver of disease than previously recognized. Then, I developed a statistical framework for differential gene expression analysis to address the impact of non-recurrent structural variants in our primary prostate tumour cohort. This method improves on conventional gene expression fold change estimates in these unbalanced experimental designs. Finally, I investigated the genetic and epigenetic changes that underlie B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia relapse. I found recurrent loss of DNA methylation in patient-matched relapse samples that indicate a more stem-like chromatin state. Together, my work investigates the relationship between multiple components of the chromatin architecture, and how aberrations to this architecture connects oncogenesis, disease progression, and relapse. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Damasco, Valerie | Mirchandani, Kiran | Circumventing Border Control and Restrictive Immigration Policies: The Transnational Labour Migration and Mobility of Filipino Nurses to Canada from the Philippines and via the United States, 1957 to 1969 | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-06-01 | In this empirical study, I examine the transnational labour migration process of nurses who immigrated to Canada from the Philippines and via the United States during the 1950s and 1960s. Using institutional ethnography as a method of inquiry and historical research methods, I conducted in depth life history/oral history interviews with Filipino nurses who were recruited to work in hospitals in North America between 1957 and 1969. I also analyzed historical documents (i.e., correspondence between authorities at federal and provincial levels of government) obtained from archival repositories in Canada and the United States, including Archives of Ontario, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), and National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). Despite Canadian state securitization, strict border control, and the enforcement of restrictive immigration policies which prioritized white immigrants, I argue that nurses who had trained in elite private nursing schools in the Philippines attained lateral and/or vertical labour mobility in Canada between the late 1950s and the latter years of the 1960s. Notably, among the fifteen nurses I interviewed, a small number arrived prior to the commencement of the liberalization of Canadian immigration policy in 1962. Albeit Canada’s explicit prioritization and preference for white immigrants (i.e., British, French, and American citizens), as well as its imposed restrictions on and discrimination against Asian migrants during the post 1962 period, nearly half of my participants were appointed to supervisory positions (i.e., head nurse, nurse coordinator, nurse supervisor, director of nursing) or nurse educator positions (i.e., nursing instructor, clinical instructor, professor of nursing). I argue that historical, structural, and social influences prefigured the labour mobility of these nurses to and within Canada during the mid-twentieth century. Using a meso-level analytical approach, I illustrate how their appointment in Canadian hospitals was organized by social institutions (i.e., government, education, healthcare, family), state policies in the Philippines, United States, and Canada (i.e., immigration, labour, and healthcare), and influenced by the American colonial history of the Philippines. Moreover, the data reveal that a lack of uniformity existed in the manner by which the credentials, skills, and employment experience of my participants were evaluated. Instead, the evaluation and admissions process was individualized and Canadian immigration authorities maintained flexibility in their assessment practices in accordance with economic and labour need in the country. Although this study points to the exemptions that Canadian immigration officials made on behalf of Filipino nurses and illustrates the flexibility they employed in their practices for this particular ethnic group of nursing professionals, it still, however, represents a racialized system. The Canadian state continues to privilege local labour market needs and seek immigrants or racialized groups who are equipped with various or specific forms of capital (i.e., economic, social, human, cultural). Although the nurses I interviewed attained occupational mobility, their successful career trajectories do not suggest a labour or immigration policy that is post racial. The findings of this study confirm that the practice of identifying and hiring ‘ideal immigrants’ for labour market shortages and demands nonetheless continues in a racialized manner. | Ph.D. | healthcare, citizen, employment, labour, capital, institut | 3, 4, 8, 9, 16 |
| Liang, Minggao | Wilson, Michael D | Cis-regulatory Mechanisms of Acute Phase Gene Expression | Molecular Genetics | 2021-06-01 | The accurate control of when and where genes are expressed is central to our understanding of development and disease. Elucidating the mechanisms that control this complex, multifaceted process is a major endeavor at the forefront of genetics and genome biology. The acute phase response (APR) is an evolutionarily conserved systemic response to inflammation that triggers rapid gene expression changes in the liver and other tissues. Genes induced during the APR are regulated via unique mechanisms that facilitate their rapid expression upon stimulation while maintaining their silencing under basal conditions. To dissect the mechanisms controlling APR gene expression, I employ a combination of epigenetic profiling, comparative genomics, and chromatin conformation capture to characterize the cis-regulation of a representative APR gene, PLAU. I investigate how PLAU is dysregulated in Quebec platelet disorder, a bleeding disorder in which a single tandem-duplication of PLAU causes its ectopic >100-fold overexpression in platelets and megakaryocytes. I demonstrate that the silencing of PLAU is normally facilitated by local 3-dimensional (3D) chromatin architecture which isolates it from the activity of nearby tissue-specific enhancers, while disruption of this architecture in QPD results in ectopic activation of PLAU by a conserved megakaryocyte enhancer. Employing a similar multi-omics approach, I investigate genome-wide transcriptional and epigenetic changes during the APR in the context of 3D chromatin architecture in the mouse liver. I demonstrate that enhancer-gene pairs within the same chromatin loop are more likely to show concordant changes in gene expression than equidistant genes in different domains, together illustrating a paradigm in which 3D chromatin architecture coordinates both the activation and silencing of acute-phase gene expression. | Ph.D. | invest, conserv, conserv | 9, 14, 15 |
| Rae, Eleanor | Leslie, Deborah | CityPlace and City Space: An Investigation into Toronto's Changing Skyline | Geography | 2021-06-01 | As the largest master-planned residential community in Toronto, the case of CityPlace offers an important and dramatic study of physical, social, and symbolic transformation. The towers of CityPlace altered the skyline of downtown Toronto, created a new residential and commercial neighbourhood on previously unused rail land, and established a community of nearly 18,000 people. The unique features, context, and scale of CityPlace condominiums offer a profoundly interesting case for understanding a variety of policies and processes, including: social mix and creative city planning strategies; the narrative of Toronto as a city of neighbourhoods; and the form and function of community through both online and offline geographies. The rapid construction of this neighbourhood raises critical and timely questions about the profound transformation of Toronto through the building of CityPlace, and the role of this development in shaping new neighbourhoods and identities. My dissertation engages with many themes embedded in these transformations, connecting the development of CityPlace to concepts of urban neoliberalism and development, new-build gentrification, the performance and perception of neighbourhood and community, and the production of space in the urban realm. This project investigates CityPlace in the contexts and confluences of the site’s development and evolution: production and promotion of the condominium complex within neoliberal paradigms of benevolent gentrification, creativity, and social mix; complex negotiations of Toronto’s narrative as a Jane Jacobsian city-of-neighbourhoods; strategies and sites of community life and novel perspectives on the physical and virtual locality of neighbourhood connection. CityPlace condos are reflective and constitutive of broader geo-political forces such as urban neoliberalism, place-making and gentrification, and the production of a symbolic economy – concepts that must be carefully applied to a timely and meaningful analysis of this site. Extending this analysis further, CityPlace is also a site of negotiation and nuance, where challenging, contradictory, and variegated practices, policies, processes, and perceptions complicate but also enrich our contemplation of this neighbourhood. In this dissertation, I utilize a multimethods approach to explore case and context: the production, policies, and practices of CityPlace condominiums, and how this neighbourhood operates within and informs a landscape of narratives about urban space. | Ph.D. | invest, cities, urban, production, land | 9, 11, 12, 15 |
| Slater, Kimberley R | Robinson, John B | Clarifying, Creating, Capturing, and Catalyzing: An Exploration of Social Learning in the Evaluation of Community-scale Contributions to Sustainability Transitions | Geography | 2021-11-01 | Climate change, social inequality, ecological degradation, and political volatility are just some of the complex and interconnected challenges that underscore the need to accelerate sustainability transitions; long term, systems changes in the direction of sustainability. In an increasingly urbanized world, understanding how these challenges affect cities, and are addressed by urban actors, such as those representing municipal governments and civil society, is more important than ever. Of interest here is how social learning may shape the contributions of such efforts, particularly in spurring collective action at multiple scales. Yet the conceptual ambiguity surrounding social learning, for instance whether it is a process or outcome, and what roles agency and structure play in shaping learning pathways and outcomes, presents a barrier to understanding and leveraging it in the context of community-scale interventions. These gaps warrant the theoretical, methodological, and empirical work undertaken in this dissertation. Specifically, this dissertation clarifies social learning by applying a social practice lens, operationalizes it through a “multi-pronged, light-touch, utilization-focused” evaluation approach suitable to small scale interventions in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), Canada, and finally addresses the role of social learning in the contributions grassroots interventions make in advancing sustainability transitions. | Ph.D. | learning, inequality, equalit, cities, urban, transit, climate, ecolog | 4, 10, 11, 13, 15 |
| Lin, Thomas Ken-Hsing | Leon-Garcia, Alberto | Client-centric Orchestration and Management of Distributed Applications in Multi-tier Clouds | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The increasing ubiquity of IoT and “smart” devices in our everyday surroundings presents enormous opportunities to bring novel applications and services close to end-users. As these devices continue to become more powerful, we foresee scenarios where they serve as extensions of the traditional cloud, enabling time-sensitive operations to be directly performed on premises. For composite applications and services based on the microservice and NFV architectures, whose overall performance is highly dependent on the placement of their constituent microservices relative to one another, the mobility of such devices may adversely impact the application’s operational efficiency. These composite applications therefore require an orchestration system to actively manage and reconfigure the microservices so that they continue to meet operational goals and the needs of end-users. Such orchestrators must address the challenges that come with the expected scale, variety, and mobility of resources spread out over multiple tiers and geographical regions.This thesis presents our concept of client-centric orchestration, in which compute and network resources are jointly managed to ensure that clients are able to receive their service(s) at some pre-determined quality level. To this end, we present the design and implementation of a series of management plane components that can be leveraged by a client-centric orchestrator. We first develop a multi-layer telemetry system that is capable of monitoring the metrics of both applications and the underlying infrastructure. An implementation of a client-centric orchestrator is then presented that can dynamically scale and place service replicas to optimize the clients’ perceived network quality. To further augment the orchestrator, we develop SDN-based network control capabilities that it can use to install custom network flows directly into the underlying network and enforce QoS. Lastly, we consider the case where devices are cut off from central management components, and introduce a P2P-based solution that empowers the clients (whether they be end-users or microservices in a composite application) to independently discover nearby service replicas or request allocation of new replicas. Since this work contributes towards the extension of the SAVI multi-tier cloud, we will also share our operational insights, experiences, and lessons learned. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Bai, Yuguang | Kamnitzer, Joel | Cluster Structure for Mirkovic-Vilonen Cycles and Polytopes | Mathematics | 2022-03-01 | We look at the Mirkovic-Vilonen (MV) basis for semisimple Lie algebras and compare this to the associated cluster algebra to investigate the question of whether or not the cluster variables are in the MV basis. We begin with finding analogues of the cluster structure among MV cycles and MV polytopes. In particular, we show the exchange relations correspond to an equation involving MV polytopes. We extend a result of Baumann-Kamnitzer in relating valuations of an MV cycle and the dimension of homomorphism spaces of its associated preprojective algebra module. In doing so, we are able to give a partial result for an exchange relation involving MV cycles in low dimensions. In joint work with Dranowski and Kamnitzer, we present a way to calculate the fusion product of MV cycles in type A through a generalization of the Mirkovic-Vybornov isomorphism. Finally, we finish with examining the A3 example and show directly that the cluster variables in this case are in the MV basis. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Zurbau, Lucia Andreea | Vuksan, Vladimir | Co-administration of Complementary Therapies for Cardiovascular Disease Risk Reduction in Type 2 Diabetes | Nutritional Sciences | 2019-06-01 | Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the main cause of mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). Selected dietary and herbal supplements with complementary mechanisms of action have been indicated in management of diabetes along with standard therapy. The objective of this thesis was to determine if a 24-weeks co-administration of 4 diet and herbal supplements will improve CVD risk factors beyond conventional therapy in T2D. The project consisted of a randomized, double-blind, controlled trial with two parallel groups involving 104 individuals with T2D (HbA1c: 7±0.05%) which were randomly assigned to test (10g viscous fiber, 60g Salba-Chia, 1.5g American and 0.75g Korean red ginseng extracts daily), or energy and fibre matched control (53g oat bran, 25g inulin, 25g maltodextrose and 2.25g wheat bran daily) for 24 weeks. Fasting blood was drawn at weeks 0, 12 and 24. Primary and secondary endpoints was change in HbA1c, blood pressure and serum lipids over 24 weeks. The study was conducted at two centres: St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, Canada and Vuk Vrhovac University Clinic in Zagreb, Croatia. Results were computed using an intent-to-treat analysis with multiple imputations. Eighty-seven participants completed the trial (test n=44; control n=43). The test intervention significantly reduced HbA1c (0.27±0.13% (p=0.03) and 24-hour systolic blood pressure by 3.8±1.2 mmgHg (p | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Pauker, Sharon | Perlman, Michal | Cognitive Sensitivity - Investigation of Construct Across Cultures and Settings | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2019-11-01 | The current dissertation includes 3 research papers investigating the construct of cognitive sensitivity across different cultures, populations, and settings. Cognitive sensitivity refers to an individual’s ability to create a cognitively stimulating environment for their interaction partner, while being attuned to this partner’s emotional state. Study 1 investigated the role mother’s ethnicity (Caucasian, Asian, Black; N=354) plays in maternal cognitive sensitivity and in children’s later cognitive outcomes (n=245). Results indicated that maternal cognitive sensitivity skills differ as a function of the mother’s ethnicity. Additionally, ethnicity moderated the relationship between maternal cognitive sensitivity and children’s later cognitive outcomes, but only for children from Asian backgrounds. Study 2 investigated cognitive sensitivity within a sample of Israeli parent-child dyads (N=44), its relation to children’s emerging literacy skills, and whether cognitive sensitivity differed as a function of the parent’s gender. The psychometric properties of the cognitive sensitivity measure were solid, providing preliminary evidence of the applicability of this construct to this Israeli population. Parent cognitive sensitivity was found as a significant predictor of children’s phonological awareness, but only in families with small sibship size (≤2 children). No significant differences were found between mothers’ and fathers’ cognitive sensitivity ability. Interestingly, parents were found to be more cognitively sensitive towards their daughters compared to their sons. Study 3 adapted and validated the Cognitive Sensitivity scale from the family to the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) settings to capture educator-child interactions. The measure was designed to be short and efficient to train and administer. Results indicated strong psychometric and concurrent validity properties for the new scale, Educator Cognitive Sensitivity (ECS). Using multilevel data, with educators (N=350) nested within classrooms (n=135) and within centres (n=69), a variance component analysis indicated that the majority of variance in cognitive sensitivity scores was accounted for by individual differences between educators. This brings into question methods currently used with gold-standard measures capturing the quality of educator-child interactions. Taken together, research findings highlight the complexity of factors playing in measuring parent-child and educator-child interactions. As a result, researchers need to develop measures that are empirically strong, efficient, and culturally sensitive. | Ph.D. | gender, invest | 5, 9 |
| Biondi, Margherita | Sargent, Edward H. | Colloidal Quantum Dot Surface Modification for Emerging Optoelectronic Applications | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-03-01 | Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) have received attention for their potential in optoelectronic applications. Their solution-processing and tuning beyond silicon offer an alternative to standard crystalline materials and enable integration with numerous substrates, including flexible ones. In this thesis I seek to modify the CQD surface to improve CQD transport and device performance.I begin by studying the limitations in the best prior PbS CQD solar cells, finding that inefficient charge collection limits performance. I found this is caused by a chemical alteration of the active layer following the deposition of the hole transport layer (HTL) using the standard thiol-based ligand exchange. I then develop a new ligand exchange, obtaining a novel HTL material, chemically orthogonal to the underlying active layer, which minimizes interface defects and improves the charge collection probability at the back interface from 50% to ~100%. Improved transport enables increased fill factor and solar cell efficiency (from 12.2% to 13%). Next, I study the effect of the defects in the HTL: the rapid thiol-based HTL ligand exchange causes agglomeration, defects and incomplete passivation. I develop a kinetically-controlled exchange via solvent engineering, improving passivation and order in the final solid, resulting in 13.3% solar cell efficiency (vs. 12.5% for standard device). Finally, I apply the knowledge gained on surface modification to infrared CQD photodetectors. At the time I started my Ph.D., infrared PbS CQD photodetectors failed to combine quantum efficiency, sensitivity and speed and the external quantum efficiency in the IR was limited to 15%. I found that the CQD shape, determined by synthesis thermodynamic, is responsible for weak coupling, detrimental for device performance. I employed colloidal atomic layer deposition to rationally modify the CQD surface and obtain a shape not achievable with synthesis alone, favoring CQD coupling. The resulting CQD solids show one order of magnitude increase in hole mobility, resulting in 70% external quantum efficiency in the IR (vs. 45% for standard device), and record-performing solution-processed short-wavelength infrared photodetectors. The studies in this thesis improve the understanding of CQD surface, surface modification and its effect on transport, offering routes to improve CQD optoelectronic device performance. | Ph.D. | knowledge, solar | 4, 7 |
| Blackwell-Hardie, Victoria Katherine Dale | Forman, Lisa | Community Conceptualizations of Women’s Everyday Mental Distress: The Importance of Social Contexts, Power and Agency in Shaping Women’s Distress Experiences in Eldoret, Kenya | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | Common Mental Disorders are the leading neuropsychiatric causes of disease burden in low and middle-income country (LMIC) settings. Women also demonstrate a higher burden of everyday distress globally, representing an extraordinary challenge for women in LMICs (WHO, 2017). Dominant assessment/treatment responses have been critiqued for lacking local cultural information about social contexts, experiences, and determinants of distress. This study responds to these concerns in Eldoret, Western Kenya, a context with strong mental health policy and primary care services, but limited resources and community-level data on women’s mental health. In partnership with Moi University and the AMPATH Consortium, I investigated the perspectives and experiences of women, the primary social determinants, and the community-level needs and assets around Eldoret women’s distress. This was an exploratory qualitative research study in which I drew on methodological frameworks for Community Health Needs Assessment and ethnography. I employed a critical cross-cultural theoretical stance informed by social ecological theory, cultural psychiatry, and Black and African feminisms. Over two years living in Eldoret, I generated primary data via community observation, key informant interviews, focus group discussions, and asset mapping, alongside the collection of relevant pre-existing secondary data. I found that “stressed up”, a severe form of everyday common mental distress, was the foremost mental health problem for Eldoret women. Key social determinants included: insufficient resources; primary partner relationships; household gender role stress; cultural norms; and gender-based violence. Women’s greatest mental health assets were their own coping skills (including ‘being brilliant’, hustling and persevering), female support networks, chamas (women’s groups), and religious institutions. Key needs included increased opportunities for pragmatic/economic support, and a centralized community women’s centre in town. This study contributes to the literature on socio-cultural models for understanding the burden of women’s distress, and offers a methodology for cross-cultural community mental health assessment. My findings suggest that severe stress is common and highly normalized, many women may therefore not seek help from primary care. Innovative social interventions are needed that build on community assets, champion women’s strengths, and offer pragmatic economic, relationship and violence-prevention supports that could address the core social determinants of Eldoret women’s distress. | Ph.D. | mental health, gender, women, female, feminis, invest, income, ecolog, institut, violence | 3, 5, 9, 10, 15, 16 |
| Vargas Soto, Juan Sebastián | Molnár, Péter K | Community Disturbance and Host-parasite Interactions at the Wildlife-domestic Interface in a Neotropical Biodiversity Hotspot | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-11-01 | Tropical ecosystems worldwide are threatened by land-use change. The resulting increased interaction between wildlife, domestic species, and humans can lead to parasite spillover and emerging diseases that can significantly impact wildlife. Measuring spillover risk presents multiple challenges, including identifying drivers of species interaction, quantifying host densities and overlap, and estimating parasite prevalence. I studied anthropogenic pressures and the associated risk of parasite spillover in the Osa peninsula, an important biodiversity hotspot in southern Costa Rica. In Chapter 1, I analyzed how anthropogenic disturbance, land protection, and habitat quality shape the vertebrate community. In collaboration with multiple institutions, I conducted a region-wide camera-trap survey and analyzed the occurrence of terrestrial mammals and ground birds using a joint species distribution model. Overall disturbance had negative impacts on occupancy of large predators and herbivores. Mesopredators like ocelots ( | Ph.D. | labor, urban, anthropogenic, species, biodivers, ecosystem, forest, biodivers, species, land, ecosystem, wildlife, institut | 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Gauberg, Julia | Senatore, Adriano | Comparative Analysis of CaV1 and CaV2 Voltage-gated Calcium Channels from Trichoplax adhaerens Reveals Early Divergence of Channel Types and Biophysical Properties | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11-01 | To translate electrical signals into chemical signals at the synapse, cells employ voltage-gated calcium (CaV) channels. Most animals have three types of CaV channels, CaV1-CaV3, and of these, CaV1 and CaV2 channels have distinct roles at the synapse that are conserved across many animal phyla, from invertebrates to humans. CaV2 channels are involved in exocytosis of vesicles from the presynaptic cell, and CaV1 channels are typically involved in triggering gene transcription or contraction at the postsynaptic cell. CaV1 and CaV2 channels from nematodes to mammals have conserved features that are important for their post-/presynaptic functions, and it is possible that these features are conserved in more early-diverging animals as well. The most early-diverging animal phylum to have all three CaV channel homologues is the Placozoa. Placozoans are microscopic, marine animals that lack true tissues and synapses but still exhibit complex behaviours. Because they lack synapses but have all three types of CaV channels, they can be used as an evolutionary outgroup to examine the properties of CaV1 and CaV2 channels. The work presented in this thesis describes the characterization of the CaV1 and CaV2 channel homologues cloned from the placozoan Trichoplax adhaerens. The T. adhaerens CaV1 (TCaV1) and CaV2 (TCaV2) channels share structural and functional features that differentiate them from the TCaV3 channel. The biophysical properties of the TCaV channels were found to be more similar to their mammalian homologues than each other. However, differences in modulation by cytosolic proteins such as G-proteins and calmodulin, which are defining features of these channels in mammals, are lacking in TCaV1 and TCaV2 channels. Thus, ancestral CaV1 and CaV2 channels likely diverged in their biophysical properties before gaining the ability to be modulated by different cytosolic proteins. Finally, TCaV1 and TCaV2 channel expression was examined in vivo, revealing that these channels are expressed in cell types that are known to be contractile and neuroendocrine-like. The differences in TCaV1 and TCaV2 expression suggests that they have different functions in vivo. Overall, this work provides invaluable insight into the properties of T. adhaerens CaV channels and contributes to our understanding of metazoan CaV channel evolution. | Ph.D. | marine, conserv, animal, conserv, animal | 14, 15 |
| Arefmanesh, Maryam | Master, Emma R||Nejad, Mojgan | Comparative Analysis of Chemical and Enzymatic Pathways to Improve Suitability of Industrial Lignins for Polyurethane Applications | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | The utilization of all biorefinery products and by-products, including lignin, will be a game-changer to optimize the biorefinery concept and make corresponding processes economically viable. Softwood kraft lignin (SKL) is a significant bioresource that could play an essential role in achieving a sustainable bio-based economy. Due to existing aliphatic and phenolic hydroxyl groups in lignin, it could be used as biobased polyol for polyurethane (PU) application. PUs represent a large class of polymers with urethane repeating units produced by reacting polyols and diisocyanates. Major hurdles to the valorization of kraft lignins include high heterogeneity, inaccessibility of hydroxyl groups for reaction with isocyanates, and low solubility in most organic solvents. As such, technologies to enhance kraft lignin homogeneity are particularly crucial to unlocking its enormous potential and entirely replace petroleum-based polyol in PUs. To overcome the bottlenecks in valorization of SKL for applications beyond energy production, chemoenzymatic methods were established and compared to propel our knowledge of effective ways to tailor lignin structure for PU resin applications. The first method focused on fragmentation of lignin structures using ionic liquid 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium [BMIM]Br treatment to gain access to the existing hydroxyl groups. However, the expected compositional changes were not detected on SKL (Indulin-AT) after IL treatment, as confirmed by phosphorus nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (31P NMR) and gel permeation chromatography (GPC) analysis. The second method was a one-step acetone fractionation of LignoBoost SKL that resulted in acetone soluble and insoluble fractions, offering components suitable to entirely replace phenol and polyol in phenolic and PU resins, respectively, without the need for further chemical modification of the lignin structure. Additionally, the possibility of using a cellulose-derived solvent in PU formulation was successfully tested. Finally, to eliminate organic solvents and mimic the oxidation of lignin phenolic compounds in nature, an alkaline tolerant laccase was used to graft acrylate monomer onto LignoBoost SKL. Enzymatic grafting was confirmed by Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy and 1H NMR techniques, and was shown to enhance the reactivity of lignin as a polyol substitute in PU resin applications. The reported enzymatic and aqueous process presents an opportunity for the sustainable valorization of SKL. | Ph.D. | knowledge, energy, accessib, production | 4, 7, 11, 12 |
| Pryszlak, Michael | Pearson, Bret J | Comparative Genomics Identifies DDX56 as a Highly Conserved Stemness Regulator in Normal and Cancer Stem Cells | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2020-11-01 | In all animals, development and homeostasis is ultimately regulated by stem cell proliferation, differentiation, and self-renewal. Aberrant activation of “stemness” programs is deleterious at both the cellular and organismal level and is commonly observed in human cancers. However, identifying key stemness genes directly in humans is challenging. Here, I use the power of model systems and comparative genomics to identify and functionally screen 76 highly conserved, putative stemness regulators in vivo that are also candidate drivers of stemness in human glioblastoma, a highly aggressive, stem-cell driven cancer with limited treatment options. I then closely characterize the DEAD-box RNA helicase DDX56, which is conserved across evolution as a single gene, and its upregulation is prognostic of a poor clinical outcome in glioblastoma. I demonstrate that DDX56 is essential for stem cell maintenance in planarians and is required for survival and proliferation of radial glial stem cells in the developing murine cortex. In glioma neural stem cells, I show that DDX56 is required for normal growth kinetics and sphere forming ability in vitro. Finally, in a Drosophila glioblastoma model, I show that DDX56 is required for tumourigenesis in vivo. In summary, my thesis work supports that underlying programs governing stemness have been conserved across evolution and demonstrates the utility of taking a comparative genomics approach in identifying stemness genes that are key players in an incurable, stem cell-driven, human cancer. | Ph.D. | conserv, animal, conserv, animal | 14, 15 |
| Mattocks, Michael | Tropepe, Vincent | Computational Approaches to D. rerio Retinal Organogenesis | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11-01 | Increasing integration of statistical and computational techniques into the analysis of cell and molecular biological data has created opportunities for explaining organogenic phenomena by numerical analysis. This thesis first examines the suitability of the most developed of these explanations for the development of the \textit{D. rerio} eye, the stochastic mitotic mode explanation (SMME) for retinal progenitor cell (RPC) function, and demonstrates that it is neither the best available explanation, nor theoretically sound. It is shown that a deterministic alternative model is an improved explanation for the data, and that the SMME cannot explain postembryonic RPC function. These studies support earlier hypotheses of a linear progression of competency phases over the hypothesized ``stochastic'' nature of RPC lineage commitment. A Bayesian model comparison framework, relying centrally on the Galilean Monte Carlo nested sampling algorithm for estimation of model evidence and posterior parameter distributions, is subsequently elaborated as an improved method for testing models in organogenesis. The utility of this approach is proved by comparing models of \textit{D. rerio} RPC populations in the postembryonic Circumferential Marginal Zone (CMZ). The inferential framework is used to show that the activity of CMZ RPCs in the postembryonic period is best characterised by a decaying cell cycle rate, with similar activity across morphological axes, despite asymmetrical population dynamics. Changes to RPC lineage commitment over this time suggest an explanation for the changing photoreceptor mosaic. These studies establish that CMZ RPC behaviours change over time, whose postembryonic function is not adequately described as a recapitulation of an embryonic program. Finally, the \textit{D. rerio} mutant \textit{rys} is shown to arise from a lesion in the npat locus, and the apparently paradoxically enlarged CMZ RPC population observed in these animals is demonstrated to arise from a failure of these cells to specify and exit the proliferative niche, and not from a proliferative defect. Nested sampling is used to show that unique populations of nucleosome positions in \textit{rys} mutants and sibling arise from separate causal processes. A mechanism for these observations involving simultaneous changes to the subunit composition of the nucleosome pool, and loss of positioning control, is suggested. | Ph.D. | labor, fish, animal, animal | 8, 14, 15 |
| Sidders, Lindsay Christine | Newton, Melanie J. | Conquering Creoles: Power, Transculturation, and the Limits of Empire in New Spain, 1521-1625 | History | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation examines conquering creole consciousness through the voluminous pastoral and ethnographic writings of Mota y Escobar (1546-1625), a first-generation elite criollo of Hispanic descent, who served as Bishop of Guadalajara-Nueva Galicia (1598-1607) and Tlaxcala-Puebla (1608-1625). His generation, the first of the conquistador descendants, believed themselves entitled to extend and naturalize conqueror power as a form of perpetually inheritable privilege, in order to continue the construction of empire and cement their own place within it. Mota y Escobar’s cohort enjoyed the returns of their parents’ and grandparents’ institutionalization of Hispanic domination but experienced the Crown’s efforts to claw back the mercedes (rewards) that undergirded this naturalization. Mota y Escobar’s writings exemplify the ways in which creole power was made through transcultural agents who used Iberian epistemological constructs alongside distinctly novohispano goals, desires, and affect to assert their natural right to rule the colony. As mobile and strategic cultural agents, these creoles banded together around a sense of entitlement as the legitimate inheritors of New World wealth and power, and as the most effective conquerors, creators, and interpreters of New World order. Bearing out Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortíz’s vision of New World cultural transformations as processes of exchange, loss, and creation (transculturation), this dissertation shows criollo power as articulated and negotiated through colonial bureaucracy, reproduced through the rhetoric of whiteness, and managed through the practices of slavery, patronage, and wealth accumulation. It highlights Mota y Escobar’s efforts as a transcultural agent to communicate his sense of his place in the imperial structure using a language that moved flexibly between what was European and what was novohispano. To naturalize Hispanic control, power had to be made and remade constantly in the colony of New Spain, and conquering creoles like Mota y Escobar laboured to transform and translate European cultural codes into novohispanoorder. Conquering creoles revelled in their domination and marginalization of other racialized groups in New Spain, all the while romanticizing the criollo relationship to colonial space. A detailed examination of a member of this generation helps illustrate the logic of violence upon which criollismo was built. | Ph.D. | labour, institut, violence | 8, 16 |
| Campisi, Susan Christine | Bhutta, Zulfiqar A | Considerations Regarding Puberty Assessment Methodology and the Relationship between Undernutrition and Puberty among Adolescents Living in Pakistan | Nutritional Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Background: Knowledge regarding the timing of pubertal milestones among those living in Pakistan is sparse. Additionally, an accurate methodology for pubertal self-assessment is key to develop a more comprehensive understanding of sexual maturation on adolescent health. Such research is lacking among those living in low-and middle-income countries (LMIC) and especially for males. Objectives: The first objective of this thesis was to assess the accuracy of pubertal self-assessment. The second objective was to determine the relationships between undernutrition and the timing of pubertal milestones among adolescents living in two different settings in Pakistan – rural Matiari and an urban slum in Karachi. Methods: A systematic review with meta-analysis was conducted to assess the level of agreement between self-assessment using Tanner Stages images and clinician-based assessment. Among youth living in rural Pakistan, the level of agreement between self-assessment using a questionnaire-based tool without images with physician assessment was determined. Next, the relationship between the timing of all pubertal milestones and undernutrition among youth living in Matiari, a rural district in Pakistan was determined using cross-sectional data. Lastly, the relationship between the timing of pubertal onset and undernutrition among youth living in an urban slum in Pakistan was determined using longitudinal data. Results: Participants in rural Matiari and the Karachi slum were able to assess their pubertal development reasonably well when mapped to a three-point classification. However, when the subtitles of the five-point Tanner Stages are of interest, clinician-based assessments were superior. Participants in rural Matiari and the Karachi slum who weren’t impacted by stunting, experienced pubertal milestones consistent with LMIC estimates. However, those with stunting or thinness experienced delays in attaining pubertal milestones. A high prevalence of anemia and nutrient deficiencies were observed in both settings. Conclusions: Integrating self-assessment puberty measures into adolescent research may reveal the interconnectivity of nutrition, health, and well-being. The body of research in this thesis highlights the nutritional vulnerability of adolescents in LMIC as demonstrated by delays in puberty in stunted youth and high levels of hidden hunger. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, nutrition, malnutrition, well-being, knowledge, income, urban, rural | 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11 |
| Young, Christina Michelle | McDonough, Peggy||Fox, Bonnie | Constrained Care: Doula Practice and Hospital Birth | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | Doulas offer emotional, physical, and informational support to women during pregnancy, childbirth, and the early postpartum period. Their model of practice is based on providing continuity of care and helping clients feel well supported regardless of how their birth proceeds. In hospitals, these efforts are complicated by doulas’ lack of formal status in the health care system and by the medical model of birth, which views childbirth as a clinical event rather than one that requires support and encouragement. Presently, little is known about how these “complications” shape doulas’ work in hospitals. As more women train and practice as doulas, it is critical to understand the nature of their working conditions and their capacity to deliver their ideal model of care. I asked: How do doulas accomplish their work in hospitals? To explore this question, I conducted interviews with 26 doulas working in Toronto, Canada. I invited participants to describe the work involved in providing client support, their interactions with hospital staff, the overall demands of their role, and their level of satisfaction with doula practice. My analysis brought together data about the particularities of doulas’ work practices with feminist critiques of medicalized childbirth and the gendered organization of care work. I found that doulas’ position in hospitals created several challenges. Many participants reported an inability to perform their ideal model of care without tiptoeing around staff, a need to show deference to medical authority and appear as if they were not challenging the medical model of birth (even if that was their aim), and an implicit obligation to perform work outside of their scope of practice to assist busy nurses and ensure that their clients received adequate care. These demands were in addition to the considerable challenge of providing women with comfort and support during childbirth – a task that required a great deal of emotional labour – and the commitment involved in providing continuity of care. My findings suggest that the current model of doula practice is unsustainable and the challenges doulas face in hospitals highlight broader deficiencies in the organization and delivery of maternity care. | Ph.D. | health care, gender, women, feminis, labour | 3, 5, 2008 |
| Booth, Kyle Ewart Coventry | Beck, J. Christopher | Constraint Programming Approaches to Electric Vehicle and Robot Routing Problems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Driven by global efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions, there has been significant investment in electric vehicle (EV) technology in recent years, resulting in a substantial increase in EV market share. Concurrently, the demand for mobile robots, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and land-based robots, has also experienced rapid growth, encouraged by recent advances in the autonomy and capabilities of these systems. Common to both of these technologies is the use of electric motors for propulsion and batteries for mobile energy storage. Techniques for the coordination of electric vehicle fleets, whether human-operated or autonomous, must address a variety of unique challenges, including sparse recharging infrastructure, significant recharge durations, and limited battery capacities. The central thesis of this dissertation is that constraint programming (CP) can be an effective and flexible paradigm for modeling and solving routing problems involving electric vehicles. While efforts on the development of mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) approaches to electric vehicle routing problems within the vehicle routing literature are expansive and consistently growing, the exploration of CP for approaching these increasingly pervasive problems has been, thus far, limited. Throughout this dissertation, we address this thesis by developing novel CP formulations for both existing and new electric vehicle routing problem domains, leveraging modeling strategies from the MILP literature. Specifically, we propose novel CP models based on recharging path multigraphs as well as introduce a novel single resource modeling strategy that exploits symmetry in vehicle fleets for CP models involving interval, sequence, and cumulative function expression variables. These methodological contributions are then applied to four problem domains, where applicable. The first two problem domains involve electric vehicle routing with traditional logistics fleets. The third domain requires the synchronization of heterogeneous fleets involving UAVs and ground-based vehicles in a large-scale surveillance setting. Finally, the last problem domain involves the routing of social robots in a retirement home setting under complex real-world constraints, including synchronization and optional task precedence. For each of these domains, we empirically demonstrate the effectiveness of our CP approaches. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, greenhouse, infrastructure, invest, cities, greenhouse gas, emissions, land | 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 |
| Erlich, Andrew | Garrett, Frances | Contextualizing Medicine and its Roles in Seventeenth-century Tibet | Religion, Study of | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation examines Tibetan medicine and its roles in Tibetan politics and culture throughout history with a focus on the seventeenth-century and the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) and his last regent, Desi Sanggyé Gyatso (1653-1705). It explores the role that their patronage of medical institutions, scholarship, and practice played in legitimizing the rule of their new regime and in helping to establish Lhasa as the capital of Tibet. It critically examines how modern scholars have approached the study of Tibetan medical history through a comparative approach with European medical history, arguing that applying ideas and periodizations from the latter onto the former is methodologically unsound. It suggests alternative approaches to the study of Tibetan medical history, including different ways to engage with Tibetan historiography and how we might begin to think about the roles of non-human actors, such as deities, in Tibetan history and medicine. | Ph.D. | capital, institut | 9, 16 |
| Mahfouz, Mostafa | Iravani, Reza | Control and Operation of the Battery-enabled Direct-current Fast Charging Station for Electric Vehicles | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2020-06-01 | This dissertation presents, develops, and evaluates a system architecture and its control structure that mitigates impact of the Electric Vehicles’ (EVs) Direct-Current Fast-Charging (DCFC) station on its host weak Alternating Current (AC) grid. The DCFC station includes multiple DCFC units, a Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), a solar-Photovoltaic (PV) system, and a grid-interface Voltage-Sourced Converter (VSC). The proposed control system, i.e., combination of Local Controllers (LCs) and Supervisory Controller (SC) contains the station dynamics within the station and thus prevents dynamic impact of the DCFC units and other internal sources, such as solar-PV generation, on the host grid. Unlike a conventional station, this enables interfacing the proposed DCFC station to the legacy AC distribution grid, irrespective of the grid weakness and technical limits. A discrete-event control-based Supervisory Controller (SC) for the DCFC station is synthesized, evaluated, and verified to (i) limit the station’s power based on grid-imposed requirements, (ii) coordinate operation of controllable units within the station, (iii) operate the station in either grid-connected mode or islanded mode, and (iv) dynamically adjust power flows inside the station between grid, PV unit, DCFC units, and BESS to satisfy the EVs charging requirements and when applicable charge BESS or export PV power to the grid. Time-domain simulation results, in PLECS software platform, are presented to assess the dynamic performance of the proposed SC subject to various discrete events/transitions. The results demonstrate robustness of the proposed control system to large-signal disturbances and discrete events/transitions. The proposed control system performance, i.e., LCs and SC, is experimentally validated using a two-layer real-time control Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) setup. The power circuit of the DCFC station is simulated in real-time in OPAL-RT platform. The LCs and the SC of the DCFC station are implemented in industrial CompactRIO (cRIO) controller and a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) PLCnext-controller, respectively. The control system performance is tested in case of islanded and grid-connected modes of operation of the station, subject to various disturbances and SC transitions, to verify the functionality of the implemented controls and readiness for final deployment and field tests. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, urban, transit, land | 7, 11, 15 |
| Richards, Larissa Marie | Binder, Ilia | Convergence Rates of Random Discrete Model Curves Approaching SLE Curves in the Scaling Limit | Mathematics | 2021-06-01 | Recently, A. Kempannien and S. Smirnov provided a framework for showing convergence of discrete model interfaces to the corresponding SLE curves. They show that given a uniform bound on specific crossing probabilities one can deduce that the interface has subsequential scaling limits that can be described almost surely by L\"owner evolutions. This leads to the natural question to investigate the rate of convergence to the corresponding SLE curves. F. Johansson Viklund has developed a framework for obtaining a power-law convergence rate to an SLE curve from a power-law convergence rate for the driving function provided some additional geometric information along with an estimate on the growth of the derivative of the SLE map. This framework is applied to the case of the loop-erased random walk. In this thesis, we show that if your interface satisfies the uniform annulus condition proposed by Kempannien and Smirnov then one can deduce the geometric information required to apply Viklund's framework. As an application, we apply the framework to the critical percolation interface. The first step in this direction for critical percolation was done by I. Binder, L. Chayes and H.K. Lei where they proved that the convergence rate of the Cardy-Smirnov observable is polynomial in the size of the lattice. It relies on a careful analysis of the boundary behaviour of conformal maps and their discrete analytic approximations as well as a Percolation construction of the {\it Harris systems}. Further, we exploit the toolbox developed by D. Chelkak for discrete complex analysis on isoradial graphs to show polynomial rate of convergence for the discrete martingale observables for harmonic explorer and the FK Ising model to the corresponding continuum objects. Then, we apply the framework developed above to gain a polynomial convergence rate for the corresponding curves. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Dinh, Danny Duy | Bolz, Steffen-Sebastian | Correction of Cerebrovascular CFTR Expression and Systemic Adrenergic Receptor Blockade Normalize Cerebrovascular Resistance and Mitigate Cardiovascular Dysfunction Following Subarachnoid Hemorrhage | Physiology | 2021-06-01 | Subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a deadly stroke subtype that kills or causes permanent disability in most of its victims. Nimodipine therapy is currently the standard of care for SAH patients. Although nimodipine provides neuroprotective benefits to SAH patients, the resulting rates of morbidity and mortality are still alarmingly high. SAH standard of care has not significantly changed in three decades, highlighting the urgent need to develop better therapeutic strategies. Importantly, SAH also inflicts damage to peripheral tissues, likely due to the surge in circulating catecholamine levels that accompanies SAH. Notably, cardiac dysfunction is a common side effect and detrimental increases in blood pressure are frequently observed in SAH patients. We propose that SAH standard of care can be refined with the addition of two elements: (i) specific targeting of cerebrovascular processes that are altered by SAH and (ii) systemic protection of the cardiovascular system from collateral damage that would otherwise exacerbate the primary cerebral pathology.In an experimental murine model of SAH, we found that lumacaftor, a reagent that increases expression of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR), prevents the SAH-induced augmentation of cerebrovascular myogenic responsiveness and the subsequent neuronal injury. In contrast, the current standard of care nimodipine fails to normalize cerebrovascular reactivity and neuronal injury in our SAH model. Importantly, CFTR is not expressed in the peripheral vasculature; lumacaftor therefore exerts high specificity for the cerebral microcirculation and targets only the pathological elevation of cerebrovascular myogenic responsiveness in SAH. Additionally, we investigated the effects of our SAH model on peripheral cardiovascular function. We found evidence of impaired cardiac function and elevated myogenic responsiveness in peripheral arteries; this latter effect is associated with increased total peripheral resistance, a main determinant of blood pressure. Anti-adrenergic therapy with the clinically-available β-blocker bisoprolol and α-blocker terazosin effectively prevents the cardiac dysfunction and restores peripheral artery myogenic responsiveness, respectively. In summary, this investigation provides detailed mechanistic insight into a novel therapeutic approach towards correcting cerebral microvascular dysfunction following SAH and a complementary therapeutic approach towards alleviating peripheral cardiovascular dysfunction that is suited to improve clinical outcome in SAH patients. | Ph.D. | disabilit, invest | 3, 9 |
| Zahiremami, Parisa | Virani, Shafique N. | Cosmopolitanism, Poetry, and Kingship: The Ideal Ruler in Sanāʾī’s (d. 1131 or 1135 CE) Poetry | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation examines the vision of ideal rulership expressed in the works of the court poet Sanāʾī (d. 1131 or 1135) by highlighting the dialogue of his works with various genres of medieval literature: Sunni and Shiʿite metaphysics, mystical writings, mirrors for princes, pious maqāmāt, and court poetry. This dissertation highlights how the politicization of Islamic mysticism that occurred during the eleventh and twelfth centuries was manifested in that era’s court poetry. In doing so, it calls for scholarly attention to the intersection of Islamic mysticism and political theory in court-patronized works composed by non-Sufi authors.This dissertation investigates Sanāʾī’s engagement with the literary and intellectual milieu of his time through the lens of his portrayal of an ideal ruler. This engagement, first, informs Sanāʾī’s interdisciplinary approach to Islamic theories of governance; second, it enables him to cross-fertilize the substance, language, and rhetorical features of other literary genres with Persian court poetry; third, it defines the politics of his poetry. After contextualizing Sanāʾī in his literary and intellectual milieu, this dissertation will analyze his Ḥadīqat al-ḥaqīqah (‘The Garden of Truth’), the Sayr al-ʿibād (‘The Journey of [God’s] Servants’), and poems from his Dīvān (‘Collection of Poems’). It argues that Sanāʾī’s poetry had two roles: it served as propaganda for his patron, the Ghaznavid ruler Bahrāmshāh (r. 1117-1157) and was used by Sanāʾī as a podium from which he promoted himself as a sage-poet endowed with knowledge of the divine. This analysis leads to a discussion of the nature of knowledge and the two foundations of perfect kingship in Sanāʾī’s poetry, intellect and justice. It argues that the metaphysical framework of Sanāʾī’s works binds the political and the mystical aspects of his poems together. Through a description of the soul’s journey to God Sanāʾī explains that drawing near God, experiencing divine love, and becoming a valī (in its mystical sense) is a prerequisite for being a perfect ruler. This mystical theory of rulership recurs in later political texts and plays a significant role in shaping Perso-Islamic political ethics during the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, governance | 4, 9, 16 |
| Black, Shannon Ananada | Leslie, Deborah | Crafty Impressions: The (New) Visual Culture of Contemporary Fibre Craft | Geography | 2021-11-01 | In recent years in the Global North, there has been an extraordinary resurgence of craft. Do-it yourself and domestic fibre-based arts and crafts have proliferated in homes, workshops and online. The pandemic has further extended these developments. Today, craft is practiced for its physical slowness, intrinsic rewards, creative expression and psychological benefits. Craft is also pursued as a form of paid work. This is particularly true for a growing number of middle-class,white women in Canada and the United States. Increasingly, many craft workers are turning to visual and digital mediums, such as photography, video, blogging and social media, in an effort to showcase their work, exchange creative and technical ideas, cultivate communities, and generate business opportunities. Drawing on a mixed-methods approach and focusing on the hand-knitting industry in Canada and the United States, this dissertation explores the ways in which photographs circulated on social media platforms are bound up in the creative and labour practices, subjectivities, bodies, affects and politics of particular craft workers. The research suggests as craft workers use visual and digital media for the purposes of cultivating creativity, income, communities and political solidarity, they are simultaneously caught up in broader techno-capitalist systems of power.These systems can create opportunities and pathways; they can also limit capacity to earn a secure and stable living, encourage the governing and surveillance of creativity, bodies and emotions, and facilitate the marginalization of transformative politics. Highlighting the ways in which the visual and material are not separate but conjoined, the case of the hand-knitting industry demonstrates how images circulated on social media platforms are bound up in networks of power that span across geography and time, and have important human, social, political and economic contexts and consequences. Adding empirical analysis to the ways in which images circulated on social media platforms do not just show things, but do things (Tolia-Kelly and Rose, 2012), this dissertation offers new perspectives on, and contributes to broader conversations about, visual culture, creative labour, platform economies and social justice, providing analysis on the interconnectedness of these systems, and how they relate to life both online and offline. | Ph.D. | women, labour, worker, capital, income, social justice | 5, 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Arora, Rahul | Singh, Karan | Creative Visual Expression in Immersive 3D Environments | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | Recent developments in immersive technologies of virtual and augmented realities (VR/AR) have opened up the immersive space for 3D creation. By removing the crutch of two-dimensional proxies for input and output, the immersive medium presents a significant advance in the design of intuitive interfaces for 3D creative expression. However, immersion also presents its own unique challenges in precision, control, ergonomics, and perception. This thesis advocates for a human-centred approach to the design of creative tools for immersive environments. Conducting interviews, observational studies, and formal quantitative experiments reveals insights into the needs and aspirations of future users of immersive tools. These user studies build fundamental knowledge about the limitations of human perception and our musculoskeletal system. These insights are then utilized to build concrete design guidelines for immersive creation tools. We present four immersive tools, targeted at sketching, modelling, and animation tasks in VR/AR. These tools harness 3D mid-air interactions to improve the user experience for existing design tasks, and to enable novel design aesthetics. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Fang, Bingxu | Hope, Ole-Kristian OKH | Creditor Rights, Bankruptcy Resolution, and the Role of Accounting Quality | Management | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation investigates the effects of the creditor rights and the role of financial reporting in the debt markets. In Chapter 1, I focus on the impact of creditor rights and the role of accounting quality on the efficiency of bankruptcy resolutions. In Chapter 2, I study the relevance of the reporting of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in the debt markets.Chapter 1 studies the effects of creditor rights and the role of accounting quality on the efficiency of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings. I exploit the staggered adoption of anti- recharacterization statutes that induce variations in creditor rights across states and time. My findings suggest that stronger creditor rights lead to more efficient bankruptcy proceedings. Specifically, I show that stronger creditor rights lead to higher enterprise value of the firm at bankruptcy resolution, which results in higher recovery rates for creditors. I also find better operating and financial performance for firms that emerge from bankruptcy, and a lower likelihood for emerged firms to require further restructuring after emergence. Moreover, I show both analytically and empirically that the benefits of creditor rights are higher when the information frictions in bankruptcies are lower, which is captured by higher quality accounting information. Finally, I extend the generalizability of my findings to a broader sample using credit default swap data. ii Chapter 2 studies the role of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in debt markets. I explore whether KPIs convey incremental information to debt investors and examine the reaction of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market to the announcement of KPI news. Using data from four industries in which KPIs are common (airlines, retail, oil and gas, and telecommunication industries), I predict and find that the CDS market reacts significantly to the informational content embedded in KPIs. I further show that the impact of KPIs is stronger when investors’ demand for KPI information is higher. Consistent with the nonlinear payoff functions of debtholders, cross- sectional analyses show that the relevance of KPIs is higher when the company has a higher risk of financial distress, when the sign of KPI news is negative, and when the level of the KPI is lower than the industry-median level. I also find that the impact of KPIs is stronger when the company has lower earnings quality, corroborating the notion that KPIs provide incremental information relative to accounting earnings. Overall, my findings contribute to the literature studying the informational content of KPIs by showing their relevance to debtholders. This study also contributes to research on the determinants of credit risk by highlighting the role of KPIs, including both financial and non-financial metrics. Overall, this dissertation highlights the role of financial reporting in the debt markets. The evidence suggests that financial reporting has an impact on both the ex-ante expectation of credit risk and the ex-post efficiency of bankruptcy outcomes. This dissertation has implications for regulators regarding the current bankruptcy reforms in Europe and the reporting of performance metrics in the U.S. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Xia, Yi | Hu, Jim | CRISPR-cas9 and TALEN Mediated Gene Editing for Treating Cystic Fibrosis | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2019-11-01 | Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is an inherited monogenic autosomal recessive genetic disease that is most commonly seen in the Caucasian population. CF is caused by mutations along the Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Regulator (CFTR) gene which is a channel protein that regulates chloride- secretion. Conventional treatments such as physical therapy, antibiotics, and nutritional care only alleviates symptoms but does not provide a cure. New emerging channel potentiators and correctors slowed disease progression for 90% of patients. Gene therapy is an attractive strategy for treating CF as it treats all mutation classes along the CFTR gene. Targeting the airway stem cells for permanent integration of CFTR gene may provide a long-term cure for CF. In this study, we utilized a helper-depended Adenoviral (HD-Ad) vector system to package both gene editing tools and donor genes into a single vector for delivery, owing to its large carrying capacity (36 kb). TALEN and CRISPR-cas9 were utilized as gene editing tools. We first utilized a LacZ donor system to evaluate integration efficiency before integrating CFTR. We demonstrated 5% integration efficiency at the AAVS1 locus using TALEN and 10% using CRISPR-cas9. In addition, the level of TALEN/CRIPSR-cas9 and vector genome diminishes rapidly following delivery, suggesting expression of these components are transient. We showed CRISPR-cas9 mediated gene editing efficiency can be enhanced by supplying cells with key factors involved in cellular repair pathways, SCR7 (DNA ligase inhibitor), CtIP, and Exo1. Integration of CFTR using both TALEN and CRISPR-cas9 lead to long-term stable CFTR mRNA and protein expression; functional analysis showed 50% CFTR channel function restoration without enhancement and close to 100% channel function rescue with enhancement. Collectively, these data showed feasibility of permanent CFTR integration for future in vivo applications. | Ph.D. | nutrition | 2 |
| Galati, Melissa Anna | Tabori, Uri | Cross-species Modeling of Replication Repair Deficient Cancers | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Replication repair deficiency (RRD) is a leading cause of cancer hypermutation. RRD cancers are found across tissue types, often resistant to chemo-radiation therapy, and therefore universally lethal. Among children, germline deficiencies in either replication repair mechanism—DNA polymerase proofreading or the mismatch repair (MMR) system—result in early-onset cancers which were considered incurable. Despite recent success of immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) in treating RRD cancers, most tumors remain refractory or unresponsive. Novel treatments and robust models to study RRD cancers are lacking.Using a multi-omics approach, we found that RRD hypermutant cancers are enriched for RAS/MAPK mutations, exhibited increased RAS/MAPK pathway activity, and responded to MEK inhibition. Treatment of patients with RRD gliomas revealed durable responses to MEK inhibition, suggesting these tumors are addicted to oncogenic pathways resulting in favorable response to targeted therapies. To better study hypermutant cancers in vivo, we established mouse models harboring cancer-associated POLE mutations P286R and S459F, which caused rapid yet distinct time to cancer initiation, enabled stratification of POLE mutations into 3 groups based on clinical phenotype and mutagenicity, and mirrored human cancer ultrahypermutation and mutational signatures. These animals primarily developed lymphomas which could not be prevented, and were likely exacerbated by ICI, as observed in humans. We then used the Pole models to study combined RRD (MMRD+Pole mutations), which commonly occur in childhood hypermutant cancers. We developed novel brain and gastrointestinal-specific RRD mouse models. Both models resulted in highly penetrant, rapid onset cancers that genomically mimicked human RRD cancers. We observed that increased RRD likely contributes to mutational loads not sustainable for normal cell function as manifested by maldevelopment and malfunction of colon and brain from MMRD+Pole mutant homozygous mice. Moreover, serial passaging of RRD brain tumors revealed differences in mutation accumulation between intracranially and subcutaneously transplanted tumors in immunocompromised and immunocompetent animals, likely due to differences in immune surveillance within and outside the brain. Collectively, our observations provide insights into the carcinogenesis of POLE-driven tumors, information for genetic counselling, surveillance, and immunotherapy for patients. Finally, this work provides insight on immune editing, and platforms to further study RRD cancers in vivo. | Ph.D. | species, animal, species, animal | 14, 15 |
| Woo, Amelia Huibin | Jenkins, Jennifer | Culture and Family Relationships: Examining Young Sibling Conflict, and European and South Asian Canadian Mothers | Human Development and Applied Psychology | 2021-11-01 | Mothers are salient influencers of their children’s development, and the strength of their influence is contingent on cultural values and beliefs. Cross-cultural research has primarily investigated parental relationships and their associations with individual child behaviour. The unique contribution of this thesis is the cross-cultural examination of three dyadic relationships in the family: the sibling, parent-child, and marital relationships. Data was drawn from Kids, Family Places. Two hundred and seventy-three Canadian families (222 European and 51 South Asian) were included. There was data from a total of 546 siblings (i.e., 273 dyads). Observational measures of interaction between young sibling dyads were collected in the home, and mothers reported on negative and positive qualities of their parenting, and conflict in their marriage. Cross-culturally equivalent measures of parenting and marital conflict were first established using structural equation modelling. Establishing measurement equivalence was an important component as it allowed for meaningful mean comparisons of the constructs between European and South Asian Canadian mothers. Mean differences were examined with t-tests and there was evidence of cultural variation in parenting and marital conflict patterns. South Asian Canadian mothers reported more negativity with both of their children and positivity with their younger 18-month-old, and lower frequency of destructive marital conflict, than European Canadian mothers. Sibling conflict (aggression and hostility) was investigated in the context of positive parenting and constructive marital conflict, their interaction, and culture. Culture was examined as a moderator on the association of sibling conflict with positive parenting and constructive marital conflict using multilevel modelling. As expected, sibling conflict was found to be negatively predicted by positive parenting. This association was attenuated by the frequency of constructive marital conflict. Consistent with literature, culture moderated the negative association of positive parenting on sibling conflict. Specifically, positive parenting was more strongly associated with sibling conflict in European Canadian than in South Asian families. These findings are discussed in the context of values and beliefs associated with conflict and cooperation amongst individualistic Western cultures and collectivistic Eastern cultures such as the South Asian community. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Nault, Jean-Francois | Childress, Clayton||Baumann, Shyon | Culture and Private School Choice | Sociology | 2021-11-01 | In sociology, the role of education in cultural reproduction and, by extension, in the reproduction of class-based inequalities has been widely examined. School choice scholars have drawn on work exploring differences in cultural resources (e.g., capital) and comportments (e.g., habitus, concerted cultivation) to highlight the role of school choice in cultural reproduction. However, focus has generally been on differences between choosers and non-choosers, and on the choice between public school and other schooling options. As such, little is known regarding how, once they have decided to engage in private school choice, parents go about selecting specific schools. Moreover, while much attention has been given to practical and academic considerations in shaping parents’ school preferences, the role of cultural factors remains underexamined. When culture is considered, it is generally to examine class-based differences in resources and dispositions between choosers and non-choosers, neglecting potential differences among those engaging in choice. Finally, although parents engaging in school choice ultimately choose among schools to which their children are granted admission, little is known regarding schools’ selection of students/families and if cultural processes linked to homophily and cultural matching identified in other domains factor into these choices. This dissertation seeks to fill these gaps while arguing for a greater attention to the role of culture in furthering our understanding of all dimensions of private school choice. It does so – through distinct papers drawing on three sources of original data (interviews and a survey with parents engaging in school choice and interviews with private school administrators) – in three complementary ways: (1) by highlighting the centrality of culture and values in shaping parents’ preferences for and selection of private schools, (2) by showing how differences in access to field-specific cultural and social resources influence parents’ ability to fulfill their school choice wants and, by extension, to transmit advantages to their children, and (3) by drawing attention not only to the role of cultural matching in schools’ selection of students, but also to how these selection processes vary across schools with differing levels of selectivity and how parents’ cultural resources and dispositions interface with the interactive matching process. | Ph.D. | capital, inequality, equalit, production | 9, 10, 12 |
| Orange, Jennifer A | Brunnée, Jutta||Macklem, Patrick | Curating Law: Museums as Partners in the International Human Rights Project | Law | 2019-11-01 | Over the past 30 years, a growing number of human rights museums have stepped into the fray of the international human rights project. This dissertation explores the surprising ways that the history, theory, and practices of human rights museums and international human rights law (IHRL) are interrelated. Part I reviews the history of IHRL and identifies its structure and major actors, in order to establish the framework in which human rights museums now play a role. I then review the history of the museum as a political institution, including the type of human rights focused museums that have evolved since WWII, and the particular practices in which they are engaged. Part II tests human rights museum practices against three serious challenges for human rights law: (1) its claim to universality; (2) its lack of effectiveness; and (3) its position within the structures of state sovereignty. In Chapters 4-6, I rely on legal, political, cultural and critical theories to show how museum practices either support or combat critiques of IHRL. Part III is motivated by a desire to identify the ways in which museums influence actors, from individual visitors to larger communities, to the international human rights system. In order to move from the personal to the global levels of influence, Chapters 7-8 rely on legal theories about the construction and meaning of legal norms and the organizational theory of Etienne Wenger, showing the breadth and depth of museum work as it touches upon many levels of human rights practice. The dissertation concludes with a plea for further interdisciplinary exchange in order to solve the complex problems posed by human rights violations. Legal institutions should recognize museums as welcome partners to the human rights project and museums should be conscious of their impact on community understandings of the importance of the rule of law to the realization of human rights. Human rights norms should be ingrained in multiple sites and institutions throughout our society, so that changing the law into a force that oppresses some peoples’ rights is an affront to society’s values. | S.J.D. | institut, human rights, sovereignty, rule of law | 16 |
| Almuhtaram, Husein | Hofmann, Ron | Cyanobacteria Monitoring and Cyanotoxin Management in Drinking Water Treatment Plants | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | This thesis examines three aspects of toxic cyanobacteria with respect to drinking water treatment plants: risk, monitoring, and treatment. Previous work shows that cyanobacteria cells can accumulate to high concentrations inside treatment plants, potentially rupture, and release their toxins. Therefore, accumulation in four Great Lakes region treatment plants was assessed, revealing that accumulation was generally minimal for plants experiencing low levels of cyanobacteria but could be significant for plants where cyanobacteria blooms occur in their source water. Drinking water utilities susceptible to harmful algal blooms need to be able to detect the onset of a bloom to implement management strategies. One way to monitor cyanobacterial activity is to use fluorescence-based probes that measure phycocyanin, a pigment specific to cyanobacteria. The conventional approach in the literature is to correlate phycocyanin fluorescence measurements to independent measures of cyanobacteria cell counts to use fluorescence to estimate the influx of cells, but most utilities do not measure cell counts, so this approach cannot be applied at all sites. This research explored machine learning for anomaly detection in phycocyanin fluorescence data without the need for corresponding cell counts. Two models were identified with an average accuracy of 86% to correctly predict elevated cyanobacterial activity in four data sites when trained on 2014-2018 data and tested on 2019 monitoring data. Therefore, this research has resulted in a potentially useful tool for drinking water utilities to use to improve their cyanobacteria monitoring strategies. When a utility is faced with cyanotoxins in their raw water, various treatment methods may be used to degrade them, each with its own advantages and limitations. Peracetic acid has recently emerged as a potential oxidant for water treatment, but its ability to degrade cyanotoxins has not been assessed with or without ultraviolet (UV) light for advanced oxidation. This research evaluates the degradation of two microcystins by UV only, peracetic acid only, and UV with peracetic acid. The results show that the combined process is as effective as or better than conventional advanced oxidation processes under typical water quality conditions. These findings support the potential future adoption of peracetic acid in water treatment plants. | Ph.D. | learning, water | 4, 6 |
| Stocco, Marlaina Rosemaria | Tyndale, Rachel F | CYP2D in the Brain Alters Response to Drugs and Neurotoxins | Pharmacology | 2021-11-01 | Cytochrome P450 2D (CYP2D) is a subfamily of enzymes that metabolize many centrally acting drugs and neurotoxins. In humans, CYP2D6 is genetically polymorphic, resulting in variable activity. CYP2D in the liver is regulated primarily by genetics, while CYP2D in the brain is affected by genetics and other factors, including xenobiotic induction and hormonal regulation. Thus, CYP2D in the brain is highly variable and may alter brain drug concentrations and drug response. This thesis investigated the impact of inhibiting CYP2D specifically in the brain, without affecting CYP2D in the liver, on brain drug metabolism and resulting responses. CYP2D in rat brain was inhibited using a twenty-hour intracerebroventricular pretreatment with an irreversible inhibitor of CYP2D. We found that inhibiting CYP2D in rat brain increased brain methamphetamine concentrations and decreased the methamphetamine p-hydroxylation metabolic ratio in the brain, enhanced striatal dopamine and serotonin release, exacerbated acute methamphetamine-induced rearing, and enhanced repeated methamphetamine-induced stereotypy sensitization. Next, to assess the role of human CYP2D6 in brain in vivo, humanized CYP2D6-expressing transgenic mice and wild-type mice were given intracerebroventricular pretreatments with a CYP2D inhibitor. A four-hour inhibitor pretreatment irreversibly inhibited human CYP2D6 in transgenic brain and competitively inhibited mouse CYP2D in transgenic and wild-type brain. This four-hour inhibitor pretreatment exacerbated harmine-induced hypothermia and tremor in transgenic mice and exacerbated only hypothermia in wild-type mice. A twenty-four-hour inhibitor pretreatment irreversibly inhibited human CYP2D6 in transgenic brain only and was thus used to test the specific contribution of human CYP2D6 in vivo in brain. The twenty-four-hour inhibitor pretreatment exacerbated harmine-induced hypothermia in transgenic mice, having no effect in wild-type mice. Confirming an impact of human CYP2D6 in brain, the twenty-four-hour inhibitor pretreatment also reduced haloperidol-induced catalepsy in transgenic mice. We demonstrated that CYP2D in rat brain alters brain methamphetamine concentrations and methamphetamine-induced neurotransmitter release and behavioral sensitization. Further, we demonstrated that human CYP2D6 is active in vivo in brain, and its activity is sufficient to alter haloperidol-induced adverse effects and harmine-induced neurotoxicity. In conclusion, the extensive variation in CYP2D6 in the human brain may contribute to interindividual differences in drug-induced neurochemical and behavioral responses, adverse effects, and neurotoxicity. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Paré-Labrosse, Olivier | Miller, Dwayne RJDM||Ernst, Oliver OE | Damage-free Femtosecond Structural Dynamics of Proteins in the Biologically Relevant Regime | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | In the first part of this work, we present two techniques that we developed to improve the existing protein serial crystallography technique. By implementing the first technique that we call “chip mapping”, we were able to decrease the time it takes to acquire enough data to reconstruct a single protein’s structure by a factor five. The second technique called oscillation serial crystallography allowed us to decrease by one order of magnitude the number of crystals needed to reconstruct said protein structure. In the second part of this work, we use transient absorption spectroscopy to measure the population dynamics in carboxymyoglobin when excited with different laser peak powers. This allowed us to fit a population dynamics model as a function of peak power allowing us to study the protein’s nonlinear absorption properties. We report for the first time the linear and nonlinear absorption cross section of carboxymyoglobin as, respectively, \mbox{$\sigma_0 = (1.07 \pm .02) \times 10^{-16}$ cm$^2$} and \mbox{$\sigma_0^{(2)} = (1.45 \pm .15)\times 10^{-19}$ cm$^4$/GW}. The latter part is an attempt at providing the threshold for excitation conditions to ensure that the structural dynamics of interest are studied under 1-photon excitation conditions, which are the most relevant to elucidating the biologically relevant protein response. To date, this essential condition has yet to be rigorously met in femtosecond time resolved x-ray studies of structural dynamics of biological systems. In that context, this thesis work provides the important criteria for next generation experiments. Dans la première partie de cette thèse, nous présentons deux techniques que nous avons développées afin d'améliorer les techniques existantes de cristallographie en série. En développement une première technique que nous appelons "chip mapping", nous avons pu diminuer par cinq le temps nécessaire pour acquérir assez de données pour reconstruire la structure d'une protéine. Une seconde technique appelée cristallographie en série avec oscillations nous a permis de diminuer par un ordre de grandeur la quantité de cristaux requise pour reconstruire la structure de protéine mentionnée ci-haut. Dans la seconde partie de cette thèse, nous utilisons la spectroscopie par absorption transitoire pour mesurer la dynamique des populations dans la carboxymyoglobine lorsque excitée avec des impulsions laser de différentes puissances. Avec ces données, nous avons pu construire un modèle décrivant l'évolution temporelle des différentes espèces présentes, ainsi que les interactions interespèces et leurs propriétés d'absorption non linéaires. Nous présentons pour la première fois les sections efficaces d'absorption linéaire et non linéaire de la carboxymyoglobine qui sont, respectivement, \mbox{$\sigma_0 = (1.07 \pm .02) \times 10^{-16}$ cm$^2$} et \mbox{$\sigma_0^{(2)} = (1.45 \pm .15)\times 10^{-19}$ cm$^4$/GW}. Afin de s'assurer d'étudier des protéines dans des conditions pertinentes à la biologie structurelle qui se doit d'être un régime linéaire où un seul photon est absorbé par un chromophore; cette dernière partie se veut une tentative de démontrer l'existance de limites dans les conditions d'excitation par impulsions laser lors d'expériences de dynamique structurelle sur des protéines. À notre connaissance, ces conditions essentielles ont été que très peu utilisées et discutées dans la littérature de dynamiques structurelles femtosecondes de systèmes biologiques. Dans ce contexte, cette thèse fournie des critères importants pour les futures générations d'expériences de ce type. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Maemura, Emily | Keilty, Patrick | Data Here and There: Studying Web Archives Research Infrastructures in Danish and Canadian Settings | Information Studies | 2021-11-01 | Web archives collections are an important site for preserving digital cultural heritage, capturing online resources and the underlying data of web pages and websites over time. This dissertation explores the data practices involved in the curation and scholarly uses of archived web data, and the emerging humanities research infrastructures that support this work. I focus on how data are created by and interact with multiple, varied, conflicting and often opaque systems from collection through to analysis and visualization, involving a range of actors and systems. Through interviews and observations in two settings centred on emerging research infrastructures from national libraries and academic libraries, I explore how web archiving processes involve technical systems that impose or manipulate data structures, as well as policies, legal restrictions, and a range of decisions and interpretations of the data made by the people involved in curation practices. My analysis is guided by the approach of infrastructure studies towards describing, documenting and contextualizing archived web data at varying scales and through their sociotechnical relationships. By studying these settings ethnographically, I seek to understand how data produced here are different from data produced there; in spite of the use of similar technologies and standard formats of data, I reveal how the particular contexts of these research infrastructures serve to shape the data found in each. I highlight the role of categories and classifications both in the construction of digital materials and the design and tailoring of computational systems. Ultimately, I argue that one cannot study, describe, or otherwise work critically with data without also understanding the classification systems and infrastructures through which data categories are developed and applied. It is in fact these categories of data that determine judgments and decision-making, and impact movement and legibility between systems and contexts; digital curation practices are in essence categorical work. I conclude by highlighting contributions to digital curation theory and practice and new directions for emerging work in critical data studies to consider how data categories are compatible or incompatible, and the complex sociotechnical relationships between categories, meanings and uses in data-centered algorithmic systems. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Liao, Renjie | Zemel, Richard||Urtasun, Raquel | Deep Learning on Graphs: Theory, Models, Algorithms and Applications | Computer Science | 2021-06-01 | Structures or graphs are pervasive in our lives. Although deep learning has achieved tremendous success in many engineering fields, it is still limited in handling various structured data. More importantly, humans have the remarkable ability to learn discrete structures from data to facilitate explainability and generalization, which current deep learning systems can not parallel. In this thesis, I present our work, which revolves around how to improve deep learning for graphs from aspects of theory, models, algorithms, and applications.We first provide a theoretical investigation on graph neural networks (GNNs), an increasingly popular class of deep neural networks that are promising in learning with graphs. We establish PAC-Bayes generalization bounds for common GNNs and show the connection to the results for regular neural networks. In the second part, we look at the limitations of current GNNs and introduce novel models that effectively capture multi-scale dependences in graph convolutions and efficiently propagate messages using asynchronous schedules. Moreover, we study the graph generation problem and introduce a new deep auto-regressive GNN that can generate high-quality graphs in a scalable and fast manner. In the third part, we revisit an implicit gradient based learning algorithm and propose new variants that are effective in training message-passing GNNs. At last, we demonstrate our efforts of customizing GNNs to achieve impressive performances in many practical application domains, including computer vision, reinforcement learning, and probabilistic inference. I summarize the thesis and discuss promising future directions in the final chapter. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Wang, Shenlong | Urtasun, Raquel | Deep Structured Models for Spatial Intelligence | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | The future robots and embodied devices will seamlessly interact with the physical world, help us in our everyday lives and become an integral part of society. To make this dream come true, we need to bring spatial intelligence to our embodied devices: the ability to understand, reason, and create rich knowledge about the spatial relations among objects and space. While computer vision has significantly enhanced capabilities in 2D perception, we are still missing key ingredients to achieve the desired goal — holistic spatial modeling of our 3D world. In this thesis, we present a collection of work towards this goal. The core idea is to build expressive representations of the world and exploit rich structure in the problems. Our research efforts span both creating new structured models as well as developing novel solutions to various applications. The effectiveness of our integrated approach has been demonstrated at the full spectrum of spatial intelligence tasks, including localization, perception, and mapping. Finally, I will give a brief personal outlook on open research topics towards achieving spatial intelligence. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Onderisin, John Christopher Truman | Scott, Ian C | Deeply Conserved Cardiac Enhancers Guide Zebrafish Heart Regeneration | Molecular Genetics | 2022-03-01 | Adult mammalian hearts do not replenish lost cardiomyocytes (CMs) after injury, replacing them with akinetic scar tissue. One strategy for promoting cardiac healing in humans involves re-activation of regeneration programs conserved through evolutionary history in vertebrates such as the teleost fish Danio rerio, commonly known as the zebrafish. The zebrafish heart robustly regenerates cardiac tissue in multiple injury models, restoring myocardium via pre-existing CMs that de-differentiate assume a proliferative cellular phenotype. Non-coding cis-regulatory regions such as enhancers determine the spatiotemporal dynamics of gene expression and have been leveraged as tools for deployment of pro-regenerative factors into the hearts of non-regenerative species. Despite prediction of developmentally linked enhancers for promoting adult cardiac regeneration, there has been a dearth of such enhancers reported in the literature. In this thesis, I examine the role of conserved cardiac enhancers identified as active in zebrafish embryos during the phylotypic period of development. These enhancers represent Accessible Conserved Non-coding Elements (aCNEs) that label specific cardiac compartments during cardiac development and regeneration, with several active in wound-proximal endocardium and de-differentiated myocardium. I find evidence that orthologous human aCNEs fail to activate in response to cardiac injury, implicating divergent evolutionary trajectories for post-injury enhancer activation between species. I also utilize the regulatory sequence representing an enhancer for hey2 (aCNE 21), de-coupled from endogenous hey2 expression in the adult heart, to define the contributions of trabecular myocardium to zebrafish heart regeneration. Through mutational analysis of a hand2-linked enhancer element (aCNE 1), I uncover critical activating and repressive regulatory modules required for regulation of enhancer activity during development and regeneration. Finally, genetic deletion of aCNE 1 reveals an essential role for directing the cardiac repair process. Loss-of-enhancer mutants retain scar tissue and fail to regenerate; aCNE 1 mutants further display impaired recruitment of leukocytes and dysregulation of matrix metalloproteinase activity within the wound area. Together, these results serve to identify regulatory elements with the unique ability to target gene expression to specific cardiac compartments, and further explain the differences in cardiac regenerative potential between regenerative and non-regenerative species. | Ph.D. | accessib, conserv, fish, species, conserv, species, regeneration | 11, 14, 15 |
| Shah, Sarah | Salem, Rania H||Korteweg, Anna C | Defining, Refining, and Enacting Religious Reflexivities in Pakistani-Canadian Muslim Families | Sociology | 2019-11-01 | Political and popular discourse maintain Orientalist myths about Muslims as uniformly and fatalistically driven by a monolithic Islam, fueling a clash of civilizations. While researchers disrupt this Orientalist narrative by underscoring the presence of Muslim “reflexivity,” or the critical engagement with religious identities, beliefs, and practices, they nevertheless unintentionally reify a uniform Muslim reflexivity. This dissertation is the first empirically based study that demonstrates the social patterns of multiple forms of Muslim reflexivities. I highlight two patterns of reflexivities that relate to different approaches to religion: orthodox and heterodox. I further refine these patterns by highlighting how group and individual statuses shape social location, and thus subjectivity. I draw on theories of racialization and gender and I utilize a sample of 56 currently and previously married Pakistani Canadian Muslims to parse differences between orthodox and heterodox reflexivities and explore how divergent approaches to religion coincide with contrary patterns. These patterns are complicated by group identity for minorities within minorities (e.g., Shias) and by individual statuses (e.g., previously married women). In order to understand these divergent patterns, I extend the concept of Muslim reflexivity by incorporating a religious approach. Orthodox reflexive Muslim participants, who view one approach as correct, are preoccupied with authority given their identification with a marginalized minority group. Thus, they perceive ethnic boundaries as bright and gender boundaries as rigid. The focus of their reflexivity is dawat, or teaching others about the “true” Islam. This contrasts with heterodox reflexive Muslim participants, who view multiple approaches as correct. They do not perceive their minority group as being threatened, and thus do not seek out authority to legitimize their identity. In turn, they perceive ethnic boundaries as blurred, and maintain gender fluid attitudes and practices. The focus of their reflexivity is akhlaq, or having polite manners and ensuring mutually satisfying intimate relations. I conclude by discussing theoretical contributions and policy implications, cautioning against conflating categories of practice and analysis, and also problematizing liberal feminist approaches that pathologize Islam in efforts to ‘liberate Muslim women.’ | Ph.D. | gender, women, feminis, minorit, marginalized | 5, 10 |
| Knight, Ashley Cherie | Vasdev, Neil | De-Risking PET Radioligand Discovery for Neurodegenerative Diseases | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | This work sought to characterize novel and existing radioligands, assessing their utility and effectiveness for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of neurodegeneration. Three proteins were targeted: 1) colony stimulating factor-1 receptor (CSF-1R); 2) glycogen synthase kinase-3 (GSK-3); and 3) transactivation response DNA-binding protein with molecular weight of 43 kDa (TDP-43). Utilizing autoradiography, a putative CSF-1R binding radioligand, [3H]CPPC, did not localize to microglia in the brain tissue of a preclinical model of neuroinflammation and percent displacement did not exceed 50% of signal, requiring use of spleen in screening assays. Selectivity assessment showed numerous binding sites which prevents an interpretation of signal contribution. Using similar methods, two radioligands targeting GSK-3, a kinase implicated in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) pathogenesis, were shown to quantify similar target densities (Bmax) with similar affinity (Kd) in human and rodent post-mortem homogenates. Investigation of human AD brain revealed possible differences in GSK-3 density compared to controls within females. In P301L mice, GSK-3 density in males was elevated compared to control, and a trend was recapitulated by in vivo PET, while females remained unchanged by both methods. GSK-3 PET research could inform the biological role of this critical kinase in pathogenesis of AD. Lastly, autoradiography identified two potential lead structures following evaluation of existing tau PET radioligands in post-mortem amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) tissues. Colocalization of specific binding with aggregate TDP-43 immunostaining was evaluated for isotopologues of 6 existing tau PET radioligands in varying structural classes. Three radioligands, [3H]MK-6240, [3H]GTP-1, and [3H]JNJ-067, showed no binding in ALS tissues. [3H]CBD-2115 specific binding was elevated but did not correlate to pathology. [3H]Flortaucipir binding was increased in the motor cortex compared to the cerebellum. Immunofluorescent staining with APN-1607 revealed no colocalization with a TDP-43 inclusion but significant binding to b-amyloid. Despite revealing both positive and negative results an overarching objective of de-risking radioligands was achieved in each case by providing important information including selectivity, target density, specificity, or affinity. The results presented here are not unexpected due to challenges in developing imaging probes which has led to most putative radioligands failing prior to translation as successful clinical imaging ligands. | Ph.D. | female, emission, invest | 5, 7, 2009 |
| Chen, Michael | Eleftheriades, George V | Design and Applications of Printed-circuit-board Huygens' Metasurfaces | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | As applications involving electromagnetic waves as carriers of energy and information have become common in society, the ability to tailor and control electromagnetic fields has become proportionally more demanding. In recent years, with the emergence of the Huygens' metasurface, applications and functionalities previously thought to be unachievable have been demonstrated. Due to their intimate and complete control over incident electromagnetic waves, Huygens' metasurfaces theoretically allow the arbitrary manipulation of the involved electromagnetic fields. In this thesis, demonstrations of designs and applications of these remarkable devices are presented. Applications including beam collimation, angle doubling, and perfect refraction are investigated. Additionally, realization of printed-circuit-board prototypes are detailed with designs utilizing stacked-layer and wire-loop structures. Throughout the different applications, both transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic designs are shown. Furthermore, to demonstrate the versatility of Huygens' metasurfaces, the operational frequency of the prototypes ranges from K-band to V-band. Details regarding theoretical and fabrication trade-offs are also considered for all presented designs. Theoretical aspects such as zero loss, passivity, reciprocity, impedance equalization, and local power conservation are studied in detail. Moreover, design and fabrication considerations are also investigated thoroughly. By analysing the designs via fullwave simulation tools and experimental measurements, the functionalities of the presented metasurfaces are validated. Additionally, the frequency responses of the designs were also presented and discussed. Lastly, future opportunities and design considerations were also outlined. Although the designs presented in this thesis only serve as early examples of Huygens' metasurfaces, the achieved results demonstrate the capability and versatility of these devices for achieving various applications. Due to these remarkable abilities, the Huygens' metasurface will undoubtedly become an indispensable tool for solving increasingly challenging electromagnetic problems in the near future. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, trade, conserv, conserv | 7, 9, 10, 14, 15 |
| Engels, Steven Alexander | Hewitt, Jim | Design Factors for Educational Video Games | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | Educational video games can provide an effective learning experience if designers ensure that the games engage the player and achieve learning goals. A fun game with few learning goals will fail to teach the player, while a boring game replete with learning goals will fail to retain the player’s attention. By providing a deeper understanding of the design factors that affect these two outcomes, educational game developers can produce games that better educate the player. This study uses design research to examine design features used in creating educational games for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). 25 design features were found to be significant in the design of educational games. The goal of this research study is to discover the effect that each of these features has on engagement and learning, as well as the correlation that these features have on each other. What makes this study unique and instrumental in discovering the general effects of these design features is the large amount of data collected to validate the results. To study the effects of 25 design features, 25 experiments were run, each of which tested a subset of the design features. Each experiment involved the creation of an educational STEM game, followed by a second version of that game, enhanced with the set of design features. The experiments then measured differences in engagement and learning outcomes between the two versions of the game and then isolated the effects of individual features by performing a correlation analysis on the overall result. The design features with the biggest impact on engagement were the expression of learning goals and immersion in these STEM games. To a lesser extent, user interface, visual cues and level behaviour also enhanced engagement in the player. These generally align with the characteristics of optimal flow, where immersion, action and agency contribute to the optimal player experience. From a learning point of view, subject integration was the most significant design feature, with other features such as increasing challenge, visual instructions and aesthetic elements contributing lesser effects on the player’s learning performance. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| McAllister, Bryony of | Seferos, Dwight S | Design of Polymer Electrodes for Energy Storage Systems | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | The 21st century has been marked by an exponential increase in new and interconnected technologies and an awareness of the pressing need to decarbonize our energy supply. As a consequence, the demand for higher performing, versatile and environmentally benign energy storage has skyrocketed. Organic electrode materials are attractive candidates to address these needs because they are inexpensive, abundant, adaptable to different form factors, and their properties can be tuned at the molecular level by synthetic modification. Organic energy storage research has experienced a resurgence in the last decade, however many challenges must be overcome to achieve commercialization. In this thesis, I present the design of new organic polymers for energy storage systems that address specific challenges of organic electrodes. In Chapters 2 and 3, I leverage the advantageous properties of pyrene, namely surface area, electron transport and stability, to design conjugated polymers for supercapacitors and lithium-ion batteries. Chapter 2 explores a pyrene-fused thienopyrazine polymer as an n-type supercapacitor electrode. The extended conjugation afforded by pyrene results in good cycling stability relative to literature examples, and the material design provides a platform for further improvements in stability. In Chapter 3, I design a pyrene-fused azaacene polymer anode and investigate its mechanism of superlithiation and activation. I demonstrate the highest capacity for a linear polymer anode to date, attributed to high stability and extended conjugation. Analysis of the cycled electrodes indicates a deformation-based mechanism of activation, whereby cycling results in increased order and sp2 character within the electrode. Importantly, the electrodes maintain their high capacity across a ten-fold increase in rate, suggesting that high capacity superlithiation anodes will be achievable at practical rates. In Chapter 4, I describe synthetic strategies to develop norbornene-based pendant polymers for lithium-ion batteries. The chapter is divided into two sections, that each detail multiple generations of polymers that leverage the versatility of norbornene to achieve high capacity, high voltage or high rate capability. Synthetic design and future applications are discussed in detail. Lastly, Chapter 5 summarizes potential extensions of the above projects and provides an overview of the remaining challenges in the organic energy storage field. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, decarboniz, environmental | 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Choi, Francis Ming Hei | Acosta, Edgar J | Design of Viscoelastic Surfactant-oil-water Structures with the Hydrophilic-lipophilic Difference (HLD) and Net-average Curvature (NAC) Frameworks | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2020-06-01 | Manipulating the self-assembly of surfactants into viscoelastic structures such as wormlike micelles and liquid crystals is an important aspect in the development of personal care products and nanostructured materials. Central to this is the curvature of the surfactant membrane, which is one of the governing concepts of surfactant self-assembly. It can be altered with multiple parameters including differences in surfactant molecular structure, added salts, added oils, and temperature. Current frameworks used to guide the design of formulations such as the packing factor do not excel at predicting the necessary combination required to produce the desired structure. A new approach presented in this work relates the formation of viscoelastic structures including wormlike micelles and liquid crystals to curvature-related phase inversion phenomena observed in surfactant-oil-water systems. The phase inversion point, in turn, can be predicted with the hydrophilic-lipophilic difference (HLD) framework. This approach was successful at predicting the formation of viscoelastic fluids for extended anionic surfactants, and a model anionic surfactant, sodium dihexyl sulfosuccinate for a variety of salinities and polar/non-polar oils at low surfactant and oil contents ( | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Swarup, Arushri | Drake, James||James, Adrian L | Design, Development and Pre-clinical Validation of a Novel Instrument to Faciltate Transcanal Endoscopic Ear Surgery | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Transcanal (or totally) endoscopic ear surgery (TEES) is a minimally invasive ear surgical technique that has been shown to improve outcomes, reduce patient post-operative pain, recovery time, and hospital costs. The primary challenge with TEES is that it requires a one-handed surgical technique as the non-dominant hand controls the endoscope, which remains dynamic during surgery in order to visualize the surgical sites. In order to address the challenges surgeons experience while performing this type of surgery, this manuscript presents the motivation, design requirements, design, development and validation testing of a new instrument to facilitate this technique.Current TEES instruments are presented first to outline the design specifications for new instrumentation to be compatible with the TEES environment. The functional design requirements for a new instrument were motivated by a surgeon survey and a workflow study analysing instruments used during TEES. A new instrument that enables accessibility of anatomy visualized by the endoscope, dissection and removal of a benign skin tumor (cholesteatoma) as well as suction was called for. Next, the design process of developing a new instrument with intermittent surgeon feedback is presented. The feedback was obtained by testing the latest version of the prototype at conferences and surgical dissection courses over the course of the project. The feedback was used to design the final instrument that was shown to be able to do the following tasks in a TEES environment: (1) access more difficult to access anatomical structures than current tools in an anatomical validation study, using 3D printed temporal bone models; (2) dissect and remove an allograft (mockup cholesteatoma) from the middle ear space of a cadaveric goat model; and (3) enable suction within cadaveric goat and human models. Lastly, the final instrument prototype was shown to be able to (1) articulate to touch the boundary of the viewing angle of an endoscope; (2) enable suction at a similar rate as a currently used straight suction tool; and (3) safely withstand surgically relevant mechanical loading conditions expected during surgery via benchtop experiments. | Ph.D. | accessib | 11 |
| Muytjens, Carla | Diamandis, Eleftherios P. | Detection and Identification of Active Serine Proteases in the Lower Female Reproductive Tract: A Functional Approach | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2019-06-01 | Proteases irreversibly modify proteins by hydrolyzing the bonds between amino acids and are implicated in virtually every significant biological process. Many proteases have previously been identified in cervical-vaginal fluid (CVF), the fluid covering the tissues of the lower female reproductive tract, and have been linked to a myriad of processes including the susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases, pain sensitivity during sexual intercourse, extracellular matrix remodeling and vaginal epithelial desquamation. Interestingly, human CVF differs from other mammals in that it is uniquely acidic with levels of 4.5 or less which poses a substantial challenge for proteolytic activity in this environment. An integrated proteomic and peptidomic analysis of CVF confirmed that approximately 8% of the CVF proteome consists of proteases, predominantly serine proteases. Detailed proteomic analysis of CVF samples collected throughout the follicular and luteal phases of the menstrual cycle demonstrated that the CVF proteome remains consistent throughout the menstrual cycle. Functional proteomics using an activity-based probe (ABP) has emerged as a powerful tool to study active proteases within complex proteomes. In the current study, ABP profiling of CVF resulted in the identification of transmembrane protein serine 11D (TMPRSS11D) and kallikrein-related peptidase 13 (KLK13) as active trypsin-like serine proteases. Immunoassays showed that KLK13 is highly abundant in CVF and the expression of a panel of KLKs is not affected by the menstrual cycle phase. The finding that multiple KLKs are present at high abundance levels in CVF strengthens the hypothesis that the reproductive tissues and associated fluids are an important site for proteolytic functioning. We also observed a near complete cessation of trypsin-like proteolytic activity at physiological pH levels in CVF. Therefore, we propose a novel mechanism in which conditions characterized by an elevated pH in CVF, such as male ejaculation, postmenopausal status and bacterial infection, provide a window of opportunity for proteolytic activity in the lower female reproductive tract. Considering the fact that the proteases are involved in virtually every significant biological process, understanding the protease activity and functioning in CVF can provide important insights in their mechanism of action and ultimately lead to novel protease-targeted therapeutics. | Ph.D. | female, wind | 5, 7 |
| Longo, Joseph | Penn, Linda Z | Determinants of Statin Drug Sensitivity in Mevalonate-dependent Cancers | Medical Biophysics | 2020-06-01 | Statins are widely prescribed cholesterol-lowering drugs that inhibit HMG-CoA reductase (HMGCR), the rate-limiting enzyme of the mevalonate pathway. Several lines of evidence support that certain tumours depend on the mevalonate pathway for growth and survival and are vulnerable to statins. However, if statins are to be successfully repurposed for the personalized treatment of cancer, we must identify biomarkers that can predict which patients might benefit from the addition of a statin to their treatment regimen, and how best to administer these drugs in combination with other agents to maximize therapeutic responses. Herein, the research objectives were to elucidate novel determinants of statin drug sensitivity in different tumour types, and further characterize the molecular mechanism(s) by which statins induce cancer cell death. To this end, we demonstrated that prostate tumours overexpress HMGCR, and that high HMGCR protein expression is associated with poor prognosis. Interestingly, however, not all prostate cancer cells were sensitive to statin-mediated HMGCR inhibition at physiologically-achievable concentrations. We further identified that statin-sensitive prostate cancer cells were impaired in their ability to activate a sterol-regulated feedback loop in response to statin exposure. Notably, in statin-insensitive prostate cancer cells, where this sterol-regulated feedback loop was intact, the clinically-approved drug dipyridamole was found to inhibit this response and sensitize cells to statin-induced apoptosis. In an independent malignancy, multiple myeloma, we identified that cells positive for the t(4;14) chromosomal translocation were particularly vulnerable to mevalonate pathway inhibition. Statin treatment induced a robust integrated stress response in t(4;14)-positive cells, which was exacerbated by co-treatment with the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib. Moreover, statin treatment synergized with bortezomib to induce apoptosis in t(4;14)-positive cells, providing strong rationale to combine these two clinically-approved agents for the treatment of t(4;14)-positive disease. Taken together, the work presented in this thesis reveals two promising opportunities for the repurposing of statins, as single agents or in combination with additional, clinically-approved drugs, to treat distinct mevalonate-dependent cancers. Since statins are already approved for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, and are available as generic drugs, they offer an immediate, safe and affordable opportunity to improve cancer patient care and treatment outcomes. | Ph.D. | affordab, affordab | 1, 10 |
| Solano, Ivan Galias | Mcilroy, William||Zabjek, Karl F | Determining Older-Adult Rollator Users’ Characteristics, and the Effect of Rollator Use on Mobility and Its Association with Falls | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-11-01 | Neuropsychological and physiological age-related changes in older adults directly affect safety and independence, especially with regards to balance and mobility. The rollator is commonly prescribed as part of a fall-prevention strategy to manage older adults’ fall risks, optimize function, and preserve safe and independent performance of everyday activities. However, emerging studies revealed the potential attentional demand of rollator use, as well as falls and injuries attributed to usage. Despite the increasing dependence on rollators by the aging population, limited knowledge exists of the contextual, demographic, physical, and cognitive characteristics of the older adults who use these assistive mobility devices, which are crucial to determining the association between rollator use and falls. To close this knowledge gap, this study focused on the cognitive, psychological, and physical determinants of mobility and the interplay with assistive mobility devices among older-adult residents in long-term-care retirement homes. From the focus, the following specific objectives were established: (1) to determine rollator users’ characteristics; (2) to assess the effect of dual-tasking on rollator use; and (3) to explore the association of fall history with rollator use and user characteristics. Subsequent research and observations for this dissertation revealed two findings: (1) the dual-tasking effect of rollators on gait performance, and (2) a positive association between fall history of older adults and the interaction effect of being a rollator user and dual-task step-time variability. Overall, these findings demonstrate that contextual, demographic, physical, and cognitive characteristics influence older adults’ use and reliance on the rollator and history of falls. On a broader level, this dissertation lays the foundation for the development of new assessment models that will better inform the prescription and use of rollators among older adults. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Kung, Chun Kui Jocky | Jockusch, Rebecca A | Developing and Utilizing Gas-phase Laser Spectroscopy Techniques to Study the Effect of Desolvation on Molecules | Chemistry | 2019-11-01 | Mass spectrometry is a valuable analytical technique that has applications in diverse fields. One requirement of employing mass spectrometry (MS) as a technique is that analysis occurs in the gas phase. Many samples, however, are found in solution and therefore desolvation is required for the analytes to be introduced into the mass spectrometer. This process, and the gas phase environment may fundamentally change the properties of the analyte due to the removal of intermolecular interactions. On the other hand, gas-phase analysis can present opportunities to reveal the effects of these interactions on the analyte. In this dissertation, the effect of desolvation on the structure of biomolecules and the photophysics of chromophores is explored. Specifically, gas-phase laser spectroscopic techniques were developed and utilized to perform spectroscopic measurement of mass-selected gaseous ions to explore these effects. In Chapter 2, specific changes in the simple rhodamine scaffold, starting with rhodamine 123 are shown to induce changes in the dyes’ fluorescence excitation and emission spectral profiles in the gas phase. The possibility of these changes being indicative of the effect of solvent interactions on excited state relaxation pathway is discussed. Chapters 3 and 4 showcase the development in the use of Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) as a tool for structural analysis of gas-phase proteins, focusing on ubiquitin ions as a model system. FRET efficiencies of the ions suggest that their conformation can remain similar to what is known in solution. However, caution needs to be taken in order not to disrupt the structure. The photophysics of gaseous thioflavin T (ThT) in isolation and with select binding partners is examined in Chapters 5 and 6. The fluorescence enhancement (“turn-on”) response of ThT after binding, which is important in the effectiveness of ThT as a probe for amyloid fibrils in vitro, is investigated in the gas phase. Intermolecular interactions needed for the preservation of the turn-on response and the prevention of non-radiative relaxation pathways are postulated. Ultimately, this work demonstrates the power of gas-phase laser spectroscopy as a tool to study molecular behaviour of chromophores and macrobiomolecules in the gas phase. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, invest | 7, 9 |
| Stockley, Derek | Janzen, Katharine | Developing Leadership in the Decanal Role in Ontario Institutes of Technology and Advanced Learning (ITALS): A Case Study of Humber College ITAL | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-03-01 | There is growing need for ongoing leadership development in the Ontario college system with very little research and literature on how to achieve this. This case-study explored the pathways to decanal leadership at Humber College Institution of Technology and Advanced Learning (ITAL). This was done by examining theparticipants’ perceptions of the challenges of the decanal role, alongside the competencies or leadership frameworks that are required. This study also examined how those in the role were supported in their professional development. This was an exploratory descriptive case study that used both document analysisof job descriptions, advertisement and LinkedIn profiles, alongside semi-structured interviews with 12 current and previous deans who have held the role since Humber became an ITAL in 2003. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted with the Senior Vice-President Academic and the current President. Key findings of this study include a profile of the ideal candidate for these dean positions, including the ideal pathway. The key challenges included defining and defending the ITAL status, alongside the complexities brought about by this focus. The role of collaboration and conflict was also noted, along with isolation and limited resources. The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) competencies were examined alongside Bolman and Deal’s framework for leadership. Supports for professional development were identified, including the role of mentorship, external Professional Development, graduate studies and inhouse training which can all be used pre-service or in-service with a Dean group. The implications for policy and practice include the need to develop intentional training structures that move away from a reliance on informal mentoring, while investing in the development of in-house training. There is also a clear need to develop multi-framework leadership to address the broad range of challenges faced at the decanal position, acknowledging that one approach to leadership does not fit in a position that is meant to deal with a broad range of issues. While this study addresses a gap in the literature, there is a need to expand future research across the Ontario college sector, while addressing the emerging challenges arising from the impact that COVID will have on our industry. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, invest, institut | 4, 8, 9, 16 |
| Malhi, Manpreet | Maynes, Jason T. | Development and Application of Novel in Vitro Assays to Advance Drug Discovery for Arrhythmogenic Cardiomyopathy and Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection | Biochemistry | 2021-11-01 | The research described in this thesis is focused on the development of in vitro assays to better study human disease and advance drug discovery, specifically in the context of arrhythmogenic cardiomyopathy (ACM) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection. Despite the functional distinction between these diseases, they both share the issue of inadequate treatment options for patients. Dysfunction of gap junctions is thought to underlie the development of fatal ventricular arrhythmias early in ACM disease progression. Existing methods of studying gap junction function are low-throughput, technically challenging, and have poor reproducibility. Chapter II outlines the development of a robotic cell microinjection assay to quantify gap junction permeability. Human cardiomyocytes with knockdown of PKP2, a protein commonly mutated in ACM, were screened against a library of drugs using the robotic assay. Five compounds were found to enhance gap junction function in vitro, one of which reduced beating irregularity in a mouse model of ACM. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the leading cause of acute respiratory tract infections necessitating hospitalization in infants and young children. There are currently no vaccines for the virus and treatment options are limited to supportive care. Chapter III describes the development of a high content assay to rapidly quantify RSV infection rates. Application of this assay towards drug screening led to the identification of several viral inhibitors and host pathways targeted by the virus. Functional enrichment analyses revealed an interaction between the virus and lipid metabolic pathways, prompting further investigation into the antiviral mechanism of statins–a top screening hit. Chapter IV takes a closer look at the function of statins and mevalonate pathway metabolites during viral infection. Statins were shown to inhibit RSV through a combination of cholesterol and isoprenoid-mediated effects. Notably, statin treatment negated virus-induced increases to the prenylation and activation of Rho GTPases. A primary outcome of the conducted research was the identification therapeutic drugs and pathways for two unique diseases with limited treatment options. The obtained results also highlight the utility of each assay, and demonstrate the potential of applying this work towards future studies on other viral or gap junction-mediated diseases. | Ph.D. | vaccine, invest | 3, 9 |
| Smith, Laura | Shoichet, Molly S | Development of a Hydrogel Platform to Model Cellular Invasion in Glioblastoma | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | Aggressive tumour invasion is a major therapeutic challenge in glioblastoma, leading to poor patient outcomes. This process is facilitated by various factors in the tumour microenvironment (TME), including highly migratory glioma neural stem (GNS) cells and their physical, biochemical and cellular surroundings. Engineered hydrogel-based materials can be used to recapitulate specific aspects of the biochemical composition and physical properties of the extracellular matrix (ECM). Bio-orthogonal click-chemistries enable the functionalization and crosslinking of biomaterials for hydrogel synthesis without side reactions. The Diels-Alder cycloaddition between furan and maleimide functionalized polymers was ameliorated by replacing the furan-moiety with a more electron rich methyl-furan group, resulting in a faster rate of reaction. A series of experimental and computational studies elucidated the factors contributing to the more rapid gelation kinetics, thus enabling the cytocompatible encapsulation of cancer cells.In order to investigate cellular invasion in glioblastoma, we designed a hydrogel conducive to cell invasion by incorporating extracellular matrix (ECM) components upregulated in tumour tissue into the hydrogel. We found that GNS cell lines invade into this material similarly to the way they would in patients. We characterized protease- dependent and independent processes, as well as focal adhesion pathways to be at play in our system. Moreover, we performed bulk-RNA sequencing on cells migrating in the hydrogel and found the invasion process to coincide with apoptotic, stress-response, and immunoregulatory signalling. In order to target cell invasion in glioblastoma, we tested a novel therapeutic platform against the invasion phenotype in our hydrogel model. We exploited the endosomal escape mechanisms of the bacterial toxin, diphtheria toxin, and transformed it into a delivery platform for antisense oligonucleotide therapeutics, specifically, siRNA targeting integrin beta 1. We showed that by targeting an invasion-related gene, a phenotypic change in invasion can be quantified using the hydrogel model developed herein. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Castaneda, Rowshyra Ashley | Mandrak, Nicholas E||Weyl, Olaf LF | Development of a Novel Detection Technique for Rare Freshwater Fishes | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11-01 | Underwater cameras are extensively used to detect and quantify fishes in marine ecosystems and are becoming increasingly popular in fresh waters. However, due to the differences in optical properties of these aquatic ecosystems, freshwater-specific studies are needed to evaluate the effectiveness of this method for freshwater fishes. Underwater cameras are of specific interest for rare fishes as conventional sampling methods may cause stress, harm, and mortality from handling. This thesis investigates the use of underwater cameras in freshwater systems to detect, quantify, and study the ecology of rare freshwater fishes. In Chapter 2, I compare the detection probabilities of underwater cameras and conventional sampling methods and assess the optimal sampling procedure for cameras in headwater streams. I found that underwater cameras are as good as conventional sampling methods in detecting rare fishes. In Chapter 3, I compare the ability of two visual observation methods, underwater cameras and snorkel surveys, to detect and quantify fish communities in tributaries in remote watersheds and evaluate the pros and cons of both methods. I found that the visual observation methods have different capabilities in detecting the full fish community but have equal detection probabilities for detecting two IUCN-listed fishes. In Chapter 4, I use long-term monitoring data collected using visual observation methods to investigate the recovery of endemic fishes after eradication of an invasive fish. The visual observation methods revealed that the two endemic Threatened fishes, have fully recovered in density and population stability, while the Endangered endemic fish has recovered in density but it is still unstable. I suggest that invasive species eradication should not be the only management strategy for the conservation of endangered animals, but other strategies, such as habitat restoration, are necessary. In Chapter 5, I used empirically derived data to validate a novel 3D random-encounter equation that theoretically estimates fish density. I found that when the assumptions of the model are met, the equation accurately and precisely estimates densities. However, the assumptions are likely to be violated in natural systems. Together, these studies show that underwater cameras are a powerful sampling method that should be incorporated into standardized sampling protocols. | Ph.D. | water, invest, marine, conserv, fish, species, animal, ecosystem, ecolog, conserv, species, animal, ecosystem | 6, 9, 14, 15 |
| Tavakolian, Pantea | Mandelis, Andreas | Development of a Novel Truncated-correlation Photothermal Coherence Tomography for Non-invasive Biothermophotonic and Non-destructive Materials Imaging | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-06-01 | Truncated-Correlation Photothermal Coherence Tomography (TC-PCT) is the most successful class of diffusion-wave methodologies to-date providing 3-D subsurface visualization. To extend depth range and axial and lateral resolution, a novel imaging system with improved instrumentation, and an optimized reconstruction algorithm over the conventional TC-PCT technique is developed in this PhD project. The enhanced TC-PCT system was then used for biomedical and non-destructive testing applications. First, we reported visualization of subsurface defects in a steel sample. The results demonstrate defect detection at the depth range of ∼4 mm in a steel sample, which exhibits dynamic range improvement by a factor of 2.6 compared to the conventional TC-PCT, the Lock-in Thermography and Thermal Wave radar. Lateral resolution in the steel sample was measured to be ∼ 31 μm. Second, we used the system to investigate the possibility of non-destructive imaging of an art object to identify features that often are invisible areas of vulnerability and damage. The enhanced TC-PCT modality identified all the defects such as empty holes, a hole filled with stucco, delaminations and natural features such as a wood knot and wood grain in different layers of the sample. The system was then used for biomedical applications, three of which are early demineralization in tooth sample, early detection of tumor in mice, and structural imaging of mouse brain. First, we introduced dental enhanced TC-PCT imaging with a current subsurface depth profilometric capability of ~ 3.8 mm. Second, the enhanced TC-PCT modality was presented for early in-vivo tumor detection and tested in imaging nude mice thighs. Precise measurement of the size and shape of the detected tumor was validated following histological analysis. Third, enhanced TC-PCT was developed for brain imaging and was successfully exhibited structures of the brain such as brain lobes, blood vessel, olfactory bulbs, and cerebellum. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, invest | 1, 9 |
| Kadhiresan, Pranav | Chan, Warren | Development of a Smartphone Based Point of Care Device for Multiplexed Infectious Disease Diagnosis | Biomedical Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Infectious diseases are responsible for a significant portion of mortality and morbidity in the developing world, whose spread can be better controlled by using accurate diagnostic and epidemiological tools. Wireless multiplex point of care diagnostic devices can address the drawbacks of current gold standard diagnostic methods such as ELISA and PCR, while allowing for epidemiological data collection and use through geo-tagging and real-time disease tracking when coupled with cell-phones. Existing cell-phone based point of care diagnostic devices lack sensitivity, portability or adequate multiplexing capabilities. Quantum dot microbead barcoding, Recombinase Polymerase Amplification and fluorescent microscopy are three technological platforms that have been shown through the work of Chan et al. to be ideal for multiplexed point of care detection when integrated with a smartphone. When consolidated with automated fluid handling and electricity-free precise temperature control, it can serve as a proof of concept for a point of care device for multiplexed genomic disease detection. The objective of this thesis is to develop and verify automated fluid handling, barcode readout and electricity-free precise temperature control for an integrated point of care DNA diagnostic platform. Chapter two covers the development and iteration of an approach to automated fluid handling for the quantum dot barcode assay. Chapter three covers the development and iteration of point-of-care quantum dot barcode readout and integration with the automated fluid handling module. Chapter four demonstrates an approach to reducing power consumption of the integrated device while allowing for electricity-free, precise and localized temperature control without damage to surrounding reagents. The successful development and verification of the component modules required for a multiplexed diagnostic device represents a significant step towards the achievement of a consolidated universal point of care multiplex diagnostic device. Translation of this device through clinical validation and iterative design for manufacturing can allow for amelioration of the healthcare infrastructure in resource poor settings through better diagnostic workflows. | Ph.D. | healthcare, infrastructure, consum | 3, 9, 12 |
| Underhill, Ainsley Quinn | Wrana, Jeffrey L | Development of an Automated Computational Cell Tracking Tool for High-throughput Screening of Cellular Migration in Exosome-stimulated Wnt-PCP Signaling | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | Intercellular delivery of WNT ligands across tissues is required for development, regeneration and is also involved in many pathologies. One method of this transport is facilitated by being carried on exosomes, which are small, stable extracellular vesicles. Exosomes released by cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) interact with various types of cancer cells to stimulate motility through transport of WNT11 to promote WNT-PCP signaling. This model system presented a unique opportunity to identify new regulators of exosome-based WNT-PCP signaling. However manual measurement of the motility is slow, thus greatly inhibiting our ability to screen large number of candidate regulators. As such, I devised a method to automate the measurement and analysis of cell motility by tracking cells over a time course using live cell imaging. The algorithm I developed was able to accurately and precisely measure the movements of 100s of cells in a multi-well format. Additionally, my approach considers possible track fragmentations to ensure that the majority of tracks encompass the entire time course. I also expanded the algorithm to measure changes in cell morphology and cell death. High-throughput screening of kinase inhibitor tool compounds in a proof-of-concept screen identified various kinases with putative roles in exosome-stimulated motility. One such kinase I chose to focus on was RET, a receptor tyrosine kinase, that is closely linked to migration and morphogenesis in development and is often mutated or overexpressed in cancer. RET loss showed loss of motility in both MDA-MB-231 triple negative breast cancer cells and T24 bladder cancer cells as well as morphological changes that led to increased cell aspect ratios. Furthermore, RET and WNT11 interactions in the embryonic kidney are required to promote branching morphogenesis. I inhibited the release of exosomes in ex vivo E11.5 kidneys through treatment with Manumycin A, which resulted in a reduction in branching. My work describes an efficient, automated method to screen for regulators of WNT-PCP associated cell motility and illustrates a potential role for RET and WNT11 interaction in exosome-stimulated cell migration. | Ph.D. | regeneration | 15 |
| Larin, Egor Mikhailovich | Lautens, Mark | Development of Copper-catalyzed Processes towards the Synthesis of Tetrahydroquinolines, Benzoxazinones and Fused Triazoles | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | The Lautens group has a long-standing interest in the application of transition metal catalyzed reactions in developing strategies towards synthesizing biologically relevant heterocycles. This thesis focuses on the development of various copper-catalyzed transformations that enable the efficient syntheses of tetrahydroquinoline, benzoxazinone, and fused trisubstitued triazole heterocycles. Chapter 1 describes a process to synthesize borylated tetrahydroquinoline scaffolds using a copper-catalyzed borylation of Michael acceptors in tandem with a Mannich-type cyclization. The use of Michael acceptors as π-systems in copper-catalyzed borylation reactions is well known, however their application to generate heterocycles in domino processes remains largely underdeveloped. This strategy is feasible with a broad range of Michael acceptors, and can be leveraged to generate versatile borylated tetrahydroquinoline scaffolds bearing three contiguous stereocenters in a diastereo- and enantioselective fashion. Chapter 2 details the development of a multi-step strategy enabling the synthesis of benzoxazinone scaffolds. The developed method relies on an initial selective copper-catalyzed borylation across an α,β-unsaturated ester or amide, subsequent C−B bond oxidation to generate the reactive alcohol intermediate, and a cyclization to generate the desired heterocyclic product. The application of chiral ligands in this strategy was also demonstrated, generating the benzoxazinone moiety in an enantioselective fashion. Chapter 3 focuses on the utilization of the copper-catalyzed azide alkyne cycloaddition reaction in the synthesis of trisubstituted 1,2,3-triazoles. The mechanism of the copper-catalyzed azide alkyne cycloaddition involves the generation for a nucleophilic copper-triazolide intermediate. Typically, this intermediate undergoes protodemetallation to generate 1,4-disubstituted 1,2,3-triazole compounds. However, the tethering of carbamoyl chloride functional group enables an intramolecular cyclization generating novel, fully-substituted, fused 5-acyl 1,2,3-triazoles. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Wang, Xuguang | Kwon, Oh-Sung | Development of Hybrid Fire Simulation Methods and Their Applications to Column Fire Tests | Civil Engineering | 2021-06-01 | The design philosophy in structural fire design has been shifting from prescriptive design toward performance-based design. The hybrid fire simulation method, where a physical element and a numerical model are integrated, can be used to combine the benefits of the element-level fire test and system-level fire analysis. Although the development of the hybrid fire simulation method started in the late 1990s, a fully automated robust method for large-scale numerical-experimental hybrid fire simulation has not been developed yet. In this study, two hybrid fire simulation methods are proposed and validated through full-scale column tests. The simulation schemes, substructuring methods, and stability issues are discussed in detail in this thesis. A steel moment frame was selected as a reference structure for the validation tests. The proposed methods were applied for parametric studies of steel columns and reinforced concrete columns to investigate the effect of load ratio and the axial constraint ratio on the performance of columns at elevated temperatures. The proposed method is also applied to a scaled steel braced frame that was subjected to fire following an earthquake. A set of temperature- and constraint-dependent demand-capacity curves was proposed for steel columns. The proposed curves were validated through hybrid fire simulations of steel columns. The results of the fire tests in this study demonstrate the importance of considering a realistic boundary condition for evaluating the fire performance of columns. The proposed methods provide a novel way to investigate structural fire performance through large-scale numerical-experimental hybrid fire simulations. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Pakpour, Farbod | Christopoulos, Constantin | Development of Low-cost Seismic Isolation Platform (SIP) for Mass Implementation in Developing Countries | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Rapid urbanization of densely populated cities in developing countries like India has exposed large areas to greater human and economic catastrophes caused by natural disasters, specifically earthquake and flooding. This highlights the global need for the development of affordable, yet robust and resilient housing against such natural disasters in these regions. This research proposes a novel system, namely the Seismic Isolation Platform (SIP), for the mass implementation of low-cost seismically resilient systems for commonly designed affordable housing in densely populated and seismically active urban regions in India. The SIP system consists of three major portions including a supporting slab, low-cost seismic isolation layer, and ground floor columns. The isolation layer within the SIP consists of flat sliding bearings which are comprised of a low-cost off-the-shelf commercially available material sliding on a flat sheet of stainless steel.Large-scale component level testing is used to identify and characterize friction properties of a number of potential low-cost sliding interfaces that have not been studied extensively as seismic isolation sliding surfaces in prior research. Based on this investigation, high density polyethylene (HDPE) in contact with polished stainless steel is selected as the most economical viable sliding system for the SIP. Using the experimental data, modifications to an existing mathematical friction model are proposed to consider the variation of the breakaway friction with initial sliding velocity and the transition between breakaway/stick-slip and dynamic friction. Two post-tensioned transfer systems are studied for the SIP supporting slab using a regular ten-storey and an irregular twenty-storey RC building that were designed as per most recent Indian standards were. Lastly, the seismic performance of the SIP with and without two proposed low-cost displacement restraining systems was numerically validated using two reference ten-storey benchmark buildings. Results of extensive nonlinear dynamic analyses showed that the proposed SIP, combined with a low-cost displacement restraining system is efficient to minimize the structural damage of a building that is designed conventionally for a lower hazard level, but located in a high seismic zone, to a point where the structure could resume its function almost immediately after a severe seismic event. | Ph.D. | affordab, buildings, invest, affordab, cities, urban, resilien, housing, affordable housing, transit | 1, 10, 9, 11 |
| Xu, Maotong | Stephan, Douglas Wade | Development of Main Group Systems for Small Molecules Activation | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Frustrated Lewis pairs (FLP) have been introduced as an alternative to transition metal catalyst. Since the first discovery in 2006, FLP has found diverse applications in areas such as small molecules activation and catalysis. The present thesis has two major directions: 1) find new types of FLP; 2) demonstrate their unusual reactivity. Alkali metal species are shown to mimic FLP behavior. The combinations of Lewis acidic alkali metal cations with hydride (H-), carbanions (R3C-), amides (R2N-) or phosphides (R2P-) are shown to activate H2 reversibly and hydrogenate unsaturated molecules. In addition, the reaction of alkali metal species with CO affords the transient anionic carbene intermediate, which can either undergo CO polymerization or react with H2 to form the Fischer-Tropsch type of products. In a different approach, we showed compounds contain covalently bonded group 13 and 15 elements remain reactive towards CO2 activation. For example, indium amide systems (R2In-NR’2) are shown to readily activate CO2 and has been developed as catalysts for the synthesis of 1,3-disubstituted ureas. | Ph.D. | transit, co2, species, species | 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Alex, Alice | Zajacz, Zoltan | Development of New Methods to Control Redox Conditions in High-pressure Experiments and their Application to Study Ore Metal Solubilities in Sulfur-bearing Magmatic Fluids | Earth Sciences | 2021-06-01 | This thesis perfected the method of admixing calculated amounts of H2 gas to the argon pressure medium to impose desired fO2 values in hydrous experiments. Using CoPd alloy redox sensors, the method was shown to be accurate within 0.3 log units for the P-T range of 960 – 2060 bar and 800 – 1100⁰C. The rate of progressive oxidation caused by diffusive H2 loss through the Molybdenum Hafnium Carbide (MHC) pressure vessel walls was determined experimentally and the hydrogen permeability constants of the MHC alloy were calculated. At T = 1000⁰C, fO2 at water saturation increased about 0.36 log units/day, and this value approximately doubled for every 100oC increase in T. A prototype MHC pressure vessel apparatus was developed that can be used with a modified Shaw membrane to impose fO2 precisely and accurately while maintaining rapid quench capability. It was shown that 95% of the imposed hydrogen pressure is attained inside the pressure vessel within 2 hours from the start of the experiment at 800 – 1000⁰C, after which a steady state equilibrium is established. Experiments comparing redox-dependent Cu solubilities in silicate melts at fO2 imposed by redox buffers and identical target fO2 imposed by the hydrogen membrane confirmed consistency between the two methods within 0.3 log units fO2 deviation at T=1000⁰C and P=2000 bar. Experiments using Fe(II)-Mg exchange between olivine and water-saturated melt to constrain Fe3+/Fetotal ratios in the silicate melt yielded results mostly consistent within 1σ error with those predicted by the equation of Kress and Carmichael (1991). The relationship between exchange coefficient of Fe-Ti between magnetite and silicate melt (K_(d,Fe-Ti)^(magnetite/melt)) and fO2 in hydrous mafic magmas was also constrained. Using the new experimental apparatus, the solubilities of Cu, Ag and Au in S-rich Cl-bearing magmatic fluids were determined at T = 900 ⁰C and P = 2000 bar covering a wide range of fO2 from NNO – 0.5 to NNO + 2.5 with 7 steps in-between. Thermodynamic model calculations were performed using the HCh software to determine the dominant species of the metals in the fluids. | Ph.D. | water, species, species | 6, 14, 15 |
| Rezaei, Sasan | Park, Chul B | Development of Novel Hybrid Silica Aerogels with a Reticulated Structure using New Generation of Marcromolecular Precursors | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-06-01 | Aerogels (e.g. silica aerogel) have created a prospective market for oil-absorption, insulation and aerospace applications. However, their intrinsic fragility and poor mechanical properties have been a stumbling block to their wider applications. These drawbacks originate from their inherent particulate structure and weak interparticle interactions. For several decades, researchers have been trying to enhance the aerogels’ mechanical properties by improving the particle-to-particle connections. However, the cost was increased processing time, increased density, and increased total thermal conductivity. Therefore, this Ph.D. research aims to find an industrially viable and fast manufacturing technology to produce ultra-light weight and mechanically robust and resilient aerogel while preserving the unique features of the aerogels such as the good thermal insulation properties and high surface area. This dissertation fundamentally addressed the difficulties associated with the improvement of the particle-to-particle connection in the conventional aerogels by inventing a novel non-particulate and reticulate structure, free from the troublesome particles. This new technology relied on the development of a new generation of polymeric silica precursor and a meticulous control of thermodynamics at gelation step. Polymeric precursors with different chemistries and molecular weights were synthesized in the preparatory stage and then through spinodal decomposition, non-particulate and reticulate aerogels were afforded. Thermodynamics variables, molecular weight of the polymeric precursor, solvent, temperature, and the amount of the nonsolvent were systematically studied and correlated to structural parameters and consequently to the final properties. It was found that there is a critical point where a particulate structure transfers to a non-particulate one. The findings have also demonstrated how to tailor the structural factors such as the void fraction, the average pore sizes to optimize the final properties. This study provided an in-depth understanding of processing-structure-property relationship and a novel technology to molecularly engineer the structure and properties of hybrid silica aerogels. Various aerogels’ building blocks assemblies, polymeric precursors, and thermodynamics variables have been investigated to identify the optimal structure and processing methodology to obtain highly robust and super-insulative aerogels. | Ph.D. | invest, resilien | 9, 11 |
| Mester, James Raymond | Stefanovic, Bojana||Sled, John G | Development of Optical Methods for Interrogating Neurovascular Coupling in Health and Disease | Medical Biophysics | 2021-11-01 | The communication between neurons and blood vessels to supply cells in the brain with energy is a complex interaction called neurovascular coupling (NVC) that is critical for healthy brain function. Its understanding is crucial for the interpretation of functional brain imaging signals in humans such as blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), however its underlying mechanisms are presently not fully described. The present work implements combined optical stimulation and recording methods using optogenetics and two-photon fluorescence microscopy (2PFM) to interrogate neurovascular coupling in vivo with high spatiotemporal precision. We present a focused optogenetic stimulation paradigm to excite precise volumes of brain tissue to localize neuronal excitation to nearby vessels, combined with simultaneous, high-throughput single vessel recordings to characterize red blood cell (RBC) speed responses to local NVC cascades. This paradigm was first applied in mice to cortical penetrating arterioles and venules, major regional supply and draining vessels to the cortex respectively, and found that arterioles have higher absolute and lower relative RBC speed responses to focused photostimulation than venules, wider regional dependencies of arterioles over venules, and larger, more reliable neuronal and vascular responses to focused photostimulation versus conventional fibre-optic photostimulation. This paradigm was applied to a mouse model of repeated mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) that also introduced a GABAA receptor (GABAAR) inverse agonist as a pharmacological intervention and showed neuronal hyporeactivity and venular hyperreactivity 2 weeks post-injury, which were resolved via GABAAR inverse agonism. Lastly, we expanded on the present methodology to characterize RBC speed responses to local neuronal activation along the arteriovenous axis and describe a volumetric functional readout using a machine learning vascular segmentation algorithm. This elucidated larger RBC speed responses in precapillary arterioles than capillaries and a positive linear correlation with distance from photostimulation in the former, and described differential contributions to the volumetric CBV response among different vessel diameters. Combined, these studies reveal novel characteristics of NVC in vivo based on high spatiotemporal control of neuronal activation. Furthermore, these methods have sufficient sensitivity to describe novel functional changes in mTBI, highlighting the efficacy of focused photostimulation for interrogating NVC. | Ph.D. | learning, energy | 4, 7 |
| Tabatabaei Anaraki, Maryam | Simpson, Andre | Development of Solution-state In vivo NMR: Towards an Understanding of Aquatic Toxicity | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-11-01 | In vivo NMR has the potential to monitor metabolic flux close to real time, essential for a better understanding of the mode-of-action of toxic contaminants and deciphering complex interconnected response pathways inside living organisms. Thus, in this thesis a novel continuous low-volume flow system suitable for in vivo NMR metabolic studies of small aquatic living organisms, such as D. magna, was developed and its feasibility was evaluated. In chapter two a low-volume flow system that permits for faster and easier locking, shimming, and water suppression is introduced. Chapter three includes two sections. In the first section, a technique to convert 2D NMR data into “spikelet” 1D format is demonstrated. This approach permits preservation of the information content of spectral dispersion of 2D NMR while providing a simple 1D data format that is required for analysis by most chemometric software. The second section describes how use of in vivo NMR technique overcomes complications from individual organism variability and permit metabolic impacts of stress to be more easily differentiated. In this section, the in vivo impacts of anoxic stress are compared using a time trajectory and a traditional approach. The approach that utilizes the same organisms for both the control and exposed studies reduces natural variability significantly allowing the anoxic stress to be more easily discerned. Chapter four is dedicated to NMR assignment of the in vivo D. magna metabolome, implementing various 1D, 2D, and 3D 1H and 13C NMR approaches. In this project, in vivo metabolome assignment of isotopically enriched small aquatic organisms (D. magna) is performed for the first time. Studies show that wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) effluents remain as one of the primary sources of toxins introduced into the aquatic environment, threatening both ecosystem and human health. Therefore, screening and assessment of wastewaters that considers both the components and the toxicity of wastewater is imperative. Chapter five evaluates an integrated NMR framework that combines various 1D and 2D NMR, and in vivo NMR metabolomics techniques to study and identify the wastewater composition and toxicity. In addition, this chapter includes a comprehensive review on NMR spectroscopy of wastewater. | Ph.D. | water, waste, ecosystem, ecosystem | 6, 12, 14, 15 |
| Shi, Hao Tian | Naguib, Hani E | Development of Surface-modified Electrodes for Electrochemical Energy Storage Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-06-01 | Recent commercialization efforts made in the fields of flexible sensors, low-energy Bluetooth transmitters, and low-power thin-film electronics have contributed to significant fast-paced growth in the smart wearable industry. This drastic paradigm shift in the flexible electronics component design has fuelled an evolution in the flexible personal electronics, biomedical, athletics, and logistics industries as more flexible, thin-film products are offered. Flexible thin-film electrochemical capacitors (EC) or supercapacitors are energy storage solutions that offer both high energy and power densities resulting from the exceptional high electrode specific surface area and appropriately tuned electrode/electrolyte interface. To meet both the electrochemical and mechanical requirements, several aspects of the electrode design was to be considered in the proposed flexible EC devices: a) Areal- and gravimetric specific capacitance; b) Charge-discharge cycling properties; c) Mechanical bending and flexing behaviours; and d) Environmental stability. In this work, novel facile techniques in fabricating flexible EC electrodes with micro- and nano-structured surface modification have been proposed to produce high-performing flexible EC electrodes with additional intrinsic multi-functionalities, such as piezoresistive sensors and breathing sensors, along with energy storage. Herein, to create facile pathways for fabricating flexible, high-performance EC electrodes, this thesis has been divided into the following studies: The first study focuses on the design of a novel environmental-controlled self-assembly method, where polyaniline (PAni) nanorod structures were grown on polyacrylonitrile (PAN) nanofibers for high-surface-area textile electrochemical capacitor electrodes with intrinsic piezoresistive tactile sensing capabilities. The second study relied on a novel laser-assisted photochemical reduction method to produce reduced graphene oxide micro-ribbon textile electrode directly on a liquid surface, which can be transfer printed onto any substrate for both supercapacitors and breath sensor applications. The third study validated a method for creating hierarchically structured multilayer reduced graphene oxide for flexible intercalated supercapacitor electrodes where simultaneous reduction and nitrogen-doping were successfully achieved. The last study explored the possibility of creating a multi-layered flexible polypyrrole micro-foam/carbon nanotube composite electrodes for flexible supercapacitor devices via the creation of three-dimensional polypyrrole microsphere architecture. | Ph.D. | energy, environmental | 7, 13 |
| Facciol, Amanda Jean | Gerlai, Robert T | Developmental Stage-dependent Effects of Embryonic Ethanol Exposure on Social Behaviour and Potential Underlying Mechanisms in Adult Zebrafish: A Model for FASD | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-03-01 | Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) is characterized by a variety of morphological, behavioural, and cognitive deficits, including life-long learning disabilities and social dysfunction. FASD is a highly variable disorder, and symptoms range from mild to severe despite similar drinking patterns in mothers. One of the hypotheses proposed to explain this variability is the timing of alcohol consumption, or in other words, the developmental stage at which the embryo is exposed to alcohol. Due to their highly social nature, the zebrafish is becoming a popular model organism for investigating social deficits that arise from embryonic ethanol exposure. Previous studies in zebrafish have observed ethanol administered at 24 hours post fertilization (hpf) resulted in abnormal social behaviour accompanied by lower levels of dopamine and serotonin in the brain, however, little is known about how ethanol alters social behaviour and neurochemical systems at other developmental timepoints, and the mechanisms underlying these alterations remain unknown. Therefore, the goal of this thesis was two-fold: firstly, to investigate how the developmental stage of embryonic ethanol exposure differentially alters social behaviour and underlying neurochemistry, and second, to investigate novel mechanisms underlying embryonic ethanol-induced social deficits in adult zebrafish. Results presented here show both social behaviour and underlying neurochemistry are indeed impaired by ethanol in a developmental stage-dependent manner, however, the expression of ethanol-induced neurochemical dysfunction differed slightly depending on the age of observation. In adult zebrafish, abnormal social behaviour was accompanied by lower levels of whole brain dopamine, specifically when ethanol was administered at 10hpf, 16hpf and 24hpf, however, ethanol administered earlier (5hpf) and later (36hpf) had little to no effect. Additionally, abnormal social behaviour resulting from ethanol exposure at 24hpf was accompanied by lower levels of whole brain isotocin in adult zebrafish. Lastly, exposure to ethanol at 24hpf resulted in altered histone variant and neurochemical gene expression in adult zebrafish. These findings not only point to sensitive periods during early development but highlight potential new molecular candidates which may play an important role in the expression of embryonic ethanol-induced social deficits. | Ph.D. | disabilit, learning, invest, consum, fish | 3, 4, 9, 12, 14 |
| Akhtari, Nazli | Sharma, Sarah | Diasporic Constellations: Performing on the Periphery of the Archives | Drama | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation examines a wide array of performance and media practices in the Iranian diasporas. It argues that any understanding of diasporic imagination and material culture demands an in-depth engagement with cultural histories, including genealogies of media and technologies. By focusing on performance and media practices in various geographical regions within the Iranian diasporas and putting contemporary practices in dialogue with their historical precedents, this dissertation argues that histories and archives in public and digital spaces help find points of connection in diasporas. I argue that Iranian diasporas, in all their complexities and effects, are fundamentally historical subjects. Diasporic Constellations ultimately posits that the affective engagements in the Iranian diasporas undergird our diasporic imaginations and matters. Using remix studies’ broad definition of the remix as practices of “appropriation and transformation” of material and mass media texts, this project considers the remix as the aesthetics underpinning the selected diaspora cultural productions. The analysis of multiple case studies proves that the remix gives these Iranian diasporic remixers/curators and minoritarian artists techno compositional strategies to archive, queer the archival practice, and unarchive cultural histories. In doing so, the remix also offers a technology of remembrance in affective, visceral, trans-temporal, and interspecies archival encounters. In sum, despite their differences, the selected case studies this dissertation draws upon remember diasporic histories and pasts, and in doing so, envision alternative futurities that trespass hegemonic Iranian archives and historiographies. | Ph.D. | queer, minorit, production, species, species | 5, 10, 12, 14, 15 |
| Bilodeau, Claudia | Post, Martin | Differentiation of Murine and Human Embryonic Stem Cells on Acellular Lung Scaffolds and Extracellular Matrices | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-06-01 | Lung diseases are a leading cause of death worldwide. Due to a lack of knowledge of the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms and absence of treatment, lung transplantation is one of the few live-saving options at the end stage of disease. Although the number of donor lungs for transplantation has increased, the demand is exceeding organ availability. To palliate this situation, one promising avenue is the use of decellularized whole-lung scaffolds to bioengineer a functional lung for transplantation. An ideal cell source to recellularize the cell-free lung scaffolds would be a multipotent cell line that combined with the intrinsic differentiation capacity of the scaffold ECM that would properly repopulate the denuded lung. In Chapter 3, we investigated the hierarchical differentiation process of multipotent ES-derived endoderm cells into proximal airway epithelial cells on acellular lung scaffolds. We found that differentiation of ES-derived endoderm on decellularized lung scaffolds towards airway epithelium proceeds via TP63+ basal cell progenitors and tracks a regenerative repair pathway. Our findings support the use of airway basal cells for repopulating the proximal airway side of an acellular lung scaffold.Another approach to lessen the burden of lung diseases is to develop organotypic models that can be used to study pathogenesis and optimize treatment, including cell therapy. To model distal (alveolar) lung disease with alveolar organoids using pluripotent stem cells we need to reproduce the alveolar niche. In Chapter 4, we investigated whether replicating the cellular and matrix environment of the alveolus enhances the differentiation of human lung progenitor cells into alveolar type 2 (AEC2) cells. We found that a 3D organisation and mesenchyme-derived chemical cues were key for the differentiation of ESC into AEC2 while matrix-derived cues were inhibitory. A lot remains to be done prior to modeling distal lung disease, but understanding the role of all constituents of the alveolar niche will bring us closer to it. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Rodriguez, Jose Francisco | Lautens, Mark | Difunctionalizations of Alkynes in the Domino Synthesis of Heterocycles | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | The Lautens group has investigated the use of metal catalysts for the domino synthesis of heterocycles. These strategies aim at generating products with high atom economy and minimal generation of waste. This thesis consists of three chapters describing the synthesis of various heterocycles in this fashion using both metal- and non-metal-catalyzed methodologies. Chapter 1 describes a palladium-catalyzed cycloisomerization of 1,6-diynes for the synthesis of silylated 2-azafluorenes. This reaction occurs via a palladium-hydride addition and C–H bond functionalization cascade. Originally, we desired to generate carbohalogenation products via the reductive elimination of a C–Pd(II)–X species, however, the corresponding intermediates demonstrated higher aptitudes for C–H activation. The synthetic utility of the products was investigated, and several mechanistic experiments were performed. Chapter 2 focuses on a palladium-catalyzed synthesis of dihydrobenzoindolones via an ortho C–H bond functionalization and alkyne insertion process. The reaction forms three new C–C bonds and generates products in high yields and excellent regioselectivities using unsymmetrically substituted alkynes. Chapter 3 describes the intramolecular chloroacylation of alkyne-tethered carbamoyl chlorides for the synthesis of E-3-(chloromethylene)oxindoles. Initial attempts to synthesize methylene oxindoles using nickel catalysts revealed that fluorinated alcohols promote this process in the absence of a metals or other additives. The products were obtained in high yields and excellent E-selectivity, and their synthetic versatility was demonstrated via a series of derivatizations, including the synthesis of nintedanib. Isomerization and halide-exchange experiments were performed to gain further insight into the reaction mechanism. Furthermore, analogous reactivity was extended towards the synthesis of chlorinated methylene pyrrolidones and 2-quinolinones. Chapter 4 describes future directions of the previous chapters. Mechanistic experiments, new substrate classes, asymmetric variants, among other related and unexplored areas of research are discussed. | Ph.D. | invest, waste, species, species | 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Jeffries, Boyce William | Huang, Aiyun | Digitisation, Dissemintation, and Reception of Percussion Performance: Evaluating YouTube Videos of John Cage's Third Construction Through Analysis and Case Studies | Music | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation investigates the digitisation, dissemination, and reception of percussion performance on YouTube. It examines three questions: 1) How has YouTube impacted the percussion field? 2) What are the available audiovisual recordings of John Cage’s Third Construction (1941) on YouTube and would analysing them illustrate consistencies and divergences in the performance practice of the work? 3) How would undergraduate percussionists who have never performed Third Construction evaluate selected performance videos of the work? Would their opinions on performance quality or accuracy of interpretation change if they watched these videos under differing conditions (e.g., with and without the musical score)? Chapter 2 describes academic research on the topic of YouTube, and summarizes the current video content pertinent to percussionists. Despite a well-established and thriving percussive subculture on the site, discussing YouTube as educational resource has not been substantially addressed within music performance scholarship. Chapter 3 presents a corpus study on performance videos of John Cage’s Third Construction (1941). In addition to outlining the processes of navigating, collecting, and analyzing data on a dynamic, digital environment, this corpus study presents qualitative and quantitative data on how percussionists have chosen to interpret Cage’s quartet. Chapter 4 presents the findings from a case study conducted on nine undergraduate percussionists. The participants were first asked questions about their uses of YouTube in a precursory survey. Participants then examined five excerpts of YouTube videos of Third Construction under two differing conditions: first, by simply watching them and; second, by following along with the musical score. Each viewing condition included questionnaires that solicited their opinions of the video excerpts. Chapter 5 summarizes the research findings. Despite the wealth of concerns to be had about the world’s largest tech corporations (e.g., data privacy, cyber security, censorship, anti-trust/monopolization), online videos of music performance present opportunities for future generations of scholars, educators, and students. Rather than seeking to reconcile the concerns with and benefits of these digital experiences, the author advocates that they should become a greater part of the discussions held within academic environments. | D.M.A. | invest | 9 |
| Jeyapala, Renu | Bapat, Bharati | Discovery and Validation of a Panel of Methylation Biomarkers for the Detection of Aggressive Prostate Cancer | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Prostate cancer (PCa) ranges from indolent to aggressive tumors with the challenge of identifying high-risk PCa patients that will benefit from multi-modal aggressive treatments, without overtreatment. Radical prostatectomy (RP) remains the gold standard for curative treatment of localized PCa. Approximately 30-50% of men experience recurrent cancer within 10-years post-surgery. Intraductal carcinoma and cribriform (IDC/C) is a prognostic indicator of biochemical recurrence(BCR), metastasis and prostate cancer-specific mortality. Approximately 70% of PCa patients are IDC/C negative yet up-to 20% experience BCR post-RP. Thus, tumor histopathologic characteristics are limited in their ability to predict BCR. Similar to IDC/C, several biomarkers, panels and nomograms have been developed to improve patient risk stratification and prognosis. However, lack of large-scale validation in well characterized cohorts have limited translation to clinic. This thesis focuses on the discovery, development, and validation of novel biomarkers and panels in well-characterized multi-institutional cohorts of patients undergoing RP. Through the use of genome-wide DNA methylation profiling we have identified key hypermethylated genes associated with PCa progression. One such candidate was gastrulation of the brain homeobox 2 (GBX2) significantly associated with GG, pT, and an independent predictor of BCR. GBX2 methylation was able to discriminate patients diagnosed with intermediate disease suspected to have a poorer prognosis (≤GG2 versus ≥ GG3). Additionally, GBX2 methylation has additive potential to IDC/C. Especially among IDC/C negative patients, those with high GBX2 methylation had a shorter time to BCR (P=0.002). The development of panels outperforms the predictive accuracy of any single marker for BCR alone. To address this, I developed and validated a 4-G model consisting of APC, HOXD3, TGFβ2 and CRIP3 (AUC=0.670, Cohort 3), an Integrative gene model combining the 4-G and CAPRA-S (AUC=0.726, Cohort 3) and a clinic-pathological based model integrating IDC/C+CAPRA-S. The investigation of IDC/C features among CAPRA-S low-risk and conversely the investigation of CAPRA-S among IDC/C negative patients improved the prognostication of time to BCR. The integration of epigenetic markers, CAPRA-S and IDC/C can serve as an informative model for improved prediction of tumor behavior. The findings in this thesis with further validation, may lead to improved post-operative risk-stratification tools for PCa patient management. | Ph.D. | invest, institut | 9, 16 |
| Goldberg, Aaron Zev | James, Daniel FV | Disquisitions on quantum-enhanced polarimetry | Physics | 2021-06-01 | It takes some convincing to realize that light has a polarization degree of freedom, as our eyes are usually ignorant of light's polarization. Since overcoming this hurdle of intuition, polarization has become a fantastic resource that can be easily manipulated both physically and mathematically, opening the door to a wide variety of applications. We have only recently begun to appreciate how many more doors are opened by the quantum mechanical degrees of freedom inherent to optical polarization. One use of optical polarization is for polarimetry: measuring the changes in light's polarization after it interacts with a material is an excellent procedure for nondestructively probing the characteristics and composition of the intervening material. More sensitive measurements require brighter probe light; however, sufficiently intense light will begin to destroy the sample being probed. In this thesis, we seek to provide more sensitive polarimetry without resorting to bright beams of light. Tailoring the quantum properties of various states of light has been shown to increase their usefulness for other estimation protocols and we show how to extend this paradigm to quantum enhancements in polarimetry. We begin by finding the quantum states underlying classical polarization. Each particular set of classical polarization properties corresponds to a large variety of quantum states. Next, we establish quantum descriptions of classical polarization transformations corresponding to arbitrary Jones and Mueller matrices, including quantum mechanical insights into the distinction between processes that can and cannot be described by Jones matrices. We propose candidates for the most likely quantum states underlying classical decompositions into polarized and unpolarized fractions, carefully inspecting how these quantum states behave under polarization transformations. This language allows us to inspect quantum-enhanced sensing in the multiparameter context of polarimetry. We show the dramatic possibilities for quantum enhancements in any metrological scenario that is mathematically equivalent to a rotation, of which polarization rotations are a primary example; in contrast, we also show most attenuating and depolarizing polarization transformations to forbid such dramatic enhancements. Finally, we discuss polarization and its generalizations in the context of generating quantum entanglement via linear optics. These applications serve as mere examples of the usefulness promised by light’s quantum polarization degrees of freedom. | Ph.D. | metro | 11 |
| Richards, Laura | Pugh, Trevor | Dissecting Genetic and Cellular Heterogeneity in Glioblastoma at Single Cell Resolution | Medical Biophysics | 2021-11-01 | Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive form of adult primary brain cancer. Therapeutic resistance in GBM is rooted in its layered genetic and cellular heterogeneity, including rare glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs) that drive tumour growth and disease relapse. Despite extensive profiling of primary tumours, heterogeneity within the GSC fraction and its relationship to the tumour bulk remains poorly characterized. To address this gap, I used whole genome sequencing of 44 GSC-tumour pairs to demonstrate that purified GSC cultures recapitulate the somatic landscape of tumours. I then performed single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) on >69,000 GSCs isolated from 26 tumours to characterize functional diversity within the tumour-initiating fraction of GBM. GSCs exhibited extensive transcriptional heterogeneity that translated to variable, subpopulation-specific drug sensitivity profiles. Although a portion of intra-GSC heterogeneity was explained by subclonal somatic alterations at the DNA level, we found GSCs mapped to a unifying transcriptional gradient spanning two cellular states reminiscent of normal neural development and inflammatory wound responses. Genome-wide CRISPR–Cas9 dropout screens independently recapitulated this observation and identified targetable sensitivities within each GSC state. Additional scRNA-seq of >56,000 malignant cells from primary tumours found that the majority organize along an orthogonal astrocyte maturation gradient yet retain expression of founder GSC transcriptional programs. Finally, to investigate transcriptional programs and cellular dynamics underpinning disease progression in glioma, I performed single nuclei RNA-sequencing on >270,000 cells isolated from 52 cryopreserved gliomas, including a subset of patients with longitudinal samples before and after therapy. Compositional analysis revealed gliomas separated into distinct groups based on the frequency of malignant phenotypes, each with an associated microenvironmental niche and GSC state mirroring the Developmental to Injury Response gradient. Collectively, this work has two important consequences. First, gliomagenesis may be explained by a single biological model that involves mixtures of inflammatory wound-healing cells and neurodevelopmental-like cells that cause aberrant neural growth and underpin therapeutic resistance. Second, the heterogeneity discovered at the GSC level suggests combination therapies must be developed to simultaneously target both developmental and inflammatory subpopulations. This paradigm may help identify new approaches to target treatment-refractory cells that reside at the apex of GBM cellular hierarchies. | Ph.D. | invest, environmental, land | 9, 13, 15 |
| Dynes, Rhonda | Ryan, James | Distributed Leadership in Ontario’s CAAT sector English Department Academic Coordinators | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | This study uses the theories of distributed leadership (DL) and the lens of hermeneutic interpretation to explore and describe the interactional tasks and functions that English department Academic Coordinators (ACs) across the province of Ontario carry out in their leadership work as an alternative to the traditional administrative systems. Interviews with 15 English department Academic Coordinators at Ontario anglophone colleges in the CAAT (Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology) system provided the key data for the study. Document analysis in the form of organizational charts, union and corporate documents as well as observational journaling were used to provide data to account for the ACs practices. Study findings indicate that CAAT ACs in English departments have a unique and influential role as both teacher leaders and boundary spanners. Participants suggested this was because their role required them to span both the macro-world of the college context as well as the micro-world of their own departments and faculty peers. Results from the data indicate that there are multiple challenges to these interactive and collaborative coordinator interactions. Participants suggested this was caused by clashing with other faculty and administration over their influence and ability to work through change in policy and teaching practice. The theoretical lens of DL helps to illuminate some of these challenges. Throughout the study, participants also described positive aspects of their work that were used in order to maintain connections, establish trust and organize the flow of communications and to attempt to use influence to lead their respective departments and the college staff from the bottom up. Their experiences may provide a descriptive entrance into a conversation about collaborative forms of leadership that are already being used in the CAAT system. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Al Lawati, Haider | Draper, Stark C | Distributed Online Learning and Optimization using the Fixed-time Approach | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Gradient-based algorithms play an important role in solving a wide range of online learning and optimization problems. Despite being inherently sequential, these algorithms have been successfully parallelized due to their scalability to large-scale problems. In distributed systems, however, processing speed varies unpredictably across compute nodes. Slow computing nodes called stragglers can present a serious computational bottleneck in distributed systems. One way to alleviate the straggler effect is to use asynchronous methods. In a typical asynchronous scheme, workers calculate a fixed minibatch of gradients with respect to out-of-date optimization parameters while the master uses stale gradients to update the parameters. While stale gradients can slow the convergence, asynchronous methods speed up the overall optimization with respect to wall clock time by allowing more frequent updates and reducing idling times. In this dissertation, our aim is to design large-scale distributed optimization techniques that deliver idealized performance while automatically coping with the non-idealities of real-world distributed systems. We present novel algorithms using the fixed-time approach. In this approach, workers are assigned a fixed duration to compute gradients in each iteration. This approach results in time-varying minibatch sizes. The synchronous fixed-time variant termed Anytime Minibatch (AMB) has been shown to outperform the state-of-the-art fixed minibatch (FMB) approach in the presence of stragglers. We present two asynchronous variants: Anytime Minibatch with Delayed Gradients (AMB-DG) and Async-Timed. We analyze a distributed system deploying the fixed-time approach and present the convergence analysis of our schemes. We run experiments and show that our schemes outperform AMB and the state-of-the-art asynchronous FMB schemes. In addition, we analyze a general distributed system using an asynchronous FMB method. Our analysis is based on renewal theory. We derive the system bandwidth requirements and the expected gradient staleness. Gradient staleness is an important quantity that arises in asynchronous optimization but has received limited attention in the existing literature. Our derivations characterize the expected gradient staleness and present it in terms of other system parameters such as the number of nodes, the expected gradient compute time, and the expected communication delay. This representation helps provide more insight into the factors that affect convergence. يعد حل مسائل الاستمثال أو التحسين الرياضي من أكثر المسائل شيوعًا في المجالات والتطبيقات الهندسية خصوصا في مجالات تعلم الآلة والذكاء الصناعي. يُعتمد في حل هذه المسائل على خوارزميات قائمة على حساب تدرج وانحدار الدالة مثل خوارزمية الانحدار التدريجي العشوائي. يعتمد الأسلوب الكلاسيكي لحل هذه المسائل على استخدام هذه الخوارزميات المتسلسلة على جهاز حاسوب واحد حيث تخزن فيه البيانات كلها. ولكن مع الانفجار المعلوماتي خصوصًا في العقدين الأخيرين أصبح حل هذه الخوارزميات باستخدام جهاز واحد أشبه بالمستحيل خصوصا عند التعامل مع بيانات ضخمة لا يمكن تخزينها في جهاز واحد. وعليه ابتكر العلماء والمتخصصون أساليب لحل هذه الخوارزميات بشكل موزع. ولكن عند استخدام أنظمة موزعة مثل أنظمة الحوسبة السحابية لحل هذه المسائل والخوارزميات، قد تواجهنا بعض التحديات مثل اختلاف سرعات الحواسيب أثناء قيامها بحل المسائل بشكل غير قابل للتوقع. ينتج عن هذا بطء سير العمليات الحسابية خصوصا عند استخدام الخوارزميات الموزعة بطرق متزامنة. لحل هذه المشكلة يمكن استخدام خوارزميات غير متزامنة. في هذه الحالة تقوم الحواسيب العاملة بحساب انحدار أو تدرج الدالة في كل خطوة اعتمادًا على دفعات صغيرة وثابتة من البيانات وارسال الناتج إلى الخادم الرئيسي الذي يقوم بحساب العوامل المتغيرة أو عوامل التحسين دون الحاجة لانتظار نتائج الحواسيب البطيئة. هذا بدوره يؤدي إلى زيادة معدل تحديث عوامل التحسين ولكن باعتماد قيم قديمة لانحدار الدالة الأمر الذي قد يؤدي إلى تأخير الوصول إلى النتيجة النهائية المطلوبة. في هذه الأطروحة العلمية نقدم بحثنا الذي يهدف إلى تصميم خوارزميات موزعة لحل مسائل الاستمثال الرياضي المعتمدة على البيانات الضخمة مع زيادة سرعة الحساب والتعامل الأفضل مع مشاكل الحوسبة الموزعة. كما هو معلوم أن الخوارزميات المستخدمة حاليًا تعتمد على إعطاء كل حاسوب نفس الكمية من البيانات لمعالجتها في كل خطوة وحساب تدرج الدالة وهذا يؤدي إلى اختلاف أوقات انتهاء كل حاسوب بسبب تفاوت السرعات. في هذا البحث نقدم ابتكارًا جديدًا لحل هذه المسائل باستخدام أسلوب الوقت المحدد. باستخدام هذا الأسلوب فإن جميع الحواسيب ستنتهي من حسابها في نفس الوقت ولكن ستتفاوت في كمية البيانات المعالجة المستخدمة في حساب الانحدار. عند استخدام أسلوب الوقت المحدد بطريقة متزامنة ينتج عنه خوارزمية الدفعات الصغيرة في أي وقت ونشرت في بحث سابق وبينا فيه أن هذه الخوارزمية تتفوق على الخوارزميات المعتمدة على تحديد كمية البيانات. في هذه الأطروحة نستعرض خوارزميتين جديدتين تعتمدان على أسلوب الوقت المحدد ولكن بشكل غير متزامن ومن خلال التجارب نبين مدى تفوق هاتين الخوارزميتين على الخوارزميات غير المتزامنة. بالإضافة إلى الابتكار السابق فإن هذه الأطروحة تقوم بتقديم أسلوب جديد لتحليل الخوارزميات غير المتزامنة باستخدام أساليب مشابهة لتلك المستخدمة في نظرية الطابور والرائج استخدامها في مجال شبكات الحاسب الآلي. من أبرز النتائج التي نطرحها هنا هو حساب القيمة المتوقعة لمدى تأخر الانحدار أو التدرج وكيفية ارتباطه بعوامل أخرى من قبيل عدد الحواسيب العاملة وسرعة المعالجة أو الحساب وسرعة نقل المعلومات من الحواسيب العاملة إلى الخادم الرئيسي. ترجمة بعض المصطلحات: Optimization: الاستمثال أو التحسين الرياضي Stochastic Gradient Descent: الانحدار التدريجي العشوائي Distributed Systems: أنظمة موزعة Synchronous Method: طريقة متزامنة Asynchronous Method: طريقة غير متزامنة Workers: حواسيب عاملة Master: الخادم الرئيسي Gradient: انحدار أو تدرج Fixed Minibatch: دفعة صغيرة وثابتة من البيانات Optimization Parameters: عوامل التحسين Delayed or Stale Gradient: قيم قديمة للانحدار Anytime Minibatch: الدفعات الصغيرة في أي وقت Queueing Theory: نظرية الطابور Gradient Delay: تأخر الانحدار أو التدرج | Ph.D. | learning, worker | 4, 8 |
| Iwama, Rafael Eiji | Kvist, Sebastian | Diversification and Evolution of Leech (Hirudinida) Anticoagulants with Emphasis on Antistasin-like Proteins | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-03-01 | Bloodfeeding is a common feeding behavior among animals and it requires several adaptions for individuals to feed efficiently. Molecular mechanisms of hemostasis inhibition are common adaptations of bloodfeeding species, and it is essential to allow the parasite to feed for a longer time. The diversity of anticoagulants secreted by these animals is noticeable by many cases of functional convergence and divergence within and between protein families. Leeches are an ecologically diverse group of annelids that are closely related to earthworms and other clitellates. They are known for their bloodfeeding behavior that has attracted great attention during human history, because of the medical properties attributed to leech saliva.This thesis aims to (1) test previous orthology hypothesis between archetypal anticoagulants (2) identify the origin of main orthologous groups (3) seek for putative anticoagulants in non-bloodfeeding leech species and (4) understand the contribution of gene duplication and alternative splicing in the diversification of leech anticoagulants. The results presented here contribute to the expansion of leech salivary transcriptome sampling and orthology determination of several anticoagulants. Moreover, we identify putative homologs of many anticoagulants in non-leech clitellates, helping to clarify the origin of these proteins, which can be traced back to before the origin of extant leeches. The presence of ii anticoagulants in non-predatory species suggests that many of these anticoagulants may be involved in other functions. Finally, we found several splicing isoforms that may contribute to a local exploration of protein sequence space. These results have a high impact on our understanding of leech anticoagulant evolution and suggest that the ancestral leech was probably capable of inhibiting factor Xa. However, important thrombin inhibitors such as Hirudin, seem to be an innovation of Hirudiniforms. | Ph.D. | species, animal, ecolog, species, animal | 14, 15 |
| Faccio, Maya Sonnenschein | Weir, Jason | Diversification of Antbirds Associated with Amazonian Flooded Forest Habitats | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-06-01 | Rivers represent one of the few geographic barriers that bisect, and promote allopatric speciation, in an otherwise continuous landscape of the Amazon basin. In contrast to Amazonian understory forests birds, which replace each other across river barriers, a strong barrier effect has not been reported for flooded forest species, which may experience rivers as dispersal corridors rather than as barriers. The apparent lack of geographic barriers for flooded forest birds raises the possibility that parapatric rather than allopatric speciation, might drive divergence in this habitat. Parapatric speciation usually involves gradual divergence across a species range, frequently involving divergence across geographically structured ecological gradients. Here I used morphometrics, plumage and genome-wide SNP datasets to uncover clinal patterns in three species of flooded forest antbirds at different stages of divergence. I found weak phylogeographic structure in Hypocnemoides maculicauda and H. melanopogon and much stronger structure in Sclateria naevia. While the clinal patterns uncovered in H. maculicauda and H. melanopogon could be consistent with either parapatric divergence or secondary contact, Sclateria exhibited strongly concordant cline centres across nuclear loci, mitochondrial DNA and female plumage, consistent with secondary contact between an eastern and western lineage that diverged in allopatry. I also applied coalescent modelling to distinguish between allopatric, parapatric or mixed allo-parapatric models in driving the diversification of Hypocnemoides from their common ancestor. The parapatric model of diversification was rejected in favor of one including an allopatric phase followed by secondary contact prior to the completion of speciation. Thus, while parapatry may have played a role in speciation, an initial allopatric phase is supported by this model. I proposed that the main drivers of genetic differentiation in flooded forest birds were climatic fluctuations caused by glacial and interglacial cycles. These species probably suffered multiple cycles of population expansion and retraction that resulted in the current phylogeographic structure. Repeated episodes of secondary contact during interglacials might explain why speciation in flooded forest birds is rare. Allopatric barriers have rarely persisted long enough to cause speciation, and cycles of expansion of populations erased part of the accumulated genetic divergence, impeding the completion of reproductive isolation. | Ph.D. | female, species, forest, ecolog, species, land | 5, 14, 15 |
| Addleman-Frankel, Kate | Bear, Jordan | Dividing Lines: Early Photogravure, Reproduction, and the History of Photography | History of Art | 2019-11-01 | The refinement of photomechanical techniques, which would ally photography to publishing and solve the problem of image fading, was a chief concern of the French photographic establishment from the 1850s through the 1870s. Photomechanical prints from this period exist in collections worldwide and are noted in seminal publications devoted to the history of photography, but they are rarely subjected to serious analysis. This owes in part to the persistent assumption that their only use is reproductive, in the replicative sense; to their hybrid nature as ink-based prints with photographic roots; to a teleological understanding of early photomechanical processes as tentative steps along the path to the halftone; and to their holding institutions—frequently, libraries rather than art museums, which are not obvious points of departure for visual scholarship, do not catalogue archival holdings at the item level, and infrequently employ adequate vocabularies for the description of visual materials. Over time, photomechanical prints from the dynamic period of their initial florescence have become invisible as compared to photographs from the same period. Amongst photomechanical processes, photogravure was the closest to traditional fine-art printmaking in its materials, applications, and techniques. It also had the greatest impact on the development of fine-art photography at the end of the century, as Peter Henry Emerson’s and the Pictorialists’ process of choice for the dissemination, and oftentimes elaboration, of their work. This dissertation is the first to focus on photogravure prints made prior to Emerson’s. It traces the incomparably productive and sustained photogravure career of Édouard Baldus (1813–1889) in order to comprehend the field as a whole. Baldus’s photogravures point toward three categories of production: facsimiles of line engravings; creative translations of silver-based photographs; and original images elaborated only, in their final form, as photogravures. Through analyses of all-but unknown prints and practices in each category, this study challenges assumptions about what photogravure produced and the relevance of its products to nineteenth-century audiences. It furthermore argues that the study of these seemingly marginal photographic objects can illuminate key issues in photography scholarship, such as reproduction, image manipulation, and field formation. | Ph.D. | labor, production, institut | 8, 12, 16 |
| Forsyth, Donald Bruce | Flessa, Joseph | Docile Minds: Discursive Implications of Mental Health Policies Related to Young People in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-03-01 | This study investigated how administrative interests impact understandings of youth mental health in Ontario’s public education system. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s model of Administrative Control as a theoretical framework and Norman Fairclough’s five-stage method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as a research methodology, this report examined seven (7) policy documents released between 2011 and 2015. These documents include the Ontario secondary school Health and Physical Education curriculum document, two provincial policy documents, a report commissioned by an independent charitable organization, an online resource hosted by a children’s mental health centre, a report commissioned by a national non-profit organization, and a public school board implementation plan. Results of the study revealed a powerful underlying interest in Administrative Control that presents systemic barriers to the development of positive student mental health outcomes. Discursive constructions of youth mental health in Ontario were found to associate mental health with a set of adverse clinical outcomes to be monitored and reported. More specifically, existing discourses were found to (a) prioritize clinical approaches to addressing adverse individual outcomes over developmental approaches to promoting psychological resilience, (b) call for sweeping normalization, to promote simplistic notions of risk and protection, (c) discursively appropriate the concept of mental health through collectivization, and to exclude the role of challenge as a developmental tool. Instead, this study suggests that mental health should be reframed within the context of public education policies as an ongoing developmental process of adjustment to a range of environmental factors. Finally, this study recommends the application of psychological resilience, academic resilience, and academic buoyancy as underlying constructs in the development of future school mental health policies. This study contributes to ongoing discussions about the role of discourse in both reflecting and shaping mental health outcomes among young people in Ontario. | Ed.D. | mental health, invest, resilien, environmental, resilience, resilience | 3, 9, 11, 13, 15 |
| Seagren, Erin Grace | Schoenbohm, Lindsay M | Drainage Reorganization and Landscape Evolution at the Puna Plateau Margin, NW Argentina | Earth Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Investigating the controls of fluvial erosion and how these controls are recorded in topography is key for understanding tectonic-climate coupling and the landscape evolution of orogenic plateaus. However, these investigations are limited by systematic assumptions that may bias apparent controls of fluvial erosion and neglecting how rivers respond through adjusting planform patterns. This thesis explores these complications at the Puna Plateau margin and broken foreland of NW Argentina and (1) assesses how spatial variability and interactions among potential tectonic, climatic, and lithologic controls drive fluvial erosion rates, (2) identifies planform drainage reorganization and its controls, and (3) determines how planform reorganization may influence the preservation and destruction of orogenic plateau margins. This thesis systematically analyzes how spatial variability and independent variable interactions influence 10Be-derived catchment-wide fluvial erosion rates through a multivariate Bayesian regression model. Within-catchment spatial variability of vegetation produces the strongest relationship; this suggests that catchment-wide fluvial erosion rates in NW Argentina are likely dominated by rapid erosion in steep, high elevation, and unvegetated portions of a single catchment. These results highlight the utility of considering summary statistics other than the catchment-wide mean when conducting quantitative analyses of fluvial erosion rate controls. Using a combination of geomorphic, morphometric, and structural evidence, this thesis identifies drainage reorganization across the Puna margin. Stream captures and progressive divide migration forced the Puna margin into the plateau interior, until it largely stabilized at a position predicted by tectonically-controlled base-level differences across the divide. Locations of ongoing divide migration coincide with rapidly-uplifting thrust faults. This thesis additionally synthesizes published thermochronologic and sedimentologic evidence to construct a chronology of range uplift and drainage reorganization in the broken foreland. Unlike thin- and thick-skinned wedges, fault-parallel longitudinal drainages in the broken foreland are long-lived, and are controlled by the unique tectonic setting of the region, in which shortening is accommodated by out-of-sequence uplift along steep inherited faults. This thesis concludes that tectonics, particularly through tectonically-controlled base-levels and inherited structures, controls patterns of drainage reorganization and therefore plays a key role in shaping the topography of orogenic plateaus and their associated forelands. | Ph.D. | invest, climate, land, erosion | 9, 13, 15 |
| Davies, Marissa Anne | Finkelstein, Sarah | Drivers of Holocene Carbon Uptake and Release in Peatlands of the Hudson Bay Lowlands, Canada | Earth Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Northern peatlands are a key component of the terrestrial carbon cycle, acting as both a source and sink of carbon. Therefore, to predict impacts from anthropogenic climate change and create effective land management policies, constraining how environmental factors impact peatland carbon fluxes is critical, especially in peatland-rich regions such as the Hudson Bay Lowlands (HBL), Canada. This thesis aims to understand how local-scale factors impacted Holocene carbon uptake and release in the HBL using paleoecological and geochemical analyses of radiocarbon-dated peat cores. Paleoecological analyses of a site on the southern HBL margin demonstrate that landscape position controls local hydrology and can subsequently limit Holocene carbon accumulation rates (CARs). This record also demonstrates a summer bias in temperature and validates pH reconstructions from lipid biomarker proxies. Paired treed fen and bog sites from the western HBL margin show markedly high carbon masses owing to deep peat accumulation with old initiation ages. Mean testate amoeba trait values reflect hydrology and food web structure and are also influenced by vegetation shifts and peatland type. Further, mixotrophic taxa are not related to higher millennial-scale CARs, suggesting a minor role for their primary production in long-term carbon storage. The above records were synthesized with other hydrological records derived from testate amoebae across the HBL to reconstruct paleo-methane fluxes via a linear regression model developed from modern relationships between methane fluxes and water table depths. Land availability controlled by glacial isostatic adjustment was an important control on Holocene emissions when fluxes were scaled to regional emissions. The combined hydrological reconstructions also suggest that peatlands were drier under warmer Middle Holocene conditions. A charcoal record collected from the western HBL margin supports drier conditions, as warmer Middle Holocene conditions were related to higher fire frequency. Although higher fire frequency did not have a significant impact on millennial-scale CARs, carbon loss from combustion was potentially doubled, which has implications for atmospheric carbon budgets. Overall, this thesis advances our understanding of the complex interplay between climate and local processes in long-term carbon dynamics that is of fundamental importance for conservation priorities and constraining future carbon emissions. | Ph.D. | water, emission, production, climate, environmental, anthropogenic, emissions, methane, conserv, ecolog, conserv, land | 6, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Bouchard, Dwight Jordan | Chandra, Sanjeev | Droplet Impact, Infiltration, and Boiling in Pores and Porous Media | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | In the baking industry, metallic, porous media beds are cyclically heated and then sprayed with water to generate the steam that is crucial for many baked products. Unfortunately, any improvements to these steam generators are slowly made by trial and error because fundamental studies into this mode of steam generation are absent from the literature. Experiments are performed on how individual drops impact and infiltrate long, narrow gaps and porous media to understand the trade-off between impact velocity and pore size on the drop’s infiltration time. Long, narrow gaps are heated to 130°C and 230°C to observe how the gap temperature influences the infiltration and evaporation of a water drop. An evaporation balance is designed to quantify the amount of steam that is generated from a porous media bed and different media bed configurations are tested. The infiltration of water inside narrow gaps and porous media slices can be predicted by a radial capillary model, which is an improvement over the commonly used Washburn capillary rise model. Photographs of the drop simultaneously spreading and infiltrating clearly show that drops commence infiltration into gaps and porous media immediately upon impact for We>7. Cleaving of the drops, when only a portion of the drop infiltrates, occurs when pore sizes are large and/or impact velocities are high. Criteria that predict the cleaving of drops on narrow gaps and porous media are established. For heated gaps, larger gap sizes permitted more of the drop to infiltrate and remain in the gap. For the 100 µm gap size the steam generated inside the gap repeatedly stopped the infiltration. Using the evaporation balance, media beds made from larger media evaporate more water than media beds made from smaller media. The porosity of the media bed did not produce a measurable difference in quantity of steam generated. It is shown that steam generation increases with a decreasing Fourier number and that steam generators should be designed with a Fo | Ph.D. | water, trade, cities | 6, 10, 11 |
| Javid, Seyyed Morteza | Mostaghimi, Javad||Moreau, Christian | Drying of a Single Suspension Droplet in Suspension Plasma Spray: Numerical and Experimental Study | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Suspension plasma spray is a powerful coating technique for depositing high-quality thermal barrier coatings with promising mechanical and physical properties while taking advantage of the well-established atmospheric plasma spray process. In this process, fine ceramic particles are suspended in liquids such as water or ethanol before injection into a plasma jet. The heat from plasma evaporates the carrier liquid of injected suspension droplets and leads to an agglomeration of the particles. The agglomeration process plays a crucial role in the state of particles before impacting a substrate and, consequently, the mechanical properties of the coating. In this work, numerical models for simulating different cases of drying of a single suspension droplet in processes with a high evaporation rate like suspension plasma spray are devised. The models use a Lagrangian method for tracking suspended solid particles and the Eulerian method for the liquid phase. These models not only demonstrate droplet distortion during evaporation but also predict solid particles behavior suspended in the droplet. The numerical models can describe consecutive states of the agglomeration process, including droplet shrinkage, particle accumulation on droplet surface, and buckling. Also, the numerical analysis sheds more light on the complex phenomena of buckling, especially the interaction of the droplet interface and suspended solid particles, and different types of suspension droplet buckling. The numerical results reveal that the role of capillary forces in the shape of agglomerated particles is significant. It is found that particle-induced surface pressure drives the buckling of the suspension droplet. It is also shown that the particle-induced surface pressure reaches a threshold value at the onset of buckling and overcomes surface tension. Finally, the models have been validated by comparing the simulation results with designed experiments. The numerical results are in good agreement with the experimental ones, both qualitatively and quantitatively. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Harris, Andrew Sydney Ross | Swenson, Edward R||Miller, Heather M.L. | Early Theravāda Place-making in the Shadow of Mount Meru: Negotiating the Architecture, Space, and Landscape of “Buddhist Terraces”/Praḥ Vihār at Angkor Thom, Cambodia c. 13th-16th Centuries | Anthropology | 2021-06-01 | This Dissertation explores the material remains of the religious transition from Brahmano-Buddhist practice to Theravāda Buddhism of the Angkorian Empire (802-1431 CE) which occurred within and surrounding the urban citadel of Angkor Thom between the 14th-16th centuries. The study of this major social and political transformation is based on an analysis of the remains of wooden prayer halls, called “Buddhist Terraces” or praḥ vihār, emblems of less centralized religious practices and the institutionalization of a Theravāda-aligned saṅgha in Cambodia. In the absence of inscriptions following the end of the 13th century, anthropological approaches to landscape, memory, ritual, and place-making provide the analytical framework for the interpretation of Angkor Thom’s Theravāda Buddhist constructions and the resulting politico-religious changes across the urban landscape. Two seasons of survey and one of excavation revealed an architecturally diverse array of over seventy praḥ vihār within Angkor Thom alone, built in reference to previously constructed urban infrastructure such as roads, canals, city blocks, and earlier ritual complexes of unidentified affiliation. In turn, my analysis identified that certain architectural forms and the functions they afforded directly correlated with pre-Theravāda ritual practices and building technologies. Significant Brahmano-Buddhist temples such as the Bayon and Western Prasat Top were also architecturally and ritualistically transformed by the founding of praḥ vihār in the immediate vicinity of these monuments, as well as by the carving of new iconography reflective of growing Ayutthayan geopolitical influence. This reformation of the landscape created new ritual centers within the old and endowed earlier structures with new religious purpose, establishing “foci of memory” across the landscape. Such strategies of place-making maintained the sacrality of Angkor Thom as an integraed cosmographic urban center. The remaking of Angkor Thom’s Theravāda religious landscape, however, was the negotiated outcome of competing factions such as centralizing state institutions and quasi-independent monastic communities. My thesis posits that regardless of the societal and material changes that accompanied Theravāda Buddhism, the “temple” tradition which materialized Angkor’s religious pre-eminence witnessed considerable continuity through time. This tradition is believed to have transcended key epochal breaks including the gradual dissolution of Brahmano-Buddhism as an imperial institution. Ultimately, this Dissertation provides the first systematic investigation of a distinctive Theravāda Buddhist landscape that reinvented Angkor Thom beginning in the late-13th century. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, invest, urban, transit, land, institut | 9, 11, 15, 16 |
| Ng, Ginnie Wing Yan | Zawertailo, Laurie | E-Cigarettes: Biomarkers of Exposure and the Development and Validation of a Research Toolkit | Pharmacology | 2021-06-01 | Electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) have gained worldwide popularity. Even so, there is limited research on the potential effects of regular ENDS use on health. Moreover, little is known about ENDS dependence and studies are often limited by a lack of validated research tools. Current measures of ENDS dependence are adapted from cigarette dependence questionnaires and do not consider concepts unique to ENDS vaping. Similarly, there are currently no validated ENDS-related stimuli for use in the research of drug reward and addictive behaviors. This thesis therefore directly compared the urinary cotinine levels, a biomarker of nicotine exposure, in individuals who use ENDS exclusively, use ENDS in conjunction with smoking tobacco cigarettes (dual users), and smoke cigarettes exclusively. We found no significant differences in cotinine levels between genders [F(2,84)=0.46, p=0.636], and between participant groups [F(2,84)=0.12, p=0.892]. In exclusive ENDS users, individuals with higher levels of cotinine also reported shorter times before vaping after waking [r(21)=-0.46, p=0.028]. Additionally, this thesis developed and validated a questionnaire to assess ENDS dependence and a database of 120 ENDS-related image cues. Exploratory factors analysis reduced an initial pool of 28 ENDS dependence items to 15 that were included in the final ENDS Nicotine Dependence Questionnaire (ENDS-DQ). Further analyses found that the ENDS DQ has high internal consistency (Cronbach α=0.84), external validity, and test-retest reliability (ICC=0.87). Regarding the development of an ENDS-related cue database, findings from our preliminary and follow-up validation studies were consistent with one another and with literature. Desire-to-vape ratings of ENDS-related images were correlated with valence (r=0.55, p | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Pannia, Emanuela | Anderson, G. Harvey | Effect of Folate Dose and Form during Pregnancy on Early- and Later-life Phenotype of the Wistar Rat Mother and Her Female Offspring | Nutritional Sciences | 2021-11-01 | High gestational folic acid (FA, synthetic folate) programs long-term metabolic consequences in the offspring. The hypothesis of this research is that the dose and form of folate consumed during pregnancy determines the post-birth and long-term phenotype of Wistar rat mothers and female offspring through effects on central hypothalamic and peripheral energy regulatory mechanisms. Three studies were conducted. In Study 1, pregnant Wistar rat were fed an AIN-93G diet with FA at 0X, 1X (control), 2.5X, 5X, or 10X recommended levels then switched to a control diet during lactation and for 1-week post-weaning when dams were terminated to address early postpartum effects. In Study 23, pregnant dams were fed either 1X- or 5X-FA or equimolar doses of 5-methyltetrahydrofolic acid (MTHF). Mothers and female offspring were maintained on a high-fat (45% lard) diet for 19 weeks. In Study 1, FA below (0X) or above (5X, 10X) recommended intakes delayed the re-set of body weight and metabolism in dams after birth. In Study 2, both 5X doses delayed post-birth maternal weight-loss but 5X-MTHF compared to 5X-FA dams had greater post-weaning weight-gain and food intake. These effects associated with altered expression of energy regulatory genes in the hypothalamus and peripheral hormones. In Study 3, 5X-MTHF compared to 5X-FA diets increased post-weaning weight-gain and food intake in the female offspring and associated with modified central and peripheral mechanisms. Alterations in folate-mediated 1-carbon metabolism were consistently observed. In conclusion, both folate dose and form during pregnancy alter the early- and later-life phenotype of the Wistar rat mother and her female offspring via central hypothalamic and peripheral energy regulatory mechanisms. Further consideration of the amounts and forms of folates added to the food supply and pre-natal supplements is needed. | Ph.D. | female, energy, consum | 5, 7, 12 |
| Bidzinski nee Kozak, Karolina | George, Tony P | Effects of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) on Cannabis Use and Cognitive Outcomes in Schizophrenia | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Effects of Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) on Cannabis Use and Cognitive Outcomes in Schizophrenia Karolina Bidzinski nee KozakDoctor of Philosophy 2021 Institute of Medical Science University of Toronto ABSTRACTRationale: Schizophrenia is a debilitating psychiatric disorder, with poor functional outcomes. Problematic cannabis use among the schizophrenia population is high, with 26% diagnosed with comorbid cannabis use disorder (CUD), which negatively impacts psychosocial functioning. These patients also have greater difficulty quitting cannabis, which may reflect putative deficits in the prefrontal cortex. To date, there are still no established evidence-based treatments for this comorbidity. Aims: Primary: Determine effects of high frequency (20 Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on cannabis use outcomes in outpatients with schizophrenia and CUD. Secondary: Examine effects of active vs. sham rTMS on cannabis craving/withdrawal, psychiatric symptoms, and cognitive functioning. Hypotheses: Primary: Active vs. sham rTMS will result in significantly greater reductions of cannabis use and cannabis abstinences rates. Secondary: Active vs. sham rTMS will result in significantly greater reductions in cannabis craving/withdrawal symptoms, and positive and negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and greater improvements in cognition. Methods: A preliminary double-blind, sham-controlled randomized trial. A total of N=24 subjects were enrolled, and n=19 participants were randomized to receive either active (n=9) or sham (n=10) high frequency rTMS 5x/week for 4 weeks, combined with weekly behavioural support sessions. Cannabis use and symptomatology were monitored weekly through self-report and urine toxicology. A cognitive/neurophysiological battery was administered at pre (Baseline) and post (Day 28). Results: Although no significant differences in cannabis use from Baseline to Day 28 between active and sham treatment were found, contrast estimates indicated greater reductions in cannabis use in the active group (GPD: Estimate=0.33, p=0.207). A trend toward significantly greater reduction in craving score (MCQ Factor 3) over time was found in active vs. sham (Estimate=3.92, p=0.064). Significant reductions in PANSS positive (Estimate=2.42, p=0.018) and total (Estimate=5.03, p=0.019) symptoms over time were found in active vs. sham groups. Significant improvement in Continuous Performance Test (e.g., sustained attention) over time was found in active vs. sham groups (Estimate=6.58, p=0.048). rTMS was safe and well-tolerated, with a high retention rate of 17/19 (90%) outpatients completing the study. Conclusions: Our preliminary findings support the notion that rTMS is a safe and potentially effective treatment for comorbid CUD and schizophrenia. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Sulaiman, Salima | Dennis, Cindy-Lee CL | eHealth Antenatal Coparenting Intervention to Prevent Postpartum Depression among Primiparous Women, Karachi, Pakistan: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial | Nursing Science | 2021-11-01 | Background: Postpartum depression is highly prevalent among women and a lack of partner support is a strong risk factor for PPD. Partner support has been shown to decline significantly during the transition to parenthood. The primary objective of this pilot randomized controlled trial was to examine the feasibility and acceptability of an eHealth antenatal coparenting intervention called eACoP and obtain preliminary estimates on clinical outcomes for a future larger trial. Methodology: 212 primiparous couples were recruited from the Aga Khan University Hospital and randomly allocated into the intervention group or the control group using sequentially numbered opaque sealed envelopes. Couples in the intervention group received the eACoP intervention during pregnancy which consists of eight 45-minute online videos. Primary outcomes were feasibility and acceptability measured through enrollment rates, intervention adherence rates, follow-up rates, and intervention satisfaction. Secondary outcomes were depressive symptomatology, anxiety, postpartum partner support, coparenting relationship, relationship satisfaction, postpartum childcare stress, child development, extrafamilial support, and healthcare services utilization. Results: Primary outcomes: The enrollment rate of eligible participants in this pilot study was 83.5%. One in five couples completed the minimum intervention dosage of watching at least five videos. Complete follow-up data was collected from 66.5 (n=137) of women and 56.7% of partners (n=117) at 4-6-weeks, decreasing slightly to 60.7% (n=124) of women and 50.4% of (n=104) partners at 12-weeks postpartum. The 24 couples who watched at least five videos and completed the satisfaction forms felt that the content of the videos was helpful and provided appropriate strategies for managing situations or problems. Participants provided important recommendations, including the inclusion of Pakistani cultural and religious aspects in the videos and making the videos shorter. Secondary Outcomes: At 4-6-weeks postpartum, 22.1% of women and 3.5% of partners in the intervention group showed depressive symptomatology while 32.8% of women and 7% of partners had anxiety symptoms. At 12-week postpartum, 14.1% of women and 5.7% of partners had depressive symptoms while 21.9% of women and 11.3% of partners had anxiety symptoms. Similarly, 13.11% of women and 9.6% of partners reported relationship dissatisfaction. There was no difference found between the intervention group and control group with respect to other secondary outcomes. Conclusion: This pilot trial found that a future randomized controlled trial of eACoP intervention is not feasible nor acceptable in the Pakistani context without modifications. . | Ph.D. | healthcare, women, transit | 3, 5, 11 |
| Fisch, Alicia | Yeung, Rae SM | Elastin-derived Peptides in the Pathogenesis of Kawasaki Disease | Immunology | 2019-11-01 | Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute multisystem vasculitis that predominantly targets the coronary arteries in children. The immunopathogenesis of KD is characterized by systemic inflammation localizing to the coronary arteries and production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Local cytokines induce the upregulation of MMP-9, a key elastolytic protease in KD. MMP-9 activity leads to elastin degradation and aneurysm formation. Elastin breakdown is a hallmark of aneurysms. Interestingly, the degradation of elastin generates fragments referred to as elastin-derived peptides (EDPs). EDPs can bind directly to elastin-binding protein (EBP), a subunit of the elastin receptor complex. Through EBP-mediated signaling, EDPs regulate diverse cellular events including the upregulation of elastolytic MMPs. EBP is an inactive splice variant of b-galactosidase that retains the ability to bind galactosugars at its galactolectin binding site. Unlike EDPs, the binding of galactosugars by EBP induces dissociation of the elastin receptor complex and inhibits EDP-mediated signaling. The overarching theme of this thesis is the role of EDPs in modulating the immunobiology of KD. Firstly, EDPs are elevated in the Lactobacillus casei cell wall extract (LCWE) murine model of KD in which diseased mice have greater EDPs compared to non-diseased mice. We demonstrate that EDPs are bioactive in vitro and induce ERK phosphorylation, MMP-9 expression, and cell migration in both a murine (MOVAS) and human aortic smooth muscle cell line. More importantly, EDP-induced signaling and cellular functions are inhibited in the presence of galactosugars. We show that intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG), the primary treatment for KD, is also a source of galactosugars. The Fc domain of IgG in IVIG is glycosylated and these glycans can terminate in galactose or sialic acid attached to penultimate galactose. Thus, desialylation cleaves sialic acid and exposes terminal galactose. Desialylated IVIG inhibits EDP-induced signaling and cellular functions in MOVAS, whereas sialylated IVIG has no effect. Furthermore, in vivo administration of galactosugars attenuates disease, decreasing coronary arteritis severity and reducing EDPs in the LCWE model of KD. Taken together, these results further our understanding of the immunopathogenesis of KD, identify EDPs as a potential biomarker of disease, and provide insights into potential therapeutic approaches and targets for KD treatment. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Ahmad, Syed Ahmad Ghazali | Kraatz, Heinz-Bernhard | Electrochemical Determination of Extracellular Phosphorylation in Neuronal and Neuroblastoma Cells | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | This thesis describes the investigation, imaging and quantification of the extracellular membrane phosphorylation profiles of human neuron and neuroblastoma cells through the use of surface-based electrochemical sensors. This investigation started by demonstrating electrochemistry as a simple and effective technique to determine the phosphorylation state of neuronal proteins. The nAChR α7 subunit, an abundant and essential surface receptor protein, was used as an example protein and three important ectokinases, PKA, PKC and Src, were utilized to phosphorylate the protein. To confirm these results, gel electrophoresis and XPS studies were performed. Once establishing electrochemistry as a useful methodology, the next phase involves phosphorylating whole fixed neuronal cells and monitoring the phosphorylation profile of each of the three ectokinases described above. The electrochemical techniques were supplemented with fluorescence microscopy and quartz crystal microscopy (QCM). Fluorescence microscopy indicated that each of the kinase phosphorylation reactions had completed within 8 hours and QCM established that the number of phosphorylation sites for neuronal cells by PKA, PKC and Src were 5.7 x106 sites/cell, 5.3 x106 sites/cell, 4.8 x105 sites/cell, respectively. For neuroblastoma cells, the number of sites were determined be 1.1 x106 sites/cell, 1.1 x106 sites/cell and 7.4 x105 sites/cell. It is established that neuroblastoma cells differ significantly from neuronal cells in their extracellular phosphorylation states. Lastly, using the phosphorylation profiles, the percent composition of neuronal and neuroblastoma cells mixtures can be determined. Findings obtained from this thesis establish that mammalian neuronal cells (healthy) and neuroblastoma cells (cancerous/disease state) have different extracellular phosphorylation patterns. Furthermore, it is emphasized that electrochemical techniques provide insights for the design of new histological or diagnostic technology. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Judge, William David | Azimi, Gisele | Electrorefining and Electrochemistry of Molten Iron and Iron-Carbon Electrodes in Slag | Materials Science and Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Despite a perpetual societal need for steel, the industry is facing critical challenges as more steel must be continually recycled to improve sustainability and close material loops in circular economies. A major issue here is producing high-value products and controlling elements like carbon in the face of stringent consumer requirements, volatile markets, low profit margins, and scrap irregularity. In this dissertation, a new electrorefining process was developed where molten iron is decarburized by imposing an electromotive force between it and a slag electrolyte at 1600–1700 °C. Upon anodic polarization, oxygen-containing anions react with carbon dissolved in molten iron, evolving gaseous carbon monoxide. As carbon is oxidized from the iron anode, valuable metallurgical-grade silicon is recovered as a by-product on counter electrodes. Electrorefining trials were conducted over the entire compositional range from 4.5 to 0.005 wt% C and shown capable of producing high-value ultra-low carbon steel containing | Ph.D. | consum, recycl, low carbon | 12, 13 |
| Manion, Kieran Patricia | Wither, Joan E | Elucidating B Cell Tolerance Defects in Lupus-prone Mice | Immunology | 2019-06-01 | Systemic lupus erythematosus is a chronic autoimmune disease that impacts multiple tissues through the production of pathogenic anti-nuclear autoantibodies and inflammatory immune complexes. Mouse models that develop lupus-like disease due to the presence of specific lupus susceptibility loci or candidate genes have proven incredibly useful in elucidating how these genetic factors contribute to the complex pathogenesis of SLE. Additionally, the use of immunoglobulin transgenic and knock-in mouse models in conjunction with these lupus-prone strains enables interrogation of the defects in B cell tolerance mechanisms and signalling pathways that lead to SLE development. This thesis examined the impact of genetic loci from the lupus-prone New Zealand Black chromosome 1 congenic strains and of the lupus candidate gene BLK on the maintenance of B cell tolerance and the development of autoimmunity in the context of a nuclear antigen-specific B cell repertoire. It was found that NZB c1 congenic mice with an anergic, ssDNA-specific B cell repertoire had a severely attenuated capacity to breach tolerance to nuclear antigen due to impaired development of Tfh cells relative to the generation of Tfr cells. It was also demonstrated that the autoreactivity of a nuclear antigen-specific B cell repertoire is largely determined by the specificity of the B cell immunoglobulin heavy chain, as B cells from c1 congenic mice with the DNA-specific 3H9 heavy chain were appropriately regulated by B cell tolerance mechanisms in the periphery. Finally, examination of how BLK impacts autoimmunity in the context of nuclear antigen specificity revealed that loss of this molecule enhances both central and peripheral B cell tolerance to anti-DNA B cells. Together, these results underscore the resilience of tolerance mechanisms in the regulation of nuclear antigen-specific B cells and reinforces the concept that the development of profound autoimmunity requires concurrent defects in multiple components of the immune system. | Ph.D. | resilien, production, resilience, resilience, land | 11, 12, 13, 15 |
| Khan, Ramsha | Lazarus, Alan H | Elucidating the Mechanism(s) of Action of Anti-Erythrocyte Antibodies in a Murine Model of Immune Thrombocytopenia | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-06-01 | Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune bleeding disorder that causes thrombocytopenia (decreased platelet numbers in the blood) primarily due to the presence of antiplatelet autoantibodies. Anti-D therapy (treatment with an antibody against the Rhesus-D factor on erythrocytes) has been proven to ameliorate ITP but as a human-derived product, it is limited in quantity and carries the potential risk of transferring emerging pathogens. Additionally, the US Food and Drug Administration has issued a black box warning for potentially serious adverse effects in ITP patients, including anemia, fever and/or chills. Therefore, there is incentive present for developing a safe and effective recombinant replacement that mimics the therapeutic activity of anti-D. Thus far, monoclonal anti-D antibodies have only had limited clinical success and better knowledge of its mechanism is required to accelerate the development of anti-D alternatives. This thesis documents studies that evaluated multiple anti-erythrocyte antibodies (as surrogates for anti-D) in murine models of ITP in order to provide insight regarding their mechanism(s) of action. Results indicate that adverse events such as anemia and temperature flux, which can be indicative of inflammatory activity, are not required for ITP amelioration; thus demonstrating that certain toxicities associated with anti-D therapy are independent of therapeutic activity and have the potential to be minimized when developing and/or screening synthetic alternatives. Additionally, it was also shown that the ability of the anti-erythrocyte antibodies to ameliorate murine ITP in vivo is correlated with, and therefore can be predicted by, their ability to mediate erythrocyte phagocytosis and inhibit platelet phagocytosis in vitro. The data suggests that the inhibition of in vitro platelet phagocytosis may prove to be a valuable tool for testing the functionality of erythrocyte-specific antibodies and screening likely candidates for clinical use in ITP. Mechanistically, evidence is provided demonstrating that anti-erythrocyte antibodies do not lead to a decrease in the expression level of the activating receptor FcγRIIIA on splenic macrophages, but instead are likely exerting their therapeutic activity through a direct competitive blocking mechanism. The results provide substantial support for the mononuclear phagocytic system (MPS) blockade hypothesis as the primary mechanism of action in anti-erythrocyte antibody-mediated ITP amelioration. | Ph.D. | knowledge, cities | 4, 11 |
| Stavropoulos, Panagiotis Peter | Kee, Hae-Young | Emergent Phenomena in Correlated Materials with Strong Spin-orbit Coupling | Physics | 2021-11-01 | Correlated materials have a long history in the research of the condensed matter community, and in the past couple of decades effects of spin-orbit coupling have been recognized for emergent unconventional phenomena in quantum materials. A series of transition metal compounds have been proposed to exhibit exotic states of mater. Among them, quantum spin liquids are highly entangled states of matter where strongly interacting magnetic moments do not show long range magnetic order. In general, strong spin-orbit coupling entangles spin and orbital degrees of freedom into an effective pseudospin moment. For d^5 materials like Sr_2IrO_4, beta-Li_2IrO_3, and alpha-RuCl_3, unconventional bond-dependent exchange interactions among jeff=1/2 pseudospins are expected. Although stabilization of exotic states is possible within these bond-dependent interactions, usually a unconventional magnetic order may set in due to other small interactions. Beyond the pseudospin moment jeff=1/2 picture, a bond-dependent interaction may exist among higher spin moments, but it is unclear how such an interaction arise in transition metal systems. Understanding the microscopics of how these interactions arise and how to manipulate them is important in characterizing the nature of a phase, tuning the systems into different regimes, and identifying new candidate materials. In this thesis, we provide the microscopic theories for a certain set of pseudospin systems, and their implications. In the first part, the unconventional counter-rotating magnetic order in beta-Li_2IrO_3 is addressed from the perspective of a hidden symmetry of a minimal jeff=1/2 model. Later, a microscopic mechanism for a higher spin S model with bond-dependent interactions is proposed, where S=1 and S=3/2 cases are addressed explicitly. In the last part, we present ab initio results that allow us to estimate and characterize the spin interactions of related materials. Finally comments on open questions and directions for future studies are summarized. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Buono, Stephanie | Woodruff, Earl | Emotions in Emerging Readers: Results from Automatic Facial Expression Analyses | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | Emotions significantly impact classroom experiences, as emotions can shape a student’s academic self-concept and achievement. In the early elementary years, learning to read is a highly salient objective for students. As a result, reading can elicit strong emotions that influence students’ enjoyment and perceived efficacy in reading. Previous research in reading has overlooked the effects of emotions. The majority of emotion research has focused on adolescent and undergraduate students and overlooked students in the early elementary years. The impact of emotions on students learning to read (i.e., emerging readers) has not been extensively studied. The work presented within this dissertation attempted to address this gap in the literature by examining how emotions affect scores on two different literacy tasks in a sample of emerging readers. In three separate studies, a computer-generated automatic facial expression coding software was used to measure individual emotions such as joy, anger, confusion and frustration. The first study examined students’ emotional reactions during a word recognition task and whether they affect word recognition scores. The results demonstrated that increases in the negative affective valence of a word were related to increases in anger and frustration. Further, increases in negative affective valence and increased confusion and anger were related to decreases in word recognition scores. The second study sought to examine how emotions affect scores on the various measures within a narrative storytelling task. The results demonstrated that confusion was related to decreases in complex sentences and evaluative devices. Additionally, frustration fully mediated the effects of confusion on complex sentences. Finally, the third study examined how emotions affect Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) strategies and narrative storytelling scores. The results demonstrated that frustration was related to decreases in narrative storytelling scores, joy was related to increases in monitoring strategies, frustration was related to decreases in planning strategies, and planning fully mediated the effect of frustration on narrative storytelling scores. Taken together, the results from these three studies provide a novel contribution to the current research in emotions and literacy development in emerging readers. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Kukar, Polina | Boler, Megan | Empathy in Education: A Narrative Study into Practicing Teachers’ Experiences | Social Justice Education | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation interweaves a study of how empathy is understood and talked about with an account of practicing teachers’ experiences. While empathy has long been proposed by educational thinkers as the remedy to social conflicts and divisions, it is also understood in myriad, and at times contradictory, ways. The ambiguity of the term does not seem to lessen empathy’s discursive cachet, however. And since the lack of clear or widely accepted conceptualization is no obstacle to empathy’s flourishing as an educational ideal, I propose that what empathy does (or what educators think it does) is much more important than what empathy is. Thinking of what empathy “does” – of what we are hoping for when we invoke it – frames empathy’s operation as a set of promises. Pedagogies of empathy and their interpretation by teachers thus become sites of examination for issues of systemic injustice in the education system. In fact, I suggest that behind most invocations of empathy are pressing systemic issues, unaddressed. I propose that while an uncomplicated “one-size-fits-all” model of decontextualized, prosocial, and teachable empathy is unlikely to be effective for students and teachers, neither is a model based primarily on teachers’ individual emotional responses to their students. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, injustice | 4, 16 |
| Hoi, Kit Ian Gigi | Mideo, Nicole | Emphasizing the Vectors in Vector-borne Disease Transmission and Evolution | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-11-01 | Disease transmission is a product of mechanisms and interactions at multiple levels of biological organization, and a comprehensive understanding of these processes is essential to disease control. Malaria parasites, for example, can infect dozens of vector species and undergo complex, density-dependent developmental transitions within those vectors, but the consequences of vector diversity on disease transmission, or vector-parasite interactions on parasite trait evolution, have rarely been explored. My research fills these gaps by investigating the myriad and nuanced roles that vectors play in disease ecology and evolution beyond simply carrying parasites. First, I examine the impact of vector diversity on malaria transmission. I curated a unique, multi-scale dataset of global mosquito distribution and malaria burden, and synthesized disparate theory for vector community ecology, linking principles of community assembly to disease risk. Using structural equation models, I provide the first empirical evidence that mosquito diversity amplifies malaria prevalence at both global and local scales, and demonstrate that this relationship is sensitive to a multitude of abiotic factors. Second, I investigate the evolutionary consequences of vector-parasite interactions. For malaria parasites, relative investment in transmission versus proliferative (i.e., host cell-infecting) stages is a key trait determining infectiousness, infection severity, and ultimately parasite fitness. To study how developmental processes and trade-offs that occur in the vector interact with the host half of the parasite life cycle to influence investment strategies in the host, I developed a mechanistic, mathematical model that links parasite development dynamics within-hosts and within-vectors. This model generates predictions for optimal transmission investment under a variety of scenarios, and provides refined proxies of parasite fitness by including transmission potential after passage through the vector, a major advancement over classic models of parasite evolution. Together, my research elevates vectors to their rightful place as crucial drivers of disease ecology and evolution. | Ph.D. | invest, trade, transit, species, ecolog, species | 9, 10, 11, 14, 15 |
| Cohen, Eldan | Beck, J. Christopher | Empirical Models of Heuristic Search in AI Planning and Neural Sequence Decoding | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Heuristic search algorithms are widely used in both AI planning and the decoding of sequences from deep neural networks. In recent years, several lines of work have highlighted different factors that impact the empirical performance of heuristic search algorithms. However, a principled empirical understanding of the search behavior of these heuristic search algorithms has yet to be developed. Empirical models, such as the phase transition and the heavy-tailed behavior, have been central to the development of empirical understanding of combinatorial search problems such as constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) and satisfiability (SAT). In this dissertation, we investigate the use of empirical models to explain the behavior of heuristic search algorithms in AI planning and neural sequence decoding and support the development of more efficient search algorithms. In AI planning, we develop empirical models for problem difficulty of greedy best first (GBFS), the most commonly used algorithm for satisficing planning. First, we establish the existence of a phase transition in the solubility of planning problems and investigate its implications to problem difficulty. Then, we demonstrate the heavy-tailed behavior of GBFS and provide a deeper understanding of the connection between constrainedness and local minima. Informed by our analysis, we develop a novel variant of GBFS that outperforms the baseline. In neural sequence decoding, we develop empirical models for the performance of beam search, the ubiquitous algorithm for decoding deep sequence models. First, we investigate the empirical problem of performance degradation in beam search. We present an explanatory model based on search discrepancies that generalizes previous observations on the behavior of beam search. Building on our analysis, we present two heuristic techniques that eliminate the problem. Next, we study goal-oriented sequence decoding and show that, similar to GBFS, we observe heavy-tailed behavior. We present a novel variant of goal-oriented beam search that exploits our insights and outperforms the baseline. Our work shows the importance of empirical models in the study and development of heuristic search algorithms and demonstrates that empirical models developed for CSPs and SAT can be adapted to AI planning and neural sequence decoding. | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Gabriel, Mikaela Daria | Stewart, Suzanne L | Employment and Education Pathways: Exploring Traditional Knowledges Supports for Transitions Out of Homelessness for Indigenous Peoples | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | Indigenous Peoples are the fastest growing population in Canada, yet face persistent housing and homelessness crises. While Indigenous Peoples often move to cities in search of employment and education, they are overrepresented among the homeless population. There is little known about what current life transitions out of homelessness look like for Indigenous Peoples. This study asked: “How do traditional knowledge/Elders support the mental health and wellbeing of Indigenous homeless individuals transitioning to housing and seeking employment/education?” This study interviewed 13 Indigenous participants using a narrative inquiry methodology, in which their perspectives, experiences, and insights on housing transitions, employment barriers, and education supports were shared. Results included five metathemes: Housing Shelter; Indigenous Knowledges Community Connections; Education Employment Pathways; Social Services Programming, and Indigenous Existence in Society. Limitations, future directions, and implications for policy are included in this work. | Ph.D. | homeless, wellbeing, mental health, knowledge, knowledges, traditional knowledge, employment, indigenous, cities, housing, transit, indigenous | 1, 3, 4, 8, 10, 16, 11 |
| Al-Basha, Dhekra | Prescott, Steven A | Encoding of Touch: An Investigation into the Neural Representation of Tactile Stimuli | Physiology | 2021-06-01 | The encoding of touch starts at the periphery where the terminals of mechanosensitive neurons, called low threshold mechanoreceptors (LTMRs), convert mechanical forces into action potentials, or spikes. These spikes eventually propagate to the cortex where perception occurs. Here, I investigated how tactile stimuli are encoded in LTMRs and in somatosensory cortical neurons. LTMRs generate spikes in a two-step process: a transduction step where mechanical stimuli are converted into a local depolarization, or receptor potential, and a spike initiation step, where the local depolarization is transformed into spikes. While LTMR spike patterns in response to different tactile inputs have been investigated, the individual contributions of transduction and spike initiation have eluded investigation owing to the small size of LTMR terminals, which preclude direct recording. To overcome this limitation, I used a novel optogenetic approach to replace natural, hard-to-measure mechanopotentials with artificial, easy-to-control photopotentials. I discovered that slow-adapting type 2 (SA2) and rapid-adapting (RA) terminals have qualitatively different transduction and spike initiation properties, which is critical for spike-based coding of tactile input. In a subset of SA2 LTMRs, I also discovered integer-multiple-patterned spiking, comprising a fundamental interspike interval and multiples thereof. Using a combination of computational and experimental approaches, I showed that this pattern arises from intermittent failure of spike propagation. Because propagation failure was rare, I deduced that propagation in LTMRs is reliable while remaining energy efficient. Lastly, I investigated how cortical neurons encode tactile stimuli after inputs conveyed by functionally distinct LTMRs have converged. I showed that cortical neurons can simultaneously encode stimulus intensity in the rate of asynchronous spikes, and abrupt changes in stimulus intensity in the timing of synchronous spikes. The ability of neurons to simultaneously encode multiple stimulus features using different neural codes is an example of multiplexing. Similarly, I found that SA LTMRs are themselves capable of multiplexing. Deciphering the strategies by which neurons form multiplexed representations is needed to ultimately understand how information is decoded in downstream neural circuits. Taken together, these findings inform us how neurons generate and use spikes to represent tactile information. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Pasarikovski, Christopher R | Yang, Victor XD | Endovascular Optical Coherence Tomography Imaging in Cerebrovascular Disease | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Neurointerventional surgery is a subspecialty focused on the diagnosis and treatment of vascular diseases of the central nervous system. The appeal of treating vascular diseases through minimally invasive techniques without the need for open surgery has led to continued technological innovation and device development. Endovascular optical coherence tomography (OCT) is the highest resolution intravascular imaging modality available, utilizing near-infrared light with a wavelength of approximately 1300 nm and excellent spatial resolution of 10µm is achievable. With near histologic resolution, OCT has been described as an optical biopsy modality. The adoption of endovascular OCT imaging in the evolving field of neurointerventional surgery seems instinctive. The goal of this doctoral thesis was to utilize OCT as an adjunct in the diagnosis and treatment of cerebrovascular diseases. Towards that goal, preclinical animal and human investigations were performed. We assessed the feasibility of OCT imaging in quantifying vascular injury after endovascular thrombectomy (EVT) in a swine model. OCT was found to be feasible in assessing vascular injury after EVT with histological accuracy. Varying degrees of vessel wall injury occur after EVT, and residual luminal thrombus was present despite complete angiographic revascularization. Next, we designed a preclinical swine model of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST) with subsequent EVT and OCT imaging. OCT revealed that residual bridging cortical vein thrombus may be present despite complete sinus recanalization on angiography. This thrombus may be the etiology of poor clinical outcome despite technical success. Establishing preclinical feasibility with novel findings of undetected residual thrombus allowed for research ethics board approval for human OCT imaging. OCT imaging in patients with basilar stroke was undertaken. OCT was safe and capable of producing cross-sectional images displaying evidence of endothelial injury and residual thrombus. OCT may guide future antithrombotic treatment for patients with demonstrated residual thrombus. OCT carries great promise in the future of neurointerventional surgery. | Ph.D. | invest, animal, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Li, Peicheng | Lu, Zheng-Hong | Energy Levels and Charge Transport in Host-dopant Organic Semiconductors | Materials Science and Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The organic light-emitting diode (OLED) generates light through charge carrier recombination in the emissive organic layer which has a host-dopant structure and, thus, the OLED device performance is impacted by the electronic properties of this host-dopant organic semiconductor. In this thesis, the energy level alignment and charge transport process in the host-dopant organic semiconductor are investigated by photoelectron spectroscopy and by analysis of the current-voltage behavior, respectively.First, the energy level alignment of host-dopant organic semiconductors at electrode-organic interface is studied by photoelectron spectroscopy. The interface energy disorder is found for molecules close to an electrode surface. This energy disorder has significant impact on energy level alignment. Second, the energy level alignment of bulk host-dopant organic semiconductors is investigated. A host/dopant hetero-interface formed by a layer-by-layer method is demonstrated to correlate well the host-dopant energy level alignment in mixed form. It is found that the host-dopant energy level alignment falls into the elastic region of the universal energy level alignment rule, involving negligible charge transfer. Third, charge transport in the host-dopant organic semiconductors is studied using single carrier devices. Charge detrapping and percolation are found to be two major mechanisms for transport in the host-dopant materials. A theoretical formula is proposed and validated to describe the mobility dependence on the energy level alignment, and an empirical formula is demonstrated to describe the mobility dependence on the dopant concentration. Lastly, the impact of dopants on charge transport across an organic-organic interface is investigated. This charge injection from the transport layer into the emissive layer is critical for device efficiency. It is found that charge transport characteristics at an organic-organic junction varies depending on the energy level alignments of the dopant to that of the host and the hole transport layer. In addition, the dopant concentration is found to dictate the device electrical characteristics. Detailed numerical studies show that carrier transport across the junction is charge injection-limited at low dopant concentration (≤5 wt%), while an Ohmic junction is obtained at high dopant concentration. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Salehinejad, Hojjat | Valaee, Shahrokh | ENERGY MODELS FOR PRUNING NEURAL NETWORKS | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Deep neural networks (DNNs) have achieved significant performance improvement in image classification tasks.A DNN utilizes an enormous number of trainable parameters and non-linear functions to learn a mapping from a set of input images to a set of target classes. However, the increasing number of parameters, called the overparameterization problem, can create major challenges in implementation of these models on resource limited devices and can encourage overfitting of the model. Pruning less important trainable parameters in DNNs is one of the major established methods to defeat the above challenges. Pruning methods are also applicable on small models by design to further reduce their size. This thesis proposes the concept of energy models for pruning convolutional filters and hidden units with corresponding incoming and outgoing connections and bias terms for image classification tasks. Specifically, two energy models, namely EPruning and IPruning, are proposed. The first approach uses the Hamiltonian of a given DNN to form an energy loss minimization problem. The loss function is defined based on the difference between the energy of target class and the closest energy of the competitive classes. The second approach uses entropy of feature maps, Kullback–Leibler (KL) divergence between convolution filters in a layer, and activation level of hidden units to form an Ising energy-based minimization problem for detecting less important and redundant parameters in the network. Despite most pruning methods, which are based on defining a pruning threshold per layer, the proposed methods are data-driven and perform a network-wise pruning of the trainable parameters. We define pruning as searching for a sub-network of a given DNN, which has the lowest energy loss value based on a defined energy loss function. Since this is an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem, a population-based global optimization framework is proposed to minimize the pruning objective functions. The proposed framework is evaluated on different flavors of DNNs (e.g. ResNets, AlexNet, and SqueezeNet) and datasets (e.g. CIFAR-10, CIFAR-100, and ImageNet) for image classification tasks. | Ph.D. | learning, energy | 4, 7 |
| Forshaw, Laurel Dawn | Dolloff, Lori-Anne | Engaging Indigenous Voices in the Academy: Indigenizing Music in Canadian Universities | Music | 2021-11-01 | Canadian universities are under increasing pressure to address systemic exclusions of Indigenous peoples and knowledges, exclusions that have been perpetrated by residential schools, day schools, and universities. Canadian universities have, increasingly, begun to engage in Indigenization efforts; however, engagement in Indigenization efforts has been inconsistent and uneven within institutions and across the sector. Higher music education, in particular, has done little in terms of engaging in Indigenization, and this research seeks to address this gap. This research engages with six Indigenous musicians who each hold at least one university degree in music in order to hear their experiences in higher music education and to envision an Indigenized higher music education in Canadian universities. This research is, in part, a response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action (2015c), specifically Call 62, ii.: We call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal peoples, and educators, to: ii. Provide the necessary funding to post-secondary institutions to educate teachers on how to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms (p. 331). Call to Action 62, ii provides a framework for thinking about and envisioning what higher music education—or post-secondary music programs—can do to respond to the TRC’s Calls to Action (2015c) in meaningful ways in collaboration with Indigenous peoples, communities, and Nations. This research engages with Ermine’s (2007) conceptualization of the ethical space and McCallum and Perry’s (2018) structures of indifference in order to conceptualize higher music education as structures of difference whereby Indigenous musics, musicians, knowledges, and musical practices are valued and included in ways that go well beyond Indigenous inclusion (Gaudry Lorenz, 2018). The final chapter includes a lengthy list of recommendations, informed by the participants’ stories, for all stakeholders in higher music education, including deans and senior leadership, chairs, faculty, staff, students, patrons and donors, and audience members. The academy has undergone very little structural change (Ottmann, 2013) and the magnitude of what will be required of higher music education in the work of Indigenization will necessitate visionary and courageous leadership. Keywords: music, higher music education, Indigenization, decolonization, reconciliation, post-secondary music education, university, Indigenization of the academy, Indigenization of higher music education | Ph.D. | knowledge, knowledges, labor, indigenous, reconciliation, truth and reconciliation, decolonization, institut, indigenous | 4, 8, 10, 16 |
| Nowak, Lauren Leone | Schemitsch, Emil H||Mamdani, Muhammad | Enhancing our Understanding of Outcomes and Determinants of Outcomes Following Proximal Humerus Fractures in Adults | Medical Science | 2020-06-01 | There remains significant debate surrounding the optimal management strategies for proximal humerus fracture (PHF) patients. High quality evidence summarizing and appraising the measurement properties and concepts reflected by outcomes used to evaluate recovery, and predictors of outcomes following PHF is needed. Objectives: To summarize and appraise 1) outcome measures; and 2) predictors of outcomes following PHF; and 3) develop novel risk tools to predict subsequent surgery following PHF. Methods: I performed four systematic reviews to discern 1) the measurement properties of outcomes; 2) identify the concepts reflected by these outcomes; and 3) summarize and appraise predictors of i) patient-reported functional disability, and ii) subsequent surgery following initialtreatment. I used these data to develop a population-based cohort of PHF patients, and novel risk tools to predict subsequent surgery following initial treatment. Results: The Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand (DASH), Shoulder Function Index, and Euro-Quol-5D scores appear to have the best measurement properties to evaluate PHF patients.The DASH, American Shoulder and Elbow Surgeon’s, and Oxford Shoulder Scores appropriately address limitations in daily activities. While evidence surrounding predictors of outcomes was somewhat conflicting, there were trends toward worse outcomes in patients who were older (primarily in those treated with fixation), injured their dominant arm, and whosefracture had a varus fracture neck shaft angle, or a disrupted medial hinge. My risk tools identified the use of a bone graft, and fixation with a nail or wire (vs. a plate) in patients treated with fixation, poor bone quality in patients treated with replacement, and younger age, as well asdischarge to a destination other than home in patients treated non-surgically as predictors of subsequent surgery. The tools showed good to strong discriminative ability for patients treated with fixation and non-surgically. Conclusion: This thesis generated important new knowledge surrounding the outcomes and predictors of outcomes following PHF. My outcome studies can help clinicians choose measures for evaluating recovery, and for future research. My systematic reviews to identify predictors of outcomes can help select variables potentially associated with poor outcomes. My risk tools can identify patients at risk for subsequent surgery. | Ph.D. | disabilit, knowledge | 3, 4 |
| Mehta, Arthur | Yuen, Henry | Entanglement and Non-locality in Games and Graphs | Mathematics | 2021-06-01 | Quantum graph theory, also known as non-commutative graph theory, is an operator space generalization of graph theory. The independence number, and Lovasz theta function were generalized to this setting by Duan, Severini, and Winter [DSW13] and two different version of the chromatic number were introduced by Stahlke [Sta16] and Paulsen [HPP16]. We introduce two new generalizations of the chromatic number to non-commutative graphs and provide an upper bound on the parameter of Stahlke. We provide a generalization of the graph complement and show the chromatic number of the orthogonal complement of a non-commutative graph is bounded below by its theta number. We also provide a generalization of both Sabidussi's Theorem and Hedetniemi's conjecture to non-commutative graphs. The study of non-local games considers scenarios in which separated players collaborate to provide satisfying responses to questions given by a referee. The condition of separating players makes non-local games an excellent setting to gain insight into quantum phenomena such as entanglement and non-locality. Non-local games can also provide protocols known as self-tests. Self-testing allows an experimenter to interact classically with a black box quantum system and certify that a specific entangled state was present and a specific set of measurements were performed. The most studied self-test is the CHSH game which certifies the presence of a single EPR entangled state and the use of anti-commuting Pauli measurements. We introduce an algebraic generalization of CHSH and obtain a self-test for non-Pauli operators resolving an open question posed by Coladangelo and Stark (QIP 2017). Our games also provide a self-test for states other than the maximally entangled state, and hence resolves the open question posed by Cleve and Mittal (ICALP 2012). This thesis is primarily based on two collaborative works written by the author and several coauthors [CMMN20], [KM19]. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Robinson, Baxter Van Halm | Kuruscu, Burhan||Kambourov, Gueorgui | Entrepreneurial Income and Wealth Dynamics | Economics | 2022-03-01 | This thesis studies wealth inequality, entrepreneurship, and financial frictions. The first chapter focuses on how the uninsurable nature of entrepreneurial risk reduces entrepreneurial activity and affects aggregate output, productivity, and the distribution of wealth. I build a model where individuals choose to become workers or entrepreneurs, and where entrepreneurs choose how risky a business to start. My model features two distinct financial frictions. First, a missing market for entrepreneurial risk prevents entrepreneurs from insuring themselves against their income risk and the risk of business failure. Second, borrowing constraints limit the size of an entrepreneur's business. I contribute to a literature on financial frictions and entrepreneurship by studying the missing market for entrepreneurial risk. The model is calibrated using micro data on new U.S. firms. I find that completing the missing market for entrepreneurial risk improves aggregate productivity by 9% and reducing the share of wealth held by the wealthiest 1% by two thirds. In a policy experiment, a partial insurance scheme for unsuccessful entrepreneurs can increase aggregate productivity and output by encouraging entrepreneurs to start riskier businesses. In my jointly-authored second chapter, we study how the composition and distribution of household wealth affects the distribution of MPC's. We document facts in the Survey of Consumer Finances about the composition of household portfolios between housing, mortgage debt, and more liquid financial assets over the distribution of wealth. We then build a rich quantitative model with heterogeneous returns that matches both the composition and concentration of wealth. We use the model to decompose the importance of return heterogeneity, long-term fixed rate mortgages and refinancing, and owner-occupied housing for the average MPC and find that each factor significantly contributes to generating a higher average MPC, with a cumulative effect of 0.25 percentage points. In my third chapter, I study how different government policies can promote entrepreneurship by mitigating financial frictions. In the presence of both a missing market for entrepreneurial risk and borrowing constraints, I compare how entrepreneurial insurance, a universal basic income, government-backed business loans, entrepreneurial income tax deductions, and tax progressivity will impact the decisions of potential entrepreneurs. | Ph.D. | worker, entrepreneur, inequality, equalit, income, housing, consum | 8, 10, 11, 12 |
| Joudan, Shira | Mabury, Scott A | Environmental Reactions of Novel and Legacy Fluorosurfactants | Chemistry | 2020-11-01 | Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a class of environmental contaminants grouped together by the presence of a perfluoroalkyl moiety. PFAS have a range of applications depending on their specific chemical structure including as direct-use surfactants. Due to concerns about persistence, bioaccumulation potential, and toxicity, some PFAS have been phased-out and replaced with new PFAS. This thesis explores the environmental fate of one phased-out fluorosurfactant, and one novel fluorosurfactant and its synthetic intermediate. Perfluoroalkyl phosphinic acids (PFPiAs) are fluorosurfactants that were used as wetting and levelling agents and as defoaming additives to pesticide formulations. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were dosed with C6/C8 PFPiA or C8/C8 PFPiA, which were metabolized to form persistent perfluoroalkyl phosphonic acids (PFPAs), and 1H-perfluoroalkanes (1H-PFAs), which contain one labile hydrogen that may undergo further metabolism. This was the first reported cleavage of a C-P bond in mammals, and the first attempt to characterize the degradation of any perfluoroalkyl acid. A new fluorosurfactant on the market was designed with the intention that it would degrade in the environment to non-bioaccumulative components. The surfactant diFESOS, and its semi-volatile synthetic intermediate FESOH were investigated. Atmospheric oxidation experiments of FESOH reported a short lifetime with respect to reaction with OH radicals. FESOH undergoes multiple defluorination steps to form products with fewer fluorine atoms, including perfluoropropanoic acid (PFPrA) as the terminal aqueous phase product. The surfactant diFESOS, FESOH, and another major degradation product were incubated with activated sludge from a wastewater treatment plant to assess aerobic microbial degradation. Ultimately, diFESOS degraded to lower fluorinated acidic PFAS, including small amounts of PFPrA. The formation of the metabolite 2H-3:2 PFECA is hypothesized to occur via defluorination on a carbon adjacent to the sulfur atom, which we believe has not been previously reported. Overall, major metabolites have lower bioaccumulation potential than the parent diFESOS surfactant. These laboratory studies enable understanding of environmental fate of these specific PFAS, and also contribute to fundamentally understanding the reactivity of highly fluorinated molecules, which may allow for the design of chemicals that can harness the functionality of organofluorine without persisting in the environment. | Ph.D. | water, labor, invest, waste, environmental | 6, 8, 9, 12, 13 |
| Carrier, Julien | Johns, Alana | Ergativity on the Move | Linguistics | 2021-06-01 | This thesis investigates changes associated with the ergative morphosyntactic alignment of the Inuit language. All these changes have been argued to signal an alignment shift from ergative to accusative, though none of them has ever been confirmed with detailed quantitative evidence. The most important change involves the rise of the antipassive construction in Inuktitut dialects at the expense of the ergative construction as the new default transitive construction (see Johns 1999, 2001a, 2001b, 2006, 2017; Spreng 2005; Carrier 2012, 2017; Yuan 2018). Other reported changes are 1) the elimination of overt transitive objects in the most innovative varieties, which would make the ergative construction a ‘marked’ transitive construction (see Johns 2017; Yuan 2018), and 2) the loss of the ergative case on transitive subjects in favor the absolutive case, which also marks intransitive subjects (see Tersis 2004; Langgård 2009; Carrier 2012). Using a variationist sociolinguistic approach to analyze data from North Baffin Inuktitut and a formal syntactic one to interpret the results, this study is the first to provide statistical evidence confirming that the ergative construction and the ergative case have been used progressively less and that they correlate with each other. I also posit that the general ongoing alignment change from ergative to accusative was first initiated by a neutralization in transitive subject number agreement, and that a series of changes has then successively triggered one another. Building on Brook (2018), I thus argue that these distinct changes constitute increasingly bigger envelopes of variation nested in one another and have in turn triggered one another after reaching a certain level of completion. One clear theoretical implication of these successive changes affecting distinct forms that display the traditional ergative alignment of the Inuit language is that ergativity is not a single concept but a macroset of many different properties (e.g., Dixon 1994; Johns 2000; Deal 2015a; Haig 2017). | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Hao, Tongtong | Brandt, Loren | Essays in Development Economics | Economics | 2021-06-01 | Since the beginning of its economic reform in 1978, China’s extraordinary economic growth has been accompanied by increased migration and rapid structural transformation – the reallocation of economic activity from agriculture to nonagriculture. This significant labor reallocation and migration stemmed from a series of institutional reforms and policies that significantly reduced labor market barriers. My thesis studies the impact of changes in labor market barriers during China’s reform era. Chapter 1 constructs measures of sectoral reallocation and geographical relocation of labor at the provincial level for 1978-2015 resulting from a series of institutional reforms and policies that lowered labor market barriers. I find that the structural transformation process was uneven across provinces. Agriculture-to-nonagriculture worker reallocation began earlier and on a larger scale for coastal provinces. Since 1990, workers moving from inland agriculture to coastal nonagriculture became an important source of nonagricultural labor growth. Chapter 2 quantifies changes in barriers regarding sectoral reallocation and regional migration and studies their impact on China’s economic growth over 1978-2015. I build a two-sector two-region general equilibrium model focusing on labor market barriers both between agricultural and nonagricultural sectors and across coastal and inland regions. I find that the 1982-2015 decline in labor market barriers contributed to an increase in output of 26.5% in 2015. Despite this, there remain considerable gains for future improvement. In particular, eliminating barriers from inland agriculture to coastal nonagriculture in 2015 could further increase output by 12%. Chapter 3 presents the joint work with Ruiqi Sun, Trevor Tombe, and Xiaodong Zhu. Expanding on Chapter 2, we explore the effect of changes in capital market and trade frictions in addition to labor market barriers on resource allocation. Employing a rich spatial general equilibrium model, we quantify the size and impact of migration barrier changes, capital barrier changes, and trade cost changes, to growth, regional income convergence, and structural change in China over 2000-2015. While each contributed meaningfully to growth, migration policy changes were central to China’s structural change and regional income convergence. | Ph.D. | agricultur, economic growth, labor, worker, capital, trade, income, land, institut | 2, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 |
| Bolhuis, Marijn Arend | Restuccia, Diego | Essays in Economic Growth | Economics | 2022-03-01 | This thesis presents three studies in economic growth. The first chapter (with Marina Tavares) examines a novel channel through which financial shocks are transmitted across countries, the international capital markets of multinationals. We exploit empirical variation in the availability of credit to U.S. multinationals during the 2008-09 financial crisis to identify the strength of this channel. We estimate that the U.S. credit crunch accounted for a quarter of the drop in sales of European subsidiaries during the crisis. Through the lens of a dynamic multicountry model, our micro estimates imply that financial linkages within multinationals account for at most a fifth of global GDP comovement. Our findings suggest that countries with the largest foreign multinational presence experience more spillovers from foreign financial shocks, especially from shocks originating in the United States. The second chapter proposes a tractable quantitative framework to examine the role of inter-industry productivity spillovers in the catch-up growth of open economies. First, I document that a country’s comparative advantage tends to increase in industries that employ occupations that are used most intensively in current exports. The model rationalizes these patterns by incorporating occupation-specific dynamic scale economies into a multi-sector gravity framework. I estimate that scale economies are relatively large in high-skilled production. Simulations suggest that spillovers play a quantitatively substantial role in accounting for slow cross-country convergence and increase the gains from trade, especially in countries with a comparative advantage in manufacturing. The third chapter (with Swapnika Rachapalli and Diego Restuccia) uses variation in land-market institutions across Indian states and detailed micro panel data to study distortions in land rental markets and their impact on agricultural productivity. We find empirical evidence that states with more rental-market activity feature less misallocation and over time reallocate land more efficiently. We develop a model of land rentals across heterogeneous farms to estimate land-market distortions in each state and assess their quantitative effect on agricultural productivity. Land rentals have substantial positive effects on agricultural productivity: an efficient reallocation of land increases agricultural productivity by 38 percent on average and by more than 50 percent in states with highly distorted rental markets. | Ph.D. | agricultur, economic growth, capital, trade, production, land, institut | 2, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16 |
| Sinha, Dhruv | Yatchew, Adonis | Essays in Environmental and Energy Economics | Economics | 2022-03-01 | This thesis contains three chapters associated with the study of environmental and energy economics. The first chapter studies the impact of activism by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on the stock returns of the firms they target, measured through their cumulative abnormal returns (CARs). I find that campaign events on environmental concerns substantially reduce CARs, and that there is no significant effect on campaigns related to non-environmental issues. I additionally test whether NGOs strategically time their campaigning activities and find evidence that NGOs avoid days with newsworthy events that may shift public attention away from their activity. Taken together, the results of this paper provide comprehensive evidence of the effectiveness of activism by NGOs in impacting firms. The second chapter investigates trends in energy use in Canada, relating them to economic output using a key metric: energy intensity. We first derive the major determinants of energy intensity in Canada between 1997 and 2017 using a traditional decomposition framework, namely the activity and efficiency indices. We then find through a non-parametric estimation framework that energy intensity trends downwards, with an average reduction of 1.5% per year, and improvements in efficiency of roughly 1% per year. Our results demonstrate that non-parametric estimation methods are effective in analyzing improvements in energy intensity. The third chapter models the interaction and strategic decision-making between activist NGOs and the firms they target. Firms respond to pressure from NGOs by choosing "green" or "brown" technologies, or by window-dressing; engaging in costly deception to avoid paying the full cost of complying to green technology. I examine how NGOs and firms interact in a monopolistically competitive environment. I derive an NGO-firm game in which firms can choose their technology in response to NGO activism, and the NGO chooses its monitoring intensity. I find that increases in payoffs to the NGO's arm that monitors the use of brown technology lead to an increase in window-dressing. Meanwhile, increases in payoffs to the arm that monitors window-dressing cause a rise in brown technology adoption. | Ph.D. | energy, wind, invest, environmental | 7, 9, 13 |
| Lim, Paul | Aguirregabiria, Victor | Essays in Industrial Organization and Banking | Economics | 2021-06-01 | This thesis contains three chapters exploring topics related to industrial organization and banking. The first chapter studies how banks compete through interest rates and credit rationing in the U.S. mortgage market. I estimate a structural model of bank competition in interest rates and credit rationing using U.S. mortgage data. I use the estimated model to show how banks optimally trade-off interest rates and credit rationing, and illustrate its policy relevance by examining the magnitude and the form of banks' pass through -- to clients -- of a cut in funding costs. I find that banks pass through their lower funding cost by not only cutting interest rates but also relaxing credit rationing. There is substantial heterogeneity in the pass through in both margins and this is mainly explained by heterogeneity in two different types of banks' costs: funding cost of originating mortgages and cost of processing applications. The second chapter surveys recent papers using structural models to study lending markets from an industrial organization perspective. I show that the papers can be divided into two modeling and estimation frameworks: the discrete choice, differentiated product model framework and the search model framework. The discrete choice model framework is based on seminal work by Einav, Jenkins, and Levin (2012) and is used to study how issues related to adverse selection, moral hazard, and market structure affect lending market outcomes. The search model framework, on the other hand, encompasses a variety of approaches focusing on how search frictions affect lending outcomes. I compare and contrast the two different frameworks and also suggest areas for future research. The third chapter studies the factors that drive mortgage securitization in the U.S. I combine a multinomial probit model of mortgage securitization with unique application-level mortgage data to study how loan- and bank-level characteristics affect bank securitization incentives. Overall, I find that lower mortgage quality and higher bank resource constraints lead to higher mortgage securitization by banks. | Ph.D. | trade | 10 |
| Bélisle, Louis Étienne Salmon | Burda, Martin | Essays on Banking Regulations and Financial Risk Modelling | Economics | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation presents three studies of financial risk modelling, with a particular focus on the banking and credit system. The first chapter presents a structural model of a syndicated lending market and examines the response of banks and non-bank financial institutions to different capital ratio regulatory requirements. I show that regulatory requirements may have opposite effects on banks than on non-banks. While capital ratios are effective for banks to reduce their risk exposure, they may lead non-banks to take on more risk and result in increasing the level of risk borne by the system. The second chapter posits that the substitutability between safe and liquid assets that are often used as collateral in credit markets is inherently dynamic. By using Kalman and particle filtering, I estimate a time-varying model of the elasticity of substitution and show that it reflects well the credit boom and bust cycles of the 1990s and 2000s. The third chapter develops an estimation methodology suitable for complex financial models that exhibit dynamic dependence patterns featuring non-elliptic distribution, focusing on the Copula multivariate GARCH (CMGARCH) model. Using Constrained Hamiltonian Monte Carlo methodology as a Bayesian analysis of the CMGARCH, I show increased efficiency in the inference of the coefficients of tail dependence. Cette thèse présente trois études sur la modélisation des risques financiers, avec un accent particulier sur le système bancaire et de crédit. Le premier chapitre présente un modèle structurel d'un marché des prêts syndiqués et examine la réponse des banques et des institutions financières non-bancaires aux différentes exigences réglementaires en matière de ratio de fonds propres. Je montre que les exigences réglementaires peuvent avoir des effets opposés sur les banques et sur les non-banques. Si les ratios de fonds propres permettent aux banques de réduire leur exposition au risque, ils peuvent conduire les non-banques à prendre plus de risques et entraîner une augmentation du niveau de risque supporté par le système. Le deuxième chapitre postule que la substituabilité entre les actifs sûrs et liquides qui sont souvent utilisés comme garantie sur les marchés du crédit est intrinsèquement dynamique. En utilisant un filtre de Kalman et un filtre à particules, j'évalue un modèle de l'élasticité de substitution variable dans le temps et montre qu'il reflète bien les cycles d'expansion et de récession du crédit des années 1990 et 2000. Le troisième chapitre développe une méthodologie d'estimation adaptée aux modèles financiers complexes qui présentent des modèles de dépendance dynamique comportant une distribution non-elliptique, en se concentrant sur le modèle de Copula multivarié GARCH (CMGARCH). En utilisant la méthodologie de Monte Carlo hamiltonienne contrainte dans une analyse Bayésienne du CMGARCH, je montre une efficacité accrue dans l'inférence des coefficients de dépendance de queue. | Ph.D. | capital, institut | 9, 16 |
| Furzer, Jill | Laporte, Audrey | Essays on Child Mental Health: Estimating Diagnostic Errors, Latent Risk, and Long-term Trajectories | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | Understanding diagnostic decision-making for child mental illness is the central focus of my dissertation research. I combine multiple quasi-experimental methods and machine learning tools with novel individual-level tax and survey data linkages to explore these issues. Over three papers, I address several sources of diagnostic and treatment errors in child mental illness, stemming from school and home environments. In the first paper, I study how a child's school starting age generates over-diagnosis of ADHD in young-for-grade and male students and missed diagnoses in relatively older students, especially females. Importantly, I demonstrate that teacher special education training mitigates these age-based assessment errors. The second paper investigates multiple sources of under-and over-utilization of mental health care by combining a machine learning-derived mental health risk prediction with multiple exogenous changes in diagnosis and treatment likelihood. These changes include the effect of school starting age on diagnosis and the role of Quebec's pharmaceutical insurance plan expansion on treatment uptake. I identify that over-diagnosis may be driven by over-weighting externalized behaviours, which are more common in males. At the same time, I additionally find that removing out-of-pocket costs increases treatment rates, specifically for high-risk children. The final paper expands upon this work to understand the long-term trajectories of children with mental health issues and heterogeneous treatment effects at the population level. I find that measured gaps in educational attainment, social assistance receipt and income due to child mental illness persist well into adulthood. I find evidence that diagnosis and treatment worsen human capital outcomes like educational attainment and unemployment for low-risk individuals. Nevertheless, treatment can help close mental health-related socioeconomic inequalities, but only for very high-risk children. Together these papers outline the growing issue of mental illness in childhood and its long-term implications. They highlight the potential for diagnostic mistakes or misallocation of care and the role of new data-driven tools to alleviate some of these medical errors. In my concluding chapter, I highlight some of the strengths and limitations of machine learning tools for improving mental illness detection and treatment going forward and point towards critical work required to make these tools useful for clinical practice. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, mental health, health care, health issues, illness, child health, learning, female, employment, capital, invest, equalit, income | 1, 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10 |
| Rachapalli, Swapnika Reddy | Trefler, Daniel | Essays on International Trade and Development | Economics | 2021-11-01 | This thesis contains three papers examining topics related to international trade, growth, and development. In chapter 1, I examine the role of buyer-seller relationships on the global platform for the transfer of knowledge across borders, wherein firms can learn about products produced by each other in a transaction. I find that an exogeneous increase in plants’ access to foreign downstream knowledge through exports increases the likelihood that they produce new downstream products. I then build a model of international trade, knowledge spillovers, and growth to analyze the general equilibrium effects of such firm-level innovation on aggregate economic outcomes and find that trade induces growth and a convergence of the technology gaps between countries. Further, firm level innovation activity reduces in response to this convergence reflecting the lower opportunities to learn from foreign firms.In chapter 2, which is based on joint work with Stephen Ayerst, Faisal Ibrahim, and Gaelan MacKenzie, we study the role of knowledge embodied in traded goods for knowledge diffusion. We use US patent citation data to first, construct a knowledge input-output structure, and second, to measure embodied knowledge in products that is useful for the production of innovative ideas in a sector. We find that countries that import more knowledge from the United States that is useful for knowledge production in a specific sector also have increased innovation activity (R, researchers), innovation outputs (patents, citations), and finally employment and output production in that sector. Further, these results are stronger in richer economies, suggesting that they are better able to utilize frontier knowledge to generate new innovations. In chapter 3, which is based on joint work with Marijn Bolhuis and Diego Restuccia, we study how distorted rental markets for agricultural land lead to low agricultural productivity in India. We first recognize that there is large variation in land market institutions across different states in India due to colonial institutional precedence and differences in state-level land reforms implemented post-independence. We find that states with more rental market activity feature less misallocation, and also reallocate land more efficiently over time. Based on this observation, we build a model of land rental markets and heterogeneous farms and estimate land market frictions by state. Land market distortions contribute to about one quarter of the differences in agricultural productivity across states. Without rental activity agricultural productivity falls by 22%, and reallocating land more efficiently can increase agricultural productivity by 29% on average. | Ph.D. | agricultur, knowledge, employment, trade, production, land, institut | 2, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 16 |
| Enkhbold, Amina | Ozkan, Serdar | Essays on Monetary Policy Transmission | Economics | 2022-03-01 | In my dissertation, I study how financial frictions and market power in the banking sector affect the transmission of monetary policy shocks to mortgage rates and the real economy. The first chapter investigates how banking market concentration and its reliance on wholesale funding can affect the transmission of monetary policy shocks to mortgage rates. Using US bank- and loan-level data, I find that banks at the 90th percentile of the wholesale funding reliance in concentrated markets transmit 61 basis points (bps) to mortgage rates, in response to a monetary policy shock that raises the policy rate by 100 bps. Banks at the 10th percentile of the wholesale funding reliance in competitive markets transmit 108 bps to mortgage rates. I find that for unconventional monetary policy shocks, such as an increase in 10-year Treasury yield by 3.85 bps, high market power banks transmit 0.15 to 0.69 bps less to mortgage rates, whereas high market power FinTech lenders pass-through 2 to 3.36 bp more relative to their counterparts. The second chapter focuses on the macroeconomic implications of imperfect monetary policy transmission to mortgage rates. I build a quantitative New Keynesian model with monopolistically competitive banks that have costly access to wholesale funding. In contrast to assuming a perfectly competitive banking sector, my model exhibits a dampened transmission of monetary policy on output, consumption, and housing prices. I then study monetary policy transmission under the Basel III Liquidity Coverage Ratio rule that limits excessive reliance on wholesale funding. I find that higher market power banks with greater reliance on wholesale funding respond strongly to monetary tightening on mortgage rates. The third chapter analyzes cross-country monetary policy transmission on mortgage and deposit rates via the bank market power channel. My results show that when the policy rate increases by 100 bps, banks with high market power transmit a 49 bps lower deposit rate and a 20 bps higher mortgage rate relative to banks with low market power. Monetary policy decisions are transmitted to mortgage and deposit rates mainly through banks with low market power. | Ph.D. | invest, housing, consum | 9, 11, 12 |
| Michaud Leclerc, Catherine | Bobonis, Gustavo GB | Essays on The Supply of Education and Student Achievement | Economics | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation examines the relationship between the supply of education and student achievement in three distinct contexts and across three levels of schooling. The first chapter, Private School Entry, Sorting, and the Performance of Public Schools: Evidence from Rural Pakistan, asks whether private school expansion in rural Punjab, Pakistan, affects the academic performance of students in primary public schools. I show that younger students from wealthier households and students who perform better in school are more likely to exit public schools and enroll in private schools. I conclude that sorting does not have negative consequences for the academic performance of students who stay in public schools. The second chapter, Searching for Answers: The Impact of Student Access to Wikipedia, evaluates an intervention from a randomized controlled trial in Malawi in which secondary school students got access to Wikipedia. Students searched for information related to their school syllabus, sexuality, African news, and a variety of topics that cater to their interests. We find that access to Wikipedia improved exam scores in English and Biology, especially among low achievers. The third chapter, What Sets College Divers and Thrivers Apart: A Contrast in Study Habits, Attitudes, and Mental Health, is an article published in 2019 in Economics Letters. We examine study habits and mental health among college students in Canada. Compared to students who do very well in college, students who perform poorly struggle on several dimensions: they feel more depressed, study less, and do not utilize the free university resources. The three chapters explore the common themes of student academic performance and school resources, from primary, secondary, to tertiary education, and across three continents. The findings inform policymakers about the role of the supply of education on student achievement. | Ph.D. | mental health, tertiary education, rural | 3, 4, 11 |
| Bhuiyan, Mohammed Mahadi | Esmaeili, Kamran | Establishing Geometallurgical Relationships between Rock Comminution Behaviour and Rapid and Portable Drill Core-Scale Rock Characterization Tests | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Rock comminution is an energy-intensive process contributing to cost uncertainty in mining. Expensive and time-consuming comminution testing leads to insufficient characterization of orebody variability, which can result in significant fluctuations in energy consumption. Rapid and portable drill core-scale rock characterization is a practical geometallurgical proxy for comminution testing, but linking the two types of tests requires understanding how rock properties on different scales influence comminution behaviour. The three studies of this research investigate the effect of rock macro- and micro- properties on comminution breakage and energy consumption to establish geometallurgical relationships between rapid and portable rock characterization tests on the drill core-scale and comminution behaviour.The first study applies data analytics to identify relationships between Bond work index (BWI) and rock characterization data for the Paracatu orebody. The regolith and fresh rock geometallurgical domains are established from unsupervised learning. Regolith weathering creates a strong relationship between BWI and physicomechanical properties. Supervised BWI classification in the fresh rock identifies the greater importance of geochemical properties. The second study integrates geometallurgical characterization and data analytics for the Tasiast orebody to understand what rock macro- and micro- properties influence grinding and evaluate rock characterization test proxies for BWI. Texture and geochemistry are identified as significant predictors for discriminating lower BWI clastic-derived and higher BWI crystalline-derived samples. Portable X-ray fluorescence analysis is determined as an effective rapid and portable rock characterization test for BWI modelling at Tasiast. The third study employs the discrete element method to investigate the influence of rock foliation on jaw crushing behaviour by parametrically varying geometrical and strength properties of anisotropic planes in bonded particle models during crushing simulations. Varying these properties can inhibit or facilitate fracture propagation in the model, resulting in a demonstrable variability in its matrix breakage evolution and energy input. This research signifies that drill core-scale rock characterization tests can be used to predict comminution indices when variability in drill core-scale rock properties are linked to variability in rock properties dictating resistance to comminution loading. This enables these tests as practical geometallurgical tools in forecasting feed variability to the comminution circuit for control energy consumption. | Ph.D. | learning, energy, invest, consum, weather | 4, 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Lepock, Jennifer Rebecca | Kiang, Michael||Mizrahi, Romina | Estimating Psychosis Risk in Individuals at Clinical High Risk using Event–related Brain Potential Indices of Cognitive Processing | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Background: The N400 event-related brain potential waveform occurs in response to potentially meaningful stimuli and this effect is thought to reflect greater activation of related versus unrelated concepts in long-term semantic memory. In normal participants, related targets elicit smaller (less negative) N400 amplitudes than do unrelated items. These N400 semantic priming effects are found to be attenuated in schizophrenia patients, suggesting impaired activation of related concepts. Individuals at clinical high risk (CHR) for schizophrenia experience subthreshold symptoms of the disorder, including decreased functioning. The event-related potential Mismatch Negativity (MMN), P3a and gamma ASSR measures have been found to be abnormal in CHR patients compared to controls.Aim: We aimed to examine whether N400 semantic priming deficits are a biomarker of the CHR state, whether decreased N400 semantic priming predicts conversion to psychosis in this population over two years, and whether N400 effects predict high-risk symptomatology and impaired functioning over time. Methods: We examined the N400 ERP semantic priming effect, the MMN, P3a and gamma ASSR in a sample of CHR participants and healthy controls. We then re-assessed the CHR group at one and two years to measure global functioning, positive psychotic symptoms, and conversion status. Results: We found a deficient N400 effect in the CHR group compared to controls. In this group, the N400 was related to role functioning and cognitive defects at baseline, social functioning at one-year follow-up, and improvement of positive symptoms and functioning over two years’ follow-up. Conclusion: This study indicates that the N400 priming effect is deficient at the CHR state and may contribute to the worsening of positive symptoms and functioning over time. Given that only a minority of CHR individuals will go on to develop schizophrenia, efforts to refine our ability to identify those at highest risk are critical. These findings may help to target limited resources to those individuals at risk who need it the most and minimize unnecessary treatment and side effects. | Ph.D. | minorit | 10 |
| Wu, Yingzhou | Roth, Frederick P | Estimating the Functional Impact of Single Amino Acid Changes Using Machine Learning | Computer Science | 2022-03-01 | One of the great challenges in genetics is to accurately separate functional from neutral variation in human genome sequence. Towards more accurate pathogenicity prediction of human genetic variants, it has become possible to experimentally map the fitness landscape of missense mutations for specific targeted human disease-associated proteins. Coupling exhaustive mutagenesis with a deep sequencing read-out of multiplexed yeast functional complementation assays can yield a “variant effect map” covering most of possible amino acid changes in these proteins. The first challenge I wished to address is that for each variant effect map, a substantial minority of missense mutations remain unmeasured. The second challenge is that variant effect maps are available for less than 1% of disease-associated proteins, with a high-quality fully comprehensive experimental atlas of functional missense variation being likely decades in the future. Towards the first challenge, I imputed the functional effect of unmeasured variants using machine learning model trained on variants with experimental measurement, each of which is represented by a list of features including conservation scores, chemical physical proprieties of the residues, and engineered feature derived from the functional effect of similar amino acid substitutions in the same map. Towards the second challenge, I built a computational model VARITY to predict the pathogenicity of all possible missense variants for ~18,000 human proteins. I exploited a larger reservoir of training examples with uncertain accuracy and representativity, each assigned with a differential weight determined via hyperparameter tunning that optimizes predictive performance on a small high-quality set of annotated variants. Performance of the final model (VARITY) exceeds that of all analyzed previously described computational methods. | Ph.D. | learning, minorit, conserv, conserv, land | 4, 10, 14, 15 |
| Mirahadi, Seyedfarid | McCabe, Brenda | EvacuSafe: A Smart Evacuation Management System for Buildings | Civil Engineering | 2020-06-01 | Tall buildings and their occupants are highly sensitive to emergencies. Decision-making in these situations is complicated due to high population densities residing in these dwellings, complexity of emergency management strategies, significance of quick response in these cases, and unknown reactions of occupants under stress. This research develops an evacuation management system (EMS), named EvacuSafe, to support decision-making and crowd handling during evacuations. EvacuSafe supports a fully automated process of detecting the fire, simulating the growth pattern of the hazard, generating multiple strategies of evacuation, evaluating the strategies based on the risk to evacuees, and finally guiding evacuees along their egress route. EvacuSafe’s architecture consists of the three main modules of fire dynamics simulation, agent-based crowd simulation, and graph search path-planning. EvacuSafe is model-centric, and the entire data storage and data transfer between its three modules are based on Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). By integrating BIM, agent-based crowd simulation, and fire simulation, EvacuSafe enables a performance-based evaluation of building evacuations for different building designs. In real-time mode, EvacuSafe converts BIM to a Geometric Network Graph (GNG) and performs path-planning and guidance during emergencies. In addition, the guidance system in EvacuSafe is based on the application of Adaptive Dynamic Signage System (ADSS). This research aims for a smart emergency management system that will be less restricted by human factors and more efficient in saving the lives of occupants in emergencies. | Ph.D. | buildings | 9 |
| Yuan, Jie | Hofmann, Ronald | Evaluating and Predicting the Performance of Granular Activated Carbon Filter-adsorbers: Adsorption and Biodegradation Processes | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Drinking water treatment plants use granular activated carbon (GAC) to adsorb micropollutants, but the GAC has a limited adsorption capacity and needs to be replaced before it is exhausted. A minicolumn test technique was developed by Gillogly et al. (1999) to monitor the saturation of GAC beds, which enables the determination of GAC replacement schedules. However, this tool has not been fully validated. The first part of this research was to validate and refine the minicolumn test protocol by exploring fundamental questions related to operating GAC in an adsorption mode. These questions include evaluating the effect of water temperature on the adsorption of 2-methylisoborneol (MIB) and geosmin in GAC contactors, and understanding the effect of the mass transfer zone (MTZ) on the accuracy of the minicolumn test protocol. Temperature was found to be an important factor that should be considered for the minicolumn test. Full-scale GAC contactors were observed to have a broad MTZ for micropollutants, which verifies the minicolumn test protocol. When GAC is in operation, some biofiltration may be occurring, where biodegradation becomes an alternative removal mechanism. Operating GAC in a biological mode can extend GAC lifetime. However, GAC biofiltration remains poorly understood. Thus, the second part of this research was to evaluate the biodegradation potential of GAC. This research developed an approach that can differentiate between adsorption and biodegradation in GAC. The approach revealed that substantial MIB and geosmin biofiltration was occurring at one water treatment plant, and that GAC in some cases had significant adsorption capacity even after 9 years of operation. The final part of this research was to evaluate the removal of perfluorooctanic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS) in GAC filter-adsorbers. It was observed that GAC could achieve approximately 20% to 55% of PFOA and PFOS removal even after a long period of operation (e.g., 6 years). This provides operational information for utilities that have installed GAC filter-adsorbers for taste and odour control but may wish to consider poly- and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) removal as an additional treatment objective. | Ph.D. | water, pollut, pollut | 6, 14, 15 |
| Fu, Rui | Coyte, Peter C | Evaluating Kidney Transplantation for Adults with End-stage Renal Disease | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | Kidney transplantation is widely accepted as the optimal treatment for most adult patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Due to the rising scarcity of donor kidneys and the ageing of the patient population, performance of kidney transplantation warrants careful clinical and economic considerations. This dissertation comprised three projects to examine kidney transplantation for treating adult ESRD patients in the contemporary era, including (1) the role of pre-existing psychosocial conditions on the survival of deceased-donor kidney transplant (DDKT) recipients; (2) the economic consequences of i) receiving a DDKT as an adult ESRD patient and ii) donating a kidney as an adult living donor; and (3) machine-learning-based algorithms for managing older adults who have received a DDKT at age beyond 60 years by predicting i) their risk of posttransplant mortality, ii) their status of being a high-cost user of publicly funded health care during the year of transplantation, and iii) their total health care expenditures over the first posttransplant year. Person-level linked administrative data of all cases of DDKT performed in Ontario, Canada between April 1, 2002 and March 31, 2013 were used in projects (1) and (3). The results of this dissertation confirmed psychosocial conditions being diagnosed at 1-year prior to entering dialysis to be a strong and independent risk factor of posttransplant mortality. The systematic review and meta-analysis suggested that while DDKT was generally cost-effective over dialysis, the benefits diminished for patients over the age of 60 years and might further decrease for those older patients with diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease and long wait times. For living kidney donors, they incurred costs between $900 to $19,900 (US dollar in 2019 values) from pre-donation evaluation to the first postoperative year. The machine learning studies implied the feasibility of incorporating data mining techniques to support the decision-making and care planning of older DDKT recipients. Jointly, these findings have implications for an array of clinical and resource allocation policies to optimize ESRD management and highlight the potential utility of novel statistical methods in transplant outcomes research. | Ph.D. | health care, learning | 3, 4 |
| Lee, Shin Hann (Alex) | Boulianne, Gabrielle GB | Evaluating the Therapeutic Potential of Angiotensin-converting Enzyme Inhibitors and Angiotensin Receptor Blockers in Drosophila Alzheimer's Disease Models | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a degenerative disorder that causes progressive memory and cognitive decline. Recently, studies have reported that inhibitors of the mammalian renin angiotensin system (RAS) result in a significant reduction in the incidence and progression of AD by unknown mechanisms. Here, I used a genetic and pharmacological approach to evaluate the beneficial effects of Angiotensin Converting Enzyme-inhibitors (ACE-Is) and Angiotensin Receptor Blockers (ARBs) in Drosophila expressing AD-related transgenes. Importantly, while ACE orthologs have been identified in Drosophila, other RAS components are not conserved. I show that captopril, an ACE-I, and losartan, an ARB, can suppress brain cell death in flies expressing a mutant human C99 transgene. Captopril also significantly rescues memory defects in these flies. Similarly, both drugs reduce cell death in Drosophila expressing human Ab42 and losartan significantly rescues memory deficits. However, neither drug affects production, accumulation or clearance of C99 and Ab42. Moreover, neither drug rescued brain cell death in Drosophila expressing human Tau suggesting that RAS inhibitors specifically target the amyloid pathway. Of note, I also observed reduced cell death and a complete rescue of memory deficits when I crossed a null mutation in Drosophila Acer into each transgenic line demonstrating that the target of captopril in Drosophila is ACER. In addition, I also found that knockdown of an ACER interactor, CG2233, in flies expressing human Ab42 recapitulated the beneficial effects by Acer null mutationand captopril, suggesting an ACER-CG2233 pathway underlying the captopril-driven beneficial effects. Altogether, these studies demonstrate that captopril and losartan are able to modulate AD related phenotypes in the absence of the canonical RAS pathway and suggest that both drugs have additional targets that can be identified in Drosophila. | Ph.D. | production, conserv, conserv | 12, 14, 15 |
| McCuaig, Jeanna Marie | Kurdyak, Paul | Evaluation of Genetic Service Utilization and Patient Psychological Response to the Implementation of Reflex BRCA1/2 Tumour Genetic Testing for Ovarian Cancer | Nursing Science | 2022-03-01 | Background: Reflex (automatic) BRCA1/2 tumour genetic testing of all newly diagnosed high-grade serous ovarian cancer (HGSOC) was implemented in the province of Ontario, without data regarding potential impacts on germline genetic testing rates or patient psychological outcomes. This thesis aimed to identify changes in genetic service utilization and measure the psychological impact reported by HGSOC patients following reflex BRCA1/2 tumour genetic testing. Methods: A scoping review identified measures evaluating alternative models of genetic service delivery for cancer patients. A retrospective review compared rates of genetic counselling referral, attendance, and patient uptake of germline genetic testing before and after implementation of BRCA1/2 reflex tumour genetic testing. A cross-sectional patient survey study collected patient reported outcomes after receiving reflex BRCA1/2 tumour genetic test results. Results: Evaluations of alternative genetic service delivery models reported on genetic service use (rate of genetic counselling referral, attendance for genetic counselling, and uptake of genetic testing) and patient outcomes (satisfaction, knowledge, and psychological outcomes). There was an absence of studies involving reflex tumour genetic testing. Following implementation of reflex BRCA1/2 tumour genetic testing at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, genetics referral rates increased (IRR=1.60, 95% CI: 1.07-2.42) and the median time from diagnosis to referral decreased (59 days pre- vs 33 days post-implementation; p=0.04). Once referred, most patients attended genetic counseling and pursued germline testing. Among HGSOC patients surveyed, 41% could not accurately recall their tumour genetic test results, but 85% were satisfied with having reflex BRCA1/2 tumour genetic testing completed as part of their cancer care. Higher cancer-related distress was associated with a higher psychological impact of tumour genetic testing (p | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Pacheco Rodriguez, Diana Marisol | MacLean, Heather L | Evaluation of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Oil Sands Upgrading Technologies Using a Novel Life Cycle-based Model | Civil Engineering | 2019-11-01 | As the production of oil sands bitumen and associated final products (e.g., transportation fuels) continues to grow, so do the environmental impacts associated with the life cycle of fuel production and use. This has motivated research on developing novel analytical methods that model these impacts on a life cycle basis. Upgrading generated 23% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oil sands operations or 2% of Canada’s GHG emissions in 2016. Upgrading is a stage in the production of oil sands-derived transportation fuels that transforms bitumen into higher value products, most of them refinery feedstocks. A novel life cycle-based model, the Oil Sands Technologies for Upgrading Model (OSTUM), that assesses the direct and indirect energy use and GHG intensities of current and emerging upgrading technologies, was developed and implemented using publicly available data. OSTUM is applied to commercial upgrading technologies operating in Canada in 2018: delayed coking based- (DC), hydroconversion based- (HC), and combined hydroconversion and fluid coking based upgrading (HC/FC). Two emerging partial upgrading technologies are also modeled: the HI-Q® Process and EST technology. These latter applications demonstrate OSTUM’s flexibility to produce adequate assessments as the oil sands industry evolves. DC’s baseline intensity is 8.5 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per megajoule of synthetic crude oil (g CO2e/MJ SCO) and range is 6.3–11.2 g CO2e/MJ SCO. HC’s baseline intensity is 10.8 g CO2e/MJ SCO (range: 8.6-14.3 g CO2e/MJ SCO) and HC/FC’s is 12.2 g CO2e/MJ SCO (range: 9.7-14.8 g CO2e/MJ SCO). The baseline, low and high scenario GHG intensities for HI-Q® are 3.7, 2.3 and 6.4 g CO2e/MJ of partially upgraded bitumen (PUB), respectively, and 8.3, 6.6 and 12.3 g CO2e/MJ PUB for EST. Contributions include 1) the development of a framework to systematically assess/compare the GHG intensities of upgrading technologies using consistent boundaries, assumptions, sources, and methodologies; 2) comprehensive and transparent results obtained with a well-documented model; 3) improved characterization of emission sources/drivers of variability; 4) improved estimation of hydrogen consumption; and 5) estimation of GHG intensities of upgrading co-products of different qualities. OSTUM can provide insight and assist stakeholders in regulating and mitigating upgrading GHG emissions. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, greenhouse, consum, production, greenhouse gas, environmental, emissions, carbon dioxide, co2 | 7, 12, 13 |
| Carwana, Brian | Coleman, Simon||Bryant, Joseph | Evangelicals, the Liberal State, and Canada’s Family Values Debates: The Struggle to Shape Selves | Religion, Study of | 2021-06-01 | One of the most pervasive challenges for liberal democracies is the ongoing tension between religious conservatives and the liberal state. Using as my central case study, the highly-charged debates over “family values” in Canada circa 1985-2015, I argue that despite claims that liberal democracy enables religious freedom, its values and extensive reach prove challenging to conservative religiosity. Heightening the stakes is that the rival worldviews I examine – liberalism and evangelicalism – are ambitious, struggling not merely over matters such as same-sex weddings but ultimately for the ability to shape selves. My research focuses on certain central nodes of family values politics, namely three conservative evangelical lobbies – the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, Focus on the Family Canada, and the Canada Family Action Coalition – as they enter political debates, confront state bodies and legislation, and try to gain a hearing in the country where liberal pluralism has achieved a cultural power perhaps unmatched anywhere else. This study examines the lobbies’ discursive output in order to: trace the ideological drivers of evangelicals’ family values focus; question liberal democratic theory’s emphasis on reason and freedom at the expense of affect and compulsion; and contribute to a rethinking of a central question in secularization theory, by suggesting that persistent disputes over American versus European exceptionalism overlook the most important factor – that Western societies’ ability to resist secularization has rested chiefly on the relative strength of its evangelical community. In short, America’s relative religiosity has depended primarily on the strongly held commitments that foster evangelical exceptionalism. | Ph.D. | worldview, conserv, conserv, democra | 4, 14, 15, 16 |
| Mendlowitz, Andrew Bryan | Krahn, Murray||Isaranuwatchai, Wanrudee | Evidence to Inform Policy Options for the Elimination of Hepatitis C Virus in First Nations Populations in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | In Canada, an estimated 220,000-246,000 people currently live with chronic hepatitis C viral (HCV) infection. To achieve the goals set by the World Health Organization (WHO) strategy to eliminate HCV infection by 2030, a mandate for action in the form of the Blueprint to Inform Hepatitis C Elimination Efforts in Canada was released. The Blueprint outlines what is necessary to achieve HCV elimination in Canada, emphasizing the need to inform specific knowledge gaps and calling on provinces/territories to develop action plans to meet the WHO targets for viral elimination. As a part of Canada’s commitment to the WHO strategy and the Blueprint, Canada has made First Nations-led approaches and First Nations populations a priority focus for national and provincial/territorial HCV strategies. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to generate evidence that can inform policy options for HCV elimination efforts in First Nations populations in Ontario. In Ontario, recent negotiations have allowed for partnerships between academic researchers and First Nations organizations to perform First Nations-directed research using administrative health data. In partnership with the Ontario First Nations HIV/AIDS Education Circle (OFNHAEC), we examined the health and economic impacts of HCV on Status First Nations populations in Ontario. The first study explored trends in the epidemiology and testing for HCV among a cohort of Status First Nations individuals across Ontario. The second study estimated the provincial publicly-funded healthcare costs associated with HCV among a cohort of Status First Nations individuals in Ontario. The third study uses the example of HCV screening within the emergency department setting to demonstrate how existing research can be used to perform economic evaluations of novel HCV case-finding approaches. With future work and using the evidence generated from this thesis, a similar approach can be used to evaluate First Nations-specific HCV interventions. Collectively, these studies inform research gaps necessary to reach the WHO goals for viral elimination and serve as reference in beginning to understand the impact of infection among First Nations individuals in Ontario. The data presented by this dissertation provides decision-makers with evidence that can inform the creation of HCV policy, prevention, and treatment efforts. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge, indigenous, indigenous | 3, 4, 10, 16 |
| Ang Houle, Marie-Armande | Awadalla, Philip||Stein, Lincoln D | Evolutionary Population Genomics and Transcriptomics in Cancer | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2021-06-01 | Cancer progression is an evolutionary process: somatic mutations can confer selective advantages to certain cells, eventually causing them to abnormally proliferate. Parallels can be drawn between the evolution of organismal populations and cancer cell populations. In both, selective forces act on mutations to promote or obstruct the transmission of alleles to future generations. As an integral component in shaping the genomic landscapes of populations, recombination and selection have a high potential to contribute to cancer progression. Despite the clear similarities between evolutionary processes in populations and in cancer cell populations, many theoretical evolutionary concepts remain to be applied to a cancer context.This thesis characterizes processes known to drive the evolutionary trajectory of populations in a cancer context. I first uncover the role of the meiotic recombination factor PRDM9 in cancer. I identify the aberrant expression of PRDM9 in cancer and uncover the association between sites of somatic structural variant breakpoints and sites of PRDM9 binding and activity, reminiscent of the role of PRDM9 in recruiting the double stranded break machinery in meiosis. This study is the first to provide evidence of an association between the aberrant expression of the meiosis-specific gene PRDM9 with genomic instability in cancer. To further investigate the role of selection and linkage in cancer, I model the evolution of cancer cell populations to infer a comprehensive history of the evolution of beneficial, deleterious and neutral mutations within individual biopsies. In 172 Barrett’s esophagus samples, an esophageal adenocarcinoma cancer risk condition, and 47 samples from esophageal adenocarcinoma, sarcoma, prostate, and pancreatic cancer, I capture previously under-detected selective processes in tumors. Negatively selected mutations occur alongside positively selected mutations in many tumors where a signature of positive selection is observed. The accumulation of damaging mutations concurrently with beneficial mutations is associated with increasing the age of sub-clones harboring these mutations, slowing down tumor progression, implying that early detection diagnostics should be developed to screen individuals for tumor progression to improve survival outcomes. Overall, my research highlights the role of evolutionary processes in cancer which has important ramifications on personalized treatment opportunities, resistance and timing of diagnosis. | Ph.D. | invest, land | 9, 15 |
| Tay, Joanne | Widger, Kimberley | Examining the Adjustment and Coping Trajectories in Healthy Siblings of Children With Life-threatening Conditions | Nursing Science | 2021-11-01 | Background: Siblings of children with life-threatening conditions are often referred to as ‘forgotten’ mourners as focus tends to be on the ill child and parents. With limited knowledge about siblings’ experience, it is challenging to provide appropriate supports.Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation was to examine and expand current evidence about siblings’ experiences to guide research and clinical practice. Method: Study 1 was a scoping review to map existing literature on siblings’ experiences. Based on identified gaps in the literature, two additional studies were conducted through secondary analysis of data from the ‘Charting the Territory’ study – a unique dataset that contains bio-psychosocial information from parents, siblings, and children with progressive metabolic, genetic, or neurological conditions, known as Quadrant 3 (Q3) conditions. Seventy siblings were included in this analysis. The Child Behaviour Checklist (CBCL) was used to examine siblings’ internalizing, externalizing, and total behaviour problems. Kidcope was used to examine coping in siblings over a 12-month period. Growth curve modelling was used to examine the trajectories of siblings’ problems (Study 2) and a mediation analysis using Structural Equation Modelling framework was adopted to test coping as a mediator between siblings’ stressor and the trajectories (Study 3). Results: Gaps identified in the review included a lack of research on siblings of children with Q3 conditions and reliance on cross-sectional designs. Siblings’ internalizing, externalizing, and total behaviour problems improved over time. However, a substantial proportion of siblings (7 – 25%) had scores within the clinical range. When treatment was first sought for the ill child ≤ 1 year prior to study participation, siblings had higher levels of internalizing and externalizing problems compared with siblings who participated >1 year after treatment was sought. Factors that affected siblings’ problems were parental stress, anxiety, depression, and burden of caregiving. Mediation through active coping was significant for siblings with internalizing problems, but not externalizing and total behaviour problems. Significance: This study adds to the small knowledge base about the experience of siblings of children with Q3 conditions. The findings provide a base for future research and guidance for clinicians and parents to enhance support for these siblings. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Duncan, Andrea Lynn | Wodchis, Walter P||Dainty, Katie | Examining the Experience of Change to Funding and Service Length: A Multi-method Study of Community Mental Health Services | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-06-01 | This PhD Thesis explored the connections between community mental health interventions, service user needs, outcomes, funding and stakeholder engagement. Specifically, the overarching question “How are changes to community mental health funding and service length connected to stakeholder engagement and outcomes in the literature and practice?” was addressed using four different research studies. The first study used a realist synthesis approach to address the question “How does stakeholder engagement impact outcomes when there is a change in public funding allocation models within community mental health settings?” The findings demonstrated that funding change does not necessarily influence outcomes, but that stakeholder engagement is an essential mechanism that can support positive outcomes. The second study asked, “How do short term case managers reflect on the principles of a time restricted case management intervention?” Short-term case management is modeled after Intensive Case Management and Critical Time Intervention; however, the new change limits service to three months. A principles-focused evaluation (P-FE) methodology with focus groups was used to gather perspectives of short-term case managers. The results indicated that case managers adhering to the short-term case management (STCM) process as it was conceptualized, however they are more often embracing “broker case management” models of care instead of an Intensive Case Management approach. Following the investigation with case managers, the third study sought perspectives from clients who were recipients of STCM services. Specifically, the question for this study was “What are the experiences with services of individuals who received short term case management?” This qualitative study used individual in-depth interviews and found that clients predominantly reported a positive experience with having a therapeutic relationship with a case manager, however, some clients conveyed concern that this relationship had to come to an end or a desire to interact more frequently with their case manager. Lastly, the fourth study focused on measuring the needs of clients who had participated in STCM and asked, “What are the needs of clients before and after short term case management services as rated by both the client and the case manager?” Based on an analysis of the program’s Ontario Common Assessment of Need (OCAN) data, psychological distress, company and physical health were the most common unmet client needs at the start of service. Findings indicate that STCM can have a positive impact of psychological distress and daytime activities. Additionally, it appears to decrease total need and total unmet need scores. This new evidence has demonstrated that the constructs of funding, service delivery model, engagement, client needs and outcomes are complex. Additionally, stakeholder engagement is an essential construct when considering how funding and services are structured within community mental health settings. | Ph.D. | mental health, invest | 3, 9 |
| Yearwood, Caroline Ashar | Lopez, Ann AL | Experiences of Secondary Long-term Occassional Teachers Seeking Permanent Employment in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | This study analyses how Long-term Occasional Teachers (LTO) interface with permanent teachers, students and the administration as they seek to gain permanent employment. It also focuses on Internationally Educated Teachers (IETs) who are LTOs as they seek integration into the Ontario teaching workforce as permanent teachers. The study utilized a general qualitative research methodology with interviews to obtain participant data and is undergird by notions of Post-Fordism, communities of practice and equity education. Data were collected from 15 participants who self-identified as LTOs. Of the 15 LTOs 4 identified as IETs who sought employment as full-time teachers in Ontario. Findings reveal that (a) LTOs and in particular those who were internationally trained (IETs) felt that they were required to continuously reinvent themselves to become marketable for the Ontario education system; (b) their knowledge seems to be less appreciated than that of permanent contract teachers and; (c) there are challenges achieving permanent employment. This study also reports on the insecurities and low self-esteem caused by extended periods of job search as well as the impact of different forms of discrimination on their ability to obtain full time employment. This study relies on the extant literature on the experiences of LTOs and IETs to build greater awareness of the challenges they experience while seeking employment in Ontario as full-time teachers. | Ed.D. | knowledge, equity, employment, equit | 4, 8, 10 |
| Elias-Cartwright, Kimberly Laura | Wheelahan, Leesa | Experiential Learning for All! An Institutional Analysis of How University Administrators Responded to the Ontario Government’s Call to Action | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | Governments in Western liberal democracies, such as Ontario, have increasingly used policy tools to influence university priorities and actions, despite the literature suggesting that policy tools are limited in their ability to shift institutional behaviour. As institutional theory posits, institutions require legitimacy to remain prominent in society and they may respond to government policy tools in superficial ways that mask non-compliance. Universities are autonomous institutions rooted in their small, liberal arts traditions and structures of decentralization, collegial governance, and academic freedom, and this institutional context makes institutional change difficult. This study explores the gap between the intention of government policy tools and their implementation by institutions. By leveraging the Ontario government’s experiential learning (EL) call to action in 2016-2019, a multi-case study design is used to explore how five universities interpreted and responded to the government’s EL call, as a way to explore this gap between policy tool goals and institutional responses. In particular, this study focuses on the experience of 21 university administrators who sit below the President and Provost, and at the juncture of strategy and implementation (i.e. Vice-Provosts, Assistance Vice-Provosts, Directors, Managers, and Registrars) to explore how administrators balance government calls for accountability and transparency with university structures and cultures. Using theoretical and conceptual constructs from institutional theory, this study contributes to our understanding of policy tools and institutional change by highlighting characteristics of the political and institutional contexts that influence institutional actions. First, the findings suggest that a process of layering is occurring, where the Ontario government is arguably introducing new priorities without the authority to replace existing structures and priorities. Second, the findings highlight the role of central university administrators as rule facilitators—critical actors who work with their institutional structures and cultures to respond to government policy tools in ways that maximize institutional legitimacy. Lastly, the findings echo existing propositions in the literature that suggest there is a relationship between alignment and compliance, where government policy tools that do not align with institutional priorities encourage strategic responses that mask non-compliance. | Ph.D. | learning, institut, governance, democra | 4, 16 |
| Iyer, Kali Rae | Cowen, Leah E | Exploiting Diverse Chemical Collections to Uncover Compounds with Novel Activity Against Human Fungal Pathogens | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | Fungal pathogens are an underappreciated contributor to infectious disease related deaths, infecting billions and killing 1.6 million people annually. The rise in drug resistance amongst pathogenic fungi paired with the limited arsenal of antifungals available is an imminent threat to our medical system. To address this, I screened two distinct compound libraries to identify novel strategies to expand the antifungal armamentarium. The first collection, from Boston University, was screened to identify two types of compounds with activity against the highly drug-resistant pathogen Candida auris: those that were bioactive alone, and those that enhanced the efficacy of fluconazole, the most commonly administered systemic antifungal. Through these efforts I identified the rocaglates, a chemical class exhibiting single agent fungicidal activity. The rocaglates were found to inhibit translation initiation in C. auris but not in its close pathogenic relative Candida albicans. This species-specific activity was contingent on a single amino acid difference in the drug target, the translation initiation factor Tif1. Strikingly, rocaglate-mediated translation inhibition activated cell death in C. auris, but not in a rocaglate-sensitized C. albicans strain. From the fluconazole combination screen, I discovered a compound, subsequently termed azoffluxin, that enhanced fluconazole efficacy against C. auris through increasing its intracellular accumulation. This activity was through the inhibition of efflux pumps, indicating azoffluxin targets a key resistance mechanism. Furthermore, azoffluxin significantly reduced fungal burden alone and in combination with fluconazole in a mouse model of C. auris disseminated infection. The second chemical library screened, the RIKEN Natural Product Depository, was evaluated for antifungal activity against four major human fungal pathogens: C. auris, C. albicans, Candida glabrata, and Cryptococcus neoformans. One molecule, NPD6433, was prioritized for having broad-spectrum antifungal activity and minimal mammalian cytotoxicity. NPD6433 was determined to inhibit the enoyl reductase domain of the essential fungal enzyme fatty acid synthase 1, Fas1. Treatment with NPD6433 inhibited various virulence traits in multiple fungal species and rescued mammalian cell growth in a co-culture model with C. auris. Overall, this work identifies compounds with bioactivity against fungal pathogens, revealing important biology and paving the way for the critical development of new therapeutic strategies. | Ph.D. | species, species | 14, 15 |
| McGillis, Laurel Hunter | Jones, Nicola L | Exploring Gene-environment Interactions in Inflammatory Bowel Disease | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is family of complex conditions of the gastrointestinal tract. Pathogenesis of IBD remains unknown and is postulated to be multifactorial, including contributions from host genetics, environmental factors, the gut microbiome, and the immune response. This work explored environmental influences and gene-environment interactions in IBD. Vitamin D deficiency is an environmental factor involved in IBD pathogenesis. Although the mechanism remains unclear, previous studies suggest that a lack of vitamin D signaling causes a reduction in intestinal autophagy. A potential link between vitamin D deficiency and dysregulated autophagy is microRNA (miR)-142-3p, which suppresses autophagy. We found that vitamin D deficient mice had enhanced miR-142-3p expression in ileal tissues compared to control mice. Paneth cells of vitamin D deficient mice were morphologically abnormal and displayed evidence of an autophagy defect. These findings suggest that Paneth cells exhibit early markers of autophagy dysregulation within the intestinal epithelium in response to vitamin D deficiency and enhanced miR-142-3p expression. We demonstrated that treatment-naïve IBD patients with low vitamin D have increased miR-142-3p expression in colonic tissues procured from ‘involved’ areas of disease. Taken together, our findings demonstrate that insufficient vitamin D levels alter expression of autophagy-regulating miR-142-3p in intestinal tissues of mice and IBD patients, providing insight into the mechanisms by which vitamin D deficiency modulates IBD pathogenesis. We explored gene-environment interactions by evaluating the effects of vitamin D deficiency in mice that have an important IBD genetic risk variant, Nod2fs, which also disrupts autophagy. Interestingly, the combination of vitamin D deficiency and Nod2fs did not impact autophagy at baseline. However, upon microbial disturbances in the microbiome, the vitamin D deficient Nod2fs mice had pervasive autophagy defects. This is in line with the multi-hit model of IBD, which proposes that many insults converge to cause defects in the intestinal epithelium. In our gene-environment analyses, we also observed that the Nod2fs mutation led to reduced serum vitamin D, a novel interaction between an IBD genetic risk factor and environmental factor of interest. Through this work we were able to identify therapeutic targets of interest and contribute to the understanding of IBD pathogenesis. | Ph.D. | urban, environmental | 11, 13 |
| Edwards, Brydne Morgan | Cameron, Debra||King, Gillian | Exploring Social Inclusion from the Perspectives of Children in an Inclusive Recreation Program | Rehabilitation Science | 2019-06-01 | Children with disabilities continue to have fewer opportunities to experience social inclusion compared to children without disabilities. Having children with and without disabilities participate in integrated recreation programs is one strategy assumed to promote inclusion during childhood. However, what social inclusion means and how it is facilitated in recreation settings is not fully known. Furthermore, it is unclear whether such recreation programs have an influence on any aspect of inclusion outside of the program. Drawing on the perspectives of children with and without disabilities who participated in the same inclusive recreation program, this study aimed to explore: (a) how social inclusion is perceived and experienced; (b) how social inclusion is fostered and promoted, and; (c) whether the program influenced their thoughts or perspectives outside the program. This study adopted a generic qualitative methodology. Seventeen children with and without disabilities who were registered for the same inclusive program were recruited. Each child participated in two semi-structured interviews; one during the program and one four to six weeks after the program. Additionally, three, two-hour observations were conducted while each participant was involved in the program’s activities. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyze interview and observation data. This study revealed children’s unique perspectives and experiences of social inclusion in an inclusive recreation setting. From the perspectives of children, social inclusion has three main dimensions; contextual, intrapersonal and interpersonal. Each dimension contained two key aspects of social inclusion that were important to children. This study showed how these aspects of social inclusion can be promoted using specific inclusive strategies, identified by children with and without disabilities, to enable integrated recreation program to be more inclusive. Finally, this study showed that participation in inclusive recreation has an impact on children without disabilities’ attitudes toward people with disabilities generally, which may facilitate a reduction in societal stigma over time. This study helps clinicians, scientists, program developers and policy makers to consider how meaningful inclusion experiences can be facilitated by policy reform, research and service delivery. | Ph.D. | disabilit | 3 |
| Gerrard, Darlee Alexandra | Pedretti, Erminia | Exploring STEM in a University Outreach Setting | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-03-01 | STEM literature has proliferated in recent decades. However, few studies consider the setting of university-based STEM outreach programs - programs that negotiate the border of informal and formal learning. In this ethnographic case study, I explore a STEM summer camp at a large Canadian university via two cohorts of learners: (15 elementary school age) campers and (14 undergraduate and graduate student) instructors. The research questions ask: What are the motivations for participating in a university STEM outreach program? How do participants perceive or understand STEM, and its purposes, in a university STEM outreach program? How do participants experience teaching and learning in a university STEM outreach program? Data collection methods included semi-structured interviews, questionnaires, reflections, observations, artifacts, and images. Inductive and deductive analysis are used to identify thematic categories. The findings identify similarities in the interests and aspirations of cohorts that underpin common experiential, preparatory, and learning motivations. Both cohorts are motivated to learn about science and engineering; instructors anticipate teaching. Perceptions of STEM prioritize and conflate science and engineering and view STEM as providing an understanding of the world, affecting change, and serving personal goals. STEM is seen as interdisciplinary, with engineering design informing how it is organized, described, and conveyed. STEM is characterized as hands-on, fun, easy, and broadly transferrable. It is positioned as a reciprocal fund of knowledge; a fund of experience that is built, valued, and leveraged. The facilitation of teaching and learning in the outreach program includes tending to the management of the physical camp space, the relational camp space, and leading hands-on, design-oriented activities. Findings suggest that the outreach program is a site of learning shaped for and by its participants. STEM learning is mediated through engineering design and constructionist approaches that prioritize participant funds of knowledge, in a meaningful third space. This offers a reconceptualization of STEM where engineering is present as content, context, and pedagogy; a perspective that broadens and deepens the connections to be made across practices in outreach, engineering, and education so critical to this work. The thesis concludes with implications and recommendations for theory and practice. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Stover, Katherine | Brian, Jessica | Exploring the Impact of Early Intervention on Toddlers with ASD and their Parents | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11-01 | The Social ABCs is a parent-mediated intervention for toddlers with or at-risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The intervention targets children’s functional social communication skills and early positive affect sharing with a primary caregiver. Using data from a randomized control trial of the Social ABCs, the current thesis investigated the impact of the intervention on children’s disruptive behaviour, as well as parent outcomes. Study One provided a review of randomized controlled trials conducted on parent-mediated interventions for toddlers with or at-risk of ASD from 2000 to 2021. Approximately half of the included studies reported significant improvements in children’s social communication outcomes as a result of the intervention. This review highlighted the need for further research to examine the associations between child outcomes and parent factors within parent-mediated interventions to explain differences in outcomes across intervention models. Study Two examined whether participation in the Social ABCs intervention had a collateral impact on children’s disruptive behaviour. Results indicated that children in the treatment group displayed significant decreases in refusal behaviours and physical aggression following the intervention. Participants in the control group did not display similar decreases in disruptive behaviours. In addition, children’s refusals were negatively associated with their vocal initiations towards parents, highlighting an emerging association between communication and challenging behaviour. Study Three explored the relationships between child outcomes and parent variables (i.e., stress, fidelity, self-efficacy, satisfaction) within the context of the Social ABCs. Results indicated that, across groups, parents’ feelings of self-efficacy were negatively associated with feelings of parenting stress at baseline and follow-up. In addition, parents’ implementation fidelity was negatively associated with children’s physical aggression at baseline, and at follow-up, children’s ASD symptomatology was negatively associated with parenting stress. The implications of these results are discussed within the context of the Social ABCs and parent-mediated interventions more broadly. Areas for future research are discussed. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Chukwueke, Chidera Chisom | Le Foll, Bernard | Exploring the Influence of the Dopamine D3 and Cannabinoid CB1 Receptors in Substance Use Disorders: A look into human drug reinforcement and cue-reactivity | Pharmacology | 2021-11-01 | Introduction: There is a growing need for the better understanding of the neurobiology that underlies substance use disorder. The dopamine D3 receptor (DRD3) has received research attention recently due to its apparent involvement in alcohol use disorder (AUD) and tobacco use disorder (TUD). The current series of human laboratory experimentations aim to explore the role of DRD3 in both AUD and TUD using a variety of investigative techniques. The final study serves as a contrast that explores the cannabinoid CB1 (CB1R) receptor in TUD. Methods: Study 1 examines DRD3 levels between AUD subjects and healthy controls using positron emission tomography and a DRD3 preferring radiotracer, [11C]-(+)-PHNO. The relationship between [11C]-(+)-PHNO binding and AUD phenotypes, motivation to consume alcohol (measured by an intravenous self-administration procedure) and alcohol cue elicited craving (measured by cue-reactivity), is also explored in AUD subjects. Study 2 and 3 respectively investigate DRD3 and CB1R single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in phenotypes of TUD (both nicotine reinforcement [measured by forced choice] as well as craving [measured by cue-reactivity]). Results: In study 1, there was a global reduction of [11C]-(+)-PHNO binding, reflecting DRD2/3 levels, in AUD subjects compared to healthy. [11C]-(+)-PHNO binding in the limbic striatum was positively associated with alcohol cue-elicited craving, however this and no other association withstood Bonferroni corrections. In study 2, the Glycine allele carriers of the DRD3 Ser9Gly SNP experienced a blunted smoking cue-elicited craving, but the SNP showed no effect on nicotine reinforcement. On the other hand, in study 3, the C allele carriers of the rs2023239 CB1R SNP demonstrated lower relative nicotine reinforcement but this SNP did not affect cue-reactivity. Conclusion: Despite discrepant methods, these results seem to point to a potentially larger role of DRD3 in drug cue-associated craving compared to drug reinforcement as measured by these laboratory procedures. That said, understanding the neurobiological mechanisms underlying this relationship requires more research as the 2 studies point to different directions regarding the DRD3 and craving relationship. Therefore, further validation of the clinical utility of DRD3 as a potential drug target for substance use disorder pharmacotherapy is needed. | Ph.D. | emission, labor, invest, consum | 7, 8, 9, 12 |
| Lee-Foon , Nakia | Grace , Daniel | Exploring the State of Sexual Health Literacy among Young Black Gay and Other Men who Have Sex with Other Men in Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06-01 | Despite advancements in diagnosis, treatment and prevention for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), young Black gay and other men who have sex with men (YBGM) experience significantly higher HIV rates compared to other young gay and other men who have sex with men. While sexual health literature indicates various socio-structural factors (e.g., systemic racism, low income) contribute to these rates, research on YBGM’s sexual health literacy in Canada is sparse. I developed a qualitative study guided by intersectionality and the social-ecological model theoretical frameworks and methodologically informed by Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory to begin addressing this scarcity. My primary research question was: what is the state of YBGM’s sexual health literacy? My sub-questions were: 1) what or who are YBGM’s sources of sexual health information?; 2) how do YBGM evaluate the information they gather from these sources? and 3) in what ways, if any, are YBGM applying this information in their everyday lives? Twenty-two YBGM aged 16 to 31 years underwent a socio-demographic survey and one-on-one semi-structured interviews. The first manuscript centered on YBGM’s pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) knowledge. My findings revealed that YBGM’s limited PrEP knowledge was due to healthcare institutions’ inability to effectively disseminate PrEP information coupled with the impact of PrEP stigma and their social locations on this knowledge. Manuscript two explored YBGM’s approaches to evaluating the credibility of key sexual health information sources. My findings countered common narratives in the literature that identified sex-ed, same aged peers and family as key sources. Older Black peers were seen as a key source who used ‘testimonials’, a commonly used knowledge dissemination approach in the Black-African diaspora, to share their experiential sexual health knowledge with YBGM. My final manuscript explored the state of healthcare providers’ sexual health communication skills through the lens of YBGM. Participants’ accounts pointed to providers’ inadequate skills and to the healthcare system’s medicalization of YBGM whereby their race, sexual orientation and/or age automatically categorized them as needing HIV and other STI testing even when they sought non-sexual healthcare. We conclude with the study’s implications on sexual healthcare research, policy and practice. | Ph.D. | low income, healthcare, knowledge, racism, income, ecolog, institut | 1, 3, 4, 10, 15, 16 |
| Zhu, Diya No middle name | Stephan, Doug DWS | Exploring the Synthesis and Reactivity of Phosphorus/Boron Frustrated Lewis Pairs and Nitrogen-based Lewis Acids | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | The definition of frustrated Lewis pairs has been broadened from combinations of sterically encumbered Lewis acids and bases to stable classical Lewis adducts, which opens a new avenue as FLPs in challenging small molecule activation and catalysis. The objective for this thesis is to explore the design and fundamental reactivity of Lewis acid and base pairs featuring group 13 and 15 elements within the realm of frustrated Lewis pair chemistry.An FLP strategy was used in the interception of intermediates in mesityl-N-oxide-mediated phosphine oxidation with stable P/B-based Lewis adducts. The FLP 1,3-addition products were shown to react with strong bases allowing the phosphine oxidation to proceed, which provided experimental data supporting the related phosphine oxidation mechanism proposed by Cummins. Highly electrophilic hydridoboranes, H2B(C6F5)·SMe2 and HB(C6F5)2 were demonstrated to yield bicyclic and cyclic boron species when exposed to carboxylic acids or phosphinic acid. The subsequent reactivity of many of these heterocycles with Lewis bases was investigated. Oxygen-bridging P/B molecules featuring a weak Lewis acid centre were prepared and the FLP reactivity of these species was systematically explored. Such POB-containing intramolecular FLPs were found to effect in the capture of N2-surrogate, diazomethanes, which resulted in the formation of unexpected stable heterocycles. Isomeric nitrenium Lewis acids were prepared from alkylation of spiro[fluorene‐9,3’‐indazole] with tBuCl. The chemical properties of the cations were examined and their reactivity with phosphorus and carbon nucleophiles was explored. | Ph.D. | invest, methane, species, species | 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Fernando, Ann | Gariepy, Jean | Exploring the Theranostic Potential of Gas Vesicle Protein Nanobubbles | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Halophilic archaeabacterial gas vesicles (GVs) are a class of protein nanobubbles isolated from buoyant, aquatic microorganisms. The hollow chamber of GVs enables them to be readily visualized by ultrasound (US) waves. Extensive research has gone into characterizing the imaging or therapeutic functions of GVs, but no work has sought to combine these functions to develop GVs as multifunctional theranostics. We hypothesized that GVs can serve as a scaffold to integrate therapeutics or tumor targeting ligands through covalent or noncovalent approaches. This thesis investigates the strategy of chemically conjugating therapeutics to the free amino groups on the GV shell, and explores the non-covalent complexation of GVs with bispecific linkers to introduce tumor-targeting function to GVs. The first study demonstrated that covalently modifying the surface of GVs with the photosensitizer called chlorin e6 (Ce6) transformed them into light-sensitive, photoactive nanobubbles (Ce6-GVs) with potent cancer-cell killing effects. The second study used bispecific adapters to noncovalently link monoclonal antibodies that bound Ce6-GVs, in order to target Ce6-GVs to cancers overexpressing the tumor antigen called carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The third study focused on the surface modification of Ce6-GVs using GV specific antibodies covalently modified with another tumor targeting ligand called folate. Overall, the results of these studies support the hypothesis that GVs can be repurposed into nanoscale theranostics for cancer. GVs can be manipulated in diverse ways for diagnostic or imaging purposes, which warrants further investigation on GVs and other ligands or tools that may be useful to develop them into beneficial biologics. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Vladimirov, Maria | Davidson, Alan AD | Extracellular Contractile Injection Systems (eCIS) - Characterization of Conserved Phage Tail-like Structures in Streptomyces | Biochemistry | 2021-06-01 | Extracellular contractile injection systems (eCIS) are bacteriophage tail-like structures produced by bacteria that have been implicated in diverse interactions with eukaryotic cells. Despite their distribution across many bacteria and archaea they have been relatively understudied and are often misclassified as other secretion systems or tailocins. In this work I performed a comprehensive analysis of eCIS across bacterial genomes. I show that all eCIS are comprised of nine core protein families and are closely related to contractile phage tails, a relationship emphasized by the discovery of rare eCIS-like prophages that are the likely evolutionary link between the two. I classify eCIS into six distinct groups and show that group 1 eCIS are ubiquitous in the Streptomyces genus, where their production is linked to the developmental program of these complex filamentous bacteria. The eCIS of Streptomyces coelicolor are natively produced as intracellular phage tail-like structures. Mutations that abrogate eCIS formation cause developmental defects and reduced levels of hyphal cell death at specific times during differentiation that correlate with maximal eCIS production, suggesting a potential role in programmed cell death. | Ph.D. | production, conserv, conserv | 12, 14, 15 |
| Finseth, Sonia | Peterson-Badali, Michele||Skilling, Tracey | Facilitating Pathways Out of Crime: The Role of Strengths in Risk Assessment and Rehabilitation among Justice-Involved Youth | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-06-01 | This dissertation consists of two papers examining the role of strengths in the youth justice context. Paper 1 examined the psychometric properties of a strengths measure, the Structured Assessment of Protective Factors for Violence Risk – Youth Version (SAPROF-YV). In a sample of 305 youth, exploratory factor analysis suggested the removal of four items and the resulting revised scale demonstrated good internal consistency and strong convergent validity. There was additionally evidence for a promotive effect, with the total score inversely predicting reoffending in the 3-year follow-up period. Strength factors did not provide incremental predictive validity over risk factors. A significant moderation effect revealed that strengths are protective among lower risk youths but amplify the impact of risk on recidivism among higher risk youths. Paper 2 focused on the relationship between strengths and service provision and sought to evaluate whether strengths function as specific responsivity factors as proposed by the Risk-Need- Responsivity model. Findings from a sample of 261 youth indicated that as the proportion of identified criminogenic needs met via probation-provided and -coordinated services increased, youths’ odds of reoffending decreased, for both males and females. Importantly, having more identified strengths was associated with having a higher proportion of criminogenic needs addressed during probation, lending some support to the hypothesis that strengths function as specific responsivity factors; the relationship between service-to-needs matching and reoffending was not moderated by strengths. These studies provide preliminary support for the validity and reliability of the SAPROF-YV. Given the controversial moderation findings, the use of the SAPROF-YV for enhancing recidivism risk prediction is not currently recommended; however, the findings do suggest that youth strength profiles are associated with the quality and quantity of services received over the course of probation and further research into how strengths can guide and improve services for justice-involved youth is warranted. | Ph.D. | female, violence | 5, 16 |
| Bowers, Anna Lee | Henderson, Joanna | Factors Influencing Service Engagement of Youth in Services for Concurrent Disorders: A Mixed-methods Approach | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-03-01 | Objective. Despite the high prevalence and negative impacts of co-occurring substance use and mental health problems (i.e., concurrent disorders) among youth (ages 14 to 24 years), the dearth of evidence-based and developmentally appropriate services for youth with concurrent disorders, and high rates of discontinuing services early among this population, little research has focused on understanding their service engagement. This dissertation employed a mixed- methods approach to understand a broad range of factors influencing engagement of youth in services for concurrent disorders. Quantitative Study. This investigation examined service engagement, as defined by attending at least five sessions, to understand how engagement changes across service stages and what client-related factors predict engagement. Three hundred and two youth presenting to an outpatient concurrent disorders service completed questionnaires investigating a variety of factors. Those found to be positively associated with service engagement included greater challenges with anxiety, depression, trauma, substance use, and emotion regulation. Identifying alcohol as the only substance of concern was negatively associated with engaging in services. Qualitative Study. This investigation allowed for a broader and more in-depth understanding of service engagement by considering client as well as service-related factors. Qualitative data were gathered from semi-structured interviews with 20 youth who had attended or were attending outpatient services for concurrent disorders. Thematic analysis revealed that youth consider engagement to be expressed in a variety of ways including attendance, participation in sessions, and actions taken between sessions. Factors – including social relationships, mental health and/or substance use challenges, readiness to change, treatment approach, and clinician characteristics – influenced service engagement. Conclusion. Youth engagement in services for concurrent disorders is more complex than just attending sessions. Behaviours during and between sessions are also important. Service engagement among this population is impacted by a variety of factors, including youth’s perspectives of services and their mental health and/or substance use challenges. It is critical that early service delivery efforts seek to understand the needs and preferences of youth in order to individualize services and promote engagement. Continued research should focus on factors influencing service engagement to help establish best practices for youth in services for concurrent disorders. | Ph.D. | mental health, invest | 3, 9 |
| De Courcy, Eileen Theresa | Rolheiser, Carol | Faculty Perceptions on Contextual Factors as Affordances or Constraints to Innovative Teaching and Learning in Polytechnic Institutions | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | The current global context and the ongoing disruptive nature of technological advancements continue to shape the narrative surrounding the relevance of traditional models of higher education. Although innovation in teaching has been identified as a priority for most institutions of higher education, there is limited research on the perception of innovative teaching directly from the innovators themselves – faculty members. Furthermore, there is a lack of empirical research on the institutional conditions conducive to innovative teaching practices in a polytechnic model of education in Ontario, Canada. Using an adaptation of Cognitive Work Analysis and the Human-tech Framework (Vicente, 2006), the purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of innovation from the perspective of college faculty members and to explore the contextual factors that enable or constrain the development and use of innovative teaching approaches. This inquiry utilized extreme case sampling to investigate the perceptions of five faculty members in Ontario Colleges offering a polytechnic model of education. Using Seidman’s (2013) three-series interview process, and an analysis of teaching artifacts and publicly available institutional documents, a detailed picture of the participants’ teaching experience and professional identities in the context of their institutions has been painted. Key affordances and constraints related to their innovative teaching practice are identified. The major findings emerging from the study are, first, a social justice identity was found to be a key factor in shaping the participants’ innovative teaching practice, as was their induction into the profession. Second, the participants identified that organizational culture factors, including negative relationships with peers and leadership, misaligned institutional priorities, and staffing models, were impacting their ability to innovate. Last, the participants highlighted the design of the higher-education system as a barrier to the progression of innovative teaching. That includes constraints associated with the evolution of Ontario colleges to polytechnic institutions. The results of this study contributes knowledge and provide insights into the contextual factors that impact the development and use of innovative teaching practices in polytechnic institutions. This information will be of interest to educational developers, policy makers and administrators interested in advancing innovative teaching practices at their institutions. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, learning, invest, institut, social justice | 4, 9, 16 |
| Luu, Shelly | Swallow, Carol J | FAM46C/TENT5C Is a Tumour Suppressor in Gastric Adenocarcinoma | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Despite improvements in surgical and perioperative adjuvant therapy, gastric adenocarcinoma carries a 75% case-fatality rate and approximately 40% of Western patients die of recurrent disease. As an important regulator of centriolar duplication, cell motility, and invasion, polo-like kinase 4 (PLK4) has been identified as an oncogene which affects tumourigenesis, cancer metastasis, and response to chemotherapy. Change in PLK4 expression has been identified in numerous human cancers, but Plk4’s role in gastric adenocarcinoma is not well defined; I hypothesized that Plk4 or its interactors could be intimately involved in gastric cancer metastasis and progression. The high degree of molecular heterogeneity in gastric adenocarcinoma and variability in patient outcomes highlight the importance of utilizing patient cohorts to identify novel therapeutic targets. As such, I performed a comprehensive clinical chart review of 238 consecutive gastric adenocarcinoma patients who underwent a curative-intent resection. Recurrence remained a major cause of death in this patient cohort and was only predicted by pathologic staging. Our laboratory had previously identified a number of high-confidence functional interactors of Plk4, and, for each interactor, I determined the mRNA expression in tumour vs paired normal mucosa in our patient cohort. From this interrogation, I identified low expression of FAM46C, a Plk4 inhibitor and tumour suppressor in multiple myeloma, as a novel predictor of inferior disease-specific survival and recurrence at locoregional or distant sites. In vitro experiments demonstrate that FAM46C expression is cytotoxic to gastric cancer cells and suppresses cell migration. RNA-sequencing of patients’ gastric tumour and normal mucosa further reveal that ion-channel related pathways are significantly dysregulated in low-FAM46C tumours, but not in high-FAM46C tumours, implying a novel relationship between FAM46C and ion channels. Targeted evaluation revealed a correlation between the expression of FAM46C and KCNQ1, the main potassium recycler in parietal cells, both in vitro and in patient samples. FAM46C-depleted gastric cancer cells were also better able to survive in a high KCl concentration environment. These findings provide support for FAM46C as a tumour suppressor and therapeutic target in gastric adenocarcinoma patients, and potentially reveal a new role for FAM46C in regulating KCNQ1-mediated evasion of apoptosis and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. | Ph.D. | labor, transit, recycl | 8, 11, 12 |
| Brouillard, Lochin | Cochelin, Isabelle | Families of Flesh, Families of Spirit: Familial Conversions and Kinship in Medieval Hagiography (400–1200) | Medieval Studies | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation analyzes the representation and discourse on familial conversions in Latin saints’ Lives written between the fifth and the twelfth centuries in western Europe. Its aim is to broaden our understanding of medieval kinship, by revisiting the significance of the biological family in medieval hagiography, and by exploring a notion of kinship created through spiritual bonds rather than filiation and marriage. The first two chapters are surveys, which highlight broad trends across a wide chronological frame while also offering close readings of each text. Both chapters begin by interrogating the saints’ origins and their entrance in the religious life. The saints’ early days might be characterized by renunciation and conflict or integration and collaboration with their birth kin. The two overview chapters then move on to the relationship between members of the same birth kin who entered the religious life. The vitae often mention the existence of these relatives who share a religious vocation, but do not always develop the relationship between them. Relatives are but one piece in the saints’ larger spiritual network. Different types of relationships (siblings, parent-children, husband-wife) are moreover explored, each of them emphasizing different themes, from equality and love to hierarchy and authority. Gender clearly shapes the portrayal of the saints and their natal kin, as the Lives of female saints and male saints present distinct characteristics. The third chapter is devoted to the cycle of Maubeuge, a group of hagiographies dedicated to seventh-century saints from the same natal kin in what would now be northern France and Belgium. Over the centuries, additional saints were attached to the original nucleus through alleged familial ties. Rather than retelling the story of a sacred bloodline, the cycle of Maubeuge stresses the importance of education for the transmission of institutional memory and practices. My last chapter focuses on the Life of Stephen of Obazine, composed in the second half of the twelfth century in the Limousin region. It explores the centrality of the language of the spiritual family in the text as a means to preserve the community’s distinct identity and to reimagine gender. | Ph.D. | gender, female, labor, equalit, institut | 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Lam, Ka Yee | Passeport, Elodie | Fate and Removal of Triclosan in Open–water Treatment Wetlands | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | Triclosan is an antimicrobial agent and one of the many emerging contaminants that is frequently detected in the environment. Triclosan is an endocrine disruptor that is able to accumulate in living organisms (i.e., fish, algae, humans). Triclosan can transform into various transformation products that are potentially toxic and can contribute to bacteria resistance against antibiotics. This research aimed at minimizing the accumulation of toxic by–products in open–water treatment wetlands for the safe transformation of triclosan. This work focused on triclosan phototransformation, and algae uptake and transformation. The results showed that the half–life of triclosan was generally shorter in solutions with a high pH (where the pH is greater than triclosan’s pKa at 8.2), and low dissolved organic carbon (DOC) concentration. However, in treatment wetlands, where the pH is around 7, triclosan phototransformation cannot be maximized unless the DOC is reduced, and the pH is increased. The use of Euglena gracilis strain Z was studied for its potential to (i) provide an additional transformation pathway for triclosan and (ii) naturally increase the pH of the water via photosynthesis. A series of multiple laboratory–scale algae reactors was carried out to investigate triclosan fate in open–water treatment wetlands. The pH of the algae–containing reactors increased during the 25–day experimental period for wetland water, autoclaved wetland water, and growth media. More than 90% triclosan concentration decrease was also observed in the reactors that used continuous (white) light. Data on kinetics, pathway apportionment, and transformation products showed that phototransformation, algae uptake and transformation, microbial transformation, and adsorption (at low pH) all contributed to triclosan elimination in these lab–scale algae reactors. Altogether, these results suggest that triclosan removal can be accomplished with open-water treatment wetlands while minimizing the accumulation of triclosan’s transformation products. | Ph.D. | water, labor, invest, fish, land | 6, 8, 9, 14, 15 |
| Takhar, Manpreet Kaur | Chan, Arthur | Fate of Food Cooking Emissions in the Atmosphere | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Food cooking emissions represent an important source of particulate matter in urban areas, contributing 10-35% of total organic aerosol. Cooking emissions also contribute significant levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as carbonyls which are important precursors to formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA). In this work, I use heated cooking oils as a model to investigate the reaction pathways that drive formation of VOCs and cooking organic aerosol (COA), and their evolution in physicochemical properties. I demonstrate that VOCs and primary COA emissions are driven by autoxidation reactions involving radical species, and the composition of cooking oils strongly influences the reaction mechanisms. Antioxidants, routinely employed in food industry to delay oil oxidation have complex effects on autoxidation reaction mechanisms. Furthermore, in this work, physicochemical properties and chemistry of COA are investigated. I demonstrate that evaporation of oxidized cooking oil particles is much slower than unoxidized oil particles, despite containing a higher fraction of volatile reaction products than unoxidized cooking oil particles. Additionally, a new analytical approach was developed to characterize the chemical composition of SOA. It is shown that SOA formed from cooking oil vapors undergo fragmentation reactions with increasing atmospheric oxidative aging. Moreover, detailed chemical speciation and total production of SOA from heated cooking oils are explained from aldehydes and its oxidation products which are significant contributors to VOCs from cooking emissions. Overall, knowledge about both oxidation pathways provide useful insights into the importance of fragmentation reactions during evolution of cooking emissions in the atmosphere. | Ph.D. | knowledge, emission, invest, urban, production, emissions, species, species | 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Takhar, Manpreet Kaur | Chan, Arthur | Fate of Food Cooking Emissions in the Atmosphere | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Food cooking emissions represent an important source of particulate matter in urban areas, contributing 10-35% of total organic aerosol. Cooking emissions also contribute significant levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) such as carbonyls which are important precursors to formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA). In this work, I use heated cooking oils as a model to investigate the reaction pathways that drive formation of VOCs and cooking organic aerosol (COA), and their evolution in physicochemical properties. I demonstrate that VOCs and primary COA emissions are driven by autoxidation reactions involving radical species, and the composition of cooking oils strongly influences the reaction mechanisms. Antioxidants, routinely employed in food industry to delay oil oxidation have complex effects on autoxidation reaction mechanisms. Furthermore, in this work, physicochemical properties and chemistry of COA are investigated. I demonstrate that evaporation of oxidized cooking oil particles is much slower than unoxidized oil particles, despite containing a higher fraction of volatile reaction products than unoxidized cooking oil particles. Additionally, a new analytical approach was developed to characterize the chemical composition of SOA. It is shown that SOA formed from cooking oil vapors undergo fragmentation reactions with increasing atmospheric oxidative aging. Moreover, detailed chemical speciation and total production of SOA from heated cooking oils are explained from aldehydes and its oxidation products which are significant contributors to VOCs from cooking emissions. Overall, knowledge about both oxidation pathways provide useful insights into the importance of fragmentation reactions during evolution of cooking emissions in the atmosphere. | Ph.D. | knowledge, emission, invest, urban, production, emissions, species, species | 4, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Adam, Margaret E. | Gagne, Antoinette | Finding the Self that Teaches: A Co-active Coaching Approach to Mindful Practice and Wellbeing in Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | Finding the Self that Teaches:A Co-active Coaching Approach to Mindful Practice and Wellbeing in Education Doctor of PhilosophyMargaret E. Adam Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Ontario Institute of Studies in Education University of Toronto 2021 Abstract This research is a qualitative study concerned with developing teachers’ ongoing professional learning through the lens of co-active coaching. It seeks to explore the mechanisms of a holistic model of co-active coaching that influence and deepen Ontario secondary school teachers’ understanding of the self in practice. It includes a self-study that investigates my professional development as a co-active member of the research. The study examines the ways in which learning occurs to cultivate mindful practice and wellbeing in teachers. The co-active coaching model is framed largely by a holistic approach to learning supported by Whitworth et al. (2007) who emphasize the quality and importance of relationship in learning. Co-active coaching is collaborative, non-directive, and co-creative where the desired outcome is a mutual growth in self-understanding and improved performance in teaching. Five secondary school teachers engaged in professional learning and collaboration over 9 months, where they reflected on their development of the self in practice. The narrative analysis of teacher learning indicates a positionality of the teacher in “Finding the Self that Teaches” and is demonstrated through the beliefs, assumptions and practices that emerge from their narratives. The results of this study demonstrate that learning occurs through multiple orientations to teaching and learning. The inward reflection of the participants indicates that a key thread of “who teachers are” is woven through the fabric of “what they do” in practice. Teacher participants reported changes in their thinking and a shift in their perspectives of their own wellbeing and their practices. They demonstrated that co-active coaching was a useful means of supporting professional collaboration and positively influencing mindful practice. This research contributes new knowledge to the field of professional learning, holistic education and coaching and has implications for co-active coaching, as a process for building capacity and delivering sustainable, professional learning to teachers—to be used formally in their classrooms and informally with their colleagues. By implementing co-active coaching as a practice for embedded, ongoing professional learning, schools can take action to ensure high quality support for both educators and students. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, knowledge, learning, labor, invest, institut | 3, 4, 8, 9, 16 |
| Dathan, Michele | Davydenko, Sergei | Firms' Access to External Capital Markets | Management | 2021-06-01 | This thesis examines external forces that impact firms' willingness and ability to raise external funds in the capital markets. Chapter 1 introduces the research topics that the thesis addresses and briefly outlines their findings. Chapter 2 examines a regulation that was designed to increase the number of private firms choosing to go public in the United States, but which actually resulted in fewer firms completing initial public offerings. Specifically, the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act was enacted to reduce the costs of going public for small firms by reducing the amount of required disclosure and allowing these firms to test the waters before filing public documents. This Chapter argues that these changes exacerbated information asymmetry in favour of firms over investors, discouraging all but the best firms from going public. Chapter 3 examines the impact of passive investors on firms' bond issuance decisions. This Chapter hypothesizes that firms take advantage of the presence of passive demand by issuing index-eligible bonds with features that favour firms. It shows empirically that firms care whether their bonds are index-eligible, and that as the level of passive demand increases, firms are more likely to issue bonds and the bonds they issue are larger and have lower spreads. By focusing on changes in index thresholds, the Chapter then shows that while bonds become larger, bond issuance decreases, consistent with some firms `reaching' to be included in the index while other firms opt out of the bond market. Chapter 4 examines two forms of seasoned equity offerings, which differ in terms of risk taken by financial intermediaries. Specifically, the Chapter compares bought deals, where underwriters buy shares from an issuer at a fixed price and then find buyers or risk holding the shares as inventory, to marketed deals, where underwriters build a book of interested buyers but do not take on any price or inventory risk. This Chapter examines why underwriters choose one form of intermediation over the other, and how bought deals change the way surplus is divided among firms, investors and underwriters and can result in inefficient seasoned equity offerings. | Ph.D. | equity, water, capital, invest, equit | 4, 6, 9, 10 |
| Wang, Sai | Park, Chul||Naguib, Hani | Foaming Effects on Conductivity Percolation Threshold in Conductive Polymer Composites | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Conductive filler/polymer composite foams (CPC) with micro-/nano-scale bubbles have attracted much attention due to their various advantages. Understanding the evolution of electrical behavior in CPC foams is important for their functional application. This thesis investigated the foaming effects on the re-alignment of the conductive filler and the subsequent conductivity percolation threshold of CPC foams experimentally and theoretically. The polystyrene (PS) and multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) were selected as the model system for analysis. In the experimental approach, we prepared a series of PS/MWCNTs composite foams using solvent-mixing method to blend PS and MWCNTs followed by the conventional batch foaming. It was found that at a relatively low void fraction, the electrical conductivity can be increased, and the percolation threshold can be decreased. In the theoretical modeling, a novel resistive network model based on Monte Carlo simulation to directly predict the electrical conductivity of CPC foams was developed. The model predictions agreed very well with the experimental data for both the solid and foamed composites. At relatively low void fractions (up to ~30 %), the growth of bubbles with size comparable to the MWCNT length increased the conductivity. The methods and models developed in this work are useful tools for understanding the underlying mechanism of percolation behavior in CPC foams, as well as quantitative tools in the design of CPC foams. Furthermore, the approaches and strategies used to develop such computational model can provide guidelines and useful references for model simulation in other functional polymer composite foams, such as thermally conductive polymer composite foams. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Xu, Rui | O'Reilly, Meaghan A. | Focusing Ultrasound to the Vertebral Canal | Medical Biophysics | 2022-03-01 | The blood spinal cord barrier (BSCB) and blood brain barrier (BBB) are semi-permeable barriers separating the spinal cord and brain vasculature from the parenchyma. Focused ultrasound can transiently open the BBB to improve therapeutic agent delivery to the brain. The extension of this technique to the human BSCB may similarly improve targeted therapies to the spinal cord. However, focusing ultrasound to the spinal cord is difficult because it is encased in the spine, which consists of stacked, irregularly shaped vertebrae that distort the intended foci. This thesis aimed to develop a spine-specific ultrasound array and simulation-based aberration correction method to generate a controlled focus in the intact vertebral canal. A spine-specific formulation of a multi-layered ray acoustics model was developed, and its accuracy characterized through comparison with set of 90 field measurements produced with a spherically focused 514kHz transducer. This model predicted maximum pressure locations and weighted focal volume locations with an accuracy of 2.3mm and 1.5mm respectively. The ray acoustics model was then used to optimize a vertebra-specific density (rho) - speed of sound (cL) function to maximize the model accuracy in calculating vertebra-induced time delays. A linear model was optimized in this work, cL(rho) = 0.35(rho - rho_w) + cL_w (w denotes water), which was able to reproduce the vertebra-induced delays with an accuracy of lambda/16, where lambda is the wavelength. The ray acoustics model was used to optimize the design of a spine-specific ultrasound phased array for maximum efficiency in focusing ultrasound through the posterior elements of the spine. The optimized array had four quadrants, two 64-element arrays for focusing ultrasound through the vertebra laminae, and two 64-element arrays for focusing ultrasound through the paravertebral spaces. One array quadrant was built and used to demonstrate transspine beamforming with geometric delays, hydrophone-based delays, and delays calculated with the ray acoustics model. The ray acoustics delays outperformed the geometric delays, but not the hydrophone-based delays. Demonstrating the feasibility of ultrasound array-based focusing through the spine is a critical step to advancing ultrasound treatments of the spinal cord. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Nakhjavani, Reza | Zhu, Jianwen | FPGA Micro-Architecture-Code Co-Design For Low-Density Parity-Check Codes For Flash Memories | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | The exponential growth of digital data has led to the proliferation of cloud storage systems as well as high-capacity, low-latency storage devices such as flash memory based solid-state drives (SSDs). These advances, along with the technology shrink, have increased the error rate both at system and device level. Storage device manufacturers and service providers often promise data reliability through error control coding. This dissertation is centered around the implementation of error correcting code (ECC) in data storage. In particular, we target low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes used for device-level and erasure codes used for system-level data reliability. Due to the ever-changing ECC requirements in the storage industry, we focus on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), given their short design cycles. Many studies on FPGA implementation of ECC focus on improving the hardware efficiency for a certain code of interest. This thesis extends this theme by considering hardware and code performance simultaneously. With the focus on ECCs used in data storage, we demonstrate a study of hardware-code co-design through an efficient FPGA micro-architecture that strikes a trade off between hardware efficiency and code performance. To this end, we leverage the FPGA’s inherent physical architecture to propose an efficient reconfigurable micro-architecture for LDPC decoders. Then, we address the limitations of ECC in flash memories and define a finite decoder design space. Finally, we propose an end-to-end solution in which we leverage machine learning techniques to design a finite alphabet iterative decoder which strikes a trade off between hardware efficiency and code performance. In a separate effort, we perform a quantitative study of erasure coding design on FPGAs. We demonstrate, through probabilistic analysis, that an efficient implementation ought to allocate more resources to the common-case, while reducing the performance target for less probable cases. | Ph.D. | learning, trade | 4, 10 |
| Smarandache, Bogdan Cezar | Meyerson, Mark D||Northrup, Linda S | Frankish-Muslim Diplomatic Relations and the Shared Minority Discourse in the Eastern Mediterranean, 517-692 AH/1123-1293 AD | Medieval Studies | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation examines the link between Christian-Muslim diplomatic relations and the conditions of confessional minorities in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean. It begins with a preliminary analysis of the legal and ideological frameworks that guided Christian and Muslim rulers in their policies towards minorities. It then surveys how these rulers involved minorities in their negotiations, upholding or challenging these frameworks, from the earliest Christian-Muslim encounters in the first/seventh century to the Norman and Seljuk invasions of Sicily and Anatolia in the fourth/eleventh century. The dissertation then shifts focus towards the Frankish Coastal Plain (Arabic: al-Sāḥil; Old French: Outremer) and Islamic Greater Syria (Arabic: Bilād al-Shām; Latin: Major Syria) from the First Crusade (488-492/1095-1099) to the conquest of the last Frankish stronghold of Acre by the Mamlūk sultan al-Ashraf Khalīl (689-693/1290-1293) in 690/1291. This dissertation offers a new analysis of Christian-Muslim relations that considers post-crusade developments in diplomatic practices as part of a continuum originating with relations between Byzantine emperors and Umayyad caliphs and their concerns over the welfare of minorities. It shows how rulers projected their authority by including minorities in their negotiations and how changes in the relations between rulers brought about the improvement or worsening of minority conditions throughout Mediterranean history. It also argues that the expressive (or symbolic) actions used to target minorities, or challenge the ability of rulers to protect them, were mutually intelligible across confessional divides. Thus, Frankish and Muslim rulers shared a common language of diplomacy that involved diplomatic conventions, such as gift-exchange, and they also shared a conceptualization of authority tied to their treatment of minorities and their ability to protect minorities that had evolved out of earlier discourses. تحاول هذه الأطروحة الربط بين العلاقات الدبلوماسية بين المسلمين والمسيحين كطرف في هذه العلاقة، وبين أوضاع الأقليات الدينية كطرف أخر. وتبدأ الأطروحة بتحليل الأطر القانونية والفكرية التي تؤثر على الحكام في سياساتهم بالنسبة إلى الأقليات. ثم تتبع محاولة معرفة كيفية استخدام الحكام لها فيما يخص شؤون الأقليات في مفاوضاتهم، خلال العلاقات الأولى بين المسلمين والمسيحيين إلى حين الفتوحات النورمانية والسلاجقة في القرن الرابع هجري\السابع ميلادي. بعد ذلك تركز على السهل الساحلي الذي كان تحت سيطرة الإفرنج آنذاك، وبلاد الشام التي كانت تحت سيطرة المسلمين وذلك يشمل الفترة من الدولة الإفرنجية حتى الاستيلاء على أخر حصون الفرنجة هناك على يد السلطان المملوكي الأشرف خليل في ٦٩٠هـ \ ١٢٩١م. تعرض هذه الأطروحة تحليلاً جديداً في تأريخ العلاقات الدبلوماسية باعتبار العلاقات جزء من الاستمرارية الحوارية التي بدأتها العلاقات بين الأمويين والبيزنطيين ومخاوفهم فيما تتعلق برعاية الأقليات وتعرض كيف تحكم الحكام سلطتهم بضمين الأقليات في مفاوضاتهم وكيف تتأثر أوضاع الأقليات كماً في السهل الساحلي وبلاد الشام بسبب التغييرات في العلاقات الدبلوماسية. إضافة إلى ذلك، كانت الإجراءات التعبيرية أو الرمزية التي استخدمها الحكام لتؤذي الأقليات مفهومة على الرغم من اختلافاتهم الدينية. وهكذا حكى المسلمون والمسيحيون لغة مشتركة تضمنت اهتمام بشؤون الأقليات، لأنهم شاركوا مفاهيم السلطة التي تنطوي على رعاية الأقليات. | Ph.D. | welfare, minorit | 1, 10 |
| Prescott-Brown, Marci Michelle Faith | Nyquist, Mary | Freedom Dues: Negotiating Race, Servitude, and Freedom in Early American Law and Literature | English | 2019-06-01 | Freedom dues were typically payments of money, land, or clothing that masters gave to servants upon completion of servitude. Using case studies, this thesis captures the arc of a historic transformation in how freedom dues were perceived between the mid-seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries; it illuminates how these dues became a humanitarian symbol and the narrative of self-actualization that arose about them. The narrative focus on freedom dues was generated through tracts advocating immigration to colonial America and was integral to early understandings of the promise of New World prosperity. The texts I address use this narrative to critique a society failing to live up to its implied ideal: enfranchisement through hard work. My thesis reveals that often relations of servitude morph into something that looks dangerously akin to chattel slavery. In Chapter One, I contrast the Lawes and Libertyes (1648), where servants were to be prevented from “be[ing] sent away emptie,” to the revisioning of this framework in the Fugitive Slave Law (1850), which enshrined slaves’ perpetual indebtedness. In Chapter Two, I use the Records of the Salem Witch-Hunt (1692-93) to examine how Tituba’s claim that the devil offered her an indenture followed by many “fine things” came to influence other testimonies. I argue that the narrative Tituba and others craft regarding the Devil's promise of servitude properly rewarded but not supplied by Massachusetts’s governors would have been shocking in New England at the time. Chapter Three analyses The Scarlet Letter (1850) and reveals that, by presenting Hester Prynne as a branded, lifelong indentured servant, Hawthorne effectively portrays a variety of servitude that appears similar to black slavery. Hester and Pearl have their customary white privileges undermined, I argue, and Hawthorne’s novel reveals abolitionist leanings. In Chapter Four, I consider Harriet Wilson’s autobiographical text, Our Nig (1859). The Bellmonts’ refusal to provide proper freedom dues to the novel’s protagonist highlights the degree to which her servitude has been slavish, and Wilson’s plea for support to remedy this wrong provides a final critique of "free" New England. | Ph.D. | humanitarian, land | 10, 15 |
| Minet, Laura | Hatzopoulou, Marianne | From Bike Lanes to Highway Trucks, Assessing the Impact of Transportation Policies on Air Pollution Exposure at Local and Regional Scales | Civil Engineering | 2020-11-01 | In a context of increasing concern for population exposure to ambient air pollution, it is crucial to develop tools to assist urban policies tackling air quality. In this thesis, techniques to investigate air quality at local and regional scales were developed and applied to analyze the impact of transportation policies on population exposure and health. The first part of this thesis consists in a large data collection campaign involving short-term stationary and mobile measurements of air pollutant concentrations in Toronto. Land-use regression (LUR) models based on the two data collection protocols are developed and compared with data from a panel study. Recommendations are provided for the design of short-term monitoring campaigns. In the second part of this thesis, we set-up a chemical transport model (CTM) and a plume-in-grid (PinG) model for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) to simulate the levels of various air contaminants at a scale of 1 km2. These models are based on a detailed traffic emission inventory and enable a refined analysis of population exposure to traffic-related air pollution. The CTM is combined with a health impact assessment tool to investigate the benefits of greening freight movements on urban air quality and health. In the third module, we use our LUR and air quality models to analyze the impact of transportation policies on population exposure and health. The fine spatial resolution of the LUR exposure surfaces is optimal to assess a major urban planning strategy of the City of Toronto: the installation of new bike facilities. We use our CTM to investigate the health and climate benefits of renewing the fleets of private household vehicles, transit buses and commercial vehicles. While we recommend the use of detailed air pollutant maps such as those obtained from LUR models to assist local policy making, spatially refined CTMs supplemented by comprehensive emission inventories are outstanding tools to assess and compare the benefits of transportation policies at a regional scale. | Ph.D. | pollution, emission, invest, urban, transit, climate, pollut, pollut, land | 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Tucker, James Milton | Fox, Harry | From Ink Traces to Ideology: Material, Text, and Composition of Qumran Community Rule Manuscripts | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2021-06-01 | This study is a fresh analysis of a collection of scrolls and fragments grouped under the rubric, The Community Rule or Serekh ha-Yaḥad. As part of the manuscripts discovered in the Judean Desert, the Community Rule manuscripts are all fragmentary to various degrees, yet attest to important issues of legal dispute and community formation in the Second Temple era. Whereas the previous 70 years of scholarship bifurcated some of these scrolls into different “works,” I argue for a process of compositional development which revolved around issues of legal authority and purity. It is my contention that textual similarities and differences—ink traces as it were—provide opportunity to probe into the legal ideology of the tradents, in terms of how anterior sources were configured to establish and project political authority in contradistinction to the tradents’ opponents. Consequently, I propose a compositional hermeneutic model that accounts for textual stability and change with respect to disputes of legal authority and notions of textuality in the Second Temple era. In addition, I provide several new editions, most importantly a new edition of 4QSerekh ha-Yaḥade (+ olim 4QOtot), 4QSerekh ha-Yaḥadb, and 1QS+ab (= 1QS, 1QSa, and 1QSb). These new editions were made by drawing on advanced manuscript studies in the digital humanities and material philology. Consequently, I provide a plethora of new textual readings and reconstructions. In short, this study observes and takes account of the various semantic and textual drifts in the compositional development attested in, among, and between the manuscripts of the so-called Communty Rule at Qumran. | Ph.D. | trade | 10 |
| Gurgis, Joseph John | Kerr, Gretchen A | From Safe to Safeguarding: Conceptualizing and Advancing Safe Sport | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2021-06-01 | The following dissertation sought to understand how sport stakeholders conceptualize and experience safe sport and to elicit their recommendations to advance safe sport, a movement that has emerged in response to cases of athlete maltreatment. To-date, the related literature indicates there is no universal definition of safe sport and thus, prevention and intervention initiatives differ; further, these initiatives are not necessarily empirically or theoretically driven. In Study 1, a constructivist grounded theory was employed, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with forty-three stakeholders in sport to elicit views of the meaning of the term safe sport. The findings revealed commonalities among the participants’ interpretations, specifically pertaining to the prevention of and intervention in incidences of physical, psychological, and sexual harm. Additionally, some participants’ interpretations expanded beyond the prevention of harm to include the optimisation of the sport experience, characterized by the promotion of positive values and human rights. In Study 2, an interpretive phenomenological analysis was used to explore equity-deserving athletes’ understanding and lived experiences of safe sport. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven athletes of diverse intersectional identities. The findings suggest that athletes from equity-deserving groups experience verbal and non-verbal forms of discrimination in sport and questioned whether safe sport was an attainable outcome for them. Moreover, athletes with visible, under-represented characteristics (e.g., Black, physical disability) perceived themselves as more vulnerable to unsafe sport experiences compared to athletes who could hide elements of their identity (e.g., gay athletes). Finally, Study 3 was a constructivist grounded theory that utilized semi-structured interviews to explore thirteen sport administrators’ perspectives of advancing safe sport. The participants recommended that sport organisations establish a universal framework of safe sport, design and implement education, implement and enforce policies, establish independent monitoring and complaint mechanisms, and conduct research to ensure advancement strategies are current and applicable. The current dissertation contributes to the growing body of safe sport literature by recommending that conceptualizations and advancement strategies of safe sport, which tend to be focused on the prevention of harm, extend to the promotion of human rights in sport through safeguarding. | Ph.D. | disabilit, equity, equit, human rights | 3, 4, 10, 16 |
| Semsar, Sepehr | Lehn, Peter | Full Scale Electric Vehicle Drivetrain-integrated Charging from a Single-phase AC grid and Wireless Power Transfer System | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-03-01 | The limited range and slow/inaccessible charging infrastructure of electric vehicles (EVs) makes it hard to justify the purchase of new EV. This is exacerbated by the higher cost of EVs compared to traditional internal combustion vehicles. This thesis proposes a drivetrain-integrated charging system which addresses some of the barriers hindering the widespread adoption of EVs. A drivetrain-integrated charging system is an EV charger that resides on-board the vehicle which re-purposes pre-existing components on the vehicle to constitute the required charging circuit. In other words, it leverages the power electronics and electric machine in the drivetrain to serve as part of the high voltage battery charging system. The proposed integrated charger is based on the dual-inverter drive, consisting of two traction inverters, two batteries and an open-winding machine. The addition of two extra half-bridge modules enable this drivetrain to directly connect to and charge from a single-phase AC grid at power levels comparable to the power rating of the drivetrain. A further addition of a small capacitor divider enables the charger to also serve as the receiver power electronics in a wireless power transmission system. The developed control schemes allow for regulating the charging rate of both batteries from either source with excellent efficiency. Bidirectional operation is also possible during single-phase AC charging, in order to provide grid support or to supply external loads, such as appliances, tools or even other EVs or homes. Simulation and full-scale experimental testing validated single-phase AC and wireless charging. Single-phase AC charging is demonstrated up to 19.2kW with peak efficiency over 97%. Wireless charging is demonstrated up to 6.6kW with a peak efficiency of over 95%. Practical considerations, such as user safety (and standards compliance) was verified experimentally using the full-scale system considering all applicable parasitic elements. Overall, the developed integrated charging solution can save cost and space on-board the vehicle while offering additional/improved functionalities compared to existing discrete solutions in use today. This can make EVs more attractive for potential adopters. | Ph.D. | wind, infrastructure, accessib | 7, 9, 11 |
| Salmon, Jeffrey Guy | Christopoulos, Constantin | Full-Scale Testing and Improvements to the Design and Use of the Gapped-Inclined Bracing System | Civil Engineering | 2021-06-01 | The gapped-inclined bracing (GIB) system is an innovative retrofitting device that was developed to improve the performance and prevent the collapse of reinforced concrete (RC) soft-storey buildings during earthquakes. The GIB system was designed to increase the displacement capacity of the soft ground floor without increasing the overall lateral resistance of the building. During an earthquake, the ground floor of GIB-retrofitted structures acts as an isolation layer protecting the upper floors of the building while maintaining the integrity and gravity-load-carrying capacity of the soft ground floor; this is accomplished using the geometry and gap element of the GIB system. This dissertation presents five contributions to the development of the GIB system. First, a four-phase, full-scale experimental programme of the device was completed. In the second phase of testing, the reversed cyclic response of two single storey, single bay, RC planar frames was studied: a conventional soft-storey and a GIB-retrofitted soft-storey. These frames represented the ground-floor of existing seismically vulnerable structures. The lateral displacement mechanism of the frames was governed by flexural hinging at the top and bottom of the columns, representing a common soft-storey failure. The results confirmed the improved seismic performance of GIB-retrofitted structures and revealed a stable GIB-only rocking response at extreme lateral drifts, which acts as a collapse-prevention system and a viable mechanism for post-earthquake performance. Second, these experiments were modelled using three computer software: OpenSees, VecTor2, and ATENA. Because damage of the structure was governed by flexural hinging, OpenSees was found to best represent the response of the experimental specimens. Third, the limit states of common GIB-to-structure connections were identified. Detailed finite-element analyses were performed to highlight potential failure modes and suggest strengthening options to increase the capacity of the connection. Fourth, the limits of stability for the bidirectional response of GIB-retrofitted structures were identified. Finally, with an improved understanding of the GIB system, a step-by-step design procedure for the retrofit of soft-storey buildings using the GIB system was proposed. The design procedure was exemplified for a 5-storey case-study structure. The effects of including supplemental damping in parallel with the GIB system was also investigated. | Ph.D. | buildings, invest | 9 |
| Lino, Marsel | Bendeck, Michelle P | Functions of Discoidin Domain Receptor 1 in Diabetic Vascular Calcification and Regulation of Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes in High-fat Fed Mice | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2019-11-01 | The extracellular milieu is a critical component of tissue structure and organization. The collagen-binding receptor tyrosine kinase Discoidin Domain Receptor 1 (DDR1) is an important sensor of the extracellular milieu that has been implicated in the pathogenesis of fibrosis, certain cancers, and atherosclerosis and vascular calcification. Due to its recent discovery, much remains to be learned about DDR1’s role in health and disease. In the present thesis, I describe a mechanism by which DDR1 promotes diabetic vascular calcification. In vivo, DDR1 deletion ameliorated diabetic vascular calcification and suppressed osteogenic transcription factor RUNX2. In vitro, DDR1 potentiated RUNX2 by the PI3K/Akt signaling axis. Downstream of Akt, GSK3β is an inhibitor of microtubule assembly and RUNX2. Microtubule organization was perturbed in DDR1 deficient cells and microtubule stabilization rescued nuclear RUNX2 translocation in DDR1-deficient cells. These findings demonstrate a novel pathway by which DDR1 promotes diabetic vascular calcification and implicate DDR1 in the regulation of microtubule assembly. Additionally, I discovered a novel function for DDR1 in the development of obesity-associated hyperglycemia and metabolic dysfunction. High fat feeding induced DDR1 expression in adipose tissue. Conversely, DDR1 deficient mice were leaner and were protected against metabolic dysfunction and had increased energy expenditure and UCP-1 expression in subcutaneous adipose tissue. In vitro, DDR1 inhibition blunted adipogenic differentiation of C3H10T1/2 cells and increased UCP-1 expression, whereas DDR1 overexpression suppressed UCP-1. These findings suggest that DDR1 deletion promotes beige fat formation whereas DDR1 suppresses it. Adipose tissue fibrosis is a known suppressor of beige fat formation and DDR1 has known functions in mediating fibrosis. Consistent with this, DDR1 deficient mice had decreased adipose tissue fibrosis, implicating DDR1 in the regulation of adipose tissue remodeling and whole-body energy metabolism, possibly by suppressing beige fat formation while concurrently promoting adipose tissue fibrosis. In conclusion, the research presented in this thesis demonstrates a signaling mechanism by which DDR1 promotes vascular calcification and uncovers a novel function of DDR1 in the regulation of adipogenesis, beige fat formation, and adipose tissue fibrosis. Taken together, these observations suggest that DDR1 is an important matrix sensor and determinant of cellular differentiation. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Francis, Roshane | Kim, Tae-Hee | Gastrointestinal Transcription Factors drive Lineage-specific Developmental Programs in Organ Specification and Cancer | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2020-11-01 | The adult gut houses a series of organs derived from a naïve, embryonic population, called the endoderm. During embryonic development, the endoderm specifies into unique gastrointestinal identities through the temporal and spatial control of master transcription factors. Expressed in a tissue-specific manner, master transcription factors bind to DNA regulatory elements of multiple target genes to activate organ-specific transcriptional programs. During gut development, these programs drive organ specification, its growth, and lastly, lineage determination and maintenance. Although accumulating evidence shows global enhancer activation and aberrant expression of developmental transcription factors in gut cancers, little is known about how these factors drive gastric development and cancer. In this thesis, I first defined gastrointestinal organ-specific chromatin accessibility and gene expression during development using high-throughput sequencing technologies: cumulative analysis revealed dynamic epigenetic regulation of SOX family of transcription factors during gastric determination. Furthermore, I revealed that Sox2 is not only essential for gastric specification, by maintaining chromatin accessibility at forestomach lineage loci, but it is also sufficient to promote gastric/squamous transformation upon Cdx2 deletion in the embryonic intestine. To assess if organ specific developmental programs are activated in adult gut cancers, I compared our gastrointestinal lineage-specific transcriptomes to the publicly available human gastrointestinal cancer data. Here, I found that stomach and intestinal lineage-specific programs are reactivated in Sox2-high/Sox9-high and Cdx2-high cancers, respectively, emphasizing tissue ontogeny as a mechanism for cancer initiation. By analyzing mice deleted for both Sox2 and Sox9, we revealed their potentially redundant roles in both gastric development and cancer, highlighting the significance of developmental lineage programs reactivated by gastrointestinal transcription factors in cancer. | Ph.D. | accessib, forest | 11, 15 |
| Katri, Ido | Cossman, Brenda | Gender Self-determination Troubles | Law | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation explores the growing legal recognition of what has become known as ‘gender self-determination.’ Examining sex reclassification policies on a global scale, I show a shift within sex reclassification policies from the body to the self, from external to internal truth. A right to self-attested gender identity amends the grave breach of autonomy presented by other legal schemes for sex reclassification. To secure autonomy, laws and policies understand gender identity as an inherent and internal feature of the self. Yet, the sovereignty of a right to gender identity is circumscribed by the system of sex classification and its individuating logics, in which one must be stamped with a sex classification to be an autonomous legal subject. To understand this failure, I turn to the legal roots of the concept self-determination by looking to international law, and to the origin moment of legal differentiation, sex assignment at birth. Looking at the limitations of the collective right for state sovereignty allows me to provide a critical account of the inability of a right to gender identity to address systemic harms. Self-attested gender identity inevitably redraws the public/private divide along the contours of the trans body, suggesting a need to examine the apparatus of assigning sex at birth and its pivotal role in both the systemic exclusions of trans people, and in the broader regulation of gender. Looking forward rather than back, I turn to what I perceive to be the ‘future challenge’ of a right to self-attested gender identity, trans parental designations. I show that when people ask that their gender identity be recognized as parents, and especially when using their own bodies to conceive, they become inconceivable, exposing the gaps between what the law imagines as natural and the realities of lived experience. Theorizing the self-determination of gender through sex reclassification histories and practices of international law, and through its articulation within family law, suggests that all its elements, the individual self and its assumed ability for autonomous determination, and the formulation of gender identity as a self-evident right, require new imaginaries. | S.J.D. | gender, self-determination, sovereignty | 5, 16 |
| Kuchuk, Nika | Raman, Srilata | Genealogies of Transnational Religion: Translation, Revelation, and Discursive Technologies in Two Female Gurus of Esoteric Vedanta | Religion, Study of | 2021-11-01 | This project investigates the role of translation within Theosophy and Integral Yoga, focusing on translational discursive devices in the work of the movements’ respective female preceptors—Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891) and Mirra Alfassa (1878-1973), better known as the Mother. This research, using translation as a hermeneutic lens, examines the discursive structures of the women’s teachings, and especially the ways in which both had leveraged translation to articulate their universalist visions. Translation, both linguistic and idiomatic, permeates the underlying logic of these late-colonial transnational movements, giving rise to a peculiar universalism and a constellation of teachings I have termed Esoteric Vedanta. The contribution of this paper is twofold: first, it demonstrates that ‘thinking with translation’ is an effective entry into the multidirectional traffic of ideas, practices, and epistemologies that have given rise to these movements, allowing a better understanding of ideological commitments at the fin-de-siècle, including affective, hybrid, and radical political alignments. This, in part, is made possible by examining the two women side by side, since, while the content of their teachings differs, the logic of translation permeating their thought allows one to excavate a deeper genealogy of ideas. Secondly, this thesis argues that the universalist thrust of transnational movements such as Theosophy and Integral Yoga is itself a function of translation practice—translation at multiple registers and in an expanded sense of the term—emerging in a specifically heterolingual idiomatic context. The utopian, evolutionary, esoteric, and broadly Vedantic (or else, Buddhist) currents in Blavatsky and Alfassa’s teachings continue to reverberate and inform not only their respective traditions but also the broader fields of modern yoga and New Age spirituality. In attending to processes and discourses of translation in both women’s thought, this project both traces the connections between Theosophy and Integral Yoga, and seeks to reframe the ideological history of contemporary transnational religion and the sort of universalist thinking it offers. | Ph.D. | women, female, invest | 5, 9 |
| Ghanbari Azarnier, Ronak | Zacksenhaus, Eldad | Genetic Analysis of Triple-Negative Breast Cancer and Pineoblastoma | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-11-01 | Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a devastating disease affecting relatively young women. The tumor suppressor genes TP53 and RB1 are commonly lost together in a subset of TNBC with exceedingly poor prognosis. The identification of oncogenic drivers that cooperate with p53/Rb-loss in TNBC may uncover novel therapeutic modalities. Here, I employed sleeping beauty (SB) mutagenesis screens to identify oncogenic drivers that cooperate with p53- versus p53 plus Rb-deletion to promote primary mammary tumors and lung metastases, using a WAP-Cre deleter line to induce transposon mobilization. SB mutagenesis accelerated tumorigenesis in the absence of functional p53 or p53 plus Rb. 66.7% of metastases formed in p53/Rb-deficient mice had transposon insertions in genes involved in the Ras pathway (Hras1 and Sos2) or cell motility/migration (Rock2, Fam19a5, and Ntn1). In accordance, bioinformatic analysis revealed that the Ras pathway is enriched in TNBC samples and cell lines. Inhibition of ERK1/2 via ulixertinib suppressed growth of TNBC cell lines with high Ras activity; suppression was more pronounced in cells with stable RB1 knocked-down relative to parental RB1 wild-type cells. These results suggest that alterations in genes involved in Ras pathway activation and motility promote metastatic p53/Rb-deficient TNBC, and point to ERK1/2 inhibitors as potential therapeutic intervention for this subgroup of metastatic TNBC patients. I also used WAP-Cre to generate a mouse model for Pineoblastoma (PB), a lethal pediatric brain cancer. Germline mutations in RB1 and DICER1 have been implicated in the etiology of PB, and deletion of Rb and p53 via WAP-Cre has been shown to induce pineal tumors that resemble human PB with 100% penetrance. Here, I inactivated Dicer1 plus p53 or Dicer1 plus Rb and p53 in the pineal gland via WAP-Cre. Dicer1/p53 and Dicer1/Rb/p53-deficient mice developed PB with 33.3% and 93.8% penetrance, respectively. These tumors clustered close to human PB, and exhibited sensitivity to the tricyclic antidepressant drug nortriptyline in vitro. This study describes the first mouse model for Dicer1-deficient pineoblastoma, demonstrates that WAP-Cre can be used to target the cell-of-origin of distinct PB subtypes, and identifies nortriptyline as a potential new therapeutic for children with DICER1-deficient pineoblastoma. | Ph.D. | women, land | 5, 15 |
| Mah, Julie | Hackworth, Jason | Gentrification and Displacement in U.S. Shrinking Cities: The Role of Planning Policy and Housing Subsidies in Detroit | Geography | 2019-11-01 | As shrinking cities implement regeneration initiatives to recover from years of decline, planners have been struggling with how to promote equitable development. A weak housing market with high vacancy rates does not necessarily mean increased housing affordability, especially for low-income residents. To the contrary, it can mean a precarious housing situation given the decreasing supply of decent housing that is affordable to low-income households. Revitalization efforts to improve the housing stock can create even more housing precarity, as these efforts typically attract wealthier in-movers and result in increased competition for a scarce supply of decent housing. This research shows how the conceptual boundaries between regeneration and gentrification have blurred in Detroit, as there is evidence of direct and indirect displacement. Through a critical examination of the social and housing impacts of regeneration initiatives in the greater downtown, a distinct picture of gentrification emerges and illustrates how the process occurs in a resurgent declining city. This research employs a mixed-methods approach to explore the impacts of gentrification on the housing affordability landscape in Detroit. I do this by examining the housing impacts of revitalization initiatives from three different perspectives. First, I examine how the affordable housing opportunities of low-income households in the greater downtown have been affected by recent intense reinvestment. Second, I explore displacement effects by using evictions data as a proxy for direct displacement and by conducting in-depth qualitative interviews to explore tenant experiences with indirect displacement in a rapidly gentrifying downtown. Third, I interrogate the role that place-based subsidies and planning policies have played in helping to facilitate gentrification. | Ph.D. | low-income, affordab, precarity, precarious, equitable, equitable, invest, equit, affordab, income, cities, housing, affordable housing, regeneration, land | 1, 10, 4, 9, 11, 15 |
| Colinet, Andrew | Jerrard, Robert L | Geometric Behaviour of Solutions to Equations of Ginzburg-Landau type on Riemannian Manifolds | Mathematics | 2021-11-01 | In this thesis, we demonstrate the existence of complex-valued solutions to the Ginzburg-Landau equation \[-\Delta{}u+\frac{1}{\vep^{2}}u(|u|^{2}-1)=0\hspace{20pt}\text{on }M, \] for $\vep\ll1$, where $M$ is a three dimensional compact manifold without boundary, that have interesting geometric properties. Specif\mbox{}ically, we argue the existence of solutions whose vorticity concentrates about an arbitrary closed nondegenerate geodesic on $M$. In doing this, we extend the work of \cite{JSt} and \cite{Mes} who showed that there are solutions whose energy converges, after rescaling, to the arclength of a geodesic as above. An important ingredient in the proof is a heat f\mbox{}low argument, which requires detailed information about limiting behaviour of solutions of the parabolic Ginzburg-Landau equation. Providing the necessary limiting behaviour is the other contribution of this thesis. In fact, more is achieved. Provided that $N\ge3$, we give a structural description of the limiting behaviour of solutions to the parabolic Ginzburg-Landau equation on an $N$-dimensional compact manifold without boundary $(M,g)$. More specif\mbox{}ically, we are able to show that the limit of the renormalized energy measure orthogonally decomposes into a dif\mbox{}fuse part, absolutely continuous with respect to the volume measure on $M$ induced by $g$, and a concentrated vortex part, supported on a codimension $2$ surface contained in $M$.Moreover, the dif\mbox{}fuse part of the limiting energy has its time evolution governed by the heat equation while the concentrated part evolves in time according to a measure theoretic version of mean curvature f\mbox{}low. This extends the work of \cite{BOS2} who proved this for $N$-dimensional Euclidean space provided that $N\ge2$. | Ph.D. | energy, land | 7, 15 |
| Cressman, Celine | Miller, Fiona A | Governance of Child Health Policy: The Canadian Context for Developmental Screening | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2020-06-01 | Child health policymaking is complex, necessitating collaboration among various sectors and actors. This is particularly evident in “developmental screening.” The potential to routinely assess development in early childhood— to ‘screen’ for developmental problems— holds a potent if contested promise to optimize child health. Clinical evidence supporting systematic population-level interventions is insufficient, yet many health-professional associations have endorsed the practice and several developmental-screening initiatives have been implemented internationally, including in Ontario— the only Canadian province to implement developmental screening (the Enhanced Well-Baby Visit). The controversies surrounding developmental screening suggests that the ‘problem’ is not solely technical: it reflects political contests over the intervention’s aims, the justifications that warrant action, and the arrangements of actors who debate and authorize policy change. In brief, it reflects the policy challenges of agenda-setting and governance. This research describes approaches to the governance of child health, and explores relationships between governance arrangements and decision-making, particularly the impacts on agenda-setting and evidence use. Using a comparative case study design involving interpretive qualitative methods, I analyzed policy documents and conducted interviews (n=40) with child-health policy experts in Ontario and Manitoba. I found jurisdictional differences in policy attention and governance, specifically in the structure of institutions, the organization of interests, and the ideas of stakeholders as they apply to screening programs. The study reveals how framing impacts agenda-setting and how governance arrangements influence the design and delivery of policy. Presented as three manuscripts, key findings include: (1) developmental screening is framed, and understood, as three distinct agendas (medical, social, political) for child health; (2) comparing Manitoba and Ontario’s efforts for ‘joined-up’ governance reveals that perceptions of policy success depends on whether collaboration or action is prioritized; and (3) Ontario’s implementation experience for the 18-mos visit illustrates that the choice of primary care as the venue for delivery shapes how interventions are defined and delivered. Overall, this work highlights the complexity of child health policy, illuminates challenges in screening for social risk, and contributes to current debates about how professionals intervene in early child health. | Ph.D. | child health, labor, institut, governance | 3, 8, 16 |
| Botchwey, Brianna | Bernstein, Steven | Governing Foreign Aid: Explaining Donor Responsiveness to Global Development Goals | Political Science | 2021-06-01 | In September 2015, the United Nations adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Foreign aid is crucial to achieving the SDGs in developing countries, as it can fill key funding gaps that the private sector or NGOs cannot. However, there exists a fair amount of variation in the impact of the SDGs on the aid policies and practices of major OECD donors. Drawing on case evidence, including elite interviews and qualitative document analysis, from three bilateral aid donors (Sweden, Canada and the United Kingdom), this dissertation seeks to explain this variation and identify the causal mechanisms through which global goals influence aid policy and practice. I argue that the SDGs exert influence through a mechanism of show and tell in donor normative frameworks. Show and tell involves rhetorical performance that obligates performers to communicate their policies, practices and identities using a common script. The sensitivity of donors to this mechanism of show and tell is shaped by the perceived instrumentality of the SDGs in furthering donors’ specific reputational aspirations. When donors perceive that the SDGs will further their reputational aspirations they will show and tell a story about how their aid programs and even more fundamentally their donor identity are linked to the SDGs. This process of show and tell can lead to goal responsiveness because donors then link SDG implementation to the maintenance or achievement of particular donor identities. The variation in donors’ political commitment to the goals, then, is attributable to their differing sensitivity to the performative mechanism of show and tell which is in turn rooted in differing concerns for their reputation, and their perception of the SDGs utility in furthering their reputations. Donor governments who perceive that the SDGs are useful in achieving their desired reputation are more likely to be highly responsive to the goals. | Ph.D. | sustainable development, sustainable development | 8, 11 |
| Conklin, Randy | Holdom, Bob | Gravitational Wave Echoes: Theory and Application | Physics | 2021-11-01 | Black hole mimickers may compose some of what is assumed as the black hole population, and multiple groups have claimed evidence for this in the form of gravitational wave echoes. This thesis elaborates on work by the author and collaborators, detailing echo theory and discussing hints of echoes in gravitational wave data from the LIGO observatory.Echoes from a variety of exotic compact objects are compared, and the effects of spin are investigated. The most characteristic feature of echoes, a series of spectral resonances, is exploited to look for this structure in LIGO data via windowing methods. These resonances are modulated by an initial-condition-dependent source integral, and it is shown that echo features traditionally assumed to be known may be altered by generic production mechanisms. The complete modulation in all variables is calculated, and the impact on echoes is displayed. An analytical method is constructed to test asymptotic radial perturbations. Quantum quadratic gravity is a theory capable of producing echoes, and it can be made renormalizable with ultraviolet completions. It may also satisfy the optical theorem under certain conditions, and these are reviewed and further explored through two subjects: the physical particle spectrum and the complex prescription of propagators. Required conditions for unitarity are defined along with their consequences, and the consistency of the theory is tested against these. The search for echoes is then continued in a recently detected gravitational wave event, GW190521, by employing the latest developments in echo theory. Combining advancements in physical boundary conditions, numerical relativity, and complex representation of the echo spectrum, a model is built to seek for physically motivated echoes across background parameters of mass, spin, and geometry. The search is done over Monte Carlo chains distributed according to background parameter probabilities, with significance assessed by signal to noise ratios and statistical analysis. Potential echo detections in the LIGO events GW151226, GW170104, GW170608, GW170814, and GW170817 are presented with false alarm rates of 1 in 700 or less using the older windowing methods. The latest model is employed to find a false alarm rate of 1 in 50 in GW190521. | Ph.D. | wind, labor, invest, production | 7, 8, 9, 12 |
| Milovanoff, Alexandre | MacLean, Heather L. H.L.||Posen, I. Daniel I.D. | Greenhouse Gas Emission Mitigation Pathways for Light-duty Vehicle Fleets under Ambitious Climate Targets | Civil Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from light-duty passenger vehicles (LDVs) will be necessary to maintain global warming below 2 °C, and ideally below 1.5 °C. In this dissertation, methods to estimate the life cycle GHG emission implications of LDV-focused mitigation strategies and to outline mitigation pathways under ambitious climate targets are developed at national and urban scales. First, a fleet-based life cycle model, the FLAME (Fleet Life cycle Assessment and Material-flow Estimation) is developed to examine the life cycle GHG emission implications of mitigation strategies, such as lightweighting the U.S. LDV fleet or deploying mid-level ethanol blends (15-30% ethanol by volume) in Canada's LDV fleet. The model combines the high technological resolution of life cycle assessment (LCA) with the temporal and dynamic perspectives of LDV fleet models. Recommendations are provided on the most effective timing of the mitigation strategies, and on their contributions to national GHG emission reduction pledges. Then, the FLAME model is augmented with a backcasting procedure to outline GHG emission mitigation pathways for LDV fleets to maintain global warming below 2 °C, and the electrification of the U.S. LDV fleet is used as a case study. The backcasting procedure relies on an innovative approach based on Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to quantify national and sectoral GHG emission budgets. Finally, the CURTAIL model (Climate change constrained URban passenger TrAnsport Integrated Life cycle assessment) is developed and applied in Singapore to integrate all passenger land transport modes at an urban level and to seek associated combinations of mitigation strategies that are consistent with maintaining global warming below 2 °C or 1.5 °C. The methods developed in this dissertation bridge gaps between the refined perspectives of LCA and the global perspectives of IAMs to support the development of national and urban policies for LDVs to respect ambitious climate targets. The findings suggest that there is no technological silver-bullet, there is an urgency to act, and all mitigation efforts should be pursued. | Ph.D. | emission, greenhouse, biofuel, urban, climate change mitigation, climate, greenhouse gas, global warming, emissions, climate change mitigation, land | 7, 11, 13, 15 |
| Lee, Cammy | Trifonas, Peter P | Heck Fun Ya! (Let's Eat!) An Autoethnographic Cookbook: Memories of a Chinese-Canadian Upbringing Beyond | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation emerges out of the conceit that food, more than mere sustenance, is significant cultural artifact. Rooted in the premise that there is educative value in life story as research, Heck Fun Ya! (Let’s Eat!) An Autoethnographic Cookbook: Memories of a Chinese-Canadian Upbringing Beyond is a performative text using food as a vehicle to discuss culture, identity, and otherness. Blending academic analyses, life story writing, and multi-media, its creative format is an expression of the uniqueness of this process. Thematically organized, the cookbook structure of starters, mains, and desserts is comprised of food experiences punctuated by recipe in a variety of narrative forms. Narratives will be analyzed through interdisciplinary lenses that explore how food shapes various identities in order to ask: What role does food play in identity construction? And how can storying and/or re-storying food experiences be used to live a good life? In approaching this, the work aims to recalibrate my understanding of past experiences to create resonance with new ones, and thus, deepen knowledge. Starters offers two opposing effects of food experience: one that considers food shame and stigma through a psychoanalytic lens (Kristeva, 1982; Goffman, 1963), and the other that explores the role of disgust in igniting imagination (Korsmeyer, 2011). Mains will address the part food plays in the identities that emerge from having a sense of home and belonging. Narratives serve as entry points for discussions that emphasize the home, food, eating, and family connection (Bell Valentine, 1997; Blunt Dowling, 2006). Food’s role in identities that evolve out of the things we do are also considered: teaching and food writing including the physiology of taste, impact of hunger and whether it sharpens one’s descriptive abilities (Brillat-Savarin, 1949/2009; Hemingway, 1964/2009; Zola, 1873/2009). Desserts, the last cookbook section, takes a dramatic turn to consider the non-alimentary ways of food and feeding; this discussion explores music, yoga, meditation, and narrative medicine as expressions of “nourishment” (Pretorius, 2017; McGonigal, 2008; Lazar et al., 2005; Charon, 2008). Finally, the significance of the study and implications for next steps will be presented. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Barry, Rebecca | Kurdyak, Paul | Help-seeking Behaviours, Access to Care and Suicide among Rural and Urban Populations in Ontario, Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11 | Suicide is a significant cause of premature death. Rural populations may be particularly vulnerable for multiple reasons including healthcare access, stigma, and isolation. First, a systematic review and meta-analysis were conducted to examine the association between rurality and suicide and suicide attempts among English-speaking high-income countries. Findings indicated that rural males were more likely to die from suicide than their urban counterparts (RR=1.41, 95%CI=1.21-1.64, I2=96%). Second, in a population-based case-control study of adults living in Ontario, rurality was associated with increased risk of suicide among rural males (AOR=1.70, 95%CI=1.49-1.95). Rurality was also found to be associated with suicide attempts among both males and females (males: AOR=1.37, 95% CI=1.24-1.50; females: AOR=1.26, 95% CI=1.14-1.39). Findings indicated a pattern of increasing risk of suicide and suicide attempts with increasing rurality. The third manuscript examined the association between rurality and help-seeking behaviours. We found that among those who attempted suicide, those living in rural areas were significantly less likely to have visited a psychiatrist prior to attempt compared to those living in urban areas (rural males: AOR=0.49, 95%CI=0.43-0.56; rural females: AOR=0.51, 95%CI=0.46-0.57). We found the same association among those who died by suicide (rural males: AOR=0.42, 95%CI=0.31-0.57; rural females: AOR=0.46, 95%CI=0.29-0.97). Rural males who attempted or died by suicide, and rural females who attempted suicide were less likely to seek help from a general practitioner for mental health purposes. The final manuscript examined the association between travel time to health care and suicide outcomes. Findings suggested that males who must travel longer to hospitals are at a greater risk of suicide compared to those who travel shorter lengths of time (AOR=2.08, 95% CI=1.61-2.69). Longer travel times to psychiatric hospitals also increased risk of suicide among males (AOR=1.03, 95%CI=1.02-1.05). Furthermore, travel time to care was a mediator of the association between rurality and suicide. Together these findings suggest that those who live in rural areas are at increased risk of suicide attempts, and rural males are at increased risk of death by suicide. This dissertation provides insights into how travel time to care and help-seeking may impact risk of suicide in the context of rurality. | Ph.D. | mental health, health care, healthcare, female, income, urban, rural | 3, 5, 10, 11 |
| Casha, Albert Francis | Orr, Robert S | Higgs Boson Measurements in Leptonic Final States with the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider | Physics | 2021-11-01 | Two cross-section measurements of the Higgs boson with leptonic final states are presented in this Thesis. The measurements use proton-proton collisions measured by the ATLAS detector at a the center-of-mass√ = 13 TeV. The first analysis was performed using the of data collected between 2015 and 2017, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 79.8 fb−1. The search specifically targeted Higgs boson production in association with a top quark pair (tt ̄H), with three electrons or muons and one hadronically decayingtau in the final state. The cross section was measured to be σˆ(tt ̄H) = 215+550 fb, where the uncertainty −425 is dominated by the statistical component. This was then combined with other similar channels that all target the tt ̄H production mode decaying to leptons. The overall cross section was measured to be σ(tt ̄H)=294+182 fb,which is consistent with the Standard Modelprediction. The second analysis was performed using the full Run-2 dataset, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. The analysis targeted the four main Higgs boson production modes at the LHC, where the Higgs decays to a pair of tau leptons. The analysis was split into 36 channels based on which production mode was targeted and the lepton multiplicity of the final state. The overall cross section was measured to be 2.89+0.21(stat.)+0.37(syst.) pb, and the cross sections for the individual production modes −0.21 −0.32 were measured to be σggF = 2.6+0.4(stat.)+0.9(syst.) pb, σV BF = 0.196+0.028(stat.)+0.032(syst.) pb, −0.4 −0.6 −0.027 −0.029 σV H = 0.11+0.06(stat.)+0.04(syst.)pb, σtt ̄H = 0.05+0.03(stat.)+0.04(syst.) pb. Differential measurements −0.06 −0.04 −0.03 −0.03 using the simplified template cross-section framework were also performed. All the results were found to be in agreement with the Standard Model predictions. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Bai, Min | Urtasun, Raquel | High Precision Real World Perception for Autonomous Driving | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | The captivating hopes for a future with autonomous vehicles promises to free us from one of the most laborious, monotonous, and dangerous of our daily tasks. This thesis presents several works that I have undertaken to improve the perception capabilities of autonomous vehicles, with a particular attention to high precision. The first part of this thesis describes a technique to exploit the rich, high resolution camera information and the unambiguous 3D measurements of LiDAR to detect lane boundaries in 3D in real time with centimeter-level accuracy. We show that our approach significantly outperforms the baselines, particularly at longer distances. Next, we leverage the implicit boundary parameterization used in the previous work in a multi-task neural network for panoptic segmentation in the image space, with the goal of categorizing each pixel in an image into various semantic classes and delineating different instances of countable objects. We compare with the state-of-the-art technique and show that our approach can produce more accurate object boundaries. Finally, we bring temporal information into the segmentation task. Here, we leverage the full history of observations and reasoning results encoded into a non-parametric memory structure and intelligently incorporate new information at each instant in time to perceive small, safety critical objects such as construction elements in 3D. | Ph.D. | learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Saldias, Anibal Nicolas | Handley, Antoinette | History’s Wages – State Formation and Labour Policy in Argentina and Uruguay | Political Science | 2021-11-01 | In the mid-2000s, left-of-centre governments in Argentina and Uruguay enacted pro-labour reforms, including sector-level collective bargaining. In the following decade, labour incomes rose rapidly and unions regained a central place in politics. Despite this, the labour institutions that structured collective bargaining (corporatism) were contested politically and legally in Argentina, while they became more stable in Uruguay with reforms to strengthen its institutional resilience. This dissertation explores why labour relations in the two countries diverged despite policy convergence. Although both countries instituted innovative policies to address poverty and inequality in the 2000s, they opted to reinstate corporatist labour laws designed in the 1940s: Argentina’s corporatist labour laws allow the state to determine which unions could represent workers during collective bargaining (monopoly representation); in Uruguay, monopoly representation is recognized by the state owing to the democratic will of the workers. I argue that the divergent outcomes in the evolution of labour relations in Argentina and Uruguay in the 2000s is due to differences in the institutional design of corporatism: Argentina’s state corporatism violates the norms of liberal democracy as it limits freedom of association, while Uruguay’s democratic corporatism respects and promotes freedom of association. Why did Argentina and Uruguay design their corporatist institutions so differently in the 1940s? I posit that the variation in the institutional design of corporatism can be traced back to state formation during the nineteenth century. Argentina’s state formation was led predominantly by military elites whose hierarchical worldview filtered into exclusionary political institutions that created an anti-pluralist political culture that by the 1940s had created the conditions for state corporatism. State formation in Uruguay was led by political parties whose elites created inclusive political institutions that cemented a pluralist political culture and that by the 1940s led to the creation of a democratic corporatist framework. The dissertation contributes to the study of how historical processes, like state formation, leave important institutional and cultural legacies that influence choices by policy makers far into the future. | Ph.D. | poverty, worldview, labour, worker, wage, inequality, equalit, income, resilien, resilience, resilience, institut, democra | 1, 4, 8, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Schwartz, Noah | Brett, Clare | Holistic Curriculum for the Technology-mediated Post-secondary Course | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | This case study research examines the adaptation, design, and enactment of John P. Miller’s Holistic Curriculum (2019) in a technology-mediated post-secondary course consisting of 90 students. The research is grounded in the field of curriculum studies through a social constructivist perspective and is informed through the framework of 21st century competencies which value active learning, metacognition, and digital literacy over specific disciplinary knowledge. The course directs students toward developing these competencies as they critically identify and reflect on relationships between technology and culture, economy and power, and industry and media. A primary learning outcome is for students to contemplate their technology usage through Ursula M. Franklin’s lens of holistic and prescriptive technologies (1990). Holistic technologies create potentials for innovation, communication, and collaboration, while prescriptive technologies pose perils of conformity, inactivity, and complacency. This research occurred amid social distancing measures that were necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and thus was conducted entirely online. Data indicated that students were highly engaged in the course, as it fostered a sense of connection and community, and was seen as relevant across personal, professional, academic, and creative contexts. Findings also indicated promotion of critical thinking, metacognition, and the transfer of knowledge across subject domains and disciplinary boundaries. Considerations for future enactments of Holistic Curriculum in post-secondary courses and other the technology-mediated educational contexts are recommended. These include a synthesis of holistic perspectives to inform the design of technology-mediated curriculum and the pedagogical significance of a passionate and compassionate teacher presence. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Vakalis, Donna Marie | MacLean, Heather L||Siegel, Jeffrey A | How Energy-saving Building Designs Influence the Indoor Environment and Affect Learning, Comfort, and Health | Civil Engineering | 2021-06-01 | As building strategies evolve to mitigate climate change, there may be accompanying changes to indoor environmental quality (IEQ). These include dilution of indoor pollutants and changes to acoustics, thermal comfort and to lighting. These IEQ measures are associated with occupant health, comfort and/or performance. My research seeks to understand the nexus of building measures–IEQ–occupant outcomes, with a focus on vulnerable populations. This dissertation is organized as a synthesis of findings from a literature review of field studies in school buildings, and a multi-faceted assessment of the impacts of energy retrofits in social housing. The review encompasses studies of cognitive performance, standardized test scores and absenteeism among students and the association of these outcomes to a diverse set of school building design and operation specifications from a popular green building certification program. The results of reviewed studies are weighted using a modified version of a public health study analysis tool. Indoor air quality is important for student absenteeism, and along with thermal comfort and acoustics is also important for school-aged children performing well on tasks that are cognitively demanding (the review did not consider impacts on teachers). In another facet of my research, I explore IEQ in seven social housing multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) before and after buildings underwent mechanical system energy efficiency retrofits. Results from the pre-retrofit surveys show many residents experience thermal and olfactory discomfort and discomfort appears clustered together with health symptoms. For a smaller subset of residents, apartments were monitored for thermal comfort parameters such as temperature and relative humidity. A comparison of pre- and post-retrofit modelled thermal comfort based on the indoor monitoring as well as survey answers demonstrates that these energy retrofits have not been effective at improving thermal comfort in most of the buildings. Further analysis shows the carbon impact from the material and energy associated with the retrofits was an order of magnitude smaller than the annual avoided carbon from lowered heating energy use. The implications are widely relevant given the need to reduce our collective carbon footprint and our propensity to spend time indoors. À mesure que les stratégies de construction évoluent pour atténuer le changement climatique, il peut y avoir des changements accompagnant à la qualité de l'environnement intérieur (QEI). Il s'agit notamment de la dilution des polluants intérieurs et des modifications à l'acoustique, du confort thermique et de l'éclairage. Ces mesures de la QEI sont associées à la santé, au confort et/ou à la performance des occupants. Ma recherche vise à comprendre le lien entre les mesures du bâtiment—le QEI— les résultats pour les occupants, avec une attention particulière sur les populations vulnérables. Cette thèse est organisée comme une synthèse des données d'une revue de la littérature d'études au champ dans les bâtiments scolaires, et une évaluation à multiples facettes des impacts des rénovations énergétiques dans les logements sociaux. La revue englobe des études sur les performances cognitives, les scores aux tests standardisés et l'absentéisme des élèves et l'association de ces résultats à un ensemble diversifié de spécifications de conception et d'exploitation de bâtiments scolaires d'un programme de certification de bâtiments écologiques populaire. Les résultats des études examinées sont pondérés en utilisant une version modifiée d'un outil d'analyse des études de santé publique. La qualité de l'air intérieur est importante pour l'absentéisme des élèves, et avec le confort thermique et l'acoustique, elle est également importante pour les enfants d'âge scolaire qui exécutent bien des tâches cognitivement exigeantes (la revue n'a pas considéré les impacts sur les enseignants). Dans une autre facette de ma recherche, j'explore la QEI dans sept immeubles résidentiels à logements multiples (IRLMs) avant et après que les bâtiments ont subi des rénovations écoénergétiques du système mécanique. Les résultats des sondages pré-rénovations montrent que de nombreux résidents ressentent un inconfort thermique et olfactif et que l'inconfort semble regroupé avec des symptômes de santé. Pour un plus petit sous-ensemble de résidents, les appartements ont été surveillés pour les paramètres de confort thermique tels que la température et l'humidité relative. Une comparaison du confort thermique modélisé avant et après la rénovation basée sur la surveillance intérieure ainsi que sur les réponses du sondage montre que ces rénovations énergétiques n'ont pas été efficaces pour améliorer le confort thermique dans la plupart des bâtiments. Une analyse plus approfondie montre que l'impact carbone du matériau et de l'énergie associés aux rénovations était d'un ordre de grandeur inférieur au carbone évité annuel provenant de la réduction de la consommation d'énergie de chauffage. Les implications sont largement pertinentes étant donné la nécessité de réduire notre empreinte carbone collective et notre propension à passer du temps à l'intérieur. | Ph.D. | public health, learning, energy, buildings, vulnerable population, housing, green buildings, climate, environmental, pollut, pollut, exploitation | 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Lake, Jennifer Dawn | Austin, Zubin||Barnsley, Janet | How the Role of the Pharmacist is Negotiated in Ontario Family Health Teams: A Multiple Case Study | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | Including pharmacists on interprofessional primary care teams has demonstrated improvements in patient safety and clinical outcomes but there are concerns about under-utilization. Using Goffman’s micro-sociological theories of self and impression management, this dissertation explored the negotiation of the pharmacists’ role in Ontario Family Health Teams (FHTs). This dissertation used a multiple case study per Yin. Recruitment of five cases was used to ensure cross-case analysis. Cases were varied on geography, FHT size, and team tenure. Data was collected using both semi-structured interviews and document analysis. At least four participants were interviewed in each case. All data was stored in MAXQDA. Thematic analysis was completed using the Quality Analysis of Leuven (QUAGOL) framework. Positionality was completed through reflection and assisted by Social Identity Map. Three cases were recruited and analyzed. Case A demonstrated the organization led the negotiation of the pharmacist’s role, Case B demonstrated that physicians led, and Case C demonstrated a lack of active negotiation of the pharmacist’s role. The cross-case analysis highlighted pharmacists were not actively involved in negotiating their role due to their professional identities. This led to uncertainties of who should lead role negotiations. Organizations with more formal procedures tended to have proactive pharmacist’s roles including independent access to patients. The pharmacists’ supportive identity and ongoing comparison to physicians may have resulted in their lack of archetype. This contributed to unclear goals for role negotiation. Additionally, this contributed to physicians being the audience for the pharmacist’s role and a focus on tasks and delivery that physicians valued. Most patient-care decisions were referred back to physicians. The lack of focus on patients’ experiences and outcomes was likely an important aspect of role negotiation. Stakeholders such as patients, pharmacists, their institutions, and organizations, can use these results to negotiate roles efficiently. Organizations could use programming to assign new tasks to the pharmacist for successful implementation. Future research should look at the pharmacist’s professional identity and its relationship to patient-centered care. | Ph.D. | health care, labor, institut | 3, 8, 16 |
| Thavabalasingam, Sathesan | Lee, Andy | Human Medial Temporal Lobe Contributions to a Temporal Representation of Sequences in Memory | Psychology | 2021-11-01 | Time and space are fundamental components of our past, and our memories are rich with temporal information allowing us to remember ‘when’ a past event took place. The medial temporal lobe (MTL), and hippocampus (HPC) in particular, have been suggested to represent time in support of memory. While previous research has demonstrated an important role for the HPC in remembering the order of events, recent evidence has suggested that rodent hippocampal “time cells” can signal the passage of time on the order of seconds between events. In this thesis, I describe a series of studies inspired by findings from the animal literature, which shed light on how the human MTL may contain a temporal representation of sequences that contains information not only about order, but also the amount of time that has elapsed between successive events. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in conjunction with multivoxel pattern analysis (MVPA) techniques, I explored how the human MTL and HPC is preferentially involved in memory for temporal durations that are embedded within a sequence of events. Specifically, I demonstrated how human HPC patterns of activity are influenced by changes in the temporal duration of event sequences processed explicitly (Chapter 2) or implicitly (Chapter 3). Further, memory for sequences was associated with the stability of duration representations in the HPC. Chapter 4 was designed to explore if the human HPC represents information about short durations in the context of long-term sequence memories. It was found that the anterior HPC and CA1 subregion carried information about individual sequences during recognition memory, that reflected the combination of image content and temporal duration information unique to each sequence. Lastly, in Chapter 5, I demonstrated how memory for order and temporal duration contained within a sequence of events is affected in healthy ageing and MTL pathology. Together, these data speak to an important role of the human MTL in temporal duration memory, advancing our understanding of how the HPC can represent sequential information. | Ph.D. | animal, animal | 14, 15 |
| Choi, Yoojin | Kaul, Rupert | Human Papillomavirus and Anorectal Immunology in HIV-positive Men who have Sex with Men | Immunology | 2021-11-01 | Anal human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is prevalent among HIV-positive men who have sex with men (MSM) and can lead to the development of anal intraepithelial neoplasia (AIN) before possibly progressing to anal cancer. However, very little is known about mucosal immune changes that occur as a consequence of AIN development. As such, the overarching goal of this thesis was to explore the impact of AIN on anorectal immunology in HIV-positive MSM. Because my studies took place in Toronto, Canada, I first aimed to understand anal HPV prevalence among MSM living in Toronto. To this end, I analyzed data collected from a previous study and confirmed a high anal HPV prevalence of 82% in 294 HIV-positive and 148 HIV-negative MSM. I began my thesis work by testing whether AIN is associated with increased anorectal HIV shedding in men with suppressed HIV viremia. Although I did not find an association between AIN and anorectal HIV shedding, a subset of the cohort did have low-level anorectal HIV shedding despite effective ART. Therefore, I next assessed mucosal immune correlates of HIV shedding. Contrary to my hypothesis, mucosal inflammation was not associated with HIV shedding in ART-treated MSM. Finally, I aimed to identify immune predictors of AIN regression. I found compelling evidence to support that T cell activation within AIN lesions is associated with natural regression. Moreover, AIN regressors had significantly higher systemic responses to HPV peptides than non-regressors, and these responses in the blood strongly correlated with T cell activation in AIN lesions. Taken together, the findings presented in this thesis demonstrate that while AIN is unlikely to enhance HIV transmission in ART-treated men, differential immune responses within AIN lesions can help predict clinical outcomes. Further studies are warranted to 1) understand the relationship between HIV shedding and the HIV reservoir; and 2) inform clinical management of AIN. Importantly, if similar mucosal immune responses mediate AIN regression in HIV-negative MSM, this may be a mechanism by which anal HPV/AIN increases HIV susceptibility; thus, the association between AIN and HIV susceptibility in HIV-negative MSM should be investigated in the future. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Scott, Emily Karolina Mary | Wong, Joseph||Hoffmann, Matthew | Humanitarian Governance Experiments: INGO Power and the War in Syria | Political Science | 2019-11-01 | After the War in Syria broke out in 2011, new needs emerged amongst Syrian refugees in Lebanon and Jordan. They presented with high rates of disability and of non-communicable disease, like asthma, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Local actors, Syrian doctors, and the World Health Organization (WHO) called for response to these unmet needs. Yet, standard repertoires of response dominated as international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) offered the kinds of care they were accustomed to offering in other contexts, such as first aid care and primary healthcare response. This behaviour is not uncommon to INGOs, nor should it have been unexpected. Scholars have shown that time and security constraints during emergency, humanitarian operations limit opportunities to reflect and learn. What was unexpected was a set of more transformative changes by service-delivery INGOs that followed between one and four years into the crisis, or humanitarian governance experiments (HGEs). These were first moves into new areas of service-delivery and rulemaking that altered the range of behaviours available to potential recipients, were meant to provide assistance across borders, and claimed new rights to govern populations or aspects of their lives. Aid workers deliberately and consciously contested the limits of status quo response, moving their organizations into areas of service-delivery previously considered the domain of states and outside of the humanitarian scope. It is this increasingly governmental activity by INGOs that this dissertation explores. It adds important conceptual and empirical clarity to the question: why is there variation in the timing of new behaviours across INGOs of similar size and engaged in the health sector? Drawing on comparison of those processes and factors that make experiments by three humanitarian organizations – Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), Save the Children International (SCI), and the International Committee of the Red Cross and Red Crescent (ICRC) – possible, my research shows that an organization that decentralizes power to the field and is home to bottom-up channels of expert communication is most likely to experiment when experiencing insecurity. Findings contribute to studies of aid and humanitarianism, INGO behaviour in international relations theory, and governance. | Ph.D. | healthcare, disabilit, communicable disease, worker, humanitarian, refugee, governance | 3, 8, 10, 16 |
| Amini, Mohammad Ali Al | Wu, Xiao Yu (Shirley) | Hybrid Bioactive Nanoparticles for Modulation of Tumor Microenvironment and Enhancing Radiation and Chemotherapy Efficacy | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2019-06-01 | Tumor microenvironment (TME) abnormalities are recognized as the main obstacle in treating solid tumors and are responsible for the failures in cancer therapies via promoting tumor cell growth, invasion, resistance to radiation and chemotherapy (CT), and escape from immune surveillance. To tackle interplay of multiple TME factors, our team has previously designed novel hybrid manganese dioxide nanoparticles (MDNPs) with the high reactivity and specificity toward H2O2 for the simultaneous and sustained production of O2 and regulation of pH to modulate the TME. Here, we propose a new multimodal strategy by utilizing MDNPs to remodel the TME, suppress drug and radiation resistance factors, reverse immunosuppressive conditions, and enhance treatment efficacy. Results from this thesis reveal the high potential of MDNPs in quenching reactive oxygen species (ROS) (e.g. H2O2), decreasing HIF1α, and lowering hypoxia level in the tumor. In comparison to radiation therapy (RT) alone, the combination of MDNPs and RT promoted cell death and decreased cancer cell proliferation in tumor-bearing animals. Survival studies not only resulted in significant increase in median survival time for breast and prostate tumor-bearing animals treated with the combination MDNPs + RT, but also achieved curative III treatment. It was further observed that MDNPs could modulate TME, reflected in downregulation of drug resistance factors and enhanced cellular uptake and anti-cancer activity of doxorubicin (DOX). The combination therapy with MDNPs and DOX also stimulated adaptive antitumor immunity and decreased immunosuppression, resulting up to 60% complete tumor regression in breast tumor-bearing mice. The high in vivo tolerability and stability of the nanoparticles, the simplicity of administration and effectiveness of the MDNPs on CT and RT are key elements that will make this system highly translational. Such results suggest that the new multimodal combination therapies are a simple yet powerful approach to treat solid tumors. Further, it was shown that the polymer-lipid nanoparticle (PLN) formulation developed by our team has a transformable behaviour in physiological condition, enabling higher intracellular uptake in vitro and intratumoral accumulation and penetration in-vivo of DOX when compared to liposomal or free solution of DOX. The findings in this thesis verify that transformable PLN system offers a unique platform and a novel approach for more effective drug transportation to the tumor. | Ph.D. | production, species, animal, species, animal | 12, 14, 15 |
| Karamikamkar, Solmaz | Park, Chul B||Naguib, Hani E | Hybrid Carbon-modified Polymer-based Silica Aerogels with Low Thermal Conductivity and Improved Mechanical Properties | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-06 | Recently, graphene nanoplatelets (GnPs) have attracted a great deal of attention as a multifunctional reinforcing nanofiller in polymer composites, which is due to their unique two-dimensional layer structure with honeycomb characteristics, their excellent mechanical properties and their isotropic reinforcement capability in more than one direction. Here, the effect of the spinodal decomposition process in creating a nonparticulate morphology in the GnPs' orientation and dispersion is investigated. It is also studied how the gelation reaction can participate in the inclusion of GnPs in the aerogel backbone during the sol-gel process to strengthen the body of the gel. Meanwhile, the process of GnP exfoliation and restacking elimination during sol-gel transition is comprehensively studied. The present thesis also analyzes the gelation kinetics and thermodynamics in the presence of GnP and graphene oxide (GO) using in-situ rheology, light scattering (DLS), small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and pore-structure-analyzer. The data collected during the gel network formation obtained with and without GnP or GO are analyzed in which to fully study the kinetics of structure evolution during the gelation. It is confirmed that the use of spinodal decomposition to create a nonparticulate gel network helps to offset the required long aging step during the sol-gel process, which is inevitable to strengthen the particle-to-particle neck using conventional methods such as nucleation and growth. It is also verified that this gelation technique enables the system to take advantage of GnP's full potential through correct exfoliation and elimination of restacking and re-agglomeration. The carbon-modified polymeric silica-based aerogels were first modified to enhance their mechanical properties by the addition of flexible nanofibers and stiff nanosheets into the structurer. The composites assembled homogeneously into the carbon-modified polymeric silica-based aerogel structure to create a uniform network of the solid struts along with the backbone. With such a network, the mechanical properties of the aerogels increased dramatically while preserving/advancing their unique features such as high surface area and thermal stability. The new aerogels could operate a high temperature with a high surface area. Furthermore, such material could resist moisture, which makes this material ideal to be used in high temperatures and humid environments. | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Alizadehgiashi, Moien | Kumacheva, Eugenia Kumacheva | Hydrogels Derived from Cellulose Nanocrystals | Chemistry | 2019-11-01 | In quest for new functional materials, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) have attracted great interest due to their sustainability, biocompatibility, ease of surface functionalization, and mechanical strength. In this thesis different hydrogels derived from CNCs for various applications have been developed. The hydrogels derived from CNC in this thesis can be divided into isotropic and anisotropic hydrogels. High capacity, low cost and sustainable materials for waste water treatment and heavy metal removal are in high demand. An isotropic nanocolloidal hydrogel based on CNCs and graphene quantum dots (GQDs) was developed. The microstructure, permeability and mechanical properties of the hydrogel was dependent on the concentration and the ratio of the two precursors. Microfluidic microgels have been used for heavy metal scavenging and wastewater treatment applications. Higher concentration of GQDs lead to higher adsorption capacity for different heavy metal ions. To study the possibility of alignment of CNCs in shear field, studying the kinetic of alignment and relaxation of alignment, an oscillatory microfluidic device was used. Higher frequency of oscillations led to higher alignments in different regions of the microchannel. An increase in the viscosity of the CNC suspension led to higher degree of alignment. At higher viscosities the relaxation of alignment was also slower. Similar to the morphology of the native tissue which contains unidirectionally aligned collagen fibers, anisotropic hydrogels that mimic the native tissue morphology are highly desired. Nanofibrillar hydrogel derived from CNCs and gelatin have been prepared to study the role of shear in fabrication of anisotropic hydrogels. Variation of concentration and ratio of hydrogel precursors led to various gelation times, permeability and mechanical properties. Using different printheads, sheets of CNC/gelatin hydrogels have been extruded and fluidic control in achieving composition gradient in transverse and longitudinal direction was explored. Variation in the substrate temperature was used to tune the degree of alignment in the hydrogel sheets. Hydrogels derived from CNC and Chitosan were developed to form a shear-thinning photo crosslinkable hydrogel for fabrication of personalized wound dressings. The structure, mechanical properties and swelling of the hydrogels were dependent on the concentration and ratio of the precursors. The hydrogels could be loaded with various active ingredients (AI) to add different functionalities. These functional hydrogels were printed in different shapes to program the release of AI in a controlled manner. | Ph.D. | water, waste | 6, 12 |
| Lindenmaier, Andras Adam | Santyr, Giles | Hyperpolarized 129Xe Diffusion-weighted MRI for Lung Morphometry of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia | Medical Biophysics | 2022-03-01 | Bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) is a disease that affects very prematurely born infants requiring ventilatory support and supplemental oxygen from birth. Despite advances in neonatal critical care, about 40% of very preterm infants develop BPD, characterized by alveolar simplification and microvascular stunting. Chronic sequelae of the disease persist into adulthood, reducing quality of life and exacting a significant toll on the healthcare system. Hyperoxia exposure followed by intermittent hypoxia in newborn rats mimics features of human BPD, specifically alveolar simplification. Alveolar simplification is morphometrically quantified by the mean linear intercept (MLI) that is based on hand-counting of intercepts from a limited number of representative histological sections and fields. With the advent of hyperpolarized (HP) gas magnetic resonance (MR) imaging, non-invasive imaging of terminal airway structure and function is achievable in vivo. HP 129Xe MR morphometric imaging exploits diffusion weighting along with a theoretical cylinder model of the terminal airways, to characterize the microstructure (eg. the terminal airway chord length, Lm) of the terminal airways. In this thesis, hyperpolarized 129Xe MR morphometric imaging was applied to characterize the microstructural changes associated with an O2 exposure rat model of BPD. Hyperoxia exposures consisted of either 60% or 85% O2 from post-natal day (PND) 1 – 7, followed by 60% O2 from PND 8-14. MR morphometry was performed and microstructural changes were compared with histology obtained from the same rats post-imaging. Lm and MLI were moderately correlated (r2 = 0.34, p = 0.0028), and MLI was increased by 11.3 ± 4.6µm in the 85% O2 exposed group compared to the control group, while Lm showed similar trends. Regional compliance was also estimated, assessing lung microstructural elasticity by performing morphometry at multiple peak-inspiratory-pressures. On average, alveolar compliance values scaled to a whole lung (19.1±15.1mL/cmH2O) were two orders of magnitude larger than conventional whole lung compliance obtained in the same animals (0.36±0.08mL/cmH2O) in a cohort of healthy rats. The two quantities were moderately correlated (r2 = 0.63, p = 0.019). HP 129Xe MR morphometric imaging affords non-invasive regional characterization of the lung microstructure and may be useful for the long term tracking of BPD in the clinic. | Ph.D. | healthcare, animal, animal | 3, 14, 15 |
| Tabi, Emmanuel | Simon, Dr. Rob | I Too Know Why The Caged Bird Sings: Rapping and Spoken Word as Activism and Education | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | ABSTRACT I have often witnessed how racialized children, youths, and young people have mobilized these practices through their cultural production. Such actions have served to (re)imagine what constitutes literacy, thus making space for more complex, fluid, and robust understandings of the literacy practices of Black youth (Fisher, 2003; Kinloch, 2010; Kirkland, 2013; Rowsell, 2011). The project is a collection of four narrative case studies that examined how four young Black men in the Greater Toronto Area employ spoken word poetry and rapping in their education and activism work. Drawing on New Literacy Studies (e.g., Street, 2003), the rhetoric of cultural production (Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013), and Critical Race Theory (e.g., Ladson-Billings Tate, 1995), I explore how they each created out-of-school educational workshops as a respond to the low self-esteem, depression, and marginalization as well as the creative potential of the racialized youth and children they support in the schools and communities they work within. As such, the two key questions that guided this research are: (a) How do these four Black young men explain their choice to use spoken word poetry and rapping to express their lived realities, including the systemic racism they continue to live with? (b) How do these four Black young men use spoken word poetry and rapping to educate themselves and their communities? Three key themes emerged from the narrative case study data. First, these Black young men engage in the cultural production of rapping and spoken word poetry as a method of expressing and theorizing their emotional lives and lived realities. Their cultural production helped them make sense of and cope with the pain and difficulties they have experienced. Second, the cultural production of these young men counters problematic, monolithic conceptualizations of Black people in Canada. Participants’ critical and creative labour provide counter-narratives to the stereotypical ways that Black youth are regarded. Third, findings highlight how Ebele, Kofi, TD, and Efe created a “new” form of education that supports the healing of racialized children and youths in urban communities, as alternatives to formal educational institutions that often marginalize Black children and youths. | Ph.D. | racism, gender, labour, urban, production, fish, land, institut | 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 |
| Lee, Frank Shin-Haw | Gramolini, Anthony O | Identification and Characterization of the Role of REEP5 in Sarco-Endoplasmic Reticulum Formation, Maintenance, and Function in Cardiac Muscle | Physiology | 2021-06-01 | Heart failure (HF) remains the most rapidly rising cardiovascular disease and the leading cause of inpatient hospitalization worldwide, with costs exceeding $30 billion dollars annually in North America. While many key regulators of heart function have been identified, yet effective therapies aimed at healing or reversing the progression of HF remain restricted due to the complex nature of the disease and a lack of understanding of the functional membrane proteome of the heart. Here, we created a blueprint of all critical membrane and membrane-associated proteins in the heart by mapping several transcriptomic- and proteomic-based datasets against our mass spectrometry dataset of membrane-enriched protein clusters from human fetal and mouse neonatal cardiomyocytes. We identified 173 membrane-associated proteins that are conserved among eukaryotic species, cardiac-enriched, and have not been previously linked to a cardiac phenotype. These poorly annotated cardiac-enriched membrane proteins represent excellent candidates in follow-up studies aimed at elucidating the underlying molecular mechanisms of cardiomyopathies and HF. One of the highly ranked, poorly annotated, and cardiac-enriched membrane proteins was REEP5, a sarco-endoplasmic reticulum (SR/ER) membrane protein. In a follow-up study we tested the hypothesis that physiological REEP5 expression is important for cardiac SR/ER organization and heart function. In vitro REEP5 depletion in isolated functional adult mouse cardiomyocytes resulted in SR/ER membrane vacuolization and impaired cellular processes including activated cardiac ER stress pathways and dysregulated Ca2+ cycles. Subsequent in vivo CRISPR/Cas9-mediated REEP5 loss-of-function zebrafish mutants showed sensitized cardiac dysfunction upon pharmacological HF induction. Similarly, in vivo adeno-associated viral (AAV9)-induced REEP5 depletion in the mouse resulted in lethal diastolic cardiac dysfunction with dilated cardiac chambers and reduced ejection fraction. Altogether, these results demonstrated 1. Our cardiomyocyte membrane proteome dataset proves instrumental to studies aimed at characterizing novel regulators of heart function and identifying potential heart disease markers and/or therapeutic targets, 2. The critical role of REEP5 in cardiac SR/ER organization, embryonic heart development, and heart function. | Ph.D. | conserv, fish, species, conserv, species | 14, 15 |
| Frendo-Cumbo, Scott | Klip, Amira||Brumell, John H | Identification of New IRS1 Interactors in the Regulation of Insulin Signalling and Cell Proliferation | Physiology | 2021-06-01 | Insulin is an essential hormone for the maintenance of whole-body glucose homeostasis, inducing glucose disposal in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue and inhibiting glucose production in the liver. Moreover, insulin signalling stimulates whole-body growth by promoting cell proliferation. Upon binding to the insulin receptor (IR), insulin acts through conserved signalling nodes, including insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS1), AKT and Forkhead box O1 (FOXO1). When insulin signalling fails, insulin resistance develops, which is a key contributor to the development of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2D). Insulin resistance correlates with various, potentially causative, altered cellular conditions, such as deficient autophagy. Irrespective of the causal condition, insulin resistance is usually associated with defects at key signalling nodes, IRS1 and AKT. IRS1 inhibitory serine phosphorylation and decreased protein content are common in insulin resistance, while insulin-stimulated AKT phosphorylation is decreased and often used as a measure of insulin sensitivity. Despite associations between insulin resistance and IRS1 dysregulation, how this arises is still debated. The work in this thesis focused on identifying regulators of IRS1 and characterizing their impact on downstream insulin signalling. First, we identified the KLHL9/KLHL13/CUL3 E3 Ubiquitin ligase complex as a new IRS1 interactor responsible for proteasomal targeting of IRS1 for degradation. This E3 complex contributes to the development of insulin resistance in a genetic cellular model of deficient autophagy. Second, we identified DCAF7 as a new interactor of IRS1 that when lacking leads to activation of FOXO1 downstream. We found that DCAF7 regulation of FOXO1 is important for cell proliferation and inhibition of hepatic glucose production. Together, our findings identify new interactors of IRS1 and reveal the importance of these interactors in the regulation of IRS1, AKT and FOXO1. In this way, our findings contribute to the overall mechanistic understanding of insulin signalling. | Ph.D. | production, conserv, conserv | 12, 14, 15 |
| Lithwick , Stuart Aaron (Matan-Lithwick) | Taylor, Michael D.||Bader, Gary | Identifying Novel Genes and Pathways Correlated with Group 3 and Group 4 Medulloblastoma Metastasis to the Spine | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-06-01 | Medulloblastoma (MB) is a cancer of the cerebellum and the most common childhood brain malignancy. For children with high-risk MB, mortality is nearly always the result of the primary tumour having metastasized to the leptomeninges. This is due to the fact that current therapy for metastatic MB is less effective than that for primary disease. This is a product of the fact that most MB research has focused on primary tumours rather than metastases, due to the low availability of metastatic MB tissues for research, and, until recently, the absence of mouse models of metastatic MB. With greater understanding of primary MB has come a more rounded foundation upon which to build a better therapy. Thus, it is exciting to note that mouse models of MB dissemination now exist, and with these models has come first glimpses of mechanisms that may be driving MB metastasis. In an effort to build upon this new body of knowledge our lab engaged in a process of repeated selection for increased metastasis propensity among spine metastases from mouse patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models of human Group 3 and Group 4 MB. By phenotypically selecting for increased metastasis propensity, we would necessarily also select for increased activity of the genes and pathways necessary and sufficient for increased metastasis propensity, some of which might represent valuable new therapeutic targets. In this manner, we have identified several long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and Cancer Testis Antigen (CTA) genes increasingly transcribed in correlation with metastasis. Further, we have found that their increased transcription is followed closely by the activation of several well- known metastasis pathways. So lncRNAs and CTA genes may represent novel new components of the complex systems regulating MB metastasis. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Maal-Bared, Geith | van der Kooy, Derek | Identifying the Anatomical Layout and Molecular Properties of the GABAA Motivational Switch in the Ventral Tegmental Area | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | The motivation to seek natural reinforcers and drugs can transform over time from a form of pleasure-seeking to a form of relief-seeking. This shift from a positive reinforcement-based motivation to a negative reinforcement-based motivation is a hallmark of several substance use and eating disorders. Our group has demonstrated a double dissociation wherein the former motivational state is mediated by the tegmental pedunculopontine nucleus (TPP), while the latter is mediated by mesolimbic dopamine (DA). In this thesis, I demonstrate the functional role that brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and connexin-36 (Cx36)-containing gap junctions play in this switching mechanism. Specifically, I show that intra-VTA infusions of BDNF produce a drug-dependent and withdrawn phenotype in otherwise drug-naïve animals and that lentiviral knockdown of the BDNF receptor, TrkB, prevents the manifestation of opiate dependence and withdrawal. I also show that Cx36 is necessary and sufficient for opiate dependence susceptibility, as evidenced by my finding that intra-VTA infusions of the pharmacological blocker, mefloquine, result in a reversion of opiate-dependent and withdrawn (ODW) rats to a drug-naïve state, that conditional knockout mice lacking Cx36 in GAD65+ cells are perpetually drug-naïve, and that viral-mediated rescue of Cx36 in VTA GABA neurons is sufficient to restore susceptibility of those mice to opiate dependence. These studies further characterize the GABAA switch that is causally linked to maladaptive drug-seeking. | Ph.D. | animal, animal | 14, 15 |
| Fournier, Chantal | Gérin-Lajoie, Diane | Identité professionnelle et rôle des enseignantes et des enseignants dans les écoles de langue française en Ontario | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | In addition to transmitting academic knowledge and socializing students, teachers working in a linguistic minority context must be a linguistic and cultural model for these young people. Their task is complex and comes with many challenges not faced by their counterparts in English-language schools. This research aims to understand how teachers in French-language schools in Ontario perceive themselves personally and professionally. Based on the life stories of seven teachers, we are interested in exploring how their rapport to identity will have an influence on how they perceive their role in fulfilling the mandate of French-language schools, particularly with regard to the transmission of French language and culture, given the close link between personal and professional identity. Analysis of the results reveals that teachers understand their role as agents of linguistic reproduction, but have a poor understanding of their role in the transmission of French culture. Despite the many policies and initiatives implemented by the government to support their work and help them fulfill the mandate of French-language schools, teachers tend instead to interpret their role according to their representations of their own linguistic and cultural identity, as well as their representations of the culture of expression, interpreted according to a traditional and folkloric vision of this notion. | Ph.D. | knowledge, minorit, production | 4, 10, 12 |
| Shangguan, Junnan | Chin, Ya-Huei (Cathy) | Identities and Catalytic Functionalities of Reactive Hydrogen Species during Hydrogen Addition and Oxygen Removal Reactions of Carboxylic Acids, Carbonyls, and Phenols at Transition Metal-solvent Interfaces | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-06-01 | At transition metal and protic solvent interfaces, H-adatoms (H*) derived from H2 (10-60 bar) dissociative adsorption, and protons (H+) derived from either H* ionization or solvent self-ionization are catalytically reactive H species. These H species participate in or assist with hydrodeoxygenation of phenolics and carbonyls to produce alkanes and alkanols; yet their specific identities and catalytic functions remain unclear. This thesis interrogates the origin, chemical identities, and electronic charge of reactive H species and connects these properties to their catalytic roles within the complex reaction network. These roles depend on the solvent and reactant identity and lead to rate equations that depend on the number of catalytically active sites during the hydrodeoxygenation of C3-C6 carbonyls, acetic acid, and phenols on Ru, Pt, and Pd clusters in protic solvents. Across all three catalytic systems of carbonyl hydrogenation, acetic acid hydrodeoxygenation, and phenolic hydrodeoxygenation, H+ and H* both play their respective roles as intermediates in the overall catalytic system. It is proposed that H+, derived from H* ionization, adds onto the carbonyl oxygen followed by H* addition onto the carbonyl carbon, thus leading to C=O hydrogenation. Proton transfer steps cause the rate constants to increase as the proton affinity of the carbonyl group increases or as the solvent dielectric permittivity increases. Acetic acid undergoes rate limiting C-O bond rupture on a vacant Ru site to form a surface acyl group. The acyl undergoes H* and H+ addition to form a valuable ethanol product. The selectivity of ethanol is found to increase with H* and H+ concentrations that are in turn determined by the square root of the H2 pressure and acetic acid concentration, respectively. Quasi-equilibrated H* addition to the aromatic ring of guaiacol leads to the formation of partially saturated enol intermediates. H+ from the solvent catalyzes the tautomerization of the partially saturated enol, leading to the formation of its keto tautomer that either undergoes C-OCH3 bond cleavage or another H* addition to form hydrodeoxygenation or hydrogenation products. | Ph.D. | transit, species, species | 11, 14, 15 |
| Koyama, Jacklyn Mary Ruth | Page-Gould, Elizabeth | Ideological Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation | Psychology | 2022-03-01 | Ideological beliefs are strongly held, prescriptive beliefs about how a society should function. Differences in ideological beliefs can be a cause of intergroup conflict and a driver of polarization. This thesis explores how individuals react when encountering people and groups whose ideological beliefs conflict with their own. I find that across a range of ideological beliefs that span the political spectrum, people report similar experiences of ideological threat and intergroup perceptions and intentions. In each chapter, I explore ideological disagreement through the lens of different psychological phenomena. In Chapter 2, I use data-driven methods to build an evidence-based description of the attitudes and characteristics of political moderates. I show that moderates have more diverse and less extreme views than partisans, and confirm existing literature showing they are less prone to negative views and dogmatic ideological beliefs. However, I also show how the American culture war polarizes moderates' attitudes towards certain issues such that they resemble partisans' attitudes in their consistency and extremity. In Chapter 3, I investigate the relationship between perceptions of ideological threat and moral conviction. I find that perceptions of a preferred ideological policy as being under threat is related to higher moral conviction towards that policy. In Chapter 4, I develop a measure of ideological prejudice that captures negative attitudes towards both ideological outgroup members and their beliefs. I find that negative attitudes towards ideological outgroups largely centre around generalized dislike towards outgroup members and condemnation of ideologies that would restrict others' freedom of expression. Finally, in Chapter 5, I identify psychological mechanisms related to cooperative intentions towards ideological outgroup members. I design and test a series of wise interventions leveraging each mechanism. While I do not identify an effective intervention in this chapter, I discuss insight gained from these tests and the identified correlates of cooperation. In this thesis, I seek insight into ideological disagreement through the lens and tools of social psychology. Overall, I find evidence that individual ideological beliefs have great power over perceptions of the social world and engagement with it. | Ph.D. | invest, judic | 9, 16 |
| Ghatage, Rohan | Dolan, Neal | Illegible Subjects: Knowledge and American Modernity, 1898-1985 | English | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation explores the relationship between politics and knowledge as represented by a set of late-nineteenth and mid-twentieth century American writers. The category of knowledge has long been regarded as a site of power and has, consequently, also been a site of contestation. There is a suggestion that if the way the world is understood ramifies through the domains of the political and the social, then efforts must be made to—as Eve Sedgwick puts it—“pluralize and specify” knowledge in order to disentangle it from oppressive agendas. This mode of critical address has a lot of traction in the humanities and is differently exemplified by scholars such as Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Sylvia Wynter. I intervene in their conceptions about the relationship between knowledge production and social change by examining a series of American writers who, rather than remaking the normative codes that impose legibility on social and political life, work towards accessing the broad range of political possibilities that exist outside of what is either known or knowable. I begin by surveying the critical field that examines the relationship between knowledge, politics, and everyday life. In particular, the introduction draws upon the pragmatist philosopher William James and his critique of “vicious intellectualism” to develop what I call American society’s legibility imperative and consider how it can be undone. My first chapter demonstrates how the late writing of Henry James militates against modernity’s reduction of all aspects of life to what is profitable and quantifiable by celebrating forms of human subjectivity and relation that are purposeless, unpredictable, and porous. Next, I interrogate how Nella Larsen’s Quicksand suggests that the production of sustaining forms of collective life depends upon the suspension of the coercive demand that subjects exchange their radical opacity for identitarian legibility. My third chapter explores how the essays of James Baldwin contend that the imagining and creation of a better world is predicated upon rethinking the normative value accorded to knowledge in the practice of politics. I conclude with Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood which argues that doing away with knowledge’s priority could potentially lead to the emergence of an authentic, non-hierarchical, and trans-species community. | Ph.D. | knowledge, gini, production, species, species, social change | 4, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16 |
| Munro, Daniel Joseph | Nagel, Jennifer | Imagining the Actual | Philosophy | 2021-11-01 | Suppose I ask you how many windows are on the outside of your house. A natural way to answer my question is to imagine the outside of your house from various angles, counting the number of windows in your mental image. Suppose now that I describe to you a car accident I witnessed on my way to work this morning. As I do so, it would be natural for you to imagine this event as I describe the various details. In cases like these, we exercise our ability to imagine the actual world, using mental imagery to put us in touch with the way things are in reality. Prior to reflecting on such examples, it’s intuitive to associate the imagination with our ability to mentally transcend reality: to daydream, fantasize, and conjure up fictional worlds. But this obscures the fact that uses of imagination to cognize actuality are a common, core part of everyday mental life. This dissertation investigates the nature and epistemic significance of such uses of the imagination, both in our individual explorations of the world and in how we learn from other people. | Ph.D. | wind, invest, gini | 7, 9, 10 |
| Kaluskar, Samarth | Arhonditsis, George | Implementation of Bayesian Inference Technique to Address Data Limited Problems in Acology: A Case study with Peary Caribou in Canadian Arctic Archipelago | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-06-01 | In the present era, rates of decline in species’ abundance provide some of the most compelling evidence of biodiversity loss rates globally. To address the problem of biodiversity loss, a critical piece of knowledge is the understanding of species interactions with their environment, because environmental variables are generally better predictors of population integrity than intrinsic biological traits. Peary caribou (Rangifer tarandus pearyi), the smallest of all caribou subspecies, are endemic to the Canadian Arctic Archipelago (CAA) and a characteristic example of species at risk. Climate change can affect their habitat availability, as well as the makeup of the entire Arctic ecosystem. Logistical and financial constraints in the CAA often compromise the frequency and the spatial extent of Peary caribou surveys, and therefore inconsistent sampling, errors in measurements, or faults in data acquisition encumber the robust assessment of their population status. To remedy such data gaps in surveys and, improve the robustness of any modelling exercise, I first developed a regression-based imputation framework to reconstruct the Peary caribou time series. The model was able to capture more than 65% of the variability in the dataset. To date, little work has been done to evaluate the net impact of changes from the climate on Peary caribou population dynamics, as it has been argued that the net balance of limited forage accessibility due to severe weather conditions relative to that of increased forage biomass due to prolonged growing season will depend on local climate, floral abundance and composition, and landscape characteristics. Using a two-pronged modelling approach, I characterized the year-to-year variability of the habitat conditions across the CAA, using meteorological variables, landscape features, and resource competition. My dissertation also introduced a spatially explicit modelling framework to examine the strength and nature of the relationships of snow density and vegetation with Peary caribou populations. My dissertation concludes by identifying critical augmentations of the available scientific knowledge that necessitate to design the optimal management actions of Peary caribou populations across the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. | Ph.D. | knowledge, accessib, climate, weather, environmental, species, biodivers, ecosystem, biodivers, ecolog, species, land, endangered species, ecosystem | 4, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| MousaviHejazi, Bahar | Janzen, Katharine K | Implementation of Outcomes-based Education in an Interdisciplinary Design Course and Curriculum: An Action Research Study | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | This is a case study that focuses on the challenges that I, as the action researcher and design educator at the post-secondary level face in the integration of an outcomes-based curriculum model that has been adopted in recent years by the higher education sector in Ontario in order to ensure quality, transparency and compatibility among the credentials. In this thesis, I studied the implementation of the outcomes-based education curriculum in a design program through investigative cycles of action-reflection of my own teaching practice as well as that of my colleagues in the Art and Design Foundation Program at the School of Design, George Brown College. The selection of action research as my strategy of inquiry is my response to the qualitative and critical nature of the challenges that educators are facing in their efforts to integrate learner - centered principles in their teaching practice. My research has been completed in two phases: Phase A – Critical Dialogue with Self and Phase B – Critical Dialogue with the Institution. The participants of my study are my students in Foundation Design II: Colour Theory and Practice, one Critical Expert from the Teaching and Learning Exchange, one Interested Observer (graduate of the program), Art and Design Foundation faculty and a Critical Administrator at the College. These are the synthesis of the insights I gained: Phase A – Critical Dialogue with Self: • A holistic approach to teaching and learning of the foundation of art and design. • Proactivity and reflexivity in my teaching practice with the goal of self-improvement and growth based on personal beliefs and social values. • A flexible learning - centered approach in course planning. • Sense of care towards student learning. • Mentality of success in teaching and learning: we are a team and we are working together to succeed. Phase B – Critical Dialogue with the Institution • A holistic learning - centered approach in the art and design foundation curriculum planning. • Use of new strategies to engage faculty in curriculum development. • Use of design thinking tools in curriculum design. • Empowering students and faculty by giving voice to their individual beliefs and values in art and design education. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, institut | 4, 9, 16 |
| Liu, Kailuo | Lee, Spike WS||Leonardelli, Geoffrey J | Impression Formation in the Digital World | Management | 2021-11-01 | The need for impression management and identity signaling is one of the core motives behind consumer behaviors (Baumeister Leary, 1995; Gal, 2015). Researchers have studied how consumers disclose their personal attributes and consumption attitudes extensively (Han et al., 2010; Kurt et al., 2011). However, little is known about how observers respond to these social signals. In other words, the effectiveness of many impression management behaviors remains unknown. Although new technologies like social media have revolutionized people’s social lives, academic research knows little about how consumers view others in the digital age. The present dissertation examines how perceivers form impressions on presenters when different types of consumer attributes and attitudes are observed. Essay 1 focuses on public impressions of a person’s online inconsistent disclosure about themselves (e.g., a book lover who goes to night clubs frequently). I reveal that people can form not only negative impressions of the person, rooted in greater perceived inauthenticity, but also positive reactions, indicating greater perceived versatility. The moderating role of relationship closeness, perceiver traits, and implicit theories were tested. Essay 2 demonstrates that people who express valenced consumer attitudes (i.e., liking and/or disliking brands and products) are viewed more favorably than people who express neutral consumer attitudes (i.e., neither liking nor disliking brands and products). The effect is driven by dehumanization of consumers who have neutral attitudes. Within valenced consumer attitudes, positive attitudes are found to bring more favorable impression than negative attitudes. Empirical evidence was provided in a series of lab experiments and an archival dataset. The current research contributes to the impression formation literature by showing how inconsistent personal attributes influence impression favorability. It validates the conception of connectionist models that not only the content of attributes, but also the structure and associations among them, determine social impression (Kunda Thagard, 1996). The research also offers insights into consumer attitude literature (Argyriou Melewar, 2011) by demonstrating a subtle form of dehumanization induced by neutral attitudes. The literature on impression formation was reviewed, along with discussions on how online social media provides an avenue ripe for future research. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Iwenofu, Linda | Geva, Esther | Improving the Reading Achievement of Language Minority and Disadvantaged Youth At Risk of Academic Failure | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2019-06-01 | BACKGROUND: Variability in individuals' response to intervention can contribute to smaller intervention effects. Integration of quantitative and qualitative findings can be instrumental in elucidating person-level and broader contextual issues related to differential intervention efficacy and inform overall intervention utility. In order to assess ecological factors implicated in differential response to intervention, three studies were conducted that together comprised a comprehensive program evaluation of the Vocabulary Learning Project, a manualized reading intervention targeting the vocabulary and reading comprehension skills of academically at-risk language-minority and economically disadvantaged high-school aged youth. METHODS: A sequential embedded quasi-experimental mixed methods research design consisting of three distinct yet interrelated phases was used. Across the three research phases, mixed analyses of variance, hierarchical linear regression and multi-case study analyses were conducted to assess intervention effects, factors predictive of outcome gains and contextual factors differentiating outcomes, respectively. RESULTS: Findings from the first two studies indicated that the intervention was differentially effective based on multiple factors at various contextual levels. At the person-level context, pre-intervention language comprehension skills, pre-intervention motivation to read, achievement orientation, academic self-concept and sense of future aspirations were implicated factors. At the intervention program level, investment in positive program outcomes, tutoring group climate and participant resourcefulness were identified factors. Within the peer and family social context, reliance on peers and nature of parental support were differentiating factors. At the broader school, community and cultural context, school perceptions, school and community engagement, as well as youths’ sense of cultural identity were factors that differentiated program effects. Findings from the third, integrative study resulted in the identification of a unifying meta-theme of motivation as a key factor underlying the differential responses to the VLP intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Consideration of the multiple contexts navigated by culturally and linguistically diverse youth is critical for maximizing intervention effects. IMPACT: This study provides multiple insights about opportunities worthy of consideration in optimally designing instructional interventions targeting marginalized youth populations in the Canadian context, and suggests a useful methodological approach for evaluating such programs. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, minorit, marginalized, climate, ecolog | 4, 9, 10, 13, 15 |
| De Leon, Marc Adrian | Fujitani, Takashi||Bender, Daniel | In the Image of Industry: Indigeneity and Migrant Labor in the Making of Filipino America | History | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation presents a cultural and labor history of race in 20th century Filipino America through the political-economic conditions that displaced lowlands peasants and indigenous groups from Northern Luzon in the 19th century. It argues that the constellation of contradictory identities that constitute the “Filipino”—the indigenous “savage” and the industrious migrant worker—across the early 20th century Pacific emerge out of archival productions that decontextualized political economic upheavals, as the island of Luzon became repurposed into a commodity producing colony. Industrial empires, nationalist political elites, rural intellectuals, migrant peasants, and indigenous Cordillerans alike competed over the terms of what the modern “Filipino” would look like as northern resource frontiers produced a global labor force, bringing with it a vibrant transpacific political culture. This dissertation investigates the racial economy of the colonial archive, or the phenomenon of archival production and circulation through which race manifested as ways for empires to manage human resources. | Ph.D. | labor, worker, invest, indigenous, rural, production, land, indigenous | 8, 9, 10, 16, 11, 12, 15 |
| Robinson Giff, Patricia C. | Gagne, Antoinetté | In-between Places: A Narrative, Arts-informed Exploration of the Knowledge, Values, and Beliefs of English Language Instructors | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | This research study, written as a narrative, arts-informed multiple case study, provides a model of reflective practice for TESOL professionals. Based on a foundation of holistic education, this study is an in-depth exploration of the teacher-self, centred on the hearts, minds, and behaviours of four English as an Additional Language (EAL) instructors of adults at mid-career. The central question of this study was, In what ways do English as an Additional Language (EAL) instructors of adult learners describe transformations in their knowledge, values, and beliefs about teaching and learning over the course of time? Engaged in an 8-month long Professional Learning Community (PLC) using Kolb’s Experiential Learning Cycle as the framework for reflection and growth, participants completed creative and reflective writing tasks and participated in group discussions in order to investigate their knowledge, values, and beliefs and how these shaped their perspectives, impacted their decision-making, and influenced their behaviours both inside and outside the classroom. Through actively investigating and constructing meaning from their lived experiences, participants imagined and created new ways of being and teaching. Participants were interviewed 4 years and 13 years after their participation in the PLC in order to identify the most significant changes in their knowledge, values, and beliefs. Findings showed that peer-based, continued professional development (CPD) involving writing and dialogic reflection are powerful methods and means for mid- to late- career EAL instructors to uncover hidden assumptions, develop alternate perspectives on experiences, build upon their diverse knowledge, and develop and share their expertise. Findings also showed an impact on the participants’ knowledge, values, and beliefs as they each progressed through various life stages and career transitions. While certain values remained the same over time, others changed as a result of the participants’ personal and professional growth. Implications of this study address research and practice at three levels. First, at the individual level, focusing on educators and students, second, at the level of professional development practices, and third, at the policy level related to professional learning and development within the community college context. | Ed.D. | knowledge, learning, invest, transit | 4, 9, 11 |
| Dong, Yuchan | Ozin, Geoffrey | Indium Oxide Photocatalysis Doping, Defects and CO2 Reduction | Chemistry | 2020-11-01 | Heterogeneous catalysis, in which the reaction of gaseous or liquid chemicals is facilitated at the surface of a solid material, is responsible for the majority of chemicals and fuels production on the industrial scale. The energy required to drive these reactions is typically derived from the combustion of non-renewable fossil resources and carries with it a significant and unavoidable carbon footprint. In the pursuit of an environmentally responsible and sustainable chemical industry, being increasingly motivated by concerns regarding climate change caused by excessive CO2 emissions, green chemistry approaches to heterogeneous catalysis are being actively sought. Such methodologies include the electrification of chemical- and fuel-production processes using renewable forms of energy, the replacement of fossil feedstock chemicals by CO2 and the substitution of heterogeneous thermocatalysis by photocatalysis. To realize this utopian vision of a sustainable future, the discovery and optimization of highly active, selective and stable CO2 catalysts is imperative. Catalytic metal oxides in particular are renowned ‘chameleons’ in the materials world, being capable of filling diverse roles in solid-state chemistry, physics and engineering, as well as being employed in the production of many industrial products, processes and devices. This prevalence of metal oxides is traceable to their myriad compositions, structures and forms, variations of which bestow upon them diverse properties, functionality and utility. Herein, we utilized two photocatalyst engineering methods to tune the surface and electronic properties of indium oxide nanomaterials that could enable solar powered gas-phase heterogeneous catalytic CO2 hydrogenation reactions. More specifically, detailed investigation on the synthesis, structure, property relations of bismuth substituted defect-laden indium oxide and reduced black indium oxide materials were established through comprehensive characterizations that include HRTEM, XAFS, XPS and PXRD. An understanding of the photochemistry and photophysics that underpins the excited state surface chemistry of gaseous H2 and CO2 has also been explored through a combination of computational modeling and advanced surface characterization methods such as Near Ambient Pressure XPS, and DRIFTS. Together these studies have demonstrated how rational and systematic variations in the structure-property relations of indium oxide enlighten our understanding of gas-phase heterogeneous CO2 photocatalysis and provide a platform for photocatalyst engineering. | Ph.D. | energy, renewabl, solar, emission, invest, production, climate, environmental, emissions, carbon dioxide, co2 | 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Herman, Miranda Katelyn | Jayawardhana, Ray||Wu, Yanqin | Individual and Statistical Characterization of the Giant Exoplanet Population | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2021-06-01 | The field of observational exoplanet astronomy has seen tremendous progress over the span of only a few decades. Now, we find ourselves at the dawn of a new era: the characterization of distant worlds. Novel observational methods and statistical techniques allow us to explore not only the trends in bulk properties within the exoplanet population, but the atmospheric properties of individual planets as well. In this thesis, we aim to produce a more comprehensive view of the giant exoplanet population across a range of orbital distances, from the chemical inventory, thermal structure, and orbital characteristics of hot Jupiters, to the occurrence rate of cold giants and their correlation with inner planets. We begin by characterizing the orbital parameters of a single hot Jupiter, reporting on the spin-orbit misalignment and precession of the planetary system based on gravity-darkened transit observations. We then investigate the composition and thermal structure of an ultra hot Jupiter atmosphere, searching for water vapor and TiO in its optical transmission and emission spectra. We also provide confirmation of neutral atomic iron in the day-side atmosphere of an ultra hot Jupiter, and introduce a new likelihood mapping technique to constrain a planet's day-night contrast and peak phase offset using high-resolution Doppler spectroscopy alone for the first time. Lastly, we turn out attention to characterizing the population of outer planets. We perform an automated search for and statistical study of transiting cold giant planets orbiting Sun-like stars, discussing their occurrence rate, radius distribution, and correlation with inner planets. These works will have implications for theories of planet formation at both the inner and outer edges of planetary systems, allowing us to develop a clearer understanding of planet formation and evolution. The breadth of these studies is also a testament to the advancing capabilities of observational exoplanet science, and we anticipate that the future of the field lies in the study of Earth-like planets and the statistical trends in atmospheric properties across the exoplanet population. | Ph.D. | water, emission, invest, transit, planet | 6, 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Ren, Annie | Diamandis, Eleftherios P||Kulasingam, Vathany | Individualizing Ovarian Cancer Surveillance: Discovery and Validation of Serological Personalized Biomarkers of Recurrence Using Multiplex Proteomics Technologies | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-11-01 | In Canada, ovarian cancer is the third most common female reproductive cancer and the leading cause of deaths among gynecological cancers. Although remission is observed in most ovarian cancer patients after first-line treatment, >80% of advanced cases see recurrence with a median survival of 12-24 months from the time of recurrence. The classical ovarian cancer biomarker, CA125, is controversial for monitoring recurrence as initiating second-line therapy sooner based on CA125 does not impact survival. Furthermore, CA125 is non-elevated at diagnosis in 10-20% of advanced ovarian cancer cases in general, leaving this population with no widely used biomarkers for surveillance. Patients being monitored with CA125 also have a 10-40% chance of CA125 being non-elevated at recurrence. With increasing selection of immunotherapies and precision medicines, novel personalized ovarian cancer biomarkers could help individualize the surveillance process. Due to tumour heterogeneity, we hypothesize that quantifying the unique array of tumour-derived serological proteins with advanced proteomics methods could identify personalized marker signatures that sensitively detect relapse. We first assessed the technical potential of two multiplex proteomics technologies for detecting proteins that may correlate to tumour burden in cancer patients. For our subsequent discovery study, we employed the proximity extension assay (PEA) to simultaneously measure 1,104 proteins in 120 longitudinal serum samples (30 ovarian cancer patients). We identified 23 candidate personalized markers (plus CA125 and FDA-approved marker HE4), in which personalized combinations was informative of recurrence in more patients (92%) compared to clinical CA125 (68%) and HE4 (32%) alone. For our ensuing validation study, we used PEAs to concurrently measure 644 proteins (includes 21 previously identified candidates plus CA125 and HE4) in 234 independent, longitudinal serum samples (39 ovarian cancer patients). The 21 candidates were each informative of recurrence in 3-35% of patients. Patient-centric analysis of all 644 proteins generated a refined panel of 33 personalized tumour markers, which includes 18 validated candidates from our discovery study. Along with HE4, the 34-marker panel offered higher sensitivity (91%) by identifying personalized marker signatures of recurrence compared to clinical CA125 (59%) and HE4 (26%) alone. Our findings show that personalized tumour markers may offer the best lens into the rich heterogeneity of ovarian tumours compared to a single marker alone. Developing a panel of personalized markers for tracking custom signatures of tumour burden in each patient may offer excellent sensitivity for detecting recurrence early and aid in prompt clinical referral to imaging and subsequent treatment interventions. | Ph.D. | female, emission, ecolog | 5, 7, 15 |
| Iorio, Francesco | Amza, Cristiana||Beck, J. Christopher | Inductive Transfer Learning for Incremental Modeling and Optimization of Cloud Systems Performance | Computer Science | 2021-06-01 | Due to the cost of sampling system performance, it is expensive to obtain performance characteristics of a complex computer system in different configurations. As an alternative, in this dissertation, we propose to reuse existing partial and full performance models and explicitly model the effects of configuration variations, with a goal of substantially reducing the time and effort required to perform performance reasoning and optimization on cloud-based systems, applications and services. We introduce Model Mapping, a novel inductive transfer learning technique for incremental performance modeling of highly configurable systems. Model Mapping captures many explicit and latent types of dynamic system evolution, including configuration changes, scaling and hardware upgrades, by deriving and modeling these kinds of incremental transformations between system and/or application instances, over time. Modeling these transformations allows us to build accurate models for new configuration instances with just a few samples.We experimentally test our method on a variety of system performance modeling and optimization scenarios, using a carefully designed experimental testbed and realistic benchmarks, to obtain insight on the method's applicability in real-world cloud computing environments. Among other examples, we show how our method can be used to quickly derive an accurate resource allocation split that optimizes a given overall performance goal for co-hosted applications in a virtualized environment. Compared to using conventional direct and incremental modeling techniques, our method achieves higher accuracy by up to an order of magnitude when the sampling budget is extremely limited, in particular when samples are limited to between 0% to 5% of an exhaustive sampling budget. | Ph.D. | learning, reuse | 4, 12 |
| Di Matteo, Daniel | Rose, Jonathan||Katzman, Martin | Inference of Anxiety and Depression from Smartphone-collected Data | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Anxiety and depression are widespread and have significant impact on individuals’ quality of life. Automated technology which objectively measures behaviorsrelevant to symptoms of anxiety and depression could aid in the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders in two ways. Diagnosis could be improved by using this data to build automated pre-screeners for these disorders. Treatment could be improved by sharing relevant patient data withclinicians, aiding in decision making.Smartphones offer a wide variety of objective digital data, such as GPS location and audio, which can be collected and analyzed in order to infer key behaviors which give insightinto individuals’ mental health. This thesis describes the development of passive and objective measures of individuals’ symptoms of anxiety and depression, enabled by the analysis of smartphone-collected data. A study was conducted where data was collected from participants’ smartphones and a number of features which quantify symptom severity of anxiety and depression were designed and extracted from this data. One such feature, which infers the regularity in an individual's daily pattern of activity from short recordings of their ambient audio, was found to be correlated with self-reported measures of depression (r = -0.37, P = 0.01). Another feature, which infers the number of times that an individual leaves the home from GPS location data, was found to be correlated with self-reported measures of social anxiety (r = -0.25, P = 0.04), generalized anxiety (r = -0.31, P = 0.01), and depression (r = -0.29,P = 0.01). In total, 97 features were extracted from participant data and tested for associations with self-report measures of anxiety and depression. A subset of these features were also selected and used to build predictive models of anxiety and depression, screening participants for social anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, respectively. The results of this study show that objective data, passively collected from individuals'smartphones, give broad insight into individuals'behaviors and activities, and specific insight into the severity of symptoms of anxiety and depression. | Ph.D. | mental health | 3 |
| Sasse, Alexander | Morris, Quaid D. | Inferring RNA Sequence Specificities from Protein Sequences to Characterize Post-transcriptional Regulation in Eukaryotes | Molecular Genetics | 2022-03-01 | Most RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) find their targets through unique binding preferences towards specific RNA sequence or RNA sequence-structure patterns, called specificities. Recently, we used RNAcompete, an in vitro binding assay, to measure the RNA sequence specificities of 174 RBPs. Combined with previous measurements, we established the largest collection of RBP sequence specificities to date, containing 381 RBPs from 33 eukaryotes, from protists to humans. RNA sequence specificities are nearly always conserved if RBP sequences share more than 70% identity in their binding regions (70%-rule). However, only half of the RBPs sharing between 30% and 70% sequence identity recognize similar RNA, limiting the confidence in predictions from sequence identity. To increase the number of RBPs with a confidently inferred specificity from our measured data, I developed a computational method, called joint protein-ligand embedding (JPLE), which jointly embeds amino acid 5-mers and RNA sequence specificities into a joint latent space. The joint latent embedding of an RBP sequence can be approximated from protein sequence features alone and enables reconstructions of RNA sequence specificity, prediction of RNA binding similarity, and identification of important binding regions in the protein sequence. JPLE doubles the number of RBPs with confidently inferred RNA sequence specificities compared to predictions with the 70%-rule. I embed RBPs from 690 eukaryotes in JPLE’s latent space, confidently reconstruct specificities for 29,000 RBPs, and cluster RNA sequence specificity groups (RSSGs). I use these RSSGs to estimate the number of distinct RSSGs for all eukaryotic RBPs with RRM and KH domains. I confirm that RRM containing RBPs recognize highly diverse sequences, covering every possible 7-mer, while KH containing RBPs recognize only 40% of all possible 7-mer sequences. Moreover, I determine the last common ancestor of the RBPs in an RSSG and derive the evolutionary rate with which new RNA sequence specificities evolve in different eukaryotic clades. Lastly, to demonstrate the utility of this new resource to investigate post-transcriptional regulation, I combine 101 inferred RNA sequence specificities from Arabidopsis thaliana with RNA-seq from 69 plant tissues and I identify RBPs that regulate mRNA stability through interactions with the 3’UTR. | Ph.D. | invest, cities, conserv, conserv | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| McMahon, Colin | Kulesha, Gary | Infinite Shoreline for Orchestra | Music | 2022-03-01 | Infinite Shoreline, by Colin Spencer McMahon, DMA 2021Graduate Department of Music, University of Toronto Infinite Shoreline is a composition for orchestra in one movement that explores the mathematical, philosophical, and emotional implications of the “Coastline Paradox”. The “Coastline Paradox” highlights the difference between our experience of the natural world, and reality as observed by fractal geometry. A fractal is a curved line that can have no discernible length, its complexity changes with scale. If you were to measure the distance between plotted points on a coastline and then sum the total, the total would increase as you increased the number of plotted points such that as the number of points approaches infinite so does the length of the coastline. Infinite Shoreline explores ornamentation as a method for melodic development, wherein a broad, simple melody is made increasingly complex whist still following the same essential landmarks. Ornamentation is used as an allegory for the infinite, fractal nature of a coastline. As the melody increases in complexity so too does the linear harmonic collections that contain it, moving from pentatonic, through to 12 tones and beyond to micro-tonal as the melodic complexity “approaches infinite” so-to-speak. If the coastline is a melody, the harmonic and textural contexts in which we hear it is the ocean; constantly shifting, on minuscule, local, and large scales. At the point of contact the ocean is in constant flux (waves), it shifts dramatically with the moon, and the ocean is slowly rising (global warming.) This constant motion influences the make-up of the coastline as defined as “the place where the ocean and land meet”, but also on the land itself through eroding and depositing earth. In musical terms, the turbulent rising and falling of orchestral texture and harmonic density shifts the otherwise firm landmarks of the melody. Approximate duration: 14’ 00” | D.M.A. | global warming, ocean, ocean, land | 13, 14, 15 |
| Zajch, Andrew | Gough, William A | Influence of Climate on Open Earth-air Heat Exchanger Potential | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Space heating and cooling constitute significant energy demands in buildings. The interdependence between climate and heating and cooling energy usage makes this sector a prominent candidate for climate change mitigation as well as making it susceptible to climate change impacts. Earth-air heat exchangers (EAHE) have the potential to provide heated or cooled air to buildings by allowing for heat exchange between the subsurface and supplied ambient air, hypothetically reducing energy demands for space heating and cooling. However, the system is naturally tied to the climate as it relies on both air and subsurface ground temperatures. Therefore, to ¬recognize the feasibility of these systems and their capacity for becoming tools for climate change mitigation, the influence of climate on these systems require further understanding. The influence of seasonal variations in air and subsurface temperatures were gauged for Canadian climates to understand the impacts of assuming temporal homogenous ground or typical weather conditions. Heating potential was less dependent on the timing of seasonal variations when compared to cooling potential, with ground temperature changes exhibiting a heightened effect. This emphasized the importance of parameterizing temporally heterogenous ground surface conditions for estimates of EAHE potential. The importance of daily air temperature behavior was investigated through the temporal decomposition of surveyed air and ground temperatures from an EAHE system employed in Aichi, Japan. The reliance of cooling on the diurnal variations in air temperature implied EAHE cooling may be susceptible to increases in overnight/morning temperatures when system cooling is least favorable. Finally, ‘future’ EAHE potential was estimated by pairing a climate driven approach with climate change scenarios. Projections of geo-climatic suitability showed EAHE systems can continue to be useful in temperate climates, with a more balanced heating and cooling demand, despite an evolving heating and cooling regime. Further work should endeavor to incorporate the climate influences highlighted in this work to create a comprehensive climate-based approach for estimating EAHE. Ultimately, stakeholders looking to harness the benefits of EAHE systems should consider climate effects, avoiding oversimplifications, when estimating EAHE feasibility for present and future conditions. | Ph.D. | energy, buildings, invest, climate change mitigation, climate, weather, climate change mitigation | 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Chen, Kuan Huan Gary | Wu, Xiao Yu S | Influence of Drug-polymer Interactions on Drug Transport of Pharmaceutical Polymer Materials | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2019-11-01 | Interactions between drugs and polymers strongly influence the properties, functionality, and permeability of the polymers, and thereby the kinetics of drug transports. The effects of drug-polymer interactions, specifically ionic bonding between ionized drugs and polymers, were investigated in four different polymeric systems and a multifunctional terpolymeric nanoparticle was developed for three different applications: enteric coating for delayed release; microenvironmental pH (pHm) modifier for pH-independent release; and alcohol-resistant material for mitigation of alcohol-induced dose dumping. A mathematical model based on diffusion and ion exchange reaction was derived to describe drug transport of pharmaceutical polymeric films and coating in a finite volume. The model predictions strongly agreed with experimental data of drug loading into Eudragit® RS/RL films. The results demonstrated that transport of anionic drugs in Eudragit® RS/RL polymer-based dosage forms follow diffusion and ion exchange kinetics. A pH-sensitive nanoparticle (TPN) was developed as a new enteric pore former in an ethylcellulose (EC) coating system with superior properties compared to conventional pore formers. Compared to conventional water-soluble pore formers, TPNs demonstrated very low impact on viscosity of EC dispersions, minimal leaching, suitable mechanical properties, and highly pH-dependent permeability. To achieve pH-independent release of weakly basic drugs, TPN was employed as a pHm modifier by incorporating it into EC matrices loaded with verapamil HCl. The results indicated that swelling was not the primarily release mechanism and that ion exchange played a significant role, especially at higher pore former level of TPN. TPN was further developed as an alcohol-resistant material for mitigation of alcohol-induced dose dumping. TPN-EC films showed reduced drug release in alcoholic media for several ionized weakly basic drugs due to ion-dipole interactions between drugs and PMAA groups of TPN. The mathematical model and polymeric materials developed in this work presents significant contributions to the field of pharmaceutics. | Ph.D. | water, invest, environmental | 6, 9, 13 |
| Santoni, Charlene Holly | Thaut, Michael||Bressmann, Tim | Influencing Oral-nasal Balance in Speech and Song | Music | 2021-06-01 | Oral-nasal balance is dependent on the valving of the velopharyngeal sphincter. This dissertation examined the control and modification of oral-nasal balance in speech and song. Literature was reviewed from the fields of speech science and singing voice pedagogy, which motivated three projects. The first project (Santoni et al., 2018) explored the role of altered nasal signal level feedback on the regulation of oral-nasal balance in singing in trained and untrained singers. Results indicated that all participants showed lower nasalance scores in response to both increased and decreased nasal signal level feedback. The findings implied that trained singers’ internal models for controlling oral-nasal balance may not be as refined as those that guide other vocal parameters. The second project (Santoni et al., 2019) explored the influence of voice focus adjustments (forward and backward vocal tract shape and length modifications) (Boone, 2007; Boone et al., 2010) on the control of oral-nasal balance in typical speakers in speech and song. Results indicated that forward focus led to higher and backward focus to lower nasalance scores. There was one exception wherein one female participant produced lower nasalance scores in forward focus during the nasal stimulus. The results confirmed that voice focus maneuvers influence oral-nasal balance in typical speakers. Findings from project 2 led to the clinical experiment described in project 3. The third project (Santoni, Thaut Bressmann, 2020) explored the influence of voice focus adjustments on the control of oral-nasal balance in speakers with hypernasality in speech and song. Results indicated that for a group of five speakers with hypernasality, forward focus resulted in higher and backward focus resulted in lower nasalance scores. There was one exception wherein one male participant produced lower nasalance scores in forward focus during the nasal stimulus. The results provided preliminary evidence that voice focus maneuvers influence oral-nasal balance in speakers with hypernasality. With further development of the voice focus method, the intervention could become a useful therapeutic approach for speakers with hypernasality. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, female | 4, 5 |
| Kavassalis, Sarah Catherine | Murphy, Jennifer G. | Insights into the Role of Meteorology on Improving Model-measurement Agreement of Oxidants in Forested Environments | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Within forest canopies, biogenic emissions and anthropogenic pollutants interact through complex chemicalreactions, impacting atmospheric composition, climate, and ecosystem processes. The need to understand the biosphere-atmosphere exchange of heat, momentum, and chemical species has led to a significant body of work on the transport and fate of molecules within and above plant canopies. The impact of these canopies on the fast oxidation chemistry responsible for regulating the lifetime of greenhouse gases is still insufficiently understood. This is largely owing to the complexity of the chemical reactions involved and the lack of fully explicit physical descriptions of in-canopy turbulence and deposition. This thesis investigates the role that improved meteorological representation can play in reducing model error for simulated chemistry and improving our understanding of oxidation chemistry in forested environments. I examine long-term air quality monitoring data to show evidence that ozone mixing ratios in much of the United States are impacted by the presence of vegetation through the ability of plants to remove ozone from the atmosphere, and that this dry deposition sink is regulated by vapor pressure deficit. Examining the role of forest canopies in modulating chemistry further, I used the FORest Canopy Atmosphere Transfer (FORCAsT) model to simulate dynamics and reactions in a forest at the University of Michigan Biological Station (UMBS). I found that updating modeled meteorology by assimilating observations improves simulations of primary species, but key discrepancies in oxidation products exist, suggesting possible changes to branching ratios in the chemical mechanism may be needed. I use the micrometeorology measurements I made at the UMBS in conjunction with high resolution volatile organic compound (VOC) data to determine the impact of turbulence on VOCs, providing novel data for future model validation and parameterization. Further, I simulate the impact of turbulence on chemical reactions by incorporating the turbulence-induced covariance between chemical reactants in a box model and show that turbulent fluctuations strongly impact reactions involving short-lived radicals, leading to significant concentration changes, at canopy height. This work contributes to our understanding of the impact that meteorology plays on oxidation chemistry in and above forests. | Ph.D. | emission, greenhouse, invest, climate, greenhouse gas, anthropogenic, emissions, pollut, species, ecosystem, forest, pollut, species, ecosystem | 7, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Chang, Po-Han | Helmy, Amr S | Integrated Photonic Functions Using Optically Anisotropic Materials | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-03-01 | Integrated photonics is an emerging field within photonics research in which waveguides and optical components can be fabricated as an planar, integrated structure. In particular, silicon photonics based on dielectric nanowires have been established as a platform of choice for processing optical signals largely due to their near-lossless nature. One major constraint associated with dielectric waveguides is that their modes are diffraction limited. Plasmonic waveguides can compliment silicon photonics in a way that they can support modes that are not diffraction limited. Our group has successfully developed a plasmonic platform that can facilitate field-matter interaction, long-range propagation while exhibiting excellent coupling efficiency with silicon photonics. Nonetheless, dielectric and plasmonic waveguides still cannot fulfill the full suites of photonic functions. This is because optical modes supported in these structures are predefined by the design, and lack tunability over their modal properties. In this thesis, we will investigate the prospects of optically anisotropic materials/structures as new emerging integrated platforms for tailoring the modal attributes of the waveguide modes. These concepts have been abundant in the field of metamaterials for free space applications. However, thus far the advantage of anisotropic materials as an integrated platform has been largely overlooked, therefore the demonstrations of integrated devices using anisotropic 2D materials have been limited. In this thesis, we theoretically propose and demonstrate how to leverage material anisotropy of the optical materials/structures to tailor modal properties. First, a birefringent L-slot waveguide architecture will be introduced to serve as the basis for various polarization manipulating devices, allowing for the managements and control of polarization states of the lightwaves. Second, a metamaterial waveguide architecture that can effectively enhance the in-plane components of the modal field for graphene photonics will be presented. Third, the modal and dispersion behaviors of anisotropic 2D plasmonic waveguide will be explored. One striking advantage associated with this platform is that the material absorption inherent in this class of plasmonic material can play favorable roles in achieving intriguing integrated photonic functions, which can facilitate low-loss mode propagation, mode swapping, and diffractionless field canalization by regulating material absorption. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Wu, Qiu Jing (Jane) | Tymianski, Michael | Interaction of Transient Receptor Potential Melastatin-7 Ion Channels with N-Methyl-D-Aspartate Receptor GluN2B Subunits and its Implication in Stroke | Physiology | 2019-06-01 | Ischemic stroke is one of the leading causes of neurological disability and mortality worldwide. It places a huge burden on the health care system. However, the pathological mechanisms of ischemic stroke are not fully understood and few effective therapies are currently available. We have previously reported two key signaling pathways involved in calcium-mediated oxidative stress during ischemic neuronal death. The first is the formation of nitric oxide, which is facilitated by the coupling of the ionotropic, N-methyl-D-aspartate glutamate receptors (NMDARs), to neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) by the intermediary postsynaptic density 95 protein (PSD-95). The second is the formation of reactive species mediated by the transient receptor potential cation channel, subfamily M, member 7 (TRPM7). Previously our lab has shown that another TRPM family member TRPM2 can influence NMDAR expression in neurons to modulate excitability and vulnerability to ischemic insults. Therefore in the current study we investigated whether TRPM7 and NMDARs, the two key signaling pathways of ischemic injury, also interact in neurons. Here we show that TRPM7 channels and NMDARs are not only expressed in the same neurons, but co-associate directly, largely through interactions of TRPM7 with GluN2B NMDAR subunits. This was demonstrated by membrane fractionation and co-immunoprecipitation (co-IP) analyses from rat brain tissue and from HEK293 cells that co-expressed TRPM7 and NMDARs, and then validated with bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assays that demonstrated the preferential association of TRPM7 channels with GluN2B over GluN1 subunits of NMDARs. Furthermore, NMDAR and TRPM7 are also functionally interconnected because inhibiting TRPM7 channels also inhibited NMDA-mediated excitotoxicity in neurons. This is the first demonstration that TRPM7 and NMDAR channels, two key modulators of ischemic cell death, co-associate in the same protein complex in neurons and are capable of a direct interaction. These findings provide mechanistic insights into the cross talk between these important signaling pathways of anoxic cell death. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, health care, disabilit, invest, species, species | 1, 3, 9, 14, 15 |
| Lauby, Samantha | McGowan, Patrick O | Interactions of Early-life Temperature Exposure, Offspring Genotype and Maternal Care on Later-life Maternal Care Provisioning in Female Rats | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-06-01 | The early-life maternal environment has a profound effect on offspring behaviour, including the transmission of maternal care across generations. Variations in rat maternal care provisioning are associated with alterations in the oxytocinergic and dopaminergic systems in the maternal brain and, in turn, maternal care received by pups can alter oxytocinergic and dopaminergic systems in the rat pup brain. Though there has been progress in elucidating the biological mechanisms underlying the developmental programming of maternal care, the mechanisms that link maternal care received to alterations in the dopaminergic and oxytocinergic systems in the offspring remains to be an active area of research. Previous work has studied the transmission of pup licking across generations, but there are other relevant factors that could interact with pup licking on later-life maternal care provisioning. In this thesis, I review early-life temperature exposure and offspring genotype as important factors also involved in the developmental programming of maternal care. One project directly manipulated early-life temperature exposure and levels of supplemental licking-like tactile stimulation. The second project investigated the main effects of observed early-life inter-individual maternal licking received and interactions with naturally occurring genetic variants in dopamine-related genes. I hypothesized that early-life temperature exposure and offspring genotype would interact with licking-like tactile stimulation or pup licking to alter the oxytocinergic and dopaminergic systems in the offspring and also influence their later-life maternal care provisioning. I found that 1) early-life temperature exposure influenced the epigenetic regulation of the oxytocin gene in week-old female pups with changes in oxytocin transcript abundance and 2) that both early-life temperature exposure and supplemental tactile stimulation affected later-life maternal care provisioning. In addition, I found that a single nucleotide polymorphism in the dopamine receptor 2 gene interacted with inter-individual maternal licking received on 3) later-life performance on dopamine-related tasks and 4) maternal licking provisioning. Moreover, the association between maternal licking received and maternal licking provisioning was mediated by dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens of the maternal brain. These findings suggest novel biological mechanisms of the developmental programming of maternal care that could be involved with the transmission of maternal care across generations. | Ph.D. | female, invest | 5, 9 |
| Raymond, Sandrena | Krmpotich, Cara | Intermaterial Collaboration: The Spatiotemporal Nexus of Nonhuman Agency in Cultural Heritage Knowledge Production | Information Studies | 2021-11-01 | This exploratory research into cultural heritage collections management practice develops a process by which richer knowledge of prospective —and existing—collections can be cultivated while taking the agency of the bodies being considered seriously. Recognizing that interactions require documentation to be useful for knowledge production, perspectives for bolstering non-anthropocentric awareness are presented using the case study of an art collection created and assembled by Indo-Canadian artist P. Mansaram to bring nonhuman agency into the purview of cultural heritage documentation. Influenced by the preceding three decades of material culture theory, especially the theoretical lens of political theorist Jane Bennett (2010) that actively notices nonhuman agency, the dissertation presents multiple methods of reinforcing this awareness in the documentation of objects during the acquisitional process--a moment when contexts and relationships are at their most accessible to collections managers and curators. Recognizing that there is an ahistorical bias to these methods that decontextualizes the interactions from their spatiotemporal contexts, this research puts forward an augmentation of social anthropologist Alfred Gell’s art nexus (1998) to provide a richer method for capturing the agential roles and classifications of interactions in a standardized manner across objects and collections, positioning temporality and spatiality as capable of agential roles. This dissertation demonstrates how knowledge production of collections can be enriched through the application of the nexus to thick narratives developed in the acquisition moment by cultural heritage professionals with the intention of recognizing agency, as well as retroactively to interview and archival materials that were not generated with this purpose in mind. In doing so, it advocates for a fundamental change in how cultural heritage information is managed, building on the calls to evolve existing documentation practices that uphold limitations from rational and standardized contexts toward more relational, unexpected, "crunchy knowledge” (Chapman 2015). | Ph.D. | knowledge, labor, accessib, production | 4, 8, 11, 12 |
| Simpson , Diane Lesley | Hayhoe, Ruth||Knight, Jane | International Joint Universities: Towards a New Model in International Academic Mobility | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | The first International Joint University (IJU) was founded in Cairo, Egypt in 2002. Since then more than 20 IJUs have developed globally, 10 of these in the last five years and several more are in the development phase, symbolizing a growing, yet under researched, phenomenon in international academic mobility. The nature of the IJU transcends both the traditional university, with its strong ties to the nation, and other forms of international academic mobility including branch campuses, franchise programs, and joint and double degrees. The IJU is a cofounded institution, with independent legal status, cogoverned by two or more HEIs from different countries. This thesis on International Joint Universities (IJU) investigates this new phenomenon within international academic mobility. Determining the characteristics of the IJU within the ever-evolving landscape of International Program and Provider Mobility (IPPM) provides insight into a new model of international collaboration in higher education. This thesis defines the IJU through the identification of the underlying principles of reciprocity, collaboration and capacity development driving the distinguishing features as evidenced through an analysis of the founding, governance, positioning and functions of the IJU within the national higher education landscape of both the host and foreign partner countries. The conceptual frame for this study draws upon previous research on the internationalization of higher education broadly with a focus on international academic mobility more specifically. Conceptualization of the IJU fits within the IPPM framework which distinguishes between collaborative and independent approaches to international academic mobility. Through a multi-site case analysis of six of the IJUs across three host countries and engagement with four foreign partner countries, this study determines the distinguishing features and core principles that contribute to the IJU’s distinctiveness within international academic mobility. The study culminates in the presentation of the IJU model within international academic mobility situating the IJU in contrast to the International Branch Campus (IBC) and other forms of international academic mobility. Elucidating what differentiates the IJU within international academic mobility informs practice and supports further research and theorizing of this new phenomenon. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, globaliz, land, institut, governance | 8, 9, 15, 16 |
| Jafar , Hayfa Faisal | Hayhoe, Ruth RH | Internationalization of Higher Education and Imported Universities in Post-conflict Iraq through a Policy Borrowing Lens | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | The U.S.-led invasion in 2003 has created opportunities for Iraq to reconnect with the international academic community, adopt some internationalization activities and establish American-style universities. Drawing on policy borrowing and educational transfer theory, this study examines how internationalization and the American-style university are rationalized, appropriated, or resisted, by various actors at national, sectoral, and institutional levels. I used a vertical case study research design with interviews as the primary method of data collection. The findings suggest that various stakeholders in Iraqi higher education have rationalized internationalization activities, such as twinning programs and international university partnerships, differently. While the Iraqi government was motivated by an economic rationale to develop urgently needed manpower to participate in the economic and social development of the post-2003 democratic Iraq, the Ministry of Higher Education and some of the universities’ administrators framed the rationales around rebuilding the reputation of higher education institutions. At the institutional level, the rationales centered around finding a better alternative to the local system that seems resistant to change, bringing in financial aid, and the potential for revenue generation. The findings suggest that the primary framing used by various external and internal actors to justify adopting internationalization activities is the conceptualization of Iraq as a cradle of civilization that has collapsed, and desires help from the international community to reform its higher education institutions. The founders’ rationales for establishing American-style universities in post-conflict Iraq include peace and social cohesion, reviving the history of excellence and greatness of Iraq, and revolutionizing public higher education. While the American-style university model promises an environment for cultural tolerance and unity and encourages positive social change, the findings show that the chaotic transition to democracy in Iraq has yet to provide a safe environment for the university to fully realize its social and political agendas. Lack of financial support could make these universities more isolated rather than fully engaged in shaping Iraq’s new society. In the conclusion, I critique internationalization that occurs without regard for Iraq's specific contextual factors and suggests the establishment of a policy sector that could guide educational change for Iraq. | Ph.D. | peace, transit, institut, peace, social change, democra | 4, 16, 11 |
| Khan, Sobia | Berat, Whitney B | Interorganizational Relationships in British Columbia’s Community Overdose Response: Evaluating Community Partnerships as a Network Intervention | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-03-01 | Background: Surging overdose deaths in British Columbia (B.C.) prompted the development of Community Action Teams (CATs) - interorganizational networks that deliver overdose prevention strategies. The formation of CATs is a network intervention, aiming to optimize implementation by fostering connectivity. My research questions were: 1) How were the network intervention components (relational antecedents, structure, processes and outcomes) enacted in each of the participating CATs, and how (and why) were these similar or different?; 2) How did each of the CAT components influence strategic goals/collaborative objectives? Methods: This was a multiple case study using multiple methods. I adapted a framework for evaluating interorganizational relationships (IORs ) to understand partnership building relative to implementation goals/tasks. I selected 5 CATs as cases and used multiple sources of data to compile the case studies: social network survey; community survey; interviews; and document review. I conducted a social network analysis, a descriptive analysis of the community survey, a thematic analysis of interview transcripts, and a content analysis of key themes from documents. Findings were compiled into summary tables and narratively integrated. Results: Three cases were ultimately included. CAT 1 took on a ‘whole network’ approach in which strategic goals involved most CAT members and pertained to enhancing partnering. Structures, processes and outcomes in this CAT were more participatory and cohesive. CAT 2 funded small projects, which led to a few organizations participating in pockets of action. This may have led to lower network cohesiveness, higher centralization (compared to CAT 1), and relational challenges. CAT 3 funded small projects involving the participation of many CAT members, which fostered better relational processes compared to CAT 2. Formality and fairness were key convening processes. All three CATs were operating network-wide at a mid-range level of collaboration, and all met their implementation tasks but not necessarily their collaboration goals. Conclusion: Information about implementation tasks/goals can help us better understand network formation. Evaluating IORs as network interventions can lend insights about how and why certain networks are built in certain ways, and better enables us to study and provide guidance on these relationships in the future. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Haj-Ali, Wissam | Glazier , Rick | Interprofessional Teams in the Context of Primary Care Reform in Ontario, Canada: Selection Factors and Association with Access to Care and Health Services Utilization | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-06-01 | Background: Countries throughout the world have been exploring new models to deliver primary care. Ontario has undergone a primary care reform that includes the introduction of interprofessional teams. The purpose of this thesis was to investigate the association between receiving care from interprofessional versus non-interprofessional primary care teams and access to care and health services utilization. The first study investigated selection factors into interprofessional teams. The second and third studies compared interprofessional teams and non-interprofessional teams on access and health services utilization measures.Methods: The three studies linked provincial administrative datasets (second study included a provincial healthcare experience survey as well) to assess outcomes of interest over time. The first study was cross-sectional and the last two were retrospective cohort studies. Results: The first study identified that there are selection factors into interprofessional teams. The second study findings highlighted that as compared to Health Care Experience Survey respondents in non-interprofessional teams, respondents in interprofessional teams self-reported more timely access to care and less walk-in clinic use but no significant difference in self-reported access to after-hours care and emergency department use. The third study found that there was no difference in the change over time in Ambulatory Care Sensitive Conditions admissions and all cause hospital re-admission between interprofessional and non-interprofessional teams between the pre- and post-implementation periods. Conclusion: Ontario has made a major investment in interprofessional team-based care. The findings from this thesis indicate that there are selection factors into interprofessional teams. Interprofessional teams perform better than non-interprofessional teams on some but not all investigated processes and outcomes of care. Our findings can inform other jurisdictions aiming to expand voluntary participation in interprofessional primary care teams regarding expectations about the relationship between primary care policy, organization and delivery and patient experience and health services utilization. | Ph.D. | health care, healthcare, invest | 3, 9 |
| Choi, So Jung | Janssen, Harry LA | Into the Unknown: Predicting Outcomes in Chronic Hepatitis B | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is a global public health concern, as it affects more than 250 million people and can lead to serious complications such as cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and liver failure. The current study aims were to investigate long-term clinical outcomes and identify prognostic factors in CHB. Study I confirmed that CHB patients are at risk of liver-related outcomes and death. Concurrent biopsy-proven non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) substantially increased the risk in strong association with advanced fibrosis compared with CHB alone (adjusted hazard ratio [95% confidence interval]: 4.8 [2.6-9.0], P | Ph.D. | public health, invest | 3, 9 |
| Cui, Teng | Filleter, Tobin||Sun, Yu | Intrinsic and Interfacial Fatigue of Graphene | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11-01 | The booming applications of graphene in flexible electronics, mechanical structures, and biomedical sensors require robust mechanical and structural properties as a premise. With the ever-increasing demand for the long-term reliability of graphene-based devices and structures, the fatigue behavior of graphene necessitates careful investigation, especially its intrinsic and interfacial fatigue behavior. The fatigue concern of graphene is more stringent under extreme loading conditions in more complicated designs, such as at severe stress concentrations and abundant interfaces in flexible devices. Here we enabled the intrinsic fatigue study of suspended two-dimensional (2D) materials based on a modified atomic force microscopy technique. We discovered that monolayer and few-layer graphene also suffered fatigue, but they exhibited remarkable fatigue life of more than one billion cycles at large stress levels (e.g., at σ_mean=71 GPa and ∆σ=5.6 GPa), which is higher than any materials reported to date. Surprisingly, monolayer graphene did not reveal any obvious progressive damage during cyclic loading as manifested by its non-changing morphology and non-degraded mechanical properties. Molecular dynamics simulations further revealed bond reconfiguration near the defective site only immediately prior to fracture. Such non-progressive fatigue nature indicates the inapplicability of macroscopic fatigue mechanisms and challenges the fatigue definition at the atomic scale. A kinetic theory was proposed to explain the fatigue behavior of graphene and highlight the strong cyclic effect on reducing its lifetime. Graphene oxide, meanwhile, also exhibited ultrahigh fatigue resistance, but revealed clear progressive damage, similar to conventional fatigue mechanisms. Despite the record-high intrinsic fatigue life of graphene, we observed significant interfacial fatigue damage when introducing graphene-polymer contact. The significant elastic mismatch and weak van der Waals (vdW) interactions at the interface not only cause graphene buckling but also propagate the buckles under cyclic loading. The buckle propagation was revealed to follow an inverse Paris’ law. Moreover, cyclic loading through the vdW interfaces could also induce significant fracture of graphene even in tens of cycles, with the main fracture modes identified as in-plane shear and tear. These studies provide fundamental insights on the dynamic reliability of graphene and call for further fatigue studies of other 2D materials and their interfaces. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Renton, Tian | Kennedy, Sidney H | Investigating Correlates of Athletic Identity, Coping with Concussion, and Return-To-Play Behavioural Intentions Among Healthy Young Athletes | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-11-01 | Participation in sport is associated with several positive outcomes including improved physical fitness and mental wellbeing. Irrespective of these benefits, sport participation imparts an inherent risk for injury upon all athletes. Although defined as a mild traumatic brain injury, concussions are a cause for concern in sport considering the myriad of symptoms associated with the injury (e.g., cognitive, emotional, physical, and sleep-related) and the negative repercussions they can have on an individual’s psychosocial functioning. In the case of a suspected concussion, an athlete is expected to remove themselves from play. However, evidence suggests that for various reasons many athletes choose not to do so. To date, little research has examined the role of athletic identity and how this construct is related to how athletes think, feel and act in the context of a sport-related injury. This thesis is comprised of one scoping review and two original research studies that seek to better understand the relationship athletic identity has with respect to athlete cognitions, emotions, and behaviours following a sport-related injury. The first manuscript provides a comprehensive summary of known demographic, behavioural, psychosocial, functional, and pain-related correlates associated athletic identity following sport injury. The second study assesses healthy young athletes’ cognitive coping appraisals in response to a hypothetical concussion, and how these appraisals relate to both their return-to-play behavioural intentions and athletic identity. The third study assesses concussion knowledge accuracy among healthy young athletes and how their knowledge relates to concussion reporting behaviours, return-to-play behavioural intentions (in the context of a hypothetical concussion) and athletic identity. Research pertaining to athletic identity as a predictor of sport injury outcomes is still in its infancy. Therefore, the primary goal of this thesis is to determine if athletic identity is harmful or helpful to an athlete’s recovery following an actual or hypothetical injury. Findings from this program of research can be useful for guiding subsequent hypothesis generation, can serve as the impetus for future behavioural interventions, and may inform clinical practice(s). Most importantly, findings are useful for informing our understanding of athletes’ psychosocial response to concussion. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, knowledge, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Dao, Duc Phuong | He, Yuhong | Investigating Drought Impacts on Plant Functional Traits Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing | Geography | 2021-11-01 | Grasslands are among the most endangered and least protected ecosystems on Earth due to the impacts of livestock grazing, agricultural land conversion, invasive species, extreme weather events, especially droughts. The characterization and assessment of native and invasive species distribution and functional traits in response to drought provide insights into plant biological and ecological processes and ecosystem functioning. Remote sensing has been used to map grassland species and assess functional traits at various spatial and temporal scales. Furthermore, it has been used to distinguish native and invasive species. However, the use of broadband multispectral or coarse spatial-resolution imagery in previous studies resulted in the over- or under-estimation of plant traits, especially in rugged terrain with small, highly mixed, and highly dynamic species. Airborne hyperspectral imagery, with high spatial resolution and hundreds of contiguous narrow bands, can be used to assess subtle changes in plant traits and species composition. The combination of hyperspectral imagery and topographic data provides insights into the effect of topographic variability on trait variation and trait responses of native and invasive species under drought stress. This study aims to investigate the integration of airborne hyperspectral imagery, field and laboratory measurements, topographic data, and machine learning to detect early drought impact and characterize the compositional and trait responses of native and invasive species. A series of experiments from greenhouse drought simulations to landscape-level natural drought experiments were conducted to understand how species respond to drought stress at different spatial and temporal scales. Results show that hyperspectral images, together with machine learning, outperform the traditional use of spectral indices and multispectral data in early drought detection and species classification. Plant functional trait analyses demonstrate that hyperspectral data can effectively estimate leaf and canopy functional traits and capture their responses to drought between native and invasive species in an area with small-scale topographic variability. This study sets a methodological basis for the advancements of remote assessment of trait response in native and invasive species under stress environments and provides essential information for invasion control and management to protect native ecosystems and wildlife habitats. | Ph.D. | agricultur, learning, drought, greenhouse, labor, invest, weather, species, ecosystem, traditional use, ecolog, species, land, ecosystem, wildlife | 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Jacobs, Grace Kathryn Renske | Voineskos, Aristotle N||Ameis, Stephanie H | Investigating Heterogeneity and Overlapping Clinical and Neurobiological Features across Early Psychosis and Neurodevelopmental Disorders in Children and Adolescents | Medical Science | 2022-03-01 | The presence of psychosis symptoms in childhood and adolescence is associated with impaired daily functioning and the later development of more severe psychotic and non-psychotic psychiatric disorders. Evidence is emerging that neurodevelopmental disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) are themselves risk factors for psychosis symptoms and psychotic disorders. Heterogeneity within these disorders is well-established, as well as that they share overlapping clinical and biological features. In addition, such disorders share common genetic and neural circuit substrates with psychotic disorders. However, the relationship between these disorders including their heterogeneity and comorbidities, as well as underlying neurobiology is still unclear. This thesis applies multivariate, machine learning, and factor analytic approaches and magnetic resonance imaging to investigate neurobiology and other risk factors, such as biological sex, associated with overlapping psychopathology in children and adolescents. In study one, cortico-striatal-thalamic-cortical circuit structure and connectivity is examined in children and adolescents experiencing psychosis spectrum symptoms, as well as how differences vary with age and sex. In study two, novel data-driven subgroups across children with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are identified based on integrated multimodal structural imaging and behavior measures. In study three, factor structure underlying a wide range of psychopathology symptoms is investigated in children using ten dimensional instruments from both child and parent informants and a novel modeling approach. Together, the work presented in this thesis highlights heterogeneity within and similarities across children and youth experiencing early psychosis symptoms and neurodevelopmental disorders (ASD, ADHD, and OCD) in neurobiology and behavior. By improving our understanding of different neurobiological profiles of youth within and across diagnostic categories and how these map onto behavior, we can better understand the pathophysiology of mental illnesses, identify biomarkers of risk that can be used to predict illness/outcome trajectories, and provide opportunities to develop more individualized interventions. | Ph.D. | illness, learning, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Lee, Eliza S | Palazzo, Alexander F | Investigating Mechanisms of Nuclear mRNA Export | Biochemistry | 2021-11-01 | In eukaryotes, the segregation of the RNA synthesis/processing in the nucleus from the translation machinery in the cytoplasm has important implications for nuclear export and retention of mRNAs. This division ensures that only correctly processed mRNAs are exported to the cytoplasm to be translated into proteins, while misprocessed and aberrant transcripts are retained in the nucleus to be degraded by various nuclear surveillance mechanisms. In the first half of this work, I show that mature mRNAs containing the 5’ splice site (5’SS) motif are retained in the nucleus. Although a fraction of 5’SS motif containing mRNAs are rapidly degraded, those that escape decay are targeted to nuclear speckles. We show that ZFC3H1, a component of the nuclear exosome associated PolyAdenylation Exosome Targeting (PAXT) complex, is required for the nuclear retention and degradation of such transcripts. Similarly, we demonstrate that U1 snRNP, a component of the spliceosome that recognizes and binds to the 5’SS motif, mediates the nuclear retention of these aberrant mRNAs. We show that ZFC3H1 and U1-70K are not required for targeting 5’SS motif containing mRNAs to nuclear speckles, and these mRNAs phase-separate into this sub-nuclear compartment by some unknown process. Next, I perform RNA Frac-Seq and demonstrate that ZFC3H1 is required for the decay and nuclear retention of intronic polyadenylated transcripts, which naturally contain intact 5’SS motifs. In the second half of this thesis, I characterize the role of TPR, a nuclear pore basket protein, in mediating nuclear retention and export of mRNAs. While splicing has been shown to enhance nuclear mRNA export, it remains unclear whether RNAs generated from intronless genes use specific machinery for their export. We show that TPR is required for promoting the efficient export of intronless or intron-poor mRNAs and lncRNAs. Furthermore, we observe a strong correlation between transcripts generated from short pre-processed RNAs and TPR mediated nuclear export. My observations suggest that TPR acts in a late step of mRNA export and is most likely required for the mRNA docking with the nuclear pore. In summary, I show that mRNA export/nuclear retention processes are ‘two sides of the same coin’ and collectively mediates the export of bona fide mRNAs while simultaneously promotes the nuclear retention/degradation of misprocessed transcripts. Furthermore, the export of certain subtypes of RNAs (as exemplified by intronless genes) requires additional factors for their nuclear export, demonstrating that this process is more complex than previously envisioned. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Tkachenko, Andrew | McDougall, Douglas | Investigating Secondary School Teachers’ Understandings of and Approaches to STEM Integration | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | This multiple-case study explores the integration experiences of four secondary school science and mathematics teachers. The study draws upon both semi-structured interviews and classroom observations to illustrate each of the participants strategies to STEM integration and to understand the benefits and challenges of each of their approaches. A number of common themes emerged from the individual findings and are consolidated to form the overall results.The results indicate that Project-based learning (PBL) represents the most common approach to STEM integration. The benefits associated with PBL include increases in student engagement and motivation, as well as improvements in achievement that are related to group work and personalization of learning. Challenges to implementation include the need for time for collaboration and professional development, the need for administrative support, and access to resources. Teacher STEM pedagogical content knowledge was identified as a useful construct in assessing teacher needs and the ability to develop authentic and open-ended projects that allow for the personalization of learning. The eight major findings are: (1) project-based learning forms the foundation of STEM integration; (2) teachers notice an improvement in achievement for those students enrolled in STEM programs; (3) project-based learning allows for ongoing feedback loops that enhance teacher tracking and assessment of student progress; (4) field trips and partnerships represent a powerful tool in complementing PBL approaches to STEM integration; (5) STEM integration through a PBL approach requires additional time for teachers; (6) Administrator support for a STEM program is key to its implementation; (7) STEM integrative pedagogical knowledge is regarded as a useful construct in describing the unique skills that are required by teachers who wish to implement STEM integration; and (8) teachers with a high degree of STEM pedagogical content knowledge are better equipped to develop, implement, and adapt projects to suit student needs and interests. STEM integration through a project-based learning approach represents a compelling strategy that offers multiple benefits to student engagement and learning. It also represents a challenging instructional strategy as it requires the coordinated efforts of school administrators and teachers for effective implementation. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, labor, invest | 4, 8, 2009 |
| Gaona Gómez, Adriana | Saville, Bradley A||Lawryshyn, Yuri A | Investigating Slurry Behaviour During High Solids Enzymatic Hydrolysis via CFD | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-11-01 | Enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic substrates is a promising process that converts cellulose into soluble sugars for the production of biofuels and added-value products. There is a potential to increase sugar titers and enhance downstream processes when the process operates at high solids loadings (≥ 15 wt%). However, the use of high-solids enzymatic hydrolysis (HSEH) for biofuel production is still not widely available at industrial scales due to limitations in mixing and mass transfer that reduce enzyme-solids interactions, decreasing product yields. This thesis focuses on investigating the fluid behaviour of HSEH to determine important parameters that can enhance enzyme-solids interactions and product yields using experimental and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approaches, under industrially relevant conditions. The experimental approaches made it possible to: i) Identify the rheological behavior of the slurry ii) Adopt fed-batch strategies that enable management of the viscosity changes in the slurry and increase glucan-to-glucose conversion iii) Determine a protocol to measure viscosity in situ iv) Understand the effect of physical properties of pretreated lignocellulose substrate on enzymatic hydrolysis and v) Obtain experimental data required to develop the CFD model. The CFD modelling described in the thesis is comprised of i) Modelling to represent the shear-thinning behaviour of the slurry ii) A two-phase model for the insoluble solids and slurry interactions iii) A simplified kinetics model for the enzymatic hydrolysis process and iv) A transient model to simulate behavior from points i to iii. The comprehensive CFD model predicts that sugar titers in the enzymatic hydrolysis system can be enhanced by a) Increasing the pseudo-cavern size and shape formed around the impellers; due to the shear-thinning behaviour of the slurry, this reduces stagnant zones in the reactor b) Using a combination of dual axial impellers and lower rotational speeds to rapidly distribute the insoluble solids within the reactor compared to using an upper axial and lower radial impeller configuration and c) Using biomass with moderate moisture content to reduce uneven distribution of cellulose. The results of this thesis enhance the current understanding about the performance of the high-solids enzymatic hydrolysis system, studying several operating parameters in concert that ultimately impact sugar titers. | Ph.D. | biofuel, invest, production | 7, 9, 12 |
| Lim, Sang Hyun | Stagljar, Igor IS | Investigating the Dynamic CFTR Interactome using the Mammalian Membrane Two-hybrid (MaMTH) platform | Biochemistry | 2021-11-01 | Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regulator (CFTR) is a chloride channel found in secretory epithelia with a plethora of known interacting proteins found throughout its life cycle. Over 2,100 mutations have been reported in the CFTR gene associated with Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a complex disease that leads to progressive respiratory illness and other complications of phenotypic variance resulting from perturbations of its protein interaction network. To date, four FDA-approved drugs have provided promising clinical effects on modulating functional expression of the most common CFTR mutations. However, treatments that can modulate one type of mutation in CFTR have been shown not to work for others, leading to diverse classification of CFTR modulators. Furthermore, high variance in drug response within patients of the same genotype, including those who are refractory to the treatment, has been attributed to the presence of secondary genetic modifiers and environmental factors. For these reasons, therapies that solely target the CFTR protein itself have not had therapeutic payoffs matching research input. Studying the collection of CFTR interacting proteins and the differences between the interactomes of mutant and wildtype CFTR may be an effective way to address this problem, providing a comprehensive view of the disease and identifying novel drug targets that may allow for more patient-specific therapeutic regimens. Using the Mammalian Membrane Two-Hybrid (MaMTH) protein fragment complementation assay developed in our lab, my thesis focuses on systematic, high-throughput identification of CFTR-interacting proteins to provide additional insight into CFTR regulation and function. Through a collaborative initiative involving clinicians, biochemists and bioinformaticians, we developed a High-Throughput Screening pipeline (MaMTH-HTS) to identify and functionally validate numerous novel interactors of CFTR in multiple disease models including patient-derived intestinal organoid cultures. In parallel to these studies, we applied the MaMTH assay as part of a drug discovery platform (MaMTH-DS) and screened multiple small molecule libraries to identify compounds that can stabilize CFTR’s interaction with our most promising interaction partner 14-3-3 gamma. Lastly, we performed proof-of-concept screening of a comprehensive set of SLC transporters against CFTR and discovered an unusually high number of interactions suggesting an intricate network of PPIs that remains to be discovered. | Ph.D. | illness, labor, invest, environmental | 3, 8, 9, 13 |
| Cao, Yanshan | Uetrecht, Jack JU | Investigating the Involvement of the Sulfotransferase Pathway in Drug-induced Skin Rash | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Circumstantial evidence suggests that most idiosyncratic drug reactions are caused by chemically reactive metabolites of the drug that covalently binds to proteins. The skin is a major target of idiosyncratic reactions; however, drug metabolism in the skin is limited. One exception is the presence of relatively high sulfotransferase activity in human skin. For example, nevirapine-induced skin rash is caused by a reactive benzylic sulfate formed in the skin. The working hypothesis is that the serious skin rashes caused by other drugs involve reactive sulfate metabolites formed in the skin. Trimethoprim, lamotrigine, valdecoxib, and sertraline have the potential to produce reactive sulfate metabolites that may be responsible for drug-induced skin rash. Anti-drug antibodies against trimethoprim, lamotrigine, and valdecoxib were made to study covalent binding of the drug to proteins. Brown Norway rats were treated with these drugs, and their liver and skin proteins were immunoblotted to look for covalent binding. No covalent binding of any of these drugs was detected in the skin, but covalent binding of trimethoprim was detected in the liver. The immunoassay may not be sufficiently sensitive to detect covalent binding in the skin, or binding may be limited to human skin. The sulfates of hydroxy-trimethoprim and lamotrigine-N-oxide, which are metabolites of these drugs, were chemically synthesized, and both were found to be chemically reactive. Surprisingly, even hydroxy-trimethoprim itself had sufficient reactivity to covalently bind to proteins in vitro. Dr. Liu, our collaborator at the University of Toledo, tested whether hydroxy-trimethoprim, lamotrigine-N-oxide, hydroxy-valdecoxib or hydroxy-sertraline were substrates of human sulfotransferases. He found that lamotrigine-N-oxide was a substrate for several human sulfotransferases, while hydroxy-trimethoprim was only a substrate for the fetal sulfotransferase SULT1C4, and hydroxy-valdecoxib and hydroxy-sertraline were not substrates for human sulfotransferases. That implies that the rashes caused by valdecoxib and sertraline are not due to a sulfate metabolite. Given that hydroxy-trimethoprim is only a substrate for a fetal sulfotransferase but is weakly reactive, it may be responsible for trimethoprim rashes. The rash caused by lamotrigine is likely due to the N-O-sulfate; however, detection of covalent binding in skin would have strengthened the evidence for this hypothesis. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Rostami, Ariana | Bratman, Scott V | Investigating the Mechanisms and Kinetics of Circulating Tumour DNA Release to Improve its Clinical Utility | Medical Biophysics | 2021-06-01 | Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a heterogeneous disease with distinct subtypes, molecular features and clinical behaviours. Significant advances to better define this heterogeneity have revealed new targets and attempted to stratify patients into clinically meaningful groups. Human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive HNSCC has been recognized as a distinct etiology with significantly better treatment response and overall survival compared to HPV-negative HNSCC. However, despite the improved prognosis of these patients, current therapies result in significant toxicities, and subtype-specific treatments are still lacking. Thus, there remains an urgent need for additional biomarkers of therapeutic sensitivity to better risk stratify these patients and enable personalized treatment regimens. Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) has sparked tremendous interest in the last decade as a non-invasive method to monitor dynamic changes in treatment response. However, the mechanisms that dictate ctDNA release kinetics have not been thoroughly investigated, hampering the interpretation of such ctDNA kinetic patterns. To address this gap, I first evaluated the biological underpinnings that dictate ctDNA release using preclinical models of HNSCC. To evaluate the generalizability of my findings, I simultaneously evaluated ctDNA release from other cell types including mesenchymal cells and lung adenocarcinoma. Through detailed mechanistic studies, I uncovered a complex interplay between apoptosis, necrosis and senescence in determining ctDNA release kinetics, where treatment type and timing from treatment exposure were key factors influencing release. I next investigated the longitudinal kinetics of ctDNA release in 70 HNSCC patients treated with definitive radiotherapy or chemoradiotherapy. Three patterns of ctDNA kinetics were observed, with HNSCC patients exhibiting frequent on-treatment spikes, with a strong dependence on treatment type. Lastly, utilizing the knowledge gained in regard to the underlying biology and longitudinal profiles of ctDNA release, I identified a cohort of 235 HPV-positive oropharyngeal carcinoma patients and discussed the next steps in evaluating the relationship between ctDNA kinetic changes and clinical response. These studies provide novel insights into the biological mechanisms and dynamic changes of treatment-induced ctDNA release. Overall, these findings highlight the potential clinical utility of dynamic ctDNA monitoring to facilitate biomarker-driven adaptive therapy, with the intent to maximize disease control and minimize current treatment related-morbidities. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, cities | 4, 9, 11 |
| Torontali, Zoltan | Peever, John H | Investigating the Neural Circuits that Control Cataplexy | Cell and Systems Biology | 2019-06-01 | In this thesis I explored a long-standing hypothesis that the paralysis occurring during REM sleep and cataplexy share a common neural mechanism. Cataplexy, a debilitating symptom of narcolepsy, is the abrupt onset of skeletal muscle paralysis during wakefulness. Under normal conditions, neurons of the sublaterodorsal tegmental region have been shown to be active during REM sleep and either activate GABA/glycine neurons of the ventral medulla or inhibitory interneurons in the spinal cord which in turn silences motoneurons and results in REM sleep muscle paralysis. The mechanism mediating the paralysis of cataplexy has not been fully characterized but is hypothesized to result from the abnormal activation of SLD neurons during wakefulness. First, I investigated if activation of all cells in the SLD nucleus could trigger cataplexy in wildtype (hypocretin-intact) mice and narcoleptic (hypocretin knockout) mice. Next, I investigated if glutamatergic, VGLUT2-expressing, neurons of the SLD were the cellular phenotype responsible for triggering cataplexy in wildtype and narcoleptic mice models. This final investigation required the development of a new hypocretin knockout mouse line (hypocretin -/- , VGLUT2-Cre mice). This new model is scientifically important as it provides an innovative toolkit for neuroscientists to examine the role of glutamatergic cell populations throughout the brain of mice with a narcolepsy phenotype. Several major conclusions can be drawn from my results: 1. Cataplexy and REM sleep share a common neural mechanism that generates muscle paralysis. Activation of the SLD nucleus triggered cataplexy in wild type mice. This is a significant finding as it is the first time that cataplexy has been triggered in wildtype mice. Similarly, narcoleptic mice experienced an increase in the number of cataplexy episodes after activation of the SLD nucleus. 2. Activation of VGLUT2-SLD neurons in VGLUT2-Cre (hypocretin intact) mouse results in overall muscle weakness during wakefulness but does not trigger cataplexy episodes. 3. The VGLUT2-expressing SLD neurons are a component of the neural circuit that triggers cataplexy. Activation of the VGLUT2-SLD neurons in hypocretin knockout mice resulted in increased number of cataplexy attacks without altering the duration of the episode. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Cavdaroglu, Bilgehan | Ito Lee, Rutsuko | Investigating the Role of the Ventral Hippocampus in Decision-Making under Approach-Avoidance Conflict | Psychology | 2021-11-01 | Approach-avoidance (AP-AV) conflict occurs when an organism encounters a stimulus that has both attractive and aversive properties and optimal resolution of this conflict is vital for survival. Existing theories of anxiety and defensive behaviours such as Reinforcement Sensitivity Theory and Imminence Continuum Theory consider long spatio-temporal distance under AP-AV conflict inducing situations to be sufficient to engage the ventral hippocampus (VH) and produce anxiety-like behaviors. Accordingly, VH engagement has been supported by studies employing the use of ethological anxiety tests and cue-based maze tasks that induce a state of AP-AV conflict. However, the role of the VH in more discrete/choice-based decision-making tasks with AP-AV conflict remains unclear. In this thesis I investigated whether discrete choices under AP-AV conflict are sensitive to VH disruption and whether the temporal distance of the conflict-inducing event affects this sensitivity. First, rats were tested in an active avoidance (AA) task with and without safety signal, and their responses in both reinforced and extinction conditions were evaluated. Inactivation of VH decreased AA responses but only in the presence of safety signal, and under extinction condition. These results indicated that AA is not dependent on VH activity, and the presence of ‘temporal distance’ alone (impending shock) is not sufficient to make behavior susceptible to VH disruption. A second experiment investigated the role of the VH in temporal decision-making under conflict. This work revealed that chemogenetic inhibition of VH did not have an effect that was specific to the conflict-inducing conditions. Instead, VH inhibition reduced timing uncertainty regardless of the presence of AP-AV conflict. Finally, animals were tested in a discrete choice task in which they had to make decisions between a high reward option with varying degrees of shock intensity and a low reward option which enabled the quantification of the point of subjective equality (PSE). Here again, inhibition of the VH did not play a role in AP-AV conflict with reinforcement but increased the preference for the low reward option and PSE in extinction. Together, these results reveal that either the omission of reinforcement or ambiguity, rather than AP-AV conflict and/or temporal distance engage the VH. | Ph.D. | invest, equalit, animal, animal | 9, 10, 14, 15 |
| Yang, Yanbo | Fairn, Gregory D | Investigating the Roles of Anionic Phospholipids in Endocytic Trafficking in Mammalian and S. cerevisiae Cells | Biochemistry | 2019-11-01 | A fundamental feature of eukaryotic cells is their compartmentalization into organelles. This allows for the segregation of biochemical processes, such as protein translation, energy production, macromolecule catabolism, and the transcription of genetic materials. Organelles are delineated by membrane bilayers that are composed of transmembrane and peripheral proteins and lipids. For organelles to maintain their functionality, they must constantly refresh or receive new lipids and proteins. Additionally, organelles are not static structures found in the cytoplasm but are highly mobile and moved around the cell using microtubule-based motors. Two main mechanisms are responsible for the movement of material between organelles. This includes vesicular transport of proteins and lipids and non-vesicular movement of lipids. Non-vesicular transport is best characterized to occur at sites of contact between the ER and other organelles. However, other contacts have been described which do not rely on the ER. Importantly, not only are lipids essential components of the bilayer of organelles but they also contribute to the identity of the organelle, signal transduction, functionality, and vesicular transport. This thesis examines the roles of negatively charged lipids, specifically phosphatidylserine (PtdSer) and phosphorylated variants of phosphatidylinositol (PIPs) on organelle identity, vesicle budding and transport, and the relative roles for vesicular and non-vesicular transport in the subcellular distribution of PtdSer and cell polarity. Results from my studies reveal i) a redistribution of the phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate 5-kinases (PIP5Ks) to endomembrane structures upon PIPKH (PIP5K homolog) overexpression that is accompanied by an accumulation of PIPs, which increases the negative surface charge of endomembrane that in turn leads to the relocalization of polycationic proteins. ii) PtdSer is not only a cargo of Snx4 and Retromer mediated retrograde transport pathways but is also essential to support the formation and recycling of cargo, and iii) Osh6 and Osh7, two proteins involved in the non-vesicular transport of PtdSer, are dispensable with regards to the polarization of PtdSer in the plasma membrane of yeast and not required to support robust cell polarity pathways. Together, my results highlight the importance of anionic phospholipids in organelle identity and endocytic trafficking. | Ph.D. | trafficking, energy, invest, production, recycl, trafficking | 5, 16, 7, 9, 12 |
| Mahmud, Neemat | Miller, Freda D | Investigating the Sources of Mesenchymal Cells that Contribute to Adult Murine Digit Tip Regeneration | Physiology | 2021-11-01 | While regeneration of appendages is relatively common among invertebrate, it is relatively restricted in mammals. Adult murine distal digit tip regeneration is one example of mammalian multi-tissue regeneration. Blastema formation is the critical step distinguishing regenerative from non-regenerative amputations. While the sources of the blastema cells in other regenerative vertebrates such as amphibians and zebrafish have been widely studied, the cellular origin and phenotypic identity of mammalian blastema cells are not well understood. In this thesis, using adult mouse digit tip regeneration as a model, I investigate the origin and nature of the mammalian blastema cells. First, I show that distinct Pdgfra-expressing mesenchymal cells in the uninjured distal digit tip contribute to the majority of the mouse blastema. Single cell profiling indicates that the Pdgfra-expressing blastema mesenchymal cells acquire a precursor-like transcriptional state distinct from both the uninjured and developing digit tip mesenchymal cells. Thus, digit tip regeneration occurs via a distinct adult mechanism. Second, I show that various differentiated Pdgfra-expressing mesenchymal cells in the uninjured digit tip, such as the bone lineage cells and nail bed dermal cells, upon contribution to the blastema, lose their differentiated phenotypes, re-enter the cell cycle and acquire the blastema transcriptional signature, suggesting dedifferentiation of cells during regeneration. Third, transplantation studies indicate that the regenerating environment dictates the blastema transcriptional state and confers mesenchymal lineage plasticity to some blastema mesenchymal cells. This allows these select cells to contribute to multiple mesenchymal tissues irrespective of their own tissue-of-origin. Fourth, I show that certain cells such as the nail bed dermal cells show spatial restriction in the regenerating blastema and regenerated digit tip suggesting that some cells might harbour positional memory during mammalian tissue regeneration. Finally, we show that the non-regenerating tissue acquires some aspects of the regenerative blastema transcriptional state. These findings lay the groundwork for further research investigating the differences between regenerative and non-regenerative responses with the hopes of enhancing mammalian tissue repair and regeneration. | Ph.D. | invest, fish, regeneration | 9, 14, 15 |
| Holownia, Aleksandra Emilia | Yudin, Andrei K. | Investigating the Synthesis and Reactivity of Boron Carbonyl Compounds | Chemistry | 2020-11-01 | In the context of small molecule synthesis, boron-containing building blocks have proven to be indispensable tools. Therefore, efforts to develop novel molecules with boron at strategic positions is an important research objective. As part of an ongoing study in the area of amphoteric reactivity, our goal has been to generate molecules wherein the boronate functionality is nearby or bound to the carbonyl functional group. This is challenging due to the known instability of boron in heteroatom-rich environments, but the use of the N-methyliminodiacetic acid (MIDA) ligand has shown to mitigate the propensity of boron to migrate from carbon to oxygen or nitrogen. This dissertation explores the synthesis of novel boron carbonyl compounds and demonstrates that the selective manipulation of the carbonyl moiety extends the scope of accessible boron-containing molecules. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the unique chemical and physical characteristics of MIDA boronates and our previous contributions to the chemistry of boryl carbonyl compounds. Chapter 2 outlines two distinct approaches to achieve the oxidative functionalization of alkenyl MIDA boronates, providing facile access to oxalyl boronates and alpha-borylated ketones. Application of these compounds towards the synthesis of borylated heterocycles is also explored. Chapter 3 reports the chemistry of boryl oximes, which are derived from alpha-boryl aldehydes or acylboronates. Applications in the context of nitrile oxide chemistry, bioconjugation and the Beckmann rearrangement are discussed. Chapter 4 details the identification of the unprecedented C1 building block, carboxyboronate, which can participate in a range of polar transformations. In the process of evaluating the reactivity of carboxyboronate, its ability to react with nucleophiles at both carbon and boron atoms was discovered. Reactions at the boron atom were found to be coupled with the release of carbon monoxide, a property that was applied in carbonylative coupling chemistry. In Chapter 5, the potential of acylboronates to function as acyl anion surrogates is discussed in the context of the Suzuki-Miyaura reaction. Optimal reaction conditions were identified, providing the corresponding ketones in good yields. | Ph.D. | invest, accessib | 9, 11 |
| Ojo, Andrew Olutoye | Lee, Ping I | Investigation of Amorphous Solid Dispersions for Solubility Enhancement of Poorly Water-soluble Drugs: Understanding the Effect of Material Properties on Amorphous Drug Crystallization and the Impact on Formulation Performance | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-06-01 | The preparation of amorphous solid dispersions (ASDs) has enabled the development of oral dosage forms for many poorly water-soluble compounds. The aim of the work presented in this dissertation is to advance our understanding of ASDs, specifically their long-term stability with respect to crystallization and the implications of instability on product performance. Advancing knowledge in these areas is pivotal for the pharmaceutical industry and its efforts in drug discovery. Much of our understanding of ASD stability results from empirical or extrapolative models that have been applied to describe stability. Their application has been limited and they do not provide fundamental insights into the recrystallization process to aid in the rationale development in ASDs. Notably, they fail to consider supersaturation as the driving force for crystallization, diffusivity in viscous systems, and interfacial effects. The works presented in this dissertation model the mechanisms of crystal nucleation and growth in ASDs by incorporating these concepts, develop and apply characterization tools to determine critical model parameters, and study the effects of crystallization on product performance. | Ph.D. | knowledge, water, invest | 4, 6, 2009 |
| Pogoutse, Anastassia Igorevna | Moraes, Trevor F | Investigation of the Immunogenicity and Specificity of the Transferrin Binding Proteins from Bovine Pathogenic Bacteria | Biochemistry | 2019-11-01 | Through trying to survive and proliferate within their hosts, pathogens have developed creative mechanisms of acquiring iron. A nutrient required for survival by most organisms, iron is both highly sought and jealously guarded. Hosts sequester iron using iron-binding proteins. These iron sinks keep the extracellular concentration of free iron at a level that does not support microbial proliferation. Transferrin is a bilobal iron carrying protein found in the blood and cerebrospinal fluid, and on mucosal surfaces. It is targeted by a number of microbial transferrin binding proteins and siderophores. This thesis focuses on one of the best-studied bacterial transferrin receptors, which consists of the transporter TbpA and its associated surface lipoprotein TbpB. TbpA and TbpB have been studied for years as potential vaccine antigens. Recently, mutants of TbpB that do not bind transferrin have been shown to provide improved protection against infection compared to wild-type TbpB. In this thesis, I develop a method for rapidly screening TbpB mutants, measure loss of affinity for multiple mutations, and investigate the effectiveness of a mutant in generating transferrin blocking antibodies. Furthermore, I investigate multiple methods of measuring binding specificity in Tbp-transferrin interactions in order to lay the groundwork for identifying functionally important residues in Tbps, and for designing improved animal models of infection. | Ph.D. | nutrition, vaccine, invest, animal, animal | 2, 3, 9, 14, 15 |
| Lee, Donghyun | Tabori, Uri | Investigation of the TERT promoter DNA methylation status in human cancer | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Telomere maintenance is a hallmark of human cancer. In the majority of human cancer, telomere maintenance is achieved by reactivation of telomerase. TERT – a reverse transcriptase component of telomerase – is a proto-oncogene that governs the telomerase activity and is transcriptionally dysregulated in cancer. While genetic alterations including mutations affecting the TERT promoter has been described, the exact mechanism of TERT reactivation in human cancer cells remains poorly understood. The focus of this Ph.D. thesis is to investigate biological and clinical implications of aberrant DNA hypermethylation within the TERT promoter observed uniquely in human cancer. I initially uncovered a cancer-specific DNA hypermethylated region within the TERT promoter – which I defined as the TERT Hypermethylated Oncological Region (THOR) – and show high prevalence of this epigenetic alteration in the context of human cancer. I then determine the biological and clinical implications of THOR hypermethylation, leading to its potency as a therapeutic target and a diagnostic biomarker. Lastly, I elucidate a new model of differential allelic THOR hypermethylation in human cancer and how it can explain differential allelic expression of TERT. Together, these studies provide an insight into the DNA methylation landscape of the TERT promoter, introduce a THOR-dependent TERT upregulatory mechanism, and propose therapeutic and diagnostic potential of THOR hypermethylation signature. | Ph.D. | invest, land | 9, 15 |
| Lynch, Madelaine | Aubert, Isabelle | Investigation of Vascular Function and its Modulation in a Mouse Model of Amyloidosis | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2019-11-01 | Vascular integrity and function is critical for maintaining homeostasis of the central nervous system. Compromises in vascular structure and function are observed in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and associated with amyloid pathology. Vascular dysfunction affects cerebral blood flow (CBF), including vascular reactivity which can be regulated by arachidonic acid (AA) and nitric oxide (NO). This thesis investigates vascular dysfunction and response to challenges in the TgCRND8 mouse model of amyloidosis. Biochemical and functional vascular characteristics were evaluated to better understand the extent of vascular dysfunction in this mouse model. With the goal of evaluating vascular plasticity and vascular response to challenges in presence of amyloid, we disrupted the blood-brain barrier (BBB) with focused ultrasound (FUS) in TgCRND8 and non-transgenic mice. We then used Vasculotide (VT), which was previously characterized as a Tie2 agonist to assess the effects of a 3-month VT treatment on vascular integrity and repair. VT-treated TgCRND8 mice required less pressure to induce permeability and demonstrated an accelerated restoration of the BBB after FUS. Using functional MRI, hippocampal, but not cortical, vascular hyporeactivity was found in TgCRND8 mice at 7.5 months, at which point there is significant vascular pathology. A higher cerebral amyloid angiopathy burden was identified in the hippocampus, compared to the cortex. At the mRNA level, we identified increased expression of cyclooxygenase (COX)-1, essential for AA metabolism, in the hippocampus and increased expression of endothelial and neuronal NO synthases (NOS) in the cortex of TgCRND8 mice. These results indicate modulation of AA and NOS enzymes in the brain of TgCRND8 mice that may be relevant to the observed vascular dysfunction. In conclusion, these results provide evidence of cerebrovascular dysfunction in presence of amyloidosis and they characterize potential regulators of vascular dysfunction, such as AA, NOS and CAA, in the mouse brain, which could be engaged for plasticity and repair. Lastly, the combined use of VT and FUS suggests that VT enhances vascular plasticity, which is promising for its future use in combating insults to the BBB. Overall, a better understanding of cerebrovascular dysfunction in the context of AD pathologies is critical for the understanding and treatment of AD. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Ahmadi Nadoushan, Soha | Kraatz, Heinz-Bernhard | Investigations of Tau-metal Interactions | Chemistry | 2019-06-01 | This thesis describes the investigation of metal-tau interaction and speculates about its possible role in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer’s disease. The investigation started by developing a surfaced-based electrochemical sensor to monitor the conformational changes of htau39 on the gold surface as a consequence of Fe2+ and Fe3+ interaction, which is the first account of monitoring the conformation changes of tau film using electrochemistry. This work depicts the ability of surface-based electrochemistry to study the biomolecular interaction including metal-protein and protein-protein interactions. This technique was also applied to study the influence of phosphorylation on the iron-tau interaction, which showed the possible role of tyrosine in Fe2+ interaction. The ESI-MS experiments provide substantial evidence for the metallation of the longest isoform of tau with Cu2+, Zn2+, Fe2+, and Fe3+, which further support our findings from surface-based electrochemistry. This work also confirms the impact of phosphorylation on metal interaction. The possible role of metal ions in Alzheimer’s was reinforced by the formation of tau aggregates in the presence of metal ions, and ROS generation in the case of Cu2+, and Fe2+. Focusing on the interaction of metal ions with full-length peptides of the microtubule binding repeats R1 – R4 was an opportunity to gain more insight into the possible implication of d-block metal ions in the interaction with the tau protein. In particular, the involvement of Cys-based redox chemistry in the interaction of Cu2+ with R2 and R3 leads to the ROS formation and fibrils formation, which could not be prevented by ascorbate and glutathione as the most abundant anti-oxidants in neurons. This thesis also discusses the conformational and structural changes of R1 and R4 upon interaction with Zn2+, Fe2+, and Fe3+, and while ES-MS spectra confirmed the complexation of Zn2+ and Fe2+, there is no such evidence for Fe3+. Findings obtained from this thesis reinforces the idea that metal ions play a role in tau aggregation and ROS formation, which may contribute to cell death. These findings provide new insights for the design of new potential therapeutic agents. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Karnad-Jani, Rashmee | Bascia, Nina | Invisible Work and Hidden Labour in Ontario’s Public Education: A Decolonizing Institutional Ethnography of Mothering and Teachers’ Work | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | This study explores how one institutional text, Ontario’s Parental Engagement Policy (2010), enters into and coordinates the work of mothers and teachers in publicly funded education. An institutional ethnography was conducted based on in-depth interviews with ten mothers and ten teachers of students in Grades 4 to 6 in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) comprising of the municipalities of Toronto, York, Durham, Peel and Halton. The data was analyzed using Smith’s framework that keeps the institutional ruling relations in view. The findings indicated that Ontario’s Education Act and Parental Engagement Policy operationalized governance through a network of subordinate texts and textually mediated mothering and educational discourse routinely activated through the text-reader dialogic of everyday work. While the efforts of the Ontario policy appeared to invite parents to connect with their children’s teachers to understand schooling and support their children, the data highlighted how the teacher union, the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario’s professional judgement and professional conduct guidelines subjugate parental engagement by asserting teachers’ expertise over these attempts and efforts. I argue that due to the racist Standard North American Family (SNAF) ideology of Ontario’s Education Act and policy, as well as the power relations of ETFO, mothering work -a valuable contributor to students’ learning outcomes -is largely marginalized and undervalued in GTA schools especially when done by women caught in the intersections of raced-class, immigration trajectories and linguistic hegemonies of socially dominant languages within the North American schooling context. I conclude that ETFO and the Government of Ontario operate as isomorphic organizations with similar relations of ruling that create invisible barriers for parental engagement as well as the advocacy practices of equity-minded, anti-racist teachers. Social change recommendations include community-led, multilingual, outcomes-driven parent advocacy collaborations alongside teacher-led participatory action research to build professional capacity that invites and authentically supports parent partnerships in schooling. | Ph.D. | learning, equity, racism, women, labour, labor, equit, marginalized, anti-racist, institut, governance, social change | 4, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Tsujimoto, Kimberley | Martinussen, Rhonda | It’s not, “let’s do more”. It’s, “let’s do different”: Recognizing the Important Associations between Children’s Reading Skill and their Motivation and Engagement in the Elementary School Classroom | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation contains a collection of three studies that examined young children’s engagement and motivation for reading concurrently in the context of word reading achievement. Participants across the three studies included students in grades 1 and 2, and their teachers, from public and Catholic elementary schools in the Greater Toronto Area. The goal of the first study was to assess how reading motivation and engagement relate to each other and whether they help to explain variance in children’s reading achievement together as a shared unit, or whether they each contribute something unique. Results showed that reading self-concept, reading interest, and emotional engagement are unique dimensions, but that they have a shared component that is related to children’s word reading skills. The goal of the second study was to explore individual differences in early readers’ motivation and emotional engagement. Using person-centered analyses, results identified more than one profile of reading motivation and emotional engagement in grades 1 and 2. The motivation and engagement construct that most informs these profiles appears to change over time, with reading interest being especially important in grade 2. A latent transition analysis suggested that a student’s motivation and engagement profile in grade 1 is important for their later motivation and engagement. Most students did not change profiles over time—maintaining either positive or poor motivation and engagement from grade 1 to 2. The goal of the third study was to assess teacher autonomy support as an instructional approach that may enable positive reading motivation and emotional engagement by offering choice and teaching relevance of learning tasks. Results showed that the pathway between students’ reading achievement in grade 1 and their later reading self-concept in grade 2 was explained by teacher autonomy support and its relation to students’ emotional engagement and reading interest. The contributions of this dissertation are to enhance an understanding of what young readers’ motivation and engagement looks like in grades 1 and 2. By considering different dimensions of motivation, specifically self-concept and reading interest, in addition to children’s general emotional engagement when learning, we may be able to explain some of the observed differences in children’s reading behaviours and achievement. | Ph.D. | learning, transit | 4, 11 |
| Huang, Shiming | Peterson-Badali, Michele||Skilling, Tracey | Item Response Theory and Measurement Invariance Investigations of the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2020-11-01 | Derived from the Risk-Need-Responsivity framework, the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) is a widely implemented instrument used to assess risk of recidivism in justice-involved youth. Its results inform risk classification, sentencing decisions, and treatment planning. Given the impact of the YLS/CMI on the lives of justice-involved youth, its validity needs to be thoroughly investigated. This dissertation is comprised of three studies examining the psychometric properties of the YLS/CMI based on samples of community-sentenced youth in Ontario, Canada. Study 1 examined the YLS/CMI items and its internal structure using item response theory (IRT) analyses and confirmatory factor analysis. The YLS/CMI items loaded onto their respective domains and the domains in turn converged onto a single factor as theorized in the RNR framework. The IRT analyses demonstrated that the instrument was most informative for youth with average risk levels, with items from the Personality, Attitude, and Criminal History domains especially adept at discriminating between individuals with varying risk levels. Study 2 explored the measurement invariance of the YLS/CMI across gender (male vs. female) and race (Black vs. White) using differential item functioning (DIF) analyses within an IRT framework. Most of the items demonstrated similar discrimination across subgroups, with the exception of verbally aggressive across gender, and poor relations with father across race. Several items demonstrated differential likelihood of endorsement across gender and race. Study 3 examined the measurement invariance of the YLS/CMI across a sample of Indigenous and non-Indigenous justice-involved youth using DIF. Results demonstrated similar discrimination of the items across groups, with the exception of poor frustration tolerance. Items from the Education domain were more likely to be endorsed for non-Indigenous youth, while items from the Substance Abuse domain were more likely to be endorsed for Indigenous youth. Results also indicated that the total scores were not predictive of recidivism for Indigenous youth. Findings from this dissertation highlight the importance of investigating the psychometric properties of risk assessment instruments in order to establish its validity and understand its implications for justice-involved individuals. | Ph.D. | substance abuse, gender, female, invest, indigenous, indigenous | 3, 5, 9, 10, 16 |
| Belfon, David | Coleman, Simon | Jewish Geographies: Spatial Narratives of Orthodox Jewish Leavetakers in Toronto | Religion, Study of | 2021-11-01 | Through interviews with twenty self-described leavetakers from a wide range of Orthodox Jewish lifestyles in Toronto, Canada, this dissertation argues that leavetaking from normative Orthodox Judaism does not mean exiting Judaism or even stopping observance completely. Study data illustrates how leavetakers instead embark on individual journeys towards what they perceive as greater personal Jewish authenticity. They do so by restructuring their Jewishness from a perspective coloured anew by their leavetaking trajectories. Their experiences living in their old normatively Orthodox community, leaving these communities, and returning to Jewish Toronto post-disaffiliation to maintain contact with their families of origin all contribute to their new Jewish identities. Using a framework highlighting the effects of spatial and social Jewish Geography on disaffiliation and identity change, I adapt sociologist Wayne Brekhus’ typologies of gay identity disclosure in my investigation of Orthodox leavetaking trajectories. In addition, by expanding inclusion criteria to include both Haredi and other observant leavetakers towards a broader “Orthodox” participant sample, this research addresses a wider discourse on permeable religious boundaries than existing scholarship on leaving Judaism typically offers. My analysis uncovers a variety of local models for changing religiosity, from firm rejection of normative observance to break-taking and eventual return to an amended Orthodoxy and beyond. Leavetakers seek out and develop for themselves an adjacent “other Jewishness” sometimes still within observant Judaism but distinctly different from normative Orthodoxy, finding that established denominational categories do not correspond with their reconstituted Judaism. These narratives offer profound insights into what post-leavetaking Judaism looks like for disaffiliates who find themselves in indeterminate spaces still within Judaism—not outside of it. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Vickers, Simon Thomas | Mills, Sean | Jobs, Homes, and the Right to Exist: Neighbourhood Activism in Deindustrializing Toronto and Montreal, 1963-1989 | History | 2021-11-01 | AbstractThis dissertation explores the points of tension between dominant histories of neighbourhood activism in Toronto and Montreal between 1963-1989 and the lived experiences of locally embedded activists who organized for access to safe jobs, homes, and the right to exist in their neighbourhoods. It demonstrates how material conditions, determined by the overlapping processes of deindustrialization, post-industrial development, and the movement of capital from Montreal to Toronto, shaped how neighbourhood activists organized, who they organized with, what they organized for, and how they recorded what they were doing. Dominant narratives of neighbourhood activism during this period over-emphasize the perspectives white, middle-class, and cis-gendered male activists who benefitted from the world the sixties made. Their upward mobility, made possible through the expansion of public spending and their involvement in gentrification, gave them the time and resources to document what they were doing, elevating their perspectives in the historical record. At the same time, embedded poor and working-class, racialized, disabled, and trans activists who continued to experience the ongoing structural violence of the capitalist city also continued to collectively resist that violence. Unfortunately, their ongoing precarity denied them of the resources necessary to produce historical records to the same degree as their upwardly mobile contemporaries. By historicizing how uneven material conditions shaped what activists were doing and how they recorded what they were doing, this thesis demonstrates how power shaped the production of neighbourhood activism history. It also presents opportunities to contest this power in the historical record. | Ph.D. | precarity, gender, capital, industrialization, urban, production, violence | 1, 5, 9, 11, 12, 16 |
| Taylor, Jennifer Lynda | Klenk, Nicole | Knowledge Controversies and Renewable Energy Transition: Exploring Science and Policy Debates | Geography | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation explores controversies arising from policies to promote a transition to greater reliance on wind and solar power in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on conceptual frameworks from science and technology studies (STS), human geography and socio-technical transition studies, it provides new insights into the dynamics and impact of debates over the cost and environmental impacts of “new” renewable energies, as well as the role and nature of social resistance in the context of emergent concepts of energy democracy. This dissertation comprises three standalone articles (chapters 3-5). Chapter 3 uses rhetorical analysis to explore how scientific facts about wind energy’s impact on human health were co-produced by the science and policy processes. It suggests the wind and health controversy cannot be definitively settled by science because it is inextricably tied to value-based questions about how precautionary wind development should be, what should count as a valid health issue, and what constitutes valid evidence in health research and public policy. Chapter 4 explores how the (in)visibility of different causal frames of the issue of rising electricity prices was mediated through a decade of newspaper coverage in Ontario. It demonstrates how coverage framed the issue of rising electricity prices overwhelmingly as a consequence of the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, 2009, amplifying criticisms of its design and impact on consumers and the economy while diminishing the visibility of other key cost-related factors. Chapter 5 presents a comparative assessment of normative and relational frameworks of energy democracy and their different accounts of resistant publics in energy transitions. It finds normative understandings constrain imaginings of low-carbon energy futures and who legitimately participates in democracy, overlooking uncertainties and complexities inherent to transitions and their publics. Relational approaches address these shortcomings through greater attention to how energy problems and solutions are framed, how political action is performed through the articulation of contested issues, and who is disenfranchised in transition processes. Findings highlight the importance of studying in-depth the co-production and mediation of knowledge and how publics struggle to gain political authority over issues that affect them when investigating trajectories and outcomes of renewable energy transitions. | Ph.D. | knowledge, energy, renewabl, wind, solar, invest, gini, transit, consum, production, environmental, democra | 4, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16 |
| Zangeneh, Pouya | McCabe, Brenda Y | Knowledge Representation and Artificial Intelligence for Management of Socio-Technical Risks in Megaprojects | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Megaprojects are probabilistically dependent systems prone to progressive failures that are undertaken in significantly incentivized economic and political domains. Current processes in definition, estimation, and financing of these large projects often exclude relevant sources of socio-technical risks with overarching effects on the project. Applications of the artificial intelligence methods in forecasting project performance and outcomes considering socio-technical sources of risks have been mainly ad-hoc solutions catered to specific needs, project types, and data availability. This research proposes a high-level framework for dealing with socio-technical risks by utilizing available sources of data, expert knowledge, and the most applicable analytics methodologies. The framework consists of representation, quantification, and inference connected through a loop of dynamic learning. The representation part defines various sources of risk in an expandable data format and with universal semantics, considering the nature of risk factors as to when and how they should be collected, in conjunction with project performance measures. An ontology is developed for such representation using the linked data and the semantic web format. The quantification aims to measure such sources of risk, which could vary from machine learning algorithms' applications over remote sensing data to pure qualitative judgments in discrete scales. The quantification was exemplified by creating a remoteness risk index, called Nighttime Remoteness Index (NIRI) for risk and resilience assessment of remote projects. The remoteness index takes nighttime satellite imagery as input and produces a remoteness index using machine learning algorithms. The index was validated based on two census bases remoteness indices of Australia and Canada. The inference part aims to incorporate the effects and dependencies of socio-technical risk factors on project outcome variables by defining an expandable object-oriented Bayesian Network (OOBN). The models can be trained based on the collected data from knowledge representation or based on expert knowledge, and different extents of their combinations. The employed methodologies allow for evergreen process of data collection and process optimization in the previous three sections. The framework creates a systematic approach to capturing and modeling project socio-technical risks, enables quality controls across the process, and can be applied to various risk sources such as the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) factors. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, resilien, environmental, resilience, resilience, governance | 4, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Shahin, Ramy | Chechik, Marsha | Language-based Lifting of Analyses to Software Product Lines | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | Software Product Lines (SPLs) allow software engineering teams to develop families of products together using a common set of artifacts. The goal is to maximize reuse of artifacts (requirements, design models, source code, test cases, etc...) across related products. Many of the analysis tools (e.g., static analysis, model checking, test-case generation) used throughout the engineering process are designed to analyze one product at a time. Several attempts have been made to \emph{lift} some of those analysis tools to analyze the whole product line at once, leveraging the amount of commonality between individual products to avoid the intractability of analyzing each product instance by itself in a brute-force fashion. In this thesis, we address the problem from a different angle. Instead of lifting an analysis, we lift languages used to implement analyses. Since a given analysis is a program written in some programming language, extending that language with variability-aware constructs would allow for reinterpreting the original analysis program to process a product line instead of a single product. We presented the lifting of two languages: Datalog, and an extended version of Programming Computable Functions (PCF). Datalog combines relational data definition and manipulation, together with logical inference. It has been used to implement different categories of declarative, succinct, and easy to understand software analyses. We present syntactic extensions to Datalog to allow variability annotations of facts, and a variability-aware inference algorithm. In addition, we present two approaches to automatic variability-aware lifting of software analyses written in a functional language (PCF+). A light-weight, black-box approach (shallow lifting) wraps an analysis in its variability-aware version. The second approach (deep lifting) is an automatic program-rewriting mechanism that translates an analysis program into a semantically equivalent variability-aware analysis. We evaluated the lifted versions of Datalog and PCF+ on a set of Java and C-language benchmarks, comparing their performance against brute-force analysis. Our evaluation results validate our assumption that variability-aware analysis is in general orders of magnitude faster than brute-force analysis. Also in the case of Datalog analyses, variability-aware analysis resulted in similar savings in fact database size. | Ph.D. | reuse | 12 |
| N'Diaye, Jeanne | Lian, Keryn | Layer-by-layer Design of Organic-carbon Composite Electrodes for Capacitive Charge Storage | Materials Science and Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Delivering clean and sustainable energy is currently a major challenge worldwide. Among the promising energy storage solutions are electrochemical capacitors (ECs), which have seen tremendous improvements recently, but suffer from their low energy densities and fabrication costs. A potential remedy to these issues is the development of electrodes that combine the two main charge storage mechanisms of ECs, namely electrical double-layer capacitance (EDLC) and pseudocapacitance. This combination has been successfully realized by depositing conducting polymers on carbon, which greatly increases the energy density of the resulting composites. The main shortcomings of these composites are their slower charge storage kinetics and instability, resulting from thick active layer. The aim of this thesis is to address the issues above, in the case of composite electrodes based on carbon nanotubes (CNT) modified with redox polyluminol (CpLum) and sulfonated porphyrin macrocycles (TPPS). This work is divided into three parts, the first part starts with a single layer approach to identify the advantages and shortcomings of the developed composites. Compared to bare CNT electrodes, the obtained CpLum-CNT and TPPS-CNT composites have enhanced capacitive charge storage abilities and good stability. The charge storage kinetics of the composite was studied to gauge the capacitive performance of said composites. In the second part of the thesis, the knowledge gained from the first part is leveraged to develop a TPPS-CpLum-CNT composite. This dual layer material exhibits enhanced capacitive charge and faster storage kinetics compared to the individual single layer-CNT. The last part of this work tackles the layer-by-layer (LbL) assembly of molybdovanadogermanic (GeMoV) polyoxometalates. The synergy between redox active CpLum and GeMoV along with the anchoring polycation on CNT give rise to several improvements, including improved capacitive behavior, faster storage kinetics, and a wider operating potential window. The fundamental aspects of the contributions above enabled the design and optimization of carbon-based composites via a feasible and scalable LbL assembly method through an in-depth understanding of the physico-chemical and electrochemical properties of the materials at hand. On top of obtaining higher energy and power densities for ECs, the approaches in this work can be extended to improve other electrochemical devices. | Ph.D. | knowledge, energy, wind | 4, 7 |
| Abdolanezhad, Hojat Alah | Malekian, Azarakhsh | Learning and Strategic Behaviour: The Role of Consumer Behaviour in Three Revenue Management Applications | Management | 2021-11-01 | In this thesis, we study three different revenue management applications where consumer behavior is crucial in designing an optimal strategy. The focus is on two aspects of consumer behavior: learning in the market and strategic behavior. In the second chapter, we study service design and pricing in car-sharing networks with limited capacity serving strategic consumers. We consider a hybrid system that allows a mix of both one-way and round-trip services on the same network, and consumers who strategically select from these two service types. We provide demand and supply conditions for offering both types of services, only one of the types, or some mix of two. We further characterize the optimal combination of pricing and repositioning to mitigate demand imbalances in the network. In the third chapter, we study the optimal release strategy (simultaneous or sequential) of a firm with two digital products of unknown quality. Consumers learn through a combination of private, public, and social learning. We consider two consumption patterns: consumers may go back and consume the early-released product (binge consumption) or not (sequel consumption). The firm can control the learning dynamics by its release strategy and possibly pricing. We provide three main results. First, under sequel consumption and exogenous uniform pricing, the simultaneous release always outperforms the sequential release. Second, under sequel consumption and endogenous pricing, the sequential release dominates the simultaneous release for a certain parameter range. Third, under binge consumption and exogenous uniform pricing, the sequential release dominates the simultaneous release if and only if the price is sufficiently high. In the fourth chapter, we study the problem of review manipulation. In online markets, consumers can learn from reviews, therefore, a seller may have incentive to influence the learning process by distorting reviews. We examine the impacts of review distortion on a seller's profit and consumer behavior. We first provide some empirical evidence on the review distortion. We then show a seller benefits from review distortion if and only if consumers are sufficiently patient. Moreover, given consumer patience, a seller distorts reviews if and only if the consumer's cost of review search is sufficiently large. | Ph.D. | learning, consum | 4, 12 |
| Nieto Sachica, Diego Alejandro | Bickmore, Kathy K||Gaztambide-Fernandez, Ruben R | Learning Conflict in the Midst of Violence. Urban Youth and School Life in Colombia’s (Post)Conflict Transition | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | This thesis explores the (dis)encounters between youths’ lived experiences and understandings of conflict and violence and the curricular intentions and practices in their schools. Participating youth attend two schools in marginalized urban areas of Colombia that are differently affected by violence and the armed conflict. One school is located in a municipality directly affected by armed conflict violence. The other is in a traditional neighborhood in a large city, affected by insecurity and urban criminality but located away from the direct effects of the armed conflict. Soon after the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian state and the largest guerrilla organization, I conducted three months of participant observations, focus groups with youth from grades 8 to 10, interviews with teachers, and follow-up visits in each field site. I show that, despite young people’s different locations in relation to war, intimate expressions of direct violence—interpersonal, criminal, domestic, and drug-related—were prominent in students’ narratives about the social conflicts affecting their lives in both field sites. These concerns overrode both the visibility of armed conflict and indirect socio-cultural and structural forms of violence in their understandings of social conflict. I also show how the prevalent practices embedded in these schools’ curriculum, based on convivencia [peaceful coexistence] and (global) citizenship education discourses and guidelines, emphasized a similarly individualized, depoliticized, and ahistorical framing of violence and conflict. I argue that school life is a symbolic device that contributes to the normalization of violence in the everyday life of these (school) communities. While it provides a space for stability, inclusion, and young people’s personal visions of their future paths, it also undermines their ability to understand the Colombian conflict as a social process, with causes, actors, and a history. By contrasting youths’ and schools’ conceptions and practices of conflict and violence in two different geographies, this dissertation shows how predominant approaches to convivencia as securitization and order, conceptions of citizenship that blame others for violence, and skepticism towards peace (building) and collective action hinder youth-oriented peacebuilding pedagogies efforts for conflict transformation and reconciliation during Colombia’s transition from war to post-conflict. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning, peace, citizen, reconciliation, marginalized, urban, transit, peace, violence | 4, 16, 10, 11 |
| Snell, Jake Charles | Zemel, Richard S | Learning to Build Probabilistic Models with Limited Data | Computer Science | 2021-06-01 | Deep learning has successfully transformed a wide range of machine learning applications in recent years. One of its keys to success is the ability to learn relevant features from scratch on large amounts of data. Yet there are many real-world scenarios in which a new model must be built quickly with only a small amount of data. This naturally raises the question: How can we use deep learning to efficiently build task-specific models given limited data? In this thesis, we introduce a framework for understanding relationships among these sorts of problems and propose several novel algorithms for tackling challenging tasks in this regime including few-shot learning, zero-shot learning, and structured prediction. In the first part of this thesis, we propose a deep metric learning approach to few-shot and zero-shot classification that generalizes from just a few examples. It does so by exploiting a simple inductive bias, namely that there exists an embedding space in which examples from the same class are clustered around a single prototype representation. We demonstrate the strong accuracy of our approach on standard few-shot and zero-shot benchmarks. We then consider image segmentation, an task in which is important for a machine learning system to capture multiple plausible outputs due to ambiguity. We introduce a tree-structured graphical model for representing such distributions and propose an algorithm that optimizes the model structure for each image. When evaluated on a challenging image segmentation datasets, our algorithm is successfully able to generate multiple diverse segmentations much in the way that humans do. Finally, we develop a Bayesian approach to few-shot classification based on Gaussian processes. Our method learns a deep kernel to compute the similarities among input images and uses a Pólya-Gamma augmentation scheme to achieve tractable inference. We show strong predictive accuracy on several challenging few-shot learning datasets and improved uncertainty quantification over baseline methods. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| McKinnon, Christopher | Schoellig, Angela P | Learning-based Path-tracking Control for Ground Robots with Discrete Changes in Dynamics | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Control algorithms such as stochastic model predictive control (SMPC) choose control inputs that guide the robot towards its goal by minimising a cost function while limiting the risk of collision to an acceptable threshold. This ability to manage risk makes it appropriate for autonomous mobile robots to manage the potential for damage to the robot and its environment. A key ingredient in SMPC is a dynamics model that predicts the motion of the robot, including an estimate of uncertainty in that prediction. This thesis focuses on using data to improve this dynamics model in changing conditions with limited prior knowledge about those changes. Existing approaches focus on either a single model that can be adapted to slowly changing dynamics or a fixed number of models that are known ahead of time. In contrast, we focus on the case where the robot dynamics may be subjected to an unknown number of potentially large changes. First, we develop a method to model the robot dynamics as a Gaussian Process (GP), learning new models when new dynamics are encountered and leveraging existing models when possible. However, the GPs resulting from this method are too computationally expensive for use in closed-loop experiments. To reduce their computational cost, we switch to a repetitive path-following task and an experience-recommendation paradigm, whereby a single, local GP is constructed based on relevant data from previous traversals of the path. We then build on this framework using Bayesian Linear Regression (BLR) to model the robot dynamics which facilitates continuous adaptation to changing dynamics in addition to leveraging data from previous traversals. To make better use of data available apriori, we develop a method to learn basis functions for BLR from data rather than requiring that they be specified by hand. Finally, we develop a method to learn a correction to the cost function used in SMPC that automatically discourages the robot from entering states where the dynamics model does not accurately predict the cost associated with a sequence of control inputs. These approaches are validated through a series of experiments on ground robots. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Mamode, Marie Naike Mei-Lan | Steele, Jeffrey | Les effets d’un entraînement perceptif prosodique sur la perception de trois propriétés prosodiques du syntagme accentuel en français langue seconde | French Language and Literature | 2021-11-01 | La présente thèse investigue la perception prosodique en langue seconde (L2) et les effets d’un entraînement perceptif (EP) sur cette perception. Il a été démontré que les apprenants anglophones éprouvent certaines difficultés à percevoir trois propriétés du syntagme accentuel (SA) du français : (i) la proéminence finale; (ii) la montée de F0 finale des SA non terminaux; et (iii) l’allongement syllabique final (p. ex. Sunara, 2018; Tremblay et coll., 2016; 2018). En conséquence, notre travail cherche à mieux comprendre la nature de ces défis perceptifs éventuels, pour ensuite examiner si un EP prosodique peut améliorer la perception de ces trois propriétés. Pour ce faire, 28 anglophones apprenants du français, répartis en groupes expérimental (GEX) et témoin (GT), ont participé à une étude de type prétest-posttest-posttest différé. Le GEX et le GT ont respectivement reçu un EP prosodique et un EP segmental. La perception, avant et après l’EP, a été mesurée via une tâche de jugement d’acceptabilité prosodique. Les résultats du prétest – qui ont révélé des défis perceptifs lors de la perception de la proéminence et de l’allongement – suggèrent que les difficultés proviennent d’une influence de la L1 au moment du traitement phonologique des indices prosodiques plutôt que d’une incapacité à détecter ces indices au niveau acoustique. Les résultats des posttests ont montré que l’EP prosodique pouvait considérablement améliorer la perception de la proéminence chez les apprenants ayant démontré des défis perceptifs au prétest. Aucune amélioration n’a été observée pour la perception des deux autres phénomènes. Notre étude contribue aux recherches en perception prosodique puisqu’elle permet de mieux cerner la source des difficultés perceptives chez les apprenants de L2, tout en démontrant que l’EP prosodique peut pallier ces difficultés, bien que ses effets soient contraints par le type de phénomène prosodique, par la L1 aussi bien que par les différences individuelles. The current thesis investigates second language (L2) prosodic perception and how it can be influenced by perceptual training (PT). It has previously been shown that Anglophone learners of French experience difficulties in perceiving three properties of the Accentual Phrase (AP) in French: (i) final prominence; (ii) the final F0 rise in non-final APs; (iii) final syllabic lengthening (e.g., Sunara, 2018; Tremblay et al., 2016; 2018). This thesis therefore seeks to better understand the nature of these potential perceptual difficulties and to examine whether prosodic PT can improve the perception of these three prosodic properties. Twenty-eight L2 learners of French (L1 English), divided into an experimental group (GEX) and a control group (GT), participated in a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest experiment. While the GEX received prosodic PT, the GT received segmental PT. Perception before and after training was measured using a prosodic acceptability judgment task. Pretest results – which revealed challenges in perceiving final prominence and final lengthening – suggest that perceptual difficulties may arise due to an influence of the L1 during the phonological processing of prosodic cues, rather than from an incapacity to detect these cues at the acoustic level. Posttest results show that prosodic PT could significantly improve the perception of final prominence in learners who experienced perceptual difficulties at pretest. No improvement was observed for the perception of the other two phenomena. Our study contributes to research in prosodic perception as it allows to better identify the source of perceptual difficulties in L2 learners while demonstrating that prosodic PT can help to overcome these difficulties, although its effects are constrained by the type of prosodic phenomenon, the L1 as well as individual differences. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Dweme Mbukuny Pitta, Yollande Konzo | Farmer, Diane||Labrie, Normand | Les Professionnelles et Les Professionnels Formes a L'etranger et Leur Insertion au Travail dans le Contexte Francophone Minoritaire en Ontario: Le Cas des Enseignantes et des Enseignants Originaires de L'Afrique Subsaharienne | Social Justice Education | 2022-03-01 | La présente étude vise un double objectif, d’une part, appréhender la réalité de l’insertion professionnelle des Africaines et des Africains francophones en milieu minoritaire au Canada et d’autre part connaitre leur vécu dans les écoles de langue française de l’Ontario. Devant les enjeux comme ceux liés à l’accès à l’emploi, ces professionnelles et professionnels imaginent différentes stratégies, incluant celle de devenir enseignantes ou enseignants, ce qui m’a poussée à me poser les questions suivantes : Premièrement, comment les professionnelles et les professionnels originaires de l’Afrique subsaharienne formés à l’étranger dans un domaine autre que l’éducation vivent-elles ou vivent-ils leur réorientation vers la profession enseignante une fois embauchés dans le système d’éducation de langue française de l’Ontario? Deuxièmement, à partir de leurs différentes expériences sociales et professionnelles précédentes comment ces enseignantes et ces enseignants se perçoivent-elles et se perçoivent-ils après leur passage à une autre profession? Troisièmement, cette nouvelle expérience peut-elle être considérée comme une reconstruction potentielle de leur identité professionnelle dans leur trajectoire migratoire? Et, enfin, en quoi leur participation à la communauté de pratique les lie-t-elle à une carrière en enseignement? Cette stratégie nous semble attrayante en raison du contexte actuel de la pénurie d’enseignantes et d’enseignants dans les écoles de langue française de l’Ontario. La présente recherche s’articule autour de deux théories clés, à savoir l’insertion sous l’angle de la socialisation professionnelle et la construction des identités sociales et professionnelles (Dubar, 1991 cité dans Trottier, 2001, p 9) ainsi que celle de la communauté de pratique (Wenger, 2005). Pour bien appréhender la manière dont les identités sociales se perpétuent et changent, il importe de comprendre par quel mécanisme de socialisation elles se constituent et se recomposent. À cette fin, j’ai analysé les parcours migratoires diversifiés qui ont amené ces personnes à une insertion professionnelle dans l’enseignement. Mais, aussi, j’ai abordé la manière dont elles ont construit leur identité professionnelle comme produit d’une histoire à la fois singulière et collective. Et cela, dans trois communautés de pratique différentes. Cette étude m’a donné l’occasion de comprendre les parcours variés d’insertion professionnelle des immigrantes et immigrants ainsi que les stratégies utilisées. | Ed.D. | minorit | 10 |
| Attai, Nikoli Adrian | Walcott, Rinaldo||Trotz, Alissa | Let’s Liberate the Bullers: Queer Activism and Community-making in the Anglophone Caribbean | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation interrogates the work being done by activists and non-governmental organizations in the Anglophone Caribbean, and theorizes that current interventions fail to adequately address the complicated ways that queer people negotiate and resist homophobia and transphobia in the region. In this work I draw on transnational feminist, Black queer theory, and Caribbean studies frameworks to posit that queer sexual praxes extend beyond dominant human rights tropes of disease, mortality and the imperative to escape a violently homophobic region. I am also particularly interested in the ways that working class gay men and trans people create communities of exile within the region as a radical praxis of space making despite being deeply affected by politically and culturally sanctioned homophobia and transphobia. My multi-sited ethnographic study is based on fieldwork conducted between 2016 and 2018 in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago. In these sites I conducted extensive online ethnography and participant observation, as well as semi-structured interviews with representatives from prominent queer advocacy groups. I also collected life histories from trans and gender non-conforming persons in order to better understand how they make life in the region. My scholarship offers an interdisciplinary intervention that engages and extends transnational feminist theory, critical race theory, human rights theory, queer theory, anthropology, and Caribbean studies by focusing explicitly on the under-interrogated area of queer sexual and gender politics in the Anglophone Caribbean. This project starts by examining the nature of queer human rights organizing by activists from Toronto’s Caribbean diaspora, aided by financial and administrative support from human rights organizations in Canada. I then interrogate the ways that such activities materialize in the four research sites, and some disconnects between the work being done by funders and activists located in Toronto, and the dynamics on the ground in each space. Finally, I explore three important moments across the four research sites that disrupt human rights narratives of a violently homophobic Anglophone region. | Ph.D. | gender, queer, feminis, transgender, human rights | 5, 16 |
| Coyne, Steven | Naguib, Hani E | Liberal Theories of Political Authority | Philosophy | 2022-03-01 | In this thesis, I argue that liberal theory faces a fundamental problem in accounting for the legitimate authority of the state. On the one hand, legitimate authority entails that the state has a right to the obedience of its citizens – a right that citizens not act on some of the considerations that they find morally important, and that they instead simply do what the state tells them to do. On the other hand, liberalism is committed to respect for autonomy, which entails that citizens have a moral obligation to act on their moral reasons as they understand them. To reconcile the two, liberalism must make sense of how a citizen could see themselves as required to refrain from acting on considerations that they believe to be morally relevant, and instead act on what the law demands of them. I frame a number of the leading theories of authority as attempts to explain how this is possible, including Rawls’s justice as fairness, Raz’s service conception of authority, and Darwall’s second-person standpoint. Ultimately, however, none of these theories appear to satisfactorily resolve the problem. This suggests that liberals may have to accept that their states lack legitimate authority over them. | Ph.D. | citizen | 4 |
| Akhshik, Masoud | Sain, Mohini||Tjong, Jimi | Life Cycle Assessment Based Greenhouse Gas Emission Reductions, Cross Country Analysis and Algorithm Aided Prediction for Lightweighted Composite Auto Parts | Forestry | 2022-03-01 | Algorithms made our life simpler and enables Machine to learn and predict and seems like a promising revolutionary science of the future. Even though this has been a hotspot in many aspects of science; there are some areas still behind. One of these areas is the Environmental and lifecycle assessments (LCA). The main problem with these areas is that the collected data are not comparable as every research has its own unique details even though LCA has a standard set of guidelines to perform. The second main problem is that we have very limited data avail-able for machines to be able to use in these areas. Here in this thesis, several normalization methods and a coefficient were used to make these data comparable. Also, because we had lim-ited data available, we performed several LCA studies to generate more data to be able to use it in Machine learning algorithms for the purpose of testing, validation and training. One of the advantages of having limited data here was that it enabled us to implement several machine learning algorithms and methods to compare their performances. The results of this study created a powerful tool that can help researchers, original equipment manufacturers, policymakers and automotive companies to make better environmental decisions prior to any design stages just by knowing the percentage of lightweighted automotive parts. This tool is specifically created to work with lightweighting that is resulted from replacing a glass fibre automotive part with natural fibre-reinforced composites. Also, with the developed coefficient of countries, one can transfer the LCA data from one country to another by using a simple equation. These coefficients were developed by using the countries posted total primary energy supply and electricity grid mix. By using these tools, we will have a better understanding of our emissions prior to any design with relatively high accuracy. | Ph.D. | learning, energy, emission, greenhouse, greenhouse gas, environmental, emissions | 4, 7, 13 |
| Rowe, Daniel Jonathan | Hess, Paul | Life in a Mixed Neighbourhood: Three Essays on Tenure Mix and Sociality in the Redeveloped Regent Park | Geography | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation comprises three chapters of original empirical research concerning the mixed-tenure redevelopment of Toronto’s Regent Park public housing community. These chapters use survey data from 517 unique respondents in two different surveys to provide the first systematic account of attitudes towards the mixed community among both residents and users of Regent Park’s public spaces. It provides a quantitative complement to the large body of qualitative research that has so far been produced on the redevelopment and contributes to our understanding about how programs of mixed-tenure redevelopment may impact individuals on a range of social, health-related, and economic dimensions. Two chapters are based on data collected in a survey of residents of the redeveloped portions of the neighbourhood and investigate perceptions of stigma and collective efficacy. Another chapter uses data from a street-intercept survey to assess more general attitudes towards the redeveloped neighbourhood among all users of its public spaces. In general, responses to the various survey measures employed are broadly positive, although differences between tenure groups and along certain demographic lines are also apparent. An important contribution of this research is the explicit measurement of variation between individuals and the treatment of this variation as a phenomenon of fundamental interest. It is uniformly the case across chapters in this dissertation that variation between individuals explains vastly more of the observed variation in outcomes than do any other variables considered, helping to contextualize the diversity of experience reported in other research. The findings of this dissertation are broadly consistent with expectations that mixed-tenure redevelopment primarily tend to improve ‘placed-based’ outcomes and provides support for the policy, if expectations are limited to the provision of improved housing and public amenities with relative comity between neighbours rather than meaningful interaction between residents of different tenures. | Ph.D. | invest, urban, housing | 9, 11 |
| Marcus, Natania | Gillis, Joseph R | Lifetime and Daily Discrimination and Mental Health in Sexual and Gender Diverse Individuals: Examining Risk and Protective Factors | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-06-01 | Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, queer, two-spirit, intersex, asexual and other sexual and gender diverse (LGBTQ+) individuals are at increased vulnerability to experience negative mental health outcomes compared to their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts. A large body of scholarly literature suggest that stigma (often in the form of discrimination) contributes to stressors that may account for the increased mental health burden in this population. The Psychological mediation framework (PMF) indicates that emotion regulation and social support may be important mechanisms leading from stigma to mental health outcomes. The objectives of the present studies were to evaluate and expand the PMF by testing the effects of stigma on mental health (i.e., affectivity and depression) through emotion regulation and social support, and to examine the moderating effects of several risk factors (i.e., childhood abuse history, attachment insecurity) and protective factors (i.e., self-compassion). Daily diary data was used in Study 1 while Study 2 used cross-sectional baseline data to carry out objectives. In Study 1, participants (n = 84) submitted 592 daily surveys for an average of 7 days, reporting on their discrimination experiences, social support, emotion regulation, daily affect, and several risk and protective factors. Moderated mediation models were examined using multilevel, conditional process modelling. It was found that both within-person and across-persons, daily discrimination was indirectly related to daily negative affectivity, via emotion dysregulation, but not social support. Childhood abuse history and self-compassion moderated the daily discrimination- emotion dysregulation relationship. In Study 2, conditional process modeling was used to test pathways from lifetime LGBTQ+ discrimination to depression via social support and emotion dysregulation, with attachment insecurity as a moderator using cross-sectional data from 117 LGBTQ+ individuals. As expected, lifetime LGBTQ+ discrimination had an indirect effect on depression, via social support, and this effect was moderated by attachment insecurity. Social support had a direct and indirect effect on depression, via emotion dysregulation. Emotion dysregulation and social support are important mechanisms leading from discrimination to mental health in LGBTQ+ individuals, and understanding specific risk and protective factors can help to inform case conceptualization and treatment planning for LGBTQ+ affirmative interventions. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, mental health, gender, queer, non-binary, lgbtq, transgender, two-spirit, minorit | 1, 3, 5, 10 |
| Fysh, William | Jennings, Eric T. | Light in the Shadow of Empire: Visual Witnessing in France and the French Colonies, 1944-1962 | History | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation explores the role of the camera in ushering in what French historian Annette Wieviorka has called a mediatized, globalized "era of the witness" in the middle of the twentieth century. Examining post-Holocaust, colonial, and anticolonial desires to transform spectators into witnesses in the last years of empire in France, French West Africa, Indochina and Algeria, I examine how photographers, filmmakers, television figures, journalists, scholars, civil servants and missionaries strove to envision new futures out of the spectacular and often traumatic realities of the recent past. Combining close readings of photographic, cinematic and televisual images with newspaper and magazine collections and extensive findings from governmental, institutional and private archives, I offer the first detailed history of ideas and practices of visual witnessing. From the development of television programming and the psychological study of spectators in France after World War Two, to African soldiers' testimony of the war in Indochina, rural "ciné-bus" tours by French officials in Algeria and competing visions of the "reality" of Algeria's war of independence, the dissertation challenges the historiographical consensus that the "era of the witness" only emerged following the 1961 Eichmann trial. In its multimedia approach, the project provides both historians and visual theorists alike with new ways of thinking about the ethics and politics of looking. And by bridging metropole and colony, and the history of World War Two and decolonization, the dissertation animates the 'cuts' and 'dissolves' between the European and the global. | Ph.D. | anticolonial, globaliz, decolonization, rural, metro, institut | 4, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Fenelon, Kelli Dominic | Hopyan, Sevan | Linking Nuclear Mechanotransduction and Epigenetics in Morphogenesis | Molecular Genetics | 2022-03-01 | Organ primordia shape is important for pattern formation and organ function. Morphogenesis generates forces through cellular rearrangements, proliferation, and shape change. These forces are felt by the cells of each tissue and are transmitted through them via the cytoskeleton. In addition to shaping tissues during development, emerging research suggests that mechanical forces play a role in gene expression. A traditional view of mechanotransduction is that extracellular and intracellular forces elicit a biochemical response, transmitting information to the nucleus. Intriguingly, evidencein vitro shows that nuclear strain can mechanically influence transcription by deforming the chromatin. Forces transmitted from the cytoskeleton to the nuclear lamina via the LINC complex, a direct mechanical connection, have the potential to efficiently couple morphogenesis with gene expression by pulling the genome to activate genome topology sensitive genes like the HoxA/HoxD clusters. To facilitate the investigation of potential nuclear mechanotransduction in vivo, I generated transgenic FRET‐based tension sensors. I utilized these sensors within the LINC complex protein, Nesprin2G, which links actin to SUN proteins, and the inner nuclear membrane protein NEMP1 which joins the nuclear lamina to chromatin to measure nuclear force transmission in living tissues. I tested invivo the responsiveness of each conditionally expressed sensor to physical and chemical manipulation of the mouse embryo. I helped develop software (FLIMvivo) to resolve challenges uniquely abundant with in vivo fluorescence lifetime imaging analysis. I found that force transmission to the nuclear interior indeed varies by tissue in the developing forelimb. Further, I used exogenous force via atomic force microscopy to modulate HoxA expression in live embryo forelimbs and have adapted a recently developed 3D stochastic reconstruction microscopy (3D‐STORM) OligoPaint approach to enable super resolution acquisition of chromatin topology at the single gene locus scale under differing cellular force regimes. These tools will be useful to measure the extent to which the genome and gene expression are influenced directly by the forces felt by cells not only during limb bud development, but also in other developmental processes, cancer, and disease. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Martin, Hopi Lovell | Stewart, Suzanne | Listening to Land as Teacher in Early Childhood Education | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | This research responds to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action (2015) to develop “culturally appropriate early childhood education for Aboriginal families” by bringing together Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and educators to share their perspectives on land-based pedagogies for young children. This qualitative research is based on a ‘Circle Teaching’ shared by Ojibwe Traditional Teacher and Gokoomis (Grandmother) Jacque(line) Lavallee from Shawanaga First Nation in relationship to an Indigenous Knowledge Bundle that she calls a ‘Memory Teaching Bundle’. Since Spring 2019, this ‘Memory Teaching Bundle’ has been cared for and practiced cyclically through Seasonal Ceremonies led by Gokoomis (Grandmother) and her Oshkaabewis (Ceremonial Helper and Messenger) along Gaabikanang Ziibi (Humber River) in Tkaronto (Toronto) in collaboration with a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and community organizations committed to land-based early childhood education. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, traditional knowledge, labor, indigenous, reconciliation, truth and reconciliation, land, indigenous | 4, 8, 10, 16, 15 |
| Mustafa, Nida | Einstein, Gillian | Lived Experiences of Chronic Pain among Immigrant Indian Women in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | Chronic pain affects an estimated 1.5 million people in Canada (Canadian Pain Task Force, 2019). As recent immigrant status is a risk factor for the development and progression of chronic pain (Cimmino, Ferrone Cutolo, 2011), it is a particular concern for Canadian immigrant communities. Currently, the Indian population is the fastest growing immigrant group in the country (Statistics Canada, 2014). This makes them an important community in which to understand chronic pain – both its manifestations and its meaning – to ensure culturally-sensitive pain management (Weerasinghe Numer, 2010). As elsewhere in the world, the prevalence of chronic pain is higher among Indian women than men, with women also reporting more severe pain (Dureja et al., 2013). In countries other than India, Indian women also report more pain than non-Indian women (Chia et al., 2016; Allison et al., 2002). However, little is known about their lived experiences of chronic pain or the context in which their pain occurs. In order to fill these gaps, the current qualitative study explores: (1) Canadian immigrant Indian women’s lived experiences of chronic pain, and (2) the role culture plays in these experiences. Thirteen immigrant Indian women with chronic, non-cancer pain participated in this study. Women’s experiences were gathered using one-on-one interviews and photovoice methods. interviews and photographs were analyzed using van Manen’s (1990) phenomenological thematic analysis and Oliffe, Bottorff, Kelly and Halpin’s (2008) photograph analysis. Findings revealed the multidimensional nature of Indian women’s chronic pain, as well as the influence of the larger contexts of gender and immigration on their pain experiences. In particular, women discussed pain in relation to gendered roles and expectations. They also described the process of emigrating to a new country, adapting a new way of life, and adjusting to shifting roles as key factors affecting their pain experiences. These valuable insights have practical, as well as theoretical implications; they not only inform our current knowledge of pain within this understudied population, but also expand our understanding of pain’s biocultural components to include gender and immigration. | Ph.D. | knowledge, gender, women | 4, 5 |
| Niles, Chavon | McCready, Lance T | Living in the In-between: Implications of Counter Narratives of Immigrant Youth with Disabilities in the Canadian Nation State | Social Justice Education | 2021-06-01 | In 2016, the Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth published a longitudinal study sharing the stories of children and youth with disabilities across Ontario, Canada. Largely missing were the stories of LGBT+, Indigenous, newcomer and/or racialized youth with disabilities. This is a common practice, which continues to erase those who experience a confluence of systemic barriers. When disabled youth are written about it is usually from a service user perspective, especially regarding mental health (see Beiser et al., 2011; Shakya, Khanlou, Gonsalves, 2010; Simich, Beiser, Stewart, Mwakarimba, 2005) through a biomedical lens. Moreover, there is a dominant practice to write about disability as a single identity that defines the experiences of the individual. This leaves out attention to the migration experiences of racialized immigrant youth with disabilities. The study used open-ended semi-structured interviews with 10 (5 males and 5 females) racialized immigrant youth (ages 16-24) with disabilities living in the Greater Toronto Area in Ontario, Canada. Participants illustrate how dominant discourses of disability as a deficit, burden, and undesirable impacts their sense of self-worth, which is intrinsically tied to their employment, their educational journey and how they do/not access navigate health and social services. Their stories also bring to the forefront the complexity of migration pathways and signals the need to rethink migration as occurring on multiple planes leading many to occupy an in-between space. This study contributes to our understandings of disability as they are shaped by changes in Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that continues to define and classify disabled people and the lack of critical scholarly research in the critical disability studies and immigrant youth literature in Canada. Through first-person storytelling, this study challenges racism and ableism. | Ph.D. | mental health, disabilit, racism, female, employment, refugee, indigenous, indigenous | 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Crookston, Cameron | Johnson, Stephen | Living Legends: Performing a Queer Past through Drag | Drama | 2019-11-01 | This thesis analyzes the ways that drag performs queer cultural memory. I examine the works of six performers from Canada and the United States that serve as exemplars for the ways that drag presents a performative vision of the past. I argue that drag gives shape to ideas and concepts found in queer temporal theory, queer historiography, and memory theory. In my first chapter, I examine how Jinkx Monsoon and Major Scales’ The Vaudevillians builds a narrative out of the skeleton of queer-coded music. By doing so, Monsoon and Scales create fictional, unified origins to queer-coded culture. The Vaudevillians also presents a reflexive vision of the past that echoes Robert Scholes’ and Lawrence Kimmel’s theories of fabulation. In my second chapter, I analyze the 2016 remake, The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again, and examine the ways in which Laverne Cox’s presence exposes racial coding in the original that uses blackness as a metaphor for otherness. I also argue that Cox draws attention to the gaps and conflations of the original’s use of trans iconography and highlights Rocky Horror’s function as a performative collage. In chapter three, I examine how Miss Conception’s show, The Wonderful World of Miss Conception, and Lucy Flawless’ performance of “Country Roads, Take Me Home” responds to the erasure of queer childhood, particularly male effeminacy, as well as pervasive issues of gay shame. Their performances serve as examples of Gilad Padva’s concept of femininostalgia and my own concept of retroactive cultural memory. In my fourth and final chapter, I examine how Rose Butch, a non-binary performer navigates their entry into the world of “legendary drag.” I argue that their performances of Christina Crawford and Charlie Chaplin queer cis gay diva worship and create a durational representation of gender-fluid identity. Through their reflexive and meta-theatrical dramaturgies each of my case studies offer an affective vision of queer past—from a presentist model. While each of these chapters take different case studies as points of entry, they draw from a common dramaturgical vocabulary of drag performance and overall dramaturgy of queer historiographical desire. | Ph.D. | gender, queer, non-binary | 5 |
| Mattingly, Todd Matthew | Cochelin, Isabelle||Diem, Albrecht | Living Reliquaries: Monasticism and the Cult of the Saints in the Age of Louis the Pious | Medieval Studies | 2019-11-01 | At the genesis of this dissertation is the observation that numerous Carolingian monasteries of the ninth century were more than just enclaves for a spiritual elite following the Rule of St. Benedict but also functioned as popular religious shrines. These communities almost invariably identified with a patron saint particular to their institutions, whose bodily remains they protected and memorialized, and whose cults they actively promoted. This contrasts sharply with the early Merovingian period when monasteries and the shrines of the saints were mostly separate endeavors. My study aims to understand how and why this development came about, and what, if anything, the cult of the saints and their relics had to do with the monastic life and its ideals. It also serves to complicate the prevailing view that Carolingian monasteries were essentially “Benedictine” and functioned foremost as “powerhouses of prayer” for the aristocratic society that supported them. A preliminary chapter provides historical context and introduces key themes by analyzing Queen Balthild’s decision, ca. 650, to organize the premier saints’ shrines of the Frankish realm as monasteries. The remaining chapters are then devoted to detailed case studies of the monastery-shrines of Saint-Wandrille, Saint-Denis, and Saint Gall, and are based on close readings of hagiographical works composed during the early decades of the ninth century in the midst of major institutional transformations. While scholars have previously focused on the adoption of the Rule of St. Benedict by these communities in the context of an imperially sponsored monastic reform, the changes are shown here to have been much more comprehensive, entailing large-scale building projects, artistic enhancements, liturgical renewal, and the production of new hagiographic literature. The larger aim, it is argued, was to create integrated complexes of sacred space, more worthy of the relics housed within, as the basis for Christian communities that comprised more than just their monks. The reformed monasteries themselves are represented, in effect, as living reliquaries, whose sacred duty was to protect, honor, and mediate the power of the relics entrusted to their care. | Ph.D. | production, institut | 12, 16 |
| Yamanouchi, Shoma | Strong, Kimberly | Long-term Analysis of Toronto-Area Atmospheric Composition | Physics | 2021-06-01 | This thesis examines total columns of C2H2, C2H6, CH4, CH3OH, CO, H2CO, HCl, HCN, HCOOH, HF, HNO3, N2O, NH3, and O3 measured using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy to study Toronto-area atmospheric composition. The thesis has three scientific objectives: to quantify trends in the time series of trace gas concentrations, to determine how emissions from biomass burning events affect air quality over Toronto and whether observations in Toronto can be used to quantify wildfire emissions, and to examine the spatial representativeness and temporal variability of the FTIR NH3 columns over Toronto.Trends and enhancement events were determined by fitting trended Fourier series to the total columns, and bootstrapping was used to identify the statistical significance. Trends from 2002 to 2019 were examined, and the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model was used to identify major sources of CO and CH4 over Toronto, which were CH4 oxidation and wetland emissions, respectively. Transport of wildfire plumes over the site results in enhanced columns of biomass burning species. Several simultaneous enhancements of CO, HCN, and C2H6 were observed, and the measured columns were used to derive emission ratios and emission factors for HCN and C2H6 for fire events in 2012, 2015, and 2017. For the 2015 and 2017 events, simultaneous enhancements of HCOOH and CH3OH were observed, and their emission ratios and emission factors were also examined. Atmospheric NH3 is a pollutant, and a major source of fine particulate matter. In this study, three NH3 datasets were used: TAO FTIR total columns, three years of surface in situ measurements, and ten years of total column measurements from the Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI). The datasets were used to quantify NH3 temporal variability over Toronto, Canada. All three time series showed positive trends in NH3 over Toronto: 3.56 ± 0.85 %/year from 2002 to 2019 in the FTIR columns, 8.88 ± 5.08 %/year from 2013 to 2017 in the surface in situ data, and 8.38 ± 1.54 %/year from 2008 to 2018 in the IASI columns. The multiscale datasets were also compared to assess the representativeness of the FTIR measurements. | Ph.D. | emission, emissions, pollut, species, pollut, species, land | 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Barakatain, Masoud | Kschischang, Frank R | Low-complexity Forward Error Correction and Modulation for Optical Communication | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | A novel low-complexity architecture for forward error correction (FEC) in optical communication is proposed. The architecture consists of an inner soft-decision low-density parity check (LDPC) code concatenated with an outer hard-decision staircase or zipper code. The inner code is tasked with reducing the bit error probability below the level that allows the outer code to deliver on the stringent output bit error rate required in optical communication. A hardware-friendly quasi-cyclic construction is adopted for the inner codes. The concatenated code is optimized by minimizing the estimated data-flow at the decoder. A method is developed to obtain complexity-optimized inner-code ensembles. A key feature emerging from this optimization is that it pays to leave some inner codeword bits completely uncoded, thereby greatly reducing the decoding complexity. The trade-off between performance and complexity of the designed codes is characterized by a Pareto frontier. In binary modulation, up to 71% reduction in complexity is achieved compared to previously existing designs. Higher-order modulation via multilevel coding (MLC) is compared with bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) from a performance-versus-complexity standpoint. In both approaches, complexity-optimized error-reducing LDPC inner codes are designed for concatenation with an outer hard-decision code, for various modulation orders. Code designs for MLC are shown to provide significant advantages relative to designs for BICM over the entire performance-complexity tradeoff space, for a range of modulation orders. Codes designed for MLC can operate with 78% less complexity, or provide up to 1.2 dB coding gain compared to designs for BICM. A multi-rate and channel-adaptive inner-code architecture is also proposed. A tool is developed to optimize low-complexity rate- and channel-configurable concatenated FEC schemes via an MLC architecture. Compared to previously existing FEC schemes, up to 63% reduction in decoding complexity, or up to 0.6 dB coding gain is obtained. Code designs for MLC in combination with four-dimensional signal constellations are also considered. The design method is generalized to obtain complexity-optimized non-binary LDPC codes to concatenate with outer zipper codes. Gains of up to 1 dB over the conventional schemes are reported. The possibility of using a novel class of nonlinear codes in FEC design is also investigated. | Ph.D. | non-binary, invest, trade | 5, 9, 10 |
| Sahin, Nil | Andrews, Brenda J||Morris, Quaid | Machine Learning and Computer Vision Approaches for Phenotypic Profiling in Yeast | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | Functional genomics research aims to systematically discover the functions of all genes in an organism. Developing computational tools to facilitate gene function discoveries has been the overarching goal of my thesis work. I have developed computational pipelines for the automated detection of abnormal phenotypes in single cell images of the budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. My collaborators in the Boone and Andrews labs have used methods that automate yeast genetics to produce genome-wide arrays of yeast mutants, each carrying a defined perturbation in a single gene, and expressing fluorescent markers for various subcellular compartments. The resulting large-scale image dataset consists of millions of single cells each harbouring a single gene perturbation and a single fluorescently labelled subcellular compartment for around 6000 yeast genes and 13 compartments. To develop my image analysis for discovering mutant phenotypes in single-cell images of arrayed mutants, I first focused on comparing different combinations of methods for performing outlier detection to automatically detect cells with abnormal morphologies. This analysis allowed me to quantify the percentage of cells in a mutant population with abnormal phenotypes and thus the penetrance of phenotypes associated with a specific genetic perturbation. In the second data chapter of my thesis, I combined outlier detection and a neural network-based image analysis of single cells to quantify the phenotypic variability within a population of cells. As a model system, I focused on the genes that influence the architecture of four subcellular compartments of the endocytic pathway and identified 17 distinct abnormal phenotypes that are associated with perturbation of many genes. Nearly half of these perturbed populations displayed multiple phenotypes, suggesting that morphological pleiotropy is prevalent. In the final data chapter of my thesis, I describe my work to automate the clustering of cells with abnormal morphology from a dataset of images of yeast cells expressing fluorescent markers of 13 subcellular compartments into distinct abnormal phenotypes to understand the global morphology of the yeast cell. My analyses have facilitated the identification of connections between discrete biological processes, the prediction of novel gene function, and a visual representation of basic eukaryotic cell biology. | Ph.D. | learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Johnston, Andrew | Sargent, Edward | Machine Learning-aided High-throughput Synthesis and Development of Optoelectronic Materials | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | In recent years, researchers have increasingly turned to machine learning (ML) techniques to help accelerate research spanning disparate fields. This has largely been motivated by the advent of readily accessible high-performance computing techniques; and equally by the need to decrease the time in which lab-scale products reach the market. The development of metal-halide perovskites (MHPs) in particular can benefit from accelerated techniques: MHPs have emerged as excellent optoelectronic materials, but despite seeing unprecedented research intensity in the last decade, only a small fraction of the available chemical space has been explored. In this thesis I present workflows to accelerate the discovery and understanding of new optoelectronic materials.I begin by developing a ML-accelerated workflow for the synthesis and characterization of perovskite single crystals. I demonstrate that a Protein Crystallization Robot can be modified to prepare autonomously 288 independent perovskite single crystal growths. The robot acquires iii images as the crystal growth proceeds, allowing for direct measurement and classification of each experiment. I then use this method, aided by ML, to discover the growth conditions for a new Cl-based MHP. I characterize this perovskite and find that it emits light in the deep-blue region. Next, I use Quasi-Elastic Neutron Scattering (QENS) to identify the dynamics of the multiple cations in state-of-art perovskite solar cell compositions as a function of bromine incorporation. I find that the suppression of one of the cations, FA, correlates with an increased carrier lifetime. I find that when the fraction of bromine that is incorporated reaches 0.15 – a composition used extensively in literature for single-junction solar cells – the FA rotation is suppressed by more than 25% compared to the pure iodine composition. Lastly, I demonstrate how the high-throughput method I developed can be applied to discover new EO modulating materials. I use the robotic workflow to synthesize high quality perovskite single crystals. I train an ML model to classify the space group of a material from its pXRD spectra, which allows for the rapid evaluation of non-centrosymmetry, a key consideration in EO modulating materials. With this workflow I screen > 30 different ligands for new perovskite single crystals and discover three new noncentrosymmetric perovskites. | Ph.D. | learning, solar, accessib | 4, 7, 11 |
| Chern, Li Ern | Kim, Yong Baek | Magnetic Field Induced Phases in Kitaev Magnets: A Semiclassical Analysis | Physics | 2021-11-01 | The Kitaev honeycomb model is a rare example of exactly soluble $S=1/2$ frustrated systems with a quantum spin liquid ground state, in which the spins fractionalize into Majorana fermions coupled to a $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge field. The bond dependent Ising interaction that defines the Kitaev honeycomb model is proposed to have a dominant presence in transition metal compounds with partially filled $d$ orbitals and a strong spin-orbit coupling. However, these materials, which are known as Kitaev magnets, generically possess other interactions such that a magnetically ordered ground state is stabilized, instead of the desired Kitaev spin liquid. Intriguingly, recent experiments on the Kitaev magnet $\alpha$-RuCl$_3$ subjected to external magnetic fields reported a half-quantized thermal Hall effect and a neutron scattering continuum, hinting at a field induced quantum spin liquid. Motivated by these experiments, we theoretically investigate the possible emergent phases in realistic spin models of Kitaev magnets under a magnetic field, via a semiclassical analysis. We identify phases other than the Kitaev spin liquid that are able to account for some of the experimental observations. In particular, we show that the thermal Hall conductivity due to magnons in the polarized state exhibits the same sign structure as in the suspected spin liquid phase, while the energy spectra of magnetic orders with large unit cells resemble an excitation continuum. We also discuss an instance of how the classical $S \longrightarrow \infty$ model helps us to understand its quantum $S=1/2$ counterpart, by establishing a correspondence between two phases found in the opposite limits. Finally, we conclude our studies and suggest some potential future research directions. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, transit | 7, 9, 11 |
| Jing, Shenglin | Thompson, Christopher | Magneto-centrifugal Wind with Applications to Astrophysical Accretion Disks | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2022-03-01 | We calculate the structure of radially self-similar magneto-centrifugal winds with a wide range of magnetic flux distribution, mass loading, and injection speed at the base of the wind. A variety of wind structures is obtained, including winds driven by magneto-centrifugal and magnetic pressure gradient forces. The critical magnetic tilt needed to achieve an Alfven transition is sensitive to the wind properties, especially the magnetic flux distribution and injection speed, and generally exceeds the 30 degrees minimum for a magneto-centrifugal slingshot. A connection between magnetic tilt and minimization of the specific wind energy is conjectured. The least tilted wind solution is shown to approach the potential solution at low mass loading. Gaseous disks in star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei may contain dynamically important magnetic fields and significant flux of cosmic rays. In contrast with radiation-pressure dominated disks, a much weaker energy input in cosmic rays is required to support the disk against vertical gravity, and to drive a magneto-centrifugal outflow. Taking into account cosmic ray ionization, streaming, injection from massive stars and energy losses, we calculate the transition from a hydrostatic disk to an outflowing wind. The solutions are constrained by the slow-magnetosonic critical point associated with cosmic ray streaming; the wind is initially driven by the cosmic ray pressure gradient rather than the magneto-centrifugal force, with the magneto-centrifugal force dominating at larger heights above the disk. The specific example that is explored in quantitative detail involves a near Eddington accretion flow onto a supermassive black hole, at a distance from the hole where a viscous disk tends to be gravitationally unstable. We find that the disk magnetization is around unity, which optimally fixes the fraction of the radial mass flow returned to the wind at order 0.01. Radial scalings in a constant Q disk are worked out. | Ph.D. | energy, wind, transit | 7, 11 |
| Salari, Nooshin | Makis, Viliam | Maintenance Modeling and Optimization for Multi-unit Systems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-11-01 | Unplanned downtimes caused by system failures incur high costs for many complex systems such as wind turbines, aircrafts, and advanced medical equipment. It is crucial to prevent failures for such systems by applying maintenance policies. Maintenance models can be classified as corrective or preventive maintenance (PM). PM is performed to prevent severe deterioration or failure of the system. The most advanced PM program is known as condition-based maintenance (CBM) which is a maintenance approach that takes into account collected information concerning the working condition of a system to determine the optimal maintenance actions. Studies in the area of CBM have focused mainly on single unit systems, however in reality most of the systems consist of more than one unit. Maintenance models for single unit systems cannot be applied to multi-unit systems when there is a dependency between units. This research presents a new framework for maintenance modeling of multi-unit systems. We proposed CBM policies for multi-unit systems taking into account external demand and production rates which depend on the state of a unit. Units of the system are subject to gradual deterioration and deterioration process of each unit is a three-state continuous time homogeneous Markov chain with two working states and a failure state. We have applied semi-Markov decision process (SMDP) framework to formulate the maintenance decision problem and to determine the optimal control parameters. Two computational approaches were proposed to find the optimal policy by applying 1) the first step of policy iteration algorithm, and 2) the first and second steps of policy iteration algorithm. We showed that a lower average cost rate can be obtained by applying the second approach. We also derived an analytical formula for the average cost considering a corrective maintenance policy for multi-unit systems applying Markov renewal processes. We also developed a powerful model for joint CBM and just-in-time spare parts provisioning policies for a multi-unit production system. SMDP framework is applied to formulate the maintenance problem to determine the optimal control parameters. | Ph.D. | wind, production | 7, 12 |
| Farooq, Asif Bin | Bertrand, Jacques J.B. | Making Welfare Work for Autocracy: Wealth, Will Woes in the Politics of Welfare in China | Political Science | 2021-06 | China’s recent welfare expansion demonstrates a puzzling case. The welfare expansion has been broad-based, benefiting almost every sector of the society in one way or another, which is rare considering past authoritarian regimes often made welfare expansion exclusive to its loyal-support base. A wide degree of variation also exists in how welfare policies are prioritized in the shortterm and how welfare provision is made in the long-term. To address these puzzles, the study examines welfare expansion at the city-level, covering 114 cities from 2006 to 2016. The main arguments are three-fold. First, local leaders prioritize different welfare policies with different motivations. They prioritize education spending strategically, ensuring human development for the local economy’s productive purpose while enhancing prospects for personal promotion. By contrast, annual social security and total welfare spending are determined by the local state sector’s size. Second, the state sector also plays a critical role in determining long-term welfare provision. Cities with a large state sector tend to have a high level of welfare provision in the long-term. Finally, the state sector gained more than any other sector from the expansion of social security even though the general population experienced a relative improvement in their welfare. The findings underscore the importance of the state sector for regime survival. The expansion of the state sector is a culmination of past policies. While the state sector’s expansion had the goal of establishing its commanding presence in the market economy, on the political level, it became a vehicle for advancing the Party’s socialist agenda and establishing social stability. Moreover, the mixed-welfare system made the fiscal burden of welfare expansion bearable through standardization of social security, creating a large pool for contribution by socializing risk. Privileged benefit and coverage helped strengthen the Party’s patronage relation with the state sector, while the relative improvement in welfare provision for all helped gain broader legitimacy. As a result, the Party-regime made the welfare expansion work for its own survival interest by instrumentalizing welfare for mass-cooptation while making it affordable. The study establishes a clear link between welfare expansion, mass cooptation, and authoritarian-regime survival. | Ph.D. | affordab, welfare, privileged, affordab, social security, cities, authoritarian | 1, 10, 11, 16 |
| Kim, Hyeyeon | Khokha, Rama | Mammary Lineage-dependent Homologous Recombination Repair and PARP Inhibitor Vulnerability | Medical Biophysics | 2020-06-01 | Deleterious germline mutations in the key homologous recombination (HR) repair genes, such as BRCA1/2, strikingly increase the lifetime risk for breast cancer, underscoring the importance of faithful double-strand break (DSB) repair in maintaining the genome integrity of mammary epithelial cells. It has long been assumed that all normal cells have the same capacity to engage high-fidelity HR and error-prone non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) to repair DSBs, and that the choice between these two DSB repair pathways are determined by the cell cycle. Here, we show that the two major mammary epithelial lineages, basal and luminal, are not equally equipped to resolve DSBs. Global proteomic analyses of primary mouse mammary epithelial subpopulations and enumeration of their DSB repair activities have revealed that HR is predominantly restricted to the luminal lineage, while NHEJ operates in all mammary epithelial cells. This intrinsic differential HR repair translates into a divergent sensitivity to poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors (PARPi), selectively reducing basal clonogenicity while sparing luminal progenitors, in both the mouse and human, irrespective of BRCA mutation status. Furthermore, we generated proteome-defined lineage-specific signatures, referred to as basal or luminal progenitor identification (ID), that correlate to the PAM50 breast cancer subtypes and predict the PARPi response of triple-negative human breast cancer xenografts. Thus, mammary epithelial cell types underpin a new strategy for identifying PARPi responders. We further sought to potentiate the efficacy of PARPi by concurrently blocking progesterone receptor given its pro-tumorigenic role in the BRCA1/2-mutated carriers. This novel PARPi combination with a selective progesterone receptor modulator, ulipristal acetate (UA), abrogated clonogenicity of both lineages from primary, high-risk breast tissue specimens. Altogether, we demonstrate that mammary cell lineage is an unprecedented determinant of DSB repair pathway choice, and understanding cell lineage-restricted vulnerabilities can be leveraged to enhance intervention strategies for improved therapeutic outcomes in high-risk women. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, women | 1, 5 |
| Khan, Anum Irfan | Wodchis, Walter P | Managing Multimorbidity in Primary Care: Measuring Collaboration Efforts within and across Organizational Boundaries | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-06-01 | In Ontario, there has been widespread investment and reform to enable collaboration between providers in interdisciplinary primary care teams (Family Health Teams [FHT] and Community Health Centres [CHC]), alongside partnerships to promote collaboration between primary care teams, hospitals, and community agencies. However our understanding of the factors associated with interprofessional collaboration within primary care teams, the association between interprofessional collaboration and patient outcomes, and the interplay between interprofessional and interorganizational collaboration as it relates to the primary care sector is still in its early stages. Study 1 examined which organizational characteristics are associated with interprofessional collaboration that was assessed via the Collaborative Practice Assessment Tool (CPAT) in CHCs and FHTs across Ontario. Study 2 involved analyzing linked administrative data to assess the association between interprofessional collaboration and emergency department (ED) visits, hospitalizations and 30-day readmissions for adults with multimorbidity. Study 3 adopted a network analysis lens to examine regular contact, level of integration, and four types of relationships (referrals, information sharing, joint care planning and shared resources) between organizations. Two care coordination initiatives (Health Links) were selected as case studies. One case was led by a lead agency with a low CPAT score and the second case was led by a lead agency with a high CPAT score. The use of formal and informal mechanisms of information sharing, a strong commitment to quality improvement and years since practice establishment were positively associated with interprofessional collaboration. Increasing team size, high levels of information exchange, a mixed governance board, and greater centralization of administrative processes had a negative association with CPAT score. The extent of interprofessional collaboration was not associated with the likelihood of having an ED visit, hospitalization or readmission. Results indicate no statistically significant association between interprofessional collaboration and healthcare utilization for patients with multimorbidity. The low-CPAT led case showed greater connectivity pertaining to regular contact and integration between organizations, compared to the high-CPAT led case. Mixed trends were observed for the four types of relationships examined. Network analysis findings offer key insight into how organizations in Health Links are interacting to better coordinate services for this unique patient population. | Ph.D. | healthcare, labor, invest, governance | 3, 8, 9, 16 |
| Fernandes, Dennis Denzil | Gradinaru, Claudiu C | Mapping the Conformational Landscape Spatial Organization of G Protein-coupled Receptors using Single-molecule Fluorescence | Physics | 2021-06-01 | G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) are the largest class of transmembrane proteins, making them an important target for therapeutics. Several aspects of GPCR signalling pathways, however, still remains elusive. In this thesis, two key aspects are addressed: the role ligands play in shaping the conformational landscape of GPCRs, and the oligomeric size of GPCRs during different stages of signalling. Here, a combination of ensemble and single-molecule fluorescence techniques were used to investigate the above, whereby the A2A adenosine receptor (A2AR), and the M2 muscarinic receptor (M2R) were used as model systems. Using single-molecule Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (smFRET), it was shown that A2AR exhibits a high degree of basal activity, and that the relative populations of inactive and active states is modulated upon binding of ligand. Furthermore, photoinduced electron transfer, monitored via Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy (PET-FCS), showed that ligands also effect the dynamics within and between several conformational states of A2AR. This work provides a quantitative approach to study how ligands modulate the conformational landscape of GPCRs. The oligomeric size of detergent-purified M2R and its attendant G protein (Gi1) were determined using single-molecule Photobleaching (smPB) analysis via a total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscope. The smPB analysis revealed that both M2R and Gi1 were oligomeric in nature prior to coupling, predominantly consisting of tetramers for M2R and hexamers for Gi1, regardless of ligand. In the coupled state (RG), it was found that a tetrameric M2R couples to tetrameric Gi1, whereby the binding of nucleotide (guanosine triphosphate) causes the disassembly of the RG complex, and a reduction in the oligomeric size of Gi1 from tetramers to dimers. The binding of an inverse antagonist also results in disassembly of the RG complex, and a reduction in the oligomeric size of M2R from tetramers to monomers or dimers. The work suggests that active M2R is tetrameric and solely capable of binding to tetrameric forms of Gi1, whereas the active form of Gi1 is dimeric and only activatable when coupled to M2R. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, land | 7, 9, 15 |
| Taylor, Luke | Cossman, Brenda||Rittich, Kerry | Marriage, Work, and the Construction of the Family in Nineteenth-century English Law and Legal Thought | Law | 2019-11-01 | This thesis is concerned with the dissolution of the household and the construction of the family in English law and legal thought in the long nineteenth century. It examines (intersecting) intellectual and institutional dimensions of this process, focusing on shifting legal concepts of work and family, and some of the specific legal-institutional moves (statutory, judicial, administrative) that contributed to the creation of the family’s categorical status in the social and legal order and a distinct and exceptional body of rules – Family Law – for its governance. Drawing on recent scholarship on Family Law Exceptionalism, it is concerned to show how a confluence of laws and ideas helped to shape the modern disaggregation of work and family, and adherence within Anglophone legal systems to regulatory models premised on divisions between realms of production and reproduction. This excavation of law and legal thought is designed to shed light on the historical processes that contributed to the emergence of English Family Law; and, in so doing, reveal the constructed, contingent nature of the legal family and its exceptional domain of regulation. Using the Blackstonian household as a launching pad, the story told in the thesis follows two mutually reinforcing narratives. One movement involved the staged extrusion of productive work relations (in the narrow sense of work for pay) from the household, and their re-characterization as market-based activities exterior to the family and governed by a legal regime that blended contract and coercion. Certain household-based forms of work, notably domestic service and apprenticeship, were treated in a different manner because of their ongoing connection to the family, but eventually they too were deemed non-familial (but also subject to differing schemes of regulation). The other movement involved a new legal emphasis on marriage as the core relation within the non-productive private family, which involved the conceptualization and treatment of marriage as a site of legitimate public concern and intervention. That process relied in part on a set of scholarly, judicial and (to a lesser extent) legislative moves that distinguished marriage from contract on the basis of the English state’s perceived interest in regulating conjugal practices. | S.J.D. | employment, production, institut, governance, legal system, judic | 8, 12, 16 |
| Waite, Spirit-Rose | Terpstra, Nicholas | Material Regimes of Bodily (Re)Formation: Person Shaping and Display in Urban Tuscan Homes for Abandoned Children, ca. 1570-1650 | History | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation examines material, embodied, disciplinary regimes of person shaping in Tuscan, civic-religious institutions circa 1570-1650. In particular, I analyze how three homes for abandoned children, Florence’s Innocenti and Santa Maria e San Niccolò del Ceppo and Prato’s Misericordia e Dolce, aimed to use food, textiles, wax, educational materials, and deportmental discipline to shape abandoned children uprightly, body and soul, according to contemporary, intersecting prescriptions about Catholic reform and patriarchal discipline. This person-shaping endeavour had both practical/economic and spiritual/rhetorical purposes. On the one hand, all three of the institutions took in socio-economically precarious dependents, but none offered free charity. Abandoned children were put to work to keep the institutions running, overwhelmingly in manual tasks. This shared occupation—manual labour—profoundly influenced material provisions, which both reflected and reinscribed abandoned children’s socio-economic place as labourers onto their bodies. On the other hand, provisions and rules governing conduct also reflected the institutions’ shared aim of raising devout and virtuous Catholics. In both cases, homes for abandoned children framed their material provisions and deportmental discipline as acts of bodily and spiritual care. Further, they displayed the outcomes of this charity and person shaping on—or perhaps more accurately, as—the carefully shaped bodies of their dependents. In other words, they used highly curated displays of abandoned children to publicize the apparent efficacy of their patriarchal, civic-religious charity and, by extension, the virtue of the institutions themselves, the cities in which they operated, and the grand dukes that ruled them. This study, then, brings together a number of threads: histories of institutionalization and child-raising, of Catholic reform and patriarchal authority, of the body, soul, and senses, of workfare and materials, of age, gender, and status. By applying the lenses of materiality, the body, and the senses to institutionalization, it shows how late sixteenth- through mid-seventeenth century reforms and patriarchal discipline were felt, embodied, and displayed by some of early modern Tuscany’s most vulnerable residents—institutionalized, abandoned children. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, precarious, gender, labour, cities, urban, institut | 1, 5, 8, 11, 16 |
| LeMay-Nedjelski, Lauren PM | O'Connor, Dr. Deborah L. | Maternal Metabolic, Obstetrical and Dietary Characteristics are Associated with the Microbiota and Oligosaccharides in Human Milk at Three Months Postpartum | Nutritional Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Background: The association between maternal demographic, metabolic, obstetrical and nutritional parameters on the human milk microbiota and human milk oligosaccharide (HMO) composition remains poorly understood. Objectives: To determine if: (1) maternal BMI, gestational glucose tolerance, mode of delivery and ethnicity are associated with human milk microbial composition and predicted function, (2) if maternal diet and infant feeding practices are associated with the human milk microbiota composition and predicted function, and (3) if maternal characteristics are associated with HMO composition and ii) if HMOs are associated with milk microbiota community structure and predicted function. Methods: Mature milk samples (n= 113) along with demographic, anthropometric, obstetrical and maternal and infant dietary data were collected at three months postpartum. V4-16S rRNA gene sequencing of the human milk microbiota was conducted and rapid high-throughput high performance liquid chromatography of milk samples was performed to analyze HMO composition. Results: Pre-pregnancy BMI was most consistently associated with a number of parameters of the milk microbiota including beta-diversity (Bray-Curtis R2=0.037, P=0.031) and a functional gene inference pathway (biosynthesis of secondary metabolites; coefficient=0.0024, PFDR | Ph.D. | nutrition, arid | 2, 6 |
| McEwen, Elizabeth | Martinussen, Rhonda | Math Anxiety in Early Elementary School in Ontario | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | Math anxiety, which is defined as negative feelings such as tension, worry, or apprehension about math, is thought to negatively affect children in a myriad of ways. However, the majority of math anxiety research has been conducted with university students and adults, and less is known about math anxiety in the early years of formal education. Further, math anxiety research often fails to take into account important contextual factors such as instructional style and classroom environment that students are exposed to, thus omitting important considerations. The overall goals of this dissertation are (1) to contribute to knowledge in the area of math anxiety in early elementary school-aged students in terms of measurement of math anxiety and its relation to math performance, and (2) to mobilize research into practice by providing vital information directly to educators and clinicians to support their students with math anxiety. First, new questionnaire items are presented that more accurately represent the breadth of math learning experiences of Ontario students who receive a curriculum incorporating both traditional and inquiry-based pedagogy (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2020). Second, the relation between math anxiety and children’s math performance, is explored along with examining the effects of two potential moderators on this association: working memory and executive functioning skills. Lastly, the real-world practical implications for this research and the existing literature are synthesized into a question-and-answer style paper aimed for educators and clinicians working with early elementary school-aged children, to build their knowledge of math anxiety and offer an emotion-focused response style to math anxious students. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Stemeroff, Noah | Berkovitz, Joseph | Mathematics, Structuralism, and the Promise of Realism: A study of the ontological and epistemological implications of mathematical representation in the physical sciences | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2019-06-01 | Realists often suggest that scientific knowledge is grounded in the mathematical representation of nature (e.g. Stein, 1989; Worrall, 1989; Ladyman, 1998; Cao, 2003; Ladyman and Ross, 2009; and French, 2014). However, it is important to clarify what it is about mathematics that allows it to accurately represent the physical world. This is one of the principal challenges at the foundation of the philosophy of science. It not only concerns the nature of scientific knowledge, but also the methodology of physical inquiry and the nature of physical reality. In this dissertation, I present a study of the methodological, epistemological, and ontological constraints implicit in the application of mathematics in the physical sciences. In the introduction, I provide an account of the problem of mathematical representation and a brief summary of the history of structuralism in the philosophy of science. In the second chapter, I offer a critique of the structural realist's account of the mathematical content of scientific theory in order to highlight the holistic nature of mathematical representation in the physical sciences. In the third chapter, I present an account of the constraints implicit in the use of mathematics in physical theory. In the fourth chapter, I outline the presuppositions of the `mapping' account of mathematical representation and provide a critique of the supposed conformity that must exist between mathematics and nature in order to support the structuralist conception of mathematical representation. In the fifth chapter, I address a number of challenges that concern the grounding of natural law in the mathematical concepts of symmetry and invariance and the viability of a scientific realism based in this mathematical conception of natural law. Throughout, I critically re-examine the nature of modern mathematical physics and the viability of the recent turn toward structuralism in the philosophy of science. I conclude with a discussion of possible avenues for further research that might help address some of these concerns. Through a discussion of the problems inherent in the application of mathematics in the physical sciences, this dissertation brings renewed attention to the constitutive role that mathematics plays in modern physical theory, and provides a novel perspective on how issues of scientific representation should be conceived in the philosophy of science. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Roche, Sebastien | Strong, Kimberly KS||Wunch, Debra DW | Measurements of Greenhouse Gases from Near-infrared Solar Absorption Spectra | Physics | 2021-11-01 | This thesis presents improvements to retrievals of greenhouse gas concentrations, with a focus on CO2 and the Arctic. Near-infrared solar absorption spectra were collected at the Polar Environment Research Laboratory (PEARL) in Eureka, Nunavut as part of the Total Carbon Column Observing Network (TCCON), extending the data record to July 2020. Data processing was improved by the application of solar zenith angle corrections to account for pointing offsets of the solar tracker. Issues related to surface pressure records were resolved. TCCON measurements were used to validate simulations of CO2 and CH4 by GEM-MACH-GHG, a model in development at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Vertical profile retrievals of CO2 from TCCON spectra were evaluated, using improved spectroscopy and line shapes. CO2 profiles were obtained from sequential retrievals in five spectral windows using synthetic and real spectra. A sensitivity study showed that the leading source of uncertainty in the retrieved CO2 profiles is errors in the a priori temperature profile as small as 2°C between 600-850 hPa. To distinguish the effect of errors in the instrument alignment and spectroscopic parameters from other error sources, CO2 profiles were retrieved using an a prioriprofile built from coincident in-situ measurements. With real spectra, the deviations in retrieved CO2 profiles were larger than typical vertical variations of CO2. Remaining errors in the forward iiimodel limit the accuracy of the retrieved profiles. Implementing a temperature retrieval or correction is critical to improve CO2 profile retrievals. A study was conducted in support of the proposed Canadian satellite mission AIM-North. The ReFRACtor algorithm was adapted to generate synthetic spectra for a Fourier transform spectrometer and a grating spectrometer. Retrievals were performed on these synthetic spectra to estimate the precision and accuracy of retrieved XCH4, XCO, and XCO2, in different conditions.Over a standard scene corresponding to a boreal forest, the retrieval precision for the given instrument characteristics was ~0.6% for XCH4, ~8% for XCO, and ~0.4% for XCO2. These results can be used by the AIM-North team to decide whether the instrument design should be adapted to meet the mission’s precision and accuracy goals and thresholds over specific scenes. | Ph.D. | wind, solar, greenhouse, labor, climate, greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, co2, offsets, forest | 7, 8, 13, 15 |
| Towns, Megan Marie | Wright, F Virginia | Measuring Balance Confidence in Youth with Cerebral Palsy: Measure Development, Sensibility, Content Validity, and Initial Psychometric Evaluation | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-06-01 | Background: Youth with cerebral palsy (CP) generally participate in less physical activity than typically developing youth. In adults with physical disabilities, balance confidence is a strong predictor of participation. However, balance confidence has not been studied in youth with CP. Research objectives: (1) To explore whether concerns about balance influence physical activity participation of ambulatory youth with CP; (2) to determine how youth with CP feel when they lose their balance; (3) to build a balance confidence measure for this population; (4) to examine the sensibility and content validity of the measure; and (5) to evaluate test-retest reliability and construct validity of the measure. Participants: Eighty-one participants were involved in one or more stages of this measurement study (25 youth with CP, eight parents of youth with CP, 17 typically developing youth, and 31 health care professionals). Methods: Qualitative descriptive methodology with 16 interviews was used to explore balance confidence with ambulatory youth with CP and parents. A multi-step process was used to create the Feelings About Balance–Cerebral Palsy (FAB-CP) youth-report questionnaire and evaluate sensibility, content validity, test-retest reliability, and convergent and discriminant validity. Results: Qualitative analysis demonstrated that ambulatory youth with CP, especially those who do not use gait aids for ambulation, are often concerned about losing their balance during physical activities, which may lead to avoiding physical activities. The FAB-CP, an 11-item computer-based measure was created to investigate balance confidence of this population. Test-retest reliability was excellent (n=21; one-to-four week interval; ICC 0.97 [95% CI 0.93, 0.99]). Convergent validity was good when evaluated against measures of balance capacity (rho=0.74), advanced motor skills (rho=0.83), physical activity enjoyment (rho=-0.61) and participation (rho=0.77). The FAB-CP discriminated among participants of different levels of gross motor function (maximum p | Ph.D. | health care, disabilit, invest | 3, 9 |
| Dou, Wenkun | Sun, Yu | Mechanical Measurement and Stimulation of Human Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The emerging heart-on-a-chip platforms are promising approaches to establish cardiac cell/tissue models in vitro for studying cardiac physiologies, disease modeling, cardiotoxicity testing, and therapeutic discoveries. Challenges still exist in realizing the capability of sensing and evaluating the functional properties of cardiac cell/tissue models in situ (i.e., on the platforms). In particular, generating sufficient forces of contraction during the rhythmic beating of cardiomyocytes plays a central role in pumping oxygen-rich blood through the circulatory system. Developing new platforms and technologies to assess the beating behaviors and contractile functions of in vitro cardiac models is essential to provide information on cell/tissue physiologies, drug-induced inotropic responses, and mechanisms of cardiac diseases. This thesis focuses on developing biosensing technologies/platforms for the measurement of contractile functions of in vitro cardiac models. In vitro cardiac cell/tissue models were established by using Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) generated with the human proteome to avoid the potential species-dependent differences. Firstly, a label-free imaging technique was developed to offer a cytotoxic-free method for long-term measurement of dynamic beating trajectories, beating amplitude, beating propagation, and conduction velocities of cardiomyocyte monolayers, avoiding the perturbation and cytotoxicity induced by fluorescent dyes. Next, a carbon-based biosensing platform integrated with flexible biosensing components was developed for continuous measurement of multiple parameters of cardiac functional properties in vitro, including contractility, beating rate, beating rhythm, and field potential. In addition, a microdevice array integrated both contraction sensing and mechanical stimulation functions was also developed to recapitulate the mechanical microenvironment of myocardium in vitro and characterize the effect of mechanical strain magnitude on the maturation of iPSC-CMs. Highlighted applications and discoveries enabled by these developed platforms were summarized and discussed in aspects of investigating fundamental cardiac physiologies (e.g., iPSC-CM maturation under mechanical stimulation), drug testing (e.g., isoproterenol, verapamil, blebbistatin, and E-4031), and disease modeling (e.g., drug-induced cardiac arrhythmia and arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy (ARVC)). | Ph.D. | invest, cities, species, species | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Bamford, Natalie Claire | Howell, Lynne | Mechanism of Galactosaminogalactan Biosynthesis and Modification in Aspergillus fumigatus Biofilm Formation | Biochemistry | 2019-06-01 | The opportunistic fungal pathogen Aspergillus fumigatus adopts a biofilm mode of growth during infection. The exopolysaccharide galactosaminogalactan (GAG) is essential for A. fumigatus biofilm formation and is a key virulence factor in the murine model of A. fumigatus infection. Biosynthesis of the GAG polymer has been linked to a five-gene cluster reminiscent of bacterial synthase-dependent exopolysaccharide operons. As little is known about the mechanisms of exopolysaccharide synthesis in fungi, the structure and function of three of the proteins encoded by the GAG cluster were investigated. Ega3 and Sph3 were found to be endo-acting glycoside hydrolases active on galactosamine and N-acetylgalactosamine regions of the GAG polymer, respectively. Sph3 has a (β/α)8-barrel fold with a conserved shallow active site groove. Ega3 similarly adopts a (β/α)8-barrel fold but had a much deeper electronegative substrate binding cleft. Whilst Ega3 was found to belong to glycoside hydrolase (GH) family GH114, Sph3 did not belong to an existing GH family and thus GH135 was created around Sph3 and its homologues. These GHs were found to disrupt A. fumigatus biofilms and potentiate some antifungals against A. fumigatus. The third protein, Agd3, has a unique three domain structure with an N-terminal reductase-like fold, a central distorted (β/α)7-fold followed by a small β-sandwich domain. The (β/α)7-fold has low structural and primary sequence similarity to the carbohydrate esterase (CE) 4 family. Agd3 deacetylates oligo-N-acetylgalactosamine in a metal-dependent manner. This domain defines a new carbohydrate esterase family. The N-terminal domain was found to be a novel carbohydrate binding module. Agd3 deacetylation of GAG renders the polymer adherent to multiple surfaces and mediates virulence in the murine model of invasive aspergillosis. The structure and functional characterization of these proteins sheds light on the mechanism of GAG maturation, enriches our understanding carbohydrate active enzymes, and reveals new possibilities for therapeutics against fungal infection. | Ph.D. | arid, invest, conserv, conserv | 6, 9, 14, 15 |
| Sawan, Sidney Abou Sawan | Moore, Daniel R | Mechanisms Regulating Resistance Training Mediated Hypertrophy in Human Skeletal Muscle | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2021-11-01 | It is well established that resistance training induces muscle hypertrophy, although the mechanisms and influence of biological sex are unclear. The extent of post-exercise myofibrillar protein synthesis (MyoPS), satellite cells (SC) and dietary amino acids to promote muscle hypertrophy have generally been investigated independently in controlled lab based settings and predominately in males; therefore this dissertation systematically examined how MyoPS, SC and dietary amino acids are influenced by acute resistance exercise, resistance training and sex in a single study. Ten young men (~23.0 y) and women (~23.0 y) completed a single bout of resistance exercise before and after 8-weeks of whole-body resistance training with muscle biopsies of the vastus lateralis taken immediately prior to, 24-, and 48-hours after each bout. Study 1 displayed, irrespective of acute exercise or training status, males had greater rates of integrated MyoPS over 48 h, and regardless of sex, post-exercise MyoPS was positively related to muscle hypertrophy only in the trained state. In Study two, irrespective of sex and acute resistance exercise, resistance training induced SC accretion in only type II fibers, and the change in pre – post type II SC content was related to type II muscle fiber hypertrophy. In Study 3, the incorporation of post-exercise dietary amino acids into contractile myofibrillar and non-contractile sarcoplasmic proteins was reduced in the trained state, regardless of sex, suggesting less reliance of dietary amino acids to sustain post-exercise MyoPS in the in trained state. We also observed that, irrespective of sex and acute resistance exercise, resistance training promoted greater mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) proximity to the cell periphery and capillaries and concomitant colocalization with the lysosome suggesting an increased efficiency to sequester dietary amino acids and activate MyoPS in the trained state. Males had greater post-exercise mTOR colocalization with the lysosome, which may in part, explain the greater rates of MyoPS. Based on these studies, it appears that resistance exercise in the trained state is reflective of hypertrophic adaptations, through MyoPS and SC content, and may result in less reliance of dietary amino acids. These changes may be underpinned by altered intracellular mTOR redistribution with training. | Ph.D. | women, invest | 5, 9 |
| Roumeliotis, Nadezhda (Nadia) | Parshuram, Chris CP | Medication Errors in Critically Ill Children: Evidence, Event Rate, Harm Analysis | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | Background Children in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) are at high-risk group of healthcare associated harm. We used pharmaco-epidemiologic methods to estimate drug error, and patient associated harm using a large drug administration dataset. The objectives of this doctoral dissertation were to describe the: [1] Evidence for the effect of electronic strategies on medication errors and harm, [2] Incidence of acetaminophen dosing errors; [3] Patient specific harm associated with acetaminophen errors. Methods Objective 1: A systematic review was used to evaluate the impact of electronic strategies on medication errors, adverse drug events and harmful medication errors in hospitalized patients. For objectives 2 3, we used a large database of drug administrations from 2004 to 2017. Objective 2: An algorithm to identify acetaminophen dosing errors was created. The nature of errors was described as well as the characteristics of affected patients. Objective 3: A Generalized estimating equations regression study was then conducted on the acetaminophen dataset, with cumulative dosing error of acetaminophen as the exposure of interest. Outcomes were changes in liver enzymes (ALT, AST, GGT) as a marker for acetaminophen organ induced toxicity. Results Objective 1: This systematic review found that, amongst 38 prospective interventional studies identified, electronic prescribing strategies reduced medication errors (13 studies), and adverse drug events (n=4 studies), compared to no electronic strategy. Evidence was low-quality and studies had high risk of bias. Objective 2: In the evaluation of 14 146 admissions, having received 147 485 doses of acetaminophen, under- and over- dosing were common in the pediatric intensive care unit; with a rate of 1 in 19 and 1 in 20 doses administered respectively. Cumulative 24-hour overdosing occurred in 1 in every 9 patient days, (> 82.5 mg/kg/day). Objective 3: Cumulative acetaminophen dosing (>82.5mg/kg/day) was not associated with an increase in ALT, AST and GGT in the 24h -72h after the cumulative overdose, nor was a sensitivity analysis with higher cumulative dosing (>100 mg/kg/day). Conclusion Electronic strategies reduce medication errors and adverse drug events. This finds does not include preventable adverse drug events, and no studies involve children. Although acetaminophen dosing errors may be common, they are not always associated with harm. | Ph.D. | healthcare | 3 |
| Russo, Teresa | Robins, Will | Memory, Image-making, and Literary Structure in Dante, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan | Comparative Literature | 2016-06-01 | Abstract My dissertation, “Memory, Image-making, and Literary Structure in Dante, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan, considers classical and medieval theories of the art of memory and analyzes how several late medieval works of vernacular literature exhibit mnemonic techniques. The dissertation highlights the importance of image-making in the Middle Ages for the processes of remembering and invention and discusses examples of architectural structures, memory buildings, and mnemonic movement from major vernacular literary works of the Middle Ages, including examples from Dante’s Commedia, Boccaccio’s Teseida, Chaucer’s The Knight’s Tale and House of Fame, and Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la Cité des Dames. My research also examines the relationship between rhetorical language and image-making in the Middle Ages, considering how images write their way into our memories and how powerful descriptions, such as allegories and similes, create cognitive maps. Medieval writers made use of these techniques of ars memoriae for the organization of the text—its unity and coherence provides a significant structure for memorial storage while images provide a clear visual thread useful for marking the text in memory, but also for networking cognitively and for making useful associations and connections. I argue that the precepts of locational memory underpin important aspects of the structure and presentation of some major vernacular literary works of the late Middle Ages. | Ph.D. | buildings | 9 |
| Ezekiel, Frederick | Martinussen, Rhonda | Mental Health and Academic Performance in Postsecondary Education: Sociodemographic Risk Factors and Links to Childhood Adversity | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-06-01 | A significant body of literature has demonstrated that marginalized sociodemographic groups are subject to increased frequency and severity of stress, deemed ‘minority stress,’ associated with discrimination, harassment, systemic barriers, and oppression (Meyer, 2003 2015). Furthermore, early childhood adversity has been shown to be linked to increased stress reactivity and reduced mental health outcomes in early adulthood and across lifespan development (Fergusson Lynskey, 1996; Lupien, McEwen, Gunnar, Heim, 2009; Shonkoff et al., 2012). Experiences of stress in academic settings, while performance-enhancing at low and moderate levels, has been shown to be detrimental to performance and learning at chronic or severe levels (Hartley, 2011; Keogh, Bond, Flaxman, 2006; Liston, McEwen, Casey, Posner, 2012b). This dissertation leverages an ecological systems theoretical framework to identify differences in stress, wellness and learning among marginalized sociodemographic postsecondary students in Canada, and individuals who have experienced adverse childhood experiences. In study one, National College Health Assessment (2016) data from 43,780 participants across 42 Canadian postsecondary education institutions were analyzed. Findings showed that students who identified with marginalized identities were significantly more likely to experience poor wellness during their postsecondary studies, and that wellness served as a mediator between identifying with a marginalized sociodemographic group and reduced academic performance. In study two, links between stress and academic performance during transition into university were examined through a survey administered at a large, research-intensive university in Southwestern Ontario. This research demonstrated that stress was negatively related to sense of belonging and academic performance during first-year university, and that sense of belonging partially mediated the negative relationship between stress and academic performance. Furthermore, students who experienced chaotic family environments and childhood adversity were shown to have increased levels of stress and reduced academic performance during their transition into university. Collectively, this research underscores the critical role that wellness plays in student learning and establishes imperatives for postsecondary institutions to engage in efforts to enhance equity, inclusion, and transitional supports that create wellness-promoting educational contexts supporting the learning of all students, with particular benefit to communities who are vulnerable to systemic barriers and stress. | Ph.D. | mental health, learning, equity, secondary education, equit, minorit, marginalized, transit, ecolog, institut | 3, 4, 10, 11, 15, 16 |
| Vinaik, Roohi | Jeschke, Marc G | Metabolic and Regenerative Role of NLRP3 in Response to Thermal Injury | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Severe burns are accompanied by hyperinflammation and hypermetabolism, which increase risk of immune compromise, physiologic exhaustion and ultimately, death. However, these post- trauma phenomena are not wholly detrimental and may confer a survival advantage during the acute phase, while chronic alterations contribute to poor outcomes. In particular, chronically enhanced inflammation may interfere with wound healing, increasing risk of infection, fluid loss, impairing thermoregulation and sustaining metabolic dysregulation. Thus, we investigated the beneficial versus injurious role of inflammation after burn focusing on the master regulator of post-trauma inflammation – NLRP3 inflammasome. Although its inflammatory role is established, recent evidence suggests that NLRP3-mediated inflammation has a pivotal effect on metabolism as well. In this study, we investigated NLRP3-mediated inflammation in burn skin and white adipose tissue (WAT). We aimed to determine if 1) local inflammation is beneficial in wound healing, 2) WAT inflammation regulates lipid metabolism (i.e., lipolysis and browning), and whether 3) WAT metabolic alterations in turn impact healing of adjacent skin. In our initial studies, we investigated whether and how NLRP3-mediated inflammation effects post-burn healing. We demonstrated that lack of acute inflammation impairs normal healing, while prolonged inflammation contributes to scarring. Subsequently, we investigated the role of NLRP3-mediated inflammation in WAT metabolism, which can indirectly affect wound healing and substantially impacts post-burn outcomes. Here, we showed that lack of NLRP3-mediated inflammation and altered inflammatory responses enhance lipid turnover acutely and contribute to persistent, augmented browning. Thus, NLRP3 activation has a key upstream role in quelling WAT dysfunction. Finally, we demonstrated that WAT dysfunction and ensuing increases in lipolytic byproducts in turn enhance lipid uptake to injured skin, interfering with normal healing. Taken together, these studies indicated that post-burn inflammation is initially an adaptive response. Acute activation of inflammatory pathways after trauma is not only beneficial in terms of direct inflammatory and immune effects (e.g., cytokine production, macrophage chemotaxis) but also due to regulation of tissue metabolism (e.g., glycolysis, lipolysis, browning). A key mediator of this cross talk between inflammation and metabolism is NLRP3 inflammasome, a critical acute phase mediator that has a more significant role in post-trauma recovery than previously known. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Taullaj, Fioralba | Fekl, Ulrich W | Metal 2-Adamantyl Complexes: Synthesis and Characterization | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | This thesis describes the synthesis and characterization of several new 2-adamantyl metal complexes via transmetallation. Chapter 2 – Synthesis of 2-Adamantyl Anions for use in Transmetallation outlines new procedures for generation of 2-adamantyl transmetallating agents, including [(2-Ad)2Zn], [(2-Ad)MgBr], and [(2-Ad)2Mg(THF)2]. Chapter 3 – Synthesis of 2-Adamantyl Metal Complexes is focused on the utility of the newly developed transmetallating agents. The synthesis of several complexes, including those of gold, iridium, platinum, and tantalum using [(2-Ad)ZnBr] (a commercially available precursor), [(2-Ad)2Zn], and [(2-Ad)MgBr] is explored. The efficacy and ease of use of [(2-Ad)2Zn] was instrumental in development of isolable and fully characterizable complexes of both gold 2-adamantyls, and platinum 2-adamantyls. Owing to the well-developed chemistry of platinum alkyls, Chapter 4 – The Chemistry of Platinum(II) 2-Adamantyls focuses on the nature of the 2-adamantyl ligand compared to well-known platinum(II) alkyl complexes of methyl, phenyl, neopentyl, and cyclohexyl. The expansion of synthetic procedures for further modification of platinum(II) 2-adamantyls, as well as assessment of the trans influence of the 2-adamantyl ligand is discussed. Chapter 5 – The Synthesis and Chemistry of Pt(IV) 2-Adamantyls expands on the robust platinum(II) chemistry, allowing for synthesis and characterization of 2-adamantyl platinum(IV) complexes. Future work towards the use of the resulting organometallic species, and applications to C-H activation of the 2-adamantyl γ-CH2 offers a promising pathway towards new adamantyl chemistry. As such, Chapter 6 – Considerations for γ-C-H activation of 2-adamantyl discusses the potential for metal-mediated activation and functionalization of the 2-adamantyl γ-CH2 position, with the goal of generating a facially tri-substituted 2-adamantyl compound. Such a compound is currently inaccessible using organic methods, and only one successful fluorination leading to a facially tri-substituted adamantyl was reported in 2020. Development of 2-adamantyl metal complexes provides promising new developments for both catalysis and organic synthesis. | Ph.D. | accessib, species, species | 11, 14, 15 |
| Foroozan Ebrahimy, Amirhossein | Newman, Roger RCN | Metallic NanoPorous Materials, from Design to Degradation | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | From (bio)sensing to self-powered wearable electronics, nanomaterials have showed great potentials in empowering the march towards sustainability. The theory, synthesis, characterization, and degradation of metallic nanoporous materials, of particular nanoporous gold, due to its versatility and biocompatibility, and nanoporous copper, due to its extraordinary catalytic and self-sanitizing properties, are discussed. Nanoporous gold was designed and synthesized by electrochemical dealloying from lean noble alloys (silver-gold(-platinum)) with the minimum gold content theoretically sufficient for the development of a fully gold covered nanoporous morphology. Advanced characterization techniques, such as atom probe tomography, were employed to obtain a near atomic-scale resolution of the nanoporous morphology developed from Ag95Au5, the lowest gold content precursor to date. The capabilities and drawbacks of atom probe tomography in characterizing heterogeneous nanomaterials were explored. A non-destructive and inexpensive electrochemical characterization technique was developed to probe the chemistry of the entire surface of such tortuous morphology. Via sulfide selective adsorption on silver, the surface chemistry of nanoporous gold was characterized with a precision of approximately 2 atomic % silver coverage on the outermost monolayer. Mechanical integrity of nanoporous layers developed from lean noble alloys was investigated using a combination of ex situ and in situ microscopy, as well as image processing algorithms. Despite speculations in the literature, capillary stresses during drying of the nanoporous samples was found to have no correlation with crack formation within the dealloyed films. Cracking within the nanoporous layers was analyzed by obtaining crystallographic information from cross-sections of the dealloyed samples. Coarsening behavior of nanoporous gold samples developed from various noble precursors was also studied in different media for long exposure times (up to a few months). Alloying with elements with low surface diffusion coefficients (e.g., platinum) was found to decrease the post-porosity coarsening rate, as also demonstrated in several previous investigations. However, under anodic polarization, platinum containing samples exhibited almost identical coarsening behavior to that of dealloyed binary silver-gold samples. Lastly, the applications of nanoporous copper developed via (electro)chemical techniques in self-sanitizing and catalytic electroreduction of CO2 were reviewed. Additionally, investigations were performed to synthesize nanoporous copper via guided dezincification of brass, a prevalent and inexpensive copper alloy. | Ph.D. | invest, co2 | 9, 13 |
| Coindre, Virginie Florence | Sefton, Michael V | Methacrylic Acid-based Biomaterials and their Applications in Diabetes and Soft Tissue Repair | Biomedical Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Regenerative medicine holds the promise to restore the functionality of damaged tissue through the use of medical devices that can enhance mechanical performance or deliver therapeutic cells. Clinical implementation of these devices has been limited by challenges associated with fibrosis and/or poor vascularization. Improved device design and materials are required to accelerate healing and reduce inflammation post-implantation. Methacrylic acid (MAA)-based materials are promising candidates for improving the functionality of medical devices due to their ability to enhance vascularization and tissue healing. The present work explores this proposition by evaluating the performance of two MAA-coated implants and a MAA-collagen gel: a polypropylene surgical mesh, a pancreatic islet transplantation device and a wound dressing. The first two devices were coated with MAA-co-isodecyl acrylate and implanted in mice subcutaneously; the last was produced by immobilizing polyMAA to collagen using carbodiimide chemistry. The coating lowered the inflammation around the polypropylene mesh and generated constructive remodeling by biasing the tissue response towards vascularization instead of fibrosis. To assess the effect of the coating on therapeutic cell survival, coated and uncoated devices were implanted in diabetic mice. Pancreatic islets were transplanted into implanted devices and the glucose levels were compared across both groups. Animals with MAA coated devices had the highest islet survival rate and became normoglycemic within 3 weeks of transplantation. Islet survival rate for animals with uncoated devices was low, and they remained diabetic. For wound healing polyMAA was used in a regenerative medicine application that did not require a permanent implant by utilizing a bio-degradable delivery vehicle. The topical application of this gel on hard-to-heal diabetic wounds increased vascularization, and hastened closure. Overall, the ability of MAA-based materials to overcome challenges associated with fibrosis and poor vascularization has been demonstrated in three different areas of regenerative medicine. Future work should explore the use of polyMAA-collagen gels for other tissue engineering applications | Ph.D. | animal, animal | 14, 15 |
| Alibrahim, Ammar | Dittrich, Maria | Microbial role in dolomite formation in hypersaline sabkha and Miocene mud volcano outcrop in Kuwait | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-11-01 | The origin of dolomite has remained the subject of an ongoing debate for over a century and is known as “the dolomite problem”. The essence of this problem is the inability to explain the disparity of dolomite abundance in sedimentary carbonate records and in modern depositional environments. Previously conducted laboratory experiments have demonstrated the ability of microbes to mediate dolomite formation; yet microbial involvement in large scale worldwide dolomitization is poorly understood. This dissertation attempts to expand the knowledge on the microbial role in dolomite formation by investigating modern and paleo environments in Kuwait where dolomite exists. Microbes live in interactive communities where ecological interactions can possess properties of positive cooperation or negative antagonism, thereby affecting microbial composition. In Chapter 2, proto-dolomite was formed by microbial consortia dominated by Halomonas strains alongside a considerable increase in pH which is required for increasing the dolomite saturation index. Although microbes are important to overcome the dolomite kinetic barrier, Chapter 3 showed that aerobic halophilic heterotrophic microbial consortia enriched from Al-Subiya sabkha in Kuwait were unable to replace calcium carbonate by magnesium carbonate to form any of dolomite’s metastable phases. This inability suggests that dolomitization is a lengthy process at Earth’s surface temperature and the factors controlling microbial ability to precipitate dolomite from saturated solutions are dissimilar to microbial ability to dolomitize precursor calcium carbonate. In Chapter 4, crustacean burrows in Early-Middle Miocene coastal mud volcano outcrop provided channels for the mixing of the seeped methane and the downward seawater flux. The anoxic channels provided the preferential conditions for dolomite formation carried by consortia of methanotrophic archaea and sulphate reducing bacteria. In Chapter 5, organic microanalysis of microbial signatures in the mud volcano showed the immediate proximity of methanotrophic archaea and sulphate reducing bacteria to dolomite in contrast to calcite. This observation is in agreement with microbes as a nucleation site for dolomite to overcome the dolomite kinetic barrier as opposed to calcite formation. | Ph.D. | disparity, knowledge, water, labor, invest, disparity, methane, ecolog | 1, 10, 4, 6, 8, 9, 13, 15 |
| Faruque, Muhammad Omar | Hannigan, John | Mining Capitalism and Contentious Politics in Bangladesh | Sociology | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation analyses a social movement in Bangladesh fighting a potentially environmentally destructive resource extraction project as well as the country’s neoliberal energy policies. Grassroots community grievances against an open pit coalmine in Phulbari in the northwest region started small but culminated in a multi-scalar social movement, including anti-corporate mobilization against privatization of resource extraction at the national level. It also inspired a group of transnational advocacy groups to support the anti-mining movement. Drawing on critical development, social movement, and critical globalization scholarships, the dissertation analyses three distinct scales of the anti-coalmine social mobilizations: local, national, and transnational. Based on a set of qualitative interviews with local/national activists and transnational advocacy groups, I examine each of these scales through the lens of a specific theoretical approach. At the local level, drawing on scholarship on critical development studies, I consider the development of contentious political agency of grassroots communities to analyse the dynamics of the counter-movement against ‘accumulation by dispossession.’ At the national scale, I engage with critical globalization scholarship to analyse discourses of a radical social organization to challenge neoliberal development and its dominant narrative of capitalist modernity. I pay attention to the significance of its political rhetoric (nationalist imaginaries) to articulate a counter-hegemonic political agenda. Finally, at the transnational level, I use sociological scholarship on transnational activism to analyse the mobilization of transnational advocacy groups supporting grassroots mobilization to critically reflect on the dynamics of alliances of differently positioned actors who, although united to achieve a common goal, share different worldviews on how to confront the power of global capital in the periphery. I conclude with the lessons learned from the analysis of the Phulbari movement. I focus on three issues: the salient features of the movement, which can be applied in other cases, the significance of the Phulbari movement to confront resource extraction, and a note on rethinking coal politics in the era of climate crisis. | Ph.D. | worldview, energy, capital, globaliz, climate, environmental | 4, 7, 9, 13 |
| Khan, Khulood Agha | Bakan, Abigail | Mirrors and Reflections: Perceptions of Muslim Immigrant Women in Toronto | Social Justice Education | 2022-03-01 | This study addresses the perceptions that Muslim immigrant women in Canada have about themselves, as self-perception, while also speaking to how they perceive others’ views that affect their lives. Drawing on the experiences and perceptions of self-identified Muslim immigrant women in Toronto, who are English language learners, this study aims to understand Muslim immigrant women’s self-esteem. The study seeks to understand how they perceive themselves, how they simultaneously perceive how others see them in Canada, and the impact of such a double reflexive process. The study examines the cultural and religious impacts on immigrant Muslim women that lead them to deal with a certain “double consciousness” (Du Bois, 1968) to fit into a dominant Canadian culture shaped by colonialism, patriarchy and anti-Muslim racism. Specifically, the study investigates the challenges and needs encountered by Muslim immigrant women in Canada due to existing Orientalist stereotypes and biases about the Muslim community, and how they navigate these challenges. This study adopts a mixed methodology grounded in autoethnography, interviews and a focus group, reflexivity and poetry expression, and creative imagination and visualization. While the study is based on a limited sample, results revealed that Muslim immigrant women’s response to the racist and patriarchal gaze does not diminish their self-esteem; instead, the key finding is that their sense of themselves as agentic, confident women is strong, and this self-perception is not lowered by the perceptions of others. | Ed.D. | racism, women, patriarchy, invest | 4, 5, 2009 |
| Munroe, Jesse Allan | Penfold, Steve||Radforth, Ian | Mistakes by the Lake: Making and Unmaking Space at the Canadian National Exhibition | History | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation examines the Canadian National Exhibition and its site, Exhibition Place in Toronto, to explore the changing constellation of meanings surrounding public architecture over the past century. It reveals the cultural, financial, spatial and emotional dimensions of the built environment. It argues that public structures carry deep-rooted, variegated societal implications, which can be recovered by examining their “lives” and the furor sometimes surrounding their “deaths.” Landmarks are invaluable pieces of civic machinery; they are storehouses of memory and focuses of ritual, and through them we can learn a great deal about the concerns and values of Canadians in the past. As a city-owned site, Exhibition Place offers a uniquely abundant array of archival and newspaper sources for such an intervention. From the 1900s, when the CNE remade itself in the image of Chicago's White City fairground, to the post-war era when it became Toronto's proving ground for modern architecture, to the present day when the trend is to destroy rather than to create functional public spaces, the city's waterfront has experienced far more change than continuity. Each generation has interpreted their forebears' legacies in a different light, and found new ways to adapt, corrupt, or misuse them. Financial concerns have transformed Exhibition Place from a working site of memory to a nearly featureless, antiseptic trade show complex. Few Torontonians have appreciated the value of their old buildings, a situation worsened by the CNE's invisibility during the fifty weeks each year during which it does not operate. This has made any attempt at historical preservation an extremely fraught affair. By studying the evolution and devolution of public architecture, then, we are also studying the evolution and devolution of our senses of self. | Ph.D. | water, buildings, trade, land, corrupt | 6, 9, 10, 15, 16 |
| Duong, Angela | Andreazza, Ana C | Mitochondrial Dysfunction in Bipolar Disorder with a Family History of Mitochondrial Disease: From Family Genetics to Patient-derived Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-based Neuronal Models | Pharmacology | 2021-11-01 | Bipolar disorder (BD) is a complex mood disorder with high heterogeneity and unclear pathophysiology. Mitochondrial dysfunction has been repeatedly observed in BD; however, our understanding of mitochondrial dysfunction remains incomplete due to the lack of patient stratification, nuclear and mitochondrial genomics, and patient-derived neuronal models. The objective of this thesis was to investigate mitochondrial genetics and function in BD with or without a family history of mitochondrial disease. To achieve this, we (1) identified two families, each with at least one surviving member with BD and two deceased offspring with mitochondrial disease and BD patients without family history of mitochondrial disease; (2) performed nuclear and mitochondrial genome sequencing to evaluate family genetics and; (3) developed patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cell- (iPSC-) based neuronal models to uncover mitochondrial signatures specific to BD with a family history of mitochondrial disease. Nuclear and mitochondrial genome sequencing uncovered two novel variants in two genes, NUBPL and COMT, shared amongst BD across two unrelated families. While these variants require functional validation, we showed that bi-genomic sequencing could detect novel variants. Next, we generated patient-derived iPSCs and neural progenitor cells (NPCs). Grouping the family cases by the NUBPL and COMT variants, we identified that BD with a family history of mitochondrial disease presented lower maximal respiration in the iPSCs, higher proton leak and lower total ATP levels in NPCs compared to relatives. Furthermore, BD with a family history of mitochondrial disease presented lower glycolytic markers in the iPSCs than BD without a family history of mitochondrial disease. Our study demonstrates the importance of stratifying the heterogeneous BD patients into mitochondrial-based subgroups to unveil unique signatures of mitochondrial dysfunction. While single-cell models like iPSCs and NPCs offer insights into disease pathophysiology, there is a need to develop a disease model that recapitulates the complexity of the human brain. Therefore, we developed cerebral organoids (COs) from iPSCs derived from human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) and demonstrated preserved mitochondrial genetics and function across PBMCs to iPSCs to COs for the first time. These COs may serve as models to further investigate the role of mitochondrial dysfunction in BD. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Atkins, Michael H | Keller, Gordon M | Modeling Human Yolk Sac Hematopoiesis with Pluripotent Stem Cells | Medical Biophysics | 2020-11-01 | Embryonic hematopoiesis in the mouse consists of distinct programs that differ in their lineage potential and spatiotemporal organization. Prior to the generation of hematopoietic stem cells, the yolk sac initiates three programs, known as the primitive, erythro-myeloid progenitor (EMP) and lymphoid-primed multipotent progenitor (LMP) programs. While these programs do not contribute to long-term, multilineage hematopoiesis, their innate immune cell progeny seed and persist in the tissues throughout development and adult life. These populations execute organ-specific functions to maintain homeostasis. Given the transient nature of their progenitors and their emergence at early stages of development, the identification and study of these programs has not been possible in the human embryo. To overcome this hurdle and access these progenitor populations, I established a developmental biology-guided protocol to generate the yolk sac hematopoietic programs from human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) in vitro. Using this strategy, I show that the human primitive hematopoietic program transitions through a NOTCH-dependent progenitor, known as the hemogenic endothelial cell (HEC), prior to the generation of the first hematopoietic cells. Coincident with the emergence of primitive hematopoietic cells, I demonstrate that a second population of HECs gives rise to the progenitors of the EMP program. This second HEC population also harbours T lymphoid potential indicative of the development of the LMP program. Clonal analyses revealed that the EMP and LMP programs derive from a common hematopoietic progenitor, defining in the human, a unified yolk sac program that develops from a multipotent cell. Together, the findings from my PhD project outline the architecture of the equivalent of the developing human yolk sac hematopoietic system and in doing so, offers a progenitor source for the study of the function of tissue-resident immune cells and their role in disease. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Naseri, Ali | Thomson, Murray J | Modeling of Carbon Nanoparticle Formation in Combustion and Pyrolysis Environments and Its Application in the Carbon Black Industry | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Carbonaceous nanoparticles such as soot and carbon black (CB) are formed during the incomplete combustion or pyrolysis of hydrocarbons. Soot is a threat to human health and climate change, while CB has diverse applications that depend on the particle morphology, e.g., aggregate structure. Predictive numerical tools capable of estimating the mean particle properties such as the primary particle size, mobility diameter, and particle number density help to prevent the unwanted formation of soot and assist the CB manufacturers to fine-tune their products. This thesis seeks the implementation of an aerosol dynamics model into a plug flow code to simulate the CB synthesis in flow reactors. Inception, surface growth, and coagulation control process yield and agglomerate morphology. New particles are formed by the reversible clustering of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) followed by chemical bond formation, i.e., chemical dimerization, and grow with Hydrogen Abstraction Carbon Addition and chemical adsorption of PAHs on the surface of particles. Irreversible PAH clustering and surface adsorption continuously convert more than 90% of the PAH precursors to new particles even in the low temperature (T | Ph.D. | climate | 13 |
| Quevedo, Rene | Pugh, Trevor J||Haibe-Kains, Benjamin | Modeling the Mechanistic and Therapeutic Roles of Allele Specific Copy Number Alterations in Cancer | Medical Biophysics | 2021-06-01 | Aneuploidy, loosely defined as an imbalance of chromosomes, is found in ~90% of all solid tumors and can affect ~33% of the genome ranging from focal aberrations to an entire chromosome or chromosomal-arm. Despite this overwhelming prevalence and severity, copy-number based biomarkers are typically represented at the gene-level and any allelic imbalance is largely ignored. In this thesis, I explore the mechanistic and therapeutic roles of allele-specific copy-number (ASCN) aberrations in cancer and how it compares to an absolute copy-number analysis. I illustrate the mechanistic relevance of ASCN profiles by using a multi-omic and meta-analysis approach to uncover a highly conserved copy-neutral loss-of- heterozygosity pattern in pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PANETs). By inferring molecular timing of the somatic mutations in the context of purity and ploidy, I proposed an evolutionary model for a subset of aggressive PANETs that is initiated by mutation of MEN1, ATRX and DAXX. These insights aid in disease risk stratification and guide the way for exploring clinically relevant therapeutic vulnerabilities. I developed two strategies to gauge the therapeutic relevance of ASCN profiles. First, I describe CCLid, a method I developed to cross-validate the genetic identity and karyotypic similarity of 1,497 unique cell lines found in three large pharmacogenomic datasets. I show that genetic drift is widely prevalent between cell lines and that genetic drift occurs between molecular profiles of the same cell line within a single dataset. Second, I employ a deep learning algorithm that utilizes these ASCN profiles to predict cancer-type and drug-response across these same datasets. I use a Hilbert space-filling curve to map the ASCN profiles of these cell lines to a compressed 2D visualization for use in convolutional neural networks. In comparison to a total copy-number predictor that utilizes either gene- or bin-level features, I found that the ASCN encoding can better predict both cancer-types and drug-response. These results suggest that an ASCN approach can be used to boost other molecular profiles to provide a cohesive view of biological mechanisms guiding tumorigenesis, as well as effectively used to improve the performance of predictive models that use copy-number features. | Ph.D. | learning, conserv, conserv | 4, 14, 15 |
| Hawkins, Jason Fraser | Nurul Habib, Khandker M. | Modelling Spatial Location Choice and Transition for a Changing Urban Landscape | Civil Engineering | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation focuses on the integration of models of spatial location and transportation decision-making that form the core of modern integrated urban models. A conceptual framework for the modelling of household behaviour is developed from the theory of home production. This theory provides a means of integrating individual time-use and household consumption of goods and services in a consistent microeconomic model structure. It is shown that budgetary constraints on time-use and consumption can be used to relate models of long-term location choice with activity-based transportation demand models and macroeconomic models. The dissertation contains six empirical studies that develop elements of the proposed conceptual framework for integrated urban modelling. The first two studies focus on shifts in residential location choice. The first of these studies estimates a residential location choice model that incorporates intra-household negotiations. The second study applies a choice set formation model to a panel of residential location choice data to explore potential shifts in the types of dwellings considered by households. A third location study applies a latent auction approach to establishment location choice. It tests a structural specification of agglomeration using a generalized nested logit correlation structure. The final three empirical studies focus on elements of the home production model. The first of these studies develops a framework for data fusion and synthesis to construct the dataset necessary for the estimation of the home production model. The model is then derived from microeconomic foundations and estimated using this dataset. The final empirical study isolates a component of the home production model; specifically, the relationship between population density and household consumption. Taken together, the components of this dissertation provide a sophisticated framework for the integrated modelling of urban systems and empirical validation of several elements of the framework. | Ph.D. | urban, transit, consum, production, land use, land | 11, 12, 15 |
| Bolongaita, Lady Josef Anne C. | Laporte, Audrey||Deber, Raisa | Modelling the impact of changes in education requirements on nurses’ labour market outcomes | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | Provinces across Canada, with the exception of Québec, have changed their Entry-to-Practice (ETP) requirements for Registered Nurses (RNs) from a diploma to a baccalaureate degree in nursing. The variation in introduction of the RN ETP requirement across Canada was used to investigate its impact on RNs’ probability of participation in the nursing labour force (relative to non-nursing employment and being ‘unemployed/out of the labour force/retired’), wages, and choice of care sector of employment. Licensed Practical Nurses (LPNs) simultaneously experienced a change in ETP requirement. LPNs’ labour market outcomes were also examined because LPNs are thought to offset changes in RNs’ labour force participation. Nurses’ outcomes were modelled using a nationally representative longitudinal dataset that captures nurses between 1996 and 2010, allowing for unobserved heterogeneity to correlate with the covariates. I found that the change in RN ETP requirement did not impact RNs’ or LPNs’ participation in the nursing labour force; however, RNs’ and LPNs’ probabilities of non-nursing employment and being ‘unemployed/out of the labour force/retired’ were impacted. The change in the RN ETP requirement did not impact RNs’ average wage and had no differential effect between diploma and baccalaureate RNs and between newly trained and experienced nurses. LPNs’ average wage across the country decreased post-changes in the RN ETP requirement. On the other hand, the change in the LPN ETP requirement did not impact RNs’ and LPNs’ average wage; however, newly trained baccalaureate RNs faced a wage decrease after changes in the LPN policy. The change in the RN ETP requirement had no effect on RNs’ and LPNs’ choice of care sector of employment. Relative to diploma RNs, baccalaureate RNs’ probability of working in the community sector increased after changes in the LPN ETP requirement. The likelihood of LPNs working in hospitals increased as their probability of working in the community decreased after the change in their ETP requirement. Jurisdictions should consider the labour market impact of changes in ETP requirement on targeted as well as non-targeted nursing categories, and the potential impact on a range of nurses’ labour market outcomes. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, wage, invest | 8, 9 |
| Donaldson, Hilary Seraph | Lee, Sherry | Modernism and the Sacred in the Music of Benjamin Britten | Music | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation examines English musical modernism through the lens of Benjamin Britten’s engagement with the sacred, focussing on his affinity for sacred and liturgical imagery both on and off the stage, and inside and outside of the church. Although Britten’s oeuvre is shot through with ideas and themes that are in direct conversation with both sacred traditions and cultural indices of modernism, scholars have only recently positioned him as an emblematic modernist composer. This overlook is due in no small part to his lifelong interest in exploring themes and musical structures drawn from the Anglo-Catholic church which put his music at odds with dominant discourses of high modernism. This dominant modernist discourse has been construed not only in terms of an avant-garde aesthetic, but in a distinctly secular opposition to tradition. I examine Britten’s pervasive use of the narratives, tropes, liturgies, and framework of the institutional church in England, arguing for the need to foreground the sacred in Britten interpretation more broadly. My analysis includes liturgical works (e.g. Rejoice in the Lamb Op. 30, Missa Brevis in D Op. 63) alongside others for non-liturgical contexts (“Chorale [after an Old French Carol],” Curlew River Op. 71, Children’s Crusade Op. 82). Understanding Britten’s modernism as an intentional engagement with the present by means of shared reference points and traditions, I argue these works are best understood in connection with Britten’s collaborations with clergy and church musicians, and his investment in the communities which sustained both. The constellation of issues I bring together in this study includes: (1) the tensions within our conception of Britten as both a modernist figure and as a composer of church music; (2) how familiar tropes of musical modernism in the twentieth century find new contexts and new significance through their rapprochement with the sacred and liturgical in the Britten repertoire; and (3) the untenability of a simplistic division of sacred and secular as it functions within Britten’s oeuvre. My approach is to clarify where tensions exist, rather than seeking to resolve them; indeed, such tension indelibly inflects Britten’s own engagement with both the sacred and the modernist. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, land, institut | 8, 9, 15, 16 |
| Hernandez, Jose Javier | Wrana, Jeff | Modularity in Somatic Cell Reprogramming | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | Reprogramming relies on the concept that cellular fate is plastic, and therefore a considerable effort has been made to develop molecular strategies that reset the epigenome to achieve distinct cell fates, including stem cells. Deriving induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells has thus emerged as a critical approach in personalized regenerative medicine that provides an exclusive platform to study human development ex utero, engineer complex tissues, and build new models of human disease. However, reprogramming human somatic cells is an inefficient and nebulous, ill-defined process, and thus to benefit from the potential of iPS cell technology, it is essential to understand the mechanisms underlying cell fate transitions. Here, I explored the transcriptome dynamics of human cells as they acquire pluripotency and propose a novel model of modular-based reprogramming. My observations suggest that numerous common pathways observed during reprogramming are implemented in varying temporal orders across distinct systems, and show that disparate/opposing developmental programs can co-exist within individual cells. By applying a barcoded, single cell-tracing platform, I further identified a subpopulation of highly plastic cells that can access multiple cell fates, of which iPS cells is one of them. Moreover, I show that these cells elicit an elite gene signature that is shared with another highly plastic cell type shed from the kidneys that has elite reprogramming features. These results provide a new perspective on reprogramming as a non-linear process that requires a highly plastic intermediary cell state to achieve pluripotency. By applying this philosophy of reprogramming I propose that we can achieve a better understanding of cell fate control and propel more effective translation of stem cell biology. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Kumar, Sachin | Taylor, Michael D | Molecular Biology of Childhood Brain Tumours | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-11-01 | Malignancies of the central nervous system are the leading cause of cancer-related death in children. These cancers pose a significant clinical burden due to limited treatment options and substantial morbidity from chemotherapy and radiation sequelae during childhood. Two of the most common pediatric brain tumours are medulloblastoma and ependymoma. Over the past decade, advances in genomics have allowed for these tumours to be classified into molecularly and clinically distinct subgroups. These studies have enabled researchers to identify drivers of tumorigenesis, uncover novel vulnerabilities, and propose putative targeted treatments. In this thesis, I continue to build upon these findings. First, examining the genetic landscape of non-coding mutations in medulloblastoma we identify a highly recurrent mutation in the U1 small nuclear RNA. These mutations are prognostically relevant, represent a novel type of splicing-related mutation, and provide a new avenue to develop targeted immunotherapies. Next, we establish primary patient derived models of the lethal PFA ependymoma subgroup. Through a series of experiments, we characterize a metabolic-epigenetic axis that drives PFA growth and propose a “Goldilocks Model” of PFA tumorigenesis. Finally, we establish that the metabolic phenotype of PFA mirrors that of normal cerebellar development. Thus, characterizing the molecular biology of medulloblastoma and ependymoma has revealed novel drivers of disease, advancing our capacity to develop targeted treatments for these dismal cancers. | Ph.D. | land | 15 |
| Titton Dias, Otavio Augusto | Sain, Mohini | Molecular Design and Structural Optimization of Nanocellulose-Based Functional Films | Forestry | 2022-03-01 | The present work is focused on molecular design and structural optimization of nanocellulose-based functional films. Since nanocellulose can be modulated and designed at the molecular level, tunable chemistry and functionalization of nanocellulose can offer much richer materials properties and more possibilities to construct nanomaterials with numerous features for advanced applications. Herein, the grafting of carbazole units on allyl-functionalized nanofibrillated cellulose (NFC) enabled photoluminescence activity. Additionally, flexible, strong, and electrically conductive nanocellulose-based polythiophene nanofilms were fabricated. The results reveal that cellulose nanofibers changed their nature from insulator to semiconductor. Finally, regioselective functionalization of NFC was conducted to investigate whether precise control of the positioning of functional groups can enhance the electroactivity properties of nanocellulose-based films. Regioselective tuning for the design and configuration of flexible nano-substrates as demonstrated in this study can be replicated by other researchers for other cellulose derivatives. The synergetic effect of two or even three different moieties grafted on anhydroglucose units may create limitless possibilities for the design of advanced engineered nanomaterials. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Loganathan, Neruja | Belsham, Denise D | Molecular Mechanisms Involved in the Regulation of Agouti-related Peptide and Neuropeptide Y by Endocrine Disrupting Chemical Bisphenol A in Hypothalamic nNurons | Physiology | 2021-06-01 | Bisphenol A (BPA), a ubiquitous endocrine disrupting chemical found in plastics and receipts, is a disruptor of reproductive function and is a known ‘obesogen’ as it is linked to increased body mass index in humans and leads to weight gain in animal models. The hypothalamus houses orexigenic NPY/AgRP neurons, which integrate peripheral hormones and nutritional signals, to increase food intake and decrease energy expenditure. NPY neurons are also afferent regulators of the hypothalamic-pituitary gonadal axis, and thus reproductive function. This thesis investigated whether the NPY/AgRP neurons, and particularly Npy and Agrp expression, are altered by BPA. We hypothesized that BPA increases Npy and Agrp gene expression in hypothalamic neurons and that this effect is mediated through nuclear receptor activation, induction of cellular stress and subsequent transcription factor activation or circadian dysregulation. We demonstrated that BPA increased Agrp mRNA expression in mHypoA-59 and mHypoE-41 cells. Inhibition of AMPK and knock-down of transcription factor ATF3 prevented the BPA-mediated increase in Agrp expression in the mHypoA-59 cells. ATF3 was also required for BPA-mediated increase in Npy in the mHypoE-41 cells. We also described subpopulation-specific changes in Npy expression in response to BPA. While BPA induced Npy expression in mHypoA-59, -2/12 and mHypoE-41, -42 neurons, Npy expression was downregulated in mHypoE-46 and -44 neurons. Inhibition of AMPK with compound C or oxidative stress with antioxidants and vitamin B6 prevented the BPA-mediated induction in Npy in the mHypoA-59 cells, whereas antagonism of ERß or GPER prevented the decrease in Npy mRNA in the mHypoE-46 cells. Finally, we showed that circadian gene dysregulation occurred with BPA exposure and using hypothalamic cell lines lacking BMAL1, demonstrated that the BPA-mediated induction of Npy, but not Agrp, required BMAL1. Accordingly, treatment with BPA increased BMAL1 binding to the Npy promoter. These findings illustrate distinct mechanisms responsible for the BPA-mediated changes in appetite-increasing Npy and Agrp gene expression, suggesting that NPY/AgRP neurons are susceptible to the endocrine disrupting effects of BPA. Furthermore, we describe potential targetable pathways to combat the obesogenic or reproductive dysfunction-inducing effects of BPA at the hypothalamic level. | Ph.D. | nutrition, energy, invest, animal, animal | 2, 7, 9, 14, 15 |
| Rajakumar, Sujeetha Angel | Danska, Jayne S | Molecular Mechanisms of Bone Destruction and Central Nervous System Invasion in B Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia | Medical Biophysics | 2019-11-01 | The use of intensified multiagent and prophylactic central nervous system (CNS)-directed chemotherapy has achieved improved survival for pediatric patients with B-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (B-ALL). However, skeletal morbidities and CNS leukemia continue to pose significant clinical challenges in B-ALL patients underscoring the need to identify the underlying mechanisms and to develop effective targeted therapies. My thesis project aimed to elucidate molecular mechanisms of bone destruction and CNS invasion in B-ALL and to provide evidence for potential targeted therapies to ameliorate these complications. Using a genetically sensitized mouse model of spontaneous B-ALL and primary patient-derived xenograft (PDX) mouse models, we demonstrated that B-ALL cells cause bone destruction and identified the receptor activator of nuclear factor kappa-B (RANK-RANKL) ligand axis as critical in these effects. Treatment of PDX mice with a RANKL antagonist recombinant Osteoprotegerin-Fc (rOPG-Fc) conferred robust protection from bone destruction. We examined routes of leukemic cell entry into the CNS and demonstrated that both mouse and primary human B-ALL cells migrated to the skull and vertebral bone marrow (BM) and further transited into the subarachnoid (SA) space of the CNS. Strikingly, rOPG-Fc protected both skull and vertebral BM from human B-ALL cell invasion and prevented transit into the SA space. Moreover, pharmacological inhibition of the C-X-C chemokine receptor type 4 (CXCR4) in human BCR-ABL+ PDX mice prevented leukemic cell migration from skull/vertebral BM into the SA space. Overall, these findings demonstrate two mechanisms of CNS invasion by B-ALL that can be opposed by targeted treatments. Finally, we identified unique transcriptional and functional signatures in pediatric mixed lineage leukemia (MLL) which reveal distinct cell intrinsic behavior of lymphoid- and myeloid-like MLL populations and striking adaptations to the CNS microenvironment. Collectively, this thesis reports novel molecular mechanisms of B-ALL mediated bone destruction and CNS invasion and identifies actionable therapeutic targets to reduce these morbidities. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Vassiliou, Constantine | Kingston, Rebecca | Montesquieu's Moderation: Commercial Innovation and Public Responsibility in Eighteenth-century Britain and France | Political Science | 2019-11-01 | The dissertation considers Montesquieu’s conception of moderation in the context of John Law’s economic system in France. In considering the institutional and intellectual context of Law’s ‘System’, the first part casts light upon the unsavoury effects of unfettered commerce in Bourbon France, and examines their formative influence upon Montesquieu’s political thought. It explains that Law’s System threatened to produce a despotism of the most pernicious sort. Unlike traditional threats to moderate government that stemmed from absolute princely rule or clerical power, the form of despotism that concerned Montesquieu most came from a fusion of financial and political power. He moreover feared that Law’s financial system fed into an emerging commercial culture of the time, which perceived money and personal wealth as the greatest arbiter of social standing. As a corrective, Montesquieu provides an elegant theory of moderate government, which reinvigorates institutions of honour to foster a hierarchy of value in the public mind that privileges civic engagement over wealth and commercial success. In comparing the political thought of Montesquieu, David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson, the second part of the project unearths a conceptually distinct idea of eighteenth-century political moderation, which paradoxically relies on pre-modern institutions to preserve liberty and political order in a modern commercial context. These themes will help illuminate post-Cold War attempts at dealing with the explosion of liberal capitalism as the de facto global standard. Francis Fukuyama, who famously proclaimed that there is no viable alternative to this dominant ideology, examined its deep roots to discover sources for taking advantage of it while counteracting its pathologies. The subsequent third-way politics of the 1990s and centrist attempts to counteract the recent wave of populism in the West each aim to protect the existing liberal economic order from more debased forms. Their attempts at moderating the excesses of liberal capitalism in some ways mirror the moderate compromises that Montesquieu and his Scottish counterparts deemed necessary for guaranteeing a free and stable order. The dissertation carefully reconstructs their visions of free and moderate government so that the limits and potential of this analogy can be fully understood. | Ph.D. | capital, institut | 9, 16 |
| Dahl, Shayne Allan Peter | Boddy, Janice||Sanders, Todd | Mountains of Time: Historical Consciousness and Sacred Mountains in Japan | Anthropology | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation presents an ethnographic account of mountain asceticism and pilgrimage in Dewa Sanzan, a sacred mountain range in Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. I argue that the space of Dewa Sanzan, like that of other sacred mountains in Japan, stands not only in topographical contrast with the urban sprawl in valleys below, but also in temporal contrast with a culturally and historically unique form of capitalist modernity. For contemporary practitioners, mountain ascetic rituals and pilgrimage bend the linear, clock-time of capitalist modernity into a premodern-like cyclical time of annual rebirth in the mountain’s symbolic womb and of ancestral return on mountain summits. Each chapter of this dissertation explores different ways in which Mount Haguro, Gassan, and Mount Yudono, the three mountains of Dewa Sanzan, constitute a spatiotemporal alterity in modern Japanese society. Dewa Sanzan is a place that evokes modes of historical consciousness for visitors, some of which are contested, but all of which reach into the past as imagined. Engagements with the spatialized past of Dewa Sanzan enable modern people to fashion themselves anew, reconnect with ancestors, and gain a critical perspective of society. | Ph.D. | capital, urban | 9, 11 |
| Burgener, Justin Matthew | Bratman, Scott V||De Carvalho, Daniel D | Multimodal Profiling of Cell-free DNA for Detection and Characterization of Circulating Tumour DNA in Low Tumour Burden Settings | Medical Biophysics | 2022-03-01 | Circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) is comprised of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) fragments released into bodily fluids. ctDNA can enable personalized treatment strategies in oncology by providing a non-invasive source of prognostic, predictive, and pharmacodynamic biomarkers. Despite this, in clinical scenarios where disease burden is low, current clinical ctDNA detection methods demonstrate inadequate sensitivity without the use of matched tumour profiling. In recent years a variety of sequencing tools have been developed to improve the sensitivity of detection by increasing the number of fragments analyzed, decreasing sources of error, or enrichment of cancer-derived features. Yet few studies have comprehensively evaluated the clinical utility of tumour-agnostic detection of ctDNA. Therefore, to address this gap in knowledge, I first refined a recently described method for genome-wide profiling of cfDNA, cell-free methylated DNA immunoprecipitation by high-throughput sequencing (cfMeDIP-seq). Specifically, adaptations to the cfMeDIP-seq protocol were conducted to enable analysis of lengths of cfDNA fragments, which are thought to be shorter among tumour-derived fragments (i.e., ctDNA) compared with other sources of cfDNA. Additionally, bioinformatic pipelines were developed to assess quality assurance as well as metrics for robust identification of ctDNA. Next, I evaluated the feasibility of simultaneous profiling of multiple ctDNA-derived metrics for tumour-agnostic detection. I applied these new tools to a cohort of 30 human papillomavirus (HPV) negative head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients (HNSCC). Specifically, I conducted cfMeDIP-seq as well as cancer personalized profiling by deep sequencing (CAPP-Seq) for detection of ctDNA-derived methylated regions and mutations, respectively. Twenty out of 30 patients had detectable ctDNA by CAPP-Seq, which I utilized to identify 941 hypermethylated regions associated with HNSCC cfDNA when compared to a cohort of 20 healthy donors. These fragments with ctDNA were confirmed by concordance of regions commonly dysregulated within publicly available tumour data, as well as by concordance of reduced fragment length and abundance between cfMeDIP-seq and CAPP-Seq. Finally, I demonstrate that multimodal detection within the same cohort is capable of robust diagnosis, prognostication, and disease surveillance. Altogether, this work describes the development of a novel strategy for ctDNA detection and validation, with promising potential for various research and clinical applications. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Chimisso dos Santos, Daniela | Trebilcock, Michael J||Prado, Mariana M | Multinational Enterprises as Institutional Entrepreneurs: Directed and Diffused Institutional Strategies and Development | Law | 2019-11-01 | How institutions are improved is the Achilles’ heel of institutional reform. In the development agenda, institutional reform has been consigned to host states, with the help of international development agencies and international financial institutions. The multinational enterprise (MNE) is often seen as an opportunistic agent that avails itself of institutional fragilities for its own gain and rarely as an institutional change agent for development. This thesis explores when and under what circumstances it is likely for MNEs’ institutional work through the creation, maintenance, and disruption of institutions in host countries to advance the broader social welfare of the host country and not only the MNEs’ best interests. Using a multidisciplinary approach, this dissertation presents a conceptual framework and argues that MNEs engage in a range of actions of institutional work strategies. At the end point of this range are two overarching types of institutional work—directed and diffused institutional entrepreneurship. Directed institutional entrepreneurship occurs when the MNE targets one specific local institution and actively engages with it. In contrast, diffused institutional entrepreneurship is widespread, and the MNE’s institutional entrepreneurship can be seen throughout a constellation of institutions. As MNEs act using such institutional work strategies, this dissertation further proposes three conditions that increase the likelihood of positive advancement in the social welfare of the host country. The first is the robustness of the home country’s institutional quality, the second is the types of institutions that are targeted by the MNE when it engages in institutional work, and the third is the type of ally that the MNE brings on board to assist in its institutional work endeavours. To strengthen the conceptual arguments presented in this thesis, four examples of directed and diffused institutional entrepreneurship based on investments by two MNEs—Vale S.A. and Rio Tinto plc. in the Global North and the Global South—are offered. | S.J.D. | welfare, entrepreneur, invest, institut | 1, 8, 9, 16 |
| Ataei, Mohammadmehdi | Bussmann, Markus||Park, Chul | Multi-Physics Simulation of Foaming Phenomena | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Polymer foams are usually produced by injecting gas at high pressure into a molten polymer, and then reducing the pressure suddenly to nucleate gas bubbles. The nucleated bubbles grow and form a low density cellular structure that has many applications. This thesis focuses on the development of numerical models for the simulation of foaming phenomena. Different simulation techniques, including the lattice Boltzmann method, molecular dynamics, and the immerse boundary method, are explored to develop a an improved 1D Cell Model, as well as a comprehensive 2D/3D numerical model that accounts for all physical aspects of foaming, and can be used for modeling of the foaming process and polymer foam composites. An improved 1D Cell Model is presented where the effect of the local variation of viscosity around growing bubbles is investigated. Due to the diffusion of gas from the polymer melt into growing bubbles, the viscosity at the bubble-melt interface can be significantly larger than further from the bubble. This effect of the viscosity profile on bubble growth and deformation is numerically investigated. We show that the viscosity variation slows the bubble growth rate at the early stages, and increases the resistance of bubbles to deformation. Next, a 2D/3D free surface lattice Boltzmann method simulation package called LBfoam for the simulation of foaming processes is presented. The model incorporates the essential physics of foaming phenomena: gas diffusion into nucleated bubbles, bubble dynamics and coalescence, surface tension, the stabilizing disjoining pressure between bubbles, and Newtonian and non-Newtonian rheological models. Finally, a hybrid lattice Boltzmann method-molecular dynamics-immersed boundary method model is presented for simulating the foaming process of polymer composites. The LBfoam solver is used to resolve the foaming process, and the MD model accounts for filler dynamics. These two solvers are coupled by a direct forcing IBM. This solver can simulate composite foaming processes involving many bubbles and filler particles, including rigid, deformable, and fragile fillers. The solver relaxes most simplifying assumptions of earlier polymer composite models, allowing for a better understanding of filler motion and interaction with growing bubbles, to produce composite foams with improved mechanical, electrical, and electromagnetic properties. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Yadav, Shwetank | Singh, Chandra V | Multiscale Modelling of Hydrochlorination Reactions for Solar Grade Silicon Production | Materials Science and Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The rapid growth in silicon photovoltaics deployment has led to increased research focus on the energy and capital intensive refining of solar grade silicon. The most commonly implemented first step in refining of solar grade silicon involves converting metallurgical grade silicon to gaseous trichlorosilane (TCS). In order to further investigate this reactive process, the interaction of H2, HCl and relevant chlorosilanes with the Si(100)-c(4x2) surface and catalytic Cu3Si surface was investigated using atomic scale density functional theory (DFT). All molecules underwent dissociative chemisorption with HCl and SiCl2 possessing the strongest binding energies. An elementary reaction network was derived for each surface, with 27 reactions for Si (100) and 20 reactions for Cu3Si, exploring formation of all chlorosilane intermediates species from two to four atoms, five product gas species as well as surface diffusion. The activation barriers and reaction rate constants for each of these reactions were also determined. Activation barriers were significantly lower for the Cu3Si. These values were then fed into meso-scale kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations, including the effect of lateral interactions, over a temperature of 900 - 1200 K. The production of TCS on Cu3Si was at least four orders of magnitude higher than on the Si (100). The formation of TCS on Si (100) was found to have four possible routes, involving SiCl2*, SiHCl* or SiCl3* as key intermediates. The formation of SiCl* from a solid surface Si atom or the formation of SiHCl2 from SiHCl* was found to be the rate determining step (RDS) depending on pathway. The formation of TCS on Cu3Si had only one active pathway, with SiCl3* as a key intermediate and one step formation of SiCl2* from surface Si as RDS. The SiCl* adsorbate strongly disliked presence of H* or Cl* and this inactivated several predicted reactions. TCS production had higher selectivity on Cu3Si for low to mid temperatures and peaked in production rate and selectivity at 950 K. Effective activation energies were obtained for use in macroscale modeling. This work gives insight into reaction mechanisms for hydrochlorination surfaces and kinetic parameters which can be used in process optimization and development. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, capital, invest, production, species, species | 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Hung, Shih-Ping | Hodaie, Mojgan | Multivariate Prediction of Pain Relief Following Surgical Interventions for Trigeminal Neuralgia: Intersections Between Brain Imaging and Machine Learning | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Trigeminal neuralgia (TN) is a chronic neuropathic facial pain disorder characterized by severe lancinating pain. While surgical treatments exist for TN, 20-30% of patients achieve minimal pain relief and require multiple, repeat interventions. Structural neuroimaging of TN has revealed widespread white and gray matter abnormalities in central nervous system and peripheral nervous system areas implicated in sensory and emotional processing of facial pain. While group-level associations have been shown between these abnormalities and TN surgical treatment response, whether these abnormalities are effective predictors of surgical treatment response remain unclear. The overarching goal of this dissertation is to combine structural neuroimaging and machine learning (ML) techniques to identify and understand individual-level predictors of TN surgical treatment response. The main aims are: 1) to investigate the role of pre-treatment trigeminal nerve microstructural diffusivity patterns as predictors of long-term response to surgical treatment for TN; 2) to characterize temporal patterns of trigeminal nerve microstructural diffusivities following surgical treatment for TN with respect to treatment response; 3) to investigate the role of pre-treatment regional brain gray matter morphology as predictors of long-term response to surgical treatment for TN; and 4) to investigate the potential of a ML-derived biomarker (brain age gap estimate; brain-AGE) as a pre-treatment predictor of long-term response to surgical treatment for TN. Study 1 demonstrated that pre-treatment diffusivity patterns within peripheral and brainstem portions of trigeminal nerves can predict long-term response to TN surgery. Study 2 revealed that post-treatment patterns of microstructural diffusivities within trigeminal nerves of TN patients are associated with response to TN surgery and that treatment response is associated with temporally delayed fractional anisotropy reduction within the treatment target. Study 3 identified pre-treatment regional brain gray matter morphology (surface area and cortical thickness) as effective predictors of long-term response to TN surgery. Study 4 demonstrated that brain-AGE was elevated in TN patients and can differentiate long-term responders from non-responders to TN surgery. In sum, this thesis identified novel collections of effective TN surgical treatment response predictors and provided several candidate ML models which may serve as sensible starting points toward personalized surgical treatment response prognostication paradigms in TN. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Saumur, Tyler | Mathur, Sunita||Mansfield, Avril | Muscle Matters: Understanding how Muscle Function Contributes to Reactive Stepping Performance | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-11-01 | Muscle weakness and balance control are two important predictors of fall risk. The main objective of this work was to determine how leg muscle function contributes to reactive stepping performance – a strategy used to recover balance. Studies 1-3 were conducted in young, healthy adults and study 4 was performed in individuals with chronic stroke. The first study demonstrated that force plate measures used to estimate foot-off and swing times of the stepping limb following a loss of balance had good to excellent between-session reliability. The second study highlighted unique function-specific increases in muscle activity following larger balance perturbations. Namely, the timing of muscle activation suggested that the modulation of medial gastrocnemius and biceps femoris was likely important for reducing forward momentum, propelling the swing limb forward, and applying braking forces at foot contact. In addition, increased muscle activity of the vastus lateralis and tibialis anterior likely contributed to earlier foot-off times and restabilization of the centre of mass following foot contact. The third study found that while most measures of muscle strength and explosive force were not related to reactive step timing, knee extensor explosive force was correlated with swing time. The last study revealed strong correlations between the average number of steps required to recover balance and knee flexor and extensor concentric peak torque in chronic stroke. Overall, the findings of this work suggest that muscle function contributes to reactive stepping performance, with the knee extensors having an important role particularly during restabilization. Variability in strength and balance control due to aging or neurological injury may accentuate these correlations to a greater extent and warrant further investigation. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Becker, Hanne | Komisaruk, Kevin | Music for God’s Glory: The Improvisatory Organ Music of Matthias Weckmann (1616 – 1674) | Music | 2021-06-01 | The improvisatory music of German organist-composer Matthias Weckmann (1616 – 1674) has remained largely undervalued and underperformed for almost 400 years, arguably suffering a similar fate as did the works of Johann Sebastian Bach (until Felix Mendelssohn sparked a revived interest in Bach’s music during the early 19th-century). Despite Weckmann’s relative obscurity today, interest in his music is growing. Weckmann studied organ, singing and counterpoint with the famed Heinrich Schütz and Jacob Praetorius II, and was hailed as a “true virtuoso” by contemporary Johann Jakob Froberger after a legendary improvisation contest between the two musicians. This study documents the search for, and deeper understanding of, Weckmann’s improvisatory competencies through exploring the different facets of his life, relationships, and work — and ultimately how Weckmann contributed to the legacy of improvisation within the realm of North German baroque organ music. I document Weckmann’s life, his travels, the influences of his teachers and the breathtakingly beautiful instruments that shaped his artistic style and registrational practice. With a view towards 1) engendering a deeper and more comprehensive stylistic understanding of Weckmann’s music, 2) solving numerous problems of attribution, and 3) laying the groundwork for a new performer’s edition of Weckmann’s Organ Works, the dissertation provides an in-depth analysis of the Free and Chorale-based works. The study frames Weckmann’s genius in terms of his exceptional contrapuntal skill, improvisatory imagination, sensitivity to sacred texts, as well as the creative methods he implemented to maximize exploration of the expressive possibilities of the organ, thereby bringing his diverse set of powerful musical ideas to life. | D.M.A. | gender | 5 |
| Stein, Leonard | Ross, Jill | My Heart is in Sepharad: Writing Medieval Spain in the Modern Sephardic Diaspora | Comparative Literature | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation investigates the cultural construction of a modern global diaspora by foregrounding the historical, linguistic and nationalist contexts embedded in literary works produced over the last two centuries, written by a diverse collection of writers who imagine a preserved ethnoreligious community. Sephardim—descendants of medieval Jews expelled from Spain in the fifteenth century—have sustained an ethnic heritage by drawing on the figures, texts, and experiences of medieval Iberia, specifically the Golden Age of al-Andalus (ca. 950- 1140) and the anti-Jewish measures in Christian Spain that led to the Inquisition and expulsion (ca. 1391-1492). I argue that by reading, translating, and rewriting the rich literature of medieval Iberian Jews, from Andalusian liturgical poetry to Kabbalistic commentaries to converso epistles, modern Sephardim creatively interpret the historical and political significance of their ancestral homeland. To conceptualize such diasporic identities, I compare temporalities, regions, and genres, consistently juxtaposing major forms of literature written by Iberian Jews throughout the Middle Ages with those written by their descendants.This study of a modern diaspora also compares the role of contemporaneous historiography, from Romantic historicism to the Wissenschaft des Judenthums to archival research of the Cairo Geniza, in accessing the history and texts of a former homeland. I furtherexplore the intertextual strategies through which modern Sephardim imagine the medieval Jewish experience, constructing palimpsests that bring influential texts into relief by writing around and about them in order to situate artistic expressions, such as those in homoerotic or Romantic poetry, as a medieval inheritance. By adopting genres from al-Andalus, where quantified meters of poetry and conventions of form reflected Jewish acculturation in a predominantly Arab society, Sephardim writing in Hebrew, in particular, produce experimental, actively archaic forms of poetry and narrative. Finally, this study addresses how Sephardim deploy medieval tropes, such as the intolerance of the Inquisition or the heroic pilgrimage of an Andalusi poet, to project an ethnicity onto modern nationalist identities. | Ph.D. | invest, land | 9, 15 |
| Ho, Kuan I | Walker, Gilbert C | Nanoscale Properties of Block Copolymers, Perovskites and Boron Nitride Obtained by Near-field Scanning Optical Microscopy in the Infrared | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Several material types have been studied using coupled atomic force microscopy (AFM) and Infrared Spectroscopy techniques including scanning near-field optical microscopy (SNOM) and peak force infrared microscopy (PFIR). First, the different structures formed by block copolymer thin films were studied using SNOM. With SNOM, local subsurface morphologies in block copolymer thin films were revealed. Second, the degradation of perovskites under high humidity and light soaking was monitored by PFIR, x-ray diffraction and time-of-flight secondary ions mass spectrometry. Lastly, phonon polaritons in hexagonal boron nitride were studied using SNOM. It was found that structures in the boron nitride can self-launch phonon polaritons. In addition, the effect of the adjacent layer of material on the phonon polaritons in the boron nitride was investigated. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Ducci, Francesco | Trebilcock, Michael||Iacobucci, Edward | Natural Monopoly Regulation in Platform Markets | Law | 2019-11-01 | Technological change and digitalization have enabled a wave of multi-sided platform markets where network externalities, big data and algorithmic matching contribute to concentrated market structures and monopolistic tendencies. Yet the assessment of conditions under which such tendencies may be natural and efficient remains underdeveloped, and the consequential determination of the appropriate regulatory tools and institutions associated with natural concentration unexplored. This thesis evaluates the applicability of the natural monopoly framework to three case studies of platform markets: horizontal search engines, e-commerce marketplaces, and ride-hailing platforms. It demonstrates that technological change and the increasing predominance of multi-sided platforms overall increase the likelihood of natural monopolies, although natural concentration is neither inevitable, nor necessarily the consequence of multi-sided network externalities. On the contrary, natural monopoly conditions are often the result of a complex interplay between supply side economies of scale, access to data, and the strength of both direct and indirect network externalities, all factors that vary substantially across markets and that may be independent of the platform model. The thesis reaches this conclusion by placing the three case studies along a spectrum of natural concentration. At one extreme, it characterizes horizontal search as naturally monopolistic, due to high-fixed costs and low marginal costs, the value of data and direct externalities among users that generate such data. At the opposite extreme, it concludes that e-commerce marketplaces, while benefiting from scale economies and network effects, are not natural monopolies and instead benefit from the competitive advantage offered by efficient logistics. In between, ride-hailing platform markets are a more ambiguous case that may or may not give rise to natural monopolies depending on the specific conditions of each local market. Based on this framework, this thesis evaluates alternative regulatory instruments that can address market power while at the same time embracing efficient concentration. The dissertation in particular demonstrates how the institutional dimension of intervention critically affects the trade-offs between imperfect policy instruments, arguing that policy approaches require more complementarity between regulation and competition as opposed to clear-cut choices between ex-ante and ex-post approaches to market power. | S.J.D. | trade, institut | 10, 16 |
| Power, Catherine Rachel | Kingston, Rebecca | Nature, Freedom, and Toleration ad saeculum: Étienne de la Boétie and Jean Bodin in Dialogue | Political Science | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation places the works of Étienne de la Boétie (1530-1563) in dialogue with those of Jean Bodin (1530-1601) in order to better understand how competing notions of human nature, freedom, and conceptual (not to mention, literal) boundaries of civic belonging and political community were formed amidst the backdrop of the French Wars of Religion. This artificial dialogue is constructed by proverbially asking what each thinker has to say about two exigent and related questions of their day: human nature and its relationship to freedom and the question of toleration. La Boétie is most well-known for his short Discourse on Voluntary Servitude that went on to be appropriated by rebellious Reform factions in the decades immediately following his death, but would then find many afterlives as an inspirational text for republicans during the French Revolution, for revolutionary socialists of the Paris commune, and for various anarchist and libertarian thinkers in the past century. Jean Bodin, on the other hand, is most associated with political theology and a theory of absolutist sovereignty that would go on to form the basis of the modern sovereign state system and is identified by both its critics and its proponents as the political foundation of modern authoritarianism and worse. Nevertheless, Jean Bodin was a life-long defender of toleration while La Boétie penned a short, yet characteristically impassioned, condemnation of toleration shortly before his death. Both thinkers centre freedom as a constitutive aspect of human nature, yet where free-will and the human ability to choose between good and evil forms the basis of all justice for Bodin, La Boétie pairs our innate freedom-from-subjection with an equally innate sociability that can all too easily enable customary servitude and tyranny to take hold. Both thinkers seek to understand and theorize how peace and freedom can be forged and lost in human politics ad saeculum. Boétian freedom and amitié would prove the fertile ground in which later republican notions of freedom-from-domination and fraternity would grow, along with attendant concerns over factionalism and the civil religion necessary to cohere a free demos. Bodinian freedom and pluralistic understanding of the republic as secular analogue of the divine cosmos provided the structural and conceptual scaffolding for modern, liberal pluralism, even as the shift to popular sovereignty deeply distinguishes Bodinian toleration from later iterations. | Ph.D. | peace, peace, authoritarian, sovereignty | 4, 16 |
| Belchev, Zornitza Evgenieva | Gilboa, Asaf | Negative Neuroplasticity in Moderate-to-severe Traumatic Brain Injury and Healthy Aging, and the Development of an Intervention to Attenuate Hippocampal-related Decline | Psychology | 2021-06-01 | The present dissertation examined neurocognitive processes associated with negative neuroplasticity related to declines in enriching activities (i.e., new learning), neurally in patients with chronic moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury (TBI), and behaviourally in healthy older adults. Additionally, it explored a potential avenue for offsetting negative neuroplasticity in older adults. In TBI, recent longitudinal studies show that neurodegeneration continues chronically, and is associated with negative environmental factors (e.g., low levels of enriching activities) that can lead to a cycle of negative neuroplasticity. Similarly, healthy aging involves degeneration and related cognitive declines, which are exacerbated by previous incidences of trauma (e.g., TBIs), while counterproductive environmental factors promote negative neuroplasticity. A region that is vulnerable to damage in both populations is the hippocampus (HPC), which also shows heightened experience-dependent neuroplasticity. Furthermore, the HPC is implicated in memory and navigation, domains that are negatively impacted by both TBI and aging. Although hippocampal degeneration has been previously described in TBI, Study 1 examined patterns of decline across all gray matter structures in patients with chronic moderate-to-severe TBI, finding that other structures also show decline and may be affected by negative neuroplasticity. Study 2 investigated injury- and age-related deficits in two hippocampal-dependent domains – spatial cognition and memory, finding broad age-related effects across all tasks, while TBI-related deficits were more specific to memory. The behavioural relationship between these domains was examined in younger and older adults. Although spatial cognition significantly predicted memory processes in younger adults, these two domains seem to become more independent with age. Finally, Study 3 assessed the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of a novel, remotely delivered intervention in healthy older adults, which behaviourally targets the HPC through allocentric navigation. Although retention rates suggest this population may need more initial support, compliance was encouragingly high. There was evidence of near- and some medium-transfer effects, but improvements did not generalize to memory. Together, this dissertation deepens our understanding of how negative neuroplastic processes may be manifested in affected populations (i.e., TBI and healthy older adults), how specific its effects may be in each population, and examines environmental enrichment as a way of counteracting this negative cycle. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, environmental | 4, 9, 13 |
| Del Gobbo, Daniel | Cossman, Brenda||Stern, Simon | Negotiating Feminism: Campus Sexual Violence and the Politics of Settlement | Law | 2021-11-01 | Negotiating Feminism traces the reflection of the feminist “sex wars” in contemporary debates about campus sexual violence reform in Canada and the United States – what Emily Bazelon has called the “return of the sex wars” on college and university campuses. Negotiating Feminism focuses on one issue in the return of the sex wars – the role of interests-based, consensual dispute resolution processes, including mediation and restorative justice, in changing the conditions that foster campus sexual violence on the ground. The political polarization of the return of the sex wars has prevented some colleges and universities from engaging with policy models that challenge the primacy of campus adjudication and other rights-based options. Complainants of campus sexual violence should be empowered to access any form of dispute resolution under law, whether rights-based or interests-based, that accords with their personal conception of justice. Empowering complainants in this way does not mean that colleges and universities should be willfully blind to the reality of substantive inequality that campus adjudication is intended to address. Yet acknowledging this reality should not require colleges and universities to essentialize about the nature of women’s injury or overdetermine the role of gendered power imbalances in producing the content of women’s interests in resolving their complaints otherwise. Feminist law and policymakers should negotiate between these competing imperatives and come together by instituting what Negotiating Feminism calls the “plural process” model of campus sexual violence reform. The plural process model recognizes that both rights-based and interests-based options can promote substantive equality for women and other historically marginalized groups – and it seeks to bring about that change. | S.J.D. | gender, women, feminis, inequality, equalit, marginalized, institut, judic, violence | 5, 10, 16 |
| Butt, Sadia | Smith, Sandy M||Moola, Faisal | Neighbourhood Engagement in Urban Forest Governance: A Case Study of Resident Associations in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada | Forestry | 2021-11-01 | Initiatives in community engagement and the struggle to conserve urban forests have risen steadily over the past 30 years. In Canada, Resident Associations (RAs) are one major group, with varying degrees of influence, that have shown potential to build working relationships with decision-makers at the local level. Although poorly studied, RAs commonly work with local or municipal representatives and engage civic managers in order to address issues at the neighbourhood scale. Urban forest and tree health have become of increasing concern for local communities because of the greater awareness of the physical and social benefits these green spaces provide to society. Unfortunately, there is little understanding as to the role of public participation in urban forest governance despite it being a key component in building frameworks for successful urban forest governance. The present study examines the role of RAs in influencing governance at the local level using the City of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada as a case study. In-depth, semi-structured interviews and a grounded theory approach reveal increased engagement by RA executive members when the benefits of and risks to their neighbourhood urban forest are understood. Increased urban forest knowledge allowed RA executive members to become involved with municipal decision-makers and more likely to participate in developing strategies and networks to conserve and improve urban forest health. Interview questions probing the power dynamics between residents and decision-makers indicated most residents build upon common objectives within existing civic processes rather than work independently from the outside for conservation. Research here demonstrates the key role that knowledge plays in both motivating and sustaining resident involvement in urban forest governance, and provides clear evidence that RAs need to build strong relationships with decision-makers and neighbourhood constituents in order to effect change. Resident knowledge about the urban forest helps raise social capital and build strategies for RA engagement in order to achieve better management. | Ph.D. | knowledge, capital, urban, conserv, forest, ecolog, conserv, governance | 4, 9, 11, 14, 15, 16 |
| Tran, Matthew | Richards, Blake A | Neocortical Inhibitory Interneuron Subtypes Display Distinct Responses to Synchrony, Rate and Layer-specific Inputs | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-06-01 | Almost a hundred years after the recording of the first voltage “spikes”, the question of how neurons use spikes to convey information about the outside world remains elusive. The standard model of how neurons encode information is through their different frequencies of spiking. High fidelity rate coding requires high spiking rates, but many regions of the brain, such as the supragranular layers 2/3 (L2/3) of the neocortex exhibit sparse, low firing activity. Evidence from L2/3 of the cortex supports the idea that the timing and synchrony of spikes may also encode relevant stimulus information. There is increasing evidence to suggest that high-frequency, nonlinear bursting may be another distinct form of coding within L2/3, particularly when integrating feedback inputs from higher order regions arriving in Layer 1 (L1). How such different coding regimes could exist within the neocortex may be due to the diversity of neuronal cell types that reside in this region. To understand how different neurons in L2/3 encode different types of information, I used ex vivo whole cell patch clamping to examine the responses of PV+ and SST+ inhibitory interneurons in the somatosensory cortex of mice when inputs were driven either optogenetically or electrically. First, I sought to determine whether different interneuron types were sensitive to information conveyed through the rates or synchrony of inputs. To do this, I developed a novel setup that would encode a random 1-bit signal controlling either the synchrony or rates of optical inputs. I then examined the amount of information encoded by PV+, SST+ and pyramidal neurons about this 1-bit signal. I found that these two inhibitory classes of cells were differentially sensitive to each input type. I also examined whether these different classes of cells responded differently to inputs from L1 of the neocortex. Similar to my optogenetic experiments, these two classes showed different bursting responses to increasing stimulation of inputs from Layer 1. These results demonstrate that the interneuron subtypes studied here have distinct sensitivities to different types of coding regimes utilized by L2/3 and strongly suggests potential divisions of labour for information encoding within the neocortical circuit. | Ph.D. | labour | 8 |
| Khosravi, Niloufar | Davies, John E||DaCosta, Ralph S | Neovascularization and Perivascular Progenitor Cell Dynamics During Early Peri-Implant Endosseous Healing and The Effect of Implant Surface Topography | Dentistry | 2019-11-01 | Metallic endosseous (in-bone) implants are standard devices in dentistry and orthopedic surgery yet optimizing the bone-implant interface remains a challenge. Following the placement of an endosseous implant, cascades of cellular and molecular events, including the inflammatory response, angiogenesis and progenitor cell migration, occur that result in the integration of the implant in bone. While important biological events happen before the bone forms, currently there is little understanding of the cellular dynamics and mechanisms at the earliest stages of peri-implant healing, particularly with respect to angiogenesis. Angiogenesis is considered an essential prerequisite to osteogenesis. Capillaries carry oxygen and nutrients to the wound site and serve as a route for inflammatory and stromal progenitor cells to the site of injury. By developing a new intravital model the work presented here has been able to longitudinally track angiogenesis in the peri-implant compartment for the first time in real-time. Spatiotemporal monitoring of the tissue healing phases following implantation revealed that, contrary to conventional wisdom, mesenchymal progenitor (MP) cells massively populate the wound site upon implantation and are not directly associated with blood vessels. However, the two phenomena of angiogenesis and MP cell influx are correlated. Given the potential for significant clinical impact of surface-modified implants in wound healing, the effect of implants of differing surface topography on angiogenesis was also investigated in this thesis transpires that modifying the surface of a metallic implant has a profound effect on the pattern of peri-implant angiogenesis. The improvement of the blood supply and induced directional migration of MPs and vascular endothelial cells to the bone-implant interface led to a higher degree of contact osteogenesis. The results indicate that measurement of angiogenesis can be exploited to biologically assess the clinical efficacy of implants at early healing stages. The work of this thesis presents the following: 1) the development and experimental validation of a cranial implant window chamber (CIWC) platform to study peri-implant healing intravitally over clinically-relevant time scales. 2) Investigation of the effect of implant surface topography on the spatiotemporal pattern of neovascularization, the recruitment of a tissue-resident population of mesenchymal progenitor cells, and ultimately spatiotemporal pattern of bone formation in vivo. 3) Investigation of possible biophysical mechanism(s) under which nanosurfaces may make significant changes in angiogenesis and perivascular progenitor cell influx in vitro. Les implants endo-osseux métalliques sont des dispositifs standard en dentisterie et chirurgie orthopédique, mais optimiser l'interface entre l'os et les implants reste un défi. Suite à la mise en place d'un implant endo-osseux, il se produit des cascades d'événements cellulaires et moléculaires, notamment la réponse inflammatoire, l'angiogenèse et la migration des cellules progénitrices, qui aboutissent à l'intégration de l'implant dans l'os. Bien que d'importants événements biologiques se produisent avant la formation des os, il existe actuellement une compréhension limitée de la dynamique et des mécanismes cellulaires aux premiers stades de la guérison du péri-implant, en particulier en ce qui concerne l'angiogenèse. L'angiogenèse est considérée comme une condition préalable essentielle à l'ostéogenèse. Les capillaires transportent l'oxygène et les nutriments vers le site de la plaie et servent de voie de transmission aux cellules progénitrices inflammatoires et stromales vers le site de la lésion. En développant un nouveau modèle in vivo, j'ai pu suivre l'angiogenèse dans le compartiment péri-implantaire dans le sens longitudinal pour la première fois en temps réel. La surveillance spatio-temporelle des phases de cicatrisation des tissus après implantation a révélé que, contrairement à la sagesse populaire, les cellules progénitrices mésenchymateuses (MP) qui peuplent massivement le site de la plaie après implantation ne sont pas directement associées aux vaisseaux sanguins. Cependant, les deux phénomènes d'angiogenèse et d'afflux de cellules MP sont corrélés. Etant donné l’impact clinique potentiel significatif des implants à surface modifiée dans la cicatrisation des plaies, j'ai également étudié l'effet des implants de topographie de surface différente sur l'angiogenèse. Il s'avère que la modification de la surface d'un implant métallique a un effet profond sur le schéma d'angiogenèse péri-implantaire. L'amélioration de l'apport sanguin et la migration directionnelle induite des MP et des cellules endothéliales vasculaires vers l'interface os-implant conduisent à un degré plus élevé d'ostéogenèse de contact. Les résultats indiquent que la mesure de l'angiogenèse peut être exploitée pour évaluer biologiquement l'efficacité clinique des implants aux stades précoces de la guérison. Les travaux de cette thèse présentent les éléments suivants : 1) développement et validation expérimentale d'une plate-forme de chambre de fenêtre d'implant crânien (CIWC) pour étudier la cicatrisation péri-implantaire par voie in vivo sur des échelles de temps cliniquement pertinentes. 2) Etude de l'effet de la topographie de la surface de l'implant sur le modèle spatio-temporel de néovascularisation, le recrutement d'une population de cellules progénitrices mésenchymateuses résidant dans le tissu et, finalement, le schéma de formation osseuse in vivo spatiotemporel. 3) Déconvolution du ou des mécanismes biophysiques possibles sous lesquels les nanosurfaces ont considérablement modifié l'angiogenèse et l'afflux de cellules progénitrices périvasculaires in vitro. | Ph.D. | wind, smes, invest, animal, animal | 7, 8, 9, 14, 15 |
| Edwards, Phoebe | Boonstra, Rudy | Neuroendocrine Mechanisms of Vole Population Self-regulation | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11-01 | Arvicolinae rodents (voles and lemmings) go through distinct population cycles that influence ecosystem dynamics throughout the northern hemisphere. The existence of an intrinsic regulatory mechanism driving these population cycles has been speculated about since the 1960s, however, the mechanism has never been demonstrated. In this thesis work, I tested the hypothesis that high population density, a condition of the cycle peak, induces epigenetic changes in genes central in regulating the reproductive axis and the stress axis of voles. I manipulated population density in meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) using predator-proof field enclosures. In the high density enclosures, fewer females were reproductive, as has been found in peak density populations in the wild. Non-reproductive females did not appear to be social subordinates, as they were equally able to secure a territory as reproductive females and there were no differences in stress (fecal corticosterone) levels between classes. However, breeding females at high density had higher corticosterone levels than breeding females at low density, potentially reflecting a cost of competition amongst females. I collected brain tissue from juvenile animals born at high and low density and quantified mRNA expression in the candidate genes gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH; GNRH1), estrogen receptor alpha (ERα; ESR1), glucocorticoid receptor (GR; NR3C1) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR; NR3C2). I found that voles of both sexes born in high densities had lower GnRH expression, and lower levels of androgens in the feces, indicating down-regulation of the reproductive axis. There were no density treatment differences in ERα in either sex. Male voles born in high densities also had lower GR and MR expression, aligning with predictions of an increased stress response and weaker negative feedback in a high competition environment. Females, contrary to predictions, had higher GR expression levels at high density, and no change in MR, suggesting faster down-regulation of the stress axis. I sequenced a region of the M. pennsylvanicus genome that is highly conserved with the mouse GnRH promoter, and examined it for methylation differences between population densities. In the CG site within a sequence highly similar to the mouse EGR-1 transcription factor binding site, meadow voles had no differences in methylation levels associated with density treatment. Other CG sites in the meadow vole GnRH promoter should be examined in future work. These findings provide evidence for an intrinsic physiological mechanism in vole population dynamics by density-induced suppression of the reproductive axis. However, the suppression of GnRH is not driven by methylation in a key region of the GnRH promoter. Arvicolinae rodents (voles and lemmings) go through distinct population cycles that influence ecosystem dynamics throughout the northern hemisphere. The existence of an intrinsic regulatory mechanism driving these population cycles has been speculated about since the 1960s, however, the mechanism has never been demonstrated. In this thesis work, I tested the hypothesis that high population density, a condition of the cycle peak, induces epigenetic changes in genes central in regulating the reproductive axis and the stress axis of voles. I manipulated population density in meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus) using predator-proof field enclosures. In the high density enclosures, fewer females were reproductive, as has been found in peak density populations in the wild. Non-reproductive females did not appear to be social subordinates, as they were equally able to secure a territory as reproductive females and there were no differences in stress (fecal corticosterone) levels between classes. However, breeding females at high density had higher corticosterone levels than breeding females at low density, potentially reflecting a cost of competition amongst females. I collected brain tissue from juvenile animals born at high and low density and quantified mRNA expression in the candidate genes gonadotropin releasing hormone (GnRH; GNRH1), estrogen receptor alpha (ERα; ESR1), glucocorticoid receptor (GR; NR3C1) and mineralocorticoid receptor (MR; NR3C2). I found that voles of both sexes born in high densities had lower GnRH expression, and lower levels of androgens in the feces, indicating down-regulation of the reproductive axis. There were no density treatment differences in ERα in either sex. Male voles born in high densities also had lower GR and MR expression, aligning with predictions of an increased stress response and weaker negative feedback in a high competition environment. Females, contrary to predictions, had higher GR expression levels at high density, and no change in MR, suggesting faster down-regulation of the stress axis. I sequenced a region of the M. pennsylvanicus genome that is highly conserved with the mouse GnRH promoter, and examined it for methylation differences between population densities. In the CG site within a sequence highly similar to the mouse EGR-1 transcription factor binding site, meadow voles had no differences in methylation levels associated with density treatment. Other CG sites in the meadow vole GnRH promoter should be examined in future work. These findings provide evidence for an intrinsic physiological mechanism in vole population dynamics by density-induced suppression of the reproductive axis. However, the suppression of GnRH is not driven by methylation in a key region of the GnRH promoter. | Ph.D. | female, sexes, conserv, animal, ecosystem, ecolog, conserv, animal, ecosystem | 5, 14, 15 |
| Cao, Feng | Jia, Zhengping | Neuroligin 2 Regulates Absence Seizures through GABAergic Transmission within the Thalamocortical Circuitry | Physiology | 2019-11-01 | Autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and epileptic seizures are heterogeneous disorders but have high rates of co-occurrence. The comorbidity of these two disorders implies the existence of potentially shared mechanisms. Neuroligins (NLGs) are a family of postsynaptic cell adhesion molecules critical for synapse formation, maturation and function. Genetic mutations in the NLG genes are also linked with ASD and other neurodevelopmental disorders. However, the role of NLGs in the pathogenic process of epileptic seizures remains unknown. In this thesis, I investigated the involvement of Neuroligin 2 (NLG2) in epileptic seizures and identified the molecular link for the shared underlying mechanisms. The deletion of NLG2, but not other NLGs in the family, resulted in spike and wave discharges (SWDs) in cortical EEG recordings and were associated with behavioral arrest that are characteristic of absence seizures. The SWDs in NLG2 knock out (KO) mice were also sensitive to the anti-absence seizure drug ethosuximide (ETX) and allosteric GABA receptor modulator diazepam, injected either systematically or locally into the thalamus, but not hippocampus or cortex. Similar to the diazepam effect, I found the diminished GABAergic transmission, but not excitatory transmission in thalamocortical (TC) neurons in NLG2 KO mice. Accordingly, I demonstrated that the restoration of GABAergic transmission of the TC neurons rescued the impaired GABAergic transmission and reduced the SWDs in NLG2 KO mice. Optogenetic activation of the thalamic reticular nucleus (nRT)-TC neuronal circuit also increased the GABAergic transmission and reduced the SWDs in NLG2 KO mice. Furthermore, I showed the NLG2 dependent autistic behaviors are associated with epileptic seizures. Anti-absence seizure drug ETX rescued behavioral arrests, anxiety and impaired social interaction in NLG2 KO mice. Optogenetic activation of nRT-TC circuit and postsynaptic overexpression of NLG2 in the TC neurons also reduced the behavioral arrests in NLG2 KO mice. Overall, these results highlight the role of NLG2 in thalamocortical circuitry during absence seizures and provide crucial evidence that NLG2 may serve as molecular link between seizures and ASD via regulating GABAergic transmission at nRT-TC circuit. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Yuan, Bo | Kim, Young-June | Neutron Scattering Study of Magnetic Excitations in Quantum Magnets Bi2CuO4 and CoTiO3 | Physics | 2021-11-01 | Anisotropic spin interactions beyond simple Heisenberg models have been intensively studied in recent years as new routes for realizing exotic magnetic phases. Although theories of anisotropic interactions have been developed extensively, careful experimental studies that determine the forms and magnitude of these interactions in actual magnetic systems have been scarce. In this thesis, I present inelastic neutron scattering (INS) studies of magnetic excitations in two ordered antiferromagnets, Bi2CuO4 and CoTiO3, to elucidate their microscopic spin interactions. Bi2CuO4 is an easy-plane antiferromagnet with a tetragonal crystal structure. Despite many earlier studies using INS and other techniques, nature of low energy magnons and hence the form of anisotropic interactions in Bi2CuO4 have been controversial. Using higher resolution than all previous INS work, we determined the dispersions of the low energy magnons, which we used to construct an anisotropic spin model based on lattice symmetry. Remarkably, the anisotropic interactions in our model were shown to play a fundamental role by producing an in-plane anisotropy through a quantum order by disorder mechanism. This anisotropy was directly observed in a field-dependent neutron scattering measurement. CoTiO3 has an ilmenite structure with a stacked honeycomb lattice of Co2+ ions. We obtained its full energy-momentum resolved magnon spectrum, which we showed to be consistent with a simple XXZ model. A Dirac-cone like dispersion was discovered in CoTiO3, making it a promising candidate for realizing topological magnons. A high-resolution measurement revealed important features of the magnon dispersion, namely a zone center and a Dirac magnon gap, that can only be explained by anisotropic interactions beyond an XXZ model. Field dependence of these features was studied and used to constrain the forms of the anisotropic interactions. Higher energy spin-orbit exciton in CoTiO3 was studied as a function of temperature across the magnetic ordering transition. A strong temperature dependence was observed, which we attributed to a mixing between the ground and excited multiplets using a multi-level model. By comparing the theoretically determined dispersion of the spin-orbit exciton to our data at different temperatures, we found indirect evidence for higher order spin interactions beyond a bilinear spin model. | Ph.D. | energy, transit, co2 | 7, 11, 13 |
| Xie, Lin | Kirk, Donald W | Ni Stability in Anion Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Hydrogen gas is a clean energy storage material because it can store and supply a large amount of energy, in theory, with no greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. Hydrogen fuel cells convert the chemical energy of hydrogen gas into electricity. In 2016, the Paris Climate Agreement was signed with major countries and economic entities, which has created a massive demand for hydrogen fuel cells. However, the conventional PEM fuel cell design has high reliance on expensive platinum group metal (PGM) catalysts. An anion exchange membrane fuel cell (AEMFC) is one of many alternatives. The AEMFC provides an alkaline environment that enables the use of many non-platinum group metal (non-PGM) catalysts. This grants AEMFCs the potential to become Pt-free and thus compete with PEM fuel cells, but the development of AEMFCs is still at an early stage. The thesis examined the hypothesis of using Ni Ni alloy catalysts to substitute for PGM catalysts for AEMFC applications. As a result, the thesis discovered a stability issue of Ni-based catalysts under AEMFC cathode conditions after long-term operations. The Ni metal, carbon-supported or in an alloy system, was irreversibly oxidized and formed a soluble species which migrated into other cell components. As supported by ICP, SEM, TEM, XPS, XRD, and FTIR analyses, the result is significant because it may limit the use of Ni-based catalysts in AEMFCs. Therefore, the use of Ni in AEMFCs needs to be carefully considered and researched. The thesis also includes works on other areas relevant to the study on the stability of Ni. As a benchmark of the Ni study, Pt was also tested under the same conditions, and the study found significant Pt agglomerations at cathodes. To provide a reliable AEMFC test environment for the Ni study, multiple AEMs were tested and compared in terms of alkaline resistance, and an alkaline exchange process was developed with improved conversion performance and stability of AEMs. To measure the in-situ Ni dissolution conditions, an operando half-cell measurement system was developed to determine the Ni dissolution form. The candidate verifies that all these findings and results are original. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, greenhouse, climate, greenhouse gas, species, species | 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Rombough, Julia Elizabeth Grace | Terpstra, Nicholas | Noisy Soundscapes: Women's Institutions, Sound, and the Body in Early Modern Florence | History | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation examines soundscapes in and around women’s residential institutions in sixteenth and seventeenth century Florence (1537-1670). Over these two centuries, an unprecedented number of girls and women entered or were entered into a variety of convents, charity homes, and reform houses. Religious and civic institutions expanded rapidly in both number and size, and adopted increasingly strict rules of enclosure. Racket, clatter, silence, and the quotidian sounds of sociability took on profound significance in these spaces. Using institutional manuals, criminal records, letters, and legislative records, this project uncovers the sounds that continually flowed in and out of Florence’s many enclosures from women, linking these communities to the larger city. While other studies have examined material practices of enclosure in the early modern period, immaterial practices of enclosure have been largely unstudied. Yet, the ephemeral senses fundamentally patterned how thousands of girls and women experienced institutionalization. This project offers new insight into the institutional shifts that marked the early modern period, showing how a sonic boundary increasingly characterized institutionalization. An early modern emphasis on the power and potency of sound found expression on multiple fronts. Medical, health, and spiritual literature discussed the impact of sound on the environment, body, and soul in detail. Tridentine period religious reforms increasingly advocated the importance of careful listening and sonic decorum. In Florence, the centralizing Medici Duchy and Grand Duchy crafted a corpus of sonic legislation that aimed to discipline space, sound, and sociability. Women’s institutions were pivot points around which these combined sonic cultures turned. Rather than focusing on one particular type of institution, this project examines a range of lay and monastic enclosures that housed diverse girls and women from across the socio-economic spectrum. Moreover, my analysis focuses on the sonic interactions that connected institutionalized girls and women to the various Florentines who lived, lingered, and laboured near their enclosures, challenging early modern discourses of "public" and "private". These groups include women sex workers, rowdy male youths, aggressive men, gamblers and game-players. This project positions institutionalized girls and women at the centre of the early modern Florentine soundscape, showing how the rapid expansion of women’s institutions fundamentally shaped urban socio-sonic experience. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, gender, women, girl, labour, worker, urban, institut | 1, 5, 8, 11, 16 |
| Alaica, Aleksa Katrina | Swenson, Edward | Nonhuman Social Actors in Daily and Ritual Activities of the Andes: Human-Animal Interactions among the Moche in the Middle Horizon, Jequetepeque Valley, Peru (CE 600-1000) | Anthropology | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation examines how animals formed part of daily, economic, sociopolitical, and ceremonial practices among Middle Horizon period (CE 600-1000) communities of the North Coast of Peru. I focus on the Late Moche period (CE 600-850) to examine how animal depiction, co-habitation and value were variably manifested in daily and ritual practices at the site of Huaca Colorada in the Jequetepeque Valley. This project is guided by posthumanism and indigenous scholarship to interpret the role of animals in quotidian activities, sociopolitical structures, and identity formation.I examine the role of animals across a large Late Moche center to investigate the spatial distribution of animal taxa, the sharing of their meat and the symbolic significance of different species in interment events. My analysis also considers the briefer Transitional period (CE 850-1000) occupation of Huaca Colorada and the adjacent Transition site of Tecapa to realize the continuity of traditional ecological knowledge, lifeways, and religious aesthetics. The persistent consumption of camelids and coastal taxa throughout the Middle Horizon reveals that southern Jequetepeque Valley communities employed commensal strategies to advance their own interests and legitimize their political standing in ritual practices. Feasting also provided a medium for non-local, possibly highland communities to be involved in large-scale, seasonal events. I reconstruct the life histories of animals and humans from Huaca Colorada through three interrelated approaches: (1) the iconographic or idealized depictions of animals; (2) the osseous patterns of life and death among animals and humans, and (3) the biographies of nonhuman and human animals as reflected in their diets and mobility. The objective of this dissertation is to interpret the roles of different animals as social actors in the mediation of the changing sacred and political landscapes of the southern Jequetepeque Valley. This dissertation demonstrates the essential involvement of animals in daily and ceremonial activities both as animate living beings and as butchered and consumed resources. The results of this investigation emphasize that Moche period ecological knowledge and deeply embedded ideologies about the cosmological cycles of the world were believed to depend on nonhuman beings and ensured the survival and prosperity of human societies. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, indigenous, transit, consum, species, animal, ecolog, species, animal, land, indigenous | 4, 9, 10, 16, 11, 12, 14, 15 |
| Riazi, Arash | Qian, Li | Nonlinear Interferometers for Quantum Information Processing and Metrology | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The ability to generate biphoton state with tunable properties in various degrees of freedom (DoFs) is always a challenging task in the field of quantum information processing. This arises from the fact that generating such biphoton state puts many constrains on the design and fabrication of the biphoton sources. In this thesis, I propose a novel common-path nonlinear interferometer (NLI) to generate biphoton states with tunable properties without the need for any modification to the biphoton source itself. I further utilize our NLI scheme to perform a precision dispersion measurement as well. First, I developed a comprehensive model, which accounts for the effects of the pump temporal coherence, as well as the chromatic dispersion and the birefringence of the linear medium inside the NLI. I have shown that through manipulating the dispersion and birefringence of the linear medium inside the NLI, biphoton properties in both frequency and polarization DoFs can be tuned (simultaneously or separately). Variants of all-fiber NLIs, consisting of periodically-poled silica fibers as the nonlinear media, which generate biphotons, and a single-mode fiber with an inline polarization controller as the linear section, are constructed for proof-of-principle demonstrations. Biphoton states with comb-like spectra are obtained from the NLI, without requiring any modification to the nonlinear media. Furthermore, biphoton states with tunable degree of polarization entanglement (in the range of 0 to 1) are predicted and experimentally generated with our interferometer. More significantly, through the simultaneous manipulation of the chromatic dispersion and birefringence of the linear medium, a novel class of biphoton states with coupled frequency and polarization DoFs is also obtained. The frequency-dependent polarization entanglement feature, which is the signature of such states, is experimentally verified. The abovementioned NLIs are also utilized to demonstrate precision dispersion measurement on a 5-m-long single-mode fiber sample, with a sensitivity of ~0.009 ps/nm. Our sensitivity is comparable to that of the existing state-of-the-art dispersion measurement techniques, but unlike the latter, ours eliminates the need for interferometer balancing, beam alignment, and phase stabilization. The simplicity, robustness and versatility of our demonstrated NLI technique illustrates its important role in quantum state engineering and quantum metrology. | Ph.D. | metro | 11 |
| Pellow, Carly | Zheng, Gang||Goertz, David E. | Nonlinear Nanobubble Behaviour for Vascular and Extravascular Applications | Medical Biophysics | 2021-06-01 | Nanomedicines exhibit novel properties with structural versatility, improved pharmacokinetic profiles, and multifunctionality for advanced delivery strategies targeting infiltrative tumours while sparing surrounding normal tissue. Consolidating the abilities of traditional nanoparticles with conventional ultrasound agents by shrinking microbubbles to the nanoscale can have profound effects on bubble behaviour, bringing new possibilities as well as challenges. This dissertation aims to address current limitations of nanobubbles, laying the groundwork for their utility within and beyond the vasculature. Insights on nanobubble behaviour in vessel- and tissue-mimicking surroundings through theoretical and experimental approaches are presented. The first observation that nanobubbles can initiate sustained pressure threshold-dependent nonlinear scattering is shown, and found to be highly sensitive to nonlinear shell rheology. Novel direct acoustic evidence that nanobubbles can extravasate intact is then demonstrated upon different delivery avenues with real-time acoustic and visual observations in tumour-affected functional circulation at the microscale. An ultrasound-stimulated in situ conversion of microbubbles to nanobubbles is studied and compared to passive and ultrasound-mediated delivery of injected nanobubbles, with acute vascular events from ultrasound-stimulation of nanobubbles being visualized for the first time. Developing a tool for further examination of nanobubbles, their scattering is then systematically investigated at high frequencies with a view to establishing imaging schemes based on their physical behaviour. Pressure-calibrated amplitude modulation is employed on a commercial pre-clinical array system, resulting in enhanced contrast-to-tissue ratios onthe order of 10 dB in a phantom and in vivo. Collectively, the developments achieved in this thesis aim to extend bubble-mediated approaches through the integration of nanomedicine and ultrasound. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Jafarzadeh, Ehsan | Sinclair, Anthony AS | Nonlinear Wave Propagation in High Frequency Ultrasound Imaging | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | The existing safety standards for diagnostic ultrasound devices were developed for low frequency systems (1 to 10 MHz) under the assumption that nonlinear effects are negligible. However, the standards are now being used for relatively high frequency systems (up to 70 MHz); nonlinear effects are increasingly evident as the working frequency f0 is increased. The main goal of this project is to determine if the coverage of nonlinear effects in safety standards in terms of thermal and non-thermal effects is adequate for equipment with f0>10 MHz. To achieve this goal, a practical variation to the finite amplitude method for determination of B/A is proposed, and the values of B/A are measured from 2.25 to 20 MHz for water. It is shown that there is no statistically significant variation with f0 for the value of B/A. The appropriate value of B/A in tissue is used as input to a nonlinear pulse propagation model in the time-domain. The total heat deposition pattern due to ultrasound absorption is then calculated and used as input to a bio-heat model. The maximum peak-rarefactional pressure is also extracted from the nonlinear pulse propagation results and used to calculate the Mechanical Index MI. We propose a slight modification to MI to solve the inconsistencies associated with the coverage of nonlinear effects in MI. A modification is also required in the existing upper limit for the hydrophone calibration bandwidth to ensure that the fundamental component is fully captured at high frequencies.The thermal results show that strong higher order harmonics can significantly increase the local heat deposition rate. However, at the same time, they lead to an increase in the rate of axial and radial heat conduction, thereby reducing the net impact on the steady-state temperature rise. Also, the effect of higher order harmonics can be significant on the temperature rise at the focal point, while the maximum temperature rise always occurs close to the skin surface. We conclude that current safety standards are adequate in assessing thermal effects in B-mode imaging at high frequencies despite ignoring the extra heat deposited by higher order harmonics. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Dobronyi, Christopher Ryan | Gourieroux, Christian | Non-parametric Identification and Estimation of Demand and Preferences using Scanner Data | Economics | 2021-11-01 | This thesis presents three essays on the partial non-parametric identification and estimation of demand and preferences using scanner data. In the first essay, I consider a critical real-world problem: the formal identification and estimation of food stamp fraud in the United States. It is shown that consumption choices can be used to bound fraud. The estimation procedure in this essay uses a standard assumption. In particular, it assumes that there exists a conditional quantile of consumption that coincides with an individual demand function. This assumption is strong, but useful for the structural estimation problem at hand. In the second and third essays, I propose flexible methods for estimating demand and preferences using scanner data that do not require this strong assumption. In the first proposed method, heterogeneity across consumers is introduced by assuming that the marginal rate of substitution is a random field. In such an environment, the theory of generalized functions can be used to test the integrability of expected demand at a parametric rate. If variation in preferences is small, then preferences can be recovered by approximating the relationship between preferences and demand with a first-order expansion and applying an analogue of the delta-method. In the second proposed method, individual-level heterogeneity is characterized by a distribution, and the heterogeneity across consumers is characterized by a Dirichlet process F over such distributions. Two frameworks for estimation are considered: a Bayesian framework in which F is known, and a hyperparametric (or empirical Bayesian) framework in which F is a member of a parametric family. Both methods are illustrated by applications to alcohol consumption. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Vrantsidis, Thalia | Cunningham, William A. | Normative Approaches to Understanding Stereotyping and Group-based Inferences | Psychology | 2021-11-01 | People often make inferences about others based on beliefs or stereotypes about the social groups a person belongs to. These types of inferences can often be problematic (e.g. overgeneralizing based on a stereotype can lead to less accurate inferences, and exacerbate moral and social problems like discrimination). Yet group-based types of inferences can also be a necessary and even beneficial part of life (e.g. using accurate beliefs about groups can make inferences more accurate, and recognizing real group differences can serve as a basis addressing problematic social inequalities). The current research clarified the epistemic and moral standards that can be used to distinguish the problematic from non-problematic cases, and then used this to empirically examine several reasons people might fail to live up to these standards. Part 1 re-examined the idea that certain types of social categories (e.g. demographics, occupations) might often be overused compared to “individuating information” (e.g. traits, behaviours) as a heuristic to simplify inferences. Results did not support this idea, instead suggesting that these two types of information are largely used similarly. Part 2 re-examined whether certain biases in people’s information (due to lacking first-hand knowledge or having biased second-hand knowledge about a group) might lead people to think that groups are overly homogeneous, and thus be overconfident in their group-based inferences. Results suggested that, while both sources of bias can lead groups to appear more homogeneous, only second-hand knowledge leads to greater confidence when making inferences. Part 3 examined the moral norms used to judge group-based generalizations, and showed how differences or errors in people’s beliefs might lead people to freely use generalizations that are widely seen as violating these moral norms. Overall, this work helps bring clarity to the epistemic and moral standards that can be applied to evaluate group-based inferences, and helps better understand when people will or will not live up to these standards. | Ph.D. | knowledge, equalit | 4, 10 |
| Xu, Liangcheng Henry | You, Lidan | Novel in vitro Microfluidic Platform for Studying Osteocyte Mechanobiology | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Osteocytes are the major mechanosensing cells during bone remodeling. Current bone mechanotransduction research use macro-scale devices such as flow chambers; however in vitro microfluidic devices provide an optimal tool to better understand this biological process with its flexible design and high-throughput capabilities. Our recent work on co-culture platform has demonstrated the feasibility of building more complex microfluidic devices for osteocyte mechanotransduction studies. However, there still lacks a robust system where multi-physiological flow conditions are applied to bone cells during intercellular communication. I aim to improve the in vitro experimental platform for osteocyte mechanotransduction studies by 1) designing a novel multi-shear stress co-culture microfluidic device to study osteocyte intercellular communication; 2) testing the novel OCY454 osteocyte cell line to enable in vitro studies of osteocyte-osteoblast cross-talk; and 3) investigate magnetically actuated beams as a new method for in vitro fluid flow stimulation of osteocytes. I demonstrated that osteocytes seeded in the novel microfluidic device respond to different levels of fluid shear stress in each channel by varying amount of secreted RANKL. Furthermore, co-cultured osteoclast precursors had suppressed differentiation when next to osteocytes stimulated with high fluid shear stress. This microfluidic device can provide a new platform for researchers to further understand how mechanically stimulated osteocytes affect the bone remodelling process without complicated in vivo models. I also validated the response of OCY454 osteocytes to fluid shear stress, demonstrating changes in key indicators such as extracellular sclerostin level and intracellular calcium response, as well as capability to drive effector cell differentiation. This new cell line can help unlock further understanding of the role sclerostin plays in bone remodelling, and potentially give rise to novel pharmaceutical targets that can be used for treatment of bone diseases. Using novel magnetically actuated micro-beams, I experimented with a new method of generating localized fluid shear stress on osteocytes. This novel magnetic actuator can help us better understand how intercellular communication propagates within an osteocyte network when stimulated with localized shear stress. With development of new in vitro technical approaches to study osteocyte mechanotransduction, a better understanding of the bone remodeling process can be obtained. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Abdel-Nour, Mena | Girardin, Stephen E | Novel Insights into the eIF2 alpha Integrated Stress Response on Microbial Infection, Inflammation and Proteotoxic Stress | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2019-06-01 | The integrated stress response is an evolutionarily conserved pathway found in all eukaryotic cells, which allows for adaptation to environmental insults. At the same time, mammalian cells have intricate mechanisms to detect and respond to pathogens, however the interactions between the integrated stress response and innate immunity has become increasingly apparent. The findings in this thesis highlight novel interactions between the integrated stress response sensors GCN2 and HRI in innate immune signaling and cellular homeostasis. In Chapter 2, I highlight the impact of the integrated stress response by infection with several intracellular bacterial pathogens using cells which are stress irresponsive. I then compared the roles of the eIF2 alpha kinases GCN2 and HRI in inducing the integrated response and using the intracellular pathogens Shigella flexneri and Listeria monocytogenes as models, which revealed that although both sensors are activated during infection, they have different effects. While exploring these differences, I discovered that innate immune pathways which oligomerize require HRI for signaling and the mechanisms by which HRI mediates the signaling of these complexes is described in Chapter 3. Specifically, I found that the pattern recognition molecules NOD1, NOD2, TIFA, MAVs and NLRP3 all require HRI to induce inflammatory responses while TLR2, TL4R, TLR5 and STING-driven inflammation was unaltered. Interestingly, I found that the defect in HRI deficient cells to induce these signaling pathways is because of aberrant complex formation. I then determined that for oligomerizing pattern recognition molecules to assemble correctly, the chaperone HSPB8 is required. I also found that HSPB8 is regulated by the integrated stress response in an ATF4-HRI-eIF2 alpha dependent manner. I then explored the effect that HRI may have on more general proteotoxic stress in Chapter 4. I found that HRI is crucial in mediating protective responses to proteasome inhibition as well as against aggregating alpha-synuclein and TDP-43, which aggregate in Parkinson’s disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis respectively. This body of work sheds light on a novel signaling pathway, which may lead to the development of alternate avenues for the treatment of autoinflammatory disease as well as neurodegenerative disease. | Ph.D. | environmental, conserv, conserv | 13, 14, 15 |
| Sehgal, Kirti | Drake, Jennifer | Novel Operation and Maintenance Practices for Permeable Pavements | Civil Engineering | 2021-11-01 | This thesis investigates several opportunities for operation and maintenance to improve the performance of permeable pavements by testing strategies to rejuvenate old pavements, improve winter stormwater quality, and enhance stormwater infiltration. Testing of pre-treatment maintenance followed by street sweeping on mature permeable interlocking concrete pavement parking lots in 2016 revealed that pre-treatment with pressure wash significantly improves the effectiveness of vacuum sweeping. Pavement age and usage were found to affect the restoration of surface infiltration significantly. Older pavements and high traffic areas were considerably more challenging to restore for both control and test groups. Power brushing gave inconclusive results across test groups. Chloride concentrations in surface runoff and zero-exfiltration permeable pavement effluent were measured between Jan 2016 to May 2017 and compared with concentration in runoff from a conventional asphalt pavement. Runoff from asphalt generated large spikes in chloride concentration over 21,800 mg/L. However, when combined with the flashier runoff hydrograph, these high instantaneous chloride levels, lasting a few hours, resulted in less exposure to elevated concentrations. Permeable pavements, in contrast, attenuated peak chloride concentrations during winter. Furthermore, chloride was retained only temporarily and flushed from the pavement reservoir during spring melt, suggesting that attenuated chloride release from permeable pavement effluent is unlikely throughout the summer or fall months. Smart adaptive operation of PICP underdrains was tested to increase stormwater infiltration on low permeability soils. This unique study is the first demonstration of ‘smart’ operations for permeable pavements. The three-year evaluation, 2016-2018, confirmed that extended detention of stormwater could allow permeable pavements to control and infiltrate excess stormwater run-on and increase the probability of managing extreme events in non-run-on situations. The study also noted that high volume reductions could be achieved even when low permeability soils are present on site. Overall, the thesis bridges the gap between theory and practice by guiding how to improve operation and maintenance techniques for permeable pavements. This research aims to benefit permeable pavement manufacturers, suppliers, and installers in Canada by highlighting opportunities to improve permeable pavements' environmental benefits and management practices. | Ph.D. | water, low impact development, infrastructure, invest, low impact development, environmental, soil | 6, 11, 9, 13, 15 |
| Ye, Sheng Hua | Young, R. Paul | Numerical Simulation of the Stick-slip Instability for Laboratory Earthquakes using a Discrete Element Model | Civil Engineering | 2021-06-01 | The fractal nature of earthquakes allows the study of their mechanisms in controlled laboratory environments. At the field scale, studies on earthquake nucleation mechanisms are dominated by two end-member theories––cascade triggering and preslip triggering. However, at the laboratory scale, very few studies have focused on the nucleation mechanism. This study aimed to discover the key factors that trigger stick-slip instability at the laboratory scale using numerical simulation.Numerical simulation provides a unique advantage in that it is capable of generating a large quantity of data at very little cost. Utilizing this advantage, a stick-slip experiment conducted by Goebel et al. was reproduced 27 times by employing a distinct element method (DEM) code, analogous to repeating the experiment on multiple Westerly granite samples. In particular, a dynamic-weakening pulse-slip model was built into the DEM framework, provided by Particle Flow Code (PFC), to promote rupture along the laboratory-scale fault. A data pipeline was constructed to collect, transform and analyze the numerical simulation data. New insights on the nucleation mechanism were derived from the data. The results rejected the hypothesis that mainshocks are directly caused by foreshocks. Instead, it was found that there was a strong correlation between a fault’s tendency to slip and the foreshock-induced acceleration of grain-scale normal and shear forces, which led to the idea that foreshocks indirectly prepare the nucleation zone to reach a state that allows a few acoustic emissions to cascade up into stick-slip instability. These results support the latest findings in the field, and could potentially resolve the disagreement surrounding the nucleation mechanism at the field scale. | Ph.D. | learning, emission, labor, emissions | 4, 7, 8, 13 |
| Abudu-Birresborn, Diana | Cranley, Lisa||Puts, Martine | Nursing Students’ Self-efficacy to Care for Older Adults in Acute Care Settings in Ghana: A Mixed Method Study | Nursing Science | 2022-03-01 | Self-efficacy has been reported to serve as a motivator for goal achievement and to impact care quality and career development choices. Understanding nursing students’ self-efficacy to care for older adults can provide an opportunity to identify gaps and develop strategies to shape nursing students’ interest in caring for older adults. This study sought to identify the relationship between nursing students’ knowledge about, attitudes towards, and self-efficacy to care for older adults and explored nursing students’ understanding of their self-efficacy to care for older adults. The study also examined stakeholders’ perceptions about nursing students’ self-efficacy to care for older adults and how these views shape gerontological nursing education and practice in Ghana. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory guided this study. Results of this sequential explanatory mixed-method study showed that nursing students’ age and attitudes towards older adults were associated with their self-efficacy to care for older adults. Content knowledge about gerontology was not associated with self-efficacy. Nursing students suggested their self-efficacy to care for older adults was based on their perceived competency in routine procedural nursing care, the impact of the general nursing education program, and the sociocultural norms of caring for older adults in Ghana. Stakeholders indicated that nursing students were well prepared and confident to care for older adults and that the general nursing education program and sociocultural norms of caring for older adults enhanced nursing students’ self-efficacy to care for older adults; however, they also acknowledged the need for gerontological clinical placements for nursing students and the challenges of the gerontology curriculum in the general nursing program. Findings suggest a need for a larger study encompassing different nursing training institutions to determine the extent of revisions needed in gerontological nursing curricula. Findings also indicate a need for gerontological nursing clinical placements to enhance students’ gerontological skills development, for capacity building of faculty, and for the government’s commitment to invest in gerontology education and practice. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, institut | 4, 9, 16 |
| Abudu-Birresborn, Diana | Cranley, Lisa||Puts, Martine | Nursing Students’ Self-efficacy to Care for Older Adults in Acute Care Settings in Ghana: A Mixed Method Study | Nursing Science | 2022-03-01 | Self-efficacy has been reported to serve as a motivator for goal achievement and to impact care quality and career development choices. Understanding nursing students’ self-efficacy to care for older adults can provide an opportunity to identify gaps and develop strategies to shape nursing students’ interest in caring for older adults. This study sought to identify the relationship between nursing students’ knowledge about, attitudes towards, and self-efficacy to care for older adults and explored nursing students’ understanding of their self-efficacy to care for older adults. The study also examined stakeholders’ perceptions about nursing students’ self-efficacy to care for older adults and how these views shape gerontological nursing education and practice in Ghana. Bandura’s self-efficacy theory guided this study. Results of this sequential explanatory mixed-method study showed that nursing students’ age and attitudes towards older adults were associated with their self-efficacy to care for older adults. Content knowledge about gerontology was not associated with self-efficacy. Nursing students suggested their self-efficacy to care for older adults was based on their perceived competency in routine procedural nursing care, the impact of the general nursing education program, and the sociocultural norms of caring for older adults in Ghana. Stakeholders indicated that nursing students were well prepared and confident to care for older adults and that the general nursing education program and sociocultural norms of caring for older adults enhanced nursing students’ self-efficacy to care for older adults; however, they also acknowledged the need for gerontological clinical placements for nursing students and the challenges of the gerontology curriculum in the general nursing program. Findings suggest a need for a larger study encompassing different nursing training institutions to determine the extent of revisions needed in gerontological nursing curricula. Findings also indicate a need for gerontological nursing clinical placements to enhance students’ gerontological skills development, for capacity building of faculty, and for the government’s commitment to invest in gerontology education and practice. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, institut | 4, 9, 16 |
| Boroumand, Parastoo | Klip, Amira||Girardin, Stephen | Obesity-driven Immunometabolic Activation of Myeloid Cells | Biochemistry | 2021-06-01 | Background/Rationale: Obesity is a chronic inflammatory disorder and a strong predictor of tissue insulin resistance and Type 2 Diabetes. Accumulation of pro-inflammatory adipose tissue macrophages (ATM) are culprits to tissue insulin resistance. Tissue infiltration and the subsequent differentiation of Ly6Chigh monocytes largely contribute to ATM accumulation during obesity. Interestingly, Ly6Chigh monocytes are elevated in the circulation and in the bone marrow (BM) during obesity. However, the temporal relation of the obesity-driven increase in ATM and BM Ly6Chigh monocytes are unknown. Furthermore, it is also unknown what obesity-induced changes drive the increased production of Ly6Chigh monocytes in the BM. Moreover, it is unknown how monocytes are affected with obesity and whether the metabolic skewing, as observed in ATM, are also induced in BM monocytes. Hypotheses: I hypothesized, that increased BM Ly6Chigh monocytosis occur prior to ATM accumulation with high fat diet (HFD). Additionally, I hypothesized, that local BM adipocyte (BMA) expansion favour increased Ly6Chigh monocyte development. Lastly, I hypothesized, that a glycolytic shift would be induced in BM monocytes with HFD. Methods: A murine HFD feeding model with the durations of 3, 8 and 18 weeks were adopted. Using flow cytometry analysis, the accumulated ATM and BM monocytes were quantified. Furthermore, in vivo correlative analysis between BMA and monocytes were assessed. In vitro models were adopted to assess the direct influence of adipocytes on monocyte development. Lastly, the metabolic status of monocytes were studied using the Seahorse assay, MitoTrackerTM staining and expression analysis of mitochondrial genes via RT qPCR. Results/conclusion: An earlier elevation of the BM monocytes compared to the ATM were detected with HFD. Furthermore, BMA whitening temporally correlated with Ly6Chigh monocyte expansion in the BM during HFD. White adipocytes and HFD-derived BMA directly favoured Ly6Chigh monocytes, in vitro. Interestingly, white adipocytes induced conversion of Ly6Clow to Ly6Chigh monocytes. We further discovered that Ly6Chigh monocytes prefer glycolytic and Ly6Clow monocytes prefer oxidative metabolism. During HFD, the metabolism of Ly6Clow monocytes are skewed to resemble that of Ly6Chigh monocytes. The findings reported here place the BM as a key site for the origin of cellular and metabolic disruptions with obesity. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Singh, Aarzoo | Georgis, Dina | Object Stories: Tracing South Asian Colonial Histories of Displacement through Affective Archives | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study into unheard narratives of the 1947 Partition of India as they inform legacies of trauma, violence, and displacement for South Asian diasporic communities. In exploring the limitations of official state accounts of Partition, I turn to alternative epistemological sites in archives of the personal, in my own familial story of Partition, as a point of analysis. These sites take up the form of what I call “affective objects”: sites, things, heirlooms, and artefacts that, because they are intimately linked to familial and community histories, are laden with in-articulatable feelings. I argue that affective objects can be space- and knowledge-making for unheard intergenerational narratives of displacement as they ruminate in realms of undefinition and nonverbal modes of communication. The familial stories about Partition that are produced from these affective spaces, which are not dependant on state- sanctioned narratives, are reparative in how they allow South Asian diasporic communities to work through inherited intergenerational traumas of Partition. I bring together affective theories, object studies, and colonial and postcolonial histories of India to uncover a method to speak about the unspeakable—to explore how nonverbal meaning, through the form of physical objects, comes through the work of affect. My methodology in this project is storytelling. That is, I take my own familial stories of Partition that have been attached to various affective objects as analysis. This is a move away from discourses that have been constructed by the colonial powers that incited trauma and violence on communities affected by Partition. I question the denial in contemporary colonial systems’ romanticized readings of the past and diminished understandings of current social realities of oppression, which render the victims of these histories silent. I include the personal in this conversation not only to connect and position myself within the narrative of Partition but also to make sense of larger socio-historical colonial processes that continue to unfold from and about Partition. The turn towards the affective object, archives of the personal, and the sharing of familial stories creates spaces of possibility and potential for knowing Partition and its legacies of violence differently. | Ph.D. | knowledge, violence | 4, 16 |
| Smale, Scott David | Thywissen, Joseph H | Observation of a Transition Between Dynamical Phases in a Harmonically Trapped Degenerate Fermi Gas | Physics | 2021-11-01 | A proposed paradigm for out-of-equilibrium quantum systems is that an analog of quantum phase transitions exists between parameter regimes of qualitatively distinct time-dependent behaviour. Here, we present evidence of such a transition between dynamical phases in a cold-atom quantum simulator of the collective Heisenberg model. The crux of this work is the conceptual mapping of a 3D harmonic optical trap onto a mode-space lattice in which the collective Heisenberg model lives. We show that this mapping is valid for our system in the regime of weak pair-wise interactions and explore the limits of this regime. This mapping enables study of spin models on lattices using simple optical traps -- without the use of optical lattice beams. The spatial extent of the harmonic oscillator wavefunctions gives rise to long-range collective interactions. We find that below a critical interaction strength, magnetization of an initially polarized fermionic gas decays quickly, while above the transition point, the magnetization becomes long-lived because of an energy gap that protects against dephasing by the inhomogeneous axial field. Our quantum simulation reveals a non-equilibrium transition predicted to exist but not yet directly observed in quenched s-wave superconductors. To facilitate our quantum simulation, we measured the zero-crossing near 209 G of the Feshbach resonance between the lowest two spin states in 40K to greater precision than ever before. We also compare our experimental measurements to several levels of theory and find excellent agreement. Further, in our system, we find that the dynamics of the collective Heisenberg model can be reversed by applying a many-body reversal. | Ph.D. | energy, transit | 7, 11 |
| Bell, Celine Ellen Reid | Columpar, Corinn | Old Acquaintances and New Sisterhoods: Female Friendship in Classical Hollywood Cinema | Cinema Studies | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation examines representations of female friendship in Hollywood films from 1930-1953. I seek to demonstrate that the first half of the twentieth century was a crucial period of transition in thinking about female friendship and how women relate to each other. The period I consider is largely marked by an increasing distrust of close friendships between women and a subsequent pivot towards a redefinition of and reinvestment in heterosexual courtship and marriage. At the same time, widespread socio-cultural changes were bringing about circumstances through which women were spending increasing amounts of time with their peers. Women were meeting, learning about, and forming bonds with increasing numbers of women, including those with lives and experiences radically different from their own. Hollywood movies played a role in creating this connectivity between women, both as a public, social space and, most pertinently for this dissertation, as a platform for female viewers to connect with and relate to other women. Many of the films I examine pick up and reinforce ideas about female friendship already circulating in popular discourse, albeit with a distinctly Hollywood spin. Broadly speaking, I identify the early twentieth-century as marking a shift in female friendship styles away from the intense, dyadic friendships of the Victorian period towards social, collective friendship groups. This does not mean, however, that Victorian style friendships disappear entirely. Indeed, the period I examine is marked by continuous negotiations and contradictions, allowing multiple friendship styles to exist simultaneously. I argue that many of the traits prized in Victorian friendships, most notably emotional intimacy, reciprocity, equality, and supportiveness, continued to define the new friendship styles that would emerge in the twentieth century. At the same time, these Victorian traits were re-imagined in a new context. Group friendships are emblematic of the increasingly public lives of twentieth-century women as well as both the new opportunities and new challenges that came with these lives. Women’s friendships took on a newly pragmatic function as practical support became increasingly important. The films I examine take up many of these key elements of female friendship, translating them into visual and narrative terms. | Ph.D. | learning, women, female, invest, equalit, transit | 4, 5, 9, 10, 11 |
| McQueen, Sydney Amelia | Moulton, Carol-anne | On Surgeon Stress: An Exploration of Distress and Eustress | Doctor of Medicine/Doctor of Philosophy | 2021-11-01 | Rationale: High rates of distress among surgeons, and physicians more broadly, are alarming and negatively impacting provider wellness, performance, and healthcare system functioning. Yet despite increased attention, we continue to struggle in addressing stress in practice. One challenge is the lack of a shared vocabulary for understanding stress, which is a complex and idiosyncratic phenomenon that can be experienced both positively (as eustress) and negatively (as distress). While traditional reductionist approaches focusing on individual facets –such as physiology or cognition– have greatly advanced scientific knowledge, stepping back to examine the composite, subjective experience of stress may provide new, complementary insights for mitigating distress and supporting more favorable states in practice. Objectives: This research program explored the multidimensional, integrated experience of stress among academic surgeons in order to establish conceptual frameworks for understanding surgeon distress and eustress in practice. Design: Qualitative data were collected over three phases, guided by a constructivist grounded theory methodology. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with staff surgeons affiliated with the University of Toronto, purposively sampled to capture a broad range of perspectives including specialty and experience level. Results: Eustress and distress were reconceptualized as multidimensional experiences, comprising physiologic, physical, cognitive, affective, social, cultural, and environmental facets. Subjective control was identified as central to the stress experience. In contrast to traditional dichotomous views placing eustress and distress on two polar ends of a spectrum, findings illustrated how experiences of distress and eustress could overlap and coexist. Conceptual frameworks were established for understanding eustress and distress, and how physicians might reflect on their own experiences in practice. Conclusions: Stress is not simply positive or negative, cognitive or physiologic, or individual- versus system-based; understanding the points of intersection and seeking to embrace inherent complexities in the subjective human experience may provide deeper understandings and allow us to approach stress in a more authentic way. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge, environmental | 3, 4, 13 |
| Mourad, Lama | Schatz, Edward | Open Borders, Local Closures: Decentralization and The Politics of Local Responses to the Syrian Refugee Influx in Lebanon | Political Science | 2019-11-01 | The ongoing Syrian civil war has been characterized as the greatest crisis of forced displacement since the Second World War, and has disproportionately affected neighboring countries who host the vast majority of displaced Syrians. As a result, Lebanon, a country of nearly four million citizens, saw its population grow by nearly a third in less than three years, and quickly became the largest per capita host of refugees in the world. At its core, this dissertation is driven by a desire to understand how a country such as Lebanon, a near-archetype of what political scientists often call a “weak state,” dealt with the influx of an unprecedented number of refugees in a remarkably short period of time. Neighbouring Jordan and Turkey, the second and third largest hosts of Syrians per capita, moved quickly to implement national plans and policies, build formal refugee camps, and regulate the presence of Syrians on their territory. In contrast, in Lebanon, the over 1.1 million Syrian refugees who entered the country faced what has been called a ``policy of no policy." Among the most important elements of this policy was the refusal to build formal refugee camps. The result was that Syrian refugees self-settled across Lebanon's over 1100 municipalities, which in turn became key actors in the governance of Syrians in the country. Three main research questions structure my analysis: (1) How do so-called ``weak" states manage and govern migrants on their territory? (2) What explains variation in sub-national migration policies? (3) Finally, in what ways do sub-national practices and policies challenge, strengthen, and potentially drive national policy with regards to migrants and refugees? In answering these questions, I find that explaining a state's response to large-scale displacement must take into account the multiple scales at which migrants are governed. More specifically, it is only by looking below the central state that ostensible paradoxes between relative openness at the national level, and tensions and restrictions at the local level, can be understood. Through locally-grounded analysis, I find that so-called open borders can co-exist and even co-constitute local closures. | Ph.D. | citizen, refugee, governance | 4, 10, 16 |
| Rodgers, Timothy | Diamond, Miriam L | OPEs, What Do We Do? Modeling Emissions, Fate, and Mitigation of Organophosphate Esters in Urban Systems | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Organophosphate esters (OPEs) are high production volume chemicals that span a broad range of physicochemical properties. Their global distribution raises concern that they could be classified as Persistent Mobile Organic Compounds (PMOCs) for which assessment tools and mitigation measures are required. This thesis has advanced the development of such tools and measures for PMOCs, using OPEs as a case study. By developing a novel workflow including a novel Bayesian model, I generated final adjusted values (FAVs) for 12 physicochemical properties of 74 compounds across nine compound classes, including OPEs, filling an important data gap. This work also found that different in silico estimation methods used to predict physicochemical properties varied widely, underlining the continued importance of measuring these properties for use both in understanding compounds fate and in further improving the in silico estimations. I developed and applied an updated polyparameter linear free energy relationships multimedia urban model (ppLFER-MUM) to better model PMOC fate and emissions in cities. Application of the model to OPEs in Toronto, Canada, I identified that chlorinated-OPEs acted as PMOCs with atmospheric deposition driven by efficient scavenging from air to receiving waters by precipitation while non-chlorinated-OPEs acted as Persistent, Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBTs) compounds. Stormwater and treated wastewater discharges were important pathways of OPEs from Toronto air emissions to receiving waters. Using bioretention cells as an example stormwater management technology, I undertook a scoping review of bioretention research. This review found that uptake by vegetation was a potentially important pathway for the fate of PMOCs, requiring further study. I then developed a multimedia, activity-based chemical transport model called “SubsurfaceSinks” and a submodel called “BioretentionBlues” for bioretention cells. Fate in a bioretention cell was determined first by hydrology, then by sorption to soil, and finally transformation of compounds that were captured; vegetation played a minor role. Persistent compounds with soil-organic carbon distribution coefficients (log10 DOC) ≤ 2.7 were not captured and so are likely PMOCs transmitted to the environment through stormwater. Compounds with 2.7 ≤ log10 DOC ≤ 3.8 may be PMOCs transmitted to the environment through stormwater, depending on chemical- and location- specific factors. | Ph.D. | water, stormwater management, energy, emission, cities, urban, production, waste, emissions, pollut, pollut, soil | 6, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| White, Samantha Josephine | Bondy, Susan | Opioid Abuse among Injection Drug Users and Adsociation with City-level Prescription Opioid Dispensing Rates in Ontario | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06-01 | Introduction: The opioid crisis is widespread and expanding in Ontario. Despite increases in opioid-related deaths in recent years, prescription opioids (POs) continue to be prescribed at high levels. The goal of this study was to better define connections between local PO dispensing levels and opioid abuse among IDU (injection drug users) in urban areas of the province.Methods: Data were obtained from the Ontario Drug Benefit claims database and the I-Track surveillance system. Using an unmatched repeated cross-sectional design, individual-level opioid abuse was nested within year and again within city-level (Kingston, London, Sudbury, Thunder Bay and Toronto) PO dispensing rates. Analyses were conducted with mixed-effects multilevel logistic regressions. Results: Total PO dispensing levels and total PO abuse among IDU were not associated. For opioid types, there was much variation in measures by city. Possible substitution effects were observed between Dilaudid dispensing levels and morphine abuse among IDU (OR=0.99, 0.98-1.00) as well as morphine dispensing and Dilaudid abuse among IDU (OR=0.93, 0.92-0.94). Dispensing of morphine (but not other POs) was related to heroin abuse among IDU (OR=1.04, 1.00-1.08). Dilaudid dispensing levels were associated with methadone abuse among IDU (OR=0.96, 0.94-0.98). Discussion: Distinctions between cities in both PO dispensing and opioid abuse among IDU were probably due to differences in distances to trafficking points and sociodemographic factors. The relationship between total PO and total opioid abuse among IDU was not reflective of relationships between opioid types. PO dispensing changes were related to changes in abuse of more than traditional PO types, including illicit (heroin) and restricted (methadone) opioids. Conclusions: Policies involving PO dispensing or opioid abuse among IDU should emphasize local evidence based on opioid types. The urban nature of the study also necessitates supplementary research in rural areas. New studies should examine PO dispensing with fentanyl and Suboxone abuse among IDU. | Ph.D. | trafficking, cities, urban, rural, trafficking, illicit | 5, 16, 11 |
| Walker-Jones, David Elliot | Deb, Rahul||Stewart, Colin | Optimal Attention | Economics | 2021-11-01 | In many environments it is costly for decision makers to determine which option is best for them because learning about different options takes time, and time is valuable to decision makers. To accurately predict changes in behavior and estimate preferences in such settings it is crucial to understand what information agents choose to acquire. In the following three chapters I study costly information acquisition both theoretically and experimentally. In the first chapter I characterize the choice patterns that are consistent with two major models of costly learning when price changes and then test these theoretical results in a lab setting. The experiment shows that the heterogeneity of subjects is key for understanding aggregate behavior and that subjects are sophisticated when choosing both if and what to learn. In the second chapter I use an axiomatic foundation to create a new measure for the cost of information that allows for multiple perceptual distances in a single choice environment so that some events can be harder to differentiate between than others. In the third chapter I show that the new measure of uncertainty produced in the second chapter maintains the tractability of Shannon's classic measure but produces richer choice predictions, identifying a new form of informational bias significant for both welfare and counterfactual analysis. The third chapter also establishes a new foundation for `non-compensatory' behavior anddemonstrates novel predictions for the formation of consideration sets. | Ph.D. | welfare, learning | 1, 4 |
| Shrivats, Arvind | Jaimungal, Sebastian | Optimal Control and Mean-Field Game Approaches in Renewable Energy Markets | Statistics | 2021-06-01 | SREC markets are market based systems designed to incentivize the production of energy from solar means. A regulator imposes a floor on the amount of energy each regulated firm must generate from solar power in a given period and provides them with certificates for each generated MWh. Firms offset these certificates against the floor and pay a penalty for any lacking certificates. Certificates are tradable assets, allowing firms to purchase/sell them freely. This thesis investigates the problem of optimal behaviour for both regulated firms and regulators in SREC markets by leveraging techniques from stochastic control, mean field games, and principal-agent games, accounting for the costs the agents regulated by SREC markets face, and their interaction amongst one another. The thesis contains three main parts, with increasing levels of complexity. In the first, we study the optimal control problem faced by a single agent optimizing their behaviour within an SREC market. We propose a model for the firm's costs and for the prevailing SREC price, which incorporates generation costs, trading costs, and price impacts. Using the Stochastic Maximum Principle, we obtain optimality conditions for said firm’s optimal behaviour. We develop a numerical algorithm to obtain their optimal controls, conduct myriad experiments, and validate our theoretical optimality conditions. Following this, we consider the possible interactions regulated firms may have on one another, by simultaneously solving for all regulated firms’ behaviour to obtain a Nash equilibrium, using tools from mean field games and variational analysis. This requires approximating an SREC market, which has finite regulated agents, with an infinite-player version; however, we show that such an approximation is justified, and the optimal firm behaviour for the infinite-player market satisfies an $\epsilon$-Nash equilibrium property in finite population samples. Finally, we flip the perspective by considering the goals of the regulator in SREC markets, and studying their optimal design. We study this from a theoretical and numerical perspective, imposing a parametric family of possible market designs to make the numerical analysis tractable, as the theoretical analysis does not yet allow for complete solutions. | Ph.D. | energy, renewabl, solar, emission, invest, production, emissions | 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Chio, Chon Teng Jonathon | Fehlings, Michael | Optimization and Mechanistic Exploration of Intravenous Human Immunoglobulin G for Treatment of Traumatic Cervical Spinal Cord Injury | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Spinal cord injury (SCI) causes devastating functional impairments and socioeconomic consequences for patients and family members. The pathology is characterized by an initial physical trauma which is amplified by secondary injury mechanisms including vascular and inflammatory processes. The blood-spinal cord-barrier (BSCB) consists of pericytes, astrocytes and endothelial cells, which collectively form the neurovascular unit (NVU). After SCI, a compromised BSCB enables peripheral immune cells to enter the injury site. This inflammatory response has polarizing effects. While immune cells are beneficial by secreting growth factors that promote regeneration after SCI, they also propagate injury when sterilizing the injured area. Thus, immunomodulation is becoming the preferred clinical intervention to immunosuppression when resolving neuroinflammation. Approved by regulatory authorities as an immunomodulatory therapy, intravenous human immunoglobulin G (IVIg) may be suitable for treating SCI. While prior work has suggested a possible beneficial role for IVIg in the treatment of acute SCI, the clinical translation of this work has been hindered by critical knowledge gaps including uncertainty around mechanism of action, the optimal dosing and the post-injury therapeutic window. Therefore, this thesis aims to use a clinically relevant rat model of SCI to provide insights into the optimal dose, therapeutic time window and mechanism of action. My work determined that the optimal therapeutic dose of IVIg is 2g/kg and that beneficial effects were maintained when administered up to 4 hours post-SCI. My work showed that IVIg binds to BSCB cells, strengthening the BSCB and reducing neutrophil infiltration at 24 hours post-SCI. This is associated with long-term motor and sensory recovery and spinal cord tissue preservation. Immunomodulatory effects mediated by IVIg (2g/kg) might be explained in two-fold, where human immunoglobulin G (hIgG) antagonizes neutrophil infiltration into the spinal cord by co-localizing with endothelial cell ligands that mediate neutrophil extravasation. Moreover, IVIg traffics neutrophils to the spleen by increasing expression of neutrophil chemoattractants in spleen and sera. In conclusion, this work demonstrates that IVIg might be a suitable treatment for SCI with potential for clinical translation. IVIg (2g/kg) enhances short-term and long-term benefits after SCI by modulating local and systemic neuroinflammatory cascades. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, knowledge, wind, regeneration | 1, 4, 7, 15 |
| Guo, Cheng | Bodur, Merve | Optimization Models and Algorithms for Nonconvex Planning, Pricing and Operational Problems in Power Systems and Energy Markets | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Optimization models are widely used in power system engineering to improve efficiency and cost effectiveness. The main challenge in power system optimization is nonconvexities that arise from various sources, such as binary decisions for investment or commitment for power generators and nonlinear physical constraints for electric current. The primary focus of this thesis is on important nonconvex planning and operational optimization problems in power systems and energy markets. We improve decision making for such problems by proposing suitable models and developing algorithms to efficiently solve them. We illustrate their benefits by extensive case studies. First, we study a generation capacity expansion problem that combines investment planning with unit commitment. We incorporate revenue adequacy constraints in a two-stage generation expansion planning model. After making generation investment decisions in the first stage, we determine the commitment schedule and production levels, as well as electricity prices, in the second stage. To approximate a market equilibrium, we use the duality gap between the second-stage nonconvex unit commitment model and its linearly-relaxed dual as a regularizer. Next, we propose a framework to derive solutions for discrete energy market and game theory problems using copositive programming. It was shown that a nonconvex mixed-binary quadratic program can be reformulated as a convex program, which has strong duality under mild conditions via copositive programming. Through this (duality) perspective, we propose a new pricing mechanism for nonconvex energy markets that has desirable properties, and a novel method for obtaining Nash equilibria for discrete games using the theoretical results we prove. To facilitate implementation, we design a cutting plane algorithm for solving copositive programs exactly. Lastly, we consider the alternating current optimal transmission switching (ACOTS) problem, whose models contain nonconvex structures such as binary variables and multilinear terms. We propose a variety of ways to strengthen the quadratic convex ACOTS relaxation model from the literature, such as linearizing multilinear terms with the extreme-point representation, and adding several types of valid inequalities. In particular, we derive a novel kind of cycle-based polynomial constraints, which can be added iteratively in a branch-and-cut framework. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, equalit, production | 7, 9, 10, 12 |
| Kshad, Mohamed Ali E. | Naguib, Hani E. | Optimization of Origami Inspired Static and Active Mechanical Metamaterial | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2019-06-01 | Origami-inspired materials provide effective solutions to control the mechanical properties of sandwich core structures, due to their outstanding structural features and due to the unique capacity of elastic deformation of its elements that are able to fold and unfold at different scales during the loading process. Both the geometrical features and the properties of the parent material that used to produce the origami structures are the most important factors required for tailoring the designed origami core with the target application. To eliminate the fracture and the abrupt stress change in the designed origami core elements, it is important to consider the parent material properties and behavior. There are two important challenges that should be considered in designing origami cores, the geometrical features of the origami tessellation and the material used to produce the origami unit cells and cores. Three dimensional origami cores can be fabricated by folding two dimensional flat sheets into three dimensional cores, or by pre-folding the origami features using a molding process. This research is devoted to investigate pre-folded origami cores made of polymeric materials for damping applications. Both passive and active properties of the designed unit cells were investigated in this research. Two different origami patterns were considered in the research, Miura and Ron-Resch-like origami structures. Different material blends were used to fabricate pre-folded origami features and correlate with the mechanical properties of the fabricated cores. Another way of preparing pre-folded origami cores is by using fused deposition modeling, in which different Ron-Resch-like cores with different geometrical parameters were designed and characterized for compression and impact load absorption. The designed origami cores were numerically simulated and compared with the experimental results. This motivated to include the viscoelastic behavior of the polymeric parent material at elevated temperature and simulate the cores’ unit cell using periodic boundary condition; the actual skeleton of the origami unit cell structure was represented in order to capture the mechanical behavior. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Schulze, Laura | Downar, Jonathan | Optimizing Treatment Outcomes of Dorsomedial Prefrontal Cortex Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Major Depressive Disorder. | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Major depressive disorder (MDD) continues to challenge the field of psychiatry with its suboptimal treatment outcomes. In cases of partial or non-response to first-line treatments, alternative treatment options are available. Unfortunately, even with these pharmacological advances, there remains a proportion of patients who experience minimal relief from their depressive symptoms. Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an emerging form of brain stimulation used in the treatment of refractory psychiatric and neurological disorders. The most widely used target for rTMS in MDD is the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC); however, the treatment outcomes it yields are moderate. Over recent years, alternative stimulation targets have emerged as a potential solution to this issue; among them is the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC). To our knowledge, the DMPFC has not been systematically investigated like its adjacent prefrontal counterpart, the DLPFC. Therefore, the primary aim of the present thesis is to examine, and to further optimize treatment outcomes of DMPFC-rTMS in MDD. We addressed this research question using multiple cohorts of MDD patients receiving DMPFC-rTMS. First, we explored the safety and tolerability of DMPFC-rTMS, focusing primarily on its cognitive profile (Study I). Second, we compared treatment outcomes for DMPFC-rTMS between individuals undergoing concurrent antipsychotic pharmacotherapy versus those receiving rTMS alone (Study II). Finally, Experiments III and IV were untaken to investigate accelerated rTMS; that is, whether the pace of symptom improvement can be increased through the use of a more intensive protocol consisting of multiple daily rTMS sessions. Encouragingly, results from this body of work demonstrate that DMPFC-rTMS is a safe and well-tolerated, treatment for MDD (Study I), even in patients undergoing concurrent antipsychotic therapy (Study II). Congruent with existing literature on accelerated rTMS, we found that the rate of improvement can be rapidly increased in some patients, by administering multiple daily sessions of rTMS (Study III), regardless of the intersession interval (Study IV). Collectively, this thesis provides support for the notion that the safety and efficacy of rTMS in MDD applies not only to the standard target, the DLPFC, but also to the DMPFC, a target of stimulation that is entering use. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Kim, Dongso Julia | Elliott, Robin | Organizational Responses to COVID-19 in Canadian Symphony Orchestras - Six Case Studies | Music | 2021-11-01 | This study is a collection of six case studies of Canadian orchestras which examines the differences in organizational responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. Case studies method is utilized to explore the connection between the various facets of the external environment and the orchestras. The research question “How do Canadian symphony orchestras monitor and respond to their organizational environment in relation to COVID-19?” frames the focus of the study to understand how various environmental and organizational contingencies affect the organizational actions in response to the crisis caused by the pandemic. Each case study is composed of a research report with a comprehensive description of the orchestra and its environment, a discussion of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a detailed account of how each orchestra has responded to the pandemic crisis. Five hypotheses are analyzed and discussed using a theoretical framework. The framework merges the basic concepts of resource dependency theory and population ecology theory and incorporates four different units of analysis. The results of the research revealed each case orchestra had unique traits, contingencies and the external environment that influenced the organizational actions they took to mediate the impact of the pandemic. In general, the large and more professional orchestras with more than 10 million dollars in annual revenue, focused on keeping their musicians working, maintaining their organizational presence in the community and increasing legitimacy through various partnerships. Medium sized orchestras with annual revenue between 1 to 10 million dollars, have focused on keeping their concerts and the existing audience base. Small and/or community-based orchestras with under a million in their annual revenue focused on keeping the organizational structure and reaching out to their existing donor/audience base. The pandemic has forced all six case orchestras to act fast and move most of their organizational functions online and make the online presence more permanent. | D.M.A. | environmental, ecolog | 13, 15 |
| Dimakos, Victoria | Taylor, Mark S | Organoboron-mediated, Site-selective Transformations of Carbohydrate Derivatives | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | The synthesis of valuable carbohydrate derivatives through the site-selective modification of OH or CH groups is challenging; these molecules bear multiple potential sites of reactivity that are difficult to distinguish between. Previous work has demonstrated that organoboron reagents can enable the site-selective O-functionalization of carbohydrates with electrophiles. This thesis describes efforts to expand the utility of the reversible covalent interactions between organoboron reagents and carbohydrates towards other site-selective transformations. Chapter 1 discusses the utility of carbohydrate O-aryl ethers, provides a review of the synthetic methods currently available to access compounds arylated at the anomeric position, primary or secondary hydroxyl groups, and serves as a general introduction for the research discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 discusses the development of a site-selective, copper-mediated O-arylation of carbohydrate OH groups with arylboronic acids. The observed reactivity was unexpected; hindered secondary aliphatic alcohols are challenging substrates for copper-mediated arylations. Mechanistic investigations suggest that boronic ester intermediates serve as transient protecting groups and accelerate the reaction of an adjacent OH group; accounting for the reactivity and selectivity observed. In Chapter 3, a protocol for the copper-mediated O-arylation of glycosyl hemiacetals with triarylboroxines is described. This method was applied towards the synthesis of O-aryl glycosides derived from differentially configured starting materials. Chapter 4 explores the utility of diarylborinic acid catalysis to promote the site- and stereoselective C–H alkylation of carbohydrates under photoredox conditions. Substrates containing 1,2-cis diols were alkylated selectively with retention of configuration. Computational investigations suggest that formation of a tetracoordinate borinate intermediate accelerates site-selective hydrogen atom abstraction with a quinuclidine radical cation through polarity matching and/or electrostatic interactions in addition to enabling stereoselective C–C bond formation. Chapter 5 further explores the utility of organoboron catalysis to promote selective hydrogen atom abstraction. Combined arylboronic acid/photoredox catalysis enabled the isomerization of furanosides to 2-keto-3-deoxyfuranosides. Mechanistic studies suggest that tetracoordinate boronate intermediates promote both selective C–H bond abstraction and C–O bond cleavage; emulating the mechanistic pathway employed by ribonucleotide reductase enzymes. A summary of the results obtained in Chapters 2–5 is presented in Chapter 6. Future directions and preliminary investigations into selective oxidation are also discussed. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Kim, Jaeseung C | McPherson, John D||Notta, Faiyaz | Origin of Disease Heterogeneity in BCR-ABL1 Lymphoblastic Leukemia | Medical Biophysics | 2021-03-01 | BCR-ABL1 positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is an aggressive subtype of ALL that commonly appears in adults. Introduction of tyrosine kinase inhibitors into frontline treatments has significantly improved outcomes; however, the disease still frequently relapses and becomes refractory to targeted therapy. To understand this phenomenon, an in-depth genomic investigation, including RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq), single-cell RNA-seq, and whole-genome sequencing (WGS), of BCR-ABL1 ALL was performed. First, RNA-seq analysis identified three distinct molecular subgroups within BCR-ABL1 ALL. The first subgroup expressed higher levels of stem/myeloid genes, phenotypically resembled early-pro-B cells, and was termed ‘Aberrant Stem and Myeloid’ (ASM). The ‘Core B-lymphoid 1 and 2’ (Core-B 1/2) subgroups expressed higher levels of B-lymphoid genes and resembled pre-pro-B/pro-B cells. Clinically, ASM and Core-B 2 patients showed slower rates of achieving remission, higher relapse rates, and worse overall survival than Core-B 1. Single-cell RNA-seq revealed that ASM leukemias are highly heterogeneous and consist mostly of dormant cells, which could contribute to resistance against cytotoxic agents. Second, WGS analysis found that ASM subgroup was enriched for inactivation of HBS1L, RUNX1, and EBF1 genes, whereas Core-B 1/2 were enriched for inactivation of PAX5 and CDKN2A/B. Core-B 2 was uniquely defined by homozygous losses of IKZF1. Most focal deletions in all three subgroups were generated by RAG-mediated recombination. Tracking mutations in hematopoietic precursors and in diagnosis/relapse pairs supported that subgroups arose through secondary, stage-specific inactivation of B-lineage factors. Third, the integrated genomics approach was adapted to detect cryptic genomic lesions in complex karyotype acute myeloid leukemia. While complex karyotype leukemia is often considered a single entity, individual leukemias harboured unique driver events, such as gene fusions. Therefore, genomic analysis can effectively complement conventional cytogenetics in leukemia diagnosis. In summary, transcriptomic and genomic investigations reveal that human leukemias consist of heterogeneous subgroups that arise from acquisition of distinct genetic lesions. | Ph.D. | emission, invest | 7, 9 |
| Klassen, Sharon Louise | Switzky, Lawrence | Oscar Wilde and His Legacy: British Commercial Comedy 1892-1930 | Drama | 2019-06-01 | Oscar Wilde’s successful 1890s works were something new within Victorian comedy. He reinvents a theatrical comedy tradition dominated by a combination of farce and French-inspired well-made plays, creating more psychologically complex characters than the usual stage types, repeatedly adjusting or blending comic forms to disrupt audience expectations, and emphasizing forgiveness and reconciliation over revenge or poetic justice. This dissertation considers how Wilde’s unique approach to comic writing is both reflected and adapted in plays from 1900-1930 by St. John Hankin, Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward, revealing shifts in what it means to behave badly when values are rapidly changing. The analysis considers how these plays were affected by contemporary conditions of theatrical production, which are often neglected in scholarship on the plays as texts. The first chapter considers Wilde’s shrewd assessment of the consequences of courtship practices and the double standard beneath a veneer of manners and cleverness in Lady Windermere’s Fan, A Woman of No Importance and An Ideal Husband. The work continues with an examination of The Importance of Being Earnest, particularly its connections to Wilde’s stories for children, the form of farce and recent scholarship about play. The third chapter considers how Hankin reworks comic expectations in a Wildean way to build layered characters, accurately portray their actions, and provide satisfactory, unconventional endings through plays such as The Return of the Prodigal and The Charity That Began at Home. In the fourth chapter, the connections between Wilde and several of Maugham’s better known comedies is examined, as Maugham continues Wilde’s witty discussion of the place of women, the requirements for a good marriage, and the effects of too much leisure time. This work concludes by contemplating the influence of Wilde’s comedies on early plays by Coward, revealing how his characters reject not only etiquette and decorum, but the need for any manners at all. | Ph.D. | women, wind, reconciliation, production | 5, 7, 10, 12 |
| Fournier, Roxanne | Harrison, Rene E. | Osteocyte Form and Function in Loading and Unloading Environments | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-06-01 | Long-term human spaceflight presents unprecedented challenges to the human body, such as microgravity-induced bone loss. Without intervention, astronauts lose between 1 – 2% bone mineral density per month in weight bearing bones and the cellular mechanisms involved in this process are still poorly understood. To date, the most abundant cell of bone, the osteocyte, has rarely been subjected to spaceflight. Yet osteocytes are known to be important regulators of bone loss in immobilized and elderly people. The first objective of this thesis was to develop novel 3D culture methods to study osteocytes using the Rotary Cell Culture System (RCCS). This device is commonly used for both suspension culture and simulated microgravity by clinorotation. The second objective was to investigate morphological and gene expression changes in MLO-Y4 cells following suspension culture or clinorotation. We found that the ideal 3D scaffold consisted of 2% type I collagen mixed with 6% synthetic hydroxyapatite (collagen-HA). The scaffold was successfully formed into droplets for suspension culture, whereas it was adhered to the RCCS vessel walls for clinorotation. After 3 days of suspension culture, MLO-Y4 cells embedded in the collagen-HA droplets showed reduced expression of the mechanosensitive genes DMP1, E11, IL-6, and RANKL and the number of cells was elevated compared to the static control. We estimated that the drag force acting on the aggregate of droplets was in the range of 2.1 – 4.4 dynes/cm2, speculated to provide a small but significant stimulatory effect on the cells located on the surface, which may de-sensitize them over the course of 3 days. Following clinorotation for 3 days, MLO-Y4 cells showed reduced expression of DMP1 and E11 genes while the cell number was unchanged compared to the static control. Since clinorotation and spaceflight cause the de-differentiation of other bone cells, we speculated that our MLO-Y4 cells were also de-differentiating during clinorotation, resulting in the lower expression of osteocyte-specific genes. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Ke, Calvin | Shah, Baiju R | Outcomes and Management of Type 2 Diabetes in India and China | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-03-01 | Nearly half of all the adults with diabetes worldwide live in India and China. This thesis examines various aspects of the management and outcomes of type 2 diabetes mellitus in these populations. In India, the objective was to examine the associations between diabetes and cardiovascular mortality (due to ischemic heart disease and stroke), and between self-reported medication use and cardiovascular mortality among adults with diabetes (with or without comorbid hypertension), in a nationally representative population of India. In Hong Kong, China, the objectives were to determine how age at diagnosis and modifiable risk factors affect hospitalization rates, glycemic exposure, glycemic deterioration, and responses to oral glucose-lowering drugs. In India, diabetes was associated with double the odds of ischemic heart disease mortality and increased odds of stroke mortality. Medication use was associated with lower odds of ischemic heart disease mortality and stroke mortality in high-burden states among people with diabetes and hypertension, with no significant association among people with diabetes alone. In Hong Kong, people with young-onset type 2 diabetes had the highest hospitalization rates, and that 36.8% of bed-days before age 40 years were attributable to mental illness. The adjusted rate ratio of hospitalization was increased in young- versus usual-onset type 2 diabetes for hospitalizations due to any cause, renal causes, diabetes-related causes, cardiovascular causes, or infection. Based on model estimates, intensified risk factor control in young-onset type 2 diabetes was associated with a one-third reduction in cumulative bed-days from diagnosis until age 75 years. people with young-onset type 2 diabetes had a higher mean A1C throughout the lifespan. The cumulative glycemic exposure was >3 times higher for young-onset versus usual-onset type 2 diabetes. Younger age at diagnosis was associated with faster glycemic deterioration, while age at diagnosis ≥60 years was associated with glycemic improvement. Responses to oral glucose-lowering drugs differed by age at diagnosis. Those with young-onset type 2 diabetes had smaller A1C decrements for metformin-based combinations versus usual-onset type 2 diabetes, but greater responses to other combinations containing sulfonylureas. These findings call for better strategies and further research to improve diabetes management and outcomes in India and China. | Ph.D. | illness | 3 |
| Al-Aradi, Ali | Jaimungal, Sebastian | Outperformance and Tracking: A Framework for Optimal Active and Passive Portfolio Management | Statistics | 2021-06-01 | Portfolio management problems can be broadly divided into two classes of differing investing styles: active and passive. There are a number of philosophical and operational distinctions between these two investment approaches including mandate, complexity, activity level, constraints, and goals. Both forms of portfolio management, however, can involve absolute or relative goals. These goals are distinguished by the involvement (or lack thereof) of external processes in measuring an investor's performance. This thesis presents a unified framework for solving portfolio selection problems arising in both active and passive portfolio management with a focus on relative goals. We are, in particular, interested in stochastic optimization problems related to outperforming a selected benchmark and/or tracking a given portfolio, both natural and essential questions in portfolio management. In the first part of the thesis, we lay the foundation for our framework by introducing a flexible stochastic control problem that captures the range of goals we are interested in. We solve the problem, first, in a simple setting using a dynamic programming approach and derive an explicit closed-form solution for the optimal portfolio. We uncover several important features of the optimal portfolio, most notably, a decomposition result where the optimal solution is expressed in terms of the underlying benchmarks, the growth optimal portfolio, and the minimum variance portfolio. We probe the empirical performance of the optimal portfolio using historical as well as simulated market data. The latter parts of the thesis are dedicated to cases where (i) assets are driven by latent factors and general martingale noise processes, (ii) the market model and preference parameters are stochastic, and (iii) the investor has non-linear utility. These extensions are approached using variational analysis techniques which exploit the convexity of the underlying performance functionals to easily incorporate these additional features. In some instances, the optimal portfolio is characterized via forward backward stochastic differential equations (FBSDEs), and, due to the variational characterization, we establish the existence and uniqueness of solutions to those FBSDEs. The approach we take is also useful for lending interpretability to the solution of the well-known Merton problem when model parameters are stochastic. Moreover, in some special cases, we are able to extend the decomposition result established in the Brownian setting. From a practical perspective, this thesis also presents a fully implementable procedure for computing optimal portfolios for a hidden Markov model of asset prices, including parameter estimation along with filtering results for the hidden state in a general semimartingale setting. The investment performance is demonstrated with out-of-sample backtesting using historical market data. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Kim, Junseok | Davis, Karen D | Pain-Related Brain Oscillations in Healthy Individuals and those with Chronic Pain: A Magnetoencephalography Study | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Pain is a highly individual experience. Recent studies have demonstrated that variability in brain dynamics within brain regions involved with nociceptive processing, collectively known as the dynamic pain connectome, is associated with individual variability of pain perception in healthy and chronic pain conditions. In this thesis, I employed magnetoencephalography (MEG) to probe the role of brain dynamics both regionally and cross-regionally on nociceptive processing in healthy and chronic pain states. In the first study, regional abnormalities in alpha and beta spectral power were observed within regions of the ascending nociceptive pathway and salience network in people with chronic pain and they were most pronounced in neuropathic pain (NP) compared to non-neuropathic pain (NNP). In the second study, cross-regional abnormalities in chronic pain varied between NP and NNP with broadband abnormalities in static and dynamic functional coupling (FCp) observed in each group. In studies 1 and 2, the regional and cross-regional abnormalities were correlated with pain intensity and pain interference. In the third study, measures of pain sensitivity and pain interference were correlated with static and dynamic FCp and these relationships are different between men and women. These results demonstrated the importance of regional and cross-regional brain dynamics in both healthy and chronic pain nociceptive processing. Furthermore, the results of the study showed that MEG measures of brain dynamics can be used to distinguish specific characteristics of subgroups such as NP/NNP as well as sex-differences suggesting the importance of brain dynamics in pain. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Lukich, Vasilija | Cowling, Sharon||Chazan, Michael | Palaeoenvironmental Reconstruction and Geochronology of the Archaeological Localities at Kathu Pan, South Africa | Earth Sciences | 2019-06-01 | Investigation of palaeoenvironments along the semi-arid Kalahari desert margin is necessary for understanding the processes driving modern desertification as well as providing context for the evolution of early hominin populations. By investigating Kathu Pan (KP), an archaeological site with several exposed sediment profiles (KP1, KP6 and KP9), this dissertation constructs a well-dated record of palaeoenvironmental change through the use of luminescence dating and sedimentological methods. To provide a secure age for the stratigraphy, the sequence was dated using multiple minerals and luminescence signals. Discrepancies exist among the results of these techniques, with quartz optically stimulated luminescence providing the most consistent set of ages. These results have important implications for our understanding of the Howiesons Poort technology. The KP exposures were investigated using a multi-proxy approach, including a suite of sedimentological and mineralogical techniques to reconstruct palaeoenvironmental shifts across the site. The resulting record reflects a consistently semi-arid environment fluctuating among a number of thresholds for accumulation of different kinds of transported and authigenic sediments. The sands at the base of the sequence, deposited during the late Pleistocene, are coated in the clay mineral palygorskite, indicative of moderate evaporative control within a semi-arid environment throughout Marine Isotope Stages 6-3. Increased moisture availability during Marine Isotope Stages 5a and 5c is reflected in these sands by the formation of palygorskite in concert with the deposition of organic material. KP crossed a threshold during the Last Glacial Maximum, when deposition of CaCO3 dominated over that of palygorskite, revealing an increasingly arid climate possibly responding to global cooling. In the Holocene beds, repeated alternation of CaCO3- and organic-dominated deposits reflects variable water availability. Through integration with nearby palaeoenvironmental archives, the KP record is discussed in the context of complex southern African climate systems and the variable responses of different proxies to changing moisture regimes, especially seasonality of precipitation. Given the presence of dense artefact assemblages at KP, the availability of water here evidently influenced hominin populations in the region; this dissertation brings southern African moisture records into the pan-African conversation around hominin evolution. | Ph.D. | water, arid, desertification, invest, climate, environmental, marine | 6, 9, 13, 14 |
| Quinn, Kieran Lewis | Bell, Chaim M||Detsky, Allan S | Palliative Care in Patients with Noncancer Illness | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06-01 | The evidence base for palliative care is heavily skewed toward patients with cancer, despite the fact that there are twice as many patients with palliative care needs and noncancer illness. This thesis seeks to establish the evidence for clinical practice and policy development for palliative care programs to improve end-of-life care. The first study was a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized clinical trials of patients with primarily noncancer illness. We found that receipt of palliative care, compared with usual care, was significantly associated with less acute healthcare use and modestly lower symptom burden, and no significant difference in quality of life. The second study measured the association between newly initiated palliative care in the last 6 months of life, healthcare use and location of death in a cohort of adults dying from noncancer illness; and compared these associations with those who die from cancer. We found that among those dying of chronic organ failure, palliative care was associated with a reduction in the rate of emergency department use, hospitalizations and ICU admissions. Palliative care was associated with increased rates of emergency department use and hospitalization in patients dying of dementia, which differed depending upon whether they lived in the community or in a nursing home. In our third study, we measured the association between physician rates of referral to palliative care and location of death in hospitalized adults with serious illness, which include patients dying of cancer and noncancer illness. We found that patients who were cared for by physicians with higher rates of referral to palliative care were less likely to die in hospital and more likely to die at home. Standardizing referral to palliative care may help reduce physician-level variation in referral as a barrier to access. Collectively, these thesis findings highlight the potential benefits of palliative care in patients with select noncancer illness and identify further knowledge gaps for other common noncancer illnesses. Scaling existing palliative care to increase access through sustained investment in physician training and current models of collaborative palliative care may improve end-of-life care, which have significant implications for health policy. | Ph.D. | healthcare, illness, knowledge, labor, invest | 3, 4, 8, 9 |
| Bodner, Korryn | Fortin, Marie-Josée||Molnár, Péter | Parasitism, Predation Prediction: Modelling Variations in Ecological Interactions from Mechanisms to Networks | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-11-01 | Ecological interactions are fundamental to ecology and evolution, regulating population dynamics as well as influencing the biodiversity and stability of communities. Intraspecific and environmental variations are often present in ecological interactions and are typically observable within the processes that regulate the existence and strength of these interactions as well as in the topology of ecological interaction networks. The main objectives of my PhD thesis were to improve the frameworks and methodologies used for predicting and quantifying variations in interactions and their processes and to understand how intraspecific variation can influence the topology of ecological networks. In Chapter 2, I introduced a framework for creating efficient predictive models, which summarizes the three main stages of the modelling process – (1) Framing the Question; (2) Model-Building and Testing; and (3) Uncertainty Evaluation – and outlines stage-specific interdisciplinary strategies designed to improve the accuracy, reliability, and transparency of predictive modelling. As understanding ecological interactions requires insight into the mechanisms underpinning these interactions, in Chapter 3, I evaluated common approaches for measuring resistance and tolerance processes, two key defense strategies regulating host-parasite interactions. Using individual-based models to simulate host-macroparasite experiments, I demonstrated how the design of experiments and methodologies could interact with resistance and tolerance processes to produce unreliable and biased measures and outlined how modifications to the experimental set-up, sampling design, and statistical analyses could help improve the accuracy and precision of these measurements. As intraspecific variation is expected to influence ecological interaction networks, in Chapter 4, I demonstrated how to detect a major source of this variation, ontogenetic variation, in inferred interaction networks using a framework of count-based inferential methods and graphlet-based techniques. I showed that for freshwater stream fish communities, the inclusion of juveniles – specifically larger species’ juveniles – fundamentally altered the structure of their interaction networks. Altogether, the findings in my thesis emphasize both the importance of considering variations in ecological interactions and their processes and the need for appropriate research designs and methodologies to inform our inferences and predictions. | Ph.D. | water, environmental, fish, species, biodivers, biodivers, ecolog, species | 6, 13, 14, 15 |
| McVey, Mark John | Kuebler, Wolfgang M||Semple, John W | Pathophysiologic Mechanisms, Prevention and Treatment of Antibody Independent Transfusion Related Acute Lung Injury | Physiology | 2019-11-01 | A key component of the ability to resuscitate or revive badly injured or ill patients involves transfusion of blood products. Though blood products offer incredible capacity to benefit patients in need, they are not without risk. Though infrequent, in 1 in 5000 transfusions, one of the most lethal (mortality ≈ 10%) and thus serious adverse events associated with receiving a blood transfusion is transfusion related acute lung injury (TRALI). TRALI causes chest infiltrates and hypoxia in part due to lung endothelial cell barrier disruption. Mechanistically, TRALI involves pathogenic antibodies or biological response modifiers (such as sphingolipids) from donor blood which damage transfusion recipients’ lungs. Antibody-mediated TRALI rates have fallen since interventions to reduce the amounts of antibodies in donated blood have been initiated. Antibody-independent-TRALI is hard to identify, let alone eliminate. To gain insights into antibody-independent-TRALI we elected to study platelet mediated TRALI. Platelets, especially those stored for extended periods prior to transfusion represent the highest risk cellular blood products for causing TRALI. We hypothesize that aged platelets are especially injurious due to key distinctions: 1) they contain more of the acid sphingomyelinase (ASM) derived sphingolipid ceramide (known to cause lung injury) and 2) have increased production of extracellular vesicles (EVs; small sub-cellular particles released from platelets during storage which we propose to mediate TRALI). TRALI’s low clinical incidence means studying this condition prospectively at the bedside is very challenging. As a result, we developed a novel murine platelet antibody-independent-TRALI model of TRALI as well as an in vitro human pulmonary microvascular endothelial cell injury model. Within these models we show that aged (stored 5-7 days), not fresh (stored 1 day) platelets or platelet EVs are able to mediate TRALI through an ASM/ceramide dependent mechanism. Present treatment of TRALI involves supportive care with oxygen and positive pressure ventilation. Our study offers pathophysiologic insights which may translate into novel therapies, for example inhibition of ASM during platelet storage or supplementation of the barrier-protective sphingolipid sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P) within aged platelets may prove effective strategies to prevent or even treat antibody-independent-TRALI. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Yassine, Abdul-Amir | Betz, Vaughn | PDT-SPACE: Automatic Interstitial Photodynamic Therapy Planning and Optimization | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) is a minimally invasive oncology treatment that uses light-activated photosensitizers to destroy tumors locally. It has been approved for a variety of superficial tumor indications such as the skin. For deep-seated tumors like brain glioma, the treatment (via interstitial light illumination with fiber optic probes) is yet to be approved due to several challenges that hinder its efficacy. Much of the research to improve interstitial PDT’s (iPDT) therapeutic index has been directed towards developing targeted photosensitizers. However, another factor that highly affects iPDT efficacy is the light penetration inside the tissues, especially when the tumor is surrounded by extremelysensitive healthy tissues such as white matter in the brain. This thesis introduces PDT-SPACE, an open-source software for automatic iPDT planning. We present novel computer-aided design (CAD) algorithms to allocate powers to a set of light diffusers and determine the location and lengths of those diffusers in order to minimize the damage to surrounding organs-at-risk (OAR), while maximizing the damage to the tumor. We also generalize the power allocation algorithm to generate tailored power profiles for cylindrical diffusers to better conform the light distribution to the tumor shape and further decrease the damage. We simulate our methods onnine virtual brain tumors constructed from glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) MRI images taken from the cancer imaging archive. Through the various optimizations presented, we show that the treatment plans generated by PDT-SPACE can reduce damage to OAR by more than 70% on average compared to state-of-the-art techniques, while destroying at least 98% of the tumor. Additionally, we present several techniques utilizing machine learning to generate robust treatment plans that take into account inter-patient variations of tissue optical properties. These robust treatment plans are more adaptable to the biological uncertainties of individual patients. Finally, we show how PDT-SPACE serves as a prospective methodology to analyze the effect of different combinations of optimization parameters on iPDT efficacy for various oncological indications while avoiding the technical difficulties that come with in-vivo direct measurements. We present different treatment plans (each with its own trade-off) to treat bone metastasis resulting from colorectal cancer recurrence. | Ph.D. | learning, trade | 4, 10 |
| Ortega Páez, Yecid | Gagné, Antoinette | Pedagogies of Be[Ing], Be[Longing] and Be[Coming]: Social Justice and Peacebuilding in the English Curriculum of a Marginalized Colombian Public High School | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | Colombia has experienced over five decades of political unrest and extreme violence. This has caused suffering not only for those involved in the armed conflict, but for marginalized populations in general, and specifically for disadvantaged students in public schools. Although the education system has required that issues of peace, conflict resolution, citizenship and social justice be addressed in history and social studies classes, this has not been the case for English classes. In fact, English language teaching has mainly focused on linguistic aspects of the language through content that is sometimes irrelevant to the most vulnerable communities. Starting with a personal onto-epistemological paradigm as a point of entry, this critical ethnographic case study considers how lived social justice and peacebuilding curriculum (SJPBC) occurs in three English classrooms, and how this helps high school students to learn English communication skills that allow them to discuss issues of social justice, as well as to help resolve problems that are relevant for their communities. From May to December 2018, fieldwork was carried out in a public high school, in Bogotá, Colombia with three English teachers and students from Grades 6 to 11. Data collected included teacher interviews, student focus groups, field observations, and artifacts which were used content and theme analysis as interpreted through the lens of grounded theory. Findings revealed four major theoretical ideas related to 1) how teachers create a social justice-inspired curriculum that guides students to learn English, 2) how this curriculum reflects the students’ and teachers’ sense of community and, 3) how selected classroom activities raised social awareness towards a more humanizing pedagogy for English, and 4), how to create a novel research-based model for teaching English that resonates with the students’ needs, expectations, and dreams for their future . Ultimately, in this project I juxtapose the teachers’ classroom pedagogy with the students' lived experiences. Research and pedagogical implications are provided to shed light on the future of English language teaching, especially in marginalized countries such as Colombia. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, peace, citizen, marginalized, decolonization, peace, social justice, violence | 4, 16, 10 |
| Facchi, Francesca | Somigli, Luca | Per una metodologia di studio del protogiallo: i casi di Giulio Piccini e Carolina Invernizio | Italian Studies | 2019-11-01 | Since the 1980s Italian crime fiction has enjoyed international mass popularity, and has drawn critics towards a genre neglected for decades. Studies have almost exclusively focussed on texts written after 1929, the publication year of the first volume of Mondadori’s ‘Libri Gialli’, a series that made giallo synonymous with the crime novel and which is considered as the birth of modern Italian crime fiction. In fact, texts dealing with mysteries, criminals, police, trials and detection contributed to developing a modern conception of the genre from the 1850s onward. As it does not conform to a recognizable genre-structure, the pre-1929 period has been defined as the “prehistory of Italian crime fiction” or protogiallo, and to date only a few scholars have studied early crime fiction writers, approaching them as exceptions of an undignified lowbrow genre. Going against this critical trend, the purpose of my research is to identify a methodological approach to study the protogiallo, which is instrumental to understand the development of the genre in a diachronic perspective as well as to synchronically explore its phases. To achieve this, I relate protogiallo’s heterogeneous corpus to canonical crime fiction by applying Jacques Derrida’s genre conception, which distinguishes ‘participation’ in a genre from the stricter ‘belonging’. Moreover, after determining the fundamental influence of Anglo-American and French crime fiction in the protogiallo’s development, I propose a comparative typology that allows critics to effectively approach early Italian crime fiction texts by identifying their foreign models. I then apply such typological approach to two case-studies: Giulio Piccini’s crime novels published in the 1880s and featuring the first serial detective in Italian literature; and a selection of fin-de-siècle feuilletons by Carolina Invernizio who, from my research, emerges as a proto-feminist crime fiction writer. While highlighting the international interconnectedness of crime fiction, this study pinpoints characteristics that differentiate the protogiallo from its foreign models, including the mutual impact between Italian popular literature and the society of the time. Thus, it emerges how this work does not only speak to scholars invested in literary criticism, but to anyone interested in a wider socio-cultural portrayal of Italian crime fiction. | Ph.D. | feminis, invest | 5, 9 |
| Dhillon, Sonya Kaur | Zakzanis, Konstantine K | Perceived and Objective Cognitive Impairment in Depression: The Identification, Investigation, and Measurement of Cognitive Impairment Bias | Psychological Clinical Science | 2021-06-01 | A recently introduced construct – Cognitive Impairment Bias (CIB) – suggests that the common, but heterogeneous cognitive impairments reported in patients with depression and/or depressive symptoms may be related to biased perceptions related to one’s cognitive abilities. The current program of research examines CIB in a young adult sample with a range of depressive symptom severity. In the first study, CIB uniquely accounts for variation in depressive symptoms and functioning above and beyond objective measures of cognitive functioning. In the next study, CIB was shown to vary based on depressive symptom severity, distinguishing groups belonging to different depressive symptom severity groups, demonstrating large effects as a standalone distinguishing construct, but also when compared to objective measures of cognitive functioning. Finally, after highlighting that CIB is an important construct associated with depressive symptoms, warranting further exploration, the Cognitive Impairment Bias Scale (CIBS) was developed. Psychometric properties of the initial development of the CIBS are discussed. Collectively, results show that CIB is an important construct to consider for both clinicians and researchers. Future studies should seek additional evidence to support the validity of the CIBS in diverse clinical samples and research settings. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Beaulac, Cédric | Rosenthal, Jeffrey S. | Performance and accessibility of statistical learning algorithms for applied data analysis | Statistics | 2021-06-01 | In this thesis we explore a wide range of statistical learning algorithms and evaluate their abilities toanswer clear and precise research questions given a real data set. We do so in multiple research fields; we tackle a higher education problem, contribute to oncology research and analyse an image data set. Our evaluation of algorithms is made with respect to their performance on these real data sets and their overall accessibility. This creates opportunities for interesting findings and results and it serves as motivation for theoretical and algorithmic contributions. We revisit the theoretical foundation of algorithms in order to adapt them to tackle well-established statistical problems. We also visit every step of data analysis; from data collection passing by algorithm design to a thorough analysis that answers research questions. This gives us a complete perspective of the entire data analysis pipeline which allows us to form constructive criticisms about algorithms. In this thesis we discuss all of our recent contributions. We analyse a higher education data set and demonstrate the ability of algorithms to accurately predict students in needs of support. Inspired by the structure of this data set, we construct a new decision algorithm and provide a R-package to anyone interested in using this algorithm. We study the gap between the theory and the implementation of variational autoencoders, illustrate these differences on real data sets and provide explanations and recommendations on how to fix these issues. We design a new survival analysis model using the variational autoencoder framework and evaluate multiple survival analysis machine learning models on the largest randomized trial in pediatric Hodgkin Lymphoma ever conducted. We collect and share a new data set containing high-resolution images of hand-written digits attached to a collection of covariates. Finally, we demonstrate the potential of controllable generative models; a new perspective on the use of labelled data sets and generative models to provide user control over the generated variables. | Ph.D. | learning, accessib | 4, 11 |
| Slattery, Susan Elizabeth | Syme, Alison | Performing Portraiture: Picturing the Upper-class English Woman in an Age of Change, 1890-1914 | History of Art | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation examines the use of portraiture by upper-class women of Britain in the period 1890—1914 as a means to redefine gender and class perception and to reposition aristocratic women as nostalgic emblems of a stable past and as symbols of a modern future. Through a range of portraiture practices, upper-class women promoted themselves as a new model for a continuing upper class that fulfilled a necessary social function in the altered circumstances of the new century. The period 1890—1914 was an era of change that challenged the existing social structure in Britain, destabilizing the hereditary entitlement of the ruling class and questioning the continuing role and relevance of the upper class. In the same period, changes in the technology of print and photography meant that, for the first time, there was the ability to disseminate portrait images through mass media on an economical basis, leading to a proliferation of illustrated journals and magazines. These circumstances provided an opportunity for upper-class women to reimagine the social and political potential of portraiture. My analysis examines different forms of media through intensive case studies arguing a progression from a traditional static image to a fluid interdisciplinary performative portraiture practice. In the first chapter I consider the aristocratic practice of pencil portrait drawings as a symbol of past values. In the second chapter I address the new technology of halftone images and the consequent desire for new forms of portrait images for publication. I argue that upper-class women seized this opportunity to transform the aesthetic of portraiture and to translate a new form of public persona into a platform for political involvement. In the third chapter I consider the advent of the snapshot photograph and the resulting change to ideas of privacy and awareness of forms of self-presentation. Finally, in the fourth chapter I look at the matrix of the upper-class woman, fashion, and the theatre through the perspective of portraiture as a performative practice facilitating the transformation of the upper-class woman into a new type of style celebrity that formed the basis for the celebrity culture of contemporary society. | Ph.D. | gender, women, female, land | 5, 15 |
| Abdelhalim, Reham | Wodchis, Walter P | Person-centred Care Coordination in Ontario: A Multimethod Evaluation of Implementation and Impact | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | As the number of persons living with complex health and social care needs increases, healthcare systems are faced with the challenge of providing high quality care to these individuals. One approach utilized by many healthcare systems to achieve high quality care for persons living with complex health and social care needs is person-centred care coordination). A gap still exists in our knowledge on how to implement person-centred care coordination in ways that meet individual and family expectations and needs. In addition, more is to be learned about the care experiences of persons receiving person-centred care coordination and their family caregivers.The aim of this dissertation was to fill these gaps by evaluating Health Links by conducting three interconnected studies. In the first study of this dissertation, an implementation evaluation approach was utilized to assess the extent to which the implementation plans of person-centredness, and engagement were operationalized within Health Links. In the second and third studies an impact evaluation approach was employed to assess the care experiences of persons living with complex health and social care needs and their family caregivers after being enrolled in Health Links. In order to assess the care experiences comprehensively, multimethods were used. A patient experience survey was used in the second study and in-depth interviews with enrollees and their caregivers in the third study. The first study concluded that operationalization of implementation plans in network structures like Health Links was faced by numerous challenges. The second study found that the intended components of the Health Links approach (care plan and care coordinator) positively impacted the experience of the enrollees. However, issues with implementation of these components led to a negative care experience. The third study showed that despite being enrolled in an initiative that aimed at delivering person-centred care coordination, persons living with complex health and social care needs and their family caregivers were still shouldering the main burden of care coordination. The findings of the three studies can guide policy makers, planners, implementers, and evaluators on how to better plan, deliver and evaluate person-centred care coordination (integrated patient care) interventions. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge | 3, 4 |
| de Keyzer, Charlotte | Thomson, James D||MacIvor, Scott | Phenological Responses of Plants and Pollinators to Human-altered Climates | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-11-01 | The timing of plant and animal life cycle events are changing in response to human-altered climates. These shifts in phenological event dates can be detected through time and across space. For example, shifts through time are usually detected in response to global climate alterations, such as increases in average spring temperature since the Industrial Revolution. In contrast, shifts across space are usually detected in response to local-scale climate alterations, such as increases in temperature in urban compared to rural areas. Phenological responses to altered climates can also be studied through experimentation by directly manipulating the relevant environmental cues. Despite the relative ease of phenological measurement, how we interpret phenological shifts and changes to species interactions is not always straightforward. Careful consideration of the metadata, such as the underlying sampling and pooling decisions made across spatial and temporal scales and across levels of biological organization, is often required. In addition to scale-dependency, a lack of knowledge of the cues driving phenological responses further complicates the interpretation of phenological shifts. In my thesis, I address certain knowledge gaps and issues relevant to phenological sampling, scaling, mechanism, and synchrony between interacting species. I do this through the re-analysis of a long-term dataset on plant phenology and through observational and manipulative studies of Cercis canadensis, the eastern redbud tree, and some of its bee pollinators. In Chapter 2, I show how sampling decisions across space and time can affect phenological patterns and our ability to attribute those patterns to climate change. In Chapter 3, I show that the flowering phenology of C. canadensis within the City of Toronto is highly variable in space. This variability correlates with microclimate and may result in greater temporal overlap with certain C. canadensis floral visitors. In Chapter 4, I experimentally manipulate temperature cues and show that cue-response differences can lead to changes in temporal overlap between C. canadensis flowering onset and the emergence of a pollinator, Osmia lignaria. Through the use of novel sampling and experimental approaches, my thesis addresses knowledge gaps in phenological scaling and mechanism and improves our understanding of how plants and pollinators respond to human-altered climates. | Ph.D. | knowledge, urban, rural, climate, environmental, species, animal, ecolog, species, animal | 4, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Xia, Fan | Kelley, Shana | Phenotypic Screening of Rare Tumor Cells Using Microfluidic Platforms | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Metastatic disease accounts for 90% deaths from cancer. As rare tumor cells shed from primary tumors, circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are considered as “seeds” of secondary tumors and travel via the bloodstream highway to invade distant tissues with a proper environment for their proliferation (“congenial soil”). However, clinical blood samples typically contain tens to hundreds of heterogeneous CTCs and are outnumbered by billions of normal blood cells. The rarity and fragility of CTCs represent challenges that have limited the comprehensive characterization of these cells to reveal their contribution to metastasis at the molecular level. Among the technologies developed to capture and analyze CTCs, microfluidic platforms have offered high levels of performance with great potential for single-cell analyses. Taking advantages of the fast-developing CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing and phage display technologies, we pursued new studies of the molecular mechanisms that explain contributions of CTCs to metastasis. Using microfluidic platforms, we successfully performed an in vivo genome-wide CRISPR knockout screen identifying genetic factors whose loss-of-function promoted CTC production. SLIT2 was identified to be a critical factor regulating invasiveness and metastatic behaviors of tumor cells. In addition to CTC isolation for downstream analysis, we also demonstrated the potential of microfluidic platforms for on-chip analysis such as surface marker profiling. Together, this work demonstrates the power of combining molecular screening and microfluidic platforms to systematically identify disease-causing factors in rare cells, which may eventually lead to the development of novel therapeutic targets. | Ph.D. | production, soil | 12, 15 |
| Imbault, Alexander | Farnood, Ramin | Photocatalytic Production of Dihydroxyacetone from Glycerol Using Non-aqueous Solvents | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | This thesis discusses the opportunities of using photocatalysis to valorize glycerol, a biodiesel waste product, to dihydroxyacetone (DHA), a high-value pharmaceutical. Finding environmentally friendly processes that use less energy input and do not create harmful emissions is of increasing importance. Similarly, ever-increasing waste streams need to be reduced and repurposed. Photocatalysis using solar light as an energy input and performed using waste streams, is an ideal method to combat both of these problems. Typically photocatalysis is performed using water as a solvent because it is both cheap and environmentally friendly. However, this leaves a large non-water space mostly unexplored. This space is investigated in two ways, the adsorption that the catalyst and substrate display, by changing solvent, as well as the change in light distribution caused by the addition of an inactive, immiscible co-solvent. The photocatalytic production of DHA from glycerol in acetonitrile on TiO2 was investigated. After 300 min, with 1 g/L catalyst loading and 4 mM initial glycerol concentration, glycerol conversion and DHA selectivity were 96.8% and 17.8% in acetonitrile compared to 36.1% and 14.7% in water. The half-life of glycerol decreased by a factor of 6.2, from 467 min to 75 min, by changing the solvent from water to acetonitrile. Experiments using biodiesel-derived crude glycerol verified the utility of the proposed process for the photocatalytic production of DHA from crude glycerol. A mechanism is proposed to explain the higher selectivity towards DHA over GAD in this process. The first biphasic photoreactor was investigated and utilized for the conversion of glycerol to GAD and DHA using water and ethyl acetate as dispersed (active) and continuous (inactive) phases, respectively. Compared to a monophasic photoreactor containing only water and identical amounts of glycerol and photocatalyst, the biphasic reactor containing 90 vol % ethyl acetate increased the DHA yield by a factor of 2.9 (from 4.5% to 13%) and the concentration of DHA by approximately 14 times (from 0.08 mM to 1.1 mM) after 240 min. Additionally, conversion of crude glycerol extracted using a 90:10 (vol/vol) ethyl acetate-water mixture showed a similar DHA conversion and yield to that of pure glycerol. | Ph.D. | water, energy, solar, emission, invest, production, waste, environmental, emissions | 6, 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Lin, Charles Chih-Chin | Helmy, Amr M | Photonic Devices using Coupled Plasmonic Structures | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2019-06-01 | The loss-confinement trade-off is the key limitation that prevents realistic utilization of plasmonic components in photonic integrated circuits. Although coupled-mode plasmonic structures can help alleviate the trade-off, stringent symmetry requirements limit the fabrication tolerance and the optical functionalities that can be supported. In this dissertation, a coupled hybrid plasmonic waveguide (CHPW) capable of supporting both long-range propagation and subwavelength confinement is presented as a versatile platform for designing integrated optical devices. The supermodes guided by CHPWs are formed via the coupling of surface plasmon polariton (SPP) and hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPW) modes across a common metal layer. By manipulating the destructive interference between these highly dissimilar plasmonic modes, it is shown that the modal field overlapping the lossy metal region can be minimized without being significantly redistributed. As such, experimental realization of CHPW shows propagation loss and mode area of only 0.07dB/um and 0.002um^2 respectively. As these attributes are fabrication-tolerant and wavelength-insensitive, CHPW micro-ring resonator with loaded Q-factor of 3276 is also demonstrated. The advantage of CHPW as a device platform is that it can also support active functionalities. Specifically, the metal-semiconductor interface where the SPP portion of the supermode is guided can serve as an internal photoemission-based Schottky photodetector. Experimentally, a 20um CHPW photodetector demonstrates responsivity of 80mA/W and sensitivity of | Ph.D. | emission, trade | 7, 10 |
| Vidotto, Danica | Brett, Clare | Play Like a Champion, Post Like a Champion: Investigating Adolescent Female Identity and Social Media | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | This intersectional feminist research project critically explores the experiences and identity constructions of adolescent female athletes through social media. Specifically, this research project studies how adolescent female athletes use social media as a possible tool to confront and disrupt current media discourses of female athletes. Grounded in feminist sports media scholarship and intersectional fourth-wave feminism, I engaged in a qualitative virtual ethnography, conducting surveys, collecting and analyzing digital artifacts, and interviewing adolescent female athletes aged 13-18. Findings included four significant themes: 1) Creating Narratives on Social Media, 2) “Legitimate” Athletes and the Female/Athlete Paradox, 3) Gendered Spaces in Sports and Sports Media, and 4) Female Athleticism and Social Justice Participation. Overall, each participant discussed how their identity constructions on social media were intentional and deliberate. Results demonstrate that participants are extremely conscientious social media experts, questioning and working through ideas about where, how and what to post on social media, as they negotiate identities of female athletes. This work provides further insights into the gender inequities and discourses in Canada’s sports and sports media climate, and how these inequities are mediated through social media technologies. This work aims to contribute to the body of intersectional feminist sports media scholarship in ways that legitimize, value and hold true to girls’ experiences and understandings. The overall impact of these studies is significant because this research addresses the challenges of being an adolescent female athlete in the 21st century and how this phenomenon contributes to gender inequities in sports and sports media. Using existing literature and scholarship, I contextualize, expand, and consider the findings, explain theoretical and methodological considerations, and discuss future research projects stemming from this work. | Ph.D. | gender, girl, female, feminis, invest, equit, climate, social justice | 5, 9, 10, 13, 16 |
| Manuele, Vincent Edward | Holtz, Grégoire | Poésie et idéologie libertine dans l’œuvre de Charles de Sigogne (1560 – 1611) | French Language and Literature | 2019-11-01 | Charles-Timoléon de Beauxoncles, mieux connu sous son nom de plume, Charles de Sigogne, compte parmi les nombreux auteurs restés longtemps dans l’oubli et auxquels la recherche dix-septièmiste a récemment redonné la place qu’ils méritaient. Notre étude s’inscrit dans ce même mouvement de réhabilitation en s’intéressant à Sigogne. Ce poète, associé aux recueils collectifs satiriques, marque la première décennie du XVIIe siècle en faisant la transition avec le siècle précédent. Bien que jouissant d’une popularité certaine, son succès littéraire est paradoxal puisqu’il n’a jamais publié d’œuvre en son nom. La poétique de Sigogne repose sur une langue ordurière, une énonciation proche de l’invective ainsi que sur la description de realia et de corps répugnants dans leurs représentations hyperboliques. Son outrance verbale répond à un antipétrarquisme virulent et se fonde sur le renversement systématique des valeurs qui annonce l’esthétique burlesque. Cette étude, qui cherche d’abord à mieux faire connaître la production de ce poète méconnu, s’articule autour des notions d’œuvre et d’auteur, et analyse les ressorts de son écriture satirique en s’appuyant notamment sur le concept polysémique du libertinage. Afin de comprendre l’altérité et la singularité de la satire de Sigogne, nous nous interrogeons sur les usages et les réappropriations du genre en faisant l’analyse des éléments parodiques propres à sa poésie. L’analyse des recueils collectifs, en se fondant sur l’étude de la réception et de la production de l’écriture sigognienne, nous permet de comprendre et de déterminer la place prédominante qu’y occupe Sigogne. L’étude de son style et de son utilisation constante de métaphores relatives au bas corporel et aux isotopies de la nature, permet de montrer comment sa poétique s’inscrit dans une véritable esthétique de dégoût. Finalement, il s’agit de comprendre comment Sigogne mobilise la performativité de la parole en offrant une place de choix à l’invective, l’insulte et l’énonciation ordurière et en refusant toute forme d’argumentation. | Ph.D. | transit, production | 11, 12 |
| Peters, Jason S | Stevens, Paul | Poetry and the Pursuit of Consensus in Renaissance England | English | 2019-06-01 | Despite resistance from historians and literary critics, two narratives continue to hold sway in many accounts of the Protestant state’s rise in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. The first, associated with recusant and high Tory nostalgia for a hierarchical Middle Ages, sees the Reformation as the moment when “a rich and comforting consciousness of communal identity” passed away and something more like modern pluralism began to emerge. The second, associated with equally influential Whig narratives of liberation and progress, reverses that story and sees the Reformation in more salutary terms, as the moment when the individual first broke free from the church and became a significant actor on the world stage. This study tells a different story. It looks at the way several writers, including Skelton, Tyndale, Spenser, and Milton, responded to one of their period’s most pressing issues—sectarianism—by positing an “aesthetic community” that binds citizens together not with external laws and institutions, but with a deeper, more internal form of authority that reconciles liberty with community. For these writers, the broad cultural changes brought about by the Reformation, changes that centered on tensions that emerged throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries between the institutional authorities of the church and state, on the one hand, and the individual conscience, on the other, required the deployment of new forms of authority that could unite an increasingly divided populace. Chapters consider Skelton’s invocation of his divinely inspired authority as a poet as a way to defend the Catholic consensus fidelium; Tyndale’s fantasy of a spontaneous, affective consensus that would unite the commonwealth in love; Spenser’s moderate vision of a “provisional” consensus that would acknowledge the fictional nature of all common norms; and Milton’s aesthetics of liberty, which aims to reconcile his countervailing desires for liberty and belonging. The result is not only a prehistory of eighteenth-century aesthetics, particularly as it relates to what Terry Eagleton has called “a dream of reconciliation – of individuals woven into intimate unity with no detriment to their specificity,” but also an account of some of England’s earliest responses to the quintessentially modern problem of pluralism. | Ph.D. | knowledge, citizen, reconciliation, land, institut | 4, 10, 15, 16 |
| Aristegui, Juan Pablo | Chiao, Vincent | Police as Institution of Public Force. A Research Agenda | Law | 2021-11-01 | An agenda for legal research on the police is sketched. Adopting a public law account of state authority, mainstream approaches in legal scholarship are criticized. Legal scholarship has been narrowly focused on the regulation of policing through the enforcement of constitutional rights by the courts, using the exclusionary rule of wrongfully obtained evidence. This approach disregards the institutional dimension of police forces and their interactions with other state agencies, thereby providing a reductionist image of the police. This limitation can be overcome by redirecting analysis towards the intra-organizational production of police practices within a given territory. The last section offers a case study by developing a genealogy of the Chilean police. | LL.M. | production, institut | 12, 16 |
| Hamal, Pushpa | Mojab, Shahrzad Professor | Political Economy of Road Building in Nepal: Limits of Social Transformative Change | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation examines the relationship among road building, critical consciousness and social relations in Nepal, with a focus on rural roads as a key site of socio-political action. After the Maoist revolution (1996- 2006), roads have become a primary site, not only of investment in “post-conflict” state-building but also of people’s aspirations for self-governance. At the same time, road building provides opportunities for elites and foreign donors to consolidate power and dominance. Thus, I consider road building as an important but under-examined terrain of hegemonic practice, as well as a potential site for transformative social relations. The dissertation poses three questions: First, what governmental rationalities of road building have shaped planning processes, and what policies and programs have resulted? Second, how do road-building processes manifest prevailing social relations? Third, what critiques or alternative visions have been articulated and what are the limits and possibilities for transformative social change? It draws on three theoretical frameworks. Political economy prompts queries about histories of regional integration and contemporary territorializing regimes. Cultural politics facilitates consideration of how road building reproduces or challenges prevailing social relations, and what critiques or alternative visions have been articulated. Critical adult education emphasizes connecting analysis to praxis. These theoretical inquiries entail dialectically examining how social relations build roads and are in turn constituted through road-building processes. The research design is ethnographic—engaging both semi-structured interviews (with diverse actors involved in road building) and archival analysis (of development grey literature and local media). Participant observation allows for triangulating findings and exploring the gap between what people say and what they do, as well as the gap between what policies indicate and what happens in practice. The dissertation argues that official rationalities become distorted as they encounter social relations, and also that those engaged in road building must navigate complex power dynamics as they seek to enrich themselves and their families. Road development serves to reproduce existing relations of domination; resistance seems futile and is rare. At the same time, there is evidence of critique, which sometimes takes a public form, suggesting that it could become the foundation for more collective action. | Ph.D. | invest, rural, governance, social change | 9, 11, 16 |
| Berkok, Ali | Packman, Jeff | Polytemporality in Contemporary Jazz Performance | Music | 2021-11-01 | Time related concepts in jazz such as tempo, metre, rhythm and even form—the arrangement of timespans within a piece of music—have been theorized in ways that assume a single temporal reference, The Pulse. However, jazz performances since at least the 1960s are, with increasing frequency, using polytemporality, the simultaneous presence of two or more asynchronous rhythmic layers, for creative effects such as destabilizing listeners’ sense of pulse. In this dissertation, I build on foundational research on music featuring more than one temporal stream in jazz (Benadon 2009, Folio 1995, Huang Huang 1994, Pressing 2002) to investigate the inner workings and many implications of polytemporal jazz for both performers and scholars. Through close analysis of three key recorded performances—Miles Okazaki’s “Generations,” Craig Taborn’s “Future Perfect,” and Nick Fraser’s “Disclosure”—I reckon with the ways polytemporality defies conventional approaches to transcription and analysis and develop new methods for this foundational aspect of jazz analysis and pedagogy. I then explore the implications of polytemporality for form in jazz, arguing that each performance studied can be productively understood as a combination of two forms: one notated and one kinetic. The performances analyzed, then, hinge on an agreement or set of agreements, explicit and/or tacit, among the players about how to navigate coherently the composed material. Also at issue are factors such as skill and familiarity among the band members, specific to particular groups and even particular compositions. The result of these conditions is a cohesive, yet polytemporal performance that is more than a strict rendering of a notated composition or the result of individual improvisation, but a fluid and contingent combination of the two. Finally, I examine melodic improvisational musical gestures that sit off the metric grid, discovering that they emerge in a figure/ground relationship with an orienting pulse most often established by the rhythm section. This study serves to diversify ways of understanding polytemporal jazz ensemble performance. Looking forward, this analysis of polytemporality as a rubric and the general analytical principles developed are intended to serve as foundations for the development of future polytemporal composition processes and new vocabularies for polytemporal improvisation. | D.M.A. | pedagogy, invest | 4, 9 |
| Kreiner, Julia Margaret | Wright, Stephen I||Stinchcombe, John R | Population Genomics of Herbicide Resistance Contemporary Agricultural Adaptation in Amaranthus tuberculatus | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-06-01 | The evolution of resistance in response to herbicides is a striking example of repeated, human-induced evolution. While much is known about the effects of particular point mutations that confer resistance, the extent to which they arise repeatedly de novo, draw from standing variation, or spread across populations through gene flow is unclear (Chapter 4). Beyond these simple mutations, complex genetic bases such as gene amplification (Chapter 2) and polygenic architectures (Chapter 3) also contribute to resistance in weed populations, but their population genomics have yet to be characterized. In this thesis, I quantify the repeatability of resistance evolution across these genomic architectures by characterizing adaptive origins and causes and consequences for heterogeneity in the spread of resistance across the range of Amaranthus tuberculatus. A. tuberculatus is native to North America, with an annual life history and wind-pollinated dioecious sexual system. While historically found in riparian habitats, A. tuberculatus has successfully colonized agricultural landscapes and recently become problematic to manage in these ruderal settings due to widespread resistance to multiple modes of herbicides. In Chapter 5, I go on to test hypotheses about the timescale of adaptation to agricultural environments in A. tuberculatus, with phenotypic and genomic data from paired natural-agricultural collections grown in a common garden. I find that nearly all possible mechanisms contribute to the evolution of herbicide resistance and agricultural adaptation in A. tuberculatus, drawing from standing variation, repeated de novo mutations, and widespread gene flow among populations—highlighting the role of both slow gradual change and rapid genetic turnover during plant evolution to contemporary landscapes. Overall, my thesis contributes to our understanding of the extent and magnitude of evolutionary parallelism in the wild, population-level factors that influence the rate of evolution, and the timescale of adaptation to extreme selection and to human-mediated environmental transitions. | Ph.D. | agricultur, wind, transit, environmental, land | 2, 7, 11, 13, 15 |
| Zhang, Yiwen | Kant, Shashi | Post-2003 Collective Forest Tenure Reform in Fujian, China: Institutional Diversity and Farmer’s Preferences | Forestry | 2019-11-01 | China’s post-2003 collective forest tenure reform has drawn substantial attention. Based on the evidence from Fujian Province, this research focuses on three topics that pertain to this reform but have not been sufficiently studied in the literature. Chapter 3 focuses on the diversified approaches that villages developed to change their forest tenure systems. Based on the reform implementation archives of 41 villages, I identify various tenure change approaches and categorize them into two types: tenure form changes and tenure security enhancements. I find that the majority of commercial forests experienced tenure security enhancements instead of tenure form changes in the reform, and the possibilities of experiencing these two types of tenure changes vary across bamboo forests, economic forests and timber forests. Chapter 4 discusses how community commercial timber production is affected by the restructuring of devolving forests from the villagers’ committee to villagers’ groups, which is the major approach to changing forest tenure forms in Fujian. The comparative study based on two cases reveals the mixed effects of this restructuring. By decreasing groups size and decentralizing forest management powers, this restructuring increases the equity of allocating timber revenues and enhances the accountability of forest managers to ordinary farmers. However, this restructuring threatens the long-run efficiency of timber production because villagers’ groups often have weaker organizational capacities than the villagers’ committee. Chapter 5 focuses on the controversy regarding reallocating timber revenues according to demographic changes and discusses the trade-off between equal access and individual rights in the reallocation problem. I find that farmers support reallocating timber revenues to achieve equal access, and such preference pertains to social preferences including altruism and aversion to inequality. However, farmers’ preference for reallocation may be lower if they feel reallocation is difficult to implement. 中国2003年之后的集体林产权改革在学界已经引起诸多关注。基于福建省的经验证据，本研究考察了与本改革相关、但既有文献鲜有关注的三个问题。第三章聚焦于村庄层面上多种多样的林权变革方式。基于41个村庄的林权改革实施档案，笔者识别了各类林权变革方式并将其分为两类：产权形式变化和产权稳定性增加。笔者发现在改革中，多数商品林经历的是产权稳定性增加而非产权形式变革。而且，经历这两种产权变革类型的概率，在竹林、经济林、用材林这三种森林类型之间并不相同。第四章讨论把林权从村委会下放到村民小组这一产权变革方式的影响。对两个村庄的比较案例研究表明，这一制度变革既有正面也有负面影响。通过降低组织规模和下放森林管理权利，这一变革增加了木材收入分配的公平性，并且提高了森林管理者对普通村民的问责性。但是，由于村民小组通常比村委会的组织能力更弱，这一变革危及了木材生产的长期效率。第五章聚焦于集体木材生产中根据人口变化调整木材收入分配的争议，并且讨论了在林权制度设计中如何权衡平等受益与个体权利这两项目标。笔者发现多数农民支持根据人口变化来调整木材收入分配，从而实现平等受益的目标。这种偏好与利他、不平等厌恶等亲社会偏好相关；但是，如果追求平等受益的实施成本较高，农民对平等受益的偏好会降低。 | Ph.D. | equity, trade, inequality, equit, equalit, equal access, cities, production, forest, institut | 4, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16 |
| Cusimano, Maria Christine | Baxter, Nancy N | Practice Patterns and Long-term Health Outcomes of Bilateral Salpingo-Oophorectomy at Benign Hysterectomy | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | Background: Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy (BSO) is offered at the time of benign hysterectomy to prevent ovarian cancer later in life. However, BSO results in the cessation of ovarian hormone production and may be harmful to long-term health. If BSO is associated with adverse outcomes, then understanding variation in surgeon practice will help identify targets for knowledge translation and quality improvement. Methods: We performed three population-based observational studies of women undergoing benign hysterectomy in Ontario, Canada, using linked administrative databases held at ICES. We used mixed logistic regression modelling to describe between-surgeon variation in BSO; overlap propensity score weighted survival modelling to determine whether BSO was associated with all-cause and cause-specific death; and inverse probability of treatment weighted survival modelling to quantify the risk reduction in ovarian cancer associated with BSO. Results: Rates of BSO at benign hysterectomy varied markedly between surgeons even after adjusting for patient case-mix, and the surgeon providing care was one of the strongest factors influencing whether patients underwent BSO (median odds ratio 2.10, 2.49, 2.84, 2.00 in women | Ph.D. | knowledge, women, production, ecolog | 4, 5, 12, 15 |
| Hamilton, Matthew James | Kohn, Margaret | Praxis and Critique: On Fugitive Politics | Political Science | 2019-06-01 | Through dialectical reflection upon the predicament of fugitive political praxis – forms of political action or claim making compelled to resist or give expression to political wrongs via the very mediums and contexts that sustain their imperceptibility and uninhabitability – this dissertation engages simultaneously in an immanent critique of the ‘primacy of [decentered/ fugitive] praxis’ and the development of a critical theory of fugitive politics. The ‘primacy of praxis’ names a constellation of contemporary political thinking that has discovered, out of both the ruins of sovereign or autonomous subjectivity (‘the decentering of the subject’) and the impasses of Critical Theory, novel forms of (fugitive) political possibility. The challenge of the dissertation is to salvage the promise of fugitive praxis from the antinomous theoretical architecture that falsifies it by inflating its plurality, agonism and indeterminacy into the status of ontological, affirmative or axiomatic givens. To raise the question of the inhabitability of fugitive politics is to ask after the particular social and political conditions that variably obstruct or facilitate responsiveness to the fragile claims of fugitive politics. Thinking both with and against Adorno – using his own philosophical insights to exceed his philosophy’s particular, historically sedimented limitations – the dissertation aims to rethink the interpretation of fugitive praxis in the historical present by salvaging his critical conception of mediation. Critical political interpretation, I will argue, neither affirms the resistant or heterogeneous power of (de-centered) praxis, nor discloses its impossibility within the mediating context of the historical present. On the contrary, it proceeds through micrological ambivalence to elucidate political praxis it where it emerges – in triumphant and transient flashes as well as in its disappointing, constrained and damaged forms – neither to celebrate nor mourn, but to disclose the conditionality of praxis and so to dis-close concrete insight as to how different form of praxis and different forms of political institutions might be realized. | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Spierings van der Wolk, David Coby | Steinberg, Aephraim M | Precise Larmor Time Measurements of a Tunneling Bose-Einstein Condensate | Physics | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation presents precise tunneling time measurements of ultracold rubidium atoms tunneling through a narrow optical barrier. A pseudo-magnetic field localized to the barrier region causes the spins of the atoms to rotate while inside the barrier and the rotation is used to define a time of interaction. We observe that tunneling atoms spend less time interacting with the barrier as their energy is decreased below the barrier height. Furthermore, we find that atoms spend less time tunneling through higher barriers. Both observations confirm longstanding predictions about tunneling times. We also discover spin waves generated in the reflected cloud of atoms after collision with the barrier. Atomic interactions in the high-density regions of the reflected cloud drive additional spin rotations. We study this effect and find that it becomes the dominant contributor to spin rotations when the measurement of time spent inside the barrier is `strong'. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Galatro, Daniela | Amon, Cristina H | Predicting Lithium-ion Battery Aging in Electric Vehicles and Second-life Stationary Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Electric vehicles (EVs) have become the most reliable option to replace the current automotive fleet, driven by significant battery technology advances, competitive battery prices, government policies and incentives, and global warming and climate change concerns. The reliability of EVs mostly depends on the performance of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs), currently the preferred energy storage choice in EVs. The development and improvement of LIB chemistries, along with the design of effective Battery Management Systems (BMS) and Battery Thermal Management Systems (BTMS), have contributed to maximizing the lifetime of the LIBs. Despite these technological advances, degradation, commonly referred to as aging, is inevitable and irreversible, affecting battery performance over time, causing a decrease in power and capacity. Accurate battery health diagnosis and prognosis are therefore crucial for describing the aging phenomenon. Aging is mostly described and predicted as the evolution of battery performance parameters in time, through limited correlations based on accelerated test aging data or data-driven models supported by machine learning techniques. These approaches do not allow for the identification and segregation of the mechanisms responsible for aging, which would provide a valuable aging input to the BMS for optimal control actions, accurately setting key battery lifetime thresholds. On the other hand, electrochemically-based aging models are robust but computationally expensive and have not been successfully implemented in BMS algorithms. Data-based and electrochemically-based aging models have been mostly developed at the cell level. Moreover, batteries experience intrinsic cell-to-cell variations or spreading that, in addition to uneven extrinsic stress factors, cause different degradation trajectories per cell, contributing to cell imbalance. To overcome these challenges in modelling aging in LIBs, and hence to support the design and control strategies of both BMS and BTMS aiming to maximize the battery lifetime, this thesis work proposes an aging prediction framework in lithium-ion batteries by: (i) using a statistical-kinetics approach to obtain a set of test matrices and modelling guidelines for data-based models from aging accelerated tests; (ii) integrating an electrochemical reduced-order performance model with an electrochemical aging diagnostic tool, allowing for the identification and segregation of the main degradation mechanisms, and for the accurate identification of battery life thresholds such as first-, second- and unusable-life; and (iii) ensuring the scalability of the proposed approach from cell to battery level by considering cell spreading, using a stochastic approach to predict the state-of-health (SOH) of the battery. | Ph.D. | learning, energy, climate, global warming | 4, 7, 13 |
| Sriretnakumar, Venuja | So, Joyce||Kennedy, James L. | Prevalence and Phenotypic Characterization of Rare Genetic Disorders within Psychiatric Populations | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-06-01 | Many rare genetic syndromes are known to phenotypically manifest with psychiatric symptoms that can be indistinguishable from primary psychiatric disorders. While the majority of ongoing research in psychiatric genetics has been dedicated to the identification and characterization of genes involved in primary psychiatric disorders, there has been a lack of research to determine the extent to which rare genetic variants contribute to the overall psychiatric disease load. This thesis aims to investigate the prevalence of clinically well-characterized pathogenic copy number variant (CNV) syndromes and treatable genetic disorders that can present with neuropsychiatric symptoms within the general psychiatric patient population. In our first study, a greater than expected number of syndromic CNVs was observed amongst a cohort of 348 schizophrenia patients. In our second, pilot, study of 2 046 psychiatric patients, an enrichment for variants associated with four treatable inborn errors of metabolism were found in comparison to the control population. In the third, expansion, study screening for 108 treatable genetic disorders, there was also an enrichment found for the screened genetic disorders in a general psychiatric patient population relative to the expected disease prevalence in the general population. Moreover, an increased carrier frequency for screened genetic disorders was also seen amongst psychiatric patients. Taken together, discovering genetic diseases in psychiatric patients will shift how health care is delivered to these vulnerable patients by addressing underlying conditions rather than masking symptoms with medications and will especially help patients who don't respond to regular medications. This will lead to significant cost savings to the health care system. Ultimately, this study will pave the way for the development of a genetic testing strategy screening psychiatric patients for genetic diseases and identification of specific characteristics associated with psychiatric symptomatology in treatable genetic diseases that will allow for earlier targeted screening and treatments. | Ph.D. | health care, invest | 3, 9 |
| Letchumanan, Michelle | Bayoumi, Ahmed M | Preventing Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Living with HIV: Model Calibration and Economic Evaluation Studies | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-06-01 | I aimed to provide Ontario’s public healthcare payers with an economic evaluation of fracture prevention strategies for HIV-positive men who take antiretroviral therapy (ART). When developing microsimulations models for this purpose, calibration is critical and computationally expensive. Studies that explore efficient calibration methods for microsimulation models are limited. As such, I sought to determine whether simulated annealing or Nelder-Mead is the best-performing parameter search algorithm to calibrate a microsimulation model in project one; determine whether a discrete-event simulation model of fractures leads to more efficient calibrations than a patient-level, discrete-time simulation model in project two; and, estimate the cost-effectiveness of osteoporosis screening and treatment strategies in ART-treated men over a lifetime horizon in project three. For projects one and two, I constructed a Markov microsimulation model that tracked bone loss and incident fractures. All calibrations were based on 4 calibration targets, 12 calibration inputs, a binomial log-likelihood goodness-of fit measure, and first-order searches in a simulated sample of 1000. I assessed calibration performance according to differences in the goodness-of-fit and the time to identifying a good parameter set. In project one, both algorithms produced good sets that had similar fit, but simulated annealing identified the sets two times faster than Nelder-Mead. In project two, both model structures generated similarly accurate good sets, while the discrete-event simulation generated these three times as quickly as the discrete-time simulation. In project three, I evaluated 13 strategies for initiating osteoporosis treatment based on Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX) scores, with and without bone mineral density (BMD). The base-case included 50-year-old, HIV-positive men who took ART for ≥3 years and did not have a history of fractures or osteoporosis treatment. I incorporated the calibrated results from projects 1 and 2 in project 3’s probabilistic analysis. I discounted outcomes annually by 1.5%. At a willingness-to-pay threshold of $50,000/QALY, it is most cost-effective to assess FRAX without BMD, offer treatment if FRAX is ≥10%, and re-screen annually. Collectively, these studies suggest using simulated annealing and discrete-event simulation as efficient calibration methods; as well as that the payer should not pay for BMD screening in older HIV-positive men. | Ph.D. | public health, healthcare | 3 |
| Huang, Yunyun | Winklbauer, Rudolf | Prickle1 Regulates Cell Adhesion and Migration in the Xenopus laevis Gastrula | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-03-01 | Gastrulation is a series of morphogenetic movements that gives rise to the primary germ layers. Molecular control of the process is an intriguing topic to understand how cell and tissue behaviour is coordinated. In the Xenopus gastrula, the prechordal mesoderm (PCM) undergoes involution, and it continues to move and spread along the ectoderm inner surface while it remains separate from it. It gives rise to the head mesoderm, which is anterior to the notochord. The planar cell polarity (PCP) protein Prickle (Pk) is known to coordinate tissue polarity and has been implicated in regulating intercellular adhesion. In this thesis, I investigated Pk1’s role in controlling cell adhesion and motility in the PCM. Pk1 is localized in both diffuse and punctate forms, and the former has been overlooked in most studies. I showed that diffuse Pk1 is ubiquitously expressed in the cytoplasm and is enriched in a sub-membrane zone that overlaps the cortex. I found that diffuse Pk1 is sufficient for up-regulating cortex F-actin, and this modulates cortex tension in the rearranging tissue. Pk1 acts in conjunction with another PCP component Dishevelled2, which antagonizes Pk1’s activity and down-regulates the cortex, and they share a common effector, Casein Kinase II. I proposed that diffuse Pk1 controls F-actin turnover below the cell membrane to modulate cortex density. The PCM rearranges by differential cell-on-cell migration, and cells exhibit velocity gradients from deep tissue to mesoderm-ectoderm boundary. I showed that Pk1 coordinates cell polarity, morphology, orientation and neighbour exchange, and is necessary for generating the velocity gradients. PCM cell translocation is accompanied by lamellipodia formation and tail retraction, and both processes require Pk1. This control of cell motility could already be explained by diffuse Pk1-mediated cortex regulation, but punctate Pk1 may have additional roles, probably in dispersing local tension build-up. I found that Pk1 puncta can be induced by mechanical stresses, and they form at cell-cell contacts and at cell rear ends in vivo. I proposed that the puncta could serve to reduce local peak tensions during PCM cell rearrangement. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Applebaum, Ira Robin | Flessa, Joseph | Principal Practices of Authentic Parental an Community Engagement in Urban Schools | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | The notion of parents more engaged in their children’s education has been enthusiastically embraced during the last quarter of a century. The acknowledgement of the significance of conferring with parents about their opinions of school and learning has increased. Moreover, the Ontario Ministry of Education published its Parent Engagement Policy and enabling regulations in 2010. Parent engagement practices are delineated as procedures in which parents have chances to affect decisions that will influence their children’s learning. Research demonstrates how consulting parents benefit the parents as well as the schools. There is a gap in the research explicitly investigating the practices of school principals in engaging parents. This qualitative study investigated the practices of elementary principals who had keenly pursued parent engagement. Eleven administrators from three Ontario school boards were interviewed about their practices expediting parent engagement. It was found that these principals used comparable practices, and experienced similar supports and barriers. When exploring the data from the first set of interviews, it became clear that the conceptual framework needed to shift the focus to the practices of principals who strive to meet the needs and work with the strengths of the parents (Hornby, 2011). Also, six of the participants were found to be more reflective practitioners. They had previously published in the field of education or were profoundly influenced by their professional reading. The significance of more reflective practice on parent engagement is discussed. The importance of trusting relationships as the foundation of parent engagement is emphasized. Principals build relationships with and among staff, students and parents to engage parents. Suggestions are proposed for the roles that teachers, students and parents need to play to facilitate parent engagement. Recommendations have been made for professional development for staff, engaging parents, as well as suggestions for the ministry and school boards. Where participants have been able to develop trusting relations with parents, parents are more engaged in their child’s schooling. Keywords: parents, relationships, strengths, reflection | Ed.D. | knowledge, learning, invest, urban | 4, 9, 11 |
| Jibran, Ahmad | Flessa , Joseph | Principals and the Hiring Process for Teachers in the Private Schools of Lahore, Pakistan | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | Based primarily on private secondary schools of Lahore, Pakistan, this qualitative study investigates the processes involved in hiring suitable teachers. In doing so it explores in particular the expectations that principals put forth for teaching candidates and how these, then, dictate the hiring process. Fifteen principals with at least five years’ experience were selected for this study. These principals were in charge of private schools which are uniformly following the local education system of Matriculation and charging tuition fee ranging from Rs. 4000 – 7000. Qualitative research approach is used for this study in which data was collected through one-on-one interviews with the help of a semi-structured interview guide. The participants involved in the study have vast experience of hiring teachers, as their administrative experience ranges from six to twenty years in school setting. The research concludes that a good teaching candidate should have strong content knowledge, good personal characteristics, robust teaching experience and subject-specific pedagogy, proficiency in academic and non-academic tasks, strong written and oral communication skills, good discipline, immaculate handwriting and proficiency in notebook correction, adaptability, and capacity to model oneself to the taught group. The research also lists shortcomings usually found in teaching candidates, which include limited occupational choice, stark differences between paper and real qualifications, lack of teaching qualification/teacher training, poor communication skills, handwriting and work ethics, and gap between university education and practical professional life. The implications of the study suggest that university education programs need drastic, informed changes. It seems imperative to take into account not just how private school teachers are hired but who exactly is hired, and what professional qualifications such candidates hold and what effect this variable has. Based on the findings, the study has made recommendations for teaching candidates and principals as they indulge in the hiring process, and to universities as well in relation to their teacher education programs. Finally, it provides directions for future research and suggests how this study can be enhanced. | Ed.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Hebert, William | Dave, Naisargi N | Prisoners of Paradox: Ambivalent Trans-affirmation in the Canadian Prison | Anthropology | 2019-11-01 | Based on twenty-four months of multi-sited anthropological fieldwork, this dissertation traces the conditions of possibility of recent Canadian trans correctional reforms and explores the outcome of their early implementation. Drawing from insights in legal and medical anthropology, critical criminology, and trans studies, it argues these reforms emerged from a wider shift through which trans subjectivity transitioned from being a pathological medical condition to becoming a self-determined, injury-based legal category. In the pre-reform era, Canadian correctional authorities cited pathologizing norms in trans medicine and security concerns in ‘gender-responsive’ women’s institutions to prohibit the placement of ‘pre-operative’ trans people in identity-concordant facilities. From the 1990s onward, trans advocates and their allies challenged the model of pathologization, asking for the inclusion of a broader range of gender-variant persons and for their entitlement to ‘self-determine’ their access to medical care and legal recognition. Correctional reforms were prompted by stories that various actors emploted about trans prisoners’ suffering, which were recuperable within a rights-based framework that posits that injury can be remedied through legal protections and accommodations. This ethnography argues that the quest for rights foreclosed more transformative projects for social change, also requiring advocates to elevate specific stories and silence others. Canada’s reforms thereby constrained trans personhood to a category of ‘virtuous victimhood’, which occluded that trans prisoners are, fundamentally, paradoxical figures: at once ‘victims’ and ‘offenders’. This would, in turn, have ambivalent consequences in the everyday of prison life, where self-determination’s inclusive and liberatory aspirations were in a chronic tension with correctional institutions’ punitive and rehabilitative logics. This dissertation suggests that the ambivalences that emerged through Canada’s trans prison reforms are not anomalies but, rather, that they provide a window to reflect on the ambivalent nature of Canada’s regime of governance, through which inclusion and exclusion are not polar opposites but co-constitutive potentialities. Following from other anthropologists’ concerns with how to write about suffering without producing totalizing, overdetermined narratives, this dissertation also considers what the case of trans prisoners demands of ethnographic writing and what it suggests about the (mis)uses of storytelling in the everyday pursuit of social change. | Ph.D. | gender, women, wind, transit, institut, governance, social change, self-determination | 5, 7, 11, 16 |
| Schott, Nicole Danielle | Titchkosky , Tanya | Pro-Ana/Mia Performance Ethnography: Remaking Responses to Psychiatric Relations to “Eating Disorders” | Social Justice Education | 2022-03-01 | This dissertation focuses on cultural representations of “pro-ana/mia” as well as people’s responses to these representations. Pro-ana/mia has multiple meanings and can refer to individuals and communities online, self-described as “pro-anorexia”, “pro-bulimia” or “pro-eating disorder”, who communicate about eating, movement and bodies in ways that medical and mental health professionals disapprove, censor, deny or obliterate. Intervening against psychiatry’s assumed authority, my dissertation understands pro-ana/mia as representing a complicated diversity of voices and experiences that we should listen to, and learn from. Through the transformation of my pro-ana/mia research, a play titled Pro-Ana/Mia Embedded was staged. The play was performed for two audiences: those who identified with dis/ordered eating, and professionals who worked with people identifying with dis/ordered eating. Focus groups were held with these participants forming the basis for much of the research encountered here, where I extended my theorizing of responses to pro-ana/mia and “eating disorders” to reveal ableist myths of normalcy and sanist violence. With an interpretivist ontology and attention to the politics of emotion (e.g., Ahmed, 2014; Boler, 2015), my dissertation co-produces knowledge with participants who reify and rupture hegemonic understandings of, and responses to, pro-ana/mia and eating disorders. Participants contributed to the post-performance conversations in ways that de-center the normalcy of the psychiatric and bio-medical model’s tyranny on “mental illness” knowledge production and intervention, narrating the ineffectiveness and harms caused by ED treatment and approaches to recovery. Remarkably, through multiplex stories of dis/order, struggle and recovery, participants themselves do disability studies through creating new meanings of pro-ana/mia as teacher (Titchkosky, 2003a) to learn from, and understand with, disrupting the authoritative monopoly of being explained by “experts” and acted upon by psychiatry. My dissertation embraces the non-violent lessons and possibilities that doing disability studies, with emotion and collaboration, offers for fostering new relations with pro-ana/mia and eating disorder theory and praxis. | Ph.D. | mental health, disabilit, illness, knowledge, labor, production, violence | 3, 4, 8, 12, 16 |
| Pollit, Adam Arthur | Seferos, Dwight | Probing Catalyst Control during Polymerizations of π-conjugated Monomers | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | Intramolecular catalyst transfer during polymerizations of π-conjugated monomers can yield unprecedented control over polymer molecular weight, dispersity, and end-group functionality. However, the scope of catalyst–monomer pairings that yield controlled chain-growth character is currently quite limited, which hinders application of these optoelectronic materials. This thesis presents a series of experimental and computational studies aimed at investigating catalyst control during the chain-growth polymerization of π-conjugated monomers, with the goal of increasing the scope of polymers that can be synthesized with control. A novel Ni(diimine) catalyst is developed, which can install a unique end-group on electron-deficient π-conjugated polymers (Chapter 2). This enables quantitative polymer end-group analysis to identify termination side-reactions, which compete with polymer propagation and reduce polymerization control. In order to better understand the mechanistic role of steric and electronic ligand effects during controlled polymerizations of π-conjugated monomers, a computational model is developed which encompasses the entire polymerization catalytic cycle (Chapter 3). This model utilizes a Ni(phosphine) catalyst with various steric and electronic structural modifications, and enables ligand design rules to be proposed for developing future polymerization catalysts which facilitate controlled chain-growth. The developed computational model is applied to a Ni(diimine) catalyst, to evaluate the role of spin states throughout the polymerization catalytic cycle (Chapter 4). This computational investigation is accompanied by experimental studies of Ni(diimine) catalysts, revealing the role that diimine ligand redox chemistry also plays during polymerizations of π-conjugated monomers. Based on the experimental and computational studies presented, a concluding outlook is provided over several ongoing and future studies which could provide further insights into catalyst development for controlling the polymerization of π-conjugated monomers (Chapter 5). | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Upenieks, Laura | Schafer, Markus | Probing the Religion-health Connection: Integrating Insights from the Life Course Perspective and Social Networks | Sociology | 2019-11-01 | While the balance of existing evidence suggests that religion is positively related to health and mental health, the nature of this relationship is complex, with religiosity found to have positive, negative, and null associations with various forms of health. While much progress has been made in revealing this complexity, there are several promising directions that can illuminate currently understudied aspects of this relationship. This dissertation further probes the religion and health connection by integrating the life course perspective and the religious dimensions of people’s close social networks. I argue that the premise that earlier life conditions affect later life outcomes contains an underlying logic generalizable to the domain of religion. Using longitudinal data, Chapter 2 explores the potential long-term health effects of religiosity in the childhood home, and finds that children brought up in highly religious households have a higher risk of mortality than those socialized in more moderately religious households. Extending the findings of Chapter 2, Chapter 3 uses over 35 years of prospective panel data and expands on the life course perspective by considering religious accumulation—the consequences of remaining (ir)religious—as opposed to increasing or decreasing religious attendance, what I term religious mobility. Taken together, results suggest an enduring influence of childhood religiosity on health and mortality, and a beneficial impact of continuity of frequent religious practice over the life course. Health behaviors, particularly smoking, largely mediate the relationship between childhood religiosity and health. Finally, Chapter 4 examines why network religiosity may promote or detract from well-being. Social connection is often offered as the reason for why religion (broadly defined) is beneficial for health. Using nationally representative egocentric network data, this chapter indicates that various dimensions of network members’ religiosity—shared religious tradition, discussion of religious matters, and exchange of prayer support—have different implications for mental health. These associations, moreover, are contingent on respondents’ own religiosity. Considered as a whole, this dissertation broadens the vast body of work assessing the complex relationship between religion and health by offering insight into when and why religion may shape health, in both positive and negative ways. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health | 3 |
| Pereda Aguado, Luis Valentin | Light, Matthew A | Processes of Violence in Mexico’s Organized Crime Groups: A Study of Los Zetas | Criminology | 2021-11-01 | Leading organized crime (OC) theories often assume that violence by organized crime groups (OCGs) results directly from their overarching objectives. While this assumption seems valid at the aggregate level, at the micro-level, OCGs’ strategic objectives frequently seem unnecessary or insufficient to explain their violence. This thesis argues that to understand why and how micro-level violence by OCGs occurs —especially when it seems irrational or disconnected from purported organizational objectives— it is essential to examine how different organizational processes shape and constrain these groups’ behavior. Organizational processes are collections of activities involving repeated, predicable sequences or patterns that enable organizations to function. By identifying and dissecting the organizational processes that structure an OCG’s behavior, it is possible to unearth the causal mechanisms leading to puzzling forms of violence and explain aspects of violence that seem senseless or extraneous. This thesis examines violence by the OCG known as Los Zetas to substantiate this argument. Each of the thesis’s substantive chapters begins by identifying a form or aspect of violence by Los Zetas that approaches focused on the group’s overarching goals cannot appropriately explain. Subsequently, each chapter analyses the relationship between such forms or aspects of violence and specific organizational processes. En las teorías dominantes sobre el crimen organizado frecuentemente se propone que la violencia por parte de los grupos delictivos es resultado directo de sus objetivos “estratégicos”, es decir, de las acciones que implementan para conseguir sus intereses primordiales. Cuando se analiza el actuar de los grupos delictivos de un país en su conjunto, a grandes rasgos y en el largo plazo, este supuesto es válido desde una perspectiva general. Sin embargo, cuando el análisis se enfoca en el comportamiento de un grupo delictivo en el corto plazo, el supuesto de que sus objetivos estratégicos explican su comportamiento, suele ser insuficiente o incluso innecesario para explicar su violencia. En este trabajo se argumenta que es necesario examinar los procesos organizativos que estructuran y canalizan el comportamiento de un grupo delictivo en el “día a día”, para explicar cómo y por qué se genera la violencia. Entendiendo por procesos organizativos al conjunto de actividades y comportamientos que involucran secuencias repetitivas y predecibles e impredecibles para el funcionamiento de cualquier organización; que al identificarlas y examinarlas permiten generar explicaciones sustantivas de la violencia que generan, y que pueden parecer incoherentes, irracionales, o teóricamente intrascendentes. Esta tesis examina la violencia generada por el grupo delictivo conocido como Los Zetas para sustentar este argumento. Cada uno de los capítulos de la tesis identifica un tipo de violencia, o un aspecto de la violencia de Los Zetas, que no puede ser explicada si se parte del principio de que el grupo utiliza la violencia sólo de manera estratégica para alcanzar sus objetivos primordiales. Subsecuentemente, en cada capítulo se analiza la relación entre dicho tipo o aspecto de la violencia y los procesos organizativos de dicho grupo delictivo. | Ph.D. | violence, organized crime | 16 |
| Marshall, Jennifer Ann | Thompson, Alison | Productive Uncertainty and the Genomics of 'Neurodevelopmental Disorders': A Critical Discourse Analysis | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Genomics, in association with precision medicine, promises future certainty meant to ‘pinpoint’ individual differences and allow for individualized therapies. This approach to medicine is also taking place within a context in which neoliberal rationalities dominate thinking about ‘health’ and ‘normality’. My dissertation challenges the notion that the goal of biomedicine, and genomics in particular, is to attain certainty and precision. Rather, uncertainty in this context is a form of power-knowledge that is productive, circulates, and is used as a resource. This study is concerned with the use of uncertainty and uncertainty management discourses to shape genomic testing and diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs). The dissertation aims to extend understandings of how the changing uncertainty discourses of genetics experts can, instead of confounding and diminishing technological and diagnostic pursuits, propel these pursuits using discursive strategies to frame what and who is ethical. Few studies have critically examined the discourses of genetics experts regarding uncertainty in this particular context. I use Foucauldian-influenced critical discourse analysis and a critical bioethics approach to carry out and examine interviews with genetics experts on uncertainty and the genomics of NDDs. My findings highlight three discourses in a field that is changing over time and is technologically dependent. First, the ‘traditional certainty’ discourse was constructed as ‘old thinking’ and as receding into the past. This is contrasted with the ‘uncertainty management’ discourse that is growing in dominance and represents a ‘modern’ approach to uncertainty production in biomedical genomics. A third discourse ‘slips’ between the two discursive poles of ‘traditional certainty’ and ‘modern uncertainty management’. This ‘terrain of slippage’ contains contradictory discourses that co-exist, highlighting tensions around shifting authority and changing technology. Through my analysis, I argue that uncertainty discourses are used to construct varying ethical subjectivities that ultimately extend the reach of genomics while diminishing the need for direct human participation in genomic testing and diagnostic decision-making. This construction culminates in the creation of the ‘innocent’ subject who strategically uses uncertainty to avoid and ignore contentious discourses in the biomedical genomics context and ‘forgets’ the disabled patient who is inconvenient to modern uncertainty management discourses. | Ph.D. | knowledge, production | 4, 12 |
| Yoon, Rosanra | Rush, Brian||Barnsley, Jan | Program Domains of Trauma-Informed Practice Associated with Client Perception of Care and Staff Perceived Organizational Support: A Study of Women’s Substance Use Programs Utilizing Qualitative Comparative Analysis | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | Background: Trauma-informed practice (TIP) is a strength-based service delivery approach that acknowledges the widespread prevalence and impact of trauma in the lives of both the people seeking services as well as amongst its’ workforce (Harris Fallot, 2001; SAMHSA, 2014). As programs and organizations implement a TIP approach to service delivery, examining the degree to which an organization is able to integrate TIP principles into their practices and operations and how it relates to client and staff perception of care can be helpful for program evaluation. Purpose Objectives: Guided by a Knowledge Based View (KBV) of the firm (Grant, 1997; 2002; 1991) and Resource Based Theory (RBT) (Barney, 1991), this study sought to examine combinations of program domains and the degree to which they are trauma-informed that are associated with client perception of care and staff perceived organizational support. Methods: A case study design involving nine women’s substance use agencies across the province of Ontario, Canada was employed to study TIP organizational capability in six program domains. To facilitate the study of combinations of organizational capability domains that are associated with the outcomes, Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) was used as the main analytic approach. Findings: QCA results indicate, that the degree to which program domains are trauma-informed may not be related to staff perceived organizational support and client perception of care outcomes as anticipated. It is possible that organizational capability in TIP has more distal and perhaps little connection to the outcomes as measured by the SPOS and OPOC. Conclusions: Although the CCTIC has utility to inform program planning and implementation for trauma-informed services, it may be challenged as a tool to evaluate the extent to which program domains are associated with client perception of care and staff perceived support. Future studies should look at replicating the CCTIC as a more refined and calibrated measure of TIP that can be readily used to evaluate TIP as it relates to provider and client experiences of care to inform policy and program evaluation. | Ph.D. | knowledge, knowledges, women | 4, 5 |
| Rosenblat, Michael Alexander | Thomas, Scott G | Programming Interval Training to Optimize Endurance Sport Performance | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2021-06-01 | Interval training has become an essential component of endurance training programs because it can facilitate a substantial improvement in endurance sport performance. Interval training involves repeated bouts of high intensity exercise lasting from seconds to minutes in duration. There remains a lack of consensus concerning the optimal method to structure an interval training program. Therefore, the objective of this thesis is to determine the optimal method to program interval training to maximize endurance sport performance. The results of this thesis showed that interval training produced adaptations in the central and peripheral factors that influence maximal oxygen consumption (VO2max) that were dependent on the type of interval training. Interval training programs led to improvements in VO2max, maximal aerobic power and time-trial (TT) performance. The responses were highly dependent on individual and training characteristics. Training status was shown to be the primary baseline characteristics that influenced the response to interval training. With respect to programming variables, long duration intervals (4 min to 5 min) performed during high-intensity interval training (HIIT) produced greater improvements in TT performance compared to sprint interval training (SIT). Exercise performed at any intensity within the severe domain led to similar improvements in TT performance. Consistent training for at least 4-weeks was required to see maximal improvements with HIIT. However, the relationship between total work and performance improvements was not present with SIT. Meta-analyses are highly effective tools that can be used to create best practice guidelines for programming interval training. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Seddon, Josephine Carnevale | McDougall, Douglas E. | Project-Based Learning: A Case Study of Early Data Analytics Learning in Undergraduate Mathematics | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-06-01 | The overall goal of this study was to examine the design and impact of project-based learning (PBL) for early data analytics learning in undergraduate mathematics at a four-year research university in the United States. I documented the plans, activities and participant feedback gathered as part of the original funded program at the university, and delved further into the archival data to explore the feasibility and impact of introducing data analytics learning early in the undergraduate mathematics curriculum. The relationships between student development of knowledge, ability, and confidence during this PBL-infused program were also examined, and the benefits and challenges from the perspectives of the learner and the teacher were detailed.The study provided a successful example of how a PBL-infused approach could be used to effectively teach data analytics early in the mathematics undergraduate curriculum. The findings suggested that the early introduction to data analytics program resulted in additional learning, research and internship opportunities, and informed students’ undergraduate studies, choice of major, and other life choices such as plans for graduate studies and/or careers. Interactions and collaborations in visualizing problem solving in the context of projects using real-world data afforded the students additional opportunities to network with their peers, faculty, and university, industry, and/or community partners. This created a community of learners with shared goals and achievements. These collaborations and interactions supported students’ development of knowledge and ability, both of which were positively correlated with confidence in this early data analytics experience. This study illuminates the design features of the early data analytics learning and research experience, and offers a refined design framework for PBL-infused data analytics curricula in mathematics. The refined design framework includes: real-world content for greater accessibility, visualization of the problem solving, incorporating interactions and collaborations among all in the community of learners, and the promotion of knowledge, confidence and beliefs in support of lifelong learning. The potential of the case study and the refined framework to transform learning across STEM disciplines bolsters the potential broader impact. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, labor, accessib | 4, 8, 11 |
| Dorsman, Ryan N | Stewart, Hamish | Proportionate Sentencing within the Criminal Records Act | Law | 2021-11-01 | This paper analyzes the negative impact that Canada’s criminal records regime has on sentencing judges’ ability to proportionately sentence. The advent of the criminal record check as a risk-management tool in the private sector has increased the burden of the modern criminal record. Although the current legislative push for making record suspensions more accessible is welcome, it is best analogized as a push to reduce the mandatory minimum sentences that currently apply to criminal records. The regime continues to fall short of affording sentencing judges the flexibility to craft sentences that impose punishment that is proportionate to the circumstances of an offence and the characteristics of the offender. In response to this shortcoming, this paper proposes a modified record suspension regime that provides for judicial discretion in the longevity of Canadian criminal records. | LL.M. | accessib, judic | 11, 16 |
| Iacono, Giovanni | Craig, Shelley L | Proposing an Integrated Mindfulness and Affirmative Intervention for LGBTQ+ Youth: The LGBTQ+ Youth Affirmative Mindfulness Project | Social Work | 2019-11-01 | Objective: Sexual and gender minority youth (SGMY) experience disproportionate mental and sexual health disparities, and are often overlooked in practice and research; leaving a notable gap in the study of empirical interventions for SGMY. As there is no systematic study of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for SGMY, The LGBTQ+ Youth Affirmative Mindfulness Project aimed at helping address this gap by examining the potential utility of an adapted affirmative MBI for SGMY by introducing core mindfulness skills to SGMY as a simulated MBI, and developing an adapted MBI. Methods: SGMY (n = 30) participated in four focus groups and six individual interviews in Toronto, Ontario. SGMY also completed the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) at the beginning and end of the study to provide insight into intervention development, and determine its feasibility for use in future studies with SGMY. A paired sample t-test was conducted to test SCS scores pre-sample to post-sample intervention. This study ultimately sought to determine what were the experiences of SGMY while participating in a sample affirmative MBI, what mindfulness coping skills and LGBTQ+ affirmative content would SGMY want to utilize in an affirmative MBI, and what specific adaptations to mindfulness coping skills would provide greater support for SGMY participating in an adapted affirmative MBI. Results: Quantitative results revealed that SGMY displayed low to moderate levels of self-compassion and mindfulness. Additionally, participants reported significantly increased mindfulness and self-compassion at post-testing. Several themes emerged, such as: 1) The importance of psychological safety when practicing mindfulness; 3) The necessity of an explicit focus on self-compassion. Conclusion: Taken together, this dissertation provides an emergent conceptual and practical picture of the effective adaptation of MBIs for SGMY. The findings of this study suggest that SGMY found mindfulness-based practices beneficial, acceptable, and feasible. The overarching themes of this study suggest that: 1) SGMY may benefit from an affirmative MBI; 2) they can be engaged and participate in an affirmative MBI; 3) they would like to utilize mindfulness coping skills to help address stressors and to foster a sense of calm and self-compassion. Future social work and mental health research, practice, and education considerations are discussed. | Ph.D. | mental health, mindfulness, gender, lgbtq, minorit | 3, 5, 10 |
| Mauro, Antonio | Singh, Krishna K.||Connelly , Kim A. | Protocol Development for the Discovery of Angiogenesis Inhibitors via Automated Methods Using Zebrafish and the Discovery and Validation of PD 81723 as a Novel Angiogenesis Inhibitor | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Their optical clarity as larvae and embryos, small size, and high fecundity make zebrafish ideal for whole animal high-throughput screening. A high-throughput drug discovery platform (HTP) has been built to perform fully automated screens of compound libraries with zebrafish embryos. A Tg(kdrl:EGFP) line, marking endothelial cell cytoplasm, was used in this work to help develop protocols and functional algorithms for the system, with the intent of screening for angiogenesis inhibitors. Indirubin 3’ Monoxime (I3M), a known angiogenesis inhibitor, was used at various concentrations to validate the protocols. Consistent with previous studies, a dose-dependent inhibitory effect of I3M on angiogenesis was confirmed. The National Institutes of Health Clinical Collections Libraries I II (NIHCCLI) were screened for angiogenesis inhibitors with these methods as a pilot project for the HTP. The 727 compounds were screened in triplicate and 14 compounds were considered hits. The 5 compounds that corresponded to the most diminished endothelial network with a relatively normal overall morphology were selected for further analysis. A dose response experiment of each of the top 5 compounds was conducted and only PD 81723 and raclopride yielded a significantly smaller endothelial network. Evaluation of the chemical phenotypes of PD 81723 and raclopride led to the exclusion of raclopride as a possible candidate. PD 81723 appeared to be working in a dose-dependent manner and was selected as the main compound of interest. Zebrafish exposed to PD 81723 exhibited several signs of a diminished endothelial network due to the inhibition of angiogenesis. Immunochemistry experiments did not reveal any significant apoptotic or mitotic activity in the zebrafish. Assays with cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) elucidated the ability of PD 81723 to inhibit capillary tube formation, wound healing/migration, and proliferation of endothelial cells. An annexin V/PI flow cytometry assay did not reveal significant levels of apoptotic events in PD 81723 treated cells. These results indicate that PD 81723 may be driving endothelial cells into a quiescent state. In addition, immunoblotting revealed that PD 81723 significantly down regulated p21, AKT, VEGFR-2, p-VEGFR-2, eNOS, and p-eNOS, with no notable change in endogenous VEGF-A. | Ph.D. | fish, animal, animal, institut | 14, 15, 16 |
| Hutchinson, Amber | Pouls Wegner, Mary-Ann | Provincial Cults during the Eighteenth Dynasty: A Dialectical Relationship between Royal Patronage and Non-royal Votive Activity | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation examines the dialectical relationship between royal patronage and non-royal votive activity associated with provincial cults in Egypt during the Eighteenth Dynasty (1550-1295 BC). The study focuses on the sites of Mendes, Abydos, Elkab, Elephantine, and Sai Island, which represent a range of geographical regions from the Delta to Nubia. By analyzing architecture, material culture, pictorial evidence, and inscriptional data, this thesis incorporates an integrative approach to Egyptian history. The results of this research demonstrate that the sacred landscapes of Eighteenth Dynasty provincial towns delineated by royal cult institutions (provincial cult temples, peripteral temples, and ka chapels) and festival processional routes enabled royal and non-royal individuals to partake in mutual interactions. Royal involvement in provincial cults solidified economic, administrative, and political ties throughout Egypt and allowed the king to benefit from perpetuating the cults of local deities by appeasing the gods that could grant him favor. A significant development in royal temple construction indicates that this activity was both influenced by local aspects of divine cults and further enriched the built environment of sacred landscapes. At the same time, non-royal individuals could display their social status and devotion to their local deities by participating in festival celebrations and by leaving physical traces of their activity. This dissertation proves that traditionally assumed binary oppositions, or contrasts, between center and periphery, residence versus province, and state versus private religious systems can be moderated through careful analysis of the integration of material remnants of royal and non-royal votive activity acting within specific historical and geographical settings. | Ph.D. | land, institut | 15, 16 |
| Kalb, Natalie | Goldstein, Abby L | Psychological Distress Among LGBTQ People of Colour: Understanding the Role of Intersectional Microaggressions, Social Identity, and Community Connectedness | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer people of colour (LGBTQ-POC) are confronted with daily, subtle racist and heterosexist microaggressions, which have been linked to stress and increased likelihood of mental health problems. The current study applied an intersectional framework to understand the role that intersectional microaggressions play in predicting psychological distress among LGBTQ-POC. Furthermore, rather than merely investigating risk, the current study integrated a resiliency perspective to understand how individual- and community-level promotive factors compensate for and protect against psychological distress in the face of intersectional microaggressions. A racially diverse sample of 200 LGBTQ emerging adults of colour (ages 18-29) participated in an online study that assessed psychological distress, three types of microaggressions (racial, heterosexist, and intersectional), social identity, and community connectedness. Results indicated that although heterosexist and racial microaggressions predicted psychological distress, when considered together, intersectional microaggressions accounted for the majority of the relationship and were a better predictor of psychological distress. Additionally, although social identity was not protective, connectedness with each of the three communities (LGBTQ, POC, LGBTQ-POC) had a direct compensatory effect on psychological distress. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed. | Ph.D. | mental health, gender, queer, lgbtq, transgender, invest, of colour, resilien | 3, 5, 9, 10, 11 |
| MacPherson, Ellen | Kerr, Gretchen | Public Shaming of Professional Athletes on Social Media | Exercise Sciences | 2021-06-01 | The overarching purpose of this dissertation was to explore the nature and extent of public shaming of professional athletes on social media in response to perceived legal, social, and sport-specific norm violations and the potential reasons that fans engage with athletes in this manner on social media. The methods employed were two-fold: for studies one and two, a qualitative content analysis of 7,700 fan comments on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram directed at eleven male and female professional athletes from six different sports was conducted. To analyse these data, I implemented methodological pluralism by engaging in a semantic and subsequent latent thematic content analyses. For study three, guided by a narrative methodology, I conducted five semi-structured in-depth interviews with sport fans (three males, two females) who engaged regularly with professional athletes and teams on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Findings cumulatively revealed that fans engage in public shaming of male and female professional athletes in response to the athletes’ perceived legal, social, and sport-specific violations. Public shaming on social media was evident with each athlete violation I examined, regardless of sport or experience level, and occurred across all platforms (Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram). Acts of shaming were illustrated by fans’ explicit withdrawals of support and descriptions of desired physical, psychosocial and career-related consequences for the athletes. In addition, there were undercurrents of gender and sexism observed across fans’ public shaming, which were exemplified through fans’ objectification of females, promotion of hyper-masculinity, and victim blaming. Fans proposed that public shaming acts occur in response to the threats that norm violations pose to fans’ sense of identification and belonging that have been cultivated through fandom and enhanced through the relationships perceived to be developed with athletes via social media. Specifically, fans suggested public shaming might be provoked when the integrity of fan-athlete relationships are challenged by legal, social, or sport-specific norm violations. Based on the collective findings, I explained the theoretical, methodological, and applied contributions of this dissertation to the existing literature, proposed ethical considerations for research of this nature, and discussed recommendations for future directions in this area of scholarship. | Ph.D. | gender, female | 5 |
| Dick, Daniel Gerard | Laflamme, Marc | Quantifying Similarity in Paleontological Settings: Accuracy, Complexity, and Macroevolutionary Implications | Earth Sciences | 2021-11-01 | In paleontological settings, similarity measures serve multiple roles, from arranging taxa into phylogenetic trees, to quantifying overlap between communities in terms of several interrelated factors. Any measure that attempts to incorporate such a wide variety of concepts will struggle to handle lost information, and the well-known biases of the fossil record represent a significant hurdle to accurate quantification of similarity. In this thesis I explore the accuracy of several well-known similarity measures when they are applied in paleontological settings, and discuss how measuring similarity can allow us to better understand long-term evolutionary dynamics. Using a combination of numerical models that simulate the biases of the fossil record, alongside field-based samples from rapidly lithifying environments, I demonstrate that only a small subset of popular similarity measures work in paleontological settings. I explore how the most accurate measures can be modified to incorporate additional information about inter-community overlap, expanding our conception of what constitutes a “similar” ecosystem. While articulating the assumptions underlying the most commonly used similarity indices, I wrote a proof demonstrating that one of the most popular similarity measures in paleontological research (convex hull overlap) does not work like other measures and can return inaccurate results even in unbiased settings. Finally, I looked at two key questions in the application of similarity to paleontological problems. The first of these issues involves the problem of a tie when classifying taxa into groups based on functional similarity. In classical classification protocols, when a given taxon is equally likely to belong to two or more groups, there is no clear solution. Here I explore how the mathematical approach of fuzzy set theory can offer a potential means of solving this problem. Finally, I explore how quantifying similarity can offer a possible mechanistic explanation for one of the most unusual patterns in the fossil record – the decoupling of the taxonomic and ecological consequences of a mass extinction event. My research provides the first quantitative evidence that functional similarity, long proposed to have a stabilizing effect on small-scale ecosystems, could potentially prevent widespread collapse in the face of a global climatic shift. | Ph.D. | ecosystem, ecolog, ecosystem | 14, 15 |
| Shi, Qianwen | Murphy, Jennifer | Quantifying Sources of Nitrogen Oxides in Remote Environments: From Biosphere-Atmosphere Exchange to Renoxification | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) are an important constituent to the global atmosphere due to their strong connection to ozone (O3) and hydroxyl radical (OH). Anthropogenic NOx emissions have been regulated worldwide, leading to a decreasing trend over the past 15 years in North America and Europe, which makes biogenic sources and recycling pathways more important, especially in remote regions that are less influenced by human activities.A two-channel chemiluminescence instrument with high precision and time resolution was used to quantify NOx in the field and the laboratory. In the field, direct measurements of biosphere-atmosphere exchange of NOx were made above a temperate broadleaf forest using the eddy covariance flux method. Near-zero NOx fluxes suggest that the soil NO emissions barely escape the canopy, and an air mass back trajectory analysis indicates that the morning NOx maximum is mainly associated with long-range transport of pollution. Flux divergence observed at this site is a consequence of fast chemical processes and different light intensity above and below the canopy. In the laboratory, NOx and other products from the photolysis of suspended inorganic particulate nitrate were measured in chamber experiments as a function of wavelength, relative humidity, and presence of photosensitizers. The photolysis rate constants of particulate nitrate measured are within an order of magnitude of that of gas-phase HNO3. This finding is in contrast with several studies showing a larger enhancement factor (EF) of renoxification of particle nitrate relative to HNO3. Different values of EF were applied to monitoring data from Environment and Climate Change Canada, to estimate NOx production from the photolysis of particulate nitrate and HNO3. Results were then compared with soil NOx emissions from a global model, showing that renoxification could potentially compete with biogenic NOx in remote environments and needs further investigation. | Ph.D. | pollution, emission, labor, invest, production, recycl, climate, anthropogenic, emissions, pollut, forest, pollut, soil | 3, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Hsu, Ian Shenyen | Moses, Alan M | Quantitative Experimental and Mathematical Approaches to Extract Information about Transcription Factor Pulsing | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11-01 | The picture of intracellular information processing is changing from a passive, predictable mechanism to an active, spontaneous dynamic system. Together with an increasing appreciation of the stochastic nature of signaling pathways and regulatory networks, a key discovery in this transition was that many transcription factors show stochastic pulsing: these transcription factors repetitively shuttle in and out of nuclei when cells are in a constant environment. Although functional explanations of stochastic pulsing have been proposed, many outstanding questions remained when I started my thesis research: What are the key regulators that lead to pulsing? Is the regulation encoded in the amino acid sequence of these transcription factors? Is stochastic pulsing beneficial to the organism or a byproduct of other biological functions? How does stochastic pulsing evolve? Two systems biology approaches have been widely applied to study stochastic single-cell dynamics: mathematical modeling, which helps us explain complex cellular phenomena, and quantitative experiments, which help us falsify model predictions. Hence, my thesis research aims to understand the mechanism underlying stochastic pulsing through quantitative, mathematical, and experimental approaches. I first characterized the mechanism at the level of the signaling pathway by using a stochastic pulsing transcription factor, Crz1, which is downstream of the calcium signaling pathway. I found that Crz1 shows damped oscillations after rapid fluctuations in cytosolic calcium concentration. Using a stochastic model, I found that the stochastic pulsing of Crz1 can be explained as a synchronous molecular movement with delay to upstream signals. I next characterized the mechanism at the level of peptide sequence by taking the advantage of wide sequence variation among Crz1 orthologues. By developing a reporter system for the calcium/Crz1 pathway, I found that the intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs) of the orthologous Crz1 show differences in their signaling dynamics. I also found that a few evolutionary changes in the IDRs are sufficient to introduce pulsing and improve fitness, supporting the hypothesis that pulsing is beneficial. Finally, I contributed to developing inference methods for quantitative studies on stochastic signaling pathways, which are known to include IDRs. Starting with the high osmolarity glycerol (HOG) pathway, I quantified the effects of conserved elements in IDRs of the HOG pathway. I developed a method to fit data with non-symmetrical errors and demonstrated the current limit of model interpretability. Overall, my thesis clarifies key challenges in systems biology and provides a promising direction to investigate the mechanism of stochastic signaling pathways. | Ph.D. | invest, transit, conserv, conserv | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Choi, Wonjune | Kim, Yong Baek | Quantum Dynamics and Topology of the Kitaev Materials | Physics | 2021-11-01 | Spin-orbit coupled Mott insulators on trivalent lattices open up a new arena of exotic correlated quantum phases by realizing frustrating bond-directional interactions. These frustrated quantum magnets, so called the Kitaev materials, provide the platform for the long-sought quantum spin liquid with Majorana fermions and Z2 gauge fields, as well as various noncollinear magnetic orders with topological magnons. In this thesis, we study the topological properties of proximate superconducting and magnetic phases of the Kitaev materials and provide theory of a novel spectroscopic experiment for sharper characterization of quantum spin liquids. We first investigate topological nature of the emergent superconductors born out of the Kitaev spin liquid strongly Kondo coupled to conduction electrons. We discover a ferromagnetic topological superconductor carrying non-Abelian anyons and a nonmagnetic Z2 topological superconductor, whose symmetry and topology are heavily influenced by the emergent gauge structure of the parent spin liquid. Next, we discuss the nonsymmorphic symmetry protected topological nodal magnons in the three dimensional Kitaev materials. We discovered stable magnon band crossings in the field-induced canted zigzag order of the hyperhoneycomb β-Li2IrO3 and showed that the magnetic glide symmetries and the non-Hermitian nature of the bosonic magnons lead to unique topological protection that is different from the case of their fermionic counterparts. Finally, we propose a theory of two-dimensional spectroscopy, where nonlinear dynamical responses provide insight into the low-energy excitations, for quantum spin liquids. By considering the exactly solvable Kitaev honeycomb model as an archetype example, we theoretically demonstrate that the two-dimensional Fourier transform of the nonlinear dynamical response functions can reveal clear signatures of the itinerant Majorana fermions and gapped Z2 fluxes of the Kitaev spin liquid. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Ferretti, Hugo | Steinberg, Aephraim M. | Quantum Parameter Estimation in the Laboratory | Physics | 2022-03-01 | In this thesis, I report on three projects which I have completed during my PhD. All of these projects are related to quantum parameter estimation.When simultaneously measuring all the parameters describing a unitary transformation, a decision needs to be made regarding the relative importance of these different parameters. In our first project, we show that the geometry of the group of unitaries in question can guide us toward a natural way of weighting these dif- ferent parameters. This allows us to transform the matrix Cram ́er-Rao inequality into a simple parameter-independent scalar inequality. We use this new inequality to calculate the best possible performances for a measurement of the parameters that describe a general SU(d) unitary and we find an optimal scalable family of quantum states which achieves this performance for SU(3) unitaries. In our second project, we experimentally create and characterize the tetrahedron state in the polarization of four photons. This entangled state is the optimal 4-photon state for measuring the three parameters describing a SU(2) polarization rotation. Interestingly, it possesses the same rotational symmetries as a tetrahedron, giving the state its name. We perform state tomography on our experimental state and measure a quantum state fidelity of F = (0.46 ± 0.02) with the ideal state. Our state nevertheless shares many qualitative features with the latter. Finally, in our last project, we propose a technique named SPLICE which allows us to beat “Rayleigh’s curse”—the inability to measure the separation between two incoherent point sources of light when said separation is below the imaging apparatus’ Rayleigh’s criterion. We test this technique in a proof of principle experiment in the laboratory and demonstrate its advantage over traditional methods. | Ph.D. | labor, inequality, equalit, metro | 8, 10, 11 |
| Hems, Rachel | Abbatt, Jonathan | Radical Cloud Chemistry: Oxidation of Organic Compounds in Atmospheric Water | Chemistry | 2020-06-01 | Atmospheric aging of organic compounds by photo-chemical oxidation can occur rapidly in the aqueous phase in aerosol particles, cloud droplets, and fog droplets and can result in changes to their chemical composition and absorptivity. Despite their capacity to significantly alter the properties of organic aerosol, aqueous phase reactions have not gained as much attention as other atmospheric aging pathways. The goal of this thesis was to further our understanding of photoreactions of atmospherically-relevant organic compounds in cloud water. This goal was accomplished through three projects, which investigated factors influencing the production of hydroxyl (OH) radicals in aqueous phase reactions and the lifetime, oxidation mechanism, and fate of light absorbing molecules that contribute to brown carbon. In the first project, the impact of dissolved organic compounds, specifically from α-pinene ozonolysis secondary organic aerosol (SOA) material, on the Fenton reaction, a major source of OH radicals in cloud and fog water, was investigated. OH radical production was significantly suppressed in the presence of SOA material, likely due to complexation of the iron involved in the Fenton reaction. In the second project, aqueous photo-oxidation kinetics of three light-absorbing nitrophenol compounds often associated with wildfire smoke were examined and were found to have an in-cloud lifetime on the order of hours. Photo-oxidation initially caused an absorption enhancement that corresponded to products with added oxygenated functional groups. Further photo-oxidation led to products that do not absorb visible light, reducing their contribution to atmospheric warming. In the third project, representative and chemically complex brown carbon was generated in the laboratory from wood smoke. Light absorption increased from aqueous photoreaction and OH oxidation and was linked to oligomerization and functionalization of aromatic compounds, similar to the nitrophenol chemistry. While extended OH oxidation led to a decrease in absorbance, brown carbon in wood smoke is likely to have a longer lifetime than estimated by individual components. Overall, this work demonstrated key outcomes of organic chemical transformations resulting from aqueous atmospheric aging under relevant cloud conditions and provided implications for their effect on the climate system. | Ph.D. | water, labor, invest, production, climate | 6, 8, 9, 12, 13 |
| Li, Dongzi | Pen, Ue-Li | Radio Propagation Effects and Coherent Sources | Physics | 2021-06-01 | Some critical components of the universe are difficult to observe in emission. One way to study them is through their interaction with light from background sources. When studying the propagation effects of a background source, one major challenge is the degeneracy introduced by the source behavior. Sources with simple known properties, such as the cosmic microwave background (CMB), or point-like and coherent sources, such as pulsars and fast radio bursts (FRBs), are optimal. In this thesis, I focus on the studies related to these sources. I analyze the possibility of distinguishing kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) distortions on CMB as a way to measure diffuse baryon distribution. By cross-correlating kSZ distortion with density fluctuations from 21 cm intensity mapping, a $>20\,\sigma$ detection with existing facilities is forecasted. Separately, I have proposed a new method to study small-scale magnetic structures via plasma lensing, which is applied to study the magneto-environment in the interface between a pulsar B1957+20 and its companion's wind. A new constraint of $\sigma_B | Ph.D. | wind, emission | 7 |
| Muredda, Angelo | Goldman, Marlene | Raising a Question Mark: Disability and Textual Recalibration in Canadian Fiction and Film | English | 2019-11-01 | This study considers how the disabled child is alternately depicted as a question mark of uncertain form and value and as a prosthetic aid to narrative in Canadian fiction and film. Since Lee Edelman’s manifesto against “reproductive futurism” in 2004’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, children have been the site of discursive debates about the future in queer theory and beyond. Drawing on disability studies scholarship about literature, this thesis positions the disabled child at the frontier of these discursive debates about what viable lives can be projected into the future. Examining depictions of the disabled child in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Canadian fiction and film, I argue that disabled children are chimeric figures who both facilitate and disrupt narratives of generation and inheritance. The disabled child, I show, glances back on a preceding generation’s yearnings and malfeasances while giving shape to a future that is often frightening but is nevertheless charged with ambivalent potential. My first chapter highlights the depiction of arrested adults frozen in childhood by physical and cognitive disabilities in Irene Baird’s Waste Heritage (1938) and Hugh MacLennan’s Barometer Rising (1941), novels about the state’s relationship to the vulnerable citizens under its custodial powers. My second chapter examines how Margaret Laurence’s The Diviners (1974) and Joy Kogawa’s Obasan (1981) focus their critical gaze on the state’s violent dereliction of care toward its vulnerable citizens through the precarious figure of the racialized disabled child who embodies either a redemptive or an impaired future. In chapter three I examine how the long hand of the state extends into physicians and families in texts since the 1990s, proposing that Barbara Gowdy’s short story “Sylvie” (1992) and Kathleen Winter’s novel Annabel (2010) privilege the singularity of disabled children despite medical interventions to police them. Finally, chapter four evaluates science fiction and horror as capacious generic venues to think about the polysemous nature of the disabled child, juxtaposing David Cronenberg’s film The Fly (1986) and Vincenzo Natali’s Splice (2010) to show how eugenic anxieties about disability are simultaneously past, present, and future. | Ph.D. | precarious, disabilit, citizen, queer, waste | 1, 3, 4, 5, 12 |
| Ma, Shun Lok Jennifer | Zandstra, Peter W | Rapid and Direct Enumeration of Hematopoietic Stem Cells in Unenriched Cell Populations | Biomedical Engineering | 2020-11-01 | Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are rare cells that sustain life-long blood cell production and can be transplanted to treat various hematological disorders. HSC enumeration is important for gauging potential therapeutic efficacy, and the current gold standard relies on months-long xenotransplantation assays, which are challenging and impractical for routine screening. It was hypothesized that rare cell populations such as HSCs can be more readily identified and enumerated based on their specific transcriptional signature and an ultrahigh throughput single-cell RT-PCR platform was pioneered. Using this platform, simultaneous detection of three targets at single-molecule level and one-step RT-PCR that integrated all the processing steps from cell lysis to the generation of fluorescent amplification products in nanolitre droplets were demonstrated. A probabilistic deconvolution algorithm was developed to decouple the confounding effects of ambient RNA and cell doublets, allowing the construction of single-cell gene signature profiles as well as the decomposition of heterogeneous populations. Furthermore, a simulation model of the droplet RT-PCR experiment was constructed to explore the limits of the platform and guide experimental design. By mixing cell lines at predetermined ratios and enumerating them instantaneously, the assay’s capability to distinguish between, and provide frequency readouts of, various cell populations based on their gene signatures was illustrated. Potential candidate markers for HSC enumeration were identified by analyzing existing microarray data collected from highly purified populations of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells. The droplet RT-PCR platform was evaluated against other single-cell gene expression profiling technologies using an analytic hierarchy process-based framework that took into consideration their technical capabilities, logistics, accessibility, and cost. This methodological approach allows the ranking of technologies based on the requirements of specific applications, established the droplet RT-PCR platform as the most appropriate solution to routine HSC enumeration, and revealed technological gaps for further development. In summary, this work provides a suite of novel tools for ultrahigh throughput single-cell gene expression profiling and rare cell detection. It lays the technological foundations for identifying and implementing a unique RNA signature for robust and rapid enumeration of HSCs, which will accelerate stem cell research and facilitate clinical management to provide more effective HSC transplantation treatments. | Ph.D. | accessib, production | 11, 12 |
| Schneider, Matthew Levi Alexander | McLeod, Randall | RARchive Fever: The Materiality of Videogames | English | 2019-11-01 | The shaping of videogames by material conditions can be uncovered by comparing works across multiple platforms through something analogous to textual criticism: one must understand the digital equivalents of bibliographical codes and be able to relate them to the processes through which players interact with videogames. In this thesis, I extend the siloed approach of Platform Studies and draw on evidence from the past half-century to examine the diverse codes that shape the meaning-making of videogames. Chapter One posits that digital storage media have a knowable topography, and that videogames provide an ideal tool to visualise and navigate it. Additionally, this chapter demonstrates that understanding this topography can enhance our appreciation of videogames by detailing how storage-based glitches make the contours of the storage visible to us. In Chapter Two, I examine what is hidden in digital texts, including comments as well as decoupled portions of code. Although such information cannot be seen by those unaware of how displayed information only partially reflects the content of digital files, it can have industry-shaping consequences. An “Interlude” section concludes my study of digital storage and data and introduces the study of further components, including hardware and print matter. Chapter Three explores mobile devices as collections of sensors continually gathering data. Focussing on the game République, I study how such data can be used without the knowledge of and contrary to the wishes of a device’s owner. République provides a model for making visible the processes in a player’s phone, so as to challenge her trust of her device. Finally, in Chapter Four, I turn to an early Computer Role-Playing Game, The Temple of Apshai. Studying its manual, I demonstrate that print materials can be integral to videogames: they reveal connections to print traditions and allow the games to surpass the limitations of their storage media. My comparative approach to platforms and eras serves to illuminate the nuances of digital materiality in videogames. Advancing our knowledge of this field of study is vital at a time when access to the original objects is waning. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Wang, Shunyao | Chan, Arthur W.H. | Reactive Intermediates in Secondary Organic Aerosol and Oxidative Potential | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Secondary organic aerosol (SOA) contributes a significant fraction of particulate matter (PM), which has important impacts on climate change and public health. Reactive intermediates in SOA are compounds with relatively high reactivities, whose environmental fate can significantly influence the physicochemical properties of aerosol. The present thesis characterizes the reactive intermediates in OA by evaluating their potential role in atmospheric chemistry and human health. Organic peroxides are highly reactive components detected in a variety of organic aerosol systems. The current work investigates the reactivity of organic peroxides towards SO2 through laboratory measurements of bulk-phase and heterogeneous reaction kinetics. Results indicate that this interaction is important for particulate sulfate formation and other aerosol characteristics. Furthermore, organic peroxides can serve as a significant source of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and exhibit high oxidative potential (OP) as observed in OA from cooking emissions. Among OA from various emission sources, the OP of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons derived SOA is the highest while the evolution in the atmosphere remains obscure. Using naphthalene SOA (NSOA) as a model system, secondary ozonolysis and oligomerization was found to enhance the OP of NSOA while chelation with transition metal (Cu2+) reduces the OP. Photochemical aging can initially enhance and then decrease the cytotoxicity of NSOA. Post-translational level results from proteome-wide analysis show that quinones and other unsaturated carbonyls are responsible for the toxicity of NSOA during atmospheric aging. This work contributes to our understanding of the dynamic evolution and potential health impacts from organic aerosol in the atmosphere. | Ph.D. | public health, emission, labor, invest, transit, climate, environmental, emissions, pollut, species, pollut, species | 3, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Raeis, Majid | Leon-Garcia, Alberto | Real-time Delay Prediction and Quality of Service Assurance for Traffic Management in Service Systems | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Ensuring quality of service (QoS) is one of the important challenges facing service providers. A key metric of the QoS is the experienced delay by the customers, which can depend on various factors such as the demand patterns, service capacity and the scheduling discipline. In this thesis, we study delay distribution prediction in service networks and propose novel QoS assurance methods which target the mentioned factors. In particular, the proposed methods require no knowledge of the system model or parameters, which is an important feature for real-world applications. We first consider the delay distribution prediction problem in tandem and acyclic queueing networks. Our analytical results suggest that the Gaussian mixture model can be a good candidate for estimating the end-to-end delay distribution in these systems. Motivated by this result, we use mixture density networks to propose a delay distribution predictor based on queue length information, which requires no knowledge of the system model or parameters. As the next step, we take a reinforcement learning (RL) approach and propose an admission controller with the goal of providing probabilistic upper-bounds on the end-to-end delay of the accepted jobs, while minimizing the probability of unnecessary rejections. Since admission control might not be a viable solution in some applications, we propose a deep RL-based service-rate controller as an alternative, which is capable of providing probabilistic upper-bounds on the end-to-end delay of the system by dynamic adjustment of the service rates. In the last part of this thesis, we study urban traffic management, as another important example of service systems. Specifically, we introduce two notions of fairness in this context, which are concerned with the delay of the vehicles and throughput of the traffic flows at an intersection. This is particularly important asneglecting fairness can lead to situations where some vehicles experience unacceptable long delays, or where the throughput of a particular traffic flow is highly impacted by the fluctuations of another conflicting flow. Finally, we propose two traffic signal control methods for implementing these fairness notions, which also consider the efficiency of the system at the same time. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, urban | 4, 11 |
| Zhu, Sijia | McDougall, Douglas | Reciprocal Learning Partnerships between Elementary Mathematics Teachers: A Partnership between Canada and China | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06-01 | This study investigates the Reciprocal Learning Partnerships (RLP) between two pairs of elementary school mathematics teachers where each pair is comprised of one teacher from Changchun, China and one teacher from Toronto, Canada. These teachers are part of a seven-year reciprocal learning project focused on understanding the cultural and educational perspectives of Canadian and Chinese mathematics educators. Furthermore, this study explores how long term cross-cultural reciprocal learning partnerships can be used as a form of professional development for mathematics teachers. Data for this study was collected through interviews, classroom observations, videos, documents, journals and e-communication transcripts. These exploratory case studies focus on the teacher’s professional development needs and their personal narratives as they participate in reciprocal learning partnerships. Findings suggest Canadian and Chinese teachers have complementary strengths that make ideal reciprocal learning partners (RLP). Some findings include: (1) subject specific teacher knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, and knowledge of the learner are main areas of focus for Canada-China RLPs; (2) Canadian teachers were able to learn content knowledge from their reciprocal learning partners; (3) differentiated learning, especially for students with exceptionalities, is a common area of interest for both Canadian and Chinese teacher’s due to recent curriculum reforms in both nations; (4) cultural misconceptions are still present in Canadian and Chinese schools, and they can be challenged and corrected through reciprocal learning; (5) long-term RLPs can increase teacher efficacy; (6) RLPs are developed through three main stages where teachers learn about each other, learn from each other, and then learn with each other; (7) student-involvement in in-service teacher development can increase teacher motivation and accountability; (8) administrative and peer support are advantages to motivating RLPs; (9) when translations are involved in RLP communications, it is important to use tools that allow participants to express their personality and emotions; (10) portability, ease of use, and accessibility are important factors to consider when selecting technology for in-service teacher development. This research suggests that mathematics teachers from Canada and China are willing and eager to learn from each other to increase their teacher knowledge. Recommendations for future research are also outlined. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, labor, invest, accessib | 4, 8, 9, 11 |
| Martin, Robert Joseph | Harrison, Timothy P. | Reconstructing Maritime Networks in the Bronze and Iron Age Eastern Mediterranean: A Diachronic Analysis of Canaanite and Phoenician Maritime Transport Containers | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2021-06-01 | This thesis provides a diachronic overview of the evolution of Canaanite and Phoenician Maritime Transport Containers (MTCs) produced in the Levant from the Early Bronze Age (EBA) II/III to the terminal Iron Age (IA) II. The focus is on the morphological development of these ceramics and how this relates to maritime function, standardization for international markets and technological innovation. Through an examination of the spatial distribution and provenance of these ceramics, as well as EBA precursor and Iron Age successors, this study will elucidate their essential relationship with eastern Mediterranean maritime (and terrestrial) exchange networks. Their morphological development reflects growing specialization as an MTC and the transport of bulk liquid staples like oils, resins, and wine, characteristic of production in the Levant. Littoral patterns are apparent, with exemplar MTCs common to coastal centres, but with evidence for dendritic patterns of exchange connected to hinterland production. This study reveals expansions and contractions in long-distance trade during the Bronze and Iron Ages, with some continuity in patterns stemming from coastal emporia, which interfaced with other economic centres via long-distance maritime activities. A basic typological framework for the development of Levantine MTCs is presented, covering a period of nearly two millennia, but revealing appreciable continuity. With the growth of incipient EBA long-distance maritime routes, so too occurred the innovation of new ceramic technologies in the form of MTC prototypes (MTC #1), further refined in the Canaanite Jars (MTC #2) of the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), and with the expansion of international networks in the Late Bronze Age (LBA) IIB, producing what may be the earliest purpose-built MTCs (MTC #3). Despite the disappearance of this distinctive, standardized type with the transition to the Iron Age, likely due to contraction in long-distance trade, there is continuity in the production of this carinated jar tradition along the Phoenician coast (MTC #4). The Phoenician MTCs of the Iron I-II relate to similar processes, with evidence that international trade continues during the Iron I (particularly with Egypt and Cyprus), and that it proliferates during the Iron II when MTC #5 is similarly standardized for international markets and provides evidence for deposition in contemporary shipwrecks. These Phoenician MTCs display further continuity with amphorae produced into the later Persian, Classical, and Roman periods. | Ph.D. | trade, transit, production, maritime, land | 10, 11, 12, 14, 15 |
| Zhang, Xinyue | Triverio, Piero | Reduced-order Modeling in the Finite-difference Time-Domain Method | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2020-06-01 | The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method is a well-known numerical algorithm. Despite its many advantages, FDTD becomes time-consuming when applied to multiscale problems, where sharp field variations or fine geometrical details impose a very fine grid, at least locally. Grid refinement affects computational cost in two ways: it increases the number of fields to update at each iteration, and it reduces the maximum timestep allowed by the Courant-Friedrichs-Lewy (CFL) stability limit. Our goal is to investigate how model order reduction (MOR) can be leveraged to address both computational issues associated with grid refinement, and devise accelerated FDTD schemes for multiscale problems. In the envisioned approach, multiscale objects are initially meshed with a locally-refined grid, while the rest of the domain is meshed with a coarse grid. Then, the FDTD update equations of each refined region are processed to generate a reduced-order model, which is finally coupled to the surrounding coarse grid. To achieve this vision, two main issues had to be addressed: i) how to generate FDTD-compatible reduced-order models, and ii) how to guarantee that the final FDTD scheme with embedded reduced models will be stable under a known CFL limit. Our first major contribution is to devise a new theoretical framework to create FDTD-like schemes with provable stability, based on the dissipativity theory. We show that most FDTD schemes can be seen as the connection of different subsystems, such as reduced-order models. We determine the conditions under which these FDTD-like subsystems are dissipative, and prove that, if each subsystem is dissipative, then the whole scheme will be dissipative, and thus stable. This theory provides a systematic way to create a variety of FDTD schemes with provable stability, from simple subgridding algorithms to the advanced FDTD schemes with embedded reduced-order models. Another major contribution is to generate reduced-order models compatible with FDTD simulations, and capable of accurately capturing the electromagnetic behaviour of a given volume enclosing arbitrary objects. The proposed models can be instantiated into a coarser FDTD grid and are compatible with leap-frogging. Through the dissipativity theory, we rigorously prove the stability of the proposed FDTD algorithms with reduced models. | Ph.D. | invest, consum | 9, 12 |
| Grimes, Kyrsten Marie | Zakzanis, Konstantine K | Refining and Expanding a Cognitive Model of Positive Symptoms in Schizophrenia | Psychological Clinical Science | 2021-06-01 | Schizophrenia affects approximately 1% of the population. A primary symptom of schizophrenia is positive symptoms, which can be extremely debilitating if untreated, and only a quarter of individuals experience complete recovery even when treated. Treatments are only partly effective because the etiology of these symptoms has yet to be fully understood. While there are known genetic vulnerabilities associated with schizophrenia, numerous cognitive models have been proposed. Broadly, these models suggest deficits in metacognition contribute to the development of positive symptoms, but more recent research indicates neurocognitive impairment increase the risk of developing deficits in metacognition. Thus, this research aimed to advance current cognitive models for psychosis by clarifying these relationships in healthy young adults with schizotypal traits. In two studies, the neurocognitive correlates of several metacognitive abilities were examined using self-report and performance-based measures. Processing speed was associated with an externalizing bias, which was associated with subsyndromal positive symptoms. Verbal fluency and verbal learning were associated with understanding another person’s beliefs (i.e., cognitive theory of mind), while verbal memory was associated with faux pas detection (i.e., integration of cognitive and affective theory of mind). Both understanding beliefs and faux pas detection were associated with subsyndromal delusions but not subsyndromal hallucinations. Importantly, schizotypal traits did not influence the strength of these relationships, which supports a continuum view of psychosis. In addition to exploring potential mechanisms, this research examined the influence of negative and positive affect on one aspect of metacognition, jumping to conclusions (JTC), using an experience sampling approach. This study did not support the hypothesis that negative affect increased one’s tendency to JTC. The findings from these studies were synthesized to propose a comprehensive model for the development of positive symptoms in schizophrenia. There are a limited number of studies examining the neurocognitive correlates of metacognition in healthy individuals along the continuum of risk for psychosis as it relates to the development of positive symptoms. Even less research has advanced theories for why these relationships exist. As such, a major contribution of this research was to propose a cognitive model for the development of positive symptoms, grounded in empirical evidence. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Schlaich, Lisa Maria | Flessa, Joseph | Refugee Parental Involvement: A Study of Refugee Parents in the Greater Toronto Area | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | Parental involvement enhances student learning and educational experiences and can specifically increase equitable access in education. Refugee parental involvement supports children’s learning and development, as well as the child’s and family’s integration into Canadian society, culture and institutions thereby providing the parents and family with beneficial social and cultural capital. This study investigates how refugee parents in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) want to be involved in their children’s education using a critical qualitative research design in order to explore their views, experiences and knowledge. The conceptual framework incorporates key ideas from literature on parental involvement approaches, barriers and applications in order to understand refugee experiences. Twelve refugee parents from GTA schools were interviewed using semi-structured interviews that included questions on involvement practices, knowledge, and desires. The data revealed consistencies and discrepancies with literature on parental involvement, illuminating similarities in the forms of involvement, while revealing differences in how refugee parents participate. In addition, refugee parents had similar barriers, but also had additional challenges due to migration related stressors, and language and cultural abilities. Refugee parents shared their preferred forms of involvement, including effective knowledge sharing, increasing parental agency through collaboration, removal of barriers and inclusion of their needs, and strengths-based and respectful opportunities for involvement. These preferred forms of involvement are the recommendations of this dissertation, and include a discussion on practical applications and implementation. They provide significant changes in practice which should be integrated into policy to ensure that refugee parents can access and use their cultural and transcultural capital. | Ph.D. | equitable, knowledge, learning, equitable, labor, capital, invest, equit, refugee, institut | 4, 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Workewych, Natalie Valentina | Ito, Shinya | Regulating Lactation: Defining Key Players in the Lactogenic Process for the Development of an In Vitro Model of Drug Transfer into Breast Milk | Pharmacology | 2021-11-01 | The study of xenobiotic transfer into breast milk remains an unresolved and difficult task, as clinical trials involving the administration of drugs to breastfeeding mothers to measure milk levels mostly remain unethical and unsafe. Although prediction of drug excretion into milk using physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling coupled with in vitro-in vivo extrapolation is becoming an important alternative, in vitro experimental approaches remain to be fully developed. This thesis attempted to enrich the knowledge required for the development of in vitro approaches and PBPK models of lactation in 4 domains: the identification of gene expression profiles of the lactating mammary gland; the elucidation of the role of ELF5 in ABCG2 expression; the 3D visualization of milk and vascular compartments of the lactating mammary gland and development of a microfluidic mammary gland-on-chip as an experimental platform in vitro; and the exploration of methotrexate mammary gland transport. First, a gene expression profile in the lactating mouse mammary gland was identified through GEO2R analysis of published microarray data, which was then used to examine hormone responses of the CIT3 mammary epithelial (MEC) line. Second, ELF5, an identified lactogenic marker, was found to be a transcription factor for ABCG2 expression, a transporter marker of the lactating mammary gland, upon prolactin stimulation in vitro. Third, the 3D imaging of the milk and vascular compartments of the lactating mouse mammary gland by 2-photon microscopy revealed dimensional characteristics of milk compartments interspersed by attenuated epithelia and a network of microvasculature. Further, a microfluidic chip was developed as an in vitro platform of the mammary gland, composed of poly(methylmethacrylate) pieces with channels accommodating media flow on either side of a porous membrane. Lastly, in order to gain mechanistic insight into the influx of methotrexate into MECs as a potential target pathway for riboflavin-associated reduction of methotrexate excretion into milk, folate receptor alpha (FRα) was tested for its capacity to mediate methotrexate influx into FRα-overexpressing HEK293 cells. A known methotrexate receptor highly upregulated in the lactating mammary gland, data reveal FRα to be a mediator of methotrexate influx into MECs, however riboflavin interference of methotrexate uptake was not detected. | Ph.D. | knowledge, land | 4, 15 |
| Chin, Stephanie | Bear, Christine E. | Regulation of CFTR function and stability by phosphorylation and its membrane environment | Biochemistry | 2019-06-01 | Cystic Fibrosis is caused by mutations of the gene that codes for Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane conductance Regulator (CFTR), an ATP-Binding Cassette anion channel. The major disease-causing mutation, deletion of phenylalanine at position 508 (F508del), results in misfolding, mistrafficking and loss of CFTR at the cell surface where CFTR normally functions to maintain proper hydration of epithelia. Protein kinase A (PKA) phosphorylation enhances CFTR function at the cell surface. However, not much is known regarding the structural consequences of full-length CFTR upon PKA phosphorylation. Towards this, I developed biophysical methods to study purified full-length CFTR and showed that PKA phosphorylation modifies its overall structure, possibly at the transmission interface between coupling helices and nucleotide binding domains. Channel function studies with disease-causing mutations at the transmission interface further support the role of transmission interface interactions for phosphorylation-mediated channel gating. Recent structural studies have found that PKA phosphorylation causes subtle changes in zebrafish CFTR structure. However, the channel remains closed. We propose that this may be due to the detergent environment of the protein. We developed a novel purification method that maintained CFTR: lipid interactions. We conducted ATPase and iodide efflux assays to show that purified CFTR associated with lipids resulted in significantly higher CFTR activity than purified CFTR in detergent micelles. These experiments suggest involvement of lipids in regulating CFTR function. Potentiator drugs, like ivacaftor, enhance CFTR function at the cell surface. I conducted biochemical experiments to find that high concentrations of ivacaftor non-specifically destabilized F508del-CFTR and other membrane proteins. This non-specific destabilization of ivacaftor appears to be associated with its lipophilicity which disrupts the membrane. This further highlights the importance of lipids for stabilizing and modifying CFTR function in the lipid bilayer. In summary, CFTR function and stability are regulated by PKA phosphorylation and lipids of the membrane environment of CFTR. | Ph.D. | trafficking, fish, trafficking | 5, 16, 14 |
| Dojo Soeandy, Chesarahmia | Henderson, Jeffrey | Regulation of necroptotic-apoptotic signaling in vitro and in vivo | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Programmed cell death (PCD) is an evolutionarily conserved process observable in all metazoans. In mammals this process is requisite for organ and structural development of the fetus, pathogen clearance, tissue remodeling and homeostasis, responses to cellular stress, and suppression of oncogenesis. Several major forms of PCD have been characterized to date, including apoptosis, necroptosis and autophagy-dependent cell death (ADCD). Each of these forms of PCD demonstrate their own morphologic and molecular features. In particular, apoptotic and necroptotic cell death have been identified in many circumstances to be competitive in nature, often displaying a ‘winner take all’ dynamic where necroptosis provides a backup role in many tissues upon failure of apoptosis. To better understand the regulation of PCD and more specifically the interactions between apoptosis and necroptosis, I have examined these forms of cell death in two models: (1) cisplatin-mediated cell death of homogeneous populations of embryonic stem (ES) cells in vitro and (2) endothelin-1 mediated ischemic/reperfusion injury in the murine cortex in vivo. In addition to homologous gene recombination, I have also utilized pharmacologic inhibitors to interrogate the interaction of these pathways in detail for both models. Using these methods, I demonstrate that ES cells exposed to cisplatin demonstrate a hitherto uncharacterized novel form of cooperative PCD between apoptotic caspase-3 and necroptotic RIPK1 and RIPK3. Further analyses suggest that RIPK1 and RIPK3 signaling lie upstream of caspase-3 in this cooperative pathway and that the resulting cell morphology and molecular details of dead/dying cells reflect neither traditional apoptosis nor necroptosis, instead demonstrating a hybrid of both. Characterization of the neuronal cell death involved in endothelin-1-mediated cortical ischemic/reperfusion injury in vivo was similarly observed to be protected through inhibition of either RIPK1 or caspase-3. Interestingly, protection induced by inhibition of RIPK1 seem to occur upstream of caspase-3-mediated apoptosis similar to features observed in ES cells. This identification of a novel co-operative apoptotic/necroptotic signaling in turn have important implications for cell death regulation in primary tissues – in terms of both pathologic processes and pharmacologic interventions. | Ph.D. | conserv, conserv | 14, 15 |
| Price, Daniel | Cochelin, Isabelle||Murray, Alexander C. | Re-imagining the World: Sanctity and Materiality in the Vitae of Sixth-century Gaul | Medieval Studies | 2021-06-01 | In the sixth-century, Gaul was undergoing a prolonged negotiation about how its communities should function, framed in terms of divine materiality, and it survives to us today in the period's most popular stories about itself: the Vitae of its saints. This thesis argues that hagiography in post-Roman Gaul was an arena in which updated frameworks for making sense of the world were put forward, and that a significant part of that undertaking was the establishment of a legitimizing logic for specific social structures and political arrangements. This was accomplished by identifying specific points of intersection between the divine and the material in order to establish tangible, particular points of meaning in an ontologically shifting world. The relationship between sensible material and story is socially produced but nonetheless deeply real by virtue of its ability to represent—make present—those stories as an embodied experience through Vitae that reveal themselves to be complex texts emerging from a cultural milieu steeped in the conventions of homiletics and exegesis.Four roughly contemporaneous Vitae form the thesis’ source material. The first two are monastic: the Vita patrum Iurensium, which narrates the founding of a monastic community through the lives of three of its first abbots, and the Vita abbatum Acaunensium, which describes the refounding of the monastery of Agaune by Sigismund of Burgundy. The remaining two texts take an urban setting, more episcopal than monastic in focus: the Vita of Amator, an early bishop of Auxerre, and that of Genovefa of Paris,a complex figure who straddled the categories of holy virgin, Roman aristocrat, and even perhaps (albeit never explicitly) urban bishop. This selection of texts, reasonably contemporary with one another, is contained enough to allow a robust exploration of each, while still diverse enough to offer a glimpse of the deep complexity and variety of hagiological projects that were at work in the world-defining project this thesis aims to explore. | Ph.D. | gini, urban | 10, 11 |
| Stirchak, Laura T | Donaldson, D. James | Relating Ionic Composition to the Photophysics and Photochemistry of Natural Organic Matter in Aqueous Environments | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Photochemical reactions in the natural aquatic environment are important drivers of chemistry, including degradation of pollutants and formation of volatile species at the air-water interface. Several species found in this environment may contribute to photochemistry. One of the most important species is natural organic matter (NOM), a complex and ubiquitous component of aquatic environments. NOM contains chromophores that absorb light and may undergo intersystem crossing to form the excited triplet state, which can act as a photosensitizer or react, forming reactive intermediates, such as singlet oxygen and hydroxyl radical. In this thesis, several NOM samples were used to investigate the differences in NOM photophysics and photochemistry in seawater compared to freshwater. Systematic investigations, using seawater components such as halides and metal ions, determined how water composition affects the photophysics of NOM through fluorescence. The changes in photophysics were then linked to changes in NOM photochemistry via the formation of reactive intermediates, such as the excited triplet and singlet oxygen, or photosensitization mechanisms. The first investigation indicated that the presence of magnesium changed the photophysics of NOM through enhanced NOM fluorescence, linked to a change in NOM photochemistry through decreased formation kinetics of the excited triplet state and singlet oxygen. The study hypothesized that the decrease in the formation kinetics of singlet oxygen was due to changes in the conformation of NOM due to NOM-magnesium complexes. Fluorescence anisotropy was used in the second study to determine that NOM-metal complexes did not change the conformation of NOM, but did influence the photophysics of NOM. Finally, the difference in photochemistry occurring in seawater versus freshwater was investigated at the air-water interface by exploring the formation kinetics of gas-phase products from seawater and freshwater. These investigations determined that differences in water composition affected the number, concentrations, and growth rates of species formed. The studies presented in this thesis illustrate that water composition plays a significant role in altering the photophysical and photochemical mechanisms of NOM, with greater implications towards changes in aqueous photochemical processes. | Ph.D. | water, invest, environmental, pollut, species, pollut, species | 6, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Fricker, Tim | Childs, Ruth | Relationships Between Student Characteristics, Academic Advising and College Student Success | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation is about the student success problem: institutional retention rates have remained low for decades and clear evidence about why and how to support more students to persist and graduate is elusive. In Canada, and within Ontario Colleges specifically, there is a dearth of research on this topic. Performance-based funding and the global pandemic has increased the need to improve these outcomes. The three studies that comprise this dissertation investigate the relationships between the characteristics of students at the time they enter college, participation in academic advising, and student success. In the first study, an integrated literature review method was used to analyze two decades of peer-reviewed research related to five constructs – program fit, career clarity, academic self-efficacy, educational commitment, and friend and family support – and the relationships with both advising and student success. Results showed positive relationships. New working definitions for each construct were developed. The second and third studies used a unique administrative dataset from Mohawk College. In the second study, a series of factor analyses identified three latent variables – Career and Program Clarity, Friend and Family Support, and Positive Academic Attitudes – within the Mohawk College student entrance survey. The latent variable measurement model was used as the foundation of a structural equation model (SEM) as part of the third study to analyze the relationships between the latent variables, advising participation, and student success. The SEM did not produce an acceptable fit or find any significant relationships. The concluding chapter used an integrated discussion method to summarize the overall findings. The contributions to the literature include an example of unique methods; new findings related to student success; and evidence of the practical use of college administrative data. Seven implications and next steps for researchers, practitioners and leaders are identified: improving institutional data collection practices; more focused evaluation of academic advising; purposeful outreach to students who do not engage early in admissions or transition processes; continued efforts to work with students to (re)define student success; new investments in research infrastructure; stronger emphasis on good research methods; and new campus commitments to relationship rich education. | Ph.D. | secondary education, infrastructure, invest, transit, institut | 4, 9, 11, 16 |
| Howell, Nicholas Araki | Booth, Gillian L | Relationships between Urban Environments and Crdiovascular Disease Risk | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-06-01 | Background Cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains one of the leading causes of mortality and morbidity globally. An environmental approach to increasing physical activity, by creating walkable neighbourhoods where individuals can accumulate active minutes by walking to work, local stores, and appointments may have more success in sustainably increasing activity than traditional exercise programs. Further evaluation is needed to understand the potential benefits of walkable neighbourhood environments in reducing CVD risk to inform its role as a target for public health policy. Methods Results Data were drawn from the Cardiovascular Health in Ambulatory Care Research Team (CANHEART) cohort, derived from health administrative databases. The population studied were community-dwelling, working-age adults. The first study examined cross-sectional associations between neighbourhood walkability and predicted CVD risk. High neighbourhood walkability was associated with a lower predicted 10-year risk of CVD but a higher odds of smoking. The second cross-sectional study focused on interactions between neighbourhood walkability and traffic-related air pollution and their association with hypertension and diabetes. Significant interactions were identified; while high walkability was associated with a lower odds of hypertension and diabetes at low levels of pollution, these exposures were no longer protective in highly polluted areas. The third study explored associations between walkability and the occurrence of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) using a retrospective cohort study design. Over a median follow-up of 5 years, adults residing in a highly walkable neighbourhood had a lower rate of MACE, but a higher rate of cardiovascular death than individuals residing in less walkable areas. Subgroup analyses suggested that the increased mortality observed in highly walkable neighborhoods was limited to individuals with psychiatric comorbidities. Conclusions The results of this dissertation suggest that adults who reside in highly walkable neighbourhoods have fewer CVD risk factors and a lower likelihood of experiencing a major cardiovascular event. | Ph.D. | public health, pollution, urban, walkab, environmental, pollut, pollut | 3, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Main, Kimberly Anne | Noel, Jan | Rendering Service to the Community: The Spiritual Life of the Ursuline Nuns of Quebec City, 1639-1780 | History | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation explores the spiritual life of the Ursulines nuns of Quebec City as the central feature of their lives. While other historians have illuminated the political power, economic influence, and social role of the nuns, this study places the nuns’ stated goals of dedicating their lives to God at the centre of this examination and as linked with these other roles. It begins with an exploration of the Ursulines in France, the creation and modification of their constitutions, and the unique rules of the Quebec monastery. It then delves into the spiritual imagery of the Quebec constitutions, focusing on the competing images of nuns as Mary and Martha or as brides of Christ. The dissertation then examines the lifecycle of the Ursuline nuns. It brings a fresh examination on how recruitment was conducted, who entered, the process of the novitiate, the selection of the leadership of the community, followed by the spiritual concerns at end-of-life. It particularly brings attention to converse nuns, who although working as servants in the monastery, were just as dedicated to the life of prayer as the choir nuns. Moving from how the nuns lived, the dissertation then examines how they wrote about themselves. Particular attention is paid to the monastery’s annals and necrology, which documented the communal and individual lives of the nuns. These sources reveal that the nuns put a high value on retaining the religious value of charity, acknowledging Divine Providence, and on serving their monastery. Their religious ideals surrounding education and religious practice were evident in the teaching of Indigenous, French, and English girls who were students at the monastery. The nuns were not blind to racial and ethnic identity, but they prioritized religion in their decision regarding how they educated girls, bringing the nuns into conflict with colonial officials. Their dedication to education meant they schooled a significant number of Quebec girls and women resulting in high rates of literacy. Their spiritual intensity persisted all through the century and a half studied here, shaping their devotional practices and love of cloister as well as teaching. | Ph.D. | women, girl, indigenous, indigenous | 5, 10, 16 |
| Qin, Dai | Goel, Ashvin||Demke Brown, Angela | Replication and Workload Management for In-Memory OLTP Databases | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Online transaction processing (OLTP) databases are a critical component of modern computing infrastructure services. As a result, they must be highly available, and they must process requests efficiently for a wide range of workloads. Databases provide high availability by using replication so that when a database replica fails, a backup can take over. They use workload management mechanisms for efficiently supporting different types of workloads with varying levels of skew and contention. This thesis revisits the challenges of database replication and workload management for in-memory databases. Unlike traditional disk-based databases, in-memory databases are designed for workloads whose entire dataset fits in DRAM memory. These databases are highly scalable, raising challenges for replication and workload management. For example, traditional database replication schemes suffer from the network, instead of storage, bottlenecks because in-memory databases have much higher throughput, and traditional workload management solutions significantly limit the performance of in-memory databases. In this thesis, we propose using deterministic concurrency control as the basis for replication and workload management. Deterministic concurrency control allows transactions to execute concurrently while guaranteeing equivalence to a predetermined serial ordering of transactions. For data replication, we propose a replay-based scheme that executes transactions concurrently and scalably on the backup database in the serial order predetermined by the primary database. Our solution reduces network bandwidth requirements to 10-15% of traditional database replication schemes. For workload management, we propose two optimizations to deterministic concurrency control that help parallelize internal database operations. These optimizations enable handling contention and skewed workloads efficiently and provide 30% to 6x performance improvements. | Ph.D. | infrastructure | 9 |
| Al-Janaideh, Redab | Chen, Xi X | Resettled Syrian Refugee Children in Canada: Oral Language, Literacy and Well-being | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | The Canadian government has resettled over 57,000 Syrian refugees since 2015. This influx of migrants has offered a chance to evaluate the language development and overall well- being of such a unique group. The primary goals of this dissertation were to examine the extent to which morphological awareness skill predicted Arabic reading skills, as well as to investigate the role of child-specific and family-related predictors of English reading in school-aged Syrian refugee children resettled in Canada.The first study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal role(s) of morphological awareness in Arabic word reading and reading comprehension. A total of eighty-three native Arabic Syrian refugee children aged 6-13 years resettled in Canada were administered measures of nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, word reading and reading comprehension at two points in time. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that morphological awareness was related to word reading and reading comprehension concurrently and longitudinally, after controlling for age, cognitive abilities, phonological awareness, and vocabulary. Interestingly, these relations remained statistically significant even with the addition of autoregressive controls. The second study was designed to examine the extent to which children’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms, as reported by their parents, predict English word reading, in a sample of one-hundred and thirty-three Syrian refugee children 6-13 years. Using multilevel modeling, child’s ADHD score was a strong predictor of English word reading accuracy, above key cognitive variables. Family time spent in refugee camps significantly moderated the association between ADHD symptoms and English word reading. The findings of the study showed that children with higher ADHD scores performed lower on word reading task after controlling for key cognitive variables. Children who spent more time in refugee camps before resettling in Canada showed higher ADHD symptoms and lower word reading performance compared to children who spent less/no time in refugee camps. Overall, the findings of this dissertation support the relevance of cognitive variables in the development of literacy skills in refugee children who are Arabic native speakers relocated in an English dominant country. Furthermore, the findings highlight the importance of overall well- being and pre-migration factors on children’s learning. | Ph.D. | well-being, learning, invest, refugee | 3, 4, 9, 10 |
| Jegathesan, Thivia | Sgro, Michael D||Ray, Joel G | Rethinking the Assessment of Hyperbilirubinemia in Preterm Infants | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Preterm infants born at 240/7 to 356/7 weeks’ gestation are at greater risk of developing acute bilirubin encephalopathy (ABE) and chronic bilirubin encephalopathy (CBE). However, guidelines for the assessment of hyperbilirubinemia are consensus-based, and systematically derived pre-treatment total serum bilirubin (TSB) percentiles are lacking for preterm infants. Preterm infants who undergo repeat TSB testing are subjected to greater stress, pain, and risk of anemia. To address the aforementioned issues, two multi-site retrospective (Study 1 and 2), and one multi-site prospective (Study 3), cohort studies were conducted at three neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in Ontario. Study 1 generated pre-treatment TSB percentile levels among infants born at 290/7 to 356/7 weeks’ gestation, using quantile regression. Study 2 generated pre-phototherapy TSB percentiles levels at 24 hours of age among infants born at 240/7 to 286/7 weeks’ gestation and contrasted those pre-phototherapy TSB percentiles with existing consensus-based thresholds produced by Maisels. Study 3 investigated the agreement between transcutaneous bilirubin (TcB) and TSB measurements among preterm infants born at 240/7 to 356/7 weeks, overall, by receipt of phototherapy, by anatomical site of measurement and by self-reported maternal ethnicity. Study 1 produced hour-specific pre-treatment TSB levels at the 40th, 75th and 95th percentiles, with corresponding curves by gestational week at birth. Study 2 observed considerably higher statistically derived pre-phototherapy TSB percentile levels at 24 hours of age at the 75th and 95th percentile than Maisels’ consensus-based TSB thresholds. Study 3 observed higher agreement between TcB and TSB values among preterm infants born at 330/7 to 356/7 weeks’ gestation, prior to phototherapy, whether measured at the forehead or sternum. TcB-TSB agreement was not impacted by ethnicity. The results of this thesis provide new information about bilirubin measurement in preterm infants. Experts and health policy makers may choose to use these data to inform evidence-based guidelines in the assessment (and management) of hyperbilirubinemia in preterm infants. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Gillis, Rory | Trebilcock, Michael||Alarie, Benjamin | Rethinking the Division of Tax Room in Fiscal Federalism | Law | 2021-11-01 | The division of tax room for shared tax bases, such as income taxation in Canada and the United States, is a frequent cause of political conflict between national and sub-national governments. Economists and legal scholars have developed a normative theory that sets out an optimal division of tax room, but federal nations often substantially depart from this prescription by allocating too much or too little tax room to national governments. This thesis argues that the divergence between the normative theory and actual practice can be partially explained by three incentive problems that afflict the division of tax room: 1) a “credit assignment” problem; 2) a contract enforcement problem; and 3) a vertical tax competition problem. In combination, these problems produce an incentive structure that discourages the optimal division of room and invites high levels of political conflict. To illustrate, this thesis develops a model of tax room allocation, which it then applies to the four oldest constitutional federations: the United States, Switzerland, Canada, and Australia. The thesis argues that law can be used to improve the allocation of tax room in two ways. First, a number of non-tax legal doctrines, including rules addressing conditional grants, concurrent expenditure jurisdiction, direct cash transfers to individuals, and parliamentary sovereignty, should be revised to encourage consensual and welfare-maximizing exchanges of tax room between national and sub-national governments. Second, when consensual exchanges fail, law should be used to regulate vertical tax competition, so that the competitive process tends toward welfare-maximizing outcomes. This thesis examines a number of competition-regulating measures, including intergovernmental anti-discrimination rules and conflict-of-law rules. The thesis concludes by briefly considering whether and how these approaches can be applied to two other contexts in which vertical relationships are relevant: regional-local tax room allocation and international tax room allocation. | S.J.D. | welfare, taxation, income, land, sovereignty | 1, 10, 15, 16 |
| Rotteau, Leahora Karla | Webster, Fiona | Rethinking the use of Evidence in Decisions to Scale up Healthcare Interventions | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | Scaling up proven healthcare interventions is a common strategy for addressing global health system challenges. However, scale-up efforts have shown mixed results, with many interventions, shown to be effective at small scale, not moving beyond pilot projects. Though the use of scientific evidence has been promoted as playing a critical role in scaling up healthcare interventions, we currently have a limited understanding of how such evidence is understood and applied. Through this dissertation, I explore how different forms of evidence are applied to decision-making related to healthcare intervention scale-up, with a focus on the social, political, and structural factors that influence these practices. The aim is to inform and enhance current approaches to scale-up to better apply a range of scientific evidence. Two different methodological approaches inform this dissertation: a multiple qualitative case study of the evaluation and scale-up efforts of three healthcare intervention and a scoping review of frameworks or models providing actionable guidance for scale-up. I applied two separate analytical approaches to the case study data: 1) social theory informed thematic analysis, using elements of Bourdieu’s theory of practice as a theoretical lens, and 2) an interpretivist critical analytic approach to further explore how qualitative research is used in scale-up efforts. The findings demonstrate that there are gaps in the use of a range of evidence types in scale-up efforts, influenced, in part, by the prioritization of quantitative effectiveness data in the healthcare context and the challenges of incorporating different forms of evidence in practice. I suggest ways to address these gaps, such as better supports for qualitative and social scientists to engage in intervention evaluation and scale-up, broadening the scope of what is considered legitimate evidence, addressing limitations in funding programs to better incorporate different scientific approaches, and working towards a ground shift in terms of how we value, and reward, success and failure related to scale-up. These changes will better position our healthcare system to ensure that the most valuable and appropriate interventions are supported and scaled to meet the needs of the patients and the wider healthcare system. | Ph.D. | global health, healthcare | 3 |
| Soroor, Forooz | Trimble, William | Revised Subunit Order of Mammalian Septin Complexes Explains their in Vitro Polymerization Properties | Biochemistry | 2021-11-01 | Septins are GTP-binding cytoskeletal proteins conserved from yeast to man. In humans, there are 13 genes that fall into 4 subfamilies and it is thought that two copies of a member of each subfamily assemble in an ordered array into hexamers or octamers that serve as the building blocks for larger filaments. Crystallography studies predicted the order of the hexamers to be SEPT7-SEPT6-SEPT2-SEPT2-SEPT6-SEPT7, while other studies showed SEPT9 interacted with SEPT7, implying a place at the ends of octamers. SEPT9 has many isoforms raising the possibility that isoform expression might influence octamer polymerization. However, based on this septin organization, octamers and hexamers would not be expected to co-polymerize due to incompatible ends. Here I describe a septin purification procedure used to isolate hexamers and octamers of specific composition from mammalian cells. I show that octamers containing each isoform of SEPT9 polymerize similarly. BORGs have been identified as septin binding proteins via their BD3 homology domains, but their contribution to septin polymerization is not understood. Addition of the BD3 domain of BORG3 results in dramatic bundling of septins that distinguishes hexamers and octamers. Unexpectedly, I show that hexamers and octamers can co-polymerize and that the organization of the septin complexes is inverted from what was previously predicted. This revised septin organization is congruent with the organization and behaviour of yeast septins suggesting that their properties are more conserved than was previously thought. | Ph.D. | conserv, conserv | 14, 15 |
| Toro Icarte, Rodrigo Andrés | McIlraith, Sheila A | Reward Machines | Computer Science | 2022-03-01 | Reinforcement learning involves the study of how to solve sequential decision-making problems using minimal supervision or prior knowledge. In contrast to most methods for automated decision making, reinforcement learning agents do not require access to a formal description of the problem in order to find optimal solutions. Instead, such agents learn optimal behaviour using a trial-and-error strategy. This learning strategy makes reinforcement learning a strong candidate to tackle real-world problems with complex dynamics. However, there are two core challenges that limit the use of reinforcement learning in the real world: sample efficiency and partial observability. In this dissertation, we tackle these two problems through the creation of reward machines. Reward machines are automata-based representations of a reward function that expose reward structures to the agent. We show that agents can exploit these structures to improve their sample efficiency and their performance under partial observability. In particular, we propose (i) to use decomposition methods and reward shaping to improve sample efficiency based on a given reward machine, and (ii) to use reward machines as external memory and solve partially observable tasks by learning reward machines. In both cases, we provide theoretical and empirical evidence of the benefits of utilizing reward machines to tackle these problems. Finally, we conclude this dissertation with a discussion of the role that reward machines can play in tackling other long-standing problems in reinforcement learning, such as developing agents with interpretable behaviours, providing guarantees that an optimal policy is safe, and creating agents that can understand instructions. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Shoaib, Mohammad | Bobicki, Erin R | Rheology and Microstructure of Aqueous Clay Suspensions | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2022-03-01 | The clay minerals kaolinite and montmorillonite are ubiquitous and abundant and have therefore been the focus of research since the early 20th century when Eugene C. Bingham used aqueous kaolinite suspensions in his seminal work that introduced the concept of yield stress, and Irving Langmuir used aqueous montmorillonite suspensions in his seminal work that laid the foundation of Onsager’s theory of the isotropic–nematic liquid crystal transition. Since then, an enormous amount of work has been carried out on the microstructure and rheological behaviour of these two clay minerals. However, the true microstructure and associated rheological response remain poorly understood. The present work focuses on understanding the microstructure of kaolinite and montmorillonite suspensions and their associated rheological behaviour. The microstructure of kaolinite suspensions was investigated as a function of pH and concentration using scattering and rheology experiments. The microstructure at pH 10—far above the iso-electric point (IEP) of the alumina basal plane—showed the absence of aggregation up to a clay concentration of 55 wt.%. Increasing the concentration further led to aggregation to form entities larger than 20 µm in size. The microstructure at pH values below and above the edge IEP did not change except in terms of attraction strength, signifying that the silica-alumina basal plane interaction was the main mode of aggregation. For montmorillonite, scattering experiments revealed objects in the microstructure that were at least an order larger than individual particles, along with the presence of order. Cryo-electron microscopy complemented the scattering results, showing the presence of domains having strong particle-particle ordering as well as regions of particle-particle aggregation. Thus, the presence of an assembly of particles was confirmed, which refuted a widely accepted model for a purely repulsive nature. The presence of nematic domains refuted a widely accepted model for a purely attractive nature. Rheology experiments revealed a pH-driven aging bifurcation. Furthermore, low ionic strength suspensions at clay concentrations above the sol–gel transition were shown to exhibit features of physical aging and thixotropy, suggesting an out-of-equilibrium behaviour, even within the limit of low ionic strength. | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Mazer, Katrine Margaret | Cowen, Deborah | Roads to Resources: Uneven Development, Mobile Work, and the Extractive Imaginary in Canada | Geography | 2019-06-01 | In recent years it has become common for workers to commute from high unemployment areas of eastern Canada to work in the Alberta oil sands and related industries. Through a genealogical investigation that moves from the post-war decades to the present, this dissertation asks how, and to what end, mobile extractive work has become normal for east coast communities. Drawing on participant observation and action research, in-depth interviews, and archival research in provincial and federal state archives, I illustrate that welfare state policy, rural restructuring, and targeted recruitment have driven workers into long-distance work, but that a narrow set of stories about work and the economy have normalized these extreme labour relations. In the decades after World War Two, as the Canadian state set its sights on modernization and national economic expansion, it formulated the Maritime region as a national problem. Framing the region’s seasonal economies, low productivity, and “underdevelopment” as barriers to national growth, planners and policy-makers worked to remake Maritime economies and people to fit with a vision of the national economy rooted in industrialization, urbanization, and expanded industrial resource extraction. Welfare state programs focused on rural development, modernization, and labour re-organized local material life in powerful ways, but they also broadcast narrow ideas about what types of work, livelihoods, and economies could be part of the future. These enduring stories about economic viability, I argue, have naturalized decline, mobility, and market volatility, rendering the region’s remarkable reliance on long-distance resource employment ordinary. By obscuring workers’ experiences of volatility and the underdevelopment that shapes extractive labour markets, this normalization has been a linchpin in Canadian extraction. This research highlights the central role of welfare state policy in producing relations and geographies of extraction in Canada. But the state’s intensive investment in managing peripheral workers and regions also underscores the persistence of economies, lives, and forms of valuation that break from the logic of unending accumulation. | Ph.D. | welfare, employment, labour, worker, invest, industrialization, urban, rural, maritime | 1, 8, 9, 11, 14 |
| Arvani, Foad | Carusone, Tony | RO-Based TDC Design with Configurable Resolution and Power for SPAD-Based TCSPC LiDAR Applications | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-03-02 | Single-photon avalanche diodes (SPAD) are used to measure time-of-flight (ToF) using CMOS time-to-digital Converters (TDCs) for compact, low-cost, and highly integrated three-dimensional (3D) sensing. The TDC specifications are critical determinants of the system's range, resolution, and accuracy. The optimization of the TDCs requires modeling that captures the target application's design specifications and parameters under different operating scenarios. Since single-photon detection is fundamentally a stochastic process, a fast and accurate analytical model is presented try accounting for the effects of limited TDC conversion rate (CR). The model is used to relate the number of required TDCs per SPAD array to the 3D imager performance accounting for environmental factors such as ambient light and distance. The model permits architectural exploration to determine the number of TDCs required for a given array size. Monte Carlo numerical simulations verify the accuracy of the proposed method. It also reveals that the most critical performance metrics of TDCs in time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) applications are their CR, area, and power consumption. TDCs formed by ring oscillators (ROs) are arrayable, scalable, and low power, making them suitable for SPAD-based TCSPC 3D sensing systems. The jitter of RO-based TDCs is studied as a function of their full-scale-range resulting in an expression for the TDC total jitter. The analysis also identifies a peak-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) design point. Increasing the TDC's full-scale-range beyond this point entails increased jitter and, thus, ultimately a declining SNR. Finally, this thesis presents a multi-channel RO-based TDC architecture whose power consumption scales with its configurable resolution for power-sensitive applications. A 75% power savings is achieved by sharing one RO among five TDCs relative to non-shared architectures. Furthermore, such an architecture improves uniformity between neighboring TDC channels by avoiding oscillator mismatches. Here, a 5-channel 12-bit TDC is fabricated in 65 nm CMOS with an area of 1920 m2 per channel. It demonstrates a CR up to 1 GHz in simulation (limited to 125 MHz in measurements due to the following serializer) with a resolution configurable from 24 to 133 ps. At a CR of 125 MHz, the TDC power consumption is 0.1 mW and 1 mW per channel at 133 ps and 24 ps resolution, respectively. | Ph.D. | consum, environmental | 12, 13 |
| Jia, Tianyi | Jaimungal, Sebastian | Robust Statistical Arbitrage: Trading Foreign Exchange Triplets and Trading Assets with Short Term Alphas | Statistics | 2021-11-01 | Decision making in a stochastic environment depends on the decision makers' models of the environment. To reach their goal, decision makers consider not only the randomness of the outcomes described by a certain probability law, but also their uncertainty of the probability law itself. We call such decision makers ambiguity averse. In the area of algorithmic trading, financial agents often trade multiple assets with some inherent price structure. The main goal of this work is to investigate how these agents behave when facing model uncertainty by considering two real-world algorithmic trading problems: trading foreign exchange triplets and trading short term alpha. In the trading foreign exchange (FX) triplets problem, an FX broker accepts trades from her clients, and hence needs to manage positions in multiple currencies by acquisition and liquidation. She admits that her model for FX rates may be misspecified and we explore the optimal strategy for her to liquidate a large position in an illiquid currency pair. We find that the ambiguity averse broker can improve her liquidation profit by trading a currency triplet consisting of the illiquid currency pair and two relatively liquid currency pairs. In the trading short term alpha problem, our trader can predict prices of N assets with M alpha signals. She is uncertain about the models of asset prices and alpha signals and wants to maximize her final trading wealth. We formulate the trader's stochastic control problem and solve it in closed form. We also calibrate our model to real market data and numerically demonstrate that our robust strategy can increase the mean and reduce the standard deviation of the trader's Profit and Loss (P). | Ph.D. | invest, trade | 9, 10 |
| Stewart, John Graeme | Jones, Glen A. | Rocks Will Melt With the Sun: Higher Education, National Identity and the Independence Debate in Scotland | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | Higher education has become connected to the political debate around independence in Scotland, playing a significant role in both regular elections for the Scottish Parliament and in the debate around the 2014 Independence Referendum. Using the nationalism-social policy nexus as a framework for analysis, this thesis explores how contemporary higher education policy has been deliberately connected to a historical conception of a distinct tradition of higher education in Scotland to position nationalist political actors as the protectors of Scotland’s political values and identity, and independence as the only way to ensure the continuity of these values in the face of England’s differing approach to higher education and social service provision. Using document review, a content analysis, key informant interviews and several international comparative case studies, this dissertation validates the existence of a belief in a distinct Scottish tradition, and how appeals to that tradition can be motivating in certain political contexts, such as normal parliamentary elections. It also find that the nationalism-social policy nexus helps explain both the sharp policy divergence, particularly on tuition fees, between Scotland and the United Kingdom, and why higher education came to play a role in the 2014 Independence debate. Interestingly, higher education was deployed by both the “Yes” and “No” campaigns to support their respective arguments. This fact enriches our understanding of the nexus, in that it is effective in explaining why a nationalist sub-state government may make certain policy choices, but is unable to predict whether these choices become politically motivating for voters. The dissertation furthers our understanding of the relationship between higher education and the state, notably how political forces such as sub-state nationalism drive policymaking in postsecondary education systems. State power is often theorized as unitary, where one central political authority exerts influence on higher education institutions to further specific nation-building or ideological goals. The case of Scotland suggests that higher education policy is not only driven by what is useful to the state, but also by those who seek to re-negotiate or dismantle it. | Ph.D. | secondary education, land, institut, nationalism | 4, 15, 16 |
| Ma, Cheng-I Jonathan | Brill, Julie A | Roles of Phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate in Secretory Granule Biogenesis | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Professional secretory cells are responsible for regulated secretion of biologically active molecules to maintain homeostasis. These molecules, which include neuropeptides, digestive enzymes, and hormones, are stored in long-lasting secretory granules (SGs) that undergo exocytosis in response to external stimuli. The molecular mechanisms of SG biogenesis are poorly understood. Using Drosophila larval salivary glands as a model system, our laboratory has previously discovered that the type II phosphatidylinositol 4 kinase (PI4KII) is required for normal SG biogenesis. PI4KII is responsible for the generation of phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate (PI4P) from phosphatidylinositol (PI) at the trans-Golgi network (TGN) and endosomes. To examine how PI4KII and its product PI4P regulate SG biogenesis, I employed genetic approaches and cell biology techniques to identify and characterize potential factors acting in this pathway. I discovered that Past1, syntaxin-16 (Syx16) and oxysterol binding protein (Osbp) are regulators of PI4KII and PI4KII-mediated SG maturation. I conducted a candidate RNA interference (RNAi) screen that identified many endocytic genes needed for proper SG maturation, suggesting that SG maturation requires endocytic contribution. A secondary screen suggested that Past1 and Syx16 are potential factors acting in the same pathway as PI4KII to facilitate SG maturation. Further characterization demonstrated that both PI4KII-dependent early endosomal sorting and accumulation of PI4P on SG membranes are associated with proper SG maturation. In addition, Past1 and Syx16 are needed for formation of PI4KII-positive endosomal tubules involved in this process. I also examined Osbp, which is a PI4P effector that regulates non-vesicular transport of PI4P and cholesterol across membrane contact sites (MCS). Loss of Osbp resulted in lowered levels of PI4P on SG membranes and an absence of PI4KII-positive tubules, similar to Past1 null mutants. Moreover, a cholesterol probe, D4H, showed that these tubules are enriched in cholesterol. My results indicate that Osbp is required for cholesterol accumulation at endosomal membranes to enable formation of PIKII-positive and cholesterol-rich membrane tubules. Overall, my results establish Past1, Syx16 and Osbp as regulators of PI4KII and describe a novel PI4KII-mediated early endosome retrograde trafficking pathway important for cellular PI4P distribution and SG maturation. | Ph.D. | trafficking, labor, land, trafficking | 5, 16, 8, 15 |
| East, Melanie Christine | Bolus-Reichert, Christine | Romances of Modern Enchantment at the British Fin de Siècle | English | 2019-06-01 | This thesis examines the relationship between romance and Max Weber’s narrative of the disenchantment of modern life in which scientific calculation has mastered mystery. I argue that specific British novels at the fin de siècle deploy romance to resist the rationalization of experience and create new forms of enchantment. I re-read texts by major authors that include tropes of romance when the mode was synonymous with the Romance Revival of authors like Rider Haggard and R.L. Stevenson, but disavowed by proponents of realism and emerging modernism. Unless it appears to deconstruct itself, romance from this period continues to be viewed by critics as nostalgic. The novels I call “romances of modern enchantment” employ metafictional elements to subvert narrow understandings of romance as a conservative mode, instead drawing on areas of uncertainty in modern life as sources for romance. In Chapter One I examine discourses of play in Thomas Hardy’s A Laodicean (1881). Hardy challenges romance’s association of play with childishness by exploring the gothic castle, the theatre, the telegraph, and the casino, demonstrating how these sites become material for romance. Chapter Two reads G.K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908) as a metaphysical detective novel that combines Edwardian detection with the medieval dream vision to show how mystery might be sustained within modern romance. Chapter Three contends that Joseph Conrad and Ford Madox Ford’s collaborative novel, Romance (1903), re-works the “boy’s adventure” story to challenge ideologies of imperial masculinity by drawing on Catholicism and literary impressionism as subversive discourses. Finally, Chapter Four attends to romance in Ford’s post-war tetralogy Parade’s End (1924-28), arguing that these novels challenge collective efforts to memorialize the dead and contain trauma by employing hagiographical tropes to depict the inconveniently returned soldier. My project demonstrates that both fin-de-siècle and current critical perceptions of romance ignore possibilities for the mode as an experimental literary strategy that explores uncertainty without rationalizing, controlling, or regulating it. Re-reading romance in these novels broadens our understanding of the connection between literary form and the disenchantment narrative, and reveals ways in which romance might enchant modern life. | Ph.D. | labor, conserv, conserv | 8, 14, 15 |
| Katz, Chaim | Valiante, Taufik A.||Zariffa, José | Saccadic Eye Movement Event-related Potentials and the Effects of Subsequent Phase-based Stimulation on Memory in Humans | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11-01 | With the ageing population comes an increase in dementia and memory-related disorders. Investigations of memory formation can facilitate insights into more effective treatments for this growing problem. Deep brain stimulation (DBS), the delivery of electrical stimulation to modulate brain activity, presents an exciting opportunity to investigate mechanisms of memory formation and potentially alleviate memory loss. One critical question with regards to DBS is when and where to stimulate. Treatment for individuals with epilepsy who require resection surgery usually involves the implantation of electrodes in mesial temporal lobe structures (MTL), locations known to be involved in memory formation. This provides a unique opportunity for researchers, in a controlled setting, to record and stimulate the brain to investigate memory formation. Episodic memory, our recollection of personal experiences, can be tested through visual cues (presenting a stimulus and saccadic eye movements (SEM) during memory task). We used a model of how the brain can separate encoding and retrieval states to inspire our approach to try and optimize DBS timing delivery. Our objectives were to 1. Determine which visual stimulus is most relevant for timing stimulation, and 2. Determine the effects of such stimulation. In this thesis, we identified that eye movement in response to a visual stimulus is a more appropriate timing cue than image presentation. In fact, through work with single-unit activity, we found inhibition of activity during the SEM. Our results suggest the SEM in MTL results from an internally generated movement not previously probed in mnemonic structures. Finally, we were able to investigate the effects of contingent stimulation on the SEM. This stimulation resulted in memory impairment. By customizing stimulation delivery contingent on an individual’s timing of the electrophysiological response post saccade, we saw no difference in memory performance between stimulation and no stimulation We successfully established eye movements as an important timing mechanism in MTL structures. Furthermore, stimulation contingent on eye movements can modify memory. These contributions support the potential to look at eye movements as a window on stimulation for investigating, modifying, and hopefully improving memory formation. | Ph.D. | wind, invest | 7, 9 |
| Bryer, Elizabeth Rita | Brown, Elspeth | Scramble for Photographs of Empire: Complicating Colonial Visions of the Philippine American War (1899 - 1913) | History | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation explores how a scramble for photographs of the Philippine American War helped capture a more complicated history of the United States empire in the Philippines from 1898 to 1913; preserving traces of Americans’ emotions, Filipinos’ resistance, and less common sights of colonial violence. As the war in the Philippines faded from American historical consciousness during the twentieth century, a few well-known colonial officials’ ethnographic photographs, aftermath images of dead Filipinos, and cliché phrases such as “civilize ‘em with a krag” or “the water cure” summarized it. In contrast, this dissertation’s case studies extend the work of photo theorists Laura Wexler, Tina Campt and others, to the Philippines, arguing that re-framing colonial representations reveals more complexity in colonial relations, same-sex sexual violence, and Filipino peoples’ resistance or a less overt refusal to accept colonial domination. The first case study re-situates one photograph of dead Filipino soldiers in the broader history of colonial relations on the ground in 1898 and 1899, demonstrating how the image documents same-sex sexual violence and what anti-imperialist Harvard professor of psychology William James denounced as American martial hysterics. Next, the dissertation goes beyond existing histories of photography and the Philippines to argue that many more individuals contributed to a multivalent, layered, visual discourse about the islands during an initial scramble for souvenirs and visual trophies of empire in 1898 and 1899. Looking at how images of the Philippines shifted increasingly towards depictions of progress and the continued need for American governance after 1899, the third case study considers what is often outside the frame of the U.S. government’s preferred depictions of benevolent assimilation. Undermining the social death implicit in racial typing, as Laura Wexler advocates in a different context, the final case study analyzes the colonial uncanny, or the secretly familiar resistance, refusal, and variation in American colonial structure on the ground. Moving beyond traditional analyses of how dominant gazes racialize, sexualize and objectify, this dissertation demonstrates how Americans scramble for photographs of empire created a more complicated visual discourse, recording Americans’ emotions, systemic and continuing violence, as well as different forms of Filipino resistance. | Ph.D. | water, land, governance, violence | 6, 15, 16 |
| Pokharel, Ramesh Kumar | Labrie, Normand | Second Language Writing: A Study of the Learning and Teaching of Academic Writing in a Networked Culture | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | The traditional notions of contrastive rhetoric conceive L2 writers of English as separate group of people having diverse cultural and rhetorical backgrounds, which interfere with their writing in English. It is assumed that their cultural thought patterns get expressed in their writing in English, thereby making their writing different from that of English writers. However, given the impact of new media and technology and its globalizing spread, L2 writers cannot be fully defined by a culture because they live in a networked culture. So, the relevance of contrastive rhetoric studies needs to be examined to suit the teaching situation, which is both cultural and social product of a given time. Building on the critical studies (Connor, 2002, 2004; Kubota Lehner, 2004; Petric, 2005), this research consolidates the existing dissonances with the traditional notions of contrastive rhetoric by examining the lived experience of graduate students. I also propose networked contrastive rhetoric (NCR) that better theorizes and operationalizes L2 writing theory and pedagogy. Using NCR as a conceptual framework that combines contrastive rhetoric (CR), L1 and L2 similarities and differences, L2 writing pedagogy, genre and academic conventions, discourse community, and networked culture (and their impact on L2 skills development and the familiarization with academic genre), this research does an empirical qualitative study by triangulating some research methods such as L2 student survey questionnaires and semi-structured faculty and L2 student interviews using survey research methodology and proposes some L2 writing pedagogical approaches. The findings show that a) L2 writers have challenges with both linguistic and rhetorical competences; b) they would benefit from more appropriate collegiality and lack institutional supports; c) L2 writers’ performance cannot be generalized as it depends on a lot of factors; d) the lived experiences of the faculty members and students problematize L2 writing as problems assumption and the notion of the expression of cultural thought patterns and transfer theory because networked culture has impacted L2 writing. Incorporating the findings of this research in future teaching may introduce a paradigm shift in L2 writing pedagogies in the ways L2 writing is taught in the classroom because it can have serious pedagogical implications in the multilingual, multiethnic, and cross-cultural context of present L2 writing. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning, globaliz, institut | 4, 9, 16 |
| Gillis, Jennifer L | Burchell, Ann N||Raboud, Janet M | Secondary Prevention of Anal Cancer among Men living with HIV: Acceptability and Suitability of Anal Pap Cytology and HPV DNA Type Testing | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | The risk of anal cancer is magnitudes higher among men living HIV than the general population. To contribute to an evidence-base in support of anal cancer screening guidelines, this dissertation evaluates the acceptability of screening among men living with HIV and sets the foundation for work examining the suitability of anal cytology and HPV DNA type testing for screening this population. A sample of 1677 men living with HIV enrolled in the Ontario HIV Treatment Network Cohort study completed a questionnaire module on HPV, its associated diseases, and their prevention in 2016-2017. Three objectives examined acceptability of anal cancer screening by 1) quantifying prevalence of screening, 2) examining the role of past screening on beliefs and willingness to be screened, and 3) evaluating facilitators to screening, HPV knowledge and self-perceived risk for anal cancer. In this sample, disparities in anal cancer screening were observed, wherein men from some racialized groups and heterosexual men were less likely to have discussed screening or to have been screened. The vast majority (90%) of men, however, were willing to undergo screening in the future. Positive beliefs regarding screening were associated with higher willingness. Behavioural intention does not ensure uptake, however, and factors such as health literacy and perceived susceptibility can influence men’s participation. Half of the study sample were unaware of HPV and the majority (73%) felt they had no or low chance of getting anal cancer. Specific risk-focused knowledge was associated with higher perceptions of risk. Findings will inform community-led health literacy efforts to improve participation in anal cancer screening. The final objective provides methodological guidance for the analysis of screening studies when verification of screening results is not possible for all participants. This simulation study assessed the utility of statistical methods to account for verification bias that arises in these scenarios. Findings suggest multiple imputation may be most suitable for handling complex missing data scenarios common to screening studies. This work will inform the analysis of data from a forthcoming anal cancer screening study to determine the best algorithm by which to screen for anal cancer among men living with HIV. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Thomas, Lahoma | Carens, Joseph||Fujii, Lee Ann | Seeing from Da Yaad: Black Women and the Politics of Respect | Political Science | 2021-11-01 | Why would law-abiding citizens protest the arrest of a don (i.e., a leader of a criminal organization) and confront the Jamaican constabulary police force, especially when such actions carry personal risk to the protestors’ safety? Why would the majority of protestors be women? These were the two questions that became the core puzzle for my dissertation, following the protests in Kingston, Jamaica that erupted in response to the state’s attempt to arrest and detain a don in May 2010. Current political science approaches might view the protests as irrational behaviour considering that such actions carry great personal risk and little potential benefit for the protestors. My study reveals that residents who engage in high-risk collective action in support of a don often do so because they see the don as a legitimate political authority. An important reason why they hold this view is because the dons treat them with respect. The experience of respect is an important, albeit understudied, mechanism that plays a central role in the political behaviour and strategies of actors beyond conventional cost-benefit calculations. Respect is communicated to residents and made visible in key interactions with the don, via a mechanism that I call displays of respect. Displays of respect are exhibited through governance practices that the don establishes in the community, governance practices that are highly gendered and, in certain cases and in certain ways, designed to protect women. Respect is one sort of political subjectivity, an internalised perception of and relation to authority, but the meaning of respect depends on context. To understand any political subjectivities, we have to understand how those subjectivities are embodied, i.e., how socio-political and personal histories, experiences of racialization, gendering, and personal experiences become internalised, how they affect perceptions and emotions, and how they shape the ways in which people relate to various sorts of authorities. This framework allows us to consider the political subjectivities of Black women in Jamaican garrison communities and how the feeling of being respected as a political subject informs their political motivations, perceptions, strategies, decisions, and ways of being in the present. | Ph.D. | citizen, gender, women, governance | 4, 5, 16 |
| Kim, Jade | Gagné, Antoinette | Seminars as Communities of Practice: The Structural Analysis of Four Graduate-level Seminars and the Spoken Participation Experiences of International Students in a Canadian University | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | Canadian universities and colleges are increasingly characterized by diversity. In academia, the number of individuals using English as an additional language (EAL) exceeds the number of scholars and students speaking English as their native language. However, previous studies have explored academic English among English monolingual speakers and many of these studies have focused on the written aspect while spoken genres such as seminars remain underexplored.This research is an embedded multiple case study that focuses on exploring the spoken participation experiences of EAL international students in four graduate-level seminars in a Canadian university. The research questions are: 1) How do four graduate-level seminar courses in Education in an English-language university differ in terms of their schematic structure, implementation, and instructor expectations for participation?; and 2) How do the EAL international student participants experience spoken participation in four graduate-level seminar courses? Each seminar course was conceptualized as a case and participants were embedded subunits of analysis. Data were collected using classroom observations, interviews, as well as physical artifacts and analyzed using genre and thematic analysis. Drawing on genre theory, community of practice, and landscape of practice, this study discussed how each instructor’s particular style of teaching and perception of their role in the classroom are reflected in the structure of each seminar course and closely associated with instructors’ different expectations for participation. These differences contributed to the confusion that student participants experienced. In addition, the international students encountered difficulties related not only to language, but challenges stemming from diverse understandings of spoken participation and classroom context-specific challenges. Thus, they perceived themselves as novice members of the community engaged in participation on the periphery as opposed to some of their classmates who were seen as more expert members. As this study highlights the varied structure of graduate seminars as well as the range of demands and participation expectations in seminars as elements that can contribute to spoken participation difficulties of international students, there are a number of implications that pertain to graduate program preparation as well as the professional development of professors in graduate programs that include international students. | Ph.D. | land | 15 |
| Fitzpatrick, Tiffany | Fisman, David N||Guttmann, Astrid | Severe RSV-related IIlness among Ontario Children: Using Population-based, Administrative Data to Comprehensively Identify High-risk Children and Evaluate Population Interventions | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11-01 | Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is the most common cause of respiratory tract infection and hospitalization among children globally. Early-life infection with RSV has long-term impacts, including increased risk of developing asthma, and there is increasing recognition of the burden RSV imposes upon the health of older adults. In this dissertation, I present three studies pertaining to the epidemiology and prevention of severe RSV-related illness, particularly among young children, using unique multi-linked health and socio-demographic administrative data for the population of Ontario, Canada. Using a quasi-experimental design, I evaluated the effectiveness of RSV prophylaxis programs for high-risk infants. Severe RSV-related illness substantially declined over the 24-year study period, particularly among high-risk children. While we cannot firmly attribute causality, the magnitude and timing of changes, along with diminished social inequities, among prophylaxis-eligible infants are noteworthy and suggest these programs have noticeable real-world effectiveness, albeit to a lesser degree than observed in efficacy studies. In a birth cohort study, I investigated the contribution of multiple socio-demographic factors to early-life RSV admissions. To date, these factors have received little attention relative to medical factors, despite the known role they have in influencing the transmission, severity and uptake of interventions for other common respiratory viruses. Multiple novel socio-economic factors were independently associated with significantly greater RSV-related admission rates, including young maternal age, maternal involvement with the criminal system, and maternal mental health and/or addiction concerns. I developed the first RSV transmission model for any Canadian population, which also uniquely captures the entire population age spectrum. Relative to other common communicable diseases, few RSV transmission models exist. Our model accurately captured the seasonal RSV epidemic curves observed among infants and suggests RSV burden is greatest at the extremes of the age spectrum. This calibrated base model can be adapted to investigate the potential impacts of emerging RSV vaccination strategies in Ontario and could be further calibrated for use in other populations. Overall, these results contribute to our understanding of the real-world impact of RSV prophylaxis programs and highlight impactful targets for revisions to prophylaxis guidelines and emerging vaccination strategies. These results may inform the selection of optimal policies and interventions which not only reduce RSV burden but also minimize social inequities. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, mental health, public health, illness, communicable disease, invest, equit | 1, 3, 9, 10 |
| Alimohammadian, Ehsan | Herman, Peter R. | Shaping Nonlinear Laser Interactions Inside Thin Film and Bulk Glass | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2020-06-01 | This thesis experimentally investigates spatial beam shaping for two- and three-dimensional manipulation of laser interactions inside thin film and bulk glass. In thin film, the interferometric processing was tailored by spatial light modulator beam shaping to form a high aspect ratio nanochannel inside a silicon oxide film. Structuring nanochannels with only a single laser pulse opens up new opportunities for the fabrication of lab-in-thin film devices. In bulk glass, experiments explored the complex relationship of linear and nonlinear optical interactions in transparent glass, where self-focusing, plasma defocusing, and surface aberrations play different roles with increasing focal depth and pulse energy. The key contribution centres on manipulation of femtosecond laser interactions with beam shaping based on generating both concave and convex conical phase fronts. A comprehensive investigation was carried out over a broad domain of laser exposure conditions not previously investigated that sheds light on the competition between nonlinear and aberration effects. In this way, beam shaping enabled tuning of the modification zone to form long and uniform filament tracks over shallow to deep focusing conditions. In addition, the study expanded the laser processing zone for forming low loss optical waveguides or rapid-etching modification tracks from shallow to very deep positions (up to 2.8 mm) that were not previously feasible. As a result, the thesis sheds light on new beam shaping opportunities for steering the physics of light propagation and interactions with transparent materials, which are of central importance to the rapidly advancing field of femtosecond laser material processing. The present work dramatically extends the understanding and application of conical phase fronts, which have been rapidly transforming the field of laser processing based previously only on fixed angle axicons. This work introduces a facile means for tuning the conical angle, thus unlocking new physical insights and application directions. Alternative beams such as sheet-like shapes were further examined in shallow focusing depth of bulk glass. The technical advances will be of broad interest to the communities of optical material processing, nonlinear optical interaction physics, laser photonics manufacturing, and three-dimensional micro- and nano-structuring of transparent materials. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Paradise, Adiv | Menou, Kristen | Simulating Paradise: Exploring Habitable Exoplanet Climates with a Fast GCM | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2021-11-01 | A quarter-century of exoplanet science has delivered thousands of confirmed exoplanets, revealing a far broader palette of worlds than those found in our own solar system--including many Earth-sized planets in the habitable zones of their stars. With these discoveries has come a growing interest in using the computer models developed to simulate Earth's climate to probe the possible climates of potentially-habitable planets. However, many of these models are limited in their ability to model planets that are very different from Earth, or are computationally expensive to run, limiting the degree to which they can be used to study the full breadth of that diversity. In this dissertation, I present ExoPlaSim, a version I have created of the PlaSim 3D climate model. ExoPlaSim is designed to simulate a wide range of habitable planets, including those most likely to be observed and characterized in the coming decades. ExoPlaSim is accurate and extremely fast, enabling modellers to pursue new kinds of exoplanet science. It is also easy to use, enabling more people than ever to use and learn from 3D climate models. I present validation tests using established models as benchmarks, and show several demonstrations of its utility through sensitivity studies, discoveries of new phenomena in narrow regions of parameter space, and simulations of a climate's evolution over geological timescales. Finally, I demonstrate how ExoPlaSim can help inform observations by combining it with a spectral postprocessing code to create synthetic observations, which allow us to explore the impact that the underlying diversity of possible climates has on our ability to infer climate from observations. This model, and the discoveries it has already enabled, will enable rapid improvements in our understanding of habitable climates through studies involving hundreds and even thousands of 3D models, obtained in a matter of weeks rather than months or years. This model thus fills a gap in the model hierarchy, helping to guide the more sophisticated models to interesting modeling targets, and permitting the study of questions that are easy to answer, but of too-low priority to justify the use of more expensive models. | Ph.D. | solar, climate, planet | 7, 13 |
| Borrett, Michael Jacob | Miller, Freda D.||Kaplan, David R. | Single Cell Transcriptional Approaches to Understanding the Life of Mammalian Neural Stem Cells | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Adult neural stem cells (NSCs) build, maintain and are involved in repair of the mammalian brain. Adult NSCs reside within two distinct niches of the forebrain: the hippocampal dentate gyrus and the ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ) along the lateral ventricles. Both adult NSC populations exhibit specific functions within their niches: hippocampal NSCs produce granule neurons of the dentate gyrus involved in spatial learning and memory and V-SVZ NSCs produce neurons required for olfactory learning and oligodendrocytes for white matter development and repair. Adult NSCs derive from embryonic neural precursors which are tasked with building the brain. Unlike their adult NSC progeny, embryonic precursors produce a wide variety of neuronal and glial cell types during development. Whether adult NSCs are fundamentally different and intrinsically less multipotential than their embryonic predecessors are largely unknown. This thesis has addressed this by characterizing and comparing the molecular profiles of adult forebrain NSCs and their embryonic predecessors to ascertain whether they are similar or different. First, I performed single cell transcriptional profiling on embryonic neural precursors and identified a novel core signature for embryonic neural precursors that is largely maintained in adult V-SVZ NSCs indicating that the two populations are fundamentally molecularly similar. Second, I have coupled single cell transcriptional profiling with lineage tracing to follow different populations of embryonic precursors as they progress into adult V-SVZ NSCs. This analysis revealed that the transition from an embryonic precursor to an adult NSC does not involve a fundamental change in cell identity but rather reflects a conversion from an active to a dormant state. Third, I compared the molecular profiles of V-SVZ NSCs with hippocampal NSCs and show that both forebrain NSC populations share the same core signature and undergo similar transitions from embryogenesis to adulthood. These findings support a model in which NSCs of either hippocampal or V-SVZ origin possess conserved molecular properties regardless of their age or respective functions. This model further suggests that the different functions exhibited by NSCs at different ages may not be a product of intrinsic programming but may instead reflect the influence of the environment they reside in. | Ph.D. | learning, transit, conserv, conserv | 4, 11, 14, 15 |
| Qidwai, Sarah Ahmed | Lightman, Bernard | Sir Syed (1817-1898) and Science: Popularization in Nineteenth Century India | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2021-11-01 | On 9 January 1864, 109 men joined the newly formed Scientific Society in Ghazipur, India. Its founder, Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817–1898), and his engagement with various scientific disciplines is the subject of my dissertation. This work takes a notable figure in South Asia and re-examines him in his historical setting. Drawing on a wealth of published and archival material in several languages, I argue that Sayyid Ahmad’s activities between 1837 and 1876 fall under the category of science popularization. These themes are under-examined because of his image as a Muslim reformer in India. I use him as a template to show how scientific knowledge was transformed in India from multiple perspectives. This includes case studies ranging from translations of Persian sources that describe how to build mathematical compasses into Urdu, to debates in other parts of the world that shaped the conversations in India. I also show that Sayyid Ahmad’s engagement with science education and popularization draws in several groups, such as the intellectual elite at Delhi College and members of the Asiatic Society. The dissertation is split into five chapters, each dealing with a different part of Sayyid Ahmad’s activities and publications. The first chapter examines Urdu translations of Persian sources by Sayyid Ahmad. The second chapter deals with the field of archeology and Sayyid Ahmad’s contributions to the first report of the Archeological Survey of India (1862–1865). The third chapter explores Sayyid Ahmad’s bilingual Bible commentary and the scientific beliefs, such as the fact that the Earth revolves around the Sun, scattered through the publication. The fourth chapter examines his Scientific Society. Given the importance of Aligarh Muslim University (est. 1875), which was called Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College until 1920, the significance of his Scientific Society is often overlooked. The final chapter explores Sayyid Ahmad’s visit to London in 1869–70 and his return to India. Overall, this thesis aims to write Sayyid Ahmad into the existing historiographical discussions within nineteenth century history of science. This lens offers a fresh account of a well-known figure in a new historiographical setting. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Le, Penny J. | Winnik, Mitchell A. | Site-specific Antibody-Polymer Conjugates Synthesized by Enzymatic Methods | Chemistry | 2022-03-01 | Antibody conjugates have typically been prepared by random conjugation to lysine amino groups. However, the effects of antibody conjugation remain unclear and are difficult to predict. Site-specific conjugation methods that control the conjugation site have yielded antibody-polymer conjugates with improved properties compared to their analogue prepared by random lysine conjugation. The preparation of site-specific antibody-polymer conjugates is challenging, as few methods are suited for conjugating large payloads with multiple chemical functionalities. My studies focused on developing a method to prepare site-specific antibody-polymer conjugates using microbial transglutaminase (mTG) and characterizing these conjugates. I also applied an existing method, SiteClick™ conjugation, to prepare conjugates for in vivo studies.In Chapter 3, I describe the synthesis and characterization of 11 polyglutamide-based polymers, including metal-chelating polymers (MCPs) for developing a conjugation method based on mTG, and for use with SiteClick™ conjugation. These polymers also included a series of D-enantiomers to examine the enantiopurity of the polyglutamide MCP. In Chapter 4, I describe a method to site-specifically conjugate polymers to proteins using mTG. I describe the conjugation of an H2N-PEG-oligonucleotide and MCP to two antibody fragments, a VHH fragment that binds to programmed death ligand 1, and a Fab fragment that binds to frizzled-2. For the Fab conjugates, the conjugation site was characterized by mass spectrometry experiments which confirmed that the mTG conjugation was site-specific. In Chapter 5, I examined the properties of conjugates prepared by site-specific mTG conjugation and random lysine conjugation. I analyzed for changes to various properties by differential scanning fluorimetry, biolayer interferometry, and cell-binding assays. The site-specific conjugate showed high affinity to the antigen and ca. 4-fold lower non-specific binding to two cell lines compared to the random conjugate. Site-specific conjugation appeared to reduce non-specific binding associated with random lysine conjugation of the polymer. In Chapter 6, I describe experiments that investigated the SiteClick™ method to conjugate an MCP to a therapeutic antibody, Panitumumab, to test whether biodistribution is improved. I optimized the method and overcame purification issues found in previous attempts to conjugate related polymers. I also analyzed the results obtained with our collaborators and compared them to previous results. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Thomas, Sridevi Mariyam | Barati, Mansoor||Sridhar, Ramamritham | Slag Refining of Aluminum Silicon Alloys for the Purpose of Obtaining Solar Grade Silicon | Materials Science and Engineering | 2021-06-01 | The need for a reliable, cost effective method to produce solar grade silicon (>6N purity) for photovoltaic cells is imperative in the age of climate change. Boron and phosphorus are used to dope the silicon to make p- and n-junctions and require the strictest control; unfortunately, these are also the most difficult elements to remove during the purification of silicon. The relatively new path of combining of slag treatment and solvent refining is seen as a potential route to large scale and cost-effective refining of silicon. In this study, slag treatment of aluminum-silicon alloys using calcium aluminate slags with varying composition was investigated. Kinetics data was collected and used to calculate the mass transfer coefficient of B and P into the slag; a maximum of 47µm/s and 14µm/s respectively was reported at 35mol% Al2O3. Calculations showed mass transfer of boron was faster than phosphorus due to the smaller ionic radius. It was found that there was a linear correlation between the mass transfer coefficients and superheat of the slag; it is concluded that this is an artifact of the change in both slag and metal compositions as the experiment proceeds. Equilibrium data was used to compare the removal of phosphorus and boron from the alloy, showing significantly better performance for phosphorus removal as it was reduced into the slag as a phosphide ion. Boron removal, as borate ions, was less than ideal because of the very low oxygen potential provided by the slag. The maximum LB and LP reported in this study was 0.38 and 2.17 respectively at 40mol% Al2O3. Also calculated were the slag capacities for borate and phosphide ions. In addition to the fundamental data contributions to the field, a set of criteria were defined for future researchers should they want to pursue slag treatment and solvent refining. Also, a number of parameters that might prove useful when narrowing down potential alloy systems, that would benefit from slag refining, were provided and assessed. | Ph.D. | solar, invest, cities, climate | 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Stopps, Helen | Touchie, Marianne F | Smart Thermostat Use in Multi-unit Residential Buildings: Impacts on Occupant Behaviour, Thermal Comfort, and Energy Performance | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | As the proportion of the population who resides in urban centers grows, the number of dwellings in high-rise residential buildings is also increasing. Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) typically accounts for over half of all energy use in this building type and, as such, consideration of these loads is key to effective energy demand-side management. Connected, smart thermostats provide new opportunities for energy management in high-rise residential buildings by facilitating access to suite-level data for building operators and researchers, improving occupant interfaces, and enabling the implementation of new in-suite HVAC control strategies (e.g., occupancy-based and load shifting control, as explored here). In this thesis, the impacts of smart thermostat use on occupant behaviour, thermal comfort, and energy performance were investigated through a field study in two contemporary high-rise residential buildings in Toronto, Canada. The key findings for each of these areas are summarized below.1. Occupant Thermal Comfort and Behaviours: Over-conditioning of suites occurred frequently in both buildings, despite the presence of in-suite temperature controls, resulting in thermal discomfort for occupants. As compared to conventional, programmable thermostats, higher schedule programming rates were observed amongst the study population, who has smart thermostats installed in their suites. 2. Thermostat Control Strategies:Occupancy-based thermostat control was estimated to reduce suite-level HVAC use by 5.9% ± 46% on average in the studied suites, however the energy impacts were limited by pre-existing short terminal HVAC unit runtimes (average runtime of 5 minutes/hour in the heating season and 12 minutes/hour in the cooling season). Overall, the load shifting strategy was ineffective, however, substantial shifting of suite HVAC load from on-peak to off-peak periods was observed in a subset of suites. 3. Chiller Plant Operation and Performance: Based on chiller plant operation data, modelling showed that reductions in building space cooling demand had diminishing returns in terms of reducing electricity use –the first 10% to 20% of space cooling demand reductions had the most impact on chiller plant electricity use. Further, using weather-based regression models and typical meteorological year forecasts for the 2040s, space cooling electricity use was forecasted to increase by 21% over 2020 levels. | Ph.D. | energy, buildings, invest, urban, weather | 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Fralick, Michael | Redelmeier, Donald | Sodium Glucose co-Transporter 2 (SGLT2) Inhibitors for Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Assessing their Safety and Effectiveness using Real-world Data | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-11-01 | Background: Sodium glucose co-transporter 2 (SGLT2) inhibitors are a new class of medications for adults with type 2 diabetes mellitus. While their efficacy has been well established, less is known about their effectiveness and safety in routine care. The three studies for this thesis include: (1) To compare the cardiovascular effectiveness of SGLT2-inhibitors compared to metformin for people with diabetes who are treatment-naive; (2) To compare the risk of fracture with SGLT2-inhibitors compared to GLP1 agonists; and (3) To identify predictors of SGLT2-related diabetic ketoacidosis using Machine Learning. Methods: All three studies utilized routinely collected data from large healthcare databases in the United States and applied the new-user cohort design. Study 1 and 2 applied propensity-score matching and a Cox proportional hazards model to estimate the hazard ratios for the primary outcome. Study 3 utilized two popular machine learning techniques: least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression and gradient boosted trees. Results: In Study 1, the primary outcome of stroke, myocardial infarction, or heart failure occurred in 198 individuals (32 events per 1,000 person-years) newly prescribed an SGLT2, compared to 223 individuals (31 events per 1,000 person-years) among 10,549 PS-matched new-users of metformin (HR = 1.02, 95% CI: 0.84, 1.23). In Study 2, 79,964 patients initiating canagliflozin who were propensity score matched to 79,964 patients initiating a GLP1-agonist. The primary outcome of hip fracture, pelvic fracture, humeral fracture, or wrist fracture was similar for canagliflozin (2.2 events per 1,000 person-years) compared to GLP1-agonists (2.3 events per 1,000 person-years). In Study 3, 111,597 adults newly prescribed an SGLT2 were identified. The following variables had strong associations with an inpatient diagnosis of diabetic ketoacidosis: prior DKA (OR = 4.62, 95% CI 1.06 – 20.14), digoxin use (OR = 4.38, 95% CI 1.98, 8.56), and a baseline hemoglobin A1C above 10% (OR = 3.10, 95% CI 1.93,4.98). Discussion: This thesis provides timely data to understand the safety and effectiveness of SGLT2-inhibitors in routine care. This was achieved through advanced pharmacoepidemiologic methods and machine-learning techniques. With the aid of open-source statistical packages, this body of work also provides a methodologic framework for conducting similar studies. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning | 3, 4 |
| Stammitti Scarpone, Aurelio | Acosta, Edgar J | Solid-liquid-liquid Wettability and its role on Targeted Emulsified Solvent Injection (TESI) | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-11-01 | Canada possesses the third largest world reserves of crude oil, mostly in the forms of heavy oil or bitumen in the oil sands. However, 80% are too deep to be mined, requiring in-situ extraction methods. This work involved the design of a chemical enhanced oil recovery (EOR) approach, referred to as Targeted Emulsified Solvent Injection (TESI), that uses a surfactant-oil-water (SOW) system in the form of an emulsified solvent formulation at low surfactant concentration (~0.8%) to extract bitumen from oil sands. Different from previous approaches, TESI features an unstable emulsion delivered to the porous media where it is meant to break, dilute the bitumen, reducing its viscosity, and producing an ultralow interfacial tension (IFT). According to a known theory of capillary displacement, the ultralow IFT should facilitate bitumen removal via shear forces. A gap in this theory was addressed, concerning the effect of surfactants on wettability and its potential impact on bitumen recovery. To this end, existing Surface-Liquid-Air (SLA) wettability models were evaluated for their suitability to predict Solid-Liquid-Liquid (SLL) contact angles for a wide range of interfacial tensions (IFTs) of surfactant-free systems on various materials. The Neumann’s equation of state (EQS) was found to predict well wettability changes with IFT changes. This extended-EQS was then combined with the Hydrophilic-Lipophilic-Difference (HLD) + Net-Average Curvature (NAC) framework, used to predict IFT, to estimate changes in wettability around the phase inversion point (PIP) of SOW systems. It was found that at the PIP –where IFT is ultralow– the wettability is nearly neutral, and more importantly, is nearly independent of the solid’s hydrophilicity, explaining why wettability did not seem to affect TESI performance. The most influential factor on TESI performance was the delivery of solvent. Under optimal delivery conditions, bitumen recoveries of 60-80% can be achieved. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Wang, Fanmao | Barati, Mansoor||Marcuson, Samuel | Solid-state Extraction of Nickel from Nickel Sulphide Concentrates by Iron Addition | Materials Science and Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Nickel is a strategic metal in modern society and is widely used in stainless steel, Ni-based alloys, electroplating, and batteries. Nickel production from sulphide nickel ores constitutes approximately 30% of all nickel produced worldwide. The conventional extraction process begins with the smelting of nickel sulphide concentrates, producing large quantities of SO2, either released to the atmosphere directly or captured at a cost. The high cost of SO2 abatement alone has, in instances, resulted in the shutdown of nickel smelters. The smelting product, nickel sulphide melt (known as Bessemer matte), is not directly marketable and has to be further refined by a long series of steps. The refining process is complex, costly, and energy-intensive. This research focused on developing a novel Ni extraction method from sulphide concentrates with minimal SO2 emissions. Under a neutral atmosphere, heating mixtures of metallic iron powders and nickel sulphide concentrates at 950 oC followed by slow cooling to 700 – 800 oC produced large ferronickel grains (d80 = 125 μm) and Ni extraction of approximately 98%. Grinding the particle size of the heat treatment products to below 44 µm yielded a significant liberation degree of the ferronickel grains. Through magnetic separation, the Ni-depleted iron sulphide was removed, producing a ferronickel (FeNi) concentrate with a grade of 15.6 wt% Ni. Additionally, the remaining S in the recovered FeNi concentrates was analyzed to be 3 wt%, demanding additional refining of FeNi if it was to be used for stainless steel production. The by-product, Ni-depleted iron sulphide, is a possible feed material for the production of iron oxide and sulfuric acid or elemental sulfur. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, production, emissions | 7, 12, 13 |
| Awonaike, Boluwatife Boluwatiwi | Wania, Frank | Sources, Phase Partitioning and Transport of Organic Contaminants in Contrasting Landscapes during Runoff Events | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Transport of many contaminants to receiving waters increases during precipitation events. Measuring the dissolved and particle-phase concentrations of a diverse group of organic contaminants during baseflow and a summer storm at high temporal resolution in an urban and a largely agricultural peri-urban watershed, allowed for the observation of the contaminants’ storm-driven transport behavior, revealing plausible sources and factors influencing their amplification and removal from waterways. Total loads for all contaminant groups were higher in the urban watershed, especially for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) and Quinones (PAQs) (>x20) and less so for Organophosphate Esters (OPEs) (x2). The bulk of event transport for all groups was particle-driven. Water concentrations of particle-bound compounds showed first flush behavior and increased with discharge, which was often correlated with suspended solid concentrations, pointing to contaminated particles as a major source. Temporal variation of dissolved phase concentrations was less apparent, with most compounds experiencing dilution or chemostatic behavior. Contaminant profiles in rainfall generally matched that in streamflow, and mass loads from rain exceeded stream-fluxes at most sampling sites. Benzotriazole Ultraviolet Stabilizers (BT-UVs) in stream water, commonly attributed to wastewater given their use in personal care products and textiles, could also be associated with additive-containing plastics, atmospheric deposition, and especially contaminated road dust, the latter potentially related to applications in automotive clearcoats. Concentrations of particle-bound PAHs and BT-UVs were respectively, 2–37 times and 2–75 times lower than during previously investigated cold-weather events in the same rivers. Whereas seasonal emission strength was responsible for this difference in the agricultural watershed, event characteristics (length of the antecedent dry period, ambient temperature, runoff ratio) played more of a role in the urban watershed. The diverse effects of variable event characteristics were visualized using concentration-discharge relationships. Whereas field-based organic carbon-water partitioning coefficients for the BT-UVs were in good agreement with predictions, the OPEs, especially chlorinated ones, partitioned more into organic particles than expected.Overall, this work expands existing knowledge on phase partitioning, property prediction, event scale transport dynamics, and sources of PAHs, PAQs, OPEs, and BT-UVs in urban stormwater. | Ph.D. | agricultur, knowledge, water, emission, invest, urban, waste, weather, land | 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15 |
| Boyko, Mariya | Fraser, Craig | Soviet Mathematics Curriculum Reforms (1958-1985): Redefining the Purpose of Mathematics Education | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2019-11-01 | ABSTRACT This thesis is a study of the major mathematics education reforms that took place in the period from 1958 to 1985 in the USSR, and are referred to as Kolmogorov’s reforms, after the prominent mathematician and educator Professor Andrei Kolmogorov. The thesis examines the political and intellectual factors that influenced the designers of the new curriculum. The Soviet Union was in competition with the United States in 1958, when a general education reform was launched by Nikita Khrushchev’s government. This reform was intended to bridge the gap between theoretical and practical skills, and prepare students for entering postsecondary study and the workplace. Kolmogorov was influenced by Khrushchev’s reforms, although his revision of the mathematics curriculum differed in philosophy and emphasis from those reforms. The mathematics reforms were spearheaded by accomplished researchers who were strongly influenced by the character of modern mathematics. The Kolmogorov curriculum included the introduction of set theory at a fairly stage, a deductive logical approach, and a stronger focus on the abstract and conceptual character of mathematics. In certain respects, the curriculum resembled the famous new mathematics movement in American education in the 1960s. The Soviet curriculum was fully implemented only in the 1970s. The authors of the new curriculum had experience in teaching mathematically gifted youth, and were involved in special schools established for them. Although the Kolmogorov curriculum was intended in principle for anyone wishing to learn mathematics, it turned out to be unsuitable for the broad range of students. Student grades in mathematics dropped and performance on mathematics entrance examinations to postsecondary institutions declined. In the later 1970s criticisms of the new curriculum mounted from both teachers and academic mathematicians. Kolmogorov’s reforms were replaced with counter reforms, advocated by senior professors of mathematics and educators Ivan Vinogradov and Lev Pontryagin in the late 1970s and implemented in the 1980s. However, the legacy of Kolmogorov’s reforms endures in the form of educational materials that are used for teaching mathematically gifted students and as a model for learning mathematics that remains today of substantial interest to educators. | Ph.D. | learning, institut | 4, 16 |
| Montange, Leah | Gilbert, Emily||Buckley, Michelle | Spaces of Unfreedom: Interior Immigration Detention and Carceral Immigration Enforcement in the US Pacific Northwest | Geography | 2021-11-01 | This thesis is a collection of four papers that analyze interior immigration detention and carceral immigration enforcement in the US Pacific Northwest. Together these papers elucidate how processes of bordering and carceral control overlap with one another in a particular conjuncture – the US Pacific Northwest during the years of the Trump White House. They explore the various and sometimes contradictory ways that interior immigration enforcement and detention in the US interior produce racialized human hierarchy, operate through economic relationships, and are subject to political struggle. This collection contains four major arguments, each one correlated with a different vantage point into carceral immigration enforcement. First, I argue that the spatio-temporal ordering of a specific detention center, the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA, intertwines logics of exclusion and dehumanization. I find patterns of inclusionary exclusion and exclusionary disposal, through which detention providers place responsibility for degradation, deportation, and even premature death, upon those in detention. Second, I analyze three overlapping economic logics that constitute the migrant detention system in the US Pacific Northwest: production, extraction and financialization. Through these logics, human needs of those who ICE detains are in turn smothered, exploited, and partially fulfilled. This can lead to contradictions that hinge upon the life, death, mental health, and subjectivity within the detention system. Third, I analyze the destabilizing impact of eliminatory carceral immigration enforcement in a rural Washington community in the Trump era. I argue that while immigration enforcement is a mode of controlling and devaluing migrant workers, this process is both geographically and historically contingent. Fourth, I analyze the political repression of migrant justice activists that struggled against carceral immigration enforcement during the Trump presidency. I argue that while this appears to be a new, vengeful pattern, it is part of a longer project of securing the smooth functioning of economic and racial social control in the US. The conclusion offers some reflection on developing an abolitionist politics that challenges the various social, economic and political relations that sustain carceral immigration enforcement in the US. | Ph.D. | mental health, labor, worker, rural, production | 3, 8, 11, 12 |
| Mckinven, Ryan | Gaensler, Bryan M. | Spectropolarimetry of Fast Radio Bursts, Radio Galaxies, and the Milky Way | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2022-03-01 | Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are microsecond to millisecond extragalactic radio transients. Despite a published sample of over 600 FRB observations, the nature of their progenitor/s, the mechanism for their emission and their domain of applicability as probes remain open problems. Here, information on their polarized signals may offer illuminating clues, however, only a small fraction of the current FRB sample report polarization information. This modest sample exhibits a rich phenomenology in its polarized properties and has provided some important discoveries that have refined our under- standing of the FRB population. The FRB survey operating between 400-800 MHz on the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME/FRB) should detect several thousand FRBs over the next few years. A significant fraction of these events will be recorded in a mode that enables po- larization analysis. Such a large sample requires an automated pipeline in order to reduce recorded data into useful summary statistics for different FRB properties. This thesis reviews the polarization analysis pipeline developed for CHIME/FRB, along with the various science enabled with polarized data. The analysis tools developed specifically for CHIME/FRB observations are illustrated using a combination of simulated and real FRBs. These tools include a parametric method that robustly characterizes dominant sources of instrumental polarization affecting the CHIME telescope. A novel method for circumventing bandwidth depolar- ization is outlined and validated with a real CHIME-detected FRB whose Faraday rotation measure (RM) is the second largest from any FRB observed to date. Time dependence in the polarization properties of two prolific repeating CHIME/FRB sources is studied where significant changes in RM are observed, strongly suggesting a dynamic local environment. Joint analysis of dispersion and rotation measures are used to constrain the field strength in the local environment and are compared to equivalent measurements from other repeating FRBs and pulsars. Finally, this thesis explores new methods for refining the Faraday rotating Galactic foreground, a major contaminant in the interpretation of FRB RMs, through joint analysis of RMs obtained from extragalactic sources and foreground emission from the interstellar medium. | Ph.D. | emission | 7 |
| West, Junior John | Harris, Tony JC | Spreading and Sealing: Epithelial Morphogenesis Regulated by the Cytohesin Arf-GEF Steppke | Cell and Systems Biology | 2019-11-01 | Epithelial tissue must maintain structural integrity to carry out secretion, absorption and barrier functions. Maintaining integrity becomes especially important as tissues undergo dynamic shape changes for morphogenesis during animal development, homeostasis, and tissue repair. For epithelial morphogenesis, regulating the actin cytoskeleton is critical for modulating cell shape and adhesion that facilitates changes to tissue topology. Actin networks are regulated by a wide variety of proteins that allows them to adopt diverse configurations and activities. ADP ribosylation factors (ARFs) are molecular switches that control various cellular responses, and their activation at the cell cortex by Cytohesin Arf-guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) modulates actin networks in cultured cells. However, it is not clear how Cytohesins regulate actin networks and how this contributes to epithelial morphogenesis in vivo. For my thesis, I studied the role of the sole Drosophila Cytohesin, Steppke (Step), during embryonic epithelial morphogenesis. I found that Step is critical for promoting orderly tissue spreading and it does this by antagonizing actomyosin networks. Step depletion resulted in an ectopic accumulation of actomyosin networks that was correlated with increased tissue tension. Interestingly, actomyosin networks are required for subcellular recruitment of Step indicating that the antagonism occurs through negative feedback. A collaboration revealed a similar role for Cytohesins in Zebrafish. In a second study, I found that Step is required for efficient tissue sealing. For this role, Step promotes F-actin and actin-based protrusions at the leading edge of epithelial sheets, and cooperates with the actin polymerization protein, Enabled. Strikingly, overexpression of Step induced ectopic actin-based protrusions and epithelial breakdown in more severe cases. By antagonizing actomyosin networks and promoting actin protrusions, Step is a critical regulator of epithelial morphogenesis. | Ph.D. | labor, fish, animal, animal | 8, 14, 15 |
| Lezard, Percy | Walcott, Rinaldo | Sqilxw Educator Rising: Sqilxw Educator Rising: Relationality as Methodology in a Social Work Abolitionist Framework | Social Justice Education | 2022-03-01 | AbstractWai, iskwis (my name is), Percy Lezard. Sqilxw ways, personal introductions come before any other words. I am outma sqilxw I was born into a family of sexʷwrmin̓ (firekeepers). This research demonstrates how I as a sqilxw stamya? educator have been able to survive and thrive, through my sqilxw identity and Indigenous knowledges, in mainstream post-secondary education institutions. I have used myself as both the subject and researcher within the social context of post-secondary social work settings, with an insider’s vantage point to chronicle my own pedagogical transition, using the qualitative methodology of relationality. Through my interpretations and reflections about two post-secondary programs, I use comparison to highlight the complexities of their strengths and inadequacies. This work includes my account as an Indigenous scholar working within a college program grounded in feminist theory, and a university department grounded in an anti-oppression/anti-racism framework. It explores experiences of anti-Indigenous racism, cis-sexism, pushback for my position of solidarity with Black liberation, and oppressions within a disability justice framework. Using the methodology of relationality, I share the experiences I have encountered and the problems I have faced, to facilitate an understanding of the processes of transition. As the genre of qualitative research brings the reader closer to the subculture studied through the experiences of the author, my work serves to provide an evaluation and insights into the cultures of these two learning environments. Data gathering consisted of a reflexive journal, my personal calendar, faculty agendas, staff memos, and reflective analysis. As well, in each of the institutions, I was able to gather support and insight through ceremony and interactions with Knowledge Keepers and Elders. In this way, I was able to reflect upon teachings and to apply Indigenous knowledges to my work. These research tools were used to capture the experiences of my transition. The results of this study were expressed in a personal narrative that comprises of Section 1: Situation, Owing, Questioning. Section 2: How did I come to formulating an Abolitionist Social Work Framework? Section 3: History of Social Work Harms. Section 4: Alternatives Section 5: Vision and closing remarks. | Ph.D. | disabilit, knowledge, learning, knowledges, anti-racism, racism, anti-oppression, secondary education, gender, feminis, transgender, indigenous, transit, institut, indigenous | 3, 4, 5, 10, 16, 11 |
| Aryan, Raabeae | Mansfield, Avril | Standardized Application of Force Plate-based Measures of Standing Balance in the Sub-acute Stage of Stroke Recovery | Rehabilitation Science | 2022-03-01 | People with stroke have poor balance in standing and moving, and experience frequent falls. Impaired balance is a major risk factor for falls in stroke. Therefore, it is important to objectively investigate balance difficulties to develop effective rehabilitation and falls-prevention strategies. Force plate-based balance measures have previously been used to inform clinicians and researchers about balance impairments in the stroke population; however, little is known about their measurement properties, particularly in sub-acute stroke. The overall goal of this dissertation was to establish reliability, validity, and responsiveness of force plate-based measures in sub-acute stroke, and to determine the measures with the best measurement properties. Study 1 established relative and absolute reliabilities for sixteen balance measures, and demonstrated that directional weight-bearing asymmetry (indicates uneven weight distribution), speeds of centre of pressure (indicates neuromuscular control needed for regulating postural fluctuations), and symmetry index (represents contributions of each lower extremity in controlling balance) had the highest relative reliability and lowest measurement error in sub-acute stroke. Study 2 examined concurrent validity of reliable force plate-based measures, and their ability in discriminating different groups. This study found that speed of centre of pressure along the anterior-posterior axis had the highest concurrent validity, while weight-bearing asymmetry had the best capacity to distinguish between people with and without a history of falls, and also between those at high versus low-moderate risks of falls. In Study 3, responsiveness of reliable force plate-based measures, following a period of routine inpatient rehabilitation, was studied. Speed of centre of pressure along the medial-lateral axis, and weight-bearing asymmetry had the highest responsiveness. Additionally, weight-bearing asymmetry and symmetry index were more responsive in individuals who had higher initial reliance on their non-paretic lower extremity for controlling standing balance. Combined, these findings suggest that weight-bearing asymmetry, and speeds of centre of pressure along the anterior-posterior and medial-lateral directions have the overall best measurement properties, which can be used to precisely study balance in people with sub-acute stroke. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Bourassa, Joseph Eli | Lo, Hoi-Kwong | Strategies for Noisy Photonic Quantum Technologies: Quantum Computation to Quantum Key Distribution | Physics | 2021-11-01 | This thesis focuses on photonic implementations of two quantum technologies: quantum computers and quantum key distribution (QKD). Part I concentrates on photonic quantum computation using a qubit encoding for continuous-variable (CV) systems such as photonic modes known as Gottesman-Kitaev-Preskill (GKP) states. GKP states would be an advantageous encoding for photonics due to their error-correcting properties in the CV space and due to the experimental accessibility of gate and measurement implementations. This thesis advances the prospect of photonic quantum computation with GKP states on three fronts: first, to address the outstanding issue of how to prepare these qubits in optics, we analyze a proposal for their generation using two experimentally-accessible resources, multimode squeezed states and photon-number resolving detectors. Next, to overcome the difficulty of simulating GKP states in the Fock basis, a phase space simulation technique is introduced to understand realistic noise on these qubits. Lastly, to determine the potential of GKP qubits for fault-tolerant photonic quantum computation, a measurement-based architecture with GKP states is analyzed to determine thresholds for the quality of state required. Part II shifts focus to QKD, and how security proofs can account for realistic device imperfections. We first examine entanglement-based QKD protocols that employ high-dimensional photonic degrees of freedom (e.g. time-frequency or electric field quadrature) to produce more bits of key per optical signal. While entanglement-based protocols circumvent security assumptions about the quantum state source, they come at the cost of having to trust one's detectors. This thesis analyzes a previously-identified detector loophole for these schemes, and provides a modified security proof that succeeds in establishing security when encoding in electric field quadrature, with limited success for time-frequency encoding. Luckily, an alternative protocol known as measurement-device-independent (MDI) QKD requires no security assumptions about detectors. Instead, MDI QKD requires trusted sources of quantum states, which are nonetheless subject to their own imperfections that can compromise security. In the remainder of the thesis, we advance security proofs for MDI QKD in the presence of two potential source flaws: noise that introduces mixedness to the quantum states, and side-channels that leak information about the encoding choices of states. | Ph.D. | accessib | 11 |
| Ashrafriahi, Ali | Newman, Roger | Stress Corrosion Cracking and Pitting Corrosion of Carbon Steel in Ethanolic Environments | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2022-03-01 | Several studies have recently claimed that the Stress Corrosion Cracking (SCC) of carbon steel in ethanolic environments occurs by an anodic dissolution mechanism, but the exact mechanism is not well understood. In this research project, potentiostatic slow strain rate testing was conducted on SCC test specimens exposed to ethanolic environments prepared from pure dehydrated ethanol. Cracks of various types—intergranular and transgranular open cracks, and sharp closed transgranular cracks—were found by altering several testing parameters. The presence of chloride was found to be essential for crack initiation. SEM examination indicated that an “anodic” cracking mechanism, not necessarily slip-dissolution, was most likely operating at high elongations. Sharp closed transgranular cracks, with a maximum depth of 4 µm, were detected at elongations below 3% in ethanol solutions containing 2.5 mM LiCl. A focused ion beam was used to extract the tip of such a transgranular crack tip for analytical transmission electron microscopy using electron energy loss spectroscopy, which confirmed that the crack was in a ferrite grain. The sharp closed transgranular cracks seem to ally with the cracks observed in CO-CO2-H2O and anhydrous ammonia environments, which are proposed to grow by unique cleavage mechanisms. The possibility of embrittlement by carbon interstitials produced by ethanol electro-oxidation within the crack is discussed.The similarities of ethanol SCC and CO-CO2-H2O SCC prompted the investigation of the possibility of ethanol electrochemical oxidation into CO on ferrite (Fe) and cementite (Fe3C) surfaces. Density functional theory (DFT) computations on (110) surfaces reveal that the catalytic activity of Fe and Fe3C through the α dehydrogenation pathway can significantly reduce the energy barrier of electro-oxidation of ethanol and production of CO to 0.575 and 0.480 eV vs SHE, respectively. These first principles calculations indicate that at the anodic potentials applied during potentiostatic slow strain rate testing (SSRT), ethanol electro-oxidation to CO is thermodynamically viable on carbon steel, giving further credit to the involvement of cleavage type SCC of carbon steel in ethanolic environments. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, production, co2 | 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Ou, Wei-Lin | Ernst, Oliver P | Structural Characterization of Photoreceptor Complexes by EPR Spectroscopy | Biochemistry | 2020-06-01 | Photoreceptor proteins are detectors that sense and respond to light signals in various organisms. In vertebrates, rhodopsin is the primary element of vision and is responsible for converting light to nerve impulses through a series of signaling events. In bacteria, however, a light-driven proton pump, bacteriorhodopsin, utilizes the energy of light to create proton gradients which leads to the generation of chemical energy. The goal of my thesis is to understand the molecular mechanism of these photoreceptors and their signaling complexes. Technological advances in protein crystallography in recent years have brought many outstanding results; however, not all samples are suitable for protein X-ray crystallography due to their heterogeneous and dynamic nature. First, I applied electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy together with spin labeling techniques to study the conformations of visual arrestin upon its activation. In this study, I propose that visual arrestin only adopts a twist conformation when it interacts with light-activated rhodopsin. Second, I solved the crystal structure of a novel rhodopsin kinase and characterized its interaction with rhodopsin using EPR spectroscopy. Lastly, I solved the crystal structure of a cyanobacterial rhodopsin and determined its oligomeric states in detergent micelles with pulsed EPR techniques. Overall, I demonstrated that EPR spectroscopy is a powerful tool to study membrane protein complexes and it provides valuable information on protein structure and dynamics. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Halgas, Ondrej | Pai, Emil F | Structural Characterization of Prion Protein Misfolding using Proteins from Resistant Species and Antibodies | Biochemistry | 2019-11-01 | Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are a group of infectious and currently untreatable neurological diseases of humans and farmed and wild animals, that are caused by a unique pathogenic mechanism – misfolding of the cellular prion protein (PrP). PrP is primarily expressed in the nervous system. It is highly conserved among mammals and has orthologs in other vertebrates. The mature PrP is a GPI-anchored glycoprotein attached to the outer leaflet of the plasma membrane. It has two main structural domains. The N-terminal half is flexible and contains four or more metal binding sites. The C-terminal half is folded into a unique prion fold composed of two short β-strands and three α-helices. The misfolding of PrP leads to a poorly understood and aggregation-prone prion species rich in β-sheets. A number of pathologic mutations have been identified, mostly in the C-terminal domain. Some species, such as horses or chicken are considered resistant to prion diseases. To further our understanding of PrP’s pathologic conversion I explored two main areas. Firstly, I determined the crystal structure of the C-terminal, folded domains of horse PrP at 1.08 Å and of chicken PrP at 1.7 Å resolution. Both structures show a typical prion fold and a disordered highly conserved helix-2 helix-3 loop which was structured in crystal structures of PrPs from other species. Secondly, I showed that the β-sheet-rich octameric PrP induced by intermediate urea concentrations at low pH is stable at least for 80 days upon urea removal and is recognized by several antibodies. I determined the crystal structure of PRB7 Fab, a putative β-PrP-specific antibody. This antibody however did not show any binding to PrP or its proposed epitope peptide in the tested conditions. Antibodies D18, P and AMF-1c-120 showed a highly pH-dependant binding to β-octamers. While D18 Fab did not bind β-octamers at low pH, P Fab formed a stoichiometric 1:1 complex with β-PrP octamer, even at pH 4.5. This thesis describes structural features of PrP that may contribute to resistance to prion diseases in some species and provides a roadmap for the antibody-mediated crystallization of the misfolded PrP. | Ph.D. | conserv, species, animal, conserv, species, animal | 14, 15 |
| Mir-Haidari , Seyed-Ehsan | Behdinan, Kamran | Structural Dynamic Analysis and Health Monitoring of Aeroengines: Nonlinear Modelling of Bolted Flange Connections and Transfer Path Analysis | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | In this research, a full and comprehensive category of analysis techniques were proposed, developed, and implemented on aircrafts, specifically aeroengines. Initially, by proposing a novel nonlinear experimental protocol in conjunction with finite element modelling methodologies, the underlying nonlinear dynamic characteristics of the aeroengine casing assemblies were determined at a significantly reduced testing duration. Due to lack of a computationally efficient and accurate nonlinear bolted flange connection modelling methodology, a set of nonlinear analytical bolted flange connection models was developed and proposed. Using finite element techniques, the proposed nonlinear analytical model was incorporated in the finite element model of the aeroengine to capture the underlying nonlinearities. The proposed nonlinear analytical model illustrated a very good correlation compared to the experimental results. Moreover, the proposed nonlinear analytical model demonstrated outstanding computational efficiency. In the second stage, to address noise and vibration problems arising from the aeroengine, a novel bond graph transfer path analysis was implemented on a reduced aeroengine-wing assembly. Using this novel approach and process, vibration energy transmission paths and path contributions in the aeroengines were investigated and determined based on the bond graph transfer path analysis methodology. Moreover, vibration reduction strategies are proposed to minimize and attenuate vibration energy transfer in the aeroengine-wing assembly. The theoretical bond graph transfer path analysis methodology has proven to be extremely time efficient while reducing associated costs in performing conventional methodologies. The proposed bond graph transfer path analysis methodology was validated using finite element simulations. In the last stage, a novel theoretical approach was proposed using the bond graph methodology to perform structural health monitoring on the aeroengine-wing assembly. The proposed analytical structural health monitoring technique permits the rapid detection of damage in the structure while also allowing the determination of damage severity in the structure. The analytical findings of the proposed methodology can be used as a benchmark against experimental measurements to rapidly detect, localize, and analyze the severity of damage in the structure. Moreover, design guidelines and strategies were proposed to minimize damage and defect formation in the structure. The proposed structural health monitoring methodology was validated using finite element simulations. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Sankar, Tejas | Lozano, Andres M | Structural Neuroimaging to Generate Biomarkers of Response to Deep Brain Stimulation | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) is the use of continuous, typically high-frequency direct electrical current, delivered through neurosurgically implanted electrodes, aimed at altering activity within dysfunctional brain circuits. DBS is now an established therapy for several neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease, dystonia, and tremor, and is emerging as a viable therapy in several others including depression and disorders of memory. However, the response to DBS is highly variable across individuals with the same disease, a fact often attributed to clinical factors such as age or illness severity, or to technical factors such as DBS electrode position. The central hypothesis underlying this thesis is that brain structure, as evaluated by structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), is also a key factor influencing clinical response to DBS therapy across various neurological and psychiatric diseases. The specific aims of the thesis project were to determine: 1) whether pre-DBS brain structure relates to, or predicts, eventual clinical response to DBS; and 2) whether ongoing DBS therapy produces detectable structural changes in the brain that may influence clinical response. In study #1, we demonstrate that in patients undergoing DBS of the subcallosal cingulate region (SCG) for depression, future response to DBS is predicted by pre-treatment variations in brain structure, especially volume of the SCG, thalamus, and the total volume of cortical grey matter. Studies #2 and #3 provide preliminary, first-in-human evidence, in two different patient populations (Parkinson’s Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease), that DBS is associated with structural neuroplasticity demonstrable on post-operative MRI scans, and may even result in the reversal of focal atrophy in selected patients. Study #4, however, illustrates the difficulties inherent in replicating these results on a larger scale because of methodological concerns related to the reliability and concordance of automated algorithms currently used to analyze structural neuroimaging data. Despite these concerns, this thesis illustrates that structural neuroimaging with MRI indeed has the potential to generate clinically useful biomarkers of response to DBS therapy, which may ultimately influence patient selection for DBS, guide DBS programming, and inform prognosis after DBS implantation. | Ph.D. | illness | 3 |
| Patel, Yash | Paus, Tomas | Structural properties of the human cerebral cortex in health and disease | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | In vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has shown profound structural differences in the human cerebral cortex – varying across regions – during development, aging, and in clinical conditions such as mental illness. The neurobiology underlying these MRI-derived structural variations remains largely unknown. Herein, we develop a novel bioinformatics approach to probe the underlying biological processes behind structural variations of the cerebral cortex by integrating single-cell and bulk transcriptomics with MRI-derived measures. This approach was first applied to a multi-modal dataset linking biophysical MR properties in cortical tissue, commonly used to index tissue microstructure, with shared and unique cellular elements of pyramidal neurons and oligodendrocytes. Then, using an independent dataset, we link microstructural change in the cerebral cortex during adolescence with intra-cortical myelination. Finally, this approach was used to probe the neurobiological and developmental origins of cortical thickness and surface area in psychiatric disorders. Group differences in cortical thickness were quantified in individuals with mental illness (n=28,321), namely attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum (ASD), bipolar (BD), major depressive (MDD), obsessive-compulsive (OCD), and schizophrenia (SCZ). There was a shared profile in group differences of thickness among the six disorders and was associated with pyramidal-specific expression. Co-expression analysis of genes implicated in thickness differences revealed two clusters: a prenatal cluster involved in neurodevelopmental processes and 2) a postnatal cluster involved in synaptic activity/plasticity. Next, we investigated group differences in cortical surface area – a phenotype largely determined during gestation – in those with ADHD, ASD, BD, MDD, SCZ, and high psychopathology (n=27,359). Group differences in area were predominantly in transmodal association cortices, and associated with inter-regional profiles of fetal gene-expression specific to proliferative cells, namely radial glia and intermediate progenitor cells, and differentiated cells, namely excitatory neurons, endothelial and mural cells. We also show that these cell types intersect with genes associated with known pre-/perinatal risk factors for mental illness. Taken together, these findings support a model of mental illness, whereby deviations in neurodevelopment confer vulnerability later in life, and subsequent postnatal perturbations contribute to clinical manifestation. Ultimately, this body of work provides an analytical framework to explain variations within the human cerebral cortex. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, illness, invest | 1, 3, 2009 |
| Yong, Darren | Privé, Gilbert G. | Structure and Functional Characterization of ERG and SPOP | Biochemistry | 2020-11-01 | Deregulation of protein homeostasis is a hallmark of cancer and diseases such as prostate cancer and leukemia. ERG is transcription factor that is aberrantly overexpressed in the majority of prostate cancers patients in North America. The second major cause are missense mutations in the Cul3 E3 ligase substrate receptor SPOP. It was previously reported that SPOP targets ERG for degradation in prostate epithelial cells and deregulation of this process drives prostate cancer progression. However, their proposed mechanism is inconsistent with other established biophysical studies. Here, we demonstrate that SPOP interacts with ERG using the canonical binding mechanism and that phosphorylation of S37 abolishes the interaction. Prostate cancer mutations in the MATH domain on SPOP impair ERG binding. However, we did not find sufficient evidence to support the previous findings that SPOP targets ERG for ubiquitination in vitro or subsequent degradation in vivo. ERG overexpression is also associate with leukemia. Our collaborators have fortuitously discovered a P199L mutation in the PNT domain that impairs ERG mediated leukemogenesis. We find that the mutation does not affect the structure, stability or localization of ERG in vitro or in vivo. Using BioID and RNAseq we found that ERG associates with several histone modifying complexes such as HDAC3 and the BAF complex to repress genes involved myeloid differentiation. The mutation appears to impair association with these transcription factor complexes and derepresses myeloid differentiation. Furthermore, using an HDAC3 inhibitor we observed a reversal of ERG mediated leukemic transcriptional programming. Together this thesis provides insights on the nature of the SPOP and ERG interaction in prostate cancer and provide a foundation for developing a therapeutic strategy for treating leukemia. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Abdul Reda, Amir | Cochrane, Christopher B.||Ahmad, Aisha | Structures Strike Back: Their Significance for Our Models of Opinion Formation | Political Science | 2021-06-01 | Why do our models of opinion formation work in some situations but fail in others? In this dissertation, I explain that our models of opinion formation work in some cases but fail in others because of the structural level variations that are not accounted for when these models are designed only with individual level variables in mind. By structural level variations, I mean the societal conditions that affect everyone in a given society and which are typically measured by societal level variables. These variables, I argue, are as fundamental to the process of opinion formation as the individual level variations scholars focus on by default. In Chapter 1, I elaborate on the theoretical foundations of this argument and set the tone for the three empirical chapters that test my argument. In Chapter 2, I start testing my argument by engaging with the structural impact of socioeconomic development on elite directed opinion formation at the individual level in MENA countries. I use survey data collected by three waves of the Arab barometer between 2010 and 2016 to show that socioeconomic development reverses the correlation between political awareness and the adoption/rejection of party cues in Islamist publics. In Chapter 3, I address the structural impact of colonization on the model of secularization postulated by modernization theories based on individual material conditions in MENA countries. Based on 42 surveys delivered between 2000 and 2014, my findings suggest that postcolonial MENA societies do indeed break with the pattern predicted by modernization theorists. In Chapter 4, the last empirical chapter of this dissertation, I discuss the structural impact of different immigration systems on patterns of xenophobia predicted by the economic competition theory based on individual social class in MENA countries. Using data from 14 MENA countries gathered between 2000 and 2011, it argues that where immigration systems prevent the social mobility of migrants, as in the case of the kafala system, xenophobic attitudes develop among those with a higher as opposed to a lower socio-economic status. Chapter 5 concludes by outlining some of the key theoretical and methodological implications of these empirical findings. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, socioeconomic, labor | 1, 8 |
| Bognar, Kristof | Strong, Kimberly | Studies of Stratospheric and Tropospheric Ozone, NO2, and BrO Using UV-Visible Spectroscopy in the Arctic and at Mid-latitudes | Physics | 2021-06-01 | This thesis utilizes UV-visible spectroscopy to develop new datasets, study Arctic and urban atmospheric composition, and validate satellite data products. The primary instruments used here (the Ground-Based Spectrometers, or GBSs) have been taking measurements at the Polar Environment Atmospheric Research Laboratory (PEARL, 80.05°N, 86.42°W) since 1999 and 2006, respectively.The GBS dataset, combined with other measurements at PEARL, was used to validate ozone and NO2 measurements from the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment (ACE) and Optical Spectrograph and InfraRed Imaging System (OSIRIS) satellite instruments. Ozone from all instruments agrees to within 12.0%, while NO2 measurements agree to within 33.2%. There are no apparent systematic changes in the observed differences between the satellite and the ground-based instruments over time. In the winter/spring of 2020, the unusually strong and cold polar vortex led to unprecedented Arctic ozone depletion. Total column ozone was at an all-time low in the 20-year GBS dataset. Chlorine activation inside the vortex was ongoing until the end of March, resulting in mean chemical ozone loss of 111-127 DU (27-31%) over Eureka, which represents similar absolute loss and greater relative loss compared to that in spring 2011. GBS BrO partial columns were used to investigate Arctic tropospheric ozone depletion during four bromine activation seasons. BrO enhancements show two modes differentiated by air mass history. Contact with the snowpack on sea ice corresponds to increased BrO for one of these modes only, while the other mode is related to storms that almost always bring bromine-enriched air to Eureka. The presence of coarse mode aerosols (likely sea salt aerosol) is a necessary and sufficient condition for observing BrO at Eureka, indicating that sea salt aerosols play an active role in bromine activation. A tropospheric NO2 profile dataset was retrieved from 2018-2020 Pandora spectrometer measurements to investigate NO2 pollution in Toronto. Retrievals using optimal estimation and parametric algorithms show good agreement. Seasonal and diurnal variability is apparent in both the NO2 partial column and surface concentration datasets. During the spring 2020 COVID-19 lockdown in Toronto, daily maximum NO2 values showed substantial reductions. | Ph.D. | pollution, labor, invest, urban, pollut, pollut | 3, 8, 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Wallace, Amy Catherine | Cheetham, Mark A | Studio of Nature: The Transformation of Artists' Studios, 1845–1910 | History of Art | 2019-11-01 | "Studio of Nature: The Transformation of Artists' Studios, 1845–1910" examines artists' studios in Britain, France, and the United States from the advent of Realism to the Arts and Crafts movement at the turn of the twentieth century. I consider in particular how changing conceptions of the natural environment in the nineteenth century contributed to the emergence of new studio paradigms. The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic rise in the number of artists who left the studio to paint outdoors. Artists associated with movements as diverse as the Barbizon School, the Hudson River School, Realism, Pre-Raphaelitism, Naturalism, and Impressionism all engaged in plein-air practice to varying degrees. A close engagement not only with physical nature but also with the ideals it represented guided artists working across a variety of artistic genres. In addition to the continued rise of landscape painting in the nineteenth century, the emergence of Realism challenged inherited notions of the studio as a place of retreat that had prevailed since the Renaissance. The positivism that informed artistic movements around midcentury encouraged a direct engagement with reality. While fragments of the natural world could be brought into the studio for study, by and large the studio separated artists from physical nature. This epistemological shift catalyzed numerous studio innovations that unfolded in the decades that followed: the studio was variously transformed into an optical instrument, a mobile apparatus, a transparent prism, and an agent of social reform. As the identity of the modern artist emerged in the nineteenth century, the studio was reimagined to meet the needs of a new generation of artists. "Studio of Nature: The Transformation of Artists' Studios, 1845–1910" foregrounds the significance of the studio as both a contributor to as well as an index of changing artistic standards in the context of modernity. | Ph.D. | land | 15 |
| McNeil, Sandra R | Fang, Lin | Substance Use Recovery and Stigma in Rural Contexts | Social Work | 2021-11-01 | BackgroundThe concept of recovery holds international legitimacy as a client-centered, strengths-based approach to mental health and substance use. How dominant recovery discourses shape the identities and affect the lives of people with substance use issues in rural areas have received little attention. The purpose of this three-paper dissertation is to better understand power operating within recovery discourses and trace the sociocultural processes by which stigmatized identities are constructed and resisted. Foucauldian and intersectionality theories are used to address the questions: 1) How do recovery discourses shape the identities of people with substance use issues in rural Ontario? 2) How do recovery discourses affect the daily lives of people with substance use issues in rural Ontario? 3) What strategies for resistance are employed to challenge substance use stigma? Methods Paper 1 presents a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of two federal documents to examine how recovery is understood in Canada. Paper 2 applies a CDA to 40 semi-structured interviews with people with substance use issues in two rural communities to explore how they adopt and contest recovery discourses. Paper 3 presents a thematic analysis of the same 40 interviews to consider how people with substance use issues experience recovery, stigma, and resistance. Findings Findings from Paper 1 illustrate that dominant recovery discourses are enmeshed in complex networks of neoliberal, biomedical, legal, and moral discourses that (re)produce stigmatized identities at macro and micro levels, complicating the recovery literature and challenging normative assumptions related to substance use. Papers 2 and 3 present the voices of people with substance use issues in rural areas. Their experiences and perspectives align with and contest dominant recovery discourses and provide numerous strategies of resistance to counter substance use stigma. Conclusion This thesis complicates the growing body of substance use recovery literature in rural communities. The analyses of federal documents and personal narratives not only expose underlying power relations and ideological values that construct a reductionist model of recovery and perpetuate stigmatized identities, but encourage researchers, educators, policymakers, practitioners, and marginalized groups to advocate for more equitable approaches to recovery that eradicate stigma related to rural substance use. | Ph.D. | mental health, equitable, equitable, equit, marginalized, rural | 3, 4, 10, 11 |
| Luo, Alice Chibulu | MacLean, Heather L. | Sustainable Energy Use in Dar es Salaam: Current Trends, Future Scenarios, and Policy Options | Civil Engineering | 2021-06-01 | In 2019, Africa accounted for only 5% of global energy demand and 3.7% of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions. However, Africa’s rapid urbanization will contribute to rising energy use and emissions, both regionally and globally. Using the case of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, this thesis offers new insights relevant to the discourse on Africa’s evolving energy landscape. The thesis: (1) Estimates possible changes in Dar es Salaam’s residential energy use and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 2015 and 2050, (2) Identifies key household and transport-related drivers of energy use and GHG emissions, (3) Assesses variations in energy use at the sub-city (ward) level, i.e., between settlements of differing socio-economic profiles and spatial location in the city, and (4) Examines institutional and societal factors that may constrain low-carbon development in Dar es Salaam. Three studies are presented to address the four aforementioned thesis aims. The first study – Modelling Future Patterns of Urbanization, Residential Energy Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Dar es Salaam with the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways – employs a scenario-framework to scope different urban growth and GHG emissions pathways in Dar es Salaam. The work demonstrates an approach for projecting GHG emissions in an Africa city context that may be data constrained. The second study – Does Location Matter? Investigating the Spatial and Socio-Economic Drivers of Residential Energy Use in Dar es Salaam – shows the differences and clustering of energy use that exist at the ward level, and employs statistical methods to correlate energy use with different socio-economic and spatial characteristics of wards. The final study – Assessing Institutional and Societal Barriers to Low-Carbon Development in Dar es Salaam – asserts that processes to implement low-carbon measures (e.g., electrification and public transport projects) would need to engage multiple stakeholders in a collaborative process to leverage the power and mandate of different institutions. Together, these studies seek to inform energy and urban planning policies in Dar es Salaam that (1) enhance synergies between GHG mitigation investments, (2) support implementation strategies that consciously account for local energy use realities and infrastructure access needs, and (3) acknowledge linkages between sustainability, climate change, and socio-economic development strategies. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, knowledge, energy, emission, greenhouse, labor, infrastructure, invest, cities, urban, public transport, transit, climate, greenhouse gas, emissions, carbon dioxide, land, institut | 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Kim, Jihye | Azimi, Gisele GA | Sustainable Valorization of Steelmaking Slag: From Metal Extraction to Carbon Sequestration | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation is focused on the development of novel, effective, and environmentally sustainable processes for the recovery of critical metals such as niobium, titanium, and magnesium from steelmaking slag and carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration using steelmaking slag. In this work, a fundamental understanding of the metal extraction process and carbonation process was developed using principles of reaction kinetics, mass transfer, and thermodynamics to elucidate the underlying physicochemical mechanisms. This approach helps tackle the sustainability challenges associated with the supply of such materials, reduce the carbon footprint attributed to the steelmaking industry, and unveil the hidden value of industrial wastes. In this dissertation, innovative pyro-hydrometallurgical processes were developed for the recovery of valuable components, i.e., niobium, titanium, and magnesium, from steelmaking slag. In this work, the physicochemical mechanisms of this process and their consequences on the process efficiency and operation of the process were investigated. The process mechanism was validated by trials using synthetic analogues to steelmaking slag, phase identification, morphology characterization, elemental mapping measurements, and microstructure measurements. The focus of this dissertation was expanded to the development of a novel supercritical carbonation process for CO2 sequestration using EAF slag. A systematic design of experiments and response surface methodology were used to develop a model for calculating the carbonation efficiency as a function of various operating parameters, such as slag particle size, CO2 pressure, reaction temperature, water to slag ratio, and processing time. It was demonstrated that the empirical model built in this work is suitable for process optimization with the objective of maximizing the CO2 uptake of the slag. On the basis of the fundamental investigations, it was identified that the diffusion barrier to the carbonation process is a product calcium carbonate layer formed on the outer shell of the slag particle and the thickness of this layer is constant regardless of the slag particle size. It is believed that the knowledge gained here will help enable the development of robust, cost-effective, and efficient pyro-hydrometallurgical processes for the valorization of industrial process residues, alongside the development of novel and environmentally-friendly supercritical carbonation processes for CO2 sequestration using industrial wastes. | Ph.D. | knowledge, water, invest, waste, environmental, carbon dioxide, co2, carbon sequestration, carbon sequestration | 4, 6, 9, 12, 13, 15 |
| Bamford, Karlee Lynn | Stephan, Douglas W | Synthesis and Reactivity of Electron-deficient Boron Species | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | The reactivity of boron-containing molecules of extreme electrophilicity has been minimally explored in comparison with other aspects of fundamental boron chemistry. This dissertation describes research into the fundamental reactivity and bonding of the electron-deficient boron compounds of different molecular charges (0 or +1) and electronic multiplicities (1 or 2). Depending upon their substitution pattern, highly Lewis acidic boron reagents can participate in unusual reactivity. Borocyclic radicals and diamagnetic heterocyclic boroles were prepared in hydroboration and frustrated Lewis pair hydrogenation reactions of redox-active o-iminoquinone and α-diimine ligands and highly electrophilic boron reagents. Hydride-substituted boranes were found to stoichiometrically react with strong aliphatic carbon–fluorine bonds. The net transformation was found to depend on the natures of both the fluorinated substrate and the hydridoborane. For highly electrophilic boranes, a dehydrofluorination or boryldefluorination reaction was observed, whereas hydrodefluorination was found for less electron-deficient boranes. The use of an auxiliary Lewis acid initiator was also briefly explored in carbon–fluorine bond reduction. The synthesis and reactivity of uncommon, two-coordinate borocations was systematically explored. A rare carbon-substituted borinium cation was prepared or generated as the salt of various anions and used in reactivity studies. The reactivity of organo(amino)borinium cations was found to preferentially involve boron–carbon bond insertion over boron–nitrogen bond insertion. A diorganoborinium cation was investigated in frustrated Lewis pair as well as frustrated radical pair chemistry. The formation of an unprecedented diboranium cation in reactions of the borinium cation with reducing agents was observed. Reactivity of the diboranium cation with small molecules indicated both boronium- and borinium-like reactivity. Extension of the diboranium cation synthesis to other boron reagents furnished an unusual triboron(8) cation. Investigations of boron–boron bonded reagents in diboranium synthesis unexpectedly produced an isolable and highly-substituted pentaborane(9) compound, likely via boron(I) intermediates. Reactions of hydridoborane compounds were generally found to undergo redox chemistry in reactions of tetraaryldiborane(4) reagent. Analysis of related reactions involving dihydrogen show previously undocumented similarities. Collectively, these findings show new modes of reactivity for well-known boron reagents and provide strong motivation for further studies of electron-deficient boron compounds. | Ph.D. | invest, cities, species, species | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Tao, Huachen | Kumecheva, Eugenia EK | Synthesis, Surface Patterning and Self-assembly of Plasmonic Nanoparticles | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Nanoparticles (NPs) have a broad range of applications. Nanoparticle properties are governed by their composition, dimensions, shapes and surface chemistry, as well as the assembly in clusters. This thesis describes three ways to control nanoparticle properties via (i) synthesis, (ii) surface patterning and (iii) self-assembly.As the synthesis of nanoparticles often involves multiple reagents, the optimization of reaction conditions is time- and labor-intensive, combining machine learning and microfluidics can lead to a self-driving platform for the accelerated optimization of nanoparticle synthesis along with low regent consumption. This thesis describes a machine learning-driven, oscillatory microfluidic platform for the synthesis of inorganic nanoparticles with targeted spectroscopic characteristics. Several machine learning algorithms were applied to study and optimize the effect of reaction conditions on the spectroscopic characteristics of the gold NPs. Surface-patterned nanoparticles are an emerging class of colloidal building blocks of functional hierarchical nanomaterials. This thesis describes a strategy for nanoparticle surface patterning by phase separation of incompatible polymer ligands. By varying the molar ratio of polystyrene and poly(ethylene glycol) polymer brushes on the surface of gold nanorods, several surface patterns have been generated, including a helicoidal pattern of polystyrene patches wrapping around the nanorods. The helicoidally patterned nanorods exhibited long-term colloidal stability in a good solvent. Furthermore, for nanoparticles surface-patterned with polystyrene patches, we studied temperature-dependent morphological transitions. The surface pattern was preserved upon heating up to 40 °C, while at 80 °C, the number of patches decreased and their contact angle with nanoparticle surface increased, due to the increased lateral mobility and coalescence of the patches. Ultimately the polymer ligands desorbed from the NPs, due to the enhanced solvent quality. Finally, the temperature-responsive self-assembly of nanoparticles end-grafted with polystyrene ligands was studied. Upon cooling the nanoparticle solution below the transition temperature, the nanoparticles assembled in clusters, while upon heating these clusters dissociated into individual nanoparticles. The self-assembly was reversible and reproducible, and the dimensions of nanoparticle clusters were controlled by the superposition of temperature and incubation time. The transition temperature was governed by the solvent quality for the polymer ligands and was tuned by varying solvent composition. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, transit, consum | 4, 8, 11, 12 |
| Seo, Sang gyu | Morris, Robert RHM | Synthetic Strategies for Enhancing Metal-ligand Cooperation and Enantioselective Polar Bond Hydrogenation with Base Metal Catalysts | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | Chiral alcohols and amines are widely used in pharmaceutical, agricultural and fine chemical industries as synthetic building blocks and asymmetric polar bond hydrogenation offers an efficient method for their preparation. However, 2nd and 3rd row transition metals are still predominantly used for asymmetric hydrogenation of the substrates owing to their high activity and stability, and there has been a push towards replacing them with cheap, non-toxic and environmentally friendly base metals. Our group has extensively studied metal-ligand cooperation in the effort to enhance the activity of the base metals. Particularly, we have developed unsymmetrical pincer complexes synthesized with phosphonium dimers, where the amine exhibits the “N-H effect” bifunctional activity. The focus of this research was to explore the capability of base metal pincer complexes and to develop synthetic methods to expand the ligand synthesis.An unsymmetrical P-NH-P’ ((S,S)-Ph2PCHPhCHPhNHCH2CH2PiPr2) ligand was used to synthesize iron and manganese precatalysts and these were applied to hydrogenation of N-phosphinoyl and N-sulfonyl imines, and aryl-alkyl ketones, respectively. With iron P-NH-P’ catalyst, 3 mol% of catalyst and 10 mol% of base loading was optimal and high enantioselectivity was observed. We identified the enantiodetermining step as outer-sphere hydride transfer with N-H moiety of the ligand pre-organizing the substrate by forming a hydrogen bond with a P=O or S=O group on the substrate. A manganese amido P-N-P’ complex was used in base-free ketone hydrogenation and was found to be a viable precatalyst in terms of activity and stability. A comparison was made between the isoelectric base metal complexes and the manganese complex has the higher overall energy barrier for hydride transfer, but also the larger ΔΔG‡ between pro-R and S transition states, as supported by the experimental results. Dichloro(N,N-diethylamino)phosphine was used as a precursor to secondary phosphine in order to expand the ligand library. Dicyclopentylphosphine was targeted as novel alkyl phosphine and its respective phosphonium dimer and PNP ligand were synthesized. Manganese bis(2-dicyclopentylphosphinoethyl)amine complex was synthesized and tested for benzonitrile and methyl benzoate hydrogenation by the Beller group at Leibniz Institute for Catalysis. It showed low activity towards the ester hydrogenation and moderate selectivity for the nitrile reduction. | Ph.D. | agricultur, energy, transit, environmental, institut | 2, 7, 11, 13, 16 |
| Yang, Huijuan | Rogers, Ian||Nagy, Andras | Systemic and Local Modulation of the Immune Response to Allogeneic Cell Transplants | Physiology | 2019-11-01 | Immune rejection is a critical barrier to successful organ transplantation and stem cell therapies. In this project, I investigated the targeted modulation of the immune system to induce immune tolerance and alter the immune response to allogeneic grafts: 1) The first part of my Ph.D. project aimed to develop a mouse model that had functional human T cells for studying patient-specific allogeneic graft rejection. In the thymus, thymic epithelial cells can “educate” developing T lymphocytes and induce a specific tolerance for T cells to recognize self and non-self. Here, human pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) were in-vitro differentiated into thymic epithelial cell progenitors (TEPs) by mimicking a series of signal pathways important for embryonic thymus development. The upregulation of appropriate cell markers was detected at each differentiation stage; however, the expression of TEP markers FOXN1 and Cytokeratin (CK) 5 was not robust in the differentiated cells. The following in vivo functional assay indicated the TEP-like cell graft in a humanized mouse model was not functional and could not attract the lymphoid progenitors and could not further support T cell development. More optimization of TEP differentiation protocol is needed for future research and the clinical applications. 2) Learning from the immune regulation, I expressed a combination of immunomodulators (IMs) in allogeneic cells in order to induce local immune tolerance and prevent allogeneic immune rejection. The in-vitro cell interaction between human immune cells and IM-expressing cells (H1-FS-8IMs) derivatives showed suppressed immune proliferation and proinflammatory cytokine production. Immune profiling results also demonstrated the dynamic changes in human immune cells in the IM-expressing group. We observed the shift in the immune cell homeostasis, the weakened homing ability of naïve T cells and dendritic cells, indicating the expressed immunomodulators induced immune suppression. The in vivo evaluation is still in progress. A more robust immune response to the allogeneic teratoma tissue derived from human ESC without IMs expression was observed in the hu-PBL-NSG humanized mouse model. Further in vivo analysis is needed to assess the immune response and immune tolerance induced by H1-FS-8IMs-derived allogeneic cell grafts in a humanized mouse model. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, production | 4, 9, 12 |
| Audrain, Samantha | McAndrews, Mary Pat | Systems Consolidation in the Context of Schemas, Sleep, and Medial Temporal Lobe Damage | Psychology | 2021-06-01 | In recent years, models of systems consolidation have become more complex as we consider the different factors that influence the establishment of long-lasting memories. This dissertation outlines a series of experiments that examines systems consolidation in two contexts: 1) in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy who evince a relatively selective long-term memory disorder, termed accelerated long-term forgetting (ALF), and 2) in the context of schematic congruency of new information with prior knowledge in the healthy brain, which has been shown to accelerate consolidation in rodents. In study 1, we present evidence that ALF is not a disorder of hippocampal binding and is instead associated with diminished hippocampal coupling with neocortical regions important for ultimately supporting the memory trace over time. In study 2, we report evidence that in the same patients, sleep-related consolidation mechanisms are disrupted. We found that time spent in slow wave sleep overnight was detrimental to subsequent memory, and present evidence that forgetting may be due to more numerous epileptic discharges during this sleep stage. In study 3, we investigated the influence of schematic congruency on memory in the healthy brain over time. Relative to incongruent information, content that was schema-congruent was remembered more coarsely over time, which was associated with increased post-encoding functional coupling between the hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). There was also greater integration according to the congruent schematic context in the mPFC over time, as assessed via multivoxel pattern-similarity analyses. These findings are consistent with the idea that schemas act as a scaffold for the accelerated consolidation of congruent information. Finally, in study 4, we describe a schema benefit to long-term memory in patients with ALF, although that benefit is not as great as that which was observed for controls. While schematic congruency improved long-term retention in patients, there was some indication that these benefits may not be long-lasting. Together, these studies present evidence for altered timelines of systems consolidation, depending on hippocampal-neocortical interaction, sleep, and schema-congruency. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Gagnon, Jeffrey Georges | Freeman, Barry | Tactical Dramaturgies: Media, the State, and the Performance of Place-Based Activism | Drama | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation seeks to develop a theory of protest as it relates to the tactics and mobilizations of specific groups and the performance of their ethical, aesthetic, and philosophical responses to the contested relationships between state and space. In doing so, I make use of theoretical frameworks provided by performance, the social production of space, and media theories in order to develop a theoretical analysis of resistant practices of Idle No More, Occupy Wall Street, and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). In these sites I explore moments of performative resistance that challenge the supremacy of state power, dominion over language and voice, control of the body, and agency over space. Primarily informed by Marxist spatial theory, supplemented by additional postcolonial and feminist theory and Indigenous knowledges, I examine digitally-enabled networks of solidarity and place-based activism that take up a critical stance towards digital networks, technologies, and cultures. My theoretical fusion of Henri Lefebvre, Brechtian performance traditions, and Glen Coulthard’s challenge to recognition politics, generates for me a form of critique that makes the case for an inclusive and empowering spatial ethics. I have, therefore, sought to highlight the threads that connect these different philosophies and to seek out some of those places where such ethics can be put into practice through radical performances of political resistance. These mobilized performances which enact the tensions between margins and centres, ephemerality and materiality, localism and international solidarity, become the elements of a tactical dramaturgy that reveals the precarity of those ideologies and mechanisms of oppressive power. Drawing on examples from these acts of political resistance, the sites and theory come together in my analysis under three broad themes: the voice as a challenge to the universal, the occupation of space as a challenge to state spatial supremacy, and the invocation of the mortified body as a rejection of the biopolitical state. | Ph.D. | precarity, knowledge, knowledges, feminis, indigenous, production, indigenous | 1, 4, 5, 10, 16, 12 |
| Marando, Dylan | White, Linda | Tales from the Canadian Tax Code: The Policy and Politics of Federal Tax Expenditure Instrument Choice | Political Science | 2021-11-01 | Drawing from 30 in-depth interviews of elite policy actors, this project seeks to add to extant rich descriptions of Canadian federal tax expenditures through a policy instrument choice analysis of the durability of political executives’ interest in tax expenditures. The project proposes a new concept of the politics of Canadian federal tax expenditures. More specifically, the data collected suggests that the use of tax expenditures is motivated by the logic of institutional leapfrogging, which expresses itself in the form of: i) bureaucratic bargaining; ii) public opinion responsiveness; iii) evasive federalism; and iv) government responsiveness to citizenry policy fatigue. The concept of institutional leapfrogging denotes efforts by federal political executives (i.e. Members of Cabinet and their senior advisors) as well as civil service elites to use tax expenditures to deliver visible and popular policy outcomes to the public with minimal interference from other political or governmental actors and institutions (i.e. Members of Parliament, departments of government, and political executives in the provincial-territorial order of government). While I believe that existing understandings of tax expenditures as a politically rational instrument choice are correct, this study departs from earlier conceptual models by examining how such political self-interest is uniquely conditioned by broader Canadian political phenomena. To structure these arguments, I provide background on existing sub-fields of Canadian tax expenditure research and make the case for turning the orientation of federal tax expenditure research upstream in the policy process, toward policy instrument choice theory. I provide an overview of the project’s dependent variable, including a survey of select statistical analyses of Canadian federal tax expenditures. I outline the four independent variables that I hypothesize influence Canadian federal tax expenditure adoption. I then proceed to outlining my research approach, including the methods adopted for elite interviews, as well as the methods used for Hansard and media analysis. Next, I review my research findings, exploring how the project’s data speaks to the causal and intersecting relationship between my independent variables and the durability of tax expenditures. Finally, I offer conclusions on the project’s significance to Canadian political scientists and outline several areas of future research. | Ph.D. | citizen, institut | 4, 16 |
| Zhao, Xiao | Liu, Fei-Fei | Targeting Metabolic Dysregulation for the Treatment of Radiation Fibrosis | Medical Science | 2019-06-01 | Extracellular matrix (ECM) homeostasis is essential for normal tissue function. Disruption of homeostasis by iatrogenic injury, trauma, or disease can lead to fibrosis. Skin ECM homeostasis is maintained by a complex process involving an integration of cytokine and environmental mediators. It is currently unclear, in both normal and disease states, as to how these multifactorial processes converge to shift ECM homeostasis towards accumulation or degradation. In this study, an interplay between fatty acid oxidation (FAO) and glycolysis was observed to be a key convergence point governing ECM homeostasis in skin. A consistent shift from FAO to glycolysis was observed in human and murine skin with ECM accumulation, and in dermal fibroblasts induced to upregulate ECM production by multiple mediators (TGF-Β1, PDGF-BB, hypoxia). Pharmacologic inhibition and genetic knockdown of key FAO and glycolysis pathway enzymes in dermal fibroblasts confirmed that FAO and glycolysis have opposing roles in ECM regulation. Specifically, glycolysis induced an anabolic fibroblast that upregulated ECM production. This was counteracted by shifting fibroblasts to FAO, which induced a catabolic phenotype inhibiting both transcription of components of the ECM, as well as enhancing ECM internalization and lysosomal degradation. CD36, a multifunctional fatty acid transporter, was discovered to be a critical mediator connecting the metabolic state of fibroblasts with their capacity for ECM regulation. CD36 promoted the catabolic effect of a FAO fibroblast, as its knockdown abrogated the internalization and degradation of collagen-1. Restoring FAO and upregulating CD36, either through pharmacotherapy or by autologous transplantation of CD36high fibroblasts, reduced ECM accumulation in murine radiation fibrosis. Our data demonstrate that metabolic regulation may be an integration point downstream of molecular signaling pathways that govern ECM homeostasis by shifting fibroblasts between anabolism and catabolism. These results have broad implications for therapies aimed at ECM reduction, such as fibrosis, or ECM buildup, such as regenerative medicine and aging. | Ph.D. | production, environmental | 12, 13 |
| Hung Cheong Lan, Jean Yves Linley David | McDougall, Douglas | Teachers' Use of Discourse to Promote Student Learning in Grade 7 and 8 Mathematics | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | The study investigates how teachers use math discourse in grade 7 and 8 math classrooms. Teaching strategies that use student interaction combine with the natural desire to communicate with teaching. The way teachers interact with their students can increase or decrease their students’ level of participation and engagement and eventual learning of mathematics. The study uses a multiple-case methodology and involves four participants. Data were collected from each participant using two semi structured interviews, two observation sessions, publicly maintained websites and using the researcher’s journal. Each case was analysed separately for major themes and then a cross case analysis was conducted to find similarities and commonalities among the cases. The five major findings of the study are: (1) teachers prepare their students to work in groups of three to four students by doing several activities prior to start engaging them in discourse; (2) teachers nurture a conducive classroom learning environment prior to engaging students in discourse; (3) teachers with good knowledge of mathematics, the curriculum, pedagogical practices, and with extensive teaching experience tend to have more success with using discourse to promote student learning; (4) teachers use focused questioning to help students during math lessons; and (5) teachers improve the level of students participation by using several strategies. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Pries-Klassen, Monika Margret | Childs, Ruth | Teachers’ Perceptions of Students’ Postsecondary Education Aspiration Capabilities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | This study examines how teachers perceive students’ postsecondary education (PSE) aspirations and whether teachers’ perceptions differ depending on the income levels and PSE application rates of students in secondary schools. The study contributes to research about students’ PSE aspirations by analyzing the kinds of perceptions teachers hold of students’ PSE aspirations and why they might support some aspirations over others. The premise was that teachers’ perceptions could be a limiting factor on students’ aspirational capabilities if teachers perceived students as not having the aptitude to be successful, and that this might further be correlated with students’ family incomes. The research used a mixed methods convergent research design: Quantitative data consisted of teachers’ responses (n =113) to a survey about their perceptions of students’ PSE aspirations, and qualitative data were generated from semi-structured interviews (n =12) with teachers. Participants were drawn from three schools of varying income and PSE participation levels from within the same public-school board in southern Ontario. The findings were interpreted using the Sen-Bourdieu Analytical Framework as proposed by Hart (2019), combining both Sen’s capability approach and Bourdieu’s theory of social reproduction. The quantitative data revealed that teachers’ perceptions of students’ aspirations and how teachers prepared students for PSE did not significantly differ across schools. The qualitative data, however, showed that teachers evaluated students’ capacity to aspire on the basis of students’ capability sets, as perceived by teachers, and that teachers’ pedagogy and PSE praxis differed depending on the income level of the school in which they taught. Further analysis revealed that teachers were frustrated with policies that limited their ability to effectively support and encourage students’ PSE aspirations. A conclusion drawn from this study was that, to increase students’ capacity to aspire, teachers must adjust their pedagogy and praxis to address the distinct needs of students with different levels of access to forms of capital and different family habitus; however, secondary and PSE leaders must also collaborate with teachers when developing policies and protocols that enhance students’ aspirational capabilities and functionings so all students, regardless of income level, have equitable opportunities to aspire to a PSE. | Ed.D. | equitable, pedagogy, equitable, secondary education, labor, capital, equit, income, production | 4, 8, 9, 10, 12 |
| Miles, James | Sandwell, Ruth | Teaching and Learning for Historical Justice: A Comparative Case Study of Four Sites of History Education in Canada | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | Recently, Canadian governments and public institutions have initiated a wide range of symbolic gestures and policy reforms aimed at reconciling historical injustices. Reforming history education to teach Canada’s difficult past has been a key priority in this movement, leading to curricular changes and the development of new resources across the country. This dissertation explores four case studies that consider history education’s role in making sense of past injustice and pursuing historical justice and redress in Canada. The four case studies include a curriculum reform process in British Columbia, two grade 9 social studies classrooms engaging with the difficult past, a university field school and bus tour, and a temporary exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum focused on a difficult history. Drawing on theories of settler colonialism, multidirectional memory, and historical consciousness, this comparative case study illustrates the relationship between teaching and learning difficult history amid a culture of redress in Canada. This dissertation argues that history education’s new roles and responsibilities for helping to right historical wrongs present specific challenges and opportunities for teachers and learners. In particular, this dissertation argues that issues of identity, group memory, and collective responsibility are all brought into focus when educators and learners engage the difficult past. This dissertation raises questions and makes suggestions about the possible roles and limitations for social studies and history education in pursuit of reconciliation and redress in post-conflict and settler colonial contexts. | Ph.D. | learning, settler, reconciliation, institut, injustice | 4, 10, 16 |
| Xiong, Chen | Colantonio, Angela | Technology to Support Informal Caregivers: Matching the Tools to the Needs from a Sex and Gender Perspective | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-06-01 | Caregiving can be highly stressful and associated with poor mental and physical health. Technologies, including mobile and e-health applications, have been developed to address caregiver needs. Yet, although caregiving is a gendered activity, sex and gender considerations have not been incorporated systematically in understanding caregiving experiences and the design of these technologies. As such, this thesis aims to develop a tool to assist in the development of technology interventions to support caregiving by (1) synthesizing evidence on sex and gender distinctions in caregiving experiences and its physical and mental health impacts on informal caregivers, (2) examining caregiver’s knowledge, use, perceived usefulness and feature preferences of technology, and (3) exploring sex and gender influences on technology use and perceptions amongst informal caregivers. Findings from each objective are used to inform tool development. The thesis was based on three studies. The first study, a systematic review on sex and gender distinctions in caregiving experiences and its impact on informal caregivers’ physical and mental well-being, found 13 studies reporting higher caregiving burden among female caregivers. Results from the second study, a secondary analysis of a cross-sectional survey on technology needs and preferences of informal caregivers, revealed that most caregivers did not know much and had never used any technologies to assist with caregiving. Female respondents were more likely to have more knowledge about technology for caregiving while male respondents were more willing to pay higher amounts for these technologies. Findings from the third study involving semi-structured interviews with informal caregivers and technology researchers, highlighted the multi-faceted role technology can play in aiding caregiving, while at the same time draw attention to the pitfalls and drawbacks of these technologies perceived by caregivers. Together, the findings lead to the creation of the CareDATA (Caregiving Diversity and Technology Assessment) tool. It provides key considerations for incorporating sex, gender and diversity when developing technologies for caregiving. Overall, this thesis highlighted the complexities of sex, gender and diversity within the field of both caregiving experiences and technologies and represents a robust step towards the realization of more tailored technological solutions to support informal caregivers. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health, knowledge, gender, female | 3, 4, 2005 |
| Crosby, Lucas David | Patterson, Kara K | Temporal Gait Asymmetry: The Relationship of Rhythm Abilities, Perception of Performance, and Responsiveness to Rhythmic Auditory Stimulation | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-11-01 | A promising intervention to target persistent post-stroke temporal gait asymmetry (TGA) is rhythmic auditory stimulation (RAS). Response to this intervention likely depends on the influence of many patient-related factors. This thesis examined the influence of two such factors on the relationship between TGA and the immediate response to RAS: rhythm ability and perception of gait performance. This thesis is comprised of four studies that investigated perception of an induced TGA in healthy adults, the effect of rhythm ability on the response to RAS with an induced TGA and with post-stroke TGA, and the influence of RAS on TGA perception. A unilateral load induces TGA in neurotypical adults, however accurately perceiving this asymmetry may be a difficult task, as nearly half of participants incorrectly perceive the direction of their asymmetry (study 1). Conversely, people with stroke are mostly accurate at detecting the presence and direction of their TGA (study 4). Both healthy adults and individuals with stroke improve TGA regardless of rhythm ability (study 2 3). Healthy adults with strong rhythm ability demonstrate greater step synchronization to the beat than those with poor ability, though this did not affect the response to RAS (study 2). Some individuals with stroke who worsen TGA with RAS have significantly poorer rhythm ability (study 3). For both healthy adults and people with stroke, walking to a metronome reduces the ability to detect the presence of TGA (study 4). This thesis presents new evidence for the relationship between rhythm abilities, the perception of TGA, and the responsiveness of TGA to RAS. Since some individuals with poor rhythm ability worsen TGA with RAS, clinicians may consider assessing individual rhythm ability when using rhythm-based treatments. The disparate ability to accurately perceive TGA among study participants demonstrates the importance to provide augmented feedback in therapy for interventions that rely on the perception of performance. Future work should explore the influence of rhythm ability on the response of TGA to other auditory stimuli (e.g., music) or the effect of rhythm ability on the response to a RAS intervention and consider alternate approaches to assess the perception of gait performance. | Ph.D. | invest, metro | 9, 11 |
| Logue, Alexandra | Mori, Jennifer | The “Metes and Bounds” of Manhood: Gender, Property, and Violence in Early Modern England | History | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation explores the relationship between masculinity and domestic space in early modern England. It argues that property and the body were symbolically linked, and hegemonic masculinity was contingent upon the ability to protect and control both. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the emergence of strict legal, spatial, and sensory boundaries around property, as men began to more clearly demarcate what they possessed. But migration, urban development, and shared resources made the creation and enforcement of property boundaries difficult. In London, increased migration from within the British Isles and immigration from Europe led to unprecedented population growth, and these demographic changes were associated with overcrowding, poverty, and disease. In the congested city, Londoners lived cheek by jowl, and overlapping living spaces were a source of tension between neighbours. Similar anxieties existed in rural areas surrounding London, where neighbours fought over the enclosure of common land and access to declining natural resources, like animals and timber. Shared and adjoining properties created conflict between neighbours, resulting in physical and verbal altercations that were litigated in the Court of Star Chamber. Gender historians have challenged the supposedly strict dichotomy of separate, gendered spheres, demonstrating how women traversed the boundaries between public and private while still maintaining links with the domestic space of the home. Less attention has been paid to the ways that men also navigated these spaces. By the seventeenth century, ideal masculinity was modeled through patriarchal authority over the boundaries around property and around the bodies of those who dwelled within. | Ph.D. | poverty, gender, women, urban, rural, natural resource, animal, animal, land, violence | 1, 5, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16 |
| Nunn, Neil | Chen, Robert | The 2014 Mount Polley Mine Disaster: Environmental Injustice, Antirelationality, and Dreams of Unconstrained Futures | Geography | 2022-03-01 | On August 4, 2014, within Secwépemc territory in the interior of British Columbia, a failing retainment wall of an over-burdened tailings storage facility released ~25,000,000 m3 of industrial waste into adjacent ecosystems culminating in what is now known as the Mount Polley Mine Disaster (MPMD). This dissertation takes the MPMD as a stepping off point to analyze how the disaster is relationally connected to larger patterns of socio-ecological disruption in the context of British Columbia’s colonial history. Drawing from Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s idea of antirelationality, I raise questions about the underlying logics that enabled the disaster and how this disaster fits within broader historical patterns of violent disruption. My research employs qualitative research methods that include historical archival research, interviews, participant observation, as well as document and media analyses to support a central overarching argument. Here I argue that, while the MPMD is commonly viewed as a representation of state or industry failure, looking instead to the history of British Columbia reveals that mass socio-ecological disruption from industrial mining have not been failures at all. Instead, mass socio-ecological destruction has been an inherent part of the entirety British Columbia’s complex and evolving project of modern settler colonial state-building. | Ph.D. | settler, waste, environmental, ecosystem, ecolog, ecosystem, injustice | 4, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Winter, Ellyse | Bialystok, Lauren | The Animal-industrial Complex and the Politics of Resistance: A Critical Discourse Analysis of White Veganism | Social Justice Education | 2022-03-01 | Using the theoretical dimensions of critical animal studies (CAS) and the methodological field of critical discourse analysis (CDA), this project examined how the logic that produced and maintains the current system of animal agriculture in Canada and the United States is re-inscribed and/or challenged in online vegan advocacy. Data were collected from 10 online Facebook pages dedicated to vegan advocacy and included entries posted by the page administrator(s) within a 6-month period, as well as the top 5 user comments left on each of these entries. Across all 10 vegan advocacy groups, the total number of posts analyzed was 3,071 and the total number of user comments analyzed was 8,313. Overall, the analysis highlighted the ways in which White privilege and capitalist logic are reproduced and/or contested in online spaces of vegan advocacy. More specifically, CDA revealed the following themes in the data: commodity fetishism and “removing the veil”; conceptualization of animals; varying socio-political context; and relationship to other social justice causes. Drawing on these four themes, this project provides insight into the possibilities and limitations of vegan advocacy and emphasizes strategies for building solidarity across various social justice movements. | Ph.D. | agricultur, capital, vegan, animal, animal, social justice | 2, 9, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Alexander-Luna, Kristina | Martinussen, Rhonda | The Art Songs of Violet Archer: A Performer's Analysis and Perspective on Repertoire for the Mezzo-soprano Voice | Music | 2022-03-01 | This thesis offers an in-depth look at the art song repertoire of Violet Archer by focusing on her compositions for the mezzo-soprano voice and piano. Factors that influenced this distinctive body of music and recognizes the important role that Violet Archer played as a composer in Canada during the twentieth century will be considered. My own introduction to Archer came during my undergraduate studies while taking a course on Canadian music, however until recently I had heard very little of her works performed, programed, or studied, but was drawn to her story of resilience and perseverance to pave her own path as a prominent composer and educator. The goal of this research was to explore selected works from this repertoire to look at its suitability for singers at differing levels, taking into consideration musical elements such as harmony, melody, text, and rhythmic setting. This necessitated a literature review to determine how vocal compositions are assessed within the fields of voice pedagogy and performance, and to examine resources that looked at Violet Archer’s music from a compositional standpoint. It also merited interviews conducted with individuals who had worked with Archer directly on some of her vocal compositions. Each song analyzed for this study was assessed according to three levels of difficulty (minimal, moderate, and extensive) resulting in a numeric amount which corresponded to the piece being classified as elementary, intermediate, or advanced. The literature review helped to inform my approach to this repertoire selection and to establish a grid with which to classify these works in order to provide a context for analyses and further discussion on each piece. Repertoire selected included songs and song cycles that have very little or no attention given to them in prior scholarly articles and research. My hope is that a detailed exploration of this selected repertoire will encourage singers and teachers alike to engage in the full breadth of what Violet Archer has to offer us as performers, teachers, and lovers of music. | D.M.A. | pedagogy, resilien, resilience, resilience | 4, 11, 13, 15 |
| Vyas, Manav | Kapral, Moira K. | The Association between Immigration Status and Stroke Incidence, Care and Outcomes | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06-01 | Immigrants to high-income countries have a lower cardiovascular disease incidence and mortality compared to host populations, a phenomenon termed the healthy immigrant effect. However, differences in stroke incidence, care and outcomes between immigrants and host populations have not been well-characterized. We studied the incidence, acute care, and short-term and long-term outcomes of stroke in immigrants compared to long-term residents in Ontario, Canada. People born outside of Canada who immigrated after 1985 were considered immigrants. Compared to long-term residents, immigrants had stroke at a younger age and had a lower adjusted hazard of stroke (hazard ratio [HR] 0.67; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.66-0.68). Compared to long-term residents, immigrants were less likely to seek care for transient ischemic attacks, and among patients with ischemic stroke, immigrants received equal or better acute stroke care, had higher disability on discharge (adjusted risk ratio 1.18, 95% CI 1.13-1.22), and marginally lower long-term (15 years) mortality (adjusted HR 0.94, 95% CI 0.88-1.00). These associations varied with age at the time of stroke, stroke subtype, ethnicity, country of origin, and immigration class, highlighting heterogeneity in the observed healthy immigrant effect. While the lower incidence of stroke and the lower mortality following stroke in immigrants compared to long-term residents may suggest a healthy immigrant effect, the younger age at the time of stroke and the higher disability on discharge in immigrants compared to long-term residents highlights a higher risk of premature and disabling stroke in immigrants. Further research should evaluate the reasons for the observed differences, which could then inform the design of effective interventions to improve stroke outcomes for both immigrants and long-term residents. | Ph.D. | disabilit, income | 3, 10 |
| Martinez, Ruth Maria | Colantoni, Laura | The Bidirectional Acquisition of Oral and Nasal Gestural Timing in L2 Brazilian Portuguese and Rioplatense Spanish Nasal Structures | Spanish | 2021-06-01 | Brazilian Portuguese (BP) nasal vowels (Ṽᴺ) and Rioplatense Spanish (RS) vowel + nasal sequences (VN) are realized with two oral (vowel and consonant) gestures and a nasal (velum) gesture, but they differ in the way these gestures are sequenced. Adult native speakers of RS and BP who aim to acquire the opposite language will thus need to learn this cross-linguistic difference. On the one hand, non-native speakers of BP will have to realize a longer overlap of the vowel and velum gestures and a shorter nasal coda. On the other hand, non-native speakers of RS will need to produce a shorter gestural overlap and a longer nasal coda. The main purpose of this dissertation is to investigate the relative difficulties that RS and BP speakers encounter at the phonetic and phonological levels when acquiring the gestural pattern of the other language’s nasal structure. To accomplish this goal, four studies were conducted. The findings from the studies on monolingual and bilingual production suggest that nasal structures in RS and BP are similar but differ in terms of their gestural timing and that their phonetic implementation and phonological representation may be affected by the dominant language of heritage speakers. Moreover, the studies on naïve and L2 perception and production indicate that, with experience in the L2, the timing of the oral-nasal gestural overlap can be acquired by non-native speakers. However, the gestural timing of a longer nasal coda seems more difficult to realize than that of a shorter nasal coda, not only at first exposure but also with more experience in the L2. This suggests that nasal coda weakening, a common phonological process in language variation and change, poses less articulatory difficulties to L2 learners than nasal coda strengthening. We propose that a gestural timing constraint on nasal coda strengthening should be integrated into L2 models of phonological acquisition to better predict and explain relative difficulties encountered by L2 learners. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Lin, Qiaochu | Mallevaey, Thierry | The Bidirectional Relationship Between Invariant Natural Killer T Cells and the Intestinal Microbiota | Immunology | 2021-11-01 | Invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells are innate T cells that recognize lipid antigens presented by CD1d. Upon activation, these cells can rapidly secrete a wide array of cytokines and chemokines to bridge and influence both innate and adaptive immune responses. As a result, iNKT cells are key players in the maintenance of tissue homeostasis and a promising immunotherapeutic target for various diseases. While the regulation of iNKT cell development and function by host factors has been rigorously investigated, only few studies have described the involvement of microbial factors in these processes. In this work, we aimed to characterize the influence of the intestinal microbiota on iNKT cell homeostasis and the reciprocal effect of iNKT cells on microbiota composition. First, we investigated the effect of microbial alterations on iNKT cell function during intestinal inflammation. We showed that engraftment of a proinflammatory microbiota can exacerbate chemically induced colitis in mice by imprinting iNKT cells with a procolitogenic gene signature and altering their response to activation. Second, we examined the impact of microbial status on iNKT cell homeostasis and how microbial presence is communicated to these cells. Using germ-free and pet store mice, we found that the gene expression, subset distribution and cytokine production of iNKT cells are significantly altered in the absence of the microbiota and upon increased microbial exposure. In addition, we showed that microbial signals are potentially conveyed to iNKT cells in a TCR-independent manner. Finally, we demonstrated that iNKT cells and/or CD1d has a marginal impact on the composition of the microbiota. Collectively, this work contributes to the understanding of the crosstalk between iNKT cells and the gut microbiota. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Chen, Xi | Meng, Yue | The Birth of the Animal: The Politics of Interspecies Culture in China, 1900-1959 | East Asian Studies | 2019-11-01 | In the first sixty years of the twentieth century, China witnessed the emergence of contested expressions of nonhuman animals and cultural politics of human-animal relations. This dissertation is a historical investigation into the emergence of modern Chinese conceptions of the animal and their effects on modern Chinese culture. Many of these concepts and practices challenged the dominant modern divide between the human and the (nonhuman) animal. They also paved the way for critical cultural practices that envisioned social, ethical, and affective bonds between humans and animals, and created alternative imaginations of the human. In order to prove this contention, this dissertation examines a series of animal-related concepts and practices via literary texts, translations, popular science essays, cartoons, and social campaign documents at five moments stretching from the early twentieth century to the first decade of socialist China. The dissertation organizes the sources chronologically. Each chapter considers a distinct set of conceptions of the animal and the human in the related historical moment. I examine two contested approaches to human-animal relations in the first decade of the twentieth century in my first chapter. One is represented by anarchist Li Shizeng李石曾 (1881-1973), who envisioned a world of a multi-species coexistence without hierarchies. The other approach is associated with Lu Xun 魯迅 (1881-1936) and Zhou Zuoren 周作人 (1885-1967), both of whom incorporated a construction of brutalized animality in their early writings. The emergence of Chinese popular science essays was a result of the epistemic politics between European animal science and the technique of taxidermy and Chinese philological and folk conceptions and practices of species. I prove this intermingling via Jia Zuzhang’s 賈祖璋(1901-1988) bird writings from 1920s and 1930s in my second chapter. I also argue that the writings of Lü Bicheng 呂碧城 (1883-1943) re-imagined animals as half-humans—unfixed subjects––who actively receive the pains and bodily affects from others in my third. My case studies of Feng Zikai 豐子愷 (1898-1975) and Hongyi 弘一 (1880-1942) grounds my fourth chapter. Through their exploration of the new artistic form of manhua 漫畫 (cartoons), they rendered visible and sensible invisible violence towards nonhuman sentient beings. Feng and Hongyi’s works re-inscribed the interspecies experiences of pleasure, play, and exile upon memories of war. Finally, I focus on the contested conceptions of the animal in the Eliminating Four Pests Campaign in the 1950s because this campaign (and in resistance to it) emblematize the politics of interspecies affects in twentieth-century China. | Ph.D. | invest, species, animal, species, animal, violence | 9, 14, 15, 16 |
| Milley, Katherine | Razack, Sherene | The Colonizer The Colonizer Who Refuses: Cultural Production and Colonial Crisis at Oka, Ipperwash, Burnt Church Caledonia | Social Justice Education | 2019-11-01 | This study examines white settler responses to the Oka, Ipperwash, Burnt Church, and Caledonia Crises. Listed as the quintessential examples of contemporary “Indian Crises” in Canada, I argue these events are in fact colonial crises, produced by colonizers in an attempt to manage Indigenous resistance and the “Indian question.” Colonial crises are sites of inordinate state and mob violence, as well as anti-Native activism, however, colonizers can be found on all sides of the (proverbial) barricades as aggressors, “peacekeepers,” and allies. These four crises are sites of extraordinary white settler activity and production, where techniques and modes of power—colonial governmentalities—are (re)fashioned. To examine this spectrum of white settler responses, I assembled a corpus of materials produced concerning each crisis. Using discourse analysis and genealogy to study white settler behaviours and discursive products, the corpus reveals that whether symbolising current “Indian-White” relations or the “ugly events” from which the nation has evolved, the four crises are key to stories of colonial progress and improvement, even if in that story, progress is rendered as having gone too far. The crises are cited by a plethora of colonizers as proof of the necessity of their particular political approach to (re)managing Indigenous-settler relations. These management strategies include calls for heightened use of state force to quell Indigenous resistance, demands for the state to engage in “negotiations, not confrontation,” as well as calls for decolonization. Attentive to the discursive parameters of white settler responses, I trace three figures in a continuum of colonizers: the anti-Native colonizer, the liberal colonizer, and borrowing from Albert Memmi, the colonizer who refuses. The corpus is utilized to pattern behaviours and trace colonial structures of feeling across each figure to understand the spatio-temporal dimensions that shape when and where “pro-Native” and anti-Native sentiment emerge. Interrupting the narratives of colonial progress in the “age of reconciliation,” I argue it is imperative Memmi’s colonizer who refuses be historicized in a white settler state not as a new arrival or new subject but as a colonizer whose rejection of colonialism has always been central to the management of an ongoing colonialism. | Ph.D. | settler, peace, indigenous, reconciliation, decolonization, production, peace, indigenous, violence | 4, 16, 10, 12 |
| Hylton, Treisha Hanna-Kay | Muzzin, Linda | The Contested Academy: African Canadian Women’s Experiences as Tenured, Tenure Stream and Non-tenured Faculty | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | This thesis explores the experiences of Black women who are in tenured, tenure-stream, and non-tenured faculty positions and presents how Black women negotiate their intersectional identities in the academy. The study documents their self-identifications and struggles with the academy in terms of power relations in their respective universities, including racial and sexual discrimination. In addition, the study explores the career paths of Black women faculty from contract faculty to full professor. Methodologically, the study uses Black Feminist theorizing along with autoethnography in order to explore the nature of the experiences of Black Canadian women faculty within the academy. I interviewed 13 self-identified Black women across Canadian universities, including myself as the fourteenth key informant. This study reveals a complex and rich text of how Black women see themselves in the university, their experiences with multiple and overlapping oppressions and how this affects their careers, and finally, their contributions to the academy and their visions of success. | Ph.D. | women, feminis | 5 |
| Gonzalez, Columba | Cunningham, Hilary | The Dearest Butterfly: A Nonlinear, yet Stratified, Human-butterfly Ethnography | Anthropology | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation is a multi-sited and multi-species ethnography which follows the migration of the monarch butterfly across the East Coast of Canada and the United States to the Oyamel Forest of central Mexico. The project builds upon ethnographic research at four nodal locations for monarch conservation: Point Pelee National Park in Ontario, Canada; Monarch Lab in Minnesota, U.S.; The Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico; and an online community named DPlex-L. The thesis develops the concept of the “Dearest Butterfly” to index the emergence of a new way of valorizing this migratory insect after it entered international networks of species conservation and to navigate what I call a non-linear and stratified assemblage that exists around the aspirations of conserving this charismatic insect. Along with this proposition, I chronicle and utilize the monarch’s sharp population decline as a means to unearthing North America’s devastated socioecology. The thesis argues that the insect’s falling numbers are related to the outcomes of nature-extensive exploitation and displacement of indigenous forms of knowing nature at the sites of study. In a non-linear fashion, I connect these outcomes with NAFTA’s circulation of goods and new forms of human displacement from Mexico to its northern neighbors to argue that protecting this tri-national butterfly was part of a plan to consolidate the North American region as an economic block that prizes mobilities of goods even while it seeks to prevent the movement of people, and, ironically, of monarchs. The thesis engages with the field of Science and Technology Studies by describing the everyday tensions of rendering the iconic monarch as a working and captive insect in the laboratory in order to conserve it. From the introduction Pendant Egg to the conclusion chapter Egg Under Review, I maintain that thinking with monarchs and their exceptional life cycle achieves a twofold outcome for anthropological research: it approaches the devastated monarch migratory corridor as an ecological, social, and technological assemblage; and it investigates existent cooperative and often uncooperative relations to critique this crisis, and hopefully re-vitalize it through a proposition of an ecosophy for migrating humans and nonhumans of North America. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, indigenous, conserv, species, animal, forest, ecolog, conserv, species, animal, indigenous, exploitation | 8, 9, 10, 16, 14, 15 |
| De Benedetti, Marc | Moore, G.W.K. | The Decorrelation Length and Time Scale - Diagnostic Tools to Visualize Spatial and Temporal Variability in Geophysical Fields | Physics | 2021-06-01 | Atmospheric reanalyses and model data are becoming more commonly used. However, most reanalyses and global climate models have resolutions of ~50 km or lower --- scales too coarse to capture many topographic and coastal effects within various geophysical fields such as precipitation and wind speed. Although attempts have been made to assess the impact of horizontal model resolution, such as downscaling and power spectrum methods, it is still unclear how this impacts the representation of the spatial variability. This thesis presents the Decorrelation Length Scale (DCLS and Decorrelation Time Scale (DCTS), novel techniques to characterize and visualize spatial and temporal variability in geophysical fields at a grid-point level, that is able to investigate this impact. The main strength of the DCLS/DCTS provide insight into both the relative variability and geographical imprint of the source of variability. A set of reanalysis, hindcasts, and analysis datasets with a common lineage and with horizontal resolutions ranging from ~125 km to ~9 km were used in three case studies to validate and explore the utility of this new technique. The first case study validated the DCLS's utility as a diagnostic by showing that there are changes in the spatial variability of the precipitation over the Eastern Pacific that are not reflected in its mean structure. The second case study applied the same analysis technique as the DCLS to visualize temporal variability as well, showing that even resolutions of ~30-km do not capture the wind field's variability, especially in coastal and mountainous regions and also support the historic choice of wind farm development in the UK, namely, the southern/south-western tip of England as well as off the southern shore. Since the DCLS is not subject to uniform model bias, the third case study used this technique to study the spatial variability of the Congo Basin's hydrological cycle. This region has been historically understudied due to a lack of validation data and an interesting candidate for the DCLS analysis. DCLS results revealed that the main source of spatial variability in the P-E field over the Basin was uniformly from the precipitation field and that the spatial scales of the variability are less than 10 km. | Ph.D. | hydrological cycle, wind, invest, climate, global climate models, land | 6, 7, 9, 13, 15 |
| Park, Hanuel | Nitz, Mark | The Design and Development of Organotellurium Scaffolds for Mass Cytometry | Chemistry | 2022-03-01 | Fluorescence-based Cytometry (FC) is an essential technique in investigating heterogeneous cell populations. FC uses tagged antibodies to detect biomarkers on individual cells. However, the inherent spectral overlap between fluorophores limits the use of the methodology in highly multiparametric assays. In recent years, mass cytometry (MC) has emerged as an effective alternative technique to study heterogenous cell populations in highly parameterized assays. MC utilizes bio-orthogonal heavy isotope (> 100 Da) tags, rather than fluorophores, to read out the biomarkers on a cell. Here, we investigate three classes of organotelluriums as a mass cytometry compatible isotope tag: methyl tellurides, trifluoromethyl tellurides and 2-alkyl-tellurophenes. Stability and toxicity assays showed that the 2-alkyl-tellurophene containing scaffold was the most reliable isotope tag for mass cytometry. As a result, we investigated the use of tellurophenes in the development of a MC barcoding reagent, an antibody-conjugated MC polymer reagent and a potential activity-based MC probe to study protease activity (Cathepsin S). | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Todorovic, Petar | Sargent, Edward H | The Design of Perovskites for Light-Emitting Applications | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | In the last decade, perovskite quantum dots have emerged as next-generation active materials for optoelectronics. They have tunable bandgaps, good charge carrier mobility and low defect density, and are readily synthesized. They exhibit high photoluminescence quantum yields and bandgaps tuned throughout the visible range via compositional engineering and nanostructure modulation. This positions perovskites for applications in red, green and blue light-emitting diodes. They must achieve narrow emission linewidths, as well as increased stability and efficiencies under operating conditions, to realize their potential in displays.In this thesis, I explore the design and prediction of novel perovskite materials through experimental and computational methods; and I find new optoelectronic materials with promise as narrowband light-emitters. Mixed anion approaches used by prior researchers to tune bandgap suffer from halide segregation and resultant spectral instability. I designed a mixed cation strategy whereby Rb+ is directly incorporated during synthesis into CsPbBr3 nanocrystals, forming the alloyed RbxCs1-xPbBr3. This resulted in tunable blue-emitting perovskite quantum dots and devices with stable photoluminescence and electroluminescence ranging from 460 – 500 nm and narrow emission linewidths ( | Ph.D. | learning, emission | 4, 7 |
| Shugrina, Maria | Singh, Karan S||Fidler, Sanja | The Design of Playful and Intelligent Creative Tools | Computer Science | 2021-06-01 | While ample research demonstrates the importance of concepts such as flow, playfulness and exploration for creative tasks, practical application of these principles leaves more to be desired, as evidenced by the prevalence of cumbersome creative interfaces. The goal of this thesis is to address the problem of designing playful, expressive and delightful creative interfaces for a number of concrete creative tasks, including interaction with color and 2D animation. To this end, I explore a number of approaches for establishing artist needs, develop digital representations that are amenable to both machine learning and user interaction, and design novel digital media that amplify, not stifle, creativity. This practical application of intelligence, including domain understanding and AI, and playfulness to the design of creative interfaces is meant to inspire future work in interaction design that adopts the same spirit. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Ning, Yu (Paris) | Simpson, Andre J. | The Development and Application of Environmental Comprehensive Multiphase Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Environmental samples contain multiple phases (solution, gel, and solid) and the synergy and interactions between these phases give rise to their physical structure and environmental reactivity. It is important to analyze samples as close to their intact state as possible to preserve such information. Comprehensive multiphase nuclear magnetic resonance (CMP-NMR) combines all the hardware features from traditional NMR approaches (solution-state, solid-state, and HR-MAS) and can differentiate components in all phases in intact samples. As CMP-NMR technology is relatively new, continued improvement is being made to expand its applicability and compatibility with more multiphase environmental samples. This dissertation focuses on the development of CMP-NMR technologies and expanding their applications on a greater variety of natural samples. The first study introduces a quantitative technique (stepped decoupling) which through effective decoupling, can provide quantification to components in all phases without bias. This approach can be used to quantify specific compounds and to give a quantitative overview of the components in all phases. In the second study, spectral editing techniques, along with stepped decoupling, are applied to differentiate and characterize multiphase components in algae biofuel products that have been extracted under various reaction conditions. The findings demonstrate CMP-NMR’s capability of studying a multiphase reaction process and suggest the possibility to optimize reaction conditions to produce useful biofuel extraction by-products. In the third study, a new coil design is adapted to CMP-NMR, significantly reducing sample heating induced by high-power decoupling for solid-state components. This study not only showcases the improved survival rate of in vivo Hyalella azteca (freshwater shrimp) under high decoupling power but also presents the importance of using proper high decoupling power for natural samples. The fourth study introduces a 7 mm probe, providing significantly larger sample volume compared to the current 4 mm system. The increased sample volume allows for natural non-enriched samples to be studied in a reasonable timeframe and for larger samples such as a pomegranate aril and a softgel pharmaceutical capsule to be studied intact. The work in this dissertation demonstrates the continuing development of CMP-NMR to expand its compatibility with a wider range of multiphase samples and processes. | Ph.D. | water, biofuel, environmental | 6, 7, 13 |
| Lynall, David | Ruda, Harry E | The Dominant Role of Surface States in Electron Transport and Chemical Sensing in InAs Nanowires | Materials Science and Engineering | 2019-06-01 | Semiconductor nanowires have shown great promise for applications in electronic, optoelectronic, and chemical sensing devices. Electronic transport in nanowires is confined in two lateral dimensions which obscures the distinction between surface and bulk. Consequently, the properties of nanowire surfaces are intimately tied to the operation and performance of nanowire-based devices. This is most evident in InAs nanowires where the high electron mobility, low effective mass, and native surface accumulation layer augments the unavoidable connection between transport and surface properties. Because of their small size, conventional surface science and capacitance-based measurements for the characterization of nanowire surfaces and surface states are either extremely difficult or not possible. We develop novel conductance-based methods to characterize surface states in InAs nanowire field-effect transistors revealing the spectral distribution of donor-like surface states in the InAs NW bandgap. The effects of chemical surface passivations on the InAs NW transport properties and surface states are characterized. The best results are obtained from 1-octadecanethiol which was found to decrease the density of donor-like surface states in the bandgap and increase the field-effect mobility by ∼ 100%. Capture and emission processes from surface states exhibited thermally activated character and caused hysteresis and relaxation in the nanowire conductance. Slow surface trap densities as high as 4×10^13 cm^−2 are observed when measurement time intervals are expanded. A time-dependent transport model based on non-equilibrium carrier populations and thermally activated capture and emission is constructed that shows excellent agreement with experiment. We demonstrate that the spectral distribution and dynamic characteristics of surface states dictate the transport properties of InAs nanowires. The mechanism of chemical sensing by InAs nanowires is elucidated towards ethanol and NO2. Physisorption and chemisorption mechanisms are identified, and the time-dependent transport model is adapted to describe and predict the sensor response. A new regime of highly sensitive chemical sensing unique to nanowires is identified based on the single molecule sensor response where ethanol concentrations as low as 10 ppb are detected at room temperature by physisorption. Sensing by physisorption is shown to be preferable to chemisorption due to the fast time scale and reversibility of the sensor response. | Ph.D. | emission | 7 |
| Clark, Katelyn | Clark, Caryl | The Early Pianoforte School in London’s Musical World, 1785–1800: Technology, Market, Gender, and Style | Music | 2019-06-01 | The late-eighteenth century was a period shaped by curiosity and fast-paced industrial, technological, and social growth in London. Collaborations between musicians and artists were frequent, and the boundary between musical understanding and “natural philosophy” was fluid. While market forces contributed to the popularity of the pianoforte in London, the technological development of the instrument and its multinational professional players performed key roles in the genesis of a London school of piano composition. This dissertation studies major factors that contributed to this evolution in pianism, focusing on matters of technological progress, collaboration, and stylistic revision in professional practice. I contend that a dynamic “early” London pianoforte school flourished from approximately 1785–1800. My goal is to insert new players and contexts into an incipient London-based pianoforte school so as to better understand how the early English piano functioned within its local market during this period. I examine the work associated with a cosmopolitan group of influential pianists, composers, and visual artists who were active in London during the 1780s and 1790s, including Joseph Haydn, Sophia Dussek, Theresa Jansen, and Francesco Bartolozzi. To elaborate further upon the work of these individuals, I study the increasingly innovative and responsive pianos that developed locally. In Chapter 1, I trace the history of the piano in England through Charles Burney’s writings, relevant patents by builders including those of Sébastien Érard, and documents from the Broadwood company archives. Chapter 2 develops our understanding of the English piano’s striking point through the collaborative work of Broadwood and scientists Tiberius Cavallo and Edward Whitaker Gray. Chapter 3 considers the rich evolution of Haydn’s compositional style through connections to London-based pianists Theresa Jansen and Maria Hester Park, and visual artists Francesco Bartolozzi and Thomas Park. Chapter 4 focuses on the short-lived music periodical Pleyel, Corri, and Dussek’s Musical Journal, and considers composer representation and marketing for the London audience in the 1790s. Through this dissertation, I demonstrate that shared stylistic principles and collaborative efforts forged strong connections among piano builders, musicians, and artists within the city’s vibrant urban environment of the late-eighteenth century. | Ph.D. | gender, labor, urban, land | 5, 8, 11, 15 |
| Herzog, Ian | Baum-Snow, Nathaniel | The Economic Effects of Transportation Policy | Economics | 2021-11-01 | The Economic Effects of Transportation Policy a thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and convocation year of 2021 by Ian Herzog to the Graduate Department of Economics in the University of Toronto. This thesis collects three papers discussing effects of transportation policy and infrastructure on neighbourhoods, cities, and regions. In each paper I combine new spatial data with economic theory to estimate how road pricing, traffic congestion, and road building affect economic wellbeing. In the first chapter, The City-Wide Effects of Tolling Downtown Drivers, I study the effects of London England's Congestion Charge on regional traffic, commuting, and economic activity's spatial distribution. I begin by showing that the policy reduced rush-hour traffic in the tolled downtown area and on radial roads leading downtown. I then use London's Congestion Charge as a natural experiment to find ensuing effects of traffic on commuting by car and public transit. These patterns calibrate a quantitative spatial model to conclude that London's Congestion Charge increases driving rates among untolled commuters and gives the region's commuters positive net benefits that disproportionately accrue to low-skill workers. In chapter two, The Marginal External Cost of Traffic in Greater London, I estimate the time costs of rush-hour road traffic in London England. To identify causal effects, I merge web-scraped travel times with Greater London's traffic monitoring network and compare across time of day at each road link. Results suggest that prevailing traffic conditions create a substantial deadweight loss, that driving downtown from the airport creates larger externalities than the average car commuter at the margin, and that public transit creates substantial congestion relief benefits. Chapter three, National Transportation Networks, Market Access, and Regional Economic Growth, steps back to estimate interregional transportation's effect on local economic activity by studying the Interstate Highway System. Using a new empirical strategy, I present evidence that through market access highways increased employment and had small and delayed wage effects. These patterns then calibrate a structural model to show that additions to early Interstate plans benefited places they cross but were less valuable than the system's core. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, employment, economic growth, worker, wage, infrastructure, cities, urban, transit, land | 3, 8, 9, 11, 15 |
| Cushing, Alex | Bruun, Christer | The Economic Relationship between Patron and Freedman in Italy in the Early Roman Empire | Classics | 2020-06-01 | The Economic Relationship between Patron and Freedman in Italy in the Early Roman Empire explores how economic and productive relationships between patrons and freedmen continued after manumission in Roman Italy during the early Principate. This dissertation surveys a range of ancient sources, including inscriptions, literary sources, alimenta tables, and wax tablets, to show how Roman patrons deployed different social and legal mechanisms to continue to draw on the productive capacities of their former slaves in a range of economic sectors. The techniques employed varied depending on productive context. Freedpersons who had been slaves in domestic familiae were redeployed as agents, not just associated with the urban households from which they originated, but also as agricultural procuratores overseeing the legal administration of rural properties. This indicates a recognition that unique skills and personal connections to their former masters could continue to be exploited after manumission for a variety of purposes. That mid-level domestic slaves were preferred for such posts instead of other, ostensibly better-suited skilled slaves, such as urban dispensatores or rural vilici, indicates a deliberate and concerted organization of both enslaved and freed workforces alongside each other. This suggests that practical economic considerations played a role both in the direction of freed labour and in manumission itself. The procuratio, a form of agricultural agency, was also used in Roman banking firms to facilitate flexible representation by freedmen, as evidenced by its repeated use by the Sulpicii from Puteoli. Efforts at patronal control were not necessarily to the detriment of the freed slaves involved, however, and sometimes could provide economic benefits and incentives to the latter. In urban manufacturing, the clustering of freedpersons in productive units enabled patrons to draw on services owed after manumission more efficiently, but also facilitated cost-sharing among skilled liberti and greater flexibility in the day-to-day management of their own businesses. In short, Roman patrons drew from a toolkit of strategies, including operae, personal links, forms of agency particularly suited to the freedman-patron relationship, and other social and legal mechanisms, to continue to draw on the productive capacity of their former slaves. | Ph.D. | agricultur, labour, cities, urban, rural | 2, 8, 11 |
| Ku, Kyung Ha | Marsden, Philip | The Effect of Hemodynamics on Endothelial Cell Gene Expression: The Interaction between Cis-DNA Elements and Chromatin-based Pathways | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-11-01 | Endothelial cells (ECs) are professional sensors of shear stress (SS), the frictional force of blood flow. Endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) is an EC-specific gene predominantly expressed in arterial regions of atheroprotective laminar flow with high SS. This prototypic arterial EC gene contains two distinct flow-responsive cis-DNA elements in the promoter, the Shear Stress Response Element (SSRE) and the Krüppel-Like Factor (KLF) element. To investigate the in vivo function of these cis-DNA elements, insertional transgenic mice with a mutation at each element were generated using a murine eNOS promoter-β-galactosidase reporter. Surprisingly, the SSRE mutation abolished eNOS transcription and was associated with aberrant hypermethylation at the eNOS proximal promoter. The KLF mutation demonstrated an integration site-specific decrease in eNOS transcription, again with marked promoter methylation. Together, this indicated that both elements are necessary for a transcriptionally permissive, hypomethylated eNOS promoter and neither element alone is sufficient for eNOS transcription in vivo. We also examined the genome-wide DNA methylation profiles in arterial ECs exposed to different flow conditions. Global methylation and hydroxymethylation levels showed no changes in vivo between the aortic arch and the descending thoracic aorta in mice, as well as in human ECs in vitro under distinct arterial flow patterns, suggesting that flow-mediated changes in DNA methylation are gene-specific. Two arterial EC genes, namely eNOS and C-X-C motif chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4), showed differential endothelial responses to SS that were associated with changes in proximal promoter DNA methylation. Laminar flow induced eNOS expression but repressed CXCR4 expression. Conversely, disturbed flow repressed eNOS expression but induced CXCR4 expression. Methylation levels at the proximal promoter region of each gene were significantly correlated with its repressed gene expression in a flow-dependent manner, indicating a mechanistic role of promoter DNA methylation in flow-mediated endothelial gene regulation. In conclusion, we describe the in vivo function of flow-responsive cis-DNA elements for the first time and present evidence for biological interplay between these elements and chromatin-based pathways, particularly DNA methylation. Moreover, we demonstrate that the expression of arterial EC genes, eNOS and CXCR4, is regulated by flow-dependent epigenetic mechanisms, offering new mechanism-based therapeutic strategies for cardiovascular diseases. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Kojovic, Dea | Piquette-Miller , Micheline | The Effect of Pre-eclampsia and HIV on the Expression and Regulation of Drug Transporters in Placenta | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Disease-mediated changes in the expression and activity of placental ABC and SLC drug transporters have been extensively studied in animal models resulting in altered transplacental passage of their substrates. While these transporters are likely also dysregulated in human placental tissues, translational studies are lacking and thus little is known about expression and regulation of these clinically important drug transporters in patients with Pre-eclampsia (PE) and Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). Moreover, statistics indicate that prescription drug use in pregnancy is on the rise and is likely higher in these two conditions. In two separate studies, we used placental tissues obtained at birth from women with PE and HIV, to investigate the effect of these two diseases on the expression of highly expressed and clinically relevant drug transporters. We further used in vitro cultured placental cells and cultured placental villous explants to further understand the effects of angiogenic factors in the context of PE and ARVs in the context of HIV on the expression of several drug transporters. Our studies demonstrated that both PE and HIV resulted in widespread dysregulation of several placental uptake and efflux transporters from women with clinically diagnosed disease. Additionally, within our PE group, placental angiogenic factor sFlt-1 was significantly induced while VEGF and PLGF were significantly downregulated in PE placentas compared to non-PE controls. These were further investigated in vitro where they were found to play a role in the regulation of BCRP and OATP2B1 expression. Within our HIV group, many women were on prescribed antiretroviral regimens, some of which were found to significantly induce PGP and downregulate OAT4 expression in vitro in human placental explants. Our findings suggest that the protective function of the placenta is compromised in women with PE and HIV with significantly altered expression of clinically important transporters. These translational studies provide key insight and real-world evidence of disease-mediated changes in placental transporter expression. As this may impact fetal health and increase in utero exposure to prescription medications, further studies and closer clinical investigation are needed to determine the impact of disease-induced changes on placental drug transporters and the possible impact on maternal drug-disposition and fetal drug exposure. | Ph.D. | women, invest, animal, animal | 5, 9, 14, 15 |
| Marmureanu, Cosmin | Davies, Scott | The Effect of Vegetation on Student Achievement in the Toronto District School Board | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation builds on past research that has demonstrated positive and significant correlations between student achievement and vegetation. My research extends The Biophillia Hypothesis, which posits that humans receive psychological benefits from being near vegetation, by hypothesizing that schools with greater amounts of nearby vegetation will have better academic outcomes than schools with lesser amounts of vegetation, controlling for key confounders. Data come from student standardized test scores and demographic, obtained from the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and from measures of satellite images of vegetation surrounding each school, obtained from the Canadian Urban Environmental Health Research Consortium (CANUE). Initial analyses using Pearson’s correlations and OLS regression show positive relationships between vegetation and achievement similar to those found in previous research. However, this dissertation also engages in a unique attempt to investigate whether vegetation has causal effects on school achievement, exploiting a natural experiment made possible by a large ice storm that hit Toronto in 2013 and destroyed approximately 20% of the city’s tree canopy. Several spatial and descriptive statistics were carried out, including Moran’s I, and long-term vegetation change measurements, to examine whether the ice storm was a significant and random event. Fixed Effects (FE) regression models were run to investigate whether proportions of students who met provincial standards in standardized tests dropped due to vegetation loss after the ice storm. These models test for causal impacts of vegetation by comparing levels of achievement before and after the ice storm while controlling for measured confounders such as school-level SES, as well as unmeasured and time-invariant confounders like school climate and culture. Descriptive statistics and OLS regression reveal mixed associations between vegetation and school achievement, while FE regression models did not yield consistent or significant results in support of the initial hypothesis. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed. | Ph.D. | mental health, invest, urban, climate, environmental | 3, 9, 11, 13 |
| Goodman, Rachel | Tremblay, Luc | The Effects of Aging on Sensory Feedback Utilization During the Planning of Upper Limb Movements | Exercise Sciences | 2021-06-01 | Previous work on sensorimotor integration for movement planning has mainly focused on visual environments and targets. Further, age-related adaptations to sensorimotor integration for movement planning are seldom explored. In the current dissertation, four experiments were conducted to investigate sensorimotor processes occurring during movement planning to targets of varying sensory modality, in both younger and older adults. They were asked to perform upper limb reaching movements to various target cues in the absence of visual feedback, and reaction time was evaluated as the main outcome variable. The goal of the first experiment was to investigate if target modality modulated movement planning time, and if these effects were different across age groups. The results showed longer reaction times for movements planned to somatosensory targets versus visual or bimodal targets, and these longer reaction times were significantly longer for older adults than for younger adults. The goals of the second and third experiments were to test for any contributing effects known to be affected by aging, such as sensory acuity or movement planning strategy. The results showed that older adults did not appear to have acuity deficits, nor did they plan their movements differently than younger adults to the various sensory cues. The goal of the fourth experiment was to implement a somatosensory perturbation to further investigate sensorimotor processes when planning movements to somatosensory targets. The results showed that somatosensory perturbations to the effector limb caused even further elongation of reaction times, and this effect was greater in older than younger adults. Overall, the current work provides a further look into the age-related differences in somatomotor integration processes, when planning movements to somatosensory targets. It was hypothesized that sensorimotor transformations may be responsible for the delays in movement planning time, as older adults may be mapping all cues into a visual reference frame, regardless of the presence of visual inputs. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Gaffney, Caitlin | Steele, Jeffrey | The Effects of Intelligence, Personality Traits, L1 Fluency, and L2 proficiency on L2 Spoken Fluency | French Language and Literature | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation explores the underlying structure of second language (L2) fluency by investigating inter-learner variability via a comparison of the relative contributions of two understudied variables, intelligence and personality traits (extraversion, neuroticism, openness to experience, conscientiousness, agreeableness) versus known L2 fluency predictors, namely, first language (L1) fluency, and L2 lexical and grammatical proficiency. Previous research has rarely considered the effects of intelligence and personality on L2 fluency, despite their omnipresence in psychology studies. Two exceptions are Dewaele (1999) and Dewaele Furnham (2000) who found positive correlations between extraversion and L2 fluency measures, suggesting that personality may contribute to L2 fluency variation. However, this previous research failed to control for L1 fluency and L2 proficiency, known corelates of L2 fluency (e.g., Hilton, 2008; Riazantseva, 2001), lacked comprehensive fluency analyses, and relied on univariate analyses that cannot compare the effect sizes of multiple fluency predictors.In the present study, L1 and L2 speech data were elicited from 73 advanced Anglophone learners of French via a picture description task and analyzed for seven standard fluency measures. The Big Five Aspect Scales test (DeYoung, Quilty, Peterson, 2007) and a short form of Raven’s Standard Progressive Matrices (Bilker, Hansen, Brensinger, Richard, Gur Gur, 2012) evaluated personality and intelligence. A Vocabulary Levels Test and a sentence scramble test (Department of French Studies, 2020) measured lexical and grammatical proficiency. Correlational analyses demonstrated significant relationships between L2 fluency and L1 fluency, L2 lexical and grammatical proficiency, and openness to experience. Sequential regressions revealed that L1 fluency explained more L2 fluency variance than proficiency. Openness to experience was not a significant predictor after accounting for L1 fluency. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of the relative importance of L2 fluency predictors including personality and intelligence and makes a methodological contribution via its use of multivariate statistics. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Chu, Carson | Thomson, Murray J | The effects of molecular structures and reactant temperatures on soot formation in a coflow laminar flame | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | The objective of the present study is to explore the effects of aromatic hydrocarbons and reactant temperatures on soot formation in a coflow diffusion flame. The study is motivated by the observation that soot formation is influenced by the flame boundary and ambient conditions, i.e. fuel species, pressure, temperature, etc. The effects of aromatic hydrocarbons and reactant temperatures have not been widely covered by current fundamental studies. With the help of experimental and numerical tools, the present study will extend our understanding of soot formation under various conditions. The effects of molecular structures of alkylbenzenes on soot formation in a coflow laminar flame are presented in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 of Part I. It is shown that 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene has a greater sooting tendency than n-propylbenzene because the former forms polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) through efficient radical recombination whereas the latter forms PAHs via the sequential Hydrogen-Abstraction-C2H2-Addition (HACA) mechanism. The importance of both mechanisms was highlighted by assessing the effect of naphthalene addition to both 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene and n-propylbenzene. It is found that naphthalene addition affects n-propylbenzene more than 1,2,4-trimethylbenzene, suggesting that the effect is fuel-type dependent. Furthermore, the role of alkylbenzenes in a jet fuel surrogate on soot formation was also assessed and it is found that their roles are moderate. The effects of elevated reactant temperatures on soot formation in a coflow laminar flame are presented in Chapters 6, 7, and 8 of Part II. Experimental studies show increasing the reactant temperature promotes soot aggregation and soot surface growth. It also yields curved nanostructures that decelerate soot surface growth. In addition, the modeling study shows the promotion of soot formation is likely due to early fuel pyrolysis that promotes PAH formation. The increase in PAH production also signifies the importance of the PAH adsorption mechanism. Finally, the temperature dependence of alkylbenzenes was explored. It is found that alkylbenzenes are less sensitive to the change in reactant temperature than alkanes and alkenes. This may be attributed to differences in their pathways for PAH formation. | Ph.D. | emission, production, species, species | 7, 12, 14, 15 |
| Rivkin, Lillian Ruth | Johnson, Marc | The Effects of Urbanization on the Ecology and Evolution of Species Interactions | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-11-01 | Urbanization alters the environment in profound ways that affects both the ecology and evolution of species and their interactions with one another. My thesis explores how urbanization alters ecological processes in urban populations and communities and investigates how patterns of ecological change feedback to influence the evolution of populations. Throughout my thesis, I use a combination of perspective pieces, literature reviews, and empirical research to identify and test avenues of research in the field of urban evolutionary ecology. In my first chapter, I reviewed the literature and identified key questions that needed to be addressed by the field. I followed up on one of these questions in my second chapter, where I reviewed the literature to identify patterns on non-adaptive evolution in urban populations. In the next two chapters, I measured the effects of urbanization on plant-pollinator and plant-herbivore interactions. My results demonstrated that urbanization alters interactions between Brassica rapa and its pollinators, leading to altered patterns of pollen dispersal and reproductive success in cities. Similarly, my results demonstrated that even small human settlements lead to increased seed predation rates and modified natural selection in Tribulus cistoides. My sixth chapter looked at the effects of urbanization on the mating system and population genetic variation of Impatiens capensis, and found that despite high outcrossing, urban populations were less genetically diverse than rural populations. My last chapter broadens the scope of my research and identifies joint effects latitude and sexual system on resistance to herbivory in Sagittaria latifolia. My thesis identified consistent effects of urbanization on the ecology and evolution of species and their interactions with one another and provides research directives to develop and broaden the scope of the field of urban evolutionary ecology. | Ph.D. | invest, cities, urban, rural, species, ecolog, species | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Lefevre-Walke, Kimberly Ann-Marie | Campbell, Carol | The Ethical Transformative Leadership of Mid-level District Leaders in Ontario Working to Advance Educational Equity | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | Today, the advancement of equity dominates the reform and policy agenda of educational jurisdictions around the world. School districts are thus charged with advancing educational equity. In the United States, as in some Canadian provinces, school district staff report to a chief executive officer who is referred to as the “superintendent.” However, in publicly-funded districts in the province of Ontario, with the exception of small districts, groups of “superintendents” report to the director of education who occupies the role of chief executive officer in their district. In Ontario, the term “superintendents” therefore refers to mid-level district leaders. The extant American and Canadian literature and current Ontario professional standards, provincial education policy and leadership frameworks, and professional associations offer little guidance to mid-level district leaders on how to advance equity. In recognizing how educational leaders are struggling to advance equity, Dr. Carolyn Shields (2003, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2017) positioned her theory of ethical transformative leadership as being more conducive to the advancement of equity than transformational leadership theory which has dominated the field of educational leadership and educational reform efforts since the 1990s. Shields has conducted two studies of ethical transformative American superintendents working to advance equity, but no research has been conducted to explore the utility of her theory in relation to mid-level district leaders or how they work to advance equity. In response to these gaps in the literature, the purpose of this qualitative project was to study how eleven ethical transformative Ontario superintendents, identified by reputation and drawn across seven districts, work to advance equity by exploring their adherence to Shields’ theory and their praxis. Qualitative interview data suggested that participants adhered to ethical principles and lenses and transformative leadership principles inherent in Shields’ theory. Findings also identified that participants enacted praxis to advance equity in their districts which can be categorized into six areas of practice. This study forms the beginning of a knowledge base on ethical transformative Ontario superintendents and how they work to advance educational equity. It concludes with a discussion of implications and recommendations related to professional standards, policy, practice, theory and research. | Ed.D. | knowledge, equity, equit, social justice | 4, 10, 16 |
| Langemeyer, Sean Michael | Lowman, Julian P | The Feedback between Core Heat Flux, Compositional Heterogeneity, and the Dynamics of a Rheologically Obtained Plate-like Surface in Numerical Mantle Convection Model | Physics | 2021-06-01 | The present day Earth features a surface characterized by broad regions of low strain rate and narrow bands of high deformation, comprising the plates and their boundaries, respectively. Moreover, a distinction exists between the divergent boundaries which include frequent transform-like offsets and the convergent boundaries, which are smooth continuous features. Above the Core Mantle Boundary (CMB), seismic tomography has revealed the presence of two Large Low Shear-wave Velocity Provinces (LLSVPs) below the African and Pacific Plates. This thesis presents mantle convection simulations focused on the feedback between a rheologically obtained plate-like surface and the characteristics of the lower mantle including the core mantle boundary heat flux and the presence of a Compositionally Anomalous Intrinsically Dense (CAID) component, speculated to be the origin of the LLSVPs. Over 200 two-dimensional and 13 three-dimensional numerical simulations were conducted in this study. Two-dimensional calculations illustrate the general impact of model parameters on the mantle's thermal state while it is found that three-dimensional calculations are necessary to properly investigate the feedback between the surface velocity field and the distribution of CAID material. The presence of a dense component near the core mantle boundary can act to inhibit heat flow into the mantle, effectively cooling the system. Previous studies have investigated the parameters affecting the distribution of a dense component above the CMB, however, some lack the presence of a dynamically evolving surface or a three-dimensional geometry. The rheologically obtained plate-like surfaces in this study feature evolving regions of convergence, where cold downwelling surface material sinks into the deep mantle, and divergence, at boundaries punctuated with transform-like offsets. Downwelling material sinks to the CMB driving CAID material into a variety of different distributions. Given the insulating nature of the CAID material, its distribution effects the basal heat flux and the thermal state of the mantle. The physical requirements necessary to generate a plate-like surface velocity field do not allow for the development of diametrically opposed CAID material provinces, however, the presence of the CAID material impacts the surface dynamics. | Ph.D. | invest, offsets | 9, 13 |
| Lona Durazo, Frida | Parra, Esteban | The Genetic Architecture of Pigmentation Traits in Modern Human Populations | Anthropology | 2021-11-01 | Pigmentation traits, here defined as hair, eye and constitutive skin pigmentation are some the most variable phenotypes among human populations. They have a complex genetic basis, in which interactions among genes and pleiotropy are common. Several genes involved in the pigmentation pathway have been described across mammalian species, which explain a significant proportion of the normal pigmentation variation in humans. However, the full understanding of the genetic architecture of pigmentation in human populations has not yet been achieved. Major effect genes are known to explain a relatively high proportion of the variance for each pigmentation trait at a population-basis level, but a substantial number of genetic loci modulating pigmentation in several populations have small effects and remain unknown. The objective of my thesis was to contribute to and improve the state of knowledge of the genetic architecture of pigmentation traits in modern humans. To achieve this, I have taken advantage of novel approaches at different stages of the research program, such as the use of large sample sizes and different cohorts, the application of diverse statistical approaches, and the use of genomic and epigenomic databases and computational advances to follow-up putative causal loci. I have identified a complex genetic architecture across known pigmentation regions such as TYR and OCA2, in which a combination of missense and non-coding SNPs are independently associated with pigmentation traits. These associations seem to vary among populations and among pigmentation traits to certain extent, as evidenced by fine-mapping and genetic correlations in a Canadian cohort of European ancestry. Finally, I explored the putative regulatory role of pigmentation loci. I have identified shared causal signals between hair or eye colour and quantitative trait loci (i.e. methylation and expression), and I have identified significant associations between hair or eye colour and the expression of pigmentation genes such as OCA2 and SLC24A4. Overall, my research has nominated several candidate causal variants across loci, and has provided insights to further explore the biological role of these SNPs in human pigmentation. | Ph.D. | knowledge, species, species | 4, 14, 15 |
| Yegen, Eyub Enes | Simutin, Mikhail||Akey, Pat | The Governance Role of Institutional Investors | Management | 2021-06-01 | This thesis consists of chapters on the governance role of institutional investors. Chapter 1 provides an introduction of the three essays as well as provides a brief summary of their main findings. Chapter 2 examines whether certain types of institutional investors use their ownership rights as a mechanism of exerting influence on portfolio firms to amplify their political voice. We show that ownership may be an important mechanism through which institutional investors amplify their political influence. In particular, we find that the probability that a firm’s Political Action Committee (PAC) donates to a politician supported by an investor’s PAC nearly doubles after the investor acquires a large stake, and that it increases five-fold when the investor obtains a board seat. The relationship is stronger for private funds, and those with high partisanship, suggesting the relationship is driven by investor preferences rather than strategic concerns. Chapter 3 examines whether institutional investors may partially offset the social trade-offs due to outsourcing government services to private enterprises. Consistent with prior theoretical work, I find evidence that institutional investors, in particular investors with a long holding horizon, have a positive impact on social outcomes of privatized prisons. Overall this chapter provides evidence that social trade-offs due to privatization may be partially mitigated by institutional investors due to litigation and reputation risks. Chapter 3 examines whether institutional investors have an impact on product market outcomes. The empirical literature on the potential anti-competitive effects of common-ownership relies heavily on financial institution mergers to make causal inferences. I find that more than 85% of newly-formed common-ownership relationships due to such financial institution mergers are no longer commonly-held by the acquiring institution during the post-merger period (with most being liquidated in the first quarter following the merger). Firms that are no longer commonly-held by the merged institution drive the anti-competitive results found in previous studies. The fact that portfolio firms are so quickly rebalanced casts doubt on the utility of financial institution mergers as a natural experiment. Taken together, my thesis finds that institutional investors have a crucial governance role that benefits society. | Ph.D. | invest, trade, outsourc, institut, governance | 9, 10, 12, 16 |
| Weckman, Andrea Margaret | Kain, Kevin C. | The Impact of Malaria in Pregnancy on Fetal Outcomes and Neurodevelopment | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-11-01 | Malaria infection during pregnancy is a major contributor to the global burden of adverse birth outcomes including fetal growth restriction, preterm birth, and fetal loss. Despite progress in preventing and treating Plasmodium falciparum malaria in pregnancy, the issue of malaria infection and its impact on maternal-fetal health remains a global health priority. This is in part due to a poor understanding of the pathophysiology of malaria as a driver of adverse birth outcomes. Here, in a large cohort of pregnant women in Malawi, we showed that malaria infection before 24 weeks gestation was associated with dysregulation of inflammatory and angiogenic mediators important for placental vascular development, and an increased risk of preterm birth. We used an experimental model of malaria in pregnancy to show that the angiopoietin-Tie2 pathway is mechanistically involved in placental vascular disruption and adverse birth outcomes. Furthermore, a growing body of evidence links maternal infection during pregnancy to neurocognitive deficits and neuropsychiatric disease in exposed offspring. Since congenital infection is not required for this effect, maternal immune activation is thought to be a critical determinant of neurological outcomes. However, the impact of exposure to malaria in pregnancy on neurodevelopment in children is not well understood. We provide the first clinical evidence in an observational cohort that malaria in pregnancy is associated with neurocognitive delays in children. Mechanistically, we show that malaria-induced inflammation is associated with lower language achievement in children up to two years of age. Collectively, these data suggest that scaling prevention efforts for malaria infection during pregnancy could be a far-reaching strategy to simultaneously reduce maternal-child morbidity and mortality and mitigate the burden of neurological injury in malaria-endemic regions. | Ph.D. | global health, women | 3, 5 |
| Schemitsch, Christine Emma | Nauth, Aaron | The Impact of Psychosocial Factors on the Outcome of Surgical Repair for Rotator Cuff Tears – A Prospective Cohort (IMPROVE Study) | Medical Science | 2021-11-01 | Rotator cuff tears are a common cause of pain and reduced function in the shoulder. The impact of psychosocial factors on patient outcomes following rotator cuff repair (RCR) surgery is unclear. The main goal of this thesis was to determine the association of psychosocial factors and outcomes in patients undergoing RCR surgery. Objectives: (1) To determine if psychosocial factors are associated with post-operative outcomes one-year after RCR surgery. (2) To determine if psychosocial factors are associated with disease severity at baseline. (3) To determine if psychosocial measures improve in patients one-year after RCR surgery. (4) To determine if treating surgeons are able to accurately assess patient’s mental health status at the baseline visit. Methods: A multi-centre, prospective, cohort study was performed where patients with a full-thickness rotator cuff tear were enrolled prior to RCR surgery. Patients completed multiple validated questionnaires to measure psychosocial functioning (symptoms of depression, anxiety, pain catastrophizing, treatment expectations and social support) at the pre-operative visit. Patients were followed for one year after their surgery. The primary outcome was the patient-reported Western Ontario Rotator Cuff Index (WORC) completed at one-year. The secondary outcomes were the Constant Murley Score (Constant) and the EQ-5D-5L. A multivariable regression analysis was performed. Results: 244 patients were enrolled, and 137 patients have completed a one-year follow-up. When controlling for other key variables, a multiple linear regression analysis did not demonstrate an independent association between any of the psychosocial factors and WORC scores at one year. Patients with higher levels of pain catastrophizing prior to surgery presented with worse WORC scores, Constant scores, and EQ-5D-5L health index scores at baseline and worse Constant scores at one-year. The remaining psychosocial factors were not associated with worse WORC scores at baseline. Scores on all of the psychosocial questionnaires improved between baseline and the one-year follow-up visit. The surgeons’ rating of patient’s mental health did not agree with the scores from the questionnaires. Conclusion: In this patient population, we found a low rate of clinically significant psychological symptoms and when controlling for other variables, psychosocial factors did not have a significant impact on outcomes after RCR. | Ph.D. | mental health | 3 |
| Bested, Stephen Ryan | Tremblay, Luc | The Impact of Robotic Guidance on the Learning of a Golf Putt | Exercise Sciences | 2019-11-01 | Robotic guidance has been recently shown to improve movement smoothness by providing participants with an ideal trajectory. The main purpose of the current thesis was to investigate the impact of robotic physical guidance on the execution of a golf putting task. To investigate how robotic guidance influences the consistency and performance of a golf putting task, the studies employed a pre-test, acquisition, and retention testing phases in which participants completed putts to multiple targets. Using custom-built software, participants’ kinematic data were collected and converted into robotic coordinates to be delivered by a robot arm. As demonstrated in the first experiment, the robot’s trajectories were highly accurate, consistent, and smooth, replicating human trajectories. In the second experiment, participants trained with the robot (50% or 100% of training trials) or without the robot (0%). Following the training phase, participants performed an immediate retention test, putting to a target without the help of the robot arm. Participants that trained with the robot 50% of the trials were the only group to both improve their performance (i.e., stop the ball closer to the hole as well as task consistency). In the third experiment, participants were unable to see the ball’s trajectory and were asked to estimate the ball endpoint. As anticipated, the benefits of robotic guidance were replicated while showing that robotic guidance can also help develop error detection mechanisms. This research has improved our understanding of motor skill acquisition, especially as it pertains to the implementation of robotic guidance methods. Also, this project has led to novel robotic guidance tools, first applied to golf putting performance successfully and perhaps, can be expanded to different sports and other practical areas in the future (e.g., rehabilitation). | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Apostoli, Andrew Joseph | Gough, William A | The Impacts of Climate Change on the Potential for a Northward Expansion of Agriculture in Ontario’s Great Clay Belt Region | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Climate change has widespread impacts on the agriculture sector, especially in northern latitudes where warming is amplified, and where ecosystems and traditional lifestyles are notably sensitive to the effects of warming. This may enable the northward expansion of agriculture in northern areas of Ontario, such as the Great Clay Belt (GCB) region. While the GCB region contains an abundance of productive and less expensive land, the historical trends and future agroclimatic conditions are underexplored. The first study of this thesis examined the historical trends of agroclimatic indices at seven locations within the GCB region during 1961-1990. First, how to best account for missing data in the historical record was found by imputing a daily gridded meteorological dataset. Using complete and reliable historical climate data, the trends implied a potentially more favourable climate for agriculture in the region as warming, with longer growing seasons and increases in heat accumulation, may result in the northward expansion of some crops. The second study explored the new growing conditions up to the year 2100 using climate models. Future projections indicated a warming trend using raw and bias-corrected/downscaled data for two emissions scenarios during the growing season. Bias-corrected/downscaled data was found to be more useful for impact analyses because it corrected for errors and showed better agreement with station observations compared to the raw output. The third study explored the challenges, opportunities and needs and priorities for expanding agriculture in the GCB region using climatological and socio-economic data. The results showed that the most significant barriers currently facing agricultural expansion is derived from socio-economic factors rather than from environmental factors. This thesis demonstrated that climate change presents significant opportunities for agricultural expansion in the GCB region. This suggests opportunities for economic development that may help ameliorate the disadvantages associated with rural and remote communities in northern Ontario. The challenge presented for the GCB region will be to ensure sustainable growth in the agriculture sector without compromising environmental quality, natural resources, and Indigenous autonomy. There is a need to develop adaptation strategies in response to the impacts of climate change on agriculture in the GCB region. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, agricultur, agro, emission, sustainable growth, indigenous, rural, natural resource, climate, environmental, emissions, ecosystem, land, ecosystem, indigenous | 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 16, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Jarvis, Lauren Alexandra Sueko | McMeans, Bailey C||Chu, Cindy | The Importance of Thermal Preferences in Governing Fish Productivity, Foraging Behaviour, and Interactions in a Changing World | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-03-01 | Fisheries are an important source of food, income, and recreation across the world, yet they are vulnerable to exploitation and environmental change. As ectotherms, a fish’s environment directly affects how it acquires and metabolizes energy. Energy acquisition and metabolism differ among fish species based on their unique diets, behaviours, and habitat preferences, resulting in differential (or asynchronous) responses to environmental change. Therefore, natural resource managers must learn these unique qualities and responses to create adaptive policies under changing conditions and protect fisheries into the future. However, research about the simultaneous effects of multiple interacting environmental factors on multiple interacting species is still at its infancy. My research seeks to understand the effects of environmental factors on the productivity of multiple fish species (referred to as fish productivity for the remainder of this thesis), as well as their behaviours, and interactions. First, I show that species-specific fish productivity (g·ha-1·yr-1) in inland lakes is differentially influenced by various abiotic (e.g. temperature, dissolved organic carbon, habitat area) and biotic (e.g. presence of predators and invasive species) factors. Second, I use stable isotopes to show that behavioural foraging (i.e., trophic position and habitat use) is mediated by local and broad-scale habitat conditions but does not necessarily reflect fish productivity. Third, I used a temperature-dependent food web model to study how thermal guild interactions are altered by changing environmental conditions, which may lead to unexpected outcomes of a species-removal management strategy. Together, my research suggests that fish species respond asynchronously to different environmental conditions. This means that some species may behave differently and be more or less productive than others when exposed to new conditions, which will manifest in unique species interactions and food web dynamics. Such information will be crucial for assessing the effectiveness of adaptive management policies in a changing climate. | Ph.D. | water, energy, income, natural resource, climate, environmental, fish, species, species, land, exploitation | 6, 7, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Kandel, Christopher | McGeer, Allison | The Incidence of Prosthetic Hip and Knee Joint Infections in Ontario and Risk Factors for Treatment Failure | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06-01 | Deep periprosthetic hip and knee joint infections (PJI) are a feared complication of primary arthroplasty and are associated with substantial morbidity. Linked health administrative databases are the mainstay of studying PJIs in Ontario while a detailed retrospective cohort is needed to understand risk factors predictive of treatment failure. The aims of this thesis were to evaluate PJI detection algorithms in administrative databases, describe the incidence and trends of PJIs in Ontario and describe characteristics associated with treatment failure.In the first study, we describe the performance characteristics of algorithms of diagnosis and procedure codes for detecting PJIs, demonstrating that the combination of a PJI diagnosis code along with a procedure code for an arthroplasty in conjunction with the code for a peripherally inserted central catheter had a sensitivity of 0.92 (95% CI 0.88-0.94) and positive predictive value of 0.78 (95% CI 0.74-0.82). This PJI detection algorithm was used to identify the incidence of PJIs in a large cohort using administrative databases. Of the 504,322 primary hip and knee joint replacements performed from 2003-2016, there were 7331 PJIs, with a cumulative incidence at 1-year of 0.97% (95% CI 0.92-1.01%) for hips and 0.76% (95% CI 0.73-0.79%) for knees. To assess for characteristics associated with PJI treatment failure, a retrospective cohort of 533 individuals with a PJI where prosthesis removal occurred was created. By two years 25% had experienced failure with liver disease (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) 3.12, 95% CI 2.09-4.66), presence of a sinus tract (aHR 1.53, 95% CI 1.12-2.10), preceding debridement with prosthesis retention (aHR 1.68, 95% CI 1.13-2.51), a one-stage procedure (aHR 1.72, 95% CI 1.28-2.32), and infection with Gram-negative bacilli (aHR 1.35, 95% CI 1.04-1.76) associated with failure. The majority of recurrent PJIs (53%, 56/105) were caused by a different bacterial species. We designed an algorithm that maximizes the identification of PJIs in administrative databases, which was used to demonstrate that PJIs are increasing over time. Failing to cure a PJI is common and most risk factors are not easily modifiable, which should spur the development of novel treatment paradigms. PJIs cause considerable morbidity and attention needs to be directed toward understanding why these infections occur. | Ph.D. | species, species | 14, 15 |
| Côté, Stephanie Élin | Steele, Jeffrey | The Independent and Combined Effects of Cognitive and Affective Variables on the L2 Acquisition of French Grammatical Gender Agreement | French Language and Literature | 2021-06-01 | A defining characteristic of second language (L2) acquisition is the well-attested variability observed between learners, often despite comparable exposure to the target language. In an attempt to explain this variability, researchers have considered the effects of various individual difference variables, cognitive and affective factors that distinguish learners from one another. The goal of this dissertation is to further our understanding of the roles of two such variables, foreign language anxiety (FLA) and working memory (WM). Each of these variables has been previously shown to impact L2 learners’ success individually, and Eysenck and colleague’s Attentional Control Theory (ACT) suggests that anxiety may impede WM resources, meaning these variables may also interact to predict L2 learning. While such an interaction has been alluded to in SLA research, few studies have empirically investigated the potential combined effects of FLA and WM on L2 learning. In order to address this gap, a study was designed to investigate the independent and combined effects of FLA and WM on intermediate proficiency French learners’ grammatical gender agreement accuracy. Sixty-one L1 English-speaking learners of French completed a Spot-the-difference picture description task designed to elicit instances of noun-adjective gender agreement varying in the syntactic distance between the head noun and modifying adjective. Learners were significantly more accurate with local agreement than with agreement that crosses syntactic boundaries, in line with Pienemann’s (1998, 2005) Processability Theory. Furthermore, FLA and WM each made contributions to agreement accuracy scores; FLA predicted a small amount of the variance of long-distance agreement scores only, while WM was a significant predictor of agreement in all three of the constructions considered here. However, no significant interaction was found between the variables, which appears to contradict ACT’s predictions. Various explanations for this finding are explored. In summary, this dissertation makes important contributions to the growing body of research on individual differences in L2 acquisition by considering FLA’s effects on a specific grammatical construction, namely gender agreement; by expanding previous research on WM’s role in agreement processing to oral production; and by empirically testing the possible interaction of FLA and WM in L2 grammatical accuracy. | Ph.D. | learning, gender, invest, production | 4, 5, 9, 12 |
| Shea, Dylan Wesley | Krkošek, Martin||Short, Steven M | The Influence of Aquaculture on Marine Microbiota and Pathogen Communities in a British Columbia Coastal Ecosystem | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-03-01 | The productivity of wild-capture fisheries has long plateaued and global dependence on aquaculture is progressively increasing. Despite the perception that substituting wild caught seafood for domestic production benefits the conservation of wild populations through decreased fishing pressure, this is frequently not the case. Aquaculture can challenge the conservation of wild populations via the harvest of wild fish for feed, degradation of wild habitat, and by facilitating the spread of infectious disease. This thesis examines how aquaculture facilities influence microparasite transmission dynamics and the potential consequences for co-occurring wild species. I investigate these topics in coastal British Columbia, Canada, where wild Pacific salmon populations encounter open-net salmon farms along their migration routes. In chapter 2, I use seawater filtration and quantitative PCR (qPCR) to quantify the presence of DNA for 39 viral, bacterial, and eukaryotic microparasite species in the marine environment in relation to active Atlantic salmon farms. I show that the odds of encountering an infectious agent are 2.72 times higher at active salmon farms relative to inactive control sites. In chapter 3, I evaluate Atlantic salmon eDNA dispersal at 2m and 8m depths throughout 55 km of narrow migratory channels, in relation to four Atlantic salmon farms. I show that long distance dispersal (1.5 km – 3.9 km) occurs, and the spatial extent of environmental eDNA dispersal depends primarily on current velocity and depth. In chapter 4, I evaluate environmental microbe communities using deep amplicon sequencing to evaluate variation in community structure among 57 salmon farm tenures in relation to aquaculture activity, temperature, salinity, turbidity, and multiple scales of spatial predictors. The results from chapter 4 show that the effect of salmon farm activity on the marine microbiota was detectable but small relative to environmental variation and spatial structure although three bacterial Orders: Flavobacteriales, Rhodobacterales, and Alteromonadales, stood out as strongly positively correlated with salmon farm activity. The sustainability of aquaculture and the persistence of many wild populations will depend on our understanding of the local and regional influences of domestic reservoirs on microparasite transmission and our ability to develop integrated control measures to limit transmission among wild populations. | Ph.D. | water, water filtration, invest, production, environmental, marine, conserv, fish, species, ecosystem, conserv, species, ecosystem | 6, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Varma, Vanita | Childs, Ruth Dr. | The Influence of Outcomes-based Funding Models on Two Large Canadian Non-profit Organizations | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | Through a qualitative case study of two large non-profit organizations, the purpose of this research was to understand and explore how non-profit organizations are being influenced by outcomes-based funding models. During the last two decades, there has been increasing pressure on non-profit organizations to demonstrate the impact of their programs, often as a condition for receiving funding from the government and non-government funders. Traditionally, non-profit organizations have been delivering programs through staff and volunteers (inputs) and measuring success through the number of individuals participating in the programs (outputs). The mission and vision of non-profit organizations are often broad and to assess the organizations’ success by solely measuring the number of participants in a program has been questioned for some time thus leading to a shift towards outcomes measurement process. The outcomes measurement process is a type of evaluation that is focused on measuring how the programs impact the lives of participants lives rather than what the program does for the participants in terms of delivery of activities. More recently, both government and non-government funders have changed their funding models to be outcomes-based and requiring organizations to demonstrate short-term, medium-term or long-term impact of their programs on the participants. The findings of this research study indicate that there is a need for further collaboration and open communication between funders and the non-profit organizations to resolve the tensions between the purpose of outcomes-based funding models and the capacity needed to meet those funding requirements. The study also highlighted the need for different funders to collaborate with one another to support the non-profit organizations in their work on outcomes measurement for measuring short-term, medium-term or long-term impact of their programs. The organizations too need to take leadership on the outcomes-measurement work for their own organizational learning, strategic thinking and planning. While the findings of this study cannot be generalized, they are suggestive and have implications that will be of interest to anyone working in the non-profit sector and not only to funders and leaders of non-profit organizations. | Ph.D. | learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Ahmad, Muhammad Waqar | Bakan, Abigail B||Wane, Njoki N | The Invisible Human: A Reflective Autoethnography about the Lives of Pakistani Transgender People | Sociology and Equity Studies in Education | 2021-06-01 | Since the creation of Pakistan in 1947, transgender people in Pakistan have been isolated and denied substantive rights, due to dominant discourses of marginalization that have served to deny them basic human rights. These include rights to social services such as education and healthcare, in addition to the right to employment. The only profession seen as legitimate for transgender people is prostitution, or sex work. They live at the margins of society, disowned by their families and mocked and ridiculed by the rest of society. They are commonly targets for various forms of abuse at the hands of police and others in society. In 2016, an angry customer viciously attacked a transgender female sex worker, Alisha, shooting her eight times. Alisha later died because she was denied timely medical attention at the hospital. No one was held responsible for her death for three years. In this dissertation, I examine the murder of Alisha as an example of gendered racial violence and the continued colonization of marginalized people, as an entry point to consider how Pakistani transgender people are rendered invisible. This research explores how issues of race, gender and sexual orientation, among other factors, have defined transgender people in Pakistani society. This research is approached methodologically as a reflexive autoethnographic work. I worked with Alisha on a transgender empowerment project when I was Cultural Advisor for the U.S. Consulate General in Lahore, Pakistan. Her murder motivated me to apply to the Doctor of Education (EdD) program, in the Department of Social Justice Education (SJE), Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), at the University of Toronto, with collaborative specializations in Comparative International Development in Education, and Global Affairs with a special focus on South Asia. This dissertation in practice highlights the transformative power of practicum education as a step toward advancing the understanding of Pakistani transgender people. This EdD project is designed to serve as an educational toolkit for North American (Canada and US) educators. It includes two parts: 1) a written narrative that suggests strategies to empower transgender sex workers in Pakistan; and 2) a digital story board about the lives of Pakistani transgender people. I hope Alisha’s story moves you to join me, and to stand up and speak out for transgender people’s rights everywhere. | Ed.D. | healthcare, gender, female, transgender, employment, labor, worker, marginalized, institut, social justice, human rights, violence | 3, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Hill, Jesse Michael | Dewar, Michael | The Latin Past and the Poetry of Catullus | Classics | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation examines the relationship of the Latin poet Catullus to the preceding Latin poetic tradition, particularly to the pre-eminent figure of that tradition, pater Ennius. Classical scholarship has long thought the nature of this relationship settled: in a surge of revolutionary force (so goes the story), Catullus and his poetic peers (the “neoterics”) broke violently away from Ennius and the dominant Ennian tradition, turning instead to the recherché Greek poetry of the Hellenistic period for their inspiration. My study complicates this dominant narrative: Ennius, I argue, had a foundational, positive influence on Catullus; Catullan poetry was evolutionary, not revolutionary at Rome. Chapter 1 sets the stage by redefining neotericism: this was a broad poetic movement that included, not just Catullus and his friends (“the neoteric school”), but a majority of the Latin poets writing c. 90-40 BCE. Neotericism, moreover, was an evolutionary phenomenon, an elaboration of second-century Latin poetry. Chapters 2-4 attend to specific Catullan poems that engage closely and allusively with Ennius. Chapter 2 shows how, in poem 64, Catullus reinvents Roman epic on the model left to him by Ennius. Chapter 3 takes up poem 116, which I read as a programmatic statement of its author’s Ennian-Callimachean poetics. Chapter 4 turns to poems 1 and 68: here I demonstrate how Catullus draws on Ennius qua complex cultural authority in order to defend, question, and think through his own identity as a Transpadane-Roman. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Langille, Joanna | Ripstein, Arthur||Knop, Karen | The Limits of Legality: The Rule of Law Principles Governing the Common Law Public Policy Exception in Private International Law | Law | 2019-06-01 | The public policy exception is a well-established part of common law choice of law doctrine. But to use the exception, judges must identify the forum’s fundamental values that cannot be violated by foreign law. Scholars have argued that it is impossible to provide a general account these values and have criticized the exception for introducing indeterminacy into choice of law doctrine. As result, scholars argue, the exception represents a threat to the rule of law. This standard scholarly critique is rooted in a formal account of the rule of law. But in the common law tradition, there is a well-established alternative theory: under the common law constitutionalist account of the rule of law, judges must do much more than simply ensure that the law is consistent, predictable, and determinate. Judges must also ensure that the law’s content does not violate the fundamental rule of law values of the unwritten ‘common law constitution.’ This project offers a novel common law constitutionalist account of the relationship between the rule of law and the public policy exception. Instead of undermining the rule of law, this account sees the public policy exception as a means through which courts uphold the rule of law. The exception allows courts to ensure that the content of foreign private law selected by the forum’s choice of law rules does not violate the forum’s substantive rule of law values. This account also offers guidance as to which values cannot be violated by foreign law: the rule of law norms of the ‘common law constitution.’ In addition, this account helps make sense of English and Canadian public policy jurisprudence, offering a compelling account of the leading cases and the reasons that judges have used to invoke public policy. Ultimately, common law constitutionalism would not see the public policy exception as a ‘unruly horse,’ but as a necessary aspect of the rule of law; and as a unique doctrine offering important insight into the fundamental values of the common law tradition and the success of common law constitutionalism qua theory of the rule of law. | S.J.D. | rule of law | 16 |
| Keidar, Noga | Silver, Daniel | The Making of Urban Knowledge: Ideas, Cities, Gurus | Sociology | 2021-06-01 | In the face of severe political, economic and environmental crises at the urban level, cities have been seen in recent decades not only as the place where these problems are created, but also as the location where they could be solved. This construction of cities as sites of both crisis and opportunity is related, at least partly, to the work of urban experts, transnational organizations, professional networks, and local agencies taking part in developing and connecting cities with ‘big ideas’ like Resilient Cities, Smart Cities and Creative Cities. To examine the making of such ideas, this dissertation develops the theoretical model of the Urban Knowledge Making Triangle, joining together three different units of analysis - Ideas, Cities, and Agents. The triangle calls to investigate how the ‘same’ idea varies over time and across places, how cities use the idea to depoliticize and re-politicize local struggles, and how human agents connect cities with the idea. To demonstrate the approach, I focus on the Creative City paradigm, which describes the shift that cities took when adjusting their economic industrial base to the information age. It also offers a formula to recover from the urban decline that many cities experienced during post-industrialization. The Creative City long-life cycle and flexible formula which is applicable to cities of different sizes and geography, make its local translations vary extensively. I use fieldwork methods to examine the making of the Creative City in Jerusalem and Toronto and the role of Richard Florida in connecting the two cities with the idea; I also use Structural Topic Modelling to draw the broader contours of arts and culture discourses using a policy corpus of the largest 26 cities in the Anglo-Saxon world. The findings demonstrate the dialectic relationship between the construction of cities as sites of crises and as sites of opportunities. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, globaliz, industrialization, cities, urban, resilien, environmental | 4, 9, 11, 13 |
| Schnabel, Rose | Woodruff, Earl | The Measure of Emotion During an Attention Demanding Task and Mindfulness Biofeedback for Improved Selective Attention | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11-01 | Teenage scholar-athletes are at risk of mental health concerns, including high levels of stress due to the constant demands across academic and athletic domains (Lavallee Wylleman, 2000; Watt Moore, 2001). One must be able to self-regulate to reach optimal levels of attention (Gross, 1998a). Additionally, one must have the ability to deliberately shift into a state of attention for optimal performance in sports and academics (Wilson et al., 2018). Research indicates that practicing mindfulness is beneficial in improved executive functioning, and in well-being (Zanesco et al., 2018, Farb et al. 2015; Kabat‐Zinn, 2003). Biofeedback training is a method of self-regulation of autonomic responses (Moss, 2016). Mindfulness biofeedback (MB) has recently gained attention regarding its benefits (Khazan Moss, 2020). MB improves athletic performance (Perry, 2018); however, the effect of MB on selective attention has yet to be investigated. This study details the effects of MB induction on selective attention scores and psychophysiological changes in electrodermal activity (EDA). Method: 71 high-school scholar- athletes were randomly assigned to play a multiple object (MOT) game with MB (experimental) and without MB (control). EDA recordings of alerting and orienting phases provided an active measure of emotional arousal throughout the MOT phases and a selective attention test was conducted pre and post (Cambridge Brain Science [CBS]). Results: Significant effects of MB were evident through higher selective attention scores. As predicted, EDA decreased during the orienting phase; however, a decrease in EDA variability in the orienting phase of the MOT (Coefficient-of -Variability) had a mediating effect on MB and the CBS test. A 1-month-follow-up survey showed MB was applied by participants to regulate preperformance in sport and academic domains. Conclusion: The experience of (a) conscious awareness (mindfulness) of psychophysiological feedback regulation (Biofeedback-EDA changes) and (b) MB significantly impacted selective attention scores (CBS). The effect of MB on selective attention is mediated by a decrease in the variability of emotional arousal. The study design and results capture the dynamic relationship between cognition and emotion as explained by theory and Gross’ Process Model of Emotion Regulation. Follow-up-questionnaires revealed that students applied MB beyond the experiment in everyday life. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health, mindfulness, invest | 3, 9 |
| Van Nynatten, Alexander | Chang, Belinda SW||Lovejoy, Nathan R | The Molecular Evolution of Rhodopsin in Marine-derived and other Freshwater Fishes | Cell and Systems Biology | 2019-06-01 | Visual system evolution can be influenced by the spectral properties of light available in the environment. Variation in the dim-light specialized visual pigment rhodopsin is thought to result in functional shifts that optimize its sensitivity in relation to ambient spectral environments. Marine and freshwater environments have been shown to be characterized by different spectral properties and might be expected to place the spectral sensitivity of rhodopsin under different selection pressures. In Chapter two, I show that the rate ratio of non- synonymous to synonymous substitutions is significantly elevated in the rhodopsin gene of a South American clade of freshwater anchovies with marine ancestry. This signature of positive selection is not observed in the rhodopsin gene of the marine sister clade or in non-visual genes. In Chapter three I functionally characterize the effects of positively selected substitutions occurring on another independent invasion of freshwater made by ancestrally marine croakers. In vitro spectroscopic assays on ancestrally resurrected rhodopsin pigments reveal a red-shift in peak spectral sensitivity along the transitional branch, consistent with the wavelengths of light illuminating freshwater environments. Kinetics assays reveal that freshwater croaker rhodopsin might also possess more efficient dark adaptation. In Chapter four I use a comparative approach to show that substitutions with similar functional effects occur convergently during marine to freshwater transitions, but only in deeper-dwelling lineages. In Chapter five I investigate the molecular evolution of rhodopsin in Gymnotiformes, a clade of freshwater fishes with an alternative sensory modality specialized for dim-light environments. Rhodopsin is highly conserved in this clade, but bouts of positive selection are observed in association with ecological transitions, indicating that dim-light vision remains an important sensory modality in these freshwater fishes. Altogether, these studies show that shifts in selection pressures and substitutions that alter the functional properties of rhodopsin are frequently observed during ecological transitions into and within freshwater environments, as long as species inhabit depths where the attenuation of light is non-negligible. Furthermore, this thesis expands our understanding of the effects of ecology on visual evolution and its influence on the structural and functional properties of rhodopsin. | Ph.D. | water, invest, transit, marine, conserv, fish, species, ecolog, conserv, species | 6, 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Shrestha, Norzin | Ralph, Martin R||Lovejoy, David A | The Neural Basis of a Circadian Oscillator Underlying Time Memory | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11-01 | Mice anticipate the time of day that important conditions or events are likely to occur based on their previous experiences with those conditions. They can learn to expect positive (rewarding) or negative (aversive) events. The ability to predict the coming of specific events in its environment (time memory) is crucial for its survival. Current evidence has led to three hypotheses: 1) The clock(s) underlying time memory are located in the dopamine target regions, 2) The hippocampus is a site of cells that register the time of day, and 3) Subpopulations of hippocampal cells that are activated during spatial learning are also responsible for time of day learning. If the same cells that are involved in the formation of spatial memories are also oscillators, then the cells most closely involved in context learning should be the ones most readily phase shifted by a learning experience. Therefore we should be able to distinguish cells linked to specific memories by recording the phase of their circadian rhythms. Using qRT-PCR and ISH, I found that several tissues as a whole do not exhibit shifts of their clocks, particularly, the hippocampus. Instead, behavioral conditioning induced a phase shift in the circadian clock protein PERIOD 2 expression, specifically in the shell region of the nucleus accumbens (NAS) and the dorsal striatum (DS). Next, using the Tetracycline Transactivator Controlled Genetic Tagging of Active Neural Circuits (TetTag) system and ICC, my data suggests that only a few cells in the hippocampus participated in the conditioning. The hippocampal cells whose rhythms were set at the time of conditioning may be critical to the expression of craving. In human health, this research will provide a new perspective on the regulation of craving and as such, will contribute to the development of treatments for drug/substance abuse. | Ph.D. | substance abuse, learning | 3, 4 |
| Green, Philippe Benjamin | Wilson, Mark W.B. | The Nucleation, Growth and Surface of PbS Nanocrystals | Chemistry | 2021-11-01 | Despite being studied for the past 40 years, the chemistry and photophysics of colloidal nanocrystals (NCs) remain rich with mysteries. Nonetheless, NCs are now part of commercialized technologies and synthetic and engineering advances continue to facilitate and further this endeavour. In this thesis, I will explore various facets in the synthesis and surface of PbS NCs. In 2003, Margaret A. Hines and Gregory D. Scholes developed a synthetic route to PbS NCs that is nearly ubiquitously employed for the assembly of PbS NC devices. Later in 2006, Ludovico Cademartiri and his colleagues in the group of Geoffrey A. Ozin, reported a new synthetic route to PbS NCs using completely different precursors than Hines Scholes. Since then, both routes have been refined to offer facile size-tuning and yield NC ensembles with extremely narrow size dispersities. However, several questions remained unanswered and differences in the synthesis and surface chemistry of particles made by both routes were apparent, even if infrequently acknowledged explicitly in the literature. In Chapter 2 and 3, I investigate how small PbS NCs can be made with significantly improved size dispersities. Particularly, I show that a metastable cluster is present in the synthesis and can be controlled to give exquisite size control. Next, in Chapter 4, I establish that NCs made through the two synthetic routes mentioned above are structurally different. In particular I identify that an insulating shell is present on NCs made from Cademartiri-type reactions. Finally, I attempt to understand where ligands go on the surface of PbS NCs after a ligand exchange procedure. I show that this depends on the nature of the ligand, with bulky aromatic ligands preferentially positioning on facet edges and resulting in an anisotropic coverage. Finally, while this work answers several questions on the synthesis and surface of PbS NCs, several more challenges remain. In chapter 6, I attempt to give an outlook on how the presented work might influence future research. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Papp, Susan Margaret | Kasekamp, Andres||Wrobel, Piotr | The Politics of Exclusion and Retribution in the Hungarian Film Industry, 1929-1947 | History | 2020-06-01 | This dissertation examines how the interwar and postwar governments in Hungary politicized and shaped the film industry to do their bidding and how filmmakers, actors and actresses reacted to those political pressures. The interwar conservative government of Miklós Horthy set out to mold the film industry to suit its ideals and ideas, while, at the same time, seeking to limit the number of Jews in the professions. This dissertation investigates the resulting conflicted political forces that brought about the creation of the Theatre and Film Arts Chamber. It examines the impact of the chamber, specifically how those working in the film industry were affected by these laws and new measures. The archival files of the postwar certification committees provide significant historical insight into the leadership and antisemitic narrative of the entertainment industry during the interwar era. In particular, these files illuminate the motivations of the individuals leading the Theatre and Film Arts Chamber. The certification committees established to investigate the wartime activities of those involved in the film industry played a significant role in creating a positive postwar identity. In 1945, this identity grew out of the belief that Hungary had been a victim of Nazi aggression. The postwar system of retribution sought to smooth the transition, and to salvage the once thriving film industry. After the Communist Party consolidated its hold on the government in May 1949, the regime recruited and rehabilitated famous Hungarian actors from the interwar era. The alleged crimes of these actors and actresses and their subsequent postwar convictions were no longer an issue of importance. The political trials that unfolded in the late 1940s served the position and power of the new elites more than anything else. By the early 1950s, the Cold War took precedence over retribution following the Second World War and the outcome of these trials seemed irrelevant. This dissertation notably adds to the research and discussion of how to shape, and for what purpose, a nation’s memory of the war and postwar years. This question is still being formed and framed in Hungary today, as it is in many European countries. | Ph.D. | invest, transit, conserv, conserv | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Peterson, Jacqueline Marie | Stren, Richard | The Politics of Funding Urban Infrastructure in Canada and the United States: Implications for Resilience and Sustainability | Political Science | 2021-06-01 | Infrastructure is a core municipal expenditure and an important component of local climate change strategies. There is a general consensus that cities never have enough funding to meet their infrastructure needs. Attention is rarely paid, however, to how cities fund and finance infrastructure, which can vary meaningfully between cities in different jurisdictions. While U.S. cities are highly reliant on issuing voter-approved municipal bonds to finance infrastructure, Canadian cities often depend on transfers from higher levels of government. This dissertation uses a mixed-method comparative approach to investigate how the policies governing cities’ capital revenue sources (which I label “multilevel fiscal institutions”) shape local infrastructure policy processes and climate change outcomes. Using an original dataset of infrastructure investments in four North American cities dating back to 1957 (Calgary, Edmonton, San Antonio and Austin) and drawing on in-depth qualitative interview data from Calgary, AB, and San Antonio, TX, I argue that how cities fund and finance infrastructure is critical to what they build, with important implications for local investments in sustainability and resilience. Multilevel fiscal institutions set the capital revenue options available to cities, which in turn influence accountability channels and power distribution. I find that local policy actors (namely, local bureaucrats) respond to these power and accountability dynamics by shaping policy processes and structuring investment choices in order to advance the projects that are best poised to secure the highest levels of funding. Because different projects are more likely to advance under different capital revenue arrangements, multilevel fiscal institutions have important consequences for infrastructure outcomes and how cities choose to advance their sustainability objectives. These findings highlight the various democratic trade-offs involved in different multilevel fiscal arrangements and push back against the commonly held assumption that more fiscal autonomy is inherently good. While local fiscal autonomy and voter approval requirements can heighten citizen influence and accountability over infrastructure investment processes, they may not be conducive to equity and sustainability over the long-term. I close with policy recommendations and areas for further research. | Ph.D. | equity, citizen, infrastructure, capital, invest, trade, equit, cities, urban, resilien, climate, resilience, resilience, institut, governance, democra | 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Khan, Allysa Zarah | Gerin-Lajoie, Diane | The Politics of Identity and Space: Muslim Female Students' Discourses on their Experiences in Secular High Schools | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2021-11-01 | There is a wealth of existing literature on the importance of student organizations both at the secondary and post-secondary level; however, very little is known about Muslim female youth and their experiences in Muslim student groups in secondary schools. This study focuses on the discourses of adolescent Muslim females and their participation in Muslim student organizations in public high schools in Ontario. The educational experiences of Muslim female students are shaped by a variety of discourses, including Orientalism, secularism, Islamic religious discourses, and discourses on gender and sexuality. Through in-depth interviews with Muslim female high school students and Muslim high school teachers who supervise Muslim student organizations within one of the largest and most culturally and racially diverse school boards in Ontario, I explored the internal dynamics of Muslim student groups and their connection to identity and space. I also examined equity and inclusive education policy documents and religious accommodation policy guidelines in several public school boards in Ontario, in order to better understand the official discourses on religious accommodation. My analysis of participant discourses used the theoretical concepts of Orientalism, outlined by Edward Said, and Third Space by Homi Bhabha and Henri Lefebvre, as well as the notion of hybridity also conceptualized by Homi Bhabha. Student discourses revealed that participation in Muslim student groups provided them with avenues to socially integrate into the larger school community, as well as to develop tools to advocate for religious accommodations. In addition, participants highlighted that Muslim student groups often function as a Third Space within secular schools and have the capacity for transformative change with female leaders at the helm. Finally, teachers who were interviewed pointed out the importance of religious accommodations in the lives of Muslim students as well as the need to develop uniform policies in schools targeting the implementation and monitoring of religious accommodation policies. The lack of understanding of those policies at the school level often translates into a lack of professional development on religious accommodations and an uneven implementation of policies across schools and teachers. | Ph.D. | equity, gender, female, equit | 4, 5, 10 |
| Shanouda, Fady | Yoshida, Karen K | The Politics of Passing: Disabled and Mad Students’ Experiences of Disclosure in Higher Education | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation explores disabled and mad students experiences of disclosure in higher education from a Deleuzian new materialist perspective. This theoretical orientation conceptualized students’ movements through the university as rhizomatic, and included passing, moving into the middle, and coming out. The author argues that these movements create an affective politics within the university that can change and rearrange the university in meaningful ways for individuals with embodied differences. The author organizes the relationship between students and the university using la paperson’s (2017) idea that there are two competing machinic-desires operating within higher education. In this thesis, these desires are defined as eugenic and crip. Eugenic desires operate within the university and construct assemblages with eugenic ends and are operationalized by the disclosure process. Crip desires, on the other hand are a passional understanding of disability and madness as multiplicity (rather than a binary) that can build the university anew. Crip desires are constituted by disabled and mad students and create assemblages that deterritorialize the university. The impact of disclosure was made clear by the 17 disabled and mad participants who shared stories of disclosure’s affective violence (when registering as a “student with a disability,” or disclosing to faculty or staff, and petitioning a grade or a course). The author argues that disclosure produces violence in higher education because it reduces embodied differences to biomedical and psychiatric explanations – often limiting disability/madness from becoming anything other. However, there are other ways that students speak about disability and move in-between identities that allow for a different understanding of disability and madness to emerge. When students come out-crip, they story difference rather than disclose disability, and therefore, create new conditions for how access might be arranged. The author argues that a more complex understanding of students’ movements and actions as rhizomatic reveals that they are engaged in micropolitical work with identity that can create small and slow cracks in the university. In asking participants to imagine a different university, this project engages in a thinking-resistance that works towards actualizing different conditions for learning in higher education. | Ph.D. | disabilit, learning, violence | 3, 4, 16 |
| Glenn, Andrea J | Sievenpiper, John | The Portfolio Diet and Cardiovascular Disease Risk Reduction: Insights from International Prospective Cohort Studies | Nutritional Sciences | 2021-11-01 | The Portfolio Diet significantly lowered low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) and several other cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in randomized controlled trials of patients with hyperlipidemia. However, it is not known if the diet lowers CVD risk in other populations. To examine the long-term health effects of the diet in broader populations, we developed a Portfolio Diet Score (PDS) using a food frequency questionnaire (FFQ). The PDS gives positive scores for foods and nutrients recommended in the diet (plant protein, viscous fibre, nuts, phytosterols, and monounsaturated fatty acids), and reverse scores for foods limited in the diet (those high in saturated fat and dietary cholesterol). This dissertation describes the development of and examines the validity of the PDS, and then evaluates the PDS’ associations with incident CVD outcomes and cardiometabolic risk factors in two prospective cohort studies. In chapter 1, we used data from the Toronto Healthy Diet Study to develop and examine the predictive and concurrent validity of the PDS. We found the PDS from the FFQ was associated with LDL-C in the expected direction. The PDS from the FFQ also had reasonable correlations and good agreement with a PDS determined from a 7-day diet record. In chapter 2, we examined associations of the PDS with incident CVD outcomes in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI). We included ~120,000 postmenopausal women from 1993 through 2017 with a mean follow-up of 15.3 years. In the multivariable-adjusted analysis, the PDS was inversely associated with incident total CVD, coronary heart disease (CHD), and heart failure, but not stroke and atrial fibrillation. In chapter 3, we examined associations of the PDS with several cardiometabolic risk factors in PREDIMED-Plus, a cohort of ~6,000 older adults with metabolic syndrome. Over one year of follow-up, the PDS was inversely associated with markers of glycemic control and adiposity, and triglycerides, but not with LDL-C or other cardiometabolic risk factors. In conclusion, we found reasonable validity of the PDS as determined by an FFQ. The findings suggest that the Portfolio Diet is associated with lower risk of CVD and CHD, and several cardiometabolic risk factors, in different populations. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Little, Christopher | Wardlow, Holly | The Precarity of Men: Youth, Masculinity, and Money in a Papua New Guinean Town | Anthropology | 2016-06-01 | This dissertation is a study of uneducated young men (“youths”) in urban Papua New Guinea (PNG). Seeking to move beyond analyses that focus upon the themes of rupture and alienation caused by socio-economic changes that impinge upon young men’s abilities to mature and leave them “stuck” as youth, I deploy both historical and ethnographic data to examine how young men’s lives have been shaped by, and how they in turn shape their lives in the wake of change. Part I of this dissertation explores how the masculine life course and men’s aspirations were recast as local populations were incorporated into the nation state during the colonial era. In particular, I bring attention to the way in which becoming an educated person and living in town became key distinctions that structure post-colonial society. Part II of this dissertation draws upon 24 months of ethnographic research with men who experience the abjection of being forced out of school and turn to several activities: crime, rugby league football, and street sales. These activities provide men with parallel educational trajectories and the ability to claim a place in the city while aligning themselves with core masculine values. Although these activities appear to be a response to exclusion from formal wage labour opportunities, local views of money prevent such an interpretation. Money, I argue, is viewed as an inalienable object that men use as partible complements of their gendered substance, so stolen money or money from rugby (“easy money”), cannot be held, and is instead rapidly spent to re-enter circulation. Instead, men participate in crime and rugby to cultivate “fame,” that is conceived of as the socio-spatial extension of the self through the circulation of “name” and “face.” Although fame is so attractive to men that they may consciously try to prolong their status as youth as they continue to seek it out, this fame is fleeting, and depends upon forsaking social reproduction. “Street sales,” in contrast, allow men to generate a special kind of wealth (“hard work money”) that they can use for provisioning. Through “fathering,” which is predicated upon the flow of material resources to their children, men pass on their name and face to their children. Through partible personhood men thereby transcend death and achieve enduring fame. Attending to men’s practices illustrates how, while social change has made masculine social maturity increasingly disaggregated, men’s core values and desires remain coherent over time, including the desire to cultivate the body, achieve fame, and reproduce themselves socially within a framework of partible personhood. Similarly, examining young men’s actions illustrates how, while young men’s lives are shaped and constrained by broader social processes, being a youth can also be examined as a socially productive period as well. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, precarity, gender, labour, wage, urban, production, social change | 1, 5, 8, 11, 12, 16 |
| Fleming, Noah | Pitassi, Toniann | The Proof Complexity of Integer Programming | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | Proof complexity provides a promising approach aimed at resolving the P versus NP question by establishing the nonexistence of propositional proof systems which admit short proofs of every tautology. Proof complexity suggests an incremental program of proving lower bounds on the size of proofs in successively stronger proof systems as a means of building towards a resolution to the central question. The complexity of specific proof systems is also deeply connected to the analysis of practical algorithms. A proof system corresponds to a family of efficient algorithms. Thus, lower bounds for a proof system reveals the limitations inherent to the associated algorithms. In this thesis we develop and study proof systems which formalize modern algorithms for integer programming.Our contributions are as follows. A major conjecture in proof complexity is that random k-CNF formulas are hard to prove in every proof system. This conjecture has been confirmed for a number of proof systems [ChvatalS88, SegerlindBI04, AlekhnovichR01, Schoenebeck08]. One notable exception is the Cutting Planes system, which formalizes classical algorithms for integer programming. In this thesis we confirm this conjecture for Cutting Planes. Modern algorithms for integer programming, known as branch-and-cut, improve upon Cutting Planes by combining it with a branch-and-bound procedure. We introduce Stabbing Planes as an elegant proof system which formalizes branch-and-cut algorithms. In doing so, we show that Stabbing Planes can simulate Cutting Planes and surprisingly, that a partial converse exists as well. Using this converse we are able to obtain exponential lower bounds on branch-and-cut, as well as exhibit small Cutting Planes proofs of any systems of linear equations over a prime finite field, generalizing [DadushT20]. One striking feature of these Cutting Planes proofs of linear equations is that their depth far exceeds worst-case. This suggests that these formulas may yield a supercritical size/depth tradeoff for Cutting Planes --- formulas for which short proofs require depth beyond worst-case. We make two contributions towards this. First, we develop a geometric technique for proving depth lower bounds and apply it to a ``semantic'' generalization of Cutting Planes. Second, generalizing [Razborov16], we establish supercritical size/depth tradeoffs for Cutting Planes. | Ph.D. | trade | 10 |
| Willoughby, Patrick Morley | Bruce, Ashley Dr | The Recycling Endosome Protein Rab25 Coordinates Collective Cell Movements in the Zebrafish Surface Epithelium | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11-01 | The surface epithelium of the zebrafish gastrula spreads to completely enclose an underlying yolk cell in a process known as epiboly. Epithelial epiboly is coordinated by oriented cell division and intercalation events, as well as the transmission and modulation of global tissue tensions. Currently, the molecular mechanisms underpinning zebrafish epithelial epiboly movements are unknown. Here I present the findings of a poorly characterized Rab protein, Rab25, during zebrafish epithelial tissue spreading and show that Rab25 is a recycling endosome protein that coordinates collective cell movements through endomembrane trafficking. Spatiotemporal analysis showed rab25a and rab25b transcripts were restricted to the outer epithelium upon epiboly initiation. Rab25 fluorescent fusion proteins distributed near cytokinetic midbodies and cell vertices during cytokinesis and cell intercalations, respectively. In maternal-zygotic Rab25a and Rab25b embryos, cytokinetic abscission and vertex remodelling was impaired, leading to anisotropic shaped multinucleate cells and uncoordinated cell rearrangements. At the tissue scale, global reductions in contractile actomyosin networks were associated with altered viscoelastic responses of the tissue. Taken together the slow cell rearrangements and defective tissue material properties likely contribute to delayed epiboly. I present a model in which Rab25 vesicle transport coordinates timely epiboly movements by regulating local cell behaviours and tissue scale forces via cytokinetic bridge abscission, cell intercalation and junctional actomyosin maintenance. | Ph.D. | trafficking, recycl, fish, trafficking | 5, 16, 12, 14 |
| Marin, Michael | Edwards, Alex | The Relation between Payroll and Income Tax Avoidance | Management | 2021-11-01 | Payroll taxes, such as contributions mandated through the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), represent a considerable expense for businesses and are a large source of government revenue. Considering that employers pay approximately 50% of FICA, payroll taxes have a material impact on firm profitability. Despite the large cost, little is known about the determinants of payroll tax avoidance. By misclassifying employees as independent contractors, a firm can avoid their portion of FICA contributions and a variety of other employee related costs. This paper utilizes publicly available compliance action data from the Wage and Hour Division (i.e., WHD) of the United States Department of Labor (i.e., DOL) to identify employee misclassification and to empirically identify whether firms that avoid income taxes also avoid payroll taxes. This paper documents two main results. First, income tax avoidance, proxied by CashETR, is positively related to the likelihood of a successful discovery of a Fair Labor Standards Act (i.e., FLSA) violation during a Wage and Hour Division audit. Second, firms reduce their income tax avoidance following the discovery of FLSA violations. | Ph.D. | labor, wage, income | 8, 10 |
| Johnsen, Simen Alexander Linge | Bollmann, Jörg | The Relationship Between Calcite Mass and Coccolith Morphology in the Coccolithophore Family Noelaerhabdaceae | Earth Sciences | 2019-06-01 | Anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere are taken up by the ocean, leading to a decrease in pH and CaCO3 saturation state in a process called ocean acidification. Ocean acidification is thought to affect several marine calcifying groups, including the coccolithophores. Field studies on potential changes in coccolithophore calcification due to ocean acidification often rely on the coccolith as a proxy for calcification. Such research, however, is limited by researchers applying different approaches for estimating coccolith mass with little knowledge on how the different approaches relate to each other. Furthermore, several studies rely on flawed methodology to estimate coccolith mass from its interference colours produced under polarized light. In this thesis, a published method for estimating coccolith mass under circular polarized light (the CPR-method) was revised. These revisions addressed several important limitations with the CPR-method by rendering a revised and accurate Michel-Lévy chart, developing a colour management routine applicable to oil objectives, and using polymer films of known and low (~30nm) retardation for calibration to reduce polarization aberrations. After these limitations were addressed, coccoliths could be measured with unprecedented accuracy (±0:007 μm for thickness and ±~15-20% for mass). The CPR-method was then applied to plankton samples collected near the Canary Islands in January and September 1997. Relative abundance, coccolith thickness, and coccolith mass of different morphotypes of the coccolithophore species Emiliania huxleyi were evaluated, and the study revealed that "overcalcified" Type A coccoliths in September were lighter and thinner than "normally calcified" Type A coccoliths in January, and the thickness difference between Type A and Group B coccoliths was furthermore highly variable between samples. This result has important implications for several studies which have used E. huxleyi morphotypes as a proxy for coccolithophore calcification. The CPR-method was also applied to E. huxleyi and Gephyrocapsa oceanica strains cultured under different salinity conditions to evaluate the relationship between coccolith length and thickness. The study found that coccolith length and thickness were not related in E. huxleyi, and caution is therefore needed before using the ks model to estimate coccolith mass from length. | Ph.D. | knowledge, emission, production, anthropogenic, emissions, co2, ocean, marine, species, ocean, species, land | 4, 7, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Pacione, Sandra | Welsh, Timothy | The Relationship between the Processes of Action-related Language Comprehension and Upper- and Lower-limb Movements | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2021-11-01 | Processes of action-language comprehension and actions performed by the limbs have been traditionally regarded as separate entities. However, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that there is a dynamic multi-directional interaction among processes of language, perception, and limb action. One challenge in drawing firm conclusions about these interactions is that results of more recent studies show discrepant results and a lack of replications. The purpose of the research reported in this dissertation was to investigate the hypothesized bidirectional links between action-related language comprehension and both upper- and lower-limb movements. The first three experiments examined the influence of limb-specific language comprehension on limb movement initiation by assessing response times in a semantic decision-making task involving limb-specific nouns and verbs. Limb word-response compatibility effects were found for limb-specific nouns and verbs with both hand and foot effectors. The second set of three experiments evaluated the influence of limb action preparation on the comprehension of action-related language. Participants pre-planned a grasping or a pointing action to words related to object characteristics that were congruent or incongruent with the planned action in a semantic go/no-go task. Preparation of upper-limb pointing movements were found to facilitate the processing of location-related words. The final experiment investigated the influence of limb movement execution on limb-specific language comprehension. Participants completed a dual-task paradigm in which they performed a rhythmic motor task while presented with body-related or non-body-related words. There was no effect of the type of rhythmic task on the processing of hand- and foot-related words and there were no performance trade-offs between RTs and tapping performance. The main conclusions drawn from this set of studies is that there is: 1) evidence for a strong directional influence of limb-specific language comprehension on limb movement; and 2) weak evidence for a directional influence of limb movement systems on language comprehension systems. The findings of this dissertation highlight that there is some evidence for an interconnected network between language comprehension and motor systems, but there seems to be a stronger directional influence in one direction, namely from language comprehension systems to limb actions. | Ph.D. | invest, trade | 9, 10 |
| Yip, Gloria | Dolloff, Lori-Anne | The Resilient Musician: Positive Psychology and String Players Studying at the Graduate Level | Music | 2021-11-01 | The purpose of this dissertation is to explore how theories in positive psychology manifest in the lived experience of graduate-level students majoring in a stringed instrument (violin, viola, cello, or double bass). Research was conducted using narrative inquiry, a qualitative methodology that analyzes the human experience, understood through a participant’s own telling of their lived experience. An exploratory survey was used to identify individuals for the narrative study and three participants (two violinists and a violist) were chosen for the narrative study. Their unique stories revealed a number of common themes, reflecting on the influence of early childhood experiences, teachers, the role of hard work, music performance anxiety (MPA), enjoyment, individuality, and finding balance. Future studies that include a larger participant pool may result in more widespread implications for the community of graduate-level string majors. | D.M.A. | resilien, resilience, resilience | 11, 13, 15 |
| Hammoud, Rola | Anderson, Harvey | The Role of Choline in Gestational Diets in the Programming of Food Intake Regulation and Metabolism in Wistar Rat Offspring | Nutritional Sciences | 2021-11-01 | High (5-fold) folic acid (FA) diets during pregnancy result in obesity in rat offspring, associated with altered DNA-methylation of hypothalamic food-intake neurons. Like FA, the methyl-donor choline modulates fetal brain development, but its long-term programming effects on metabolic phenotype has not been reported. The hypothesis of this research is that choline in the gestational diet, like FA, is a contributor to the in utero programming of hypothalamic food intake regulation, and the later-life metabolic phenotype of male Wistar rat offspring. In study 1, Pregnant Wistar rats were fed an AIN-93G diet with recommended choline (RC, 1 g/kg diet), low choline (LC, 0.5-fold), or high choline (HC, 2.5-fold). Male offspring were weaned to a normal (16%) fat diet for 17 weeks. In study 2, the interaction between the choline content of the gestational diet (RC vs HC) and fat content of the post-weaning diet (normal (16%) vs high (45%)) on metabolic phenotype of male Wistar rats was assessed. In study 3, pregnant Wistar rats were fed an AIN-93G diet with recommended choline and FA (1X, RCRF, control), or high (5X) FA with choline at 0.5X-(LCHF), 1X-(RCHF), or 2.5X-(HCHF). Male offspring were weaned to the control diet for 20 weeks. In study 1, choline content in the gestational diet (below or above recommended intakes) programmed changes in food intake, body weight, energy expenditure and hypothalamic energy-regulatory neuropeptides. In study 2, choline additions reduced long-term body weight-gain and improved the later-life metabolic phenotype of offspring fed a high fat, but not a normal fat, post-weaning diet. In study 3, high gestational choline reduced high FA induced increases in long-term food intake and body weight and modified expression of regulatory genes in the hypothalamus. In studies 1 and 3, both early and later-life brain and plasma 1-carbon metabolites were affected by the choline content in gestational diets. In conclusion, maternal choline contributes to the in utero programming of hypothalamic food intake regulation and the metabolic phenotype of male rat offspring, and its effects are dependent on the composition of the gestational and post-weaning diets. | Ph.D. | nutrition, energy | 2, 7 |
| Drohomyrecky, Paulina Christine | Dunn, Shannon E | The Role of Myeloid Peroxisome Proliferator-activated Receptor Delta in Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis | Immunology | 2021-11-01 | Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor δ (PPAR-δ) is a nuclear receptor that regulates whole body metabolic homeostasis, cell growth and differentiation. Previously our lab reported that mice lacking PPAR-δ (Ppardmut) developed more severe experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE), with more proinflammatory T helper (Th) cells and macrophages. To elucidate the role of peripheral myeloid cells to this disease phenotype, EAE was induced in mice with a myeloid-specific PPAR-δ-deficiency (LysMCre:Ppardfl/fl). These mice developed more severe EAE compared to Ppardfl/fl controls, with an increased accumulation of pathogenic IL-17+CD4+ T cells in the CNS at the peak of EAE. Adoptive transfer studies and radiation bone marrow chimeras pointed to peripheral myeloid cells as the driver of this disease phenotype, substantiated by enhanced splenic myelin-specific Th1 and Th17 responses in LysMCre:Ppardfl/fl mice. Using a CD11b+:Th cell coculture system, CD11b+ cells from LysMCre:Ppardfl/fl mice were found to better at priming myelin-specific Th cells relative to Ppardfl/fl CD11b+ cells. The driver of this effect was predominantly increased expression of IL-12p40 and higher secretion of IL-12p40 homodimer and IL-23 by LysMCre:Ppardfl/fl CD11b+CD11c+ cells. These results thus identified a novel role for PPAR-δ in DCs in the regulation of Th cell priming during EAE. To evaluate the contribution of PPAR-δ in microglia in EAE, we used mice with a microglia-specific PPAR-δ-deficiency (Cx3cr1CreERT2:Ppardfl/fl), where tamoxifen (TAM)-treated mice exhibited microglial specific Ppard knockdown at 30 days. TAM-treated Cx3cr1CreERT2:Ppardfl/fl mice experienced worse EAE relative to TAM-treated Ppardfl/fl controls. Histopathology and magnetic resonance studies revealed increased Iba-1 immunoreactivity, axonal injury, and CNS atrophy in TAM-treated Cx3cr1CreERT2:Ppardfl/fl mice compared to controls. In early EAE, Cx3cr1CreERT2: Ppardfl/fl and Ppardfl/fl groups, Ppard-deficient microglia exhibited a more reactive phenotype as evidenced by a shorter maximum process length, lower expression of microglial genes associated with homeostasis, and higher expression of genes associated with reactive oxygen species generation, phagocytosis and lipid clearance, M2-activation, and inflammation. Our results therefore suggest that PPAR-δ is important in limiting the pro-inflammatory activities of microglia during EAE. Together, these studies expand upon the existing understanding of PPAR-δ in the immune system and are the first studies to evaluate the cell-specific roles of PPAR-δ in EAE. | Ph.D. | species, species | 14, 15 |
| Langevin, Lysa | Yeung, Rae SM | The Role of NCX1 in the Pathogenesis of Kawasaki Disease | Immunology | 2021-11-01 | Kawasaki disease (KD) is an acute multisystem vasculitis that predominantly affects children under the age of five. The pathobiology of KD is characterized by systemic inflammation localizing at the coronary arteries, where inflammatory cells, such as macrophages, infiltrate the arterial wall. The production of pro-inflammatory cytokines through NLRP3 inflammasome activation is thought to be involved in the pathogenesis of KD. Interestingly, many of the SNPs associated with KD susceptibility and CAL formation are in genes involved in calcium mobilization, a trigger of NLRP3 inflammasome activation, including SLC8A1. The protein encoded by SLC8A1, the sodium–calcium exchanger 1 (NCX1), mediates intracellular calcium efflux or extracellular calcium influx in exchange for sodium. In macrophages, canonical NLRP3 inflammasome activation requires two signals: priming and activation. The priming signal can be induced by TLR ligands, resulting in the activation of the NF-kB pathway including the transcriptional upregulation of pro-IL-1B and production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, such as TNF-a. We show that reverse-mode NCX1 activity modulates TLR-induced extracellular calcium influx, phosphorylation of p38 MAPK and NF-kB, upregulation of pro-IL-1B and production of TNF-a in PMA-differentiated THP-1 cells, a model of human macrophages. Additionally, we demonstrate that genes involved in the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway are upregulated in KD patients in the acute phase of disease, in comparison to the convalescent phase. Moreover, NLRP3 inflammasome activation can be induced by ion fluxes including calcium mobilization and mitochondrial dysfunction, resulting in the release of IL-1B and IL-18, and gasdermin D cleavage. We demonstrate that low extracellular sodium concentrations induce the dose-dependent release of IL-1B in primed macrophages. In addition, we show that low extracellular sodium concentration mediates intracellular calcium mobilization through NCX1 and production of mtROS in macrophages. Furthermore, low extracellular sodium concentration mediates the release of IL-1B and IL-18, and gasdermin D cleavage through NLRP3 inflammasome activation and release of IL-1B through mtROS production. Lastly, KD patients with hyponatremia have higher Z-max score in comparison to patients with normal serum sodium concentration. Taken together, these results highlight the role of NCX1 in the pathogenesis of KD. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Teichman, Sintia | Zuniga-Pflucker, Juan Carlos | The Role of Notch Signaling on Recent Thymic Emigrant Cell Maturation and Function in a T Cell Transfer Model of Colitis | Immunology | 2021-11-01 | Recent thymic emigrants (RTE) are a distinct subset of T cells that leave the thymus and enter the periphery where they undergo further post-thymic maturation. RTE cells play a crucial role in neonatal life as well as during adult lymphopenia. As such, it is important that we understand the events that govern their maturation and functionality. In this thesis, I investigated whether there was any role for Notch signaling during RTE and RTE-regulatory T cell (Treg) maturation andfunctionality. In order to address this question, we used an RBPJind mouse model, in which Notch responsiveness and, in effect, T cell development are under the control of Doxycycline, to generate various RTE and RTE-Treg subsets. We then used these newly generated cells in a T cell transfer model of colitis to test their immunocompetence. Here, I show that maturing RTE cells display a significant bias towards IL-17 production, a bias that is completely Notch-dependent and that is lost at the next developmental stage. In addition, I found that extrathymic Notch signaling is one of the pathways that contributes to RTE and RTE-Treg maturation. I also showed that the loss of Notch responsiveness impacts the pathogenicity of developing RTE cells and RTE-Treg regulatory capacity. Furthermore, I demonstrated a time-specific role for Notch signaling in RTE-Treg regulatory ability, with this sensitivity to Notch signals being lost upon full maturation to Treg cells. In summary, this body of work has contributed to our understanding of RTE and RTE-Treg biology and shown a critical role for Notch signaling in mediating their cellular maturation and functionality. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Papadopoulos, Efthymios | Santa Mina, Daniel | The role of physical activity and exercise training in modulating clinical, physiological, and psychological outcomes in men with prostate cancer on active surveillance | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2021-06-01 | Background: High levels of physical activity (PA) are associated with a less aggressive tumour phenotype and a lower risk of prostate cancer (PCa) mortality. This is especially important for men with PCa on active surveillance (AS); a disease management strategy for low-risk disease that defers treatment until the tumour progresses. The aim of this thesis was to assess the role of PA and exercise training in improving clinical, physiological, and psychological outcomes in men on AS for PCa. In study 1, we assessed whether high levels of moderate-to-vigorous PA (MVPA) influence the time to AS discontinuation. Study 2 examined the association between total PA, quality of life (QOL), and emotional well-being (EWB) during AS. In study 3, we conducted a feasibility randomized controlled trial of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) or resistance training (RT) versus usual care (UC). Methods: For Studies 1 and 2, we retrieved longitudinal data from the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre. To examine the influence of PA on AS discontinuation and the associations between PA, QOL, and EWB, we used Cox regression models and generalized estimated equations, respectively. For Study 3, we recruited men with PCa on AS from the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre and randomized them to 8 weeks of HIIT or RT or UC. Participants completed self-report measures, physical fitness assessments, and provided blood samples at baseline and upon completion of the intervention period. Results: In Study 1, high MVPA levels did not predict AS discontinuation for clinical and/or non-clinical reasons. In Study 2, achieving >1000 MET-min/wk was associated with higher QOL and EWB over time relative to | Ph.D. | well-being | 3 |
| Semnani-Azad, Zhila | Hanley, Anthony J | The Role of Soluble CD163, a Marker of Adipose Tissue Macrophage Activation, in the Etiology of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus | Nutritional Sciences | 2021-11-01 | Obesity is the most well-established risk factor for type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), although the underlying pathophysiological mechanisms have yet to be fully described. A growing body of evidence suggests that obesity directly induces chronic subclinical inflammation, which is strongly linked with T2DM risk. The discovery of increased macrophage infiltration in the adipose tissue of obese individuals has offered new insights into the potential importance of adipose tissue as a primary driver of chronic subclinical inflammation. To date, however, few studies have investigated the association of adipose tissue inflammation with the natural history of T2DM in humans. The purpose of this thesis was to examine the association of adipose tissue inflammation, assessed using the novel biomarker soluble CD163 (sCD163), with the longitudinal progression of disorders underlying T2DM, and to identify factors related to the development and progression of adipose tissue inflammation. We conducted a systematic review of the current evidence on the association of sCD163 with T2DM and its underlying disorders. Our analytical assessment used data from a longitudinal cohort of well-characterized adults at-risk for T2DM. Insulin sensitivity and beta-cell function indices were calculated using glucose and insulin measures obtained from 75g oral glucose tolerance tests collected at each clinic examination. sCD163 concentrations were evaluated using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Our systematic review identified sixteen studies, demonstrating a consistent relationship between elevated sCD163 concentrations and insulin resistance, beta-cell dysfunction, and T2DM. Results from our analytical assessments showed that (1) changes in sCD163 concentrations over 6-years were longitudinally associated with impaired insulin sensitivity and beta-cell dysfunction, and with incident dysglycemia; (2) adipose tissue insulin resistance was associated with worsening adipose tissue inflammation as measured by increases in sCD163 and decreases in adiponectin concentrations; and (3) poor diet quality was associated with longitudinal changes in sCD163. Our findings on the association of sCD163 with changes in underlying pathophysiological disorders of T2DM support the concept of adipose tissue macrophage activation as an early abnormality in T2DM. Furthermore, the associations of sCD163 with adipose tissue insulin resistance and diet suggest that this phenomenon is responsive to early modification, setting the stage for future studies. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Alwash, Nawar | Levine, Joel D. | The Role of the Foraging Gene (for) on Social Interaction Networks of Drosophila melanogaster | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11-01 | Social interactions are prevalent in the lives of many animals, including Drosophila melanogaster. D. melanogaster aggregate on fermenting fruit, creating complex social environments within which they display various social behaviours. Deciphering the genetic underpinnings of these social behaviours is a difficult task, and few studies have attempted to address this. Here, I investigate how the foraging gene (for) influences social networks in D. melanogaster. for is a well-established example of a pleiotropic gene that modifies behavioural phenotypes. In fruit flies, there are two naturally occurring alleles known as rover and sitter, that differ in their foraging behaviour. for regulates multiple phenotypes, the best known of these involves larval food-related behaviours. Recent studies suggest that for’s influence extends to social behaviours across a variety of taxa. In my thesis, I report that for plays a role in influencing both behavioural elements of social networks and social network measures. Rover flies are characterized by having greater interaction rates, moving more during the trial, and having higher global efficiency values. While sitter flies spend more time interacting, are more likely to reciprocate an interaction, and create more homogeneous networks in which they display higher clustering coefficient values. My initial findings establish that this natural polymorphism of for influences the behavioural elements and social network measures. Using gene dosage manipulations, I show that differences in behavioural and social network phenotypes are mainly due to differences in the for locus. To address this further, I attempt to investigate the critical period of for expression on behavioural elements and social network measures. I separately knockdown for in the adult stage, as well as from the embryonic until the larval wandering stage. I did not find an effect of these developmental manipulations on behavioural elements and social network measures. These results suggest that the critical period of for expression in relation to behavioural elements and social network phenotypes is likely within the pupal stage, during metamorphosis. I also use promoter-driven increased expression of for and show that the different for promoters may independently regulate different phenotypes within the analysis of social networks. I report that for's influence on social behaviour exhibits plasticity to the environment. I show that even though network measures are resilient to social isolation, food, and sleep deprivation, the behavioural elements of a network are responsive to these stressors. Finally, I examine networks of mixed groups of the rover and sitter flies to shed light on how these strains may interact when they are in the same group. In summary, this thesis characterizes the effects of a specific gene on social networks. My findings emphasize the complexity of for’s influence on Drosophila social behaviour and support the theory of genetic effects on social behaviour. | Ph.D. | invest, resilien, animal, animal | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Zucker, Miriam Lavi | Réaume, Denise | The Role of the State in the Problem of Intra-group Vulnerability: Addressing Polygamy and Forced Marriage Practices in Minority Communities | Law | 2021-06-01 | This thesis examines the intra-group vulnerability of minority women subject to polygamy and forced marriage practices. The thesis focuses on these vulnerabilities in the context of the Bedouin-Arabs in Israel, and explores two questions: 1) should the liberal state address concerns about the oppressive potential of minority cultures’ practices for women? And, 2) if so, what approach should be taken to this end, and how should this approach inform state laws?Critical work discussing liberal multiculturalism has generated different proposals for addressing intra-group vulnerability concerns. But if we attempt to practically implement these proposals, we find that the proposed solutions come down to a binary choice between heavy-handed interventionism and a laissez-faire approach. Looking into actual cases of intra-group vulnerability to critically reflect on this theoretical scholarship reveals that the scholarship suffers from a striking gap in its proposed solutions – it overlooks the state’s role in creating and perpetuating the problem. This oversight can explain the tendency of scholars to fall into this binary. Viewing the state as a bystander restricts these scholars to ‘response strategies,’ either intervening against other community members, or holding back from acting at all. Investigating the vulnerability of Bedouin women to oppressive marriage arrangements highlights how the state could be implicated in this problem on different levels. This investigation illustrates how Israel’s policy of pushing the Bedouin out of their lands has reinforced this vulnerability. It further elucidates how Israel’s legal treatment of these practices has been significant in perpetuating this vulnerability. Finally, it reveals how discriminatory accessibility barriers to public resources, including family courts, welfare assistance, and protection against domestic violence, have made it harder for Bedouin women to resist and break away from oppressive marriage arrangements. This investigation also allows us to see why recognizing the (partial) responsibility of the state for this problem provides the key to escaping the laissez-faire/heavy-handed interventionism binary. Most significantly, it indicates how removing barriers impairing minority women’s access to various public resources can open up paths for these women to leave and resist unfavourable aspects of their community life, without forcing them to exit their community altogether. | S.J.D. | welfare, vulnerability, women, forced marriage, invest, minorit, accessib, land, violence | 1, 5, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16 |
| Boddy, Kirsten C | Brumell, John H | The Salmonella Effector SopD Promotes Plasma Membrane Scission by Inhibiting Rab10 | Medical Science | 2019-11-01 | Salmonella utilizes translocated virulence proteins (termed effectors) to promote host cell invasion. The effector SopD contributes to invasion by promoting scission of the plasma membrane, generating Salmonella-containing vacuoles. SopD is expressed in all Salmonella lineages and plays important roles in animal models of infection, but its host cell targets are unknown. Here we show that SopD can bind to and inhibit the small GTPase Rab10, through a C-terminal GTPase activating protein (GAP) domain. By inhibiting Rab10, SopD promotes scission of plasma membrane invaginations, which form at the base of invasion sites. These studies also identify an unexpected role for Rab10 in regulating deep tubular invaginations of the plasma membrane, through its effectors MICAL-L1 and EHBP1. Together, our study uncovers an important role for Rab10 in regulating plasma membrane dynamics, and identifies the mechanism used by a bacterial pathogen to manipulate this function during infection. | Ph.D. | animal, animal | 14, 15 |
| Uchacz, Tianna Helena | Kavaler, Ethan Matt | The Sensual Body and Artistic Prowess in Netherlandish Painting ca. 1540â 1570 | History of Art | 2016-06-01 | In the middle of the sixteenth century, Netherlandish painters turned their attention toward the sensual nude. The leading contemporaries of Pieter Bruegel, including Frans Floris, Willem Key, Jan Massys, Maerten van Heemskerck, and Michiel Coxcie, favoured subjects that allowed them to elaborate their respective approaches to the ideal body. Artistsâ deliberate attention to the visual and tactile qualities of their painted figures had affective and artistic aims: painters sought to cultivate empathetic responses in their viewers while simultaneously asserting their individual brands. These artists also favoured subjects that presented the sensual nude as a problemâ an object for erotic delectation and one that could raise salient social concerns around gender, love, and coupling. An important feature of the paintings in this study is the way they orchestrate the possibility for contrasting points of view, thus complicating attempts to derive unequivocal interpretations. Indeed, contemporary rederijker drama, public festivity, vernacular literature and poetry, authoritative classical texts, and prints from across Europe suggest the range of issues that might have been projected onto Netherlandish depictions of the nude. While little is known of the patrons of such works, the scale, quality, and erudite subject matter point to a relatively affluent and educated class of individual; we know, for example, that Frans Florisâ s nudes were collected by Antoine Perrenot de Granvelle, a Habsburg official and the Bishop of Arras, and by the wealthy Antwerp financier, Nicholas Jonghelinck. Such patrons were as attracted by the visceral, affective qualities of the sensual body as they were by the opportunities it gave to display their erudition. They also valued how the leading artists adapted the fashionable formal vocabulary of antiquity and post-Raphaelesque figure painting to Netherlandish thematic demands and artistic traditions. By allowing their works to negotiate between the international and the local, Frans Floris and his contemporaries were active participants in a discourse on the sensual nude that had regional relevance and pan-European purchase. This very prominent and prestigious image category must be better integrated into art historical narratives of Netherlandish painting and Renaissance art. | Ph.D. | gender, labor, land | 5, 8, 15 |
| Alboiu, Mihai | Elliott, George A | The Stable Rank of Diagonal ASH Algebras | Mathematics | 2021-06-01 | Building on the work of Lutley in [Lut17b], we study a certain subclass of recursive subhomogeneous algebras, called DSH algebras, in which the pullback maps are all diagonal in a suitable sense. We examine inductive limits of DSH algebras, where each bonding map is itself diagonal in an appropriate way, and show that every simple algebra thus obtained has stable rank one. We are therefore able to show that every simple dynamical crossed product has stable rank one and that the Toms-Winter Conjecture holds for such algebras. We also introduce the class of non-unital DSH algebras and make partial progress towards showing that inductive limits of such algebras with diagonal maps have stable rank one. Moreover, we investigate more intrinsic notions of a diagonal map and matrix unit compatibility and show that in the full matrix algebra setting they agree with their usual (global) counterparts. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Lorteau, Steve | Brunnée, Jutta | The State as Polluter Challenge in Climate Law | Law | 2021-11-01 | It is commonly assumed that private actors cause climate change. This assumption problematizes international environmental law and suggests that the conduct of private actors should be the principal focus of climate law. This thesis challenges the empirical predicate and legal implications of this common assumption. The assumption is empirically wrong because states-controlled polluters are responsible for much of the global greenhouse gas emissions. The assumption is also legally misleading because it obscures a state’s obligations under international climate change law. Acknowledging the state’s direct contributions to climate change and its attendant legal consequences justifies litigation against states and their entities, or ‘state as polluter’ litigation. The trajectory of state as polluter litigation, however, will be shaped by the law of state attribution and the law of state immunity. These jurisdictional hurdles limit the scope —but do not foreclose — the possibility of state as polluter litigation before international and foreign tribunals. | LL.M. | emission, greenhouse, climate, greenhouse gas, environmental, emissions, pollut, pollut | 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Ferraz Duarte, Mariana | Siddiqi, Arjumand | The struggle for urban resources in Sao Paulo, Brazil: How can the housing movement tackle urban health inequities? | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11-01 | The economic, social and health benefits arising from the process of urbanization and globalization have been unevenly distributed within cities, benefiting some social groups to the detriment of others, some neighbourhoods at the expense of others and contributing to the growth of pockets of wealth and poverty characterized by inequitable distribution of income and essential urban health resources. Over the last few decades, there has been an emergence and consolidation of the housing movement in Sao Paulo, Brazil, leading groups of citizens to articulate their struggle for social and housing justice and access to urban land, housing and basic infrastructure for the most marginalized groups. Drawing on critical theory of health inequities and decolonial thought, this dissertation employs a critical ethnography lens to examine how the housing movement in Sao Paulo addresses urban health inequities. In addition, this study aims to examine how members of the housing movement understand urban health inequities and what strategies they employ to address them. It also discusses what insights the housing movement generates to inform public health practice. Data was collected through participant observations of the housing movement’s meetings and events, individual interviews with 19 participants of the movement, a socio-demographic questionnaire, and go-along interviews. The study suggests that the housing movement has constituted itself as a credible participant in the process of resisting uneven urbanization and peripheralization of the urban poor. By combining different types of knowledge, expertise and resources with different actors and institutions, they influence national and local urban and housing policies that benefit socially disadvantaged groups. As a result, I argue that the housing movement is challenging urban health inequities and contributing to creating a healthier and more equitable society. Public health practitioners and the housing movement can work together to influence policies and programs that contribute to addressing the effects of urban inequities on the health of families and individuals living on the margins of unequal cities. | Ph.D. | poverty, public health, health equity, equitable, knowledge, decolonial, equitable, equity, citizen, infrastructure, globaliz, equit, marginalized, income, decolonization, cities, urban, housing, land, institut, social justice | 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 15, 16 |
| Rappon, Tim | Berta, Whitney||Sinha, Samir K | The Sustainment and Sustainability of Quality Improvement Initiatives for the Health Care of Older Adults | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-06-01 | Quality Improvement (QI) is increasingly viewed as the vehicle of choice by health care organizations seeking to respond to the changing health care needs of an aging population while making efficient use of limited resources. However, evidence suggests that 40% to 60% of QI initiatives fail to achieve lasting improvements. Despite the potential waste this statistic represents, we have a limited understanding of factors which promote a QI intervention’s continued use in practice (sustainment) and the maintenance of its benefits (sustainability). Moreover, existing research has largely focused on large academic institutions in urban centres. As such, recommendations derived from these studies may not be appropriate for less-resourced, rural, or remote settings, where adaptations—planned changes to the intervention—may be needed to ensure its survival. The impact of such adaptations on QI sustainment or sustainability has not been studied. This thesis draws from a scoping review and subsequent artificial neural network analysis of empirical studies of the sustainment and sustainability of QI interventions for the health care of older adults to identify contextual, intervention and implementation factors which predict sustainment and sustainability. This model significantly predicted sustainability, but not sustainment. Omission of organization type, intervention target, or reported adaptations resulted in a significant loss of predictive power. To further investigate this result, I conducted a comparative case study to examine how the dynamic interaction between adaptations and organizational context impacts sustainment and sustainability. By comparing 3-year trajectories for elder care QI interventions implemented through participation in a quality improvement collaborative in a 375-bed academic hospital and a 56-bed remote hospital 2500 km away from its nearest referral centre, I found evidence that ongoing adaptations which are responsive to changes in organizational or environmental context (e.g. patient needs, government and local health authority supports) promote sustainment. In addition, adaptations that promote sustainment and are consistent with the core functions of a QI intervention contribute to the sustainability of QI. To close, I offer a new framework informed by organizational learning theory which will help contextualize adaptations’ impact on the people, tasks and/or tools of an intervention and its long-term sustainment and sustainability. | Ph.D. | health care, learning, labor, invest, urban, rural, waste, environmental, institut | 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 16 |
| Moriarity, Robert Joseph | Tsuji, Leonard JS | The Traditional Cree Lifestyle: Assessing the Risks and Benefits of Traditional On-the-Land Activities in a Modern Environment | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2022-03-01 | The Cree First Peoples of subarctic Canada rely on the environment as a source of sustenance and cultural wellness; however, unique health and well-being issues face First Peoples who engage in on-the-land activities in the modern world. Consequently, this dissertation critically assessed the risks and benefits of on-the-land activities for Ontario and Quebec’s James Bay Cree First Peoples. Industrial development in the eastern James Bay region of Quebec was associated with the self-reported worry about pollution of the Cree homelands. Further, the self-reported worry about pollution was associated with behavioural changes in water consumption, that is, increased spring water consumption in the bush and decreased water consumption in the communities, but not with days spent on the land. Additionally, industrial development in the eastern James Bay region and exposure to methylmercury in adults from medium and large-sized predatory fish consumption was associated with increased blood-mercury concentrations. Land-use development, classified as high-intensity, yielded significant spatial cluster “hot spot” clustering of fish tissue methylmercury and a higher probability of harvesting a fish with increased methylmercury concentrations. In light of these changes to the land in the eastern James Bay region, the health measures of Cree First Peoples eligible for participation in the Income Security Program – the longest-running on-the-land program in the world – were assessed. Cree First Peoples eligible to participate had increased omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid levels in the blood from fish consumption, but blood-mercury concentrations were similar to the comparison group of those ineligible to participate. Lastly, black carbon mass concentrations from wood smoke resulting from traditional cultural activities in the western James Bay region of Ontario were periodically elevated in the hunting cabins, and especially the smoking tents at baseline. Black carbon mass concentrations in the hunting cabins were negligible after a wood smoke mitigation intervention using propane-fueled sources of heat. The results of this dissertation have been, and will be, used to inform on-the-land activities and programs to maximize benefits and minimize risks for the Cree First Peoples in James Bay. Les Premières Nations Cries du Canada subarctique dépendent de la terre et de l'eau comme source de subsistance et de bien-être culturel. Cependant, les Premières Nations qui pratiquent des activités traditionnelles dans le monde moderne sont confrontées à des problèmes de santé et de bien-être uniques. Par conséquent, cette thèse a évalué de façon critique les risques et les avantages des activités traditionnelles pour les Premières Nations Cries de la Baie-James de l'Ontario et du Québec. Le développement industriel dans l'est de la région de la Baie-James au Québec a été associé à l'inquiétude auto-déclarée concernant la pollution des terres des Cris. De plus, l'inquiétude auto-déclarée concernant la pollution était associée à des changements de comportement en matière de consommation d'eau, c’est-à-dire à une augmentation de la consommation d'eau de source dans la brousse et à une diminution de la consommation d'eau dans les communautés, mais pas aux jours passés sur la terre. De plus, le développement industriel dans la région de l'est de la Baie-James et l'exposition au méthylmercure des adultes par la consommation de poissons prédateurs de taille moyenne et grande étaient associés à une augmentation des concentrations de mercure dans le sang. Le développement du territoire, classé comme étant de haute intensité, a donné des | Ph.D. | well-being, pollution, water, hydroelectric, indigenous, income, consum, pollut, fish, pollut, land, indigenous | 3, 6, 7, 10, 16, 12, 14, 15 |
| Chen, Sujun | He, Housheng H | The Transcriptomic Heterogeneity in Prostate Cancer | Medical Biophysics | 2021-06-01 | Prostate cancer affects millions of people worldwide. The current risk stratification and disease management strategies are not sufficient. Understanding the molecular basis of prostate cancer can help address these clinical needs. While the genome is extensively investigated, the transcriptome of prostate cancer is much less well characterized. I have worked to unravel the transcriptomic heterogeneity in prostate cancer. I investigated the transcriptome of primary tumors with ultra-deep total RNA-seq and identified widespread RNA circularization in prostate cancer for the first time: the average tumor expressed 7,232 distinct circular transcripts and circRNAs showed a highly tissue specific expression pattern. The parental genes of circRNAs showed distinct characteristics and the circular transcriptome harbors unique prognostic information. The degree of circRNA production is directly correlated to disease progression in multiple patient cohorts. Loss of function screening identified 11.3% of highly abundant circRNAs as essential for cell proliferation; for ~90% of these, their parental linear transcripts were not essential. Individual circRNAs can have distinct functions, with circCSNK1G3 promoting cell growth partially through regulating microRNA miR-181. In two side projects, I interrogated the tumor transcriptome from two different aspects: First, I tackled the intra-tumoral heterogeneity at single cell resolution and identified multiple transcriptomic reprogramming associated with tumor progression in primary tumors (Appendix I). Second, I worked to outline the transcriptional regulatory mechanism of the histone demethylation protein LSD1 on the pioneer transcription factor FOXA1 in prostate cancer (Appendix II). Together, my work reiterated the importance of transcriptomic study in prostate cancer: it provided novel insights into prostate cancer biology, offered multiple opportunities for future investigation and pinpointed actionable targets for advanced tumors. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Boldt, Irene Joan | Peter, Elizabeth | The Well-Being of Community-Residing Not Criminally Responsible Patients: Recognizing Ethical Dimensions | Nursing Science | 2021-11-01 | In Canada, community-residing not criminally responsible (CR-NCR) patients are provided treatment to reduce their public safety risk and assist their reintegration into society; however, it is unclear whether the social circumstances of these patients sufficiently support this rehabilitative process. Previous research findings suggest deficiencies exist in CR-NCR patients’ well-being, but further work is required to better understand how their circumstances are socially arranged and to examine the pertinent ethical dimensions.Using the theoretical work of Powers and Faden (2006; 2019), the empirical aim of this critical ethnography was to explore the lives of CR-NCR patients for the purposes of developing an understanding of the interplay between the social factors present in the community settings in which they live and their well-being. The corresponding normative aims include examining theoretically the adequacy of patients’ socially arranged well-being, elucidating the justness of their circumstances, and considering the implications of this on their societal reintegration. A total of 23 go-along interviews with CR-NCR patients (N=10) were conducted. These data, along with field notes and relevant documents, were analyzed using a multi-stage, iterative process of deconstructing and reconstructing meaning, with ethical evaluations supported by the practice of reflective equilibrium. The findings reveal that CR-NCR participants were situated unfairly in circumstances that almost invariably resulted in deficiencies in their well-being and undermined their efforts to reintegrate. Recommended remedial changes include enhancing the respectful, patient-centred, and recovery-oriented aspects of care. Further studies are needed to more comprehensively understand the impact of social arrangements on the lives of CR-NCR patients and to examine in greater detail the consequences these arrangements have on the rehabilitative aims of the forensic mental health system. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health, public health, social justice | 3, 16 |
| Stasiulis, Elaine Karen | Boydell, Katherine M | The Work of Getting Better: An Institutional Ethnography of an Early Psychosis Intervention Clinic | Medical Science | 2022-03-01 | The imperative to provide recovery-oriented services in mental healthcare settings has become foundational to mental health policies world-wide. However, in the context of psychiatric services, historically characterized as paternalistic and coercive, the translation of recovery policy into practice is complex, challenging and unevenly taken up. Early intervention services for young people experiencing a first episode of psychosis adhere to a recovery-oriented approach that aims to be client-centred, flexible and collaborative, empowering young people with the right and responsibility to be engaged in shared decision-making about their treatment options, which involve low-dose medication and psychosocial services. However, how these recovery practices unfold in young peoples’ interactions in early psychosis intervention (EPI) programs is not clear. In this study, I employ an institutional ethnographic approach to explore how the social organization of an EPI clinic coordinates young people’s everyday work of recovery. Methods included over 110 hours of ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews with 27 participants (18 clinic staff, four young people and five family members) and textual analysis of clinic documents (e.g., case files, administrative forms, policy reports). I provide an ethnographic description of “what actually happens” in young people’s interactions with service providers of an EPI clinic situated in Ontario, Canada. Findings detail how institutional processes shaped by the medication adherence discourse produced a disjuncture between service providers intent to provide recovery-principled care and young people’s experiences of medication uptake via institutional relations of informal coercion. In a related disjuncture of conflicting directives and objectives that govern the clinic, this analysis also outlines how the clinic manager’s and staff’s resistance to hospital rulings that impeded EPI policy principles were part of the extended sequence of activities that produced trust. These findings have important implications for shifts at the system level in terms of medication management and an emphasis from risk management and quality governance to an organizing framework based on trust. | Ph.D. | mental health, healthcare, labor, institut, governance | 3, 8, 16 |
| Sondarjee, Maika | Adler, Emanuel | The World Bank and Inclusive Policymaking Practices [1980-2014]. A Theory of Change and Stability Through Collective Learning | Political Science | 2020-06-01 | This dissertation presents a theory of change and stability of the World Bank based on collective learning processes and communities of practice. It is broadly divided into two parts. First, I aim to demonstrate how the Bank changed its policymaking practices between 1980 and 2014 in terms of [1] consultation with NGOs, [2] participation of citizens in design and implementation of projects, and [3] ownership by borrowing governments. This change, I argue, is due to three processes of collective learning: the interactions at the boundaries of communities of practice; and the constant contestation of practices. In the second part of the dissertation, I argue that in the end, this evolution of practice reinforced the Bank technocratic and neoliberal political rationality, thus promoting overall stability in its modus operandi. Building on French philosophers Pierre Dardot and Christian Laval, I seek to explain how change in an international organization (even if meaningful in many ways) can promote stability in its employees’ political rationality. Methodologically, this dissertation is based on a historical process-tracing of the period 1980-2014, using 41 first-hand interpretive interviews with World Bank employees and officials, 80 open source in-depth interviews with senior Bank managers, as well as an archive analysis. | Ph.D. | learning, citizen | 4 |
| Dimech, Stephanie Marie | Portelli, John P | Then and Now, Knowing and Leading: The Lived Experience of Ethnicity and its Implications for College Leadership | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2019-06-01 | In my research, I set out to ask if lived experiences related to ethnicity shapes and informed college leaders. From the findings, I have concluded that lived experiences of ethnicity do shape and inform college leaders. This was a heuristic exploration that allowed participants to find, discover, and understand the meaning in their lived experiences. I used a heuristic, qualitative research approach with semistructured interviews to question and learn from 10 participants during two interviews over a 1–3-month period. Participants were Maltese, Italian, Portuguese, or a combination, and were leaders in colleges in Ontario. For the purposes of this study, these college leaders were administrators in the positions of Associate Dean/Chair, Dean/Director, manager, and/or senior administration in Ontario. The experience of growing up ethnic, immigrant, and marginal, was juxtaposed to these participants’ experiences of whiteness, being educated, and privileged. Participant histories of marginality and difference were largely dismissed by others against their current positions of status and power. Implications of historical and current lived experiences of marginality on leadership practice were a central focus. The exploration of how participants negotiated, mediated, and reconciled past marginality with current privilege and how this informed their leadership practice was a core tenet of this work. I pursued this research and offer it not to right the wrongs for participants, but rather to inform leadership practice in ways that encourage white stories of marginality to be told; to disarticulate and rearticulate rules and systems that oppress and confine; and to continue to reimagine that whiteness is not sameness. The insights assembled in these findings may be of interest and informative to other scholars who work towards equity and inclusion. | Ph.D. | equity, equit, privileged | 4, 10 |
| Zaknic-Catovic, Ana | Gough, William A | Theoretical Considerations of High-frequency Air Temperature Variations and Their Application to the Identification of Physical Heterogeneities in Canadian Temperature Time Series | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2020-11-01 | Theoretical considerations of high-frequency air temperature variations primarily address the representativeness of diurnal temperature extrema in climatological analysis and application and ask the questions related to extrema characterization, causes of systematic temperature biases, and presence of physically based heterogeneities in Canadian temperature time series. The main objective of this thesis is to lay the theoretical foundation for the study of physical heterogeneities in air temperature samples and to offer a practical algorithmic solution for the separation of temperature time series into the radiative and advective temperature components. The initial research question was, Is diurnal air temperature variation accurately represented by the average of daily temperature extrema, and what are the implications of using such averages in the estimation of temperature-related quantities? The answers led to more questions: Can observing windows bias air temperature observations, and which observing window is the most suitable for identification of diurnal mathematical extrema of the temperature-time function? What can improve the representation of diurnal temperature variation? The final question, and a confluence of all previous ones, was, Is high-frequency air temperature sample from northern midlatitudes physically heterogeneous, and if it is, what is the relationship between its components? The results indicate that: (i) Modification of the degree-day formula significantly improves the prediction accuracy of temperature-related quantities. (ii) An improved climatological observing window identifies correctly radiatively driven diurnal minima and remedies the “cold bias” in Canadian temperature observations. (iii) The critical element to an improved representation of diurnal air temperature variation is diurnal extrema timing. (iv) Separation of Canadian air temperature time series into physically distinct populations yields homogeneous radiative and advective air temperature components. The findings suggest that inattention to the physical make up of the air temperature sample can potentially lead to a significant underestimation of the radiatively driven air temperature signal. Finally, the information on the position of diurnal temperature extrema is a key to a plethora of climatological applications, few of which are the main subjects of this thesis. | Ph.D. | wind | 7 |
| Haire, Catherine Margaret | Thaut, Michael H | Therapeutic Instrumental Music Training and Sensory-enhanced Motor Imagery in Chronic Post-stroke Upper-extremity Rehabilitation: A Randomized Controlled Trial | Music | 2021-06-01 | Objectives: To investigate the effectiveness of Therapeutic Instrumental Music Performance (TIMP) training, with or without motor imagery, in upper-extremity rehabilitation for individuals with chronic, post-stroke hemiparesis. Secondary objectives investigate effects of interventions on cognition and affect. Methods: Two baseline assessments, a minimum of one week apart; one final assessment. Nine interventions (3x/wk for 3 wks), facilitated by a qualified Neurologic Music Therapist. Thirty participants were randomized to one of three groups: 45 minutes of active TIMP; 30 minutes of TIMP followed by 15 minutes of metronome-cued motor imagery (TIMP+cMI); 30 minutes of TIMP followed by 15 minutes of motor imagery without cues (TIMP+MI). A selection of acoustic and electronic instruments was used. Results: Thirty participants completed the protocol, ten per arm [14 women; mean age= 55.9; mean time post-stroke= 66.9 months]. Pooled group baseline measures did not significantly differ. There were significant improvements from pre-test 2 to post-test for all groups on the Fugl-Meyer-Upper Extremity (FM-UE) and the Wolf Motor Function Test-Functional Ability Scale (WMFT-FAS), and for TIMP and TIMP+MI on the Motor Activity Log (MAL)-Amount of Use Scale. Comparing percent change differences between groups, TIMP (mean rank = 21.05) scored significantly higher than TIMP+cMI (mean rank = 11.00, p = .032) on the FM-UE. There were no significant percentage change differences between TIMP and TIMP+MI. The TIMP+MI group showed a significant change on the Trail Making Test (TMT)–Part B. The TIMP group showed a significant increase on the Multiple Affect Adjective Checklist (MAACL) Sensation Seeking scale and the Valence and Dominance portions of the Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM); TIMP+cMI showed respective increases and decreases in positive and negative affect on the MAACL, as well as an increase in Valence, Dominance, and Arousal portions of the SAM. There was no statistically significant association between cognitive and affective measures. Conclusions: Implementation of TIMP-based techniques led to significant improvements in paretic arm control. TIMP and TIMP+MI showed greater benefits than TIMP+cMI, suggesting that synchronizing internal and external cues during cMI may pose additional sensory integration challenges. TIMP+MI appeared to increase mental flexibility, while active TIMP interventions appeared to enhance positive affect. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials NCT03246217 | Ph.D. | women, invest, metro | 5, 9, 11 |
| Parker, Nadine | Paus, Tomas | Thickness of the Cerebral Cortex and Stress: A Multiscale Analysis | Medical Science | 2021-06-01 | The intricate relationship between stress and the brain varies spatially, across brain regions, and temporally, across the lifespan. It is hypothesized that stress, spanning from the molecular level to environmental level, will be related to cortical thickness and its underlying neurobiology. The research described in this thesis focuses on the neurobiology of cortical thickness and the potential relationship with psychiatric disorders, expression of stress-hormone receptor genes, and potential stress exposure from the socioeconomic environment. The first study investigated what neurobiological features contribute to the variation in cortical thinning during maturation, and how those features may be implicated in psychopathology. Here, dendritic- and myelin-related gene expression both contributed to regional variation in cortical thickness during development, and were also enriched for genes associated with several psychiatric disorders. For the next study, regional variations in expression of the cortisol binding glucocorticoid and mineralocorticoid receptor genes (NR3C1 and NR3C2, respectively) were associated with cortical thickness across the lifespan. The association betweenthe profiles of gene expression and cortical thickness increased rapidly in strength during childhood and adolescence, plateaued in midlife, and decreased during late life. The final study investigated the relationship between cortical thickness and income inequality (in neighborhoods); it used expression of NR3C1 and androgen receptor (AR) in the cerebral cortex to aid interpretation of this relationship. Females, from low-income families living in neighbourhoods with high income-inequality had greater age-related reductions in cortical thickness when compared with females of differing economic conditions. The same group of females displayed a stronger negative association between cortical thinning and both NR3C1 and AR gene expression when compared with other low-income females. This body of research demonstrates how stress, spanning from the molecular level to environmental level, is related to cortical thickness. Overall, this contributes to the understanding of how stressors may contribute to spatial and temporal variations in brain structure, and contribute to the emergence of psychiatric disorders. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, low-income, female, invest, inequality, equalit, income, environmental | 1, 5, 9, 10, 13 |
| Indacochea, Daniel | Siow, Aloysius||Eli, Shari | Three Essays in Labour Economics and Applied Econometrics | Economics | 2022-03-01 | The dissertation is comprised of three chapters. Chapter 1 investigates the marital behaviour of veterans.I first examine the extent to which military service makes men more marriageable using the NLSY97. I present evidence that non-college blacks enjoy the greatest return to military service in both the labour and marriage market. Second, to explain the relatively high intermarriage rates among veterans, I apply a local log odds framework to Census data to examine the social exchange hypothesis. Consistent with this hypothesis, I find both white and black women demand compensation to intermarry. Third, I present evidence in favour of the contact hypothesis. Chapter 2 evaluates the effects of racial integration during the Korean War (1950-1953). First, I evaluate whether the Army achieved its goal of improving efficiency as measured by the survival rates of wounded soldiers. Using casualty data, I develop a novel wartime integration measure to quantify exogenous changes in racial integration over time and across regiments. Based on a two-way fixed effects model, I find that a one standard deviation increase in integration improved overall casualty survival rates by 3%. Second, I explore the effects of wartime racial integration on the prejudicial attitudes of veterans after the war. To do so, I link individual soldiers to post-war social security and cemetery data using the expectation maximization algorithm. With these linked samples, I show that a one standard deviation increase in wartime racial integration caused white veterans to live in more racially diverse neighborhoods and marry spouses with less distinctively white names. Chapter 3 addresses the misuse of out-of-sample predictive performance tests for model selection. I compare in-sample alternatives for non-nested hypothesis testing of two possibly misspecified models developed by Vuong (1989), and compare those to the out-of-sample tests developed by Clark and McCracken (2014). Using Monte Carlo simulations, I demonstrate that the out-of-sample procedure indeed exhibits markedly worse statistical size and power. I then reproduce an applied example on GDP growth where the conclusions are found to be sensitive to the choice of out-of-sample versus full sample procedure. | Ph.D. | women, labour, invest, social security, judic | 5, 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Jo, Chanik | Elkamhi, Redouane | THREE ESSAYS ON CONSUMPTION RISK AND ASSET PRICING | Management | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation contains three essays on consumption risk and asset pricing. The first essay, based on joint work with Redouane Elkamhi, develops a dynamic equilibrium consumption-based model where heterogeneous investors endogenously choose to enter/exit the stock market. Our study characterizes the equilibrium and presents a conditional consumption-CAPM. The model implies small changes in the composition of stockholders, which generate a strongly countercyclical stockholders’ amount of consumption risk. The model provides a new perspective on the main drivers of asset dynamics. It is the procyclical consumption risk-sharing implied by changes in stockholders' composition that contributes to the dynamics of risk premium, excess volatility, and price-dividend ratio. The second essay, based on joint work with Redouane Elkamhi, evaluates the performance of the conditional consumption-CAPM with stockholders' consumption in explaining equity returns. At the market level, the study finds that stockholders' consumption produces theoretically reasonable risk aversion ranging from 10 to 26 as well as strong long-term forecasting performance with promising 38% in-sample and 28% out-of-sample R^2 for the three-year horizon. The study provides explanations for why our test reverses the findings in the literature: (i) The amount of stockholders' consumption risk varies in the opposite direction to that of aggregate consumption, but in the same direction with the equity premium. (ii) Joint dynamics of the price and amount of risk in testing the consumption-CAPM substantially improves the fit to the data. The third essay, based on joint work with Redouane Elkamhi and Yoshio Nozawa, studies the implication of the long-run consumption risk model for the cross-section of corporate bond returns. The study finds that a one-factor model based on long-run consumption growth explains the risk premiums on corporate bond portfolios sorted on credit rating, credit spreads, downside risk, idiosyncratic volatility, long-term reversals, maturity, and the betas with respect to shocks to financial intermediary's capital. The estimated risk-aversion coefficient is lower when the consumption growth of wealthy households over a longer horizon is used as a risk factor, and a model with a 20-quarter horizon yields a risk-aversion coefficient of 15. | Ph.D. | equity, capital, invest, equit, consum | 4, 9, 10, 12 |
| Sigurdson, Kristjan | Agrawal, Ajay | Three Essays on the Impact of Inducement Prizes on Innovation | Management | 2021-11-01 | Innovation prizes are an increasingly popular tool used by policy makers, firms, and non-governmental organizations to induce innovation. This is surprising given the paucity of systematic research to justify their use and empirical evidence of their impact. In this dissertation, I explore the relationship between inducement prizes and innovation and shed light on the impact of prizes on the rate and direction of innovation. In the first study, I explore whether inducement prizes increase the relative returns to research collaboration at the level of the individual researcher. I investigate how researchers’ participation in the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge affects rates of post-prize research collaboration. Findings suggest that prize participation reduces the costs of future collaboration by incentivizing researchers to learn how to work on complex real-world problems requiring multiple domains of expertise. Increases in collaboration occur on the extensive margin (more unique coauthors) and intensive margin (more papers with existing coauthors) and persist for years after the prize, suggesting that the costs of cross-domain collaboration are fixed rather than variable. In the second study, I examine how inducement prizes influence the discovery of scientific breakthroughs. Focusing on the field of robotics research, I explore the effects of the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge on the post-prize salience of a branch of robotics research used heavily by prize-participant teams compared to a control group of contemporaneous research in the same field but unrelated to the prize. I find that prize-relevant research experiences a disproportionate increase in forward citations after the conclusion of the prize and that prize participants’ use of a specific breakthrough technology known as the Kalman filter plays a key role driving the results. Findings suggest that in research fields where prizes provide objective benchmarks for the performance of competing approaches, they may influence the direction of research by resolving uncertainty and enabling the discovery of breakthrough ideas. In the final study, I examine the effects of multiple dimensions of team experience on performance in an annual aerospace engineering competition organized by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Findings suggest that experienced team leaders are most strongly related to performance and that experience at the leader and team member levels may be partial substitutes. Results also highlight that experience affects performance differently during the design phase compared to the execution phase of the competition. | Ph.D. | knowledge, labor, invest, production, institut | 4, 8, 9, 12, 16 |
| Sariri Khayatzadeh, Amir | Agrawal, Ajay K | Three Essays on the Role of Information in the Development of Early-stage Startups | Management | 2021-11-01 | Entrepreneurs bring novel ideas to market, ideas that are the engine of economic growth. In the early stages of firm development, however, entrepreneurs face significant uncertainty with respect to both the quality of ideas and the path to commercializing them. Whereas scholars have extensively studied the nature of risky ideas, the uncertain path to firm development has received little attention. The three chapters of this dissertation explore three ways in which information can reduce this uncertainty and increase the probability of entrepreneurial success. In the first chapter, I explore the differences in the types of information provided by angel investors and venture capitalists, two major suppliers of risk capital to early-stage startups. I also examine how these different information types are related to investors' prior experience. I find that angels are more likely than venture capitalists to provide information on entrepreneurial experiments that test important product and market hypotheses. On the other hand, venture capitalists are more likely to provide information on market sizing and business planning. Evidence suggests that angel investors' higher operating experience gives them a skill advantage over venture capitalists in designing and running experiments. In the second chapter, Ajay Agrawal and I report evidence that the impact of information from mentors is not uniform across firms, suggesting that some entrepreneurs absorb information from mentors more than others. I characterize these as high versus low learners and show that information from mentors on task prioritization has a much greater effect on high learners. In the third chapter, Kevin Bryan, Mitchell Hoffman, and I examine the effect of quality signals in the context of startup recruiting. Human capital is one of the most important determinants of firm performance. However, early-stage startups face significant difficulty in attracting job applicants. In a Randomized Controlled Trial, we find that workers' access to signals about the quality of firms' technology and business models substantially affect how they rank startups, and hence the ones they apply to. We also find that workers' beliefs about startups' growth potential are strongly influenced by information about the quality of the firm's core technology and business model. | Ph.D. | economic growth, worker, entrepreneur, capital, invest | 8, 9 |
| Abou-Seido, Rami Maher | Deb, Rahul | Three Papers in Game Theory and Organizational Economics | Economics | 2022-03-01 | This thesis includes three chapters. The common theme among the chapters is the application of game theory to gain insights in organizational economics. In Chapter 1, titled "Customizability in Negotiations", I propose a model where the buyer and seller can trade a customizable product where some attributes are optional and can be removed. The buyer privately knows his type. The buyer and seller play a one shot bargaining game where the player chosen can make a menu of offers. I show that as customizability increases it becomes easier for the seller to screen the buyer which increases the probability of agreement. Lastly I show that customizability will always benefit the seller, however it can make the buyer worse off. In Chapter 2, titled "Cheap Talk in Win-Win Negotiations", I propose a model where the buyer and seller can trade a customizable product just like in Chapter 1. In this Chapter though, I make several key changes. All attributes can now be kept or removed. The buyer can report his privately known type to the seller at the beginning of the game and it is the seller's responsibility to design the product. I show that in a one-shot offer game the buyer will always disclose truthfully. I then extend these results to the alternating offer framework. This suggests a mechanism for why credible talk can exist in a bargaining game. In Chapter 3, titled "Disclosure in Agency Problems", I propose a two sided moral hazard model where on the agent's side is a traditional unobservable effort problem while on the principal's side is a disclosure problem. The principal might have private information about the potential output that he can disclose to an agent. His disclosure decision is not contractible but if he discloses, the information is verifiable. I show that in such an environment, the principal will not disclose private information that reflects the potential of a low outcome. I then show that if the disclosure decision is contractible, the principal will write a contract that allows him to commit to full-disclosure. | Ph.D. | trade | 10 |
| Lu, Tianshu | Baron, Opher OB||Krass, Dmitry DK | Three Priority Queuing Models Motivated by Healthcare Management | Management | 2021-11-01 | In this thesis, we study three priority queueing models in healthcare management. In the first chapter, we analyze the impact of incentive misalignment between ED and physicians. We analyze two scheduling rules: physician self-schedule and centralized schedule. For the first scheduling rule, we show, using Markov decision process, that the physician's optimal policy has a time-dependent pattern. More specifically, near the beginning of the shift, the physician is more willing to see new patients, while near the end of the shift, the physician is more willing to see reentrant patients. Using a fluid model, we demonstrate that the time-dependent behaviour increases the variance of the system, and thus raises the 90th percentile of time to physician initial assessment (TPIA). For the second scheduling rule, we show, using the fluid model, that the centralized scheduling rule decreases the 90th percentile of TPIA. In the second chapter, we analyze the practice of capacity rationing under the setting of a non-preemptive priority queueing model with c servers. In the model, an arriving low priority customer enters service without waiting only when the number of idle servers exceeds the capacity rationing level. When the service rates for high and low priority customers are equal, we demonstrate, using diffusion approximation, that the non-degenerative rationing level is at most O(√c). When the service rates for two classes are different, we develop an algorithm, using queueing and Markov chain decomposition method, that calculates the performance measures of interest. In the third chapter, we study an M/G/1 preemptive priority queue with transition delays, which happen when high priority customers preempt low priority customers. Recent literature empirically shows the existence of transition delay. We build a queueing model to incorporate the transition delay into performance analysis. For queueing systems with two priority classes, we find the analytical solution of the expected waiting time of both classes. For systems with more than two priority classes, we summarize our preliminary results, and discuss the difficulty of extending the result of the two class model to multiple classes. | Ph.D. | healthcare, transit | 3, 11 |
| Baker, Alexander Edgar Gilbert | Shoichet, Molly S | Three-dimensional Hyaluronan-based Hydrogels Designed for Breast Cancer Spheroid Formation | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2019-06-01 | In vitro culture of cancer cells is traditionally performed with two-dimensional (2D) culture, which fails to model the in vivo tumour cell phenotype and microenvironment. Hyaluronan (HA) is upregulated in breast cancer stroma and thus an excellent starting material in which to culture breast cancer cells; however, HA itself is a viscous liquid. To create a 3D gel for the prolonged culture of breast cancer cells we invented a crosslinked hyaluronan hydrogel comprised of HA-aldehyde and HA-ketone crosslinked with poly(ethylene glycol)-oxyamine. In designing this hydrogel, we considered hydrogel stability, transparency, and mechanical and chemical tunability. These HA-oxime crosslinked gels enabled the long-term culture of breast cancer spheroids (CS). First, hydrogel stiffness was decoupled from the immobilization of cell-adhesive peptides using orthogonal oxime and Diels-Alder click chemistry. Breast CS formation on bifunctional HA hydrogels is dependent on hydrogel stiffness and immobilized peptide. Breast cancer cells treated with the chemotherapeutic doxorubicin were less sensitive compared to cells grown on Matrigel™, a complex protein extract without HA. Breast CS expressed multidrug resistance protein 1, a drug efflux transporter on bifunctional HA hydrogels, and showed decreased doxorubicin drug penetration. Secondly, HA-oxime hydrogels were designed with tunable gelation to encapsulate breast cancer cells. We compared the culture of 5 different cell lines in vitro to in vivo xenografts in mice, thereby benchmarking the gene profile of in vitro cultured cells in our HA-oxime hydrogels to xenografts and relative to more traditional culture strategies of 2D and in Matrigel™. Using these gene expression profiles, we probed drug sensitivity and demonstrated greater predictability in HA-oxime hydrogels than other strategies. Moreover, we demonstrated the capacity to grow patient-derived cells in these HA-oxime hydrogels, paving the way for future opportunities in personalized medicine. Collectively, in these studies we developed and benchmarked in vitro breast cancer models and demonstrate the importance of cell microenvironment when investigating chemotherapeutics. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Kim, Han Na | Kulesha, Gary | Timbre Saturation for Chamber Orchestra (2021) | Music | 2021-11-01 | My dissertation is a work for chamber orchestra which specifically considers economy attained through efficient uses of the instruments. The work is for a smaller number of players than the standard orchestra. Typically, when it comes to scoring chord progressions for a large orchestra, two methods are common: one is doubling, and the other is harmonizing. My composition project begins by questioning whether those common practices cause any sound overload. Furthermore, what if a composer eliminates any melodic/intervallic elements that could be thought of as ‘wastefulness’, such as doubling? By seeking to create the most economic orchestration, the goal of this project is to suggest a solution to optimize the orchestral effects and colors with a limited number of instruments. In addition, this work relies on the minimum number of instruments for a large ensemble piece to be as effective as a full-sized orchestra, particularly focusing on the use of colors (timbre). | D.M.A. | of color, waste | 10, 12 |
| Riddell, William Donald | Halpern, Rick | To the Water’s Edge of Empire: Domestic Class Struggle, White Merchant Sailors, and the Emerging U.S. Imperial System, 1872-1924 | History | 2019-06-01 | This dissertation examines the process through which the lines between foreign and domestic and nation and empire were established and re-established within the emerging U.S. imperial system between the 1870s and 1920s. It was a fluid process, perpetually in motion. I argue that white working people were both central to and on the front lines of this process, most of all merchant sailors. They were the ones most affected by these boundaries. Sailors who labored in the foreign maritime trade crossed these invisible boundaries every time they went to work. In short, the relationship between nation and empire and foreign and domestic was a labor question. By examining the connection between domestic class struggle and U.S. imperial expansion this dissertation will also reveal the vital role that organized labor—the principle institution through which the white working classes made their voices heard and their influence felt—played in this process and will challenge organized labor’s apparent anti-imperial orientation. With that in mind, the boundaries between nation and empire as well as foreign and domestic emerged through domestic or metropolitan class struggle —ebbing and flowing with the changing power dynamics between capital and labor—though largely expressed through the discourse of racial exclusion. Immigration restriction, therefore, emerged as labor’s primary means of exercising influence over U.S. imperial expansion. While the public and all three branches of government fiercely debated the now famous question of whether the constitution followed the flag. The question most pertinent to America’s labor leaders and the white working class they claimed to speak for was rather: does exclusion follow the flag? They would accept American imperial expansion so long as they were protected from the peoples and practices of the emerging U.S. empire. By demanding protection from certain parts of the U.S. imperial system they were implicitly endorsing the concept of empire by insisting on a privileged and protected position within an emerging imperial hierarchy. When all is said and done, though white working people were far from the principle beneficiaries of U.S. imperial expansion, they were nonetheless important and complicit players in its execution. | Ph.D. | water, labor, capital, trade, privileged, metro, maritime, institut | 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 14, 16 |
| Yasui, Emma Keiko | Crawford, Gary W | Tools to Live by: Starch Grain Analysis on Jomon Period Ground Stone from Southern Hokkaido, Japan | Anthropology | 2021-11-01 | Over the past few decades of research on Jomon Period (ca. 16,500 – 2,300 BP) subsistence, many have come to accept that various edible tree nuts were central to everyday practices and foodways throughout this period. Despite palaeoethnobotanical research from southern Hokkaido challenging this generalization, studies continue to assume the importance of nuts based on macrobotanical remains, site features, and artifactual proxies. Ground stone technology is one artifact class that is consistently associated with nut processing, but research programs designed to explicitly evaluate this relationship have been relatively few for Jomon sites. In this dissertation, I examined the larger interaction between starchy plant species and grinding implements from Jomon sites across southern Hokkaido through the application of starch grain analysis on extracted residues. The ground stone implements sampled here did not yield clear evidence for nut species considered important to Jomon peoples in this region, such as Castanea crenata and Juglans ailanthifolia, and many artifacts had no visible starch to report. These results challenge the suggestion that handstones and netherstones, such as suri-ishi and ishizara respectively, were primarily for processing plant foods, and are particularly indicative of cracking and grinding nuts in Jomon communities. This leads to further questions about the potential of ground stone to be used beyond subsistence studies, turning the focus to discussions of foodways, resource processing, and the intersections of different activities within daily life at Jomon sites in Hokkaido. | Ph.D. | species, species | 14, 15 |
| Ding, Jack | Jeffrey, Lisa||Selick, Paul | Topics on Based Loop Groups | Mathematics | 2021-11-01 | We prove two generalizations of localization formulae for finite-dimensional spaces to the infinite-dimensional based loop group $\Omega G$. The Atiyah-Bott-Lefschetz Formula is a well-known formula for computing the equivariant index of an elliptic operator on a compact smooth manifold. We provide an analogue of this formula for the based loop group $\Omega SU(2)$ with respect to the natural $(T \times S^1)$-action. This is accomplished by computing certain equivariant multiplicities in the K-theory of affine Schubert varieties. From this result we also derive an effective formula for computing characters of certain Demazure modules. The based loop group for a compact Lie group $G$ has been studied intensively since the work of Atiyah and Pressley and the book of Pressley and Segal. It is an infinite-dimensional symplectic manifold equipped with a Hamiltonian torus action, where the torus is the product of a circle and the maximal torus of $G$. When $G = SU(2)$, the fixed points for this action are in bijective correspondence with the integers. Our final result is a Duistermaat-Heckman type oscillatory integral over the based loop group, expanded around the fixed points of the torus action. To accomplish this we use Frenkel’s results (1984) on pinned Wiener measure for orbital integrals on the affine Lie algebra, as well as the results of Urakawa (1975) on the heat kernel for a compact Lie group and Fegan’s inversion formula (1978) for orbital integrals. | Ph.D. | cities | 11 |
| Sorn, Sopheak | Paramekanti, Arun | Topology and Magnetism in Quantum Materials | Physics | 2021-11-01 | In this thesis, we study various electron systems with nontrivial topological characters emerging in real space, in reciprocal space, or driven by electron-electron interactions, from which a variety of extraordinary properties in thermodynamics, transport, and optics are uncovered. We begin with systems hosting real-space skyrmion spin texture known to induce an emergent magnetic field for conduction electrons in metallic magnets, resulting in observable anomalies in transport phenomena such as Hall effect and Nernst effect. We examine how the topological charge density of skyrmions can be tuned by the Zeeman field coupled to the spin texture, which in turn tunes the emergent magnetic field. Conduction electrons sensing such a tuneable emergent magnetic field are shown to exhibit anomalous quantum oscillations in physical quantities in addition to the conventional quantum oscillations from Landau quantization due to an orbital magnetic field. We then turn to study the impact of skyrmions on the optical Hall conductivity of the conduction electrons, from which a high-frequency resonant feature is found. A sum rule is discovered, which relates properties of the Hall resonance to the density of skyrmions in the system. The second part of the thesis is inspired by a remarkable oxide ferromagnet SrRuO$_3$ where both momentum-space and real-space topology have been reported. Earlier works suggested the presence of topological Weyl nodes in the band structure, while Hall-effect experiments on its thin films detected anomalies reminiscent of the Hall-effect signature of skyrmions. In fact, there is a debate on the skyrmion origin versus the momentum space Berry curvature origin of these anomalies. Intriguingly, similar anomalies are observed in magneto-optical Kerr effect in thin films. We provide theoretical evidence suggesting a common origin from magnetic domains for the observed anomalies: (1) Kerr anomalies arise from magnetic domains and an unusual non-monotonic relation between Kerr angle and magnetization, whereas (2) Hall anomalies may be linked to highly skew domain-wall scatterings, occurring when there are Weyl nodes near the Fermi level. Finally, we study a bilayer Haldane model where Hubbard interactions can drive a topologically trivial band insulator into a strongly correlated topological phase. A slave-rotor mean-field approach is used to study its phase diagram and its properties, including its edge electron spectral function. | Ph.D. | land | 15 |
| Feldman, Margeaux | Seitler, Dana | Touch Me, I’m Sick: Hysterical Intimacies | Sick Theories | English | 2021-06-01 | This dissertation develops what I call a “sick theories” approach to the long history of labeling girls, women, and femmes – and their desires – as hysterical, sick, pathological, and in need of a cure. My approach builds on the insight that repressed trauma can lead to chronic illness, which was discovered in the early twentieth century with the emergence of the figure of the hysteric: a girl or woman experiencing inexplicable symptoms, from a persistent cough to full body seizures. Drawing on recent work in trauma studies, I offer a new lens to disability studies by reclaiming the figure of the hysteric, who has been largely neglected in this field. By examining a range of literary and cultural texts, I trace new connections between those who are living with trauma, chronic illness, and pathologized desire, and develop a language for imagining new forms of community and care, which I call “hysterical intimacies.”Each chapter builds on my sick theories approach, outlined in Chapter One, to analyze a different sick girl. Chapter Two looks at Jesmyn Ward’s novel Salvage the Bones to challenge the state’s narrative that the pregnant Black teen is part of an epidemic and reveal new dimensions of state sponsored anti-Black violence. In recognizing teen pregnancy as endemic new modes of community care, that cross species lines, open up. Chapter Three focuses on Marie Calloway’s what purpose did i serve in your life and Catherine Fatima’s Sludge Utopia, which depict what I call “ugly sex” – sex that both repulses you and gets you off. In embracing this ambivalence, these women refuse to have their desires pathologized. Chapter Four compares archival photographs of hysterics with Instagram selfies by authors Esmé Weijun Wang and Porochista Khakpour to demonstrate how chronically ill women reimagine communal forms of care that reject the neoliberal valorization of the individual. Ultimately, this dissertation shows how trauma and sickness enable new forms of relationality and community. These “hysterical intimacies” make it possible to show up in a world full of systemic violence with all of our trauma and sickness and imagine better worlds to come. | Ph.D. | disabilit, illness, women, girl, gini, species, species, violence | 3, 5, 10, 14, 15, 16 |
| Nam, Somang | Chignell, Mark H||Fels, Deborah I | Towards an Automatic Caption Quality Assessment Model Reflecting the Subjective Views of Deaf, and Hard of Hearing Audiences | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Closed Captioning (CC) was designed to serve Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewers, but the quality of CC has been assessed without much inclusion of these primary consumer groups. Currently, caption quality is mostly measured using arithmetic counts based on “errors” between the original spoken words and the caption text. A method to assess the quality of CC that includes the subjective perspective of D/HoH viewers could provide descriptive evaluations and ratings reflective to hearing conditions. Furthermore, using machine learning algorithms based on subjective ratings from D and HoH audiences could automate the process of assessment while reflecting human subjective assessment. Towards the goal of automatic caption quality assessment based on target consumer group perspectives, three studies were conducted to: 1) determine the potential of neural network prediction model feasibility; 2) generate a probability model of human caption quality assessment using the Signal Detection Theory framework; 3) construct and train neural networks to represent human quality assessors using Active Learning; and 4) carry out a benchmarking analysis to compare the newly developed assessment system with existing measures. The main findings from the studies include: 1) statistically significant difference in subjective assessment between D and HoH audiences; 2) correlation between caption error sensitivity and the perceived quality ratings on captions; 3) empirical evidence of the relationship between the values of the four quality factors (Delay, Speed, Number of missing words, and Caption paraphrasing) and the subjective quality rating; 4) use of Signal Detection Theory for modeling D and HoH audience error detection behaviour from watching CC; 5) implementation of Caption quality Assessment Intelligence System (CAIS) which can automatically rate the quality of CC by replicating human subjective assessment on various captions. The main contributions of this research are: 1) the development of a quality assessment neural network model for Closed Captioning which includes Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewer’s subjective opinions; 2) the development of probability decision models for Deaf and Hard of Hearing viewers based on caption error detection; and 3) provision of additional quantitative evidence of subjective difference between Deaf and Hard of Hearing groups. | Ph.D. | learning, consum | 4, 12 |
| Mitra, Tirthankar | Thomson, Murray J. | Towards an Understanding of the Chemical Formation Pathways of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in Sooting Flames | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Combustion of hydrocarbons inadvertently produces soot which has detrimental effects on both health and environment. Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) play a central role in soot formation. Several chemical pathways have been predicted to explain the growth of PAH growth during combustion like sequential addition of small species (C1, C2, C3), reactions between aromatic radicals and reactions of Resonantly Stabilised Radicals (RSRs) with another RSR or PAH. These pathways have been developed based on the experimental trends. However, the experimental dataset available in the literature is limited especially for coflow diffusion flames. As a result, a chemical mechanism developed based on the experimental results of one fuel or flame configuration can not explain the PAH growth for other fuels or burner configuration. The uncertainty increases as the PAHs grow larger and depart from the gas-phase. Some studies suggest that this departure starts as PAHs containing 13-16 rings are formed. Other studies suggest that the medium-sized PAHs (containing four or five rings) depart from the gas-phase to form soot. This thesis presents an extensive and comprehensive database comprising of PAHs, soot volume fraction, temperature and soot morphology for aliphatic and aromatic fuels in a coflow diffusion flame. The thesis describes the relationship between the fuel structure and the PAH formation pathways. The potential global chemical pathways for PAH growth discussed here can help in developing more comprehensive and accurate chemical mechanisms. The experimental results show that for aliphatic fuels, PAH growth takes place mainly by sequential addition. For alkylated aromatic, the growth of PAHs take place by the reactions between RSRs, reactions between aromatic radicals and hydrogenation of PAHs followed by addition of methyl radicals. The thesis also discusses the surface chemistry of particulates. The surface composition of the young soot is dominated by medium-sized PAHs and is similar to the gas-phase in its vicinity. With the increase in flame temperature or degree of maturity of the particles, medium-sized PAHs desorb from the surface of the particles into the gas-phase. Large PAHs are dominant only on the surface of the mature particles suggesting that these PAHs might be growing on the surface. | Ph.D. | species, species | 14, 15 |
| Guerguiev, Jordan | Richards, Blake A | Towards Biologically Plausible Gradient Descent | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-06-01 | Synaptic plasticity is the primary physiological mechanism underlying learning in the brain. It is dependent on pre- and post-synaptic neuronal activities, and can be mediated by neuromodulatory signals. However, to date, computational models of learning that are based on pre- and post-synaptic activity and/or global neuromodulatory reward signals for plasticity have not been able to learn complex tasks that animals are capable of. In the machine learning field, neural network models with many layers of computations trained using gradient descent have been highly successful in learning difficult tasks with near-human level performance. To date, it remains unclear how gradient descent could be implemented in neural circuits with many layers of synaptic connections. The overarching goal of this thesis is to develop theories for how the unique properties of neurons can be leveraged to enable gradient descent in deep circuits and allow them to learn complex tasks. The work in this thesis is divided into three projects. The first project demonstrates that networks of cortical pyramidal neurons, which have segregated apical dendrites and exhibit bursting behavior driven by dendritic plateau potentials, can in theory leverage these physiological properties to approximate gradient descent through multiple layers of synaptic connections. The second project presents a theory for how ensembles of pyramidal neurons can multiplex sensory and learning signals using bursting and short-term plasticity, in order to approximate gradient descent and learn complex visual recognition tasks that previous biologically inspired models have struggled with. The final project focuses on the fact that machine learning models implementing gradient descent assume symmetric feedforward and feedback weights, and presents a theory for how the spiking properties of neurons can enable them to align feedforward and feedback weights in a network. As a whole, this work aims to bridge the gap between powerful algorithms developed in the machine learning field and our current understanding of learning in the brain. To this end, we develop novel theories into how neuronal circuits in the brain can coordinate the learning of complex tasks, and present a number of experimental predictions that are fruitful avenues for future experimental research. | Ph.D. | learning, animal, animal | 4, 14, 15 |
| Shea, Kaela | Chau, Tom | Towards Improving Access to Assistive Communication through Brain Computer Interface Technology, Interface Design, and Policy | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Communication is the foundation for many daily activities. Individuals with complex communication needs often require alternative communication pathways to support self-expression, education, and enjoyment of life. Children are especially vulnerable to the effects of impeded communication. Augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices can improve a child's development. This thesis explores strategies for improving the efficiency of and access to brain-mediated communication technology for pediatric users. Four self-contained papers are included in addition to a brief chapter discussing natural language processing models designed for pediatric communication. The first paper applied ecological interface design (EID) to investigate system boundaries and user capacity required for audible language-based communication. This research exposed unmet needs in language organization for efficient communication support and yielded a new AAC interface design. Study two evaluated the change in usability, mental workload, and information transfer rate enabled by the introduced EID interface in comparison to a commercial AAC interface. A significant improvement in communication experience during EID interface use was observed in 5 out of 7 performance measures. Study three investigated a new word selection pathway through electroencephalographic (EEG) identification of semantic priming. Above-chance accuracies in excess of 70 % were achieved in automatic word preference discrimination on the basis of 2-trial averages in a sample of pediatric participants. Findings from this study suggest that semantic priming can potentially be leveraged in a BCI system to provide automatic feedback in line with users’ language preferences. The final paper considered the distribution of and population access to brain-mediated AAC technology, by analyzing technology promotion and adoption pathways. I presented policy recommendations to ensure equity in distribution. Together, the 4 papers in this thesis contribute new knowledge about mitigating the access barriers to brain-based communication. | Ph.D. | public health, knowledge, equity, invest, equit, ecolog | 3, 4, 9, 10, 15 |
| Santos, Marc Antonio | Goertz, David E||Hynynen, Kullervo | Towards Overcoming Limitations on MRI-guided Focused Ultrasound Hyperthermia-mediated Drug Delivery using Thermosensitive Liposomes | Medical Biophysics | 2020-06-01 | Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) hyperthermia is a completely non-invasive thermal procedure that involves slightly heating up a localised region of the body to between 41°C and 45°C. MRgFUS hyperthermia can trigger the local release of chemotherapy from thermosensitive liposomal drug carriers in high concentrations within heated tumours. These temperature elevations have synergistic effects with chemotherapy and radiotherapy when maintained for tens of minutes up to several hours. Presently, limitations including bone shielding, respiratory motion and large blood vessel cooling make heating of many anatomical locations difficult to maintain for long durations. These limitations prevent MRgFUS hyperthermia from being achieved in the kidney, liver or the head and neck. By developing new treatment strategies and sophisticated MRI-compatible FUS delivery systems that can overcome these limitations, MRgFUS hyperthermia with thermosensitive liposomal chemotherapy can be used to treat a more broad spectrum of tumour types. This thesis describes standalone FUS and microbubble-mediated strategies to overcome the limitations of MRgFUS hyperthermia. First, the incorporation of contrast agent microbubbles was investigated with MRgFUS hyperthermia in rabbit thigh muscle and experimental rabbit Vx2 tumours to reduce the applied power to maintain the temperature elevation. Second, a FUS hyperthermia system compatible with in vivo two-photon microscopy was developed as a platform for studies of controlled hyperthermia and drug delivery in mouse tumours. Practically simple short duration (~30s) temperature elevations to 42°C were shown to release substantial amounts of chemotherapy doxorubicin from thermosensitive liposomes. Third, the therapeutic efficacy of short duration temperature elevations to 42°C was evaluated in rabbit thigh Vx2 tumours. Considerable tumour growth inhibition and survival prolongation was observed with the short duration heating approach, demonstrating the potential for overcoming limitations on clinical MRgFUS hyperthermia with thermosensitive liposomal chemotherapy. The results of this thesis demonstrate that through the incorporation of microbubbles, as well as short duration heating strategies, the practical limitations of clinical MRgFUS hyperthermia can be alleviated. The clinical investigation of these heating strategies is warranted in order to provide cancer patients with a non-invasive treatment option that can both improve their response to therapy and reduce treatment-associated side effects. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Marshe, Victoria | Mueller, Daniel | Towards Precision Medicine: Characterizing and Predicting Antidepressant Remission Heterogeneity in Late-life Depression Using Genetic Data | Medical Science | 2022-03-01 | Late-life depression (LLD), diagnosed as major depressive disorder in older adults (≥ 60 years), is a heterogeneous disorder characterized by a unique constellation of clinical symptoms and risk factors associated with ageing, including comorbidities such as cerebrovascular disease, which impact symptomatology and response to antidepressant medication. Towards precision medicine, this thesis traverses methodologies in pharmacogenetics to identify variants associated with, and predictive of, response in older adults, specifically among those treated with the commonly used antidepressant, venlafaxine.First, using a candidate-gene approach, we show an association of the norepinephrine transporter gene (SLC6A2) with LLD remission (OR = 1.67 [1.13, 2.42], p = 0.009), which is a validated target of venlafaxine. In addition, we identify variants in novel genes of interest, particularly in the PIEZO-type mechanosensitive ion channel component 1 gene (PEIZO1; OR = 0.33 [0.21, 0.51], p = 1.42×10^-6), which implicates cardiovascular and inflammatory processes in LLD and antidepressant response. Given our interest in predicting antidepressant response, we evaluate the predictive capacity of data-driven, machine learning models which integrate clinical and genome-wide data. Compared to baseline models using only clinical features, integrated models show decreased performance due to noise added by genetic features. Furthermore, integrated models do not achieve clinical significance (remission, AUC = 0.68, Sensitivity = 0.53, Specificity = 0.75, Accuracy = 65.0%, p = 5.08×10^-6; end-of-treatment depression severity, RMSE = 7.93, Pearson’s ρ = 0.22, p = 0.033). Our results present several implications, including (1) the need for larger clinical studies targeted towards the development of inferential and predictive pharmacogenetic models; (2) the further need for leveraging in silico databases to characterize and understand the biological relevance of associated variants; and, (3) a better understanding of the computational and statistical implications for machine learning models integrating high-dimensional genome-wide and clinical data for the prediction of complex psychiatric outcomes. Ultimately, such predictive models will aid the development of decision support tools to identify older adults at high risk for inadequate response to antidepressant treatment who may benefit from additional or alternative interventions to reduce the overall healthcare burden and improve patient quality of life. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning, emission | 3, 4, 2007 |
| Triantafillou, Eleni | Zemel, Richard RZ||Urtasun, Raquel RU | Towards Strong Generalization from Few Examples | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | Deep learning has recently driven remarkable progress in several applications, including image classification, speech recognition, autonomous driving, and creating agents that can beat human experts in challenging games. However, this success often relies on large amounts of labeled data. This is at a stark contrast with how humans learn: we are able to efficiently re-use previous knowledge or experience to expedite future learning, allowing to understand new concepts from only a handful of examples. Motivated by this discrepancy, we aim to improve upon machine learning models' ability to learn more flexibly, from fewer examples. We will discuss the early formulation of few-shot learning and argue that, despite instrumental for making initial research progress, it is overly simplistic, posing what we will refer to as `weak generalization' challenges. We argue that, to continue making progress and inspire the creation of models that can few-shot learn in the real world, we require benchmarks that examine stronger forms of generalization. To this end, we propose challenging few-shot learning tasks, including a contextual formulation, as well as a large-scale few-shot learning challenge across diverse datasets. We show that previous models suffer on these harder problems, leading us to propose novel approaches. Notably, we find that self-supervision is particularly well-suited for generalization to novel contexts. We also find that per-task model adaptation is important for generalization to diverse data distributions and propose an effective approach that achieves this. Finally, we put forth an inductive bias to learn a `template' that defines a wide array of models for strongly generalizing to previously-unseen datasets, leading to substantial performance gains over previous approaches, while also being more scalable and adaptable than previous solutions. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Pahlavanlu, Paniz | Seferos, Dwight S | Towards the Controlled Synthesis of Conjugated Polymers | Chemistry | 2021-06-01 | Organic semiconductors with varying physical and optoelectronic properties are readily obtained by incorporating different functional groups in conjugated polymers. While controlled chain-growth polymerization routes have been developed for a handful of these conjugated polymers, most conjugated polymers are still synthesized through step-growth methods that allow little to no control over the resulting polymers. Robust and versatile synthetic methodologies are needed to access conjugated polymers with unprecedented control and optimized properties. In Chapter 2, I describe a rapid and selective synthetic route to thionated naphthalene diimides (NDIs). Thionated NDIs exhibit improved electron mobilities and ambient stabilities. Thionation procedures, however, are lengthy, unselective, and low yielding. Polymeric analogues had not previously been reported due to incompatibilities between sulfur atoms and prevalent palladium catalysts. I illustrate that the rate and selectivity of thionation is drastically improved using steric control and highly efficient microwave irradiation. This methodology is readily applied to synthesize NDI-based polymers with varying degrees of thionation through post-polymerization modification. In Chapter 3, I investigate the anion-radical polymerization of parent and thionated, thiophene- and selenophene-flanked NDIs. Although NDI-based polymers exhibit among the highest electron mobilities for n-type conjugated polymers, their existing synthetic routes are still largely uncontrolled. Anion-radical polymerization provides a promising alternative, wherein thiophene- flanked NDIs have been shown to exhibit chain-growth polymerization. I show that thiophene- and selenophene-flanked NDIs undergo anion-radical polymerization, albeit through step-growth mechanisms. While thionated NDIs form anion-radical complexes and exhibit signs of catalyst insertion, they do not undergo further polymerization. In Chapter 4, I present the templated oxidative synthesis of conjugated polymers. Templated synthesis is a prevalent route to accessing biological and bioinspired polymers but has only sparingly been applied to the synthesis of conjugated polymers. I illustrate that well-defined macromolecular templates synthesized through ring-opening metathesis polymerization undergo subsequent oxidative coupling to form well-defined conjugated polymers. I apply this methodology to synthesize soluble, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-based polymers with controlled molecular weights and low dispersities. In Chapter 5, I summarize the main conclusions and outlook of this thesis work. Further optimization and expansion of the methodologies described herein could greatly impact the fields of conjugated polymers and organic electronic materials. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| El-Hamamy, Ibrahim Mohamed | Stein, Lincoln D | Tracing the Cellular Origins of Brain Cancers using Single-cell Transcriptomics | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11-01 | Brain cancers are one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths among children and adults. The cellular and molecular heterogeneity of brain cancers at the time of diagnosis renders the identification of the cell-of-origin very challenging. Recent technological advancements have paved the way for the development of high throughput single-cell transcriptomics, which can be exploited to resolve the cellular identities of these cancers, trace developmental origins, and identify transcriptomic differences between the tumor and its cell of origin. Here, I analyze single-cell transcriptomic data from the developing mouse brain with collaborators to identify novel cell populations and re-construct developmental lineages from the embryonic stage to adulthood. First, through a novel approach combining single-cell transcriptomics and gene expression deconvolution methods, I establish a pipeline to map bulk and single-cell human brain tumor transcriptomes from hundreds of patients to normal developmental lineages of the mouse brain. I then show that the different molecular subgroups of childhood cerebellar tumours mirror the transcription of cells from distinct, temporally restricted cerebellar lineages. I next analyze single-cell transcriptomes of human childhood cerebellar tumours and show that many bulk tumours contain a mixed population of cells with divergent differentiation. Together, this work highlights cerebellar tumours as a disorder of early brain development and provides a proximate explanation for the peak incidence of cerebellar tumours in early childhood. Lastly, I extend this method to adult cerebral tumors and show that glioblastoma multiforme contains cells with a transcriptional signature that highly resemble embryonic and juvenile radial glial cells. Together, my research identifies candidate cells of origin for childhood and adult brain cancers through a novel approach, provides novel insights into tumour biology and heterogeneity, and will promote the development of novel targeted therapies based on differences between the tumor and its cell of origin. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Ahmed, Abdalla | Delgado-Olguin, Paul PDO | Transcriptional Origins of Adult Cardiac Disease in Response to Maternal Obesity | Molecular Genetics | 2021-06-01 | The transcriptional networks that maintain adult cardiac homeostasis are established during early stages of cardiac formation. Obesity during pregnancy poses a significant deviation from embryonic homeostasis which negatively impacts heart function, as early as the first trimester, and increases the risk for adult-onset cardiovascular disease. The phenotypic trajectory of these offspring that ultimately results in adult cardiomyopathy, and the transcriptional pathways altered in the embryonic heart and conferring increased risk of adult-onset heart disease are unknown. Here, I examined the functional and molecular consequences of maternal obesity on the offspring's hearts during fetal and adult life. I found that adult mice born to obese mothers are phenotypically silent in young adulthood but develop mild heart dysfunction as they age. Hearts of these mice dysregulated genes controlling extracellular matrix remodeling, metabolism, and TGF-β signaling, known to control heart disease progression. Moreover, in response to cardiovascular stress, the offspring of obese mice developed exacerbated myocardial remodeling and excessively upregulated the expression of genes that regulate cell-extracellular matrix interactions but failed to upregulate metabolic regulators. These pathways were already dysregulated in cardiac progenitors in embryos of obese mice and human fetal hearts from obese donors. I found that the expression of these “obesity-responsive” genes was developmentally regulated. Accordingly, the expression levels of Nkx2-5, a key regulator of heart development, inversely correlated with maternal body weight in mice. Nkx2-5 target genes were dysregulated in cardiac progenitors, adult hearts born to obese mice, and in human fetal hearts from pregnancies affected by obesity. Altogether, I have discovered that obesity during pregnancy alters transcription in differentiating cardiac progenitors, throughout gestation, and in the adult heart, poising the adult heart to dysregulated stress responses. My findings bridge a gap in knowledge regarding the transcriptional responses to maternal obesity, its impact on the heart, and the developmental time frame when cardiac disease risk is programmed. The genes and pathways identified in this thesis as well as the early functional consequences of maternal obesity on the offspring heart could have broad ramifications in screening and treatment strategies to help reduce the potential risk of cardiovascular disease in future generations. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Anreiter, Ina | Sokolowski, Marla B | Transcriptional Regulation of the foraging Gene and its Associated Behaviours | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11-01 | The genetic underpinnings of animal behaviour are exceedingly complex. The behavioural effects of a gene often depend on environmental conditions, as the ability to adjust to new conditions is essential for fitness. Furthermore, genetic background can affect behaviour, introducing additional variability in behavioural responses. To complicate the study of behavioural genetics further, many genes that regulate behavioural phenotypes are themselves very complex genes, with several gene products and functions. One example of such a complex gene is the foraging gene in Drosophila melanogaster, which encodes a signaling protein that is involved in regulating many phenotypes, including feeding behaviour, metabolism, learning and memory, and sleep. foraging has four promoters, twenty-one transcripts, and nine distinct open reading frames (ORFs). The putative FOR isoforms encoded by these ORFs share the same 3’ protein kinase domain and cGMP binding domains but differ in their subcellular localization and self-regulatory domains. This complex molecular structure allows for the production of different gene products at different times in different tissues, likely using different transcriptional regulators. This thesis examines different mechanisms of transcriptional regulation of the foraging gene and the role of those mechanisms in Drosophila behaviour. Using gene expression measurements, behavioural assays and transgenic tools I investigate the regulatory underpinnings of differences in adult Drosophila feeding behaviour, and larval food-related behaviours. The results provide a complex picture of pleotropic behavioural regulation by different products generated by a single gene. I found that strain differences in adult, but not larval, feeding behaviour are regulated by the transcriptional regulator G9a, a histone methyl transferase which differentially methylates foraging’s promoters. Select larval food-related behaviours are under regulation by Pumilio, an mRNA binding protein that binds the 3’ UTR of foraging mRNA transcripts. Furthermore, I show that foraging and its transcriptional regulators play a role in the behavioural response to nutritional stress. Collectively, my thesis provides new insights into the complex molecular mechanisms (genetic, epigenetic and post-transcriptional) that underlie the regulation of behavioural pleiotropy of foraging, a complex gene. | Ph.D. | nutrition, learning, invest, production, environmental, animal, animal | 2, 4, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Lamsechi, Guita Angella | Kavaler, Ethan Matt | Transgressive Nature. Beyond the Frame: Images of Vegetal Nature Across the Arts in Northern Renaissance Europe | History of Art | 2016-06-01 | Nature became a significant object of attention in the early modern era. Images of plant life changed significantly in the arts and architecture of Northern Europe near the beginning of the sixteenth century. Representations of branches, vines, and other botanical material become more prominent, proliferating in every medium. As designs based on nature became a field for creative innovation, botanical material sometimes transgresses the role of marginal ornament, and natural settings appear in new contexts. Other studies tend to either disregard plant ornament or they argue that landscape became a central subject in northern art but connect its origins and impetus to sources in ancient Rome and early modern Italy. Rather than seeking connections with Italy, this study demonstrates the impact of other factors, arguing that the changes in representing trees and plants reflect cultural shifts, including changes in knowledge production and religious thought. A consideration of the factors that concerned vernacular culture, as well as humanists, provides insights that deepen our understanding of early modern art. Nature could serve as a representational strategy to visualize these concerns. The broad and contradictory significances that natural imagery carried made it an ideal vehicle to express the concerns of northern European culture in a time of religious reform. Nature's polyvalency may suggest alternate points of view, enabling the work as a whole to participate in current themes of discourse and debate. This project examines the inventive uses of plant imagery, and demonstrates the impact of its cultural contexts. The geographical context is from the Alsace to the Czech Republic, the Low Countries, and especially the German-speaking lands. Some works were produced by renowned artists, while others are little known in North America. This study addresses the roles nature played in early modern visual culture, in ways not yet addressed by other scholars. | Ph.D. | knowledge, production, forest, land | 4, 12, 15 |
| Des Rochers, Arianne | ten Kortenaar, Neil | Translation and Postnational Cartographies of Language in Twenty-First-Century Canadian Literatures | Comparative Literature | 2021-06-01 | “Une opération de traduction ne peut être effectuée que s’il y a une frontière à franchir,” says Sherry Simon in Le trafic des langues. The border that translation is said to cross is, typically, linguistic: the dominant understanding and theorization of translation relies on the notion of linguistic difference and autonomy, whereby meaning is transferred from one bounded linguistic system to the other. This dissertation takes as its starting point the border between languages, recognizing that linguistic borders as we know them today are neither natural nor ontological, but the result of the sedimentation and naturalization of a specific kind of linguistic mapping along discriminatory (ethno)national and racial lines. Its premise is that the gesture of translation, rather than simply crossing a pre-existing linguistic border, constructs linguistic difference by drawing a border where there is not one in the first place. The writers that make up my corpus— Gregory Scofield, France Daigle, Kevin Lambert, Joshua Whitehead, Nathanaël, Oana Avasilichioaei, Maude Veilleux and Nicholas Dawson—reveal the work of linguistic differentiation (and, consequently, of translation) as normative, hierarchical, and violent, inasmuch as it imposes a linguistic order on texts that explicitly refuse to conform to that order. This dissertation problematizes the structural view of language that underlies the bulk of Western translation practice and theory by looking at the anticolonial, queer, and postnational linguistic cartographies that are drawn and imagined in contemporary literary works published in Canada between 2005 and 2020, and written by voices that are minoritized within Canada’s linguistic regime. These texts are written in what we are used to recognizing as several “languages,” “registers” or “dialects,” in other words they feature linguistic forms that overflow the containers of French and English, the two official, colonial languages of the Canadian state. I argue that, on the part of these writers, this amounts to a refusal to be a good, monolingually intelligible national subject, and that it is crucial for translation to reenact that refusal. Indeed, because these texts ask us to approach, read and translate them without following the lines drawn on colonial and national linguistic maps, they point to what I call a postlingual understanding of translation, which enables a move away from idealized, abstract, national languages and towards the specificity of linguistic practices, understood as fundamentally social and local. Taking cues from the literary works under study, my analysis calls for a focus on the singularity of the relation both between the translator and the text she is translating and between the translator and the linguistic, communicative and expressive resources that are socially meaningful in her own surroundings. Framed as a series of relations, rather than as transposition from one system to another, translation becomes a decidedly localized practice that draws on the translator’s specific embodied and territorialized experience and on the subjective, deliberate and ethical relations she establishes in the process. | Ph.D. | anticolonial, queer, minorit | 4, 5, 10 |
| Ivry, Henry | Downes, Paul | Transscalar Critique: Crisis and Form in the Anthropocene Contemporary | English | 2019-11-01 | “Transscalar Critique” proposes a new model of literary criticism for reading in the Anthropocene. I argue that contemporary literature and literary criticism are defined by a problem of scale. Critics and novelists have sought to capture the expansiveness of a larger and more connected world while simultaneously contracting inwards, refocusing on smaller units of analysis. By looking at representations of specific crises and foregrounding scale as a central analytic, my dissertation develops a mode of critique that is at once discursive, geologic, political, and ontological. “Transscalar Critique” offers a survey of the Anthropocene contemporary to suggest that paying attention to questions of the micro-scale of the word is just as important as the macro-scale of the world. In the first half of this dissertation, I argue that the 2008 Financial Crisis and climate change have been represented as monoscalar. Existing literary and critical accounts of these events only attend to their human scale, imaging crisis as the result of specific individuals and a momentary interruption in a teleological narrative of technological and economic expansion. “Transscalar Critique” reveals the way that these very specific crises in fact result from the co-constitutional convergence of human and nonhuman life. In the second half of the dissertation, I read two authors I understand as specifically transscalar, Ben Lerner and Paul Beatty. Lerner develops an ambient mode of literary fiction and critique that dissolves the distinction between text and world, rescaling the relationship between audience, author, and work of art. Beatty uses satire as a way to both represent and critique the divergent scales of the contemporary, writing fiction that is just as concerned with environmental and economic issues as it is with questions of race and aesthetic value. It is between these scales, “Transscalar Critique” argues, that we can understand what it means to live in a contemporary backlit by the perennial crisis of the Anthropocene. | Ph.D. | climate, environmental, anthropocene | 13 |
| Sun, Minjee | Goldfarb, Avi||Shi, Mengze | Two Essays on the Value of Marketing in the Digital Economy | Management | 2021-06-01 | Over the past three to four decades, explosive growth in data collection, storage, and processing has changed marketing practice substantially. For example, in business-to-business industries, advanced marketing analytics has supported salespeople’s decision-making by providing predictions based on new types of information. Furthermore, companies can reach consumers and ask their opinions more easily. The first essay of my dissertation quantifies the impact of the availability of such information on the marketing-sales interface. While marketing analytics intended to aid salesforce decision-making has developed rapidly, there is little empirical understanding of how the adoption of such marketing analytics may affect sales performance. Using data from a global business-to-business information technology company, we provide empirical evidence that the adoption of a new marketing analytics tool improved salespeople’s performance. By further exploring the outcomes by salespeople- and account-specific characteristics, we find that marketing analytics enabled high-performing salespeople to achieve greater sales from customers without recent transactions. In contrast, for low-performing salespeople, marketing analytics led them to winning more sales opportunities from accounts with recent transactions. Overall, marketing analytics empowers the high performers to reach a more balanced customer account portfolio and supports the low performers to seize the opportunities that might have been missed. Digitization has not only provided more information on customers but enhanced the means of communications between companies and their customers. The extant literature has explored positive behaviors that can occur after completing a survey, sometimes called the mere-measurement effect, but has neglected how the effect may depend on the valence of previous experience. In the second essay, we examine the impact of product performance on the mere-measurement effect using a unique natural experiment dataset from a securities brokerage company. Our results confirm mere-measurement effects in transaction intensity, transaction volume, and sales of other products. More importantly, the effects are greater for customers with negative pre-survey performance. The finding suggests that participation in satisfaction surveys leads to asymmetric positive effect. These results can help companies assess the return of resources invested in conducting surveys beyond the value of information and more accurately understand the relation between consumer behavior and marketing interventions. | Ph.D. | invest, consum | 9, 12 |
| Harrison, Jack William | McLeod, Kenneth | Two Left Feet: A Study of Multispecies Musicality in British Women's Sport | Music | 2021-11-01 | The division between the study of human cultures, human minds, and animal behaviours and biology in academic scholarship exacerbates the assumption that music is exclusively human and that the human is singularly musical. In an attempt to avoid this simplified linkage between human music cultures and human biology, my research explores the interrelationship between (a) the “music-like” socialities underpinning sustained interspecies encounters, and (b) the human constructions of musicality (or unmusicality) that generate social allegiances and facilitate the strategic navigation of hierarchical power structures within multispecies environments. My dissertation examines two interspecies sports in the UK—equine freestyle dressage and canine heelwork to music—in which horses and dogs are trained predominantly by women to perform skills on command to the accompaniment of a music track. Drawing together perspectives on the animal from continental philosophy, ethology, gender studies, and critical theory, this multi-sited, multispecies ethnography aims to rethink the category of music through the animal and, conversely, the category of the animal through music. My argument is that the social bonds generated amongst freestyle dressage and heelwork to music’s sportswomen at shows are related to the interactions negotiated between the women and their horses/dogs during training and competition, both of which emerge from the interspecies performers’ music-like “expressions of desire” mediated sonically, visually, and tactilely between individuals through time. However, in order to engender these social bonds of community across human spectators as well as navigate the hierarchies of difference that govern their lives as mostly white, British, middle-class women, riders and handlers must place conditions on their animal partners’ expressions of desire as part of their construction of horse and dog (un)musicalities in social discourse. This latter characteristic of musical sociality, I argue, appears to be exclusive to the human. | Ph.D. | gender, women, species, animal, species, animal | 5, 14, 15 |
| Lokhorst, Deborah Monique | Abraham, Roberto G | Ultra-narrowband Imaging with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array: Toward the Cosmic Web | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2022-03-01 | The circumgalactic and intergalactic medium (CGM and IGM), are arguably the most important baryonic components of the Universe, yet are poorly understood. The CGM and IGM contain the majority of baryons in the Universe and play vital roles in galaxy formation and evolution, but due to their diffuse nature they are extremely hard to detect. At high redshift, recent technological developments in integral-field spectroscopy have yielded success in detecting emission from the CGM and IGM, but an alternative method is needed to extend this accomplishment to low redshift. This thesis presents a novel method for investigating the line emission from the CGM and IGM in the local Universe: a narrow-band imaging extension to the Dragonfly Telephoto Array designed to target diffuse visible-wavelength line emission. In Chapter 1, the current status of the field and an introduction to line absorption and emission studies is presented, along with an introduction to narrowband imaging and the Dragonfly Telephoto Array (Dragonfly, hereafter). Chapter 2 presents an analysis of cosmological hydrodynamical simulations from the EAGLE project to predict whether visible-wavelength line emission from the local CGM and IGM would be detectable. The result of this analysis is that observations taken by Dragonfly with ultra-narrow bandpass filters would be able to detect the CGM in exposure times as little as ~10 hours. Based on these predictions, the following Chapter presents the design and lab-based testing of instrumentation that implements ultra-narrow bandpass imaging capability on Dragonfly, the “Filter-Tilter”. Chapter 4 presents the first scientific observations taken by a pathfinder Dragonfly Narrowband imager (a 3-lens version of Dragonfly with Filter-Tilter instrumentation), the main result of which is the discovery of a giant ionized gas cloud in the CGM of the starburst galaxy M82. Chapter 5 reports on the current status and work towards a 120-lens full-scale Dragonfly Narrowband imaging upgrade, which is currently under construction and is based on the pathfinder. Finally, Chapter 6 gives a summary of this thesis and plans for future work, the bulk of which is a survey of the CGM of local galaxies with the Dragonfly Narrowband imaging upgrade. | Ph.D. | emission, invest | 7, 9 |
| Daniel-Ivad, Martin | Nodwell, Justin | Uncovering ‘Cryptic’ Natural Products from Streptomyces Bacteria | Biochemistry | 2020-03-01 | The Streptomyces bacteria produce natural products that have potent biological activity against other organisms: 60% of our antibiotics are derived from this source. Genome sequencing reveals genes for many more. One view in the field is that these “cryptic” metabolites could serve as badly needed antibiotics for antibiotic resistant infections. However, many of them are produced at too low yields for structural and mechanistic characterization. The top priority is finding broadly applicable approaches to enhancing the yields of these molecules. To address this, I took advantage of a conserved regulator of specialized metabolism to develop a generally applicable tool, called AfsQ1*, that heterologously induces many specialized metabolic genes. Using this technology, I developed two antibiotic discovery screens. First, I identified afsQ1*-induced antibacterial activities and purified the active agents. This led to the discovery of the antibiotic siamycin-I, a potent inhibitor of antibiotic resistant Gram-Positive bacteria. I demonstrated that this compound targets the lipid-II component of cell wall biogenesis, the first of this class of molecules to do so. The second approach used comparative metabolomics to identify afsQ1*-induced novel masses. By NMR I identified a new pepticinnamin analogue, whose family are inhibitors of an eukaryotic post-translational modification called farnesylation. Farnesyl transferase inhibitors were previously investigated (unsuccessfully) as anticancer medicines. I demonstrate, however, that they are candidates for antifungal therapy, because they block morphological switching- a key virulence trait in lower fungi. This work suggests a new paradigm in antifungal therapy. Finally, I dissect an interaction between Lactobacillus reuteri and C. albicans. When co-cultured together C. albicans cannot undergo filamentous growth and I found that this inhibition is molecule-mediated. 1-acetyl β-carboline is the active metabolite isolated from L. reuteri and I found that its production is prevalent throughout the Lactobacillus genera. I also synthesized a new β-carboline analogue for future clinical trials. | Ph.D. | invest, production, conserv, conserv | 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Moazzam, Zainab | Yoo, Paul B | Uncovering the Neural Pathways Mediating the Bladder-inhibitory Effects of Percutaneous Tibial Nerve Stimulation: A Novel Approach to Treating Overactive Bladder | Biomedical Engineering | 2019-06-01 | Each year, millions of Canadians suffer from the debilitating effects of overactive bladder (OAB) resulting in profound socio-economic costs. Various treatment algorithms, such as behavioral therapies and pharmacotherapies have been introduced to counter the unwanted results of this disorder. Such treatments are, however, modest in their effectiveness. An alternative to conventional therapies, neuromodulation, is proven efficient in reducing OAB symptoms. However, it’s the invasiveness and the surgical cost (e.g., sacral nerve stimulation – SNS), which precludes it as a first line of treatment in the algorithm of incontinence care. Consequently, percutaneous tibial nerve stimulation (PTNS) was introduced as a less-invasive yet effective therapy for treating OAB symptoms. In PTNS, clinical efficacy is achieved by repeatedly applying electrical stimulation through a percutaneous needle electrode, which is used to target the tibial nerve (TN). However, the lack of rationale for using the set stimulation parameters (20 Hz coupled with intensities below the motor threshold), the need for repeated treatments to maintain the therapeutic effects as well as the inconsistent response rates pose a major barrier to its widespread use. The focus of this work is therefore, to rationalize the lack of consistency in the bladder-inhibitory output following standard TNS techniques. In particular, we investigated the role of saphenous nerve (SAFN), largest cutaneous branch of the femoral nerve which, intercedes with the anatomical point of PTNS delivery, in modulating bladder function. This project uses well-established animal models to explore and systematically characterize the effects of TNS and SAFNS on bladder function and is divided into three main aims. The first aim focuses on rationalizing the inconsistency in response rates observed during non-selective TNS approaches by optimizing the role of stimulation parameters. The second aim targets the investigation of SAFN afferents in inhibiting bladder activity in a continuous urodynamic model. Finally, the last aim validates the consistency of SAFN-evoked bladder inhibitory reflexes at high stimulation amplitudes and its role in the development of a model for underactive bladder (UAB). Together, these results improve our understanding of the neural network underlying the therapeutic output of PTNS and the role of SAFN afferents within the urodynamic circuitry. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, invest, animal, animal | 1, 9, 14, 15 |
| Lu, Zhicong | Wigdor, Daniel J. | Understanding and Supporting Live Streaming in Non-gaming Contexts | Computer Science | 2021-06-01 | Live streaming has gained worldwide traction due to affordable digital video devices and high-speed Internet access. Besides video games, live streaming users share a variety of non-gaming content, such as civic engagement, knowledge and experience, and even traditional cultural practices (i.e., intangible cultural heritage). However, because video game live streaming is the primary target of mainstream streaming platforms, little prior research has explored the practices and challenges of the communities of non-gaming streamers who share knowledge or showcase and promote cultural practices through live streams, and few computational tools and systems have been designed and developed to support these stakeholders' unique needs for engaging and communicating with their communities more efficiently and meaningfully. The goal of my research is to understand emerging practices of non-gaming streamers and their communities, and to design new tools for these streamers, viewers, and other stakeholders to better support knowledge sharing and cultural heritage preservation through live streaming. I first conduct qualitative and mixed-method studies to understand various non-gaming streaming practices for sharing knowledge, sharing experiences, and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage, all of which are prevalent in China but have not gained comparable traction elsewhere. These studies reveal the stark differences of non-gaming live streams with video-gaming streams, and show that for knowledge sharing and cultural heritage live streaming, context loss, information overload, and limited communication modalities are key challenges for stakeholders. Building on these findings, I design, deploy, and evaluate novel user interfaces for non-gaming live streaming users to better support their needs in knowledge sharing and experience sharing contexts. StreamWiki is a tool that leverages viewers during live streams to produce useful archives of the interactive learning experience which can facilitate in-stream and post hoc learning. StreamSketch enables viewers and streamers to engage during live streams through multiple modalities, including sketch and text. The evaluations of these live streaming interfaces show their usefulness in non-gaming contexts, but also reveal remaining challenges of how to better engage viewers with increased complexity of streaming interfaces. In conclusion, I summarize the key insights from my studies and discuss future research opportunities in non-gaming live streaming. | Ph.D. | affordab, knowledge, learning, internet, affordab | 1, 10, 4, 9 |
| Wen, Bijun | Bandsma, Robert HJ | Understanding Pathways Underlying Inpatient Mortality of Children with Complicated Severe Malnutrition | Nutritional Sciences | 2022-03-01 | Children admitted to hospitals with severe malnutrition are exceptionally vulnerable to death and account for a large proportion of early childhood mortality globally. In low- and middle- income countries, inpatient mortality rates of severely malnourished children remain high, despite implementation of the empirical management guidelines developed by the World Health Organization. Upon hospital admission, this group of children often present with a wide range of life-threatening illnesses and complications, making risk stratification and identification of underlying causes challenging. Severe malnutrition is also associated with concurrences of subclinical conditions, such as metabolic defects and enteric dysfunctions, that may not be clinically addressed but contribute to mortality. However, very few studies have investigated the pathophysiological pathways involved in the mortality of these children.Using medical records and biological samples among children hospitalized with severe malnutrition in African countries, Malawi and Kenya, the present research aimed to (1) identify clinical warning signs associated with inpatient mortality and evaluate their values in monitoring risks over the course of hospitalization, (2) define systemic pathways associated with mortality employing a multi-omic approach, and (3) evaluate the role of intestinal disturbances in mortality. It was found that monitoring the clinical warning signs: hypoglycemia, reduced consciousness, chest indrawing, not able to complete feeds, nutritional edema, diarrhea, and fever, can serve as a valuable tool for assessing children’s mortality risks during hospitalization. Compared to children who were discharged alive, children who died had distinct biomolecular profiles at admission, indicating that altered energy metabolism and systemic inflammation are associated with inpatient death. Furthermore, enteropathy was found to have a partial contributory role in the mortality of severely malnourished children. These findings alter our thinking around management of children hospitalized with severe malnutrition with important implications in providing novel evidence for guideline optimization to ultimately improve survival outcome of vulnerable children. | Ph.D. | nutrition, malnutrition, illness, learning, energy, invest, income, urban | 2, 3, 4, 7, 9, 10, 11 |
| Gosine, Philippa | Novak, Alison C||Fernie, Geoffrey | Understanding Recovery Reactions Following Balance Loss: The Effect of Age and Handrail Cross-sectional Design | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11-01 | Falls on stairs are a common cause of injury and hospitalizations, particularly for older adults. To recover balance after a destabilization, fast, accurate and appropriate balance recovery strategies must be employed to arrest a fall. While handrails have been shown to decrease the likelihood of falls, it is unknown how handrail shape and size affect the ability to support successful balance recovery. With a lack of guiding data to support design, national and international standards and regulations permit a variety of handrail cross-sectional sizes and shapes. This thesis aims to better understand balance recovery on stairs and how the design of handrails affects the reach-to-grasp balance recovery responses. I conducted four experimental studies to address the overall research objective. In the first two studies, I characterized the demands of balance recovery during stair descent. Novel methods were used to induce unexpected forward and backward balance loss during stair descent in younger adults. To recover from both forward and backward balance loss, participants used a variety of strategies, including compensatory stepping, counter-balancing trunk and arm movement and grasping environmental features. Of those participants who grasped the handrail, participants applied a range of forces, from light touch to 30% of their body weight. Many participants also had errors in grasping, particularly in backward balance loss. Building on this work, Studies 3 and 4 aimed to further understand the effect of handrail shape and size on the speed and accuracy of reach-to-grasp reactions and ability to generate necessary forces to arrest a fall for older and younger adults. A ramp-up perturbation protocol was used to induce balance loss that was repeatable and demanding for all handrail cross-sections. Of the seven handrails tested, the 1.5” round handrails allowed participants to apply the highest forces and to withstand the greatest magnitudes of perturbation with the fewest errors for both younger and older adults. In contrast, large complex handrails resulted in reduced forces, lower withstood perturbations with more errors. This research provides empirical evidence that can be used to guide standard development and clinical recommendations for safer stairways. | Ph.D. | environmental | 13 |
| Parker, Gillian A | Berta, Whitney | Understanding the Drivers of Low-value Care and De-implementation Processes: A Multi-methods Study | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | Low-value care (LVC) are tests, treatments, medications or procedures which have been deemed, through evidence, to be ineffective, harmful or unnecessary. It is estimated that 30% of current healthcare dollars are spent on these practices (Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2017). The de-implementation of low-value care is widely recognized as critical for patient safety, healthcare resources and health system sustainability. In recent years, a number of initiatives, such as Choosing Wisely, have targeted the de-implementation of low-value practices in healthcare. The de-implementation of LVC is an important endeavour that poses challenging conceptual and practical questions. This dissertation explores the conceptual and practical aspects of LVC and de-implementation through three complementary studies. In the first study, I conducted a comprehensive scoping review of the literature on the use of theory to understand or explain efforts to reduce LVC. This review offers four key findings: 1. De-implementation is still largely atheoretical, but the use of theory is increasing; 2. TDF is the most commonly used framework; 3. Theory was most commonly used to identify determinants or inform data analysis; and 4. The lack of studies examining the impact of patients on efforts to de-implement LVC. In the second study, I developed the Implementation Process Model (IPM) using a modified Delphi approach. This study, to advance understanding of de-implementation processes and explicate the elements of implementation processes, identified four critical elements important to implementation processes: 1. Stakeholder engagement throughout the process; 2. Iterative nature of implementation processes; 3. Importance of context; and 4. Importance of using guiding theories or frameworks. The third study used the knowledge and tools produced in the first two studies to conduct a qualitative exploration of factors which impact LVC and de-implementation processes. The findings of this study explicated the drivers of LVC, the magnitude of the problem of LVC and unique influences on de-implementation processes. Understanding LVC and de-implementation processes is critical to improving patient care, reducing waste and improving the healthcare system. The results of these studies provide insights into theoretical approaches, implementation processes, and factors which influence LVC and de-implementation applicable to both research and practice. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge, waste, institut | 3, 4, 12, 16 |
| McCallum, Leslie Ann | Alaggia, Ramona | Understanding the Experiences of Individuals in Midlife Living with Anorexia Nervosa: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Study | Social Work | 2019-06-01 | Understanding the Experiences of Individuals in Midlife Living with Anorexia Nervosa: A Constructivist Grounded Theory Study Doctor of Philosophy, June 2019 Leslie Ann McCallum Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work University of Toronto Background Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a complex, life-threatening mental illness with high comorbidity rates. This disorder has one of the worst prognoses of all mental illnesses, with a mortality rate of 10.5%. It affects people of varying socioeconomic statuses, cultures, sexes, genders, and ages. There is no universally effective treatment for adults living with AN. Despite the high percentage of individuals who continue to live with AN for decades, there is limited understanding of what it means to be in midlife living with a disorder that is more commonly noted to occur among adolescents and young adults. The purpose of this dissertation research was to build understanding of the experiences of adults in midlife (40 to 65 years of age) living with AN to inform clinical practice and support for this population. Methods A qualitative study design was chosen using constructivist grounded theory methodology. This dissertation research was conducted in accordance with the ethics protocol approved by the Health Sciences Research Ethics Board of the University of Toronto. Nineteen individuals in midlife (40 to 65 years of age) living with AN participated in individual, in-depth interviews to explore their experiences of living with AN in midlife. Results Four main findings emerged from this study. First, based on comparing narratives of participants’ accounts of their experiences of living with AN in midlife and as young adults, important differences exist between living with AN in midlife versus when one is younger. Second, based this sample and their retrospective accounts, complex trauma is common among individuals in midlife living with AN. Third, midlife can act as a barrier to seeking treatment and/or facilitate disengaging from treatment. Fourth, shifts occur in midlife that can act as catalysts to fully engaging in recovery. Implications Findings from this dissertation research provide a framework for understanding the unique qualities and experiences of individuals in midlife living with AN, and their capacity for treatment engagement. Honouring the added challenges that come with midlife, as well as harnessing qualities developed in midlife, will help this older age group move forward with their recovery journey. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, illness, gender, sexes | 1, 3, 2005 |
| Cho, Hae-Ra | Liu, Mingyao | Understanding the Role of an Adaptor Protein, XB130, in Tumorigenesis | Physiology | 2019-11-01 | Adaptor proteins are essential proteins involved in the regulation of signal transduction pathways. XB130 is one type of adaptor proteins, which functions as an intracellular mediator for regulating cellular activities, such as cell proliferation, cell survival, cell migration, invasion, and cytoskeleton regulation, in various normal and cancer cells. Currently, the exact physiological roles of XB130 in in vivo tumorigenesis remain unknown. To investigate its functions, two studies were performed using XB130-deleted mice: (1) a two-stage dimethylbenzanthracene (DMBA)/12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate (TPA)-induced skin tumorigenesis study, and (2) a study on spontaneous tumorigenesis of aged mice. First, through the carcinogen-induced tumorigenesis approach, XB130 is identified as a putative tumor suppressor and regulator of inflammatory response. The multiplicity and size of DMBA (mutagen)/TPA (tumor promoter)-induced epidermal tumors in XB130 knockout (XB130-/-) males were significantly increased compared with those of wild-type (XB130+/+) littermate males. In the absence of XB130, keratinocyte proliferation, edema formation, neutrophil infiltration, expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines, as well as inflammation- and cell proliferation-related signaling pathways were altered dramatically in response to repeated TPA stimuli in males. These changes may have orchestrated tumor microenvironment favoring the skin tumorigenesis in XB130-/- mice. In the second study, aged XB130-/- mice had increased spontaneous occurrence of benign enlarged thyroid glands with various nodules, which were diagnosed as multinodular goiters. XB130-/- thyroid glands exhibited architectural distortion with higher proliferation of follicular cells in nodules, as well as disrupted expression and distribution of cytoskeleton elements and junction proteins. XB130-/- mice were hypothyroid, displaying defective organification of iodide during perchlorate discharge test and reduced expression of iodinated thyroglobulin. XB130 was confirmed to be localized at the apical side of thyroid follicles at which thyroglobulin iodination normally occurs. As compensatory mechanism to the loss of XB130, thyroperoxidase (TPO) activity was enhanced in aged XB130-/- thyroid glands, with increased affinity of TPO for iodide and higher expression of TPO protein. Thus, XB130 deficiency led to the pathogenesis of benign multinodular goiters as the manifestation of dyshormonogenic hypothyroidism. In summary, this work highlighted the tumor-suppressive role of XB130 in carcinogen-induced tumorigenesis study and introduced its novel involvement in thyroid function through spontaneous tumorigenesis study. | Ph.D. | invest, trade, land | 9, 10, 15 |
| Loureiro, Livia Oliveira | Engstrom, Mark | Unraveling an Evolutionary Enigma: Investigation of Population Dynamics, Species Diversification, Phylogeny, and Biogeography of the Common Mastiff Bats (Molossus) | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2019-11-01 | Understanding the spatial distribution of genetic diversity for a particular group is critical to understanding patterns of biodiversity and biogeography and informing conservation and management decisions, especially when studying cryptic species. Bats are one of the few native groups of mammals present in both the Antilles and the mainland Neotropics. However, not much is known about how geographic and oceanic barriers affect gene flow and the patterns of diversity in this group and the capacity of different species to disperse among islands. In addition, mechanisms underlying the evolution of species-specific echolocation signals and its correlation with morphology are not well understood. I address these evolutionary questions using the mastiff bats (Molossus) as a study group. The genus Molossus is widely distributed in the Neotropics, occupying both sides of prominent geographic and oceanic barriers. I used the genotype by sequencing (GBS) approach to test the utility of next generation sequencing to understand phylogenetic relationships, population structure, biogeography, and evolution of characters among genetically conserved groups. I clarified the taxonomy of Molossus and elevate the number of species in the genus from 11 to 14, revealing three complexes of cryptic species. I also showed that phylogeographic patterns vary according to habitats preferences, to levels of population isolation, and to historical fluctuations in climate. Biogeographic analyses suggest that the ancestor of Molossus had its origin in South America and that most of the speciation in the genus occurred relatively recently, within a short period of time, consistent with a hypothesis of diversification in Pleistocene refugia. I did not find much support for mainland geographic barriers acting to disrupt gene flow, but oceanic straights seem to genetically isolate some species. Previously a taxonomic black-box, the evolution of Molossus has been painted with an alchemist’s admixture of stasis, convergence, genetic divergence, and conservatism to render the seemingly mundane house-bat a fascinating model in which to explore evolutionary patterns in a broadly distributed Neotropical group comprising both relatively ancient and recently derived lineages. | Ph.D. | invest, climate, ocean, conserv, species, biodivers, ocean, biodivers, conserv, species, land | 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Lu, Alex Xijie | Moses, Alan M | Unsupervised machine learning for hypothesis discovery and representation learning in biological image and sequence analysis | Computer Science | 2021-11-01 | High-throughput screening technologies, such as robot-controlled microscopes and whole genome sequencing, have led to an increasing volume of unbiased biological data. An open question is how we can best support hypothesis discovery from these datasets. While we expect some of the data to contain cryptic patterns like novel phenotypes in images or motifs and molecular features in protein sequences, that may lead to new hypotheses about regulation or function, manually sifting through millions of images or protein sequences is too time-consuming and subjective. In this thesis, I will demonstrate how representations, which convert raw images and sequences into computationally comparable measurements, can form the basis for efficient and objective exploration of big biological datasets. I will show how representations can be combined with unsupervised clustering to discover new functions of proteins from an integrative study of almost 400,000 microscopy images of yeast cells. I will describe new computational methods that reduce barriers in effort and expertise in converting images and sequences into representations, by exploiting self-supervised deep learning, where models autonomously learn effective representations of biology through self-posed puzzle-solving tasks. These models develop their own independent conception of data unbiased by prior expert conceptions: I show that by interpreting the features learned by models trained on protein sequences, we can discover sequence features that may be functionally relevant. Finally, I will outline open challenges in out-of-sample generalization in representations, to illuminate future directions for producing representations that capture biological signal in data invariant of noise. | Ph.D. | learning, consum | 4, 12 |
| Toledo-Garibaldi, Maria | Puric-Mladenovic, Danijela||Smith, Sandy M. | Urban Biotope Development for Green Infrastructure and Urban Forest Planning in Mexico City | Forestry | 2021-11-01 | As cities continue to expand and their environmental problems intensify, there is a growing need to incorporate urban forests into land-use planning to enhance and preserve the many environmental services they provide. The environmental problems and demands for greener and more sustainable urban areas are magnified in Mexico City, the largest city in North America. Here, the urban biotope approach was used to understand the extent and structure of the urban forest to support urban land use and planning. First, the urban forest was measured in 500 fixed-area plots (400 m2) and then field data were collected from a subset of plots. A total of 25 urban forest structural and compositional variables were generated from these plots, and then Principal Component Analysis was used to reduce the number of forest variables to five. Hierarchical clustering was used to derive three broader-level biotope groups defined by the dominant land cover and eight finer-level biotope classes characterized by the urban forest. Statistical modelling, based on a random forest algorithm, yielded high classification errors suggesting relatively low accuracy and poor model fit. Alternatively, mapping of four landscape classes based on canopy and environmental variables across the study area provided a much-improved classification system. This work is the first to develop urban biotopes for the entire area of Mexico City and demonstrates that urban biotope information analyzed at different spatial and operational scales is relevant for planning at the neighbourhood, borough, or land use levels. Land use plans at the city-wide level could be developed by incorporating biotope information into planning instruments operating at the neighbourhood and borough levels. Urban biotopes have many practical applications, from informing land-use planning, defining tree planting and stewardship priority areas, setting tree diversity targets, and supporting the development of comprehensive urban forest management and green infrastructure spatial plans. | Ph.D. | green infrastructure, infrastructure, cities, urban, green infrastructure, environmental, forest, land use, land | 6, 11, 9, 13, 15 |
| Modlinska, Ewa Grazyna | Bunce, Susannah | Urban Neoliberalism and External Partnerships in the City of Toronto's Tower Renewal Program | Geography | 2021-11-01 | In 2008, the City of Toronto ('the City') adopted Tower Renewal as a municipal policy and program with the stated objective of helping to revitalize Toronto's postwar high-rise apartment buildings and surrounding neighbourhoods. These apartments were built in the post-World War II period and are predominantly privately owned. This dissertation examines the external partnerships that are being employed by the City for Tower Renewal policy development in municipal offices, and implementation in privately-owned postwar apartment buildings. These external partnerships involve planning professionals from private sector firms, non-profit sector organizations, community-based organizations, and private postwar apartment owners. The overarching argument presented in this dissertation is that Tower Renewal demonstrates the complexities and challenges of local public policy development and delivery in the governance context of urban neoliberalism. Neoliberalism is reflected in four main ways in Tower Renewal that include: (1) discourse and practice of fiscal austerity in municipal offices; (2) popularity of partnership-based policy mechanisms; (3) offloading public policy responsibilities to non-governmental actors; and, (4) the constraints and opportunities that diverse urban actors are confronted with in this new era of partnership-based governance, and within urban neoliberalism more broadly. Although external partnerships have been essential for Tower Renewal policy development and delivery since 2008, my research reveals that the participation of external actors is presently unsustainable and ineffective due to the lack of adequate public-sector financial support and incentives. Theoretically, Tower Renewal also challenges the notion of urban actors as simply passive victims of neoliberalism. Throughout this dissertation, documented are instances where diverse urban actors are strategically engaging in neoliberal policy partnerships with some success in incrementally implementing their progressive agendas. It is through establishing multi-sector policy partnerships, which strive towards more socially and environmentally progressive ends, that these urban actors are challenging neoliberalism from within. In the concluding chapter, I suggest ways to better support the involvement of non-profit and private sector actors in Tower Renewal’s external partnerships. I also recommend an alternative, more traditional approach, to the City’s current emphasis on neoliberal policy partnerships. | Ph.D. | buildings, urban, environmental, governance | 9, 11, 13, 16 |
| Phillips, Elizabeth | Sherwood Lollar, Barbara | Use of Compound-specific Isotope Analysis to Investigate Enzymatic Reaction Mechanisms | Earth Sciences | 2021-11-01 | To maximize the efficiency of biodegradation in groundwater at contaminated sites, it is imperative to understand biodegradation reaction mechanisms. Compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) is a powerful approach that provides novel insights into biodegradation reaction mechanisms, enzyme kinetics and bioremediation potential and efficiency. This thesis aims to extend the discipline of CSIA in several new directions including its use as a means for probing reaction mechanisms, and for examining enzyme kinetics and biodegradation efficiency for halogenated alkanes. This thesis expands the application of CSIA to a new class of compounds, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Significant carbon isotope fractionation was observed during biotransformation of CFC- 113 and CFC-11, and experimental findings applied to investigation of a contaminated field site. Carbon isotope fractionation of CFC-11 in groundwater suggested up to 86% transformation was occurring. Science and public attention remain focused on CFCs, due to recently reported unexplained source inputs to the atmosphere, and the potential for CFC biotransformation in surface and groundwaters remains unclear. Further biotransformation experiments integrated chlorine isotope with carbon isotope analysis for 1,1,1-trichloroethane (1,1,1- TCA) and 1,1-dichloroethane (1,1-DCA). Carbon isotope effects for 1,1,1-TCA and 1,1-DCA biotransformation are suppressed while ΛCl/C are consistent, suggesting a non-fractionating masking effect is present in 1,1,1-TCA and 1,1-DCA biotransformation. In contrast CF biotransformation by the enriched culture SC05 produced highly suppressed carbon and chlorine isotope effects, resulting in significantly different ΛCl/C values. These results are inconsistent with a non-fractionating masking effect and indicate differences in reaction mechanisms or an isotopically fractionating masking effect. The observational data and insights into underlying controls on isotopic fractionation observed for the experiments and field applications herein emphasize the need to understand mechanistic and kinetic controls on carbon and chlorine isotope effects. Studying RDases using CSIA has implications for understanding the role of reductive dehalogenation in the global halogen cycle that influences environmental contamination, atmospheric chemistry and, in turn, climate. | Ph.D. | water, contamination, remediation, invest, climate, environmental | 6, 9, 13 |
| Heslin, Donna Elizabeth | Sá, Creso | Use of Social Media in the Promotion of University-based Entrepreneurship Centres | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | The overall problem this study addressed is how university-based entrepreneurship centres (EC) are using social media to promote themselves and whether this varies based on the regional location of the EC. This study examined how ECs are connecting with internal and external stakeholders to highlight their congruence with the social and scholarly values of the university and the larger ecosystem and helps in understanding how ECs are promoting the support they provide to their key stakeholders to drive innovation and economic development. The study used institutional theory and symbolic management to analyze the social media disseminated by ECs to engage stakeholders. The study included interviews of 12 directors and/or leads of communications at ECs across Canada, followed by a website and Twitter review. The findings of this study revealed that ECs are using social media as an integral means to drive stakeholder engagement and establish themselves as legitimate players in their relevant ecosystems. Symbolic imagery was prevalent in the social media distributed by the ECs with an emphasis on successful programs and events. Targeted channels allowed the EC to build their legitimacy with appropriate stakeholders in the university and the larger entrepreneurial ecosystem. Regional location of the EC does seem to affect the stakeholders valued by an EC. All shared that their primary stakeholders were; students, the university, alumni, mentors and funders. However, ECs in smaller cities appeared to have a more local focus, where those in large cities were looking to engage on a national and international level. ECs shared that their communication tools need to reflect the audience they are looking to engage, and that this needs to align with their university to establish their perceived legitimacy in the ecosystem. | Ph.D. | entrepreneur, cities, ecosystem, ecosystem, institut | 8, 11, 14, 15, 16 |
| Danyliuk, Tanya | Grusec, Joan E | Using Autobiographical Narratives to Examine Successful and Unsuccessful Socialization Experiences | Psychology | 2021-06-01 | The goal of socialization is to have children accept parental values while simultaneously integrating them into their own sense of self. Ultimately, successful socialization is marked by behaviours that are internally driven rather than externally controlled. Researchers studying this process have often relied on using questionnaires in an attempt to uncover which parental behaviours facilitate internalization. Findings have shown that children are more likely to internalize parental values when parents model positive values, comfort during times of distress, use inductive discipline in response to misbehavior, engage in appropriate discussions, and respond to reasonable requests. However, it has recently been suggested that qualitative measures, such as autobiographical narratives, are ideal for studying how life events have been processed. Autobiographical narratives provide insight into which features of socialization are recalled as significant. For this reason, autobiographical narratives were used in the current study. The primary goal was to determine if the ways individuals recall socialization experiences reflect what has already been established using more traditional methods. Several features of socialization were considered, including, whether some values occurred more often in successful experiences, whether learning occurred across a variety of different domains, and whether some components of domains lead to higher internalization than others. Further, combinations of domains were also investigated. Autobiographical narratives of 474 emerging adults were analyzed. Participants provided two narratives, 1) a time when their caregiver was successful at teaching them a value and 2) a time when their caregiver was unsuccessful at teaching them a value. A domains-of-socialization framework was used to conceptualize socialization. Although several findings aligned with previous research, when narratives were used as the outcome measure, some novel findings occurred. Notably, lessons that pertained to being grateful for what you have and where you came from occurred more in successful experiences compared to unsuccessful experiences. Also, learning through participation/observation alone was associated with higher meaning making than when participation was accompanied by a discussion. Finally, no unsuccessful socialization experiences were reported to occur through modeling; thus learning through observation alone seems to be an effective, yet subtle, socialization technique that frequently lead to value internalization. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Legusov, Oleg | Wheelahan, Leesa | Using Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice to Investigate the Experiences of Ontario College Graduates from Three Former Soviet Republics | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | With an aging population and a looming shortage of skilled labor, the Canadian government wants to attract more international students in the hope that many will stay on after graduation. For most international graduates, the path to citizenship involves securing suitable employment in Canada. This study used a mixed-methods research design to explore the experience of 30 Ontario community college graduates originally from three former Soviet republics – Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus – as they attempted to transition from school to work and to integrate into Canadian society. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice provided the theoretical framework used to analyze their work and integration experience. The study examined the relationship between structure and agency, as well as the interplay of the three elements of Bourdieu’s theory: field, capital, and habitus. The data collected from in-depth interviews and document analysis revealed that each participant belonged to one of three distinct groups: “Teenagers”, or those who arrived in Canada shortly after graduating from high school; “Young Adults”, or those who were in their 20s and had further life experience on arrival; and “Mature Adults”, or those who were over 30 on arrival, leaving behind established lives. Before coming to Canada, many members of the Teenager group already had attitudes and attributes suited to Canada’s career field. They also possessed considerable cultural and economic capital as a result of opportunities provided by their parents. The participants in the Young Adult group could not come to Canada right after high school and therefore spent several years engaged in various activities in their home countries, gaining experience that gave them a career habitus not well aligned with the Canadian labor market. And the salient feature of the Mature Adult Group was that, even though some were still young when the Soviet Union collapsed, socialism had a profound impact on their habitus in general and career habitus in particular. Accordingly, they had the greatest difficulty adjusting to life in Canada. The study also revealed that, even though the participants experienced prejudice and discrimination as a nonvisible minority, their whiteness served as a form of capital in the job market. | Ph.D. | citizen, employment, labor, capital, invest, minorit, transit, judic | 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| DuBois, Glynnis Elizabeth | Nixon, Stephanie A | Using Group Music Activities with Families to Support School-readiness Skills in Preschool Children with Hearing Loss | Rehabilitation Science | 2021-06-01 | Age appropriate development in areas of school readiness such as language, literacy, social skills, executive functions, and balance contribute to the successful transition into a typical classroom setting. These areas of development pose a challenge for children with hearing loss and often require additional support to be on par with their peers. As traditional listening and spoken language therapy focuses mainly on skills related to speech and language, other areas of development may lag. The overarching aim of this thesis then, is to review the challenges faced by families of preschool children with hearing loss at school entry and explore how to better support development of school readiness skills using music as a medium. As music has been used for the development of these skills (Habibi, Cahn, Damasio Damasio, 2016; Putkinen, Tervaniemi, Saarikivi, Huotilainen, 2015), this was incorporated. Three inquiries were completed, namely: How might Neurologic Music Therapy (NMT) be incorporated into a music and movement intervention, can a music intervention help to support school readiness skills, and how can this intervention also support families? Six NMT techniques were chosen and used in a twelve week intervention for 10 preschool children with hearing loss. Pre and post intervention test outcomes in the areas of interest were not statistically significant, however observations by both parents and the facilitator reported many positive gains in both groups. A higher percentage of intervention group participants made gains in, preliteracy (100% music and movement, 66% craft-based, 40% control), balance (71% music and movement, 66% craft-based, 0% control) and social skills (70% music and movement and craft-based, 0% control). Parents also completed a post intervention interview. Themes related to gains for themselves and their children and connections and joy were consistently described. It is hoped that outcomes from this study support the addition of group music and movement to assist school readiness skill development. The inclusion of non formalized measures would also add to the overall assessment of progress. Parent to parent support, resources, and strategies would encourage a holistic method of supporting the family during this time of transition to school and hopefully beyond. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Hossain, Fatema Rehana | Campbell, Carol | Using Research Knowledge: Immigrant South Asian Women Graduate Students as Knowledge Mobilization Agents | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | The distinctiveness of graduate students lies in their individual research choices. Graduate students are under-researched despite the large body of research they produce. I found little in the literature about the research conducted by graduate students and also the usage and/or implementation of their research findings. As the potential bridge between research and practice, graduate students could fill the growing demand for knowledge mobilization. Immigrant South Asian women graduate students are doubly overlooked within this under-researched graduate student pool. In this qualitative study, nine immigrant South Asian women graduate students were interviewed to explore their knowledge mobilization experiences. Using the research generation and utilization model by Gough, Tripney, Kenny, and Buk-Berge (2011), the data analysis from the in-depth interview showed that immigrant graduate students from four South Asian countries created and co-created knowledge from their research. Their research were mainly based on the challenges they faced or facing in their lives. They shared, exchanged, and transferred their research knowledge within their educational and professional communities. Along with their researcher roles as knowledge producers, they served as knowledge mediators and users, which indicates they are situating themselves in all three contexts of the knowledge mobilization process. Further studies are recommended to strengthen relationships between students and faculties and/or universities by contributing institutionalized support to graduate students with special emphasis on racialized students. These findings may inform graduate students, researchers, educators, and university administrators regarding knowledge mobilization aspects at universities and provide formalized support for graduate students. | Ph.D. | knowledge, women, institut | 4, 5, 16 |
| Lazarovits, James | Chan, Warren CW | Using The Protein Corona to Train Deep Neural Networks and Build Patient-specific Nanomaterials | Biomedical Engineering | 2019-06-01 | When nanoparticles are exposed to biological environments, proteins rapidly adsorb to the surface and form a structure known as the protein corona. The protein corona always forms irrespective of the material composition, surface chemistry, size and shape. This interfacial network of protein is one of the biggest banes to nanomedicine as it mediates how nanoparticles behave in the body despite our synthetic control. Investigations outside the body have shown that it is possible to predict protein corona adsorption based on nanoparticle size, shape and surface chemistry. At present, no insight and forecast exists of protein assembly patterns in vivo, nor has this interfacial chemistry been used toward building new applications in medicine. This thesis presents an original contribution to biomedical nanotechnology as it exploits the protein corona across two themes with a collective effort to improve translation of nanomaterials into the clinic. First I demonstrate that the protein corona can be deciphered and used as input data to train a neural network that is able to predict nanoparticle biodistribution in an animal model. Second, a new class of nanomaterial is created by isolation, separation and materials ligation of the protein corona from a nanoparticle template. The latter provides a solution to a major problem facing nanomaterial design; the engineering of size and shape tunable organic nanomaterials under 100 nm. They are biodegradable and do not activate innate or adaptive immunity following single and repeated administrations in vivo. Together, these findings provide insight and foundational materials design to create a patient-specific nanomaterial that can have predictable biodistribution inside of the body. | Ph.D. | invest, animal, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Jeong, Junho | Poon, Joyce K. S. | Vanadium Dioxide for Memory, Oscillators, and Optical Beam Manipulation | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06-01 | Vanadium dioxide (VO2), which exhibits insulator-metal transition, has been utilized to demonstrate a non-volatile memory and a tunable metasurface device. To realize these devices, fabrication techniques were developed. Different dry etching recipes were created for making VO2 micro-wires depending on the material crystallinity. In addition, a post-fabrication technique using current injection was developed to create single-crystal VO2 micro-wires from initially poly-crystalline samples. The electrical properties of VO2 become more favorable after this recrystallization process. First, we present a VO2 memory device that demonstrated optically addressable nonvolatile memory at room temperature. The combination of electrical and optical stimuli was used to write memory, and the device state could be read out as voltage oscillations even after several days. This is the first time, to our knowledge, that non-volatile memory is observed in VO2 at room temperature. This observation suggests the presence of a metastable phase in the VO2. Although probing the physical nature of this phase was outside the scope of the thesis, the non-volatile memory effect was studied phenomenologically using VO2 micro-wire devices. Second, we show highly tunable optical transmission in a VO2 optical metasurface. The device consisted of gold (Au) gratings on a VO2 thin film. The gratings simultaneously served to enhance the optical transmission and as resistive heaters. As current was applied through the Au gratings, the localized area of VO2 became metallic due to Joule heating. By switching between extraordinary optical transmission when the VO2 was an insulator to a high absorptive state when the VO2 was metallic, the transmission was tunable by 33 dB/mm. Furthermore, another metasurface device is proposed with simulations displaying reconfigurable beam steering capabilities while using only digital switching of the VO2 elements. With the development of fabrication processes along with the demonstrations of nonvolatile memory and beam manipulation with VO2, this thesis expands the opportunities for VO2 to be used in new types of computing and flat optics devices. | Ph.D. | knowledge, transit | 4, 11 |
| Park, Yoobin | Park, Chul B||Naguib, Hani E | Variable-centered and Person-centered Approaches to Understanding a Satisfying Single Life: A Focus on Singles’ Social Lives | Psychology | 2022-03-01 | Despite the worldwide increase in the unpartnered population, little research has examined what factors contribute to a satisfying single life. This is an important gap in the literature as the degree to which one is satisfied with one’s relationship status has been shown to be a more important determinant of well-being than relationship status per se. In the present research, I examined situational (Studies 1-3) and individual factors (Studies 4-6B) related to a satisfying single life, with a focus on single individuals’ social experiences. In the first three studies (N = 3,890), I examined if and how having satisfying relationships with family and friends or having a satisfying sexual life is associated with single individuals’ satisfaction with singlehood. Results showed that having satisfying friendships and a sexually satisfying life were both associated with single individuals’ feelings of satisfaction about being single. In the next four studies (N = 3,195), I drew on the Fundamental Social Motives Framework to examine single individuals’ motivations to pursue different types of social experiences in relation to satisfaction with singlehood. Across two Western samples (primarily European and American) and one Korean sample (collected during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021), I identified three different configurations of motives that exist within the single population. Importantly, the profile characterized by high independence motives in combination with low affiliation and mating motives seemed to be associated with greater satisfaction with singlehood compared to the profile characterized by strong interest in self-protection and social connections as well as the profile characterized by little interest in self-protection but moderate interest in affiliation. Despite considerable consistency, these profile features did not perfectly replicate in a smaller sample collected before the pandemic, highlighting the need to interpret the data with the historical background in mind. Overall, the present research provides novel evidence that maintaining satisfying friendships and sexual lives may contribute to a satisfying single life; at the same time, individuals oriented towards independence in the absence of strong interest in affiliation or romantic partnership may be prone to experiencing singlehood as more satisfying. | Ph.D. | well-being | 3 |
| Bennett, Morgan Jane | Bovy, Jo | Vertical Oscillations in the Solar Neighbourhood and the Sagittarius Dwarf Galaxy | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2021-11-01 | Galactic dynamics is an important tool for studying what is happening in our Milky Way, because the kinematics of stars can tell us a lot about their history and the forces that have shaped their orbits. From our position in the Milky Way, we are able to accurately observe the positions of billions of stars and the velocities of millions. Observations of the solar neighbourhood have told us that it is currently undergoing an oscillation from a perturbation with unknown origins. We start by examining the Gaia Data Release 2 positions and velocities of stars in the solar neighbourhood to measure this perturbation. We find evidence in the vertical number count asymmetry and mean vertical velocity of a perturbation to the solar neighbourhood of approximately 10\%. One of the leading theories to-date is that the passage of Sgr caused this perturbation to the Galactic disc. We develop a one-dimensional model which predicts the perturbation to the vertical distribution function of the solar neighbourhood given the force from a passing satellite. By investigating a multitude of possible Sgr orbits, Sgr mass models, and Milky Way halo masses, we show that Sgr is not able to reproduce the observed perturbation. We follow this by running an ensemble of thirteen N-body simulations of the interaction between Sgr and the Milky Way. These simulations span the same parameters of the interaction as the one-dimensional model. We then look at solar-neighbourhood-like volumes in our simulations and find that again none were able to reproduce the observed perturbation to the Galactic disc. We also find that the final mass of Sgr consistently exceeds the true mass measurement of the Sgr progenitor. From this we deduce that the true perturbation from Sgr is in fact much smaller than has previously been assumed. We can therefore conclude the observed vertical perturbations to the solar neighbourhood could not have been caused by Sgr acting alone. We suggest that pinning down the origin of the vertical perturbation to the Galactic disc requires much more complicated modelling. | Ph.D. | solar, invest, cities | 7, 9, 11 |
| Gallo, Tiziana Andrea | Xie, Liye | Vibrant Stone: Ground Stone Celt Biographies Among the Ancestral and Historic Wendat in Southern Ontario from the 14th to mid-17th Centuries | Anthropology | 2022-03-01 | Ground stone celts are an understudied artifact category in Ontario archaeology despite their essential contribution to the intensification of sedentarism and horticulture in northern Iroquoian communities. This dissertation studies 2660 ground stone celt artifacts – including blanks, roughouts, debitage, complete celts, recycled and unrecycled celt fragments — from 20 legacy collections of ancestral and historic Wendat sites dating between the 14th and mid-17th centuries in southern Ontario to better understand their comprehensive roles in northern Iroquoian lifeways before and at the onset of European contact.I integrate the chaîne opératoire and New Materialism to reconstruct ground stone celt biographies from a relational perspective. Viewing stones as a vibrant agent, my investigation begins with geological histories, which preshaped celts at the source and affected morphological changes in later stages of their biographies. Metamorphic stones predominantly used to make the documented celts originate from the Canadian Shield, a powerful and geologically complex landscape with a long history of human and non-human relations. Regional longue durée shows that Indigenous peoples made and used ground stone celts since the Middle Archaic period. Thousands of years of relations to stones and the landscape carried through the biographies of ancestral and historic ground stone celts during the Late Woodland period. Ethnohistoric and ethnographic accounts indicate that ground stone celts came to mediate transformative relations between the Wendat and various non-human beings including trees, soil, animals, and plants. The chaînes opératoires of the documented celts reveal that stone selection processes and celt morphologies resulted from reciprocal and co-creative engagements assembling humans, non-humans, and historical contexts, which preserved and transformed geologically formed surfaces, morphologies, and functions. Throughout changing social, economic, political, and territorial contexts of the American Northeast between ca. 1300 and 1650 CE, Wendat communities reoriented procurement strategies while maintaining shared ways of relating to ground stone celt properties and biographies. The ever-changing ground stone celts thus escape typological classification, and cannot be used as cultural, temporal, or functional markers. Their persistence alongside copper and iron cutting tools of European origin on early to mid-17th-century sites further indicates the strong connections that the Wendat developed with these vibrant stones. | Ph.D. | invest, indigenous, recycl, animal, animal, land, soil, indigenous | 9, 10, 16, 12, 14, 15 |
| Frydel, Tomasz | Wróbel, Piotr J. | Village Society and the Holocaust in the General Government: The Case of Kreis Debica | History | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation is a microhistory of a phase of the Holocaust in German-occupied Poland characterized by widespread police manhunts for fugitive Jews (Judenjagd) from mid-1942 to late 1944, which followed the violent deportation Aktions directed at ghetto populations. It is a case study of one rural county, or Kreis, of Debica, located in the eastern half of District Kraków of the General Government. The study identifies 1,257 Jews who evaded the mass killing operations and took shelter on the territory of Kreis Debica, 75% of whom were subsequently killed and 25% survived. It provides a fine-grained reconstruction of the social dynamics and processes that informed the participation of locals in the persecution of Jews for a period of almost three years. The data is drawn primarily from postwar legal proceedings against individuals accused of collaboration on the basis of the Decree of August 31, 1944. The dissertation integrates the Judenjagd with parallel processes aimed at other groups by means of a thick description. It places the findings within two theoretical frames of reference. First, it treats the nexus of local structures co-opted by the occupation authorities as a critical meso level of the process of genocide in the General Government. Those with institutional ties to the system of indirect German rule over the Polish countryside became bound by a self-regulating dynamic of mutually reinforcing fears among its members, which did not necessitate the presence of the uniformed police. Second, it views local dynamics as a response to ongoing security dilemmas. The aftershock of German state violence against locals for the shelter of Jews provided a combustible social atmosphere, in which Polish fear of Jewish exposure upon capture set off a chain reaction of pre-emptive violence against Jews in hiding. The study situates the question of Polish agency within these structures and dynamics. It finds that the occupation authorities had essentially unleashed a sociology of state collapse upon Poland’s multiethnic society. These conditions lowered the threshold for participation in persecution and violence against targeted groups. This account stands in contrast to interpretations that explain Polish participation in genocide as stemming primarily from ideology and personal convictions. | Ph.D. | labor, rural, land, institut, violence | 8, 11, 15, 16 |
| Durant, Steve | Webster, Fiona | Visions and Shadows: A Socio-history of the Mental-health Policy Reform Agenda in Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation offers a critical, contextualizing analysis of government policy and discourse pertaining to mental-health reform in Canada, with a focus on the province of Ontario. It represents my attempt to craft an analysis and contextual history of government policy visions pertaining to mental disorder and wellness. I define the study’s problematic broadly, as an attempt to understand how problems are defined and solutions enacted through institutions organized under the auspices of government, insofar as problems and solutions in public discourse are depicted as pertaining to mental disorder. My investigation proceeds through an analysis of government texts and their social, political and historical context, influenced by Dorothy Smith’s contributions to institutional ethnography and political economy, Arthur Frank’s project of socio-narratology, and, (in a more complicated way), the historical and methodological works of Michel Foucault. My history of reform is in many respects a history of how problems have been constructed and understood, and my deconstruction of discourses of recovery and reform is in many ways an exploration of institutional developments (as well as certain concrete policy proposals that authorized discourse seems to preclude, actively or implicitly). Drawing on literature from policy studies related to policy subsystems and state capacity, I interpret actual policy developments and visionary discourse pertaining to mental-health policy as the vanguard movement of neoliberalism within the Canadian social-welfare state. I suggest that a biomedical era of mental-health discourse may be usefully thought of as giving way to, and merging with, an ascendant economic understanding of disorder itself – the antecedents of which are well-described in Foucault’s analysis in the 1970s of the then-nascent political implications of neoliberalism. | Ph.D. | welfare, mental health, invest, institut | 1, 3, 9, 16 |
| Rothstein, Jacqueline | Most, Andrea | Vital Movements: Feminist Aesthetics and Popular Culture 1920–1945 | English | 2019-06-01 | Vital Movements argues for the crucial importance of women’s physical movement to the aesthetics of American popular culture between 1920 and 1945. Tracking female bodies as they run up and down stairs, enter and exit rooms, and strut across spaces and places, my dissertation reveals an array of self-determining women, defiant in their mobility and their right to choose and take pleasure in a life outside the accepted roles of wife and mother. Aesthetic modernism’s institutionalization as the critical high-water mark of the period has largely rendered works that circulated in the commercial realms of Broadway, Hollywood, and Book-of-the-Month Clubs devoid of substance. Further, critical emphasis on language and discourse, according to dance critics, has caused us to ignore the expressive capacities of the body in motion. I argue that sustained attention to embodied movement forces a reconsideration of popular realist texts by revealing other ways they tell their stories, ways that are complex and layered in their own right. This method of engagement restores agency to the texts, lost, as Rita Felski has argued, in the emphasis on historical context, by rendering their capacity to solicit our “affective attachments.” Combining insights from middlebrow studies, “physical cultures” of the period, philosophies of movement, dance studies, and spatial theory, each chapter applies them to a different genre. Chapter one uses Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman’s play Stage Door to establish women’s movement as the dissertation’s overall subject and to introduce the essential role played by work in the freedom and autonomy expressed by it. Chapter two focuses on resistance to norms of feminine embodiment and their relation to social and economic mobility in Dorothy Arzner’s film Dance, Girl, Dance. Stage directions and the inherent visuality of film attune readers to moving bodies before encountering the narrative forms of chapters three and four, which, respectively, connect moving bodies to unarticulated thoughts and desires in Zona Gale’s novel Miss Lulu Bett, and to personal growth and fulfillment in Mabel Dodge Luhan’s autobiography, Intimate Memories. Throughout bodies “speak” through movement, generating a realism richly attuned to the textures of women’s everyday lives. | Ph.D. | women, girl, female, feminis, water, cities, institut | 5, 6, 11, 16 |
| Allison, Betty Waynne | Nielsen, Wendy||Gustsche-Miller, Dr. Sarah | Voice-in-the-World: An Exploration of Mid-Career Opera Singers’ Non-Musical Stressors and Coping Strategies | Music | 2021-11-01 | Singers are constantly balancing how they, as subjects, interact with objects in the world to create a consistent product (sound). But singers are also used as objects in the creation of someone else’s work by composers, directors, and companies, etc. This results in a highly unstable and unpredictable career that can upset the inner balance between coping and resilience. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this thesis explores the lived experience of seven elite-level Canadian opera singers through in-depth narratives to discover these performers’ non-musical stressors and coping strategies. The four emergent stress themes (finances, expendability, peripatetic lifestyle, and fatigue) were all accentuated by feeling a lack of control, or lack of agency, and instability. Often, the coping strategies were obfuscated by stress and were in fact harder for the singers to discuss or identify. The three main coping strategies outlined—routines and consistency, emotional self-management, and support network and communication—reflected how the singers tried to create stability and control to find resilience and longevity in the opera business. This thesis ends by bringing awareness to the idea of creator mind versus the singing body—a dichotomy which, I argue, leads to the subjugation of opera singers. This study is not meant to produce definitive conclusions or solutions; rather it is meant to prompt a conversation by focusing on what Heidegger (1927/2010) would call a caring “attunement” towards a deeper understanding of what it is to be an opera singer in Canada. | D.M.A. | resilien, resilience, resilience | 11, 13, 15 |
| Vaziri, Ehsan | Ekmekci, Alis | Vortex-induced Vibration and Forced Oscillation Motion of a Circular Cylinder Fitted with a Single Spanwise Tripwire | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2021-06-01 | This experimental study consisted of two main parts. The first part investigated the control induced by a spanwise tripwire on a circular cylinder undergoing one-degree-of-freedom vortex-induced vibration (VIV). The cylinder vibrates in the cross-stream direction as a result of the fluid forcing in a recirculating water tunnel. Changing mass and damping ratios in the test rig allowed the investigation at different VIV response branches. The tripwire diameter was 6.25% of the cylinder diameter. Experimental research was conducted by attaching the large-scale tripwire along the span of the cylinder at various angular positions ranging from 0° to 180° (with respect to the most upstream point of the cylinder). Along with measuring the trajectory of the cylinder motion, the instantaneous velocity field in the near wake of the cylinder was obtained simultaneously at a fixed Reynolds number of 10,000 (based on the cylinder diameter) using a Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) system. Various vortex-formation modes induced by the tripwire were observed. It was shown that the oscillation pattern, frequency, and amplitude of the cylinder can be altered significantly depending on the angular position of the tripwire and the VIV response branch. For specific tripwire positions, increases of up to 52 times and decreases of up to 98% were identified in the oscillation amplitude of the tripped cylinder compared to the amplitude of the clean cylinder.The second part of the study investigated the effects of the tripwire on the flow structure behind a circular cylinder forced to oscillate harmonically at prescribed amplitudes and frequencies in the cross-stream direction. Oscillation amplitudes are 0.05, 0.3 and 0.6 times the cylinder diameter, and oscillation frequencies are 0.61, 0.8, and 1 times the vortex shedding frequency of the stationary clean cylinder counterpart. For a fixed oscillation amplitude and frequency, the tripwire can either induce intermittent switching between various vortex shedding modes or cause a wake mode to be dominant during the entire observed oscillation motion by altering the vortex shedding mechanism. The wake of the tripped cylinder undergoing the lowest amplitude forced oscillation motion showed resemblance to the wake of the stationary tripped cylinder. | Ph.D. | water, invest | 6, 9 |
| Giusto, Salvatore | Muehlebach, Andrea||Song, Jesook | Vox Populi: Organized Crime, Media Politics, and Subaltern Publicity in Contemporary Naples, Southern Italy | Anthropology | 2019-11-01 | This dissertation investigates the organized crime sponsored mediascape of Naples, Southern Italy, through the ethnographic analysis of the "neomelodic" media industry. Neomelodic folk-pop songs and local TV shows constitute a main form of media entertainment among the current Neapolitan lower-classes. These cultural productions aim to depict the experience of the local poor, specifically those involved with the Camorra: a criminal organization that is also a major investor in the neomelodic mediascape. With this in mind, this dissertation explores the neomelodic media industry as a cultural, aesthetic, and politico-economic platform of informal governmentality, which attempts to reconcile the Neapolitan subaltern publics with the political violence managed by local Camorra networks versus the unaccountability of the Italian state toward its social peripheries. Complementing historical insights with ethnographic data collected amid neomelodic sites of cultural production, this dissertation shows that Camorra-mediated subaltern politics parallel the neoliberal policies engendering the populist take-over of the post-Berlusconian Italian state over the national media industries since the mid-1990s. These policies, in fact, turned Italian national media into platforms of informal engagement with the public sphere, which served the local subaltern as self-exploitative tools of socio-economic mobility and indirect governmentality. Through this comparison, this dissertation ultimately shows how the politics enacted by contemporary criminal cartels and the neoliberal state are articulated in tension with each other, since they hinge on similar logics of mediation. Together, they deploy an interactive regime of subaltern publicity, which reproduces historical conditions of social inequality while turning them into mediacratic forms of agency and populist reinterpretations of power and violence. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, gender, invest, inequality, equalit, production, violence, organized crime | 1, 5, 9, 10, 12, 16 |
| Wind, Keiwan Seiedi | Poland, Blake | What Causes Health? Revisiting the Social Determinants of Health (SDH) Through a Salutogenic Lens and Self-reported Health (SRH) as the Main Outcome: A Realist Evaluation | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11-01 | For centuries healthcare has been driven by a disease-oriented mindset. Built on the Enlightenment philosophers’ thoughts and insights, this mindset has separated self from body, defined health as the absence of physiological disorders, and reduced healthcare to a disease elimination campaign. Even the social determinants of health (SDH) models have been designed to reduce the prevalence of the disease and to detect and correct pathogenic mechanisms of “social production of disease.” However, studies show that people with chronic or terminal conditions identify themselves as healthy. In the late 1970s and in his theory of Salutogenesis, Antonovsky hypothesized that people with a strong sense of coherence (SOC) manage to maintain their health, facing stressors created by life challenges. Informed by the realist evaluation methodology, this study explores how a Salutogenic SDH model operates if the duality of self and body is challenged by replacing medicine-diagnosed disease with self-reported health (SRH) as the outcome of the SDH models. In the first chapter, I argued that approaching health from a pathogenic perspective is misleading and has created many unintentional harms like the medicalization of life. From synthesizing seventy-one reviews (Chapter Two), I found that SRH can replace medicine-diagnosed diseases in SDH models. The systematic review (Chapter Three) showed that SOC has a robust and positive impact on the SRH of individuals, and its impact on the relationship between SDH and SRH is similar to that between SDH and disease. However, based on the findings from two review papers, I argued that to develop a true salutogenic SDH model, merely changing the outcome and even adding SOC as another determinant to the list of SDH is not enough. In a salutogenic model, a salutogenic outcome should be supported by a salutogenic mechanism. Using a network approach to data analysis in chapter four, I created an interface between the National Population Health Survey dataset and the realist evaluation methodology. I showed how strong SOC improves the general resilience of a person’s network of determinants and protects her health when a life challenge turns a determinant in the network turns from a resource into a deficit. | Ph.D. | healthcare, resilien, production, resilience, resilience | 3, 11, 12, 13, 15 |
| Azzam, Raneem | Bakan, Abigail | What Does it Mean to be a Solution?: Teachers of Colour Doing Social Justice in the Multicultural School in Canada | Social Justice Education | 2019-11-01 | This project conceptualizes the racialized teacher subject in the multicultural Canadian school in Toronto, Ontario, by examining what it means for the Black, Indigenous and teacher of colour to be positioned to solve inequity and racial injustice in schools. It asks: What does it mean for the racialized teacher to be a solution? To address this overarching question, the project examines the following issues: how racialized teacher subjectivity becomes constituted prior to and while working in the multicultural school; what kinds of expectations the racialized teacher subject navigates; and the systems that function to produce and constrain the racialized teacher’s social justice goals. Because the project is interested in the complexity of the racialized teacher in a white settler state such as Canada, the space of the racially diverse or “multicultural” Toronto area high school was the site of investigation. The core argument presented is that the racialized teacher subject is restricted through liberal and neoliberal discourses, contending with the position of what I term the multicultural helper – an idealized figure who is expected to facilitate the inclusion of the racialized student into the multicultural school. The types of solutions racialized teachers are typically invited to take up are those that model and facilitate depoliticized and culturally acceptable subjectivities for their students. I argue that racialized teachers do not and cannot actually embody social justice; rather they struggle against and negotiate the position of the multicultural helper. Crucially, they unlearn dominant notions of Canadian multiculturalism in the production of a politically conscious subjectivity. I further argue that the liberal expectations inscribed in multicultural helping require racialized teachers to navigate the contradictions between the benefits and harms of the ways they are positioned in schools. I illustrate that spaces and systems within schooling, in particular those outside the direct influence of the racialized teacher, are governed by discourses of control (Nolan, 2011) and discipline (Foucault, 1995), reproducing injustice and limiting the transformative potential of the racialized teacher’s work. | Ph.D. | settler, equity, invest, equit, of colour, indigenous, production, social justice, injustice, indigenous | 4, 9, 10, 16, 12 |
| Dong, Mengxi | Fournier, Marc A. | What Is It to Be Wise? The Nomological Network and Necessary Conditions of Wisdom | Psychology | 2021-11-01 | Although wisdom has been universally valued by all cultures since antiquity, the scientific investigation of wisdom has only just begun. This dissertation aimed to move the psychological research on wisdom forward by clarifying the nomological network of wisdom and identifying the personality and cognitive constructs that constituted its necessary conditions. In Study 1, I meta-analytically summarized thirty years of empirical wisdom research on the associations between wisdom on the one hand and age, intelligence, the Big-Five personality traits, self-esteem, narcissism, social desirability, and well-being on the other. I furthermore examined whether these associations were moderated by how wisdom was operationalized. Although wisdom measures showed different patterns of correlations with these constructs, with the largest differences between self-report and performance wisdom measures, all wisdom measures were robustly associated with trait openness and the growth dimension of eudaimonic well-being. In Study 2, I examined the longstanding hypotheses that certain cognitive and personality constructs, such as intelligence and trait openness, constitute necessary conditions for wisdom. I found that the necessary conditions for wisdom depended on how wisdom was operationalized: intelligence was necessary for wisdom performance, whereas the adaptive Big-Five traits were necessary for self-report wisdom. Findings from this dissertation serve to inform the field of the strengths and shortcomings as well as the commonalities and divergences among current conceptions and operationalizations of wisdom. These findings provide a foundation and reference for future theorizing and research on the topic of wisdom. | Ph.D. | well-being, invest | 3, 9 |
| Bramwell, Daniela | Flessa, Joseph | Why did Ecuador Adopt Education Standards and Citizenship Education? An Analysis through Four Different Theoretical Approaches | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-11-01 | This research consists of an exploration of the reasons why Ecuador adopted two policies (education standards in 2013 and citizenship education in 2011) through four different theoretical approaches: rationalism, world culture theory, culturalism and decolonial thought. This study uses an adaptation of the Comparative Case Study Approach (Bartlett Vavrus, 2017) and the data consists of 25 interviews of organizational elites as well as 80 documents. In answering the main research question, this study also explores voluntary choice versus coercion in reasons for policy adoption, showing there are more ways of exerting power in policy adoption than commonly shown in Global Education Policy literature. It also teases out what three main theoretical approaches in Global Education Policy illuminate/overlook in explaining policy adoption and brings a fourth theoretical approach into the conversation: decolonial thought. And so, why did Ecuador adopt education standards and citizenship education? I found three main answers: (1) an “official” answer - Ecuador adopted both policies to solve national problems (reflecting rationalism) with a countertheme to this, signaling that policy makers might also have adopted education standards for reasons of political expediency (reflecting culturalism), (2) a common answer - Ecuador adopted both policies due to international influence (reflecting world culture theory) with a counter theme highlighting policy makers’ emphasis on national sovereignty and their own agency as decision-makers (reflecting rationalism and culturalism) and (3) a decolonial theory answer - Ecuador adopted both policies because it is embedded in global hegemonic colonial power which includes power differentials between nation states, power differentials in knowledge, power differentials between racial groups, and the structures of internal colonialism. This study responds to three policy borrowing research needs: (1) the inclusion of more postcolonial/decolonial thought, (2) more policy borrowing studies reflecting societies of the Global South and (3) further study and theorization of the policy adoption phase. In addition, this study offers two theoretical contributions: (1) an adapted continuum of voluntary-coercive reasons for policy adoption and (2) a proposed conceptual framework for studying reasons for policy adoption. | Ph.D. | knowledge, decolonial, citizen, sovereignty | 4, 16 |
| Francescutti, Kristina Sara | Bartlett, Kenneth | Women Disputing Inheritances: Status, Material Culture, Law, and Agency in Sixteenth-century Friuli | History | 2021-11-01 | This dissertation highlights the experiences of three Friulian women alive in the first half of the sixteenth-century who negotiated complex issues around property, rights, and law generated out of conflicts in or around their marriages. In examining moments of transition and conflict in their lives through the lens of material culture we learn a great deal about the ways early modern women could assert agency in a time and place undergoing significant social change. Through a comparison of three microhistorical case-studies, similar motives, strategies and aspirations emerge. Giulia de Urbanis, Mora Quagliana, and Agata di Varmo all engaged in inheritance disputes in order to ensure their economic well-being. In their attempts to right perceived injustices in their lives, Giulia, Mora, and Agata all exercised agency within a legal system not known for being particularly receptive to challenges to patriarchal norms. These women are each representative of different social and marital statuses, and therefore the impact of the elements of class and the intersection of legal systems on agency is explored. Additionally, the material objects at the heart of these lawsuits, which these women went to great lengths to secure, help paint a picture of their domestic worlds and establish the vital importance of dotal goods to women’s survival. By focusing this examination in Friuli, a territory at the intersection of the era’s key social, political and legal movements, we gain a more nuanced impression of the Italian peninsula in the sixteenth-century and expand our understanding of how these intersections shaped women’s experience. This study argues that, when taken together, the experiences of Giulia, Mora, and Agata demonstrate that agentic capacity was shaped by class and status. Specifically, women could exploit traditional gender roles, concepts of honour, and a range of social networks in order to manipulate legal ambiguities to their advantage during times of social upheaval. | Ph.D. | well-being, gender, women, urban, transit, injustice, legal system, social change | 3, 5, 11, 16 |
| Aiello, Olivia Jessica | McCready, Lance T | Young Black Men's Embodied Experiences of Traumatic Gun Violence | Social Justice Education | 2022-03-01 | This thesis examines the experiences of 10 young Black men who have been impacted by traumatic gun violence either directly through being shot or indirectly by witnessing gun violence in their communities or losing loved ones to gun violence. Few studies have considered the traumatic and embodied impact of gun violence on young Black men. Using trauma theory and embodiment as theoretical frameworks, this research demonstrates how due to the lack of resources and recognition of young Black men’s experiences of traumatic gun violence, young Black men begin to “embody” experiences of traumatic gun violence physically and emotionally. Young Black men’s experiences of gun violence within the city of Toronto continue to be stigmatized, criminalized, and disregarded as a traumatic issue and the main approaches to solving gun violence have focused on criminal justice interventions and policing which do not engage with the actual “embodied trauma” of gun violence. This thesis demonstrates that to understand how young Black men embody traumatic violence we first need to understand how systemic violence and structural oppression, as expressed through racial profiling, over-surveillance, incarceration, police brutality, and experiences of poverty, coincide with the traumatic impact of gun violence, and directly relate to young Black men’s experiences of ongoing exposure to gun violence. | Ph.D. | poverty, criminal justice, violence | 1, 16 |
| Rhoades, Rachel Emma | Gallagher, Kathleen | Youth Artists for Justice: Examining Participation in Social Movements and Envisioning Futures through Applied Theatre | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2019-11-01 | This study examines how racialized, socioeconomically under-resourced secondary school-age youth in Toronto conceptualize their current and future roles within contemporary social movements and the larger political sphere. This collaborative ethnodrama action research study, Youth Artists for Justice, involved 12 participants ages 15-20, consisting mainly of racialized, socioeconomically under-resourced youth. The study expands understanding of how youth envision and enact political participation within the current context of ongoing racism in this neoliberal era. A goal of the program was to garner within these particular youth a sense of hope and capacity to conceptualize and enact their political agency. This research contributes to scholarly discourses of drama methodology and secondary school-age youth participation in social movements by examining how ethnodrama as a methodology supports youth in further developing theories of change, envisioning their own potential political roles, and entering into participation on their terms. Applied theatre practices in this study created space to honour and to apply counter-hegemonic knowledges, to embrace and mobilize emotional expression, to disrupt power, to enrich collective agency, and to perform a public performance with political efficacy. Findings show the need to attend to the sense of existential displacement and foreboding that many youth participants reported experiencing when envisioning the future. Another major finding points to how the Toronto youth participants, through the theatre-making processes, related to the embodiment of solidarity. In this study, devised theatre work with marginalized youth serves as a means of analyzing, experiencing, and modeling solidarity and its strategic importance as a modality for countering systemic injustice. Using a critical youth studies and applied theatre lens, this research expands discourse on how youth desire and strategize the means by which to enact both major structural change and local movement-building outside of neoliberal structures. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, knowledge, knowledges, racism, labor, marginalized, injustice | 1, 4, 8, 10, 16 |
| Ritchie, Genevieve Beth | Mojab , Shahrzad | Youth in Transition: The Political Economy of Migration | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06-01 | From the Arab uprisings to the refugee crisis, global events seemed to be remaking the conditions of life for young people. For young adults from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), the tumultuous conditions of our time prompted civil society actors to develop new forms of youth engagement. Refugee youth from the MENA region are now marked as both a global threat to stability and an asset on the verge of return. Beginning from these contrary realities, my analysis seeks to make two contributions to the knowledge produced for and about refugee youth. Firstly, I locate theorizations of youth within the relations of neoliberals and the expansion of civil society. I aim to disrupt the idea that neoliberal models of youth can promote the agency of refugees. In contrast, my analysis works toward the argument that global capitalism produces a particular type of individual agency that exists in mutual constitution with the conditions of alienation. The point that I hope to demonstrate is that the relations of alienation are co-ordinated, reproduced, and expanded by non-government organizations in their quest to open up spaces for youth participation. The second intervention made by the analysis speaks more directly to the migration studies literature and critiques the ideal of migration as justice. I argue that migrations create the conditions of survival and exploitation, racialization, patriarchy, and youth alienation. Refugee migrations are contradictory, often engendering both access to justice and conditions other than justice. The two parts of the argument are united in the idea that access to humanitarian migration, coordinated by civil society, weaves the aspirational promise of access to class mobility into the political promise of access to justice. The interlinking of youth participation and migration then promises youth a kind of internationalized class mobility. Although social participation for refugee youth promises economic and geographic mobility, the concrete conditions of drawing refugee youth into global capitalism engender conditions of exploitation, racialization, and alienation. | Ph.D. | knowledge, gender, feminis, patriarchy, capital, humanitarian, refugee, transit, exploitation | 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Boswell, Curtis William | Ciruna, Brian G | Zebrafish Models of Idiopathic Scoliosis: Cilia, Cerebrospinal Fluid Flow and Neuroinflammatory Origins of Pathogenesis | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2019-11-01 | Adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (IS) is a spine disease characterized by three-dimensional curvatures of the vertebral column that arise in the absence of observable physiological or anatomical defects. Although there has been investigation into genetic components of IS, the cell biological and molecular mechanisms underlying disease progression remain unclear. Our lab has previously described the first genetically defined developmental model of IS in ptk7 mutant zebrafish. Zygotic ptk7 mutant zebrafish display hallmark phenotypes of the human disease, including 3-dimensional rotational spinal deformities, late onset for curve formation and sexual dimorphic bias in phenotype severity. These fish are defective in a key modulator of Wnt signalling, implicating this pathway in the onset of disease. Wnt signalling controls the biogenesis, localization and polarized architecture of motile cilia, which are essential for proper cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) flow. I found that ptk7 mutants display a late-onset ependymal cell motile cilia phenotype that was directly associated with spinal curve formation. Live imaging of CSF dynamics within the brain ventricles revealed uncoordinated flow, transgenic re-introduction of Ptk7 in motile ciliated lineages prevents scoliosis in ptk7 mutants, and mutation of multiple independent cilia motility genes also yield IS phenotypes. To identify underlying mechanisms of disease, I used lineage tracing, conditional genetic methodologies and next generation sequencing to define a spatial and biological origin of spinal curve formation in ptk7 mutant zebrafish. Strikingly, I found that ptk7 is expressed and specifically required within the brain for normal spine development and CSF homeostasis. Downstream of brain-derived CSF regulation, I uncovered an unexpected upregulation of immunogenic factors suggesting that spinal curvature may be due to a neuroinflammatory response to defective CSF homeostasis. I found that focal activation of proinflammatory signals within the spinal cord is sufficient to initiate idiopathic-like spinal curvature. Together, these data suggest that Wnt-directed motile cilia function is required for proper adolescent spine development, and that neuroinflammatory signals downstream of disrupted homeostatic CSF integrity can initiate spinal deformity. | Ph.D. | invest, fish | 9, 14 |
| Narayanaswamy, Nagarajan | Ward, Charles A | Zeta Adsorption Isotherm: Surface Area Determination and Kinetics of Vapour Adsorption | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-03-01 | A method based on the zeta adsorption isotherm (ZAI) is proposed for determining the specific surface area, $A_s$, of a nanopowder from its measured (mass-specific) N$_2$ vapour adsorption isotherm at 77 K. A multi-component canonical ensemble is used to determine the conditions for equilibrium between a contacting vapour phase and the adsorbed molecular clusters. Provided the substrate variations (heterogeneities), do not cause a phase transition, it was shown that the equilibrium conditions allow an expression for an adsorption isotherm to be formed in terms of four constants that are obtained empirically from mass-specific adsorption measurements. The $A_s$ of a substrate is expressed in terms of the mass-specific number of adsorption sites, and the cross-sectional area of an adsorbed N$_2$ molecule. This procedure is investigated bypooling area-specific datasets from multiple samples of a given material to form a single dataset. Then a thermodynamic isotherm is obtained through a regression analysis. The determined values of $A_s$ are further verified by obtaining the solid surface energy, $\gamma^{S0}$, by using the ZAI with the Gibbs adsorption equation. Five materials are examined: silica, $\alpha$-alumina, $\gamma$-alumina, carbon-black, and graphitized-carbon. Their respective solid surface energies are each shown to be a material property. The ZAI approach is extended to determine the $A_s$ by using water vapour adsorption at 298 K. After determining the average occupied area of a water molecule adsorbed on silica, the $A_s$ of other samples of silica at 298 K were obtained. The results of the ZAI analysis were further used to predict other thermodynamic properties such as $\gamma^{S0}$ and the surface silanol concentration for silica. The determined equilibrium ZAI was then used with the statistical rate theory (SRT) to describe the kinetics of water vapour adsorption at various system pressures. Finally, the determination of the $A_s$ of nanopowders by using the ZAI approach with inert \ce{Ar} vapour is examined at 77 and 87 K, respectively. The validity of this procedure was analyzed on silica and carbon-black by obtaining the respective $\gamma^{S0}$. The ZAI is then used to show that the change in \ce{SiOH} concentration does not affect \ce{Ar} vapour adsorption. | Ph.D. | water, energy, invest, transit | 6, 7, 9, 11 |
| Chen, Ying | Mcdougall, Douglas||Booth, David | Teacher experience and teacher identity: A case study of three math teachers learning to teach in a Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Project | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-06 | We can improve the quality of learning for teachers by studying the experiences of teacher learning. Through my facilitation of a group of three Math teachers in a Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Project over two years, I investigated teachers' experiences of learning in depth. I used a qualitative research approach to engage teachers in reflecting actively on their process of learning. Evidence of their learning was gathered by conducting interviews, observing lessons that they taught, visiting their workplaces, and reviewing documentary data of their teaching and learning. A couple of theoretical foundations-Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory and Ying's Social Constructive Learning Theory guided the research in examining how authentic teacher learning develops, as well as how social, community, and personal factors interactively influence a teacher's learning experience. Additionally, I examined the relationships between teacher's experiences of learning and their perceptions of teacher identity. The findings indicated that the experiences of teachers contributed to and continued to modify their perspectives of identifying themselves professionally, while teachers' perceptions of their professional identity influenced their ways of learning and teaching practices. The findings showed: (1) teachers achieved effective learning through interactive dialogues and active reflections; (2) through the partnered activities in the project, teachers built their sustained community of learning; (3) teachers achieved effective learning through engaging other stakeholders in their process of learning, such as students, principals and parents; (4) teachers' experiences of learning in the partnership were impacted by social factors in their school contexts as well as their personal factors; (5) teachers were self-guided/motivated learners as they sought resources to assist their teaching and other professional work at school; and (6) their partnership learning experiences potentially influenced teachers' school practices. Implications from this study suggested that authentic teacher learning is personal as well as socially constructed. Teacher educators need to respect teachers' voices regarding what they need to learn, and how they want to learn. Centering teachers in the learning process is essential for effective teacher learning. Obstacles for learning were discussed in the last chapter, and suggestions for future research were also included in the thesis. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Osmann, Jonas Justin | Feinstein, Anthony | Investigation of Psychological Trauma in Journalists and the Development of the Toronto Moral Injury Scale for Journalists | Medical Science | 2021-06 | Journalists fulfill an important civic function by keeping society informed of events that can have a direct impact on their citizens' well-being. By doing so, they risk exposing themselves to dangers associated with their profession. While the physical risks are well documented, the psychological risks are harder to quantify. This thesis investigates the psychological impact on journalists of exposure to potentially traumatic events and transgressions of deeply held moral beliefs. Six studies are presented with the first four focusing on the fear- and anxiety-based aspects of trauma and the remaining two focusing on moral injury. The first study, a mapping review of the trauma literature, concludes that journalists are at an elevated risk for exposure to potentially traumatic events, and that rates of trauma-related psychopathology are higher than in the general population. Study two and three reveal that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) phenomenology is dominated by reexperiencing symptoms in a sample of journalists with well over a decade of frontline experience and that print reporters in the same sample are at a higher risk for PTSD and depression than photographers. An investigation of Afghan journalists in study four highlights the extreme stressors confronted by them, their correspondingly high levels of psychopathology and the relative ineffectiveness of mental health therapy given to a minority of those in distress. The mapping review of the moral injury literature in study five finds that journalists may be at an elevated risk for moral injury and that more research is needed to determine the nature and effects of moral injury and how it pertains to journalists. The most salient finding to emerge from this literature review is the need for the development and validation of a journalist-specific moral injury scale. The sixth study details the development of such a scale. The Toronto Moral Injury Scale for Journalists is theoretically and statistically robust and gives the profession, for the first time, a content relevant psychometric measure to inform clinical care and future research. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health, citizen, invest, minorit | 3, 4, 9, 10 |
| Burrows, Brendan Michael | Restoule, Jean-Paul | Film as Intervention: Raising the Bar for Teacher’s Engagement with Indigenous Content | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2021-06 | This dissertation aims to ask numerous interrelated research questions. Of most importance and enveloping all of them is: does Indigenous-produced drama, in particular Jeff Barnaby’s Rhymes for Young Ghouls (Barnaby, 2013), create a transformative environment for teachers to engage with issues affecting Indigenous people and the lived history of colonial violence? To find the answer to this question I facilitated 4 discussions with 3 educators where I incorporated Grounded theory with a Cultural studies mode of inquiry. This would also be informed by various theoretical touchstones from the history of Indigenous film and from some of the existing literature on Indigenous education; in particular Susan Dion’s Braiding Histories (2010) read in conjunction with scholar/activist Ariel Smith’s theorization of Indigenous ‘horror’ film (2015). I hypothesized that the teachers participating in the study would have their positionalities disrupted as a result of viewing Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) and would then be able to engage their classes in awareness of Indigenous/Canadian issues. Though the participants agreed that it was an emotionally gripping and powerful film the results did not suggest that the research participants changed their views and conceptions of themselves in relation to colonialism as a result of viewing Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013). The findings demonstrated the potential for a critical intervention to take place when teachers incorporate a film like Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013) into their curriculum. Evidence of the affective power of Rhymes is represented in the research participants’ responses in addition to the strategies discussed to enable an exhibition of the film to a classroom of young adults. The concluding results will leave one hopeful that there is still a will and a way to incorporate such a gritty film into secondary-school curriculum to challenge ongoing manifestations of colonial violence against Indigenous peoples. | Ph.D. | indigenous, violence | 10, 16 |
| Ho, Julia Wyling | Kuluski, Kerry||Miller, Fiona A | The Coordination of Health and Social Care in the Community for Seniors with Complex Needs | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06 | The aim of this thesis was to understand the conditions for coordinating health care and social care by examining the micro-level processes and practices of policy implementation in home and community care services. A qualitative single case study was conducted with two embedded units of analysis: 1) home care (HC) services care coordination of first-dollar, publicly financed extended health care services, and 2) community support services (CSS) care coordination of publicly subsidized services, outside of the extended health care basket of services. Qualitative data were collected from publicly available governmental and organizational documents. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 33 home and community care case managers (15 HC managers, 18 CSS case managers). Data were analyzed using an abductive approach to thematic analysis. Drawing on street-level bureaucracy theory, this thesis assumes that examining how discretion is exercised by case managers in their efforts with arranging services for individual clients will illuminate how health and social care coordination policies are implemented. This thesis found public entitlements for the assessment of eligibility for home and community care services focuses on mostly medically oriented care and excludes necessary services for the most vulnerable of older adults, namely those with lower financial means and with social care needs. Given this, the thesis illustrates the importance of discretion in policy implementation. HC case managers were subject to more extensive rules and practice guidelines than CSS case managers. Despite this difference in formal expectations across sub-sectors, both sets of case managers were able to exercise discretion and deliver care outside of formal rules and guidelines. In other words, the case managers provided “extra care” to vulnerable clients who would otherwise not be served if formal policies were strictly adhered to, serving as something of a relief valve in a context of systemic under-funding. Overall, this thesis demonstrates how the practice of health and social care coordination is a complex endeavor, one that relies on the discretion of front-line health care and social care professionals in addition to being influenced by policy strategies and managerial models for care delivery. | Ph.D. | health care | 3 |
| Brent, Jonathan Lawrence | Akbari, Suzanne C | World History in the Tumultuous 1330s: A Study of Nicholas Trevet’s Anglo-Norman Cronicles | Medieval Studies | 2021-06 | The following study comprises a sustained reading of the Cronicles (c. 1328-1334), a universal history written by the English Dominican Nicholas Trevet. Trevet’s history is known primarily as the source for Geoffrey Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale; this dissertation reads the Cronicles as a text in its own right, with its own strategies of language and form, and its own historical context. Chapter 1 places the Cronicles into the framework of “universal history,” a heuristic grouping of texts in which space and time function as prominent vectors for the conveyance of meaning. The manipulation of universal-historical form allows Vincent of Beauvais, one of Trevet’s closest sources, to place the Dominican Order at the providential end of history; the Cronicles’ form, by contrast, suggests divine interest in England and its kings. Chapter 2 offers a close reading of the Cronicles’ treatment of the biblical Maccabees. Sustained attention to this material belies the supposed singularity of the work’s central narrative, the Tale of Constance. The masculine, heroic ethos of the Maccabees story complements the work’s pervasive engagement with women’s history. Trevet alters his sources, moreover, to bring Maccabean history, and biblical history more broadly, into alignment with the Anglo-British past. Chapter 3 reads the Cronicles’ other major narrative, the Tale of Constance, within the context of Trevet’s historical project. The Tale functions to slow down the pace of history and to surface its latent processes; crucially, however, Trevet also encourages us to read the Tale itself as history. Understood in this way, the Constance story functions as an origin-point, both for English Christianity and for conflict between Muslims and Christians in the Holy Land. England’s past is thus yoked to the latter, with crusade emerging as another vector for the nation’s providential significance. The final chapter places the Cronicles into the context of several fourteenth-century developments. Trevet’s genealogical program updates previous Plantagenet efforts in response to contemporary political uncertainty. The work’s oft-noted investment in Christian history, and its imbricated focus on England, reflect contemporary methods of conceptualizing and articulating the nation in religious terms. | Ph.D. | women, invest, land | 5, 9, 15 |
| Ghasaei, Arman | Iravani, Reza | Hierarchical Discrete-event Supervisory Control of AC Multi-microgrid Systems | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-06 | This thesis reports the Research, Development, and Demonstration (RD) of a Supervisory Control (SC) system, based on Supervisory Control Theory (SCT), to provide discrete-state power management functions as part of the control of an AC multi-microgrid system. The SC system includes a two-layer hierarchical structure and synthesized as a decentralized system, using the Discrete-Event-System (DES) model of the multi-microgrid system (plant) and the proposed SC strategy. The SC system enables a logically optimal decision-making process, i.e., guarantees to i) make operational decisions subsequent to all possible discrete-event scenarios that are represented in the DES model of the plant, ii) remain non-blocking and non-conflicting, and iii) provide scalability. The main differences and features of the proposed SC system, as compared with the conventional SCADA-based Energy Management System (EMS), are: * The SC system, subsequent to a discrete event, e.g., a circuit-breaker opening or state-of-charge of a battery storage reaching a limit, makes a decision on a new i) operational mode, e.g., grid-connected or islanded, and/or ii) control state, e.g., grid-following or grid-forming control functions. The SCADA-based EMS, based on power flow studies, optimizes the steady-state operation in the time-frame between two consecutive discrete events. * The SC system should respond to an event within a few to tens of milliseconds, since the SC system's decision determines viability of the system operation condition. The SCADA-based EMS assumes a viable steady-state operating condition and its response is not time-critical. A multi-microgrid study system, composed of four single microgrids, is developed to evaluate the performance of the proposed SC system in an off-line hybrid PSCAD-MATLAB environment, where the multi-microgrid and local controllers are represented in the PSCAD platform and the SC system is modeled in the MATLAB-Stateflow toolbox. The study results are verified in a RTDS-PLCnext Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) platform, where the multi-microgrid and local controllers are represented in the RTDS real-time simulator and the SC system is implemented in the PLCnext control platform. | Ph.D. | energy, land | 7, 15 |
| McCarthy, Mary Louise | Wane, Njoke | Segregated in Life and in Death: A Black Woman's Critical Exploration and Narrative Account of Early African Descended Communities and Graveyards in New Brunswick | Social Justice Education | 2021-06 | This almost ten-year journey of ancestral teachings has become my PhD dissertation. The exposure of the systemic abandonment and erasure of Black communities in New Brunswick, Canada, is the primary focus of this thesis. It centers on the segregation in life and in death of the early people of African descent in Fredericton and surrounding area of the province. I am a sixth generation descendent of those early African families; my fifth great-grandmother Sabina Grant (according to the Carleton Papers) arrived in Nova Scotia in 1783. I speak to the oppression my ancestors endured and, specifically, what happened to their bodies after death. The dissertation provides evidence to show how my ancestors’ bodies were placed in segregated graveyards that were later abandoned or destroyed and their communities erased from the historical record. I include personal poetry and photographs to help illustrate this erasure. This work is an academic, and a decolonization project. My dissertation is guided by my spiritual epistemology and is grounded in anti-colonial and critical race theories. I draw on historical research methodology and multiple methods of primary and secondary sources of data collection from archival, to academic publications, oral histories, and the exploration of six graveyards in Fredericton and the surrounding area of the province. The intent of this thesis is to decolonize the current narratives surrounding the history of my ancestors and to insert more accurate narratives about their lives and deaths, which I will pass on to my descendants and all people interested in New Brunswick Black History. I include recommendations for action by local government and communities to help preserve this historical record, and for schooling and higher education. I conclude the dissertation with a chapter about my community advocacy work, titled “Speaking Back”, which includes a discussion of my successful Human Rights case against racial profiling in an incident in a shop in Toronto in 2011. Keywords: Black History, Segregation, Death, Graveyards, Spirituality. | Ph.D. | decolonization, human rights | 10, 16 |
| Williams, Sarah A. | Boddy, Janice||Wardlow, Holly | Re/producing Legitimacy: Midwifery and Indigeneity in the Yucatán Peninsula | Anthropology | 2021-06 | This dissertation is rooted in ten years of collaboration and eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork with both professional and traditional midwives in the Mexican states of Quintana Roo and Yucatán. This project takes a historicized approach, tracing current configurations of race and gender in Mexico through over one hundred years of nationalist intertwinements with science, medicine, and public health projects to illuminate how Indigenous epistemologies are trivialized and marked for elimination by biomedicine. Midwifery in Mexico is a precarious profession and tradition, and over the past ten years a multiplicity of government and NGO actors have attempted to shape, constrain, support, and eliminate Indigenous midwifery practices throughout the country, sometimes simultaneously and through the same programs and laws. This research, based in a midwife-run birth house in Quintana Roo and tracing particular local, national, and international networks that midwives in seemingly peripheral places draw upon to sustain their work, examines how global health priorities such as the Millennium Development Goals become appropriated through local government programs to promote and extend nationalist projects of ethnic and racial homogenization. Through a reproductive justice framework, I reveal how this agenda inherently promotes the elimination of Indigenous midwifery practices while entrenching systems that are particularly violent for Indigenous women, a reality embedded in historically-mediated racial logics deployed by both advocates and critics of midwifery. By blending an analysis of participant observations of births, pre-natal appointments, activist meetings, Secretariat of Health midwifery training workshops, and midwifery conferences, with a focused attention to the peninsula’s history as a site of Indigenous uprising during the Caste War and as a continued site of racial imaginaries and erasure via the tourist industry, I argue that histories of Indigenous dispossession in the Yucatán are intimately linked to Indigenous women’s experiences of birth and the precarious right to practice traditional midwifery. | Ph.D. | precarious, public health, global health, gender, women, labor, indigenous, government program | 1, 3, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| McPhail, Sean A. | Leonard, Garry | Fraternity on the Front Lines: Siegfried Sassoon, Fictive Kinship, and the First World War | English | 2021-06 | Fraternity on the Front Lines examines the relationship between kinship and commemoration in the Great War diaries, poetry, and autobiographical prose that Siegfried Sassoon composed between 1915 and 1945. I contend that Sassoon’s account of his front-line service first developed as a direct consequence of the fictive kinship bonds that united fighting men together in France, to the exclusion of the Homefront civilians from whom these soldiers felt themselves irreparably exiled. These men perceived their shared combat experience as forming the foundation of their interdependent relationships, and of the war narrative that they soon produced. That narrative’s publication in their war-poetry and memoirs in turn supplied vivid details of the war that had remained otherwise inaccessible to most civilians even after 1918. Whatever its hostility to non-combatants, then, Britons began to adopt much of the combatant- writer’s seemingly unimpeachable account nearly verbatim: soldiers’ writings retroactively redefined the nation’s larger relationship to the war so that the collective British war narrative after 1930 came to over-emphasise the figure of the soldier-poet, around whom it began to build a canon of war-books. While recent scholarship has worked to rediscover writings by the very groups that soldier-kin sought to exclude—women, conscientious objectors, colonial subjects, and others still—it has so far missed how the once-dismissive Sassoon was himself forced to radically reconsider his earlier ideas of what “qualifies” one to testify to wartime sufferings. As I show in my last chapter, Sassoon experienced another great war, this time as a superannuated non-combatant at home in England. My reading of the long-ignored autobiographies that he began as this Second War approached (and only finished in August 1945) will update the reputation of one of the First World War’s best-known writers, now beginning to suffer from the success of his earlier, exclusionary writings. By showing how the older Sassoon finally expanded his conception of valid, experience-informed testimony well beyond his combatant kinship group, therefore, Fraternity on the Front Lines supports scholarship working to extend the Great War library beyond the received handful of soldier-poets that includes the young Sassoon and his closest comrades. | Ph.D. | women, accessib, land | 5, 11, 15 |
| Aziz, Adrian | Wane, Njoki | Masculinity Contest Culture Under the Microscope: A Critical Analysis of Gender Relations Within Ontario Police Services | Social Justice Education | 2021-06 | Even though traits associated with masculinity contest culture have always existed within policing forces, this phenomenon is understudied. Masculinity contest culture has four principal characteristics: 1) show no weakness; 2) always demonstrate strength and stamina; 3) put work first; and 4) dog-eat-dog competition. This project investigated how police officers in Ontario, Canada negotiate gender in an industry where any deviation from masculinity contest culture results in negative consequences for the officer. Masculinity contest culture exists to varying degrees in occupations that are predominantly controlled by male workers but policing and the military are the two occupations with the strongest affiliation. There is no leniency for police officers to deviate from masculinity contest culture, regardless of their gender.In this study, 23 police officers from five police organizations were interviewed. Each interview was based on 20 open-ended questions. The researcher analyzed two models of policing commonly practiced in North America from a gendered perspective: community policing and traditional policing. Community policing is referred to as “soft” policing. The duties of policing are so highly gendered that women are geared towards community policing whereas males are geared towards traditional policing. Males who engage in community policing are sometimes feminized by officers in traditional policing who do not consider this model to be real ii policing. This research demonstrates women in policing in Ontario continue to struggle to achieve parity with males because of masculinity contest culture. The findings demonstrate that masculinity contest culture could eventually be transformed from an observed phenomenon to a theoretical framework once testing is conducted on a larger scale. To reduce some of the toxic effects of this culture, the researcher recommends police officers should reorganize some of their off-duty time according to a caring masculinity framework, which is another understudied theoretical framework. This study contributes to the field by demonstrating the existence and effects of masculinity contest culture. It is hoped that it will provide a starting point for a closer analysis of masculinity contest culture by scholars and workers within the police services. | Ed.D. | gender, women, worker, invest | 5, 8, 2009 |
| Mai, Juntao | Liu, Ju JL | Target-recognition Mechanism of Non-coding Small RNAs in Mycobacterium Tuberculosis | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2021-06 | Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis), the causative agent of tuberculosis, is a major public health threat. The success of M. tuberculosis as a human pathogen is dependent on its ability to rapidly cope with the stresses imposed by the highly variable host microenvironment. To adapt to the diverse microenvironments in the host, M. tuberculosis has to coordinate its gene expression for its survival. While the transcriptional regulation of M. tuberculosis has been extensively studied, the non-coding small RNAs (sRNAs) remains poorly understood.In this thesis, I investigate the target-recognition mechanism of sRNAs in mycobacteria. Bacterial sRNAs are important post-transcriptional regulators that have been shown to regulate metabolic processes, stress adaption and virulence. Compared to the vast knowledge of bacterial sRNAs in Gram-negative bacteria, the number of identified sRNAs is limited and their target-recognition mechanisms are unknown in mycobacteria. A major enigma in the field of mycobacterial sRNA research is the lack of RNA chaperones in this genus, such as Hfq. Hfq belongs to the Sm/Sm-like (Lsm) family RNA binding proteins and is required for the interactions of many sRNAs with their target mRNAs. The lack of RNA chaperones has thus prevented sRNA discovery and target identification in mycobacteria. Here using 6C sRNA as an example, I show that the sRNA-mRNA interaction mediated by the C- rich loops of sRNAs could be a common mechanism of action of sRNAs that contain unpaired C- rich regions in mycobacteria. This interaction is independent of protein accessory factors. For sRNAs that do not contain this C-rich motif, it is possible that an RNA chaperone is required. I discovered that Rv3208A may play a role in mycobacteria that is equivalent to Hfq in other bacteria and represent a new bacterial member of the Sm/Lsm family proteins. I present evidence that Rv3208A is an RNA binding protein and exhibits a quaternary structure feature that is characteristic of the Sm/Lsm family RNA binding proteins. Taken together, my works have partially filled in the large knowledge gap of understanding the mechanism of action of M. tuberculosis sRNAs and open up new opportunities to further study the roles of sRNA-mediated regulations in the biology of M. tuberculosis. | Ph.D. | public health, knowledge, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Street, Ella Carpenter | Balot, Ryan | When Citizens Judge: Democratic Judgment in the Courts and Theater of Athens | Political Science | 2021-06 | Abstract In When Citizens Judge, I compare judgment in the popular courts and in the theater of democratic Athens, examining how citizens reflect on questions of inclusion, political identity and the public good in these alternative sites. The Athenian case provides a particularly useful occasion for theorizing democratic judgment in theatrical settings, where citizens are brought together in a congregation of leisured listening, and legal arenas, where citizens as jurors must reach a definitive decision that carries the weight of penal sanction. My project proceeds along two tracks simultaneously: I argue that both the courts and the theater were spaces in which citizens reflected upon and reconstituted their common project; at the same time, I challenge the perceived unity of the Athenian public sphere. The dominant view is that Athenians learned vital lessons at the theater (about the excesses of empire, the instability of civic boundaries, or the tragic limits of human agency), and that these lessons informed their political judgment in the popular courts and in the Assembly. My research challenges this view both at a historical level and by rethinking the theory of judgment that undergirds it. I draw attention to the puzzling disunity of the Athenian public sphere, and in particular the dissonance between judgment in the theater and in the courts. Instead of theorizing judgment as a faculty or capacity that one develops in one site and then exercises in another, I argue that we should theorize judgment as a situated political practice. This requires attending to what I call “institutional charge,” including the political and institutional pressures placed on the judge, the required outcome or telos of a given judgment, the institutional constraints on narrative, and the civic role and relationship between the judges and those judged. Theorizing judgment in this way helps to explain the puzzle of the Athenian public sphere and is a resource for studying judgment in the contemporary context. | Ph.D. | ABS, citizen, institut, democra | 2, 4, 16 |
| Prior, Julie Bernadette | Lopez, Jeremy | The “Silent” Shrew: The Taming of the Shrew in Text, Adaptation, and Performance | English | 2021-06 | This dissertation writes a new performance history of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew that considers the play in a range of social, political, and historical contexts. I analyze the play’s texts, adaptations, and performances through theories of adaptation, while also deploying abject theory in response to my observation that, in order to insist on its real-world relevance in challenging injustice, the play has staged deeply unsettling epistemic and systemic violence as a way of mobilizing audiences to take action. My methodology also involves theories of the anecdote: Shrew actors have been received as enacting their notorious lives on stage, bringing the play to life, and giving it real-world efficacy. The first of this project’s four chapters addresses Shrew and its early responses, showing how nascent intertextualities in the discourse of Shrew and non-dramatic texts of the seventeenth-century gender debate resonated across modes in a way that I argue brought the debate to life. Chapter 2 explores how Katherine has been a defining role for the actress; I contend that Katherine-focused Shrews depended upon an idea that the actress was enacting her real persona, and that this made the role into a star-vehicle. Chapter 3 focuses on notorious and married couples who have played Katherine and Petruchio; I argue that anecdotes connected to leading actors were deliberately fashioned in service of transforming the play into a story about actors’ offstage relationships. The final chapter discusses how violence and the abject have been staged in radical adaptations, contending that these productions implicated audiences and demanded they acknowledge their privilege and reconsider their contributions to unequal and harmful power systems. My conclusion uses a production of an all-female Shrew I directed in 2013 in Saudi Arabia in order to reflect on what my performance history has demonstrated about Shakespeare’s play: Shrew has worked in the world as a reflection of real relationships and actual domestic violence, in turn functioning as an agent for challenging oppressive systemic structures. When audiences leave the theatre believing they have witnessed real violence, Shrew gains pressing real-world relevance, with audiences compelled to actively participate in social change. | Ph.D. | knowledge, gender, female, production, injustice, social change, violence | 4, 5, 12, 16 |
| Drake, Danielle Marie | Wells, Peter G | A Protective Role for Breast Cancer 1 (BRCA1) in Fetal Brain Development | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-06 | Physiologically produced reactive oxygen species (ROS) optimize CNS activity. Enhanced ROS production by alcohol (ethanol, EtOH) consumption during pregnancy via multiple pathways, including fetal NADPH oxidase (NOX) induction, and EtOH metabolism, may contribute to disordered development, including behavioural disorders. ROS may alter signal transduction and/or oxidatively damage proteins or DNA, the latter acting as epigenetic modifications altering gene expression. The breast cancer 1 protein (BRCA1) regulates multiple DNA repair and possibly antioxidative pathways. Additional to ROS-mediated effects, acetaldehyde production via EtOH metabolism can result in DNA damage capable of stalling and collapsing replication forks to generate enhanced DNA strand breaks (DSBs) in BRCA1-deficient cells. Studies herein used a Brca1 knockout mouse model to determine the impact of BRCA1 on the susceptibility of the fetal brain to ROS, modulated by a NOX inhibitor/free radical spin trap (phenylbutylnitrone, PBN), and a ROS enhancer (EtOH). Multiple markers of oxidative stress (enhanced NOX, antioxidative and proteasomal activities, DSBs) in the untreated +/- Brca1 fetal brains, were worsened by saline exposure and blocked by PBN, as were cognitive deficits, suggesting a pathogenic potential for physiological ROS production. In utero EtOH exposure further exacerbated markers of oxidative stress, including DNA (8-oxoG, γH2AX, DSBs) and protein (males only) damage, and NOX, antioxidative and proteasome activities in +/- Brca1 fetal brains. EtOH also enhanced postnatal behavioural deficits in +/- progeny, compared to +/+ controls. Both molecular and behavioural findings were partially blocked by PBN, suggesting ROS-mediation. EtOH also reduced BRCA1, enhanced most markers in +/+ fetal brains and induced postnatal anxiety-related behaviour in +/+ progeny. A Brca1 gene-dose dependent sensitivity to EtOH was also evident among embryos and postnatal progeny, where a larger BRCA1 deficiency resulted in enhanced DNA damage and postnatal deficits. The enhanced ROS-mediated DNA damage and impaired behaviour in +/- Brca1 fetal brains and progeny, exacerbated by EtOH suggests that BRCA1 plays a major role in protecting the embryo and fetal brain from physiological and drug-enhanced levels of ROS production. These results provide the first evidence of BRCA1 deficiency enhancing risk for behavioural disorders and highlight important underlying mechanisms/targets for preventive strategies. | Ph.D. | consum, production, species | 12, 14, 15 |
| Hahn, James | McGill, Robert | Towards an Ethics of Reading: The Canadian Documentary Long Poem | English | 2021-06 | This dissertation explores the ethical reading strategies at play in and impelled by the Canadian documentary long poem. I consider the ways in which poets encode and engage with the ethical problematics occasioned by their reconstruction of historical figures and events, arguing that documentary long poems encourage the reader to undertake a similar engagement—one that may result in the reader reaching drastically different conclusions than those apparently posited by a given work. Questions pertaining to appropriation, representation, and poetic license abound—questions that rarely, if ever, have stable answers. I contend that this indeterminacy is key to the ethical dimensions of the documentary long poem, as it generates open-ended dialogue regarding the recuperative work and potential harm that can result from the genre’s interrogative approach to historiography. In Chapter One I consider how Stephen Scobie’s McAlmon’s Chinese Opera invites the very ethical scrutiny that it thematizes via its representation of an historical subject who did not want aspects of his personal life transformed into literature. Chapter Two examines the documentary long poem’s capacity to offer the reader a dubious sense of historical veracity by looking to Patricia Young’s All I Ever Needed was a Beautiful Room and Douglas Burnett Smith’s Sister Prometheus, two works that link this capacity to the genre’s utilization of conventions associated with auto/biography. In Chapter Three I address the paucity of attention paid to Indigenous oral histories in critical engagements with the genre, reading Colin Morton’s The Hundred Cuts and Louise Bernice Halfe’s Blue Marrow as works that explore the damage wrought by a broader privileging of material evidence in historiographic considerations of Indigenous Peoples. Chapter Four reads Phinder Dulai’s dream / arteries and Jordan Abel’s Un/inhabited as works that outline different strategies by which archival holdings may be used to seek redress from the institutions and nation-states typically responsible for their maintenance. Throughout this dissertation, I frame the historiographic interventions of documentary poets as acts that invite scrutiny of not merely the contexts surrounding the production of historical records but also the uses to which such records are put by the poets themselves. | Ph.D. | indigenous, production, institut | 10, 16, 12 |
| Baxter, Jo-Anna B | Bhutta, Zulfiqar A | Characterizing Social Determinants of Nutrition among Late Adolescent Girls in Rural Pakistan | Nutritional Sciences | 2021-06 | Although recognition of the importance of the adolescent period to both current and future health and well-being has increased, there is an acknowledged need internationally for more data to fully understand the complexities around growth and nutrition during this sensitive life stage. In Pakistan, adolescent girls are considered to be at greater risk for poor nutrition between their increased physiologic demands to support maturation, general poor dietary intake, and potential vulnerability given cultural and social norms; yet, limited data exists. Understanding the social determinants of nutritional status could serve to further elucidate where inequalities occur and shape the development of interventions. This dissertation aimed to describe the nutritional status of non-pregnant, late adolescent girls enrolled in the Matiari Empowerment and Preconception Supplementation (MaPPS) Trial, regardless of marital status, using cross-sectional data collected at enrolment. To characterize nutritional status, multiple measures were employed, including anthropometrics (n = 25,447; height, weight, and middle-upper arm circumference); dietary intake (n = 390; dietary diversity score from three repeats of a 24-hour recall); and biochemical markers (n = 3,461; hemoglobin, ferritin, retinol, and 25(OH)D concentration). A conceptual framework of social determinants of health was used to guide the development of hierarchical models for the respective nutritional status outcomes. Nearly half of participants were found to have a divergent body mass index (underweight: 36.9%, overweight: 7.9%, obese: 2.3%) and 9.2% were stunted. Only 13.5% achieved minimum dietary diversity. The overall prevalence of anemia was high at 53.6%, and, after adjustment for inflammation, 65.9% of participants were iron deficient and 38.0% had iron deficiency anemia; vitamin A and D deficiency affected 31.8% and 81.1%, respectively. At least one micronutrient deficiency was experienced by 91.0% of participants. Within the hierarchical models, variables related to poverty were more likely to lend to the greatest inequalities in nutritional status. In this population, reducing the observed triple burden of malnutrition and addressing the underlying factors that lead to nutritional inequalities will be critical. Collectively, the findings demonstrate that late adolescent girls in Pakistan would benefit from the implementation of evidence-based direct and indirect interventions to improve nutritional status and reduce poverty. | Ph.D. | poverty, vulnerability, nutrition, malnutrition, well-being, knowledge, girl, equalit, rural | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11 |
| Karia, Purva | Yoshioka, Keiko | Tail-anchored Triphosphate Tunnel Metalloenzymes in Arabidopsis thaliana: An Investigation into the Molecular Mechanisms underlying their Biological Functions | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-06 | The Triphosphate Tunnel Metalloenzymes (TTMs) superfamily is a group of proteins that contain a tunnel-shaped β-barrel structure, called a TTM domain. They exist in all domains of life where they act on a range of triphosphate substrates. However, the biological function of most TTM proteins is not well understood. The Arabidopsis genome encodes three TTM proteins named TTM1, 2, and 3. Our research group previously found that both TTM1 and TTM2 are involved in different types of programmed cell death (PCD), dark-induced senescence and immunity, respectively. It was concluded that this functional differentiation was governed by their transcriptional regulation. In this thesis, I show that the knockout mutant of TTM1 (ttm1) also displays delayed natural and ABA-induced senescence, indicating its universal role as a positive regulator of senescence-related PCD. I further found that TTM1 undergoes multiple phosphorylation events at three major sites upon perception of senescence cues (i.e. ABA or dark treatment). One of the sites, S437, shows a strong increase in phosphorylation after dark treatment and I have shown that phosphorylation at S437 is crucial for TTM1's function in senescence. Our extensive in vitro kinase assays identified two MAP kinases that phosphorylate TTM1 at S437, connecting these kinases to senescence via TTM1. I also identified a set of MAP kinases that phosphorylate TTM1 at two additional sites, S10 and S490. My data suggest that phosphorylation of these additional sites regulates TTM1 protein turnover via the 26S proteasome. These data provided the first mechanistic evidence connecting the mitochondrial outer membrane-localized protein TTM1 with ABA and leaf senescence. Further, to understand the transcriptional regulation which determines the biological functions of TTM1 and TTM2, a combination of a yeast one-hybrid assay and various in silico analyses were performed. Based on my analyses, I propose fivet ranscription factors that potentially regulate TTM1 expression during senescence and two transcription factors that likely contribute to the transcriptional down-regulation of TTM2 upon pathogen infection. In summary, my thesis work describes a mechanism for the post-translational regulation of plant TTM1 and also identifies possible transcriptional regulators of TTM1 and TTM2 for future study. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Astudillo-Clavijo, Viviana | López-Fernández, Hernán||Claramunt, Santiago | Diversification of Riverine Cichlids: Phylogenomic, Locomotor and Habitat Patterns using Natural History Collections | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-06 | Documenting biodiversity and uncovering the adaptive and non-adaptive mechanisms involved in its generation are major goals in evolutionary biology. Insular oceanic island and lake environments have long been the focus of diversification studies, especially from the perspective of adaptive radiation. However, most of life’s diversity originated and diversified across broader continental scales, where large geographic areas and coexistence of various unrelated taxa complicate niche availability and diversification opportunities. Macroevolutionary studies in mainland taxa are therefore also needed to achieve a more general understanding of how adaptive and non-adaptive processes contribute to the formation of biodiversity. Cichlid fishes are an ideal system in which to study continental diversification, as the family is species rich, ecologically and phenotypically diverse, and inhabits multiple large continental areas. In this thesis I use several sources of data from museum collections and emerging molecular, phylogenetic and comparative approaches to investigate the evolution of functional locomotor phenotypes across cichlid fishes, with a focus on continentally distributed riverine lineages in the Neotropics and Africa. I develop robust higher level phylogenetic hypotheses for African cichlids, which have posed several longstanding taxonomic challenges, and for the whole family. Riverine cichlids exhibit diverse locomotor phenotypes and this diversity arose through selective constraints towards multiple distinct adaptive optima, consistent with adaptations to diverse diets and habitats. Shifts to new adaptive optima occurred early in some clades, such that early bursts consistent with adaptive radiation are detected for African Great Lake cichlids and two riverine tribes, the Neotropical Geophagini and African Chromidotilapiini. For other riverine clades, evolutionary patterns are instead consistent with allopatric or constrained diversification. Evolutionary patterns also vary between the Neotropics and Africa, and between continentally distributed riverine and lacustrine groups, indicating local influences on the evolutionary trajectory of these lineages. Using a novel transformation approach to extract ecological data from archived field notes I provide evidence for an association between locomotor phenotypes and habitat use, thereby supporting habitat as one ecological driver of cichlid locomotor diversity. Overall, this thesis reveals that riverine cichlid diversity was shaped by a mosaic of adaptive, non-adaptive and contingent evolutionary processes. | Ph.D. | invest, gini, ocean, fish, species, biodivers, ecolog, land | 9, 10, 14, 15 |
| Hegazi, Sara | Cheng, Hai-Ying Mary||Levine, Joel | Regulation of Biological Timekeeping and Secretory Trafficking by the N-recognin UBR4/POE | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-06 | Most organisms possess circadian clocks that allow them to anticipate and accordingly respond to daily cycles in the natural and ecological environment. This endogenous timekeeping machinery is driven by numerous clock proteins, whose interaction generates daily rhythms in gene expression. At the core, ubiquitin ligase enzymes contribute immensely to the molecular clock by controlling the degradation of core clock proteins, which in turn serves to govern the speed and resetting properties of the central circadian clock. However, few studies have addressed their potential to regulate other cellular events within clock neurons beyond clock protein turnover. Here, I report that the ubiquitin ligase, UBR4/POE, strengthens the central pacemaker by facilitating neuropeptide trafficking in clock neurons and promoting network synchrony. Ubr4-deficient mice are resistant to jet lag and prone to constant light-induced arrhythmicity, whereas poe knockdown flies become arrhythmic under constant dark conditions. These behaviors are reflective of the reduced axonal trafficking of circadian neuropeptides induced by the loss of ubr4/poe in clock neurons. In addition to impaired neuropeptide transport, the loss of ubr4/poe also perturbs the expression of the core clock protein, PERIOD in both mouse and fly clock neurons. However, it appears that the in vivo behaviors are best explained by the neuropeptide transport deficit, which led me to pursue this phenotype further. The biosynthetic secretory pathway is responsible for the synthesis and trafficking of membrane and secretory proteins, including neuropeptides. Within this pathway, I found that UBR4 ablation leads to altered Golgi morphology and impedes the export of secreted proteins from the Golgi apparatus by reducing the expression of Coronin 7, a protein essential for the budding of Golgi-derived transport vesicles. In summary, this work reveals a conserved and unexpected role of UBR4/POE in vesicular trafficking of neuropeptides, a function that has important implications for circadian clock synchrony and circuit-level signal processing. | Ph.D. | trafficking, conserv, ecolog | 5, 16, 14, 15 |
| Bodalia, Ankur | Wang, Lu-Yang||Trimble, William S | The Multifaceted Roles of Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein in Developmental Plasticity at a Central Synapse | Physiology | 2021-06 | During their critical period of sensory development, postsynaptic glutamatergic receptors, namely AMPA receptors (AMPARs) and NMDA receptors (NMDARs), undergo rapid remodeling in abundance and composition to enable fast neurotransmission. Dysregulation of this process can lead to neurodevelopmental disorders such as Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) which shares several mental retardation-associated features of Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). This is caused by a loss of Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein (FMRP), a critical translational repressor at the synapse recently implicated in ion channel modulation. To investigate the roles of FMRP in synaptic remodeling of glutamatergic receptors, I have established developmental profiles at the calyx of Held-MNTB synapse in the auditory brainstem by measuring whole-cell electrophysiological synaptic responses from pre-ear canal opening (post-natal day 6-9) and after-hearing onset (post-natal day 16-19) synapses in wild-type and the FMR1-/- mouse model of human FXS. My results indicate the loss of FMRP causes early maturation of AMPARs by accelerating the developmental switch from the slower-gating GluA1-dominant to faster-gating GluA4-dominant subunit composition of AMPARs, consistent with the canonical role of FMRP as an mRNA translational repressor. In contrast, developmental downregulation of NMDARs is not only stunted in FMR1-/- synapses, but also resistant to activity-dependent downregulation. This defect can be acutely rescued by intracellular delivery of the protein binding N-terminus fragment of FMRP during whole-cell patch clamp recordings, suggesting FMRPN-terminal is sufficient for mediating activity-dependent plasticity of NMDARs. Importantly, pulldown of the NMDAR subunit GluN1 and mGluR5 by FMRP in co-immunoprecipitation experiments provides evidence of FMRP binding to mGluR5-NMDAR complexes. This raises the possibility that a protein-protein interaction involving FMRP is engaged in the developmental downregulation of NMDARs. Based on these novel findings, I propose a model whereby activity induced increases in intracellular calcium triggers a two-pronged biochemical cascade through which FMRP differentially regulates two glutamatergic receptors within the same cell type. Altogether, FMRP functions as a canonical translational repressor to regulate AMPAR subunit expression, as well as as a non-canonical signaling molecule to mediate activity-dependent downregulation of NMDARs. These deficits in developmental synaptic remodeling provide mechanistic insights into the sensory hypersensitivity and cognitive impairments in FXS and ASD. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Pokorny, Johanna | Bamford, Sandra | The Brain Complex: Indeterminacy in a neuroscience laboratory | Anthropology | 2021-06 | This dissertation is an ethnographic study of how notions of the human and scientific practices in a neuroscience laboratory transform under the contemporary condition of complexity. I focus on a group of researchers working in a neuroscience laboratory in Ottawa, Canada, and who have close ties with researchers in China and Taiwan. Rejecting especially deterministic and reductionist approaches, these researchers take up a notion of the human brain—the “most complex” scientific object, that is embodied, embedded in the surrounds, and emplaced in time, but also active on its own, and thus what they see as a living brain, an especially lively and active one. Captivated by the lively activity of the brain, the scientists bring dynamic, temporalized, noisy, and processual matters and methods into their scientific practices of imaging, experimenting, measuring, and modelling brains, what I term the brain complex. With the brain complex, the scientists revision the brain less as a thing, and more as a verb, a process or a doing, and captured in the term ‘activity’ that was the focus of study and materialized through dynamic interactivity. This dissertation argues that, with this revision, the scientists’ efforts to study the lively brain involve incorporating indeterminacy in their scientific practices and doing so challenges notions of science as reductive, deterministic and as a fixed practice itself, studying static scientific objects with stabilized technical apparatuses. Indeterminacy in practice instead acknowledges the change and transformation of this science, as well as the complex anthropological notions with which the brain is conjoined, namely the human, the body, and life. By following how scientific practices take up indeterminacy in this neuroscience laboratory, this dissertation challenges taken for granted understandings of the neuroscientific human as not just fixed but also dynamic, and, even further, how this dynamic human, still latent in anthropology as well, can (re)produce an uneven politics of knowledge. | Ph.D. | knowledge, knowledges, labor | 4, 8 |
| Daya, Devina | Chen, Charles P. | Navigating the Labyrinth: Women, Work and Career Coping | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-06 | The present study sought to examine the life-career experiences of women in senior corporate leadership with a specific focus on career coping. This study was in response to gender discrepancy in executive leadership and focused on the minority of women who have attained high-ranking corporate positions. Using a qualitative approach to data collection, in-depth interviews were conducted with fifteen senior female leaders in Toronto, Canada. The goal of the study was to gain insight into their lived experience including their perspectives on career advancement and progression. A qualitative approach consistent with constructivist grounded theory yielded rich narratives and personal reflections that formulated underlying themes based on principles of theoretical sufficiency. The findings of data analysis validated a multidimensional approach to career navigation based on a combination of psychological, behavioural and contextual factors. The model presented in this study, illustrates each of these components on a “Career Triflex,” or a triangle, as means of highlighting the process of continually traversing between psychological, behavioural and contextual factors at various points throughout one’s career. Importantly, contained within each point on the “Career Triflex” were various career supportive items as endorsed by high ranking female executives. The psychological and behavioural components described action-oriented concepts that were directly applicable and within their locus of control. Meanwhile, the contextual component considered the role that organizations, stakeholders and/or other individuals play in supporting gender parity. This study provides nuanced conceptualizations and perspectives towards a greater understanding of how participants navigated their careers and coped with difficulty and challenge. This research addresses the lack of female representation within career theory and career counselling literature and presents a model of career coping as endorsed by a niche population of women in corporate business. | Ph.D. | gender, women, female, minorit | 5, 10 |
| Shahzad, Uswa | Rutka, James T||Das, Sunit | Cross-species Multi-platform Screens to Characterize Novel Targetable Pathways in Glioblastoma Multiforme | Medical Science | 2021-06 | Glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) is an invariably fatal brain tumour. Despite advances in surgical techniques, radiation therapy, and chemotherapy, the prognosis of patients with glioblastoma remains grim. The median survival in adults following diagnosis with GBM is only 14 months, and most patients succumb to their disease within two years. Our failure to offer a meaningful therapy to these patients has driven scientific studies towards increasing our understanding of the biology of these tumours, and in the process, identifying new targets for therapy. We propose that an integrated therapeutic approach which targets the pathways involved in regulating the hyperproliferative signaling, replicative immortality and cancer stem cell subpopulation, and the migration and invasion potential of the tumour cells is needed to achieve remission and prevent recurrence of GBM. Here, we performed multiplatform in silico and in vivo cross-species screens to identify novel therapeutic targets in GBM. Using these approaches, we have identified 25 different targets from the KRAS/PTEN, Rho-GTPase, and SOX2 signaling pathways. These studies may prove helpful in understanding the utility of targeting tumours in preclinical models, and potentially lead to novel therapeutic avenues for treating patients with GBM. | Ph.D. | emission, species | 7, 14, 15 |
| Manaswiyoungkul, Pimyupa | Gunning, Patrick T | Biophysical Techniques and Assay Design for the Development of Small Molecule Inhibitors | Chemistry | 2021-06 | One of the most important pillars in preclinical research involves the biophysical characterization of protein-compound interactions. This characterization, describing the in vitro potency and binding properties of the interaction, is measured through techniques such as fluorescence polarization assays, thermal shift assays, isothermal titration calorimetry experiments, and activity-based assays. A broad biophysical profile of each compound against the target of interest allows for fine-tuning of the molecule through structure-activity relationship-guided design. Biophysical profiling can enable accurate prediction of the interaction within a biological setting and thus provide insight into the mechanism-of-action observed in a cellular setting. This thesis details the recombinant protein expression and purification as well as the biophysical assay development of several attractive therapeutic targets for cancer treatment including STAT3, STAT5B, UBA5, HDAC6, and HDAC8. To aid in STAT inhibitor discovery, exploration of assay development to confirm STAT-phosphorylation inhibition was described. This thesis reports a rapid fluorescence-based screening method to identify SH2 domain binders followed by a phosphorylation-inhibition assay to validate mechanism of action for molecules determined from the high-throughput screening assay. Additionally, the development and optimization of a fluorescence polarization (FP) assay for binding affinity determination of DNA binding domain inhibitors for STAT3 was also described. Similarly, FP assays and thermal shift assays were also validated for drug discovery program geared towards identification of highly selective and potent HDAC6 and HDAC8 inhibitors. Fluorescence-based activity assays and in cellulo nanoBRET assays were also established for HDAC proteins to confirm the results obtained from preliminary biophysical assays. Exploration of high-throughput virtual screening was also employed to identify novel UBA5 inhibitor scaffolds from a diverse natural product and natural product derivative libraries. This experiment yielded a lead candidate with potential for refinement through structure-activity relationship (SAR) to improve drug-like qualities of the molecule. Lastly, the hijacking of the upregulated prenylation pathway in cancer for artificial protein-membrane anchorage was investigated for utility as an alternative protein inhibition mechanism. Collectively, these studies demonstrate the progress in the assay development area for the targeting of multiple proteins to aid the drug discovery process. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Good, Tyler Jacob | McIntosh, Anthony R | Large-scale Network Models of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury and Repetitive Head Trauma | Psychology | 2021-06 | Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) may be understood as a multi-scale system deficit where adverse clinical outcomes emerge due to interacting brain changes that span spatial scales. At the micro-scale a neurometabolic cascade affects neurotransmission, while on the macro-scale diffuse axonal injury disrupts long-range connections. Large-scale brain network modeling allows us to make insights across these spatial scales; integrating neuroimaging data with biophysically based models to predict whole-brain dynamics. In this thesis, I used brain network models to study the long-term effects of mTBI and repetitive head trauma. Study 1 found mTBI patients experiencing active post-concussion syndrome symptoms had lower regional inhibitory connection dynamics relative to comparison participants. Study 2 expanded these findings to a sample of mTBI patients recruited from hospital emergency rooms in the semi-acute phase (1-2 weeks) by showing regional inhibitory dynamics were related to chronic TBI outcomes. Finally, in Study 3 I linked lower regional inhibitory connection dynamics with higher concussion exposure, lower cognitive performance, and higher psychosocial complaints in a sample of retired professional hockey players. Together, the work offers converging evidence that lower regional inhibitory dynamics are related to concussion exposure and poorer clinical outcomes following mTBI. The work exemplifies how large-scale network modeling may be used to make cross-scale inferences otherwise inaccessible with conventional neuroimaging. | Ph.D. | accessib | 11 |
| Allan, Kate Elizabeth | Craig, Shelley L | Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy in Canada: Paediatricians’ Perspectives and Social Work Opportunities | Social Work | 2021-06 | The objectives of this three-paper thesis are to: (1) explore the prevalence and impact of parental vaccine hesitancy on paediatricians in Canada; and, (2) use a social work lens to examine vaccine hesitancy and identify novel approaches involving social work to enhance vaccine uptake for young children in Canada. This research is guided by four theoretical perspectives: The Health Belief Model, The Theory of Planned Behaviour, Ecological Systems Theory and The Transtheoretical Theory of Change Model. The first and second papers are based on survey data collected through the Canadian Paediatric Surveillance Program (CPSP). The first paper examined the frequency with which paediatricians encounter vaccine hesitancy in clinical practice, challenges and impacts of hesitancy on practice and factors associated with vaccine-compliance among parents with concerns about vaccination. The second paper examined factors predicting physician-reported parental intention to vaccinate following the diagnosis of a paediatric vaccine-preventable disease. The third paper explores how social workers could contribute to addressing vaccine hesitancy with respect to early childhood vaccines in Canada. The findings of this dissertation indicate that paediatricians encounter parents with concerns about vaccination frequently in clinical practice. The most significant predictor of vaccine compliance among parents of young children with concerns about vaccination was receiving a strong personal recommendation from their primary care physician. The only significant predictor of physician-reported parental intention to vaccination following the diagnosis of a paediatric vaccine-preventable disease was whether the parent previously refused all vaccines for the child. Vaccine hesitancy is a complex phenomenon which has traditionally remained within the purview of physicians. Social workers have the training and skills to effectively address vaccine hesitancy, particularly among families facing structural barriers to accessing vaccination. This dissertation concludes with a discussion of key findings, implications for social work and healthcare and suggestions for future research, policy and practice efforts. | Ph.D. | healthcare, vaccine, worker, ecolog | 3, 8, 15 |
| Matyasi, Robert | Hübner, Karolina | Spinoza’s Metaphysics of the Finite: Composition, Essence, Modality | Philosophy | 2021-06 | This dissertation is about Spinoza’s metaphysics of ordinary objects and organisms. It focuses on three topics: mereological composition, essence and universals, and the nature of contingency. Chapter one argues that Spinoza’s thinking about parts and wholes provides a powerful alternative to so-called ‘fictionalist’ accounts of mereological composition. I show that even though Spinoza agrees with fictionalists that part-whole reasoning doesn’t aim at literal truth, at the same time he considers it instrumental in elucidating our limited understanding of causal processes. I conclude that Spinoza is an anti-realist about composition because he is a perspectivalist. That is, for Spinoza, expressions such as ‘x is a part of y’ or ‘x is a whole composed of some ys’ convey abstract judgments from a limited perspective. Chapter two is about Spinoza’s account of universal natures, that is, essences shared between members of a certain natural kind. I show that evidence for commitment to universal natures pervade Spinoza’s metaphysics, epistemology, and political philosophy. However, at the same he provides an error theory explaining how extant realist accounts of universals go wrong. On my reading, Spinoza’s seemingly contradictory statements about shared essences in fact constitute a coherent, modest realist account of the genuine qualitative similarity of entities belonging to a certain natural kind or species. Lastly, chapter three makes a novel case for interpreting Spinoza as a necessitarian, which is arguably one of the most important commitments in his metaphysics. I argue that even though Spinoza holds necessitarianism, he allows for contingency, although in a different sense than it is standardly taken to be in contemporary discussions. His definition of contingency is closer in meaning to the familiar use of the word ‘contingent’ according to which something is contingent if it depends on an external cause. On my reading, this means that Spinoza holds modal compatibilism, that is, on his account, something can be both contingent since it depends on an external cause, and necessarily exist in with regard to its causal history. | Ph.D. | ABS, species | 2, 14, 15 |
| West, Leah | Roach, Kent | Protecting Rights in the digital Age: The Application of the Charter in Cyberspace | Law | 2021-06 | Since the swift passage of the Anti-Terrorism Act (Bill C-51) in 2015, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) has had the unprecedented and highly controversial authority to take “reasonable and proportionate” measures — often referred to as “threat reduction measures”—to reduce threats to Canadian security. While there are some limits to the types of measures CSIS can employ, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act permits the use of measures that would otherwise contravene the laws of Canada or limit a right protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) so long as they are judicially authorized by a judge of the Federal Court of Canada. As new threats and threat actors proliferate online, it is anticipated that CSIS will increasingly carry out its threat reduction mandate in the digital world. Yet, in June 2018, CSIS’s former review body, the Security Intelligence Review Committee, reported that CSIS had never sought a threat reduction warrant from the Federal Court. What remains unclear is why. Is it possible that CSIS has never employed a measure that might violate someone’s freedom of association, expression, or mobility rights, or their right to liberty and personal security protected under the Charter? Or has CSIS concluded that the Charter does not govern actions carried out in cyberspace and, as such, that their online conduct falls beyond the reach and oversight of the Federal Court? Unfortunately, Canadian Courts have never been asked, and legal academics have never answered whether the Charter constrains online state action. The Department of Justice and CSIS have also never publicly enunciated their legal position on this subject. To date, the government’s interpretation of the Charter’s application to state cyber operations remains classified. This dissertation dissects these issues for the first time and ultimately concludes that the Charter governs state conduct in cyberspace. | S.J.D. | judic, terroris | 16 |
| Salisbury, Jennifer | Freeman, Barry | Community-engaged Theatre Audiences | Drama | 2021-06 | Community-Engaged Theatre Audiences is an intervention into the reception of politically motivated, community-centered plays. This thesis aims to understand how individuals make meaning or sense out of these complicated sites of performance. It asks “what can scholars and artists learn about community-engaged theatre by asking audience members about their experiences?” Community-engaged theatre is an umbrella term that contains a multitude of theatrical practices, where theatre artists work with members of a community to create performance texts that in some way depict the community, taking up the community’s concerns and grappling with the community’s future. These plays are social justice initiatives, working within dynamic communities to foster social change. This study is predicated on the understanding that communities are neither fixed nor stable, but are rather emerging and constructed. Community-Engaged Theatre Audiences offers empirical audience data to scholars and artists of community-engaged theatre in an effort to understand more fully this performance genre as it is practiced now, both in contemporary southern Ontario specifically, and in Western, English theatre more broadly. This thesis presents three case studies of new Canadian plays, each one employing a contrasting set of dramaturgical practices: verbatim theatre, physical comedy, and site-specific theatre. The plays are Stories from the Generation Gap, by Cameron Crookston,Common Boots Theatre’s The Public Servant by Jennifer Brewin, Haley McGee, Sarah McVie, ii and Amy Rutherford, and finally, A Simple Twist of Faith by Evan and Rafe Malach. Each case study presents an analytical review of audience reflections in order to offer a rich, local understanding of each play, while revealing the fluidity of belonging and the gap between the communities hailed through the performance and the lived realities of the audience members in attendance. This study investigates multiple perspectives from audience members, bringing their language and reflection to the analysis of each play. Community-engaged theatre as a genre is more deeply understood through an analysis of audience member’s responses to specific exemplars. Audiences are so often erased or simply absent from archives and theatre scholarship. This thesis centers their voices in order to understand better community-engaged theatre as an advocacy project. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest, social justice, social change | 2, 9, 16 |
| Lamanna, Julian | Wheeler, Aaron | Development of Digital Microfluidic Tools for Translational Medicine | Chemistry | 2021-06 | Digital microfluidics (DMF) is a liquid handling technology used to manipulate microliter sized droplets on an array of electrodes. The flexibility of DMF makes it particularly useful for a wide range of applications. This thesis describes the development of DMF tools for diagnostic assays and single-cell analysis for genetic testing. Chapter 2 describes the first demonstration of clinical assays using DMF outside the laboratory. A portable DMF control system and low-cost cartridges were developed and used to perform DMF immunoassays for anti-measles and anti-rubella IgG in blood samples collected and analyzed on-site in a refugee camp in Kenya. We achieved clinical sensitivities and specificities of 86/80%, and 81/91% for measles and rubella. Next, recognizing the challenges inherent in uncontrolled environments, we developed tests that could be performed by inexperienced operators. Chapter 3 describes our development of DMF hemagglutination assays for trauma tests. This system was transported to Sunnybrook Hospital, and when run by an inexperienced user, blood typing results were found to be 100% concordant with the gold standard. Next, we switched to a different application, the development of a DMF powered tool for single-cell analysis called digital microfluidic isolation of single cells for -Omics (DISCO). Chapter 4 introduces DISCO, which combines DMF and laser cell lysis, allowing for single cells to be isolated from heterogenous populations in situ. We analyzed the genomes, transcriptomes, and proteomes of single-cells isolated by DISCO, connecting sequencing data to cell phenotype, while also identifying single nucleotide variations. Finally, chapter 5 discusses the application of DISCO for non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT). Novel strategies were developed for the isolation of viable fetal cells from the cervical mucus of pregnant mothers for genetic testing. We provide preliminary evidence of successful fetal cell isolation, demonstrating potential utility of this method for NIPT. In sum, the tools developed in this thesis demonstrate the utility of DMF for point-of-care diagnostics and single-cell genetic analyses. I propose that the further development of these tools will allow for DMF to be utilized in resource limited settings and for a wide range of assays for trauma monitoring, cancer diagnostics, and beyond. | Ph.D. | labor, refugee, cities | 8, 10, 11 |
| Cheng, Arthur Hoi Hin | Cheng, Hai-Ying Mary | The Role of SOX2 in Molecular Circadian Clock Regulation and Suprachiasmatic Nucleus Development | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-06 | The focal point of my doctoral research, Sox2, is a stem cell gene that has been extensively studied for its function in stem cell maintenance and proliferation, cellular reprogramming, neurogenesis, and tumorigenesis. Sox2 is expressed and maintained in stem cells of different tissues, including the developing central nervous system and adult neurogenic niches. When neural stem/progenitor cells terminally differentiate into neurons, SOX2 protein is usually eliminated and its gene transcription turned off, thus rendering it functionally irrelevant in most mature neurons. However, a hand full of brain regions contain fully differentiated neurons that are spared from Sox2 downregulation and retain strong Sox2 expression. One of such regions is the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), that contains the mammalian central circadian clock. The 20,000 clock neurons in the SCN are responsible for interpreting photic signals and orchestrating oscillations in peripheral tissues. In this study, I demonstrated the “unusual” and “non-canonical” roles of Sox2 in these post-mitotic and differentiated clock neurons. By creating a Sox2 gene knockout specifically in the SCN, I found that Sox2 in SCN neurons is pivotal for high-magnitude expression of clock genes and neuropeptides that are critical for circadian rhythm regulation. In addition, the absence of Sox2 in SCN neurons leads to severe and widespread changes in behavioral rhythms. My study also shows that neuronal Sox2 expression is vital for defining the transcriptional landscape of the SCN and promoting its function as the central circadian pacemaker. These severe consequences of Sox2-deficiency observed in adult mutant animals are, at least in part, due to developmental and differentiation defects of the SCN. | Ph.D. | ABS, animal, land | 2, 14, 15 |
| Van Gennip, Jenica LM | Ciruna, Brian G | Investigating the Underlying Biological Causes of Idiopathic Scoliosis | Molecular Genetics | 2021-06 | Idiopathic scoliosis (IS) is a spinal disease characterized by a three-dimensional curvature of the spine that arises in the absence of observable physiological or anatomical defects. Although there has been investigation into the genetic components of IS, the underlying cell biological and molecular mechanisms for disease progression remain unknown. Consequently, treatment options are limited to bracing or surgery, which act more as preventative measures rather than a cure. Our lab has previously described the first genetically defined developmental model of IS, ptk7ahsc9/hsc9 mutant zebrafish. Homozygous ptk7ahsc9/hsc9 mutant fish display hallmark phenotypes associated with human disease, including 3-dimensional rotational spinal curvature and adolescent onset. To identify mechanisms underlying IS, I employed next generation sequencing, transgenic reporters, and pharmaceutical treatment to define the biological origins of spinal curvature in ptk7ahsc9/hsc9 mutant zebrafish. These methods revealed an unexpected up regulation of immune factors and recruitment of immune cells to the site of spinal curvatures. I also demonstrated that administration of anti-inflammatory agents to juvenile ptk7ahsc9/hsc9 fish significantly impacts the onset and progression of scoliosis. To further investigate the mechanisms underlying IS pathogenesis, I also undertook RNA-sequencing on a second zebrafish model of IS, sspodmh4/+. sspodmh4/+ fish display a consistently severe, late-onset, scoliotic phenotype. Investigation of differential gene expression in sspodmh4/+ fish also indicated an neuroinflammatory response driving scoliosis formation. Furthermore, RNA-sequencing of sspodmh4/dmh4 and sspohsc105/hsc105 embryos, which display an embryonic curly-tail down phenotype, indicated that the curly-tail down phenotype may act as a functional scoliosis surrogate model, for use in drug and chemical screens. Together, this data suggests neuroinflammation as a common factor driving scoliosis pathogenesis in multiple models of zebrafish IS, and that modulation of these inflammatory signals could provide a treatment for this disease. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest, fish | 2, 9, 14 |
| Ghabrial, Monica A | Andersen, Judith P | Identity Affirmation, Resilience, and Cardiovascular Health Among Sexual Minority People of Colour | Psychology | 2021-06 | Research with sexual minority (SM) people – especially people of Color (PoC) – has been limited in terms of depth and breadth. The existing research involving SM people has historically excluded PoC or neglected to address racialized experience as a factor in stress and wellbeing. Similarly, this body of literature rarely considers the impact of the unique experiences of sexuality (e.g., bisexual vs. monosexual) and gender (e.g., cisgender vs. gender diverse). Because SM-PoC are considered a population with conflicting identity categories, much of the literature focuses on the negative aspects of living with this identity, and rarely employs a strengths-based framework. This dissertation aimed to address these gaps in the literature by expanding on SM-PoC representation and diversifying approaches to examining mental and physical health. Study 1 involved a content analysis which examined the representation of bisexual PoC in SM mental health literature. Overall, this study revealed the underrepresentation of bisexual PoC, the most effective strategies for recruiting this population in research, and the common pathologizing of bisexual PoC in the literature. Findings highlight a great need for intersectional research that includes underserved ethnoracial groups. Study 2 involved a thematic analysis of qualitative survey responses from bisexual PoC. Participants noted novel positive perspectives on identity invisibility, in which they discussed being empowered by their identity and using their ability to pass as cisgender and heterosexual to advocate for others. Study 3 presented the development and initial validation of the Queer People of Color Identity Affirmation Scale (QPIAS), the first scale on positive attitude toward identity for this population. The QPIAS predicts resilience and empowerment beyond existing measures of sexual and ethnoracial identity affirmation. Use of this scale may provide new information on factors contributing to wellbeing in this population and be a beneficial tool in multiculturally competent clinical assessment. Study 4 explored the relationship between the QPIAS and cardiovascular regulation and reactivity in a sample of SM-PoC. QPIAS scores were found to correlate positively with both stress reactivity and self-reported physical health. High QPIAS scores were associated with flexible parasympathetic activity and vagal withdrawal during stress, which may be advantageous to health. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, mental health, gender, queer, minorit, of colour, of color, underserved, resilien, resilience | 3, 5, 10, 11, 13, 15 |
| Chang, Michael | Valiante, Taufik A | The Complicity of GABAergic Neurotransmission in Ictogenesis during Acute Hyperexcitabilty | Medical Science | 2021-06 | The observations of GABAergic interneurons leading the transition into seizure events is antithetical to the current framework that seizures (“ictogenesis”) manifest from excessive excitation in the brain. This study utilized optogenetic tools to investigate the paradoxical role of interneurons in mediating ictogenesis in the in vitro cortical 4-AP seizure model. It was discovered that the brief activation of GABAergic interneurons can reliably initiate ictal events in an all-or-none fashion. It was discovered that GABA-initiated ictal events were dependent on bicarbonate, likely for efflux via GABAA receptors to mediate synaptic depolarization. It was also discovered that there are multiple mechanisms to ictogenesis, co-existing at different orders of preference, in the same brain tissue. A secondary pathway to ictogenesis was dependent on K-Cl Co-transporter 2 (KCC2) activity, likely for its role in extracellular potassium accumulation which can non-synaptically depolarize surrounding neurons. Accordingly, the partial downregulation of KCC2 and carbonic anhydrase (to reduce bicarbonate regeneration) reliably thwarted ictogenesis, and most remarkably, completely restored normal activity in the in vitro 4-AP seizure model. Collectively, these findings suggest that ictogenesis can manifest from the pathologically heightened activity of GABAergic interneurons because they activate downstream GABAA receptors in parallel and cause excessive ion fluxes that result in EGABA breakdown (loss of GABA-mediated hyperpolarization) on the post-synaptic neuron. During EGABA breakdown, the subsequent activation of GABAA receptors can mediate depolarization, synaptically and non-synaptically, via downstream carbonic anhydrase and KCC2 activity. This effectively converts intrinsic feedback inhibition circuits into feedforward excitation circuits, facilitating ictogenesis. In summary, the findings in this thesis demonstrate that GABAergic interneurons are complicit in mediating ictogenesis during acute hyperexcitable conditions, such as some cases of drug-induced seizures. | Ph.D. | invest, transit, regeneration | 9, 11, 15 |
| Rao, Abilasha | Kim, Tae-Hee | Uncovering Signalling Pathways Mediating Gastrointestinal Morphogenesis and Tumorigenesis | Molecular Genetics | 2021-06 | The gastrointestinal system undergoes remarkable morphogenesis during development, in which a simple, smooth tube rapidly rearranges to form millions of finger-like projections called villi that line the entire intestinal tract. While gastrointestinal development requires precisely coordinated intercellular communication via signalling pathways, mechanisms underlying intestinal morphogenesis remain unclear. The Hedgehog signalling pathway is critical for many aspects of gut development, however, its downstream transcriptional targets allowing for complex cell behaviours during villus formation are poorly understood. By uncovering the Hedgehog targetome in vivo, we revealed GLI2 transcriptional activation of atypical cadherin and planar cell polarity genes in the mesenchyme. Moreover, by using a combination of mouse genetics, live imaging and 3D-culture based approaches, I have demonstrated a requirement for planar cell polarity in instructing organized cell migration for mesenchymal clustering, which is critical for each emerging villus. Therefore, mesenchymal planar cell polarity induced by Hedgehog signaling drives morphogenetic cell behaviours required for proper villus formation. While developmental signalling pathways are essential for instructing the formation of complex organ systems, their reactivation later in life can result in disease. Indeed, recent work has revealed reactivation of developmental signalling pathways in many human gastrointestinal cancers. YAP is a co-transcriptional activator in the Hippo signalling pathway, and is frequently upregulated in gastric cancer, however, its role in tumorigenesis is unclear. By investigating the function of activated-YAP, I have shown its ability to induce gastric adenocarcinoma in a cell type-specific manner. Moreover, Yap deletion in a pre-clinical model of gastric cancer results in suppression of tumorigenesis, implicating YAP as a potential therapeutic target. Together, my results demonstrate that Yap is a potent oncogene in stomach tissue, highlighting the importance for strict regulation of Hippo signalling during adult homeostasis. Collectively, my work has defined the mechanisms by which Hedgehog and planar cell polarity pathways mediate intestinal morphogenesis, as well as YAP in driving gastric adenocarcinoma, which contributes to our understanding of how aberrant developmental signalling can drive disease. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Baker, Rachel Jessica | Lautens, Mark | Rhodium(II)-catalyzed Ring-opening of Cyclopropenes for Dearomative Cyclopropanations, and Synthesis of Pro-Nematicides with Imidazothiazole Core | Chemistry | 2022-06 | The use of transition metals for the dearomative functionalization of planar aromatic systems has been applied in the synthesis of complex 3D structures that find application throughout the pharmaceutical and agrochemical industry. Several reports from the Lautens group have demonstrated this concept, with a focus on the palladium- and nickel-catalyzed dearomative difunctionalization of indoles.Chapter 1 describes the rhodium(II)-catalyzed dearomative cyclopropanation of benzofurans, indoles and styrene derivatives from the ring-opening of cyclopropenes. Using cyclopropenes as the carbene precursor leads to the formation of a donor vinyl carbene, which can be difficult to synthesize by other methods. This approach offers a complementary one to the classic methods of cyclopropane synthesis, that are typically not amenable to the synthesis of vinyl cyclopropanes. The method described requires mild conditions, and the catalyst loading was further lowered on scale-up without any effect on yield or stereoselectivity. In Chapter 2, the ring-opening of cyclopropenes for the dearomative cyclopropanation of naphthols using rhodium(II) and acid catalysis is described. In contrast to the reactivity of naphthols previously reported, this methodology allows for functionalization at the 3- and 4-positions of naphthols instead of the 1-position. The various sites of reactivity in the vinyl cyclopropane products could be uniquely exploited with several transformations, forming new carbon-carbon or carbon-heteroatom bonds. Substrate modification can allow for the formation of the [4+1]-cycloaddition product between the in-situ generated rhodium carbene and ortho-quinone methide intermediates. Experimental evidence for the proposed mechanism is described. Chapter 3 describes the synthesis of imidazothiazole compounds for control of plant parasitic nematodes, an ongoing collaboration with the Roy group at the University of Toronto. The synthesis of a putative bioactive metabolite and various derivatives was conducted, and the compounds were tested against the free-living nematode Caenorhabditis elegans by the Roy group. Many analogues in the unsaturated imidazothiazole series were synthesized and tested against the plant parasitic nematode Meloidogyne incognita by the Roy group, with some derivatives showing excellent activity and selectivity towards the target organism. The lead and parent compounds in the series were synthesized on larger scale for rat oral toxicity assays. | Ph.D. | agro, labor, transit | 2, 8, 11 |
| Bag, Ebru | Joshee, Reva Dr. | Reproducing, Resisting, Challenging, and Changing: Intersectionality and Narratives of Women School Principals in Turkey | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-06 | This dissertation explores the experiences of female school leaders in Turkey within the framework of Intersectional Feminist Theory and Bourdieu’s Theory of capital using a narrative approach and focusing on the continuum of their past, present, and future. Data collection included semi-structured interviews with fifteen women school principals from three different regions of Turkey (West, Central, and Southeast Anatolia) and demographic information form, document analysis, and fieldnotes. Age, marital status, socioeconomic status, ethnic background, political background, religious background, and social background emerged as the seven primary identity markers intersecting with gender. The study revealed that participants come from low, lower-middle, and middle socioeconomic backgrounds, with most of them from lower-middle backgrounds. Their economic and cultural capital played a significant role in their educational path and choosing teaching as a career. Despite familial and institutional support they received, household and institutional barriers hindered their leadership paths and experiences. In addition, two other significant discourses emerged, which I categorized as “being in between support or a barrier.” These discourses were significant in terms of depicting the construction of gender norms and roles and how participants hover between praise and blame for being a woman, and how they start to “act like a man,” or their hard work is praised by “seeing them as a man but not a woman.” The study also revealed that the intersection of gender with religious and political background played a significant role in participants’ leadership experiences. Besides, the old-boys’ club emerged as an important discourse regardless of time and place. In addition to its common association, the old-boys’ club is mainly expressed in relation to women’s sexuality in men’s eyes in the Turkish context. Last but not least, the participants’ narratives showed that they had complex and contradictory thoughts regarding gender roles. Regardless of their backgrounds, they can propound conflicting and complicated ideas regarding gender norms and reproduce gender stereotypes. On the other hand, they resist, challenge, and are eager to change hegemonic gender norms in society. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, gender, women, female, feminis, capital, institut | 1, 5, 9, 16 |
| Banaiemoqadamfariman, Amin | Hooshyar, Ali||Iravani, Reza | Distance Protection of Systems with Inverter-based Resources | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-06 | This dissertation focuses on the challenges faced by distance relays and their supervising elements, including directional, phase-selection, and loss-of-voltage (LOV) elements, in the systems with inverter-based resources (IBRs). A comprehensive dual current control scheme is proposed for IBRs during the low-voltage ride-through (LVRT) mode to address the challenges. This method addresses the shortcomings of existing solutions and enables correct operation of distance, directional, and phase-selection elements during all types of faults. The proposed method controls the IBR to operate as a voltage source behind a virtual impedance in the positive-sequence circuit and a single inductive virtual impedance in the negative-sequence circuit, thereby emulating the phase angles of an SG's fault current. The proposed method also maximizes the active and reactive current generation of the IBR during faults and emulates the relative incremental sequence current magnitudes of an SG. It is unveiled, for the first time, in this dissertation that IBRs can jeopardize the security of the LOV detection element, which is another supervising element for distance relays. A new LOV detection method is proposed to address this problem. The proposed solution centers around the fault current signature of IBRs and performs superior to the existing LOV detection elements. This method operates reliably regardless of the type of generation units in the system and is sufficiently fast to prevent relay misoperation during LOV conditions. The impact of different implementations of distance element on protection of systems with IBRs is also investigated in this dissertation. The focus is on the relays implemented using the phase comparators and the reactance method. It is unveiled, for the first time, that the ground and phase elements of a distance relay that uses these methods are prone to under-/over-reach in the systems with IBRs. A detailed analysis on the root causes of the problems as well as the measures to alleviate them is provided. Besides, it is shown that IBRs can adversely impact the operation of not only the distance relay that protects their tie-line but also the relays of the neighboring lines. The above studies are all supported by hardware-in-the-loop testing of commercial relays. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Yee, Yohan | Lerch, Jason P | The Neurobiological Correlates of Structural Covariance Networks | Medical Biophysics | 2022-06 | There exist many studies examining population-level correlations between the cortical thickness or volumes of brain structures. Yet, the reasons for why these correlations—termed structural covariance—form are unclear. Current thoughts on the formation of these correlations can be broadly grouped into two hypotheses. The first hypothesis posits that regions that correlate in their structural properties do so because they are connected by bundles of neurons, and plasticity acting along this structural backbone causes regions to grow or shrink in a coordinated manner. The second hypothesis suggests that regions found to correlate in their structural properties are those that grow together during neurodevelopment. In this thesis, I examine structural covariance in the mouse brain, with the goal of comparing these two mechanisms. I show that in adult mice, structural covariance networks are associated with both structural connectivity and transcriptomic similarity, and that structural covariance is already present at birth and generally decreases over neurodevelopment. I then specifically focus on the thalamus and its connections to the cortex and show that cortical structural covariance reflects the functional organization of the thalamus, and is sensitive but not specific to structural connectivity. Additionally, I show that plasticity (resulting from exercise) decreases thalamocortical structural covariance. Finally, I show (using multiple models of agenesis of the corpus callosum) that structural covariance is preserved in the absence of structural connectivity. I end the thesis with a discussion on the plausible mechanisms underlying the formation of structural covariance, and considering all the results presented in this thesis, I make the case that it is the intrinsic coordinated neurodevelopment of structures that results in the main patterns of structural covariance seen in later life. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Maloney, Katie Meghan | Laflamme, Marc | Tonian Macroalgae from the Mackenzie Mountain Supergroup in the Wernecke Mountains, Yukon Territory | Earth Sciences | 2022-11 | Early eukaryotic fossils are crucial to understanding the evolution of the Earth's biosphere and geosphere. Molecular clock estimates suggest that crown-group members of key algal lineages evolved and diversified by the Tonian Period (1000 to 720 Ma), but this diversification is poorly reflected in the fossil record. Previously undocumented, centimeter-scale macrofossils were recovered from the outer shelf marine facies of the ca. 950 Ma Dolores Creek Formation, Wernecke Mountains (northwestern Canada, Chapter 2). Three distinct size classes were identified. The larger fossils are interpreted as eukaryotic macroalgae with a likely green algal affinity, making them among the oldest macroalgae yet recognized and filling a critical gap in algal evolution. Analytical microscopy, including scanning electron microscopy and tomographic x-ray microscopy, were used to investigate fossil preservation and develop a taphonomic model (Chapter 3). The fossil preservation consists of pyritization and aluminosilicification, similar to accessory mineralization observed in the Paleozoic Burgess Shale-type preservation. The macroalgae are defined as a new genus and species based on their morphology including an unbranching, uniseriate thallus with uniform width and elliptical to globose holdfasts (Chapter 4). Larger specimens are classified as probable vendotaenids while smaller mm-scale specimens display branching but remain undefined as a form taxon as theylack distinguishing morphological characteristics. The unstable redox conditions that defined the macroalgae's paleoenvironment in the Wernecke Mountains were constrained using geochemical analyses (Fe speciation, major/trace elements, and TOC, Chapter 5). Considering the macroalgae within a paleoenvironmental context allows us to place realistic constraints on these organism's paleoecology and paleobiology. The Dolores Creek macroalgae along with the recently reported ca. 1000 Ma multicellular chlorophyte from North China and ca. 1000 Ma photosynthetic, eukaryotic algae from the Congo Basin, provide evidence that benthic green algae colonized shallow marine habitats by the early Tonian Period. These discoveries indicate that there are glaring omissions in the fossil record that need to be addressed in future studies by recovering new fossils and characterizing their habitats to aid in reconstructing the late Proterozoic biosphere. | Ph.D. | invest, environmental, marine, species, ecolog | 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| O'Reilly, Ryan | Sander, Beate | The Economic Evaluation of Adult Immunization Programs: The Importance of Local Context and the Example of Pneumococcal Vaccination | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-06 | Infectious diseases represent a unique challenge in healthcare policy decision-making, as the risk of disease is subject to change based on factors specific to the local context, which can evolve over time. Given this dynamic nature, it is critical to tailor economic evaluations of interventions targeting these diseases to the jurisdiction and timeframe in which they will be applied. The research comprising this thesis sought to address these challenges through a systematic review, population-based studies of health administrative data, and an economic evaluation. This was implemented through the example of evaluating a potential pneumococcal vaccination program, with a specific focus on publicly funding the 13-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV13) for older adults (65+). Streptococcus pneumoniae is a gram-positive bacterium that represents one of the most common causes of community-acquired pneumonia (CAP), imposing a significant health and financial burden across the world. Due to the decline in vaccine-type pneumococcal disease among older adults since PCV13's inclusion in the Ontario infant immunization program, the cost-effectiveness of publicly funding PCV13 for immunocompetent older adults remains unclear. The first study was a systematic review examining the impact of pneumococcal disease on health state utility values, focusing specifically on the syndromes of acute otitis media, CAP, bacteremia and meningitis. The second study was a population-based retrospective matched cohort study assessing the incidence of disease and healthcare costs attributable to CAP from the Ontario healthcare payer perspective using health administrative data. Exposed subjects were found to have substantially higher healthcare costs than comparable unexposed subjects for up to one year post index date. The third study applied the data developed in the first two studies to conduct an economic evaluation of adding PCV13 to the current immunization program in Ontario. The cost-utility analysis employed a microsimulation health state transition model, with the results indicating that adding PCV13 is unlikely to be cost-effective due to the substantial decline in disease caused by vaccine serotypes. Overall, this thesis demonstrates an approach to assessing the cost-effectiveness of vaccination programs, highlighting the influence of local factors such as serotype distribution on cost-effectiveness. | Ph.D. | healthcare, vaccine, transit | 3, 11 |
| Mahtani, Trisha | Treanor, Bebhinn L | The Ion Channel TRPV5 Regulates B Cell Signalling and Activation | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-06 | B cell activation leads to the production of antibodies that protect us from infection. Recognition of antigen by B cells begins with the B cell receptor (BCR) recognizing and binding antigen, which initiates BCR signalling and antigen internalization. Calcium is an important secondary messenger during B cell activation and calcium signalling in B cells is best characterized by the store operated calcium entry (SOCE) pathway that triggers ion channels on the plasma membrane, predominantly known to be calcium release-activated calcium (CRAC) channels. Patients that have mutations in the proteins of this pathway present with severe immunodeficiency; however, murine B cells deficient in CRAC channel components mount normal antibody responses, suggesting that alternative channels may be important. We identified a member of the calcium permeable transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channel family, TRPV5, as a candidate channel expressed in B cells by a qPCR screen. We found TRPV5 polarized to BCR clusters upon stimulation in a RhoA dependent manner and siRNA knockdown of TRPV5 in a murine B cell line impaired calcium flux upon BCR stimulation. To further investigate the role of TRPV5 in B cell responses, we generated a murine TRPV5 knockout (KO) by CRISPR-Cas9. TRPV5 KO mice had normal B cell development and mature B cell numbers. TRPV5 KO B cells had impaired spreading and contraction in response to membrane-bound antigen. Surprisingly, calcium influx upon BCR stimulation in primary TRPV5 KO B cells was not impacted; however, differential expression of other calcium-regulating proteins, such as ORAI1, which we found was expressed 5-fold higher in TRPV5 KO B cells than WT B cells, may contribute to a compensatory mechanism. Despite no difference in calcium signalling, BCR signalling measured by phospho-tyrosine residues was reduced in TRPV5 KO B cells. Consistent with this, immunization induced T-dependent (TD) antigen-specific antibody titers were reduced in TRPV5 KO mice compared to WT mice. Thus, our findings identify a role for TRPV5 in BCR signalling and B cell activation. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Korolj, Anastasia | Radisic, Milica | Engineering the Fractal Properties of Podocytes | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2022-06 | Nature efficiently self-organizes cells and tissues into complex fractal forms, where fractal structures have cascading features that are statistically similar to the whole. While fractality of a tissue’s structure has been associated with healthy or pathological state, an understanding of whether fractal patterning of the native milieu contributes functionally to tissue maturation, and how cells interpret such shape cues, is not well understood. This thesis uses kidney podocytes as a model system to study the role of fractal patterning of shape cues in tissue development and function in vitro. Podocytes are a major component of the glomerular filtration barrier and exhibit a complex, sieve-like, branching cell architecture. Disruption of podocyte architecture is involved in many kidney diseases, yet is poorly understood. New lab-based approaches are thus needed to accelerate kidney research. However, podocytes are difficult to cultivate in vitro. Here, out-of-plane microscale curved shape cues, biomimetic of glomerular capillaries, were developed as a 2½-D topographic organ-on-a-chip surface and augmented with low and high extents of fractality, to study the role of microenvironment shape in podocyte development in vitro. It was discovered that the micron-scale curvature of polydimethyl siloxane scaffolds exhibited differential surface charge density compared to flat regions, which was correlated with extracellular matrix organization that led to assembly of cell structures and hierarchical cell branching in vitro, delineated using a novel fluorescent “Mosaic” assaying technique. Fractally stimulated cells reflected biological complexity more completely than flat cultures in applications of drug testing, coronavirus infection, and a cells-as-sensors approach to patient serum diagnostics, supporting overall podocyte maturation. RNA-sequencing confirmed maturation and further identified a signature of genes and pathways enhanced uniquely by shape stimulation. This thesis contributed to the understanding of the unique role of fractally-patterned shape cues in supporting podocyte maturation in vitro, and harnessed this knowledge to develop advanced laboratory tissue modeling tools. This work thereby addressed some challenges of cultivating podocytes in vitro, and sets a precedent for how fractal frameworks may support higher-fidelity bioengineering that may extend to other tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications broadly. | Ph.D. | knowledge, labor | 4, 8 |
| Revie, Nicole | Cowen, Leah E | Exploring Novel Drug Targets and Combination Therapies to Extend the Life of Current Antifungal Agents | Molecular Genetics | 2022-06 | Fungal infections are a relatively unacknowledged contributor to human disease, despite global mortality rates being on par with well-known diseases such as malaria or tuberculosis. This growing threat has been met with the prophylactic overuse of a limited arsenal of antifungals, leading to the rapid emergence of multidrug-resistant pathogenic fungi. The rate at which resistance continues to emerge is greatly outpacing the rate of antifungal discovery, highlighting the urgent need for novel therapeutic strategies. My research aims to define the genetic circuitry underpinning antifungal drug resistance and to devise therapeutic strategies to abrogate resistance in human fungal pathogens. To identify new genes involved in tolerance and resistance to the azole antifungals, we screened a homozygous deletion library, covering ~11% of the Candida albicans genome, in the presence of fluconazole. We identified 13 genes for which deletion enhanced susceptibility to the azoles, two of which were also important for azole resistance acquired by diverse mechanisms. Mechanistic studies of the retromer component, Pep8, and RHO-GTPase activating protein, Rgd1, highlighted the central role of stress response signaling and genome plasticity in antifungal resistance. Taking a multi-pronged, chemical biology approach, we aimed to identify novel chemical scaffolds with antifungal activity against diverse fungal pathogens. By profiling a targeted set of synthesized macrocyclic peptides, we identified several molecules that enhanced fluconazole activity against diverse Candida species, including the drug-resistant pathogens Candida glabrata and Candida auris. We also leveraged the RIKEN NPDepo collection to perform multiple high-throughput screens against four prominent human fungal pathogens, both in the absence and presence of fluconazole. From this, we identified a broad-spectrum inhibitor, NPD6433, that targets fatty acid synthase, and an azole-potentiating compound, NPD827, that disrupts membrane homeostasis through interactions with sterols. Further, we demonstrated that both molecules circumvent biofilm formation in a rat catheter model of candidiasis that mimics central venous catheters in patients. Collectively, this research unlocks new opportunities for antifungal drug development and provides insight into adaptive mechanisms governing antifungal drug resistance. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, species | 2, 4, 14, 15 |
| Lin, Shen (Lamson) | Fang, Lin | Healthy Ageing in a Foreign Land? Examining Health Care Inequities Faced by Older Racialized Immigrants in the Canadian Community Health Survey (2015-2018) | Social Work | 2022-11 | Background: Canada's demographic landscape has transformed to be more multicultural and multi-ethnic, resulting from an increasing inflow of racialized immigrant populations from the Global South, made possible by the abolition of racially discriminatory immigration policy in the 1970s. Although there is a significant body of Canadian research examining immigrants’ access to care, contemporary immigration scholarship has typically examined immigrants as a monolithic population while the intersecting lens of “race” and “immigration” has been largely overlooked. The invisibility of racialization in immigrant research has been criticized for its European-centric worldview. Therefore, this three-paper dissertation aims to make racialized immigrants’ ageing experiences visible through a racial-nativity lens in health equity and health care equity. Methods: A combined dataset was generated to pool over four annual circles (2015-2018) from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS). Statistical methods including Chi-square tests, binary logistic regression, multinomial logistic regression and classification and regression tree analysis (CART) were used. Results: Racialized immigrant older adults systematically bear an excess burden of compromised conditions in physical and mental health consequences, including undiagnosed depressive symptoms (Chapter 2, C#2), unrecognized depressive symptoms (Chapter 2, C#2), poor-fair self-rated mental health (C#3), perceived stressful life (C#3), co-morbidity of mood and anxiety disorders (C#3), poor-fair self-rated health (C#4), and multiple chronic conditions (C#4), compared to the dominant Canadian-born White populations. Moreover, racialized immigrant older adults experienced inequities in access to various types of care across different settings, including depression diagnosis (C#2), mental health consultations from family doctors, psychologists, and social workers (C#3), unmet healthcare needs due to affordability and acceptability barriers (C#4), and unmet needs for treatment of chronic physical conditions (C#4), compared to the dominant Canadian-born White populations. Conclusion: These systematic differences in health conditions and differential patterns of accessing necessary health care services, by race-nativity status, are judged to be unfair in a way that undermine Canada's mandate of universal health coverage. These health and health care inequities are also remediable which warrant interventions to address problems with provisions of health care resources to racialized immigrants at interpersonal, organizational, and policy levels. | Ph.D. | affordab, mental health, health care, healthcare, health equity, universal health coverage, worldview, equity, worker, equit, land | 1, 10, 3, 4, 8, 15 |
| Roberts, Surain Bala | Hansen, Bettina E | An Evaluation of Primary Biliary Cholangitis as a Lifelong Disease: Insights from Canadian Cohort Studies | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-06 | Primary Biliary Cholangitis (PBC) is a rare chronic autoimmune liver disease that results in morbidity, mortality, and quality of life impairment. This thesis includes four projects designed to inform our understanding of the progression of a patient’s journey with PBC and contribute new knowledge that may inform clinical decision making and advance clinical research. The first study investigated patterns of biochemical response to long-term ursodeoxycholic acid treatment. This study found that achievement of adequate biochemical response was associated with improved liver transplant-free survival regardless of prior history of inadequate response, highlighting response as an important longitudinal treatment goal. The second study aimed to evaluate the real-world effectiveness of obeticholic acid (OCA), a new second-line therapy. This study found that OCA was associated with improvements in biochemical surrogates of outcome and was well tolerated. The third study investigated associations between ethnicity and disease severity, quality of life, and survival. This study found that Indigenous Canadians presented with more advanced disease, had impaired quality of life, and worse liver transplant-free survival compared to White patients. The fourth study investigated the in-hospital burden of liver disease and compared the burden of PBC to other common liver diseases. This study found that liver disease inpatients had premature morbidity, mortality, and high resource use and that PBC inpatients represented a similar resource burden to other common liver diseases. These findings provide evidence to support clinical decision making for patients with PBC and contribute to a growing body of literature. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, indigenous | 4, 9, 10, 16 |
| Amri, Michelle Maral | O'Campo, Patricia||Enright, Theresa | An Investigation into the World Health Organization’s Discussion of Health Equity and Resulting Operationalization to Policy and Practice | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-06 | The World Health Organization (WHO) is the most prominent global health institution as a specialized agency of the United Nations, whose key objective is “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.” As a part of its constitution and work, over the last several decades, the WHO has expressed concern for health equity. However, there is a lack of clarity around the WHO’s fundamental definition and conceptualization of equity. This research asked “how does the WHO conceptualize equity in key texts about health promotion, the social determinants of health (SDH), and urban health, and how does this translate into policy, particularly in Urban HEART?” Urban HEART, the Urban Health Equity Assessment and Response Tool, is a WHO tool for cities to address health inequities through assessing indicators and responding with interventions. The research involved (i) a scoping review to understand how the WHO’s conceptualization of equity is discussed in the scholarly literature; (ii) an examination of WHO key texts about health promotion, SDH, and urban health, to provide an in-depth analysis of how health equity is conceptualized and how it maps against contradictions from study (i); and (iii) an analysis of Urban HEART as an illustrative case, based on interviews with key informants, to determine how key informants understand equity and to assess if discourses from key texts parallel the WHO Urban HEART’s work in practice. While these analyses led to a host of results, one of the main findings is that discourses in WHO texts have and have not paralleled practice through Urban HEART. Specifically, in terms of the outlined approaches for tackling health inequity, while the WHO outlines “three main approaches,” there are seven approaches that emerge through analyzing discourses in WHO texts, and Urban HEART aligns with two of these specified approaches and two unspecified approaches. This work contributed two key things: (i) it shed light on definitions to improve health equity, and (ii) elucidated disconnects between policy and practice. | Ph.D. | global health, health equity, equity, invest, equit, cities, urban, institut | 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Gustafson, Dakota | Fish, Jason E | Diagnostic Applications of Circulating Endothelial-centric Biomarkers in Cardiovascular Diseases | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-11 | The endothelial lining of blood vessels is a critical determinant of cardiovascular homeostasis. Endothelial dysfunction, characterized by an imbalanced release of vasomodulatory factors, pro-inflammatory molecules, and induction of reactive oxygen species, has been recognized as a major contributor to a plethora of cardiovascular (CV) ailments. Recently, novel circulating factors, including endothelial-enriched proteins, microRNAs (miRNA), and extracellular vesicles (EVs) have been suggested as a more informative and specific means of not only diagnosing CV diseases but also predicting outcomes. However, it remains unknown whether these novel circulating markers (i) accurately reflect endothelial dysfunction, (ii) provide incremental biological insights over existing markers, and (iii) have clinical utility. To address these lingering questions, this thesis reports a combination of in vitro and clinical studies to assess (i) endothelial-centric biomarkers, (ii) circulating miRNAs, and (iii) EV characteristics. To this end, chapter one highlighted the association of endothelial-centric markers (e.g., angiopoietin-2 [Ang-2], endothelin-1, and myeloperoxidase [MPO]) with mortality during SARS-CoV-2 infection while whole plasma transcriptomics revealed pathways for endothelial-focused intervention. Subsequent in vitro testing of endothelial barrier stabilizing treatments (e.g., angiopoietin-1 mimetics and Slit2-N) abrogated COVID-19 induced endothelial permeability. Extending these concepts to the context of cancer therapy, chapter two revealed how tyrosine kinase inhibitor therapy during chronic myelogenous leukemia differentially modulated the expression profiles of endothelial-centric biomarkers (e.g., increased vascular cell adhesion molecule and Ang-2) while not affecting high-sensitivity C-reactive protein; a commonly used inflammatory marker. Finally, chapter three looked at endothelial dysfunction in the context of cancer-therapy related cardiac dysfunction (CTRCD) during breast cancer therapy. These studies revealed that underlying inflammation (i.e., heightened expression of MPO), as well as endothelial-activation (i.e., increased Ang-2) prior to cancer treatment, may be associated with CTRCD. Whole plasma and EV transcriptomics further highlighted the potential of miRNAs to act as not only biomarkers but elucidate complex disease pathways, the latter of which included cellular senescence and apoptosis. In the broader context, these studies highlight the central role of endothelial activation/dysfunction in CV diseases and emphasize the utility of multi-omics datasets in diagnosis and prognostication. | Ph.D. | species | 14, 15 |
| Marajh, Leah-Marie | Daniere, Amrita||He, Yuhong | Integrating Qualitative and Geospatial Data to Understand Environmental Change in a Diverse Cambodian Landscape | Geography | 2022-06 | A surge of anthropogenic activities has led to irreversible, destabilizing environmental conditions in recent years. Increased calls for stronger management and policy regulations on land use, climate change, and water resources have reached paramount levels globally, as citizens and governments reframe their role in this call to action. Research on these topics: land use, climate change, and water resources span across the world, highlighting the severity and urgency in every country and region. This research focuses on a case study in the Global South, which has undergone significant social, ecological, and economic shifts that have resulted in both positive and negative impacts on the environment and human well-being. In examining these impacts, this research examines how systematic changes in lifestyle and policy have impacted people and their environments and what reform needs to be put in place to ensure environmental sustainability for the future. In doing so, in this research project, I engage in an exploratory study that combines geospatial data (remote sensing/GIS) to analyze system level spatiotemporal changes and semi-structured interviews with residents to analyze local level individual experiences. Together the integration of these two methods helps to address the scalar challenges of environmental research and offers adequate consideration to the interconnection of people and their environment and where future work and policy needs to be focused. Results reveal the processes occurring across the landscape and highlight land transitions, temperature changes, and water resource shortages that are important for understanding broader evolving patterns, while interviews reveal uneven experiences, not just across different land types (rural mountain, rural agricultural lowlands, urban) but also within communities, drawing out issues pertaining to access, distribution, adaptive capacity, and education that all need to be improved. Within geography, planning, and environmental studies, this research offers critical insight regarding the underlying processes and experiences that drive environmental change, the impacts of those changes on humans, and where more research and attention needs to be directed when planning for the future. | Ph.D. | agricultur, well-being, citizen, water, urban, rural, transit, climate, environmental, anthropogenic, ecolog, land use, land | 2, 3, 4, 6, 11, 13, 15 |
| Cole, Kevin Mark | Thorpe, Steven J||Kirk, Donald W | Amorphous Ni-based Alloys as Alkaline Oxygen Evolution Electrocatalysts | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-06 | The overall efficiency of many electrochemical conversion and storage technologies, such as water electrolysis and CO2 conversion, is hindered by sluggish oxygen evolution reaction (OER) kinetics. Amorphous alloys display enhanced OER kinetics and stability over their crystalline counterparts but traditionally have had limited geometries (ribbons, flakes) due to material processing requirements tied to rapid solidification. These geometric constraints have restricted amorphous alloys from being explored and integrated into membrane systems. In this work, a two-stage ball milling process was developed and implemented to synthesize high surface area amorphous Ni-based nanoparticles. This process allowed for a broad range of novel compositions to be explored and not be limited to deep eutectic compositions, as most amorphous alloys are. The amorphous Ni-based alloys produced through ball milling were studied as OER electrocatalysts and displayed enhanced activity over their crystalline counterparts on an intrinsic and geometric basis. Various techniques were employed to study surface, electronic, and structural properties of amorphous Ni-based alloys to elucidate why amorphous alloys are more electrocatalytically active. These techniques revealed that the studied amorphous alloys' increased hydration was particularly beneficial for improving activity and stability. The increased hydration, along with minor additions of Co, led to the favourable formation of stable β-NiOOH. The integration of Y into β-NiOOH provided catalytic synergy by participating in proton-coupled electron transfer processes that assisted with removing electrons generated during polarization to facilitate the formation of β-NiOOH and prevent overcharging to form Γ-NiOOH. The absence of observed surface overcharging in amorphous Ni-based electrocatalysts resulted in long-term durability for both cyclic and steady-state polarization conditions. These results demonstrated that amorphous Ni-based alloys are promising candidates as oxygen evolution electrocatalysts, and producing them in the form of nanoparticles facilitates their use for commercial application. Additionally, ball milling was shown to be a valuable process for generating and scaling the synthesis of amorphous nanoparticles while allowing new chemistries to be explored to enhance the OER kinetics further. | Ph.D. | ABS, water, co2 | 2, 6, 13 |
| Jaworsky, Denise Wendy | Loutfy, Mona | Geography as a Determinant of HIV Health Outcomes for Individuals Living in Rural, Remote, and Northern Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-06 | Individuals in rural and remote areas face significant barriers to chronic disease care, including HIV. Challenges in defining and conceptualizing rurality and the lack of appropriate community engagement are ongoing limitations of rural health research. The objectives of this thesis are to: reflect on the importance of developing meaningful community relationships when engaging in rural health research impacting Indigenous peoples, engage with Indigenous community members to explore how distance to HIV care impacts quality of HIV care and, explore how different definitions of rural and northern impact the health outcome, HIV virologic suppression. This thesis explores my relationships as a settler physician engaging with Indigenous communities through a Two-Eyed Seeing approach. It focuses on co-writing methodologies to include perspectives from Indigenous and settler team members. Cohort data from the Canadian Observational HIV Cohort were used to explore the impact of distance to HIV care on markers of quality HIV care in Saskatchewan, as measured by the Positive Partnership Score. The Positive Partnership Score is a composite metric measuring quality of HIV care and includes frequency of viral load and CD4 measurements, baseline CD4 count, antiretroviral medication regimen, and virologic suppression. Cohort data from the British Columbia Comparative Outcomes And Service Utilization Trends cohort were used to explore the impact of different definitions of rurality on HIV virologic suppression. In Saskatchewan, living further from HIV specialist care or from a site of research enrollment was associated with lower Positive Partnership Scores. In British Columbia, rurality defined by Statistical Area Classification but not by Forward Sortation Address was associated with lower odds of virologic suppression. Northern Health Authority was associated with the lowest odds of virologic suppression. Rural health discrepancies have been frequently reported across many health conditions. Greater efforts are needed to address geographic health disparities in Canada. More significantly, this thesis demonstrates several lessons for how rural research should be conducted: careful consideration is needed to ensure geographic variable selection is conceptually appropriate for the research question and community members, such as Indigenous people living with HIV can enrich rural health research and should be included as team members. | Ph.D. | settler, indigenous, rural | 4, 10, 16, 11 |
| Zhu, Hongyu | Pekhimenko, Gennady | Benchmarking, Profiling and White-box Performance Modeling for DNN Training | Computer Science | 2022-06 | Training a modern deep learning model is extremely time-consuming. The software/hardware deployments that machine learning (ML) programmers use in practice are widely diverse.Differences in algorithms, hardware features, or even software versions could all shift the performance bottlenecks of practical deployments. Therefore, it usually requires extensive amount of domain knowledge and engineering effort for ML programmers to profile and pinpoint ad-hoc performance bottlenecks. In this thesis, we explore the approach of performance modeling in the context of ML workloads to enable efficient optimizations.Our key idea is to decompose a training workload into atomic traces of heterogeneous hardware components, and properly structure these traces to build a complete profile. Using this profile, we allow ML practitioners to effectively identify the performance bottlenecks and efficient optimizations for any given software/hardware deployments. In summary, this thesis makes the following major contributions. First, we propose a new benchmark suite for DNN training workloads, called TBD, that contains nine mainstream DNN models, covering six major DNN applications. We also propose a set of performance metrics that can directly indicate performance bottlenecks on CPU/GPU, and build a tool chain that enables end-to-end profiling for DNN training workloads. Second, we propose a new performance predictor (Daydream), that allows users to accurately and effectively estimate the efficacy of various optimization techniques for DNN training workloads. Daydream utilizes a dependency graph approach to model the hardware execution, which tracks the task dependencies at kernel level and addresses several unique challenges in the ML context. Third, we propose two tensor compilers, Sokoban and Roller, that can generate high-performance tensor programs in seconds.They view the underlying architecture as a data processing pipeline, and the computation of an operator as independent tiles. Sokoban is a search-based compiler that utilizes an end-to-end cost model based on the pipeline model, while Roller is a construction-based compiler that exploits heuristics from the pipeline model and directly constructs efficient schedules. Both compilers manage to generate tensor programs that are comparable against manually-written libraries and state-of-the-art compilers, as well as reduce the compilation time to seconds. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, consum | 4, 12 |
| Yang, Xiaolong | Kelley, Shana O | Exploration of New Nucleic Acid Factors to Improve the Development of Synthetic Biosensing Switches | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2022-11 | In biosensor development, synthetic nucleic acid or protein responsive switches are critical for improving disease diagnostic performance. My thesis investigates several topics related to the exploration of new nucleic acid factors to improve the performance of current strand displacement switches and to discover RNA/ssDNA-responsive prokaryotic promoters. Incorporating a secondary looped structural element (flex-loop) into a switching domain allows the acceleration of toehold-mediated strand displacement in various constructs, including toehold-exchange, associative toehold, remote toehold, and allosteric toehold systems. The flex-loop switch has the ability to boost the i) efficiency of DNA-based computing, ii) analytical performance of an allosteric toehold technique for DNA sensing, and iii) performance of artificial gene circuits that regulate gene expression. Additionally, the flex-loop regulatory element enabled protein responsive proximity-strand displacement switch was investigated. The proximity flex-loop switch-functionalized antibodies allowed on-cell multi-receptor detection. This strategy, combined with the droplet microfluidic technique, enables a fluorescent-droplet cytometry assay that allows the characterization and profiling of live cancer cells with the single-cell resolution based on surface expression phenotype. Using this approach, we achieve live-cell phenotype profiling of multi-surface markers acquired with small (< 40 cells) collections of cells. We also develop an in vitro, non-traditional promoter structure selection strategy, in which a cell-free lacZ gene expression screening method carries on a new type of promoter structure acting as transcription factors. These T7 promoter structures performed as cis-acting transcription factors under the control of prokaryotic RNA polymerase. A rationally designed sequence responsive T7 promoter, termed Omega promoter, was developed to control gene expression via a toehold-mediated promoter rearrangement principal. Transcription-only Omega promoter-based sensors demonstrate engineered reporting activity through the use of RNA aptamers or control of Cas12a cleavage. We also discover that Omega promoter sensors could be operated from a circular DNA template for sequence-specific detection of ssDNA and RNA. The Omega promoter design can be directly adapted to the control of SP6 RNAP using prescribed sequences of ssDNA/RNA complexes. A single-stranded Omega promoter enables DNA-dependent RNA polymerase to accomplish the simplest in vitro RNA replication. Together, these studies explore nucleic acid factors to improve synthetic biosensing switches development in disease diagnostic applications. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Melhuish Beaupre, Lindsay | Kennedy, James L | An Examination of the Genetics of Sleep Disturbances in Depression | Medical Science | 2022-11 | It was not until large consortia were established that genome-wide association studies of major depressive disorder (MDD) were able to identify significant variants. However, given the nature of MDD, these studies often have considerable heterogeneity, partly due to various symptom clusters that can be labelled as MDD. Research suggests that focusing on one symptom cluster of MDD may reduce this heterogeneity and allow for smaller sample sizes for genetic studies. Sleep disturbances, mainly insomnia and hypersomnia affect 25-88% of depressed individuals and lead to poorer patient outcomes, including increased suicide risk. Both animal and human studies have shown that sleep is largely controlled by circadian rhythms, which, at the cellular level are regulated by a set of circadian genes. More recently, mitochondria have been suggested to be involved in sleep due to their well-known role in energy metabolism. However, prior to the work in this thesis, there were only a handful of candidate gene studies in sleep and depression, all of which focused on circadian genes. Therefore, the overall goal of this thesis was to extend upon previous work by using state-of-the-art analytical approaches to examine the role of common genetic variants in sleep disturbances among depressed individuals. This thesis is divided into four independent projects. Chapter 3 reviewed mitochondria’s involvement in sleep in the literature. Chapter 4 focused on identifying common variants associated with self-reported problematic sleep in depressed individuals. Chapter 5 examined the genetic overlap between insomnia and hypersomnia in the general population and depressed individuals. Chapter 6 investigated the involvement of common variants from both the autosomal genome and mitochondrial DNA in objectively-derived sleep measures in depressed individuals. Altogether, these studies suggest the involvement of common genetic variants in sleep measures in depressed individuals, thereby suggesting that their sleep disturbances are genetically determined. This work sheds light on novel variants that may be used in the future to improve diagnosis and treatment regimens. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, urban, animal | 7, 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Wong, Erin Oi-Yan | Navarre, William W | Developing a Metabolically Diverse Collection of Inflammation-associated Bacteria from the Murine Gut | Molecular Genetics | 2022-06 | Gut inflammation directly impacts the growth and stability of commensal gut microbes and can lead to long-lasting changes in microbiota composition that can prolong or exacerbate disease states. While mouse models are used extensively to investigate the interplay between microbes and the inflamed state, the paucity of cultured mouse gut microbes has hindered efforts to determine causal relationships. To address this issue, I have assembled the Collection of Inflammation-Associated Mouse Intestinal Bacteria (CIAMIB). The collection comprises 41 isolates of 39 unique bacterial species, covering 4 phyla and containing 10 previously uncultivated isolates including one novel family and 7 novel genera. The collection significantly expands the number of available Muribaculaceae, Lachnospiraceae, and Atopobiaeae isolates and includes microbes from genera associated with inflammation such as Prevotella and Klebsiella. I have characterized the growth of CIAMIB isolates across a diverse range of nutritional conditions and generated draft genomes of each isolate enabling the prediction of their functional potential. Probing the growth parameters of CIAMIB strains revealed that some species are refractory to propagation in liquid media or have difficulty initiating growth from a low inoculum. Since many large-scale cultivation studies have traditionally relied on limiting dilution assays and liquid propagation steps to isolate species in pure culture, these results have important implications for future work aiming expand the phylogenetic diversity of cultured species. I have provided the first metabolic analysis of species within the Adlercreutzia and Parvibacter genera, revealing these representatives to be nitrate-reducing and severely restricted in their ability to grow on carbohydrates. Finally, using our expanded panel of cultured Muribaculaceae species, I probed their growth and biochemical properties to further our understanding on the basic physiology of this highly abundant and diverse, but understudied, family of bacteria. CIAMIB isolates are fully sequenced and available to the scientific community as a powerful tool to study host-microbiota interactions. | Ph.D. | nutrition, invest, species | 2, 9, 14, 15 |
| Moazami-Goudarzi, Maryam | Espie, George S | The Structure, Function, Kinetics, Regulation, and Interactions of β-Carboxysomal Proteins CcmM and CcaA | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-06 | Carboxysomes are proteinaceous biochemical micro-compartments essential for photosynthetic CO2 fixation in cyanobacteria. These self-assembling structures encapsulate Ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase and a carbonic anhydrase (CA) creating a segregated environment where both enzyme and substrate CO2 are concentrated. CO2 is generated within the β-carboxysome by the catalyzed dehydration of HCO3- mediated by two evolutionarily distinct lineages of CA, the β-class CcaA and the redox-regulated γ-class CcmM. Here we determined the components of the redox switching mechanism in CcmM from Nostoc sp. PCC7120 and provided a reaction mechanism through which the oxidation / reduction of Cys194 – Cys200 disulfide bond is transmitted to the active site to change the level of enzymatic activity between the carboxysome-localized and cytosol-localized enzyme. Switching between activity states in this trimeric protein involves residues from two adjacent protomers. Of profound importance are Pro9, Pro10, Thr11, and Trp13 from the AAPPTPWS motif and Tyr192 that forms part of a trans-protomer activation triad Tyr192’ - Asp55 – Glu56 within the active site. In a subset of cyanobacteria, however, we provide evidence that CcaA either complements or replaces CcmM as the carboxysomal CA, though the kinetic parameters, kcat and kcat / KM, are of similar magnitude. Notably, hexameric CcaA is targeted to the carboxysome through its pM binding affinity for trimeric CcmM, forming a symmetric CcmM3CcaA6CcmM3 complex. The tight association of these two structurally distinct but catalytically similar proteins has led to the evolution of distinct β-carboxysome sub-types in which CcmM is the sole CA (BDC1), CcmM and CcaA are co-contributors of CA activity (BDC2) and in which CcaA is the sole CA (BDC3). In the latter case, a catalytically inactive CcmM is retained as a structural scaffold. Through bioinformatics analysis and biochemical reconstitution experiments we demonstrate that CcmM from BDC3-strains have lost CA activity through the devolution of Cys194 - Cys200, Tyr192 and other residues of the redox activation domain. Rank ordering of the CcmM kinetic parameters within a multiple sequence alignment allowed for the identification of a minimal complement of amino acid residues required for CcmM CA activity, substitution of which leads to an enzyme in a low activity state or with no activity. | Ph.D. | co2 | 13 |
| Sarker, Nitish Ranjan | Bilton, Amy | Image-based Characterization and Data-driven Techniques for Mitigation of Photovoltaic Reverse Osmosis Membrane Scaling | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | The scarcity of potable drinking water is a billion-person problem and the primary cause of health impacts in many off-grid communities of low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Decentralized, community-run photovoltaic reverse osmosis (PVRO) is one of the prospective solutions to this problem. However, fouling-related reliability issues and lack of regular supervision can lead to poor water recovery and faster degradation of PVRO membranes. Herein, the inorganic scaling of the PVRO membrane was evaluated by adopting an in-situ and hierarchical mm-to-nm scaling characterization technique. The scopes of membrane rinsing and data-driven control as interventions to minimize the scaling of ‘unsupervised’ PVRO operation were also evaluated. In-situ visualization of membrane scaling confirmed that periodic intermittency does not negatively impact the scaling growth in PVRO. The hierarchical mm-to-nm length scale characterization added new insights into the interplay between membrane active layer microstructure and scaling growth. The findings hinted at simultaneous nonclassical nucleation and surface crystallization of the dissolved minerals at the top of the active layer. In contrast, only surface or heterogeneous crystallization dominated deep inside the active layer. The hierarchical characterization framework was also used to evaluate rinsing performance as a scale mitigation intervention. 15–30 min hydraulic rinsing of PVRO membranes remarkably improved daily water production (~23%) and membrane scaling conditions, even at low-pressure conditions (mimicking low solar power availability). However, some smaller crystals within the complex folding of the active layer may remain after the rinsing cycles and act as seeding crystals for scaling growth in subsequent days of operation. Finally, short-term data-driven forecasting of permeate flux was carried out as a preliminary step towards developing a low-cost semi-automated supervisory control and data acquisition for community-run PVROs. Univariate and multivariate XGBOOST and LSTM forecasting models demonstrated reliable prediction of membrane permeability, 1-1.5 h in the future, with a mean square error (MSE) ranging from 3.8% to 11.2%. Stacking longer-term operational, characterization, and weather data (from field-scale plants) to the experimental and data-driven frameworks could fine-tune PVRO operability and make them more appropriate for off-grid applications worldwide. | Ph.D. | water, solar, income, production, weather | 6, 7, 10, 12, 13 |
| Mildon, Alison | Sellen, Daniel W||O'Connor, Deborah L | Infant Feeding Practices in a Multi-ethnic Cohort of Vulnerable Women Registered in the Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program | Nutritional Sciences | 2022-06 | Background: Breastfeeding rates are lower among socio-economically vulnerable women in Canada. Improved access to skilled lactation support is one priority action to address these disparities. The Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program (CPNP) aims to support breastfeeding among vulnerable women but little is known about participants’ infant feeding practices or effective models for delivering postnatal lactation support through the CPNP. Objectives: Data from a Toronto cohort of CPNP participants were examined to determine : 1) breastfeeding intensity levels at seven time points to six months postpartum, frequency of breastmilk supplement use by time point, and intervals of exclusive breastfeeding; 2) prevalence of expressed breastmilk use and associations between its use at two weeks postpartum and breastfeeding practices (any and exclusive) to six months; 3) prevalence of household food insecurity at six months postpartum and associations with continued and exclusive breastfeeding. Methods: A pre/post study of a postnatal lactation support intervention was implemented at two CPNP sites but suspended prematurely due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Post-hoc analyses were conducted using the available dataset (study 1; n=151) and pooling it with data from a related study at another CPNP site providing free, in-home skilled lactation support (studies 2 and 3; n=337). Results: At least 60% of study 1 participants provided breastmilk for >75% of daily milk feeds at all time points and 48% exclusively breastfed for at least three consecutive months, despite only 18% doing so for six months. In the pooled cohort, in-hospital formula supplementation was common (57%) and 34% used expressed breastmilk in the first two weeks postpartum. These early feeding practices were associated with breastfeeding cessation before six months and non-exclusive breastfeeding to both four and six months. Household food insecurity was highly prevalent (44%) in the pooled cohort but was not associated with breastfeeding practices. Conclusions: Findings showed high rates of breastfeeding but a continued need for skilled lactation support from birth to improve exclusive breastfeeding. These findings inform adaptations to the redesign of the planned intervention study. Comprehensive assessment of infant feeding practices and household food insecurity in the national CPNP is also needed to shape future program delivery. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, nutrition, food insecurity, women | 1, 2, 2005 |
| Peden, Elizabeth | Farmer, Diane | Racial Ambiguity in Film: Rudolph Valentino and the International Racialized Type | Social Justice Education | 2022-06 | When asked what he thought of Valentino’s performance in the 1921 film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, silent film director D.W. Griffith stated: “is this fellow really acting or is he so perfectly the type that he doesn’t need to act?” Griffith’s comment instantiates the crux of this dissertation. The “type” to which Griffiths refers is Rudolph Valentino, a racially ambiguous Southern Italian immigrant to early 20th century America. At a time in which immigrants from the region were viewed as racially inferior and undesirable, Valentino went on to become one of the world’s biggest film stars. This dissertation argues that, while under contract to Famous Players Lasky (FPL), Valentino’s racial ambiguity was leveraged by the studio to the international film market through roles in which Valentino repeatedly played what I term the “international racialized type.” In unravelling this multi-layered issue, this dissertation places original archival research concerning FPL’s marketing of Valentino into conversation with the history and theory of scientific racism, particularly as it plays out in Michel Foucault’s writing on biopolitics. Close analysis of five Valentino films made for FPL at the height of his career together with archival records reveal FPL’s use of repetitive tropes that leveraged Valentino’s racial ambiguity both in his films and in their marketing of him internationally. Additionally, this study finds that despite his success, FPL still viewed Valentino as inferior and replaceable, all of which ultimately was destructive to his career. The intervention of this dissertation is twofold. First, original archival research conducted provides insight into marketing techniques that seek to capitalize on racial ambiguity specifically related to the formative period of early cinema; and second, it also acts as a valuable lens for viewing contemporary media culture and its marketing of race today. | Ph.D. | racism, capital | 4, 9 |
| Lai, Benjamin | Radisic, Milica | Development of a Well Plate-based Multiplexed Organ-on-a-chip Platform with Perfusable Vasculature | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-06 | Cellular microenvironment forms a multifaceted network that regulates all aspects of tissue organization, specification and function. Animal models have been essential in providing a physiological relevance on drug metabolism and disease model, but they are limited in replicating human physiology and complex disease progression, and in providing high-resolution real time assessment. Traditional in vitro platforms can provide high-throughput studies, but lack the physiological relevance. Organ-on-a-chip technology offers a great promise in building organotypic models of human tissues for drug screening and disease modelling. They are engineered to recapitulate hemodynamic fluid flow in a vascular network and mimic cell-cell crosstalk, organ-organ communication with a high spatiotemporal precision. However, current techniques result with systems mainly in closed-capped format, and with channel networks that limit seeded parenchymal cells from remodeling the cellular environment in three dimension, and organs that are not interconnected together under a single vasculature.Here, we report the design and development of a generic user-friendly, organ-on-a-chip platform for the assembly of micro-vascularized tissues on a multi-well plate footprint. The integrated vasculature for assessing dynamic events (InVADE) platform is constructed by first 3D stamping a UV-cross-linkable polymer into a scaffold that has a built-in central lumen and micro-holes on the side walls, and then situating the scaffold on to a 96-well base plate. The scaffold is mechanically stable to support a perfusable vasculature and a continuously remodeling parenchymal tissue. With this technology, we have successfully engineered (i) a vascular barrier for studying small molecule permeation and cellular trafficking, (ii) a metabolically active liver tissue that processes clinically relevant drugs delivered through the vasculature, (iii) a contracting cardiac tissue that responds to drug treatment and electrical stimulation, (iv) a co-cultured tumor tissue that remodels its microenvironment into desmoplastic like stroma and affects drug bioavailability. Incorporating a cantilever structure to the side wall of the scaffold allows non-invasive, real-time assessment of cardiac contraction. Interconnecting adjacent tissue compartments with a single scaffold initiates modelling of all stages in cancer metastasis cascade, in particular, parenchymal tissue invasion, vascular transmigration, and multi-organ interaction. | Ph.D. | trafficking, animal | 5, 16, 14, 15 |
| Ho, Brandon | Brown, Grant W | System Wide Views of Proteome Abundance and Dynamic Localization Reveals Novel Saccharomyces cerevisiae Stress Response and Replication Checkpoint Pathways | Biochemistry | 2022-06 | Cells face a myriad of different environmental stressors and must respond appropriately, as failure to do so can result in disease states. To this end, cells engage intricate signaling pathways that typically involve cellular changes, such as alterations in transcription programs, translation rates, and protein function. Ultimately, protein activity is the final arbiter of function in most cellular pathways. In this work, I investigated the cellular response to stress in the model organism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, focusing on two of the most important proteomic properties, protein abundance and localization. To begin, I evaluated 21 quantitative analyses of the S. cerevisiae proteome and converted all measurements of protein abundance into the intuitive measurement of absolute number of molecules per cell. I found that the previously described global environmental stress response (ESR) is not detected at the level of protein abundance. In addition, this rich dataset provided insight into proteins that are differentially regulated at the levels of mRNA abundance, mRNA translation, and protein abundance. Next, I developed a quantification method to measure protein localization dynamics in single cells and applied this pipeline to monitor 322 yeast proteins following MMS- and HU-induced replication stress. I discovered that proteins change localization at different rates and with high heterogeneity within a cell population. Moreover, this analysis revealed that Ydr132c/Mrx16 is an unrecognized component of intranuclear quality control (INQ) compartments. Finally, I defined protein factors that govern protein re-localization during conditions of stress, particularly in cells experiencing DNA replication stress. I discovered that Mec1 and Rad53 checkpoint kinases promote the proper subcellular localization of 131 proteins. Importantly, my screening efforts revealed a new checkpoint activation mechanism and gene involved in genome maintenance, RTG3. Together, my data show that a more complete characterization of the proteome, particularly during stressful conditions, provides great insight into cellular functions and reveals novel protein biology. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest, environmental | 2, 9, 13 |
| Adams, Rachel Laura Elizabeth | Simmons, Craig A | The Regulation of C-type Natriuretic Peptide Signalling in Aortic Valves: Sex Differences and Shear Stress-dependency | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-06 | Aortic valve disease initiates on the fibrosa (aorta-facing) side of the valve leaflets, whereas the ventricularis side is disease-protected. Spatially predictable disease correlates with side-specific hemodynamics and gene expression, as fibrosa valve endothelial cells (VECs) experience low, oscillatory shear stress and have lower expression of pathological inhibitors, whereas ventricularis VECs experience high shear stress and have a more protective phenotype. Among the genes expressed in a side-dependent manner, C-type natriuretic peptide (CNP) stands out as a factor that suppresses fibrotic differentiation of aortic valve interstitial cells (VICs). However, the regulation of CNP in aortic valves has not been characterized. In this thesis, shear stress regulation of CNP was studied in vitro using porcine VECs. Steady, high magnitude shear stress and ventricular side-specific shear stress waveforms upregulated NPPC (encoding CNP) in a KLF2-dependent manner. KLF2 and NPPC were upregulated by shear stress in VECs isolated from both the fibrosa and ventricularis sides, but with greater sensitivity in fibrosa-side cells. Notably, while male VECs exhibited side-specific shear stress regulation of KLF2 and NPPC, female VECs did not. Immunohistochemical staining of human valves validated side- and sex-specific CNP expression in normal endothelium. Given the putative role of CNP in valve homeostasis and emerging clinical evidence that stenotic female aortic valves present with more fibrosis than male valves, we hypothesized that the predominance of valvular fibrosis in women would associate with deficiencies in CNP signalling. Here, for the first time, sex differences in CNP expression were demonstrated for human aortic valves: female valves, on average, had lower CNP and higher fibrosis upon disease, but the amount of disease (collagen) was not correlated with levels of CNP. In contrast, in diseased regions of male valves, collagen deposition was inversely correlated with CNP, suggesting an anti-fibrotic relationship not present in female valves. Further, treatment of male VICs with CNP suppressed myofibrogenic differentiation in vitro, but female VICs were unresponsive to CNP treatment, indicating deficient CNP signaling. These studies reveal new insights into the hemodynamic regulation of CNP signalling and its role in sex differences of valvular fibrosis. | Ph.D. | women, female | 5 |
| Tan, Ceryl Elvira | Kafri, Ran | Mechanisms Contributing to Animal Cell Size Homeostasis | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | While molecules that promote the growth of animal cells have been identified, it remains unclear how such signals are orchestrated to determine and maintain a characteristic target size for the different cell types. More recent studies have established that cell size is determined by size checkpoints – mechanisms that restrict the cell cycle progression of cells that are smaller than their target size. However, what determines such a target size remains unclear. Through a chemical screen and subsequent validation studies, I have identified CDK4 activity to set the critical size referenced to by homeostatic mechanisms in proliferating animal cells (Chapter 2). In other words, CDK4 activity shifts the size threshold at which checkpoint mechanisms consider a cell to be ‘too small’. While these findings shed light on the molecular processes involved with target size determination, the cell size checkpoint remains limited in rectifying cells that are too large. To that end, I followed up on previous reports highlighting mechanisms of growth rate regulation (i.e., how fast cells accumulate mass) that function in parallel with size checkpoints to maintain cell size homeostasis. It has been shown that large cells slow down rates of growth; however, mechanistic studies on such a compensatory response are lacking. I have demonstrated that large cells inhibit growth not by slowing down protein production but rather by upregulating rates of protein degradation (Chapter 3). Together, these findings contribute insights into the mechanisms that control cell size in animal cells. | Ph.D. | production, animal | 12, 14, 15 |
| Muaddi, Hala | Karanicolas, Paul MD PhD | EVALUATION OF ROBOTIC SURGERY AND PUBLIC PREFERENCE | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-06 | Introduction:Robotic surgery has rapidly integrated into our Canadian healthcare system for the management of surgical diseases. However, the benefits in patient-important outcomes from robotic surgery compared with laparoscopic or open procedures remain unclear and controversial. The objective of this thesis is to evaluate robotic surgery in Ontario and the public’s perception of this new technology. Methods: Using linked health administrative data, we identified adults who received the most common robotic surgeries in Ontario, which include radical prostatectomy, total hysterectomy, thoracic lobectomy, and partial nephrectomy, since the beginning of documenting robotic surgery in administrative databases the province, 2008-2018. We first determined the trend in the utilization of the robotic approach compared to the non-robotic approach. Subsequently, we examined the patient and system-level characteristics that could determine the receipt of robotic compared to laparoscopic and open approaches. Then we compared 90-day perioperative adverse events across the 3 surgical approaches for all procedures. Finally, we examined the public’s perception of and preference for robotic surgery. Results: We demonstrated that the use of robotic surgery has increased. Lower comorbidity burden, earlier disease stage (among cancer cases), higher surgeon case volume, early career surgeons, and surgery at a teaching hospital, were consistently associated with receipt of robotic surgery. The robotic approach was associated with fewer 90-day adverse events compared to the open approach. However, the robotic approach was not associated with 90-day adverse events compared to the laparoscopic approach. More participants feared outcomes of robotic surgery more than laparoscopic surgery, while participants preferred laparoscopic over robotic surgery. Conclusion: The trend of robotic surgery has increased and is offered to a selected group of patients by selected surgeons. The benefit of robotic surgery is related to the minimally invasive approach rather than the platform itself. The public prefers laparoscopic surgery over robotic surgery and is more fearful of undergoing surgery using the robotic approach. The rapid implementation of robotic surgery is less likely to be due to the public’s preference and is more likely related to other factors, such as marketing or system-level factors. The study of additional real-world clinical outcomes and associated costs is needed before further expanding use among additional providers and hospitals. | Ph.D. | healthcare | 3 |
| Carducci, Bianca | Bhutta, Zulfiqar A | The Relationship between Food Environments and Nutritional Status of School-aged Children and Adolescents in Low- and Middle- income Countries: Evidence from Pakistan | Nutritional Sciences | 2022-06 | Food environments in low- and middle- income countries (LMICs) have undergone unprecedented changes over recent decades with the emergence of modern supply chains, coupled with shifts in consumer food choice. The accessibility and availability of cheap, ultra- processed foods have led to suboptimal diets, and a rise in the double burden of malnutrition particularly in school-aged children and adolescents (SACA). The aim of this dissertation is to improve the understanding of the food environment and its relationship with diet-related health outcomes in SACA in LMICs and advance the methodological approaches to assess and monitor food environments in such settings and population. The first study led to a comprehensive understanding of methodologies for conceptualizing and analyzing food environments in LMICs and presented a systematic, inclusive portfolio of methods and metrics for SACA, which can be used to study the relationship between the food environment, diet and nutritional outcomes. To pilot test these indicators, an empirical assessment of retail food environments in Pakistan and its relationship to adolescent nutrition outcomes was conducted. Findings from the second study suggest that in the peri-urban district of Sindh, modernization is underway with the increasing accessibility and availability of unhealthy foods as compared to healthy foods. When examining the association between food environment characteristics and nutrition outcomes in adolescents, the total number of food outlets were significantly associated to hemoglobin in both adolescent girls and boys, whereas for BMI z-score, mean total number of healthy food items was significantly associated in adolescent boys, but not girls. Finally, a systematic review and meta-analysis on the effectiveness of food environment interventions on diet-related health outcomes in SACA in LMICs was conducted. Seven randomized controlled trials (RCTs), and six quasi-experimental studies were included. A pooled analysis of RCTs indicated no significant effect of the intervention on BMI (kg/m2), (mean difference: -0.08, 95% confidence interval of -0.18, 0.02). Taken together, this body of work provides novel and necessary evidence to inform the design and development of standardized tools and future food environment interventions related to improving diet-related health outcomes in SACA in LMICs. | Ph.D. | nutrition, malnutrition, girl, income, urban, accessib, consum, supply chain | 2, 5, 10, 11, 12 |
| Wang, Tingwu | Filder, Sanja||Ba, Jimmy | Learning Scalable Physics-based Motion Skills with Reinforcement Learning | Computer Science | 2022-06 | The fast development of deep neural networks and reinforcement learning (RL) has enabled a large number of applications that generate motions in robotics, video games and movies.However, current motion controllers are task and agent dependent, and are sensitive to agents' small dynamical changes. Their performance also degenerates with high dimensional agents such as humanoids. Therefore existing research methods cannot scale to real-life applications. In this thesis, we present a series of research works that improve the scalability of physics-based motion controllers. First, we identify one of the potential causes of the scalability gap as the task-dependent objective modeling and reward design.We propose UniCon, which instead is a two level framework that disentangles high-level behaviors and low-level motion skills. By developing multi-task objective functions and constraints, UniCon enables learning of thousands of motion skills with a single neural controller, and can be used for various interactive applications in a plug-and-play fashion. The second line of research uses structured prior in RL, which aims to improve the scalability of modeling agents with different topologies and structures.We propose NerveNet, which models the agent as a graph and learns a structured policy with graph neural networks. NerveNet greatly increases the scalability and transferability of the learnt features between different agents, demonstrating zero-shot performance across agents with similar structures. Following NerveNet, we further propose neural graph evolution (NGE).NGE improves the graph modeling which scales and shares the graph controllers to agents with arbitrary structures. NGE empowers the search optimizer to find the optimal graph structures and policies jointly. We demonstrate the effectiveness of NGE with the task of robot search, where NGE successfully evolves effective agents much faster and more efficiently. Our final contribution is GraphCon, where the insights from the aforementioned research are combined.We utilize the RL formulation from UniCon, and the graph policy modeling from NerveNet and NGE. We show that GraphCon generates realistic physics-based control with the scalability across a large variety of motions and characters, and models object interactions naturally with the graphs. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Arias Medellin, Luis Antonio | Wagner, Helene H||Hadley, Adam S | Disentangling the Roles of Pollination and Seed Dispersal on the Demography of a Tropical Understory Herb (Heliconia Tortuosa) in a Fragmented Landscape | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | Forest loss and fragmentation can affect plant populations directly by altering their demographic vital rates or indirectly by altering the movement behavior, abundance, and diversity of animals, which can affect pollen and seed flow. Most studies assess how forest loss and fragmentation affects plant population dynamics, pollination or seed dispersal independently, but little is known about how these processes are jointly affected for the same plant species. My thesis assesses the relative importance of forest loss and fragmentation for pollination, seed dispersal and plant demographic vital rates of the tropical understory herb Heliconia tortuosa Griggs. In Chapter 2, I found that, contrary to previous research on pollinators of H. tortuosa, the community of seed dispersers and Turdus grayi (one of the main seed dispersers of H. tortuosa) were not significantly affected by forest loss and fragmentation. Furthermore, I found high intraspecific variation in T. grayi habitat preference that was independent of patch size and proportion of forest in a 1 km radius. In Chapter 3, using a movement behavior model developed from radio-tracked individuals and an experimental assessment of seed passage time of H. tortuosa seeds by T. grayi individuals, I found that the probability of seeds landing in the same forest patch, in the matrix or in a new forest patch were mainly driven by habitat preference and patch size, while seed dispersal distance depended on step length. Lastly, in Chapter 4, demographic models obtained by following H. tortuosa individuals during 2013-2015 and 2015-2017 showed that pollination and seed dispersal had a low effect on population growth rate (λ), while survival, probability of reproduction and growth had larger effects. I found that the high mortality during 2013 - 2015 coincided with an unusually dry and warm wet season of 2015. Such unfavorable conditions are predicted to occur more frequently due to global warming. Overall, the results from my thesis suggest that, at least in the short term, inter-annual variation in meteorological conditions may have a stronger effect on H. tortuosa populations in the remaining forest habitat than direct and indirect effects of forest loss and fragmentation. | Ph.D. | production, global warming, species, animal, forest, land | 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Yang, Yi | Kotra, Lakshmi P | Medicinal Chemistry of Cannabis and Cannabinoids | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2023-06 | As societal attitudes towards cannabis evolve along with our understanding of the endocannabinoid system, medical cannabis is poised to re-enter the mainstream pharmacopeia, especially in North America. Presently, significant gaps in knowledge exist regarding the true chemical composition of medical cannabis as well as the pharmacodynamics of cannabinoids and cannabis extracts. As such, deconvoluting the chemical complexity of cannabis is essential for maximizing its therapeutic benefits and reducing adverse effects in the clinic. Accordingly, this thesis presents a comprehensive investigation of cannabis and cannabinoids at the pre-clinical level, drawing on core aspects of medicinal chemistry and applying developed techniques under large study settings. Through pilot experiments, extraction protocols for the optimal recovery of cannabinoids from different types of cannabis plant material were investigated and the diverse phytochemistry of cannabis was revealed through extensive chemical profiling, reiterating the need for standardization and consistency in therapeutic-grade cannabis extracts. Meanwhile, receptor profiling at CB1 and CB2 receptors confirmed the importance of decarboxylation for the optimal biological activity of cannabinoids and cannabis extracts, demonstrating the suitability of microwave-assisted extraction for producing pharmacologically active cannabis extracts. Following this, high-level chemoinformatic analyses of receptor responses versus cannabinoid concentrations of cannabis extracts generated meaningful prediction models for CB1R and CB2R agonism, predicting the cannabinoid receptor activities of individual phytocannabinoids with reasonable accuracy and revealing differences in cannabinoid receptor responses between pure cannabinoids and cannabis extracts. Finally, the total synthesis and characterization of two pharmaceutically novel cis stereoisomers of CBD was undertaken, resulting in the first unambiguous identification of cis-CBD species and the isolation of a hitherto undescribed cis-Δ9-THC species. Through this thesis, we report significant real-world evidence for the case that cannabis and cannabis extracts behave as complex mixtures of physiologically active molecules, whereby their effects on receptors vary significantly with chemotype and in turn reflects their chemical compositions. Several first-in-kind studies detailed in this thesis pave the way for further investigations of cannabinoids into their chemical structures, mechanism(s) of receptor binding, as well as synergistic and antagonistic effects during co-administration that together bring about the unique and medically important effects of cannabis. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, species | 4, 9, 14, 15 |
| Singh, Kamalpreet | Voznyy, Oleksandr | Design and Investigation of Clean Energy Materials: From Stable Perovskites to Economical Catalysts for Oxygen Evolution Reaction | Chemistry | 2023-06 | As we strive to find sustainable and economical materials for green technologies, developing next-generation materials that are efficient, durable, and affordable is crucial. In this thesis, I present my research on improving phase and bandgap stability in lead halide perovskites and explore nanostructuring and non-precious metal alloys as a route to economical catalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in an acidic medium.In the first section of the thesis, I discuss my work on perovskites. I start with a density functional theory (DFT) study of a dual-dopant strategy to increase the structural stability of the black phase CsPbI3 (chapter 4). The DFT studies revealed the importance of stereoelectronic effects in dopant-induced phase stabilization and found that the combination of Ca and Mn-doped CsPbI3 is the most effective in stabilization. The synthesized dual-doped thin films retained the black phase for up to 16 days at 40-60% relative humidity, while the non-doped controls degraded on the order of seconds. I also used DFT to evaluate additive-based design principles to improve the bandgap stability of lead halide perovskites and aid in elucidating the structure of the smallest CdSe magic-sized cluster. My work reveals the ability of chelating agents to modulate the quantum-well distribution of CsPbBr3 to achieve bandgap stability. My computational work also highlighted the importance of surface coverage in mitigating the phase segregation that plagues mixed-halide perovskites. The results are supported via experimental validation, producing spectrally stable blue and red PeLEDs. In the second part of the thesis, I discuss my work on economical catalysts for OER in an acidic medium. I demonstrate the use of a metal-organic framework (MOF) structure to bolster the performance of Mn, a non-precious metal catalyst, in this application. The Mn MOF outperformed the classical bulk MnO2 under the same conditions. I also demonstrate the OER capability of a commercially available FeAlCr alloy (Kanthal) as an affordable catalyst in an acidic medium. I conclude by offering my perspective on the future directions of the outlined work, thereby delivering the desired efficient, durable, and affordable next-generation materials. | Ph.D. | affordab, energy, invest | 1, 10, 7, 9 |
| Savella, Tristan | McClelland, Ryan | Cello-Piano Duos: Analytical, Practical and Rehearsal Strategies for the Collaborative Pianist | Music | 2023-06 | The ability to play collaborative music is one of the most important skills learned by undergraduate students majoring in piano performance. As pianists are required to play with a range of instruments, they must be well informed of the unique features and idiosyncrasies presented by the combination of piano and the instrument, or instruments, with which they arecollaborating. Compared to other instrumentalists, undergraduate pianists often have less experience with collaborative music. Students learning orchestral instruments or voice generally acquire experience in various ensembles from a younger age. These experiences are viewed as a vital component of studying these instruments from a relatively early stage. The comparatively limited experience as collaborative musicians many pianists have before their undergraduate degrees amplifies the importance of teaching pianists various skills needed as collaborative pianists and chamber musicians. This document describes a method of analyzing works from the collaborative pianist’s repertoire, exploring how a pianist can use analysis to develop their interpretation and conception of a chamber music work. Analysis can inform strategies for practice and rehearsal. Since this document focuses on repertoire for the cello-piano duo, it also identifies specific challenges and characteristics of the cello-piano instrumentation—a topic that has received little attention in the current literature. This dissertation is in four chapters. The first chapter provides a literature review, while also highlighting other relevant topics that have not been examined in the current literature. The second chapter presents insights from interviews with professional pianists and cellists regarding their early training and experiences with chamber and collaborative music. The third chapter proposes a step-by-step guide to analysis for the collaborative pianist, discusses how to use analysis when learning duo works for cello and piano, and addresses challenges specific to collaboration with the cello. The final chapter takes Rachmaninov’s Sonata for Cello and Piano in G Minor, Op. 19 as a case study, demonstrating the practical application of the analytical process presented in the third chapter. | D.M.A. | learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Thompson, Jocelyn Rosemary | Pruessen, Ronald W | Foreign Relations? A Comparative Study of Foreign Policy and the Media in Britain and America, 1939-1941 | History | 2023-06 | How do a people experience their country’s foreign policy statements? This thesis explores the projection of publicly stated foreign policy and how it is constructed by the media. The existing research literature rarely covers in any depth this fundamental aspect of modern foreign policy. That said, analysing the relationships between governments, media, and peoples in a comparative context offers essential insights into the way these connections work. Choosing Britain and America, both liberal democracies facing similar challenges in the international landscape, provides the lens to explore the intricate processes of policy projection.The approach of this thesis falls within the methodological ambit of International History with its emphasis on insights gained from comparative studies and its liking for ‘borderlands’ and suggestive conclusions. The thesis has two parts. Part 1 is thematic and contextual in approach. It explores three determinants - national political structures and belief systems, the importance of the personal assumptions of policy makers, and role of the media - looking at foreign policy between 1929 and 1938 for illustrative material. Part 2, using the years 1939, 1940 and 1941, examines how these three determinants buttressed government and public reactions to the expanding war. The voices in this thesis are the human voices of the players of the time not the voices of later historical judgement. They are found in speeches, diaries, letters, and commentary in the media. These are the broad questions asked of the research: How resistant were underlying beliefs and assumptions - the determinants of Part 1 - to the stresses of wartime events? How deliberate were policy makers in organising statements for the media? Did public reaction influence policy? The analysis shows the strong persistence of established structures and assumptions as the context for the projection of wartime foreign policy in both countries. It shows media commentators consciously adjusting to perceptions of their own country’s national needs and constraints as they reported the war. As far as changing stated foreign policy, the reception in the media seemed only to influence timing and strategies for implementation as events unfolded rather than policy itself. | Ph.D. | land, democra | 15, 16 |
| Hood, Jonathan | Arbour-Nicitopoulos, Kelly A | Sport for Development Side-lined Youth: An Empowering Intervention or Socializing Agent? | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2023-06 | Faith in the positive outcomes of sport has led to its mobilization to fulfill several ‘developmental’ goals for youth in under-resourced communities (e.g., improved life skills, improved academics, etc.) under the name sport for development (SFD). The dominant narrative that sport is effective in the development of youth has been challenged by many scholars who illustrate that such a perspective is rooted in colonial practices that socialize participants to maintain power imbalances rather than empower participants and lead to social change. Hartmann and Kwauk (2011) term this the dominant vision approach. Within it, participants are not made aware of the institutions that play a role in their marginalization rendering them powerless in advocating for real change, growth, and development. This doctoral research program aimed to critically explore the dominant narrative that SFD programming is developmental for side-lined youth. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) strategies were used to engage young adults from marginalized communities as co-researchers by way of a young adult advisory board (YAAB). The YAAB co-designed data collection strategies deployed in two studies that captured the voices of side-lined youth and program facilitators. Life history interviews were used to capture the counter stories of side-lined youth which were analyzed to yield five narratives that illustrate a range of developmental gaps SFD programs have the potential to address. Semi-structured interviews were used to capture program facilitators’ intentions for side-lined youth who participated in their programs. The YAAB took part in thematic analysis that revealed alignment between youth narratives and program facilitator intentions, as well as differences in developmental approaches between program facilitators with lived experience in comparison to those without (i.e., learned experience). In addition, the CBPR process was evaluated to produce a systematic method for meaningful engagement of side-lined youth in the research process. Overall, this doctoral research program discusses the role of power in SFD programming and research, while providing theoretical and practical considerations for researchers and practitioners in this field. Furthermore, it explores the socioeconomic challenges that side-lined youth face, and demonstrates how sport can be used to address those gaps in a useful and realistic way. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, marginalized, institut, social change | 1, 10, 16 |
| Sparks, Jennifer Lynn | Waterman, Stephanie | Parent Involvement in the Lives of College Students in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | When working at a community college in Ontario, my colleagues and I frequently interacted with students and their parents. However, limited institutional resources supported such interactions and much of our work with parents was performed off the sides of our desks. As both an administrator and academic researcher, I was conflicted by how scholarly descriptions of parent involvement differed from my professional encounters with parents of students. I was inspired to synergize the support students receive in their college journeys: both the familial and institutional. Thus, the purpose of my doctoral research became to explore the involvement of parents in their students’ education journeys at four public Ontario Colleges. I grounded my research in Bronfenbrenner's (1977) & Bronfenbrenner & Morris' (2006) bioecological model. I used the bioecological model to conceptualize influences (including parents) on human (student) development. Through website content analysis, telephone interviews, and surveys, I sought to elucidate the nature of parent involvement in the context of college in Ontario. I used the parallel-databases variant of convergent design to collect and analyze data on the involvement of parents in the lives of college students, through three distinct research strands: (i) interviews with college employees,(ii) surveys of college employees, students, and parents, and (iii) college website content analysis. My study yielded novel contributions to the literature, including that the involvement of parents impacted both students and college employees. My research documented that parents (& other family members) were involved in a myriad of ways and that their involvement both positively and negatively affected students. My findings also highlighted a range of perspectives in regards to how parents were foreseen as involved in students’ college related experiences. In particular, I found institutional and college employees’ perceptions of the home-school relationship, often conflicted with student expectations and the involvement practices of parents (especially for families from marginalized backgrounds). Overall, I concluded that, in Ontario, parents are involved throughout students’ college journeys, from recruitment through to graduation, and beyond. Ultimately, I hope that my dissertation may inform professional practices seeking to support the involvement of parents in students’ college journeys in Ontario. | Ph.D. | marginalized, ecolog, institut | 10, 15, 16 |
| Liang, Weike | Chin, Jik JC | Molecular Recognition and Catalysis – Amino Acids, Epoxide and Carbon Dioxide | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Molecular recognition and catalysis are fundamental areas of research in chemistry. Stereoselective recognition of amino acids, catalytic asymmetric epoxidation, and CO2 fixation were investigated combining experimental and computational methods. Chapter 1 focuses on the stereoselective recognition of amino acids by imino boronate complexes. The origin of stereoselectivity is explained in terms of covalent, steric, and cation-π interactions. Conflicting reports on the stereoselectivity of this system is addressed. Moreover, proline derivatives were synthesized diastereoselectively from the amino acid boronate complexes. In Chapter 2, stereoselective recognition of (2R,3S)-2-phenyl-3-methylaziridine with diaminocyclohexane (DACH)-based Co-salen complexes was investigated where experimentally observed stereoselectivities and structures were reproduced with DFT calculations. Computation also shows that substituting the metal from Co to Mn and aziridines to corresponding epoxides does not significantly change the position of the coordinated substrates or their stereoselectivity of recognition. In Chapter 3, the origin of stereoselectivity for the Jacobsen-Katsuki epoxidation was examined by computation based on the lowest energy transition state structures. Through computation, we found a new origin of stereoselectivity that has not been previously reported. The enantioselectivity can be explained for the first time in terms of a unified transition state for different catalysts and substrates. In Chapter 4, the electronic effect on enantioselectivity of Jacobsen-Katsuki epoxidation is investigated by computation and analyzed using Hammond postulate, Reactivity-Selectivity principle, and Marcus equation. This study shows that Marcus’ intrinsic barrier is sensitive to the electronic effect, which results in greater stereoselectivity. In Chapter 5, we show that the electrophilicity of CO2 matches that of diaryl carbonates with the leaving group phenol pKa of around 7.6 and 5.4 when the nucleophiles are water and thiomethyl acetate, respectively. Enthalpic activation of CO2 can be achieved towards all nucleophiles by conversion to carbonates or carbamates with good leaving groups. A novel mechanism of biotin-dependent carboxylases is proposed based on computation, which considers N-phosphocarboxybiotin as the carboxylating agent rather than the conventionally proposed carboxybiotin. Each step of the new catalytic cycle was shown to be chemically reasonable and thermodynamically downhill by DFT computation. With the new mechanism, enthalpic activation of CO2 can be achieved unlike with carboxybiotin. | Ph.D. | water, energy, invest, transit, carbon dioxide, co2 | 6, 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Istanboulian, Laura | Dale, Craig | Theoretically Informed Design and Acceptability Evaluation of a Communication Bundle for Adult Intensive Care Unit Patients with an Advanced Airway during Pandemic Conditions | Nursing Science | 2023-06 | Background. Communication difficulty is associated with adverse physical and psychological sequelae for intensive care unit (ICU) patients managed with an advanced airway for mechanical ventilation. Supportive communication tools exist; however, few are integrated into practice. COVID-19 pandemic (2020-22) infection prevention and control (IPAC) conditions contribute new barriers to communication warranting solutions. Objectives. To use a theoretically informed study design to create and evaluate the acceptability of a co-designed bundled COmmunication intervention for adult patients with an advanced airway during the COVID-19 PandEmic (COPE) from the perspective of diverse health care professionals (HCP), patients, and family in the adult ICU IPAC context. Design. A sequential multiple study design including a scoping review, an interview study, co-design methods, and a convergent mixed-method acceptability evaluation study in a single adult medical-surgical ICU in Toronto, Canada (January 2020 – March 2021). Methods. The Theoretical Framework of Acceptability was used to consecutively analyze reported barriers to and facilitators for: communication tool use in the adult ICU in the scoping review; and stakeholder support of patient communication in the pandemic ICU context in qualitative interviews. The results from these two studies informed the co-design of the COPE intervention. Finally, the acceptability, appropriateness, and feasibility of COPE were evaluated using mixed-methods. Results. The COPE intervention included 1. Stocked IPAC approved physical communication tool cart, and electronic tool cart, 2. Education modules for HCP, and 3. Information for patient-family connection. COPE was rated and described to be acceptable, appropriate, and feasible. Integration of data sets revealed additional recommendations for COPE including enhanced access to tools and training; leadership support of the physical, cognitive, and emotional impact of communication work; and use of a theoretically informed implementation framework. Conclusion. A theoretical understanding of acceptability of communication interventions such as COPE from the perspective of key stakeholders can inform intervention design, improve acceptability, and potentially advance utilization of communication supportive tools in practice. Relevance to practice. Implications include the availability of an acceptable communication intervention for use and further evaluation, a call to action for communication training, and need for leadership support for ICU HCP and communication work. | Ph.D. | health care | 3 |
| Egorov, Gleb Andreyevich | Eleftheriades, George V | Theory and Application of Refracting Metasurfaces for Phased-Array Angular Scan Extension | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | Most of this thesis discusses metasurface lenses and their application to enhancing the angular scan range of phased antenna arrays -- an application of particular interest for 5G. Theoretical aspects of the problem are first discussed, and we are able to say that most, if not all, lens-based scan enhancers degrade the directivity of the source. This degradation is proportional to the enhancement of the device. To validate some of the theory and test various refracting devices a simulation tool was written to perform quick simulations of 2D scenarios. The simulation tool is discussed in detail as well, and it turns out that the vague metasurface definition (defined via the phase it incurs upon the incident fields) leads to quantifiable "errors." Simulation rigor is improved and the rest of the theory is validated via full-field simulations. In these simulations the lenses are defined according to the theory of ZYK boundary surfaces (a.k.a. omega bi-anisotropic Huygens metasurfaces). This definition performs as an ideal lens in the context of Gaussian beams, and we argue that this definition extends the concept of an ideal lens to electromagnetics. The topic is concluded by experimental verification of some of the theoretical claims. Finally, the theory of cotangent ZY boundary surfaces (a.k.a. Huygen's refracting metasurface, a.k.a.tangent sigma-tau boundary) is revisited. In a somewhat educational manner, we build up the theory of "ideal" refraction and claim that existing treatments of the topic leave the problem somewhat incomplete -- no "general" scattering solution is known. We then proceed to analytically solve for the general scattering of a tangent-like sigma-tau boundary subject to TE illumination. The obtained solution is studied extensively, and new functionalities of cotangent ZY boundaries are discovered -- namely, refraction without specular reflection and oblique absorption. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Thakor, Azima | Lopez, Ann E | Navigating Administrative Leadership: An Examination of Brown Women Educators’ Leadership Experiences in K-12 Public Schools in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | This qualitative research grounded in notions of Seva Service Leadership examines the experiences of Brown women in formal (administrative) leadership roles in K-12 Public Schools in Ontario. Through semi-structured interviews, 15 self-identifying Brown women educators (BWEs) shared how they navigate their leadership journeys, factors that influence their decisions to enter formal leadership roles, and what sustains them in their administrative leadership roles. The term ‘Brown’ is used in this study to refer to women who self-identify as Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or Sri Lankan descent/heritage and/or belonging to the South Asian diaspora. BWEs navigating leadership roles in K-12 Ontario public school boards face individual and systemic barriers, while engaging in strategies that sustain their leadership journeys. The findings from the participants’ experiences revealed: a) the Need for and Importance of Mentoring, b) the Need to Prove Oneself, c) Importance of Representation, d) Experiencing and Navigating Microaggressions and Whiteness, e) Navigating Internal Tensions f) Survival Strategies, and g) Pay it Forward. Findings also revealed that BWEs interpret their experiences by using Seva Service Leadership actions and subsequently their agency. Finally, this research can inform hiring and recruitment practices of not only Brown women in formal leadership roles in K-12 schools in Ontario, but all diverse populations. The study concludes with implications for practice and future research. | Ed.D. | women | 5 |
| Girard, Melanie | Watts, Tania H | Type I Interferon Responses in Monocytes Regulate GITRL Expression and Anti-tumor Immunity | Immunology | 2023-06 | Human mononuclear phagocytes comprise specialized subsets of dendritic cells (DCs) and monocytes, but how these subsets individually regulate the expression of the molecular signals involved in T cell costimulation is incompletely understood. In a first study presented in chapter 2, I demonstrate that type-I interferons (IFN-Is) regulate the expression of the T cell co-stimulatory molecule GITRL on human peripheral blood DC3, and to a lower extent on cDC2 and monocytes. Using single-cell transcriptomics to predict regulatory networks and pharmacological inhibitors to validate predictions, I also show that human GITRL expression is regulated by NF-kB downstream of IFN-I signaling. Collectively, this study provides insight into the regulation of human GITRL expression and the cell type-specific response of human DC and monocyte subsets to IFN-I. In a second study, I investigated how IFN-I signaling in monocytes affects anti-tumor immunity in the context of STING agonist therapy of cancer. The cyclic GMP-AMP synthase stimulator of interferon genes (cGAS-STING) pathway allows cells to produce IFN-Is upon detection of cytosolic DNA and intratumoral injection of STING agonists drives durable and systemic control of pre-established tumors in mice. In chapters 3 and 4, I show that intratumoral injection of STING agonists drives the accumulation of inflammatory monocytes in B16F10 tumors and tumor-draining lymph nodes. I demonstrate that these monocytes have responded to IFN-Is and express GITRL and IL-18. I further show that GITRL expression on CCR2+ cells and IL-18 are important for the response to STING agonist therapy. Collectively, this study provides novel insights into the role of IFN-Is, monocytes, GITRL, and IL-18 during STING agonist therapy. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Wiggans, Mallory Elizabeth | Pearson, Bret J | Comparative Genomics Identifies Conserved Factors that Regulate Stemness in Adult and Cancer Stem Cells | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Adult stem cells (ASCs) that self renew indefinitely and generate differentiated cell types are present in species of every phylum identified and, thus, likely share a common evolutionary origin. Cancer stem cells (CSCs), a cell type known to drive tumourigenesis and recurrence, also share these functional properties with ASCs, as well as molecular characteristics, albeit in a dysregulated manner. It is plausible that normal ASCs and CSCs utilize a common genetic circuitry to mediate their shared functional properties, and a comparative genomics strategy may uncover conserved stemness factors required for regulating stemness in normal and cancer stem cells across evolution. Here, I identified transcripts that have enriched expression and a human ortholog in planarian ASCs and cross-referenced this list to genes that are upregulated in glioblastoma stem cells (GSCs) compared to their normal stem cell counterparts. In total, I identified 76 putative stemness regulators common in both systems and I systematically knocked down expression of candidate genes in planarians by RNAi. I found 29/76 resulted in stem cell dysfunction leading to planarian death. DDX56 encodes a DEAD-box RNA helicase, and high DDX56 expression is correlated with worse clinical outcome in GBM patients. I demonstrated planarian ddx56 is required for ASC function, and ddx56(RNAi) caused impaired differentiation, reduced proliferation and ASC loss, as well as disrupted nucleolar integrity and dysregulation of ribosomal components. In patient-derived GSCs, DDX56 localized to the nucleolus, and knockout suppressed CSC growth and self-renewal in vitro. Together, I suggest a role for DDX56 in ribosomal biogenesis, where upregulation of DDX56 in a cancer context reduces nucleolar stress. Another candidate, smarcc2, encodes a core component of the BAF chromatin remodeling complex. In planarian ASCs, I determined the BAF complex regulates chromatin accessibility and therefore expression of key target genes required for differentiation to mesodermal and ectodermal lineages. Functionally, RNAi of smarcc2, or another core component brg1, caused ASC accumulation and impaired differentiation into epidermal and neural fates. Thus, the BAF complex has conserved roles in regulating differentiation across species and provides insights into mechanisms that determine fate choice in ASCs. In conclusion, I demonstrate the utility of comparative genomics and model systems to identify key stemness regulators active in stem cells across evolution, including in CSCs. | Ph.D. | accessib, conserv, species | 11, 14, 15 |
| Walton, Joseph Paul | Ailles, Laurie | Targeting Epigenetic Regulation in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma Reveals PRMT1 as a Novel Target | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is characterized by a remarkably homogenous event: biallelic inactivation of the tumour suppressor gene Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL). Loss of VHL disrupts normal oxygen sensing and causes an upregulation of hypoxia-related genetic programs. Understanding these mechanisms led to the development of targeted agents now used clinically for metastatic ccRCC. Although these therapies have improved survival outcomes, the response rates remain variable, and resistance is a persistent problem. Additionally, loss of VHL alone appears to be a necessary yet insufficient event to drive oncogenesis in the majority of ccRCC instances. Large genomics studies have revealed that co-deletions of VHL with genes involved in chromatin regulation are common and important co-drivers of tumourigenesis. Several conserved evolutionary subtypes have been described clinically and the majority implicate disruptions in epigenetic regulators. Although this molecular picture is complex, it is now clear that impairments in cellular epigenetic mechanisms are important co-drivers of disease and signal a potential vulnerability in the epigenetic network of ccRCC cells relative to their normal counterparts.In this thesis, we aim to exploit this vulnerability to identify novel therapeutic targets with potential for clinical translation. We first established a clinically relevant panel of ccRCC models and performed a screen of small molecule inhibitors targeting a spectrum of epigenetic regulators. We identified MS023, an inhibitor of type I protein arginine methyltransferases (PRMTs) as an agent with anti-tumour activity. Using orthogonal genetic technologies, we further validated PRMT1 as the specific critical dependency for cancer growth. Mechanistically, our transcriptomic and functional analyses suggest that MS023 treatment results in substantial impairments to cell cycle and DNA damage repair (DDR) pathways, while spawning an accumulation of DNA damage over time. Our PRMT1 specific proteomics analysis revealed an interactome rich in RNA binding proteins including the specific regulator of DDR mRNA metabolism: the BCLAF1/THRAP3 complex. Further mechanistic investigation suggests that MS023 treatment may result in impairments to DDR specific mRNA activities including nucleocytoplasmic transport and RNA splicing. Together, our data supports PRMT1 as a compelling target in ccRCC and informs a potential mechanism-based strategy for translational development. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, invest, gini, conserv | 1, 9, 10, 14, 15 |
| Wong, Jessica Jayne | Rosella, Laura C | Effects of Back Pain and Mental Health Conditions on Health Care Utilization and Costs: A Population-based Perspective using a Novel Data Platform in Back Pain Research | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2023-06 | Back pain is the leading cause of disability globally, and a driver of health care utilization across health systems. Back pain is a complex condition with multiple contributors to disability, including biopsychosocial factors and comorbidities. Notably, this includes mental health conditions as common comorbidities that can negatively impact back pain outcomes. Given the growing burden of back pain and its relationship with mental health, this dissertation aims to comprehensively examine the effects of back pain and mental health conditions at the population level. The first objective assessed the effects of back pain on health care utilization and costs among Ontario adults in a single-payer health system. In this population-based cohort study, adults with back pain had substantially higher rates of health care utilization and costs than those without back pain. Incremental costs corresponded to an annual burden of $759 million in Ontario. The second objective assessed the association between depressive symptoms/depression and outcomes in persons with back pain. This systematic review and meta-analysis found that depressive symptoms may be associated with disability and worse recovery for acute and chronic back pain, and greater primary health care utilization for acute back pain. The third objective assessed the joint effects of back pain and mental health conditions on health care utilization and costs among Ontario adults in a single-payer health system. In this population-based cohort study, the joint effects of back pain and mental health conditions on back pain-specific utilization and opioid prescription were greater than expected, with evidence of synergism. Study findings quantify the substantial burden of back pain on the Ontario health system, and highlight adults with back pain and mental health conditions as a priority group with worse outcomes and greater health care needs. This dissertation offers unique contributions to musculoskeletal epidemiologic research through several methodological approaches, including novel linkages between survey and administrative data for Ontario, propensity-score matching, prognostic review methodology, and analyses of joint effects. Overall, this dissertation provides the evidentiary basis to inform health programs and resources planning tailored to back pain and mental health conditions, to improve population health and health care sustainability in Ontario. | Ph.D. | mental health, health care, disabilit | 3 |
| McTavish, Candice | McGillis Hall, Linda | New Nurses’ Perceptions of Work Environments and Work Outcomes in Mental Health Practice Settings: A Multi-method Study | Nursing Science | 2023-06 | Background: New graduate nurses (NGNs) are a vital resource to the nursing workforce given the forecasted staffing trends. NGNs face complex work environments in addition to the challenges inherent in transitioning to practice that shape their initial work experiences. The mental health (MH) practice setting, in particular, has been under-examined with respect to NGNs’ perceptions of the work environment (WE), as have work outcomes. Objectives: This study: 1) identified the perceptions of NGNs working in a MH WE; 2) explored their perceptions of MH nursing culture; 3) determined the extent to which NGNs in MH settings experience job satisfaction (JS), burnout (BO) and turnover intention (TI), and 4) examined whether relationships exist between the MH WE and work outcomes. Methods: A multi-method research design was undertaken with NGNs practicing in MH settings in Ontario, Canada and included the use of a survey of 165 NGNs and interviews with a sample of 15 participants. Nurses working in MH settings with three-years or less of experience were recruited from the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) registry. Results: Quantitative and qualitative data were considered independently and also triangulated. Survey data found that NGN working in MH settings perceive the quality of the WE to be favourable, except their participation in the internal governance. JS was insignificant as an explanatory variable relating to TI. Levels of JS, BO and TI were all deemed to be of concern for NGNs. Moreover, nursing WE was found to contribute significantly to said outcomes. Qualitative findings offered further context with themes emerging addressing the rewards/challenges related to caring for patients, such as patient aggression, along with factors in the WE that impact the development of nurse outcomes. Significance: This study resulted in an improved understanding of the WE in MH settings from the lens of NGNs, providing important context regarding what shapes their experience of undesirable work outcomes. These insights and NGN views on MHN facilitates nurse leaders’ understanding of what is needed for NGNs to survive and thrive in a MH practice setting. Strengthening this knowledge will help to support and sustain the MH nursing workforce. | Ph.D. | mental health, knowledge, transit, governance | 3, 4, 11, 16 |
| Murdoch, Chandra | Bohaker, Heidi | Act to Control: The Grand General Indian Council, The Department of Indian Affairs, and the Struggle over the Indian Act in Ontario, 1850-1906. | History | 2023-06 | This dissertation examines the development of the Indian Act in nineteenth-century Ontario within the context of Indigenous political response to the law. The Grand General Indian Council of Ontario was a cross-reserve political organization that met every two years after 1870 to review legislation affecting their communities and to urge the government to act on their recommendations. Representing various communities, nations, and legal frameworks, the Council was built on historic alliances between the Anishinaabe and the Haudenosaunee. Over the years, they drew on multiple forms of Indigenous law, as well as put forward a plethora of political strategies including engagement with and accommodation of some parts of the law itself. Understanding the plurality of legal frameworks and political thought put forward by the Council makes clear the diversity in how Indigenous leaders negotiated the shifting tactics of the government in their efforts to entrench control over reserve communities, as well as demonstrates how their political vision never neatly aligned with government goals. This dissertation also examines the changing legal mechanisms developed by the Department of Indian Affairs and the expansion of the Indian Agent system¬–often in relation to resistance– that ultimately undermined even the most accommodationist alternatives put forward by the Council. Each chapter traces one aspect of the Indian Act (or related legislation) that was of particular concern to both the Council and the Department of Indian Affairs: resource regulation, enfranchisement, reserve governance, inheritance, and the role of Indian Agents. I argue that the application of the Indian Act in Ontario can be understood as a series of contestations over local jurisdiction on reserves. These contestations make clear that while the development of the Indian Act has conventionally been understood as a top-down process, with law being passed in Ottawa being directly applied to reserves, this framing overlooks Indigenous political leaders who opposed the law or sought to have it altered to suit their needs, the difficulties that Indian Agents had in imposing the law, and how the law changed in response to these various struggles over local jurisdiction. | Ph.D. | indigenous, governance | 10, 16 |
| Saadat, Md Nazmus | Sain, Mohini MS | An Investigation on Advanced Functional Carbonaceous Materials for High Performance Composites in Fuel Cell Applications | Forestry | 2023-06 | Hydrogen fuel cell, one of the main power sources in environmentally benign hydrogen economy, has its own cost and performance limitations which is a large drawback for moving forward with this demanding technology to reduce GHG emissions particularly in the transportation sector from mid-to-heavy duty vehicles. Research on the bipolar plates, a vital component, can be a solution to address this on-going issue which needs improvement in electrical and mechanical attributes. In this dissertation, investigation was carried out on anisotropically distributed advanced functional carbonaceous materials along with the introduction of novel biocarbons which can facilitate to improve the performance of carbon polymer composites by increasing the movement of charged particles through decoupling of repulsion, increased conjugated carbon-carbon aromatic structure and through the spin non-conservation in the crystal lattice structure. The highest electrical conductivity was achieved 221 S/cm and flexural strength 64 MPa, well above the US DOE target of 100 S/cm and 25 MPa respectively. It was observed that the non-destructive porous structure measurement can determine the extent of electrical conductivity. A novel continuous carbon fiber process showed crucial potential in improved mechanical properties with excellent electrical conductivity. The use of multi-fillers and intercalated carbonaceous materials can help to reduce the density, thickness and weight to a large extent which is important for the fabrication of a highly conductive, mechanically flexible and light-weight composite. In this research, a holistic approach of effective intrinsic properties, optimized process parameters and novel functional materials proved to facilitate achieving a high-performance composite for bipolar plates. | Ph.D. | emission, invest, environmental, emissions, conserv | 7, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Gandhi, Pooja | Steele, Catriona M | Swallowing Physiology and Impairment in Individuals with Parkinson Disease | Rehabilitation Science | 2023-06 | Parkinson Disease (PD) is a common neurological disorder that is expected to affect 9 million people worldwide by 2030. Dysphagia is highly prevalent in PD, and can result in aspiration pneumonia, malnutrition, and dehydration. The purpose of this doctoral dissertation is to provide a comprehensive overview of swallowing physiology in PD, elucidate potential relationships between swallowing physiology and swallowing function, and to examine the effectiveness of an exercise-based intervention protocol for improving impaired swallowing physiology in PD. The first chapter of this dissertation provides an overview of normal swallowing, dysphagia, and PD pathology. Chapter 2 synthesizes and compares existing evidence on the effectiveness of interventions for dysphagia in PD patients, in the form of a systematic review. Our review highlighted a situation of clinical equipoise and a low certainty evidence base, precluding our ability to make strong recommendations to guide practice. Furthermore, it demonstrated that to manage PD-related dysphagia, it is imperative for clinicians to have an understanding of the physiological mechanisms that contribute to impairment. Building on this discussion, Chapter 3 involved a cross-sectional study of swallowing physiology in PD, using quantitative videofluoroscopic analysis. Measures of swallowing safety, efficiency, timing and kinematics were obtained and compared against healthy reference data. In addition, we explored the effects of liquid thickness on swallowing physiology. Through this analysis we were able to delineate mechanisms of swallowing impairment related to PD from those due to aging, revealing potential targets for intervention and rehabilitation. Given the prominent role that the tongue plays in bolus formation, control, and propulsion in swallowing, interventions to improve tongue strength may positively impact swallowing. To evaluate the utility of including a tongue pressure training component in dysphagia intervention for people with PD, we compared tongue pressure generation capacity in PD and other neurodegenerative populations to healthy controls, presented in Chapter 4. Putting together these findings, Chapter 5 describes an exercise-based rehabilitation protocol, using a tongue pressure measurement device for biofeedback, designed to target the identified physiological mechanisms of swallowing impairment in PD. Finally, we outline limitations and suggest priorities for future research in Chapter 6. | Ph.D. | nutrition, malnutrition | 2 |
| Otobo, Tarimobo Michael | Doria, Andrea S | Development and Validation of the Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Magnetic Resonance Imaging - Sacroiliac Joint Scoring System (JAMRIS-SIJ) | Medical Science | 2023-06 | ABSTRACTIntroduction: This thesis utilized a mixed method approach in the development and validation of the Juvenile Arthritis Magnetic Resonance Imaging Sacroiliac Joint Scoring System (JAMRIS-SIJ) in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). JIA is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects joint function, resulting in a significant effect on the quality of life. MRI is the best diagnostic modality for SIJ imaging in JIA due to its ability to detect early signs of inflammation before radiography, providing for the direct visualization of osteochondral changes to guide treatment. The objective of this research thesis project was to develop a reliable and valid imaging outcome measure that can detect change during JIA interventions. This dissertation describes a series of studies reporting the development and validation process of the JAMRIS-SIJ. Methods: JAMRIS-SIJ development was conducted using a combination of the synthesis of existing related scoring systems in the literature and a multi-iteration nominal group process among over 30 multidisciplinary international imaging and clinical experts to arrive at consensus on the measurement domain and items for the assessment of SIJ inflammation and damage. Thereafter, using data-driven methodology, cases of patients with JIA were selected to test the reliability and validity of the JAMRIS-SIJ. Results: An all-inclusive definition of the SIJ MRI lesions for the inflammation in the order of their relative importance weights in the JAMRIS-SIJ are osteitis (25.7%), bone marrow edema (24.3%), inflammation in erosion cavity (16.9%), joint space enhancement (13.1%), joint space fluid (9.1%), capsulitis (7.3%) and enthesitis (4.6%). Likewise, for damage domain are ankylosis (41.3%), erosion (25.1%), backfill (13.9%), sclerosis (10.7%), and fat metaplasia lesion (9.1%). The intraclass correlation coefficient for inter-rater reliability was 0.77 and 0.60 for inflammation and damage domain respectively. Conclusion: This project reports the novel JAMRIS-SIJ scoring system and initial stages of validation of this scoring system. To our knowledge, this is a pioneer initiative towards the development of a sacroiliac joint MRI outcome measurement tool targeted on the pediatric population considering the unique imaging characteristics of growing bones, cartilage, and bone marrow. The understanding gained from this research may lead to the development of future guidelines for MR imaging outcomes in rheumatology clinical trials. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, erosion | 2, 4, 15 |
| Ketabi, Shiva | Ganjali, Yashar | Flow Consolidation for Congestion Control in Data Centers | Computer Science | 2023-06 | Congestion control has been a fundamental component with evolving challenges in computer networks during the past few decades. In this thesis, we focus on the following key challenges of congestion control: lack of information sharing among flows, limited congestion visibility at the end-hosts, stringent requirements for convergence time, and dynamic and volatile nature of networks. We design a hierarchical congestion control system (HCC) that addresses the above challenges in data center networks. By grouping flows in a hierarchical manner, HCC enables flow cooperation and information sharing, leading to expanded visibility for flows, improved fairness, and faster convergence. Flows share congestion information within groups and propagate the compressed signals through the hierarchy, enabling aggregate control of multiple flows. HCC implements a distributed system for realizing max-min fairness, which is the theoretical objective of many congestion control protocols. To limit the state space, communication overhead, and processing time, HCC leverages flow aggregation and rate quantization techniques. Rate quantization is an effective way to reduce the run-time of max-min fairness. Flow aggregation helps flows to react collaboratively to changes at the edge of the network and converge to a local optimal state promptly. Also, the aggregated updates are propagated through the hierarchy to reach a globalmax-min fair state. This fast reaction at the edge is beneficial for short-lived flows and on-off traffic patterns. Moreover, to eliminate the volatile nature of flows, we define the correlation-aware flow consolidation problem. In correlation-aware flow consolidation, the goal is to reduce the fluctuations in individual flows by aggregating inversely correlated (or uncorrelated) flows. In our experiments, we show that we can reduce the average standard deviation of group demands by 33% which results in estimating future group demands with higher confidence. We evaluate HCC on a real workload and show that HCC converges to full utilization much faster (up to 4x), with a near zero bottleneck queue size, lower flow completion times (42 − 62%), and a significantly higher fairness index compared to well-known congestion control protocols. Also, by comparing HCC with a centralized solution, we show that HCC significantly reduces the overheads (by 73% and 99.5%). | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Bruce, Jessica | Girardin, Stephen E||Philpott, Dana J | Inflammasomes in the Intestinal Epithelium | Immunology | 2023-06 | Inflammasomes are multiprotein signalling complexes that detect a diverse range of pathological stimuli to activate inflammatory caspases, resulting in cell death and the release of IL-18 and IL-1b. Inflammasomes are important in a wide range of diseases, in particular with auto-inflammatory disorders in humans. While they have been extensively studied in immune cells, their role in mediating inflammatory responses in other cellular compartments is ill-defined. It is becoming increasingly clear that epithelial inflammasomes are critical for controlling intestinal pathogens and regulating epithelial-mucosal homeostasis, little is known about how they function in this cellular compartment. Moreover, very few studies focus specifically on inflammasomes in human cells, and this has implications for our understanding of human diseases. In this thesis we investigate human intestinal epithelial inflammasomes in the two contexts that they are known to function: controlling epithelial-mucosal homeostasis and defending against cytosolic pathogens. We have uncovered that NLRP6 may function to regulate intestinal mucus homeostasis and that disruption of this may underpin the diseases of the microbiota-gut-brain axis. Secondly, we have uncovered the importance of the non-canonical inflammasome and caspase-4 in producing intestinal IL-18. Through this we have discovered a novel mechanism of GSDMD and propose that GSDMD regulates the activity of caspases in the intestinal epithelium. Together these data expand upon the knowledge of innate immune signalling in the human intestinal epithelium, enhancing our understanding of how inflammasomes contribute to defense against pathogens and regulation of the intestinal microenvironment. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Kolaj, Adelaida | Miller, Freda D||Kaplan, David R | Investigating the Mechanisms of Perinatal Neuron Degeneration, Survival, and their Differentiation from Neural Precursor Cells of the V-SVZ | Physiology | 2023-06 | For the formation and maintenance of functional neuronal networks, the generation of neurons from their progenitors developmentally as well as their continued survival once the circuitry has been established are both crucial for nervous system homeostasis and plasticity, with disruptions resulting in neuropathologies. For the integrity of this process, first, cellular mechanisms need to temporally orchestrate the correct neuronal fate delineation from multipotent precursors and second, transduced pro-life signals need to suppress degeneration-promoting transcriptional programs to ensure continued survival. In this thesis, I describe a novel 4E-T-based translational regulation mechanism that “fine-tunes” the timing of neurogenesis, coordinating the correct emergence ofinterneurons from transcriptionally pre-fated early postnatal precursors (Chapter 5), in addition to characterizing a novel neuroprotectant promoting survival by suppressing the degeneration of peripheral neurons and potently protecting axonal mitochondria (Chapter 4). Postnatal precursors which possess multi-lineage potency and the ability to renew long-term, are a continuous source of neuronal progeny for tissue formation and repair, and must balance their maintenance through self-renewal, expansion of their pools through proliferation, and the need to generate progeny through differentiation. In Chapter 5 of this thesis, I demonstrate that postnatal precursors are “pre-fated”, expressing neuronal differentiation instructing specifier transcripts, and that a 4E-T-based regulatory mechanism involving translational repression modulates protein synthesis levels of these mRNA targets, controlling timely neurogenesis. Established peripheral neurons and their axonal projections need to then be preserved for the lifetime of the organism to ensure proper circuit function. One goal of the work presented in this thesis is to identify safe-in-man drugs that can block or delay axon degeneration, and to use these drugs to characterize new degeneration pathways. To this end, the work described in Chapter 4 describes and identifies the multikinase inhibitor Foretinib as being protective in sympathetic, sensory and motor neurons across multiple degeneration paradigms. Thus, my thesis traces the trajectory of neurons in two main aspects of neurobiology: from onset of fate commitment and appropriate neuronal lineage acquisition, to maintenance and protection in maturity once neurons integrate into circuits, highlighting the consequences to the organism in the case of aberration in either process. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Diep, Patrick | Yakunin, Alexander F.||Mahadevan, Radhakrishnan | Characterization and Design of Nickel-binding Proteins towards Metal Recovery Applications | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-06 | Nickel is an important metal in the adoption of greener technologies needed to transition to cleaner economies, and mines face pressure to source it more sustainably. Nature has evolved nickel-specific ATP-binding cassette (ABC) importers that can transport nickel across a cell’s membrane from the environment into the cytoplasm. Specifically, their solute-binding component known as the nickel-binding protein (NiBP) scavenges the cell’s periplasmic space to deliver metals to the cognate permease complex for transport. Existing methods for metal-binding characterization are not amenable to protein engineering efforts that rely on screening libraries of variants with different substrates. Using natural changes in protein fluorescence during a metal-binding event, we first optimized an assay previously reported in literature to measure the binding affinity (K¬D) of NiBP complexes with nickel and other metals. This assay was validated by determining the KD of the well-characterized NiBP CjNikZ from Campylobacter jejuni, which was comparable to reported values, so it was then used to demonstrate the presence of Ni(II)-binding activity in the uncharacterized NiBP called CcNikZ-II from Clostridium carboxidivorans. Next, we determined the crystal structure of CcNikZ-II, which revealed the potential Ni(II)-binding site located close to a short variable loop. Mutagenesis identified the CcNikZ-II residues involved in Ni(II) binding, but the role of the variable (v-)loop of this protein (TEDKYT) remained unclear. We purified nine CcNikZ-II homologues and determined the nickel-binding affinity of these proteins using an intrinsic fluorescence quenching assay, which showed all these proteins have higher KD for Ni(II) than CcNikZ-II. Furthermore, we replaced the CcNikZ-II v-loop sequence (TEDKYT) with those from the other homologues with higher affinity and found that the engineered CcNikZ-II variants have a higher binding affinity to Ni(II). Metal promiscuity screening further demonstrated the importance of the secondary coordination sphere in controlling affinity and specificity. Finally, an engineered E. coli strain (Ni_v.1) was created and tested in 10 ppm NiCl2 solution matching environmental conditions and demonstrated 7-fold improvement in nickel bioaccumulation performance compared to controls. Thus, both wildtype and engineering microbial NiBPs can be engineered for improved metal binding and selectivity and used for developing bio-based technologies for metal recovery applications. | Ph.D. | transit, environmental | 11, 13 |
| Hu, Ran | Newman, Peter A | Leveraging Twitter Data and Activists’ Lived Experiences to Explore Digital Advocacy for Sex Work Decriminalization in the United States | Social Work | 2023-06 | Contemporary community activism has been greatly influenced by the wide adoption of digital technologies, such as the use of social media. For communities whose voices are often systemically marginalized in public discourse, social media affords unique opportunities for communication to mobilize for social and policy advocacy. The digital space, meanwhile, has yet to be made equitable for all. This dissertation explores Twitter-based digital advocacy for sex work decriminalization in the United States, focusing on the opportunities in the digital space for community activism, the barriers facing activists when using Twitter for advocacy, and the resistance demonstrated by community activists in navigating barriers. Theoretically, the dissertation is guided by resource mobilization theory, discursive structure theory, the theory of connective action, and a systemic lens of digital inequity. This dissertation consists of five chapters, including an introduction, three independent empirical manuscripts, and a conclusion. Paper one adopts a sequential mixed methods design to explore how activists use Twitter connective functionalities (e.g., following a Twitter user, mentioning a user in a tweet, and replying to a user) to connect with key stakeholders and organize for sex work decriminalization. The mixed method analyses integrate findings of social network analysis of Twitter data and qualitative content analysis of interviews with activists who use Twitter for decriminalization advocacy. Paper two adopts qualitative content analyses of both tweets and qualitative interviews with activists to explore how sex worker rights activists and advocacy groups build Twitter messages to mobilize for decriminalization and how online advocacy is connected to offline advocacy. Finally, paper three adopts a qualitative content analysis of interviews with activists to explore how digital inequity shapes the barriers facing activists and how activists navigate and resist barriers. Overall, this research reveals activists’ intentional and strategic use of Twitter to organize resources, build movement alliances across political and social justice domains, and bridge online and offline mobilization for decriminalization advocacy. Meanwhile, the findings raise concerns about how intersecting forms of systemic marginalization legitimize platform-embedded exclusions, making Twitter an inequitable and risky environment for activists, especially for activists who engage in both online sex work and digital activism, to organize for advocacy. The research suggests the need for social workers and social justice researchers to critically examine and engage with the complex role of social media in community activism and the significance of conducting advocacy for digital equity with a commitment to confronting and removing structurally inequitable conditions compromising the digital participation of marginalized communities. | Ph.D. | equitable, equity, worker, equit, marginalized, social justice | 4, 8, 10, 16 |
| Samji, Fatima | Childs, Ruth A | Excellence and Access for Ontario’s Higher Education System: How Universities Commit to Both | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | This thesis describes two phases that together investigate how the 20 Ontario universities commit to the values of widening participation and academic excellence, which are often viewed as competing. This research employs theories and concepts at the intersection of sociology and politics of education, namely, maximally maintained inequality, effectively maintained inequality, isomorphism, and legitimacy to compare Ontario to international trends of social stratification and inequality within the higher education sector. Phase 1 provides a landscape analysis of Ontario’s higher education system and a classification of Ontario’s universities as recruiting or selecting. The universities were classified using three sources of data. The first was the entering grade-point averages across universities and programs from Common University Data Ontario (CUDO), the second was a discourse analysis of websites for five programs (Arts, Science, Business, Engineering, and Nursing) at each university, and third was Maclean’s (a Canadian current affairs magazine) rankings of university reputation. Phase 1 found that certain Ontario universities were distinctively selecting across most programs, while others were recruiting across most programs, and that the majority of Ontario universities had both selecting and recruiting programs. In phase 2, I conducted a discourse analysis of guiding documents (Strategic Mandate Agreements and Strategic Plans), and discourse analysis of publicly facing websites and viewbooks to explore how two of Ontario’s selecting universities and two recruiting universities commit to both widening participation and academic excellence. The findings reveal that Ontario’s selecting universities and programs prioritize being perceived as academically excellent (e.g., rigorous training, prestigious learning opportunities, leading innovation, and impact) on a global stage. Recruiting universities prioritize widening participation for local communities through strong recruiting and retention discourse and local community building through research. Recruiting and selecting universities use the discourse of academic excellence and widening participation to establish cognitive, moral, and pragmatic legitimacy. Selecting universities commit to widening participation to the extent that it does not challenge perceptions of global academic excellence. The findings of Phases 1 and 2 are relevant for policymakers, researchers, university leaders, and the public, as Ontario’s differentiated higher education system is not removed from the debate around equality of opportunity. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, inequality, equalit, land | 4, 9, 10, 15 |
| Huh, Sungjoon | Yudin, Andrei | Modification of Macrocyclic Backbone to Control Conformation and Reactivity | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Macrocyclic peptides are a valuable medicinal tool for drug discovery purposes as they are more effective at targeting protein binding sites and have better proteolytic stability than linear peptides and small molecules. However, drawbacks, such as their oral bioavailability and cell permeability, hinder the development of cyclic peptides into therapeutics. Many recent investigations focus on trying to design cyclic peptides for a specific conformation to enhance target-binding and to resolve cell permeability issues. In this dissertation, different amide isosteres were explored and incorporated into the backbone of macrocyclic peptides to observe the conformational outcome upon altering the backbone and to assess their permeability. In chapter 2, subtle peptide bond isostere, the amidine functionality, was site selectively incorporated in cyclic pentapeptides using the thioamide functionality. The addition of the amidine functionality allows for switching between a hydrogen bond donor to hydrogen bond acceptor. This feature was utilized to assess the role of H-bonding interaction in determining the conformation. By employing the amidine as a conformational probe, we revealed the insignificance of H-bonding in the conformation of cyclic pentapeptides in which steric interactions of side chains and turn-inducing residues have a larger influence on the conformation. In chapter 3, further investigation was performed on the 1,3,4-oxadiazole-embedded macrocyclic peptides. Assays that are more representative of cell membranes showed high cell penetrating ability. However, passive permeability was not exhibited by these oxadiazole macrocycles. These findings have demonstrated that the design of macrocyclic peptides for cell permeability is a complex matter and that ct-incorporated oxadiazole macrocyclic peptides may provide a framework for designing cyclic peptides which can undergo active transport permeation. In chapter 4, we have repurposed the rarely used Cornforth rearrangement to induce sub-residual ring contraction in peptide macrocycles. Investigation of the rate of the reaction as well as the conformational consequences upon rearrangement was performed. Distal changes of the dihedral angles were observed because of coupled bond rotations. Furthermore, a flexible macrocycle has shown conformational rigidity upon rearrangement, which could facilitate conformation-activity studies. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Muyini, Jubran | Todorova, Miglena | Teachers’ Gender, Emotions and Needs in K-12 Public Education in Saudi Arabia | Social Justice Education | 2023-06 | The present study investigates teachers’ professional experiences, emotional lives and needs, focusing on how gender impacts and shapes these experiences in K-12 public education in Saudi Arabia. The literature on teacher professional preparedness globally highlights important local and national aspects of K12 teaching and learning. Yet research on K12 public education in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, lacks attention and deeper understanding of how self-identified male and female teachers experience their professional environments and relate to students, school administrators, parents and school staff. This study helps to fill that knowledge gap. It uses 10 semi-structured personal interviews with teachers in urban schools in Saudi Arabia to study the importance of emotions and emotional labour in their careers and lives. Findings from the interview narratives highlight two important aspects of teachers’ professional lives: both male and female teachers fear state and school authority and institutional power; yet female teachers also struggle with and resist patriarchal norms and structures that impact how they relate to their students, and navigate the controlling gaze of school principles and colleagues. The conclusions propose and construct a professional training program for Saudi K-12 teachers and principals, promoting their emotional awareness as a way to foster positive relations and experiences for all participants in K-12 education. The program’s objectives and content are described and rationalized in the last chapter of the thesis. The program is a concrete praxis that could be applied in any K-12 educational environment in Saudi Arabia. The program is also a unique contribution to public education in Saudi Arabia, where programs focused on emotional and professional wellbeing, gender-based awareness and social relations in education currently do not exist. | Ed.D. | wellbeing, knowledge, learning, gender, female, labour, invest, urban, institut | 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 16 |
| Miron, Jean-Philippe | Blumberger, Daniel | Optimizing Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation for Major Depressive Disorder | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a well-established and effective intervention in MDD, with an advantageous side-effect profile over medication. Unfortunately, widespread adoption of rTMS has been impeded by several obstacles limiting clinical accessibility, including high costs of acquisition and operation, technical challenges because of the current complexity of the procedure, and the lack of validated and scalable biomarkers to help predict treatment outcome. To address these issues, we explored novel rTMS delivery methods, including parabolic coils with broad stimulation areas allowing easy targeting, safe and well-tolerated low-frequency 1 Hz stimulation delivered on the most affordable FDA-approved rTMS devices, an open-room setting allowing a single technician to attend to multiple patients, custom-made equipment reducing costs, and performed schedule optimization using treatment acceleration. We subsequently attempted to maximize effects by optimizing stimulation parameters. Lastly, we researched heart rate variability (HRV) as a potential biomarker to predict treatment outcomes. Our initial chart review studies helped us determine that the use of parabolic coils combined with 1 Hz rTMS was safe and well-tolerated in the treatment of MDD. Our second study showed that accelerated 1 Hz rTMS with parabolic coils was also safe, well-tolerated. We also showed that an open-room setting was feasible and that our custom-made rTMS equipment was reliable. Given the limited clinical effects observed in those studies, we researched an even more intensive accelerated 1 Hz rTMS protocol in our third study and found evidence of increased effectiveness. Lastly, we did not observe any significant association between baseline pre-treatment resting-state HRV and clinical outcomes. In the final part of this thesis, we summarize our findings and discuss their implications for the treatment of MDD. We conclude by discuss the various limitations inherent to this preliminary work and potential future directions. Given its established efficacy in MDD and its lower side-effect profile compared to medication, efforts should be made to make rTMS more accessible. Our work proposes several ways to improve rTMS by simplifying procedures to reduce costs and therefore potentially increasing accessibility at the community level, increase clinical effects and help with patient selection. | Ph.D. | affordab, accessib | 1, 10, 11 |
| Pan, Yueyue | Liu, Xinyu | Point-of-care Detection Platforms for Metabolic Biomarker and Infectious Disease | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | The metabolic and protein biomarkers are the most significant detection targets for the point-of-care disease diagnosis and healthcare. The chronic diseases are among the world’s leading causes of mortality, and the COVID-19 pandemic is continuously burdening the global health, especially impacting the low-income, resource-limited regions. Accurate point-of-care detection of biomarkers is an important monitoring strategy for chronic disease development. Early detection of infectious disease outbreaks can reduce the ultimate size of the outbreak and the overall morbidity and mortality due to the disease, in which diagnosis plays an important role. As available diagnostic technologies require well-trained personnel, expensive equipment and complex assay procedure and consume a large amount of time in medical laboratories, there is an urgent need for low-cost portable platforms that can provide fast, accurate, and ideally multiplexed diagnosis of infectious diseases at the point of care. This thesis reports on the design, fabrication, and demonstration of electrochemical point-of-care detection systems for metabolic and protein biomarkers. Rapid results have been achieved by employing electrochemical enzymatic reactions on devices with simple fabrication and preparation. The systems have demonstrated high sensitivity and specificity comparable to state-of-the-art laboratory tests. The works reported in this thesis show strong potential to lead to portable systems for point-of-care diagnosis. | Ph.D. | low-income, global health, healthcare, labor, income, consum | 1, 3, 8, 10, 12 |
| Hamilton, Darren Marcel | Dolloff, Lori-Anne | How Gospel Pianists Learn Black Gospel Music: Developing Gospel Music Education in Postsecondary Institutions Beyond Choral Music | Music | 2023-06 | The purpose of this study was to create a foundation for the inclusion of gospel piano instruction in the curriculum of postsecondary institutions. Critical Race Theory (Bell, 1987, 1995; Dumas, 2013, 2016; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Yosso, 2005) was used as a theoretical underpinning to interrogate the existence of anti-Black racism in music education and the ways in which Black music, history, culture and voices have been historically silenced in music curriculum. Narrative Inquiry (Clandinin, 2020; Connelly & Clandinin, 1990; Creswell & Guetterman, 2019; Downey & Clandinin, 2020) was used to explore the lived experiences and perspectives of eight professional Black gospel pianists. In conjunction, autoethnography (Davis & Ellis, 2010; Reed-Danahay, 1997) was used to explore the lived experience and perspective of the researcher while engaging in private gospel piano lessons. The study was guided by the question, ‘How can the traditions and practices of learning to play piano in the Black gospel style be used to enrich the curriculum of music in postsecondary institutions?’ The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews and autoethnography experience tracking forms. Findings revealed five broad themes suggesting how postsecondary music institutions can be enriched by including gospel piano in the curriculum: (1) Developing Aural Musicianship and Improvisational Skills; (2) Developing Well-Rounded Musicians; (3) Embracing Diversity; (4) Developing Community Partnerships; and (5) Expanding Gospel Music Programs. These findings provide valuable insights into the practices of learning Black gospel piano and may be used to inform the inclusion of gospel piano in the curriculum of postsecondary music institutions. This integration into the postsecondary curriculum may expand existing gospel music programs or introduce new gospel music courses with the purpose of diversifying music curricula and dismantling anti-Black racism in music education. | Ph.D. | learning, racism, land, institut | 4, 15, 16 |
| Teymouri, Ramtin | Fenner, Angelica | A Temporal Study of Palestinian Cinema | Cinema Studies | 2023-06 | This dissertation discusses how time is reckoned with and represented in Palestinian cinema through a thematic and formal analysis of select Palestinian films. I argue that a defining feature of Palestinian cinema is its preoccupation with understanding, both in the context of Palestine as well as on a universal scale. These films utilise singular qualities of the cinematic medium to reflect on Palestinian history, depict the experience of the present moment, and speculate about the future. In each chapter I engage with the representations of the past, the present, and the future respectively, while also problematising any assumption that temporal vectors can be understood conclusively and in isolation. I show that while Palestinian cinema is deeply and unavoidably concerned with the experience of historical trauma, its films attempt to make sense of how history and its experience are narrativized and rendered coherent in spite of unavoidable ambiguities. This can be detected in the formal qualities of the films I discuss by way of a focus on media and the creation of historical records. I demonstrate how the films are shaped formally and thematically by the conditions of occupation and the regimentation of time and space, or, in other words, how their depictions of temporal and spatial experiences directly emerge from the conditions of life in Palestine. While the spatial consequences of occupation, symbolised by images of the Separation Wall as well as checkpoints, tend to be the focus of most analyses, I show that it is not only space but also time that is divided, and attentiveness to time and temporality is equally essential and rewarding. Working my way towards the future in a nonlinear manner, I conclude the project by showing how Palestinian cinema anticipates and speculates about the future, particularly how it acknowledges uncertainty and contends with utopian impulses through the concept of Sumud/steadfastness while also imagining Palestine beyond the present moment’s political impasse | Ph.D. | knowledge, knowledges, gini | 4, 10 |
| Cohen, Tamara | Raman, Srilata||Hanneder, Jürgen | Yoga in the Mokṣopāya | Religion, Study of | 2023-06 | This thesis aims to elucidate the Yoga of the Mokṣopāya, a philosophical story-text from tenth century Kashmir in which the sage Vasistha imparts teachings to the young Lord Rama on the illusory nature of the world and the path to liberation. In the Mokṣopāya we find a unique nondual idealist philosophy that teaches that the entire world is a dream of the cosmic mind—nothing is fundamentally real—and professes to convey the ultimate truth of all established philosophies while adhering to none in particular. The Mokṣopāya is most popularly known in its later recension as the Yogavāsiṣṭha—a well-known and important text of nondual Vedānta which has been transmitted, translated, and commented upon over the centuries––however, the Yogavāsiṣṭha has significant textual corruption which took place during the transmission of the Mokṣopāya sometime after it was composed. This dissertation draws upon the work of the Mokṣopāya project and the nearly complete critical edition of the Mokṣopāya which presents scholars with a unique opportunity to study this unknown nondual pre-Advaita Vedānta tradition. I suggest that the Mokṣopāya is a Yoga text grounded in a unique and idiosyncratic nondual Sāṃkhya system of knowledge with a strong Yogācāra Buddhist influence and similarities to early Haṭha Yoga. In fact, I suggest that a similar historical context could have led to the development of both Haṭha Yoga and the Mokṣopāya since many common elements are found between the two traditions. Specifically, the Mokṣopāya shares elements with Haṭha Yoga that include the raising of kuṇḍalinī, the intonation of the syllable OṂ, the central focus on prāṇa and kumbhaka, a doctrine of siddhis, a goal of jīvanmukti or embodied liberation, a notion of immortality in the body, a practice of conscious Yogic dying, a doctrine of the prāṇa-sun which is fire that consumes the apāna-moon which is water in a centre in the core of the body, and descriptions of yogins retreating to clean and beautiful but simple Yogic huts or caves to practice nirvikalpa samādhi on animal skin seats in the lotus posture with the openings of the body closed off to keep the flow of prāṇa inside. | Ph.D. | knowledge, water, consum, animal, corrupt | 4, 6, 12, 14, 15, 16 |
| Croxall, Mark Peter John | Goh, Cynthia | Towards Understanding Heterogenous Interactions in Photocatalysis | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Photocatalytic materials are an interesting subset of nanomaterials capable of converting light into chemical energy. The basis of any heterogeneous photocatalytic reaction involves a redox driven transformation of a small molecule by a semiconducting material, often colloidal nanoparticles. Several questions remained surrounding the physical interactions at play, notably in interactions between small molecules and the colloidal nanoparticle. Herein, four studies aimed at improving our understanding of the photocatalytic process are provided. The first study investigates how conventional 1D NMR can be utilized to follow the progress of photocatalytic reactions. NMR provides a number of advantages over traditional techniques and allows for more environmentally relevant reactions to be studied. Next, the first application of comprehensive multiphase (CMP) NMR to catalytic systems, revealing that molecules transiently interacting with the surface of the nanomaterial appear to be those preferentially targeted by photocatalysis. CMP NMR provides a more holistic approach to studying photocatalysis overall owing to its ability to monitor reactions without sample preparation. The next study discusses a series of TiO2- Nitrogen Doped Graphene Quantum Dot (NGQD) nanocomposites as potential solar photocatalysts. These species show an improved ability to harvest visible light and show increased photocatalytic performance. This improvement appears to multifaceted being due to both a Z-Scheme heterojunction present at the interface of the composite and increased organic retention provided by the NGQDs. The Z-Scheme architecture allows for the highly oxidizing valence band holes of TiO2 to be retained during charge transfer while the organic retention of the NGQDs allows for higher turnover of photocatalytically generated intermediates and a higher degree of interaction between the small molecules and TiO2. Finally, a framework to study photocatalysis of mixtures was used to monitor the degradation of a 2 dye system ii using both TiO2 and g-C3N4 catalysts. Within model system containing Methyl Orange and Methylene Blue dyes, a catalytic enhancement in Methyl Orange’s degradation in the presence of g-C3N4 was found to be caused by increased surface adsorption and secondary homogeneous photosensitization processes. Contrarily, in the presence of TiO2, Methyl Orange’s catalytic degradation was hindered due to competition for photogenerated radical species. | Ph.D. | energy, solar, invest, environmental, species | 7, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Janmohamed, Hussein | Dolloff, Lori-Anne | Translating Ismaili Muslim Experience in Canada: Integrative Choral Pathways of Belonging | Music | 2023-06 | This study explores possibilities for blending choral forms of singing with traditional Ismaili Muslim devotional recitations. In particular, the focus is on finding new musical translations as a means of interpreting tradition and negotiating belonging in Canada. In music education scholarship, Muslim musical traditions can often be portrayed in ways that delimit the communities represented. In doing so, Islam may be inadvertently positioned as a problem to be addressed. Furthermore, there is a paucity of scholarship in music education that illustrates the importance of sound and music in diverse Muslim cultures. This study aims to further the conversation. I propose an “enlightened encounters” theoretical framework that draws together post-colonial, indigenous, educational social justice, and Ismaili literature. Autoethnography and narrative research methods foreground the transformative impacts of integrative vocal practices on retranslating Muslim experience in new contexts. Key findings include: 1) Blended sound and music can play a significant role to feel faith and embody cultural knowledge; 2) Integrative vocal practices can provide the possibility of avenues for Ismaili youth to navigate delicate relationships of belonging within their own traditions, as well as in the larger cultural context; 3) Engaging in participatory communal activities can provide youth with safe spaces for receiving, translating and interpreting knowledge; 4) Music and sound can have a powerful impact on reconnecting spirituality with life. | Ph.D. | knowledge, indigenous, social justice | 4, 10, 16 |
| Liu, Jia Yuan (Richard) | Kahr, Walter HA | Structure of the Human VPS33B/VPS16B Complex | Biochemistry | 2023-06 | In humans, variants affecting expression/function of VPS33B or VPS16B (VIPAS39) can cause arthrogryposis, renal dysfunction and cholestasis (ARC) syndrome, a rare neonatal lethal condition with symptoms affecting many organ systems. These proteins form a VPS33B/VPS16B complex which is required for many cellular processes, including the production by bone marrow megakaryocytes of protein-carrying alpha granules, which are absent in the platelets of ARC syndrome patients. Previous students in the Kahr Lab studied the VPS33B/VPS16B complex by a variety of means, including negative-staining electron microscopy (EM), which yielded the dimensions and overall shape of a complex with two lobes resembling a dumbbell. However, key aspects of the complex including the molecular weight, composition and subunit arrangement remained elusive. My work demonstrates that human VPS33B/VPS16B is a pentameric complex containing two molecules of VPS33B and 3 of VPS16B. Negative staining EM imaging of avidin-labeled complex showed the VPS33B subunits present in opposing lobes, oriented in trans. Analysis of the effects of VPS16B truncations revealed that a central domain of this subunit is required for stable assembly of the complex. This work significantly advanced knowledge of the structure and composition of VPS33B/VPS16B, providing details that point to key insights into the potential cellular functions of this complex. I also developed a reliable, scalable and easy-to-modify expression system for recombinant human VPS33B/VPS16B, a library of mutated and truncated complexes, and a TEV-protease cleavable version of VPS33B that will support future research into VPS33B/VPS16B function. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, production | 2, 4, 12 |
| Lindsay-Mosher, Nicole Rachel | Pearson, Bret J | Pigment Cells Model Lineage Regulation and Cell Clearance in the Planarian Schmidtea mediterranea | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Billions of cells are replaced in adult humans every day, yet many of the mechanisms of cell turnover are still poorly understood. In particular, the clearance of dead cells by engulfment, a processed termed “efferocytosis”, remains mysterious. In this thesis, I investigate cell turnover using the freshwater planarian Schmidtea mediterranea, a model organism that undergoes constant cell turnover as an adult and is capable of regenerating all of its organs and tissues. Using light-induced ablation of pigment cells, I first characterize the pigment lineage as a model for cell clearance. Next, I investigate the molecular mechanisms of efferocytosis in planarians, and find that the highly conserved engulfment receptor CED-1/Draper/MEGF10 is not conserved in planarians. Instead, I demonstrate that a related gene, megf6, and the extracellular matrix component hemicentin both function to restrict the stem cell compartment by maintaining the integrity of the basement membrane. Finally, by tracking planarian pigment cells following light exposure, I demonstrate that apoptotic cell corpses are transported to the gut, where they are engulfed by gut phagocytes and excreted from the animal. The planarian ortholog of the conserved engulfment gene CED-12/ELMO is required for efferocytosis of pigment cells by gut phagocytes. Together, these results provide the first insight into the mechanisms of cell clearance in planarians. | Ph.D. | water, invest, conserv, animal | 6, 9, 14, 15 |
| Glenwright, Brittni Jessica | Gillis, Joseph R | Mental Health, Coping, Resilience, and Community in Plurisexual Emerging Adults | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | Despite cultural shifts in the acceptance of sexual minority individuals, plurisexual people continue to face mental health disparities in comparison to their monosexual counterparts. This study investigated how stressors (e.g., identity uncertainty, internalized homonegativity, experiences of microaggression), and resources (e.g., resilience, social support, connectedness to LGBTQIA2S+ communities) relate to psychological well-being and distress in plurisexual emerging adults. It also explored how this population describes and labels their sexual identities. Participants completed an online survey assessing the above-listed variables, as well as measures related to sexual identity, fluidity, and coping. All 774 participants were between the ages of 18 and 29, experienced attraction to more than one gender, and were living in Canada or the USA. Results indicated high levels of anxiety and depression in the sample. Minority stress was predictive of poorer mental health outcomes, while social support and resilience served as protective factors. Implications for counselling interventions are discussed, as well as the importance of education and training for clinicians to address the specific needs of this population. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health, gender, lgbtq, invest, minorit, resilien, resilience | 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15 |
| Kim, Justin Yonghui | Liscidini, Antonio | Power-Efficient Voltage-Mode RF Front-End Using Quantized Analog Signal Processing | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | In favour of saving precious real-estate and reducing overall cost for modern RF front-ends, SAW (Surface Acoustic Wave)-less RF receivers have become a popular topic recently. Unfortunately, removal of SAW filters requires the receiver to handle large blockers (e.g., above 0 dBm) without degrading the noise floor and in turn increases the overall power consumption of both the signal and local oscillator (LO) paths. My contributions to the state-of-the-art SAW-less receivers for my PhD addresses the abovementioned issues and can be summarized in the following major points: 1) for the first time, voltage-mode approach was made compliant to modern SAW-less receiver specs by the use of Quantized Analog (QA) signal processing, 2) for the first time, power scalability feature for the LO is introduced where LO power is scaled based on the operative scenario, leading to a significant power reduction compared to state-of-the-art (e.g., down to 1.6 mW for the LO), 3) an automated calibration platform was developed for the QA receiver where it significantly increased the linearity performance (e.g., up to 33 dB improvement for both third-order and second-order intermodulation products compared to non-calibrated), and 4) a novel multi-stage QA low-noise amplifier (LNA) was investigated with the introduction of tree architecture which dramatically reduces the power consumption and input capacitance when large input swing for the LNA is required.The first chapter reviews the state-of-the-art SAW-less receivers which identifies the core issue of excessive power consumption in these modern receivers and to appreciate the outlined solutions presented in this thesis. Chapter 2 presents the employed design strategies in the proposed receiver to address the excessive power. In chapter 3, the proposed SAW-less RF receiver design is presented as well as the manufactured test chip with its measurement results, with the results verifying points 1) and 2) above. Chapter 4 provides the automation calibration platform developed to increase overall linearity performance of the first QA test chip described in point 3) above. In chapter 5, the novel tree QA architecture is presented along with simulation results verifying point 4) above. The last chapter provides concluding remarks of the entire thesis. | Ph.D. | invest, consum | 9, 12 |
| Lee, Joy Jae-Ryung | Philcox, Steven SP | Opera Chunhyangjeon [ˈɔpera tɕʰunçaŋʥʌn]- An introduction to South Korea’s first Changjak Opera, Opera Chunhyangjeon (1949), including a Korean lyric diction guide with a complete IPA transcription of the libretto for non- Korean speakers | Music | 2023-06 | Gesamtkunstwerk, translated as ‘total work of art,’ is a German term that is often used to describe opera. In addition to this ‘union of arts,’ opera is also a vehicle that can be used to share and experience foreign languages and culture from different times and countries. This study investigates the use of opera to share foreign language and culture, and presents two major resources to the Western music community. First, it introduces Opera Chunhyangjeon (1949), a Korean opera composed by Je-Myung Hyun (1903-1960), with libretto by Seo-Gu Lee (1899-1981). Looking at Opera Chunhyangjeon (1949) in a few different contexts- its literary roots, its musical stylistic development, and the history of South Korea during this time, gives the insight to the birth of the changjak opera, a meaningful amalgamation of Korean traditions and Western musical form. Second, this paper provides a performance guide in Korean lyric diction, with a complete libretto, Romanization, IPA transcription and English translation of Hyun’s Opera Chunhyangjeon to facilitate the needs of non-Korean speakers when approaching this work. By these means, this study looks to make Opera Chunhyangjeon available to a broad international audience as a tool for learning the music and history of Korean opera and the life and culture of the Korean people through a beloved classic folktale. | D.M.A. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Black, Zachariah | Beiner, Ronald | Minding the Mundane: The Critique of Political Participation from Epicurus to Montaigne | Political Science | 2023-06 | Minding the Mundane theorizes an important way of thinking about politics both today and in the history of European political thought. I call this the mundane perspective and locate it particularly in Epicurus and his ancient followers, as well as (in modified form) in early modern European theorists influenced by Epicureanism. The mundane perspective is a way of looking at and talking about political activity, one which is critical of the lofty self-conceptions and aspirations most political communities create for themselves, instead encouraging attention to features of human nature that are often thought of as “mundane”: the needs of the body and the everyday needs of the soul for intellectual activity and commerce with other human beings. The Introduction argues for the importance of the mundane perspective in the history of political thought and as well as its relevance to contemporary political theory and practice. The first chapter draws out the political dimensions of Epicurus’ advice to his followers to “live unseen,” setting the stage for the readings to come by introducing the paradoxes of a political thought that is critical of political engagement. The next chapter draws out the mundane perspectives of two theorists often associated with the republican tradition: Thomas More and Niccolò Machiavelli. The final two chapters examine monarchical versions of the mundane perspective in the novels of François Rabelais and the essays of Michel de Montaigne. The mundane perspective calls us and our politics back down to earth. It is therefore of interest to scholars and citizens seeking to moderate the increasingly heated politics of contemporary liberal democracies, and to those seeking a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of political disengagement. Minding the Mundane contributes to our understanding of the republican tradition by recovering a normatively attractive rival to republicanism, and to contemporary political theory by arguing that contemporary neo-republicans and democratic theorists alike have been too influenced by the republican tradition. The mundane perspective offers a helpful corrective to the overly romantic conceptions of citizenship held by political theorists and sheds light on the widespread preference of liberal democratic citizens for private over public life. | Ph.D. | citizen, democra | 4, 16 |
| Cao, Xiaoshu | Yadollahi, Azadeh A. Y. | Influence of Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) on Rostral Fluid Shift, and the Pathophysiology on Asthma | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-06 | The presence of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in persons with asthma confers a heightened risk of overnight exacerbation of asthma, declined lung function, increased airway hyperresponsiveness, and greater need for asthma medications. Previous studies showed that overnight fluid shift from the legs into the neck and peripharyngeal tissues increases upper airway resistance and severity of OSA. Recent findings also indicated that in asthma, fluid shift into the thorax induced by lower body positive pressure (LBPP) while supine provokes an increase in small airway resistance. However, whether fluid redistribution links OSA with asthma remains unknown. This thesis aimed to investigate the role of fluid accumulation in the thorax in the pathophysiological link between OSA and asthma. The central hypothesis is that one mechanism by which OSA can predispose to small airway narrowing in asthma is by aggravating fluid accumulation in the thorax during sleep. We found that simulated obstructive apneas in awake participants increased thoracic fluid volume (TFV) by approximately 50 ml in both healthy and asthma groups. However, small airway narrowed only in the asthma group, indicating that increases in TFV resulting from negative intrathoracic pressure swings during simulated apneas, increase small airway narrowing in patients with asthma, but not in healthy controls (Chapter 3). We expanded this work into the overnight and clinical setting, and found that patients with asthma and co-existing OSA had a larger increase in TFV and greater small airway narrowing than asthma patients without OSA (Chapter 4). Moreover, we investigated whether asthma treatment with bronchodilators can prevent the airway narrowing that is attributable to rostral fluid shift. It was found that small airway narrowing would increase after application of LBPP, both with and without bronchodilator (Chapter 5). Finally, we developed a model of the respiratory system, to estimate elastance of the airway tissues and total respiratory system in patients with asthma in response to increase in TFV. Our modelling results showed that increases in TFV was associated with an increase in airway tissue elastance (Chapter 6). Taken together, these studies demonstrate that fluid accumulation in the thorax narrows the small airway in patients with asthma, and contributes to the pathophysiological link between OSA and asthma. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Shrestha, Mariusz | Zacksenhaus, Eldad EZ | Targeting Vulnerabilities in RB-deficient Breast Cancer | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2023-06 | Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a lethal disease with limited treatment options. TNBC affects younger women and has high rates of relapse and metastasis, which are lethal; new therapies are therefore desperately needed. Most TNBC cases have mutations in TP53. RB-loss is also seen in ~30% of TNBCs and is associated with metastasis. As RB-loss is not directly druggable, identifying downstream pathways may expose vulnerabilities that are amenable to therapeutic interventions. Employing murine models of TNBC driven by p53 loss or combined Rb plus p53 loss, Rb-deficiency was found to induced mitochondrial protein translation (MPT) and sensitize human TNBCs to tigecycline, an FDA-approved antibiotic targeting prokaryotic protein translation, both in vitro and in vivo (Chapter 2). Kinome drug screens of human and murine TP53/RB1/PTEN-deficient cancer cells identified the CDC25 phosphatase as a target for diverse TNBC lines. CDC25 inhibition was synergistic with WEE1 and PI3K inhibition in vitro and combined CDC25 plus PI3K inhibition strongly attenuated growth of the TP53/RB1/PTEN-deficient TNBC line BT549 in immune-compromised NSG mice (Chapter 3). In addition to MPT, Rb-loss also downregulated immune hallmarks including interferon alpha/gamma, inflammation, complement, allograft rejection and IL6 JAK STAT3 signaling. Furthermore, analysis of all BC subtypes or TNBCs revealed a subset of immune modulators including immune checkpoint CD274 (PD-L1) and PVR that correlated with RB-loss, and E2F1 and E2F2 gain signatures. ENCODE analysis confirmed recruitment of pRB-E2F1 to the promoters of these immune modulators. Both PD-L1 and PVR were induced by overexpression of E2F1or RB-depletion, and suppressed by over-expression of pRB. Importantly, the FDA-approved CDK4/6 inhibitor (CDK4/6i) palbociclib attenuated PD-L1 and PVR expression in RB-deficient TNBC lines (Chapter 4, submitted). Rb-loss in an immunocompetent mouse model of HER2 (her2/neu) induced mammary tumors that responded to palbociclib to the same extent as Rb-proficient tumors. This is in contrast to results obtained in vitro using CDK4/6i-sensitive line MCF7 in which isogenic RB-loss desensitized cells to palbociclib, and this was further attenuated upon p130 depletion (Chapter 5, unpublished). These studies describe new vulnerabilities of RB-deficient, aggressive BC, involving cell metabolism (MPT), cell cycle (CDC25), and immune checkpoint modulators (PD-L1, PVR) as potential new therapeutic modalities. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Hoffman, Simon Steinbring | Adeli, Khosrow | Gut Hormone Regulation of Hepatic and Intestinal Lipoprotein Production | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2023-06 | Dyslipidemia is a key component of insulin resistance, which results in the overproduction of hepatic and intestinal apolipoprotein (apo)B-containing lipoprotein particles. These particles are catabolized down into highly proatherogenic remnants. Several gut-derived peptides have been identified as regulators of energy metabolism; one such peptide is the incretin hormone glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1. Our laboratory has previously demonstrated that GLP-1 can signal both centrally and peripherally to reduce postprandial and fasting lipoprotein secretion. Here, I examine a novel vagal neuroendocrine signalling pathway by which native GLP-1 may exert its anti-lipemic effects. Furthermore, I demonstrate a novel role for other gut-derived peptides in regulating intestinal lipoprotein production. Portal vein injections of GLP-1(7-36) into Syrian golden hamsters revealed a site-specific anti-lipemic role for native GLP-1. This effect was lost after GLP-1R antagonism, and in a GLP-1R KO hamster model. The suppressive effects of portal GLP-1 on intestinal lipoprotein excursion were also lost after chemical, pharmacological, surgical, or selective denervation of the vagus nerve – together identifying the vagus nerve as a key component of GLP-1's endogenous signalling pathway. Moreover, we demonstrate a role for nodose ganglia GLP-1R-containing neurons in propagating anti-lipemic viscerosensory signals. These data are complimented by the finding of portal and nodose ganglia GLP-1 resistance following diet-induced insulin resistance, suggesting loss of this vagal GLP-1 signalling pathway may occur at the advent of diabetic dyslipidemia. The role of other gut- derived anorexigenic hormones were also investigated, and we identified that Peptide YY, oxytocin, and cholecystokinin (CCK) also exert a suppressive effect on postprandial lipoprotein metabolism. Importantly, we also delineate the effect of CCK receptor signalling from bile acid release on postprandial lipemia. This in combination with data showing CCKs effects are lost in GLP-1R KO hamsters suggests that CCK may exert its effects though bile acid-mediated increases in GLP-1 secretion. Overall, the data presented here supports a key role for GLP-1 receptors on the portal vein afferent neurons in modulating intestinal fat absorption and lipoprotein production and identifies other gut-derived peptides as novel regulators of postprandial lipemia. Insights from these data may support identification of potential drug targets for treatment of diabetic dyslipidemia. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy, labor, invest, production | 2, 7, 8, 9, 12 |
| Kutarna, Steven | Peng, Hui | Development of Nontargeted Screening Algorithms for Indoor Contaminants | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Humans spend most of their lives indoors, but there are thousands of chemical contaminants in indoor environments and the majority of these remain undetected. The focus of this thesis was to develop methods for nontargeted screening and prioritization of previously unreported indoor chemical contaminants using high-resolution mass spectrometry. To achieve this, a one – stop suspect screening algorithm was developed incorporating retention time prediction, isotopic peak calculation and in silico MS2 prediction. The algorithm was benchmarked for halogenated compounds and was further applied to screen for previously unrecognized indoor contaminants. Among 39 chlorinated compounds detected, 18 previously unrecognized azo dyes were detected as the biggest class of indoor chlorinated compounds (Chapter 2). To further characterize the indoor sources of these chlorinated compounds, various consumer products were collected from Toronto homes and screened for toxic halogenated contaminants with an emphasis on chlorinated paraffins. Chlorinated paraffin compounds were detected in 84 of 96 products analyzed, including electronic devices and plastic children’s toys, despite these compounds being prohibited for manufacture or import in Canada as of 2013 (Chapter 3). In addition to direct emission sources, the indirect sources of indoor contaminants formed through indoor reactions were investigated. To achieve this, an R package (‘indoortransformer’) was developed to predict indoor transformation products of organophosphorus compounds (OPCs). By further expanding the R package to incorporate in silico MS2 fragmentation prediction, 40 OPCs were detected in 23 house dust samples among which 24 OPCs were predicted to be formed through indoor reactions (Chapter 4). To systematically investigate the emission of contaminants from indoors, wastewater samples were collected over a 1.5 year period during the COVID-19 pandemic and screened against the ToxCast and Tox21 databases. Among 1037 ToxCast compounds, 43 were detected with high frequency plus 8 additional dyes and OPCs. Several plasticizers and disinfectants also showed an increase in concentration during periods of public lockdown (Chapter 5). This thesis provides a systematic exploration of the occurrence, source, reactions and temporal trends of many indoor contaminants. Future studies are warranted to expand the nontargeted screening methods developed in the current study to additional indoor compound classes. | Ph.D. | water, emission, invest, consum, waste | 6, 7, 9, 12 |
| Forbes, Rachel Chubak | Stellar, Jennifer | When the Mighty Fall: Moral Outrage Toward Powerful Perpetrators | Psychology | 2023-06 | Past work demonstrates that powerful individuals are more inclined to act unethically (e.g., Gruenfeld et al., 2008). As a result, people are routinely confronted with powerful transgressors. Power is a potent force in perception (e.g., Keltner et al., 2008) and, therefore, I investigate how a perpetrator’s power will impact people’s moral outrage towards bad behavior. Powerful transgressors, due to their control over valued resources and social influence, can cause greater harm to victims and are more likely to encourage unethical group norms, compared to less powerful transgressors. Therefore, across six studies, I hypothesized that powerful perpetrators would elicit greater moral outrage than less powerful perpetrators. Participants reported greater moral outrage toward powerful transgressors who acted unethically in hypothetical scenarios (pre-registered Study 1 and Study 2), real stakes economic games (Study 3), live interactions in a laboratory (Study 4), and recalled events (Study 5). This robust effect held in contexts when the perpetrator’s power was not directly relevant, regardless of the victim’s power, and generalized across a variety of unethical acts. It was mediated by perceptions that powerful transgressors inflicted greater harm to victims and encouraged unethical group norms (Studies 2 and 3). However, this effect was moderated by important individual differences and contextual variables. Specifically, this effect was eliminated or reversed for participants who heavily endorse system-justifying ideologies (Study 5) and towards admired leaders within one’s own group (Study 6). My findings highlight the importance of social features like power in influencing moral judgment, suggesting that moral perception does not occur in a social vacuum. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Pal, Vidhant | Rocheleau, Jonathan V.||Kilkenny, Dawn M. | Investigating the Impact of FGFR5 Expression on β-cell Metabolism, Maturity and Intracellular Signaling | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-06 | Pancreatic β-cells exist in an incredibly dynamic microenvironment that impacts cell metabolism, maturity, and function. Our research group previously showed that pancreatic β-cells plated on laminin matrix express reduced levels of FGFR1, a kinase receptor linked to β-cell metabolism. Due to recent evidence that adult β-cells also express FGFR5, a co-receptor for FGFR1, we hypothesize that laminin would impact FGFR5 expression with consequent effects on β-cell metabolism. Using a genetically encoded sensor for NADPH/NADP+ redox state (Apollo-NADP+), we show overexpression of FGFR5 enhances glucose-stimulated NADPH metabolism in β-cell lines as well as mouse and human β-cells. This enhanced response was accompanied by increased expression of transcripts for glycolytic enzymes (Glucokinase/Gck, Pyruvate kinase M2/Pkm2) and the functional maturity marker Urocortin 3 (Ucn3). Culturing β-cells on laminin matrix also stimulated upregulation of endogenous FGFR5 expression, and similarly enhanced β-cell glucose-stimulated NADPH-metabolism as well as Gck and Pkm2 transcript expression. Collectively these data reveal that β-cells respond to laminin by increasing FGFR5 expression to enhance β-cell glucose metabolism. We next examined changes to intracellular signaling pathways activated by FGFR5 expression. Using live cell imaging and qPCR we showed that the FGFR5-induced changes to metabolism are due to activation of the MEK/ERK signaling pathway. We then examined if the metabolic changes induced by MEK/ERK activation, specifically increased glucose consumption, had subsequent effects on nutrient sensing pathways. Using Western immunoblot and a variety of live cell imaging techniques, we showed FGFR5-induced metabolism increased activation of the nutrient sensing mTOR pathway. Lastly, we used data mining to uncover gene correlations to FGFR5 based on a human online β-cell database. Findings from the data mining analysis were validated using qPCR and identified the gene Rcc2 (Regulator of chromosome condensation 2) as being upregulated by FGFR5 in β-cell lines. We then expanded our data mining approach to better understand changes associated with late-stage β-cell maturation by centering our analysis on UCN3, a β-cell maturity marker. Our UCN3 focused analysis allowed us to construct a “late-stage maturation map” for β-cells which identified correlation to notable integrin subunits and solute carrier genes. | Ph.D. | invest, consum | 9, 12 |
| Liu, Lutan | Chalikian, Tigran V | Characterization of Duplex-Tetraplex Equilibria in DNA | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2023-06 | The four-stranded non-canonical structures G-quadruplexes and i-motif are formed by G-rich and C-rich DNA strands, respectively. These tetrahelical structures form in biologically important loci of the genome and are the essential regulator of genomic events. For this reason, tetrahelical structures have become an important target for developing anti-cancer strategies. To design drugs that control the formation of tetrahelical structures at specific genomic loci, it is important to understand the forces controlling the conformational preferences of potentially tetraplex-forming DNA strands. This doctoral thesis aims to characterize the distribution of conformational states adopted by G- and C-rich DNA strands and molecular forces that modulate their conformational equilibria. The first part of this dissertation describes the use of volumetric methods to characterize the hydration properties and the ionic atmosphere of an i-motif from the promoter region of the c-MYC oncogene. Our study reveals that changes in volume, ΔV, and adiabatic compressibility, ΔKS, accompanying i-motif formation are nearly zero. The DNA releases its counterions to the bulk upon i-motif formation thereby ceasing to be a polyelectrolyte. In the second part of the dissertation, we employ a CD-based analytical approach to determine the conformational preferences of equimolar mixtures of complementary G-rich and C-rich DNA strands from the promoter regions of c-MYC, VEGF, and Bcl-2 oncogenes. The conformational distribution is sequence-specific and is modulated by environmental factors such as temperature, salt, and pH. Under physiological conditions, the G-quadruplex and duplex coexist in all three DNAs although in different proportions. In the final part of the dissertation, we report changes in volume and compressibility accompanying interconversions between the G-quadruplex, duplex, and coil conformations adopted by the G-rich DNA strand from the c-MYC promoter. We rationalized our data in terms of the hydration and intrinsic properties of DNA. In addition, we further use our data to construct the first pressure-temperature phase diagram of G-quadruplex stability. Taken as a whole, our studies provide insights into the formation of tetrahelical structures within the genome. | Ph.D. | environmental | 13 |
| Rothschild, Jeremy | Zilman, Anton | The Role of Stochastic Competitive Processes in Shaping Population Diversity and Dynamics in Ecological Communities | Physics | 2023-06 | Ecological populations are shaped by inter- and intra-species interactions within the community. However, it remains unclear how these interactions, along with other factors such as immigration and spatial confinement, control the structure, diversity, and long-term stability of ecological systems in the presence of noise and fluctuations. This thesis addresses the question of the mechanisms involved in community structure and diversity by using minimal models of interacting multi-species ecological communities that incorporate competition, demographic noise, and spatial factors. The complete phase diagram of community structure in these models exhibits rich behaviour with multiple regimes that go beyond the classical `niche' and `neutral' dichotomy. In particular, novel regimes of coexistence are observed that cannot be characterized as either `niche' or `neutral'. Furthermore, dynamical features such as the mean first-passage times between abundances elucidate the transitions between the different regimes, showing how the regimes arise from the underlying kinetics of species turnover, temporary extinction, and invasion. While mechanisms of inter-specific competition are not often specified in models, species must fundamentally compete over limited physical space. Informed by recent experimental studies of cellular competition in confined spaces, I extend a classical model of population dynamics incorporating spatial exclusion through mechanical interactions. The results of this spatial exclusion model differ significantly from classical models, displaying `tug-of-war' type dynamics with a region of quasi-neutral diffusion centered around regions of deterministic population collapse. Population fixations are influenced by the location of the boundary between populations, either performing quasi-neutral diffusion near semi-stable fixed points, or quasi-deterministic avalanche dynamics away from this fixed point. The results of this thesis have implications for the maintenance of species diversity in various ecosystems, such as bacterial colonies. These bacterial communities can have different structures, and I explore varying strengths of the mechanisms that organize the community into these structures. In organized biofilms or intestinal crypts, spatial exclusion is central to the competition, changing the timescales and likelihood of fixation compared to non-spatial models. These models serve as minimal null models of noisy competitive ecological systems, against which more complex models that include factors such as mutations and environmental noise can be compared. La structure, la composition et la stabilité des populations écologiques sont façonnées par les interactions inter- et intra-espèces au sein de leurs communautés. Il reste à comprendre pleinement comment l’interaction de ces interactions avec d’autres facteurs, tels que l’immigration et la confinement spatial, contrôlent la structure, la diversité et la stabilité à long terme des systèmes écologiques en présence de bruit et de fluctuations. Cette thèse aborde la question de la structure et de la perte de diversité de la communauté en utilisant des modèles minimaux de communautés écologiques multi-espèces interactives qui intègrent la compétition, les facteurs spatiaux et le bruit démographique. Je constate qu’un diagramme de phase complet de la structure de la communauté présente un comportement riche avec de multiples régimes qui vont au-delà de la dichotomie classique «niche» et «neutre». En particulier, des régimes inédits de coexistence sont observés qui ne peuvent être caractérisés ni comme «niche» ni comme «neutre», où une distribution de abondance des espèces multimodale est observée. Les transitions entre les différents régimes sont caractérisées par des caractéristiques dynamiques qui montrent comment les régimes émergent de la cinétique sous-jacente du renouvellement des espèces, de l’extinction et de l’invasion. Dans cette formulation, le mécanisme de la compétition interspécifique n’est pas explicitement spécifié, cependant les espèces doivent fondamentalement se concurrencer pour l’espace physique pour l’expansion et l’accès à des ressources supplémentaires. Informé par les études expérimentales récentes de la compétition cellulaire dans des espaces confinés, j’ai également étendu un modèle classique de dynamique de la population pour inclure explicitement l’exclusion spatiale à travers les interactions mécaniques entre les cellules dans un microcanal ouvert à un dimension. Les résultats de ce modèle d’exclusion spatiale diffèrent significativement de ceux de son homologue classique sans confinement spatial. La fixation réussie par les espèces envahissantes, qu’il s’agisse de mutation ou d’immigration, est également moins probable en moyenne que dans le modèle de Moran. Le temps moyen de fixation se déduit heuristiquement de la limite entre les populations qui effectuent soit une diffusion quasi-neutre, près d’un point fixe semi-stable, soit une dynamique d’avalanche quasi-déterministe loin du point fixe. Ces résultats peuvent être largement appliqués à tout système présentant des dynamiques de type «tir à la corde» avec une région de diffusion quasi-neutre centrée autour de régions de collapse déterministe de la population. Les résultats de cette thèse ont des implications pour la maintenance de la diversité des espèces dans les écosystèmes bactériens dens où l’exclusion spatiale est centrale pour la compétition, tels que dans les biofilms organisés ou les cryptes intestinales. Ces modèles servent de modèles nuls minimaux de systèmes écologiques concurrentiels bruyants, contre lesquels des modèles plus complexes qui incluent des facteurs tels que les mutations et le bruit environnemental peuvent être comparés. | Ph.D. | transit, environmental, species, ecosystem, ecolog | 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Ketabchi Haghighat, Sana | Krieger, Peter W | Measurement of the Cross Section of the Higgs boson Production in Association with a $Z$ boson and Decaying into $WW^*$ | Physics | 2023-06 | This thesis presents measurement of the production of the Higgs boson in association with a $Z$ boson in the $WW^*$ Higgs decay channel. In order to optimize sensitivity, this analysis focused on the leptonic final state which contains four charged leptons in addition to two neutrinos. The measurement was performed using 139$\,\mathrm{fb}^{-1}$ of data recorded by the ATLAS detector and obtained from proton-proton collisions of $\sqrt{s}={13}\,$TeV during Run-2 of the Large Hadron Collider. The signal process was measured with an excess of 4.5$\sigma$. The ratio of the observed cross section times branching ratio to the value predicted by the SM, assuming the existence of the Higgs boson with a mass of 125 GeV, was measured as $1.6\pm0.5$, which indicates consistency between the observed data and the SM prediction. The cross section times branching ratio of the $ZH\rightarrow Z(WW^*)$ process was measured as $0.31^{+0.10}_{-0.09}\,$pb. The uncertainties on this measurement are three times smaller than the uncertainties associated with the previous measurement of same process by the ATLAS experiment. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Foroughifar, Mohsen | Mehta, Nitin||Soberman, David | The Challenges of Deploying an Algorithmic Pricing Tool: Evidence from Airbnb | Management | 2023-06 | This thesis studies the deployment of an algorithmic pricing tool, Smart Pricing (SP), on Airbnb's platform. SP is a machine learning algorithm that uses past data to predict demand and employs proxies that are correlated with the hosts' marginal costs to set prices for listings. Chapter 3 discusses why SP can provide benefits to hosts in the context of Airbnb, and how Airbnb hosts use SP on the platform. The reduced-form analyses of this chapter suggest that a lot of Airbnb hosts do not vary their prices with changes in the demand for short-term rentals, and adopting SP is associated with higher benefits for hosts who rarely change their prices compared to those who flexibly adjust their prices before adoption. However, hosts who rarely change their prices are surprisingly less likely to adopt SP. Chapter 4 builds upon the results of chapter 3 and develops a dynamic structural model to estimate the primitives of the host's pricing and adoption decisions. The ultimate goal is to run counterfactual analyses and quantify the impacts of SP on hosts and the platform, and to understand how the platform can improve the outcomes of the SP deployment. The estimation results identify a gap between the actual performance of the SP algorithm and the host's prior belief about it. Specifically, hosts with a pessimistic prior belief about SP think they will need to manually correct algorithmic prices if they adopt SP, and this belief is disproportionately stronger for hosts with higher adjustment costs, making SP adoption less attractive to them. The counterfactual simulations indicate that the introduction of SP has had a small positive impact on the average host profit and the total platform revenue. But this boost can be significantly raised if Airbnb educates hosts to correct their beliefs about the SP algorithm. The counterfactual analyses also demonstrate that, since the platform does not fully capture the host's private marginal cost in training the algorithm, using the estimated marginal costs from the structural estimation to re-train the algorithm can significantly increase the profitability of SP for both the average host and the platform. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Kumar, Shashank | Niyozov, Sarfaroz | Doctors' Efforts to Reform Medical Practice in England for Climate Change Mitigation: Insights for Implementing Medical Education and Training Reforms | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | In this study, I explore how the ideas and experiences of doctors who have attempted to reform medical practice in England for climate change mitigation can enhance the implementation of similar reforms in medical education and training. I draw upon theories of climate justice, the social responsibility of medicine, critical reflective practice, and learning as a socio-cultural process to frame and investigate the research problem. I draw upon the critical-interpretive paradigm and the methodological recommendations of the phronetic social science framework to design the study. Applying these ideas, I conducted an interview study with 18 English doctors representing diverse clinical specialties, official designations, career stages, and social backgrounds. I documented how these doctors conceptualized reform problems and solutions, and attempted to enact change between 2006 and 2020. I also inquired into what enabling conditions and barriers they encountered in the process, and how they regard the consequences of their efforts, and envision future action. I then analyzed how their reflections and insights can improve the implementation of ongoing efforts to reform medical education and training in England to address climate change mitigation. My analysis shows that doctors’ efforts to reform professional practice can be adapted and applied to reform medical education and training in a variety of ways. Significant among these are: exercising/leveraging formal authority and leadership to drive top-down change, seeking new job roles to work on climate change mitigation, securing sustained sources of funds for reforms, building alliances in and outside the health system, creating networks for collaboration, generating new socio-environmentally informed ways of conceptualizing and practicing illness prevention and healthcare, and pursuing professional learning to develop additional capabilities to enact change. The scaling-up and wider application of reform initiatives such as these can have significant impacts in mitigating the threats and harms of climate change in England. They can inspire similar action in health systems in other global contexts as well. | Ph.D. | healthcare, illness, learning, labor, invest, climate change mitigation, climate, environmental, climate justice, land | 3, 4, 8, 9, 11, 13, 15 |
| Hanafy, Sara | Colantonio, Angela||Lindsay, Sally | Traumatic Brain Injury: Sex and Gender Considerations Relevant to Rehabilitation | Rehabilitation Science | 2023-06 | Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a global cause of disability. Effects of TBI include cognitive, physical, and psychosocial disabilities. Although sex and gender considerations in research are considered important for good science, there is limited information on the extent to which sex and gender effects in TBI are recognized in rehabilitation. Further, the extent to which an educational tool targeted at persons with TBI and caregivers, can serve to improve knowledge, attitude, and skill on the topic for future integration within clinical practice has not been explored. Information is further lacking on differences in sex- and gender-based needs for men and women in the community specifically while transitioning to work and during the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, this thesis aimed to address these knowledge gaps by (1) understanding clinicians’ perspectives on the clinical impact of sex and gender in TBI rehabilitation, (2) exploring the effectiveness of education on sex and gender impacts in TBI for persons with TBI and caregivers, and (3) investigating differences in support service and workplace accommodation needs of men and women with TBI for transitioning into the community. The added impact of COVID-19 on employment status and mental health was also explored. The thesis was based on three studies. The first study, a qualitative descriptive design with semi-structured interviews with diverse rehabilitation clinicians highlighted limited attention on sex and gender topics in TBI rehabilitation and a need for resources that consider psychosocial factors. Results from the second study, a pilot pre-test/post-test randomized control-group trial revealed the potential for education to improve knowledge, attitudes, and skills on sex and gender effects in TBI, furthering the need for tools to help persons with TBI and caregivers address daily barriers post-injury. Finally results from the third study, an observational cross-sectional survey, demonstrated differences between men and women with TBI in transitioning to work and because of the pandemic, based on respective gender roles and behaviours. Findings from each study furthered the knowledge base on sex and gender considerations in TBI rehabilitation, with future attentions needed on developing sex- and gender-sensitive tools for clinical and non-clinical benefits. | Ph.D. | mental health, disabilit, knowledge, gender, women, employment, invest, transit | 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11 |
| Nziwa, Kambale | Meacham, Tirzah||Metso, Sarianna | Tracking the Continuity of the Leviticus Laws of Genital Fluids in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Literature | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2023-06 | This comparative study explores Leviticus’ rules on the impurity caused by genital fluxes as attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic literature to shed light on the state of halakhah in the pre-rabbinic stage. Using the five impurity categories of genital fluxes outlined in Lev 15 and 12, this study demonstrates the Dead Sea Scrolls' relevance as a textual product of the Second Temple period for tracking the antiquity of some rabbinic halakhic rulings. As a starting point, an analysis of the biblical exposition of each impurity category is undertaken, noting hermeneutical, textual, and text-critical difficulties in the text but selectively limiting the detailed examination to problems that have implications in the attestation of these rules in the Dead Sea Scrolls or other Second Temple period texts in comparison with their attestation in the rabbinic literature. The study pays particular attention to variant readings found in ancient translations (the LXX and the Targumim) and the Samaritan Pentateuch, and to cases of word choices in the DSS and other Second Temple period texts. It contends that these variants and word-choices are hermeneutically pertinent to our understanding of the state of halakhah in the Second Temple period when verified by their conformity with a particular position on a halakhic issue for which rabbinic opinions diverge. The investigation leads to the conclusion that difficulties in the biblical text are responsible for many divergences or innovations in later attestations of the biblical rules, and that many rabbinic rulings can be linked to the innovations or polemical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls or to variant readings in ancient translations or versions of the Hebrew Bible. This study stands out from other comparative approaches to the DSS and rabbinic texts which tend to have broader perspectives by narrowing down the scope of the investigation to one type of impurity to demonstrate from that standpoint how a textual, text-critical, and hermeneutical analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls texts can yield valuable pieces of evidence on the state of halakha in the Second Temple period, and thus shed light on the trajectory of halakhic development. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Kamal, Muntasir | Roy, Peter Dr | Insights on the Xenobiotic Barrier Function of the Caenorhabditis elegans Pharynx Cuticle | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Cuticles are specialized extracellular matrices that prevent water loss and provide a barrier to external, harmful chemical and infectious agents. In the model nematode C. elegans, I report the serendipitous discovery that certain lethal molecules accumulate in the heads of worms as crystalline and spherical objects. Using DIC microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, pulse-chase, RNA interference and fluorescent dyes, I confirmed that the crystalizing molecules preferentially accumulate in the non-luminal side of the anterior pharynx cuticle. A chemical screen of 2560 molecules revealed that crystal formation can be suppressed by 85 small molecules as well as the amyloid dyes Congo Red and Thioflavin S, but not by chitin dyes. Many crystallizers and suppressors have highly similar core scaffolds and are enriched for aromatic rings, with the ability to form hydrogen, halogen and π-π bonds. Interestingly, 43% of the substructures that are ≥1.5X enriched in crystallizing molecules compared to molecules that do not form objects and/or a random set of molecules, are known to bind amyloids. 33% of the core scaffolds of the crystal suppressors are found in known amyloid-interactors. Bioinformatic analysis of the C. elegans pharynx proteome revealed that during molting, the pharynx secretes in the cuticle large amounts of proteins/peptides with phase-separation ability, a property shared by amyloidogenic proteins. Through a genetic screen, I found that loss of components of a novel sphingomyelin synthase, SMS-5, or an ABC transporter, PGP-14, which are both expressed in the pharynx, abolishes crystal formation in the pharyngeal cuticle but also drastically alters the worm's overall sensitivity to xenobiotics/ This indicates that the proteins play a critical barrier function. Taken together, my Ph.D. work identifies the pharynx cuticle as a critical determinant of drug sensitivity, and implicates sphingomyelin, an ABC transporter and potentially phase-separated proteins/peptides as novel determinants of xenobiotics accumulation in C. elegans. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Eng, Margaret Elizabeth | Matthews, Stephen G | Antenatal Synthetic Glucocorticoid Programming of Post-natal Blood-brain Barrier Drug Transporters | Physiology | 2023-06 | The blood-brain barrier (BBB) is essential in protecting the developing brain from neurotoxins, through high expression of drug transporters P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and breast cancer resistance protein (BCRP). However, external stimuli such as xenobiotic exposure may disrupt BBB protection. Antenatal synthetic glucocorticoid (sGC) therapy is a life-saving treatment administered to pregnant women at risk for delivering preterm, to aid in the maturation of several fetal organ systems, notably the lungs. The purpose of the studies described in this thesis were to investigate the long-term effects of antenatal sGC on the levels and function of BBB drug transporters. We investigated drug transporter levels and function in brain endothelial cells (BECs) of postnatal day (PND) 14 male and female offspring prenatally exposed to multiple or single course betamethasone (BETA) treatment. We have identified a reduction in the levels and function of P-gp in male offspring only, as well as sex differences in baseline P-gp function in BECs derived from juvenile guinea pigs. Importantly, we found a single course did not impact P-gp function. Recently miRNAs have had increased attention as a regulatory mechanism for drug transporter expression. As we observed decreased P-gp protein and function independent of changes in mRNA levels, we investigated miRNAs as a potential mechanism underlying these effects. Our targeted analysis of 7 miRNAs did not reveal differences after antenatal sGC. However, these initial studies have laid the groundwork for future investigations into miRNA regulation of BBB transporters. Finally, while levels of P-gp mRNA/protein, and function were unaltered in BECs derived from female offspring, once exposed to a challenge (infection mimic ssRNA, P-gp activity was markedly reduced. This is in-line with previous research that the long-term effects of antenatal sGCs do not always manifest themselves at baseline. The findings from this thesis have implications as decreased P-gp function can result in increased transfer of neurotoxic P-gp substrates into the brain of infant (e.g., bilirubin in hyperbilirubinemia) and pediatric (e.g., colchicine poisoning) populations. Additionally, long-term changes in drug transporter activity can have consequences for central nervous system (CNS) exposure to harmful agents across the entire life-course. | Ph.D. | women, female, invest | 5, 9 |
| Dacquay, Louis Colin | McMillen, David | Genetically Engineering Microbes for Detecting and Treating Inflammatory Bowel Disease | Cell and Systems Biology | 2023-06 | Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic medical condition characterized by inflammation in the intestine. Treating the patients starts by appropriately diagnosing the disease, followed by administering therapeutic drugs to reduce the symptoms and induce tissue repair that can help the patient achieve remission. However, as there are no definitive cures, treatment of IBD requires long-term management that involves periodically monitoring the extent of inflammation within the intestine and several treatment courses. Traditional methods for detecting the disease are highly intrusive, and the therapies are not entirely effective, often leading to relapse and sometimes even requiring surgical interventions. Therefore, there is a need for better diagnostic tools and treatment options to improve the outcomes and quality of life of IBD patients. Small, single-celled organisms, such as bacteria or yeast, have the unique ability to travel through the gastrointestinal tract and into the intestine- a natural habitat for microbes. Once inside this area, they come in close contact to the sites of inflammation, priming them for disease intervention. As these microbes are living organisms, they can also be genetically re-programmed to accomplish desired functions such as sensing molecular or environmental cues, or to deliver molecules with therapeutic properties. With the advances in genetic engineering tools and strategies, microbes can be engineered into diagnostic tools to monitor the inflammation within the patient’s intestine and as therapeutic delivery systems to provide targeted therapies at the source of the disease. The goal of this project was to contribute to the development of engineered microbes for detecting and treating IBD. These contributions include developing and validating genome editing tools, therapeutic protein expression systems, biosensors to detect reactive oxygen species, and a colorimetric yeast-based assay to detect biomarkers of IBD using a probiotic yeast strain Saccharomyces boulardii. I also discovered novel transcriptional markers of colitis within a probiotic bacteria strain, E. coli Nissle, that could be used to monitor intestinal inflammation. Overall, the results of this project should prove valuable for engineering microbial devices for medical applications. | Ph.D. | emission, environmental, natural habitat, species | 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Androschuk, Alaura Marie Anne | Sefton, Michael V | Methacrylic Acid-Based Biomaterials Promote Terminal Axon Growth | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-06 | Peripheral innervation is essential for all tissue engineering strategies as all tissues are innervated. In absence of innervation, tissue regeneration is impaired. Here we show a new role for MAA-based biomaterials in promoting terminal axon nerve growth. Our results demonstrate that MAA-based biomaterials promote peripheral nerve growth in an Igf-1 and Shh dependent manner. The resulting nerves increased the sensitivity of treated mouse paws to nociception. iDISCO clearing showed that MAA increased the presence of peripheral nerve structures in whole explants. MAA was also able to increase the expression of key neuronal markers and growth factors in a peripheral neuropathy model, the diabetic db/db mouse, suggesting that MAA-based biomaterials may be relevant to treatment of peripheral neuropathy. Moreover, in a peripheral neuropathy model, MAA was able to up-regulate the expression of growth factors for an extended duration suggesting MAA may prevent degeneration through an effect on factors that promote survival. Through the use of single-nucleus RNA-sequencing we profile whole-explants of subcutaneous tissue following 21-day treatment with MAA and show that MAA explants contain a unique cell population that is a key source of factors that promotes axon growth. We also identify a new role for Nrg1-ErbB signalling in promoting MAA-induced peripheral nerve growth.Moreover, we also use an unbiased proteomics approach to further characterize PEG and MAA hydrogel explants. Our results demonstrate that MAA treatment results in the differential expression of proteins and show that MAA may have a temporal effect on protein expression. Proteomic profiling also identifies new signalling pathways that may be involved in the mechanism of MAA-induced axon outgrowth including GCPR, integrin, and mTOR signalling. As all tissues are innervated, MAA-based biomaterials could have broad applications in the promoting regeneration and preventing degeneration of peripheral nerves. | Ph.D. | ABS, regeneration | 2, 15 |
| Baksh, Karina Amelia | Zamble, Deborah B | Allosteric Regulation of the Helicobacter pylori NikR Transcription Factor in Response to Nickel and pH | Biochemistry | 2023-06 | Survival of the Helicobacter pylori pathogen within the acidic environment of the human stomach requires the nickel enzyme urease, which makes nickel an essential nutrient for this bacterium. Due to its inherent toxicity and limited availability, nickel homeostasis is maintained through a network of pathways that are coordinated by the nickel-responsive transcription factor, NikR. Nickel binding to H. pylori NikR (HpNikR) allosterically activates binding to several target promoters encoding genes involved in nickel homeostasis and acid acclimation to either activate or repress their transcription. HpNikR can also respond to a drop in pH and bind target promoters independently of nickel to regulate their transcription. In this work, the allosteric mechanisms by which nickel, and acidity activate DNA binding by HpNikR were explored using biochemical, spectroscopic, and computational methods. The results demonstrate that HpNikR adopts an equilibrium between an open conformation and more DNA-binding competent cis and trans states, regardless of nickel binding or increased acidity. The response to nickel involves an increase in protein rigidity that is propagated from the nickel-binding sites to the DNA-binding domains through a network of residues linked to the inter-domain interface. This response allows nickel binding to slow down conformational exchange and shift the equilibrium toward the DNA binding-competent states. The protein then becomes stabilized in a cis conformation upon binding a target promoter, in a manner consistent with conformational selection. In addition, the DNA sequence was found to play an important role in tuning the allosteric response. Experiments at lower pH levels revealed that the histidine residues of the nickel-binding sites are involved in the allosteric response to acidity. However, the mechanism of pH-responsive DNA binding is quite distinct compared to the response to nickel, and results in a unique DNA-bound cis conformation. Overall, this work provides novel insights into how HpNikR is able to respond to two important environmental cues for H. pylori – nickel and pH. This knowledge advances our understanding of the allosteric mechanisms employed by metalloregulators, and contributes to our understanding of how HpNikR helps this bacterial pathogen thrive in the harsh environment of the human stomach. | Ph.D. | knowledge, environmental | 4, 13 |
| Swanson, Ross Kent | Antebi, Susan | Shaman as Saviour? The Trope of the Amazonian Shaman in Recent Latin American Literature and Film | Spanish | 2023-06 | This dissertation analyzes the trope of the Amazonian shaman in recent Latin American literature and film. References to shamanism have become increasingly popular in recent years. Shamans have gained importance in environmentalism and struggles for Indigenous rights, as well as academic writing interested in radical social change. Meanwhile, shamanic tourism attracts thousands to the Amazon region each year. The books and films of this dissertation participate in this trend by mobilizing the shaman as a figure that holds privileged solutions to contemporary problems like ecological decline, climate change, and persistent coloniality. I argue that these shamanic solutions are often superficial and aimed at satisfying Western desires for progress and limitless growth. Furthermore, they reproduce problematic colonialist tropes, including Western fascination with the ‘wild man.’ Nevertheless, my readings also show how these works may suggest possibilities for change. I draw on critical environmental scholarship, including the work of Elizabeth Povinelli, Stacy Alaimo, Déborah Danowski and Eduardo Viveiros de Castro to show how the shaman characters’ risk-laden and grounded negotiations with materiality may sometimes challenge anthropocentrism and narratives of progress. Moreover, through their frequent references to the Amazonian archive of colonial texts, anthropology, literature and film, the works themselves model a similar process of negotiation that transforms the notion of shamanism. My own contribution via this dissertation is also an inevitable part of this ongoing engagement. Chapter 1 analyzes the influence of shamanic ayahuasca tourism and desires for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples over the abuses of colonialism in the film El abrazo de la serpiente (2015). Chapter 2 addresses how the film Ícaros: A Vision (2016) undermines the drama of shamanic miracle healing and tourism through a focus on the characters’ imbrication with materiality. Chapter 3 compares the ambivalence of shamanic pharmakon remedies in the novels Todas as coisas são pequenas (2008) and El último guerrero de’Aruwa (2006), and the film Chamán: El último guerrero (2016). Chapter 4 analyzes shaman Davi Kopenawa’s techniques for maneuvering restrictions on Indigenous discourse in The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman (2010). | Ph.D. | indigenous, reconciliation, privileged, climate, environmental, ecolog, social change, indigenous rights | 10, 16, 13, 15 |
| Mufteev, Marat | Ellis, James | Global Post-Transcriptional Regulation during Human Neuronal Development and Disease | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Globally coordinated post-transcriptional mechanisms that regulate the transcriptome through mRNA stability and translation are relatively understudied during human neurodevelopment and disease. Our lab uses human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to model neurodevelopment in vitro by directed differentiation into neural progenitor cells (NPC) and cortical neurons. The iPSC model illuminates the mRNA regulatory programs that act during neurodevelopment and disease. Deficiency in the global transcription and chromatin regulator methyl-CpG-binding protein 2 (MECP2) leads to a neurodevelopmental disorder, Rett Syndrome (RTT). Recent molecular studies in RTT focused on transcriptionally altered genes. However, changes in the overall protein synthesis and microRNA biogenesis in RTT neurons point to the contribution of post-transcriptional mechanisms. I dissect the post-transcriptional regulatory layer by measuring mRNA synthesis, degradation, translation rates, and microRNA abundance in neurodevelopment and RTT. First, I described global changes in translation during neurodevelopment and identified genes bound by RNA-binding protein TIA1 that substantially influence MECP2 translation during differentiation to neurons. Second, I studied whether MECP2-deficient neurons have altered mRNA translation. I detected widespread and global changes in ribosomal engagement, agreeing with decreased protein synthesis in RTT neurons. I also captured translational misregulation of NEDD4-family E3-ubiquitin ligases. It highlights altered ubiquitination as a novel molecular signature in RTT. Third, I explored the contribution of mRNA stability to shaping the transcriptome during normal development and RTT. I observed significant shifts in median RNA stability during neuronal differentiation. This global change in RNA stability differentially affects gene isoforms, shaping the transcriptome. A concurrent shift in microRNA copy number per cell suggests a common genome-wide mechanism that drives the process. Next, I probed the degree of coupling between transcription and mRNA stability. I observed a widespread boosting and buffering of transcription rate shifts during neurodevelopment. This crosstalk between nuclear and cytoplasmic machinery is striking upon loss of MECP2. Reanalysis of mouse Mecp2-deficient neurons supported the existence of global buffering, suggesting that mRNA stability response is a conserved feature of RTT models. In summary, I identified a unique role of mRNA stability and translation in the regulation of transcriptome and in mounting a genome-wide balancing response to altered transcription. | Ph.D. | conserv | 14, 15 |
| Rahnama, Abdullah | Herman, Peter | Design, Fabrication, and Characterization of Filament Based Fiber Bragg Grating Sensors | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | In this thesis, femtosecond laser writing is harnessed towards advancing capabilities in the fabrication of novel fiber Bragg grating based sensors. Femtosecond laser pulses inscribed low- and high-contrast filament grating structures in single-mode fibers. The transmitted, reflected and radiated diffraction from these gratings have been tailored for various applications by optimizing the focal beam stretching, laser exposure, and grating period.In this work, the low-contrast laser filaments have been harnessed to exploit their properties for fabrication of all-fiber spectrometers and displacement sensors. The unique geometry of the filament shape as an optical scattering element is an enhancement of the first-order radiative emission of fiber-guided light into cladding modes. The opportunity exploited in this thesis is drawn from filament based FBGs which permits strong and directional radiation modes to escape from the fiber. The above advantages have been resulted in the designing and fabricating of all-fiber spectrometers. Furthermore, the thin geometry of laser filaments facilitates a precise off-centered positioning of filament arrays in the fiber core. This flexibility permits strain-optic responses for azimuthally resolved displacement sensing in single-mode fiber. Therefore, the special shape of the laser written filaments resulted in the designing and fabricating of opto-mechanical displacement sensors based on off-axis filament FBGs. For the case of high-contrast filaments, the laser-processing was further advanced to high energies sufficient to open arrays of hollow filament tracks inside the core waveguiding. The ordered Bragg gratings presented an usually large refractive index contrast of 0.4 into the fiber core, opening a new means for creating strong and compact photonic-stop band devices. The filament geometry underpinned a strong capillarity effect for wetting with various liquids which demonstrated high-resolution refractive index sensing through an intact fiber cladding. In another application, Nematic liquid crystal was introduced into the nano-hole grating arrays. Capillary alignment has resulted in a strong polarization extinction ratio within a broad Bragg resonance which enabled design of all-fiber, dynamically tunable, polarization filters. The present work is promising to transform how fibers shape the flow of light and sense the local environment from applications in biomedical probes through to large area communication networks. | Ph.D. | emission | 7 |
| Xiong, Ruichi | Baum-Snow, Nathaniel | Essays on Urban Economics and International Trade | Management | 2023-06 | The three chapters of this dissertation explores different issues in urban economics and international trade. The first chapter shows that the reduction in travel time to China promotes the creation of firms in US cities, more in industries that use many different suppliers, employing a novel instrument for travel time constructed from the gradual deregulation of the US-China passenger flight market. To account for the heterogeneity in supplier presence within China, I estimate a quantitative spatial model featuring sourcing location choice, input-output structure, and a firm entry decision. The model illuminates that the 2004-2013 US-China aviation network expansion increases US firm creation by 1.7%. 42% of the increase comes from the supplier presence heterogeneity across Chinese prefectures because of assortative matching on the sparse US-China flight network. The second chapter uses a unique administrative dataset of the universe foreign firms in China to document that initial foreign direct investment was mainly driven by the Chinese diaspora; massive non-diaspora foreign direct investment did not materialize until a later stage. Leveraging the staggered opening up of Chinese prefectures during 1981-96 as an identification strategy, we find that following the opening up, diaspora direct investment is more likely to enter prefectures with stronger lineage connections. These prefectures also witness a greater number of non-diaspora foreign and domestic private entrants in the later period. The third chapter develops a spatial Ben-Porath model which introduces the endogenous life cycle forward-looking learning decision into a spatial setting. The model's novel predictions on the life cycle learning dynamics across cities, the dynamic agglomeration gain over life cycle by skill, and the spatial sorting of high skill workers into big cities over life cycle find supportive empirical facts. These facts are documented with a learning time measure constructed from time use surveys, and city size elasticities and sorting of high skill workers estimated using the US population census data. | Ph.D. | learning, worker, invest, trade, cities, urban | 4, 8, 9, 10, 11 |
| MacMullin, Laura Nicole | VanderLaan, Doug P. | An Ecological Systems Approach to Understanding Risk and Promoting Resilience Among Trans and Gender-Diverse Youth | Psychology | 2023-11 | The present research investigated the experiences of risk and resilience for trans and gender-diverse youth. Ecological systems theory emphasizes how one is impacted by both proximal (e.g., peer interactions) and more distal (e.g., societal attitudes) environmental factors. Factors impacting trans and gender-diverse youth’s risk and resilience were explored at multiple levels of influence to achieve a comprehensive understanding of how to improve these youth’s well-being. Study 1 examined the relationship between broad, environmental marginalization levels and access to gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. Study 1 compared marginalization levels in the areas surrounding trans youth (N = 298) who accessed gender-affirming healthcare services in Toronto, Canada, relative to marginalization levels in background populations. Compared with background populations, there was some evidence that areas where trans youth patients came from were biased toward less marginalization (e.g., less ethnic diversity). Study 2 was a qualitative study focused on asking Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour (BIPOC) trans youth (N = 12) about their experiences of risk and resilience. Despite facing multiple forms of marginalization, BIPOC trans youth have received limited research attention. Through qualitative coding, I identified four superordinate themes: accessing community connection and fostering belonging; navigating the healthcare system; personal journey with and relationship to gender identity; and others’ reactions to gender identity. Participants commented on day-to-day social interactions, interactions with societal institutions, and prevailing societal attitudes. Study 3 explored the possibility of changing societal attitudes in order to improve the experiences of trans and gender-diverse youth. Specifically, I investigated whether an empathy-based intervention could improve children’s (N = 186) attitudes towards gender-diverse peers and reduce gender stereotyping. Although the intervention was not effective, girl participants who displayed higher levels of trait empathy also displayed more positive ratings of target children. Also, among all children, gender stereotyping was related to more positive appraisals of gender-conforming (relative to gender-diverse) targets, suggesting that reducing stereotyping is an important strategy for improving children’s gender-related attitudes. Overall, the present research highlights a variety of factors at multiple levels of the environment that could be targeted to improve the well-being of trans and gender-diverse youth. | Ph.D. | well-being, healthcare, gender, girl, invest, bipoc, of colour, indigenous, resilien, environmental, resilience, ecolog, institut | 3, 5, 9, 10, 16, 11, 13, 15 |
| Lee, Yong Wook (Wyatt) | Tilcsik, András||Bowers, Anne | Essays on Evaluations and Inequality | Management | 2023-06 | Evaluations play a crucial role in determining resource allocation in markets. Through three empirical studies, this dissertation investigates this topic by focusing on how evaluations affect the outcomes of organizations and individuals and, furthermore, contribute to inequality among them. The first study examines the conditions under which a fall in rankings affects organizational outcomes. Using the Fortune 500 ranking as an empirical setting, the study finds that a fall in rankings is associated with negative stock market reactions but that this negative association is strengthened under three conditions: less alternative information, lower audience sophistication, and if the firm falls off the Fortune 500 list due to the fall in rank. Overall, this study develops an informational theory of rankings and illuminates their contingent effects on organizational outcomes. The second study examines bias and stereotypes that occur during evaluation processes within organizations. It asks why East Asian Americans are underrepresented in corporate leadership positions, despite their high socioeconomic status and stereotypes of being highly competent. The key argument is that a stereotype that East Asian Americans lack creativity is an important mechanism underlying their underrepresentation. Two experiments consistently showed that evaluators are less likely to select East Asian American candidates for corporate leadership positions because they perceive them to be less creative than White candidates. This study suggests that even socioeconomically successful demographic groups might face negative stereotypes that impede their status attainment in organizations. The third study examines the effects of certifications on racial discrimination and inequality on digital platforms. This study predicts that certifications on digital platforms tend to benefit White sellers more than Black sellers because they carry ambiguous meanings to buyers. Thus, reducing ambiguity in certifications can make it provide more equal benefits to Black and White sellers. Evidence for these arguments is provided using observational data from Airbnb listings and an experiment with Airbnb users. This study has implications for understanding racial inequality and the design of certifications. The final chapter discusses implications, limitations, and future research avenues. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, invest, inequality, equalit | 1, 9, 10 |
| Song, Mengyi | Scott, Ian IS||Wilson, Michael MW | GATA4/5/6 Family Transcription Factors: An Ancient Guide for Cardiac and Pharyngeal Mesoderm Fate Decisions | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | GATA4/5/6 transcription factors play essential, conserved roles in heart development. To understand how GATA4/5/6 modulates the mesoderm-to-cardiac fate transition, we labeled, isolated, and performed single-cell gene expression analysis on cells that express gata5 at precardiac time points spanning zebrafish gastrulation to somitogenesis. We found that most mesendoderm-derived lineages had dynamic gata5/6 expression. In the absence of Gata5/6, the population structure of mesendoderm-derived cells was substantially altered. In addition to the expected absence of cardiac mesoderm, we confirmed a concomitant expansion of cranial-pharyngeal mesoderm. Moreover, Gata5/6 loss led to extensive changes in chromatin accessibility near cardiac and pharyngeal genes. Functional analyses in zebrafish and the tunicate Ciona, which has a single GATA4/5/6 homolog, revealed that GATA4/5/6 acts upstream of tbx1 to exert essential and cell-autonomous roles in promoting cardiac and inhibiting pharyngeal mesoderm identity. I further characterized the open chromatin landscape of the cardiac and pharyngeal mesoderm progenitors at single cell resolution and revealed a pro-cardiac role of gata5/6. Overall, cardiac and pharyngeal mesoderm fate choices are achieved through an evolutionarily conserved GATA4/5/6 regulatory network. | Ph.D. | ABS, transit, accessib, conserv, fish, land | 2, 11, 14, 15 |
| Ying, Chen | Li, Baochun | Improving Training Performance in Federated Learning | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | To utilize enormous data generated on numerous edge devices such as mobile phones to train a high-performance machine learning model while protecting users' data privacy, federated learning has been proposed and has become one of the most essential paradigms in distributed machine learning. Under the coordination of a central server, users collaboratively train a shared global model without sharing their data. They conduct local training with their data and only send their model updates to the central server for aggregating an improved global model. To improve training performance in federated learning, a myriad of new mechanisms have been proposed. However, our extensive evaluation indicated that most state-of-the-art mechanisms failed to perform as well as they claimed. We thus explored potential directions that can consistently decrease the elapsed training time for the global model to converge to a target accuracy, and found that changing the conventional synchronous aggregation paradigm, where the server does not conduct aggregation until it receives updates from all the selected users, to the asynchronous one, where the server aggregates without waiting for slow users, significantly improved the training performance. However, asynchronous federated learning has not been as widely studied as synchronous federated learning, and its existing mechanisms have not reached the best possible performance. We thus propose Blade, a new staleness-aware framework that seeks to improve the performance of asynchronous federated learning by designing new mechanisms in all important design aspects of the training process. In an extensive array of performance evaluations, Blade consistently showed its substantial performance superiority over its state-of-the-art competitors. Under some scenarios of federated learning, users are institutions such as hospitals and banks, which implicitly require centrally storing data of their clients to conduct local training. To protect clients' data privacy, these scenarios motivated us to study three-layer federated learning, where institutions serve as edge servers on the middle layer, between the central server and clients. With empirical and theoretical studies, we observe that pruning and quantization could largely reduce communication overhead with a negligible reduction, sometimes even a slight increase, in training performance. Also, the number of clients' local training epochs affects the training performance. We thus propose two new mechanisms, FedSaw which prunes and quantizes updates, and Tempo which adaptively tunes the number of each client's local training epochs, to improve training performance in three-layer federated learning. Inspired by the advantages of using asynchronous aggregation in two-layer federated learning, we investigate asynchronous three-layer federated learning which also demonstrates its superiority over synchronous three-layer federated learning in our empirical study. We thus modify Blade to adapt it to the three-layer setting. Experimental results show that Blade can also significantly improve training performance in three-layer federated learning. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, invest, institut | 4, 8, 9, 16 |
| Price, Kaitlyn Mary | Barr, Cathy L | Genes and Neural Cell Types Influencing Reading and the Overlap with Neurodevelopmental Disorders | Physiology | 2023-06 | Although a breadth of research has been conducted on Reading Disabilities (RD), the genes, molecular mechanisms, and cell types involved in its etiology remain to be elucidated. Understanding these processes is complicated by the frequent overlap between RD and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The purpose of this dissertation was to identify genes and neural cell types involved in the development of RD, while considering the genotypic/phenotypic overlap with comorbid disorders. To that end, genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and polygenic risk scores (PRS) were used to identify genes associated with word reading and examine shared genetic etiology with neurodevelopment/psychiatric disorders. We identified two novel loci for word reading, with top SNPs in or near ARHGAP23 (n=624) and the CCNT1/LINC00935 region (n=4430) (p~10-7) (significant by gene-based analysis (p~10-6)). We also identified significant genetic overlap for word reading and intelligence, word reading and educational attainment, and word reading and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (threshold for significance=7.14x10−3) and observed shared genes between word reading and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and language. We observed genes involved in neuronal migration among top results. To increase power to identify genes for word reading, we performed Hypothesis-Driven GWAS in a larger sample. SNPs in DOCK7, CDH4 (n~26,000), and intergenic between BTG3-C21orf91 (n=4152) showed significant association. Top SNPs were eQTLs/sQTLs, providing hints to the molecular mechanism of risk for these genes. We also found that genes previously implicated in ASD cumulatively and significantly contributed to word reading (n=624). We hypothesized the link between RD-ASD was through deficits in language systems. To determine neural cell types, we used Linkage Disequilibrium Score Regression to look for cell enrichment in our GWAS results and correlated traits -- as determined by PRS. We demonstrated enrichment of adult excitatory neurons in word reading; adult excitatory neurons in ADHD; and adult and fetal excitatory neurons, inhibitory neurons, astrocytes, and oligodendrocytes in educational attainment and cognitive ability. This thesis contributed novel genes and neural cell types to RD, as well as an understanding of the shared overlap between its comorbid disorders. It can inform future functional studies examining the molecular mechanisms of reading. | Ph.D. | disabilit | 3 |
| Dickau, Joel | Pilcher, Jeffrey M | Inventing Texture: Food Science and Culinary Culture in Postwar America | History | 2023-06 | In the second half of the twentieth century, food scientists in North America and eventually across the globe focused their attention on the human sense of texture. Largely ignored by scientists before them, and seemingly without cultural precedent, corporate and public research scientists set out to define texture as a measurable phenomenon, to ascertain what was generally desirable to chew, and to operate this knowledge in service of the ongoing global industrialization of food production and retailing. Above all, texture was staked as the solution to overlapping crises in the global food system, promising the Global South abundant meat prepared cheaply from plants and offering a palatable alternative to excessive dietary fat in the Global North. Through an examination of their research methods, published ideas, and the new products that resulted, this dissertation explores the messy entanglement between food science and culinary culture. As scientists drew upon cultural intermediaries like home economists, marketers, and vegetarians to direct their research, so too did increasing scientific control over the physical features of processed foods shape broader cultural understandings about normative taste. While the desired outcomes for texture research have thus far resulted in spectacular market failure, this dissertation suggests how the core concepts of modern food science have succeeded nevertheless in becoming part of culinary discourse, offering a terminology and indeed a terrain for navigating contemporary global cultural exchanges. | Ph.D. | food system, culinary, knowledge, industrialization, production, vegetarian | 2, 4, 9, 12, 13 |
| Wu, Mingkun | Blencowe, Benjamin J | Systematic Investigations of the Regulation and Nuclear Organization of Alternative Splicing | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Alternative splicing is a key process by which precursor (pre)-mRNAs generate multiple mRNA isoforms and greatly expands transcriptomic and proteomic diversity. It is often precisely regulated by intricate RNA-protein interaction network, and tightly coordinated on a global level to modulate gene activities and interactions in diverse cellular, developmental, and pathological processes. Therefore, comprehensively dissecting the regulatory landscape of alternative splicing and its organization in the cell nucleus is of significant interest. During the course of my PhD thesis research, I co-led the development of a CRISPR-based strategy for the genome-wide elucidation of pathways that control alternative splicing, and applied this to alternative microexons with critical functions in nervous system development and that are commonly misregulated in autism. Approximately 200 genes associated with functionally diverse regulatory layers and enriched in genetic links to autism control neuronal microexons. Remarkably, the widely expressed RNA binding proteins Srsf11 and Rnps1 directly, preferentially, and frequently co-activate these microexons. These factors form critical interactions with the master neuronal splicing activator Srrm4 and bi-partite intronic splicing enhancer elements to promote the recognition and splicing of most neuronal microexons. Multiple steps of gene expression are highly compartmentalized in the cell nucleus. In particular, membraneless nuclear domains play an important role in the organization of gene expression and RNA processing. However, the composition and function of many of these structures are not well understood. I utilized APEX2-mediated proximity labeling and RNA sequencing to survey human transcripts associated with nuclear speckles, several additional domains, and the lamina. Remarkably, speckles and lamina are associated with distinct classes of retained introns enriched in genes that function in RNA processing, translation, and the cell cycle, among other processes. In contrast to the lamina-proximal introns, retained introns associated with speckles are relatively short, GC-rich, highly differentially regulated across diverse cellular contexts, and enriched for functional sites of RNA-binding proteins that are concentrated in these domains. Together, this thesis dissertation presents a versatile system for the comprehensive identification of splicing regulatory pathways impacting exons of interest, and further reveals speckles and lamina as hubs engaged in the splicing of distinct classes of retained introns. | Ph.D. | invest, land | 9, 15 |
| Naiman, Ilana Deborah | Wright, Virginia | Exploring the Body Language of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) during Physical Activity | Rehabilitation Science | 2023-06 | Introduction: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) participate in less physical activity (PA) than their peers. Research has shown that one reason is that some instructors lack awareness about ASD and how best to support these children. Differences with body language expression are a feature of ASD that limit social interactions and may compromise participation. This dissertation used mixed methods to explore how body language of children with ASD is demonstrated and perceived in PA settings and reports the first-stage validation and associated refinement of the Body Language Coding Scale (BLCS) to help instructors with body language identification and interpretation.Methods: Twelve parents of children with ASD (7-12 years) were interviewed to explore thoughts about their child’s body language and their impressions of its interpretation by PA instructors. Next, the BLCS was used to quantify body language during a motor assessment performed by 31 children with ASD (6-12 years). BLCS reliability and its association with motor proficiency and skill enjoyment were evaluated. A content validity evaluation was undertaken with three parents of children with ASD (8-12 years) to review cue valence. The BLCS scoring was revised and reliability was re-evaluated. Results: Misinterpretation of non-basic emotions expressed through body language was identified by parents as a knowledge gap. The BLCS showed excellent intra-rater and moderate inter-rater reliability. No significant associations were shown between body language, motor performance and enjoyment. Parents’ evaluation of cue meaning demonstrated concurrence with BLCS cue valence. Further refinement of the BLCS (including renaming of positive/negative categories to engaged/not engaged) resulted in the BLCS-v2-revised, which demonstrated excellent intra-rater and good inter-rater total score reliability, and excellent intra- and inter-rater category reliability. Discussion: The BLCS-v2-revised is a reliable and valid measure of body language of children with ASD. Further research is needed on the feasibility of using the BLCS-v2-revised in the community context. Conclusion: The BLCS is ready for introduction to PA instructors as a tool to help them communicate better with children with ASD. Bringing awareness of body language differences in children with ASD may help instructors create a more inclusive environment to support participation and enjoyment. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| McKay, Michelle | McDougall, Doug | Supporting Kindergarten Student’s Development of Knowledge, Skills and Understanding about Truth and Reconciliation | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | In Kindergarten, educators and students are called to action to engage in learning related to truth and reconciliation. The purpose of this study is to explore how educators can engage Kindergarten students in learning about truth and reconciliation within three Kindergarten classrooms. Using a qualitative case study approach, this study investigates the question: What practices support Kindergarten student’s development of knowledge, skills and understanding about truth and reconciliation? This study will extend our understanding of how to respond to the Calls to Action in the early years theoretically and pedagogically and contribute to the literature.The results from this study indicate that there are practices that educators can engage in as they move through a continual process of teaching and learning about truth and reconciliation and adopt a ‘reconciliatory stance’ to support Kindergarten students’ knowledge, skills and understanding of truth and reconciliation. Challenges related to teaching and learning about truth and reconciliation in Kindergarten include encountering resistance or pushback from others regarding the appropriateness of this work and the lack of capacity building for educators. The seven major findings from this study include: 1) there is a continual process that educators must engage in throughout the school year to develop knowledge, skills and understanding about truth and reconciliation; 2) there are practices that educators can use to support the development of knowledge, skills and understanding about truth and reconciliation; 3) educators need to have a strong understanding of how to connect teaching and learning about truth and reconciliation to the Ontario Kindergarten Program document and other guiding documents; 4) educators must continue to engage in professional learning to have the knowledge and understanding of how to bring this work into their practice; 5) more Kindergarten-specific resources need to be developed; 6) adopting a ‘reconciliatory stance’ allows educators to respond to teachable moments within the classroom related to teaching and learning about truth and reconciliation; and 7) this work needs to be done in relation and in community. Implications of this study suggest that there are powerful possibilities for developing a strong foundation for truth and reconciliation with students in Kindergarten. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, invest, reconciliation, truth and reconciliation | 4, 9, 10 |
| Hu, Die | Al-awar, Rima RA||Vedadi, Masoud MV | Validating the WD Repeat Protein CDC40 as a Potential Therapeutic Target for Lung Cancer | Pharmacology | 2023-06 | Lung cancer is the second most diagnosed and most lethal cancer globally. Presently, there is a need for novel targets for the development of improved therapeutics. Data mining of whole genome genetic dependency screens suggested that the pre-mRNA splicing factor Cell Division Cycle 40 (CDC40) is essential for lung cancer cell survival. In this study, I characterized the effects of CDC40 knockdown in a panel of lung cancer cells. I show that CDC40 knockdown induced cell cycle defects resulting in strong growth inhibition and activation of late-stage apoptotic markers in all lung cancer cells tested. To further understand the cellular consequences of CDC40 suppression, I investigated global transcriptional and splicing changes and found that CDC40 knockdown resulted in a perturbation of splicing and translation-related genes in addition to a higher number of transcripts with intron retention. I explored one specific intron retention event in the mRNA transcript of the cell cycle regulatory protein CDCA5, a potential prognostic marker for cancer, and showed that CDC40 knockdown induced retention of its first intron leading to an increase in the unspliced CDCA5 transcript, and subsequent decrease in CDCA5 protein expression. Finally, I explored the direct protein interactions of CDC40 in lung cancer lines and found spliceosome components as the predominant binding partners for CDC40, further highlighting the major role of CDC40 in splicing. CDC40-CDC5 interaction, identified in the current thesis, was investigated using peptide displacement assay for drug development purpose. So far, no hits have been confirmed from screens. In addition, no disruption was observed even with quadruple mutations within the putative binding pocket on CDC40. This implies that it may be difficult to disrupt key protein-protein interactions using small molecules within this very large complex. In summary, I was able to demonstrate that CDC40 is important for lung cancer cell survival and has potential as a novel therapeutic target for lung cancer treatment. I confirmed that CDC40 is involved in the human pre-mRNA splicing process as it is an important component of the spliceosome like its yeast counterpart. Furthermore, I characterized several CDC40 interactors to look for pockets for future therapeutic intervention. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Fedotov, Dmitriy A | Bascia, Nina | Student Mobility and the Struggle over European Intergration: The Lessons of the Bologna Process | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | This study aims to provide insight about the dynamics of credit and degree mobile students in the European Union (EU). The analysis allows for cross-country comparisons and helps to assess the evolution of student mobility rates in the studied countries. The researcher analyzes data for tertiary mobile enrolments (both sexes). The study draws on the Leuven and Louvain-la-Neuve communiqué of 2009 as a turning point which shifted to quantitative targets. First, using Statistical Product and Service Solutions (SPSS), the researcher conducts statistical analysis by implementing a paired comparisons test. It tests a hypothesis about the mean of the differences (µd) that can be observed across the EU member-states over period from 1999 to 2018. Second, using the European Tertiary Education Register (ETER) data from 2011/2012 to 2016/2017, the researcher contributes to the construction of degree and credit mobility indicators (benchmarks). In brief, it uses ETER database to derive figures that are necessary for computing ratios such as “Share of degree mobile students” and “Share of incoming Erasmus students”. In this study the unit of analysis is the country.Another focus of the study is on tensions and contradictions that arise due to situations where students, on the one hand, are desired to fulfill the needs of skilled labor market; and, on the other hand, the very same students are “unwanted” due to politics of migration control. This is very typical that different actors hold different positions; therefore, employers want more international workers and local employees want fewer international workers. In particular, the researcher addresses the experience of Austria, Estonia, Germany, Sweden, and the UK. The study is concerned with the role of states in initiating, selecting, restraining, and ending international migration movement. It shows how institutions and governments in countries with well-developed higher education (HE) systems are creating initiatives to receive students from abroad. Within the Bologna Process (BP), European governments discuss HE policy changes. It seems that the BP has become an important space for soft diplomacy with neighbouring countries where participants strive to overcome obstacles to create a European Higher Education Area (EHEA). Enhancing the quality of teaching is also a core mission of the BP. This study shows how the BP helps to build the trust necessary for cross-border academic cooperation, successful learning mobility, and the mutual recognition of study periods and qualifications earned abroad. | Ph.D. | learning, tertiary education, sexes, labor, worker, institut | 4, 5, 8, 16 |
| Osolen, Rebecca Susan | Walks, Alan | Gentrification, Mobility and Automobility; A quantitative study of local driving mode share and commute time in Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver | Geography | 2023-06 | This thesis investigates how gentrification affects the transport mode and travel time of commuters in large, globalizing Canadian cities. While there is evidence that gentrification is associated with transit, cycling and walking, gentrification also involves the displacement of low-income and racialized households, and commuters in these households are the least likely to drive to work. Does gentrification contribute to automobility? Also, how are residential mobility and exclusionary displacement related to everyday commute mobility in gentrification? In this dissertation, I cross tabulate commute time and mode by household income, racial status and other sociodemographic characteristics at the census tract scale in 1996, 2006 and 2016. I find that in Montréal, Toronto and Vancouver, gentrification is correlated with a decrease in the mode share for driving among affluent commuters and visible minorities who live in gentrifying neighbourhoods. However, there is no change in the overall percentage of commuters who drive to work, since low-income and racialized minority commuters, who are less likely to drive, are displaced and higher-income and white commuters, who are more likely to drive, become more concentrated in gentrifying places. Also, while within gentrifying places I find little evidence of racial differences in commute time, through gentrification racialized residents are displaced from places where they have a lower driving mode share, and shorter commute times by private vehicle and transit. Moreover, a case study of the Toronto metropolitan area shows that the centralization of households with above average incomes is not on its own associated with a reduction of their private vehicle use over time. At the same time, the private vehicle use of low-income households does not change in gentrifying neighbourhoods, but is bolstered by their increasing concentration in the suburbs. Thus, the cultural aspects of gentrification processes have an important influence on commute behaviour, and these combine with economic change and improvements to local transport infrastructure to support the motility of affluent, white households, while contributing to displacement pressure for low-income and racialized minority households. | Ph.D. | low-income, infrastructure, invest, globaliz, minorit, income, cities, metro, transit | 1, 9, 10, 11 |
| Hall, David Ross | Peng, Hui | Chemical Proteomics Methods for Elucidating the Physical Protein Targets of Environmental Contaminants | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Chemical pollution is the most poorly understood environmental change. Even its impact on the global burden of disease is unknown as humans may be exposed to mixtures of over 350 000 chemical, the majority of which have not undergone any toxicological testing. As proteins are the direct mediators of cellular processes, they are most likely the target of chemical contaminants. However, identifying targets is technically challenging, thus limiting research in this domain. This thesis work focuses on the development and refined of chemical proteomics, a methodology to identify chemical-protein interactions, to explore environmental contaminant-protein interactions. Herein, I review challenges in contemporary methods in environmental toxicological studies and contend that chemical proteomics is a viable means to address such issues. I then demonstrate the capabilities of chemical proteomics via three projects. The first combines activity-based protein profiling and direct adduct monitoring to explore and elucidate compound- and class-specific differences in Nrf2-response mediated oxidative stress between monohalogenated acetic acids (mHAA) and acetamides (mHAM). The second adapts fluorous-solid phase enrichment (FSPE) workflows to study peptides covalently modified by long-chain per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), using 8:2 fluorotelomer acrylate (8:2 FTAC), an environmentally relevant legacy PFAS detected in food packaging, as a case-study. The third project surveys the sub-lethal proteome perturbations of early-life stage exposure to seventy-four unique PFAS in zebrafish (*Danio rerio*) using data-independent acquisition (DIA) proteomics. Each project yielded unique insights into environmental contaminant-protein interactions, with many targets being reported for the first time. Likewise, the results gathered suggest novel mechanism of toxicity and reconsideration of PFAS classification with respect to potential toxicities. | Ph.D. | pollution, cities, environmental, pollut, fish | 3, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Kirby, Duncan | Zilman, Anton | Mesoscopic Models of Cellular Signaling Reveal Strategies for Specificity in Crosstalk Signal Pathways | Physics | 2023-06 | Successful cellular signal processing strategies must be robust to stochastic fluctuations and yet sensitive to small differences between molecular signals, often in a signaling environment containing many cross-wired signals. Understanding how cells overcome challenges posed by signal crosstalk is important for our understanding of immune processes such as the initiation of anti-viral defenses by Type I Interferon signaling, or kinetic proofreading by T cell receptors. This thesis addresses several interrelated problems regarding molecular mechanisms for distinguishing signals and managing stochastic fluctuations for reliable cellular decision making in situations with signal crosstalk. Despite systematic categorization and highly detailed structural descriptions of the various molecular signals involved in the immune response, quantitative predictions of immune behaviour are difficult.Immune signaling pathways involve many sequential molecular interactions, and this organizational complexity presents a significant barrier to modeling immune processes. In this thesis, I study how receptor signaling dynamics contribute to signal processing specificity in situations with signal crosstalk. I use the Type I Interferon signaling pathway as a model system to study signal crosstalk and I develop a computational model of this pathway to investigate how the Interferon receptor performs signal discrimination. I use mesoscopic modeling to capture key features of complex signal pathways and to capture the intrinsic stochasticity of receptor signaling dynamics, without directly modeling every known molecular detail of these signaling systems. Using this approach, I show that the intrinsic stochasticity of kinetic proofreading receptors fundamentally constrains the robustness to fluctuations of downstream signal processing. Both the Interferon receptor and the kinetic proofreading receptor exhibit deficiencies in achieving specificity in crosstalk signal pathways. I develop a minimal model for a receptor with multiple outputs which can overcome these deficiencies to simultaneously identify and accurately sense the concentrations of arbitrary unknown ligands present individually or in a mixture, even in the presence of stochasticity. As a whole, this thesis focuses on the dynamical factors of cell signaling which contribute to specificity in noisy crosstalk signal pathways. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Merovitch, Neil H | Lefebvre, Julie L||Jia, Zhengping | Regulation of Memory by the Actin-Binding Protein Cofilin | Physiology | 2023-06 | The concept of disability is complex, constantly evolving and hard for many to understand. Disabilities, including those that are non-apparent such as some neurodevelopmental disorders, are often associated with negative preconceptions. Though neurodevelopmental disorders can affect language, speech, learning, memory, motor skills and other functions, individuals with these disorders can still lead meaningful lives. While many developmental disorders are associated with impaired learning and memory, different stages and types of memory can be affected. These impairments are often correlated with altered neuronal structure or function. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms is important to better understand neurodevelopmental disorders. One process that is important for neuronal development is remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton. This remodeling is regulated by the actin binding protein cofilin, but its role in learning and memory remains unclear. Physiologically relevant manipulations of cofilin activity in vivo provide new opportunities for examining its function in learning and memory. Therefore, in this thesis, I examined three objectives to determine how cofilin overexpression in vivo affects the actin cytoskeleton and memory. I first characterized two novel transgenic mouse models that allow for either overexpression of wild-type or constitutively inactive forms of cofilin with spatial and temporal regulation. Expression of transgenic cofilin was robustly localized in excitatory neurons and processes in both mouse models. However, rod-like structures thought to be cofilin-actin aggregates were observed in cofilin overexpressing mice. I then showed that cofilin overexpression impaired short-term social novelty recognition, which was rescued by reversible transgene expression. Though it is unclear if the impairment was due to an underlying deficit in recognizing novelty. In contrast, some mice expressing constitutively inactive cofilin exhibited a possible immobility phenotype. However, further testing is required to determine the reproducibility of these impairments. Finally, cofilin-overexpressing zebrafish showed transgene expression throughout the nervous system, with rod-like structures in neuronal processes similar to those in mice with no effect on locomotion. Together, these results suggest that the novel transgenic cofilin models provide valuable tools for future research on the roles of cofilin and actin regulation in a variety of neuronal processes. | Ph.D. | disabilit, learning, fish | 3, 4, 14 |
| Lacoste, Jessica Sachiko Chantal | Taipale, Mikko | Multi-omic Phenotype Discovery for Mendelian Disease Variants | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | There are over 7,000 known rare diseases and over 80% have a simple Mendelian pattern of inheritance. Despite our knowledge of the genetic mutations that cause rare diseases, little is known of the cellular consequences of these genetic mutations. Functional studies on rare disease have fallen behind gene discovery since advances in genome sequencing have far outpaced the throughput in functional follow-up studies. To bridge the gap between genetic and functional information, I systematically phenotyped a human mutation open reading frame (hmORF) collection of 3,547 human coding variants using immunofluorescence and high-content automated confocal microscopy, and discovered 250 mislocalized variants, indicating that mislocalization plays an important role in Mendelian disease pathology. 53 unique mislocalization patterns were observed. The most common type of mislocalization was between organelles within the secretory pathway (59%). It is possible that many of the mislocalized secretory pathway variants fail to pass quality control in the ER and are retained and sorted for degradation. To support this hypothesis, I performed BioID on 16 ER-retained variants and discovered that all 16 variants associated more with ER quality control factors than their wild-type counterparts. To elucidate the degradation pathways of the ER-retained variants, I used immunofluorescence to measure protein abundance of each ER-retained variant after inhibition of the proteasome, autophagy, or VCP. I discovered that proteasome-dependent ERAD was the dominant degradation pathway for ER-retained variants. Finally, using luciferase reporter cells, I assessed the ability of the ER-retained variants to upregulate the IRE1 and ATF6 unfolded protein response pathways. I found that 35 variants could upregulate both the IRE1 and ATF6 pathways. In this study, I present the first large-scale, publicly available map of the impact of human variants on protein localization. Aside from serving as a resource for researchers interested in each variant, reference gene, or associated human disorder, the data answered fundamental questions about the frequency and characteristics of mislocalization events. Most notably, pathogenic variants are more commonly mislocalized than benign variants or variants of unknown significance. Mislocalizations within the secretory pathway and cytoskeleton are more common than others, which points towards the possibility of similar targets and or candidate compounds being useful to correct an entire class of mislocalizations and therefore potentially an entire class of disorders. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Zhang, Guodong | Grosse, Roger | Deep Learning Dynamics: From Minimization to Games | Computer Science | 2023-06 | The last decade has witnessed the unprecedented successes of deep learning in various high-profile challenges. Meanwhile, the practical success of deep learning has greatly outpaced our theoretical understanding, and it is tempting to blindly use this hammer without knowing how it works. In particular, the current approach to deep learning relies on a combination of seemingly innocuous ingredients, like special weight initializations, carefully-designed activation functions, skip connections, normalization layers, sophisticated learning rate schedules, and some opaque training strategies, whose precise roles are not well understood, but without which training is challenging. Such an approach could be problematic as it may mask hidden issues in our training pipeline, and eventually keep us from making further progress. This thesis aims to close this theory-and-practice gap by studying neural network training dynamics closely for both standard minimization and multi-agent problems. To be specific, it addresses some important questions such as how to train very deep neural networks without using extra tricks, which algorithmic choices would benefit from increasing compute, how standard algorithms fail in the multi-agent setting and how to solve multi-agent games efficiently. The final chapter of the thesis discusses how to extrapolate from works presented to build scalable and safe intelligent learning systems. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Zhang, Javi Qing Chen | Parkinson, John | Novel Approaches to Population-Based Studies in Human Pathogens | Biochemistry | 2023-06 | Human pathogen populations are comprised of subpopulations exhibiting varying levels of virulence or resistance against therapeutics. The number, size, and characteristics of the subpopulations are referred to as population structure. Understanding population structure can provide insight into the evolutionary forces that shaped the development of a population. Haplotypes, representing population structure within specific genomic regions, can serve as markers for identifying the genetic determinants of virulence and resistance. With the advent of low-cost, high-throughput genome sequencing technology, population genomics data sets arebeing generated for hundreds of species of medical importance. The scale of these data sets presents new challenges for the inference and visualization of their population structures. In this thesis, I present PopNet, a novel computational method that identifies regions of common ancestry in the genomes of related strains through clustering patterns of genetic variation. The broad applicability of PopNet is demonstrated through the Apicomplexan pathogens Toxoplasma gondii and Plasmodium falciparum, as well as the yeast model organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae. An extension of PopNet, named PopNetD3, improves its accessibility through serverside computing and a web-based graphical user interface. The haplotype data produced by PopNet also contributed to the development of a novel neural network-based method for genome-wide association studies. The dimensionality reduction achieved via PopNet and prefiltering using a regularized linear model helped a deep neural network model achieve higher predictive accuracy for artemisinin resistance in Plasmodium falciparum compared to the regression models currently used for GWAS. Using a novel “impact” scoring system, I found that the neural network model predicts five artemisinin resistance-associated genomic loci containing ten genes, one of which included the known resistance marker gene kelch13. The generalizability of the neural network approach is shown through application to the bacterial pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae, where the purE gene is predicted to be associated with disseminated gonococcal infection. Together, PopNet and the neural network genome-wide association study approach represent novel computational methods to better understand and exploit the genetic diversity of Apicomplexan parasites and related haploid organisms. | Ph.D. | accessib, species | 11, 14, 15 |
| Velázquez Toledo, Oliver | Antebi, Susan | Literatura nacional y procesos editoriales en México (1915-1966) | Spanish | 2023-06 | La Revolución mexicana incitó un archivo canónico de obras literarias que perfilaron el imaginario nacional: de la filosofía y las artes a la cultura popular. Estas obras resultaron de las experiencias directas del trauma de la guerra y reflexionaron acerca del significado de estos eventos históricos y sus consecuencias para el destino del país. En un periodo caracterizado por una búsqueda de la mexicanidad, más una afirmación de los rasgos nacionales que respaldaran el proyecto político del Estado posrevolucionario, autores y editores — habitantes de la ciudad letrada— desempeñaron una función, como en los tiempos de la Colonia y los movimientos de independencia, para producir los libros que forjaran la nación.Estos intelectuales salvaguardaron su sitio en la manufactura de la literatura mexicana, de la escritura al proceso editorial. Puesto que la producción de libros determinaba la configuración textual y material de las obras literarias, las empresas editoriales —como periódicos, revistas, casas editoras— a menudo fueron políticas también. Con su potestad de primeros lectores, los editores asumieron convicciones estéticas y de forma en torno a los libros y la literatura, mientras servían de intermediarios con el público. La continuamente desestimada transducción de textos en ediciones específicas, por medio de la edición de desarrollo o en línea, la promoción, la censura o la crítica aplicada —formalmente o no—, se convierte en una contribución ineludible a la hora de aproximarse a los escritos. Desde la perspectiva de la historia del libro, la examinación de los procesos editoriales de Los de abajo, de Mariano Azuela, Cartucho, de Nellie Campobello, Pedro Páramo, de Juan Rulfo, y Poesía en movimiento, de Octavio Paz, Alí Chumacero, Homero Aridjis y José Emilio Pacheco, revela la sofisticación en las prácticas de la edición y los criterios de autores y editores al paso del tiempo; la conexión con el proceso creativo; y que, en un contexto de una producción de libros capitalista, el prestigio cultural determinó el acceso al inventario canónico de la nación. A través de ajustes a las narrativas y a las poéticas de la memoria en circunstancias sociopolíticas formativas, la edición incorporó nociones hegemónicas del lenguaje, el canon y la civilización, que son los fundamentos de las batallas culturales del México actual. The Mexican Revolution instigated a canonical archive of literary works which outlined the national imaginary: from philosophy and arts to pop culture. These works resulted from direct experiences with the trauma of war and reflected on the meaning of such historical events and their consequences for the fate of the country. In a period characterized by a search for Mexicaness and an affirmation of national features to support the political project of the postrevolutionary State, writers and editors —citizens of the lettered city, as Ángel Rama puts it— played a role, as in colonial times and independence movements, to produce books that shaped the nation.These intellectuals upheld their function in the manufacture of Mexican literature from writing through to the editorial process. Since publishing production determined the material and textual configuration of literary works, editorial endeavours —such as newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses— were often political as well. In their domain as first readers, as Roger Chartier calls them, editors embraced aesthetic and formal beliefs around books and literature, serving as intermediaries to the readership. The often overlooked transduction of texts into specific editions through developmental and in-line editing, promotion, censorship or criticism —formal or otherwise— then becomes an undeniable contribution when approaching such writings. From the perspective of book history, the examination of the editorial process of Los de abajo, by Mariano Azuela, Cartucho, by Nellie Campobello, Pedro Páramo, by Juan Rulfo, and Poesía en movimiento, by Octavio Paz, Alí Chumacero, Homero Aridjis and José Emilio Pacheco, reveals the sophistication in practices of editing and in authors’ and editors’ criteria over time; the connection to the creative process; and that, in a capitalistic book production environment, cultural prestige determined access to the national inventory. Through adjustments to the narratives and poetics of memory in formative sociopolitical circumstances, editing ultimately endorsed hegemonic notions of language, canon, and civilization which are the foundations of current Mexican cultural battlefields. | Ph.D. | citizen, arid, capital, production | 4, 6, 9, 12 |
| Starkman, Rebecca Lily Russell | Niyozov, Sarfaroz | Religious Girlhood and Secular Schooling: Experiences of Faith and Gender in Toronto Area Public High Schools | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | Toronto public schools are some of the most religiously diverse in the country. Religious students, whose practices may run counter to the dominant cultures of Christianity and secularism shaping public education, often face marginalization. This dissertation asks how religious girls of Abrahamic faiths navigate academic and social life in public secondary schools in Toronto. It addresses gaps in extant literature by highlighting the significance gender plays in youth religiosity; by looking across multiple faiths groups; and by centering student voices in data analysis. Guided theoretically by feminist epistemology, and taking a qualitative research approach, interviews and focus groups were conducted with 18 religious girls. The resulting data was analyzed through a thematic analysis. Key findings paint a picture of girls’ quiet religious expression within classroom and social spaces. Degrees of peers’ acceptance influenced girls’ actions to edit aspects of their religiosity in social settings. Participants identified challenges related to their gender in the school context, but relegated experiences stemming from their being a religious girl to faith-specific, outside school environments. Additionally, variability in their teachers’ approaches to addressing religion shaped girls’ religious expressions and relative comfort in the classroom. The data analysis challenge feminist conceptualizations of religious agency and point to visibility as a salient space where religious girls exercised their agency in public schools. Findings also illustrate a gap between what girls pointed to as shaping their experiences as religious girls at public high schools, and the current religious accommodation policies as the primary mechanism for addressing religious student needs. The dissertation suggests a need for additional policy tools in conceptualizing religious student needs, and for increasing attention at the policy level on religiousness as an important dimension of student diversity. Implications for teacher education suggest enhanced training about the nuances of religious identities and the numerous (intersecting) ways religiosity manifests in school environments. Directions for future research include investigations with teachers about pedagogy and curriculum connections to religion, and with religious students of all genders into the conditions determining when and why students hide aspects of their religiosity in school. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, gender, girl, feminis, invest | 4, 5, 2009 |
| Martinez-Cortés, Oscar Geovani | Kant, Shashi | The Colombian Forest Sector Model – An analysis of forest plantation policy in Colombia | Forestry | 2023-06 | An economic model for the Colombian forest sector (Colombian Forest Sector Model – CFSM) is developed and used to analyse Colombia´s commercial forest plantation policy covering the 2018 – 2038 horizon (PFCm policy). The CFSM is a structural partial equilibrium econometric model that forecasts quantities and prices for the Colombian forest product markets using the neoclassical theory of competitive markets. Phase I of the CFSM (CFSM-I), developed in detail in this dissertation, includes a simulator of growth and yield for the Colombian forest plantations and two market (sub)models: for Unprocessed Wood and for Manufactured Wood Products. Using the CFSM-I, two PFCm policy goals were simulated to unveil their impacts on the Colombian forest sector. Simulations of an expansion of Colombia’s forest plantation current area (0.3 million hectares, Mha, on Dec 2015) to 1.5 Mha by 2025 indicate that Colombia would increase the 2015-2047 volume available of industrial wood in plantations by 5 times (annually 20.8 million cubic meters of underbark roundwood, on average). In monetary values, this expansion would importantly impact the unprocessed wood market. Supply and exports of wood would multiply by 2.5 and 14.5 times in the next 25 years meanwhile its price of supply would drop by 24%, respectively, and on average, compared to the scenario of no expansion of the current plantations. Simulations of a 2023-2038 5.5-times expansion of the current (2022) production capacity of Colombia’s manufactured wood forest products industry show that on average in the next 25 years and compared to the no expansion scenario, consumption of unprocessed wood and manufactured wood products of the pulp and paper industry would increase by 8% each, and the imports of the latter and of manufactured products of the furniture industry would decrease by 35% and 25%, respectively. Alternative policies of plantation area expansion (0.45 Mha, 0.765 Mha, and 2.0 Mha under sustained rotation, and 0.3 Mha harvested without replanting) also simulated enrich the set of information for policy makers and other stakeholders in preparation for the first round of the PFCm policy evaluation, scheduled for 2023 after the completion of its first implementation period in December 2022. | Ph.D. | consum, production, forest | 12, 15 |
| Wali, Sahr | Cafazzo, Joseph A | ‘Nothing about us Without us’ – Development of a Patient- centered Digital Health Self-care Program for Marginalized, Underserved Populations with Heart Failure | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2023-06 | Heart failure (HF) is a global pandemic affecting over 26 million people worldwide. In high-income-countries (HICs), the use of evidence-based self-care models has led to a decline in HF prevalence. However, these improvements are less evident in low-and-middle-income countries (LMICs) and marginalized subgroup populations in HICs, like the Indigenous People, due to factors related to poor disease control and the disparities in a population’s social determinants of health. With the inequitable distribution of health services, digital health has been offered as an avenue to assist populations with limited resources. While mobile phones have become increasingly utilized, many digital health interventions have failed to be adopted, as they have been designed for usage in high-resource settings. With the current mismatch between technological innovation and local community priorities, this research sought to 1) evaluate the state of heart health within the remote communities in Northern Ontario and Northern Uganda, 2) investigate the contextual requirements to design of a community-based digital health program, and 3) adapt the program according to the identified design requirements. In Study 1a, we established that Indigenous communities and LMICs valued the use of digital tools, but its adoption would be dependent on its cultural compatibility. To better understand how cultural context should be integrated within digital tool design, Study 1b explored how various community engagement strategies could be utilized. Using these findings, in Study 1c, a research partnership was established with each community. In Study 2, a community-based needs assessment was conducted to evaluate the contextual influencers impacting community heart health. In Study 3, we developed a series of design requirements focused on empowering existing community resources and cultural values. In a society where the distribution of wealth is heavily unbalanced, there is concern that the digital divide will compound the effects of socioeconomic divisions. While the COVID-19 pandemic triggered the momentum for digital health, populations with a history of being overlooked, continue to be left with minimal support. As such, to close the gap associated with the digital divide, interventions need to be designed in reflection of the contextual circumstances contributing to a population’s poorer health outcomes. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, equitable, invest, equit, indigenous, underserved, marginalized, income | 1, 4, 9, 10, 16 |
| Chua, Conan | Gehring, Adam||Feld, Jordan | The Hunt for Immune Biomarkers during Chronic Hepatitis B Infection | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Current treatment options against chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection are rarely curative and represent a significant global health burden. Novel therapeutic approaches directly target the immune system or indirectly enhance antiviral immunity through impeding with viral antigen production or viral lifecycle, yet immunological biomarkers are highly lacking beyond clinical assays for antibodies to HBsAg and HBeAg. In order to characterize immunological mechanisms of action and guide clinical decisions for the use of immunotherapeutic agents, immune assays that can measure T cell functionality or predict liver inflammation are highly sought after. Overall, our work builds upon the current understanding of host immunology during CHB infection and aims to establish immunological biomarkers in pursuit of defining curative strategies against HBV infection. | Ph.D. | global health, production | 3, 12 |
| Karimi, Maral | Portelli, John P||Ngwenyama, Ojelanki | Modern Iran, Republican Nationalism, Empire and Social Movements: Outlines of a Theory of Protest Cycles | Social Justice Education | 2023-06 | This dissertation focuses on the political transitions and quest for self-determination in modern Iran through the prism of successive social movements in Iran since the beginning of 20th century. I argue the process of democratization in Iran was frustrated by competing domestic and imperial forces. Thus, the unfolding of the democratic process remains impeded despite recurring mass uprisings — a phenomenon I’ve theorized as “protest cycles”. By understanding how these internal and external forces have limited the trajectory of Iran’s quest for self-determination and manifested in protest cycles, I worked to develop a theory of collective social action in the region and beyond. This research builds on work I published in 2018 — “The Iranian Green Movement of 2009: Reverberating Echoes of Resistance” —resulting from my York University MA thesis, in which I examined the quest for self-determination of the Green Movement and developed rudimentary concepts for theory of ‘protest cycles’. In the work before you, I am expanding on the theory of ‘protest cycles’ by conducting a socio-historical analysis of Iranian social movements, focusing on the voices and the narratives of the subaltern: women, minoritized ethnics, and the working class. My research is anchored in critical theory and draws on principles of Marx’s historical materialism, Parsons’ theory of social systems, and Giddens’ theory of structuration. Corpus of data comes from a variety of archival and primary textual sources including newspapers, leaflets, and slogans — analyzed based on principles of critical hermeneutics. I map the core dimensions of protest cycles, based on my empirical analysis of three major uprisings in: The Constitutional Revolution, the Oil Nationalization Movement, and the Islamic Revolution. A Causal Loop Model is used to illustrate a complex set of positive and negative influences: overall, Republicanism & Citizenship and Reclamation of National Wealth play a generative role in motivating uprisings; and Oppressive Ideologies, Dislocations & Marginalization (including women and ethnics), and the Islamic Regime were negatively influential. | Ph.D. | citizen, women, minorit, transit, nationalism, democra, self-determination | 4, 5, 10, 11, 16 |
| Jenne, Amy | Simpson, Andre | Towards Automated Toxicity Testing Using Novel Technologies to Reduce Spectral Overlap and Address Sensitivity Limitations in Environmental In-Vivo NMR | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Toxicity testing of living organisms has been undergoing a paradigm shift over the last decade. Focus has moved from examining apical endpoints such as death or reproduction, to measuring sub-lethal impacts from a biochemical perspective, with future aspirations to automate the approach. One of the ways this is examined is through metabolomics, the study of the impacts to an organism’s metabolic system as a result of an external stressor, such as a potential toxin. Recently, the field of in-vivo nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to study metabolomics has provided breakthroughs in toxicity testing information. Much of this work has been done with the aquatic organism Daphnia magna, a model organism for aquatic toxicity studies. While robust, NMR suffers from a lack of sensitivity and heavy spectral overlap in complex systems, such as living organisms. Thus, this thesis introduces novel technologies which help address sensitivity limitations and remove overlap in in-vivo NMR while working towards creating an automated dosing platform in line with the paradigm shift of toxicity testing. First, a new holistic approach to testing is examined which uses three NMR techniques in tandem, providing complementary information of toxin interactions including binding, physical partitioning, and biochemical response inside living organisms. Binding with the organism’s outer shell and metabolic oxidative stress responses were measured, which could not have been examined independently. Additionally, two new NMR pulse sequences are introduced. The first examines new bond formation between different nuclear isotopes (13C-12C), and food incorporation into living biomass of D. magna was examined. In the second sequence, suites of molecules chosen by the user can be isolated from an unchanged matrix, while focusing increases sensitivity over traditional 1H NMR. Four metabolites indicative of oxidative stress were monitored in D. magna simultaneously, while the unselected signals were filtered out. Finally, an automated dosing platform was created by the combination of digital microfluidics (DMF) and NMR to keep D. magna alive for prolonged periods using automated movement of food and water. Moving forward, these four new approaches could be used in tandem to increase sensitivity, reduce overlap, and automate the toxicity testing process. | Ph.D. | water, production, environmental | 6, 12, 13 |
| Hung, Lisa | Eiwegger, Thomas | Development of a Human Precision Cut Intestinal Slice Model of Acute IgE-Mediated Food Allergy | Immunology | 2023-06 | Food allergy is a potentially life-threatening disorder that affects both children and adults. There are no definitive prevention strategies in place, and treatments remain limited. Models of food allergy are needed to further understand the cause and underlying cellular mechanisms of this disorder, and to develop and test preclinical therapeutics. Current models of food allergy are limited in their ability to reflect the complexity of this disease in human mucosal tissue. Therefore, the aim of this thesis project was to generate a novel model of IgE-mediated food allergy using precision cut intestinal slices (PCIS). PCIS are live pieces of intestinal tissue of a fixed thickness that maintain the cellular diversity and function of the organ. We optimized the generation of PCIS using intestinal tissue from mice, rats, pigs, and humans. Viability and metabolic activity were maintained for up to 24h. Rodent and human PCIS were passively sensitized using plasma or serum from allergic donors and the smooth muscle contraction reactions that occurred following stimulation with allergen or controls were filmed. These contractions functioned as a readout of the allergic response. To quantify these responses, a novel video analysis software was created that measured muscle contraction in free-floating PCIS. We verified these responses were due to mast cell-derived mediator release by measuring allergen-specific increases in tryptase concentration in the culture supernatant. We showed that treating rodent and human PCIS with commonly used antihistamines could block contraction responses. We also found that plasma from peanut allergic patients who were successfully desensitized by oral immunotherapy could suppress allergen-specific contraction responses in human PCIS. Using single nucleus RNA sequencing we confirmed the presence of all expected cell subsets including stromal cells, epithelial cells, and key immune cell populations. We demonstrated that human PCIS can be used to observe tissue-specific changes in gene expression patterns following stimulation with allergen or controls. Through this thesis research, we established PCIS as a novel complementary tissue-based model to study acute, IgE-mediated food allergic responses, to assess current and preclinical therapeutics, and to investigate the complex network of reactions that occurs within intestinal tissues during an allergic reaction. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Paton, Morag Carol | Kuper, Ayelet | Carving Space for Staff Agency in a Faculty of Medicine: A Foucauldian-inspired Discourse Analysis of Administrative Staff and Faculty Relations | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | Administrative staff in higher education have been described as invisible (Eveline, 2004; Szekeres, 2004) and often characterized as being “non-academic, non-faculty, non-teaching, [and] non-professional” (Losinger, 2015, p. 157). These characterizations manifest within health professions education (HPE) contributing to the undervaluing of staff and staff contributions. While administrative staff are present on campuses or within the virtual workspace, staff often remain absent when it comes to HPE documents, literature, and reports. With few exceptions, if staff appear in the HPE literature it is as a passive object, often as a resource, a possession, or a liability. If staff appear in institutional reports, it is often within an acknowledgement section rather than a list of authors. These absences are also felt in the everyday staff experience: staff are sometimes overlooked in meetings, may not feel comfortable contributing knowledge, and may feel devalued or invisible in their roles. At the same time, the neoliberal university system has led to the increasing professionalization of staff roles, occurring as health professionals experience their own shifts in power and prestige. These changes affect staff and faculty relationships in the health professions education space at times, leading to tensions if not toxicity. Throughout this thesis I build and examine an archive of published literature, archival documents, interview data, and my reflections and lived experience as a staff member to conduct a Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis. Specifically, I conduct a “history of the present” (Foucault, 1977; Garland, 2014) to identify discourses that regulate the work of and power relations between administrative staff and faculty in a faculty of medicine. I discuss what these discourses make possible for staff to do, be, or say and what these discourses now make impossible. I explore the material effects of discourse, very purposefully centering staff voices within this text. Using feminist and decolonial critical theories throughout my analysis, I engage with the historic and hierarchical structure of academic medicine that constructs the largely feminized administrative staff cohort as having limited agency in HPE. To navigate the tensions produced by discourses and structure, I work to rebuild agency through staff voices, resistance, and recommendations for practice. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, decolonial, feminis, land, institut | 2, 4, 5, 15, 16 |
| Ingenfeld, Julia | Schafer, Markus | Gender Inequality in the Labor Market: Trends and Mechanisms | Sociology | 2023-06 | Despite significant gains made over the last decades, women—and mothers in particular—are still disadvantaged in the labor market. For example, women are less likely to be employed in the most prestigious occupations, such as managerial and professional occupations (MPOs), especially those that have been historically dominated by men. Moreover, women are more likely than men to reduce their work hours or exit the labor market after the transition to parenthood. Consequently, women more often work in position with lower levels of autonomy, lower salaries, and less beneficial working conditions. In this dissertation, I examine social change in women’s participation in (male-dominated) MPOs and illuminate two prevalent factors that past research has identified as impacting women’s participation in those occupations: motherhood and overwork. In addition, I investigate the role of the male partner’s involvement in domestic work on women’s employment after the transition to parenthood among heterosexual couples. My findings suggest that women are more likely to work in historically male-dominated MPOs with each successive cohort, although participation rates for MPOs overall have been stalling among the youngest cohorts. The prevalence of motherhood does not differ between male-dominated MPOs, non-male dominated MPOs, and other types of occupations, but women working in historically male-dominated MPOs are less likely to have more than one child. My findings further show that overwork is more prevalent in male-dominated MPOs throughout time and across all cohorts, and may be a barrier for having more than one child. Lastly, my results demonstrate that mothers who are most disadvantaged on the labor market benefit most from their partner’s involvement in child care in terms of their labor force participation. Taken together, my findings show a positive development in terms of women’s participation in the most prestigious occupations—i.e., historically male-dominated MPOs—but also suggest that gendered assumptions in the home and in the workplace still create barriers for women’s employment participation. Lastly, my results indicate that the prevalence and impact of those gendered norms varies by women’s labor market (dis)advantages. | Ph.D. | gender, women, employment, labor, invest, inequality, equalit, transit, social change | 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Moldowan, Patrick David | Rollinson, Njal | Ecology and Sensitivity to Environmental Change of a Northern Population of Spotted Salamander, Ambystoma maculatum | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | Amphibians perform numerous ecological roles—as predators and prey, as connectors of energy flow between aquatic and terrestrial landscapes, and as sizable contributors to vertebrate biomass—in wetland and forest ecosystems. Amphibians are also modern “canaries in the coal mine”, serving as a barometer for assessing environmental health. The Spotted Salamander (Ambystoma maculatum) is geographically widespread in eastern North America and is well-studied. This research arises from long-term monitoring of Spotted Salamanders at Bat Lake in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada, approaching the species northern climatic range edge. In 2008, monitoring efforts were formalized into a capture-mark-recapture study, collecting morphological, reproduction, and population data. The long-term aims of this project are to monitor baseline population vital rates and assess the effects of climate (change) on a northern salamander population. Chapter One introduces salamanders as research subjects and the ecology of Bat Lake. Chapter Two presents a synthesis of Spotted Salamander biology based on 15-years of monitoring data, including phenology of spring breeding and post-metamorphic dispersal, operational sex ratio, early life survival, body size of adults and metamorphic juveniles, age and size at maturity, longevity, and spatial habitat use. These findings are paired with a literature review to compare the natural and life history of Bat Lake salamanders to other populations. Chapter Three estimates population vital rates, including adult survival and abundance, and provides suggestions on how to sample the Bat Lake salamander population to inform continued long-term ecological and demographic study. Chapter Four investigates the influence of seasonal climate on body condition, reproductive output, and breeding phenology. Breeding body condition declined over a 12 year monitoring period (2008–2019) with warmer summer temperatures at least partly responsible for the observed decline in body condition, highlighting the vulnerability of fossorial taxa and subterranean environments amid accelerating climate change. This dissertation contributes to our understanding of salamander ecology and begins to address a knowledge gap about the consequences of climate (change) for amphibian populations. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, mental health, knowledge, energy, invest, production, climate, environmental, species, ecosystem, forest, ecolog, land | 1, 3, 4, 7, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Naseri, Parinaz | Hum, Sean V. | Inverse Design of Metasurfaces Using Machine Learning Techniques | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | These days, devices employing electromagnetic waves, such as antennas, have been intertwined with everyday life such that they are now unrecognizable by a general user. Despite the advancement of these technologies in the past few decades, in recent years, electromagnetic metasurfaces have introduced an unprecedented potential to not only tackle the problems of the conventional systems, but also create new applications for them. These engineered two-dimensional materials offer complete and intimate control over the electromagnetic fields involved through their constituent, judiciously designed meta-atoms. In recent years, in response to emerging applications for these surfaces, there have been tens of proposed meta-atoms that compete in performance, while the search for new applications is ongoing to date. Considering the revolution caused by these structures in different fields, ranging from micro-sized cameras to intelligent buildings, the significance of automated and efficient approaches to design and discover new metasurfaces is undeniable. Inspired by the breakthrough of machine and deep learning methods in other fields, generative machine learning networks such as variational autoencoders and generative adversarial networks are employed to explore the high-dimensional solution space of the meta-atoms composed of metallic and/or dielectric scatterers. Based on the presented generative methods, periodic and quasi-periodic single-layer and multilayer transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic metasurfaces are designed for different applications, including but not limited to frequency selectivity and wideband linear-to-circular polarization conversion. An end-to-end approach involving predicting the dispersive properties of bianisotropic meta-atoms via machine learning surrogate models for a beam-splitting metasurface is also presented. The functionalities of the presented metasurfaces are validated through full-wave simulation tools and experimental measurements. Lastly, future opportunities and design considerations are outlined. While the presented machine learning methods for the design of metasurfaces in this thesis serve as early attempts to tackle the problem, the achieved results demonstrate the capability and versatility of data-driven techniques for different applications of metasurfaces. Due to these remarkable abilities, machine learning will undoubtedly become an indispensable tool for solving increasingly challenging electromagnetic metasurface problems in the near future. | Ph.D. | learning, buildings, judic | 4, 9, 16 |
| Bilodeau, Blair | Roy, Daniel M | Contributions to Minimax Statistical Theory | Statistics | 2023-06 | Complex statistical methods are regularly deployed in high-stakes settings. Examples include policy making informed by epidemiological and economic models, and medical diagnoses and autonomous driving informed by machine learning algorithms. These settings demand an understanding of the risks associated with statistical methods, both when optimistic modelling assumptions are correct and when they fail. One way to quantify these risks is through theoretical guarantees, yet statistical theory often relies on unverifiable assumptions and therefore fails to explain performance in real-world settings. This dissertation provides methods and theoretical guarantees without such limitations across a wide range of statistical tasks, including inference, prediction, and decision making. We study these problems using minimax analysis, determining the best possible performance against worst-case data and distributions, where the notion of worst-case is problem-specific. The considerable flexibility of this approach facilitates, for example, characterizing statistical optimality separate from concrete algorithms, obtaining a precise, non-asymptotic dependence on all relevant features of various decision problems, and establishing results that apply in generality across modelling assumptions. The main contributions of this dissertation are (i) tight bounds on the minimax performance of contextual probabilistic forecasting without any assumptions; (ii) the minimax rates of conditional density estimation for all parametric and nonparametric classes with i.i.d. data; and (iii) the introduction of adaptivity to sequential experiments, including the first algorithm that adaptively exploits causal structure. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Norwood, Todd A | Rosella, Laura C. | Advanced Diagnostic Imaging and Differentiated Thyroid Cancer in Ontario: Detection, Incidence, Access, and Patient Outcomes | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2023-06 | Overdetection of thyroid cancer from increasing use of diagnostic imaging is a leading hypothesis to explain worldwide incidence rate increases in the context of low and relatively stable mortality rates. In this dissertation, I present three studies that investigate factors and outcomes related to use of advanced diagnostic imaging in the incidence of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC) in Ontario. In the first study, I classified pre-diagnostic pathways with advanced diagnostic imaging procedures as incidentally detected cases (IDCs) (otherwise non-incidentally detected, non-IDCs). I found that a up to 20% and 30% of female and male DTCs were IDCs, and that incidence rate ratios (IRR) for these cases (IRR, females: 3.45, 95% CI 3.00-3.96; males: 3.21, 95% CI 2.65-3.90) increased more rapidly than non-IDCs (IRR, females: 2.49, 95% CI 1.22-5.08; males: 2.38, 95% CI: 2.20-2.58) in the most recent period (2013-2017) compared to earliest (1998-2002). In the second study, I evaluated standardized imaging capacity and geographic access to imaging facilities associated with increasing incidence of IDCs. I found that CT and MRI imaging capacity were associated with higher odds of IDCs among males (odds ratio, OR: 1.26, 95% CI 1.01-1.57) and females (OR: 1.44, 95% CI 1.10-1.85), respectively. Drivetime (per 10 minutes) from patient residence to imaging facility was associated with higher odds of incidental detection of DTC outside rural areas (OR range: 1.06, 95% CI 1.02-1.12 in urban areas to 1.44, 95% CI 1.25-1.66 in large urban areas). In the third study, I used instrumental variable methods to compare five-year mortality and recurrence between IDCs and non-IDCs. While I did not identify a strong instrument—causing imprecise results—the findings show confounding by prognostic and clinical factors which are unavailable in the administrative data. Sensitivity analyses support the design and approach upon identification of a strong instrument. These findings show that use of advanced diagnostic imaging contributes to Ontario’s increases in DTC incidence. As use of advanced diagnostic imaging increases, incidence rates of patients with IDCs will continue increasing. Overall, these findings provide a foundation to conduct future epidemiological, clinical, and health services research of the burden of DTC in Ontario. | Ph.D. | female, invest, urban, rural | 5, 9, 11 |
| Forouzandeh Shahraki, Ramin | Baum-Snow, Nathaniel | Essays on Urban and Labor Economics | Management | 2023-06 | This thesis investigates the relationship between residential location choice and labor market outcomes. The decision to reside in a particular location is intertwined with labor market opportunities, which are crucial determinants for housing market outcomes. Conversely, any barrier to mobility due to housing policy or finance condition adversely affects workers’ careers, making any housing policy consequential for the labor market. Chapter 1 focuses on the labor market outcomes of negative equity homeowners who face geographical mobility barriers due to economy-wide factors. Using Census data in 2005-2010, the study estimates the mobility response and labor market outcomes of negative equity homeowners to the China trade shock and compares them to other homeowners. The analysis finds no significant difference between the two groups in terms of mobility, employment along intensive and extensive margin, and wages, suggesting that house lock-in effects did not significantly influence the pattern of wages and employment after the China shock. Chapter 2 delves into the mechanisms behind location choice decisions based on labor market prospects and examines the relative weight of spouse career prospects in the location decision of dual-earner, college-educated straight couples. The analysis finds that higher expected wages for husbands in a potential destination makes it more attractive for households, compared to the same increase in expected wages for wives, a gap which monotonically diminishes with age. Several hypotheses are explored, with the division of labor within the household being most consistent with the evidence. Also this difference cannot be interpreted as a difference in spouses’ bargaining power, as the estimated bargaining power from a model including home production shows almost no gender imbalance. Chapter 3 examines the popularity of rent stabilization, a widely advocated housing affordability policy despite its inefficiencies. Contrary to conventional belief, the study finds that the main benefit of rent regulation for tenants is not the protection it provides against higher rent increases over time. Instead, rent regulation is attractive mainly because it is associated with lower quality and less expensive units, which are in higher demand | Ph.D. | affordab, equity, gender, employment, labor, worker, wage, invest, trade, equit, urban, housing, production | 1, 10, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 12 |
| Law, Jaclyn Cheukwai | Watts, Tania H | Characterization of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 following Infection and Vaccination | Immunology | 2023-06 | The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to be a global health crisis. There is an urgent need to understand immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 to develop effective therapeutics and vaccine strategies for controlling infection. While antibodies prevent infection, T cells are critical for controlling and resolving infection. Memory T cell responses are necessary to limit re-infections. While there was a race to probe antibody responses after infection during the early stages of the pandemic, there was notable lack of focus on cellular immunity. This thesis sought to characterize the T cell memory response after SARS-CoV-2 infection and vaccination. In the weeks after symptom onset, I show that all study subjects develop SARS-CoV-2-specific CD4+ T cell responses. However, CD4+ T cells exhibited unusual cytokine profiles characterized by high IL-2 and reduced IFN-γ expression across two separate convalescent cohorts, especially when compared with responses against the more common influenza virus. I demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 T cell responses persist up to 9 months after symptom onset in most convalescent subjects, and that the atypical cytokine profile that was initially observed is maintained over time. With the advent of COVID-19 vaccines, it became crucial to examine vaccine immunogenicity in immunocompromised individuals who were overlooked during vaccine trials despite being more vulnerable to severe outcomes of COVID-19. Here, I followed a cohort of 124 patients with immune-mediated inflammatory diseases on various immunosuppressive therapies after successive mRNA vaccinations. In this study, I provide compelling evidence that these patients have diminished and less durable vaccine-induced antibody and T cell responses against SARS-CoV-2. In particular, patients on TNF inhibitor therapy exhibited lower levels of virus-specific antibody and decreased T cell responses compared to healthy controls, especially with respect to neutralization responses against variants of concern. Thus, vaccine strategies need to be optimized for this patient population. Altogether, the work in this thesis contributes to our current understanding of immune responses against SARS-CoV-2 by highlighting skewed antiviral T cell responses and reduced vaccine immunogenicity in immunocompromised individuals. | Ph.D. | global health, vaccine | 3 |
| Peel, John Kenneth | Sander, Beate||Keshavjee, Shaf | Evaluation of Cost-Effectiveness for Lung Transplant and Ex-Vivo Lung Perfusion | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2023-11 | Demand for lung transplantation exceeds the supply of suitable donor lungs. Ex-vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) is a technology that enables further objective evaluation of potentially-useable organs, as well as rehabilitation of “marginal-risk” donor lungs, outside the body prior to transplantation, which together may increase organ supply and overcome this bottleneck. However, the decision of whether to fund EVLP and integrate it into lung transplant programs must be supported by evidence that considers the clinical, economic, and humanistic consequences of the technology; for EVLP to justifiably receive healthcare resources, the costs, health outcomes, and incremental cost-utility of the technology must be determined. The goal of this thesis was to conduct an economic evaluation of lung transplantation with versus without EVLP at the largest lung transplant center in North America. Our first study determined the impact of EVLP on the cumulative and phase-specific hospital-perspective costs of lung transplantation in Ontario, Canada. This retrospective before-after cohort study presented a novel methodology for phase-based costing that uses multi-state survival regression to overcome the limitations of conventional costing methods. Study 2 evaluated the impact of EVLP on organ transplantation and patient outcomes, using linked health administrative data from the only adult lung transplantation centre in Ontario, Canada, and identified the health resource and clinical implications of having EVLP available. Study 3 involved a cost-utility analysis using an individual patient simulation. This study used input parameters from our antecedent studies to inform a decision-analytic model that estimates the number of transplants, cumulative lifetime costs, and projected health outcomes expressed as quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). Results from our observational studies suggest that the implementation of EVLP in the Toronto Lung Transplant Program at the University Health Network has been associated with improved accessibility to transplantation, improvements in several clinical outcomes, but no significant difference in phase-specific or cumulative costs. We found that having EVLP available should be considered cost- effective across a range of commonly accepted cost-effectiveness thresholds. Collectively, this thesis synthesized evidence that EVLP was economically justifiable at our centre; these findings may be used by clinicians, administrators, and other institutional stakeholders involved in resource allocation and funding decisions. | Ph.D. | healthcare, accessib, institut | 3, 11, 16 |
| Eskandarian, Ladan | Naguib, Hani | Development of Multi-functional Electroactive Fibers for Electrophysiological Application | Materials Science and Engineering | 2023-06 | Recent advances in telemedicine and personalized healthcare have motivated a wave of new developments in wearable technologies targeting continuous monitoring of biosignals. The common limitations of wearables for continuous monitoring are the durability, flexibility and breathability of their biopotential electrodes interfacing the body. Our studies tackle these challenges by proposing flexible, breathable, and washable dry textile electrodes made of electroactive fibers. In this thesis, we developed conductive elastomeric filament (CEF) fibers through melt spinning. Using an industrial scale knitting machine, CEF fibers were directly knitted into dry textile electrodes. Underwear and headband garments with integrated textile electrodes were knitted and electrocardiograms (ECGs) were acquired using the underwear garment and electrooculograms (EOGs) were acquired using the headband. ECG and EOG recordings with textile electrodes were found to have comparable fidelity to that of the gold standard gel electrodes. CEF electrodes were continued to acquire high-fidelity ECGs and EOGs after 30 wash and dry cycles. Smart underwear garments were also used to perform continuous ECG measurements in 5 participants over 24-hour of unrestricted daily activities. Results demonstrated the success of these garments in performing high fidelity continuous ECG monitoring. We also developed novel multifunctional electroactive fibers with various cross-sectional geometries for electrophysiological applications. Different fiber materials with cross-sectional geometry of round, ribbon, and trilobal were coated using poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) biocompatible conductive ink through a continuous roll-to-roll coating technique. Physico-chemical interactions between the fiber substrates and PEDOT:PSS ink were calculated based on the Owens, Wendt, Rabel and Kaelble (OWRK) method. Coated fibers were knitted into 3D textile electrodes using an industrial knitting machine. The electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, skin-electrode impedance, and ECG signals of the knitted electrodes after repetitive wash cycles were used as criteria to study the electrode’s performance for biomedical applications. The results showed that factors such as capillary force, cross-section of the filaments, and type of polymer materials affect the adhesion properties of the conductive ink to the fiber substrates. Collectively, the results of our studies present novel dry textile electrodes as a promising scalable solution to the challenges of wearable technologies for long-term continuous electrophysiological monitoring applications. | Ph.D. | healthcare | 3 |
| Boyes, William | Wheelahan, Leesa | Sounding the Alarm: An Exploration of Professionalization within the Ontario Fire Service Focused on the Issues, Challenges, Pressures, and Opportunities for Transforming a Lauded Public Sector Institution | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | The fire service is highly regarded by the community and is routinely recognized as a highly trusted occupation. The demands placed on the fire service have grown substantially in recent years due to neoliberal pressures, growing fiscal costs, accountability pressures, an expanding emergency response mandate, and the acquisition of additional non-emergency roles. This thesis explores the extent to which these changes are resulting in the professionalization of the Ontario fire service. It employs historical and sociological institutionalism to examine the Ontario fire service as an institution to understand factors influencing its behaviour and shaping its change mechanisms. It uses related theoretical concepts of institutional agency, path dependence, endogenous and exogenous variables, rule makers versus rule takers, and institutional isomorphism to provide insight on how institutional change occurs or does not occur. This study comprised twenty-four interviews with leaders from Ontario and international fire services, the Ontario police and paramedic services, senior municipal officials, labour relations experts and higher education professors. The findings of this study suggest that the Ontario fire service may be approaching a critical juncture whereby it is forced to adapt to neoliberal pressures and pressures for occupational change to remain effective and become more professionalized, despite its entrenched nature as a long-standing hierarchically structured but non-professionalized institution. These pressures combined with growing calls for change are challenging the ingrained status quo. This study contributes to the literature on institutionalism and the professions through its exploration of an understudied institution. While the focus is the Ontario fire service, the findings may have implications for other fire services and similar institutions. It finds tensions between pressures for professionalization on the one hand, and neoliberal fiscal pressures on the other. These complexities contribute to firefighters embodying a quasi-professional status that gains legitimacy from the ‘heroic work’ it undertakes rather than by qualifications or credentials. Furthermore, the post-pandemic workplace and a newer generation of workers are producing institutional pressures that can potentially shift the entrenched fire service. This research sheds light on the Ontario fire service through an academic lens and reveals a complex institution facing a challenging trajectory. | Ph.D. | labour, worker, institut | 8, 16 |
| Gregor, Alexander Tomas Adler | Yasufuku, Kazuhiro | Novel Approaches for Preclinical Lung Sentinel Lymph Node Mapping | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Sentinel lymph node mapping is a technique to identify the first draining lymph node of a solid organ cancer. This node theoretically represents the first potential site of cancer spread, and therefore should be prioritized for biopsy and thorough pathological evaluation. Despite successful adoption of sentinel lymph node mapping as standard-of-care for diseases like breast cancer and cutaneous melanoma, reliable performance for other cancers has proven more elusive. This includes lung cancer, which represents a leading cause of cancer death globally. Proponents of lung sentinel lymph node mapping note its potential utility for guiding therapeutic decision-making and prognostication. Yet prior attempts at lung sentinel lymph node mapping have been complicated by poor performance or technical complexity, even with techniques previously successful in other cancers or preclinical studies. Such failure may reflect a disconnect between prior preclinical research and the anatomic considerations of lung cancer. To that end, a series of experiments were conducted to lay the foundation for future success in lung sentinel lymph node mapping. First, we characterized the performance of dual-modality mixtures of water-soluble computed tomography contrast and near-infrared fluorescent indocyanine green. We found such mixtures preserve the radiopacity of the computed tomography contrast solvent while enhancing the fluorescence of the indocyanine green solute. Second, we leveraged the capabilities of these mixtures for a novel application of lung sentinel lymph node mapping: endoscopic nodal staging, which better reflects the unique anatomic configuration of the intrathoracic lymph nodes. We demonstrated that this novel technique was feasible in healthy pigs, while also identifying key considerations for clinical translation. Finally, we characterized a nodal metastasis model to facilitate more meaningful, future evaluation of lung sentinel lymph node mapping techniques. We demonstrated that this rabbit model formed nodal metastases even with isolated peripheral tumors, mirroring a pattern of disease that would meet the indications for lung sentinel lymph node mapping as currently conceived. The cumulative result of these investigations provides a path to re-explore the potential role of lung sentinel lymph node mapping. | Ph.D. | water, invest | 6, 9 |
| Emara, Salma | Li, Baochun | Sequential Decision-Making in Networking Algorithms using Deep Reinforcement Learning | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | Networking algorithms perform sequential decision-making on the Internet, where they take decisions, e.g., on when to transmit a packet. Traditional networking algorithms use fixed mappings between network-level events and control responses, which may result in inefficient usage of network resources in some network environments. The main issue with existing networking algorithms is the lack of generalization to diverse network environments. This results in poor performance in a wide variety of network environments. This dissertation proposes new techniques in reinforcement learning (RL) to solve the lack of generalization issue. We propose new RL techniques and study them in congestion control, network adaptive coding, and adaptive bitrate selection. First, we present Pareto, a congestion control algorithm fueled by deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Different from existing RL-based congestion control algorithms, Pareto uses expert demonstrations, a new staged training process, multi-agent RL fairness training framework, and online adaptation to new environments. All of these techniques enable Pareto to perform well in a wide variety of environments in terms of high throughput, low latency, low loss rate and fairness to competing flows. In network adaptive coding, we propose Ivory, a new DRL-based network adaptive coding algorithm that utilizes an existing low-latency forward error correction (FEC) scheme. Ivory chooses better coding parameters to ensure a low loss rate and latency while having lower coding overhead compared to the state-of-the-art. Lower coding overhead makes Ivory a better fit for limited bandwidth networks. Since interactions with the environment are costly in online RL, we propose Lethe, a new online RL approach to quickly acquire new knowledge by biasing against old interfering knowledge. In Lethe, we solve issues resulting from interference between knowledge acquired in different time slots. On a different note, in federated learning (FL), interference occurs when the server simultaneously accumulates models from clients with interfering objectives. To avoid inter-client interference, we propose Cascade, a curriculum-federated RL framework. Cascade is tested by training an adaptive bitrate selection algorithm, and it achieves a better asymptotic behavior with fairer knowledge accumulation as compared to other FL algorithms. This results in a better performance over diverse network environments. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, internet | 4, 9 |
| Dadouch, Rachel | Parsons, Janet||D'Souza, Rohan D | Where is Communication Breaking Down? Narrative Tensions in Obesity-in-Pregnancy Clinical Encounters | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Clinical encounters in the context of obesity in pregnancy can be complex to navigate. The biomedical literature on obesity in pregnancy focuses on numerous adverse outcomes that these patients are at an increased risk of, and the associated procedural difficulties. In contrast, the literature on patients’ lived experiences characterizes obesity in pregnancy as challenging due to stigma, and feel weight is overemphasized. To date, studies lack an exploration of stories of both patients and healthcare providers (HCPs) in tandem, as they relate to these clinical encounters. The objective of the study was to understand the communication challenges within obesity-in-pregnancy clinical encounters. I conducted in-depth, semi-structured narrative interviews with 16 patients and 19 HCPs. Stigma theory informed this work, along with Goffman’s dramaturgical approach, which allowed for an exploration of how participants portrayed their identities when describing these encounters and communication. In my analysis of their accounts, I identified five narrative tensions that contributed to communication challenges. The first three tensions related to obesity: 1) obesity is only seen as a detriment to health versus acceptance of obesity; 2) obesity is a result of personal choice versus a result of uncontrollable circumstances; and 3) a regular pregnancy versus a high-risk diagnosis. The fourth and fifth tensions related to characterizations of the obesity-in-pregnancy clinical encounter and the communication therein: 4) a typical and problem-free clinical encounter versus a tremendously difficult clinical encounter; and 5) talking openly about BMI and related co-morbidities versus sidestepping the topic. How participants positioned themselves relative to prevailing societal discourse regarding obesity and being a ‘good’ HCP/patient influenced these tensions. These narrative tensions revealed specific areas where communication is vulnerable to breaking down. They also illuminated the experiences of both HCPs and patients (and the meaning they ascribe), as well as the complexities in this interactive space. This research has important implications for improving clinical practice and education. Beyond the implications in the realm of obesity in pregnancy, this approach and these findings may be applicable to other obesity contexts, to improve clinical encounters for people of larger body sizes. | Ph.D. | healthcare | 3 |
| Horne, Rebecca Marie | Impett, Emily A | Navigating Conflicts of Interest and Psychological Need Satisfaction in Romantic Relationships | Psychology | 2023-06 | In four experiments (Studies 1-4; combined N=2,088) and a twice-weekly diary study (Study 5; N=252) with partnered individuals, I investigated how resolving conflicts of interest with a romantic partner—situations in which partners’ interests are misaligned—affects psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In Studies 1-4, participants imagined or recalled resolving a conflict of interest with a partner through making or receiving a sacrifice (Studies 1-4), compromising (Studies 2-4), or going separate ways and pursuing interests independently (Studies 3-4). In Study 5, participants completed twice-weekly surveys for one month about their daily conflicts of interest and needs. In Studies 4 and 5, I also explored goal-, power-, compatibility-, and self-clarity-related mechanisms through which conflict resolutions impact needs, as well as contextual and sociodemographic moderators to determine when or for whom resolutions are more or less costly. Three core findings emerged. First, resolving conflicts of interest consistently predicted need satisfaction: self-sacrifice undermined autonomy, self- and partner sacrifice undermined competence, and self-sacrifice and separate ways undermined relatedness. Second, goal obstruction and feeling a shared reality with a partner explained links among nearly all resolutions and needs. Some mechanisms more robustly predicted specific needs (e.g., relationship inequity and autonomy; personal-relational balance and competence; matching values, relationship closeness, and relatedness) and uniquely explained links among self-sacrifice and needs (i.e., self-concept clarity, relationship power, preference communication clarity). Third, severe conflicts of interest made self-sacrifice more detrimental—but partner sacrifice more beneficial—for autonomy and relatedness (Studies 4-5), as well as made compromising more beneficial for relatedness (Study 4 only). In Study 4, when people had a strong preference during a conflict, self-sacrifice was more detrimental for all needs, but preference strength attenuated the negative impact of partner sacrifice on competence. In Study 5, self-sacrifice undermined relatedness more strongly for women and undermined autonomy more strongly for women and people from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds. Overall, self-sacrifice seems to be destructive for people’s psychological needs through multiple mechanisms—especially during high-stakes conflicts and for women and lower SES individuals—and alternative resolution strategies (e.g., compromising, going separate ways) may better protect couple’s needs. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, equity, women, invest, equit | 1, 4, 5, 9, 10 |
| Cowling, Dawn | Schneider, Marg | A Quantitative Study of Occupational Stress in Animal Shelter Workers | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | Animal shelter workers are a unique cohort of care workers who have been shown to have high levels of burnout, compassion fatigue, and occupational stress. The full extent of the burden of this type of work is still being discovered. We deployed an online survey (n = 113) which included a novel occupational stress questionnaire and established mental health measures to evaluate levels of compassion fatigue, potential for moral injury, anxiety, and depression in animal shelter workers. Specific variables of interest were type of worker (full/part- time/volunteer), reason for euthanasia (medical vs. non-medical), and level of training. Results reveal only a small percentage of shelters did not practice any form of euthanasia (9%). Overall, respondents exceeded normative levels of burnout, compassion fatigue/secondary trauma, depression, and anxiety. Shelter work was shown to place respondents at a higher-than-average risk of moral injury, which was found to be significantly correlated with depression, anxiety, and compassion fatigue, and inversely related to optimism. Moral injury was higher for shelter workers whose work included euthanasia for non-medical reasons. Euthanasia for non-medical reasons and having formal animal care training, however, were not associated with significant increases in depression, compassion fatigue, or optimism. Full-time workers were found to have significantly higher levels of anxiety, depression, and risk of moral injury than part-time workers and volunteers. A factor analysis of the 43 workplace stressors included in the novel occupational stressor questionnaire revealed four distinct dimensions: 1) involvement in policy and decision-making, 2) public perceptions and stigma, 3) staff and the environment, and 4) job rigidity and social support. Of these scales, job rigidity and social support were found to have the greatest impact on burnout, depression, anxiety, optimism, and compassion fatigue/secondary trauma. Involvement in policy and decision-making had the greatest impact on moral injury. It is clear from our findings that the mental health burden of caring for shelter animals is great. Our findings add four distinct areas of focus that policy and decision-makers may consider to improve the wellbeing of animal shelter workers. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, mental health, worker, animal | 3, 8, 14, 15 |
| Leivesley, Jessica Alice | Rollinson, Njal | Evolution and Ecological Consequences of Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination in Long-Lived Reptiles | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | Temperature exerts strong and pervasive effects on reptile development, resulting in lasting phenotypic impacts and consequences for individual fitness. An interesting example of pervasive effects of early-life temperature is in temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), whereby incubation temperature irreversibly determines an individual’s sex. TSD has been described in 137 reptile species, but we have no taxonomically widespread explanation for its adaptive significance. Nor do we understand how TSD may have persisted through climatic upheaval in deep time. My thesis addresses both key questions.The adaptive significance of TSD is likely rooted in the Charnov-Bull model, which states that TSD is adaptive if the ratio of male to female fitness varies with temperature. This model predicts a sex-by-temperature interaction on offspring fitness, but given the diversity of reptile natural histories, it is not clear how this interaction could manifest in a manner that is taxonomically widespread. I test three hypotheses for the driver underlying this interaction: 1) immune system strength; 2) an extension of the Trivers-Willard hypothesis (males should be produced in high-quality environments as their fitness is strongly dependent on condition); 3) the Survival to Maturity hypothesis (sex differences in age at maturity compound survival differences resulting from incubation temperatures). I find that the Survival to Maturity hypothesis is consistent with the results of my thesis. Given that sex is determined by temperature, widespread feminization of populations is predicted under climate change. However, our knowledge of how climate change will affect species with TSD is limited to species with MF TSD (males produced at cool temperatures and females at warm temperatures). To address this gap, I investigate long-term trends in primary sex ratios of snapping turtles (Chelydra serpentina), an FMF TSD species. Despite documented warming, the sex ratio remained unchanged over 21 years in Algonquin Park, Canada. I attribute this resilience to remarkable intra-annual variation in sex ratio which is, in turn, related to individual-level attributes of nests that affect development temperature. My thesis provides further direction for tests into the adaptive significance of TSD and suggests that aspects of TSD and species biology contribute to resilience to climate change. | Ph.D. | knowledge, female, invest, resilien, climate, resilience, species, ecolog | 4, 5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 14 |
| Maric, Filip | Kelly, Jonathan||Petrovic, Ivan | A Geometric Approach for Generating Feasible Configurations of Robotic Manipulators | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2023-06 | Most robotic manipulators, and especially those designed with autonomous operation in mind, consist of a series of joints that rotate about a single axis, also known as revolute joints. These mechanisms give robotic manipulators the degrees of freedom and versatility similar to that of the human arm, which they are designed to outperform. However, this results in a geometry of motion or kinematics that makes all aspects of robotic manipulation challenging from a computational perspective. A major part of this challenge lies in the fact that computing joint configurations adhering to a specific set of constraints (i.e., gripper pose) is a non-trivial problem. The procedure of finding feasible joint configurations and the mathematical problem associated with it are known as inverse kinematics - a core part of motion planning, trajectory optimization, calibration and other important challenges in successfully performing robotic manipulation. In recent years, the overall decrease of computation time required to perceive and process environmental and proprioceptive information has helped realize the potential of robotic manipulation in dynamic environments. Concurrently, a new standard in manipulator design has emerged, where additional degrees of freedom are added in order to increase their overall dexterity and capacity for motion. These two developments have vastly increased the requirements for inverse kinematics algorithms, which are now expected to deal with infinite solution spaces and difficult, nonlinear constraints. On the other hand, the addition of degrees of freedom in recent robot designs has enabled algorithms to search for locally optimal configurations with respect to some performance criteria in an infinitely large solution space. This property has motivated approaches that leverage non-Euclidean geometries to replace conventional constraints and optimization criteria, thereby overcoming computational bottlenecks and common failure modes. The contributions presented in this thesis propose three such approaches, that aim to develop new ways of looking at the problems associated with inverse kinematics through the use of geometric representations that are not widely utilized in robotic manipulation. | Ph.D. | environmental | 13 |
| Jaffer, Shehbaz | Schroeder, Bianca | Improving Reliability and Performance of Storage Stacks on next generation Solid State Drives | Computer Science | 2023-06 | Solid State Drives (SSDs) are increasingly replacing HDDs as the primary source of persistent storage medium in both data centers and personal storage devices. SSDs offer higher performance and consume less power. They also bring two challenges in the storage space: First, SSDs have different reliability characteristics than HDDs. However, the impact of various SSD-based errors on the overlying software stack is not well known. Furthermore, as the demand for high-capacity SSDs increases, more bits are stored within the same voltage range of the underlying SSD medium. Second, with the end of Moore’s law, there is increased emphasis on disaggregated computing where data-intensive computation takes place on a processor within the device. Applications can offload computation from the host to the device, save host CPU cycles, lower host-to-device latency, and reduce bandwidth utilization. However, such devices are expensive, hard to program, and may not be suitable for all application computation offloads. We address these reliability and performance challenges for SSDs as follows: First, we evaluate file system reliability in the presence of SSD errors. We notice that real-world file systems often make performance assumptions for SSDs that impact their reliability. We find that real-world file systems incur severe failures, such as unmountable drives in 16% of our extensive test suite emulating 7000 SSD-based errors. Second, we invent a novel voltage-based Write Once Memory (WOM-v) coding scheme that reduces the number of erase operations that take place on every overwrite to the SSD. We show that for QLC SSD, the number of erase operations can be reduced from 4.4x to 11.1x for real-world workloads. Third, we build Nescafe, a computational storage framework to evaluate performance gains of offloading computational tasks to an emulated near storage device. We show that real-world, compute-intensive applications like zlib compression, jbd2 checksum computation, and LSM Tree compaction are easy to offload to a computational device using our framework. We show that Nescafe is generic and simple to extend to different types of block, stream, and application-based workloads. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Hendrikse, Liam Doherty | Taylor, Michael D | Integrative Genomics of Human Cerebellar Development and Group 3/4 Medulloblastoma | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Medulloblastoma (MB) comprises a group of heterogeneous pediatric neuronal neoplasms of the hindbrain with strong links to early development of the hindbrain. While Sonic Hedgehog MB arises in the upper rhombic lip (RL) granule cell lineage due to mutations that activate Shh signaling, and WNT MB arises in the lower RL due to mutations activating WNT signaling, little is known about the more common Group 4 (G4) MB, thought to arise in the unipolar brush cell (UBC) lineage. We demonstrate that somatic mutations in G4 MB converge on the Core Binding Factor Alpha (CBFA) complex, observing mutually exclusive alterations affecting CBFA2T2, CBFA2T3, PRDM6, KDM6A, and OTX2. CBFA2T2 is expressed early in the progenitor cells of the Homo sapiens cerebellar RL subventricular zone (RLSVZ), and G4 MB transcriptionally resemble these RLSVZ progenitors but are stalled in developmental time. Knockdown of OTX2 in model systems relieves this differentiation blockade, allowing MB cells to spontaneously proceed along normal developmental differentiation trajectories. The unique nature of the split human RL, destined to generate the majority of the neurons in the human brain, with its high level of susceptible EOMES+ KI67+ UBC progenitor cells, likely predisposes our species to the development of G4 MB. | Ph.D. | species | 14, 15 |
| Greiner, Ariel | Krkošek, Martin||Fortin, Marie-Josée | Consequences of Multiple Stability and Connectivity on Coral Reef Ecosystem Dynamics | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | Coral larval dispersal networks are changing due to multiple anthropogenic stressors that are destroying coral habitat and shifting reefs from coral-dominated to macroalgal-dominated states that support smaller fish communities. However, it is unclear whether these connectivity changes could themselves propagate or contain shifts to macroalgal-dominated states. My research investigates how the combined effects of connectivity and local multiple stability affect coral persistence with the goal of informing conservation decisions. In Chapter 2, I explore how plausible scenarios of climate-change-induced loss could change coral larval dispersal networks and their reseeding potential. I find that these scenarios of loss (yielding the same number of reefs) lead to vastly different global reef networks, from which full reseeding is impossible. In Chapter 3, I develop a two-reef mathematical model and determine that two connected reefs may exhibit a novel third, mixed coral-macroalgal stable state at low dispersal. Furthermore, I find that high- and low-grazing reefs have stable coral-dominated and macroalgal-dominated states if connected by high dispersal to a low or high-grazing reef (respectively). In Chapter 4, I extend this two-reef model to a model of 75 Fijian reefs to determine the interplay among connectivity, local multiple stability, and management strategies in larger networks across three grazing scenarios spanning the stability regimes elucidated in Chapter 3. I find that increasing the grazing rate of a few reefs leads to higher overall coral cover in the entire network, even in reefs with low grazing rates. I also find evidence that a combined strategy of increasing the water quality and increasing a few reefs’ grazing rates is more effective than either strategy in isolation, across all grazing scenarios. Overall, my research increases our general understanding of how ecosystems with multiple stable states respond to connectivity changes, stresses the importance of collecting connectivity and grazing rate data for coral reefs and pioneers novel methods for informing reef management design. Specifically, my thesis stresses the importance of connectivity and local stability dynamics to coral reef management by showing that natural larval dispersal can tip connected reefs to higher coral states but is not sufficient to restore coral habitat worldwide. | Ph.D. | water, invest, climate, anthropogenic, conserv, fish, coral, ecosystem | 6, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Riley Case, Sarah Annabella | Brunnée, Jutta | Climate Change, Anticolonial International Law, and the Universality of the Commons | Law | 2023-06 | This thesis presents three historical accounts of what happened when people from the Caribbean, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia proposed to address climate change through universal forms of law that would equitably distribute responsibilities among richer states and poorer racialized peoples of the world. In each case, lawyers, government officials, and scholars across these regions of the Third World argued that international law could only prevent further climate change, and redress associated harms, if it were to treat the problem as a colonial legacy. Their proposals turned to redistribution, as a result, inspired by decolonization movements from the 1950s to the 1980s. As such, the thesis argues that Third World advocates sought to advance anticolonial forms of international law on climate change, characterized by universal redistribution – the redistribution of wealth, of decisional authority, and of ecological meaning-making on a global scale. They did so, the thesis argues, to counter liberal forms of international law that supported imperialism historically and that Third World advocates have associated with ongoing Northern hegemony. Yet the thesis also shows that anticolonial proposals for international law on climate change have been coopted, amended, or deferred for the very forms of liberal international law that Third World peoples sought to overcome. The thesis critiques ensuing liberal approaches for delaying concerted action on climate change with significant consequences, first and foremost, for racialized peoples of formerly and still colonized territories. To trace this oscillation between anticolonial and liberal forms of international law, the thesis focuses on discursive and practical evocations of the ‘common concern of humankind’ principle. The thesis shows how this principle – or its basic meaning of shared responsibility and cooperation – has been used for hegemonic and counter-hegemonic purposes across three histories addressing, inter alia, the origins of international law on climate change, financial transfers from the Global North to the Global South, and redress for loss and damage. The thesis concludes by suggesting the ‘common concern of humankind’ principle still has emancipatory potential that may contribute to pressing discussions about reparations and how to move the world away from exploitative ways of living. | S.J.D. | anticolonial, equit, decolonization, climate, loss and damage, ecolog | 4, 10, 13, 15 |
| Dimakos, Christina | Watson, Jeanne | Therapist Responsiveness in Couples Therapy: Perceptions of Male and Female Partners | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | Responsiveness refers to the ability of the therapist to understand a client’s concerns and convey this understanding through a thoughtfully selected intervention, treatment, or other action. Although a sizeable literature on individual therapist responsiveness exists, a complementary framework to guide responsiveness in couples therapy is absent. This is surprising given that responsiveness becomes appreciably more complex when the therapist must attend to the moment-to-moment needs of both partners and tailor interventions to fit the needs of each individual as well as the couple. The present study sought to understand how individual partners experience therapist responsiveness in the context of couples therapy. One-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight individuals from four partnerships currently in couples therapy. Transcripts were coded and analyzed following constructivist grounded theory. A hierarchical model of the experience of therapist responsiveness in couples therapy emerged and subsumed a number of categories. Clear differences between male and female partners were inconclusive. By extrapolating principles from this model, a theory was proposed that identifies factors and processes that contribute to the experience of therapist responsiveness in couples therapy. Limitation and directions for future research are presented. | Ed.D. | ABS, female | 2, 5 |
| Aleong, Amanda | Weersink, Robert | A Machine Learning Approach to Real-time MRI Guidance for Robotic Needle-Based Procedures | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-06 | Needle-based interventions such as biopsy and brachytherapy play a vital role in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Notably, prostate procedures are particularly challenging as they require the insertion of multiple long, flexible needles to access deep-seated targets. Several robotic systems have been developed to aid needle insertion under intermittent MRI-guidance. To realize the full potential of image-guided robotics, there is a need to integrate with real-time imaging for feedback during insertion.This work describes a novel data-driven approach to the integration of real-time imaging for the guidance of multi-needle robotic interventions. Three critical steps in realizing this approach were developed and demonstrated: i) rapid needle segmentation in MR images, ii) a robotic multi-needle insertion strategy and iii) real-time adjustment of MRI scan plane parameters based on image-input. Rapid, automatic segmentation of multiple needles in multi-slice MR image volumes was achieved using a convolutional neural network. The network achieves a 95% detection rate in a test set at a rate of 0.89s/image volume with shaft errors <1mm and tip errors <2.5mm for over 90% of the needles. Next, a robot was designed for the sequential insertion of multiple non-parallel needles. The kinematics, accuracy, and compatibility with real-time MRI were characterized. Finally, needle tracking was achieved using remote scan control to dynamically update the scan plane of a real-time single-slice MR sequence and the automatic needle segmentation algorithm to evaluate the alignment of the scan plane to the needle. A scan plane was purposefully misaligned and allowed to automatically search for a needle in a gelatin phantom. The algorithm achieved a localization accuracy of 2.9±1.8mm in 6.88s compared to 2.1±1.2mm in 39.13s for manual localization using interactive scan plane manipulation with a refresh rate of 0.89s. Overall, this work demonstrated that using rapid needle segmentation and automated scan control, real-time MRI may be used as a tool to track needle insertion for robot-driven multi-needle procedures. To advance the automated image-guided robot-driven platform through the regulatory process and obtain approval for its use in humans, future work employing this system should focus on proving the clinical benefit and safety of the system. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Gong, Zhe | Trescases, Olivier | Increasing the Pack Energy Throughput in Electric Vehicles with Impedance-Based Battery Management | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | Between 2010 and 2021, the global stock of Battery Electric Vehicles grew from 17,000 units to over 10 million. Innovations in Lithium-ion batteries have been the key technological driver of the fast-paced EV growth. As the physical performance limits of Lithium-ion batteries reach a saturation point, the value of system-level battery pack performance improvements is increasing. Battery systems must be designed to utilise as much of the available energy storage and power delivery capacity of cells as possible, without sacrificing safety and reliability. The focus of this thesis is on first identifying the impact of battery cell capacity/resistance imbalance, and inaccurate battery state estimation, on the usable pack energy. This is done by quantifying the single-cycle and cumulative discharge energy metrics, which capture the work done by the EV battery system. It is found that significant cumulative performance loss is experienced under cell imbalance and state estimation inaccuracy. Solutions are then proposed to alleviate the virtual loss of battery performance:\begin{enumerate} \item A new balancing control algorithm is presented, which utilises a Linearised Equivalent Circuit Model (L-ECM) to capture the capacity and resistance equalisation effect of active balancing systems. The L-ECM control is shown to provide up to 47\% cumulative energy improvement, compared to a time-to-balance SOC equalisation scheme. \item In-situ Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) architectures are developed and demonstrated experimentally. It is found that performing vehicle-level EIS through the dc charging port captures the high-voltage power electronics impedance, in addition to the battery pack impedance. The feasibility of sub-module-level impedance measurement with a pack-level current perturbation is also demonstrated. \item Battery Equivalent Circuit Model (ECM) extraction techniques are evaluated based on their accuracy in the presence of noisy impedance phasor measurements. A total of 53 ECMs for 20 battery sub-modules are extracted from an experimental in-situ EIS setup across temperatures ranging from 15$^\circ$C to 35$^\circ$C. Approximately 8-11\% improvement in the state-of-power estimation accuracy is identified through a model prediction accuracy analysis. \end{enumerate} | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Chung Siong Fah, Christina Newk-Tchin | Havercroft, Barbara | Configurations du sujet lesbien chez Colette, Violette Leduc, Jovette Marchessault et Anne Archet | French Language and Literature | 2023-06 | Cette thèse a pour but d’examiner les représentations des identités et des sexualités lesbiennes dans les textes contemporains français et québécois. Elle montre comment les autrices de notre corpus reproduisent ou contestent les représentations dominantes de leur époque. Nous adoptons des perspectives féministes et queers afin de mieux cerner la construction des identités de genre et les sexualités multiples des personnages lesbiens. Le premier chapitre, de nature théorique, expose les recherches tant en sexologie (Krafft-Ebing, Ellis) et en psychanalyse (Freud) qu’en études féministes (Irigaray, de Beauvoir, Wittig, Rich), queers (Sedgwick, Jagose, Halberstam) et de genre (de Lauretis, Butler, Bourcier). Ce chapitre nous sert d’appui aux quatre chapitres suivants dans lesquels nous analysons Le Pur et l’impur de Colette, Thérèse et Isabelle de Violette Leduc, Tryptique lesbien (« Chronique lesbienne du moyen-âge québécois ») de Jovette Marchessault et Le Carnet écarlate d’Anne Archet. Notre étude du texte de Colette explore le rapport ambigu qu’entretient la narratrice avec des travesties, des androgynes, des hermaphrodites, des lesbiennes aristocrates et le personnage de Renée, l’une des lesbiennes les plus connues à la Belle Époque. Au sein du troisième chapitre, on a une représentation plus positive de la sexualité lesbienne. Violette Leduc renouvelle l’expression du désir et du plaisir lesbien en utilisant un langage métaphorique et poétique. Le récit de Jovette Marchessault nous intéresse pour la valeur politique qu’elle attribue à l’identité lesbienne. Dans son oeuvre, la lesbienne symbolise la résistance contre les institutions hétéropatriarcales. Enfin, notre étude du Carnet écarlate met en lumière les nouveaux traits qui définissent la littérature érotique lesbienne, tels que la représentation des pratiques sexuelles non normatives et celle des relations polyamoureuses. Au fil de ces analyses, nous souhaitons donner une meilleure visibilité à la multiplicité des identités lesbiennes. This thesis aims to examine the representations of lesbian identities and sexualities in contemporary French and Quebecois texts written by women authors. It shows how the authors of our corpus reproduce or contest the dominant representations of their time. In order to better understand the construction of gender identities and the diverse sexualities of lesbian characters, we adopt feminist and queer perspectives. The first chapter presents theories gathered from different fields such as sexology (Krafft-Ebing, Ellis), psychoanalysis (Freud), feminist studies (Irigaray, de Beauvoir, Wittig, Rich), gender studies (de Lauretis, Butler, Bourcier) and queer studies (Sedgwick, Jagose, Halberstam). This theoretical chapter serves as support for the four following chapters in which we analyze Le Pur et l’impur by Colette, Thérèse et Isabelle by Violette Leduc, Tryptique lesbien (« Chronique lesbienne du moyen-âge québécois ») by Jovette Marchessault, and Le Carnet écarlate by Anne Archet. Our study of Colette’s text explores the narrator’s ambiguous relationship with transvestites, androgynes, hermaphrodites, aristocratic lesbians, and the character Renée, one of the most famous lesbians of the Belle Époque. In the third chapter, we have a more positive representation of lesbian sexuality. Violette Leduc renews the expression of desire and lesbian pleasure by using a metaphorical and poetic language. Jovette Marchessault’s text is interesting for the political value that she attributes to lesbian identity. In her work, lesbians symbolize the resistance against heteropatriarchal institutions. Finally, our study of Le Carnet écarlate sheds light on the new traits that define lesbian erotic literature, such as the representation of nonnormative sexual practices and of polyamorous relationships. Through these analyses, we hope to give better visibility to the multiplicity of lesbian identities. | Ph.D. | gender, women, queer, feminis, reuse, institut | 5, 12, 16 |
| Manson, Michaela Estelle Rae | Ainslie, Donald | Mind and Prejudice: Cognitive Improvement in the Philosophies of René Descartes and Mary Astell | Philosophy | 2023-06 | This dissertation examines the philosophies of René Descartes and Mary Astell with the aim of answering the question: what makes cognitive improvement possible? Both Astell and Descartes acknowledge prejudice as a significant barrier to cognitive improvement such that the possibility of cognitive improvement depends in part on routing such prejudices and their effects. However, for Descartes, part of what explains the challenge presented by prejudices also explains the possibility of cognitive improvement: humans are susceptible to habituation. In chapter one, I argue that Descartes should be read as appropriating a scholastic notion of habitus in accounting for both the challenge of prejudice as well as the goal of cognitive improvement, namely, better cognitive habits. Yet, merely being susceptible to habituation cannot fully explain cognitive improvement. In chapter two, I argue that another significant feature of Descartes’s account of cognitive improvement is what I call Rational Self-Confidence: a subject’s confidence in their ability to use and improve the cognitive capacities. Still, recognizing the importance of rational self-confidence for cognitive improvement suggests another barrier to such projects: not all subjects possess this confidence. In chapter three, I argue that Astell recognizes how a peculiar prejudice, what I call the Women’s Defective Will Prejudice [WDWP], can undermine the rational self-confidence of women especially – those cognitive subjects that most concern Astell. The effect of this prejudice on a subject’s rational self-confidence leads to what I call the Astellian Circle: the apparent truth of the WDWP can undermine a subject’s rational self-confidence and inhibit subjects from pursuing activities that would cultivate their cognitive capacities, thus further reinforcing the apparent truth of the WDWP and so on in circulo. Significantly, a subject caught in this circle is unlikely to engage in projects of cognitive improvement. Accordingly, chapter four argues that Astell’s account of cognitive improvement addresses precisely the influence and effects of the WDWP and the Astellian Circle. In particular, I contend that Astell’s social solutions stand to promote a subject’s rational self-confidence, thus supporting their engagement in projects of cognitive improvement. By recognizing and addressing a more preclusive barrier to cognitive improvement, Astell develops an account of cognitive improvement that expands the pool of potential subjects that could succeed in such projects. | Ph.D. | knowledge, women, cities, judic | 4, 5, 11, 16 |
| Schollen, Laurel Michele | Wheelahan, Leesa | Third-party Arrangements between Private and Public Colleges in Ontario: Benefits, Threats, Implications for Policy | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | Ontario’s Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) were established more than 50 years ago as an alternative public postsecondary choice for students to provide vocational education programs grounded in general education. The CAAT system was positioned as a public good, envisioned to serve individuals and society. In the past 20 years, governments have implemented neoliberal policies requiring CAATs to be more entrepreneurial, efficient, and fiscally sustainable amid declining funding and domestic enrolment, and increased regulation. These pressures, coupled with burgeoning demand from international students motivated to study in and immigrate to Canada, led some colleges to enter third-party arrangements (TPAs) with for-profit private career colleges (PCCs). The PCC partner delivers the public college curriculum to international students at the PCC campus, located in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA), who earn their credentials from the public college. This research study examined the development, growth and impact of TPAs between 2005 and 2019, using an exploratory, descriptive, qualitative research design to understand the factors that led to the TPAs, their impact on public colleges and the implications of these arrangements on the future of Ontario’s public college system. Two overarching theoretical frameworks grounded the research: historical institutionalism (Streeck & Thelen, 2005) and Principal-Agent Theory (PAT) (Mitnick, 1973; Ross, 1973). Three complementary theoretical frameworks were used to situate findings. Data were collected in two phases (1) document analysis and (2) 25 semi-structured interviews with system and policy leaders. Data were used to elucidate the trajectory of the formation, growth and cementing of TPAs into the Ontario college system. Four inflection points, each representing the culmination of various environmental factors, were conceptualized to explain how decisions and conditions contributed to the trajectory. Interviewees identified competition, marketization of higher education, economics, demographics and policies as contributing to the formation, growth and formalization of the TPAs. Interviewees perceived TPAs to introduce significant risks to public colleges, including financial, labour, relational, reputational and quality. More critical are strategic risks posed by the TPAs concerning future funding and enablement of PCCs, which have implications for system design, including further marketization and privatization of Ontario’s public college system. | Ph.D. | vocational, labour, entrepreneur, environmental, institut | 4, 8, 13, 16 |
| Du, Wenkui | Haslhofer, Robert | Singularity Analysis in Mean Curvature Flow | Mathematics | 2023-06 | In this thesis, we investigate the formation of singularities in mean curvature flow. Specifically, we study ancient asymptotically cylindrical flows, i.e. ancient solutions whose tangent flow at $-\infty$ is a round shrinking cylinder $\mathbb{R}^{k}\times S^{n-k}(\sqrt{2(n-k)|t|})$, where $1\leq k\leq n-1$. While in the neck case, i.e. for $k=1$, a complete classification has been obtained in several breakthroughs, a classification for the case $2\leq k\leq n-1$ until recently seemed out of reach. To analyze ancient asymptotically cylindrical flows for $2\leq k\leq n-1$, we consider the cylindrical profile function $u$ that measures the deviation of the renormalized flow from the round cylinder. We prove that for $\tau\to -\infty$ we have the asymptotics $u(y,\omega,\tau)= (y^\top Qy -2\textrm{tr}(Q))/|\tau| + o(|\tau|^{-1})$, where $Q$ is a constant symmetric $k\times k$-matrix whose eigenvalues are quantized to be either 0 or $-\sqrt{(n-k)/8}$. We then focus on the extremal rank cases. Under the natural noncollapsing condition, we obtain a classification of all solutions with $\textrm{rk}(Q)=0$, and establish $\textrm{SO}(n-k+1)$-symmetry and unique asymptotics in the case $\textrm{rk}(Q)=k$, also known as the $k$-oval case. Next, we confirm a conjecture by Angenent-Daskalopoulos-Sesum about uniqueness of $\textrm{O}(k) \times \textrm{O}(n-k+1)$-symmetric ancient ovals and more generally classify all $\textrm{O}(k) \times \textrm{O}(n-k+1)$-symmetric ancient noncollapsed solutions. On the other hand, for every $2\leq k\leq n-1$ we construct a $(k-1)$-parameter family of ancient ovals that are only $\mathbb{Z}^{k}_{2}\times \mathrm{O}(n-k+1)$-symmetric, giving counterexamples to another conjecture of Daskalopoulos. We then investigate ancient ovals without any symmetry assumption. Specifically, we prove that any $2$-oval in $\mathbb{R}^4$, up to scaling and rigid motion, either is the unique $\textrm{O}(2)\times \textrm{O}(2)$-symmetric ancient oval constructed by White and Haslhofer-Hershkovits, or belongs to our new one-parameter family of $\mathbb{Z}_2^2\times \textrm{O}(2)$-symmetric ancient ovals. In particular, this seems to be the first instance of a classification result for geometric flows that are neither cohomogeneity-one nor selfsimilar. Finally, as an application of the theory of ancient solutions, we prove that for the mean curvature flow of closed embedded hypersurfaces the intrinsic diameter stays uniformly bounded as the flow approaches the first singular time, provided all singularities are of neck or conical type. In particular, our analysis yields sharp curvature bounds improving prior results by Head and Cheeger-Haslhofer-Naber. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Xu, Peihang | Thywissen, Joseph H | Probing Atom On-site Interactions in an Optical Lattice | Physics | 2023-06 | In this thesis, we observe and characterize both s-wave and p-wave interactions of fermionic 40K atoms in deep optical lattices. The p-wave interactions especially draw our attention, as they have a well understood connection to topological properties. The discovery of p-wave interactions in ultracold-atom systems is promising, as the systems are tunable and controllable, but the experimental efforts have been severely limited by the short lifetime of atoms due to the three-body loss mechanism. The deep lattice potential applied in our study ensures near-zero tunneling, such that we are able to directly measure the on-site interaction energies of isolated pairs of atoms, and this isolation especially helps to suppress three-body losses for p-wave interacting pairs.For s-wave interactions between two lowest spin states in the ground hyperfine manifold, the binding energies of the s-wave molecular dimers have been studied pre- viously. However, in our study, we also measure the repulsive interaction energies via the radio-frequency (RF) spectroscopy. The obtained energy eigenspectrum for the atom pairs can be well explained by the theory based on two atoms in a harmonic trap interacting via a pseudopotential. Another experimental technique to measure the s-wave interaction energies is developed as well using Raman excitation. By cou- pling both spin and motional degrees of freedom, we obtain an energy spectrum that agrees well to the one using RF spectroscopy. To study p-wave interactions between two identical atoms in a spin triplet state, we prepare an initial non-interacting triplet state with a motional excitation via Raman excitation, and then directly measure the p-wave interaction energies by RF coupling the initial state to the final interacting one. The resulting universal energy spectra obtained at various conditions are well characterized by an exact solution for two harmonically confined atoms interacting via a p-wave pseudopotential with anharmonic corrections. We also measure the Rabi oscillations of the p-wave interacting pairs, and take the first steps towards the coher- ent control of the oscillations. Finally, we set up an experiment to test the lifetime of the p-wave interacting pairs, and find that losses are limited by the intrinsic lifetime of the molecular dimer. The lifetimes are measured to be much longer than observed for free-space dimers, and are predicted well by calculating the short-range fraction of the wavefunctions. Another theory based on an ab initio interaction potential is applied as well, which gives similar results to the pseudopotential theory, and again proves their validity. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Lin, Fang Xi | Pen, Ue-Li | Dispersion Measure Variations Predict Lensing in Pulsars | Physics | 2023-06 | As radio signals from a pulsar travel to the observer on Earth, they encounter electron plasma. This plasma delays the signals in a frequency-dependent manner, which can be characterized by the dispersion measure (DM), a fundamental observable in pulsar astronomy. This quantity, which is a measure of the total electron content between the pulsar and source, is expected to change as the pulsar moves. Since the refractive index of the medium is related to electron density, a changing DM is expected to be correlated with lensing effects such as a change in magnification or multiple imaging. In this thesis, we show that such expectations are indeed valid, and show how they can be used to study structures in the interstellar medium (ISM) or the environment of a pulsar. We develop techniques developed based on standard lensing formalism and apply them to PSR J1713+0747, PSR J2051–0827, and PSR B1957+20. In PSR J1713+0747, we show that the multiple DM dip events, if they are indeed due to line of sight crossing a lower electron density region, must create a second, bright image. We find that the dips in DM are consistent with the projected profile of an underdense current sheet, and find unexpected transient pulse profile changes during the events. In the Black Widow pulsars PSR J2051–0827 and PSR B1957+20, we discover the existence of an apparently weak lensing regime in the two pulsars and show that this regime transitions to a strong lensing regime in PSR B1957+20. We show, for the first time, that the second derivative of variations in DM can predict observed flux density variations in the apparently weak regime. We use this correlation to directly measure the velocity of the lensing material, projected onto the plane of the sky. The techniques developed in this thesis can be applied to improve pulsar timing by predicting and mitigating certain propagation effects. The discovery of lensing regime transitions in PSR B1957+20 offers a valuable testing ground for theoretical developments in lensing. Alors que les signaux radio d'un pulsar parviennent à l'observateur sur Terre, ils rencontrent un plasma d'électrons. Ce plasma retarde les signaux en fonction de la fréquence, ce qui peut être caractérisé par la mesure de dispersion (DM), une observable fondamentale en astronomie des pulsars. Cette quantité, qui est une mesure de la teneur totale en électrons entre le pulsar et la source, devrait changer à mesure que le pulsar se déplace. Comme l'indice de réfraction du milieu est lié à la densité électronique, un changement de DM devrait être corrélé avec des effets lentille tels qu'un changement de grossissement ou une imagerie multiple. Dans cette thèse, nous montrons que de telles attentes sont en effet valables et montrons comment elles peuvent être utilisées pour étudier les structures du milieu interstellaire (ISM) ou l'environnement d'un pulsar. Nous développons des techniques basées sur le formalisme standard en optique et les appliquons à PSR J1713+0747, PSR J2051–0827 et PSR B1957+20. Dans PSR J1713+0747, nous montrons que les multiples événements de descentes en DM, s'ils sont effectivement dus à la traversée de la ligne de visée d'une région à faible densité électronique, doivent créer une deuxième image apparente. Nous constatons que les baisses de DM sont cohérentes avec le profil projeté d'une feuille de courant sous-dense et trouvons des changements transitoires inattendus du profil d'impulsion pendant les événements. Dans les pulsars du type veuve noire PSR J2051–0827 et PSR B1957+20, nous découvrons l'existence d'un régime de lentille apparemment faible dans les deux pulsars et montrons que ce régime passe à un régime de lentille forte dans PSR B1957+20. Nous montrons, pour la première fois, que la dérivée seconde des variations de DM peut prédire les variations de densité de flux observées dans le régime apparemment faible. Nous utilisons cette corrélation pour mesurer directement la vitesse du matériau de lentille, projetée sur le plan du ciel. Les techniques développées dans cette thèse peuvent être appliquées pour améliorer la synchronisation des pulsars en prédisant et en atténuant certains effets de propagation. La découverte de transitions de régime de lentille dans PSR B1957+20 offre un terrain d'essai précieux pour les développements théoriques en optique. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Henry, Georgia Alexandria | Stinchcombe, John R | Selection and Evolutionary Constraint in Ipomoea hederacea | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | Understanding how adaptive evolution proceeds in populations experiencing different environments is the basis of much of evolutionary biology. Genetic variation is required for evolutionary change by natural selection to occur, and that genetic variation is oftentimes correlated among traits. Selection acts on the entirety of an organism’s phenotype and is thusalso best considered in a multivariate context. The interaction between selection and the organization of genetic variation together produces the evolutionary trajectory of a population. In my doctoral work, I have explored the influence of genetic correlations between traits on the response of populations to selection in populations across a geographic range, using the Ivyleaf Morning Glory (Ipomoea hederacea). I demonstrate the constancy of these genetic correlations among populations in the face of the destabilizing force of genetic drift. I investigate how genetic correlations and strong natural selection have shaped divergence among populations across space. Additionally, I consider what these evolutionary patterns suggest about the maintenance of range limits and potential for future northward expansion of Ipomoea hederacea. I find overall stability of the genetic relationships among quantitative traits, and strong selection which acts counter to the majority of the genetic variation. The observed divergence among populations has occurred despite the constraining influence of their quantitative genetic architecture. Future adaptive evolution beyond the range margin will largely depend on the source population, as minor difference in the structure and quantity of genetic variation may have critical impact of population persistence. Further, I demonstrate the potential for using machine learning to predict fitness using gene expression data from a field experiment with I. hederacea. I find that photosynthesis-related genes, and genes related to stress response are major contributors to fitness differences. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Alsaafin, Alaa | Tyndale, Rachel F. | Associations Between Genetic Variation and Cigarette Smoking and Alcohol Drinking during Youth: Longitudinal Investigations | Pharmacology | 2023-06 | We evaluated genetic-based associations with early smoking and drinking behaviours among European-ancestry youth in a longitudinal cohort design. In Study 1, we examined associations between genetic variation in TAS2R38, which encodes a bitter taste receptor, and early smoking behaviours. Individuals with the PAV/PAV or PAV/AVI diplotypes (i.e., PAV diplotypes) are considered bitter tasters, whereas AVI/AVI (i.e., AVI diplotype) are non-tasters. Cox proportional hazards models estimated associations between TAS2R38 diplotype and time to early smoking outcomes in adolescent incident smokers (i.e., those who initiated smoking during study follow-up). While similar diplotype-based rates to first whole cigarette were found, those with the PAV diplotypes attained monthly smoking and converted to tobacco dependence (measured using three indicators ICD-10, mFTQ, and HONC) faster than those with the AVI diplotype. When these participants reached young adulthood (age 24), those with PAV diplotypes had higher mean cotinine + 3’hydroxycotinine, a biomarker of nicotine intake.In Study 2, we examined associations between genetic variation in fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) and early drinking behaviours, and whether similar associations were observed with early smoking milestones. As part of the endocannabinoid system, which is implicated in psychiatric disorders and drug dependence, FAAH metabolizes endocannabinoids such as anandamide. Individuals with A-group genotypes (C/A or A/A) of a FAAH missense variant (rs324420; C>A) have slower enzymatic activity than those in the C-group (C/C genotype). We first replicated findings from two studies in adults, where those in the A-group had higher odds of past-year binge drinking at ages 20 and 30. Next, Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate associations during adolescence, where those in the A-group had faster time to drinking initiation and daily drinking. Although the genotype associations extended to faster rates to smoking initiation, associations with early smoking milestones were inconsistent. Thus, the ability to taste bitter compounds increases the risk for early smoking behaviours, while slow FAAH activity increases risk for drug use initiation and harmful drinking behaviours. Our findings underscore the importance of examining genetic associations in acquisition and early drug use behaviours and contribute to our understanding of inter-individual differences in substance use in adolescence. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Ho, Man Ho Stephen | Wheeler, Aaron R | Improvements to Digital Microfluidic Technologies: Towards Automated Point-of-Care Diagnostics | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Digital microfluidics (DMF) is a liquid handing technique that allows precise manipulation of discrete droplets of liquids by electrostatic forces. Individual droplets can be dispensed, mixed, merged, and separated in DMF, allowing automation of liquid handling steps that are required in complex multi-step operations. This automation capability makes DMF an attractive candidate for developing point-of-care (POC) systems with minimal user involvement and training. However, the biofluids that are commonly handled by POC systems can negatively impact droplet movement in DMF through non-specific adsorption (NSA) to the device surfaces; thus, there are substantial challenges that must be overcome before this dream can be realized. This thesis describes my work investigating Pluronic®/Tetronic® surfactants in combatting NSA in DMF to enable automated sample processing in POC systems. Chapter 2 describes a systematic study of the anti-fouling performance and mechanism of a series of Pluronic® and Tetronic® surfactant additives. Chapter 3 describes the development of a novel microscopic technique, supercritical angle fluorescence microscopy, for monitoring surface adsorption on a Teflon-AF film and determining the anti-fouling mechanism of surfactant additives. Chapter 4 describes the hardware and methodological improvements that enable viral nucleic acid extraction and amplification in DMF for detecting infection for Zika virus in a field trial in Recife, Brazil. Chapter 5 describes work-in-progress towards the application of DMF with surfactant additives for a new type of portable SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid-based diagnostic technique. In summary, this thesis addressed the challenges of NSA in DMF and describes how to push the boundaries of what is possible for DMF in automating liquid handling in POC systems. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Leclerc, Natasha | Halfar, Jochen | Reconstructing Past Sea Ice Cover with Coralline Red Algae | Earth Sciences | 2023-06 | Arctic sea ice plays a pivotal role in climate regulation. Its decline in recent decades has contributed to Arctic Amplification, the fast rate of Arctic warming in comparison to other regions. Models that aim to predict future climate are continuously under development as they still underestimate warming, and particularly sea ice loss and variability. These models must be refined with long-term, spatially diverse, and highly resolved data, to be as accurate as possible. However, instrumental data records are short-term and spatially constrained. The use and continued development of environmental proxies such as sediment and ice cores help lengthen data records (Chapter 1). Likewise, the coralline red algae species Clathromorphum compactum is a sea ice cover proxy in development. Several multi-century algal timeseries of past sea ice variability have been generated using this proxy, however, uncertainties remain about: 1) whether sea ice cover can be reconstructed at all C. compactum collection sites, and 2) whether methodological standardization ensure data replicability between intra-site specimens and validate C. compactum-based chronologies. In this thesis, I first tested whether growth increments, Mg/Ca averages, or combined anomalies were best suited to capture sea ice variability during the ~40-year satellite record at 11 subarctic and arctic sites (Chapter 2). Results showed that growth increment-based chronologies from exposed sites, far from runoff sources, experiencing long lasting sea ice cover (>6-7 months) best captured sea ice variability. However, intra-site replicability was low and insignificant at most sites in this multi-site study. This prompted a study on the application of dendrochronological crossdating methods to improve intra-site replicability of algal chronologies (Chapter 3). The findings suggested that the previously utilized methods incorporated subjective interpretation and that crossdating improved intra- and inter-specimen replicability, setting a new standardized methodology for age model determination and validation. Validated algal chronologies were then used to study the relationship between sea ice and large-scale atmospheric patterns and showed a significant sea ice response to the Arctic Oscillation and other atmospheric patterns (Chapter 4). This thesis has examined the advantages and limitations of the algal sea ice proxy and should methodologically guide future research with C. compactum-based proxies. | Ph.D. | climate, environmental, species, coral | 13, 14, 15 |
| Valentine, Grant John | Maurutto, Paula | The Canadian Punitive Paradox: The Evolution of Conservative Political Marketing Practices and the Late Onset of Penal Populism in Canadian Federal Politics | Criminology | 2023-06 | At the height of the punitive turn that occurred among Western liberal democracies, Canadian federal politics stands out as exceptional for choosing not to embrace a ‘tough-on-crime’ agenda. Instead, penal populism emerged as a salient political marketing tool in Canadian federal politics much later — at a time when many of the failures associated with its outcomes were coming to light elsewhere. The latent emergence of penal populism in Canadian federal politics was atypical as it often surfaced as a hollow performative tool that consisted of expressive rhetoric over substantive outcomes. This dissertation argues that the political marketing strategies that governed political campaigns were critical in the decision to adopt or reject penal populism as a campaign tool. By situating the presence or absence of penal populism within the context of shifting campaign strategies, this study deepens our understanding of Canadian punitive exceptionalism and shows that the Canadian version of penal populism was heavily influenced by advancements in political marketing strategies. This study also advances our understanding of the narratives used to shape a ‘tough-on-crime’ image and the extent to which it existed between electorally successful conservative campaigns. Through an analysis of the emotional rhetoric used to promote punitive sentencing policy, specifically mandatory minimum and maximum sentences, this dissertation exposes the manner in which emotionality is used to enhance the appeal of these political offerings. | Ph.D. | ABS, conserv, democra | 2, 14, 15, 16 |
| Variath, Caroline | Peter, Elizabeth | Loss of Capacity to Consent and Access to Medical Assistance in Dying: Healthcare Providers’ Experiences and Perspectives | Nursing Science | 2023-06 | Under Bill C-14, patients who met eligibility requirements were prevented from accessing medical assistance in dying (MAiD) if they lost decision-making capacity while awaiting MAiD. Little is known about healthcare providers’ experiences of patients’ loss of capacity to consent and subsequent ineligibility for MAiD. The enactment of Bill C-7 in 2021 has allowed eligible patients to use a waiver of final consent agreement to access MAiD following their loss of capacity, but healthcare providers’ perspectives on providing MAiD using the proposed amendments were not known. Therefore, the aims of this study were: 1) to explore Canadian healthcare providers’ perspectives on providing MAiD to eligible patients in the absence of a contemporaneous final consent; and 2) to explore healthcare providers’ experiences when their previously eligible patients were unable to access MAID due to a loss of capacity to consent. A critical qualitative methodology, informed by feminist ethics, was used focusing on the concepts of power, relationality, and moral agency. A voice-centred relational approach was used for data analysis. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a heterogenous sample of 30 participants, (physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners and social workers) recruited using purposeful and snowball methods, who had experiences with patients’ loss of capacity and subsequent ineligibility for MAiD. The findings highlight that healthcare providers’ agency and experiences with MAiD were influenced by socio-political, personal, and professional factors, that in turn, had significant impact on their patients’ access to and experiences with MAiD. While participants morally supported the amendment to waive the final consent requirement, they anticipated ethical and legal challenges in the absence of patients’ contemporaneous consent. The study identifies gaps in the care and support offered to patients and families following patients’ capacity loss and subsequent ineligibility for MAiD. The inconsistencies and disparities in the access to MAiD and other end-of-life services across Canada also came to light. Organizational and professional support, adequate resources, and infrastructure as well as clear policies and guidelines are required to prevent capacity loss-related ineligibility for MAiD, to improve end-of-life care for incapacitated patients and their families, and to promote the safety and well-being of healthcare providers. | Ph.D. | ABS, well-being, healthcare, feminis, worker, infrastructure | 2, 3, 5, 8, 9 |
| Alhosseini, Fatemeh | Ferrari, Michel MF | Resilience among Newcomer Students in Canada: A Transformative and Socio-Ecological Analysis of Narratives from Tree of Life Workshops | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | Newcomer students’ adaptation is a major concern for Canadian educators and teachers due to the recent influx of refugees and immigrants resulting from political, social, and natural displacement. Intersections of race, gender, language, low SES, and previous traumas have traditionally motivated researchers and policymakers to focus mostly on language, mental health symptomology, and risk assessment among this population. Consequently, in institutional programming (e.g., schooling, community organizations, government welcome programs), overemphasizing risk factors has created a deficit-oriented approach in which newcomer students are viewed as the victims and passive recipients of services. However, to create an empowering post-migration experience, it is crucial to understand how newcomer students view themselves, navigate their resources, and make sense of their experience.This case study’s narrative and transformative stance enabled: 1. Shedding light on the less heard stories of the newcomer students and highlighting the risk and resources identified by the newcomers themselves; 2. Examining the influence of participation in a strength-based workshop where the newcomer students’ agency was encouraged. The main evidence of this study was collected through a narrative activity called Tree of Life for 8 weeks with 3 groups of students in two schools within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The influence of the workshop was studied via facilitator’s observations, teachers’ reflections, and the students’ post-workshop interviews. Findings of this study revealed the holistic understanding of the newcomer students about their pre- and post-migration experience, how cultural background and past experiences as well as their hopes for the future can be a source of strength, and how the schools’ attitude about newcomers can influence the students’ post-migration experience. The positive feedback and outcomes of the workshop call for participatory and culturally relevant programs for newcomer students where they feel safe and have the chance to know themselves, build their new identity, and create community. Similar programs are especially recommended for students of refugee background who have faced significant interruption in their schooling, where the intersection of past traumas, present stigmatization, and socioeconomic status has influenced their schooling experience and self-image. Keywords: newcomer students, resilience, transformative paradigm, narrative, culture, socio-ecological approach, strength-based approach. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, mental health, gender, refugee, resilien, resilience, ecolog, institut | 1, 3, 5, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Eghbali Tehrani, Amirnikan | Ansloos, Jeffrey | From Suicidality to Psychological Growth: Understanding the Role of Affective Processing and Meaning Making | Psychology | 2023-06 | Difficult life situations are deemed to facilitate the cultivation of an array of positive changes, collectively referred to as growth through adversity (GTA). Whereas some investigations have documented GTA in survivors of those who have died by suicide, there are scant data regarding the possibility of psychological growth in the aftermath of resolved suicidality for individuals with lived experience of suicidality. In addition, the mechanism through which individuals resolve suicidality and potentially cultivate positive change is unclear. A rarely examined pathway to explain positive change is a shift in individuals’ emotion system. This is rooted in the theory that deep and lasting change cannot occur without a change in one’s affective experiences. Therefore, the current study aimed to examine affective processing (AP) before, during and after suicidality with the aim of understanding whether participants' interactions with affects and emotions could play a role in the resolution of active suicidality. Moreover, this study examined the often overlooked externally determined protective and risk factors as potential contributors to suicidality, to better contextualize the findings. The results of a thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with 14 participants indicated that AP was implicated in the process. In particular, participants' difficulty with processing affects was prominent during the active phase of suicidality and remarkably improved in the process of moving away from suicidality. These changes appeared closely associated with the balance between risk and protective factors, in the sense that highly demanding circumstances stifled, whereas supporting situations facilitated AP. Finally, participants’ narratives indicated the occurrence of GTA reflected in multiple aspects of wisdom such as balanced self-appraisal and prosocial orientation. There were also indications of a renewed interest and increased affinity for spirituality. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Jahanzaib, . | Sheikh, Shamim A. | Understanding the Behaviour of GFRP Reinforced Concrete Members under Changing Climate Trends | Civil Engineering | 2023-06 | While fibre-reinforced polymers (FRP) bars have significant advantages over steel with respect to resistance to corrosion, high strength-to-weight ratio, and magnetic neutrality, FRP bars can still deteriorate when exposed to extreme weather events. The current research investigated the effects of increased temperatures, resulting from recent climate changes, on the behaviour of GFRP bars by testing several specimens: 46 coupons, 37 bond specimens, and 12 large beams. The experimental investigation—divided into three phases—was later followed by the analytical study. In the first phase, the tensile behaviour of GFRP bars for elevated temperatures up to about 300oC was studied. Results showed that GFRP bars experienced about a 60% reduction in strength at a steady-state temperature of 250oC. The bars subjected to 40% of the room temperature strength and exposed to high temperatures resulting from situations such as sudden fire sustained the load for about 50 minutes. In the second phase, bond behaviour was studied with pullout as well as beam bond specimens which were conditioned at 50oC and 80oC for four months under a relative humidity of 60%. It was found that the studied thermal conditioning induced up to 26% reductions in the bond strength of GFRP bars. Moreover, beam specimens yielded lower bond stresses at room temperature and experienced higher thermal degradation than their counterpart pull-out specimens. The long-term thermal performance of flexural and shear critical beams was studied in the third phase. Beams were conditioned at 50oC for four months under 60% relative humidity. Under-reinforced flexural critical beams showed about a 22% reduction in the ultimate failure load, but over-reinforced beams did not observe substantial reductions in the ultimate capacity. Likewise, the shear critical beam did not observe a significant reduction in the ultimate shear capacity. Finally, a database of more than 500 coupon specimens tested under elevated temperatures was developed based on which statistical analysis was carried out, and a model is proposed to evaluate the reduction in the tensile strength of GFRP bars with increasing temperatures. Moreover, an analytical model is developed to predict the shear capacity of GFRP-RC beams. | Ph.D. | invest, climate, weather | 9, 13 |
| Lee, Ji Eun | Naguib, Hani E | Hierarchical Manufacturing of Hybrid Multi-Functional Soft Actuator | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | As the use of mechanical actuator becomes more unfeasible in this world that require flexibility and light-weight products, an alternative solution is needed that is beyond the capabilities of current single stimuli-responsive and single functioning soft actuators. The limitations of a single function (actuation) powered by a single external stimulus hinders its practicality for real-world applications that is comprised of integrated systems. This thesis presents a series of studies in the development of multi-stimuli-responsive and multifunctional soft actuators, with unlimited potential in function and power source, and ultimately better suited for the application at hand. Single stimuli-responsive soft actuation systems were carefully studied for successful integration into multi-functioning hybrid composites, starting with piezoelectric polymer actuator where nanofillers were embedded to increase its actuation magnitude. As a gripper system, hybrid pneumatic-magnetic soft actuator was able to increase its degree of freedom in actuation and demonstrate multi-plane actuation with increased blocking force. With robust actuation, its application went beyond traditional grippers and was able to move itself to complete an LED circuit and demonstrate its actuation in air and water environments. For smaller actuation, such as vibration dampers, a hybrid piezoelectric-magnetic self-sensing actuator (HPMSA) in a thin film device was utilized highlighting simultaneous alignment of multiple nanofillers and crystals for enhanced sensing and actuation properties. By applying 3D printing, the same HPMSA could be fabricated in greater size to sense and dampen excessive vibrations that are harmful to vehicle passengers. This fast and scalable fabrication method allows the possibility of mass production and commercial use, easily producing thin films of same properties. The results of this research can be used to further the development of multi-stimuli / -functional soft actuators to enhance actuation performance and take a step closer to replacing mechanical actuators and actuator systems in its entirety. | Ph.D. | water, production | 6, 12 |
| Gordon, Alex | Forrest, Christopher R||Drake, James | Development of an Ultrasonic Bone Cutting Instrument for Robotic-assisted Surgery | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-06 | The use of robotic assistance in abdominal surgeries has increased rapidly in the last two decades and da Vinci Surgical System (dVSS) variants by Intuitive Surgical are now used in over one million procedures annually. With the widespread availability of the dVSS and the release of competing teleoperated systems anticipated in the near future, there is motivation to investigate whether non-abdominal operations may also benefit from the advantages provided by these robotics systems. Several research groups, in early feasibility studies, have found benefits of using the dVSS for operations in which hard tissue removal is required, including transoral, orthopaedics, spinal, and neurosurgery. However, the application of the robot in craniofacial procedures remains unexplored. It is hypothesized that the robotic-assisted system, with its improved precision, motion scaling, and advanced visualization, may similarly provide benefits in both minimally invasive and open cases of craniofacial surgery. However, the lack of robotic instruments for hard tissue precludes exploration in craniofacial procedures and remains a blocker for evaluating a fully robotic approach in operations where any hard tissue removal is required. The research presented here intends to address this limitation by developing a ultrasonic bone cutting instrument for the dVSS, and then evaluating the initial feasibility of using the system for craniofacial operations by performing a simulated procedure. To develop the prototype, performance and clinical requirements were first established and the instrument was designed and optimized using finite element analysis and a commercially available multi-objective genetic algorithm. The prototype was then verified using a combination of amplitude characterization, fatigue testing, and experimental modal analysis. Benchtop testing indicated the optimal cutting approach based on cutting depth, speed, and approach angle, and teleoperated cutting tests were performed on representative craniofacial models using an open approach. Initial experiments show that teleoperated bone cutting using an ultrasonic tool is feasible despite the lack of force feedback provided by the robot, and results indicate that there may be improvements to accuracy over manual tools. Further testing in a minimally invasive model with additional participants is required to evaluate robot setup, reach and range of motion of the prototype instrument, operating time, and safety | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Madras, David | Zemel, Richard | Towards Trustworthy Machine Learning in High-Stakes Decision-Making Systems | Computer Science | 2023-06 | Machine learning systems are increasingly applied to tasks of high-stakes decision-making, in areas like healthcare, personal finance, and criminal justice. In these areas, the trustworthiness of the system is essential; beyond just having a high-accuracy tool, a number of other desiderata are required. Stressing that creating trustworthy machine learning is a problem without a well-defined solution, we focus in particular on two of these desiderata: fairness and robustness. To these ends, we discuss three potential approaches to improving the trustworthiness of machine learning systems. In the first, we consider the task of learning representations which guarantee that downstream classifiers yield predictions that align with fairness metrics when trained on transfer tasks, demonstrating how designing an adversarial loss function can correspond to various commonly-used fairness metrics. In the second, we provide an intuitive heuristic for detecting underspecification, show how it can be computed in a post-hoc fashion using only second-order statistics of the trained model, and discuss how we navigate computational hurdles for calculating this score in deep neural networks using techniques for eigenspectrum estimation. In the third, we reframe rejection learning as a task which should be inherently adaptive, depending on the properties of external decision-makers, and show how to formulate this as a mixture-of-experts-type learning objective, studying its impact on both fairness and accuracy. Through theoretical analysis and empirical evidence, we examine the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and critically discuss how each fits into the larger project of building trustworthy machine learning systems. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning, criminal justice | 3, 4, 16 |
| Kent, Tyler Vincent | Wright, Stephen I | Evolutionary Consequences of Plant Genome Structure | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | The outcome of evolutionary forces in natural populations is contingent on an organism’s genome structure, which itself varies and evolves. My thesis uses population genomics to investigate a range of evolutionary questions and processes broadly related to plant genome structure. In chapter 2, I review literature of the genomic landscape of transposable elements, recombination rate, and their interactions, and discuss the implications for their coevolution. In chapter 3, I show that how recombination and selection interact to determine the landscape of introgression from Capsella rubella into Capsella grandiflora varies by scale and is dependent in the largest scale on the length of chromosome arms. I find no evidence that selection against introgression is due to deleterious load or loci associated with floral evolution, but I show a strong reduction in introgression at the locus causing the breakdown of self-incompatibility. In chapter 4, I use genome assemblies of 32 species in the Brassicales to investigate the role of polyploidization in shaping the variation of genome size and transposable elements, as well as convergent and lineage-specific selective responses in evolutionarily conserved sequences. In chapter 5, I show that Rumex hastatulus, a species with large low-recombination regions across the genome, has a low efficacy of selection and unexpected patterns of chromosome-wide genetic diversity. I show that models of linked selection do not predict the genomic landscape of diversity, suggesting that an ongoing history of genomic rearrangements may be obscuring patterns of both recombination and diversity in the species. Overall, my thesis highlights the importance of considering genome structure as both shaping the evolution of plants and as a complex set of phenotypes evolving in concert and in conflict with the organism. | Ph.D. | invest, conserv, species, land | 9, 14, 15 |
| Mihaescu, Alexander | Strafella, Antonio P. | Cognitive Decline in Parkinson's Disease: Understanding the Pathophysiological Differences | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, and the accompanying cognitive decline sequelae are one of its most pressing and least understood non-motor symptoms. It is estimated that between 20 to 40% of PD patients have some form of cognitive decline at the time of diagnosis, and over 80% of PD patients eventually convert to dementia within 20 years of diagnosis. PD patients can experience deficits in executive function, memory, attention, language and visuospatial function. PD has been linked to many different forms of pathology, ranging from brain atrophy and functional dysregulation, toxic protein deposition, and neurotransmitter system dysfunction. However, it is still not well understood why some PD patients experience rapid cognitive decline while others remain cognitively stable for years. Brain imaging techniques can be used to help elucidate the pathophysiological changes that occur which separate cognitive decline from cognitive sparing, providing insight into the compensatory changes the brain undergoes to maintain healthy cognition. The general aim of this thesis was to uncover the brain differences between PD patients with and without cognitive decline using multimodal imaging techniques and machine learning assisted modelling. First, using a coordinate-based meta-analysis, we found that key hub regions in three different important brain networks were affected by structural atrophy and functional hypometabolism in PD patients with cognitive decline: the bilateral insula, the bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, and left angular gyrus. Second, we used graph theory analysis to uncover that cognitively spared PD patients had more efficient brain networks than PD patients with mild cognitive impairment, suggesting compensatory network reorganization was occurring to maintain healthy cognition in the face of increasing disease burden. Finally, we found evidence that region beta-amyloid deposition affects cognitive decline in PD, with some brain regions being more vulnerable to the burden than others. Taken together, this thesis posits various ways the brain experiences both compensatory help and pathological harm due to PD cognitive decline pathology, providing a better understanding of this complex symptom umbrella. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Gillon, Colleen J. | Richards, Blake A. | Predictive Learning in the Neocortical Microcircuit | Cell and Systems Biology | 2023-06 | \noindent Scientists have long conjectured that the neocortex learns the structure of the environment in a predictive, hierarchical manner. Under this hypothesis, the brain compares incoming sensory information to internally generated predictions about the sensory environment. Through this process, unexpected features of the environment are detected by the brain and used to guide learning about the sensory world. In support of this hypothesis, numerous neurophysiological studies have found evidence for predictive signals in the brain. In parallel, modelling studies have shown predictive learning to be a powerful way for artificial neural networks to learn about the underlying structure of sensory inputs. However, several open questions remain as to how predictive learning might be implemented in the brain. With their unique morphology, pyramidal neurons have emerged as promising candidates for enabling feedback and feedforward information to be integrated within the neocortical microcircuit. In this thesis, we examine the roles of the somata and distal apical dendrites of layer 2/3 and layer 5 pyramidal neurons in mice presented with unexpected visual stimuli over the course of several days. Through data analysis and modelling, we find evidence that these two neuronal compartments play complementary roles in guiding predictive learning in the neocortical microcircuit, potentially computing what proportion of error in the circuit is attributable to stimulus encoding versus prediction. The dataset and analysis code used in this project is openly available to support further research elucidating the role of pyramidal neurons in supporting sensory processing in the brain. Il est proposé, en neuroscience, que le néocortex utilise une approche prédictive et hiérarchique pour comprendre la structure de l'environnement sensoriel. Selon cette hypothèse, le cerveau génère des prédictions sensorielles, puis les compare aux informations sensorielles entrantes. Cette comparaison lui permet d'identifier les caractéristiques inattendues de l'environnement et de s'en servir pour mettre à jour un modèle interne du monde sensoriel. À l'appui de cette hypothèse, de nombreuses études neurophysiologiques ont montré que le cerveau émet, sous différentes conditions, des signaux prédictifs. Parallèlement, des études de modélisation de l'apprentissage sensoriel dans des réseaux de neurones artificiels ont démontré que l'apprentissage prédictif permet de découvrir efficacement la structure sous-jacente de données sensorielles complexes. Cependant, il reste à savoir comment l'apprentissage prédictif pourrait être implémenté dans le cerveau. Grâce à leur morphologie unique, les neurones pyramidaux pourraient permettre au microcircuit néocortical d'intégrér les informations prédictives provenant de régions corticales en amont avec les nouvelles informations sensorielles arrivant de régions en aval. Dans cette thèse, nous examinons l'activité des corps cellulaires et des dendrites apicales distales des neurones pyramidaux des couches 2/3 et 5 chez des souris exposées à des stimuli visuels inattendus au fil de plusieurs jours. à l'aide d'analyses de données et de modélisation, nous montrons que ces deux compartiments neuronaux jouent des rôles complémentaires pour guider l'apprentissage prédictif dans le microcircuit néocortical, évaluant possiblement en quelle proportion l'erreur dans le circuit est attribuable à l'encodage du stimulus comparé à sa prédiction. L'ensemble de données et le code d'analyse développés pour ce projet sont disponibles en ligne, afin de soutenir la recherche sur le rôle des neurones pyramidaux dans le traitement d'informations sensorielles dans le cerveau. | Ph.D. | learning, reuse | 4, 12 |
| Cybulski, Alexander Dean | Grimes, Sara | Sim-Cyberpunk: Serious Play, Hackers and Capture the Flag Competitions | Information Studies | 2023-06 | Capture the flag (CTF) is a style of game developed within the hacker community to simulate/emulate the practice of vulnerability research. In a CTF players identify security vulnerabilities in information systems and exploit these flaws to undermine their operations, which gives them access to a “flag” which they score for points used to win a competition. An exploratory study of this game, this dissertation uses ethnographic methods including observation of three CTF competitions and semi-structured interviews with 47 CTF players and designers. Analysis of this data considers the co-constitution of the game through the practices of its designers and players, concerning the values of the hacker community and its linkages to the information security industry whose membership constitutes the preponderance of CTF participants. Utilizing Sara Grimes and Andrew Feenberg’s (2009) theory of “games as sites of social rationalization” this paper argues that CTF has been instrumentalized as a tool of cultural reproduction. This function of CTF is used to discursively shape and sustain knowledge acquisition, identity formation and work in the cybersecurity industry through the affordances of play in alignment with hacker values, translating intellectual capital into social capital through playful game systems. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, knowledge, capital, production | 1, 4, 9, 12 |
| Clewell, Jacob | Elliott, Robin | The Relevance of Casimir Ney's 24 Préludes pour L'alto to the Contemporary Violist | Music | 2023-06 | Casimir Ney's 24 Préludes pour L'alto are among the most technically virtuosic works available to the contemporary violist. This dissertation explores the 24 Préludes relevance to contemporary violists through an examination of research relevant to Ney's identity, the history of the viola, musical and technical styles of Romantic string playing, viola pedagogy and pedagogical materials, and viola repertoire. Technical requirements existing simultaneously in Ney's writing and the solo, sonata, and concerto repertoire for viola are compared, with the parallels drawn showing frequent commonalities between Ney and music preceding the 24 Préludes to the present. The research conducted for this document suggests study of the 24 Préludes pour L'alto may assist in the development of personal technical ability. A performance guide for all twenty-four works has been included to provide one option to facilitate learning and preparation of the preludes for performance. | D.M.A. | pedagogy, learning | 4 |
| Shvo, Maayan | McIlraith, Sheila | Theory of Mind Reasoning in Explanation, Plan Recognition, and Assistance: Theory and Practice | Computer Science | 2023-06 | With the rapid advancements in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, one of the longstanding goals of the field – building AI systems that are able to interact with other agents in social settings – may appear within reach. However, present-day AI systems do not yet demonstrate the social cognitive skills needed to robustly operate in the real world, and in particular in complex social settings involving humans. Research on humans has identified that Theory of Mind – the ability to attribute mental states (e.g., beliefs, desires, and intentions) to oneself and to others – is a precursor to the development of social cognitive abilities that enable most humans to successfully navigate complex social settings. It follows, then, that augmenting AI systems with Theory of Mind capabilities could improve upon their existing social cognitive abilities and get us closer to achieving AI’s aforementioned longstanding goal. In this dissertation, we present a body of work that investigates the role of Theory of Mind in explanation, plan recognition, and assistance and takes steps towards the betterment of social cognitive abilities held by present and future AI systems. Moreover, in much of this dissertation we appeal to the computational paradigm of epistemic planning, which allows us to address or circumvent some of the challenges involved with augmenting AI systems with Theory of Mind. Appealing to epistemic planning allows us to develop computational solutions and demonstrate the feasibility and usefulness of Theory of Mind in explanation, plan recognition, and assistance. Finally, this dissertation employs these computational solutions and integrates them within a robotic system that demonstrates social cognitive abilities in complex real-world settings, as well as a potential to benefit humans with whom it interacts. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Chan, Ka Ho | Azimi, Gisele | Recycling of LiNixMnyCo1−x−yO2 (NMC) Cathodes from End-of-Life Lithium-Ion Batteries Using Hydrometallurgical and Direct Recycling Processes | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-06 | Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) have become a mainstream power source for portable electronic devices and electric transportation due to their several prominent advantages, including high energy density, long storage life, small volume, lightweight, and low self-discharge. With the increasing demand for LIBs, the serious shortage of raw materials for LIB production, and the growing global awareness to protect the urban environment, recycling of postconsumer LIBs has become imperative. In recent years, LiNixMnyCo1−x−yO2 (NMC) cathode material has become the most promising cathode material for LIBs because of its low cost, high discharge capacity, good cyclic performance, and stable structure; thus, its application in electric vehicles (EVs) has been promoted. Since this cathode material will soon enter the recycling stream, it is critical to have an effective recycling process for its handling. The overall objective of this dissertation is to develop novel, efficient, and sustainable hydrometallurgical and direct recycling processes for NMC cathode materials from spent LIBs. This dissertation is focused on 1) recovering lithium, nickel, manganese, and cobalt from NMC cathode material of spent LIBs of an EV via acid leaching; 2) separating all four metals from the leachate after acid leaching using electrodialysis; 3) synthesizing nickel-rich NMC cathode material for LIBs utilizing supercritical CO2; and 4) directly recycling degraded NMC cathode material of spent LIBs from an EV using hydrothermal relithiation combined with sintering. The milestones in this dissertation involve 1) developing, advancing, implementing, and optimizing the leaching, metal separation, coprecipitation, and relithiation steps to improve the hydrometallurgical and direct recycling routes by reducing the environmental impact and enhancing the sustainable development; and 2) elucidating the leaching, electrodialysis, coprecipitation, and relithiation mechanisms using fundamental investigations and kinetic modeling. The potential for social, environmental, and economic impacts through innovations and scientific excellence of this dissertation is immense. The advantages of successful implementation of this research project are twofold: 1) it provides a secure secondary supply for strategic materials that face steep demand growth and potential supply shortfall; and 2) it provides an environmentally sustainable and economic route for waste valorization and resource recovery, which in turn will enable the circular economy. | Ph.D. | energy, sustainable development, invest, urban, consum, production, waste, recycl, environmental, co2 | 7, 8, 11, 9, 12, 13 |
| Lahey, Kathleen Sarah | Georgis, Dina | At the Mouth of the River: Shame, Secrecy, and Intergenerational Trauma in Newfoundland | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2023-06 | In this dissertation, I engage with theories of intergenerational trauma to explore the psychic dynamics of loss and memory in Newfoundland. This inquiry works to unearth the complex historic and social conditions that contextualize ongoing legacies of social injury in Newfoundland. I explore the many ways that Newfoundlanders grapple with the messy contradictions of trauma through aesthetic expression, resilience and love. I ask: in what ways has trauma demanded a kind of suspension between spaces, both temporal and cognitive, in Newfoundland culture? How and why do historic losses define Newfoundland culture, identity, politics and industry today?This dissertation swims in the slippery waters of secrecy, shame and silence that define intergenerational trauma in Newfoundland. Working with theories of trauma, I explore how enigmatic memories move through the generations across relational, embodied, cultural and ecological passageways. By turning to the aesthetic archive of Newfoundland film, folklore and art, this dissertation traces the affective, relational, and sociopolitical legacies of trauma in Newfoundland as they move through somatic, relational, familial, cultural, and ecological passageways. Importantly, I consider how these legacies are rooted in transnational histories that have shaped the cultural landscape of this island, including the Atlantic slave trade, settler colonialism, and resource extraction. In doing so, I propose methods for attuning us to the paradoxical tensions of silence that resound through Newfoundland culture. Such methods lay the foundation for an analysis of the way in which historical contexts such as colonialism, slavery, resource extraction, poverty, rurality, and religion continue to define contemporary Newfoundland life through shame and silence. In this dissertation, I seek a range of modes for listening to transgenerational silences to working through cultural shame and to imagine radical change. | Ph.D. | poverty, settler, water, trade, resilien, rural, resilience, ecolog, land | 1, 4, 6, 10, 11, 13, 15 |
| Ebrahimiazar, Maryam | Ashgriz, Nasser NA | Ultrasound Jetting and Atomization of Sessile and Impacting Droplets | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | We present the results of our experimental and theoretical study of the jetting and atomization of a sessile and an impacting droplet subject to an ultrasonic surface vibration. Such high frequency vibrations result in the formation of a liquid jet shooting outwardly from the surface of the droplet, which eventually breaks up into droplets. Part of the liquid remains on the surface, which eventually goes through ultrasonic atomization. We divided this process into three categories of (i) jetting, (ii) jet breakup and liquid layer formation, and (iii) liquid layer atomization, and characterized each one separately. We have developed a model to predict the onset of jetting and jet velocity. The liquid jet may breakup into droplets, the sizes of which were measured and predicted theoretically. The liquid layer remaining on the surface may go through ultrasonic atomization resulting in bimodal droplet size and velocity distributions. Additionally, the effect of parent droplet size on the final aerosol size distribution was studied and theoretical models were proposed to characterize the ultrasonic atomization and liquid breakup (droplet size, ejection threshold, and ejection velocities). It was also shown that the ultrasonic atomization of nanoliter liquid volumes results in the formation of <10 μm mist with the large droplets being cut off. | Ph.D. | cities | 11 |
| Semeniuk, Maria Natalia | Sain, Mohini M||Lu, Zheng-Hong | An Investigation on Renewable Carbons as Natural Sources of Fluorescent and Conductive Materials for Smart Device Applications | Forestry | 2023-06 | Controlled carbonization of biomass leads to nano-layered graphitic structures with characteristic crystalline sp2 hybridization with conductive and optical properties. The starting material and processing parameters influence the final chemical and morphological structure of the renewable carbon, which determine its practical applications. Biomasses investigated include various wood, xylem sap and peanut shells. Controlled pyrolysis of several wood species to 800 ˚C yielded photoluminescent graphene clusters with a notable electrical conductivity of 600 S/m and electromagnetic interference shielding effectiveness of 47.7 dB at 12 GHz. This is due to the renewable graphitic carbon’s material graphene-graphite composite, since graphene is known to be highly conductive due to its high carrier mobility. Catalytic graphitization with iron nitrate nanoparticles successfully showed the formation of single crystal graphitic carbon structures in black spruce (Picea mariana) at temperatures between 300-800 ˚C and conductivity of 850 S/m. This P. mariana renewable carbon was applied as the cathode of a coin cell battery. To reduce processing temperature further, hydrothermal pyrolysis was performed at 180 ˚C on xylem sap. A characteristic crystalline sp2 carbon was observed in hydrochar xylem syrup. When UV light is shone on the carbon, by the “naked eye” it can selectively detect Fe3+ ions and pH. A chemo sensor was designed based on logic gates, which can displace traditional metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) based circuits. Additionally, multiple thermogravimetric comparisons were performed using several model-free and model-based kinetic analyses, where activation energy and pre-exponential factors were determined during the decomposition process. Peanut shell graphitic carbon was applied as an electrode in a Li-ion coin cell battery, yielding a specific capacity of 220 mAh/g and 100 % columbic efficiency for 800 cycles. Thus, these findings on renewable carbon will open a new frontier in sustainable bio-electronics and energy materials manufacturing. | Ph.D. | energy, renewabl, invest, species | 7, 9, 14, 15 |
| Konnelly, Lex | Hachimi, Atiqa | “The Right Story”: Discursive Strategies in Gender-Affirming Healthcare Access | Linguistics | 2023-06 | Despite strides towards a less pathological and diagnostic-centered approach to transgender healthcare, many policies continue to present barriers in accessing gender-affirming medical support that may provide individuals with greater ease in their embodiment. Research on transgender speakers’ linguistic practices in healthcare interactions has shown that practitioners’ prerequisites for granting access to this kind of care remain largely based on criteria presented in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This practice of evaluation has led to an impression within trans communities that accessing gender-affirming care is a test, where patients must “do” their gender or present their identity in a particular way. Meeting this expectation may feel especially imperative and dehumanizing for non-binary transgender people, as individuals who do not identify as either, or exclusively, masculine or feminine. Presenting a gender positionality outside of the binary has historically meant losing access to care, and as a result, non-binary patients often find themselves using different language to describe their experience than they would in other contexts, simply to gain access to much-needed care. As an intervention in the inequity of doctor-patient communication in this setting, this dissertation considers the metalinguistic (“talk about talk”) observations of non-binary people regarding their gender-affirming healthcare interactions in Ontario. Rather than considering non-binary patients’ practices as straightforward acts of capitulation to medical expectations, their performances in these high-risk interactions are a means to contest their marginal status within the healthcare system. Participant-collaborators express numerous strategies to simplify or obscure their non-binary identities in their pursuit of care, such as the flexible use of identity labels, vocal pitch modulation, the intensification and historicization of experiences of suffering related to gender identity, and avoiding asking questions about their care so as not to compromise doctors’ impressions of their certainty about medical transition. This dissertation thus shows how linguistic performances are a crucial part of the gender-affirming care process; in other words, whether patients get the access that they need often depends not just on what they say, but how they say it, and what they strategically omit. | Ph.D. | healthcare, equity, gender, non-binary, transgender, labor, equit, transit | 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 11 |
| Regeenes, Romario | Rocheleau, Jonathan V | Design of a Multiparameter Islet-on-a-Chip Device to Measure the Functional Variability of Individual Pancreatic Islets | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-06 | Pancreatic islets are small micro-organs responsible for glucose-stimulated insulin secretion, which occurs in two phases; a rapid first phase burst followed by a sustained second phase. Islets are commonly studied ex vivo using assays that have poor temporal (>5 min) and spatial (multiple/bulk islets) resolutions. Bulk measurements are highly susceptible to uncoordinated responses, poor treatment penetration and often lack multiparametric capability. These limitations are especially exacerbated by the functional variability of pancreatic islets. The magnitude, rate, and timing of first and second-phase insulin secretion are highly variable between islets. We postulate that this variability is important to the normal function and dysfunction of islets. Hence, studying islets individually can help overcome the limitations of bulk islet studies to enhance our knowledge of functional variability. Our goal here was to measure O2 consumption rates and insulin secretion from individual pancreatic islets with a high spatiotemporal resolution. To achieve this goal, we combined microfluidics with an O2-sensitive probe and biochemical assay. We first developed O2 microsensors using SU-8 microwells to digitize the O2 measurements and a polydimethylsiloxane-based sensor to enhance oxygen diffusion. We fabricated our microfluidic platform out of polymethylmethacrylate to limit diffusion and permeation of external O2 from saturating our measurements. We combined the O2 microsensors and platform to measure islet OCR simultaneously with Ca2+-activity. Glucose-stimulated O2 consumption of individual mouse islets was found to be biphasic with the timing independent of cytoplasmic Ca2+-influx. Finally, we developed an on-chip fluorescence anisotropy immunoassay to measure c-peptide secretion as a surrogate for insulin from individual mouse islets. In this study, we designed a novel islet-on-a-chip that mixes islet effluent with the assay reagents to be imaged downstream of the islet. We showed that islets respond to glucose at varying times with different magnitudes of secretion. Future directions include combining the O2 and c-peptide sensor into the islet-on-a-chip. Overall, this thesis reveals the power of individual islet measurements, which show how current methods have been undermining islet variability. The tools engineered in this thesis provide an individual islet approach to further characterize islet metabolism and to understand the intricacies of healthy and unhealthy islets. | Ph.D. | knowledge, consum | 4, 12 |
| Redel, Cornelia | Penn, Linda Z | Targeting the MYC Oncoprotein by Disrupting the MYC-PNUTS Interaction | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Despite the knowledge that the MYC protein family is a potent driver of multiple oncogenic malignancies, no targeted therapy against MYC exists for patient care. One major obstacle for conventional drug development is that MYC is an intrinsically disordered protein, that only upon binding to protein partners adapts a conformation. One of the recently identified MYC protein interactors is the Protein Phosphatase 1 (PP1)/PP1 Nuclear Targeting Subunit (PNUTS) complex. Inhibition of PP1 leads to the hyperphosphorylation and degradation of MYC, thus making this complex a potential vulnerability of MYC-driven cancers. As protein phosphatases are promiscuous enzymes with multiple substrates, we placed our focus for developing a MYC-specific inhibitor on the interaction of MYC with the regulatory protein PNUTS. To this end we took two approaches: i) characterizing the MYC-PNUTS interaction structurally; and ii) demonstrating that disruption of this interaction is detrimental to tumour growth.First, we identify the MYC-PNUTS interaction. PNUTS interacts directly through the PNUTS amino-terminal domain (PAD) with the MYC homology Box 0 (MB0) of MYC. The latter is a highly conserved region, shown to be important for MYC oncogenic activity. We also demonstrate that mutation of key residues on either protein disrupts this interaction and leads to elevated phosphorylation of MYC in human cells. Leveraging the MYC-PNUTS structural information, we designed a proof-of-principle study, in which we show that overexpression of the PAD provokes disruption of the MYC-PNUTS complex in human cells. Moreover, we find that disruption of this complex affects MYC-driven transcriptional programs, and alters breast cancer cell proliferation, transformation, and xenograft growth. Taken together, the work presented in this thesis lays the groundwork for developing novel, targeted therapeutics against the to date deemed ‘undruggable’ MYC oncoprotein. Considering the omnipresence of MYC dysregulation in human cancers, these findings hold the promise of ultimately developing a MYC-PNUTS inhibitor and benefiting many cancer patients. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, knowledge, conserv | 1, 4, 14, 15 |
| Han, Yi Fei | Savard, Pierre | Measurement of Electroweak VVjj Production in Semileptonic Final States in pp Collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector | Physics | 2023-06 | Vector boson scattering (VBS) is a rare process in the electroweak sector of the Standard Model, and it has not been observed at over $5\sigma$ significance in many of its final states until the 139 fb$^{-1}$ dataset was taken at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This thesis presents the precision measurement of VBS-enhanced electroweak $VVjj$ production in semileptonic final states, using the full 139 fb$^{-1}$ $pp$ collision dataset taken at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. To model background contributions, Monte Carlo simulations corrected with data in dedicated control regions are used, and a new recurrent neural network approach is introduced to increase signal-to-background separation.Three channels are considered, with 0, 1, or 2 leptons (electrons or muons) in the final state, and a signal significance of $6.0\sigma$ is reached where $6.5\sigma$ has been expected, with a simultaneous fit in all three channels. With the same dataset, a fiducial cross-section of $\sigma^{\text{fid,obs}}_{\text{VVjj}} = 21.7\pm2.0\text{(stat.)}^{+3.4}_{-3.3}\text{(syst.)}$ fb is measured where a cross-section of $22.3 \pm 1.7$ fb has been expected. This is the first time that a significance value above $5\sigma$ is reached for VBS-enhanced electroweak $VVjj$ production in this final state at the ATLAS experiment. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Lim, Elisha Chwee Cheng | Cowan, T.L. | Pious: Why Meta’s Business Model Drives Intolerance | Information Studies | 2023-06 | The rise of social media parallels a rise in distorted identity politics. The past decade has seen an increase in cases of ethnic fraud, polarizing populism, and corporate solidarity statements critiqued for capitalizing on social issues. While many critics blame these social phenomena on opportunistic individuals and businesses, this dissertation studies the role played by social media platforms: their business models, advertising datasets and ranking algorithms. I focus on Meta as a blueprint for subsequent social media platforms. I begin with my autobiography as a former QTBIPOC influencer, as a microcosm of the distorted identity politics amplified by social media infrastructures. I conduct a walkthrough of the Meta Detailed Targeting Tool (MDTT), paying close attention to how this tool fetishizes social difference: by stripping behaviors, interests and demographics down to fungible exchange value and market optimization. I argue that this process of fetishization rewards and conditions grammars of action that inherit the techniques, and problematic social dynamics, of Christian colonialism. This dissertation brings The Black Radical Tradition and anti-colonial critique to bear on social media scholarship, in order to investigate the following questions: 1) How does the MDTT shape behavior? 2) What are the motivations that compel identity politics? 3) Why have “morals” become so important to business? and 4) How can the framework of “piety” offer new theories and solutions for negative social media dynamics? | Ph.D. | infrastructure, capital, invest, bipoc | 9, 10 |
| Massarelli, Geremia | Paramekanti, Arun | The Properties of Dirac Materials: Strain, Magnetoelectrics and Krein-Hermiticity | Physics | 2023-06 | The study of Dirac matter offers a cross section of some of the most dynamic topics in condensed-matter physics. Interest in Dirac-like dispersions in band structures dates back to the early days of solid-state physics; however, in the past decades, emergent Dirac-like behaviour in materials has become a focal point of condensed-matter physics, in no small part because of the new, topological appreciation of these gapless phases of matter. Since then, the field has witnessed an ever-increasing understanding of the exotic properties that emerge in Dirac matter. _x000D_ The present thesis furthers the exploration of Dirac-like physics in condensed-matter systems and the novel properties that stem from it. After a thorough overview of the physics underpinning these states of matter, we investigate the existence of strain-induced pseudomagnetic fields in nodal superconductors like the cuprates. We provide a realistic proposal to realize strain-induced Landau levels in a cuprate sample, a unique scenario that cannot be achieved with an ordinary magnetic field. _x000D_ We then turn to a study of the orbital Edelstein effect resulting from spontaneous symmetry breaking within a nodal-line semimetal. In this model, the onset of charge order endows the gapless lines with a mass; they then become sources of orbital magnetic moment. Hence, we exemplify how this magnetoelectric effect can serve as a proxy for symmetry breaking in certain Dirac semimetal phases. _x000D_ Finally, we develop a formalism of the Schrieffer-Wolff transformation in Krein-Hermitian Hamiltonians, which arise, among other contexts, as the single-particle Hamiltonians of bosonic Bogoliubov–de Gennes systems. These Hamiltonians are Hermitian with respect to an indefinite inner product, and the Krein-unitary transformation we formulate preserves their Krein-Hermiticity. In particular, we explain why an effective Hermitian Hamiltonian can, under certain conditions, be used to describe subsets of adjacent bands of a larger Krein-Hermitian Hamiltonian, a justification of which seems to have been lacking. We then apply our findings to study the generic codimension of Dirac-like band touchings in such systems, focusing on spin-wave excitations in quantum magnets. | Ph.D. | invest, land | 9, 15 |
| Philpott, David Nicholas | Sargent, Edward | Unlocking Cell Biology Through Development and Application of High-Throughput Microfluidic Cell Sorting | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | Studying biology through a high-throughput lens has enabled many advancements in academia and healthcare. Yet for cytometry, the analysis and sorting of cells, current tools necessarily face trade-offs between throughput, accuracy, and viability. Microfluidics, the highly controllable manipulation of fluids on the microscale, has potential to address these limitations. Herein, we present the development and application of an ultrahigh-throughput immunomagnetic microfluidic cytometry platform technology. The technology, termed microfluidic cell sorting (MICS), is capable of sorting 4.4x108 live cells/hour/device and contains reusable components and a user-friendly external set up to facilitate deployment to non-expert users. Device performance was validated using immortalized cell lines and was shown to be able to isolate clinically relevant quantities (108) of mature CD56dimCD16bright natural killer cells from primary samples in hours. To demonstrate further utility in cell biology, MICS was used to facilitate a genome-wide CRISPR screen in embryonic stem cells, a challenging cell type for sorting. This screen identified homeobox protein CDX-2 as a negative genetic regulator of mesoderm differentiation efficiency. Knock-out of CDX2 resulted in a 2-fold increase in mesoderm specification at day 6 and increased proportions of both hematopoietic stem cell and lymphocyte progenitors at later time points. Finally, MICS was used in combination with an unsupervised k-means clustering algorithm, to create a novel approach to phage display antibody discovery. This approach, termed mCellect, performs fab-antigen binding in a heterogenous mixture of antigen-expressing and background cells and chooses candidates for validation by identifying underlying motifs in primary protein structure that contribute to affinity. In a proof-of-concept screen pursuing Frizzled-7, a challenging oncology target, mCellect discovered antibodies with picomolar affinities and increased selectivity relative to first-in-class reagents in only two selection rounds. The approaches and findings presented in this work demonstrate that MICS is a high-throughput, high-precision cytometry tool with the potential to unlock new approaches to studying cell biology. In addition, the approaches used to develop the MICS technology provide novel contributions to microfluidics and adjacent research fields. | Ph.D. | healthcare, trade | 3, 10 |
| Hasan, Ahmed Raza | Ness, Rob W | Causes and Consequences of Recombination Rate Variation | Cell and Systems Biology | 2023-06 | Recombination, the shuffling of alleles during meiosis, is a fundamental evolutionary process that is nearly ubiquitous across eukaryotes. By uncoupling linkage disequilibrium between harmful and beneficial mutations, recombination promotes more effective selection. However, recombination rate varies at multiple scales across nature, which has important implications for genome evolution at large. Here, I report four chapters that investigate recombination and genome evolution using the unicellular and facultatively sexual chlorophyte Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. I examine recombination rate variation at the level of populations, individuals, and across the genome itself. I show that recombination rates are consistent between populations and individuals, demonstrate evidence that recombination plays a role in reducing the effects of selection at linked sites, and estimate the rate of sexual reproduction in a wild population of C. reinhardtii. I also investigate recombination in a crossover-suppressed sex-determining region of the genome, and show how noncrossover recombination can still maintain effective selection, thus preventing long-term degeneration of these loci. Finally, I close off with a study pertaining to mutational biases introduced by environmental stressors in C. reinhardtii and demonstrate the effects of the former on adaptation. Altogether, my thesis addresses fundamental questions regarding recombination rate variation and adaptation in C. reinhardtii, and alongside existing detailed work on spontaneous mutation in the system, provides an empirical framework for understanding how these processes affect genome evolution over evolutionary time. | Ph.D. | invest, production, environmental | 9, 12, 13 |
| Andrews, Ryan Joseph | Stephan, Douglas W | Chemistry and Reactivity of Lone Pair Bearing Electron Deficient Main Group Compounds | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Due to concerns around the cost, abundance, and toxicity of precious metal systems used for various chemical transformations, substantial research has targeted cleaner and cheaper catalysts. Motivated by the discovery of frustrated Lewis pairs (FLPs) and their ability to reversibly activate H2, main group compounds have become attractive alternatives. Consequently, metal-free advancements have recently been reported for nitrogen fixation and the Fischer-Tropsch process. To continually develop these new advancements, new and robust Lewis acid compounds are of significant fundamental interest. This work explores the synthesis and reactivity of various electrophilic compounds based on carbon, phosphorus, and sulfur. The reactivity of electron-deficient N,N’-diamidocarbenes (DAC) was explored with various common main group Lewis acids with results showcasing their ability to stabilize unpaired electrons. These carbenes were shown to undergo nucleophilic substitution to the C6F5 rings of B(C6F5)3 leading to the stabilization of analogues of the B(C6F5)3•- radical anion. Furthermore, with other Lewis acids, such as Ph3C+, spontaneous radical formation was observed, a rare observation from the combination of a Lewis acid and a Lewis base. New base-stabilized phosphorus(III) polycationic species were prepared through the use of various ligands based on nitrogen and phosphorus. An air-stable P(III)2+ example bearing a terpyridine ligand was shown to be an effective catalyst towards the hydrosilylation or reductive hydrodeoxygenation of aldehydes, ketones, and olefins. Similarly, new P(III)3+ species stabilized by transannular interactions showed unusual ambiphilicity by these highly charged species. Finally, this strategy was used in the synthesis of new and robust base-stabilized thionylium dicationic (SO2+) species. Computational and experimental studies show that these compounds are moderate Lewis acids through S-N σ* orbitals, with comparable Lewis acidity to BF3 and PF5. These compounds were shown to be able to enact the C-F bond activations, with the loss of SOF2; and O2- abstraction reactions of phosphine oxides and CuO, with the loss of SO2. Furthermore, due to a high s-character of the lone pair of these SO2+ species, they were highly resistant towards the direct oxidation of the sulfur centre. | Ph.D. | ABS, species | 2, 14, 15 |
| Lee, Jung Hyub | Park, Chul B. | Development of High-temperature Thermoplastic Foams: Investigation on Foaming Behaviors of Sulfone Polymers | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | One of global efforts to address the growing environmental concerns pertaining to energy consumption in automotive and aerospace industries is to replace conventional materials with lightweight alternatives. In this regard, development of industrially viable high-temperature polymeric foams is of significant interest. Generating microcellular structures with lightweight thermoplastics would not only provide weight reduction but also tailorable properties based on the cell architecture. Furthermore, utilizing environmentally benign physical blowing agents, for instance CO2 and N2, to develop such structures would additionally reduce the environmental footprint of manufacturing processes. Despite the economic and the environmental advantages of high temperature polymeric foams, the development is still at its inception. There is a limited number of studies on the foaming of high temperature polymers and the majority are based on the two-step batch foaming process, in which cell nucleation was induced thermally through rapid heating. Although the results may be meaningful, it is not applicable to continuous foaming processes that utilize pressure quench as a means of inducing thermal instability. In this regard, the present dissertation is dedicated to investigating various aspects of processing high-temperature sulfone polymer foams and making a transition from small scale batch to continuous processes. The study commenced with fundamental research on the solution properties of sulfone polymers and CO2. Empirical as well as theoretical determination of gas solubility and observation on plasticizing effects of CO2 on the thermal behaviors of polysulfone (PSU) and polyethersulfone (PES) were conducted and discussed in relations to foaming. The one-step batch foaming process was employed to discern the effects of processing parameters on the foaming behaviors of PSU and PES. Uniform cellular structures exhibiting high cell densities ranging up to 1010 cells/cm3 were developed affirming that the pressure quench method was effective in producing high density foams. Subsequently, foam injection molding techniques were implemented for the continuous production of PSU foams. Impact and tensile properties of the foams were characterized and analyzed based on the parameters of cellular structures. Lastly, graphene nanoplatelet (GnP) was introduced in the processing of PES foams. The effectiveness of GnP as a cell nucleating agent, and the effects of cell structures on the electrical performance of the nanocomposites were investigated. Overall, the dissertation provides a comprehensive framework of high-temperature foam processing that focuses on process-structure-property relationships of sulfone polymer foams. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, transit, consum, production, environmental, co2 | 7, 9, 11, 12, 13 |
| Hossain, Sanjana | Nurul Habib, Khandker M | Data Fusion Methods to Support Travel Demand Modelling in Emerging Contexts | Civil Engineering | 2023-06 | In the face of growing incomprehensiveness of traditional data sources, lack of behavioural information of emerging sources, and changing data requirements of advanced models, the dissertation investigates the feasibility of fusing data from multiple sources to generate richer, more comprehensive, and more representative information to support disaggregate travel demand modelling. It presents an econometric data fusion framework that is based on four dimensions: purpose of fusion, characteristics of input data, feature of fusion methods, and nature of outputs. It proposes a conceptual framework to integrate econometric data fusion with activity-travel model to create a consistent simulation system. The thesis presents four empirical investigations that implement parts of the proposed conceptual framework. The first two studies demonstrate the feasibility of fusing traditional data with emerging data to infer the missing semantic information of the latter. The first exercise proposes an econometric fusion method to infer trip purposes from GPS trajectories of ride-hailing services in Toronto by combining with travel survey and land use data. The inferred trip purpose pattern extends our understanding about ride-hailing demand and helps account for trip underreporting in travel surveys. The second investigation infers origin and destination zones of transit trips from smart card data by fusing with survey data, land use information, and network characteristics. This helps generate up-to-date demand data necessary for public transport planning and operations. The dissertation also demonstrates the feasibility of fusing multiple survey data to capture travel attitudes and preferences. The third analysis focuses on enriching a “core” travel diary survey with attitudinal information from “satellite” surveys via implicit fusion to evaluate the impacts of COVID-19 on passenger travel demand. The results highlight the ability of the imputed variables to support the estimation of an advanced econometric model. The fourth investigation proposes a model-based method to fuse repeated cross-sectional travel survey data based on the theory of rational inattention to capture travel preference evolution and enhance the forecasting robustness of discrete choice models. Taken together, the components of this dissertation lay the framework for producing rich and accurate input data for evidence-based transportation planning in the emerging context. | Ph.D. | invest, public transport, transit, land use, land | 9, 11, 15 |
| Chen, Siyin | Zhong, Chen-Bo||Christianson, Marlys | Art for whose sake? Occupational Identity, Commercialization, and Innovation in the “Porcelain Capital” of China | Management | 2023-06 | When and how could experts translate the growing power of the audiences of their work (e.g., clients and customers), which existing research often characterizes as an occupational identity threat, into an opportunity for product innovation and identity reconstruction? I answer this question using a qualitative ethnography and a quantitative audit study of porcelain artists in China who have been forced to cater to market audience demands due to a market shift. I found that when facing challenging feedback from market audiences on their work, artists who distilled the core material element(s) of their work products that signify their occupational identity, and successfully experimented novel work products integrating their distilled material element(s) with audience feedback, innovated new artistic products and reconstructed their occupational identity. I further found that artists who did not go through the distilling and/or experimenting processes either quit the market or built strong segmentation between the work products that they created catering to audience feedback from their occupational identity through work product self-categorization, which helped protect their existing work and occupational identity. These findings contribute to a richer understanding of the role audience feedback, material objects, and innovation play in occupational identity processes, as well as the market implications of holding an unwavering occupational identity. | Ph.D. | capital | 9 |
| Mistry, Nikhil | Mazer, C. David | Evaluation of Strategies for Managing Anemia and Transfusion in Cardiac Surgery and Risk Factors for Cardiovascular Health | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Patients with high cardiovascular risk may develop coronary artery disease requiring surgical intervention. The primary focus of this thesis was to evaluate strategies for reducing the potential risks associated with anemia in cardiac surgical patients. A secondary focus of this thesis was to explore the potential cardiovascular risks associated with cannabis in young adults. The first study was a subset analysis of the Transfusion Thresholds in Cardiac Surgery (TRICS-III) trial evaluating transfusion thresholds in patients with acute myocardial infarction on long-term cardiovascular outcomes, and a synthesis of the results with all available evidence through a systematic review and meta-analysis. We identified that liberal transfusion strategies may reduce the risk for long-term major adverse cardiovascular events. The second study was a subgroup analysis of the TRICS-III trial evaluating transfusion thresholds in patients with diabetes undergoing cardiac surgery. Despite patients with diabetes having increased cardiovascular risk, restrictive transfusion did not increase the risk for clinical outcomes and was more effective at reducing transfusion. The third study was a translational study of the TRICS-III trial evaluating the role of plasma methemoglobin as a marker for anemia-induced tissue hypoxia. Reductions in hemoglobin were associated with increases in methemoglobin, and elevated post-surgical methemoglobin was associated with an increased risk for neurological outcomes. The fourth study was a cross-sectional analysis of the nationally representative Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey to evaluate the association between recent cannabis use and myocardial infarction in young adults. Recent cannabis use was associated with a 2-fold increase in the risk for myocardial infarction. This risk was elevated in more frequent users of cannabis, and was sustained across all methods of consumption. We demonstrated that there may be differences in the susceptibility of anemia and tolerance to transfusion in specific subgroups of patients with high cardiovascular risk undergoing cardiac surgery, and incorporation of a biological marker of anemic stress may better inform clinical decision making for personalizing transfusion therapy for improving postoperative clinical outcomes and reducing unnecessary exposure to banked blood. Additionally, insights from our cross-sectional study may inform individual decision making regarding an underappreciated cardiovascular risk associated with cannabis use. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Kim, Ji Sup | Al-awar, Rima | Investigating WDR12 as a Therapeutic Target in Breast Cancer | Pharmacology | 2023-06 | Breast cancer is the most diagnosed and lethal cancer globally in women. Presently, there is a need for novel targets for the development of improved therapeutics. Data mining through genetic screens suggests that the ribosome biogenesis protein WDR12 is essential for breast cancer cell proliferation. In this study, we characterize the effects of WDR12 knockdown in a panel of breast cancer cells. We show that WDR12 knockdown induces ribosomal RNA (rRNA) processing defects resulting in strong growth inhibition in all breast cancer cells tested, however only a subset of lines displayed short-term cell cycle defects. To further understand the cellular consequences of WDR12 suppression, we investigated the global proteomic landscape and found that WDR12 knockdown results in a perturbation of translational and ribosome biogenesis-related networks. Furthermore, we performed RNA-sequencing to assess the global transcriptional changes upon WDR12 knockdown and found dysregulation of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response pathway. Finally, we characterized the effect of long-term WDR12 suppression and found that growth inhibition was in part due to cellular senescence. Our results demonstrate that WDR12 is implicated in breast cancer cell growth and senescence, and its suppression may represent a viable therapeutic target for breast cancer. | Ph.D. | women, invest, land | 5, 9, 15 |
| Vujovic, Ana | Hope, Kristin J | Investigating RNA-binding Protein Dependencies in Hematopoietic and Acute Myeloid Leukemic Stem Cells | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Hematopoiesis is sustained through a delicate balance of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) self-renewal versus differentiation. Leukemic stem cells (LSCs) arise from mutations in hematopoietic stem or progenitor cells and are both seeds of initiation as well as drivers of progression and relapse in acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Targeting LSCs represents a key therapeutic goal in AML, but is challenged by their seemingly overlapping features with HSCs. Therefore, understanding the unique molecular circuitries that regulate HSCs versus LSCs is crucial to the development of LSC-targeted therapies in AML. Emerging evidence demonstrating the importance of post-transcriptional regulation in stem cells and solid tumors highlights the critical need for further efforts to understand these mechanisms in healthy and malignant HSC contexts. The work presented in this thesis aims to uncover key RNA-binding protein (RBP) dependencies in HSC and LSC in order to gain insights into vulnerabilities that can be harnessed for therapeutic targeting. In the second chapter, an in vivo CRISPR-mediated dropout screen of RBPs whose expression is enriched in LSCs uncovered 32 hit RBPs essential for leukemic propagation and/or LSC self-renewal, From this, we identified ELAVL1 as one of the top hits and demonstrate that its genetic and pharmacological inhibition impairs human primary AML LSCs, engraftment and promotes myeloid maturation while relatively sparing healthy HSCs. An integrative multi-omics approach reveals mitochondrial metabolism to be a key axis through which ELAVL1 enacts its functional phenotypes in AML with the mitochondrial protein, TOMM34 being a key effector of ELAVL1. In the third chapter, an oncofetal RBP, IGF2BP2 was identified in a BioID screen as an interactor of the HSC pro-self-renewal RBP, MSI2. Functional studies in fetal and adult mouse BM demonstrate that IGF2BP2 knockout does not impair hematopoietic engraftment. However, IGF2BP2 knockdown in human primary AML shows a trend toward decreased leukemic burden, suggesting that IGF2BP2 may have a selective functional role in AML. Altogether, our findings demonstrate the importance of interrogating the post-transcriptional level of regulation in LSCs as exemplified by the characterization of ELAVL1 as a potentially LSC-specific post-transcriptional dependency in AML. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Wickstrom, Hanna Catherine | Pyle, Angela | Meeting in the Middle: Teacher-Facilitation of Play and Math Learning in Contemporary Kindergarten | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | Early math ability is a powerful predictor of future academic learning and opportunity (Duncan et al., 2007). To teach early math skills, many kindergarten programs world-wide endorse (Tafa, 2008), or mandate, play-based pedagogy (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2016), yet all play is not equal when it comes to math learning. Experimental evidence shows that a specific type of teacher-facilitated play, called guided play, leads to greater math learning gains than traditional approaches like direct instruction or free play (Fisher et al., 2013; Skene et al., 2022), however, classroom-based research shows that guided play is uncommon in practice (Wickstrom et al., 2019). Further work is needed to understand how teachers are successfully translating theory into practice by optimizing the middle ground of guided play to support early math learning.This study used qualitative inquiry and thematic analysis to respond to this central challenge. It began by collecting survey data to understand kindergarten educators’ perspectives regarding play, math, and the integration of play and math. Participants who described guiding play to support math were purposefully selected for follow up interviews. Results identified three key findings. First, the majority of educators described more indirect approaches to play and math learning in kindergarten, where children learn math through opportunities for free play without adult intervention. Conversely, only a minority of educators described more direct, or teacher-facilitated, approaches to math learning in kindergarten through various approaches to play and direct instruction. Second, educators who described these teacher-facilitated approaches also described evolving their conceptualizations of play and math learning into a singular and unified construct, that young children learn math through play. Third, this evolved perspective helped educators to then implement various approaches to guided play in practice. Implications of these findings point to a larger conversation about the need to move away from child-led approaches to early math learning and towards teacher-facilitated approaches instead. Importantly, this discussion will identify the key factors that educators leveraged to help them successfully transition towards teacher-facilitated approaches to math and will discuss what can be done to support more educators in also successfully making this transition. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning, minorit, transit, fish | 4, 10, 11, 14 |
| Chu, Anh Thi Ngoc | Manolson, Morris F | Elucidating the Role of Lipid Binding Domains in V-ATPase a-subunits | Dentistry | 2023-11 | V-ATPases are H+ pumps essential for housekeeping functions such as acidifying Golgi, lysosomes, and endosomes. V-ATPases on the plasma membrane (PM) of osteoclasts pump acid onto the surface of bone to demineralize bone, while V-ATPases on the PM of tumour cells acidify the extracellular space required for metastasis. A drug design towards inhibiting V-ATPase activity to prevent bone loss or metastasis must develop a strategy for targeting only V-ATPases on the PM of tumour cells or osteoclasts without affecting V-ATPases involved in housekeeping roles. In mammalian cells, the V-ATPase a subunit has four isoforms, a1-4, that are responsible for targeting V-ATPases to specific cellular locations. Human mutations in the four isoforms have been linked to different diseases. Among the four isoforms, a2 is found in the Golgi membrane while a3 and a4 are primarily expressed on the PM of osteoclast, and kidney cells, respectively. In invasive cancer, both a3 and a4 at the PM of tumour cells are required for tissue invasion and metastasis. Protein primary structures reveal a putative phosphoinositide (PIP) binding domains, containing a highly conserved basic motifs within all a isoforms. Using site-directed mutagenesis, I showed that the basic motifs to affect PIPs interaction and that disruption of the interaction impaired membrane targeting of the N-terminal domains of both a2 and a4 isoforms. In addition, altered levels of membrane PIPs mislocalized both proteins. Mutations in a1, a2, a3 and a4 are associated with epileptic encephalopathy, cutis laxa, osteopetrosis and renal tubular acidosis (dRTA), respectively. To understand the role of a subunit-PIPs interaction in human diseases, disease-causing mutations occurring within the putative binding domains, specifically: a2.K237_V238del (cutis laxa), and a4.K237del (dRTA) demonstrated defective PIP binding in vitro and impaired membrane retention/targeting in HEK293 cells. This data suggests that the a2-PI(4)P interaction is required for Golgi retention/targeting, and a4¬-PI(4,5)P2 interaction is required plasma membrane retention/targeting. This work enhances our understanding of a subunit functional domains, and informs potential targeted therapeutic treatment for metastatic cancer and bone loss pathologies. | Ph.D. | conserv | 14, 15 |
| Zouda, Majd | Bencze, J. Lawrence | STEM Discourses and Distinction in An Elite School: Leadership through Relationships to Knowledge | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) has become an influential discourse in many educational contexts. Despite varied conceptualizations and practices of STEM and STEM education, main goals of these discourses have largely been to support skilled STEM workforce to compete in the global economies. Although there is a plethora of publication regarding STEM education, a still underexplored context for STEM education is elite private schools. The rationale for examining STEM education discourses in elite private schools stems from these schools’ roles in perpetuating the status quo and securing privilege to dominant social groups. They do so by supporting their students to cultivate recognizable forms of capital, a sense of distinction, and entitlement to their privilege. As such, they allow their students to envision leadership roles. Hence, examining how STEM education is conceptualized and practised in these schools can provide understanding of how elite identifications might be facilitated through available STEM discourses and related meanings of excellence and distinction. This is particularly significant when acknowledging that STEM fields tend to have and produce their own status hierarchy. Through critical discourse analysis, this research examines STEM discourses that are available in an elite independent, co-educational, secondary, day school in Ontario, Canada, and how educators in this school conceptualize distinction in and through STEM (education). Using semi-structured interviews with teachers/administrators and document analysis of the school’s website and viewbook, this research further theorizes how these constructs might contribute to elite identifications. This research shows that, in contrast to the narrative of skilled STEM workforce, in this elite school there is an overarching discourse of leadership that defines what distinction in STEM means and what tends to be embraced, rejected and/or recontextualized regarding dominant STEM discourses. Such a leadership discourse subsumes other discourses of impact, intellectual distinction, competitive achievements and active participation. These discourses and related conceptualizations and practices can support students to develop particular “relationship[s] to knowledge” (Bourdieu, 2004) or, more specifically, particular harmonised relationships to STEM knowledge as thinkers, experts and risk-takers, allowing students as such to envision and assume leadership roles and to validate their high status/elite positions. | Ph.D. | knowledge, capital | 4, 9 |
| Ayoub, Mariam | Gillis, Roy | The Unacknowledged Ones: An Investigation of The Resistance of LGBTQI+ Syrians | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | The ongoing tribulations in Syria have catapulted the number of displaced refugees to devastating levels. The trauma experienced by Syrian refugees extends onward from Syria; Syrian Canadians, regardless of their citizenship status, face a host of isolating experiences such as discrimination, racism, Islamophobia. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+). Syrians are particularly susceptible to these injustices. LGBTQI+ Syrians face discrimination from multiple sources, including homophobia from their cultural groups, and racism, Islamophobia, and homophobia from Western cultures. This can contribute to the development of psychological difficulties, and appreciably compromise their integration into social networks. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the lived experiences of discrimination and oppression impacted the lives of the eleven LGBTQI+ Syrians that were interviewed as participants in this research, and the types of resistance and resilience-based coping strategies that they utilized to promote successful integration of their multiple identities while settling into Canadian society. This study employed a qualitative approach and was informed by minority stress theory while operating within an intersectional framework. Additionally, the study used a community-based, narrative approach that explored the tribulations and resistance strategies of LGBTQI+ Syrians concerning their intersecting identities. The main finding of this dissertation revealed that there is ongoing discrimination which left the participants feeling inferior and led to complications in integrating their identities within a Syrian and Canadian context. Results indicated three significant themes regarding coping strategies that participants utilized in response to experiences of discrimination, humour, therapy, and social support. This dissertation added empirically supported culturally responsive practice insights, specifically tailored culturally responsive training and community resources, which are expected to improve the design and delivery of interventions that aimed to promote psychosocial wellbeing and positive experiences of immigrating to Canada for LGBTQI+ Syrians. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, knowledge, racism, citizen, gender, queer, lgbtq, transgender, invest, minorit, refugee, resilien, resilience, injustice | 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Mitchell, Chloe J | Deber, Charles M. | Peptide-based Inhibitors of Bacterial Small Multidrug Resistance Proteins | Biochemistry | 2023-06 | Antibiotic resistance is a global crisis that first appeared in 1940, shortly after the introduction of penicillin. With the introduction of each new antibiotic, bacteria compensated with mechanisms to avoid their lethal effects. As an alternative approach to conventional antibiotics, this thesis explores a novel, rational drug design to inhibit a resistance mechanism of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. One resistance mechanism involves membrane-embedded multidrug efflux pumps that can effectively extrude an array of substrates, including common antibiotics, dyes, and biocides. Among these pumps are the small multidrug resistance (SMR) membrane transport proteins that consist of four transmembrane (TM) helices, which homodimerize in an anti-parallel fashion through a GG7 motif in TM4. To disable this pump, we synthesized a series of TM4 peptides that contain this dimerization motif designed to disrupt the dimer interaction and reduce substrate efflux. The peptides contain two terminal tags: a C-terminal tri-lysine tag to direct the peptides toward the negatively-charged bacterial membrane, and an uncharged N-terminal sarcosine (N-methyl-glycine) tag to promote membrane insertion. A series of these TM peptides were designed to target various SMRs, and as the GG7 dimerization motif was highly conserved across bacterial species, the peptides were tested for interspecies inhibitory activity. We found that peptides designed to target the P. aeruginosa SMR (PAsmr) were shown to competitively disrupt PAsmr-mediated efflux and re-sensitize bacteria to previously sublethal doses of the commonly-used hospital disinfectant benzalkonium chloride. A range of inhibition was induced across peptides, with the inhibitor peptide for PAsmr displaying the best broad-spectrum activity. To then elucidate the biophysical details of the peptide-membrane interactions, we used circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy, which confirmed that these peptides were inserted and assumed a helical conformation in membrane environments. Interestingly, differential scanning calorimetry showed that peptide insertion into liposomes caused lipid reorganization, yet dye-based in vivo and in vitro assays found that the peptides displayed minimal non-specific peptide-induced disruption of the bacterial membrane per se. As such, the efflux inhibitors designed herein show promise not only for improved treatment of bacterial infections, but more generally, may provide a successful platform to target and disrupt other membrane-embedded protein-protein interactions. | Ph.D. | conserv, species | 14, 15 |
| Zhang, Jiakai | Azimi, Gisele | Supercritical Fluid Extraction of Critical Metals from Postconsumer Products: Process Development and Mechanistic Investigation | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-06 | With the growing awareness to protect the urban environment, the use of green technologies has been widely promoted. These technologies rely upon strategic materials, such as rare earth elements (REEs), lithium, and Cobalt. They are essential in use and subject to supply risk. For building a more sustainable future and enabling the circular economy (make, use, recover), waste valorization and recycling of end-of-life products is imperative.Conventional recycling processes are based on pyrometallurgy or hydrometallurgy. The former is energy intensive, generating greenhouse gas emissions, while the latter relies on large volumes of acids and organic solvents; thus, generating hazardous wastes. There is a need for an environmentally sustainable and efficient process to enable green urban mining of secondary resources. Supercritical fluid extraction (SCFE) is a potential green alternative to convention processes because of the desirable properties of supercritical fluids as solvents. The SCFE is an emerging technology in the field of recycling of metals. There is a limited number of studies that investigated SCFE using end-of-life products as feed materials. The mechanism of SCFE and impacts of adding co-solvents and adducts to supercritical fluid are unclear. The SCFE involves multiple variables, which require a systematic approach for optimization. The main objective of this PhD project is to develop the SCFE process to recover strategic metals from end-of-life products. The first thrust focused on the recovery of rare earth elements (REEs) from neodymium iron boron (NdFeB) magnets and waste fluorescent lamp phosphors using SCFE. The second thrust focused on investigating the effect of organophosphorus ligand on the extraction of REEs from waste NdFeB magnets using SCFE. The third thrust focused on recovering lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese from waste lithium-ion battery using SCFE. The fourth thrust focused on elucidating the mechanism governing the complexation process during SCFE, focusing on elucidating the coordination environment of metal upon SCFE using X-ray absorption spectroscopy in collaboration with the Canadian Light Source. The fifth thrust focused on the techonoeconomic assessment of the SCFE process for the recovery of strategic materials from end-of-life products. Each thrust has led (or will lead) to a journal publication. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy, emission, greenhouse, labor, invest, urban, consum, waste, recycl, greenhouse gas, environmental, emissions | 2, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 |
| Patel, Zain Munir | Hughes, Tim Dr. | Organizing Principles of Regulatory Elements and TF Binding Models | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Mammalian genomes contain millions of putative regulatory sequences, which are delineated by the binding of multiple transcription factors (TFs). A major question in regulatory element biology is how TFs collaborate to encode cell-specific activity of cis-regulatory DNA. Genomics approaches have given rise to various theories about the organizing principles of individual regulatory elements. The enhanceosome model posits that an individual regulatory element is defined by a combination of TFs that adhere to strict spacing and orientation constraints (SAOCs). In contrast, the billboard model suggests that regulatory DNA has (at best) soft SOACs, and individual TF binding sites are subject to a high rate of 'turnover' during evolution. My thesis work aims to explore two major issues around this topic: First, while various lines of genomic evidence have been used to compel each of these models, a systematic evaluation of how well each model explains the global sequence and biophysical properties of regulatory elements has been lacking. Therefore, I evaluated whether four different regulatory element models incorporating different degrees of SAOC among transcription factor binding sites were broadly consistent with five different global properties of regulatory sequence (length, uniqueness, frequency, turnover, and role of master regulators). Based on my analysis, I conclude that models of transcription factor binding with or without spacing and orientation constraints predict that regulatory sequences should be fundamentally short, unique, and turn over rapidly. Additionally, my analysis suggested that the existence of master regulators may be, in part, a consequence of evolutionary pressure to limit the complexity and increase evolvability of regulatory sites. Second, in order to thoroughly explore multiple TF binding and the regulatory code, I assisted in the identification of binding motifs for the remaining TFs that lack motifs. I systematically compared traditional position weight matrix models of TF specificity to more complex k-mer based approaches like gapped-kmer support vector machine (gkmSVM) both within and across Chip-Seq and HT-SELEX datasets. I discovered that gkmSVM outperforms PWMs in predicting HT-SELEX and Chip-Seq data for almost all TFs tested, suggesting that TF binding may be influenced by flanking sequences and dinucleotide interdependency that are not accounted for by a PWM model. Additionally, I find that cross-comparing models across datasets is critical for identifying systematic biases in these datasets and flagging uninformative experiments. Overall, my research will contribute greatly to our understanding of the regulatory element code and will aid in the understanding of multiple TF binding and individual TF binding. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Gupta, Shubham | Röst, Hannes | Strategies to Align DIA Proteomics Runs Across Multiple LC-MS/MS Setups | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Data Independent Acquisition Mass Spectrometry (DIA-MS) is a widely used for proteomics approach given its high-throughput and reproducibility; but ensuring consistent quantification of analytes across large-scale studies of heterogeneous samples such as human plasma remains challenging. Heterogeneity in large-scale studies can be caused by several factors, such as large time intervals between data-acquisition, acquisition by multiple instruments, and normal aging or replacement of parts, such as the liquid chromatography column, all of which affect retention time (RT) reproducibility and, successively, the performance of downstream statistical analyses. Here, I present a novel algorithm, implemented in the DIAlignR package, for RT alignment of DIA-MS runs based on direct alignment of raw MS2 chromatograms using a hybrid dynamic programming approach. The algorithm provides a high alignment resolution which assists in peak-selection in crowded MS2 chromatograms. In addition, it does not impose a chronological order of elution allowing alignment of elution-order-swapped peaks. Furthermore, constraining RT mapping in a certain window around a coarse global fit makes it robust against noise. Successively, the pairwise alignment is extended to multiple runs using both reference-based Star, and reference-free minimum spanning tree (MST) and Progressive alignment approaches. On a gold standard annotated dataset, DIAlignR achieves a threefold reduction in the peak identification error-rate when compared to standard non-aligned DIA results. A similar improvement is achieved from aligning runs acquired at 11 different sites when compared against the current state-of-the-art method, TRIC. Next, on real-world clinical data, the proposed approach outperforms TRIC, mapping 98% of peaks compared with 67% cumulatively. Additionally, DIAlignR reduces alignment error up to 30-fold for extremely distant runs. Finally, when analyzing the 949 plasma runs from a prediabetic cohort, the use of DIAlignR resulted in an increase of 57% and 62% in the number of statistically significant proteins for insulin resistance and respiratory viral infection, respectively, compared to prior analysis without alignment. Hence, DIAlignR fills a gap in analyzing DIA runs acquired in-parallel using different LC-MS/MS instrumentations. The alignment algorithm is freely available at https://github.com/Roestlab/DIAlignR. | Ph.D. | wind | 7 |
| Latremouille, Chelsea Bronwynn | Dolan, Neal | Solitude and Postbellum Literary Culture: Elizabeth Stoddard, William Dean Howells, and Henry Adams | English | 2023-06 | This dissertation tells a new story about the role of solitude in late-nineteenth-century American culture. The figure of the solitary individual informed the consolidation of liberalism and the rise of literary romanticism in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Louis Hartz has famously argued that liberalism came to define America’s “way of life,” while F.O. Matthiessen and Richard Chase have claimed that American literature is effectively romantic. Despite solitude’s importance to American political and aesthetic thought, however, the role of isolation in American culture is under-studied outside the contexts of antebellum romanticism and the existential alienation associated with modernism. My study asks, what happens to discourses of solitude between romanticism and modernism, that is, in “the Age of Realism”? Accordingly, I examine solitude in postbellum literature, exploring how beliefs about the transformative power of solitude change under the pressures of an increasingly industrialized and mechanized society. I argue that solitude becomes an important discourse through which many late-nineteenth-century writers questioned their political assumptions and navigated the meaning of declining republican political values. The authors I consider, Elizabeth Stoddard, William Dean Howells, and Henry Adams, confronted the limitations of liberalism to grapple with a progressively unequal society, and they expressed these limits in often-contradictory celebrations and critiques of solitude. My study reveals an impasse shared by these writers regarding the value of solitude. For them, neither republican, classical liberal, nor romantic valuations of solitude fully survive America’s transition into an industrial modernity. But neither are these outlooks entirely surrendered. My readings of Stoddard, Howells, and Adams disclose an emerging American modernity still partially shaped by powerful inherited discourses of solitude reflecting romantic ideals that prove inadequate to new social and economic conditions. Postbellum realism tries but fails to escape a romantic bind in which these authors’ adherence to discourses of solitude appears to produce the very social and political problems of economic marginalization, inequality, and alienation that they sought to avoid. Complicating critical narratives in which realism develops in reaction to romanticism, this project demonstrates that romantic ideals of solitude shaped realism into the early twentieth century. | Ph.D. | inequality, equalit, transit | 10, 11 |
| Ermakova, Vera | Bascia, Nina | Teachers’ Perspectives on Nutrition and Physical Education Teaching Practices | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | This qualitative study investigates Nutrition and Physical Education and its role in student empowerment as a precondition for subsequent healthy habits and lifestyle, drawing on teachers’ perspectives in the province of Ontario, where the researcher is based. The teacher perspective is distinguished, as it is these ground level experts who are in the best position to discuss the education carried out, as well as evaluate the outcome for their students, and identify the specific challenges of the process. The critical value lens of empowerment is operationalized to investigate the lasting impact of the education upon the students. To this end, the dynamic interaction of policy, teachers and students is of interest, during the respective teacher practice process, filtering through the challenges, to produce the final outcome of student empowerment for healthy habits and lifestyle. Accordingly, the respective past and current teachers are considered, their backgrounds, workplaces and communities, their particular Health Education programs, as well as any challenges experienced by them. Specifically, a Questionnaire and several interviews explore which factors inform the teacher practice of nutrition and physical education teaching, what influences what the teachers do pedagogically when they teach nutrition and physical education, how the teachers evaluate effectiveness of the education they provide, what are the challenges encountered by the teachers during this process, and what are the teachers’ perspectives about the relationship between their teaching practices and student empowerment in the formation of healthy habits, and subsequently, a healthy lifestyle? Findings of the investigation point to a wide range of factors which directly and indirectly inform the teacher practice of nutrition and physical education teaching; numerous important direct and indirect conditions impacting the teaching practice of the participants are observed; various types of instruments employed for evaluation purposes are identified; and many challenges of direct and indirect nature encountered by the teachers during this process are uncovered. Nonetheless, the participants confirm the belief that Health Education provided leads to the formation of healthy habits and a healthy lifestyle. In conclusion, implications for policy, practice, and theory are discussed, as well as recommendations are offered for future research. | Ed.D. | nutrition, health education, invest | 2, 3, 2009 |
| Lovblom, Leif Erik | Tomlinson, George||Perkins, Bruce A | Joint Multistate Models for Correlated Disease Processes: Extending Approaches for Interval-Censoring, Mixed Observation Schemes, and Multiple Longitudinal Outcomes | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2023-06 | In diabetes and other lifelong diseases, it is not always known with certainty how chronic correlated non-fatal disease processes co-develop over time. It is also not obvious how to analyze this complex multivariate statistical problem. This thesis reviews and proposes methods that allow for the simultaneous modelling of several such processes. In a tutorial setting, it is shown that multistate and joint modelling approaches are useful for the overall research objective. Multistate models are found to be particularly applicable for questions surrounding the order and timing of disease-related processes. However, they require discretization of outcome data and possibly a very complex state space when more than two processes are modelled. In contrast, joint models can account for variations of continuous biomarkers over time and are particularly designed for modelling complex multivariate association structures. It would therefore be useful to combine elements of multistate and joint models, and the next part of the thesis develops this framework. Shared random effects can be used to link multistate and longitudinal processes, but most existing approaches assume that the multistate transition times are exactly observed. This renders them unsuitable for interval cohort studies, which are one of the most popular study designs for questions surrounding the natural history of complications. In interval cohort studies, participants are intermittently observed at regular intervals and are thus subject to mixed observation schemes where certain events are interval-censored and others are exactly observed. A novel shared random effects joint model for a longitudinal outcome and a multistate process under a mixed observation scheme is thus proposed. An appropriate likelihood function is defined and the model is fitted using a maximum likelihood framework with adaptive Gaussian quadrature. The model is assessed using simulation studies and is applied to 30-year data from the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial and Epidemiology of Diabetes Interventions and Complications study. The model is then extended to accommodate multiple longitudinal outcomes via Bayesian estimation using Hamiltonian Monte Carlo. In the end, it is shown that the novel joint multistate model gives greater insight into the natural history of a full complications process. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Feng, Shengrui | De Carvalho, Daniel DDC||Arrowsmith, Cheryl CA | Epigenetic Profiling and Therapy for Brain Cancer | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Brain tumors are aggressive and lethal cancers affecting both children and adults. Genetic alterations in the regulation of epigenetic processes play a critical role in the development of brain tumors. Atypical teratoid rhabdoid tumors (ATRTs) exhibit clinical heterogeneity and a relatively stable genome, suggesting they may comprise distinct molecular subgroups driven by epigenetic mechanisms. Integrated analyses of epigenomic and transcriptional profiling on a large cohort of primary ATRTs defined three molecular subtypes that correlated with distinct clinical features, lineage-specific methylation, and transcriptional patterns. ATRT subgroups exhibited distinct epigenomic landscapes correlated with the expression of cell-lineage and signaling genes. This suggests that different subgroups of ATRTs may have distinct regulatory networks, highlighting the potential for developing treatments tailored to specific subgroups. SMARCB1 inactivating mutations in ATRTs confer an oncogenic dependency on EZH2. We found that EZH2 inhibition (EZH2i) upregulates the expression of genes enriched for intronic and 3’ UTR IR-Alu elements, leading to the formation of intramolecular stem-loop dsRNA and activation of cytosolic dsRNA sensing pathways. EZH2i induces genome instability and cytoplasmic DNA sensing pathways in a process dependent on reverse transcriptase activity. The viral mimicry state underlying the vulnerability of genetically defined, SMARCB1-deficient tumors on EZH2i is mediated via both dsRNA and DNA sensing pathways.DNA methylation patterns can be used to classify different types of brain tumors in molecular pathology, but this typically requires obtaining tissue samples through invasive surgery. To overcome this obstacle, we used a highly sensitive technology called cfMeDIP-seq to profile DNA methylation in the plasma. We found that DNA methylation patterns in the plasma can accurately identify common primary intracranial tumors that may be difficult to differentiate with standard imaging methods and have the similar cell of origins. Altogether, this thesis demonstrates epigenomic profiling as a powerful approach to classifying different brain tumor entities and reveals an important mechanism of targeting EZH2 as a potential therapeutic strategy for the treatment of ATRTs. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, land | 1, 15 |
| Toomey, Nisha | Tuck, Eve | Aid and Development at the Thailand-Myanmar Border: Mapping humanitarianism as a settler colonial construct | Social Justice Education | 2023-06 | This study maps Western humanitarianism as an imaginary that positions the Western world as superior to other places. Humanitarian and international development activities work to recruit local populations into Western worldviews and economic practices, instead of meeting them on their own terms. In placing the focus on the supposed deficiencies of the peoples and places they work in, Western humanitarianism evades and actively obscures how global economic forces–originating in and supported by the West–are the reason why people face challenges of conflict, poverty and displacement. I learn from the context on the Thailand-Myanmar border, site of some of the world’s longest civil wars and land sovereignty struggles, where exploitative development projects are accelerating. I conducted interviews with 33 humanitarian workers in that region to learn how they understand humanitarianism, and what their organizations are doing or not doing about land theft. I combine the results with a review of historical and current literature, analysis of INGO annual reports, and theorizations from across the fields of critical humanitarian studies and Black and Indigenous Feminist Studies. I observe that the problem of land confiscation is largely ignored by INGOs in the Thailand-Myanmar border region, and this is also true of humanitarian practices globally. I trace how INGOs self-define their work, constructing concepts of an international humanitarian community that is separate from communities in the places they work, that is accountable not to those communities but to Western audiences: humanitarians report. I consider how humanitarianism idealizes a certain type of human: civilized, developed and progressive: humanitarians are human. Humanitarian projects exoticize and pathologize places that Westerners travel to, conceiving of those places as open to exploration: humanitarians travel. When they arrive in places, they reinforce models of extractive capitalism imported from the West: humanitarians create economies. Finally, they ignore local relations to land, avoiding support for land sovereignty struggles, and in doing so reproduce settler colonial ways of being: humanitarians settle. This work also considers questions of research ethics and suggests practices of refusal in research. The final chapter incorporates suggestions from participants on how academic research might be more useful. | Ph.D. | poverty, worldview, settler, feminis, worker, capital, humanitarian, indigenous, land, sovereignty | 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 16, 15 |
| Reynolds, Ashley R | Evans, David C | Life History and Osteohistology in Feliformia (Mammalia: Carnivora), with Case Studies in Panthera and Smilodon | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | Aspects of vertebrate life history can be studied using osteohistology, including growth rate and trajectory, but mathematical methods for growth curve reconstruction have not been adequately tested and applied in fossil mammals. This study makes inferences on the life history of the extinct sabre-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis (Carnivora: Felidae) from gross osteology and taphonomy; tests the viability of osteohistology and mathematical growth curve reconstruction on extant felids in the genus Panthera; establishes relationships among extant feliforms between body mass, sexual size dimorphism, and sociality; applies these methods to estimate growth parameters in S. fatalis; and tests hypotheses relating to S. fatalis ecology. An association of at least two S. fatalis subadults and one adult from Pleistocene deposits in Ecuador is interpreted as representing a family group. Comparison of the Ecuadorian subadults with the growth of pantherine cats produces the hypothesis that S. fatalis had a unique growth strategy that combines a rapid growth rate, seen in Panthera tigris, and the extended growth period of P. leo. Observational data were collected from species in the felid genus Panthera and the feliform family Hyaenidae. Osteohistological growth data were also collected from P. leo and P. tigris. A growth curve based on osteohistology in P. leo captures observed patterns of growth. Growth curves based on observational data in feliforms show that higher levels of sexual size dimorphism are associated with higher size-standardized variability in body size, while social species demonstrate lower maximum daily growth rates (kg/d) and slightly higher age to 95% asymptotic body mass than solitary species. These results were used to test two hypotheses: (1) S. fatalis was not sexually size dimorphic, and (2) S. fatalis was social. Size-standardized variation in adult body mass suggests that S. fatalis was moderately sexually size dimorphic. Maximum daily growth rates in S. fatalis are consistent with a solitary species of its body mass, but age at 95% asymptotic body mass is more consistent with a social species. This study represents the first rigorous modelling of growth curves in a fossil mammal and highlights the utility of such studies for inferring palaeoecology. The methods used here provide a novel framework for understanding extinct mammalian life history strategies and will provide new insights into their evolution and ecology. | Ph.D. | species, ecolog | 14, 15 |
| Elsayed, Shehab | Enright Jerger, Natalie | Improving Multi-threaded Application Performance on Modern Chip Multiprocessors | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | Multi-threading is one way of leveraging the increasing number of cores in today's processors to speed up applications by dividing the workload, that would otherwise be executed sequentially, across multiple threads that run in parallel. However, if one thread lags behind the rest of the threads, it will limit the overall achievable benefit from parallelization. To unlock the full potential of multi-threading such critical threads have to be predicted and optimized during runtime in a way that minimizes the difference in performance between them and the remaining threads. The large number of factors that can affect a thread's performance make critical thread prediction a very challenging task. Moreover, these factors are not completely independent of each other and can be indirectly related in ways that are difficult to model accurately. Therefore, previous works that addressed the issue of thread criticality only focused on a limited set of factors when predicting which threads are critical. However, the results presented in this thesis show that none of these factors strongly correlates to thread criticality when considered separately resulting in suboptimal thread criticality predictions. Instead of focusing on a limited set of factors, this thesis leverages machine learning to facilitate the study of a wide variety of factors that can potentially affect a thread's progress. Specifically, this thesis formulates the problem of thread criticality as a Learning-to-Rank problem. Each thread is represented by a set of runtime statistics representing the input features to the ranking model and the predicted scores reflect how critical a thread is. Using a ranking model puts more emphasis on threads' criticality scores relative to each other rather than exactly matching the criticality score for each thread. This work shows how the proposed thread criticality prediction methodology can be applied to two types of run environments. The first runs the benchmarks on a real system and uses Linux Trace Toolkit: next generation (LTTng) for data collection while the second uses Gem5 to simulate the required multi-core system. Collected results show that single features are not very accurate predictors for thread criticality compared to a model that considers several features. The obtained model performs 17% better than a single-metric based predictor in predicting threads' criticality. Finally, a case study where critical threads are prioritized by doubling the corresponding core frequency shows the potential benefit the proposed ranking model offers compared to a predictor that is based on a single feature. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Fiore, Mary | McDougall, Douglas | Investigating Teachers’ Assessment Practices of Students’ Mathematical Thinking | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | Mathematics educators and researchers describe mathematical thinking as a set of specific mental processes or habits of minds. While research has identified a wide range of effective instructional strategies for enhancing students’ understanding of mathematics by learning through mathematical thinking or thinking classrooms; however, little is known on how to assess students’ mathematical thinking or habits of mind that are integral to teaching and learning mathematics. This study investigated teachers’ practices and perceptions about teaching and learning through mathematical thinking to help students construct a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and skills. Using a qualitative multiple-case study approach, I investigated the ways in which four elementary school teachers approach the assessment of students’ mathematical thinking in their classrooms. The major findings are: (1) participants reported that instructional practices and the assessment of students’ mathematical thinking occur simultaneously; however, the participants struggled to describe mathematical thinking; (2) participants felt that explicitly embedding the skills that underpin mathematical thinking in the learning goals shifted the focus of the assessment; (3) participants relied on students’ reflective thought processes to support their assessment practices of students’ mathematical thinking; (4) participants reported that they could more readily assess students’ mathematical thinking when students are given opportunities to apply their understanding of mathematics concepts and skills; (5) participants reported that students need to be given ample opportunities to make their thinking visible to enhance their assessment practices; (6) participants reported that students who are comfortable with learning mathematics and exhibit positive attitudes toward learning mathematics are more likely to share their mathematical thinking; and (7) participants reported that their comfort and attitude towards mathematics enhanced their assessment practices as part of their daily practices. Eliciting students’ mathematical thinking through purposefully selected student tasks is an integral component of a successful mathematics program; however, eliciting student thinking on its own does not imply students’ thinking is being attended to for assessment purposes. This study provides insight about the assessment practices of teachers and their perceptions of mathematical thinking. It is hoped that the findings of this study will ultimately enhance teachers’ formative assessment practices of students’ mathematical thinking. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Gleeson, James | de Lara, Eyal||Pekhimenko, Gennady | Managing, Profiling, and Optimizing Heterogeneous GPU Workloads | Computer Science | 2023-06 | The popularity of machine learning (ML) workloads have made GPU instance offerings ubiquitous in the cloud, introducing new challenges in managing, profiling, and optimizing GPU workloads. Cloud providers assign passthrough GPUs directly to virtual machines (VMs) for high performance, but doing so renders VM migration non-functional, limiting cloud operator ability to manage hardware resources. Existing general purpose GPU (GPGPU) and deep neural network (DNN) profiling tools are ineffective for heterogeneous CPU/GPU workloads like reinforcement learning (RL) since they only provide information about GPU kernel and DNN layer execution, and ignore CPU-side bottlenecks such as simulation. The lack of adequate profiling tools has led ML researchers to rely on naive costly cluster scale-up solutions to optimize RL training time, which can cost millions of dollars and are inaccessible to most ML researchers. In this dissertation, we build systems software for addressing these challenges. For management, we build Crane, a GPU virtualization middleware that achieves within 5% of passthrough GPU performance, requires no OS/application/hypervisor modifications, and can even enable migration between heterogeneous GPU targets. For profiling, we build RL-Scope, a cross-stack profiling tool tailored to RL workloads that breaks down low-level CPU/GPU training time scoped to high-level algorithmic operations (i.e., inference, simulation, backpropagation). We survey RL workloads across major workload dimensions (i.e., simulator, RL algorithm, DNN framework) and demonstrate that RL workloads suffer universally from low GPU utilization, and that na ̈ıve attempts to increase GPU utilization by parallelizing GPU inference requests are unsuccessful. For optimization, we propose two optimizations targeting the time-consuming data collection phase of RL training. First, GPU vectorization moves simulation from the CPU to the GPU to benefit from increased hardware parallelism, achieving a 1024× speedup over CPU implementations. Second, Simulator kernel fusion fuses multiple steps of simulation into a single GPU kernel launch to benefit from caching simulator state in fast GPU registers, obtaining a 11.3× speedup over an unfused GPU kernel. Both optimizations are orthogonal and can be combined for massive multiplicative speedups, and are more accessible to ML researchers since they do not rely on costly cluster scale-up | Ph.D. | learning, accessib, consum | 4, 11, 12 |
| Hadi Zadeh, Ali | Moshovos, Andreas | Fast and Energy-Efficient Inference for Attention-Based Natural Language Processing Models | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | Creating machines that can ``understand’’ our language and ``interact’’ with us as we interact with each other has been a dream that motivated many and captured the imaginations of even more. Attention-Based Transformer models have demonstrated remarkable success in getting us closer to this dream by tackling many natural language understanding tasks.However, for these impressive algorithmic developments to be of practical use, they need to be matched by capable hardware devices. Unfortunately, these models' storage, data transfer, and computation demands are already taxing even the most powerful computing hardware available today. This thesis' goal is to reduce the cost of inference for Transformer models in terms of latency and energy consumption to help enabling widespread application in our daily lives. Since in these models, the primary performance and energy efficiency bottleneck is memory transactions, this dissertation develops model compression techniques to reduce the model's memory footprint. The model compression techniques are post-training and require no fine-tuning. To reach this goal, this thesis investigates the underlying distribution of values in Attention-Based models and shows most of the weights and activations throughout the model follow a bell-shaped distribution. This motivated us to develop GOBO and Mokey, two quantization techniques for Transformer models that focus on the bulk of values to map FP32 or FP16 numbers into 3- or 4-bit indexes to dictionaries of representative values. This means forcing most of the values in a layer to be one of 8 or 16 unique values (instead of 2^32 in single-precision floating-point, FP32, format) while maintaining the models' accuracy. To exploit the quantized model even during inference computations, we designed custom hardware accelerators for GOBO and Mokey to enable computation directly on dictionary indexes instead of representative values, eliminating the need to build look-up tables for index-value conversion. GOBO and Mokey hardware accelerators improve the performance and energy efficiency of such models by one to two orders of magnitude. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, consum | 7, 9, 12 |
| Dobri, Simon Giuseppe James | Ross, Bernhard | Neural Mechanisms Underlying Speech-in-Noise Perception in Aging | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Everyday conversations take place in environments with some level of background noise. An aging-related decrease in the ability to understand speech in the presence of noise, called speech-in-noise loss, is a common experience causing major communication problems. Unfortunately, it is not only a matter of audibility. Aging-related changes in the central auditory system cause noise to interfere with speech further along the processing hierarchy, at the level of perception. This thesis investigated how some of those changes may impair older listeners’ ability to segregate and integrate speech sounds and background noise into separate perceptual objects, a process called feature binding. Binding is achieved by synchronizing 40-Hz gamma oscillations in spatially overlapping sensory and higher-order thalamocortical networks, which crucially depends on inhibition mediated by the neurotransmitter γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA). For this thesis, auditory cortex GABA levels in young and older adults were measured with magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS). The total amount of auditory cortex GABA declined in aging, and this decline was associated with reduced speech-in-noise understanding. Thorough analysis allowed the GABA decline to be teased apart from aging-related changes in brain structure and MRS reference signals, demonstrating an additional decline in the brain matter GABA concentration. In the same participants, the 40-Hz auditory steady-state response (ASSR) in quiet and with concurrent multi-talker background noise was recorded using magnetoencephalography (MEG). Careful analysis indicated multiple components of the ASSR. In noise, it was dominated by an early sensory component, and in quiet by a later higher-order binding component. For both stimulus conditions, 40-Hz gamma synchrony increased in aging. The gamma synchrony increase in the noise condition was associated with reduced speech-in-noise understanding, indicating heightened synchrony in sensory networks may cause stronger interference between speech and noise. This makes it more difficult to bind the sounds into separate perceptual objects for further processing. The grey matter GABA concentration was positively associated with gamma synchrony in the quiet condition, supporting GABA’s role in the internal generation of gamma oscillations. These results provide insight into how aging-related changes in the central auditory system affect feature binding and contribute to speech-in-noise loss. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Slater, Justin James Ian | Brown, Patrick E||Rosenthal, Jeffrey S | Bayesian Spatiotemporal, Sample Survey, and Forecasting Methods for Analyzing COVID-19 Infections and Mortality | Statistics | 2023-06 | For decades, mathematicians and statisticians have been modelling infectious diseases to forecast case/death counts, estimate important epidemiological quantities, and understand the dynamics of disease spread.This dissertation offers methodological insights into each of these three challenges using novel spatial, spatio-temporal, and Bayesian modelling methods, with applications to COVID-19 data. Alongside methodological contributions, this thesis also presents estimates of important epidemiological quantities which, subject to peer review, could be utilized by public health professionals and policy makers. There are four primary contributions of this work: 1) a subnational, single-wave COVID-19 mortality forecasting model that accounts for day-of-the-week effects, which was shown to outperform the most highly-cited model during the first viral wave; 2) a mobility-augmented spatial model for COVID-19 case counts, where cellphone-derived mobility data is shown to capture dependence between areal units better than physical proximity; 3) a novel, interpretable spatio-temporal infectious disease model where infectiousness is a function of mobility between areal units, resulting in estimates of the risk associated with travelling in two Spanish Communities; 4) a modular Bayesian framework based on mixture modelling of serological data and disaggregated deaths data to estimate COVID-19 incidence and infection fatality rates, resulting in estimates of these quantities across Canada for various strata. Although the applications in this thesis are to COVID-19 data, the proposed methodology can be applied to a wide spectrum of problems across infectious disease epidemiology. | Ph.D. | public health | 3 |
| Kennedy, Alysse Mary Audrey | Pedretti, Erminia | Storying Journeys in Environmental Sustainability Education: Navigating Teacher Candidates’ ESE Experiences | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | This thesis seeks to understand the experiences of twenty K-12 teacher candidates (TCs) within environmental and sustainability education (ESE) at a large Ontario faculty of education. Using Sauvé’s (2005) cartography of environmental education currents and Cooper and White’s (2012) five contexts as frameworks, I ask to what extent and in what ways are TCs engaging within ESE during their teacher education programs. Through a qualitative interview study inspired by the art of storytelling, twenty personal, highly-detailed and honest accounts developed of what it is like to be a TC engaging in ESE during an uncertain time (COVID-19) and looking towards an uncertain future for our climate. In their own words, TCs reveal the conceptualizations of ESE they carry, the range of emotions they navigate, the opportunities and supports they receive, the barriers and challenges they face, and the motivations that draw them into this complex field of study (despite their faculty of education not requiring them to do so). In listening to their stories, we hear powerful testimony from a group of TCs urging Canadian faculties of education and K-12 schools to respond to their call for relevant, engaging and meaningful ESE and climate action that is rooted in intersectionality, social justice, and appropriately inclusive of Indigenous pedagogies and perspectives. This study is significant in a number of ways: it informs our understandings of the role of ESE theory, the spectrum of emotions (from eco-anxiety to resilience), the critical importance of community, and the individual and systemic barriers at play in TCs’ personal and professional lives. I conclude the thesis with suggestions and considerations - theoretical and practical - for ESE in Canadian teacher education programs. Keywords: environmental and sustainability education; ESE; environmental education; teacher candidates; teacher education; climate justice; climate action; eco-anxiety; interview study; stories; intersectional environmentalism; environmental justice; ecojustice education; Indigenous education | Ph.D. | sustainability education, environmental education, ecojustice education, indigenous, resilien, climate, environmental, climate justice, resilience, environmental justice, social justice, ecojustice | 4, 10, 16, 11, 13, 15 |
| Yin, Yin | Drake, Jennifer | Potential Hydrologic Changes of a Low Impact Development Neighbourhood | Civil Engineering | 2023-06 | Low Impact Development is intended to maintain pre-development hydrology, but this remains widely unproven due to a lack of large-scale implemented and monitored projects. The Creek Side Village (CSV) is a planned community that will convert a 28 ha fallow field into a mixed-density residential neighbourhood for seniors. The proposed neighbourhood will not include conventional stormwater management systems and will instead manage stormwater exclusively through Low Impact Development (LID). This thesis proposes an approach for evaluating the pre-development hydrologic conditions of a land development site and examines how hydrologic processes may change when developed with LID infrastructure for stormwater management. The property's pre-development hydrological conditions were characterized by collecting field data in the summer and fall seasons with comprehensive onsite measuring tools to understand the current seasonal hydrological condition. The development property has highly permeable soils with an average saturated hydraulic conductivity of 24 mm/hr, making the site well suited for infiltration-based LIDs. Evapotranspiration (ET) and seepage water data collected from high-resolution weighing lysimeters were analyzed to determine the site’s water balance. A comprehensive filtering process was developed and adopted to minimize the errors in the lysimeter data, thereby improving the estimate of ET. The water balance between the proposed LID neighbourhood was compared with data from an instrumented bioretention cell site to assess if this LID approach is likely to mimic the pre-development water balance. Results showed that green infrastructure could mimic the water balance of the fallow field and compensate for potential ET losses after development. Field data were used as input data for a pre-development hydrologic model (using SWMM and SWMM-UrbanEVA). The model was calibrated using the lysimeter water balance data. Hydrologic modelling was conducted to determine if specific LID approaches (permeable pavements and/or bioretention cells) can maintain pre-development water balance conditions after development. Four proposed post-development scenarios were considered. The modelling work reveals that bioretention cells are unlikely to maintain the pre-development water balance. Using PPs to control stormwater is a more effective approach, while PPs+BioCells can help maintain pre-development water balance, but they are less effective than PPs only. | Ph.D. | water, stormwater management, low impact development, green infrastructure, infrastructure, urban, land, soil | 6, 11, 9, 15 |
| Gauthier, Jeremy Robert | Mabury, Scott A | Fluorine NMR as a Tool for Analysis of Fluorinated Compounds in the Environment | Chemistry | 2023-06 | The ubiquity of per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances (PFAS) in the environment is a global concern. As a result of an ever-expanding number of fluorinated compounds, the existing methods of analysis for PFAS are facing increasing challenges. Tandem mass spectrometry methods become limited by numbers of compounds able to be examined simultaneously. Non-targeted or suspect screening methods are useful for identifying unknown or undiscovered fluorinated compounds in samples but can be limited by difficulty in quantifi- cation or ionization. Fluorine nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (19F NMR) offers a complementary tool to mass spectrometry methods. 19F NMR provides an unbiased, non-targeted snapshot of a sample. Unlike mass spectrometry, there is no required anticipation of types of carbon-fluorine bonds or functional groups present. The sensitivity of the fluorine nucleus being similar to that of proton allows for low-concentration analysis of nearly every fluorinated compound in a particular sample. Additionally, the lack of naturally occurring, fluorinated species allows for analysis with minimal background contamination. In this thesis, 19F NMR was used to monitor degradation and transformation of fluori- nated agricultural chemicals. It was also used to examine organic fluorine contamination in a variety of samples including surface waters, rainfall, municipal water sources, wastewater, human urine, and human serum. Across all these samples, 19F NMR was better-able to account for the extractable organic fluorine content when compared with either targeted or non-targeted mass spectrometry techniques. Additionally, detection limits of 19F NMR have been pushed as low as 389 pg/L, when detecting trifluoroacetic acid in rainwater using a novel noise-reduction strategy. The capability of 19F NMR was further demonstrated by the first experimental measurement of aqueous diffusion coefficients for several PFAS. The thesis concludes by publishing the 19F NMR spectrum of numerous PFAS (100+ compounds) and provides useful guidelines for acquiring 19F NMR spectra of environmental samples. The overarching goal of this thesis was to demonstrate the capability of 19F NMR for environmental and analytical chemistry. This has been successfully achieved by the straightforward application of 19F NMR for the low-concentration detection of PFAS, and its capability for non-targeted analysis of PFAS within complex samples. | Ph.D. | agricultur, water, contamination, waste, environmental, species | 2, 6, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Zhang, Qian | Saks, Alan | Integrating Relational Perspectives into Strategic Human Resource Management: Three Papers on Strategic Relational Human Resource Management | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2023-06 | This thesis highlights the importance of integrating a relational perspective into strategic human resource management (HRM) and investigates how to make this integration in three studies. Chapter 1 first provides a review of the extant strategic HRM studies with a relationship-related focus. The review shows that our knowledge is limited in understanding the potential for HRM systems to directly influence individuals’ relational attitudes and behaviours. To address this void, this chapter develops a theoretical model of strategic HRM systems—strategic relational HRM—an interrelated set of HR practices that intends to help employees build and maintain workplace relationships. Theoretically, the model of strategic relational HRM emphasizes the role of individuals’ relational competencies in facilitating the emergence of human and social capital at the unit-level, which further contribute to firm performance. Chapter 2 explores how strategic HRM can enable new ventures to satisfy their simultaneous strategic needs of survival and growth through an inductive approach. Drawing on 51 semi-structured interviews conducted in two young hospitals in China, this study finds that young organizations relied on relationship-oriented collaboration to achieve their strategy through the implementation of a multilevel model of HRM systems. Specifically, at the macro-level, they used cross-organizational partnership to share human resources and develop their own employees. At the meso-level, these organizations cultivated collaborative cultures and designed HR policies targeting a promotion of relationship-building within firms. At the micro-level, they highlighted relational capabilities of individual employees, in addition to their technical skills. Having established the importance of relational attributes in the first two chapters, Chapter 3 develops a measure of strategic relational HRM following a rigorous procedure of measure development. This study underscores the importance of employees’ relational competencies as the micro-foundation of human capital and argues that strategic relational HRM can lead to superior firm performance through enhanced relational skills of individuals. Drawing from four samples from North America and Asia, this study tested content validity, internal consistency reliability, convergent, discriminant, criterion-related and incremental validity of a new strategic relational HRM measure. Evidence of the present study supports the use of strategic relational HRM measure in future research. | Ph.D. | knowledge, labor, capital, invest | 4, 8, 2009 |
| Walsh, Kathleen Marie | Farb, Norman||Segal, Zindel | Development of a Perspective Switching Task to Train Decentering | Psychological Clinical Science | 2023-06 | Decentering is the ability to shift experiential perspective from being immersed in internal experiences to observing them from a distance. Research has consistently shown the therapeutic benefits of taking a decentered perspective, but how to directly train this skill has yet to be investigated. One component of decentering, disidentification from internal experience, closely resembles self-distancing, which is the ability to switch from a first- to third-person perspective. Virtual reality provides a unique platform to train self-distancing using behavioural modification principles to enhance learning. As such, the goal of this research program was to develop an interpersonal mood induction with first- and third-person perspective videos (studies one and two) to be used in a Perspective Shifting Training (PST) tool to train decentering (study three).Using interpersonal theory of complementarity to inform the content of our videos, we developed a mood induction (30 videos) that successfully elicited positive and negative valence in undergraduate and global samples, regardless of the technology used (virtual reality, 360-degree videos, flat videos). However, technology impacted levels of presence (sense of “being” in the virtual environment). Specifically, watching virtual reality videos elicited greater levels of presence relative to flat videos; this difference was not observed when comparing 360-degree videos with flat videos. Using this mood induction, we recruited participants to train for two weeks in a PST condition (practice in “switching” perspectives through watching first- then third-person videos) or a Control condition (watching first-person perspective videos only). Participants in PST reported improvements in self-distancing that were associated with a gradual decrease in evoked valence. Both conditions increased in levels of decentering, suggesting the presence of an unexpected mechanism. Moreover, change in decentering was not associated with change in psychological well-being. The impact of individual differences, personal relevance, and immersive technology on presence is discussed. We explore the benefits of taking a first- or third-person perspective and highlight the importance of clarifying the dose-response relationship for self-distancing. Implications and future directions are discussed; most notable being the importance of recognizing and harnessing individual differences to enhance the therapeutic benefits of new and existing interventions to train decentering. | Ph.D. | well-being, learning, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Kotoulas, Nicholas Konstantine | Goh, M. Cynthia | Developing Novel Approaches to Bacterial Detection | Chemistry | 2023-06 | The rise of antibiotic resistance is a critical problem impacting healthcare networks worldwide. A common bottleneck in the assessment and effective treatment of antibiotic resistant infections is lengthy bacterial detection, which includes both pathogen identification and antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST). Standard clinical AST techniques require upwards of 48-72 hours, in large part delayed by the need to observe growth of bacterial colonies by eye. Furthermore, emerging technologies, while effective, are limited in their routine use and otherwise inaccessible in the developing world due to significant operational barriers. This work introduces the development of two novel approaches to bacterial detection that aim to improve upon detection times for both bacterial identification and AST with an emphasis on reduced cost, ease-of-use, and utility. The first approach involves the adaptation of an existing optics-based technique (diffraction sensing) for use in the measurement of bacterial growth, with a future application in AST. Three distinct cases were developed and proof of concept results discussed, focusing on shifts in the diffraction spot intensities produced by patterns comprised directly of the test bacterium, Escherichia coli, and those made from inoculated polymer and LB agar gels. The signal detection times for bacterial growth compared with the non-inoculated pattern controls across all three approaches ranged from 10-30 minutes, with more consistent shifts in diffraction intensities observed in cases with improved bacterial-surface spatial control and growth confinement. The second approach was developed from the ground up and focused on differentiating bacteria by their unique interactions with a small series of polyelectrolyte multilayer (PEM) surfaces. A simple microfluidic channel-based method was optimized to fairly assess these attachment strengths, which were combined to build cell-specific surface interaction profiles (SIPs). SIPs were applied to a series of hospital acquired ESKAPE pathogens and S. aureus single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), highlighting their ability to distinguish bacteria by Gram stain, individual species, and SNPs. A limited and successful blind experiment introduces the potential for utilizing SIPs in bacterial identification, and their capability to differentiate resistant isoforms of S. aureus underscores the future clinical applicability of SIPs in potentially streamlining identification and AST with a single, low-cost test. | Ph.D. | healthcare, accessib, species | 3, 11, 14, 15 |
| Buahom, Piyapong | Park, Chul B. | Theoretical Modeling and Optimization of Thermal Transport in Thermal Insulation Foams | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | Superinsulation has been one of the most challenging topics because of global concerns in sustainability and energy. However, the practical underpinning needed to design the optimal cellular structure and economically manufacture high-performance thermal insulation is still challenging due to the complication of thermal transport in the foam structure involving intermolecular, interfacial, and radiation-matter interactions. Therefore, this Ph.D. thesis developed theoretical modeling for the thermal transport in thermal insulation foams and demonstrated the influence of cellular structure and material properties on the thermal insulation property of closed-cell and reticulated open-cell foams. In particular, this research also demonstrated how an optimal foam structure and the addition of radiation-blocking carbonaceous nanoparticles effectively suppress the overall heat transfer. The research findings demonstrated that the size of struts and cell walls in the foam structure are sensitive to the foam’s expansion and cell size. Heat conduction in the solid depends on the structural tortuosity. Conduction in the gas is substantially reduced in nanocellular foams when the mobility of gas molecules is limited due to the Knudsen effect. The radiative heat transfer depends on the opacity of each cell and the number density of cells. An optimal foam structure minimizes overall heat transfer, and a material with low thermal conductivity and high radiative absorption is preferable. This research also demonstrated the impact of carbonaceous nanoparticles in the polymer at a small content on the substantially reduced thermal radiation while minimizing the increased heat conduction. Adding such nanoparticles can further reduce the optimal thermal conductivity and increase the optimal volume expansion ratio for manufacturing high-performance insulation with less polymer. In addition, thermal transport in foams is sensitive to cellular morphology. This thesis also explained the thermal transport in nanocellular open-cell foams with excellent thermal insulation performance. Furthermore, the generation of anisotropic foams could reduce the heat transfer in the transverse direction and increases the heat transfer in the longitudinal direction, providing a unique controlled heat transfer. The models provided an in-depth understanding of the relationship between the structure and the thermal conductivity. It provides insights into the cellular structure design and material selection for thermal insulation. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy | 2, 7 |
| Rees, Melissa | Misak, Cheryl | Placebos—Their Nature and Ethical Implications | Philosophy | 2023-06 | Placebos have the potential to improve patient outcomes and promote our well-being. They are important to the methodology of clinical trials, and they disturb the boundaries of what counts as ‘real’ medicine. In this dissertation I present the Social Positioning Account of placebos wherein placebos are partially constituted by the social context in which they are administered, and furthermore have a distinctive normative profile. An intervention only counts as a placebo when the client perceives themselves to be in a treatment context, and placebos are held to a norm such that they are better the more they resemble an extant standard treatment. I argue that the current state of empirical literature does not support the assumption that there is a unique causal driver for placebo effects. Thus, the Social Positioning Account is causally neutral—it does not define placebos in terms of a particular class of causes or causal mechanisms.The ethics of placebo administration intersects with broader questions within bioethics. In research settings, placebos are particularly important in the running of Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs). I therefore widen the scope of discussion and develop a framework for analyzing the ethical good standing of RCTs. I use that framework to examine a cluster of issues that arise in the running of RCTs, of which placebo administration is one. The placebo effect is also relevant to clinical practice; practitioners must balance the ethical obligation to disclose information to a patient with the assumed health risks or benefits consequent of that disclosure. Although withholding information can sometimes violate the duty to promote patient autonomy, I argue that there are surprising cases in which autonomy is promoted by withholding information and apply this insight to cases of placebo administration in clinical practice. | Ph.D. | well-being | 3 |
| Dhaliwal, Gurjot Singh | Nair, Prasanth B.||Singh, ChandraVeer | Robust Machine Learned Inter-atomic Potentials for Molecular Dynamics Simulations | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulations accelerated material discovery by performing property prediction at scales higher than Density functional theory (DFT). To make property prediction from MD simulations more robust, we propose an uncertainty quantification framework. The developed framework considers uncertainty in the parameters of the interatomic potential (IP) used to compute energy/forces between a set of atoms. We considered two distinct potentials namely AIREBO and Embedded atom method. The material of choice are graphene and aluminium. Sensitivity analysis was performed to understand the effects of IP parameter change on the final properties of interest. The sensitivity analysis showed that by varying the potential parameters as small as by 1%, the variance in the resulting mechanical properties was as high as 1e5. Basic properties such as elastic constant of graphene showed variation of 66% by changing AIREBO parameters only by 0.5%. Based on the sensitivity analysis results, a new robust version of each IP (AIREBO/EAM) was developed using Bayesian methodologies. Using samples from the resulting posterior distribution, MD simulations were performed and error bars for each property was obtained. The variance in the properties was within experimental tolerance exhibiting the reduction in sensitivity for both the material systems. It can be challenging to obtain a single classical IP to describe the interactions involved in multi-element systems. Various machine learning based potentials have been proposed to overcome this limitation however their computational cost can be high. The proposed model approximates the energy/forces using a linear combination of random features at a lower computational cost. This study provides results for three classes of materials, namely two-dimensional materials, metals, and semiconductors. Force and energy predictions made using the proposed method are in close agreement with density functional theory calculations, with training time that is 96% lower than standard kernel models. This study also develops IPs for High Entropy alloys based on random features. MD simulations for mechanical and thermal properties are within 7% of the corresponding DFT values. Complex interactions present at high temperatures were also correctly identified by the proposed IP. | Ph.D. | learning, energy | 4, 7 |
| Tsai, Meng-Fen | Zariffa, José||Wang, Rosalie | Monitoring Hand Use and Hand Role of Stroke Survivors at Home Using Egocentric Video | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-06 | Capturing hand function performance at home is essential to measuring the ultimate impact of novel interventions after stroke. Wearable technologies have been used to capture upper limb use ratios outside of clinical environments, however, wrist-worn devices measure arm use rather than hand use, and finger-worn devices may interfere with natural hand movement during activities of daily living. Therefore, an egocentric (first-person) camera was applied to capture natural hand movements of stroke survivors at home. In addition to hand use, the role of the affected hand in bimanual tasks, including stabilization and manipulation, provides distinct information about hand function performance and has not yet been investigated. Machine learning-based computer vision algorithms were used to detect hand-object interactions (hand use) and hand role after stroke from videos. In this thesis, the three objectives were to investigate the feasibility, validity, and user perspectives regarding the use of egocentric video to capture hand use and hand role of stroke survivors at home, respectively.Two datasets of recorded daily tasks from 24 stroke survivors at home and in a home simulation laboratory were collected and used in the studies. Hand-object interaction detection at home was feasible using a pre-trained deep learning model: the Hand Object Detector. As for hand role classification, other computer vision techniques that track finger movement may be helpful in the future. The measured hand use ratios from home-recorded videos had close to strong correlation with the Motor Activity Log (MAL) and demonstrated that egocentric video can capture hand function performance after stroke at home. Hand role ratios from the annotated bilateral tasks had very weak correlation with the MAL and negative correlations with the Fugl-Meyer Assessment – Upper Extremity and the Action Research Arm Test. Hand role ratio might capture different information about hand function than clinical upper limb assessments. Stroke survivors had high acceptance of using the camera to record daily routines at home and were willing to use it for rehabilitation purposes again. This thesis demonstrates the potential of using egocentric video with computer vision-based algorithms to measure hand function after stroke in the community. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, invest | 4, 8, 2009 |
| Whittaker Hawkins, Ryder | Rottapel, Robert | The Autoinflammatory C188Y Mutation in Cdc42 | Immunology | 2023-06 | The autoinflammatory syndromes are rare genetic diseases manifesting as widespread inflammation in the absence of an infectious trigger. The study of these unique diseases has revealed causative mutations in genes that regulate innate immune signaling pathways, such as the tumor necrosis factor (TNF), interleukin-1 (IL-1b), and inflammasome systems. A patient with heterozygous C188Y mutation in Cdc42 was recently described, presenting in early childhood with rash, periodic fever, recurrent infections and extremely high IL-18. Cdc42 (cell division cycle 42) is an ubiquitous Rho-family GTPase that controls actin cytoskeleton rearrangements, cell polarity and migration. The C188Y mutation is located in the C-terminal tail of Cdc42, which is modified by prenyl lipidation and required for membrane insertion. Two other C-terminal mutants, R186C and *192C, have been reported in childhood autoinflammation, but the mechanism by which C188Y causes systemic disease has not been examined. Here, I report the first comprehensive study of the biochemical and immunological effects of the C188Y mutation in Cdc42. The C188Y mutation results in the mislocalization of the protein from the plasma membrane and cytosol to the nucleus. Cells expressing Cdc42-C188Y protein exhibit defects in filopodium formation, an important Cdc42-driven process. BioID proteomics of Cdc42-C188Y revealed loss of interaction with key actin effectors including IQGAP1, Toca-1, and IRSp53. Expression of Cdc42-C188Y in the monocytic cell line THP-1 did not affect NLRP3 or pyrin inflammasome activation. THP-1 cells expressing Cdc42-C188Y showed impaired actin dynamics, impaired differentiation into macrophage-like cells and reduced phagocytosis. Thus, the Cdc42 C188Y mutation likely disturbs actin organization in innate immune cells to drive immunodeficiency and subsequent autoinflammation. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Bader, Elyssa | Awadalla, Philip | Genomic architecture of the aging hematopoietic system | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Hematopoiesis is a dynamic, yet tightly regulated process continuously replenishing populations of cells, including those with immune functions, that circulate in peripheral blood. Aging is associated with changes in hematopoiesis, resulting in altered composition and reduced function of immune cells, increasing risk of disease in the elderly. However, some elderly individuals remain healthy throughout their lifetime, which provides an opportunity to identify mechanisms that maintain healthy hematopoiesis. The underlying genomic architecture and molecular mechanisms that regulate hematopoiesis among the healthy aging population have yet to be studied comprehensively at the population level. Using genetic and functional genomic approaches, I utilized large population cohorts to identify genetic and transcriptomic factors associated with variation in blood aging. First, I investigated the impact of pleiotropic variants on blood and age-related phenotypes because they have the potential to simultaneously increase an individual’s risk for multiple phenotypes and chronic conditions. Out of more than 65,000 candidates, I identified six pleiotropic variants associated with diverse traits including blood cell counts, metabolic and cardiovascular disease, and anthropometric traits. I found that pleiotropic variants are more likely to be coding mutations and are highly deleterious yet remain at relatively common allele frequencies, supporting the mutation accumulation and antagonistic pleiotropy theories of aging. Next, I investigated the genomic architecture and mechanisms associated with variation in blood aging. I selected 400 individuals from the extremities of the age and immune health spectrums and performed single cell RNA sequencing on more than 500 000 cells, together with whole genome sequencing and chromatin profiling on bulk CD45+ cells to reveal genetic, epigenetic, and transcriptional factors underlying healthy immune aging. I show that sex and cell-type specific transcriptional signatures rather than cell composition differentiate individuals with healthy or unhealthy blood. We also identified 2565 cell-type specific expression quantitative trait loci associated with blood health enriched in innate cell types, suggesting a significant portion of the heritable component to blood aging mainly acts through innate cells. My research demonstrates how natural variation in healthy agers can help to uncover mechanisms that prevent or protect dysregulated immune function during aging. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Anis, Hassan | Kwon, Roy H | Cardinality-Constrained Financial Optimization Problems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | To construct an optimal portfolio, an investment process typically involves a risk model and an asset allocation. Whether it is which factors to include in the risk model or which assets to include in the portfolio, investors are constantly making a choice. If the selection is made a-priori, then the included subset may be suboptimal; another choice may lead to better outcomes. In order to integrate the selection problem in the overall optimization, cardinality constraints are imposed on the decision variables resulting in mixed-integer programs (MIPs). This thesis investigates various cardinality-constrained optimization problems throughout the investment process using different techniques and methods to deal with the computational complexities presented by MIPs and improve model performance. First, a cardinality-constrained risk model is examined. A unified, data-driven framework that produces general factor models is presented. Three sparse factor models of varying degrees of nonlinearity across feature selection and engineering are proposed. Next, cardinality-constrained asset allocation problems are studied. First, cardinality constraints are imposed on the risk parity (RP) portfolio optimization problem. Presented are the first two formulations that can be solved using off-the-shelf solvers to global optimality without the need of specialized algorithms or approximations. Second, index tracking is reframed to be more risk-centric, focusing on matching the risk make-up of the tracking portfolio to that of the benchmark’s. To that end, a novel risk allocation-based index tracking (RABIT) framework is proposed. While it is formulated as a non-convex MIP that is solvable to global optimality by the latest off-the-shelf solvers, an exploration-exploitation heuristic is developed to tackle larger scale problems. The final work presented integrates both aspects of the investment process. Using end-to-end learning, the performance of the downstream portfolio is taken into account during the risk model’s parameter estimation. This is the first work to implement the end-to-end learning framework to non-linear MIPs. A tight, semi-definite programming relaxation is placed as an implicit layer in a neural network that uses a loss function corresponding directly to the portfolio's realized performance quality. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, exploitation | 4, 9, 16 |
| Ghazisaidi, Hamed | Allen, Grant DGA||Tran, Honghi HT | The Effect of Using Bioflocculants as Conditioners on Dewatering of Biosludge | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-06 | Chemical conditioning by biopolymers, as an alternative for petroleum-based synthetic polymers, for improving the dewatering of biosludge from pulp and paper mills is a growing interest. There are limited studies on the application of biopolymers for enhancing the dewaterability of biosludge and the underlying mechanisms in this process. This thesis explored the possibility of employing biopolymers such as hemoglobin (Hb), lignin-based flocculants (LBFs), and protamine to enhance the dewaterability.Cationic polymers improve the dewaterability of sludge by neutralizing the negative charge of the biosludge particles. Biopolymers such as hemoglobin and lignin do not possess high charge density naturally. As a result, they only exhibit a positive effect on dewaterability after modification through different processes. Hemoglobin from animal blood was methylated to replace the hydrogen carboxyl groups in its structure to become more positively charged. Lignin from pulp manufacturing processes was also modified via free radical polymerization with acrylate-based monomers. Dewaterability was assessed based on the dry solids content after treatment and pressing by Crown press. Capillary suction time (CST) was also used as water separation rate indicator. Only after modification, by using 10% of methylated hemoglobin, the dry solids content of biosludge increased by 5%. Similarly, LBFs considerably decreased the CST by nearly 50 seconds from 73s to 23s and increased the dry solids content by 7% with a relatively high dose of 7.5%. The potential of using dual conditioning method by combining cationic biopolymers such as protamine and LBFs with a small amount of a synthetic anionic polyacrylamide (APAM) was also investigated to lower the dosage required for biopolymers. Dual conditioning provided significant synergistic effect resulting in increasing the solids content of biosludge by 9% and lowering the amount of protamine addition substantially to 2%. In a similar way for LBFs, the biopolymer demand decreased from 7.5% to around 3% by using a dual conditioning system. The cationic biopolymer reduced the negative charge on the particles, allowing smaller particles to agglomerate and provided a positively charged framework for the addition of the APAM. Significant floc-bridging occurred after the addition of APAM, allowing smaller flocs to aggregate into larger flocs. | Ph.D. | water, invest, animal | 6, 9, 14, 15 |
| Richter, Ian | Jackson, Donald A||Jones, Nicholas E | Developing predictive stream fish productivity models using the metabolic theory of ecology and a size-based approach | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | Secondary production reflects the amount of energy available to higher trophic levels and can provide insight into the dynamics of energy transfer within an ecosystem. Fish production incorporates a wide range of key response metrics such as abundance, biomass, growth, and reproduction, into one quantitative metric but requires resource-intensive data for empirical estimation. While many studies have investigated fish productivity, few have evaluated different methods of estimating production or investigated the key drivers of productivity in riverine ecosystems. Additionally, size spectrum modeling reflects the negative scaling relationship between abundance and body size and has commonly been applied to lake and marine ecosystems to understand trophic dynamics and the transfer of energy for communities and ecosystems. In my thesis, I investigate different approaches to predict the biomass production of stream fish assemblages using the metabolic theory of ecology and size spectrum modeling. By testing the metabolic theory of ecology and published standard production model, I show that precise estimates of total stream fish productivity can be obtained from biomass and body size data. To ensure that fish data are unbiased and accurately represent fish assemblage, I developed a capture probability model using a hierarchical Bayesian framework that corrects the size bias associated with electrofishing removal samples. I then used variance partitioning and model selection to investigate how a combination of abiotic and biotic variables are related to stream fish productivity in wadeable streams. Finally, I investigated the parameterization of size spectrum models at various spatial scales to determine whether site aggregation is a suitable approach for riverine size spectrum modeling. My findings indicate that fish size spectra align better approximate theoretical expectations when multiple sites are aggregated together. Overall, my thesis demonstrates that published standard fish production models can be used to estimate productivity, that productivity is better predicted by biotic than abiotic variables, and that size spectra models at broader spatial scales can be used to investigate the movement of energy at higher trophic levels in river ecosystems. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, production, marine, fish, ecosystem, ecolog | 7, 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Hilowle, Shukri Abdi | Manion, Caroline||Wane, Njoki | Under Surveillance: A Study of the Securitization of Somali Men in Canada | Social Justice Education | 2023-06 | This study uses an autoethnographic approach as a Somali, Black, Muslim, Woman living in Canada. Drawing on my lived experiences, I look at the ramifications and direct material consequences of islamophobia and anti-blackness on the Somali Toronto community. In addition, this also utilizes a Critical Discourse Analysis Approach to study anti-terrorism policy and countering violent extremism programs in Canada; it critically examines 10 key government documents that focus on radicalization and national security. A critical examination of these documents reveals anti-Islamic, Islamophobic, and Orientalist discourses embedded within national security policies. The findings show a clear contradiction between the Charter Rights and Freedoms and the current anti-terrorism policies, which have directly caused an increase in racial profiling and racialization of Muslims. The key arguments presented in this study show that the current approaches to address ‘terrorism’ stem largely from Orientalist ideas about the East and the fear of the ‘enemy.’ I emphasize the need for a multi-centric depiction of Muslims that disrupts the common monolithic construction of the violent, intolerant, Muslim Male. The response to 9/11 resulted in discourses and constructions of Muslim men as potentially dangerous and a threat to democratic values, which has contributed to the continual surveillance and securitization of Muslim communities in Canada. This study contributes to the broader discussions surrounding national security, Islamophobia, and securitization in Canada. I utilize an anti-racist, Foucauldian, and intersectional approach to look at the existing barriers Canadian Somali men face. Through situating the dual oppressions Canadian Somali men face, I argue a need for an anti-racist approach to countering violent extremism, and the importance of a multi-centric understanding of Islam. I introduce an integrative anti-framework approach that addresses the systemic barriers Somali men face in Canada. | Ph.D. | anti-racist, democra, terroris | 10, 16 |
| Avila, Fernando Ramon | Hannah-Moffat, Kelly | “The Scars Remain.” Power, Solidarity, and Punishment in an Atypical Latin American Prison | Criminology | 2023-06 | This dissertation presents an ethnographic research study of “Punta de Rieles,” an atypical Latin American prison where over 600 male prisoners coexist with a significant degree of autonomy in a relatively peaceful environment that resembles a poor neighbourhood. Unlike other experiences in the region, the atmosphere of this prison is a direct consequence of the prison authorities’ decision to promote responsibilization, prisoners' participation, and solidarity. The study explores this prison on its own social, geographical, and political terms, examining the discourses and rationalities that shape the warden's practices and leadership style. It describes how prisoners actively adapt and engage with the penal environment, shaping it through individual and collective participation. In this way, the penal environment, the governmental practices, the surveillance network, and the level of order are defined by the authorities and influenced by the prisoners. This study dialogues with prison sociology studies from the Global North and the Global South and sheds light on the fragility of penal regimes based on strong leadership, the impact of real subjects in defining penal scenarios, the limitations of responsibilization, the complex power assemblages that define punishment, the contradictions that arise when conflicting rationalities interact, the role of prisoner participation in establishing order, and the relationship between domination and space and time carceral configurations. | Ph.D. | peace | 4, 16 |
| Koek, Laura A | Collingridge, Graham L | Role of Intracellular Calcium Stores and Calcium-Permeable AMPARs in Functional and Structural Plasticity in Mouse Hippocampal Slices | Physiology | 2023-06 | Memories are internal representations of life that can last in the order of minutes to years, and are largely experience-dependent. For example, the memory of an inconsequential event typically fades, unless they are closely related to a novel event, succinctly explained by the synaptic tag and capture (STC) hypothesis. The formation of short (STM)- or long - term memories (LTM) involve several biochemical changes that either increase or decrease synaptic efficacy. These changes are commonly referred to as Long-term potentiation (LTP) or depression (LTD). LTP can be differentiated into two forms based on their dependence (LTP2) or independence (LTP1) on protein synthesis (PS) and are hypothesized to be analogous to LTM and STM respectively. In both forms of LTP, calcium (Ca2+) signaling plays a vital role. However, Ca2+ has a number of different sources, the relative importance of which is poorly understood. Here I have investigated the role of calcium-permeable (CP)- AMPARs and Ca2+ release from intracellular stores. Using theta burst stimulation (TBS) of varied strength and patterning, I was able to selectively induce LTP1 (wTBS or cTBS) or a combination of LTP1 and 2 (sTBS). Combining these induction protocols with pharmacological agents, I have confirmed the role of CP-AMPARs and demonstrated that intracellular Ca2+ stores are required specifically for LTP2. To investigate STC, I delivered LTP 2 and LTP1 to independent inputs, which resulted in an enhancement of LTP1 due to STC. I confirmed the role of CP-AMPARs and demonstrated the importance of Ca2+ release from intracellular stores during the induction of LTP2 in STC. Furthermore, to address the question of the association between functional and structural plasticity under physiological conditions, I developed a method to monitor both simultaneously using field potential recordings and two-photon imaging, respectively. I found that functional plasticity induced by sTBS is associated with structural plasticity and that the structural plasticity is entirely dependent on the activation of CP-AMPARs. In conclusion, my findings provide novel insights to the synaptic basis of memory formation and highlight the importance of CP-AMPARs and calcium release from intracellular stores in this process. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Xiao, Sa | Sinton, David | Sperm Motion in Viscous Environments with Applications in Microfluidics-based Selection | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | Male infertility is a major global concern and is defined by an ejaculate that’s function is hindered by insufficient sperm counts and/or low-quality sperm that obscure fertilization success. Assisted reproduction techniques (ARTs) are used to treat infertility and focus on the selection of viable sperm from the sample for fertilization in vitro. However, conventional selection methods fail to recover the top sperm candidates, thereby limiting ARTs success. The concerns of infertility and challenges in its treatment techniques indicate the necessity of sperm analysis and selection methods to resolve the mechanisms mediating fertilization success and to improve ARTs. Biomimicry-based models supporting key properties of the in vivo microenvironment are required – and microfluidics has emerged as a promising tool to meet this demand. This thesis develops clinically-driven microfluidic approaches for sperm selection and investigates sperm behaviour in relevant rheological environments. A sperm selection-in-a-dish platform is developed, integrating the clinically established petri dish with a microchannel array that selects high-quality sperm directly from semen by way of a one-stage processing protocol that is representative of the clinical setup for fertilization in vitro (Chapter 3). Clinical tests with human sperm show a 63% improvement in selected sperm DNA integrity over that of the standard methods. In the course of clinical test development, an unexpected cooperative behaviour among human sperm is discovered within a microfluidic setup mimicking the viscous contrasts in the female tract. Sperm with high DNA integrity cooperate by attaching at the head region to migrate faster as a group through highly viscous conditions to potentially outcompete rival sperm for fertilization. This new mode presents a revision on the knowledge of motion of human sperm – some of the most studied human cells – and became the focus of the second half of the Ph.D. (Chapter 4). The cooperative swimming mode preferentially involves sperm with high DNA integrity and capacitation functionality, and can be an essential mechanism dictating fertilization success and for incorporation in selection processes in ARTs. Collectively, these contributions advance the field of male fertility by providing new methods for sperm selection in vitro, and new understanding of how sperm navigate in vivo. | Ph.D. | knowledge, female, invest, production | 4, 5, 9, 12 |
| Acuna Marrero, David Jesus | Fidler, Sanja | Visual Learning Using Synthetic Data | Computer Science | 2023-06 | Deep learning has revolutionized several fields, including computer vision. Yet, creating computer vision datasets to train deep neural networks using supervised learning is time-consuming and expensive, typically involving collecting and annotating large amounts of sensor data. This collection and annotation process becomes more complex and costly if the task demands risky events, highly precise annotation, or expert knowledge. Using synthetic data generated with graphics simulators for training deep neural networks is an alternative solution. We can obtain an infinite number of perfectly labeled training samples with synthetic data, including long-tail rare events and safety-critical scenarios, and those humans might annotate noisily. However, the generalization performance in complex real-world scenes of synthetic-data-trained models frequently degrades. This thesis presents a collection of work toward overcoming this issue. Our core idea interprets learning from data generated with graphics simulators as a domain adaptation problem and develops novel adaptation techniques that improve the transfer performance in real-world datasets. The underpinning of our proposed algorithms lies in aligning synthetic and real-world data distributions using a novel adversarial framework that minimizes a chosen f-divergence and is both practical and theoretically motivated. We also show how to deal with complications arising in this framework, such as complex optimization dynamics and label-distribution mismatch. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our methods in both controlled settings using standard datasets and in more practical scenarios using an open-source self-driving simulator with multi-sensor data. Finally, I conclude the thesis by summarizing the key contributions of my work and discussing directions for future research. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, consum | 4, 12 |
| Bridge, Michael | Halladay, Wallace | Expressive Virtuosity on Accordion: The Performance Techniques of Joseph Macerollo, O.C. | Music | 2023-06 | Since the 1970s, Joseph Macerollo’s accordion teaching has attracted hundreds of students from at least 18 countries, and he has given hundreds of world premieres with an emphasis on contemporary chamber music. A pioneer of using accordion in a contemporary music landscape, Macerollo developed a multitude of precise body techniques for integrating the accordion’s sound into diverse musical environments. His techniques incorporate all parts of the upper body (and occasionally the legs) to achieve superior versatility and awareness in the performer’s production of tone, phrasing, articulation, projection, and the ability to alter how ‘time’ is perceived by the listener—all of which I call collectively Expressive Virtuosity. Macerollo summarizes his method in a four-point model—Time, Tone, Flow, and Space. Examples of his unconventional techniques include playing the left hand ahead of the right, using multi- dimensional bellowing motions, creating rhythmic points using combinations of finger, bellows, and body techniques, and moving around the instrument. These techniques have the potential to revolutionize how accordion is taught at the university level, and the central goal of this thesis is to document and explain Macerollo’s unconventional techniques. To offer additional perspectives on Expressive Virtuosity, I also conducted interviews with renowned Professors Geir Draugsvoll and Claudio Jacomucci, including in-depth discussions of performing as an orchestral soloist and using the Alexander Technique on accordion. The recent rise in articles related to accordion performance and pedagogy shows that the academic accordion community is searching for new techniques that will inspire greater creativity in relationships with composers, within pedagogy, and on the concert stage. After a lifetime of performance experience and teaching, Macerollo’s techniques will help raise concert accordion playing to the next level and acknowledge Canada’s most important contribution to date in this field. | D.M.A. | pedagogy, knowledge, production, land | 4, 12, 15 |
| Ling, Shouyu | Nestor, Adrian||Lee, Andy C.H. | Decoding and Reconstructing Orthographic Information from Visual Perception and Mental Imagery Using EEG and fMRI | Psychology | 2023-06 | Vision plays a crucial role in reading by supporting the processing of visual-orthographic representations, which are essential for social interactions and daily activities. In recent years, there has been a lot of interest in investigating such processes across multiple methodological domains, including electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). For instance, studies have shown the importance of the visual word form area (vWFA) in reading, but its exact role remains unclear. On the other hand, mental imagery is a unique form of visual experience where, in contrast to perception, no external stimuli are present. The current thesis aims to investigate the neural representational structure of visual-orthographic information in both visual perception and mental imagery by considering both EEG and fMRI signals during word recognition and by applying state-of-the-art pattern analysis techniques to such signals. Specifically, Chapter 2 established the feasibility of decoding and reconstructing whole-word images from EEG data. The examination of the time course of decoding provided insight into the temporal dynamics of early word processing, identifying critical time points for word recognition. Chapter 3 examined the relative contribution of different time points from different EEG channels, revealing time and frequency features that underlie decoding for words and faces. Chapter 4 investigated the neural representational structure of words in mental imagery using fMRI and successfully decoded and reconstructed whole words from activity patterns in both vWFA and early visual cortex. These findings provide a deeper understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying visual perception and mental imagery of orthographic information. They demonstrate the feasibility of retrieving fine-grained visual features from neural signals that support the distinction of within-category exemplars, which offers considerable potential benefits for the development of new communication methods for individuals with communication impairments. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Sourisseau, Matthew John | Pugh, Mary||Wu, Hau-Tieng | Statistics of the Synchrosqueezing Transform | Mathematics | 2023-06 | We investigate the synchrosqueezing transform applied to complex gaussian white noise, as well as signals consisting of a single harmonic component contaminated with complex gaussian white noise. First, this involves analyzing the reassignment rule, which is built from a quotient of improper, correlated complex gaussians. We provide a new formula for the general density of said quotient and use this to carefully clarify the decay rate of the covariance of the reassignment rule. Next, for a fixed time $t$, we analyze the synchrosqueezing integrand $Y_{\alpha,\eta}$ at different frequencies $\eta$ and resolutions $\alpha$. A detailed asymptotic analysis of the covariance between $Y_{\alpha,\eta}$ and $Y_{\alpha,\eta'}$ is provided. By appealing to an $M$-dependent approximation argument, we obtain a central-limit theorem for the synchrosqueezing transform at time $t=0$ and fixed frequency $\xi$ and give an interpretation within the context of kernel regression. Finally, we provide a number of open problems whose resolution may lend themselves to further results in the vein of this work. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Kempton, Allen S | Grimes, Sara M | Crossroads in Digital Gaming: Metaplay, Communication, Interaction | Information Studies | 2023-06 | This dissertation conducts a qualitative study in a region in Canada, anonymized as “the District”, which sits outside of a major city, focusing on adult players of the main series of Pokémon games. The District encompasses different geographic areas, characterized by suburban growth in a rural context with limited urban areas, with a significant industrial sector that comes with a working class demographic. By interviewing players who began playing Pokémon at different points in time, ranging from the first generation of players in 1998 to those who played their first Pokémon games in the mid-to-late 2000s, the dissertation captures a snapshot of changing play practices that came alongside the deployment of high-speed and more accessible Internet in the mid 2000s. Since the debut of Pokémon in North America in 1998, Pokémon play is now significantly more complex owing to an intricate network of gaming practices and communication, contextualized by play practice developments over time, changes in hardware, and information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure in local communities. This dissertation argues the best means of engaging digital play today is the framework of metaplay, derived from Bateson’s theories of meta-action and meta-communication (1956), supported by the components of metagame (Donaldson, 2016), paratexts, and gaming capital (Consalvo, 2007). Through this framework, the study reveals inequities in Pokémon play in the District, demonstrating the impact of infrastructure and perceptions of play for adult players in regions like the District, while also demonstrating a desire for local play cultures and how ICTs impact the complicated relationship local players have with global play cultures and practices. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, capital, internet, equit, urban, rural, accessib | 9, 10, 11 |
| Wani, Omar Bashir | Bobicki, Erin | Enhanced Beneficiation of Ultramafic Nickel Ores Using Novel Reagents | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-06 | Due to its outstanding physical and chemical properties, nickel (Ni) is used in the manufacture of stainless steel, batteries, catalysts etc. However, high Ni demand has rapidly depleted high-grade sulfide deposits, leading the mining industry to seek alternative Ni sources such as low-grade ultramafic Ni ores. Processing of these ores is difficult due to their high content of the gangue mineral, serpentine, which slime coats the Ni-bearing mineral, pentlandite, and increases slurry viscosity. In response to stringent environmental regulations, process water is recycled, introducing significant amounts of Ca2+ and Mg2+ into flotation unit operations, which exacerbates the slime coating phenomenon. Additionally, the mining industry is under pressure to decarbonize its operations: it currently accounts for 4–7% of global greenhouse gas emissions. To overcome these challenges, the first part of this thesis focuses on decarbonizing mineral processing operations by utilizing carbon dioxide (CO2) in unit operations such as flotation and rheology modification. CO2 conditioning prior to flotation prevented slime coating and mitigated the detrimental impacts of divalent cations by permanently storing CO2 as metal carbonates. Zeta potential measurements and theoretical calculations indicated adsorption of metal carbonates onto the serpentine surface and microflotation experiments demonstrated increased Ni recovery. The second part of the thesis focuses on using sustainable flotation reagents for separation of pentlandite from ultramafic Ni ore. Citrate and Oxalate were shown to chelate with divalent cations to form metal-citrate or metal-oxalate chelates, which desorb from the pentlandite surface and adsorb onto the serpentine surface. Removal of chelates restored the charge and hydrophobicity of pentlandite whereas it reversed the charge of serpentine. The induced electrostatic dispersion among the mineral particles enhanced selective separation of pentlandite. The third part of the thesis explored the use of citrate and oxalate as rheology modifiers during slurry transport operations. Both reagents prevented bridging between serpentine particles and were selectively adsorbed onto the brucite plane of serpentine. Theoretical calculations and AFM measurements showed repulsive/weakened interactions between the brucite plane and silica/edge plane, which broke the mineral microstructure. Rheology investigations confirmed weakened interparticle interactions, manifested as significant decreases in slurry viscosity, yield stress, and storage modulus. | Ph.D. | water, emission, greenhouse, invest, recycl, decarboniz, greenhouse gas, environmental, emissions, carbon dioxide, co2, land | 6, 7, 9, 12, 13, 15 |
| Smirnov, Petr | Haibe-Kains, Benjamin||Pugh, Trevor J | Leveraging Preclinical Pharmacogenomics Studies to Discover Translatable Expression Biomarkers of Drug Response | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Precision oncology trials have demonstrated that matching cancer patients to treatment based on the molecular characteristics of their tumour leads to better response to therapy. Recent evidence suggests that transcriptomic profiling is particularly informative for matching patients to treatments. However, in many clinical studies, the majority of patients could not be matched to a genomically or transcriptomically selected therapy, highlighting a need for more biomarkers predictive of drug response. Preclinical pharmacogenomic studies combine molecular profiling of cancer models with drug sensitivity screening with the goal of discovering novel predictive markers. However, inconsistencies between experiments done in different laboratories raised concerns about the reliability of biomarkers discovered from these datasets. In this thesis, I address three challenges to using such studies for the discovery of transcriptomic biomarkers predictive of drug response. To address differences in data pre-processing and inconsistent nomenclature, I present PharmacoDB, a unified database of preclinical pharmacogenomic studies. I then investigate which statistical approaches are best suited to correlating noisy drug response measurements, both in simulation and real datasets. I propose and investigate the rCI statistic, a semi-parametric extension of the concordance index designed to reduce the impact of noisy drug response measurements. The rCI is shown to be more powerful at detecting correlations than the concordance index or Spearman correlation coefficient, however, it remains less powered than the Pearson correlation in the application to drug response data. Finally, I present a framework using statistical meta-analysis models to resolve technical and biological differences across datasets. I apply this framework to the seven largest preclinical pharmacogenomic studies released to date, discovering 4338 putative robust trancriptomic biomarkers. Using clinical validation data, I demonstrate a novel biomarker, expression of ODC1, is predictive of paclitaxel response for treatment of Breast Carcinoma a neo-adjuvant setting. Together, these contributions provide novel tools and propose novel approaches for analysing preclinical pharmacogenomic screens, as well as initiate the translation of discoveries made in these studies to clinically actionable biomarkers. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Williams, Meaghan Anne | Kuokkanen, Rauna||Schertzer, Robert | The Same River, Together: Theorizing and Assessing Shared Rule in Treaty Federalism | Political Science | 2023-06 | Starting from a query regarding the place of pre-Confederation treaties in the reconciliatory intentions of the contemporary Canadian political order, the primary objective of my dissertation is to consider one possible answer to this challenge by asking whether and how Indigenous peoples’ aspirations for both self-rule and shared rule might be achieved, and what role – if any – the Canadian federal state might play in those aspirations. The theory of treaty federalism, which takes the pre-Confederation treaties as the foundation of a federal relationship between Indigenous peoples and Canada’s colonial authorities, presents one vision for achieving such aspirations. The general aim of this dissertation is to consider both the theoretical basis for a theory of shared rule in treaty federalism as well as its implications for assessing the merit of various institutional models operationalizing shared rule. However, the theory of treaty federalism has been criticized for its under-theorization of the element of shared rule. This dissertation fills the shared rule gap in the theory of treaty federalism by elaborating what I have termed a “sharing protocol” that could feasibly underpin treaty relations in the Canadian federal order. If a functioning, treaty-centered nation-to-nation relationship is ever to be within reach, a coherent and comprehensive theory of shared rule is imperative. The sharing protocol rests on three core principles, derived from historical and contemporary treaty processes and traditions: enacting self-determination, commitment to co-responsibility and reciprocal prosperity. To test the viability of these principles in operationalizing a treaty federal order, the dissertation assesses the core models of political representation employed in service of increasing Indigenous political presence in settler state legislative bodies around the globe. Ultimately, the dissertation finds that both operational and proposed models of Indigenous political representation offer only limited enactments of shared rule from the perspective of a theory of treaty federalism, most often constrained by a lack of affirmation for Indigenous self-determination and the imposition of state-centric and hierarchical, rather than nation-to-nation, relations. | Ph.D. | settler, labor, indigenous, institut, self-determination | 4, 8, 10, 16 |
| Yeung, Clarence Hue Lok | Andrews, Brenda||Boone, Charles | A Systematic Pipeline to Identify Bypass Suppressors of Essential Genes and Gene Pairs in S. cerevisiae | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Genetic suppression occurs when a phenotype associated with a mutation in one gene is rescued by a secondary, extragenic mutation. Dramatic examples of genetic suppression include bypass of the lethal phenotype associated with mutation in an essential gene, or of phenotypes associated with severe Mendelian disease mutations in humans. Previous efforts to map bypass suppressors of essential genes have involved screening for chemically induced or spontaneous mutations, followed by next generation sequencing which, although biologically informative, can be laborious and time-consuming. Here, I developed a systematic method for identifying bypass suppressors using Synthetic Genetic Array (SGA) (Suppressor-SGA; Sup-SGA) technology to introduce defined loss-of-function mutations from yeast mutant arrays into strains carrying deletion mutations in essential query genes or gene pairs. Because the identity of the suppressor gene on the mutant array is known, this method enables rapid and exhaustive tests for suppressor relationships involving all genes in the genome. Analysis of bypass suppressors identified known suppressors and uncovered novel genetic factors that contribute to conditional essentiality. For example, analysis of bypass suppressors of NAT2 deletion revealed previously unappreciated roles in viral attenuation and mitochondrial function. I also adapted Sup-SGA to identify bypass suppressors of synthetic lethal gene pairs; that is, genes which when deleted alone do not cause a dramatic growth defect but cause lethality when combined as double mutants. I show that the suppressors of different bni1 synthetic lethal gene pairs are distinct and likely act through different mechanisms. In another screen, I identified three independent alleles of the essential cyclin-dependent kinase CDC28 at a semi-permissive temperature that cause G1-delay as suppressors of the synthetic lethal gene pair rpn4∆ ire1∆. Further experiments showed that the suppression occurs due to a bypass of the UPR pathway, likely alleviating the downstream consequences of ER stress. Intriguingly, rpn4∆ ire1∆ mutants were chemically rescued by the presence of low concentrations of α-factor which, like the mutation of CDC28, also causes G1-delay. This result illustrates the potential of small molecules to phenocopy genetic suppression. Altogether, I demonstrate the utility of Sup-SGA to elucidate the mechanisms of gene essentiality, to illuminate cell biology that governs synthetic lethality and to explore the basis of chemical suppression. | Ph.D. | labor, consum | 8, 12 |
| Erdman, Lauren | Goldenberg, Anna | Deep Transfer Learning Models for Prediction from Ultrasound | Computer Science | 2023-06 | Deep learning models are powerful tools for prediction but can fail when data is insufficient or shifts between training and deployment. These failure modes are expected in models built for ultrasound imaging, as small data sets for imaging of specific conditions and variability between sonographers, machines, institutions, and patient populations make prediction in this data challenging. Ultrasound is by far one of the most accessible and non-invasive medical imaging technologies available so the benefit of stable, effective models in this technology is very high. Therefore, a key to improved deep learning modeling of ultrasound data (and achieving this benefit) is identifying methods which enable effective small sample model development and model transfer to new populations. Many methods and classes of methods have been proposed to enable deep learning model transfer, including pretraining with a related or unrelated data set and task, domain adaptation, and qualitative interviews. I adapt and apply these methods in 3 ultrasound use-cases: paediatric hydronephrosis (HN) renal ultrasound, paediatric echocardiography (ECHO), and first-trimester prenatal ultrasound. Domain adaptation is explored for its potential to bridge covariate shifts of different sizes, with more or less data, conditioned on the label or not. This work shows that if the covariate shift assumption can be satisfied, domain adaptation is extremely effective at improving target performance even with very few labeled samples. This makes domain adaptation a preferable choice when (multi-)source data is available and the assumptions of the model are met. Finally, the context of model transfer is examined with a qualitative analysis of deep renal ultrasound model transfer to South Africa. This work finds major demand for tools which guide and improve ultrasound interpretation as well as a demand for greater ultrasound access and training at point-of-care. Creating models for ultrasound-informed precision care that transfers stably between these sources is an essential precursor to deep learning-enabled precision care with ultrasound modeling. This work shows how effective each model transfer method is, even with very little training data for a target task. In addition, the compendium of these studies can guide model development and decision-making around data collection, labeling, and sharing. | Ph.D. | learning, accessib, institut | 4, 11, 16 |
| Bastawrous, Monica | Simpson, Andre J | The Development and Miniaturization of In-Vivo Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy Towards Mass-Limited Environmental Samples | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2023-06 | The continual release of environmental contaminants is a global concern that impacts human and environmental health. To monitor and characterize the risk of contaminants, it is critical to determine their toxic mode of action. Unfortunately, our understanding of toxicity pathways is limited, in large part due to a lack of analytical methods capable of monitoring living organisms at the molecular level. Current methods often rely on apical endpoints; however, metabolomics focuses on characterizing biochemical changes in response to external stimuli. Recently, in-vivo Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has demonstrated a distinguished ability to monitor living organisms in real-time with the potential to decipher complex interconnected response pathways. Unfortunately, environmentally crucial specimens, such as aquatic eggs, are challenging to study using in-vivo NMR due to their small size and the low sensitivity of NMR. This dissertation will address this challenge through miniaturization of in-vivo NMR. After an introduction to environmental metabolomics and NMR in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 focuses on optimizing in-vivo NMR using existing technology. This chapter examined NMR probes and experiments to establish that the optimal protocol to monitor 13C enriched living organisms was an inverse 2D experiment and an inverse cryoprobe. In the next chapter, NMR was first miniaturized here using microcoils. Chapter 3 compares two main microcoil designs (surface and 3D volume coils) for their ability to perform complex experiments on intact biological samples, concluding a 3D coil is most beneficial for in-vivo studies. In Chapter 4, a microlitre probe is modified with a separate lock and used to significantly reduce sample size requirements for the analysis of D. magna hemolymph and eggs. Additionally, a mL volume flow system is introduced for an in-vivo stress study of neonates at the microcoil level. Lastly, Chapter 5 miniaturizes NMR using a novel Lenz lens design while integrating sensitivity enhancements from cryoprobes. The detection system created here leads to massive reductions in sample requirements and substantial increases in sensitivity for mass-limited samples. This dissertation miniaturizes in-vivo NMR techniques and positions it as an important approach to help improve the fundamental understanding of biochemical processes and for future environmental risk assessments. | Ph.D. | mental health, environmental | 3, 13 |
| Jackson, Shira | Vutha, Amar C | Toward a Compact Two-photon Optical Clock based on Calcium | Physics | 2023-06 | This thesis presents details on the design, construction, and characterization of a novel compact optical clock based on a two-photon transition in calcium. Optical atomic clocks have reached unprecedented accuracy and precision and have the potential to revolutionize metrology. However, many of the applications of optical clocks, such as the detection of dark matter and gravitational waves, deep space navigation, measurements of variations in fundamental constants, and precision geodetic measurements, require compact portable clocks. Building optical atomic clocks on a scale suitable for most field applications is an ongoing challenge in the precision metrology community. This work describes a clock that can be made smaller and simpler than most existing optical clocks, while still operating with state-of-the-art precision. The basis for these improvements is using a two-photon transition, which eliminates the need for sub-Doppler cooling and tight confinement of the atoms. The design for the calcium two-photon clock is given, and the construction of the clock components is described. Experimental results are presented for the search for the clock transition frequency, which has never before been precisely determined. A detailed uncertainty budget is given, showing that this clock should be able to achieve a fractional frequency uncertainty of $\sim 10^{-17}$. In addition, a novel technique of ``magic polarization'' is presented which can be implemented to mitigate probe laser light shifts, long thought to be a serious impediment to precision two-photon clocks. An experiment in which a two-photon clock based on rubidium was launched and operated on a stratospheric balloon and subsequently recovered is also described. This work represents an advancement in the development of compact portable optical clocks which will further push the boundaries of precision measurement and our understanding of the universe. | Ph.D. | metro, transit | 11 |
| Kinha, Bhisham | Moodley, Roy | "Gathering the Pieces Back Together": The Experiences of Queer Second-Generation South Asians in Counselling and Psychotherapy | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | Second-generation South Asian sexual minorities endure numerous challenges to their mental health and well-being often arising from their generational, ethnoracial and sexual identities, which are difficult to reconcile and develop into a cohesive and consistent personal identity due to discriminatory ideologies and experiences within ethnocultural/religious communities, mainstream queer spaces and Western society. These individuals must also adhere to the codes of South Asian family life and navigate competing cultural influences. Yet, queer second-generation South Asians seem to underutilize counselling services, suggesting that the mental health needs of this population may be unmet. Furthermore, whether psychotherapeutic practice can effectively address the mental health needs of this community remains unclear given the paucity of research and practice literature. The present study aimed to better understand the mental health and treatment-seeking experiences of this community through the research question: What are the experiences of queer second-generation South Asian clients in counselling and psychotherapy? Participants consisted of thirteen (cisgender) women and men of South Asian descent, who were born in Canada, identified as queer and had experience in counselling and psychotherapy. Research methods involved qualitative interviewing and the use of social constructivist grounded theory. Four key themes emerged: Experience Leading Up to Initial Counselling and Psychotherapy, Experience Inside Counselling and Psychotherapy, Impacts of Counselling and Psychotherapy and The Therapy Relationship. Findings suggest that queer second-generation South Asians first engage therapy in particular conditions, including the presence of multiple issues that overwhelm and isolate them, and when access to therapeutic supports are availed through personal circumstances and resources. Moreover, the presence (or absence) of topics and processes in therapy shape their experiences both inside and outside the counselling space. Ultimately, engaging in psychotherapy impacts these clients personally, relationally and experientially. Notably, all participants were multiple users of psychotherapy, and over time psychotherapeutic engagement was increasingly oriented towards a therapy relationship seemingly capable of supporting the integration of their identities and experiences. A mid-level theory was generated from this study’s findings. Additionally, implications of this research on the field of psychotherapy and directions for future research are discussed. | Ed.D. | ABS, well-being, mental health, gender, women, queer, minorit | 2, 3, 5, 10 |
| Menicanin, Sadie | Lee, Sherry | A Cultural Geography of Gardens in Early Twentieth-Century Viennese Opera | Music | 2023-06 | This dissertation offers a new exploration of music, space, and place in early twentieth-century Vienna, through a focus on gardens as represented in opera and encountered in the city. I provide alternatives to longstanding interpretations of fin-de-siècle Viennese gardens as symbolic of aestheticist escapism by attending to a range of garden types and emphasizing their embeddedness within social and material contexts. I identify various metaphorical, literal, and discursive resonances between my chosen operatic gardens and counterparts in the built environment. Reading musical-dramatic gardens in light of contemporary urban and artistic developments, I argue, recognizes the mutual inflection of physical environments and artistic representations of them, and newly illuminates gardens’ diverse cultural associations and their dramaturgical functions in opera. Following my Introduction, the second Chapter outlines Richard Wagner’s musical-dramatic gardens, which served as precedents for the Viennese operatic gardens at the centre of my project. My third Chapter addresses the spatial dimensions of domestic, enclosed gardens and their entwinement with concerns around gender and psychological wellness in the modern urban landscape, through which I frame the garden in Arnold Schoenberg’s monodrama Erwartung (1909, premiered 1924). Chapter 4 theorizes open-air garden theatres as a locus for understanding the changing significance of neo-Baroque style for Vienna’s self-conception and theatrical ethos before and after World War I. I trace these themes in Franz Schreker’s pantomime Der Geburtstag der Infantin (1908), which premiered at the garden theatre of the Klimt circle’s Kunstschau 1908, and in the self-consciously Wagnerian garden scene in Alexander Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg (1921, premiered 1922). My fifth Chapter focuses on pleasure gardens—a label I apply to the turn-of-the-century amusement park “Venedig in Wien” and the island of Elysium in Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten (1913-15, premiered 1918)—wherein sound and music evoke otherworldly atmospheres and transport listeners to imaginary spaces. Through a combined historical and interpretive approach, this project deepens musicological understanding of the connections between turn-of-the-century opera and urban environments, explores literal and metaphorical relationships between music and space, and contributes a music-focused cultural geographic perspective on gardens’ significance for Viennese material and artistic life around 1900. | Ph.D. | gender, urban, land | 5, 11, 15 |
| Maddeaux, Frances Jessica Ruth | Chambers, J.K. | Individual Differences as Predictors of Participation in Sound Change | Linguistics | 2023-06 | Models of sound change rely on individual listeners-turned-speakers to propagate variation which eventually turns into large-scale change. Sociolinguistic research, meanwhile, documents sound changes by aggregating data from a large number of speakers, usually disregarding individuals who deviate from the group norm. Psycholinguistic approaches to speech perception and production offer compelling evidence that individual cognitive differences are implicated in our linguistic behaviour. This dissertation aims to bring together individual difference frameworks and models of phonetically-motivated sound change to explore an instance of linguistic variation in Toronto. The production of /u/ has an allophonic distribution in which it is fronted following coronal segments and less fronted elsewhere. Post-coronal fronting has been documented as a long-term change-in-progress, while recent research indicates that the phonetic conditioning is loosening and fronting is spreading to non-coronal environments. A production experiment testing for correlations between individual cognitive differences and F2 of /u/ in two phonetic environments finds that female speakers who score low on the Empathizing Quotient scale have a significantly further back production of /u/ in the newly fronting environment, meaning that they are less innovative than their high-scoring counterparts. I argue that although this result is the opposite of the hypothesis that high-empathy women lead change, this low-empathy profile is compatible with a canonical description of a leader of sociolinguistic change. A perception experiment tests for correlations between the same cognitive factors and the perception of /u/ in coronal and non-coronal environments, to determine whether listeners at either end of the cognitive scales compensate for environment to different degrees. Women at either end of the empathizing scale do not differentiate between environments, leading to the conclusion that they are less affected by the onset than listeners who score highly on the systemizing scale. I suggest that the innovators are those whose low level of attention to detail allows them to ignore phonetic conditioning in their perception of /u/ providing the opportunity for /u/ to front in traditionally non-fronting environments, and whose low level of empathizing allows them to deviate from their peers. Both attributes are necessary to lead a co-articulatorily motivated sound change. | Ph.D. | women, female, production | 5, 12 |
| Gordon, Jacob Aaron Simmons | Kee, Hae-Young | Exploring Symmetry and Field-induced Phenomena in Kitaev Materials | Physics | 2023-06 | A large part of modern condensed matter concerns non-local or global properties of systems under the broad term of topology. Closely intertwined with certain senses of topology are symmetries of the system, which physically constrain our description and offer non-perturbative insights into material properties. The range of possible phases of matter is greatly enriched by quantum mechanics, including certain types of non-local entanglement that cannot be understood in the usual symmetry-breaking paradigm of local order parameters. Beyond weakly interacting topology we find the stronger notion of \textit{topological order} in correlated systems, a prominent example being the $S = \tfrac{1}{2}$ Kitaev honeycomb model in a weak magnetic field.Through a remarkable combination of lattice geometry, strong spin-orbit coupling, and electron interactions, several material candidates have been put forward to realize Kitaev physics, including the $4d$ Mott insulator $\alpha$-RuCl$_{3}$ which offers tantalizing experimental hints of topological order. In this thesis we explore several aspects of Kitaev candidates and related systems under two broad themes. One involves symmetry-informed and constrained observables, including a proposed singularity in a thermodynamic quantity accompanying phase transitions between two Ising topological orders (ITOs). The ITO physics realized by the Kitaev model requires time-reversal symmetry to be broken, and much of the non-trivial physics is found at finite magnetic field. To this end, we study a microscopic spin model appropriate for $\alpha$-RuCl$_{3}$ and show that it exhibits an interesting field-induced paramagnetic state between the low- and high-field magnetic orders, consistent with recent experimental findings. We determine several properties of a lower-dimensional spin-$S$ analogue of the Kitaev model, including a multi-critical point at finite field separating different topological phases. Finally, we derive quantum state purities of entangled photons emitted from a spin-triplet superconducting heterostructure and discuss its use in a new paradigm of entangled spectroscopy. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Malhotra, Karan | Krull, Ulrich J | Versatile Polymer Coatings for Advanced Stability and Bioanalytical Applications of Nanoparticles | Chemistry | 2023-06 | One of the challenges in transitioning nanoparticle (NPs) formulations to commercial applications is the limited colloidal stability of these materials in physiologically relevant buffers. Indeed, achieving long-term stability (>3 months) is difficult, particularly for upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) which are known for poor stability in buffers like 1×PBS. Versatile surface coatings (surface ligands that bind to many types of NPs) are also difficult to prepare because each type of NP [quantum dots (QDs), iron oxide NPs (IONPs), gold NPs (AuNPs)] has a unique composition and surface chemistry. To address these challenges, nine unique copolymers formulations were prepared and evaluated as NP overcoatings. These polymers were made of a poly(isobutylene-alt-maleic anhydride) (PIMA) backbone functionalized with varying ratios and types of phosphonate anchoring groups (PA) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) moieties. Syntheses of these polymeric ligands was done by the simple, one-pot nucleophilic addition reactions. Copolymers were subsequently coated onto UCNPs, QDs, IONPs, and AuNPs and investigated for colloidal and optical stability in different solutions including water, 1×PBS, and other common aqueous buffers. UCNP colloidal stability improved by up to 4 months when coated with copolymers containing greater proportions of anchoring groups and higher phosphonate valences. Small molecules could also be conjugated to these polymer-coated NPs by use of copper-free click chemistry. Using bio-orthogonal chemistry, folic acid (FA), tripheylphosphonium (TPP) and Cy3 dyes were conjugated to UCNPs (and QDs for Cy3) to demonstrate suitability for biosensor and bio-probe development. Cellular toxicity, uptake, and imaging studies were done to assess the bioanalytical potential of these polymer coatings. Early investigations for the potential theranostic applications of UCNPs was also done along with attempts to unravel the cellular uptake mechanism of these polymer coated NPs. | Ph.D. | water, invest, transit | 6, 9, 11 |
| Todd, Matthew Carl | Palej, Norbert | Room 41, Pictures from | Music | 2023-06 | This work is scored for orchestra of 3.3.3.3.4.3.3.1, 4 percussionists, piano, and strings. It comprises three movements: I - Hue Superimposed; II - Solids, Strings and Verticals; and III - Endless Rhythm. The durations of the movements are approximately 4’30”, 8’30”, and 11’30”. This composition focuses on the exploration of ideas from the Cubist art movement and in particular, the juxtaposition or combination of different perspective schemas or viewpoints. Each movement centers on musical techniques that aim to represent this idea through the co-existence of musical objects. Common to all movements are three-note pitch cells which serve as the basic object of observation. The first movement’s textualization of the cell creates viewpoints smeared in time and is inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s idea of "a static representation of movement," an idea he explored in paintings such as Sad Young Man on a Train, 1911, and Nude Descending a Staircase No.2, 1912. In the music, this texture is overlaid with versions of itself, at varying transpositions, to create multiple perspective schema. The second movement begins as a powerful release of energy, through solid, block-like, orchestrations of the cell, also combined at changing transpositions. This then moves to contrapuntal representations of the motive that are intimately presented by the string section. The third movement begins by combining the first movement's overlapping textural idea with a version of a rhythmic idea taken from the second. This transforms into repetitive rhythmic motives that change while they explore the pitch cell and build to a dramatic layering of the rhythmic patterns at the climax of the composition. The title of this work is taken from the location, room 41, that featured artworks by the emerging group of ‘salon’ Cubists who presented at the 1911 Salon des Indépendants art exhibition. | D.M.A. | energy | 7 |
| Christensen, Bradley | MacDonald, Lorna | The Repertoire of John Beckwith for Solo Voice and Piano: An Interpretive and Pedagogical Guide | Music | 2023-06 | This thesis examines the compositions of John Beckwith for solo voice and piano, creating an interpretive and pedagogical guide to these works. Several questions predominate. What aspects of Beckwith’s songs contribute to the overall difficulty level of the pieces? What aspects of Beckwith’s songs should singers and teachers consider in order to give a successful performance and interpretation? What are the key elements of Beckwith’s compositional style for art song and how did these develop over the course of his compositional life? What are the values and pedagogical benefits of disseminating Beckwith songs into the teaching and singing community? This guide is intended to assist voice teachers in assigning repertoire to their students, particularly voice teachers who may not be familiar with John Beckwith’s art song compositions. One of the issues facing voice teachers is determining the level of difficulty of a song. A literature review of various evaluative rubrics for the piano/vocal pairing has revealed a necessity for developing a new grading rubric. Therefore, this guide includes a grading rubric using the Criteria-Specific Rating Scale, which assesses the difficulty level of Beckwith’s forty-six songs for voice and piano, indicating the assigned difficulty rating – Easy, Easy-Moderate, Moderate, Moderate-Difficult, and Difficult. This guide also provides annotations of song cycles, with a deeper focus on select songs. Annotated information includes the date of composition, voicing, vocal ranges, tessitura, song duration, text source and complete texts, publisher information, debut performance, and commissioners. Annotations also include specific statements about the songs from Beckwith and key collaborators, with indications of how performers can interpret each song to create a successful performance. This thesis details the personal and professional history of John Beckwith, focusing on his education and his multi-faceted career, which includes academia, writing, and composition, all of which had a significant impact on the Canadian music scene. Through his song repertoire, this thesis reveals the evolution of his writing style, the timeline of his output, his interactions with poets, performers, and organizations, his compositional processes, his treatment of the text, voice and piano, and ultimately the values and pedagogical benefits of these important works. | D.M.A. | labor | 8 |
| MacMillan, John William Stewart | Weaver, Donald F | Development of Novel Algorithms to Predict Pharmacokinetic Properties of Drug Molecules | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Models of drug pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD) are indispensable in modern drug design. Relatively few in silico models of PK are currently available, especially compared to in silico PD models. Clinically significant PK properties include potentially dangerous food–drug and drug–drug interactions (FDIs and DDIs); mutagenicity, typically measured using the Ames test; and inhibition of the cardiac repolarization channel, human ether-à-go-go related gene (hERG). Virtual screening (VS) of large drug candidate libraries for these properties would facilitate avoidance or prediction of these effects early in drug development. VS methods of predicting another important PK property, blood–brain barrier (BBB) penetrance, are available, but tools for considering this property in de novo drug design are limited.Here, a combination of homology modeling, docking simulations, and quantitative structure–activity relationship (QSAR) analysis was employed in predictive modeling of drug interactions with six membrane transporters known to mediate clinically significant FDIs and DDIs in humans. The accuracy of the homology models varied with availability of foundational data, but, in general, they successfully captured known aspects of the proteins’ structures. No docking simulations accurately reflected literature substrate and inhibitor data for these proteins; further in vitro structural analysis of the proteins’ ligand binding modes is therefore recommended. Machine learning (ML)-assisted binary QSAR analysis successfully yielded predictors for BCRP and P-gp substrate and inhibitor activity, as validated by three established statistical measures of reliability. Using similar methods, a binary QSAR and a “rule of thumb”—simple set of criteria—were developed for predicting hERG inhibition, and two analogous rules were identified for predicting BBB penetrance, with one using only drug structural descriptors that can be readily calculated without computational tools. Finally, a list of structural alerts for positive Ames test results was derived from literature and ML output, and validated using the same methods as for the hERG and BBB rules. Overall, this work has established an approach to detailed, predictive in silico PK modeling based on various levels of availability of structural and fitting data, as well as many example models that can be readily enriched as more such data becomes available. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Ladan, John | Morris, Stephen W | Experiments on the Formation of Rippled Icicles | Physics | 2023-06 | Icicles are a common sight during winter, hanging from rooftops and otherstructures from which water drips. The long slender shape of an icicle develops through a highly non-equilibrium process in which water flows down its surface, partially freezing along the way. This is an example of ``wet ice growth.'' Many icicles exhibit rippled pattern along their length with a near universal9~mm wavelength. While measurements of icicle ripples date back to at least 1933, the mechanism through which they form has eluded physicists. The existence and amplitude of ripples was previously shown to depend on the presence of impurities in the source water, but no existing model for icicle ripples includes impurities. The problem of how icicles form in the presence of impurities is the focus of this thesis. A pre-existing model for the rippling instability was extended to includephysical effects of impurities. A linear stability analysis performed on this model showed that it did not predict ripples. The stability of the model is not sensitive to concentration, so such a model will likely never agree with experiment. A set of 120 icicles were grown using various chemical species as the impurity.The changes in morphology from impurities were only affected by the molar concentration, showing that icicle ripples only depend on the number of dissolved molecules. One of the impurities used was a dye that only fluoresces when dissolved inwater. The liquid flowing down the surface of icicles was observed directly using this dye. Contrary to previous models, we find that the ice is incompletely and intermittently wetted by the liquid phase, and the concentration of impurities modifies the wetting properties of ice. The location of impurities trapped inside of icicles was also observed. All ofthe impurities were found inside small spherical inclusions. The inclusions are organized into chevron patterns aligned with the peaks of ripples, with a layered substructure, suggestive of cyclic wetting and freezing. These observations must inform any successful model of an impurity-drivenrippling instability. Our results have general implications for the evolution of many gravity-driven wet ice growth processes. | Ph.D. | water, species | 6, 14, 15 |
| Abdelaziz, Aly | Grasselli, Giovanni | Stress, Strain, and Failure in Heterogeneous and Anisotropic Rock | Civil Engineering | 2023-06 | Strain evaluation of various testing frames/devices indicated that they have significant impacts, lowering the expected E by up to 50%, leading to a correction factor, termed “system-compliance”, that is unique to the test systems and setups. Also introduced, is a novel approach for sub-core extraction relying on CNC milling, which has proven a success rate of about 85% in any direction to the bedding plane. This technique was used to plug and assess the mechanical anisotropy of heterogeneous, anisotropic, water sensitive shale. The mechanical test results varied with change in the bedding plane with the exception of the E when the bedding planes were perpendicular to the test direction.Numerically, models should be able to capture the heterogeneity of the rock sample being simulated. The grain based modelling (GBM) within the combined finite-discrete element method (FDEM) demonstrated its ability to predict more realistic microscopic and macroscopic response of rocks than conventional FDEM models. The explicit modelling of crack boundaries captured microscopic failure transition from along grain boundaries to coalescence along shear bands, dominated by intraphase cracks. GBM can also represent pre-existing cracks by specifically assigning friction and cohesion values along the grain-grain interfaces. The results of the simulation indicated that for rough fractures, the effect of fracture intensity was minor and was more predominant on both stress-strain curves and macroscopic strength properties for smoother fractures. Hydro-mechanical response ranges from the mechanical response due to the in-situ stress condition and how the rock fabric reacts to the additional stresses imposed by the injection fluid. In the true-triaxial experiments, the hydraulic fracture occurred perpendicular to the intermediate stress in a strike-slip fault regime along the plane of weakness. A new conceptual model is proposed to explain the failure processes, based on which the shut-in pressure corresponds to the magnitude of the principal stress perpendicular to the fracture plane. Other values of shut-in pressure are indicative of a complex fracture network. The resulting fracture network is greatly impacted by the fluid viscosity, with lower viscosity promoting the interaction with bedding planes and existing discontinuities. | Ph.D. | water, transit | 6, 11 |
| Tarafdar, Naif | Chow, Paul | A Hetorogeneous Stack for a Re-configurable Data Centre | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | With the increase of heterogeneity in data centres, the scalability of such devices, from the perspective of both ease of development and performance has been more difficult. The work in this thesis introduces a heterogeneous development and deployment stack at scale, particularly in integrating FPGAs and CPUs. This stack is a series of abstraction layers, where these layers can be swapped for different devices at the lowest level (we demonstrate this with CPUs and FPGAs), and different application domains at a higher level. End-to-end we present the translation of an application into hardware IP cores, to partitioning across devices, down to implementing on multiple FPGAs and CPUs. We also present the applicability of this heterogeneous stack for large scale applications through a large machine learning application. Through the use of multiple abstraction layers we have increased productivity and increased performance by unrolling our application across more devices at scale. | Ph.D. | ABS, learning | 2, 4 |
| Lockert, Stephanie | Marchildon, Gregory P | Structuring Horizontal Accountability in Ontario’s Health Care System | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2023-06 | Background: In health systems comprised of independent health care organizations, the structuring of integrated delivery systems relies on organizations structuring horizontal accountability (HA) with one another. Despite this requirement, we know very little about how this is achieved. While scholars acknowledge that HA should exist as complementary to an organization’s vertical accountabilities, research has found that the structuring of HA can be disrupted by strong vertical accountabilities. This research seeks to understand: how can HA be structured within a system historically reliant on vertical accountabilities?Methods: This was an embedded, multi-case, case study research design, utilizing two Ontario-based cases. I utilized multiple qualitative methods with semi-structured interviews with administrators and governors as a primary source of data collection. Drawing on definitions of accountability in the public administration literature and Bovens (2010) and Dubnick and Frederickson’s (2010) concepts of accountability as a mechanism and as a virtue, I developed a preliminary conceptual framework that would guide this research. The focus was exploratory with goals of analytic applicability, generalization, and the expansion of theory. Results: Where organizations are compelled to structure HA, they will structure HA with contingencies that maintain their independence. For HA to be successful, it must be structured in a way that maintains its virtues while also institutionalizing aspects of HA that codify the interdependence of the partners. Actions and behaviours from the principal and governors, and participant willingness to tackle various tensions resulting from the historical environment, will all be core to establishing a facilitative environment for HA. Democratic, political, clinical, and community dimensions of accountability are well suited to HA whereas high degrees of funding, performance, and bureaucratic forms of accountability may determine whether HA will be replaced by a hierarchical scenario. Conclusion: This research adds to the literature by considering necessary processes, mechanisms, and environments for structuring HA and presents conceptual and analytic frameworks that can be utilized by administrators, policy makers, and researchers. This comprehensive approach is important as the presence of mechanisms alone have proven to be insufficient to the successful structuring of HA relationships (Addicott & Shortell, 2014; Andersson & Wikström, 2014). | Ph.D. | health care, knowledge, institut, democra | 3, 4, 16 |
| Lee, Sandy Che-Eun Serena | Koritzinsky, Marianne | The Role of Oxygen and Oxygen-Dependent Enzymes in Protein Folding, Metabolism, and Redox Homeostasis | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Low levels of oxygen (hypoxia) in solid tumors contributes to therapy resistance and poor patient prognosis. How the cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME) adapt to hypoxia at a transcriptional, epigenetic, and translational level has been extensively explored. Here, we provide a comprehensive review on how molecular signaling in hypoxia represents an intricate, coordinated response triggered by oxygen dependent enzymes. Our work also highlights the lack of understanding of the requirement for oxygen in protein folding and the biological roles of an oxygen dependent enzyme, 2-aminoethanethiol dioxygenase (ADO). Secreted proteins contribute to aggressive cancer phenotypes in the TME. These secreted proteins are thought to utilize an oxygen dependent mechanism for disulfide bond formation required for proper folding, which represents a paradox when they are expressed under hypoxic conditions. Here we confirm the existence of oxygen independent pathways for disulfide bond formation. For the first time we demonstrate that key hypoxia-induced proteins such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A) and carbonic anhydrase 9 (CA9) remain fully competent at disulfide bond formation in the absence of oxygen, supporting their efficient expression in hypoxia. This work highlights that the ability of individual proteins to undergo protein folding in the absence of oxygen ultimately determines their expression in the extracellular space in hypoxia. In parallel, we explored the cellular and physiological roles of a relatively uncharacterized oxygen sensing enzyme, ADO. ADO synthesizes hypotaurine and directly regulates protein stability through catalyzing a post translational modification in an oxygen dependent manner. Here we show that ADO is essential for the growth and survival of cancer cells and promotes tumor xenograft growth. ADO mitigates reactive oxygen species (ROS) through regulating proline metabolism. These data provide novel insights into how depletion of an oxygen dependent enzyme may elicit a metabolic imbalance leading to loss of redox homeostasis. Taken together, this thesis explores the role and the importance of oxygen and oxygen dependent enzymes that drive acute responses such as affecting the disulfide bond formation of protein folding and deregulation of the cancer metabolome. | Ph.D. | ABS, species | 2, 14, 15 |
| Chippin, Daniel | Mondria, Jordi | Essays in Financial and Theoretical Economics | Economics | 2023-06 | In Chapter 1, we analyse a model in which a biased Institutional Investor may offer a share price to acquire voting rights over a corporate motion. The selling and voting decisions of each initial shareholder (with imperfect, private information about the firm’s value of the motion) depend on the private information held, but the selling decision also depends on the Institutional Investor’s price offer. The voting decision of the Institutional Investor depends on the bias and updated beliefs about the motion value (which depend on the quantity of acquired shares). We find that (i) if the magnitude of the bias is large enough, then, relative to the absence of the Institutional Investor, shareholder welfare increases (decreases) if the bias is against (for) the motion and (ii) the Institutional Investor is less willing to exert control as the quality of the private information increases. In Chapter 2, we use the ex-vote date of shareholder meetings to measure the value of corporate shareholder voting rights. We find that the value of voting rights is affected by the quantity and type of shareholder proposed motions and that the interaction between shareholder and management proposed motions negatively affects the value of voting. Our results suggest that the mean value of voting rights is about 1.01% of firm value. The measured drop in the ex-ante expected share price on the ex-vote date is analogous to the drop in share value after a price offer in the modelin Chapter 1. In Chapter 3, we analyse an intertemporal model of network formation. Individuals possess a quality variable whose evolution depends on the number and quality of the individual’s links. We introduce a definition of positive assortative networks and provide conditions for which our model of network formation supports positive assortative networks. | Ph.D. | welfare, ABS, invest, institut | 1, 2, 9, 16 |
| Sutherland, Sarah C. | Braitstein, Paula||Shannon, Harry | Resilience and the Relationship between Care Environment and HIV Risk Factors in Orphaned and Separated Children and Adolescents in Western Kenya | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2023-06 | Millions of orphaned and separated adolescents and youths (OSAY) in sub-Saharan Africa are at a disproportionately higher risk of many adverse health outcomes, including HIV and associated risk factors, as compared to their non-orphaned peers. This increased vulnerability may be due more to a combination of environmental, social, and psychological factors than orphan-status alone. Care environment has been linked to differences in physical and mental health as well as risk behaviours in this population; however, the mechanisms underlying these relationships are not well understood. This dissertation used rich data on the health and well-being of OSAY in Charitable Children’s Institutions (CCI, i.e. orphanages and rescue centers) and family-based care settings (FBS) to investigate the relationships between care environment, psychological resilience, resilience-building factors, and HIV risk factors in OSAY in western Kenya. The first study examined the psychometric properties of the 14-item Resilience Scale (RS14) tool for measuring psychological resilience in this population. It found a high level of internal consistency reliability, moderate convergent validity, and satisfactory construct validity; supporting the use of the RS14 in OSAY in western Kenya. The second study explored the relationships between care environment, social-psychological factors thought to promote psychological resilience, and psychological resilience. Individuals in CCIs showed greater resilience than those in FBS. Family support, social support, peer support, and volunteering were identified as factors that may facilitate the development of psychological resilience in this population. The third study investigated the causal mechanisms behind the relationships between care environment and HIV risk factors; examining these relationships longitudinally and decomposing the impact of care environment on HIV risk factors into the effects due to mediation, interaction, neither, or both. It found that CCIs provided a strong protective effect against sexual HIV risk factors and that none of resilience, peer support, family support, social support, volunteering, or having one’s material needs met were strong mediators of these effects. Together, these studies make an important contribution to the epidemiological literature on resilience and HIV risk in vulnerable populations in low resource settings, and provide insights to guide future research and support evidence-based policy interventions. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, well-being, mental health, invest, vulnerable population, resilien, environmental, resilience, institut | 1, 3, 9, 10, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Alamparambil, Flanny Chacko | McDougall, Douglas | Quantitative Education Researchers’ Conceptualization of Validity in Research Design, and Perceptions of their Work | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | The question of whether a study’s findings or conclusions are valid is a universal concern to all researchers, regardless of whether their approach to research is qualitative, quantitative or mixed. The various research traditions adopt differing philosophies about the nature of knowledge and reality. The literature in the quantitative research tradition has already made attempts to include qualitative and mixed methods in the same validity framework. Quantitative researchers usually use some version of the Campbellian validity typology to discuss research validity. Despite this validity typology originating in the fields of experimental and quasi-experimental causal studies, the internal-external validity framework is widely used in many fields including in education. However, differences in conceptualizations and disagreements abound in the use of the terminology associated with that framework. This exploratory study investigates nine quantitative researchers’ conceptualization of validity, their research practices, their research aims, and their decision-making process during research design and implementation. The participants’ contributions suggest that researchers do not limit themselves to one type of study despite using a particular validity framework. Results also indicate that researchers value flexibility in both their validity framework and their research protocols. Participants highlighted that rewards structures in the research community may not always promote good science. These insights are instrumental for understanding the barriers to having a common validity framework, and some of the prevalent issues related to when it comes to current practices of researchers. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Robinson, Jennifer Jane | Stermac, Lana | Predictors of Self-Injurious Thoughts and Behaviours Among Canadian Post-Secondary Students | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2023-06 | Self-injurious thoughts and behaviours (SITB) represent a collection of life-threatening outcomes ranging from non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI, e.g., self-cutting) to suicidal thoughts (ST) and suicide attempts (SA). Suicide has been identified as a major public health problem and the second leading cause of death among young adults (18 to 24 years), with peak developmental transitions such as attending post-secondary education presenting as a strong catalyst for SITB engagement. Although SITBs have undergone rigorous examination over the years, there remain inconsistencies in the classification of non-suicidal and suicidal SITBs and the prevalence of subsequent risk factors specific to young adults. The purpose of this study was to examine the pre-existing and emerging biopsychosocial risk factors associated with suicidal thoughts and behaviours and non-suicidal self-injury among post-secondary students. While several researchers approach the topic of suicidal thoughts and behaviours separately from non-suicidal self-injury, this study examines the two constructs concurrently and explores risk factors common to both. Using data from the 2013 (n=354) and 2016 (n=270) American College Health Association–National College Health Assessment (ACHA-NCHA), a cross-sectional survey of the health behaviours of Canadian post-secondary students, this study examined the prevalence of 13 biopsychosocial risk factors in a group of students who endorsed engagement in SITB. Of the 13 risk factors examined in the current study, results demonstrate three pre-existing risk factors (interpersonal trauma, substance use and diagnosis of a mental health issue) and three emerging risk factors (disability identification, sleep disturbance and negative affect) converging in the two student samples. Understanding emerging risk factors may help improve suicide risk assessment tools and mitigate suicidal tendencies by providing clinical interventions at earlier stages for post-secondary students. Sleep problems may be a particularly important intervention target because of their non-stigmatizing nature and amenability to mental health treatment. | Ph.D. | mental health, public health, disabilit, secondary education, urban, transit | 3, 4, 11 |
| Nunoda, Erin | Cahill, James L. | Unconsummated/Queer Loneliness | Cinema Studies | 2023-06 | This dissertation is organized around a concept called queer loneliness, which I define as a state of unrequited longing, one that contests the borders between the presence and absence of sex. Whereas most queer theory has understandably worked to repair and refigure non-monogamy, this project approaches queer intimacy from the opposite direction, illuminating relations that often occur without sex, without contact, or without a human intermediary. Following from theoretical work on celibacy, autoeroticism, and asexuality, this project examines the criteria through which erotic behaviours become recognizable as sex, rather than as foreplay, fetishism, or masturbation. In this sense, loneliness is not only a paradigm that questions the collapse of sexual evidence and legitimized partnership, but also one that poses consequences for the legibility of erotic life in moving image media. Distance, seclusion, vicariousness, illegibility, and frigidity are all operative figures in this project, and I suggest that these aesthetic paradigms contest an insistence – whether in acts of seeing or interpreting – on union between beholder and object.My methodology combines engagement with queer thinkers, close formal analysis, and attention to sexual historiographies, thereby negotiating culturally specific modes of sexual epistemology through the peripatetic surprise of aesthetic reading. The project is periodized alongside increasing sexual privatization throughout the late 20th century in a variety of national contexts (Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, Japan, Taiwan, the United States), focusing particularly on the sacralisation of nuclear family dynamics that proliferated globally during these decades. In this project, I excavate an alternative history of queer cinematic expression in the late 20th century, one that examines how this era simultaneously fortified a conservative, heteronormative pastoralism and permitted a set of stranger erotic relations to seclusion, atomization, and home spaces to take root. Ultimately, this project suggests that unconsummated, celibate, or non-companionate relationalities are not simply a form of negation, but an aesthetic mode, a form of ambient togetherness, a way of doing history, and a component of cinematic grammar. | Ph.D. | ABS, queer, equit, consum, conserv | 2, 5, 10, 12, 14, 15 |
| Quilico, Enrico L. | Colantonio, Angela||Swaine, Bonnie | Co-creating and Implementing a Community-Based Peer-Assisted Physical Activity Program to Promote Exercise and Sport Participation after Moderate-to-Severe Traumatic Brain Injury | Rehabilitation Science | 2023-06 | Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a leading cause of death and disability around the world, and moderate-to-severe TBI may result in long-term or lifelong sequelae that prevent individuals from returning to a pre-injury way of functioning. Physical activity (PA; e.g., exercise and sport) demonstrates the potential to alleviate some of this burden through meaningful health-improving activities that are positive for mood, community participation, and quality of life after moderate-to-severe TBI. However, adults with moderate-to-severe TBI do not participate in recommended amounts of PA. Therefore, establishing best-practice methods to support PA participation in the community after moderate-to-severe TBI is warranted for the purpose of improving long-term outcomes. This doctoral dissertation addresses that gap with (1) a scoping review of the current literature about community-based PA interventions after moderate-to-severe TBI, (2) an exploratory case study of an existing peer-based PA program being piloted in a YMCA fitness centre, (3) an interpretive case study of co-creating a tailored peer-based PA program with key stakeholders, and (4) an interpretative phenomenological analysis of COVID-19’s impact on program participants and their PA. Results showed (1) community-based PA interventions can lead to significant improvements in health-related outcomes after moderate-to-severe TBI, but further research is needed with sex and gender considerations, telehealth applications, and better intervention reporting; (2) the inner mechanisms of a peer-based PA program from the perspective of multiple stakeholders and the autonomy-supportive approaches needed to tailor the intervention for future users; (3) how the participation in and co-creation of a new optimized community-based peer-assisted program can increase PA autonomy, reduce PA barriers, and lead to important biopsychosocial benefits; and (4) the profound impact of COVID-19 and necessary considerations to support PA in a pandemic after moderate-to-severe TBI. Findings of this dissertation include implications for the rehabilitation sciences and literature. Integrated knowledge transfer approaches to co-creating a peer-based PA program in the community can lead to the co-production of knowledge between researchers and users, who benefit from health promotion opportunities that further their participation in society. Peer-based PA programs can transcend rehabilitation to the community context with positive health behaviours that extend beyond a formal intervention. | Ph.D. | disabilit, knowledge, gender, production | 3, 4, 5, 12 |
| Vaezipoor, Pashootan | Bacchus, Fahiem||McIlraith, Sheila A | Contributions to Data-Driven Combinatorial Solvers | Computer Science | 2023-06 | Discrete optimization problems appear in everyday life, with a wide range of applications including airline scheduling, telecommunications network design and healthcare. Modern solvers are intricately crafted to perform well on average across this wide range of applications. This generality is at odds with their emerging applications where the solver is rapidly queried with slightly modified versions of the same problem. Data-driven algorithm design provides a potential solution to this dilemma by tuning various aspects of the solver via machine learning to the desired distribution of a particular domain. Several attempts have been made towards this goal, yet many challenges lie ahead of its adoption in modern solvers. In this dissertation, we identify some of these challenges and propose methods to alleviate or circumvent them. First, we contribute the first ML-based exact model counter by improving the branching heuristic of a conventional solver in a data-driven manner. We show that the resulting solver takes fewer steps in solving unseen similarly distributed instances and can extrapolate to larger instances from the same problem family, sometimes leading to orders of magnitude speedups over the conventional solver. Second, we investigate the potential of contrastive learning in ML-based solvers. Given the NP-hard nature of these problems, the cost of acquiring labels is quite expensive. We show that, by using only 1% of the labelled data, contrastively-trained representations can achieve comparable test accuracy to fully-supervised representations. This positions contrastive learning as a formidable technique for data-driven solver design. Third, we propose a framework based on Monte Carlo tree search for efficient “backdoor” discovery in integer linear programming. The study of backdoors can reveal novel structural properties of these problems and provide insights into their hardness. Lastly, we show how ML can in turn benefit from the discrete mathematics domain. We show how a type of formal logic can be used to express multi-task, temporally extended instructions to reinforcement learning agents. We prove that the resulting agents have theoretical advantages over baseline methods. Particularly, we show that our agent does not suffer from myopia, where the individual subtasks are solved optimally but the combined solution is suboptimal. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Lee, Kathy Kyungeun | Mitchell, Jane||Grynpas, Marc | Investigating the In vivo Effects of Osteoblast-specific Oerexpression of Gαs and Gαq/11 on Bone Formation and Remodeling during Fracture Repair | Pharmacology | 2023-06 | G proteins mediate a multitude of physiological processes by transducing extracellular signals from G protein-coupled receptors to various intracellular signaling cascades. Of particular importance in bone are GαS that raises cAMP levels by activating adenylyl cyclase and Gαq/11 that increases intracellular calcium levels via activation of phospholipase C. Using transgenic mice that overexpress either GαS (Gs-Tg) or Gαq/11 (G11-Tg) in osteoblast lineage cells, previous work in our lab has demonstrated that alterations in GαS and Gαq/11 levels in the skeleton can have profound effects on bone mass, microarchitecture, mineral density, and quality. It remains unclear, however, how variation in GαS and Gαq/11 levels affects bone regeneration and repair. To test our hypothesis that increasing Gαs and Gα11 in osteoblasts leads to differential fracture healing responses, we performed stabilized tibial osteotomy in male Gs-Tg and G11-Tg mice at 8 weeks of age and examined the progression of fracture healing by Micro-CT, histomorphometry, and gene expression analysis over a 4-week period. Gs-Tg mouse fractures exhibited diminished cartilage formation, increased callus mineralization, increased bone formation, and improved material stiffness. Histological analyses also revealed excess fibroblasts along the newly formed woven bone surfaces and elevated osteocyte density at the times of increased bone formation and elevated osteoclastic bone resorption in the bone remodeling stage. Coincident with enhanced osteogenesis, elevated osteoblastic Wnt secretion and Wnt/B-catenin signaling was evidenced by quantitative reverse transcription PCR and immunofluorescence staining implicating increased Wnt signaling activation as a mechanism by which increased GαS levels promote osteogenesis and induce fibrosis during bone repair in Gs-Tg mice. In contrast, normal endochondral healing progressed in G11-Tg mice. However, their reduced osteogenic differentiation capacity led to diminished formation of highly mineralized bone and poor structural integrity of healing bone. The lack of changes in osteoclast parameters and osteoclast marker expression suggested that the G11-Tg fracture repair phenotype is driven by osteogenic abnormalities. Overall, our results confirm our hypothesis that GαS and Gαq/11 differentially regulate bone formation and remodeling during fracture repair and highlight that osteoblast GαS and Gαq/11 levels play a significant role in determining the pattern, rate, and extent of fracture healing. | Ph.D. | invest, regeneration | 9, 15 |
| Loaiza Ganem, Ignacio | Izmaylov, Artur F | Efficient Algorithms for Smulations of Quantum Chemical Systems | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Even though the physical equations that model chemical systems are known, the complexity of solving, and sometimes even representing such equations, escalates exponentially with the system size for an arbitrary chemical system. However, many different approximations can be made and efficient algorithms found for the accurate description of some chemical systems of interest with reasonable computational effort. In this work, we propose efficient algorithms for the solution of three problems of chemical interest, namely: the electronic structure problem using quantum computers, the simulation of chemical reactions on metallic surfaces, and modelling the absorption of solar radiation by light harvesting molecules. All of the proposed algorithms work within larger frameworks. We start by discussing the importance of each given problem, after which we cover the necessary background for all the used frameworks and show the details on how our proposed algorithms make these frameworks more efficient. | Ph.D. | ABS, solar | 2, 7 |
| White, James J. | Gastaldo, Denise | Developing a Diagnostic Approach to Multi-Dimensional Poverty | Nursing Science | 2023-06 | Resource accumulation benefiting some people over others has been naturalized throughout human social evolution, even when its acquisition caused widespread suffering, disease, and premature death. The first religious orders, humanitarians, and indeed nurses, all emerged in response to this widespread exploitation and misery. In our globalized and technologically advanced world, there is widening inequality, deepening impoverishment, complex threats to health and security, and increasing uncertainty. As clinicians, we seek to assist people living in multi-dimensional states of suffering, yet our tools and methods are insufficient. Poverty measures often focus on monetary impoverishment alone; most are not meant to be broad or diagnostic in nature; political barriers and other perverse incentives limit the scope of poverty case finding; practice barriers (not least, time) limit case finding in the clinic; and often we focus on symptoms and surface manifestations of poverty – not the root causes. Grounded on an ontological foundation of critical realism and guided by an epistemology of critical theory, this study seeks to address this practice gap by synthesizing existing poverty measures and approaches via a literature scoping review; collecting primary data from health providers and clients through a generic qualitative research study; and constructing a novel diagnostic approach to multi-dimensional poverty with an emphasis on clinical utility. During eight months of data collection in urban Toronto, semi-structured interviews were carried out with 11 healthcare professionals and 6 clients, as well as a multidisciplinary focus group of 5 clinicians. Findings revealed that respondents held diverse perspectives on the definition of “poverty”, what to do about it, and what provider and client roles ought to be. Respondents also helped prioritize life domains, proposed ways to measure complex aspects of life, and suggested settings where a diagnostic approach to poverty would be useful. Based on these findings, I propose the Survival – Orientation – Self-Actualization (S.O.S.) Diagnostic Approach, a novel multi-dimensional measure infusing elements of the nursing process, person-centered care, and ethical triage to better guide poverty case finding and praxis in the clinical setting. The study concludes by offering suggestions on application to practice, informing policy, and suggestions for future research. | Ph.D. | poverty, healthcare, globaliz, inequality, equalit, humanitarian, urban, exploitation | 1, 3, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Rennie, Benjamin Edward | Morris, Robert H. | Odd Electron Transition Metal Hydride and Amine Complexes and their Associated Proton/Electron/Hydrogen Atom Reactivity | Chemistry | 2023-06 | This thesis is focused on furthering our understanding of the thermodynamics associated with metal hydrides and coordinated amines, namely the acidity, electrochemistry, and M-H and MN-H bond strengths. This understanding will improve catalyst development and should make industrial processes more sustainable and environmentally benign. In chapter 2, literature-reported electrochemistry of metal-hydride complexes is combined with estimated acidities of the oxidized species, in order to examine trends in electrochemical reversibility, acidity, and metal-hydride bond strength. It was found that oxidations to acidic metal hydrides tend to be irreversible due to proton loss. On the other hand, regions of electrochemical reversibility are usually associated with more reducing, less acidic complexes. In addition, the ligand acidity constant (LAC) method of estimating the pKa of metal hydrides and dihydrogen complexes is applied to paramagnetic metals. It was found that the LAC method generally works well for paramagnetic complexes, even though it was empirically derived from pKa of diamagnetic hydrides. Using the work from chapter 2 as a guide, a series of paramagnetic manganese(II) hydride com- plexes were synthesized, as discussed in chapter 3. This series is of the type trans-[MnH(L)(dmpe)2]+ were L is PMe3, C2H4, or CO. All of these complexes were studied by frozen solution EPR spec- troscopy. However, at room temperature, the trans ligand was found to determine the radical stability, and in cases of instability, the decomposition products. trans- PMe3 provides steric bulk and basicity, which stabilizes the radical. The trans-C2H4 complex decomposed by loss of ethylene and ethane, which ultimately yielded the homoleptic tris-dmpe complex and other unidentified side- products. The trans-CO complex provided little steric bulk and was more acidic, such that this complex cleanly lost 1/2 H2 in MeCN to give the MnI product [Mn(CO)(MeCN)(dmpe)2]+. In chapter 4, the focus is on coordinated amines, specifically a secondary amine in a tri-dentate phosphorous-nitrogen-nitrogen (PNN) ligand, which is coordinated to iron and rhodium. This case study used cyclic voltammetry and NMR to measure the acidity, electrochemistry, and MN-H bond dissociation free energies for the complexes. | Ph.D. | transit, environmental, species | 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Apte, Chirag Nitin | Yudin, Andrei K | Reaction Discovery through Amphoteric Functional Groups: From Fluorophores to Peptides | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Functional groups with multiple electrophilic and nucleophilic sites facilitate the synthesis of complex molecular scaffolds and the development of new chemical reactions. This thesis classifies functional groups based on the relative position and nature of their reactive atoms and studies their chemical transformations as well as the applications of the molecules generated. Chapter 2 discusses the use of sodium cyanoborohydride as a C1 borylated building for synthesizing borindolizines, a class of fluorescent boron-containing heterocycles. Borindolizines exhibit scaffold-dependent fluorescent emissions spanning the entire visible spectrum (violet to red) and a high Stokes shift. A computationally-guided scaffold screen is performed, allowing for the rational design and synthesis of a family of fluorophores with tunable emission wavelengths, including a red-emissive isoquinoline-based borindolizine. Chapter 3 explores the redirection of an established 1,3,4-oxadiazole-forming reaction towards the synthesis of pyrazolyl-heteroaryl-containing rings from readily available amino-azoles in a single synthetic step. The heterocycle-forming reagent N-isocyaniminotriphenylphosphorane (Pinc) possesses an amphoteric isocyanide capable of engaging both nucleophilic and electrophilic reaction partners during the reaction and a nucleophilic iminophosphorane. The redirected reaction rapidly generates chiral bis(heteroaryls) from linear peptides and commercially available azole amines that can have wide-ranging applications as small molecule probes, organocatalysts, and ligands. In Chapter 4, the monomer-dimer equilibrium observed in amphoteric aziridine aldehyde dimers is probed by introducing hydrogen-bond donors and acceptors. The synthesis of functionalized aziridine aldehydes displaying a breakdown of the dimeric character of aziridine aldehydes is conducted, and the first observation of a predominantly monomeric aziridine aldehyde is made. Finally, a mechanistic tool is developed by leveraging the homochiral nature of aziridine aldehyde dimers based on the non-linear effect observed through monomer enantiomeric excess values in scalemic mixtures of dimers. | Ph.D. | emission, emissions | 7, 13 |
| Segal, Dmitri | Taipale, Mikko | Systematic Characterization of Human 14-3-3 Paralogs Reveals Highly Similar Interaction Specificities and Uncovers their Role as Chaperone-like Molecules | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Human 14-3-3 proteins are a family of seven highly conserved phospho-serine/threonine binding domains. They interact with hundreds/thousands of structurally and functionally diverse protein clients, thereby acting as central hubs of many signaling networks. However, how each 14-3-3 paralog differs in client specificity is not known for most clients because interaction specificity differences have never been quantitatively assessed on a large scale for the full complement of 14-3-3 paralogs. Furthermore, due to the lack of systematic functional screens, it is not known how most client proteins are regulated by 14-3-3s. Here, I used affinity purification coupled to mass spectrometry (AP-MS), proximity biotinylation (BioID2), and LUminescence-based Mammalian IntERactome profiling (LUMIER) to generate quantitative and directly comparable interactomes of all seven human 14-3-3 paralogs. I also used a high-content immunofluorescent imaging approach to uncover the effect of disrupting 14-3-3 interactions on client protein localization. The resulting networks revealed that all paralogs, with the exception of 14-3-3σ, have extremely similar or nearly identical interaction specificities. Furthermore, I found that loss of 14-3-3 binding leads to coalescence of a large fraction of clients into discrete foci or clusters in a client-specific manner, suggesting a central chaperone-like function for 14-3-3 proteins. Consistent with this, engraftment of 14-3-3 binding motifs to non-clients suppressed their aggregation or phase separation. This is also supported by the enrichment of features in 14-3-3 interactors that promote aggregation and phase separation. Finally, I showed that 14-3-3 proteins negatively regulate the localization of the RNA-binding protein SAMD4A to cytoplasmic granules and suppress its activity as a translational repressor. Ultimately, I was able to generate the most comprehensive framework for deciphering differences in interaction preferences between 14-3-3 paralogs. Furthermore, my work was able to greatly expand on the functional consequences of 14-3-3 binding in human cells, revealing that 14-3-3 proteins have a more prominent role as chaperone-like molecules than previously thought. | Ph.D. | cities, conserv | 11, 14, 15 |
| Pickup, Shawn Michael | McFadden, Jeffrey | Takemitsu’s Solo Guitar Music Inspired by Visual Art: Informed and Imaginative Interpretation and Performance | Music | 2023-06 | The guitar music of Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu presents a unique contribution to the solo guitar repertoire. Like much of his creative output, his guitar music features some ambiguous inspiration from extra-musical sources. The purpose of this study is to uncover information on the connection between Takemitsu’s guitar pieces and the works of visual art for which they are named; additionally, this information is incorporated into a multi-level approach to interpretation and performance. The methods include first establishing an approach to the problem from the perspective of the performer through a framework built upon hermeneutic methods, literature on the role of the performer, performer’s analysis (John Rink), analogy of score as script, and reflections on the practice-based learning process on the guitar. The suggested approach is then applied to two case studies, Takemitsu’s All in Twilight (1987), and Equinox (1993). The approach includes producing translations of pertinent Japanese texts, conducting interviews with two professional guitarists (Tanenbaum and Fukuda), and investigating the artists Klee and Miró and the works of visual art after which each piece is named. The results show that for each case the viewing experience, evocation of the title, and aesthetic of the artwork inspired Takemitsu’s creativity. This manifested in various associations and references to concepts and fascinations of the composer, including the conflation of dream and water themes, nocturnal references, the subconscious mind, transitions of nature, the end of life, and the space between dualities of day and night, life and death, and sound and silence. The composer embedded these associations in part through intertextual reference to previous works of his own and those of major influences Messiaen and Debussy, with overlapping motivic material, contours, and harmonies. The results of each case study present an informed and imaginative interpretation, rather than an authoritative reading. The information on the visual artists, artworks, and extensive reflections on the technical execution of the pieces on the guitar may be used by students and professionals as a guide toward their own interpretations of the case-study pieces and further related works by this and other composers. | D.M.A. | learning, water, invest, transit | 4, 6, 9, 11 |
| Hastings-Speck, Emily Jean | Joshee, Reva | Making a Beautiful Difference: How Teachers Support Students with Learning Challenges in Rural Nepal | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | The growing demand for high-level English education in south Asia has created a network of private schools, promising better results and outcomes for students than local-language government schools. This in turn creates an expectation that all children should be able to access this type of schooling, and an environment where academic achievement is prioritized for a variety of complex reasons. Typically within these systems, students who did not succeed in school were pushed out early, or held back repeatedly over multiple years. However, with the global push to ensure access to education to all of the world’s children, children who struggle academically are spending more and more years in a classroom, despite their lack of perceived success. How do teachers support students who are struggling academically within a system which emphasizes academic achievement, and which measures success based on a strict series of exams? The purpose of this research was to explore the experiences of teachers in supporting students who struggle academically in a small community in rural Nepal, and explore the process of creating a positive model of support for students at the study school. I interviewed teachers and explored ideas related to the supports and barriers they faced in supporting struggling students, the value of education to their community, and the changes they felt were needed to better support students with learning challenges. I took a qualitative case study approach based in narrative and ethnographic traditions, and collected data through individual interviews and group discussions with the participants, as well as through the analysis of field texts, including the use of reports, journals and photographs. I analyzed the data using thematic analysis and organized in relation to an initial, and then revised, conceptual framework that included a variety of influences impacting the teachers in their work. I used narrative and story throughout to contextualize and discuss the findings, and discuss implications for theory, practice and further research. | Ed.D. | learning, rural | 4, 11 |
| Zamiri-Jafarian, Yeganeh | Plataniotis, Konstantinos N | Acquiring Information from Bayesian Surprise in Cognitive Linear Gaussian Dynamic Systems | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | The development of autonomous systems (AS) requires cognitive entities capable of acquiring information, learning, planning, and reasoning that eventually adapt to environmental uncertainties. Since surprising events encourage learning and information-seeking in biological agents, this research suggests surprise as the intrinsic motivator to design cognitive dynamic systems undergoing autonomous behavior. Amongst several definitions of surprise, this thesis proposes the Bayesian surprise to express information utility and to guide novelty acquisition from uncertain measurements by considering the impact of new data on changing prior beliefs. By adopting Gaussian noise-driven linear dynamic models to represent the environment, the Bayesian surprise drives the system to estimate future environmental states from noisy measurements and execute a decision to minimize the estimation error over time. This research implements a novel planning algorithm, where the system computes the contribution of prospective actions---which are available from a library---to state estimation and selects the one that maximizes the expectation of Bayesian surprise. Theoretical analysis shows that the action corresponding to the highest expectation of Bayesian surprise conveys the maximum information and reduces the state estimation error. Furthermore, a learning and planning algorithm is derived by intrinsically assigning novel rewards which are developed based on the expectation of Bayesian surprise. This thesis proposes reward functions inspired by credibility measures in estimation/control theory to evaluate the consequences of past actions. The performances of the proposed algorithms are compared to the state-of-the-art for numerous experiments. For a cognitive linear Gaussian dynamic application (i.e., cognitive radar), results show that the proposed planning algorithm outperforms its competitors with respect to the mean square relative error when one-step and multiple-step planning are considered. In comparison to alternative methods, the learning and planning algorithm implemented by the proposed surprise-based rewards significantly improves the state estimation performance. Also, results indicate that multiple-step planning does not necessarily lead to lower error, mainly when the environment changes abruptly. | Ph.D. | learning, environmental | 4, 13 |
| Campbell, Connor James | Burda, Martin||Luo, Yao | Essays in Econometrics, Industrial Organization, and Technology | Economics | 2023-06 | Recent developments in machine learning (ML) have facilitated the development of new methodologies to estimate structural economic models. This thesis contributes to the existing literature by developing new methodologies that combine Bayesian statistics with ML for structural model estimation and inference. In Chapter 1, I develop a model of the short-term accommodations market in Austin, Texas on Airbnb using Bayesian Neural Networks and simulate the effect of allowing platform fees to vary with consumer demand. I find that scaling fees with demand could have earned Airbnb an additional 10% in revenue over the period 2015-2019. In Chapter 2, I develop a method to estimate a first price sealed bid auction model using less observable data than what has conventionally been considered necessary. By combining a Bernstein polynomial with a Metropolis-Hastings sampler, I obtain point estimates and credible intervals on all primitives. Chapter 3 is joint work with my supervisor Martin Burda. We develop a statistical method to impose functional shape constraints on functions modeled by a flexible neural network that incorporates uncertainty inherent in the network structure. Further, we develop a method of architectural learning which enables simultaneous estimation via MCMC of both the network parameters and architecture. | Ph.D. | learning, metro, consum | 4, 11, 12 |
| Hwang, Sungwon | Maxwell, Karen L | Structural and Mechanistic Characterization of Type II-C Anti-CRISPR Proteins | Biochemistry | 2023-06 | The CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune system provides bacteria with defence against phage predation.CRISPR-Cas systems use protein-RNA complexes to cleave and eliminate invading phage genomes in a sequence specific manner. Phages have evolved a countermeasure through the expression of small protein inhibitors against CRISPR-Cas called “anti-CRISPRs”. Anti-CRISPR proteins use incredibly diverse mechanisms to either bind directly to or enzymatically modify Cas proteins to prevent cleavage mediated by CRISPR-Cas. CRISPR-Cas enzymes, especially Cas9, have been repurposed in many biotechnologies including genome editing. Anti-CRISPRs have potential to be utilized as “off-switches” for CRISPRCas9 gene editing, addressing safety and ethical concerns for the technology. Since their discovery in 2013, over 90 protein families of anti-CRISPRs have been reported, with 37 being inhibitors of Cas9 specifically. However, much of the mechanistic details of the anti-CRISPR proteins are left incomplete. In this thesis work, I characterize the inhibitory mechanisms of two CRISPR-Cas9 inhibitors, AcrIIC4 and AcrIIC5, using structural biology and biochemical and biophysical assays. I demonstrate that AcrIIC4 inhibits the DNA cleavage activity of Cas9 by binding to the REC2 domain of Cas9 and preventing the conformational changes required for Cas9 to switch into the active state, while AcrIIC5 inhibits Cas9 from binding to target DNA using DNA mimicry. The inhibitory mechanisms elucidated in my thesis work can be applied to the potential development of AcrIIC4 and AcrIIC5 for biotechnological purposes. This work also expands our knowledge of the vast arsenal phages have evolved to circumvent CRISPRCas defence. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| McIntyre, Lindsay Maria | Tan, Daphne | Talking Back: An Exploration of Negative Self-Talk in Undergraduate Voice Majors | Music | 2023-06 | This research centers on the experience of negative self-talk in undergraduate voice majors. The research questions are (1) How prevalent is negative self-talk in individual singers? (2) Why do students experience negative self-talk? (3) How does negative self-talk impact the wellbeing of this population? And (4) Can mindfulness-based meditation serve as an effective intervention in reducing the effects of negative self-talk? To answer these questions, a multiple case study was designed alongside an eight-week mindfulness-based intervention. Five undergraduate student participants were sent an email once a week for eight weeks, which included introductions to mindfulness concepts and audio files of guided meditations, which they were to practice daily. During these eight weeks, each student participated in a series of three interviews and completed questionnaires relating to music performance anxiety, self-efficacy, and mindfulness following “high stakes” performances of their choosing. In Chapter 1 of this dissertation, I present my own experience with negative self-talk in performance, and in Chapter 2, I review the current literature on Music Performance Anxiety (MPA), self-talk, and wellbeing. I present my research design and intervention in Chapter 3 and describe the five participant case studies in Chapter 4. I provide within-case and cross-case analyses in Chapter 5. In the cross-case analysis, four themes emerged: 1) Cognitive manifestations of performance anxiety; 2) Comparison; 3) Over-analyzing; and 4) Increased mindfulness. Following the eight-week intervention, overall awareness around performance and performance process increased, a deeper connection to breath was developed, and greater overall acceptance was gained. Chapter 6 contains a discussion of limitations and future directions for this research. Given the results of this and similar studies, I suggest that music educators consider adding mindfulness practices into their curriculum to enhance both the performance experience and overall wellbeing of student musicians. This intervention took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which is discussed throughout. | D.M.A. | wellbeing, mindfulness | 3 |
| Keunen, Rachel Arlene | Winnik, Mitchell A | Synthesis and Characterization Of Cellulose Nanocrystal Based Rod-Like Nanoparticles For Investigation Of Surface Chemistry Effects On Cellular Internalization of Nanoparticles | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) are biocompatible, non-toxic nanoparticles with many surface hydroxyl functionalities available for chemical modification. In this thesis, I describe the modification of CNCs for applications in the investigation of how nanoparticles interact with cancer cells. I modify CNCs with benzaldehyde functionalities as reactive handles for conjugation with hydrazinonicotinamide-modified polymers via a bisarylhydrazone. I first describe the sequential epoxidation and amination of pristine CNCs and carry out analysis of the effects of the reaction conditions. I then describe the synthesis of mPEG-PGlu(DOTA)-HyNic polymers using three different lengths of mPEG. The final polymer modification I describe is that of Folate-PEG-HyNic. In a final synthetic step, I conjugate the HyNic polymers to the CNC-aldehyde in a UV-Vis quantifiable reaction generating four CNC-polymer conjugates: CNC-PEG2K, CNC-PEG3K, CNC-PEG11K, and CNC-Folate. In this thesis, I describe careful and systemic study of the many synthetic steps. My interest in synthesizing these CNC-polymer conjugates was as potential drug delivery vehicles and for a systematic investigation of the effects of nanoparticle surface chemistry on cellular internalization. Surface chemistry effects were analyzed by measuring the median fluorescent intensity by flow cytometry of cell populations incubated with fluorescein-labelled CNC-polymer conjugates. The effects of PEG length were investigated using the CNC-PEG2K, CNC-PEG3K, and CNC-PEG11K conjugates upon incubation with two ovarian cancer cell lines, SKOV3 and HeyA8. I found that cellular internalization decreased with increased PEG block length for each of the cell lines. Additionally, I was able to use the same two cell lines to investigate active vs passive targeting of nanoparticles to cells as HeyA8 has low folate receptor expression whereas SKOV3 has high folate receptor expression. I found that the amount of nanoparticles internalized by and adhered to SKOV3 was higher for the actively targeted conjugate (CNC-Folate) than for the passively targeted conjugate (CNC-PEG2K). Finally, I used trypan blue incubation experiments to distinguish CNC conjugates adhered to the cell surface from those that were internalized. The results described in this thesis add to the conversations about CNC modification and characterization as well as the requirements for effective nanomedicines. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Derkson, Kyle Matthew Daniel | Derry, Ken KD||Harris, Jennifer JH | Canada's Hot Little Prophet?: Walt Whitman, Richard Bucke, Psychiatry, and Metaphysical Religions in Nineteenth-Century Ontario | Religion, Study of | 2023-06 | My dissertation focuses on the friendship between the Canadian psychiatrist and superintendent for the London Asylum for the Insane, Dr. Richard Maurice Bucke and the American poet, Walt Whitman. I situate their adaptation and reimagining of a Christian ideology to suit their psychiatric and poetic needs within nineteenth-century interrelatedness of Christian, medical, psychiatric, and new metaphysical religions. The physical body is known through observation and experimentation, which then creates a “neutral” body from which other bodies can be adjudicated. This “neutral body” becomes an unnecessarily complex or impractical mechanical device that is often poorly constructed and even dangerous. In other words, both Bucke and Whitman embed a sense of Christian ideology into the physical bodies of those they are either diagnosing or writing about. The first chapter of my dissertation provides a literature review including relevant literature from the study of religion in regard to new metaphysical religions, science, and the relationship between religion and the secular. I also provide an overview of the literature regarding nineteenth-century asylums as well as the relevant literature on Bucke and Whitman. My second chapter provides an overview of the relationship between the history of new metaphysical religions and psychiatry. The bulk of my analysis comes in chapters three and four where I go in-depth regarding the relationship between Bucke and Whitman, how their ideas of religion impacted each other and their own works respectively. Finally, I examine their conceptions of religion and the body through the framework of the Cosmos. Ultimately, I argue that both Whitman and Bucke create distinct (but complementary in their consequences) conceptions of Cosmos due to a shared, Christian centred, ideological framework. Further, imagining bodies as having cosmic potential like Whitman and Bucke do, allows them to maintain their positions of authority as the science and discourse revolving around gendered and racialized bodies changes. | Ph.D. | gender, gini, judic | 5, 10, 16 |
| Zare Jahromi, Martiya | Kundur, Deepa | Security Enhancement of Power Transformer Differential Protection | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | The growing use of information and communication technologies information and communication technologies (ICTs) in power grid operational environments has been essential for operators to improve the monitoring, maintenance and control of power generation, transmission and distribution, however, at the expense of an increased grid exposure to cyber threats. Information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT) convergence has incentivized hackers to trigger more attacks on cyber-physical systems in recent years. This has resulted in more global investment on cybersecurity. Moreover, the amount of data flow in such systems is beyond human supervision capabilities. Hence, data driven methods provide a wealth of opportunities to enhance cybersecurity. Of specific interest, we focus on the use of machine learning in an IT/OT converged environment for the purpose of intrusion detection, an essential step in cyber-physical grid security due to the complex nature of emerging power systems. We focus on the IEC 61850 substation environment, which lies at the heart of IT/OT convergence. This thesis first searches for the optimized models using applicable neural network architectures and compares their performances. The results of hyperparameter tuning are used to propose universal models for all types of faults for each architecture for IEC 61850 transformer protection relays. Next, an adversarial training method is proposed to enhance the security of the models. The performance of the models before and after adversarial training is compared. The results are used to propose the best model for enhancing the security of the transformer protective relays. Then, a black-box attack framework is proposed to study the capability of the attacker to conduct a successful attack without knowing the model parameters. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Rahman, Anum | Sled, John G | Modeling Congenital Heart Disease in Mice and Assessing its Effects on Fetal Brain Development | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | In congenital heart disease (CHD), defined as structural defects of the heart that arise in-utero, neurocognitive deficits are common and are associated with brain dysmaturation in the perinatal period. Clinical studies involving CHD cohorts have shown an association between fetal brain abnormalities and hypoxemia, which is thought to result from altered cardiovascular physiology due to CHD. However, despite this association, it is not known whether the cardiac lesion in CHD causes cerebral hypoxia. Furthermore, given that factors such as shared genetic defects in heart and brain development and underlying placental disease may independently contribute to brain abnormalities, the extent to which hypoxemia/decreased substrate delivery is responsible for fetal brain dysmaturation in CHD is unknown. In this thesis, I examine whether fetal brain abnormalities can be directly caused by altered hemodynamics due to CHD. To investigate this question, I developed a surgically-induced, cardiac-specific mouse model of a CHD known as hypoplastic left heart syndrome (HLHS), which is clinically associated with hypoxemia and brain abnormalities. Next, I interrogated brain development in HLHS fetal mice using high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and immunohistochemistry. At a structural level, HLHS mice had volumetric reductions in compartments responsible for neurogenesis and white matter development, as observed clinically, and the size of these brain structures was partly determined by the size of the cardiac vessels. Furthermore, HLHS mice had volume loss in midbrain structures, which has not been previously observed. At a cellular level, HLHS mice had increased cerebral hypoxia and a decreased number of mature neurons globally. Given these results, I make the case that during development, altered cardiovascular physiology due to a severe cardiac lesion can directly cause brain dysmaturation at a structural and cellular level, independent of genetic factors. Furthermore, given that HLHS mice show evidence of cerebral hypoxia, therapies aimed at improving cerebral substrate delivery should be explored for improving neurological outcomes in the CHD population. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Bateman, Thomas J | Moraes, Trevor F | Investigation of a Heme Uptake System in Acinetobacter baumannii | Biochemistry | 2023-06 | Iron is an essential micronutrient required for bacterial growth and survival. Heme is the largest source of iron in humans, but is inaccessible as it is tightly bound by proteins like hemoglobin. Bacteria rely on specialized protein machinery to capture host heme. Therefore, these pathways are attractive therapeutic targets which necessitates an in depth understanding of how they function. Two gene clusters predicted to function in heme acquisition in the opportunistic pathogen, Acinetobacter baumannii, are examples of such pathways requiring further characterization. This is especially important as A. baumannii is an increasing threat to global health due to its extensive antibiotic resistance. In this thesis, I show that one of the predicted gene clusters functions to support growth in hemoprotein scarce conditions. This gene cluster encodes an outer membrane translocon that secretes a hemophore called HphA into the environment. HphA binds to Hb and passively scavenges its heme, which is then shuttled to the outer membrane hemophore receptor, HphR, for subsequent uptake. The HphR-heme uptake pathway plays a crucial role in A. baumannii virulence and thus, has potential for future therapeutic interventions. | Ph.D. | global health, invest, accessib | 3, 9, 11 |
| Lundbye, Camilla Johanne | Collingridge, Graham GLC | Alterations in NMDARs and STEP in the Hippocampus of a Fragile X Syndrome Mouse Model | Physiology | 2023-06 | Fragile X Syndrome (FXS) is one of the most prevalent developmental disorders causing intellectual disability. The disorder has a high burden on society and no efficient treatment options exist. FXS typically stems from mutations that silence the Fragile X messenger ribonucleoprotein 1 (Fmr1) gene hindering the production of the protein, Fragile X Messenger Ribonucleoprotein (FMRP). According to a long-held theory, based on results from animal Fmr1 knock-out (KO) models, the absence of FMRP causes exaggerated metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR) signaling which in turn leads to impairments in the KO. Drugs blocking mGluRs are known to normalize synaptic deficits and reverse traits in the animal models, but in clinical trials the approach has failed to translate to FXS patients. The failure of clinical trials has led to a search for new protein and signaling pathway targets that may offer a treatment for FXS. In this thesis, the role of the glutamatergic N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), and the synaptic protein, Striatal-Enriched Protein Tyrosine Phosphatase (STEP)61, were examined in the hippocampus of Fmr1 KOs. NMDARs are required for some excitatory synaptic functions and are comprised of several subunits that change in expression with development. The Fmr1 KO mouse showed an age-dependent decrease of the NMDAR subunit GluN2A expression compared to wild-type (WT) littermates. The decreased GluN2A resulted in a delayed developmental switch in the GluN2A/GluN2B ratio, a switch that is important for the optimal development of synapses. Furthermore, the KO expression differences were accompanied by a developmental-dependent deficit in long-term potentiation (LTP). However, the developmental impact was only found in the CA1 area of the hippocampus, since the dentate gyrus (DG) showed a consistent decline in GluN2A expression and LTP impairment throughout development. Additionally, this thesis reports a contribution of an increased STEP61 activity accompanied by a decreased activity of the tyrosine kinase Src to the NMDAR-related deficits in the Fmr1 KO in both hippocampal areas. Taken together, this work shows the importance for developmental studies and distinguishing between hippocampal subregions in cellular, synaptic, and behavioural functions in the FXS model. Furthermore, it highlights STEP61 as a target for further investigation into FXS therapeutics. | Ph.D. | ABS, disabilit, invest, production, animal | 2, 3, 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Wicks, Joshua | Sargent, Edward H | Rational Design of CO(2) Electroreduction Catalysts and their Chemical Micro-environments in Gas Diffusion Electrode Systems | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | A growing abundance of renewable low-carbon electricity coupled with CO2 capture and utilization are two critical components of global net-zero emissions plans. The electrochemical conversion of CO2 and CO into value-added chemicals and fuels is a promising strategy to electrify hard-to-decarbonize sectors of industry. Electrolyzers employing gas diffusion electrodes (GDEs) offer a means to elevate operational reaction rates to scalable regimes. In this thesis, I use experiment and atomistic simulations to investigate CO2 electroreduction property-performance relationships at multiple length-scales along the cross-section of a gas diffusion electrode. I begin with describing the need for industrial decarbonization, the role of CO2 electroreduction in hard-to-decarbonize chemicals manufacturing and renewable fuels production, and fundamental background information of the reaction from theoretical and experimental perspectives. I then conduct an experimental investigation into the effect of gas diffusion layer properties on electrochemical performance, finding a 100x increase in C2H4:CO ratio by tuning surface morphology to extend the residence time of locally-produced CO in the catalyst layer. I also experimentally explore catalyst:ionomer intefaces in the catalyst layer of the GDE, leading to a record ethylene partial current density of 1.3 A/cm2. I concluded from both experimental studies that *CO coverage on the catalyst surface, as a result of \ch{CO2} and CO concentrations in the local chemical environment of catalyst sites, was an important variable influencing selective chemical production. I applied this insight -- through two studies involving computational atomistic simulations -- to guide catalyst material design. I studied how low *CO coverage reaction environments favor methane selectivity on CuAu catalyst materials, leading to an experimental selectivity of 56% at a production rate of 112 mA/cm2. Conversely, I found that high *CO coverage regimes favor pathways to acetate production in the electrochemical CO reduction reaction, leading to an experimental selectivity of 91% at a production rate of 113 mA/cm2. I conclude with a reflection on future priorities to advance the technological readiness of CO2 electrolyzers. Broadly, the studies herein enable scientists and engineers to better understand the interplay between reaction chemistry and reactor design in gas diffusion electrode systems for CO2 and CO electroreduction. | Ph.D. | renewabl, emission, invest, production, decarboniz, emissions, co2, net-zero, methane | 7, 9, 12, 13 |
| Duong, Bill Thien-Vi | Kelley, Shana O. | Detection of Rare Circulating Cancer Biomarkers using Microfluidics | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Improving the detection and prognostic evaluation of cancer can allow for earlier therapeutic decision-making and significantly improve patient outcomes. Point-of-care (POC) microfluidic platforms have enabled rapid biomarker analysis with reduced cost and simple handling. The ability of microfluidics to precisely control the physical and chemical conditions at the microscale level allows for improved sensitivity and resolution of marker detection compared to traditional laboratory evaluations. Despite advancing progress in our biological understanding of cancer development, many hypothesized physiological pathways with rare biological targets have perceived little relevance in the clinical setting. Developments in microfluidic platforms can allow for the interrogation of these rare biomarkers with greater efficiency and allow for more rapid biomarker discovery. This thesis aims to showcase a novel microfluidic approach for the screening of rare cancer biomarkers. The microfluidic platforms presented here utilized immunomagnetic separation to efficiently purify biological targets of interest while integrating high-resolution molecular profiling of these rare biomarkers to provide a more accurate analysis. I first demonstrate a quantitative approach for analyzing circulating tumor cells (CTC) from lung cancer. Compared to more common laboratory protocols such as fluorescent microscopy and flow cytometry, I have demonstrated that our microfluidic platform achieves better clinical practicality due to the high throughput, sensitivity, and resolution for biomarker expression. Extending from this platform, I then utilized microfluidics to examine potential rare-cell biomarkers for earlier diagnostics in mesothelioma. Since mesothelioma is a slow-developing cancer with the lack of early symptoms, the ability to detect mesothelioma early with high specificity allows for earlier interventions and significant improvements in therapeutic outcomes. I’ve successfully identified subpopulations of mesothelial precursor cells (MPC) that have different clinical diagnostic and prognostic utilities. Our microfluidic approach was able to simultaneously analyze these MPC subpopulations for high-throughput screening mesothelioma and asbestos-exposed patients. As I have demonstrated the capability of microfluidics to discover new rare-cell biomarkers for cancer, I then broaden my scope to analyze cancer-associated EVs. Upon development of this technology, I have demonstrated a high-throughput and high-resolution microfluidic platform for the separation of phenotypically distinct EVs. With validation through in vitro and in vivo models, I have successfully proven EVs to be a strong predictor of cancer progression and therapeutic response. This work highlights the strong potential for microfluidics in biomarker detection and clinical implementation. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Burton, Kirsteen Rennie | Kapral, Moira K | Optimizing Neuroimaging of Patients with Suspected Acute Stroke | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2023-06 | In patients with suspected acute stroke, prompt neuroimaging is required to determine eligibility for revascularization treatment, and earlier revascularization increases its benefit for patients of any age and any type of stroke severity; yet little is known about the frequency, predictors, and outcomes of timely neuroimaging. The objectives of this thesis were to (1) describe the characteristics of patients with suspected acute ischemic who do and do not receive timely neuroimaging; (2) assess the potential benefits of screening for suspected acute ischemic stroke with computed tomography perfusion (CTP) neuroimaging, within a meta-analysis of experimental and observational studies; and (3) assess outcomes of patients with suspected acute ischemic stroke who do and do not receive timely neuroimaging. In the retrospective cohort study of the time to neuroimaging in Ontario patients with suspected acute ischemic stroke, we found that 27.3% of patients with stroke-like symptoms who presented within the four-hour intravenous (IV) thrombolytic treatment window received timely neuroimaging. Neuroimaging delays were significantly influenced by several patient and hospital factors including a less severe stroke, longer time from symptom onset to presentation, female sex, and presentation to a rural hospital. The meta-analysis of outcomes among patients with acute ischemic stroke who were screened using perfusion computed tomography (CTP) imaging demonstrated that mortality, morbidity and symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (SICH) rates appear favourable for patients selected with CTP imaging to receive IV thrombolytic treatment more than three hours after symptom onset. Finally, in our second retrospective cohort study we found that timely neuroimaging was associated with higher use of intravenous thrombolysis, no difference in the risk of hemorrhage or mortality, and a greater likelihood of disability at discharge. Overall, these results reaffirm the importance of multi-level efforts to optimize timely neuroimaging among patients who present with suspected acute stroke. Specific contributions of this work to the understanding of management, clinical decision-making and directions for future research in acute stroke neuroimaging and care are discussed. | Ph.D. | disabilit, female, wind, rural | 3, 5, 7, 11 |
| Ramadan, Khaled Tarek | Cypel, Marcelo | Photodynamic Therapy During In Vivo Lung Perfusion for Treatment of Lung Metastases | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Isolated lung metastases in sarcoma and colorectal cancer patients are inadequately treated with current standard therapies. In Vivo Lung Perfusion, a novel platform, could overcome limitations to photodynamic therapy treatment volumes by using low cellular perfusate, removing blood, and thus theoretically allowing greater light penetration. Development of personalized photodynamic therapy protocols requires in silico light propagation simulations based on optical properties and maximal permissible photodynamic threshold doses of lung tissue. This approach aims to maximize the effective treatment dose to the lung while avoiding toxicity to healthy lung tissue. Based on this rationale, the overall objective of this thesis is to create a whole-lung perfusion assisted PDT protocol for the treatment of lung metastases demonstrating adequate safety and feasibility to guide clinical translation. To achieve this goal, the first aim is to quantify key biophysical properties necessary for PDT; specifically, the optical properties for blood and low-cellular perfusion and the photodynamic threshold dose for 5-ALA and Chlorin e6. This will demonstrate the difference in light penetration for low cellular perfusate vs. blood. The second aim of this work is to develop a 72-hr porcine In Vivo Lung Perfusion survival model to allow assessment of acute and delayed lung toxicity. This model is validated using an accelerated titration dose-escalation study of delivery of oxaliplatin chemotherapy. The final aim of this work involves combining the previous aims to develop a full treatment protocol. Firstly, a light delivery system is created that can homogenously deliver light to the entire lung, and using Monte Carlo simulation software, can be used to simulate personalized treatment plans. The safety and feasibility of a full treatment protocol of whole-lung perfusion-assisted photodynamic therapy is then demonstrated, examining the maximally tolerated doses of 5-ALA and Chlorin e6 photosensitizers. Overall, the protocols and knowledge from this work will provide the basis for Phase 1 clinical trials assessing the safety of whole-lung perfusion assisted PDT. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Nziwa, Kambale Jim | Meacham, Tirzah||Metso, Sarianna | Tracking the Continuity of the Leviticus Laws of Genital Fluids in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Rabbinic Literature | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2023-06 | This comparative study explores Leviticus’ rules on the impurity caused by genital fluxes as attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls and rabbinic literature to shed light on the state of halakhah in the pre-rabbinic stage. Using the five impurity categories of genital fluxes outlined in Lev 15 and 12, this study demonstrates the Dead Sea Scrolls' relevance as a textual product of the Second Temple period for tracking the antiquity of some rabbinic halakhic rulings. As a starting point, an analysis of the biblical exposition of each impurity category is undertaken, noting hermeneutical, textual, and text-critical difficulties in the text but selectively limiting the detailed examination to problems that have implications in the attestation of these rules in the Dead Sea Scrolls or other Second Temple period texts in comparison with their attestation in the rabbinic literature. The study pays particular attention to variant readings found in ancient translations (the LXX and the Targumim) and the Samaritan Pentateuch, and to cases of word choices in the DSS and other Second Temple period texts. It contends that these variants and word-choices are hermeneutically pertinent to our understanding of the state of halakhah in the Second Temple period when verified by their conformity with a particular position on a halakhic issue for which rabbinic opinions diverge. The investigation leads to the conclusion that difficulties in the biblical text are responsible for many divergences or innovations in later attestations of the biblical rules, and that many rabbinic rulings can be linked to the innovations or polemical texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls or to variant readings in ancient translations or versions of the Hebrew Bible. This study stands out from other comparative approaches to the DSS and rabbinic texts which tend to have broader perspectives by narrowing down the scope of the investigation to one type of impurity to demonstrate from that standpoint how a textual, text-critical, and hermeneutical analysis of the Dead Sea Scrolls texts can yield valuable pieces of evidence on the state of halakha in the Second Temple period, and thus shed light on the trajectory of halakhic development. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Zhong, Chiyun | Christopoulos, Constantin | Self-Centering, Shear-Controlling Rocking-Isolation Podium System for Enhanced Resilience of Tall Buildings | Civil Engineering | 2023-06 | The seismic performance of tall buildings has become a major consideration for the sustainable and resilient development of urban centers in earthquake-prone regions. One of the most critical design challenges using current prescriptive code-based design methods is to properly account for the contribution of higher modes of vibrations to the overall dynamic response of these structures, especially for reinforced concrete shear wall structures that are commonly used in tall building developments. It has been widely acknowledged that the actual seismic demands in these systems can be much larger than predicted when using simplified design equations. These higher-mode effects are primarily attributed to the amplified dynamic response of tall buildings at higher frequency modes that are not controlled by the designated plastic-hinging mechanism at the base. This amplified dynamic response can cause unexpectedly higher structural and non-structural damage, making these tall buildings more susceptible to service disruptions and extensive repairs following a major earthquake.Working towards more sustainable and resilient cities, the overarching objective of this thesis is to develop and validate a novel base system that can mitigate higher-mode effects and enhance the overall seismic performance of tall buildings. The proposed system is a dual base-mechanism system that enables independent control of the shear force and overturning moment demands at the base of tall buildings to mitigate higher-mode effects, while eliminating residual deformations and high-stress concentrations within the structure that otherwise would need to be designed for. A schematic overview of the proposed system is first presented, followed by the detailed design and numerical validation of a practical implementation of the system based on a benchmark 42-story tall building. Extensive shake table tests are performed on a scaled specimen with and without the proposed system, which experimentally demonstrated the enhanced seismic performance of the specimen with the proposed system. To better understand the influence of the proposed system on the overall seismic behaviour of tall buildings, a generalized parametric study was conducted. Based on these numerical and experimental studies, a comprehensive performance-based design methodology was developed and validated to assist engineers in the detailing of proposed system and the capacity design of the structures above. | Ph.D. | knowledge, buildings, cities, urban, resilien, resilience | 4, 9, 11, 13, 15 |
| Abed, Jehad Hazim Ismail | Sargent, Edward H. | Developing Efficient Electrocatalysts for Oxygen Evolution at High Current Densities | Materials Science and Engineering | 2023-06 | The energy efficiency of water electrolyzers is limited by the sluggish kinetics incurred by oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts. Iridium oxide is a widely used OER catalyst that is both electrochemically active and stable, however, it proves uneconomic for large-scale application due to the scarcity and high cost of Iridium. Therefore, finding affordable alternatives is critical for scaling up water electrolysis. In this work, I devise material design strategies to develop Iridium-free catalysts that combine both activity and stability. I use advanced electrochemical characterization, electron microscopy, and synchrotron X-ray absorption to investigate the multimodal correlation between atomic structure, physical properties, and electrochemical performance.First, I develop a cryogenic ball-milling technique to synthesize Ni-Co-Se catalysts for alkaline OER. During OER, the electrocatalyst is anodized and Se is fully leched out of the structure forming a disordered g-NiCoOOH. The resulting electrocatalyst demonstrates an exceptional performance maintaining an overpotential of 279 mV at 0.5 A.cm-2 for 500 hours. I find that introducing structural disordering in the pre-catalyst promotes the evolution of highly active and stable structures. Next, I use quantum-inspired search to accelerate the discovery of active OER catalysts in acid. I build surrogate models based on band structure to screen the theoretical overpotential for a vast space of rutile mixed-metal oxides. Then, I identify candidates with superior performance and validate the predictions experimentally. As a result, I show that the best candidate Ru0.58Cr0.25Mn0.08Sb0.07Ox demonstrate eight times improvement in mass activity compared to RuO2. Finally, I use crystal graph convolutional neural networks and computational descriptors to optimize the acidic stability of OER catalysts. I find that incorporating Ti increases the metal-oxygen covalency and Pourbaix dissociation energy of RuO2 resulting in improved electrochemical stability. The best candidate Ru0.6Cr0.2Ti0.2O2 demonstrate OER for 200 hours at 0.1 A.cm-2. I reveal that the formation of a metastable structure consisting of a strong Ti-O network and a hydrous Cr-O passivation layer slowed the dissolution of Ru by 20 times. The findings in this thesis demonstrate the role of machine learning and advanced characterization in guiding catalyst design paving the way for commercializing water electrolysis at scale. | Ph.D. | affordab, ABS, learning, water, energy, invest | 1, 10, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9 |
| Langille, Ellen | Schramek, Daniel | In vivo Screening Reveals Epigenetic Regulation of Mammary Epithelial Lineage Integrity and Tumorigenesis | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Systematic investigation of the scores of genes mutated in cancer to discern disease drivers from inconsequential bystanders is a prerequisite for precision medicine but remains challenging. Here, I developed a somatic CRISPR/Cas9 mutagenesis screen to study 215 genes that are recurrently mutated in ~2-10% of human breast cancers but lacked thorough study. Screen results revealed epigenetic regulation as a major tumor suppressive mechanism. I identified components of the COMPASS-like and PR-DUB complexes, including KDM6A, ASXL1/2, BAP1 and KMT2C, function as epigenetic tumor suppressor genes (EpiDrivers) that cooperate with PIK3CAH1047R to transform mouse and human breast epithelial cells. Mechanistically, I found that activation of PIK3CAH1047R and concomitant loss of EpiDrivers triggered an alveolar-like lineage conversion of basal mammary epithelial cells and accelerated formation of luminal-like tumors. Mutations in EpiDrivers are found in ~39% of human breast cancers and casein expression can be seen in ~50% of ductal-carcinoma-in-situ, suggesting that lineage infidelity and alveologenic mimicry may significantly contribute to early steps of breast cancer etiology. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Chenery, Emily Sarah | Molnár, Péter K||Mandrak, Nicholas E | Detecting and Monitoring Wildlife Parasites: Determining the Current Extent and Future Impact of the Winter Tick ( | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2023-06 | The causes and consequences of species’ distributional change has long been of interest in ecology, but it is of ever-pressing importance given increasingly rapid changes to both climate and land. Escalation of established and novel parasite populations in space and time within northern ecosystems has led to growing concern for the health of potential wildlife hosts, but the initial detection, monitoring, and trajectory of wildlife parasites in remote subarctic and Arctic regions is challenging to study and difficult to predict. In this thesis I examine the distribution of the winter tick, | Ph.D. | climate, species, ecosystem, ecolog, land, wildlife | 13, 14, 15 |
| Plakhotnik, Julia | Maynes, Jason T | Clinically Relevant Models of Cardiac Function using Human Stem Cell-derived Cardiomyocytes | Biochemistry | 2023-06 | Cardiovascular diseases pose a significant healthcare burden, however, development of effective therapeutics has stagnated, with many recent clinical trials resulting in failure. Moreover, unexpected drug-induced cardiotoxicity contributes to a high attrition rate for all drugs, irrespective of disease indication. These issues largely stem from challenges in modeling the heart’s complex structure and dynamic function in preclinical settings. Emulating key cardiac mechanobiological aspects at a scale sufficient for drug development has been difficult. Human-based preclinical models are needed to reduce the reliance on animals, and mitigate problems arising from cardiological species differences. This research is aimed to broaden our understanding of how human stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte in vitro models can potentially improve downstream clinical translation by incorporating physiologically-relevant high-content study designs. Chapter 2 describes a novel high-throughput testing platform designed to comprehensively evaluate cardiomyocyte contractile function. A machine learning-based classifier to predict drug candidate cardioactivity was developed, illustrating how cardioactivity may be identified earlier in the drug development process to mitigate potential downstream toxicity issues. Using the new analysis platform, cardiac microenvironment biomechanical features were recapitulated in vitro, revealing how mechanical stress present in heart disease may affect drug response. Cardiomyocyte mechanobiology was further explored in Chapter 3 by investigating proteins involved in cardiac force-sensing. Specifically, the integrin-linked kinase adaptor protein beta-parvin was shown to regulate cardiomyocyte structure and function in response to mechanical stress, presenting a potential therapeutic target for cardiac fibrosis and heart failure. Chapter 4 focuses on local anesthetic cardiotoxicity, as a clinically-relevant example of inadvertent drug-induced toxicity. Cardiomyocyte calcium dynamics were found to differentiate the toxicity mechanisms between anesthetics with distinct clinical toxicity profiles, revealing potential anesthetic-specific treatment strategies. These findings were replicated in rodent experiments in vivo, emphasizing the translational utility of stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte models. In summary, the conducted research demonstrates how stem cell-derived cardiomyocyte models can recapitulate key aspects of heart disease pathology and physiologic responses to cardiotropic drugs. The experimental approach described here provides an efficient framework to discover new cardiac therapeutic targets, and investigate cardiotoxicity mechanisms for existing drugs, with the ultimate goal of developing safer and more effective medications. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning, invest, species, animal | 3, 4, 9, 14, 15 |
| Sachdeva, Nidhi | Brett, Clare | Designing Evidence-Informed Microlearning for Graduate-Level Online Courses | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | Microlearning is a buzzword in eLearning, referring to learning content that is delivered in short bursts or small bites. With no universally accepted definition, it means different things to different people, which further adds to its nebulous nature. This thesis study uses learning theory principles in a graduate education context to explore how students see the benefits or issues with microlearning activities integrated into an online course. Despite its popularity, much is still unknown and unclear about its educational potential especially within the context of formal higher education and how it can be integrated within university-level online courses. By means of a design-based study spanning across three iterations, I explored the role of microlearning in a graduate-level online course from a course design perspective. I achieved this by developing a model called midweek microlesson, under which graduate students enrolled in an online course in Education at a Canadian university were exposed to microlessons on a weekly basis. These microlessons were carefully designed based on theories and evidence-informed practices within the science of learning. The model intended to: a) offer students opportunities for distributed practice; and b) further augment and enrich students’ understanding of the course’s weekly theme. Qualitative and quantitative data was collected and analyzed to understand students’ interaction and experience with the microlessons. The main purpose of this exploratory study is to understand how a specific form of microlearning (i.e., microlessons) can be integrated within a graduate-level online course with the goal to enhance learners’ interaction with the content. Thematic analysis of student commentary led to the emergence of six design themes: content, purpose, timing, length & structure, format and interactivity. I discuss these in light of cognitive learning theories and what they mean for practice. Overall, this study is an attempt to lay a foundation to explore potential educational affordances of microlearning within graduate-level online courses. The study also raises awareness about the lack of theory in current discussions surrounding microlearning and presents an example of exploring and integrating microlearning in course design. Limitations of the study and areas for future exploration are discussed. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Enman-Beech, John | Radin, Margaret J||Hadfield, Gillian | Contract Life: A Rhetoric on Law, Tech and Power in Everyday Consumer, Work and User Agreements | Law | 2023-06 | Contract has come to structure everyday life. It does this rhetorically, through a set of concepts, narratives, and rhetorical resources that pervade both contract law and contract practice. This dissertation begins by introducing a rhetorical approach to contract law and contract practice, focussing on the concepts of contractual choice and contractual fairness that run through both. I then explore the mechanisms through which contract uses these concepts to give words particular forms of power, through three chapters. First, I elaborate the forms of rhetorical power that contract constructs, both bargaining power and a broader conventionalizing power that tends to reproduce existing structures of relations. Through this power, contract can turn moments of choice into moments of resignation. Second, I consider areas of law that have been designed to contest contractual power: consumer and work law. Through a close reading of the discursive ecosystems that constitute these areas of law, I argue that they have also been structured by contract to a substantial extent, curtailing their ability to limit contractual power. Third, I consider the material context in which contract rhetoric operates, the shifting terrain of new tech. Contract practices, including the making and distribution of offers, performance, and enforcement, are increasingly digitized and automated. For better and worse, new tech spreads contract power further, leaving no part of the everyday untouched. Implications for digital markets policy and contract doctrine are considered. I close by suggesting that contract’s rhetorical potency is what has allowed it to grow and spread through discursive domains, with a glimpse at the utopic and dystopic futures suggested by contract life. | S.J.D. | labor, consum, ecosystem | 8, 12, 14, 15 |
| Uribe Castano, Leonardo Jose | Barzda, Virginijus V | Wide-field Polarimetric Second Harmonic Generation Microscopy for Histology Imaging | Physics | 2023-06 | Nonlinear optical microscopy provides several contrast mechanisms including second harmonic generation (SHG), third harmonic generation (THG) and multiphoton excitation fluorescence (MPEF) that can contribute with additional information to hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) stained tissue histopathology, which is used as a gold standard for cancer diagnostics. Large area imaging is required for practical applications of nonlinear microscopy in whole-slide digital pathology. Nonlinear optical histopathology encompasses multiscale imaging starting from the ultrastructural (nanoscopic) scale, where polarization of SHG is applied to deduce the structural changes of extracellular matrix (ECM) collagen. The distribution of ultrastructural parameters on the microscopic scale provides the information, for example, about the tissue changes at the tumor margins. The hundreds of microns to millimeters scale allows to investigate the spread of induced changes in the tissue providing information about the tumor invasiveness and advancement that can aid in tumor staging and prognostics of the disease. In this thesis, we developed a novel polarimetric wide-field SHG microscopy technique that allows for whole-slide imaging of histopathology samples. We optimized imaging conditions of wide-field microscopy by investigating photobleaching effects of SHG and MPEF signals induced with wide-field illumination in unstained and H&E stained histology tissue sections. A theoretical and experimental description of MPEF and SHG bleaching in H\&E stained samples is performed, providing the basis for choosing optimal laser settings for wide-field microscopy. Moreover, we developed the SHG Stokes polarimetry method (SP-SHG) for quick calculation of ultrastructural parameters required for large area imaging. Generation of polarization states is achieved using liquid crystal variable retarders. SP-SHG is performed on large area images (700 um x 700 um) and ultrastructural parameters are calculated from the polarimetric parameters without data fitting, that shortens the post-processing time of polarimetric data by more than an order of magnitude. Wide-field polarimetric SHG microscopy was used for imaging tendon tissue, as well as histopathology samples from kidney, liver, lung and breast tissue. Changes in the collagen structure are demonstrated for normal and breast tumor tissue. The thesis demonstrates that the novel wide-field polarimetric SHG microscopy imaging method can be readily applied for nonlinear whole-slide digital pathology investigations. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Xu, Gaowei | Azhari, Fae | Smart Maintenance Management of Highway Bridges Subject to Inspections | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | Bridge maintenance management aims to balance life-cycle costs and bridge safety based on inspection data and by predicting the time-dependent bridge deterioration using physics-based models or Markov-based models. Through four independent projects, this dissertation develops maintenance optimization frameworks based on the two approaches, contributing to intelligent infrastructure asset management and sustainable societies.Existing research focused on physics-based models has not explored the use of non-destructive inspection data in predicting the deterioration of pre-stressed concrete highway bridges. Based on a real bridge example, we predict the loss of structural capacity resulting from chloride-induced corrosion, simplified by gamma processes. To make the model more realistic, we consider random vehicle arrivals and varying loads, ensuring failure probabilities are not underestimated. Bayesian inference updates are used to select model parameters and determine the associated temporal structural resistances. Current bridge management systems (BMS) adopt Markov chains to simulate the temporal bridge condition rating drops, which ignore the time effect on bridge deterioration rates and underestimate the failure risks of aging bridges. Current fixed-interval inspection policies may also over-inspect new bridges and under-inspect old bridges. Furthermore, existing BMS fail to consider the effects and costs associated with carbon emissions due to maintenance activities. We propose multi-dimensional Markov models to describe temporal bridge deteriorations, the states of which are translated by the Weibull-baseline proportional hazard model into a single hazard indicator for decision-making. Markov decision processes (MDP) are employed to determine optimal repair schemes with the objective to minimize the expected long-term annual maintenance-associated and detouring-related costs. As an alternative to MDP, we also explore the use of Q-learning for single-bridge maintenance optimization. The decision-making procedure implemented in this thesis resembles a quality control chart with time-variant decision thresholds. Integer programming is used to optimize budget allocation processes for bridge networks. For demonstration purposes, we apply the proposed methodologies to bridges in New York state. Comparative evaluations indicate that the proposed methods outperform existing BMS in terms of information richness and total cost savings. Sensitivity analyses reveal the effects of inspection intervals and budget levels on maintenance policies and network carbon emissions, respectively. | Ph.D. | learning, emission, infrastructure, emissions | 4, 7, 9, 13 |
| Zainub, Anila | Dei, George | The Social and Economic Integration of Highly Skilled Muslim Immigrants in the Canadian Knowledge Economy | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | This study explores the social and economic integration outcomes and lived experiences of highly skilled Muslim immigrants in Canada. It investigates the effect of race and religion on their experiences of socio-economic integration and examines their strategies of resistance in response to the challenges. An overall aim was to critically understand the human capital-based integration discourse as it relates to their lived realities. Research has shown that Muslim immigrants in Canada experience low economic outcomes compared to non-Muslim Canadians and are the target of a rise in hate crimes due to anti-Muslim sentiment. There is a substantive body of mainly quantitative literature on the integration of highly skilled immigrants in Canada, as it pertains to their successful settlement processes. However, there is limited data and research on the socio-economic integration of highly skilled Muslim immigrants. This study conducted twenty-one qualitative, semi-structured interviews and applied the theoretical perspectives of Anti-colonial Discursive Framework in combination with Muhammad Iqbal’s concept of Khudi (Self). The study found that Muslim immigrants are at a clear and significant disadvantage in the Canadian labour market facing Islamophobia and racism in hiring, retention, and daily social interactions. All participants experienced the non- recognition of their foreign credentials and skills, a demand for Canadian experience, occupational downgrading, and received no resume call backs. Muslim immigrants show a strong sense of Khudi (Self) and identity in the face of these challenges. They invoke resistance and agency through a reliance on indigenous knowledge and faith-based strategies. They also showed a high sense of belonging to Canada and engagement in the community through political participation and volunteering. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, knowledge, racism, labour, capital, invest, indigenous | 1, 4, 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Peters, Madeline Amanda Erzen | Mideo, Nicole | Confronting Intuition in Disease Ecology and Evolution with Models | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-06 | Mathematical models have been used to address a wide range of central questions and ideas in ecology and evolutionary biology. For example, models are crucial for understanding the ecological processes that govern interactions between species (e.g., predator-prey dynamics) and the contributions of different evolutionary forces (e.g., the interaction between genetic drift and selection). Such models are useful for a number of reasons, including efficiently and expansively exploring– and questioning– ecological and evolutionary hypotheses and assumptions. My research applies this utility to three different questions, each from a different level of biological organization. First, I challenge the inference that rodent malaria parasite Plasmodium berghei experiences delayed development when in a host experiencing an active infection. Through the development of a series of delay differential equations, I simulate within-host infection dynamics and transform this data to reflect several documented measurement biases to which experimental data are subject. Subsequent fitting and parameter estimation of these transformed data reveal a potential to incorrectly infer delayed parasite developmental cycle length, as well as biased estimates of other important biological processes, including parasite clearance and replication. Moving from within-host ecology to selection within a population, I use both a structured coalescent model and forward-time population simulations to document the unique signatures following “negative frequency-dependent, positive” (NFDP) selection compared to constant, positive selection. This form of selection is to be expected for many disease resistance alleles: as the frequency of such an allele increases in a host population, the prevalence of disease– and thus the force of infection and thus selection– will decrease. I demonstrate that while these two forms of selection do produce different signatures, such signatures are insufficient when attempting to classify empirical data as originating from constant versus NFDP selection. Further, failure to correctly classify selection form can bias estimates of selection strength, with the assumption of constant selection producing stronger selection estimates. Finally, I move to consider coevolution between hosts and parasites and its consequences for the maintenance of host genetic diversity over time. In particular, I seek to reconcile disagreement in the literature by parsing the effects of population structure and time structure for the maintenance of host genetic diversity under host- parasite coevolution in finite populations. Through analytical and stochastic treatment of six models of host-parasite coevolution, I demonstrate that while host-parasite coevolution in finite populations may deplete diversity relative to the neutral expectation via directional selection, it may also contribute to its maintenance when 1) coevolution pushes the system away from its boundary equilibria and 2) there is sufficient perturbation from the boundary equilibria through introduction of genetic diversity via migration. All three projects employ mathematical models– and computational methods– and demonstrate their usefulness for challenging both recent and long-standing biological hypotheses. | Ph.D. | species, ecolog | 14, 15 |
| Feng, John | Miller, RJ Dwayne RJDM | Next Generation Ultrafast Electron Diffractometers | Physics | 2023-06 | The emerging field of ultrafast electron diffraction has made incredible progress in the last two decades, paving the way for studying ultrafast structural dynamics with electron probes. Modern ultrafast electron diffractometers now routinely break the sub-picosecond time resolution by either using the compact design principle or via electron pulse compression. This thesis details the development of two distinct UED apparatuses, one that involves the novel implementation of semiconductor photocathodes, and the other is a more conventional compact design electron gun. Semiconductor cathodes have been a staple in photoinjectors technology, providing ultrabright beams for various accelerator applications. The appeal of semiconductor cathodes is their superior quantum efficiency and initial emittance at the source, corresponding to a higher spatial resolution for more complex systems such as proteins and nanoparticles. The design of this electron gun must accommodate the stringent vacuum requirements of semiconductors, adding extra complexity and cost. The compact UED takes a more minimalist approach, aiming to shorten the electrons' transit distance from the cathode to the sample, being the most straightforward approach for achieving ultrashort pulse durations. The lack of beamline elements and pulse compression devices eliminates sources of jitter in electron beam propagation. My last project proposes a novel time-zero determination method for UED that exploits a system with a known response function. Here we used polycrystalline bismuth (Bi) deposited on a home-built silicon nitride (SiN) chip for its ultrafast non-thermal melting time response. The advantage of this time-zero determination method over others is that it closely matches actual UED experimental conditions while determining time-zero with a precision better than the native temporal resolution of our UED instrument. We also investigate the effect of the silicon nitride substrate on the melting dynamics. We found that the coupling of SiN and Bi alters the intrinsic melting rate of Bi. This thesis work explored the next generation of high brightness ultrafast electron sources and provided a robust, simple-to-implement timing tool that greatly facilitates the application of UED. | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Douglas, Velta | Simon, Rob | Environmental Education Inspired by Critical Literacy, Indigenous Perspectives, and World-ending Texts: A Practitioner Inquiry Study with High School English Students | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-06 | This practitioner inquiry study took place in a high school English classroom at an alternative social justice-oriented school in a large urban area in Ontario, Canada. Working as a practitioner researcher, I collaboratively taught two units over ten weeks with a classroom teacher in his Grade 11/12 English classroom, seeking opportunities within the existing curricula for youth to engage with environmental issues. The key research question that guided the work is: How do students engage with a critical literacy approach to environmental education? I constructed an ecoliteracies framework which positions the environment as a text that recognizes functional, cultural, and critical aspects of environmental issues. I took up concepts from environmental education and critical literacy to intervene in “business as usual” environmental education in ways that allow for nuance, complexity, and the social experiences of youth. Data for this research emerged from students’ assignments and classroom participation as well as from follow up focus groups where, along with recorded conversation, students made projects that described their understandings of a critical literacy approach to environmental education. Findings from this study suggest that the environment is a social practice. As youth show through their work, taking a critical literacy approach to environmental education allows teachers and students to trouble assumptions, reimagine ways of connecting, dwell in difficulty, and speculate about our experiences with a damaged planet. This research therefore offers ways that critical literacy and environmental education can support and sustain each other while engaging youth in intertwined social and environmental catastrophes currently rocking our world. Rather than a neat, nice package of knowledge about environmental issues, environmental education can be taken up as a cyclical process of world-ending and world-building. The implication for educators is that existing English curricula have space to recognize the creative, theoretical, and conceptual genius of young people to explore and represent their own experiences of their worlds. This dissertation offers teachers and researchers opportunities to take up nuanced and complex relational environmental engagement, along with some examples of how youth might respond if given the leeway to creatively remake their worlds within schools. | Ph.D. | knowledge, environmental education, labor, indigenous, urban, environmental, planet, social justice | 4, 8, 10, 16, 11, 13 |
| Digby, Elyse | Beharry, Andrew A | The Development of Targeted Photosensitizers to Enhance the Efficacy and Selectivity of Photodynamic Therapy Against Cancer | Chemistry | 2023-06 | Photodynamic therapy is a clinically approved cancer therapeutic that uses a photosensitizer, light, and oxygen to produce reactive oxygen species. The accumulation of reactive oxygen species (e.g., singlet oxygen) can induce cancer cell death via oxidative damage, with the intracellular location of a photosensitizer a key determinant governing the outcome of photodynamic therapy. Although photodynamic therapy is inherently targeted due to light irradiation, currently used photosensitizers lack cancer cell selectively, making off-target accumulation and production of reactive oxygen species in the desired tissues problematic. Moreover, the low-energy visible light used to activate the photosensitizer has limited tissue penetration depth, such that the intracellular location of the photosensitizer becomes more crucial. In this thesis, I demonstrate approaches for overcoming these challenges with photodynamic therapy. I first discuss Br-DAPI, a DNA-binding photosensitizer that localizes to the nucleus and induces double-strand DNA breaks upon irradiation. I next describe a dual-targeted photosensitization strategy, where a conjugate containing two photosensitizers (Br-DAPI and WinterGreen) localize to different subcellular organelles, where synergistic photocytotoxicity was achieved. Next, I seek to address the limitations with cancer selectivity and limited light penetration depth. To achieve cancer selectivity, I chemically modified a known photosensitizer, phenalenone, with a quinone substrate of human NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1. When attached to the quinone, phenalenone is initially quenched in its ability to produce singlet oxygen, however phenalenone is liberated in the presence of cancer cells containing high levels of the enzyme (i.e., lung cancer cells), resulting in the production of cytotoxic singlet oxygen upon irradiation. To produce reactive oxygen species without the requirement of an external light source, I functionalized a chemiluminescent scaffold (i.e., Schaap’s adamantylidene-dioxetane) with the photosensitizer, Erythosin B, where deprotonation of the reactive phenol (modifiable with an enzyme responsive trigger) resulted in spontaneous chemiluminescent resonance energy transfer to the photosensitizer and production of singlet oxygen in cancer cells. The four projects in this thesis propose proof-of-principle designs to address key limitations with photodynamic therapy. The key molecules discussed demonstrate evidence to improve the efficacy of photodynamic therapy and lay the groundwork for future optimization such that they can be applicable in vivo models. | Ph.D. | energy, production, species | 7, 12, 14, 15 |
| Venkatesan, Sridevi | Lambe, Evelyn K | Multimodal Investigation of Chrna5 Nicotinic Receptors: Cellular and Synaptic Mechanisms of Cholinergic Modulation in the Prefrontal Cortex | Physiology | 2023-06 | Acetylcholine neurotransmission in the prefrontal cortex is essential for attention and executive function. Its disruption is implicated in multiple neurological disorders with serious cognitive deficits. However, there remain critical knowledge gaps in cellular and synaptic mechanisms of endogenous cholinergic modulation of prefrontal cortex, especially compared to better-characterized sensory cortical regions. In particular, the role of the alpha5 nicotinic receptor subunit encoded by Chrna5, which is expressed in deep-layer neurons in the prefrontal cortex remains unknown. Since Chrna5 is vital for higher-order cognition, it is essential to investigate the synaptic function of alpha5 nicotinic receptors and characterize Chrna5-expressing neurons mediating optimal cholinergic excitation. Here, I examine these questions using a multimodal approach comprising compound transgenics, optogenetics, patch-clamp electrophysiology, two-photon calcium imaging, and transcriptomic analyses in the mouse brain. First, I characterize prefrontal cholinergic signaling in a mouse model with attention deficits caused by genetic ablation of the alpha5 nicotinic subunit. These results identify Chrna5 as necessary for the rapid onset of endogenous cholinergic responses relevant for the fast timescales of attention. Using a nicotinic positive allosteric modulator NS9238, I successfully treat the deficit arising from Chrna5 disruption, restoring rapid onset of cholinergic neurotransmission in alpha5 knockout mice. Next, I probe the identity of Chrna5-expressing (Chrna5+) neurons and molecular determinants of their cholinergic properties. Through multiple approaches in novel Chrna5-Cre transgenic mice, I uncover a distinct population of Chrna5+ neurons with stronger and faster cholinergic responses. With single-cell RNAseq analysis, I identify these cells to be developmentally critical subplate neurons with differential expression of several GPI-anchored Lynx prototoxins. Using optophysiological approaches, I discover complex endogenous modulation of nicotinic receptors by Lynx prototoxins. Overall, this dissertation creates new understanding of prefrontal cholinergic modulation at the synaptic and cellular level. I identify the role of the alpha5 nicotinic subunit in ensuring rapid synaptic cholinergic transmission and preventing desensitization of these nicotinic responses. I discover a specialized subpopulation of Chrna5-expressing neurons with enhanced nicotinic responses that are dynamically regulated by distinct modulatory proteins. Together, my work uncovers molecular and cellular roles of Chrna5 relevant to cognition and identifies novel treatment approaches to restore cholinergic signaling. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Obnamia, Jon Albert | Saville, Bradley A||MacLean, Heather L | Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Renewable Jet Fuels Produced in Canada | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-11 | Modern technology has enabled the transformation of renewable biomass and waste into renewable energy for the sectors of our society that use fossil fuels the most. This thesis contributes to knowledge on renewable jet fuels (RJF) and their potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction benefits for the aviation sector from a Canadian context. The first part of this thesis quantifies the life cycle GHG emissions of ethanol produced using corn stover, an agricultural residue. Wide ranging results of 7.9 to 45 gCO2e MJ-1 were initially determined from two fuel life cycle assessment (LCA) tools that modelled corn stover ethanol. Harmonization of model parameters and assumptions in the two LCA tools led to similar estimates of 41 – 42 gCO2e MJ-1 although these values obscured substantial differences in GHG emissions at the individual contributor level, which can impact the fuel’s performance under different regulatory regimes. Next, the thesis conducted an LCA on RJF derived from corn stover or ethanol from corn stover. The LCA modelled Ontario and Québec RJF production using these regions’ corn production data. The study determined life cycle GHG emissions of 3.5 – 5.3 gCO2e MJ-1 for the Fischer-Tropsch jet fuel pathway while the ethanol-to-jet fuel pathway resulted in 28 – 36 gCO2e MJ-1 due to greater inputs in the ethanol production process. Québec benefitted from its low carbon intensity electricity but corn stover yields in Ontario were identified as advantageous. The last two parts of the thesis assessed the life cycle GHG emissions of RJF from canola, camelina, and carinata oilseeds. Respectively, GHG emissions from each oilseed-to-RJF are 16 – 58 gCO2e MJ-1, 53 – 72 gCO2e MJ-1, and 43 – 52 gCO2e MJ-1. Canola RJF values varied due to soil carbon effects from land use and land management changes. The range of results for camelina and carinata RJF are due to using input data from many sources and differences in modelling assumptions. A scenario maximizing camelina or carinata RJF production using Canadian marginal lands is estimated to reduce GHG emissions in aviation by up to 2 million tonnes of CO2e emissions per year in 2050. | Ph.D. | agricultur, knowledge, energy, renewabl, emission, greenhouse, production, waste, greenhouse gas, fossil fuel, emissions, co2, low carbon, land use, land, soil | 2, 4, 7, 12, 13, 15 |
| Qureshi, Muhammad Faizan | Sheikh, Shamim Ahmed | Towards Understanding the Behaviour of the External FRP-Reinforced Concrete Structures under Changing Climate Trends | Civil Engineering | 2023-06 | Over the last thirty years or so, extensive research has been carried out on FRP sheets and concrete structures retrofitted with external FRP sheets under various loading and environmental conditions. Despite the excellent performance of FRPs in improving strength and ductility of structures under different conditions, information on the behaviour of FRPs under changing climatic trends including the global rise in temperature and increased number of freeze-thaw cycles etc. is not clearly understood. This study was undertaken to address this gap. In this study, over 200 specimens of FRP materials and FRP strengthened structures were tested under different temperature protocols. The test plan included FRP sheet coupons, FRP-FRP bond specimens, FRP-concrete bond specimens, FRP wrapped concrete cylinders, and FRP-strengthened reinforced concrete (RC) beams. Two main variables in this study were; the type of FRP (carbon FRP (CFRP) and glass FRP (GFRP)) and the temperature protocol; 1) sustained temperature (ST), 2) sustained deformation with increasing temperature (SD), 3) sustained load with increasing temperature (SL), and 4) freeze-thaw (FT) cycles. The exposure to elevated temperatures showed a sharp decrease in the mechanical properties of the FRP around the glass transition temperature (Tg) of epoxy. In contrast, freeze-thaw cycling showed a negligible impact on the FRP sheet behaviour. The results of FRP-FRP and FRP-concrete bond specimens investigated at sustained elevated temperatures and under sustained load protocols also showed reductions in the bond strength beyond the glass transition temperature. FRP wrapped concrete cylinders tested under room conditions showed remarkable improvements in strength and ductility of concrete. These gains were reduced severely at sustained elevated temperatures beyond the Tg. Again, the freeze-thaw cycles showed minimal effect on strength and ductility enhancements provided by the wraps. Results from the thermal study on shear-critical RC beams suggest that anchored FRP wraps can significantly improve the shear capacity of the beams at room temperature but that will reduce at a temperature of 60oC. In the analytical part of this study, models were developed to estimate the temperature reduction factors for FRP materials and FRP strengthened concrete members subjected to various temperature conditions. | Ph.D. | invest, transit, climate, environmental | 9, 11, 13 |
| Oghbaey, Saeed | Miller, R.J.Dwayne DM | Fixed Target Sample Delivery for Serial Crystallography and Ultrafast Study of Bismuth by Electron Diffraction | Physics | 2023-06 | This thesis reports on developing a fixed target sample delivery system utilized in X-ray crystallography and the ultrafast study of lattice dynamics in bismuth crystals upon photoexcitation by ultrafast electron diffraction (UED). The advent of novel ultrabright X-ray sources, such as the X-ray free electron laser (XFEL), necessitated the development of a platform for rapid and reliable delivery of protein crystals employed in the scheme known as serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX). The development of a micropatterned silicon-based crystallography chip constructed by nano-fabrication methods combined with spectroscopic mapping is outlined in the scope of this thesis. The crystallography chip capable of trapping more than 25000 crystals with the help of spectroscopic mapping more effectively exploits the expensive XFEL beam time by providing a significant improvement of the X-ray hit rate. This fixed target method enables the study of proteins with more demanding conditions by minimizing the sample consumption and reducing the stress-induced damage due to crystal handling. The application of the crystallography chip for resolving the structure of carboxy myoglobin, along with the further implementation of the crystallography chip in synchrotron light sources, is discussed. Besides developing a platform for serial crystallography, the ultrafast dynamics of bismuth crystal upon laser excitation are investigated in the second part of this thesis. It has been shown that by laser excitation of the bismuth crystal's valence electrons above 2.5 percent, a significant atomic movement in the diagonal axis of the crystal's unit cell is initiated due to a Peierl distortion reversal. The increased electronic temperature alters the electronic energy surface, enabling large amplitude movement of the atoms up to 40 picometers. This significant atomic displacement leads to the rise of anisotropic disorder in (-110) crystallographic direction, plus entering the lattice into a more symmetric state. Furthermore, the role of strong phonon-phonon interaction in the emergence of this disorder and the distribution of the energy in the lattice is investigated. Finally, the use of the fast collapse of (-110) diffraction peaks for pump and probe arrival time determination is described. The implementation of a silicon nitride chip to facilitate rapid data collection in an irreversible regime for the application of time zero determination is extensively discussed. | Ph.D. | energy, invest, consum | 7, 9, 12 |
| Watson, Kaschka R | Ryan, James | Navigating Academic Leadership Hierarchy: Exploring Black Male Faculty Members’ Advancement to Senior-Level Leadership Positions in Ontario Universities | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | The purpose of this study was to explore how Black male faculty members navigated the academic leadership hierarchy to attain senior-level leadership in Ontario universities. The literature highlighted the underrepresentation of Black male faculty members in senior-level leadership, the product of racial inequities and discrimination despite institutional commitments to equity in Canadian universities. Critical race theory (CRT) underpinned this study and acted as a vehicle to understand the impact of racism, anti-Black racism and oppression on Black men who aspired to leadership positions in academia. Inevitably, this study documented ways to disrupt and dismantle systemic racism that impeded the advancement opportunities of Black male faculty members in senior-level leadership in academia. Interviews with 11 Black male faculty members in senior-level leadership revealed that Black men experience major barriers/challenges in academia but were able to successfully advance into senior-level leadership because of numerous navigating strategies they employed. | Ph.D. | equity, racism, equit, institut | 4, 10, 16 |
| Lai, Yung Priscilla | Diller, Eric | Robust, pH-responsive Hydrogels as Actuators for Small-scale Medical Devices | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-06 | Miniaturization of medical devices as minimally invasive tools for disease diagnosis and treatment can lead to improved patient experience and outcomes. However, its size limits the available power to drive onboard systems and wireless power transfer via electromagnets is challenging due to scaling effects and range dependency. Chemical reactions have been used as onboard power. However, this method can generate undesired waste products in the human body. There is a need for actuators that use minimal power with minimal waste generation to impart functionality in miniature medical devices. The proposed project is to develop pH-responsive hydrogels and combine them with magnets for a novel hybrid hydrogel magnet actuator. The environmentally responsive hydrogels will add functionality without additional power and minimal volume uptake. The magnets will enable a fast mechanism response. In this work, a pH-responsive hydrogel that swelled in basic pH was developed, used in a hybrid hydrogel magnet actuator, and applied to an automatic fluid sampling capsule. An analytical model was also formulated to predict the hydrogel forces and swelling for actuator design. | Ph.D. | waste, environmental | 12, 13 |
| Wang, Yu | Callen, Jeffery||Lu, Hai | Mitigating Greenwashing Concerns in the Green Bond Market | Management | 2023-06 | This dissertation examines whether the issuers of high-quality green bonds differentiate themselves by bonding with two reputable organizations that impose high green bond transparency standards -- the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI) and the Luxembourg Green Exchange (LGX), and whether the bonding mechanism effectively mitigates investors' greenwashing concerns. I document evidence that is consistent with a separating equilibrium. Specifically, I find that the bonding issuers (i.e., issuers that obtain CBI certifications for their green bonds or list their green bonds on LGX) demonstrate higher post-issuance transparency and a larger reduction in carbon emissions while also receiving a larger green premium than the non-bonding issuers. Further analyses document differences between the CBI and LGX regimes. The CBI regime, which requires certification against a green taxonomy but allows for private communication, is more effective at screening issuers that achieve larger carbon reduction, whereas the LGX regime, which accepts broad categories of green projects but requires public disclosure on a centralized platform, is more effective at screening issuers that provide higher post-issuance transparency. Interestingly, only the LGX-listed green bonds receive a significant green premium. Moreover, green premium is more concentrated in the LGX-listed green bonds with high ex-ante transparency commitment. Furthermore, in the secondary market, green bonds from issuers that end up providing high post-issuance transparency tend to have higher liquidity. The CBI-certified or LGX-listed green bonds with high post-issuance transparency tend to have even larger liquidity benefits. Taken together, consistent with prior survey evidence in Chiang (2017) and Sangiorgi and Schopohl (2021), the findings in this dissertation corroborate that high post-issuance transparency may effectively mitigate investors’ greenwashing concerns, facilitate low-cost environmental financing, and bolster market liquidity. | Ph.D. | emission, invest, climate, environmental, emissions | 7, 9, 13 |
| Lu, Wei | Goldfarb, Avi | Three Essays on The Economics of Video Games Platforms | Management | 2023-06 | Digital platforms distributing software products, such as the App Store, Google Play, and Steam, comprise a vital role in the digital economy. They facilitate the exchange of digital goods and services between firms and consumers and are the central marketplaces in the software industry. Nevertheless, the dynamic effect of platform design on firms and consumers remains under-investigated. This work examines the role of digital platforms, specifically video game platforms, on firm decisions and consumer behaviors from a dynamic perspective. In the first chapter, I investigate how platform commission changes affect software developers’ innovation efforts and their consequences on platform revenue. Using a unique dataset of video games in the Early Access Program on Steam, I study how commission schemes can change both the product update decisions and the release decision to Steam's main Store of developers. In the counterfactual analysis, I further examine the impact of varying platform commission rates on product development decisions and find that lowering commissions can lead to more updates, but developers are over-investing in Early Access. This chapter is based on my job market paper with Avi Goldfarb and Nitin Mehta. The second chapter, a collaborative work with Daniel Goetz, examines the peer effect of the product adoption decisions of friends and strangers on consumers' purchase behavior. Using data on microtransactions in an online gaming app, I show that the marginal effect of friends' product adoptions is roughly twice as large as the marginal effect of strangers' product adoptions but that the two types of peer effects are substitutes. An estimated network diffusion model implies that peer effects from strangers alone can account for 69% of the total lift in product adoptions from social interactions. The third chapter studies the peak-end effect of consumer behavior on online software product usage. I examine this question empirically using data from two popular free-to-play online games and document three facts about user behavior: app usage (games played) clusters temporally in sessions, negative outcomes tend to prolong sessions, and positive outcomes at the end of a session decrease time to the next session. This chapter is also a joint work with Dan. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, consum | 8, 9, 12 |
| Sheen, Jack Z | Downar, Jonathan | Treatment Response Biomarkers of Accelerated Low Frequency Repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation in Major Depressive Disorder | Medical Science | 2023-06 | AbstractRepetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is a non-invasive form of brain stimulation for the treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). One substantial knowledge gap with rTMS is that clinically applicable treatment response biomarkers of rTMS in MDD remain elusive. This thesis contains three studies that are based on the data from two open-labeled clinical trials, and these studies aim to address the need for biomarkers by providing preliminary evidence on the utilization of electrocardiography (ECG) and electroencephalography (EEG) parameters as treatment response biomarkers of accelerated low frequency (LF) right hemisphere (R) dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) rTMS in MDD. The first (n=19) study aims to investigate the effect of accelerated 1Hz R-DLPFC rTMS on heart rate (HR) and heart rate variability (HRV), as well as the association between HR and HRV with treatment outcome. In this first study, HR significantly decreased during the rTMS period. Resting HR, HR during the rTMS period, and the degree of rTMS-induced HR reduction were all significantly negatively associated with treatment outcome prior to Bonferroni correction; Resting HR remained significantly associated with treatment outcome post Bonferroni correction. Furthermore, the second study (n = 24) aims to validate the results of the first study using data from a separate clinical trial. For this second study, HR also significantly decreased during the rTMS period prior to Bonferroni correction. Resting HR, HR during rTMS, and the degree of HR reduction were not significantly associated with treatment outcome; however, the trend of association remained the same as that of the first study. Lastly, the third study aims to investigate the association between baseline TMS evoked potential (TEP) N100 amplitude and 1Hz R-DLPFC arTMS treatment outcome. For this third study, baseline N100 amplitude was significantly associated with treatment outcome. The change in N100 amplitude from baseline to follow-up was significantly associated with treatment outcome prior to Bonferroni correction. In conclusion, the collective result of these three studies is generally in agreement with previous studies and provide additional preliminary evidence for future studies of larger sample sizes to further investigate the biomarker potential of ECG and EEG parameters. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, invest | 2, 4, 2009 |
| Azimi, Sina | Tamminen, Katherine KT | Exploring the Development of Coach-Parent Relationships in Organized Competitive Youth Team Sports | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2023-06 | The purpose of this dissertation was to gain a better understanding of coach-parent relationships in organized competitive youth team sports. Two studies are presented in this dissertation to support this aim. Study 1 was a qualitative inquiry of parents’ and coaches’ perceptions of factors that affect coach-parent relationships in competitive youth sports, and involved semi-structured interviews with 41 participants: 21 coaches (5 females and 16 males, 22-64 years of age), and 20 parents (6 females and 14 males, 40-63 years of age). The results demonstrated that coaches and parents had similar views regarding the nature of a healthy coach- parent relationship, and that the coach-parent relationship could be influenced by factors that are related to coaches and parents’ behaviours and their interpersonal interactions. Parents’ socioeconomic status and occupation, coaches’ age and gender, and the perceived professionalization of youth sport appeared to influence the coach-parent relationship. Participants’ descriptions of their experiences revealed an imbalanced power dynamic among parents, coaches, and athletes, with parents and athletes having less power than coaches. Study 2 was a grounded theory of the developmental trajectory of the coach-parent relationship in organized competitive youth team sports, and consisted of semi-structured interviews with 20 participants: 10 coaches (2 females and 8 males, 26-50 years of age), and 10 parents (9 females and 1 male, 40-57 years of age). The results indicated that the relationship between parents and coaches develops through three stages: a) ‘Introduction and Discovery’, b) ‘Curiosity, Doubt, or Stability’, and c) ‘Engagement or Separation’. In addition, the results highlighted the role of parents, coaches, athletes, and sport administrators in development of this relationship, and brought to attention the influence of culture and generational differences among parents on the coach-parent relationship. Together, the studies presented in this dissertation provide a more comprehensive understanding of coach-parent interactions in organized competitive youth team sports, and build the foundation for future research and interventions designed to enhance the quality of coach-parent relationships in various contexts. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, gender, female | 1, 5 |
| Del Borrello, Samantha | Fraser, Andrew G | Targeting Rhodoquinone and Anaerobic Metabolism in C. elegans for Anthelmintic Drug Discovery | Molecular Genetics | 2023-06 | Parasitic helminth infections affect ¼ of the world and result in thousands of deaths every year as well as economic losses in agriculture. This is in part due to increasing anthelmintic resistance, thus fuelling a need for the discovery of novel anthelmintics. My thesis project aimed to identify new anthelmintics targeting the unique metabolic pathways used by parasites during host infection. They survive these low oxygen environments by using rhodoquinone (RQ), an alternative electron carrier in an anaerobic form of the electron transport chain. These RQ-related pathways are absent in parasitic hosts, making it an ideal drug target. Furthermore, these pathways are functional in C. elegans, providing us with a model system to explore these specialized pathways. My work aided in establishing methods to use C. elegans to dissect parasite metabolism and identify new drugs. To do this, we prevent oxidative phosphorylation through treatment with potassium cyanide (KCN) and monitor worm movement using an image-based assay developed in the lab. We found worms can survive treatment with potassium KCN for 15 hours and a major contributor to this survival is the use of RQ-dependent metabolic pathways. My work helped characterize the requirement of kynu-1 and the kynurenine pathway in RQ biosynthesis in C. elegans, providing the first defined synthesis pathway for this molecule in a eukaryotic organism. Kynu-1 mutants do not recover after prolonged exposure to KCN, suggesting RQ is required for surviving this treatment. Using this assay, I developed a screening platform for RQ-dependent pathway inhibitors. I then tested this platform with the Spectrum library which is composed of clinically approved drugs and natural products. Through this research I found a list of 155 drugs which have the potential to be repurposed as anthelmintics specially targeting RQ-dependent metabolic pathways. By targeting such a crucial aspect of parasitic survival during host infection we hope to provide relief to the global health burden of soil-transmitted helminths. | Ph.D. | agricultur, ABS, global health, soil | 2, 3, 15 |
| Mirjalili, Mina | Rajji, Tarek K | Investigating Causal Relations between EEG Features and Working Memory | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Working memory is essential to perform higher-order complex cognitive tasks. A deficit in working memory yields difficulties in performing daily activities and it is an indicator of cognitive decline. Thus, extensive research has focused on approaches to improve working memory. Among these approaches non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has been widely explored. However, the efficiency and reliability of NIBS across studies have not been well established. One reason could be intervening the improper neurophysiological mechanisms of working memory across individuals. Ultimately, for an optimum NIBS, it is essential to target personalized neurophysiological mechanisms that have causal relations to performance. Therefore, the overall objective of my thesis is to use electroencephalography (EEG) signals that recorded while performing N-back working memory task to determine novel neurophysiological targets for NIBS for improving performance.In the first study, we assessed the relative roles of three EEG markers that represent distinct neurophysiological mechanisms of working memory. We investigated the roles of theta-gamma coupling (TGC) representing ordering of information, alpha event-related de-synchronization (ERD) representing interference inhibition, and theta event-related synchronization (ERS) representing cognitive control in preforming N-back. The results of this study demonstrate that TGC could be a potential target for NIBS as it shows an association with N-back performance independent of other EEG markers in both younger and older healthy adults. In the second study, to identify potential targets for personalized NIBS, we used a machine learning-based approach to identify individual-specific neurophysiological correlates of N-back performance. We identified distinct EEG markers, including ERD and ERS from various oscillations and brain regions that predict performance at the individual level. In the third study, to further optimize the targets for personalized NIBS, we used a graphical causal model to identify individual-specific neurophysiological features that cause the performance. The results of this study suggest that entraining gamma oscillations using multiple electrodes over the temporal cortex to generate more causal gamma oscillations and not necessarily increasing the power of these oscillations could result in more effective NIBS outcomes and improvement in N-back performance. Taken together, our findings provide novel targets for personalized NIBS to improve working memory performance and cognition. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Basso, Matthew Joseph | Orr, Robert S | Measurement of Associated Production of Higgs Bosons Decaying to Pairs of W Bosons with the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider | Physics | 2023-06 | This thesis describes the measurement of Higgs boson production in association with a vector boson, WH/ZH, using the H->WW*->lvlv and H->WW*->lvqq decay channels, where l is an electron or a muon. The analysis uses proton-proton collision data at centre-of-mass energy 13 TeV delivered by the Large Hadron Collider and recorded by the ATLAS detector between 2015 and 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb^-1. The analysis is performed in several channels across 2-, 3-, and 4-lepton final states and utilizes a diverse set of multivariate techniques for signal extraction. The WH and ZH production cross sections times the H->WW* branching ratio are measured to be 0.13+0.08/-0.07(stat.)+0.05/-0.04(sys.) pb and 0.31+0.09/-0.08(stat.)+/-0.03(sys.) pb, respectively, in agreement with the Standard Model expectations. | Ph.D. | energy, production | 7, 12 |
| Bedroya, Olinka | Lo, Hoi-Kwong||Qian, Li | Resource-Efficient Real-Time Polarization Compensation for MDI-QKD | Physics | 2023-06 | Quantum key distribution is information-theoretically secure and a promising candidate for security against quantum computers. However, experimental implementations might deviate from assumptions made in the security proofs and leave the system vulnerable. Measurement device-independent QKD (MDI-QKD) scheme closes all the loopholes on the detection side, which is the most susceptible part of QKD. Therefore, the state preparation part of QKD systems becomes the only source of imperfections that needs to be considered in the security proofs of MDI-QKD. We examine our polarization encoding module and how imperfection in its components can affect state preparation. Our experiment demonstrates the feasibility of generating a secure key with imperfect states prepared by off-the-shelf devices. Another practical challenge that we address in implementing fibre-based MDI-QKD is polarization compensation. Polarization variations due to temperature fluctuations and fibre birefringence are inevitable and require polarization stabilization. Before this work, polarization compensation schemes for QKD either reduced the key sharing cycle or required extra equipment, making them less scalable or commercially viable and preventing the wide adaptation of polarization encoding. We propose and implement a novel polarization compensation scheme in the MDI-QKD systems that avoids the abovementioned drawbacks by using part of discarded detections. Our scheme evaluates the polarization drift in real-time based on single measurements corresponding to decoy intensities. We successfully implemented this active polarization compensation for four hours over 40 km of buffered fibre spool without thermal insulation or vibrational isolation. This thesis is a decisive step toward making polarization encoding MDI-QKD practical and secure, paving the way to realizing a polarization encoding MDI-QKD network. Future networks could be hybrid (ground and satellite links), and polarization encoding is a suitable candidate if an efficient stabilization scheme for fibre links is present. To this aim, our novel compensation scheme solely relies on recycling detections and retains a simple structure for a user node so that expanding the network could be feasible in terms of cost and practicality. Also, it does not reduce the key-sharing cycle, which is essential in networks where the detection system is shared, and each user has limited access time. | Ph.D. | recycl | 12 |
| Guo, Jackson Yue Bin | Chen, Li | Drinking in the Sea of Passion: Social Distinction, Public Sentiment, and Chinese Identity, 1680s-1930s | History | 2023-06 | This dissertation delves into the significance of public drinking in late imperial Chinese society and its impact on the values and behavior of educated elites. Using a wide range of primary sources, including legal archives, memorials, cookbooks, literati anthologies, and poetry, I explore the different class-, status-, and gender-based perspectives on alcohol consumption and production. The dissertation specifically focuses on the growth of commercial drinking establishments during the Qing period and argues that the formation of public sentiments and identities was a bottom-up process, which created intricate links of interaction between Chinese elites and commoners. It thus challenges the conventional notion that late imperial popular culture was overwhelmingly based on Confucian scholars’ moral-political values by highlighting the transformative effects of public drinking on elite sensibility, sociability, and knowledge formation. Through five chapters, I examine the ways in which drinking habits and behavior of Chinese commoners influenced the moral-legal propriety, masculinity, femininity, social distinction, and sensibility of scholar-elites. Ultimately, this study reveals the important role of public drinking in shaping Chinese society and culture between the late imperial and Republican periods. | Ph.D. | knowledge, gender, consum, production | 4, 5, 12 |
| Lou, Jenny Wan-Hin | Zheng, Gang | Applications of Porphyrin Nanoparticles in Enhancing Cancer Immunotherapies | Medical Biophysics | 2023-06 | Harnessing the immune system can be an effective means of combating cancer. Activation of the immune system can result in the specific targeting of tumor cells, elimination of residual disease and metastases, and generation of immune memory to prevent recurrence. In this thesis, applications of porphyrin nanoparticles to stimulate antitumor immunity are explored. Treatments such as photodynamic therapy (PDT), which are specific and targeted to tumors, are intriguing for their potential to induce the abscopal effect. This rare phenomenon occurs after initial treatment promotes a systemic immune response that results in the delay in growth, or even shrinkage, of untreated tumors or metastases. As such, finding methods to enhance the abscopal effect can improve patient outcomes. This thesis first sought to determine the ability of porphyrin lipoprotein (PLP) nanoparticles to serve as a photosensitizer for PDT and whether PLP-mediated PDT can induce the abscopal effect. In mice bearing subcutaneous AE17-OVA+ mesothelioma on both hindlimbs, four repeated cycles of PLP mediated PDT (R-PDT) delayed the growth of distal, non-irradiated tumors four-fold, relative to control mice. Moreover, combining R-PDT with anti-PD-1 therapy to strengthen the abscopal effect, resulted in prolonged survival, compared to mice who were treated with PBS, R-PDT or anti-PD-1 therapy alone. Next, the immune mechanisms underlying the abscopal effect and the safety of R-PDT were evaluated. Antigen presentation in the spleen and distal, non-irradiated tumor draining lymph nodes were observed, and corresponded to alterations in T-cell subsets in the spleen and non-irradiated tumor draining lymph nodes. Upon examination of histology and blood chemistry, R-PDT had an acceptable safety profile, whereas combination R-PDT + αPD-1 induced 1.3-fold higher serum potassium and 1.3-fold phosphorus in mice, which is consistent with mild laboratory tumor lysis syndrome. Therefore, this work shows the abilityof PLP-mediated PDT to induce the abscopal effect to improve antitumor efficacy, while maintaining a reasonable safety profile. Conventional means of activating the immune system include the use of cytokines, immune checkpoint blockades, cancer vaccines, and adoptive cellular therapies. However, the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment has impeded the efficacy of these treatments, particularly for adoptive cellular therapies. To address the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment, we proposed the delivery of immunostimulants in a localized manner: we conjugated OKT3 antibody loaded porphyrin liposomes (ie. porphysomes) to the plasma membranes of double negative T cells (DNTs). Conjugation of OKT3-loaded porphysomes to DNTs improved cytotoxicity of DNTs relative to DNTs conjugated to empty porphysomes for up to five days post-incubation. Accordingly, the proof-of-concept for this conjugate system was demonstrated. Taken together, this thesis demonstrates two methods in which porphyrin nanoparticles can boost immunity to combat cancer. | Ph.D. | ABS, vaccine, labor | 2, 3, 2008 |
| Ngai, Jessica W | Chan, Warren WC | Delineating the Interaction between Liposomes and the Tumour Microenvironment | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-06 | Cancer nanomedicine offers promising characteristics such as protecting small molecules from early degradation, reducing systemic toxicity and prolonging blood circulation to increase drug accumulation in the tumour. The majority of clinically-approved anti-cancer nanomedicines are lipid-based nanoparticles. Studies have used animal survival graphs and tumour growth curves to identify potential candidates, but it is not obvious which cells within the tumour microenvironment contribute towards their therapeutic effect. The incomplete understanding of lipid nanoparticle behaviour at the cellular-level may have contributed towards the limited number of nanotherapeutic translations into the clinic. In my thesis, I focus on two aspects of nano-bio interaction to better understand how liposomes interact within the tumour microenvironment. First, I conducted an in-depth investigation into how a therapeutic lipid nanoparticle affects the cytodistribution within the tumour microenvironment. This revealed intrinsic properties unique to lipid nanoparticles and the cell types it predominantly impacted. Flow cytometry revealed that Doxil, a liposomal formulation of Doxorubicin, preferentially killed cancer cells, macrophages and neutrophils within a breast cancer tumour model. Immunofluorescent imaging of apoptotic cells, pharmacokinetic study and uptake and cell viability experiments further supported the findings to explain the delay exhibited by Doxil-treated tumours. By identifying cells predominantly killed by Doxil, we can better explain how and why liposomes uniquely cause a tumour growth delay and may guide the design of future nanocarriers against those predominant cell types and prolong the therapeutic effect. Second, I developed a simple tag for the three-dimensional (3D) mapping of liposomes in intact tissues. Prior to this tag, it was not possible to image liposomes in optically-cleared tissues because the typical processing step of rendering tissues transparent removed lipids. This will provide a means to visualize where liposomes distribute, how stable they are and how fast they degrade in vivo within a tumour using 3D imaging. Knowledge established from this thesis has the potential to optimize the design and selection of future formulations to obtain a longer and more responsive therapeutic effect. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, animal | 4, 9, 14, 15 |
| Moore, Monika Zenobia | Childs, Ruth | Managing Tensions in Equitable Disciplinary Teaching | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-06 | As representatives of a discipline and gatekeepers to disciplinary communities, faculty have a powerful role in defining what disciplines are and who has access. In exposing students to disciplinary conventions, instructors may present disciplinary norms as inflexible, which may limit access or make disciplines feel unwelcoming. Students may be faced with reconciling their culture’s ways of knowing with disciplinary ways of knowing, and instructors may face conflicts between preparing students for disciplinary expectations and providing an equitable classroom open to non-dominant ways of knowing and communicating. This multiple case study investigates how faculty think about disciplinary norms and equitable pedagogies, whether tensions arise in their disciplinary teaching, and how they manage those tensions. Findings indicate that tensions created opportunities for reflection and led to changes in teaching indicative of double-loop learning. Departmental tensions suggest a paradigm shift in Earth Science teaching pedagogy, and institutional tensions suggest that the university is undergoing organizational learning. This study also indicates that tensions occurred at multiple levels (individual, departmental, discipline, and institution/university) which has implications for challenges in making learning environments more equitable. Existing and potential approaches for addressing these challenges are discussed. | Ph.D. | equitable, pedagogy, learning, invest, equit, institut | 4, 9, 10, 16 |
| Mulligan, Christine | L'Abbé, Mary | Child-appealing Marketing on Food and Beverage Product Packaging: Evidence to Inform Regulatory Development, Implementation and Monitoring in Canada | Nutritional Sciences | 2023-06 | Child-appealing marketing for unhealthy foods and beverages is prolific globally and is contributing to the development of poor dietary habits among children. Canadian attempts to establish federally-mandated marketing restrictions have been unsuccessful to date. Therefore, comprehensive evidence to monitor the marketing landscape and support policy development was needed during the period of this thesis research. In Studies 1 and 2, the effectiveness of Canadian Nutrient Profiling Models (NPMs) developed for purposes related to marketing (i.e., the Canadian Advertising Initiative’s NPM and Health Canada’s proposed NPM) were evaluated. Results demonstrated their stringency in identifying foods and beverages of poor nutritional quality, however, their effectiveness was limited by the breadth of scope of marketing instances/food products they were applied to (i.e., child-appealing marketing/products). Study 3 found significant heterogeneity in how researchers have defined and evaluated “child-appeal” in the literature, which was synthesized into a thematically-categorized inventory of marketing techniques to inform the development of future research methodologies. The Child-Appealing Packaging (CAP) tool was developed for this purpose (Study 4) and was found to be valid to assess the presence, type, and power of child-appealing marketing using core and broad marketing techniques that children (5-12 years) reported to find pertinent. Study 5 evaluated packaged foods using the CAP tool, and found that powerfully marketed, unhealthy, child-appealing products were prevalent in the Canadian food supply, and that these products were often of poorer nutritional composition and more likely to exceed Health Canada’s NPM thresholds than non-child-appealing products. Taken together, the five studies presented in this thesis highlight the necessity of continued broad monitoring of the food marketing landscape in Canada and the need for comprehensive marketing restrictions. Collectively, this research identifies key aspects of the regulatory approach, namely the criteria for 1) identifying child-appealing marketing and 2) the types of foods that are “unhealthy”, both of which will be critical to ensuring policy effectiveness and best protecting children from harmful marketing practices. | Ph.D. | nutrition, land | 2, 15 |
| Monteith, Hiliary | Hanley, Anthony||Galloway, Tracey | Determinants of Anishinabeck Infant and Early Childhood Growth Trajectories in Sandy Lake, Ontario | Nutritional Sciences | 2023-06 | Indigenous ways of knowing and being often focus on the health and wellbeing of future generations. Therefore, the health implications for children of First Nations women, who experience a disproportionate prevalence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) compared to non-First Nations women living in Canada, are a priority. Infants born to women with GDM are more likely to have high birthweights, which may influence growth trajectories throughout childhood. Infant nutrition is a priority within this context, where breastfeeding can mitigate cardiometabolic disease risk. Therefore, as part of the Sandy Lake Health and Diabetes Research Project (SLHDP), a community-based research project with Sandy Lake First Nation, we collected longitudinal height and weight data for infants and children under 6 years of age and maternal and child health factors using questionnaires. With these data we characterized growth trajectories over the first 6 years of life and explored associations between early life factors and growth patterns. We also conducted a scoping review of the qualitative literature, and interviews with caregivers in Sandy Lake, to understand infant feeding experiences of Indigenous caregivers. Weight-for-age (WAZ), height-for-age (HAZ), and BMI-for-age (BAZ) z-scores were calculated using the World Health Organization (WHO) reference data and plotted using generalized additive models, which demonstrated that Sandy Lake infants and children had z-scores above the WHO reference population. Generalized estimating equations and logistic regression revealed a possible role for high birthweight, caregiver BMI, cigarettes in the home, alcohol consumption during pregnancy, and GDM in subsequent growth patterns. Results of the scoping review and the 26 interviews with 32 caregivers in Sandy Lake emphasized a variety of socioecological factors impacting infant feeding experiences with family and culture playing significant roles. In conclusion, this study is one of the first on Turtle Island (North America) to characterize First Nations infant and child growth and to consider related health and social factors. We identified that infant nutrition is impacted by a variety of factors, highlighting a need for systemic changes that address issues of inadequate income, food and water insecurity, and a lack of cultural safety. | Ph.D. | nutrition, wellbeing, child health, women, water, indigenous, income, consum, ecolog, land | 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 16, 12, 15 |
| Teferra, Bazen Gashaw | Rose, Jonathan S | Correlates and Prediction of Generalized Anxiety Disorder from Acoustic and Linguistic Features of Impromptu Speech | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-06 | The diagnosis and tracking of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) require frequent interaction with mental health professionals, but there are not enough professionals to serve the demand. The ability to automatically detect anxiety disorders through samples of speech could be a valuable complement to conventional treatment and provide greater access to it. In this work, we explore acoustic and linguistic features of speech that correlate with anxiety and use those to predict above or below the screening threshold of GAD. A large number of participants (N = 2, 000) participated in a single online study session where they completed the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) assessment and provided an impromptu speech sample in response to a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST). Acoustic and linguistic speech features were a-priori selected based on the existing speech and anxiety literature, together with related features. Associations between speech features and anxiety levels were assessed using sex, age, and personal income included as covariates. The amount of speech had the most significant correlation with GAD-7 (r = −0.12; P < .001), indicating that participants with higher anxiety scores spoke less. Linguistic features acquired using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) were also significantly (P < .05) associated with anxiety. Using these acoustic and LIWC features to predict above or below a screening threshold of 10 for GAD, a logistic regression model achieved a mean AUROC = 0.57, SD = 0.03. The mean AUROC increased to 0.62 (SD = 0.03) when demographic information (age, sex, and income) was included indicating the importance of demographics when screening for anxiety disorders. The LIWC linguistic features are based on single-word counts and do not account for the surrounding word context. We attempted the same prediction based on greater context using a transformer-based neural-network model (pre-trained on large textual corpora) and fine-tuned on the speech transcripts. This model, which only uses the textual input, achieved an AUROC value of 0.64. When acoustic, LIWC, and the predicted output of the fine-tuned transformer-based model are combined into one model, the AUROC increased to 0.67 and further increased to 0.68 when demographic information was included. The results suggest that there is a signal of anxiety within such impromptu speech that may be useful as part of a system to screen for anxiety, detect relapse, or monitor treatment. | Ph.D. | mental health, income | 3, 10 |
| Gheorghiade, Paula | Knappett, Carl | A Network Approach to Cultural Interaction and Maritime Connectivity on Crete during the Late Bronze Age – Late Minoan II – IIIB2 | History of Art | 2020-06 | Approaches to trade and exchange in the Late Bronze Age (LBA) have generally centred on one class of artifacts: those identified as long-distance imports or exotica. This has served to limit the discussion of trade and exchange in the LBA to one scale of analysis: the international and long-distance. This emphasis on the long-distance has, however, disregarded the movement of goods at a range of other scales. This thesis takes an empirical approach to LBA connectivity and interaction in the eastern Mediterranean by focusing on Crete during the Late Minoan II to Late Minoan IIIB period. I argue that making sense of large-scale patterns of interaction visible in the archaeological record of the LBA also requires a consideration of connectivity at a much smaller scale: locally, between people and the objects they used; regionally, between various settlements; and trans-regionally, between larger regional centres on the island. I utilize a collected dataset of 13,737 ceramic entries from published assemblages at the sites of Chania, Knossos, Kommos, Mochlos, and Palaikastro. With this data, I explore interaction and maritime mobility from a nested, diachronic perspective and argue that connections between these local and regional communities form the backbone of larger social and economic networks. I then highlight the range of possible interactions at this smaller, local scale, through an in-depth case study of the consumption of imports in local assemblages from one building at Kommos. I explore access and mobility between these settlements on Crete by applying new methods and models adapted from network science and GIS for modelling interaction. Lastly, I discuss the results of the modelling in tandem with the collected ceramic data to highlight the advantages of an interdisciplinary, multiscalar approach in exploring LBA interaction. | Ph.D. | trade, consum, maritime, land | 10, 12, 14, 15 |
| Zagzoog, Nirmeen | Yang, Victor | Feasibility of Skull Base Neuronavigation Using Optical Topographic Imaging Toward Guidance of Human and Robotic Drill Operators | Medical Science | 2023-06 | Mastoidectomy is a surgical procedure that allows access to critical portions of the skull base in order to treat a broad range of conditions. Mastoidectomy requires enormous precision and focus in order to avoid critical structures such as veins or nerves, and often occurs at the beginning of long, complex skull base operations, leading to cognitive and physical fatigue before some of the most crucial portions of a surgery have occurred. Neuronavigation, the technique of using preoperative imaging and patient anatomy to generate a surgical roadmap, is often used to facilitate safe mastoidectomy in current clinical practice. Optical topographical imaging (OTI) is a form of neuronavigation that uses structured light projected onto the operative surface to facilitate co-registration of 3D space with preoperative imaging. This thesis endeavored to explore whether OTI-assisted neuronavigation could be combined with multi-parameter, realtime data collection of the mechanical parameters of mastoidectomy, with the ultimate goal of developing a platform to be used in the future for robotic mastoidectomy. First, a comprehensive review of the current body of literature surrounding robotic mastoidectomy revealed that previous investigators had not yet quantified the mechanical parameters of mastoidectomy. Our next step was to compare both OTI-assisted and free-hand mastoidectomy, which revealed that OTI-assistance led to shorter procedure times. This set of experiments also demonstrated that OTI navigation was accurate in the skull base, while highlighting room for improvement of the accuracy of OTI navigation. Following this, we used an iterative design approach to develop a platform for multi-parameter, real-time data collection during the drilling. This platform allows for the collection of data ranging from drill tip movement to force magnitude in all three dimensions throughout mastoidectomy. Ultimately, this body of work serves to advance the goal of robotic OTI-assisted mastoidectomy by demonstrating the feasibility of OTI-assisted neuronavigation in the lateral skull base and developing a platform which can be used to create a reference database of the mechanical parameters of mastoidectomy, effectively serving to quantify a previously qualitative process. Future projects may use this database, in combination with patient-specific preoperative imaging, to train roboticalgorithms to perform mastoidectomy. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Torres-Vanegas, Luis Felipe | Wagner, Helene H | The Ecological Consequences of Hummingbird Pollination for Plant Mating Systems | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | Plant-pollinator interactions are an essential component of the ecology and evolution of natural and agricultural ecosystems, as they drive the ecological process of pollination and determine the outcomes of plant mating. My PhD thesis capitalized on plant-pollinator interactions in Heliconia tortuosa Griggs (Heliconiaceae) to understand the role of the ecological process of pollination as a driver of the outcomes of plant mating. The ecological process of pollination in H. tortuosa is exclusively mediated by territorial and trapline foraging hummingbirds. My PhD thesis combined a landscape-scale observational field survey, a variety of techniques of molecular biology, and a breadth of methods in statistical analysis to evaluate the interplay of ecology and evolution through the process of pollination. In Chapter 2, I found that patterns of pollen-mediated gene flow in H. tortuosa are characterized by a signature that is consistent with the behaviour of trapline foraging pollinators. I demonstrated that patterns of pollen-mediated gene flow can provide information to infer the foraging behaviour of pollinators. In Chapter 3, I found that deforestation altered the composition of the pollinator community through the decline of trapline foraging pollinators. This impact reduced the quality of pollen received by H. tortuosa individuals, as it reduced the genetic diversity of progeny and enhanced inbreeding. Given this perspective, I identified important implications for the conservation of plant-pollinator interactions. In Chapter 4, I found novel consequences of the foraging behaviour of pollinators for patterns of cross-fertilization and multiple paternity in H. tortuosa, with particular attention to the impact of trapline foraging. I demonstrated that variation in the foraging behaviour of pollinators can have divergent implications for the outcomes of plant mating. My PhD thesis demonstrated that disparities in the pollen transport mechanism can have profound implications for the ecology and evolution of plant mating. In particular, my PhD thesis revealed that the foraging behaviour of pollinators and the composition of the pollinator community are fundamental factors that determine patterns of pollen-mediated gene flow, self-fertilization, cross-fertilization, and multiple paternity in plants. Collectively, my PhD thesis contributed to a rich literature that has established a dialogue of ecology and evolution in the study of plant-pollinator interactions. | Ph.D. | agricultur, capital, conserv, ecosystem, forest, ecolog, land, deforestation | 2, 9, 14, 15 |
| Bhatia, Dominika | Lipscombe, Lorraine L. | Influence of Chronic Disease and Comorbidity on Colorectal Cancer Screening and Diagnostic Testing | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Population-based CRC screening has been recommended by in Canada since 2001 and organized screening programs, which involve coordinated activities from screening through diagnosis, have been implemented in most Canadian jurisdictions. Those who have chronic comorbidities may be less likely to participate in all steps of the cancer preventive pathway due to the competing demands of chronic disease management. As some major chronic conditions are also associated with increased cancer morbidity and mortality, understanding the use of cancer preventive services in these populations is necessary to improve the effectiveness of screening programs.This dissertation aimed to determine whether major chronic medical and mental health comorbidities are associated with lower use CRC screening and follow-up diagnostic testing, focusing on the province of Ontario, Canada. The first study was a systematic review and meta-analysis examining the effect of one “model” chronic condition – diabetes – on screening for CRC and other common cancers for which universal screening has been recommended (breast and cervical cancer). The second and third studies were longitudinal population-based cohorts using Ontario health administrative data, with the second study investigating the influence of diabetes, heart disease, renal failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and mental health conditions on periodic CRC screening test uptake, and the third study considering the effects of these conditions on follow-up diagnostic testing receipt. The first study found that diabetes was associated with lower likelihood of breast and cervical cancer screening, while the results for CRC screening were mixed. There were significant methodological limitations in the evidence base, including the focus on one-time screening in opportunistic settings and the use of cross-sectional designs and self-report data. The second and third studies found that major chronic conditions were associated with lower rates of periodically becoming up-to-date with CRC screening and with receiving follow-up testing. Having multiple medical conditions or comorbid medical and mental health conditions exacerbated these relationships. The findings of this thesis highlight that organized screening programs may need to consider additional strategies to reduce breakdowns in the cancer preventive pathway and improve appropriateness of screening for people with comorbidities. | Ph.D. | mental health, invest | 3, 9 |
| Du, Bowen | Siegel, Jeffrey A | The Impact of Indoor Air Quality and Exposure to Indoor Air Pollutants on Cognitive Function | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | In addition to the well-recognized comfort and health impacts, indoor air quality has been linked with cognitive function and further with work productivity and learning performance. Such cognitive impact has significant economic consequences and may serve as an additional incentive for IAQ improvement. However, our current understanding of this link is limited, with the causal agents not identified and the mechanisms not understood. This thesis explores the cognitive impact of IAQ through firstly synthesizing existing experimental investigations of the role of CO2 and ventilation in affecting cognitive function and identifying the causes of discrepancies in the literature and then conducting human exposure experiments to assess cognitive responses to exposures to emissions from a strong source. The results of the review suggest a strong link between ventilation rates and cognitive function but mixed and sometimes contradictory effects of CO2 on cognitive performance even after controlling for inconsistency in experimental designs. The exposure experiments saw a few significant changes but mostly trends in decision-making patterns towards more impulsive behaviour with subjects exposed to emissions from an essential oil diffuser using scented lemon oil or non-scented grapeseed oil. Further, methods were developed for characterizing emissions sources and monitoring long-term air change rate and pollutant removal rates to facilitate future research on IAQ and cognitive performance. Findings in this thesis suggest a clear correlation between overall IAQ and cognitive performance and a less definitive link between specific pollutants, such as CO2, PM, and VOCs, and distinctive brain functions including executive functioning, memory, and response inhibition. Despite the complexity of controlling airborne exposure and assessing cognitive function, understanding the cognitive impact of IAQ is crucial for the health and performance of building occupants and the development of the building industry. | Ph.D. | learning, emission, invest, emissions, co2, pollut | 4, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Li, Alice Shi Ming | Vedadi, Masoud | Customized Approaches for Inhibition and Degradation of Drug Targets | Pharmacology | 2022-07 | Diseases are often caused by increase or decrease of specific proteins, and changes in the level of their activities in cell. Many cancers have already been directly or indirectly linked to such changes, for example. This necessitates development of therapeutics for diseases caused by such imbalances and dysregulations. Therefore, the dysregulated proteins are attractive drug targets, and small molecules are needed to modulate their function or antagonize their interactions with partner proteins. However, some protein targets may not be druggable, and finding small molecule modulators of their function may not be practical. Alternative approach would be to selectively target these proteins for degradation. This approach utilizes protein degradation pathway to specifically ubiquitinate the protein of interest by E3 ligases and mark it for degradation. My research takes advantage of all available options for modulating the level of activities of drug targets. Major step in the discovery of small molecule modulators of drug targets is to characterize their function and develop high throughput methods for screening. In the first chapter of my thesis, I focused on better understanding of the mechanism of function of protein arginine methyltransferase (PRMT) 1 in nucleosome setting by investigating its crosstalk with other methyltransferases. This study resulted in discovery of the activating effect of monomethylation of H4K20 on nucleosome by SETD8 on H4R3 methylation by PRMT1. In the second chapter, I focused on discovery of ligands for DDB1 Cul4-associated factor 1 (DCAF1) to employ the protein degradation approach. This project resulted in discovery of a potent antagonist of DCAF1 with a Kd value of 38 nM, a great step in the development for a chemical probe or PROTAC. Utilizing the two different approaches in targeting proteins of interest, will result in new opportunities that can facilitate early-stage drug discovery. | Ph.D. | invest, gini | 9, 10 |
| Anand, Abhinav | Aspuru-Guzik, Alán | Designing Algorithms for Quantum Computers of the Near Future | Chemistry | 2022-11 | Variational quantum algorithms (VQAs) have emerged as the leading strategy for using these noisy devices to achieve an advantage over their classical counterparts.VQAs use a hybrid quantum-classical framework, in which one employs the quantum computer to prepare a parameterized quantum state and outsource the optimization to a classical subroutine. VQAs have been proposed for applications in various fields, including physics, quantum chemistry, machine learning, and optimization. Nevertheless, many challenges must be addressed before we can use them for practical tasks. In this dissertation, we propose strategies to overcome some challenges in implementing VQAs. We first look at the issue of trainability for VQAs and propose three methods for optimizing them.The first method is based on natural evolutionary strategies (NES) and can alleviate the issue of vanishing gradients for randomly initialized parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs). The second method is based on the notion of information flow in PQCs and uses a mutual information-based distance metric to define paths for stochastic optimization of VQAs. Finally, we develop gradient evaluation procedures for optimizing objectives with the unitary coupled-cluster ansatz. Next, we study the issue of expressibility of PQCs used in variational algorithms.First, using the theory of quantum optimal control we define a notion of reachability of general ans\"atze used in VQAs. Next, using a variational autoencoder (VAE) coupled with a regression model, we try to gain a better understanding of the parameterization of PQCs. Finally, we attempt to remedy the inefficient usage of quantum resources for storing quantum data using evolutionary strategies to design quantum circuits for compressing quantum data. We present numerical evidence that the work presented here can increase trainability, efficiency, and understanding of VQAs.We believe our work is of interest to the quantum computing community as we continue to push the limits of NISQ devices for solving practical problems. | Ph.D. | learning, outsourc | 4, 12 |
| Shearkhani, Sara | Wodchis, Walter | Informal Caregiving: Health System Cost Implications and Caregiver Outcomes | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06 | Care provided by unpaid caregivers, is often seen as a lower cost substitute to care provided by health care providers (formal care), and hence the prevailing assumption is that caregivers’ contributions reduce healthcare costs. One unintended consequence of caregiving is a deterioration in caregiver’s health which could a) impact caregivers’ ability to provide care affecting care-recipients’ use of formal healthcare services; and b) result in a potential increase in healthcare utilization for caregivers themselves. Changes in healthcare resource use due to caregiving health consequences are direct costs to the healthcare system which have been largely omitted in healthcare policy and research. The overarching objective of this thesis is to provide a more accurate estimation of costs and consequences associated with caregiving. This is done by investigating patterns of: 1) healthcare use among caregivers; 2) healthcare use among care-recipients due to the consequences of caregiving; and 3) developing and validating a comprehensive tool that could facilitate routine measurement of caregiving and systematic inclusion of caregiving consequences in the policy making process. The first study was a difference-in-differences cohort study examining the impact of caregiving on caregivers’ use of healthcare services, before and after caregiving in comparison to non-caregivers using administrative databases. Results showed that adjusted total healthcare costs for caregivers were 10% lower than non-caregivers two years into caregiving. The second study was a longitudinal study examining the impact of caregiver distress on care-recipient’s use of healthcare services using administrative databases. The study found that caregiver distress was associated with a 4% increase in care-recipient’s total healthcare costs every six months. The third study reported on the development and validation of a caregiving survey. The survey was co-designed with caregivers providing a simultaneous measurement of caregivers’ health, experience of care, and costs. The analysis of the survey revealed four scales relating to care burden, care partner, caregiver assessment, and care integration. This thesis used novel data and methods to estimate the cost and consequences of caregiving and identifies issues that should be considered in healthcare policy making and in the design and evaluation of healthcare services. | Ph.D. | health care, healthcare, invest | 3, 9 |
| Jenkinson, Jesse Isadora Reisman | Di Ruggiero, Erica||Hwang, Stephen W | Contextualizing the Crisis in the Hospital Discharge Process for People Experiencing Homelessness in Toronto, Canada: “Danger and Opportunity” | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-06 | Canadian scholarship shows higher rates of hospital readmission among homeless than housed populations, signaling that their health needs are not being met post-discharge. The discharge process is meant to ensure patients’ care is transitioned to the community and is recognized by communities and homelessness researchers as a critical point of transition; yet little research has examined this process from acute physical care services. This exploratory qualitative study aimed to characterize the hospital discharge process for people experiencing homelessness when discharged from general medicine in Toronto, Canada. Informed by critical realism, it explains how and why discharging homeless patients remains a challenge. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were held with 16 hospital workers involved in the discharge process from three urban hospitals, six shelter workers who receive discharged patients, and 11 key informants with expertise in homelessness and healthcare. Results broadly characterize the process, situating inadequate discharges as a consequence of the failure of multiple systems on which the discharge process relies: barriers to publicly-funded systems, and silos and gaps between these systems. Further findings shed light on contextual influences of two features of the discharge process. First, finding an appropriate discharge destination was challenged by historical and contemporary social and economic contexts that triggered the adoption of efficiency and accountability measures in hospitals, and eligibility and exclusion criteria in shelters. Second, within the legal context of health information protection in Ontario, knowledge sharing between hospitals and shelters was complicated by the concept of circle of care that excludes shelter workers from the discharge process. Certain geographic and organizational contexts have activated the development of institutional- and individual-level relationships between some hospitals and shelters or their workers, which improved knowledge sharing. Despite the agency exhibited by our participants, the discharge process was marred by uneven power dynamics between hospitals and shelters and a service gap where neither hospitals nor shelters are responsible for the wellbeing of homeless patients post-discharge. Future research should centre the voices of people experiencing homelessness who go through the discharge process and adopt an intersectional analysis to better understand how the discharge process is shaped by patients’ intersecting social locations. | Ph.D. | homeless, wellbeing, healthcare, knowledge, worker, urban, transit, institut | 1, 3, 4, 8, 11, 16 |
| Liddell, Robert Sean | Davies, John E. | Observing and Describing the Sigmoidal Growth of Bone Anchorage from Endosseous Healing with Empirical Models | Dentistry | 2022-03 | The concept of endosseous healing creating a secondary biologic stability is firmly established in the dental literature, but mathematical growth curves have not been used to describe the resultant increase in bone anchorage (BA). This work investigates the hypothesis that the effect of implant surface topography on BA can be quantified using the appropriate empirical model and that increases in BA follow a sigmoidal growth curve with features that are consistent with the three general phases of endosseous healing: the lag phase with osteoconduction, the growth phase with de novo bone formation, and the plateau phase with remodeling. BA of rectangular implants placed in rat femora were tested in both shear and tension. Initial anchorage measurements taken at 5-days occurred after the lag phase, but growth and plateau phases were apparent in the data and could be measured using the asymptotic model. Testing method was found to significantly affect the peak BA and the inclusion of nanotopography on a microtopographically complex surface significantly decreased the required healing time. The effect of nanotopography was found to be greater than the effect of surface chemistry or hydrophilicity. Cylindrical and threaded implants were tested in torsion after being placed in rat tibiae for up to 6 months. By taking BA measurements at 3-days after placement the lag phase could be observed, enabling the fitting of sigmoidal functions with the logistic function producing the best fit. This allowed for the description of the peak anchorage, inflection point, and healing time. By differentiating between the phases of endosseous healing it was found that implant topography had a significant effect on de novo bone formation but not remodeling. This work has shown the three phases of increasing BA, related the increase of BA to bone formation, and found that curve fitting is an effective means of comparing different implant designs with respect to BA achieved through endosseous healing. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Nascimento de Almeida, Renan | Guttman, David S | Identifying Host-adaptive Genomic Signatures in the Pseudomonas syringae Species Complex | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-03 | Pseudomonas syringae is a diverse bacterial species complex capable of causing disease on various crop and wild plant species. Despite the relatively high number of affected crops, an understanding of the genetic basis allowing P. syringae to promote disease on many of these hosts is lacking. My goal was to identify genomic signatures from P. syringae genomes associated with adaptation to distinct types of hosts. I hypothesized that such signatures were overrepresented in pathogens from a given host, and that they could be extracted when compared to genome data from non-pathogens. Using statistical approaches such as GWAS and machine learning, I identified five plasmid-borne type III secreted effectors (T3SEs) and 32 other plasmid-borne genes strongly associated with isolation from diseased coffee plants. We then showed that isolates lacking this plasmid exhibit reduced growth on coffee leaves, suggesting that these genes play an important role on coffee colonization by P. syringae. Furthermore, I employed machine learning techniques to investigate if we could use genomic data to predict P. syringae virulence on bean and found that our model could predict virulence with high accuracy (mean absolute error = 0.05). I functionally validated the model by predicting virulence for 16 strains and found that 15 (94%) had virulence levels within the bounds of estimated predictions, demonstrating the power of machine learning for predicting host-specific adaptation. Finally, I also identified specific T3SE gain and loss events potentially associated with bean adaptation and showed that the loss of the HopAZ1 T3SE contributed to this process. Its presence reduced the growth of the strong kidney bean pathogen P. syringae pathovar phaseolicola 1448A on bean. Altogether, my thesis shows that pathogen genomes contain a written history of past evolutionary events associated with adaptation to specific hosts. Such signatures can be unraveled by applying statistical approaches to next-generation sequencing data. | Ph.D. | ABS, learning, invest, species | 2, 4, 9, 14, 15 |
| Bussell, David Andrew | Sandwell, Ruth | Historical Thinking in Ontario Secondary Schools: A Multiple Case Study | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-03 | In recent decades, history and education scholars in the Western world have argued for a constructivist approach to disciplinary thinking in history, known as historical thinking. This generated a large body of scholarship and many curriculum revisions. In Canada, these included the articulation of six historical thinking concepts designed to operationalize historical thinking for the classroom. Four of these concepts were embedded into the 2013 secondary school history curriculum in Ontario, the context of this present study. Yet, there has been little classroom-based empirical research exploring how teachers implement and enact historical thinking, generally, and historical thinking concepts, specifically. The present study asks: How do Ontario secondary school history teachers, who conceptually and practically embrace historical thinking as their approach to teaching history, understand and implement the Ontario history curriculum? Multiple-case study methodology was used, with the participation of four history teachers. Data for each case was generated by a survey, three interviews, two think-aloud activities, five classroom observations, document analysis of lesson plans, student and teaching resources, and assessments. The results revealed teachers’ different interpretations and expressions of the Ontario history curriculum. Two pedagogical profiles emerged. In one, teachers understood historical thinking concepts as skills for developing students’ critical thinking, as a transferable generic skill. Historical thinking was a means to this end. In the other profile, teachers used historical thinking concepts as critical inquiry lenses for creating new knowledge about history; they used historical thinking to help students understand history as a process of interpreting humanity and society over time. Historical thinking was its own end. These results support other studies in suggesting that there is no singular pedagogical approach for delivering a secondary school curricula. The particular contribution of this study, however, is in its detailed descriptions and analysis of how and why teachers negotiate between curriculum imperatives and their own teaching philosophy, and how they adapt their knowledge and understanding of historical thinking to do so. This study concludes by exploring the implications of this research for curriculum implementation, for teaching practice, for teacher education (both pre-service and in-service), for curriculum development, and further classroom-based research. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Penk, Stephanie | Molnár, Péter K | Linking Polar Bear Physiology and Ecology via Models of Their Energetics | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-03 | Polar bears require a sea ice platform to access and capture energy-rich marine prey. Climate warming is lengthening summer ice-free periods, forcing polar bears to survive increasingly longer periods of food deprivation while also leaving less time to accumulate body energy stores through on-ice periods. Dynamic energy budget (DEB) models have been used to estimate physiological and demographic impacts of sea ice loss for polar bears, accurately reflecting declines in body condition, reproduction and survival already observed in several subpopulations. To date, data limitations have restricted assessments to the effects of increased summer ice-free periods on the reproduction and survival of adult bears. My thesis increases our understanding of polar bear energetics by developing and refining models for estimating the energy polar bears have stored in lipid and protein reserves, developing new methods for collecting polar bear energetics data, and by exploring how polar bears acquire energy-draining parasites. In Chapter 2, I used data from dissected polar bears to develop a body composition model that separately estimates protein and lipid energy storage, expanding the applicability of the polar bear DEB framework to conditions where the molecular composition of energy storage changes rapidly (i.e., feeding). In Chapter 3, I developed and tested a method for morphometric data collection from captive polar bears using crate training. Sequential straight line body length measurements of captive bears showed no difference in precision compared to those collected from wild polar bears, opening new avenues for collecting physiological data necessary for further DEB development. In Chapter 4, I applied energy budget and demographic arguments to establish marine prey muscle tissue as the most likely transmission pathway of the parasite Trichinella nativa to polar bears. Understanding how polar bears acquire parasites facilitates understanding how changes in diet might affect parasite load, and thus, polar bear energetics. My thesis highlights the power of implementing novel methodologies while concurrently repurposing existing data and rethinking traditional collections to better understand difficult-to-observe processes like energy acquisition or disease transmission. As human-driven environmental change continues to push ecosystems beyond regularly observed extremes, methods enabling predictions of unobservable phenomena using measurable variables are invaluable. | Ph.D. | energy, production, climate, environmental, marine, ecosystem, ecolog | 7, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| De Serrano, Alexandra Rae | Rodd, Helen | The Transgenerational Effects of a Dpaminergic Drug on the Behaviour and Morphology of the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-03 | Maternal effects are ubiquitous, but paternal effects, the nongenetic influence of fathers on their offspring, were traditionally thought to be limited to animal species with paternal care/investment, however, there is now evidence that fathers can influence their offspring via nongenetic factors (interactions with females, modifications to sperm/ejaculate). There is also limited evidence that both maternal and paternal effects can span several generations, i.e. they can be transgenerational, but it is not yet clear if this phenomenon is generalizable across taxa. For my dissertation, I asked if there were parental and transgenerational effects of a dopaminergic drug (the psychostimulant methylphenidate hydrochloride (MPH), known as Ritalin or Concerta) on Trinidadian guppies. I selected MPH because it is highly prescribed for the treatment of Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and, given its pharmacology, it was predicted that it could cause transgenerational effects; despite this, the paternal and transgenerational effects of MPH were unknown. I found that MPH treatment had significant effects on the behaviour of first-generation males, and the morphology of first-generation males and females. I also found that some of these effects persisted across generations. First, MPH treatment directly affected male mating behaviours, with downstream effects on the behaviour of offspring; there was evidence that paternal effects were mediated by females for the offspring of control fathers, but, not for the offspring of MPH-treated fathers, suggesting nongenetic modifications to sperm as a potential mechanism. I also describe transgenerational effects of MPH in later generations and observed that behavioural effects of MPH were transmitted through the paternal, but not maternal, line to male and female great-grandoffspring—a generation that was not directly exposed to MPH. For morphological traits (body size and male colouration), I observed that both maternal and paternal treatment affected some offspring and grandoffspring morphological traits, highlighting the importance of exploring maternal and paternal effects in tandem. Taken together, this research is the first to demonstrate that MPH can cause transgenerational effects, which highlights the need to consider parental and transgenerational effects in studies of human health and the responses of natural populations to anthropogenic effects (e.g. exposure to pollutants, climate change). | Ph.D. | female, invest, climate, anthropogenic, pollut, species, animal | 5, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Ireland, Ronald | Simmons, Craig A | The Development of Xeno-free Culture Substrates for Long-term Culture of Human Pluripotent Stem Cells | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-03 | Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) are subject to a highly dynamic microenvironment in the developing embryo, replete with a wide range of biochemical and biophysical cues. Given the transitory and complex nature of pluripotency, efforts to fully understand the factors that maintain hPSCs in vitro can be leveraged for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. In vitro culture methods for hPSCs have largely relied on xenogenic and non-chemically defined culture substrates, namely basement membrane extracts (eg., Matrigel and Geltrex) and supportive feeder layers, while xeno-free culture substrates that support high levels of proliferation and pluripotent marker expression are currently lacking. In this thesis, the role of substrate stiffness and extracellular matrix (ECM) composition in maintaining hPSC pluripotency and proliferation was explored. We first developed a high throughput matrix microarray screening platform capable of tightly controlling substrate stiffness and ECM protein composition. Proof-of-concept screening with this platform identified several non-intuitive matrix and substrate stiffness combinations capable of supporting hPSC pluripotency in long term culture. Subsequently, we employed a bioinformatics and mass spectrometry screening approach to identify novel ECM factors that support hPSC pluripotency. These factors were screened using a design of experiments (DOE) screening strategy on our matrix microarray where we identified a novel matrix condition that outperformed Geltrex in long term culture. Cells grown on this substrate in chemically defined conditions exhibited improved cell survival, increased proliferation, and greater expression of pluripotency factors compared to Geltrex. Through RNA-Seq and phosphoproteome arrays, we determined that an increase in AKT signalling ostensibly drove the observed increase in pluripotency and proliferation on our novel substrate. In summary, the integration of a combinatorial microarray screening platform and statistical modeling facilitated the study of the effect of substrate stiffness and ECM composition on hPSC pluripotency. The optimal hPSC culture substrate developed in this work could be used to permit massive expansion of hPSCs in chemically defined conditions for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine applications. This screening approach can also be applied to other cells to optimally guide cell phenotype. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Hu, Guanlan | Bandsma, Robert RB | The Role of the Tryptophan-Nicotinamide Pathway in Malnutrition Induced Liver Dysfunction | Nutritional Sciences | 2022-03 | Background: Malnutrition contributes to about 45% of the death of children | Ph.D. | nutrition, malnutrition | 2 |
| Vasiliou, Stella | DIAMANDIS, ELEFTHERIOS EPD | Identification of Androgen-regulated Genes in a Breast Carcinoma Cell Line, BT474, using Transcriptomic and Proteomic Techniques | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-03 | Breast cancer (BCa) is the second most common cancer worldwide and the most prevalent cancer in women. The majority of BCa cases are positive for the estrogen receptor (ER+, 80%), and progesterone receptor (PR+, 65%), whereas some express human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2+, 20%). The androgen receptor (AR) is also found to be expressed in 77% of patients with invasive BCa and is now considered a promising biomarker and therapeutic target for BCa. However, the biological significance of androgens (A) and the AR in BCa remains unclear. Thus, in this study, the BT474 cell line was used as cell line model because it is an ER+PR+AR+ BCa cell line with high response to androgen treatment. The main purpose of this work was to investigate the effect of androgens in this cell line at the transcriptomic and proteomic level. The first step was to perform a pilot study using the androgenic hormones (dihydrotestosterone and norgestrel) to identify the expression of androgen-related molecules, using RNA sequencing and stable isotope labelling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC)-based proteomics. As a second step, the effects of dihydrotestosterone and progesterone hormone were examined in a more precise way to identify potential androgen-regulated genes and molecular pathways that are involved in BCa pathology, using the same techniques. Thirtly, validation of candidate mRNAs and proteins was perfomed using qRT-PCR and parallel reaction monitoring (PRM)-based proteomics, respectively. Lastly, verification of the expression of selected androgen-regulated genes was assessed in other BCa cell lines. The high expression of kallikrein 3 (KLK3), also known as prostate specific antigen (PSA), under androgen stimulation, was used as a positive control for all experiments. Several known and unknown androgen-regulated genes were identified. Pathway analysis revealed that androgen stimulation changed the abundance of proteins involved in lipid metabolism, cell cycle, and estrogen-dependent processes known to be associated with BCa progression. The validated results from these orthogonal techniques contribute to the overall knowledge of AR’s role and significance in BCa. Furthermore, new androgen-regulated genes identified through this work may be considered for further investigation as biomarkers or target molecules for personalized treatments. | Ph.D. | knowledge, women, invest | 4, 5, 2009 |
| Odhiambo, Judith Apondi | Grace, Daniel | Legislation of Structural Violence, Inequities, and Social Injustices? An Institutional Ethnography of the social organization of HIV Healthcare and Treatment for African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) People Living with HIV in Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-03 | Biomedical HIV discourses demonstrate that people living with HIV on antiretroviral treatment (ART) can achieve undetectable viral load or a state of undetectability, which is fundamental for optimizing health outcomes, decreasing mortality and morbidity, and preventing HIV transmission. Despite the biomedical breakthroughs and the global and national commitment to end HIV/AIDS, African, Caribbean, and Black (ACB) people remain structurally disadvantaged, marginalized and experience disproportionate burden of HIV. The way that HIV healthcare and treatment are organized has significant implications for ACB people. This dissertation research draws on institutional ethnography (IE) to explore how ACB people access HIV healthcare and treatment given the social context and their actualities. Through the lens of structural violence, this IE illuminates invisible and taken-for-granted harmful effects of laws, policies and institutional practices organizing and regulating healthcare access and delivery in Ontario, Canada. The research explicates how laws, policies, and institutional practices shape Black people’s day-to-day lives in ways that constrain their ability to access and engage in HIV healthcare, adhere to ART, and reach undetectability. This research uses data obtained through semi-structured interviews with Black people living with HIV (n=20) and fifteen health workers (n=15), including physicians, nurses, pharmacists, frontline workers, and health policy actors, and textual analysis of biomedical HIV/AIDS discourses, and legislative and human right frameworks. The inquiry begins from the experiences of ACB people seeking HIV healthcare and explores the struggles they encounter accessing care within Canada’s healthcare system. This inquiry demonstrates that standardized biomedical HIV discourses, which are presented as “best practices,” ignore and obscure forms of structural violence that perpetuate inequities and violate individual and population right to health. The dissertation unmasks a multi-axial model of violence, inequities, social injustices, and suffering that constrain Black people’s ability to enter the healthcare system, access HIV healthcare, adhere to ART, reach undetectability, and achieve optimal health outcomes and quality life, and therefore undermining public health and global HIV response efforts of ending HIV and contributing to the pathologization of Black people. Actioning Black Health provides a human rights, equity and social justice informed operational framework for facilitating HIV healthcare and treatment interventions. | Ph.D. | public health, healthcare, equity, worker, equit, marginalized, institut, social justice, injustice, human rights, violence | 3, 4, 8, 10, 16 |
| Miles, Amanda Sue | Tropepe, Vincent | The Role of dmbx1 and pcdh15 in Zebrafish Retinal Development and Disease | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-03 | The retina is organized into layers of different retinal cells, including photoreceptors, which are responsible for vision. Precise development of the retina requires (1) the coordinated expression of genetic networks to promote the differentiation of different retinal cells from multipotent retinal progenitor cells (RPCs), and (2) the adaptation of structural features to elaborate unique cell morphologies necessary for their function. Improper development or maintenance of retinal cells are responsible for many retinal dystrophies including blinding diseases, Retinitis Pigmentosa (RP) and Usher syndrome (USH). In this thesis, I explore two genes that exemplify these processes including the homeobox transcription factor, dmbx1, and putative adhesion molecule and USH gene, pcdh15, in the retina. Using CRISPR genome editing technology, I created the first zebrafish mutants for the paralogs dmbx1a/b and pcdh15b that display retinopathic features. Despite previous accounts that suggest dmbx1 is required for RPC cell cycle exit, I find that although there are some early defects in RPC proliferation and cell death, the retina initially forms normally in the mutant context. However, specifically in dmbx1a mutants, I find novel phenotypes showing greater amounts of retinal cell death, failure of post-embryonic retinal growth, and progressive development of dystrophic photoreceptors. RNA-seq analysis indicates that these phenotypes can be attributed to dysregulation of a small subset of genes associated with retinal disease and ciliogenesis. Although reports of Pcdh15 mice mutants fail to mimic retinopathy, I show that zebrafish pcdh15b mutants display defects in the outer segment (OS) regions of photoreceptors, and the synapse. Zebrafish pcdh15b mutants show abnormal photoreceptor integrity, including detachment of OS from the cell body, and abnormal growth of OS discs, which are both exacerbated under bright light conditions, as well as disorganization of synaptic elements. Furthermore, the current model of USH-associated retinal disease suggests that USH is a degenerative issue, however, the detection of these defects in early developing photoreceptor cells indicates a progressive developmental pathology. Together, my work highlights new finding of these genes using zebrafish models, and the importance of establishing proper transcriptional gene networks, as well as maintaining structural molecules in the prevention of retinal dystrophies. | Ph.D. | labor, fish | 8, 14 |
| Najafi, Farzin | Singh, Chandra Veer CV||Sain, Mohini M | Fatigue and Fracture Behavior of Graphene-based Nanomaterials | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-03 | Mechanical durability is an important factor for a reliable design and commercialization of nanostructured products, where the components are susceptible to mechanical failure induced by static and cyclic loads. Known as "wonder material" graphene has demonstrated a great potential to be used in multifunctional nanostructures and nanodevices. However, after more than a decade of research, studies have reported the mechanical performance of graphene-based nanomaterials is far from the initial hype. The key issues are that graphene suffers from an intrinsically brittle behavior and an interfacially weak interaction in contact with adjacent constituents. The present thesis studies both issues under static and cyclic loads. Initially, atomistic simulations were performed to understand the underlying mechanisms and required kinetic conditions for the fatigue failure of graphene. While the failure was a thermally activated process, an extreme defect sensitivity was captured for graphene in which the fatigue life was completely dominated by the first covalent bond dissociation. Considering the inevitability of defects, such a drawback stressed a need for modifying the lattice structure of graphene such as by using chemical functionalization. Using extensive atomistic simulations coupled with AFM-based nanoindentation tests, we systematically studied the fatigue behavior of graphene oxide and presented the tailoring of functional groups as a tool to tune the intrinsic fatigue resistance and lifetime of graphene. It was demonstrated how a controlled chemical functionalization of graphene oxide can indeed enhance the defect tolerance and maximize the fatigue lifetime of graphene, up to five-fold at a low degree of functionalization (5\%) with higher content of epoxy groups. Using a similar approach, the possibility of tailoring functional groups was evaluated on enhancing the interfacial properties of graphene/polymer nanocomposites. From an atomistic insight, an enhanced load transfer was observed at the interface of functionalized graphene/polymer owing to the creation of mechanical entanglements and hydrogen-bond networks. We also reported that by a selective degree of functionalization (approximately 10\%), a superior fracture resistance can be achieved for the graphene-based polymer nanocomposites. This was attributed to a transition in the failure mode from interfacial slippage (for graphene/polymer) to an interfacial crack arresting (for graphene oxide/polymer). | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Edmonds, Kevin | Teichman, Judith | Legalize it? A Comparative Study of Cannabis Economies in St. Vincent and St. Lucia | Political Science | 2021-03 | This dissertation examines the historical origins, as well as the cultural, political and economic significance of the ganja industries of the Eastern Caribbean islands of St. Vincent and St. Lucia. The primary research question this dissertation sought to answer was, would the legalization of ganja in the Eastern Caribbean be an economically viable replacement for bananas? The additional two sub-questions were: What are the power dynamics of the illegal ganja trade? Furthermore, what is the current contribution of the ganja trade to the economies of St. Vincent and St. Lucia? The central argument of this dissertation is that the emergence, variation and importance of the ganja economies in St. Vincent and St. Lucia arise from their particular historical legacies of colonial underdevelopment and the failure of capitalism to generate a sustained, widespread improvement in living standards. The historical combination of outward-oriented economies that failed to meet the needs of the domestic majority, and weak states (themselves a product of capitalist underdevelopment) facilitated a pattern of resistance rooted in the use of illegal activities as a mode of survival employed by the rural and urban poor. This pattern of resistance has its origins in clandestine circuits of trade and production that arose during slavery. However, unlike past illegal economic activities, the ganja economy, in responding to widespread unemployment and catering to regional as well as local needs, represents a departure from the plantation model of the past. Despite data limitations, this project has established that ganja has become much more important to these economies than bananas or remittances, acting as an indispensable grassroots social safety net. However, given the power of international capitalist interests and the predisposition of domestic elites, the available evidence thus far suggests that the governments of these Eastern Caribbean countries will not pursue the policies necessary to ensure that the ganja industry develops in a way that benefits local populations and threatens to erase the lifeline that ganja has provided for so many in the region. | Ph.D. | social safety, employment, capital, trade, urban, rural, production, land | 1, 10, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15 |
| Carraro, Elisabetta | Somigli , Luca SM | Universes of the Mind: the Jungian Archetype of the Self in the Works of Philip K. Dick and Valerio Evangelisti | Italian Studies | 2021-03 | This thesis examines the influence of Jungian’s analytical psychology on Philip K. Dick’s early narratives and Valerio Evangelisti’ Eymerich Saga by focusing on the central Jungian archetype of the Self. “Universes of the mind,” a concept that comes from Dick, refers to the visionary power of symbolic images, namely, what Dick and Evangelisti tried to discover and investigate through their writing. By focusing on Dick’s Ubik and Evangelisti’s Cherudek, this thesis explores how Jung’s archetype of the Self manifests within the context of physics, mythology, numerology, alchemy and the history of religions in their novels. In both novels—and select other works by Dick and Evangelisti—Jungian theories of the archetypes influence not only the narrative structures but also the character dynamics. By moreover following Campbell’s hero journey—a theoretical journey based on Jung’s process of individuation—these writers represent the inner struggle of the individual to achieve psychological integration. Despite significant variances between them, the two authors take inspiration from Jung’s concepts of synchronicity and schizophrenia in order to represent the condition of capitalist society. These similarities between Dick’s and Evangelisti’s SF make it possible to identify a shared tendency in their use of literature as a way to represent the psychological effects of capitalism in western society. | Ph.D. | capital, invest | 9 |
| Balasingham , Katherine | Lovejoy, Nathan R | Patterns of Selection in Osmoregulatory and Visual Protein Coding Genes in Beloniform and Clupeiform Fishes as an Evolutionary Response to Major Ecological Transitions | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2021-03 | Ecological transitions arise due to opportunities that present themselves facilitating species transitions to novel habitats, diets, behaviours, and other ecological adaptations that can be marked in their molecular blueprints. Studies have explored variation in species genetics in the context of evolution by implementing methods that estimate patterns of selection acting in genes likely involved with ecological transitions. In my thesis, I implement these methods to determine them overall patterns of selection on candidate genes that are likely influenced by ecological transitions using teleost fishes as my model system. To test hypotheses of transitions between marine and freshwater habitats as a major evolutionary event overcoming salinity barriers, I analyze osmoregulatory related (OR) and non-osmoregulatory related (NOR) genes using marine and freshwater Beloniformes (chapter 2). I find that evidence of positive selection was prevalent in OR genes for marine species based on random-sites models, but clade model analyses which estimates selection patterns between partitions in a phylogeny (i.e. between marine and freshwater) revealed an overall purifying selective force on OR genes across beloniforms, with stronger purifying selection in marine beloniforms. The results suggest that stronger selective forces may be prevalent in marine beloniforms in order to maintain protein integrity which may be important in these species that occupy diverse marine habitats (i.e. coastal, pelagic, lagoonal) where salinities can differ. I also find evidence for genome-wide influence due to similar patterns of selection acting on NOR genes, suggesting that transitioning to freshwater can impact other genes not directly associated with osmoregulation. In chapters 3 and 4, I further explore the influence of ecological transitions, but focusing on photic regime shifts between marine and freshwater habitats as well as transitions to different diets to elucidate if one ecological transition had a stronger impact on vision (i.e. opsin) evolution. I analyzed Beloniformes (chapter 3) and Clupeiformes (chapter 4) opsins and find that, interestingly, diet played a more prominent role in opsin evolution than habitat. Diet explained significant shifts in selection in six out of nine beloniform opsins and for all six clupeiform opsins analyzed. | Ph.D. | water, transit, marine, fish, species, ecolog | 6, 11, 14, 15 |
| Ksiezak, Aleksandra E | Pouls-Wegner, Mary Ann | Tell el-Yahudiyeh Ware at Tell el-Maskhuta – Evolution, Character, and Function during the Middle Bronze Age/Second Intermediate Period | Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations | 2021-03 | Tell el-Maskhuta was a major settlement in Wadi Tumilat located in eastern Nile Delta with Western Asiatic population dating to the Second Intermediate Period. It was excavated by the Wadi Tumilat Project under the direction of John S. Holladay in the late 1970s and early 80s, and despite its remote location, showed great potential in understanding of the 15th Dynasty presence in the periphery of the eastern Nile Delta. Unfortunately, after the initial excavation and land survey were completed, the site was never fully analyzed or published. This study aims to re-examine the archival material and conduct a re-evaluation of the data collected during the excavation of the site. The typological and petrographic analysis of Tell el-Yahudiyeh ware found at Tell el-Maskhuta allowed to confirm the dating of the site and provided evidence of local adaptation and evolution of this vessel type. A pattern of changes in the fabric use attested for those highly specialized and standardized vessels was a sign of evolution of their sequence of production in order to accommodate locally available raw materials. It also signalled the emergence of a local ceramic tradition incorporating both Egyptian and Levantine traits. The analysis of available data showed that, contrary to previously accepted theories, Wadi Tumilat could have been involved in the long-distance, over-land trade with both southern and northern Levant. The results of this work present a better understanding of the site’s function and development during the Middle Bronze Age (MBA), its place in the Hyksos trade network, and role in the local settlement system. Consequently, Wadi Tumilat was considered as a significant southern corridor leading in and out of Egypt, and a part of the southern desert route traversing the Sinai Peninsula towards the Negev Desert and the Jordan Valley. Tell el-Maskhuta, due to its size and location, could have functioned as a “gateway city” into the Wadi, and consequently into the Nile Delta. As a part of the Hyksos trade network, Tell el-Maskhuta provides invaluable clues to the logistics of the 15th Dynasty economy and its contacts with neighbouring areas beyond the reach of the maritime trade. | Ph.D. | trade, production, maritime, land | 10, 12, 14, 15 |
| Lor, Prathna | Ruti, Mari||Cobb, Michael | Unthinkable Subjects: Postmortem Poetics in Modernity | English | 2021-03 | “Unthinkable Subjects: Postmortem Poetics in Modernity” investigates the status of the dead in theory and the avant-garde at the limits of race and sex. Bringing together queer theory, critical race studies, psychoanalysis, and contemporary experimental writing, this thesis suggests that the dead animate these fields as a site for ethical and political inquiry. If oppressive rhetoric murders by castigating nonnormative others beyond the sphere of the common—as sick, infected, contagion, dying, or already dead—this thesis examines the risks of reclaiming such murdered and murderous bodies. Since fatality invigorates queer theory and critical race studies, the first part of the thesis considers the murderous subjectivities that compose these fields. In this section, the thesis critiques the “murderous jouissance” of the antisocial thesis in queer theory, which offers the most extreme version of self-annihilating fantasy as an ethos of being in the world. Given that the antisocial thesis is most often articulated through psychoanalysis, the thesis goes on to historicize questions of psychoanalysis and race in Frantz Fanon, arguing that for racialized subjects a condition of murderousness registers the violent logic of racism as a psychotic aberration. The rest of the thesis offers readings of contemporary experimental texts working along axes of race and sex, troubling both queer theory’s self-assured fantasy and the apparent inescapability of racialization as a psychically damaging prison. The writers in this study—Wilson Harris, Gail Scott, and Renee Gladman—paradoxically respond to the murderous language of oppressive rhetoric with texts that demonstrate how language not only murders but is itself murdered. Murdered language is registered by the experimental poetics that claim unbecoming, decay, attrition, severance, and violence as their form, resulting in narratives of “in-existence”—texts that formally dwell in and meditate on ambivalence, refuse narrative wholeness, solicit poetic enigma, and traverse the antagonisms of language. Each author’s investment in murder, self-murder, self-annihilation, or self-removal paradoxically offers nonaggressive forms of undoing, ravishment, and coming undone as that which occasions novel ways to claim ontological murder at the scintillating and ecstatic limit of fatal language. | Ph.D. | racism, queer, invest, violence | 4, 5, 9, 16 |
| Benn-John, Jacqueline | Wane, Njoki N | (Re)defining Feminist Resistance, Activism and Empowerment in Rape Crisis Centres: Black Women’s Perspectives and Implications for Education | Social Justice Education | 2021-03 | The anti-rape movement has largely understood issues of sexual violence, including its prevalence, prevention, and response to survivors of sexual violence, from the perspective of Eurocentric ideals of White womanhood. The theories and practices related to violence against women used by mainstream feminists are largely gender-based and do not pay sufficient attention to intersectionality – how race, culture, class, and other important social factors inform deeper understandings of violence against women. In turn, African/Black women’s experiences and contributions to feminist organizing have been overlooked, undocumented and made invisible with hegemonic feminist movements. This dissertation acknowledges, documents and amplifies African/Black women’s experiences working and volunteering in rape crisis and sexual assault centres in Ontario, Canada. Using an anti-colonial, African/Black Canadian feminist and integrative anti-racism theoretical framework to examine qualitative interviews with ten African/Black women about their experiences and perspectives on feminist organizing in rape crisis centres and sexual assault centres, this research reveals that African/Black women feel invisible and that their contributions to the anti-rape movement have been unvalued and disregarded. Based on the ten interviews, I argue that a focus on the intersectional experiences of womanhood for African/Black women within rape crisis centre work is needed to advance social justice within feminist organizing. Consequently, if the colonial and operative processes within rape crisis and sexual assault centres are not disrupted, the anti-rape movement will continue to perpetuate systemic violence with disproportionate adverse outcomes for African/Black women, whether as workers, clients or support seekers in rape crisis and sexual assault centres. This dissertation puts forth several instrumental recommendations and calls for transformative education, pedagogy, scholarship and research that centres the embodied lived experiences of African/Black women in classrooms, higher learning institutions, social services, feminist organizations and subsequent social movements within Canada and elsewhere. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, learning, knowledges, anti-racism, racism, gender, women, feminis, violence against women, worker, institut, social justice, violence | 4, 5, 8, 16 |
| Luo, Ai Li | Zhang, Haibo | Lung Repair and Regeneration after Injury: Molecular Mechanisms and Therapeutic Opportunities | Medical Science | 2021-03 | Introduction: Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is characterized by defused alveolar damage and impaired re-epithelialization. Left lung pneumonectomy has been shown to increase lung tidal volume that leads to pneumocyte proliferation in the right lung, suggesting that mechano-transduction may support lung regeneration. This study aimed to 1) investigate the molecular mechanisms of impaired lung repair in ARDS induced by different insults, and 2) test whether mechano-transduction can leverage lung repair through activation of alveolar regenerative properties. Hypothesis: Impaired alveolar re-epithelization is common among different phenotypes of ARDS, and modulation of mechano-transduction provokes endogenous repair. Method: Mass spectrometry was used to examine the lung injury microenvironment protein profiles of 3 mouse models of ARDS (acid, endotoxin and mechanical ventilation). Mechanical transduction by continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) was applied daily to acid aspiration model in a dose-dependent manner to determine the optimal stretch to activate endogenous alveolar stem cell. Main finding: The 3 models of lung injury commonly shared epithelial injury including pulmonary edema and neutrophil recruitment. Defective repair mechanism was evidenced by diminished surfactant, antioxidant, and mechanoreceptor- Piezo1. Alveolar re-epithelialization and repair was triggered by CPAP at optimal pressure. The preservation of epithelial cells was attributed to the activation of Piezo1-YAP pathway. Conclusion: Protein profiling identified alveolar epithelial injury and impaired repair mechanisms, which can be re-activated by mechanical signal transduction via Piezo1-YAP signaling pathway as a novel therapeutic approach for lung injury. | Ph.D. | invest, regeneration | 9, 15 |
| Bowley, Gregory Freeman Wayne | Benson, Peter | Private Oppression: An Account of Motive and Purpose in Anglo-Canadian Private Liability | Law | 2021-03 | The role of subjective intent, motive, and purpose in the assignment of private liability in interpersonal disputes remains a point of uncertainty and dispute in contemporary Anglo-Canadian jurisprudence and commentary. Notwithstanding a preponderance of academic interventions and decisions of the highest authority to the effect that an actor’s subjective intent, motive, or purpose plays no justifiable part in classifying private conduct as wrongful, several causes of action which make either express or implicit use of a subjective element as a prerequisite for the imposition of liability persist in Anglo-Canadian tort law, including the torts of libel, slander, malicious falsehood, slander to title, conspiracy to harm, watching and besetting, and private nuisance of the sort found in Hollywood Silver Fox Farm Ltd v Emmett.This dissertation takes the presence in Anglo-Canadian common law of such bases of private liability seriously. As human artifice created and refined over the course of centuries, the existence of these tort doctrines is taken to be presumptively intelligible, explicable, and significant in and to a broader system of private liability. As such, the account advanced makes two foundational assumptions: that all such tort doctrines respond to and manifest identical normative content, and that this shared normative content can be theorized in a fashion that accords with dominant rights-based accounts of the balance of Anglo-Canadian tort liability. Proceeding from these assumptions, this dissertation develops and illustrates two complementary positions. The first, using a core case approach centred on the defamation torts, articulates an understanding of the structures of the torts of private oppression as reflecting a shared treatment of subjective intent, motive, and purpose. The second, using an interpretive approach, explains the internal logic of a single theorized interpersonal entitlement all such tort doctrines can be understood as operating to protect from encroachment by others: juridical personhood. Together, these two accounts identify a coherent doctrinal group within Anglo-Canadian tort law, the torts of private oppression, and provide a theoretical account of the normative phenomenon to which that doctrinal group responds, private oppression, that is demonstrably reconcilable with leading rights-based accounts of Anglo-Canadian tort liability. | S.J.D. | land | 15 |
| Snaggs-Wilson, Suzan Eva | Wane, Njoki||Lopez, Ann | Black Women in Leadership – Dominant Discourses that Construct, Maintain and Legitimize Gender, Race Class Bias in Top Canadian Corporations | Social Justice Education | 2021-03 | Abstract Decades after the establishment of the feminist movement in Canada, systemic gender biases proliferate in corporate boardrooms. Notwithstanding the influx of women into the paid Canadian workforce, gender inequality, specifically the disproportion of women in executive roles in Canadian corporations, is confounding. This study examines dominant androcentric and Eurocentric discourses about gender, race, and class that influence how society identifies and ascribes masculinity to leadership roles. Dominant discourses construct, maintain, and legitimize biases that impede women's career progression to senior leadership. Discourses in media, for example, television, movies, print and other narratives, influence how society behaves and treats women leaders in male-dominated roles as President, CEO, CFO, Chairs and other named officers in Canadian Financial Post 500 companies. The theoretical framework incorporates three theories in deconstructing androcentric leadership discourses and biases. First, the research interrogates the motivation for the division and deskilling of labour using Harry Braverman's Labour Process Management theory, an extension of Karl Marx's class theory, to examine the history of hegemony, capitalism, and patriarchal settings. Next, Gender Theory analyzes social, structural and institutional barriers women leaders experience as they disrupt the traditional roles women have and are expected to play in society. Subjective androcentric discourses relating to femininity, such as work-life balance, care-giving, child-bearing, and tropes like the 'superwoman syndrome,' are reviewed. Finally, Black Feminism interrogates tacit and implicit biases that perpetuate the disenfranchisement of Black females as Presidents, CEO's, or Chairs of corporate boards in FP 500 companies. The Conceptual Framework looks at fundamental Leadership Theories to examine the evolution of leadership and characteristics that historically are associated with masculinity. The research employs a qualitative research methodology using content analysis and critical discourse analysis incorporating books, journals, documentaries, public interviews and other writings on gender, race and class hegemonies. These allow for a critical examination of the androcentric and patriarchal ideologies rooted within capitalistic systems. Such androcentric ideologies impact compensation, career progression and career longevity for women in leadership, particularly Black and racialized women. The findings recommend a critical pedagogy and call for a profound commitment by all stakeholders to reify change. | Ph.D. | ABS, pedagogy, gender, women, female, feminis, labour, capital, inequality, equalit, institut | 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Wettstein, Marian Severin | Kulkarni, Girish S. | Utilization of Re-resection in T1 Bladder Cancer: A Population-based Study | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-03 | Introduction: T1 bladder cancer represents the aggressive end of the spectrum of non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. Based on proposed therapeutic, diagnostic, and prognostic benefits, guidelines recommend a second resection, a so-called re-resection, 2 to 6 weeks after initial transurethral resection of the bladder tumor. This thesis aims to investigate the uptake of re-resection (Objective 1), factors associated with re-resection (Objective 2), and the oncological benefit of re-resection (Objective 3) in T1 bladder cancer at the population level within the province of Ontario (Canada). Methods: Manually abstracted bladder cancer pathology reports were linked to health administrative databases to (1) identify patients diagnosed with T1 bladder cancer between January 1, 2001 and December 31, 2015, (2) to ascertain if they underwent re-resection, (3) to verify their survival, and (4) to measure covariates at diagnosis. Interrupted time series analysis was used to explore Objective 1 while multivariable logistic regression and time-dependent Cox proportional hazards regression were used to analyze Objectives 2 and 3, respectively. Results: A cohort of 7,666 patients diagnosed with T1 bladder cancer could be identified. Re-resection rates increased from 8.4% in 2001 to 28.3% in 2015 regardless of an influential guideline revision released in April 2008. Patients with a more aggressive tumor profile, individuals without sufficiently sampled muscularis propria as well as younger, healthier, and socio-economically advantaged patients were more likely to receive re-resection. Considering surgeon-specific factors, more senior, lower-volume, and male surgeons were less likely to offer re-resection to their patients. During any time of follow-up, the receipt of re-resection was associated with a lower rate of death. Conclusions: This thesis currently represents the largest cohort of patients diagnosed with T1 bladder cancer. The rather low uptake of re-resection regardless of an influential guideline revision in combination with heterogeneous uptake behavior among different groups of surgeons implies a gap in knowledge translation/exchange that needs to be addressed by tailored initiatives after identification of specific barriers to change. When it comes to the oncological benefit of re-resection, the findings of this work represent an essential piece of evidence supporting the use of re-resection in T1 bladder cancer. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, ABS, knowledge, invest | 1, 2, 4, 9 |
| Goracinova, Elena | Wolfe, David A. | Varieties of Embeddedness: Essays on Technological Transition in Automotive Regions | Political Science | 2021-03 | Automotive incumbents are undergoing a technological transformation and face intensified competition from big tech companies. New entrants like Tesla are challenging existing automakers and betting on electric vehicles. Established software giants like Google's Waymo promise autonomous cars in the future. So, it could be either incumbents or big tech that dominate innovation activities and integrate autonomy, connectivity and battery technologies in vehicles. And their innovations may be geared toward reducing vehicles' use or toward preserving the car-centric paradigm. The dominant network of innovators can also differ across regions. In other words, the transition can have varied effects on the economic structure and mobility patterns in automotive jurisdictions. This dissertation aimed to identify how automotive jurisdictions reconfigure their industrial and support structures to promote new path development toward connected and autonomous vehicles (C/AVs). In political science, the Varieties of Capitalism literature is considered helpful in providing insights into how regions will adjust to these challenges. It suggests the national institutional context will shape the capitalist variety of technological change. However, transition in automotive jurisdictions diverges from these expectations. Therefore, this dissertation draws on recent conceptual advances from evolutionary economic geography to develop an analytical framework that casts light on how regional preconditions underpin different routes of transformation. The framework is applied to a qualitative comparative analysis of industrial path development towards C/AVs in two automotive regions, namely Ontario (Canada) and Baden-Wurttemberg (B-W). Findings suggest that in regions where automotive incumbents have historically dominated firm networks and been the main target of institutional supports, like B-W, automotive firms capitalize on the initial favourable conditions and lead innovation in C/AVs. When information technology (IT) firms are more influential in the automotive jurisdiction, like in the case of Ontario, there is more significant room for new entrants and innovation that challenges the car-centric paradigm. This has opened a window of opportunity for the Canadian automotive region to upgrade from a production hub to an R center. In summary, the dissertation shows that national-level institutions are limited in their ability to help us understand the processes of value capture and innovation at the sub-national level. | Ph.D. | wind, capital, transit, production, institut | 7, 9, 11, 12, 16 |
| Ribeiro, Roberto Vanin Pinto | Rao, Vivek | Ex Situ Heart Perfusion: Assessment of Novel Strategies to Improve Transplantation of Hearts Donated After Circulatory Death | Medical Science | 2021-03 | Heart transplantation is the gold-standard treatment for the eligible patient with end-stage heart failure. However, the lack of donor organ availability limits its application. One alternative would be the use of hearts recovered from donation after circulatory death (DCD). However, as DCD hearts invariably undergo a period of warm ischemia, their use is challenging due to the lack of proper methods to determine their viability. Ex Situ Heart Perfusion (ESHP) is an alternative preservation strategy which permits continuous viability assessment of the organ. This study investigates the main limitations of ESHP - need for an optimized perfusate, a validated method to assess heart viability and function, and alternatives to ESHP that still enable the use of DCD hearts. Various models were used, ranging from in vitro endothelial cell cultures to clinically relevant porcine heart transplants. First, we demonstrated that perfusate supplementation with SOM-TRN-001, an experimental cardioprotective solution, significantly enhances endothelial and myocardial preservation during ESHP. Second, we showed that markers of left ventricular work and reserve were the best estimators of myocardial performance following transplantation. Also, we showed that simple non-invasive estimates of ventricular function are useful in this setting. Finally, we demonstrated that DCD hearts could tolerate cold ischemia after being reconditioned with normothermic regional perfusion (NRP) – a procurement strategy involving in situ donor organ reperfusion and assessment, basically eliminating the routine need for ESHP. Furthermore, we again saw the benefits of SOM-TRN-001 on the preservation of DCD hearts. Optimizing cardiac preservation and functional recovery during ESHP is critical to facilitate the widespread clinical use of this technique. Seeking alternative strategies to increase the utilization of DCD hearts is also critical. Ultimately, the goal is to expand the donor heart pool. We hope the results of the work presented here can be soon translated into clinical practice and aid in the use of DCD hearts, addressing the critical donor organ shortage. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Yang, Jane | Prescott, Steven A | Implications of Degeneracy and Pleiotropy for Homeostatic Regulation of Neuronal Properties | Biomedical Engineering | 2023-03 | Neuronal excitability is homeostatically regulated through coordinated adjustments of diverse ion channels. This is possible because the basis for excitability is degenerate—equivalent excitability can be achieved via different ion channels. But one must also consider that ion channels are pleiotropic, meaning that they affect multiple properties. Then how does a neuron co-regulate multiple (degenerate) properties by adjusting pleiotropic channels? The overarching goal of this thesis is to study the implications of pleiotropy and degeneracy for homeostatic regulation of neuronal properties. Using simulations, I showed that successful homeostatic regulation requires that the number of adjustable ion channels (nin) must exceed the number of regulated properties (nout). Those results reveal that homeostatic regulation can fail from having to regulate multiple properties concurrently, which is more challenging than regulating them separately. In collaboration with experimentalists, I conducted simulations to demonstrate that nociceptor excitability is degenerate on the basis of different subtypes of voltage-gated sodium channels (NaVs). This has critical implications for the efficacy of subtype-selective NaV inhibitors: Given that one subtype can compensate for another, the therapeutic effects of blocking NaV1.7 can be offset by compensatory changes in other NaVs (i.e. subversive compensation). I reviewed preclinical and clinical literature on NaV1.7-selective inhibitors to see whether there was evidence for subversive compensation, a possible explanation for why preclinical success did not translate into clinical success. I found that nearly all preclinical studies were single dosing, and would not have observed the effects of subversive compensation. Overall, this thesis shows that degeneracy is an important consideration when trying to understand homeostatic regulation of neuronal excitability under normal and pathological conditions. Indeed, degeneracy predicts that subtype-selective ion channel inhibitors might be particularly prone to having their therapeutic effects subverted by homeostatic regulation of other, non-targeted channels, which is obviously an important yet underappreciated factor in choosing drug targets. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Grevstad, Peter Austin | McCready, Lance T | Queering Places and Curricular Spaces: LGBTQ+ Students in the Community, the College, and the Curriculum | Social Justice Education | 2023-03 | This exploratory dissertation addresses a significant gap in Canadian scholarship: the inadequate recognition of LGBTQ+ student experiences in a community college, and the problem of queer presence in the curriculum, college, and community. The research question is: “What are the school experiences of LGBTQ+ students in an Ontario college, and how does campus climate affect experiences such as coming out?” This work introduces campus climate, Queer identity formation, the ‘campus closet’, and the problem of unwelcoming schools with heteronormative curricula and school ethos. Campus climate for LGBTQ+ students is problematic, yet a positive climate is fundamental to students’ feeling welcome, as institutions undertake EDI initiatives. Literature uses a social justice framework, and introduces major themes: LGBTQ+ identity formation; the lack of recognition of diversity in schools; research and policy which do not serve students equally; and curriculum as heteronormative social control. This project employs qualitative research methods, in particular grounded theory, to situate the experiences of LGBTQ+ college students in Canada. Campus climate should reflect Queer presence in the curriculum, the college, and the wider community. The findings introduce the research participants, and reflections on homophobia, campus climate, inclusive curriculum, as well as social relationships inside and outside the classroom. Findings also suggest a theory about the school lives of LGBTQ+ students: that for queer students a positive campus climate lies at the intersection of Queer in the curriculum, Queer in the college, and Queer in the community, and further, that a welcoming local community, institution, and curriculum shape the school experiences of LGBTQ+ students, and contribute to their persistence in their studies and successful degree completion, as well as to their determination of a post-secondary education being an experience worth wanting. | Ph.D. | secondary education, queer, lgbtq, climate, institut, social justice | 4, 5, 13, 16 |
| Pentz, Brian | Klenk, Nicole | On the Role of Resource Epistemology and Epistemic Tensions as Explainers of Fisheries Management Outcomes | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2023-03 | The aggregate status and trends of marine capture fisheries and the ecosystems which support fisheries production have deteriorated significantly since the end of World War II. These declines have material impacts for human health and well-being, as fisheries make important contributions to employment, economic activity, food security, and cultural and social practices around the world. Fisheries research not only seeks to identify biomass declines in commercial fisheries and their supporting ecosystems, but also to explain declines, identify root causes, and identify potential solutions to improve outcomes for resources and resource users. This dissertation contributes to the broader effort seeking to understand the causes of unsustainable outcomes for fisheries resources by examining the influence of resource epistemology on resource decision-making. The dissertation uses a case study of northern cod (Gadus morhua) in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean to examine how epistemic tensions influence (1) the governance of species recovery, (2) decision-making in the context of the precautionary approach to fisheries management, and (3) the uptake of knowledge co-production processes in fisheries management. The dissertation borrows from the findings of the case study to inform a literature review which outlines the potential that climate change could undermine resource policy efficacy by creating or exacerbating epistemic tensions between stakeholders. This work views the epistemic orientations embedded in governance structures as key sources of tension between stakeholders, which influence resource decision-making and, in turn, resource outcomes. | Ph.D. | food security, well-being, knowledge, employment, production, climate, ocean, marine, fish, species, ecosystem, governance | 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 |
| Chami, Julie | Ryan, James | Educational Currency: Teacher-Parents, Privilege, and Schools Choice in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-03 | Neoliberal school choice policies continue to expand across the globe. Supporters claim that the school system’s failings can be solved by moving away from a one-size-fits-all, geographically allocated body, and towards a more diversified, individualized market. At the forefront of this movement are choice advocates who insist that it is more equitable to provide families with the opportunity to decide where their children will learn and that school markets are more socially responsive. However, these sentiments are not undisputed. The following study is built on the opposing position – that current school choice policies are discriminatory and unjust. I challenge the notion that markets enhance equity by investigating the complex process of how schools are selected. Because neoliberal, market methods are rooted in competition, I emphasize that the practice of school choice is yet another opportunity in which families experience uneven amounts of advantage. But, while many agree that school choice policies privilege certain parents more than others, little is known about what this privilege looks like, how it is attained, and how it is used during the selection process. In this study, I attempt to understand the intricacy of school market privilege by studying teacher-parents, a subgroup of the population who possess it. The experiences of teacher-parents provided insight into how privilege may be differently retained, acquired, and used in school choice. This is the story of how twenty-three public school teachers navigate the marketed school system in Ontario, Canada. In this study, participants share their insider experience and demonstrate how their unique combinations of cultural, social, and economic capital allowed them to collect and spend (use) educational currency (EC) as they choose schools for their own children. The data not only reaffirms that certain populations possess unique amounts of educational currency and provides insight into what exactly EC is; it also unveils that choice can have a concerning tendency to shape a more racially, ethnically, and economically segregated system. This information has become even more relevant since the as the Covid-19 global pandemic has created novel concerns and options including various forms of online and distance learning. Word count: 348. Keywords: school choice, privilege, educational currency | Ph.D. | equitable, learning, equity, capital, invest, equit | 4, 9, 10 |
| Klassen, Michael | Sa, Creso | Curriculum Governance in the Professions: A Comparative and Sociological Analysis of Engineering Accreditation | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-03 | Professional education operates in a tension between its two key institutional homes – universities and professional bodies. Curriculum governance – the structures and processes for making decisions about the curriculum – is embedded in higher education but influenced by professional accreditation. This multiple paper thesis explores the implications of a worldwide shift in engineering towards outcomes-based accreditation. The study is framed by a comparative case study methodology, and empirical data is drawn from 78 interviews across the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, and South Africa. All four countries are signatory to the Washington Accord, a mutual recognition agreement that has been influential in helping to spread outcomes-based accreditation.This study is theoretically grounded in Bernstein’s pedagogic device, from the sociology of education, and regime theory, from international relations. At a global level, the key findings are that the Washington Accord has evolved into an explicit regime that shapes the behaviour of its 20+ signatories, as well as countries thinking about applying. From a power perspective, the regime disproportionately benefits its founding members, while newer signatories are scrutinized before being admitted. From a cognitivist perspective, the regime is under threat from a subtle shift in its purpose, from mobility to quality assurance. Drawing on the pedagogic device, the thesis finds meaningful differences across countries in the structure of the ‘recontextualizing field’ – comprised of the official field which sets accreditation policy, and the pedagogic field which interprets and implements the policy. Four archetypes, based on the four countries, are shown to explain some of the differences in uptake of outcomes-based accreditation. Within the ‘field of reproduction’, curriculum governance structures are shown to differ according to the type of university. Research-intensive universities are less invested in accreditation, more decentralized, and centrally control the curriculum less. Teaching-intensive universities depend on accreditation for legitimacy and invest more in a centralized approach to curriculum governance. Overall, this study highlights the importance of power differences between old and new signatories, between research-intensive and teaching-intensive universities, and between central faculties and their departments. These tensions represent an important area of research within professional education at large. | Ph.D. | invest, production, institut, governance | 9, 12, 16 |
| Choubisa, Hitarth | Sargent, Edward H | Accelerating the Discovery of Materials for Energy Capture and Energy Storage Using Quantum Chemistry and Machine Learning | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-03 | In order to reduce the global dependence on fossil fuels it is critical that we develop new materials to efficiently capture and store energy. The enormous size of the material space poses a formidable challenge to the discovery of energy materials. In this thesis, I develop machine learning (ML) approaches and search algorithms that enable accelerated discovery of energy materials. First, I develop a material representation that enables relaxed crystal properties prediction from unrelaxed crystal structures using ML. The results show that the approach accelerates the discovery of mixed halide perovskites by a factor of 105 over conventional computational screening approaches based on Density Functional Theory (DFT). I apply the method to two material discovery problems: the search for photovoltaic materials with small bandgaps; and UV and IR light-emitting materials. Next, I generalize the above-mentioned approach to tackle one of the main criticisms of ML-based approaches: their black-box nature i.e., lack of interpretability. I do this by training accurate ML models that can predict energy above hull, bandgaps, and the nature of bandgaps among different material classes using unrelaxed crystal structures. With the combination of statistical techniques and simpler supervised learning methods, I develop a method to extract scientific insights from trained ML models and use these generated insights to design new, stable UV light emitting materials and direct bandgap semiconductors. Finally, I develop a method to efficiently search the chemical space. The proposed search method efficiently identifies the material with the desirable set of properties an order of magnitude faster than genetic algorithms and bayesian optimizations. Applying this to the discovery of oxygen evolution reaction (OER) catalysts, I predict several previously unreported promising candidates that are then validated in the lab. The best candidate Ru0.58Cr0.25Mn0.08Sb0.07O2 shows a mass activity 8 times higher than the current state-of-art, RuO2, and maintains performance for 180 hours while operating at 10mA/cm2 in acidic 0.5M H2SO4 electrolyte. The studies in this thesis introduce and demonstrate the application of data-driven approaches to accelerate the discovery of energy materials through the development of generalizable ML models, interpretability analysis and efficient search algorithms. | Ph.D. | learning, energy, fossil fuel | 4, 7, 13 |
| Beaulieu, Jack | Ganeri, Jonardon | Absence in Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā | Philosophy | 2023-03 | I examine competing views from Nyāya and Mīmāṃsā philosophers about the epistemology of absence, which asks how we learn that an object or property is absent. In particular, I examine Nyāya defenses of, and Mīmāṃsā challenges to, perceptualism, according to which we learn that an object or property is absent (abhāva) by perceiving (pratyakṣa) its absence. In the first chapter, I introduce cases of past absence (prāṅnāstitāsthala), purported counterexamples to perceptualism which involve agents learning in retrospect that an object or property was absent. I identify two groups of views about these cases: recollection views, according to which cases of past absence involve agents recalling negative information; and recollection failure views, according to which cases of past absence involve agents failing to recall positive information. I reconstruct two recollection views: a Bhāṭṭa view belonging to Uṃveka, and a Nyāya view belonging to Jayanta and Bhāsarvajña. I then examine Śālikanātha and Sucarita’s critiques of recollection views. In the second chapter, I examine recollection failure views. I introduce the Bhāṭṭa philosopher Pārthasārathi's view, following which I reconstruct the Nyāya philosopher Gaṅgeśa's critiques. Gaṅgeśa defends a similar view to Pārthasārathi's that mends its difficulties and secures a perceptualist explanation of past absence. According to Gaṅgeśa, agents learn that a recollectable (smaraṇārha) object or property was absent by inferring its past absence from failing to recall (asmaraṇa) that object or property. In the third chapter, I examine the Nyāya philosopher Raghunātha's attack on a condition according to which we are always aware of an absence as an absence of its counterpositive (pratiyogin), or its corresponding absent object or property. Gaṅgeśa defends this condition, showing that it is supported by a plausible thesis about the epistemology of relational properties and motivates the Nyāya defence of absence as irreducible to a positive. But Raghunātha identifies cases in which the condition fails. Finally, I provide a translation of, and commentary on, a selection from the Pramāṇapārāyaṇa by the Prābhākara philosopher Śālikanātha. I argue that he defends a reductionist metaphysics according to which absence reduces to an awareness-event (buddhi), and knowledge of absence thereby reduces to self-knowledge. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, learning | 2, 4 |
| Tatham, Christopher Duane | Green, Adam I | Life and Love Under Criminalization: The Experiences of People Living with HIV in Canada | Sociology | 2023-03 | Through in-depth qualitative interviews with 75 people living with HIV (PLWH), this dissertation examines the impact of HIV criminalization upon the lives of PLWH in Ontario, Canada, particularly in terms of HIV stigma, sexual and romantic relationships, and community, as well as the unique challenges the law creates for marginalized groups, specifically women living with HIV (WLWH) and racialized people living with HIV (RPLWH). The first paper of this dissertation examines how HIV criminalization impacts the lives of WLWH and the HIV stigma they experience. Key themes that emerge from the accounts of women in the study include how the law facilitates social exploitation, the impact of the law upon sexual and romantic relationships, and their treatment by the criminal justice system. The women in the study experience criminalization through the lens of motherhood – regardless of whether they have children. The second paper of this dissertation focuses on the experiences of Indigenous, Black, and other racialized people living with HIV who participated in the study, as they navigate disclosure, relationships, and life under HIV criminalization. RPLWH in the study report the experience of high amounts of HIV stigma in their communities. RPLWH employ various strategies to navigate the law and the high levels of perceived community stigma. These include keeping their HIV status hidden, having firm boundaries between and within communities, abstaining from relationships, leaving the country to have sex, avoiding HIV networks, and self-non-disclosure. Drawing upon the full sample, the third paper of this dissertation examines the impact of HIV criminalization upon the sexual and romantic relationships of PLWH, as well as the strategies they employ to navigate and protect themselves from the law. Key themes include concern with the law’s impact on dating desires and practices, the power imbalance that the law enables with serodiscordant partners, the privacy implications of being investigated or charged, as well as their potential treatment by both police and media. PLWH use various navigation strategies to protect themselves from the law including staying in relationships, celibacy, serosorting, anonymous and casual sex, leaving the jurisdiction, universal disclosure, non-disclosure, and disclosure documentation. | Ph.D. | ABS, women, invest, indigenous, marginalized, criminal justice, exploitation | 2, 5, 9, 10, 16 |
| Toffoli, Erica C | Coleman, Kevin||Kazal, Russell | ¡Saca Mi Foto!: The Visual Cultures of Undocumented Migration | History | 2023-03 | This interdisciplinary study traces the emergence of two competing visual cultures of undocumented migration in the U.S. borderlands between the 1950s and the 1990s. One was a nativist visual culture crafted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and its backers in the wake of the bracero program. Photographers affiliated with the agency, popular magazines, and the news media objectified Latin American migrants and depicted the border as vulnerable territory that required constant surveillance but would never be completely controlled. In doing so, they fortified xenophobic law and practice by framing sovereignty as a visual project that depended on rigorous oversight and the regulation of racialized migrants. Through this visual regime, the state cemented the ontological divide between citizens and “illegals” and helped forge the stereotype of the Latinx “alien”: a criminal trespasser who posed a persistent, insidious threat to the nation. In response, an eclectic cohort of artists, photojournalists, and documentary photographers based in Arizona, California, Florida, and Texas generated a critical, humanitarian visuality attuned to migrants’ subjectivities and lived realities. They collaborated with activists, new labor unions, and outlets from the radical and mainstream press. In the 1970s and 1980s, their work critiqued the militarization of the border, displayed the intimate bonds and rich culture that sustained transnational communities, condemned the exploitation that Latinx workers experienced under U.S. capitalism, and propelled movements for the rights of the undocumented. To access the perspectives of photographers, migrants, and spectators, I draw on evidence from memoirs, photo-essays, newspapers, oral history interviews, archival documents, private collections, and gallery exhibits. In doing so, I demonstrate that photographers played a pivotal role in creating—and reimagining—the modern image of “illegality.” In the hands of the state and its boosters, the camera was a disciplinary technology that fueled xenophobia and naturalized surveillance. But for migrants and their advocates, it was a tool of resistance that questioned nativist tropes and promoted solidarity with Latinx communities. | Ph.D. | citizen, labor, worker, capital, humanitarian, gini, land, sovereignty, exploitation | 4, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16 |
| Macgregor, Stuart Robert | Goring, Daphne R. | Downstream Regulators of Pollen-stigma Interactions in Arabidopsis thaliana | Cell and Systems Biology | 2023-03 | In the Brassicaceae, sexual reproduction is tightly controlled through a series of cell-to-cell communication events between the male pollen and the female pistil. This communication can result in either the acceptance or rejection of pollen, which ultimately controls the plant’s reproductive success. The basal compatible pollen response pathway is initiated by a Brassicaceae-wide recognition system, which results in polarized vesicle secretion in the pistil towards the site of pollen contact, providing water and other resources to the pollen grain. Conversely, the self-incompatible pollen response pathway is triggered by a genetically linked receptor-ligand interaction and results in the block of vesicle secretion, leaving the pollen physiologically inactive. Although the broad mechanisms of these two pathways are understood, knowledge of the mechanisms through which they are carried out remains elusive. This thesis describes the identification of several new factors involved in pollen acceptance or rejection. During compatible pollen acceptance, the vesicle-fusing SNARE complex was found to be involved in the early stages of compatible pollen responses. Each component of this ubiquitously used protein complex was targeted through a combination of T-DNA insertions, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutations, or stigma-specific RNAi knockdowns, resulting in impaired pollen hydration. Additionally, live-cell fluorescent imaging was used to directly observe the secretory network during the compatible pollen responses in the stigma. In the self-incompatible pollen response pathway, the role of autophagy was investigated through the introduction of autophagy-deficient mutants into transgenic self-incompatible Arabidopsis thaliana. Disrupting autophagy was sufficient to break down self-incompatibility, indicating it was an essential mechanism in pollen rejection. Live-cell imaging was again used to observe autophagosomes and secretory components during this response. Thus, several new key cellular players were added to both pathways in the pollen-pistil interaction, opening new avenues for future research into either the acceptance or rejection of pollen in the Brassicaceae. | Ph.D. | knowledge, female, water, invest, production | 4, 5, 6, 9, 12 |
| Liu, Hsueh-Ti Derek | Jacobson, Alec | Algorithms for Data-driven Geometric Stylization Acceleration | Computer Science | 2023-03 | In this thesis, we investigate computer algorithms for creating stylized 3D digital content and numerical tools for processing high-resolution geometric data.This thesis first addresses the problem of geometric stylization. Existing 3D content creation tools lack support for creating stylized 3D assets. They often require years of professional training and are tedious for creating complex geometries. One goal of this thesis is to address such a difficulty by presenting a novel suite of easy-to-use stylization algorithms. This involves a differentiable rendering technique to generalize image filters to filter 3D objects and a machine learning approach to renovate classic modeling operations. In addition, we address the problem by proposing an optimization framework for stylizing 3D shapes. We demonstrate how these new modeling tools can lower the difficulties of stylizing 3D geometric objects. The second part of the thesis focuses on scalability. Most geometric algorithms suffer from expensive computation costs when scaling up to high-resolution meshes. The computation bottleneck of these algorithms often lies in fundamental numerical operations, such as solving systems of linear equations. In this thesis, we present two directions to overcome such challenges. We first show that it is possible to coarsen a geometry and enjoy the efficiency of working on coarsened representation without sacrificing the quality of solutions. This is achieved by simplifying a mesh while preserving its spectral properties, such as eigenvalues and eigenvectors of a differential operator. Instead of coarsening the domain, we also present a scalable geometric multigrid solver for curved surfaces. We show that this can serve as a drop-in replacement of existing linear solvers to accelerate several geometric applications, such as shape deformation and physics simulation. The resulting algorithms in this thesis can be used to develop data-driven 3D stylization tools for inexperienced users and for scaling up existing geometry processing pipelines. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Li, Aedan Yue | Barense, Morgan D | A Solution to the Multimodal Binding Problem | Psychology | 2023-03 | Known as the multimodal binding problem, a long-standing question in the cognitive sciences has asked how the mind forms complex object representations from basic sensory features. Integrating features into object representations is fundamental to human experience, yet there remains little theoretical consensus towards how the mind accomplishes this remarkable ability. In Chapter 1, I first describe how existing theoretical perspectives differ in their levels of analysis in terms of how feature integration is understood, focusing on the working memory literature. I then provide a link between seemingly contradictory perspectives, interpreting memory performance in terms of mental representations. In Chapter 2, I show how shape representations can be quantified through similarity judgments, constructing the first perceptually uniform shape space comparable to the ‘color wheel’. In Chapter 3, I combine perceptually uniform shape and color space together, creating a novel simultaneous reproduction task to quantify visual object representations along a continuous metric. Critically, objects in working memory were represented hierarchically as both independent and integrated features, providing evidence for one solution towards how the mind constructs objects from their basic features. In Chapter 4, I directly ask how the brain solves the binding problem, recording brain activity using multi-echo functional neuroimaging as participants experienced 3-dimensional multimodal objects. Using a novel 4-day learning task, I found that the brain constructs multimodal object representations through a hierarchical architecture: experience-dependent integrative coding in the anterior temporal lobes distinct from individual features coded across distributed sensory regions. In Chapter 5, I conclude with future research directions, including how these findings may relate to the design of more human-like artificial neural networks that aim to learn multimodal object concepts. These results provide one solution to the multimodal binding problem, revealing that a hierarchical neural architecture supports the representation of multimodal objects in working memory. Furthermore, I introduce several new tools to quantify object representations, revealing that how we understand feature integration is fundamentally intertwined with the level of analysis by which we measure and interpret human behaviour in the first place. | Ph.D. | learning, production | 4, 12 |
| Kabir, Mabruk | Mundy, Karen||Chmielewski, Anna | Public-Private Partnership Schools in Punjab: Is there a Learning Premium that can be Explained by Management Practices? | Policy Analysis | 2023-03 | The rapid rise of low-cost private schools (LCPS) in developing countries has sparked fierce debate. Proponents argue these schools promote access in areas underserved by government schools, as well as benefit from improved autonomy in decision-making and accountability to parents to produce superior learning outcomes. Critics note that they fail to reach the poor, and any learning premium is driven by selection effects. Despite the ongoing debate, in the face of growing demand for schooling, public-private partnerships (PPPs) have become a key feature of the global education landscape. This trend is especially pronounced in the Punjab province of Pakistan, where many private schools participate in public financing schemes through subsidy, charter and voucher programs. With increasing recognition of the global learning crisis, the performance of PPP schools, as well as the drivers of any achievement gap, are of great interest to policy makers. Recent scholarship has foregrounded school management practices – including accountability to clients – as a key factor in school effectiveness. Drawing on data from the Service Delivery Indicator (SDI) Survey from Punjab, this dissertation contributes to these debates: first by asking if there is an achievement gap between PPP and government schools in Punjab (as well as fee-based private schools), and second, assessing the role of school management quality in explaining the achievement gap. I hypothesize that certain management best practices – focusing on the domains of people management, operations, leadership, target setting and monitoring, as measured by the SDI – are driven by increased autonomy for private schools, and should account for part of the hypothesized ‘PPP school premium’. The results suggest that while the achievement gap between PPP and public schools is small after accounting for student background, it is statistically significant and relatively consistent across models. In addition, when comparing the PPP approaches, voucher schools have the strongest achievement followed by subsidy and then charter schools. Second, I find that the index for management practices is positively associated with learning outcomes. However, despite having more autonomy in decision making, fee-based private schools and PPP schools do not appear better managed than government schools, and as a result, management practices do not explain the achievement gap. | Ph.D. | learning, underserved, land | 4, 10, 15 |
| McLeod, Brandon | Julien, Jean-Philippe | Molecular Characterization and Engineering For the Development of a Transmission-Blocking Malaria Vaccine | Biochemistry | 2023-03 | Malaria is an ongoing global health crisis with cases and resistance to treatments on the rise. Only one malaria vaccine is currently recommended for use in endemic regions in Africa by the WHO, which has middling efficacy that drops to approximately 35% protection against clinical disease after a year. Novel approaches are urgently needed. Transmission-blocking vaccines aim to inhibit the malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, while in the mosquito vector, so the parasite is not viable to transmit to the human host. However, both biological and biophysical understanding is lacking for most target antigens within the field. This thesis establishes the groundwork for the molecular understanding of antibody recognition of leading transmission-blocking antigens Pfs25 and Pfs48/45 by solving multiple crystal structures of Fabs bound in complex to the antigens. Herein is described the first atomic resolution structure of Pfs25, as well as the molecular characterizations of both murine and human monoclonal antibody epitopes of high and low potency, providing a comprehensive map of the immunogenicity and potency of Pfs25. This thesis also leverages molecular blueprints of Pfs48/45 to stabilize its structure using integrative structural biology approaches leading to increases in recombinant expression (~30x), thermostability (>25°C improvement in melting temperature from wild-type), and potency (1-2 log) of the antibody response elicited through immunization. Overall, this work provides foundational molecular understandings and improvements to two of the most high- priority transmission-blocking vaccine targets against malaria. | Ph.D. | ABS, global health, vaccine | 2, 3 |
| Schneider, Stephanie R. | Abbattt, Jonathan | Connecting the Atmosphere and the Ocean through Reactions at the Sea Surface Microlayer | Chemistry | 2023-03 | The reaction of ozone with chemical species at the ocean surface is a source of volatile molecules, including molecular iodine (I2) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs), including organoiodine molecules. The volatiles released affect air quality and climate by impacting aerosol composition and the atmospheric oxidative budget.One major goal of this thesis was to understand the factors which affect the formation of VOCs from gas-surface ozonolysis. To accomplish this, axenic Thalassiosira pseudonana cultures were used to generate a reproducible and realistic surface ocean proxy. When the culture was exposed to gas-phase ozone, VOCs were observed which were further oxidized to form secondary organic aerosol. The VOC type and yield was linked to the phytoplankton growth cycle, emphasizing the importance of biological processes on VOC precursors. The second and third projects focused on understanding the interaction of ozone with the iodide component of seawater, and how that affected the release of VOCs from ozonolysis. Using a halide solution that matched seawater composition, the ozone loss rate was strongly influenced by iodide depletion. These findings were substantiated with a kinetic multilayer model. Uncertainties in the efficiency of mixing processes in the ocean makes assessment of the importance of iodide depletion in the environment an open question. The formation of gaseous I2 from the ozonolysis of iodide was suppressed in the presence of chloride and phytoplankton organics, which could not be modelled by known chemistry. A sensitivity analysis indicated two key aqueous phase reaction rate constants which could be changed to replicate the trend of decreasing gaseous I2yield in the presence of chloride. Attempts to determine why phytoplankton organics suppress the I2 yield involved measuring I2uptake to the T. pseudonana cultures. However, experimental limitations caused by the rapid hydrolysis of I2 into HOI prevented firm conclusions being made. Finally, preliminary studies comparing the VOC yield from photochemistry and ozonolysis on real Arctic Ocean samples are presented. Overall, this thesis highlights the factors that should be considered when determining the importance of ozonolysis to VOC and iodine emission to the marine atmosphere. | Ph.D. | water, emission, climate, ocean, marine, species | 6, 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Claro, Jennifer | Brett, Clare | Effects of an Online Intercultural Exchange on the Motivation of Japanese University Students to Learn English | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-03 | This study of a 10-week Japan-Canada university online intercultural exchange investigated the motivation to learn English of 17 Japanese participants (engineering majors) in which students used video posts as the main form of communication. Video posts consist of a video recording of a student speaking while looking directly into the lens of a webcam, as well as the text of the recording, and images. This sequential explanatory mixed-methods study used the L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS) questionnaire (Dörnyei & Taguchi, 2010) with three added scales from Ryan (2008), to measure change in variables related to motivation to learn English. T-tests of Japanese student data showed significant increases in the means of Ideal L2 Self, International Empathy, and Linguistic Self-Confidence, and a large effect size for Interest in the English Language (IEL), as well as a significant decrease in Integrativeness. There was a significant increase in the correlation of Item 48-Identification (from the Integrativeness scale) and ILE (Intended Learning Effort) from T1 to T2. Promotion, IEL, Ideal L2 Self, and Item 51-Liking English had significant correlations with ILE at T2 that were not present at T1. Short-term effort to learn English increased but long-term effort (ILE) did not. This study showed that identification with an external referent (an L2 role model) may be internalized to a student’s ideal L2 self, and that a strong ideal L2 self can act as a goal that inspires effort to learn the L2. Analysis at the individual level revealed that four students experienced strong changes in motivation. The motivation of two students increased because they became motivated by their peers. They set new goals of study abroad, and achieved these goals. Two other students could not communicate well in English and soon lost motivation. One of them, a self-identified otaku who wanted to support Japanese culture, disidentified strongly with a partner in Canada whom he perceived to be immodest. The study ends with a call for greater integration of L2 motivation theory with mainstream motivation theory, as self-efficacy and goal-setting emerged in qualitative analysis and are linked to increases in effort to learn English. 本研究は、10 週間の日加大学間オンライン異文化交流会を対象に、工学部日本人参加者 17 名の英語学習に対するモチベーションを調査したものである。本研究では、学生はビデオ投稿（学生がウェブカメラのレンズを直視して話すビデオ録画、録画のテキスト、画像で構成）を主なコミュニケーション形態として用いた。 この逐次定量・定性混合型研究法では、L2 Motivational Self System (L2MSS、L2 動機付け自己システム) 調査 (Dörnyei & Taguchi, 2010) に Ryan (2008) から３つの尺度を追加し、英語学習意欲に関する変化を測定した。日本人学生のデータのt検定では、Ideal L2 Self（理想的な L2 自己）、International Empathy（国際的共感）、Linguistic Self-Confidence （言語的自信）の平均値が大きく増加し、IEL（Interest in the English Language) は大きな効果量が見られ、Integrativeness （統合性）は大きく減少した。また、項目48-Identification（目標識別、Integrativeness（統合性）尺度より）とILE（Intended Learning Effort（意図的学習努力））の相関は、T1からT2にかけて有意に増加した。進歩達成（「Promotion」）、IEL、理想のL2自己、項目51-「英語が好き」は、T2でILEとの有意な相関が見られ、これはT1で見られなかった。短期的な英語学習努力は増加したが、長期的な英語学習努力（ILE）は増加しなかった。 本研究では、外的参照対象（L2ロールモデル）と同一化し、学生の理想的なL2自己に内面化され、強い理想的L2自己がL2の学習努力を鼓舞する目標として作用する可能性があることを明らかにした。個人レベルの分析では、4人の学生に強いモチベーションの変化が見られた。2名の学生のモチベーションが上がったのは、仲間に刺激されるようになったからであった。また、２人とも、留学という新たな目標を設定し、それを達成できた。もう2人は、英語でのコミュニケーションがうまくいかず、すぐにモチベーションが下がってしまった学生である。そのうちの1人は、自称オタクで、日本文化を促したいと思っていたが、カナダのパートナーの１人が見せびらかしていると感じ、結果として人として拒否した。最後に、質的分析の結果、自己効力感や目標設定が英語学習努力の上昇に導く可能性があることから、L2モチベーション理論を主流のモチベーション理論とより統合されることを求めて、本研究は終了する。 | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Ning, Xin | Jaimungal, Sebastian | Reinforcement Learning for Stochastic Control and Games in Algorithmic Trading | Statistics | 2023-03 | Algorithmic trading in electronic markets is a well-studied field in finance with a plethora of different possible approaches. This thesis explores how agents participating in electronic markets should optimally trade when accounting for latent factors and the behaviour of other participating agents. It investigates the problem by developing a modified Deep Q-Learning method for a single agent trader, generalizing the approach for multi-agent games using Nash equilibria, and constructing a new method for generating arbitrage-free implied volatility surfaces used for derivative pricing. The thesis contains three main parts. In the first part we take a model free approach to optimal trade execution and develop a variation of Deep Q-Learning to estimate the optimal actions of a trader. The model is a fully connected Neural Network trained using Experience Replay and Double DQN with input features given by the current state of the limit order book, other trading signals, and available execution actions, while the output is the Q-value function estimating the future rewards under an arbitrary action. We apply our model to nine different stocks and find that it significantly outperforms a baseline approach. In the second part, we generalize this approach into the multi-agent setting by developing a new data efficient Deep Q-learning methodology for model-free learning of Nash equilibria for general-sum stochastic games. The algorithm uses a local linear-quadratic approximation of the stochastic game, which leads to analytically solvable optimal actions. The approximation is parameterized by deep neural networks to provide sufficient flexibility to learn the environment without the need to experience all state-action pairs. We study symmetry properties of the algorithm stemming from label-invariant stochastic games and as a proof of concept, apply our algorithm to learning optimal trading strategies in various simulated competitive electronic markets. In the third part, we take the first steps in extending our approach into the derivatives market by proposing a new hybrid method for generating arbitrage-free implied volatility (IV) surfaces, which is a key feature used in derivative pricing. Our approach combines model-free Variational Autoencoders (VAEs) with continuous time stochastic differential equation (SDE) driven models. We focus on two classes of SDE models: regime switching models and L\'evy additive processes. By projecting historical surfaces onto the space of SDE model parameters, we obtain a distribution on the parameter subspace faithful to the data on which we then train a VAE. Arbitrage-free IV surfaces are then generated by sampling from the posterior distribution on the latent space, decoding to obtain SDE model parameters, and finally mapping those parameters to IV surfaces. We further refine the VAE model by including conditional features and demonstrate its superior generative out-of-sample performance. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, trade | 4, 9, 10 |
| Poorganji, Mohsen | Blumberger, Daniel M | TMS-EEG of FrontSensory Co-activation and Brain State in Suprathreshold Frontal Cortex | Medical Science | 2023-03 | Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) combined with electroencephalography (EEG) can provide an opportunity to study the intact brain by perturbing it and recording its response. It is crucial to have a clear understanding of the level of inherent sensory co-activation in the TMS-EEG signal, and to devise methods to minimize these effects. Additionally, TMS-EEG recordings are performed without considering the state of the brain at the time of stimulation. Investigating the possible modulatory effect of phase and power of EEG oscillation before the TMS pulse on the outcome of TMS-EEG recordings is of interest. We explored the differentiation of the auditory co-activation from TMS response in healthy participants (Study-1). We further studied the topic of sensory co-activation and state-of-the-art methods for masking it (Study-2). Additionally, we investigated the effect of phase and power of EEG oscillations before stimulation on single trial TMS-EEG response (Study-3). We observed a distinctively higher level of cortical reactivity to active TMS compared to the auditory sham and the sham coil. The early response (<80 ms) in the active conditions (state-of-the-art- masking vs conventional) did not show significant differences over the stimulation site and across all of the electrodes (global activity). The late response (<275 ms) over the stimulation site was not significantly different between the active conditions, but the difference was significant in the global activity. Only active paired-pulse protocols in both studies resulted in a significant level of cortical inhibition measured by LICI. No effect of phase was observed on the single trial cortical reactivity while a significant effect for pre-stimulus power was evident in theta and beta bands with higher power resulting in larger single trial cortical reactivity to TMS compared with lower power. While sensory co-activation in suprathreshold TMS-EEG of dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is a concerning factor, it can be masked effectively with appropriate masking procedures, and reliable data regarding cortical reactivity to TMS can be achieved. Though we found no modulation of cortical reactivity to TMS by the phase of EEG oscillations, we did observe that higher power in theta and beta bands prior to stimulation can lead to larger cortical reactivity. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Sandler, Georgy | Agrawal, Aneil AFA||Wright, Stephen SIW | The Evolution and Consequences of Sexual Reproduction | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-03 | Sex is predicted to be a costly mode of reproduction associated with drawbacks such as a genetic transmission disadvantage, the destruction of favourable genetic associations, and the cost of finding mates. Despite this, most eukaryotic species reproduce sexually at least occasionally. In my thesis I use genomics and field work to explore the possible benefits and consequences of sexual reproduction. In Chapter 2, I analysed data from a mutation accumulation experiment using two highly asexual duckweed species. My analyses revealed some of the lowest known multicellular eukaryotic mutation rates, possibly a consequence of asexuality. In Chapter 3, I analysed patterns of linkage disequilibria (LD) in two population genomics datasets to explore the potential role of negative LD and synergistic epistasis among deleterious mutations in favouring sex. I found that patterns of genome-wide LD among deleterious mutations differed from those of neutral mutations, but that this was likely a by-product of complex demographic processes. Further analyses focusing specifically on deleterious mutations affecting genes in established genetic networks did suggest a signal of within-network negative LD, hinting at a possible role of negative epistasis in favoring the evolution of sex. In Chapter 4, I used exploratory population genomics analyses to examine signatures of selection and recombination in the facultatively sexual liverwort Marchantia polymorpha. My findings suggested that despite the likely limited dispersal of bryophyte sperm, M. polymorpha populations appear to engage in sexual reproduction at least occasionally. However, other analyses suggested that the M. polymorpha genome harbors a large fraction of deleterious genetic diversity, a possible hint of inefficient selection associated with predominantly asexual reproduction. Finally in Chapter 5, I attempted to experimentally compare the fitness of sexual and asexual offspring in M. polymorpha in a field experiment to broadly ask which mechanisms may favour the evolution of sex. However, my analyses suggested that almost all variation in fitness in my experiment was due to environmental heterogeneity, precluding any biologically meaningful comparisons of sexual and asexual offspring. Overall, my thesis contributes to our understanding of the consequences of sexual and asexual reproduction, particularly in species where both reproductive modes are employed. | Ph.D. | production, environmental, species | 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Steckley, Joshua William Leigh | Prudham, Scott | Nightcrawler Commodities: How capital subsumes nature and labour in Ontario’s underground bait worm industry | Geography | 2023-03 | This dissertation uncovers the development and contemporary constitution of the ‘underground’ nightcrawler (Lumbricus terrestris) industry that has consolidated in southwestern Ontario. My theoretical starting point is the ‘subsumption of nature’ framework that identifies the strategies by which ‘nature-based industries’ harness biophysical processes to produce surplus value. While Boyd, Prudham and Schurman (2001), initially treated the subsumption of nature as “analogous” to the subsumption of labour in how they reflect the dynamics of capitalist design and control over the production process, I argue the subsumption of labour and nature are not merely parallel processes but are, in fact, conjoined; the formal and real subsumption of labour is dialectically related to the formal and real subsumption nature. The extent to which capitalists can control the ecological conditions of production will shape how labour is arranged and subsumed in the capitalist production processes. The characteristics of the peculiar nightcrawler industry result from the capitalist’s uneven ability to subsume the nightcrawler’s biological characteristics and ecological conditions necessary for commercial production. The research relies primarily on semi-structured interviews, as well as newspaper archives, and secondary natural science research. Through these methods, I describe the history of recreational angling and bait worms, why southwestern Ontario became the ‘worm capital of the world,’ why dairy farmers rent their land, how capital investments are deployed, as well as the social composition of the labour force and their working conditions. The conjoined subsumption framework I propose in this dissertation provides a way to go “beyond the antinomies of posthumanist and political economy inquiry” (Barua, 2019) and engage in the open-ended associations of socio-ecological relations while following how capital surplus value is produced. No one set out to develop a profitable bait worm industry in Ontario; it emerged as an industry and took shape through the contingent socio-ecological conditions of production that constituted who worked (under what conditions) and who profited (with what investments). Despite the non-deterministic trajectories of commodifying living organisms, value relations continue to take form and discipline producers; in other words, the pursuit of surplus value is the glue that holds these disparate people, soils, and worms together. | Ph.D. | labour, capital, invest, production, ecolog, land, soil | 8, 9, 12, 15 |
| Kouri, Andrew | Straus, Sharon E | Mobile Health (mHealth) in Older Adults with Airways Disease | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2023-03 | The use of mobile health (mHealth) in asthma and COPD is growing in tandem with shifting demographic trends towards an older population. While mHealth innovations may hold great promise in helping older adults manage asthma and COPD, the two most common chronic airways conditions, many apps and mobile digital devices are not designed with older adults in mind, and older age is known to be a barrier to health technology adoption in general. Furthermore, little is currently known about how older adults with asthma and COPD specifically experience mHealth use. The purpose of this thesis is to illuminate these knowledge gaps and achieve a greater understanding of mHealth research and use in older adults with chronic airways disease. In the first study, I quantitatively analyzed uptake of and engagement with an mHealth asthma questionnaire among older adults, demonstrating that older age (>/=65 years) was associated with decreased uptake, but not engagement. This finding suggests that adverse perceptions of mHealth among older adults are an important barrier to adoption, even among tools optimized for older adult usability. In the second study, I systematically explored the asthma and COPD mHealth literature using a scoping review approach. In studies across the mHealth research cycle, I found that needs and perspectives of older adults have seldom been specifically considered, including in tool design. Even when included in the study populations, study designs and analyses seldom considered older adults separately. In the third study I used a phenomenological approach to qualitatively assess the perspectives and experiences of older adults with asthma and COPD in their use of mHealth. Through this analysis, I demonstrated a central tension among older adults between the use of mHealth to maintain independence and apprehension to a changing healthcare technology landscape. Overall, this thesis resulted in a deeper understanding of mHealth use among older adults with asthma and COPD, including quantitative and qualitative analyses of use and the state of current research, leading to identification of important evidence gaps that may inform future research, clinical practice, and health policy decisions with the goal of promoting effective and equitable use of mHealth in asthma and COPD across demographics. | Ph.D. | healthcare, equitable, knowledge, equit, land | 3, 4, 10, 15 |
| Shaw, Stephanie Margaret | Martino, Rosemary | Development of a Protocol for Measuring the Tensile Properties of the Swallowing Musculature: A Potential Methodology for Quantifying Radiofibrosis | Rehabilitation Science | 2023-03 | Radiotherapy for head and neck cancer (HNC) can lead to fibrosis (RF) and dysphagia. However, the relationship between these conditions remains unclear due to a lack of valid/objective RF measurement tools. Three studies were designed to address this knowledge gap. First, a systematic review was conducted to identify and evaluate existing tools for measuring RF in HNC patients. Eight electronic databases and five HNC journals were searched. Two blinded raters reviewed each reference. Included studies were critically appraised using Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies-2. A narrative review was also conducted to identify tools for measuring fibrosis elsewhere in the body. One low cost tool with good clinical availability was shear wave elastography (SWE). SWE is sensitive to muscle fiber orientation; however, little is known about the musculoaponeurotic architecture of the swallowing musculature. Therefore, the second study evaluated the musculoaponeurotic architecture of the suprahyoid muscles (AD, anterior digastric/GH, geniohyoid/PD, posterior digastric/MH, mylohyoid/SH, stylohyoid). Ten cadaveric specimens were volumetrically dissected, digitized, and modeled, as in situ. Architectural parameters for each muscle were quantified and functionally distinct regions identified. The final study assessed the potential of using SWE to measure the stiffness of GH and genioglossus (GG), in vivo, in ten healthy adult subjects. Ten stiffness measurements were obtained bilaterally at rest and during swallowing exercises. The systematic review found nine tools that had published data regarding their reliability/validity. No valid and reliable tools had been applied to the swallowing musculature. All studies were at a high risk of bias. The anatomical study found that GH, SH, and PD had a single belly; MH had distinct anterior and posterior regions; AD varied by participant, with 1-3 distinct bellies. GH had the most consistent fiber bundle orientation and was therefore selected for initial SWE investigations. The third study showed that using SWE to measure the stiffness of GH and GG at rest and during certain exercises is possible and well-tolerated. Measuring the tensile properties of the swallowing musculature could offer insight into the underlying causes of dysphagia post-radiotherapy for HNC, and could thereby guide the development of novel, individualized, and targeted interventions. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Khattak, Shahrman | Bascia, Nina Dr | The Field of Higher Education in Pakistan as Experienced by Faculty: A Bourdieusian Analysis | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | Faculty play a key role in the development of a nation. Their ideologies, work, knowledge, and attitudes are all significant in not only determining the students’ success but also the overall quality of the education system. This study explores the experiences and struggles faced by the faculty in a public research university in Pakistan and their approaches to navigating their everyday work lives. It employs Bourdieu’s theoretical triad of habitus, capital, and field to highlight the struggles faced by the faculty in their everyday academic lives. The study is designed to understand the shaping and reshaping of academic habitus and the resultant formation of their sense of place. The interviewed participants included PhD holders who earned their degrees internationally as well as those who did so locally, belonging to the departments of Chemistry and Management Sciences. The study highlights ideological differences between the two disciplines, their varying backgrounds and dispositions. The study showed that not all faculty members working in the Pakistani academic environment hail from the same environment or have had similar access to resources and experiences. Their varying backgrounds and dispositions act as paradigms to help them understand and navigate their academic careers, starting with their choice of pursuing a Ph.D. The interviewed faculty experienced a clash between their expectations and reality when it came to new habitus formation, resulting in a very docile and compliant faculty. Overall, the study highlights a key common concern from participants across the board in relation to higher education reforms and systemic issues, which leads to multi-level issues of varying gravity. A lack of importance given to Social Sciences and overt importance given to Sciences were identified as creating rivalry and jealousy amongst the faculties. However, there were some commonalities between the faculties, including the use of the word ‘we’, non-uniform interpretation and implementation of policies, lack of job security, communication, and appreciation. Despite the significant differences amongst international and local PhDs, there did not appear to be consistent differences amongst any two subgroups, irrespective of how one divides the participant pool. | Ed.D. | knowledge, capital | 4, 9 |
| Baker, Daniel Thomas | Pen, Ue-Li | Understanding Pulsar Scintillation with the Power of Straight Lines | Physics | 2023-03 | Pulsars provide an exciting laboratory for the study of physics over a wide range of scales and regimes. Their extreme densities give us a window into the properties of matter in exotic conditions realized almost nowhere else in the universe. Their stable spins and regular emission allow them to be used as clocks to test general relativity and its alternatives, both in their local environment, and on a larger scale through gravitational waves. Their small size makes them effectively point sources whose coherent emission leads to an interference pattern when scattered by structures in the Ionized Interstellar Medium (ISM). However, this interference not only provides information about the ISM, but can be a nuisance parameter for other pulsar observations including timing. Fortunately, there is increasing evidence that not only is the scattering of any given pulsar dominated by a thin region along the line of sight, but also that in many cases it is restricted to a collection of scattering points forming a nearly straight line on the sky. In this thesis, I will present a new approach to understanding the scattering structure of the ISM in the direction of a pulsar. By taking advantage of the linearity of the scattering region, we map pulsar observations into a new space where the interference of pairs of images is more apparent and the properties of each image can be extracted. The power of this new technique is first demonstrated on simulated data where the assumption of a straight line of images is exact. Using archival data of pulsar B0834+06, we show how this new method is able to function on data where this assumption breaks down using both single dish and Very Long Baseline Interferrometry (VLBI) observations. These techniques will aid in future observations to determine physical properties of the pulsars, such as their size and distance, as well as reducing the effects of scattering from timing measurements that may limit the precision of gravitational wave measurements. | Ph.D. | wind, emission, labor | 7, 8 |
| Febbraro, Jennifer Joan | Walcott, Rinaldo | Fracturing White Feminism: Race, Nation, and Representation at the National Film Board’s New Initiatives in Film Program at Studio D | Social Justice Education | 2023-03 | This dissertation examines the final years of Studio D, the state-funded, feminist film studio at the National Film Board of Canada (1974-1996) during its attempts to deal with the question of racial diversity within a post-multicultural policy Canada. As a national, feminist space, Studio D positioned itself as the cinematic center of the white Canadian women’s movement and their documentaries produced our understanding of the (mainly) white Canadian feminist subject to the exclusion of women of colour and First Nations women. This thesis interrogates the discursive collision between white hegemonic feminism and multicultural policy, specifically with an examination of the case study of the New Initiatives in Film Program (NIF) (1990-1996), the NFB’s first formal attempt to deal with questions of race and gender simultaneously and the representation of racial inequity within the women’s movement, as well as the discursive and historical conditions of the late 1980s/ early 1990s which led to its creation. Using archival documents and primary interviews, I employ the methods of intersectionality and counter-narrative to describe the power/knowledge nexus of white hegemonic feminism within Studio D’s institutional boundaries and the struggles for racial equity that challenged the Second Wave’s myth of a united sisterhood. In examining the successes and failures of NIF, I also demonstrate how grass-roots consciousness-raising by women of colour within the Canadian women’s movement and Studio D eventually paved the way for the NFB’s Special Mandate Team for Cultural Diversity, where the lack of non-Caucasian male filmmakers was finally addressed. I argue that the shifting relationships between notions of feminism, race and nation provide optimism for a radical possibility for transformation within Canadian cultural institutions, where diversity speak can be replaced with a foregrounding of co-existing, multiracial, and collaborative differences. | Ph.D. | knowledge, equity, gender, women, feminis, labor, equit, of colour, institut | 4, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Sears, Nathan Alexander | Bernstein, Steven | Great Power Rivalry and Macrosecuritization Failure: Why States Fail to “Securitize” Existential Threats to Humanity | Political Science | 2023-03 | Humanity lives under a growing spectrum of existential threats that have their origins in human agency and could bring about the collapse of modern global civilization or even human extinction. Why do states fail to mobilize the will and resources to neutralize the existential threats to humankind? This dissertation develops a theory of “macrosecuritization failure,” based on securitization theory and the concept of “macrosecuritization,” and studies the empirical phenomenon of the recurrent failure of states to take extraordinary action for the security and survival of humankind. It finds great power consensus or rivalry to be the central dynamic behind the success or failure of macrosecuritization in international relations. In the absence of a world political entity with the authority and capabilities to “speak” and “do security” on behalf of humanity, the great powers collectively shape the fate of macrosecuritization and the security of humankind. The argument is that conflicting security narratives of “humanity securitization” and “national securitization”—or ways of framing the referent object, the threat, and necessary measures for security—shape the thinking and action of the great powers towards macrosecuritization. When a security narrative of humanity securitization prevails, this can open space for great power consensus on macrosecuritizaton; but when national securitization triumphs, great power rivalries lead them to prioritize national power and security over the security and survival of humankind. The dissertation examines three historical case studies of macrosecuritization (failure) in international relations: the international control over atomic energy (1942-1946), the Biological Weapons Convention (1968-1972), and artificial intelligence (2014-present). The theoretical framework posits three variables to explain the influence of conflicting security narratives over the great powers: (1) the stability of the distribution of power in the international system; (2) the power and interests of domestic securitizing actors over state audiences; and (3) the beliefs and perceptions of political leaders about threats. Ultimately, macrosecuritization fails when these conditions favour a security narrative of national securitization amongst the great powers, whereby fear of “the Other” outweighs fear of an existential threat. The argument has important implications in an age characterized by the escalating great power rivalry between the United States and China under a growing spectrum of existential threats to humanity. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy | 2, 7 |
| Lindenmaier, Zsuzsa | Lerch, Jason P | Implementation of Co-clinical Autism Trials in Mice and Humans | Medical Biophysics | 2023-03 | Despite promise in animal models, novel therapeutics consistently fail in clinical trials of autism. Due to the heterogeneous nature of autism, treatment will likely only ameliorate symptoms in a subset of patients. There is a need to simultaneously test promising new compounds while understanding and predicting which patients will respond to each therapy. To determine what might contribute to response susceptibility, the implementation of co-clinical trials in autism is proposed. Here, the implementation of multiple co-clinical trials is discussed, including how changes to the protocols were expanded and adapted as the projects proceeded. The first studies set the groundwork for the methodology, first in a study of high throughput characterization of behavioural and neuroanatomical measures in mouse models, then in a study of oxytocin in mouse models of autism. Next, the first true co-clinical trial of tideglusib was investigated in mouse models of autism, followed by an investigation of arbaclofen that deviated due to treatment side effects. A high-throughput protocol for mouse models of autism is discussed, which encompasses chronic treatment over development, multiple magnetic resonance imaging time-points, and behavioural tests before, during, and after treatment. Human subjects also follow an extensive phenotyping protocol, including behavioural testing, as well as genetics and imaging assessments. This multi-modal, multi-species approach is designed to be a rigorous method of assessing treatment effect, with the intention of stratification by response susceptibility. Considerations that are key to successful implementation of a co-clinical trial are discussed, including behavioural, neuroanatomical, treatment, subject, and data analysis aspects. Recommendations based off lessons-learned are also reviewed, including the design of a third co-clinical trial. All of these considerations are discussed and implemented in a manner that makes use of the heterogeneity of the disorder-- an aspect that historically is ignored-- while also prioritizing translation across species. The implementation of co-clinical trials is the right "next step" for autism research, where the classic progression of therapeutics has failed. The hope is to introduce the concept of co-clinical trials to the field of autism, creating a shift in our current approach to the treatment of the disorder. | Ph.D. | invest, species, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Yu, Xiaotian | Takehara-Nishiuchi, Kaori KT-N | The Medial Prefrontal Cortex Supports Hippocampus Dependent Memory Encoding by Signaling for the Behavioral Relevance of Stimuli | Cell and Systems Biology | 2023-03 | The ability to associate related events separated in time is essential for it allows us to adapt to similar events in the future based on past experiences. The formation of this temporal associative memory (TAM) is thought to be dependent on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and hippocampus (HPC). As disruption of either region impairs the acquisition of trace eyeblink conditioning (TEBC). A TAM task wherein rats are required to form an association between a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) and a mildly aversive unconditioned stimulus (US) across a temporal delay. In well-trained animals, mPFC neurons exhibit selective firing patterns towards the CS only when it predicts the US, possibly signaling the behavioral relevance of the CS and binding it with the US. Thus, the mPFC might support HPC-dependent memory encoding by signaling the behavioral relevance of stimuli. To address this possibility, three experiments were performed. First, to test if the relevance signal correlated with TAM acquisition, I increased the proclivity of the prelimbic (PrL) cortex to generate this relevance signal and assessed if it improved rats’ ability to acquire TEBC. Second, to investigate whether this signal’s emergence depends on afferent input into the PrL, I inactivated the lateral entorhinal cortex (LEC), an intermediary structure connected to both the PrL and HPC, that is also involved in TEBC. Lastly, as the PrL lacks monosynaptic excitatory projections to the HPC, I examined whether the relevance signal might reach the HPC via the nucleus reuniens (RE), an intermediary structure facilitating mPFC-HPC communication. I found that chemogenetic enhancement of PrL neuronal excitability improved TAM acquisition, furthermore, oscillatory activity analogous to the relevance signal correlated with the rate of TEBC acquisition. Moreover, pharmacological LEC inactivation abolished the development of the signal. Lastly, photometric recordings of PrL terminals found that the RE is a recipient of the relevance signal, suggesting that the mPFC might modulate HPC encoding via its projections to the RE. Together, these findings not only identify a prefrontal network process underlying TAM formation but also highlight the differing contributions of the LEC and the RE to corticolimbic-dependent memory formation. | Ph.D. | invest, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| de Pina, Joao Martins | Sargent, Edward | Engineering Semiconductor Nanostructures for Short-Wave Infrared Detection | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-03 | Photodetectors fabricated using silicon and III-V compound semiconductors enable accurate light detection across the visible and infrared spectra. These, however, suffer from limited wavelength selectivity and from manufacturing costs that prohibit wider application.Solution-processed semiconductor nanostructures such as colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) represent a promising alternative. These combine ease of processing and a bandgap that is tunable across the short-wave infrared (SWIR) spectrum. At the outset of this study, CQD photodetectors sensitive to this spectral region suffered from high dark current (10-2 mA.cm-2), poor stability (a few hours), and low detection speed (fall time of 500 ns). In this thesis, I focus on the realization and investigation of new CQD device architectures and their effects on dark current, stability, and speed. I then explore the potential benefits of CQD photodetectors over epitaxial technologies. First I investigate the limitations of prior CQD photodetectors. I find that inadequate control over the band alignment and surface passivation lead to high dark current. I pursue the development of a surface-ligand engineering strategy that tailors the functionalities of each layer, enabling me to achieve record low dark current (10-3 mA.cm-2). Next, I study two performance-limiting factors: operating stability and speed. I examine a chief cause of photodetector instability – oxygen adsorption by the electron transport layer – and develop a synthesis method with 10x lower binding energy to oxygen. The new photodetectors are stable for over 100 hours. I then develop a device model to quantify the impact of charge transport layers on the detection speed and use this to fabricate 3x faster photodetectors (fall time of 150 ns). Finally, I explore the advantages of CQD photodetectors over traditional epitaxial semiconductors. I tune the spectral response of the CQDs to a SWIR band in which atmospheric absorption suppresses solar illumination. This results in CQD photodetectors achieving 140x higher signal-to-background ratio compared to Si-based photodetector systems. I then explore the integration of CQDs onto lattice-mismatched substrates, developing an interfacial layer that improves the injection of carriers into silicon. The studies herein offer routes to improve CQD photodetector performance and demonstrate the benefits of CQDs over epitaxial technologies. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy, solar, invest | 2, 7, 2009 |
| Spourdalakis, Aris G.B. | Luke, Michael E | Effective Field Theory and Machine Learning for Jet physics | Physics | 2023-03 | In this thesis a Soft Collinear Effective Theory (SCET) formalism for the calculation of Next to Leading Power (NLP) corrections is presented along with a project concerned with the use of Machine Learing (ML) as anomaly detection.This SCET formalism has the advantage of being more easily applied to NLP corrections than the standard approach. In this work, the application of this formalism for the massive Sudakov form factor, small qT Drell-Yan and Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS) is presented. A comprehensive framework is setup both towards fully resumming large logarithms at NLP for these processes as well as the study of other processes in this framework. The ML work also included in this thesis is has the goal of improving our understanding of the Standard Model (SM) background as well as mitigating model dependence when searching for new physics. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Osborne, Natalie | Davis, Karen D | Abnormal Functional Connectivity in Descending Antinociceptive and Somatosensory Networks in People with Chronic Pain | Medical Science | 2023-03 | One in four Canadians live with chronic pain, and women are more often affected than men. Understanding how pain-related brain networks function in people with chronic pain could provide insight on who develops this condition and why. This thesis investigated abnormal functioning of brain networks associated with ascending somatosensory input and descending pain modulation in women and men with chronic pain. I used resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure functional connectivity (FC) and quantitative sensory testing and questionnaires to assess pain symptoms and behaviours in two chronic pain conditions; one that is more prevalent in men (ankylosing spondylitis, AS) and the other more prevalent in women (carpal tunnel syndrome, CTS). In the first study, I characterized brain-wide FC of the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), a key node in the descending antinociceptive system, and found sex differences both in healthy individuals and those with AS. Importantly, sgACC abnormalities were only found in women, but not men, with AS. In the second study, I investigated whether abnormal sgACC FC is unique to AS or found in women with another chronic pain condition by examining the sgACC in people with CTS. Again, I found sex differences in sgACC to whole brain FC, but abnormalities only in men with CTS, not women. Furthermore, the sgACC showed treatment-related plasticity in people with CTS who had received surgical treatment. In the third study, I measured FC in the somatosensory network, responsible for processing ascending sensory input, in people with CTS before and after surgery that significantly relieved their pain and sensory symptoms. Abnormal FC of the primary somatosensory cortex (S1) normalized, and thalamus/cortex FC was attenuated following surgery. Together, this thesis found that sex influences functional abnormalities in a key antinociceptive brain region in chronic pain; namely, abnormal sgACC FC is present in people with a chronic pain condition that is less prevalent in their sex. Furthermore, treatment can influence chronic pain-related abnormalities in ascending somatosensory pathways, and reduced FC between key nodes (thalamus and S1) may reflect central plasticity in response to the resolution of abnormal sensory signals from the periphery. | Ph.D. | women, invest | 5, 9 |
| Anstey, Andrew James | Park, Chul B.||Lee, Patrick C. | Structural Dynamics of In situ Nanofibrillated Polymer Composites | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-03 | In recent years, the in situ nanofibrillation method for the production of polymerpolymer composites has been explored with great interest. In this technique, large extensional flows are applied to a well-dispersed immiscible polymer blend to inducea highly elongated nanofibril morphology in the dispersed phase. It has been demonstrated that highly desirable thermomechanical and viscoelastic properties can be imparted to the composite material with only a small weight fraction of dispersed polymer nanofibrils. The in situ nanofibrillation technique presents an especially interesting avenue for research and development due to its high degree of scalability, as well as its relatively inexpensive nature compared to other techniques for the production of polymeric nanocomposites. The property changes in in situ nanofibrillated composites originate predominantly from the extremely high aspect ratio and specific surface area of the nanofibril phase. There is a large degree of interaction between the matrix and nanofibril phase due to their large interface, which induces structural changes at the nanoscale that dramatically change the behaviour of the bulk material. This thesis investigates the formation and behaviour of nanoscale structures within nanofibrillated polymer-polymer composites, and builds structure-property relationships to correlate these observations to the macroscopic behaviours of the material. The present work contributes substantially to our fundamental understanding of the physical chemistry of in situ nanofibrillated composites. The primary emphasis of this work is on the kinetics of crystal nucleation and growth at the nanofibril interface, which largely governs the structural development of the crystalline and amorphous phases. We also provide new insights into mechanical behaviours of the investigated systems, demonstrating the application of in situ nanofibrillation to induce unique functionalities in semicrystalline polymers without sacrificing mechanical performance. Within the scope of the thesis work, we also develop a novel technique employing fast scanning calorimetry to probe the kinetics of homogeneous nucleation in supercooled polymer melts. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Correa e Castro Martin, Christiana | Marchildon, Gregory | Access to Dental Care in Canada: Organized Dentistry and the State in Two Canadian Provinces | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2023-03 | Although oral health in Canada has improved considerably since the 1970s, many vulnerable groups still lack proper access to dental care. Limited public funding for dental care, restricted access to private insurance, and a shortage of dental professionals in more remote parts of the country, have all contributed to historical inequality and inequity in the dental care system. Although scholarship in the field has focused substantial attention on these issues, less consideration has been given to how political forces at play influenced major policy reforms designed to improve access to basic oral care. Most notably, the political intricacies affecting the sustainability of a major dental experiment in the province of Saskatchewan—which subverted the traditional model of delivery in care in Canada—have never been analyzed through the lens of medical sociology. Through the theory of professional dominance, this thesis examines how the relationship between the dental profession and the government influenced the creation and termination of the dental therapy program in Saskatchewan, and how it foiled any initiative allowing dental therapists to work in Ontario, despite recommendations from a committee appointed by the provincial government. A scoping review examined research activity on the political influence of organized dentistry over public dental programs, and whether the professional dominance framework had been used for this purpose. A qualitative case study methodology was then adopted to examine the dental profession’s historical influence over public dental policies in Saskatchewan (1950s to 1980s), and Ontario (1960s to 1970s), through this frame. This thesis revealed that the dental professions’ political efforts, in both Saskatchewan and Ontario, were aimed at maintaining control over knowledge, and at lobbying the government for public programs focused on prevention and hygienists. This ultimately contributed to the termination of the dental therapy program in Saskatchewan and prevented the entry of dental therapists in Ontario. In applying the theory of professional dominance to dentistry, the analysis clarifies how the profession’s authority was shaped into an effective lobby that would terminate Saskatchewan’s experiment employing an alternative delivery model of oral care, and how it prevented such a model from being implemented in Ontario. | Ph.D. | knowledge, equity, hygien, inequality, equit, equalit | 4, 6, 10 |
| Chen, Tian Qi | Duvenaud, David | Generative Modeling with Differentiable Dynamics | Computer Science | 2023-03 | Deep Learning has focused around building differentiable models for a variety of data modalities, but there are still some types of data that deep neural networks struggle to handle natively. In particular, data that come from high-dimensional distributions, time-stamped data that are sampled at irregular frequencies, and event-based data that exhibit both discrete- and continuous-time behaviors. These data modalities can be better modeled by specialized models with particular built-in structures. However, placing such structures within models can also come at the cost of extra computation, in both computing the output and its gradient. We will discuss tractable methods for the construction and application of generative models to high-dimensional and continuous-time data. We focus on building flexible probabilistic models that provide both an efficient algorithm for sampling and log-likelihood evaluations, as these enable simple adoption within a wide variety of machine learning applications. In the first part of this thesis, we construct unbiased gradient estimators for enabling efficient training within two foundational probabilistic modeling frameworks: 1) the Residual Flow makes use of an invertible residual network and excels at both density estimation and hybrid modeling, and 2) SUMO enables unbiased estimation of log marginal likelihoods for latent variable models, enabling them for plug-and-play applications in posterior inference and reinforcement learning. In the second part of this thesis, we present methods for dealing with discrete events localized in continuous time. We first construct a new framework for generative modeling based on ordinary differential equations (ODE) called Continuous Normalizing Flows. We then embed its usage within spatio-temporal point process modeling to build efficient yet flexible models for data from a wide variety of scientific domains. Finally, we show how to differentiate through event handling in ODE solvers, allowing us to extend Neural ODEs to cases of implicitly defined termination times and enabling learning of discrete events and discontinuous dynamics. This allows gradient-based training for switching linear dynamical systems, applicable for neuroscience and finance to decompose a complex time series into intervals. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Stata, Matt | Sage, Rowan F||Sage, Tammy L | The Evolution of C4 Photosynthesis in Blepharis (Acanthaceae): Multiple Transitions, Diverse Intermediate States, and Divergent Routes to a Convergent Phenotype | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2023-03 | The evolution of life on Earth is characterized not just by the adaptation of living things to new and changing conditions but by the emergence of complexity. A central challenge to understanding the diversity of life on Earth is thus understanding how complex traits emerge. Convergent evolution provides a powerful tool for addressing the emergence of complexity because independent origins of a complex trait can serve as natural experimental replicates. As a de novo metabolic pathway with elaborate anatomical and regulatory requirements, the repeated emergence of C4 photosynthesis from C3 ancestors in land plants represents a richly convergent system for studying the evolution of complexity. Based on preliminary analyses of herbarium specimens, the genus Blepharis (Acanthaceae) has been hypothesized to represent a dynamic lineage in which to study C4 evolution. This dissertation aims to develop Blepharis as a model system for C4 evolution via physiological, biochemical, phylogenetic, anatomical, immunohistochemical, and transcriptomic analysis of a living collection of 28 Blepharis species. All known classes of C3-C4 intermediate phenotypes are shown to occur in Blepharis, including the proto-Kranz, C2, and C4-like character states. Critically, substantial C2-C4 intermediate diversity is revealed, including intraspecific variation in three related species. Common modifications in other C4 lineages, including higher vein density and larger bundle sheath cells, appear to represent pre-existing anatomical enabling conditions in Blepharis. Intermediate phenotypes largely follow a phylogenetic gradient from C3 to C4, supporting a stepwise model of C4 evolution. Five independent origins of the C4 cycle are identified, with one representing a novel, aspartate-dependent variation of the typical NADP-ME C4 pathway. Transcriptome analysis reveals differing underlying molecular mechanisms supporting the convergent C4 phenotype in independent C4 Blepharis lineages and identifies the co-function of the C2 and C4 carbon concentrating systems as an important consideration during late-stage C4 evolution. Together, these findings demonstrate the power of Blepharis to generate new insight into the evolution of C4 photosynthesis and how complexity arises in living systems. | Ph.D. | labor, transit, species, land | 8, 11, 14, 15 |
| Lancaster, Charlene Elaine | Terebiznik, Mauricio R. | Characterization of Phagosome Resolution in Mammalian Phagocytes | Cell and Systems Biology | 2023-03 | Phagocytosis is the process by which particles are internalized and degraded by specialized, highly active cells in the organism, known as phagocytes. Billions of phagocytic events occur daily in the body, which serve to capture and digest apoptotic cells, microbial pathogens and unwanted particles within membrane-bound organelles called phagosomes. As such, phagocytic cells like macrophages, have an extraordinary phagocytic capacity, as they can internalize up to three times their own volume in particles. Yet for every phagosome formed, finite cellular resources, like the plasma membrane and endolysosomal organelles, are consumed. How can macrophages sustain their impressive phagocytic capacity without exhausting cellular resources? Maintenance of cellular appetite must be associated with the recycling of essential components from phagosomes after cargo degradation, where this recycling must occur during a newly defined stage in the life cycle of the phagosome, known as phagosome resolution. Unlike the rest of the maturation process, which has been studied extensively, very little is known about phagosome resolution and thus we sought to characterize this final stage. By monitoring the fate of phagosomes carrying degradable and non-degradable cargo and labelling phagosomal markers, we uncovered that macrophages resolve phagosomes through a continuous dismembering process resulting in the shedding of myriads of lysosome-like vesicles containing degraded cargo, which we called phagosome-derived vesicles (PDVs). These results challenged the preconceived notion that intact phagolysosomes within mammalian phagocytes are primarily resolved through the process of cell secretion called exocytosis, which is the known fate of phagosomes in unicellular organisms. Further investigation into the mechanism behind phagosomal fragmentation revealed that this process is dependent on cargo degradation, clathrin and the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons. Additionally, inhibition of this stage of phagocytosis prevented the reformation of the pool of lysosomes and the maturation of subsequent phagosomes, as components were unable to be retrieved from the pre-existing phagosomes to further the maturation of subsequent compartments. Thus, we propose that phagosome resolution recycles cellular resources for the continuous generation of new phagosomes and prevention of this phase impairs the immune and housekeeping functions of phagocytes. | Ph.D. | invest, consum, recycl | 9, 12 |
| Wagstaff, Brandon | Kelly, Jonathan S. | Data-Driven Models for Robust Egomotion Estimation | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2023-03 | In many modern autonomy applications, robots are required to operate safely and reliably within complex environments, alongside other dynamic agents such as humans. To meet these requirements, localization algorithms for robots and humans must be developed that can maintain accurate pose estimates, despite being subjected to a range of adverse operating conditions. Further, the development of self-localization algorithms that enable mobile agents to maintain an estimate of their own pose is particularly important for improved autonomy. At the heart of self-localization is egomotion estimation, which is the process of determining the motion of a mobile agent over time using a stream of body-mounted sensor measurements. Body-mounted sensors such as cameras and inertial measurement units are self-contained, lightweight, and inexpensive, making them ideal candidates for self-localization. Traditional approaches to egomotion estimation are based on handcrafted models that achieve a high degree of accuracy while operating under a range of nominal conditions, but are prone to failure when the assumptions no longer hold. In this dissertation, we investigate how data-driven, or learned, models can be leveraged within the egomotion estimation pipeline to improve upon existing classical approaches. In particular, we develop a number of hybrid and end-to-end systems for inertial and visual egomotion estimation. The hybrid systems replace brittle components of classical egomotion estimators with data-driven models, while the end-to-end systems solely use neural networks that are trained to directly map from sensor data to egomotion predictions. We employ these data-driven systems for self-localization in pedestrian navigation, urban driving, and unmanned aerial vehicle applications. In these domains, we benchmark our systems on several real-world datasets, including a pedestrian navigation dataset that we collected at the University of Toronto. Our experiments demonstrate that, in challenging environments where classical estimation frameworks fail, data-driven systems are viable candidates for maintaining self-localization accuracy. | Ph.D. | invest, urban | 9, 11 |
| Vicol, Paul Adrian | Grosse, Roger B | On Bilevel Optimization without Full Unrolls: Methods and Applications | Computer Science | 2023-03 | Bilevel optimization (BLO) problems are nested optimization problems where an outer objective must be minimized subject to the optimality of an inner objective. This nested structure poses several challenges, including the cost of running full unrolls of the inner problem for each outer parameter update. We discuss several approaches which allow for efficient bilevel optimization, that do not require full inner unrolls. 1. Challenge: Inner optimization is expensive and needs to be re-run for each outer parameter update. We introduce Self-Tuning Networks (STNs), an approach that learns a parametric approximation to the best-response function online, amortizing the inner loop optimization. STNs address the two main challenges to fitting a best-response approximation: 1) STNs fit the approximation locally around the current outer parameters, and alternate between updating the outer parameters and updating the best-response approximation, and 2) STNs use a structured hypernetwork to represent the best-response, that scales to large neural networks. 2. Challenge: Long unrolls of the inner optimization can lead to chaotic meta-loss landscapes; short unrolls can lead to truncation bias. To address both of these issues, we introduce Persistent Evolution Strategies (PES), an approach for computing unbiased gradient estimates of parameters that govern a dynamical system, using only partial unrolls of the system. PES estimates the gradient of a Gaussian-smoothed objective, allowing for optimization over chaotic landscapes. 3. Challenge: Most research in BLO assumes that the solutions to the inner and outer problems are unique, but in practice typically either the inner or outer problems are underspecified. In this case, there are many ways to choose among equivalent optima, potentially leading to different results. In this part, we investigate the implicit bias of commonly-used algorithms in overparameterized bilevel optimization. 4. Finally, we introduce Amortized Proximal Optimization (APO), a framework for online meta-optimization of a parametric update rule which governs optimization. APO is based on a 1-step lookahead meta-objective. Under appropriate assumptions, APO can recover existing optimization algorithms such as natural gradient descent. We present two use-cases of APO: 1) tuning a structured preconditioning matrix; and 2) tuning the global learning rate of several base optimizers. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, land | 4, 9, 15 |
| Castro Diniz Viana, Caniggia | Lehn, Peter W. | Electric Vehicle Drivetrain with Integrated Nonisolated Charging and Auxiliary Power Module | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2023-03 | As electric vehicles set out to compete with their internal combustion engine counterparts, cost and range anxiety are the two main factors limiting the speed of adoption.Even as transportation electrification becomes the norm in the decades to come, these aspects are expected to remain the significant drivers of consumer decision-making._x000D_ _x000D_ Electric vehicles require several onboard power converters, contributing considerably to production cost and vehicle weight, the latter impacting energy consumption and, ultimately, range._x000D_ Among the significant power electronic systems are the input three-phase and single-phase compatible onboard charger, responsible for charging the traction battery from an ac supply, and an auxiliary power module, responsible for converting power from the traction battery to the auxiliary low-voltage battery for powering subsystems, such as headlights and onboard computing systems._x000D_ _x000D_ This thesis introduces a topology that integrates these three power conversion functionalities to the dual inverter drivetrain with no additional active semiconductors and minimal additional passive circuitry._x000D_ Namely, three-phase onboard charging, single-phase onboard charging with optional active power decoupling, and traction-to-auxiliary battery power conversion are implemented solely with the drivetrain circuitry._x000D_ Implementing this diverse set of functionalities reduces the need for discrete onboard converters, materially improving vehicle weight and production cost._x000D_ _x000D_ To enable the aforementioned integrated power conversion, several theoretical contributions are included in this work. The mathematical model of the dual inverter with a split-phase open-winding machine is developed, explicitly describing all available degrees of freedom in the machine. A symmetrical design method for power converters eliminates the common-mode currents for nonisolated systems, enabling the design of standard-compliant onboard chargers. The power phasor and power space-vector concepts are introduced and leveraged to design an active power decoupling control for single-phase-to-dc power conversion applications. Lastly, the switching frequency component of the common-mode voltage between two dc links is controlled using carrier phase-shift between the inverters connected to said dc links. | Ph.D. | energy, wind, consum, production | 7, 12 |
| Larson, Elizabeth Jean | Bale, Jeff | Test Validation and Complex, Dynamic Systems: The Case of the Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Supporting English Learners Test (PeCKSELT) | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2023-03 | Designing tests and rubrics, using test scores, and validating tests are all human-led activities that do not occur in isolation. Rather, these activities (and those performing them) constantly interact with internal and external elements, causing them to grow and change in sometimes nonlinear ways. These are the same characteristics of complex, dynamic systems as conceptualized in Complexity Theory. While Complexity Theory has been used in various disciplines, such as education, urban studies, and applied linguistics, it has yet to be fully integrated into the test validation literature. In this study, I address this gap, first by presenting a novel framework that infuses Interpretation Use Arguments (a traditional approach to validation) with aspects of Complexity Theory. I then apply this framework to uncover validity evidence for the Pedagogical Content Knowledge for Supporting English Learners Test (PeCKSELT), a measurement of Teacher Candidates’ understanding of how to support English Learners (ELs) in their K–12 classrooms. Within this complex validation system, I sought evidence to support two key claims (i.e. warrants): 1) PeCKSELT test performance elicits the relevant PCK required for teachers to successfully support their EL students in K–12 Ontario Classrooms; and 2) PeCKSELT scores reflect the target abilities and skills associated with PeCKSEL. Evidence to support these claims comes from the findings of two analyses I conducted. One of these was a thematic analysis of data that emerged from phenomenological interviews of PeCKSELT test developers. The other is from Latent Profile Analysis of the PeCKSELT scores of 307 Teacher Candidates who took the test in the Fall of 2018. Throughout this study, I also examine overarching theoretical concerns regarding the possibilities and benefits of applying Complexity Theory to test validation procedures. Moreover, as test takers, developers, test validation and the construct being measured are all complex, dynamic systems, I also explored the ways in which testing can still generate information that is stable enough to be useful. | Ph.D. | knowledge, urban | 4, 11 |
| Song, Sue | Lockwood, Penelope||Page-Gould, Elizabeth | Morality of Matchmaking: When is discrimination perceived as more or less immoral? | Psychology | 2023-03 | Deciding with whom to interact on the basis of potential partners’ social group membership is, in general, condemned and thus avoided; however, such prejudicial partner selection continues to be prevalent in dating. The present research examined whether people would use social group membership to guide their choice of romantic partners. Results show that people spontaneously nominated social group memberships as their relationship deal-breakers and must-haves (Chapter 2) and were indeed more likely to shortlist and choose dating partners based on social group membership compared to work-related (e.g., business partners; Chapter 4) and other close relationship (e.g., friends; Chapter 5) partners. Guided by the Justification-Suppression Model of Prejudice (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003), the present research then explored why prejudicial partner selection is more prevalent in dating than in other contexts. I examined two norms in dating that may be conducive to prejudicial partner selection: norms around prejudicial dating decisions (Chapter 3) and partner selection based on mate value (Chapter 4). I found evidence consistent with the first norm; prejudice was perceived as socially acceptable when used to choose dating partners. However, I failed to find evidence for the second norm; prejudicial partner selection was not more or less likely among those who perceived themselves as desirable vs. undesirable romantic partners. I also explored two factors that may serve as a justification for prejudicial partner selection: the perceived relevance of social group membership to diagnosing partner quality (Chapter 4) and the perceived malleability of attraction (Chapter 5). Perceived diagnosticity indeed served as a justification such that prejudicial partner selection was more likely when social group membership was perceived as diagnostic vs. undiagnostic to partner quality; however, it did so across all contexts and its justification effect was weaker in dating than in other contexts. Malleability beliefs about attraction also served as a justification for discrimination; people were more likely to discriminate when they believed attraction cannot (vs. can) be changed. The justification effect of malleability beliefs was not unique to dating but rather was comparable in strength across close relationships. Overall, the present research provides strong evidence that prejudicial partner selection remains prevalent in the context of dating and highlights the importance of social norms in perpetuating prejudicial partner selection across contexts. | Ph.D. | judic | 16 |
| Ilnyckyj, Milan Prazak | Vipond, Robert | Persuasion Strategies: Canadian Campus Fossil Fuel Divestment Campaigns and the Development of Activists, 2012–20 | Political Science | 2023-03 | Starting in July 2012, the climate change non-governmental organization 350.org proliferated the idea of fossil fuel divestment campaigns at universities. They provided a “campaign in a box” with a common demand for divestment from the 200 corporations with the largest fossil fuel reserves over five years and a standard set of tactics, then supported individual campaigns largely by shaping the overall media narrative. Campaigns were launched across Canada with the strategic objectives of persuading universities to divest, delegitimizing the fossil fuel industry in the eyes of the public and decision makers, and recruiting and developing a new cadre of climate change activists. Using the contentious politics theoretical framework, this dissertation provides an anatomy of the campus fossil fuel divestment (CFFD) movement, including the political opportunity structure in which it arose, the mobilizing structures campaigns used to organize labour and make decisions, and the activist repertoires they employed. My chief research question is how involvement in the CFFD movement influenced the political beliefs and behaviours of activists. Based on my interviews with organizers in Canadian campaigns, a review of the journalistic media and published scholarship on divestment, and social media monitoring of campaigns, I conclude that the main effect of the CFFD movement on activist beliefs was to differentially socialize them into climate justice (CJ) and CO2 -energy (CO2-e) worldviews. These differ in their account of the root causes of climate change, and most notably in the political project which they call for in response. For CJ advocates, climate change is one manifestation of profound global injustices including colonialism and racism. Eliminating the problem of climate change thus requires eliminating those causes, and thus a radical global programme of political and economic reform. CO2 -e advocates question whether the issue linkages at the heart of the CJ strategy are analytically convincing and, more importantly, part of a sound strategy for avoiding the worst projected effects of unconstrained climate change. While the CJ worldview has helped overcome some of the emotional and motivational problems that block effective climate action, it only speaks to a limited subset of the population that embraces the progressive assumptions behind it. Producing a sufficient coalition to enact effective climate change policies and keep them in place requires support from non-progressive flanking coalitions who share an interest in climatic stability but do not embrace the rest of the CJ agenda. | Ph.D. | worldview, racism, energy, labour, climate, fossil fuel, co2, climate justice, injustice | 4, 7, 8, 13, 16 |
| Ryan, Jennifer Leigh | Wright, F Virginia||Beal, Deryk S | Evaluating the Feasibility of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation as an Adjunct to Physiotherapy in Children and Youth wth Acquired Brain Injury | Rehabilitation Science | 2023-03 | Background: Children and youth with subacute moderate to severe acquired brain injury (ABI) experience plateaus in gross motor recovery toward the end of inpatient rehabilitation. Thus, novel treatment adjuncts may be used to enhance recovery. The primary objective of this dissertation was to evaluate the feasibility of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) as an adjunct to inpatient physiotherapy in school-aged children and youth with ABI. Methods: A chart review was conducted to establish the gross motor change associated with inpatient ABI. A systematic review was undertaken to determine if motor evoked potentials (MEP) are an appropriate neural outcome for tDCS protocols involving motor intervention in healthy individuals. A tDCS feasibility trial was conducted at the author’s pediatric rehabilitation centre where participants were randomized to receive either 20 minutes of sham or active anodal tDCS immediately prior to their existing inpatient physiotherapy sessions for up to 16 sessions. Results: The chart review provided an estimate of gross motor change for inpatient ABI rehabilitation with two of the outcome measures implemented in the feasibility study. The systematic review revealed that MEP outcomes varied considerably across tDCS studies and were therefore not measured in the feasibility study. Feasibility study eligibility and retention were lower than the a priori targets. Over 21 months, six children were eligible for the study, four enrolled in the study, three commenced the study protocol, and one completed all study sessions. Symptom ratings before and after each tDCS session suggest that the participants tolerated tDCS. Physiotherapy session documentation and analysis detailed the motor learning strategies content of the physiotherapy sessions accompanying tDCS. Conclusions: This dissertation established gross motor outcomes associated with inpatient pediatric ABI rehabilitation and identified the limitations of MEPs as a neural outcome. While eligibility and retention were barriers to tDCS study feasibility, our study processes (including differentiating between ABI symptoms and tDCS side effects, analyzing the physiotherapy session content paired with the tDCS, and evaluating gross motor outcomes with a complementary set of outcome measures) were feasible and can be applied in future tDCS research in pediatric ABI. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Liu, Hui | Luo, Yao | Essays in Industrial Organization and Housing | Economics | 2023-03 | This thesis contains three chapters exploring topics related to industrial organization and housing. The first chapter studies demand estimation of products with unobservable and varying availability. I show that unobservable product availabilities are recoverable from firms' profit maximization conditions. Searching for optimal assortment can be very time-consuming, because the total number of assortments increases exponentially with the number of products. I show firms only need to choose from a foldable menu, wherein the number of assortments equals the number of products. I provide an empirical application of the foldable menu model in China's tobacco industry. My results show that ignoring varying product availabilities leads to underestimated price elasticity (0.38 vs. 1.2) and thus false tax policy implications. Making all cigarettes available positively affects consumer welfare (+6.75%) and cigarette sales (+12.11%) but negatively affects wholesale profits (-5.95%).The second chapter proposes a penalized estimator for random coefficients demand models and tests its performance. Berry et al. (1995) proposed the widely used estimator for random coefficients demand models, the BLP estimator, which requires the inversion of model-predicted market shares using contraction mapping to obtain mean utilities and then uses the generalized method of moments (GMM) for estimation. The inversion step requires many iterations and thus is computationally costly. We propose a penalized estimator for random coefficients demand models, where the inversion step is unnecessary. We augment the GMM objective function with a penalty for the distance between observed market shares and predicted ones. Monte Carlo experiment results show that when using an appropriate starting point of search, the performance of our estimator is comparable with that of the BLP estimator. The third chapter empirically tests the effects of the Ontario Non-Resident Speculation Tax on the Greater Toronto Area's housing markets. Using house transaction data and the hedonic model, I find that the housing markets of areas preferred by domestic Chinese residents were more adversely affected by the Non-Resident Speculation Tax than those of the rest Greater Toronto Area. | Ph.D. | welfare, housing, consum | 1, 11, 12 |
| Khafhafera, Ahmed | DeMartini, Nikolai | Solubility of Sodium Salts in Kraft Black Liquor and the Impact on Evaporator Fouling | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2023-03 | The evaporation of black liquor is a key step in the chemical recovery cycle of kraft pulp mills. Black liquor is concentrated stepwise by evaporating water in multiple effects evaporators (MEE). The majority of the scaling and fouling instances during black liquor evaporation are attributed to sodium salts. The focus of this thesis is to obtain the necessary solubility data for sodium oxalate and sodium carbonate-sodium sulfate salts and thus generate empirical models for sodium salt solubility that can be applied in mills to help reduce evaporator scaling. Sodium oxalate solubility was studied in the temperature range of 50 °C to 140 °C and a dry solids range of 14% to 70% dry solids. Four mill liquors were studied for the work done below 100 °C, and sodium oxalate solubility was not found to be liquor-dependent but rather depended only on the concentration of sodium, concentration of oxalate, and temperature. Two different empirical formulas were developed for solubility below 100 °C and solubility above 100 °C. These formulas were applied by a mill with sodium oxalate scaling in several of their evaporator effects. Double salts of sodium carbonate and sodium sulfate precipitate in the evaporation sets of all kraft pulp mills. Most of the solubility work focused on the transitions between the different salt species and the solubility of the carbonate-rich salts, about which there is relatively little data in the present literature. Empirical formulas were developed for use by mills and were utilized in the following studies with electrostatic precipitator (ESP) ash. Electrostatic precipitator (ESP) ash is used by the pulp and paper industry in two different ways to try and reduce sodium salt scaling. The first is to dissolve it in black liquor so that a sulfate-rich double salt precipitates first rather than carbonate-rich salts, which causes more severe scaling. The second approach is to add the ash above the solubility limit to increase the crystal surface area for precipitating salts to precipitate onto. The experiments showed that ash added below the solubility limit dissolves quickly, reaching saturation as fast as 10 min. It also found that ash, when added to carbonate-rich black liquor above the solubility limit, remains as burkeite and sodium sulfate and, within 24 h, does not undergo dissolution and re-precipitation to a carbonate-rich salt. This may help explain the varied success of using precipitator ash to reduce sodium salt scaling in kraft black liquor evaporators. | Ph.D. | water, transit, species | 6, 11, 14, 15 |
| Butt, Osama Jawaid | Ryan, James | Promoting Higher Education Institutes: Issues and Practices | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2023-03 | The purpose of this research is to examine how universities promote themselves. In particular, it explores why these institutions engage in promotional activities, the promotional strategies they adopt, the challenges they face in promoting themselves, as well as the outcome of the promotional activities. The literature review examined each of the elements of promotion mix (advertising, direct marketing, sales promotion, personal selling, digital marketing/social media and public relations) in the context of universities. Most of the studies conducted earlier were theoretical in nature. This study enriches the existing literature by empirically examining all of the elements of promotion mix together in the context of universities. The methodology used was qualitative. Data was collected by interviewing eight departmental staff members who are directly involved in the promotional activities of their respective departments within a university. The findings suggest that the universities engage in promotion activities to promote their ranking as well as to establish their positioning as a reputable brand which helps to increase student enrollment and revenue either in the form of more tuition or in the form of non-governmental funding. Implications for practice are discussed, highlighting the advantages as well as the challenges practitioners may face while executing a promotion mix strategy. For example, research highlights the advantages of TV advertising in reaching a wide range of audiences, yet it also tells the practitioner to be careful of the high cost of TV advertising which may not be suitable for one’s budget. Similarly, while social media marketing is very effective in reaching a wide audience, marketers need to be careful of the user generated content which may or may not be suitable for an organization’s promotional efforts. Lastly, directions for future research are also discussed guiding the readers on how to further enhance research on this topic by either conducting a quantitative study and/or developing an international study to enhance generalizability of this research. | Ed.D. | institut | 16 |
| Gimelfarb, Michael | Sanner, Scott||Lee, Chi-Guhn | Who Should I Trust? Uncertainty and Risk for Knowledge Transfer from Multiple Sources in Reinforcement Learning Domains | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2023-03 | Despite the recent success of reinforcement learning (RL) in simulated domains and industrial applications, sample-efficiency remains a fundamental limitation of many model-free algorithms. Transfer learning mitigates this problem by using prior knowledge obtained by solving one set of tasks in order to accelerate the convergence on future tasks. However, while many frameworks have been proposed to successfully transfer different kinds of knowledge representations between tasks, existing transfer learning approaches remain largely incognizant to risk and uncertainty during transfer. In this thesis, we identify two sources of risk that must be addressed in order to make transfer learning from multiple knowledge sources more reliable and autonomous: epistemic uncertainty arises due to a lack of uncertainty about the model predictions, while aleatory uncertainty arises due to the stochastic nature of the environment. We address epistemic uncertainty by leveraging Bayesian model combination (BMC) to quantify and utilize uncertainty over the selection of knowledge sources for transfer, and we develop novel analytical techniques to efficiently tackle approximate Bayesian inference to train such models. We demonstrate the success of the proposed framework by transferring value functions, policies, and raw demonstrations between tasks. Next, we begin our treatment of aleatory uncertainty by highlighting some of the challenges in accounting for such risks during transfer, namely the lack of computationally tractable solutions that also provide theoretical assurances on the quality of transfer and control of risk. To mitigate this problem, we begin with two transfer learning approaches that have been highly successful in risk-neutral transfer -- namely potential-based reward shaping and successor features -- and extend them to the risk-sensitive setting. We empirically validate all our contributions on standard RL benchmarks, where they are shown to outperform other state-of-the-art transfer learning approaches in terms of robustness to noise and covariance shift in the training data, risk-sensitivity, and ease of interpretation. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Kwon, Jihyun | Macklin, Audrey||Hannah-Moffat, Kelly | Misconduct Mismanagement: Independent Oversight, Accountability, and the Rule of Law | Criminology | 2023-03 | Over the last few decades, there has been increasing interest in research and theory on police oversight. Likewise, different types and layers of oversight mechanisms have been introduced to advance the democratic policing ideal. Unfortunately, the endless cases of police wrongdoing, oversight decisions that are almost always stacked against members of the public, and a series of civil protests across the Western world against police brutality and abuse of power suggest that the added layers of external oversight have yet to deliver the promised outcome. Some elements of democratic policing—such as the use of minimal coercion, respect for human rights, justice, equality, and responsive policing—explicitly relate to how policing services are delivered through the behaviours and decisions of individual police officers. Others—such as independent oversight, accountability, and the rule of law—are directly relevant to the control mechanisms that moderate their discretionary authority. Most existing studies on police oversight, such as those focused on social psychological theory of procedural justice, lack conceptual clarity on these elements. The majority of studies on this topic overlooks the role of institutional design and dynamics in relation to the overarching aim of democratic policing as they primarily focus on individual-level subjective evaluations and the willingness to obey. My dissertation conducts a case study of Ontario, Canada. It takes a qualitative approach using primarily case law, governmental reports, and semi-structured interviews with the oversight officials and other key stakeholders as data sources. I analyze the practices and implications of having heterogeneous external oversight mechanisms within the same regulatory space for democratic policing. I outline several inconsistencies within the democratic policing framework and shortcomings of the police oversight system that relies on a heterogeneous network of arm’s length authorities. I find that both the rules and values enshrined in the oversight system—however all-encompassing and -promising they may sound—permit considerable room for interpretation; and the same logic and formula that failed the previous oversight regime continue to paralyze the new oversight arrangements. | Ph.D. | equalit, institut, human rights, democra, rule of law | 10, 16 |
| Ma, Yuchen | Peltier, William W.R.P. | Irreversible Fluxes in Double-diffusive Systems and the Origin of Thermohaline Staircases | Physics | 2023-03 | Thermohaline staircases are structures in the ocean characterized by well-mixed layers of uniform temperature and salinity separated by sharp interfaces. Based on the background stratifications in which these structures are embedded, observed staircases can be categorized into salt-fingering and diffusive-convection staircases. Although it is generally believed that the formation of these staircase structures is related to double-diffusive processes, a detailed formation mechanism is still under debate, especially for those found in the Arctic Ocean. In this thesis, I have systematically investigated the formation of both types of staircases, those found in the low-latitude oceans and those found in the polar oceans. This investigation is pursued by studying the flux laws that govern the turbulent environment in each of these regimes. Specifically, I first developed a theoretical framework that can be used to separate the irreversible component of turbulent mixing from the reversible stirring component in a double-diffusive system. Direct numerical simulations were then performed in both the salt-fingering system and the shear-driven diffusive-convection system in order to infer accurate parameterization schemes that best capture these systems’ irreversible fluxes. These flux parameterizations were further analyzed theoretically to understand the mechanism for the development of the staircase structures. For the salt-fingering system, I studied the evolution of salt-fingering staircases in a vertically inhomogeneous environment and addressed the observational trend that the characteristic step size in a salt-fingering staircase is larger in regions characterized by weaker gradients. For the diffusive-convection system, I systematically investigated an original mechanism that appears to be responsible for the formation of thermohaline staircase structures that broadly exist in the Arctic Ocean, which has puzzled researchers for five decades. This work shows that a stratified-turbulence-based layering mechanism could be responsible for the layer formation process in the Arctic pycnocline. Contrary to conventional wisdom, double diffusion based upon the different molecular diffusivities of heat and salt plays no significant role in staircase formation in the diffusive-convection regime. Rather, in this regime, the control on layer formation is provided by the turbulent diffusivities of heat and salt. | Ph.D. | invest, ocean | 9, 14 |
| Dhami, Prabhjot | Blumberger, Daniel M | Insight into the Neurophysiology of Major Depressive Disorder in Youth and its Treatment Via Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation | Medical Science | 2023-03 | Approximately 30 – 50% of youth with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) do not respond to conventional treatments. Accordingly, novel treatments are needed for this population. A greater understanding of the pathophysiology of youth MDD may help guide the development of such treatments. In adults with MDD, theta burst stimulation (TBS) applied to dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) has been found to be clinically effective. However, the clinical and neurophysiological effects of TBS for youth MDD have not been investigated. It was hypothesized that youth with MDD would exhibit excessive DLPFC cortical reactivity, as probed by combined transcranial magnetic stimulation-electroencephalography (TMS-EEG), relative to healthy youth. It was also predicted that for treatment of youth MDD, bilateral DLPFC TBS would be clinically effective, and would reduce DLPFC cortical reactivity. Finally, it was hypothesized that baseline cortical inhibition of the DLPFC would predict treatment response to TBS. In study one, cortical reactivity of six cortical sites (bilateral DLPFC, motor cortex, and inferior parietal lobules (IPL)) was assayed in healthy youth and youth with MDD. In accordance with our hypothesis, youth with MDD exhibited significantly greater cortical reactivity in the bilateral DLPFC relative to healthy youth; no differences were found in the motor cortices or IPLs. In study two, youth with MDD underwent ten sessions of bilateral DLPFC TBS. This treatment was found to be safe, feasible, and effective in significantly reducing depressive symptoms. In study three, the neurophysiological effects of bilateral DLPFC TBS were assessed in youth with MDD. DLPFC cortical reactivity was not modulated by TBS treatment. However, cortical reactivity of the right IPL was significantly reduced. In study four, the association between baseline cortical reactivity and treatment response to bilateral DLPFC TBS treatment were assessed. Only cortical reactivity measures related to cortical inhibition and excitation at the left DLPFC were found to be predictive of treatment response. Excessive cortical reactivity of the DLPFC, as probed through TMS-EEG, may be critical in the pathophysiology of MDD in youth. Furthermore, TBS applied to the DLPFC may be a promising novel treatment for youth MDD. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Fisher, Victoria Jane Louise | Yeang, Chen-Pang||Woods, Rebecca | Getting Down to Brass & Wax: The Material Culture of Physics at Canadian Universities, 1890-1939 | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2023-03 | This thesis explores the scientific apparatus of physics at Canadian universities from 1890 to the onset of World War Two. It is divided into two complementary sections. _x000D_ The first section adopts a collections and material culture approach to analyze the accumulations of historical apparatus that emerged at departments of physics. Through considering how artifacts in these environments avoid destruction, how they come to form collections, and the implications of these processes for the surviving artifacts as evidence of the scientific past, it complicates existing accounts of these narratives. It examines the close and definitive relationship these collections have to their home department and how they are shaped over time, most notably by technical members of staff. This dissertation concludes that collected sets of surviving artifacts at university departments form a particularly rich historical source due to their shared history, while simultaneously noting the importance of fully considering these collections’ formations and evolution through to the present day._x000D_ The second section of the dissertation offers a materially-focused history of experimental and practical physics as it emerged and matured in Canada. Informed directly by the material remnants of each university’s physics programme and the discussion in the first section, it traces shifts in thinking about teaching and research in physics relevant to both Canadian and international contexts. This includes the use of imported instruments to establish legitimacy away from scientific centres, the early influence of engineering and technical programmes, the rapid developments in research and teaching in the period following the First World War, and the central importance of department workshops, technical skills, and makers throughout this period. Together, these themes contribute a history of physics in Canada in which materiality, in the form of equipment and laboratory spaces, played a definitive role. _x000D_ This dissertation demonstrates the ability of large sets of seemingly mundane scientific artifacts to contribute a useful narrative history, and reveal new details about less-well recorded elements of the history of science, such as the role of technical staff. As such, it represents a model for future work examining the large quantity of historic scientific material at university departments. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Fok, Cheok In In | Luo, Yao | Three Essays in Industrial Organization | Economics | 2023-03 | This thesis includes three chapters studying various topics related to industrial organization. My first chapter develops a novel procurement auction model with endogenous public information acquisition and ex-post cost uncertainty to study the effect of information policy on procurement cost. Bidders can exert costly effort to learn about the project and update their beliefs about the ex-post cost before participating in the auction. First, it allows risk-averse bidders to reduce their ex-post cost uncertainty and, thus, their risk premium on bids. Second, the acquired information generates additional information rent, which increases their bids. I estimate the model using unique administrative data from the Indiana Department of Transportation, which publishes all observable outcomes of bidders’ information acquisition on its Question and Answer platform. I find that not allowing bidders to acquire information increases the average procurement cost by 1.62%. Second, changing the endogenous model of public information acquisition to a private one generates higher expected procurement costs when competition is high. My second chapter develops a simultaneous multiple-procurement auction model under the presence of capacity constraints. In this environment, winning multiple auctions induces additional complementarity payoffs coming from synergies between auctions. But winning also increases the capacity constraints of the winner. I investigate the marginal effect of participating in an additional auction. I find that increasing an additional small auction will decrease the total average procurement cost by 2.8% or 70,000. The second counterfactual analysis looks at the effect of joint bidding on bids. Allowing bidders to submit a joint bid can potentially decrease the bids by 8% for the median auction. My third chapter studies the bidding capacity mechanism in procurement auctions. The bidding capacity mechanism restricts bidders' eligibility to submit a bid in an auction based on their available bidding capacity. I use a fixed effects model to test the linear relationship of bidding capacity with bidders' bid and bid submission decisions. I find that bidders with a higher bidding capacity will have a higher chance of submitting a bid to an auction, participating in more auctions in a period and submitting a more competitive bid. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Rich, Allison J. | Tan, Daphne | The Cello Exercise Index: Considering Technique Resources for Cello Teachers and Students | Music | 2023-03 | This dissertation is an analysis and codification of technical exercises written for the cello. The research aims to investigate this repertoire, understand its value, and consider the relevance of exercises for contemporary cellists. Technical exercises have been a mainstay of cello pedagogy but are rarely indexed in detail. This lack of indexing prevents cellists from effectively and efficiently using exercises for teaching, learning, and practicing cello technique. To address this issue, I created a traditional “back of the book” index not just for one book, but for a representative majority of the exercise repertoire. To build this “Cello Exercise Index,” I individually analyzed, tagged, and entered data for the contents of exercise books, ultimately creating a resource that allows users to search for, browse, and filter exercises according to their needs. This document serves as a guide to the Cello Exercise Index. Interested musicians could simply use the Index, but those who wish to learn about the methodology behind its creation, the potential benefits of this resource, and consider the general value of exercises will find discussions of these topics in this dissertation. After an introduction to the project in Chapter 1, Chapter 2 is a review of existing literature, including both historical information about the cello’s development and precedents in the form of analyses of pedagogical material. Chapter 3 details the methodology for the creation of the Index, including selection of sources and organization. Chapter 4 is a guide to using the Index, along with a summary of some difficulties encountered during its creation and their solutions. Telling a more complete story about the cello technical exercise meant discovering how and why contemporary cellists use exercises in their performing and teaching. To get a snapshot of the role of exercises in today’s cello studios, I conducted a series of semi-structured interviews to hear perspectives and opinions from four prominent cello teachers. Chapter 5 is a description of the interview component, including methodology and emergent themes. To conclude, Chapter 6 summarizes the project and considers directions for future research. | D.M.A. | pedagogy, learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Tan, Stephanie | Nodwell, Justin R | Remodeling of Peptidoglycan Biosynthesis in Staphylococcus aureus for Enhanced Antimicrobial Activity and Novel Drug Discovery | Biochemistry | 2022-11 | Multidrug resistant Staphylococcus aureus is a prevalent opportunistic pathogen with limited treatments available. The development of antibiotic resistance in S. aureus requires new therapeutics and a clearer understanding of its drug-resistant properties at the cellular level. In this work, I have discovered a novel class of antibiotics known as the lasso peptides that targets lipid II, the main precursor molecule for building bacterial peptidoglycan. I show that WalKR, an essential two-component system that regulates peptidoglycan remodeling, is key to understanding antibiotic susceptibility and resistance in multidrug-resistant S. aureus. Mutations in walR confer a hypersensitive reaction to tunicamycin, albeit resistance to all other cell wall targeting antibiotics. I have conducted a comprehensive biochemical and transcriptional profile of this phenomenon whereby a downregulation of peptidoglycan recycling is the indirect cause of the wal mutant phenotype. I show that in vivo studies of tunicamycin treatment can restrict the growth and dissemination of wal-mediated S. aureus infections while clinical antibiotics available cannot. This study highlights the important need for new antimicrobial matter and a new indirect mechanism wal mutations confer on S. aureus. | Ph.D. | recycl | 12 |
| Posada Gutierrez, Julian Alberto | Delfanti, Alessandro | The Coloniality of Data Work: Power and Inequality in Outsourced Data Production for Machine Learning | Information Studies | 2022-11 | Many research and industry organizations outsource labour-intensive processes of data generation, annotation, and algorithmic verification—what this dissertation refers to as data work—to workers worldwide through digital platforms. A subset of the gig economy, these platforms consider workers independent users with no employment rights, pay them per task, and control them with automated algorithmic managers. This dissertation focuses its study on the data worker population in Venezuela—a Latin American country experiencing a socioeconomic crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and where a significant number of data workers in the Global South are located—to understand the coloniality of data work, or the historical patterns of power that define contemporary data production. This dissertation looks at how power imbalances are reproduced in outsourced data work through a configuration of actions, discourses, and objects—the “data production dispositif”—by which platform companies profit from marginalized workers in a socioeconomic condition characterized by high disembeddedness, or a lack of regulations and protections on the population. Social inequalities are reproduced through the data production process and local worker communities mitigate these power imbalances by relying on the support of family members, neighbours, and colleagues online. Furthermore, the data production dispositif ensures that workers’ voices are suppressed in the data annotation process through algorithmic management and surveillance, resulting in datasets generated exclusively by clients, with their worldviews encoded in algorithms through training. The coloniality of data work is thus characterized by an extractivist method of generating data that privileges profit and the epistemic dominance of those in power. This dissertation argues that data production is a process and that the quality of data and artificial intelligence algorithms depend on incorporating a plurality of workers’ voices and the decommodification of their labour away from market dependency. This process is multifaceted and requires the responsibility of the computing industry, policy centred on worker communities, and support of local worker-led initiatives. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, worldview, learning, employment, labour, worker, inequality, equalit, marginalized, production, outsourc | 1, 4, 8, 10, 12 |
| Grozavu, Ingrid Claudia | Stagljar, Igor | Identifying Novel Vulnerabilities of KRAS using the MaMTH and SIMPL Assays | Biochemistry | 2022-11 | KRAS is a plasma membrane anchored small GTPase that serves as an ON/OFF switch in many cell signalling pathways. When mutated, KRAS assumes a conformation that is constitutively active, resulting in unchecked signalling that promotes tumorigenic phenotypes such as uncontrolled cell proliferation. Oncogenic KRAS is detectable in approximately 20% of human cancers. Yet, only one KRAS variant, KRAS G12C, has been identified as a therapeutic target, whereas other more prevalent or lethal isotypes, such as KRAS G12D or G12V, remain undruggable. Consequently, the objective of this study was to identify novel vulnerabilities of KRAS using two approaches that could be therapeutically exploited. Using MaMTH-HTS, I screened the human ORFeome collection (13,000 human ORFs) for protein-protein interactions (PPIs) of KRAS and identified 113 interactors of KRAS WT, 109 interactors of KRAS G12R, a mutant found in pancreatic cancers, and 42 overlapping interactors. Further investigation revealed KRAS variant-specific sub-networks of interactors with distinct pathogenicity, function, or subcellular localization. Orthogonal validation of PPIs revealed that SLC26A2, a multifunctionalanion exchanger, showed a strong interaction signal with KRAS WT rather than KRAS G12R, which may have biological implications. Parallel to this strategy, I collaborated with two pharmaceutical partners to identify KRAS G12V inhibitors. In collaboration with Evotec AG, a large-scale drug screen of 200,000 compounds using the MaMTH-DS (MaMTH Drug Screening) assay was conducted, and 39 molecules were identified for further study. Second, in collaboration with Cyclica Inc., an AI-augmented virtual screen of the Enamine REAL space of 1.3B compounds was performed to select molecules with a high probability of specifically binding KRAS G12V. Sixty-three AI-selected molecules were synthesized de novo, and their activity against the KRAS G12V-CRAF PPI was evaluated using MaMTH-DS. I identified four molecules that disrupted this interaction, one of which reduced the viability of cancer cell line moles. Overall, this study has uncovered several biological and chemical vulnerabilities of KRAS that may become therapeutically exploitable for the treatment of KRAS-driven cancers. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Otto, Susan | Wane, Njoki | Work-based Learning in the Ugandan Secondary School Curriculum | Social Justice Education | 2022-11 | Beginning in 1997, the Ugandan government introduced different initiatives that have had the primary goal of updating and expanding the country’s secondary school system. This was aimed at improving the performance of students and developing a curriculum able to cultivate the skills and competences of students. Work-based learning (WBL) was situated as an alternative form of learning able to serve as the foundation of national development. This study delved into the value of WBL by carrying out an investigation in 10 secondary schools in northern Uganda, with 10 learners and 10 teachers. It also concentrated on the relationship that is found between anti-colonial education and WBL. Through the usage of a mixed research methodology, data was collected between January 2019 and June 2019. The objectives of the study were to investigate the experiences of Ugandan secondary teachers and learners participating in WBL. Attention was given to the study of the implementation of WBL and its role in the skills development of learners, its potential benefits, and the potential barriers to its implementation. The target population was secondary school students and teachers in northern Uganda and the study used stratified random sampling. The study showed that there is an absence of a strong WBL infrastructure, and that there is a need to work on the areas of job shadowing, apprenticeship, and internships. Recommendations include a need for policy changes, development of diverse pedagogical tools, career interests, fostering of business community partnership, professional development, and the need to cultivate indigenous knowledge. In conclusion, there is a need for an overhaul of the secondary school curriculum in Uganda. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, learning, infrastructure, invest, indigenous | 2, 4, 9, 10, 16 |
| Avery, Teresa Lynn | Brett, Clare Dr. | The Development of Persona as a Tool for Online Learning | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | The purpose of this thesis was to explore if learner personas could be used as a tool for learner-centred online learning. Personas can be a powerful design tool when applied to online learning design and could assist instructors in envisioning and planning for distinct “archetypes” of online learners and is one way that can be used to characterize the needs, goals, experience and accessibility requirements of learners (Lilley et al., 2012; Pyper et al., 2011; Rogers et al., 2011; Ward & Parr, 2010). The study intended to create a compelling and approachable representation of data based on representative data from observations made while doing a comprehensive case study. Personas can be tools or a broader lens that instructors can use to extend or complement their teaching, adding to the constructivist and collective knowledge of the group, ideally interrogating ideas within the online environment (Dalley-Hewer et al., 2012; Garrison et al., 2001; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2005). Accordingly, a course developed as part of a COI should provide a space for “meaningful discourse and [to] develop personal and lasting understandings of course topics” (Garrison et al., 1999; Oztok et al., 2014; Rourke & Kanuka, 2009). This study found that using distinct personas––as a way to envision the learner’s individual journeys and engagement patterns––can guide the instructor’s thoughts about how the learners’ themselves add to their own personal understanding. The personas also offered a way for instructors to dialogue with colleagues in context about similar learners across other course offerings, providing a practical way for instructors and designers to look at their courses from the perspective of the learner (Jonassen et al., 1995; Swan et al., 2009a; Ward, 2010). The study used log-file data from threaded conversations, student participatory behaviours, and student reflective journals, along with instructor interviews and insight from a comprehensive literature review. This contributed to the development of five specific personas, created from specific facts as general archetypes. The next steps in this study included how these findings about one course offering can be translated into future studies and tool development. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, accessib | 4, 11 |
| Arguelles, Angelica Nicole | Tyndale, Rachel | Sex and Estrous Cycle Differences on CYP2D in the Brain (vs Liver); Impact on Oxycodone Metabolism and Resulting Analgesia | Pharmacology | 2022-11 | Sex and estrous cycle differences in opioid analgesia occur in rodents and humans; differences in drug metabolism and resulting drug and metabolite concentrations could contribute. Since numerous opioids are cytochrome P450 2D (CYP2D) enzyme substrates and variation in CYP2D alters opioid drug concentrations and responses, we investigated the sex and cycle differences in oxycodone and metabolite concentrations and resulting analgesia (nociception) in rats. We also explored the impact of CYP2D in the brain (versus liver) on these differences and explored the potential mechanism of hormonal regulation. This was investigated through selective inhibition of CYP2D in the brain using a mechanism-based inhibitor, propranolol (or vehicle), given by intracerebroventricular (ICV) injection 24 hours before testing with oral oxycodone in male and female (in estrus and in diestrus) rats. To explore hormonal regulation, ovariectomized (or sham-operated) females were treated systemically with estradiol, progesterone, or vehicle, followed by ICV propranolol (or vehicle) pre-treatment and oral oxycodone. Analgesia was measured using tail-flick latency, while brain drug and metabolite concentrations were measured in vivo by microdialysis. Across oxycodone doses, females in diestrus had greater analgesia compared to males and females in estrus. Analgesia correlated with brain oxycodone, but not brain oxymorphone or noroxycodone concentrations, or plasma drug or metabolite concentrations. ICV propranolol (versus vehicle) pre-treatments increased brain oxycodone concentrations, and decreased brain oxymorphone/oxycodone drug ratios (an in vivo CYP2D activity phenotype in the brain) in males and females in estrus, but not in females in diestrus. Brain oxymorphone/oxycodone drug ratio was inversely correlated with analgesia. Together, sex and cycle differences were observed in oxycodone analgesia and brain oxycodone concentrations; CYP2D in the brain is a major contributor to these observed differences. Following ovariectomy there was little to no impact of brain CYP2D inhibition on brain oxycodone concentration or analgesia, similar to females in diestrus. The impact of selective inhibition of CYP2D in the brain, on brain oxycodone concentration and analgesia was restored following acute estradiol, but not progesterone, treatment. Sex, cycle and hormone regulation of CYP2D in brain may contribute to the large inter-individual variation in response to numerous centrally acting CYP2D substrate drugs, including opioids. | Ph.D. | female, invest | 5, 9 |
| Alizadeh-Meghrazi, Milad | Popovic, Milos R | Development of Smart Textile Systems for Electrophysiological Monitoring | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide. Assessments of cardiac electrical signals, such as variations in cardiac rhythm or abnormalities in wave form, allow for diagnoses of cardiac disease states. Conventionally, the cardiac electrical signals are acquired using gel electrodes, part of electrocardiogram (ECG) assessment. Gel electrodes have limitations for long-term use due to durability issues and possible skin irritations. This presents a need for an alternative to gel electrodes that addresses the limitations for long-term ECG measurements such as a holter system, while providing comparable clinical applicability and accuracy.Throughout human history, textiles have been a ubiquitous technology. Their pervasive nature makes them a promising medium as a replacement for gel electrodes. This can be achieved through the introduction of materials that can capture electrical signals from the body. These materials can be introduced through techniques of lamination on textiles or as a fiber/yarn in the textile production process. In this thesis a variety of materials from the literature were selected and deployed using textile lamination and knitting, to create textile-based electrodes for electrophysiological signal acquisition. The textile-based electrodes were electrically characterized and compared to gel electrodes. The textile electrodes were further classified for their performance in the acquisition of electrophysiological signals, such as electrocardiogram (ECG) and electromyogram (EMG). In the subsequent phase of this thesis textile form factors were designed and developed, that incorporated the textile-based electrodes best suited for ECG and EMG acquisition. The form factors were selected for use cases in, a) ECG: continuous monitoring through an underwear form factor for CVD, and b) EMG: continuous monitoring through a sleeve form factor for prosthetic control. Successful demonstrations are presented of the developed textile form factors, and the custom algorithms needed for the analysis of acquired electrophysiological signals from the textile-based electrodes. In conclusion, a framework for the design, development, testing and validation of textile based electrophysiological systems is presented. These guidelines and best practices should pave the way for future developments in this field. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Wang, Yu | Lahusen, Thomas TL | The Witness-Scholars of the Holocaust and Their Righteous Rescue Narratives (late 1970s – early 1990s) | Comparative Literature | 2022-11 | This dissertation analyzes narratives of rescue during the Holocaust that coalesced between the late 1970s and early 1990s. During this time, Holocaust discourse moved beyond a narrow focus on the perpetrators and survivors of concentration camps and killing centers, as scholars and writers began to incorporate a more diverse range of experiences in their work. Amidst this transition, the subfield of “rescue studies” developed in a complicated negotiation across geographic, religious, and cultural boundaries, between the people who constructed the subfield and their prospective audiences. “Righteous rescue” was one of the first analytical tools that elicited a range of lessons from the Holocaust, beyond sheer evil and destruction. The rise of narratives of righteous rescue reflected the efforts of individual scholars and survivors to develop new frameworks and storytelling devices in order to wrest some meaning, or at least some sort of order, from the catastrophe. The focus of this dissertation is on four people whose works constituted the core of the early righteous rescue discourse: Philip Hallie, Nechama Tec, Samuel Oliner, and Mordecai Paldiel. All four were scholars of the Holocaust whose research was closely connected to their wartime experiences. Trained in Philosophy, Sociology, and Religion, they introduced tools from their respective fields to understand what they called “goodness.” In the process, they both expanded the scope of Holocaust remembrance and revised theories and practices in their home disciplines. While investigating other people’s rescue stories, they identified themselves as witnesses of goodness, testifying to their own experiences of rescue during the Holocaust. The moral core of the righteous rescue narratives raises questions about the ethics of examining rescue. All four witness-scholars placed storytelling at the center of their writing, emphasizing the power of real stories in shaping collective memories of the past. This method contributed to the stratification of righteous rescue literature, as the author, narrator, and character each spoke in a different voice. At the same time, the process of turning personal stories into moral tales tested the authors’ ability to respect the witnesses’ self-understanding while translating their experiences into universal lessons. Situating these questions about the ethics of storytelling at the forefront of analysis, this dissertation traces the evolution of the four witness-scholars’ righteous rescue literature through changing chronological, national, and international contexts. Loosely connected, their narrative trajectories point to the multiple ways in which the scholars’ personal experiences during the Holocaust intertwined with their research in the living present. | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Zaman, Mehreen | Gibson, Jennifer | What Makes a Death Good? Examining Key Conditions to Guide Healthcare Decisions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Abstract Background: Although there is increasing interest in understanding and improving how humans die, the concept of a “good death" remains poorly understood. This creates barriers to crafting specific policies and care provision strategies that cater to dying individuals and their caregivers. This thesis aims to synthesize knowledge generated by scholars and professionals, in the healthcare field, to enhance our understanding of a good death. Specifically, it examines a minimum set of conditions that are deemed necessary by people around the globe for a death to be considered good. Methods: A collection of three studies is presented. Study 1) A bibliometric analysis of 1034 citations was completed in May 2020. This effort aimed to assess the state of biomedical literature on the topic of a good death through quantitative examination of publication patterns. MEDLINE and EMBASE were searched for articles containing “good death” or “dying well” in their titles or abstracts. Eligible citations were analyzed for key research indicators, including number of annual publications, journals of publications, language representation, research productivity by country, type of published output, study populations and prominent themes. Findings were reported following the PRISMA guidelines for meta-analysis. Study 2) A systematic review of existing systematic reviews within healthcare literature was conducted. This effort sought to aggregate information on conditions consistently deemed as necessary for a good death. A search of Medline, Embase, APA, PsycInfo and AMED yielded 275 potentially eligible reviews. Thirteen of these were selected based on the inclusion criteria, featuring 407 studies on views of several populations including children, patients, healthcare providers, cultural communities, elderly, frail adults with reduced agency, residents of long-term care facilities, rural residents, and other stakeholders involved in the dying process. Conditions for a good death appearing commonly in biomedical literature were identified and reported using PRISMA guidelines for systematic reviews. Study 3) Results from a survey asking healthcare professionals to prioritize conditions they would like to experience near the end of their own lives were analyzed. The survey aimed to utilize the unique position of healthcare providers given their experience and proximity to dying individuals. It was completed by 2,971 out of 3,495 eligible people (85% response rate). Most were female (79%) and between the ages of 26 - 45 years (70%). Almost two-thirds were clinical staff (65%; 13% physicians, 34% nurses; 18% other health professionals), while the rest were non-clinical personnel (managers, administrators, and support staff) working at healthcare facilities. Priorities near the end of life were examined. Conclusion: Thirteen conditions for a good death were identified to guide healthcare decisions around the event of death. These can be a starting point for global health systems to craft palliative and end-of-life care strategies. Insights from healthcare professionals should support efforts to minimize unnecessary medicalization of dying. Publication patterns unveil several gaps within existing literature that need to be filled with rigorous research to advance the conceptualization of a good death. | Ph.D. | ABS, global health, healthcare, knowledge, female, rural | 2, 3, 4, 5, 11 |
| Ramaraju, Ram Gopal Varma | Chandra, Sanjeev | Additive Manufacturing Methods to Make High-Heat-Flux Heat Sinks | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | Cold plates with internal flow passages were made by placing 3D printed polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) parts in channels machined in the plates, spraying metal over the polymer, and then dissolving the polymer. Aluminum and copper plates with coolant channels were made and found to have significantly lower thermal resistances than commercial cold plates. Properties for a sprayed metal layer to adhere to a polymer substrate were identified, including substrate roughness, substrate temperature during spraying and the thermal coefficients of expansion of the metal and polymer. Surface features such as pin fins and channels were deposited directly on heat-generating surfaces using thermal spray deposition. Tests were done by cooling a 1 cm2 copper surface with a surface heat flux of 50-450 W/cm2. The thermal resistance of the heater surfaces decreased resulting in heat transfer coefficients up to 50 kW/m2K. These features increased the heat transfer area by 45% and distributed cooling liquid uniformly without introducing any thermal contact resistance, unlike conventional heat sinks. Nozzles with an array of water jets were 3D printed using polymer to impinge water jets over a high heat-flux surface. Experiments were done to measure convective heat transfer from a copper surface with a surface area of 0.142 cm2 emitting heat fluxes of 50 to 900 W/cm2 while varying the water flow rate from 0.1 to 1.0 L/min. Heat transfer coefficients as high as 150,000 W/m2K were measured during impingement cooling. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Moon, Haesun | Sawchuk, Peter H | Efficacy of Training in Solution-focused Coaching: Process Study of Learners’ Progress in Response Choices | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-06 | The aim of this thesis is to study the efficacy of coach training by investigating the changes in practitioners’ interactional patterns with their clients as they learn to practice Solution-Focused coaching. The heterogeneous roots of coaching have contributed to highly eclectic theoretical bases, ambiguous definitions, and a lack of process evidence for its efficacy––all of which are shortcomings that this thesis addresses by asking the research question: What changes in the interactional patterns of a practitioner learning to coach? To answer this, three video recordings of coaching conversations over the span of their Solution-Focused Coaching Program from three practitioners-in-training (PiT’s) are used. Their response patterns are analyzed using descriptive methods of Microanalysis of Face-to-Face Dialogue (MFD) and the Dialogic Orientation Quadrant (DOQ). MFD is used for content analysis of what PiT’s and their clients do; DOQ for functional analysis of how their interactions contribute to creating meaning together. The results show a higher rate of formulations––especially in the positive content––in their later sessions as well as a decreased rate of adding their own words over time, which is consistent with previous analytical studies on expert sessions. While the rate of asking questions did not show a consistent change, embedded presuppositions had a markedly consistent orientation toward positive content in later sessions for all PiT’s. This study is limited to short excerpts of sample sessions of three PiT’s yet contributes to the literature because it is the first to introduce DOQ––a meta-model of interaction––as a research tool. It is also the first process study to include both MFD and DOQ, and it provides a longitudinal and comparative analysis of PiT skill development. Implications of the study include supporting coaching practitioners and trainers by increasing their empirical understanding of efficacy; inviting researchers in MFD to consider the adoption of DOQ as an operational language of functional analysis; and encouraging the use of DOQ as a tool for various process research, outcome evaluation, and pedagogy of coaching. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Danniels, Erica Paige | Pyle, Angela | Supporting the Inclusion of Children with Developmental Disabilities in Play-based Kindergarten | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | Play is widely recognized as occupying a central role in young children’s early learning and development. Contemporary research on the benefits of both child-led and teacher-guided play have driven curricular shifts in kindergarten toward mandating play-based learning. However, research on play and disability has characterized play as a challenging context for children with developmental disabilities (DD), with concerns raised regarding access to play opportunities, engagement in different play skills, and level of social participation with peers. Kindergarten teachers have also been found to hold differing views toward play and learning and implement play-based learning in different ways. Consequently, it is important to explore how teachers approach play-based learning in inclusive settings with diverse student bodies, including children with DD. This exploration was guided by a social relational model of disability, acknowledging how both impairment effects and contextual factors can impact experiences of play, as well as a sociocultural perspective toward play and children’s learning. Firstly, an online survey was conducted of 42 kindergarten teachers’ perspectives toward play and inclusion. Secondly, teachers in eight play-based kindergarten classrooms were examined using direct observation and semi-structured interviews. Lastly, a subset of three teachers who shared a strong commitment to inclusion in play were examined more closely through a case study lens. Teachers in the broader survey conceptualized inclusion primarily from an academic lens and addressed it mainly outside of play, underscoring a need for clearly defined strategies in play. Both indirect (i.e., environmental) and direct (i.e., teacher support) strategies for supporting inclusion in play were highlighted in studies two and three, as well as perceived challenges and some notable patterns between perspectives and practices. This exploration also uncovered some ongoing concerns related to meaningfully supporting children with DD in play, including emphasizing child-led play with a more passive teacher role and a narrow focus on social development in play. These findings can help to inform teacher training programs related to play and lay the groundwork for future research on cultivating play-based learning spaces that can support the participation and holistic learning of all children, including children with DD. | Ph.D. | disabilit, learning, environmental | 3, 4, 13 |
| Chung, Jiil | Tabori, Uri | The Investigation of Genomic Microsatellite Indel Signatures in Replication Repair Deficient Germline and Cancerous Tissues | Medical Science | 2022-06 | Replication repair deficiency (RRD) is the inactivation of either/both of the mechanisms that repair mistakes during DNA synthesis, the mismatch repair (MMR) system and polymerase proofreading. RRD is associated with different malignancies at all stages throughout life, and among the different forms, one that is particularly aggressive is Constitutional Mismatch Repair Deficiency (CMMRD). It is characterized by the germline biallelic loss of one of the four MMR genes, MSH2, MSH6, MLH1, and PMS2. Individuals with CMMRD have no MMR activity from conception, and develop cancers early in life, primarily in the brain, GI, and haematopoietic systems. These cancers are commonly hypermutated (>10 mut/Mb), and the analysis of their mutations led to insights on their etiology, mutational kinetics, and signatures. Conversely, there is another category of mutations that is associated with RRD but has not been investigated in CMMRD tissues, called microsatellite insertion/deletions (MS-indels). These MS-indels are canonically known to be repaired by the MMR system, and are highly prevalent in adult MMR-deficient (MMRD) cancers. This thesis presents a comprehensive, genomic analysis of MS-indels in RRD tissues, and the associated biological discoveries and clinical implications. Chapter 1 highlights important findings in the pertinent fields of replication repair, microsatellites, modern therapies/prevention, and current challenges with diagnosis of RRD. Chapter 2 describes the methods used in this thesis, including bioinformatic pipelines, statistical analyses, as well as any laboratory experiments that were included in the subsequent chapters. Chapter 3 describes the landscape of MS-indels in RRD cancers, defining novel MS-indel signatures (MS-sigs) that uncover important biological questions. Chapter 4 details the clinical use of MS-sigs in the diagnosis of RRD in cancer, and its efficacy in predicting the response of RRD tumours to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICI). Chapter 5 outlines the ability of MS-sigs to detect RRD in the germline, and clarifies the heterogeneity of MSI in CMMRD individuals. Chapter 6 is focused on the future directions of this work, and discusses the potential limitations to the above studies. This thesis clarifies the association between MS-indels and RRD, and describes how microsatellite mutations can impact the treatment and clinical management of individuals with RRD. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, land | 8, 9, 15 |
| Gagne, Mathew | Dave, Naisargi N | Gay Sex and Digital Media in Beirut: The Social and Erotic Life of Information | Anthropology | 2020-11 | In this dissertation, I examine how queer men in Beirut, Lebanon use sex apps and other social media to create their intimate lives despite the persistence of marginalizing legal, state, and social regulations. Among men, there is a sense that gay sex has become different in the digital age, becoming both more abundant and more ordinary. I argue that gay sex in Beirut is not extraordinary simply because it exists against a set of marginalizing forces, but rather that it is ordinary because of its imbrication in everyday life, habits, and routines. Sex apps are tools for the abundant ordinariness of sex. In my dissertation, I examine the media practices, logics, desires, meanings, categories, and debates queer men in Beirut have developed to live with one another sexually and relationally. What I demonstrate in this ethnography of gay sex in the digital age is that queer politics are not exclusively about resistance, but about the pleasures and struggles of carving out moments for sex, intimacy, and pleasure in an otherwise bounded world. Along with an ethnographic exploration of gay sex and how men talk about it, a central focus of this dissertation is the erotic life of information itself. In digital sex cultures, information plays a central role in the production of desire and sexual possibilities. Information produces feeling, both in the meaning of the words and images, but also in the ritualistic subtleties of how information is shared. The sociality of sex apps, I argue, is fundamentally about exchange as a way of making things happen through the erotic life of information. | Ph.D. | queer, production | 5, 12 |
| McAdam, Rochelle | Dirks, Peter B||Huang, Xi | Identification of Resting Membrane Potential as a Regulator of Medulloblastoma Stem Cell Proliferation | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2020-11 | Medulloblastoma is a cancer of the cerebellum and is one of the most common malignant pediatric brain tumours. Currently, a significant barrier to treatment is disease relapse, which is almost uniformly fatal. Although the mechanism of disease relapse in humans is not presently understood, a preclinical mouse model of medulloblastoma has demonstrated that a rare subset of tumour cells, marked by the transcription factor Sox2, persist and continue to seed the tumour after antimitotic chemotherapy treatment. Additionally, human Sonic hedgehog subgroup medulloblastomas that are enriched for Sox2+ cell expression profiles have a worse prognosis.Together, these data suggest that medulloblastoma relapse develops from a rare, treatment resistant population, against which no therapies currently exist. One under studied property of medulloblastoma cells is their bioelectric properties. In this thesis, I used electrophysiology to study the bioelectric properties of medulloblastoma cells, with the aim of better understanding the disease heterogeneity that leads to relapse. I identified a novel bioelectric heterogeneity that exists amongst proliferative and quiescent tumour cells. Specifically, the resting membrane potential of the quiescent Sox2+ population was found to be hyperpolarized, and the proliferative progenitor population was found to be depolarized. Designer Receptors Exclusively Activated by Designer Drugs were used to depolarize the resting membrane potential of Sox2+ cells, which resulted in the disruption of quiescence and a transient increase in proliferation. To understand what maintains Sox2+ cells in this hyperpolarized state, I investigated candidate ion channels and found that the hyperpolarizing ion channel Kir4.1 was expressed at both the RNA and protein level in Sox2+ cells, but not other tumour populations. Furthermore, pharmacological blockade of this channel resulted in membrane depolarization, and genetic knockdown in a Drosophila model of medulloblastoma resulted in a reduction in tumour volume. Taken together, these findings identify RMP as a regulator of MB cell proliferation and demonstrate the therapeutic potential of targeting ion channels to modulate RMP in cancer and disrupt tumour growth. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Zhu, Gaoxia | Scardamalia, Marlene | Understanding and Supporting Socio-cognitive-emotional Dynamics in Knowledge Building Communities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2020-11 | Wellbeing is increasingly viewed as a key component of success in school, with research showing the many ways in which emotions and cognition interact. Positive emotions are generally beneficial for students’ learning; negative emotions can be beneficial or not, depending on self-regulation and learning strategies that play a mediating role. Knowledge Building is a pedagogical approach that emphasizes students taking higher levels of responsibility for bringing ideas they really care about to the community and collectively improving the ideas. An important and direct way for students to take responsibility is engaging in discourse about their discourse—metadiscourse—in which they collectively plan, monitor, regulate, and evaluate their progress. According to the control-value theory, students should experience higher levels of positive emotions in Knowledge Building because they have more control over learning and perceive the learning as more personally relevant. My thesis represents longitudinal design-based research in which young students take greater responsibility for their Knowledge Building. In Chapter 1, a literature review and outline of contributions to the field of the Learning Sciences is presented. In Chapter 2, instruments used to analyze students' emotions are presented, using multimodal data—including text, speech, gesture, and facial expressions recorded in classroom videos. In Chapter 3, design research to investigate how student engagement in metadiscourse influenced their emotions was conducted, and interrelationships between students’ emotions and idea improvement were explored. In Chapter 4, the co-development of students’ emotions and idea improvement over time was examined using Markov Chain analysis. Students expressed greater levels of enjoyment and surprise when engaged in metadiscourse. They liked metadiscourse, designing new work, and improving ideas; confidence was significantly positively associated with students’ explanations (partial and elaborated) and proposals for new directions for their research. Reflection led to greater levels of reflection. Overall, this thesis develops theoretical constructs that integrate Knowledge Building, metadiscourse, and the control-value theory for enhancing students’ productive Knowledge Building and emotional wellbeing. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, knowledge, learning, labor, invest | 3, 4, 8, 9 |
| Karimian Pour, Navaz | Piquette-Miller, Micheline | Impact of Inflammation on the Expression of Renal Drug Transporters | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2020-11 | Inflammation-mediated changes in the expression and activity of drug transporters and drug metabolizing enzymes have been shown to alter disposition of their substrates. Renal drug transporters including ABC and SLC transporters play an important role in the clearance of several drug substrates, as well as numerous endogenous compounds. Little is known about the impact of inflammatory stimuli on renal transporters. Using rodent models, we investigated the impact of inflammation on the expression of clinically important renal drug transporters. Three inflammatory conditions were examined as part of this thesis: inflammation elicited by HIV viral proteins, by bacterial endotoxin, and by the viral mimetic poly I:C. In a series of in vivo studies, endotoxin was administered to male HIV1-Transgenic (HIV1-Tg) and wild type (WT) rats to model the presence of endotoxemia in HIV patients. Endotoxin administration significantly downregulated numerous renal drug transporters in both HIV1-Tg and WT rats 18 h after administration. In addition, the presence of the HIV transgene alone in the absence of endotoxin resulted in the downregulation of the mRNA expression of several drug transporters. Although HIV and endotoxin each imposed alterations in the expression of many clinically important renal drug transporters, co-infection did not augment this effect. Viral and/or bacterial infections may impact the renal clearance of drug substrates and could potentially be a source of drug-disease interactions. In the next set of in vivo studies, poly I:C or saline was administered to pregnant rats at term. Poly I:C imposed a significant reduction in the mRNA and protein expression of numerous renal drug transporters 24 h after administration. Next, poly I:C or saline was administered to pregnant rats at mid-gestation and the impact of poly I:C was investigated at different time points. The mRNA expression of several drug transporters was downregulated at 6 h, and corresponding alterations at the protein level occurred at 48 h. Overall, poly I:C imposed significant reductions in the expression of several key renal transporters at term and mid-gestation in pregnant rats. Thus, viral infection may impact renal excretion of drug transporter substrates, potentially leading to drug–disease interactions. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest | 2, 9 |
| Wauchop, Marianne Emily | Backx, Peter H | The Pathophysiology of R222Q Mutant Nav1.5 Channels | Physiology | 2020-11 | Mutations in the primary cardiac sodium channel (SCN5A) are associated with arrhythmias and cardiomyopathy, however the mechanisms underlying this phenotype, particularly cardiomyopathies remain unclear. To investigate R222Q-SCN5A associated arrhythmias and dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), we used ventricular cardiomyocytes (CMs) derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) from a patient heterozygous for an SCN5A mutation (c.665G>A/R222Q) with clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR) corrected isogenic controls. Single cells and cell sheets largely failed to recapitulate the electric physiological changes previously associated with R222Q-Nav1.5 channels. The R222Q-SCN5A phenotype was unmasked using the electrically stimulated biowire platform to promote maturation. Biowires harbouring the R222Q-SCN5A mutation exhibited action potential (AP) abbreviation consistent with Ω-pore currents and contractile dysfunction associated with tissues dilation, reduced troponin T (TnT) expression and sarcomere disarray in the absence of fibrosis and changes to calcium handling. Collectively, these findings suggest that SCN5A plays an important structural role in CMs, which is disrupted by the R222Q mutation resulting in the tissue dilation and reduced myofibril density and organization and consequently contractile dysfunction. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest | 2, 9 |
| Ganjavi, Mahdi | Mojab, Shahrzad | Franklin Book Programs (1952–1977): Imperialism, State and Knowledge Production | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11 | This thesis explores the role of the Franklin Book Programs (FBP) (1952–1977) in the print, publishing industry, textbook writing, and educational policies of the Middle East, with a specific focus on Iran. The Franklin Book Programs (FBP) was a private not-for-profit U.S. organization founded in 1952 during the Cold War and was subsidized by the United States’ government agencies as well as private corporations. The FBP initially intended to promote U.S. liberal values and also to create appropriate markets for U.S. books in ‘Third World’ countries (Robbins, 2007). However, from its initial objective of exporting U.S. culture to rival the influence of Soviet socialism, the FBP evolved into an international educational program publishing university textbooks, schoolbooks, and supplementary readings (Laugesen, 2012). As the FBP moved to become the most important organization of the Cold War with a global focus on the production of educational material, its activities broadened from the ones specifically related to translation to those related to the development of printing, publishing, book distribution, and bookselling institutions. Therefore, the FBP started to build and expand printing plants; it encouraged library development and more importantly undertook the training of teachers as textbook writers. Through archival study and historical analysis of the international role of the FBP (1952–1977) on the print and publishing industry and educational policies of the Middle East, this thesis examines the interrelation between imperialism, state, and knowledge production. Criticizing the prevalent understanding of imperialism as an economic system, this research explores and historicizes the ideological functioning of imperialism through its cultural and publication policies in the Middle East. Using a dialectical and historical materialism approach, my research shows that the print, the production, and the distribution of a wide range of liberal literacy, educational, and school texts throughout the Middle East was a continuation of U.S. anti-communist policies during the Cold War. | Ph.D. | knowledge, production, institut | 4, 12, 16 |
| Wong, Raymond Yin Cheung | Sun, Hong-Shuo | Role of Ion Channels in Glioblastoma | Physiology | 2020-11 | Glioblastoma (GBM) accounts for the majority of astrocytic tumours and represents the most common primary brain cancer. Prognosis for patients is dismal even with aggressive treatment. Because of diffused GBM invasion throughout the brain, it is impossible for surgery to completely remove the tumour. Chemotherapeutic adjuvants are used in attempt to eradicate remnant GBM cells. Unfortunately, the standard clinically used drugs have limited therapeutic benefits. Thus, there is need to identify novel drug targets. Although ion channels contribute to a wide array of fundamental cellular functions, the role of ion channels in GBM is ill-defined. A better understanding of ion channels can potentially present new effective ways to treat GBM. In this thesis, I aimed to fill some of these knowledge gaps by investigating two exciting candidates: the transient receptor potential melastatin 7 (TRPM7), and the swelling induced chloride current (ICl,swell), both of which can potentially serve as cellular "sensors" for key GBM characteristics such as hypoxia and cell volume. In my first aim, I validated the involvement of TRPM7 in GBM cellular functions and the underlying signalling by employing a unique experimental approach. That is, I found that pharmacologically potentiating TRPM7 enhanced GBM motility. In my second aim, I evaluated the therapeutic potential of the specific TRPM7 antagonist waixenicin A. By employing both in vitro and in vivo approaches, I provided evidence suggesting that waixenicin A reduced GBM cellular functions. Lastly, in my third aim, I expanded my scope of study in order to gain a broader understanding of ion channels' roles in GBM by examining ICl,swell, a target that may complement TRPM7 in various physicochemical sensory roles. Here, I observed that inhibiting ICl,swell can also suppress GBM cellular functions. Overall, the objective of my thesis is to elucidate the ill-defined roles of TRPM7 and ICl,swell in GBM in order to identify potential targets for pursuit of further drug development. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest | 4, 9 |
| Feather, Janice | McGillis Hall, Linda | Organizational Citizenship Behaviours: A Relational Perspective on the Critical Care Nursing Workforce to Patient Safety and Quality Care | Nursing Science | 2020-08 | One underrecognized essential component of highly reliable safety performance is the adaptive capacity and engagement of the front-line nursing workforce. Findings from a review of the literature revealed (a) conflicting evidence between studies creating a lack of consensus as to the nature and influence of nurses’ workplace behaviours on patient safety outcomes, (b) a gap in understanding nurses’ workplace behaviours in the context of high reliability settings, and (c) a lack of evidence on the Organizational Citizenship Behaviours (OCB) of nurses in critical care settings. Thus, this study explored the social functioning of relational work environments and workplace behaviours of Registered Nurses (RN) in critical care settings that promote safe patient outcomes and high quality care. This study was conducted using a sequential explanatory mixed methods design (Teddlie Tashakkori, 2009). The quantitative portion of the study included administration of a survey distributed to critical care nurses in Ontario with a response rate of 29.3% (N = 508) and administrative patient outcome data. The qualitative portion of the study included individual interviews with a random sample of seven nurses and six nurse leaders. Multivariable regression exploring linear, non-linear, multi-level, moderation, and mediation relationships was conducted and triangulated with qualitative findings. The study found that co-worker exchange relationships were the strongest relational work environment variable in predicting nurses’ workplace behaviours. Nurses frequently engaged in OCB for the benefit of co-workers and patients/families. At the individual-level, nurses’ OCB was associated with decreased self-reported medication errors (b = -0.07, p = 0.007), missed care (b = -0.16, p = 0.001), and increased nurse-perceived quality of care (b = 0.28, p = 0.01). Safety organizing behaviour (SOB) based on high reliability practices accounted for 57.3% of the total mediation effect between OCB and medication errors. Nurses’ organizational identification was influenced by the interprofessional teamwork climate (b = 0.23, p = 0.001) and SOB (b = 0.29, p = 0.001). Results from this study provide nurses, leaders, and researcher insights into the importance of the relational environment in critical care that contribute to highly reliable, safe, and high quality care through engagement in workplace behaviours. | Ph.D. | citizen, worker, climate | 4, 8, 13 |
| Kwok, Chi | Carens, Joseph||Kohn, Margaret | Workplace Control and Workplace Injustice | Political Science | 2020-11 | This dissertation examines how the internal life in contemporary workplaces might foster or undermine democratic values. It is an interdisciplinary work that combines normative political philosophy with empirical management and sociological studies of workplace control. The dissertation analyzes three major forms of workplace control: emotion, time, and knowledge. For each form of workplace control, I analyze the empirical details of how this control works in reality, and then analyze the empirical evidence concerning the positive and negative personal, social, and political consequences of such control. Building on the empirical analysis of workplace control, I ask why some forms of workplace control should be regarded as normatively problematic by engaging with the contemporary debates around distributive justice and democratic theory. Chapter 5 of the dissertation addresses the question of what personal and social goods a lower degree of workplace control can foster and whether the democratization of the workplace can lead to a lower degree of workplace control. Ultimately, the dissertation aims to present a coherent, comprehensive, and empirically solid picture of what modern forms of workplace control are and how they undermine important values of a free and fair democratic society. | Ph.D. | knowledge, injustice, democra | 4, 16 |
| Cao, Wen Xi | Lipshitz, Howard D | Precise Temporal Regulation of Ribonucleoprotein Complexes during the Drosophila Maternal-to-Zygotic Transition | Molecular and Medical Genetics | 2020-11 | In early animal embryos, maternally loaded mRNAs and proteins regulate development prior to the handover of control to zygotically expressed gene products in a process known as the maternal-to-zygotic transition (MZT). RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) tightly regulate the translation, stability, and localization of maternal mRNAs through post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms. For example, in the Drosophila melanogaster embryo, the Smaug (SMG) RBP forms ribonucleoprotein complexes with corepressors, Trailer hitch (TRAL), Maternal expression at 31B (ME31B) and Cup, as well as AGO1 and the CCR4-NOT deadenylase to regulate the translation and stability of hundreds of maternal mRNAs, and this regulation is required for proper development through the MZT. However, regulation of maternal proteins, including these RBPs is not well-studied. In this thesis, I show that the maternal proteome represents over half of the protein coding capacity of the Drosophila genome and that 2% of this proteome is rapidly degraded during the MZT. Cleared proteins include the post-transcriptional repressors Cup, TRAL, ME31B and SMG. While the ubiquitin-proteasome system is necessary for clearance of these repressors, distinct E3 ligase complexes target their degradation at distinct times: the C-terminal to Lis1 Homology (CTLH) complex targets Cup, TRAL and ME31B for degradation early in the MZT; the Skp/Cullin/F-box-containing (SCF) complex targets SMG at the end of the MZT. Deleting the C-terminal 233 amino acids of SMG abrogates interactions with F-box proteins and results in failure of the protein to degrade during the MZT. I map the regulatory elements of SMG protein degradation to conserved motifs within the C-terminus. Furthermore, I found that many of maternal mRNAs targeted for degradation by SMG are subsequently re-expressed zygotically. Unlike Cup, TRAL and ME31B, the deadenylase complex remains stably expressed in the embryo. Consequently, after zygotic genome activation, persistent SMG continues to function in complex with the CCR4-NOT deadenylase and downregulates zygotic re-expression of these mRNAs. Thus, timely clearance of SMG during the MZT permits an orderly gene expression program in the early embryo. | Ph.D. | transit, conserv, animal | 11, 14, 15 |
| Sewell, Karen Menota | Bogo, Marion | Evaluating the Feasibility of a Clinical Supervision Model for Evidence-supported Interventions for Children with Severe Disruptive Behaviour | Social Work | 2020-11 | The purpose of this dissertation was to enhance knowledge of the practice and role of staff supervision in supporting children’s mental health services and the implementation of evidence-supported interventions. This research examined the need, acceptability, and feasibility of implementing a model of clinical supervision to support the SNAP (Stop Now and Plan) evidence-supported interventions for children with disruptive behaviours and their families. Methods: In Paper 1, a descriptive cross-sectional survey of supervisors and practitioners (N = 54) established supervision in practice within Canadian SNAP evidence-supported interventions. In Paper 2, a multiple case study evaluated the acceptability, appropriateness, adoption, and feasibility of implementing an intervention-specific model of clinical supervision within SNAP sites (N = 3). In Paper 3, a feasibility study of implementing the SNAP model of clinical supervision in community sites (k = 6) over a six-month period examined the demand, acceptability, implementation, practicality, and effectiveness of the model on enhancing practitioner competence, and perceived support (N = 27). Results: Paper 1 showed that supervision was valued, however occurring variably across the SNAP affiliate sites. The results highlighted an opportunity to enhance the quality of supervision within the SNAP affiliate sites. Paper 2 demonstrated that the SNAP clinical supervision model could be adopted in practice with adjustments, was deemed acceptable and appropriate by SNAP supervisors, and was predominately feasible with real world circumstances taken into consideration. Paper 3 findings included a determination of partial demand for implementing the SNAP clinical supervision model, as well as the acceptability of the model, implementation benefits and challenges, challenges related to the practicality of implementing the model using existing resources, and the preliminary effectiveness of the model on enhancing practitioner competence. Conclusions: This dissertation contributes an understanding of the need for a structured model of supervision, as well as demonstrates how such a model incorporating theory and research can be specified and translated to practice. The studies demonstrate the feasibility of implementing the SNAP CS in community-based sites. The dissertation employed a systematic approach to researching supervision to present the first known Canadian study of implementing a model of clinical supervision in practice. | Ph.D. | mental health, knowledge | 3, 4 |
| Tsang, Man Yin | Wortmann, Ulrich G | Modeling the Effects of Microbially-mediated Sulfate Reduction on Porewater S-isotope Ratios in Marine Sediments | Earth Sciences | 2020-11 | Microbial sulfate reduction affects the balance between the burial and remineralization of organic carbon. We can trace the activity of microbial sulfate reduction with the concentration and isotope data of porewater sulfate and sulfide. This dissertation aims to improve the understanding of sulfur isotope measurements of marine porewater samples. Specifically, this dissertation is investigating (a) the isotope effects of disproportionation, (b) isotope fractionation due to microbially-mediated processes in the abyssal plain, and (c) effects of drilling-fluid contamination on the estimated rates and isotope fractionation of microbial sulfate reduction. Our understanding of the isotope effects of disproportionation comes mostly from laboratory cultures different from natural settings. This dissertation uses a modeling approach to investigate the constraints of such effects on the S-isotopes of sulfate and sulfide. The results show that with sulfate reduction and disproportionation co-occurring in marine sediments, the isotope effects of disproportionation are capped at about 16‰. Studies taking physical processes into account when studying microbially-mediated isotope fractionation in the abyssal plain are rare. This dissertation applies a reaction-transport model to the S-isotope data from the Eastern Equatorial Pacific (Site 1226, Ocean Drilling Program), with physical processes considered. Model results reveal sulfate reduction occurring at rates from 10^2fmol/cm^3/day near the seafloor to almost zero above the basement. The modeled microbially-mediated fractionation factor is between 1.058 and 1.062. This value is lower than the equilibrium value between sulfate and sulfide suggested by previous studies. The problem of drilling-fluid contamination to microbial studies is well-known but only qualitatively. Drilling fluid affects concentration and isotope data, which will lead to inaccurate estimations of the rates and isotope fractionation of microbial activities. This dissertation reviews porewater profiles of sites that have been drilled twice in the International Ocean Discovery Program. Concentration differences between independent drilling campaigns of the same locations suggest that porewater samples can contain 30% of drilling fluid. Here, reaction-transport models are used to reveal that drilling fluid leads to minor effects on the estimated sulfate reduction rates. However, its impact on the estimated isotope fractionation is significant. 30% contamination will cause an underestimation of the fractionation by more than 30‰. | Ph.D. | water, contamination, labor, invest, ocean, marine | 6, 8, 9, 14 |
| Rodda, Kimberly Kristine | Schmitt, Cannon||Knight, Mark | Doubtful Forms: Uncertain Belief in Victorian Women’s Writing | English | 2020-11 | Critical engagement with religious doubt in Victorian studies has long been determined by the linear structure of the conversion narrative as it works out across the faith/doubt binary. The doubter moves from one certain form of belief (faith) to another (doubt), usually through the paradigm of the crisis. The same shape has become the blueprint by which we identify the Victorian doubter and that, extrapolated to the social level, organizes the secularization thesis, which associates industrialization with the progressive decline of religious belief. The prevalence of this particular shape in literary studies has implications for how we understand doubt and what we register as doubt in our readings. Drawing on the resources of postsecular criticism and the recent (re)turn to formalism, my dissertation resists collapsing the dynamic interplay between faith and doubt and instead analyzes how a less stable and more mobile doubt makes itself felt in the formal dimensions of literary texts. I show that writers not only deployed but also interrogated and subverted the faith/doubt binary, displaying and developing complex alternate understandings of doubt. Refusing to conceptualize doubt as a static form, as the faith/doubt binary implies, this dissertation distinguishes doubt from disbelief, reinterpreting doubt not as a loss of faith but as a movement of uncertainty within faith. In my investigation of doubt’s role within faith, I turn to writing by nineteenth-century women, who did not encounter doubt in the same contexts as their male counterparts and, consequently, whose conceptions of doubt are often less preconditioned by the structures of the faith/doubt binary. In chapters focusing on Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s verse-novel Aurora Leigh, Christina Rossetti’s mixed-genre devotional works The Face of the Deep and Time Flies, Olive Schreiner’s experimental novel The Story of an African Farm, and Alice Meynell’s essay collections, including The Rhythm of Life, I examine how literary form interacts with religious doubt, especially by eliciting particular reading practices that unsettle readerly certainty. My dissertation contributes to postsecularism’s reconsideration of literature’s religious dimensions and showcases the diversity of nineteenth-century doubt to demonstrate Victorian literature’s potential to generate new understanding of the structural workings of belief. | Ph.D. | women, invest, industrialization | 5, 9 |
| Israelian, Nyrie Elise | Danska, Jayne | Interactions Between Gut Microbial Composition, Mucosal Immunity and Metabolism | Immunology | 2020-11 | While evidence that the intestinal microbiome contributes to host health and disease has rapidly developed, the causal mechanisms that link these microbes to disease are largely elusive. The goal of this project was to explore the complex crosstalk between the microbiome and the immune system using genetically defined mouse models under defined environmental conditions. We first aimed to identify how early-life perturbations in the microbiome alter the immune landscape of gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT), as well as extra-intestinal influences conferred by these perturbations. We investigated how oral administration of the antibiotic vancomycin from weaning until early adulthood affects the microbial ecosystem, intestinal immunity and serum metabolic profiles in C57BL/6 mice. Vancomycin treatment significantly altered gut microbiome composition, affected T cell and innate-like lymphocyte (ILC) populations in the small intestine, and increased levels of intestinal and serum IgA. We also report that vancomycin treatment altered serum cytokine and metabolic profiles, demonstrating that gut microbial perturbation can have extra-intestinal effects. The second focus of this project was to understand how biological sex participates in the trialogue between the immune system, metabolism, and the microbiome. We used the “four core genotypes” (FCG) mouse model which generates XX or XY gonadal females, and XX or XY gonadal males to dissect the independent and collective roles of sex hormones and sex chromosomes on these processes. We observed that during puberty, both sex chromosomes and sex hormones affect the composition of cecal microbial taxa that subsequently develops in adult mice. Gonadal sex had a broad effect on serum metabolites and bile acids, and androgens influenced gut microbial composition and immune cell population frequencies in males. Collectively, the data presented in this thesis uncover new insights into the relationship between gut microbial composition and intestinal immunity. We comprehensively immunophenotyped the GALT and demonstrated how microbial perturbation effects intestinal-associated immune subsets, highlighting a major source of control on immunity in extra-intestinal sites. Further, these data emphasize the importance of considering sex as a biological variable in analysis of microbiome-immune-metabolic interactions and reveal potential mechanisms that may influence sex differences in immune and metabolic diseases. | Ph.D. | female, invest, environmental, ecosystem, land | 5, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Beard, Lauren | Comay, Rebecca | The Aesthetics of Nachträglichkeit: Traumatic Temporality and the First World War in Proust, Joyce, and Mann | Comparative Literature | 2020-11 | I investigate the unusual temporality peculiar to modernist literature in Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), James Joyce’s Ulysses, and Thomas Mann’s Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain). These contemporaneous novels, written in diverse locations, by unassociated authors, share a protracted temporality that extends the narratives to unexpected lengths. Time itself is interrogated in these novels, and in criticism is often characterized as an intensely subjective and private form of time, in reaction to major contemporary shifts occurring in public time, notably the ongoing implementation of Global Standard Time. I propose that the instability of time in these novels reveals a structure of the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit at work, a belatedness that is a form of coping with crisis, and that the major crisis to which this peculiar temporality responds is the First World War. These novels are not ostensibly preoccupied with the war, and yet convey how deeply war affects individuals and cultural production in ways that are often unanticipated and unacknowledged. Nachträglichkeit, the inherent belatedness of trauma, shapes the temporality of modernist literature in ways previously unconsidered. In these novels, trauma appears as what Cathy Caruth calls a “missed event”: its initial iteration appears minimally or not at all, and is instead represented through flashbacks (in the case of involuntary memory in Proust), allusions (in Joyce), or a trope of ineffability (in Mann). Although the affect related to a traumatic event is deferred, this deferral is part of a coping mechanism: it is the consciousness’ strategy of self-protection through gradual exposure, and this is the crucial component of the belatedness in these novels. The various ways in which time operates in the three novels demonstrates the diverse logic of Nachträglichkeit, particularly in their respective treatment of the war. Nachträglichkeit, in various permutations, is one articulation of the broader interrogations of temporality that were ongoing in the early twentieth century, and the most compelling explanation of the strange temporality of modernist literature, particularly as it invites a reconsideration of the constellation of Proust, Joyce, and Mann. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, production | 4, 9, 12 |
| Tosaj, Nicholas | Bender, Daniel E. | Empire of Wheat: Wheat, Bread and Staple Carbohydrates in the French Colonial Empire 1887-1939 | History | 2020-11 | This thesis expands the history of French bread and wheat beyond the metropole by studying the place of these dietary staples alongside local staple foods in colonial Morocco and Cambodia. The period covered spans from the formation of French Indochina in 1887 to the dawn of the Second World War in 1939. Staple foods in this context stand at the intersection of food studies, colonialism and French imperial history. By situating this study within the framework of imperial collaboration, French foodways and the global wheat market, this thesis argues that dietary staples provide a key platform through which we can deepen our understanding of the French empire and its food systems. Where Cambodia was primarily a rice-producer, Morocco was a longstanding producer of wheat. In the context of French colonization these highly valued local foods were juxtaposed against the preferred French staple; bread made of European-style wheat. As a result, Cambodian rice and breads made of Moroccan wheat were deemed less civilized by the French than bread made of European-style wheat. The urge to make bread deemed to be French readily available both in the colonies and the metropole meant that wheat provisioning was a priority for the colonial government in Cambodia. In Morocco, immense efforts were undertaken by the French administration to transition the state into a producer and potential exporter of European-style wheat which could wean the French empire off of its reliance on foreign imports. The value of Cambodia and Morocco as case studies thus rests in part on their nature as colonies, each with a contrasting relationship with wheat. By studying these colonies side by side, we gain insight into the cumbersome system which integrated Morocco and Cambodia into the French empire, one which operated with varying levels of success. As such, this thesis argues that the French empire was an empire of wheat, defined in part by its subsistence staple. The dependence of this empire on a food system tied to wheat and bread in the French colonies is a testament to the interconnectedness of empires, to their problematic natures and to their fragility. | Ph.D. | food system, labor, metro, transit | 2, 8, 11 |
| Tarshis, Sarah | Alaggia, Ramona | Theorizing, Conceptualizing, and Responding to the Employment Needs of Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV): A Gounded Theory Study | Social Work | 2020-11 | Introduction: The impact of economic abuse among survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV) can be devastating. Abusers requently engage in behaviors that interfere with, restrict, and sabotage their partners’ employment and economic well-being. Despite growing recognition of he economic consequences of IPV, research that examines employment-seeking experiences is scant. This dissertation seeks to advance a conceptual understanding of employment-seeking from the perspectives of survivors of IPV and service providers. Method: The dissertation utilized a constructivist grounded theory design to address the following research questions: 1) What are the employment-seeking experiences of survivors of IPV; 2) How do service providers respond to survivors’ employment needs; and 3) How do both groups conceptualize economic empowerment related to employment attainment? Sixteen survivors of IPV and ten service providers from IPV organizations in a large, northeastern American city were recruited to participate in in-depth individual nterviews. Theoretical sampling strategies were used to ensure a diverse sample of participants. Interviewing continueiii until theoretical saturation was reached and no new themes were identified. Through iterative stages of coding, themes were identified, linked, and developed into mid-level theory Results: Findings are organized within three distinct papers. The first paper explores the social ecological and intersectional barriers that impede employment, and the supports that facilitate employment-seeking. The second paper conceptualizes how service providers theorize and approach employment services using an intersectional and trauma-informed approach. The third paper explores and compares perspectives on economic empowerment and employment-seeking among survivors and service providers. Implications: The dissertation’s findings provide implications for research, policy, and practice. IPV survivors face multiple and intersecting forms of stigma and discrimination that prevent them from securing living wage employment. By focusing on survivors’ complex and diverse social locations, a social ecological and intersectional framework offers a more complete analysis of barriers and facilitators in the employment seeking process. Findings also suggest a trauma-informed lens to be an important component of employment service provision. The different structural forms of oppression that impact employment-seeking highlight the need for multidimensional services approaches to economic empowerment. Further research is necessary and outlined in this dissertation | Ph.D. | well-being, employment, wage, economic empowerment, ecolog, violence | 3, 8, 15, 16 |
| Clausen, Jessica | Bakan, Abigail | Nature Pedagogy and the Enactment of Settler Colonialism in Ontario Forest Schools and Nature-based Kindergartens: A Study of Three Sites | Social Justice Education | 2020-11 | Forest Schools and Nature-based Kindergartens are a trend that promotes greater connection to land-based learning for their participants. This study examines the promise of Forest Schools and Nature-based Kindergartens in the context of settler colonialism and their impact on education in Canada. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (2015) Calls to Action challenge educators to teach about the effects of colonialism on Canadian society, and to create a more equitable and just partnership with Indigenous peoples. The dissertation takes seriously this challenge and considers a comparative case study analysis of three different sites in central Ontario, focusing on the frameworks of stewardship, connection to nature, and responsibility to Indigenous communities. The study uses policy, curricula, and practice as the lenses to analyze how educators’ practices contribute to or challenge settler colonialism. Data sources includes participant observation at each of the three sites over the course of seven months, interviews with participants and experts, photos, videos, and field notes. Practices in two of the three sites indicate strong influences of western pedagogies that replicate colonial structures. The third site, in contrast, nurtured relationships with a local Indigenous community to provide meaningful, reciprocal experiences and connections for both children and Indigenous community members. This study reveals a spectrum of tensions found in the colonial representations of childhood experiences with nature that have profound implications for our ability to understand the ways settler colonialism is manifested in nature pedagogy. | Ph.D. | equitable, pedagogy, learning, settler, land-based learning, equit, indigenous, reconciliation, truth and reconciliation, forest, land | 4, 10, 16, 15 |
| Xhima, Kristiana | Aubert, Isabelle | Selective Tropomyosin Receptor Kinase A Activation in a Mouse Model of Alzheimer’s Disease | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2020-11 | Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia. AD is characterized by the deposition of β-amyloid peptides (Aβ) and the formation of tau-containing neurofibrillary tangles that result in neurodegeneration, which in turn leads to cognitive impairment. Substantial neurodegeneration is prevalent by the time of clinical presentation; thus, a successful intervention must provide neuronal support, in addition to reducing the pathological hallmarks of the disease. Among the neuronal populations affected in AD, basal forebrain cholinergic neurons (BFCNs) undergo early and extensive dysfunction that correlates with clinical severity. One mechanism underlying the selective vulnerability of BFCNs in AD is the neurotrophic functional imbalance between TrkA-mediated survival signalling and p75NTR-mediated pro-apoptotic signalling. This thesis investigates the effects of selective TrkA activation in the TgCRND8 mouse model of amyloidosis, in which I discovered the recapitulation of AD-related cholinotrophic deficits. With consideration for clinical translation, I delivered a selective agonist for the TrkA receptor (D3) to cholinergic loci using a drug delivery modality termed MRI-guided focused ultrasound (MRIgFUS). MRIgFUS was used to locally, transiently and noninvasively increase the permeability of the blood-brain barrier (BBB), thereby allowing systemically administered D3 to enter MRIgFUS-targeted brain regions. MRIgFUS-mediated delivery of D3 rescued cholinotrophic neuronal dysfunction in TgCRND8 mice including TrkA phosphorylation and intracellular signalling cascades, Akt, MAPK, and CREB, that compete with p75NTR-mediated pathways. In addition, TrkA activation promoted cholinergic neurotransmission in TgCRND8 mice. Repeated MRIgFUS-mediated delivery of D3 for sustained TrkA activation rescued cholinergic neuronal atrophy, axonal degeneration and dystrophy, and stimulated cholinergic tone in TgCRND8 mice. In response to neurotrophic support, cholinergic activity increased hippocampal neurogenesis; an important form of structural plasticity which is impaired in AD. TrkA activation was also accompanied by a widespread decrease in Aβ burden. TrkA-mediated neuronal resilience and plasticity contributed to improved performance in various memory tasks, cognitive flexibility and daily living activities. In conclusion, this thesis demonstrates that selective TrkA activation, combined with MRIgFUS-induced BBB permeability, can enhance cholinergic function and plasticity in the presence of Aβ-driven neurotrophic deficits, and represents a promising strategy to improve cognition in AD. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, invest, resilien, resilience | 1, 9, 11, 13, 15 |
| Moozeh, Kimia | Evans, Greg | An Instructional Structure to Enhance Learning in Undergraduate Laboratories | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2020-11 | Undergraduate laboratories are an important part of engineering and science curricula, as they have the potential to help students develop and improve many skills. Concerns, however, have been raised regarding the learning achieved in laboratories. This thesis provides a means of enhancing student knowledge in traditional undergraduate laboratories through the development and evaluation of an instructional structure. The instructional structure was developed based on modified Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, the expectancy-value theory of achievement motivation and multimedia design principles. Based on the instructional structure, web-based multimedia prelaboratory and postlaboratory exercises were developed which explain related theories, justify experimental procedures, and enable students to apply gained knowledge in new contexts. In addition, the exercises provided and demonstrated utility value of experiment-acquired knowledge. The instructional structure was developed and evaluated for two experiments in a second-year chemical engineering undergraduate laboratory course using an intervention cross-over methodology. Post-test case-control study design and surveys were used to assess the efficacy of the structure on student knowledge and motivation. Findings indicated that the prelaboratory exercises enhanced student knowledge through explanation of theories and rationale for experimental procedures. Further, this phase of conceptual understanding increased student motivation and encouraged them to be actively involved in learning while performing the experiment. Though results do not indicate a statistically significant increase in knowledge due to the postlaboratory exercises, students’ responses indicated that postlaboratories provided an opportunity to apply experiment-acquired knowledge to a new situation and integrate concepts learned in lecture with concepts learned in the lab course. There was also evidence that the instructional structure enhanced student breadth of knowledge. The instructional structure thus affords instructors a way to design prelaboratory and postlaboratory exercises to enhance student knowledge and motivation in undergraduate laboratories. | Ed.D. | knowledge, learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Lerner, Alexis M | Way, Lucan A | Authoritarian Dissent Management: Repression of the Nonsystemic Political Opposition in the Post-Soviet Region | Political Science | 2020-11 | This dissertation aims to advance scholarly understanding of autocratic repression by analyzing patterns of state-led violence against political opposition candidates in the context of presidential elections. I challenge the conventional wisdom of the ‘Law of Coercive Responsiveness’, which posits that bigger threats lead to more repression (Davenport 2007, 7). I demonstrate that a political opposition candidate with robust international prominence poses a large political threat due to their potential ties to other powerful actors—whether foreign leaders, international organizations, or transnational activist networks—who can express sympathy, raise awareness for that actor and their cause, enact sanctions, and/or leverage others to act. However, I argue that greater threat does not always correspond with more repression, and large threats can be safeguarded by a political opposition candidate’s robust international prominence. It is not only that robust prominence abroad is an adequate indicator of political threat for these critical opposition candidates, but also that prominence abroad corresponds with a decrease in the likelihood that a political opposition candidate will encounter state repression. This is because hybrid leaders are concerned ex-ante for what will happen ex-post (Lachapelle 2017, 11), which makes them less likely to repress political opposition candidates with assumed foreign networks that may intervene in anticipation of, or in response to, human rights violations. I evidence this claim using an original dataset of 4,083 potential presidential candidates across the post-Soviet region from 1991-2018 and a mixed-methods approach that includes both quantitative modelling and in-depth case studies. | Ph.D. | human rights, authoritarian, violence | 16 |
| Charles, Nicole | Trotz, D. Alissa||Murphy, Michelle | Suspicious Refusals: HPV Vaccine Hesitancy and the Politics of Protection in Barbados | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2017-11 | This dissertation, based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork in the Caribbean, critically examines hesitancy toward the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine in Barbados. As a project of women of colour and transnational feminist theory, it argues that “hesitancy”—vernacularized in Barbados as suspicion—is an affective orientation produced in the multi-scaled tensions and circuits of both the colonial and postcolonial state. By situating acts of (bio)medical and technological refusal in Barbados in longer spatio-temporal, cultural and political genealogies that animate contemporary suspicions toward state-led public health interventions, this work challenges mainstream narratives of irrationality that undergird the conception of hesitancy to argue for Barbadian parents’ suspicion as a mode of protection. Put another way, this work proposes an interruption of the impulse to eliminate hesitancy, and a move instead to appreciate the historical significance, contemporary relevance, and generativity of the presumed-unsettling nature of suspicion. This work is situated in conversation with critical traditions of feminist and decolonial theorization in the global South, as well as within an emerging body of transnational feminist work on affect, culture, technologies and neoliberal globalization in the Anglophone Caribbean. | Ph.D. | public health, vaccine, decolonial, women, feminis, globaliz, of colour | 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 |
| Antwi-Boasiako, Kofi | Fallon, Barbara | Disproportionality and Disparity of Black Children in the Child Welfare System of Ontario, Canada | Social Work | 2020-11 | While the disproportionate and disparate representation of Black children in the child welfare system has been the subject of over forty years of research in the United States, such research is now emerging in Canada. This three-paper dissertation examines disproportionality and disparity of Black children in the child welfare system of Ontario, Canada. The first paper uses data from the first five cycles of the Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse and Neglect (OIS) to compare incidence data on Black and White families investigated by Ontario’s child welfare system over a twenty (20) year period. The results show that the incidence of investigations involving White families almost doubled between 1998 and 2003. For Black families, the incidence increased almost fourfold during the same period. The second paper uses the same OIS data to examine the impact of decision-making tools on Black families and how they might have contributed to their overrepresentation in the child welfare system. The paper seeks to explore potential drivers of the increase and their impact on Black families. This paper suggests that reports of physical abuse and exposure to intimate partner violence are among the many explanations for the overrepresentation of Black children in Ontario’s child welfare system. The third paper uses focus groups to explore the findings from the first two papers in order to interpret them through the perspectives of community service providers and child welfare workers. This paper generates a number of themes around racism and bias; lack of cultural sensitivity; lack of workforce diversity/training; lack of culturally appropriate resources; assessment tools; duty to report; fear of liability; lack of collaboration between child welfare workers and Black families; and poverty. This dissertation concludes with a summary of key findings, limitations and implications for theory, policy and practice. | Ph.D. | poverty, disparity, welfare, racism, labor, worker, invest, violence | 1, 10, 4, 8, 9, 16 |
| Bernardini, Paola | Guardiani, Francesco | Il feuilleton di Luigi Natoli: dal romanzo d’appendice ai nuovi media | Italian Studies | 2020-11 | In analyzing the vast textual corpus of Luigi Natoli (1857–1941), it has emerged that his narrative literature can be considered as an archetype of the novel published in installments and the epitome of the history and customs of Sicily. At the fin de siècle, characterized as it was by fervid cultural unrest, Natoli, who was known universally for The Blessed Paulists (I Beati Paoli), continued his activity as a writer, journalist, researcher, critic, poet, and playwright, all while remaining in the shadows, not only due to critical indifference regarding popular literature and novels published in installments—in juxtaposition with “high” literature—but also due to Natoli’s adoption of several pseudonyms. Natoli published literary gleanings under the names Rapsodo, Lo Spigolatore, Maurus, Un topo di biblioteca, and Grifeo, some of which were later collected in Storie e leggende (1892), which would form a zibaldone, or a notebook, for future feuilletons in which he employed the pseudonym of William Galt. His two personalities were diametrically opposed and, at the same time, were central in his poetics: on the one hand, we have the auto-didact historian, the authoritative professor who published critical works, poetry, and textbooks under his own name; on the other, we have the brilliant journalist and creative writer of feuilletons who employed noms de plume. Spanning historical and adventure novels to novels published in installments and detective novels, Natoli’s narrative literature offers fertile ground for the comprehension of texts influenced by 19th-century popular narrative fiction and for the history of the Italian feuilleton. Natoli’s novels in installments testify to the metanarrativity and transmediality of the new media and lead back to a literary and popular double coding for both a mass and elite audience. The intermediality of his feuilletons accentuates the exploitation of Natoli’s narrative production as a multimedial crossroads, as in the case of the trilogy devoted to the 18th-century secret society of mysterious blindfolded men, conceived as a backwards theatrical technique that cannot be reconciled with the romanticized accounts of the Mafia’s progenitors in popular imagination. | Ph.D. | production, exploitation | 12, 16 |
| Cruz, Ailen | Sarabia, Rosa | From the Griffin to the Axolotl: The Resurgence and Reimagining of the Medieval Bestiary in Contemporary Hispanic Literature | Spanish | 2020-11 | This thesis examines the resurgence of the bestiary in contemporary Hispanic literature. Translated into dozens of languages and enjoying prolific numbers, medieval European bestiaries edified humans by decoding lessons incarnate in animals. After centuries of obscurity, five of Latin America’s most prominent writers, Juan José Arreola, Jorge Luis Borges, Nicolás Guillén, Augusto Monterroso, and Pablo Neruda took up the bestiary during the experimental Latin American avant-garde and Boom periods. While these five authors’ works are widely recognized, the Hispanic bestiary has thus far been treated as a fluke. The then-esoteric choice to interpret the medieval genre, however, culminates in a proliferation of the bestiary that spans the last twenty years. This study analyzes the canonical Hispanic bestiaries together with nine contemporary works representing the four most prominent contemporary trends. The selected bestiaries were taken from an original corpus containing over 80 bestiaries, sourced from bookshops and libraries in Europe, North, and South America. Each category was allotted a chapter: “Los inspirados” analyzes ruminating works that uncover the beast’s perspective. “Los (di)simuladores” disguise themselves as other genres, such as environmental manifestos. “Los rebeldes” explore bestiaries which undermine official rhetoric and hegemony. Finally, the “Nosotros, animales” bestiaries replace animals with humans, leading to eco-critical discussions on pre-assumed hierarchies between the two. Using postmodern, post-colonial, eco-critical, and media theory, current works are contrasted with their medieval analogues to shed light on the parodic subversion of the genre implicit in each contemporary bestiary. These four categories were explored to understand what characterizes a literary genre, what the boundaries of a literary genre are, and whether the societal purpose of a genre can shift over time. Ultimately, the analysis concludes that form, not content, defines the bestiary, and leads to the following redefinition of the term: A collection of titled, independent short texts, largely descriptive but sometimes anecdotal, often accompanied by an image, about real, mythical, or implied beasts. The present thesis proposes that the bestiary genre is not extinct, but rather, remoulded for new societal purposes. It traces a trajectory from the medieval to the contemporary Hispanic tradition and promotes an understudied genre of Hispanic literature. | Ph.D. | gini, environmental, animal | 10, 13, 14, 15 |
| Burford, Natasha V | Wane, Njoki | Black Canadian Women, White Canadian Schools: Navigating Identity Within the Complexities of Blackness | Social Justice Education | 2020-11 | This study focuses on the educational experiences and narratives of Black girls in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and is based on ten self-identified Black women who were interviewed over a four-month period, in addition to sharing my own schooling experiences. The literature review examines the ways is which today’s experiences of formal education, which were shared by the women, are shaped and circumscribed by various components of schooling. Overall, this study recounts the participants’ challenges and frustrations, coupled with their positive experiences in navigating the educational system in the GTA from elementary to high school. However, much more work needs to be done to ensure that formal education and learning are meaningful for Black girls and other systematically marginalized students in our Canadian school system. The thesis reveals the complexities associated with understandings and interpretations of identity and discusses Black women’s questions of identity as situated in Black Canadian feminist theory. My research question is: How did diverse self-identified Black women experience education in the Greater Toronto Area? This research is important because Black girls are not only made to feel invisible in schools, but they are also under researched. With the use of Black feminist thought, I used interviews while connecting my personal experiences to wider cultural understandings of Black women’s question of identity. This research found that the women participants were resilient but impacted due, perhaps, to their negative schooling experiences. While some of the findings support existing literature, the participants also recommended ways in which Canadian schools could be more relevant to Black female students. This work should encourage more Black girls and women of colour to share their stories, and for educators, school administrators, and policy makers to pay more attention. Keywords: anti-colonial, decolonization, schooling, blackness, black female education, black girls | Ph.D. | learning, women, girl, female, feminis, of colour, marginalized, decolonization, resilien | 4, 5, 10, 11 |
| O'Mahony, Julia Danielle | Laporte, Audrey | The Weight of Worry carried by Children who Live with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and their Parents | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2020-11 | Background Appreciation by health care providers of the impact of a medical illness on the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of affected individuals and their families is fundamental to the optimal delivery of medical care. This is especially true in the context of paediatric care when parents serve as decision-makers for their children. Objective The objectives of this dissertation were to: 1) evaluate the relationship between the diagnosis of paediatric-onset multiple sclerosis (MS) and the HRQoL of affected children and their parents; 2) evaluate bidirectional relationships between parent and child HRQoL; 3) generate theories of psychosocial interventions to improve the HRQoL of children with MS and their parents and; 4) characterize overlap between the proposed theories and usual care. Methods HRQoL was ascertained using the PedsQLTM modules. The relationship between the diagnosis of MS and the HRQoL of affected children and their parents was evaluated by comparing the HRQoL of children with MS and their parents to that of children with transient demyelination (monoADS) and their parents. Bidirectional relationships between the HRQoL of children with MS and their parents were evaluated using multivariable models. Theories of interventions to improve the HRQoL of children with MS and their parents were generated through a configurative review. Overlap between the proposed theories and usual care was ascertained through qualitative interviews with clinicians who care for children with MS. Results Parents whose children live with MS reported reduced HRQoL in every HRQoL domain when compared to parents whose children experienced monoADS. Children with MS reported reduced emotional functioning. Multivariable analyses revealed that lower self-reported HRQoL among children with MS was associated with their parents’ self-reported HRQoL, and not the diagnosis of MS. The configurative review and qualitative interviews with providers yielded recommendations for immediate action to optimize the HRQoL of children with MS and their parents. Conclusion The diagnosis of MS during childhood negatively associates with the HRQoL of affected children and their parents, even in the absence of active clinical disease. Recommendations generated ought to be implemented immediately to optimize the HRQoL of affected children and their parents. | Ph.D. | ABS, health care, illness | 2, 3 |
| Dingwell, Luke Stephen | Husain, Mansoor | Role of B-cells in Kidney Sodium- and Water-Handling in Hypertension and Heart Failure. | Medical Science | 2020-11 | Cardiovascular diseases, including hypertension and heart failure, remain a primary cause of morbidity and mortality. Both hypertension and heart failure are largely volume-dependent disorders, with the cardiovascular, neuro-endocrine, and renal systems serving foundational roles in disease pathogenesis. Recently, the immune system has also been identified to serve volume-dependent and -independent roles – with immune cells and their products shown to regulate these foundational responses. With respect to renal responses, and specifically sodium- and water-handling, T-cells and macrophages have emerged as primary regulators. B-cells, on the other hand, have received less characterization – despite their implication in hypertension and heart failure pathogenesis and their various immunological roles. Thus, this Dissertation first examines the role of B-cells in blood pressure regulation in Chapters 2 and 3. Chapter 2 demonstrates that B-cell deficient mice (i.e. c-mybh/h) manifest a reduction in blood pressure and protection against experimental hypertension. Underlying the reduction in blood pressure, c-mybh/h mice have an increase in sodium- and water-excretion, and mechanistically, a transcriptional downregulation of vasopressin receptor-2 in renal medulla. Importantly, similar results are shown in B-cell deleted mice (i.e. JHT). Chapter 3 shows that mice with specific deficiency in immunoglobulin A recapitulate the blood pressure and renal phenotypes – suggesting its potential importance. Both B-cell- and immunoglobulin A-deficiency appear to associate with a reduction in renal NF-κβ signaling, given reductions in renal B2 B-cells or macrophages. NF-κβ signaling is shown to positively regulate vasopressin receptor-2 promoter activity in immortalized, mouse inner medullary collecting duct cells (mIMCD-3), and pharmacologically antagonizing vasopressin receptor-2 was concordantly found to reduce blood pressure and increase sodium- and water-excretion. Upon identifying a role for B-cells in renal sodium- and water-handling, Chapter 4 examines whether these renal responses manifest in and/or affect heart failure pathogenesis. Therein, B-cell deficiency (in c-mybh/h mice) is reported to protect against cardiac dysfunction and pathologic remodeling in a model of ischaemic heart failure – plausibly through sustained increases in sodium- and water-excretion and decongestion. Together, work of this Dissertation begins to elucidate the complex role of B-cells in these overlapping pathologies and adds to our overall understanding of cardiovascular (patho)physiology. | Ph.D. | water | 6 |
| Rodrigues, Michelle | Jenkins, Jennifer M | Turning the Focus to Fathers: Broadening Our Understanding of How Fathers Influence Child Development | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11 | The quality of parent-child interactions is one of the most robust predictors of childhood outcomes, with effects extending into the adolescence and adulthood period. Most of the research examining parent-child interactions has come from the investigation of mother-child dyads. Due to the recent societal shift wherein fathers have greater involvement and responsibility in child upbringing, it is essential to deepen our understanding of how fathers affect family processes and children’s development. The aim of the current dissertation was to examine the role that fathers play in children’s development across various domains and developmental stages. Sensitive parenting has been shown to be one of the strongest predictors of children’s well-being across various developmental domains. Although individual studies have revealed positive associations between paternal sensitivity and children’s well-being, no meta-analysis has been conducted to synthesize this literature. In Study One, six independent meta-analyses (N=60 samples) were conducted. Results showed that children raised with sensitive fathers displayed better cognitive (e.g., language, executive function) and socioemotional (e.g., emotion regulation) outcomes. In Study Two, father-child conflict interactions were investigated. Dynamic Structural Equation Modeling was used to disentangle individual contributions from interpersonal influences during father-child conflict resolution discussions with younger (ages 5-9, N=150) and older (ages 7-13, N=152) children. Children influenced fathers’ conflict constructiveness under certain conditions, with evidence for developmental differences in the magnitude and directions of influence, while fathers were not found to influence their children’s conflict constructiveness under any circumstance. In Study Three, the important role of fathers’ childhood conduct problems on parenting and children’s functioning was examined. A cross-sectional multilevel mediation model was used (N= 198 families; 452 children) to assess whether father conduct problems relate to child disruptive behaviour via paternal negativity to result in greater sibling similarity or variability in disruptive behaviour. Paternal negativity did not significantly (although marginal) mediate the association between paternal history of conduct problems and within-family variability in child disruptive behaviour. Using rigorous methodological and analytical techniques, findings from this dissertation suggest that fathers play an important role in children’s socioemotional, behavioural, and cognitive development in the early and middle childhood periods. Implications are discussed. | Ph.D. | well-being, invest | 3, 9 |
| Frasca, Paolo S. | Somigli, Luca | Oblique Genealogies: A Queer Analysis of the Life, Thought, and Works of Mario Mieli (1952-1983) | Italian Studies | 2020-11 | This dissertation explores the life, thought, and works of Mario Mieli (Milan, 1952-1983), an Italian author whose theories, activism, and cultural production have had a significant impact on contemporary understandings of queer identities in Italy and elsewhere. While Mieli’s work has been studied by Italian Queer scholars, it remains largely unmentioned in North American Queer Studies, as well as in the study of Italian cultural history. This project analyzes Mieli’s revolutionary thought and creative work to show important lineages between this thinker and contemporary theories on gender and sexuality. It also argues for the relevance of Mieli’s forward-looking reflections on human emancipation, through sexual liberation, in our current times of global crisis. Furthermore, this analysis helps to identify a root of Queer thought in Italy, pointing to the importance of this cultural setting in scholarly conversations on sexual diversity while recognizing that the often perceived universality of Queer discourses, mainly produced in the English-speaking world, must be challenged by efforts to localize sexual diversity such as this dissertation’s. The project begins with an introductory chapter, offering an overview of the Queer theoretical phenomenon, of male same-sex desire in the Italian context (before and after Italian unification in 1861), and a biographical introduction to Mieli. It then discusses Mieli’s main theoretical work, Elementi di critica omosessuale (1977) by identifying its main tenets (transessualità, educastrazione, and the schizophrenic trip) and by placing Mieli’s thought in conversation with contemporary Queer theories on such topics as gender performativity, homonormativity, antisociality, death, and futurity. Finally, the project studies Mieli’s cultural production, particularly literature (the novel Il risveglio dei Faraoni, published posthumously in 1994) and theatre (the Collettivo Nostra Signora dei Fiori’s La Traviata Norma, ovvero: vaffanculo…ebbene sì!, 1976-1977). The examination of cultural production explores the dialectical relationship between theory and creative practice and highlights how Mieli’s cultural production can make evident both the (productive) impossibility and the potential of his radical theorizations. It also brings to light significant elements of queer culture, such as the importance of self-creation through autobiographical/autofictional literary practice and the productive tension between performativity and performance in theatre | Ph.D. | gender, queer, production | 5, 12 |
| McQuaid, Rosanne | Jurisicova, Andrea | The Effects of Exercise and Brca1 on Mitochondrial Function in the Ovary and Adipose-epithelial Ovarian Cancer Microenvironment | Physiology | 2020-11 | As women age, their follicular reserve in the ovary depletes and the quality of oocytes declines. Aged oocytes have an increased risk of DNA damage and a subpar mitochondrial pool that compromises their ability to generate viable embryos. Mitochondria are the most abundant organelle within the oocyte which co-ordinates energy-sensing pathways with biosynthetic processes in the oocyte. Exercise can impede the age-related decline of mitochondrial health in muscle and adipose tissue. In the oocyte, we show that exercise induces hallmarks of mitochondrial uncoupling that include: an abundance of mitochondria that generate heat, elevated substrate oxidation with reduced levels of ROS and lipid droplet accumulation. We identified and characterized uncoupling protein 5 (UCP5) as the protein responsible for metabolic uncoupling in the oocyte. The energy sensor AMPK (AMP-activated protein kinase) works in conjunction with BRCA1 to stabilize the phosphorylation of acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC). The absence of BRCA1 in the oocyte increased its sensitivity to DNA damage and altered AMPK-ACC signaling in both growing and ovulated oocyte. The metaphase II arrested ovulated oocytes had lower levels of mtDNA and an increased proportion of abnormally shaped mitochondria, a phenotype that contributes compromised the oocyte’s developmental competence. Repeated wounding and repair mechanisms of ovulation increases the risk for the oncogenic transformation of ovarian epithelial cells. The high mortality of women with epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) reflects its strong metastatic potential which is difficult to detect. EOC develops in post-menopausal women whose adiposity contributes to disease progression. Using an orthotopic mouse model I show that limiting adiposity by physical activity slowed down cancer growth and reduced overall tumour burden in mice. BRCA1 mutations increase the risk of EOC, yet patients have an improved short-term prognosis. In mice, adipocyte BRCA1 deficiency reduces adiposity and alters the adipocyte's phenotype to influence cancer cell behaviour. Thus, genetic predisposition and lifestyle factors play a role in regulating ovarian health and disease. | Ph.D. | ABS, women, energy | 2, 5, 2007 |
| Franco Arellano, Beatriz | L'Abbé, Mary R. | Nutrition Claims and Symbols on Food Packages: Examination of Current Practices to Monitor and Inform Food Policy | Nutritional Sciences | 2020-11 | Unhealthy diet is a major risk factor for non-communicable diseases. Many governments and health-oriented organizations have stressed the need to implement strategies to encourage healthier diets. Nutrition labelling (i.e., description intended to inform about the nutritional properties/ingredients of a food) is one of those strategies. In Canada, food labels are required to display nutrient declarations (i.e., Nutrition Facts table [NFt]) and ingredients lists since 2003. Food labels could also display voluntary nutrition claims, which are representations that imply a food has certain nutritional properties. In Canada, new nutrition policies and guidelines have been recently issued. For example, new nutrition claims were approved between 2010-2013, and front-of-pack labelling (i.e., supplementary nutrition information displayed on the front of food labels) was proposed in 2018 to highlight foods and beverages with high levels of sodium, saturated fat and/or sugars. However, few studies have assessed how have these changes impacted the packaged food supply and consumers’ perceptions of foods. This research assessed trends in the use of nutrition claims on food labels, examined the nutritional quality of products with and without nutrition claims, and examined the influence of nutrition claims, health-related messages and front-of-pack labelling on consumers’ perceptions. Nutrition claims continue to be displayed on nearly half of packaged foods. While products with nutrition claims have a healthier profile than those without; 42% of products displaying nutrition claims were considered not eligible to carry claims (i.e., “less healthy”), as determined by the Food Standards Australia New Zealand Nutrient Profiling Scoring Criterion. Consumer studies revealed that most consumers based their product judgement using the information presented on the front of labels, and very few viewed the NFt. Front-of-pack labelling had a stronger influence than nutrition claims among consumers with different levels of health literacy, and despite the ‘halo’ effect created by claims. Importantly, the use of the NFt limited the influence that nutrition claims have on consumers’ perceptions. These studies suggest that front-of-pack labelling could be the nutrition labelling component that better helps consumers to discriminate products with different nutritional quality, and highlight the importance of implementing nutrition labelling policies that support fast healthy food choice. | Ph.D. | nutrition, communicable disease, consum, land | 2, 3, 12, 15 |
| Hsieh, Amanda | Lee, Sherry D | Male Hysteria, Degenerate Opera: Post-Wagnerian Music Drama in the Era of World War I | Music | 2020-11 | This dissertation interrogates ideas about gender and Austro-German identity in the years before, during, and after World War I, offering historically informed hermeneutic readings of Berg’s Wozzeck, Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, and Korngold’s Die tote Stadt. Specifically, by drawing on concepts from critical disability and masculinity studies, this research considers how the operas under investigation — each of which features a seemingly emasculated protagonist and music that resists the traditional (masculinist) confines of modernism — were in dialogue with broader socio-political and aesthetic anxieties about being a man during the war years. This project centres on issues of vocality, departing from the kinds of formal-motivic analysis that have prevailed in previous studies of twentieth-century Austro-German opera. Such emphasis on voice allows Chapter 1 to raise questions about what sounded “natural,” therefore healthy and virile in the German nation, as it interrogates the musical-linguistic expressions in Berg’s Wozzeck. A further research focus is to explore aspects of the operas that seem tangential but in fact featured prominently in historical performance reviews. Chapter 2 thus examines the moralistic stance of Die Gezeichneten’s numerous but hitherto overlooked secondary characters, contextualizing that stance in light of the fin-de-siècle press’s tendency to sensationalism and arguing that provocative vocabularies of “degeneracy” occupied a positively celebratory place in Schreker’s pre-Nazi reception. Finally, Chapter 3 turns its attention to the figure of an ostensibly lone Jewish man to probe questions of “Jewish difference” and Die tote Stadt’s rarely discussed commedia dell’arte sequence of Act II. Placing side by side Wagnerian symbolism and commedia dell’arte — that is, ingredients from Christianity and contemporary popular Jewish theatre — Korngold’s opera asked timely questions of Jewish manhood and citizenry in Austria’s First Republic. This dissertation’s interrogation of masculinity adds to opera studies’ long-standing investment in representations of gender. It further contributes to musicology’s burgeoning engagement with disability aesthetics, as its historically oriented work asks how the operas studied herein underscore post-/WWI politics of injury, rather than seeking in the music symptoms of illness. These wartime works ultimately offer audio-visual experiences that challenge Austro-German nationalist ideals — and authoritarian aesthetics — of the first decades of the twentieth century. | Ph.D. | disabilit, illness, citizen, gender, invest, authoritarian | 3, 4, 5, 9, 16 |
| Saadi, Sardar | Li, Tania||Muehlebach, Andrea | City and Resistance in Kurdistan: Poverty, Urban Development, and the Struggle for Democratic Autonomy in Diyarbakir | Anthropology | 2020-11 | How does an excluded population engage a hostile state to affect transformations of its social and political situation? Focusing on the Kurdish movement for self-determination in Turkey, this dissertation examines different modes of engagement with the Turkish state adopted by the Kurds in Kurdistan. These modes of engagement comprise a set of imbricating and at times conflicting practices that variably draw on Kurdish cultural repertoires of struggle, collective experiences of ethnohistorical oppression, and symbolic topographies of past and present resistance (mountain and city). I explore how the Kurdish struggle is shaped by and responds to the process of state formation in Turkey based on Turkish ethnonationalism, which has been historically entrenched by violent denial and exclusion of the Kurds. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2015 and 2017 in the city of Diyarbakir, I examine the process through which the city became the center of Kurdish politics with multiple instantiations in urban modes of political engagements. I argue that the Kurdish movement was caught in managing the contradictions that arose once the battle for Kurdish self- determination—a struggle that had predominantly been fought from the mountains—moved onto the urban terrains of Kurdistan, especially the city of Diyarbakir, in the last two decades. The shift of confrontation to the city resulted in a significant transformation in Kurdistan that was manifested in a flourishing civil society as well as in municipalities for the Kurds to exercise self-government. I analyze how the Kurdish movement and the modes of political engagement with the state in urban spaces came under the influence of class-based dynamics and the European Union’s reform packages for Turkey. My examination also includes the devastating destruction wrought by the Turkish state after many cities in Kurdistan declared autonomy or what was later called “self-rule resistance” in 2015. My research contributes to anthropological studies of the state and political movements by expanding our knowledge on how excluded and marginalized populations, often indigenous to their lands, take part in political movements, and how communities of resistance engage, react to, or refuse state power in the environment of political violence. | Ph.D. | poverty, knowledge, indigenous, marginalized, cities, urban, land, nationalism, democra, self-determination, violence | 1, 4, 10, 16, 11, 15 |
| Sendroiu, Ioana | Levi, Ron | Managing Crisis: Decision-making, Memory, and Legality in Post-World War Two France and Romania | Sociology | 2020-11 | The three papers that comprise this dissertation deal with how how politicians create, use, manage, exacerbate, or diminish crisis. The empirical focus is on Romania and France in the mid and late 1940s. At the time, politicians in both countries were dealing with multiple crises: managing the devastation of a far-reaching war, political transition as wartime leaders were removed from power, and of course the beginning of the Cold War. Moreover, the crises differed according to each actor within a political field: differing involvement in the war, more or less power within the respective political transition, and divergent ideological positioning within the emerging Cold War. In the first paper, I theorize the concept of a failure of imagination. Drawing on core sociological theories of behavioral change during crisis, I point out that the discomfort caused by a changing context does not seamlessly translate into behavioral change. Instead, the gap between the pre- and post-reflexive aspects of a crisis can be pronounced, and the expected behavioral change may potentially not happen at all. In the second paper, the focus is on actors taking advantage of crisis to pursue their political goals. Here, I argue that trials can be integral to the symbolic aspects of regime change, even when hard power has been won. And in particular, the use of trials highlights the extent to which regime change is a transnational phenomenon. Legitimacy is not bound within national borders, and so regimes can face legitimacy threats from abroad even after consolidating control of the state. In the third paper, I argue that political transition can be understood through the frame of moral panic. The moral faults of a small group of people can be quickly and easily addressed. But if a diffuse and ill-defined group of people can potentially pose a moral threat to a new regime, dealing with these individuals will be effortful, continuously inchoate, and highly political. | Ph.D. | transit | 11 |
| Selepiuc, Tatiana | Lettieri, Michael | Pietro Aretino: Recapturing the Chivalric Tradition | Italian Studies | 2020-11 | The purpose of this thesis is to offer an original overview of Pietro Aretino’s experience in navigating and attempting to dominate the chivalric tradition. Aretino, usually considered — if at all — an ‘additional chivalric writer,’ longed to be recognized as one of the greats in this field; however, his four attempts — Marfisa (1535), Angelica (1536), Orlandino (1540), and Astolfeida (1547) — were left unfinished and for the most part have remained buried beneath other countless chivalric imitative works. The Marfisa and the Angelica are directly linked to Ludovico Ariosto’s ‘bestseller,’ the Furioso, and aimed to be an integration of tradition and invention, bridging the gap of the literary values of the past while still maintaining a unique poetic interpretation. The Orlandino and the Astolfeida are anti-chivalric fragments that portray a different view of the chivalric tradition, redesigning the model and foreshadowing what would later be considered the poema eroicomico. Aretino’s place in the chivalric tradition falls between the expiration of the chivalric genre and the launch of the mock-epic, rendering his experience and position unique and matchless in relation to the studies of court culture in Renaissance Italy and the historical context of the romance epic and its metamorphosis. This dissertation explores Aretino’s four chivalric fragments and demonstrates that the whole picture — Aretino’s multi-layered life experiences, his unconventional writing trajectories, the unique space and time in which his distinct chivalric fragments came to be — offers a significant and never-before-seen glimpse of Pietro Aretino as he recaptured the chivalric tradition. The investigation is carried out in five chapters and a conclusion: Chapter 1 (Life and Works), Chapter 2 (Marfisa), Chapter 3 (Angelica), Chapter 4 (Orlandino), Chapter 5 (Astolfeida). Chapters 2-5 consist of a preface to the work being analyzed and five subsequent parts: Content, Characters, Structure, Language and Style, and Legacy. The Conclusion, followed by the Bibliography, summarizes and reflects on the research. | Ph.D. | invest, land | 9, 15 |
| Tin, Gary Kwok Chun | Gunning, Patrick T. | Electrophilic Tuning of Novel Pentafluorobenzenesulfonamide Warheads | Chemistry | 2020-11 | This thesis details research in our lab which identified a novel reactive pentafluorobenzenesulfonamide (PFBS) warhead, delivering four separate projects focused on protecting and tailoring a reactive warhead towards biological nucleophiles and systemic application in vivo. Discovery of AC-3-019, a novel and potent molecule harbouring a modified PFBS group uniquely demonstrated a conformational mechanism that provided suitable pharmacokinetic (PK) stability compared to its predecessors. AC-3-019 was subsequently evaluated in two in-vivo animal models (MB and AML) to assess its anti-cancer ability. In follow-up work, DR-1-055, combined the conformational approach with synergistic electronic tuning of PFBS to deliver another metabolically stable scaffold with enhanced PK parameters. DR-1-055’s enhanced potency is displayed against two in-vivo breast cancer mouse models, as well as in-vivo facial tumour model towards Tasmanian devils. A simplified version of the PFBS bearing an alkyne handle was used in an activity-based protein profiling (ABPP) approach to interrogate its intrinsic reactivity against biological nucleophiles in HeLa cell lysates. Gel-based click experiments were performed to compare reactivity against common covalent cysteine-targeting warheads. Subsequently, a semi-quantitative approach called tandem orthogonal proteolysis-ABPP (TOP-ABPP) demonstrated that the PBFS warhead is cysteine-specific. Lastly, we demonstrated a unique ortho-substitution technique to systematically control the reactivity of PFBS by electronic tuning and applied it towards a known PFBS-containing clinical candidate. Directed-ortho-metalation (DOM) chemistry was used to synthesize ortho-substituted warheads allowing for systematic tuning of reactivity. Finally, Batabulin, a PFBS containing molecule previously failing in phase II clinical trials, was utilized as an example for application of the ortho-substitution platform to potentially rescue a failed clinical candidate. | Ph.D. | animal | 14, 15 |
| Mealey, Scott Robert | Gallagher, Kathleen M | Recollection of an Audience: Style, Experience, and Change in the Study of Theatre Spectatorship | Drama | 2020-11 | This emic-oriented, uniquely mixed methods project explores the evidence for theatrically induced change and the individual contexts and processes that accompany it. The transformative power of theatre has been the source of much speculation and increasingly marked by agnosticism in recent years, but it has rarely received rigorous empirical consideration nor solicited the extended investment of first-hand spectatorial input. To address this lack, this dissertation offers unique models of theatrically induced change drawn from quantitative and qualitative data collected from 180 pre/post-show surveys and 30 extended interviews in partnership with four aesthetically and persuasively distinct Toronto-based theatre companies. The data is put into conversation with reception scholarship from theatre studies, media studies, and psychology in order to yield new insights into theatrically-induced change. Change – often incoherently conceptualized and unsubstantiated in audience theory – is interrogated here as both a shift in the valence and intensity of a spectator’s attitudes over the course of a show, and the perception of artistically induced affective disruption leading to distinct channels of rethinking and possibly inner realignment. In light of accounts offered by the spectators, the process of change seems to be largely generated by the mismatch between a production’s dominant artistic modes and the familiar perceptual patterns adopted by spectators to help mediate their often unappreciated levels of anxiety and degrees of investment. The dynamic and patterned influence of a spectator’s disposition toward theatrical style, their personal identity, and their past theatre-going on in-show sense-making are given particular attention. Spectators seem to orient their attention (toward stories, craft/process, or ‘real’ messages) and modes of engagement (affective, identificatory, or cognitive) in discrete ways that are especially shaped by their stage of life, real-life occupations, and degree of familiarity with theatre/artists. This project has sought to engage in a methodology that promotes the value of intercourse between quantitative, qualitative, and philosophical approaches to an emerging field of scholars and theatre-makers. To that end, tools are proposed for interrogating style and its dimensions (The Persuasively Inflected Theatre Scale); categorizing age, income, and theatre-going; and organizing the types of memories, questions, and forms of change spectators share. | Ph.D. | invest, income, production | 9, 10, 12 |
| Zhu, Min | Sun, Yu | Spatial Mapping of Tissue Properties Reveals Durotaxis in the Mouse Limb Bud | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11 | Numerous hypotheses invoke tissue stiffness as a key parameter that regulates morphogenesis and disease progression. However, current methods are insufficient to test hypotheses that concern physical properties deep in living tissues. For example, durotaxis, a form of cell migration in which cells are guided by stiffness gradients, has only been studied in vitro owing largely to the lack of tools to measure three-dimensional tissue properties in vivo. The role of durotaxis under physiological conditions remains unknown. Targeting spatial mapping of tissue properties and investigating durotaxis in vivo, this thesis focuses on (1) developing a new tool to achieve spatial mapping of tissue properties, (2) establishing the correlation between measured tissue properties and cell migration behavior, and (3) investigating the molecular basis of tissue properties and how it regulates durotaxis behavior. A 3D magnetic device was developed which generates a uniform magnetic field gradient within a space that is sufficient to accommodate an organ-stage mouse embryo under live conditions. The method allows rapid, nontoxic measurement of the three-dimensional spatial distribution of viscoelastic properties within mesenchyme and epithelium. Using the device, an anteroproximally biased mesodermal stiffness gradient was identified in the mouse limb bud. Along the stiffness gradient, cells migrate collectively to shape the early limb bud. The stiffness gradient corresponds to a Wnt5a-dependent domain of fibronectin expression. The findings challenge the notion that Wnt5a regulates cell migration through chemotaxis. Instead, Wnt5a modifies the tissue microenvironment to promote durotaxis in vivo. By conditionally knocking out the fibronectin within the mesenchyme, the stiffness gradient was abolished and the durotaxis behavior was arrested. Three-dimensional stiffness mapping enabled by the 3D magnetic device fills an important void in the current methods repertoire of measuring tissue properties and will facilitate the generation of hypotheses and potentially the rigorous testing of mechanisms of development and disease. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Guglielmin, Maria Kristiina | Muntaner, Carles | Health in All Policies Implementation at the Local Level: A Realist Explanatory Case Study | Nursing Science | 2020-11 | Background: Health in All Policies (HiAP) implementation can occur at the national, regional, and local government levels; however, factors contributing or hindering HiAP implementation at the local level are largely unexplored. HiAP is an approach to public policy that considers health and health equity in the development, implementation, and evaluation of policies in various government sectors. By addressing health and health equity in all sectors such as the transportation, housing, education, and agriculture sectors, HiAP addresses the larger social determinants of health, ultimately improving population health and decreasing inequity. Implementation of HiAP is often idiosyncratic to specific settings. Therefore, when aiming to understand how HiAP is implemented locally, it is imperative to consider context. Methods: A literature review on HiAP implementation at the local level was initially conducted, resulting in seven themes significant to implementation. Three of those themes were subsequently tested in an explanatory case study using realist methods. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten government employees in the municipality of Kuopio, Finland. In addition to the key informant interviews, grey and peer-reviewed literature were also analyzed to understand how HiAP is implemented in Kuopio, Finland, and uncover the relevant facilitating and hindering factors. Results: Findings support the importance of three factors in successful HiAP implementation at the local level: having/creating a common goal, having dedicated staff and local leadership, and the use of Impact Assessments. Strong evidence was found for each hypothesis, including a description of the underlying mechanisms of how and why strategies for HiAP work. Numerous contextual factors relevant to implementation success in this setting were also uncovered, including a mature HiAP setting, a culture of intersectoral collaboration, and a small city milieu, among others. Conclusion: Results of this realist case study augment the limited evidence available on HiAP implementation locally. Findings contribute to the growing body of knowledge in this field by providing a focus on descriptions of underlying mechanisms for HiAP implementation strategies in a Finnish municipality. Evidence provided can also be used strategically by local policy and decision makers to improve HiAP implementation efforts. | Ph.D. | agricultur, health equity, knowledge, equity, labor, equit, housing, land | 2, 3, 4, 8, 10, 11, 15 |
| Frederiksen, Lia | Cowen, Deborah||Hunter, Mark | Work and Worth: A Contested History of Labour and Value in Toronto’s Public Libraries | Geography | 2020-11 | Public libraries are often thought of as inherently democratic institutions where the provision of informational resources supports social inclusion and civic participation. Inspired by a recent citywide conflict over potential library closures in Toronto, Canada, this dissertation investigates a more contested history than conventional interpretations have often permitted by revealing a series of conflicts over public library buildings, budgets, and governance across more than a century. The main argument is that understanding this history requires an account of the overall work done to make and remake these spaces into what they are today, as a way of understanding of what these spaces may soon become. This argument illustrates how the perceived worth of providing public library service, whether or not it is accounted for in monetary terms, can be seen as socially constructed and politically contested. To make this argument, I draw mainly from feminist theorizations of work, which broaden this category to encompass productive waged labour along with paid and unpaid reproductive labour coded as ‘nonwork’ or ‘unproductive’, and geographers’ insights on the contested social production of space. In so doing, this dissertation aims for a critical re-thinking of what these spaces mean for daily urban life. | Ph.D. | feminis, labour, wage, buildings, invest, urban, production, institut, governance, democra | 5, 8, 9, 11, 12, 16 |
| Heer, Tej | Mandrak, Nicholas E||Wells, Mathew G | Predicting Asian Carp Spawning in Tributaries to the Great Lakes Basin | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2020-11 | Four invasive fish species, collectively known as Asian carps, have the potential to establish in the Great Lakes basin. To aid in prevention efforts, research was undertaken to understand factors influencing Asian carp spawning success. As Asian carp egg movement and hatching time are dependent on water temperature and hydrodynamics, this thesis focused on predicting in which rivers, and in which temperature and flow scenarios, successful hatching is more likely to occur. Chapter Two used existing temperature and velocity data to preliminary assess the spawning potential of eight Toronto-area tributaries. The results showed that Asian carp have substantial inter-annual variation in spawning potential and provided a method that had widespread applicability to narrow down potential spawning tributaries in the Great Lakes basin. Chapter Three created a novel coupling of three-dimensional (3-D) hydrodynamic river model and a 3-D Lagrangian Particle Tracker to model Grass Carp egg movement during a 2017 high-flow event in the Sandusky River, OH. The inclusion of 3-D aspects of flow allowed for the simulation of low-velocity dead zones that retain and re-suspend eggs, thereby increasing their residence time in rivers. The results showed that Grass Carp could spawn in shorter river lengths than previously predicted, thereby raising the potential of establishment in the Great Lakes basin. Chapter Four developed a coupled model on the Don River, ON to test the impact of potential barriers on spawning success. The results showed that in-river hatching rates could be greatly reduced by limiting upstream passage of carp and created a method that can be used to assess future potential barrier placements. Chapter Five added a novel temperature model coupling to the developed Sandusky River model to incorporate spatial and temporally varying temperature in the particle tracking. The results showed that the inclusion of varying temperature led to significant changes in in-river hatching rates. Climate-change scenarios model runs indicated that egg hatching times may reduce substantially due to anthropogenic climate change. The thesis results are directly applicable to prevention efforts in the Great Lakes and represent an advancement in the modelling of Asian carp spawning. | Ph.D. | water, climate, anthropogenic, fish, species | 6, 13, 14, 15 |
| Ho, Carmen Jacqueline | Wong, Joseph | Benevolent Policies: The Politics of Welfare State Expansion in Southeast Asia | Political Science | 2020-11 | Why do governments expand social policies? This question is central to our understanding of the welfare state. Conventional scholarship suggests that governments expand policies to placate groups with high political power or garner political support. Left unknown, however, is why governments expand social policies if clear, short-term incentives are absent. I draw attention to a class of social policies which serve groups with low political power and address issues with low visibility. I call these benevolent policies. Governments do not have strong incentives to prioritize, then formulate benevolent policies – yet some have sprung into action, introducing rapid policy change. What explains why governments expand benevolent policies? And why do some governments expand benevolent policies, while others do not? In contrast to the existing literature, which conceptualizes welfare state expansion as a product of conflict amongst societal groups, organized to protect or advance their interests, or of political manipulation and bargaining, I draw attention to the role of policymakers within the bureaucracy. I argue that policymakers are the primary source of policy reform. They mobilize in some governments, but not others, because of variation in bureaucratic capacity. This dissertation highlights the role of international socialization in triggering policymaker mobilization when bureaucratic capacity is high. Policymakers use the leverage provided by international pressure to deploy bureaucratic capacity and push through policy change. When bureaucratic capacity is moderate or low, however, other actors, such as civil society organizations or development partners, mobilize but are not as well positioned to facilitate reform. I develop this argument through a study of nutrition policies in Indonesia and the Philippines, and Laos and Cambodia. Nutrition policies, I contend, are emblematic of benevolent policies. Drawing upon nine months of fieldwork – including observations at a UN agency, 71 in-depth, semi-structured interviews, and observations at three closed-door regional health meetings – this project challenges influential theories of interest group strength, clientelism, and civil society mobilization. Instead, I show that policymakers are the defining agents of change. This dissertation therefore lays the foundation for future research on benevolent policies and invites further exploration of the conditions under which they expand. | Ph.D. | welfare, nutrition, ABS | 1, 2 |
| Kozman, Rony | Newman, Judith H. | Adam's Wisdom and Israel's Law: Natural Law in Early Judaism | Religion, Study of | 2020-11 | When we think of “natural law” we may think of Thomas Aquinas, the Greco-Roman philosophers, or the rabbinic Noahide law. I show that in the Second Temple period Jews had their own way of talking about natural law. Their approach precedes Aquinas and the rabbis, and it is contemporary with the Stoic philosophers. They used Adam and Eve to formulate concepts concerning moral knowledge and moral agency including natural law. Aside from the opening chapters of Genesis, the Hebrew Bible shows little interest in Adam and Eve. By comparison, Second Temple Jewish literature developed various interpretive traditions concerning the primordial pair. In one tradition God endowed Adam and Eve with wisdom, law, or commands. In this “Adam’s wisdom” tradition, when Adam and Eve (i.e., humanity) receive wisdom they know their moral obligations. This tradition occurs in a variety of early Jewish literature (ca. 300 BCE–200 CE), and it articulated diverse ideas of revelation, moral knowledge, and moral agency. This project compares Adam’s wisdom in four texts—Sirach, the Qumran Thanksgiving Psalms (i.e., 1QHodayota), Paul’s letter to the Romans, and 4 Ezra. This comparison illumines the diverse configurations of moral knowledge and moral ability in early Judaism. Of special interest is a literary tradition that blends Adam’s wisdom with Israel’s reception of the law at Sinai. This interweave of scriptural threads forms a tapestry of natural law. Adam’s wisdom and Israel’s law is a prominent and repeated literary feature of Sirach, Romans, and 4 Ezra, and this project shows the varied argumentative, rhetorical, and formative purposes for which it was deployed. Adam’s wisdom and Israel’s law also illuminates how Jews of the Greco-Roman period negotiated Jewish and gentile identities in light of God’s revelation to Adam (i.e., humanity) and God’s revelation at Sinai. While the Hodayot do not interweave Adam’s wisdom and Israel’s law, they provide a counterbalance to the other texts. Instead of universal moral knowledge, the Hodayot use Adam to portray universal moral ignorance and inability, and Adam’s wisdom signifies the esoteric knowledge possessed exclusively by the Qumran community. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Hartley, John | Netterfield, Calvin B | The SuperBIT Hardware Design and a Constraint of the Tensor to Scalar Ratio r from the Spider I Polarized CMB Maps | Physics | 2020-11 | ]Scientific ballooning experiments offer a number of advantages over space and ground based alternatives: they are lower cost, faster to deploy, and easily upgraded in contrast with satellites. As well, the ballooning environment, while quite harsh, has the benefit of raising the experiment above 99% of the atmosphere, as opposed to ground based experiments which are subject to seeing and absorptivity of the atmosphere even when atop the highest mountains. The subjects of this thesis are two examples of scientific ballooning experiments; Spider I, a cosmic microwave background experiment, and SuperBIT, an optical and near-UV observatory. The Spider I experiment is designed to constrain the tensor to scalar ratio, r; a parameter informing the allowed potential energy of the inflationary epoch thought to precede the standard cosmological model, ΛCDM. This thesis contains an analysis of the Spider CMB maps for a constraint on the parameter r, and includes the development of a bin to bin correlation transfer matrix, as well as the development of an auto-spectrum null-test procedure used for data qualification. The SuperBIT experiment is designed for cluster-galaxy weak gravitational lensing measurements to provide calibration data for future satellite experiments which are hoped will break the 1.5σ contention between the leading measurements of the cosmological parameters Ω M and σ8 taken from CMB data compared with that of other low redshift, Sunayev Zel’dovich measurements. To date no lensing data has been taken; however, a long duration flight is tentatively scheduled for 2021. This thesis contains a description of my contributions to the development of the SuperBIT hardware systems and optics. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy | 2, 7 |
| Sowter, Deanne Michelle | Cossman, Brenda | The Bounds of Legality for Family Lawyers: Is the Law Enough? | Law | 2020-11 | Positivist legal ethics theories provide that a lawyer’s role is to pursue her client’s interests within the bounds of legality. In the context of family law, the law allows for objectionable conduct by a lawyer which may even be harmful where there is family violence or children. In essence, there is tension between the positivist explanation of a lawyer’s role, and what that explanation allows a family lawyer to do. In this thesis, I provide a comprehensive examination of the canons of legal ethics theory as they explain a lawyer’s role. I defend positivist legal ethics theories and examine how they conceptualize the bounds of legality. Following from that theoretical account, I apply positivism to family law and argue that the considerable discretion provided by family law creates too much room for bad behaviour by family lawyers. Finally, I refute the idea that there are additional reference points to guide professional judgement that are unique to family law, and I argue for reform. | LL.M. | violence | 16 |
| Sanders, Jane Elizabeth | Mishna, Faye||Fallon, Barbara | Experiences of Students Who Have Been Suspended or Expelled from School | Social Work | 2020-11 | Background Violence and adversity disproportionately affect students who are Black or Indigenous, come from lower socioeconomic (SES) communities and those with special education needs. These same populations are disproportionately suspended and expelled (disciplinary exclusion). The role of adversity in disciplinary exclusion, however, is rarely explicitly considered. It is difficult to understand students’ and their behaviours, however, if adversity is unacknowledged. Methods This three-paper dissertation presents a constructivist grounded theory analysis of 31 semi-structured interviews with students who have been suspended or expelled (n=15) and the multidisciplinary staff who support them (n=16), in two urban and suburban school boards in Ontario, Canada. The purpose of this study was to understand the experiences of students who have been suspended or expelled. The following research questions were addressed: 1) What are the experiences of students who have been suspended or expelled leading up to and including expulsion? 2) What factors do participants (staff and students) feel contributes to a suspension or expulsion?; and 3) What systemic factors (school, community, family) have positively or negatively influenced students’ personal and academic success? Student participants ranged in age from 14 to 19. Most students in the sample were male (n=11), Black (n=10), or identified as having special education needs (n=9). Results Students in this study had experienced multiple and diverse forms of adversity, including conventionally defined adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), as well as systemic racism and inequality, and community and school violence. All students noted the importance of connection with school staff however, an interactive social process emerged within which three identified factors (bias, coping behaviours and limited resources) blocked this connection. Implications The findings call into focus the role of disproportionate exposure to adversity for students who are suspended and expelled. These findings are consistent with recommendations to expand conventional ACEs. The emergent interactive social process is influenced by disproportionate exposure to adversity, which may be unacknowledged as traumatic among students who are suspended or expelled. When expanded forms adversity are unacknowledged student experiences and the ways they are coping can be misunderstood. Policy, practice and research must reflect trauma-informed, relationship-based and culturally aware/responsive strategies. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, knowledge, racism, inequality, equalit, indigenous, urban, violence | 1, 4, 10, 16, 11 |
| Wan, Ho Yee | Hynynen, Kullervo||Macdonald, Robert Loch | Etiology of Vascular and Inflammatory Changes in the Central Nervous System after Experimental Subarachnoid Hemorrhage | Medical Biophysics | 2020-11 | Subarachnoid hemorrhage (SAH) is a type of hemorrhagic stroke that is associated with high mortality and morbidity. Though bleeding is confined to the subarachnoid space, there is significant parenchymal brain injury after SAH. The development of brain injury after SAH is widely studied with varying conclusions, though growing evidence indicates that changes to the microcirculation and inflammation may play important roles in this process. In this thesis, I used in vivo and ex vivo imaging and molecular techniques to better characterize how SAH affects the microcirculation and inflammatory cells in central nervous system tissue. In the first part, I studied the microcirculation using two-photon laser microscopy in vivo, and confocal imaging ex vivo. I found that SAH causes microvascular disturbances in the somatosensory cortex within minutes of SAH, which last for hours after the ictus. These microvascular changes persist for days in regions adjacent to the blood clot, but not in distal brain regions. In the second part, which focuses on the inflammatory response, I first characterized the distribution and clearance of blood in the central nervous system after SAH by modifying an SAH animal protocol to track erythrocytes. Erythrocytes were found throughout the ventricular and subarachnoid spaces, but also extending to perivascular spaces within the brain tissue. We found that perivascular and leptomeningeal macrophages were directly involved in the uptake of blood after SAH. In experiments where these macrophages were depleted, we found that specifically timed deletion could improve outcome after SAH. Lastly, I found that meningeal macrophages in the dura also are activated after SAH, and thereby represent another potential source of central nervous system inflammation. Based on the work presented in this thesis, I propose that the cerebral microcirculation, and perivascular and meningeal macrophages are essential to the development of injury after SAH and may be potential therapeutic avenues. | Ph.D. | urban, animal | 11, 14, 15 |
| Wshah, Adnan Ali Hasan | Brooks, Dina | Approaches to Anti-sedentary Behaviour in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease | Rehabilitation Science | 2020-11 | Background: Decreasing sedentary behaviour has emerged as a distinct health target in individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but effective approaches to reducing it are unclear. Objective: To explore the perspectives of people with COPD and healthcare professionals on reducing sedentary behaviour in people with COPD, to develop and test a sedentary behaviour reduction intervention for people with COPD, and to examine the feasibility of an alternate exercise modality (dance) to decrease sedentary behaviour for people with COPD. Methods: Two qualitative research studies, informed by the Theoretical Domains Framework, were conducted with 14 people with COPD (Study 1) and 16 healthcare professionals (Study 2). The feasibility of the “Get Up for Your Health” behaviour change reduction intervention, which was informed by the findings from Study 1, was tested in Study 3 using a single group, pre- and post-intervention design, among those with COPD enrolled on a PR program. Study 4 was a single group, pre-and post- study, which involved examining the feasibility of dance as an alternate exercise modality in individuals with COPD. Results: Study 1 revealed a lack of knowledge on the concept of sedentary behaviour among study participants. It identified behavioural determinants that could be targeted for a reduction in sedentary behaviour among people with COPD. Study 2 found that healthcare professionals need more education on sedentary behaviour with information about the determinants of behaviour relating to healthcare professionals targeting a reduction in sedentary behaviour in people with COPD. In study 3, the “Get Up for Your Health” intervention, emerged as being feasible, with an enrolment rate of 75%, a completion rate of 90%, adherence to wearing the activity monitor of 84% and participant satisfaction of 90%. The impact of the intervention on sitting time was unclear. In study 4, a dance program was safe and feasible, with an enrolment rate of 49%, a mean attendance rate of 78%, an absence of adverse events and a high participant satisfaction Conclusion: The current thesis provides important information for future sedentary behaviour research to support people with COPD. | Ph.D. | ABS, healthcare, knowledge | 2, 3, 2004 |
| Oh, Hyemin | Osborne, Lucy | Effects of Altered 7q11.23 Copy Number on Neural Stem Cell Physiology and Cortical Organization during Embryonic Development | Medical Science | 2020-11 | Williams-Beuren syndrome (WBS) and 7q11.23 duplication syndrome (Dup7) are two rare neurodevelopmental disorders caused by deletion and duplication respectively, of 25 genes on chromosome 7q11.23. Individuals with WBS or Dup7 present with an array of cognitive and behavioural phenotypes, including anxiety, autism, speech and language delay, and intellectual disability, but the biological basis for these neuropsychiatric symptoms remain unknown. Structural and functional abnormalities of the cortex have been identified in both WBS and Dup7, suggesting that cortical development is perturbed in these disorders. The effects of altered copy number variation (CNV) of two candidate genes, GTF2I and GTF2IRD1, on neural stem cell growth and fate determination was investigated using primary neuronal precursor cultures derived from mouse models with CNV of these genes. Altered Gtf2i and/or Gtf2ird1 expression disturbed neural stem cell physiology in early corticogenesis leading to abnormal cortical cytoarchitecture in late gestation embryos, in a gene dose dependent manner. Genome wide expression analysis of embryonic cortices of mouse models of Gtf2i and Gtf2ird1 CNV identified changes in transcriptome profiles underlying dysregulated corticogenesis. These data will help us understand how the developing brain is perturbed in people with WBS and Dup7 and may give insight into the pathological causes and possibly help identify therapeutic interventions to treat their cognitive symptoms. | Ph.D. | disabilit, invest | 3, 9 |
| Nishi, Stephanie Kimiko | Sievenpiper, John L||Bazinet, Richard P | Assessing the Effect of Tree Nut and Peanut Consumption on Adiposity: Is a Calorie a Calorie? | Nutritional Sciences | 2020-11 | Nuts have been shown to have diabetes and cardiovascular related health benefits, yet there remains concern that nuts may contribute to weight gain due to their high energy density. To address this concern, the research carried out in this thesis includes a systematic review and meta-analysis (SRMA) of prospective cohorts and randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to investigate the role of nuts on measures of adiposity, and an exploratory analysis of a randomized crossover trial to assess the bioaccessibility of energy and macronutrients of almonds. The SRMA identified 7 prospective cohort studies and 86 RCTs involving 569,910 and 12,092 participants, respectively. Nut consumption was inversely associated with the primary outcome overweight/obesity, as well secondary outcomes (body weight, risk of ≥5 kg weight gain, waist circumference) in prospective cohort studies. Similarly, there was no adverse effect of nuts on the primary outcome of body weight or any of the secondary outcomes (BMI, body fat, waist circumference, waist-to-hip ratio or visceral adipose tissue) in RCTs. The 3-phase randomized crossover trial including 22 participants with hyperlipidemia indicated fat from almonds was only 78.5±3.1% bioaccessible with an average overall energy loss of 21.2±3.1% (40.6 kcal/d). When considering the diet as a whole, there was significantly less bioaccessibility of energy and fat with almond consumption, but not carbohydrate or protein, compared to the control. Inclusion of ~73 g of almonds each day decreased the energy bioaccessibility of the diet by approximately 2%. Thus, the energy content of almonds may not be as bioaccessible as predicted by Atwater factors. Current evidence demonstrates that nuts are not associated with increased overweight/obesity incidence or weight gain, possibly due to the reduced bioaccessibility of energy and fat content of nuts. The research conducted in this thesis suggest nuts may be recommended without the concern that they contribute to weight gain. | Ph.D. | water, energy, invest, accessib, consum | 6, 7, 9, 11, 12 |
| Boutet, Alexandre | Lozano, Andres M. | Safety and Accuracy of a Novel MR Imaging Based Method for Optimizing Deep Brain Stimulation Settings. | Medical Science | 2020-11 | Deep brain stimulation (DBS) is most commonly used in Parkinson’s disease (PD) to modulate dysregulated motor circuits. This surgical treatment can produce striking clinical benefits when stimulation is properly programmed. DBS programming, the process of individually titrating the dose of electrical stimulation delivered to achieve maximal clinical benefits, remains largely a trial-and-error process predicated on clinical observations. This process imposes significant time and financial stress upon patients and healthcare systems. Hence, there is a need for a physiological marker that can rapidly and accurately predict clinical response to DBS parameters. We hypothesized that functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) could serve as an objective predictor of treatment efficacy in PD DBS patients. This led to a four-step process: (1) determine the safety of 3 Tesla (T) MRI using a phantom model; (2) highlight the importance of using native optimal DBS programming settings; (3) determine the safety, and feasibility of 3T MRI in a large cohort of patients receiving DBS; and, (4) define a typical fMRI pattern resulting from clinically optimal stimulation in PD patients. Our results showed that optimal functional neuroimaging data (i.e., 3T MRI and body-transmit coil) could be acquired safely and effectively in patients with DBS. Then, we demonstrated that ethic approvals enabling the use of optimal native settings should be obtained since converting optimal native settings (i.e., non-bipolar) to equivalent bipolar settings — to meet MRI safety guidelines — does not yield equivalent fMRI maps. Finally, we defined a characteristic pattern of brain responses associated with clinically optimal stimulation. By contrasting the fMRI patterns obtained during optimal and non-optimal stimulations, we built a machine learning model classifying whether a given stimulation setting could be considered optimal based on its fMRI pattern of brain changes. Our results show that fMRI can rapidly define the optimal DBS stimulation in PD patients. Obtaining DBS-induced fMRI brain signatures associated with optimal clinical benefits, will not only allow us to obtain a better understanding of the mechanism of action of DBS, but could also facilitate individualized medicine for our patients and may represent a small step towards the possibility of autonomous, closed-loop DBS programming. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning | 3, 4 |
| Scontrino, Maurizio | Lettieri, Michael | IDENTIFICARE IL DISAGIO: crisi esistenziale, affettività e binarismo di genere nel cinema italiano LGBTQ del XXI secolo | Italian Studies | 2020-11 | This work aims to investigate the cinematographic representation of the relationship between the individual and his or her gender identity in LGBTQ Italian films by Donatella Maiorca (Viola di mare, 2009), Ferzan Özpetek (Hamam/Il bagno turco, 1997; Saturno contro, 2007), Nicolo Donato (Brotherhood/Fratellanza, 2009), Ivan Cotroneo (Un bacio, 2016), Sebastiano Riso (Più buio di mezzanotte, 2014), Maria Sole Tognazzi (Io e lei, 2015), Fabio Mollo (Il padre d’Italia, 2017), Cristina Comencini (Il più bel giorno della mia vita, 2002), Francesco Henderson Pepe (Amaro amore, 2013), Stefano Calvagna (Un nuovo giorno, 2016) and Margherita Ferri (Zen sul ghiaccio sottile, 2018). The analysis is carried out through a social and psychological perspective that underscores how this relationship is influenced by emotions that pervade the protagonists. In particular, the existential crisis within contemporary LGBTQ Italian cinema is examined, including the discrepancy between sexual identity and gender identity. This study aims to portray ways in which the conflict between sex and gender inside the subjects in question can be a source of a profound existential crisis as a motive for rejection and/or discrimination by society. Through a study of the characters’ affectivity, the emotional turmoil experienced by LGBTQ subjects becomes evident through the emphasizing of the influence such states of being have on their behavior, while modalities of inclusion/exclusion within their respective societies are also brought to light. In its conclusions, this work establishes that our emotions control, even though unconsciously and peculiarly, our behaviours, and ultimately determine who we are. Such behaviors characterize us as social actors in revealing the significance of non-verbal communication, which is an undeniable source of truth on a subliminal level. Through a critical context, this work enriches the pre-existing debate on masculinity by proposing a new interpretive perspective that considers the ways in which emotions interact with our free will, thereby becoming an indisputable indicator of our hidden inclinations. The study of such factors is instrumental in demonstrating how sexual or gender identity influence the characters in question, who, in turn, through their emotions display a sense of existential crisis tied to their non-binary and/or dysphoric condition. | Ph.D. | gender, non-binary, lgbtq, invest | 5, 9 |
| Rife, Michaela Elaine | Cheetham, Mark A | Public Art, Private Land: Settler Colonialism and Environment in New Deal Murals on the Great Plains | History of Art | 2020-11 | “Public Art, Private Land: Settler Colonialism and Environment in New Deal Murals on the Great Plains” analyzes government-sponsored public art produced in the context of the Dust Bowl. While the national print media was dominated by images of environmental and economic disaster, the Treasury Department’s Section of Fine Arts (1934-1943) placed murals in post offices across the country to provide an uneasy population with a reassuring vision of America. This dissertation focuses on the Great Plains, a region defined by environmental disaster narratives and the celebratory recent histories of white settlement. While the land appeared to be rejecting settlers through drought and dust storms, muralists offered scenes of reassuring history and agricultural bounty. However, the Dust Bowl was but one symptom of the ongoing disaster of settler colonialism. Through four thematic chapters, I ask how these artworks functioned to shore up settler faith in the land during a period of environmental crisis. In Chapter One, I examine land claim murals, works that emphasized settler arrivals and European histories on the Plains. Chapter Two considers extinction narratives that were employed against Native peoples and bison as a means of further solidifying settler land claims. However, these murals are considered alongside cultural production from Native artists that refutes settler claims and asserts survivance against colonization. Chapter Three examines agricultural murals, arguing that while some depictions of bounty ignored the surrounding Dust Bowl, others directly engaged with symbols of disaster. Finally, Chapter Four posits that symbols of oil extraction became hopeful signs of modernity and wealth for communities characterized by the Dust Bowl. In each chapter, I situate murals in a wider visual landscape that includes the visual culture of preceding festivals, photographs and print media of the 1930s, and more recent examples of community public art. My analysis draws from the rich archive of the Section of Fine Arts and from the fields of ecocritical art history, environmental and labor history, and settler colonial studies to argue that post office murals on the Plains worked to both reflect and to shape a community’s land ethic. | Ph.D. | agricultur, settler, drought, labor, production, environmental, land | 2, 4, 6, 8, 12, 13, 15 |
| Kahraman, Nefise | Nyquist, Mary | Nerves on the Loose: Gendering Nervousness in Ottoman and Early Republican Turkish Novels | Comparative Literature | 2020-11 | This dissertation analyzes the literary representations of nervousness and its cognates, such as neurasthenia, hysteria, and nervous sensibility, which were coded as feminine in the novels of several canonical Ottoman-Turkish authors in the period between 1880 and 1940. It explores the complexity and many idiosyncrasies surrounding the idea of female nervousness together with its relevance to cultural and political discourse within the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey. Although its relevance has eluded scholars, the notion of female nervousness, as represented both in fiction and nonfiction, deserves its place as a noteworthy category within Ottoman and Turkish narratives of disease. Two chapters of this dissertation examine the array of hysteric and neurasthenic female characters in Ottoman-Turkish literature and demonstrate that these disorders were malleable and varied in definition, drawing from changing socio-cultural and medical contexts. The other two chapters focus on different manifestations of female nervousness. Inspired by the frequent references to the concepts of nerves, the nervous system, and female nervousness in print media from the turn of the century, this dissertation ultimately demonstrates four things. First, the ways in which the authors narrativize female nervousness in their novels reveal prevailing gender and class norms of the era. A closer analysis of the novels supported by secondary sources called for widening the analysis beyond gender and class to include race, ethnicity and socio-economic expectations of the period. Second, female nervousness is rarely treated as a mere medical condition or diagnosis; authors often capitalize on nervousness, or any related diagnostic label, to promote their own views of concepts such as civilization (medeniyet) or emotional etiquette (hiss-i terbiye). Third, female nervousness is mobilized to cast a light on the conditions of modernity, and to express anxieties around it. Lastly, with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of Turkey as a nation state, female nervousness takes on metaphorical meanings in the service of nation-building and the construction of a national identity. Together, these four arguments demonstrate that the exploration of female nervousness cannot be contained within a single, definitive narrative. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, gender, female, capital | 1, 5, 2009 |
| Abraham, Karan Joshua | Mekhail, Karim | Control of Ribosomal DNA Loci by Nucleolar RNA Polymerase II and Its Intergenic R-loops | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2020-11 | Proteins are universally manufactured by ribosomes, which are assembled within phase-separated nuclear compartments called nucleoli. In the heart of nucleoli, ribosomal RNA (rRNA) molecules are transcribed from ribosomal DNA (rDNA) loci, thus initiating the process of ribosome biogenesis. Traditionally, RNA polymerase I (Pol I) is believed to be the sole polymerase responsible for this fundamental process. The rDNA repeats also contain nested intergenic spacer (IGS) elements that are naturally enriched in co-transcriptionally generated triplex nucleic acid structures termed R-loops. At budding yeast IGSs, RNA polymerase II (Pol II) generates R-loops, and can drive genome instability and ageing. Whether nucleolar Pol II exists in higher organisms, modulates life-sustaining ribosome biogenesis in any species, or is relevant to human aging and age-related disease is unknown. Here, we uncover nucleolar Pol II and identify its co-transcriptional R-loops as deleterious and beneficial protagonists in genome instability and ribosome biogenesis, respectively. First, via dual interrogation of yeast and human cell systems, we identify neurodegeneration-linked ATXN2 as a conserved suppressor of genome-destabilizing rDNA/nucleolar R-loops, while uncovering Mg2+ as a biochemical signal of R-loop-combating and lifespan-prolonging calorie restriction (CR) [1]. Second, we uncover a nucleolar Pol II-dependent mechanism that operates across human IGSs to maintain nucleolar organization and drive rRNA expression, reveal disease-associated disruption of nucleoli by non-coding RNAs, and establish locus-targeted R-loop modulation via a novel RNaseH1-EGFP-dCas9 system (denoted ‘red laser’). Our results challenge the current schema of labour division between different RNA polymerases and have implications for our understanding of disease entities linked to R-loop and nucleolar dysfunction. | Ph.D. | labour, conserv, species | 8, 14, 15 |
| Abbou, Abderrahmane | Makis, Viliam | Maintenance Optimization of Partially Observable Complex Systems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2020-11 | Maintenance is an essential activity to improve the productivity of deteriorating systems. Various technical issues arise during the development of optimal maintenance policies. Two of the most commonly encountered issues are \emph{partial information} and \emph{high dimensionality}. Firstly, information obtained from condition monitoring sensors is inherently noisy, meaning that decision makers must plan maintenance interventions under uncertainty about the true operational state of the system. Secondly, a high dimensional state representation is necessary for modeling real world systems, e.g. those characterized by complex deterioration mechanisms or those composed of multiple subsystems, adding another layer of complexity to maintenance decision making. This thesis develops three related models reflecting the importance of partial information and high dimensionality in maintenance optimization. The first model concerns the preventive maintenance of a single-unit system such as a wind turbine. We model the system's deterioration as a continuous-time Markov chain with two unobservable operational states and one observable failure state. Our objective is to jointly decide when to collect condition monitoring data and when to initiate preventive maintenance. We first develop the Bayesian updating of the posterior probability that the system is in a bad operational state, and then formulate an optimal stopping problem to characterize the optimal policy. Specifically, we prove via dynamic programming arguments that the optimal policy has a threshold structure, enabling its implementation using the familiar control chart. For the second model, we study the group maintenance of a multi-unit system such as a wind farm. We analyze and compute the optimal policy prescribing when to initiate group maintenance interventions, assuming full observability of each unit in the system, and construct a heuristic policy for the computationally intractable setting with partially observable units. Lastly, the third model considers the resource-constrained maintenance of a large-scale system, e.g. a system of geographically dispersed wind farms. Sequential allocation of the limited repair resources corresponds to a restless bandits problem, which we near-optimally solve using Whittle's index policy. Efficient algorithms are developed for computing the proposed maintenance policies. Also, the extension to deterioration processes with multiple operational states is discussed for each of the three models. | Ph.D. | wind | 7 |
| Brassard, Christina | Havercroft, Barbara | La Relation Hétérosexuelle dans Trois Romans Contemporains au Féminin au Québec : Regards sur la Construction Identitaire Genrée | French Language and Literature | 2020-11 | Cette thèse étudie la représentation de la relation hétérosexuelle dans trois romans au féminin dans la période contemporaine au Québec. Pour ce faire, j’ai recours aux théories du genre sexuel. Chaque roman du corpus met en scène une narratrice qui fait le portrait de son partenaire amoureux ou conjugal et de sa relation avec lui : je prête ainsi une attention particulière à la construction identitaire masculine en fonction de la construction identitaire féminine des narratrices. En me référant à diverses théories (le constructivisme social, l’études des stéréotypes, l’intersubjectivité et le féminisme), j’examine Espèces de Ying Chen, Folle de Nelly Arcan et Mãn de Kim Thúy et je m’attarde aux moyens littéraires que les auteures utilisent pour élaborer une critique féministe des rapports de genre. Différents procédés littéraires sont déployés par les romancières afin d’interroger la binarité du genre sexuel : de l’ironie au réalisme magique en passant par l’intertextualité, leurs démarches sont hétérogènes. Le premier chapitre met en évidence les approches théoriques employées pour analyser les romans. Le deuxième chapitre porte sur Espèces de Ying Chen, qui explore les formes du réalisme magique au féminin et resignifie la figure de la chatte dans le roman. Cette œuvre met en question la réitération de l’objectification féminine dans la relation conjugale. Dans le troisième chapitre, sur Folle de Nelly Arcan, j’analyse l’ironie, l’humour noir et la resignification d’injures faites aux femmes pour montrer comment l’auteure critique les stéréotypes genrés dans la relation amoureuse. Le dernier chapitre, consacré à Mãn de Kim Thúy, explore l’écriture migrante et l’intertextualité afin de témoigner de l’importance de la reconnaissance mutuelle dans la relation hétérosexuelle. This thesis analyzes the representation of the heterosexual relationships in the contemporary women’s novels in Quebec. Each novel under study features a female narrator who portrays her romantic or conjugal partner, as well as her relationship with him. My analysis focuses on the construction of masculine identity in relation to the construction of the narrators’ female identity. Drawing on various theories (social constructivism, studies of stereotypes, intersubjectivity, and feminism), I examine Ying Chen’s Espèces, Nelly Arcan’s Folle, and Kim Thúy’s Mãn while focusing on the literary techniques employed by the authors to develop a feminist critique of gender relations. Literary devices allow novelists to question gender binarity: from irony to magical realism, and migrant literature, their approaches are diverse. The first chapter examines the theoretical framework used to analyze the novels. The second chapter focuses on Espèces by Ying Chen. I explore Chen’s female take on magical realism and the meaning of the figure of the cat in the novel. Chen’s work challenges the reiteration of feminine objectification in the conjugal relationship. The third chapter features on the analysis of Folle by Nelly Arcan: irony, black humor, and the resignification of hate speech against women illustrate the author’s critique of gender stereotypes through the romantic relationship. The last chapter, devoted to Mãn by Kim Thúy, discusses migrant literature and intertextuality in order to underline the importance of mutual recognition in the heterosexual relationships. | Ph.D. | gender, women, female, feminis, labor, reuse | 5, 8, 12 |
| Tankha, Akshaya | Jain, Kajri | An Aesthetics of Endurance: Art, Visual Culture and Indigenous Presence in Nagaland, India | History of Art | 2020-11 | This doctoral dissertation explores objects of Indigenous art and visual culture in Nagaland, northeast India as sites of emergence informed by a temporally layered Indigenous present that foreground the aesthetics of endurance that characterizes Indigenous lifeworlds and their settler-colonial marginalization by the postcolonial state in contemporary South Asia. It is based on ethnographic interviews with regional artists and activists, and visual analysis of objects as sites that world multiple conceptions of time and space, associated with the ever-changing practices of Naga Indigeneity and with discursive understandings of them, in layered ways. The primary objects of my research—craft objects, memorial monuments, and house museums—were produced in the predominantly Indigenous and Christian Nagaland after 1997. This was when an armed, pan-Indigenous, transregional and transnational Naga movement for political autonomy, which began in 1953, ended with a ceasefire agreement between the Indian government and Naga nationalists. I argue that the plural and layered temporality of the objects materialize intersubjective conceptions of time and space constituted by Indigenous practices, relationships to land, and their overlapping re-significations as heritage within the terms of culture, and as history, statecraft, sovereignty, and Indigenous rights within the terms of democracy. It also grounds the newness of the monument, the museum and craft object, which shows the aesthetics of endurance to be a space of emergence as well. This highlights an Indigenous present co-constituted by Indigenous rituals and Christian practices, forms of collective memory, and the contestations that characterize them, which illuminate regional processes of identity-formation. Based on discursive analyses of colonial and post-independence scholarship, this thesis also shows that the institutionalization of Indigenous arts as India’s “tribal” crafts both essentializes them and appropriates them to Hindu hegemonic notions of craft and culture. This reveals the art historical lineage of the postcolonial Indian state’s settler-colonial logic of the marginalization of regional Indigenous lifeworlds. The layered nature of my objects exemplifies the enduring and emergent qualities of Indigenous presence in the face of this ongoing discursive appropriation, while also exemplifying the plural and layered temporality of art as such and the present that we all inhabit. | Ph.D. | settler, indigenous, land, institut, democra, indigenous rights, sovereignty | 4, 10, 16, 15 |
| Dhoot, Tejinderpal | Trotz, Alissa||Yoneyama, Lisa | The Neoliberal Politics of Queer Men of Colour’s Erotic Lives | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2020-11 | The growth of queer digital spaces that offer queer men of colour the ability to find each other for sex and dating has produced a set of challenges for researchers. While these spaces are seen as significant for opening up new erotic sites, they are simultaneously mired by erotic practices rooted in racism. This dissertation asks, what significant ways do racial differences play a role in queer men of colour’s erotic lives, particularly in the digital era, and what kind of agency do queer men of colour practice in regard to erotic racism? I argue that despite evidence of increasing racism in digital spaces, queer men of colour continue to navigate, (re)shape and participate in online discourses including even those considered ideologically problematic. My project undertakes an in-depth study of the practices and experiences of queer men of colour to better understand how racial difference and configurations of neoliberalism shape queer men of colour’s intimate lives. Based on interview data, this dissertation demonstrates that many queer men of colour, including those who see themselves as anti-racist, are often erotically attached to what I characterize as racial and neoliberal economies of desirability. Racial and neoliberal economies of desirability refer to preferences for particular forms of (economic and cultural) capital rooted within white middle-class ideals. This dissertation focuses on racism within quotidian (erotic) practices in order to understand the depth through which racial difference organizes our intimate lives. My analysis builds from the theoretical framework of queer of colo(u)r critique to explore how queer erotic lives are sutured to intersecting configurations of gender, sexuality, race, capital, nation and disability/normalcy. Extending queer of colour critique theorizations of power differentials between differently racialized groups and within each community of colour, I theorize eroticized power relations that exist between queer men of colour. My research underscores that queer men of colour’s erotic attachments often align with sexual and gendered racial discourses while they are simultaneously committed to anti-racist and often feminist politics. By underscoring this point, this research provides new ways of understanding queer subjectivities as vexing and contradictory, because in reality there are no ‘perfectly’ non-racist subjects. | Ph.D. | disabilit, racism, gender, queer, feminis, capital, of colour, anti-racist | 3, 4, 5, 9, 10 |
| Roberts-Zauderer, Dianna Lynn | Ross, Jill | "The Motive for Metaphor": Metaphor and Imagination in Moses ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses Maimonides and Shem Tov ibn Falaquera | Religion, Study of | 2017-11 | This thesis seeks to challenge assumptions that posit imagination as the opposite of intellect, and argues that the complexities of epistemology require a nuanced, rather than binary, approach to imagination. By exploring metaphor and imagination in medieval Arabic-Aristotelian and Jewish thought, my work examines how metaphoric language creates conceptual figurations that require imagination to unravel their meaning. Although imagination is a necessary contributor to abstract thought, and Andalusī thinkers writing in Arabic highlight the difference between the faculty of imagination and its functions, this aspect of human psychology has not been transmitted through translations and across borders. A metaphor is a word picture; it presents a semantic association that requires deciphering. Ibn Ezra, Halevi and Maimonides discuss the ramifications of using likenesses to describe the unknowable divine. Chapter 1 considers the cognitive aspect of metaphor in light of Arabic-Aristotelian poetics and modern metaphor studies. In order to comprehend how metaphor operates at the level of human understanding, Chapter 2 undertakes an analysis of medieval Jewish engagement with Fārābīan and Avicennan psychology. Both Halevi and Maimonides operate within the Arabic-Aristotelian paradigm; however, imagination plays different, yet vital, roles in the theology of each Jewish thinker. Chapter 3 focuses on terms used to describe imagination in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, and discusses how these terms have been translated into Hebrew, English and French. Using translation theory, this chapter calls into question the translators’ precision in transmitting the Judeo-Arabic terms into the target language. Chapter 4 draws connections between Iberian thinker and poet Falaquera and his Andalusī predecessors. Falaquera maintains a binary approach to imagination and intellect in his translation of Maimonides’ Guide. His critique of the falsity of figurative language is examined in light of the poetic theories of Christian scholastics, who advocate an ethical role for poetry. This thesis highlights the cognitive aspect of metaphoric language, rehabilitates imagination’s vital role in human psychology, and highlights a nuanced approach to imagination that is lost on Maimonides’ interpreters. Its significance lies in the examination of medieval Jewish thought in relation to both Islamo-Arabic and Christian Scholastic traditions. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Ahn, Jeeyoon Jennifer | Dunn, Shannon E | Effects of Puberty and Obesity on Central Nervous System Autoimmunity in Experimental Autoimmune Encephalomyelitis | Immunology | 2020-11 | Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic neuroinflammatory disease that is characterized by the formation of inflammatory demyelinating lesions in the central nervous system (CNS) white matter. One of the largest risk factors for developing MS is being female. The female preponderance of MS only manifests post-puberty implicating hormonal factors in this biology. Several other MS risk factors including obesity only impact MS risk when experienced post-puberty. The mechanisms of how puberty and obesity enhance MS risk are unknown. This thesis aimed to investigate how puberty in females (Chapter 2) and adolescent obesity (Chapter 3) increase autoimmune susceptibility in the mouse model of MS, experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). First, EAE development was compared between age-matched SJL/J mice that differed only by pubertal status. It was observed that puberty in females, but not males, was associated with increased susceptibility to EAE. Additional studies performed in female mice revealed that myelin-specific T helper (Th) cell responses were more robust post-puberty as a result of more efficient antigen-presenting cell (APC) function. These findings suggest that the female adaptive immune system matures with puberty. In Chapter 3, we evaluated the effect of diet-induced obesity (DIO) on the development of EAE in adolescent female and male C57BL/6J mice. We observed that short-term (3-4 weeks) exposure to high-fat diet starting at 6 weeks of age resulted in modest weight gain in both sexes. Upon induction of EAE, mice on high-fat diet developed more severe EAE; this effect was particularly striking in female mice. Further studies performed in diseased mice revealed that DIO increased the number of myelin-specific and CD44hi Th cells in mice of both sexes but had the unique effect of enhancing Th1 responses in females. DIO also increased the potential of naïve CD4+ T cells from non-immunized mice to secrete IFN-γ in response to anti-CD3 and anti-CD28. This effect was more prominent in female CD4+ T cells and was associated with upregulation of IFN-γ-induced STAT1 signaling. Together, these studies contribute to the understanding of how puberty and adolescent obesity enhance CNS autoimmune susceptibility in females. | Ph.D. | female, sexes, invest | 5, 9 |
| Zabalza, Maria Soledad | Jagoe, Eva-Lynn | La construcción política del indígena en la narrativa de la Conquista del Desierto. Sarmiento, Mansilla, Moreno, Zeballos | Spanish | 2020-11 | Abstract This work examines how the mechanisms of the discourse of natural science served intellectuals in nineteenth-century Argentina. This discourse allowed them to selectively include desirable subjects within their project of civilization, while discarding others as objects of natural science. Analysis of the foundational historiography of the Argentine Republic reveals a systematic biopolitical practice that has resulted in a long process of deconstituing ontology, that is to say, denying and rejecting indigenous being. The narratives of exploration, travel and frontier that circumscribe the foundational literature of the Conquista del Desierto (1878-1879) construct a disposable Other in a new and demanding liberal stage. This liberal stage demanded an economically useful population that was racially constituted as superior. This discourse of difference, which identified traditional indigenous populations as infidels, savage, and indecent, contrasted with the identification of the creole society as racially superior. For example, Western episteme supported what believed to be scientific discourses that included myths as of White Argentina. This official discourse, articulated by intellectual authorities and promoted by the Argentine state, sought to put obstacles to the agency and rights of the Indians with the construction of a negative ontological character lodged in absence and invalidity. These biopolitical practices of intellectuals, the government, and its institutions have repressed, marginalized and annulled any voice of the Indian as citizen since the beginning of the revolution of independence at the turn of the nineteenth century to today, as evidenced by ongoing contemporary political battles to grant equal citizenship to all people living on Argentine soil. This study centers on the process of the invalidation of the political, legal, and social agency of the Indian, or what has also been called the deconstituting ontology, as part of the power apparatus of the positivist modernism of the new Argentinian Republic in the nineteenth century. Resumen Este trabajo examina los mecanismos de naturalización del discurso usados por la figura del intelectual del siglo XIX en Argentina con el propósito de, selectivamente, incluir sujetos deseados para el proyecto político civilizador y descartar sujetos indeseados por este. El análisis de la historiografía fundacional de la República presenta una sistemática práctica de la biopolítica que ha resultado en un largo proceso de desconstitución ontológica del indígena. La narrativa de exploración, viaje y frontera que circunscribe a la Conquista del Desierto (1878-1879) presenta la fabricación de un Otro inviable en el nuevo y exigente escenario liberal. Esta demanda fue en busca de una población útil económicamente y, además, racialmente construida como superior. El discurso de la diferencia, que por un lado buscó marcar a los indígenas como infieles, salvajes e indecentes y, por el otro, a los cristianos como superiores racialmente será universalizado con fines políticos y transformado en consenso por la sociedad criolla a través del mito de la Argentina blanca. El discurso oficial verbalizado por la autoridad del intelectual y promovido por el Estado argentino buscó poner obstáculos a la agencia y derechos del indígena por medio de una construcción negativa de carácter ontológico que se aloja en la carencia y en la invalidez. Las prácticas de biopolítica ejecutadas por la intelectualidad, el gobierno y sus instituciones han tenido como objetivo la represión, marginalización y anulación de la voz ciudadana del indígena desde la revolución independentista a comienzos del siglo XIX y continúa hoy día haciendo visible un estado de excepción cuando se trata de reconocer y de respetar sus derechos de ciudadano. Esta investigación se centra en el proceso de invalidación de la agencia política, legal y social indígena o lo que también ha sido llamado desconstitución ontológica por parte del aparato de poder de la nueva República Argentina en la modernidad positivista del siglo diecinueve. | Ph.D. | ABS, citizen, invest, indigenous, marginalized, soil, institut | 2, 4, 9, 10, 16, 15 |
| Light, Nicholas | Malkin, David||Shlien, Adam | Studies on the Evolution of and Mutational Processes Driving Childhood Cancer in the Context of Genetic Predisposition | Medical Science | 2020-11 | Cancer predisposition syndromes (CPSs) are caused by heritable mutations, often affecting DNA-repair pathways, which dramatically increase cancer risk. Once diagnosed, screening of additional family members combined with cancer surveillance protocols have shown significant survival benefits. However, CPSs are largely underdiagnosed due to clinical heterogeneity and variants of uncertain significance. In this thesis I explore the hypothesis that CPS-associated cancers exhibit characteristic DNA-repair-associated mutational signatures—patterns of somatic mutation related to mutation aetiology¬— and/or evolutionary dynamics, which may be exploited to aid in CPS diagnosis and management. To address this hypothesis, I studied two model CPSs—constitutional mismatch repair deficiency (CMMRD) and Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS). CMMRD results from biallelic germline mutations in one of four mismatch repair genes, and is associated with childhood brain, colorectal and lymphocytic neoplasms. Recent work has shown cancers developing in CMMRD patients to possess recurrent somatic mutations in POLE/POLD1 and massively elevated numbers of somatic point mutations (hypermutation). To assess the frequency, timing, and aetiology of hypermutation in adult and childhood cancer, I performed a comprehensive analysis of hypermutation across >80,000 human cancers. Our work identified CMMRD in 15 patients, resulting in their enrollment on a surveillance protocol and immune checkpoint inhibitor trial, which has shown sustained responses for CMMRD patients. Li-Fraumeni syndrome (LFS) is a cancer predisposition syndrome caused by germline mutations in the TP53 tumor suppressor gene, and is associated with a wide range of cancers, including sarcomas, breast cancers, adrenocortical carcinomas and brain tumours. To investigate somatic mutational events driving tumourigenesis in LFS, I performed whole-genome sequencing (WGS) analysis of bulk and multi-region dissections of tumours derived from childhood and young adult patients with germline TP53 mutations. Our analyses revealed that the life history of LFS cancers is marked by early loss of heterozygosity of TP53, mutational signatures related to homologous recombination repair deficiency and in some cases previous chemotherapeutic treatment. In summary, my thesis research demonstrated CPS-related malignancies are often mutationally and evolutionarily distinct entities. The unique molecular features of these tumours reveal aspects of their aetiology and in some cases can be used to aid in diagnosing and treating these patients. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| ter Stal, David Michael | Tepass, Ulrich | Molecular Parameters of Crumbs Surface Stability and Cytoplasmic Interactions in Epithelial Polarity | Cell and Systems Biology | 2020-11 | Epithelial integrity is essential for development and morphogenesis and relies critically on the polar organization of individual epithelial cells. The Crumbs (Crb) complex of proteins is a key regulator of epithelial apical-basal polarity, apical membrane size, and assembly of adherens junctions. The apical transmembrane protein Crb has two conserved cytoplasmic protein interaction motifs, a FERM domain binding motif (FDB) and a PDZ binding motif (PDB), which are crucial for its function. Crb FDB can be phosphorylated by the apical kinase aPKC, but the consequences of Crb phosphorylation remain largely unknown. Moreover, increasing evidence suggest that the large extracellular region of Crb plays a role in Crb surface stability and distribution. In developing and analyzing a new set of Crb mutant constructs I found that Crb surface stability requires both its extra- and intracellular regions. Furthermore, both Crb FDB and PDB motifs contribute to surface stability and Crb function. Also, mutations of potential ubiquitination sites in the Crb cytoplasmic tail cause a dramatic increase in Crb accumulation, suggesting that Crb turnover requires ubiquitination-dependent endocytosis. I also investigated Crb phosphomutant constructs. My findings suggest that lack of phosphorylation of the Crb FDB is compatible with normal development confirming published findings. However, I also show that phosphorylation of the Crb FDB enhances Crb membrane accumulation and activity. In studying the effects of Crb phosphorylation on two FERM proteins Crb FDB binding partners, Moesin and Yurt, I found that any modification in Crb phosphorylation strongly reduces cortical Moesin, and dramatically decreases its sensitivity to the negative regulatory effects of Yurt as well as reduces the levels of active Yurt. Additionally, Crb phosphorylation causes a reduction of aPKC as a potential negative feedback mechanism. Taken together, I developed new insight into how Crb levels and activity are regulated at the apical membrane, and the complex relationships between, Crb, Yurt, aPKC, and Moesin. | Ph.D. | invest, conserv | 9, 14, 15 |
| Finn, Debbie | Muntaner, Carles | Examining Social Exclusion by ‘Race’/Ethnicity in Toronto’s Health Care System: A Scientific Realist-inspired Concept Mapping Study | Nursing Science | 2020-11 | With widening health inequities, developing an effective policy of action requires a better understanding of the mechanisms through which health inequities are distributed. The purpose of this doctoral research is to understand the effect of current hospital policies and practices on racial/ethnic groups at the level of the individual in Toronto’s health care system. The overall goal is to provide the explanatory power necessary to change policies and practices. Using concept mapping, a semi-qualitative study design, participants identified experiences of social exclusion when receiving health care in Toronto’s health care system. A political economy theory with a scientific realist philosophy of science was used to identify social causal mechanisms and explain how and why everyday racism occurs in Toronto’s health care setting. From the brainstorming activity, participants generated 35 unique statements of ways in which patients feel disrespect and mistreatment when receiving health care. From the sorting and mapping activity, statements were grouped into five clusters: ‘Racial/ethnic and class discrimination’, ‘Dehumanizing the patient’, ‘Negligent communication’, ‘Professional misconduct’, and ‘Unequal access to health and health services’. Two distinct conceptual regions of social exclusion were identified: ‘Viewed as inferior’ and ‘Unequal medical access’. Clusters rated highly for ‘race’/ethnic based discrimination were ‘Racial/ethnic and class discrimination’ and ‘Dehumanizing the patient’. Racialized health care users reported ‘race’/ethnic based discrimination or everyday racism as largely contributing to the challenges experienced when receiving health care. From the go-zone data, statements rated high for ‘race’/ethnic based discrimination and taking action/change were ‘when the patient's symptoms are ignored or not taken seriously’, ‘when the health care provider does not provide the requested information’, and ‘when the health care provider belittles or talks down to the patient’. To eliminate institutional racism, political will is needed to eliminate the ideology of racial inferiority often used for the purpose of justifying racist actions/unequal treatment. Anti-racist policies are needed to move beyond cultural competence polices and towards addressing the centrality of unequal power relations and everyday racism in health care. This has implications for nursing leadership, health care provider education, health care organizations, and health care practice. | Ph.D. | health care, racism, equit, equal access, anti-racist, institut | 3, 4, 10, 16 |
| Chan, Sharon | Lee, Kang | Children's Attitudinal and Behavioural Explicit Racial Bias and Its Reduction | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-06 | This thesis explored the reduction of children’s intergroup bias. Part one of the thesis tested whether a multiethnic sample of Canadian children aged 4-12 years showed explicit preference for white over black race in their trait attributions and hypothetical interactions. Results showed evidence for pro-white preference, with younger children and nonwhite children showing higher pro-white bias. Part two of the thesis showed that explicit racial bias was the most consistent predictor of children’s prosocial sharing with recipients of both races as compared to age, gender and contact measures, and was a likely indicator of general prosocial development. Children across ages prioritized self-interest over sharing with others. Part three demonstrated that exposure to positive counterstereotypical black exemplars reduced children’s overall pro-white preferences but had no effect in increasing prosocial behaviour. Results suggest that information-based interventions can be successful at reducing explicit intergroup bias when contact opportunities are limited or insufficient. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Regan, Talia | Dolan, Neal||Wilson, Sarah | Periodicals, Portables, and the Reading Public: The Short Fiction of Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, and William Faulkner in the Literary Marketplace | English | 2020-11 | This dissertation examines the effects of the literary marketplace on the production, dissemination, and reception of American short fiction between 1914 and 1945, a period that experienced both an explosion in print culture and increased anxiety about the adverse effects of the literary marketplace on artistic and textual autonomy. Combining book history, cultural studies, and literary analysis, I argue that reading short fiction of this period in multiple contexts of its publication history reveals how the literary marketplace enabled the genre’s complex “portability” – a term that evokes the materiality of the text itself, the interpretive mobility of the literary work from one publication context to another, and the movement of the work within the hierarchy of literary “brows.” Dorothy Parker, Langston Hughes, and William Faulkner, all successful and prolific writers of short fiction, demonstrate the range and the surprising coherence of the hermeneutic questions raised by short fiction’s portability. Chapter one examines the interpretive shifts in Parker’s satirical fiction as her stories move from The New Yorker to The Portable Dorothy Parker (1944), revealing that Parker’s satire seeks new targets as relentlessly as publishers seek new markets. Chapter two highlights how racial prejudice operated on portability within the literary marketplace by analyzing a little-known episode in Hughes’s career when Esquire asked its readers to vote on whether one of his stories should be published in the magazine. Following this publicity stunt through Esquire’s “letters to the editor,” I demonstrate the magazine’s tactical consolidation of its readers through exploitation of divergent interpretations of Hughes’s story. Chapter three probes Faulkner’s anxious engagement with the mass-market magazine by examining the publication history of the generically ambiguous Go Down, Moses (1942). I argue that Faulkner seized upon the portability of his stories and repurposed them in a higher-brow, more authorially controlled form—the novel. I conclude the dissertation by demonstrating how recent periodical digitization initiatives, like the Modernist Journals Project, facilitate the study of short fiction in its various versions and contexts, and how integrating my theory of portability and its methodology into our pedagogy invigorates teaching practices of American short fiction. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, production, judic, exploitation | 4, 12, 16 |
| Ay, Birol | Davies, John E | Impact of Hyperglycemia on Rat Cortical Bone Microstructure and Osteoprogenitor Cell Exhaustion | Biomedical Engineering | 2020-11 | Uncontrolled diabetes has been associated with an increased risk of bone fracture and implant failure. However, the underlying reasons have yet to be entirely understood. Our group previously reported that osteocyte number appeared increased in the peri-implant bone of hyperglycemic rats, which might increase cellular level cortical porosity. In this context, since there are examples of increased proliferation of cells in hyperglycemia from other tissues, we hypothesized that increased osteocyte cell number due to the excessive proliferation of osteoprogenitors increases osteocyte lacunar density in hyperglycemic bone. To address the hypothesis, changes in bone porosity, due to osteocyte lacunar density and vascular canal volume, in streptozotocin (STZ)-induced hyperglycemic Wistar Albino rat bone were quantitatively assessed with synchrotron radiation (SR) micro-CT. Additionally, the effects of hyperglycemia on bone formation in osteogenic cultures of rat bone marrow stromal cells (rBMSCs) was quantified. To elucidate the mechanism by which hyperglycemia affects progenitor cells, colony forming capacity, glucose consumption, motility, and whole transcriptome of rBMSCs were compared with euglycemic controls. As opposed to the hypothesis, lacunar density was significantly higher in STZ than euglycemic group (67,195±3,206 vs. 61,126±1,457, lacuna number/mm3, p | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Demian, Wael | Rotin, Daniela | NKCC1 Regulates mTORC1 and p38-MAPK | Biochemistry | 2020-11 | The Mammalian Target Of Rapamycin Complex1 (mTORC1) is a key regulator of cell growth and survival. It is activated by growth factors and by essential amino acids such as Leu. Influx of Leu into cells is mediated by the Leu transporter LAT1-4F2hc (LAT1). Here I show that the Na-K-2Cl cotransporter NKCC1 (SLC12A2), a known regulator of cell volume, is present in complex with LAT1. I further show that NKCC1 suppresses mTORC1 by independently inhibiting its key activating signaling pathways: (i) Leu influx via LAT1; and (ii) growth factor signaling pathways (PI3K/Akt and Erk1/2). Moreover, I found that suppression of mTORC1 by NKCC1 leads to reduced cell volume mass and increased cell proliferation. Thus, my studies implicate NKCC1 in the long-sought link between cell size (volume) and cell mass regulation. After cell shrinkage by hyperosmotic stress, NKCC1 transport ions (including Na+) into cells followed by water to restore normal cell volume, by a process called Regulatory Volume Increase (RVI). RVI is regulated by the hyperosmotic-stress response p38-MAPK. I show that NKCC1 depletion abolished RVI by reducing intracellular Na+ concentration ([Na+]i) and inhibiting p38-MAPK activity. Further, I investigate the effect of [Na+]i on the p38-MAPK in the presence of high or low [Na+]i concentrations. My data show that [Na+]i is a positive regulator of p38-MAPK activity. Further, I find that [Na+]i is sensed by the upstream activators of p38-MAPK: TRAF2/ASK1 and MEK3/6/4, thus establishing [Na+]i as a signaling ion that activates the p38-MAPK stress response pathway. Independently, I also show that WNK kinases (also activated by hyperosmotic stress) inhibit p38-MAPK, but via a distinct pathway. Together, these studies illuminate the signaling role of NKCC1, [Na+]i and WNK kinases in p38-MAPK activation and cell volume regulation. | Ph.D. | water, invest | 6, 9 |
| Louie, Patricia | Wheaton, Blair | Complicating Race in the Study of Mental and Physical Health | Sociology | 2020-11 | Racial disparities in health are large and persistent. While decades of research have clearly established race-based disparities in health, less attention has been paid to the way in which race is conceptualized and measured in the study of health disparities. The three empirical studies comprising this dissertation move beyond current sociological work in this area by complicating how race is used in health disparities research. First, I consider the simultaneous effects of race and skin tone stratification in the patterning of physical health. This paper offers a new approach that better specifies the contribution of each status to health inequality, by providing a method that partitions the impact of race from skin tone in the same analysis. Second, I disaggregate combinations of mixed-race groups (i.e. Asian-White, Black-White, and Black-Asian) to better understand whether the social distribution of mental and physical health outcomes varies by specific combinations of mixed-race relative to monoracial groups. Finally, I consider whether Black-White differences in mental disorder have changed across cohorts of Black and White Americans – introducing social change into the study of racial disparities in health. Taken together, this dissertation demonstrates how thinking about race in more specific and complex ways allow us to uncover new empirical realities. | Ph.D. | inequality, equalit, social change | 10, 16 |
| Zuccaro, Jennifer | Fish, Joel | Laser Therapy to Treat Hypertrophic Scars in Children with Burn Injuries | Medical Science | 2020-11 | Introduction: Laser therapy has emerged as a valuable treatment option for hypertrophic burn scars. Currently, the two most commonly used lasers include the ablative fractional CO2 laser to improve scar thickness and stiffness and the pulsed dye laser to reduce scar redness. However, research regarding the use of laser therapy in the pediatric population has been limited by poorly designed studies. Thus, the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using laser therapy to improve hypertrophic burn scars in pediatric patients using a comprehensive set of subjective and objective scar assessment tools. Methods: A single-centre, prospective observational study was carried out at a tertiary pediatric hospital. Twenty participants with hypertrophic burn scars that had not received previous laser treatment were included. Laser therapy sessions were administered over the course of one year and all treatment parameters were tailored to meet the needs of each participant. A comprehensive set of scar assessment tools including the Vancouver Scar Scale, the Patient and Observer Scar Assessment Scale, conventional ultrasound, acoustic radiation force impulse ultrasound elastography, and the DermaLab Combo® colour and elasticity probes were used to evaluate scar characteristics at each study visit. Results: Seventy-one laser procedures were carried out with the majority of participants receiving treatment with both the ablative fractional CO2 laser and the pulsed dye laser at the same session (83%). All participants received at least three sessions of laser therapy with no complications noted. From baseline to study completion, statistically significant improvements in all scar measures, both subjective and objective, were observed (p | Ph.D. | invest, co2 | 9, 13 |
| Nikolova, Kristina | Fallon, Barbara | Intimate Partner Violence and Gender Inequality: A Multilevel Analysis | Social Work | 2017-11 | Introduction: Individual experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) occurs in a socio-political context that varies internationally. This dissertation examined (1) how gender-specific policies impact women’s risk of IPV; (2) whether gender norm transgression increases women’s risk of experiencing IPV; and (3) how women’s experience of violence in the home impacts their access to pregnancy-related health care. Methods: A sample of 28 countries’ Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) were analyzed using multilevel modelling. Women’s experience of lifetime IPV and past-year IPV were examined considering national factors, such as geopolitical region, economy, and gender-based policies, while controlling for women’s sociodemographic characteristics. The final analyses used women’s experience of physical IPV to predict their use of professional prenatal care and delivery assistance during pregnancy and the immunization of their infants. Results: Women were at higher risk for violence if they were the sole income earner for the household compared to situations where the man was the primary provider. The presence of gender non-discrimination legislation was protective against physical IPV experience. Polygamy legalization was a significant risk factor of all forms of IPV experience. Women who experienced violence were less likely to receive prenatal care when pregnant and to fully vaccinate their children, even when controlling for household income. These women were more likely to experience unwanted pregnancies, which was also associated with lower use of health care services. Conclusions: Gender-specific policies aimed at protecting women from violence and discrimination are possibly having a positive impact on women’s self-reports of IPV. Further, the finding that employment differences between partners is associated with an increase in women’s risk for violence should be used to inform intervention and prevention programs. The consequences of violence experience are associated with insufficient healthcare use not only by women, but also their children. | Ph.D. | health care, healthcare, gender, women, employment, inequality, equalit, income, violence | 3, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Sabzalieva, Emma | Sá, Creso | Responding to Major Institutional Change: The Fall of the Soviet Union and Higher Education in Central Asia | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2020-11 | With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newly independent Central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan inherited a shared legacy of higher education, institutionalized during the twentieth century under Soviet rule. All three countries were struck by the same fundamental challenges in the wake of the Soviet collapse, and all three brought forward the same normative models of government and governance. Yet in the space of just a few years, each of the three higher education systems had diverged, often extensively. By examining the immediate period following the major institutional change of 1991, this study advances our understanding of how organizations respond to such dramatic moments, moving beyond a simplistic binary of transformation or stagnation. Where higher education in Central Asia experienced some major shifts, in other areas it adjusted more incrementally, and in many respects higher education continued to be organized and structured just as it had been in the Soviet era. Theoretically, the study compares the extent to which the rational choice, sociological and historical strands of new institutionalism can be used to analyse these responses to major (as opposed to minor or incremental) institutional change. Yet more than this, being able to explain both the differences and the similarities in the way higher education in these three countries shifted as a result of the fall of the Soviet Union also tells us about how actors grapple with the legacies of previous organizing templates. Understanding how higher education changed – or did not change – despite or because of this inheritance also deepens our understanding of the value placed on higher education, which, given the criticality of higher education across countries, helps us understand how states envision their future. Drawing extensively from 36 interviews with experienced faculty members and supplemented by descriptive statistics, this study makes an important contribution to comparative studies and to filling the gap in theory-driven explanations of organizational responses to major change. As the first study to set higher education in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan into comparative perspective, it directly addresses the clear disparity between research on contemporary Central Asia as compared to other world regions. | Ph.D. | disparity, institut, governance | 1, 10, 16 |
| Zhang, Yuanfang | Kawashima, Ken | Perversions of the Capitalist Fantasy: The Agrarian Question and Japanese Colonialism in Manchuria | East Asian Studies | 2020-11 | This dissertation analyzes the agrarian question in Manchuria during Japan’s occupation. Instead of conceptualizing Manchuria’s rural society in terms of its essentialist connotations, such as being backward and opposed to the capitalist industrialization, I analyze the articulation of the so-called feudal remnants in the countryside with Manchuria’s industrial economy, which was driven by Japanese finance capital and the expansion of the Japanese empire in the wake of the domestic and world economic crisis in the early 1930s. The unprecedented economic crisis forced Japan to export its excess capital to Manchuria under the name of the rationalization of capital. The tendency of rationalization, however, did not dismantle the social conditions of Manchuria’s countryside and replace the old, feudal economy with a modernized capitalist economic sector. Feudal conditions in the countryside disrupted the fantasy of rationalization. In the meantime, the articulation with the rationalized economy exemplified capital’s enclosure of heterogeneous, political, cultural, and social elements for the sake of the latter’s own accumulation. To this end, my project addresses the shifting discursive configurations of Chinese peasants, who were not only the main markers of the feudal economy but also targets of different agrarian programs instituted by Japanese colonial agents. These discursive changes reflected the massive social upheavals resulting from the capture of the countryside by Japanese colonial agents, and as well as the often invisible dynamics of finance capital. In my dissertation, I make visible the process of capture and accumulation by analyzing four salient and inter-related problems: the colonial industries’ reliance on rural workers (chapter 2); the institutional reforms to screen and individuate peasants through a biopolitical regime of competition mediated by rural credit programs (chapter 3); the reinvention of traditional communitarianism as an ideology instrumental to the establishment of the capitalist landownership (chapter 4); the tension between dispossessed peasants and Japanese agrarian immigrants centering around the question of landownership and its implications for Chinese revolution in Manchuria (chapter 5 and 6). | Ph.D. | worker, capital, industrialization, rural, land, institut | 8, 9, 11, 15, 16 |
| Del-Villar, Zoila | Todorova, Miglena | Facing Inequity: Social Justice Education in the Training of Pre-service Workers in New York City | Social Justice Education | 2020-11 | This study uses a qualitative approach to construct and examine the impact of a critical social work curriculum delivered to pre-service social workers in New York City, United States. It argues that social justice education principles, specifically critical theories pertaining to race, racial identities and racial formation position social workers-in-training for relational and transformative social work with members of racial, ethnic, religious and sexual minorities, and those living in poverty or without citizenship status. Such relational social work, the study suggests, forces especially self-identified White-social workers to take responsibility for the historical oppression of others and ultimately view the field of social work as a space to foster non-violent and caring relations that do not duplicate and extend injustices faced by racial minorities in the United States. Despite emotional discomfort, White learners who took part in the training also exhibit readiness to engage in critical dialogue about issues of racial inequality and their role in oppressive systems of power. Pre-service social workers identifying as Black or as people of color, appreciate tremendously how the critical social work curriculum opens a space where they can voice out their experiences, and engage White people in facing together the history of racial, gender, ethnic and class inequalities that separate social workers from each other and from those marginalized communities who receive their services. The study discusses the experiential, emotional, and cognitive approaches embedded in the Critical Social Work Curriculum presented here so other educators in the field of social work could use, test and enrich the approach further. The full curriculum is provided in the Appendix. The analysis also documents limitations of the approach, the emotional labor involved in its delivery, as well as the need for institutional and organizational support for social justice education in the training of social workers not just in New York City but across the United States. University programs in social work must commit to critical pedagogies in order to position social workers for delivering services that support others in non-oppressive and meaningful ways. | Ed.D. | poverty, equity, citizen, gender, labor, worker, inequality, equit, equalit, minorit, of color, marginalized, institut, social justice, injustice | 1, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Tracey, Lauren Janette | Justice, Monica J | Elucidating the Role of the Pluripotency Regulator Prdm14 in Cancer Initiation Using Mouse Models of Lymphoblastic Leukemia | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11 | Molecular mechanisms underlying high-risk subtypes of leukemia remain elusive. PR-domain containing 14 (Prdm14) is a potent oncogene implicated in the initiation of many cancers, including leukemia. During development, Prdm14 maintains pluripotency by regulating expression of self-renewal and differentiation genes, and promoting global epigenetic changes. Prdm14 expression is restricted to pluripotent cell types; however, PRDM14 is mis-expressed in numerous human cancers and is associated with poor patient outcomes. To understand the molecular mechanisms driving cancer initiation, I studied mouse models of Prdm14-driven leukemia. I characterized a model of T cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia (T-ALL) expressing FLAG-PRDM14 to show PRDM14 binds to the Notch1 locus prior to acquiring Notch1 activating mutations and leukemia onset. Further, I identified CBFA2T3 as the primary protein interaction partner of PRDM14 in leukemic bone marrow (BM), and demonstrated that Cbfa2t3 is required for PRDM14 to expand progenitor-like cells and initiate T-ALL. The interaction between PRDM14 and CBFA2T3 that occurs in conserved family motifs suggests this complex provides a platform to recruit chromatin modifying enzymes to initiate leukemia. I used CyTOF to deeply profile the phenotype of expanded pre-leukemia progenitor-like cells and demonstrated that Prdm14 can initiate parallel cancer programs in different lymphoid lineages. Single-cell RNA-sequencing revealed that pre-leukemic T cells expressed Notch1 and its target genes, while pre-leukemic B-1-like cells expressed AP-1 proto-oncogenes coupled with mis-regulated DNA damage response and cell cycle genes. B-1 cells are an unconventional, self-renewing type of B cell established in early embryogenesis. To test the capacity of Prdm14-expressing pre-leukemic B-1-like cells to initiate leukemia/lymphoma, cells were isolated and injected into syngeneic host mice, leading to B-1 cell leukemia/lymphoma development. Consistently, I showed that Prdm14 can initiate infiltrative B-1 cell leukemia/lymphoma in a second model where Prdm14 expression is restricted to B-lineage committed progenitors, supporting a novel link between Prdm14 and transformation of B-1 cells. These findings are clinically relevant, as relapsed pediatric B-ALL patient tumours that express PRDM14 have significantly worse outcomes. Collectively, my results provide a mechanism for Prdm14-driven cancer initiation in hematopoietic cells that may inform how Prdm14 initiates cancer in solid tumours and how it could be targeted therapeutically. | Ph.D. | conserv | 14, 15 |
| Fox, Natalie Sarah | Boutros, Paul C | Molecular Cancer Subtypes and Their Associations | Medical Biophysics | 2021-11 | Molecular profiling can be a powerful tool for improving cancer classifications and patient management decisions. Breast cancer is a classic example of molecular cancer subtypes and their translational and clinical utility. Subtypes can be prognostic, which can help guide decisions on treatment intensification or deintensification. Some subtypes indicate treatment response and thereby guide treatment decisions. Cohort selection in research or for clinical trials can be aided by cancer subtypes to identify homogeneous patient criteria. Subtypes are assessed through different types of molecular features and integrative subtypes can be created by combining data types. New molecular data types are found as cancer is characterized in new ways. Datasets with increased and novel data types require novel integration methodologies for cancer subtyping.To improve integrative cancer subtypes, I took three different approaches. First, the tumour microenvironment plays an integral part of cancer development, but is not usually included in cancer subtyping with genome-wide molecular data types because of difficulties acquiring larger datasets. By deconvolving tumour adjacent cell (TAC) mRNA abundance, I created a new data type for exploring the tumour microenvironment. I investigated TAC mRNA abundance associations with survival and the well-known intrinsic subtypes in breast cancer. I discovered that somatic SNVs associate with subtype-specific TAC mRNA abundance differences. Second, I focused on localized prostate cancer, where there are significant rates of over- and under-treatment despite clinical risk classification used in treatment management. I created integrative genomic subtypes by integrating whole genome sequencing data types using a driver-based approach. Third, I expanded my subtyping beyond identified drivers and created an integrative subtype generation (iSubGen) framework that is data type agnostic. iSubGen can integrate TAC mRNA abundance with other traditional gene-based and non-traditional data types, like trinucleotide mutational signatures. Importantly, iSubGen can also accommodate missing data which is crucial for integrative subtyping of large numbers of data types. Together, this work provides a new approach to integrative subtyping with a wider range of data types. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Li, Shaopei | Kerman, Kagan | Development of Bioanalytical Platforms for the Discovery of Small Molecule-Protein Interactions in Parkinson’s Disease | Chemistry | 2021-11 | Parkinson’s disease is a type of progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the neuromotor function of the brain. The current theory suggests that its pathologies are connected with α-synuclein (α-syn) aggregation. Monomeric α-syn can cluster to form oligomers. Leading to the formation of β-sheet rich fibrils and the eventual Lewy body inclusion. The presence of biometals such as Cu(II) can drastically enhance the speed of α-syn aggregation as well as induce higher reactive oxygen species (ROS) formation. Plant extracts such as pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) have been shown to contain an anti-fibrillation effect. As such it is critical to examine the rescue effect of PQQ against Cu(II) induced α-syn toxicity. In Chapter 1, a detailed discussion between α-syn in PD pathologies, biometal implications, and plant-based PD therapeutic molecules is presented. This is accompanied by a review of fundamentals of electrochemistry to highlight the advantage of electrochemical sensors. This is followed by a summary of the current available electrochemical platform that studied biometal and neurodegenerative disease-related proteins (Chapter 2). Then, the antioxidative and rescue effect of PQQ against Cu(II) α-syn was studied. Based on circular dichroism and ROS detection assay results PQQ was effective at preventing Cu(II) induced α-syn aggregation (Chapter 3). We found, binding events between α-syn and metal or small molecules occur at the primary structure. Thus, a novel sensor platform was developed to study the α-syn-Cu(II) interaction variance caused by point-mutation on the α-syn sequence (Chapter 4). This result was in agreement with our isothermal titration calorimetry, (ITC) and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Furthermore, this novel platform was able to be incorporated into a flow-injection system and demonstrate the binding between α-syn and PQQ occurs at the lysine residue (Chapter 5). Finally, in Chapter 6, a ferrocene-modified α-syn peptide fragment was employed to observe Cu(II) induced early misfolding events. Cu(II) was shown to cause α-syn conformation change and PQQ was able to revert the effect. Overall, this thesis proved the feasibility of using peptide fragments as a new approach to designing biosensors. With further development, this system will become a keystone tool in the search for the cure in PD. | Ph.D. | species | 14, 15 |
| Han, Seong Jun | Ohashi, Pamela S | E3 Ubiquitin Ligase Cbl-b deficient T cells resist Treg cell-mediated suppression and enhance anti-tumor immunity | Immunology | 2021-11 | Regulatory T cells are one of the integral components of the adaptive immune system that contribute to the regulation of anti-tumor T cell responses. However, studies have suggested that alterations in T cell signaling networks can result in T cells that are resistant to the suppressive effects of Treg cells. Here, we specifically investigated the role of E3 ubiquitin ligase Cbl-b in establishing T cell resistance to Treg cell-mediated suppression. First, we found that the absence of Cbl-b, a negative regulator of multiple TCR signaling pathways, rendered CD8+ T cells impartial to Treg cell-mediated suppression. Transcriptomic analyses suggest that pathways associated with cellular proliferation and cytokine production likely contribute to the observed phenotype. In particular, hyper-secretion of IFN-γ by Cbl-b deficient CD8+ T cells served as a novel mechanism which selectively renders CD8+ T cells less sensitive to suppression by Treg cells. We recapitulated our findings in a syngeneic murine model by first confirming that adoptively transferred tumor specific CD8+ T cells are susceptible to regulation by Treg cells. Unlike the wildtype counterpart, Cbl-b deficient CD8+ T cells were resistant to the suppressive effects of Treg cells in the tumor, and the therapeutic benefit of Cbl-b deficiency was abrogated upon IFN-γ blockade. Next we examined the effect of Cbl-b deficiency in CD4+ T cell compartment. Ablation of Cbl-b rendered CD4+ T cells impartial to Treg suppression by regulating cytokine networks leading to improved anti-tumor immunity despite the presence of Treg cells in the tumor. Specifically, Cbl-b deficient CD4+ T cells hyper-produced IL-2 and together with IL-2Rα upregulation served as an essential mechanism to escape suppression by Treg cells. In summary, our data highlight the role of Cbl-b deficiency and subsequent hyper-secretion of cytokines as a key mechanism which renders T cells resistant to Treg cell-mediated suppression. Such a strategy could be potentially incorporated in adoptive T cell therapy to generate robust effector T cell responses and anti-tumor immunity. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest, production | 2, 9, 12 |
| Louvelle, Leslie Marie | Amon, Cristina | Computational Tools for Patient-specific Surgical Planning of Tetralogy of Fallot Repair | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11 | Surgical repair of the congenital heart defect Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) involves a series of steps to remove right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT) and pulmonary artery (PA) obstruction. However, there is a large degree of geometric variability among TOF anatomies, and the most suitable repair strategy for a given patient is unknown preoperatively. The goal of this thesis is to further our understanding of the relationships between geometry and hemodynamics in the TOF patient population, as well as the patient-specific factors that may influence the choice of surgical repair strategy, using computational methods including computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and virtual surgery techniques. Four studies make up this thesis: the first study presents a methodology to evaluate geometric parameters of the RVOT and PAs and applies this methodology to 11 postoperative TOF patients. Results showed significant variability within the dataset. The second study conducts a morphometric and statistical shape analysis of 16 postoperative TOF patients, as well as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations on the patient-specific geometries. Results demonstrated a negative relationship between cumulative and maximum torsion and the energy efficiency of the geometry, highlighting the importance of avoiding the introduction of torsion during surgical repair. The third study virtually induces a range of stenoses on three TOF geometries to investigate the sensitivity of the efficiency of different anatomies to geometric modification. Results found differences in the peak efficiency across the patients, motivating the pursuit of patient-specific surgical repair strategies. Finally, the fourth study applies virtual surgery techniques to a preoperative TOF anatomy, to explore the effect of different surgical repair strategies on postoperative hemodynamics and efficiency. Results revealed significant differences in the postoperative pressure gradients and energy efficiency for the range of repair strategies, and enabled selection of the optimal repair technique for the patient. Overall, this thesis underscores the utility and benefit of computational tools for patient-specific, surgical planning of TOF repair. Including computational tools in this process has the potential to enable identification of the patient’s optimal surgical repair strategy preoperatively, reducing guesswork in the operating room and improving long-term outcomes for this patient population. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Luciuk, Kassandra | Radforth, Ian | Making Ukrainian Canadians: Identity, Politics, and Power in Cold War Canada | History | 2021-11 | This dissertation examines the process by which a singular Ukrainian Canadian identity was constructed and entrenched throughout the twentieth century. It details how one of Canada’s largest and best organized diasporic communities, utilizing changing notions of cultural pluralism and the politics of the Cold War, crafted an increasingly nationalist, anti-communist version of identity that eradicated previously popular articulations of what it meant to be a Ukrainian in Canada. The traditional historiography posits that the community defined itself on its own terms, relying on individualized acts of agency and migrant resilience to entrench a version of Ukrainian-ness that was a democratic, bottom-up reflection of the collective. This project offers an alternative perspective by focusing on the battle over community narratives between communists, represented by the Ukrainian Labour Farmer Temple Association (ULFTA) and then the Association of United Ukrainian Canadians (AUUC), and the nationalists, organized under the umbrella of the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (UCC). I show how, with the help of state officials, the nationalists overpowered their ideological enemies on the left, concreting their identity as hegemonic. Through this process of coherence, they further bound specific aspects of their own ideology, perceived as innocuous, apolitical, and simply common sense, into mainstream political consciousness. Beyond a simple community study, this dissertation is also a case study about the building of anti-communist hegemony in Canada. Chapter One examines the role of state surveillance and political policing to show how state officials collaborated with the UCC to weaken the domestic left. Chapter Two analyzes the rise and fall of a government bureaucracy that acculturated the nationalists so as to embed them in Canada’s structures of power and bolster their anti-communism. Chapter Three looks more closely at acts of anti-communist violence, which seriously deterred participation in the AUUC. The state’s refusal to condemn the violence also telegraphed its preferences and helped define Canada’s social, political, and judicial boundaries. Chapter Four focuses on the nationalists’ appropriation of cultural pluralism to further entrench their version of Ukrainian identity. Lastly, Chapter Five explores commemoration, where competing visions for certain cultural figures were articulated and, eventually, nationalist narratives were set. | Ph.D. | labour, labor, resilien, resilience, democra, judic, violence | 8, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Shwetz, Katherine Joy | Goldman, Marlene | The Virus in the Garrison: Contagious Disease in Canadian Fiction | English | 2021-11 | This dissertation analyzes Canadian representations of contagious disease in novels written after the emergence of HIV/AIDS. Ultimately, I argue that contagion in literature registers distinctive fears about the fluid and changeable nature of Canadian communities in an increasingly globalized world. Most existing scholarship on contagious disease in fiction considers contagion on a global or transnational scale, often in deference to the ease with which viruses cross borders. In contrast, my project contends that purely transnational considerations of disease risk flattening key differences in how national communities—particularly the imagined national communities present in literature—shape contagious diseases both physically and metaphorically. In a Canadian context, literary engagements with contagious disease are situated in a discursively unique environment informed by legacies of colonialism, globalization, and fraught national identity. This research stands as one of the first inquiries into the representation of contagious disease in contemporary Canadian fiction.Each of the chapters attends to one of three narrative motifs common in how Canadian authors deploy contagious disease in their fiction: contact, apocalypse, and mutation. Crucially, the texts under consideration all pair representations of contagious disease as metaphor with an awareness of contagious disease as embodied reality, a connection that speaks to the intersections of imagined community with lived experience. The first chapter, which considers Lee Maracle’s Ravensong duology, attends both to traumatic colonial contact and to the conditions necessary for more equitable forms of engagement. In the apocalypse chapter, I examine how Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Nick Cutter’s The Troop engage with the fraught process of confronting precarity. In the final chapter, which centers on mutation, I argue that Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy deconstructs the generic conventions of plague narrative in the service of a commentary on the limitations of narrative in disease contexts. Taken together, these texts chart deep anxieties about the outcomes of confronting the porous boundaries of imagined community on both metaphorical and embodied levels. This dissertation concludes by re- engaging the key claims made in the body of this project in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, finding evidence of further narrative shifts in representations of contagion. | Ph.D. | precarity, equitable, globaliz, equit | 1, 4, 9, 10 |
| Wang, Yan (Erika) | Radisic, Milica | An Organ-on-a-chip Platform for Cardiac Fibrotic Disease Modeling and Pre-clinical Drug Evaluation | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11 | Myocardial fibrosis is a severe global health problem due to its prevalence in all forms of cardiac diseases and direct role in causing heart failure. The discovery of efficient anti-fibrotic compounds has been hampered due to the lack of physiologically relevant models that can faithfully replicate disease-related phenotypes. Herein, we propose the Biowire II platform as a powerful tool for cardiac disease modeling and pre-clinical compound screening. The disease model is constructed to recapitulate contractile, biomechanical, and electrophysiological complexities of fibrotic myocardium. Additionally, we constructed a heteropolar integrated model with fibrotic and healthy cardiac tissues coupled together. The integrated model captures the regional heterogeneity of scar lesion, border zone and adjacent healthy myocardium. Through precision phosphoproteomics analysis, the Biowire disease model provides a comprehensive profile of molecular pathways and targets involved in fibrosis remodeling. To set up an analytical system for the investigation of therapeutic targets and time-dependent biological actions in disease progression, we developed another modified model to recapitulate non-genetic cardiomyopathy. The long-term tissue cultivation and real-time functional readouts enable monitoring of both acute and chronic cardiac responses to Angiotensin II (Ang II), a key mediator in cardiac physiology. Along with mapping of cytokine secretion and proteomic profiles, this model presents an opportunity to quantitatively measure the dynamic pathological changes that could not be otherwise identified in conventional animal and 2D models. A further optimized screening strategy is used to evaluate compounds that target Ang II-induced cardiac remodeling. Through assessing the effects of different compounds, the drug screening data implicated multifaceted cardioprotective effects of relaxin in restoring contractile function and reducing fibrotic remodeling. Overall, this thesis provides an engineered platform where cardiac disease remodeling can be explicitly studied over the pathological process, thereby enabling the investigation of new disease mechanisms and the discovery of potential drug candidates. | Ph.D. | global health, invest, animal | 3, 9, 14, 15 |
| Di Paolo, Caitlin Teresa | Diamandis, Eleftherios P | Investigating the Therapeutic Potential of Targeting Kallikrein-related Peptidases in Inflammatory Dermatoses | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2021-11 | Kallikrein-related peptidases (KLKs) are a family of 15 serine proteases with various (patho)physiological functions in the human body. KLKs are involved in the homeostasis and establishment of skin barrier integrity in human epidermis. Among the skin KLKs, KLK5 and KLK7 carry out key processes and are highly regulated by endogenous inhibitors. Dysregulated and unconstrained KLK5 and KLK7 activity and expression in the skin is detrimental. This has been observed in several inflammatory skin disorders, with increased KLK proteolytic activity causing inflammation via activation of pro-inflammatory receptors and pathways and breakdown of the essential epidermal barrier. Therapeutics targeted at regulating the disrupted KLK5 and KLK7 in inflammatory skin disorders may enable the restoration of physiological skin KLK activity and provide improved therapeutic benefits over current treatments focused on symptom alleviation. To that end, a drug discovery screening approach was conducted aimed at identifying small molecule inhibitors of KLK5 and KLK7 activity and expression. A screen of a kinase inhibitor library yielded no compounds capable of reducing KLK5 expression in human keratinocytes. A high-throughput screen of five chemical libraries led to the identification of a naturally occurring chemical compound called, Brazilin, which was capable of inhibiting KLK5 proteolytic activity with a Ki of 6.4 μM. In addition, a screen of a kallikrein-targeted library of chemical compounds led to the characterization of a 1,2,4-triazolo[1,5-a]pyrimidine (TP) heterocycle backbone as a KLK7-specific inhibitor. These TP structures display highly favorable characteristics for further drug development. There remains a need to better understand the mechanisms by which KLK5 causes inflammation and barrier disruption in inflammatory skin disorders. This would help to determine possible effects of KLK5 inhibition in human keratinocytes. Here we use MS-based proteomics to gain insight into the molecular events and mechanism that may lead to disease occurrence in those patients with unregulated KLK5 in the epidermis. To address this aim we utilized shotgun label-free quantification (LFQ) mass spectrometry to define the protein signature of the secretome in keratinocytes treated with KLK5. Keratinocytes appear to have a mechanism through which they try to regulate KLK cascade proteolytic activity and KLK5 can downregulate this response. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Han, Sisu | Schuurmans, Carol | Proneural Genes; Old Players with New Functions in Controlling Neocortical Neural Progenitor Cell Behaviour | Biochemistry | 2021-11 | The neocortex is a six-layered, mammalian-specific brain region that is the main subdomain of the cerebral cortex. Cerebral cortices differ in size and shape across species, and can be ‘smooth’ (lissencephalic) or highly folded (gyrencephalic) in small versus most larger mammals, respectively. For these complex cortical patterns to develop in a species-specific fashion, precise numbers of neurons with specific regional identities must be generated at their correct developmental times and in appropriate locations. Proneural genes encode basic-helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors (TFs) that are necessary and sufficient to promote neurogenesis and specify neuronal subtype identities. In the developing neocortex, three proneural genes are expressed, Neurog2, Neurog1 and Ascl1, but how these genes interact was poorly understood at the outset of my thesis project. My global hypothesis was that protein-protein interactions regulate proneural TF activity, including interactions between proneural TFs themselves, as well as interactions with other unknown factors. To test this hypothesis, I first showed that Neurog1 inhibits Neurog2 to slow down the pace of early neurogenesis, when deep-layer neurons are being born (Chapter 2). I then discovered that Neurog2 and Ascl1 expression defines four neural progenitor cell (NPC) pools in the neocortex; proneural negative, Neurog2+, Ascl1+, and double+, each with unique lineage biases, transcriptomes, epigenomes and gene regulatory networks (GRN) (Chapter 3). To test the requirement for double+ NPCs, I developed a novel split-cre ‘deleter’ approach, revealing an essential role as Notch ligand producing niche cells that preventing cortical folding in the lissencephalic mouse brain. Finally, I found that Neurog2 interacts with L3mbtl3, a potential link to recruit the gene silencing, polycomb repressive complexes (PRC) to the genome (Chapter 4). Strikingly, in L3mbtl3 knock-outs (KO), I observed a global decrease in cortical neurogenesis due to a derepression of transcriptional repressors, while L3mbtl3 overexpression also inhibited neurogenesis, but by interfering with mRNA processing of neurogenic genes. In conclusion, I have gained new insights into how proneural TF act together or with other proteins to precisely regulate the delicate process of cortical neurogenesis. My findings may impact the future design of proneural TF-based direct neuronal reprogramming strategies for regenerative medicine. | Ph.D. | species | 14, 15 |
| Selig, Keegan Rayne | Silcox, Mary T | The Use of Dental Topographic Analysis in the Examination of Microsyopid (Mammalia, ?Primates) Evolution, Dietary Change, and Intraspecific Variation | Anthropology | 2021-11 | Plesiadapiforms are possible stem primates that first appear shortly after the extinction of the dinosaurs. One family of plesiadapiform, the Microsyopidae, is known from several thousand specimens from the early Eocene (approx. 55-52 million years ago) of the Southern Bighorn Basin, Wyoming. This dissertation uses a suite of methods called dental topographic analysis (DTA) to quantify functional aspects of microsyopid teeth. It also introduces a new method to study diet using variation in the frequency of dental caries.First, using DTA, I show that three early species of microsyopids (Arctodontomys wilsoni, A. nuptus, Microsyops angustidens) deriving from before, during, and after a localized cooling event, underwent dietary change leading up to and during this climatic event, associated only in part with taxonomic turnover. This expands on previous research suggesting that this event played a role in faunal turnover. In the second study, I focus on intraspecific variation in diet. Previously, DTA has been primarily used to study diet in extinct taxa at the interspecific level. The later occurring Microsyops latidens is known from over 1,000 specimens, and thus gives us an opportunity to iii look at finer scale variation in dental morphology (and therefore diet) over time. Although they lived during a period when local climate likely fluctuated, results suggest that diet remained relatively stable, pointing to the plasticity of this taxon, although a single specimen from a poorly sampled interval is suggestive of one brief period of change. Finally, M. latidens is characterized by a high prevalence of caries. Caries frequency suggests that the diet of M. latidens may not have been as stable as the overall dental topographic data suggest. There is a period during which caries frequency is much higher than expected in comparison to extant taxa, pointing to a temporary increase in the consumption of sugary foods in M. latidens, possibly associated with the outlier specimen in the DTA analysis. This chapter provides a framework for assessing caries in other fossil taxa. Overall, this dissertation provides new insights into the complex diet of microsyopids, a group for which little previous ecological information was known. | Ph.D. | consum, climate, species, ecolog | 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Vergeer, Laura Kathleen | L'Abbé, Mary R. | A Comparison of the Product (Re)formulation Actions and Commitments of the Top Packaged Food and Beverage Companies in Canada | Nutritional Sciences | 2021-11 | Canada’s packaged food supply is dominated by energy-dense products high in nutrients of public health concern, increasing obesity and non-communicable disease risk. Many packaged food and beverage companies voluntarily commit to improving the nutritional quality of their products. While monitoring is needed to hold companies accountable for these commitments and thereby prompt improvements, there has been little independent monitoring of their voluntary product (re)formulation efforts in Canada.This thesis aimed to conduct a comprehensive comparison of the product (re)formulation actions and commitments of the top 22 packaged food and beverage companies in Canada. In Study 1, a branded food database was used to compare the nutritional quality of products offered by these companies in 2017, overall and by food category, using multiple measures of nutritional quality. The nutritional quality of products offered by these companies differed significantly overall and by food category, with many products considered less healthy. Study 2 aimed to develop and apply a tool for quantifying the strength of companies’ voluntary recent actions and commitments to improve the nutritional quality of their products. Scores based on the Food Company Reformulation (FCR) tool were low, on average, suggesting that many of Canada’s leading food companies report limited or no action concerning product (re)formulation. Study 3 examined the relationship between the strength of companies’ voluntary product (re)formulation commitments and changes in the nutritional quality of their Canadian products, using companies’ FCR scores and branded food data collected in 2013 and 2017. While some companies improved the healthfulness of their products over this period, many companies’ product portfolios were unchanged or became less healthy from 2013-2017. Moreover, the products of companies reporting stronger voluntary product (re)formulation actions/commitments did not undergo greater improvement in nutritional quality over time, nor were their products significantly healthier. Overall, many of Canada’s leading food companies have not made meaningful improvements to the nutritional quality of their products in recent years; however, there is considerable variation between companies in terms of their product (re)formulation actions and commitments. These findings highlight a need for mandatory government interventions to help improve the healthfulness of Canada’s packaged food supply. | Ph.D. | nutrition, public health, communicable disease, energy | 2, 3, 2007 |
| Kim, Julia | Gerretsen, Philip||Graff-Guerrero, Ariel | Feasibility of Using Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation to Improve Insight in Patients with Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders | Medical Science | 2021-11 | Impaired insight into illness is a common feature of schizophrenia that contributes to antipsychotic medication nonadherence and poor clinical outcomes. Currently, there are no established treatment options to improve insight in patients with schizophrenia. Common psychological interventions such as cognitive behavioural therapy and psychoeducation have shown limited effects on improving insight, indicating the need for alternative approaches. Here we explored the feasibility of using transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to improve insight in patients with schizophrenia. First, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized-sham controlled trials (RCT) to evaluate the clinical effects of tDCS in patients with schizophrenia. We showed that active compared to sham tDCS reduced the severity of auditory hallucinations and negative symptoms, but that the effects were more pronounced when ten or more sessions of tDCS were applied. Second, we examined the neuroimaging effects of tDCS on brain regions associated with impaired insight using task-based functional MRI and arterial spin labeling. We showed that bilateral tDCS to the parietal regions transiently modulated task-based brain activity and cerebral blood flow in the posterior parietal regions. Lastly, we examined the longitudinal relationship between impaired insight and antipsychotic medication nonadherence. We found that patients with impaired insight were more likely to show earlier nonadherence compared to patients with no or minimal impairment and that the rates of nonadherence in patients with impaired insight were significantly higher after 6 months of treatment initiation. Taken together, the results of this thesis work suggest that tDCS may be a feasible adjunctive treatment to improve insight in patients with schizophrenia. We also highlight the need to utilize intervention strategies early during treatment to improve or maintain insight and medication adherence in patients with schizophrenia. | Ph.D. | illness | 3 |
| Buchanan, Francine E. | Shachak, Aviv | Making Difficult Decisions: An Activity-theory Informed Qualitative Study of Shared Decision-Making for Children with Medical Complexity | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2021-11 | ‘You are the expert when it comes to your child,’ is a common refrain heard by parents of children who frequently use healthcare. Parents are told that their ‘voice’ matters and that physicians want to work in partnership with parents to achieve the best for their children. At the same time, parents often express concern with being excluded from important discussions around the care of their child and feel that their concerns are not heard. The disparity between parental expectations and the reality of the healthcare experience, suggests that the willingness of physicians and parents to share the decision-making process may not be enough to ensure that a shared process unfolds. With a focus on children with medical complexity (CMC) who are frequent users of the healthcare system, this study aims to better understand the decision-making processes of those caring for CMC as a basis for developing solutions to improve the shared process. Taking a view of decision-making as a personal yet interconnected activity, we sought to understand the separate decision-making processes of the individual parties, parents of CMC, and the physicians treating CMC. With a better understanding of each party’s decision-making process, we then look at where the parent and physician decision-making processes have the potential to overlap and be shared. With the aim of developing an adaptable and practical model of shared decision-making (SDM) for CMC, we draw on findings from our studies on the individual processes of decision-making, build on existing models of shared decision-making and suggest a new model for SDM. The new model of SDM for CMC proposed as a result of this study reimagines shared decision-making as more than simply the exchange of information between the two parties. Our model considers how to best depict an SDM process that emphasizes the sharing of context within a limited scope, supports the family’s understanding, and is oriented towards achieving the family’s goal of coming to a decision with which they are comfortable. | Ph.D. | disparity, healthcare | 1, 10, 2003 |
| Francis, Jane | O'Connor, Deborah L||Sellen, Daniel W | Parkdale Infant Nutrition Security Targeted Evaluation Project (PINSTEP): Formative Research | Nutritional Sciences | 2021-11 | Background: Socially and/or economically vulnerable women in Canada have lower rates of breastfeeding. Skilled lactation support is one key strategy for improving practices, but it is less accessible to vulnerable women. The Canada Prenatal Nutrition Program (CPNP) aims to support breastfeeding among vulnerable women, but investigation of the potential to integrate postnatal lactation support has not been explored. Objectives: Formative research was conducted with participants at one Toronto CPNP site with separately funded postnatal lactation support services to determine (1) maternal sociodemographic/psychosocial characteristics and their association with CPNP participation; (2) experiences with breastfeeding and the lactation support program (in-home lactation consultant visits, breast pumps); (3) utilization of the lactation support program, infant feeding practices, and associations between maternal sociodemographics and six-month breastfeeding practices. Methods: (1) retrospective chart review of registered clients from 2013-2016 (n=339); (2) focus groups and interviews with 46 clients; (3) prospective cohort study collecting infant feeding data to six months postpartum (n=199). Results: CPNP clients at this site demonstrated a variety of vulnerabilities (e.g. 80% were born outside of Canada, 65% had incomes below the Low-Income Cut-Off), with few differences in CPNP participation based on maternal characteristics. Qualitative participants reported that the lactation support program helped to mitigate some physical, practical, and self-efficacy breastfeeding challenges. The most valued elements were the in-home services delivered by skilled, non-judgmental providers. Seventy-five percent of prospective cohort study participants received at least one lactation consultant visit. All participants initiated breastfeeding, 84% continued for six months, and 16% exclusively breastfed for six months. In univariate analyses, food insecurity was associated with lower rates of any breastfeeding at six months (p=0.014) and ≤ high school education with lower exclusive breastfeeding for six months (p=0.034). Conclusions: Results indicate that this CPNP site serves vulnerable women, their lactation support program is well-accepted and utilized, and a high proportion of women continued breastfeeding to six months. Mixed methods implementation research is needed to evaluate the effectiveness and feasibility of delivering postnatal lactation support within other CPNP sites across Canada and further investigation of preceding and contextual barriers to breastfeeding, such as food insecurity, is required. | Ph.D. | low-income, nutrition, food insecurity, women, invest, income, accessib | 1, 2, 5, 9, 10, 11 |
| Flood, Andrew Gary | Kherani, Nazir P. | Stimulated Emission Luminescent Solar Concentrators (SELSCs): A Modelling and Materials Study | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2021-11 | A luminescent solar concentrator (LSC) consists of a slab of optical waveguiding material comprising a dispersion of fluorophore which absorbs, emits and conveys light to photovoltaic (PV) cells placed on the edges of the slab via total internal reflection. LSCs, however, suffer from a wide variety of losses, leading to poor solar efficiencies. Stimulated emission luminescent solar concentrators (SELSCs) have been proposed as a possible approach to substantially reduce escape cone losses. SELSCs consist of an LSC coupled to a seed laser which induces stimulated emission, increasing the probability of emission in the direction of the edge PV cell. The SELSC idea has seen scant research in literature. The objective of this thesis is to develop a scientific direction for the field by undertaking broad and in-depth investigations of SELSCs from a variety of perspectives. Further, the research herein is fundamental and has relevance for various similar applications including solar pumped lasers. First, we compare the performance of rectangular geometry based SELSC directly with LSC using an ideal 4-level system and show that under the right conditions stimulated emission can help outperform a conventional LSC. We also show that circular SELSC will always outperform rectangular slab SELSC. Furthermore, we demonstrate using calculus of variations that steady-state SELSC will always outperform pulsed SELSC. Second, detailed balance limits for the inversion of solar pumped devices, first reported by Roxlo and Yablonovitch, are revisited and amended. In particular, two previous inequalities are correctly amalgamated and reduced into a single inequality. With this revised detailed balance limit, a material model is proposed and detailed numerical calculations are carried out, thereby firmly establishing the bounds on performance. Finally, the luminescence of SiOx:Nd when annealed in forming gas is studied using a variety of characterization techniques to determine its potential as a suitable material for 1-sun inversion. The forming gas treatment greatly improved photoluminescence, and, while gain measurements were inconclusive, the detailed balance inequality indicates promise. In addition, insights are gained into the sensitization mechanism for SiOx:Nd films deposited using reactive sputtering. It appears to be either defect mediated or the silicon nanoclusters are also sensitized. | Ph.D. | ABS, solar, emission, invest, inequality, equalit | 2, 7, 9, 10 |
| Vellani, Shirin | McGilton, Katherine | Voice Your Values, a Tailored Advance Care Planning Intervention in Persons Living with Early Dementia: A Pilot Study | Nursing Science | 2021-11 | A palliative approach to care aims to meet the needs of patients and caregivers throughout the trajectory of a chronic disease, such as dementia, and can be delivered by clinicians who are not specialists in palliative care. Advance care planning (ACP) is an important component of the palliative approach. Timely ACP can improve outcomes for persons living with dementia (PLwD) and their care partners. Yet only a minority of PLwD participate in any ACP discussions. There remains a lack of evidence-based guidelines to inform clinical practice, specifically related to ACP for those living with early dementia. To address this gap, an intervention called Voice Your Values (VYV) was developed, that healthcare professionals can implement to identify and document the values and wishes of PLwD for their future care. The tailored VYV intervention was evaluated using a single group pre-test and post-test design to determine its feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy. A convenience sample of 21 dyads of PLwD and their trusted individuals, such as family and friends, was recruited from five geriatric clinics in Ontario. The VYV intervention was delivered to dyads over two sessions using a secure videoconferencing platform. The recruitment rate was lower (52%) than expected (60%); however, the retention rate was high at 94%, and 100% of the participants rated VYV as highly acceptable. The PLwD demonstrated improvement in ACP engagement (p=.00). The trusted individuals showed improvement in decision-making confidence (p=.01) and psychological distress (p=.02), but no improvement in dementia knowledge (p=.22). The video and sound quality were rated highly. All PLwD were able to articulate and document their values and wishes related to terminal and vegetative states. The VYV study experienced some difficulties with recruitment. As well, some intervention sessions took longer than expected to deliver, highlighting the need for ACP conversations and the high level of engagement from participants, but also raising concern about the practicality of such lengthy conversations in actual clinical settings with limited resources. That said, the study demonstrated a high retention rate, intervention fidelity, and acceptability. Future studies are needed to further refine the VYV intervention and establish its efficacy using randomization and larger sample sizes. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge, minorit | 3, 4, 10 |
| Alwash, Mays | Gariepy, Jean | Exploring the Yse of Ligand.BirA* Constructs for Cell Surface Receptor Discovery | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-11 | Antibodies directed at blocking immune checkpoint targets such as CTLA-4 and PD-1, referred to as immune checkpoint inhibitors, have had a remarkable impact in treating cancer patients. One needs to explore the use of agents targeting new immune checkpoint targets for the purpose of developing more effective and longer lasting mono or combination therapies. Some of these new attractive targets include members of the B7 family, B7-H3, B7-H4 and B7-H5, which act as natural inhibitory ligands to unknown immune checkpoints. Presently, the most commonly used techniques to study unknown protein protein interactions on the surface of cells include TAP, LRC-TRICEPS or genome-scale CRISPR/Cas9 genetic screens. An unmet need in this field is the development of a direct and specific labeling technique of unknown cell surface receptors involved in weak/transient interactions, also providing a snapshot of any proximally associated proteins.The main theme of my thesis was to explore the use of Ligand.BirA* constructs to identify unknown interactions on the surface of cells. As a proof-of-concept, two Affibody.BirA* fusion constructs were designed, expressed, purified and functionally characterized to demonstrate that they retain their biotinylation and binding function to their respective targets (Chapter 2). These 2 constructs successfully biotinylated their targets on the surface of cells. In Chapter 3, we tested if there is a distance limitation of BirA* constructs in terms of biotinylating surface antigens using antibodies. As such, an anti-CEA-mAb.BirA* conjugate and more generically applicable Protein G.BirA* constructs were built, functionally characterized and the extent of their biotinylation range monitored. Both constructs did not label their protein targets, suggesting their large molecular size of mAbs and of mAb-Protein G complexes exceed the biotinylation radius of BirA* (~10nm). In Chapter 4, I describe the design, and expression of a high valency form of the extracellular domain of the human ligand B7-H4, hB7-H4.COMP. hB7-H4.COMP was able to bind to activated murine CD4+ T cells and suppress their proliferation and cytokine secretion. A future goal will be to insert BirA* into B7-H4 with a view to biotinylate cell surface proximal targets on T cells and identify the putative B7-H4 receptor. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Wigle, Jannah Margaret | Birn, Anne-Emanuelle | “No one can decide for us…the solutions are within us”: Rhetoric and Reality of Youth Participation and Power in Sexual and Reproductive Health Decision-making in Malawi | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11 | Ensuring active and meaningful participation of youth in decisions that affect their health and wellbeing has been recognized increasingly by the global health community as a critical strategy to meet young people’s unique sexual and reproductive health needs and rights. Despite aspirational global and national rhetoric promoting youth engagement and sexual and reproductive health (SRH), there is a dearth of scholarship on young people’s everyday realities of participating in SRH decision-making. This critical qualitative study, conducted in Malawi, examined young people’s lived experiences of engaging in SRH decision-making and the underlying structural and societal forces shaping their active and meaningful participation therein. Informed by postcolonial feminist and difference-centred citizenship theories, this study adopts a focused critical ethnographic approach to challenge normative, gendered, racialized and adultist assumptions of young people’s engagement in SRH decision-making. Data was generated from October 2017 to May 2018, using: document analysis, moderate participant observation of SRH policy meetings/events, six focus group discussions with 46 young people, 30 semi-structured interviews and open-ended drawing exercises with youth, 32 semi-structured interviews with key informants (including national/district policymakers, community leaders, non-governmental and civil society organizations, and multi- and bilateral donors) and a reflexive fieldwork journal. Reflexive thematic analysis, and document and visual analyses were employed to produce an understanding of young people’s experiences of participation in SRH decision-making. Findings reveal that despite progressive youth and SRH policies in Malawi, and the establishment of youth participatory mechanisms, young people’s authentic engagement in SRH decision-making remains limited. This study generates insights into young people’s efforts to realize their SRH and participatory rights within a postcolonial context, gerontocratic structures, and policymaking processes dominated by foreign donors and national government. It also exposes the disconnect between the global discourse on youth participation, citizenship, gender equality, and young people’s political, cultural, economic and social realities in practice. The conceptualization of “youth lived SRH citizenship” acknowledges young people’s agency and everyday acts or practices of citizenship. By recognizing youth, including girls and young women, as ardent participants and agents of SRH change within their community and country, this study explores the underlying structural and societal determinants that impede youth from meeting their SRH and participatory rights. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, global health, reproductive health, knowledge, knowledges, citizen, gender, women, girl, feminis, gender equality, equalit | 3, 4, 5, 10 |
| Sokolovic, Nina | Jenkins, Jennifer M | Strengthening Families through Responsive Caregiving: How to Target and Design Programs to Achieve Impact at Scale | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11 | Experiencing more responsive interactions with caregivers during early development is associated with better mental well-being, physical health, educational attainment, and employment outcomes over the life course. Programs that support caregivers to provide more responsive care to young children improve both parenting practices and child outcomes; nonetheless, these programs and their benefits currently only reach a small fraction of families. This dissertation uses three empirical studies to identify possible targets, teaching strategies, and approaches to program delivery that can be leveraged to increase the effectiveness, efficiency, and reach of such programs. A social relations analysis presented in study one underscores the important role parental responsivity and financial status play in shaping family interactions. Findings from study two—a network meta-analysis of 120 randomized trials—suggest that responsive caregiving programs are most effective when they give parents opportunities to observe models of responsive caregiving, have a narrow focus, use researchers as facilitators, and instruct parents to practice skills at home. Notably, effectiveness is no higher, on average, in programs that use individualized instruction, more sessions, home visits, or video-feedback. Finally, the results of a randomized controlled trial presented in study three demonstrate that it is both feasible and effective to provide online, professional development on responsive caregiving to practitioners working in remote, low-income settings. Together, these findings highlight ways to expand access to and impact of responsivity programs for parents and practitioners, as well as the importance of targeting such efforts towards equity-deserving groups to reduce intergenerational sources of inequality. | Ph.D. | low-income, well-being, equity, employment, inequality, equit, equalit, income | 1, 3, 4, 8, 10 |
| Callaghan, Neal Ingraham | Simmons, Craig A||Santerre, Paul | The Development of High-fidelity In Vitro Cardiomyocyte Models for Physiological Investigation and Pharmaceutical Testing | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11 | Cardiomyopathies, heart failure, and arrhythmias or conduction blockages impact millions of patients worldwide and are associated with marked increases in sudden cardiac death, decreased quality of life, and sequelae or complications. These pathologies stem from dysfunction in the contractile or conductive properties of the cardiomyocyte (CM), which is a focus of fundamental investigation, drug discovery, and therapeutic development. Separate from direct disease impact, pharmaceutical cardiotoxicity or lack of efficacy during both clinical trials and marketing is a leading reason for clinical trial failure or post-release drug recalls, ostensibly due to inadequate predictivity by existing animal or in vitro models. In terms of in vitro models, both animals and pluripotent stem cells offer sources of cardiomyocytes for such specific applications. Murine adult cardiomyocytes are a workhorse model for basic science but are physiologically delicate and degrade rapidly in culture; pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (PSC-CMs) offer an inexhaustible source of human CMs but are immature in all aspects of functional physiology. Furthermore, with the advent of engineered tissues and lab-on-a-chip systems, certain well-established experimental workflows to address advanced or emergent physiology in situ or ex vivo have yet to be adapted to high-throughput or microfluidic applications. | Ph.D. | invest, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Ward, Devin Lea | Viola, T Bence||Silcox, Mary T | Intraspecific Shape Variation in the Bony Labyrinth | Anthropology | 2021-11 | Intraspecific shape variation of the Homo sapiens bony labyrinth, or inner ear, has been previously explored in relation to its association with body size, sexual dimorphism, and genetic between-group differences. While studies of the influence of extrinsic and lifelong factors on labyrinthine shape variation have received less attention, they have the potential to further our understanding of functional and non-functional shape differences between the labyrinths of recent humans and our close relatives, such as Neanderthals. Research presented here uses sliding semilandmarks and three-dimensional geometric morphometrics to quantify bony labyrinth shape in both humans and model organisms, for the purpose of assessing the impact of extrinsic and lifelong variables throughout ontogeny.The first chapter of this dissertation investigates the effect of maternal malnutrition on rats exposed to a protein restricted diet through gestation and suckling. No changes in either labyrinthine shape or levels of fluctuating asymmetry were identified, despite a significantly smaller body mass in the experimental group. The second chapter focuses on assessing the effect of climate and subsistence strategy on a global sample of 262 recent humans from archaeological and morgue collections. Climate and subsistence strategy were found to be associated with 7% of overall shape variation each, with temperature being the primary climate variable associated with climate-related labyrinthine shape variation. Finally, in the third chapter, the effect of estrogen- induced osteoporosis is explored with an ovariectomized rat sample. No shape differences were identified between the experimental and control group. Although the low-estrogen group did exhibit higher morphological disparity, this difference was not statistically significant. Overall, extrinsic and lifelong variables, while minimal, were found to have an impact on intraspecific bony labyrinth shape variation at several life stages. These sources of variation should be considered when assessing labyrinth functional and phylogenetic differences at the taxonomic level, particularly when comparing hominins. These findings also suggest that it is important to use representative, large, and geographically diverse recent Homo sapiens as comparative samples. | Ph.D. | disparity, nutrition, malnutrition, invest, climate, land | 1, 10, 2, 9, 13, 15 |
| Jacobson, Danielle | Einstein, Gillian||Grace, Daniel | An Institutional Ethnography of the Social Relations that Shape Reproductive Health Care Experiences for Women with Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting/Circumcision (FGC) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11 | In recent social science research, it has been reported that women with female genital mutilation/cutting/circumcision (FGC) often experience stigmatization during reproductive health care. However, there has not been investigation into how these experiences come to take place. To address this gap in knowledge, the social relations that shape the reproductive health care experiences of women with FGC were investigated using Institutional Ethnography. Qualitative interviews were conducted with eight women with FGC, seven obstetrician/ gynecologists, and two general practitioners. Interviews revealed a set of social relations that organized women with FGC’s experiences of feeling “different” during care, which included anti-FGM discourse, organization of obstetric/gynecological work, and legislation. Immigrant women with FGC learned they were “different” in Canada from anti-FGM discourse in public conversations that opposed FGC. Women worked to mitigate this stigmatization before entering the clinic by engaging in “emotional health work”. This work carried over into the appointment itself and was shaped by the organization of doctors’ work, which was surgically focused. Finally, aspects of the Canadian legal and health care systems disproportionately disadvantaged women with FGC since the Criminal Code of Canada (Bill C-27) guarantees women their rights, but limits such rights to what is “normal” in the west through the dictation of surgeries to which women have access. This dissertation highlights how the ruling discursive knowledge of the “normal” reproductive body holds women’s bodies up against western ideals. These ideals have a normalizing function that shaped women with FGC’s reproductive health care experiences, as they learned how “normality” was inaccessible to them. Women also viewed their racialization as overlooked within medical training and by health care personnel. Racialization has not often been explicitly discussed in the broader FGC literature. It is imperative to actively make space for the perspectives of Black women with FGC in strategies that work toward their protection and to also modify the focus in FGC research and advocacy from gendered discrimination instead onto intersectional stigmatization. By better addressing the intersectional stigmatization to which women with FGC are exposed, they may not have to work so hard to navigate reproductive health care. | Ph.D. | health care, reproductive health, knowledge, gender, women, female, invest, accessib, ecolog, institut | 3, 4, 5, 9, 11, 15, 16 |
| Rahman, Laila | Einstein, Gillian | Troubling Intersections: Physical Intimate Partner Violence Against Women in Bangladesh | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2021-11 | In the underbelly of beautiful Bangladesh lies the widespread practice of male intimate partner physical violence (MIPPV) against women. Although women’s different socio-demographic risk factors for MIPPV are known, whether their intersecting individual-, community-, and cross-level social locations shape their MIPPV experiences across Bangladeshi communities have not been examined. Therefore, applying Crenshaw’s intersectionality theory, the overarching objective of this dissertation was to make visible the currently married women’s different intersectional social locations that shape their experiences of MIPPV in Bangladesh. McCall’s intercategorical intersectionality approach guided this research. Study participants comprised 14,557 (Studies 1 and 2) and 15,421 currently married women (Study 3) across 911 communities from the 2015 Bangladesh Violence Against Women Survey dataset. Two-level logistic regression models were used to predict women’s MIPPV experiences in the past year and estimate the predicted probabilities at women’s each intersectional location. These probabilities were compared to generate different configurations of inequalities. Study 1 findings indicated that younger age, lower educated and higher educated, poor women compared to older, higher educated and higher educated, nonpoor women had 13.57% (95% CI, 9.25, 17.89) and 12.02% (95% CI, 6.87, 17.17) higher probabilities of experiencing MIPPV. Study 2 found that women living in higher-earning-participation, higher-educated communities had higher probabilities of experiencing MIPPV than those in lower-earning-participation, higher-educated communities (29.90%, 95% CI 25.66 to 34.15 vs. 23.85%, 95% CI 22.40 to 25.30). While our specific hypotheses regarding differences between disadvantaged and advantaged communities were not supported, Study 3 found significant within community differences: younger, poor compared to older, nonpoor women had significantly higher MIPPV probabilities (the minimum difference=12.7%, 95% CI, 2.8, 22.6) in all communities. Similar trend was observed between younger, lower educated compared to older, higher educated women in all except poor communities. Thus, using intersectionality theory made visible Bangladeshi women’s troubling intersections of experiencing MIPPV. Future research might examine the structures and processes that put women at these precarious locations to ameliorate their socio-economic-educational inequalities and reduce MIPPV in all communities. This intersectionality theory-oriented research might advance scholarship on MIPPV in Bangladesh and quantitative intersectionality globally. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, precarious, women, violence against women, equalit, violence | 1, 5, 10, 16 |
| Wight, Christian Michael | Schemitsch, Emil H||Whyne, Cari M | Hip Replacement Head-Neck Taper Connection Tribocorrosion Reduction by Head Material, Head Size and Taper Geometric Optimization | Biomedical Engineering | 2021-11 | Modular femoral head hip replacement components connect to the femoral stem via matching tapers. Metals commonly used to manufacture femoral heads and stems rely on a passive oxide layer to resist corrosion. Under cyclic loading (i.e. gait) relative micromotion between the head and stem causes wear, removal of the oxide layer and subsequent corrosion by a process called tribocorrosion. Metallic debris released by tribocorrosion may result in adverse local tissue reactions called trunnionosis and may require revision surgery.The objective of this research was to investigate factors affecting head-neck taper tribocorrosion, including head size, material and taper geometry. A systematic review of prosthetic design, manufacturing and surgical technique factors related to taper connection tribocorrosion was performed. The review included 91 studies investigating 35 unique factors, of which only 7 had adequate evidence to support a recommendation. In particular, a gap in evidence related to taper connection design was identified. It was found that poor study design resulted in inconclusive or contradictory evidence for the majority of factors. A second review was performed of taper tribocorrosion in-vitro test methods to improve study design and increase clinical translation of results. A deficiency in current in-vitro test methods was identified where samples are only cyclically axially compressed. Frictional torques due to joint movement that may be larger with larger femoral heads are excluded. Therefore, a novel instrumented hip simulator was developed to measure corrosion related electrical activity during simulated gait. The test apparatus was employed to investigate susceptibility to corrosion of different head sizes (28 vs 36mm cobalt-chrome femoral heads), materials (cobalt-chrome, ceramic and oxidized zirconium) and taper geometry (angle, diameter, length and surface finish). The study of taper geometry followed design of experiments methodology. Twenty-five uniquely designed test samples with a range of taper angles, diameters, lengths and surface finishes were custom manufactured and tested. It was found that large diameter cobalt-chrome femoral heads are most susceptible to corrosion, oxidized zirconium exhibits similar corrosion resistance to ceramic, and that thicker, shorter tapers with either low roughness and high angle, or high roughness and low angle, are least susceptible to short term corrosion. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Chen, JoAnn | Jockusch, Rebecca A | Combining Laser Spectroscopy and Mass Spectrometry for Structural Analysis of Biologically Relevant Molecules in the Gas Phase | Chemistry | 2021-11 | The combination of laser spectroscopy with electrospray ionization (ESI) mass spectrometry has enabled conformational analysis of gaseous ions that retain some solution-phase characteristics. Mixtures of thermodynamically favoured gas-phase conformers and kinetically trapped conformers from solution may be probed simultaneously to reveal distinct photophysical properties. This body of work exploits the kinetic trapping of biologically relevant molecules to elucidate structural properties intrinsic (i.e., without solvent interactions) to systems including fluorescent sensors and DNA-drug complexes. Chapters 2 and 3 explore the trapping of multiple protomers of two fluorophores: a DNA minor groove binder and a ratiometric fluorogenic probe. The presence of multiple protomers was supported by fluorescence, photodissociation and quantum mechanical calculations. A previously unreported protomer of the DNA minor groove binder was uncovered while excitation-dependent and vibronically resolved fluorescence emission facilitated spectral assignments for the fluorogenic probe. Chapter 4 describes a collaborative effort to understand the origin of fluorescence emission enhancement for an amyloid-sensing dye by altering the local environment through macrocycle encapsulation. A hybrid computational method was used to predict gas-phase structures of the host-guest complex, with the most stable complex showing favourable electrostatic interactions that could attenuate access to non-radiative relaxation pathways. Lastly, Chapter 5 details the extension of gas-phase Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) towards detecting conformational changes in DNA duplexes induced by the binding of small molecule drugs. Changes in FRET response were detected with the incremental addition of single drug molecules to the duplex, highlighting the advantage of measuring fluorescence from mass-selected complex ions. The work in this thesis develops the utility of optical spectroscopy performed on mass-selected ions with key results showing that distinguishable deactivation pathways result from different protonation sites or non-covalent interactions and that gas-phase FRET can detect conformational effects of individual drug binding events on DNA. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, labor | 7, 8 |
| Bzonek, Paul Alexander | Mandrak, Nicholas E. | Non-structural Deterrents and Opportunistic Dispersal in an Invasive Fish: The Role of Among-Individual Variation on Common Carp Movement | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2021-11 | Dispersal decisions are often made at the level of the individual, but among-individual variation in dispersal behaviour is rarely considered in aquatic conservation and invasion control. To address this challenge, my thesis applied concepts of behavioural ecology to invasion biology. Using an invasive fish, Common Carp (Cyprinus carpio), as my study species, I examined the influence of among-individual behavioural variation on opportunistic dispersal and on the effectiveness of non-structural deterrents - methods used to limit the movement of non-native fishes. My thesis is comprised of a brief literature review and four research chapters that incorporate lab and field techniques to describe movement behaviours. My first research chapter (chapter 2) used choice-arena experiments to determine whether Common Carp express consistent individual differences in their avoidance behaviour of non-structural deterrents. I found CO2 levels required to force movement towards acoustic and stroboscopic stimuli varied across individuals. In chapter 3, these same deterrents were deployed at an outdoor fishway with more realistic field conditions. Native and non-native fish passage across the fishway was quantified to determine whether a behavioural deterrent (sound) can produce an avoidance response sufficient for conservation applications. This is the first study to find a phylogenetic signal in fish responses to a non-structural deterrent. In chapter 4, individuals captured at the fishway were measured for morphology,subjected to laboratory behavioural trials and then released to be acoustically tracked. Significant flooding provided individuals with a rare dispersal opportunity into a wetland. I found dispersal success was correlated with behaviour in the field, but not a behavioural syndrome expressed in lab tests. Finally, in chapter 5, I investigated whether Common Carp would consistently avoid a physiological deterrent (CO2) at the fishway. I observed a 10-fold decrease in Common Carp catch rates during stimulus activation and, unlike in chapter 3, there was no phylogenetic signal in avoidance responses. This research contributes to our understanding of how animals make dispersal decisions and the role of behavioural variation on biological invasions, and uses behavioural ecology techniques to advance applied aquatic conservation. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, co2, conserv, fish, species, animal, ecolog, land | 8, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Griffith, Janessa | Levinson, Wendy | Evaluation of a Choosing Wisely Canada Initiative to Reduce Unnecessary Testing in the Emergency Department | Medical Science | 2021-11 | Up to 30% of healthcare services in Canada are unnecessary and finding ways to reduce such care is critical for upholding quality of care and patient safety. This research consists of three overlapping studies investigating ways to reduce unnecessary care and the impacts of those interventions. Specifically, this research begins with a literature search to determine what is already known about interventions to reduce unnecessary care, using the example of pediatric imaging in the emergency department (ED). Building on these learnings, we evaluated the emergency department of hospital that was an early adopter of Choosing Wisely Canada (CWC)—a campaign to reduce unnecessary tests, treatments, and procedures. Specifically, the ED made changes and mandated adherence to medical directives. After analyzing their laboratory data using an interrupted time series analysis, we found significant reductions across most of the observed tests. We followed this quantitative study with semi-structured interviews from hospital leadership and ED clinicians to identify what was particularly impactful about the CWC intervention. We conclude by discussing what other healthcare organizations can learn from our research and how they can adapt our findings to suit their needs. We also discuss the challenges and benefits to using real hospital data extracted from the electronic medical record. Overall, reducing unnecessary care has become a priority for many healthcare organizations and our learnings could support these institutions in their endeavors to combat such services. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning, labor, invest, institut | 3, 4, 8, 9, 16 |
| Liu, Jieyi | Winnik, Mitchell A | Synthesis and Modification of Metal-encoded Microbeads for Applications in Mass Cytometry | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11 | Mass cytometry (MC) is an emerging bioanalytical technique analyzing the signals of isotopic labels on cell and microbead samples with high-order multiplexing and high-throughput potential. Microbeads for MC applications have to be encoded with heavy metals and surface-functionalized for bioconjugation. Several approaches of metal encoding polymeric microbeads have been reported by former members of our group. The most effective approach was the multistage dispersion polymerization of styrene in the presence of polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) with lanthanide salts and acrylic acid. However, these reactions did not allow control over metal content. I used this trial-and-error approach to synthesize 7-element encoded microbeads as effective reference beads for MC applications. For bead-based assays, I developed new chemistry involving polymerizable derivatives of diethylenetriamine pentaacetic acid (DTPA), a chelator that forms thermodynamically stable complexes with all trivalent lanthanide ions. By introducing these complexes into the two-stage dispersion polymerization reaction, I could synthesize 2–3 um diameter metal-encoded polystyrene microbeads with over 100-fold variation in metal content.Then I turned my attention to surface modification to enable attachment of bioaffinity agents to the bead surface. Previous attempts in our group had led to only low levels of antibody attachment. In my most successful approach, I was able to use the PVP on the microbead surface to facilitate coating the microbeads with a thin silica shell. I investigated this chemistry in detail, which required the delicate synthesis of microbeads of similar size using PVP samples of different molecular weight. The molecular weight of PVP had a profound effect on the thickness and roughness of the silica shell, and this in turn affected the number of NeutrAvidin molecules that could be attached to the surface. These microbeads were able to bind biotinylated goat-anti-mouse antibodies, that in turn were effective at selective binding to mouse antibodies. As a demonstration of bead-based assays in MC, I designed and synthesize a panel of 11 metal-encoded microbeads as classifier beads. The surface of these microbeads was modified with antibodies to capture target cytokines. Proof-of-concept experiments were carried out to explore assay conditions for multiplex bead-based immunoassays of cytokines using MC. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Jackson, Rachel Marie | Lee, Kang | Exploring the Associations of Parenting by Lying with Psychosocial Adjustment, Dishonesty, and Culture | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2021-11 | Parents aim to instill the value of honesty in their children from a young age (Engels et al., 2006). However, parents often use lying as a means of influencing their child’s behavioural and emotional states – a practice which has been referred to as ‘parenting by lying’ (Heyman et al., 2009). To date, limited research has explored the practice of parenting by lying and its associations with lying and psychosocial functioning in children. Thus, the goal of my dissertation is to broaden the existing research on parenting by lying by exploring the associations of this practice with the development of lying and psychosocial functioning in childhood and adulthood. I achieve this through conducting three novel studies that uniquely and significantly contribute to the current understanding of parenting by lying. More specifically, in Chapter 2, I explored the long-term associations of parenting by lying in childhood with lying and psychosocial functioning in a sample of Turkish adults. I found that adults who recalled higher levels of parenting by lying in childhood lied to their parents more and experienced greater psychosocial adjustment difficulties in adulthood, in particular secondary psychopathic traits. In Chapter 3, I discovered novel categories of parenting by lying, as well as identified predictors of parenting by lying within a sample of Singaporean parents. In addition to discovering two new parental lie categories, I found that parents who reported greater religiosity lied less to their children. Lastly, in Chapter 4, I investigated the association of parenting by lying with lying and the expression of psychosocial difficulties in childhood. I found that parents who reported using more parenting by lying strategies had children who lied more, and that children who lied more experienced greater psychosocial adjustment difficulties. Overall, the collective results of my dissertation suggest that the practice of parenting by lying may have short- and long-term negative associations with the development of honesty and psychosocial adjustment. These results can be used to inform parents/caregivers, teachers, and clinicians on the importance of effectively communicating with children in order to promote optimal development. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Currie, Elissa Glyn | Gray-Owen, Scott D | Determinants of Immunity against the Meningococcus | Molecular Genetics | 2021-11 | Neisseria meningitidis is a major cause of sepsis and meningitis worldwide, but is also a regular colonizer of the human nasopharynx. Invasive meningococcal infections are associated with high rates of morbidity and mortality, despite the availability of effective antibiotic treatment options. Vaccination is therefor the most effective way to protect people against N. meningitidis. Vaccines have been developed to target this bacterial pathogen since the early 1900’s, with varying levels of success. A successful meningococcal vaccine must be capable of preventing invasive N. meningitidis infections, to thereby protect the vaccinated individual from succumbing to infection. An ideal meningococcal vaccine should also prevent nasal colonization, thereby limiting the spread N. meningitidis and thus eliciting herd immunity within a vaccinated population. Within this thesis, I aimed characterize vaccine elicited immune processes necessary for protection against meningococcal nasal colonization and invasive sepsis. To characterize vaccine elicited protection against nasal colonization I took advantage of a “humanized” mouse model of N. meningitidis nasal infection, wherein expression of human CEACAM1 allows N. meningitidis to colonize the murine nose. I reveal that protection against nasal colonization is absolutely reliant on B cells and neutrophils, suggesting that opsonophagocytosis plays a major role in prevention of nasal colonization. To characterize vaccine elicited protection against invasive infections I utilized a mouse model of N. meningitidis sepsis. Previous findings haveiii revealed an important role for meningococcal specific IgG and complement activation in conferring protection against invasive infections. Here, I reveal that protection can occur in mice lacking either complement or IgG. Protection in the absence of complement relies on high antibody titer and my data suggests that phagocytic cells are necessary to clear the bacterial infection. Protection in the absence of IgG is reliant on bacterial specific IgM. Taken together, my findings provide novel insight into the mechanism of vaccine elicited protection against N. meningitidis. This mechanistic insight can be used to guide development of improved vaccines. | Ph.D. | ABS, vaccine | 2, 3 |
| Falcone, Natashya | Kraatz, Heinz-Bernhard | Designing Stimuli-Responsive Amino Acid and Peptide Hydrogel Biomaterials as Functional Entrapment Matrices | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2021-11 | Supramolecular gels are a fascinating class of soft materials that have attracted significant attention in recent years. Chemical polymer gels have received the most attention but are often limited by their lack of degradability and issues associated with biocompatibility. Physical supramolecular gels are composed of small molecule gelators that assemble into supramolecular network structures; the resulting space is filled with solvent. Peptide-based gels are advantageous as they are composed by small amino acid components and possess reversible supramolecular assemblies through non-covalent interactions in response to various stimuli. The stimuli- responsive properties of these hydrogels allow the design of materials that can be tailored for the purpose of a specific property and function of the gel material depending on the application. Stimuli-responsive peptides that alter properties as a function of pH, redox, temperature, and enzymes offer the potential to create materials with tunable characteristics. Peptide-based gel materials are also particularly attractive in many biomedical applications as they are biocompatible and biodegradable, and they encapsulate solvent similar to that of soft tissues and the extracellular matrix of cells. In this thesis, the stimuli-responsive properties (pH, redox, temperature, and solvent), as well as the biocompatible nature of the peptide gels are highlighted. Dipeptides, peptides bonded to metal scaffolds, peptide amphiphiles, and amino acid amphiphiles are all synthesized and explored for gelation, and fully characterized in terms of their supramolecular behaviour, morphological, and mechanical properties. We explore the properties of gels that are heat sensitive, respond to redox agents, and only gel in a very narrow pH range. The gel compounds are then explored as functional entrapment matrices for catalytic enzymes, as a biomimetic matrix for tissue regeneration, and as an entrapment matrix for drugs in delivery applications. The work in this thesis highlights the usability of these gels as a base matrix and their ability to incorporate and entrap various biomolecules which holds great future promise for the development of biomaterials for many biomedical applications. | Ph.D. | regeneration | 15 |
| Lim, Jessie Mei | Seed, Mike||Post, Martin | Cerebral Hemodynamics, Oxygen Metabolism and Brain Growth in Congenital Heart Disease | Physiology | 2021-11 | Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common birth defect in children. Neurodevelopmental deficits and brain injury are recognized as common comorbidities. Furthermore, fetal and neonatal brain growth has been shown to be stunted in addition to delayed brain maturation and these are associated with severity of cardiac defect. Various clinical factors likely contribute to the pathophysiology of these observations, though the role of hemodynamic changes due to the cardiac defect has yet to be elucidated. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the relationships between cerebral hemodynamics and oxygen metabolism on brain growth and explore the longitudinal changes of these parameters and effects on brain growth trajectory in fetuses and neonates with the most complex forms of CHD: single ventricles (SV) and transposition of the great arteries (TGA). Fetal and neonatal cerebral blood flow and oxygen content was measured using MRI-based techniques to derive cerebral oxygen delivery (CDO2) and consumption (CVO2). Brain development indices included volumetric analyses and clinical evaluations of development. Fetally, ascending aorta saturations, CDO2, CVO2, were found to be predictive of neonatal brain size. Preoperatively, cerebral blood flow (CBF) was found to be similar between neonates with CHD and controls, however, CDO2 was reduced, mainly driven by reductions to arterial saturations. Age at surgery was a strong predictor of postoperative brain volume and composite language scores in infants with TGA. Earlier surgical correction of cardiac anatomy, which improves arterial saturation, may support optimal brain growth and developmental outcomes. Longitudinal profiles of various cerebral hemodynamic and metabolic parameters in TGA and SV revealed that CVO2 increases over time in TGA but demonstrates a decline in SV patients. This pattern was also reflected in their brain growth trajectories. Furthermore, it was found that CDO2 was improved postoperatively in SV through an increase in hemoglobin concentration maintaining similar CDO2 to TGA. Surgical and clinical management differences between SV and TGA manifest in their physiological adaptations observed postoperatively suggesting inherent differences in cerebral oxygen metabolism between the two groups, where SV have impaired oxygen utility which may be a driver of their poor brain growth trajectories. | Ph.D. | invest, consum | 9, 12 |
| Hussein, Hebatullah Mohammed Adel Saleh Elsayed | Kishen, Anil | Effect of Engineered Nanoparticles-treated Root Canal Biofilm on Macrophage Plasticity and Interactions with Human Periodontal Ligament Fibroblast | Dentistry | 2021-11 | The intracanal microbes, particularly in proximity to the apical foramen, often result in chronic inflammation of the periapical tissues that might lead to compromised post-treatment healing. Macrophages (MQ), which are major constituents of periapical lesions, respond to microbial factors and exhibit a key role in the pathogenesis as well as the healing of apical periodontitis owing to their functional plasticity. Depending on the microenvironmental cues, they polarize into pro-inflammatory (M1) or anti-inflammatory/pro-wound healing (M2) phenotype. MQ crosstalk with other immune cells and periradicular multipotent cells, such as periodontal ligament fibroblasts (PdLF), via soluble inflammatory signals, to regulate the disease/healing outcomes. Engineered chitosan-based nanoparticles (CSnp) that possess effective antibacterial activities could favorably interact with host cells by virtue of their inherent bioactivity and customized physicochemical properties. Herein, we aimed to (1) understand the influence of residual root canal biofilm on MQ-PdLF interaction, and (2) evaluate the effect of engineered CSnp on modulating residual biofilm-mediated inflammatory response of MQ and their interaction with PdLF. An ex-vivo model of Enterococcus faecalis biofilm in root canals was characterized to evaluate the inflammatory response to untreated versus treated biofilms. Engineered CSnp dispersed in carboxymethyl chitosan (CMCS) resulted in significant reduction of 6-week-old biofilm compared to conventional disinfection (P | Ph.D. | environmental | 13 |
| Holst, Devon Patrick | Bender, Timothy P | Boron Subnaphthalocyanines: The First Unsubstituted Examples, New Boron Lewis Acids, Random Bay Position Halogenation, and Computational Material Screening | Chemistry | 2021-11 | Boron subnaphthalocyanines (BsubNcs) are a class of materials that our lab has shown to be alloyed mixtures of derivatives that are randomly chlorinated in the bay positions, resulting from their formation from boron trichloride. These alloyed mixtures were shown to have a positive influence on the functionality of organic photovoltaics whereby an increase in the amount of bay position chlorination was found to increase power conversion efficiency. The bay position chlorinated BsubNcs were also found to be stable in the ambient environment within organic solar cells which also justified their further development. The alloying of these materials leads to a potentially unique opportunity to tailor the alloyed mixture for a desired application by blending pure or partially separated samples of BsubNcs. Herein we lay the groundwork for achieving this goal. We explore the separation of bay position halogenated (chlorinated and brominated) BsubNcs enabled by their functionalization with phenolic axial moieties. We develop an understanding of the dependence of their physical properties on the frequency of bay position halogenation and developed improved analytical techniques for this class of materials. We also present a new method for the synthesis of BsubNcs that circumvents the generation of bay position halogenated species, resulting in the first examples of pure unsubstituted BsubNcs. To achieve this, we proposed that a non-halide boron based Lewis acid is required, and that a balance of the Lewis acidity of the boron source and the Lewis basicity of the BsubNc precursor can guide the synthesis of BsubNcs. After achieving this desired outcome, we also explored the application of this method for the synthesis of the related boron subphthalocyanines (BsubPcs) and as the macrocycles were formed, we found potential for the broad application of this methodology. A computationally calibrated model to screen key material properties of BsubPcs for their accelerated development was also developed. We uniquely found a method that can achieve this with a standard laptop and software that is free to academia. We anticipate that incorporation of BsubNcs into the model will be possible as the key material properties have been determined for BsubNcs developed in this thesis. | Ph.D. | solar, species | 7, 14, 15 |
| Jeyanathan, Gayaanan | Tepass, Ulrich | Cell Division Compromises Epithelial Cell Polarity and Drives Tumor Progression | Cell and Systems Biology | 2021-11 | Epithelia are the predominant tissue type of the animal body and form major components of most organs. As with all tissues, the formation of epithelia during development and their stem cell-based renewal requires cell division. This presents a problem as dividing epithelial cells transiently lose apical-basal polarity, which could compromise epithelial integrity. How epithelial cells respond to challenges arising from cell division is not understood. To better understand the mechanisms of polarization and the impact of cell division on epithelial integrity, I have carried out a screen to identify novel epithelial polarity determinants. I evaluated the relationship between cell division and epithelial cell polarity using Drosophila embryos and imaginal discs as model systems. I conducted a screen to find novel genes required for the normal distribution of the apical determinant Crumbs (Crb), which revealed shrub, srpk, and the cell cycle regulator fizzy (Cdc20), as genes that are required for normal polarity. Embryonic mutants of fzy, which leads to an arrest at metaphase, confirms the transient loss in epithelial cell polarity during cell division. This led to an in-depth analysis of the impact of cell division on epithelial cell polarity. Reducing cell division suppressed the mutant phenotypes of polarity genes, arguing that cell division significantly challenges epithelial polarity suggesting a higher requirement for the function of polarity regulators. I then investigated epithelia where loss of polarity proteins such as Crb have no adverse consequences in a wildtype background. I found that accelerating cell division in such epithelia caused a loss of polarity and neoplastic tumor growth. Moreover, neoplastic growth is strongly enhanced when accelerated division is combined with a loss of Crb. Interestingly, neoplastic growth as well as the loss of epithelial cell polarity observed in polarity mutants can be rescued by blocking cell division. My findings indicate that the process of cell division not only increases tumor mass but also compromises epithelial polarity to drive tumor progression. | Ph.D. | invest, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Kizovski, Tanya | Tait, Kimberly T | A “Shocking” Investigation into Life on Mars: Examination of the Structural and Chemical Effects of Shock in Hydrous Phases in Martian Meteorites | Earth Sciences | 2021-11 | To determine when and if habitable environments existed on Mars, accurate measurements of the volatile and isotopic compositions of hydrous phases in martian meteorites are essential. However, past studies on these phases have routinely overlooked one of the most fundamental properties of martian meteorites — they are all inherently shocked, experiencing extreme pressure and temperature (P-T) conditions during impact and ejection from the martian surface. These intense P-T conditions are known to induce volatile loss and isotopic disturbances. Thus, if shock-induced chemical alteration is not properly accounted for, past interpretations about water and life on Mars based on measurements from hydrous phases may be misconstrued. As such, the objective of this thesis is to determine how shock deformation has affected the structure and chemistry of the three most common hydrous phases in martian meteorites (apatite, merrillite, and iddingsite) using detailed microstructural and petrographic analyses. Microstructural electron backscatter diffraction analyses of apatite and merrillite in martian meteorites reveals these minerals experienced localized shock-induced P-T conditions high enough to alter their primary martian water contents; with the first in-situ evidence of shock-dehydrogenation in phosphate minerals revealed by correlative electron energy loss spectroscopy. This evidence of shock-induced chemical alteration also indicates that unshocked phosphate minerals on Mars would dissolve faster in water-rock interactions, supplying more bio-available phosphorus for potential life than previously estimated. Additionally, the complex microstructures observed in the phosphate minerals, even in “low-shock” meteorites, suggests that their original H-isotope compositions may have also been altered by shock, necessitating re-evaluation of past models of Mars’ atmospheric evolution based on these H-isotope measurements. Finally, through detailed petrographic examination of shock features, it is inferred that iddingsite alteration in a terrestrially weathered martian meteorite was produced on Mars via water-rich deuteric alteration. The microstructural and petrographic analyses carried out in this thesis reveal significant shock-induced structural and chemical alteration of hydrous phases in martian meteorites, and new evidence of water-rich magmatism on Mars (deuteric iddingsite). These results indicate that past approximations of water and phosphorous abundances on Mars are likely underestimates, suggesting that habitable conditions for potential martian life were more prevalent than previously assumed. | Ph.D. | water, energy, invest, urban, weather | 6, 7, 9, 11, 13 |
| Wright, Jessica Elaine | Bialystok, Lauren | The 'Grey Area' of Consent: Understanding the Psychosocial Impacts of Trauma on Sexual Consent | Social Justice Education | 2021-11 | In recent years, sexual consent education has proliferated and arguably become the most popular way of preventing gender-based violence (GBV), particularly on post-secondary campuses. However, mainstream consent programming applies a reductive conception of consent and lacks a trauma-informed lens. The concept of consent that much programming relies upon is binary (‘Yes’/‘No’) and obscures ongoing yet preventable harm in the ‘grey area’ of consent. This disproportionately impacts youth trauma survivors as they are more than twice as likely to be sexually (re)victimized compared to their peers without trauma histories; moreover, the psychosocial impacts of trauma, such as substance dependence, dissociation, or hypersexuality, refuse a binary model of consent. To explore these phenomena, I interviewed 8 diverse undergraduate students at the University of Toronto who self-identify as trauma survivors. Using intersectional feminist theory and critical trauma studies as a theoretical framework, the project provides an evidentiary and conceptual basis for rethinking consent education with a trauma-informed approach. I found that trauma survivors were able to shed light on more complex conceptualizations of consent because they could not subscribe to, or fit their experiences into, a neatly packaged version of ‘healthy,’ consensual sexual experience. Participants in the study said that they were previously taught that consent is the key to positive, healthy sexual experiences—as if bad or regrettable sex could be abolished through consent—and this message did not reflect their lived experiences. The awkwardness, ambiguity, or ambivalence that may arise out of subjective sexual experiences, and not just those of survivors of trauma, remains an understudied, critical gap in consent education. This study contributes to the evidence that we must attend to the grey areas of sex and harm in order to understand more nuanced dynamics for negotiating mutually pleasurable, ethical sex, as well as the more insidious and uncontested manifestations of GBV. By recognizing the limits of contemporary consent discourses, we can expand visions of sexual justice and prioritize talk of mutuality, interdependence, and compassion in order to foster a greater sexual ethic of care. | Ph.D. | gender, feminis, violence | 5, 16 |
| McGaugh, Emily Catherine | Nostro, Maria Cristina | Elucidating the Role of FGF and RA Signaling during Pancreatic Differentiation using hPSC | Physiology | 2021-11 | Type 1 Diabetes is an auto-immune disease that results in the destruction of insulin-producing β-cells. Human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) can be differentiated to NKX6-1+PDX1+ pancreatic progenitors (PPs) and to NKX6-1+CPEP+ β-like cells in vitro, offering a potential source of cells for therapy. Although PPs are in clinical trials and β-like cells have been approved for clinical trials, recent publications demonstrated that both populations contain cells of non-pancreatic lineages. This suggests that pancreatic specification may require further optimization, and that the markers the field uses to guide differentiation may be inadequate. In this thesis, I set out to elucidate the role of FGF and RA signalling upon pancreatic specification, with the goal to improve β-cell differentiation. In Chapter 4, I used chemical and genetic tools to demonstrate that FGFR3 activation at stage 3 of differentiation inhibited PDX1+ Endoderm induction through the MEK/ERK signaling pathway. Impaired PDX1 specification was accompanied by a decrease in PPs and β-like cells and increase in the frequency of PDX1-SOX2+ cells. As a result, stage 4 cultures failed to generate pancreatic grafts in vivo and instead generated teratomas. Notably, FGFR and MEK inhibition during endocrine induction enhanced β-cell differentiation. In Chapter 5, I demonstrated that retinoid signaling during stage 3 influenced the efficiency and purity of PPs and β-like cells. Surprisingly, retinoid treatment at stage 3 was not required for PDX1 induction, however, it was necessary for efficient PP specification. Importantly, I demonstrated that treatment with the RA precursor retinol at stage 3 was superior to RA as it generated fewer CDX2+ cells and higher percentages of β-like cells. Consistent with these findings, I showed that the RA synthesizing enzyme, ALDH, was expressed by PDX1+ endoderm and PPs and sorting for ALDH+ using ALDEFLUOR, enriched for a population expressing higher NEUROG3 levels compared to unsorted cells. Based on these data, I proposed that ALDH could be used to mark endocrine competent PPs. Together, the knowledge from this thesis advances the field by providing strategies to improve current β cell differentiation protocols and by identifying markers that could be used to monitor PP purity and β-cell differentiation. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Nemr, Carine Rita | Kelley, Shana O | New Tools for Diagnosis and Treatment of Bacterial Infections | Chemistry | 2021-11 | The excessive and inappropriate use of antibiotics has contributed to the spread of antibiotic resistance, a serious challenge the global health industry is facing. To help preserve the effectiveness of current commercially available therapies, timely, accurate and user-friendly diagnostic tools are needed; advances in biosensing and microfluidics aim to address these limitations in conventional testing. With improvements in diagnostic testing comes the ability to administer personalized patient treatments, an area which has become increasingly explored. In wound care applications, for example, different wound types may display impairments in various phases of the healing process, requiring distinct therapeutics to improve patient outcomes. This thesis first explores the development of a diagnostic device for the rapid detection of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, the most common cause of hospital- and community-acquired bacterial infections. The approach relies on nanoparticle-mediated microfluidic capture and electrochemical detection of clinically relevant concentrations of bacteria directly from patient nasal swab specimens. Next, an integrated and automated digital microfluidics platform was designed for simultaneous real-time antibiotic susceptibility testing and bacterial identification via fluorescence detection. This versatile all-in-one instrument with a small footprint allows automation of assay steps for simple sample handling, which can be easily customized for the desired application, without device redesign. Finally, multifunctional hydrogel wound dressings with programmable spatiotemporal release of biologically active agents, including small molecule antibiotics, growth factors and antibacterial silver, were investigated in vivo for personalized wound healing. The biocompatible wound dressings were fabricated via 3D printing, for simple fabrication that could be tailored to patient needs. Altogether, these studies present novel tools to better diagnose bacterial infections and treat wound patients through personalized medicine. | Ph.D. | global health, invest | 3, 9 |
| Peng, Hao Benson | Pang, K. Sandy | Effects of Vitamin D Receptor (VDR), Age and Cholesterol-status on Aβ Peptide Accumulation in the Brain | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2022-11 | Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is associated with accumulation of toxic amyloid-beta peptides, 40 and 42 amino acid lengths (Aβ40 and Aβ42) in brain. Calcitriol, natural ligand of the vitamin D receptor (VDR), activates P-glycoprotein (P-gp) to efflux these toxic peptides out of the brain and lower peripheral cholesterol, events that could be linked to brain cholesterol and Aβ formation via BACE1 from the amyloid precursor protein (APP). We applied an improved and facile enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure the low endogenous Aβ40 and Aβ42 concentrations in mouse and guinea pig brains, with 1 instead of 5 M guanidine HCl (a chaotropic agent and protein denaturant) for homogenization, thereby increasing the sensitivity by 5×. We documented age-dependent (2, 4-8, or >10 months) elevation of mouse brain Aβ, showing that protein expressions of P-gp, neprilysin (Aβ degradation enzyme) and Cyp46a1, which metabolizes brain cholesterol, were reduced and calcitriol treatment partially mitigated the changes via P-gp induction with TNF-α and IL-1β reduction. We also examined age-dependent changes in the guinea pig (GP), a species with similar Aβ homology and cholesterol processing as humans, where Aβ40 and Aβ42 accumulation, P-gp and Lrp1 (for Aβ and cholesterol transport) reduction, and free cholesterol elevation commensurate with aging (9- to 40-weeks). In 8-week-old GPs, calcitriol treatment led to increased Aβ and cholesterol clearance processes due to higher P-gp and Lrp1 protein expression, with elevated neprilysin and Cyp46a1 mRNA levels in brain, and Cyp7a1 protein, Abca1, Abcg5, and Abcg8 mRNA levels in liver. Exploiting our collaborator’s surgical skill and stereotaxic instrument for injections into brain, we defined the biodisposition of hAβ40 after intravenous or intracerebroventricular injection in rats with calcitriol treatment. The exogenously administered hAβ40 was best described by a catenary-mammillary model with one cerebrospinal fluid compartment and a slow exchange within the brain compartments. The composite findings suggest that age, cholesterol status, and vitamin D deficiency are risk factors that can alter Aβ accumulation in brain. Age is a dominant risk factor for Aβ accumulation due to reduced clearance pathways and higher cholesterol levels in brain. | Ph.D. | labor, species | 8, 14, 15 |
| Lim, Liang Ying | Meguid, Shaker A | Modelling and Characterisation of the Thermomechanical Behaviour of Thermal Barrier Coatings | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are adopted in aeroengines to enable higher operating temperatures. Whilst some progress has been made in their development, there remain major challenges to overcome. These challenges include processing defects, development and progression of undesirable thermal residual stresses and interphases. These challenges have motivated the undertaking of this study. Specifically, the main objective of this research is to develop reliable modelling techniques, which are supported experimentally, to assess the effect of defects, thermal residual stresses and interphases upon the structural integrity of TBCs. Four aspects were accordingly examined. In the first, we examined the effect of thermal cycling on the dynamic growth of thermally grown oxide (TGO) and mixed oxides (MOs) using an integrated finite volume (FV) – finite element (FE) model. We were able to accurately predict the growth of TGO and MOs at varied temperatures and show that the presence of undulated interface led to uneven growth of TGO. The second was concerned with the effect of thermal cycling, growth strain and stress relaxation of TGO stresses on the build-up of residual stresses in TBC. This was achieved using a coupled non-linear transient thermomechanical analysis that incorporated a modified FV-FE model. Model results revealed that the combined effect of growth strains and thermal cycling could lead to elastic, shakedown or ratcheting phenomena. The third involved the use of micromechanics and adaptive FE model to investigate the role of inherent microdefects on crack propagation and failure of TBC. This led to determining the effect of shielding and amplification of the stress field on the critical stress intensity factor of interacting microdefects. The fourth was concerned with examining the effect of YSZ/α-Al2O3 interphase upon the thermomechanical behaviour of TBCs using novel hybrid molecular dynamics-finite element simulations. Unlike existing work, our results show that assuming a line interphase between TC and TGO will lead to erroneous estimates of the effective stiffness of YSZ/α-Al2O3 system. In this thesis, we offer newly developed coupled mechanistic models to determine the varied thermomechanical stress states, failure modes and inelastic deformation that will undoubtedly improve our understanding and lead to better coatings. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| St John, Laura Renee | Cairney, John | From Exercise to Physical Literacy Measurement in Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | Physical inactivity is prevalent among individuals with intellectual disabilities, which has significant negative health consequences for this population. Increasing physical activity is one strategy for improving health outcomes but to be active, one must have the competence, confidence and knowledge to be active for life; collectively, this has been called physical literacy. Unfortunately, there has been no research exploring how best to measure physical literacy in individuals with intellectual disabilities. The purpose of this dissertation was to investigate how to measure physical literacy in adults with intellectual disabilities. Study one was a systematic review and meta-analysis on the broader physical activity and exercise literature. This study served to identify current trends within the literature. The review found that exercise had the most significant impact on the psychological domain, specifically anxiety and depression (SMD=-3.07). While the review did serve to identify key areas lacking in terms of measurement of movement competencies, its primary purpose was to examine how exercise and physical activity impact the physical and psychological well-being of this population. Study two used Generalizability Theory to evaluate the measurement properties of PLAYable. PLAYable was the first movement assessment designed specifically for individuals with intellectual disabilities. Fourteen raters utilized the tool to score 368 video clips each depicting individuals with various intellectual disabilities performing one of the 23 movement skills included in the assessment. The study found that the variability in scores was primarily due to the participant (facet of measurement) performing the skill. Study three examined the feasibility of using the Physical Literacy for Children Questionnaire to measure perceived physical literacy adults with ID. A total of 12 individuals with intellectual disabilities completed the questionnaire while their parents served as a proxy and completed the PLAYparent questionnaire. Overall, the results illustrated that the Physical Literacy for Children Questionnaire was a feasible measure of perceived physical literacy adults with ID. Overall, the three studies from this dissertation provided vital evidence to support and justify the need to explore physical literacy in adults with intellectual disabilities. In addition, this dissertation presented two promising measures, which researchers could use successfully with this population. | Ph.D. | well-being, disabilit, knowledge, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Yendell, Anne Patricia Mary | Cooper, Karyn | Writing Skills and Students’ Aspirations to Pursue Post-Secondary Educational Opportunities | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2024-11 | This study highlights potential positive impacts of tutoring writing to marginalized youth at a community service after-school programme. Although many secondary school students possess language fluency and competency, youths from low-income and/or minority cultures may experience unequal access to essential writing instruction in school. Students’ potential for academic advancement depends on the procurement of written language “codes” necessary to familiarize them with the manners, culture and language of power. Writing tutoring responds to the individual learning needs of youth at-risk; tutoring programmes are effective in supporting the advancement of their goals and values and for their integration into society. Interview data from nine students, staff and tutors at Pathways, Lawrence Heights and observations, field notes and journal entries from my position as researcher and volunteer tutor, reveal that the dialogic nature of tutoring facilitates an unconstrained interchange of ideas, which generates knowledge applicable to the students’ particular needs, and fosters a bond between the tutor and tutee unlike the teacher/student relationship experienced in the school context. My investigations explore how one-to-one tutoring for teaching writing skills to youth at-risk might be especially conducive to improving writing effectiveness because the tutor’s non-evaluative and non-autocratic responses are personalized to the contexts, situational needs and nuances of each student. By acknowledging the unequal distribution of writing proficiency among Ontario’s students and the inequities within the system, educators and policymakers may look for occasions in the writing curriculum that address students’ perceptions of themselves as thinkers and learners. With a broadened appreciation for the impact of tutoring programmes and their relevance to students’ pursuit of post-secondary opportunities, collaboration between researchers, schools and their communities, a thoughtfully developed educational agenda that supports our students is possible. | Ph.D. | low-income, knowledge, learning, secondary education, labor, invest, equit, minorit, equal access, marginalized, income | 1, 4, 8, 9, 10 |
| Aronoff, Laura | Epelman, Slava | Investigating the Cardiac Immune Response in Viral Myocarditis | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-11 | Heart failure (HF) is a growing global epidemic affecting people of all demographics. Non-ischemic cardiomyopathies (NICM) accounts for up to 40% of HF patients. Myocarditis, inflammation of the myocardium is the underlying cause of NICM in 9-16% of patients. The most common cause of myocarditis is due to viral infection, known as viral myocarditis. The immune response is critical in mitigating cardiac injury due to viral infection; however, it can also be pathological due to the cytotoxic effects of certain innate and adaptive immune cells. Conventional or classical dendritic cells (cDCs) are important antigen presenting cells linking the innate and adaptive immune response. Type 1 cDCs (cDC1) are critical for initiating an antigen-specific CD8+ T cell response during viral myocarditis. Mice lacking cDC1s have increased cardiac injury and dysfunction following viral myocarditis, indicating their importance in mitigating cardiac injury. The transcription factor (TF) BATF3 is necessary for the development of cDC1s. Batf3-/- mice lack cardiac cDC1s at steady state. However, during viral infection, cDC1s develop in a BATF3-independent pathway. In this thesis we investigate the BATF3-indepdent development of cardiac cDC1s during viral myocarditis. Cardiac cDC1s from Batf3-/- mice are transcriptionally similar to those from wildtype mice at 7dpi by single cell RNA-sequencing. We have shown that the cytokine GM-CSF is essential for the compensatory cDC1 development while IFNγ is partially involved. Interestingly, these compensatory cDC1s are present in the heart after inflammation has resolved and their continued presence is due to tissue-specific changes that support their persistence. We also explore sex differences in young mice (5-weeks of age) in both susceptibility and immune response to viral myocarditis. We show that young male mice have increased mortality and cardiac injury post-infection in comparison to female littermates. Importantly, we found there is a delayed response of type I interferon (IFN-I) by 12 hours in the young males have a compared to females. This thesis increases our knowledge about the BATF3-independent cDC1 development in peripheral tissues, specifically cardiac cDC1s, during both acute and resolved inflammation. More broadly, we also examine sex differences in viral myocarditis identifying IFN-I as a potential therapeutic target in early viral myocarditis. | Ph.D. | knowledge, female, invest | 4, 5, 2009 |
| Masson-Makdissi, Jeanne | Lautens, Mark | Development of Orthogonal and Cooperative Catalytic Processes via Dual Metal Catalysis | Chemistry | 2022-11 | In this thesis, the concept of dual metal catalysis will be explored in different contexts: one-pot orthogonal catalysis where both metal catalysts act sequentially and cooperative tandem catalysis where the two metal catalysts act in a synergistic fashion. In Chapter 1, a rhodium-catalyzed tandem isomerization-allylation of unsymmetrical diallyl carbonates enables the synthesis of α-quaternary allylated aldehydes. Notably, the rhodium catalyst can discriminate between two allyl groups of the unsymmetrical diallyl carbonate via a selective oxidative addition. Reaction progress kinetic analysis (RPKA) of this reaction uncovered second order kinetics with respect to rhodium, suggesting a bimetallic rate-determining step. In Chapter 2, the tandem isomerization-allylation of unsymmetrical carbonates is re-investigated from a dual metal perspective. A novel variant of this catalytic reaction is developed where a Pd(0) catalyst forms the electrophilic π-allyl species and a Rh(I) catalyst mediates the isomerization to form the enolate nucleophile. This dual metal approach was found to be more efficient and enables access to a large variety of α-quaternary allylated ketones. In Chapter 3, a one-pot reaction featuring two orthogonal transition metal-catalyzed asymmetric transformations is disclosed. The one-pot reaction combines a Pd-catalyzed asymmetric allylic alkylation and a Rh-catalyzed Miyaura-Hayashi reaction, converting allyl enol carbonates or allyl β-keto esters into enantioenriched cyclic ketones with two non-contiguous stereocenters. The process is enantio- and diastereodivergent and the major diastereomer is formed in excellent enantiopurity, owing to the Horeau principle. | Ph.D. | invest, transit, species | 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Tsui, Tsz Ho | Morris, Robert | Transition Metal Hydride Complexes: From Computation to Catalysis and Everything in Between | Chemistry | 2022-11 | Computational methods were used to investigate transition metal hydride complexes both in the ground state and as reactive intermediates. Chapter 2 investigates an interesting phenomenon concerning the reversal of the relative position of the antisymmetric and symmetric vibrational modes of trans-dihydrides of transition metals and main group elements. These findings were used to show the different modes of hydride attack on CO2 by a transition metal and main group porphyrinate trans-dihydride complex. Chapter 3 details both an experimental and computational study on the catalytic transfer hydrogenation of aryl ketones with basic iso-propanol by a ruthenium hydride complex with a protic N-heterocyclic carbene ligand. The bifunctional character of the protic N-heterocyclic carbene moiety was determined to play a crucial role in the mechanism of the inner-sphere hydride transfer to acetophenone in a computational study. Chapter 4 describes the synthesis of an iridium(III) azolato complex through rearrangement of a tethered C8-iodinated theophylline fragment. The rearrangement proceeds through an unusual seven-coordinate cationic iridium(V) hydride intermediate which is supported by computational analysis. Finally, chapter 5 concerns the development of an undergraduate laboratory experiment in which an iron carbonyl complex is synthesized to investigate its catalytic activity in the transfer hydrogenation of acetophenone. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, transit, co2 | 8, 9, 11, 13 |
| Getfield, Jacqueline | Bascia, Nina | Prescriptive Partnerships: Black Mothers of Disabled Children and Educators in Ontario's Public School System | Social Justice Education | 2022-11 | This study draws on key teachings and principles of Critical Race Theory to examine the experiences of seven Black mothers as they perform as agents on behalf of their children who are enrolled in the special education environments in elementary schools across the Greater Toronto Area of Ontario, Canada. This qualitative study uses techniques of constructivism and bricolage as it disrupts normalized, hegemonic approaches to parental engagement. The Black mothers’ voices are foregrounded as they share their experiences of engagement with, and disengagement by, members of the in-school team (including educators and health professionals). Critical policy analysis was employed to analyze two Ontario educational policies: (1) parent engagement and (2) special education.This study presents a multi-layered analysis of seven Black mothers as they fight to access special education services; advocate on behalf of their children to get teacher feedback and classwork samples; and negotiate with educators to ensure their children receive timely access to the Ontario curriculum. Notions of power relations between home and school are explored. Black mothers have significantly less power than educators who are all backed by the powerful master legislation, the Education Act of Ontario. This dissertation reveals that educators’ responses to Black students and their parents will vary based upon educator’s values and attitudes, their levels of professionalism, the local school culture as well as the expectations of the district school board and the Ontario Ministry of Education. This study is unique in that through a brief, selective history of Ontario’s general and special education, it investigates the impact of race and racism on Black mothering and mother-work within the special education environment in public elementary schools. Also, by weaving the experiences and perspectives of the seven Black mothers into the analysis of Ontario’s current educational policies, this dissertation shows further how it stands apart: this unique study looks at the role that race and racism play within the discourse of (and discursive practice inherent to) parental engagement within special education environments in elementary public schools in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) of Ontario. | Ph.D. | racism, invest | 4, 9 |
| Bonsma-Fisher, Madeleine Jenneke | Goyal, Sidhartha | Population Dynamics of CRISPR Adaptive Immunity in Communities of Bacteria and Phages: a Window into Another World | Physics | 2022-11 | Adaptive immunity shapes organisms at all scales of life, from bacteria to humans, allowing organisms to learn from past exposure to pathogens by storing specific immune memories. In humans and other vertebrates, these memories are contained in a diverse pool of specialized cells that express a range of unique immune receptors, while bacteria and archaea store immune memories using the CRISPR-Cas system. Bacteria incorporate small samples of phage DNA, called spacers, into their own genome, using this genetic memory to recognize and destroy future phage infections. Experiments have revealed high spacer diversity on the level of populations, dynamic gain and loss of immunity in bacteria, and phage evolution under pressure from CRISPR targeting, all of which is accessible through DNA sequencing. In both vertebrate and CRISPR adaptive immunity, many biological processes overlap to produce observed outcomes, but by simplifying these complicated systems, phenomenological models have the potential to reveal intuitive patterns. This thesis is about using simple phenomenological models to understand adaptive immunity in bacteria. Starting with basic bacteria and phage interactions with CRISPR immunity, I find remarkable emergent complexity that provides new but simple ways to interpret data. First, I show that stochastic bacteria-phage interactions lead to broad spacer abundance distributions that are stable in time, matching experimental data. Next, I add phage evolution in response to CRISPR targeting. I show that phage mutations and CRISPR immunity drive the emergence of stable genetic diversity and that new phage mutants experience strong positive selection. This model also provides insight into the timescale of immune memories through the summary parameter average immunity which can be calculated from whole-genome sequencing data. Finally, I show that cross-reactivity between spacers and phage genomes leads to fundamentally different regimes of evolution that are analogous to regimes appearing in models of vertebrate adaptive immunity, highlighting shared features in these very different systems. My work is a step forward in the theoretical understanding of both bacterial communities and adaptive immunity in general and illustrates the power of simple models to build intuition about complex phenomena. | Ph.D. | wind, accessib | 7, 11 |
| Adil, Deeksha | Sachdeva, Sushant | Fast Algorithms for $\ell_p$-Regression and Other Problems | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Regression in $\ell_p$-norm is a canonical problem in optimization, machine learning and theoretical computer science which asks for a vector with minimum $\ell_p$-norm in a linear subspace. In this thesis, we give fast, high-accuracy algorithms for $\ell_p$ regression for all $p\geq 2$. Our algorithms are built on novel techniques including {\it iterative refinement for $\ell_p$-norms}, and a fast {\it width-reduced} multiplicative weight update routine among others. Furthermore, via a new {\it inverse maintenance} scheme, we can solve $\ell_p$-regression almost as fast as linear regression for all $p>2$. For graph instances, where the goal is to optimize $\ell_p$-norm objectives (flow or voltages), our algorithms incorporate sparsification routines that preserve such objectives, to obtain {\it near-linear-time} algorithms. As a consequence, we also obtain a fast algorithm for the maximum flow problem in unweighted graphs. A popular approach to fast algorithms for $\ell_p$-regression in practice is via empirical modifications of the {Iteratively Reweighted Least Squares (IRLS)} algorithm since the basic version of IRLS is known to converge only for $p \in (1, 3)$ and diverge even for moderate $p$ (e.g., $p > 3.5$). We give the first IRLS algorithm that provably converges to a high accuracy solution in a few iterations. Our algorithm has shown exemplary practical performance as well beating standard MATLAB CVX implementations by 10-50x. We further extend our techniques to obtain fast algorithms for {\it Quasi-self-concordant (QSC)} functions, which includes $\ell_p$-regression, softmax regression, and logistic regression among others. We show how iterative refinement and width reduction techniques extend and give fast rates of convergence for all QSC functions. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Suckstorff, Hana | Terpstra, Nicholas | Renegades and Inquisitions: Sense, Interiority, and Conversion to Catholic Subjecthood in Early Modern Italy | History | 2022-11 | In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, hundreds of penitent renegades—Christian converts to Islam who sought to become Catholic—approached local tribunals of the Roman Inquisition for absolution in the Italian peninsula. This dissertation examines 240 renegade reconciliations from the cities of Rome, Naples, and Livorno in the years 1552-1697 to explore how inquisition officials adjudicated these conversions. The study challenges much of the literature on renegades and early modern religious conversion by arguing that renegades’ “identity” or sense of self was not at stake in depositions and sentencing. What was at stake—what was, in fact, changing in these rituals—was the nature of the renegade’s membership or belonging with the Catholic communion. The foundation of that belonging lay in the renegade’s ability to perform, publicly and before the local inquisition, as an obedient juridical subject of the Catholic Church. After sketching the local historical contexts and personnel for the three Inquisition tribunals, the dissertation compares how each engaged sensory behaviours (Chapters Three and Four) and interiority (Chapter Five) to demonstrate how expectations for that performance intensified over time in Naples and Livorno but not in Rome. While Roman officials consistently required only a perfunctory statement affirming Church teachings on apostasy, Neapolitan inquisitors increasingly emphasized bathing, dietary, and praying habits, and tied them to matters of intention, at the turn of the century. In its later cases, tribunal leaders focused on eliciting affirmations of Catholicism’s exclusive salvific worth. Livorno’s officials, on the other hand, stressed Catholic speech and dietary regimens in the tribunal’s early years and demanded renegades acknowledge links between action and belief in its later ones The dissertation explores how local leadership, religious dynamics, and regional geo-political conflicts may have shaped these varied approaches to addressing a shared goal: molding converts into obedient Catholics whose conduct was unlikely to cause public scandal. It makes original contributions to scholarly discussion of early modern religious conversions and inquisitions, and argues that centring inquisitions’ pragmatism toward “voluntary” penitents rather than the institutions’ repressiveness can help scholars write broader histories of social discipline that make room for local particularity. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, reconciliation, cities, institut, judic | 2, 4, 10, 11, 16 |
| Cassanelli, Tomas Alberto | Vanderlinde, Keith | Fast Radio Burst Localization with very Long Baseline Interferometry | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2022-11 | This thesis covers the development of Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) localization techniques for Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs). FRBs were discovered only in the 2000s and have revolutionized the radio transient field due to their unknown and complex emission mechanisms, their brightness, and the potential use as probes of the Universe's cosmology. The aim of this thesis project is to enhance the localization potential of Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) in order to identify galactic hosts, which are necessary to precisely measure redshifts of FRBs. The VLBI prototype station chosen, was the Algonquin Radio Observatory (ARO) 10-m telescope a decommissioned radio dish from the 1960s. During the first two years of PhD studies, a complete refurbishment of the system was done, which included an update on the analog signal chain and a new acquisition system. While upgrades were on their way, CHIME Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB) detected its first FRB in 2018, and today more than thousand have been observed. The ARO 10-m telescope has proved to be robust and stable over the years, with scientific results since its functioning on 2019 until the completion of this thesis (February 15th, 2022). Observations of at least three bright radio bursts have been recorded and analyzed at the ARO 10-m telescope, which have paved the way for the upcoming CHIME/FRB Outriggers project. A VLBI study has been carried out with the ARO testbed, including a new fringe fitting correlator model and a new method to phase calibrate using pulsars, particularity developed for the 400--800 MHz low frequency bandpass. The upcoming CHIME/FRB Outriggers project will have multiple baselines across North America in order to localized thousands of FRBs in the next years, to 50 mas precision, which no other experiment has been able to accomplish. Therefore, these results will open a new era in transient astronomy and unlock the unknown matter content of the Universe. | Ph.D. | emission | 7 |
| Kuipery, Adrian | Gehring, Adam | Defining the Role of Novel Therapeutics on Hepatitis B Virus Specific CD8 T Cell Recognition of Infected Hepatoma Cells and the Characterization of Mediators of the Male Bias of Liver Disease | Immunology | 2022-11 | Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) infection affects 292 million individuals globally and is the cause of an estimated 887,000 deaths annually, primarily through liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) as a consequence of chronic liver inflammation. CHB is managed with nucleos(t)ide analogues to prevent disease progression. However, nucleos(t)ide analogues do not cure CHB and can be required indefinitely. Therefore, there is a need for novel therapies enabling the long-term control of hepatitis B virus (HBV). The HBV-specific CD8 T cell response is central to the sustained control of HBV; however, it remains unclear how, or if, novel therapies for CHB will alter the function of HBV-specific CD8 T cells. When the outcomes of CHB are considered, sex plays a significant role in disease progression. Men develop HCC earlier and more frequently than women do. Together, this makes understanding if novel therapeutics can allow for the sustained control of HBV integral to preventing HCC. Using an in vitro model for HBV infection we evaluated two classes of novel therapeutics on the HBV-specific CD8 T cell response. We defined that immunomodulatory compounds can enhance CD8 T cell recognition of HBV through induction of the immunoproteasome by interferon dependent mechanisms. Additionally, we have shown that RNA interference can impede HBV-specific CD8 T cell recognition. Finally, we confirmed that men have worsened clinical outcome and elevated inflammatory potential during HBV reactivation. Using intrasinusoidal liver derived cells isolated through liver perfusion, we demonstrated that immune compositions between men and women are similar. Male liver monocytes responded to in vitro stimulations with more robust inflammatory cytokine production and had lower expression of negative regulators of Toll-like receptor signalling. Together, these data provide insight into how novel therapeutics may interact with the HBV-specific CD8 T cell response in vivo and identify a potential mechanism governing worse outcomes of CHB in men. | Ph.D. | women, production | 5, 12 |
| Li, Zhen | Wigdor, Daniel D | Enabling Consistent Workspaces Across Contexts For Information Workers | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Working with multiple physical and digital devices has become a commonplace activity today. Though every device within its own walled garden can be easily 'connected', users encounter gaps between the physical and digital world, fragmented storage solutions across devices, inconsistent interface designs, and a lack of mutual state awareness facilitating mixed-use. Modern operating systems often employ a device-centric model; as a result, operations are restricted to a particular device, leaving users without a sense of 'home' that manages their unified digital world. There is also a lack of consistent design guidelines across contexts that are equivalent to the desktop metaphor and WIMP interface in the multi-device environment. This dissertation presents an organizing principle of information to fill this gap and proposes a series of interaction techniques to demonstrate a consistent workspace across contexts. In particular, we highlight the values of the physical reality, arm-anchored interaction space, and unified shell interfaces managing personal information and devices. We first present a thorough examination of background literature, including investigations on how people work with physical and digital devices, theories and experiments on the proprioception and peripersonal space, and a summary of interaction techniques, frameworks, and hardware infrastructures adopted by existing work. Next, we explore the fusion of physical and digital documents via two experiments and a series of MR interactions that augment physical artifacts with rich, dynamic virtual content and combine the benefits of being physical and digital. We then conduct a study to investigate how users interact with an arm-anchored interface and examine a data-driven approach to optimize the layout of 3D UI controls surrounding the user's arm. We further present our design of a shell interface that enables consistent, spatially-aware access to information anytime and anywhere. | Ph.D. | worker, infrastructure, invest | 8, 9 |
| Al-Alami, Basema | Fadel, Mohammad | In Violation of International Law: The War on Terror and Anticipatory Self-defence | Law | 2022-11 | As Darryl Li writes in the Universal Enemy, this new world order is characterized by two forms of armed conflicts: national ethnic wars and a “globally threatening militant Islam.” The latter characterization is attributed to the attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States, after which the figure of the ‘Muslim’ evil ‘terrorist’ was designated as the enemy of all humankind. In light of this, the present paper tells a story of the development of the international legal regime in the realm of counter-terrorism, focusing on the doctrine of anticipatory self-defence that was introduced by the United States’ National Security Strategy in 2002. The paper argues that the novel doctrine of anticipatory self-defence introduced by the Bush administration not only undermines the principles of necessity and proportionality that govern the use of force under international law, but it also represents a neo-colonial extension of earlier colonial legacies of domination. | LL.M. | terroris | 16 |
| Lagzi, Saman | Hu, Ming GH||Romero, Gonzalo GR | Three Essays on Data-driven Revenue Management and Pricing | Management | 2022-11 | In this thesis we study data-driven approaches in the context of revenue management and pricing. In Chapter 2 we study the problem when a firm sets prices for products based on the transaction data, i.e., which product past customers chose from an assortment and what were the historical prices that they observed. Our approach does not impose a model on the distribution of the customers’ valuations and only assumes, instead, that purchase choices satisfy incentive-compatible constraints. The individual valuation of each past customer can then be encoded as a polyhedral set, and our approach maximizes the worst-case revenue assuming that new customers’ valuations are drawn from the empirical distribution implied by the collection of such polyhedra. We study the single-product case analytically and relate it to the traditional model-based approach. Moreover, we show that the optimal prices in the general case can be approximated at any arbitrary precision by solving a compact mixed-integer linear program. We also design three approximation strategies that are of low computational complexity and interpretable. In particular, the cut-off pricing heuristic has a competent provable performance guarantee. Comprehensive numerical studies based on synthetic and real data suggest that our pricing approach is uniquely beneficial when the historical data has a limited size or is susceptible to model misspecification. In Chapter 3 we study the potential negative impact of imbalanced compensation schemes on firm performance. We use a dataset from a radiology workflow platform that connects off-site radiologists with hospitals. These radiologists select tasks from a common pool, while service level is defined by priority-specific turnaround time targets. However, imbalances between pay and workload of different tasks could result in higher priority tasks with low pay-to-workload ratio receiving poorer service. We investigate this hypothesis, showing turnaround time is decreasing in pay-to-workload for lower priority tasks, whereas it is increasing in workload for high-priority tasks. Crucially, we find evidence of a spillover effect: Having many economically attractive tasks with low priority can lead to longer turnaround times for higher priority tasks, increasing the likelihood their likelihood of delay. In Chapter 4 we propose to use Deep Neural Networks to solve data-driven stochastic optimization problems. Given the historical data of the observed covariate, taken decision, and the realized cost in past periods, we train a neural network to predict the objective value as a function of the decision and the covariate. Once trained, for a given covariate, we optimize the neural network over the decision variable using gradient-based methods because the gradient and the Hessian matrix can be analytically computed. We characterize the performance our methodology based the generalization bound of the neural network. We show strong performance on two signature problems in operations management, the newsvendor problem and the assortment pricing problem. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Patel, Bhargav R | Kerman, Kagan | Development of Electrochemical and Bio-electrochemical Technologies for Environmental Applications | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2022-11 | Electrochemical and bioelectrochemical processes have recently emerged as intriguing options for sensing and wastewater treatment. There is an urgent need for the development of a sensing device capable of multiplex detections, as well as being cost-effective, quick, sensitive, portable, and selective. As nanotechnology advances, nanocomposites are emerging as model modifier components for meeting the aforementioned needs and amplifying electrochemical detection mechanisms via electrochemical sensors. In addition, bioelectrochemical systems are a novel bioengineering technology that combines electrogenic microbes with electrochemical methods to improve the microbes' reducing or oxidising metabolism. Power is generated in bioelectrochemical systems due to the oxidation reactions at the anode and reduction reactions at the cathode via electron transfer between electron acceptors and donors. Recently, microbial fuel cell (MFC) technology has emerged as a promising hybrid platform for the simultaneous removal of organic contaminants from wastewater and the generation of green energy using microorganisms already present in the wastewater.Cost-effective polyaniline-based nanocomposite modified graphite paste electrodes for simultaneous detection of phenolic pollutants such as benzenediol isomers and endocrine disrupting phenolic pollutants were developed. Furthermore, novel nanocomposites were developed to investigate the use of electrochemical sensors beyond environmental research by detecting biomolecules for clinical diagnosis, food safety, and the beverages industry. The feasibility of the developed sensors was also tested by analysing real-world samples of human urine, canned juice, hair dye, and wastewater. Finally, the dissertation focused on the fabrication of low-cost clay-based ceramic membranes, as an alternative to more expensive polymeric Nafion proton exchange membranes in MFC application. Ceramic membranes modified with plant-based organic waste such as durum wheat semolina (DWS) were developed. The DWS acted as a pore-forming agent and was used for the first time in the fabrication of novel porous ceramic membranes that improved MFC performance. This dissertation focused on the selection and optimization of electrode modifiers in conjunction with various electrochemical methods. It also concentrated on novel ceramic membrane modifiers, as well as the design and fabrication of nanocomposite-modified electrochemical sensors and MFCs. Finally, this dissertation elaborated on the concepts of electrochemical devices which have potential for miniaturisation and mass production. | Ph.D. | water, energy, labor, invest, production, waste, environmental, pollut | 6, 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Groga Bada, Joseph Camille | Yatchew, Adonis AY | Structural Identification of Production Functions | Economics | 2022-11 | This thesis addresses important questions about the theory of endogenous growth using micro-economic modeling, empirical studies and structural econometric identification. The thesis comprises three distinct but related chapters. The first chapter of the thesis highlights the importance of technology spillovers by developing a simple tournament model. The equilibrium demonstrates that technology spillovers have negative incentives effects on firms R&D investments, yet spillovers have several benefits: they potentially reduce R&D investments costs, and they impact positively aggregate variables such as industry-level prices. This chapter demonstrates that the level of social welfare and the performance of competitive markets depend upon the concentration of the market and the magnitude of technology spillovers. Consequently, the effectiveness of antitrust policies designed to increase social welfare or market efficiency is subject to the magnitude of technology spillovers. The second chapter of the thesis advances a dynamic structural econometric model to measure returns of R&D investments and the magnitude of technology spillovers. A key feature of the structural model is that both productivity and the number of patents granted are determined endogenously. In this model, externalities of technology are incorporated into the R&D investment problems. The parameters of the production function and the parameters of the equation of motion of productivity are identified. The novel estimator for production functions accounts for simultaneity, attrition, functional dependence and the reflection problem. The chapter provides empirical evidence for the theory of endogenous growth: R&D investments and technology spillovers are determinants of productivity heterogeneity across firms. The third chapter is the most important and advances a fundamental econometric result: the endogeneity problem is not well-defined, and it is not the source of identification issues in regression models. This chapter demonstrates that reduced-form models cannot be transparently identified because cross-moments between factor inputs and the residual are unknown. Subsequently, it is clearly established that controversial assumptions required for identification of production functions using control functions are not necessary. Identification of production functions parameters can be achieved using Euler-equations. The main assumptions of this original approach are profit-maximization and rational expectations. | Ph.D. | welfare, invest, production | 1, 9, 12 |
| Buffalo, Amanda | Bakan, Abigail | Kēdzéntēdé Kedzedı̨̄: Aunties, Disestablishment, and the Making of Communiversitea | Social Justice Education | 2022-11 | This work is an exploration of identity in relation to land+, language, nation, community, clan, and family; or what I call my ecocentric relational identity and relational-determination. Weaving my identity through stories and language, this work reflects on a lifelong journey of learning and applying the teachings of Dena Au’nezen (the highest law of the Kaska Dena) and Dena K’eh (the Dena way) in my community and work. From the perspectives and experiences of being a long-time advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit+ people and their families and survivors in the Yukon, nationally, and internationally, I articulate and examine tacit aspects of colonialism, ‘beneviolence’, and violence and speak to Indigenous experiences of resistance, antifragility, and survivance. This work, nested in the Kaska Dena community, seeks to rematriate Indigenous learning models and modalities, and introduces the concept of Denagogy1 (learning and leading from Dena K’eh), ecogogy (learning and leading from the land+), and ecocentric relational identity as foundational concepts. The dissertation in practice is presented in two parts: a narrative storytelling, and a digital educational model. Through the practice of dän känàdän äch’e (teaching) and känídän (learning) simultaneously, and the sharing of tea and stories, I have been gifted with the privilege of having a role in restory-ing the future through sharing a theory of decolonial living. This work introduces the practice of methodolotea as a formal research tool, deconstructing western approaches to teaching and learning while articulating the ways these have impugned and aspersed Indigenous teaching and learning methodologies and spaces as an act of genocide. Echō (Elders/highest teachers of Dena K’eh) often say Kēdzéntēdé Kedzedı̨̄ (we are all learning together) which is the conceptual midwife for introducing the model for what I call communiversitea in Kaska homelands._x000D_ _____________________________________1 Auntie Dorothy Smith, witnessing, 2022 | Ed.D. | learning, decolonial, women, girl, two-spirit, indigenous, land, violence | 4, 5, 10, 16, 15 |
| Gold, Efrat | Titchkosky, Tanya | Tracing Eugenics: The Rise of Totalizing Psychiatric Ideology in Canada | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | This dissertation explores constructions of psychiatry as accurate, effective, and necessary by tracing supposedly objective psychiatric facts to their subjective roots. I focus on post-WWII Montreal, where the discursive shift from “mental hygiene” into “mental health” signified a new era of psychiatric alignment with science and medicine in order to question the ostensible and self-proclaimed certainty of psychiatric philosophy and practice. I explore the purposeful association of psychiatry with medicine, foregrounding the ways that a totalizing ideology (Arendt, 1951) was used to buttress psychiatric expansion while simultaneously abstracting individuals into groups and types of mental health problems. By constructing the subjective opinions of professionals as objective reality, the facticity of psychiatry is rooted in eugenics hierarchies that are mobilized towards creating a particular version of desirable citizens. Using archival data from the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (Canada) and related organizations, I read expert-centered accounts against the grain, tracing ideologies, logical leaps, constructions of facticity, and overarchingly, tracing objective facts to their subjective situatedness. Focusing on the ways that undescribed and abstracted behaviours were used to funnel many individuals into a few problem-types, I show how constructions of contemporary mental health ideology are bound to social context. Specifically, I point to a psychiatric totalitarianism where all human suffering and problems become interpreted through a psychiatric lens and judged against problematic ideals of desirable citizens that bear direct overlap with eugenic ideals. This limited and limiting version of ‘the human’ rules Western social and economic hierarchies, defining both normalcy and abnormality as grounded in eugenic-based gradations that favour a white supremacist, patriarchal, and capitalist view of mental health. As such, the ideology propagated by psychiatry becomes increasingly further removed from people’s experiences of distress, defining each citizen as either participating and helping with Canada’s “mental health crisis” or else as being part of the problem and becoming categorized through the problem groups and types taxonomized within psychiatry. In this way, I show how psychiatric hegemony represents a medicalized approach to human suffering and problems that works to depoliticize distress and stunt social justice-informed change. | Ph.D. | ABS, mental health, citizen, hygien, capital, social justice | 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 16 |
| McBurney, Shilo Helen | Kwong, Jeffrey C | The Problem with Pertussis: Finding Undetected Pertussis Cases in Electronic Medical Record Primary Care (EMRPC) to Improve Data Accuracy and Burden Estimates | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Pertussis is a reportable disease in many countries and surveillance is essential, but ascertainment bias has limited data accuracy. However, the true extent of bias, and its impact on burden estimates, is unknown. Within this dissertation are three novel studies which aim to evaluate and enhance the accuracy of health data used for pertussis research in Ontario to improve burden estimates which can inform disease surveillance, health interventions, and public health policy.I used a stratified strategy to sample a reference standard from a primary care electronic medical record cohort to minimize partial verification bias while optimizing sensitivity precision. Eight hundred records were abstracted, with 208 (26.0%) definite and 261 (32.6%) possible prevalent pertussis cases. Classifications demonstrated a variety of case severities. During optimization, the predicted width of 95% confidence intervals for sensitivity ranged from 12.4% to 32.8%. I used a cohort-selected cross-sectional design to evaluate pertussis detection algorithms and reasons for lack of detection in a primary care electronic medical record database. The algorithm including all data measures achieved the highest sensitivity at 20.6%. Sensitivity increased to 100% after reclassifying symptom-only cases as non-cases, but the PPV remained low. Age at first episode was significantly associated with detection in half of the tested scenarios, and false negatives often had some history of immunization. I used Chao capture-recapture models to obtain abundance and sensitivity estimates using a dataset comprised of pertussis case report, laboratory, and health administrative data. I compared results between prevalence, incidence, and adjusted false positive case definitions. Findings demonstrated that all sources consistently fail to detect pertussis cases. Estimate validity improved after adjusting for false positives, demonstrating how capture-recapture methods can be adapted to further their utility to epidemiological research when data is biased. This research strives to improve understanding of gaps in pertussis case ascertainment and burden in Ontario while suggesting mitigation strategies. Each separate aim contributes to this effort. High quality data is essential for conducting vaccine research and effectiveness studies, in addition to evaluating immunization programs. As a result, findings from this study can help direct future research and policy towards the design of optimal public health interventions for pertussis. | Ph.D. | ABS, public health, vaccine, labor | 2, 3, 2008 |
| Chen, Kuilin | Lee, Chi-Guhn | Learning Representation to Build Models with Few-shot Data | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | Building models with limited data is one of the key steps towards the application of deep learning models in realistic scenarios. Under the framework of representation learning, we propose several novel algorithms for tackling challenging tasks in building models with limited data, including standard few-shot learning, incremental few-shot learning, and unsupervised few-shot learning. In the first part of this thesis, we propose an approach to learn low-rank representation that generalizes well to a new task using just a few training samples. High-quality representation can be found by averaging the weights of neural networks during the pre-training phase. Our approach achieves strong performance on both few-shot classification and regression benchmarks. We then consider incremental few-shot learning, in which the model incrementally learns new tasks from few-shot samples without forgetting old ones. We propose an approach to harmonize old knowledge preserving and new knowledge adaptation through quantized vectors of the learned representation. Prediction is made in a nonparametric way using similarity to learned reference vectors, which circumvents biased weights in a parametric classification layer during incremental few-shot learning. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms other state-of-the-art methods in incremental learning. In addition, we develop deep Laplacian eigenmaps to learn representation from unlabeled image data for downstream few-shot learning tasks. Our method learns representation by grouping similar images together and can be intuitively interpreted by random walks on augmented training data. The proposed method significantly closes the performance gap between supervised and unsupervised few-shot learning. To get us closer to general unsupervised representation learning across different data types, we present a domain-agnostic self-supervised learning method, which learns representation from unlabeled data without domain-specific data augmentations. The proposed method is adversarial perturbation based latent reconstruction (APLR), which is closely related to multi-dimensional Hirschfeld-Gebelein-Renyi maximal correlation and has theoretical guarantees on the linear probe error. APLR not only outperforms existing domain-agnostic self-supervised learning methods, but also closes the performance gap to domain-specific self-supervised learning methods on various domains, such as tabular data, images, and audio. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Kalim, Jamil Musa | Sawchuk, Peter | An Investigation of Emotional Labour and Race in Teaching | Social Justice Education | 2022-11 | What is Emotional Labour (EL)? Emotional labour is the process of managing and displaying emotions in the public sphere of our lives, most importantly the workplace, where emotional labour is connected to employment and is therefore done for a wage. In this doctoral thesis I explore how emotional labour is a human process that can be complicated by personal factors such as race. There were three critical questions posed in this research: (1) what is the nature of emotional labour in the work lives of Black teachers in this study? (2) how is emotional labour experienced in the work lives of Black teachers in this study? (3) what is the nature of the responses and strategies in relation to emotional labour that Black teachers in the study use in their work lives? A mixed methods design was used to gather data about the emotional labour experiences of Black teachers from two sources: (1) an online survey administered to 66 teachers from various racial groupings from the Greater Toronto Area; and (2) a series of in-depth interviews with seven Black teachers. The survey findings corroborated the experience of emotional labour for Black teachers and revealed three key concepts: racialized emotional labour (REL)—the additional emotional labour associated with being Black that prioritizes labour output; racialized emotional work (REW)—the additional emotional work associated with being Black that prioritizes human output; and white emotional privilege (WEP)—the emotional advantage gained by White teachers who are not required to engage in extra emotional labour/work attributable to race. The in-depth interviews suggested three types of teachers based on the ways they engage REL and REW: (1) Struggling to Resist; (2) Strategically Coping; and (3) Accommodating,Sticking to the Classroom, and Keeping-On. The research also provided foundational information on the development of copingstrategies among Black teachers and on the significance of spheres of interaction in the emotional experience of teachers. This complex and very rich approach gave a voice to Black teachers and focused on their personal perspectives | Ph.D. | employment, labour, wage, invest | 8, 9 |
| Deecker, Shayna Raylen | Ensminger, Alexander W | Leveraging CRISPR-Cas to Examine the Interplay Between Legionella pneumophila and Mobile Genetic Elements | Biochemistry | 2022-11 | Legionella pneumophila is a Gram-negative, intracellular bacterium and an accidental human pathogen. Much of the research to date has focused on L. pneumophila's ability to cause disease, and while this is important for developing treatments, studying the factors that influence its environmental persistence is critical to mitigating future outbreaks of disease. To this end, I focused on leveraging the CRISPR-Cas adaptive immune system to examine the impact that mobile genetic elements could have on L. pneumophila. I provided bioinformatic and experimental evidence to support the hypothesis that plasmid-based CRISPR-Cas systems are likely circulated by horizontal gene transfer, then leveraged by the bacterium to strengthen and restore its defences against environmental threats. Next, I expanded on our lab's previous work to generate a comprehensive, bioinformatic catalogue of the mobile genetic elements that L. pneumophila encounters in its environment. Using an expanded catalogue of CRISPR spacer sequences and a custom bioinformatics workflow, I showed that one or more lytic gokushoviruses and the prophage-like Legionella mobile element-1 (LME-1) are frequently encountered by L. pneumophila, providing the first evidence that the bacterium is challenged by lytic phages in the environment. In light of my findings, I re-visited the hypothesis that LME-1 could form phage-like particles under one or more experimental conditions, as opposed to being a phage remnant. I used transmission electron microscopy to show that under axenic growth conditions in rich media, LME-1 could form podophage-like particles, and that these particles were abolished in LME-1 mutants. I also showed that the LME-1 genome was protected from DNase treatment in extracellular fractions, and that a Xer recombinase, XerL, was implicated in LME-1 excision. Finally, I designed and validated a new assay to assess if the LME-1 phage-like particle is required for transfer between Legionella strains. Taken together, the data presented in my graduate research thesis highlight the role that mobile genetic elements could have on L. pneumophila's environmental persistence, and provide avenues for future research to mitigate outbreaks of Legionnaires' disease. | Ph.D. | environmental | 13 |
| Bahlmann, Laura Christine | Shoichet, Molly S | Oxime Click-crosslinked Cryogels to Quantify and Target Tumour-associated Macrophage Invasion in Hodgkin Lymphoma | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) cancer cells account for less than 5% of the tumour microenvironment, yet drug screening and treatment strategies typically focus on targeting malignant cells. Tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) are associated with poor prognosis and resistance to therapy; however, there remains an unmet need for a suitable pre-clinical model to identify macrophage-targeting therapeutics. We analyzed the HL extracellular matrix (ECM) in primary tumours and found a high abundance of hyaluronic acid, collagen, and fibronectin, which guided the design of our HL-tumour mimetic hydrogel: a cryogel comprised of gelatin, hyaluronan, and fibronectin-derived peptides crosslinked using oxime click chemistry. Primary human macrophages seeded thereon migrated to a greater depth in cryogels with greater porosity and pore size; with fibronectin-derived peptides enhancing macrophage migration. We then studied classically and alternatively activated polarized macrophages in these cryogels. While IL-4/IL-13-stimulated, alternatively-activated macrophages invaded more than IFNgamma +LPS-stimulated, pro-inflammatory macrophages, both states adopted a combination of matrix-metalloproteinase (MMP)-dependent and independent invasion mechanisms. We then studied the effect of HL co-culture on macrophage invasion and found that HL direct co-culture and HL conditioned media promoted macrophage invasion into cryogels to the same extent. HL CM-induced invasion was associated with a unique polarization phenotype and upregulation of matrix-metalloproteinase 9 (MMP9) activity. In an invasion inhibitor screen of 25 drugs, we identified 5 drug hits that significantly reduced HL TAM invasion; one of these drug hits, currently approved for treating autoimmune diseases, both decreased invasion and enhanced the percentage of M1-like, anti-neoplastic/pro-inflammatory macrophages; another has demonstrated recent success in HL clinical trials. Collectively, we have designed a platform to study TAMs in HL and 1) reveal immune effects of drugs currently under clinical investigation, 2) suggest the repurposing of approved drugs to treat HL, and 3) ultimately bridge the gap between standard 2D drug screening and complex clinical readouts. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Gillan, Caitlin Fiona Jane | Dobrow, Mark | Healthcare Professional Association Agency in Preparing for Complex Technological Interventions: A Multiple-case Study of Artificial intelligence in Radiation Medicine and Medical Imaging | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | As artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly integrated in healthcare, associated impact on employment, education, ethics, and professional regulation requires consideration. It is incumbent on healthcare professional associations (HPAs) to assist their memberships in preparing for related change. HPAs hold a unique role in establishing the socio-cultural, normative, and regulative elements of healthcare professions. An exploratory multiple-case study approach was employed to consider how, when faced with AI as a disruptive technology, HPAs engage in sense-making and legitimation of the change in order to support their membership in preparing for future practice.Normalization process theory (NPT) suggests behavioural constructs required for complex change, providing a novel lens through which to consider the agency of macro-level actors in practice change. Four HPAs were studied, selected for early consideration of AI technologies in their fields. Data collection involved key-informant interviews and document review, focusing on sense-making, engagement, coordinated action, and reflexive monitoring work of the HPA. Concept coding allowed for inductive framing of individual case narratives and subsequent cross-case analysis. Concepts were then mapped against NPT constructs. Eighteen interviews were conducted and documents spanning 2013 to 2020 were reviewed. Eleven coding categories and 25 subconcepts were identified, spanning perceived impact of AI, perspectives on prevalent mindsets, roles of HPAs in preparing their membership, including changing education needs. The HPAs studied engaged in work that aligned with NPT in varying ways, with perceived roles in education, advocacy, and leadership. Emergent trends across the four HPAs suggested three factors that might influence engagement in work that aligned with NPT; factors related to the organization, those related to the profession, and those related to the innovation in question. All HPAs acknowledged AI’s impact on practice in medical imaging and radiation medicine, while some saw it as more of a disruptive force and assigned it greater priority in the organizations. Conceptualizations of the potential threat to the profession and the HPA’s role in supporting members in navigating that future landscape were also key insights gleaned through this work. This research suggests how healthcare professions are engaging at the macro level in the implementation and normalization work related to AI, and shed light on nuanced perspectives on AI of groups that would interface with it. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge, employment, land | 3, 4, 8, 15 |
| Cronin, Shawna M | Jaglal, Susan B | Availability and Accessibility of Primary Care for Community Dwelling Persons with Dementia | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | This thesis comprises a description and analysis of access to primary care (PC) for community dwelling persons living with dementia (PLWD) in Ontario. PLWD benefit from PC for diagnosis, management, and connection to specialists and community supports, however, PC physicians and services are not equitably distributed in Ontario. The Patient Centred Accessibility Framework was used to define access and guide this thesis. Population-level health administrative databases were used to create a cross-section of community dwelling persons with prevalent, physician diagnosed dementia. To understand supply, demand, and realized access of community dwelling PLWD, the first objective used the cross-sectional study group described above, and semi-structured key informant interviews in a convergent mixed methods design. Access to PC in rural and urban areas was compared, finding that rural areas included a higher proportion of PLWD compared to urban areas, and that there was a larger supply of physicians in urban areas. Qualitatively, I explored how PC providers provide care and perceive supply and demand of health and community services for PLWD. Identified themes emphasized the different types of challenges in rural and urban settings. In objective two, I quantified the association between house calls (availability), travel time to PC physician (geographic accessibility), appropriateness (continuity of care) and emergency department (ED) use. I used regression analyses to measure the association in the study group, followed by stratification by urban and rural residence of PLWD. Results indicated that longer travel time to PC physician was associated with higher likelihood of ED use in urban settings. In the third objective, I measured the association between travel time, house calls, and continuity of care, and distress of caregivers of PLWD. Regression analyses of the entire study group were conducted, then the group was stratified by sex. Results demonstrated a positive association between having a physician who conducts house calls and caregiver distress. Findings from this thesis emphasize challenges in urban and rural access to PC, identifying potential for improving health use and outcomes among PLWD. These findings are relevant for clinicians, administrators, and policy makers working to improve access to PC in Ontario. | Ph.D. | equit, urban, rural, accessib | 10, 11 |
| Fazekas, Angela | Georgis, Dina | Creative Becomings: Explicit Fanfiction, Reinventing Adolescence, and Queer Relationality | Women and Gender Studies Institute | 2022-11 | This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study into the experiences of adolescent fans in online fan spaces, particularly as they interact with sexually explicit fanfiction. Drawing together the threads of queer theory, adolescent sexuality, critical race theory, and fan studies, I use debates about teenagers and access to pornographic fanfiction as a starting point for a wider consideration of queer adolescent fans, the generative capacity of fan creative writing, particularly of the pornographic sort, and the relationality between adult and teenage fans. Working from Jen Gilbert’s (2007) provocation that “rather than trying to extricate youth from risk, for adolescence to occur, a risk must be taken ... tolerating this view of adolescence as development will require something more of adults and sex educators: the risk of relationality” (50), I explore sexually explicit fanfiction written and read by teenagers which puts adults and adolescents into direct conversations about desire and sexuality. Given the moral panics about teenagers accessing sexual information and engaging with sexual narratives online, as well as discourses that cast any adult engaging in conversations about sexuality with teenagers outside of an institutional setting as inherently predatory, I question what fandom and sexually explicit fanfiction might offer us in terms of alternative forms of “growing up” and relationality outside of the discourses of protection and education. I thus draw on theories of storytelling, play, digital space, and sideways growth to explore how/if fandom can offer a more generative way of looking at teenage experiences in the digital realm. Working from an understanding of fanfiction as collective, intertextual, and generative storytelling, each chapter of my dissertation involves discourse analysis and a close reading of a mix of fan-generated texts, from fanfiction (including some of my own early writing) to the debates, discussions, and creative engagements with fanfiction stories on the Archive of Our Own, Tumblr, and Twitter. In looking beyond moral panics, and the dual impulses to educate and to protect, I seek to consider what kind of creative work teenagers can generate and what this work can do – both for teenagers and for adults who interact with them. | Ph.D. | queer, institut | 5, 16 |
| Hemani, Salima | Parry, Monica | South Asian Low-sodium sTudy (SALT): A Multi-Method Approach | Nursing Science | 2022-11 | Background: Hypertension (HTN) is prevalent in South Asian Canadians (SAC), and dietary sodium is the primary contributing factor. The overall goal of the South Asian Low-sodium sTudy (SALT) is to describe contextual factors and determine the feasibility of implementing a six-week low sodium community-based dietary intervention to improve outcomes in SAC with stage one HTN. Methods: SALT is a multi-method study consisting of a pilot randomized controlled trial (RCT) and a cross-sectional survey. Following ethics approval, participants with stage one HTN were randomized to a usual care group or an intervention group. Participants in the usual care group received the HTN Canada booklet and those in the intervention group received the SALT Intervention (culturally specific manual, five online modules, five weekly telephone calls). The Sodium Calculator, health literacy assessment short-form, Asian Indian Dietary Acculturation Measure (AIDAM), Knowledge, Attitude, and Behaviour (KAB) survey were utilized. A non-probability sample of SAC over 18 years was recruited for the survey. Results: A total of 292 SAC participated in blood pressure (BP) screenings, 35 (12%) were eligible for the pilot RCT. Of these, 23 (65.7%) consented. Results demonstrated some feasibility in terms of recruitment, retention, acceptability and one of the four components of intervention engagement. Participants lacked sodium-related knowledge and had positive changes in their attitudes toward lowering dietary sodium. Linear Mix Models found a significant effect of time but no effect for the group or group-by-time interaction in BP and a significant effect of group (p=0.044) and no effect of time (p=0.861) and group-by-time interaction for urinary sodium (p=0.0263). A total of 354 SAC completed the cross-sectional survey. Survey results suggest that SAC has a mean sodium intake of 2,117±1896 mg/day, and most of the respondents were concerned about their sodium intake but lacked sodium-related knowledge. Conclusion: The finding of the SALT study suggests that SAC consume a higher than Adequate Intake recommendation of sodium; they are concerned about their sodium intake but lack the knowledge for behaviour change. Results of the pilot RCT suggest that a six-week low sodium community-based dietary intervention is feasible and a larger RCT is warranted. | Ph.D. | knowledge, consum | 4, 12 |
| Konforti, Lazar | Isakson, Ryan||Prudham, Scott | “Nosotros no comemos caña”: Defence of Territory and Agrarian Change in the Polochic Valley, Guatemala | Geography | 2022-11 | Since the turn of the 21st century, the establishment and subsequent expansion of three (agro)extractive industries – sugarcane, oil palm, and nickel mining – in the Polochic valley lowlands of northern Guatemala has reduced local indigenous Q’eqchi’ campesino (peasant) communities’ access to farmland. Over the years, campesino groups and their allies have engaged in various forms of political contestation in “defence of territory”. In 2015, Chabil Utzaj, the sugarcane company, ceased operations following a second mass occupation of its plantations. As a result, over 800 campesino households now each have access to around 3.5 ha of farmland. In this dissertation, I employ an extended livelihoods approach consisting of archival research, oral histories, key informant interviews, and household surveys grounded in agrarian political economy to explore how the struggle for defence of territory has contested this latest wave of territorialisation driven by (agro)extractive industries and affected the trajectory of agrarian change in the Polochic valley lowlands. First, I find that while the struggle has produced remarkable achievements of immense intrinsic value to campesinos, household incomes remain, on average, well below national and international poverty lines. Campesino households with access to land by and large provide cheap labour, cheap wage goods, and cheap commodities (including environmental services) that sustain the national plantation-based agro-export industry and related global circuits of accumulation. The campesino struggle thus ultimately co-produced a pattern of uneven development characterised by functional dualism. Second, I argue that campesinos and their allies made effective use of available political opportunities, both toeing the line of “acceptable” politics and strategically transgressing its boundaries when necessary, to contest the reterritorialisation process under way. However, the nature of Guatemala’s elite-dominated political spaces limits the scope of the transformation that can be achieved. While campesinos were able to contest property relations and liberate much-needed spaces of social reproduction, the broader structures that shape labour regimes, income distribution, and social reproduction have remained largely intact. The long-term goal of sustainable agrarian change will remain conditional on a radical transformation of power relations and political spaces within Guatemala – a transformation that would require rethinking the scope of territorial struggles. | Ph.D. | poverty, income distribution, agro, labour, wage, indigenous, income, production, environmental, land | 1, 2, 8, 10, 16, 12, 13, 15 |
| Park, EunJee | Schuurmans, Carol | Developing a Direct Neuronal Reprogramming Strategy to Improve Motor Function in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis | Biochemistry | 2022-11 | An estimated 3,000 Canadians suffer from Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a disease associated with the degeneration of upper motor neurons in deep cortical layers and lower motor neurons in the spinal cord. In both human patients and rodent models, there is evidence for a dying-forward model in which brain pathology precedes spinal cord motor neuron loss. There are no curative strategies for ALS, with current drugs (Riluzole, Edaravone) extending a patient’s life-expectancy only 2-3 months. During my thesis project, I investigated the potential of direct neuronal reprogramming in vivo as a potential therapeutic strategy to replace lost upper motor neurons and delay disease progression. My hypothesis was that astrocyte-to-neuron lineage conversion would replace lost neurons and delay disease progression in a mouse model of ALS. To test this hypothesis, I first demonstrated that a mutated version of the proneural gene Ascl1, containing six serine-to-alanine (SA) phosphosite mutations (Ascl1SA6), was more efficient than Ascl1 at converting motor cortex astrocytes to induced neurons (iNeurons) in vivo. I also found that a short version of the glial fibrillary acid promoter (GFAP) had increased astrocyte specificity compared to a longer GFAP promoter, and that adeno-associated virus with capsid 5 (AAV5) was better than AAV8 at targeting astrocytes (Chapter 2). Next, I used spatial transcriptomics to create a molecular map of neuronal reprogramming in vivo. Here, I identified the gene regulatory networks associated with neuronal lineage conversion and identified Zbtb18 and Id2 as critical hub transcription factors that are also turned on during in vitro neuronal reprogramming (Chapter 3). Finally, I expressed Ascl1SA6 in motor cortex astrocytes in hSOD1G93A mice, a model of ALS, and demonstrated that this therapeutic approach could increase lifespan and improve motor behaviour compared to a control vector in male and to a lesser extent female mice (Chapter 4). Given the promising therapeutic impact of Ascl1SA6 astrocyte-to-neuron lineage conversion in hSOD1G93A mice, in vivo neuronal reprogramming has potential to become a novel therapeutic strategy for ALS. | Ph.D. | female, invest | 5, 9 |
| Kadu, Mudathira | Wodchis, Walter P | The Evaluation of Bundled Care for Patients with Congestive Heart Failure and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Bundled care, also known as the Integrated Funding Model initiative, was implemented by the Ontario Ministry of Health for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and congestive heart failure (CHF). The intervention focused on integrating acute and home care for up to 60 days post-discharge. This thesis generated evidence with three studies to inform health care administrators’ and policymakers’ decisions to scale, spread, or redesign bundled care for patients with COPD and CHF. The first study applied machine learning (ML) approaches to predict 90-day unplanned readmission or death in patients with CHF and compared their performance with a commonly used regression model called the LACE+ index. Overall, the ML models showed modest model discrimination. The gradient boosting machine model had the best discrimination with an Area Under the Receiver Operating Curve (AUROC) of 0.700, which was marginally better than the logistic regression model (AUROC: 0.695) and moderately better than the LACE+ index (AUROC: 0.648). The second study conducted an effectiveness and cost-effectiveness evaluation of the bundled care program among patients hospitalized for COPD and CHF within a 24-month follow-up. In patients with COPD, bundled care was associated with a decrease in the risk of death and an increase in unplanned readmission, but no difference in the risk of emergency department visits within 24 months. In patients with CHF, there were no differences in these outcomes. Participation in the program was cost-effective for both conditions and resulted in significant cost savings in patients with CHF but not significant in COPD. The third study examined bundled care’s level of intervention fidelity for patients with COPD and CHF, and whether it was associated with unplanned readmission within 12 months of follow-up. This analysis suggests that while in aggregate, the intervention fidelity of bundled care for patients with COPD and CHF was not associated with readmission within a 12-month follow-up, specific intervention components were associated with reduced readmission. As healthcare leaders and administrators seek to improve patient outcomes as they transition from hospital to home, evidence from this thesis can inform decision-making regarding the implementation of bundled care in Ontario. | Ph.D. | health care, healthcare, learning, transit | 3, 4, 11 |
| Urner, Martin Andreas | Fan, Eddy | Time-varying Intensity of Mechanical Ventilation and Outcomes of Patients with Acute Respiratory Failure | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Background: Mortality in acute respiratory failure remains high despite treatment with lung-protective mechanical ventilation. Strategies focusing on limiting driving pressure (∆P) during mechanical ventilation have been proposed to mitigate ventilator-associated lung injury and to further reduce mortality. However, the effectiveness of such sustained interventions in terms of patient-important outcomes remains unclear. Methods: The association between daily dynamic ∆P and ICU mortality was measured using Bayesian joint models in mechanically ventilated patients recorded in the Toronto Intensive Care Observational Registry. In addition, the causal effects of sustained interventions on static or dynamic ∆P on ventilator mortality compared to usual care were estimated under full adherence using the parametric g-formula. Using data from the COVID-19 Critical Care Consortium registry, the treatment effectiveness of extracorporeal life support (ECMO) – a rescue therapy to maintain gas exchange while minimizing exposure to higher intensities of mechanical ventilation – was investigated using marginal structural models with inverse probability weighting in patients with COVID-19-related, acute respiratory failure. Results: Each daily increment in dynamic ∆P was associated with a significant increase in the hazard of death. Ventilator mortality (95% CI) of patients with acute respiratory failure would have been reduced by 0.6% (95% CI: 0.3% to 1.2%) or 1.9% (95% CI: 1.7% to 2.2%) had either daily static or dynamic ∆P been limited ≤ 15 cmH2O, compared to usual care where tidal volumes and plateau pressures were already controlled (risk ratio 0.90, 95% CI 0.89 to 0.92). Secondary analyses showed that early and sustained interventions on ∆P were more effective than brief or later limitations. For patients with COVID-19-related acute respiratory failure, ECMO therapy reduced mortality by 7.1% (8.2% to 6.1%) compared to conventional mechanical ventilation (risk ratio 0.78, 95% CI 0.75 to 0.82). ECMO therapy was most effective if provided early during mechanical ventilation to patients with age < 65 years and PaO2/FiO2 < 80 mmHg or with static ∆P > 15 cmH2O. Conclusion: Early and sustained interventions to limit exposure to higher intensities of mechanical ventilation represent a promising strategy to reduce mortality of patients with acute respiratory failure and should be investigated in future clinical trials. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Andargie, Maedot Solomon | Touchie, Marianne||O'Brien, William | Evaluating the Acoustic Performance of Multi-unit Residential Buildings and the Associated Effects of Noise Exposure on Occupants' Comfort | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | Exposure to noise can cause annoyance, disturbance of daily activities and increase the risk of adverse health issues. Despite these recognized risks, exposure to high levels of noise is increasing due to population growth and urbanization. Occupants who live in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) are at an increased risk because, in addition to outdoor noise, they can be exposed to noise from various indoor sources, such as neighbours, elevators, and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, which can increase occupants’ overall noise exposure. Compared to single-family homes, MURB occupants also have very limited noise mitigation strategies available to them which can worsen their perception of their acoustic environment. To enhance current knowledge on acoustic comfort in MURBs, surveys and field measurements of sound insulation and outdoor noise levels were used in this dissertation to examine the effects of noise on occupants and explore acoustic and non-acoustic factors that affect occupants’ perception of noise. The results showed that indoor noise from neighbours and HVAC systems, and outdoor noise from traffic and construction are the most problematic noise sources. The analysis identified annoyance, effects on work performance at home and sleep disturbance as key effects of noise. However, there was a weak correlation between measured acoustic conditions and reported annoyance levels. Occupants in buildings with low indoor noise levels (LAeq,24h = 35.7–36.8 dB) expressed higher outdoor noise annoyance levels than those with LAeq,24h above 40 dB. Similarly, occupants in a building with a high impact sound insulation level (AIIC 62) had similar impact noise annoyance levels to those in buildings with AIIC 31–32. Exposure to outdoor noise was identified as an important factor that can provide a masking effect to indoor noise and reduce reported annoyance due to indoor noise. The effects of outdoor noise however depend on suite location. The results also showed that AIIC correlates better with the perceived effect on work performance compared to annoyance level. The finding suggests that disturbance of work and other activities can be used as additional metrics to assess the relationship between acoustic comfort and sound insulation. | Ph.D. | health issues, knowledge, buildings, urban | 3, 4, 9, 11 |
| Nguyen, Megan | Kontos, Pia C | Rethinking Emotions: A Phenomenological, Photo-Elicitation Study of Individuals Living with Cancer | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | The dominant discourse on emotions constructs them as irrational, psychological states. This perspective is rooted in Western philosophy, which tends to assume that the body is an unfeeling, material object, separate from and governed by the mind. The field of oncology is also rooted in this philosophy in that it predominantly characterizes distressing emotions as cognitive disturbances that require mitigation and prioritizes cognitive reflections upon inner feelings as a means to access, identify, and measure distressing emotions. However, I argue that this narrow focus produces a limited and sterile account of emotional experiences that is detached from how they are felt and lived.In contrast to the Cartesian mind-body dualism, I apply a synthesis of Merleau-Ponty’s reconceptualization of perception, and Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical notion of habitus to the phenomenon of emotions, to generate an alternative conceptualization of emotions that captures the full complexity of their experience and expression. I do so through an analysis of findings drawn from a qualitative, arts-based photo-elicitation study in which I explore in depth the experience and expression of emotions, of 10 individuals living with cancer. Based on my analysis I argue that emotions are inextricably interwoven in the fabric of our relationships and constitute an embodied way of knowing that can bring into being new possibilities for one’s growth and development in the experience of illness. There is a particularly transformative aspect to emotions in that they can move us to express ourselves differently and in so doing, mobilize new ways of relating to ourselves, the world, and others. My research not only enriches the discourse on emotions in the context of cancer, but also informs the broader scholarship on emotions by bringing in the body in a way that respects the existential immediacy of the body, without rendering the socio-cultural world peripheral. Recognizing the interrelationship between emotions, the body, and society opens new possibilities for understanding how emotions might reflect and reinforce the productive and materializing effects of caring relations and health care practices, but also how they might serve to reimagine them in more humanistic ways. | Ph.D. | health care, illness, urban | 3, 11 |
| Aboussalah, Amine Mohamed | Lee, Chi-Guhn | Exploiting Structure to Mitigate Risk in Real-world Financial Control Problems | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | Many researchers have been applying a variety of machine learning tools to a variety of financial control problems. Reinforcement learning would seem to be the most appropriate tool for portfolio management and related problems which involve interaction between an agent and an environment but the applications of this tool have been limited. We studied the challenges for the application of reinforcement learning to real world problems and developed solutions for these challenges. Along the way, we developed a theoretical framework for understanding the performance of reinforcement learning for time series data which incorporates concepts from operations research. We found that incorporating prior knowledge as structure in the reinforcement learning algorithm improves performance. Our research identified four different ways of incorporating structure from the real world into control algorithms. One of the most important challenges for financial control problems is optimizing the trade off between risk and return. We formulated risk as structure in our reinforcement learning framework to encourage the learning algorithms to meet a risk goal or to balance risk and return. Adding financial structure helped improve learning leading to more reliable and sample efficient algorithms with reduced variance, and better performance in terms of total return._x000D_ This real-world reinforcement learning framework deals with portfolio management from the perspective of a portfolio manager at an institution with a local point of view and a local understanding of risk. The collective behavior of many institutions gives rise to global risks that cannot be evaluated or mitigated by individual institutions, so a global viewpoint of risk is required. We extended our investigation of risk to include global risk management and developed a computational systemic risk environment to model the interaction between institutions and simulate cascade failures in financial networks. To control cascade failures in financial networks, we developed a two-stage network optimization algorithm using quantum partitioning and showed that the algorithm successfully delays cascade failures. The cost function for this algorithm incorporates features related to the structure of the financial network and leads to partitions that tend to confine contagion within their boundaries. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, invest, trade, institut | 4, 9, 10, 16 |
| Braun, Michael J | Handley, Antoinette | ‘We vote for good things’: The moral economy of voting in South Africa, 2009-2019 | Political Science | 2022-11 | South Africa has witnessed the emergence of electoral competitiveness between 2009-2019 as the dominance of the African National Congress (ANC) began to decline. During this time there was an increase in both abstention and opposition party support, making it a fruitful time to interrogate how voters make the decisions which ultimately determine the trajectory of democracy - supporting the ruling party, abstaining, or voting for the opposition. In contrast to the dominant explanations of ‘rational’ economic voting in political science and neopatrimonialism in the African context, this study finds that voters evaluate their options based upon both strategic and affective considerations. Voters assess the likelihood that political parties will provide them with material benefits but are also influenced by party loyalty and perceptions about the credibility of parties in promoting the ‘just’ distribution of public goods. Amid declining ANC loyalty and corruption scandals, abstention was the dominant trend among voters who did not see any opposition parties as viable alternatives. Both voters and local activists wanted to support parties which showed a commitment to do ‘good things’ in their policy-orientations and actions, so opposition parties were most successful among young people when they appeared to be a credible and efficacious voice for the ideas and frustrations of their generation. The Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) gained members and supporters with its populist political style, purporting to represent the interests of Black youth, mineworkers, and informal settlements. This strategy of opposition party building was effective where it could establish ideological and affective linkages among local activists who, in turn, could enhance the party’s reputation for contributing to the public ‘good’. In a context of vast inequality, urbanization, and single-party dominance, appropriating local struggles was a cost-effective strategy of opposition party building because it gave them a presence in the communities they claim to represent. Political ideas were packaged with a political style that projected efficacy, helping to recruit young people and build a partisan identity for those who felt excluded from the economic policies and political career pathways controlled by the ANC. | Ph.D. | ABS, worker, inequality, equalit, urban, corrupt, democra | 2, 8, 10, 11, 16 |
| Roy Goswami, Shrestha | Yan, Ning | Ionic Liquid Mediated Synthesis of Starch Maleates and their Application in Biodegradable Polymer Composites | Forestry | 2022-11 | Highly substituted starch maleate-based biodegradable polymer composites are desirable for applications, such as in food packaging films and water purification adsorbents, especially when product recycling is not desired due to contamination concerns. The conventional synthesis method for obtaining highly substituted starch maleates involves the usage of non-recyclable organic solvent and catalyst which makes the process less sustainable. In this thesis, recyclable imidazolium chloride-based ionic liquids (ILs) were applied as a solvent/catalyst system to develop highly substituted starch maleates for their applications in biodegradable composites. It was found that the amylose-rich starches yielded starch maleates with a higher degree of maleic anhydride substitution (DStitration: 1.17, DSNMR≈0.07) than amylopectin-rich starches. By replacing the [C4mim]+ cation in ILs with shorter allyl groups, such as [Amim]+, the extent of interactions between the amylose-rich starch and maleic anhydride could be further increased, providing starch maleate with even higher DS (DStitration: 1.2, DSNMR: 0.1). The obtained maleates were then used to fabricate epoxidized soybean oil and polylactic acid composite films for packaging fatty foods. This novel composite film achieved a 3-fold increase in ductility with only a 14% decrease in tensile strength compared to those of pure PLA film. Besides, the composite film fully degraded in compost within 4 weeks, while only 20wt% of pure PLA film degraded under the same composting conditions. Moreover, the high-DS starch maleates were combined with calcium alginate to make biodegradable composite adsorbents for the removal of methylene blue dye in contaminated water. The novel composite could adsorb methylene blue up to 60.54+3.71 mg/g (corresponding to an initial methylene blue concentration of 170 mg/L, a standard concentration typically found in effluents sourced from the textile sector). The composite adsorbent was also capable of adsorbing and desorbing methylene blue (80% efficiency at 4th regeneration cycle), as well as degradation in saline water at the rate of 8.55 wt.%/day at 37°C, thereby showing promise for avoiding secondary pollution at the end of the product usage. Overall, this thesis study demonstrated that recyclable ILs are highly attractive for synthesizing high-DS starch maleates to develop a variety of biodegradable polymer composites for consumer and industrial usage. | Ph.D. | pollution, water, contamination, consum, recycl, pollut, regeneration | 3, 6, 12, 14, 15 |
| Abdalla, Mohamed Mohamed Saad Atia | Hirst, Graeme||Rudzicz, Frank | Rethinking Clinical De-identification | Computer Science | 2022-11 | The restricted availability of free-text clinical notes and embedding-models trained on clinical notes is a bottleneck in deploying machine learning in clinical settings. To ameliorate concerns regarding the confidentiality of patient data, researchers are developing methods which automatically remove sensitive personal information from notes. While these methods appear to perform exceedingly well, often with reported precision and recall well above 95%, automated approaches for de-identification are still not trusted by clinicians because there remains non-zero risk. In this work, we present fundamental limitations associated with current approaches to de-identification that cannot be solved by incremental improvements to model performance. These limitations stem from the fact that current approaches are all trained in a supervised manner. To address these limitations, this thesis proposes the first unsupervised approach to the de-identification on free-text clinical notes. The proposed algorithm replaces all tokens with other tokens pseudo-randomly sampled from trained embeddings and is most useful for tasks where humans are not required to read the de-identified notes (e.g., training word embeddings for public release, piloting the feasibility of end-to-end machine learning models). Our approach successfully side-steps the issues facing supervised approaches (e.g., having to decide what constitutes sensitive personal information). The second part of the thesis argues for an expansion to the scope of clinical de-identification. Whereas existing de-identification approaches focus solely on protecting patients’ identities, we argue that de-identification should also focus on protecting the identity of healthcare providers. First, we demonstrate that authorship attribution in clinical notes is a very easy task when compared to many traditional author attribution datasets. Despite the need for specialized and improved author obfuscation techniques, the data to develop such techniques is difficult to obtain due to privacy concerns; it is impractical to manually label paired sentences and difficult to crowd-source the task given data-sharing limitations. To enable the development of automated means of evaluating semantic relatedness, we developed a novel sentence-pair dataset ordered by semantic relatedness. This dataset can serve as a catalyst for future author obfuscation evaluation, and we draw insights from this dataset to better understand existing work. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning | 3, 4 |
| Liao, Zhijie | Paus, Tomas T | Brain Maturation and Sex Hormones duringA adolescence | Psychology | 2022-11 | The second decade of life is a critical period of transition: it involves a series of biological and psychosocial changes that are essential for learning and adaptation to adult life, as well as for the development of a healthy brain. The body of work presented in this doctoral thesis aims to investigate the maturation of the brain during puberty and the possible role of testosterone in shaping the brain; it extends what is known about the hormonal events during puberty. By integrating multi-modal datasets of brain structure and function and longitudinal data on pubertal testosterone, this thesis first revealed the relationship between pubertal testosterone and brain structure, which was modulated by the timing of the testosterone surge; an earlier peak in the change in testosterone levels predicted a stronger relationship. Then it revealed that the cumulative exposure to testosterone during puberty moderated the relationship between adult testosterone and brain response to faces. Using data acquired with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in two large cohorts (the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, IMAGEN) with the same face paradigm, we have also revealed robust canonical connectivity of the face network that was invariant across populations and developmental stages (i.e., from adolescence to young adulthood). When assessing this network at an individual level, connectivity profiles of individual participants deviated from the canonical one, with the magnitude of this deviation relating to the presence of psychopathology. Lastly, moving the focus from the brain to the body, we have clarified the nature of the relationship between testosterone and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) and body mass index throughout puberty. Combining phenotypic and genetic data, our findings support a hypothesis that high SHBG leads to high total testosterone through a functional hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis.Taken together, these findings indicate a possible organizational effect of pubertal hormones and suggest that consideration of the organizational effects of pubertal hormones is required to reveal the complex relationship between testosterone and social cognition later in life. In addition, we suggest that the relationship between testosterone and the brain may involve multiple biological and psychosocial factors. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, transit, social change | 4, 9, 11, 16 |
| Herman, Dylan Jade Rose | D'Souza, Rohan D | Issues that Influence Health during Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period: An International Concept Mapping Study | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Background/Objectives: Pregnancy-related research has traditionally focused on the physical health of pregnant persons and their babies. This may be due to the lack of patient perspective in determining what issues affect their health during and after pregnancy and childbirth. The objective of my thesis was to identify issues that health-service users (HSUs, individuals with prior pregnancy experience) and healthcare professionals (HCPs) involved in their care, perceive to influence the health of pregnant persons and their babies, understand how these issues are prioritized by participant groups and identify actionable issues to inform pregnancy care, health policy and future research. Methods: I conducted a concept mapping study with HSUs and HCPs, which involved brainstorming sessions with HSUs and HCPs, data synthesis to condense the list of statements, sorting of items based on similarity, rating of items based on three scales (importance, preventability, recognizability), multidimensional scaling and hierarchical cluster analysis to produce concept maps, pattern matching graphs and go zones, and the interpretation of results with HSUs and HCPs Results: A total of 855 statements identified by 14 HSUs and 19 HCPs, were condensed to 85 unique statements, through several rounds of data synthesis. Participants from 10 high- and middle-income countries (29 HSUs and 33 HCPs) sorted and rated these statements into six clusters - maternal mental health, maternal mortality and physical morbidity, fetal/neonatal complications, unexpected peripartum events, health system challenges, and sociocultural factors. While participants agreed on issues that influence health, HSUs assigned greater importance to fetal/neonatal morbidity and maternal mental health and lower importance to health system issues, while HCPs assigned higher importance to maternal mortality and morbidity and lower importance to maternal mental health. Eleven actionable items were identified as priorities to address, to improve patients’ experiences with pregnancy care. Conclusion: The findings of my thesis demonstrate that HSUs and HCPs recognize that health during and after pregnancy is influenced by factors other than physical morbidity, but they differ in how they prioritize these issues. Addressing actionable items important to patients through multidisciplinary collaboration could improve health outcomes. | Ph.D. | mental health, healthcare, maternal mortality, labor, income | 3, 8, 10 |
| Nelischer, Kate | Leslie, Deborah | The Development of Quayside: Planning Toronto’s Smart City | Geography | 2022-11 | Smart cities are a growing area of scholarship, but they are understudied in the literature in urban planning. This case study of the Sidewalk Toronto/Quayside project offers insights into the smart city planning process and its actors. The public-private partnership between a tripartite government agency, Waterfront Toronto, and an Alphabet Inc. subsidiary, Sidewalk Labs, to plan one of the most significant urban smart city projects in North America, and its cancellation after two and a half years, provides an opportunity to study a smart city project that has not been undertaken anywhere else at this scale. My research examines the Sidewalk Toronto/Quayside smart city planning process through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis. This dissertation is organized into a three-paper model, informed by three objectives: to contextualize the Quayside project within the history of waterfront regeneration in Toronto, to understand the origins and motivations underpinning the “co-creation” partnership between Waterfront Toronto and Sidewalk Labs, and to trace how the partnership shaped public engagement in the planning process. This research expands smart city planning literature by further illuminating the unique conditions and considerations of smart cities within established planning processes, including waterfront regeneration, partnership development, and participatory planning. Based on my research findings, I make three central arguments. The first is that Quayside represents both a repackaging of established entrepreneurial discourses on Toronto’s waterfront and a new phase of Toronto’s waterfront development in that the project was specifically designed to ensure the organizational longevity of Waterfront Toronto rather than to meet development objectives that were previously prioritized in the corporation’s work. Second, I argue that smart city planning processes are a fraught application for collaborative public-private partnership models given that these models depend on equity and mutual respect between partners, which is difficult to achieve in smart city partnerships where significant resource and knowledge asymmetries exist between large technology corporations and government agencies. Third, I argue that regardless of the scale and volume of public engagement opportunities, a smart city planning process cannot be citizen-centric if participation is directed and facilitated by a private smart city actor. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, equity, citizen, water, labor, entrepreneur, equit, cities, urban, regeneration | 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 15 |
| Bonney, Mitchell Thurston | He, Yuhong | Long-term Remote Sensing for Investigating Forest Change across a Suburbanizing Landscape | Geography | 2022-11 | Forests, especially in urban and surrounding landscapes, are important natural resources that provide environmental, climatic, economic, social, health, and aesthetic benefits. It is thus important to continuously monitor these forests, which may grow, shrink, or be otherwise impacted by abrupt or gradual changes from many drivers. Long-term remote sensing time-series represent the only means by which the spatio-temporal dynamics of these forests can be consistently collected since the mid-1900s. Aerial photography provides the longest temporal coverage and can observe individual trees, but is limited in temporal density, in spectral coverage, and by differences in photograph technology through time. Landsat satellites with medium spatial resolution cannot observe individual trees but, with recent advances in sensor harmonization and time-series algorithms, can provide a consistent annual record of forest change since 1972. Combined with appropriate validation techniques and predictive modelling, Landsat holds potential for investigating changes in forest canopy cover over 50 years across landscapes that surpasses aerial photography. Both aerial photography and Landsat cover much of post-war suburbanization, when many rural-agricultural landscapes surrounding cities developed into suburban areas. However, few studies have utilized aerial photography time-series, and no studies have utilized Landsat’s full temporal record, for historical urban forest investigation and a better understanding of the suburbanization process. In this thesis, I demonstrate how long-term aerial photography and Landsat time-series can be built, validated, and analyzed to provide unique spatio-temporal results about forests and forest change across a suburbanizing landscape. With aerial photography, I capture tree density changes and drivers during the agriculture-suburban transition. With Landsat, I model a relationship with canopy cover for predictive mapping and explore connections with tree-rings as a form of temporal validation. I then build the longest-possible canopy cover time-series for investigating forest change across a heterogenous suburbanizing landscape and, more specifically, post-development residential canopy cover change in comparison with historical population demographics. These findings exemplify the power of long-term remote sensing for investigating different aspects of urban forest change, which have important research implications in urban forest and remote sensing time-series literature, and applied implications for municipal forest monitoring practices and knowledge acquisition for decision makers. | Ph.D. | agricultur, knowledge, invest, cities, urban, rural, transit, natural resource, environmental, forest, land | 2, 4, 9, 11, 12, 13, 15 |
| Sheldon, Victoria | Lambek, Michael||Cody, Francis | Vital Bodies, Natural Cures: Moral Quests for Care in Kerala, South India | Anthropology | 2022-11 | Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation offers a semi-person-centered analysis of nature cure (prakr̥ti jīvanaṁ) caregiving in Kerala, South India. First promoted in India as part of M. K. Gandhi’s anti-colonial project, this medical tradition draws on the metaphor of vitality to frame the body as having a natural wisdom—a vital force—that works to restore health and balance. This dissertation examines care practices in homes, mobile health camps, and hospitals in order to canvass last-resort quests for cure, where patients become ‘self-doctors,’ taking their sickness as signs of alienation from plants and nonhuman animal life. Through mentorships with non-professionalized healers, patients aim to repair their ill bodies, revitalize the toxic environment, and respond to moral collapse. By foregrounding the ethical stakes of rehabilitation, this dissertation pushes against reducing the logic of health choices to the neoliberal realm of individual lives; instead, it engages a relational approach to care, asking how these actions intersect with larger social and political shifts. In doing so, this dissertation shows how healers and users co-construct ethical imaginaries of reviving local lifeways, in counterpoint to larger changes in failed care regimes, migrated kin networks, widening class, caste, and gender inequalities, and publicly mediated concerns of a toxic present. At the same time, this dissertation shows how even though naturopaths aspire to transcend enduring inequalities, the medical tradition remains embedded in a wider political context of communalist conflict. This dissertation braids together the pragmatic thought of William James with Gandhi’s philosophical explorations on health and self-determination, asking how their insights may guide us to better understand what freedom and care mean within and between the particulars of individual lives and the general strands of existence that weave through all lives. Together, their teachings help amplify how scientifically-unvalidated alternative medicines may be efficacious at the levels of moral personhood and temporally shaped intersubjective care. By examining how nature cure healers and users in Kerala engage a collectivized vision of wellness and self-care, the dissertation ethnographically brings into relief the ways that biomedicine does not in itself equate to effective rehabilitation. | Ph.D. | gender, equalit, animal, self-determination | 5, 10, 14, 15, 16 |
| Pathmanathan, Shivanthy | Stagljar, Igor IS | Elucidating Met Receptor Tyrosine Kinase Interactome to Identify Novel Regulators of Met Biology | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | Met receptor tyrosine kinase is a growth factor receptor implicated in multiple diseases, including cancers, whereby aberrantly activated Met underlies metastasis, survival, sustained proliferation and angiogenesis of tumor cells, and thus is a sought-out target in cancer drug discovery. However, despite its critical role, Met and its associated functions are considerably understudied, and this is further underlined by paucity of successful therapeutics and precision medicine approaches targeting Met-mediated oncogenicity. Given that protein-protein interactions (PPIs) govern protein function and are, since recently, considered to be druggable, novel knowledge and new therapeutic strategies can be uncovered by identifying and characterizing interacting partners of Met. Using the Mammalian Membrane Two-Hybrid (MaMTH) PPI mapping technology developed in our lab, this thesis takes a PPI mapping approach to enable study of Met to uncover novel regulators of Met biology. In this study, I have generated and characterized a MaMTH-compatible PPI mapping platform, which expresses inducible full-length Met, recapitulates known Met localization, and can detect previously known interactors of Met. Utilizing this platform, I have further mapped a targeted interactome of Met against SH2/PTB-domain containing proteins and FpClass-predicted putative interactors of Met, and identified thirty-two, including sixteen novel, interactors of Met. Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)-focused functional characterization of one of the novel Met-interacting protein, B cell LiNKer (BLNK), reveal that BLNK is a positive regulator of Met signalling, and modulates surface localization and HGF-dependent trafficking of Met in NSCLC cell lines. Molecular studies in HEK293 models reveal that in the presence of BLNK, interaction between Met and its known interacting protein, GRB2 is increased, while the known constitutive interaction between BLNK and GRB2 is also increased in the presence of active Met. Finally, tumor phenotypical assays further uncover roles for BLNK in anchorage independent growth and chemotaxis of NSCLC cell lines. Cumulatively, my PhD thesis provides a PPI mapping platform for Met, targeted PPI map of Met, and describes a role for BLNK, a novel PPI of Met identified through this study, in regulating Met biology in NSCLC. | Ph.D. | knowledge, trafficking | 4, 5, 16 |
| Koebel, Kourtney Lee | Pohler, Dionne | Three Essays on the Social Determinants of Labour Supply | Industrial Relations and Human Resources | 2022-11 | This dissertation bridges empirical and theoretical insights from multiple disciplines to improve our understanding of individual labour supply decisions and, in turn, the optimal design of public policy. Chapter 1 examines the labour supply effects of the Working Income Tax Benefit (WITB) in Canada. An in-depth analysis of institutional details surrounding WITB reveals that low-income Canadians lack knowledge of the program. Consequently, WITB can be treated as a lump sum cash transfer rather than as an earnings subsidy. Using variation in WITB receipt both within and between individuals over time, results suggest that, contrary to the predictions of the standard labour-leisure choice model, WITB receipt had a robust, significant positive effect on the labour supply of single low-income workers. Chapter 2 investigates how the interaction of social norms and public childcare provisions impact maternal labour supply. Using data from the US, this chapter exploits exogenous increases in minimum school entry-age laws across states and time to measure how increasing the age at which children are eligible for public school impacts the labour supply of mothers. The results suggest that increasing the school starting age significantly decreases the labour supply of married mothers at the extensive margin and single mothers at the intensive margin. Additional analysis reveals that the negative labour supply effects are concentrated among mothers in states with progressive gender norms. Implications for public policy are discussed. Chapter 3 provides a critical evaluation of the assumption that work is a disutility, which underlies the standard model of labour supply used widely in economics, and in turn, public policymaking. The assumption implies that individuals supply labour to the market for the sole purpose of purchasing goods. This chapter reviews the work of William Stanley Jevons and Alfred Marshall, both of whom were critical in the development of the standard labour-leisure choice model, but of the opinion that work is not, in its entirety, a disutility. I then modify the standard model of labour supply to re-incorporate the positive utility of labour by making the marginal utility of leisure dependent on the amount of time spent working. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of the intrinsic benefits of work for the design of public policy. | Ph.D. | low-income, knowledge, gender, labour, worker, invest, income, institut | 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 16 |
| Manmatharajan, Vipulanantham | Ghafghazi, Mason MG | Factors Affecting Liquefaction Assessment of Granular Soils through Laboratory Testing | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | In practice, liquefaction assessment is largely driven by case histories, but the case history database is limited and there are huge gaps in the information available in each case. As a result, laboratory tests have continued to play a key role in determining how various factors influence liquefaction susceptibility and consequences. Eventually, a mechanics-based liquefaction assessment method which can differentiate among soils depending on their intrinsic properties will help geotechnical engineers better manage liquefaction risk especially in non-conventional materials such as tailings.This dissertation presents an investigation into how factors such as particle size, particle size distribution, and specimen preparation method influence the liquefaction response of a natural soil and a tailings material. Twelve particle size distributions ranging from pure silt to fine gravel and their various mixtures were studied in detail. The results are viewed through the critical state framework by first quantifying how these factors influence the critical state loci. Liquefaction response established through cyclic and monotonic simple shear testing was then compared to a large body of work from the literature to understand how the choice of testing method influenced the outcomes of these assessments. Cyclic liquefaction triggering and its relation to the number of cycles applied, as well as post-cyclic and monotonic residual strengths were reviewed. | Ph.D. | labor, invest, soil | 8, 9, 15 |
| Liu, Bochu | Widener, Michael MW | How the Food Environment, Time Use, and Household Labour Division Influence Dietary Activities: A Case Study of Two Neighbourhoods in Toronto | Geography | 2022-11 | The dietary transition from home-prepared meals to increased reliance on food prepared away from home has led researchers to study the factors influencing participation in various food-related activities. While exposure to food environments, a key factor impacting what food people purchase, has been extensively studied, the dynamic spatiotemporal contexts for food retail exposure remain underexplored. Time use also plays a role in what people eat. However, most studies have neglected the division of household labour, a factor that can help explain the ways coupled partners spend time on food activities. Furthermore, in food environment research, the prevailing reductionist view conceals compositional and contextual complexities of household food-provisioning practice. To address these research gaps, this dissertation aims to develop conceptualizations and methods to better understand how the food environment, time use, and household labour coordination collectively influence dietary behaviours, using a case study of two neighbourhoods in Toronto. Chapter 2 proposes a novel application of multi-channel sequence analysis in food environment research based on time use diaries and GPS trajectories concurrently collected. This method offers an effective way to assess how food exposure in varying spatiotemporal contexts is associated with food activities. Chapter 3 expands the individual-level time use analysis of in-home food chores to the household level by examining time use diaries of coupled men and women. The results suggest possible gender differences in responsiveness to partners’ time allocations, highlighting a need to account for potential impacts of intra-household dynamics on food behaviours. Chapter 4 proposes to conceptualize the interconnected food-provisioning activities undertaken by household members using the time-geographic concept of the project. The applicability of this conceptualization is demonstrated through a test case on coupled adults’ activities for providing dinner. Chapter 5 summarizes this dissertation and discusses how the three chapters above contribute to advancing the current research. Ultimately, these chapters substantially improve our understanding of the various ways in which the food environment, time use, and household labour division influence food behaviours and expand the conceptual and methodological approaches that are geared toward a more holistic understanding of food behaviours in the built environmental and social contexts. | Ph.D. | gender, women, labour, transit, environmental | 5, 8, 11, 13 |
| Lassetter, Bethany | Neel, Rebecca | Evaluating Others’ Relevance: Dimensions, Levels, and Interdependence | Psychology | 2022-11 | Humans seek to determine what other people are like and use others’ characteristics—such as their age, gender, and attractiveness—to assess others’ relevance to their own goals. The resulting appraisals of others’ opportunity and threat shape social judgments and behavior. My thesis accomplishes three broad aims. With Studies 1 and 2, I demonstrate that appraisals of who threatens and who facilitates one’s goals are independent dimensions of social judgment (Lassetter et al., 2021). People can be evaluated as (a) facilitating a goal, (b) threatening a goal, (c) both facilitating and threatening a goal, or (d) neither facilitating nor threatening a goal. I term this two-dimensional model the Relevance Appraisal Matrix. Relevance appraisals shift dynamically with perceiver goals: For example, a person may be appraised as facilitating a mate-seeking goal, but as neither facilitating nor threatening a self-protection goal (Lassetter et al., 2021). Further, relevance appraisals are distinct from stereotypes of group attributes and likely act as a mechanism between stereotypes of others and downstream outcomes. With Studies 3 and 4, I show that the Relevance Appraisal Matrix describes appraisals of individual targets (e.g., a nurse, a man, a close friend) and groups (e.g., medical professionals, men). Thus, in addition to appraising whether individual targets—including close and known others—pose opportunity and/or threat, relevance appraisals function as group-level phenomena that influence evaluations of broader groups. With Studies 5 and 6, I examine the link between relevance and interpersonal closeness. Close others may be especially likely to influence decisions and goal pursuit—and possibly, more likely to both facilitate and threaten goals. I show that threat and opportunity appraisals negatively and positively relate to perceived closeness, respectively. In sum, I propose a framework for understanding the structure of relevance, test how that framework applies to individual- and group-level social perception, and examine the link between relevance and closeness. Relevance appraisals are central and consequential to social perception. My thesis illuminates the structure of these appraisals and lays the foundation for future research examining how relevance shapes attention, emotions, and behavior. | Ph.D. | gender | 5 |
| Kvasnicka, Jacob | Diamond, Miriam L||Cohen Hubal, Elaine | Joint Influence of Human Activities and Indoor Microenvironments on Contaminant Exposure: A Mass-Balance Modeling Investigation | Earth Sciences | 2022-11 | Human populations globally are exposed to a wide variety of contaminants in indoor “microenvironments” (e.g., homes and workplaces). Such exposures are important contributors to the global burden of disease. Measurements reveal that human occupants dynamically influence indoor environmental quality (IEQ) through their presence and activities. However, measured data of IEQ are difficult to generalize, which can be addressed by computational modeling. This dissertation investigated the joint influence of time-dependent human activities and indoor microenvironments on contaminant exposure through modeling. Accordingly, I developed a novel modeling framework, Activity-Based Indoor Contaminant Assessment model (ABICAM). This framework leverages the principle of mass balance including fundamental processes of contaminant emission, transport, and fate, while accounting for the dynamic influence of human occupants and their activities on such processes. I applied ABICAM to address two general research questions: (1) What are the important drivers of contaminant exposure variability in North American human populations? (2) How can clothing influence the transport and fate of airborne contaminants, and accordingly, human exposure? First, indoor chemical emissions drive exposures, with rates typical for a North American home spanning ~4 orders of magnitude from 1.7 (BDE-28) to 18,300 (DEP) [ng·(h·home)-1]. Time-dependent human activities (e.g., cooking) and location are important contributors to intraindividual and interindividual exposure variability. Inherent physical human attributes influence interindividual exposure variability. Specifically, a toddler’s exposures to three ortho-phthalates can be 3-4 times those of an adult just due to a higher normalized respiration rate and skin surface area; activities (e.g., showering) can triple such exposure differences. Second, clothing influences IEQ and associated human exposure as follows: (1) Clothing readily accumulates various airborne contaminants; (2) clothing can effectively minimize transdermal uptake of such contaminants; (3) cotton clothing can effectively inactivate pathogens; (4) clothing can transport airborne contaminants between indoor microenvironments and be a source of secondary exposure; (5) textile washing transports such contaminants to outdoors, depending on physical-chemical properties. Overall, this research emphasizes the importance of reducing indoor contaminant emissions, highlights vulnerable individuals (e.g., toddlers), and supports the role of clothing in minimizing human exposure while noting the trade-off between this role and increased ecosystem exposure through laundering. | Ph.D. | emission, invest, trade, environmental, emissions, ecosystem | 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15 |
| Gagliardi, Stephanie | Isaac, Marney | Trait Variation and Ecological Function in Diseased Agroforestry Systems | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2022-11 | Biodiverse agroecosystems, including agroforestry, are characterized by complicated multispecies interactions, and it is this complexity that can be exploited for crop protection against pathogens and disease management practices. However, the effectiveness of biodiverse agroecosystems in minimizing disease depends on a range of biotic and abiotic interactions, thus requiring deep understanding of the multifunctionality within these systems. Using a functional trait-based approach, my PhD thesis aims to establish a link between multispecies functional traits in agroforestry systems and disease dynamics. As a model system, I use an economically significant crop, Coffea arabica var. Caturra (coffee), grown in biodiverse agroforestry systems, and one of its equally significant foliar pathogens Hemileia vastatrix, causal agent of Coffee Leaf Rust. I found that shade tree leaf and canopy traits in these agroforestry systems are significantly related to microclimate modifications that uniquely impact pathogens and disease incidence, highlighting the nuances between agroforestry systems. Similarly, coffee leaf functional trait trade-offs show significant shifts in diseased systems. However, disease incidence does not impact the root functional trait expression of coffee. From a theoretical perspective, this research enhances our understanding of multispecies functional traits and ecosystem processes in diseased systems, opening a new dimension for functional trait research. From an applied perspective, this research demonstrates how the multifunctionality of biodiverse agroforestry systems can be optimized for crop protection and integrated into disease management practices. I provide novel information to better inform biodiverse farm design and management, as well further promote the adoption of agrobiodiversity into our agricultural landscapes. | Ph.D. | agricultur, agro, trade, climate, species, biodivers, ecosystem, forest, ecolog, land | 2, 10, 13, 14, 15 |
| Mann, Alison | Cooper, Karyn | Group Collaboration in Global Online Learning Environments | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This case study seeks to better understand online collaboration in a global secondary school classroom context. Given the widespread promotion of collaborative learning as a crucial skill, coupled with a significant increase in online learning, this study aims to grow research evidence and offer practical recommendations specific to K-12 global online collaboration. This study encompasses an intervention activity designed to introduce a group film production assignment in a global online International Baccalaureate (IB) secondary level film class with no prior collaborative activity. The study provides a detailed account and interpretive analysis of behaviours amongst groups using a theory-driven coding scheme to further identify and interpret the complex interactions and exchanges. Finally, student reflections and post-activity comments provide insight into students' perceptions and attitudes about online collaboration. This study reveals the challenges groups faced with prescribed online tools, Internet connectivity, technical issues, uneven participation, and time zone differences. The learning management system, Canvas, was perceived as a location to retrieve assignments and less as a space to collaborate. Given these challenges, groups eventually transitioned to social media instant messaging (IM) to enhance interactions. The study reveals IM was the most effective for fostering frequency of communications, sustained interaction, and was found to have the widest range of collaborative behaviours. For groups, IM became an effective digital backchannel and a space to enhancegroup cohesion and connection. Students demonstrated preference for lean media affordances of IM such as speediness of responses, ease of use, informal nature of interactions and accessibility. Given the culturally and globally diverse students body, the study identifies a need to foster intercultural competences for students and educators. Technology access and Internet connectivity continue to be an equity issue for students globally. Considering a recent IB initiative to pilot more online courses across centres worldwide, this study makes four recommendations for current online IB film and other global centres endeavouring to promote online collaboration. Recommendations include the development of an IB global media repository to promote a culture of participatory media production, an increase of opportunities for intercultural collaboration, and further recommendations to improve instructional design for online collaboration. | Ph.D. | learning, equity, labor, internet, equit, transit, accessib, production | 4, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 |
| Montano Rendon, Fernando | Grinstein, Sergio | The Role of Phosphoinositides During Phagosome Formation and Resolution | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Phagocytosis, the process by which cells internalize particles greater than 0.5µm into membrane-bound vacuoles (phagosomes), is key for innate immunity and tissue homeostasis. Phagocytosis can be carried out by myeloid cells such as macrophages, neutrophils, and dendritic cells. These cells, known as professional phagocytes, constitute the first line of defense against invading microorganisms and are key for the development of adaptive immunity. Furthermore, phagocytosis is essential for the clearance of the apoptotic debris produced from the daily turnover of cells. Clearance of apoptotic bodies can be carried out also by non-professional phagocytes such as fibroblasts, epithelial, mesenchymal, and endothelial cells. Phagocytosis can be divided into three main stages, phagosome formation, maturation, and resolution. Firstly, phagosome formation consists of probing for potential targets through ruffling, followed by target binding, pseudopod extension, and scission of the phagosome from the plasma membrane. Secondly, during the maturation stage nascent phagosomes convert into early phagosomes, subsequently into late phagosomes and then into phagolysosomes. Finally, the resolution of phagolysosomes consists of their shrinkage and recycling of membrane and luminal components. Phosphoinositides, specialized signaling lipid molecules in the cytosolic leaflet of the phagosomal and plasma membrane orchestrate the changes in membrane composition and actin cytoskeleton during each stage of phagocytosis. This dissertation aims to characterize the roles for two largely understudied phosphoinositides, PtdIns(3,4)P2 and PtdIns(4)P, during phagosome formation and phagolysosome resolution respectively. Specifically, I focus on describing the distribution, dynamics, metabolism, and functions of these phosphoinositides during phagocytosis. In chapter I, I review the background on phosphoinositides and their previously known involvement during phagocytosis. Chapter 2 defines the aims and hypothesis of my work. The methodology used in this work is described in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, I describe the role of PtdIns(3,4)P2 during phagosome formation. Chapter 5 focuses on PtdIns(4)P, how its levels are regulated by the endoplasmic reticulum and its involvement during phagolysosome resolution. Finally, I discuss the importance of these events to phagosome formation and phagolysosome resolution. This work highlights the relevance of PtdIns(3,4)P2 and PtdIns(4)P for the phagocytic process and the importance of a fine-tuned regulation of these lipids. | Ph.D. | recycl | 12 |
| Valli, Mikaeel | Strafella, Antonio | Neuroimaging of the Dopaminergic System in Healthy Controls and Parkinson’s Disease with REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative movement disorder where patients suffer from tremor, rigidity, and bradykinesia. One of the primary driving forces of PD pathophysiology involves neuronal loss within the dopaminergic pathways including the nigrostriatal, mesocortical, and mesolimbic pathways. Neurons within these pathways contain two dopamine D2 receptor isoforms—D2 long and D2 short. The genotype of the DRD2 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), rs2283265 (C>A), modulate the degree of expression for these isoforms. This SNP is clinically important because PD patients with the CC genotype showed the most clinical improvement in motor and mental functioning to certain drugs that modulates the dopaminergic system, compared to the minor A allele carriers. However, it is unclear how this SNP affects the distribution of D2 receptors in vivo within the nigrostriatal dopaminergic system at a foundational level in healthy controls. Furthermore, given the role of the dopaminergic system on sleep disturbances in PD patients, it is critical to elucidate the dopaminergic dysfunction in PD patients with REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD). RBD impacts nearly half of PD patients and is characterized by the lack of normal skeletal muscle atonia during REM sleep resulting in dream enactment behaviours. Therefore, the general aims of this thesis were to use positron emission tomography (PET) to determine in vivo striatal D2 receptor distribution and availability as a function of DRD2 SNP genotype in healthy controls; to investigate the extent of extra-striatal D2 receptor availability and striatal dopaminergic innervation in PD patients with and without RBD. The findings from this thesis revealed that 1) DRD2 SNP influences either the quantity and/or high affinity state of D2 receptors within the ventral striatum in healthy controls; 2) extra-striatal dopaminergic system may play a role in more advanced PD patients with RBD; and 3) PD patients with and without RBD had similar striatal denervation. The significances of these results are: DRD2 SNP modulates the D2 receptor distribution in the ventral striatum in healthy controls; and the dopaminergic dysfunction in extra-striatal regions may play a stronger role in RBD pathophysiology in PD patients relative to striatal dopaminergic denervation. | Ph.D. | emission, invest, urban | 7, 9, 11 |
| Clemens, Maria Parousia (Miranda Lynn) | Ginther, James R. | My Sister, My Bride: The Liturgical Rites of Monastic Profession and Consecration of Virgins in the Usage of Monastic Women from the Tenth to the Thirteenth Century | Medieval Studies | 2022-11 | This thesis investigates the liturgical rites used by women in England and Germany for initiation into the monastic life from the tenth to the thirteenth century. Two rites were used: monastic profession and the consecration of virgins. The contents of each rite are presented from a variety of liturgical sources, facilitating their comparison. The sources are divided geographically (England and the Continent) and according to type (pontificals are treated in chapters 2 and 3 and monastic sources in chapter 4). In some contexts, the consecration of virgins was used as the female version of monastic profession. In other places, monastic women used both rites, either in two different moments or in a hybrid rite. Initially, when women used profession rites, they were identical to those used by monks. The emergence of a new type of rite, monastic profession compiled specifically for women, is documented beginning in the thirteenth century. These new rites have the nuptial character of the consecration of virgins without the requirement that they be celebrated by a bishop. These new profession rites best reflect the ecclesial role of consecrated women as spouses of Christ. | Ph.D. | women, female, invest, land | 5, 9, 15 |
| Overholt, Mary Michelle | Wheelahan, Leesa | Developing and Supporting the Dual Professionalism of CAAT Faculty Members | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | This qualitative, exploratory study is focused on how teachers in Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology (CAATs) are prepared to teach. Using focus groups and semi-structured interviews, I sought the perspectives of front-line staff within academic development units and academic leaders to create a detailed depiction of how teacher preparation and development currently happen in CAATS. In this study I worked collaboratively with the experts on teaching and learning and teacher training to develop a shared understanding of the present state of CAAT teacher training and gain insight into their perspectives on where CAAT teacher training should go next. The specific research questions I sought to answer through this study were: 1. How do CAATs, through the mechanism of their institutional academic development units, support the development of their faculty members as dual professionals to be both subject-matter experts and excellent teachers, with the goal of improved learning for students through more effective teaching? 2. What are the perceptions of academic development unit staff of current teacher training at CAATs? 3. How can the system of teacher development at CAATs be strengthened? Using Activity Theory as my main theoretical framework as well as the structure for my interview protocol, I worked with participants in this study to collaboratively map the activity system of teacher preparation both at individual institutions and across the CAAT system as a whole. Overall, CAATs provide basic teacher training—on planning and conducting lessons, designing course materials, and setting up courses on Learning Management Systems (LMS)—for faculty members, but lack resources to support faculty members’ subject-matter expertise. CAATs can work together, under the direction of senior leadership, to develop better support both for educational developers and CAAT faculty members. CAAT academic development units can collaborate to create a provincial CAAT teacher training curriculum or credential that can be implemented at the institutional level to ensure consistency as well as the necessary level of institutional focus for faculty development. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, institut | 4, 8, 16 |
| Zhao, Yulai | Mehta, Nitin||Osborne, Matthew | Essays on Managing the Consumption and Creation of Digital Media | Management | 2022-11 | Online platforms of digitized media content face different challenges on managing the consumer demand and creator production compared to the traditional media industry. This work utilizes data from a major online book platform in China to investigate these issues and provides insights on platform management regarding content releases and creator incentives. The first essay studies the impact of the digital platform’s product release strategy of serialized media content on its consumption and the ensuing profits made by the platform. Specifically, should a platform release all chapters of a book simultaneously, sequentially over time, or with a hybrid strategy where it releases a fraction simultaneously and the rest sequentially? I show that the release speed of chapters impacts consumption through two opposite forces: binge consumption and product exploration. A slower release, while limiting binge consumption, leads to an increased exploration of other books through two mechanisms - consumers visit the platform more often and explore other books due to the constrained availability. The counterfactuals show that the platform will be worse-off under a simultaneous release strategy but better-off under an optimized hybrid release strategy. The second essay focuses on how the platform should design a monetary contract to incentivize content creators to produce higher quantity and higher quality works. The platform switched from a uniform commission rate to a quantity-based plan offering higher commission rates if a writer's production meets higher quantity brackets. Theoretical analysis indicates that a quantity-based commission plan can enhance the quantity-quality complementarity: the creators who reach a higher bracket of quantity should also produce a higher quality. This theoretical result is confirmed in multiple empirical tests. First, for a given book, the chapters published in the months when writers reached higher brackets of quantity had higher quality measured by chapter-to-chapter customer retention rates. Such a positive correlation is not significant in books published when the platform offered a uniform commission plan. Second, when writers produced higher quantity early on in a month but failed later, there was a greater quality drop under the quantity-based commission plan than under the uniform commission plan. | Ph.D. | invest, consum, production | 9, 12 |
| Lavallee, Jacqueline | Tuck, Eve | Asemaa Nitam (Sacred Tobacco First): Indigenous Healing Practices within the Ojibwe Tradition | Social Justice Education | 2022-11 | The Seven Stages of Life Teaching is an Ojibwe Traditional Healing Method and Pedagogy used to relieve psychological and physical trauma to promote and support a ‘Good Life.’ The main approach of the method/pedagogy is by reliving past experiences and trauma through participation in the Oral Tradition of Sacred Ceremony. This doctoral research project will share my personal experience of this Traditional Lifeway Teaching using heard stories, Sacred Instructions, Songs, and Dreams as the primary source of reference. My intention for sharing these teachings in this academic context is to provide a point of reference to otherAnishinaabe/Indigenous students so that they can begin their own personal research as I have done to maintain this path through colonization. I am doing this work to validate our Ojibwe Traditional Healing Methods and to promote and support confidence in the psychology of Indigenous Healing Ceremonies for Indigenous students as they move forward in a Good Way. In a very small way, my contributions through this doctoral research project will begin to address some of the issues in ‘decolonizing’ the academy for Indigenous students. | Ed.D. | pedagogy, indigenous | 4, 10, 16 |
| Munroe, Melanie | Ferrari, Michel | Exploring Pathways from Growth to Wisdom: The Role of Coping Styles and Meaning-Making | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | Variations in cognition and coping play a key role in the maintenance of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), therefore it is important to know how individuals can successfully cope with trauma. Self-compassion (SC) and meaning may help an individual grow in a transformative manner following trauma. Moreover, recent research has shown a link between SC, posttraumatic growth (PTG), and emotion-focused coping strategies. Studies have also found evidence for the use of problem-focused strategies in predicting PTG. Therefore, this study had three main objectives: (1) investigate the association of negative cognitions (about the self, the world, and self-blame), coping, and their interactions with PTSD, (2) examine whether SC and meaning are associated with PTG in individuals with probable PTSD, and (3) investigate the association between SC, emotion- and problem-focused coping, and PTG. Participants were 111 emerging adults who participated in an online survey. First, a hierarchical multiple linear regression was conducted to test the hypothesis related to coping, negative cognitions, and PTSD. At step 1, self-distraction and substance use were associated with PTSD. At step 2, these coping styles and negative cognitions about the world were associated with PTSD. In step 3, no interactions were significant. Second, for the probable PTSD group, SC was associated with meaning and PTG, whereas SC and PTG were not correlated in the non-PTSD group. There was an indirect effect of SC on PTG via meaning in those with probable PTSD. Lastly, SC and PTG were correlated with active coping, instrumental support, and positive reframing. All three coping styles were associated with PTG over and above SC. Findings indicate that distracting oneself, using substances, and maintaining a negative view of the world significantly impacts PTSD. Trauma may require individuals to redefine negative beliefs to rebuild their shattered assumptive worlds. SC also involves a caring about one’s life that affords a greater opportunity for PTG. SC-based interventions could be beneficial in supporting growth after adversity. Problem-focused coping strategies are also influential in mediating the development of PTG from SC. Incorporating problem-focused coping into SC-based practices in trauma therapies may offer additional benefits by reducing self-criticism to promote recovery. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Uguccioni, James | Eli, Shari||Kroft, Kory | Essays on Intergenerational Inequality | Economics | 2022-11 | James UguccioniDoctor of Philosophy Department of Economics University of Toronto 2022 This thesis contains three papers examining the sources of, and policy remedies for, intergenerational inequality. In Chapter 1, I consider how children are affected by parental job loss. I provide the first empirical evidence of the long-run effects of parental unemployment on children exposed before age 10 (and as young as 2), a period thought to be critical for child development. Using administrative tax data covering children born in Canada between 1972 and 1985 and random forest proximity matching, I estimate the causal effects of parental job loss experienced at different points in childhood on a child's income attainment. I find that children exposed to parental unemployment at ages 2 to 10 experience losses of 3 to 4 rank points in average earnings attainment in adulthood (approximately $2,500 per year). In Chapter 2, I study how the emigration of millions of Black families from the South in the United States, known as the Great Migration, affected equality of opportunity. I am among the first to consider how Black emigrants affected their counties of origin in South. I focus on how the Great Migration affected racial inequality in educational attainment, building off of previous work showing that Black emigration limited discrimination from local governments. Using a shift-share instrument to isolate the effects of Black emigration, I find that higher emigration rates caused the Black-white gap in average educational attainment to shrink considerably. Finally, Chapter 3, based off of joint work with Shari Eli, Price Fishback, and Adriana Lleras-Muney, explores the emergence of the modern welfare system in the United States. We study the political economy of the first welfare program in the United States, the Mothers' Pension, which paid monthly pensions to widowed mothers. Despite being legislated in 46 states between 1911 and 1931, counties were left to administer, and often finance, these pensions themselves. Delegating the payment of pensions to counties led to irregular coverage and the pensions ultimately being replaced by Aid to Dependent Children. We collect new data and provide descriptive evidence that local demographics played an important role in the adoption and the payment of Mothers' Pensions. | Ph.D. | welfare, employment, inequality, equalit, income, fish, forest | 1, 8, 10, 14, 15 |
| Misquitta, Keith Anthony | Sibille, Etienne||Banasr, Mounira | The Macro- and Microstructural Alterations Associated with Chronic Stress and Chronic Hyperactivation of the Amygdala: Link to Behavioral Emotionality | Pharmacology | 2022-11 | Chronic stress exposure is a major risk factor to major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorders. Chronic stress-based animal models are pivotal for studying brain and behavioral deficits relevant to these disorders. Recent advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allowing for small animal brain imaging offer the opportunity to investigate with translational approaches the consequences of chronic stress and establish parallels with stress-related disorders in human, while identifying the underlying cellular substrates. In human, MDD is associated with structural alterations within the corticolimbic circuit, and these changes were attributed to synaptic changes particularly in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and amygdala (AMY). The AMY is a key brain region characterized by elevated activity as a result of MDD and chronic stress. In this thesis, we assessed in mice the behavioral, MRI volumetric and synaptic alterations induced by chronic stress and chronic hyperactivation of the AMY (cHOA) to establish the links between structural and synaptic changes as well as their role in the expression of behavioral emotionality. Since at the behavioral level the majority of tests used to detect the effects of chronic stress are anxiety tests but are limited in their inability to test anxiety-like deficits longitudinally, we first established a new test allowing to assess anxiety-like behavior repeatedly. Using this assay, we identified that chronic stress resulted in progressive changes in anxiety- and depressive-like behaviors. We then identified MRI structural and synaptic changes induced by chronic stress and found ACC decreased and AMY increased volumes that mapped onto parallel synaptic changes. Further, using a chemogenetic approach to induced cHOA, we demonstrated that cHOA alone resulted in chronic anxiety-like but no depressive-like deficits. We also showed that cHOA did not exacerbate chronic stress effects on anxiety- and/or depressive-like deficits. Lastly, while cHOA increased neuronal activity and synaptic density in the AMY correlated with behavioral deficits, structural changes were not observed. This thesis emphasizes the role of chronic stress in the detrimental morphological deficits associated with MDD, specifically in the ACC and AMY but suggest that AMY hyperactivity and resulting chronic anxiety is not a susceptibility factor for the development of depression. | Ph.D. | invest, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Renner, Nathan Andrew | Pilzer, Joshua D | “Ainu are not Ecologists!”: Ainu Music, Environmental Activism, and Conceptual Sovereignty for Indigenous People in Japan, 2011-2021 | Music | 2022-11 | This is an ethnography of contemporary Ainu music; i.e. aural expression in the lives of people who identify as descendants of the original inhabitants of Hokkaido and other regions in and around northern Japan. Many of the Ainu people described here are activists who are committed to preserving their ancestors’ songs, which reference traditional human/animal relationships and pre-colonial ways of life. There are also Ainu people who are ambivalent towards this repertoire but nevertheless connect with their ancestral lands and align with current political debates through aural techniques that their ancestors developed and passed on. Importantly, this research is also about non-Ainu people, particularly environmentalists who are interested in, and committed to, learning Ainu traditions, often directly from Ainu people. In many cases, they view these traditions as closer to nature than their own customs for reasons discussed throughout. In the following pages, I address an influx of support for Ainu music among non-Ainu environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists, especially after the March 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. I use ethnographic case studies to show how, even when Ainu aural expressions are misunderstood by outsiders, the intellectual legacy of Indigenous ancestors is accessible and presently undergoing rapid development by way of the music-making practices of contemporary Ainu people. While, as one Ainu language teacher put it, “Ainu are not ecologists,” my interlocutors have, indeed, encouraged many people in contemporary Japan to rethink categories like nature, music, and humanity. | Ph.D. | learning, indigenous, accessib, environmental, animal, ecolog, land, sovereignty | 4, 10, 16, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Alden, Christine Anne | Pascal, Charles E | Illuminating Outdoor Pedagogy in Early Learning and Child Care: A Collective Case Study in Ontario | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | This qualitative, collective case study, undertaken through an applied research lens, illuminates outdoor pedagogy by exploring the perspectives and practices of 12 early childhood educators and the relationship between policy and practice in three distinct Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) programs in Ontario, Canada. Data consisted of educator interviews, field observations, pedagogical planning and documentation artifacts, and centre policies. Drawing on a sociocultural theoretical framework that integrates traditional outdoor learning theory with contemporary literature about Euro-Western approaches to outdoor pedagogy, I employed constant comparison analysis, thematic analysis, and cross-case analysis to identify six themes of outdoor pedagogy: Teamwork, the Role of the Educator, Pedagogical Interactions, the Cycle of Pedagogical Documentation, Environments and Affordances, and Safety and Risk. Further, I determined one overarching theme about the locus of intentionality which informs understanding of the heterogeneity of outdoor pedagogy. I discuss the implications of my findings for practice and policy and for scaling outdoor pedagogy within the impending expansion of ELCC in Canada. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning | 4 |
| Rashidi-Ranjbar, Neda | Voineskos, Aristotle | An Integrated Assessment of Changes in Brain Structure and Function among Older Adults with Major Depressive Disorder or Mild Cognitive Impairment | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) has been associated with an increased risk of developing dementia. In 2008 Butters et al. proposed a mechanistic model by which late-life depression (LLD) may increase the risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD) consisting of: I) a vascular hypothesis, i.e., structural damage to frontal-executive circuit, II) an inflammation hypothesis, i.e., a high level of stress hormones in depression can lead to hippocampal volume loss (i.e., corticolimbic circuit).In study 1, we conducted a systematic review between 2008 and October 2018 to evaluate the evidence for the conceptual mechanistic model, focusing on frontal-executive and corticolimbic circuits in LLD. Findings from this study revealed inconsistent evidence of alterations in these circuits in LLD (compared to healthy controls; HC). In study 2 and study 3, we assessed structural and functional brain alterations of frontal-executive (i.e., ECN) and corticolimbic (i.e., DMN) circuits in five groups of older adults putatively at-risk for developing dementia: remitted depression with normal cognition (MDD-NC), non-amnestic MCI (naMCI), remitted MDD+naMCI, amnestic MCI (aMCI), and remitted MDD+aMCI. We also examined non-psychiatric HC and individuals with AD. We hypothesized that structural (via T1-weighted imaging & diffusion-weighted imaging) and functional (via resting-state-fMRI) alterations of frontal-executive (i.e., ECN) and corticolimbic (i.e., DMN) circuits would be present among these seven groups of older individuals, with the degree of alterations ranked according to the expected degree of risk for AD. Findings from these studies were contrary to our hypotheses: older individuals with remitted MDD did not show early signs of structural or functional neural alterations in the frontal-executive (i.e., ECN) or corticolimbic (i.e., DMN) circuits associated with preclinical AD. Therefore, remission from depression may protect from the risk of developing AD conferred by depression Taken together, our findings did not fully support the mechanistic ‘multiple pathways model’ linking depression and dementia. In contrast, our findings suggested that treating depression to remission in older adults could potentially reduce the likelihood of developing AD. Future large longitudinal studies should investigate differences in age of onset of depression, treatment-responsiveness, and the effects of antidepressant treatment in relation to risk of developing AD or dementia. | Ph.D. | emission, invest | 7, 9 |
| Vincett, Megan | Jang, Eunice E | Examining Young Learners’ Emotions and How They Relate to Cognition and Learning | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | Since the mid-2000s, researchers have embraced a dynamic and multidimensional view of learners, where their cognitive, social, and emotional processes are considered, in addition to their background and experiences that they bring to learning. Together these factors influence students in complex and multifaceted ways, and while tackling all of these interrelated components is impossible, in-depth analyses of contributing factors help elucidate their unique influence. The current study more specifically examines emotion in education. Research on emotion has traditionally focused on anxiety associated with test performance; however, the construct of emotion is multidimensional and developmentally sensitive. There is a dearth of research on the impact of emotion among young learners’, particularly regarding associations within the domains of language and literacy. The present study examined the relationship between task types and young learners’ emotional experience during task performance, examined whether this relationship is further differentiated by the learners’ background characteristics, and further considered the temporality of emotion over time across learning tasks. Students engaged in a comprehensive, multi-task, online learning-oriented assessment platform, Speak and Solve (SnS), targeting oral language and cognition. Multi-channel methods of self-reported emotion and behaviour observation data were used to examine the role of affect in cognitive and linguistic processing for 154 grade 4-6 students engaged in SnS. More specifically, the study utilized latent class analysis, multinomial logistic regression, and latent transition analysis to understand what emotional characteristics are associated with different tasks, what predictive factors (demographic, performance measures) are associated with emotion classes, and the stability of emotion trajectories across tasks. Findings highlight the integrated role that emotions play in young learners’ educational experiences. Additionally, results suggest that while most students’ anxiety peaked prior to and at the beginning of the platform, students that were language learners had anxiety that persisted across tasks. Furthermore, student’s motivational learning orientation appeared to play an important role in emotions experienced during SnS. Findings are contextualized and interpreted using the Control-value theory of achievement emotions. | Ph.D. | learning, transit | 4, 11 |
| Guidolin, Keegan | Zheng, Gang||Quereshy, Fayez | Developing the Porphysome Nanoparticle for Photodynamic Therapy of Colorectal Cancer | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is an ablative modality that utilizes a photosensitizing agent, oxygen, and light to generate cytotoxic reactive oxygen species to treat cancer. PDT has not achieved widespread use in clinical practice because of deficiencies in existing photosensitizers. The porphysome (PS) is a multifunctional liposomal nanoparticle containing porphyrin photosensitizer that accumulates in tumours, conferring many potential theranostic applications. Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a deadly disease with a rising incidence. CRC is uniquely amenable to PDT light delivery via endoscopy. The modern treatment of CRC is multimodal, with an increasing demand for neoadjuvant modalities to improve the effectiveness of subsequent surgery. This thesis describes work done to advance the clinical translation of PS-PDT for the treatment of CRC. A systematic review revealed barriers to the use of PDT in CRC, as well as the promise of PDT for CRC producing significant tumour ablation. The ability of PS to act as photosensitizers for PDT was established for the first time, with comparisons made against Photofrin (a clinical photosensitizer). This study found that PS-PDT was equivalent in efficacy and survival, and subsequent studies found reduced skin photosensitivity in PS compared to Photofrin treated animals. Further studies optimized PS-PDT for CRC by investigating the effectiveness associated with changes in drug-light interval, route of administration, and nanoparticle formulation. PS-PDT was most effective when light was delivered 3 hours after administration. PS-PDT was compared to PDT using PS-related nanoparticles (e-porphysomes, ePS), and ePS were shown to be more effective photosensitizers than PS. Peri-tumoural administration of the PS and ePS demonstrated a more targeted effect compared to intravenous administration. The feasibility, safety, and efficacy of intraluminal light delivery to rectal tumours was then investigated using an orthotopic model. This study revealed that intravenous administration of PS resulted in significant off-target effects, and that peri-tumoural administration was required. The thesis concludes with the protocol for a clinical trial of PDT for CRC intended to establish the feasibility of PDT and to inform the design of a future trial of PS-PDT for CRC. Overall, this thesis provides the first evidence that PS-based PDT is possible, describes fundamental discoveries about PS-PDT, and lays the groundwork for future clinical translation of the PS. | Ph.D. | invest, of color, species, animal | 9, 10, 14, 15 |
| Egan, Grace | Schimmer, Aaron D | Hexokinase 2 Localizes to the Nucleus and Regulate s Stemness in AML through a Kinase Independent Mechanism | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Leukemia stem cells are responsible for the initiation and recurrence of AML. Cell differentiation requires the coordination of metabolic state and gene expression programs. It is known that metabolic intermediates can serve as cofactors in epigenetic modifications in the nucleus to regulate the function and differentiation of leukemic and normal stem cells. However, it is less understood how mitochondrial enzymes localize to the nucleus to control stem cell function. We screened for mitochondrial metabolic enzymes that localize to the nucleus of AML stem cells. We discovered that the mitochondrial metabolic enzyme Hexokinase 2 (HK2) localizes to the nucleus in leukemic cell lines and primary patient samples. To determine whether nuclear HK2 was functionally important for AML stem cells, we overexpressed HK2 tagged with a nuclear localizing sequence (PAAKRVKLD, PKKKRKV). Overexpression of nuclear localized HK2 enhanced clonogenic growth and engraftment into immune deficient mice. Likewise, overexpression of nuclear localized HK2 blocked differentiation after treatment with all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA). Overexpression of nuclear HK2 increased leukemic stem cell (LSC) properties, independent of its kinase or metabolic activity. The nuclear localization of HK2 required active import through the importin, IPO5 and exportin XPO1, respectively. HK2 interacted with nuclear proteins that regulate chromatin openness, transcription and DNA repair. ATAC-sequencing demonstrated that nuclear HK2 increased chromatin accessibility at sites associated with the LSC+ signature. Nuclear HK2 was found to interact with the bHLH E-Box binding protein MAX (MYC associated factor X) by ChIP sequencing. Given that HK2 interacted with DNA repair proteins and increased accessibility at sites of DNA repair, we examined the role of nuclear HK2 in the DNA damage response. Overexpression of nuclear HK2 decreased double strand breaks and conferred chemoresistance in AML. This enhanced DNA damage response may contribute to the mechanism by which LSCs resist DNA damaging agents. Thus, we describe a non-canonical mechanism by which mitochondrial enzymes influence gene expression and stem cell function in AML, independent of their metabolic function. | Ph.D. | accessib | 11 |
| Sohail, Juwairia | Chen, Xi Becky | Reading Comprehension in English-French Bilinguals: The Roles of Syntactic and Morphological Awareness | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | This dissertation examines the roles of two types of metalinguistic awareness – syntactic and morphological awareness – in the reading comprehension of children enrolled in early Canadian French immersion programs. The first study investigated the contributions of syntactic awareness to concurrent reading comprehension within and across children’s first and second languages. Seventy-two emerging English-French bilingual children in Grade 3 completed measures of syntactic awareness, reading comprehension, word reading, and vocabulary in both languages, as well as a measure of nonverbal reasoning. Results revealed that French syntactic awareness made a significant unique contribution to French reading comprehension beyond controls. French syntactic awareness also contributed cross-linguistically to English reading comprehension after accounting for English controls, including English syntactic awareness. In contrast, no significant unique relations were found between English syntactic awareness and reading comprehension in either language beyond controls.The second study examined the development of morphological awareness, as well as its role in reading comprehension, in emerging English-French bilinguals. Using a longitudinal design, 115 participants were assessed in both languages on morphological awareness, reading comprehension, word reading, and vocabulary in Grade 2 and again in Grade 3. A measure of nonverbal reasoning was also collected. Results highlight the influence of phonological structure and cognate status on children’s development of morphological awareness in each language. Within-language results revealed that French morphological awareness contributed to concurrent French reading comprehension in both Grades 2 and 3 after controls, while English morphological awareness contributed to English reading comprehension in Grade 3 only. Longitudinally, Grade 2 morphological awareness predicted gains in Grade 3 reading comprehension within each language, beyond a stringent autoregressive control. Cross-language results indicated that French morphological awareness made significant contributions to English reading comprehension concurrently in Grade 3, and longitudinally from Grade 2 to Grade 3. In contrast, English morphological awareness did not contribute to French reading comprehension concurrently or longitudinally. Taken together, the findings of this dissertation add to our understanding of the roles of syntactic and morphological awareness in the reading comprehension of bilingual children. The findings underscore the importance of cultivating children’s metalinguistic awareness during the early stages of bilingual reading instruction. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Sullivan, Lisa | Schertz, Jessamyn | Pre-velar /æ/-raising in Ontario and Colorado English: Production, Perception and Metalinguistic Awareness | Linguistics | 2022-11 | Pre-velar /æ/-raising (BAG-raising) is a process in which some speakers of North Amer- ican English raise /æ/ before /g/, but not /k/. This process occurs in parts of Canada (e.g. Boberg, 2008), and in the Pacific Northwest (e.g. Freeman, 2021) and Upper Midwest (e.g. Koffi, 2013) in the US. While documentation of the production of BAG-raising is limited, less is known about its perception. Previous studies find no difference between how BAG-raisers and non-raisers perceive raising (Freeman, 2019; Sullivan, 2020a); however, anecdotal evidence suggests individuals from dialect regions without BAG-raising perceive the raised /æ/ in [æg] words as distinct from its unraised counterpart while those from BAG-raising regions do not. This dissertation seeks to establish if listeners hear raised and unraised /æ/ as distinct pronunciations, and if this is conditioned by production, metalinguistic awareness and/or phonological context. First, a metalinguistic awareness survey confirmed anecdotal evidence for differences in metalinguistic awareness between individuals from BAG-raising and non-raising regions. Individuals from non-raising regions had more metalinguistic awareness than those from BAG-raising regions. The study demonstrates that it may be possible to quantify metalinguistic awareness, though more work is needed to establish how best to do so, and which aspects of folk linguistic awareness (Preston, 1996) different tasks are tapping into. Next, a production study extended knowledge about the distribution of the production of BAG-raising to Colorado, where it has not been previously studied, and Ontario, where it has been studied, but not specifically targeted (Boberg, 2008; Sullivan, 2020a). This study showed that BAG-raising occurs in Ontario, but not Colorado. Finally, an AX discrimination task explored if speakers could discriminate raised and unraised /æ/ and if this was conditioned by their individual degree of BAG-raising, their metalinguistic awareness or the phonological context of /æ/. Listeners with higher degrees of BAG-raising discriminated raised and unraised /æ/ less than those with lower degrees of BAG-raising, but only before /g/, suggesting that production is implicated in perception and that mental representations are formed based on an individual’s production and the phonological context in which a sound occurs. | Ph.D. | knowledge, production | 4, 12 |
| Meskar, Erfan | Liang, Ben | Fair Multi-resource Allocation for Mobile Edge Computing | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | The problem of fair and efficient allocation of resources in Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is of significant importance. Users in MEC, instead of utilizing the servers in the core network, can offload their tasks to the MEC-capable access points (APs) at the network's edge. Each user in MEC requires resources in a customized proportion to execute a task on a MEC server. Furthermore, The task input data and execution results are sent through shared wireless communication links to and from the MEC servers. Hence, MEC is characterized by allocating multiple communication and computation resources. Existing resource allocation rules generally consider Pareto Optimality (PO), Envy-Freeness (EF), Sharing Incentive (SI), and Strategy-Proofness (SP) as the most desirable fairness and efficiency properties. This dissertation proposes fair and efficient resource allocation mechanisms for three different MEC systems. We first consider the single-AP MEC systems, where the users must upload their tasks over a dedicated wireless communication link outside the computing servers. We propose a fair multi-resource allocation mechanism for this environment, termed Task Share Fairness with External Resource (TSF-ER), and prove that it satisfies all desirable fairness and efficiency properties. We then consider the multi-AP MEC systems where no user can establish multiple wireless connections simultaneously to multiple edge servers. Furthermore, each user is a selfish agent that chooses the single server for its job execution that maximizes its utility. We propose the Multi-resource Allocation Game Induced by the Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining solution (MAGIKS) and prove that under discrete resource demands, it finds a Nash Equilibrium in polynomial time for any fixed server configuration. Furthermore, we prove that MAGIKS satisfies some desirable fairness and efficiency properties. Finally, we consider the multi-AP MEC systems where each user can establish wireless connection simultaneously to multiple edge servers and may experience different levels of wireless channel quality on different APs, so the user's channel bandwidth demand is not fixed. We show that the four fairness and efficiency properties are no longer compatible in this MEC environment. Hence, we propose a resource allocation rule, Maximum Task Product (MTP), that retains PO, EF, and SI. | Ph.D. | fish | 14 |
| Mayor Nunez, Diana Margarita | Tymianski, Michael | Next-Generation Postsynaptic Density-95 (PSD-95) Protein Inhibitors for the Treatment of Acute Ischemic Stroke | Physiology | 2022-11 | Stroke is the leading cause of neurological disability worldwide, creating a significant burden on health care systems. Although reperfusion therapies improve functional prognosis, this benefit is still time-dependent, and there is still a significant number of AIS patients with poor outcomes. Neuroprotection is an alternative strategy to reperfusion, aiming to enhance the brain's resilience to the ischemic cascade after stroke. Neuroprotection for experimental AIS has been demonstrated with nerinetide, an inhibitor of the protein-protein interactions of the synaptic scaffolding protein PSD-95. However, a potential adverse occurrence with the use of nerinetide is hypotension, produced by histamine release from mast cells. Therefore, we sought to develop a next-generation PSD-95 inhibitor intended to overcome the potential for hypotension currently seen with nerinetide. Three hypotheses were examined: (1) That the hypotension caused by nerinetide can be attenuated or eliminated while maintaining therapeutic effectiveness by co-formulating nerinetide with an agent that prevents mast cell degranulation, (2) That the hypotension caused by nerinetide can be attenuated or eliminated while maintaining therapeutic effectiveness by replacing the polycationic Tat N-terminus with an alternative CNS delivery domain and (3) That the hypotension caused by nerinetide can be attenuated or eliminated while maintaining therapeutic effectiveness by designing an alternative PSD-95 inhibitor altogether. These hypotheses were tested using three peptides (NA-1Lodo, Myr-NA1 and Myr-ND2) whose structural modifications from nerinetide corresponded to the three hypotheses. These were evaluated through a sequence of in-vitro and in-vivo studies evaluating their essential properties and culminating with PK/PD relationships. Of the three, NA-1Lodo demonstrated a plasma stability, pharmacokinetic profile and brain penetration like those of nerinetide. It also exhibited a superior safety profile to the other candidates, as it completely abolished the development of histamine induced hypotension following bolus administration. Additionally, NA-1Lodo demonstrated a significant neuroprotective effect, reduced infarct volume and improved neurological function in three different experimental stroke models in the rat. The overall work in my thesis shows that it is feasible to improve on the safety and tolerability of nerinetide without sacrificing efficacy using several approaches, and provides the data needed to rank these strategies for the purposes of further future development. | Ph.D. | health care, disabilit, resilien, resilience | 3, 11, 13, 15 |
| Ferreyro, Bruno Leonel | Scales, Damon C | Critical Illness in Patients with Hematologic Malignancies | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Introduction: Patients with hematologic malignancy are at increased risk of developing life-threatening complications that can lead to admission to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Acute respiratory failure is the most frequent reason for ICU admission in these patients. Existing knowledge gaps in the field include the lack of population-based estimates of the incidence and timing of ICU admission in these patients and the associated risk factors; uncertainty about the relative effectiveness of treatments for acute hypoxemic respiratory failure; and information about long-term outcomes and symptoms for patients with hematologic malignancies who survive an ICU admission. Objectives: This thesis 1) characterizes the epidemiology of critical illness after a new diagnosis of hematologic malignancy in a large population-based cohort in Ontario, Canada; 2) evaluates the effectiveness of different noninvasive oxygenation strategies for reducing the receipt of invasive mechanical ventilation and decreasing mortality in patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure; and 3) describes the association between ICU admission and subsequent patient-reported symptoms in patients with hematologic malignancies who received hematopoietic cell transplantation. Synthesis: Between April 1st 2006 and March 31st 2017, 87965 patients were diagnosed with hematologic malignancy in Ontario. The one-year incidence of ICU admission was 13.9% (median time to ICU 35 days), ranging from 7.3% for patients with indolent lymphoma to 22.5% for patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Among ICU patients, 36.7% required invasive mechanical ventilation and in-hospital mortality was 31.0%. We found that the use of noninvasive ventilation provided by either a helmet or a face mask interface or use of high flow nasal oxygen decreased the risk of receiving invasive mechanical ventilation or dying in patients with acute hypoxemic respiratory failure. Among 5844 patients with hematologic malignancy who received hematopoietic cell transplantation, ICU admission was associated with a higher risk of reporting moderate to severe symptoms during follow-up across multiple symptom domains. Conclusion: This thesis provides important findings about the epidemiology of ICU admission for patients with a new hematological malignancy and describes the impact that ICU admission and treatments can have on subsequent outcomes. | Ph.D. | illness, knowledge | 3, 4 |
| Butkiewicz, Anna | Wrobel, Piotr J | “An Inborn Idea…to be Realised.” Imagining the Polish Nation within the Great Emigration in France, 1831-1846 | History | 2022-11 | In 1795, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth ceased to exist with the third and final partition of the country by Prussia, Russia, and Austria. The nobility had held a wide array of rights and privileges that included the electoral sovereignty to choose the Polish king. The partitions thus resulted in a loss of agency for this class and provoked questioning as to whether their “fatherland” was gone indefinitely. Instead, deprived of a state, those who still identified with the fallen polity were inspired to conceive and construct the outlines of a nation without territory. The dissertation begins by examining Polish national philosophies post-partition, up to and including the November Uprising of 1830-31. Alongside themes of loss and suffering, writings centred on de-coupling the ideas of nation and state and envisioning the nation as a non-material entity. The nation began to be conceived through the idea of entelechy: in a process of self-realisation from an inborn idea, usually by means of a national mission. The focus of the dissertation is on the national thought of the members of the Great Emigration who mostly settled in France after the Uprising. Their writings on the nation built on currents that had emerged post-partition, and were heavily reliant on religious language, metaphor, and biblical inspirations. By focusing on a spiritual body reminiscent of a corpus mysticum, nationalists sought to prove and maintain continuity with the past, without the intermediary of a physical body politic. Émigrés were still concerned with the physical embodiment of a future Poland: debating boundaries, ethnic composition, religious minorities, and social questions. Contending with a deep sense of personal loss and with hopes for return diminishing, many émigrés turned toward mystical currents that viewed Poland through a messianic lens. They imagined an ideal nation that through its suffering and mission would serve as an agent of universal moral transformation. The dissertation closes with the failed Krakow Uprising of 1846 and the Galician Slaughter, which forced exiles to confront their imagined nation with the failure of the peasants, often idealised as the wellspring of national identity, to identify with and join the Polish cause. | Ph.D. | minorit, gini, land, sovereignty | 10, 15, 16 |
| Pong, Sandra | Daneman, Nick | Antimicrobial Treatment Duration for Bloodstream Infections in Critically Ill Children | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | BACKGROUNDBloodstream infections (BSIs) cause significant morbidity and mortality in critically ill children, but the optimal antimicrobial treatment duration is understudied. Adequate treatment duration is important to prevent clinical failure and infection relapse but treating for too long increase patients’ risks for developing adverse drug events, superinfections, and selection for antimicrobial resistance. This thesis describes preparatory work completed to justify and inform the design of a randomized controlled trial to evaluate antibiotic treatment durations for critically ill children with BSIs. METHODS We conducted four studies as preparatory work for a future trial: 1. Clinician practice survey to determine self-reported recommendations for antimicrobial treatment duration; 2. Retrospective observational study to describe actual treatment durations received by critically ill children with BSIs; 3. Systematic review of non-inferiority pharmacotherapy trials to examine prevailing non-inferiority margins used for mortality outcomes; 4. Retrospective observational study using PELOD-2 as an outcome measure to compare progression of organ dysfunction between children who received early or delayed adequate antimicrobial therapy. RESULTS In our survey, 64% to 99% respondents recommended ³10 days of therapy for BSIs, depending on underlying source of infection. In our observational study, the median treatment duration was 15 (IQR 11-25) days. Longer durations were associated with greater severity of illness and central nervous system infections. The median non-inferiority margin size for mortality in non-inferiority trials was a 9% (IQR 4.2%-10%) absolute risk difference or 1.5 (IQR 1.3-1.7) relative to baseline mortality risks. We did not find an association between 3-hour delays of adequate antimicrobial therapy and change in PELOD-2 scores (0.05, 95% CI -0.76 – 0.87, p=0.9) between days 1 and 5 from the index BSI. CONCLUSIONS We found self-reported and actual practice heterogeneity on BSI treatment durations, and clinical equipoise to support a trial of shorter versus longer antimicrobial treatment in critically ill children. Current non-inferiority margins for mortality outcomes in published trials are large and variable. The use of organ dysfunction as an outcome measure for BSI trials requires further study. | Ph.D. | ABS, illness | 2, 3 |
| Wong, Aaron Kin Ken | Liu, Mingyao | Transcriptomic Profiling of Ischemia-Reperfusion in Human Lung Transplantation | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Lung transplantation is the only lifesaving option for patients with end stage lung disease. The most prominent issue in transplantation is a shortage of donor lungs. Only 20% of donated organs are healthy enough to endure the stress of ischemia reperfusion (IR), an unavoidable consequence of transplantation. A deep understanding of cellular and molecular mechanisms for lung injury are needed to accelerate development of therapeutic strategies for lung repair. In this thesis we utilize a transcriptomics approach to catalogue potential mechanisms of injury directly from human lung clinical samples.In our first study we aimed to dissect potential mechanisms of IR injury through comparison of the response of human lungs to either transplantation or ex vivo lung perfusion (EVLP) using microarrays. We then aimed to further study IR at the single cell resolution and to this end, developed a hypothermic dissociation protocol. Using our developed protocol, we then conducted a longitudinal single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) study in human lungs before and after reperfusion to explore the response of donor cell populations to IR. From our bulk gene expressions study, we found that both transplantation and EVLP activated pathways involving inflammation and cell death, suggesting that these responses were induced independent of recipient factors. To conduct scRNA-seq, we developed the first hypothermic dissociation protocol for adult human lung which generated single cell suspension containing at least 18 unique cell types including neutrophils. From our longitudinal scRNA-seq study, we characterized the response of donor populations to IR and found that epithelial and endothelial cells induce major inflammatory responses early on in reperfusion. Using a single nucleotide variant-based deconvolution technique we were also able to deconvolve recipient cell populations and identify important differences compared to donor cells. These descriptive studies have identified potential mechanisms of injury at the tissue and single cell level directly from human clinical samples. Many of these potential mechanisms of injury intersect with existing data from animal and in vitro models. The human data generated from these studies will help to improve models of lung injury during IR and accelerate the discovery of therapeutic strategies for lung repair. | Ph.D. | animal | 14, 15 |
| Hu, Wenxun | Shalaby, Amer AS | Adaptive Transit Signal Priority Algorithms for Optimizing Bus Reliability and Travel Time using Deep Reinforcement Learning | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | Transit Signal Priority (TSP), a broadly used traffic signal control strategy, is traditionally designed for reducing transit delays at signalized intersections. Conditional TSP is popular in field applications, and research studies have often designed such strategy based on criteria-oriented yes or no rules, which target simple objectives and do not guarantee optimality. Although recent objective-oriented TSP systems began to consider the optimization of more objectives, headway adherence is rarely included. TSPs that addressed transit reliability issues commonly focused on improving the schedule adherence and were only able to reduce schedule delays by expediting buses. Headway regularity which is a critical performance indicator for high-frequency services has not received much attention. Algorithms that expedite late buses only have limited capacity to resolve short headway gaps. Moreover, objective-oriented TSPs most frequently use mathematical programming methods, the main concern with which is the requirement of explicit formulation and representation of the system performance, which typically includes assumptions that simplify the dynamic traffic environment greatly. These assumptions, like deterministic traffic flow could ignore or oversimplify the stochastic characteristics of the system. This PhD thesis proposes dual-objective adaptive TSP algorithms optimized using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL). These TSPs use loop detectors, and they optimize transit delays and reliability (i.e., headway adherence) at an individual intersection or multiple intersections. The proposed algorithms are trained and tested in a stochastic microsimulation environment in Aimsun Next that models a transit line segment with reliability issues in the City of Toronto. The performance of developed TSPs is compared against carefully developed baseline scenarios, including background signal timing plans without TSP, current TSP algorithm used in the field in the City of Toronto, and more advanced TSP algorithms with a machine-learning based bus arrival prediction model or DRL agents. These TSP systems are evaluated on a series of aspects including bus headway adherence, percentage of extreme headways, travel time, passenger experience, effectiveness under different traffic demand levels, and impact on the cross-street traffic delays. The developed DRL-based TSPs provide noticeable improvement in headway adherence and travel time at the individual and multiple intersections levels. | Ph.D. | learning, transit | 4, 11 |
| Bernier, Alexander | Austin, Lisa | Structural Limitations of Data Protection Legislation for the Learning Health System: Proposing a Lex Specialis for Longitudinal Biomedical Data Use | Law | 2021-11 | Data protection legislation imposes presumptive limitations on the capacity of institutions to collect, use, and disclose personal information to safeguard individual interests such as informational self-determination and privacy. This legislation has shown itself ill-suited to the regulation of emergent data-driven activities in the health sector, including public health surveillance, biomedical research, and personalised medicine. These difficulties are accentuated in transnational and intersectoral efforts, due to the heightened legal compliance challenges that arise from the simultaneous application of multiple laws. To alleviate these difficulties, a novel legal paradigm of data stewardship is proposed. A model of longitudinal information stewardship in reliance on appropriate organisational structures, expert oversight, and technical safeguards is proposed as an alternative to data protection law. Such a model should be enacted through special purpose health-sector legislation to align individual privacy and the pro-social use of health-related personal information in the public interest. | LL.M. | public health, learning, institut, self-determination | 3, 4, 16 |
| Ferguson, Amanda M | Inzlicht, Michael||Segal, Zindel | The Empathy Selection Task: Evaluating Empathy as a Subjective Value-based Choice | Psychological Clinical Science | 2022-11 | Empathy often feels automatic, but variations in empathic responding suggest that, at least some of the time, empathy is affected by one’s motivation to empathize in any particular circumstance. Here, I investigate a novel free-choice behavior measure of motivated empathy avoidance called the empathy selection task. First, I assess the suitability of the empathy selection task for use in individual difference and experimental research by examining its reliability within and across testing sessions, and by examining rank order stability of summary scores (Studies 1a and 1b). The empathy selection task is stable between testing sessions and has good/substantial test-retest reliability (ICCs = .65 and .67), suggesting that it is comparable or superior to other commonly used experimental tasks with respect to its ability to consistently rank individuals. Next, I show that people can be motivated to engage in (or avoid) empathy-eliciting situations with strangers, and that these decisions are driven by subjective value-based estimations of the costs (e.g., cognitive effort) and benefits (e.g., social reward) inherent to empathizing. Participants were more likely to opt into empathy-eliciting situations if 1) they were incentivized monetarily for doing so (Studies 2a and 2b), and 2) if a more familiar and liked empathy target was available (Studies 3a and 3b). Framing empathy as explicitly related to one’s moral character and reputation did not motivate participants to engage in empathy (Studies 4a and 4b), though these null results may be due to a weak manipulation. These findings suggest that empathy can be motivated in multiple ways, and that context-specific value-based decision can be captured and measured by the empathy selection task. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Alaca, Zahide | Davies, Scott | Schools, Summers, and Educational Inequality | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | Sociologists have claimed that summer vacations widen inequality in academic achievement because, during the summer, students with access to learning opportunities at home continue to learn while students with limited access forget much of what they learned the previous school year. Part I of this dissertation argues that this claim is premised on the assumption that, summer after summer, the same lowest-achieving students fall further and further behind in all school subjects and the same highest-achieving students pull further and further ahead in all school subjects. I test the tenability of this assumption, which I term the assumption of within-student stability in learning across time and school subjects. I fit univariate-outcome and multivariate-outcome multilevel piecewise growth models to the math and reading achievement of 19,524 students in the United States between kindergarten and grade 5. Some of the results support the assumption of within-student stability, and others undermine it. I show that the growth models that have been informing theories of summer learning are sensitive to analytic choices. I offer avenues for advancing sociological theories of educational inequality and for improving the analytic methods that are used in research on educational inequality. In Canada and the United States, the provision of free summer learning programs is among primary strategies for improving student achievement and narrowing achievement gaps. However, research on their effectiveness is inconclusive. Part II of this dissertation argues that evaluations of summer learning programs can be strengthened by using analytic methods that are appropriate for the evaluation of time-varying treatments that may operate indirectly through time-varying characteristics of students. I fit regression-with-residuals models to the math and reading achievement of 2,111 students in Ontario, Canada, between grades 1 and 3. Results suggest that summer learning programs raise student achievement more when students attend a program in multiple summers rather than in a single summer. Results also suggest that the effects of summer learning programs vary significantly between students. However, estimates are noisy. I propose ways to increase capacity for rigorous evaluations of summer learning programs. | Ph.D. | learning, inequality, equalit | 4, 10 |
| Rafie Borujeny, Reza | Kschischang, Frank R | Communication Over Nonlinear Optical Fiber Channels | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | A nondispersive model for optical fibers is considered. The nonlinear interaction between signal and noise is formulated as a reachability problem. A bounded-noise model for the nondispersive optical fiber channel is introduced. The new model is based on the so-called split-step model and is meant to facilitate understanding of capacity limitations caused by nonlinear signal-noise interactions in optical fiber. Some characteristics of the noise balls pertaining to this new model are discussed and, accordingly, upper and lower bounds on the zero-error capacity of this channel are found. By relaxing the assumption on boundedness of the noise, the problem of finding the minimum amount of noise energy that can render two different input points indistinguishable is formulated. This minimum noise energy is then taken as a measure of distance between the points in the input alphabet. Using the machinery of optimal control theory, necessary conditions that describe the minimum-energy noise trajectories are stated as a system of nonlinear differential equations. It is shown how to find the distance between two input points by solving this system of differential equations. The problem of designing signal constellations with the largest minimum distance subject to a peak power constraint is formulated as a clique-finding problem. As an example, a 16-point constellation is designed and compared with conventional quadrature amplitude modulation. A computationally efficient approximation for the proposed distance measure is provided. It is shown how to use this approximation to design large constellations with large minimum distances. Based on the control-theoretic viewpoint of this paper, a new decoding scheme for such nonlinear channels is proposed. A time-domain perturbation model of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation is used to study wave-length-division multiplexed communication over a single polarization. The model explains (a) why constant-composition codes offer an improvement in signal-to-noise ratio compared with independent and uniform selection of constellation points and (b) why similar gains are obtained using carrier recovery algorithms even without using constant-composition codes. It is shown that the more general class of spherical codes, which encompass constant-composition codes, have the potential to reduce cross-phase modulation, as long as their blocklength is not too long. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Zhong, Aileen Ri Jia | Simmons, Craig A | Molecular Mechanisms of Mechanically Regulated Aortic Valve Disease: A Focus on the Wnt Signaling Pathway | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Calcific aortic valve disease (CAVD) is characterized by the thickening and calcification of aortic valve leaflets. CAVD is a multifaceted disease caused by aberrant differentiation of valvular endothelial cells (VECs) and valvular interstitial cells (VICs) in response to changes in physiological mechanical environments. VECs can undergo endothelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EndMT) and contribute to the resident pool of fibroblast cells (VICs) within the aortic valve and upon stimulation, VICs can differentiate into myofibroblast- or osteoblast-like cells. The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway has been implicated in CAVD, VIC myofibrogenic, and osteogenic differentiation, however, its roles in mechanically-regulated EndMT and VIC osteogenic differentiation have not been investigated. The first part of this thesis examines the role of matrix stiffness and β-catenin in EndMT of VECs and found that TGF-β1 induced EndMT in a stiffness- and β-catenin-dependent manner. Notably, the initiation of EndMT (disruption of cell morphology and membrane VE-cadherin expression) was insensitive to matrix stiffness, but α-SMA fiber formation and nuclear translocation of β-catenin both increased on stiff substrate. Endostatin treatment revealed that β-catenin was necessary for TGF-β1-induced transformation of VECs to α-SMA positive myofibroblasts, and this association was confirmed by immunofluorescent staining of sclerotic aortic valves. The second part of the thesis analyzed the role of β-catenin, FoxO1, and cyclic stretch on VIC osteogenic differentiation. We demonstrated for the first time that FoxO1 expression is increased and co-localized with Runx2 in calcified region of diseased human aortic valve using immunostaining. In vitro experiments using siRNA knockdown and exogenous overexpression confirmed the causal effect of FoxO1 on the expression of osteogenic genes RUNX2, ENPP1, and SPP1 in VICs. Surprisingly, β-catenin knockdown had no effect on VIC osteogenic gene expression and thus was unlikely to be a co-factor of FoxO1 in regulating VIC osteogenic differentiation. Although short-term mechanical stretch had no effect on FoxO1, β-catenin, and osteogenic gene expression, long-term stretch promoted dystrophic calcific nodule formation. The findings in this thesis characterized the role of Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway in mechanically-regulated EndMT and VIC osteogenic differentiation, identified FoxO1 as a novel mediator of VIC osteogenic differentiation, and provided insights into the molecular mechanisms behind CAVD pathogenesis and potential therapeutic targets. | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Williamson, Eric | Moore, Daniel R | Protein Requirements and Amino Acid Metabolism following Endurance Exercise | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | Sex and diet [e.g. amino acid (AA) ingestion] can impact whole-body protein turnover following intense endurance exercise, ultimately influencing protein recommendations to enhance performance. This thesis examined sex-based differences in protein requirements and the impact of protein intake on plasma AA concentrations and markers of myofibrillar protein breakdown [3-methylhistidine (3MH)] in endurance athletes. Study one utilized a modified indicator amino acid oxidation (IAAO) 3-point curve to assess protein requirements in male and female endurance athletes. Following 2-d of controlled diet and training, participants completed an IAAO trial following a 20km outdoor run from home on three occasions testing variable protein intakes (0.2, 1.2 or 2.0g⋅kg−1⋅d-1). Oral[1-13C]Phenylalanine was used to generate a biphasic linear regression of 13CO2 excretion (F13CO2) and phenylalanine oxidation (PheOx; the reciprocal of whole-body protein synthesis) with the mean breakpoint per group serving as the estimated average requirement (EAR). Results indicated a PheOx EAR of ~1.60g·kg-1·d-1 and safe intake of ~1.85g·kg-1·d-1 with no difference (P=0.94) between sexes. The EAR and safe intake were not different from those previously determined using traditional lab-based IAAO in males, suggesting the modified 3-point IAAO is effective at determining AA requirements, and recommendations are similar whether the run is performed on an automated treadmill or in the real-world environment. Study 2 was a subset of previous research in which urine and blood samples of endurance trained males were examined to determine the effect of three different protein intakes (0.94, 1.20 or 1.83g·kg-1·d-1) following a controlled running protocol on plasma AA and plasma and urinary 3MH. Plasma results demonstrated significantly greater essential AA and branched chain AA as well as reduced 3MH with 1.83 compared to 0.94 or 1.2g⋅kg-1⋅d-1. This may indicate less myofibrillar protein breakdown is required to maintain plasma AA with an intake of 1.83g⋅kg-1⋅d-1. In conclusion, future research should consider the time-efficient modified 3-point IAAO and the home-based protocol we have developed to examine protein requirements in other populations. A protein intake of 1.85g⋅kg-1⋅d-1 maximizes whole-body protein synthesis and may reduce myofibrillar catabolism. On this basis, we recommend that endurance athletes consume towards the upper end of current consensus statement protein recommendations (1.2-2.0g⋅kg-1⋅d-1) regardless of sex. | Ph.D. | female, sexes, consum, co2 | 5, 12, 13 |
| Nakamura, Akihiro | Haroon, Nigil | Macrophage Migration Inhibitory Factor as a Critical Disease Driver and Novel Therapeutic Target in Spondyloarthritis | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Spondyloarthritis (SpA) is a rheumatic disease characterized by inflammation and new bone formation (NBF). Although current treatments including anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and anti-interleukin-17 (IL-17)-targeted therapies are available, up to 40% of SpA patients do not adequately respond to any treatment modalities. Therefore, better understandings of the disease pathogenesis and discoveries of novel therapeutic targets are warranted in SpA. Our group previously found that the concentration and expression of macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), a proinflammatory mediator, in serum and target tissues are increased in SpA patients compared to healthy volunteers or osteoarthritis patients (disease controls). However, the specific roles of MIF in the pathogenesis of SpA remain elusive. Chapter 1 describes the overview of current understandings of the pathogenesis of SpA, extensively covering contributions of genetic and environmental factors, immune activation leading to inflammation, and NBF associated with SpA. Chapter 2 describes the specific roles of MIF in the immunopathology of SpA. The data shown here incorporates experimental results obtained from a well-established SpA mouse model (curdlan-SKG mice) and SpA patient samples. I identified that among major immune cell lineages, neutrophils are the primary cells producing and secreting high amounts of MIF in both the mouse model and SpA patients. Pre-clinical testing shows that both MIF- and neutrophils-targeted therapies are effective in decreasing inflammation and NBF in SpA. Mechanistically, MIF boosts type 3 immunity by enhancing the acquisition of a T-helper 17 cell (Th17) phenotype in both mouse and human regulatory T cells. The data shown in this chapter was published in Science Translational Medicine. Chapter 3 outlines the potential role of MIF on the development of NBF in SpA. During endochondral ossification, a common process of NBF in SpA, MIF increases the expression of chondrogenesis and cartilage extracellular matrices markers by activating STAT3 and mitochondrial energy potentials. Chapter 4 proposes future directions for MIF-related research and therapies. My findings expand the current understanding of the pathogenesis of SpA and demonstrate the potential of MIF-targeted therapies to attenuate the development of inflammation and NBF in SpA. Future clinical trials testing the efficacy and safety of MIF-targeted therapies are warranted. | Ph.D. | energy, environmental | 7, 13 |
| Balt, Christine | Gallagher, Kathleen M | Seeking a Right to the City in Toronto: Youth, Pedagogy, Pandemic, and Performance | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This drama-based ethnographic research study asks how youth in Toronto, Canada, negotiate a right to the city in these times of pandemic and climate crisis. It also examines the affordances of using drama-based methodologies to study Toronto youth’s right to the city. It engages with three online drama classrooms in the Toronto District School Board: one middle school (12-14 years old) and two high schools (14-18 years old). In these drama classrooms, auto-topography (Heddon, 2007) is mobilized as a methodological and pedagogical tool to engage the city as an oeuvre (Lefebvre, 1996) that integrates both physical and virtual space. Amin’s (2012) ‘urban feelings,’ Ahmed’s (2004/2014) ‘cultural politics of emotion’ and Massumi’s (2015) ‘politics of affect’ conceptually guide this study. ‘Diffracted reflexivity’ (Serra Undurraga, 2021) is adopted as an analytical approach that attends to the sensory and embodied qualities of the data, and the broader forces of power, history and identity in which they are entangled. The findings align with Deleuze and Guattari’s (1985) concept of ‘the minor’ in that the youth’s auto-topographical performances contest majoritarian narratives of belonging, exclusion, nature, culture, and participation in Toronto in these times. Auto-topography gestures to how emotional flows of shame, disgust, fear, nostalgia, longing and joy serve to ‘deterritorialize’ and ‘reterritorialize’ youth in the context of gentrification (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987). Auto-topography confronts the capitalist and anthropocentric city, enlivening the enchanted materialism (Bennett, 2001) and ‘ecological anthropomorphism’ (Woynarksi, 2015) of parks, libraries, valleys, animals, and streets. Further, ‘participation’ – as foundational to the formation of the urban citizen – is problematized amid the changing stakes of ‘trust’ and ‘risk’ during the COVID pandemic. Hospitality and intimacy emerge as concepts for advancing a right to the city that integrates the public and private spheres. The dissertation closes with a consideration of a ‘theatre of little changes’ (Balfour, 2009) for the conceiving of a right to the city via a politics of co-flourishing. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, citizen, capital, urban, climate, animal, ecolog | 4, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Brun, Emma Alexandra | Gray-Owen, Scott D | Investigating Human Neutrophil Phenotypes that Associate with Neisseria gonorrhoeae | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | The human-specific pathogen Neisseria gonorrhoeae (Ngo) causes the sexually transmitted disease gonorrhea, an oppressive public health burden due both the recent emergence of multidrug-resistant ‘superbug’ strains and the ability of untreated infections to cause inflammation-induced scarring of the maternal reproductive tract and blindness in children born from infected mothers. The hallmark of gonococcal infection is a massive influx of neutrophils that do not seem to clear the infection. Primary human and murine neutrophil-based studies demonstrate that opsonin-independent binding and engulfment of Ngo is driven by bacterial Opa protein adhesins binding to CD66 glycoproteins expressed on the neutrophil surface. A growing awareness that multiple neutrophil phenotypes exist prompted us to hypothesize that these neutrophil populations may differentially respond to Ngo. If true, then we must revisit the potential roles for neutrophils in gonococcal immunity and the immunopathogenesis of infection. The specific objective of this work is to develop a model to study the interaction between Ngo and different neutrophil subsets, to define and characterize the subpopulations of neutrophils that respond to Ngo infection, and to understand the specific response of each neutrophil phenotype to this infection. My studies to date reveal substantial differences in the phenotypes of neutrophils recovered by standard purification methods (such as Ficoll-isolation and MACSpress negative isolation beads) and whole-blood neutrophils, and my results have been compiled in a manuscript. Using a whole blood infection model, I performed a high-throughput flow cytometry-based analysis of 355 different cluster of differentiation (CD) antigens to reveal those expressed by Ngo-infected neutrophils. After identifying the most frequent CD antigens present, I generated customized HTS plates with our top 20 hits to identify antigens expressed on neutrophils that bound Ngo. I found that expression of CD11b, CD63, CD66c, CD256, CD277 and CD288 identify neutrophil phenotypes that are more likely to bind Ngo. My ongoing research aims to further understand how these different populations contribute to immunity versus immunopathogenesis against this devastating pathogen. | Ph.D. | public health, invest | 3, 9 |
| Wolf, Derek Peter | Caspersen, John P | The Positional Logic of Technological Innovation in the Canadian Bioenergy Sector | Forestry | 2022-11 | For almost fifty years, OECD governments have sought to increase the rate of technological innovation in the energy sector to resolve price-supply risks, improve economic performance, and address environmental concerns. Policy and innovation effort has been concentrated within the transportation, electricity, and industrial sectors; fewer resources have been allocated to support the innovation of alternative energy technologies applicable to non-industrial buildings. Small European nations and many subnational jurisdictions are important exceptions to this general tendency. This dissertation presents an integrative theoretical approach to understanding these patterns that begins explanation with the power-distributional effects of material reality and then considers the power-distributional effects of institutions that do not logically derive from material reality. The explanation is improved through attention to temporal processes (path dependence and positive feedback). Areas of the political economy that are prone to oligopoly and vertical/horizontal integration (that are ”centralized”) and that involve complex technologies are more likely to receive resource allocations owing to greater institutional development (organizations and rules). The development of institutions in areas of the political economy that are less centralized and associated with less complex technologies functions to expand the scope of policy and innovation effort. The approach is tested using the example of clean technology innovation in the Canadian bioenergy field. In Chapter 2, federal policy and sectoral developments since the 1970s demonstrate that the transport sector – a highly centralized area of the economy involving the innovation of complex technologies – has been the principal emphasis of policy and innovation effort. The lack of federal policy effort in the non-industrial heating sector is attributed to its decentralized and low-tech nature. In Chapter 3, a comparison of the development of recent non-industrial heating policies in the bioenergy fields of Ontario and Quebec provides evidence supporting the proposition that institutionally complex jurisdictions function to increase resource allocations in decentralized, low-tech areas of the economy. Chapter 4 presents a method of technical and policy model parameterization that is designed to mitigate overconfidence, a plausible mechanism of positive feedback. The final chapter summarizes the findings and discusses implications for clean energy transitions and comparative political economy scholarship. | Ph.D. | energy, buildings, transit, environmental, institut | 7, 9, 11, 13, 16 |
| Embree, Robert James Dower | Eli, Shari | Three Essays in Public Economics | Economics | 2022-11 | This thesis collects three papers on topics in public economics. In the first two chapters, I consider the relationships between political and economic effects at the US state-level. Chapters 2 and 3 both have ramifications for contemporary policy debates, and highlight features of tax and intellectual property systems which have been understudied. The first chapter examines the relationship between economic growth and the outcomes of US presidential elections. Contemporary US politics has been marked by substantial increases in political polarization and a decline in swing voting, which we might expect would reduce the effect of economic growth on election outcomes. Using a Bartik-type instrument and state-level and individual-level data, I find that the effect of state economic growth on incumbent vote share is smaller when state-level polarization or individual partisanship is stronger. I also show that swing voting and economic voting are closely linked. The second chapter studies how tax systems reflect different social preferences about taxing income groups. I apply the inverse-optimum income tax method to quantify these preferences by calculating the implied weights for every US state. To capture major features of state taxation, I extend the theory underlying the inverse-optimum method to include sales taxes, property taxes, and state income taxes. Using IRS data, I calculate effective tax rates for each state, and find the weights for both single and joint filers across incomes in every US state. I find that the weights vary substantially across states, and do not decrease monotonically as might be expected from most theories of social welfare. The third chapter examines the effect of a different public policy: Canada's protection of a specialized form of intellectual property, industrial designs (IDs). Estimating the effect of holding IDs with nearest-neighbour matching, I find a 19% total treatment effect in revenue for Canadian firms holding IDs. To determine the marginal effect of each additional ID held, a regression with fixed effects finds that a 1% increase in the stock of IDs increases revenue by 0.14%. This shows the importance of design protection in Canada's IP policy. | Ph.D. | welfare, economic growth, taxation, income | 1, 8, 10 |
| Tretyakov, Ian | vanderlinde, keith | Signal Processing and Instrument Characterizationon a Large-N Radio Interferometer | Physics | 2022-11 | The CHIME radio interferometer telescope was designed with the purpose of studying dark energy during an era of accelerated expansion. It will conduct a survey of large scale structure to sample the matter density field in HI emission and measure the time evolution of the dark energy equation of state, w. CHIME is a large-N telescope and features the largest GPU correlator in radio astronomy. Here I present my contributions to the CHIME project, which took place during my graduate career, between 2015-2022. The GPU array cluster is supported by an enterprise scale software backend that I helped design to be portable and extensible by an object-oriented code infrastructure. The CHIME backend, kotekan, is built for multi-tiered task allocation across the GPU cluster that includes support tasks such as RFI excision, in addition to several operational modes including beamforming. Extensions to the architecture are designed for new science objectives and compliment the cosmology functionality to include new capabilities for FRB surveys and pulsar timing. The GPU management infrastructure I wrote and beamforming code I optimized are described here and directly impacted these objectives. Calibration of the system is performed by precisely measuring the response of the instrument. This is accomplished by either setting configurations in advance of observation cycles or by manipulating the correlated visibilities offline. Statistical analysis of the data using conventional methods such as principal component analysis are applied to test the quality of the data by estimating the redundancy of baselines that are averaged to improve signal-to-noise. The work toward optimal calibration is an evolving process for greater fundamental understanding of the system. The achieved performance of the existing calibration of the telescope can be evaluated through application in a scientific study. The study presented here is of the Cygnus Loop and a spatial spectral index variation mapping across the surface of the feature. The study incorporated every calibration developed by the collaboration and addressed every systematic present in the system. The calibrator 3C286 was selected to calibrate the spectral flux density and several beam models were applied to calibrate the spectral response. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, labor, infrastructure | 7, 8, 2009 |
| Dumont, Antoine | Lu, Zheng-Hong | Development of Vapor-phase Deposited Perovskite for Light-emitting Diodes | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are steadily becoming the new standard for luminescent display devices because of their energy efficiency and relatively low cost, and the purity of the light they emit. Perovskite materials have attracted tremendous research interests in recent years for LEDs and photovoltaic applications due to their simple synthesis and record-breaking performances. To this day, most perovskite research focuses on solution-based syntheses. There is a limited number of reports on fabricating perovskite LEDs by vapor-phase deposition (VPD), a process in vacuum that lowers the risk of contaminants and offers much better control over the thickness of films. This method can also be easily scaled up for commercial production and is currently used for publicly available LEDs/OLEDs. The class of perovskite at the center of this research is the caesium lead halide family (CsPbX3), which were found to have high colour purity, an intrinsically high photoluminescence yield and a better stability, making them strong candidates for light-emitting applications. The goal of this project is to gain a proper understanding of the material and optical behaviour of these perovskites fabricated through VPD. The underlayer (hole transport layer in the LED structure) onto which the perovskite is grown is found to have a significant impact on the film’s uniformity and can limit the reaction between the perovskite precursors CsBr and PbBr2. Hole transport layers with higher glass transition temperatures (Tg) are found to be critical to facilitate growth of crystalline perovskites, improving the colour purity. Passivation studies show that CsPbBr3 films, when coated with a thin LiBr overlayer, demonstrate an extraordinary mass transport at room temperature with self-assembly into well-defined islands. LiBr also passivates nonradiative defects and significantly boosts the luminescence performance of CsPbBr3 as single films and in LED devices. This thin film self-assembly phenomenon is also observed with CsPbCl3 and CsPbI3 compounds with varying nanostructures. The unique role of LiBr in facilitating perovskite thin film recrystallization due to increased moisture attraction is demonstrated through Density Functional Theory simulations. | Ph.D. | energy, transit, production, land | 7, 11, 12, 15 |
| Hyland, Christina | Lee, Eunjung | The Lived Experience of Street-involved and Homeless Youth who have Eating Struggles while Living in Situations of Food Insecurity | Social Work | 2022-11 | Eating struggles continue to be predominantly conceptualized as a white, middle-to-upper class, cis-gender, female youth disorder, evident by physical emaciation. This is despite the rise of literature evidencing the existence of eating struggles among individuals of diverse backgrounds including those living in situations of poverty, food insecurity and homelessness. Street-involved and homeless youth (SIHY) often endure extreme forms of food insecurity that significantly impact their relationship with food and their body. Yet, SIHY are significantly underrepresented within the existing eating disorder and food insecurity literature. This thesis aimed to address this gap by exploring the lived experiences of SIHY who have eating struggles while living in situations of food insecurity; and to explore how SIHY perceive social services in relation to their eating struggles. A Heideggerian hermeneutic phenomenological approach was used to investigate how SIHY with eating struggles interpret and negotiate with their experiences of food insecurity and other oppressive living conditions. This study was conducted at a local SIHY resource centre in Ontario and included 11 participants. The participants were asked to partake in three interview sessions and one body map arts-based activity. The findings of this thesis (1) dismantles misconceptions surrounding SIHY who have eating struggles; (2) expands our understanding of trauma, revealing the multifaceted and interlocking forms of systemic (e.g., food insecurity) and relational traumas (e.g., intimate partner violence) that underlie SIHY’s eating struggles; (3) reveals the deeper purpose of eating struggles as an embodied negotiation and response; and (4) builds knowledge from SIHY’s recommendations for social service provision including conceptualizing healing as not only an inner process but one of which requires change and healing of our world. | Ph.D. | poverty, homeless, food insecurity, knowledge, gender, female, invest, violence | 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 16 |
| Khan, Rabia | Hodges, Brian B.H. | Dying to Stay Alive in Residency and Beyond: A Critical Discourse Analysis of ‘Burnout’ | Medical Science | 2022-11 | In 1974, Dr. Herbert Freudenberger ‘coined’ the term ‘burnout’. With the creation of the Maslach Burnout Inventory in 1984, ‘burnout’ went from a term used in pop psychology to a highly studied phenomenon of academic interest in the helping professions, including medicine. Exponential growth in the study of ‘burnout’, culminated in its adoption into the International Classification of Diseases (ICD)-11 in 2022. Yet, despite awareness of this issue, and the many efforts aimed at addressing ‘burnout’ in physicians, the rates of ‘burnout’ continue to rise. Why does ‘burnout’ persist in medicine despite efforts to ameliorate it? In this thesis, a Foucauldian discourse analysis was used to investigate this question, specifically examining the socializing period of post-graduate medical education (PGME). The purpose of this thesis was to identify different discourses that legitimate or function to mobilize the use of the word ‘burnout’ in PGME. The archive from which the discourses were constructed included 10 review articles, over 500 academic articles, numerous policy documents, autobiographies, videos, documentaries, materials from conferences and discussions in forums including Reddit. This thesis identified three discourses of ‘burnout’: illness, occupational stress and existentialism. Each discourse was associated with statements of truth, signs and signifiers, roles that individuals play within the discourse and different institutions that gained visibility as a result of differing discourses. Finally, the analysis of these discourses revealed socio-historical dimensions of their occurrence, including undefined medicalization, neo-liberal capitalism and existentialism. | Ph.D. | illness, capital, invest, institut | 3, 9, 16 |
| Fraser, Gavin | Kulesha, Gary||Newsome, Gregory | Leviathans, Act I: big and small | Music | 2022-11 | Leviathans, Act I: big and small is the 20-minute first act of a monodrama for baritone, orchestra, and electronics. The first act of this dramatic work includes an overture and four scenes and depicts a world where the seas have risen above the earth, leaving only those aboard ships alive. The narrative situates an exploration of trauma within a post-apocalyptic future, creating fragmentation of self-reflection and musical material. The music in this piece contextualizes human perspective within wild nature. To achieve this, the musical seed material of this work is derived from the sea shanty known as either ‘A Drop of Nelson’s Blood’ or ‘Roll the Old Chariot Along’. The shanty’s chorus seems to originate from a hymn from the 1800s. This sea shanty is particularly interesting as it has evolved drastically, and is still performed in various versions today. I studied an early 1920s wax cylinder recording of an old sailor, where the tune is in a major mode, primarily using stepwise melodic motion. More recent versions, like those made by Fisherman’s Friends and David Coffin, substitute different verses, and use either a minor mode or a mixture of minor and major. In depicting a post-apocalyptic future, I leaned into this concept of evolving folk culture by creating an altered version of the sea shanty to represent that world. The shanty tune informs both melodic and harmonic content in the orchestra, while existing through the electronics as field recordings, contextual sound (i.e. the crew upstairs singing) and distorted material in processed soundscapes. The live electronics, which affect only the singer, serve to further exemplify the subjective perspective of Mara, our lead character, through the effects of reverb, delay and distortion. All of this human created material (i.e. the sea shanty) is filtered through ocean wave motifs and compressed into whale calls, reframing humanity as part of the sea’s wildness. | D.M.A. | ocean, fish | 14 |
| Loder, Amanda Lily | Finkelstein, Sarah A | Carbon Dynamics in Freshwater Marshes and Implications for Wetland Conservation and Restoration | Geography | 2022-11 | Wetland conservation and restoration are at the forefront of natural climate solutions for mitigating the climate crisis by storing carbon in soils. However, carbon accumulation in temperate freshwater marsh soils, and how environmental change and restoration affect carbon burial and preservation in these contexts, remain poorly constrained. In this dissertation, I use paleoecological and geochemical analyses to quantify rates of carbon accumulation and carbon masses of undrained and restored mineral-based freshwater marsh soils, and assess how these are affected by environmental change, including climatic events, land use and restoration, and in-situ processes. I demonstrate that rates of carbon accumulation in undrained freshwater marshes are under certain circumstances high and comparable to those measured in temperate peatlands and salt marshes. Assessments of organic matter quality using programmed pyrolysis and carbon to nitrogen ratios show that short-term rates over decadal time scales are particularly high due to labile organic fractions which degrade and consequently dampen long-term rates of organic carbon accumulation. Using a marsh core spanning ~6,000 years, I show that large inundation events and lake highstands enhance long-term burial and preservation of organic carbon in marsh soils. I also examine diatom assemblages in this paleorecord to show that ecological communities in freshwater marshes have undergone major shifts following European settlement in tandem with land use pressures in the temperate region including hydrological alteration, invasive species, sedimentation and eutrophication. Nonetheless, conservation and protection of undrained freshwater marshes should be given high priority because they can stabilize several meters of soil carbon stocks, which take decades to centuries to recover through restoration. A comparison of soil properties in restored and reference marshes in the same watersheds shows that sites with impermeable substrates, low-lying terrain and connectivity to a larger network of waterbodies or wetland ecosystems have greater soil carbon preservation and should be prioritized where restoration is necessary. I demonstrate the value of using paleoecological data to assess wetland habitat conditions and carbon accumulation before and after European settlement when devising wetland conservation and restoration measures as natural climate solutions. My dissertation also highlights how well-defined time scales are critical when measuring the mitigation potential of undrained and restored freshwater marshes. | Ph.D. | water, climate, environmental, climate solutions, conserv, species, ecosystem, ecolog, land use, land, soil | 6, 13, 14, 15 |
| Lebenbaum, Michael | Laporte, Audrey | The Economics of Social Capital: An Analysis of the Factors that Affect Individual Social Capital Investment and Accumulation | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Introduction: Although there is a large literature examining the effects of social capital on health, the literature examining the factors affecting investment in and accumulation of social capital is less developed, especially in the economics literature. Therefore, this dissertation examined the effects of three different sets of factors on adult social capital: 1) time preferences, risk preferences and survival expectations; 2) childhood mental and physical health; 3) genetic endowments (i.e., polygenic score) for education. Methods: This dissertation used the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, a cohort of American adolescents recruited in 1994-95 (N=20,745) and followed up in 2001-02 (Wave 3: 15,197), 2008 (Wave 4 N=15,701), 2016-18 (Wave 5 N=12,300). Siblings were oversampled (Wave 1: 1,251 groups). Polygenic scores were available for 80% of Wave 4 respondents in the Genome-Wide Association Study sub-sample. Social capital investments were defined as Waves 3-5 volunteering, religious service attendance, and Waves 3-4 team sports participation, while social capital stock was defined as Wave 4 number of friends, social isolation, and Wave 5 available social support. Results: In individual fixed effects models, we found that time preferences had negative effects while risk preferences had positive effects on social capital investments. Similar associations were found with cross-sectional stock measures. Survival expectations were only associated with stock measures of social capital. In sibling fixed effects models, child self-rated health had a positive effect on team sports participation, social support and decreased social isolation. Child mental health conditions only had effects on isolation. The education polygenic score had significant associations with volunteering, religious service attendance and friendship; however, only effects on volunteering were significant in sibling fixed effects models. Conclusions: Lower levels of time preferences and higher levels of risk preferences, child health, and the education polygenic score likely have causal positive effects in building adult social capital, highlighting that investment frameworks similar to those used for human and health capital can be used to analyzed social capital and they should be considered in the development of policies to address social capital. | Ph.D. | mental health, child health, capital, invest | 3, 9 |
| Mousavichashmi , Seyedkianoush | Roorda, Matthew J||Bodur, Merve | Strategic, Tactical, and Operational Decision-making in Crowd-shipping | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | The burgeoning last-mile delivery market coupled with the rapid evolution of sharing economy led to the emergence of crowd-shipping. This thesis studies three separate crowd-shipping problems involving strategic, tactical, and operational decision-making, particularly contributing to incorporating of uncertainties in decision-making via state-of-the-art optimization methods and solution strategies. The first crowd-shipping problem studies the strategic decision on parcel locker locations, considering both customer pickup and crowd-shipping. This problem considers customers' and crowd-shippers’ behavioural models to capture the decision dependency with respect to parcel locker locations and the delivery fee. The problem is formulated as a mixed-integer linear programming model for a given crowd-shipper compensation. The results suggest that companies can obtain a significantly higher profit by allowing customer pickup and crowd-shipping compared to the two alternative models, i.e., customer pickup and crowd-shipping in isolation. The numerical experiments demonstrate the value of the parcel locker location solution from the proposed model compared to the locations obtained from the customer pickup model. The second problem proposes a novel two-tier delivery system with crowd-shipping and mobile depots, considering the uncertainty in the availability of crowd-shippers. The problem is formulated as a two-stage stochastic programming model for tactical decisions on mobile depots stopping locations, and assigning customer packages to mobile depots. Enhanced decomposition algorithms are developed, which enable solving real-life instances. The computational experiments demonstrate the value of incorporating stochasticity and provide managerial insights from the stochastic model in the risk-averse versus risk-neutral settings. The third problem investigates a dynamic crowd-shipping problem with in-store customers as crowd-shippers for delivering online orders within a few hours. The problem is formulated as a Markov decision process for operational decision-making in matching online orders to crowd-shippers. An approximate dynamic programming (ADP) policy based on value function approximation is developed to obtain a highly scalable and real-time policy on matching orders to crowd-shippers while considering temporal and spatial uncertainty in the arrival of online orders and crowd-shippers. Our numerical analysis demonstrates the value of the proposed ADP policy over a myopic policy based on various performance measures. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Doughty, Mitchell | Wright, Graham A||Ghugre, Nilesh R | A Head-Mounted Display-Based Augmented Reality Platform for Image-guided Media Delivery to the Heart | Medical Biophysics | 2022-11 | Heart disease is the leading cause of global mortality and is a significant precursor to heart failure. Recent advances in regenerative medicine have shown promise in improving cardiac function, but challenges in cell retention, targeting, and delivery remain to be explored prior to clinical use. During media delivery, surgeons rely on information from three-dimensional (3D) preoperative imaging, displayed using a two-dimensional (2D) monitor located adjacent to the surgical scene. This guidance strategy requires that surgeons mentally map information from the 2D monitor to their current 3D surgical context—potentially contributing to reduced accuracy during cell targeting and diminished therapeutic efficacy. The purpose of this thesis was to design an optical see-through head-mounted display (OST-HMD) led navigation framework to address the challenges associated with scar tissue visualization during targeted media delivery. Informed by prior failures and poor clinical uptake of OST-HMDs in surgical domains, we set out to address the human factors and workflow limitations which remain key hurdles to widespread adoption, including perception, registration, and context. To this end, my contributions are presented through three main bodies of work: (1) assessing user perception and usability with different locations of virtual content placement and display mediums; (2) reducing the contribution of occlusion and complex marker setup to tracking and registration error; and (3) investigating the feasibility of context-relevant information display during surgical tasks. In a point-and-trace task that simulated surgical targeting, I demonstrated the clear benefits of directly superimposed virtual content on an OST-HMD with regards to perceptual accuracy and task load. I then introduced a marker-free strategy to hand and surgical tool tracking that was robust to occlusion and demonstrated reasonable performance on a commercially available OST-HMD. Finally, I indicated the feasibility of context-relevant virtual assistance, for a set of predefined surgical tasks, to lessen the interaction burden on users during OST-HMD led guidance. I envision that my contributions will serve as meaningful steps towards the design and implementation of effective OST-HMD led navigation platforms to provide virtual guidance in the delivery of therapeutics to the heart—or for other interventions which benefit from virtual guidance. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Zeng, Xiaoke | Demers, Paul A. PAD||Arrandale, Victoria H. VHA | Neurodegenerative Diseases in Two Ontario Mining Cohorts | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Neurodegenerative diseases are a group of progressive neurological disorders with continuously rising incidence rates. Aluminum, diesel engine exhaust, and radon have been studied as risk factors for neurodegenerative diseases, but no research has been performed on populations of miners with high levels of exposure. This dissertation used one mining cohort and one occupational disease surveillance cohort from Ontario, Canada, to understand the patterns of neurodegenerative diseases among miners and to estimate the association of mine type, aluminum dust, diesel engine exhaust, and radon with risk of neurodegenerative diseases (Alzheimer’s disease, Alzheimer’s with other dementias, Parkinson’s disease, parkinsonism, and motor neuron disease). Two Ontario cohorts were used for my analysis, one subset of over 1.2 million workers from a linked surveillance cohort, the Occupational Disease Surveillance System (ODSS), and the other linked cohort of 36,836 Ontario miners, the Mining Master File (MMF). Poisson regression models were used to examine incidence rate ratios of different neurodegenerative outcomes. McIntyre Powder exposure was assessed using both cleaned self-reports and reconstruction of powder use from historical records. Radon exposure assessed using job-exposure matrices that were developed using results of radon measurements carried out in Ontario mines. Different exposure assessment approaches were explored for diesel exhaust exposure, including a mine-based diesel equipment use indicator and reconstructions of diesel use for underground mines through historical records and expert assessments. In the ODSS cohort, an elevated incidence rate of motor neuron disease was suggested among workers in metal mines, as well as an indicative elevation of Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease rates among workers of gold and miscellaneous metal (primarily nickel-copper ore) mines. In the MMF cohort, I observed a 30% increased rate of Parkinson's disease and 10% increased rate of Alzheimer's with other dementia in association with respirable aluminum dust exposure. However, my findings do not support positive associations between cumulative radon exposure level and diesel exhaust exposure duration and risk of neurodegenerative outcomes. My findings support aluminum as a risk factor for Parkinson’s disease, yet more epidemiological research is needed to understand the role of aluminum, radon, and diesel exhaust in the development of neurodegenerative outcomes. | Ph.D. | worker | 8 |
| Sidani, Said | Broad, Kathy | Shifting Pedagogies during COVID-19: The Professional Learning of Teacher Educators regarding Digital Technology in a Time of Crisis and Change | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | The COVID-19 crisis that began in March 2020 presented teacher education with many challenges, among them the urgent need to support teacher educators with the sudden move to remote teaching. Teacher educators immediately started rethinking their pedagogy for a new digital classroom environment as universities rushed to provide overnight supports to help with this transition. Empirical research on how teacher educators have navigated their professional roles during this period of uncertainty is limited. There is also limited research on the professional learning of teacher educators, particularly in the area of digital technology. The aim of this study was to explore teacher educators’ shifts in views and pedagogy using digital technology as they adapted to teaching in an online environment. Investigating those shifts also required examining teacher educators’ backgrounds and experiences with digital technology and their professional learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this qualitative multi-case study, I explored the experiences of six teacher educators within a graduate teacher education program in a large urban university in Canada. Each participant took part in two semi-structured interviews and described teaching and learning artifacts that reflected a change in their pedagogy. Three key findings emerged from this study. First, the COVID-19 pandemic served as a catalyst for change in teacher educators’ enacted pedagogies. Second, teacher educators displayed heightened responsivity in two ways. They placed teacher candidate learning at the center of the online classroom and offered flexible and accessible learning experiences. Also, teacher educators’ changes in pedagogy were frequently shaped by inequities exacerbated by the pandemic. Lastly, study participants discussed different possibilities for teacher educator pedagogies, with an emphasis on flexible approaches to teaching and learning, a changed role in an online setting, and digital technology integration. Implications for teacher educators include the need to engage in ongoing learning, understand the role and uses of digital technology in the teacher education classroom, and recognize their ongoing responsibility to foreground equity and social justice in their teaching. Thus, teacher education programs must include formal and informal structures and resources that support the individualized and diverse professional learning of teacher educators. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, learning, equity, invest, equit, urban, transit, accessib, social justice | 4, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Luo, Kevin Wei | Ong, Lynette H | Land Reform and Local Agents: The Grassroots Origins of State Capacity in Communist China and Beyond | Political Science | 2022-11 | How do dictatorships morph from weak ‘paper leviathans’ into powerful institutional machines that command monopolized authority throughout its realm? While previous scholarship has shown how strong central state capacity can contribute to the endurance of authoritarian rule, less attention has been paid to how autocratic regimes construct local state capacity through the recruitment, deployment, and management of agents to enforce their rule at the grassroots level. Yet the selection of local agents for policy implementation also requires regimes to make strategic tradeoffs regarding the centralization and decentralization of their political authority. Using the National Land Reform Campaign (1950-53) under the early years of the Chinese Communist regime as a case study, I address two puzzles: under what conditions do regimes seek to prioritize different types of local agents, and which types of agents deliver better policy performance for regime leaders? The dissertation utilizes a mixed-method approach, by leveraging rare primary archival materials (e.g. internal party communications, work reports, memoirs) and novel quantitative historical datasets at the subnational level to answer these questions. I argue that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) post-1949 faced a critical centralization dilemma during the Land Reform Campaign: it could select either centrally-deployed agents, who are more likely to be faithful representatives of central political will but are unfamiliar with local governing communities, or locally-embedded agents, who are more likely to adapt to local particularities but are prone to societal capture. However, I also find that the CCP regime was sometimes able to harness a ‘hybrid’ model of local agent selection by maintaining both agent loyalty and governing familiarity, under conditions of deliberate central intervention and the presence of organizational legacies left behind by revolutionary mobilization – which consequently allowed for more effective implementation of land redistribution targets. By revisiting this massive project of socioeconomic reform in 1950s China, which was one of the largest redistributions of land ownership in human history, this dissertation sheds new light on the study of state-led land reform beyond China (including Taiwan and Asia), and offers new insight into the study of principle-agent problems and state capacity in authoritarian regimes. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, trade, land, institut, authoritarian | 1, 10, 15, 16 |
| Lucas, James Robert | Grosse, Roger B||Zemel, Richard | Optimization and Loss Landscape Geometry of Deep Learning | Computer Science | 2022-11 | The impressive success of deep learning is powered by models that are rapidly growing in size along with the computational resources that are used to train them. Despite these growing demands, the dominant tools used to train these networks have not evolved significantly to match these needs. One natural hypothesis for this limitation is our lack of understanding of the training dynamics of deep neural networks. In this thesis, I present our research on understanding and improving the optimization of deep learning models. The thesis begins by presenting two first-order optimization algorithms for deep learning: the Aggregated Momentum and Lookahead optimizers. We demonstrate their success on modern deep learning optimization problems and provide theoretical analyses of both optimizers in convex settings. However, our theoretical understanding of optimization for practical training of deep neural networks is severely limited. Following this, we turn towards building a better understanding of deep learning optimization. We achieve this by studying the loss landscape geometry of deep neural networks. This is extremely challenging due to non-convex objective functions and extremely high-dimensional parameter spaces. We address this by first studying a simple class of neural networks: two-layer linear networks. Despite their simplicity, these models capture some core challenges of deep learning optimization effectively. Within this class, we investigate regularized linear autoencoders and linear variational autoencoders and carefully characterize their loss landscape geometry theoretically. We then move beyond the simple class of two-layer linear networks to investigate a phenomenon that arises across a vast set of deep learning optimization problems. This phenomenon, which we term the Monotonic Linear Interpolation (MLI) property, describes a global property of the loss landscape geometry of deep learning models. We provide the first theoretical explanation of this phenomenon and conduct a thorough empirical investigation to better understand the pervasiveness and limitations of the MLI property. In the final chapter, the thesis is discussed as a whole and promising directions for future research are presented. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, land | 4, 9, 15 |
| Gold, Michael | Fernandez, Angela AF | The Ubiquitous Acceptance of an Exterminatory Legality: Rights, Framing, and Legal Opposition to Animal Farming | Law | 2022-11 | Animal farming is a seemingly intractable problem, but it can and should be resisted and opposed. Animal advocates can provide significantly more potent opposition than current reform strategies do. The main reform strategy is the pursuit of legal rights for animals. Yet, animal’s rights are rendered ineffective by background social conditions. The first part of this thesis explores these issues with reference to legal rights animals already possess. Considering the significance of background conditions, the second part deploys insights from social movement framing literature to propose how animal advocates can seek to alter those conditions, producing a social environment more conducive to meaningful protection for animals. This involves countering the scientific and legal narratives (scientific animal welfare and the legality of farming) which obfuscate the wrongfulness of animal farming. The third part justifies why the legality of farming can be denied, with legal theoretical, doctrinal, and public/constitutional law arguments. | LL.M. | welfare, animal | 1, 14, 15 |
| Urrutia Schroeder, Isabel | Wakefield, Sarah | An Exploration of Eating Disorders in Canada: Towards Equitable Access to Care | Geography | 2022-11 | At any given time, approximately 1.5 million Canadians meet the diagnostic criteria for anorexia or bulimia, not including individuals experiencing other eating disorder subtypes or those who are in recovery. Eating disorders are serious mental health conditions linked to severe distress, deterioration of physical health, mental health comorbidities, and loss of life. Individuals of different cultural backgrounds, genders, ages, and socio-economic status are all at risk of developing eating disorders, yet not all are able to access eating disorder diagnoses and treatment equally. The goal of this dissertation is to contribute towards expanding eating disorder care options for care-seekers, with particular attention to those left out of formal treatment options, such as Latinx individuals. Towards this goal, my work research focuses on eating disorders in Latinx individuals in Canada and care options available to people who may not be able to access clinical care. Research in these areas in a Canadian context is sparse. Thus, this project uses a variety of research methods and methodologies to address gaps in understanding eating disorder care options outside of clinical treatment and the case of eating disorders among Latinx individuals in Canada. I first present quantitative work on correlates of eating disorders to provide data on the prevalence of eating disorders in racialized population groups in Canada. I then present findings on barriers to eating disorder care identified by non-profit eating disorder organizations in Canada. I also show that these eating disorder organizations play an important role in expanding access to care by helping individuals access clinical treatment and by providing non-clinical care alternatives. Finally, I present work produced through a community-based project, in partnership with a Latinx organization in Toronto. Together, this body of work demonstrates a continued need for research on assessing the extent to which certain individuals are unable to access timely, appropriate, and affordable eating disorder treatment. Additionally, my findings highlight an urgent need to provide reliable and robust funding for eating disorder–related work, and in particular expand funding for eating disorder organizations in Canada, given their critical role in improving access to eating disorder care. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, affordab, mental health, equitable, gender, equit | 1, 10, 3, 4, 5 |
| Ranlett, Sarah | Chazan, Michael | An Experiential Understanding of the Upper Paleolithic: The Use of Some Unusual Materials in Southwest France | Anthropology | 2022-11 | This work aims to better understand the cultural role(s) of amber, lignite, soapstone, fossil, quartz crystal, and lustrous pebble (galet lustré) artifacts during the Upper Paleolithic in Southwest France. The practice of collecting, curating and modifying rare or unusual materials with evocative physical characteristics (such as color, texture or form) has a long history among human and recent human ancestor groups. During the Upper Paleolithic, this behavior increases and expands including, notably, within the context of symbolic behavior. As these materials are translated from the archaeological record into archaeological literature, the conventions and limitations of archaeological illustration and classificatory terminology such as ‘art,’ ‘ornaments,’ ‘curiosities’ and ‘precious objects’ creates interpretational impositions which result in much of the existing archaeological discourse emphasizing morphological or decorative aspects of artifacts at the expense of other visual properties such as color or luster, other sensory qualities like tactility or smell, or the significance of material sources. A more comprehensive accounting of the archaeological uses and geological occurrences of these materials reveals hitherto underexplored patterns and variations in the use of these materials across time and space. These material engagements would have produced distinct experiences which can be inferred from the inherent physical properties of the materials, the archaeological record and a shared human corporeality with Upper Paleolithic people. Knowing that these experiences would be culturally mediated makes it possible to identify a wider range of factors – such as likely modes of material procurement, color, luster, translucence, smoothness, hardness, warmth, sounds, smells – which may bear on the cultural meaning of these materials. This data complicates the notions of rarity and exoticism that come along with categorizations of these artifacts as curiosities, or precious objects and further highlights the need for a fuller range of experiential and sensory affordances to be systematically incorporated into interpretational approaches to materials, particularly those applied to art and ornaments. This research makes the case that the unique experiential characteristics and evocative sensory qualities of unusual materials should be routinely considered in articulation with the technological and typological studies that are characteristic of archaeological inquiry. L'objectif de cette recherche est une meilleure compréhension de le(s) rôle(s) culturel(s) de l'ambre, du lignite, de la stéatite, des fossiles, du cristal de roche et des galets lustrés au cours du Paléolithique Supérieur dans le sud-ouest de la France. La pratique de la collecte, de la conservation et de la modification de matériaux rares ou inhabituels avec des caractéristiques physiques évocatrices (telles que la couleur, la texture ou la forme) a une longue histoire parmi les groupes d'ancêtres humains et récents. Au Paléolithique Supérieur, ces comportements s'accroissent et s'amplifient, notamment, dans le cadre de symbolism. Dans le processus de traduction de ces matériaux d'assemblage archéologique en littérature archéologique, les conventions et les limites de l'illustration archéologique et de la terminologie classificatoire telles que «art», «parure», «curiosités» et «objets précieux» créent des impositions interprétatives. En conséquence, une grande partie du discours archéologique met l'accent sur les aspects morphologiques ou décoratifs des artefacts au détriment d'autres propriétés visuelles telles que la couleur ou le lustre, d'autres qualités sensorielles comme la tactilité ou l'odeur, ou l'importance de l'approvisionnement en matières premières. Une compréhension plus complète des utilisations archéologiques et des occurrences géologiques de ces matériaux révèle des modèles et des variations, sous-explorés, dans l'utilisation de ces matériaux à travers le temps et l'espace. Ces engagements matériels auraient produit des expériences distinctes qui peuvent être déduites des propriétés physiques inhérentes des matériaux, des archives archéologiques et d'une corporéité humaine que nous partageons avec les peuples du Paléolithique supérieur. Le fait de savoir que ces expériences seraient culturellement médiatisées permet d'identifier des aspects - tels que les modes d'approvisionnement probables, la couleur, le lustre, la translucidité, la douceur, la dureté, les sons, les odeurs - qui peuvent être importants pour la signification culturelle de ces matériaux. Ces données compliquent les notions de rareté et d'exotisme qui accompagnent les catégorisations de ces artefacts en tant que curiosités ou objets précieux, et soulignent en outre la nécessité d'intégrer systématiquement une gamme d'affordances expérientielles et sensorielles dans les approches interprétatives des matériaux, en particulier celles appliquées à l'art et parure. Cette recherche montre que les caractéristiques expérientielles uniques et les qualités sensorielles évocatrices des matériaux doivent être systématiquement considérées en articulation avec les études technologiques et typologiques qui sont caractéristiques de la recherche archéologique. | Ph.D. | conserv | 14, 15 |
| Dawydiak, Stefan James | Braverman, Alexander | Three Pictures of Lusztig’s Asymptotic Hecke Algebra | Mathematics | 2022-11 | Let $\Waff$ be an extended affine Weyl group, $\HH$ be its Hecke algebra over the ring $\Z[\bq, \bq^{-1}]$ with standard basis $\{T_w\}_{w\in\Waff}$, and $J$ be Lusztig's asymptotic Hecke algebra, viewed as a based ring with basis $\{t_w\}_{w\in\Waff}$. This thesis studies the algebra $J$ from several perspectives, proves theorems about various incarnations of $J$, and provides tools to be applied for future work. We prove three types of results. In the second and third chapters, we investigate $J$ as a subalgebra of the $(\bq^{-1})$-adic completion of $\HH$ via Lusztig's map $\phi$. In the second chapter, we use Harish-Chandra's Plancherel formula for $p$-adic groups to show that the coefficient of $T_x$ in $t_w$ is a rational function of $\bq$, depending only on the two-sided cell containing $w$, with no poles outside of a finite set of roots of unity that depends only on $\Waff$. In type $\tilde{A}_n$ and type $\tilde{C}_2$, we show that the denominators all divide a power of the Poincar\'{e} polynomial of the finite Weyl group. As an application, we conjecture that these denominators encode more detailed information about the failure of the Kazhdan-Lusztig classification of $\HH$-modules at roots of the Poincar\'{e} polynomial than is currently known. In the third chapter, we reprove the results of the second chapter without using any tools from harmonic analysis in the special case $\G=\SL_2$. In this case we also prove a positivity property for the coefficients of $T_x$ in $t_w$, that we conjecture holds in general. We also produce explicit formulas for the action of $J$ on the Iwahori invariants $\mathcal{S}^I$ of the Schwartz space of the basic affine space. In the fourth chapter, we give a triangulated monoidal category of coherent sheaves whose Grothendieck group surjects onto $J_0\subset J$, the based ring of the lowest two sided cell of $\Waff$, equipped with a monoidal functor from the category of coherent sheaves on the derived Steinberg variety. We show that this partial categorification acts on natural coherent categorifications of $\mathcal{S}^I$. In low rank cases, we construct complexes lifting the basis elements $t_w$ of $J_0$ and their structure constants. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Yang, Wook | Craig, Shelley L | Cognitive and Mental Health in Aging Sexual Minority Populations: Diversifying the Minority Stress Model | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | The aging population is continuously growing in North America, yet limited efforts have been made to understand the role of aging in the sexual minority research. Guided by the minority stress model (Meyer, 2003), the current study examined cognitive and mental health outcomes of aging sexual minority adults in Canada by using a population data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging. To understand the role of social factors in sexual minority aging, the study first compared social participation rates between different sexual orientation groups by using the analysis of variance. The second part of the study investigated the relationship between sexual orientation and cognition by conducting multiple regression analyses while considering the role of social participation and social support. The third part of the study explored the relationship between sexual orientation and depression while considering the influence of neighborhood deprivation levels. Findings from the first part of the study indicate that social participation levels differ by sexual orientation in both aging men and women. Results from the second part of the study found that aging gay men perform better in cognitive flexibility and memory related tasks compared to their heterosexual peers even after considering the effects of social support and social participation. Bisexual women also performed significantly better in memory tasks than their lesbian and heterosexual counterparts, while reporting no significant effects of social support or social participation in the model. The third part of the study that investigated the role of neighborhood deprivation levels in the relationship between sexual orientation and depression in aging populations indicated that material deprivation levels contribute to the relationship between lesbian identity and depression in aging women as well as the relationship between bisexual identity and depression in aging men. The results of this study suggest that cognition, social participation, and neighborhood material deprivation are important constructs for studies that explore the aging process of sexual minority populations. In particular, this dissertation’s results related to depression point to the need for further support for aging sexual minority adults through behavioral and policy interventions. | Ph.D. | mental health, women, invest, minorit | 3, 5, 9, 10 |
| Klim (Conforti), Paula | Levitt, Anthony J. | A School-based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Skills Intervention for Suicide Prevention and Wellbeing in Youth | Medical Science | 2022-11 | This dissertation aimed to evaluate the impact of a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy Skills Intervention (CBTSI) on suicidality in middle schoolers. The primary objective was to determine whether the CBTSI produced a meaningful reduction in suicidality (4-item composite) in middle schoolers who endorsed at least one item on the Life Problems Inventory (LPI) questionnaire. Exploratory objectives were to determine if the CBTSI produced a meaningful improvement in depression, anxiety, and wellbeing. Following a feasibility study, I conducted a randomized control trial (RCT) with 430 students (46 classes) in total, to evaluate the causal effect of the CBTSI on outcome measures of interest in a large, urban, diverse school board. In Study 3, I evaluated the potential differences in the impact of the intervention on youth with and without mental health symptoms that may be clinically relevant. A subset of these students participated in Study 4; there were 8 groups of 60 students in total. I utilized qualitative methods to explore students' experiences of the intervention during the RCT and to better understand barriers and facilitators to engagement. Students were 12 to 14 years of age or in grades 7 or 8 for all studies. One of the most reliable risk factors for youth suicide is suicidal ideation and most notably, suicide attempts. Non-suicidal injury’s (NSSI) role in youth suicidality remains debated and is not fully understood. For these reasons, measures of suicidality consisted of a composite score reflective of 1 suicide attempt item, 2 suicidal ideation items and 1 NSSI item. A decision was made to rerun the analyses and introduce the NSSI back into the results of the RCT following a Chronbach’s alpha reliability estimate calculation. Overall results of the quantitative studies indicate inconsistent findings in suicidality, but improved wellbeing. Results across the studies for depression and anxiety outcomes were mixed. When discussing the CBTSI, students expressed that the intervention needs to be adaptable to enhance the personal dignity of youth, respecting their wishes and individual goals. Maximizing the opportunities for involvement and self-determination created an atmosphere for confidence and self-compassion to flourish, the highlighted core themes. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, mental health, urban, self-determination | 3, 11, 16 |
| Gridseth, Mona | Barfoot, Timothy | Towards Deep Learning for Long-term Visual Localization in Visual Teach and Repeat | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Visual path following can facilitate autonomous operation of robots in a large variety of environments while solely relying on an inexpensive camera sensor. Visual Teach and Repeat (VT&R) achieves accurate metric and long-range autonomous path following in unstructured environments. The user teaches a path by driving the robot manually, after which the path can be repeated autonomously. During long-term operation, the camera is affected by lighting changes, and the appearance of the environment changes. This poses a challenge for localizing to the visual map that was built when teaching the path. VT&R can operate across large appearance change by using multi-experience localization. Each time the robot repeats a path, the run is stored as a new experience in the map. When localizing, VT&R can rely on intermediate experiences to bridge the appearance gap. This requires collecting experiences continuously as the environment changes and from scratch whenever a new path is taught. In this thesis, we tackle long-term localization using deep learning techniques with the aim of removing the need for intermediate bridging experiences. We first show that we can train a neural network to regress relative poses for localization directly from pairs of images. With this method, we localize across large lighting and seasonal change but fail to generalize to new and unfamiliar paths. We improve on this work by learning visual features that can be used in the VT&R pipeline. With these deep learned features, we perform closed-loop path following across a full range of lighting change and also show that the learned features generalize to new areas. We further test the learned features’ robustness to seasonal change in an experiment from late summer through autumn. The experiments cover a total of 87.7 km of driving. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Ghaznavi, Touraj | Newman, Roger | Electrochemical Studies of Molten Salt Corrosion | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2022-11 | Corrosion mechanisms of Fe-Ni and Fe-22Cr-Ni model alloys with varying Ni contents and Ni-22Cr model alloy were investigated in molten chloride salts at 350-700 °C, simulating the heat transfer circuits of molten salt reactors and thermal solar plants.This study revealed that corrosion properties in molten Cl salts depends on homologous temperatures, metallic solid-solution alloying effects, critical alloy compositions, and impurities. Dealloying of electrochemically reactive element(s) (Fe and/or Fe+Cr) was the dominant form of corrosion; fundamentals and mechanisms of dealloying, and mechanistic connections with aqueous dealloying were determined. It was discovered that at certain conditions, dealloying in molten salts obeys the same rules as the aqueous dealloying. At 350 °C, the dealloying mechanism is mediated by surface diffusion of the more-noble element (Ni) at the alloy/molten salt interface. The microporous dealloying morphology resembled that seen in aqueous systems (but much coarser). The dealloyed layer was a three-dimensional structure with core-shell ligaments; a Ni-rich shell surrounding a core with minor Fe (Fe+Cr), similar to Ag-Au systems in acidic media. At 350 °C, the fundamental parting limit (55-60 at.% of the less-noble element in aqueous solutions) decreased to 44 at.% due to the high surface mobility of elemental Ni. At 350 °C, the parting limit further decreased to a value of approximately 32 at.% Fe when elemental Ni from alloy surface was close to equilibrium with Ni2+ ions that were added to the molten salts, similar to brass in aqueous solutions. Between 500 °C and 700 °C, the dealloying morphology is an interconnected pore/ligament network; however, transitional morphologies evolved, and grain boundary dealloying was common. At 600 °C, bulk diffusion resulted in one-dimensional tunnel-like corrosion morphology ahead of the dealloyed layer. The associated dealloying threshold decreased to values close to 32 at.% and 22 at.% as the temperature rose to 600 °C and 700 °C, respectively. At high homologous temperatures, there is a strong influence of lattice diffusion of alloying elements. However, dealloying of Ni-based alloys in molten salts at up to 700 °C is consistent with percolation dissolution theory; this study revealed that the parting limit remains mostly geometric in nature. | Ph.D. | solar, invest, transit | 7, 9, 11 |
| Popovich, Anne Lorraine | Bale, Jeff | FSL Methodology Courses: Closing the Gap between Theory and Practice | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | Abstract In its report “Transition to Teaching” (2020) the Ontario College of Teachers (OCT) notes the high demand for French as a Second Language (FSL) teachers and that early full employment was the norm for most Ontario graduates with these qualifications. Despite this optimistic outlook for novice French teachers, French-language program graduates allow their Ontario teaching licenses to lapse at a much greater rate than their English-language colleagues. These high attrition rates among novice teachers create a vicious circle of teachers leaving before they have had the chance to master good classroom practices and being in turn replaced by novice teachers. The result is a loss of potentially fine FSL teachers and a diminished quality of teaching. Although many factors may contribute to this trend (i.e., lack of a dedicated classroom, lack of resources, lack of administrative support, student behaviour), one must also consider how FSL pre-service programs provide candidates with a sufficient foundation upon which to build a successful career. Much criticism has been leveled at teacher education, which is viewed by many researchers as too theoretical and not in touch with effective classroom practice. While all pre-service courses are intended to add to teacher candidate professional knowledge, Methodology courses, because of their subject specific focus, need to be designed in ways which help students develop the subject-matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge so critical to successful classroom teaching required by a demanding new FSL curriculum. The aim of this study was to examine the perceptions of teacher educators of pre-service FSL Methodology courses and FSL teacher candidates. This study examined FSL Methodology classes at two faculties of education in Ontario. The courses are part of the new two-year teacher education programs and are required courses for all FSL candidates. Participants were asked to share their views on how the Methodology courses supported FSL teacher candidates in developing the intrinsic language and cultural knowledge as well as the pedagogical skills necessary for effective second language teaching in light of the new curriculum demands on both FSL students and teachers. The key questions of the study, which were examined from the point of view of both the teacher educators and the teacher candidates were: “What knowledge and skills do FSL teacher candidates need to acquire which will equip them to meet the requirements detailed in the current Ministry documents?” “What opportunities do the Methodology courses offer to support teacher candidates in acquiring the required knowledge and skills?” and “How can Methodology courses improve teacher candidate knowledge development?” The answers to these questions provide insights to a relatively sparse field of research into how methodology courses in Ontario faculties of education can help teacher candidates as they transition from theoretical concepts to effective classroom practice. Although the research in this study touches on many aspects of the current dilemma of FSL teaching, the focus of the research was to investigate the current FSL Methodology courses and their impact on pre-service candidate skills acquisition. While FSL Initial Teacher Education (ITE) is only one area of concern when considering the problems facing FSL teaching and teachers, it is a very important one. Their entry into the ITE program is the first step for future French teachers into the professional world of FSL teaching, and therefore, the impact of the instruction they receive on their ability to successfully navigate the challenges of the FSL classroom cannot be underestimated. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, employment, invest, transit | 2, 4, 8, 9, 11 |
| Escamilla Nunez, Rafael | Andrysek, Jan | Development and Evaluation of a Wearable Vibrotactile Biofeedback System and a Gait Event Detection Algorithm to Improve Gait Symmetry of Individuals with Lower-limb Amputation | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | BACKGROUND: Individuals with lower-limb amputation (LLA) often exhibit gait asymmetry. Biomechanical biofeedback (BFB) systems can improve gait symmetry and overall mobility. However, effective ways of providing vibrotactile feedback, including system functionality and usability have yet to be investigated. Further, effective GED algorithms with low-computational demands are needed to improve performance, wearability, and portability of BFB systems. OBJECTIVE(S): Objective 1 consisted of developing and assessing a wearable BFB system, including multiple vibrotactile feedback strategies, as a clinical tool for improving temporal gait symmetry of LLA. System usability, workload, learning and immediate post-test retention effects were also explored. Objective 2 consisted of developing and evaluating a GED algorithm to accurately detect foot-strike and foot-off events at different walking speeds. METHODS: For objective 1, a systematic literature review investigated BFB systems in gait rehabilitation of LLA. Secondly, a wearable vibrotactile BFB system was developed and evaluated, targeting prosthetic stance/swing time ratio as a percentage of the gait cycle (ST%). Three unique vibrotactile feedback strategies were investigated to induce stance time asymmetries (SR) and changes in walking speed in able-bodied participants. Further, effects on spatiotemporal and kinematics gait parameters were assessed under concurrent, corrective, discrete vibrotactile feedback, targeting stance time symmetry ratio (STSR) of LLA. System usability was assessed with the System Usability Scale and workload with the NASA Task Load Index questionnaire. For objective 2, a GED algorithm (foot-strike and foot-off detection) was developed and assessed via metrics of specificity, sensitivity, and timing error in able-bodied participants walking at slow, self-selected, fast, and random speed. FINDINGS: For objective 1, all participants modulated/improved their gait symmetry (ST%, SR, STSR) using BFB. Gait speed and cadence decreased, and symmetry of kinematic parameters improved with BFB. Learning and immediate post-test retention effects were observed in spatiotemporal and kinematics parameters after BFB was withdrawn. System usability and workload were acceptable. For objective 2, the GED algorithm detected foot-strike and foot-off at various speeds with high sensitivity (94.32%), specificity (94.70%), and low latency (6.52 ± 22.37ms). SIGNIFICANCE: This study provides new insights into the development of gait training BFB systems and low-computational GED algorithms to improve gait symmetry of LLA. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Hirschey, Paige Alana | Cheetham, Mark | At the Frontier of the Impossible: Reimagining the Legacies of György Kepes and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies | History of Art | 2022-11 | This dissertation is concerned with a group of artists associated with the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) at MIT from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The Center's founder, György Kepes, envisioned CAVS as a hub for artists to meet and collaborate with the school’s faculty of scientists and engineers, in the hopes that they might develop artworks that would make the novel physical paradigms offered by fields like quantum mechanics, relativistic physics, and emergent systems more accessible to their lay viewer’s “inner world." Previous critics and historians have often dismissed Kepes’s Center (as well as the broader, art-technology fad with which it is often associated) as the product of an ill-conceived—and ultimately short-lived—desire to apply technocratic principles and techniques to the arts. I propose, instead, that the Center’s artists were united in their belief that previous scientific paradigms had engendered damaging social, political, and ecological consequences and in their conviction that these biases were not a product of technoscientific advancement in itself, but a direct reflection of the modern Western bias for sciences that relied upon the division of the world into so many discrete parts and offered a false sense of control. By drawing attention to the many ways the Center’s artists enabled viewers to engage with the kinds of relational and indeterminate phenomena that otherwise evaded their notice, I aim to show how Kepes and the extended CAVS community attempted to alleviate the sense of alienation that pervaded Cold War American culture by undermining the technocratic logic at its heart. | Ph.D. | gender, labor, gini, accessib, ecolog | 5, 8, 10, 11, 15 |
| De Simone, Laura | Kosnik, Clare | Investigating the Wellbeing of Teachers: A Self Study | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | Over the last decades, educational research has given considerable attention to teachers’ burnout. Owing to its negative personal, organizational, and social impacts (e.g., physical and mental ill health, decreased work performance, attrition, turnover), intervention and prevention efforts have consequently been employed to minimize the effects of this syndrome. As teaching-specific stressors are mainly related to the socio-emotional domain, interventions targeting social and emotional learning (SEL) for teachers have been seen to increase in recent years. Mindfulness-based interventions have proven to be successful in reducing teacher stress while improving teachers’ social-emotional competencies. The purpose of this self-study was two-fold. First, the researcher examined the contributing factors leading to her emotional exhaustion and eventual burnout. A typical burnout cycle was evidenced due to both external and internal factors, specifically, the researcher’s perfectionistic tendencies and underdeveloped emotional coping mechanisms. The second part of the research examined the impact of mindfulness practice on the researcher’s wellbeing, including her participation in a mindfulness-based intervention, Teachers on the RISE (TOTR). Findings showed that mindfulness-practices a) promote increased awareness (of self and others) b) improve one’s ability to respond c) improved compassion (for self and others) d) promote responsible decision-making e) improve esteem for the self f) improve self-care, wellbeing, and growth g) impact teacher performance h) impact students i) impact student-teacher relationships j) impact teacher practices k) build connections and community. Discussion included connections to the relevant literature, the researcher’s personal reflections as well as implications for future research. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, mindfulness, learning, invest | 3, 4, 2009 |
| Pabst, Katharina | Tagliamonte, Sali A | Putting “the Other Maine” on the Map: Language Variation, Local Affiliation, and Co-occurrence in Aroostook County English | Linguistics | 2022-11 | This dissertation examines Aroostook County English, an understudied variety spoken at the border of Northern Maine (USA) and Western New Brunswick (Canada). The analysis is based on a socially stratified corpus of sociolinguistic interviews with 30 locals and word list data from the same individuals. The project has two goals: First, to establish how the variety of English in this area fits into the surrounding dialect regions, and second, to determine whether speakers who closely align themselves with local values share a similar sociolect. Examining eight phonological features that have traditionally been used to distinguish different varieties of English in the area (namely, rhoticity, the LOT-THOUGHT merger, the NORTH-FORCE merger, the MARY-MARRY-MERRY merger, broad-a in BATH, intrusive-r, fronted START, and fronted PALM, see Stanford, 2019), I find that Aroostook County English includes a mix of features from Eastern New England and Atlantic Canada, suggesting it is a transition zone (see Chambers & Trudgill, 1998). It also challenges previous accounts of linguistic homogeneity within Northern Maine (Kurath, 1939: 17), demonstrating that there is more linguistic variation within the state than previously assumed. Focusing on three morphosyntactic variables (was leveling, demonstrative them, and preterite come), this dissertation finds that speakers with high local affiliation tend to have more nonstandard variants in their repertoire. However, speakers with ties to the education system do not conform to this pattern and usage rates vary widely. This suggests that the combination of nonstandard was, them, and come indexes high local affiliation for some speakers, but their absence does not imply the opposite. I conclude that the combination of nonstandard variants has a different social meaning from their absence, similar to the way that variants of the same variable can have non-complementary connotations (Campbell-Kibler, 2011). Taken together, these findings highlight the usefulness of linguistic data from small, remote communities for understanding the development of the English language and the relevance of identity-based factors for understanding patterns of language variation and change (see Hazen 2002; Tagliamonte, 2006c, 2013, 2017). | Ph.D. | ABS, transit, land | 2, 11, 15 |
| Aldossari, Alaa | Sykes, Heather HS | Re-Drawing Perspectives on and of Contemporary Saudiyyat: Using Suwalif by and for the Saudi Women | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | In recent decades, Saudi Arabia has witnessed the implementation of various sociopolitical changes in terms of the direction and management of its society. In this dynamic environment, women in Saudi Arabia are being largely impacted by their navigation within the private and public spaces. This dissertation brings forth the lived experiences of ten, educated, middle-class women in Saudi Arabia to look at how they negotiate their subjectivities; the strategies they use to influence their subject positions within family and society; and how the women reconcile their subjectivities as in-between in an overall process of negotiation. Subjectivity creates a fluidity where there is continuous acting and shifting, and allows for insight into how these women are affected by their interactions. This work is informed by the interpretivist and poststructuralist theoretical frameworks and introduces a narrative methodology of suwalif as a social practice of speaking, retelling and uttering lived experiences of and through these ten saudiyyat. The methodology focuses on bringing their voices away from any overused biases and analyzes the data through narrative research using my expertise as an ‘insider’ to share their suwalif in a culturally sensitive manner. The women bring forth their subjectivities and lived experiences to provoke an uneasiness in conversations around gender that create a space for questioning normative discourses of power. | Ph.D. | gender, women | 5 |
| Patel, Kramay | Popovic, Milos R||Valiante, Taufik A | Volitional Self-regulation of Individual Neurons in Mnemonic Structures of the Brain | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Brain-machine interfaces allow us to utilize specific neural activity patterns to control a particular behaviour. By establishing a causal link between neural activity and the corresponding behaviour, brain-machine interfaces also serve as a tool for investigating mechanisms of learning and plasticity in the brain. For decades, it has been known that animals, and humans, can be trained to control neural activity in parts of the brain that are involved in producing bodily movements. However, whether this type of self-regulation can be exerted over parts of the brain that are involved in higher cognition, such as memory function, remains an open question. In this thesis, we attempt to answer this question by utilizing brain-machine interfaces to train humans and animals to self-regulate the activity of individual neurons in memory-related brain structures, particularly the hippocampus. Specifically, our objectives are to (1) determine the extent to which animals and humans can learn to self-regulate activity of neurons in memory-related brain structures, and (2) shed light on the neural and behavioural mechanisms that facilitate this type of learning. In humans, we recorded activity of single neurons in individuals with epilepsy to determine whether an arbitrarily selected neuron can be brought under volitional control. Using a visual brain-machine interface, we demonstrated that humans could learn to upregulate the activity of a selected neuron quickly and reliably. Successful learning was correlated with changes in the neural population dynamics, consisting of robust phase-locking of the trained neuron to the local alpha/beta oscillations. We also utilized a similar brain-machine interface to train rats to control the activity of small hippocampal neuronal ensembles. We demonstrated that, like humans, rats could also learn to modulate the activity of individual neurons in the hippocampus. Using video monitoring we identified behavioural correlates of this type of learning which shed light on the behavioural strategies that animals use to learn such an abstract neuroprosthetic skill. Furthermore, by recording simultaneously from multiple electrodes we also demonstrated that learning is associated with increased spike-timing precision between the hippocampus and the closely associated ventral striatum. We further discuss these findings and propose a putative basal ganglia circuit that may play a role in facilitating this type of learning. Our results demonstrate that volitional self-regulation of neural activity is possible in previously uninvestigated memory-related structures, and this type of learning may engage cortico-basal ganglia circuits in a novel manner. These findings open the possibility of utilizing such neuroprosthetic skill learning to further probe learning and plasticity in memory-related structures of the brain and develop novel neuroprosthetics that can probe memory function without any exogenous stimulation. | Ph.D. | ABS, learning, invest, animal | 2, 4, 9, 14, 15 |
| McCord, Curtis | Becker, Christoph | Civic Participation and Democratic Experience: Civic Tech in Toronto | Information Studies | 2022-11 | This thesis examines intersections of civic participation and technology development in Toronto, Canada. In particular, I examine processes that configure civic participation by focussing on the way that people enrol and are enrolled by technology oriented toward the pursuit of public goods, a practice known by those involved as ‘civic tech’. Using ethnographic and action research methods, I examine processes of design and participation at multiple sites, characterised by differing levels of state and civilian involvement. In the first article, I explore the 2018-2020 corporate-run engagementprocess case of the Sidewalk Toronto smart city development, arguing that while certainly robust in scope, the process marginalised participant contributions by maintaining boundaries around key normative dimensions of the proposed smart city, especially around the governance of space, data, and other infrastructures. In the second and third article, I shift focus to Civic Tech Toronto (CTTO), a volunteer-led community group that, since 2015, has gathered civilians and public servants together at weekly hacknights, where they listen to speakers and experiment with technology projects addressing civic issues. The second article examines the governance and production of CTTO, exploring the applicability of commons based peer production language to the community and arguing that its main role as a technology itself is to produce relationships and experiences of community, rather than technological artefacts. Finally, the third article explores how CTTOs activities act as a contact zone that brings civilians and the state closer together in informal relationships. By prioritising social and self-directed cooperation, CTTO moves beyond the typical transactional nature of civic engagement (i.e. one that configures people as ‘users’ of the state or sees them as providers of informational ‘feedback’), and equips both civilians and public servants with the skills they need to interact more productively. Collectively, this research advances our understanding of the value of civic tech not only in terms of the artefacts it produces, but in the infrastructuring work it does: civic tech maintains civic commons that cultivate democratic subjects and creates spaces that ultimately help build trusting relationships between publics and public servants. | Ph.D. | infrastructure, marginalised, production, governance, democra | 9, 10, 12, 16 |
| Mendez, Mickaël Thomas | Hoffman, Michael M | Unsupervised and Supervised Methods for Analysis of Human Multimodal Transcriptome Data | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Studying the RNAs expressed in cells has enabled the discovery of different types of RNA with different functions. Many RNAs, however, have no associated function. Therefore, we need to develop novel methods to facilitate and accelerate the elucidation of these RNAs. In this thesis, I developed two machine learning methods allowing summarization and visualization of large collections of transcriptomic datasets. I also show that these methods allow generating biological hypotheses for known RNAs with unknown functions. I describe these methods in three chapters. Chapter 2 describes our SegRNA method for unsupervised annotation of multi-experiment transcriptome datasets. SegRNA annotations enabled the visualization of the most common patterns of transcriptomic signal from multiple assays: GRO-seq, CAGE, and RNA-seq. The most common patterns not only indicated the differences between these assays, but they also identified RNAs with different sizes and from different subcellular localization. SegRNA annotations are cell-type–specific. To date, the annotation that we generated for the K562 cell line is the first cell-type annotation that integrates RNA sizes, localization, and different assays. We show in this chapter that this annotation allows identifying novel short RNAs. Chapter 3 describes my collaboration with the FANTOM6 consortium. I show the experiments that led to the decision of using SegRNA with manual parameters to annotate the transcriptional changes that follow the knockdown of long non-coding RNAs, at 2 bp resolution. We used our method to generate 99 annotations that summarize 510 CAGE datasets. These SegRNA annotations successfully identified 92% of the knocked down long non-coding RNAs as downregulated, while SegRNA annotated on average 7% of the genes as downregulated. Chapter 4 describes our supervised cell lineage analysis (CLA) method for the identification of cell-type–specific, and lineage-specific RNAs. Identifying these RNAs requires running tools that generate a large number of results which makes the results hard to interpret. CLA automates these steps by identifying RNAs that discriminate cell types and summarizing the RNAs with a lineage score. We show that this approach enabled the identification of novel cell-type–specific alternative promoters. This thesis introduces tools that allow researchers to better understand the transcriptome by facilitating its interpretation. | Ph.D. | learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Wilson, Fiona M | Lima, Suzi | Negation in Cree | Linguistics | 2022-11 | This thesis investigates the negative particles used in two varieties of Cree: Muskeg Cree (a.k.a. Swampy Cree) and Plains Cree. Previous literature on Plains Cree has implicated a variety of factors potentially relevant to the choice of negative particle, including: inflectional order, clause type, clausal versus constituent negation, reality status, and veridicality (Cook 2014; Reinholtz and Wolfart 1996; Déchaine and Wolfart 2017). Discussion of Muskeg Cree has broadly claimed that inflectional order alone determines the negative particle used (Ellis 2000; MacKenzie 1992). This thesis investigates these attested patterns of negation in Plains Cree and Muskeg Cree, using a variety of methods from variationist sociolinguistics, statistical analyses, and semantic fieldwork. Corpus analysis of published literary materials was performed, as well as interviews with speakers that included translation, grammaticality judgment tasks, and storyboards. The results indicate that Plains Cree negation broadly reinforce the claim that inflectional order and reality status are relevant factors affecting negator use. It also appears that there may be additional unidentified factors at play in negation in this variety. In contrast, Muskeg Cree negation does not appear to be consistent with the previously identified pattern. The negator mwāc, previously considered marginal, is the overwhelmingly preferred negator for non-imperative negation across the modern speakers interviewed. Mwāc is used across a variety of contexts, regardless of inflectional order, while other non-imperative negators, ēkā and mōna, are dispreferred, rare, or even non-existent for many speakers. Substantial variation in negator use was observed for Muskeg Cree, both between literary and elicited materials, as well as between speakers being interviewed. This indicates that the hetereogeneity within the Muskeg variety of Cree has been underestimated, with greater variation in how speakers are able to express themselves through negation. These findings have implications for the teaching of negation in Muskeg Cree, and support the use of varied methodologies in the examination of language. They provide new insights into the pattern of use of negation in Muskeg Cree, an understudied language. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Martin, Montgomery C | Budde, Antje | Performing Technology: Mapping Interface Metaphors and Interactive Dramaturgies | Drama | 2022-11 | Digital technologies are not dramaturgically neutral. Rather, when we make the choice to use a piece of technology in performance practice, the technology has already made a series of choices for us. These choices manifest in the interface metaphors that define how we interact with digital technology and are deeply embedded in the developmental ancestry of each device.Given the profound impact of computational systems on performance, it is critically important to question when those choices are made, by whom, and to what extent, if any, computer systems make or define users’ dramaturgical choices. This process is rooted in digital dramaturgy, an interdisciplinary approach that combines intermedial-performance study, media theory, history of technology, and hands-on experimentation to establish a hybrid critical framework with a practice-based methodology which directly engages with computer hardware, software, and wetware. Through a series of case studies presented over five chapters, this dissertation examines several prominent contemporary technologies used in performance, including digital projection systems, media servers purpose-built for performance use such as TroikaTronix’s Isadora, Figure 53’s Qlab, and livestreaming studio Open Broadcaster, as well as playful appropriations of the Xbox 360 Kinect motion tracking camera and videoconferencing platform Zoom. These digital technologies use non-linguistic metaphors, including images, sounds, gestures, sensors, and other techniques which relate the logic and structure of prior (often analog) systems within the current (digital) technology. As such, this research draws on George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s notion of conceptual metaphors, which recognizes that metaphors are not merely linguistic devices, but systemic cultural expressions which humans use to communicate ideas and concepts on a structural level. In each case study, this research aims to identify what metaphors are present, how they are constructed, and most importantly, assess how they drive what is created using that technology. This thesis finds that modern digital technologies embedded technical or creative dramaturgy. When used within a performance, these technologies complicate power dynamics, foster specific ways of doing and thinking, and even enforce rigid modes of production. By mapping and revealing how these technological systems operate, this research hopes to encourage exploring and building new alternatives. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Elboraie, Ahmed Yehia | Tyndale, Rachel F. | Identifying Sources of Missing Heritability and Translating Genomic Variation in Nicotine Metabolism | Pharmacology | 2022-11 | Cigarette smoking continues to be a leading cause of preventable death. The rate of nicotine’s metabolic inactivation is mediated predominately by CYP2A6 enzyme activity, phenotyped by the nicotine metabolite ratio (NMR). The NMR is associated with several smoking behaviours, including differences in cessation outcomes and disease risk. The NMR is limited in that it requires specialized assays to run and cannot be quantified in non-regular smokers. These limitations prevent prediction of metabolizer status to evaluate disease-risk within these groups, or response to clinical drugs metabolized by CYP2A6. In contrast, genetic data is increasingly available in clinical studies and settings. Twin studies yield high heritability estimates for the NMR, indicating a genetic underpinning, yet known genetic variants explain only a fraction of the variation in the NMR. In this thesis, we explored potential sources of this missing heritability. With the rise of genome-wide association studies, novel variants associated with the NMR have been identified, but approaches to integrate these variants with known CYP2A6 variants have not been described. We developed weighted genetic risk scores (wGRSs) in both African- and in European-ancestral populations and contrasted these wGRSs to earlier genetic scoring and cross-ancestry approaches. Overall, we highlighted the ability of ancestry-specific wGRSs to replicate NMR-associated smoking cessation outcomes, such as demonstrating unique metabolizer by treatment interactions. Rare variants (minor allele frequency <1%) have been proposed to explain another portion of missing heritability. We used targeted sequencing to identify 38 novel CYP2A6 rare variants; novel variants were functionally characterized through in vivo, in silico, and in vitro approaches, and integrated into the wGRSs. On a population level, there is a minor contribution of CYP2A6 rare variants to NMR heritability; however, they provide an important contribution to the resulting prediction of metabolizer status for individuals genotyped with rare variants. Together these findings capture up to 33% and 34% of the genetic variation in the NMR in African and European populations, respectively. Overall, the research presented expands our knowledge of genetic variation in nicotine metabolism, providing insight into CYP2A6 genetic differences between ancestral populations, and enhancing our ability to use genetics to predict CYP2A6 activity. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Carter, Celina | Kontos, Pia | An Examination of the Socio-political Forces Shaping End-of-life Conversations in Interprofessional Primary Care with Medically Frail Older Adults | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Scholarship in the field of end-of-life (EOL) conversations has grown over the last three decades. However, despite a large body of work, there remain theoretical, methodological, and substantive gaps to inform an understanding of the issue of delayed or avoided EOL conversations in primary care. This critical ethnography informed by biomedicalization attempts to build an understanding, rooted in empirical data, of how EOL conversations happen and also why they might not happen in the primary care of medically frail older adults. Data includes observations of 25 clinical appointments involving clinicians and medically frail older patients and/or their care partners at an urban Family Health Team in Ontario, Canada as well as 94.5 hours of structured observations of clinicians’ day-to-day activities excluding direct patient care, and 27 interviews with participants. Key findings highlight the multiple and competing discourses circulating in primary care that constrain EOL conversations. In appointments with patients’ ‘most responsible providers’ (MRPs), the more life discourse constrains talk of decline and dying, making EOL conversations less possible. More life is aligned with the culture of biomedicine and clinical practice guidelines as well as the culture of life extension in the West, giving this discourse influence. Interprofessional collaboration (IPC) in EOL conversations is also limited, with nurses and allied health clinicians rarely being involved in EOL conversations. Neoliberal-biomedical discourse shapes factors at the structural, organizational, and practice levels, encouraging efficiency and biomedical dominance in ways that limit opportunities for IPC in EOL conversations. I recommend primary care as a specialty reflects on its entrenchment in a culture of care that valorizes more life and (re)create clinical practice guidelines and measures to align with person-centredness more meaningfully. Additionally, for nurses and allied health clinicians to become involved in EOL conversations with frail older adults, they need to share in clinical decision-making. Structurally, improving IPC must address constraints from neoliberal and biomedical ideologies. Clinicians can also collectively work at the practice level to create change. Future research should take a participator approach with patients, care partners, and interprofessional clinicians to develop ways of supporting holistic relational care & communication in primary care. | Ph.D. | labor, urban | 8, 11 |
| Semple, Philip Elias | Janzen, Katharine | An Exploratory Descriptive Study of Implicit Bias in Police Recruits and Applicants at the RCMP | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | Abstract_x000D_ An Exploratory Descriptive Study of Implicit Bias in Police Recruits and Applicants at the RCMP_x000D_ Philip Elias Semple _x000D_ Doctor of Philosophy_x000D_ Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education_x000D_ University of Toronto 2022_x000D_ This study sought to explore the nature, degree and impact of implicit bias in police recruits and their instructors attending the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) training facility in Regina, Saskatchewan. The bias explored was in relation to Black men and women. Findings were generated using a mixed methods form of research. Quantitative data were obtained using an implicit bias measuring tool and qualitative data were gleaned from key experts external to the police services. The rationale behind choosing the implicit bias test called Implicitly as the main data collection instrument, its characteristics, and established validity are discussed. The issues of bias and racism are explored from a police and social perspective. Implications, ways to mitigate implicit bias and prevent unsuitable candidates from being hired into positions of power such as policing are also discussed. Significant limitations were encountered in the implementation of the initial research protocol. At the original intended test site, the Ontario Police College (OPC), none of the instructors and only two recruits attempted to complete the Implicitly test. Furthermore, at the second site, the RCMP Depot, none of the instructors chose to participate and only 61 out of 800 invited recruits completed the Implicitly test._x000D_ However, the Implicitly tests were subsequently offered by the RCMP to recruit applicants and a robust sample of 5,282 tests were completed and the aggregated results made available to me for this study as de-identified secondary data. These secondary data provided the focus of the discussions with five key external experts who shared their perceptions stressing the need for the testing to be a mandatory part of the hiring process for policing because of the potential impact of bias in officer’s position of power. They also thought that the implicit bias testing could be useful in helping to determine the efficacy of recruit training. Key findings identified some significant limitations. These overall test results showed low ranges of implicit bias for both RCMP recruits who completed the tests and recruit applicant participants. Exploring the reason(s) for the lack of participation by the instructors and recruits urgently warrants further investigation. | Ph.D. | ABS, racism, women, invest, institut | 2, 4, 5, 9, 16 |
| Hannan-Leith, Madeline Naomi | Schneider, Margaret | Thank You for Being a Friend: Social Integration and Psychological Well-being in Lesbian Older Adults | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | A growing body of research has identified the relationship between loneliness and numerous adverse health outcomes in adults over the age of 55. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) older adults have been flagged as an especially high-risk group, and while social networks have been shown to protect against loneliness in LGBT youth, this has yet to be investigated in older adults. A growing arena for social connection in older adults is the Internet, with over 45% of seniors reporting regular use of social media sites; however, disagreement persists regarding the influence of these sites on mental health, particularly in LGB older adults. This study examined associations between social integration and psychological well-being among lesbian older adults and a demographically similar sample of heterosexual women. Additionally, the study explored the mediating roles of mental health status (loneliness, depression, anxiety) and social media (use and attitudes) on this relationship, as well as the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on social communication. Lesbian (n = 201) and heterosexual women (n = 245) between the ages of 55 and 85 completed online questionnaires assessing social integration, psychological well-being, mental health status, social media, and changes in communication patterns during COVID-19. In each sample, social integration was significantly correlated with psychological well-being; however, lesbian and heterosexual older women did not significantly differ in levels of social integration or well-being, and neither sexual orientation nor age moderated this relationship. Loneliness, depression, and anxiety were found to significantly mediate the relationship between social integration and psychological well-being, particularly regarding the more objective dimensions of social integration. Conversely, social media use and attitudes were not found to be significant mediators, and no notable changes in communication patterns during the COVID-19 pandemic were found. These results suggest that social integration is importantly linked to psychological well-being in both lesbian and heterosexual older adult women, and that this relationship is indirectly affected by mental health status. While the limited representativeness of the study sample may restrict the generalizability of these findings, they generally strengthen support for considering social factors when addressing the mental health needs of lesbian older adults. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health, women, invest, internet | 3, 5, 2009 |
| Bhargava, Aditya | Penn, Gerald | Subcategorial Considerations in Statistical Categorial Parsing | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Research in categorial grammars (CGs) is fortunate to have had a storied, decades-long history, with contributions from scholars of diverse research disciplines such as linguistics, mathematical logic, and computer science, among others. In natural language processing, categorial grammars have played critical roles in the development of efficient, wide-coverage statistical parsers, and have further provided an essential compositional framework for various semantic parsers and corpora. One aspect that has been missed in the vast majority of computational work in statistical CG parsing, however, is a treatment of CG lexical categories that reflects their structured nature. In this dissertation, I argue for a decomposed, subcategorial consideration of CG lexical categories for statistical CG parsing. In particular, my work focuses on combinatory categorial grammar (CCG) and Lambek categorial grammar (LCG), two important members of the categorial family. I demonstrate how subcategorial awareness is uniquely beneficial to three important aspects of statistical CG parsing. First, I introduce an LSTM-based CCG supertagger that can predict supertags one primitive at a time. This enables more effective incorporation of prediction history than is otherwise possible, resulting in a supertagger with improved accuracy, a parser with improved coverage and F1, and even allows for the generation of novel supertags, an entirely new capability for supervised CCG parsers. Second, for LCG parsing, I show how to express LCG proof net validity conditions as neural network loss functions, all of which are critically enabled by structured decomposition of the lexical categories. I apply these loss functions to the training of a Transformer-based LCG parser, thereby presenting the first statistical parser for LCG. I further show that the loss functions enable training the parser without ground-truth derivations. Finally, I investigate CCG parser evaluation, and show that the standard metric is prone to overamplifying minor errors. I introduce a new, decomposed version of the metric that relies on subcategorial labelling and alignment. Expert judges unanimously agree that the decomposed method better isolates parser errors. In examining their judgements, I find that expert judges show difficulty agreeing with each other when comparing parses for different sentences, raising important questions for statistical parser evaluations more generally. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Zhang, Jiahui Helena | Zawertailo, Laurie A | Exploring The Efficacy and Neural Correlates of Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) as an Adjunctive Treatment for Tobacco Dependence | Pharmacology | 2022-11 | Smoking remains the leading cause of preventable death worldwide. Even with first-line pharmacotherapies, smoking cessation rates remain low, partially due to the inability of current treatments to treat underlying aberrant neuropathology. Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) targets cortical circuits to reduce craving and nicotine consumption among cigarette smokers. However, the efficacy of tDCS as an adjunct to smoking cessation pharmacotherapy has not been studied. This dissertation aims to investigate the efficacy and neural correlates of anodal left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) tDCS in combination with varenicline for smoking cessation. This was investigated in a double-blind, sham-controlled randomized clinical trial where 41 smokers were randomized to either active tDCS (20 minutes at 2 mA) or sham tDCS (19 minutes at 0mA) for 10 daily sessions plus 5 booster sessions, occurring every two weeks for 10 weeks. All participants were also given standard varenicline treatment (1 mg b.i.d. for 12 weeks) concurrently with tDCS. Multi-modal functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans were conducted at baseline and end of treatment to investigate the neural correlates that might be altered by this treatment combination. Findings at end of treatment show that active tDCS was associated with higher quit rates than sham (67% vs 38% respectively, χ2(1)=1.47, p=0.12, effect size=0.6) in treatment completers. Active tDCS significantly decreased cigarette consumption over time but had no additional effect on nicotine craving over varenicline. A trend was also observed whereby smokers in the active group quit later than the sham group. There were no significant adverse events associated with active stimulation compared to sham. Neuroimaging findings show that active tDCS and varenicline treatment was also associated with decreased smoking cue reactivity in prefrontal areas of the brain, and increased white matter connectivity of white matter bundles connecting to the prefrontal cortex. This is the first study to show the efficacy of adjunct tDCS with pharmacotherapy for smoking cessation, establishing a medium effect size between active vs sham tDCS. These novel findings illuminate the potential for adding tDCS to varenicline treatment in future clinical settings, thereby decreasing the burden of smoking and smoking-related diseases on our society. | Ph.D. | invest, consum | 9, 12 |
| Alaca, Betül | Pyle, Angela | The Role of Mosques in Promoting Well-being in Muslim Communities | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | The mosque holds an invaluable role in Islamic tradition; it has historically offered many religious and health services for its communities while also addressing relevant social and political affairs. With the steady increase in Muslim populations in Canada comes the need for more services and programs geared towards supporting Muslim individual and community well-being. It is important to utilize the full potential of mosques in supporting Muslim communities and revive the Islamic notion that mosques are hubs for service provision. My thesis research used digital qualitative methods to understand the ways in which mosques in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) support the well-being of Muslim communities. The main question that drove my research is: How do mosques in the GTHA support the holistic well-being of Muslim children, youth, and families through their programs and services? The digital qualitative methods comprised of 17 semi-structured interviews as well as three sources of observational data: 40 hours of observation of live and archived video and audio content; website content analyses; and environmental scans. Analyses of the interview transcripts were the most detailed form of analysis. Analyses of the observational data were used to support and strengthen the themes that were generated from the interview transcripts. My findings demonstrate that mosques strive towards promoting individual and community growth by strengthening individuals’ spiritual relationships with Allah; developing programs and services for individuals across the lifespan; and serving as social service providers for marginalized groups. Furthermore, while equity, diversity, and inclusion emerged as elements of practice that are being integrated into service provision, there was also recognition of the need to better implement equitable practices in mosques. Overall, my research illustrates that mosques function as therapeutic spaces for Muslim communities and foster individual and community well-being. It is essential that the practice of psychology recognize mosques as complex institutions that can serve and benefit Muslim individuals and communities. | Ph.D. | well-being, equitable, equity, equit, marginalized, environmental, institut | 3, 4, 10, 13, 16 |
| Giannakeas, Vasily | Narod, Steven A | The Association of Platelet Count on Cancer Incidence and Survival | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Platelets are cellular fragments in the blood that have a primary purpose of forming blood clots during a blood vessel injury. Platelets have been shown to play an important role in cancer development and progression. Activated platelets promote tumour growth and angiogenesis in the early stages of tumour development, and mediate tumour cell dissemination and metastasis. It remains unclear to what extent platelet count is influenced by the presence of cancer and with which types of cancer. This dissertation is composed of four studies. In the first study I investigate the association between platelet count and a new diagnosis of cancer. Individuals with a high platelet count were more likely to be diagnosed with cancer. The association was most pronounced for gastrointestinal cancers (colon, stomach, esophageal), lung cancer, kidney cancer, and ovarian cancer. In the second study I aimed to determine if there is an elevated risk of cancer among individuals with a high platelet count (i.e. thrombocytosis). Among individuals with newly developed thrombocytosis there was an elevated risk of cancer of the colon, lung, ovary, stomach, kidney, and esophagus. Individuals with thrombocytosis may benefit from subsequent cancer screening. The third study looked at platelet count as a marker of cancer survival among cancer patients. Platelet count was associated with cancer survival for several types of cancer. The findings suggest that platelet count could potentially be used as a risk stratification measure for cancer patients. The fourth study was a descriptive analysis on trends in platelet count in a cohort of cancer patients. Platelet count increased in the months preceding a cancer diagnosis. After diagnosis, platelet count was elevated among patients that died from the cancer. This dissertation work highlights a profound relationship between platelet count and cancer outcomes. Clinical implications of this work include screening for cancer among patients with newly developed thrombocytosis, risk stratify cancer patients according to platelet count, and monitor patients for an increase in platelet count after diagnosis. I hope these findings will advance the literature and provide motivation to pursue clinical research on platelet mechanisms and cancer outcomes. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Mahpour, Amirreza | El-Diraby, Tamer | The Application of Data Science to Highway Asset Management Investment Strategies | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | Decision-making in project management is a complex process. A multitude of criteria are involved, their values are dynamically changing, and there is limited knowledge about their interactions and the influence of context on them. While causal decision-making systems over the last seven decades have contributed extensively to analyzing and understanding the complexity of decision-making, policy-makers still face many of the challenges listed above. The thesis showcases the role of non-causal decision-making. It showcases the use of machine-learning in supporting decision-making. This data-driven approach relies on discovering patterns from real-world data. In addition to bypassing the causality dilemma, good practice in machine-learning systems relies on the use of constantly updated data: as the world, in all its complexity and contextual changes, evolves, the outcome of the machine-learning systems changes accordingly. To narrow down the scope of the research, this thesis considered highway maintenance projects. In doing so, and given the non-causal nature of machine-learning, the contribution of this thesis is methodological: how to create approaches and means to implement machine-learning in decision-making given the scope and context of project management. As such, the outcomes of this research work should be valuable in guiding the decision-making process in other domains of project management. Two real-world datasets were used in the analysis: one from the national highway database of Iran and the other from the asset management database of the City of Oshawa, Ontario. Given that the aim of this work was not to theorize about the role of machine-learning in project decision-making, the selected analyses were driven by the available data. The outcome is four different systems that can be part of a bigger puzzle, i.e. the aim was not to create a generic overarching and comprehensive model. This can be antithetical to the whole notion of data-driven systems. To this end, four research questions were addressed. The results of this thesis indicate that the road functional class and climate mattered to maintenance policy-making. Furthermore, the developed methodologies can improve budget allocation and levels of service; guide climate action policies; promote preventive maintenance; and enhance creating and effectively communicating sustained funding policies. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, invest, climate | 4, 9, 13 |
| Mojdami, Zahra Dorna | Azarpazhooh, Amir||Glogauer, Michael | The Effect of Ionizing Radiation on the Oral Innate Immune Response, Oral Microbiome and the Quality of Life in Patients Undergoing Head and Neck Intensity−modulated Radiotherapy for the Treatment of Head and Neck Tumours | Dentistry | 2022-11 | Radiotherapy (RT) to the head and neck region has devastating and life altering effects. Using the Modified Delphi Technique, guidelines were reached and developed in which radiation dose at which participants would prophylactically remove teeth to prevent osteoradionecrosis (ORN) was established at 70 Grays (Gy) in the maxilla and 60 Gy in the mandible. Treatment pathways were developed for maxillary and mandible anterior/premolar and molar teeth receiving a dose at or above this threshold. Risk factors were established for carious, periodontally involved and third molar teeth. In general, periodontally involved teeth and mandibular molars were most frequently recommended for extraction. Only symptomatic third molars were recommended for extraction when adequate healing time was available prior to commencement of RT. Clinicians can recognize, anticipate and possibly reduce the risk of oral complications associated to RT to the head and neck region. However, the use of potential biomarkers in the form of oral innate immune cells and oral microbiome to potentially predict the development and progression and possibly to treat RT induced oral complications has not been thoroughly investigated and thus not well understood. The role of oral polymorphonuclear leukocytes/oral neutrophils (oPMNs), and the oral microbiome before, during and post−RT and their interaction with one another has not been extensively studied to be used as potential biomarkers in the development and progression of oral complications associated with RT treatment. When controlling for all relevant factors, intensity-modulated RT was found to decrease both the number of oPMNs post−RT as well as impair oPMN activation (priming) states through statistically significant decreases in the oPMN markers CD11b, CD16, CD18, CD64 and H3Cit. Exposure to RT can cause significant alterations in the oral microbiome by reducing the relative abundance of commensal Gram-negative microbes and increasing the commensal Gram-positive microbes. The University of Washington Quality of Life Questionnaire version 4 (UW−QoL) was administered prospectively before and during RT. Taste, saliva and swallowing scores worsened during and post-RT. The results of this study suggest that RT impairs the load and function of critical oPMN markers as well as shifting the oral microflora and contributing to poorer patient self-reported QoL. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Melle, Bradley | McGowan, Mark | Communicating Jesus Through an “Aboriginal Lens”: The Growth of a Self-determining Indigenous Evangelicalism in Northwestern Canada, 1950-2000 | History | 2022-11 | For Indigenous peoples in Canada, the second half of the twentieth century was a period of monumental and lasting change. Bolstered by demographic growth and the mobilization of intertribal alliances, Indigenous organizations pursued agendas of justice with renewed fervour. At the same time, Indigenous communities reckoned with the intergenerational traumas wrought by colonization and invested in projects focused on communal and cultural recuperation, materializing as the Aboriginal Healing Movement. In this same period, the Northern Canada Evangelical Mission launched a new evangelism program in the northwest aimed at conversion. They encountered Indigenous communities badly vandalized by the prolonged policies of coercive colonization but equally attuned to pan-Indigenous empowerment and healing. By the 1960s, an independently administered, Indigenous-led evangelical network emerged, coalescing institutionally as the Native Evangelical Fellowship in 1968. This study contends that the emergence of an Indigenous evangelical network in the twentieth century only makes sense in relation to the destructive fallout of colonization and the wider socio-cultural projects of the era. Indigenous communities were keen to rupture with their colonial pasts, achieve greater sovereignty, heal from trauma and dysfunction, and reconnect with fractured cultural identities. Fundamentalism’s anti-Catholic rhetoric and emphasis on independent congregations and outreach inadvertently meshed with the broader Indigenous pursuits of decolonization and autonomy. The “contextualization movement,” representative of a post-colonial branch of Indigenous evangelicalism, arose in the 1980s as a response to unheeded longings to reconnect with identity, a process ultimately instigated by the North American-wide Indigenous cultural resurgence. Through an analysis of the contours of Indigenous fundamentalist evangelicalism – from its origins in the 1940s to the turn of the twenty-first century – this dissertation places its trajectory of development within the wider social, cultural, and psychological contexts demarcating Indigenous life. By utilizing under-examined Indigenous evangelical publications and personal conversion narratives, this dissertation examines the most salient points of interface between Indigenous communities and the fundamentalist tradition, adding a thematically diverse and analytically rich Indigenocentric chapter to the winding history of Indigenous Christianity. | Ph.D. | wind, invest, indigenous, decolonization, institut, sovereignty | 7, 9, 10, 16 |
| Good, Bethany Dana | Mishna, Faye | Left to Their Own Devices: Digital Media use among Youth in Residential Treatment an Exploratory Study | Social Work | 2022-11 | Introduction: Three individual but related qualitative studies, explore the phenomenon of digital media use among youth within residential mental health treatment settings, from the vantage point of both the youth (n=15) and the service providers (n=25) who support them. Method: McCracken’s Long Interview Method was utilized to conduct and analyze in-depth interviews for each of the three papers. The goal of this research is to contribute a rich understanding of the experiences of youth digital media use within residential treatment RT settings from both youth in RT and the service providers supporting them. Results: Findings are organized within three distinct papers The first paper, “Double-edged sword” of digital media use among youth in residential treatment: Perspectives of service providers” focuses on the complex interplay of factors that influence how service providers from four different RTs in southern Ontario Canada contend with youth digital media use in RTs. The second paper “Digital pathways to wellness among youth in RT” is a youth centered, developmentally informed, study that attends to the gap in the literature addressing the digital media use experiences among youth in residential treatment (RT). The third paper, “Digital Media Use in Residential Treatment: Anxiety, Adaptation, and the Role of Relationship between Youth and Service providers” explores the shared experiences of youth and service providers navigating digital media use in RT. Collective recommendations are drawn from the findings of paper three, offering a relationally grounded understanding of how youth and service providers contend with their respective positions on the role of digital media use in the lives of youth, and the anxiety generated by changes in digital media access in RT settings. Implications: The dissertation’s findings provide pathways forward to inform practice, research, and policy related to supporting and addressing digital media use among youth within residential treatment settings and those requiring intensive mental health supports. | Ph.D. | mental health | 3 |
| Ruco, Arlinda | Baxter, Nancy N. | Exploring Under and Overscreening to Address the Public Health Burden of Colorectal Cancer | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Background: Cancer screening is only effective if eligible individuals participate in screening and do so at the recommended intervals. The objective of this dissertation was to explore two challenges in cancer screening: 1) strategies to mitigate non-participation (Studies 1 & 2); and 2) risk reduction after a complete colonoscopy (Study 3) to maximize patient outcomes and minimize risks for colorectal cancer (CRC). Methods: Study 1 included a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials or quasi-experimental studies evaluating the effectiveness of social media and mobile health (mHealth) interventions. In Study 2, we conducted a qualitative descriptive study with Facebook users of screen-eligible age to develop social media messages promoting CRC screening. Finally, we conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study to explore the association of complete colonoscopy with CRC incidence and mortality (Study 3) and the duration of risk reduction. A time to event analysis using a Cox-proportional hazards regression model with time-varying covariates was used to generate adjusted estimates. Results: In Study 1, we identified a total of 39 studies and the overall pooled odds ratio for screening participation was 1.49 (95% CI: 1.31–1.70) with effect sizes similar across all cancer types. In Study 2, we developed recommendations for 7 messages; 1 was classified as strongly consider, 4 as consider using this message and 2 as proceed with caution. Participants preferred social media messages that were believed to be credible, educational, and with a positive or reassuring tone. Finally, exposure to a complete negative colonoscopy was significantly associated with a lower risk of disease for more than 15 years (HR 0.710; 95% CI: 0.581-0.867 for females and HR 0.541; 95% CI: 0.436-0.672 for males) in comparison to those without a complete colonoscopy. A similar trend was observed for CRC-related mortality. Conclusions: Screening programs should consider incorporating mHealth and social media into their efforts to increase uptake. We have a provided a strong foundation of theory-informed social media messages that may be preferred by the target population. Finally, our data also suggest that more prolonged intervals than recommended by some guidelines could be considered after a complete negative colonoscopy. | Ph.D. | public health, female, of color | 3, 5, 10 |
| Li, Sheng | Seferos, Dwight | Selenophene- and Thiophene-based π-Conjugated Polymer Gels | Chemistry | 2022-11 | In this thesis, I describe my effort in the synthesis of selenophene- and thiophene-based conjugated polymers and the development of organogels and hydrogels from them. In Chapter 1, I provide a general introduction on what are conjugated polymers and their applications. Then, a brief overview of programmable self-assembly of conjugated polymers including covalent programming and solid-state programming is introduced. It provides the background, importance, and recent works on the development of conjugated polymer gels. In Chapter 2, I describe the formation and characterization of selenophene- and thiophene-based conjugated homopolymer organogels. I demonstrate the first reported polyselenophene organogels and the result shows they are promising for the development of stretchable electronics. I have also developed a cycle-doping method to successfully dope the bulk gel films and offer the merit of being able to monitor the change in the film conductivity as the doping cycle increases at the same time. And this method can be applied to dope bulk films in general. In Chapter 3, I further expand the types of conjugated polymer organogels to selenophene- and thiophene-based statistical copolymers. I investigate the influence of molecular weight on the electrical performance of those statistical copolymers. I report the self-assembly behaviour of both the statistical copolymer thin films and their gels at low, medium, and high degrees of polymerization. And the doping mechanism of statistical copolymer gels is also determined. In Chapter 4, I examine the concept of forming hydrogels from full conjugated block copolymers. I demonstrate the synthesis of an amphiphilic block copolymer and the successful development of hydrogel from it. In Chapter 5, I summarize the main conclusions and offer outlooks for my thesis work. Future directions in the development of conjugated polymer organogels and hydrogels are described, and they could offer a better understanding and higher impact in the field of conjugated polymer gels. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Miloucheva, Boriana | Benjamin, Dwayne||Eli, Shari | Doctors, Drugs, and Death: Separating Supply and Demand Factors in the Opioid Crisis | Economics | 2022-11 | Dramatic reversals in mortality trends have been identified in the United States and Canada since 1997, in part driven by rising opioid-related deaths. Two schools of thought have emerged to explain these statistics: demand and supply side forces. The supply-side channel argues that these deaths are a product of the increasing availability of legally prescribed opioids. The demand-side channel argues that growing income inequality creates a mental health burden, which can manifest in individuals as suicidality and substance abuse. This thesis investigates precisely the role of these two channels on health consequences and mortality in the United States and Canada. The first chapter focuses on supply-side forces in the opioid epidemic, particularly through the role of pharmaceutical firm promotion and physician prescribing in the United States. In order to disentangle the supply behaviour of doctors from the demand behaviour of patients, it leverages the staggered introduction of Medicaid expansion across states to exogenously shift opioid supply. The results suggest that pharmaceutical firms respond strategically to this policy by increasing their promotional targeting of physicians. These promotions appear to be effective in changing physicians prescribing behaviour, even during a period of increased awareness of the dangers of these drugs. While not persistent, this is associated with a small increase in opioid-related mortality. The second chapter focuses on the role of absolute and relative income effects on hospitalizations in Canada. To identify the effect of a change of one's position in the income distribution, it exploits the heterogeneous effects of exogenous movements in the price of oil on the distribution of local income. Using hospitalization records linked to census data, it demonstrates that non-oil workers who have many neighbors in the oil industry are more likely to be hospitalized after oil prices rise (and their relative income falls). These results shed new light on mechanisms through which income inequality might affect people's well-being. Overall, these two chapters highlight the complex interrelationships between supply and demand side forces in the opioid epidemic. | Ph.D. | income distribution, ABS, well-being, mental health, substance abuse, worker, invest, inequality, equalit, income | 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10 |
| Mou, Leping | Hayhoe, Ruth | Cultivating Whole Persons through Liberal Arts Education: A Case Study of Three Universities in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | This study explores Liberal Arts Education (LAE) in three institutions in Chinese contexts to see how their LAE is designed and implemented toward whole person cultivation by nurturing students as responsible citizens with capabilities needed in the uncertain future of the 21st century. In contrast to human capital theory, the study takes the lens of the capabilities approach to examine liberal arts models and their innovative practices for nurturing the all-around development of critical thinking, civic engagement, and intercultural competence. The study adopts a mixed-methods design, using data such as curriculum documents, interviews with administrators and faculty members, and surveys with students and alumni. I examined how universities design and adapt LAE models into their social and cultural contexts. I found that the three universities integrated cultural tradition and social factors into their LAE, so as to form an ideal higher education with a focus on the value of person-making or whole person development rooted in a Chinese cultural tradition. There are also differences in LAE in the three societies with Yuanpei influenced by the socialist context in Mainland China, Lingnan situated in the practically oriented international city of Hong Kong, and greater emphasis on traditional Chinese culture and the influence of Christian tradition in Tunghai, situated in Taiwan. Following the common model of broad knowledge, residential learning, close student-faculty relationships, small-class teaching, and extra-curricular activities, the LAE in the three institutions constitutes an educational philosophy and mode of learning focusing on mentorship experience, participation, and an experiential process, which prepares students for future uncertainties with a sense of responsibility and capabilities both for personal flourishing and sustainable development. This educational philosophy and mode of learning can find its roots in both Western and Confucian learning approaches. Given the massification of higher education, findings from the three institutions indicated that LAE in these Chinese contexts has moved away from the elite status it often held in the past and is offered to the majority of students for the cultivation of abilities needed for the future. It thus contributes to inclusion and social equity in the 21st century. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, equity, citizen, sustainable development, capital, equit, land, institut | 4, 8, 11, 9, 10, 15, 16 |
| Fox, Bailey | Shachar, Ayelet | The Legal Regulation of Holy Sites Through the Constitutional Guarantee of Freedom of Religion | Law | 2022-11 | This comparative analysis is a study of the legal regulation of holy sites through the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. I investigate how the holy site is produced within the co-constitutive relationship between law and space and argue that in remaining in the realm of the abstract theory, the law fails to capture the material aspects of freedom of religion. After summarizing the theoretical foundations of legal geography and investigating the workings of the secular in space, I study holy sites in India, Israel and Canada. Each chapter traces the historical development of regulations, with particular attention on the impact of colonialism, and how secularism influenced the legal construction of the space. In the comparative analysis, I excavate common moves within the three jurisdictions and argue that we can only start to capture these dynamics by paying attention to the complex interaction between law, religion, and space. | LL.M. | ABS, invest | 2, 9 |
| Leenders, Frank Jacobus Jacoba | Kambourov, Gueorgui||Wolthoff, Ronald | Essays in the Macroeconomics of the Labour Market | Economics | 2022-11 | In this thesis, I combine three essays that examine earnings consequences of labour market transitions, using detailed data and search-theoretical frameworks. In the first chapter, I use German employer-employee data to explore long-run earnings consequences of mass layoffs. I find that workers who return to the employer that laid them off experience larger earnings losses, both in the short and in the long run. These larger earnings losses for these so-called recalled workers are driven by employment in the short run and by wages in the long run. Furthermore, recalled workers are more likely to lose their job again compared to workers who were re-employed at different employers. In the second chapter, I propose a job search model that explains these findings. In the model, I distinguish between workers who may be recalled soon and regularly unemployed workers. The model replicates the larger earnings losses experienced by recalled workers, despite these workers optimally choosing for this recall, thus suggesting that the recall was not a bad outcome. Indeed, decomposing the difference in earnings loss between recalled and non-recalled workers shows that the short-run difference is largely explained by selection, whereas the long-run effect is driven by recalled workers being more likely to lose their job again. The third chapter investigates the cyclicality of occupational mobility and its consequences for subsequent earnings and wages, distinguishing between workers who switch occupations through unemployment and workers who switch during a job-to-job transition. Using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation, I find that the fraction of occupational switchers switching through unemployment is countercyclical, and while these workers generally do worse in terms of earnings than workers who make a job-to-job transition, their earnings and wage patterns may slightly improve in recessions. I then propose a job search model of occupational mobility in which I incorporate both types of occupational switches and show that the overall deterioration of earnings outcomes for occupational switchers in recessions is driven by a composition change towards switching through unemployment, dampened by the outcomes experienced by workers who switch occupations without switching employers. | Ph.D. | employment, labour, worker, wage, invest, income, transit | 8, 9, 10, 11 |
| Streuber, Gregg Mitchell | Zingg, David W | Efficiency Automation in Aerodynamic Shape Optimization: Multimodal Dynamic Search Spaces | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | This work addresses two topics of relevance to efficiency and automation in aerodynamic shape optimization: multimodality and dynamic geometry control. Multimodality presents a challenge to efficiency and automation by introducing the risk of poor optimizer performance or inferior final geometries if not adequately addressed, necessitating careful selection of an optimization algorithm and considerable user insight. To shed light on this risk, a previously developed gradient-based multistart algorithm is leveraged to perform a large-scale parametric study of multimodality in aerodynamic shape optimization. This study reveals that multimodality is much more common in aerodynamic shape optimization than previously believed, that it is endemic in exploratory optimization problems, and that such multimodality is robust in the face of common optimization constraints. Traditional static geometry control methods offer a similar impediment to efficiency and automation by introducing performance trade-offs at various stages of optimization, enforcing arbitrary constraints on open-ended optimization, and necessitating foreknowledge of problem behaviour to design an effective control scheme. These shortcomings can be mitigated through dynamic geometry control, which partly automates the geometry control design process by refining the geometry control topology throughout optimization; such refinement can occur in a pre-determined fashion (as in progressive control) or more automatically using sensitivity information to guide refinement (as in adaptive control). Both methods are implemented in the context of axial and free-form deformation geometry control, and several novel contributions are made to the adaptive algorithm including several novel ``potential indicators" to rank candidate refinements, a new approach to the treatment of active constraints, and the application of these methods to a wider suite of problems than previously attempted. This work demonstrates that dynamic geometry control is effective, reducing required iterations to convergence by 50% or more, realizing reductions in final drag of up to 2% while using as little as 10% as many design variables as a well-designed static control scheme, all while reducing labour requirements on the user. These gains are demonstrated across a wide variety of problems, representative of detailed, preliminary, and exploratory problems often encountered in both academia and industry. | Ph.D. | knowledge, labour, trade | 4, 8, 10 |
| Gray, Philippe Adrien | Lehn, Peter W | The Current Shaping Modular Multilevel DC-DC Converter | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | Modular multilevel converters (MMCs) for dc applications require an internal circulating ac current to balance the charge of the voltage source module capacitors (VSM). While the frequency of this circulating ac current can be freely chosen, in state-of-the-art MMC structures, this frequency is typically limited to 100s of Hz due to the presence of large string inductors and the high number of switching operations, thereby requiring significant ripple power to be filtered by large VSM capacitors. In this thesis, a novel energy transfer mechanism for dc applications is introduced which is unique in that it employs a current source submodule (CSM) to directly control the circulating ac current of the converter, enabling the frequency of the circulating ac currents to be increased by at least two orders of magnitude. This results in a commensurate reduction in VSM capacitor size compared to state-of-the-art MMCs. Based on this current shaping mechanism, several converter structures are proposed to target a wide range of dc applications including applications requiring isolation, high voltage conversion ratios, and bidirectional operational capability. In each of the proposed converter topologies, only a fraction of the VSMs are required to be switched in a given operating cycle enabling a frequency multiplier effect to occur whereby the effective frequency seen by the magnetics of the converter, as well as the VSM capacitors, is much greater than the switching frequency of the individual VSMs. The core ideas of this thesis are validated through experimental work which is performed using a laboratory-scale prototype based on SiC power devices. Peak efficiencies of up to 97.1% were achieved at an effective operating frequency of 50 kHz. The experimental work demonstrates that converters based on this energy transfer mechanism enable substantive converter volume and cost reduction due to a reduction in capacitive and inductive storage requirements. | Ph.D. | energy, labor | 7, 8 |
| Badawy, Philip James | Schieman, Scott | A "Holy Grail" of Work and Family Life? When and How Schedule Control Functions as a Resource | Sociology | 2022-11 | Schedule control is a job resource used to determine the timing of paid work and has been touted as a “holy grail” among work-family scholars and practitioners. While prior research has demonstrated that schedule control is linked with better work-life balance and health, it may not be an unfettered job reward. With this dissertation, I advance new knowledge that complicates the resource view of schedule control by integrating theoretical perspectives from diverse fields, including scholarship on roles in the work-family interface, sociology of mental health, and occupational health psychology. My dissertation extends prior research by identifying the conditions and statuses under which schedule control functions as a job resource versus scenarios where it might have circumscribed benefits or even unintended consequences for work-family life and health. Three patterns derived from longitudinal data analysis complicate the characterization of schedule control as solely a job resource. First, in Chapter 2 I reveal some of the downsides of schedule control for the work-family interface. I find that increases in schedule control are associated with a greater frequency of blurring the boundaries between work and nonwork roles. Moreover, schedule control exacerbates the association between job pressure and role blurring—and these observed downsides are stronger for women. Second, in Chapter 3 I compare the protective resource functions of schedule control and mastery for mitigating the detrimental health effects of competing work and family roles. I find that mastery has generalized stress-buffering functions whereby it alleviates the health-harming effects of both directions of work-family conflict. In contrast, schedule control has asymmetrical moderating functions: It attenuates the health effects of work-to-family conflict only. Third, in Chapter 4 I identify some of the status-based inequalities in the relationship between schedule control and job pressure. While I find that increases in schedule control help alleviate job pressure, my results reveal that schedule control is more effective in mitigating job pressure among professionals (relative to non-professionals) and those with more managerial power in the workplace. Collectively, this dissertation integrates interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives to advance knowledge on when and how schedule control functions as a resource for workers. | Ph.D. | mental health, knowledge, women, worker, equalit | 3, 4, 5, 8, 10 |
| Lucibello, Kristen Michelle | Sabiston, Catherine M. | Bearing the Weight (of stigma): Examining Weight Stigma, Body Image, and Physical Activity in Adolescents | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | This research program examined the associations among weight stigma, body image, and physical activity in adolescents using three studies. Given the predominance of cross-sectional research that has investigated these associations, Studies 1 and 2 aimed to better understand the associations among weight stigma, body image, and physical activity using longitudinal and time-varying methodologies. Study 1 (n = 576) used a longitudinal design to assess the reciprocal and prospective associations between body-related self-conscious emotions (shame, embarrassment, authentic pride) and physical activity behaviour over three years in adolescents. Findings indicated that body-related self-conscious emotions at age 14-15 predicted physical activity behaviour one year later. In turn, physical activity behaviour predicted body-related shame and authentic pride another year later. Study 2 (n = 97) used a daily diary approach to explore the between- and within-person associations among experienced weight stigma, internalized weight stigma, and body-related shame, embarrassment, and pride over five days. Higher levels of experienced and internalized weight stigma on average were associated with greater odds of reporting body-related shame and embarrassment. Within-person levels were not associated with any body-related self-conscious emotions, and between-person levels of experienced and internalized weight stigma were not related to odds of reporting body-related pride. Informed by theoretical tenets and Studies 1 and 2, Study 3 (n = 311) tested an integrated and novel model examining the associations among weight stigma (experienced, internalized), body image (body-related shame, embarrassment, authentic pride, body appreciation) and physical activity in adolescents. Partial support for the integrated model was noted, such that higher experienced weight stigma was indirectly associated with lower levels of resistance training through higher internalized weight stigma and lower body-related authentic pride. In addition, higher experienced weight stigma was indirectly associated with higher negative body image and lower positive body image through higher internalized weight stigma. Collectively, these findings provide more comprehensive insight into the negative psychological and behavioural consequences of experienced and internalized weight stigma, and advance understanding of these relationships among the understudied adolescent population. Findings from this research program have implications for individual and system-level mechanisms that should be targeted to foster physical activity in adolescents who experience and internalize weight stigma. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Gravelsins, Steven | Dhirani, Al-Amin||Goh, Cynthia | Self-Assembled Films of Gold Nanoparticles and Optical and Electrical Phenomena Enabled by Crosslinking | Chemistry | 2022-11 | Given the tunable size-dependent electronic and optical properties of gold nanoparticles, such nanostructures offer a rich platform as building blocks for the design and construction of macroscopic materials with tailored physical properties. Control over the average and standard deviation of the size distribution of organic-soluble gold nanoparticle building blocks was investigated through the development of a size-selective precipitation technique. Nonsolvent addition to dodecanethiol-ligated gold nanoparticles resulted in low nanoparticle yields in sorted nanoparticle fractions and a high degree of irreversible aggregation, whereas an intermediate ligand substitution to dodecylamine afforded increased yields and gold nanoparticles with standard deviations in diameter as low as σ < 7%. The effectsof temperature, ligand type, and excess ligand concentration on this system were investigated. Secondly, self-assembled architectures formed by mixtures of dodecanethiol-ligated gold nanoparticles and excess n-alkanethiols (n = 4, 12, 18) on a water surface were studied. Effects of excess alkanethiol chain length, concentration, solvent composition, and uniformity of solvent evaporation were investigated. With suitable solvent compositions and sufficiently long alkanethiol chain lengths, increasing alkanethiol concentration drove a transition over macroscopic length scales between a densely packed 2D gold nanoparticle monolayer phase to a quasi-crystalline ∼1D micropore/bundle network phase. Finally, an extended method was developed to both self-assemble gold nanoparticle monolayers at an air-liquid interface and subsequently crosslink the generated arrays in situ with a variety of dithiolated crosslinkers of varying lengths and structure, and the optical and electronic properties of the resulting 2D crosslinked nanosheets (X-NS) were characterized. Notably, oligophenylene dithiol (HS-(C6H4)n-SH, with 1 ≤ n ≤ 3) X-NS exhibited exponentially increasing conductance with increasing molecular length, as well as an at least ∼6 orders of magnitude increase in molecular ultraviolet-visible extinction coefficients compared with those of unlinked molecules in solution, suggesting wavefunction hybridization at a molecule - nanostructure level. These results demonstrate a rich range of 2D gold nanoparticle architectures that can be self-assembled over macroscopic scales, as well as emergent effects which arise due to the interactions between nanoparticle and crosslinker building blocks of variable molecular properties in such assemblies. | Ph.D. | water, invest, transit | 6, 9, 11 |
| AlAbed, Ahmed H.M | Abdulhai, Baher | Trip Reservation and Intelligent Planning (TRiP) for a Hyper-congestion-free Traffic System: In the Context of Pervasive Connectivity, Driving Automation and MaaS | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | In most cities worldwide, demand for travel exceeds the existing limited road capacity, which causes extended hours of hyper-congestion every day. Hyper-congestion starts when and where demand exceeds capacity on a link, a road or an area, causing capacity loss and severe performance degradation. In this thesis, we design and develop a proof-of-concept system for a trip-level, link-based, in-advance trip reservation and intelligent planning system, dubbed “TRiP”. TRiP is a network-wide methodological system and software platform that facilitates the pacing of travel demand into the existing road network without exceeding the link-level capacity. The system is intended for real-time application, using a dynamic, disaggregated, spatiotemporal, in-advance reservation approach. This thesis introduces three different interconnected pillars. The first is TRiP Abstraction (TRiNAT), which is a set of network abstraction tools developed to facilitate micro traffic management systems. The second pillar is TRiP Assignment (TRiFree), which is a novel traffic assignment algorithm for trip-level, link-based, in-advance reservation traffic control systems that aim to keep all road links hyper-congestion-free. TRiFree, coupled with TRiNAT and a frontend reservation app, create the third pillar: the Trip Reservation and Intelligent Planning (TRiP) platform.To ensure the scalability of the proposed methodology to practical city and region sizes, TRiP was tested on the Toronto, Canada, road network, which includes more than 8,434 road links and serves more than 501,800 vehicles during the peak of the weekday morning commute. Our results show a very promising reduction in total travel time of 18.9-26.6% and a reduction in total travelled distance of 0-2%. The simulation results of the various scenarios outperform existing techniques and introduce a holistic robust solution for enjoying a hyper-congestion-free road network. Unlike other propositions in the literature, TRiP is scalable for larger road networks. Therefore, this thesis offers a major contribution to state-of-the-art and state-of-the-practice traffic control systems. | Ph.D. | ABS, cities | 2, 11 |
| Lesperance, Miranda Leigh | Smylie, Janet | "We are Stories, Not Labels:" Anishinaabekweg Childrearing Experiences | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | First Nations mothers are subject to various colonization attempts, including labelling as deviant parents, both in historical and contemporary contexts. Through the application of a micro-lens to one Anishinaabeg community, known as Opwaaganisiniing or the Red Rock Indian Band, in Northern Ontario, this research 1) highlights how Euro-Canadian labels, both past and present, have impacted childrearing and 2) uncovers resistant and persistent Anishinaabe mothering principles and practices. Decolonizing Praxis and Indigenous Methodology supplement the western theoretical approach of Labelling Theory. Labelling Theory has never been applied to Indigenous communities; however, it can be useful to describe how dominant societal labels can be damaging (causing shame and stigma) yet inversely empowering (developing resistance) for marginalized peoples. An archival study looked at historical government and religious documents to determine the historical labels applied to people in the community, and 14 Indigenous female parents were recruited from members of the Red Rock Indian Band to determine the contemporary labels that exist today. A conversational methods approach was used to elicit labels and stories from the parents. Indigenous narrative methods were undertaken to draw out meaning from the stories and anecdotes told by the parents. Despite the persistence of historical labels, it was found that contemporary parents use kinship and reclamation to resist these labels. | Ph.D. | female, indigenous, marginalized | 5, 10, 16 |
| Chi, Longxing | Nogami, Jun||Singh, Chandra Veer | Synthesis and Analysis of Two-dimensional Surface Phases in the Bi/Si(111) System by Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Density Functional Theory | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | The Bi/Si(111) surface reconstruction is an attractive two-dimensional (2D) surface phase due to its compatibility with current Si-based electronic industry and due to its extraordinary Rashba spin splitting feature favorable for spintronics fabrication. However, detailed defect analysis and quantum dot creation in this system have not been reported. Here, using scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory (DFT), defects, quantum states and phase transformation mechanisms of the Bi/Si(111) system and the Pb/Bi/Si(111) system are studied separately. First, bias dependence and defects in the Bi/Si(111) √3×√3 β-phase are analyzed. It is confirmed that the honeycomb pattern at low-bias empty states and a hexagonal-closest-packed pattern at high-bias empty states originate from the Bi px, py states and Bi, Si overlapped states outside bulk bandgap, respectively. Analysis of the defect images and their associated densities of states provides further insight into the electronic structure of the surface. Second, crystal structure and quantum well states (QWSs) of the Pb/Bi/Si(111) 2D phase are researched. The atomic structure of the system is confirmed by STM images combined with DFT calculations. QWSs and a sizable Rashba band splitting are predicted with the latter comparable to what is found in other semiconductor heterostructures and an order of magnitude higher than that in Pb/Si(111) QWSs. Finally, quantum dot states (QDSs) are discovered in the √3×√3-Bi/Si(111) surface phases. The structure, energy dispersion, and size effect on the electronic states of the QDs are measured and verified. As-created QDs can be manipulated with a dot size down to 2 nm via Bi phase transformation, which in turn is triggered by thermal annealing at 700K. The transition mechanism is also supported by DFT calculations, and an empirical analytical model is developed to predict the transformation kinetics. | Ph.D. | energy, transit | 7, 11 |
| Cordero , Ruben Dario | Jackson, Donald | Patterns of Species Co-occurrence, Null Models, and the Influence of Biotic and Abiotic Factors: A Species Pairwise Approach | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | How natural communities are structured and what factors influence such structure has been a pervasive subject in ecology for more than one century. Among several approaches used to determine the structure of communities, species co-occurrence analysis has been a subject of controversy since the classical debate between Diamond and Connor-Simberloff. Their main contrasts were whether ecological communities differed from random groupings of species, the role biotic factors had in generating the observed assemblage patterns, and the methods to discern structures of communities different from random (null models). Here, my main goals were to improve approaches to species co-occurrence analysis, to improve our ability to discern whether communities are structured non-randomly, and to extend them to testing hypotheses related to ecological mechanisms. First, I analyzed co-occurrence patterns using a species pairwise approach, different from the typical whole-community approach, to discern the relationship between multiple species of lake fishes across thousands of lakes in Ontario. Specifically, I tested whether the co-occurrence patterns observed across multiple species pairs from several different watersheds exhibit consistent patterns. I used subsets of species to test specific hypotheses related to the roles of predation, competition, and environmental filtering in structuring fish communities. Following, I examined the influence of habitat size on the observed co-occurrence patterns. I compared species co-occurrence patterns across different categories of lake area and depth to determine whether and how these variables affected the associations observed among multiple species pairs. Finally, I determined whether species-pair associations can be predicted from simple ecological traits. I analyzed the relationship between three biologically relevant traits (body size, temperature preference and trophic level) and the co-occurrence values observed between each species pair. I detected a significant effect of temperature preference and trophic level on the observed co-occurrence patterns. Unexpectedly, body size did not exhibit a significant effect on the co-occurrence patterns. My research showed the strong effect of interspecific predation on community composition, that signals of non-random community assembly are strongly dependent on the abiotic conditions, that analyses at the whole-community level may dilute underlying ecological signals, and that species co-occurrence patterns reflect differences in species traits. | Ph.D. | water, environmental, fish, species, ecolog | 6, 13, 14, 15 |
| Higgins, Stephanie | MacDonald, Lorna | From Classical Music to Contemporary Music Theatre: A Pedagogical Compendium for the Crossover Teacher | Music | 2022-11 | The landscape of the collegiate voice teacher has changed considerably in recent years. From 2010–2016 total enrollment of vocal performance majors has declined 23% while enrollment in music theatre programs has grown by 33%. Research on cross-training in students earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in voice performance revealed nearly two-thirds of 2017 graduates did not receive specific training regarding the commonalities or differences between singing music theatre and opera, while 60% of graduates did not feel prepared for the current demands of either style (Saunders-Barton and Spivey, 2018). Classical music schools and conservatories are increasingly offering voice performance degrees in contemporary commercial music (CCM) styles (i.e., those found in music theatre such as country, folk, rock, pop, hip-hop and rap, gospel, and R&B), yet there are only three graduate programs for non-classical vocal pedagogy across North America.Although these vocal styles are widespread in contemporary culture and contemporary music theatre, the development of crossover vocal pedagogy based in voice science and functional physiology is nascent. In response to the need for functional crossover vocal pedagogy, this dissertation addresses the concerns of voice instructors in teaching current music theatre styles. Using lesson observations, this work will also act as a comparative assessment on stylistic and technical points of convergence and divergence between CCM styles found in music theatre and classical singing, culminating in a practical pedagogical compendium for the crossover teacher. Chapters 1– 3 examine the history of music theatre styles, assess commonalities and differences between CCM resources, and provide evidence-based research for use in the crossover lesson setting. The compendium of Chapter 4 is designed to help classical voice instructors teach the CCM styles of music theatre. Ultimately, commonalities found in Body Engagement, Imagery or Analogy, Questions to Facilitate Learning, Physical Demonstration, and Vocal Demonstration offer classical teachers confidence in their existing pedagogical knowledge when teaching contemporary music theatre. Divergent themes in Acting, Alignment, Registration, and Resonance highlight the need for further study of functional vocal pedagogy in CCM styles. | D.M.A. | pedagogy, knowledge, learning, conserv, land | 4, 14, 15 |
| Li, Bai | Rudzicz, Frank | Integrating Linguistic Theory and Neural Language Models | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Transformer-based language models have recently achieved remarkable results in many natural language tasks. However, performance on leaderboards is generally achieved by leveraging massive amounts of training data and computation, and rarely by encoding explicit linguistic knowledge into neural models. This has led many to question the relevance of linguistics for modern natural language processing. In this dissertation, I present several case studies to illustrate how theoretical linguistics and deep neural language models are still relevant to each other. First, language models are useful to linguists by providing an automatic and objective tool to measure semantic distance, which is difficult to do using traditional methods. On the other hand, linguistic theory contributes to language modelling research by providing frameworks and sources of data to probe our language models for specific aspects of language understanding. This thesis contributes three studies that explore different aspects of the syntax-semantics interface in language models. In the first part of my thesis, I apply language models to the problem of word class flexibility, a long-debated issue in theoretical linguistics. Using mBERT as a source of semantic distance measurements across many languages, I present evidence in favour of analyzing word class flexibility as a directional process. In the second part of my thesis, I propose a method to measure surprisal at intermediate layers of language models, using Gaussian models for density estimation. My experiments show that sentences containing morphosyntactic anomalies trigger surprisals earlier in language models than semantic and commonsense anomalies. Finally, in the third part of my thesis, I adapt several psycholinguistic studies to show that language models contain knowledge of argument structure constructions (a proposed analysis of verb valency from construction grammar theory). In summary, my thesis develops new connections between natural language processing, linguistic theory, and psycholinguistics to provide fresh perspectives for the interpretation of language models. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Nassiri, Farshad | Zadeh, Gelareh | Towards a Molecular Taxonomy for Intracranial Meningiomas | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Meningiomas are the most common primary intracranial tumour and their incidences continues to rise in the face of the aging population. This dissertation investigated the hypothesis that outcomes of patients with intracranial meningiomas as determined by routine clinical classifications are heterogenous and can more accurately predicted using molecular features of tissue and blood. First, consensus expert definitions of a set of minimum clinical data elements required for molecular studies reporting on meningioma were established and vetted using discovery/development, internal validation, external validation and distribution phases. Second, the definitions established for common data elements were used to inform on the development and validation of a nomogram that combines genome-wide methylation data with known prognostic clinical features to more accurately predict tumour recurrence than standard clinical factors alone. Third, a Cluster of Cluster Assignments algorithm was used to perform comprehensive integrative clustering analysis of meningiomas combining DNA methylation data with mRNA data and gene-level copy number alterations. This algorithm revealed four novel molecular groups of meningioma with highly distinct clinical outcomes. Classification by molecular groups superseded all existing classifications and each molecular group showed distinctive and prototypical biology that informed on novel therapeutic options. Lastly, methylation profiling of circulating tumour DNA derived from plasma revealed the potential for non-invasive diagnosis and subtyping according to molecular alterations in meningiomas | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Lee, Minhyoung | Fairn, Gregory | Dynamic ER-PM Contact Sites and their Impact on Lipid Homeostasis of Phosphotyrosine Signaling | Biochemistry | 2022-11 | Membrane contact sites (MCS) are specialized cellular structures where two opposed membranes of intracellular organelles form a close gap (~20nm). These regions serve as communication hubs for various cellular processes such as inter-organellar exchange of lipids, calcium homeostasis, and phosphatase activity. The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) extends to the cell periphery and contacts the plasma membrane (PM) to form metastable ER-PM contact sites maintained by membrane tethering factors linking the two membranes. Cellular functions of ER-PM MCS depend on membrane tether proteins and distinct enzymes in the vicinity, but unsolved questions remain as to how ER-PM MCS is dynamically regulated. In this dissertation, I investigate the mechanism of ER-PM MCS formation and the functional role in physiological contexts. Specifically, the study aims to i) dissect the intrinsic properties of one of ER-PM contact/tether proteins, oxysterol-binding protein – related protein 8 (ORP8), to determine the deciding factors for its membrane targeting and ii) describe the role of cortical actin in regulating ER-PM contacts during phagocytosis and determine the physiological function of rapidly formed ER-PM contacts. In the first study, I found that both the N-terminal polybasic region and the PH domain of ORP8 are required for proper targeting of the short splice variant ORP8S to the PM-ER contact site. ORP8 localization is responsive to PM phosphatidylinositol phosphate (PIP) and phosphatidylserine (PtdSer) levels and its capability to bind PtdSer. Together, I describe that electrostatic interaction, PH domain binding of PIPs, and PtdSer ligand all play a role in defining ORP8 localization. In the second study, I characterize that depletion of cortical actin at the phagocytic cup leads to rapid ER-PM/early phagosome contact site formation. PTP1B accumulates in this region and acts in trans to dephosphorylate Syk. By modulating Syk signaling at ER-phagosome contacts, PTP1B regulates phagosomal superoxide production. In addition, my thesis includes a separate chapter investigating the role of lipid post-modification in SARS-CoV2 infectivity. I characterize that CoV-2 Spike protein is palmitoylated on multiple juxtamembrane cysteine residues and is required for efficient syncytium formation. Next, TVB-3166, a FASN inhibitor, significantly reduces Spike palmitoylation that reduces viral infectivity and grants protection against CoV infection. | Ph.D. | invest, production | 9, 12 |
| Xu, MengYi | Wong, Albert HC | Effects of miR-137 on Pyramidal Neuron Morphology and GABA Interneuron Neurogenesis | Pharmacology | 2022-11 | A recent large genome-wide association study identified MIR137 as a leading candidate gene for schizophrenia. The promoter SNP rs2660304 may contribute to schizophrenia susceptibility of schizophrenia in the Ashkenazi Jewish population, and the major allele A of rs2660304 is associated with lower activity of the MIR137 promoter in vitro. However, the role of miR-137 in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia remains largely unknown, and in vivo genetic animal models could be useful in this regard. Therefore, we generated a humanized transgenic mouse carrying the major allele A of rs2660304 and examined the effects of this mutation on aspects of brain development and histology relevant to schizophrenia. Female mutant mice had selective loss of parvalbumin (PV) and calretinin (CR)-positive cells in the frontal cortex and/or hippocampus relative to wild-type controls, and those with severe loss of PV interneurons demonstrated the greatest impairment in working memory as measured in the Y-maze. The reduction in PV+ interneurons could have resulted from decreased proliferation and mitosis and increased apoptosis of medial ganglionic eminence-derived progenitors in the embryonic brains of mutants, but not altered tangential migration. RNA sequencing of miR-137 mutant mouse brain tissue revealed increased transcripts from gene sets involved in mitotic cell cycle and proliferation. In addition, mutant mice had increased dendritic spine density and branching complexity of pyramidal neurons, elongated axonal length and reduced axonal branches of primary hippocampal neurons, which could be due to indirect down-regulation of Notch1 by miR-137. Moreover, the hippocampal membrane NR2A protein level was significantly reduced in mutants relative to wild-type controls. Knocking-down miR-137 of zebrafish using morpholinos produced a major decrease in GAD67+, PV+, CR+ and mitotic cells. RNA-seq of these zebrafish morphants produced results similar to those in transgenic miR-137 mutant mice. Our findings are consistent with a large body of literature implicating GABA interneurons in the pathophysiology of schizophrenia and provides novel insights connecting a prominent candidate gene for schizophrenia with abnormal aspects of cortical development and histology. Our findings contribute new knowledge to understanding the genetic and developmental origins of schizophrenia that can inform future research aimed at creating better treatments targeting specific disease mechanisms. | Ph.D. | knowledge, female, fish, animal | 4, 5, 14, 15 |
| Wouterloot, Elise | Chen, Charles P. | Careers After Breast Cancer: Agency, Meaning and Context at Work | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | This qualitative study explored the career experiences of breast cancer survivors after their diagnosis. Previous literature addressed the post-cancer return to work rates and specific work accommodations, yet little was known about how breast cancer affects women’s meaning of work and how they dynamically utilise and adjust their personal and contextual resources to overcome this obstacle. This study aimed to understand the career experiences of breast cancer survivors, including; the role of personal agency, the shifting career meaning and the contextual influences that impact their return to work. This is also the first study to utilise the Career Human Agency Theory (CHAT) as a framework for the work experiences of cancer survivors and to gather empirical evidence for this emerging meta-theory. Twelve women, ranging in age from 34 to 61, shared their career stories since being diagnosed with breast cancer within the past five years. Open-ended, semi-structured interviews were completed with each participant and then analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. Shared themes include changes in their sense of self-efficacy, shifted career priorities and goals, and common factors that supported or hindered their process of returning to work. A unique theme that emerged was the importance of having a sense of belonging at work; as an indicator of meaningful work, a motivator to return, and an integral contextual factor. The theoretical implications include a proposed extension of the CHAT model specific to a population of cancer survivors (CHAT-CS). This model details the relevant contextual barriers and supports which must be considered in the working-lives of cancer survivors. The model provides useful considerations for clinicians and practitioners working with survivors on their career planning and goals. Lastly, the limitations and directions for future research are discussed. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Bu, Xiao-Ding | Packer, Jeffrey | Irregular Welded Rectangular Hollow Section Truss-type Connections | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | This thesis presents research on four welded rectangular hollow section truss-type connections. Each type of connection was mainly investigated using numerical methods, with finite element models validated against experimental tests that were performed by either the author or other researchers. Design recommendations are proposed based on the numerical results. In addition, a numerically based failure mode is verified using the results from each study. For longitudinally offset X-connections, 264 numerical models were analysed with the end distance varied, along with other geometric parameters. By comparing the strength of longitudinally offset models and corresponding control models, a required minimum chord end distance is proposed, along with a strength reduction factor in case the minimum end distance is not satisfied. For laterally offset X-connections, a set of 504 numerical analyses was used to evaluate the validity of two analytical models. By performing a series of reliability analyses, one of the analytical models – a combined yield-line mechanism – is recommended to be used for the design of laterally offset RHS X-connections. For overlapped K-connections, the effect of hidden toe welds was investigated both experimentally and numerically. Five full-scale welded specimens with high overlap ratios were designed and fabricated for experimental testing in the laboratory, and for validation of numerical models. 628 numerical analyses were considered for a series of parametric studies and design recommendations on the inclusion of hidden toe welds are proposed for various contemporary codes and guides. Meanwhile, revised design equations for overlapped K-connections are also proposed. For zero-gap K-connections, a new chord face shear analytical model is proposed, based on a yield-line mechanism. Two full-scale connections were tested in the laboratory and were also used to validate corresponding numerical models. Then, 171 numerical models were analysed and were used to verify the proposed analytical model for different gap sizes. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Anderson, Sean Arnold Scott | Weir, Jason T | Divergent Ecological Adaptation in the Speciation Cycle | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | In this thesis I attempt to better understand the general role played by adaptive ecological divergence in the evolution of new species. For the past two decades, evolutionary ecologists have largely viewed diversification through the lens of ecological theory of adaptive radiation (ETAR), an intuitive and influential synthesis in which divergent natural selection is the ultimate engine of biodiversity. Evidence for the theory’s main tenets has been reported in several detailed studies, leading many authors to suggest that adaptive radiation is a generally important mechanism in diversification. But much of this evidence is derived from the study of naturally occurring model systems that reside in conditions that may be especially favourable to rapid ecological divergence. Newly-discovered patterns of morphological and genetic diversity in non-model taxa, meanwhile, appear to contradict some expectations of this framework, calling into question whether the dynamics observed in model systems can in fact scale up to explain non-model diversity. It is thus unclear if our leading model of diversification applies in the complex ecological theatres in which diversity most typically arises. To address this problem, I design and deploy new statistical tools for studying divergence between speciating and recently speciated lineages (i.e. sister taxa). With these tools, I assess broader support for alternative hypotheses regarding two key processes in the diversification cycle: speciation and the evolution of coexistence between close relatives. | Ph.D. | species, biodivers, ecolog | 14, 15 |
| Harris, Daniel Albert | Bronskill, Susan E | Assessing the Unintended Consequences of Antipsychotic Reduction in Nursing Homes: Medication Substitution and Changes to Diagnosis Coding | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Antipsychotic medication misuse and overuse have been persistent quality of care issues in nursing homes for decades. Although potentially inappropriate antipsychotic use has declined following various quality improvement efforts, increases in other psychotropic medications, such as trazodone, and increases in the indications used to define criteria for appropriate antipsychotic use (e.g., schizophrenia) have generated concerns about medication substitution and diagnosis upcoding – two potential unintended consequences of antipsychotic reduction efforts. To understand the extent of these potential consequences, I conducted three observational studies of nearly all nursing home residents in Ontario, Canada between 2010 and 2019 using linked health administrative data. In a population-level repeated cross-sectional study, I found that sedating antidepressants and anticonvulsants continued to increase over time. Overall antipsychotic use stabilized following a modest decline in prevalence. The documentation of delusions increased substantially over time, with a clear inflection coinciding with efforts to reduce potentially inappropriate antipsychotics. Increases in sedating antidepressants and documented delusions were greatest among residents with dementia and severe aggressive behaviors.In a facility-level repeated cross-sectional study, I found modest variation in the time trends for potentially inappropriate antipsychotic and antidepressant use across facilities. More substantial variation in the documentation of delusions and associated conditions was observed and shown to be strongly correlated with a homes’ reduction in potentially inappropriate antipsychotic use over time. In a resident-level retrospective cohort study of new admissions to nursing homes, the incidence of trazodone modestly increased while the incidence of antipsychotics significantly decreased over time. Among residents receiving a potentially inappropriate antipsychotic at admission, those who were off an antipsychotic at subsequent assessments were significantly more likely to receive an incident trazodone dispensation compared to those who were on an antipsychotic. These studies provide complementary evidence consistent with antipsychotic medication substitution and changes to diagnosis coding. While these findings likely reflect an increasingly complex nursing home population, they suggest a role for improved quality of care monitoring, such as the expansion of public reporting programs to consider a broader range of quality indicators, investigations into the validity of diagnosis coding, and assessment of the safety and effectiveness of medication substitution. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Zhou, SiQi | Schoellig, Angela | Neural Networks as Add-on Modules for Improved Performance of Robot Control Systems | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Robots are envisioned to become reliable companions in domains ranging from advanced industrial applications to our daily lives. In the literature, well-established control techniques provide the foundation for designing high-performance robot systems with desired theoretical guarantees. However, these control techniques often rely on a dynamics model of the robot, and any inaccuracies in the model can result in suboptimal performance or even unsafe actions. These limitations motivate the incorporation of machine learning into the traditional robot decision-making stack to identify and thereby compensate for model uncertainties. In this dissertation, learning-based control approaches are developed to enhance the performance of black-box robot systems. While different machine learning models may be similarly applied to enhance the performance of a robot control system, in this thesis, we focus on neural-network-based approaches and analyze the properties that the neural network modules must satisfy for safe and data-efficient deployment. This dissertation contains five contributions. In the first contribution, we introduce a neural network inverse dynamics learning approach for improving the performance of black-box robot control systems in arbitrary trajectory tracking tasks (i.e., impromptu trajectory tracking). In the second contribution, we extend the inverse dynamics approach to non-minimum phase robot systems (i.e., robot systems with unstable inverse dynamics). In the third contribution, we propose an active training trajectory generation framework for systematically training a neural network inverse dynamics model. In the fourth contribution, we outline a data-efficient online learning scheme that allows us to transfer the inverse dynamics model trained on one robot to enhance the tracking performance of another robot. In the last contribution, we propose a learning-based model reference adaptive controller where a Lipschitz network is updated online to bridge the model-reality gap in uncertain robot systems and the system's stability is guaranteed by exploiting the architectural design of the network. Through theoretical analysis and physical experiments using quadrotors, we demonstrate that, by combining control theory and the expressiveness of neural networks, we can design safe and efficient robot learning algorithms to achieve high performance despite the uncertainties present in the environment. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Warkentin, Matthew Terrence | Hung, Rayjean J||Campbell, Kieran R | Risk Stratification for Lung Cancer Screening using an Epidemiologic, Molecular, and Quantitative Imaging Approach | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world and leading cause of cancer mortality globally. This dissertation investigates three complementary aims related to the development of lung cancer and lung cancer screening using data from the UK Biobank, China Kadoorie Biobank, National Lung Screening Trial, International Early Lung Cancer Action Program, Pittsburgh Lung Screening Study, and PanCanadian Early Detection of Lung Cancer Study. Regular screening with computed tomography has demonstrated promising reductions in lung cancer mortality. However, questions remain about the optimal approach to identify high-risk individuals most likely to benefit from screening. Widely-used enrollment criteria exclude light or never-smokers due to an absence of extensive smoking history, despite making up a meaningful proportion of lung cancers. Most findings in lung cancer screening programs are among individuals with ultimately benign determinations. The clinical management of indeterminate screen-detected pulmonary nodules remains an important barrier to optimal screening program efficiency. The lung function analysis in Manuscript 1 identifies important lifecourse exposures that shape the trajectory of pulmonary health for never-smokers and advances our understanding of risk factors for impaired lung function in the absence of primary smoking history. Manuscripts 1 and 2 are based on two of the largest population-based cohorts ever assembled. Methodological contributions of this work includes the development of risk-prediction models for never and ever-smokers, including one of the first models developed specifically in an Asian population, which may help to identify high-risk individuals who would benefit from early detection initiatives. Manuscript 3 is based on data from four international lung cancer screening programs. We performed quantitative image analysis to extract radiological features from medical images to accurately assess indeterminate pulmonary nodules. Contributions of this work include the development of highly-accurate nodule malignancy assessment models based on robust and high-throughput radiomic features, validated across multiple independent screening studies. In summary, this dissertation provides insights into how lifecourse exposures effect pulmonary function among never-smokers, how statistical models can help prioritize high-risk never and ever-smokers for lung cancer screening, and how nodule assessment models based on quantitative image features can improve clinical decision-making and management of screen-detected pulmonary nodules. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest | 2, 9 |
| Scott, Jody T | Drake, Jennifer | Key Insights into Permeable Interlocking Concrete Pavement: Measuring, Mimicking and Mitigating Clogging | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | Permeable Interlocking Concrete Pavements (PICPs) are a Low Impact Development technology designed to mimic natural pathways and control rainfall events at the source. As these pavements age, sediments accumulate within their permeable joints, causing them to clog and lose their capacity to infiltrate stormwater. Maintenance of PICPs is a critical practice to ensure long-term functionality. This thesis evaluates restorative maintenance practices for PICP and investigates how sediment characteristics influence clogging processes. To achieve this goal, a novel accelerated clogging method was developed, tested and applied in both field and laboratory experiments. Standardizing clogging methodologies will allow researchers to translate laboratory results more easily into actionable maintenance plans for operational pavements and allow for direct evaluations of new maintenance technologies. The accelerated clogging method was used to evaluate different restorative maintenance techniques, including three street sweeper technologies, a specialized high pressurized air and vacuum technology intended specifically for PICP maintenance and manual pressure washing followed by vacuuming. Each technology restored infiltration rates to above 2,000 mm/hr; however, only the specialized equipment restored infiltration rates to post-construction conditions. When the specialized equipment was re-tested for maintenance capabilities on a surface clogged with on-site (cohesive) soils, it could only restore infiltration rates to approximately 50% post-construction conditions. Lastly, the regenerative air sweeper was retested for early and repeated maintenance, which increased the effective lifespan of the PICP but was unable to prevent eventually clogging of the surface. In a parallel laboratory study, PICP clogging and surface infiltration losses were observed when varying material gradation and type using the same accelerated clogging procedure and exposing the surfaces to cycled wetting and drying. PICPs cells that were clogged with well-graded and cohesive materials lost their surface infiltration rates more rapidly compared to cells clogged non-cohesive or poorly graded materials. Well-graded clogging material allowed coarse sediments to cause early blockages and fine sediments to accumulate near the surface. Simultaneously cohesive sediments agglomerated together, forming a surface crust and attraction to water, limiting the amount of water permeation through the clogged joints leading to decreased infiltration rates. | Ph.D. | water, low impact development, labor, invest, soil | 6, 11, 8, 9, 15 |
| Lu, Wang-Ting | Davidson, Alan AD | Investigation of Non-specific DNA Binding by the Type I-F CRISPR-Cas Complex when Bound to Anti-CRISPR AcrIF9 | Biochemistry | 2022-11 | Phages and other mobile genetic elements express anti-CRISPR proteins (Acrs) to protect their genomes from destruction by CRISPR–Cas systems. Acrs usually block the ability of CRISPR–Cas systems to bind or cleave their nucleic acid substrates. Here, I investigate an unusual Acr, AcrIF9, that induces a gain-of-function to a type I-F CRISPR–Cas (Csy) complex, causing it to bind strongly to DNA that lacks both a PAM sequence and sequence complementarity. We show that specific and non-specific dsDNA compete for the same site on the Csy:AcrIF9 complex with rapid exchange, but specific ssDNA appears to still bind through complementarity to the CRISPR RNA. Induction of non-specific DNA-binding is a shared property of diverse AcrIF9 homologues. Substitution of a conserved positively charged surface on AcrIF9 abrogated non-specific dsDNA-binding of the Csy:AcrIF9 complex, but specific dsDNA binding was maintained. AcrIF9 mutants with impaired non-specific dsDNA binding activity in vitro displayed a reduced ability to inhibit CRISPR–Cas activity in vivo. We conclude that misdirecting the CRISPR–Cas complex to bind non-specific DNA is a key component of the inhibitory mechanism of AcrIF9. This inhibitory mechanism is distinct from a previously characterized anti-CRISPR, AcrIF1, that sterically blocks DNA-binding, even though AcrIF1and AcrIF9 bind to the same site on the Csy complex. Investigation into the mechanistic differences between AcrIF9 and AcrIF1 revealed that while AcrIF9 is able to inhibit the Type I-F CRISPR-Cas systems from multiple bacterial species, AcrIF1 is limited to that of P. aeruginosa. Further analysis demonstrated that the differences in specificity between these two Acrs are due to intersubtype sequence variations of the Cas7f protein. | Ph.D. | invest, conserv, species | 9, 14, 15 |
| Sun, Shengyang | Grosse, Roger | Function-Space Bayesian Learning: from Gaussian Processes to Bayesian Deep Learning | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Bayesian methods provide a general and principled framework to quantify and update beliefs based on prior knowledge and observed evidence. This thesis presents my works about function-space Bayesian learning, whose priors and posteriors are specified and computed over the function-space. This thesis first focuses on Gaussian processes (GPs), a family of traditional function-space Bayesian models. To learn a suitable kernel for the GP prior, I propose a neural network structure that computes expressive kernel compositions. Because this structure is fully differentiable, we can learn the prior kernel from data with end-to-end gradient-based optimization. Moreover, I propose a new variational GP approximation to address computational bottlenecks in variational Gaussian processes. This variational GP achieves substantial improvement in computational complexity and approximates the true posterior with high fidelity. In the next part, I propose a general framework for function-space Bayesian learning that goes beyond GPs. I apply this framework in Bayesian deep learning and demonstrate its ability to train Bayesian neural networks with interpretable function-space priors. Furthermore, by exploiting a function-space perspective, I show that the hidden units in neural networks can be viewed as inter-domain inducing points so that I can draw an equivalence between finite neural networks and sparse Gaussian processes. In the last part, I employ Bayesian models for online memory selection and improve the robustness against imbalanced data streams in continual learning. Finally, I summarize the thesis and discuss potential future directions. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Anwar, Kerim Sait | McClelland, Ryan | The 1841, 1851, and Mahler Versions of Robert Schumann's Symphony No. 4 in D Minor: A Comparative Investigation into Cyclic Form and Dramatic Structure | Music | 2022-11 | While past studies have provided a general comparison of the three versions ofSchumann’s Fourth Symphony, or a more detailed account of orchestrational variances among the first movement(s), this thesis addresses the first and the fourth movements, primarily from a form-functional perspective, and secondarily in terms of dramatic structure / Steigerung characteristics. From a conductor’s perspective, the study informs the formal and expressive clarity of each version’s broad “four-in-one” design. It also evaluates a somewhat more subjective matter, which is the effectiveness of each version’s dramatic transformation from dark and heavy to light and exuberant: a process that manifests most prominently across the duration of the Finale. The dissertation’s first section deals with the first movement in five parts. It reveals that the 1851 version, though lacking the transparency and contrapuntal variety of the original, creates a more expressive higher-level exposition of the work’s melodic content. Moreover, Schumann’s revised final sections clearly depict an evaded reprise for the movement, while the original is less resolute in this characterization. As a result, Schumann’s revision more compellingly points to the Finale for the powerful arrival of the work’s higher-level recapitulation. Mahler’s first movement, in turn, surpasses the 1851 version in creating the clearest large-scale exposition of thematic content, and the most vivid depiction of recapitulatory evasion. The study’s second section focuses on the transition to the Finale and the Finale’s main theme, the subordinate theme, development, elements of recapitulation, and the coda sections. The investigation reveals that the 1841 version forms the least powerful high-level recapitulatory confirmation at the start of the Finale; and, as it is consistent with a relatively light aesthetic across the movement, the least vivid depiction of “relaxant” transformation by the end of the symphony. By contrast, Schumann’s revision creates the strongest large-scale reprise, and expresses the greatest “relaxant” transformation across the movement. Mahler’s version, despite possessing a wonderful Steigerung in the transition to the Finale, actually displaces intensity from the start of the Finale to its end. This ultimately undermines the symphony’s recapitulatory climax, and re-shapes the dramatic narrative to emphasize heroic brilliance at the work’s end. | D.M.A. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Venu, Vijin | Thywissen, Joseph H | Strongly Interacting Fermions in a Multi-orbital Optical Lattice | Physics | 2022-11 | This dissertation discusses the experimental study of strong fermionic interactions in an optical lattice. Ultracold samples of $^{40}$K are prepared in an intricate experimental platform using the combination of various optical and evaporative cooling techniques. The atoms are adiabatically loaded into an optical lattice to realize isolated pair states. Various tools for the coherent manipulation of spin and orbital degrees of freedom of the atoms in the lattice are developed. The inter-particle interactions between pairs are tuned using magnetic Feshbach resonances. Spectroscopic measurements of resonantly enhanced and controllable s-wave and p-wave interaction energies are reported. The measurements extend to the unitary limit of interactions characterized by diverging scattering lengths and universal observables. These measurements show excellent agreements to an exact solution for two harmonically confined atoms interacting via a pseudopotential and numerical solutions using an \textit{ab initio} interaction potential. For p-wave interactions, exquisite experimental control is demonstrated by measuring Rabi oscillations between non-interacting and strongly interacting atomic pairs, which are used to accurately measure highly sensitive properties such as the two-body wavefunction overlap. With the full suppression of three-body loss processes, the lifetime of p-wave interacting pairs is investigated. The experiments demonstrate that losses of p-wave interacting pairs are limited by the intrinsic lifetime of the free-space molecular dimer, resulting in the observation of lifetimes that are fifty times larger than previous measurements in $^{40}$K. The observation, control, and comprehensive understanding of strong fermionic interactions demonstrated in this thesis illuminate a path towards the assembly of new many-body states of matter. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Moes, Calvin Michael | Hibbard, Glenn D||Steeves, Craig A | On the Manufacturing, Characterization, and Optimization of Melt-stretched Honeycombs | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Melt-stretching is a process by which a polymer melt expanded between a set of perforated platens can be made to self-arrange into a honeycomb sandwich panel with integrated face sheets. The resulting architectures are dependent on numerous process inputs including the air ingress locations, the stretching speed and distance, and the rheological properties of the polymer melt. Strain hardening in the polymer melt has been identified as a key factor to enable such honeycombs to form, as well as to determine their non-constant web thickness in both the in-plane and out-of-plane directions. The mechanical behaviour of melt-stretched honeycombs can be understood as a hybridization of a conventional constant-thickness honeycomb with an array of columns at the locations where webs intersect; the significant corner fillets created in this process concentrate structural material at the web junctions. Depending on its relative density and internal material distribution, a melt-stretched honeycomb may exhibit a variety of competing failure modes including plastic collapse and elastic buckling. The varieties of non-uniform material distribution accessible through the melt-stretching process were generally found to reduce mass-specific strength and stiffness in the loading paradigms evaluated. Polymers which produced honeycombs of near-constant web thickness were therefore found to be preferable for lightweight structural applications. Webs in a melt-stretched honeycomb panel can be positioned by manipulating the air ingress locations to tune the mechanical responses of the structure. An evolutionary algorithm was developed for this purpose and showed good effect over a range of design cases. Through many iterations of random change and selective screening, improvements in mass-specific stiffness have been demonstrated on the order of 10% compared to generic honeycombs of the same mass and geometry. Melt-stretching has thus been shown to offer a novel design freedom that is infeasible by conventional honeycomb manufacturing processes. | Ph.D. | accessib | 11 |
| Wray, Dana | Milkie, Melissa A | How Do Work-Family Policies Shape Parents’ Time with Children? | Sociology | 2022-11 | Parents’ time devoted to unpaid care for their children remains persistently gendered and is a key driver of gender inequality at home and work. At the same time, both mothers and fathers report a strong desire for more time with children, driven by norms prescribing an intensification of parenthood. These care pressures may be alleviated by work-family policy, an institutional tool that provides financial and normative imperatives for (re)shaping gendered arrangements of paid work and unpaid care. This dissertation explores how work-family policies aimed at or available to fathers – reserved paternity leave and workplace flexibility – shape parents’ time with children in Canada and the United States. These three chapters innovate on the conceptualization of parent-child time, considering a broader scope of time (total co-present time) and the co-presence of the other parent (solo versus family time). First, I examine how a state-provided reserved paternity leave policy in the quasi-experimental setting of Québec impacts fathers’ and mothers’ time with children. This policy led to a plausibly causal increase in fathers’ “responsibility time,” i.e., solo parenting time across activities when co-present with children. Similarly, this policy led to a plausibly causal increase in mothers’ solo parenting time in routine childcare, likely because of a corresponding decrease in housework time. Second, looking at employer-provided policy, I investigate how workplace flexibility policies are associated with fathers’ time with children in the United States. Flextime (control over start and stop times) and flexplace (work from home or remote work) are associated with increased “family” time with children – when the mother is also present – across activities. Taken together, these studies show that work-family policies aimed at or accessed by fathers can reshape gendered arrangements of unpaid care for children. However, this depends on the policy design (near-universal, state-provided reserved paternity leave versus selective, employer-provided flexibility policies) and the dimensions of parent-child time examined (total co-present time; solo or family time). Ultimately, this dissertation expands knowledge on and presents methodological considerations for the relationship between work-family policies and parent-child time, with key implications for family well-being and gender inequality. | Ph.D. | well-being, knowledge, gender, invest, inequality, equalit, institut | 3, 4, 5, 9, 10, 16 |
| Chad, Jordan | Chen, Jean||Pasternak, Ofer | Modeling Isotropic and Anisotropic Diffusion in Aging Brain White Matter with MRI | Medical Biophysics | 2022-11 | The cognitive decline that accompanies normal adult aging is associated with degeneration of the brain’s connectivity backbone, the white matter (WM). Age-related WM degeneration includes both (i) neuronal disconnection resulting from a loss of WM fibers and (ii) reduced conduction efficiency among intact neuronal connections resulting from disorganization and degradation of the WM fibers that remain. The development of single-shell diffusion MRI has made it possible to probe WM degeneration in-vivo at its earliest microstructural stages by measuring the anisotropy of the microscopic diffusion of water molecules in WM tissue. Diffusional changes in aging reflect both processes specific to anisotropic WM fibers, such as their disorganization and degradation, as well as elevated isotropic diffusivity that results from extra-fiber processes, such as an enlargement of the extracellular space associated with fiber loss. These two classes of diffusion effects—anisotropic and isotropic—are presumably associated with different cognitive domains, so they can potentially serve as differential targets for preventing and treating pathological aging. Unfortunately, conventional scale-invariant measures of diffusion anisotropy (the most common being fractional anisotropy, FA) inherently conflate anisotropic with isotropic effects. The purpose of this PhD thesis is to investigate diffusion anisotropy measures that, rather than being scale-invariant, are invariant under elevated isotropic diffusivity, so that fiber-specific diffusional changes and elevated isotropic diffusivity can be distinguished. I investigate how these measures can be extracted by fitting both a one- and two-compartment model of diffusion to single-shell diffusion MRI data, and I test a hypothesis that these measures can be used to uncover positive age associations of anisotropy in regions of complex fiber architecture to reflect selective degeneration of secondary crossing fibers. I further devise a mathematical framework for interpreting the outcome of these model fits to single-shell diffusion MRI data, and I derive a nonlinear relationship between the one- and two-compartment models that implicates the sensitivity and explanatory power of their respectively derived metrics to age-related processes. Ultimately, this thesis provides a foundation for understanding how to harness the power of single-shell diffusion MRI data for probing age-related WM degeneration. | Ph.D. | water, invest | 6, 9 |
| Chai, Lei | Schieman, Scott | The Consequences of Family Stress in the Work-Family Interface: Three Longitudinal Studies in Canada | Sociology | 2022-11 | Although research on the work-family interface has proliferated across multiple disciplines, two significant gaps remain. First, despite recognizing the bidirectional nature of work-family conflict, the antecedents of family-to-work conflict (FWC), compared to work-to-family conflict (WFC), are still far less understood. Second, an emerging body of work has documented the association between WFC and children’s health. However, little is known about conditions that might moderate this focal association. Motivated by these empirical observations, my dissertation seeks to provide new knowledge about the consequences of family stressors—and their moderating contingencies in the work-family interface over time. In Chapter 2, I develop two competing hypotheses to assess the reciprocal relationship between financial strain, work-family conflict, and psychological distress. The results based on a three-wave cross-lagged model demonstrate that financial strain—a prominent chronic family stressor—at wave 1 is associated with FWC at wave 2. However, FWC at wave 2 and psychological distress at wave 3 are unrelated. Furthermore, WFC at wave 2 fully mediates the association between financial strain at wave 1 and psychological distress at wave 3. In line with this, I conduct fixed-effects models to establish the positive association between family stressors—as measured by financial strain, spousal disputes, and relationship dissatisfaction—and FWC over time in Chapter 3. Moreover, by integrating ideas of border theory with the stress process model, I propose that work-family multitasking can be conceptualized as a family-related stressor that might exacerbate the positive association between family stressors and FWC—and gender might further elaborate the narratives associated with the moderating effects of work-family multitasking. Chapter 4 shifts attention to the moderating contingencies of family stressors (i.e., financial strain, household income, spousal disputes, and relationship dissatisfaction) in the association between WFC and children’s problems with school, friends, and health. The results based on random-effects models demonstrate that WFC is associated with higher levels of children’s problems over time, but household income and spousal disputes moderate this focal relationship—and they do so differently for mothers and fathers. Collectively, my dissertation draws upon multiple theoretical perspectives to highlight the central role of family stress in the work-family interface. | Ph.D. | knowledge, gender, labor, income | 4, 5, 8, 10 |
| Greene, Keisha | Moodley, Roy | “A Rough Road to the Stars”: Exploring Resilience Through Overcoming the Trauma of Anti-Black Racism | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | ABSTRACT Over the last decade, there has been growing body of research and scholarship exploring the experiences of anti-Black racism and its effects on Black Canadians. However, there seems to be little or no research that looks at the ways in which Black Canadians mediate the negative effects of anti-Black racism from a strengths-based perspective. Much of the literature is deficit-based and appears to address ways in which Black individuals survive but does not describe how they are able to thrive. The present study was conducted to explore how Black Canadians mediate the potential negative mental health effects (specifically racial stress or racial trauma) of anti-Black racism. A constructivist grounded theory methodology was used. Ten (10) Black Canadians in the GTA (Greater Toronto area, including Toronto) were interviewed on their experiences of anti-Black racism. Four core themes emerged from the interview data: awareness and understanding of anti-Black racism; experiences of anti-Black racist incidents; the effects of anti-Black racist experiences; and mediating the impacts of anti-black racism through resilience/resistance. The results of the study illustrated the nuanced, multi-layered, and diverse experiences of Black Canadians and how they navigate and make sense of ‘everyday racism’. This study posits that there needs to be a critical awareness of the relationship between white supremacy and anti-Blackness within the Canadian context if anti-Black racism is to be psychologically understood and engaged with. A mid-level theory illustrating the ways in which Black Canadians mediate the negative effects of anti-Black racist incidents arose from the data. Implications for theory, research and practice in counselling and psychotherapy are offered. Recommendations for a de-colonized, culturally specific, and trauma-informed therapeutic approach are also offered. The study’s limitations are discussed. Key words and Phrases: Anti-Black Racism, Anti-Black Racist Incidents, Racial Trauma, Mediate, Resilience/Resistance, Black Canadians, Race, Canada | Ed.D. | ABS, mental health, racism, resilien, resilience | 2, 3, 4, 11, 13, 15 |
| Amalfitano, Evan Andrew | Pardee, Keith | A Glucose Meter Interface for Point-of-care Gene Circuit-based Diagnostics | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2022-11 | Synthetic biological systems have increasingly been applied to the field of diagnostics due to their unique and often highly sensitive detection capabilities. Of particular interest is their potential application towards point-of-care diagnostics because of their low cost and speed. However, such systems have been limited in their adoption for these purposes, in part due to the use of standard laboratory output signals such as fluorescence, which may not be suitable for low-cost and distributable diagnostics. Here, I describe the development of a glucose-based gene circuit output which can be measured using a standard personal glucose meter, a widely available device used by millions of people with diabetes. This glucogenic output is adaptable to different gene circuits, can be used in the creation of diagnostic systems, and includes multiplexing potential. Further, this work describes the additional necessary components needed in a distributable diagnostic system, including isothermal target amplification and sample preparation, and their synthesis into an effective assay. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Duncan, Fraser William | Austin, Lisa | Protecting Privacy Through Quasi-Constitutional Legislation | Law | 2022-11 | Recent years have witnessed a growing awareness of the serious erosion of personal privacy in an increasingly digital world in which the accumulation, aggregation, disclosure, and sale of personal information about individuals has become routine. While there is no constitutional right to privacy in Canada, the recognition of privacy statutes as quasi-constitutional potentially offers the prospect of stronger legal protection for this fundamental right. In this thesis, I assess what quasi-constitutionality means by exploring laws between the constitutional and the ordinary in other jurisdictions and then using this framework to map the broader category of quasi-constitutional statutes in Canada. I argue for a more expansive, dialogic conception of the consequences of quasi-constitutionality based on the fundamental rights protected within such legislation. Following this, I develop a model of quasi-constitutional law reform and then apply this to the proposal to replace privacy legislation governing the private sector at the federal level. | LL.M. | erosion | 15 |
| Dunn, Rachel Clare | Tamminen, Katherine A | Exploring the Developmental Experiences of Youth Athletes During the Transition to Competitive Sport | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | The purpose of this dissertation was to study athletes’ experiences during a year in which they have the potential to transition from recreational to competitive sport. Two studies are presented in this dissertation to support this aim. Study 1 was a scoping review of positive youth development through sport and athletic transition research and aimed to investigate how theory has informed research in these two bodies of literature. 207 articles and dissertations were included, and data was extracted according to Sandelowski’s (1993) conceptualization of the uses, centrality, and function of theory in research. Main findings included: a limited body of literature that had examined youth athletes’ experiences of transitioning into the athletic pathway; the breadth of developmental and non-developmental theoretical frameworks that have informed youth sport research; and that theories are predominantly used in a peripheral, rather than central manner to introduce youth sport as a developmental context, or to explain findings related to research outcomes. Study 2 was an example of how youth sport transitions can be studied from a developmental approach. Seven parent-child dyads took part in a longitudinal (one year), mixed methods case study to explore how children’s transitions in sport influenced, and were influenced by, their psychosocial development. Children were aged between 8 and 12 (M = 10 years, SD = 1.3 years) and parents were aged between 42 and 51 (M = 44.9 years, SD = 5.1 years) at the start of the study. Participants completed measures of sports experiences, self-perceptions, and social competencies, as well as qualitative interviews at three timepoints during their potential transition. Results were analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis and quantitative data was visually inspected in Microsoft Excel. Themes explore children’s experiences related to their self-perceptions and social comparisons during the transition. Additional themes include the impact of physical maturation and the Covid-19 Pandemic for children’s transitions in sport. Collectively, the studies included in this dissertation contribute a novel approach to reviewing youth sport research (namely, by analyzing the use of theory), and documented some of the psychosocial skills that are relevant when studying transitions among youth samples. | Ph.D. | invest, transit | 9, 11 |
| Hicks, Garion Edward Joseph | Seferos, Dwight | Redox Doping and Assembly of π-Conjugated Polymers | Chemistry | 2022-11 | π-Conjugated polymers have many varied applications due to their advantageous optoelectronic and mechanical properties. These properties depend intrinsically on polymer ordering; this thesis details my efforts to control polymer ordering and assembly into π-conjugated nanostructures using redox doping. Chapter 1 introduces π-conjugated polymers, their properties, and efforts to control their assembly into functional nanostructures. Relevant π-conjugated polymers for this thesis are presented and described, including key optoelectronic phenomena particular to these materials. Programmed π-conjugated polymer assembly in solution is summarized with attention to the advantages and limitations of each programming method. Chapter 2 describes my work developing Oxidation Promoted Self-Assembly (OPSA). In this study, selective oxidative doping of one block of a fully π-conjugated block copolymer promotes the self-assembly of redox-responsive micelles. Oxidized micelles with a narrow size distribution form spontaneously upon dopant addition, and are shown to disassemble in response to a chemical reductant. Chapter 3 describes the extension of OPSA from π-conjugated block copolymers to homopolymers using poly(3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) as a model system. By this improved method, oxidative doping both determines the size and morphology of polymer nanostructures and stabilizes them in solution. Each variable governing polymer assembly is systematically varied, revealing general principles of oxidized nanostructure assembly. To highlight the distinguishing feature of this method, we termed it "Dopant-Stabilized Assembly" (DSA). Chapter 4 details my ongoing efforts to expand the scope of DSA, examining the effect of molecular weight and polymer heteroatom on nanostructure assembly. This work is motivated by a desire to generalize DSA to a wider field of π-conjugated polymers, to deepen an understanding of the principles governing DSA, and to reveal the limitations of this method. Chapter 5 describes a computational study of polyacetylene derivatives undertaken in collaboration with my undergraduate mentee Liam Foyle. We used density functional theory (DFT) to model a series of reductively doped polyacetylene derivatives. This process allowed attractive candidates for synthesis to be identified, as well as substituent effects deleterious to polymer planarity and therefore ordering. Chapter 6 summarizes the other chapters, outlines several project extensions and areas of interest, and discusses the future of redox-promoted assembly. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Hanes, Chelene C | Wotton, Mike||Flannigan, Mike D | Drought in the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System | Forestry | 2022-11 | The Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) is the cornerstone of contemporary fire management in Canada. Although the System is conceptually robust there are known issues, primarily based on limitations that existed over the last 75 years of its development. One area with many known questions is the Drought Code (DC). Within fire operations management the DC is primarily used to indicate when potential suppression issues may occur, due to burning in deeper, denser fuels that typically take longer to dry but which, once dry, can sustain deep and prolonged burning. The DC is also used to carry-over drought from one fire season to the next, when drought conditions are present. Unlike the other moisture codes in the Fire Weather Index System (a sub-system of the CFFDRS), there is much ambiguity around the DC, what it represents, how it should be interpreted and validated, and how and when it should be used to carry the accumulated moisture deficit from one fire season into the next. This latter question is more relevant than ever as we enter into an era where the effects of climate change are becoming apparent. The central goal of this thesis is to clarify some of these common operational questions through the analysis of historic fire and weather data, and new field observed moisture data. The study area included select regions within the provinces of Alberta and Ontario. Results from the thesis identify some of the sources of bias in the DC values and provide recommendations to reduce that bias. It also tested and validated new methods of soil moisture monitoring, including electronic moisture probes and land surface models. In doing so, best practices were identified that can be readily incorporated operationally to reduce errors. Where shortcomings in the science were found that limit operational use, recommendations were made to identify potential solutions needed to move the science forward. These findings will help ensure that these technologies will eventually be available for regular use in fire management and the findings herein will improve our understanding of drought and how to better represent it in the Next-Generation CFFDRS. | Ph.D. | drought, climate, weather, forest, land, soil | 6, 13, 15 |
| Bourgeois, Eve | Skogstad, Grace | Climate Change Adaptation in Quebec Municipalities: Explaining the Strategy Chosen by Local Governments | Political Science | 2022-11 | The scientific community agrees that climate change is rapidly unfolding across the globe and future impacts will be severe unless countries can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade. Despite this context, municipal governments in Canada (and elsewhere) have been slow to take actions to reduce their vulnerability to future climate change impacts. Among the ten largest cities within the province of Quebec, most have taken some ad hoc efforts to mitigate the negative consequences of future climate change impacts. However, only four cities have adopted a formal climate change adaptation plan (Montreal, Laval, Sherbrooke, and Trois-Rivières) while the other six (Quebec City, Longueuil, Saguenay, Gatineau, Lévis, and Terrebonne) have not. This dissertation aims to shed light on the different climate change adaptation efforts of six of the ten largest municipal governments in the province of Quebec. This dissertation undertakes in-depth paired comparisons of six Quebec cities: Montreal and Quebec City, Laval and Longueuil, and Sherbrooke and Saguenay. In doing so, the thesis uncovered two analytic findings and two empirical patterns. First, scholars need to pay attention to the first four stages of the policymaking process (i.e., agenda-setting, policy formulation, policy adoption, and policy implementation) to fully understand why some cities have adopted and implemented a formal climate change adaptation plan while others have not. Indeed, some policy stages are more crucial than others, and that the drivers and barriers a policy faces are not constant through out the policy-making process. Second, the size of city matters, and smaller cities (i.e., Laval, Longueuil, Saguenay, and Sherbrooke) do not face the same challenges as larger ones (i.e., Montreal and Quebec City). Third, contrary to one might have expected, climate change adaptation has low salience at the municipal level. Fourth, municipal efforts regarding climate change adaptation follow an incremental process where local governments first take ad hoc efforts, and then adopt, in some cases, a formal climate change adaptation plan approved by the city’s council. This means that some municipalities included in this research project are ahead of others on their climate change adaptation journey. La communauté scientifique est unanime sur le fait que les changements climatiques se font déjà sentir et que les conséquences négatives de ceux-ci seront de plus en plus importantes si les États ne parviennent à réduire leurs émissions de gaz à effet de serre. Malgré ce contexte, les gouvernements municipaux au Canada (et ailleurs) peinent à mettre en place des mesures pour réduire leur vulnérabilité face aux futurs impacts des changements climatiques. Parmi les dix plus grandes villes du Québec, la majorité d'entre elles a déployé des efforts ponctuels pour atténuer les conséquences négatives liées aux changements climatiques. Or, seules quatre villes ont adopté une politique formelle d'adaptation face aux changements climatiques (soit Montréal, Laval, Sherbrooke et Trois-Rivières) tandis que les six autres municipalités (soit Québec, Longueuil, Saguenay, Gatineau, Lévis et Terrebonne) ne l'ont pas fait. Devant cette observation, la présente thèse vise à mieux comprendre les différentes mesures d'adaptation mises en place par les villes et d’expliquer la trajectoire choisie par six des dix plus grandes municipalités du Québec. Pour répondre à cette problématique, cette dissertation étudie trois paires: Montréal et Québec, Laval et Longueuil ainsi que Sherbrooke et Saguenay. Ce faisant, la thèse fait deux contributions théoriques et met en lumière deux constats empiriques. Premièrement, les chercheurs doivent porter une plus grande importance aux différentes étapes du processus d'élaboration des politiques pour comprendre pourquoi certaines villes ont adopté et mis en œuvre une politique formelle d'adaptation face aux changements climatiques alors que d’autres ne l’ont pas fait. Deuxièmement, la taille des municipalités a un impact sur la capacité des villes à mettre en place des mesures d’adaptation. Troisièmement, l’adaptation face aux changements climatiques est un enjeu très peu traité par les médias traditionnels indiquant un faible intérêt face à cet enjeu. Dernièrement, les efforts municipaux concernant l'adaptation face aux changements climatiques suivent un processus incrémental selon lequel les gouvernements locaux entreprennent d'abord des efforts ponctuels avant d’adopter (le cas échéant) une politique formelle d'adaptation par le conseil municipal. Cela signifie que certaines municipalités étudiées sont plus avancées que d’autres dans leur réflexion concernant l’adaptation face aux changements climatiques. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, emission, greenhouse, labor, cities, climate change adaptation, climate, greenhouse gas, emissions | 1, 7, 8, 11, 13 |
| de Carle, Danielle Bozena | Kvist, Sebastian | Systematics of Hirudinea | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | For thousands of years, healers used bloodfeeding leeches to treat a variety of ailments from lethargy to plague. Although phlebotomy is no longer as ubiquitous as it once was, we remain fascinated by leeches and their vampiric tendencies.Together with their closest relatives – crayfish worms (Branchiobdellida) and hook-faced fish worms (Acanthobdellida) – leeches (Hirudinida) comprise the subclass Hirudinea: an ecologically diverse assemblage of annelid worms that includes predatory and ectocommensal lineages in addition to sanguivorous ones. Today, many researchers are interested in the anticoagulants, bacterial symbionts, and developmental origins of Hirudinea in addition to their enduring utility as medical tools. Perhaps surprisingly, the evolutionary history of Hirudinea and relationships among major lineages are not well understood. There are many enduring conflicts between phylogeny and existing classification schemes, which are difficult to reconcile for a number of reasons. A preponderance of incomplete or contradictory taxonomic literature; uneven geographic sampling; a vanishingly small fossil record; and an overall dearth of phylogenetically informative morphological characters present significant challenges to systematists. Existing research has made substantial progress in clarifying relationships among a number of species and genera. Still, we lack an overall understanding of the phylogeny of Hirudinea as a whole. After reviewing the diversity and classification of extant lineages, the fossil record, and important questions in hirudinean systematics, I address a number of outstanding issues on mutiple scales. I examine phylogeny and intraspecific diversity in the leech genus Placobdella (Chapter I). I detail the morphology of Acanthobdellida, and discuss relationships within the order as a whole (Chapter II). I present a large, comprehensive phylogeny of Hirudinea and use it to alleviate several outstanding taxonomic anomalies (Chapter III). As part of this effort, I propose a new family of medicinal leeches. Finally, I describe the first fossil worm that can be confidently classified within Hirudinea (Chapter IV). | Ph.D. | fish, species, ecolog | 14, 15 |
| Huo, Yiling | Peltier, W. Richard | High Resolution Climatological Simulations for South and Southeast Asia and the Tibetan Plateau | Physics | 2022-06 | The extreme concentration of population over South and Southeast Asia makes it critical to accurately understand the global warming impact on the South and Southeast Asian monsoon (SAM and SEAM) while the complex orography of the regions makes future projections of monsoon intensity technically challenging. Here we describe a series of climate projections constructed using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model to dynamically downscale a global warming simulation generated using the Community Earth System Model. All projections are characterized by a consistent increase in average monsoon precipitation and daily extreme precipitation. A regional ocean model based upon the Coastal and Regional Ocean Community model system was then incorporated into the dynamical downscaling pipeline and this has also contributed to significantly improving the simulations of both sea surface temperature and rainfall. Since the Tibetan Plateau (TP) is widely considered to act as an elevated heat source which contributes to driving the Asian monsoon system, a coupled dynamically downscaled simulation with flattened plateau has also been performed so as to investigate the role of TP in the SEAM at a higher spatial resolution than has previously been investigated. We also have completed a series of regional paleoclimate simulations using the coupled modeling system to dynamically downscale global simulations during the mid-Holocene (MH), a time period featuring generally warmer summers than present in the Northern Hemisphere. In the global model, we have taken care to incorporate Green Sahara (GS) boundary conditions so as investigate the interactions between the GS and the Asian monsoon circulations. SAM and SEAM precipitation is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of a GS. Data–model comparisons with downscaled simulations outperform those with the coarser global model, highlighting the crucial role of downscaling in paleo data–model comparison. The TP also contains the headwaters of major Asian rivers and understanding the characteristics and changes of the hydrological regimes on the TP during the MH will help understand the expected future changes. Thus, an analysis of hydroclimates in three major river basins in the TP are also presented, based on dynamically downscaled climate simulations constructed using coupled WRF-WRF-Hydro. 由于南亚和东南亚是世界上人口最稠密的地区之一，因此准确了解全球变暖对南亚和东南亚季风（SAM 和 SEAM）的影响至关重要，而该地区复杂的地形对未来季风强度的预测提出了技术上的巨大挑战性。本研究使用了天气研究和预报模型 (WRF) 对地球系统模型 （CESM）生成的全球变暖情况下的气候模拟进行动力学降尺度，以构建一系列对南亚和东南亚季风的气候预测。所有预测均显示出平均季风降水和极端降水的增加。我们随后将基于沿海和区域海洋社区模型系统的区域海洋模型 （CROCO）纳入动力学降尺度系统，这显着改善了对海面温度和降雨的模拟。由于青藏高原（TP）被广泛认为是推动亚洲季风系统的抬高的加热源，本研究因此还进行了无高原情况下的动力学降尺度模拟，从而得到了具有比以前研究更高的空间分辨率的对TP在SEAM中的作用的研究。本研究还使用了此耦合模式系统完成了一系列区域古气候模拟，对全新世中期 (MH) 的全球模拟进行了动力学降尺度。在该时期的夏季北半球通常比现在更温暖。在全球模式中，我们同时加入了绿色撒哈拉 (GS) 边界条件，以研究 GS 和亚洲季风环流之间的相互作用。加入 GS 后，SAM 和 SEAM 降水大大增强。对比使用更粗分辨率的全球模式，我们的动力学降尺度的模拟效果明显更优，这也突显了更高分辨率在古气候模拟中的关键作用。青藏高原还是亚洲很多主要河流的源头，了解 MH 期间青藏高原水文状况的特征和变化将有助于了解气候变暖情况下的未来变化可能。因此，本研究最后使用基于耦合 WRF-WRF-Hydro模式的动力学降尺度模拟，对 TP 上三个主要河流流域的水文气候分析。 | Ph.D. | water, invest, climate, global warming, weather, ocean | 6, 9, 13, 14 |
| Jarovi, Justin | Takehara-Nishiuchi, Kaori | The Role of the Medial Prefrontal Cortex in Associative Learning and its Convergence on Adaptive Behaviour. | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-11 | The medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) has emerged as a brain region with an incredibly diverse range of functions. For example, it is involved in context-dependent memory expression and memory-guided decision making. However, it remains unknown the auxiliary role the mPFC plays to these known functions, namely in the encoding of memory and inferential decision-making. The goal of this thesis is to further elucidate the role of the mPFC in these two seemingly distinct functions, which require common computations to deal with novelty. Encoding new information involves forming novel memories without any prior experience by identifying relevant features, whereas inferential decision-making involves using prior relevant information to guide decisions in novel situations. To address these points, I conducted a series of experiments where I recorded network activity from the mPFC in response to novelty while rats were trained on the mPFC-dependent task, trace eyeblink conditioning. I found that chemogenetic mPFC activation improved the rats’ ability to encode a novel association while enhancing the network signature that tracked the stimulus-outcome contingency, indicating that the mPFC may influence memory encoding by increasing behaviourally-relevant activity. In a separate experiment, I examined the mPFC’s contribution to supporting a new goal-directed behaviour that was dependent on previous learning but was never directly reinforced. I found that following the introduction of an environmental change, prior experience with the task stimuli and environments enabled rats to infer novel adaptive behaviours and avoid a negative outcome. Furthermore, the mPFC spontaneously reactivated representations of the associations before rats executed the new behaviour, uncovering how the mPFC can transform learned patterns into novel adaptive behaviours. I discuss how these findings expand upon existing theories of the mPFC’s role in encoding new information and in executing adaptive behaviour. Based on these findings, I propose an addendum to these theories: in a given situation, the mPFC network continuously monitors novel information at each moment and subsequently selects the most adaptive behaviour in response, including novel behaviours that have never been reinforced. This hypothesis can serve as a framework for future research on the mPFC’s modulatory role when handling novelty to promote adaptive behaviour. | Ph.D. | learning, environmental | 4, 13 |
| Li, Jia-Xu | Cummins, Carolyn L. | Disruption of Adipose Tissue Metabolism by Glucocorticoids is Attenuated with Loss of LXRβ or LXRβ Antagonism | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2022-11 | Excessive exposure to glucocorticoids (GCs), either from endogenous overproduction of cortisol, or exogenous pharmacological GC treatment, potentiates the development of diabetes and obesity in a fat depot-specific manner. GC treatment disrupts the thermogenic function of brown adipose tissue (BAT) and enhances futile cycling within white adipose tissue (WAT). Undesirable metabolic side effects resulting from the activation of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) remain a key limitation to the long-term therapeutic use of GCs as immunosuppressants.The liver x receptors (LXRα/β) are members of the nuclear receptor superfamily that are also implicated in regulating adipose tissue homeostasis. Lxrα/β-/- mice were previously shown to have smaller WAT depots with enhanced BAT activity compared to wildtype (WT) mice. We previously demonstrated that LXRβ is required to mediate GC-induced hyperglycemia and hepatic steatosis while sparing the therapeutic immunosuppressive effects. The discovery of this GC/LXRβ cross-talk led to the hypothesis that LXRβ antagonism may be therapeutically beneficial to prevent GC-induced dysfunction in adipose tissue. Herein, we demonstrated that pharmacological inhibition of LXRβ was able to protect against GC-mediated disruption in BAT and WAT homeostasis, both transcriptionally and functionally in mice. This is mediated, at least partially, by the flux of non-esterified fatty acids (NEFAs) from triglyceride-rich lipoproteins (TRLs) into the endogenous adipose tissue pool. Further, the protection afforded by LXRβ antagonism was confirmed to be cell-autonomous from studies performed in adipose-specific LXRβ-/- mice (LXRβATKO). The lipolytic and lipotoxic effects of GCs in adipose tissue and liver were largely abrogated by LXRβ antagonism or the loss of LXRβ in adipose tissue. Overall, our data suggest that LXRβ antagonism can reverse the disturbance in BAT and WAT (and indirectly liver) function caused by GC treatment in vivo and improved systemic insulin tolerance. The identification of this novel mechanism of interrupting GC adipose tissue action suggests that therapeutic targeting of LXRβ with an antagonist could improve the health of patients currently taking GCs to control inflammation but suffer the detrimental side effects of diabetes and obesity as a result of drug treatment. | Ph.D. | urban, production | 11, 12 |
| Sekely, Angela | Zakzanis, Konstantine K | Neurocognitive, Psychological, and Functional Outcomes in Patients with Meningioma | Psychology | 2022-11 | Meningioma is the most commonly occurring type of central nervous system tumor. Recent literature has demonstrated that the long-term quality of survival of patients with meningioma is impacted by both the tumor and resultant treatment; a significant proportion of these patients experience neurocognitive, psychological, and real-world functional challenges long after they are considered to be medically cured. This dissertation aimed to advance the research literature by (1) characterizing neurocognitive, psychological, and functional outcomes of patients with meningioma and examining what factors contribute to greater risk of poor recovery; (2) investigating associations between radiation dose to circumscribed brain regions and neurocognitive outcomes in this population; and (3) exploring long-term neurocognitive and psychological symptom change and offering a preliminary investigation of associations between radiation dose to circumscribed brain regions and these trajectories. Findings indicate that a significant percentage of patients with meningioma experience neurocognitive, psychological, and functional difficulties at an average of five years post-diagnosis. Results also indicate that younger age, faster visuomotor processing speed and, unexpectedly, higher trait anxiety scores are associated with an increased likelihood of returning to work. Novel to the literature, this dissertation suggests that in addition to known associations between radiation dose delivered to the left hippocampus and verbal memory, radiation delivered to other brain regions are associated with specific neurocognitive domains. In particular, data indicate that high dose to the parietal-occipital region is associated with slower visuomotor processing speed and poorer executive function, whereas high dose to the dorsal frontal region is associated with better executive function. The current work also revealed variability in neurocognitive and psychological trajectories at the individual level. Preliminary analyses indicated that high radiation dose delivered to the parietal-occipital region and the cerebellum are independently associated with declines in visuomotor processing speed, whereas high dose delivered to the hippocampal regions is associated with increases in both depression and trait anxiety. Results highlight the need for access to scarce supportive services for patients with meningioma, including neuropsychological assessment and cognitive rehabilitation services, emotional support programs, and rehabilitative interventions. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Colaco, Keith Adrian | Gladman, Dafna D||Eder, Lihi | Development of a Cardiovascular Risk Prediction Model for Individuals with Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Aim: Psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis (PsA), collectively known as psoriatic disease (PsD), are characterized by excess cardiovascular (CV) morbidity and mortality compared to the general population. The aim of this thesis is to identify novel biomarkers and disease-specific variables that predict CV risk beyond traditional CV risk factors in patients with PsD. Methods: Data from prospective cohorts of patients with psoriasis and PsA were analyzed. The association of serum metabolites and CV events was investigated. The association between cardiac troponin I (cTnI) and N-terminal pro-brain-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP) and carotid atherosclerosis presence and progression was also tested. Variable selection was used to construct multiple CV risk prediction models – these included traditional CV risk factors, cardio-metabolic biomarkers and disease-specific variables. Metrics of risk prediction were used to determine whether the addition of biomarkers and disease-specific variables to each model improved their predictive performance beyond traditional CV risk factors and the Framingham Risk Score (FRS). Results: The analysis revealed several metabolites associated with CV risk. A model with 13 metabolites significantly improved prediction of CV events beyond a model with age and sex alone. A FRS-adjusted model with 11 metabolites did not improve CV risk discrimination. Investigation of cardiac biomarkers demonstrated that cTnI was independently associated with the burden of carotid atherosclerosis. Elevated cTnI and NT-proBNP were associated with a higher risk of developing CV events independent of traditional CV risk factors. Addition of cTnI or NT-proBNP did not improve the performance of the FRS for predicting CV events. Considering disease-specific variables, a CV risk prediction model for patients with PsD was constructed – this model included traditional CV risk factors and it had excellent performance in predicting CV events within a 5-year period. Disease-specific risk factors did not improve predictive performance beyond traditional CV risk factors alone. Conclusions: Serum metabolite and cardiac biomarkers are associated with the development of incident CV events in patients with PsD, but do not improve predictive performance compared to the FRS. Psoriatic disease related risk factors were not superior to traditional CV risk factors, which performed very well in predicting CV events in patients with PsD. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Jensen , Phillip Wagner Kastberg | Aspuru-Guzik, Alán | Quantum Computing for Chemistry: From Quantum Computing with Molecules to Algorithmic Design | Chemistry | 2022-11 | Determining properties of molecules and materials is one of the premier applications of quantum computing. A major question in the thesis is: how might we use long- and near-term quantum computers to solve problems of chemical interest? First, we give an overview of the standard model in electronic structure theory. Electronic structure methods have been improved significantly in the last decades; however, it is still a non-trivial task to fit experimental results for complex molecular systems. Second, we introduce quantum computation and quantum algorithms as an alternative device to solve the electronic structure problem. In the remaining part of the thesis, we describe the research projects. The thesis covers two (rather different) research directions: software and hardware projects. For the software part, we contribute with two new algorithms: Phase-Estimation Interval Target Energy Readout (PHILTER) and Recursive Variational Series Estimation (RVSE), where both are designed to be run on a quantum digital computer and extract materials and molecular properties. The PHILTER algorithm is a modification of the Quantum Phase Estimation and is designed to compute excited state energies within a target energy-interval for cases where good approximations for the states in the target energy-interval are either unknown or hard to prepare. For the RVSE algorithm, we pose the question: how might we use imperfect near-term quantum computers to solve problems of practical value? In this work, we introduce a method to compute expectation values of general functions of a Hamiltonian with respect to an input state using low depth quantum circuits suitable for noisy intermediate-scale quantum computers. For the hardware part, we propose a new chemical quantum computer by using molecular electronics as a basis for quantum computing. In this work, we pose the question: can scattering of electrons in molecules produce quantum gates? We construct one-qubit gates using one-electron scattering in molecules, and two-qubit controlled-phase gates using electron-electron scattering along metallic leads. We show initial applications of the framework by illustrating one-qubit gates using the molecular electronic structure of molecular hydrogen as a baseline model. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Wang, Ruibin | Chattopadhyay, Kinnor | Hybrid Models for BOF Steelmaking and Continuous Casting Applications | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | The steel industry has faced environmental and economic challenges in the past few decades. As a result, cost-effective and robust process control models are in great need to maximize operational efficiency while ensuring product quality. This thesis proposes a hybrid method to model the oxygen steelmaking and continuous casting processes, which combines metallurgical knowledge and data-driven techniques such as machine learning.In the first part of the thesis, a process control model was established for the Basic Oxygen Furnace endpoint carbon, phosphorus, and temperature based on production data collected from Tata Steel India. To begin with, the importance of individual operating parameters was examined with respect to endpoint values by using Pearson’s correlation analysis, mutual information, stepwise regression, random forest, and principal component analysis. Three subsets of optimal features were selected for each endpoint, and an equal number of artificial neural networks were established, tuned, and validated. Secondly, theoretical models based on mass and energy balance were formulated based on operating parameters. Finally, the proposed hybrid model was established via exchanging inputs and outputs among theoretical and neural network models. The hybrid model results suggest that the prediction accuracies are improved with the application of machine learning algorithms. In addition, incorporating theoretical frameworks benefits the hybrid model with enhanced generalization. With the established hybrid model, a graphical user interface software was developed for operators to implement in production. In the second part of the thesis, a time-series deep learning model was established to monitor the nozzle clogging phenomenon in continuous casting based on production data of four steel grades collected from Stelco, Lake Erie Works. Firstly, a clogging index was formulated based on process parameters to indicate the severity of clogging buildup within the nozzle quantitatively. With this index, long short-term memory networks were developed to predict future clogging index and monitor the casting process. The models can predict clogging events and erosion incidents during the continuous casting for all steel grades. With the implementation of this model in production, operators can take corrective actions to reduce the frequency of clogging and improve process efficiency. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, energy, production, environmental, forest, erosion | 4, 7, 12, 13, 15 |
| Tsui, Michael | Grunebaum, Eyal | The Role of Ribonucleotide Reductase in Inherited Purine Disorders | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Adenosine deaminase (ADA) and purine nucleoside phosphorylase (PNP) are consecutive enzymes in the purine degradation and salvage pathways. Inherited defects that abrogate ADA and PNP function result in the accumulation of dATP and dGTP respectively, which are toxic as they allosterically inhibit ribonucleotide reductase (RNR). RNR is responsible for the production of deoxyribonucleotides (dNTP) used for DNA synthesis. RNR inhibition contributes to the profound lymphopenia in ADA and PNP deficiency due to insufficient dNTPs required for DNA replication and cell proliferation. Additional tissues, however, may also suffer from the same pathology as lymphocytes. Neutropenia has been reported among both ADA-deficient patients and patients treated with the RNR inhibitor hydroxyurea (HU). Additionally, HU administration caused significant neurological abnormalities in mice and rats, similar to those observed in PNP-deficient mice. I therefore hypothesized that the neutropenia in ADA deficiency and neurological abnormalities in PNP deficiency are consequential to the purine metabolic disorders, with the inhibition of RNR being central to their pathogenesis. To address this, I utilized induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) derived from ADA- and PNP-deficient patients, as well as healthy control individuals. Differentiating the ADA-deficient iPSCs into neutrophils revealed a significant reduction in the number of hematopoietic progenitors and mature neutrophils. Hematopoietic colony formation revealed only granulocytes to be reduced by ADA deficiency, suggesting impaired neutrophil differentiation. Supplementing cultures with exogenous ADA enzyme successfully reversed the abnormalities, validating the role of ADA in neutrophil development. Differentiating PNP-deficient iPSCs into neurons revealed the induction of intrinsic mitochondrial-mediated apoptosis. Tumor protein p53 expression was also increased, and inhibition of p53 prevented the onset of apoptosis. Supplementing exogenous PNP enzyme successfully prevented the p53-mediated intrinsic apoptosis, validating the role of PNP in neuronal viability. To determine whether the RNR inhibition was responsible for the aforementioned phenotypes, control iPSCs were treated with the RNR inhibitors HU or with the combination of nicotinamide and trichostatin A. The inhibition of RNR recapitulated the ADA- and PNP-deficient phenotypes, demonstrating impaired neutrophil differentiation and increased neuronal apoptosis, highlighting the importance of RNR and the convergent mechanism responsible for the varied systemic abnormalities observed in these purine diseases. | Ph.D. | production | 12 |
| Höbler, Fiona | De Nil, Luc | Implicit and Explicit Motor Learning in Developmental Stuttering | Rehabilitation Science | 2022-11 | Developmental stuttering is overtly characterised by involuntary disruptions to the initiation of speech segments, as well as by neurodevelopmental differences in the functional circuitry that supports motor sequence learning and the automatized processes of speech production. This dissertation comprises of three studies that are aimed at elucidating the motor sequence learning abilities of individuals who stutter, with particular focus on the domain-general processes of implicit and explicit learning that contribute to complex skill acquisition. In study one, the research literature on motor learning among children and adults who stutter was systematically reviewed for the first time. Delayed performance gains were found among adults who stutter on verbal as well as non-verbal tasks, and were most frequently measured within one practice session. Limited evidence suggests that individuals who stutter may also differ in processes of implicit learning. In study two, non-verbal motor sequence learning was investigated in adults who do and do not stutter on an implicit finger sequencing task. Implicit, sequence-specific learning was found to be reduced among male adults who stutter, when compared to male adults who do not stutter. Implicit motor sequence performance was also significantly predicted by working memory scores, for participants who stutter most significantly. In study three, finger sequence learning was investigated under explicit conditions of practice in adults who do and do not stutter. No significant differences in explicit sequence learning or retention were found between the groups. Taken together, these findings bring to light evidence of sex-based performance differences that influence implicit motor learning in adults with persistent developmental stuttering, which have not been previously reported. The current evidence may lend support to the critical role of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit in implicit sequence learning and its functional impairment in developmental stuttering. Differential implicit and explicit learning abilities can have implications for the successful acquisition of complex motor skills during development, as well as for the updating and automatization of speech motor plans in individuals who stutter. The broader implications of these findings for the development of fluent speech production, the conditions of behavioural treatment, as well as for future research are explored. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, production | 4, 9, 12 |
| Athey, Samantha Nicole | Diamond, Miriam | Microplastics and other Anthropogenic Contaminants: from Source to Sink in the Canadian Environment | Earth Sciences | 2022-11 | Anthropogenic particles (AP), including microplastics and microfibers, are a ubiquitous contaminant in the environment. Due to the mounting evidence of their persistence, accumulation and toxicity, the sources, release pathways and fate of AP warrant further investigation in order to identify and develop effective mitigation efforts. This thesis aims to (1) investigate the abundance and composition of AP assemblages in environmental sinks, (2) explore environmental transport pathways for AP in the Canadian environment, (3) assess AP sources and release pathways; and (4) explore opportunities for diverting these releases to the environment. This thesis documents anthropogenic microfibers, including those composed of natural and semi-synthetic materials, as a major component of AP contamination in the Canadian environment. Further, this work shows, for the first time, that fractionation of AP occurs as particles are transported from sources to remote environments. Evidence from sediment samples indicates that fractionation occurs such that microfibers, particularly those composed of anthropogenically-derived natural and semi-synthetic materials, undergo long-range transport to remote areas whereas, non-fibrous particles tend to settle closer to source regions. As a result, microfibers from blue jeans, the world’s most popular garment, have similar abundance in Arctic sediments as in sediments from populated urban source regions. This work provides further evidence supporting the use of washing machine filters for mitigating microfiber emissions from laundering. This thesis also shows that secondary, external dryer filters can be an effective means for diverting releases of microfibers during laundering. By expanding investigation to include semi-synthetic and natural textile fibers and advancing methods for the confident enumeration and identification of microfibers in environmental samples, this thesis has led the shift in our scientific understanding of what constitutes AP contamination, and specifically microfiber pollution. | Ph.D. | pollution, contamination, emission, invest, urban, environmental, anthropogenic, emissions, pollut | 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Chang, Chi-Hsun | Lee, Andy||Nestor, Adrian | Visualizing The Vulnerability of Face Processing Across The Lifespan: An Image Reconstruction Approach | Psychology | 2022-11 | Human faces convey a wealth of information, including identity and emotional expression, both of which are crucial for social interactions. Consequently, difficulties in face processing can cause severe problems and impact a person’s well-being and quality of life. Extensive research has demonstrated that face perception can be disrupted by a variety of factors, such as aging, brain lesions, and mental disorders. However, the nature and the extent to which these factors have upon face representations remain unclear. In this thesis, I addressed these issues by employing a behavioural-based image reconstruction approach to uncover the pictorial content of face representations across a diverse sample of individuals. Specifically, Chapter 2 showed that visual representations of facial shape and surface information diagnostic to facial identity was compromised in older adults. Yet, the age-related effects were less pronounced than those associated with individual variabilities in discriminating conjunctions of facial features. Further, Chapter 3 revealed that the ability to distinguish between facial identities was impaired by damage to the medial temporal lobe areas, particularly the dentate gyrus. Lastly, Chapter 4 found that the severity of self-related personality dysfunction and levels of affective state, both of which are core features of personality disorder, impacted not only the accuracy of the visual content represented in perception and memory of facial expression but also their visual characteristics, such as expressiveness and positivity/negativity. Together, the findings across these three studies shed light on the impact of various conditions on the fine-grained visual content underlying face perception and memory, and advance our understanding of the vulnerability of face processing across the lifespan. Practically, the present thesis also demonstrates the applicability and utility of the image reconstruction approach across a broader population and provides a methodological framework for future research. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, well-being | 1, 3 |
| Sookhan, Shane | Eyles, Nick | Exploring the Glaciodynamic Significance and Origin of Drumlins and Mega-scale Glacial Lineations from High-resolution Topographic Imagery | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2022-11 | The study of modern and ancient ice streams is one of the most rapidly growing fields in the study of glacial geomorphology following the discovery that ancient ice sheets contained corridors of fast flow (possibly as much as 10 km yr-1) called ice streams which discharge large volumes of ice (and sediment) and dictate deglaciation behaviour. This new paradigm is based on the recognition of the paleo-glaciological significance of km-long, narrow streamlined ridges called ‘mega-scale glacial lineations’ (MSGLs) which are now recognized as the hallmark of fast flowing ice. Present research activity is focussed on their origin(s) however current models are incapable of accounting for the variability of glacially streamlined landforms. Many hypotheses are based off low resolution data resulting in an underestimation of the number and extent of paleo-ice streams. This thesis uses over 150,000 km2 of high-resolution digital elevation model data from the eastern Great Lakes sector of the former Laurentide Ice Sheet in North America to address this data gap. The use of the newly developed Curvature-Based Relief Separation method for mapping subglacially lineated bedforms shows that at least 10 paleo-ice streams were previously undiscovered in the study area. Unsupervised machine learning and hierarchical-based clustering also shows that MSGLs are part of a landform ‘continuum’ and are transitional to drumlins with statistically validated ‘intermediate’ bedforms which record the dissection of parent drumlins to form MSGLs. This suggests a fundamental ice velocity control on their formation which is explored by using Median Absolute Differences to calculate the frictional profiles of paleo ice sheet surfaces showing that the evolution of this landform continuum is associated with the development of lower drag ice bed morphologies. Such observations are consistent with an erosional origin for drumlins and MSGLs, likely as the result of deforming subglacial debris being swept across the bed suggesting a basic commonality of forms produced by abrasion of ‘wear debris’ as one surface moves over another. The wider paleoglaciological and geomorphological significance of these findings are explored, representing a fundamental contribution to our understanding of fast ice flow in former ice sheets and the field of glacial geomorphology. | Ph.D. | ABS, learning, transit, land, erosion | 2, 4, 11, 15 |
| Recharte, Matias Matias | Gould, Elizabeth | Becoming a “Professional Folklore Musician”: The Coloniality of Higher Music Education in Peru | Music | 2022-11 | This dissertation uses a historically-informed ethnographic method to investigate the ways in which the “professional folklore musician” is culturally produced at the National School of Folklore José María Arguedas in Lima, Peru. Efforts to reform tertiary music education in the face of systemic racial discrimination, sexual abuse, and colonial violence have suggested that a more inclusive approach to non-European expressive cultures can alleviate these problems. However, reform proposals lack the empirical evidence to support them, and fail to underscore how music education itself is entangled with the process of colonization and how it reinforces the social hierarchies structured by it. Through fieldwork, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis, this research focuses on: (1) the historical process by which discourses of “music,” “folklore,” and “professionalism” materialized as part of the emplacement of coloniality in Peru, (2) how this history shapes the ways in which the National School of Folklore produces “folklore professionals,” and (3) how its students reproduce, adapt, or resist this model. The analysis shows that these discourses are contested arenas where social hierarchies are affixed and reproduced, while also providing a space for non-dominant expressive cultures to seek social and political legitimation. The “professionalization” that the School promotes, requires a retrofitting of vernacular forms of music and dance into stylized presentational formats and an enculturation of students into “academic” knowledge and ways of being. The data also reveals how students creatively produce their identities as “professional folklore musicians” out of a wide variety of sources, sometimes in ways that short-circuit the process of colonial reproduction of privilege and domination. These findings suggest that the reform of tertiary music education should analyze more closely the model of “professional musician” that operates in each context, and how it is entangled with the historical emplacement of coloniality. The dissertation also recommends that efforts at reforming these institutions should study closely the ways in which students culturally produce their professional identities and support those processes in ways that undermine the reproduction of colonial hierarchies. Esta disertación utiliza un método etnográfico históricamente informado para investigar las maneras en las que el “músico profesional del folklore” es culturalmente producido en la Escuela Nacional Superior de Folklore José María Arguedas en Lima, Perú. Frente a la discriminación racial, el abuso sexual y la violencia colonial, los esfuerzos para reformar la educación musical terciaria indican que una actitud más inclusiva hacia las culturas expresivas no europeas puede aliviar estos problemas. Sin embargo, estas propuestas de reforma carecen de evidencia empírica que las sustente y suelen omitir la manera en que la educación musical misma esta entrelazada con el proceso de colonización y cómo tiende a reforzar las jerarquías que esta impuso. A través de trabajo de campo, entrevistas semiestructuradas y análisis documental, esta investigación se enfoca en: (1) el proceso histórico por el cual los discursos sobre “música”, “folklore” y “profesionalismo” se materializaron como parte del emplazamiento de la colonialidad en el Perú, (2) en cómo este proceso histórico da forma a las maneras en que la Escuela Nacional de Folklore produce “profesionales del folklore” y (3) cómo sus estudiantes reproducen, adaptan o resisten a este modelo. El análisis muestra que estos discursos son escenarios en disputa donde las jerarquías sociales son fijadas y reproducidas, a la vez que proveen de un espacio en el que culturas expresivas no dominantes pueden reclamar una legitimación social y política. La “profesionalización” que la Escuela promueve, requiere una adecuación de las formas musicales y danzarías vernáculas a formatos estilizados y presentacionales, así como una enculturación de los estudiantes dentro del conocimiento “académico” y las formas de comportamiento asociadas a este. La data revela también cómo los estudiantes producen de maneras creativas sus identidades como “profesionales del folklore” a partir de una gran variedad de fuentes, y en ocasiones de maneras que interrumpen el proceso de reproducción del privilegio y la dominación coloniales. Estos datos sugieren que la reforma de la educación musical terciaria debería analizar con mayor atención cómo opera el modelo de “músico profesional” en cada contexto y cómo este está ligado al proceso de emplazamiento colonial. Esta disertación sugiere además que los esfuerzos dirigidos a reformar estas instituciones debería prestar atención a las maneras en las que los estudiantes culturalmente producen sus identidades profesionales y apoyar esos procesos de manera que socaven la reproducción de las jerarquías coloniales. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, production, institut, violence | 4, 9, 12, 16 |
| Mirsanaye, Kamdin | Barzda, Virginijus | Digital Histopathology with Second-harmonic Generation Microscopy | Physics | 2022-11 | Histopathology has been one of the most important techniques in medical diagnostics, which often involves investigation of thin tissue sections, stained with dyes such as hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) for improved visual contrast under a white light microscope. Although white light histopathology has been instrumental in revolutionizing medicine, clearing and staining processes introduce non-native molecules in the tissue and may alter the structure of the sample. Second-Harmonic Generation (SHG) is a label-free and non-invasive imaging modality which relies on endogenous biomarkers in the tissue to provide the required contrast for visualization. SHG microscopy is a well-established nonlinear modality which allows for visualization of noncentrosymmetric molecules such as collagen in the tissue. Moreover, polarimetric second-harmonic generation (P-SHG) microscopy is often used to characterize the composition, organization, and polarity of collagen fibers in tissue in the form of second-order nonlinear optical susceptibilities. In this work, scanning P-SHG was utilized to reveal unipolar arrangement of collagen fibers in the human cardiac conduction system, which may consequently aid in effective transduction of the electrical signal through the heart. Moreover, a novel widefield P-SHG microscope was designed and constructed to increase imaging speed and field of view, while reducing the effects of photobleaching and photodamage. The widefield P-SHG microscope was used to demonstrate high-throughput whole-slide imaging of a breast tissue microarray. The microscope yielded in a series of polarimetric and texture parameters which were used in tandem with supervised machine learning to differentiate tumor tissue from normal with 94.2% accuracy and F1-score, and 6.3% false discovery rate. Furthermore, a large section of tissue spanning from normal to non-small cell lung carcinoma was imaged with the widefield P-SHG microscope to map the structural variations of the ECM across the sample. The resulting parameters were analyzed with principal components analysis and unsupervised K-means clustering to identify normal- and tumor-like tissue, and to further highlight the tumor margin surrounding the tumor mass. All in all, we showed that widefield P-SHG microscopy revealed collagen ultrastructure over large tissue regions and can be utilized as a sensitive biomarker for cancer diagnostics and prognostics studies. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Mohammadi, Avid | Kaul, Rupert | Characterizing the Impact of Penile-vaginal Sex on the Immune Correlates of HIV Susceptibility in the Female and Male Genital Tracts | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Globally most HIV transmission occurs through penile-vaginal sex. Various factors in the genital tract of the uninfected partner increase the risk of HIV acquisition, including sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and the genital microbiome, with mucosal inflammation serving as the central pathway for enhanced risk. However, the clinical studies defining the mucosal immune correlates of HIV susceptibility collected genital samples remote from sexual activity, while HIV penetrates mucosal tissues within hours of sex. Therefore, it is critical to understand the impact of penile-vaginal sex itself on genital immunology. This was the primary objective of the Sex, Couples and Science study (SECS) project. Cervical cytobrush sampling is commonly used to study immune cell populations in the FGT, but the impact of sample collection itself on mucosal immunology has not been defined. Therefore, I first investigated the impact of cytobrush sampling on mucosal correlates of HIV susceptibility after 6 and 48 hours. Cytobrush sampling increased cervical HIV target cell numbers and pro-inflammatory cytokine levels at 6 hours, with most immune changes resolving by 48 hours. Cytobrush sampling did not alter the absolute abundance of key vaginal bacteria. Therefore, in designing the SECS protocol I ensured that there was a gap of at least 48 hours between consecutive cytobrush samples. I then recruited 40 established heterosexual couples to assess the impact of penile-vaginal sex, either condomless or condom-protected, on FGT and penile immunology. The level of penile and cervico-vaginal cytokines previously associated with HIV acquisition increased 1 hour after sex, regardless of condom use, and returned to baseline levels by 72 hours. Penile cytokine changes largely reflected exposure to cytokine-rich FGT secretions. The proportion of endocervical HIV target cells, specifically Th17 cells and activated/mature dendritic cells (DCs), increased transiently 1 hour after condomless sex, although this increase was only seen in the context of an uncircumcised male partner. In summary, penile-vaginal sex induced profound short-term immune changes that may enhance HIV susceptibility in women and men. This furthers our understanding of the biology of mucosal HIV acquisition and has implications for the design of clinical studies assessing mucosal immunology and HIV acquisition. | Ph.D. | ABS, women, female, invest | 2, 5, 2009 |
| Whitley, Owen Kenneth Nora | Bader, Gary D | Transcriptional and Multi-Omic Heterogeneity in Glioblastoma Stem Cells | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is a disease with terrible prognosis, having a median survival time of ~12-15 months for patients undergoing current treatment regimens, and a 5-year survival rate under 10%. There is strong evidence to suggest the existence of stem like cells, which we term glioma stem cells (GSCs), that are capable of repopulating the tumor after surgery and chemotherapy. Thus, any effective treatment for GBM will likely have to target this population. Evidence of functional heterogeneity of GSCs at the level of the transcriptome and drug response motivates a full characterization of GSCs’ biological variation. In this project, I use multiple -omic data types from both bulk and single cell resolution to explore how multiple biological processes such as transcription and epigenetic regulation play into GSC heterogeneity in therapeutic vulnerabilities. With single cell/nuclei RNA-sequencing, in collaboration with the Pugh and Dirks labs and others, I establish that transcriptional heterogeneity in GSCs and more generally GBM can be decomposed into two major axes of variation: a Developmental/Injury Response transcriptional axis present in both the stem fraction of GBM tumors as well as the tumors themselves, and a stem to astrocyte differentiation gradient present only in the tumor samples. Further functional characterization with CRISPR knockout data reveals that differential functional dependencies between Developmental and Injury Response GSCs largely match their differentially expressed genes, showing that this transcriptional axis of variation translates into functional consequences that could inform development of combination therapies. Following these results, I perform an integrated analysis of genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic, and miRNA-seq data to obtain a more complete picture of both how this transcriptional axis is regulated as well as what other heterogeneity exists independent of transcription. Here, I find four major axes in multi -omics space: one corresponding to a hypermutation phenotype largely matching one previously characterized for GBM dependent on mismatch repair deficiency and temozolomide treatment, two others corresponding to apparent latent variation in regulation of inflammatory genes, and lastly a multi-omics axis corresponding to the coordinated regulation of the Developmental/Injury Response transcriptional axis by multiple biological layers. Collectively, the results presented in this thesis provide better mechanistic understanding of GSC heterogeneity and open the door to developing novel therapies. | Ph.D. | ABS, labor | 2, 8 |
| Jervis Rademeyer, Hope | Musselman, Kristin E||Marquez-Chin, Cesar | Using Neurorestorative Approaches for the Rehabilitation of Individuals living with Spinal Cord Injury or Disease | Rehabilitation Science | 2022-11 | In recent years, rehabilitation for individuals living with spinal cord injury or disease (SCI/D) has shifted from a focus on compensatory approaches to address loss of function to a focus on neurorestorative approaches. My central thesis aim was to understand the use of neurorestorative approaches in physical rehabilitation for individuals with SCI/D. Regarding the central thesis aim, I identified barriers and facilitators to the use of these approaches. Also, I described the current state of translation and implementation of these neurorestorative approaches as part of Canadian SCI/D rehabilitation. Data were gathered from four main studies of neurorestorative approaches to SCI/D rehabilitation in Canada. Study 1 was a scoping review that investigated the effect of epidural stimulation on different functions for individuals with SCI/D. Study 2 and Study 3 investigated the perspectives of occupational therapists (OTs) and physical therapists (PTs) on activity-based therapy (ABT) using conventional content analysis. Study 2 focused on the inpatient/outpatient hospital setting, while Study 3 looked at the acute care setting. For Study 4, I interviewed OTs and PTs about their use of brain-computer interface-triggered functional electrical stimulation therapy (BCI-FEST). My research identified therapists’ need for increased knowledge and education about neurorestorative approaches to SCI/D rehabilitation using mentorship and large support groups. Implementation of these neurorestorative approaches should occur across the continuum of care yet take into consideration differences between settings and nuances between sites. Across studies, I noted that perspectives from therapists working in rural and remote (i.e., non-specialized SCI/D centres) were not included. Future research should target the perspectives of these individuals as we work towards implementation. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, rural | 4, 9, 11 |
| Smart, Matthew | Zilman, Anton | Collective Dynamics of Interacting Cell Types | Physics | 2022-11 | Recent experimental advances have opened up entirely new ways to study and conceptualize biological systems. This shift is particularly pronounced in the context of complex multicellular organisms, where single-cell technologies allow us to dissect tissue heterogeneity at the level of individual cells. For the theoretical sciences, this wealth of data provides a unique opportunity to synthesize general principles that unify the variability observed across diverse organisms. This thesis focuses on questions that are inspired by the concept of “cell type”, which is fundamental to our understanding of multicellular development and homeostasis, yet remains poorly defined. Motivated by the ongoing data revolution, cell types are defined here as subsets of gene expression space that are invariant to the dynamics of gene regulation. In particular, I investigate physics-inspired dynamical systems that encode cell types as fixed point attractors. In the process, I derive a formal correspondence between Hopfield networks and restricted Boltzmann machines – two classical architectures at the interface of statistical physics and machine learning. I then show that in the presence of gene regulatory noise alone, Hopfield networks encoding mammalian cell types can recapitulate in vivo differentiation patterns. The statistics of noise-induced cell type transitions reflect their transcriptional proximity, suggesting organizing principles for cell lineage trees. Next, by coupling the transcriptional states of multistable single cells, I develop a general model of multicellular gene regulation that formalizes emerging notions of cell type “plasticity” and establishes a framework to study the self-assembly of compositionally diverse tissues from identical subunits. I then analyze the population dynamics of interacting cell types in the context of cancer development, identifying qualitatively distinct collective states and quantifying their roles in cancer initiation. The results of this thesis not only suggest general principles involved in multicellular development and homeostasis, they also point towards new theoretical approaches inspired by multicellular systems. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, transit | 4, 9, 11 |
| Norris, Peter Alan Albert | Lazarus, Alan H. | Fc Gamma Receptors and Phagocytosis in Immune Thrombocytopenia | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-11 | Immune thrombocytopenia (ITP) is an autoimmune disease characterized by a low platelet count in the absence of secondary or other explanations of thrombocytopenia. Platelet destruction in ITP is thought to be caused predominantly by pathogenic factors present in circulation. In particular, platelets are understood to be targets of immunoglobulin G (IgG) anti-platelet autoantibodies, which may then engage Fc gamma receptors (FcγRs) on macrophages in the spleen, triggering clearance of platelets by phagocytosis. However, direct demonstrations of splenic macrophage phagocytosis of autoantibody opsonized platelets are lacking. In addition, it is unclear which specific FcγRs are utilized in the phagocytosis of platelets. There is also the potential of other humoral factors to mediate or augment macrophage phagocytosis of platelets which remains insufficiently characterized. In this thesis, I focus on the mechanisms of macrophage phagocytosis of IgG opsonized platelets, the utilization of FcγRs in phagocytosis, and potential strategies to prevent this process in ITP. In the first study, I characterize the mechanism of anti-CD44 antibodies, a potential ITP therapeutic able to ameliorate passive IgG-mediated ITP in mice. I demonstrate that anti-CD44 inhibits macrophage FcγRs through an apparent blockade-type mechanism via the Fc region of the anti-CD44 antibody, preventing macrophage phagocytosis of platelets and explaining amelioration of passive IgG-mediated murine ITP. In the second study, I demonstrate that splenic macrophages from ITP patients utilize FcγRI and FcγRIII in the phagocytosis of platelets opsonized with ITP serum positive for IgG anti-platelet autoantibodies. I suggest that the individual or combined blockade of FcγRI and FcγRIII may be an effective therapeutic strategy for ITP. In the third study, I evaluate the ability of serum from ITP patients as a source of ITP humoral thrombocytopenic factors to mediate macrophage phagocytosis of platelets. I demonstrate that 40% of ITP sera mediated phagocytosis greater than the normal human serum mean plus two standard deviations, while an additional 35% mediated phagocytosis greater than one standard deviation. I further characterized ITP sera for IgG anti-platelet autoantibodies and serum pentraxins to evaluate their contribution to macrophage phagocytosis. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Lowe, Brandon Michael | Zingg, David W | Efficient Aircraft Flutter Analysis using Model Order Reduction with Error Estimation | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Fast and accurate aircraft flutter analysis in the transonic regime remains an open problem due to the high computational cost of accurately modelling transient aerodynamic forces. In this thesis, a methodology for flutter prediction with the application of model order reduction with error estimation is presented to reduce computational cost while achieving user desired accuracy. The methodology is shown to be computationally efficient, minimize the requirement for user knowledge, and provide user-prescribed accuracy for flutter prediction relative to the high-dimensional aeroelastic model. The Euler equations are used to model the aerodynamics, which are linearized about a nonlinear steady-state solution and reduced using a projection-based model order reduction approach. The resulting aerodynamic ROM is coupled to a structural model to form the primal aeroelastic ROM. The aeroelastic ROM is of low order, allowing for a computationally efficient parameter sweep of the aeroelastic eigenproblem to determine the flutter point. A dual-weighted residual-based error estimator is presented which approximates the error in the eigenvalues obtained from the primal aeroelastic ROM relative to the true eigenvalues from the high-dimensional aeroelastic model. This error estimator makes use of a dual aeroelastic ROM to approximate the dual solution. A second error estimator is presented which approximates the error in the predicted flutter point relative to the true flutter point from the high-dimensional model. By combining the aforementioned algorithmic elements, a ROM-based flutter methodology with error estimation is developed. The proposed method provides the user with approximate aeroelastic eigenvalues, an approximate flutter point, and an estimate of the error in both these quantities. Flutter analyses are presented for several test cases. Both the eigenvalue and flutter point error estimators are shown to have good agreement with the true error. For the test cases presented, the cost of computing the flutter point at a given Mach number is equivalent to the cost of approximately 4 to 15 steady nonlinear flow evaluations of the high-dimensional Euler equations. When compared to a POD-based ROM approach, the proposed method achieves comparable or faster computational times for similar levels of error while additionally providing error estimates for flutter analysis. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Arpin, Emmanuelle | Laporte, Audrey | Essays on the Long-term Effects of Childhood Chronic Conditions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | This dissertation is concerned with understanding the long-term implications of childhood chronic conditions (e.g., physical, mental/developmental) on health and socioeconomic outcomes in young adulthood. Across three studies, I address issues pertaining to underlying mechanisms, sources of heterogeneity, and comparatively examine the effects of different conditions. I draw on survey and administrative tax data from the US and Canada, which I analyze using a range of statistical tools.The first study examines distributional differences in earnings and mental health scores in young adulthood between individuals who suffered from a chronic condition in childhood, compared to those who did not, using non-parametric distributional methods applied to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics (US). I find that young adults who reported a mental/developmental disorder in childhood cluster in the lower percentiles of both distributions of interest, relative to those who did not. Covariate decompositions suggest educational attainment represents an indirect pathway. The second study investigates long-term implications of childhood chronic conditions in Canada using individual-level linked survey and tax data (National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, T1 Family File). I find that childhood mental/developmental disorders negatively affect all adult outcomes of interest (e.g., income) in baseline and fixed effects specifications, while physical ailments only affect health-related work absences and social assistance take-up. Covariate decompositions point to cognitive skills in adolescence as an indirect pathway. The final study examines the effect of childhood chronic conditions on parental investment behaviours (e.g., affective time, discipline). Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, I find that child mental/developmental disorders and behavioural problems lead parents to reduce investments across investment domains, and that parental socioeconomic characteristics moderate investment responses. I find modest contributions from parental investments in tempering the effects between child health conditions and short-run cognitive skills. Results suggest that childhood chronic conditions affect future outcomes, though processes involved are somewhat complicated. The findings underscore the potential for large returns of investments in childhood health in the form of enhanced long-term outcomes across many domains. Findings encourage further empirical work on mental/developmental health conditions and recommend inter-sectoral policy investments in childhood (e.g., health, education). | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, ABS, mental health, child health, invest, income | 1, 2, 3, 9, 10 |
| Lasan, Ivan | Rehner, Katherine | Production and Perception of Stylistic Variation along the Continuum of Formality in English as a First and Second Language | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This research explores production and perception of stylistic variation along the continuum of formality in written English. It looks to contribute to research focused on sociopragmatic and pragmalinguistic competence by (1) offering insights into English-dominant individuals’ and English learners’ understanding of formality, knowledge of stylistic variants, and approach to the expression and perception of formality; (2) demonstrating how English-dominant individuals and English learners create styles with specific degrees of formality and how they perceive degrees of formality; and, (3) reporting English-dominant individuals’ and English learners’ confidence about their ability to express and perceive formality. To these ends, data for this research were collected in two subsequent phases (i.e., a production and a perception phase), with each drawing on its own set of participants. Each set included three groups of individuals: those who live in Canada and speak English as a dominant language, those who are learning English while embedded in the Canadian context, and those who are learning English as a foreign language in Slovakia. In both phases, questionnaire data were collected to discover participants’ understanding of formality and knowledge of stylistic variants. The participants in the production phase composed six e-mail messages in English with a specific degree of formality in mind. The participants in the perception phase rated the formality of 18 of the e-mail messages that had been generated by the participants in the production phase. The findings show that, in contrast to the English-dominant individuals, both groups of English learners were less able to provide specific examples of (in)formal stylistic variants; the preferred use of stylistic variants differed across the three participant groups; and the perceived degrees of formality for half of the e-mail messages differed across the three participant groups. The findings also showed that the English learners felt less confident than did the English-dominant individuals about their ability to express and perceive formality in English. This research concludes that English learners would benefit from instruction that increases their knowledge of salient (in)formal stylistic variants and that raises their awareness of the social, cultural, and personal factors that influence their use in English. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, production | 4, 12 |
| Neshatian, Mehrnoosh | Ganss, Bernhard w | Promoting Mineralization at Biological Interfaces with Novel Amelotin-based Bio-Nano Complexes | Dentistry | 2022-11 | According to the World Health Organization, dental caries is the most prevalent chronic disease worldwide. Remineralization of demineralized dentin, especially within the restorative material and tooth tissue interface, is of considerable interest in restorative dentistry since it may improve bond stability and prevent restorative failures.Amelotin (AMTN) is an enamel protein first identified in our lab. AMTN is expressed during the maturation stage of enamel formation and has been shown to promote mineral formation. In native tissue, AMTN is secreted into a microenvironment mostly made of nano-sized hydroxyapatite. Hydroxyapatite is the major inorganic component of the mineralized portion of the tooth. Furthermore, hydroxyapatite is one of the most biocompatible materials used in mineralized tissue regeneration. Therefore, this PhD project aimed to test the hypothesis that AMTN-coated hydroxyapatite nanoparticles (HANP) promote mineralization at collagenous interfaces. This PhD project comprises 3 phases: In phase I, a method for functionalizing HANP with AMTN/AMTN-Col was. HANP were synthesized and characterized. The nanoparticles were functionalized with AMTN or AMTN-Col. The successful coating of the nanoparticles with the proteins was confirmed using the immunogold-labelling technique. In phase II, the mineralization potential of the synthesized bio-nano complexes was studied using model systems consisting of simulated body fluid (SBF), polymerized collagen gels, and dentin disks prepared from human extracted molars. Mineral formation in SBF was recorded with a light scattering assay using a microplate reader. The extent of mineral formation on collagen gel and the remineralization of demineralized dentin were studied with scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Accelerated mineral formation in bio-nano complexes treated samples was observed in all model systems. In phase III, the clinical utilization of bio-nano complexes in bio-integration and enhancing the bond strength of a resin-based dental restoration were investigated. The bio-nano complexes were applied as a pretreatment on dentin prior to adhesive application. Shear bond strength values indicated that pretreatment of dentin with the bio-nano complexes significantly improved shear bond strength. Conclusion: We have shown that AMTN-based bio-nano complexes promote mineral formation on collagenous interfaces. Our findings can serve as the basis for the development of novel bioinspired nanomaterials to improve dental restoration longevity. | Ph.D. | invest, regeneration | 9, 15 |
| Zipursky, Jonathan Samuel | Juurlink, David N | The Epidemiology of Postpartum Opioid Prescribing in Ontario | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | This thesis uses administrative health data to examine temporal trends in postpartum opioid prescribing in Ontario, Canada, as well as the maternal and neonatal risks associated with maternal postpartum opioid therapy. In the first study, I conducted a cross-sectional time series analysis examining whether a highly-publicized 2006 case report questioning the safety of codeine during lactation was associated with changes in postpartum opioid prescribing. I found that postpartum opioid prescribing changed significantly in Ontario following publication of the case report and subsequent safety warnings, including a 30% relative decline in opioid initiation, a reduction in the proportion of prescriptions issued for codeine, and significant increases in the prescribing of more potent opioids. In the second study, I examined whether initiation of oxycodone following delivery was associated with an increased risk of persistent maternal opioid use relative to initiation of codeine. I found that 2.1% of postpartum women had evidence of new persistent opioid use in the year after delivery and compared to women who filled an initial prescription for codeine, receipt of oxycodone was not associated with persistent opioid use (RR 1.04; 95% CI 0.91 to 1.20). In subgroup analyses, I found an association between a prescription of oxycodone and persistent use relative to codeine after vaginal delivery (RR 1.63; 95% CI 1.31 to 2.03), but not after cesarean delivery (RR 0.85; 95% CI 0.73 to 1.00). In the third study, I examined whether postpartum maternal opioid therapy was associated with an increased risk of adverse neonatal outcomes. I found that children born to mothers who filled an opioid prescription were no more likely to be hospitalized for any reason compared to children born to mothers who did not (HR 0.98; 95% CI 0.93 to 1.03). The studies that comprise this thesis found substantial shifts in the types of opioids prescribed to postpartum women temporally associated with a faulty narrative regarding the dangers of codeine during lactation. In addition, our findings help clarify that providers should emphasize the potential risks of postpartum opioid use as they relate to mothers, rather than their infants. | Ph.D. | women | 5 |
| Buchanan, Serra-Willow | Isaac, Marney E | Diversification and Carbon Storage within Temperate Riparian Agroecosystems | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2022-11 | Riparian agroforestry buffers offer a significant opportunity to enhance carbon (C) storage while also augmenting local biodiversity, with buffer management playing a critical role in determining the services derived from these systems. Notably, woody and herbaceous plant communities drive C cycling via aboveground litter mineralization, belowground root respiration, and soil microbial decomposition dynamics. Yet, how plant diversity and soil microbial biota interact to regulate C cycling remains elusive, especially in riparian ecotones, which are relatively understudied, yet becoming a more prominent agricultural landscape feature. Using a functional-trait based approach, I conducted in-situ field studies paired with laboratory experiments within or using riparian landscape features to assess a series of questions related to diversity and C cycling dynamics. I found that (1) riparian agroforests had significantly higher plant diversity than grassland buffers, which resulted in lower rates of soil CO2 efflux and nitrogen mineralization; (2) differences in drivers of C cycling were significantly impacted by the age of the agroforest buffer (<10 years, or >30 years since establishment), where belowground dynamics controlled C cycling in young buffers, while aboveground traits controlled C cycling in mature buffers; (3) litter functional traits were coordinated with C mineralization rates, where species mixing resulted in synergistic, non-additive effects on soil mineralization (priming effects) and; (4) litter functional traits and litter mixing correlated with fungal and bacterial patterns of succession, with these effects being more pronounced in fungal communities. I provide novel evidence on the understudied effects of plant functional trait diversity on C cycling, distinguishing the important role of above and belowground drivers. Changes in plant community diversity, through the planting of riparian agroforestry buffers, will have positive effects on the ability of these buffer to sequester C, both by shaping diversity of understory herbaceous species and soil microbial communities. | Ph.D. | agricultur, agro, labor, co2, species, biodivers, ecosystem, forest, land, soil | 2, 8, 13, 14, 15 |
| Due, Austin | Upshur, Ross | Side Effects in Medicine: Definitions and Discovery | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2022-11 | Side effects are a concern in medical decision making and a robust area of biomedical research. However, there is relatively little philosophical investigation into side effects as such, especially given that side effects are appealed to for various applications in philosophy of medicine. In addition, health authorities like the FDA, CDC, and WHO have contrary definitions of ‘side effect.’ Moreover, these definitions have clear counterexamples. This dissertation aims to provide a complete account of what side effects are. I posit that an account of side effects ought to draw clean conceptual lines between side effects and related treatment outcomes. I contend that an account of side effects must address two components: the reasons behind an intervention that produced the side effect, and the causal powers of the intervention that brought about that effect. With this account in mind, I address contemporary philosophical models that distinguish placebo effects from side effects. These arguments, respectively in chapters 2 and 3, yield a more complete, less problematic account of side effects than previous accounts. The dissertation then turns to the process of discovering side effects, specifically in the post-market context. Given the paucity of external validity in pre-market drug trials, chapter 4 argues that post-market ‘phase IV’ trials blur the received distinction of ‘confirmatory’ versus ‘exploratory’ experimentation in philosophy of science. The other component of post-market drug research is spontaneous reporting, or the voluntary reporting of a suspected side effect to a regulatory body. Chapter 5 uses the framework of risks and values in science to examine why clinicians underreport, which hinders our ability to prevent drug-related harms. Chapter 6 looks at how patients could mitigate underreporting and develops a social-epistemic, pragmatic, and ethical framework which can evaluate proposals to engage patients to spontaneously report their suspected side effects. In short, this dissertation aims to firstly address the conceptual problems in how we define ‘side effect’ and relate it to other treatment outcomes, and secondly it addresses issues that hinder the scientific investigation of side effects. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Peters, Aaron | Fujitani, Takashi | A Complicated Alliance: Indo-Japanese Relations, 1915-1952 | History | 2022-11 | This dissertation argues that understanding Japan-South Asia relations during the first half of the 20th century (1915-1952) provides a method for explicating the linkages and complicities among empire, nationalism, and internationalism in the modern world. It joins a growing body of literature that adopts a transnational and trans-imperial approach to analyze Japan’s relationship with the world beyond the traditional area studies reference points of the West and East Asia. Bringing critical studies of British and Japanese imperialism together with postcolonial theory, I show how the imperial and nationalist visions of both Japanese Pan-Asianists and prominent Indian independence activists were mutually constitutive projects that were welded together through appeals to cultural and spiritual authenticity. In other words, visions of Pan-Asian community were inseparable from empire and nation in the non-European world even as such visions articulated a universalism that attempted to resist the West. During and after the First World War, Pan-Asianists in Japan mobilized the language of national self-determination to advocate for the establishment of a regional order in the Asia-Pacific that would challenge Euro-American colonialism, while also affirming the universalization of Japan as the guiding model of an authentic “Asian” modernity. This was evinced through the establishment of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as an empire of client-states, similar to what the United States and the Soviet Union were undertaking in their own ideological registers through the League of Nations and the Third International. Indian nationalists on the other hand, particularly Hindu nationalists, looked to Japan and to some extent Manchukuo as a model of modernization and progress without compromising the authentic spiritual values of their nation. The allure of Pan-Asianist rhetoric, which combined both Orientalism and revolutionary nationalism, appealed to a wide range of middle-class Indian nationalists, including the often-celebrated Subhas Chandra Bose who led the Indian National Army and established the Free India government with Japanese military and diplomatic support. However, such complicities between these groups in their imperial and nation-building projects, especially during the Asia-Pacific War, obscured the violence committed against minorities and labouring classes. Far from celebrating the transnational as an effective method to critique imperialism, this dissertation explores the Japan-South Asia case to highlight how transnational encounters and alliances were both conditioned by, and complicit in, imperialism and nationalism. | Ph.D. | labour, minorit, cities, nationalism, self-determination, violence | 8, 10, 11, 16 |
| Zhang, Mingyue | Wong, M. H. Franco||Lu, Hai | Determinants and Consequences of Human Capital Management Disclosure | Management | 2022-11 | Despite increasing attention to firms’ human capital management (HCM), scant large-scale empirical evidence exists regarding the determinants and consequences of HCM disclosures. In my dissertation, I develop HCM disclosure transparency measures, using a recent machine learning technique (the word embedding model), and study the determinants and consequences of HCM disclosures. The first part of my dissertation examines the determinants of HCM disclosures, I hypothesize that heightened awareness of social-oriented considerations and operational-oriented competitiveness drive HCM disclosure incentives. I find that firms disclose more about their social-oriented HCM information but less about operational-oriented HCM information when product market competition is high. Exploiting reductions in import tariff rates as exogenous variation in product market competition, I document a causal link between market competition and HCM disclosures. The second part focuses on the consequences of HCM disclosures. Results show that social-oriented disclosures improve social performance ratings and attract sustainability-oriented investors. However, I only find that more operational-oriented HCM disclosures are associated with higher subsequent shareholder value. I also conduct a survey with CPA Ontario to understand the underlying incentives of firms’ HCM disclosure behavior. Survey evidence supports and complements my empirical findings. Taken together, my findings suggest that social-oriented HCM disclosures satisfy investors’ information demand and operational-oriented HCM information reflects value-enhancing HCM practices. | Ph.D. | learning, capital, invest | 4, 9 |
| Southin, Travis Carson | Wolfe, David A | Overcoming Barriers to Policy Change: The Politics of Canada’s Innovation Policy | Political Science | 2022-11 | This dissertation aims to explain why Canada’s approach to innovation policy has remained so stable over time despite prolonged underperformance in stimulating private sector innovation. Curiously, after decades of declining business expenditure on research and development (BERD) and numerous attempts at policy reform to address it, Canada’s innovation policy mix continues to rely much more than its OECD peer countries on indirect, supply-side, and neutral policy instruments such as research and development (R&D) tax credits and academic research funding (OECD, 2022a; OECD, 2021). Canada’s 2017 Innovation and Skills Plan provides the ideal critical case to ascertain the barriers constraining policy change because despite its stated intention of achieving ‘transformational’ change by adopting direct, demand-side, and targeted instruments (such as R&D grants and procurement), it nonetheless resulted in incremental change to Canada’s overall innovation policy mix (ISED, 2019; OECD, 2021). Analyzing the design and implementation of the Innovation and Skills Plan via public documents and confidential interviews with 143 civil servants, firms, and other experts involved in this policy process reveals how three perennial institutional elements of Canada’s innovation policy process produced this incremental outcome: 1) low coordination across institutional silos within the government; 2) ad hoc and siloed institutional mechanisms for private-public policy coordination; and 3) the politics of regionalism, as institutionalized in Canada’s Westminster system. The primary empirical contribution of this dissertation is illustrating how these three barriers functioned to constrain the adoption of targeted, direct grant/contribution programs like the Innovation Superclusters Initiative and the Strategic Innovation Fund, as well as the demand-side procurement program, Innovative Solutions Canada. This finding confirms the hypothesis synthesized from previous Canadian political economy research that these three entrenched institutional barriers function to frustrate Canada’s adoption of activist industrial policy (Atkinson & Coleman, 1989; Chandler, 1986; French, 1984; Jenkin 1983). This project also contributes to the nascent comparative literature on the politics of innovation policy, highlighting how country-specific institutions make changing innovation policy mixes an inherently path dependent and political - rather than merely technocratic - exercise (Breznitz, 2007; Flanagan, Uyarra, & Laranja, 2011; Taylor, 2016). | Ph.D. | institut | 16 |
| Homayounfar, Namdar | Urtasun, Raquel R.U. | Deep Structured Output Models for Localization, Mapping and Labeling | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Advances in Machine Learning (ML) technologies coupled with the development of powerful hardware is enabling automation at a large scale in various new fields. In an automation setting, the data domain and the tasks are usually very structured. When building ML methods that map the data domain to an output space that captures the decision or understanding required in an automation task, one should leverage these structures to build more expressive and accurate models. Deep neural networks such as CNNs and RNNs have proven very effective in building rich representations that capture the structure in the data domain. Of interest and the focus of this thesis, the structure in the task can be modeled at varying levels of complexity in the output space: In certain tasks, the output space consists of fixed structured objects such as a graph with a known structure whereas in others, the output space is dynamic and one has to reason over a space of graphs or family of functions with certain characteristics.With the above in mind, the goal of this thesis is to build deep structured output models with varying levels of structure complexity encoded in the output space. One of the major challenges in building these models is designing efficient inference procedures. To this end, we also explore and develop efficient and tractable algorithms for inference in these models. In particular, we leverage branch and bound methods for random fields, deep gradient descent for inference in function spaces and RNNs to greedily discover the structure of graphs. We develop our models in the context of localization, mapping and labeling tasks in the domains of sports understanding and autonomous driving. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Kozlowski, Hannah Nicole | Chan, Warren C.W. | Strategies for Moving Multi-target Nucleic Acid Assays towards Clinical Use | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Diagnostic tests have the power to detect disease and determine treatments. Recent diagnostic innovations have focused on technological advancements to decrease turnaround times or improve limits of detection. Although this improves test capabilities it does not inherently increase patient use or speed up clinical translation. In this thesis I describe how to integrate patient needs and clinical requirements into the design of a multi-target diagnostics for detecting infectious diseases. The model platform is the MNAzyme-GNP system, which uses nucleic acid probes to detect genetic markers of disease. I integrate knowledge on prominent pathogens, clinically relevant pathogen concentrations, sample matrix compositions and target sequence variability into the design process. I then use this platform to detect bacteria that cause bloodstream infections, antibiotic resistance markers and respiratory viruses. Select antibiotic resistance markers and viruses require more than one probe for accurate detection. To understand when more than one probe is needed to obtain high clinical sensitivity I investigate the effect of nucleic acid mutations on probe-target binding and clinical sensitivity. I identify the number of mutations that can be tolerated by a single nucleic acid probe and leverage that cut-off to develop a strategy for combining nucleic acid probes. Together, these findings can be used to translate new diagnostic technologies from research laboratories into medical clinics. | Ph.D. | knowledge, labor, invest | 4, 8, 2009 |
| Diamond , Daniel John Sage | Phillips, Jim | Dispossession and Resistance: A History of Indigenous and Settler Relations to Land in British Columbia, 1800-1890 | Law | 2022-11 | Throughout Canada treaties between Indigenous peoples and the crown have provided the legal foundation for the crown’s underlying title to land. In British Columbia, however, only a handful of treaties were made. Nevertheless today, according to one now contested view of Canadian common law, the crown holds underlying title to all lands in the province, much of which, is held in fee simple by non-Indigenous people. How did the crown acquire underlying title to all the land in British Columbia? What were the legal mechanisms that erased Indigenous land rights and placed the land in the hands non-Indigenous people? How did Indigenous communities manifest resistance to the curtailment of their land rights? This thesis explores these questions and argues that Indigenous land was converted into crown land and placed in the hands of white settlers through proclamations, land registry acts, and government policy. | LL.M. | settler, indigenous, land | 4, 10, 16, 15 |
| Kopec, Anna | White, Linda A | The Politics of Homelessness: Poverty, Policy, and Political Participation | Political Science | 2022-11 | How do everyday interactions with the welfare state influence political participation? The policies individuals interact with dictate their relationship with the state. Policy designs, therefore, play a vital role in the inclusion of individuals into the welfare state as well as the political system. Policies have effects on how individuals participate politically, through the resources they distribute, the institutional arrangements they govern, and the messages they send regarding the deservingness of target populations (Pierson, 1993; Campbell, 2004; Schneider & Ingram, 1993; Mettler, 2005). How policy designs influence participation, and how different policies integrate to influence political participation and inclusion, requires further attention. An investigation of the relationship between policy and participation from the perspective of a marginalized population allows for a bottom-up examination of the welfare state (Michener, SoRelle & Thurston, 2020). Individuals experiencing homelessness are among the most vulnerable in western states and interact with several state appendages and services. In doing so, they advocate for themselves and others while interacting with multiple policies. In this dissertation, I describe a causal mechanism that connects the inclusivity of policy design and the interaction of multiple policies on the one hand, to political participation on the other. Policy inclusivity and participation are defined inductively. I present empirical evidence from a mixed method comparative study, which includes 118 interviews with individuals experiencing homelessness, service providers, and policymakers in Melbourne and Toronto. Both cities are located in liberal welfare states with means-tested and individualist policies to combat homelessness. Results from a quantitative analysis of national election surveys finds that there are complex relationships between policy, poverty, and participation. Qualitative interviews, therefore, add vital nuance to these quantitative findings and build the mechanism of policy design inclusivity. Even given failing and exclusionary housing, social assistance, and health policies, individuals experiencing homelessness participate and express their desire to bring about change. Investigating how and where individuals participate, as well as the policy designs that encourage or limit that participation, is therefore important to policy success and democratic inclusion. This research contributes to multiple bodies of political science and public policy literature. | Ph.D. | poverty, homeless, welfare, invest, marginalized, cities, housing, institut, democra | 1, 9, 10, 11, 16 |
| Hicks, Benjamin Lee | Goldstein, Tara | To Do This Discussion Differently: Queering Teacher Professional Learning Through Comic Art and Graphic Stories | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This dissertation describes a qualitative research study that is grounded in the experience of learning-while-teaching. My methodology includes contemplative teacher practice and arts-based data analysis, the demonstration of which incorporates my own experience as an elementary school teacher, a teacher educator, and a queer/trans (Q/T) person in schools. Overall, this research aims to consider how we might begin to address socially- and emotionally-challenging topics in teacher education differently. Specifically, I ask: What formats for teacher professional learning (TPL) show promise in supporting educators to expect, welcome, and include trans/gender diverse (GD) students, families and staff in schools? Through a theoretical lens that brings together perspectives from practitioner research, critical ethnography and arts-based data analysis, I work to centre the voices and experiences of trans/GD people involved in the school system in various roles. As an important boundary to that idea of “centring”, I emphasize the need to shift the expectation that it is Q/T people who will continue to do this teaching by offering our own bodies as exemplars, and to disrupt the notion that we must literally en-ACT these explanations in order to deserve and receive school communities that care for us. The literal content of this dissertation describes what the process of my research has taught me about my data, while its physical form works to enact that learning through the medium of comic art. I have communicated the findings of my research through a series of graphic stories, which also encourage the reader to consider what they read/see/feel in the context of their own lives and identities. These books both ask for and offer the kind of commitment to individual identity work that is frequently expected, yet rarely modeled or supported, in teacher education. This interweaving of process through product and the blurring of story-telling/receiving in academia is important because it proposes a less- binary future for education. This thesis and these stories imagine a system where teachers are taught to expect that we will learn and change continuously in relation to every experience, and every individual, who is part of our classroom community. | Ph.D. | learning, gender, queer | 4, 5 |
| Mac, Stephen Jichuen | Sander, Beate | Applying Health Technology Assessment Methodologies to Support Health Policy for Lyme Disease: Assessing Health and Economic Burden, and Cost-effectiveness of Potential Interventions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Lyme disease (LD) is an increasingly common vector-borne disease reported in temperate climate zones in North America. In Canada, the number of confirmed LD cases reported has increased from 144 in 2009 to 2,851 in 2021. An increasing number of LD cases along with the controversies on clinical management within the medical community and patient advocacy groups prompted the government to commit to addressing the challenges of recognition, timely diagnosis, and treatment of LD, mandated by the Federal Framework on Lyme Disease Act. However, evidence gaps related to LD health outcomes, the economic burden to the healthcare system, and cost-effectiveness of LD interventions remained. In the last decade, high-quality evidence has been more commonly produced by health technology assessment (HTA) methodologies for infectious diseases to support public health planning and the evaluation of innovative technologies. Therefore, the goal of this thesis was to use specific HTA methodologies to generate evidence to inform health policy for LD in Ontario. The first study conducted was a systematic review of long-term sequelae, prognostic factors, health-related quality of life, and health state utility values associated with LD in North America and Europe. The second study estimated the economic burden and health outcomes attributable to laboratory-confirmed LD in Ontario using a population-based retrospective cohort study, health administrative data and laboratory test data. The third study involved the development of a microsimulation model to simulate the natural disease history of LD and estimate the number of LD cases, sequelae, and projected population burden, expressed as quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). The fourth study used the microsimulation model to conduct a cost-utility analysis of potential risk-based LD vaccination programs in Ontario assuming a vaccine candidate profile. This thesis summarized long-term outcomes associated with LD, which can be used to shape or support clinical management guidelines, and future cohort studies. While investing in universal vaccination programs are typically good value, a tailored approach may be optimal for LD. This body of work demonstrated how HTA methodologies can be used to synthesize clinical, epidemiological, and economic evidence to support current and future health policy decision-making for emerging infectious diseases. | Ph.D. | public health, healthcare, vaccine, labor, invest, climate | 3, 8, 9, 13 |
| Lewitzky, Rachael A. | McDougall, Doug | Exploring Post-secondary Instructors’ Approaches to Teaching Introductory Statistics Courses Online | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This study employs a multiple case study approach to investigate teaching approaches used by post-secondary instructors in undergraduate online introductory statistics courses. This study draws on semi-structured interviews and document analysis to explore how instructors synthesize their use of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (TPACK) in virtual settings. The results from this study indicate that teaching introductory statistics courses online offer many benefits to both students and instructors. They provide continuous access to content, flexibility, and autonomy with regard to learning. Challenges with teaching introductory statistics online include learner-instructor interactions, academic integrity, and course offering properties (e.g., grading support, class size). The four major findings from the case study with these instructors include: 1) online environments provide ways for instructors to give students agency over when, where, and how they access and engage with statistics content; 2) tools should be used that allow instructors and students to write and present statistics syntax; 3) academic integrity and large class sizes pose challenges to teaching introductory statistics online; and 4) informal and formal professional development settings are necessary for successfully facilitating an introductory statistics online. Implications of this study suggest that successfully teaching undergraduate introductory statistics courses online require joint efforts on behalf of instructors, administrators, support units, and educational software developers. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Biancolin, Andrew | Brubaker, Patricia L | Secretagogin is Essential for Circadian GLP-1 Secretion and is Altered in a Model of Type 2 Diabetes | Physiology | 2022-11 | Glucagon-like Peptide-1 (GLP-1) is secreted from intestinal L-cells in response to food intake to upregulate glucose-dependent insulin secretion. GLP-1 based therapies are therefore employed in the treatment of type 2 diabetes (T2D) through the use of receptor agonists or degradation inhibitors, which drastically increase levels in the circulation. Importantly, in physiology, GLP-1 exhibits a circadian pattern in its secretion, coordinating diurnal insulin secretion. Previous publications have shown that GLP-1 secretion closely follows Arntl expression in mGLUTag L-cells; however, intermediaries connecting the circadian clock to GLP-1 secretion remain to be elucidated. Interestingly, a mass spectrometry analysis in mGLUTag L-cells identified Secretagogin (SCGN) as highly upregulated at the peak GLP-1 secretion time point. SCGN is also rhythmic in pancreatic ɑ and ß–cells and is both essential for insulin secretion and reduced in islets from patients with T2D. Furthermore, a recent publication showed SCGN administration improves glucose tolerance in obese mice. I therefore hypothesized that SCGN is essential for circadian GLP-1 secretion and is reduced in a model of T2D. Analysis of synchronized mGLUTag and hNCI-h716 L-cells revealed circadian rhythms in Scgn RNA and protein, and BMAL1 demonstrated increased binding to the Scgn promoter at the peak time point of GLP-1 secretion. Immunostaining of murine and human ileum showed that all GLP-1+ cells expressed SCGN. Immunocytochemistry further demonstrated the translocation of SCGN to the membrane upon stimulation, with increased binding to ß-actin at the peak time point suggesting that SCGN facilitates cytoskeletal transport of granules to the membrane. Further functional analyses by Scgn knockdown (si-RNA) and knockout (Constitutive, Gcg-creERT2/+;Scgn-floxed and Vil-creERT2/+;Scgn-floxed) revealed that Scgn loss-of-function resulted in impaired rhythmic GLP-1 secretion. RNA-Seq analysis in Scgn knockdown mGLUTag L-cells demonstrated a decrease in pathways relating to ‘vesicle transport’. Lastly, in the high fat-streptozotocin model of T2D GLP-1 secretion was drastically elevated and arrhythmic in association with a similar shift and unexpected increase in the pattern of SCGN expression. Together, these findings show that L-cell Scgn is essential for circadian GLP-1 secretion in physiology and is increased in a model of T2D, with further studies warranted to investigate the mechanistic secretory alterations caused by Scgn loss-of-function. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Bello, Taiwo Olanrewaju | Musisi, Nakanyike B||Rockel, Stephen J | Blockade, Starvation, and Resistance: Gender, Violence, Trauma and Memory in the Nigerian Civil War, 1967-1970 | History | 2022-11 | The Nigerian civil war of 1967-1970 involved conflicts over ethnic differences, religious intolerance, political marginalization, and national insecurity. While these issues were local and internal, the conflict attracted intense interest from beyond Nigeria’s borders and sometimes humanitarian support to either of the belligerents: Nigeria and Biafra. Concentrating on the impact on women, this dissertation examines the 1966 attacks on easterners resident in northern cities, the consequences for displaced women and their children, and the subsequent wartime violence in the Biafran heartland. In analyzing the many ways in which the war shaped the everyday experiences of women, it also details their responses and actions. It argues that women’s traumatic experiences were the direct result of reckless actions on the part of the Nigerian government which imposed a blockade on Biafra, and the Biafran leadership which could have acted to alleviate the blockade but chose not to. This issue was “complex” and historians as well as locals have read it in different ways to apportion blame. By early 1968, the blockade and the shelling and bombing of Biafra by the Nigerian military had resulted in devastating food shortages and generated profound concern from the churches and humanitarian organizations. The International Committee of the Red Cross, along with the governments of the United States and Canada, arranged for corridors through which supplies would flow into the enclave. Although the Nigerian government reluctantly endorsed this arrangement, the Biafran government declined support for military reasons, thus exposing Biafra’s people to further misery. Nigerian forces’ bombing of markets where women operated also contributed to the acute shortages of food and other supplies in Biafra. Women in the Biafran heartland responded to the scourge of starvation by engaging in a transborder trade known as Afia Attack, a smuggling network controlled by women to facilitate the movement of food and medicine from Nigerian-controlled areas to Biafra. Women developed other survival strategies and practiced market rotation to ensure that trade continued. Despite their efforts to combat starvation and resist destruction, the humanitarian crisis in Biafra had devastating consequences for them and their children, killing at least one million people. | Ph.D. | gender, women, trade, humanitarian, cities, land, violence | 5, 10, 11, 15, 16 |
| Sandoval Herrera, Natalia Ivone | Welch Jr., Kenneth C | Sublethal Effects of Pesticides on Bats: from Cells to Behaviour | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | Pesticide use associated with agricultural intensification represents a threat for wildlife, particularly for non-target species. Insectivorous bats, for example, regularly forage in agricultural lands, providing valuable pest control services but potentially coming into contact with airborne pesticides and contaminated prey. Commonly used pesticides like organophosphates can impair essential physiological processes, threatening survival and long-term ecological function. Despite growing concern about these impacts, research on bats remains scarce, especially in vulnerable regions like the tropics. I studied the susceptibility of insectivorous bats to pesticide intake and the associated sublethal effects on their physiology and behavior. I used an integrative approach to evaluate risk of exposure, to study sublethal effects, and to test promising non-destructive biomarkers for monitoring pesticide exposure in free-living bats. I used big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) as a model for insectivorous species to study the effects of Chlorpyrifos (CPF), a commonly used and highly neurotoxic pesticide. Using a toxicokinetic mathematical model, I found that pesticide intake through skin is particularly important for bats, especially when foraging in arable crops like soybean and corn. Dermal exposure must therefore be included in future risk assessments. Using a set of robust biomarkers, I found neurotoxic effects at molecular (proteomics) and individual levels (behaviour) in bats exposed to an environmentally realistic dose of CPF. Proteins involved in synaptic function, plasticity, oxidative stress, and apoptosis were altered in exposed bats, which also showed reduced exploratory activity and impaired associative memory. These results give insights into the mechanisms of pesticide toxicity and the consequences in bats ecology. Finally, I combined laboratory and field experiments to evaluate the performance of different biomarkers. Micronuclei frequency, a genotoxicity biomarker, and cholinesterase activity, an exposure biomarker, were accurate indicators of toxicant effects in both settings. Leukocyte profiles and hair cortisol, however, were not informative endpoints of pesticide effects. Overall, my results show that combining multiple biomarkers provides stronger, more conclusive evidence of toxic effects of pollutants in wildlife. Understanding the mechanisms and effects at different levels of biological organization can enable researchers to better predict the implications for populations and communities and help to inform mitigation strategies. | Ph.D. | agricultur, labor, environmental, pollut, species, ecolog, land, wildlife | 2, 8, 13, 14, 15 |
| Hicks, Steven | Lockhart, Ellen | The Cultural “Work” of Baron Gottfried van Swieten: Peering Behind the Printed Score of Joseph Haydn’s Die Jahreszeiten/The Seasons (1802) | Music | 2022-11 | This dissertation offers an alternate reading of a troublesome musical work, uncovering disregarded aspects of the genesis and implications of Joseph Haydn’s final oratorio, Die Jahreszeiten/The Seasons (1802). Merging music and book historical methodologies, I revisit the story of Haydn’s final oratorio from the perspective of the librettist: Viennese diplomat, Baron Gottfried van Swieten. By exploring the history of the source material, probing the librettist’s didactic aesthetics, and demonstrating the salience of those aesthetics in his collaboration with Haydn, I offer a revised view of Die Jahreszeiten/The Seasons as the final campaign of Swieten’s illustrious career. First, I explore the history of Swieten’s source material, James Thomson’s The Seasons (1730), as originally adapted for German readers by Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1745). I provide examples of English musical settings that resonate with early theological readings of the poem and show how specific aspects of Brockes’ early translation informed the composition of the libretto. Ultimately, I situate the libretto within a larger history of mediation, translation, and adaptation. My second chapter interrogates the authorship of the oratorio and Swieten’s role as mediator of North German aesthetics—particularly the ideas of Johann Georg Sulzer—into Vienna. Where critics championed the composer as ‘author,’ I explore how discourses of authorship in German print culture obscured the extent of Swieten’s involvement. My final chapters show how Swieten’s aesthetics drew upon the artistic cultures encountered throughout his career via analyses of his annotated libretto. I show how Swieten’s recommended tone paintings and recitatives work in tandem to immerse the characters—and—audience in what I call ‘didactic diegesis,’ negotiating a host of aesthetic perspectives. My concluding coda casts a similar gaze upon Sigismund von Neukomm’s arrangement, which offered a more visceral engagement with the work through bodily engagement. Where music history remembers Die Jahreszeiten/The Seasons as the begrudging capstone of an aged composer’s career, this dissertation champions the work as the final, unsung triumph of an Enlightened reformer obscured by the monuments—both brick and mortar and as constituted through the medium of print—erected in the name of Haydn. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| MacLachlan, Janna Lynn | Nixon, Stephanie | Naalagiursaniq Tunnganarnirlu (Learning to Listen and be Welcoming): Engaging Inuit Perspectives on Timimut Ikajuqsivik (Rehabilitation Services) for Children in the Qikiqtani Region of Nunavut | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Background: Timimut ikajuqsivik (or rehabilitation services in English) for children in the Qikiqtani Region of Nunavut is primarily delivered following mainstream Canadian practices informed by Eurocentric worldviews. Inuit have had little opportunity for their perspectives to inform timimut ikajuqsivik, limiting Inuit access to self-determination and cultural safety in this context. The primary objective of this study was to advance knowledge on how the timimut ikajuqsivik interests of Inuit children in this region can be understood and supported by foregrounding Inuit perspectives, knowledge and worldviews. Methodology: This qualitative study was organized according to the Piliriqatigiinniq Partnership Model for Community Health Research (Healey & Tagak, 2014) and supported by critical theory. The first manuscript (of four presented in this dissertation) describes the accountability framework created to support the bridging of Inuit worldviews and the critical paradigm in the study. Twenty-five participants from two Qikiqtani Region communities shared their knowledge to inform the study. Participatory analysis significantly shaped findings. Findings: Three manuscripts share research findings as follows: (1) proposing five Inuit knowledge concepts that can guide timimut ikajuqsivik; (2) highlighting Inuit knowledge about supporting childhood learning and skill building, and significant tensions between this knowledge and mainstream rehabilitation’s status quo; and (3) describing the importance of relationship-focused and contextually relevant practices to timimut ikajuqsivik moving forward together with Inuit toward reconciliation. The importance of relationships, learning to listen, being welcoming, and offering contextually relevant services, including Inuit providers and language, are highlighted across the findings. Critical analyses in each of the manuscripts describe how systems of inequity privilege Eurocentric perspectives and approaches on Inuit lands, and the negative impacts that can result. In making tensions and power dynamics visible, openings for change can be made. The dissertation concludes with a story of incorporating study learning into personal and professional actions. Conclusion: This thesis shares knowledge about coming together across differences to find ways to support sivumuaqatigiigniq saimmaqatigiinnikkut (moving forward together in reconciliation). With attention to redressing inequitable power dynamics that privilege Eurocentric perspectives over those of Inuit, opportunities abound for timimut ikajuqsivik to collaboratively support the interests of Inuit children and families. | Ph.D. | equitable, knowledge, worldview, learning, equity, labor, equit, reconciliation, land, self-determination | 4, 8, 10, 15, 16 |
| Mackinnon, Katherine | Shade, Leslie R | Databound: Histories of Growing Up on the World Wide Web | Information Studies | 2022-11 | For the past 30 years, young people have been growing up, existing, and producing data online. Their digital traces are distributed sporadically across the live and dead web, in corporately owned digital spaces, institutional holdings, and web archives. How these traces are theorized, studied, aggregated, deployed, or destroyed deserves increased public and academic attention. In this dissertation I argue that data is inextricably attached to people, both in the ways that it represents them and in the ways that they desire and deserve meaningful control over it. To this end, I propose an ethico-methodological intervention called an “archive promenade,” and developed Care Ethics Scaffolding for research with archived youth data that engages with feminist ethics of care to bring people back in relation with their data when researching the historical web. How an individual’s digital traces came to be, and the ways in which they are connected or distanced from their data, is explored throughout Chapters 3-5 where I demonstrate findings from my qualitative research project, called Early Internet Memories. In this project, I asked millennial participants (b. 1981-1996) who grew up in Canada to describe their memories of growing up online and the digital spaces that they once used to occupy. I also demonstrate how relationships between young people and the internet are not inevitable but rather constructed through government and commercial interests in promoting and creating an ideal child subject to support the growth and development of a new industry. These relationships were also multiple and varied, reflecting intersections of race, gender, class, age, and geographic location, which worked to differentiate many young people’s experiences and memories of the web. I argue that by exploring these histories of growing up online, we can see the processes by which people become databound: attached to the data they have produced throughout their lives in ways that they both can and cannot control through their ability to socially modulate and determine their information privacy. This framing assists in theorizing the long-term implications of online engagement, digital privacy, and the effects of datafication on life and livability on the web. | Ph.D. | gender, feminis, internet, institut | 5, 9, 16 |
| Campusano Garate, Rolando Raul | Baum-Snow, Nathaniel | Essays on Firm Choices, Spatial Spillovers, and Neighborhoods | Management | 2022-11 | This dissertation is composed of three chapters. Each of these chapters follows an approach that uses economic theory and data to explore different issues within urban and labor economics literature. The first chapter develops an algorithm that uses observed location choices to delineate economic neighborhoods. The second (and main) chapter investigates the role that local agglomeration spillovers play on new firms' outcomes using variation within economic neighborhoods for identification. Finally, the third chapter develops a flexible theoretical framework to empirically study the substitutability of computers and workers across occupations, and how these occupations are organized in the firm's organizational structure. | Ph.D. | labor, worker, invest, urban | 8, 9, 11 |
| Atkinson, Daniel James | Pedretti, Erminia | 'So what are you going to eat?': Insights from a Simple Foods and Intuitive Eating workshop Series | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This qualitative study is situated at the intersection of nutrition education, food literacy (Vidgen & Gallegos, 2014), intuitive eating (Tribole & Resch, 2012), and understandings of the health implications of regularly consuming ultra-processed foods (Monteiro, 2009). In this thesis I explore the perspectives and experiences of seven parents and caregivers from a vulnerable population who participated in a 12-part workshop series (held in a kitchen-equipped community facility in a large Ontarian city). The workshops, which focused on a novel healthy eating framework called ‘Simple Intuitive Eating’ (SIE), revolved around discussing SIE, practicing cooking techniques, tasting resultant foods, and collectively sharing challenges and strategies related to living healthily in a contemporary urban environment. I co-facilitated these workshops alongside a registered dietitian (with whom I also co-created SIE and the workshop curriculum). In this critical case study (Flyvbjerg, 2011), I asked: 1) How do workshop participants make sense of SIE?; and 2) What supports and barriers are operative for participants with regards to eating simply and intuitively? Data sources included pre-, post-, and three-month-post-workshop interviews with participants; video of workshop sessions; participants’ journals; and my field notes and post-workshop audio debriefs. Significant themes were identified in the data using theoretical sampling and constant comparative methods (Lincoln & Guba, 1985). Velardo’s (2015) model of food literacy was useful in interpreting participants’ views on SIE. SIE also interfaced with participants’ preferences for ‘real’ foods, and underscored the roles of trust and ethical sensibility in food literacy. I adapted Castro et al.’s (2016) articulation of patient-centredness, participation and empowerment to a workshop context so as to interpret participants’ experiences with regards to SIE and the workshops themselves. Some participants employed a strategy of ‘muddling through’ (Lindblom, 1959) in navigating complexities of SIE, changing old habits, and home-cooking. Supports and barriers identified in terms of practicing SIE included: economic, temporal, sociocultural-familial and culinary dimensions; awareness, sensation and hunger; habit and addiction; stress, exhaustion and convenience; acquiring food; and exercise, mobility and other coincident health challenges. Findings supported embodied dimensions of food literacy. Implications from this research are provided for food researchers, health practitioners, pedagogues and policymakers. | Ph.D. | nutrition, culinary, food literacy, vulnerable population, urban, consum | 2, 10, 11, 12 |
| Bonafiglia, Quinn A | Bendeck, Michelle | The Role of Discoidin Domain Receptor 1 (DDR1) in Cardiopulmonary Disease: Characterizing Mouse Models of Pulmonary Hypertension and Impaired Lung Development. | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-11 | Discoidin domain receptor 1 (DDR1) is a collagen-binding receptor tyrosine kinase that regulates cellular growth, migration, and cell-matrix interactions. However, the roles of DDR1 in the normal or diseased lungs and heart are elusive. Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a condition that affects the pulmonary vasculature and right side of the heart, and can manifest alongside developmental disorders of the lungs. The pathobiological mechanisms of PH and lung development are not fully understood, partly owing to ineffective mouse models. The work presented in this thesis describes a new mouse model (Ddr1-/- mice) of PH and impaired alveolarization, and outlines a comprehensive methodology for ultrasound imaging of the murine right ventricle (RV). This thesis also explores a potential role for DDR1 in regulating the intercalated disc (ICD), a specialized structure that maintains cell-cell mechanical and electrical coupling in cardiomyocytes. In my first study, I demonstrate that Ddr1-/- mice have a PH-like phenotype involving early mortality, elevated RV systolic pressure, RV hypertrophy and dysfunction, and increased muscularization and reduced density of pre-capillary pulmonary arteries. Ddr1-/- mice also present with enlarged alveolar spaces and reduced secondary septation at 7 days of age. Impaired alveolarization in Ddr1-/- mice results from reduced alveolar epithelial growth, migration, and EMT expression as determined by both in vivo and in vitro experiments. In my second study, I describe a protocol for high frequency ultrasound imaging of mice that have undergone pulmonary arterial constriction to induce RV pressure-overload. The progression of cardiac remodeling was assessed in five acoustic windows and used novel imaging modalities including anatomical M-mode, ECG-based kilohertz visualization, and strain imaging. In my final study, I demonstrate that DDR1 is not required for expression or localization of ICD components in the normal LV, nor the pressure-overloaded myocardium induced by transverse aortic constriction (TAC). However, Ddr1-/- mice had less collagen accumulation in the LV following TAC, compared to WT controls, suggesting a protective phenotype against cardiac fibrosis. In summary, these studies describe a novel phenotype of PH and impaired alveolarization in Ddr1-/- mice, and broaden our understanding of both lung development and RV remodeling. | Ph.D. | wind | 7 |
| Negrea, Jeffrey | Roy, Daniel M||Rosenthal, Jeffrey S | Approximations and Scaling Llimits of Markov Chains with Applications to MCMC and Approximate Inference | Statistics | 2022-11 | Markov chains are an essential tool in computational statistics because they form the basis for efficient exact and approximate inference methods, especially in Bayesian statistics. This dissertation offers insight into the viability of approximate inference methods based on both approximations to the transition kernels of a Markov chain for exact methods, and on Markov chains derived from unadjusted stochastic gradient methods. This dissertation also demonstrates how to tune computational methods based upon Markov chains in order to optimize efficiency and accuracy for approximate and exact inference. Results are obtained via two key theoretical methods: (1) an analysis of the perturbation sensitivity of Markov chains using operator theory, and (2) through scaling limits of Markov chains that facilitate a comparison to idealized continuous-time processes. The primary contributions of this dissertation are: (i) a perturbation analysis of reversible geometrically ergodic Markov chains, which characterizes the stability of the stationary distribution and rate of convergence under changes in the transition dynamics; (ii) results on the geometry of probability densities, generalized distributional integration-by-parts, and their consequences; (iii) a joint characterization of the optimal proposal scaling and shaping for the random-walk Metropolis algorithm; and (iv) a complete characterization of the statistical asymptotics of stochastic gradient algorithms as methods for approximate inference, with recommendations on how to tune them for accuracy and efficiency. | Ph.D. | metro, transit | 11 |
| Ramjattan, Daniel Michael | McFadden, Jeffrey | Music Performance Anxiety on the Classical Guitar: Expert Strategies from Psychology and Pedagogy | Music | 2022-11 | Music performance anxiety (MPA) seriously affects nearly all musicians at some point in their lives and may cause musicians to abandon their careers or develop maladaptive coping mechanisms to manage their symptoms. While peer-reviewed studies have explored a broad array of psychological treatments for MPA, a paucity of research exists regarding expert classical guitarists’ recommendations for MPA symptom management. Since all post-secondary guitar instructors at the expert level interact with MPA in themselves and their students, and each instrumental discipline has idiosyncratic presentations of MPA, this dissertation seeks to understand common approaches and MPA management strategies from the perspective of classical guitar instructors at the post-secondary level—a cohort which includes the researcher. The project compares guitar experts’ recommendations with existing treatment protocols from psychology to understand MPA from a deeper scientific and heuristic perspective while providing pathways for novel research in this topic. _x000D_ This research concluded that guitarists’ approaches prioritized performance excellence and complete mental and physical preparation to manage MPA, while psychological treatments prioritized cognitive components of MPA, musician’s well-being, and symptom reduction. An impressive convergence of approaches appeared in the guitar and psychology literature, particularly regarding the use of mindfulness strategies and strategies from sports psychology. | D.M.A. | well-being, mindfulness, pedagogy | 3, 4 |
| Cho, Tiffany Elizabeth | Uetrecht, Jack | Testing Immune Mechanisms and Other Hypotheses of Idiosyncratic Drug-Induced Liver Injury (IDILI) | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2022-11 | Idiosyncratic drug reactions (IDRs) are adverse drug reactions that do not occur in most patients treated with a drug but remain a major concern in the pharmaceutical industry due to the high risk of uncertainty in its incidence, which may also lead to significant patient morbidity and mortality. As idiosyncratic as they are in humans, IDRs are also as rare in animals, and few valid animal models can simulate the clinical picture seen in humans. The current understanding of how IDRs occur is superficial, but there is compelling evidence that most IDRs are mediated by the immune system. We have developed a valid animal model using a Pd-1-/- mouse with the administration of anti-CTLA-4 to impair immune tolerance in order to unmask the potential of different drugs to cause idiosyncratic drug-induced liver injury (IDILI). As observed with green tea extract, the Pd-1-/- model was able to unmask its ability to cause liver injury similar to the clinical picture in patients. In addition to the modulation of the immune system, other factors such as inhibition of the mitochondrial electron transport chain or the presence of risk factors may contribute to the increased severity of IDILI. The presence of danger-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) may add to the severity of liver injury; however, complex tolerogenic mechanisms may prevent the progression towards liver failure. Moreover, inhibition of the mitochondrial electron transport chain with rotenone in the Pd-1-/- model did not increase isoniazid-induced liver injury. Although we have developed a validated mouse model, mice are not the best model to study all drugs and IDRs as there are interspecies differences. To address this limitation, we successfully developed a Pd-1 mutant rat using CRISPR/Cas9 technology to study drugs, such as nevirapine, that cannot be studied in mice due to the lack of the required enzyme to create the reactive metabolite. The presence of a drug-mediated skin rash was not observed in the Pd-1 mutant rat, although moderate-to-severe liver injury was observed, which further adds to the complexity of IDILI and IDRs in general. | Ph.D. | species, animal | 14, 15 |
| Yogev, Dikla | Light, Matthew | Religion and Police Legitimacy: the Case of Israel’s Haredi Community | Criminology | 2022-11 | This dissertation analyzes police legitimacy within a Jewish religious minority community in Israel, the Haredim. Informed by theories of procedural justice, social capital, integrative enclave, and community-society, the study explores the overarching theme of religion in police legitimacy. The chapters are organized into three distinct yet inter-related case studies and implement various research designs. In these chapters, I discuss possible mechanisms that have contributed to the surprising improvement in police legitimacy within this community. In the first article, I describe the Israeli-Haredi societal situation over the last twenty years and identify forces of modernization that have contributed to higher acceptance and Haredi participation with the police, namely increased trust and cooperation. I suggest that police legitimacy has gradually developed in a dialogical manner between the community and the police. The second article discusses brokerage with the police and demonstrates how, during the first wave of COVID-19, the community shifted its communication channels with the police, leaning more heavily on professional knowledge brokers rather than traditional religious brokers. This article discusses the potential for long-term improvement of police legitimacy within the community as a result of this shift in social capital. The third article focuses on organizations as socialization mechanisms that provide a safe space for Haredim to explore the Israeli public sphere and vice versa. Organizations that assist the police in various matters, and include Haredi volunteers, provide this religious minority with the opportunity to enhance communication with the police while keeping intact religious observance. In conclusion, the dissertation provides insight into the role of religion in policing and police legitimacy, offering an important view of religion as a unique factor. Theoretically, the dissertation contributes to the understanding of (1) how police legitimacy develops over time and how religion interacts with this process; (2) how social capital access, and hence communication channels with the police, may shift under certain circumstances within religious communities; and (3) how religious organizations with ties to the police working with integrative enclaves serve as agents of socialization. Limitations and future directions for research are discussed in all three articles, as well as in the conclusion. | Ph.D. | knowledge, capital, minorit | 4, 9, 10 |
| Sumner, Carolyne | Elliott, Robin | Musical Networks and Cultural Policy in Canada from 1945 to 1982 | Music | 2022-11 | This dissertation investigates the gatekeeping activities of a network of musicians and music administrators who governed the cultural institutions crucial to the dissemination of Canadian art music during the mid-twentieth century. Organizations including the Canadian Music Council, the Canadian Music Centre, the Composers, Authors and Publishers Association of Canada, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and the Canada Council for the Arts were managed by an overlapping network of predominantly white men of European descent. As directors, executives, and jury members, they established the dominant aesthetic practices of the time and controlled access to the resources composers needed to disseminate their musical works. More significantly, as proponents of musical modernism, they worked according to an aesthetic—and at times exclusionary—agenda. This network presided over postwar Canadian musical life and ensured the development of a thriving avant-garde art music scene, its championing efforts peaking with the Centennial Celebrations of 1967. In the early 1970s, the introduction of federal cultural policies challenged its power and centrality. Numerous social, political, and cultural transformations in the postcentennial era (1968–1982) challenged this network’s authority over music practices in Canada. Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Liberal government implemented a national cultural policy with a more diversified, democratic, and industrialized political agenda, blurring the aesthetic distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ which had previously been used by the network to govern Canadian art music practices. At stake was the network’s ability to sustain its gatekeeping activities and, by extension, the livelihood of the composers it supported. The second part of this dissertation thus sheds light on how Canadian cultural policy was implemented and how it impacted the funding, championing, and curating activities of the cultural institutions that managed the flow of musical production in Canada during the postcentennial era. This dissertation brings together cultural-historical, archival and SNA (social network analysis) methodologies to trace the formation of this network and identify its key actors. By evaluating the social, cultural, and political factors which both informed and impaired the network, it also illuminates the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion which determined the audibility and success of some composers, while simultaneously marginalizing others. | Ph.D. | invest, production, institut, democra | 9, 12, 16 |
| Maksimowski, Nicholas Alexander | Scholey, James | The Pathogenesis of CKD: Studies of FSTL1 and ACE2 | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Mechanism(s) responsible for the progression of chronic kidney disease (CKD) to end stage renal disease have not been fully elucidated. During my Ph.D. studies I completed bioinformatic, in vitro, in-silico, and in vivo studies to address this gap in current knowledge.In a first series of experiments, microarray analysis of kidneys from Col4a3-/- mice, an experimental model of CKD, revealed an early increase in follistatin-like-1 (FSTL1) expression. Little is known about FSTL1 in experimental or human CKD. FSTL1 localized to interstitial cells by RNAscope® and single cell transcriptomic data from human CKD showed that FSTL1 was confined to fibroblasts/myofibroblasts. In vitro, FSTL1 activated AP1 and NFκB, increased collagen I and interleukin-6 expression, and induced apoptosis in kidney cells. FSTL1 expression in kidneys from humans with CKD associated with age, eGFR, and proteinuria and was also related to interstitial fibrosis and tubular atrophy. Remarkably, CKD progression in participants with FSGS from the Nephrotic Syndrome Study Network (NEPTUNE) study was greater in patients with high baseline FSTL1 mRNA levels. Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) catalyzes conversion of angiotensin (Ang) II to Ang-(1–7). It is decreased in kidneys from Col4a3–/– mice and recombinant ACE2 (rACE2) administration lessens kidney injury in these mice. Interestingly, ACE2 is a receptor for SARS-CoV-2 but little is known about renal ACE2 expression in human CKD. I accessed renal tubulointerstitial (TI) and glomerular microarray expression data and clinical variables from healthy living donors and patients with CKD from the European Renal cDNA Bank. ACE2 expression was greater in males than females and lower in the glomeruli. Genes involved in inflammation and fibrosis correlated inversely with ACE2 expression. I then studied ACE2 expression in participants with FSGS from NEPTUNE. ACE2 expression was related to both sex and eGFR in this cohort. ACE2 expression was inversely related to kidney interstitial fibrosis, and tubular atrophy, in males but not in females. In summary, my studies support the hypotheses that intrarenal FSTL1 and low ACE2 contribute to the progression of CKD, suggesting that they may be important targets for the development of new treatment approaches to CKD. | Ph.D. | knowledge, female | 4, 5 |
| Fares, Andrew | Brands, Bruna B | Effects of Cannabis Alone and Combined with Alcohol on Simulated Driving | Pharmacology | 2022-11 | Alcohol and cannabis remain the two most commonly detected drugs in injured drivers. The simultaneous use of these drugs is commonly reported and their combined use increases the risk of impaired driving. Additionally, the potency of cannabis for recreational use has risen causing a discrepancy between the potency being sold, and that used in driving research. Study 1 examined the effects of combinations of smoked cannabis (12.5% THC) and alcohol (BrAC 0.08%) on simulated driving performance, subjective drug effects, cardiovascular measures and self-reported perception of driving ability in 28 youngadults. The combined use of alcohol and cannabis increased weaving and reaction time, and tended to produce greater subjective effects compared to placebo and the singledrug conditions suggesting a potential additive effect. Furthermore, participants seemed to be unaware of their greater level of impairment when under the influence of both drugs. Study 2 examined the effects of four different doses of smoked cannabis: placebo (0.009% THC), low dose (6.25% THC), medium dose (12.5% THC), and high dose (22% THC) on simulated driving performance and subjective drug effects in 18 adults. At the time that this analysis was conducted, the clinical trial was still ongoing. In order not to break the blind, Pharmacy services at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health designated the four drug conditions as A, B, C and D. Conditions A, B, and C showed increased weaving and reaction time at the 30-minute drive post drug administration and increased weaving at the 90-minute drive post drug administration compared to condition D. Condition C led to significantly greater weaving in the 30-minute drive compared to condition B and D, suggesting a dose-response effect. In line with these findings, the subjective drug effects were greater in condition A, B and C compared to condition D. ConclusionThe results of these studies add to the existing literature highlighting the increased driving impairment when cannabis and alcohol are used simultaneously. Individuals driving under these conditions do not seem to be aware of their increased impairment. The findings also suggest that driving impairment under the influence of cannabis maybe dose-related. | Ph.D. | mental health | 3 |
| Osterlund, Elizabeth Julianna | Andrews, David W | Quantitative Fast FLIM-FRET (qF3) to Study BCL-2 Family Protein-protein Interactions in Live Cells | Biochemistry | 2022-11 | The BCL-2 family proteins can promote or prevent cell death (pro- and anti-apoptotic proteins respectively). They function via an intricate network of intra-family interactions, the balance of which regulates the point of no return in apoptosis: mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP). Cancer cells may become ’addicted to‘ the expression of one or more anti-apoptotic proteins to evade death, so several compounds (called BH3 mimetics) have been developed that inhibit anti-apoptotic proteins, BCL-2, BCL-XL, or MCL-1 to initiate cell death. However, most BCL-2 family proteins have yet to be purified in full-length, and most BH3 mimetics have only been validated using peptides and truncated anti-apoptotic proteins in solution. To more reliably predict how these inhibitors will work in the clinic, we used Fluorescence Lifetime Imaging Microscopy (FLIM) to detect Fӧrster resonance energy transfer (FRET), or FLIM-FRET microscopy, to measure interactions between full-length BCL-2 family proteins in live cells. To measure FRET we fuse a donor fluorophore to one protein and an acceptor fluorophore to another, expressing both in the cell. If the two fusion proteins interact they bring the donor in close enough proximity with the acceptor for FRET to occur, resulting in a decrease in donor lifetime. However, traditional FLIM-FRET is low throughput and generates binding curves that vary between experiments due to the X-axis being measured in arbitrary units of intensity; not suitable for screening. This thesis highlights our contributions to the FLIM-FRET method, culminating in the introduction of our quantitative Fast FLIM-FRET (qF3) technique. We used qF3 to screen 15 promising BH3 mimetics to displace interactions of 24 full-length BCL-2 family protein-protein complexes in live cells and find that some compounds are highly functional, yet many exhibited unsuspected cross-reactivities and/or poor function. Finally, we used FLIM-FRET to closely study the interactions of BCL-2 Interacting Killer (BIK) protein in live cells. BIK is a membrane-anchored protein well-known for its localization to the endoplasmic reticulum(ER). In order to investigate BIK function in cells, we swapped the targeting sequences of BCL-XL and BCL-2 for localization to mitochondria or ER and surprisingly BIK interacted with BCL-XL/BCL-2-targeted to mitochondria. Finally, we propose a possible model and discuss the implications regarding BIK function. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Corkum, Trevor | Mirchandani, Kiran | Migrant Youth, Islandness, and Belonging on Prince Edward Island | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | The small Canadian province of Prince Edward Island has recently experienced a population boom, driven largely by international immigration. As a sub-national jurisdiction with considerable leverage over immigration and education policy, PEI has targeted young migrating international students in immigration and education marketing, positioning such migrants as ideal future Islanders whose arrival will reverse population loss. This qualitative study considers the lived experiences of nine such migrants, all of whom arrived on PEI on international student visas within the last six years and all of whom have expressed a desire, however nominal, to remain in the province following graduation. Using narrative and arts-informed research—in particular, photo elicitation and photovoice—this multi-modal, multi-stage study explores how migrating students experience various forms of belonging and exclusion in Island material and symbolic space. Hall’s (2017) theory of ethnos as an organizing and disciplinary practice for establishing and maintaining group identity is extended into the realm of Island space, to consider how the conditions and practices of islandness as a key vector of Island identity exclude migrating students from Island society in various ways. Findings suggest that historical discourses focused on maintaining a homogenized Island identity, constructed through operationalizing and policing a strict insider/outsider binary, punishes racialized subjects in particular. While a vibrant and diverse younger population suggests the Island may be reaching a demographic inflection point, in which migrating students benefit from parallel economies of affect and capital, data suggest that social and political networks continue to privilege and elevate white Islanders within material and symbolic Island spaces. Further, findings demonstrate how the Island imaginary continues to be produced within Island and transnational space in strategic and disciplinary ways as traditional, rural, past-centric, and culturally homogenous, despite ample evidence to the contrary. The research makes an important contribution to critical international education studies by considering the influential role sub-national policy and branding play in shaping how migrating students experience settlement and place. Further, the research offers an important case study to island studies scholars considering how island place, identity, and social relations shape (and are in turn shaped by) the conditions of international migration. | Ph.D. | capital, rural, land | 9, 11, 15 |
| Giwa, Babatunde Halar | Lee, Chi-Guhn | Discount Factor Estimation in Inverse Reinforcement Learning | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | In reinforcement learning, the reward that guides the learning process of a decision-maker acting in an environment to achieve a goal can be non-trivial to specify. As such, inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) seeks to observe an expert and explain behaviour in terms of a reward. However, behaviour of humans is linked to the choice of discount factor and arbitrary choices of discount factor in IRL can lead to different rewards and optimal behaviours. Thus, discount factor estimation as part of the IRL framework is crucial to mitigate such bias in the learning process. This thesis evolves a utility-based objective within the maximum entropy IRL algorithmic framework to simultaneously estimate the discount factor and reward in a gradient-based manner via explicit computations of derivatives. The case of a single expert is first investigated prior to extension to multiple experts, in which Expectation-Maximization procedure is employed to learn each expert's cluster of trajectories and obtain maximum likelihood estimates of interest. Experimental and numerical studies on MDP environments, e.g., Grid-World are carried out with evaluative performance measures. Furthermore, an application to real-world traffic data is presented. Driving behaviour of humans may react sub-optimally to congestion leading to loss in traffic capacity. Therefore, a comparison of the observed traffic flow with theoretical maximum flow gives a quantified loss. Recommendations are also made on how a human driver should be nudged to minimize the loss. This is possible by solving three optimization problems: IRL given traffic data to learn actual reward and discount factor, forward reinforcement learning using a flow-based reward to generate ideal driving behaviour leading to theoretical maximum traffic flow, and a least-square fitting procedure to compute ideal rewards. Empirical evaluations on highway 401 in Greater Toronto Area are carried out to validate the approach. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Duffee, Charlotte | Upshur, Ross||Jones-Imhotep, Edward | Fractures: A History and Philosophy of Patient Suffering in 20th-century American Medicine | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2022-11 | My dissertation explores the history and philosophy of patient suffering in 20th-century American medicine. Chapter One argues that historians of medicine colloquially synonymize suffering with related phenomena, such as pain, which risks treating suffering as a transhistorical object. That is a problem, first because suffering appears to be historically distinct, and second because neglecting it has undesirable consequences in the history of medicine and beyond. In response, Chapters Two and Three modestly enlarge the historical scholarship by presenting an intellectual and cultural history of American physician Eric Cassell’s (1928-2021) influential theory of suffering. This narrative argues that legal influences in Cassell’s early intellectual development and the medico-legal milieu in which he wrote provided the impetus, concepts, and language for his seminal theory. Chapter Four brings my historical findings to bear on current philosophical debates over Cassell’s view. Some critics argue that his account is too narrowly focused on damage, an objection I contextualize historically using the legal descriptions of suffering that influenced him by way of an explosion in medical malpractice lawsuits. My historical research thus lends credence to existing philosophical critiques. To further reinforce these critiques, I also introduce a case of suffering excluded by Cassell’s narrow account, which I call ‘paradoxical purposes.’ On the basis of this exclusion, I conclude that his view does not exhaust suffering as he intended. To rectify this shortcoming, Chapter Five amends his theory in two different ways. Both locate personal integrity, which Cassell says suffering affects, on a spectrum that ranges by ‘existential degrees.’ I refer to the lower end of this spectrum as ‘local suffering,’ which includes paradoxical purposes, whereas Cassell’s focus is on the higher end, ‘global suffering.’ Chapter Six explores two ways scholars can theorize about suffering along this spectrum. One exhausts suffering in general accounts, which I refer to as ‘monistic theories.’ The other involves a multiplicity of narrower models aimed at types of suffering, which I call ‘pluralistic theories.’ Next, I associate these theories with the conceptual questions to which they are most relevant in a bid to facilitate greater collaboration among theorists. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Baskaran, Sivani | Wania, Frank | Measuring, Predicting, and Applying the Octanol-air Partition Ratio (KOA) and its Temperature Dependence | Chemistry | 2022-11 | The partition ratio of chemical concentrations in octanol and air at equilibrium (KOA) is often used in environmental chemistry to describe numerous partitioning processes involving the gas phase. A database comprising 2 500 experimental and 10 000 estimated KOA values was assembled and curated to consolidate decades of previous measurements and estimations. Analysis of the database showed the advantages, gaps and applicability range of different measurement and prediction techniques. Relying on the experimental KOA values from the database, five different methods for estimating KOA were compared in terms of their suitability for producing reliable predictions with low prediction intervals and wide applicability. Poly-parameter linear free energy relationships were identified as the preferred prediction technique. A new, curated dataset of high-quality internal energies of octanol-air phase transfer dUOA, which is key to predicting the temperature dependence of the KOA, was assembled and used to develop a new equation that predicts dUOA using only the log KOA at 25 °C. Direct measurements of the log KOA in the range from 4.5 to 7 are rare, but could be made with a modified generator column technique. Quantification of the octanol concentration during the experiments was identified as a key requirement for obtaining reliable results for substances in this volatility range. This thesis expanded current measurement techniques and identified and created reliable methods for predicting the KOA and its temperature dependence. | Ph.D. | energy, environmental | 7, 13 |
| Sharma, Sameer Kumar | Sarris, Costas D | Design and Characterization of Touch Sensing, EMI Shielding and Wireless Power Transfer Structures for Wireless Devices | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | With the market for wireless devices as competitive as ever, the stricter performance specifications imposed on new devices test the limits of current design tools. This motivates further research on design optimization approaches that can meet these stricter specifications under fabrication constraints. The thesis demonstrates noveldesign optimization approaches with experimental validation, and material level investigations that can solve three significant problems associated with the design of modern wireless devices. First, an electromagnetically-aware design methodology is proposed for touch sensor panels, to facilitate the integration of antennas. Building on the observation that touch sensor panels are finite periodic structures with transmission pass-bands that depend on the shape of their electrodes, these shapes are optimized to facilitate the integration of antennas at frequency bands of interest. To that end, a hybrid simulation approach is leveraged for touch sensor panels, based on the combination of a quasi-static simulation of a sub-section of the panel for the extraction of an equivalent circuit of the entire panel that is simulated in SPICE, reducing the simulation time by an order of magnitude. The feasibility of this methodology is experimentally demonstrated, by integrating an antenna with a touch sensor panel with minimal impact on its radiation pattern. As an increasing number of wireless services co-exist in various indoor and outdoor environments, the importance of electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding is as high as ever. Shielding structures for such applications, such as frequency selective surfaces and absorbers, often need to be optically transparent for aesthetic and practical reasons. This thesis introduces optically transparent EMI shield designs based on copper mesh and aluminum-doped zinc oxide, with a unique combination of absorbance and optical transparency that advance the state of the art. Finally, a semi-definite relaxation (SDR) design optimization framework is applied for wireless power transfer systems with a single transmitter and multiple parasitically excited loops on a surface, for wireless power transfer in free space and in biological tissues. The potential of this approach is demonstrated to achieve significantly improved wireless power transfer efficiency to implanted devices, designing a proof-of-concept system including a small receiver at 50 MHz. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest | 2, 9 |
| Waskiw-Ford, Marcus | Moore, Daniel R | The Impact of Essential Amino Acid Supplementation on Free-living Protein Metabolism and Recovery following Resistance Exercise in Healthy Adults | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | The consumption of essential amino acids (EAAs) plays an important role in enhancing adaptation and recovery after exercise. The two studies of this thesis sought to determine the effect of crystalline EAA supplementation following resistance exercise (RE) on protein metabolism and muscle recovery in free-living settings. The first study examined the effect of daily EAA supplementation on myofibrillar protein synthesis following RE and how this may relate to the recovery of muscle damage. We found that EAA supplementation did not enhance myofibrillar protein synthesis integrated over 96 hours post-RE in free-living young men consuming 1.2g/kg/day of dietary protein. We also found that EAA supplementation moderately improved muscle damage recovery over the same timeframe, but this was unrelated to changes in myofibrillar protein synthesis. The second study examined the retention of exogenous leucine (an index of whole-body protein synthesis) and the urinary 3-methylhistidine:creatinine ratio (3MH:Cr; an index of myofibrillar protein breakdown) with different EAA supplements following bodyweight RE in a home-based setting. We found that exogenous leucine retention and urinary 3MH:Cr improved with the consumption of an EAA formulation or branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) following RE in young adults. However, these outcomes generally improved to a greater extent with EAA supplementation as compared to BCAAs. The overall findings of this thesis indicate that the consumption of all EAAs optimizes the anabolic response to RE, but is less impactful in the context of adequate dietary protein. Additionally, the ability of EAAs to ameliorate muscle damage recovery is not contingent on increases in myofibrillar protein synthesis, suggesting they primarily enhance recovery via a different mechanism. Finally, we demonstrate that a home-based study design to assess postprandial protein metabolism, which had not previously been conducted, is feasible and provides meaningful results. This approach should be further applied in various settings outside the laboratory to understand how the beneficial effects of exercise are best supported by nutrition in different populations and/or circumstances. | Ph.D. | nutrition, labor, consum | 2, 8, 12 |
| Paabo, Monica Virve | Childs, Ruth A. | Undergraduate Students’ Experiences of Academic Probation and Suspension | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | This study involved case studies of the lived experiences of six undergraduate students who received notice of academic probation/suspension at a large university. The students participated in a voluntary academic retention program, and all returned to good academic standing. Two interviews with each student explored their backgrounds, high school experiences and challenges in first year university that resulted in notice of academic probation/suspension. The interviews also covered the students’ participation in an academic retention program and the actions they took to regain good academic standing.The interviews revealed a link between students’ assumptions from high school and lack of information at university that hindered their acquisition of needed knowledge and skills to succeed in first year. The mostly first-generation students encountered challenges in a system that expects students to have a baseline of knowledge, interactional skills to self-advocate and academic skills to manage their time and commitments effectively. The concepts of cultural capital, habitus and field were valuable for understanding how students handled academic probation and suspension, gained knowledge of the institution and obtained advice from trusted knowledgeable individuals. The students demonstrated determination and resilience which helped them return to good academic standing. Individual student profiles and cross-case analysis revealed areas of knowledge and understanding that were vital for students’ timely progress through university and provided insight into the kinds of advice and guidance that were most beneficial to them. The students’ completion of an academic retention program boosted their confidence, enhanced their academic skills for university and enabled them to interact more effectively with staff, mentors, academic advisors, faculty and peers. In addition, with guidance from academic advisors, they made strategic course choices that helped them improve their marks and return to good academic standing. Their university experience was transformative as they developed their interests, gained academic self-efficacy and even took on leadership roles. This study adds to our understanding of students’ experiences of academic probation and suspension, raises awareness of the challenges involved that merit the attention of administrators and hopefully encourages further work to understand and support the talents and needs of underrepresented students. | Ph.D. | knowledge, capital, resilien, resilience, institut | 4, 9, 11, 13, 15, 16 |
| Forest, Tess Allegra | Finn, Amy S | Statistical Learning Changes Across Development | Psychology | 2022-11 | Statistical learning is widely credited with empowering learners of all ages to extract the environmental regularities necessary to piece together the structure of their worlds. Its availability to learners of all ages, however, belies important differences in how statistical learning likely changes across development. Acknowledging this developmental change has broad implications for understanding the cognitive architecture of statistical learning, but very little past work has addressed possible developmental differences across childhood. In this thesis, I present three experiments highlighting the ways in which ongoing cognitive and neural development shape the operation of statistical learning, demonstrating that statistical learning changes in quality with age and experience. In Chapter 2, I ask whether the memory representations formed as a result of statistical learning vary with age. I report that while adults and older children (8-9-year-olds) form general and specific memories for statistical structures, young children (5-7-year-olds) remember only specific information. In Chapter 3, I directly investigate the neural underpinnings of statistical learning in 9-10-year-old children and young adults, and show that children rely more on parietal and temporal cortices and posterior hippocampus to support statistical learning than adults, who rely on ventral prefrontal cortex and anterior hippocampus. Accordingly, children represent general memories in the posterior hippocampus and IFG, while adults represent them in the vmPFC. In Chapter 4, I characterize the interaction between prior knowledge and attention during statistical learning in adulthood, laying the groundwork for developmental investigations of how children’s attention and minimal experience shape statistical learning. Specifically, I ask how experience in an environment shifts the focus of attention during learning, and show support for the idea that as a learner gains experience in an environment, they attend to successively more complex aspects of that environment. In Chapter 5, I review these interconnected findings, and reiterate that our understanding of statistical learning will be incomplete without considering how the input and output change with cognitive and neural development. Together, the studies in this dissertation offer clear insight into how developmental changes in statistical learning fundamentally alter the ways in which children interact with, learn about, and remember their experiences. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, invest, environmental | 4, 9, 13 |
| Ashdown-Franks, Garcia | Sabiston, Catherine M | Emplaced, Relational and Therapeutic? An Exploration of Parkrun’s Role in Mental Health Recovery | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | Community-based physical activity (PA) is beneficial for individuals with mental health conditions. In an explicit link between parkrun and mental health, the Bethlem Royal Hospital in South London was established in May 2019 as the first-ever site of a parkrun on the grounds of a National Health Service (NHS) trust. With the increasing use of PA as a multimodal treatment of mental illness, parkrun participation may have clinical implications. However, engagement in parkrun by individuals with mental illness is unknown. Therefore, the current program of research sought to understand the parkrun experiences of those experiencing mental health conditions. Study 1 explored discussions of parkrun in electronic mental health records. The findings were organized into 4 themes: i) More than Just a Run; ii) Clinicians as Gatekeepers; iii) The Role of parkrun in Recovery; iv) When parkrun Isn’t Always for Everyone. Study 2 examined the health, social and wellbeing impacts of parkrun engagement among runners and volunteers living with mental health conditions. It was found that those who run and volunteer, compared to those who only run, interact with significantly more individuals at parkrun, and feel more connected to their communities. Further, the benefits of parkrun participation are greater for those who run and volunteer, compared to those who only run. Using ethnographic methods, Study 3 aimed to capture the experiences of those involved in the Bethlem parkrun. The findings illustrated the emplaced and relational experiences of parkrun engagement. Given the context of the global pandemic, the Bethlem parkrun allowed for experiences of collective healing for many, while others were excluded or unable to engage in these practices. Collectively, this work may provide further understanding of the individual and collective experiences of parkrun. Such understandings may ultimately be of interest to both the parkrun organization and the Bethlem Royal Hospital. Furthermore, the findings regarding stigmatizing and discriminatory experiences may provide evidence for parkrun to explore ways that they may better welcome and accommodate individuals experiencing various mental health conditions and recoveries. These findings can be used to make parkrun a more welcoming and inclusive place for those experiencing mental illness. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, mental health, illness | 3 |
| Lamsal, Ramesh | Ungar, Wendy J | Measuring and Incorporating Family Spillover Cost and Health Consequences in Economic Evaluation of Child Health Interventions | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2011-11 | Background: A child's health conditions affect family members’ health, well-being, and economic well-being. However, these spillover effects are ignored in conventional economic evaluations, resulting in an incomplete understanding of the cost and consequences of child health interventions. Frameworks for including family spillover effects have been proposed but are not specific to pediatric economic evaluations.Objective: The primary aim was to develop a theoretical framework for incorporating family spillover effects in pediatric economic evaluation. Specific objectives were to (1) summarize methods used in pediatric cost-utility analyses (CUAs) to include family health spillover effects and maternal-perinatal CUAs to integrate health outcomes of pregnant women and children, (2) integrate evidence from theories, theoretical frameworks and models into a theoretical framework, and (3) measure health-related quality of life (HRQoL), care-related quality of life (QoL), mental health service use and time losses from paid labour and/or usual activities for parents of children with a neuroinflammatory disorder(s) (ND). Methods: A systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine methods used to incorporate health outcomes of family members in pediatric and maternal-perinatal CUAs. A critical interpretive synthesis was performed to develop a theoretical framework for incorporating family spillover effects in pediatric economic evaluation. Empiric data were collected prospectively from the Hospital for Sick Children in a cross-sectional study. Descriptive statistics were used to describe time lost from paid labour and/or usual activities, HRQoL, carer-related QoL and mental health services. Results: Considerable heterogeneity was observed in methods applied to incorporate health outcomes of family members in pediatric and maternal-perinatal CUAs. In the proposed theoretical framework ‘conducting economic evaluation from a pediatric family perspective,’ the family is a unit of analysis, where family costs and consequences related to a child's illness or disabilities are derived from all family members and incorporated into the analysis. Findings from the cross-sectional study indicated reduced HRQoL and carer-related QoL, and time lost from paid labour and/or usual activities of parents of children with ND. Conclusion: The thesis presents a theoretical framework ‘conducting economic evaluation from a family perspective’ for incorporating family spillover effects in pediatric CUAs. This can be used to develop empirical methods to include family spillover effects in pediatric CUAs. | Ph.D. | well-being, mental health, disabilit, illness, child health, women, labour | 3, 5, 2008 |
| van der Tempel, Jan | Moodley, Roy | Spiritual/religious Experience in Atheists with Bipolar Disorder: A Qualitative Study of Subjective Interpretation, Coping, and Treatment Experiences | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | Spiritual/religious experiences (SREs) are a hallmark of bipolar disorder (BD), and their subjective influence often persists post-episode. However, difficulty disentangling SRE meaning from illness narratives is common in BD, which can negatively impact illness coping and treatment engagement. While individuals with pre-existing spiritual/religious beliefs may benefit from access to adaptive interpretive frameworks shared by supportive social contexts, such resources are less readily available to atheists, who may be especially vulnerable to maladaptive SRE coping and outcomes._x000D_ The present study aimed to understand ways in which atheist adults with BD interpret their SREs, and which coping and treatment experiences are involved. Eleven medication-adherent Canadian and U.S. adults diagnosed with BD completed semi-structured interviews. A grounded theory analysis resulted in the following themes: SRE descriptions and mental health contexts; experiences influencing SRE interpretation; SRE explanations & related views; conflicting values and beliefs; helpful conceptual approaches; (predominantly negative) sharing and help-seeking experiences; spiritual/religious coping; relapse prevention; and personal growth and wellbeing. All participants endorsed agnostic and/or spiritual/religious worldviews after their SREs._x000D_ Interpretation of the results employed a cognitive approach to belief formation. The resulting middle-range theory proposes that SRE interpretation in atheists with BD is significantly influenced by cognitive dissonance between the lasting meaning/value of the SRE, acceptance of illness, and pre-existing atheist values and beliefs. Explanatory efforts may involve online and offline research, community exploration, and counselling/psychotherapy, and may be influenced by social pressures (e.g., effects of stigma, marginalization); consequences for self-esteem (e.g., internalized stigma, self-enhancing beliefs); existential concerns (e.g., coping with mortality); and mood fluctuations. Hybrid biomedical–spiritual/religious explanatory models may be common in this group, serving to reconcile SRE meaning/value with illness acceptance and pre-existing atheist values. Residual uncertainty, which can be persistent and pervasive, may be managed using various cognitive and behavioural strategies._x000D_ Clinical implications of the findings are examined and support a range of recommendations for clinical practice in assessment and treatment with this population. The study’s key contributions, limitations, and recommendations for future research are discussed, followed by some reflections from the researcher. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, mental health, illness, worldview | 3, 4 |
| Chau, Timothy | Zingg, David | Aerodynamic Design and Fuel Burn Evaluation of Transonic Strut-Braced-Wing Regional Jet and Single-Aisle Aircraft Through Aerodynamic Shape Optimization | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | The strut-braced-wing configuration is an unconventional aircraft concept that has the potential to significantly improve the fuel efficiency of transport aircraft through lower induced drag and higher structural efficiency. At transonic Mach numbers, however, the junction region of the wing and strut behaves as a transonic channel, which can cause the flow to accelerate and form shock waves, potentially diminishing the overall advantages of the concept. In order to address this concern and demonstrate the viability of the configuration for the regional jet and single-aisle classes of aircraft, this thesis investigates the concept’s aerodynamic design and fuel efficiency through aerodynamic shape optimization based on the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations. Conceptual multidisciplinary design optimization is first performed to develop strut-braced-wing concepts based on the Embraer E190-E2 and Airbus A320neo for the regional jet and single-aisle classes, respectively. Conventional tube-and-wing concepts are also developed to represent each reference aircraft as performance baselines. Gradient-based optimization is then performed on wing--body--tail models of each aircraft, with the objective of drag minimization at cruise over nominal range missions suitable to each class. Results from single-point optimization indicate that low drag strut-braced-wing aircraft can be achieved at Mach 0.78 and high design lift coefficients, while capturing trades between induced, viscous, and wave drag. This is accomplished with the help of novel aerodynamic design features which contribute to mitigating shock formation and boundary-layer separation from each wing-strut junction. Multipoint optimization demonstrates that the low drag performance can be maintained over a range of suitable and more challenging cruise conditions. Introducing low-order estimates for constructing approximations of full aircraft performance, results indicate a 13.1% and 12.2% improvement in cruise lift-to-drag ratio for the transonic strut-braced-wing regional jet and single-aisle aircraft, respectively, when compared to the similarly optimized conventional tube-and-wing aircraft. With current technology levels, these translate to relative block fuel reductions of 7.8% over each nominal range mission for both classes of aircraft. These benefits are attained with relatively high cruise altitudes necessary for achieving the lift coefficients optimal for such high aspect ratio wings, despite increased climb and descent fuel. | Ph.D. | invest, trade | 9, 10 |
| Carter, Joseph William Snarr | Krieger, Peter | Luminosity Studies and a Search for Heavy Resonances Decaying into a Pair of Z Bosons with the ATLAS Detector | Physics | 2022-11 | Many theories beyond the Standard Model predict additional, heavy Higgs bosons or other resonances. This thesis presents a search for such new states decaying into a pair of Z bosons. Two final states are considered, corresponding to the X → ZZ → ℓℓℓℓ and X → ZZ → ℓℓνν decay channels, where X stands for the hypothetical heavy resonance and ℓ stands for either an electron or muon, with the focus of this thesis on the ℓℓℓℓ channel. The search uses proton–proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy of sqrt(s) = 13 TeV collected between 2015 and 2018 by the ATLAS detector during Run 2 of the Large Hadron Collider, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. Different mass ranges spanning from 200 GeV to 2000 GeV for the hypothetical resonances are considered, depending on the final state and model. No significant excess over Standard Model predictions is observed, therefore the results are interpreted as upper limits on the production cross section of a spin-0 or spin-2 resonance under a number of benchmark scenarios. In the case of a spin-0 resonance, the observed upper limits on the production cross section times branching ratio at 95% confidence level are between 215 fb and 2.0 fb for the gluon–gluon fusion production mode, and between 87 fb and 1.5 fb for the vector-boson fusion production mode. These results are also interpreted in the context of Type-I and Type-II two-Higgs-doublet models, and are used to constrain the Randall–Sundrum model with an extra dimension giving rise to spin-2 Kaluza–Klein graviton excitations, which are excluded up to a mass of 1830 GeV at 95% confidence level. This thesis also presents studies of a novel luminosity-monitoring technique used for evaluating the systematic uncertainties of a track-counting luminosity algorithm used in the nominal calibration of the primary ATLAS luminosity measurement provided by the LUCID detector. This new luminosity algorithm, called LAr energy flow, exploits the observation that the average amount of energy deposited in the liquid-argon calorimeters per bunch crossing is proportional to the instantaneous luminosity. The energy-flow luminosity is evaluated in a set of special pp runs in 2017 and 2018, and is compared against track counting to evaluate their relative nonlinearity, with the two algorithms agreeing to within 0.5% in fills with sufficiently isolated bunches. | Ph.D. | energy, production | 7, 12 |
| Thompson-Walsh, Catherine | Scott, Katreena L | The Impact of Domestically Violent Fathers on Childrens Social-emotional Development: Beyond Domestic Violence Perpetration | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | A clear majority of children exposed to father-perpetrated domestic violence (DV) continue to have contact or live with fathers, yet beyond describing the impact of child exposure to father-perpetrated domestic violence (CEDV) on children, little research has investigated domestically violent men as fathers. This dissertation contributes to this scant literature. Study 1 investigated potential mediators of the relationship between CEDV and child social-emotional outcomes. Participants were fathers with a history of DV (n = 123) and a comparison group of non-violent fathers (n =101). Results showed that paternal depression, hostility, and coparenting difficulties significantly mediated the relationship between child exposure to DV and child internalizing and externalizing difficulties. Rejection was significantly correlated only with child externalizing difficulties and did not function as a mediator. Paternal over-reactivity and laxness were not significantly correlated with DV perpetration or child social-emotional outcomes. Study 2 presents a multiple hierarchical linear regression to determine whether there was a significant relationship between fathers’ history of DV, amount of father-child contact, and child social-emotional difficulties amongst fathers with (n = 124) and without (n = 101) a history of DV. Significant mediators identified in Study 1 were entered as covariates, as was child gender. Controlling for these paternal difficulties, there was a main effect of DV status such that fathers’ history of domestic violence was associated with more internalizing difficulties for children. All other effects were not significant. Study 3 used a longitudinal cross-lagged panel model to investigate the relationship between CEDV fathers’ (n = 39) parenting and coparenting over the course of an intervention program for DV fathers. Two hypotheses for how parenting and coparenting may be related were tested, including 1) the spillover hypothesis which predicted that higher levels of parenting difficulty would ‘spill over’ into the coparenting relationship and predict higher levels of coparenting difficulties and 2) the protective mothering hypothesis, which predicted that improvements in CEDV fathers’ warmth would predict increased healthy coparenting over time. Results showed the protective mothering model was a good fit for the data; the spillover hypothesis was not. | Ph.D. | gender, invest, violence | 5, 9, 16 |
| Ly, Michelle | Taylor, Michael D | Deciphering the Biological Differences between Micro-metastasis and Macro-metastasis in Medulloblastoma | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-11 | Medulloblastoma is a common paediatric brain tumor, arising within the hindbrain and affecting approximately 18-20% of children diagnosed with brain cancer. Metastasis is present in 40% of patients during initial diagnosis and is almost exclusive to the leptomeninges of the brain and spinal cord. Unfortunately, despite such high incidence and poor prognosis, leptomeningeal metastatic disease remains poorly understood and lacks effective therapies.The objective of my studies is to investigate the biology between micro- and macro-metastatic stages in medulloblastoma. My hypothesis is that the progression of a micro- to a macro-metastasis is dependent on a biological switch in which its inhibition carries therapeutic potential. In transgenic mice, I observed metastases of various sizes and with statistical modeling, I confirmed that there were two populations – micro- and macro-metastases. Using single-cell sequencing, I revealed that the two populations differed in their lipid metabolism and that alterations in the lipid composition of animals influenced metastatic burden. With such results, I proposed that micro-metastases are metabolically plastic – the ability to use one metabolite for multiple purposes – and must undergo a transition to become metabolically flexible – the ability to use multiple metabolites – prior to developing as macro-metastases. In addition to understanding the progression, I investigated the evolutionary trajectory of micro- and macro-metastases. Contradictory to expectations, I found that primary tumors and macro-metastases are more similar to each other than either primary tumors to micro-metastases, or micro- and macro-metastases to each other. Therefore, a proposed model for metastatic progression is the primary tumor gives rise to both micro- and macro-metastases, and the macro-metastases are capable of seeding more micro-metastases. Finally, I briefly explored the microenvironments of micro- and macro-metastases and found evidence of macrophages in association with micro-metastases. Overall, the results of my doctoral studies have contributed to the expansion of our knowledge in medulloblastoma metastasis. | Ph.D. | knowledge, invest, transit, animal | 4, 9, 11, 14, 15 |
| Ahmed, Usman | Roorda, Matthew J | An Agent-based Freight Business and Logistics Decisions Simulation - FREBUILDS | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | This dissertation focuses on agent-based microsimulation urban freight transportation modelling. Urban freight models are classified based on multiple dimensions of freight transportation. A conceptual framework of an agent-based urban freight model is developed. The framework integrates key business and logistics decisions, from short- to long-term, made by firms. Some of the modelling components of the framework are estimated for the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area. This dissertation contains four empirical studies that are part of the conceptual framework of the urban freight model. The first study focuses on long-term business decisions and estimates an establishment location choice model that incorporates intra-firm interactions. The next three studies focus on key logistics decisions that are part of the shipment formation decisions. The first of these studies estimates models of freight transportation outsourcing and vehicle type choice decisions. The two decisions are modelled independently and jointly using discrete choice methods. The second study compares machine learning and discrete choice methods for the choice of freight vehicle type. The final study, that is part of shipment formation decisions, estimates empirical models of freight vehicle type and shipment size choice. It studies the nature of the choice process i.e., sequential or joint, and recommends the appropriate modelling structure. Together with the remaining modelling components of the urban freight modelling framework, this dissertation is a first step towards operational urban freight models. | Ph.D. | learning, urban, outsourc | 4, 11, 12 |
| Datoo, Mehjabeen | Brett, Clare | Looking And Learning Together: Collaborative Reflection Within An Online Environment | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This design-based research study examines the use of an online platform (VoiceThread) to engage in collaborative reflection and learning about artifacts from Muslim cultures and civilizations within a public-school context. The research is situated within the field of learning sciences and technology design as it takes up key inquiries of the field, including the design of technology and its role in learning as well as the potential of socio-cultural views of learning, specifically Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, to provide deeper insight into complex learning environments. The study involved 37 participants from two Humanities classrooms in British Columbia, with the classroom teacher as co-designer. Learners in each class reflected on a series of uploaded images of artifacts and captured their reflections in a collaborative online environment, VoiceThread. Learners then listened to other’s reflections before revisiting the images and recording their subsequent reflections. Instructional interventions were embedded between recordings. Data collected included transcripts and video extracts of learner engagement within the environment, video recordings of learners engaging with the software and hardware (iPads), pre-post questionnaires with learners and interviews with the classroom teacher. Findings provided evidence of ways in which the online environment supported collaborative learning, however, the data showed that the impact of reflection in this learning was limited as there was little interrogation of learners’ own or peers’ perceptions of the artefacts they were observing. Findings also provided evidence that the affordances of both the software (VoiceThread) and the hardware being used (iPads) did support learners in developing their understandings, however, learners did not consistently engage with these affordances. Over time, and together with the support of instructional interventions built into learners’ engagement with VoiceThread as well as ongoing engagement with each of the artifacts, learners did acquire a deeper knowledge of the artifacts and of historical processes. The evidence also brought attention to how learners from Muslim contexts and communities developed confidence to speak and learn about their heritage cultures. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Kindree, Meagan M | Mandrak, Nicholas E||Jones, Nicholas E | Elucidating the Interactive Effects of Climate Change and Invasive Species Using a Lotic Fish Species Pair | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | Climate change is a primary threat to freshwater biodiversity, negatively affecting the structure and functioning of ecosystems. Freshwater fishes are particularly vulnerable to climate change due to their ectothermy and constrained dispersal ability within dendritic networks. Through shifting environmental conditions, the frequency of species invasions increases, as increased levels of disturbance are known to destabilize ecosystems and create niche space filled by generally adaptable invasive competitors. Although the impacts of invaders through predation and competition with native species are well documented, these processes are largely context- dependent, and shifting thermal and hydrological regimes caused by climate change may limit our ability to make generalized predictions of invasive species impacts to native competitors. Therefore, this thesis examines the context-dependencies of interactions between invasive Round Goby and native White Sucker under shifting environmental conditions. These species were chosen because of the ecological importance of White Sucker to lotic environments and its recent decline, hypothesized to be the result of benthic niche overlap with Round Goby, which may be exacerbated by changing climatic conditions. I tested the prediction that per capita effects of invading species are higher at temperatures that approach a species’ thermal optima, which reflect projected water temperatures and flows in the Great Lakes under climate change. I demonstrate that there is a competitive interaction between these species - the trophic niche of Round Goby significantly overlaps with White Sucker, which expands its prey selectivity to compensate for increased competition. Utilizing field thermal maximum and laboratory feeding experiments, I demonstrate that competition between these species is expected to increase under climate change. As the Round Goby continues to invade Lake Ontario tributaries under climate change, there will be increasing competition with White Sucker for prey items and thermally suitable habitat. | Ph.D. | water, labor, urban, climate, environmental, fish, species, biodivers, ecosystem, ecolog | 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Shahbazian, Negin | Amon, Cristina H.||Forbes, Thomas L. | The Role of Geometric and Mechanical Properties in Bird-beak Configuration Formation in Thoracic Endovascular Aneurysm Repair | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | Thoracic endovascular aortic repair (TEVAR) is a minimally invasive treatment for thoracic aortic conditions including aneurysms and is associated with a number of postoperative stent graft related complications. Bird-beak configuration is a wedge-shaped gap at the proximal end of the deployed stent graft in TEVAR that leads to incomplete seal and other complications such as type Ia endoleak (failure of proximal stent graft seal). In this study it is hypothesized that the geometric and mechanical properties of aorta and stent graft contribute to bird-beak. This study proposes a novel framework for creating realistic population-based computational models of TEVAR focused on aneurysms that allow for developing various clinically relevant geometric configurations and scenarios that are not easily attainable with limited patient data. This framework is employed to conduct a sensitivity analysis on the geometric and mechanical characteristics of aorta and stent graft in relation to bird-beak formation. The most significant parameters contributing to bird-beak are identified as aortic arch angle, TEVAR landing zone, and stent graft oversizing. The computational framework is further used to investigate the impact of various stent graft design parameters on bird-beak formation through testing a number of conceptual device designs by varying several design parameters from a commercial stent graft model as the baseline for this study. A stent graft with reduced stent height and fabric gap is identified to have the most significant impact on reduction of bird-beak size. This stent graft design maintains the radial forces within an acceptable range. Furthermore, the computational models are used to simulate patient-specific TEVAR cases to verify the accuracy of the proposed framework in predicting the proximal position of deployed stent graft as well as the presence of bird-beak. The patient-specific TEVAR simulations can predict bird-beak length and angle size with less than 10 and 24% error, respectively. The findings of this study can provide insight into the surgical planning and device selection process with the goal of minimizing bird-beak formation. The proposed framework has the potential to predict bird-beak formation in TEVAR preoperatively and modify surgical plans accordingly. | Ph.D. | invest, land | 9, 15 |
| Fu, Han | Liu, Hugh HL | A Multiplayer Target Defense Game Between Quadrotor Teams | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | The rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has created enormous opportunities as well as emerging security risks. As increasing drone accidents and threats have been reported, the research interest in counter-UAV missions has also grown. The goal of this thesis is to find a guidance law, or a defending strategy, in a counter-UAV mission that helps a group of defenders to reach in vicinity of a group of invading drones so the latter can be intercepted before entering a target area. For the defending strategy to be robust, a conservative assumption is adopted that the invaders are also capable of optimizing the invading strategy, instead of following a predefined path. This gives rise to a target defense differential game. Because player velocities have a fundamental impact on the solution, the problem is divided into two branches, where the defenders travel faster and slower respectively. When the defenders travel faster, capture is guaranteed, therefore the focus is on how far from the target area the invaders can be captured. The proposed defending strategy is fully distributed, containing a local subgame for each defender and a task assignment problem that allocates the invaders among the defenders. The optimality of the proposed solution is extensively discussed. When the defenders travel slower, an invader can only be captured by two cooperative defenders in most situations. In addition, the defenders must recede toward the target area in exchange for a chance of capture. The optimal defending strategy is a tradeoff between the receding distance and other assisting factors, such as the cooperation from another defender, the boundary of the game region, or the topology of the target area. These three aspects are discovered and explained in the solution of three different slower-defender games. The focus of solving a slower-defender game is the defenders' winning condition that whether the invaders can be captured outside of the target area. Two methods are proposed to design a computationally effective state-feedback defending strategy to meet these winning conditions. The proposed defending strategies are validated through experiments. | Ph.D. | trade, cities, conserv | 10, 11, 14, 15 |
| Sharp, Camille-Mary | Mihalache, Irina D | Decolonize and Divest: The Changing Landscape of Oil-Sponsored Museums in Canada | Information Studies | 2022-11 | This dissertation investigates the relation between oil companies and museums in Canada. I situate museums in a moment of critical change, wherein Canadian museums lead global efforts to “decolonize” – or reform the ways they engage with Indigenous stakeholders and Indigenous collections – while maintaining financial partnerships with the oil industry. With activists and cultural workers increasingly calling for museums to divest from fossil fuels in Europe and the U.S., I interrogate the reality of museum practice in two oil-sponsored museums: the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau. Focusing on two museum exhibitions from different moments of Canadian history, I trace the political economic implications of industry support for cultural initiatives and highlight the granular experiences of museum professionals who work on such projects. I explore the first instance of contested oil sponsorship in a Canadian museum –The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples (1988), sponsored by Shell – to argue that, despite community-informed reforms to collections care, exhibitions, or programming, Canada’s museum sector has neglected Indigenous groups’ early critiques of oil sponsors and their ties to land dispossession. The next case study explores the more recent Canadian History Hall (2017) – sponsored by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers – to illustrate the contemporary manifestations of extractive interests that emerge in the development of a large, national history exhibition. Together, the historical and contemporary data I collected through archival research, interviews, and document analysis point to the complexity of justice-oriented museology in a country deeply connected to exploitative resource extraction. I argue that while there is minimal overlap between sponsors and exhibition development, the contradictions of corporate funding highlight the ongoing hegemonic function of museums. Through reflective engagement with contributions from decolonial pedagogy and museology, I propose that undertheorized aspects of museum operations, including the behind-the-scenes practices of funding, should be similarly informed by the socially engaged frameworks currently underpinning museum work in Canada. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, decolonial, worker, invest, indigenous, fossil fuel, land | 4, 8, 9, 10, 16, 13, 15 |
| Ojobor, Chidozie Donald | Davidson, Alan R | The Noncontractile Phage Tail-like Bacterial Killing Nanomachines – Characterizing the Specificity Determinants of the F-Pyocins of Pseudomonas aeruginosa | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | The rise of antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains poses an enormous threat to our collective human existence; hence, there is a dire need to search for alternatives to current antibiotic treatment options. In this work, I characterized the non-contractile phage tail-like entities called F-pyocins. F-pyocins are high molecular weight bacteriocins resembling non-contractile bacteriophage tails such as E coli phage lambda of the Siphoviridae family. They are produced by many Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains and possess bactericidal activity against other strains of the same species. Structurally, F pyocins are differentiated into the tubular portion and the tail tip complex lying at the bottom of the tail. F-pyocins produced by different strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, share strong sequence similarities in the genes encoding the tubular portion, however, notable variability exists in the last six genes at the tail tip complex, collectively designated here as specificity genes. In this study, I differentiated F-pyocins into groups based on the sequence diversity in their specificity genes, which assort into two modules – modules 1 and 2, each comprising three genes. I showed that swapping module 2 from one F-pyocin to the other changes the killing spectrum of the chimeric F-pyocin to new P. aeruginosa strains. This is mediated by the interaction of the module 2 c-terminus with the LPS O-specific antigen (OSA) of the target P. aeruginosa strain. Module 1 on the other hand was shown to interact with target receptor moieties deeper within the LPS core implying that each module has selective specificity and that F-pyocins may have evolutionarily co-opted both modules to ensure the successful killing of their target P. aeruginosa strain. The plasticity of F-pyocins was further explored by engineering them with side fibre proteins from siphophage DMS3, which retargeted their bactericidal spectrum. Summing all my findings, I concluded by proposing the mechanism with which F-pyocins bind and kill susceptible P. aeruginosa strains. This study provides valuable insight into the specificity determinants of F-pyocins and how they interact with the bacterial surface, which further helps us to understand how they can be explored as potential alternatives to antibiotics. | Ph.D. | species | 14, 15 |
| Eshraghi, Nima | Liang, Ben BL | Improving Online Mirror Descent for Convex Optimization in Dynamic Environments | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | In many practical applications, system parameters and cost functions vary over time. For example, in online machine learning, data samples arrive dynamically, so that the learning model is progressively updated. It is difficult to capture such dynamics in an offline setting, while online optimization techniques naturally accommodate unpredictable variations in the system parameters. Online Convex Optimization (OCO) is a field in the intersection of optimization theory, machine learning, and control, which has recently attracted significant attention as an important tool for modeling various classes of problems in different application domains. One of the most popular algorithms in solving OCO problems is online mirror descent. Interesting theoretical and practical properties have made online mirror descent a powerful tool in solving large-scale and high-dimensional problems. However, the existing works on online mirror descent often make simplistic or impractical assumptions with respect to the cost functions and system model or propose inefficient solutions. In this dissertation, our aim is to propose efficient online algorithms based on mirror descent method with improved performance. We first consider the problem of distributed online convex optimization with a time-varying network topology. We propose the Distributed Online Mirror Descent with Multiple Averaging Decision and Gradient Consensus (DOMD-MADGC) algorithm in order to enable the local learners to accurately follow the sequence of global minimizers. We then consider a heterogeneous learning environment, where the processing speed can arbitrarily vary among the network nodes. We develop the Distributed Any-Batch Mirror Descent (DABMD) algorithm to speed up the progress of the network. Finally, we address the problem of centralized OCO without Lipschitz continuity. We show that it is still possible to guarantee the performance of online mirror descent algorithm even when Lipschitz continuity is not present. To further improve the performance, we propose the Online Multiple Mirror Descent (OMMD) algorithm that applied the mirror descent step multiple times to update the learner's decision. For each of these problems, we also use experimental results to compare against existing alternatives and study the performance of the proposed algorithms in various scenarios. We observe that the proposed online algorithms outperform other alternatives. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Nowosielski, Robert Joseph | Campos, Jennifer L | Motion and Driving: How Different Types of Physical Motion Cues Influence Driving Performance and Simulator Sickness in Younger and Older Adults | Psychology | 2022-11 | Vestibular function changes with older age, but the effects of these changes on functional activities requiring self-motion perception are largely unknown. Driving is a complex task that involves the use of vestibular inputs to guide self-motion perception and behaviours. However, little is known about how different types of physical motion (i.e., vestibular cues), such as yaw motion and full motion (7-degree-of-freedom) affect driving performance differently in younger and older adults. Driving simulators offer an effective means of studying the effects of physical motion cues on driving outcomes in younger and older adults. Chapter 2 of this thesis investigated how different kinds of motion cues (no motion, yaw motion, and full motion) affected simulated driving performance in younger and older adults. Driving environments were made up of eight scenario elements (e.g., curves, hills, turns) to strategically target vestibular cues. Results demonstrated that physical motion cues did not systematically and consistently affect driving performance across all scenario elements. The general patterns,iii however, suggest that added motion cues lead to better driving performance for both age groups, with effects being particularly apparent for certain driving metrics (e.g., mean speed). Driving simulators are also known to induce simulator sickness in some users. The prevalence and severity of simulator sickness is influenced by different factors, including motion capabilities and time of exposure. It is hypothesized that simulator sickness may be the result of sensory conflicts (visual-vestibular) and therefore, adding different types of congruent physical motion cues to visual displays may reduce symptoms. Therefore, in Chapter 3 using the same driving scenarios as Chapter 2, I investigated how different types of physical motion cues (no motion, yaw motion, and full motion) affect simulator sickness, over time of exposure, between younger and older adults. The results demonstrated no main effect of motion condition or age on simulator sickness, however, the addition of motion cues prevented simulator sickness from increasing over time of exposure. Together this thesis contributes to a fundamental understanding of how physical motions of different types influence self-motion perception, driving behaviours, and simulator sickness, which may have implications for vehicle and simulator-related research and application. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Laming, Erick | Wortley, Scot | Police Use of Force: Understanding its Impact on Indigenous and Black Community Members in Ontario | Criminology | 2022-11 | Police use of force is a critical area of concern, in Canada, North America, and globally. Issues around use of force have received considerable public attention in recent years due to several high-profile police-involved deaths of civilians, particularly racialized citizens. Using a mixed methods approach, this dissertation examines police use of force in Ontario and its impact on Indigenous and Black community members. An integrated framework of minority threat and social conflict theories, police working personality and symbolic interaction theories, and the concept of reputational risk is applied to help account for the findings. I argue that police use of force and its impact on certain communities is detrimental, multi-faceted, complex, and cannot be fully explained—in large part because of the lack of information made accessible on the subject. The qualitative section involves interviews with Indigenous and Black residents in Ontario to understand their perceptions of and experiences with police use of force. A primary finding is that many community members have been victims of police use of force—though, the types of force these members reported were overwhelmingly physical in nature (e.g., punching, kicking, knee-to-neck, roughhousing). Additionally, both Indigenous and Black individuals perceive that the police use force disproportionately against members from these groups compared to others. Moreover, the quantitative section provides an expansive analysis of police use of force over a 30-year period by examining use of force across all Ontario police services, lethal force incidents, and data from the Special Investigations Unit (SIU) to identify trends, patterns, and racial disparities in cases. Overall, the findings suggest that Indigenous and Black individuals in Ontario have been over-represented in use of force incidents consistently while other groups have been under-represented. The quantitative data also validate and support the perceptions and experiences shared by the Indigenous and Black community members. Despite the findings in this dissertation that highlight racial disparities in police use of force incidents, the limited information available on use of force by police services in Ontario underscores how much we do not know about this subject in the province. Future research and policy recommendations are provided. | Ph.D. | citizen, invest, minorit, indigenous, housing, accessib | 4, 9, 10, 16, 11 |
| Svendsen, Sarah E | Gutsche-Miller, Sarah | Understanding Organist Occupational Injury: An Epidemiological Study of Canadian Organists | Music | 2022-11 | Musicians constantly face the hazard of playing-related overuse injuries. Organists are at particular risk of Playing Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (PRMDs) as they face many challenges not encountered by other instrumentalists, including extreme patterns of motion required by all four limbs, uncontrollable practice hours, as well as many other factors. Since the 1980s, researchers have recommended approaches to injury prevention, and many schools of instruments have performed instrument-specific surveys to gather data, leading to the development of prevention techniques within their teaching pedagogies. While the amount of pre-existing information for organ playing injury prevention is minimal, there is already some evidence suggesting that musculoskeletal injury risk factors exist for organists. Unfortunately, the pre-existing information is not substantial enough for the development of data-driven prevention recommendations specific to organists, leaving the school of organ pedagogy to continue to root itself in inherited playing techniques uninformed by modern research on musician, and specifically, organist injury prevention. This thesis seeks to contribute to the literature on organist injury and injury prevention with the purpose of furthering organ pedagogy’s understanding of organists PRMDs. Using Occupational Health as a focus of research, I have collected data which can be used to confirm that organists have musculoskeletal health problems as well as to act as building blocks towards future research and pedagogical developments in injury prevention for the profession. The primary tool used for this research was an anonymous epidemiological survey distributed to the membership of the Royal Canadian College of Organists. The content and results of the survey relate to: basic demographics; practice and performance habits; individual belief systems in relation to conceptual barriers to normalizing PRMDs; the contextual use of prevention and/or treatment resources; upper and lower body symptoms of pain and function (self-reported); awareness of, access to, and understanding of injury prevention information; experience with Occupational Health and Safety; and, experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic. | D.M.A. | pedagogy | 4 |
| Sokil, Allison | Packman, Jeff | The Hums: Feminist Listening and Gendered Affects in Music Production and Audio Engineering in Canada | Music | 2022-11 | This dissertation articulates the entanglements of subtle and explicit pressures many women, trans, and gender non-conforming recordists face as they build professional careers in the recording arts in Canada. I present these affective pressure points of power as “hums”: a concept that elucidates the explicit and implicit accumulation of these feelings of un-belonging, which include experiences of isolation, marginalization, microagressions, violence, warnings, and whispers, and illuminates the way hums gradually aggregate in the body over time. I argue that hums and their abrasive “intimacy of body and world” (Ahmed 2017, 190) often go unnoticed by recordists and those involved in the broader music industries because they accumulate and operate on such a personal, subtle, and yet widespread level. I suggest that while it may be relatively rare for early-career women, trans, and gender non-conforming recordists to be outwardly discouraged from fully participating in the professional fields of music production and audio engineering, there are numerous ways to quietly dissuade systemically marginalized recordists from continuing on their chosen professional path. I attend to the particularities of these experiences of conditionality and exclusion based on extensive (auto)ethnographic fieldwork and in-depth interviews with recordists at various stages of their careers, examining three categories of hums cited as primary restrictions among my collaborators: a study of hums of neoliberalism, of violence, and of being included. Though presented as discrete, hums are always extended, overlapping and intersecting in their affects. However, this fluidity also allows for the potential for challenges and change. Therefore, as much as this work serves to illustrate the continuity and magnitude of ongoing issues, it also offers moments of transformation, of laughter, of hope, for the future of music production and audio engineering. | Ph.D. | gender, women, feminis, labor, marginalized, production, violence | 5, 8, 10, 12, 16 |
| Jaccard, Torsten Sochting | Trefler, Daniel | Essays in International Trade | Economics | 2022-11 | This thesis contains three chapters investigating the gains from trade and the subsequent costs of changes in trade policy. In Chapter 1, I use detailed data linking individual households to the origin country of the goods they buy in order to study the distributional costs of tariffs across US households. I find that tariffs on high-income countries are progressive and anti-urban, whereas tariffs on low-income countries are regressive and anti-rural. In estimating these costs, I propose a model of import substitution which marks a departure from standard assumptions often made in the trade literature, and I illustrate that this proposed model is effective at matching the underlying substitution data while also providing a nuanced analysis of how import substitutability differs across origin countries.Chapter 2 complements the analysis in Chapter 1 by providing an empirical study of the US-China trade war of 2018-2019. I use the same barcode country-of-origin data to provide direct evidence that, in the short run, the cost of tariffs implemented on Chinese imports was borne almost entirely by American consumers. However this paper departs from the previous literature in finding that in the medium-run, the incidence of these policies shifted away from American consumers and towards Chinese producers, with the market share of tariff-affected goods decreasing by almost 50\% eight months after the final tariff increase. I discuss which firms and countries gained and lost the most from this substitution and provide evidence that, due to selection effects, estimates of tariff pass-through using customs data may be biased upward. Chapter 3 provides an analysis and critique of the empirical literature documenting the variety gains from trade. I use detailed scanner data to study how the set of varieties available to US consumers responds to increases in import penetration. I find that while increased trade does lead to increased entry of new varieties, this entry is more than off-set by subsequent exit of existing varieties leaving households with contracted choice sets. I discuss heterogeneity across US cities in terms of their relative entry and exit responses to changes in trade costs. | Ph.D. | low-income, invest, trade, income, cities, urban, rural, consum | 1, 9, 10, 11, 12 |
| Ceniti, Amanda Kristina | Kennedy, Sidney H | Neuroimaging and Reward Processing in Major Depressive Disorder and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a common and disabling condition experienced by 20-45% of individuals who have suffered a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). The comorbidity of MDD and mTBI is associated with cumulatively worse outcomes, yet its neurobiological and behavioural presentation remains poorly understood. Importantly, while most literature has evaluated TBI groups with varying depressive symptom levels, scant research has investigated the impact of mTBI history among those with MDD. The current research sought to clarify this interaction with a focus on anhedonia and its underlying reward system, which are central to MDD and have preliminary evidence of disruption in mTBI. The substantial overlap in frontotemporal and limbic brain regions implicated in MDD, mTBI, and reward, combined with previous neuroimaging and reward findings in each condition separately, suggest a cumulative impact. Thus, the goals of the present studies were to understand the impact of mTBI history on resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) and cortical thickness among those with MDD, and assess the combined impact of MDD and mTBI on anhedonia and reward function. Four participant groups were recruited across two studies: (1) MDD-alone, (2) mTBI-alone, (3) MDD+mTBI, and (4) healthy control participants. Together, clinical and neuroimaging findings converged to suggest that MDD is the main contributor to the interaction between MDD and mTBI, with significant differences observed between those with and without MDD, but limited separation by mTBI history. Subtle differences between MDD-alone and MDD+mTBI groups emerged, with altered sgACC-precuneus connectivity and more intact reward learning among MDD+mTBI participants, as well as trends toward altered cortical thickness in temporal regions. However, mTBI history within MDD was not associated with large-scale network differences in this cohort. In the present sample, we also found no evidence of differences in reward valuation, motivation, or response bias based on MDD or mTBI history. This work is the first to report the impact of mTBI history on RSFC and cortical thickness among those with MDD, as well as reward outcomes in MDD+mTBI versus either alone. Findings strongly support inclusion of MDD-alone groups in future studies of TBI and depression given its substantial impact on this interaction. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Burek, Brittany Lauren | Martinussen, Rhonda | Online Research and Comprehension Process and Experience for Postsecondary Students with Learning and Attention Disorders | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | Students with disabilities are increasingly participating in higher education compared to previous years and continue to face barriers to achievement, wellbeing, and sense of inclusion. Understanding how these students experience and engage in universal academic activities, such as online research and information comprehension, will allow educators to better support them. This dissertation includes two qualitative studies exploring the process and experience of online research and comprehension for postsecondary students with learning and attention disorders, respectively. Fifteen students with a specific learning disorder and/or attention- deficit/hyperactivity disorder completed questionnaires, a recorded online research and comprehension task, a virtual-revisit think aloud protocol, and a semi-structured interview. Data were analysed using constructivist grounded theory methodology in Study 1 to generate a theoretical model of the process of the phenomenon. In addition to engaging in navigational, comprehension, and output activities, students also described a process of managing feelings of overwhelm. Both sources of overwhelm (i.e., disorientation, pop-ups, performance) and overwhelm-management strategies (i.e., emotion regulation, boosting focus, problem solving, capturing information for future use, stepped-up evaluation) are described as well as the impact of time and experience on the process. To contextualize and enrich the theoretical model of the process generated in Study 1, Study 2 used the same data for a phenomenological analysis to describe and interpret the experience of online research and comprehension for students with learning and attention disorders. Themes related to students’ awareness of their disability, distraction, urge to control/contain/compartmentalize, self-efficacy, and experience of support emerged from the data and are described.Overall, the findings from this dissertation illuminate barriers to, and facilitators of, online research and comprehension for postsecondary students with learning and attention disorders. Pedagogical implications are described. In addition, key variables of the phenomenon are highlighted from an emic perspective to guide future inquiry in a meaningful direction for those with lived experience. | Ph.D. | wellbeing, disabilit, learning | 3, 4 |
| Russell, Hamish | Heath, Joseph | Roles and the Filtering of Reasons | Philosophy | 2022-11 | This is a moral theory of roles. It asks how the special rules and purposes of institutions (such as legal systems, corporations, and governments) can change the moral rights and responsibilities of role occupants (such as lawyers, managers, and politicians). Its answer, the filtering account, is that legitimate institutions selectively filter the considerations that a role occupant may or must give weight to in doing her job. On this view, to perform a role with integrity is to respect the scope of the role’s filters, sifting the reasons for action that must be excluded from those that must remain on the moral scales. The filtering account is distinguished from two alternatives in the literature: the view that roles simply add additional reasons to the balance, and the view that roles entirely shield their occupants from ordinary moral criticism. The account is further explained in terms of a distinction between first-order and second-order reasons, which is then applied to a colourful range of examples—featuring cynical corporate lobbyists and conflicted criminal lawyers, unflinching public regulators and buck-passing middle managers. The result is a system for understanding the moral structure of roles, including the bounds of professional discretion, the ethics of official disobedience, and the relationship between individual and institutional integrity. The view is presented as a liberal theory in its respect for the moral claims of legitimate roles, as a critical theory in its diagnosis of the tendency for those same claims to be stretched and distorted. | Ph.D. | institut, legal system | 16 |
| Chishtie, Jawad Ahmed | Jaglal, Susan B. | Application of Visualization-based Analytic Methods in Population Health and Health Services Research to Rehabilitation Sciences | Rehabilitation Science | 2022-11 | Visualization-based analytic methods have evolved rapidly over the last two decades, allowing knowledge generation from large healthcare datasets. However, their application in the rehabilitation sciences, particularly related to population health and health services research is limited. This research is divided into two main parts. The first presents two systematic literature syntheses of two information visualization methods, visual analytics and interactive visualization, both applied in these areas of healthcare. The second part presents two use cases illustrating the application of these methods. The first use case is an interactive visualization dashboard prototype for the Canadian Institute for Health Information's Population Grouping Methodology, where the candidate was placed as an embedded fellow. The second use case presents a proof-of-principle dashboard exploring data on rehospitalizations from a multicenter practice-based evidence study on outcomes of persons with spinal cord injury. Rehabilitation health services' research can benefit from the use of visualization-based methods alone or combined with exploratory visual and confirmatory statistical analysis to advance the field. In addition, this thesis highlights the opportunity for organizations to leverage embedded research for advancing and improving healthcare through integrated knowledge translation initiatives and building Learning Health Systems inclusive of rehabilitation services. | Ph.D. | healthcare, knowledge, learning, institut | 3, 4, 16 |
| Chen, Pei-Chen | Koga, Midori | Off the Bench, Sing and Play: Lived Experiences in Dalcroze-inspired Piano Lessons for Amateur Adults | Music | 2022-11 | The lived experiences of career-aged adults (30-55 years of age) greatly impact how they learn a new skill. As adult piano lessons become more popular, a lack of training in adult piano education means many piano instructors are forced to adapt their methods used for children with little guidance. An increasing number of piano method books for adults are being published, but these materials often neglect the notion of musical expression and the process of feeling music through their entire body. This disconnection between the body and the music can lead to a lack of fulfillment in lessons for this age group. In this research, I explored a piano teaching approach that incorporates Dalcroze Eurhythmics, a multi-sensory music learning approach, to gain a better understanding of these experiences and expand the possibilities in adult piano education. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was the methodology I applied to answer the following research questions:1) What are the perceptions of career-aged amateur adults learning piano through Dalcroze-inspired activities? 2) How do the perceptions of the lived experiences of adult students participating in Dalcroze-inspired piano lessons further inform and broaden adult piano education? Three career-aged adults who had taken Dalcroze-inspired piano lessons for a minimum of two years participated in this study. Thematic findings were organized into two domains. First, examination of the experiences of amateur adult students returning to piano lessons later in life revealed themes of fulfilling dreams, learning with autonomy, acknowledging challenges, and feeling joy from music. The second domain explored the experiences specifically in Dalcroze-inspired piano lessons, and revealed that adult learners who stepped out of their comfort zone and used this whole-body approach became more engaged in their learning and enhanced their musical abilities from both physical and mental perspectives. The findings suggest that career-aged amateur adults have specific purposes and approaches to learning piano due to various social, physiological, and psychological factors. Dalcroze-inspired lessons provided them a holistic learning environment to incorporate a whole- body multi-sensory approach to learning, creating, and connecting music with their daily lives. This study offers insight to a unique student age group and aims to broaden the possibilities in piano adult education. | D.M.A. | learning | 4 |
| Masson-Makdissi, Etienne | Siow, Aloysius||Mourifie, Ismael | Essays on Marriage and Location Choice in Same-Sex and Different-Sex Relationships | Economics | 2022-11 | This thesis studies how individuals who look for same-sex relationships sort in different states within the United States and its effect on the rate of same-sex relationships. These questions require the development of a comprehensive general equilibrium marriage model which accounts for pre-marital migration between states. The first chapter extends marriage matching models to consider individuals with different sexual orientations. The chapter gives sufficient assumptions to identify the match gains. Combined with the existence and uniqueness of a general equilibrium in marriage, we can analyze the effect of match gains on the marital rate through counterfactual analyses. The second chapter focuses on adding pre-marital geographical sorting to the general equilibrium matching model without same-sex couples. The model combines the marriage matching models with location choice models, where individuals can sort in different local marriage markets before choosing a partner. The model gives sufficient assumptions for the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium given pre-migration population supplies, exogenous labor market earnings, and match gains. Identification follows a typical discrete choice strategy, with an additional discussion on handling the endogeneity of individual match utility on migration propensity. This model analyzes the interaction between the marital rate and migration decisions. The chapter illustrates the model's utility by examining the effect of earnings on migration and the marriage rate in the United States from 1960 to 2000. Both chapters' theoretical contributions are brought together in the final chapter to discuss the impact of sorting between states on the rate of same-sex relationships. The chapter outlines how combining both models leads to further difficulties in identifying match gains. The chapter gives additional assumptions sufficient for identifying match gains in this marriage model with pre-marital regional sorting. The model is then used to quantify the importance of moving between states for same-sex relationships. The model predicts that same-sex marital rates would decrease by almost 50% if individuals did not have a chance to move. Furthermore, 4% of lesbian women and 7% of gay men would change which states they live in if there were no difference in match gains between states. These rates decrease over time, indicating that social progress affects migration and same-sex marital rates across the United States. | Ph.D. | women, labor | 5, 8 |
| Mallory, Kylie Diane Notaro | Reed, Nick | Beyond the Youth Athlete: Exploring Concussion Education and the Provision of Social Support | Rehabilitation Science | 2022-11 | Youth can experience a concussion through many mechanisms including motor vehicle collisions, sports, falls, recreational play, assault and other causes. Despite the many mechanisms of sustaining a concussion, to date, most concussion education has been provided to athletes or within sport settings and focused on concussion reporting behaviours. Following a concussion, youth can experience a range of concussion symptoms that are cognitive, physical, sleep and emotional/behavioural, with these symptoms impacting youths’ ability to meaningfully participate in activities. Specifically, the influence of emotional symptoms on participation has been highlighted within the literature and the provision of social support has been suggested as one way to decrease these symptoms. Therefore, the motivation for this thesis is to inform concussion education interventions for all youth (athletes and non-athletes) in order to promote positive concussion-related behaviours and health outcomes. To do so, this thesis will explore: (1) existing concussion education and (2) youths’ intentions to provide social support to a peer with a concussion. This thesis is comprised of four studies. Study 1 identifies online concussion resources that are up-to-date, accurate and designed for Canadian youth by assessing the resource content as well as the readability, usability and suitability. Study 2 involves the completion of a scoping review that explores peer-reviewed concussion education delivered in the school setting. This scoping review included 27 studies and focused on the education context, delivery method, development and evaluation. Study 3 and 4 highlight relationships between demographic variables, concussion knowledge and social support-related constructs, and identify youth who may be more likely to provide social support. Study 3 involves the delivery of a novel concussion survey based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour to 200 youth (athletes and non-athletes). Study 4 builds on preliminary work conducted in Study 3 by delivering a shortened and more feasible version of the survey to 1330 Canadian high school students. The findings from this thesis highlight the opportunity to develop concussion education that fills existing gaps by delivering education to all youth and including content specific to the provision of social support to youth with a concussion. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Vantellingen , Juliana Louise | Thomas, Sean C. | Soil Methane Dynamics of Skid Trails and Landings in Managed Northern Hardwood Forests | Architecture, Landscape, and Design | 2022-11 | Skid trails and landings are the portions of harvested forests that are used by forestry vehicles; skid trails are the network of trails used to transport logs to the landing, a central storage point where logs are processed and stacked. Soils in these features are highly impacted by the traffic they experience, and often sustain long-lasting changes to soil properties. While temperate forest soils tend to act as a methane (CH4) sink, these altered soil properties can influence soil CH4 dynamics, weakening their strength as a sink or causing a shift to CH4 emissions. This phenomenon has been documented in experimental settings but very few have studied it in situ in harvested forests as well as the soil drivers that contribute to it. We studied soil CH4 fluxes from skid trails and landings in a selection-managed forest in central Ontario, Canada, as well as the properties that may contribute to the observed flux. One-year-old skid trails exhibited high CH4 emissions, particularly from intensively used primary trails that were low-lying and wet. These emissions were correlated to low surface soil porosities and high soil moisture contents. Landings one year after harvest had significant spatial variation but had some strong “hotspots” of high CH4 emissions. CH4 flux on landings was correlated to soil pH and quantities of buried woody residues. On a broader scale, within the first year after harvest emissions from skid trails and landings respectively offset the strength of the CH4 sink from the surrounding untrafficked soils within a harvest area by ~45 and 12%. A chronosequence of skid trails and landings found that highest CH4 emissions occurred one year after a harvest event then began to decrease in the following years. Eventually soils returned to consuming CH4, however in the 15-year study period these soils never recovered to consuming CH4 at the same rate as unharvested soils. Temperate forest soils are an important global CH4 sink, and these findings contribute to the understanding of the effects of forest management on forest CH4 budgets. The results also inform prevention and remedial practices in climate smart forestry practices. | Ph.D. | emission, consum, climate, emissions, methane, forest, land, soil | 7, 12, 13, 15 |
| Rooney, Patrick James | Lacetera, Nicola | Essays on Behavioural Strategy at the Firm-Society Interface | Management | 2022-11 | This dissertation examines relationships between firm decision makers and stakeholders in light of societal issues. In three sets of studies, I examine different strategic decisions in which stakeholder beliefs and identities are salient. In the first project, I examine why organizational decision makers choose to take sociopolitical stances as part of their business strategies. In an online experiment, I find that higher monetary incentives, cause-individual value alignment, and consequentialist ethics lead to more stance-taking, while credible stakeholder pushback leads to less stance-taking. Liberals tend to view stance-taking as fundamental to the corporation’s social role while conservatives view stance-taking as a means to improve financial performance. These results show that various market and individual-level factors have a nuanced impact on stance-taking decisions. In the second project, my co-authors and I examine how organizational justifications for diversity impact hiring and promotion decisions. In a field experiment with recruiters and a vignette experiment with managers, we find that moral cases for diversity result in greater hiring and promotion of underrepresented minorities than business cases for diversity. In two follow-up studies, we find that a separate set of online participants find moral and legal cases for diversity more effective than the business cases. However, counter to our findings, they predict that managers in our experiments viewed the business cases as more effective than the moral cases. These results show that moral cases may be effective in promoting diversity concerns in personnel decisions and that managers may overestimate the effectiveness of business cases, which could slow efforts to diversify organizations. In the third project, I examine how charitable giving incentives impact group coordination compared to direct monetary payment. I run lab experiments that show that donating participants’ small incomes to a widely admired charity may result in lower group performance compared to using similar-sized monetary incentives. In a follow-on survey, outside observers tend to predict higher coordination rates for those in the charity condition compared to the monetary incentive condition. These results suggest that expectation-setting properties of charitable incentives may impede creation of stable, informal coordination norms in certain settings. | Ph.D. | minorit, income, conserv | 10, 14, 15 |
| Hwang, Dae Yon Saem | Hatzinakos, Dimitrios | User Recognition System based on PPG Signal | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | People are connected to various online and off-line systems that facilitate their interactions performed on a daily basis. In all these activities, individuals use their credentials to create, share and pay which could be related to the individual’s information. This sensitive data should be highly secured and thus, user recognition systems are highly empowered and invested recently.Biometric system is a technology which takes an individual’s traits as input and identifies the individual as a genuine or malicious user. In this work, our goal is to develop the verification system based on a physiological signal which has unique properties for each individual and simultaneously ensures the liveness of user since it is one of its inherent characteristics. Among diverse physiological signals, we focus on the photoplethysmography (PPG) since it can be acquired from low cost, more accessible and portable devices. The advantages correlated to the PPG signal bring it more practical and appealing to be utilized in real applications. However, the PPG signal has theoretical challenging aspects to be considered which include time variability and inherent randomness. To this end, we focus on investigating the feasibility of employing the PPG signal for person verification by developing time-stable and distinguishable features. To achieve our goal, there are five main objectives to be considered. First, a large and reliable PPG database with multi-sessions should be recorded to investigate the time stability of verification system. Second, the appropriate pipeline of PPG verification system needs to be suggested. Third, the conventional machine learning and deep learning models are investigated to understand the suitable model for PPG verification. Fourth, we develop the Generative Adversarial Network which generates the synthetic PPG with holding the unique and time-stable features. Last, we proposed the score-level fusion method of single modality (PPG) with different representations to achieve the better results with less complexity. In the collected database, we achieved up to 11.5% Equal Error Rate (EER) whereas recent works in the literature showed 23.2%, 19.1% EER in their databases. The obtained results guarantee that our PPG verification system has a high possibility to be considered in real world. | Ph.D. | learning, invest, accessib | 4, 9, 11 |
| Gorgolewski, Adam Stefan | Caspersen, John P||Thomas, Sean C | Methane Fluxes from Living and Dead Trees in a Temperate Forest | Forestry | 2022-11 | Trees have been identified as an important source of methane in forest ecosystems, but little research exists on fluxes beyond their stems, such as those from foliage, branches, wounds, and coarse woody debris. Recent instrumentation advances allow rapid and accurate measurements of relatively low methane flux rates in-situ; this thesis takes advantage of such technology to explore methane fluxes from these tree components in northern hardwood forests of central Ontario, Canada. Foliage was found to represent a substantial component of forest methane budgets, acting as a sink in upland forests and a source in lowland forests (averages = -0.54, 6.06 nmol m-2 s-1; n = 27, 12, respectively). Uptake is hypothesized to occur through methanotrophs within foliage, and emissions from channelling of methane that originates in soil. In an upland site tree branches, wounds, and stems emitted methane (averages = 0.61, 10.58, 0.59 nmol m-2 s-1; n = 18, 83, 79, respectively), and at the stand scale represented 83%, 8%, and 9% of emissions from trees respectively. Emissions are hypothesized to occur through anoxic decomposition within the tree, which often occurs due to wounding. Coarse woody debris was found to act as a methane source in early decay classes and a sink in later decay classes (average flux rates ranged from 0.78 to -1.58 nmol m-2 s-1; n = 94). Immediately after harvest there was a large pulse of emissions from the cut surfaces of trees (>4000 nmol m-2 s-1 for Acer saccharum boles), but on average coarse woody debris was a methane sink in both managed and unmanaged stands. These results represent some of the first and most comprehensive in-situ methane flux measurements from tree branches, wounds, foliage, and coarse woody debris, and help to improve estimates of forest methane budgets. Inclusion of wounds and branches into calculations of tree methane fluxes will increase net emissions, but inclusion of upland foliage and dead wood as methane sinks can offset them. Strengthening forest methane sinks and reducing sources is an attractive policy option for “climate-smart” forestry, and this research can be built upon to support future efforts in this field. | Ph.D. | emission, climate, emissions, methane, ecosystem, forest, land, soil | 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Pandy-Szekeres, Milena | Jung, Courtney | A ‘Truly European Language:’ Europeanization and Supranational Language Regimes in the Case of Romani Language, 1998-2018 | Political Science | 2022-11 | What impact has integration with Europe had on state language regimes in Central and Eastern European countries? This dissertation investigates supranational and state treatment of Romani – the language spoken by many Roma communities in Europe – through an illustrative study of the Council of Europe and case studies of Slovakia and Croatia. Changes in state treatment of Romani in both countries have been significant on paper. In reality, however, implementation is limited or nonexistent. What explains this superficial and attenuated change? The Council of Europe’s language regime, centred on its valuation of diversity, led the organization to support Romani and push member states to do the same. In the context of Central and European countries’ integration into the EU, and into ‘Europe’ more generally, the mechanisms of Europeanization have resulted in the diffusion of elements of this supranational language regime to the domestic level. First, normative pressure and membership conditionality from European institutions have led to increased 'paper promises' – legal and policy commitments to support Romani – that follow the norms and standards of the supranational language regime at the Council of Europe. Secondly, Europeanization has resulted in new tools, opportunities, and political space for Romani language advocates within each country. But the penetration of such of supranational language regimes is also limited by two factors. State resistance emerges from the continued durability of state traditions that delegitimize Romani and exclude it from minority language rights frameworks. Secondly, the remedies for linguistic minorities proposed by both state and supranational language regimes are often a poor fit for Roma communities. Studying state treatment of Romani language helps illustrate the impact of integration with Europe on what I term marginal policy areas: those domestic policy areas which are subject to European pressure but not directly subject to EU rules. I also contribute to recent literature on continuity and change within state language regimes. The study of the politics of Romani language illuminates not only the situation of a specific minority language, or even linguistic minorities more generally, but also the complex interactions between institutions and actors at the state and supranational levels in Europe. | Ph.D. | invest, minorit, institut | 9, 10, 16 |
| McPhee, Matthew Daniel | Hendershot, Christian||Bagby, R Michael | The Acute Effects of Alcohol on Response Inhibition: An Evaluation of Meta-analytic and Laboratory-based Outcomes | Psychological Clinical Science | 2022-11 | Individuals with and without an alcohol use disorder frequently report loss of control over alcohol use, described as escalations of drinking both within a drinking episode and across time. Dual-process and triadic neurocognitive models provide explanatory frameworks of loss of control. Within these frameworks, response inhibition – the ability to withhold a prepotent response – figures prominently. Alcohol is postulated to acutely impair response inhibition, thereby contributing to loss of control over alcohol use. The effect of alcohol on response inhibition has been extensively studied in the literature. Discrepant findings have been reported, particularly around the magnitude of this effect. Recent extensions of dual-process models postulate a role of interoception – the perception of internal bodily states – in regulating alcohol use behaviour. In the triadic model, the product of the interoceptive system, alcohol craving, is thought to reduce cognitive resources available for cognitive control, resulting in attenuated response inhibition ability and higher levels of alcohol consumption. Partial support for the triadic neurocognitive model is evident in the literature, but central hypotheses from this model have yet to be tested empirically in the laboratory. Therefore, the present work has two aims: (1) to meta-analytically aggregate the literature on the acute effects of alcohol on response inhibition, and; (2) test the hypothesis that interoceptive sensitivity moderates craving elicited by alcohol, and that heightened craving results in diminished response inhibition, and increased alcohol consumption in a laboratory setting. The meta-analysis revealed a detrimental effect of acute alcohol administration on response inhibition, and this effect was moderated by intoxication level, indicators of task difficulty, and comparison type (Stop Signal Task only). The laboratory-based study failed to identify any significant effects, perhaps due to the use of a low priming dose and/or limited statistical power. The current work reinforces extant research showing a detrimental acute effect of alcohol on response inhibition and establishes the size and moderators of this effect. Ultimately, this work furthers the understanding of the potential mechanisms underlying loss of control over alcohol use in a drinking episode and to this end, the findings herein may be used in future studies to examine this construct. | Ph.D. | labor, consum | 8, 12 |
| Kelso, Susan | Sicheri, Frank | Investigating Regulation of Cyclin-Dependent Kinases by SCF Ubiquitin Ligases and Pharmacological Kinase Inhibitors | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs) are serine/threonine protein kinases that control both transcription and progression through the cell cycle. CDKs are catalytically inactive as monomers and only become fully active upon heterodimerization with cyclin proteins and phosphorylation of their activation segment. Conversely, CDKs can be inhibited by binding to CDK inhibitor proteins and phosphorylation of the glycine-rich loop of the kinase domain. Whether or not a particular CDK is active depends on the abundance of their intermolecular regulators, which is controlled by the ubiquitin-proteasome system. Because CDKs play important roles in directing cell cycle events, dysregulation of their kinase activity is commonly associated with many cancers. For this reason, it is important to understand the biology underlying CDK regulation during the cell cycle and how CDKs can be targeted by small molecule kinase inhibitors. The work conducted in this thesis focuses on two different CDKs, namely CDK2 and CDK11. In Chapter 2, I investigated the binding between the CDK2-cyclin A complex and the F-box protein Skp2. Skp2 is the substrate recognition subunit of the multi-subunit E3 ubiquitin ligase, SCFSkp2. SCFSkp2 regulates CDK2 by ubiquitinating CDK inhibitor proteins. Aside from the domains required for E3 ubiquitin ligase function, Skp2 contains a disordered N-terminus that is known to bind CDK2-cyclin A via cyclin A. The functional significance of this interaction is unknown. I determined a crystal structure of the N-terminus of Skp2 bound to cyclin A and investigated how Skp2 binding cyclin A affects CDK2-cyclin A kinase activity. In Chapter 3, I focused on determining how the small molecule inhibitor OTS964 binds CDK11. OTS964 is the first reported CDK11 specific inhibitor; however, how OTS964 achieves its CDK11 specificity is unclear. To answer this question, I solved a crystal structure of OTS964 bound to CDK11 and investigated the basis of the selectivity of OTS964 by mutagenesis both in vitro and in cells. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Pintwala, Sara Katherine | Peever, John H | Transplanting Immortal Orexin Cells in Narcoleptic Mice Rescues Cataplexy | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-11 | The sleep disorder narcolepsy is characterized by highly diminished or entirely absent levels of the neuropeptide orexin in the central nervous system. This loss manifests in symptoms such as cataplexy, a sudden and involuntary loss of muscle tone during wakefulness. To address this loss, I performed orexin cell transplants in a mouse model of narcolepsy (orexin-knockout; orexin-/-) to explore cell replacement therapy as a therapeutic strategy for narcolepsy. Here, I validate the phenotype of a novel immortal orexin cell line that exhibits genomic, proteomic and neurosecretory properties consistent with hypothalamic orexin neurons. When the designer receptor hM3Dq is expressed in cultured orexin cells activation and orexin release is increased via the ligand clozapine-N-oxide (CNO). To determine if the CNS of the orexin-/- mouse is still responsive to the orexin peptides, I performed intracerebroventricular infusion. I found that cataplexy was significantly reduced but not abolished when orexin was infused to the lateral ventricles. Because cataplexy is a behaviour exhibiting high variation, I next aimed to delineate a new method to identify cataplexy enabling experimental conditions that boost cataplexy presentation. I found that visual identification of cataplexy was accurate and that pair-housed non-instrumented animals have significantly more cataplexy than those instrumented for iii electrophysiological recordings. I next addressed the central goal of my project by transplanting orexin cells to the lateral hypothalamus of orexin-/- mice, finding no change in cataplexy. However, when orexin cells were transplanted to the dorsal raphe a substantial reduction in cataplexy in narcoleptic mice was observed. CNO-mediated activation of hM3Dq-expressing orexin cells further reduces cataplexy in the orexin-/- mouse, in line with my in vitro data. Overall, this thesis provides evidence towards the use of cell replacement therapy as a therapeutic strategy for narcolepsy, and the potential for using an immortal cell line to accomplish this specifically. | Ph.D. | ABS, animal | 2, 14, 15 |
| Bucci, Kennedy | Rochma, Chelsea M | Microplastics Affect Organisms across Multiple Levels of Biological Organization: Informing Individual and Ecological Rsk | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | Demonstrating the ecological consequences (or risk) of microplastics is critical to inform policies that will mitigate their presence in the environment. However, assessing the risk of microplastics is made difficult by their complexity: microplastics are a suite of contaminants varying in size, shape, polymer type, and associated chemical cocktail. In the first chapter of my thesis, I synthesize studies testing hypotheses about the effects of microplastics to measure the weight of scientific evidence regarding the effects of plastic pollution at every level of biological organization. By systematically reviewing the literature, I found that macroplastics are undoubtedly causing ecosystem-level effects, but that more research is needed to fully understand the ecological consequences of microplastics because effect mechanisms are likely driven by their diverse characteristics. By finding patterns in how particle characteristics relate to effects, I show that particle shape, size, and polymer type are all relevant to toxicity. In my second and third chapters, I conducted laboratory experiments designed to better understand the effects of environmentally relevant microplastics, comparing plastics that I purchased from a manufacturer and plastics that I collected from the environment. In my second chapter, I showed that microplastics are both a physical and a chemical stressor. Environmentally sourced microplastics were not only more harmful to developing larval fish than pristine microplastics, but they also caused impacts when the fish were exposed to the leachates alone, while the pristine microplastics did not. In my third chapter, I investigated the long-term effects of microplastics on two generations of fish. Here, I showed that both pristine and environmentally sourced microplastics caused physical stress resulting in decreased adult growth, lipid storage, and a visible dermal stress response. However, only the environmentally sourced microplastics had effects on reproduction and offspring viability. Finally, in my fourth chapter I proposed a risk and management framework to assess the harm of microplastics in the ambient environment. This framework can be used by decision-makers to inform microplastic concentration thresholds that will trigger management decisions. Throughout my thesis, I highlight the need to consider microplastics as a complex contaminant, demonstrate their complexity through laboratory studies, and suggest how their complexity can be incorporated into risk assessment. | Ph.D. | pollution, labor, invest, production, environmental, pollut, fish, ecosystem, ecolog | 3, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Kuan, Allan Chiwai | Bentz, Evan C||Collins, Michael P | The Behaviour and Design of Reinforced and Prestressed Concrete Members Subjected to Torsion | Civil Engineering | 2022-11 | This thesis describes analytical and experimental investigations which were undertaken to obtain a better understanding of how reinforced and prestressed concrete members resist torsion, either in isolation, or when accompanied by shear and flexure. The results were then used to develop practical, easy-to-use tools which are suitable for analysis and design. The main analytical contribution is a new design method which addresses the shortcomings of the torsion provisions in CSA A23.3:19, namely a tendency to underestimate the strengths of very lightly reinforced members and overestimate the strengths of heavily reinforced members which fail by torsional crushing. A validation study using 451 experiments drawn from the literature demonstrates that the proposed method is more accurate than the current CSA procedures. Other analytical contributions include a nonlinear analysis tool which can determine a member’s complete torque-twist response under pure torsion, a model which can predict when a member fails by crushing before yielding of the reinforcement, and a stiffness model which can determine a member’s cracked torsional stiffness. Each model is based on an updated form of the Diagonal Compression Field Theory which incorporates more recent advancements in constitutive modelling. A spalling model which predicts the onset of torsional spalling and the resulting loss of concrete is also presented. This model forms a key component of the other design and analysis tools included in this thesis. The experimental program consisted of testing eight T-beams under combined flexure, shear, and torsion to investigate the use of open stirrups as an alternative to traditional closed torsion reinforcement. Four specimens were designed to fail by yielding of the web reinforcement, while the remaining specimens were designed to fail by yielding of the transverse reinforcement in the flange. The torsion provisions in CSA A23.3:19 consistently underestimated the strengths of the specimens by a large margin. The observed behaviour suggests that open stirrups which are “closed” with supplemental torsional reinforcement can be a safe alternative to traditional closed stirrups. A procedure for proportioning such reinforcement is included in the proposed design method. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Bugyei-Twum, Antoinette | Connelly, Kim A.||Leong-Poi, Howard | Myocardial Structure and Function in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction: Molecular Insights and Therapeutic Strategies Targeting Transforming Growth Factor Beta Signaling | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Myocardial fibrosis has long been implicated in the pathophysiology of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFPEF)—increasing myocardial stiffness and contributing to diastolic dysfunction. However, despite multiple therapeutic strategies to reduce myocardial fibrosis, clinically effective anti-fibrotic therapies remain sparse. At issue is that current HFPEF therapeutic strategies often target pro-fibrotic pathways indirectly or rely on associative evidence derived from animal models that do not faithfully recapitulate human HFPEF. In this thesis, the canonical signaling pathway of transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β), a master regulator of fibrosis, is directly targeted in three clinically relevant animal models of HFPEF—streptozotocin-diabetic (mRen-2)27 rats, 5/6 subtotal nephrectomy rats, and transverse aortic constriction-induced pressure overload mice. Blockade of the acetylation of Smad2/3—key intracellular signal transducers of TGF-β signaling—in cell culture and the three animal models of HFPEF reduced the expression of several pro-inflammatory and pro-fibrotic markers and also abrogated the reactivation of the fetal gene program. In the animal models, echocardiographic and invasive hemodynamic measurements revealed a reduction in interstitial cardiac fibrosis and an improvement in diastolic filling and relaxation with the inhibition of Smad2/3 acetylation. The approach of targeting fibrosis—a central pathology in HFPEF irrespective of the inciting stimuli—by selectively inhibiting a single post translational modification critical in the TGF-β signaling pathway, is a promising therapeutic approach that could be further developed to slow, or perhaps reverse, cardiac fibrosis in HFPEF. | Ph.D. | animal | 14, 15 |
| Li, Naijin | Dirks, Peter||van der Kooy, Derek | Characterizing Human Fetal Neural Stem Cell Populations and Investigating their Roles in the Initiation of Glioblastoma | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive and incurable neoplasm. The subpopulations of cells within the tumor recapitulate a developmental hierarchy such that neoplastic stem-like cells, known as cancer stem cells (CSCs), reside at the apex and are resistant to conventional therapies. Notably, the source of these CSCs, referred to as the cell-of-origin, may have a distinct identity or a more differentiated phenotype. There is evidence demonstrating that the two stem cell populations in the human fetal cortex, namely ventricular radial glia (vRG) and outer radial glia (oRG), have different propensities for GBM initiation, whereby the latter shares a similar transcriptional signature with primary GBM cells. I investigated the properties and behaviors of vRG and oRG, in the context of both normal development and cancer initiation. Sorting approaches allow for the isolation of these cells, which I identified to exhibit several functional differences. vRG are more proliferative but less potent at self-renewal compared to oRG. Furthermore, vRG are more gliogenic whereas oRG are more neurogenic. vRG and oRG also respond differently to various growth factors, such as leukemia inhibitory factor (LIF), when grown both adherently and in suspension. These differences are maintained in culture over passaging, which suggests that vRG and oRG can be captured, propagated, and studied in vitro. Through modeling GBM molecular events in these cells via deletion of the tumor suppressor gene TP53, I discovered that oRG become more proliferative/self-renewing compared to vRG. The driving force of this difference is likely attributable to mechanisms of DNA damage repair, at which oRG seem to be weaker. Finally, I performed single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) of normal and differentiated populations of vRG and oRG, as well as subsequent comparisons to GBM cell line/primary tumor profiles. These analyses provide insights into how normal developmental cell types and pathways influence GBM progression and suggest that oRG glial lineages may more significantly contribute to the glial signature of GBM tumors. Overall, these findings lay the groundwork for further exploration of mechanisms of neoplastic transformation in the human context, particularly within cortical precursor populations. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Nouri, Shahrzad | Ganss, Bernhard | The Role of Junctional Epithelium Proteins in the Epithelial Attachment of Dentogingival Junction | Dentistry | 2022-11 | Teeth are the only organs in the human body that penetrate the otherwise protective epithelial cell layer. Therefore, the tooth-gum interface, the dentogingival junction, can be considered an open wound constantly exposed to oral microorganisms. The invasion of bacterial pathogens into the subgingival tissues is the main pathogenic factor for initiating periodontal disease (PD). Chronic PD is a destructive form of gum infection that can lead to tooth and bone loss. PD treatment procedures often fail to restore the structural integrity of the junctional epithelium (JE), the epithelial attachment of the gum to the tooth, leaving the tooth-gum interface prone to bacterial colonization. This emphasizes the need for novel therapeutic strategies targeting JE regeneration. The JE is an epithelial barrier located at the uppermost part of the dentogingival attachment apparatus and is considered the first line of defense to protect the tooth-supporting tissues from the invasion of bacterial pathogens. Despite the importance of the JE, its attachment mechanism to the tooth surfaces is not fully understood. The lack of a defined in vitro model system to study cell behavior on hydroxyapatite (HA), the main component of mineralized tooth surfaces, has been a barrier to simulating the JE attachment in vitro. Such model systems should be able to study both cell attachment and migration as important events in the JE repair and regeneration. To address this need, we have developed a model system based on real-time protein adsorption analysis, microfluidics, isolation of human primary JE cells, live-cell monitoring, and a wound-healing assay to study cell attachment and detachment behavior on HA surfaces. Our model system also enables cell migration studies over surfaces coated with protein-based bioadhesives. Using our model system, we discovered that a protein complex comprised of enamel protein secretory calcium-binding phosphoprotein proline-glutamine rich 1 (SCPPPQ1) and laminin332 (LAM332) had a unique capability to enhance and accelerate the attachment and migration of oral epithelial cells. Our results suggest that this novel protein complex can be used in developing a biomimetic adhesive to enhance and accelerate the re-epithelialization of the dentogingival junction in the destructive form of gum disease. | Ph.D. | regeneration | 15 |
| Pathmanapan, Sinthu | Wunder, Jay S||Alman, Benjamin A | Characterizing Metabolomic Activity in Mutant IDH Chondrosarcomas Chondrocytes | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Reprogramming of cellular metabolism has gained attention as an emerging hallmark of cancer, but metabolic studies of cartilaginous neoplasms have been limited. Chondrosarcomas are the most common malignancy of cartilage and are associated with somatic mutations in isocitrate dehydrogenase 1 (IDH1) and IDH2 genes. IDH mutations have also been identified in its benign precursor lesion, enchondromas; thus, suggesting that IDH mutations are early events in malignant chondrosarcoma transformation. Despite efforts from our group and others to target D-2-hydroxyglutrate (D-2HG), the downstream metabolic by-product of mutant IDH, this therapeutic strategy did not influence tumorigenic properties. We hypothesized that metabolic processes independent of D-2HG production may facilitate the development and progression of chondrosarcomas. Our targeted metabolomics study highlighted several metabolic differences between mutant IDH and non-mutant chondrosarcomas across a spectrum of organic acids, amino acids, and acylcarnitine species. This study also revealed enhanced glycolytic metabolism in mutant IDH chondrosarcoma, suggestive of increased glucose and glycogen tumor energetics. Accordingly, electron microscopical examination of patient chondrosarcoma cells revealed glycogen deposition exclusively in mutant IDH cells. We planned to uncover why this phenomenon was present in IDH mutant cells and how mutant IDH may regulate glycogen metabolism in early cartilage development and in chondrosarcomas to drive tumor growth. Upon investigation of glycogen in early cartilage development, mutant Idh1 mouse growth plates displayed glycogen accumulation upon histological analysis, confirming glycogen accumulation upon mutation of Idh1. Cartilaginous Gys1 deletion in the mutant Idh1 background revealed specific yet mild fetal skeletal deformities and partial rescue of the mutant Idh1 skeletal phenotype, suggesting that glycogen deposition plays a role in early cartilage development. Glycogen metabolism’s role in chondrosarcoma tumorigenesis was investigated by pharmacological blockade of glycogen utilization (CP-91149), which induced changes in tumor cell behavior, energetics, and tumor burden in vitro and in vivo. Finally, we identified a novel mechanism of glycogen metabolism regulation: hypoxia-inducible factor 1a (HIF1α) and mutant IDH1 interact to regulate gene expression of key metabolism enzymes. Our observations provide insight into how IDH mutational state alters cellular metabolism and how mutant IDH1 and HIF1α regulate glycogen metabolism in cartilage development and chondrosarcoma tumorigenesis. | Ph.D. | invest, production, species | 9, 12, 14, 15 |
| Lockwood, Ilana | Peterson-Badali, Michele | Theorizing and Addressing the Needs of Indigenous Justice-involved Populations: A Systematized Review and Qualitative Investigation of the Responsivity Principle | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | The dominant rehabilitation model in Western criminal justice systems, the risk-need-responsivity (RNR) framework, is criticized for disregarding the unique circumstances of Indigenous clients while at the same time under-researched on the very dimension—responsivity—that addresses this kind of tailoring. This dissertation comprises two studies investigating responsive rehabilitation for Indigenous clients from an international evidence base and local practice perspective, structured around two established and two proposed components of the responsivity principle. Study 1 is a systematized literature review of intervention with Indigenous justice-involved individuals in four countries, capturing research published between 1990 and 2022. Using narrative synthesis, I identified key themes emerging from 310 papers: that Indigenous individuals experience certain specific responsivity factors in greater numbers or to a greater degree of severity than the general justice-involved population; that services following the general responsivity principle yield positive results for Indigenous participants; that access to programs may be limited by the remoteness and poverty of Indigenous communities, representing a systemic responsivity issue; and that, at the level of ‘political responsivity,’ Indigenous scholars and communities sharply question state justice institutions and fight to implement locally owned programs under poorly resourced conditions. Study 2 presents the results of interviews with 16 service providers from northern Ontario working with Indigenous justice-involved youth in custody, probation, and community settings. I used thematic analysis to generate themes organized around the four categories of responsivity. Participants reported working in ways highly consistent with specific responsivity elements. On the topic of general responsivity, participants placed the therapeutic alliance at the core of effective treatment, noting the complexity and viability of cross-cultural relationships with Indigenous clients. With respect to systemic responsivity, participants identified remoteness and resource scarcity on reserves as significant barriers to intervention. As regards political responsivity, participants shared concerns about the “revolving door” of justice for Indigenous youth. Poverty, geography, racism, and trauma were significant cross-cutting themes. Together, these papers paint a picture of a highly vulnerable and resilient population that benefits from RNR-consistent individualized and multisystemic care but that enters the justice system with significant challenges and continues to struggle against systemic racism and inequality. | Ph.D. | poverty, racism, invest, inequality, equalit, indigenous, resilien, institut, criminal justice | 1, 4, 9, 10, 16, 11 |
| Frey, Bronwyn Amelia Fast | Barker, Joshua||Muehlebach, Andrea | Beta Capitalism: The Financialization and Minimum Viability of Food Delivery Labour | Anthropology | 2022-11 | This dissertation offers an ethnography of app-based food delivery couriers and management. The app-based last-mile delivery industry is one of the most distinctive developments in capitalism in the last decade. Drawing on twenty-one months of fieldwork, I argue that Fleatz, a composite app-based food delivery company operating in Berlin, represents a new iteration of capitalism in that the role of riders is not only, or even primarily, to create profits for the company through the surplus value of their labour. Instead, they are also subject to regimes of speculative data accumulation and of beta capitalism, an organizationally, politically, and financially volatile form of high-tech accumulation that emphasizes constant optimization, speed, and market growth, underpinned by a reliance on financial capital instead of profits to be economically viable. Subjecting rider labour to multiple forms of value accumulation results in a confusing, paradoxical, yet highly quantified work experience for riders and office workers alike, but the consequences are most serious for riders. | Ph.D. | labour, worker, capital | 8, 9 |
| Hao, Yiran | Aguirregabiria, Victor | On Electric Vehicle Demand, Price Competition and Environmental Policies | Economics | 2022-11 | Chapter 1 investigates the effects of two types of policies on consumer demand for EVs, subsidy programs and driving restrictions on gasoline cars, using rich consumer-level data from a major Chinese city on all car purchases. I estimate a structural demand model for differentiated products that incorporates these policies. I find both policies show their success in stimulating consumer demand for EVs and the positive effect of driving restrictions on the demand for EVs is stronger for consumers who already own a car than for those who do not.Chapter 2 studies the contribution to the dramatic decline of the market share of BYD Company in the Electric Vehicle (EV) market: from above 95% in 2014 to close to 10% in 2020 in a changing environment characterized by growing demand, rapid technological progress, disruptive market entry, and frequent changes in government subsidies to EVs. Our results are based on the estimation of a structural model of demand and price competition, and on a large set of counterfactual experiments that identify the contribution of different factors to the observed decline. We find that most of the decline in BYD’s market share can be explained by product proliferation and product design from early competitors. A second important factor was the rapid technological improvement in the industry during this period that made BYD to lose its initial cost advantage. Despite the decline in its market share, BYD increased its average price cost margin during this period. Our counterfactuals show that the decline in BYD’s market share and the increase in its markup are both closely related to changes in product design by BYD and its competitors. Chapter 3 compares the performance of estimation methods using market level data with a maximum likelihood–control function estimator to deal with the issue of zero market shares in demand estimation. We apply these methods to study consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic using data from a leading department store in China. We find very substantial biases in the methods using market level data while estimates using consumer level data show a more plausible result. | Ph.D. | invest, consum, environmental | 9, 12, 13 |
| Deibert, Emily Kathleen | Jayawardhana, Ray||Sivanandam, Suresh | High-Resolution Spectroscopy of Exoplanet Atmospheres | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2022-11 | Over five thousand exoplanets have been discovered, but relatively little is known about their atmospheric properties and compositions. Characterizing exoplanet atmospheres is the most promising avenue through which we can learn more about exoplanets themselves, and analyzing high-resolution spectra through Doppler cross-correlation is currently one of the best methods by which this can be accomplished. In this thesis, I use state-of-the-art ground-based spectrographs in the optical and near-infrared wavelength regimes to detect, characterize, and understand the atmospheres of exoplanets. My focus is on super-Earths and hot Jupiters, for which there are no Solar System analogues and which remain poorly understood. I begin by characterizing the atmospheres of two warm, sub-Saturn mass exoplanets with high-resolution optical spectroscopy, pushing current observational techniques to lower masses and temperatures and exploring the effects of clouds on high-resolution optical spectra. I then investigate the atmospheric composition of a hot super-Earth with high-resolution near-infrared spectroscopy, providing stringent constraints on its chemical composition and presenting the first atmospheric characterization of an exoplanet from a new near-infrared spectrograph. I also investigate the efficacy of telluric removal methods across a broad, near-infrared wavelength range. Lastly, I turn my attention to the atmosphere of a highly irradiated ultra-hot Jupiter with high-resolution optical spectroscopy, resulting in a new detection of ionized calcium indicative of atmospheric outflows and/or a hotter-than-expected temperature. I then carry out a detailed search for atomic and molecular species in this planet's atmosphere, shedding light on its chemical composition and setting the stage for a multi-year optical survey of exoplanet atmospheres at high spectral resolution. These works expand our knowledge and understanding of exoplanet atmospheres, and shed light on the enigmatic populations of super-Earths and hot Jupiters. They also introduce novel techniques across a range of new instruments and surveys, paving the way for future studies in the field and opening the doors to an era of comparative exoplanetology. | Ph.D. | knowledge, solar, invest, planet, species | 4, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Clark, Katy Aileen | MacDonald, Lorna | Regionalism in the Operas of John Beckwith and James Reaney | Music | 2022-11 | Regionalism is the cultural trend in which the idiosyncrasies of a given region, and their influence on human lives, social structures, and cultural development, are explored and expressed through an artistic medium. This trend emerged in Canadian literature in the 1920’s and 30’s, and experienced a resurgence in prominence in the 1970’s. However, the significance of regionalism in Canadian art music remains virtually unexplored. The purpose of this study is to explore the concept of regionalism in the four Beckwith/Reaney operas: Night Blooming Cereus (1959), The Shivaree (1982), Crazy to Kill (1989), and Taptoo! (2003). The author extrapolates from a literary understanding of regionalism to create a framework of analysis for these four musical works. Beckwith and Reaney employed regionalism as a vehicle for innovation within the operatic form, and exploited the tension between European operatic norms and authentic portrayals of life in rural Ontario with these works. The concluding chapter situates these operas within the context of the twentieth-century Canadian opera marketplace through an examination of composition and performance history, and examines the influence of regionalism on their critical and popular reception. | D.M.A. | rural | 11 |
| Srivastava, Amiy | Chattopadhyay, Kinnor Prof. | Modelling of Multiphase Flows in Continuous Casting | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Multiphase flow phenomena (MFP) during the continuous casting processes often become the root cause of defects in the final product. For high-end steel applications, understanding MFP-related defects is critical. At the caster, several phases interact during the course of casting. Gas-liquid interaction is observed when argon is injected into the mold which forms multi-size bubbles in liquid steel. Some bubbles are entrapped into the advancing solidifying shell and form blister defects in the slab. Gas-slag interaction occurs when bubbles interact with the slag layer. Bubbles shear the slag layer and create the slag open eye which becomes a source of reoxidation. Furthermore, slag/slag interaction can be observed when ladle slag enters the tundish due to vortex funneling or sink draining. Apart from emulsification, it can also affect the tundish covering slag layer. Physical modelling was performed using high-speed shadowgraphy imaging to capture the bubbles. Suitable image processing techniques (IPT) were identified and utilized to obtain bubble size distribution (BSD) and mean bubble size in a reduced scale mold. Dimensional analysis was performed to identify a correlation of mean bubble diameter at different gas and liquid flow rates, surface tension, viscosities, and densities of the liquids. To improve the correlation and reduce the prediction error, machine learning-based models were also developed with no overfitting. Moreover, for gas-slag interaction, the formation of open eyes in the mold top slag layer was studied through physical modelling. Different types of slag open eyes such as symmetrical, asymmetrical, liquid flow driven open eyes were observed at different gas fraction conditions. A mechanistic model was developed to predict the dimensionless open eye area of symmetrical open eyes. Lastly, for slag-slag interaction, a mechanistic model was developed and validated against physical modelling experiments to predict the affected area of tundish slag layer by ladle slag. A plumelike structure consisting of slag droplets is formed as ladle slag bounces back to the tundish slag layer. Ladle slag, upon reaching the tundish slag, pushes the tundish slag radially outward. A replacement of tundish cover was observed during physical modelling experiments. Total affected (replacement) area of tundish cover was modelled. | Ph.D. | learning | 4 |
| Mostafavi Pak, Seyedeh Nasrin | Wunch, Debra | Quantifying Methane Emissions from the Greater Toronto Area | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2022-11 | The government of Ontario has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30% of2005 levels by 2030. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA, pop. 6.4 million) is the most populous city in Canada, thus accurately quantifying GHG emissions from the GTA is an important step towards meeting Ontario’s commitments. In order to quantify GHG emissions and emission trends in an urban area, it is important to monitor GHG concentration levels in the atmosphere regularly to verify the accuracy of the reported emissions. In this study, I develop a new methane (CH4) emission inventory, using individual facility reports and emission estimates from area sources gathered for each municipality in the GTA. This allows us to have an emission inventory with a high spatial resolution that can be evaluated by atmospheric measurements. I describe the development of a network of portable Fourier Transform Spectrometers (FTS) in the GTA that measure total columns of CO2, CH4 and CO in the atmosphere and use the tracer-tracer ratio method to estimate CH4 emissions in the GTA. In addition, I preform a detailed assessment of the FTS instrument accuracy, precision and their optical stability using data collected during a field campaign at 6 TCCON stations in North America. I also demonstrate that the low-resolution FTSs could be useful as a “travelling standard” to indirectly compare TCCON instruments to each other. Coincident measurements of the vertical profile of CO2, CH4, and CO from the AirCore balloon platform provided the data required to tie the FTS retrievals to the WMO trace gas standard scale so that they can be used as a satellite validation tool. | Ph.D. | emission, greenhouse, urban, greenhouse gas, emissions, co2, methane | 7, 11, 13 |
| EbrahimAmini, Azin | Carlen, Peter | Modulating the Neocortical Extracellular Potassium Concentration In Vivo: Roles for Astrocytes and Energy | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | A normally functioning nervous system, neuronal and glial activity are dependent on normal extracellular potassium ion concentration ([K]o). Raised [K]o is associated with several disorders including cortical spreading depression, migraine, stroke, neurotrauma and epilepsy. To avoid neuronal adverse conditions, several processes, including those of an astrocytic nature, and ATP-dependent pumps and channels are involved in regulating the [K]o. This dissertation explores the role of astrocytic gap junctional coupling, astrocytic membrane potential and intracellular ATP concentration ([ATP]i) in the neocortical [K]o regulation/distribution using in vivo electrophysiological techniques combined with optogenetics and pharmacological interventions. Application of gap junctional blockers, carbenoxolone and Gap27, partially modulated the amplitude and shape of the evoked potassium ion (K) response but most noticeably decreased the velocity of the spreading evoked K and spreading depolarization (SD)-like responses. Opening of gap junctions by trimethylamine, slightly decreased the amplitude of the evoked K response and markedly increased the velocity of the redistribution of the evoked K and SD-like events. Photostimulation of eNpHR expressing astrocytes, which hyperpolarizes these cells, resulted in a significantly decreased resting [K]o and evoked K responses, and the amplitude of concomitant SD-like events also decreased. Reducing the [ATP]i using 2,4-dinitrophenol, 2-deoxyglucose or endothelin-1 application led to raised [K]o and SD-like events. It is proposed that the increased [K]o is due to impairment of the Na/K ATPase pump and ATP-sensitive potassium channels in the absence of sufficient ATP because, Na/K ATPase inhibition by ouabain led to increased [K]o and ATP-sensitive potassium channel impairment by glibenclamide resulted in decreased [K]o. In brief, observations presented in this dissertation, suggest that [K]o regulation is only partially modulated by astrocytic gap junction coupling with the most critical impact on the velocity, and not the amplitude of the evoked K and SD-like responses. Also, astrocytic membrane hyperpolarization leads to decreased [K]o. Moreover, a decreased [ATP]i leads to increased [K]o. This dissertation has investigated some of the key mechanisms involved in [K]o dynamics and suggests that modulation of astrocytic membrane potential, astrocytic gap junction coupling, and [ATP]i could be potential tools for altering the cerebral cortical [K]o. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy, invest | 2, 7, 2009 |
| Marchese, Austin D. | Lautens, Mark | From Palladium to Nickel: The Carboiodination Reaction Forward and Back | Chemistry | 2022-11 | For the past half-century, transition-metal catalysis has been an essential part of developing economical, sustainable and efficient strategies to generate pharmaceutically relevant small molecules. Despite the tremendous progress made towards these goals, new synthetic approaches are needed to keep up with the demand for innovation in drug production and discovery. Our group has had a mission to discover atom-economical processes that enable rapid access to a wide array of halogenated heterocycles. We have popularized a strategy known as the carbohalogenation reaction, wherein an aryl/acyl group and a halogen are transferred across a tethered π-bond, generating a cyclic product. Early success was achieved using palladium catalysis, however many limitations remained. First, can we access previously unattainable stereoisomers, whether it be enantioenriched products or different diastereomers? How can we reach a more structurally broad class of halogenated molecules? Lastly, what is the reaction mechanism using different catalysts? Motivated by a shift in the field to convert from precious metals to earth abundant base metals, in 2017 we began our exploration with nickel to answer these questions. Chapter 1 contains necessary background information on transition-metal catalyzed halogenation methods, domino Mizoroki-Heck reactions and landmark reports of carboiodination reactions. Chapter 2 describes the development of the first nickel-catalyzed carboiodination reaction. The following four chapters outline unique reports of nickel-carboiodination reactions, each focusing on fundamental limitations in the field, culminating with the first enantioselective nickel-catalyzed carboiodination reaction in chapter 6. Chapters 7 and 8 focus on the use of palladium in domino reactions. Chapter 7 contains the synthesis of medicinally relevant bis-heterocyclic spirocycles, via a palladium catalyzed domino Mizoroki-Heck/C–H activation reaction. Employing the knowledge of the previous work, chapter 8 combines nickel carboiodination chemistry and palladium C–H activation reactions. Fundamentally, all reactions are microscopically reversible, though studying the reversibility of Mizoroki-Heck reactions is challenging. Enabled by compounds obtained via our carboiodination methodologies, this chapter outlines our comprehensive study of the reversible C–C bond formation using palladium catalysis. Herein, we focus on mechanistic elucidation, development of a diastereoconvergent methodology, as well as study electronic and steric parameters effecting the reaction. | Ph.D. | knowledge, transit, production, land | 4, 11, 12, 15 |
| Singh, Ayushi | Martin, Peter G||Matzner, Christopher D | Properties and Stability of Gould Belt Star Forming Regions: Observational and Theoretical Analyses | Astronomy and Astrophysics | 2022-11 | Star formation occurs when the self-gravity of a clump in a molecular cloud overcomes the support by kinetic motions and collapses. Understanding the morphology and dynamics of these clouds has been crucial in understanding this balance of energy. With a wide range of observations, we are able to estimate various key properties of these regions, which are then used to assess the stability of these clumps. It is imperative that we calculate these properties accurately because any systematic uncertainty will propagate into succeeding analysis. We generated Herschel Optimized Tau and Temperature (HOTT) maps of Gould Belt regions using submillimeter images of the intensity of thermal emission by dust from Herschel Space Observatory. Our robust pipeline fitting the spectral energy distribution to a modified blackbody model using chi-squared minimization required accurate uncertainties for weighting. We investigated and quantified multiple sources of uncertainty in the observed intensity maps, which gave us a chi-squared distribution as expected from theory. Furthermore, we also confirmed the validity of using a modified blackbody to model dust emission in molecular clouds. Generating these products consistently for multiple fields created standardized parameter maps to be used in further analysis. Recent studies on the virial stability of massive clumps reported an unexpected amount of gravitational energy, making these clumps sub-virial. This cannot be explained without a high amount of magnetization, which is contradictory to what is observed. Our explorations suggested that this arises due to the methods used to implement the virial analysis. Therefore, we proposed a new technique that calculates direct estimates of gravitational and kinetic energy using resolved parameter maps. Additionally, we introduced a new clump extraction method using the Abel reconstruction. This allowed us to get better estimates of the column density and mass of the clumps. Applying these techniques to the clumps in multiple Gould Belt regions using the dust parameters from HOTT and molecular line kinematics from GAS, we found that these massive clumps are, in fact, not sub-virial and so are consistent with our current understanding of these regions. | Ph.D. | energy, emission, invest | 7, 9 |
| Grant, Robert | Gallinger, Steven | Warning Systems for Undesirable Events during Cancer Treatment: Applying Machine Learning to Administrative Data | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Patients frequently experience undesirable events during cancer treatment. Identifying those at risk of undesirable events could facilitate research on prevention and mitigation. We linked multiple population-level administrative databases in Ontario to identify patients who received systemic therapy for cancer between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2020. We developed longitudinal machine learning systems to predict undesirable events during cancer treatments from demographic, cancer, treatment, symptom, and laboratory features. We focused on three categories of undesirableevents: 1) acute care use, specifically emergency department visits and hospitalizations; 2) cytopenias, including anemia, thrombocytopenia, and neutropenia; and 3) nephrotoxicity from cisplatin, both acute kidney injury and chronic kidney disease. Machine learning generally outperformed simpler regression-based models and provided risk estimates beyond the initial period after treatment initiation. Sensitivity analyses revealed performance deterioration within some subgroups, most concerningly in some underserved populations. Together, these studies demonstrate the potential of warning systems based on longitudinal machine learning models applied to administrative data to predict undesirable events in cancer care. They also highlight potential challenges to address when the systems are deployed in clinical practice. | Ph.D. | learning, labor, underserved | 4, 8, 10 |
| Weston, J. Kyle | Piquette-Miller, Micheline | Investigation of the Involvement of NLRP3 Inflammasome Activation in the Proinflammatory Response to Clozapine | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2022-11 | Idiosyncratic drug reactions (IDRs) represent a major concern in the development of new drugs as they are rarely identified in clinical trials and can be severe and life-threatening in nature, putting a given drug’s success at risk. Improved tools for estimating the IDR potential of a drug are of paramount importance in identifying these reactions before products make it to market. The overarching goal of this research was to investigate the role of the inflammasome in the proinflammatory immune response to clozapine, using in vitro and in vivo models of clozapine exposure. Clozapine induces a well-documented proinflammatory response in patients characterized by a delayed increase in neutrophils and proinflammatory cytokines. Clozapine was found to activate NLRP3 inflammasomes, inducing a release of interleukin-1β, and the structural-functional analogue olanzapine, not associated with IDRs, did not activate inflammasomes in the in vitro assay characterized in Chapter 2. An animal model of clozapine-induced neutrophilia in rats was developed and used to characterize the clozapine-proinflammatory response. The role of inflammasome activation in the response to clozapine was evaluated using a new inhibitor of inflammasome signalling, the endogenous ketone β-hydroxybutyrate. Findings from these studies support the role of NLRP3 in the in vivo response to clozapine, as β-hydroxybutyrate was found to attenuate clozapine-induced neutrophilia and increases in CXCL-1 and α-1-acid glycoprotein (Chapter 3). Based on previous findings, myeloperoxidase (MPO) was identified as a neutrophil-derived, oxidative, metabolizing enzyme involved in the covalent binding of proteins. The data from the work described were not sufficient to define a bioactivation mechanism, but further support involving the myeloperoxidase was identified (Chapter 4). The role of inflammasome activation in the initiation and/or development of IDRs was investigated following the in vitro findings reported in Chapter 2 and expanded to the in vivo clozapine work in Chapter 3. The attenuation of the clozapine-induced proinflammatory response by inhibition of NLRP3 inflammasome activation observed in these studies supports the hypothesis that the inflammasome is involved in the development of clozapine-induced agranulocytosis and possesses significant potential for its involvement in other immune-mediated IDRs. | Ph.D. | invest, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Rooney, Ashley Marian | Coburn, Bryan A | The Effects of Antimicrobials and Microbial Consortia on Human Gut Microbiota and Antibiotic Resistance Genes | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-11 | The human gut microbiome is a significant contributor to health and disease. Numerous host and environmental factors are associated with perturbation of gut microbiome composition. Antibiotics significantly alter the composition and function of the gut microbiome, but dose, class and duration-specific antimicrobial effects are not well studied. As it becomes increasingly clear that perturbation of the microbiome is associated with adverse health outcomes, we must understand what factors influence microbiome composition, how to measure relevant aspects of microbiome composition and function, and identify therapeutic targets to remediate or protect the microbiome from iatrogenic perturbation. The first aim of this thesis was to understand the differential effects of antibiotic type and duration on the composition of the microbiota to inform antibiotic therapy that limits its disruption. In a retrospective cohort of 72 term and preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unit we compared the composition of the microbiota within one week post antimicrobial exposure between infants who received ampicillin plus tobramycin, ampicillin plus cefotaxime, or ampicillin plus tobramycin plus metronidazole. No differences in the composition of the microbiota were observed between treatment groups, but we observed that each additional day of antibiotics was associated with decreased health-associated anaerobes. Our next aim was to validate sequencing and bioinformatic methods to enable accurate detection of antimicrobial resistance genes in a metagenome to inform sequencing requirements for clinical studies. We found that 30 million sequencing reads would be required to detect antimicrobial resistance genes in organisms comprising 1% of a microbial community. Finally, in a post-hoc analysis of a clinical trial of a microbial consortium for treatment of recurrent Clostridioides difficile infection, we found that treatment was associated with multiple-log decreases in Proteobacteria abundance and antimicrobial resistance genes, and sustained increases in health-associated anaerobes. Together these data demonstrate the daily harms of antibiotics on the composition of the gut microbiota where microbial consortia may be an effective strategy for remediating the gut microbiome post-antimicrobial exposure. | Ph.D. | metro, environmental | 11, 13 |
| Jefferson, Alison Elizabeth | Jones, Glen A | The New Normal? The Practice of Doctoral Education in a Global Pandemic | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | There has been an increasing interest in doctoral education in recent years, and an increase in the number of doctoral graduates as institutions and nations strive to be competitive in the global knowledge economy, making doctoral education a prescient issue. There is very little existing literature on doctoral education in Canada. In the broader, existing literature, a socialization framework is frequently employed to explore the student’s journey from novice to scholar. A significant factor in this socialization has been the global COVID-19 pandemic, with the Canadian response first being felt in March 2020. In some provinces, some of the COVID-19 social distancing measures remained until early 2022. To address the broad aim of this research — to attempt to understand doctoral students’ perceptions, experiences, and socialization during the COVID-19 pandemic, contextualizing these aspects using Bourdieu’s conceptual tools — the following two-part research question was addressed: Firstly, how were students’ perceptions and experiences of their doctoral programs affected in the immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic? And secondly, how can Bourdieu’s conceptual tools help us conceptualize students’ experiences? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 doctoral students across various disciplines and departments at three research-intensive universities in one Canadian province. A fundamental aspect of this thesis was the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of habitus, capital, and field, both in the design of interview questions and examination of the participant responses, to explore doctoral student experience both generally and with specific reference to experiences between March 2020 and the date of their interview, with the final interview occurring July 2021. The results suggested that previously described factors affecting socialization were exacerbated during this time. The expectations placed on students and the valued activities for socialization remained unchanged, but how students perceived those expectations and experienced those activities changed significantly. The research revealed that long-standing assumptions of doctoral study as leading to an academic faculty position are not only outdated but may be actively hindering socialization. This research advances that a new field of doctoral education has emerged due to pandemic adaptations, which has implications for the design of future doctoral programs. | Ph.D. | knowledge, capital, institut | 4, 9, 16 |
| McPhee, Anna Michelle | Sommerville, Jessica A||Schmuckler, Mark A | Investigating the Development of Kinship Detection in Early Childhood | Psychology | 2022-11 | Effectively navigating our social worlds requires an understanding of the rules and behaviors that govern our own and others’ social interactions. Although previous studies have illustrated that the ability to understand social affiliation is present early in development, the majority of research to date has focused on how children come to identify the presence of third-party social affiliations, as opposed to particular types of social relationships. Being able to identify specific types of third-party social affiliations, such as third-party parent-child relationships, is an especially important skill for children to master, given that correct inferences about the nature of social relationships is central to successful social functioning. Given that parent-child relationships are characterized by parental investment (i.e., parents invest their time, effort, energy, and/or resources towards their child), we investigated whether children use two key markers of parental investment – altruism and partiality towards one’s own child – to identify and understand parent-child relationships in third-party contexts. Two sets of experiments were conducted in which participants between the ages of 3 to 7 were presented with hypothetical vignettes depicting interactions between an adult and child character. The relationship-type and presence/absence of parental investment was manipulated across contexts, and participants were asked questions regarding their social inferences and evaluations of the scenarios. Across both sets of studies, children as young as 3 used cues indicative of parental investment to guide their social evaluations, with the ability to use these cues to guide their social inferences reliably appearing by the age of 5. These findings suggest that there might be a mechanism sensitive to detecting third-party social affiliation in the preschool period that uses subtle social cues, such as the observation of parental investment, to identify and understand third-party parent-child relationships. Together, these findings speak to the sophistication of such abilities and highlight the need to examine social cues in the social contexts in which they occur. | Ph.D. | ABS, energy, invest | 2, 7, 2009 |
| Rahmani, Noreen | Zawertailo, Laurie | Exploring the Role of Attentional Bias in Tobacco Dependence | Pharmacology | 2022-11 | Attentional bias to smoking-related stimuli is an important behavioural feature of tobacco dependence. The overall aim for this thesis is to investigate if attentional bias can serve as a potential phenotypic biomarker to assist in understanding treatment effectiveness, as well as predicting treatment response.First, a comprehensive systematic review was conducted to examine the association between attentional bias to smoking-related cues using eye-tracking indices in smokers and to identify gaps in the literature. Following a thorough literature search, 18 unique articles were identified. It was determined that smokers have increased attentional bias to smoking-related cues in comparison to non-smokers. Second, we aimed to investigate differences in attentional bias to smoking, affective, and sensation-seeking cues in smokers and non-smokers using novel, free-viewing, eye- tracking technology. Smokers (n=50) spent over 2 times longer looking at smoking-related images than non-smokers (n=50; F=25.50, p<0.001). As well, greater impulsivity was significantly associated with increased attentional bias to sensation-seeking cues (R2=0.059, F=2.98, p=0.04) in smokers but not non-smokers. Finally, we investigated whether smoking cessation treatment combining varenicline and transcranial direct current stimulation applied on the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex altered attentional bias to smoking cues, and whether eye-tracking can serve as a proxy measure for changes in neural responses. Preliminary findings show a decrease (coeff=-0.007, p=0.004) in attentional bias to smoking-related cues from baseline to end of treatment across treatment conditions. A positive correlation was found between attentional bias to smoking cues outside the scanner and BOLD signal during smoking cue presentation in the anterior cingulate cortex (rs=0.36, p=0.03) at baseline. This finding was reduced to a trend when number of cigarettes smoked per day was accounted for in the model. No significant stimulation type-by-time or quit status-by-time interaction effects were found. Findings of this thesis suggest that smoking-related attentional bias is an important characteristic of tobacco dependence and can reflect treatment-related changes. As well, findings support the use of eye-tracking as a non-invasive and affordable proxy for assessing brain reactivity to drug-related cues. Findings offer insights on underlying mechanisms influencing treatment-related changes and has the potential to inform new and effective cessation interventions. | Ph.D. | affordab, invest | 1, 10, 2009 |
| Bunke, John McBride | Rattan, Gurpreet | Metaphysics in Context | Philosophy | 2022-11 | This thesis is about meta-metaphysics, which is the study of the nature of metaphysics. In this thesis, I show why two alternative approaches to the nature of metaphysics, one of which treats metaphysical views as competing theories and the other of which treats metaphysicians as engaged in merely verbal disputes, are both incorrect. In their place, I develop a picture of metaphysics in which it is a rational and substantive area of philosophical investigation that is characterized by a novel form of pluralism.I do this first by demonstrating the importance of the fact that metaphysical investigation is conducted in the medium of language; despite this, metaphysics seeks answers to questions that concern non-linguistic reality rather than language itself. Since metaphysics occurs via the medium of language, metaphysical discourse must respect the fact that a constitutive aim of language use is communication. The choices of which terms we add to or subtract from our language must be guided by this aim as well. This has consequences for which sorts of objects we are committed to saying exist. Despite occurring via the medium of language, metaphysics seeks to obtain greater understanding of (non-linguistic) reality. Metaphysics seeks to make reality intelligible by providing multiple illuminating descriptions of the phenomena. On my account, competing metaphysical views are distinct "explanatory frameworks," which are compatible with each other although there is a sense in which they are in tension. I outline a semantic framework that elucidates the nature of the complex relationship between metaphysical views. I call my approach to metaphysics "contemplative metaphysics" because it allows one to see the ultimate compatibility of metaphysical theses characterized using different frameworks. Finally, I explore whether changing one’s beliefs in the way required by contemplative metaphysics can be rational. This requires showing that several common assumptions about rational belief must be rejected. By adopting some aspects of permissivism about rational belief we can justify rejecting those assumptions and thereby defuse certain threats to the rationality of contemplative metaphysics. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Santen, Sean Dalton | Macklin, Audrey | Keeping Countries Safe from Refugees – How the Canadian Courts Interpret International Law to Place Sovereign Rights Above Individual Rights | Law | 2022-11 | This thesis examines the Safe Third Country Agreement between Canada and the United States, and the ongoing litigation contesting its compliance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Drawing from the work of Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL) scholars, the thesis traces the development and creation of racially motivated but facially neutral laws and procedures in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to present-day immigration control measures. The thesis argues that the architecture of international law elevates sovereign rights over those of the individual, and this structural imbalance has encouraged and facilitated the widespread diffusion of “safe country” agreements between states. Building upon the work of private international law scholars, the thesis contends that the Canadian Supreme Court has interpreted the concept of comity to require an unnecessarily deferential posture to the interests of foreign sovereigns. | LL.M. | refugee | 10 |
| Yu, Lu | Volgushev, Stanislav||Erdogdu, Murat | Latent Structure Estimation for Panel Data and Theoretical Guarantees for Stochastic Optimization | Statistics | 2022-11 | The past two decades have witnessed a dramatic growth of research interest in statistics, optimization, and machine learning. Despite the widespread use of machine learning techniques and optimization algorithms, many of these surprisingly lack fundamental theoretical grounding. The central theme of this work is adopting tools from statistics to bridge the gap between theory and application in machine learning and optimization. In this thesis, we investigate several fundamental problems arising from machine learning and optimization under modern regimes, and we develop theoretical guarantees that align closely with practical experience in these fields. The first contribution of this thesis is developing efficient unsupervised learning paradigms with the guarantees of quality and correctness for the estimation of patterns from panel data. The remaining part of this work focuses on understanding the foundations of stochastic optimization from both statistical and computational aspects. Our work capitalizes on the cross-fertilization among statistics, machine learning, and optimization, thereby further improves our theoretical understanding of machine learning techniques and optimization algorithms under the statistical setting. | Ph.D. | learning, capital, invest | 4, 9 |
| Besaw, Jessica E | Miller, R. J. Dwayne||Ernst, Oliver P | Structural Characterization of Novel Microbial Rhodopsins by X-ray Crystallography | Chemistry | 2022-11 | X-ray crystallography has revolutionized science by unveiling the atomic structures of thousands of molecules, ultimately exposing how the building blocks of the universe fit together. However, there are millions of undetermined chemical and biological structures that would expand our understanding of nature and medicine. One such group of biomolecules with hundreds of undetermined structures comprise microbial rhodopsins, whose numbers are rapidly increasing with the yearly discovery of new members with different functions. Microbial rhodopsins are membrane proteins that convert light into chemical energy to drive a range of functions from ion pumps, ion channels, sensors, and enzymes. Despite recycling a similar architecture of seven-transmembrane alpha-helices bundled around a light-harvesting retinal chromophore, microbial rhodopsins perform vastly different functions by fine-tuning their structures including side chains, loops, internal water, and ions. This necessitates the acquisition of high-resolution structures to understand their complex structure-function relationships. This thesis employed X-ray crystallography to expand the structural database of the family of microbial rhodopsins, whose biomolecular structures provide valuable insight into their functional diversity and can potentially be applied in optogenetics to modulate brain neurons with light. To begin, I present the crystal structure of Mastigocladopsis repens rhodopsin (MastR), a representative of a new clade of cyanobacterial chloride ion pumps that was discovered in 2016. I further solved the structure of the MastR-T74D mutant, to provide a structural rationale explaining how a single threonine (‘T’)-to-aspartate (‘D’) mutation in a conserved motif can convert the natively inward chloride pump into an outward proton pump. Secondly, I present a high-resolution structure of Thermoplasmatales archaeon SG8-52-1 heliorhodopsin (TaHeR). Discovered in 2018, the functions of heliorhodopsins are largely unknown. However, this low pH TaHeR structure helped elucidate a chloride binding site and a putative intramolecular signaling pathway. Finally, I reveal the structure of Antarctic Rhodopsin (AntR), a member of the Schizorhodopsins class discovered in 2019. AntR pumps protons inward, in stark contrast to previously discovered outward proton-pumping rhodopsins. The structure of AntR helped illuminate the mechanism of inverted proton transport and revealed a unique, elongated bent helix at the C-terminus that is required for efficient proton transport. | Ph.D. | water, energy, recycl, conserv | 6, 7, 12, 14, 15 |
| Shaikh, Hammad | McMillan, Robert RM | Three Essays in the Economics of Education | Economics | 2022-11 | A recently emerging literature in public economics uses structural models to inform the design of public policies. In these papers, credible identification of structural parameters can be challenging as they mainly utilize observational administrative data. In contrast, structural parameters are credibly identified using experimental data in the growing behaviouraleconomics literature. Although the scope for policy design is more limited in these papers as the experiments are typically conducted under ideal settings in a laboratory. The three chapters in this thesis integrates methodologies from both the public economics and behavioural economics literatures, by using evidence from field experiments and estimable models of student effort choice to design policies for improving students' academic outcomes in higher education. Chapter 1 credibly estimates the cumulative learning technology in a foundational STEM course. To do so, I carry out a field experiment which generates period-by-period exogenous variation in effort allocation, enabling me to identify dynamic interactions across effort inputs in the learning technology. I find evidence of dynamic learning complementarities as the marginal benefit to studying in each learning period is increasing in prior knowledge accumulated. Chapter 2 examines how students in STEM can be guided to learn effectively through the design of the course grading scheme. I first develop and estimate a multi-stage behavioural model of student effort supply. The estimated model allows me to explore the efficacy of changing assignment grading weights to improve student learning. I find that the simulated weights that maximize learning are decreasing across assignments, serving to increase effort by myopic students early in the course when they acquire foundational skills. Finally, Chapter 3 studies the provision of online public goods in the context of voluntary online student discussion boards – a prominent feature of distance education used to support learning at scale. I conduct two randomized informational interventions, successfully nudging students to sign-up and then contribute further to the discussion board. I find that having access to and participating in discussion board significantly improves students’ learning outcomes. Additionally, I find that free-riding behaviour can be mitigated by offering students appropriate bonus credit for writing valuable content that is endorsed by the instructor. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, labor | 4, 8 |
| Friesen, Erik Loewen | Kurdyak, Paul | Understanding Rural-urban Disparities in Alcohol-related Health Service Use in Ontario, Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Introduction: Rural, relative to urban, communities in Ontario, Canada experience disproportionately high rates of alcohol-related emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations; however, we have a limited understanding of why this disparity exists. The purpose of this thesis was to better understand rural-urban disparities in alcohol-related health service use to inform the development of evidence-based public health strategies that address high rates of alcohol-related harm in rural Ontario. Methods: This thesis was composed of three separate but related projects. The first was a scoping review of the international literature on rural-urban disparities in hazardous alcohol use and alcohol-related harm. The second was a geospatial analysis of regional rates of alcohol-related ED visits and hospitalizations across rural and urban Ontario health regions. The third was a retrospective cohort study evaluating rural-urban differences in clinical outcomes following alcohol-related hospitalizations. The latter two projects made use of Ontario health administrative data. Results: All three projects demonstrated that increasing rurality is associated with higher rates of alcohol-related harm. The retrospective cohort study also indicated that limited access to mental health and addiction services partially mediates the increased risk of alcohol-related harm in rural Ontario. Despite this general trend, each study also revealed important complexities to this association that merit consideration in future policy development. For example, the scoping review found that rural-urban disparities in alcohol-related harm vary based on the type of harm being evaluated and the sociodemographic characteristics of the study population. The spatial analysis found that the association between rurality and alcohol-related health service use differed between Northern and Southern Ontario. Finally, the retrospective cohort study indicated that the associations between rurality and clinical outcomes following alcohol-related hospitalizations are non-linear and vary substantially between outcome types. Conclusions: The results of thesis corroborate previous evidence that rural, relative to urban, communities in Ontario experience higher rates of alcohol-related harm but indicate that this association is not simple or linear. Rural communities should be prioritized for public health interventions aimed at reducing alcohol-related harm; however, more research is required to understand how these policies can be tailored to meet regional needs in an evidence-based manner. | Ph.D. | disparity, mental health, public health, urban, rural | 1, 10, 3, 11 |
| Garon-Sayegh, Patrick | Lemmens, Trudo | Medicine at the Bar: Medical Experts, Lawyers, and the Making of Malpractice in the Courtroom | Law | 2022-11 | This dissertation shows, via a detailed analysis of trial proceedings, how medical malpractice is made in the courtroom. To show this I build on insights from work in the fields of philosophy, history, and sociology of medicine and science. I draw these insights together into a general, rhetorical perspective on the evidentiary process that takes place at trial. This perspective is then deployed in a case study of a single trial. Throughout the dissertation I focus on knowledge of the medical standard of care: the norm against which the conduct of physician–defendants is compared to determine whether or not malpractice occurred. Knowledge of the standard is of a particular kind. In many cases, this knowledge cannot be separated from the argumentative work that takes place during the trial. Furthermore, knowledge of the past events themselves—i.e. physician–defendants’ past actions in the situations in which they found themselves—cannot be separated from said argumentative work. The purview of this argumentative work is extensive, since it also includes authorizing certain people—medical expert witnesses—to opine regarding the events. The case study allows me to underscore the extent to which the trial is not only an argumentative practice, but also a highly disciplined and particularized inquiry into past events. Thus the standard of care is a product of the trial qua argumentative, disciplined, and particularized inquiry. This challenges prevailing conceptions of the standard of care in the doctrine and jurisprudence. Following these, the standard of care is akin to a fact that exists independently of the trial, and the trial is merely a means to make this fact accessible to the judge or jury with the least amount of distortion. I argue, contra these conceptions, that the trial has value in itself because it yields knowledge that cannot be gained any other way. In the case of the medical standard of care, it is knowledge made up of heterogeneous considerations—technical, scientific, moral, and legal—brought to bear on specific actions in specific situations. | S.J.D. | knowledge, accessib | 4, 11 |
| Polat, Zehra Melike | Gagné, Antoinette | (Re)conceptualizing Integration: An Arts-Informed Study of Kurdish-Turkish Asylum Claimants’ Post-Migration Experiences in Canada | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | The number of Turkish and Kurdish refugee claimants to Canada has been increasing significantly over the last six years. Despite this increase, there are limited studies that focus on the post-migration experiences of Turkish and Kurdish individuals from refugee backgrounds in Canada. Although policies highlight that knowledge of the host society's language(s) is a key indicator of successful integration, little attention has been paid to the role of power relations, opportunities for social interaction, language practice and marginalization experiences in shaping the language learning experiences of migrants. Thus, my study aims to answer the following research questions: (a) How do individuals from refugee backgrounds perceive and experience “integration?” (b) What are the challenges of learning languages in Canada as an individual from a refugee background? (c) What opportunities or successes do individuals from refugee backgrounds experience while learning languages in Canada?Within the context of a participatory arts-informed multiple case study, I worked with ten Kurdish and Turkish youth between the ages of 18-30 who participated in semi-structured interviews and online focus groups. During the focus groups, participants produced and shared different (art)ifacts, such as music performance, sculptures, poems, photographs, etc. on diverse topics such as identity, language learning experiences, and involvement in community programs. Engaging in critical group dialogues, participants identified their needs, concerns, and opportunities and proposed solutions for stakeholders in the resettlement and education sectors. Findings revealed that participants’ intersecting identities and their marginalization experiences resulting from different forms of systemic oppression shaped their language learning and “integration” experiences in Canada. Their language learning trajectories were shaped by multilevel structural factors, ideologies and their own perceptions of their languages and position in Canada. Findings also revealed participants’ resilience and resistance to being understood as “lacking agency” as they created and sought opportunities for personal, academic, and language development to move towards a pathway to post-secondary education. I describe implications for language programs for newcomers and policies related to resettlement and language education and, in particular, the need to shift from measuring settlement success by considering integration to making inclusion a priority. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, secondary education, refugee, resilien, resilience | 4, 10, 11, 13, 15 |
| Ghadiri Bashardoost, Bahar | Lyons, Kelly||Miller, Renée | Knowledge Translation | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Knowledge-rich applications can see significant performance improvementsby using domain-specific Knowledge bases (KBs). Populating and enriching these KBs has, thus, become an important challenge. In this thesis, we examine a powerful approach for KB population that is based on knowledge exchange, the process of translating knowledge from one KB to another, even when these KBs use very different concepts, properties, and graph structure to represent their knowledge. We introduce Kensho. A tool for generating mapping rules between two Knowledge Bases. In the data exchange problem, data that is structured under a source schema is transformed into an instance of a target schema. This is accomplished using a set of rules (called mapping rules) that specify the relationship between the source and target schemas. Kensho can produce mapping rules even in the presence of cycles, incompleteness in the source, and in settings with missing or unknown correspondences between properties or property paths. In addition, Kensho performs knowledge translation using value invention to preserve the proper grouping of data in the target KB. We also introduce two tools (Vizcurator and Sassho) that we have created to help domain experts in the task of knowledge translation. Vizcurator aims to help a domain expert understand and curate the source of exchange. Sassho aims to help a domain expert compare and understand mapping rules which are automatically created using a mapping generation tool such as Kensho. Sassho enables a domain expert to create examples that can be used to understand subtle differences among alternative mapping rules and explore the affect of those differences on the data being exchanged. As interest in supporting data exchange between heterogeneous knowledge bases (KBs) has increased, so has interest in benchmarking KB exchange systems. We introduce a set of new requirements for a KB exchange benchmark based on unique characteristics of KBs and based on important lessons learned from other data exchange systems. The field of exchanging information among KBs is relatively new. We outline an extensive research agenda for Knowledge Exchange based our experience in bringing data exchange to knowledge graphs. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Lalancette, Michael | Volgushev, Stanislav | Statistical Inference for Tail Dependence Structures | Statistics | 2022-11 | In multivariate extreme value theory, the study of tail dependence seeks to understand the dependence structure of multivariate data among those observations that are considered extreme, typically by having at least one of their components take a large value. This thesis offers solutions to two inferential problems concerning tail dependence. Existing work often assumes that observed variables are tail dependent, i.e., that observing multiple extreme values simultaneously is roughly as likely as observing at least one extreme. Real data, however, suggests that this is a restrictive assumption even in the bivariate case; the probability of simultaneous extremes can often be significantly smaller than the probability of a single extreme, while being non-negligible. In the first part of this thesis, a novel method is introduced to construct parametric models for bivariate tails that can be agnostic to the presence or absence of tail dependence. A class of M-estimators is constructed for the models and is theoretically justified. The model construction, inference methodology and asymptotic theory are then extended to the case where the tails of a spatial process are of interest. The conditional tail dependence structure of a moderate- to high-dimensional random vector can be encoded in the edges of an extremal graph, where each vertex represents an observed variable. Learning general extremal graphs in a fully data-driven way is an important open problem. In the second part of this thesis, a family of algorithms is introduced to solve this task by borrowing tools from Gaussian graphical model selection. For two such algorithms which are based on L1 regularization, consistency of the estimated graph is established in a general setting. No assumptions are made on the structure of the underlying graph, other than connectedness, and the number of variables is allowed to be exponentially larger than the effective sample size. Along the way, a general concentration result is proved for the empirical extremal variogram, which has widespread applicability in multivariate extreme value theory. | Ph.D. | ABS, learning | 2, 4 |
| Camacho, Alberto | McIlraith, Sheila A. | Automata-Theoretic Synthesis of Plans and Reactive Strategies | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Sequential decision making is a central problem in Artificial Intelligence (AI) with applications ranging from the automated synthesis of plans for conversational agents to the synthesis of controllers for power plants and autonomous vehicles. We are concerned with synthesizing strategies for sequential decision making in discrete dynamical systems, directly from a logical specification. This problem has been investigated within the fields of automated planning and reactive synthesis, utilizing different formulations of the problem dynamics and objectives. By relating the two models, we exploit the theory and practice from one to make significant advances in the theory and practice of the other. We start by revealing a direct correspondence between reactive synthesis and automated planning with temporally extended goals in fully observable and non-deterministic (FOND) environments. Such a correspondence exists when goals and specifications are expressed in Linear Temporal Logic (LTL), and it extends beyond LTL to all the regular and omega-regular specification languages, that can be transformed into finite state automata. Finite state automata are a central theme in the dissertation, and we use them as the computational normal form to derive theoretical results and algorithms. Another central theme is the use of FOND planners as a tool. FOND planners have been highly optimized to exploit the problem structure, and also environment fairness assumptions. However, such tools can only handle final-state goals. We develop theory and algorithms for FOND planning with goals that are temporally extended, using several types of finite state automata to represent such goals. Our algorithms compile automata goals away, and make it possible to use existing FOND planners for the purpose of planning with temporally extended goals. In the second part of the thesis, we revisit specifications for reactive synthesis. We start by studying the crucial role of environment assumptions in realizability, and argue that they should be interpreted as properties of infinite-length traces, in general, even when programs terminate in finite time. We then recast specifications as automata games, and design principled methods to solve those games via compilation to FOND planning. Our methods can handle specifications for terminating and non-terminating programs, can incorporate environment assumptions, and can solve realizability and synthesis. Our empirical evaluation suggests that FOND planners can be an effective tool for sequential decision making, and that exploiting program termination and environment fairness can improve the scalability of algorithms. By studying planning and synthesis from an automata-theoretic perspective, our results can be extended to a variety of temporal logics and other regular and omega-regular specification languages that can be transformed into automata. The work presented in this dissertation establishes a new area of study for researchers in AI automated planning that holds the promise to be transformative with respect to the field of reactive synthesis and to program synthesis more generally. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Coppens, Lindsay Marie Rita | Childs, Ruth | A Narrative Study on First-generation Women Students’ Experiences and Persistence Decisions in Ontario Undergraduate Mathematics or Physics Programs | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | Though participation and persistence rates for women in university science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) programs are increasing, the experiences of an equity-deserving group, first-generation women students (FGWSs), those women first in their family to attend college or university, are not widely understood. This study used narrative inquiry and interviews to explore the journey of 12 FGWSs into and through their mathematics and physics programs, how they understood and made sense of their experiences, and how these experiences shaped their persistence decisions. The conceptual framework guiding this study draws upon Terenzi and Reason’s (2005) persistence framework, De Grandi et al.’s (2019) STEM climate constructs, and STEM literature. Although findings are mostly consistent with previous research, they also reveal new insights into FGWSs’ challenges and successes and how they use different lenses (e.g., gender or first-generation status) to understand their experiences. Growing up, participants developed an early interest in STEM through informal exploration and teachers who fostered their passion. Once they began university, participants felt disoriented as they were unfamiliar with the university context. Several themes emerged relating to their university journey. First, first-generation status is a hidden component of social identity acknowledged during first year. They do not know what they do not know (or should know), and some had experiences where they felt at a disadvantage. However, they were determined and recognized that they could ask their peers for advice. Second, doubts about their abilities led to lower academic confidence, imposter feelings, and thoughts about switching programs. However, they adopted new perspectives on learning and success and persisted as they felt a sense of pride in their accomplishments. Third, most participants suggested that STEM professors should adopt a pedagogy of care. They felt that student-centred teaching approaches engaged them and made them comfortable approaching professors. Lastly, even though their families did not have knowledge about university, many felt that family support was influential in their persistence. Not all FGWSs have the same experiences in mathematics or physics programs, so a one-size-fits-all model to support them is not appropriate. Several recommendations for post-secondary institutions and STEM departments are provided. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, knowledge, learning, equity, gender, women, equit, climate, institut | 4, 5, 10, 13, 16 |
| Blampied, Thomas Edwy | Bohaker, Heidi | “Ontario’s Development Road”: The Ontario Northland Railway and Provincial Colonialism, 1901-1995 | History | 2022-11 | In this dissertation I investigate the Temiskaming & Northern Ontario Railway (known as the Ontario Northland Railway after 1946, or simply the ONR) in the Moosonee and Moose Factory region of Northeastern Ontario as a means to examine how provincial colonialism manifested through the railway’s actions. Railway infrastructure is an active agent of provincial colonialism. In Northeastern Ontario, the provincial government used the ONR to impose colonial control over the lands and waters of Omushkegowuk people by granting the railway power over land administration, resource development, and transportation infrastructure. In the Omushkego-Aski (James Bay Lowlands) in particular, the ONR was the first permanent provincial government presence and remained one of the most significant for decades. Industrial and natural resource development proposals, championed by the Ontario government, by the ONR, and by private enterprise show this colonial mindset in practice. Racially motivated indifference and outright discrimination exacerbated the railway’s unresponsiveness to the local situation. These actions demonstrated that, despite the relationship established in Treaty 9, the provincial government’s priorities did not include the local, primarily Omushkegowuk, population. In later years, tourism and leisure activities reinforced the railway’s imposed racial division and also further entrenched colonialism in the region. The Ontario government and ONR were willing to exploit the Omushkegowuk for their own ends, as producers of crafts for sale to tourists and as guides for elite sport hunters. In Northeastern Ontario, the ONR was a key agent of provincial colonialism, even as Omushkegowuk people developed their own complicated relationship with the railway that became a significant transportation link. | Ph.D. | water, infrastructure, invest, natural resource, land | 6, 9, 12, 15 |
| Aminaei chatroudi, Mohammadali | Fadel, Mohammad | Economic Analysis of Violations of Human Rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran | Law | 2022-11 | Human rights violations in Iran present a challenging issue for international law and a complex subject for research. Most effort has gone into broadcasting Iran's systematic and gross violations of human rights. As a way to move beyond this point, this thesis uses the "law and economics" approach, political economy, and behavioral insights to investigate the behavioral dynamics of state-based human rights violations in post-revolutionary Iran. The first chapter describes human rights in Iran and reveals how institutional designs exacerbate repression. Chapter two provides a literature review, addresses methodological concerns, and defines "Economic analysis of human rights" as a distinct field. The third chapter presents a political economic conceptual framework, discusses the determinants of human rights violations in Iran, and investigates some of the underlying behavioral dynamics of repression in Iran. Finally, statistical analysis indicates that political transitions and armed conflicts are causally linked to more human rights violations in Iran. | LL.M. | invest, transit, institut, human rights | 9, 11, 16 |
| Allen, Jeffrey | Steven, Farber | Transportation, Poverty, and Urban Dynamics | Geography | 2022-11 | This dissertation examines suburbanization of poverty in Canadian cities during the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with particular focus on its relation to the distribution of transportation infrastructure and travel behaviour outcomes. The body of this dissertation consists of a literature review followed by three quantitative research papers. The first examines suburbanization of poverty in Toronto over a 25 year period relative to changes in public transit accessibility and adverse travel behaviour outcomes (e.g. longer commute times). The second uses panel data to analyze and tabulate individual pathways to suburban poverty across Canada. And the third directly asks whether low-income residents are disproportionately moving away from public transit. Findings show that many suburban areas are not only declining in socio-economic status, but are also experiencing worsening travel restrictions, evidenced by longer commute times and lower activity participation rates. Importantly, the primary pathway to suburban poverty is sourced from residents dropping into poverty in the suburbs, rather than from moving away from central areas or due to immigration. Moreover, while low-income residents reduce their level of transit accessibility when they move, they are not doing so at a greater rate than higher-income movers. Overall, this research generates important knowledge about the changing structure of urban neighbourhoods while also providing pertinent information to aid preventative policy aimed at reducing suburban poverty in Canada. | Ph.D. | poverty, socio-economic, low-income, knowledge, infrastructure, income, cities, urban, transit, accessib | 1, 4, 9, 10, 11 |
| Salerno, Marco | Elkamhi, Redouane R | Four Essays on Asset Pricing and Structural Estitmation | Management | 2022-11 | This dissertation contains four essays on asset pricing and structural estimation. The first essay illustrates the necessary and sufficient conditions via a statistical test for risk-based allocation rules to outperform mean-variance optimization. The essay empirically tests the predictions from the statistical test on many datasets ad finds that inverse volatility rules outperform mean-variance out of sample consistent with the prediction from the statistical test. Furthermore, it uses machine learning to leverage the properties of the inverse volatility portfolio to further enhance the out-of-sample performance of this allocation rule. The second essay develops 50 novel indices of State-level Economic Policy Uncertainty (SEPU) based on newspaper coverage frequency using 204 million state newspaper articles from January 1990 to December 2019. The essay assesses that SEPU indices vary counter-cyclically with respect to state-specific economic conditions, rise before close gubernatorial elections, and exhibit a large cross-sectional variation. Overall these findings highlight the importance of economic policy uncertainty at the state level in addition to the nationwide level. The third essay uses Simulated Method of Moments to estimate the costs of financial distress experienced prior to default separately from the loss incurred at default. The paper shows that, by accounting for pre-default costs of financial distress, a standard capital structure model can fit the data considerably better than previous models. The fourth essay develops a dynamic capital structure model to study how manager-shareholders agency conflicts affect the joint determination of financing and investment decisions. It shows that there are two agency conflicts with opposing effects on a manager's choice of investment: (a) the consumption of private benefits channel leads managers not only to choose a lower optimal leverage, but also to underinvest, (b) compensation linked to firm size may lead managers to overinvest. The paper uses Simulated Method of Moments to fit the model to the data and show that the average firm slightly overinvests, younger CEOs invest more than older ones, while CEOs with longer tenure overinvest more than CEOs with smaller tenure. | Ph.D. | learning, capital, invest, consum | 4, 9, 12 |
| Drapeau-Bisson, Marie-Lise | Taylor, Judith JT | Reading, Evaluating and Commemorating Feminism : Excluding and Reviving Dynamics of L'Euguélionne’s Reception in Québec | Sociology | 2022-11 | My doctoral research relies on the premise that political books are more than a receptacle of movement ideas. They are texts that reveal and put words on felt oppression; they are works that resist artistic norms and often challenges literary institutions; and they are objects that can garner solidarity amongst readers and nurture one’s connection to the movement. In other words, I understand political books – reading them, evaluating them, commemorating them – as a way in which culture shapes our political imagination. Québec's feminist novel L’Euguélionne is a good example of this type of political book. Published in 1976 as Louky Bersianik’s debut novel, it was a critically acclaimed and best-selling book that also received vitriol for its ideological commitments. Over time, it became a forgotten classic known only amongst small reception communities, until 2016, when a new feminist bookstore borrowed its name. Using L’Euguélionne as a point of departure, my doctoral research traces the cultural trajectory of this feminist artistic production to enhance our understanding about the ways in which feminist ideas are critiqued and undermined, but also circulated and kept alive. The dissertation raises three central questions: How is feminist art received by masculine gatekeepers of art worlds? What does the reception and revival of feminist art make possible for activists as they attempt to renew the movement? How does friendship shape intergenerational transmission of feminist art? Methodologically, my approach to the study of L’Euguélionne proposes to consider reception like ethnographers would a city sidewalk (Duneier 1999) or an Argentinian neighbourhood (Auyero 2015). This involves looking at the complex dynamics that characterize the site, what I term the push and pull of cultural reception, mapping the connections between actors, and paying close attention to forms of activism that happen under the radar. This approach complements more conventional studies of cultural reception and could be used by scholars interested in how critical appraisal of political art shapes public discourse about social movements, how consumption of art can fuel activism, and how consecration affects the diffusion of political ideas and shapes intergenerational movement dynamics. | Ph.D. | feminis, consum, production, institut | 5, 12, 16 |
| Fowler, Mary Ann | Gagné, Antoinette | English Academic Writing and Affordances for Writing Support: Perspectives and Experiences of Plurilingual International Course-based Master of Education Students in a Canadian University | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | Many international students are pursuing graduate education in Canada using languages other than English. The Master of Education degree has been particularly attractive as it offers significant cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1986) in return for a relatively short period of study. However, there is an implicit expectation that because these students have met admission standards, they should be performing at the same level as their peers who use standard English. Should these international students face challenges with their written English proficiency, they experience discourses of deficit that negatively affect their experience in the academy. Using a multiple case study design, I conducted a three-part series of semi-structured interviews with plurilingual international course-based Master of Education (PIM) students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) to examine their perspectives on and experiences with English academic writing and academic writing support. To learn about the affordances for academic writing support for these students, I collected data from a variety of sources, including a demographic questionnaire, participant observations, document analysis, focus group with students, and interviews with support providers. I examined the resulting data using Framework Analysis (Spencer et al., 2014) and the theoretical lenses of Academic Literacies (Lea & Street, 1998, 2006) and ecological perspectives (Bronfenbrenner, 1997; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006; Van Lier, 2000, 2004). The PIM students in this study reported challenges with English academic writing at the graduate level that left them feeling anxious and inadequate. To resist being marginalized by an English-dominant ideology that adopts a deficit view rather than values the diverse assets afforded by plurilingualism, these students demonstrated agency by engaging with an array of affordances that served to build English writing skills, to socialize students into the discourse practices of their disciplinary communities, and to develop identities as novice English scholarly writers. This study builds upon the literature that views academic writing support as integral to all students’ development as academic writers while recognizing the unique needs of plurilingual international graduate students. Implications from this study suggest a need for culturally and linguistically responsive pedagogy, and policies that help students leverage their plurilingual repertoire. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, capital, marginalized, ecolog, institut | 4, 9, 10, 15, 16 |
| Barbosa Sultanum, Nicole | Chevalier, Fanny||Brudno, Michael | Text-centric Visual Approaches to Support Clinical Overview of Medical Text | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Healthcare practice is a complex activity that merges objective medical knowledge with the subjective knowledge of the patient's life to deliver individualized, patient-centred care. This multifaceted understanding of the patient is reflected in medical documentation, which aims to capture the whole picture of the patient's illness trajectory. Among the various data items encompassed in this documentation, the unstructured and semi-structured text reports (e.g., physician notes, discharge summaries, and nursing notes) are among its most informative and perused portions; they are also where healthcare workers spend the most time on when studying a patient record in preparation for care. Text has many desirable features for this task, including expressivity of communication, conciseness as a narrative embodiment, and flexibility of form to accommodate the particularities of a patient's case. On the other hand, text is also time consuming and cognitively demanding to peruse. When patient records grow larger with more text reports, they also become increasingly unwieldy, ridden with a lack of standardization and significant redundancy as healthcare workers repeat past medical information into new notes as an attempt to make reports self contained and reduce overall reading time. While most key information gets propagated this way, important details may still get lost in the process, leading to a potentially incomplete picture of the patient's illness trajectory in these recent reports. A number of data visualization solutions have been proposed to minimize the burden of this study and expedite overviews while increasing the scope of visibility for text notes, via overarching at-a-glance visual summaries of information present in text portions of the record. However, they come with limitations of their own, including limited expressivity and communication bandwidth when compared to text, and issues of trust due to a need for automated text processing which often introduces error. Many data visualization works for the space assume perfect automation, and thus fail to consider the practical limitations that arise when such solutions are deployed in practice. These limitations could be partly mitigated by providing access to original text sources alongside the visual summaries for verification and further context. However, these works tend to heavily lean on graphical representations, and linkage to text documents and reading is still sparsely supported. Arguably, there is complementary synergy between graphical-based and text-based representations that could lead to more sensible solutions to support the clinical overview task. This thesis thus investigates ways that data visualization can benefit from a more text-centric approach to help healthcare workers peruse text portions of the patient record with ease, while still leveraging the power of visual representations. Via an iterative, user-centered approach, the research informed design requirements that guided a series of design cycles, each leading to the creation of interactive visualization prototypes: MedStory, Doccurate, and ChartWalk. Prototypes were validated by healthcare professionals, and findings underscore the importance of text content being visible front and center, while also informing new ways in which information could be summarized and organized for better overview. Evaluation findings reveal additional requirements to be addressed in follow-up cycles (leading to increasingly refined prototypes), and collective findings lead to a compilation of lessons learned to help inform future design efforts in the space. | Ph.D. | healthcare, illness, knowledge, worker, invest, consum | 3, 4, 8, 9, 12 |
| Aldossri, Musfer | Quiñonez, Carlos R | Suboptimal Oral Health and Cardiovascular Disease: Towards an Organized Research Field and Informed Preventive Strategies | Dentistry | 2022-11 | Examining associations between suboptimal oral health (SOH) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) has formed a broad and heterogenous epidemiological field with unclear implications and persistent methodological gaps. The objectives of this dissertation are to: (1) systematically map clinical heterogeneity and selected methodological gaps in the existing literature, (2) assess the relevance of SOH to the risk of CVD when defined within overarching concepts, (3) understand the associations between SOH and three competing CVD outcomes (ischemic heart disease (IHD), stroke, revascularization), and (4) simultaneously assess the association between SOH and CVD and competing death (CD). To address the first objective, a mapping review of longitudinal studies in this area was conducted. To address the remaining objectives, three 9.6-year-median follow-up data linkage studies that included 36,176 Ontario residents aged 40 years were completed. The main oral indicator was self-rated oral health (SROH), which was assessed as excellent, very good, good, fair, poor, with SROH being defined with respect to self-rated health (SRH) to address the second objective. Participants were followed until they experienced the event of interest, loss of eligibility to healthcare, death, or end of study (December 31st, 2016). Multivariable survival models were adjusted for socioeconomic characteristics, behavioural factors, and intermediate health outcomes. The mapping review showed a severe form of clinical heterogeneity and underutilization of the examined methodological approaches, including the use of randomized controlled trials, time-varying exposures, propensity methods, mediation analysis, and competing risks analysis. The three data linkage studies indicated that: SROH may capture additional information about the risk of CVD when considered within the overarching concept of SRH; the associations between SROH and IHD and revascularization are largely explained by confounders, but not with stroke; and the association between SROH and CD is more pronounced than its association with CVD. In conclusion, this work indicates the need for: an interdisciplinary approach to refine the conceptualization of SOH in relation to CVD, closing critical methodological gaps, and mitigating the risk of CVD associated with SOH in the broader context of health promotion. | Ph.D. | socioeconomic, healthcare | 1, 3 |
| Davis, Katie | Bothwell, Robert | Learning to Live with the Atom: US Public Opinion and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1945-1950 | History | 2022-11 | The advent of the atomic age at the end of the Second World War raised debates over how to protect the world from the dangers of the atomic bomb while promoting the peaceful uses of atomic energy. This could be achieved, scientists argued, only through the international control of atomic energy, which would secure nuclear technology and material under an international body. The devastation caused by a future nuclear war meant the problem affected everyone, everywhere, but as guardians of this unprecedented new weapon, Americans bore special responsibility for its future. Learning to Live with the Atom: US Public Opinion and International Control of Atomic Energy, 1945-1950 examines the two-way relationship between the American public and policymakers during the first years of the atomic age. By examining American diplomacy on the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission alongside domestic public relations initiatives to engage the American people on nuclear issues, it tells a comprehensive story about how Americans tried to make sense of the fundamentally new world in which they lived and slowly came to terms with the emerging Cold War. | Ph.D. | learning, peace, energy | 4, 16, 2007 |
| Brunton, Judith Ellen | Klassen, Pamela | Pandemonium of Hope: Oil, Aspiration, and the Good Life in Alberta | Religion, Study of | 2022-11 | For people living in Alberta, Canada’s largest oil producing province, oil is a key symbolic element in imagining what a good life is. A Pandemonium of Hope explores how oil companies, government agencies, and community organizations in Alberta use oil to describe a specific set of morals and values. In Alberta, labour, land, and aspiration are bound by a world in which religious meaning making and ideas of the good life are entangled with oil. Oil culture shapes how both the past and the future of Alberta are imagined. This dissertation discusses how oil and the good life are bound through the four case studies: Imperial Oil’s description of its own virtue in its public relations, narratively aligning itself with the Christian colonial project of settlement in western Canada; spaces that the Alberta government calls “Energy Heritage” sites and how they have used historical narratives of extraction to articulate Albertan values; the corporate culture of Calgary and its philosophies about energy; and The Calgary Stampede rodeo as a culminating spectacle in which the goodness associated with oil labour, extractive land use, and assertive aspiration is articulated as specifically ‘western.’ | Ph.D. | energy, labour, gini, land use, land | 7, 8, 10, 15 |
| Hirasawa, Haruki | Kushner, Paul J | Atmosphere and Ocean Components of the Sahel Climate Response to Aerosol Forcing | Physics | 2022-11 | The Sahel region of Africa experienced a severe drought in the 1980s, and understanding the causes of this drought are crucial for anticipating future climate changes in the region. Large ensembles (LEs) of coupled global climate model simulations of the historical period show that anthropogenic aerosol (AER) forcing causes a drying, then wetting in the Sahel with roughly coincident timing to the observed drought. To illuminate how AER forcing causes these changes, we use the ocean model hierarchy to ascertain the role of different atmosphere and ocean mechanisms. Using prescribed sea surface temperature (SST) experiments, we separate the fast direct-atmospheric (DA) effect, due to rapid atmospheric adjustments and land surface responses, and slow ocean-mediated effect (OM), due to atmospheric responses to SST changes. Then, using slab ocean model (SOM) experiments we separate the direct-atmospheric effect plus ocean mixed layer temperature change effect (DA+OT) from effect of changing ocean circulation (OC). Crucially, for both cases we derive boundary conditions from the coupled model LE so that we can perform a detailed, model-consistent assessment of these mechanisms. From the 1950s to 1970s, AER emission increase causes Sahel drying. We find this is a DA effect caused by North American emission increases. The OM effect weakly increases rainfall, due to offsetting drying effects from Atlantic cooling, which causes Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) shifting, and wetting effects from Pacific cooling, which causes a "reduced-ante" response. OC changes damp the AER forcing cooling in the North Atlantic, reducing the drying signal. From the 1970s to 2000s, the shift of AER emissions from Europe and North America to Asia cause Sahel wetting. We find this is an OM effect due to complementary wetting effects of Atlantic warming and tropical Pacific cooling, which appears to be largely due to OC changes. The DA effect of local African emissions cause drying in the West Sahel and remote Asian emissions cause drying in coastal West Africa via Walker circulation adjustments. Thus, we find that the Sahel response to AER forcing is the result of a complex combination of different mechanisms that shift as AER emission patterns change. | Ph.D. | drought, emission, climate, anthropogenic, emissions, ocean, land | 6, 7, 13, 14, 15 |
| Anderson, Conor Ian | Gough, William A | Methodological Considerations for the Comparative Analysis of Multi-day Extreme Temperature Events across Canada | Physical and Environmental Sciences | 2022-11 | Temperature extremes pose risks to human health, infrastructure and the biophysical environment. Climate change is expected to cause changes to extreme temperatures across Canada, including a reduction in cold extremes and an increase in hot extremes. This thesis examines four topics related to the study of temperature extremes across Canada: the impact of missing data on calculated monthly average temperatures, and whether so-called “rules-of-thumb” are effective for reducing calculation errors (Chapter 2); the use of quantitative description to classify urban and rural stations for urban heat island analysis (Chapter 3); the relative frequency of very cold winters in Toronto, Ontario, over three partially-overlapping time periods, using winters 2013/14 and 2014/15 as cases (Chapter 4); and, finally, a Canada-wide assessment of trends (1991–2020) in multi-day extreme temperature events, including comparative assessment of two climatological observing windows, and multiple thresholds to define extreme temperatures. The results of this research are summarized as follows: Chapter 2 will demonstrate that each missing value from a given year–month (for up to 19 missing values) causes an incremental error of between 0.008 and 0.018 standard deviations in the calculation of the true monthly mean temperature. For consecutive missing values, a statistically significant relationship exists between the lag-1 autocorrelation for the year–month, and the magnitude of the error in the calculated mean. Chapter 3, demonstrates that ∆DTD (the difference between the day-to-day variation in temperature maxima and the day-to-day variation in temperature minima) is a useful tool for quantitative selection of a rural station in an urban–rural station pair. Trends in ∆DTD may help to “fingerprint” the intensification of urbanization, such as the urbanization around Toronto Pearson International Airport between 1971 and 2000. Chapter 4 demonstrates that “extremely” cold winters are less extreme when studied over a longer period. These cold winter seasons were explained by prolonged cold snaps due to the relative stable position of the jet stream to the south of Toronto. Chapter 5, introduces the Local Relative Extreme Temperature (LRET) thresholds to describe multi-day periods of temperatures that are extreme relative to the historical distribution of temperatures for a given station. While there are few notable trends in the characteristics of fixed-threshold heat waves and cold snaps, increases in LRET heat waves at stations along Canada’s three coasts, and decreases in wintertime LRET cold snaps at stations in Atlantic Canada are described. A co-occurrence matrix provides evidence that large-scale synoptic events control exceedances of relative temperature extremes across large areas of Canada. The fixed climatological observing window (that ends at 06:00 UTC) that is used to generate daily data for Canada is less performant for the identification of extreme cold and extreme heat than is a climatological observing window based on radiative energy. This thesis proposes LRET temperature thresholds as an important tool for the detection of changes in the frequency of relative extreme temperatures that may pose risks to locally adapted species or activities, and suggests avenues for further development of this metric. | Ph.D. | energy, wind, infrastructure, urban, rural, climate, species, land | 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15 |
| Badewy , Rana | Azarpazhooh, Amir AA | The Association between Maternal Oral Inflammation and the Composition of Breast Milk: A Cohort Study | Dentistry | 2022-11 | Introduction: Maternal health conditions such as diabetes and obesity have been shown to be associated with altered breast milk composition. Periodontal diseases are among the common oral health conditions affecting mothers during pregnancy and postpartum. However, it is not known whether periodontal diseases affect breast milk composition (including immune cells, fatty acids, cytokines, etc.). Objectives: This study aimed to investigate the impact of maternal oral inflammatory load (OIL) on breast milk composition including neutrophil counts and activation state, and fatty acids concentrations. This study also aimed to identify the impact of maternal OIL on the oral health-related quality of life (OHRQoL) and the dietary intakes and quality of postpartum women. The association between maternal OIL and infant outcomes at birth were also investigated. Methods: This is a prospective cohort study where fifty breastfeeding mothers were recruited from St. Michael’s hospital and followed up from 2-4 weeks until 4-months postpartum. Oral rinse and breast milk samples were collected from the participants. Participants also completed an OHRQoL and 24-hr dietary recall questionnaires as part of the study. OIL, as expressed by the absolute oral neutrophil counts was used to assess the periodontal and oral inflammatory status of mothers. Mothers’ oral health state was categorized into “Healthy”, “Moderate” and “Severe” groups based on the oral neutrophil counts. Results: Mothers with moderate to severe OIL had a statistically significant decrease in the expression of activation biomarkers on breast milk neutrophils and decrease in the poly-unsaturated fatty acids at follow-up compared to baseline (p<0.01). Our study also showed a positive correlation between the maternal dietary inflammatory potential and OIL at follow-up. Infants of mothers with severe OIL had significantly lower birthweight z-scores compared to infants of mothers with moderate OIL (p=0.04). Conclusion: This study suggests that maternal OIL can affect breast milk composition. Future studies are needed to investigate the impact of the alterations in breast milk composition on infant health outcomes on the short and long term. This study represents a starting point for a new line of research aiming at filling the gap in the literature regarding this possible and clinically important association. | Ph.D. | ABS, women, invest | 2, 5, 2009 |
| Fraser, Jennifer | Krementsov, Nikolai | The Cold War on Cancer: Inuit and the Canadian Epidemiological Imagination | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2022-11 | From the early twentieth century to the present day, health professionals have commented on the exceptional nature of Inuit cancer patterns. Over the past hundred years, Inuit have been thought to possess a unique distribution of disease characterized, at different points, by higher than-average rates of lung, cervical and salivary gland cancer, lower than average rates of breast cancer, and substantial and growing rates of the disease overall. This thesis explores why Inuit cancer patterns have been characterized in this way and discusses their contemporary implications for Inuit health. This project argues that past and current representations of Inuit cancer incidence evolved in tandem with geographic pathology—a branch of cancer research (and predecessor of cancer epidemiology) that posited that examining the cancer rates of colonial populations could help shed light on the disease’s underlying causes. I examine how rising scientific internationalism, increased Arctic militarization, hierarchical discourses of civilization and human development, and settler policies of protectionism, segregation, assimilation, and experimentation not only allowed geographic pathology to take hold in Canada, but also transformed Inuit Nunangat into an important site in the national fight against the disease. Over the course of six-case studies, I show how Inuit served as central nodes and excluded margins of cancer knowledge production. Canadian researchers used Inuit as resources for generating etiological hypotheses and developing new diagnostic imaging devices and screening techniques. However, most of these medical insights and interventions were exported to southern Canadian urban centres—leaving Inuit to contend with the still-unfolding aftermaths of geographic pathology and its relationship to colonial rule's historical construction, and attempted elimination, of otherness. To assess the evolution and ramifications of Arctic cancer epidemiology, this thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach, juxtaposing archival materials with contemporary accounts centered on Indigenous social actors. Oscillating between different methods, sources, and temporalities reveals how historical events resurface within contemporary conditions. It also contributes to growing scholarly interest in how cancer is understood and managed in the context of colonial and post-colonial relations of power and allows us to reflect on how settler-colonial structures produce and continue to pervade cancer service delivery in northern settings. | Ph.D. | knowledge, settler, indigenous, urban, production, land, nationalism | 4, 10, 16, 11, 12, 15 |
| Cheng, Zhixiang | Walsh, Denis M. | On the Explanatory and Interpretative Functions of Mathematical Models in Evolutionary Biology | History and Philosophy of Science and Technology | 2022-11 | The thesis investigates the explanatory and interpretative functions of formal mathematical models in evolutionary biology. It is organized around three recent debates in the philosophy of biology and the philosophy of science in general. The chapters are also responses to these debates.Chapters 2 and 3 examine the statisticalist-causalist debate over the right interpretation of modern evolutionary theory. I defend a middle-ground position between the two sides. Although the statisticalists’ construal of drift is largely reasonable, we should adopt a causal-form interpretation of natural selection. While some statistical explanations in population biology are nevertheless causal, at least two types of them— explanatory cases of non-representation and explanatory cases of misrepresentation— are indeed non-causal. They refute the Representationalism of mathematics. Chapter 4 inspects the debate over “genuinely mathematical explanations” (GMEs) and “distinctively mathematical explanations” (DMEs). I argue that existing objections to GMEs are unsound. To further justify GMEs, one could either presume a Pythagorean metaphysics or adopt some non-ontic conception of explanation. Moreover, Marc Lange, the primary advocate of DMEs, has conflated two kinds of presuppositions in an explanatory task: prerequisites of a why-question and auxiliary assumptions in an explanation. Nevertheless, the existence of DMEs is defensible. Focusing on the explanatory function of formal models, Chapters 2-4 constitute the first part of the dissertation. To justify the existence of non-causal statistical explanations and DMEs, I have developed a weak pragmatic account of explanatory (ir)relevance. Chapters 5 and 6 constitute the second part of the dissertation, which concerns the interpretative function of models. They examine the debate over the appropriate interpretation and assessment of Fisher’s “fundamental theorem of natural selection” (FTNS). I propose a new variant of the modern interpretation of the FTNS. I also argue that both the traditional and the modern interpretations are embedded in a bipartite “laws of nature—world” framework, which has hindered us from adequately appreciating the significance of the FTNS. Instead, a tripartite “theory—model—world” framework is preferable. Accordingly, we should consider the FTNS as a product of an ideal “interpretative model” rather than as a standalone law. | Ph.D. | invest, fish | 9, 14 |
| Ross, Verne | Gagné, Antoinette | The Voices and Stories of Two-Spirit People | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-11 | This study documents the life histories of five Two-Spirit people and one Indigenous genderqueer gay person all coming from different Nations and communities (Saulteaux, Ojibwe, Cree, Mohawk). Using a life history methodology, I used semi-structured interviews to unearth key moments in the lives of my sisters and cousin (the term I use to describe these Two-Spirit individuals). After conducting interviews, I analyzed the stories through an Indigenous lens: the Biinskobiisin Bimaadsiiwin (The Circle of Life) Medicine Wheel. This Medicine Wheel has eight components: Nurturing Two-Spirits, Silences, Relearning Relationships for Change, Language as a Relational Process, Types of Truth, Seven Grandfather Teachings, Clans, and Gathering Together. Each of these components relates to different iterative stages in my sisters’ and cousin’s life; they each shape the life journeys of these individuals. These life histories are meant to challenge silences around Two-Spirit experiences within Indigenous and non- Indigenous communities. These stories represent the voices of people who do not always get to have their voices listened to. This sharing of stories is a form of healing in itself. These stories come alive after being shared and are looked upon as being precious and sacred. | Ph.D. | learning, gender, queer, two-spirit, indigenous | 4, 5, 10, 16 |
| Jung, Sinhyeok | Fujitani, Takashi | “Asia” as Decolonial Analytic: Critiques of Cold War Neocolonialisms in Okinawa and Mainland Japan, 1960-70s | History | 2022-11 | This study analyzes the ways in which critically minded intellectuals employed the idea of “Asia” as an analytic tool to interrogate Cold War neocolonialisms in Okinawa and mainland Japan between the 1960s and 1970s. By examining discourses on political and social issues such as national security (anpo), neocolonialism, and postwar democracy, this study demonstrates how imagining a decolonial Asia constituted an important element in critiques of Cold War neocolonialism, and particularly in critiques of American imperialism. Yet this process pertained to more than just criticisms of Cold War American imperialism. I argue that renewed visions of Asia allowed for interrogations of Japan’s own collusive relationship with the United States as well as for critiques of Japan’s postwar democracy through a series of events in the 1960s and 1970s. These included the 1960 and 1970 Anpo struggles, protests against the 1965 Japan-South Korean diplomatic normalization, and the 1972 reversion of Okinawa. I further argue that one of the most significant features of the critical capacity of Asia as a decolonial analytic came primarily from those who looked to and from the margins of the Japanese Empire. In particular, I stress the crucial role and historical significance of a group of Okinawan and mainland Japanese intellectuals who envisioned the possibility of a new subjectivity against logics of assimilation. For them, situating postwar Japan within the broader spatiotemporal “Asian” context was necessary to initiate critical interventions into Japan’s postimperiality as well as its collusive role in sustaining the neocolonial order in Asia. By looking at their writings on the colonial history of Japan, this study reexamines nationalism and colonialism in postwar Okinawa and mainland Japan within a broader Cold War context. | Ph.D. | decolonial, gini, land, nationalism, democra | 4, 10, 15, 16 |
| Sinno, Noha | Coolens, Catherine | A Cross-Voxel Exchange Model for the Non-invasive Imaging of Tracer Transport in Tumours | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Tumours exhibit abnormal interstitial structures and vasculature function often leading to an impaired and heterogeneous drug delivery. Predictions of tumour perfusion are key determinants of drug delivery and responsiveness to therapy. Pharmacokinetic models allow for the quantification of tracer perfusion based on contrast enhancement measured with non-invasive imaging techniques. In this thesis, a mathematical framework was developed to provide a comprehensive description of tracer extravasation as well as advection and diffusion based on cross-voxel tracer kinetics. The focus of the first part is on examining the assumptions made by Tofts Model (TM), a widely employed predecessor, and building upon the findings to develop an advanced Cross-Voxel Exchange Model (CVXM). The second part employs in silico datasets quantifying the roles of convection and diffusion in tracer transport (which TM ignores) to investigate the validity of Tofts’ perfusion parameters compared to CVXM. In the third part, transport parameters were derived from the dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance images of human cervical carcinoma xenografts by using CVXM. The resulting velocity flows, tracer diffusivities and extravasation parameters were employed to explain the heterogeneous distribution of the tracer across the tumour and its accumulation at the periphery. Finally, a minimum scan time was advised for the pre-clinical datasets that renders informative estimations of the transport parameters. Concluding, the new mathematical framework, based on CVXM, can determine transport metrics characterizing the exchange of tracer between the vasculature and the tumour tissue, potentially leading to its clinical application in personalized treatment planning and its employment in drug development research. | Ph.D. | employment, invest | 8, 9 |
| Jeong, Danielle | Miller, Freda | Understanding the Birth and Life of Mammalian Neural Stem Cells | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Neural stem cells (NSCs) in the adult mammalian brain are found in germinal niches where they contribute to tissue homeostasis and neuroplasticity. One of these NSC niches is in the ventricular-subventricular zone (V-SVZ) along lateral ventricles. V-SVZ NSCs are defined by their ability to persist in a quiescent-like state and become activated to generate neurons for olfactory learning or oligodendrocytes for white matter repair. V-SVZ NSCs are also exposed to a plethora of signals in the niche environment that affect their function. How do these adult V-SVZ NSCs integrate information from the many signals in the environment to persist in a non-proliferating state, and become appropriately mobilized to attempt to repair the injured brain? This question is addressed by examining V-SVZ NSCs during two key events, preceding and following the time of mammalian birth, and during a demyelinating injury in the adult brain. The first part of the thesis asks how quiescent-like NSCs emerge from embryonic neural stem cells known as radial precursors (RPs) and describes a molecular mechanism that regulates this transition. LRIG1 was identified a negative regulator of the epidermal growth factor receptor in embryonic cortical RPs and that by inhibiting this pro-proliferative receptor, facilitates the transition of NSCs into the quiescent-like state. The second part of the thesis asks what determines the oligodendrogenic potential of adult V-SVZ NSCs during white matter repair. To address this, single-cell transcriptomic profiling was coupled with lineage tracing to follow the V-SVZ NSC response to a demyelinating injury. This analysis showed that quiescent-like V-SVZ NSCs become activated and undergo increased oligodendrogenesis without changing their transcriptional identity, suggesting that extrinsic cues in the injury environment activate NSCs to promote injury repair. Collectively, these findings highlight the importance of the environment in influencing the V-SVZ NSC fate and identify mechanisms that modulate the NSC response to niche cues. | Ph.D. | learning, transit | 4, 11 |
| Chung, Chris Pak Cheong | Chen, Li | Fluid Realms: Chinese Visions of Maritime Space in the South China Sea Islands | History | 2022-11 | This dissertation explores the historical convergence between modernity and maritime space in China by analyzing the formation of its island claims in the South China Sea during the early 20th century. Drawing from largely unused Qing and Republican Chinese archival sources on the islands, it examines how Chinese notions of space and sovereignty in the maritime frontier since the late 18th century intersected with global ideas of political and legal modernity to shape China’s policies and positions in the contested Pratas, Paracel, and Spratly Archipelagos. Specifically, this dissertation traces a deeper transition between two discursive frameworks that predominantly guided political understandings of maritime space and sovereignty in China. This transition, I contend, fuelled the formation of China’s island claims. The first of these spatial modes, which I term “islands of sovereignty,” prioritized political control over imperial subjects and the boats they used to traverse the seas. Maritime space was thus only ever understood within and supplementary to this goal’s fulfillment. Following the advent of foreign imperialism in China with the First Opium War, however, “islands of sovereignty” was gradually repurposed to effect a second maritime spatial mode. This framework, labelled “markers of effective occupation,” increasingly centred Chinese conceptions of maritime space and sovereignty upon precisely-defined national territory using conceptions of international law and modern geography. Maritime peoples, formerly the target of Qing efforts to order the largely non-delineated sea, instead became a means towards ‘evidencing’ the emerging Chinese nation-state’s maritime borders. This dissertation ultimately argues that non-official actors such as fishermen, geographers, and community organizations were central to this spatial transition, and thus, to the formation of China’s island claims. It details how these non-official actors compelled government adoption of their understandings of the sea by fusing disparate Qing notions of maritime space with incoming Western and Japanese ideas of geography, international law, and the nation-state. Qing and Republican government actors were accordingly forced to negotiate their political worldviews with the non-official narratives they relied on to understand the islands, their place within the emerging nation-state — and indeed, what constituted China itself. | Ph.D. | worldview, transit, fish, maritime, land, sovereignty | 4, 11, 14, 15, 16 |
| Hong, Bryan | Barense, Morgan D | Leveraging Associations to Influence the Organization, Quantity, and Quality of Episodic Recollection | Psychology | 2022-11 | Episodic memory enables us to situate ourselves back to the place and time of specific personal events in the past, affording us the ability to re-experience them in rich detail. Previous work suggests that our episodic memories are roughly organized along the dimensions of space, time, and concepts. This organizational structure is critical in guiding memory search, as assessed by studying the order in which we retrieve items from memory. However, less is known about how this organization can be leveraged to influence memory recall, both in terms of its quantity (i.e., how much is recalled) and quality (i.e., how richly they are recalled). Across three behavioural studies, I examined how facilitating the associations between the contents of episodic memory affected how those memories are later recalled. In Chapter 2, I modified the traditional word list-learning paradigm by introducing an intermediate review phase that emphasized either the temporal or semantic associations between encoded items prior to retrieval. This review led to increased clustering along the emphasized dimension at recall. Moreover, emphasizing semantic associations boosted overall memory recall, with the degree of semantic clustering at recall predicting memory performance. In Chapters 3 and 4, I investigated how facilitating associations between adjacent events at recall affects the detailed recollection of more naturalistic stimuli. Participants described their memories for personal life events in Chapter 3, or events from the movie Forrest Gump in Chapter 4. In Chapter 3, I found that event similarity had no effect on the episodic detail of recall—however, participants provided more extraneous information for cued events when the preceding event was both semantically similar, yet simultaneously distant in time or space. In Chapter 4, I found that recall had both more episodic information and false details when the preceding event was within the same life period. Furthermore, participants provided more intrusions from outside a cued event when the preceding event was temporally distant—these intrusions were likely provided to help scaffold memory for a cued event. Together, these studies further our understanding of the organization of episodic memory by elucidating the influence that associations have on later recollection. | Ph.D. | learning, invest | 4, 9 |
| Thiong'o, Grace Muthoni | Drake, James M | The Development of a Cerebral Hemispheric Surgery Simulator and its Evaluation for Epilepsy Neurosurgical Education | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | The origins and scope of this research thesis stems from the alarming statistic that 10.1 million people worldwide are potential surgical candidates. This number is projected to increase by 1.4 million annually. Epilepsy surgery requires mastery of an eloquent set of skills which are sometimes hard to acquire in a work-hour restricted surgical training environment. Simulation in surgical education has been endorsed as a valid supplement to clinical surgical training through a reduction in the technical learning curve. The scope of the research within this manuscript, on a macro-scale, spans both the biomedical engineering sciences and the field of surgical education. On a micro-scale the concepts of fractals, dimensions and material properties are harnessed to develop a simulator which is subsequently evaluated as a tool for the behaviorist, cognitivist and constructivist learning of a spectrum of epilepsy surgery techniques.The aim of the research was to develop a high fidelity cerebral hemispheric surgery simulator utilizing 3D printing- based technology and re-engineering the use of existing materials, to promote surgical education through hands-on-training of surgical epilepsy techniques. Leonardo da Vinci’s ingenuity of injecting hot wax into the cerebral ventricles of an ox is the earliest documentation of the use of a solidifying medium to recreate a phantom of an internal body organ. Over 500 years later similar techniques are still popularly used. This thesis describes ways of addressing this materials innovation gap. Over time the research project evolved from a focus on the novelty of designing a simulator to an emphasis on practical application of the technology through qualitative analysis. The thesis title: ‘The development of a cerebral hemispheric surgery simulator and its evaluation for epilepsy neurosurgical education’ encompasses both design and validation aspects and introduces the broad nature of epilepsy surgery procedures captured within this single simulator. The core methods consisted of two parts: the engineering process of the cerebral hemispheric surgery simulator and the evaluation of the invention for face, content, construct, and criterion validity. Ultimately, the results and conclusions are supportive of an invention that harnesses the strengths of biomedical engineering for the advancement of neurosurgical education. | Ph.D. | learning, technical learning | 4 |
| Döppenschmitt, Lennart | Gualtieri, Marco MG | Hamiltonian Geometry of Generalized Kahler Metrics | Mathematics | 2022-11 | Generalized Kähler structures are a natural generalization of Kähler metrics. In this thesis, we pose and investigate the question of finding a generalized Kähler metric with a prescribed volume form in a given generalized Kähler class. This is a natural generalization of the famous Calabi conjecture. We define a generalized Kähler class as a homotopy class of bisections in a holomorphic symplectic Morita equivalence between holomorphic Poisson manifolds. To answer this question we introduce holomorphic families of branes, a novice concept to study variations of generalized complex branes with a complex parameter. We then apply this to families of Lagrangian brane bisections in a symplectic Morita equivalence to analyze variations in generalized Kähler metrics. We construct an almost Kähler metric on the infinite-dimensional space of prequantized generalized Kähler metrics and set up a Hamiltonian group action by gauge transformations. This setup leads to a downward gradient flow of a functional on the space of generalized Kähler metrics towards the metric with prescribed volume form. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Stall, Nathan Morton | Rochon, Paula A.||Bell, Chaim M. | Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and Ontario’s Long-term Care Homes | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Ontario long-term care home residents have experienced disproportionately high morbidity and mortality, both from COVID-19 and from the conditions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. As of March 16, 2022, a total of 4,286 long-term care home residents have died of COVID-19, totaling 43.0% of all 9,245 COVID-19 deaths in Ontario. The most important risk factors for whether a long-term care home will experience an outbreak is the daily incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the communities surrounding the home and the occurrence of staff infections. The most important risk factors for the extent of an outbreak and the number of resulting resident deaths are older home design, chain ownership, and crowding. Many Ontario long-term care home residents have experienced severe and potentially irreversible physical, cognitive, psychological, and functional declines as a result of precautionary public health interventions imposed on homes, such as limiting access to general visitors and essential caregivers, resident absences, and group activities. There has also been an increase in the prescribing of psychoactive drugs to Ontario long-term care residents during the pandemic. The accumulating evidence on COVID-19 in Ontario’s long-term care homes has been leveraged in several ways to support public health interventions and policy during the pandemic. Several further measures could be effective in preventing COVID-19 outbreaks, hospitalizations, and deaths in Ontario’s long-term care homes. This includes improving staffing, minimizing long-term care worker infection, reducing crowding in long-term care homes, enhanced infection prevention and control (IPAC) measures, a more balanced and nuanced approach to public health measures, and additional strategies to promote COVID-19 vaccine acceptance amongst residents and staff. | Ph.D. | ABS, public health, vaccine, worker | 2, 3, 2008 |
| Chah, Niel | Andritsos, Periklis | Data Profiling, Machine Learning, and Data Visualizations for a Multilingual Crowdsourced Knowledge Graph: The Case of Wikidata | Information Studies | 2022-11 | Wikidata is a well-known collaborative knowledge graph containing multilingual data for hundreds of language locales, ranging from Arabic (ar) to Zulu (zu). As the largest publicly accessible multilingual knowledge graph on the internet, it is important to understand the kinds of entities and the range of multilingual data that exist on Wikidata. However, research on the kinds of subject matters and topics in Wikidata and the distribution of multilingual data in the labels, descriptions, and aliases has been relatively limited. This dissertation presents a suite of tools that apply data profiling, machine learning, and data visualization techniques to Wikidata in order to organize it into subject-matter domains and to identify areas for multilingual data augmentation. After an overview of a similar collaborative knowledge graph, Freebase, is provided, the research outputs are organized as follows. First, we present WikiMetaData Profiler, a data profiling tool where the input is the entire Wikidata data dump and the outputs are (1) a series of datasets containing descriptive statistics on the distribution of items, properties, and language and (2) the raw triples in the Wikidata knowledge graph. The output is presented through interactive dashboards using Google Data Studio. Second, we present WiDAR, or Wikidata i18n Data and Ranging, another suite of tools to (1) implement machine learning techniques and manual processes that identify subject-matter domains in Wikidata, (2) generate data visualizations in the form of heatmaps to help gain a sense of "the lay of the land'' with regards to the distribution of multilingual data, and (3) programmatically generate SPARQL queries that provide recommendations for multilingual data augmentation. Finally, a demonstration with a graph visualization tool and various knowledge graph embedding techniques is presented. The research presented in this dissertation works to advance the Wikidata and research community's understanding and use of Wikidata's data and multilingual aspects. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, labor, internet, accessib, land | 4, 8, 9, 11, 15 |
| Gao, Bolin | Pavel, Lacra | Agent, Equilibrium and Learning: A Quest Towards Taming the Master Dynamics of Games | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | Unified analysis of multi-agent decision processes has garnered an increasing amount of attention in recent years. Out of this unification literature, a set of ordinary differential equations called mirror descent (MD) has emerged as the progenitor of many decision processes. In particular, MD provably converges to the Nash equilibrium (NE) of large classes of games, namely, games with strict monotonicity or strict variationally stable state (also known as VSS, a specific type of NE). However, outside of these settings, MD can fail to converge, thus greatly restricting the scope of its applications. In light of this challenge, this thesis is concerned with the design of a set of theoretically-guided methodologies that overcome such convergence barriers. These methodologies preserve the beneficial aspects of MD while bringing about convergence in broader classes of games. Our methods can also be used to create new decision processes. We begin our analysis by studying a reinforcement learning procedure based on MD, called discounted exponential learning (or DXL). We show that DXL can approximately converge to the NE of non-strictly monotone mixed-strategy finite games. Using the idea of energy dissipation, we design higher-order variants of DXL, which possess better robustness properties. We then generalize DXL to an entire class of dynamics, which we call discounted MD (or DMD), and show that DMD converges in non-strictly monotone continuous concave games. Afterward, we provide a new game characterization called relative monotonicity, which allows us to provide the convergence rates of MD-based dynamics. Combining these ideas, we design a class of second-order MD (or MD2), which can achieve exact convergence towards non-strict VSS. Finally, we consider discrete-time algorithms extracted from MD2 and provide convergence guarantees in two challenging setups: the semi-bandit case, where an agent's feedback is corrupted by Martingale-difference noise, and the full-bandit case, where each agent only receives a payoff signal which indicates its current performance. Illustrative examples are drawn from a broad set of literature with a special focus on several recent applications arising from machine learning, such as the generation of adversarial attacks and generative adversarial networks. | Ph.D. | learning, energy, corrupt | 4, 7, 16 |
| Ng, Deanna | Swallow, Carol J||Magalhaes, Marco | Molecular Mechanisms of Peritoneal Metastasis in Gastric Cancer | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Gastric adenocarcinoma (GCa), commonly known as stomach cancer, has a predilection for metastasis to the peritoneum, which portends limited survival. The peritoneal metastatic cascade remains poorly understood, and existing models fail to recapitulate key elements of the interaction between cancer cells and the peritoneal layer. To explore the underlying cellular and molecular mechanisms of peritoneal metastasis (PM), I developed an ex vivo human peritoneal explant model. Fresh peritoneal tissue samples were suspended, mesothelial layer down but without direct contact, above a monolayer of red-fluorescent dye stained AGS human GCa cells for 24h. Implantation of AGS cells within the explanted peritoneum and invasion beyond the mesothelial layer were examined serially using real-time confocal fluorescence microscopy. Both implantation and invasion were suppressed by restoration of functional E-cadherin (CDH1) through stable transfection of AGS cells, demonstrating sensitivity of the model to molecular manipulation. This ex vivo human peritoneal explant model permits meaningful investigation of the pathways and mechanisms that contribute to PM. Emerging evidence suggests that increased (Polo-like kinase) PLK4 levels, a serine threonine kinase, may promote cancer cell migration and invasion; high levels of PLK4 expression have been reported in many tumour types, including breast, colorectal and pancreas. Using the ex vivo model, I demonstrate that PLK4 facilitates PM in GCa by enhancing cancer cell migration and invasion of the peritoneum, signaling via the RAC1 activating Guanine Exchange Factor PREX2. Finally, to investigate processes involved in the initiation of the peritoneal metastatic cascade in an unbiased fashion, I have adopted a combination of next generation sequencing and the novel ex vivo model to recapitulate the peritoneal microenvironment. Peritoneal explants were suspended, mesothelial layer down, above a monolayer of GFP-labeled AGS human GCa cells that had been seeded. The genomic profile of the implanted AGS cells was compared to that of the AGS cells that failed to implant, using RNA sequencing to measure expression. These experiments have revealed ADAM12 as a potential driver gene that regulates PM by GCa. By interrupting these pathways, peritoneal directed therapies have the potential to improve quality and survival in patients with high-risk primary GCa. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Knight, Hunter | Farmer, Diane | Making Humans: Waldorf Educators and Colonial Entanglements of Childhood | Social Justice Education | 2022-11 | This dissertation examines how Waldorf educators navigate the colonial logics entangled in common-sense understandings of childhood. Dominant Western understandings of childhood—including, for example, children as innocent, irrational, or developmentally-in-progress—are constructed by placing the child in relation to Man, a story of the human as a biological actor who progresses towards rationality through exploration. This story of the human was produced alongside and through Western colonialism. The overrepresentation of Man as a universal and singular story of the human lends an air of intuitable or common-sense truth to the constructions about childhood that it supports, making the coloniality of childhood difficult to perceive. In this study, I connect childhood studies with studies of colonialism in order to think through how these colonial logics that structure childhood are negotiated within the particular context of Waldorf education. Waldorf education is an alternative schooling model based on the works of Rudolf Steiner, a philosopher prominent in early twentieth-century Germany. Educators at Waldorf schools pride themselves on protecting childhood through a holistic pedagogy that emphasizes the arts, play, and natural materials. For the purposes of this dissertation, I spoke with Waldorf teachers and Waldorf teacher educators about childhood, and prominent stories about childhood that emerged were that children belong in nature and in a family home, that children are innocent spiritual beings, and that children grow progressively over time. These common-sense stories are rooted in colonial logics, and I found that they served to protect and reify Man through rationalizing the exclusion of racialized and disabled children. Educators’ reliance on these understandings of childhood as felt truths made it difficult for them to challenge them, even when they were seriously troubled by the appearance of exclusionary logics embedded within these beliefs. This study touches, then, on the ways in which work against the racist and ableist contours of dominant constructions of childhood must necessarily address the colonial epistemologies which can make prejudicial logic feel like unquestionable truth. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, judic | 4, 16 |
| Craig Penner, David Abram | Zingg, David W | Development and Investigation of Accurate High-order Generalized Summation-by-parts Discretizations for Computational Fluid Dynamics | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | The numerical solution of the equations governing turbulent fluid flows, whether the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations or other approaches involving the Navier-Stokes equations, as in direct and large-eddy simulations, is computationally expensive. High-order methods have the potential to reduce this computational cost by providing higher accuracy per degree of freedom relative to low-order schemes. Spatial discretization schemes based on the generalized summation-by-parts property have been developed in recent years as a general approach for designing high-order numerical methods. This thesis presents work that delineates how to obtain accurate solutions and, particularly, superconvergent functionals when solving linear and nonlinear partial differential equations governing computational fluid dynamics problems of increasing practical relevance. The specific focus is on numerical schemes constructed on block-structured grids, where the spatial derivatives in the governing equations are approximated with high-order tensor-product generalized summation-by-parts operators. To begin, various components of high-order flow solvers based on generalized summation-by-parts operators are developed including novel artificial dissipation operators and two approaches for high-order grid generation and refinement for traditional and element-type operators. Next, it is shown that functional superconvergence is retained for generalized summation-by-parts discretizations of the linear convection equation in curvilinear coordinates. Furthermore, four dual-consistent discretizations of the two-dimensional linear convection equation based on the mortar-element and global summation-by-parts-operator approaches are derived and characterized in terms of truncation error, solution accuracy, and functional accuracy. Finally, using information gained from the analysis of the linear convection equation, a generalized summation-by-parts discretization for obtaining superconvergent functionals when solving sufficiently smooth problems governed by the Euler equations is proposed. Furthermore, the key features of a given discretization having an impact on solution and functional accuracy are delineated and analyzed. These features are identified to include the representation of the geometry, the approximation of the metrics, and the approximation of the wall normal in the flow tangency boundary condition. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Greeff, Melissa | Schoellig, Angela P | Flying Flat Out: Fast Multirotor Flight Using Vision-based Navigation in Real-world Environments | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Multirotor unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are mechanically simple and highly maneuverable robots that are suitable to a wide range of applications such as infrastructure inspection, transportation, search-and-rescue missions, and mapping operations. Reliable autonomous multirotor flight needs to expand beyond lab demonstrations to real-world environments. To enable this, in the first part of this thesis, we present computationally efficient control algorithms, by exploiting a property of the dynamics known as differential flatness. We exploit this property to enable efficient prediction and safe learning from online data. As a result, we develop safe high-performance control by accounting for nonlinear and unknown dynamics in a computationally tractable way. In the second part of this thesis, we explore some of the challenges to high-speed autonomous vision-based flight. Real-world environments may be GPS-denied and vision-based navigation, relying predominantly on an onboard camera, is a lightweight and cost-effective alternative. Most standard controllers are perception-agnostic and tend to assume (i) the action computed by the controller has no effect on the ability of vision-based navigation to determine location and (ii) perfect state estimation is obtained. These assumptions often limit the reliability and performance of perception-agnostic controllers for autonomous vision-based flight. In contrast, we present perception-aware control algorithms that account for partial visual knowledge of the environment and plan despite imperfect state estimation. These approaches are validated through outdoor experiments on a DJI M600 multirotor where we demonstrate autonomous vision-based flight at speeds up to 10 m/s. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning, infrastructure | 4, 9 |
| Pearson, Adam | Naguib, Hani E | Fiber-matrix Adhesion in Thermoplastic Composites | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | There has been a recent drive in many industries to replace legacy metallic components with lightweight fiber reinforced polymer composites. Thermoplastic matrix composites are becoming increasingly more prominent due to their inherent benefits such as the ability to be re-melted and re-shaped or recycled, fatigue and impact resistance, and corrosion resistance. Macromechanical properties of fiber reinforced polymers depend on a variety of factors from the mechanical properties of the fibers and matrix, the geometrical properties of the reinforcing fibers, voids and cracks in the composite, and the strength of the fiber-matrix adhesion. The fiber-matrix adhesion governs the effectiveness of the transfer of stress from the typically weak polymer matrix to the reinforcing fibers. Poor fiber-matrix interfacial shear strengths (IFSS) can lead to premature debonding of the fiber from the matrix which allows for the propagation of micro-cracks throughout the material, ultimately leading to failure. Various micromechanical tests, such as single-fiber pullout, have been developed to directly measure the adhesive strength between fibers and polymers. In this research, a novel single-fiber pullout test methodology has been utilized to measure the fiber-matrix adhesion for a variety of industrially relevant fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites. Carbon fiber proved to have greater adhesion to thermoplastic polyester elastomers than poly(p-phenylene-2,6-benzobisoxazole) (PBO) fibers due to their increased roughness and chemical functionality. Carbon content at higher binding energies of glass fiber sizings correlated to increased IFSS with polyketone matrices. Modification of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) with maleic anhydride is effective to improve adhesion to both carbon and glass fibers, and the effect of carbon fiber sizing to the IFSS was weaker than matrix modification. Surface texturing of carbon fiber with graphene nanoplatelets led to increased adhesion to HDPE matrices through mechanical interlocking effects due to increased fiber surface roughness. Fiber-matrix adhesion was found to decrease with increasing temperature due to the reduction of the compressive stresses at the fiber-matrix interface formed from polymer shrinkage during cooling. In general, the chemical properties of the matrix were the most critical factor to adhesion. The results of this research can be used to further the development of fiber reinforced thermoplastics. | Ph.D. | recycl | 12 |
| Krawczyk, Kamil Mike | Miller, R. J. Dwayne | Applying Ultrafast Electron Diffraction and Spectroscopy to Visualize Structural Changes in Inorganic and Organic Systems | Chemistry | 2022-08 | Observing the atom in real time with an adequate spatial and temporal resolution capable of resolving something so small (~10^-10 m) and so fast (~10^-15 s) presents an inherent challenge in ultrafast measurement. Modern X-ray and electron diffraction techniques provide insight in to the transient structural dynamics in a system following external perturbation, such as light. Ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) methods originating in the early 2000s gave scientists a means to monitor chemistry in action by directly probing the atomic motions through a modification of established pump-probe optical experiments. In UED, the pump is a laser pulse, whereas the probe is an electron bunch, capable of probing the atomic positions within a sample. UED can be used to monitor the structural dynamics in a variety of gaseous, liquid, and solid state systems that experience a phenomena that may directly affect their nuclear coordinates. Before performing any UED experiments, the electronic dynamics must be characterized by optical pump-probe transient absorption (TA) experiments. A modified azobenzene sample, 1,2-bis(8-bromo-6-methoxy-2,3-dihydrobenzo[b][1,4]dioxin-5-yl)diazene, was studied using TA spectroscopy to reveal three time constants describing the trans to cis photoisomerization process, indicating isomerization via a predominantly torsional mode. This experiment shows that isomerization in azobenzene systems can happen even in a sterically-hindered environment such as a crystal lattice. UED was used to characterize the effects of spin crossover (SCO) in single crystal [Fe(II)(bpy)3]^2+, wherein transient changes in Bragg peak intensities were modelled by four global parameters to describe changes in the Fe-N bond distance and the rotation of the ligands surrounding the metal center. Then, UED was used to study the surface trapping of excitons in a size and capping series of lead sulfide (PbS) quantum dots (QDs). Analysis of the intensities and positions of diffraction rings revealed a surface-mediated trapping process following photoexcitation due to QD and ligand interactions at the interface. These works describe the process of performing UED and the structural dynamics that can be elucidated to then better understand atomic changes. The latter study highlights the ability of UED to resolve surface-level phenomena, which was previously unexplored with UED. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Mei, Hao | Damaren, Christopher | Hybrid Removal of End-of-life Geostationary Satellites using Solar Radiation Pressure and Impulsive Thrusts | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | This thesis proposes novel analytical and numerical control approaches to achieve the removal of end-of-life geostationary equatorial orbit (GEO) satellites to the GEO graveyard region using solar radiation pressure (SRP), and the hybrid removal using SRP and impulsive thrusts. The dynamic model of a GEO spacecraft equipped with a solar sail is first built upon the magnitude comparisons of different accelerations exerted on the spacecraft, and the drifts of the orbital elements due to each perturbative term during the removal time. Then the continuous and hybrid dynamic systems are constructed based on Gauss’s variation of parameter (VOP) equations. A realistic solar sail model is proposed and applied in the debris removal mission. Eclipse by the Earth is considered in this thesis. In the analytical control approach, the non-linear time-varying dynamic system is first linearized along a nominal state trajectory, then a linear optimal hybrid disturbance-accommodation tracking controller is developed and utilized to find the optimal solar sail control angles and impulsive thrust vectors. The required minimum area-to-mass ratio of the spacecraft for ideal/realistic solar sails using the proposed control approach is presented. When the nominal state trajectory deviates too far from the desired state trajectory, the linear time-varying (LTV) dynamic system obtained from linearization cannot accurately approximate the non-linear time-varying dynamic system, and this causes terminal state error. This problem is solved by the following numerical control approach. In the numerical control approach, the local Legendre-Gauss-Lobatto (LGL) pseudospectral (PS) method is first extended to a hybrid PS method by breaking the state continuity constraints between the segments and governing the dynamics of the LGL points on segment boundaries using discrete dynamic equations. Then a hybrid feedback PS method is proposed, in which a hybrid linear feedback controller is developed to stabilize the open-loop hybrid PS method when it converges to a local minimum. The real-time control is the composition of the feedforward control generated by the open-loop hybrid PS method and the feedback control given by the hybrid linear feedback controller. The terminal state error is greatly reduced using the hybrid feedback PS method. At last, a two-impulse-per-orbit debris removal strategy is proposed to reduce the computational cost of the hybrid feedback PS method. The long-term (one year, two years and ten years) hybrid end-of-life GEO satellites removal is presented, and the relationship between the area-to-mass ratio of the spacecraft and the required $\Delta V$ of the impulsive thrusts using this strategy is built. | Ph.D. | solar, urban | 7, 11 |
| Esteves, Samantha Angelo Ing | Lefebvre, Julie L | Clustered Protocadherins: A Molecular Barcode for Neuronal Wiring and Survival | Molecular Genetics | 2022-11 | Neuronal branch patterns influence connectivity and function, with dendrites elaborating complex but non-overlapping distributions. One developmental process that regulates branch spacing is dendrite self-avoidance, in which dendrites originating from the same cell (self-dendrites) minimize overlap and contacts. Little is known of the cellular or molecular mechanism that underpins self-avoidance. It is hypothesized that immense extracellular diversity establishes unique molecular repertoires that confer single neuron identity, and signal for neurite avoidance. Studies suggest the clustered Protocadherins (cPcdhs) provide the molecular diversity required for these processes. The mouse cPcdh locus encodes 58 transmembrane recognition molecules in three clusters: Pcdh-alpha (Pcdha), Pcdh-beta (Pcdhb), and Pcdh-gamma (Pcdhg). cPcdhs extracellular domains vary, but isoforms within clusters share a common intracellular domain. Binding property studies showed cPcdhs engage in strict homophilic trans interactions and expression studies suggest that cPcdhs generate single neuron identity through expression of unique isoform subsets in individual neurons. In the retina, the Pcdhg cluster regulates two distinct processes: developmental apoptosis, and self-avoidance. Retinas lacking Pcdhgs display enhanced programmed cell death, and a loss of self-avoidance. However, whether Pcdhgs cooperate with other cPcdhs, or if Pcdha or Pcdhb diversity is required in cell survival or self-avoidance was unknown. Additionally, the dynamic process of dendrite self-avoidance was unknown. In my thesis I use the retina to investigate the role of cPcdh cluster diversity in cell survival and dendrite patterning. My analysis of double Pcdha; Pcdhg mutants showed cell death and self-avoidance defects are exacerbated, revealing cooperative functions between Pcdha and Pcdhg and a role for cPcdh molecular diversity. I established a novel live-imaging method to capture videos of Starburst Amacrine Cells arbour development. Through quantitative video analysis I determined that dendrite self-avoidance is a contact-dependent process. In Pcdhg knockouts, filopodia fail to retract after self-contact. Interestingly, non self-contacting filopodia dynamics are unaffected. This shows Pcdhgs are required for retraction after self-contact but dispensable for non self-contacting interactions. My work is the first study to show cooperative functions for the Pcdhas and Pcdhgs in circuit development and to directly image vertebrate dendrite self-avoidance, revealing it to be a contact-dependent and Pcdhg-mediated process. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Alostaz, Ziad | Johnston, Linda||Dale, Craig | A Diagnostic Evaluation of Physical Restraint Practices in An Adult Intensive Care Unit: A Mixed Method Study | Nursing Science | 2022-11 | Background: Evidence indicates that physical restraints (PR) are associated with adverse physical, emotional and psychological sequelae and do not consistently prevent intensive care unit (ICU) patients from removing medical devices. Guidelines advocate for minimization of PR use in ICUs. Nevertheless, PRs continue to be used extensively in ICUs both in Canada and internationally. Aim: To identify the baseline (i.e., pre-implementation) factors that could influence the successful implementation of PR minimization interventions using the integrated–Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services (i-PARIHS) framework. Design: A convergent parallel mixed qualitative and quantitative methods study in a 20-bed mixed medical, surgical and trauma ICU in Toronto, Canada Methods: The qualitative component comprised one-on-one semi structured interviews with fourteen ICU staff. The quantitative component comprised a 12-week prospective observational study of 102 restrained patients. Results: The integration of findings revealed a risk-averse culture where prophylactic application of PR for intubated patients was used to prevent unplanned extubation, thereby avoiding blame from colleagues. Interviewees shared a perception of a lack of routine communication about PR from intensivists in daily team discussions. Similarly, the quantitative data showed that in only 10% (3/30) of interprofessional rounds was PR use discussed by the ICU team. The interviewed participants demonstrated poor awareness of current local PR rates of use, which echoes the observation that PR was poorly documented in medical records. While most interviewees recommended nurse facilitation to minimize PR use, nurse leaders were not actively involved in PR discussion during the interprofessional team rounds. Interviewees recommendations regarding strategies to minimize restraint use included availability of restraint alternatives and guidance on situations for applying and removing restraints. Conclusion: This analysis of contextual influences on PR practices and minimization using the i-PARIHS framework revealed potentially modifiable barriers to successful PR minimization, including a lack of leadership involvement, gaps in practice monitoring and collaborative decision-making processes, and sometimes conflicting priorities in terms of patient safety. The establishment of an interprofessional facilitation team that addresses risk-averse culture and promotes collaboration among ICU stakeholders will be crucial to the success of any approach to restraint minimization in this context. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Ferdinand Pennock, Kaleigh Marie | Mainwaring, Lynda | Deciding to Play: Exploring Why Adolescent Athletes Under-report Sport-related Concussions using a Mixed Methods Approach | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | Sport participation offers several benefits for adolescent athletes but is not without limitations, including risk of injury. Sport-related concussions (SRC) leave adolescents vulnerable to significant health, physical, social, and educational disruptions. Current recommendations emphasize SRC education and removal from play upon suspicion of concussion. However, many adolescents under-report SRC symptoms, but the scope of under-reporting for this population is not well understood, nor are the underlying motivations for (under)reporting. It is necessary to interrogate the relationship between SRC knowledge and reporting and invite athletes to share their decision-making processes. In consideration of developmental, educational, psychosocial and sport cultural findings, the objective of the current research was to understand why adolescents under-report sport-related concussions. Using a mixed methods approach, two studies were developed. The purpose of Study 1 was to assess the current literature on SRC under-reporting in adolescent athletes 13-18 years old through a systematic review. In total, 26 articles were included in the review. All studies found evidence for athletes failing to disclose concussion symptoms; both male and female athletes were found to under-report, with limited evidence suggesting male athletes under-report SRC more frequently. Prior concussion knowledge does not appear to predict sustained improvements in under-reporting behaviours, highlighting the complexity of under-reporting decision-making. The purpose of Study 2 was to understand how athletes’ attitudes, experiences and beliefs regarding concussions influence their under-reporting decisions and behaviours. This research employed a constructivist grounded theory approach. Participants included 17 elite athletes, 16-18 years old, from a variety of sports. A substantive theoretical model demonstrates personal, social, cultural, and biophysical processes that contribute to under-reporting decisions. The model identifies multiple interconnected processes that contribute to ‘high-risk’ situations of under-reporting. Findings implicate the collective responsibility of under-reporting and the use of risk profiles as a novel approach to understand and consequently improve under-reporting behaviours. Overall, this research synthesizes evidence on adolescent under-reporting, challenges the reliance on concussion education as the primary tool for improving behaviours, and provides a theoretical foundation for how to support adolescent athlete decision-making for improved reporting outcomes. | Ph.D. | knowledge, female | 4, 5 |
| Trowbridge, Joslyn | Schwartz, Robert | A Six-Case Comparative Study to Identify Systems Thinking in Government-designed Public Health Strategies | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Governments around the world are grappling with increasingly complex and hard to solve public health problems, such as the rise in chronic diseases and increasing health inequity. Complexity is a significant challenge for policy makers who design large-scale interventions for several reasons: the interconnected dynamics of a system might lead policy design to overlook potential synergies, the heterogeneity of factors and the nonlinearity of processes in a system make causal links difficult to determine, and prediction is difficult because multiple forces shape the future behaviour of the system. Traditional theoretical frameworks, such as the biomedical or behavioural health models, are based on a reductionist paradigm that holds that all phenomena can be understood by reducing them to their smallest components and studying their interactions. This reductionist stance is inadequate for dealing with increasing complexity in public health. In this dissertation, I explore the use of systems thinking as a theoretical framework for understanding complex public health issues and designing government-led public health strategies. A systems thinking framework considers how dynamic feedback, unpredictability, and interconnected elements impact the overall structures and patterns in a system. I use a multiple case study analysis to investigate the extent to which systems thinking concepts and social determinants of health approaches are present in the design processes of three federal and three provincial strategies in Canada. Each case applies an original analytical framework to policy documents and interviews with senior strategy design leaders (n=18). Through comparative analysis, I find that that although no cases formally applied systems thinking to strategy design, the concepts are present to a significant, moderate, or limited extent. The analysis also presents a set of contextual factors in the policy environment that help or hinder the use of systems thinking. Contextual factors include the evidence-base of the strategy topic and theory of change, the policy environment and policy levers available, the specifics of the strategy design process and operational resources, and the leadership, culture, and skills of the workforce. This study contributes to the calls for evidence of applied systems thinking in public health policy and systems research. | Ph.D. | public health, health issues, equity, invest, equit | 3, 4, 9, 10 |
| MacDonald, Daniel Edward | Steinman, David A | Sensitivity of Hostile Hemodynamics to Intracranial Aneurysm Geometry | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | An intracranial aneurysm (IA) is an abnormal outpouching of an artery in the brain and is thought to be present in about 1 in 30 adults. Rupture of an IA is a devastating event leading to death or disability in most cases. To supplement clinical treatment decisions, researchers have turned to hemodynamics, which are thought to contribute to the growth and rupture of IAs. Simulations using medical-image-based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) yield patient-specific risk parameters, but these parameters are often highly uncertain due to modelling limitations, limiting their clinical utility. Recent CFD studies have shown IA rupture to be associated with wall shear stress (WSS) and jet impingement, but these studies may be overlooking turbulent-like flow instabilities. This thesis investigates the nature of these flow instabilities and risk parameters in the context of uncertainty due to geometry. To characterize these instabilities, this thesis highlights the novel use of spectrograms as an interpretable summary of the flow field (Chapter 2) and demonstrates their variation in a cohort of 50 IAs (Chapter 3). Based on these spectrograms, I developed a novel marker to quantify harmonic flow features and demonstrated that this marker was a better predictor of rupture than popular WSS-based metrics in our cohort of 50 high-fidelity IA simulations (Chapter 4). Overestimation of the IA neck is a widespread issue among IA CFD researchers, which could selectively promote or inhibit the development of flow instabilities. To overcome this issue, I devel- oped a novel technique for improving IA segmentation from 3D imaging (Chapter 5) and showed that hemodynamic parameters including flow instabilities can be sensitive to these common segmentation errors, potentially muddling efforts toward rupture prediction (Chapter 6). Hemodynamic parameters are ultimately only useful if they are robust to modelling error and provide useful diagnostic information that is not more-easily extracted from geometry alone. Lever- aging a recent deep neural network for unsupervised 3D shape interpolation, I created plausible interpolations between patient-derived geometries and demonstrated the hemodynamic sensitivity to these broad changes in geometry (Chapter 7). This research exposes limitations inherent to reduced risk indices and could help researchers identify better risk markers. | Ph.D. | disabilit, invest | 3, 9 |
| Merritt, Daniel | van der Kooy, Derek | A Discriminating Memory: Learning and Chemosensation in C. elegans | Medical Science | 2022-11 | Animals receive information about the external world through their senses, which feed this information into the nervous system where it’s processed, stored, and subsequently influences behaviour. In this work, I describe both how the first steps of chemosensory processing occur in the sensory neurons of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, and how the information provided by this chemosensory input, in conjunction with previous sensory information and the internal satiety state of the animal, act to modulate subsequent behaviour. In the first part of this work, I provide an analysis of the phenomenon of Kamin Blocking in C. elegans, in which past learning about sensory cues can modulate the ability of subsequent cues to form memories, and offer a molecular analysis of Kamin Blocking in the worm which challenges a common interpretation of it in mammals. In the second part of this work, I focus on the very initial steps occurring during chemosensation in C. elegans chemosensory neurons, and find that discrimination between different olfactory stimuli which are sensed within the same neuron relies on β-arrestin mediated desensitization of ligand-bound receptors. I provide a model for how desensitization acts to enable intraneuronal olfactory discrimination in the paradigm being tested, offering a resolution to a longstanding question in the field, and test several predictions of this model. In sum, the research presented in this work describes both the earliest mechanisms of chemosensory biology in the worm, and examines how chemosensation acts to create memories and modulate subsequent behaviour. By exploiting the simplicity and genetic tractability of C. elegans, the research described here deepens our understanding of the mechanisms underlying (and linking) the most fundamental aspects of sensation and learning in animals. | Ph.D. | learning, animal | 4, 14, 15 |
| Matzen, Christina | Bergen, Doris L. | Women’s Prisons and the Politics of Punishment in Nazi and Postwar Germany | History | 2022-11 | This dissertation is a new line of inquiry in the history of gender, crime, and punishment in modern Germany and during the Holocaust, illuminating the degree to which conventional prisons confined and often terrorized women during and after the Third Reich. Prisons in twentieth-century Germany are largely overlooked, while studies of concentration camps and Soviet forced labor camps have understandably drawn the attention of historians, but their history provides an important and rich template for critical understandings of carceral systems and their enduring power in the modern age. This project has two main objectives: first, to analyze how conceptions of gender shaped the lives of women prisoners and informed the administration of penal institutions, and second, to shed light on the position of prisons in relation to the Holocaust and to better understand the role of prisons in nascent postwar East and West German societies. The ways in which the “outside world” had concrete effects on the “inside world” of prisons are explored throughout this research, with the following interest groups at the core of the narrative: people in prison, staff in prison, families of people in prison, political actors, and broader society. The primary characteristics of the female prisoner population changed with the political, social, and economic climates of the times, as did the methods of punishment and rehabilitation, but the overarching function of prisons as sites of state power was constant. This study reveals that the criminalization of women’s sexuality and class did not falter even as the criminalization of women and their intersections with race, religion, and politics fluctuated enormously from one German administration to another. Underpinning twentieth-century German women’s prisons was a paradox of invisibility and visibility. Although women were not deemed important enough to warrant substantial sex and gender-specific treatment, they were dangerous enough to confine. Women were also the legal system’s afterthought, except for when the government sought to control their sexuality and exploit their labor. Despite the repressive conditions to which women prisoners were subjected, many found ways to resist the isolating and demoralizing effects of incarceration. | Ph.D. | gender, women, female, labor, climate, institut, legal system | 5, 8, 13, 16 |
| Gorelik, Daniel Jonathan | Taylor, Mark S | New Methods for the Site-selective O-H and C-H Functionalization of Sugars | Chemistry | 2022-11 | Carbohydrates are among the most abundant biomolecules in nature and serve as the metabolic precursors to nearly all other biomolecules. The immense structural diversity found among carbohydrates has resulted in an equally diverse profile of biological functions, including roles in energy storage, structural support, and cell-cell communication. Recognizing the myriad of vital roles carbohydrates serve in animals, development of carbohydrate-based drugs has been pursued intensely and has resulted in the prolific use of drugs like empagliflozin, enoxaparin and molnupiravir. The function of most natural carbohydrates is unknown and glycobiological research on them is limited by their availability. To facilitate this research, new synthetic methods able to generate the sophisticated functionalization patterns found in these molecules must be developed. Direct methods for the site-selective installation of functional groups onto carbohydrates are desired as they avoid the process inefficiencies caused by use of protecting groups. In this thesis, new catalytic methods for the site-selective O-H functionalization of carbohydrates will be covered. Chapter 1 will cover the borinic-acid catalyzed sulfation of carbohydrates and Chapter 2 will cover the boronic-acid catalyzed sulfamoylation of carbohydrates. Photoredox catalysis has resulted in the revitalization of radical chemistry by enabling access to open-shell intermediates under mild conditions. In conjunction with hydrogen atom transfer catalysis, activation of C-H bonds in complex molecules is possible. Given the prominence of hydrogen atom transfer processes in carbohydrate biosynthesis, photoredox-mediated hydrogen atom transfer catalysis can be used as a tool to activate the C-H bonds within sugars. Novel site-selective methods for the C-H functionalization of sugars will also be covered in this thesis as well. Chapter 3 will cover C-H alkylations and Chapter 4 will cover redox isomerizations. Finally, Chapter 5 will cover the site-selective oxidations of carbohydrates, a longstanding goal of our research program. | Ph.D. | energy, animal | 7, 14, 15 |
| How, Tuck-Voon | Mihailidis, Alex||Green, Robin EA | Contextualized Rehabilitation Technologies: An Exploration into Anger Dyscontrol after Traumatic Brain Injury | Biomedical Engineering | 2022-11 | Emergent pervasive computing technologies offer new opportunities to extend the rehabilitation paradigm beyond the hospital setting and into the context of everyday life – an opportunity area we frame as contextualized rehabilitation technologies. The development of such technologies is an interplay of clinical expertise, human-centered design, and technology readiness. Navigating this landscape, however, is fraught with challenges as one needs to balance rehabilitation opportunities against the practicalities of technology design. Pushed too far to one side, and one can either far-exceed the capabilities of emerging technologies, or miss an opportunity to capitalize on technology readiness. This thesis seeks to explore the design space of contextualized rehabilitation technologies, particularly with the focus on outpatient cognitive rehabilitation for individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). In Part 1 of the thesis, we broadly explore the design space between outpatient cognitive rehabilitation and pervasive computing, by developing a new co-design process that enables wide ideation of possible design ideas and considerations. In Part 2 of the thesis, we conceptualize an outcome idea from Part 1 as an exploratory case-study of a contextualized rehabilitation technology. Specifically, we examine the potential of photoplethysmography (PPG), a physiological wristband sensor, to be used to estimate emotion for the self-management of anger after TBI. | Ph.D. | capital, land | 9, 15 |
| Khan, Yasmin Ali | Cowen, Deborah | The Impacts of Rohingya Refugee Humanitarian Aid Policies on Local Bangladeshi Communities | Geography | 2022-11 | Long-term refugee camps are a significant outcome of the record 82.4 million displaced people globally, with 85 percent of refugees in camps in the Global South. Refugee camps in the Global South are growing ever larger as countries in the Global North close their borders to refugees. Refugee camps are well studied in the field of forced migration, but most research focuses on the lives of refugees. What is missing in this field is research on the social-environmental impacts of long-term refugee aid policies on non-refugee populations living in and around the camps: local people who are affected by refugee aid policies but are virtually invisible to aid agencies. There is a gap in the examination of the hardening of borders between camp and local communities, between the categories of refugee and citizen, between who is eligible for aid, and how this denies the deep entanglements of social, economic, and ecological life across these borders while deepening the most adverse impacts. Much of the blame for these impacts fall on the shoulders of refugees themselves, fueling anti-refugee xenophobia. This production of vulnerability through aid policies and practices is understudied and impacts of aid policies on local communities garner little attention from aid agencies or donor states. I argue that aid policies intended for refugees (re)produce gendered vulnerability of local, non-refugee “host” communities living in and around refugee camps and in this way, increases anti-refugee xenophobia. I explore the Rohingya refugee “mega camp” in Bangladesh and how aid policies shaping this camp affect local social and environmental dynamics. This dissertation explores three scenarios where aid policies affect Bangladeshi households. The first chapter explores how the lives of forest-dwelling Bangladeshi families forcibly surrounded by the camp have changed; the second chapter looks at how aid policies (re)produce gendered vulnerability to climactic events; and the third chapter examines how fractured jurisdiction between aid agencies and the Bangladeshi government affects aid practices and fuels anti-Rohingya xenophobia. Investigating the impacts of refugee aid on non-refugees is one way to diversify forced migration and vulnerability research, adding new insight to the production of anti-refugee xenophobia. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, citizen, gender, invest, humanitarian, refugee, production, environmental, forest, ecolog | 1, 4, 5, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15 |
| Lam, Larisa | Volpe, Richard||Comay, Julie | Young Children’s Perspectives on their Well-being at School | Applied Psychology and Human Development | 2022-11 | Understanding young children’s perspectives on their well-being at school is essential to creating environments that best support their development. Well-being is a balance of positive affect, negative affect, and an overall evaluation of life (Diener, 1984). My study seeks to better understand young children’s perspectives on their well-being at school. Participants were 4- to 6-year-old children and their educators from two public schools and one independent school in Ontario. First, I determined whether children’s perspectives of their well-being at school align with those of educators. Children and educators completed a questionnaire – the Multidimensional Life Satisfaction Scale adapted, (MLSS-adapted; Huebner & Gilman, 2002). My analysis of children’s and educators’ perspectives on the questionnaire showed that children’s and educators’ perspectives on children’s well-being at school are different. Then, I further examined children’s perspectives through an open-ended story completion task where children were told the beginning of a story about a character that either has a good dream or a bad dream about school. Children were asked to complete the story by telling about all the good things or bad things that happened to the character. Themes from children’s good dream stories included mentions of food, friends, “other social reference” (e.g., children in general), play, and positive feelings. Children’s bad dream stories included mentions of physical or emotional harm, negative feelings, and “other social reference”. Finally, I studied the relationship between children’s story themes and their well-being at school as indicated by their responses on the questionnaire. Play and friends were frequently mentioned by children with higher well-being in good dream stories and a failure to have expectations met were mentioned frequently by children with lower well-being in bad dream stories. My study showed young children have insights into their experiences at school that are different than those of their educators. By using measures that consider children’s developmental abilities, young children can meaningfully participate in research. Children’s unique perspectives can be used to shape schools and curriculum that best support children’s well-being. | Ph.D. | well-being | 3 |
| McClellan, Steven | Jenkins, Jennifer L | German Economists and the Intersection of Science and Politics: A History of the Verein für Sozialpolitik, 1872-1972 | History | 2022-11 | This dissertation examines the intersection of politics and scholarly activism in Germany through the prism of one organization, the Verein für Sozialpolitik. The history of the Verein highlights the deep connections between the state, science, and politics from the founding of the Kaiserreich to the establishment of the Bundesrepublik. Created in a moment of intense debate over the social question, particularly within German liberalism, the Verein pursued two aims at the same time: to educate middle-class opinion on the plight of workers in an age of rapid industrialization, and to influence government policy through detailed investigations of socio-economic phenomena. The Verein’s key contribution in its early years was propelling the notion of Sozialpolitik onto the national stage. However, the Verein increasingly evolved into a society of professional economists, although the tensions between science and politics remained. The Verein served as a space where the major issues related to Germany’s social, political, and economic development took place among middle-class elites, particularly academics. Throughout its existence, the Verein played a crucial role in defining the boundaries between liberalism, conservatism, and socialism in German intellectual life. But its early emphasis on the social question gradually grave way to increasing focus on economic problems, particularly as Sozialpolitik came to be viewed as a politically divisive force. The history of the Verein expresses the evolving nature of economic liberalism in German economic thought, particularly by showcasing the transformation of liberal conservatism from the Kaiserreich to the West German Bundesrepublik. Based on research in archives in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the United Kingdom, this dissertation traces the origins of the liberal democratic consensus among German economists that became firmly established after 1945. It details the fate of the Verein’s left wing and explains why left-leaning economics failed to take hold in the economic mainstream in Germany. By taking a longer view of the history of social and economic thought in Germany and by also focusing on the most important and consequential association for economists in German-speaking Europe, it highlights the continuities and discontinuities that defined German liberalism between 1872 and 1972. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, worker, invest, industrialization, conserv, land, democra | 1, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16 |
| Klemick, Griffin | Misak, Cheryl | How to Be a Pragmatist in the End: Objectivity, Skepticism, and the Demands of Agency | Philosophy | 2022-11 | Pragmatists face serious difficulties in accounting for the objectivity of truth and knowledge. For they clarify our beliefs’ meaning and truth by appeal to their practical success, and practical success seems relative to particular contexts, or even particular believers. Some pragmatists verge on simply accepting this consequence, but others attempt to secure objective standards of truth and justification. My dissertation interprets and evaluates this objective pragmatist tradition. I argue for three key claims. First, there are two conceptions of objectivity prominent within this tradition, which stand in serious mutual tension: an empiricist conception, on which objective constraints on belief are provided by possible experiences, and a realist-causal conception, on which they are provided by causal interaction with the mind-independent natural world. These conceptions dominate in different historical periods, marking the transition from classical pragmatism to neo-pragmatism. The classical pragmatists most concerned with objectivity, C. S. Peirce & C. I. Lewis, opt for the former conception (notwithstanding apparent realist-causal sympathies in Peirce’s work that ultimately explain the emergence of the latter). Neo-pragmatists who preserve objectivity, like Wilfrid Sellars, opt for the latter. Second, neither camp effectively deploys its conception to provide an adequate account of the epistemic objectivity of our beliefs and assertions: the former camp falls prey to phenomenalism (and so, among other problems, fails to accommodate other minds satisfactorily), while the latter fails in its effort to leverage semantic externalism into an adequate response to skepticism. Finally and in consequence, pragmatism's most fruitful contribution to thinking about objectivity turns out not to lie in its treatments of meaning and truth, but in its independent epistemology: specifically, in Peirce’s and Sellars’s arguments that our right to accept our basic empirical beliefs is a pragmatic warrant. I develop this stance by arguing that our warrant to accept that our perceptual beliefs are likely to be true derives from our commitment to being effective agents and, ultimately, from the value of control over our empirical circumstances. | Ph.D. | knowledge, transit | 4, 11 |
| Lam, Ka Hang Brian | Diamandis, Phedias | Development of an Anatomical Proteomic Atlas of Glioblastoma | Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology | 2022-11 | Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common brain tumour amongst adults with a dismal median survival of 15 months, despite multimodal therapy, including maximal resection and chemotherapy. Classically, GBM has been defined by hallmark histomorphological features, including cellular (CT) and infiltrating tumour (IT) areas, regions of microvascular proliferation (MVP), and hypoxia where the tumour cells palisade around necrosis (PAN). These diverse histomorphologic niches, create a heterogeneous tumour microenvironment (TME) that contributes to tumour evolution and treatment resistance. To better understand the molecular tenants of these histomorphological features, I created an anatomical proteomic atlas of human glioblastoma by excising these regions, using laser capture microdissection techniques, and performing liquid-chromatography based proteomics. This unique resource highlighted that GBM intra-tumour heterogeneity can be defined across a› three-dimensional axis including MYC-, KRAS- and hypoxia programs. Furthermore, utilizing these reference proteomic profiles, I leveraged machine learning to deconvolute and estimate niche proportions in independent bulk based proteogenomic efforts. This approach revealed a strong association of the proneural subtype with a diffusely infiltrating phenotype providing new insights for the genetic drivers and poor response of this subtype. Finally, I compiled these proteomic profiles to develop a publicly available bioinformatics portal for knowledge dissemination in hopes of accelerating our understanding of glioblastoma biology. Together these works highlight the importance of accounting for regional proteomic profiles in GBM to nominate phenotypic programs and unify biological theories. Generalization of the approaches and data outlined in this thesis can help explore other intra-tumoural aspects of tumour heterogeneity including divergent spatially distributed tumour subpopulations and structures. | Ph.D. | knowledge, learning | 4 |
| Mirjalili, Mahdi | Sarhangian, Vahid | Data-driven Modelling and Control of Hospital Blood Inventory | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | Determining order quantities for platelet and Red Blood Cell (RBC) units at hospitals is a challenging task since they are perishable and their usage is subject to high uncertainty. In this thesis, we develop data-driven models and methods for determining order quantities for hospitals that order their required units from a central supplier such as Canadian Blood Services (CBS). An important characteristic of the problem in the case of such hospitals is that the remaining age of received units is also subject to uncertainty, a factor that has been generally ignored in the literature. We use data from a network of hospitals in Hamilton, ON, to develop and test our proposed models. We study a periodic-review perishable inventory problem with zero lead-time that operates under the Oldest-Unit, First-Out (OUFO) allocation policy. In Chapter 4, we propose a data-driven approach for determining daily order quantities for platelets. Our approach can be viewed as a demand prediction model that is equipped with a new loss function. Specifically, we assume the required inventory (base-stock) level for each period is a linear function of a set of observed features in that period and optimize coefficients of the linear model by minimizing an approximate measure of the inventory costs comprised of expiry and shortage costs. Our first model assumes a fixed remaining age tuned using cross validation while our second model explicitly accounts for the remaining age variability through a robust optimization approach. In Chapter 5, we introduce two extensions of our first model to account for holding costs, particularly tailored for ordering RBCs that have a longer shelf-life. Our data-driven approach however does not account for fixed ordering costs and therefore is appropriate for larger hospitals relying on daily deliveries. In Chapter 6, we consider a dynamic programming (DP) approach using parametric models of demand and remaining age uncertainty and propose a simulation-based Approximate Dynamic Programming (ADP) for general stochastic perishable inventory problems with fixed ordering costs and decision-dependent remaining age uncertainty. We leverage ADP-based policies to investigate the value of accounting for (decision-dependent) uncertainty in the shelf-life of units when making ordering decisions. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Varshney, Shivani | Nogami, Jun JN | Atomic Structure of Thin Films in the Cesium-Lead-Bromine System | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Cesium lead bromide (CsPbBr3) perovskite nanocrystals have a promising future in the field of optoelectronics. Their potential applications are primarily in improving the efficiency of solar cells and light emitting diodes (LEDs). However, it remains a great challenge to fabricate halide perovskite nanodevices using traditional methods as they dissolve in polar solvents used in the fabrication of the devices. The available research regarding CsPbBr3 crystals is insufficient, particularly in the area of growth by solid phase evaporation. Therefore, the growing interest in perovskite crystals motivated us as to study the growth of the two binary constituents, Cesium bromide (CsBr) and Lead bromide (PbBr2) on a metallic substrate, as well as the results of co-deposition. In this study, ultra-thin films have been grown using thermal evaporation, studied using low energy electron diffraction (LEED), scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory (DFT). The growth of CsBr on Ag (111) has been observed in the coverage range 2.5 to 5 ML. Analysis of atomically resolved images show that the thin films have the NaCl structure. At higher coverages, significant mobility is seen in the films imaged at room temperature. The growth of PbBr2 epitaxial layers in the coverage of ~ 0.05 to ~ 1 ML results in the decomposition of PbBr2 to Pb and mobile Br atoms and later their recombination to form PbBr2. Co-deposition of these binary components shows the evidence of formation of the cubic and the orthorhombic phases of CsPbBr3 perovskites thin films. Finally, a study on the phase control as a function of molar deposition ratio has been performed which will lead to better control of the quality of perovskite thin films. | Ph.D. | energy, solar | 7 |
| Brunet, Timothy A | Wheelahan, Elizabeth | Humanities and Learning Outcomes in Ontario Higher Education | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | Governments in western liberal economies, such as Ontario, are shifting to outcomes-based systems that ‘tune’ higher education curriculum to stakeholder interests. Globally, governments are using learning outcomes for quality assurance, to modernize curriculum for societal interests, and to apply government and market influence upon the curriculum. This thesis applies new institutionalism and the capability approach to examine how humanities leaders in Ontario higher education perceive and react to the new administrative layer of learning outcomes. According to institutional theory, responses may include superficial strategies for compliance, non-compliance, or the layering of new policies among existing traditions. The research asks, “How do Ontario university leaders in the humanities perceive and implement the shift to learning outcomes?” The study aims to understand to what extent an outcomes-based system aligns with the curricular priorities of the humanities in higher education. Narratives of 19 university humanities leaders were analyzed through qualitative interviews within 10 Ontario universities. The data was reviewed using thematic analysis, inductive and deductive analysis, and compared within the context of the outcomes-based education literature. The overarching narrative of participants indicated that learning outcomes were both an innovative opportunity for pedagogical reflection and a new burdensome administrative layer. The process of tuning the humanities curriculum with administrative pursuits, targeted government funding, and specified career outcomes was not widely accepted by the participants in the study. The approach of passive compliance with learning outcomes became more evident when asking about the consistency, and verifiability of outcomes achieved. Participants shared political challenges and chronological alignments with program restructuring, displaced curriculum, and in some cases program cancellations. Participants said that students were generally unfamiliar with learning outcomes. When discussing opportunities of learning outcomes, participants said that they were an effective discussion tool to envision curricular strategies for enrolment management, experiential learning, interdisciplinary programs, and large elective courses. The study adds to the literature by providing an in-depth view of the agency of department heads to manage the curriculum in the humanities, an understanding of the implementation of Ontario’s learning outcomes policy, and the political positioning of the humanities in Ontario’s higher education system. Key Words: Learning Outcomes, Ontario, Higher Education, New Institutionalism, New Public Management, Neoliberalism, Humanities, Capability Approach, High Participation System. | Ph.D. | learning, institut | 4, 16 |
| He, Tailong | Jones, Dylan B. A. | Mitigating Model Errors in Chemical Data Assimilation: Application of New Data Assimilation and Machine Learning Approaches | Physics | 2022-11 | Ozone (O3), nitrogen oxides (NOx = NO + NO2) and carbon monoxide (CO) are air pollutants that impact global mortality. Accurate estimates of the emissions of NOx, CO, and other O3 precursors are crucial for improving air quality. A widely used means of estimating these emissions is through data assimilation, which relies on imperfect atmospheric models. This thesis explores the potential of mitigating the impact of model errors on chemical data assimilation from three approaches: improving conventional data assimilation systems, reducing model errors, and the use of a new machine learning approach. A new weak constraint (WC) four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) data assimilation approach was evaluated for assimilating CO and mitigating model errors using the GEOS-Chem model. The performance of the WC 4D-Var system was assessed using Observing System Simulation Experiments and the results showed that the system is able to mitigate biases associated with convective transport. Vertical transport in GEOS-Chem was previously found to be too weak, thus we investigated the use of recomputing convective mass fluxes online in GEOS-Chem to mitigate some of the transport bias. The physical parameters in the convection scheme were optimized using a statistical approach and the impact of the new online convective was investigated using observations of Rn222, Be7, and SF6. The results showed that the new system reduces bias in the model. To go beyond traditional modeling and data assimilation approaches, a deep learning (DL) model was developed and used for predicting summertime O3 in the United States. The DL model exhibited good predictive skill in capturing long-term and short-term variability in O3. The model was then used to evaluate trends in US anthropogenic NOx emissions, confirming that satellite-derived trends reflect a mix of anthropogenic and background influences on NOx. A second application of the DL architecture was focused on integrating a satellite-derived chemical reanalysis with in situ measurements of surface NO2 to quantify emissions of NOx from China. The DL model suggested slightly higher emissions for central and eastern China and was better able to capture rapid changes in NOx emissions, such as those associated with the Chinese New Year holidays. | Ph.D. | learning, emission, invest, anthropogenic, emissions, pollut | 4, 7, 9, 13, 14, 15 |
| Zhang, Chao | Wei, John Y. T. | Interacting Electronic Orders in Cuprate Heterostructures and Praseodymium-doped Cuprate Thin Films | Physics | 2022-11 | The REBa2Cu3O7 – δ (REBCO) family of cuprates (RE = Y or rare earth) has an electronic phase diagram with superconductivity, charge order, and a pseudogap existing at different temperature and doping regions. This thesis explores the effects of RE-site substitution by Pr and heterostructuring with the ferromagnetic La2/3Ca1/3MnO3 (LCMO) on these orders. First, we explore the extent strain-induced deoxygenation of YBCO is responsible for the observed Tc attenuation in LCMO/YBCO multilayers, where a long-range ferromagnetic/superconductor proximity effect is proposed to exist. We compare changes to the Tc in oxygen-underdoped perovskite/YBCO/perovskite trilayers with perovskite layers of ferromagnetic LCMO, paramagnetic LaNiO3 (LNO), and orthorhombic PrBa2Cu3O7 – δ (PBCO). We find that LCMO and LNO trilayers show similar Tc attenuation in response to decreasing annealing pressure. We also use x-ray absorption spectroscopy to gauge the Tc vs. hole concentration (p) relationship in LCMO trilayers. We find this relationship to be the same as what is seen in bulk YBCO. These results indicate that the superconductivity in LCMO/YBCO multilayers is similar to that of YBCO and that strain-induced deoxygenation by itself can account for the observed Tc attenuation. Second, we examine the role of epitaxial strain on a previously observed enhancement of the charge order in LCMO/YBCO multilayers. We use resonant x-ray scattering to measure changes in the onset temperature of the charge order (TCO) of LCMO/YBCO/LCMO trilayers with different YBCO thicknesses and doping levels. We find higher TCOs in LCMO trilayers with thinner YBCO even after accounting for strain-induced deoxygenation of the YBCO layer. Our results indicate that the charge order in LCMO/YBCO multilayers is additionally enhanced by the epitaxial strain on the YBCO. Finally, we report the observation of a bulk charge order in the Mott limit of a REBCO compound. In PBCO thin films, we find a charge order with a double-peak structure in momentum space. This charge order resonates at both the Cu-L3 and Pr-M5 edges, which provides strong evidence for the Pr-CuO2 Fehrenbacher-Rice state. This charge order is also the first to be found in the Mott limit of a cuprate and provides strong evidence for the real-space scenario of charge order formation inREBCO. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Faghanipour, Somayeh | Peter, Elizabeth | The Self-care of Older Adult Iranian Immigrants with Diabetes: Implications for Identity and Social Justice | Nursing Science | 2022-11 | Self-care has become a central focus in health care policies and practices over the past few decades. Under the neoliberal construction of responsible citizenship, individuals are considered autonomous agents who are expected to be self-reliant and to assume responsibility for their health with the goal of reducing healthcare costs and increasing efficiency. While this might seem to be beneficial to people and healthcare systems, there is a systemic lack of interest in the structural, social, and economic inequities that impact the ability of underprivileged groups to practice self-care. People’s inability to meet the required expectations of self-care may not only have consequences for their health but may also negatively affect their identities and undermine their sense of agency. Little is known about the impact of current self-care directives on the identities of patients with chronic illnesses living in marginal social locations. The purpose of this study was to explore how older adult Iranian immigrants with diabetes understand and negotiate their identities in the context of diabetes self-care demands. This group was chosen because immigrant Iranian older adults may face additional constraints in practicing self-care due to their marginal social location. A feminist ethics framework informed by the works of Hilde Lindemann, Joan Tronto, and Iris Young guided this study. Using a critical qualitative narrative methodology, 15 older adult Iranian immigrants with diabetes living in the Greater Toronto Area were interviewed. Four key findings resulted from this study. First, the moralization and responsibilization of health, with little regard to the structural and relational constraints of people’s lives, can damage people’s identities and sense of agency. Second, the language of control, compliance, and dependency has a negative impact on people’s identities. Third, medicalization and corporatization of healthcare contribute to the marginality of care receivers. Finally, experiencing racialization inside and outside of the healthcare system and biased self-care directives constrain immigrants’ self-care practices. This research suggests that current self-care directives can damage the identities of chronically ill older adults and widen existing social inequalities by legitimizing unjust health disparities. This thesis is a call to move away from individualistic solutions for care by acknowledging our shared interdependence and vulnerabilities. | Ph.D. | health care, healthcare, illness, citizen, feminis, equit, equalit, privileged, social justice | 3, 4, 5, 10, 16 |
| Alreshaid, Lulwah | Prakki, Anuradha||El-Badrawy, Wafa | Trends in Resin Composite versus Amalgam Restorations Placed in North American Dental Schools | Dentistry | 2022-11 | Many surveys have been conducted to determine the approach in teaching posterior composite in dental schools in North America. However, none of these surveys have correlated the numbers of posterior restorations placed by students in North American dental schools’ clinics with their teaching policies. In this thesis, three studies have been conducted to investigate the trends of posterior composites and amalgam restorations placed in North American dental schools. The first study investigated the latest teaching policies of posterior composite placement versus amalgam and determined the actual numbers of posterior composites versus amalgam restorations placed in Canadian dental schools from 2008 to 2018. Results revealed a clear trend toward an increase in posterior composite restorations placement and a decrease in the number of amalgam restorations placed. However, the teaching time assigned for the posterior composite is not aligned with the quantity placed. The second study investigated the latest teaching policies of posterior composite placement versus amalgam and determined the actual numbers of posterior composites versus amalgam restorations placed in U.S. dental schools from 2008 to 2018. Results indicated a definite trend toward an increase in the placement of posterior composite restorations and a decline in the placement of amalgam restorations, suggesting a misalignment between the amount of time assigned to teach each restorative material with the number of posterior restorations placed in U.S. schools’ clinics. The third study compared the trends of posterior resin composites and amalgam restorations placed in Canadian dental schools to their counterpart in U.S. dental schools. Results suggested that Canadian dental schools’ conduct toward posterior resin composite teaching is relatively conservative compared to U.S. dental schools. Furthermore, there was no consensus on posterior resin composite preparation techniques or contraindications among Canadian and U.S. dental schools. Based on the findings of these studies, it is suggested that the time devoted to teaching each restorative material in preclinical courses among North American dental schools should be revised and adjusted. In addition, clear, unified guidelines pertaining to resin composite teaching policies should be readily available among North American dental schools. | Ph.D. | invest, conserv | 9, 14, 15 |
| Wang, Sze Yuh Nina | Inbar, Yoel | Motivators and Consequences of Moral Rhetoric | Psychology | 2022-11 | When do politicians moralize, and what consequences does moralization have? In the current research, I combine language analysis techniques and experimental manipulations to measure the moral rhetoric of U.S. political elites and test the consequences of this moral rhetoric. I draw upon the literature on Moral Foundations Theory and social identity theory and use techniques from natural language processing to measure the moral rhetoric expressed in language on Twitter and in Congressional speeches. I find that moralization increased after the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, particularly for Democrats. I also find evidence of a more general effect of political power, such that U.S. political elites moralize more when they are in the political minority. Messages containing negative moral rhetoric diffused more widely on Twitter. I also present evidence that positive moral rhetoric can motivate political action and reduce affective polarization for political independents, and that moral rhetoric can shift independents’ political ideology. | Ph.D. | minorit, democra | 10, 16 |
| Nicolet, Victor | Farzan, Azadeh Prof. | Synthesizing Divide-and-Conquer Programs | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Multicore computers today are ubiquitous, from large distributed systems to desktops and mobile phones. Their complex memory architecture enables fast and efficient execution when used correctly. Many efforts have been invested in making the task of taking advantage of these architectures easier. Among them, the development of optimizing and parallelizing compilers as well as frameworks that provide skeletons for parallelism have abstracted the low-level details of the implementation and the optimization process. Techniques have been developed to optimize the efficiency of algorithms that fit particular skeletons, with one of the most commonly used of these being divide-and-conquer. However, the programmer still has to come up with the divide-and-conquer algorithm that fits such skeletons, often with an error-prone and tedious process. This research work aims at providing automated techniques to bridge the gap in the automated optimization process. Given an input program, our goal is to synthesize an equivalent divide-and-conquer implementation, which can then be optimized using the wealth of techniques available. The methods developed should be implementable in a practical tool leveraging the recent advances in program synthesis, but they should also act as a thinking tool for programmers when the solvers fail. This dissertation proposes methodologies to split the task of synthesizing a divide-and-conquer program into smaller but more tractable tasks. To solve these tasks, we propose both new deductive approaches to synthesize new functionality and an efficient use of existing synthesis methods. The combination of the methodologies and the synthesis techniques allows us to design a fully automated process, implemented in a tool Parsynt, which succeeds in synthesizing highly non-trivial divide-and-conquer algorithms from simple functions. | Ph.D. | ABS, invest | 2, 9 |
| Bernier, Thérèse | Seto, Emily | Community-based Research with Eastern Canadian Sex Workers on the use of Information and Communication Technology to Manage Occupational Health and Safety | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | In Canada, legal restrictions under Bill C-36 increase a sex worker’s occupational health and safety (OHS) risks by forcing the sex worker to work alone, placing the sex worker at risk for violence in the form of assault, robbery, non-negotiated sex acts, attempts to or removal of the condom, and clients trying to receive a sex act without paying for it. Other OHS risks experienced by sex workers are harassment, social isolation, and inadequate access to health services. To counteract these OHS risks, sex workers have begun using information and communication technologies (ICTs) to exchange tips and information. Through three interrelated studies, this dissertation seeks to understand how sex workers in Eastern Canada are currently using ICTs to access OHS information and manage OHS risks. Using a community-based research approach, and guided by the social ecological model, qualitative research methodologies were applied to gather insights as to whether the OHS information available via ICTs meets sex workers’ needs and explore sex workers’ suggestions for improvements in accessing OHS information. The first study in this dissertation, a scoping review, covers 12 countries, including Canada, and discusses the individual and institutional OHS risk mitigation strategies that sex workers access via ICTs. In the second study, 22 Eastern Canadian sex workers were interviewed. This study delivered a deeper understanding of the role ICTs play in a sex worker’s ability to find an online community where they can learn and exchange OHS strategies, and provided insights into the fragility of these communities, as the usage of ICTs for this purpose is prohibited by law. In the third study, a subset of sex workers from the previous study co-designed the digital prototype of a tool that could satisfy their needs for a central repository of OHS information. The overall vision for this digital OHS tool is a sex-worker friendly space, comprised of six core components: regional bad date resources, the work of sex work, supplies, STI information and education, sexual health, and harm reduction services. In designing their own OHS tool, sex workers apply their lived experience in mitigating the risks present in their profession. | Ph.D. | worker, ecolog, institut, violence | 8, 15, 16 |
| Hughes, Wendy Jane | Bascia, Nina | Graduates of Ontario Secondary Schools' Experiences in High School and Intercultural Orientations | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | How do secondary school experiences influence student intercultural orientations and how do students’ identities influence student intercultural orientations? This study uses Allport’s (1954) intergroup contact theory (the idea that sustained contact with others can reduce prejudice), Vygotsky’s (1933/1967) sociocultural theory (that we learn with and from others in specific sociocultural contexts), Charles Taylor’s (1994) theory of recognition (that human dignity demands equal recognition), John Dewey’s views on education and democracy, and a critical lens to understand the potential connections. The study accepts that students come to school with perceptions of themselves and others based on the specific sociocultural environments in which they are raised (as suggested by Vygotsky). These perceptions are influenced by such social constructions as race, Indigeneity, ethnicity, class, gender, and ability, and the embedded, internalized and often unexamined power relationships attached to these constructions of identity. The study explores how schools may affect student intercultural orientations by whether or not they bring students with different backgrounds, experiences, and cultural identities together under the conditions specified by Allport, (sustained contact, enhanced equality, institutional support, and common purpose), and whether they provide adequate recognition (following Taylor) for students’ complex, interactive and developing identities. Based on a survey of 390 recent graduates of Ontario secondary schools and fourteen individual interviews, the study finds that inequitable structures and mechanisms for school programming as well as school environments that fail to support individual student identities hinder intergroup contact in Ontario schools. Learning settings often do not allow for open discussion of local and global issues through a human rights framework, and limit students’ experience of and participation in democratic activity. The implications for Ontario education may include: a re-examination of individualism and competition in teaching and learning; contextualizing of academic merit; an examination of discriminatory school structures including state funding of denominational schooling; culturally responsive and de-colonizing pedagogy; broader and more equitable access to extra-curricular activity; greater emphasis on teacher-student relationships; and more school-based student democratic participation. | Ed.D. | equitable, pedagogy, learning, gender, equit, equalit, institut, human rights, democra, judic | 4, 5, 10, 16 |
| Schiks, Thomas John | Wotton, Brian M||Martell, David L | Delineating between Wildland Fire Rate of Spread and Daily Progression Mapping using Active Fire Remote Sensing | Forestry | 2022-11 | The estimates of a fire’s rate of spread and progression critically depend on the spatial unit size of sampling, the temporal frequency of observation, and the fire’s behaviour. Whereas airborne thermal infrared fire mapping systems have been used to estimate fire behaviour attributes (e.g., rate of spread), satellite-based active fire detections, or hotspots, have been used to estimate a fire’s daily progression and growth (e.g., day-of-burn). In this thesis, simulated and real active fire detection data are used to examine accuracy and potential measurement error in rate of spread and daily progression, as each may be estimated by interpolating a surface of arrival times at locations within a burned area. In the first study, I developed a method of spatial interpolation for rate of spread using fine-scale thermal infrared perimeter time series and assessed the accuracy of those estimates as the quality and precision of the input imaging characteristics varied (spatial resolution and revisit period) and as the fire’s perimeter growth varied (head fire rate of spread, fuel type, and wind direction). Measurement error increased with increasing detection cell size and increasing temporal gaps between consecutive observations. In the second study, I developed a method of spatial interpolation for day-of-burning on wildfires using hotspots and assessed the accuracy of those estimates using agency-prepared fire progression maps. Nearly half of each fire’s area could be correctly estimated in terms of daily progression to within one day. In the third study, I characterized progression and growth of individual wildfires by measuring daily spread distance and daily area burned increment on day-of-burning maps. A mixed effects logistic regression model indicated an increased likelihood of spread, compared to a fixed effects model that disregarded repeated measures. My findings reinforce that rate of spread and fire progression are non-interchangeable, because of inherently different potential measurement errors associated with their respective estimates. Recognizing this is crucial if remotely sensed data is to be fully realized as a compatible source with traditional fire behaviour modelling. By implication, future investigations of remote sensing products should clearly discriminate which is being studied, since each addresses separate wildfire monitoring objectives. | Ph.D. | wind, invest, land | 7, 9, 15 |
| Klemens, Joseph Aloysius | Rupp, Stephen||Rodriguez, Nestor | Aural Readings: Performative Monologues as Oppositional Narratives | Comparative Literature | 2022-11 | My dissertation aims to classify and elucidate a group of unembedded monologues in prose whose narrative voice adopts a spoken or pseudo-spoken mode. In each of the works I study—Samuel Beckett’s The Unnamable (1953), António Lobo Antunes’s The Land at the End of the World (1979), Thomas Bernhard’s Wittgenstein’s Nephew (1982) and Roberto Bolaño’s Amulet (1999)—a first-person narrator adopts a mode of speech/narration that is stylistically crafted to simulate differing degrees of spoken discourse. I look to speech-act theory and a variety of narratological concepts to show how the unembedded monologue form manifests a performative function. In this vein, I show that the unframed/unembedded aspect of these monologues is performative in its omission of a descriptive (constative), third-person framework that might suggest a narrative situation in readers’ imaginations. In the last two chapters, I also examine how this performative function is present in the narrators’ tendency to address a fictional listener or group of listeners. In addition, the narrators of these texts all occupy their respective sociopolitical spheres as outsiders or subjects of alterity and position themselves in opposition to cultural and political institutions, adopting critical/nonconformist attitudes towards power structures. I am interested in showing how performative language becomes a tool for endowing these works, and their narrators, with a political edge and a sense of agency; my selection of texts by post-WWII authors, stemming from vastly different literary traditions, aims to explore the performative monologue’s genesis and stages of development. The scope of primary texts establishes a traceable chronology and a cohesive means of grouping together previously isolated examples of this unorthodox narrative mode. | Ph.D. | land, institut | 15, 16 |
| Yeates, Dylan CM | Ito, Rutsuko||Lee, Andy CH | The Role of Extrinsic Connections and Stimulus Identity in Ventral Hippocampus Mediated Approach-Avoidance Conflict Resolution | Psychology | 2022-11 | The ventral hippocampus (HPC) has is a key mediator of approach-avoidance conflict, which occurs when organisms are confronted with a stimulus associated with opposing valences. Surprising findings have emerged regarding how different ventral HPC subregions mediate conflict resolution, and additionally suggest that only certain conflict conditions elicit ventral HPC activity. This thesis set out to investigate the role of the ventral HPC subregions and their extrinsic connections in approach-avoidance conflict, the conditions in which they are necessary for conflict mediation, and the extent to which established pathways that mediate conflict in rodents generalize to humans.The first experiment utilized established mixed valence Y-maze and metric pattern discrimination paradigms to investigate the extent to which the ventral and dorsal dentate gyrus (vDG and dDG) mediate approach-avoidance conflict and spatial pattern separation, respectively. These experiments revealed a double dissociation, with pharmacological inhibition of the vDG leading to conflict approach responses, while inhibition of the dDG impaired metric pattern discrimination. The second study investigated the extent to which conflict scenarios with simple light/sound cue signaled outcomes are mediated by the ventral HPC. Chemogenetic inhibition of the ventral HPC led to no alterations in response to conflict in either reinforced or non-reinforced conditions, suggesting that sufficiently simple conflict conditions do not require ventral HPC activity. The third investigation examined the role extrinsic connections from the ventral CA3 and CA1 (vCA3 and vCA1) to the lateral septum (LS) play in approach-avoidance conflict. It was found that chemogenetic inhibition of the vCA3 to caudodorsal LS pathway released approach responses to conflict stimuli, while inhibition of vCA1 to rostroventral LS pathway led to non-specific behavioural disinhibition. The fourth investigation used human functional magnetic resonance imaging data to examine the correlations between the human HPC, LS, and hypothalamus at rest. This found that activity between these 3 regions are correlated, and the details of these connections suggest a continuity of pathways responsible for conflict mediation between species. Together, these results reveal that the ventral HPC subfields contain multiple pathways that mediate approach-avoidance conflict elicited under complex conditions and suggest that these pathways are preserved in humans. | Ph.D. | invest, species | 9, 14, 15 |
| Wang, Yu Xiang Brian | Tran, Honghi||Wong, Willy | Development of a Mathematical Model for Monitoring Recovery Boiler Dissolving Tank Sounds | Chemical Engineering Applied Chemistry | 2022-11 | In the chemical recovery process of kraft pulp mills, molten smelt falls into the dissolving tank where it interacts violently with hot water. These smelt-water interactions allow for fast smelt dissolution, however too many violent interactions can also cause equipment damage. In severe cases, violent smelt-water interactions may result in dissolving tank explosions, costing millions of dollars to pulp mills. One way to monitor smelt-water interactions within the dissolving tank is through the sound they generate. In this work, an acoustic model of smelt-water interaction was developed to examine dissolving tank sound characteristics and operating factors affecting the sound intensity. Field studies were conducted to obtain acoustic data at several mill sites. Laboratory experiments were then conducted to study each part of the smelt-water interaction process. The results of field measurements and laboratory experiments allowed for better understanding of the physical mechanisms involved in smelt-water interactions in the dissolving tank. This model is stochastic in nature and describes the physical processes from the moment molten smelt droplets enter water to the acoustic signals produced by numerous vapour bubble expansions and collapses. Each component of the model was verified through empirical data. The simulation results of the integrated model were then compared against acoustic measurements taken from mill visits. The model predictions were in good agreement with the sounds recorded from pulp mills under various operating conditions. The model could also accurately predict other mill variables such as the temperature of green liquor in the dissolving tank based on acoustic signals. In addition, the model provides predictions of changes within the dissolving tank when parameters such as smelt droplet size distributions and smelt flow rate are varied. The results obtained through these simulations show trends that are in agreement with findings from other studies. The results also suggest that dissolving tank water temperature, smelt flow rate, and smelt droplet size are amongst the most important factors in the intensity of explosion events. The model and algorithmic procedures developed in this thesis work may be used to develop an acoustic monitoring system for recovery boiler dissolving tanks. | Ph.D. | water, labor | 6, 8 |
| Lightstone, Vardit | Shternshis, Anna||Schrire, Dani | Performing Migrant Identity: Canadian Yiddish Personal Narratives | Germanic Languages and Literatures | 2022-11 | This dissertation explores the multiple ways migrants use their personal narratives to create, express, and transmit new hybrid transnational cultures and identities. Between 1900 and 1930, over half a million Eastern European Jews settled in Canada, increasing Canada’s Jewish population by more than 800%. These migrants established new Jewish communities in cities, towns, and farming colonies and changed the face of Canadian Jewish society. This dissertation undertakes an analytical reading of Yiddish personal narratives, published and unpublished, written by 21 of these migrants. A range of approaches to stories of self, including folkloristic, literary, and psychological combined with ethnopoetic analysis provide insight into the multiple functions and meanings integrated into these migrant personal narratives. Contact approaches and postcolonial theory are utilized to understand the relationships between the individuals, space, and group identities. This work uncovers what migrant personal narratives reveal about individual and communal creative adaptation and the connections between individuals, their previous home(s) and culture(s), and their new ones. דיסרטציה זו בוחנת את מגוון הדרכים שבהן מהגרים משתמשים בסיפורים אישיים כדי לכונן ולבטא זהויות בינלאומיות היברידיות. בין השנים 1900 ו-1930, יותר מחצי מיליון יהודים ממזרח אירופה התיישבו בקנדה, ובכך הגדילו את אוכלוסיית היהודים בקנדה ביותר מ-800%. מהגרים אלו הקימו קהילות בערים, כפרים, ומושבות חקלאיות ושינו את האופי של החברה היהודית בקנדה. מחקר זה מנתח סיפורים אישיים ביידיש, שנכתבו על ידי עשרים ואחד מהגרים, חלקם ראו אור וחלקם נותרו בכתב יד. מספר שיטות ניתוח של סיפורים אישיים – מחקר הפולקלור, חקר הספרות, פסיכולוגיה, ואתנו-פואטיקה – שופכות אור על הפונקציות והמשמעויות שגלומות בסיפורים אישיים של מהגרים. המחקר עוסק ביחסים בין אנשים, מרחב, וזהות הקבוצה, תוך שילוב בין תיאוריות מגע (contact approaches) ותאוריה פוסט-קולוניאלית (post-colonial theory). | Ph.D. | cities | 11 |
| Varshney, Shivani | Nogami, Jun JN | Atomic Structure of Thin Films in the Cesium-lead-bromine System | Materials Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Cesium lead bromide (CsPbBr3) perovskite nanocrystals have a promising future in the field of optoelectronics. Their potential applications are primarily in improving the efficiency of solar cells and light emitting diodes (LEDs). However, it remains a great challenge to fabricate halide perovskite nanodevices using traditional methods as they dissolve in polar solvents used in the fabrication of the devices. The available research regarding CsPbBr3 crystals is insufficient, particularly in the area of growth by solid phase evaporation. Therefore, the growing interest in perovskite crystals motivated us as to study the growth of the two binary constituents, Cesium bromide (CsBr) and Lead bromide (PbBr2) on a metallic substrate, as well as the results of co-deposition. In this study, ultra-thin films have been grown using thermal evaporation, studied using low energy electron diffraction (LEED), scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and density functional theory (DFT). The growth of CsBr on Ag (111) has been observed in the coverage range 2.5 to 5 ML. Analysis of atomically resolved images show that the thin films have the NaCl structure. At higher coverages, significant mobility is seen in the films imaged at room temperature. The growth of PbBr2 epitaxial layers in the coverage of ~ 0.05 to ~ 1 ML results in the decomposition of PbBr2 to Pb and mobile Br atoms and later their recombination to form PbBr2. Co-deposition of these binary components shows the evidence of formation of the cubic and the orthorhombic phases of CsPbBr3 perovskites thin films. Finally, a study on the phase control as a function of molar deposition ratio has been performed which will lead to better control of the quality of perovskite thin films. | Ph.D. | energy, solar | 7 |
| Nunn, Christopher Jack | Goyal, Sidhartha | Mitochondrial Genome Dynamics in Yeast: How Mutation and Selection Inform the Fate of a Dispensable Genome | Physics | 2022-11 | The accumulation of mutant mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) results in cellular pathologies in single-celled organisms and is implicated in disease and aging in multicellular organisms like humans. However, much remains to be understood about the dynamics of the generation of mutant mtDNAs that lead to their propagation in cell populations. In particular, it is unclear what characteristics of mutant mtDNA enable the out-competition of wild-type mtDNA and what mechanisms are involved in this displacement of healthy genomes. The interplay between intracellular and intercellular selection in shaping the fate of mtDNA is also poorly understood. To investigate the generation of mutant mtDNAs and why they propagate, first I present an experiment where I use long-read sequencing to track the mutational trajectories of mtDNA in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This experiment reveals a previously unseen pattern that constrains the mutational trajectories of mtDNA in yeast. This study also shows that measurements of relative fitness of mtDNA fit a phenomenological model that highlights important biophysical parameters governing mtDNA fitness. Next, I introduce a computer-vision tool to increase the throughput of a laborious experimental assay used to infer the integrity of mtDNA in yeast. This automated tool detects colonies with wild-type and mutated mtDNA and computes their frequencies from scanned images of Petri dishes. It addresses issues in scalability and reproducibility of existing mtDNA mutation assays which currently rely on laborious manual colony counting methods. Finally, I explore the interplay between the multiple levels of selection acting on mtDNA in cell populations through mathematical models that highlight important features of systems with multi-level selection. I also propose a collection of new experiments to test these model predictions in yeast. Altogether, this work provides further insight into the dynamics of mtDNA in yeast which helps to answer some long-standing questions in mitochondrial genetics. It also provides new tools to experimentalists in the form of a bioinformatics approach that enables the reconstruction of complex mtDNA structures through long-read sequencing and a computer-vision tool to speed up assays that measure mtDNA integrity within cells. Lastly, it lays out a theoretical foundation for future multi-level selection studies in yeast. | Ph.D. | labor, invest | 8, 9 |
| Razack, Sabrina Alisha | MacNeill, Margaret | Joy as a Mode of Resistance: An examination of Black Girl Hockey Club’s Ongoing Quest for Racial Justice | Kinesiology and Physical Education | 2022-11 | Through a case study of the Black Girl Hockey Club (BGHC) founded by Renee Hess, this doctoral research project investigates how an online sports network operates as a community of resistance to racism, uniting political action with the joy of sport. Hess initially established media sites including a Twitter handle, ‘@Blackgirlhockey’ as a fan account, to attract Black women who enjoyed watching and engaging with hockey cultures. The COVID 19 pandemic and the 2020 global racial uprisings transformed the Black Girl Hockey Club into a site for hockey fandom while simultaneously influencing hockey environments and users of the site to address racism. This dissertation uses mixed-methods to employ an in-depth case study of the BGHC, a not-for-profit organization and digital network with over 30K Twitter followers. The thesis integrates theoretical and methodological frameworks of critical media studies, Black feminist theory, critical race theory, anti-racism, and social movements. The thesis demonstrates that cyber networks can enable participants to initiate social change within their own communities. The effectiveness of hashtag feminist sports activism was demonstrated through an analysis of BGHC’s #getuncomfortable campaign. Various outcomes related to involvement with Black Girl Hockey Club were explored including the blurring of on and offline engagement and the development of political consciousness among users of the site. Research participants acquired intellectual empathy, humility and a collective agency related to anti-racism movements. The Black Girl Hockey Club community clearly developed ‘networks of hope’ that produced visible cracks to the dominant social order (in hockey cultures). Another measured outcome was an increase of social capital, individual and collective agency achieved through active involvement with Black Girl Hockey Club. The research illuminates the effective functionality of feminist cyber networks and supports the plausibility and advancement of anti-racism efforts in hockey cultures both virtually and offline. This thesis broadens sport and social movement literature by exploring how the pleasures associated with sport – in this case the love of hockey—became linked to anti-racist activism in an online community. It reveals how an affective mode, joy, shapes a social movement. | Ph.D. | anti-racism, racism, women, girl, feminis, capital, invest, anti-racist, social change | 4, 5, 9, 10, 16 |
| Santangelo, James S | Johnson, Marc T. J.||Ness, Rob W. | Evolutionary Processes in Urban Environments | Ecology and Evolutionary Biology | 2022-11 | Approximately 55% of the world’s human population currently lives in cities, a figure that continues to increase annually. Because cities are constructed to suit the needs of humans, urban environments around the world are predicted to be more like one another than to their own surrounding non-urban habitat, which may drive parallel evolutionary responses to urbanization. In my thesis, I tested these predictions and leveraged large-scale, replicated urban environments to examine the extent of parallel evolution in the production of hydrogen cyanide (HCN)—an ecologically important antiherbivore defense that also affects tolerance to abiotic stressors (e.g., drought, frost)—in natural populations of white clover (Trifolium repens). Using observational, experimental, theoretical, and genomic approaches, I have shown that urbanization drives repeated reductions in the frequency of HCN in 16 eastern North American cities. I later expanded this work across the globe and showed that urban habitats around the world have converged to similar environmental features: cities are warmer, less vegetated, and contain more impervious surfaces than surrounding non-urban habitats. These convergent urban environments have driven changes in the frequency of HCN in urban populations (i.e., urban-rural HCN clines) in 47% of the 160 cities sampled. However, using computer simulations, I have shown that the epistatic genetic architecture underlying HCN makes populations particularly susceptible to loss of HCN via genetic drift. Therefore, urban-rural HCN clines could evolve if urbanization is associated with gradients in the strength of drift. Nonetheless, sequencing the whole genomes of 2,074 plants from 26 cities around the world has confirmed that clines are adaptive: urban and rural habitats consistently had equal amounts of genetic diversity, and I detected signatures of selection on the HCN phenotype and its underlying loci in cities with urban-rural clines. In addition, variation in the strength of clines could be predicted by urban-rural changes in the strength of drought and herbivory, factors also known to influence HCN frequencies at continental scales. My work has contributed to long-standing questions in evolutionary biology regarding the extent of parallelism in nature and provides fundamental insight into the drivers of evolution in one of the planet’s fastest growing and most environmentally destructive ecosystems—cities. | Ph.D. | drought, cities, urban, rural, production, environmental, planet, ecosystem, ecolog | 6, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 |
| Liaqat, Amna | Munteanu, Cosmin | Digitally Mediated Support for Lifelong Culture and Language Learning | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Learning to thrive in a new culture is a cognitively and emotionally demanding task that requires a lifetime of exploration, goal setting, and intentional effort. Lifelong learning is the reality for millions of immigrants in Canada, young and old, who leave behind the familiar to pursue social, economic, and education opportunities in unpaved landscapes. Learning independently in non-learning settings, such as the home, is particularly challenging because learning moments are sporadic, unstructured, and tacit. As a result, immigrants are at heightened risk of experiencing adverse consequences when they do not meet their learning goals, such as missing out on employment opportunities or facing relationship stress. The ill-defined pathways for supporting lifelong learning for immigrants creates barriers to full participation in their new society. In the absence of structural support, alternate possibilities for fostering the informal learning process must be identified. Toward this goal, I investigated two lifelong learning contexts and created tools that serve three generations of immigrants. In my first project I uncovered the dynamics of immigrant grandparent-grandchild storytelling practices, and I designed and evaluated a digital crafting tool that prompts two-way language and culture learning. In my second project I built and deployed a peer-feedback platform for adult immigrants learning to write in English. In my dissertation I integrate these two projects to answer three research questions. First, I have mapped the unique multifaceted learning landscapes faced by immigrants regarding (1) language and culture, (2) age, (3) attitudes, and (4) external structures. Second, I evaluated digital interventions informed by my mapping and showed how manipulating (1) flexibility and structure, and (2) shared spaces can springboard learning moments into meaningful engagement. Third, I reflect on the participatory approaches I adapted to better serve marginalized users. I advance knowledge in Human-Computer Interaction by validating design mechanisms that enrich social learning experiences, and the learning sciences by demonstrating how the interplay of internal psychosocial constructs and external sociocultural context influence the learning process for immigrant populations. Broadly, I contribute a body of interdisciplinary evidence for designing digital tools to capitalize on learning moments that arise from daily routine. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, learning, employment, capital, invest, marginalized, land | 2, 4, 8, 9, 10, 15 |
| Olivieri, Michele | Durocher, Daniel D | Charting the Genetic Architecture of the DNA Damage Response in Human Cells | Cell and Systems Biology | 2022-11 | Lying at the core of genetic inheritance is the fundamental prerequisite of ensuring correct transmission of genetic information (Jackson and Bartek 2009). To achieve this goal, cells must constantly fight back assaults from exogenous or endogenous genotoxins, able to cause a broad spectrum of mutations and genome alterations (Nickoloff and Hoekstra 2013). For this reason, cells have evolved sophisticated sensing and repair mechanisms that promptly recognize DNA lesions, regulate cell cycle progression, and trigger the activation of a limited number of DNA repair pathways, with many of them competing or collaborating for the repair of given DNA lesions. To shed light on the complex architecture of the DNA damage response pathways, the overarching aim of my Ph.D. project was to chart the genetic architecture of the DNA damage response to identify new factors involved in the detection and repair of genotoxic lesions. Using retinal pigment epithelium-1 (RPE1) TP53-/- cell line, I performed screens against 27 genotoxic chemicals using genome-scale CRISPR/Cas9 loss-of-function genetic screens (Olivieri et al. 2020). These screens identified 890 genes whose deletion causes to be more sensitive or resistant to DNA-damaging agents (Olivieri et al. 2020). Among them was ERCC6L2, which is mutated in a bone-marrow failure syndrome (Shabanova et al. 2018a; Douglas et al. 2019; Shu Zhang et al. 2016; Tummala et al. 2014; Järviaho et al. 2018) and codes for a previously unrecognized canonical non-homologous end-joining pathway factor; the RNA polymerase II component ELOF1, which I found to act as a modulator of the response to transcription-blocking agents. Mining the dataset, I uncovered that the cytotoxic mechanism of action of the G-quadruplex ligand pyridostatin involves the trapping of topoisomerase II on DNA (Olivieri et al. 2020). This DNA damage response map is a valuable resource for studying the entire biological system. It has ramifications for the development and application of genotoxic chemicals in cancer treatment. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Solomon-Krakus, Shauna | Sabiston, Catherine M||Uliaszek, Amanda A | Self-critical Perfectionism and Body-related Self-conscious Emotions: Refining the Transdiagnostic Cognitive Behavioural Model of Eating Disorders | Psychological Clinical Science | 2022-11 | This dissertation aims to refine two mechanisms of the transdiagnostic cognitive behavioural model of eating disorders: perfectionism and mood intolerance. All three studies from this dissertation used a sample of undergraduate women. Chapter 1 explored multidimensional perfectionism in relation to facets of restrictive eating. Based on structural equation modeling, self-critical perfectionism, the more maladaptive dimension of perfectionism, was uniquely related to behavioural restriction (i.e., the act of restrictive eating). In contrast, personal standards perfectionism, the less maladaptive dimension of perfectionism, was uniquely related to cognitive restraint (i.e., thoughts of restrictive eating). Chapter 2 implements a 10-day ecological momentary assessment to examine how general and body-related self-conscious emotions (i.e., body-related shame) predicted facets of restrictive eating. Based on multilevel modeling, experiencing a higher intolerance of body-related self-conscious emotions compared to one’s average was particularly important when examining behavioural restriction. Lagged analyses revealed that experiencing a higher intolerance of body-related envy predicted increases in behavioural restriction at the time of the next report. Chapter 3 integrates the findings from chapters 1 and 2; the relationships between body-related emotion intolerance and restrictive eating facets were explored as a function of perfectionism dimensions. There were significant cross-level interactions between perfectionism dimensions and emotion intolerance when examining facets of restrictive eating. For example, levels of behavioural restriction increased as levels of body-related shame intolerance increased, but this was only true for individuals with average to high levels of self-critical perfectionism. The findings from this dissertation can be incorporated into eating disorder treatment such that practitioners may consider paying particular attention to multidimensional perfectionism and a high intolerance of body-related self-conscious emotions. | Ph.D. | women, ecolog | 5, 15 |
| Towstego, Trevor | Tanaka, Hirohisa A | Study of Neutrino Oscillations with Enhanced Selection of Electron Neutrino Interactions | Physics | 2022-11 | T2K is a neutrino oscillation experiment in Japan utilising a beam of predominantly muon neutrinos or muon antineutrinos. Oscillations are observed by measuring the flavour composition of the beam at a near detector (280 m downstream) and far detector (295 km downstream). T2K is sensitive to the CP-violating phase delta_CP, where CP violation would manifest as a difference in the oscillation probabilities of neutrinos and antineutrinos. The discovery of CP violation in the neutrino sector could help to explain the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe. Super-Kamiokande acts as T2K's far detector, and observes neutrino interactions on water via charged particles emitting rings of Cherenkov radiation. At T2K, charged current quasi-elastic (CCQE) events where only a charged lepton is visible are dominant, while charged current single pion production (CC1pi) events producing a charged lepton and a pion are sub-dominant. Electron neutrino samples at T2K currently select for nu_e CCQE events, nu_e CC1pi+ events (where the pi+ is not directly observed), and anti-nu_e CCQE events. All samples exclusively select for events with a single ring. This thesis presents the development of new nu_e CCQE and anti-nu_e CCQE samples to replace the existing CCQE samples, and a 2-ring nu_e CC1pi+ sample to supplement the existing samples. Studies using Monte Carlo (MC) simulated data predict that the new samples will provide an 11.4% increase in nu_e sample statistics and a 10.5% increase in anti-nu_e sample statistics. Systematic uncertainties on the total number of events in each sample are estimated to be 4.5% for both the nu_e and anti-nu_e CCQE samples, and 17.7% for the 2-ring nu_e CC1pi+ sample. MC studies predict an improvement in T2K's sensitivity to delta_CP. When applied to T2K data up to the end of 2018, the new samples provide 10 more nu_e sample events (11.1% increase) and 1 fewer anti-nu_e sample event (7.1% decrease). The total number of events in each sample agree with the MC predictions within the statistical and systematic uncertainties. Implementing these samples into a future oscillation analysis can potentially improve T2K's measurement precision of delta_CP. | Ph.D. | water, production | 6, 12 |
| Gatea, Alexandru Cristian | Virag, Balint | Grid Entropy in Last Passage Percolation, a Variational Formula for Gibbs Free Energy, and Applications to a ”choose the best of D samples” Model | Mathematics | 2022-11 | Working in the setting of i.i.d. last-passage percolation on R^D with no assumptions on the underlying edge-weight distribution, we develop the notion of grid entropy: a deterministic directed norm with negative sign that measures the proportion of empirical measures of edge weights (in a fixed direction or direction-free) which converge weakly to a given target measure. Though grid entropy and its convex duality to point-to-point/point-to-level Gibbs Free Energy have already been discovered by Rassoul-Agha and Seppalainen [19], our approach is novel in that we realize grid entropy as both a Subadditive Ergodic Theorem limit and equivalently as the threshold exponent of canonical order statistics associated with the Levy-Prokhorov metric. We use this new framework to re-derive various properties of grid entropy, including an upper bound on the sum of relative and grid entropies and upper semicontinuity. We also show that the direction-free case is nothing more than the direction-fixed case in the (1,1, ...,1) direction. In addition, we connect these results to the work of Bates [3] and partially answer a directed polymer version of a question of Hoffman. Shifting gears, we proceed to study these objects in a model consisting of repeatedly taking D samples from a distribution and picking out one according to an omniscient ”strategy.” We show that the set of limit points of empirical measures is almost surely the same whether or not we restrict ourselves to strategies which make the choices independently of all past and future choices, and moreover, that this set coincides with the set of measures with finite grid entropy. These setsare convex and weakly compact; we characterize their extreme points as those given by a natural ”greedy” deterministic strategy and we compute their grid entropy to be 0. This yields a description of the set of limit points of empirical measures as the closed convex hull of measures given by a density which is D Beta(1,D) distributed. We also derive a simplified version of a grid entropy-based variational formula for Gibbs Free Energy for this model, and we present the dual formula for grid entropy. | Ph.D. | energy | 7 |
| Golding, Rebecca Lampert | Cohen, Adam S | Visualizing Medicine in the Twelfth Century: Bodily Disease, Spiritual Cure, and Christian Salvation | History of Art | 2022-11 | This study reevaluates the meaning and function of some of the earliest extant Western medical illustrations by interpreting them within the context of their manuscripts and the monastic culture that produced them. It is based on cases studies of three northern European books from the twelfth century and the illustrations of surgery, anatomy, and medical authorities contained therein (Durham, Cathedral Library, Hunter 100; London, BL, Harley MS 1585; Munich, BSB, Clm. 13002). Previous scholarship separated such images from their manuscript contexts and focused almost exclusively on their medical meaning and function. This study reinterprets the medical images in situ and finds other connotations and uses that relate to the theological, intellectual, and institutional concerns of the monasteries in which they were created. An iconological assessment of the imagery in these manuscripts reveals that portrayals of diseased bodies also reflect degrees of sin; peculiar features of surgical procedures represent divine intervention; and certain images of disease, suffering, and cure are associated with the rigor of monastic discipline and its goal of salvation. Furthermore, a consideration of the use and placement of the medical illustrations within the manuscripts highlights the complex visual and codicological strategies used to create additional layers of meaning. Juxtapositions of different kinds of illustrations, recurring textual themes, the structural practice of bookending, and repetition of colour and specific imagery create relationships that contribute to the monastic authors’ larger intellectual and ideological programs. Moreover, these relationships, viewed within the spiritual and educational practice of monastic meditatio, broaden the conceptions of the body, sickness, cure, and health such that medical illustrations could expound a sophisticated Christology while at the same time support the reform or reinvigoration of “unhealthy” institutional “bodies.” In the monastic milieu of the twelfth-century, images of the human body and medical procedures did not necessarily serve the same purposes they would in the later setting of the university. As the three manuscripts treated here demonstrate, they could also serve to communicate profound theological insight; substantiate a monastery’s intellectual and institutional needs; and visualize an ideal “body” intended as a model for salvation. | Ph.D. | of colour, institut | 10, 16 |
| Wun, Timothy Wai Him | Roach, Kent | Teenager or Terrorist?: The Problematic Treatment of Young People Charged with Terrorism Under the Canadian Youth Criminal Justice Act | Law | 2022-11 | This paper will argue that despite a separate system of criminal justice with different penological objectives and enhanced protections, young people accused of terrorism offences are being subtly and negatively impacted by the problematic criminal justice response to adult terrorism. Chapter 1 will suggest that there are different sentencing objectives for adults convicted of terrorism offences compared to youth. Chapter 2 will analyse the eleven terrorism proceedings brought against a young offender from 2001-July 2022. Chapter 3 will suggest that judicial bias against terrorism offences is preventing young people from being released on bail in a timely manner and potentially leading to a denial of pre-trial credit. Chapter 4 will analyse the tempered role that rehabilitation plays compared to the outsized role of denunciation and deterrence in sentencing young offenders in terrorism cases. Chapter 5 will list four recommendations for the future of sentencing young offenders convicted of terror offences. | LL.M. | criminal justice, judic, terroris | 16 |
| Liao, Shun | Zhang, Zhaolei | Methods and Applications of Deep Learning in Sequential Medical Data | Computer Science | 2022-11 | Understanding high-dimensional, complex and heterogeneous medical data is the prerequisite to transforming the healthcare system. With promising performance in understanding complex data, deep learning algorithms have provided a new paradigm for medical data, and many potential applications have been demonstrated recently. However, as one of the most common medical data, less attention was drawn to sequential medical data than other topics, such as medical imaging. Sequential medical data consists of various types, including clinical testings, medical videos, sensor data, clinical notes, etc. Regarding sequential medical data, it is challenging to apply current deep learning algorithms in most scenarios, such as limited labeled data and high sparsity. This thesis aims to improve the current methodology and explore new deep learning algorithms applications for sequential medical data. The thesis presents four cases regarding methodology and applications of deep learning for sequential medical data, and we organize them into four chapters. The two methodology chapters focus on improving performance for two common data issues - labeled data and high sparsity data. The two chapters for applications explore new applications of deep learning in two different types of sensor data - electrograms and electrocardiograms, in the realm of cardiology. | Ph.D. | healthcare, learning | 3, 4 |
| Piotrowski, Michael George Harry | Zingg, David W | Development of a Transition Prediction Methodology Suitable for Aerodynamic Shape Optimization | Aerospace Science and Engineering | 2022-11 | Aircraft configurations that exploit significant regions of natural laminar flow could play a key role in reducing the environmental impact of aviation. The design of natural-laminar-flow configurations can be accelerated using computational tools capable of accurately and efficiently predicting boundary-layer transition. Toward the development of a suitable computational design tool, methods for the efficient prediction of boundary-layer transition in a Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes-based flow solver and integration in a discrete-adjoint gradient-based optimization algorithm are presented. A local correlation-based transition model is modified and coupled to the Spalart-Allmaras turbulence model and integrated in a Newton-Krylov-Schur flow solver. Modifications to the solution strategy are introduced, including a source-term time step restriction, in order to prevent unstable solution updates for the fully coupled, fully implicit solver. A smooth-variant of the transition model is developed with approximations to discontinuous and stiff source-term functions. Both transition models are validated using two- and three-dimensional subsonic transition test cases, with the new, smooth model producing significantly improved iterative convergence. Compressibility corrections are developed and applied to extend the transition model empirical correlations to transonic flow regimes typical of commercial transport aircraft, with the resulting model investigated using two- and three-dimensional transonic transition test cases. The results demonstrate that the compressibility corrections produce substantially improved agreement with the experimental transition locations, particularly for higher Reynolds number applications. Finally, the smooth transition model is integrated in a discrete-adjoint gradient-based optimization algorithm and applied to two- and three-dimensional drag-minimization studies across a range of design conditions. The results demonstrate that the capability of the current framework to explore the natural-laminar-flow configuration design space is sensitive to the streamwise grid resolution in the transition regions, with grid requirements increasing as the transition length decreases with increasing Reynolds number. The light aircraft design space is found to be multi-modal, with the optimization framework producing two distinct local minima. Transonic drag minimizations demonstrate that the optimization framework can successfully trade a decrease in viscous drag with an increase in wave drag, and an infinite swept wing optimization demonstrates that the framework can delay both Tollmien-Schlichting and stationary crossflow instabilities. | Ph.D. | invest, trade, transit, environmental | 9, 10, 11, 13 |
| Daryalal, Maryam | Bodur, Merve | Sequential Decision-making Under Uncertainty: Novel Methodologies and Applications | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | In sequential decision-making under uncertainty, multistage stochastic mixed-integer programming (MSMIP) is a tool for addressing optimization problems with a given probability distribution and the goal of optimizing a performance measure over a planning horizon. If there is no knowledge about the probability distribution, multistage adaptive robust optimization (MSARO) is a suitable modeling framework. The goal of this thesis is to expand the methodological aspects of these two techniques, and in turn their applications. First, we study MSMIP problems, which can be approximated by using certain policies, e.g., linear decision rules. However, directly applying this idea to problems with integer decisions is difficult. We introduce Lagrangian dual decision rules (LDDRs) for MSMIP that overcome this difficulty by applying decision rules in Lagrangian duals of the MSMIP. We propose two new bounding techniques based on stagewise and nonanticipative Lagrangian duals. Our proposal requires fewer assumptions than most existing MSMIP methods. Our numerical experiments demonstrate that the LDDR approaches yield significant optimality gap reductions compared to existing general-purpose bounding methods for MSMIP. Next, we consider two problems in telecommunications industry. Network service providers routinely allocate resources to incoming requests and recover under-utilized capacity. For this resource allocation/reallocation, we present the first two-stage stochastic programming models to maximize the expected throughput, and solve them by an efficient decomposition algorithm that benefits from their observed tight linear programming bound. Additionally, we model the provisioning problem by MSMIP and approach it by our LDDR methodology. Experiments on real backbone networks reveal the significant value of considering the often overlooked uncertainty. Lastly, for MSARO problems we design primal and dual bounding methods, originated from adaptation of two decision rules rooted in stochastic programming. Our framework approximates the primal and dual formulations of MSARO with two-stage models. We provide sufficient conditions under which the column-and-constraint generation can exactly solve the primal approximation. For the dual approximation, we present a monolithic bilinear program valid for continuous MSARO problems, and a cutting-plane method for mixed-integer cases. Computational experiments on newsvendor and location-transportation problems show that our bounds yield considerably smaller optimality gaps compared to the existing methods. | Ph.D. | knowledge | 4 |
| Huang, Zongjie | Sun, Yu | Development of Microfluidic Platforms for Sperm Protein 10 Measurement | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-11 | Infertility is a worldwide disease. Approximately 48.5 million couples worldwide are infertile, including one in six Canadian couples. Male infertility, which affects approximately 7% of the male population, is responsible for an estimated 40% to 50% of all infertility cases. Male infertility is often attributed to poor semen quality with suboptimal sperm motility, limited concentration, or abnormal morphology. The total number of spermatozoa per ejaculate and the sperm concentration are related to both time to pregnancy and pregnancy rates and are predictors of conception. Since sperm concentration is an important criterion to estimate semen quality, a direct relationship between sperm concentration and signal intensity is desired for establishment through enzyme linked immunosorbent assays that measure sperm protein 10 (SP-10) concentration.This thesis focuses on developing three types of microfluidic platforms for SP-10 measurement. Firstly, a nitrocellulose paper-based multi-well plate platform was developed with a LOD of 88.84 ng/ml. The developed nitrocellulose paper plate has 96 independent wells for multiplexing ELISA assay and is compatible with standard laboratory microplates and instruments. The nitrocellulose plate is fabricated through a flexible one-step laser micromachining process, which can simply and rapidly produce a low-cost nitrocellulose paper-based multi-well plate with different sizes for ELISA experiments. Next, a lateral flow immunoassay platform was developed for home-based SP-10 measurement. This simple, rapid, and cost-effective platform replies on capillarity of a nitrocellulose strip to transport fluids and produces a measurable signal within 15 minutes. Gold nanoparticles and gold nanoshells were both applied on this platform as colorimetric labels; it was demonstrated that the LOD with gold nanoshells (5.16 ng/ml) was 5 times lower than that with gold nanoparticles (25.03 ng/ml). In addition, a single magnetic bead system integrated with a microfluidic device was developed for SP-10 measurement in laboratory with a LOD of 1.18 µg/ml. By applying a rotating magnetic field, the single magnetic bead moves freely in the chamber of the microfluidic device to actively capture the SP-10 antigen linked to the fluorescent-labeled SP-10 antibody. SP-10 concentration was measured by comparing the fluorescent intensity of the bead before and after swimming in the chamber. | Ph.D. | labor | 8 |
| Saragosa, Marianne | Kuluski, Kerry||Jeffs, Lianne | From Hospital to Home for Persons Living with Dementia and their Family Caregivers | Dalla Lana School of Public Health | 2022-11 | Older adults living with dementia are at risk for more complex health care transitions than individuals without this condition. The central research question guiding this thesis was: “How do older adults living with dementia and/or their caregivers experience and perceive the hospital-to-home care transition?” One study with three separate areas of inquiry was pursued. For Paper 1, a body of qualitative literature was systematically searched and synthesized using a meta-ethnography approach. The analysis revealed three categories: (1) feelings associated with the health care transition; (2) processes associated with the care transition; and (3) evaluation of the quality of care associated with the care transition. The objective of paper 2 sought to develop a theoretical understanding of the social processes engaged in by people with dementia and their family caregivers leading to and following a care transition to hospital and then home. A constructivist grounded theory was used, and a total of 25 people participated in 21 interviews. Study findings contribute to the dementia care transition literature by providing a conceptual framework that explains what family caregivers do (taking over), how they manage (connecting dots), and what they experience (rising up) following a care transition. Situated centrally is the core process, Seeing the day-to-day situation, which is characterized by caregivers as constant intermediaries between patients and the health system. In paper 3, a qualitative descriptive design was used to capture perceptions of quality home and community care for those living with dementia and their caregivers. Study findings found that supporting people with dementia to live in the community requires available, acceptable, adaptable and affordable home and community-based care services. Overall, this thesis demonstrates the complex nature of care transitions for those living with dementia and their caregivers. Compounding the already strained experience are perceived challenges in communication and care coordination processes, and an inadequately resourced and inflexible home and community care system. | Ph.D. | affordab, health care, transit | 1, 10, 3, 11 |
| Yung, Stephanie | Campos, Jennifer JC | Associations between Age-related Changes in Sensory and Cognitive Abilities in Multisensory Integration and Driving | Psychology | 2022-11 | The ability to integrate sensory inputs from hearing and vision is important for basic and complex perceptions and behaviours. It is well-established that sensory and cognitive abilities typically decline with age; however, past studies examining whether multisensory integration processes (e.g., audiovisual integration) also change with age have been inconsistent, possibly due to differences in how sensory and cognitive abilities are characterized and controlled for. Further, studies of sensory integration use basic tasks, while less is understood about how multiple sensory abilities interact to affect complex behaviours. Chapter 2 examined whether multisensory integrative abilities in audiovisual Simultaneity Judgment and Temporal Order Judgment (TOJ) tasks differ between younger and older adults, and if performance is associated with different sensory acuities and cognitive abilities within healthy ranges. Results showed that even with normal pure-tone hearing, visual acuity, and global cognition, older adults integrated auditory and visual events at larger temporal offsets than younger adults, especially in the TOJ task. Performance in the audiovisual tasks was not associated with unisensory or cognitive abilities. Extending knowledge of how multiple sensory abilities interact to affect complex behaviours across a broader range of sensory and cognitive abilities, Chapters 3 and 4 examined whether driving is associated with cognitive and sensory abilities in older adults with varying cognitive impairments. Specifically, whether self-reported driving status and habits can be predicted by cognitive, hearing, and vision measures (independently and/or together) in individuals with subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment, and dementia. In Chapter 3, behavioural measures of hearing and vision were analyzed, whereas in Chapter 4, self-ratings of hearing and vision were analyzed, as the two types of measures may not align and provide different insights about sensory abilities. Both Chapters 3 and 4 showed that driving outcomes were best predicted by age, sex, and cognitive measures, and in Chapter 4, there was some evidence that self-ratings of hearing and vision predicted driving outcomes. Ultimately, this thesis showed that behavioural and self-reported cognitive and sensory abilities are important to consider when examining age-related changes to basic and complex outcomes involving multisensory integration. | Ph.D. | knowledge, offsets | 4, 13 |
| Desormeau, Philip Anthony | Segal, Zindel||Farb, Norman | Unpacking Emotion Regulation: Associations among Symptom Burden, Strategy Implementation Beliefs, and Strategy Usage | Psychological Clinical Science | 2022-11 | General beliefs concerning one’s capacity for emotion regulation (ER) influence the selection and implementation of regulatory strategies. For instance, depressive symptoms have been related to higher rates of ruminative thinking and lower rates of cognitive reappraisal. However, it is unclear how much people differ in strategy-specific ER beliefs, whether such variation in beliefs predicts differences in strategy implementation, and whether symptom burden is associated with this process. Three empirical studies were conducted to understand the associations of strategy-specific beliefs regarding implementation efficacy (the ability to successfully implement strategies) and effort (the motivational cost of implementing strategies), the moderating effect of symptom burden, and post-regulation appraisals of strategy efficacy and overall regulation effectiveness (whether the strategies collectively worked to reduce negative emotions). Study 1 (n = 128) revealed that strategy-specific beliefs of implementation effort predicted lower overall strategy usage in response to emotional stressors presented in a lab setting. However, no association was detected between implementation efficacy beliefs and strategy usage. Findings from Study 2 (n = 130) showed that symptom burden predicted lower efficacy but had no relation to effort beliefs, and the interactions between symptom burden and implementation beliefs did not predict strategy usage following an emotional stressor. However, in real-world settings, Study 3 (n = 240) demonstrated that strategy-specific efficacy beliefs positively predicted strategy usage. Here, symptom burden also interacted with implementation efficacy beliefs in predicting strategy usage: those with higher symptom burden showed a stronger relationship between implementation efficacy beliefs and strategy usage. Moreover, higher symptom burden was also related to higher appraisals of strategy efficacy but lower overall regulation effectiveness, potentially blunting reinforcement of adaptive strategy selection. Together, this work underscores the role of strategy-specific implementation beliefs for strategy usage across both lab and ecologically valid settings. These findings suggest that symptom burden makes it more likely for individuals to use strategies based on their implementation beliefs while perceiving strategies as less successfully implemented, which could have meaningful implications for the clinical treatment of psychological disorders. | Ph.D. | ecolog | 15 |
| Marani, Husayn | Marchildon, Gregory P. | The Financial Risks of Unpaid, Homebased Caregiving in Ontario, Canada | Health Policy, Management and Evaluation | 2022-11 | Little is known about how current conditions in the Canadian home care sector (e.g., COVID-19 pandemic) are imposing financial risks on unpaid caregivers. Financial risk considers the sources and magnitude of direct, out-of-pocket care expenditure, and corresponding impacts across domains of financial risk (income-generating potential, employment, and personal health). Pragmatically, financial risks from caregiving call into question whether the universal dimensions of social welfare built on universality that are characteristic of Canada’s Medicare system can be applied to home care. Using Ontario as a case-study, this dissertation explores the financial risks of unpaid, homebased caregiving through the lens of welfare regime theory. We conducted an original, cross-sectional survey to explore the financial risks of unpaid caregiving (Chapter 3). This survey, completed by 190 caregivers between August - December 2020, revealed challenges paying for care expenses such as supplemental support from a personal support worker (PSW), and difficulties balancing employment compromising income-earning potential (Chapter 4). We also conducted interviews with 24 dementia caregivers across Ontario to understand how challenges acquiring a PSW have contributed to financial risk (Chapter 5). Findings suggest dementia caregiving requires substantial hours of PSW care to ensure unpaid caregivers can maintain employment or take a break (respite). However, caregivers felt they were not granted enough subsidized hours from the state. This meant working caregivers took time off work to provide care, thereby contributing to lost wages. Other caregivers paid out-of-pocket for additional hours of privately acquired home care, which contributed to experiences of financial risk. Financial risks observed in Chapters 4 and 5 raise important questions about how social benefits ought to be distributed in the context of home care to protect unpaid caregivers. Drawing on notions of universalism in post-modern welfare regimes, including inclusive citizenship and new social risks, we developed an adapted welfare regime typology to better describe the organization of social benefits for unpaid, homebased caregivers (Chapter 6). This typology reveals home care follows a liberal ethos of social benefit distribution. Findings from this dissertation may better inform policies and programs that aim to protect unpaid caregivers from financial risk across different welfare states. | Ph.D. | welfare, citizen, employment, worker, wage, income | 1, 4, 8, 10 |
| Clark, Carrie | Burchard, Almut | Droplet Formation in Simple Nonlocal Aggregation Models | Mathematics | 2022-11 | We study interaction energies given by various kernels, and investigate how these kernels drive the formation of multiple flocks within a larger population. We show that for a class of kernels having a ``well-barrier'' shape that the energy is minimized by a sequence of indicators of finitely many balls whose supports move further and further apart. The dichotomy case of the concentration compactness principle is a key ingredient in our proof. To better understand the underlying geometry and the role of the height and width of the repulsive barrier, we also consider a toy model which forbids points in the support of an admissible density from being within a certain range of distances from one another. We show in one dimensions, that no matter the width of this range the energy is minimized by the indicator of a union of well separated intervals of equal length and one smaller interval, however other minimizers are possible. Finally, we also consider weakly repulsive kernels and show that Wasserstein $d_{\infty}$ local minimizers must saturate the density constraint. | Ph.D. | energy, invest | 7, 9 |
| Sarracini, Antoine | Miller, R. J. Dwayne | Time-resolved Electron and Serial X-Ray Crystallography of PbS Quantum Dots and Biomolecules | Physics | 2022-11 | This thesis reports on the results of a series of crystallographic studies performed using ultrafast electron diffraction (UED) and serial X-ray crystallography on semiconductor nanocrystal and protein samples. In the first part of the thesis, ultrabright femtosecond electron pulses generated using a radio frequency-compressed photocathode electron source are employed to measure the photoinduced lattice response of lead sulfide (PbS) colloidal quantum dots following the optical generation of above-bandgap excitons. Short-range nonthermal lattice distortions are observed on the picosecond timescale in the form of exaggerated atomic disorder in the (100) crystallographic directions and deviations from a purely thermal response at short distance scales (< 12 Å). These structural changes are found to be related to surface charge trapping through size- and surface-series experiments and a pair distribution function analysis. In the second part of the thesis, a description of a new experimental scheme for serial X-ray crystallography is presented. The recent advent of free-electron lasers (XFEL) in the hard X-ray wavelength range (< 1 Å) has necessitated the use of serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX) for static and time-resolved structure determination. This has driven the innovation of novel sample delivery techniques to meet the stringent demands imposed by the SFX approach. This thesis outlines the development and implementation of a versatile high-speed fixed-target sample delivery technique based on a microfabricated silicon chip and spectroscopic sample mapping capability for use at both XFEL and synchrotron light sources. Application of the “serial crystallography chip” method maximizes hit-rates and minimizes sample consumption, as demonstrated by crystallographic experiments on the proteins: carboxy-myoglobin, lysozyme and fluoroacetate dehalogenase. An extension of the method which combines fixed-target serial crystallography with conventional rotation crystallography is also presented, which allows for X-ray induced damage-free structures to be obtained using serial crystallography at synchrotron light sources. | Ph.D. | consum | 12 |
| Sharma, Shashwat | Triverio, Piero | Advanced Boundary Element Techniques for Multiregion and Multiscale Electromagnetic Modelling | Electrical and Computer Engineering | 2022-11 | The rapidly increasing complexity of electronic hardware, such as integrated circuits and advanced electromagnetic surfaces, tends quickly to outgrow the capabilities of existing electromagnetic simulation tools. For example, complex chip- and package-level interconnect networks require broadband full-wave simulations that capture electromagnetic fields both inside and outside each object in the structure, including skin effect in conductors. The boundary element method has emerged as an appealing modelling technique because it allows solving three-dimensional problems using a two-dimensional surface mesh. However, existing boundary element formulations are limited in their robustness, efficiency, and scalability for modelling systems which are multiscale (i.e., extreme variations in size, frequency, and possibly material properties) and multiregion (i.e., structures involving penetrable objects). In particular, key challenges include a limited ability to handle large structures, a poor trade-off between robustness and efficiency, and numerical instability at low frequencies. In this thesis, new surface integral formulations are developed to meet these challenges in a scalable, rigorous, and accurate manner. The new frontier of potential-based integral equations is explored to develop a multiregion boundary element formulation capable of modelling interconnects accurately over an unprecedented frequency range. Realistic numerical examples drawn from various applications demonstrate progress towards alleviating some of the core challenges in multiscale and multiregion electromagnetic modelling. | Ph.D. | trade | 10 |
| Ohm, William David | Goetschel, Willi | The Sword of the Immanent God: Heinrich Heine’s Sensualist Style | Germanic Languages and Literatures | 2022-11 | In classified communications surrounding the notorious ban on the junges Deutschland, the officials responsible single out Heinrich Heine’s essay Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland, claiming that it threatens the existing order partly because of the sensualist sociopolitical programme it promotes, which aims at a “Rehabilitiren der Materie” and its “Versöhnung mit dem Geiste,” but primarily because of the text’s style—which, the authorities suggest, somehow reflects its sensualist aims. Following up on this observation and corroborating indications from Heine himself and his readers, the present study explores the hitherto largely unexamined link between sensualism and style in the Essay.In doing so, the study focuses on a practical contribution the Essay is designed to make to its sensualist goals—goals which consist of suppressing two conceptions of God that oppose sensualism (spiritualism and deism), promoting a different notion of the divine that supports the sensualist programme (pantheism), and subsequently executing a sensualist revolution. The analysis of the practical contribution the Essay makes to its goals begins by extracting Heine’s general conception of that contribution, according to which it consists of the use of a material language to embody ideas so that they can move matter—a way of writing which reflects the sensualist aim to reconcile spirit and matter and is therefore termed the sensualist style. | Ph.D. | land | 15 |
| Dirks, Emile | Fu, Diana | Policing “Target People”: Crime Control and Political Repression in the People's Republic of China | Political Science | 2022-11 | How are political repression and crime control related in authoritarian states? And why do authoritarian states adapt their control apparatus? To answer these questions, this dissertation focuses on policing in the People’s Republic of China under the Hu Jintao (2002-2012) and Xi Jinping (2012-2022) administrations. Across both administrations, victims of political repression included dissidents, ethnic minorities, and petitioners. Yet, these were not the only targets of state control. China's police also surveilled, harassed, and detained former prisoners, users of drugs, and those with mental illnesses. Instead of dividing targets of political repression from targets of crime control, China’s police categorized a vast array citizens under a common label: “target people.” This dissertation is comprised of four thematically-linked chapters addressing two conceptual questions: how are political repression and crime control related in authoritarian states like China? And why do authoritarian states adapt their control apparatuses? In answering these two questions, this dissertation argues that state repression under the Hu and Xi administrations was defined by three broad trends: the conflation of crime control and political repression; police collaboration with other party-state organs to deepen control in the community; and the growing use of control mechanisms against the general public. By exploring these policing practices, this dissertation contributes to the literature on how authoritarian states govern and how their repressive apparatuses adapt. | Ph.D. | illness, citizen, labor, minorit, authoritarian | 3, 4, 8, 10, 16 |
| Motmaen Dadgar, Maryam | Hynynen, Kullervo | Development of a Prototype High-power Ultrasound Phased-array System for the Treatment of Deep Vein Thrombosis | Medical Biophysics | 2022-11 | Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT) is the formation of thrombus in the deep veins of the body. The most important sequela of DVT, pulmonary embolism, is a major cause of mortality and morbidity due to the occlusion of the blood vessels in the lung. Common clinical treatments can provoke considerable consequences such as bleeding and damage to the vessel wall. It is well established that high-power ultrasound as a potentially non-invasive method can mechanically fragment the thrombus and restore the blood flow in the absence of lytic agents. Using single-element, focused transducers in most of these studies can lead to limitations such as lack of steerability and control of the focus. There is, therefore, a need for the development of high-power 2D phased-array transducers with the ability to electronically steer the beam with substantially shorter time delays to cover the whole target volume before the clot is released. This thesis presents the development of a novel high-pressure amplitude clinical transmit and receive array system for the treatment of DVT. We addressed the challenges associated with 2D fully steerable arrays such as high electrical impedance and element breakdown at high voltages, and then constructed a 64-element (8 × 8) high-power phased-array module operating at 260 kHz. The module elements generated 1.01±0.09 MPa at 2 mm distance while maintaining this pressure level over 10,000 sonication repetitions. Then, we modeled and constructed a 16-module cylindrical array system. The challenges associated with the large focal size of the low frequency ultrasound were surmounted with the design and a FWHM focal size (3.7 × 4.1 × 11.2 mm), and a pressure amplitude (34 MPa) suitable for DVT thrombolysis was achieved. In vitro experiments manifested a partial and complete clot breakdown at 11.5 and 15 MPa pressure at the focus. To complete the array system and qualify it for the clinical applications, we incorporated a receiver array (516 kHz) into the system. Modeling and testing of the receiver array demonstrated acceptable passive acoustic maps at different steering locations. Overall, the developed transmit-receive array system exhibited strong potential to be used in future in vivo and clinical treatments. | Ph.D. | ABS | 2 |
| Dhukai, Abida Ramzan | Parry, Monica | South Asian Women Together in a Health Initiative (SATHI): A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial | Nursing Science | 2022-11 | Background. Canadian South Asian women have high rates of cardiovascular disease and low rates of physical activity. The primary objective of this study was to assess feasibility (recruitment, retention, engagement, acceptability) of the South Asian women Together in a Health Initiative (SATHI) using the Medical Research Council’s guidance framework. The secondary objectives were to determine potential effects of SATHI on physical activity, anthropometric risk, and self efficacy. Exploratory analysis of the relationship of self-efficacy and step count was also undertaken. Methods. SATHI was a 12-week pilot randomized controlled trial of South Asian women, ages 24-39, in the Greater Toronto Area, with no previous medical history. The control group received a pedometer, the Canadian 24-Hour Movement Guidelines for Adults 18-64, and a physical activity logbook. The intervention group received a pedometer, a physical activity logbook, and the SATHI intervention consisting of a culturally tailored physical activity education with peer support program based on Bandura’s theory of self-efficacy. Physical activity and anthropometric data were collected pre- and post-intervention. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and linear mixed models for repeated measures. Results. Of the 467 South Asian women screened, 67.7% (n=316) were deemed eligible but only 15.2% consented to participate in the study. No participants were lost to follow up. All predefined engagement criteria were met (reading/watching education materials, peer interactions, submitting step counts, documenting physical activity). However, fewer participants completed the recommended physical activity for South Asians than anticipated. Acceptability of the SATHI intervention was 100%. Compared to the control group, the intervention group had significantly increased their self efficacy (SE, 106.9; 95% CI, 62.6-487.5) and step count (SE, 1151.7; 95% CI, 760.1-5340.0). However, there were no significant between group differences in anthropometric measures. Self-efficacy was also positively related to step count, r(46)=0.56, p<0.001, indicating a large effect size. Conclusions. It is feasible to conduct the SATHI trial in a South Asian community. It has the potential to improve physical activity among this at-risk population. A larger trial should be undertaken to further investigate the effectiveness of SATHI on anthropometric and cardiovascular disease risk reduction. The trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov (NCT03667976). | Ph.D. | women, invest | 5, 9 |
| Crawford, Allison | Kortenaar, Neil ten | Where Sickness Comes From: Reading and Unsettling Medicine in the Canadian Arctic | English | 2017-11 | My research project examines the written accounts of eight physicians who document their practice of medicine in the Canadian Arctic: Lorris Elijah Borden (1903–1904), Leslie David Livingstone (1922–1925), Jon A. Bildfell (1940–1942), Joseph P. Moody (1946–1949), Charlie O’Connell (1955), Otto Schaefer (1953–1985), John H. Burgess (1973–2003), and Kevin Patterson (1999, 2006). Through their life-writing practices, they enact both competency and anxiety, which are ultimately the tensions of the settler-colonial context. Discursive, affective, and visual-spatial readings of these accounts reveal how the framing of disease in the settler-colonial context engendered physician identity and rationalized the forms of healthcare established for Inuit. A discourse analysis of these accounts reveals how the clinical formulations and diagnoses advanced by these physicians transformed the Inuit patient into an uncivilized and uneducated figure, part of a dying culture ill-equipped to participate in managing their own healthcare needs. The Arctic doctor, in contrast, was knowledgeable, competent, and heroic. Affect theory shows how the reading and representation of Inuit affect, and the corollary affect of doctors, supported these discourses. The binaries used to characterize Inuit—grateful or hostile, medically compliant or non-compliant—codify the exchange between doctor and patient. Disruptive physician affects—shame, loneliness, grief—discompose the medical-settler-colonial encounter and betray their uncertainty and vulnerability. The Arctic landscape and frontier space in which the clinic is located is critical to this formation of physician identity. The photographs of landscapes and patients in the clinic bring the masterful gaze that surveys the land and the medical gaze that assesses patients into the accounts. Yet the land—vast and barren, gendered as an unwelcoming and monstrous woman—tests the physicians’ masculinity and medical assurance. Until medicine acknowledges its role in establishing and maintaining settler-colonialism, reconciliation will not be possible. More broadly, physicians can benefit from critical tools for analysis and reflection, including postcolonial and Indigenous critical perspectives. Narratives by Inuit, presented here alongside this physician life-writing, demonstrate what has been largely overlooked by these physicians and not grasped by Western biomedicine. Inuit qaujimajatuqangit is contained in narrative forms by Inuit writers and artists, and offers cultural tools for wellness and resilience. | Ph.D. | vulnerability, healthcare, knowledge, knowledges, settler, gender, indigenous, reconciliation, resilien, resilience, land | 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 16, 11, 13, 15 |
| Lachapelle, Jean | Way, Lucan A. | Determinants of State Repression in Authoritarian Regimes: Egypt between 2004 and 2013 | Political Science | 2017-11 | This dissertation aims to advance scholarly understandings of authoritarian repression by analyzing patterns of state violence against collective action. Despite the importance of violent repression to authoritarian politics, autocratsâ decision calculus for using coercion has been undertheorized. My project addresses this gap by identifying three types of coercive responses, toleration, low-intensity coercion and high-intensity coercion, and argues that a regimeâ s choice of coercive tactic depends on two factors: the levels of threat posed by the protesters and the risk of backlash after repression. These two factors lie at the core of how authoritarian regimes assess the costs and benefits of repression and thus shape when and why they repress. My argument predicts levels of repression based on observable characteristics of the opposition: the level of polarization of opposition forces, the demands that protesters make, and the geographic spread of protests, which I call "diffusion." I test this argument through an in-depth analysis of Egypt that examines the security forces' shifting reactions to popular protests. I focus on two periods that illustrate important variation in state repression against collective action: the late Mubarak presidency (2004-2011) and the period after the military takeover on July 3rd 2013. My evidence includes an original dataset of protest-police responses as well as interviews with activists and political actors. I further demonstrate the generalizability of my claims beyond Egypt through a comparative case study of Indonesia in the 1960s and a large-N study of state repression. | Ph.D. | authoritarian, violence | 16 |
| Sengupta, Ushnish | Vieta, Marcelo | Towards a Values-Based Data Governance Theory in the Social Economy in Ontario | Leadership, Higher and Adult Education | 2022-11 | This thesis develops a Values-Based Data Governance (VBDG) theory by understanding the political, cultural, ideological, and historical contexts for governance of data in social economy organizations (SEOs) with a focus on Ontario, and more broadly Canada. The social economy has a different set of values which are more equity and human rights oriented compared to the public and private sectors. The primary issue with the current absence of a data governance theory is that harms to equity-seeking groups, such as breaches of the right to privacy, gender and racial inequities, and exploitation of labour, can be exacerbated by SEOs unreflexively implementing data-intensive technologies. One of the findings of this thesis is that SEOs are adopting technologies without having a coherent theory of data governance. Countering these problematic trends, and changing the trajectory of SEO adoption of technology toward a more preventive rather than reactive process requires a VBDG theory. The main research questions guiding this study are the following: What are the theoretical gaps in understanding data governance for SEOs, from a Canadian and Ontario context? Can the gaps identified be addressed by a new theory of Values-Based Data Governance (VBDG)? A VBDG theory is presented as a solution to values-based dilemmas brought on by unthoughtfully adopting data-intensive technologies, including inheriting private sector and public sector data governance theories (and practices) that exacerbate existing inequities. Deploying a critical theory of technology approach with a theory of data and algorithms as texts inspired by institutional ethnography, the thesis develops a VBDG theory by specifically examining insights generated through grey and academic literature reviews, policy and political economy analysis, and the use of illustrative case studies. The illustrative case studies highlight two significant underserved populations, people with disabilities in Ontario and immigrants to Canada, as examples to illustrate the issues brought on by an absence of or limited data governance strategies in SEOs. The thesis contributes to social economy literature by developing a VBDG theory for SEOs that provides a basis for the adoption of data-intensive technologies that mitigate socio-economic inequities for equity-seeking groups. The developed theory includes the following elements that must be taken into account when implementing a values-based approach to data governance for SEOs: (1) national culture as the primary context for data governance; (2) political economy as an additional context for data governance; (3) organizational culture as an essential component of data governance; (4) organizational incentive systems that mediate the implementation of data governance; and (5) verification and validation as required for ensuring that the principles of data governance are implemented in practice. | Ph.D. | socio-economic, ABS, disabilit, equity, gender, labour, equit, underserved, institut, governance, human rights, exploitation | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 16 |
| Irwin, Michele Andrea | Feuerverger, Grace||Cooper, Karyn | Creative Expressive Writing: A Situated Pedagogy for Confidence, Skill, and Negotiated Meaning | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-06 | This dissertation seeks to coin a term and theorize creative expressive writing (CEW) as a situated, negotiated, and distributed mode of writing that serves to support, not replace, other types of writing instruction at all levels of education including second language writing. Using the work of Elbow (1973) and Allen (2000, 2002) as pedagogical approaches, along with Fulkerson’s (1990, 2005) framework for a full theory of writing, this thesis offers a reassertion of expressive writing as a pedagogical opportunity that empowers writers and works against traditions of dominance in the writing classroom. Creative expressive writing is a democratic mode of writing seeking to decolonize writing instruction by honouring and exercising voice. Expressivism, a mode of writing about personal experience that was popular in the 1970’s, has been denigrated as being solipsistic and careless; however, it has not left the landscape of writing instruction despite it being “seriously undertheorized” (Hyland, 2016, p. 13). With the framework provided by bioecological systems theory (Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 2006), this dissertation argues that creative expressive writing is socially situated and has both cognitive and affective benefits for students that can be transferred to their academic work. This is a three-article dissertation that includes one chapter of personal narrative and two grounded theory research studies. The first of the two studies took place in a middle school English class where students attended creative expressive writing workshops that were designed around their novel study. Findings reveal that creative expressive writing (CEW) as new literacy practice supports meaningful engagement, confidence, critical thinking, and empathy among peers. The second study took place in a second language English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context. Findings revealed that learners benefitted from the community of practice that formed. Engagement and enjoyment of writing activities led to both affective and cognitive gains similar to those found in the middle school classroom study. Ultimately, the argument is made that creative expressive writing has multiple benefits, but articulated, consolidated, and deliberate conversation about the possibilities and limitations needs finally to occur for the benefit of teachers and students alike. This dissertation endeavours to begin this conversation. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, ecolog, land, democra | 4, 15, 16 |
| Bie, Sherry | Goldstein, Tara | Unsettling Actor: Reading the 94 Calls to Action Out Loud | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2022-06 | In June 2015, Canadians received the Calls to Action, 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC 2015c). Indigenous Studies scholar Paulette Regan (2010) calls for “socio-political actors in Canadian society” (p. 23) to commit to an unsettling pedagogy that creates “decolonizing space for Indigenous history—counter-narratives of diplomacy, law, and peacemaking practices—as told by Indigenous peoples themselves” (p. 6). My settler initiative takes Regan’s call literally, asking: What happens when actors read the 94 Calls to Action aloud in community? Enaction of the Calls remains underachieved; 13 (arguably 8) have been completed in 6 years. Following Métis artist/scholar David Garneau’s (2016) proposal of “irreconcilable spaces of aboriginality” (p. 26) this settler intervention reconceptualizes a familiar acting practice; we brought an Indigenous-led policy document to the rehearsal floor, relying on the actor’s embodied practice to dialogue with the story of the text. Rereading the Calls in the Zoom/studio, we lifted the text from the page to our listening body, speaking our discomfort, complicity, and hope. This exercise is prelude: an oral action to provoke unsettling conversation, to seed commitment to action, to prepare the playground for collaborative encounter with Indigenous colleagues (Call 83). Enaction is our responsibility. My research analysis takes two forms: a script (Chapter 4) and an academic inquiry (Chapter 5); both query reading aloud as oral resource for unsettling. We found evidence of settler inaction that underlies the story (and necessity) of the Calls. We named our complicity. As storying citizens, I argue theatre makers take responsibility for the politicising impact of our storying craft. Moments of mirth surprised us. We found evidence of decolonizing possibility in a pedagogy of play. I ask: is there a generative role for the actor’s practice of complicité (as playful collusion) and transgressive play in restorying relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples? We are called to reconsider; I name sites of reconsideration. In conclusion, I urge we continue reading the charge (including treaties) aloud in community to ignite and deepen our collective commitment to enaction of the Calls, as preparatory step toward respectful reciprocal (re)conciliation action in Canada. | Ph.D. | pedagogy, settler, peace, citizen, labor, indigenous, reconciliation, truth and reconciliation | 4, 16, 8, 10 |
| Danckert, Paula | Carter, Jill||Copeland, Nancy | Speaking Truth to Historiography: The Power of Dramaturgy in Making Relationships Between Indigenous and Settler Peoples | Drama | 2022-06 | AbstractHistory and historiography only exist one to the other, but their relationship is not an obvious one. The factors that influence how we know what occurred in the past are a conglomeration of interpretations constructed from a selection of chosen elements orchestrated with particular intent. As a process of creation, organization, narration, design, research, and analysis, dramaturgy has a seminal role to play in the relationship between history and historiography. Manufacturing historical knowledge is the work of the historian but the making of it is an act of dramaturgy, a process through which history becomes historiography. As Canadian historiographies continue to fall into question under the weight and urgency of the revelations and fabrications exposed in The Truth and Reconciliation Report, the protestations and challenges in and around Canada150, and artistic manifestations that re-story our shared pasts, the myth of a benevolent Canada has fallen apart and so too has the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Many would argue that it was never together. False historiographies have caused profound damage to Indigenous peoples as well as to settler Canadians who have perpetrated or inherited the reigns of injustice. Dismantling false historiographies in exchange for a plurality of truthful ones is work that can be redressed with dramaturgies that are both old and new. In this study I offer examples of how different and varied dramaturgical approaches to politics and performance are changing how we know history. By studying performative interventions such as the appearance of the Bawating Protectors on Parliament Hill during the Sesquicentennial celebrations, and theatrical productions such as the 1967 and 2017 versions of the opera Louis Riel, as well as the contemporary opera Missing, I chart the dramaturgical processes which influence what we know about history by changing the conditions of how we know. As a Canadian of settler descent and a professional in the live arts for more than forty years, I bring my experience as a dramaturg to fields of performance and political action to explore how together they can effect change in the future relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. | Ph.D. | ABS, knowledge, settler, indigenous, reconciliation, truth and reconciliation, production, injustice | 2, 4, 10, 16, 12 |
| Savard-Corbeil, Mathilde | Riendeau, Pascal | Décrire, Inventer et Médier L’œuvre d’art : L'ekphrasis Fictive dans le Roman Français du XXIe Siècle | French Language and Literature | 2022-06 | Cette thèse propose d’aborder la problématique de la représentation littéraire de l’œuvre d’art visuelle par une approche interdisciplinaire et intermédiale. Considérée d’une part comme une médiation, mais aussi comme un exercice stylistique antique, l’ekphrasis traverse les genres et les périodes littéraires. Cela dit, le roman contemporain renouvelle l’approche de cette pratique à la lumière des enjeux soulevés par la postmodernité. La littérature du XXIe siècle se veut savante, tout en étant consciente de ses limites comme médium, jouant sur ces frontières pour continuer à contester le rapport aux grands récits tout en utilisant l’ouverture rendue possible par la fiction, lui permettant un décloisonnement des disciplines dans une intégration simultanée des discours scientifiques multiples. Dans ce contexte, il n’est donc pas étonnant qu’on puisse observer l’émergence de nombreuses ekphrasis de nature fictionnelle dans le roman français actuel. Les objectifs de cette thèse sont donc les suivants : 1) comprendre l’impact de l’ekphrasis sur l’expérience esthétique de l’œuvre d’art visuelle ; 2) explorer les possibilités du récit comme outil de médiation et de transmission ; 3) redéfinir la position de la littérature de fiction dans une distance critique des institutions et des discours officiels. À travers l’analyse de quatre romans, en l’occurrence Nue, de Jean-Philippe Toussaint (2013) ; Les Onze, de Pierre Michon (2009); La carte et le territoire, de Michel Houellebecq (2010), et Terrasse à Rome de Pascal Quignard (2000), cette thèse dresse un portrait en profondeur des multiples facettes de l’ekphrasis fictive dans le roman français contemporain. Le premier chapitre met en relation le roman Nue avec les propositions esthétiques qui se trouvent dans les écrits de Marcel Duchamp, attirant le regardeur au-delà du visible en mettant l’accent sur l’idée de l’œuvre d’art et non sur son produit fini. Le roman de Toussaint s’approprie le vocabulaire duchampien tout en mettant en scène la démarche artistique, le rapport entre contrôle, hasard et matérialité, dans une forme romanesque minimaliste qui mène le lecteur à se demander ce qu’il est finalement possible de connaître. Consacré au roman Les Onze, le deuxième chapitre de la thèse s’inspire du Musée imaginaire d’André Malraux afin de redéfinir la relation entre littérature, institution muséale et histoire de l’art. À travers la mise en scène d’une visite guidée, l’œuvre de Michon révèle les secrets oubliés d’une œuvre d’art fictive à caractère politique et les erreurs historiographiques commises à son égard. Le roman se positionne ainsi dans une distance critique qui tente de situer le discours historique comme un acte narratif et de révéler la part de choix à laquelle ce dernier doit inévitablement procéder. La littérature peut alors se réapproprier ce qui a été négligé, autant dans un mouvement à l’extérieur de l’ordre établi que dans une critique de l’exercice de pouvoir. Le chapitre sur La carte et le territoire s’intéresse à la manière dont l’ekphrasis fictive inscrit le roman au sein de la crise de la représentation à laquelle est confronté le milieu de l’art contemporain dominé par le marché et la commercialisation de la pratique. Les considérations de l’expérience esthétique que peut alors offrir le récit mènent à interroger le rapport entre ekphrasis et genres littéraires. La manière dont Houellebecq intègre à la fois le récit de la vie d’artiste, la biographie et la critique d’art amène à redéfinir la hiérarchie des discours, mais aussi à considérer la fiction comme étant une ouverture des possibles pour le monde de l’art. Enfin, le dernier chapitre consacré à Terrasse à Rome soulève des enjeux liés à la fragilité matérielle de l’œuvre d’art et explore comment le texte littéraire peut, en plus de se positionner comme une forme de savoir, en assurer la survivance conceptuelle. Les menaces politiques et religieuses de l’iconoclasme et autres types de destruction de l’objet d’art ont traversé l’histoire, permettant ainsi à la littérature de se questionner sur la manière dont on peut raconter l’œuvre d’art après sa disparition, mais aussi de se constituer comme traces et ce, même en régime fictionnel. | Ph.D. | reuse, institut | 12, 16 |
| Krahn, Philippa Robin Persephone | Wright, Graham A | MR-Guided Cardiac Ablation and Lesion Assessment for Ventricular Arrhythmia Management | Medical Biophysics | 2021-06 | Radiofrequency (RF) ablation has become a mainstay of treatment for ventricular tachycardia (VT), yet this therapy is complex and is associated with high rates of procedural failure and late recurrence. Adequate ablation lesion formation remains challenging, and current methods for assessing the accuracy and permanence of RF lesions are limited. In this thesis, magnetic resonance (MR) imaging is used to address these challenges by evaluating the spatial extent and characteristics of RF ablation lesions. The first study aimed to comprehensively describe the composition and evolution of acute left ventricular (LV) RF lesions using native-contrast MRI in a pre-clinical model. By performing this procedure entirely within the MRI scanner for MR guidance, these RF lesions could be characterized within minutes to hours post-ablation, during the time frame of a clinical ablation procedure. Combining native T1- and T2-weighted MR imaging provided a detailed picture of acute lesion composition, showing that the distinctive regions of ablation injury reflected by these contrast mechanisms evolve separately throughout the time period of an intervention. To better understand and interpret the MR images of RF lesions in the context of an ablation procedure, a study of the electrophysiologic voltage corresponding to the MR visualization of the RF lesions was performed. MR guidance enabled co-registered MR imaging and electroanatomic bipolar voltage mapping of the heart after ablation. Native-contrast MR lesion visualization differentiated permanent RF lesion cores and transient edema, while these regions were not distinguishable using bipolar voltage measurements. These findings suggest a possible role for MR lesion assessment as an additional procedural endpoint during VT ablation procedures. A third study was performed to investigate the capacity of native T1-weighted MRI to visualize RF lesions in the arrhythmogenic VT substrate. Ablation was targeted to potential VT substrates in an animal model of chronic infarct. This study showed that patterns of RF ablations are accurately visualized by native T1-weighted MRI in healthy myocardium, scar, and heterogeneous tissue channels comprising the arrhythmia substrate. This work represents significant advances towards the goal of increased RF ablation efficacy for VT by providing more specific and detailed assessment of the therapeutic RF lesions using MRI. Future work will involve evaluating chronic RF ablation lesions with respect to VT inducibility, further facilitating clinical translation of these findings. | Ph.D. | invest, animal | 9, 14, 15 |
| Whyte-Allman, Sana-Kay | Bendayan, Reina | Functional Expression and Regulation of Drug Efflux Transporters and Drug Metabolic Enzymes in the Testis and Circulating T-cells: Relevance to HIV-1 Pharmacotherapy | Pharmaceutical Sciences | 2021-06 | Despite significant advances in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) pharmacotherapy with the implementation of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART), HIV persistence in cellular reservoirs and tissue sanctuary sites is a major obstacle preventing the eradication of the virus. Suboptimal antiretroviral drug (ARV) concentrations reached in several anatomic sites such as the brain, testis, and gut-associated lymphoid tissues, could contribute in part, to persistent HIV infection. Biological membrane-bound ATP-binding cassette (ABC) and solute carrier (SLC) drug transporters, as well as drug metabolic enzymes, are known to interact with numerous ARVs, and as a result, could affect their distribution at sites of infection. Particularly, ABC drug efflux transporters and drug metabolic enzymes could reduce ARV concentrations in HIV target cells and tissues. The testis is recognised as an HIV sanctuary site, displaying subtherapeutic antiretroviral concentrations and persistent HIV infection. Furthermore, T-cells are the major cell types contributing to the HIV reservoir. Therefore, the objectives of this thesis were to: i) investigate the role of transcription factors i.e., pregnane X receptor (PXR) and constitutive androstane receptor (CAR) in the regulation of drug efflux transporters at the BTB, ii) assess the functional expression of ABC drug efflux transporters and drug metabolic enzymes in various human testicular and circulating T-cell subsets, and iii) examine the expression of drug efflux transporters, and their regulation by the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), in T-cells exposed to HIV-1 envelope glycoprotein (recombinant gp120IIIB) or pseudotype virus (pHIVNL4-3). We obtained novel data demonstrating PXR- and CAR-mediated upregulation of the functional expression of drug efflux transporters at the mouse BTB. We further demonstrated that drug efflux transporters and metabolic enzymes are functionally expressed in T-cell subsets infiltrating the human testis, suggesting their potential roles in restricting ARV permeability in this tissue. Finally, we provided evidence that ABC drug efflux transporters are upregulated in T-cells exposed to HIV via the mTOR signaling pathway. Understanding the roles and regulation of drug efflux transporters and metabolic enzymes in ARV disposition in HIV cell reservoirs and tissue sanctuaries is critical to overcome the challenge of suboptimal drug penetration at these sites. | Ph.D. | invest | 9 |
| Chang, Eun Se | Park, Chul B.||Lee, Patrick C. | Towards the Next Generation of Lightweight Polypropylene Composites with Well-balanced Mechanical Properties | Mechanical and Industrial Engineering | 2022-03 | Reinforced polypropylene (PP) composites currently find their place in various structural components by integrating the benefits of PP as a matrix and rigid reinforcement filler, largely replacing traditional metals and their alloys. Their low resistance to fracture, however, is often the major limiting factor for applications where catastrophic failure of components must be avoided. Rubber toughening is a common method that addresses this challenge but a trade-off between rigidity and toughness is usually inevitable. To this end, this dissertation aims to uncover the limits of current systems and to explore alternate strategies.The first part of the thesis focuses on optimization of existing polymer formulations for lightweight PP composites via foam injection molding process. The effect of several critical parameters including processing conditions, rubber modifier and reinforcement filler type and loading on their mechanical properties are scrutinized as a function of relative density. The results indicate that, regardless of the relative density or the filler/rubber type, increasing the filler loading leads to gradual enhancement of rigidity and reduction of toughness, while incorporation of rubber modifier displays the reverse trend. Moreover, albeit an effective modifier for toughening of PP composites in general, rubber significantly loses their efficiency for PP composite foams in the presence of nucleated cells as the relative density is reduced further. The second part of the thesis introduces novel techniques for fabrication of lightweight PP composites toughened with in situ generated organic nanofibrils. The first methodology benefits from the formation of core-sheath nanofibrils that are thermodynamically favourable, while the second study combines in situ fibrillation and vulcanization processes to generate partially crosslinked rubber nanofibres. The distinct morphology of both nanofibrillar PP composite systems imparts mechanical properties that are superior to classical PP blends produced with the equivalent material composition. In summary, the outlined research serves as a guideline for the formulation of lightweight PP composites and opens up a new avenue for nanofibre-reinforced PP composite production, broadening the spectrum of their potential applications where excellent strength/toughness balance is indispensable. Furthermore, it provides a detailed framework for understanding the process-structure-property relationships of conventional and nanofibrillar PP composite systems. | Ph.D. | trade, production | 10, 12 |
| Sadownik, Stephanie, A | McDougall, Doug | Under Construction: Developing Mathematical Processes and Discourse Through Dialogue in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Environments | Curriculum, Teaching and Learning | 2018-11 | This study investigates the use of Google Classroom as a tool for teachers of students aged 10-12 years old in facilitating and developing mathematics activity and to investigate how Google Classroom can increase engagement for their mathematics students. Qualitative data were collected in the form of pre- and post- meetings, semi-structured interviews, video and audio-recordings in person and on the phone, student and teacher work samples. Quantitative data were collected in the form of front loading a Google form listing the semi-structured interview questions to all participants prior to the interview. The eight major findings are: (1) Creating a safe and respectful environment and classroom community is a critical component for fostering mathematics activity in Google Classroom; (2) Posting student voice publicly on Google Classroom may be a powerful tool that increases student engagement; (3) Teachers in this study develop mathematical activity online in Google Classroom with different frequencies due to their background experience and comfort level; (4) Designing purposeful tasks online with Google Classroom that engage students in mathematics activity is difficult for some teachers; (5) Teachers who lack self-efficacy in teaching mathematics may rely on Google Classroom to present curriculum and to answer iii questions from their students or parents because the asynchronous nature affords a delay in response; (6) Google Classroom is most often used by teachers in this study to communicate with parents about students and to communicate mathematics homework; (7) Teachers may be able to calm parent anxieties about student learning by providing online mathematics resources through Google Classroom; and (8) Providing parents with access to online mathematics resources on Google Classroom has the potential to increase parent engagement in mathematics. Implications from this study suggest that teachers use Google Classroom to develop discourse and mathematical processes, but their overall background knowledge in mathematics and comfort level with technology dictates how it is used. Teachers can increase student engagement in mathematics by providing course content and additional resources to parents through the use of Google Classroom. Suggestions for areas for further research are included at the end of the study. | Ph.D. | education | 4 |